Bible Lessons: Genesis - Malachi

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” In ten words the Bible tells us nearly all God has caused to be written down about when and how the world, and the great big sky, with the sun, moon and uncounted stars that roll on and on through space, were made. Many thoughtful people have tried long and hard to find out when the world was made; but God has not told us. He has told us in Psa. 33:6,9. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” “He spake, and it was clone; He commanded, and it stood fast.”

“He commanded, and they were created.” Psa. 148:5.

“In the beginning’’, when there were none of Adam’s children to see Him do it, God created. And that, dear children, is the answer to all the infidel statements that are so common nowadays about how this world and all we can see came to be. God created them, made them out of nothing.— that is how He made them. There is a wonderful little verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 11 verse 3. Will you find it in your Bible? “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Many men and women have sought for a long time to prove that the world made itself, that it just happened, but we know that all those thoughts come from Satan. Nothing ever “just happens”, there is always a cause, and God was the cause of this world’s being created.

And now we come to verse 2, and find that what men call a great catastrophe, has happened since verse one. We are not told what it was, but something came in to spoil what God had made. The earth was (or became) waste and empty, and all was dark. And with it that way God began to fit the world up for man to live in it. He has told us a lot about what He did. All of the first two chapters of Genesis, after the middle of the second verse of the first chapter, tell the story. Isn’t it wonderful that God has told us so much? And notice how nearly every verse, especially in the first chapter, says “God said”, “God called”, “God made”, or something else about God, for He was alone in making the world. In something else, long, long after creation, God was all alone too,—in making a way for us to get to heaven, by faith in Jesus’ blood.

First He commanded light to be where all had been dark, and so we have our days of work and play and nights of rest and sleep; next the fog or mist that the world was covered with was moved away to form the clouds over our heads. On the third day the water that seems to have until then covered the whole earth, was made to run away into the lakes and seas and oceans, and the rivers and creeks were made, no doubt by the earth and rocks being thrown up, so there was dry land. Next God caused the grass, the bushes and the trees to grow. How beautiful the world must have looked then! It is beautiful now, where people haven’t spoiled it with ugly buildings and signs and other things, but not as beautiful as when God made it. There were no sinners then to spoil what God did. Next He causes the sun and moon and stars in. the sky to divide day from night, and to give us months and years; and spring, summer, fall and winter, as well as to give light on the earth. Four days were past, and God created the birds and fishes on the fifth day. Then on the sixth day He made everything that walks or creeps on the land; first the lower animals, and then man. And when He tells about man, God shows us in His Word, the Bible, that He didn’t think of us as being just like the lower animals. In a certain way we were to be like Him; we were to have intelligence far beyond what the lower animals have, to rule over the fish, the birds, the cattle and all the creeping things.

Man was made out of the dust of the ground, but God breathed into him the breath of life, so that we have spirit, unlike the lower animals, can never die. Somewhere you and I are going to live forever. Where shall it be, heaven or hell? God has offered us heaven, to share it with His clear Son, who died for lost sinners on the cross, if we will just own our badness and receive the Lord Jesus as Saviour. Have you, clear young reader, clone that? Don’t put off, but come to Him now.

Genesis 2

Do you notice how God is called the Lord God in verse 4 of chapter two and thereafter? It is because God was thinking of man,

His noblest creation. Adam and Eve were to be in a nearer place to God than any other of the creatures of whose forming the first chapter of Genesis tells. God was to be the Lord of human beings with whom He could talk and visit. A garden was made, somewhere, we cannot tell exactly where, in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Mesopotamia, that flow into the Persian Gulf, and this garden the man was set to care for.

Adam gave names to all the beasts and birds, but none of them would do for a companion for him. God then caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and while sleeping, God took from him a rib which He built into a woman, Eve, whom He brought to Adam as his wife. Here we have a little picture of the Lord Jesus dying on the cross for those whose sins He bore who should afterward be made fit to be with Him in glory.

Genesis 3

But now comes Satan, that wicked one, who always tries to spoil what God does; he seems to have said to himself, something like this, “I’ll see what I can do to ruin the beautiful creation God has just finished; I’ll bring in sin and sorrow and death there, and rob God of His pleasure in that happy couple.” So he came in one day, O so slyly, and said to Eve, “Yes, has God said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Poor Eve little knew what an enemy that person was that was speaking to her, or she would have been more careful about answering him; in fact she should never have listened to Satan at all. It should have been enough for her to know that God had said that there was one forbidden tree; all the rest were free to them to take the fruit and nuts growing so thickly and so beautifully from their branches. But Eve even added to what God had said, for He had not forbidden Adam and herself to “touch” but only to “eat” the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan now said to her, “You won’t die; God knows that when you eat that fruit you will know more: you’ll be as gods, knowing good and evil.” This was partly true, for Satan mixes his lies with some things that are true; it was true that their “eyes” would be “opened”, they would know good and evil; but in getting to know evil in addition to the good which only they knew before, Adam and Eve changed from innocent beings into sinners, fell under the power of evil, or sin, their very natures becoming sinful. Of this dreadful prospect Satan told Eve nothing, of course. She looked at the fruit, it seemed to be good for food even though God had said they must not eat it, and had told them they would die as a penalty for eating; it was “pleasant to the eyes” too,—beautiful; and she wanted to be wise as Satan had said; she wished to have that which he made her think God had selfishly kept back from them, and so, listening to Satan and turning away from God, Eve ate, and Adam coming up did the same.

Now a change came over Adam and Eve; they knew they had done wrong, they felt they couldn’t meet God again as they had before; they were indeed sinners. Satan had deceived Eve and God was right. The first thing they did though, was to sew for themselves clothes made out of the thick shiny leaves of the fig tree, feeling that they could no longer meet God openly as they had before. Yet when His voice was heard, walking in the garden in the cool of the day, Adam and his wife hid among the trees; the fig leaves wouldn’t do, they were afraid.

When God spoke, Adam’s answer showed that he was in his heart away from Him; “The woman Thou gavest me,” he said, “she gave me to eat,” as much as to say, “It’s all your fault.” Eve, too, throws the blame on another, Satan,—”The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.” How sad all this was,—having done wrong, and then to try to excuse themselves even at the expense of God. It shows what hearts we have, surely, because we are children of Adam and Eve, and have the same sinful nature.

In the face of the ingratitude of His disobedient creatures, God at once speaks of a Saviour. (Verse 15). There should be enmity between the woman’s child, which we know could only be the Lord Jesus; and Satan, whose “head” would be bruised though he should bruise the Lord Jesus’ “heel.” These things were made true in principle at the cross. The Lord Jesus won the victory over Satan there, though He was made to feel the hatred of Satan in all that Satan, and men led by, him, were permitted to do to Him. By and by Satan will be put in that dreadful hell that was made for him, but he will have beside him all those who are not saved.

God now turns to Eve, first, and then to Adam, both of whom had been listening, no doubt, to the words. God had spoken to Satan, and tells them of the results they and their children would always feel of their disobedience; they should have sorrows all their lives, and death would surely come just as had been foretold; Satan was proved a liar, and God their only true friend. God is your only true friend, too; have you believed what He has said and taken the Lord for your own Saviour?

The story ends with God sending Adam and Eve out of the garden they couldn’t be in any longer, but now fitted with clothes of animal skins instead of fig leaves. In this way God showed the need for blood to be shed; sinners can only be received by God on the ground of their lives being forfeited, and someone having died for them. The Lord Jesus has died for us.

Turn over the pages of your Bible to the Epistle to the Romans, 5th chapter, 6th, 7th and 8th verses which tell us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Have you thanked Him for doing that? O what trouble and sorrow, what sin and sadness that first sin of Adam and Eve brought on us all! But we are all sinners ourselves, and not only the children of sinning first parents; we need to be saved, each one of us. Are you saved?

Genesis 4

I suppose you know the name of the first baby that ever lived—it was Cain. But can you tell me what kind of man he grew to be?

His father and mother had sinned, as we have seen, but we are very sure they confessed to God and were truly sorry, and looked forward to the time when there would be a Saviour, as God had said. I am quite sure Adam and Eve are among the millions of young and old that have died in faith in God and will not be sent to hell in the day of judgment. So I think their oldest boys, Cain and Abel, must have often been told by their parents about their being sinners and of the promised Saviour.

When the boys grew to be men, Abel raised sheep, but Cain cultivated the ground. Cain brought an offering to God, but what he brought would not do, because it was the fruit of the ground, which God had cursed on account of Adam and Eve’s sin. Abel, instead. brought as an offering, the first born ones of his flock, and God long, long afterward in the Epistle to the Hebrews chapter eleven, has told us that Abel’s was “a more excellent sacrifice than Cain’s.” Abel knew and confessed. in bringing his little dead lamb, that there was no other way to come to God by faith, but in connection with the death of an innocent one instead of himself. Of course, it was only as looking on to the true Lamb of God, that God could receive a lamb of the flock whose death couldn’t save anyone from hell.

Cain got very angry because God was not pleased with what he brought, and God spoke to him about it, but he was just the same hard-hearted, rebellious man as before, and when Abel and he were in the field, Cain killed his brother because Abel pleased God, and his own ways did not. It does not seem that Cain was ever sorry for his horrible crime; he even lied to God about it in his impudent speech that is given us in the ninth verse. But nothing is hid from God. He sees everything, knows all our thoughts and hearts, and said to Cain, “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground.” Cain said to God that his punishment was greater than he could bear, but, as before, his heart was not changed. He went away to the east to live, his conscience making him unhappy to live near his parents and the others of his family.

We read of no more offerings or sacrifices to God; I think Cain wanted to forget God, like so many are doing today, and, as far as we can tell, God let him have his wish. About the Cain family, we are only told of their building a city of their own; of one of his descendants (a son in the fifth generation who proved to be a murderer like Cain) having two wives; and of the family making and using harps and organs, and of brass or copper and iron workers among them.

If you or I had been alive then, and could have gone to visit the city of Cain’s children, we should have found them busy trying to drown out the memory of their father’s terrible crime, the memory of that murdered brother, with harps and organs and singing, and with the first factories at work making various things out of iron and copper. We might have enjoyed their music, and admired their industry, but we should have remembered the sin unrepented of, and wondered how the Cain family expected to meet God.

You and I have to meet God some day; perhaps soon, it may be today. Are you ready? Do not turn away, and say, “I’ll think about that another time.” God’s time is now.

Genesis 5

A third son, Seth, came to Adam and Eve after Cain had killed his brother. We do not know very much about Seth, but God tells us that while Adam was made in His likeness, (verse 3), Seth was born in the likeness of his father, and after his image. (Chapter 3:5). Sin had come into God’s fair creation, and put its stamp on everything. Adam and Eve had become sinners, and their children were like themselves.

None of us are born good; some that we love, or think very much of, may seem to us to have no faults, or very few, but when we turn over the leaves of our Bibles to Romans 3:10-12, we learn what God thinks about us:

“There is none righteous. . . none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God . . . none that doeth good, no, not one.”

Indeed, as time went on, it seems certain that the generations, or families that were born, were getting worse and worse, for by and by God set a time when He would destroy man and beast from the earth with a great flood.

God told Adam and Eve that the punishment or penalty of sin was death. And while chapter 5 does not mention very many people by name, it tells of all of them except two, that they died, and the death of one of those is mentioned at the end of chapter nine. “All the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.”

In the very last verse of the sixth chapter of Romans you will find these very important words from God Himself: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

You see, there are wages, and the cemeteries which we see everywhere remind us that the wages are paid. So many do not want to take the gift which God offers; they would rather try to get it for themselves, but, children, eternal life can be had only by trusting in Jesus. Have you trusted Him?

I notice, too, that while we can at least hope that most, perhaps all, of the ten people whose names are given in the fifth chapter of Genesis were God’s children through faith, of only two of them is anything said that lets us know that they tried to please God in their lives. It is very sad to see so many nowadays just satisfied to be saved, and seeming to forget the Lord Jesus who died for them on the cross. If they really love Him, they would be thinking about Him sometimes, don’t you think so too? And if they are thinking about Him, they would sometimes talk about Him as though they liked to.

Do you remember that verse—O, there are several of them—that tell us that God is having a record kept, of all that we each of us, saved or unsaved, think or sav or do? In Rev. 20:12 we react of books written about the “works” done here, as well as the book of life, which contains the names of those who are saved. If you are saved, if you know the Lord Jesus as your own Saviour, I am sure you will want to please Him, and not have nothing good written down in those books that are going to be opened in heaven. We may not be able to do very much, and it is surely very, very little after all, when we think how much love we owe to God for saving us, but if we are saved, we ought to seek to please Him, shouldn’t we.?

One of the men this chapter tells us of didn’t die. You will find the short story of his life of three hundred and sixty-five years, (just as many as there are days in the year) in verses 19 and 21-24.

God just says about Enoch, that he “walked with God” for three hundred -years; and further, that he “walked with God; and he was not; for God took him.”

Let us try to imagine the day when, perhaps, Enoch’s wife, and Metbusaleh, and the rest of the family were terribly alarmed; they couldn’t find Enoch anywhere! They probably searched all around, and asked everybody, and even had the neighbors hunting for him, but all in vain. He had been taken away by God.

Do you know that this is a picture of what is going to happen to a lot of people, both old folks and young, and some boys and girls, and babes, too? Yes, the Lord Jesus is going to descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we (the saved ones, not everyone) which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we (the saved ones) ever be with the Lord.

I have repeated this for you from 1 Thess. 4:16-17, so that you will know that it is God’s word. What a terrible thing it will be to be left behind, never again to be with the saved ones! Perhaps your papa and mamma are saved, and you are not. O, be wise! own yourself a sinner now, and receive the Lord Jesus as your Saviour.

Genesis 6

Very quickly after Adam and Eve died, their children, and their children’s children got more and more sinful, and at last things got to such a condition that God said He would not let the wickedness go on; and He also cut down man’s days to one hundred and twenty years. He saw what bad hearts those people had, and that all they thought about, and all they said and did, was only evil all the time, yet He was so patient, and so slow to anger that He did not leave them without someone to speak to them about their ways and to warn them of the certainly coming day of judgment.

‘Noah’s great-grandfather Enoch, about whom we read last time, had spoken to the people of his day in a very solemn way. God has told us in the Bible, part of what Enoch said to them; it is written in the short little Epistle of Jude, verses 14 and 15. Will you take your Bible and find it?

“Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” ‘

Noah, too, was a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5.) We don’t know how many listened to his preaching, but we can be sure that hundreds, and it may be thousands, came to see the ark God told him to build, and not very many of them, we would think, went away without hearing his solemn warnings. Perhaps they laughed at what they may have called Noah’s crazy notion, that a great flood was coming to drown them all, but the time came when there was no laughing left.

God indeed had said to Noah, “The end of all flesh is come before Me make thee an ark of gopher wood”. It. was to have many rooms, and it would need to have very many to allow a place for each kind of creature that would have to find a home in the ark for a year. It had to have a place for all that would believe Goo’ and be saved, too. This big house-ship was to be painted inside and outside with pitch: it was about four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high, with three floors. There was just one window and it was about a foot and a half, on the roof of the ark. I don’t suppose this ark was very much like the “Noah’s arks” that boys and girls, when they ark not too big, sometimes have to play with; when the ark was built. God told Noah and his family to come into it. Do you notice that word “Come”? not “go” into the ark. God, through Jesus, invites us to come to Hirai and be saved, foo, not from being drowned, but from the judgment that is surely coming soon, and that will be to be shut out from Him and shut in with Satan forever.

Genesis 7

During the week that was left before the door of the ark was shut such a strange procession of creatures came from the fields and the forests, from jungle and mountain,—every kind of animal and feathered thing, and crawling worms and snakes too, came walking and flying and creeping to the ark, two of some kinds and seven pairs of others. Who but God could have made them all come there? And we can be sure that every kind of thing (except those that live under the water) was found in the ark, because chapter 6, verses 19 and 20; and chapter 7, verses 2, 3, 14, and 15, tell us so.

But did any boys and girls or men and women go into the ark? Sad to say, not one person outside of Noah and his wife, -their three sons and their wives! All they needed was to believe what God said; the door was open, and it was just to walk in! Perhaps some of them wait-. ed for others to go in, and the others didn’t go, and so they were outside when the door was shut. In verse 16 see those words, “And the Lord shut him in”; Noah and his family were surely safe then, but what about those that were outside? They were shut out, just as those who believed God were shut in. Very likely as the terrible down-pour of rain came on, and kept on day after day until presently the houses began to be covered with water, some would call out to Noah to open the door and let them in, but it was of no use,—Noah couldn’t open the door, for the Lord had shut it. The time of pleading with those that were outside was past; they had been offered salvation but didn’t take it at God’s time, and now it was too. late. Be wise, dear children, and make sure now that you are saved, -that you have put your real heart’s trust in Jesus through His word. There is a dreadful time, far worse than the flood, -coming and then it will be forever too late to be saved.

The great deluge of rain kept on until the mountains were covered, and there was no height left for anyone to climb to, and every living person and every creature that moved on the earth was dead, except those who were in the ark.

Genesis 8

After five months the rain stopped and the water gradually went down until the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat; some weeks later the mountain tops could be seen; after another few weeks, Noah opened the window of the ark, and sent out a raven which flew far and near, but did not come back to him. Next, he sent out a dove, to see if the water had become low, but she found no resting place, and came back to Noah into the ark. A week went by and Noah sent the dove out again; at evening she came back with an olive leaf in her mouth, showing that the trees were to be seen out of the water; still another week passed and the dove was let loose once more, and this time she did not come back; there was a clean, dry place for her to make her home.

When they had been shut up in the ark very nearly eleven months, the water was all gone, and Noah took the covering off the ark, but still he waited for God to tell him to leave, and to bring out the many creatures that had been shut up so long, so it was ten days more than a year after the rain began to fall, when the door of the ark was opened.

Noah, now in thankfulness for being saved from the death that had come to all the world, built an altar to the Lord and offered on it both beasts and birds of every clean kind, and the Lord, while saying that the thoughts of men’s hearts are evil. from youth, yet said that He would no more curse the ground for man’s sake, and no more strike every living thing as He had done; as long as the earth remains, planting time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night would never cease.

Genesis 9

As a sign of His promise to not destroy the earth with a flood again, God gave the rainbow in the sky that we so often see when the sun shines after rain.

I would like to end our story just here for this time, but I must tell you first that Noah planted grape vines, and afterward got drunk from the wine he made. Man cannot be depended on by God;, he always spoils what God gives him, and God keeps our salvation for us, because we’d lose it if it depended on us to keep it.

Genesis 10

For a hundred years after the flood was over, all of Noah’s children lived pretty much together, and there began to be very many of them.

Genesis 11

Just as it had been before the flood, in forgetting God and going on in sinful ways, so it was afterward; only now they seem to have very, very quickly forgotten the lesson of the ark and the awful flood of waters which God had sent on the earth to destroy every person that was not safe in that ark. I expect they thought that they were pretty smart people, and in a few verses in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, verses 21 to end of chapter, God has told us something about what they thought of themselves, and what He thought of them, which wasn’t the same at all. I want you to read them all, but I can only find room here for part of the verses:

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things”. So you see they began making pictures and images of people and things, in order to pray to them, and make sacrifices or offerings to them, because they didn’t want to believe in the true God.

Among the things these early people found how to do, was making day bricks to build With, instead of stone, and Satan seems to have made use of this to get them to go a step further from God. They were getting to be so many, and the world was so big, it was certain the people would get scattered over the whole earth, which God surely meant them to be, but in peaceful quietness. But having no wish to please God, but only themselves, and determined to make themselves independent of Him, they thought they would build a big city, and a great high tower of brick as a kind of grand gathering point, or capital city of the world. But though they wanted to forget God, He did not forget them, and so we read (verse 5): “And the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower which the children of men builded”.

I don’t suppose anyone saw Him, or thought of Him, but He was there and just as now He sees into every heart, and knows what we are doing and saying, so it was then. God saw that the city and the tower were only a beginning; they would, with Satan as their leader, get worse and worse very fast, and God would soon have to punish the world in some dreadful happening like the flood. So He had a way to ruin their plans, and to hold back Satan’s wicked schemes, and that was to alter their speech so that they could not understand one another. Well, of course, just as soon as there were different languages spoken, which is just what God caused to happen, the building stopped, and the people separated. by languages into groups, and so there came about nationalities: each nation went off in search of a home for itself, and they were soon scattered all over the world. From this time, Egypt and China had their beginning, but those countries claim to he very old, older than Adam and Eve.

Other nations, too, came to be then; many of them we know very little about. Now this is the way God tells us the nations began, and I am glad the Bible tells us, because otherwise we would have to depend on what the histories tell, that men have written, both on stones and in books, which have been found untrue many a time.

Adam and Eve, when in the garden of Eden, had been given for their food, you will remember, the grains and nuts and fruits that grew on, plants and trees, and when God sent them out of that garden He had (chapter 3:18) told them again that these things were to be their food. But after the flood, God told men that besides what I mentioned, their food should include every moving thing; there was one thing prohibited,—the blood could not he used for food, but only the flesh of the creatures: Thirty years after the tower of Babel, came Nimrod, who began to be a mighty one in the earth, and we are told that he was also a mighty hunter before the Lord; he hunted wild creatures for the pleasure of hunting and killing them, and not just for food for himself and his family. Not only that, but Nimrod became, as it seems, the first king; and Babel, where the tower had been begun was the first city of his kingdom. And so the world went on without God Who made it, Who gave its people life and breath and all things. I wonder if my reader is trying to live without. God. Nimrod. and those of his day, could not know of the precious blood of Jesus, but we do, you and I. Are you trusting Him for salvation?

Genesis 12

Beyond the broad Euphrates, the great river we have talked of before, which flows into the Persian Gulf, lived Abram, and Sarai his wife, with Nahor and Haran his brothers, and Terah their father. Haran died sometime after his son Lot was born. All of them, and I suppose nearly everyone in their country, and all over the world, both prayed and made presents to idols; they were idolators, as we say. Probably only three hundred and seventy years had gone by since the flood, but Satan had been very busy, and the whole world nearly, was by this time given up to worshiping false gods that men had made with their own hands.

And now God chose one man out of all this idol-worshiping world,—this Abram that I mentioned first,—made Himself known to him, and told him to get out of his native land, away from his relations and from his father’s house, to go to another country that He would tell him of afterward. It could not have been because Abram was any better than other people that God did this and I don’t think he was any better. I think it was just as, long afterward, God did with Saul of Tarsus, in the Acts, chapter 9, when He took a man who cared nothing for Him, and after bringing him to see how bad he was, and that God alone could save him, giving him something to do in the world for Him.

It could only have been because Abram believed what God had said to Him, that he gave up his home and started off for an unknown place with nothing but God’s spoken word to depend on. We have more than Abram had; we have God’s written word to tell us about God, and if we believe in our hearts what His word says about. us, and God’s way of salvation, we are saved, and going to a better country than Canaan, the land to which Abram was sent. Do you remember the verse in Acts 16:31, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved”? God has made it very easy for us to be saved from His anger in that coming day of judgment, but do not put off, dear children; “Now is the accepted time,” as God’s word itself says.

Well, Abram started from his home with his wife and his father and his nephew Lot. This was not doing exactly what God had told him, and so they stopped at a place named Haran, and did not go all the way to the promised land until after father Terah was dead. Then the three, Abram, Sarai and Lot, set out again, and coming into the land of Canaan from the north, they went through it to a place not very far from Jerusalem, though there was no Jerusalem then, I think. The maps in the back of your Bible will show you about how Abram must have journeyed.

There were several nations living in the country they went through, and like those who lived where Abram had,—like Abram himself had been, too, they did not know or care about the true God, and worshiped idols. Abram had come to Canaan on a simple promise from God, and He now appeared to him again, saying, “Unto thy seed (or children) will I give this land”. And there Abram built an altar,—a place on which to offer sacrifices,—to the Lord who appeared unto him. When he moved to another place, he built another altar, and from what the latter part of the eighth verse tells us, I am sure that Abram was learning more of God, and his life was showing it too. If you are one of the Lord Jesus’ lambs, your words and ways ought to show it too, shouldn’t they?

Wonderful man as Abram was, though, he failed when trial came. God let him be tried by a famine in the country. Perhaps there had not been enough rain to make the farmers’ crops grow; there certainly wasn’t much food to be had, either for themselves or their animals, and there was plenty in Egypt, and so Abram, forgetting to trust God to take care of him, as surely would in the place He had sent him to, went down there to stay until the famine was over in Canaan.

Now it is something I have proved many times, and perhaps my readers have too, that one wrong thing leads to another. That was the case here, for Abram didn’t get further than the boundary of Egypt, before he and his wife fixed up a lie to tell when they were down there. Sarai was a pretty woman, and Abram was afraid the Egyptians would want to take her from him and would kill him, so he asked her to say that she was his sister. It happened as Abram feared; the king, or Pharaoh of Egypt, took her for one of his wives. and gave Abram many valuable presents of cattle and servants and donkeys and camels for Sarai’s sake. And now again God came into what was going on.

Abram and Sarai were in serious trouble, and only God could help them. If we are saved, we ought to ask God in the Lord Jesus’ name to help us in every trouble. He will, just as surely as can be. Verse 17 tells us that He made a lot of trouble for Pharaoh and his household; we don’t know just what it was, but something that made the king of Egypt send Sarai away, and Abram, too, very quickly. It wasn’t very nice though, that someone who didn’t know God, should have to tell one of God’s children about his ways not being just right or truthful.

Genesis 13

Back they came, all the way to Bethel, the place they had started from in the middle of Canaan. They were rich now with cattle and silver and gold, hut they had not been happy while they were away. There is no mention of Abram’s praying to God in Egypt, or building an altar there, but when he got back to the place he should not have left, then he began to be a testimony for God again.

God has told us this that we have been reading about Abram, so that if we have believed in our hearts the glad news that Jesus died on the cross for us on account of our own sins, and so are saved, we may be encouraged to try with His help to live by faith like Abram did, and to avoid Abram’s mistake of acting without God. No one is, or has been, perfect in his life here on earth, but the Lord Jesus, and He is the only perfect example.

If we are the Lord Jesus’ boys and girls, shall we not try today, tomorrow and all the time, to live just as though He were walking and sitting beside us wherever we are?

You will remember that God had told Abram to go away from his relations, as well as from his home, and that he had not left his father or his nephew, but they started off with him on that journey that was to end, he didn’t know where, but in the place to which God would guide him. When his father died at Haran, Abram had started off again, God having patiently waited for him, and no doubt stirred him up again to be obedient to Him. Well, when Abram. Sarai and Lot came back from Egypt to the place they had left in the land of Canaan, the nephew Lot, who, though a child of God, was not a man of faith like Abram, was still in his company, but presently he ceased to be a hindrance to Abram’s spiritual life. It happened this way: the uncle and nephew had now so many cattle that they could not very well live together, and Abram who believed God and was content to just quietly wait for Him to give his children the land as He had promised, told Lot to choose first where he would like to live, and then he, Abram, would go to some other place. So Lot, when he had looked around, chose for himself a very good part of the country close to the one river that Canaan has, the Jordan, and removed down there.

When we choose for ourselves, without thinking of what may please God, we are likely to make a choice that proves to be a bad one afterward, and it was so with Lot. He thought about the nice place he was moving to, where there would be plenty of feed for his animals, and so on. and he either didn’t know that the men of Sodom were “very wicked, and sinners before the Lord exceedingly,” when he pitched his tent toward that city, or else he thought it didn’t matter very much, as long as he didn’t go on with them in their bad ways.

I have often thought of a story my Sunday school teacher, who is now in heaven with the Lord Jesus, told the class one Lord’s day about thirty years ago. It was about a gentleman who wanted a man to drive his carriage (there were no automobiles then). Three men came to his house to apply for the position, and the gentleman took them by turns into a room to talk with them before he decided which one to hire. After asking the questions anyone would think proper, to be sure they knew how to drive horses, and do the work he wanted a coachman to do, the gentleman asked them each how near they could drive to the edge of a certain place he named, where the road passed close to a precipice. The first one thought he could go within six inches of the edge; and the second one, after learning what the first one had answered, said he could drive three inches from the edge of the bluff; but the third one told the gentleman, “I’d keep just as far away from the edge as I could”, and his answer was the right one; he got the place. Now this was the trouble with Lot; he thought he could go near to danger and still be safe, but if we are the Lord’s, we can’t take any chances. The very first Psalm tells us where we are safe and happy:

“Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law cloth he meditate day and night”, so we should always keep away from bad companions.

The next thing we read, is, (chapter 13, verses 14 to 17) that God appeared again to Abram, who was at last free from his worldly-minded nephew, and repeated His promise, and made it stronger and clearer than before. That is always the way with God; if His children try to live for Him, no matter whether they are boys or girls, or grown men and women, God always finds a way to let them know He is pleased with them, and encourages them to go on. ‘Abram was very likely feeling sad because his nephew had gone into a bad neighborhood where he could make more money, and Abram may have been saying to himself, (if he was, Satan put it into his mind,) “I just wonder if it pays to try to please God; other folks seem to get the best of things by going after them, and I wait for God to give me what He thinks is best for me, and don’t get anything.” Now if Abram did think so, and we were living then, and knew what God knew we could have said to Abram, “You just wait, and you won’t be sorry,” because in a very short while Lot lost everything he had in this world, and Abram went on experiencing one thing after another, that told him of God’s love for and care over him; and that is the way with every boy or girl or grown person who wants to please God; it may look for a little while, just down here in this world, as though the unsaved people and the worldly Christians have the best of everything; sometimes they seem to have here, but don’t forget that life is not even long enough, big enough, to be counted as a drop of water in comparison with an ocean for eternity. Some time I would like to talk to you about Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man who lived to please himself, and Lazarus the poor beggar who was one of God’s children, but you can read the story for yourself now, without waiting for me.

Genesis 14

Genesis 14 tells about a war between several kings and you might wonder why God takes up so many verses in His precious Bible for that, until you get down to verse 12;

“And they took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who dwelt in. Sodom, and his goods, and departed”. That tells why; it was because God still cared for poor Lot.. who had first gone near Sodom, and then went to live in the city. Mind you, Lot was one of God’s children, but he was not where God would have him, and I think he ought to have felt that Sodom was the wrong place for him. It was a good thing for him that Abram could and did come after him and set him free, but it is sad to see that he went right back to Sodom again to live.

Another king, who had not been in the war that brought Lot into trouble. Melchizedek, the King of Salem, a man who feared God, was sent by Him to meet Abram when he came back with all the captives and all the property, which the victorious armies had carried away. Abram was in danger; he would be tempted to give up his place as standing separate from the wicked world around him, and to join hands with the king of Sodom, but strengthened by his meeting with Melchizedek, Abram refused to take any reward for what he had clone. He would receive from God, but not from men who did not know God, and indeed hated Him. We shall learn more about Sodom and its people, and Lot, too, in Genesis 19.

Genesis 15

After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a’ vision, saying, `Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,” (verse 1),—just the very words Abram needed, though perhaps, and very likely, no one knew it but God Himself.

You and I would feel a lot better if when we were afraid or sad and lonely, some person big and strong and rich and kind should say to us (and mean it too), “Don’t be afraid, I’ll do everything for you that you need”. But that is only a very poor likeness of what God has said, and will do, for those who love Him.

Open your Bible to John 16:33 and read, “These things I have spoken unto you that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” These inspiring words were among the last, the blessed Lord Jesus said to those He loved, on the night in which He was betrayed to the wicked men who had long planned to kill Him. “Fear not”, “Be of good cheer”—it is Jesus Who says the word, and that is why we believe it, isn’t it? But now let us look again at the first verse of our chapter in Genesis.

‘We all know what a reward is; it is something that someone gives you that isn’t wages or pay, when you’ve done something that other folks are very pleased with, isn’t it?

Now what is a shield? Some of you will say very quickly, “I know”, but as I can’t wait with this story until you tell me, I asked two boys that I know, and they told me that “I am thy shield” means, “I am your protector.” That is right, God was taking care of Abram, protecting him from wicked men and from Satan, but the verse says too, “and I have a reward for you in eternity,” because Abram had refused to take a gift from the world, when the king of Sodom met him.

But Abram had been thinking of the promise God had made to him in his old home, far away across the desert, and so he asked Him about a son, for he was past seventy-five years old, and his wife was only ten years younger than he, so they were not exactly young people, even in those days when people lived much longer than they do now. After the flood, lives grew quickly shorter, but they were not yet as short as now-a-days. God told Abram he should indeed have a son, and He even brought him outdoors at night, and told him to look up in the sky and count the stars if he could—so many would his children be for number. Before this, in the thirteenth chapter and sixteenth verse, God had spoken of Abram’s children as to be like the dust of the earth for multitude, and as we are sure there is a meaning in all the Bible tells us, we can think God, when speaking to Abram, had in mind, first, the saved ones of the people of Israel, and others who are going to be God’s earthly people; and then in the fifteenth chapter, verse five, God was thinking of those that are His heavenly people; but all of them, both earthly and heavenly people, saved through the precious blood of Jesus. Of course, not every one that has been saved since. Abram was an Israelite: no indeed, and God did not mean that, but as Romans 4:11 Says, Abram was the father of all them that believe, the head of the great family of faith.

“And he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness” (verse 6.). Have you believed in Him to the salvation of your soul? O, don’t throw this paper away, or pass this by to read something else. Have you believed, confessing your sins, your badness to God?

Abram was I think now quite as ready to wait for God to act for him as he had been before, or as he was later on, for he asked God, How shall I know that I shall inherit this land? Well, God graciously told him how it would be with himself, and with his children after his death, before they were given the land of Canaan for their own. Abram himself would die in a peaceful old age, a stranger in the country God had promised, but his descendants at the end of about four hundred years would be brought out of a strange land—Egypt, it was—in which they would be treated very cruelly, (but the Egyptians would be punished by God) and taken back to Canaan, the land of God’s promise.

The second half of verse 16 we must notice, too; it tells us that the wickedness of the nations which lived in Canaan when Abram did, was not yet “full”. Surely they were very wicked even then; let us turn back again to the thirteenth chapter and thirteenth verse which tells us about Sodom’’, that its people were “wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly”. God was going to wait four hundred years more, not on Sodom, which was soon to be destroyed, but on the rest of the people of the land, as He had waited many more years on the people who lived before the flood. Perhaps none of them would repent and turn to God, but, at least, they were given plenty of time to own their badness to Him, and they must have known they were wicked, but would not own it to God. Have you done that, dear young reader? I want to point you to two very solemn verses, Acts 16:30-31. There we are told that God now commands everyone to repent, because He has appointed a day of judgment, and ordained a Man, (it is the Lord Jesus) to be the judge.

God told Abram too of the boundaries —the Mediterranean sea and the river Euphrates—of the promised land, which was then the home of the ten nations named in the last verses of chapter 15.

Before we close let us notice that just as the precious blood of Jesus had to be shed before those who believe in Him could, beside knowing they are saved, be told of what God is going to do, and the course of things in the world, in the same way when Abram had offered as a sacrifice to God those animals and birds that verses 9-10 tell of, He told him of the future of his children. Of course we know that those Old Testament sacrifices could not take away sins, (Hebrews 10:4 says that), but until the Lord Jesus came down into this world, and died on the cross, bearing the punishment instead of all those who believe in Him, God was pleased to receive those sacrifices which were offered in faith to Him in prospect of the cross.

Because Jesus has died, God can make us His children, His friends, and tell us about a glorious home in the sky, better than any country or home in this world. O children, but are you ready to go there? It is not enough to believe that Jesus has died; to be saved, you and I have to know that our badness is so real that God has had to punish Jesus on the cross for it. What would it have been for us if the Lord had not been willing to die for our sins, taking a far bigger punishment for them than any of us can ever know, and so satisfying God when He hung on the cross, that God can forgive us all the things He had against us?

Genesis 16

Now we turn to chapter sixteen in which we come to the end of this part of Abram’s history. He had believed God in giving up his home in the East, his native land and his false gods; he had come into a strange country peopled by many nations, and there God had told Abram the land should be his by and bye, meanwhile he was to wait as a stranger in the country. God had not given Abram and Sarai any children though they had been married for many years and were now no longer young, yet all that God had told Abram was founded on a promised son.

One of the things God’s children have to learn is to have patience, to wait for God’s time to come. And we don’t like to wait. That is why, I think, He makes His children sometimes wait long for something that has been in His mind to give them all the while, it isn’t that He doesn’t love them, but because He loves, and He wants to keep them from trusting to themselves and making sometimes terrible mistakes. As far as we let God into our plans and our lives we shall not go wrong.

Sarai thought she never would get the promised boy baby of her very own, since so many years had gone by—ten at least since they came into Canaan, and she and her husband agreed that it was time to act. Abram should take Sarai’s Egyptian maid, Hagar, as a sort of second wife, and if Hagar should have a boy baby that would surely be the promised son. But they didn’t ask God what He thought about their plan; He gave Hagar a boy baby, so that part came true, but Ishmael was only the cause of grief and bad temper, lots of trouble for Sarai and Abram, and his children the roving Arabs, have never been friends of the children of Abraham.

Genesis 17

We must specially notice before we go on to the seventeenth chapter, what Hagar called God when He had so kindly sent an angel after her out in that lonely place that she ran away to, when Sarai was so hard on her,—”Thou God seest me”, Wherever we are whether in need or in trouble, self-willed and rebellious, in sin perhaps, or pleasing God in our conversation and our ways, it is always true that He sees us. O how careful we ought to be. Thou God seest me!

Thirteen years more went by while Ishmael was growing from a baby into quite a big boy, I suppose, and when it was now just about twenty-four years since Abram, Sarai and Lot first arrived in Canaan, God appeared again to Abram.

How long the time must have seemed, waiting for that promised baby. Abram and Sarai will have very soon been sure that Ishmael was not the child God had meant, when He had spoken to Abram again and again about his “seed” or children. They surely were sorry they had acted in their own wills in the unhappy marriage to Hagar.

In the sixteenth chapter, we read mostly about Sarai, Abram and Hagar, making plans and having troubles, but in this chapter, and the next one, God is the One we read mostly of, and there are no troubles to tell of now. The long years of waiting for God to act had done no good to Abram; if there was willfulness in the sixteenth chapter and planning without God, this chapter we are looking at today, shows us a man who had learned a lesson.

“I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between Me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.” When Abram heard these words he fell on his face; he was humble now and quite willing for God to lead him. And God went on to say that Abram should be a father. of many nations; his name even should be changed to Abraham, meaning father of a great multitude. God promised all the land of Canaan to Abraham and to his descendants after him for an everlasting possession. And do you know, children, that that land has never been worth much to anyone else than the descendants of Abraham? Turks and others before them have had it, but that land is waiting for God’s time, and God’s earthly people Israel, saved and obedient, to come back to it.

But though it was God’s covenant, God’s solemn agreement, to make of Abraham a great nation, and to be their God, the ninth verse goes on to say “Thou shall keep My covenant therefore, thou and thy seed after thee in their generations.” God could say. “I will make”, “I will establish”, “I will give”, for all the blessings that He told Abraham of, were what He was going to give without Abraham or his children doing anything to get them, except to believe God. This was and is what God laves to do, to give even eternal life without our doing anything to earn it from Him, but He says too, “Thou shalt keep My covenant therefore.” It is just as we would expect in the, case of some poor homeless boy who had been brought into a fine home and adopted into the family: his talk and his behavior would have to be fit for the family he belonged to, wouldn’t they?

So God’s Word in effect says to us, who are saved, that because we are His children, members of His family, we ought to be like Him in our lives. What was the sign of the covenant then? It was circumcision, a mark of death then required by God to show that we deserve to die, and that there isn’t anything in us by birth or training that God can use in our salvation; we “must be born again” (John 3:7). The “old nature” that we are born with is no good in God’s sight and He won’t have it, we must have a new nature in which to please Him, and we get that when we receive the Lord Jesus as our Saviour. But we still have the old nature, and we find it out too, because it comes out in different kinds of naughtiness. But the Bible says, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.” Rom. 6:11.

Sarai’s name as well as Abram’s was changed. She was to be Sarah, “princess”; the old name, Sarai, meant “my princess”, but she was to be “mother of nations”, not merely Abram’s princess; she was indeed, though ninety years old, to have a son, and his name should be Isaac, meaning “laughter”. Ishmael should be a great nation, but with Isaac the covenant should be, and he should be born the next year. When God has said this, He ceased talking with Abraham this time.

Genesis 18

Again the Lord appeared to Abraham. He was one day sitting in the opening of his tent at noon; on looking out, there were three men to be seen standing nearby. When he saw them, with nice courtesy, Abraham ran to meet them, and bowed very deeply as he asked them, and One of them in particular, not to go away until they might wash their feet, and rest under the shadow of the nearby tree while a little food was brought out for them. And they said, “So do as thou has said.” So Abraham hurried into the tent to his wife, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it and make cakes on the hearth,” then he ran to the barnyard, and picked out a tender and good calf, and gave it to one of his servants to prepare at once for dinner.

It doesn’t seem that Abraham knew yet who these strangers were, but when the One Who had led the party began to speak (verse 10) he found that this was that God who had spoken to him, and had appeared to him again and again before, the One Who had promised him that land, and in whom he trusted.

I love to read this chapter; it shows us again God coming. down to this world, coming near to us to talk with us, and see what we are doing. He had done this in the garden of Eden, you remember, after sin came in, and He had come again after the flood when the city and tower of Babel were being built, and now a third time He is seen here, this time with two angels all three appearing as men, and sitting under Abraham’s tree and eating the food Abraham brought out. Nov we hear His voice (verse 10), “I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life, and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son.” Sarah hears inside the tent and laughs to herself, not believing, and then the Lord said to Abraham, “Wherefore did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee . . . and Sarah shall have a son.”

Nothing is too hard for God; it must have been the hardest thing He ever has done, to give up the Lord Jesus to the death of the cross, but I think it cannot be an easy thing to get boys and girls and especially older folks to believe in Jesus, and to bring them all safely to God’s home in the sky, yet God is doing those very things, and all the saved ones will be brought right home to heaven. Will it not be hard, too, to send the lost ones to hell? yet they must go there because they have not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Saviour there is for anyone.

The three rise from the meal and start toward the wicked City of Sodom, Abraham going part way with them. And now the Lord speaks as though to Himself (verses 17-19), “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” Abraham should surely become a great and mighty nation and all the nations should be blessed in him, but that was not all,—”For I know him”, said He, “that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, etc.” How important it is for Christian parents to train their children in the fear of God; sometimes it is not easy for them, and sometimes even saved boys and girls find it hard to be willing and obedient, but God is taking notice of these things, and His books will tell in that day that is not far away, just how both children and parents have done about the things His word speaks of.

Then in verses 20 and 21 God is telling Abraham where He was going, and why; it was to Sodom and Gomorrah, because the “cry” of them was great, and their sin very grievous, “I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me, and if not, I will know.” O I wonder what He thinks of the world now, in this day of His patient grace, since Jesus has died, the Just One for the unjust ones, while it seems as though more and more, young and old, care for nothing of God, while the end of His grace is drawing nearer and nearer.

In the latter part of the chapter Abraham speaks alone with God, the two angels going on toward Sodom, while God waits to listen to Abraham’s pleading for that doomed city. Perhaps, he said, there are fifty righteous ones within the city— forty-five even, or only forty, or just thirty, even twenty, ten perhaps, the last number Abraham speaks of—would it then be destroyed? Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Indeed He would and He will, but there were not ten in Sodom that feared God, and before the next day was really begun, that wicked city, which was Lot’s home and Gomorrah too, was utterly destroyed.

In God’s Word there are many warnings of judgment on sinners who don’t turn to Him while they have the chance. I wonder if you are unsaved, my dear young reader, who hold this paper in your hand. If you have not fled for refuge to God through Jesus, let me urge you, don’t delay. Don’t let Satan fool you into waiting. Like the people in Noah’s time, and those in Lot’s day, you may wait a day or an hour, or a moment even, too long, and the door of mercy be forever closed to you.

Jesus is calling the children

Unto His side;

Opens His arms to receive them,

Opens them wide. Gently to lead them,

Guard them and feed them, Jesus is calling

The lambs to His side.

Genesis 19

In chapter 18 we began at noon; now it is evening of the same day, as two angels, appearing as men, go in at the gate of Sodom. There in the gate sits Lot, like one of the principle men of the city, and from what we read in the ninth verse, I think it was what he wanted to be. Just as courteous as his uncle, Abraham, Lot meets these two strangers with an invitation to his house for the night. The Lord has been in Sodom this afternoon, and the angels too, no doubt, but no one saw them, and He has gone back to the sky, leaving the angels behind, for they have work to do to-night and to-morrow.

The Lord had visited Abraham, sat under his shade tree, eaten his food, and talked with him this afternoon, but does He call on Lot in the city down in the beautiful valley? No, Lot, though one of His children, was too much at home in the world. What was the angels’ answer to Lot’s invitation? “Nay, hut we will abide in the street all night.” How different from the answer to Abraham in chapter 18, verse 5, “So do, as thou hast said.”

This gives us something to think about, doesn’t it? At one man’s home, God would stop and talk face to face as to a friend, but at another’s, who was as surely going to be in that heavenly home in the sky as Abraham was, even His angel said, “Nay, but we will abide in the street all night.”

I want my home to be of the Abraham kind, and not like Lot’s that even angels didn’t want to go into, don’t you, too?

Let us be much in prayer, desiring to be pleasing to God, not just while we are in Sunday school, and in meetings of the Lord’s people, but in our ways and our words at home, at day school and wherever we may be. God knows what sort of people we are, whether anyone else does or not.

The angels were persuaded by Lot to go to his house, and they ate the meal he had prepared, but we can’t help noticing that not a word is told us of the conversation at the table. I think those angels didn’t feel very much at home in Lot’s house.

Presently a great crowd of men from all over the city came to the house, shouting out to Lot to bring out the two men he had taken in for the night. How ashamed and grieved Lot must have felt as he went to the door, that his guests should know that Sodom had such people in it. If this chapter tells us all that Lot said to the crowd when he went outside, and shut the door behind him so the angels shouldn’t hear, he knew it was of no use to politely ask those lawless men to go quietly away, for they would not listen to anything, but started to break in the door. Nov the angels opened the door, drew Lot in and shut it again, and smote all the crowd with blindness, so as I suppose they soon began to go away from Lot’s house.

Lot knew quite well that Sodom was a very wicked place, but it seems to me pretty sure that he had not been trying very much to find out what God would have him to do, or where He wanted him to be because then, I think, he would not have ever gone into, or even near Sodom to live, neither would he have been trying to make Sodom, or the world better, as he appears to have been doing.

God, long, long afterwards, in 2 Peter 2:6-8, has told us how Lot felt while he was in Sodom, but I suppose he wasn’t any real testimony in the place. The wicked men, when they surrounded his house that night, didn’t say,

“He’s been telling us about God, and a day of judgment,” no, they as much as said, “He came in to stay just a little while, and now he wants to be a judge.”

Perhaps someone will say, “But the world isn’t as bad now as Sodom was in Lot’s time.” Well if you mean that there are laws now, and prisons and policemen, and so on, and we don’t often hear about such wicked deeds, I agree with you, but it isn’t just because people are afraid they will be sent to prison, or hanged, or put to death in the electric chair that there isn’t so much open wickedness. Let God give us the explanation: we shall find it in Second Thessalonians 2:7, where He tells us that there is One who restrains or holds back the tide of evil until He be taken out of the way. That person is the Holy Spirit, and when the Lord Jesus comes in the air, and calls away all those who are saved, to go with Him to His heavenly home, the Holy Spirit will go too. We must not forget that however peaceful and quiet it may seem in our part of the world now, the whole world has been charged by God with the rejection of His Son. If you, my reader, have not received Jesus as your personal Saviour, you are going to have a harder judgment than the people of Sodom will have. Just open your Bible at Matthew 11:20-24, and see that Jesus’ coming into the world has made a great difference as God sees things.

The angels now said why they were there (verse 12), and Lot was told that if he had anyone outside of his home that he cared for,. they must be brought out of Sodom, so he must have said to himself, these men are angels, and the city is going to be destroyed at once! Whatever might have been true of him before, there was no time now to be lost, and Lot set out to visit his married daughters’ homes, but their husbands only laughed at him, and the daughters evidently decided to stay with them; if they had children, they stayed too, because Lot went home alone. We are not told anything about Lot’s wife, except that she looked behind when they left the city, and judgment fell on her then.

After thinking about it a long time, I have concluded that Lot’s wife was a woman of Sodom, and not a believer, and’ that the family couldn’t have been brought up in the fear of God..

We are sure that what God said about Abraham, in chapter 18, verse 19, could not have been said of Lot, and I am afraid that Lot had not been faithful to the men who had married his daughters, either. Perhaps we had better not say more, when God says little, but it certainly is sad to see Lot going back alone, and to think of those he loved and warned of the judgment, being swallowed up in that terrible destruction the next morning.

As the dawn appeared early the next morning, the angels told Lot to take his dear ones, his wife and his two daughters, that were in the house, out of the city at once, but the poor man could hardly make up his mind to go. I suppose all his treasures were in Sodom, and it was pretty hard for him to leave.

The angels had to take each one of the four people by the hand and lead them out of Sodom. Now escape, they said, for your very lives; don’t look behind, or stay in the plain, but go quickly to the mountain, lest you be consumed in the destruction.

Poor Lot was afraid to go to the mountain, and begged to be allowed to make his home in the little town of Zoar, but when he got there his fear moved him to go on to the mountain after all.

As soon as Lot got into Zoar, a terrible storm of Sulphur and fire came down from God, and utterly destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, with their people and everything that grew there. Today there is the Dead Sea where that beautiful valley lay; no fish can live in its waters, and nothing grows near its shores, so travelers to Palestine tell us.

Lot’s wife looked back; her heart was in that city, and she died looking back, and was changed to a pillar of salt.

Now I am going to stop, but first I want you to open your Bible at one of the very shortest verses. It has just three words in it. It is Luke 17:32, but read all the verses from the 26th to the end of the chapter, for there the Lord Jesus is comparing Noah’s day and Lot’s day with what is coming on the earth.

Here too is a key verse for what we have been thinking about today.

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Gal. 6:7.

“Remember Lot’s wife.”

Genesis 20

We don’t read very far into the Bible before we find it isn’t like any other book. Do you know why? Well, one says, Because it is God’s book, and says another, It is because it tells about our badness. Yes, both answers are correct. Some of you perhaps have read a good many story books, and books written to tell about a man or a woman’s life. Some of these books are good as far as they go, but all that I have ever read tell just about nothing of the badness of the person they want to tell us most about; the books tell how wise, how good, and kind and courteous and brave, and all that the man or woman or boy or girl was that is the principal character in the book, and nothing at all, or just the very least the author thought he needed to put in, about the selfishness and other mean things that are in everyone’s heart.

God tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If He chooses to tell us about Abraham, so ready to listen to His word, and to leave home and country for an unknown land and there to be a man as we might say, without a country, for he lived in a tent all his life and didn’t buy any land or settle down, and we think and . rightly too, what a wonderful man Abraham was, then we find a chapter like that one in which we read about his going down to Egypt and telling a lie about his wife,—do you remember?—the twelfth, it was. And today we read another story about Abraham that shows us like that one, that when he didn’t keep near to God he got into trouble. Just like ourselves that is, —you and I, if we love Jesus because God first loved us and sent Him to die in our stead,—you and I, I say, we hardly hope to climb as high up the ladder of faith as Abraham did, do we? but we certainly make just as bad mistakes as he when we get our thoughts away from God, and forget it is He we have to please and not ourselves.

I think there’s more than one reason for God telling us both sides of Abraham’s character. If we read only of his believing God, and doing what He told him, we might say too, God only takes good people to heaven, as I myself have heard some children say in Sunday school. But God loves had people, sinners, the Bible calls them, and He loves them still when they show some of their old bad ways after they are saved. But does He love the bad tempers, the lies even, and the other mean things? Indeed He does not, and in one way or another He makes us sorry for them, I mean, of course, if we are really saved. Are you?

Abraham we last read of in chapter nineteen, verses 27 to 29. Now we find him going away toward the south again. Perhaps he felt rather proud about God’s visiting him the day before Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and he may have been comparing himself with Lot, and thinking “I’m the one that does what God says; I’m safe!” I don’t know, but I think he wasn’t praying with all his heart to God when he went down to Gerar, because the first thing we find out is, Abraham’s gone and told that old lie about his wife again! God’s people don’t have to tell lies! When they are in trouble, even if it is their own fault, He will always help, and we don’t have to do or say more that’s wrong to get out of our troubles.

The king of that place thought if Sarah was not married, he would like to have her for his wife, but God stopped him and spoke to him in a dream at night in such a way that the king and all his servants were very much afraid. But wasn’t it too bad that Abimelech should be able to speak to Abraham as he did at the end of the verse 9? And Abraham too, in verse 13 let out the secret that when they had left their home where they used to worship idols, he and Sarah had agreed that they should tell people they were brother and sister when they were really husband and wife, because he was afraid somebody would kill him to get Sarah for a wife. That wasn’t trusting God, was it? It surely wasn’t, but God didn’t give Abraham up for all that. He gives nobody up, who comes to Him by faith and says in his heart “I’m just bad, I deserve to go to hell, 0 let the Lord Jesus be my own Saviour.”

Genesis 21

Now we’ll go on to the twenty-first chapter. “And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as He had spoken, at the set time of which God had spoken to him”. So at last the little boy baby, Isaac, came to live at Abraham’s and Sarah’s home. How happy they must have been and so much the more because they had had to wait so long for him. Older folks than you, perhaps (only I don’t know how old you are), have found many a time that God answers prayers, God does what He says He will, and not just in Bible stories, but in our own lives right now, today. A Christian man said to me one day a few years ago when he was feeling sad and lonely, and thought. God wasn’t caring about him very much: “Do you think God answers prayers?” And because I have had so many, many answers to my own prayers, I answered just as quickly as I could “Ask me instead if God ever doesn’t answer prayer!” I just love to read those words at the beginning of chapter 21: “And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as He had spoken” Our bad ways and cold hearts may make- Him slower than He wants to be to give us answers to our prayers, but depend upon it, if we take our cares to Him and ask to be taken care of, to be given what is good for us, He will answer us, and we shall know without His saying a word, that God has answered us.

But when Isaac came, Ishmael had to go. Sarah rightly said that the son of the bondwoman could not be heir along with her son. Abraham found it very hard to say to Hagar that she had to go, but God told him Sarah was right, for “in. Isaac shall thy seed be called.” So early the very next morning as I suppose it was, after God spoke to him, Abraham gave a lot of bread and water to Hagar and she went away with her boy and wandered in the wilderness to the south. By and bye the water was all gone, and Ishmael was dying from thirst, and Hagar put him in the little shade that a bush gave and went quite a distance away from him and sat down and cried very sadly. Poor Hagar! sent away from the place that had been home so long, with no husband to care for and protect her and the fourteen-year old boy, lost in the wilderness and apparently no one cared! But as the angel of the Lord had found the mother before (chapter 16:7) when she was hopeless and helpless in the wilderness not very far from this place she was now in, so now we read that “God heard the voice of the lad” (verse 17). Isn’t that encouraging to us? Notice it doesn’t say He heard the sound of the mother’s crying, though of course He did, but that boy Ishmael,— I wonder if he was praying to God as he lay there apparently soon to die? There came a time while the Lord Jesus was on earth when mothers brought their children, and little ones too, to Him, and the disciples roughly said to them, O take your children away; Jesus hasn’t any time for any but grown folks, but the Lord not only rebuked his disciples but said, “of such” (little children, and grown folks who would trust Him like them) “is the kingdom of heaven” and took them up in His arms and blessed them.

So the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven and told her “Fear not, for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.” And God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water and got the water her boy needed so badly. “And God was with him” verse 20 says. He must have learned at home about God, don’t you think? I do; Ishmael I think had trusted God for salvation.

The next thing we read is that King Abimelech of Gerar, about whom we read in chapter 20, came over to see Abraham from the land of the Philistines with Phichol, the general of his army. But not to complain this time! No, it was to ask Abraham to promise not to do him harm, that Abimelech came to God’s servant, because he saw, as verse 22 tells us he said, that God was with Abraham in all that he did. That’s what comes of those that are saved earnestly trying to please God.

Genesis 22

This chapter tells of a very, very hard trial that God gave Abraham before he had had that boy Isaac very long. But Abraham didn’t really have to give his boy up to die, though God didn’t tell him he would not, until the very last. And while we read and think of this story today, let us try to think of that God Who gave His only begotten Son really to die, and not as. people die in this world, but to die for sinners, bearing the dreadful punishment of our sins on the cross of Calvary.

God doesn’t take pleasure in telling of bad things, but He has to tell them, because He tells what is true, and what we need to know. But I think He loved to tell in the Bible the stories we come to again and again of men and women, and children too, who did what pleased Him. There was Abel, you remember, the young man who brought the kind of offering to God that He could accept, and there was Enoch who “walked with God,” and Noah who did “according to all that God commanded him, so did he.” And we have read quite a little about Abraham that shows that he too pleased God. There are many more stories like these we have been reading, and everyone is different. God is taking notice of us all, everyone and none of us can say I’m too little, or too poor, or too something else. Perhaps some little colored boy will read this and say God doesn’t see or care about me, but it isn’t so. God cares about and loves everyone. And if you have really believed in Jesus so you are saved, He has something to say about you.

This is a story about how Abraham pleased God when it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do what God asked him.

In our ordinary Bibles the word in the first verse is “tempted,” but that is not quite the right word. It should be “tried” or “tested”, for God does not tempt any one to do wrong.

“Abraham, take now ‘thy son; thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest”—you see God knew how Abraham loved that boy—”and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” Never was a harder thing asked of anybody in this world than that! That he should have to give up that dearly loved son, for whom he had waited so many years, and actually have to lift the knife to kill his own child, must have been fearfully hard for Abraham to face. But he had learned to obey God, and we can say too, that he knew God, and by this time was willing to trust Him altogether. There is an old hymn which says

“Behind a frowning providence

God hides a smiling face”

and Abraham knew that all would be well at the end of the journey, though the way there might be a hard one.

Had we been at Abraham’s house very early that morning we should have found him up, at least as early as usual, and getting ready to go away with Isaac, and the two men servants. The wood was soon split and the donkey they took along was saddled, and away the little party went. It was enough for Abraham that God had spoken; it was better to please Him than to please himself.

Perhaps someone will say, “Why doesn’t .the Bible tell us about Isaac’s mother, Sarah, and how she felt about giving up her boy?” Well, there isn’t any doubt in my mind that Sarah loved Isaac, loved him as much as Abraham did. But in very few cases in the Bible has God told us all the story. And there is a reason every time. The reason why we only read about the father in this story is, I think, because God wants us to think of Him giving up His Son while we read about Abraham and Isaac, It wasn’t an easy thing, a little thing, for God to give up that only and beloved Son to die the dreadful death of the cross. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” and in the twelfth chapter of Mark, verses 6 to 8 we are told of God that having sent a lot of servants, but “having yet therefore one Son, His well-beloved, He sent Him also last unto them saying ‘They will reverence My Son. But they took Him and killed Him, and cast Him out of the vineyard.” Yes, Jesus was willing to come. O how thankful you and I ought to be that Jesus took the place of us guilty ones on the cross so we, if we believe in Him as our very own Saviour, might not be sent to hell.

Now let us follow our story closely. The men servants didn’t know what Abraham was thinking of, nor did Isaac as they walked on until the third day. On that day Abraham saw the place (Mount Moriah) far away, that God had spoken to him of, and then he took Isaac and the wood and went away from the men, saying to them that they were going over there to worship, and would come again to them. Every step on the journey must have been harder, one would think, than the last one, for Abraham, and when Isaac asked that question in the seventh verse it must have made it harder than ever to go on to the place where Isaac was to be offered. But still trusting in God Abraham quietly answered “My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering,” so they went both of them together. Isaac didn’t understand though he quietly went along but the Lord Jesus knew all that was before Him from the beginning, so about Him we are told not only that God gave Him, but that the Son of God loved us and gave Himself for us. (Galatians 2:20.)

After a while father and son got to the place and Abraham set to work to build an altar, I suppose of either earth or stones, and when he had that made, laid the firewood in place. Next he fastened his boy’s arms and legs so that Isaac couldn’t move, and laid him on the wood, and now there was nothing more to be done until the boy was dead. Abraham therefore reached out his hand to take the knife he had brought along to wound his dear son to death, when—O, hear that shout from heaven,—”Abraham! Abraham!” It is God that is speaking. “Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou halt not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me.” How gratefully must those words have been heard by Abraham, and just at the last moment, too, for I don’t doubt at all that the father would have obeyed to the very last, even in the heartrending act of killing the child he loved!

Hebrews 11:17-19 tell us about this time in Abraham’s life, how he was sure God would give his boy Isaac life again; if he had had to kill him, God would raise him from the dead.

Abraham now looked behind him and saw there in the bushes a sheep caught by his horns. God had provided a lamb as Abraham had said to Isaac. So he took the sheep and put it instead of his boy on the altar, offering it to God, and called the name of the place “Jehovah-jireh,” which in our language is “The Lord will provide.” But we who live in this day can say more than that,—”The Lord has provided,” for Jesus had died on the cross as God’s Lamb for everyone that will believe in Him. Let us not forget our verse in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, though He pitied Abraham and would not let him suffer long.

Do you know that the Lord Jesus is spoken of as a lamb in a good many places in the Bible? In Isaiah 53:7 it is “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.” At the beginning of the gospel of John “Behold the Lamb of God” is John the Baptist’s word about Jesus (John 1:36), and in 1 Peter 1:19 “the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” is what the Holy Spirit has caused to be written. One more verse is in Revelation 5:6, where the Lord Jesus is seen in heaven going to be the great Judge and the King of kings, and there it is “a Lamb as it had been slain.” Surely God wants everyone to know what Jesus has done.

We have been talking about Jesus, and mentioning some verses that tell about Him, but let me ask you, Is He your Saviour? I hope you can truthfully say “Yes, He is.” Nothing else will count in that moment when the Lord comes in the sky and calls on all that belong to Him to meet Him in the air.

As we close for today let us notice verses 15 to 18 of our chapter in Genesis where God promised Abraham what before He had said to him, only now it was “because thou hast done this thing.” How He must be pleased when one boy or girl gives his or her heart to the Lord and sets out on the road to heaven.

Messages of God’s Love 5/1/1921

Genesis 23

One hundred and twenty-seven years old was Isaac’s mother, Sarah, when she died. Isaac must have been thirty-seven at the time, and Abraham was one hundred and thirty-seven, for he was ten years older than his wife as we have noticed before.

Death comes sometimes to our homes; never a day passes but He calls at many a house here and across the sea. Hardly anywhere is death invited to come in, but it makes a great difference to the ones left behind when the dead mother or father, sister or brother is saved. Then we are glad to think of the One he or she has gone to be with, and the place where they have gone,—that bright and happy home in the sky that the Lord Jesus went to prepare. A dear old man who loves the Lord was telling me about his sister’s death which happened not long ago, and he said “She is happy, now, happy to be with the Lord,” and then after a pause he added “And the Lord is happy to have her there.” That is true of all those that are saved, when they die. But I think there must be a good many like Balaam who said (Numbers 23:10) “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,” but as for being saved when they have health and long life ahead of them perhaps, neither Balaam cared nor do they. Nobody I suppose wants to go to hell; I am quite sure I don’t. But Satan says Forget about God and Jesus and heaven and hell until you die, and then will be time enough to get saved, so I want to tell you that Satan knows you may not have a chance to get saved when you die, because God’s time is now and He might not give you a chance when you are dying, and because if the Lord Jesus comes before you believe in Him, and He may come at any time, it will be too late for you to be saved then. Don’t let Satan persuade you to forget God’s solemn word in Matthew 25:10 “They that were ready went in with Him to the marriage, and the door was shut.”

Verse 2 of our chapter tells us that Abraham mourned and wept about the death of his wife. He didn’t know all that God’s children now may know about Him and what He has done and will do for those who love Him, still I think if you or I had been at Sarah’s deathbed, or at the funeral, we would have noticed a difference between how Abraham acted and how other people did whose dear ones died. For they had “no hope,” as 1 Thessalonians 4:13 says, while Abraham had a hope in God, for his wife and he were both believers, so his sadness was nothing but grief because his dear wife was gone, while he could be cheered by thinking of her being in God’s home in the sky, to which he too was soon going.

But Sarah’s body, the house she had lived in so long, must be buried, and where? Abraham had lived all those sixty or more years in the promised land as a stranger and a sojourner—that is, as one who never bought a place and settled down to make it his own. God had promised the whole country to him and his children after him, but as yet it was his only in promise, so he would only buy a parcel of land in which to bury Sarah, and to be himself buried in afterward, while waiting for the day of resurrection. And he would pay the full price for the ground he wanted, too, so as not to be indebted at all to the people who had the land then.

The sons of Heth must have thought it very strange that Abraham should be so set on owning a piece of land for a graveyard, when he had never bought any other ground, but they couldn’t have understood Abraham’s life as God saw it, at any time.

Ephron the Hittite owned a field in the end of which was a cave called the cave of Machpelah, and this cave Abraham wished to have for a burial place. So ne asked the children of Heth to speak to ‘Ephron about selling him the land for whatever it was worth. Then at a meeting of the townspeople a bargain was made and the ownership of the land was passed from Ephron to Abraham.

First, verse 11, Ephron offered to give the land to Abraham without any money. Perhaps that was just the polite way of starting a sale in those days, and perhaps Ephron really meant to give his field away. But Abraham as I said would not be a debtor to the world; he would pay what the land was worth, and so he said “I will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there.” Ephron then said his price was four hundred shekels of silver, and that amount Abraham paid. The last verses of the chapter tell of the burial of Sarah after the sale of the field and what was in it, both the cave and the trees, had.. been “recorded” and made binding, not quite the same way as is done in the United States and many other countries, but just as surely, I suppose.

These chapters we are looking at, taken together, give us something to think of, besides what we have been noticing. It is this way: In the twenty-first chapter Sarah got Isaac in her old age. Sarah is called a “type” (a person or thing, or happening that God has set out in the Old Testament as showing a likeness to some person or thing or event that the New Testament tells of) of the people of Israel, and it was when God was soon to set Israel aside that the Lord Jesus came into the world. Next, in chapter 22 Abraham is called on to sacrifice his son, and chapter 23 brings us to the death of Sarah, while chapter 24 tells of the seeking of a bride for Isaac. These things are paralleled by the dying of Jesus, the Jews being given up by God for the present, while the gospel is going out to the Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit is in the world finding a bride for the Lord Jesus, —but of this last I shall try to say more next time, if the Lord will.

Genesis 24

Many, many years before Abraham had left as instructed by God the land of his birth lived and from his own relations there. Now he was old and Sarah his wife had died. His son needed a wife, but there were none of his race where he lived.

So Abraham decided to send his oldest servant, the one he trusted to look after everything for him, back to his old home to take a wife for Isaac, and bring her to the promised land. The servant asked only one question, it seems, and that was, what should he do if the woman would not come back with him,—should he take Isaac back to that country? And Abraham answered “Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.” If Isaac was not to be taken back, and the lady refused to come, there would be no bride for him, so we can see a good deal depended on what the servant could say about Isaac, when he got across the desert among Abraham’s people. It was certainly the most important thing this chief servant ever had to do, we may be sure, but I expect Abraham knew that the servant would be faithful to the trust he put in him. How confidently he spoke of God, didn’t he, in the seventh verse? God would be with the servant he said, and send His angel before him. Abraham trusted in God first of all and knew Him as his best Friend.

Abraham had a trusted, eldest servant who ruled over all that he had. He decided to send his servant back to the land of his birth to take a wife for his son. The servant was not to take a daughter of the Canaanites for his son. So the servant gave his solemn promise to take a wife his kindred.

The servant prayed to the Lord to direct him to speak to only the one person, for he had asked God to guide him to the right one, and He did. The young woman he spoke to, asking for a drink for himself, answered just as he had prayed the right one should, saying that she would not only give the servant a drink, but draw water for the camels too. I suppose that meant a good many trips down the steps to the water with the empty pitcher and up again to the trough. So we can say she was a willing person, as well as very nice looking or pretty as verse 16 says.

While she was bringing water for the camels, the servant was wondering if God had not only led him to the right person to speak to, but if He would make her willing to go back with him. As she finished supplying the thirsty camels, the servant took a gold ring, and two gold bracelets, and gave them to the young woman, at the same time asking her whose daughter she was, and if there was room in her father’s house for them to stay. And then he learned that this was Abraham’s grand-niece, Rebekah, the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother Nahor; there was straw and food for the camels, and room for them all to stay too. And again the servant prayed, but now it was a prayer of thanksgiving to God Who had led him to his master’s brother’s home. Rebekah ran home to tell of the stranger, and her brother Laban ran out to the well to invite him in as soon as he had seen the gold ring and the bracelets his sister was wearing and heard what the man had said to her.

The servant then went on to the home of Rebekah and Laban with the camels and attendants, and when the camels had been cared for and the men had washed their feet, food was set out for the servant to eat, but he would not eat a thing, he said, until he had told why he had come.

“I am Abraham’s servant,” he said “and the Lord has blessed my master very much and he has become great; He has given him flocks, and herds and silver and gold, and men-servants and maidservants, and camels and donkeys.” Abraham was rich indeed: And Sarah my master’s wife had a baby when she was old, and to that baby, now grown to be a man, he has given all that he has.” Everything Abraham had was Isaac’s. And the servant went on to tell of his orders to go to Abraham’s home land and to his relations there and take a wife for Isaac, told them too about what had happened during the last hour or two, and at the end he said “Now if you will deal kindly and truly with my master tell me, and if not tell me, so that I may turn to the right hand or the left.” He wanted to know if he was a welcome visitor or not, because if the errand he had come upon was nothing of interest to them, he was going right away to someone else. Laban and his father then answered “This is something that comes from God; take Rebekah and go; let her be your master’s son’s wife, as the Lord has spoken.” Hearing these words, the servant was filled with thankfulness and praise to God, and brought out splendid and expensive presents of gold and silver things and clothes which he gave to Rebekah; even her brother and mother were given presents. After this they ate and went, to bed, but the next morning the servant said “Send me away to my master.” What a servant that was! He didn’t want to do anything for himself; he had an errand to attend to, and nothing must come in the way of doing it. Laban and the mother wanted to keep Rebekah for a few days, but the servant said “Don’t hinder me, since the Lord has blessed my journey here; send me away that I may go to my master.” So they called Rebekah and said to her “Wilt thou go with this man?” and she answered, “Yes, I will go.”

So back across that dreary desert went the servant, with Rebekah and her maids following on the camels. How long did it take, and did anything happen on the way? Well, I suppose that no matter how long and how dreary and troublesome a journey it was, Rebekah was thinking about the wonderful thing that had become true, that she was to be the wife of the great and rich Abraham’s son, though she had never seen him nor been in that place where was his home. That is why I suppose verse 61 tells about the beginning of the trip, and there isn’t a word said about any troubles on the way, nor how long it took, for the very next thing we come to about the bride is in verse 64, “And Rebekah lifted up her eyes and when she saw Isaac she lighted off her camel.” Isaac had come out in the field and met. them before they got all the way to his home. The servant told the whole story of his doings, and Isaac brought Rebekah into his mother’s tent and they were married, and he loved her and was comforted after his mother’s death.

All of this very interesting story is true, as I surely do not need to say, but it is also a lovely picture or type of something we learn from the New Testament) and that is the Holy Spirit’s being sent into the world to gather out a lot of people, men, women, boys and girls, to form a bride for the Lord Jesus in the glory. Jesus has gone home to heaven, and will not come back to this earth while the Holy Spirit is telling about Him, telling of His greatness and His love—much more than Abraham’s servant could tell about Isaac. And some are believing what the Holy Spirit says and of them it was that the Lord Jesus spoke when he said to Thomas in John 20:29, “Because thou hast seen Me thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.” The Lord Jesus is coming to meet His loved ones in the air very soon; turn to Revelation 22:7, 12, 17 and you will find not only the promise of the Lord to soon come, but the wish of the Holy Spirit down here acting as God’s servant, together with the saved ones that are going to form the bride of Jesus: “And the Spirit and the bride say ‘Come’.”

So, my dear young friend, what is your answer to the question “Wilt thou go with this man?”

Messages of God’s Love 5/15/1921

Genesis 25

We learn here of the second wife of Abraham’s—Keturah was her name. Abraham lived thirty-eight years after Sarah died. All the children of Keturah, and of the concubines, of whom the sixth verse tells, were sent away from Isaac before Abraham died, though they were given presents. There were no presents for Isaac, because everything was his. Abraham was one hundred and seventy-five years old at his death, and Ishmael joined Isaac in burying him in the cave of Machpelah beside Sarah’s body.

Verses 12 to 18 tell of Ishmael’s family and when he died, but we can see that God was mostly thinking about Isaac and his family. And that was not because Isaac was any better than his half-brother. No, it was just God’s doing what He chose to do, because neither Isaac nor Ishmael were naturally good, or deserved to have God love them, take care of them, and take them to heaven. Indeed not, and if God had been looking for people that deserved to have something done for ‘them, to have Him love them, He would have found none, because there is not any, and there never has been any. We just have to turn back to John 3:16, and say, “God so loved.”

Isaac and Rebekah were married for twenty years and had no children, but when in verse 21 we learn that he prayed to God about it, God listened, and answered his prayers, for they got two boy babies, twins; Esau was the older one, and Jacob the younger. Esau was a strange looking baby, covered all over with red hair. As he grew up he became very fond of hunting, but Jacob always liked best to stay at home, and their mother liked him better: while the father loved Esau because of the food he brought home from his hunting trips.

Isn’t it sad to have to think that Isaac’s thoughts didn’t rise higher than the food he ate? He wasn’t much like his father Abraham who, in spite of all his mistakes, was a wonderful man of faith in God.

But if we don’t see much to admire Isaac, we see, as we read about Esau, that he was a man who cared nothing at all for God’s promises to his father and grandfather. One day when Esau came home from hunting he was very hungry.

Jacob had cooked some lentils, and Esau begged for them, but his brother, anxious to get something for himself, said, “Sell me this day thy birthright” Jacob wanted to have the rights of the older brother, and to get the blessing which his father would give the oldest son, and God meant that he should, but surely He did not like Jacob’s ways. Esau said to. himself, I am going to die if I don’t get something to eat right away, and what good is this birthright to me? So he said All right to Jacob, and gave up his rights as the oldest son, for the meal the last verse of the chapter tells about,—bread and lentils. Many years after, God caused what Esau had done to be again written about in the Bible,—in Hebrews 12:16-17.

Children, God does not forget what we say and do! He knows what you think about Him, and about what He says in His Word.

Genesis 26

Another famine came on, and Isaac went to the same Abimelech that his father had gone to years before. Egypt was not very far away and it must have been a temptation to Isaac to go down there to get away from the famine for God appeared to him, and told him not to go there, but to stay in the land where God would be with him and bless him. God further repeated to Isaac His promise to Abraham his father, that the land should be his and his children’s who should be as many as the stars in the sky, and in those children every nation should be blessed. Still You will notice God said that these wonderful things would become true, because of what He could say (in verse 5) about Abraham. He couldn’t say as much about Isaac as He could about Isaac’s father. Perhaps like some boys and girls, and older folks, too who may read this little paper, Isaac may have thought it didn’t matter very much whether he lived to please himself, or to please God, since he had trusted Him to forgive his sins, and to take him to heaven when he should die. He may have said to himself. “My father served God faithfully a long time, and I’m his son, so it will be all right anyway.” In this and different ways Satan tries to catch us, and if we are not on the watch all the time he will succeed. Every one of us has soon to give account to God for himself, and besides that, there is trouble and sadness for us here in this life we are now living, if we don’t put God first.

Isaac ought to have stayed where he was, and should not have gone to the Philistines for help, and while God stopped him from going still further away, He let Isaac get into trouble, and though lie got out of one difficulty, he soon got into another, until, at last, he went away back where he belonged, a separated man like his great father Abraham. The first thing that worried him was that the men of Gerar asked about Rebekah, and Isaac told them the same lie that his father had told in the same place, saying that his wife was his sister. Isaac was afraid the men would kill him, and take Rebekah, because she was nice looking. But after they had been there some time, King Abimelech saw Isaac and Rebekah acting very affectionately, I suppose, so he thought they couldn’t be brother and sister; he called Isaac to tell him Rebekah certainly was his wife, and Isaac had to own it was so. God took care of him, and so the men of the place didn’t kill Isaac, but God’s children. and no one else, are never really better off for telling lies. It is always best to trust God and not ourselves when we are in trouble.

Then we read of Isaac’s getting richer and richer, so that the people around there envied him and King Abimelech at last told Isaac to go away; he went away just a little distance at first. After Abraham’s death, the Philistines had filled up the wells his servants had dug, and Isaac had them dug out again, and then there was trouble. between Isaac’s servants and the herdsmen of Gerar about the wells they dug. Isaac moved from one location to another to get away from their disputes. At last when he went back to Beersheba, God appeared to him the very same night and spoke to him, telling him not to be afraid, for He would bless him and give him many children, or children’s children. Now at last we read of an altar, the first and only time we hear of Isaac’s building one, on which no doubt he offered sacrifices to God. For a time at least Isaac now seems to have lived in the fear of God, but when he was out of trouble for a while he, like so many of God’s people, just drifted back into an easy life. Was Isaac as happy as Abraham? No, I am very sure he was not. Let us learn from the mistakes Isaac made, and seek to live for God always.

After this Abimelech, and Ahuzzath, his friend; and Phichol, the general of his army. came to see Isaac and got him to promise not to do them any harm. They saw now at least that Isaac had the true God for his Friend.

Esau took two wives, named Judith and Bashemath, both Hittites, that is, people of the country around, when he was forty years old. These women made Isaac and Rebekah very sad. I suppose they cared nothing for God, and led Esau further and further away from Him. We couldn’t expect much else, because these women belonged to one of the ten nations (see chapter 15:19-21) who were to be judged by God. Abraham in chapter 24 was very particular that Isaac should not marry one of these people, and we may suppose that Esau knew this.

Genesis 27

A good many years have passed since the happenings of chapter 26.

Isaac was now and old man, for he must have been, at least 130 years old, and lie may have been 150. His twin sons were seventy years old or more. Esau we know was married, but Jacob was still single. Isaac’s eyes were already dim, so that he could not see, though he lived for more than twenty years after this, perhaps thirty or even more, but thinking he would soon (he, or his mind would not remain clear, he thought of giving Esau his blessing, so he asked his favorite son to go hunting, and bring him some of the “venison” he loved, that having eaten it, he might bless him.

Did Isaac forget that God had said, before the boys were born, (Gen. 25:23) that the elder (Esau) should serve the younger (Jacob)? And did he know of Esau’s parting with his rights, as the older son, to Jacob in return for a dish of lentils?

Rebekah had evidently been listening when Isaac spoke to Esau, and she thought at once that some way must be found to have Jacob get the blessing. She doesn’t seem to have thought of asking God about it, though He could easily have kept Isaac from giving the best blessing to Esau. He could, for example, have made Isaac cross his hands while blessing his two sons, in the way Jacob did while blessing Joseph’s two sons, in a later chapter in Genesis.

Though Rebekah surely trusted in God, she now made a plan, and presently told it to Jacob, which meant that the old blind father should be deceived into giving his younger son the blessing he would think he was giving to Esau. Isaac with his “venison”, and Rebekah in shameful deceit, don’t seem a very godly couple, do they? But as we have seen before, and if we are privileged to go. on together through God’s Word, we shall see again that “God is not mocked.” Isaac was made to feel-that he was going against God, and to please himself, and Rebekah had to part from her favorite son Jacob, never to see him again. Jacob, too, suffered, for he had to go away from home for more than twenty years, and be deceived himself, and suffer wrong after wrong. But I am getting ahead of the story. Jacob, at his mother’s bidding, killed two fine young goats of the flock, and brought them to his mother, and she fixed up an imitation of her husband’s “venison”, and she sent Jacob in to his father with it, after dressing him in some of Esau’s clothes, and trying to imitate Esau’s hairy skin by putting the goat skin on his hand and neck. One lie followed another, as Jacob talked with his father, who was suspicious that the man who stood beside him was not Esau. Finally Isaac seemed to be satisfied, and went on to give him the blessing he meant for Esau, but which God meant should be spoken of Jacob.

There is no doubt that God gave Isaac the words to say, and if we turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews 11:20, we find that God has there recorded that Isaac’s blessing was “by faith.” What Isaac said in verses 28 and 29 of our chapter in Genesis, was partly true long. ago, and it will all be made good when God brings the people of Israel into their land again, as He has said He will.

Scarcely had Jacob gone out of his father’s presence, when in came Esau, who quickly went to Isaac with the “savory meat” he had been asked for. Now the deception which Rebekah had planned, and Jacob had carried out, became known to Isaac who “trembled very exceedingly.” (verse 33) He was startled as it came into his mind that he had been trying to do the opposite of what God meant should be done. Jacob received the blessing Isaac had meant for Esau, and God had meant that it should be so, though the way it was brought about was wrong, of course; so the thoroughly awakened Isaac now said of Jacob, “I have blessed him, yea, and he shall be blessed.”

But because of the wrong done to Esau by his mother and brother in their deceitfulness, Esau received a blessing that told of some trouble for Jacob later (verse 40). This was according to God’s ways, as we have noticed already, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” and the actual breaking of Jacob’s yoke from Esau’s neck is told us in 2 Chron. 21:8-10, though other books—Obadiah 18-21, and 9:12 tell of a day when Esau’s nation, the Edomites, shall come under God’s hand in judgment, and their lands be given to Israel, while Jacob’s nation, the Israelites, will be restored and blessed.

Esau must have felt very bitter towards Jacob after this, and we read that he said that when their father died, he would kill Jacob. Rebekah heard of it, and told Jacob that lie would have to go to her brother Laban’s house at Haran for a while, until Esau was over his angry feelings, then she would send for him and bring him back home. She also persuaded Isaac to send Jacob away, as our chapter closes.

Genesis 28

Isaac blessed his son Jacob; and sent him away, as Rebekah wished, to her old home, telling him to find a wife there among his cousins.

Though an old man, and not having been as faithful to God as his father, yet Isaac’s thoughts were on the promises, and on God, whose word has never been broken.

Four verses are enough now to tell of Esau, until Jacob meets him as he returns from his wandering. Esau did not know or care about God. Jacob, though not a very lovable man, did have God in his thoughts. He might seem no better than Esau at times, because Jacob’s heart, and Esau’s, and everyone’s else were, and are just alike, but Jacob was “born again,” (John 3) and in due time we see in his ways that he was one of God’s children.

There was not much to tell about Esau, whose ways were unchanged to the end, but there is much for us to learn in reading of Jacob’s life, and God has given us eight or nine chapters in Genesis about him that we can study, and get good from. We can trace out on a map of Palestine part of Jacob’s route as he traveled, on foot, no doubt, except where someone going his way might be kind enough to give him a ride on a donkey or a camel. Beersheba, where his home was, is a village even today. It is in the southern part of the Holy Land, as we have perhaps noted already, and from Beersheba Jacob went north, past where Abraham and Lot had lived before Lot went to live in Sodom, the city now under the water of the Dead Sea. West of the northern end of that body of water, you will find Bethel on a map of Palestine, in Old Testament times. This is the place, called Luz at this time, where Jacob, the wanderer from his home, is seen in the verse 22, hunting for a stone for a pillow for his head, to lie down to sleep, for it was getting dark. All alone, with no friend or relative near, to cheer him, Jacob falls asleep, but God’s eyes were upon him, and presently he dreams. In his dream, Jacob saw a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down the ladder. God stood above it, and spoke to him so kindly, repeating his promise to Abraham and Isaac, of the land and of the great nation that his children, and children’s children should afterwards become, and closing with those encouraging words of verse 15,—shall we read them again? Notice how in all that Jacob heard God say, it was what He had promised to do, without any conditions whatever.

“Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee . . . . and will bring thee again into this land; I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” These were God’s promises, and He was true to His word.

Jacob waking up from his sleep, and afraid, said, “How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

He rose up early, and set up, as a pillar or monument, the stone he had used for a pillow, and poured oil on the top of it, and then he called the place, “Bethel,” which means the house of God. Last of all, Jacob made a promise to God that if He would be with him, keep him safely, and give him food and clothes, so that he should be brought safely home again, when his wanderings were over, then God should be his God, and he would give Him one tenth of all God should let him have. He wanted to bargain with God in spite of God’s promises, which had no “if” in them.

Dear children, see if you can count how many things God promised this poor wanderer in the three verses 13 to 15. I can count seven, easily, and all were Jacob’s, because God loves to give. Jacob could not pay Him back, but he seemed to have thought he could and have would almost think that Jacob had not been attentive when God was speaking, that he should think of saying, If God will take care of me, and see me safely home again, (he was, I suppose, thinking of Esau) I will have Him for my God. God had promised far more than what Jacob said in his vow, and I wonder if Jacob ever kept his part of it—if he ever gave back one-tenth part of all he received? God does the saving of our souls (Romans 5:S, 9), and whatever there is in us who are saved that pleases Him, is His doing, too, (Philippians 2:13). Soon it will be to live together with the Lord Jesus. (1 Thess. 5:10).

Dear young reader, are you saved? When His shout is heard, (1 Thess. 4:16-17) will you be caught up? It all depends in whom you are trusting.

“Whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he.” Prov. 16:20.

Genesis 29

Leaving Bethel, the place where God had appeared to him in his dream, Jacob went on his lonely way to Haran, and it is there, or close to the place that we next find him. There was a well in a field, and three flocks of sheep were lying beside it, but a large stone blocked the way to the water. Jacob talked with the shepherds and found out that they were from Haran and knew his uncle Laban, and that Laban’s daughter, his own cousin, Rachel, was even then bringing her flock of sheep to the well. All this was good news to the wanderer from his father’s home. While he was speaking to the shepherds about watering their sheep, Rachel came, and Jacob rolled the stone away and got water for her sheep. He told Rachel he was her aunt Rebekah’s son. I suppose that Jacob’s crying as he spoke to his cousin was because he was thinking of his having had to leave his home, and why it was so, may have been in his thoughts too.

Rachel ran home to tell her folks of Jacob’s coming, and Laban came out quickly to greet his nephew, and bring him to the house. When Abraham’s servant had been there in the days when La-ban was very young, he could tell of his master’s riches, his flocks and his herds, but when Isaac’s son Jacob, came as a visitor, he was poor, having nothing, and an outcast from home.

A month passed, and’ as Jacob was in no hurry to go home—we know why, but perhaps Laban did not, unless the end of the thirteenth verse means that Jacob told of his deceiving his father, which I doubt. Laban said because he was a relative of his, why should he work for him without pay? And he asked him what wages he wanted.

Already Jacob had set his mind on marrying Rachel, and she was beautiful. There was an older sister, Leah, who had weak or sore eyes, but he didn’t care for her. So Jacob said he would work for Laban for seven years if he would give him Rachel for his wife, and Laban agreed to this, but when the seven years were over he deceived Jacob, and gave him the older sister instead of the younger.

This was paying Jacob in his own kind of money, wasn’t it? Yes, “God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7), as we have noticed before. Did Jacob think of that at this time? I think he must have he was many miles from the home where he had acted so shamefully, but his conscience, that still, small voice in his breast, told him of his sin.

Laban gave Jacob Rachel, also, but he had to work another seven years for her. When God saw that Jacob hated Leah, He did not give the loved wife any children, but gave Leah four baby boys. These boys were Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. After them came Dan and Naphtali, whose mother was Bilhah, Rachel’s maidservant. Two more boys, Gad and Asher, were born to Zilpah, Leah’s servant. Then Leah got two boys again, Issachar and Zebulun, and a baby girl, Dinah.

Genesis 30

Long had Rachel been praying to God for a baby of her own, but there were eleven other children in the family before she had one. But that one was to be the chief of them all; this was Joseph, of whom we shall, if the Lord will, soon be reacting. Rachel didn’t forget, as some do, when their prayers are answered, to thank God for the answer. She knew who it was that had heard her prayers, and she said, “God hath taken away my reproach,” for she had felt very sad to not have a baby of her very own to clasp in her arms; and she felt sure God would give her another one too. He did, but that belongs to the next chapter.

When Joseph was born, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away that I may go to my own place, and to my own country,” but Laban wanted to keep him. No doubt Jacob was a good worker, but it was not that only, for Laban had only a few animals when his nephew had come to live with and work for him, and by this time he had very many, so he said to Jacob (verse 27), “I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake.” So they made a bargain that Jacob should take as his pay the odd looking cows, sheep and goats—the speckled and spotted cattle and goats, and the brown sheep—all the rest should be Laban’s. So the flocks were divided, and Jacob’s older boys took his animals three days’ journey away, while Jacob himself looked after Laban’s flocks.

Jacob now set to work to get the best of his uncle, but it was only God that made verse 43 of this chapter come true: “And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maid-servants, and men-servants, and camels, and asses.” But God was not finished with Jacob yet. He was watching over him, and giving him lessons to learn that were harder than any he had at school—if they had schools in those days!

Genesis 31

Laban’s sons’ words in verse 1, and Laban’s own face in verse 2, showed Jacob that his uncle’s house was not the home of friends any more. They were jealous of him because he had increased so much in herds and flocks, and Laban’s animals were not nearly so many by this time as they had been. There is only one Friend that never changes; that is Jesus, God’s beloved Son. In Hebrews 13:8, we read about Him that He is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” How good it is to know Him, and put all our trust in Him. He is my best, my truest Friend. Is He yours too? He is the One about whom the hymn was written which says,

“Earthly friends may fail or leave us,

One day soothe, the next day grieve us,

But this Friend will ne’er deceive us,

O, how He loves!”

But now God said to Jacob to go back to the promised land, and to his father’s home, and “I will be with thee.” So Jacob sent and called his two wives to come out to the field to talk with him, and there he told them what God had said. “The God of my father hath been with me,” said Jacob to Rachel and Leah, “and ye know that with all my power I have served your father. And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times, but God suffered him not to hurt me.... God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me.” And Rachel and Leah answered, complaining about their father, and telling Jacob to do whatever God hath said to him.

So, secretly, for Jacob’s trust in God was not very great, and he was afraid of Laban, Jacob got camels ready and put his twelve children and his wives on them, and started away from Padan Aram for home, with all the cattle and all the goods that he had. Laban was away seeing about the shearing of the wool from his sheep, and did not know anything about Jacob’s leaving until the third day. Then he took his “brethren” with him, and went after Jacob for seven days until he caught up with him in Mount Gilead. The land of Gilead was the name of the country east of the Jordan from about the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, so I suppose Jacob and his family were by this time about half way home.

No doubt Laban would have been very mean to Jacob, because God, who knows every human heart, and had undertaken to see Jacob safely home, spoke to Laban in a dream as he slept the night before the two men met in Mount Gilead. “Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad.” No mother ever watches over her children as God watches over and takes care of those who receive the Lord Jesus as their Saviour. God was training Jacob, and letting him have a good deal of trouble in order to make him trust, and let God lead him, but He would not let anyone harm Jacob, for he was one of the children of God by faith.

When Laban got to talking with Jacob about his going away (verse 26 to 30) he tried to make his nephew think that he would have made a big feast and had music and a good time if he had .known that he wanted to leave his service, but Jacob evidently didn’t believe what he said. Laban said too that the reason Jacob was going away was that he was very homesick for his father’s house, but Laban couldn’t have really thought so for he must have had a conscience about his mean ways with Jacob. What perhaps worried Laban the most, though, was that the stone or metal images he had, for he was an idolater, had been stolen.

The nineteenth verse tells us who had taken them, for I am afraid that Rachel prayed to idols still, although she had been Jacob’s wife for thirteen years. Surely she knew the true God, but I think that her early life, having been spent without knowing about Him and His love to us, poor lost sinners, had left a deep impression on her heart.

O, boys and girls, come to Jesus now, while you are young. Don’t delay a moment! The Lord Jesus wants to be your Saviour, wants you to know His love, that He died for you, and He wants to have you with Himself, and made like Himself, in His own glorious home in the sky.

Because Rachel had hidden the images under the saddle of her camel, and sat on them in her tent, telling her father when he came in where she was that she was sick, and couldn’t get up, Laban never found his gods. Of course Jacob could not have known that, Rachel had brought Laban’s gods with her, and had them in her tent, when he spoke to his father-in-law again. He wanted to know what his sin was that caused his father-in-law to so hotly pursue after him, and after he had searched all his stuff there was nothing found. Then he went on to tell Laban how long, and how faithfully he had worked for him, while Laban had treated him hardly, and changed his wages ten times in six years, trying to get the best of him. No doubt it was true that Laban would have robbed Jacob of everything he had earned, and Jacob told him that it was only God that had kept him from doing that very thing.

Laban could not answer Jacob’s true words, except to say that Jacob’s wives were his daughters, their children were his grandchildren, and all the animals were his, but what could he do? “Now let us make a covenant.” So they made a sort of treaty of peace, each promising the other that he would not pass the heap of stones they made there on the road to do harm to the other, and the next morning Laban said goodbye, and went back to his home.

Genesis 32

Now Laban was gone, but Esau, the wronged brother, was yet to be met.

How kindly God sent his angels to meet Jacob, as though to welcome him back to Canaan, the promised land, and to remind him that God had never forgotten, and would always watch over him. Jacob ought to have before this prayed to God for help about meeting Esau, but if he did he kept on planning and worrying, instead of waiting in prayer for God to do what He would. He sent some of his servants on ahead to tell Esau, who lived in the South, that he was on his way back home from Laban’s country with flocks and herds, and men and women servants, and in his message to his brother, Jacob was very careful to say, “Thy servant Jacob,” and “My lord Esau,” for he was afraid; as he had a guilty feeling in his breast. And the messengers coming back with the alarming news that Esau was coming to meet Jacob, and bringing with him four hundred men, Jacob was now greatly afraid and distressed. He thought very likely that Esau was coming to kill him, or to do some other bad thing to him, and so he divided his party into two bands, thinking that if Esau came to the first one, the other would get away safely. But when he had done this with his flocks, Jacob was still as much afraid as ever, and so we find him in verses 9, 10, 11 and 12 praying to God. And then set to work planning again, as though he could not depend on God. All the verses down to verse 21 tell us about Jacob’s present for Esau, for he said he would make him forget his angry feeling with a present. No less than 550 animals, probably 580, did Jacob pick out of his possessions. and sent them on the road before him for his brother, to make him feel kindly towards him.

Evidently Jacob had intended to keep his family with himself on the north side of the little river Jabbok to which they had now come, but in the night he sent his wives arid children over to the south side. Then left alone, “a man” wrested with him until daylight. It was God who stood against Jacob in those dark hours of the night, and the reason was that poor Jacob needed to know and to trust God more. very much more, than he did.

We have seen all along about Jacob how he schemed and planned for himself, and seems to have given little of his time and thoughts to God. He did not know that his strong will needed breaking before he could be happy with God. At last the heavenly visitor touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh so that it got out of joint, and then Jacob asked for a blessing, struggling no longer against God. Now God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, a prince of God, the name means. But even then Jacob only said, when left alone, “I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved,”—but not a word of His goodness to him.

Genesis 33

Now came Esau and his four hundred men, and seeing them coming, Jacob divided up his family, each mother having her children with her, with those he cared the least about first, I suppose; and certainly the one he loved the most,—Rachel —and her child, the little Joseph, last. Then he went ahead of them to meet Esau, and how polite he was,—bowing right down to the ground seven times until Ile came near to his brother. No doubt all this was done to make Esau feel kindly towards him, but Esau’s behavior to Jacob was as though he had forgotten all about the past, for he ran to meet Jacob and kissed him. Then he asked about all the animals he had met, and when Jacob told him they were for a present to him, Esau said he had enough, hut he finally took the animals home, when Jacob urged him to. Here again, though, I am sorry to say, Jacob showed his old bad ways, for he told Esau that he was so pleased to meet Esau, that it was like his seeing the face of God, which can’t have been true; it was only said for a purpose, though of course, Jacob was glad that his brother didn’t hate him as he had feared. Then to there was deceit in Jacob’s saying to Esau that he would follow him to his home at Mount Seir, for he didn’t mean to. Esau at last started back for his home, and Jacob followed along slowly, but presently stopped at a place called Succoth where he built a house and made shelters for his cattle. Next we find him across the Jordan, back again in the land of God’s promises to Abraham and Isaac and himself. He settled down at Shalem, a city of Shechem, buying a piece of land, and building an altar to God there. Jacob’s father and grandfather had always been like strangers in the country, never buying land except for a cemetery or building houses and Jacob was wrong, and we shall see what trouble it brought on him. He ought indeed to have gone on to Bethel, and to his father’s home at once, and he would then have missed the disgrace, and other things of the thirty-fourth chapter.

Well. it’s very easy to point out other folk’s mistakes, sometimes. A servant of God once said, when talking about Jacob and his ways, as God has told of them in His word, “Did you ever see Jacob in the mirror?” He meant that we all easily forget how bad we are, for the old selfish and bad ways come out sometimes after we are saved, but we should not let them, should we?

Genesis 34

The first thing I want you to notice about chapter 34 is that God’s name is never mentioned in it. It is a story of the wicked human heart nearly all through. You remember we learned from chapter 33 that Jacob bought a piece of land, and in a way settled down to live near a little town, perhaps the first one he came to in the land of Canaan, which was not doing what God had told him to do. What a lot of trouble Jacob got into, and how much he displeased God by his doing his own way so much! Anyone but God would have been angry with him and ‘given up trying to help him. But God is not like us. He had thought of this “stiffnecked” Jacob before he was born, and was going. to take care of him all the days of his life and make him praise God for His love and kindness, which he didn’t deserve at all, once and again on the journey he was taking, (just. like we are taking one, you and I from babyhood to eternity), and then God was going to take Jacob at the end of his life straight to heaven itself, because Jacob, in spite of his self-will, believed God.

We shall first talk about a few of the verses of chapter 34. In verse one we learn that Dinah, the only girl in Jacob’s family, went out to get acquainted with the girls of the country round about her home. This was the second wrong step; Jacob, when he bought the farm, and took up his home in this place, had been untrue to the character God meant him to have, of being a stranger and keeping separate from the wicked world around him, which was soon to be judged and. punished by God, and when the father shows a bad example, the children may very likely go on in the same way. You know we are all examples to each other; when we do right, we, without knowing it, perhaps, are encouraging others to do right, and when we dci wrong, we are giving others who see us, encouragement to do the same. Jacob should have kept on his way, and not settled down among those godless people, and Dinah should not have made friends among enemies of God, and these two wrong steps led to great shame and sorrow. The people of the land too, seeing nothing. about Jacob and his family that differed very much from themselves came around, and said, we would like to make marriage between your children and ours. Then we find two of Jacob’s sons deceiving as their father had done, and presently murdering all the men of the place, stealing their wives and children and all their property and destroying the. town; the other brothers, or at least the older ones, joining in the work. How dreadfully wicked all this was! And we can’t wonder at Jacob being very angry and very grieved, and afraid too, as we read what he said to his sons in the thirtieth verse. We wish though, that Jacob had thought about God, and the dishonor to Him, and confessed his own share in it, for he had not been walking with God like his grandfather and others had done.

Genesis 35

A word from God Himself set Jacob right at the beginning of chapter 35. “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there:. and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.” Bethel had been forgotten again; God or at least. ways that pleased Him, had been forgotten too, and these things came. into Jacob’s mind now very clearly. If he was going to obey God in going to the place He told him of, the family and the servants must change their ways,—things that Jacob knew about all along the way, as we may suppose. For he said to them, “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and clean, and change your garments: and let us rise, and go up to Bethel.” Jacob buried their images and their rings under a tree before the new start was made for Bethel and home. God in His mercy protecting them from the people around, whom He made afraid of Jacob and his sons, they got safely to Bethel, and there Jacob built an altar to which he gave the name of “God of the house of God,” because it was there that God had appeared to him when he was going away from home for fear of Esau’s killing him. Here Rebekah’s nurse died, and was buried. God again appeared to Jacob, and repeated to him his change of name from Jacob to Israel, telling him again of His promise that his children should be a great nation, and that the land of Canaan should be his and theirs.

On the way, the loved wife Rachel died as her second baby was born. She called him, “The son of my sorrow,” but her husband gave him a different name, “The son of my right hand” (Benjamin).

At last after another stop, and more sin and sadness in his family, Jacob came to his old father at Mamre, but Isaac died, and Esau came home to join Jacob in burying him. Before this, Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother, had died.

How little of Quietness and happiness there was in Jacob’s life, and so much of his worry and sadness was due to his own self-will. If he had been like Abraham his grandfather, as we have seen was in most of his life, Jacob would have had far less trials and sorrows. It is best to please God in everything, best for both this world, and for eternity. First though we need to be saved.

“Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” Acts 4:12.

Genesis 36

In chapter 36 we read the names of Esau’s children, and of those who were great people in the land where Esau went to live.

In verse 12 you will notice the name of Amalek, one of Esau’s grandchildren; we shall, if the Lord will, find this name again as we go on through God’s Word.

God has given us this list of people who once lived on this earth, and He has told us only their names here, but I wonder what His record books tell about them? And what has He written, down about you and me? That gives us something to think of, doesn’t it? for it is all going to come out, and many a secret will be known “in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.” (Romans 2:16 ).

Genesis 37

In chapter 37 we begin the story of Joseph, now 17 years old. Joseph seems to have been a good boy, but his older brothers were not, especially Dan.

Naphtali, Gad and Asher, it seems from the second verse. All the older brothers hated Joseph when they saw that their father loved him more than he did themselves, and they hated him more when Joseph told them of his dreams.

He dreamed that they were all out in the field at the harvest time, and tying the wheat into bundles, and Joseph’s sheaf stood upright, while the sheaves of the others bowed like one would to some great man. He dreamed too, that the sun, moon, and stars bowed to him. Jacob, his father, also was not pleased about his boy’s dreams, but he thought that God might have made Joseph to dream these strange things. I am sure God did, and the day came when everybody had to go to Joseph for food, or else starve to death.

This is also giving us a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must come to Him, and we must bow. before Him either in this day of His grace, or in the day of judgment, for we read in Phil. 2:10-11: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth! and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Have you bowed your knee to Him?

The brothers, all of the ten, I suppose, that were older than Joseph, went away north to feed their father’s flock in Shechem (verse 12). Strange place for them to go to, after killing so many people there, as we read they did in the thirty-fourth chapter! They must, indeed, have been hard hearted, wicked young men; and when we see what they did to Joseph, we shall certainly agree that that is just what they were.

Jacob sent Joseph to the place where the brothers were with the flocks, and when he got there, he could not find them, for they had gone further, to Dothan, but a man who found Joseph, told him where they were. Joseph was told to see if everything was all right with his brothers and the flocks, and go back home again, but when the brothers saw him coming, and he was still a long way off, they said to one another, “Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”

The eldest son, Reuben, heard what the others were saying, and he would not agree to killing Joseph, but told his brothers to put him in a pit nearby, because he meant to get Joseph out, and send him home again. So when Joseph came where his brothers were, they took his coat away from him that his father had made, and pushed or threw him into a pit; after that they sat down to eat. But presently they saw a train of camels, loaded with spices and balm and perfume, coming along the road on the way to Egypt, and the fourth. son, Judah, said to the others, “What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come. let us sell him to the Ishmaelites.”

So they drew and lifted Joseph out of the pit and sold him, just like people sell cows and horses and hogs, for twenty pieces of silver, and soon he was loaded on to one of the camels, and on his way. poor boy, down to that far away country of Egypt. How very sad he must have been, but no matter how much he might have cried, or struggled to get free, it would do no good. He might have said to himself, “Why has God let my wicked brothers treat me so mean, when I did nothing to deserve it?”

What a picture we get in this also of the Lord Jesus. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” “They hated Him without a cause.” He too, was sold. The wickedness of men’s hearts was told out at the cross. They killed Him, but He arose from the dead. and so Joseph was taken up out of the pit.

He may have thought that God had forgotten him, but it was not true, as we shall see. The very thing that seemed the worst, proved to be the best thing that could happen to Joseph.

Reuben, the oldest of the brothers, had not been with the others when the Midianites went by with their camels, and when he came back and looked in the pit they had pushed Joseph into, he was very much worried, but his brothers told him what they had done, and it doesn’t seem as though he cared after that.

They took Joseph’s coat, and after killing a baby goat, dipped the coat in its blood, and deceitfully and cruelly sent or took it to their father, to make him believe that Joseph had been eaten by some wild animal. Poor Jacob grieved for Joseph many days, and his children tried to comfort him, but they couldn’t make him feel better. The wicked brothers never told him what they had done, but God was going to bring out all the truth.

Joseph went down into Egypt with the men on the camels, and they sold him to one of the king’s soldiers.

We shall see how true is that word, “Be sure your sin will find, you out.” Num. 32:23.

Genesis 39

Passing chapter 38 which is another sad story of sinful ways, we come to the story of Joseph again in the chapter 39. Here is Joseph now in Egypt, and though he must have been often lonely and sad, wishing he was at home with his kind and loving father, we learn from verse 2 that God was with Joseph, and verse 3 tells us that his master saw it too. Isn’t it nice to read that about Joseph? for it shows us that he acted like one of those that belong to God; he wasn’t ashamed, though .he was in a foreign land, and had no one of God’s children to speak to as far as we know.

By and by the master made Joseph to be over everything in his house, and trusted him with everything, and then God’s blessing was more seen than before. But Satan had his eyes on Joseph, and so through a wicked woman, Joseph’s master’s wife, he was one day put in jail, though he hadn’t done anything to be put there for. This must have seemed very hard to Joseph, to be sent to prison because that bad woman told lies about him, but God was still looking out for Joseph, and what Satan planned to do, and God let him, was only going to lead the right way after all. So we read in the last two verses of this chapter that Joseph was given charge of all the prisoners, and all that he did the Lord made to prosper.

Joseph suffered for wrongs which he did not do. and he took it all meekly, and with no thought of revenge. We see these characters in all their perfection in the Lord Jesus. “When He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” 1 Peter 2:23. This is what God delights in, and if we belong to the Lord, we shall seek to follow His example.

Genesis 40

Two of the servants of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, had made him so angry that he sent them to the jail where Joseph was; they were the head butler, and the head baker. For a while these two men were kept in prison and Joseph had to look after them. One night each of them had a very strange dream, and in the morning when Joseph came in where they were, both were sad. They told him they had dreamed, and there was no one that could tell them what their dreams meant, and of course they were worried, because they thought that the dreams might have something to do with their positions in Pharaoh’s house. In those days, before any of the Bible was written, God spoke to people in dreams, and Joseph wisely said, “Is not God the One that can tell what dreams mean? Tell me your dreams.” So the chief butler told his dream which was about a grape vine that had three branches, and grapes grew on them: he had Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, and in his dream the butler took the grapes, and pressed them into the cup, and gave it to Pharaoh. Joseph told him the dream meant that in three day’s Pharaoh would put him back in his old place as chief butler again, “but think on me,” he said. “when it shall be well with thee.... and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this prison,” and Joseph told him how he had been stolen from his home, and had been put in prison without a cause.

When the chief baker heard’ what Joseph had to say to the other man, he told his dream which was about three baskets that were on his head; in the uppermost basket there were all kinds of baked or cooked dishes, and the birds ate them out of the basket. Joseph had bad news for this man, for he told him that in three days Pharaoh was going to have him hanged.by the neck from a tree, and the birds should eat his flesh. And so it was on the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday. He made a feast for all his servants, and the chief butler he took back, but the chief baker was hanged.

And did the butler remember about Joseph. and tell the king about him? No, lie forgot all about him, and so two whole years went by, with Joseph still in the prison. Poor Joseph! how sad he must sometimes have been, far away from home, and a prisoner, with no one at all, as it seemed, to take an interest in him. and get him out of jail and let him go home to his father. But we can say that God never forgot Joseph; He saw him, and took care that he wasn’t too much discouraged, kept him safely, but His time had not come yet. We shall see next week how Joseph made a great change one day.

Genesis 41

Two long years slowly went by, and Joseph still in the prison, was now thirty years old. He must have been away from home 13 years.

One night Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the great river of Egypt, the Nile, and as he looked, there came up out of the river seven fine fat cows, and they fed in a meadow. Then seven other cows, thin and bony and starved-looking, came up out of the river after the fat cows, and stood beside them on the river bank. Pretty soon the thin cows had eaten up the seven fat ones, but they were just as thin and bony as before.

Pharaoh had another dream after this one, and in it he saw seven splendid ears of wheat that grew on one stalk, and after them seven thin, dried up ears grew, and they ate up the first seven ears.

When Pharaoh awoke, he was troubled about his dreams, and so he sent for all the magicians, and all the wise men of Egypt, to tell him what the dreams meant, but none of them could say. But now the chief butler remembered Joseph, and told Pharaoh how the prisoner gave both the chief baker and himself the true meaning of their dreams when they were in prison. Then Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and they brought him in a hurry out of the prison, but he took time to shave himself and change his clothes for better ones, before he went in where Pharaoh waited for him. We can be sure that Joseph was praying to God that he should not have to go back to the prison again, as he went to Pharaoh’s palace. No doubt he was praying too for the right answers to give the king when he should meet him and hear the full story of his dreams.

Pharaoh said to the young prisoner, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it, and I have heard say of thee that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.” Joseph quietly answered the great king. “It is not in me; God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.” So with this beginning, Pharaoh told Joseph about his dreams, and at the end he said. “And I told this unto the Magicians, but there was none that could declare it to me.” As Joseph was listening to the king’s words, God was putting into his mind what the dreams meant, and when Pharaoh finished speaking Joseph began to tell what he had learned. There were seven good years with big crops coming. and then seven bad years when there would be hardly anything growing, and people and cattle would be starving, Joseph said, and he told Pharaoh that the right thing to do was to appoint a careful and wise man to be over all the country, with men under him to do what he should tell them; then to gather all the grain that should be raised in the coming seven years of plenty in the fifth part of Egypt, and store it away for the seven year of famine.

In this also, Joseph is a picture of the Lord Jesus. He is the One who alone is able to reveal secrets, and solve all our difficulties. The word is “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Heb. 4:13.

If any of our dear readers are in trouble about his or her sins, He alone can meet our difficulty. He has said, “Come unto Mc.” So the one thing for us to do is to go to Him, and He will save us. He loved us and died for us, He has been in judgment for us, and has borne what we deserved.

All who put their trust in Him shall be saved from the wrath to come.

Pharaoh and his servants talked together about what Joseph had said, and they felt that what they had heard about the dreams was right, and that Joseph’s plan to have one man over all the country to take charge of the food, and to store away what was not really needed, was just what ought to be done. Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find such an one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?” Perhaps the people of Pharaoh’s court didn’t quite like it, but Pharaoh’s mind was decided; Joseph should be the next person to himself over all the country. He took his ring off his hand, and put it on Joseph’s hand, dressed him in fine clothes, and put a gold chain about his neck. Then Pharaoh made him to ride in the second chariot, and servants shouted as Joseph went out, “Bow the knee!” Without Joseph, no one could lift hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. Pharaoh called Joseph a new name which meant “The man to whom secrets are known,” and he gave him a wife, Asenath, the daughter of a priest. Joseph went all over Egypt, and during the seven good years, when the wheat and everything else grew so well, he had great storehouses packed full of food for the seven bad years. Two boys were born to Joseph and Asenath—Manasseh and Ephraim.

Soon the seven years of plenty were ended, and the seven years of famine began. The people began to beg for food, and not only the Egyptians, but from all countries they came after grain, because they had heard that there was plenty in Egypt, and all of them were sent to Joseph.

How God had looked after the poor boy who was stolen from his home! First a slave, and then in prison for a good many years, and now next the powerful king of the rich country of Egypt, and all the world coming to him for food!

As Joseph was exalted to a place of great honor after having been in prison and judgment, so our blessed Lord is exalted to the highest place in glory, and soon He shall have everything put under Him, both in heaven and earth.

Genesis 42

The famine we read about in the last chapter was soon felt in the Promised Land, for the first three verses of this chapter tell about Jacob’s knowing that there was food in Egypt, when there was not enough to live on in their country, and saying to his sons that they should go down there to buy some, after which the ten men who had been so mean to Joseph, went to Egypt. Benjamin, the youngest boy, stayed at home.

Did the ten brothers think of their other brother, Joseph, taken as a slave over the very road, I suppose, that they now rode over to go to Egypt for food? I should think their consciences must have troubled them a little, at least, but they very likely thought that Joseph must be dead by now.

Next we see the ten brothers coming to Joseph, but not knowing him at all, and bowing down to him with their faces to the ground. Joseph knew them, but he made himself strange to them, and spoke roughly to them on purpose. He said, “Whence come ye?” They answered truly enough, “From the land of Canaan to buy food.”

Remembering his boyhood dreams, of which we read in chapter 37:5-11, Joseph spoke more roughly to them, saying, “Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land are ye come!”

Rather a little worried, we may well think, they answered again, telling Joseph that they had come only to buy food; they were all one man’s sons, and they said they were true men, and not spies. There were twelve brothers.

Just think of them telling Joseph that they were true men. He knew all about them, but they did not think of that. How often people talk about their good deeds, and make promises to the Lord Jesus of what they will do for Him, and will not own that they have had their part in crucifying Him, for they too, have said, “Away with Him.” We all have preferred anything rather than the Lord Jesus, and that is the same as saying, “Away with Him.”

Presently they were telling him the youngest was with their father, and one was dead, but Joseph still said that they were spies, and put them all in jail for three days. Then he said that one of them should be bound in prison, and the rest of them go home with the food they needed, but when they came back to get more food, they must bring their youngest brother with them to Joseph, so that he should know that they were telling him the truth.

They said one to another that they were truly guilty about their brother, because they saw the anguish of his soul, when he begged them to let him go, and they would not listen to him, and they realized that was why they were in all this trouble now. Reuben, who, you will recall, was not with his brothers when they sold Joseph to the traders on their way to Egypt, reminded them that he had said when Joseph was coming to them from their father that day, and they wanted to kill him, “Do not sin against the child,” and that his brothers would not listen to him, and now he said, “His blood is required,” that is, God was now going to punish them as the murderers of their brother.

Joseph was listening to their talk, but they didn’t know he understood, for he had spoken to them through an interpreter, who understood both the Egyptian, and the language of the people of Canaan. His kind heart was stirred deeply, so that he had to turn away, for the tears ran down his cheeks. Then he came back and talked again with his brothers, and made a prisoner of Simeon, who was the second in age.

How this is like the Lord Jesus! His heart yearns over us, yet He must get at the conscience, and make us feel our sinful condition, and have us own our sins to Him.

Then Joseph had his men fill the brothers’ sacks with grain, and put every one’s money back in his sack, and give them food for the journey. Then the brothers loaded their donkeys, and started for home, but on the way, when one of the brothers opened his sack to give his donkey some food, he found his money in the top of the sack. This made them all afraid again, and they said to one another, “What is this that God hath done to us?

It would have been right to take payment for the food he gave them, but he was dealing with them on the ground of grace, and therefore, he could take nothing from them. If he had given them what they deserved, lie would have punished everyone, but he did not want to do that, so it is all grace.

That is the way the Lord Jesus does with us. Many are so afraid to believe it is all grace. They are like Joseph’s brothers.

When they reached home, and had told their father about what had happened to them in Egypt, they emptied their sacks, and found each one his money. Now both the brothers and their old father were afraid, and Jacob said very sadly, “Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me.”

Reuben, the oldest son, as we have noticed twice before, showed that he felt rather sorry sometimes, said to his father, “Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee: deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him to thee again,” but Jacob said, “My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone: if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

Poor Jacob! what sadness he had, but down there in Egypt his boy Joseph, whom he thought was dead, was the nearest one to the king, and the very one who had treated the ten sons so strangely when they went to buy food.

Genesis 43

The famine grew worse; nothing was growing in the land of Canaan, and when they had eaten nearly all the food they had brought from Egypt, Jacob said to his sons, “Go again, buy us a little food.” But Judah, told his father that the man solemnly told them it was no use coming for food unless Benjamin was with them. If Jacob would send him with them they would go, but if not they would not go down to Egypt. Jacob asked them why they did such a thing as to tell the man they had another brother. and they told how lie had asked them about themselves and their families, so that they had to tell him about Benjamin, and that they didn’t have any thought then that the man would say, “Bring your youngest brother unto me.”

Joseph was wanting to get at their consciences as to what they had done to him, and this is how God does with us. The people in this world have crucified His Son, and He wants to get at our consciences as to which side we take, for we are either accepting Christ, or refusing Him.

At last, after Judah had promised to take great care of Benjamin, the old father consented to his going to Egypt, but he told them to take a present to the man who was over the food supply; the best fruit, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, myrrh, nuts and almonds, and twice as much money as they should need to pay for what they wanted, so they could give back the money they had found in their sacks. All this, of course, was to pacify the great man and keep him from making them more trouble. They didn’t know what love there was in that man’s heart for them, and that love, like God’s to us, was the more because of their very real need.

God is not asking for anything from us, any more than Joseph was looking for a present from his brothers, while they had not owned nor judged their rejection of him. Nor does God want us to pay for anything He gives to us, for it is all of grace, free grace, but if we have judged ourselves for the time we have gone on without Christ, and owned it to Him, and have now accepted Christ, then we should give Him our whole hearts, in response for such great love, but not as payment, for we cannot pay for that.

Again they stood before Joseph, and when he saw Benjamin, he said to his servant who had charge of his house. “Bring these men home, and slay, and make ready; for these men shall dine with me at noon.” But the brothers, instead of being pleased, were afraid when they were brought into Joseph’s house. They thought it was on account of the money they had found in their sacks when they went home the last time, and that they would now be taken for slaves. So they went to the steward of Joseph’s house and talked with him at the door, telling him how they had come the first time to buy food, and on the way back when they opened their sacks, every man’s money was found in the mouth of his sack, and how they had brought it back with other money to pay for more food. They did not know who put the money in their sacks, they said, so anxious were they to be known as honest men.

The steward quieted their fears a little by saying, “Peace be to you, fear not; your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks: I had your money.” They must have wondered a good deal at what the steward said, but perhaps they thought of it no more when he brought out Simeon, who had been locked up while they were gone, and gave them water to wash their feet, according to the custom of those Eastern countries, and fed their donkeys. The brothers then prepared the present ready to give to Joseph, for they had heard that he would come home at noon, and that they were to eat there at his house. When he came, they brought out the present, and bowed down to the ground as they gave it to him. Joseph asked his brothers, still not telling them who he was, who they were, and if their father was well—the old man of whom they had spoken, and as they answered, they bowed down to the ground again. Then he saw Benjamin, and asked, “Is this your younger brother?” But his loving heart was full, and Joseph had to go into another room to cry tears of joy; he was so pleased to see his own brother Benjamin. Coming out again he told his servants to set out the meal, and they had one table for Joseph. one for his eleven brothers, and one for the Egyptians in his house. The brothers didn’t know what to think when they were seated in order according to their ages from the oldest to the youngest. Joseph sent food from his table to his brothers, but to Benjamin, he sent five times as much as to the others.

Probably the brothers, the ten guilty ones, thought that their troubles were over now, when Joseph, though they didn’t dream it was he, was so friendly; but he was not done with them yet. He was surely showing kindness to them when they only deserved to be punished. In this his ways were like God’s who has been so kind to all of us when we didn’t deserve anything but to be sent to hell.

Genesis 44

The brothers started for home again at daylight the next morning, their donkeys loaded with sacks of wheat they had bought. How relieved they must have felt when they were outside of the city, and on their way. and perhaps they said to one another, “See how full our sacks are; we have all we can carry. That man was very good to us this time.”

But now along the road behind them comes a man driving very fast; he comes along side and says, “Wherefore have ye rewarded evil. for good?” He charged them with having stolen his lord’s cup out of which he drank, and with which he could tell secret things. They replied they should not be charged with doing such a thing, and reminded him that they brought back their money which they found in their sacks, and they were willing that the one who had the silver cup should die and the rest of them be servants.

Joseph had told the steward the night before to put the cup into Benjamin’s sack. This might seem strange, but Joseph’s object in doing this was to gradually get at their consciences, and he saw he could more quickly reach them by dealing with Benjamin, and holding him, than by taking any of the others; and then to charge them with being thieves, was nothing like as bad as that which they were guilty of. The terrible sin they were guilty of, was getting rid of Joseph; they really were guilty of murder.

They quickly took down their sacks, and opened them, very sure that the cup was not there. The steward wisely began at the eldest and ended at the youngest. which was Benjamin’s sack. and there was the cup! Now their happiness was changed to deepest sadness! The brothers tore their clothes, as people did in those days when they were very sad or angry, and loaded their sacks on their donkeys again, going back with gloomy faces to the city from which they had started but an hour, perhaps, before.

We next see them at Joseph’s house, for Joseph had not yet gone down to the storehouse, as it was still early. Once more they dropped down on the ground before him, now to beg him to be merciful. Joseph said, rather sternly. I suppose. “What deed is this that ye have done? wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” that is, he was able to understand things which were hidden from others. In all this he is a type of the Lord Jesus. We can hide nothing from Him, and whatever we have done that is wrong, we had better tell Him all about. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9.

Judah, conscience stricken about that old sin of selling Joseph to be a slave, speaking both for himself and his brothers, answered in a hopeless way. “What shall we say unto my lord ...or how shall we clear ourselves? God has found out the iniquity of thy servants; behold, we are my lord’s servants.” Surely they were remembering now their bad behavior to their lost brother, and their consciences were telling them that God had found it out; it wasn’t just Joseph who was making trouble for them.

The time is coming when all this will be fulfilled with the Jews who crucified the Lord Jesus. They shall yet bow down before Him, and shall look on Him whom they have pierced.

He also wants each one of us to own before Him what we have done with Him; whether we have taken part with those who have said, “Away with Him,” or with those who have accepted Him as their Saviour. If we own it now, we shall get His grace shown ‘to us, but if we wait till the day of judgment we. shall bow the knee before Him, and receive His judgment by being banished from His presence.

Joseph said he would not take all the men for slaves, but just the one with whom the cup was found, but the rest could go home in peace to their father.

Judah then went close up to Joseph and pleaded with him not to be angry; also told him about the old father, who could not bear to part with the youngest son; and of the other son of the same mother, that was gone, and that Jacob their father, would die from the sorrow if they went home without Benjamin; how he, Judah, had made himself the surety for the return of the little brother, and would bear the blame for ever.

“Now therefore,” he said, “I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go with his brothers.”

Genesis 45

Joseph’s heart was full; he could not wait any longer to tell his brothers who he was and so he called out for everyone to go out but themselves. When the place was empty, Joseph began to weep, and not quietly either, for the people outside heard him, and he said, “I am Joseph. Does my father still live?” He was happy, but his brothers were just the opposite, they were terrified and could not speak to him. This news was far worse, they thought, that Simeon’s being made a prisoner while they were away before, or threatening to keep Benjamin for a slave. Would Joseph kill them all, now that they were in his hands?

“Come near to me,” said Joseph, and they came near. This is what the Lord wants with each one of us—to draw near to Him. He is not saying now, “Depart from Me.” He will say that when it is too late for you to come to Him, but now He is saying, just like Joseph, “Come near to Me.”

Joseph’s brothers obeyed him. Have you obeyed the call of the Lord Jesus? They came near, and Joseph said, “I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.” There had been two years of famine in the whole land, and there were to be five more.

Joseph was the one who was able to meet all their needs, just like the Lord Jesus for us. There is a famine in this world, for there is nothing here that can satisfy us; the Lord Jesus alone can fill our hearts, and fully satisfy us.

Joseph also told them that God had made him a father to Pharaoh, and lord of his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. He told them to hurry back to his father, and tell him what his son Joseph had said, and how that God had made him lord of all Egypt, and that he should come to him without delay, and they and their children should live in the land of Goshen near him, and he would take care of them there.

He fell on Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck; he kissed all his brothers, and wept on them, and after that his brothers talked with him.

This gives us a beautiful lesson of how the Lord wants us to do with Him. He wants us to talk with Him in prayer, seeing He has so fully expressed His love upon us.

“Perfect love casteth out fear,” and that love is love of the Lord Jesus. The glad news reached Pharaoh, and he said, as Joseph had, that the brothers should bring down their father and all their families, and make their homes in Egypt.

When the brothers left, they took wagons for the children, and the mothers, and Jacob to ride back in. New suits of clothes for each brother, and five suits for Benjamin, who received three hundred pieces of silver, too. Ten donkeys carried the good things of Egypt, and ten more were loaded with grain and bread and meat for Jacob and the others to eat on the way down from Canaan.

Joseph gave his brothers good advice when he said as they left. “See that ye fall not out by the way.” Brothers and sisters too, are apt to get cross with one another very easily.

When they reached Jacob and told him about Joseph, he couldn’t believe it, and was quite overcome, but when they told him all that Joseph had said, and he saw the wagons, he revived, and he said, “It is enough: Joseph my son is yet alive: will go and see him before I die!’

Thus Joseph’s dreams were fulfilled, and he was a type of the Lord Jesus who will vet reign over this whole earth; and His brethren, the Jews, will be restored to Him, and bow before Him, as well as other people.

Genesis 46

Jacob, who is here called Israel, his new name, now started from the place which had for many years been his home, on the long journey to Egypt to see his long lost, but now exalted son, Joseph. When he came to Beersheba, the border of the land which God had promised to Abraham and Isaac and himself, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac, as though to say to Him that he would not go further without being sure God wanted him to, and God answered Jacob’s unspoken question that night, saying to him in a dream, “Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.”

So Jacob was ready to go on now, and we get a list of all those who went into Egypt. If you read the list carefully you will see that the children and grandchildren are counted up in groups according to their grandmothers. First Leah’ children, six, and their children; then Leah’s maid Zilpah’s two; then Rachel’s two; and finally Bilhah’s two. There were “little ones,” as well as big folks, but all their names are there.

Judah went on before the others to learn from Joseph the way for them to go, and Joseph went. out to meet his father. What a meeting it must have been, when Jacob saw his lost boy again, now the very next person to Pharaoh, and the one in charge of the food for all the countries around.

How glad Joseph must have been to see his father, from whom he had been separated for many years. How they must have talked about God’s kindness and wisdom too, in all the days when it had seemed so dark and so sad for Joseph, first sold as a slave, then sent to prison for something he hadn’t done, and left there for years, to at last come out as the greatest man in the great kingdom of Egypt, under Pharaoh.

God’s object in telling us this wonderful account is to give us a picture of His beloved Son, for He was to be sold, He was to be taken from prison and from judgment and He will yet rule over the whole earth. His Jewish brethren are to be restored to Him, and they shall look on Him whom ‘they have pierced. Every knee shall bow to Him. How good it is to bow to Him now, and own Him as our Lord and Saviour. Have you done so, clear reader?

Genesis 47

Now we go into Pharaoh’s court, first to listen to Joseph telling the great man that Jacob and the others were now in the land of Goshen, which maps will show you is between Cairo and the Suez Canal. Then Joseph presented five of his brothers, and Pharaoh asked them what work they were used to doing, and they told him that they were all shepherds, or cattle farmers, and would like to stay in the land of Goshen. Pharaoh turned to Joseph and told him very kindly, that his father and brothers with their families might live in the best of Egypt, and if any of the men were extra good workers they should be given charge over Pharaoh’s cattle.

Then we read of Joseph’s old father being brought in to see Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed the king. He told him rather sadly, no doubt, that he was not going to live as long as his father and grandfather had, and that he had had a troubled life and then with another blessing on Pharaoh, Jacob went away. Jacob’s life was a troubled one, surely, but he had made much of the trouble himself, by not, trying to keep close to God, and seeking to please Him in his ways. Boys and girls, and grown folks too, would save themselves much sadness and many heartaches. if they told God in prayer all about themselves, and asked Him to guide them through life, for Jesus’ sake.

Joseph now had his father and his brothers and their families near him, and we are told in the eleventh and twelfth verses how he took care of them. But the famine grew worse in Egypt and in Canaan, so that the people were starving, —not Joseph’s people, but all the others. All the money in Egypt was paid in to Joseph for food, and then the poor Egyptians exchanged their cattle and other animals for food; at last they sold themselves and their land to Joseph for Pharaoh, because they had nothing left to pay for food. How dreadful the famine must have been! Nothing grew that could be eaten for seven years. Everything depended on Joseph and his great storehouses packed with food.

God has just given us another picture of Himself, in this true story of the land of Egypt and Joseph. Does He not say to us. “Come to My Son or you will perish? There is a dreadful time coming. and Jesus is the only Saviour.” Indeed now is the time to go to Him and we cannot be saved without Him.

Genesis 48

We read in chapter 47, verses 28 and following that Jacob lived to be 147 years old, and was now about to die. He would not be buried in Egypt, for he knew God’s promise that Canaan should be his country, and his children’s and no matter how pleasant it might be to be in Egypt, taken care of by his great son, Joseph, his heart was in that land across the desert where he had been born and his parents had died.

Hearing that his father was ill, and knowing that he could not live long, Joseph took his two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh to see Jacob, or Israel. as he is called in this chapter.—the name God had given him on a memorable occasion in his life.

Jacob strengthened himself, and sat upon his bed for the visit of his son and grandsons. He immediately spoke of God, and the lonely place afterward called Bethel. where God had appeared to him when he was running away from home. and what He had said to him. Promising him that land for an everlasting possession. Now Jacob said, Those two boys of yours were born in Egypt before I came here. but they are mine, the same as Reuben and Simeon; all your children belong to the family, and shall share in the inheritance.

But his thoughts went back to his great sorrow, when the much loved wife Rachel, Joseph’s and Benjamin’s mother died, and was buried at Bethlehem where so many centuries afterward Jesus was to be born. Then he asked for Joseph’s boys, that he might bless them. Feeble now, and almost blind from old age, Jacob kissed his two grandsons and put his arms around them, then he laid his hands on their heads to give them his blessing.

Joseph had placed his boys in front of Jacob so that his father’s right hand would be placed on the older one’s (Manasseh’s) head, and his left on the younger one’s (Ephraim’s) head, but Jacob crossed his hands so that his right rested on the younger boy and his left on the older. This meant that Ephraim would receive the greater blessing, and Joseph was displeased and tried to change his father’s hands, but Jacob refused. The younger brother, he said, shall be greater than the older one.

Jacob blessed Joseph too; in verses 15 and 16 we are told what he said of him.

This lesson makes us think how much sadness and trouble Jacob and his mother would have saved themselves, so many years before (chapter 27) when they deceitfully got the oldest son’s (Esau’s) blessing for the younger one. Now God was showing how He could have the right one blessed, even when their father Joseph tried to stop it. How simple everything is, when we leave it to God.

Genesis 49

In this chapter Jacob told his sons about themselves, what kind of men they had been and would be, and as he spoke to them, the past must have come into their thoughts more than once. Reuben he reminded of a wrong he had clone; Simeon and Levi heard again about their murdering all those people at Shechem. As they had been, so they would be, but Judah heard a different message. The Lord Jesus was to be of the tribe of Judah, when the time Should come that He should be born into the world, and so, though Judah was probably as bad as the others, the Holy Spirit who is the author of the Bible, thinks of Him first.

We are nearing the end of the first book of the Bible; let us turn to the last book, the Revelation 5:5, to find one of the many names of the Lord,—”the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” Now back to Genesis 49; we can see Who is meant in the words to Judah in verses 8 to 12; it is Jesus. He is the One to be praised, the conqueror, “and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be.” But we know what happened; Jesus was refused by His people, the Jews, and crucified. “We will not have this man to reign over us,” they said.

Jacob’s words to Zebulun tell of the after history of the nation. They would not remain a separate people, but mixed with their Gentile neighbors. To Issachar he tells of their serving the Gen: tiles, their national home, the Holy Land, taken from them, just as it is today. Jacob’s words to Dan tell of worse times for the. Jews, a time that has not yet come in their history, but Gad, Asher and Naphtali speak of liberty and blessing to follow when the One whom Joseph and Benjamin were pictures or types of, (the Lord Jesus) shall come again to this world. There is a glorious time coming, when Jesus shall be owned as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, but there is a dreadful time to come before that, the word of God tells us.

Jacob charged his sons to bury him in the cave in the field, far away in the land of Palestine, which Abraham had bought for a burying place, and then he died. He was a stranger in Egypt, and knew no home but the one God had promised.

Genesis 50

I think we should have liked Joseph very much if we had known him as God’s word tells us about him How kind he was, and how loving, even to those bad brothers of his who were so mean to hint when they had a chance to be. How tender his feelings were, too, we have seen in the record of his tears when he saw his brothers beginning to feel how wicked they were, and when Benjamin came down to Egypt; again when the brothers were feeling more and more their sin, and now in this last chapter of Joseph’s life and of the book of Genesis, we see him first weeping over his dead father, and again afterward when his brothers were afraid he would hate them. In all these things Joseph was like the Lord Jesus, who loved his enemies, but He, only, died for them, the Just One for the unjust ones, to bring us to God.

A great company of Jacob’s children and grandchildren, besides Egyptians, went with Jacob’s body to the cave in the field where the bodies of his parents and grandparents were buried, far away in the land that God had promised, for Jacob wanted his body to lie there to wait for the resurrection day.

When the funeral was over, Joseph’s brothers were afraid that he would now turn against them. They thought that he might very likely try to pay them back for what they had done to him, and first they sent a messenger to Joseph to ask him to forgive them. This hurt Joseph, because he had only kind thoughts about his brothers, and he wept. Still the brothers were not at rest, and they went to Joseph and fell down before him.

Joseph spoke to them that they should not be afraid; he would take care of them and of their little ones. He comforted them and said very kind words to them. But it must have been hard for them to believe that Joseph could really forgive them for all their wickedness, and never bring it up any more. God has said that about us, who believe in Jesus,

“And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” Hebrews 10:17. Our badness should make Him never forget, but He says He will never remember. Have you confessed your sins to Him?

Joseph, when he died, told his people that God would surely visit them, and bring them out of Egypt, back to the land He had promised to Abraham. Isaac and Jacob. Joseph made them promise to take his bones with them, whenever God would lead them back to Canaan. Not all his honors in Egypt changed Joseph; his thoughts were onk God’s word, God’s promises, God’s country and I am sure too, that he was thinking of the resurrection day. Hebrews 11:22 Says, “By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel. and gave commandment concerning his bones.”

Soon the “dead in Christ” shall rise from the dust, and with them, we the living who remain, shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob with the Lord.

Exodus 1

In Genesis we were reading about one person at a time, generally, as Noah, Abraham, Joseph, but we shall find Exodus to be about a people, about their trials in Egypt, how God set them free, and brought them partway to their Promised Land, Canaan. This people was the children of Jacob, here called the children of Israel, and sometimes the Hebrews.

They had gone, you remember, to Egypt because of the fearful famine that left thousands of people without food, and there they had been taken care of by Joseph, their brother, who was next to Pharaoh himself, the king of Egypt. But now Joseph was dead, and all those we read of in the closing chapter of Genesis.

After the children of Israel came to live in Egypt, they grew in number very fast. More and more babies were born, until the country began to be full of these strangers from Palestine, and the Egyptians were not pleased. A new king was over the land of Egypt, and what Joseph had done for the country was perhaps forgotten now. The king saw that Joseph’s people were soon going to be more in number than the Egyptians, and he thought that if there should be a war between Egypt and some other nation, the children of Israel would very likely help their enemies, so he said to his people, “Let us deal wisely with them,” and they set men over them to make them work hard, building two cities at least. Perhaps you will like to know that explorers discovered one of these cities, Pithom, about thirty-five years ago, it was in the land of Goshen, the part of Egypt in which the people of Israel lived.

But the more severely the taskmasters treated the poor slaves (for that is what the children of Israel were made by the Egyptians) the more they increased in number. The Egyptians made the lives of the Israelites bitter, so hard did they have to work, and not that only, but the king said that all the boy babies that were born to the slaves must be killed. The nurses feared God., and would not kill the babies, and God gave the poor women homes of their own. Never a thing is done for God that He does not remember.

Still, with all the king’s orders to make the children of Israel work as hard as possible, (and no doubt his taskmasters were very cruel) so that many of them almost wished to die, God took care of them, and more and more babies were given to them. Pharaoh now told his own people, since the Hebrew nurses did not kill the new born babies, that they must throw the boy babies into the river. Perhaps the mothers were able to hide their babies so that the cruel Egyptians could not find them. We hope none of the little boys were drowned, or eaten by the crocodiles.

Exodus 2

Not here, but in the sixth chapter, we find the names of the father and mother of a baby who grew to be a very great man. Amram was a grandson of Levi, one of Jacob’s sons, and Jochebed belonged to the same family. We do not know how many children they had, but the baby that we read about the first thing in this chapter, was not the first child. There was an older boy, named Aaron, and a sister too, whose name was Miriam, and this baby’s name was Moses. We read about all three of these children of Amram and Jochebed in chapters that follow this one, but of Moses we learn something in nearly every chapter, and he it was to whom God gave the work of writing the first five books of the Bible.

When Moses was born, the king had said that all the boy babies that belonged to the children of Israel must be thrown into the river, and Jochebed, to save her baby from death, hid him for three months. When she thought she could not hide Moses any longer, she took a kind of basket, called an ark, made of bulrushes, or reeds, that grew by the water’s edge, which she made water tight with resin and pitch. In this the mother put her baby, and laid it among the weeds on the bank of the river. ‘ Then she must have gone home to pray, and wait to see what God would do. From what we are told in Hebrews 11:23, we know that both the parents of this baby believed God, and trusted in His word, and though it must have been very hard for Jochebed to put her child in the ark of bulrushes and go away, we may be sure that she knew that God would see that no harm came to him.

If Moses’ mother was out of sight of the ark, his sister was not, though she stood a long way off, waiting and watching to see what would happen to her little brother. After a while the daughter of Pharaoh came down to the river with her maidens to wash, and they walked along the river’s side. Then the lady saw the ark, and perhaps she was curious to know what might be inside of it. She sent one of the maids to get it, and when it was opened, there lay a little baby, and it was crying! “Poor little thing,” thought the princess, “this is one of the Hebrews’ children, one of the boy babies that were to be killed,” and she felt so sorry for it, that she could only think of keeping the baby for herself.

By this time Moses’ sister had come to the place where the princess, and her maids, and the baby were, and she said, “Shall I go and call a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?” And that led to her bringing her mother, Moses’ mother, who got her baby back again, now to be nursed for Pharaoh’s palace. A few years after this, Moses, now a boy of perhaps six or seven, went to school where he was taught all that the Egyptians could teach him (Acts 7:22), but we are taken next to see him when forty years old.

Though he lived in a king’s palace, Moses did not forget his own people, and one day he went to visit them. When he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, Moses killed the Egyptian, and hid his body in the sand. He thought his people would understand that God was going to deliver them by him, but when, the next day, Moses tried to stop two Hebrew men fighting, one of them said, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me as thou killest the Egyptian?” Soon Pharaoh heard of what Moses had done, and tried to kill him, so Moses went away to the land of Midian. God’s time had not come yet, for the people to be set free, and forty more years rolled by during which Moses was a stranger in a foreign land, where he was married to Zipporah, and a baby was born, whose name was Gershom, “a stranger here.” After forty years as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and forty years tending sheep in Midian, Moses knew himself only as one of God’s chosen people, the children of Israel, and thought of them in their sadness in Egypt.

But not only Moses, One far greater than he, was thinking of the children of Israel, hearing their groans, and their sighs, and soon God would punish their wicked oppressors, and bring them out of Egypt.

Exodus 3

Some boys and girls get anxious to be through with school before their parents think they should say a final good bye to teachers and school days, but Moses went to school for eighty years, or nearly that long. For most of the first forty years he was going to an Egyptian school, and that they taught him well. you will see if you turn to Acts 7:22.

But when the Egyptians finished with him, God as we might say, had just begun; for Moses had still to be taught how to lead the children of Israel from Egypt to Canaan. He needed, among other things, to learn to depend on God, and to be ready to do what He wished, and not to please himself. Moses, too, needed to learn to be meek and patient, so that God could use him. None of these things could have been taught in the schools of Egypt, and he learned them alone with God and the sheep in the desert.

But how long the years must have seemed to Moses, those forty years with the sheep in the desert! At last they came to an end, when one day he saw a very strange thing. He had taken the sheep to Mount Horeb (which is also called Mount Sinai), and there saw a bush burning, but not burned away.

Moses said, just as we would have, “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” Then there was something more wonderful.— a voice, calling him by his name, “Moses, Moses!” It was no less than God Himself, come down to speak to him. Moses had to take off his shoes, and not to come too close to the burning bush, for it was the place where God was.

To come near to God, we must be like Him, but we are born sinners, and sometimes, especially those who are not saved, sin a good deal. God never makes friends with sin, but He loves ‘the sinners, and long after” Moses’ time, He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to bear the punishment of our sins, as many as believe in Him.

Now God invites those who trust in Jesus to “draw near,” as well as to “enter into the holiest” by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19-22). He wants us to know Him better than we do. But we must confess our sins to Him, before we can be happy.

Do you remember how God came to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden? And then to Abraham as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day? After this visit we read of yet other visits: one in the end of the fifth chapter of Joshua shows us God as the head of an army. Every time, it is in a way that just suits the occasion, and so here, it is that God is seen as a fire out of the middle of a bush, but the bush not consumed. The children of Israel were like a poor desert bush, but God would make His home among them.

Had the poor slaves in Egypt suffered so. cruelly as we have been reading, and God did not notice, did not care? No indeed; He’ had seen the affliction of His people, and had heard their cry, as the seventh verse says.

But there was more to be told to Moses: God was “come down” to deliver them, and to bring them to a good land, even the one promised hundreds of years before to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. Moses, too, was to be sent to tell Pharaoh, and to bring the people out of Egypt, but he who was, forty years before this, quick to act for his people, now said, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

From verse 13, we learn that the people had about forgotten the true God, who now called Himself the “I AM.” Pharaoh would not willingly let them go, but when God had punished him, he would permit them to leave, and the Egyptians would even give them jewelry and clothes when they left Egypt, so glad would they be to get them away out of their country. In verse 22 where the word “borrow” is used, we should read “ask”, because that is the true meaning of the word translated “borrow.”

Exodus 4

Forty years before, Moses acted for his people in his own strength; now he looks at himself, and says to God, “But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice.” How much better it would have been if he had simply trusted God. Still God was very patient; first he gave Moses the sign of the serpent; his rod that he carried changed to a real living snake when he threw it on the ground, but changed back to a rod when he took it by the tail.

Next, the changing of his hand to be covered with leprosy, that dreadful disease of some hot countries, and then cleansed again.

Then a third sign, the water of the river —Egypt has only one river, the Nile, and from it they get all their water,—the river should be changed to blood.

Twice again, Moses objects to going when God wishes to send him, and so at last He is displeased with him, and tells him that Aaron, his older brother, should do the speaking part. That was a loss in honor to Moses, that his brother should have to share with him, what God would have given to him alone, and Moses must have felt it afterwards.

Moses now went to his father-in-law to tell him he was going back to see his relatives in Egypt, and then directed by God to go, as all the men were dead who wanted to kill him, he set out with his wife and his sons, and the rod in his hand. But Moses had never circumcised his boy, as God had directed Abraham, in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, and clearly Zipporah had been the cause. For some reason it has not exactly been explained to us, but God spoke to Moses about his ways, and he obeys, and so does his wife.

Then they go on, and meet Aaron. whom God had told to go out to meet his brother, and so together they go back to Egypt, and gathering the elders of the people of Israel together, they tell them the grand news that God is just going to set them all free.

Exodus 5

What a bold answer was Pharaoh’s, to Moses and Aaron when they came in to him with their message of, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, ‘Let My people go!’”

“Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice?” he said, “I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.”

Pharaoh found out who was the Lord, before long, When He laid His hand on him, but just now he was angry, and instead of promising to let the children .of Israel go, he ordered the taskmasters to no more give them the straw they needed to make bricks. More work was to be forced from the men, for now they must search for straw, and still make as many bricks each day as before.

Then the officers of the children of Israel who had been set over them to see that the work was done, were beaten because the poor slaves could not make as many bricks while they had to hunt for straw through all the country, and the officers went to Pharaoh to complain. But Pharaoh answered, “Ye are idle, ye are idle .... go therefore now, and work, for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks:” So the officers told Moses and Aaron, as they came away from Pharaoh, that they instead of helping the people, had made their lives harder than ever.

Pharaoh was like his master, Satan, and did not want to lose the people of Israel; he wanted to keep. them working for him without pay. Satan too in particular, wanted to prevent God from keeping His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to Moses. Just so it is with Satan always. Let God promise to Himself to save poor sinners from, hell, and bring them to glory with the Lord Jesus, and Satan determines that none shall be saved, if he can prevent it. So when the message came by Moses, that God was going to set the people of Israel free, Satan moved Pharaoh to make the people’s troubles so much greater, that they would not believe what God had said.

Exodus 6

Moses, sad and disappointed, went to God again, to ask why the people’s troubles were worse, and why He had sent him to the people and to Pharaoh, because the people were not set free, and Pharaoh was more cruel than ever. God’s answer in verses 1-8 was a gracious one; He said nothing to reprove or rebuke Moses, because of his almost fault-finding words. Instead He said,

“Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh,” with a “strong hand.” Pharaoh would even drive the children of Israel out of Egypt.

In chapter 3 God had given His name as the “I AM.” the all-powerful One, but in this chapter is another name, JEHOVAH, the name of One Who was interested in and cared for His people.

Then He spoke of His covenant to give them the land of Canaan, and how He would redeem them with a “stretched out arm, and with great judgments.” They, as redeemed ones, were to be His people, and He their God. Again He promised them the land, and at the end— “I am the Lord” (verse 8) stands as a seal that God had spoken, and what He had said He would do. They had only to believe God, and He would deliver them.

But the children of Israel did not listen to Moses when he came to tell them of the new message from God; they were so sad because of Pharaoh’s cruelty to them, through the taskmasters.

The latter part chapter 6 shows us God counting up for the last time His people in Egypt, all the heads of the families being named. They were still in the enemy’s country, and Satan might say, “They are mine,” but God had claimed them as His, and in spite of all Satan could do, the children of Israel would soon be on the march to Canaan.

Exodus 7

God had made Pharaoh to be rather afraid of Moses, and though the king had a hard heart, and rebelled against God, he listened to what the two servants of God had to say to him. The people of Egypt were going to learn that those poor slaves that they treated so cruelly, had a Friend greater than their king. their wise men, magicians and armies, and the day was close at hand when the greatness of Egypt would be laid low.

Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and as the Lord had told them, when he said, “Show a miracle for you,” Aaron threw the rod he carried on ... the ground before Pharaoh, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh called for his wise men and magicians, and they threw down their rods which became serpents too, but only Aaron’s serpent had life, and it swallowed the others. But Pharaoh was not willing to listen to Moses and Aaron, though he must have seen the power that was in Aaron’s serpent, the others being only Satan’s imitations—Verse 13 is not correctly translated in our Bibles; there was a time when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but it was not this early; here we should read, “And Pharaoh’s heart was hard, that he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had said.”

Next, the first “plague” fell on Egypt. Because Pharaoh would not hear when he was told that the Lord God of the Hebrews wanted His people let go to .serve Him, Aaron’s rod was used to turn the water of the river into blood. The fish in the river died, and the river stank; the people could not drink the water. But again the magicians imitated; they turned water into blood, too, and Pharaoh was hardened and he would not let the children of Israel go.

Exodus 8

Here we read of the second punishment God sent on Pharaoh and his people, because the children of Israel were not set free. Frogs were part of the religion of the Egyptians, who had many things they thought sacred, and so it must have been a greater trial to them than it would have been to other people, when the plague of frogs happened. Frogs in their houses, on their beds, in their baking! How disgusting it must have been to have those clammy things hopping around in such numbers, the like of which was never seen before.

The magicians could cause the frogs to come out of the river too, though they could not make them to go back again, and Pharaoh was moved a little, for he sent for Moses and Aaron and asked them to plead with God to take the frogs away. “Then,” said he, “I will let the people go, that they may sacrifice to the Lord.” God made the frogs die, and they were gathered in heaps, but Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people of Israel go.

Next, Moses was told by God to have Aaron stretch out his rod and strike the dust of the ground which then became lice, or some other disgusting insects, on the people and on the animals. All over the land of Egypt the dust in a moment became these loathsome little creatures from which there was no getting away. All of us, no doubt, wish to be clean but the Egyptians made cleanliness part of their religion, and in this plague again, as in most, if not all of them, we can see that the only true God was making war on the false gods of Egypt.

The magicians tried to make lice out of dust too, but, they could not. The reason was that only God can create life, and this the magicians seemed to realize when they said to Pharaoh “This is the finger of God.” After this we hear little more of the magicians. They were beaten.

Still another plague we read of in this chapter, the last being swarms of flies, but whether just ordinary house flies or something worse, we do not know. Whichever way it was, they made a lot of trouble for the people of Egypt, going into their houses and everywhere, but not in the land of Goshen. where the children of Israel lived, for God’ made an exception of those who were His own people. Nov Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said to them. “Go and sacrifice to your God in the land.”

This would never do. The people of God must meet with God in a place which He should choose, and so Moses said to Pharaoh that there must be a three day’s journey into the wilderness. They must get entirely away from Egypt. Pharaoh then said that the people could ko, only that they should not go very far away. All this makes us think of our wily Satan who wants to hold God’s children so close to the world, both in having a good time and in other ways, in order that they know nothing about God, and His Word, and will not be happy Christians, as God would have them to be.

The swarm of flies went away so that there remained not one, but once more Pharaoh hardened his heart, and would not let the people of Israel go.

Exodus 9

Now the hand of God was laid more heavily on Egypt and its stubborn king. If Pharaoh would not let the people of God go, a dreadful disease was next to come on the cattle, the horses, the donkeys, the camels and the oxen and sheep, but not on any of those animals that belonged to the children of Israel. When the plague fell, the poor creatures died by the hundred, but when Pharaoh sent to see how it was with the Israelites, he found that, as God had said it should be, not one of their cattle was dead. Surely he ought to have learned by now that it was the living God, One with whom he could not fight, that he was defying. But no, the seventh verse says, as we have read in other chapters, “The heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.

So again God punished Pharaoh’s proud and rebellious heart,—handfuls of ashes from the furnace tossed in the air became small dust which caused boils to break out on both people and animals. And the magicians who had helped Pharaoh against God had boils too, and as it seems, they had a worse attack than the other people had. Six plagues had been visited on Pharaoh and until this one it was Pharaoh who hardened his own heart, but now notice the change,— “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he harkened not unto them, as the Lord had spoken unto Moses.” God. had much patience, but the time came when He would wait on Pharaoh no more.

Another plague fell but not without a warning. A very heavy hail worse than ever had been known in Egypt before, was to fall, but Pharaoh was given time to get every person and every animal under shelter first. All who were outdoors when that terrible storm broke, died. What a terrible storm it must have been, when thunder and lightning, fire and hail came clown from the sky striking down people, animals, trees, and a good deal of the growing crops. Again the land of Goshen where the children of Israel lived was spared. God knows how to take care of His own, as well as to punish the wicked. Do you trust Him?

When Moses cried to God to stop the storm, it ceased. but as we read in the last two verses of the chapter Pharaoh “sinned yet more and hardened his heart, he and his servants, and the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go.”

Exodus 10

As we have noticed already, God had now hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but not until the king had hardened his heart a number of times after God had shown His power in warning signs and grew more severe as they followed one another. And again Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, carrying a new message from God: “Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, ‘How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before Me? Let My people go, that they may serve Me.’” If Pharaoh would not listen, God said the locusts would come tomorrow. And, O, what swarms of these flying things, coming like great armies, eating everything that was green—leaves, grass, grain and even fruit, and entering the homes of the people in such numbers that, as verse 6 says, they would fill the houses. “Very grievous” these locusts were. Before them, there were no such locusts, nor after them either, we learn from verse 14. They covered the face of the ground. Nothing could stop them, and when they moved, there was nothing left but the bare branches of the trees.

But first Pharaoh had tried to make a bargain with Moses and Aaron, and that was, they that were men might go to serve the Lord; and the little ones, with, no doubt, their mothers, should stay behind. How crafty Satan is! He thinks if he can keep the little ones, he will have the grown folks too, because they would be sure to come back to their children. But God will not make any such agreement as that, and Moses answered (verse 9), “We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go.”

No Christian. parent could be happy with his children unsaved; nor can they be contented to have them, if saved, going on with the unsaved, enjoying a “good time” with those who have Satan for their master. Christian parents, let us never cease praying that our children may be “All for Christ.”

Of course Pharaoh would not let the people go. He never meant to, and only did when God forced him to do so by the last and most solemn thing which He did. The locusts came, then Pharaoh pretended to be sorry and asked for forgiveness and that the locusts should be taken away. God then made a mighty, strong west wind to take them all away into the Red Sea.

Then came the ninth plague—darkness and not just such as we have when night comes on, but “thick darkness,” “darkness which may be felt,” so that the Egyptians could not see one another, and did not dare to move for three days. In that land of blazing sunshine, the extraordinary darkness must have frightened those superstitious worshipers of false gods.

“But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.” From the very beginning God had taken special care of them, and almost none of the plagues had hurt them at all.

Pharaoh had one more thing to offer. You will remember that first he was willing that if the people trust serve God, it should be in the land of Egypt (Ex. 8:25); then only the men should go (Ex. 10:11); now he said (verse 24), that they should leave their flocks and their herds behind. To this Moses said, “There shall not a hoof be left behind.” Everything must be for the Lord, nothing for Satan. So must it be with us; all our hearts, our wills, our all, must be devoted to Jesus, who gave all that He had (Matthew 13:44) that He might be our Saviour.

Pharaoh, angry now, told Moses to go, and not to come back, and Moses said to him, “Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face no more.” The end of God’s dealings with Pharaoh was near.

Exodus 11

One more plague was coming on Pharaoh and his people, and it was a terrible one. All the first born—the oldest one in every family in all the land of Egypt—were to die at midnight of a certain day. Not one would escape, from the king’s oldest child to the oldest child of the very poorest people, and even the first born of the beasts were to die. It makes us think of the day of judgment when all the unsaved will stand before the throne of the Lord Jesus; none will be spared then. They might have been saved during their life time, but would not listen to the pleading voice of the Lord Jesus. Just so it was with the people of Egypt; they might have escaped all the fearful punishment that God visited upon them, but they would not obey Him; would not do what He asked— “Let My people go.” They hardened their hearts, again and again, when He sent to them, and after a while God, Himself hardened their hearts.

There is a verse in the book of Ecclesiastes which I want you to read for a moment. It is Eccl. 11:9. You will find it speaks to those who are “out for a good time,” without God.

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.”

The first verse of the next chapter is a good one for us to remember too: “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.”

Exodus 12

In chapter 12 of Exodus we find God changing the beginning of the year for His people, Israel. The seventh month of the year was now to be the first, because it was the month in which God brought them out of Egypt. Everything was changed for them by His passing over those who were sheltered by the blood of the lamb.

Every family was to take a lamb on the tenth day of the month — not just any lamb, but a spotless one. In the evening of the fourteenth day all these lambs were to be killed, and their blood was to be put on the doorposts, and over the door of each home. Then, the flesh of the lambs was to be roasted, and eaten the same night with unleavened bread (bread made without yeast), and bitter herbs. The people were told exactly what to do; the whole lamb was to be roasted, it was not to be boiled, nor could it be eaten raw. “Roast with fire” was the only way for God, and whatever was left when they were finished eating, was to be burned up.

And how were the children of Israel to eat the lamb? All dressed and ready to go in a moment; even their staffs or sticks to help them in walking, were to be in their hands, and they were to eat “in haste!” For on that solemn night, God was going through Egypt, taking a life in every family, except those who had the blood sprinkled on their door posts. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you,” was God’s sure word to His people. With the dawn they would be on their way out of Egypt.

In all this, God has given us another picture of Jesus, and of God’s way of salvation.

Truly, when we come to God, through Jesus, it is a new start; all our past life seems wasted, and best forgotten, so it is “the beginning of months” from the time we are saved.

The spotless lamb whose blood was shed, tells of the Lord Jesus whose precious. blood cleanses from all sin; the roasting with fire is a picture of His bearing the punishment for our sins on the cross. Eating the flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs; the dress of the people; their hurrying through the meal, and burning what was left, all have lessons which even the youngest may understand. Leaven in the Bible is always a “type” of sin, and there was no sin in Jesus, nor can we go on in sinful ways or thoughts, and with God at the same time.

“Bitter herbs” turn our thoughts to the Lord on the cross, as we think of how our own badness made Him suffer so much there. Quickly He is coming to take His loved ones away to a better world, even His own home in the sky, but whether He comes at once, or not for some time yet, the saved ones should be always expecting Him, not settling down as though they were going to be always here.

The passover lamb was not to be common food; they were to eat it as part of this solemn dealing of God; it was to represent Jesus punished for our sins; His blood shed, and those who believe in Him, waiting for His coming, living by Him—Himself their food in that they should be studying the word of God and living for Him.

All the first born—not a family to be spared, unless the blood was on the door posts and the lintel over the door — were to die on the chosen night. When God began, He would punish all, except the blood-protected ones, because the lamb had, as we might say, given its life, been punished instead, God would pass over those. All have sinned, and all deserved to be punished, but the Lamb of God, the sinless One, has died for all, and those who believe in Him are saved.

They were never to forget this night of judgment, and of passing over; and well might they always remember it. Before it came, for seven days, the people who believed God were to eat no leavened bread, no bread, as I explained last week, made with yeast. The first and last days of the week were set apart for meetings, there must be no work done on those days, except to provide meals for themselves. Again and again here in this chapter the people of Israel were told that there must be no leaven in their food, or even in their houses during the whole week before the stroke of judgment fell.

Now, what do you think that God meant for people to learn from these things? If we remember that that night was one of the times when God showed us, long before it happened, something about the dying of Jesus, it isn’t hard to see that putting all the leaven out of the house, meant that God would not have sin allowed by His people during the whole week, or, really, their entire lives. If we belong to Jesus, through faith in His blood, we ought not to sin, at any time.

In verse 20, God finished speaking to Moses, and then in the next, we have Moses beginning to tell what he had been told. They were not to go out of their houses that night, after the blood of the lamb was put on the door posts, because they were only safe inside, protected by the blood out there in the dark. The destroying angel came through their streets about midnight, looking at the doorways of the houses. If there was blood there, on he flew to the next house. No blood on its door posts? Then in he went, and the oldest child was found dead. O, what crying there must have been in all the country! But it was too late; God had warned them again and, again and told of a way, of escape. And the families that believed God; they were perfectly safe in their homes, for was not the lamb’s blood on the door posts, and God had said, “When I see the blood I will pass over you”?

Expecting to leave Egypt forever by the coming of the morning, they were dressed for the journey, and meanwhile the lamb had been roasted, as I suppose, before the open fire, and eaten. Perhaps they didn’t feel safe, but it was not their feelings that kept the angel of death outside.

And through the length and breadth of Egypt the messenger of God flew, entering every house which had not the blood on its door posts, taking the eldest, the first born every time. You see, it was all a question of the blood of the lamb where God could see it.

Now the Egyptians were terrified, and they hurried the people away, thinking that if they kept them any longer, God would take the lives of all. They said, “We be all dead mien,” but we soon find that their scare did not last very long.

With bread only partly made, and with jewelry and clothes given to them by the Egyptians, the people of Israel started on their long journey, a big crowd indeed, and with them, too, a great mixture of other people who for one reason or another thought best to go along.

Exodus 13

While the fourteenth chapter is one we want to read and talk about, and a most interesting story does it tell, let us first take special note of some verses in the thirteenth, which we shall need to remember and to think about.

First, let me ask you to see again how God thinks of children, and not only grown folks, in the eighth verse: “Thou shalt show thy son,” and in the fourteenth verse, “It shall be when thy son asketh thee.” The eyes of God rest on boys and girls, and He bids us who are grown up to tell them the way of salvation; to teach them about Jesus and His love, even from babyhood.

Then see God’s care over His people which is told us in the verses from 17 to the end of the chapter. Look at the map, which I suppose you have at the back of your Bible, showing Egypt and the peninsula of Sinai.

The “way of the land of the Philistines” (verse 17), was the short way close to the Mediterranean Sea straight across to the land of Canaan; there the people of Israel would have met enemies very soon, and had to fight their way through.

The “way of the wilderness of the Red Sea” led southward down the Sinai peninsula close to the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, then north and east to Palestine. God, who thought about and loved those people, led them this longer way around, so that they might find it easier to travel, with no enemies at all to meet until they were well on their way. In verses 21 and 22 see how God went with the children of Israel; before them by day in a cloud to guide them on their way; and at night in a pillar of fire to light their camp.

How did they know their way? By following the cloud; that was all they had to do.

Suppose they got away from the cloud, what should the people do? Why, get right back, and take care not to get away from it again!

Just so with you and me, if we are saved; we must keep close to God in our lives, and if Satan leads us away, (he will if he can), let us get right back by prayer to Him. But there is more than one reason why.

Exodus 14

Not straight across, above the Red Sea about where the Suez Canal is now, but down the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, the children of Israel were led. This was God’s way; He was not through with Pharaoh, and that proud king was going to be humbled lower still. Pharaoh and his servants presently were saying to one another,

“Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” and an army was sent out quickly after those they had just been glad to send away free. “Six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt,” “all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army” caught up with the former slaves by the Red Sea, and frightened them terribly. They were “sore afraid,” and they cried out unto the Lord; indeed they were so discouraged that they thought they were just going to be killed.

It is easy for us to read the story, and think how those people were perfectly safe, because we know that God was with them, but they only saw and heard their enemies behind them, and saw the sea ahead. They didn’t really trust God, indeed I am afraid that many of them did not know, Him as their Saviour; they were not only slaves of Pharaoh, but slaves of Satan. Yet God had given His word that He would take the people to the promised land. Many of them died in unbelief, but their children went into the country God gave for their home. Many an experience did they have on the way, truly, but those who trusted in God did not die in the wilderness. Of course, Canaan was not heaven, and no doubt some of those who crossed from Egypt to that land, or were born on the way to Canaan, were like a good many today: they knew about God, and yet never came to Him as lost sinners, and asked Him to be their Saviour. What about yourself?

In front of the children of Israel, the sea, beating its waves on the sandy shore; behind them was the Egyptian army. The Israelites were not trained soldiers, but just newly freed slaves. They had said to Moses, Why bring us out here to be killed? They had not thought of God, had they? Had He forgotten them, or did He not care what happened?

Let us turn back a few pages in our Bibles and read Exodus 3:7-8 again.

“I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Would God then leave them on the road to die? Has He ever been untrue to His word? No, never! God does what He says He will, always. Yes, the people thought about their troubles and fears, but you won’t find in verses eleven and twelve that they said anything about God. But He was just going to deliver them, and as Moses said, they were to “fear not,” to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” which He would show to them that day, for they would not see the Egyptians any more again for ever.

The angel of God, who went before the camp, went between them and the Egyptians, and the pillar of the cloud took its place there too, to be a cloud and darkness to their enemies, and to be a light by night to the people. That closed the way behind; —what about in front of them?

Verse 21 answers: Moses, at God’s word, stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night and made a dry road across to the other side before morning. This was God’s answer to their fears, making a way where there never had been one before, and never would be again.

Into the midst of the sea on the dry ground late that night walked the men, women. and children, and the flocks and herds, the waters standing still as only God could make them, like walls on either side of the road. How strange it all was, but it was God’s way for them. The Egyptians after a while, early in the morning, found out what had happened and tried to follow. Even to the middle of the channel of the sea their army drove, but God was not on their side. He troubled them, took off their chariot wheels so that they wanted to get back to the Egyptian shore. Let us flee, the Egyptians said, for the Lord is fighting for Israel against us, but it was not to be. Moses, at God’s word, stretched out his hand over the sea which rolled back where it had been before, covering chariots and horsemen and all the army of Pharaoh that had come into the roadway from shore to shore; not one was spared. One party was saved, and one was lost. That is solemn, isn’t it? Not an Israelite lost, not an Egyptian saved!

Exodus 15

Standing on the further shore of the narrow Red Sea, the children of Israel were led by Moses in a song of praise to God. Under the waves was the path they had followed from shore to shore; their enemies, the Egyptians—the wicked Pharaoh who had proudly said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go”—with his soldiers, chariots, horses, swords and spears, were under the water—

“O give thanks unto the Lord; ... . To Him which divided the Red Sea into parts: and made Israel to pass through the midst of it: but overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.” Psa. 136:13-15.

On the opposite side was the land of Egypt, with its memories of brick making without straw, and of the cruel taskmasters. Then, too, there lay all the dead first-born ones from every family that had not the lamb’s blood on their doorposts.

These redeemed ones were now free, no more to feel the lash of their old master’s whip; no more to work hard from early morning till dark without pay. God had saved them from the Egyptians, and though they had a desert to cross, they sang joyfully, because He who had brought them out of Egypt, had promised to bring them into a good land which they should have for their own, the land of Canaan. Miriam, and all the other women, sang and danced for joy, praising God for His goodness to them.

And so they started on their long tramp. Three days passed, and they saw no sign of water; at last they came to a spring or pool, but the water was so bitter that they could not drink it. Grumbling, they talked against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” How quick they were to forget God who had just delivered them from Pharaoh and his army, and opened a way for them across the sea! Just a little trouble, and the people started complaining. They should have begun praying instead of grumbling, should they not?

Moses asked God to help them, and, as always, He answered believing prayer. He showed Moses a tree which he threw into the bitter water, and it was then good to drink.

This living tree put into the bitter water of death must be a type of the Lord Jesus dying for the sins of His people. His death has made everything different for those who love Him, and think of Him. They have troubles, yes, but the troubles don’t hurt as much as if they didn’t know God, and He doesn’t let the troubles last very long.

Here, you see, in the last verse, the people of Israel came to Elim, where they found no less than twelve wells of water, and seventy palm trees, and there they seem to have stayed for some time.

Exodus 16

They had gone through one little “wilderness” (Ex. 15:22), or rather I should. say, they had gone across a little corner of a big wild waste where nobody lived, and now the children of Israel were led across another wilderness, for there are very few places in the peninsula of Sinai where anyone lives, or anything grows. Great stretches of shifting sand have to be crossed from one oasis (like Elim) to another.

Their course was now away from the sea altogether, for before this, up to the end of chapter fifteen, the people had been traveling near to the Red Sea ever since they crossed it with the Egyptian army behind them. A month had been passed on the journey. That is not a very long time, but it seems to have been long enough for nearly everyone that came out of Egypt to forget what a hard time they had had; how cruelly they had all been treated there. Perhaps they really had not forgotten those dreadful days and nights when they just about wished that they had never been born, but Satan surely put into their hearts what they said to Moses and Aaron, as we read in the third verse.

They said that they would rather have died, like some of the people did in Egypt, under God’s punishment in the land of their cruel slavery, than to be brought into the country of sand and rocks, to die of starvation. There, where they had been, the people said, they “sat by the flesh pots,” and “did eat bread to the full;” here, it was to die with hunger. We read on, to see what God did, or said, to people so ungrateful, so slow to trust Him, and what do we find?

“Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you ... .every day.”

How kind, how unwilling to be angry He was, He is! They had forgotten that the Lord had brought them, out from the land of Egypt, but He had not forgotten, and would not forget, them. He knew all about their clothes, their shoes, food and drink, everything indeed, He would take care to see that they had all the way, though God would let them wait a little now and then, test them, as we sometimes say, before giving them what they needed.

Aaron, at Moses’ word, called the people to come near, telling them that God had heard their murmurings, and as they looked toward the wilderness, the brightness of God’s presence was seen in the cloud that went before them on their journeys. To Moses God said, “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel; speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread.” How was this to be? The thirteenth verse tells; in the evening a great flock of the birds called quails came by, flying low, as travelers tell us they frequently do in that region, so that they would be easily caught; and in the morning there was another surprise.

When the dew was gone with the heat of the rising sun, there lay on the ground thousands of small round white things, having a taste like honey. The people called them manna, and Moses told them it was the bread God had promised. They gathered enough for their families each morning, and it had to be eaten the same day. But on the sixth day they gathered enough for two days, and then the next day’s portion did not go bad, nor was there any manna found on the seventh day.

Some of the people did not pay much attention to what Moses had said, for they went out on the morning of the next day, which was the Sabbath, looking for the manna as usual. Of course they did not find any. Why did not God send any manna on the seventh day? This is the first time we have read of that day since the second chapter of Genesis. It was after six days of work that God rested on the seventh day. And He wanted His people to share His rest. He has finished a greater work than creation, and He wants everyone to believe it, and trust Him about it. Do you know what that work is?

The manna was food from heaven. God gives the saved ones food from heaven, now, but it is not the same kind. The food now is food for our souls, and it is the Word of God, the story of Jesus and His love to us. So the Lord is our spiritual food, as we read about Him, think about Him, try to do what will please Him, and we get spiritual strength in that way.

Some of the manna was put away to be kept always. By and by the people would have other food, the food of the country they were going to, but they were never to forget the food of the desert. And while they were going through the desert, they were to gather it every morning.

Christians ought to read God’s Word, enough to get “food” for the day out of it, every morning, I think, don’t you? And when we are in the home, made ready for those who love Jesus, we shall always remember how good it was to know Him in this world.

Exodus 17

The seventeenth chapter tells us of more complaints. There was no water, and the people said again that they had just been taken out of Egypt to be killed. What wicked hearts, tempting God again, and so soon! You see they thought about the troubles on the way, and not about the One who had engaged to bring them all the way to the better land.

The rock had to be struck with Moses’ rod, and then out of it gushed the grateful stream of water to satisfy the thirst of every one, and all their animals too. O, this story tells us again of Jesus. He had to be struck with the rod of judgment in order that we might drink of the water of life. Yes, He had to die the death of the cross for our sakes.

Next, enemies came, the Amalekites, to fight with the people, and as long as Moses’ hands were upheld the battle went for them; but when his hands sank down from weariness, the battle went for their enemies. How good it is that we can have God to fight our battles, if we only take our troubles to Him! The Amalekites were to be destroyed, and the people gather around an altar called Jehovah Nissi, The Lord my banner. Surely He was their guardian, all the way.

Exodus 18

It seems as though Jethro, Moses’ wife’s father, had not heard at first of all that God had done for Moses, and for the people of Israel, but now he hears, and brings Zipporah and the two boys, Gershom and Eliezer to Moses. Yes, it is what God has done, and not what we have done, that makes us happy.

In verses 3 and 4 we learn how the boys got their names; Gershom (“a stranger there”) reminded Moses of his being a stranger in a foreign land, tending sheep for Jethro across the desert; while Eliezer (“my God is an help”) made him think of the One who had helped him, and delivered him out of the hands of Pharaoh who would have certainly killed Moses. How wonderful to have God for our helper, and we can have Him in every trouble, if we trust Him. So I ask you, “Do you trust Him? Have you believed in Jesus?

You and I would like to have listened to Moses telling his wife’s father the story of the eighth verse. “Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and how the Lord delivered them.” It was wonderful, indeed, but God has given us more than that to tell about; He “spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,” to die on the cross for our sins, and now the same Jesus is waiting to come and claim for Himself every one that truly loves Him. Some people don’t like to hear about God, but Jethro was glad when he heard the whole story of His love and care for the people of Israel, and he praised God, and offered sacrifices to Him.

I think Moses made a mistake in listening to Jethro’s advice. He said (verse 17), “The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, for the thing is too heavy for thee: thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Hearken now unto my voice, and I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: Be thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God . . . Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. . . . And they shall bear the burden with thee. . . Then thou shalt be able to endure.”

God had given to Moses the care of His people, and He would enable Moses to listen to all their complaints, and judge rightly between them. The twenty-fourth verse tells us that Moses listened to what Jethro said, and did it all. It would have been better if he had asked God about it.

From this, Moses must have begun to think that Jethro was right, and that his burden was too heavy for him, for Moses said to God later in Numbers 11,

“Wherefore have I not found favor in Thy sight, that Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? . . . I am, not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.”

Our unsaved friends do not understand that if God gives us work to do, He will give us the strength to do it for Him, and we should be slow to, take advice from those who do not know Him, or have not accepted Christ as their Saviour, even though their advice may seem wise.

Moses did not have to bear the burden of God’s people alone. God was there,
ready to listen to him, and give him the needed wisdom in any time of difficulty. But God took him at his word, and told him to gather seventy men of the elders of Israel, and bring them to the tabernacle of the congregation that they may stand there with him. God said,

“I will come down and talk with thee there: and I will take of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.”

The spirit, then, being divided among the seventy, gave no more ability for caring for the people than God had at first bestowed upon Moses.

How good it is for us who belong to the Lord Jesus, that God is always ready to listen. He tells us to bring all our cares to Him, and He surely helps those who are His children.

Jethro, went home again; he seems not to have wished to go with the people of Israel to the promised land.

Exodus 19

The people of Israel were now encamped before Mount Sinai, and Moses went up its rocky heights to speak with God, to get a message from Him for the people. And this was the message: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and what I have done for you. Now if you will be obedient, and keep My contract (or agreement) then you shall be a peculiar treasure to Me above every other nation; you will be to Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.

When Moses came down from the mountain, and had gathered the elders of the people he told them the message, and all the people answered together, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

With this answer, Moses went back to God.

What foolish people they were, surely. For one thing, they had already done considerable complaining, as we have seen in earlier chapters, showing themselves to be pretty ungrateful to God, and not very trustful, either; and then too, they didn’t know what terms God would write into the contract He had spoken to Moses about. But, however it was with them, the children of Israel had given their promise, and God took them at their word. From now on, they were under law, under a set of rules, not rules to make them good, but to show them how bad they were. God was going to try, or test them, and I will tell you one place to find the answer. It is in Romans 3:19-20. God is not testing people now by the contract which He put on the people of Israel; that test ended when wicked men nailed the Son of God to a cross to die. Instead, God now is beseeching people to be reconciled to Him, to believe in His Son, and be saved.

Here, though, in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus, we don’t find God telling us the way to be saved, and of His love to us, but, instead, since the people were ready, as they thought, to obey God, and live according to any rules He might lay down, we read. of thunder and lightning, a thick cloud on the mountain, a trumpet sounding very loud, and fire and smoke. No one might come near the mountain, for if he did, whether it were a person or an animal, it should die. All the people trembled in the camp, and well they might.

Who could meet God, except as the One who forgives sins? Yet every one of us has to meet God. We can put off the time, but if we meet Him unsaved, it will be to hear Him say, I do not know you. Your place is the one prepared for the devil and his angels.

2 Corinthians 5:10-11 is a very solemn portion of God’s Word for us to think about.

“We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ: that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God.”

“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation.” 2 Cor. 6:2.

Exodus 20

Just ten rules did God give the people for them to keep and never to break, if they were to be His people. Everyone was a good rule, but the trouble was that the people had bad hearts, and so they never kept them; they broke them all. The laws of our
country, and I suppose every country that has good laws, are copied, though perhaps not directly, from these ten commandments, and if everybody obeyed them, we would not need policemen, or jails, or soldiers and fighting ships.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” said the first rule. And why should they turn to any other person or thing from the One who had loved them, and pitied them, and with a mighty hand had delivered them from the power of Satan’s king, Pharaoh, and who was now taking them so wonderfully across that terrible desert to a grand country He had planned for them to have for their very own?

The third commandment, or rule, in verse 7, forbade swearing. Does God take notice of all the swearing that is being done nowadays? I am sure He does. He will not hold him guiltless who uses His name that way. I hope that none of you who read “Messages of Love,” and believe in Jesus never swear.

The fifth commandment, verse 12, “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” is another that I am sure God would have us attend to more than we do. It is sad to see so many children, and older ones too, disobedient to their parents. God sees that too; nothing escapes His eyes. Do you honor your parents?

In Ex. 19:16 we read that the people were so frightened that they trembled; they had not heard yet what rules God was giving Moses, but the longer they stood there under the mountain, the more frightened they became, and pretty soon they removed as far as they could from the place. The only way anyone can be happy in the presence of God is in just telling Him, “I am a sinner. I can’t earn salvation by keeping the ten commandments, or doing anything else. I deserve to go to hell.” If they had spoken that way, God would not have given them these good rules and told them that they must keep than if they were to remain His people. Why did they not say to God, “Only let us go on as we have so far. Thou must do everything for us, or we shall never reach Canaan”? The reason was that they thought they could do a lot for themselves, and did not need to depend entirely on God. Perhaps, indeed, they thought they were pretty good people. Yes, I think they did, and that is why God was proving them, as verse 20 says, —giving them a trial to show them that they were not good at all, but just sinners hike ourselves, needing a Saviour.

Last of all, in this twentieth chapter, the people were told to make altars of earth, though they might be made of stones, but not chiseled or hammered stones, on which to give offerings to God. No work of ours would He allow. If we have to do with Him, it is because of what He is, and His work altogether. There could be no steps to the altars either for that was like getting nearer and nearer to God by our own efforts.

“Just as I am—without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come!”

This is God’s way for sinners to come. Have you come to Jesus, dear reader?

Exodus 21-22

In these three chapters many things are spoken of, telling how the people of Israel should act toward one another, and very good instructions they are. They could have been no better, nor could anyone else have made so wise laws as these which God gave Moses for the people to obey.

The first thing we read of is what should be done with one of their own people who became a slave. He could only serve six years, for in the seventh year he should be set free. If he were married when he became a slave, his wife must go out free too, but if after he became a slave, his master had given him a wife, and there were children born, he should be set free by himself, and would have to leave his wife and children behind.

Perhaps, though, the slave would say, I love my master, my wife and my children, I will not go out free. What then? Verse 6 tells: the master should bring him to the judges, and to the door, or door post, and there his ear should be bored through with an awl; then he should be a servant forever.

Perhaps some of you can tell me right away something about this, but anyway I shall say for the benefit of others, that the slave or bond-servant who would not go out free is a picture of the Lord Jesus. Faithfully He had served His Father all through His life here in the world, and He was entitled to go free, but He would not give up those He loved, and so we read in Galatians 2:20, “The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me,” and in Ephesians 5:25, “Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.” He made Himself a servant forever for those He loved. O, how we ought to love Him!

There is one of these many and important laws we would particularly like to draw attention to, and that is, “He that smiteth or curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.” (verses 15, 17.)

It is a very bad thing to despise father or mother—to disobey them, and that will surely meet with God’s judgment in one way or another. The one who respects his parents, and seeks in every way to obey them, shall be blessed of God in this life; so the Scripture says,

“Honor thy father” and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, arid thou mayest live long on the earth.” Eph. 6:2, 3.

While we are not writing about all these varied laws, they are all needful and important, so we trust you will read every one carefully and treasure them up in your hearts.

Exodus 23

In all the laws given to us in this section of God’s Word, one may be impressed with the righteousness and justice displayed in them, and can thus take lessons from, them, remembering that although we are living in a day that is called in God’s Word, “The day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2), and thus is a day of grace, and not of law, yet, God’s character is unchanged, and instead of Him expecting less from us who are His own now, than He did in those days, He expects more, seeing He has forgiven us freely all our sins through His grace, He expects us to be showing grace even to those who do us wrong.

Then again they were not to be greedy, and think that they would gain more by working their land seven years. God tells them, in verses 10 and 11, to sow their land for six years, and let the land rest the seventh year.

In verse 12, they were to work six days and rest the seventh, so that their animals may rest also. This is ever true for this creation, and the one who recognizes it will reap a benefit instead of losing by it.

For us who are Christians, it is not a question of the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week, for we are not on Jewish ground, and there is no rest for us while we are here, but “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” Heb. 4:9. We have the first day of the week, which is the resurrection day, the day the Lord rose from the dead, the day the Church was formed, and the day the disciples’ broke bread, remembering the Lord in His death; and is called in Scripture, “The Lord’s day.” So, we should use it for Him, and not for ourselves; and if we are farmers our animals would get their rest, but we might be more tired at the close of that day, serving the Lord, than on any other day for it is marked as His, and we should not, therefore, use that day for our pleasure and thus rob the Lord.

Then there is another thing that is very needful to remember, when they gave their land rest, it should be left for the poor to get whatever it produced. They were to think of the poor, and help them all they could.

Let us, who know the Lord as our own Saviour, not live just for ourselves, but remember how the Lord has done for us, and seek to show His kindness to others who are in need. The selfish life of so many is the cause of much sorrow in this world.

“They which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him, which died for them and rose again.” 2 Cor. 5:15.

Exodus 24

While the people stayed below, Moses and Aaron, Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, were told to come up into the mountain, but Moses alone was to go near to God.

Moses told the people all that we find in the chapters before the twenty-fourth, telling them how they must behave, and what they must not do. It was all rules, or laws, for the people to carry out carefully; they were all good rules, but I am sure that when they listened to Moses speaking, and answered right away all together, “All the words which the Lord hath said will we do,” those people did not know what bad hearts they had, that would bring them much sadness, and death too, and that they would not keep God’s rules at all. Later on we shall see, if the Lord will, how things went with them.

In the verse 7 we read of the people again saying that they would do all God asked of them, and then those who had been called up into Mount Sinai went up to a place where they saw what God chose to show of Himself, and they ate and drank. Moses, with his servant Joshua, went on further up the mountain, there to hear more from God, and to get two tablets of stone on which the law and commandments were written. Soon a cloud covered the mountain, and the people down in the plain beneath, saw a sight like a great fire on the mountain top. This was the way God showed Himself then, and if you and I had seen the mountain top then, we should have been very much afraid. Even Moses said (Hebrews 12:21) “I exceedingly fear and quake.”

O, if this were the only side of God that we could ever know, there would be no hope for us; it would only mean to be punished forever as sinners against Him. But He “hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son,” the Lord Jesus, Saviour of sinners, and what He says is,

“God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8.

Exodus 25:1-9

This chapter begins the account of the tabernacle as shown to Moses in the mount.

Some of my young readers may wonder what tabernacle means. In other words, it was a tent, but this particular tent was for God to dwell in, in the midst of His people, so verse 8 reads, “Let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.” His tent was to be a sanctuary, that is, a separate holy tent according to His character, entirely different than the people’s tents.

If we were to go to the White House in Washington, D. C., we would be permitted, at certain times, to go through it with a guide, but there would be certain rooms into which we would not be permitted, for they are private for the president and his family. The same thing in the Capitol, he would have his private room where his private secretary would be allowed in with him, but the public, and even very great men, would not be permitted. That would mark Him as having a place of honor above all the people. That is the way with God, He is the Supreme Ruler, and His dwelling place must be according to His position and character, therefore His tent had to mark His holiness, as well as His dignity, as the Supreme Ruler, so only those who were set apart for His service, would dare come into His presence. If any others attempted to come in there, death would be their immediate judgment.

The verse 9 shows also, that God was very particular that Moses should not allow his own thoughts to come in, in the making of that tent, but it was to be according to all that He would show him, and the last sentence of that verse is, “Even so shall ye make it.”

This gives us quite a lesson too in connection with God’s things; we must be very careful that we do not have our own thoughts as to how to serve the Lord, or approach Him, but must have His word to show us what to do.

The starting point must therefore be according to God’s Word, or we will be wrong all through our path. The first thing, then, with us is to be sure we have God’s way to be saved. Many people would tell us to be good, and then we would be saved. Others would tell us to pray, and then God would save us. Again another class would tell us we must keep the law of God, and then He would save us; but God’s Word tells us that it is,

“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us.” Titus 3:5. Then again His Word says,

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works lest any man should boast.” Eph. 2:8, 9.

Someone may say then, How are we to be saved? Or how can we have that salvation as our own, that He gives according to His mercy, and by His grace, for everybody does not have it? Our side is to have the faith, and that is simply to believe what God has said, because HE has said it. So the word from God by Paul and Silas to the jailer in answer to his question, “What must I do to be saved?” was

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Acts 16:31.

This then is God’s way. It is through His grace that is, undeserved favor, that HE saves us, but the means that He has used, is the death of Christ, so the Scripture says,

“In due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Rom. 5:6.

“While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Rom. 5:8.

“Being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” Rom. 5:9. All this then is the means God uses to save us, but believing it makes it our own.

This then is the starting point, and I trust that each of the young readers, has been particular to have God’s way, and take God’s Word just as He has given it; and in our next chapter we will continue with the wonderful lessons of the tabernacle.

We will now proceed with our wonderful subject of the tabernacle, and seek to be as careful in noticing what God told Moses, as Moses was to be that he should make everything according to the pattern shown to him on the mount.

In verses 1-7 of our chapter, we have the account of the materials God told Moses to accept from the people, and that they should give of their hearts willingly.

This is how God would have all those, who have believed in the Lord Jesus, do today. He would have us give back to Him, with a willing and responsive heart, a portion of that which He has given to us so freely.

He has given Christ, His beloved Son, for us, and He delights to have us praise and thank Him for such a gift, and talk to Him about His Son, as that meek and lowly One, the One so obedient as to go, even to death for us, and that the death of the cross. The One who delighted to do the will of God, His Father, and glorify Him in everything that He did. He was not selfish, nor was He seeking His own, but gave up all that He had to purchase us, and to make us His own. We are bought with the precious blood of Christ. Not only does He want us to give the fruit of our lips—praise to His name—but to give also of our temporal things, by doing good to others, and as for Himself who has done all things for us.

Verse 10 begins the account of the tabernacle, and it closes with chapter 30. Those chapters are divided into three.

Chapters 25-27 give us the account of varied things which show God’s glory, so God begins at Himself, and comes out to where man is, and meets him at the brazen altar, which is outside, at the gate of the court.

Chapters 28-29 give us the priests; first the garments of glory and beauty for the high priest; then, the clothing for the other priests, all of which speak to us of God’s holiness; then the consecration of the priests, so as to serve in the tabernacle, and the high priest to represent God’s people.

In chapter 30 God describes two vessels of the tabernacle that He had passed over purposely, because these were vessels by which the priests were to approach God, and they are the golden altar, and the laver. The chapter closes by showing that everything in the tabernacle, and the priests also, had to be consecrated to God with the holy anointing oil.

The Epistle to the Hebrews lets us know that the tabernacle may be viewed in three ways.

First, being the house of God, it is to be taken as a type of all the believers in the Lord Jesus at the present time, for God dwells now in them, as Heb. 3:6 says, “But Christ as Son over His house; WHOSE HOUSE ARE WE.”

Second, as a type of the heavens, so it was divided into three. First, there was the court, then came the building with two rooms. The first room was called “The Holy,” and the second room, was called the “Holy of Holies,” which was God’s private room. Heb. 9:24 says, “Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands (that was the tabernacle), which are the figures of the true; but INTO HEAVEN ITSELF, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”

Third, as a type of Christ, which Heb. 10:19-21 shows us— “Having therefore brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, THROUGH THE VEIL, THAT IS TO SAY HIS FLESH;” and having A HIGH PRIEST over the house of God.” Then again in Heb. 4:14, “Seeing then that we have A GREAT HIGH PRIEST, that is passed into the heavens, JESUS THE SON OF GOD.”

In our next we will begin by giving a brief account of the details in those three aspects, and hope that our young readers will seek to follow them up, for they will be found very instructive and beneficial.

Exodus 25:10-16

The Ark

The first article in the tabernacle that God describes is the ark, beginning with verse 10. It was to be placed in the innermost room called the holy of holies or holiest of all.

An ark is a vessel that is for the purpose of keeping safely what is put in it. This ark was a box, and only 2 ½ cubits long, 1 ½ cubits wide and 1 ½ cubits high. A cubit was either 18 or 20 inches, so you see it was not very large, but large enough to contain two tables of stone, with God’s law written upon them. (See verse 16. also chap. 31:18.) There were also to be put into it a golden pot of manna, (chap. 16:33), and Aaron’s rod that budded, (Numbers 17:10.) These were the things this ark was to have in it, but the testimony (or law) is all that is mentioned in our chapter, and from this alone we can see that this ark is a type of Christ, for He was the only One who could say, “Thy law is within My heart.” Psa. 40:8. He was the only One who ever fulfilled God’s law, and it was His delight to do God’s will.

With this thought before us, we may see how the materials that the ark was made of, are also typical of the Lord Jesus Christ. There were just two—wood and gold—these two points to Christ’s divinity and humanity. He was truly God and truly man. Who but God could have thought of how to get types of these two characters of His Son after He had become man? We can surely say, It is all of God.

The next point we would notice, is, that the ark had a crown of gold around the top of it, thus giving us another picture of the Lord Jesus, and that as the One now in the presence of God, “crowned with glory and honor.” Heb. 2:9.

There were two rings of gold put on each side for staves or poles to be put through, so that it could be carried from place to place wherever God led them. So Christ is the One who goes with us all through our path in this world, that is, if we know Him as our Saviour, and He wants us to tell Him everything, and ask His guidance, and help at every turn.

Exodus 25:17-22

The Mercy Seat

The next thing that is brought before us is the mercy seat, made of pure gold. It was a part of the ark, as it formed the lid, and was held in its place by the crown of gold on the top.

It is called a mercy seat, for God was providing a way that He, as a righteous God, could be in the midst of a sinful and failing people, and yet not consume them. He wanted to show them mercy, but His holiness and righteousness could not be forgotten.

On the ends of the mercy seat were cherubim; one cherub on each end. They were to represent the characters of God as judge, and while the description of how they were made is not given, yet from imitations that have been made of them, we might judge that they were made to look like the four heads of creation; that is, they very likely were composed of one part like a lion, another part like an ox, another part of wings like, a flying eagle, and another like the face of a man. The lion would he the symbol of power; the ox of stability; the wings, rapidity; and the face of a man, intelligence. As they were representing God’s character as judge on His throne, these different parts would show power, stability, rapidity and intelligence in judgment; but there is an important thing; the cherubim had their faces towards each other, and looking down on the mercy seat, and covered the mercy seat with their wings.

God had the priest to sprinkle the blood of the sin offering once on the mercy seat, and seven times on the ground in front of the mercy seat, (Lev. 16:14), so these cherubim, while representing God as a judge, were thus showing that the judgment was held back from God’s people. because the blood spoke of death, which was the wages of sin. The penalty of sin had already been met.

It is the blood of Christ now that speaks before God, and that withholds God’s righteous judgment from falling on all those who put their trust in that blessed Saviour. The result of this is that we can come right into God’s presence, and can talk with Him.

Exodus 25:23-30

The Table

We pass out from the holy of holies into the first room. The first vessel that would meet our view would be the golden altar, but God does not mention it just now, and we shall see when we come to it, why it was that God left it out of this part of the account of the tabernacle, and gave the table next.

The table was made of the same materials as the ark, and we can say it brings Christ before us as the One who bears us up before God, for on the table were to be placed twelve loaves, and these represented the twelve tribes of Israel.

There were two crowns of gold, one on the outside of the table, and the other a hand breadth in from it, on the top, with the purpose evidently of holding the loaves of bread in their place, so they would not be laid in all kinds of ways on the table.

All this gives us a lesson of how we are before God, kept by the hand of the One who is crowned with glory and honor. God is ever bringing before us our need of having everything done for us, as we are not only unable to save ourselves, but unable to keep ourselves. It is the Lord who must do all for us.

The bread not only represented the twelve tribes, but it was also to be food for the priests; so the bread typified Christ, as food for all the saved people, but that food had to be eaten in God’s presence.

Remember, then, dear reader, you cannot be feeding upon Christ; that is, be occupied with Him, and find your joy in the world, too. If you feed upon Him, and find your delight in Him, as the perfect One, and the One who has all wisdom, you must learn these things in the presence of God. That food had to be eaten in the “holy,” and nowhere else. May you be enabled to say from your early day,

“Jesus! Thou art enough

The mind and heart to fill;

Thy patient life—to calm the soul:

Thy love—its fear dispel.”’

Exodus 25:31-40

The Candlestick or Lampstand

Just opposite the table, stood the candlestick, or more properly expressed lamp-stand. That was on the south side of the tabernacle, for the front of the tabernacle was always to face the east. It was not for candles, but oil was to be burned in it, therefore the new translation expresses it better as lamp-stand.

It was all of gold; no wood in connection with it, so it could not be a type of Christ, as He was both divine and human. It is evident, as it was not only of gold, but was to bear light in God’s house, and as all inside was to be seen by the light from it, that it is a type of the Spirit of God, for it is the Spirit who enables us to see and understand God’s things. The Scripture says,

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him; but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God.”

“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.”

“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” 1 Cor. 2:10-16.

The unsaved people cannot understand God’s things, no matter how wise and intelligent they may be, for they do not have the Spirit of God; but those who believe, are sealed by that Spirit, and He dwells in them, and therefore they can understand God’s Word and rejoice in it.

How is it with you, dear reader? Can you say, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man?” Rom. 7:22. If not, turn to the Lord now, and you shall find real joy and delight in reading and meditating on God’s Word, and you will also get wisdom for every step in your path, or turn in your life.

Exodus 26:1-14

The Coverings of the Tabernacle

Let us read the first fourteen verses of our chapter, and we trust that all of our readers will be interested in this wonderful subject.

The tabernacle, which was God’s house, had a roof over it of curtains, and coverings of four different kinds. The first, or bottom one was made of fine twined linen. The second of goats hair; and above these was a covering of rams’ skins dyed red; and above all these a covering of badgers’ skins.

One might wonder why God should have told Moses to make the roof of so many coverings? The answer is that in these, as well as what we have already considered, God is giving to us types of Christ, His beloved Son.

The fine twined linen gives us a type of the Lord’s spotless purity, for He was the only sinless One.

There were ten of, these curtains, five were sewed together, and the other five were sewed together, and then these two were united together with blue loops, and gold taches, or hooks.

Cherubs were embroidered on these curtains, in blue, purple and scarlet, to bring before us other glories of the Lord Jesus. The blue, which is the heavenly color, brings before us His heavenly character and the purple His royal character; and the scarlet His glory as man, for He was the One who was above all others. The cherubs represented Him as the judge, for God had committed all judgment into His hands, because He is the Son of man. So the one who refuses Him as his Saviour, must have Him as his Judge.

The curtains of goat’s hair, of which there were eleven, had five sewed together, and six were sewed together, then these two were linked together with loops, and copper taches or hooks, and they bring before us the character of a prophet and servant, and the Lord was both, for He knew what was in man, and that marked Him as prophet; and He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, that is to serve. All therefore who are His, who know Him as their Saviour, should walk even as He walked. A servant should not do his. own will, but do the will of his master.

The rams’ skins dyed red, bring before us the Lord Jesus as the One who was consecrated to God, even unto death.

The badgers’ skins were on the outside. hiding and protecting all the others beneath, so that all that man could see was the covering in which there was no beauty. There is nothing attractive in the Lord Jesus to our natural hearts, as the Scripture says,

“When we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” Isa. 53:2.

What do you think of Him, dear reader? Is it your delight to read about Him, and be occupied with Him? or is He still to you as One who has no attraction? Remember He is the One in whom God has found all His delight.

Exodus 26:15-30

The Boards of the Tabernacle

This wonderful building had walls made of forty-eight upright boards, ten cubits high, which would have been at least fifteen feet high, and one and a half cubits wide, or twenty-seven inches wide. They were covered over with gold, and had two tenons on the bottom end. There were blocks of silver put into the ground for a foundation, and sockets, or holes in those silver blocks for the tenons to fit into, so each board had a solid foundation in the sand of the desert, or earth, according to the place the Israelites would be in their journey from Egypt to Canaan. Then there were pins or pegs of copper put into the ground, and cords were put over the top of the boards to those pegs on either side, so the boards were held standing up straight, and could therefore support the curtains and coverings which formed the roof, which we considered last week.

There were twenty boards on either side, and six boards on the west end, and one in each corner standing across the corners, and were bound to the corner boards of the sides and back by a ring at the top and bottom, so these bound the sides together.

Then there were three rings in each hoard, except the corner boards, for bars to be put through, so that all the boards were linked together.

We will now consider the lessons God has to teach in this wonderful building, which was His house.

It brings before us a type or picture of the present house of God, which is composed of all the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Heb. 3:6.) Each board therefore would represent individual believers.

You will remember that the wood represented that which is human, and the gold that which is divine. The gold, in this instance, would bring before us God’s righteousness, which is divine, and is put upon all them that believe, so the boards were covered with gold. We read “The righteousness of God. which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe.”Rom. 3:22.

Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is thus clothed in God’s righteousness, and is therefore fit for God’s presence.

“Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” 1 Cor. 1:30. All these things we need, and by having Christ we have them all.

The sockets of silver were made of the atonement money which was given as a ransom for their souls, and therefore speaks to us of redemption. (Read Exod. 30:11-16.) Christ is not only our righteousness, but our redemption also, so we can say in the lines of a hymn,

“On Christ the solid rock I stand.

All other ground is sinking sand.”

Have you, dear reader, accepted Christ as your foundation to stand upon? Can you say, I have Him as my righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”?

Exodus 26:31-37

The Veil, and Hanging for the Door

We have had the curtains and coverings which formed the roof of God’s house, and the boards for the walls, and now we are to consider the veil that divided the building into two rooms, and then another curtain to form the door.

The veil was made of blue, purple and scarlet and fine twined linen and cherubs, and it hung on four pillars.

We learn from Heb. 10:20, that the veil was a type of Christ’s flesh., Therefore the blue, purple and scarlet cherubs and fine twined linen, all bring before us the varied glories of Christ as we have seen already when considering the fine twined linen curtains.

This veil divided between the holy and the most holy, sometimes called the holy of holies. The latter was the room where God dwelt. and no one was allowed in there but the high priest, and that only once a year, and he had to take blood in with him to show that death had taken place, and he could go in therefore in the value of that blood as of one that had died for him.

When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, He cried out with a loud voice, and died, and the Veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. That veil which shut man out from God, was rent by God in answer to the work of the Lord Jesus which He had finished—the work of redemption. We therefore can now go into the presence of God; in all the value of His finished work through that rent veil which is Christ Himself, and have no fear in His presence. Not by any work that we have done or could do, but by Christ and His finished work.

The hanging, at the door was on five pillars, and made of the same materials as the veil, but there were no cherubs. They were all on the inside of the building, and they showed God’s character as judge so it was only those who could go into the tabernacle, with the blood, that could see them, and they were not afraid, as the blood spoke of another who had died in their place. This hanging was a picture of Christ as a Saviour, and not as the One who would execute judgment.

He says. “I am the door: by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved.” John 10:9.

Have you come to God, dear reader, through Christ as (Not a door but) the door; as there is no other; and through Him as the rent veil into God’s presence all in the unchanging value of what He is and what He has done? If so, settled peace must fill your heart.

Exodus 27

The Court of the Tabernacle.

We have now come to the outside, to what is spoken of as the court, or what we might call the yard. God passes by the laver, and says nothing about it in this chapter, just as He did about the golden altar. He has left these two out till He has the priest appointed, then He tells us about them, as they are vessels of approach.

The first vessel He tells us about is the altar for the burnt offering; it was placed by the gate of the court. It was the first vessel one had to meet in coming into the court, and it brings before us a type of the cross where the Lord Jesus was offered up as a sacrifice.

It is evident, if we want to approach God, we must come to Him through Christ. Therefore this court of the tabernacle had a hanging of fine twined linen all around it, and had one gate to enter through on the east side. How significant all this is of the only way of approach to God. Jesus says.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” John 14:6.

The gate of the court therefore, is a picture of Christ, as the way to the Father. We must come through Him, and remember there is no other way.

The next thing we would meet in coming to God, would be the altar, a type of the cross, so let us, by the eye of faith, look there and see that One who has said. “I am the way,” offering Himself up to God as a sweet-smelling savor so that He could be accepted for us, and that we might be accepted in Him.

God has done everything for us that is needed so that we can come right into His presence. If we do not come through Christ, it will be our own fault if we are lost.

May you, dear reader, take advantage of that blessed, competent Saviour. while it is still the day of God’s grace. If you have already done so, may you seek to live for Him who has loved you and given Himself for you.

Exodus 28

The Garments for Glory and Beauty

We have now come to the second part of this section of the book of Exodus. God having come to the outside of the tabernacle where He has met the people, He now provides a priest to represent them in His presence and therefore He clothes him in garments suitable for His presence.

As a rule when one represents another, or a firm, he bears the character of the one or the firm whom he represents, but it is not so with God’s high priest for His people Israel. He had to bear God’s character, so that he would be suitable for His presence, and God could look at His people in the suitability of the high priest. God therefore tells how he has to be clothed, for all that was to be put upon him had to be symbolical of His character.

Aaron, the high priest, brings before us a type of Christ, as the Great High Priest, for His people now; and Aaron’s sons are a type of all the saved people now.

We have first the priesthood in verses 1-3; then the priestly garments in verse 4; and the materials to be used in making these garments in verse 5.

The ephod which was the priestly robe, with its girdle, and the two stones on the shoulders are described in verses 6-14.

The breastplate with the twelve precious stones occupy verses 15-29.

The Urim and Thummin (which will be explained later, as well as these others) are given to us in verse 30.

The robe of the ephod is described in verses 31-35.

The crown and the mitre (or hat) in verses 36-38.

Last of all the ordinary garments of the high priest and priests are given in verses 39-43.

This is a long chapter, and we have pointed out its divisions so that you will easily get hold of each part, and in our next paper we purpose giving the typical teachings.

Exodus 28:6-14

The Ephod

We trust each of our readers, who are interested in the Bible Lessons, have read this long chapter, and noticed the different garments as pointed out in our last paper, and will now consider their wonderful typical teachings all fulfilled in Christ.

That high priest represented the Israelites before God, and is a type of Christ, who is the Great High Priest to represent all His people now before God.

The ephod, which marked him as a priest, was to be made of gold, blue, purple, scarlet and fine twined linen. These different materials bring before us the different glories of Christ. First, the gold His divine character; second, the blue His heavenly character; third the purple His royal character; fourth the scarlet His human glory and Jewish royalty, and fifth, the fine-twined linen His spotless purity.

As a divine person, He was the only One who was suitable to go into God’s presence, and seeing He became a man He was not only able to die for us and thus be our Saviour, if we have accepted Him, but is now our Great High Priest and is in God’s presence to represent us in all these glories. So God sees all those who believe in Christ in all His perfections.

On the shoulders of the high priest were placed precious stones, one on each shoulder, and they were set in gold. Six names of the children of Israel engraved on one stone, and six on the other, and the engraving was to be cut in deep like the engravings of a signet. There would be no way to take these names off; they were there to stay.

The shoulders marked the strength of the priest, so as a type of Christ we have Him with all His strength or ability as a triumphant victor over death and judgment, bearing us up before God. Every believer, therefore, is maintained before God without any change, and that as a precious stone, so that when God. who is light, shone upon these stones, all He could see was Himself reflected back again. Therefore the prophet could say about His people.

“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel.”

May every believer, who reads these lines, be enabled to say, and rejoice in the fact that “So God sees me.” He sees me in all the perfection of my Great High Priest who represents me before God.

Exodus 28:15-29

The Breastplate

The breastplate comes next, and is made of the same materials as the ephod, so we will not repeat these, but there is this in addition, and that is, there were twelve precious stones which were arranged in four rows.

The names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel were engraved on these stones, but only one name on each stone. You will remember that there were only two stones for the shoulders, and six names were on one stone and six on the other; but in the breastplate, which was to be upon his heart, there had to be a precious stone for each tribe. The lesson to be learned from this is that it would do to link the names together when the strength of the high priest was to be considered; but when his heart was in question, each one had to have an individual place.

So it is with all those who are believers in the Lord Jesus, and therefore have Him as their Great High Priest. They have their individual place in His heart, just as the mother is interested in, and loves every one of her children, no matter how many she may have.

Think of this, dear young believer, the Lord bears you up before God according to His unchanging love, and not according to your unfaithfulness and changing love. The measure of His love is that He gave His life for you, and what more can one give than his life? In all your difficulties and trials, remember that you ever have an individual place in His heart, and He will not allow anything to take place with you, but that which will be best for you.

The next thing we shall notice is that these stones were set in gold, and so were the stones on the shoulders, thus bringing before us the fact that our standing before God is in His righteousness. The breastplate was bound with chains, and rings of gold to the ephod at the shoulders, and the girdle, so that it could not be loosed from the ephod, thus teaching us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. (Rom. 8:35).

All this should cause us to seek to be like Christ in all our ways, and seek to please Him in everything. What love to show to us.

“Love that transcends our highest powers,

Demands our soul, our life, our all.”

Exodus 28:30

The Urim and Thummim

These are two Hebrew words, and they mean lights and perfections. Moses put them in the breastplate, and we suppose they were shining forth from, the stones. They marked the priest as approved of God to fill that office, as any one might have put on the ephod with the breastplate, but if he was not ordained of God, he would not have these lights and perfections come into the breastplate, so in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the Jews came back after their captivity in Babylon, some were professing to be of the priesthood, and the governor said,

“They should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim.” (Ezra 2:63. Neh. 7:65.)

There is quite a lesson for us in this, for the word in Rom. 3:1, 2 is, “What advantage then hath the Jew?......Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.”

The priests marked as having been appointed of God, had those writings given to them that were from God, and those books that they recognized as from God were only the books we have in the Old Testament. There were many other books written, but they were not acknowledged by the God-appointed priests as from God; and when the Lord Jesus was here upon earth, He did not quote from these other books, but only from the thirty-nine books which we have.

When the Lord was risen from the dead, and appeared to the two who were on their way to Emmaus, “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Luke 24:27. The Scriptures were those books which we now have.

We can see how God has guarded His Word in this way.

Exodus 28:31

Robe of the Ephod

The robe of the ephod is now our lesson. It was all blue, so as to bring before us the heavenly character of the high priest, and also mark him as suitable to go into the presence of God.

As a type of the Lord Jesus, who is the Great High Priest for all who believe in Him, we may readily see how suitable this blue robe was; for the Lord Jesus was the heavenly man, and therefore was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, and He is made higher than the heavens.

There was a hole in the top of this robe, so that it could be slipped over the priest’s, head, but the edge was bound in such a way that it could not be torn. Thus it was a beautiful type of the Lord Jesus. who could not commit sin, for there was no weak place in His character.

At the bottom of the robe were a number of pomegranates made of blue. purple and scarlet, any between each one was a golden all around the hem. These bring before us fruit and sound. As typical of the Lord Jesus, we may see they point to the fact that He entered into heaven with abundance of fruit, which was the result of His death; and I am sure each believer who reads these lines, can respond, and say,

“I am the fruit of His toil on Calvary’s cross.”

How suitable this particular fruit was as a symbol of all the redeemed people, for this fruit is full of seed, and each seed could be counted as an individual believer, and thus we have a picture of the vast number that will be presented to God, as having been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.

The golden bells gave the sound when the high priest went into the holy, and when he came out. So when the Lord Jesus went into heaven, the Holy Spirit came out as the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and was a proof that the Lord Jesus was accepted in God’s presence. That divine sound shall be heard again, in the ears of all the redeemed ones when He comes out of heaven. What joy it will be for every believer when the Lord comes to take His own; and when He comes to reign over this earth. Judgment shall fall upon all those who have rejected Him now in this the day of His grace.

How will it be with you, dear reader? Will it be joy to you to go to be with the Lord Jesus? If to be left behind, it will mean that you shall share in the judgment which shall fall noon all those who reject Christ.

Exodus 28:36-43

The Mitre

The mitre, or cap, with a gold plate on it comes next, but God speaks first of the gold plate, and what was engraved on it, “Holiness to the Lord.”

That was to be engraved very deep, “Like the engravings of a signet.” It was put there to stay. God would look at it on the front of the mitre, or cap, and it was for this object— “That Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts.”

This was a wonderful and gracious provision that God had made for their imperfections and failures in their service.

What a mark this gives us of the holiness of God, and we must ever remember that in all we may do for the Lord, there are things that are not pleasing in His sight. Some think if they even “say a prayer,” as the saying is, they have done God a favor, but when we think of the holiness of God, we feel the need of that Scripture,

“Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.” Eccles. 5:2.

God has made, in grace, provision for His people with the Great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, who represents them before Him, and if they make mistakes in speaking to Him, yet Christ, as Priest, bears the iniquity of the holy things, so that those who present praise to God through Him, are acceptable to God in that service.

Dear young believer, do not be afraid, therefore, to speak to, and offer praise to God, but seek to be careful in what you say to Him, that all may be according to His character of holiness.

In Heb. 10 we have the blood of Christ, and the rent veil, which are also Christ who has been rent for us, and thus through Him we enter into God’s presence: then we have the High Priest over the house of God, through whom we draw near to God.

Verse 39 gives us a type of Christ’s personal purity in the fine linen: the embroidery gives a type of every grace in Him.

Verses 40-43 give us Aaron and his sons, and their clothing for consecration, so is connected with the next chapter.

Exodus 29

Consecration of the Priests

We trust our young scholars will read these portions in their Bibles, as we do not have space in this small paper to quote the verses.

We have had the details about the priestly robes, and now in verses 1-3 of this chapter we have what was required for the consecration of the priests.

God must have His own people, consecrated, or separated, unto Himself, because the condition of this world is the opposite to His character.

The first thing to be done to the priests was to have them washed with water at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. This was done as a symbol of what the Word of God does to everyone who will be subject to it. The Scripture therefore is,

“Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” John 15:3.

“That He might sanctify and cleanse it (the Church) with the washing of water by the Word.” Eph. 5:26.

“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word.” Psa. 119:9.

These three scriptures show distinctly what was meant by washing the priests with water as the first thing in consecrating them to God.

The Word of God, if acted upon by us, cleanses us in our ways and separates us from all that is not pleasing to God; but the blood of Christ is what cleanses us from all our sins before God. The reason is, the wages of sin being death, which is God’s punishment for sin, demands our life and separation from God, therefore Christ, who had no sin. willingly offered Himself up to God, was forsaken by God in our stead, and shed His precious blood and thus died for us. His blood therefore cleanses us from all sin, once and forever. It is His blood that gives us boldness to go into the presence of God. Seeing He has given us such a place in His presence. through the value of Christ’s blood, He must have our ways cleansed, and have us doing those things which are according to His Word.

We cannot serve Him according to His mind, apart from having our sins put away by the blood of Jesus; and, second, by haying all our ways conformed to His Word.

GOD would not only have a sin offering for the consecration of the priests, which we considered in our last, but He must have a burnt offering for their acceptance in His presence.

Let us notice first that the ram for the burnt offering was to be brought, and Aaron and his sons were to put their hands upon its head, just as they did in the sin offering, but there is this difference: the sin offering became identified, with the offerors and their sins; whereas in the burnt offering they became identified with it, therefore its perfections were put down to the offerors.

All the details about the burnt offering are given to us in the first chapter of Leviticus.

It had to be without any blemish, as well as the sin offering, because both were a type of Christ as the perfect One; but these two offerings were giving us two aspects, or views, of the death of Christ. The burnt offering being a type of Christ in His perfection, even in offering Himself up to God, for He said,

“Lo I come to do Thy will O God” (Heb. 10:9); and again He said,

“Therefore doth My Father love me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again.” John 10:17.

It therefore was accepted for the offerors, so that the offerors could be accepted in God’s presence.

How wonderful is all this for all those who have Christ as their Saviour; they can say, Not only has Christ died for my sins, but He is accepted for me, and I am accepted in Him. My sins are gone through Christ my sin offering, and now I stand in all His perfection as the burnt offering.

This is what God has done for us in Christ, through His wonderful love, “Love that transcends our highest powers

Demands our soul, our life, our all.”

WE now have come to the second ram which was to be offered. This one had the character of the peace, or communion offering, so we shall find a number of things quite different from the two previous offerings. The mark of identification, by putting their hands upon the head of the sacrifice, was the same as in the burnt offering; they by that act became identified with it, but what marks this offering is consecration, and brings before us a type of the Lord Jesus consecrated to God, even unto death.

The blood of this ram of consecration was put upon the right ear of the priests, on the thumb of their right hand, and the great toe of their right foot.

“What can all this mean?” you say. If you just bear in mind that it is “a ram of consecration” (verse 22), it will help in understanding it as a type of Christ, as the One who was consecrated to God, even unto death. His ear was consecrated to God, so that He could say, “Thy law is within My heart.” He listened to God’s Word, and treasured it in His heart. Even when in the garden of Gethsemane, when the cross of Calvary was before Him, and what it would be to be made sin for us, He said, “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” Matt. 26:39. The lesson for us in all this is, that if we have Christ as our Saviour, we must have His measure of consecration applied to us.

First, He wants our ears to be listening to what He has to say to us in His Word.

Second. He wants our hands to be consecrated to His service, and not to be doing the things that please ourselves.

Third, He wants our feet to walk in His ways. We may also put it this way,

First, what would He have me read?

Second, what would He have me do?

Third, where would He have me go?

In verse 21 we have the continuation of the thought we had before us last week, with these additions: oil was used, and instead of sprinkling certain parts to identify, and consecrate to Him, their whole person and garments were consecrated.

How important this is for all who know the Lord Jesus as their own Saviour. The Lord wants, not only our ear, hands and feet, but our whole person, and habits for Him; indeed, it is summed up in this,

“Son, give Me thine heart.” Prov. 23:26.

If we give Him our hearts, He will have all that we have, and He is worthy of all, seeing He gave His life for us, and will share with us all that He has, and heaven and earth are all His.

After this we have the offering, and unleavened bread presented to God, and waved before Him. This is typical of worship; and God the Father wants us to be worshipers in spirit and in truth. As the type before us points to Christ (for He was the consecrated One, and He was the unleavened bread, that is, the One in whom there was no sin), God wants us to present Christ to Him; in other words, speak to Him about His beloved Son.

Another point I would take notice of is, that a part of this offering was to be food for Aaron and his sons. God therefore wants us to feed upon Christ, have Him as our object, and find our delight in thinking and meditating on Him. As we do this, we shall become more like Him in our ways.

In the latter part of the chapter, we have the continual burnt offering to give us a type of what Christ is to God continually, as a sweet-smelling savor in giving Himself up to God in death. People generally see no beauty in Christ; their hearts are far from Him, so they do not care to talk about Him, or even think of Him, but He is God’s delight.

How is it with you, dear reader? Do you delight to think, and talk of Christ? Or is it with you, like the many who are so far from God, who have no love for Him. If the latter, you are choosing the lake of fire, which is the furthest place away from Him, but if He is your delight you shall have your portion with Him forever.

Exodus 30

The Golden Altar and the Laver

We have now reached the last section of this wonderful subject of the tabernacle. We had, first, the vessels of display, and God coming out to man (chapters 25-27). Second, we had the priesthood established, with their garments for glory and beauty, and their consecration, so that the people could be accepted in His presence (chapters 28 and 29). Third, we have in the chapter before us, the vessels to be used in approaching God.

The order, we shall remember, was from the inside out—from God to man; this is the order in this chapter also.

The golden altar (verses 1-10) therefore, must be the first vessel to be considered in this section. Its place was before the vail in the first room on entering.

There were no sacrifices to be offered on this altar, as we had on the brazen altar, which stood just inside the gate of the court. This one was to have swept incense burned upon it continually. This brings Christ before us as a sweet savor ascending up before God, and the cloud of it was to be seen by the light of the lamps, which we remember, was a type of the Spirit. The priest when dressing these lamps each morning, had that cloud of sweet incense ascending between himself and God, and God could see him through it.

Applying this to ourselves, who are saved; we can rejoice to think that it is our privilege to serve Him; and while we may be deeply conscious of our unworthiness to do so, yet we can take fresh courage when we remember that we are accepted in all the perfection of Christ, which always ascends before God. Then again, it would make us very careful what we do, seeing that God accepts us in all Christ’s perfection. All our ways should correspond with our acceptance.

One may think that there is a break in the subject by what is given in verses 11-16, but instead of that, they bring before us the fact that the service is to be the poor (ver. 15), so the redemption and that was the same for the rich, as for the poor (ver. 15), so the redemption which is through Christ Jesus, is for the greatest sinner, as well as for the respectable one.

Verses 17-21 give us on account of the laver which was placed in the court between the tabernacle and the brazen altar. There is no measure or shape given to us of this vessel, but the material is mentioned, and its object. Water was to be put in it for the priests to wash their hands and feet, before going on with their service in God’s presence. In chapter 38:8, we learn that it was made of the looking glasses of the women. They had no glass in those days, but they used polished copper, and that is what is mentioned in this verse as looking glasses.

This laver is a type of the Word of God which gives us a view of ourselves in our natural state as God sees us, and therefore He tells us,

“There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Read Rom. 3:10-18). The Word of God is also that which can cleanse our ways, so the word is,

“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word.” Ps. 119:9.

We need therefore to be careful that we do not attempt to serve God apart from having all our ways searched by the Word of God, and everything set aside, or put away from us that that Word will not sanction.

The latter part of the chapter presents to us that which was for the priests only; but “man’s flesh” which was a picture of man in his natural state could have no part in this oil and sweet incense. They typified Christ in His divine graces manifested in Him as man in this world.

We, therefore, like the priests identified with Him, must seek to walk in these graces, and be like Christ in all our ways. He was the meek and lowly One.

Exodus 31

Two men were called by God to have charge of making the parts for the tabernacle’ and all its furnishings, and the clothes for the priests, but everyone could help in the work. God called Bezaleel, and filled him with the Spirit of God; gave him wisdom and understanding; fitted him for the work, and then told Moses about pit. With Aholiab too, whom He gave to work with Bezaleel, there were the “wise hearted” ones, or, as we read in chapter 36:2, “Every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it.”

Of them the verse 6 of our chapter says,

God had put wisdom, into their hearts that they might make all that He had directed. All this was, and is God’s Way for service. He calls His servants and fits them for His service; it was not Moses, nor the people who chose them. But if we are not distinctly set apart by God for His service in preaching the gospel, or in expounding the Bible and in other ways, every one of us who love the Lord Jesus has a place to fill, and the question is, are we doing anything for God, or does this world attract us so that our hearts are cold towards Him?

From verses 12-16, we are told again about the Sabbath. The Sabbath, as we have seen before, was a type or advance picture of that rest that God means to bring His people into forever. The Israelite, who broke the Sabbath, that is, who did any work whatever on that day, was to be put to death.

Christians are not under the law given by Moses, and have never been directed to observe the Sabbath, which is Saturday, the seventh and last day of the week; on the contrary, Christians, who are under God’s free favor, love to keep the Lord’s Day, first day of the week, because the Lord Jesus ruse then, after lying dead in the grave on the Sabbath, and on that day visited His disciples, gathering them together to meet Him.

At the end of the chapter, God’s talking with Moses, telling him what He Wished from the people if they were to be His, having come to an end, He gave Moses two tables or tablets of stone, on which the ten commandments were written.

Exodus 32

When days grew into weeks, while Moses was gone up into Mount Sinai, and they saw nothing of him, the people gathered together and went to Aaron, Moses’ brother, telling him to make them gods which should go before them, “for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him,” they said. Not a word about the living and true God!

Would the god that Aaron could make be able to take care of them as our God had? Could it have brought all those plagues on the Egyptians, and have opened the Red Sea for the people of Israel to go through dry footed? And had they forgotten so soon what they had promised to God through Moses in chapter 19:8? Yes, indeed, they had, forgotten God too, and His love to them. The very first of the ten commandments (twentieth chapter, third verse) they had broken: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Aaron was no better than the rest, for he does not seem to have said anything to them about the wickedness of their wish; instead he tells them that they should break off the gold rings in the ears of their wives and children, and bring- them to him. This they did, and Aaron took the gold and melted it, and made a calf out of it. When the people saw the calf Aaron had made, they said,

“This is thy god Israel, who has brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!” This was worse, denying God altogether, and honoring Satan (for he was the person who had put the idea of the calf of gold into the minds of the people) as the one who had done all that God had done for them.

And still more, Aaron now made an altar before the calf for offerings to be made on it to the calf, and made a proclamation: “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord!”—the calf Aaron had made was given God’s place entirely. They rose early the next day, and made offerings to the calf, sat down to eat and drink, and got up to have a good time.

Of all this, God had missed nothing. Every thought every word said, everything done by the people was known to Him. What should be done to such wicked people who had put themselves under the law?

“Let Me alone,” He said to Moses, “that My anger may burn against them, and I may consume them, and I will make of thee a great nation.”

What an opportunity for Moses this was, to be the head of a nation himself, but he refused it and pleaded with God to spare the people, —God’s people—they were His, whom He had brought out of Egypt; why, should the Egyptians be able to say that God had brought the people out to kill them all on the mountains? He reminded God of His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Israel, that the land He showed them should be their children’s forever. Then we read, “And the Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.”

Yet with a sad heart, Moses turned and went down the mountain, carrying the two stone tablets in his hand on which the ten commandments were written.

Joshua seems not to have known what had happened while Moses and he had been away, for he said to his master, “There is a shout of war in the camp!” It was not war, but singing and dancing about the golden calf, and Moses as they drew near the camp, in hot anger threw down and broke the stone tablets. Then he took the image and burned it, ground the metal to powder and spread it on the water, and made the people drink it. How poorly Aaron excused himself for his share in all the wrong doing, in verses twenty-two, twenty-three and twenty-four! It was only partly true, what he said, but he must have been very much ashamed of himself.

Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and shouted, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Let him come unto me.”

All the sons of Levi gathered to Moses. At his word they took swords, and went through the camp killing the people. About three thousand died. The next day Moses said to the people,

“You have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the Lord; perhaps I shall make an atonement for your sin.” So he went up the mountain to God to ask for forgiveness for them; he was willing even to have his own name blotted out of God’s book, if only the people might be spared. But the answer was,

“Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book,” and Moses was told to go back to the people, and lead them to the promised, land; God’s angel should go before them, but they were to be punished for their sin. The last verse tells us of a disease that God sent on the people because of the calf Aaron had made.

Exodus 33

For a long time, probably a year or more, the camp of the people of Israel had been standing at the foot of Mount Sinai. Here in the first verse we find God telling Moses to start again with the people for the country He had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He speaks about the people as those whom Moses had brought up out of the land of Egypt, and calls them “stiffnecked”—stubborn and self-willed, disobedient. An angel would be sent with them, and God would drive out the wicked nations which lived in the country that was to be theirs—the land flowing with milk and honey—but He would not go up in the midst of the people, because of their wickedness. Indeed, God speaks twice, in verses 3 and 5, of the possibility of His making an end of them, killing them all because of the bad hearts they had shown themselves to have.

Surely they deserved to be punished, and when they heard through Moses this message from God, the people took off their rings and bracelets, and other ornaments, at God’s word, and they were very sad. All this was very different from the shouting, and having a good time about the golden calf, was it not? Many people, and young folks too, think they can have a very nice time without giving God a thought, but when He speaks to them in perhaps some dear one’s death, like a mother or father, or someone else, you will notice the gay look and the big talk are gone for a while.

The tabernacle, which was a temporary one till the proper one was made, Moses took outside of the camp and set it up, far off. It was to be the place where God might be found by all who wished to seek Him, and that could not be among a people who had offended Him in breaking the very first commandment.

Yet in the face of their dreadful sin of worshiping as God their gold calf, God makes Himself known more fully than before to Moses. All the people went to their tent doors to look after Moses as he went over to the tabernacle, and as they looked, the cloudy pillar, which was the mark of God’s presence, came down to the door of the tabernacle, and there God spoke to Moses “face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.” Then Moses went back to the camp, but Joshua, the servant, stayed behind in the tabernacle.

It is good for us to carefully read what Moses said to the Lord, and His answers, in the verses beginning with the twelfth. It was a great care for Moses to carry, to look after all those thousands of people, listening to their complaints, and arranging everything for them, and he asked to know who God would send with him. The answer to that question is in verse 14, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” Moses asked too that if he had found favor with God, he might be shown God’s way; that he might know Him, and please Him in his ways from day to day. “Consider,” he said too, “that this nation is Thy people.” Moses always called the children of Israel God’s people, and without overlooking any of their badness, he counted himself one of them and pleaded for God to go with them: “If Thy presence go not with me carry us not up hence.” “I and Thy people.” In verse 17, the Lord graciously adds, “I know thee by name,”

Then Moses asks that he might see God’s glory, the brightness of His presence. God is a Spirit, we read in John 4:24, yet He has made Himself seen at different times by the eyes of men. There was a cleft in the rock where Moses might stand, and then God would make all His goodness to, pass by. Moses might look after God, but as someone has said, he could not meet God on His way, as independent of Him. After He has passed by, we learn about what He has done, and Christians see all the beauty of His ways.

Exodus 34

Two more tablets Moses was to split out of the solid rock, and bring them up to the top of Mount Sinai, where God would again meet him and write on them the ten commandments which He had written on the plates Moses had broken.

So the next morning Moses might have been seen climbing up the steep mountain side, carrying the new stone tablets. No one could be with him, nor on the mountain at all; even the flocks and herds had to be kept away. We are apt to forget that God is holy and just, and will eternally punish the guilty, who have not come to Him by believing in Jesus, but it is most solemnly true. Psalm 9:17 says, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”

“Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Hebrews 3:7-8.

Moses had asked, in chapter 33:18, to see God’s glory — to show Himself to him, as much as a man might be permitted to see, and in verses 5-7 we read of it, for God, in wonderful favor to Moses, came down and passed by him, telling His ways as they would be, not exactly under the law of the ten commandments, which they had broken already, but as He must act toward the people now. So mercy is mentioned twice; “long suffering,” (or patience) and forgiveness are named too, though there was nothing in the ten commandments about forgiveness or mercy. Still it was not the gospel which we know that God now made known. Read Romans 5:6-8, which tells us of God’s love, and of Christ dying for us unworthy sinners; this is the good news we have since been given, and believing it, we are saved forever.

As God passed by him, Moses quickly bowed his head toward the ground, and worshiped, and he said, “If now I have found grace in Thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord. I pray Thee, go among us.” In love to them, Moses joined himself with the people, asking pardon, not for their, but, as he said for “our iniquity and our sin,” though Moses had not sinned as they had; had not had anything to do with the gold calf. which brought such sadness on the people.

So God then made a new agreement, (verses 10 to 27), not with the people, but with Moses on account of them. He would drive out the wicked people who lived in the promised land, but there could be no agreement with them nor marriages between them; their false gods the people of Israel must destroy and everything that belonged to their religions. The Lord alone should he worshiped, and He must be first in the lives of His people.

Forty days and forty nights Moses was in the mountain with the Lord, and he neither ate nor drank, and when he came down with the new stone tablets, his face shone so that the people were afraid to come near him. And Moses called to them to come, and Aaron and all the leaders of the people came: Afterwards all the people came near, and Moses told them all the commandments that he had learned from God in the mountain, but he had to keep his face covered with a vail while he talked with them.

There are verses in 2 Corinthians 3, which speak about the vail Moses had to put on. If you will turn to that chapter, and read from the seventh verse to the end, you will find the vail is spoken about again and again. The vail, we are told there, was a picture of this, that the time had not then come when God could tell all that was in His heart to do for men and women and children, but that time has come now. Jesus has died on the cross, making atonement for sins, not His own, and now, “by Him all that believe are justified from all things.”

Exodus 35

When Moses had gathered all the people together, he spoke to them again about the Sabbath, the seventh day, on which none of them might do any work. Not even the lighting of a fire could be done on that day. In that warm climate, it would not be so hard to get along without a fire, perhaps, one day of the week, but some, no doubt, would be ready to complain about having to eat cold meals. Then the answer would have to be,

“It is God’s word; we must not do any work today.”

We may think of the Sabbath, (which God has not given to Christians to keep), as a picture of His resting in the great work of salvation, accomplished by the Lord Jesus on the cross, and, (if we believe on the Lord Jesus) our resting in that work, too. It would be only to insult God to try to work in order to get saved, when the Lord Jesus said, on the cross, “It is finished!” just before He died. Of course, we should try to be of service to God when we are saved, but the salvation of our souls is through believing God.

Next, Moses said that everyone who was willing to do so, might bring an offering to the Lord, of any of the different things which would be needed for the making of the tabernacle, which was now to begin; and for the clothes needed for the priests. What they might bring, as Moses told that big crowd of people, was exactly, word for word, as we read in the 25th, chapter.

This is something for us to think about: Moses was careful to say exactly what God had said, and so should we be, whenever we open our mouths to speak about what the Bible tells. I say this because several times in Sunday school, I have asked,

“What kind of people did Jesus die for?” and when a lot of hands would go up, I would ask someone, and the answer often is,

“Good people.” But when I ask another, he says,

“Sinners,” or perhaps, “The ungodly” then I say, “That last boy has it right,” because that is just what God’s Word says, but I wouldn’t quarrel with any boy or girl who answers my question by saying. “Bad people,” because that description fits with what the Bible says, too. Then sometimes I have asked some older folks if they are saved, if they belong to Jesus, or some other question like that, and many times I get the reply,

“I’m trying to do my best,” or “I hope I will be found faithful at the last,” “We must do our best,” and other answers like that which show that they haven’t listened carefully to the reading of the Bible, which says,

“He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” John 5:24.

Two kinds of people we read about in this chapter—those with “willing hearts;” in verse 5, and the “wise hearted,” in verse 10. The two classes are spoken of again in the last verse of this chapter, and the first verse of chapter 36. They tell us how “willing hearts” are made “wise hearts:” it is through the Lori putting wisdom there, to serve Him. These last are the men and women, boys and girls, who read and study God’s Word, and pray often for help in understanding it.

“Them that honor Me, I will honor,” God has said in 1 Sam. 2:30.

Let us try to be not only “willing hearted, but “wise hearted” too.

Our chapter tells of the people going away to their tents when Moses finished speaking (verse 20), and coming again with what they had to offer. Then in the last 5 verses, we read of Moses telling them of the two men whom God had chosen, called by name, and filled with wisdom, and understanding and knowledge, to make the tabernacle, and everything that belonged to it. We must not suppose that their work was not the very best. It must have been more nearly perfect than anything else of the kind that has ever been made, whether it was the gold-covered boards, the sockets, the ark, candlestick, the veil, or any other part, because God gave them the ability to do it; the work was for Him, and it was done exactly as He said.

Exodus 36

We have already talked about the tabernacle, and its furnishings, and the priests’ clothes, but there are some things we must notice in these, and the following chapters.

Verse 3: Every morning they brought free offerings, which they gave to God. Should we not, too?

Do you say. “What can we give to God?”

I answer, “Everything!”

We haven’t much, it’s true, to give to Him, when we think of how great God is, but let us think if there are not a few things which we can give Him. In Acts 17:25, we read that God “giveth to all, life, and breath, and all things.” That is for every body—everyone.

2 Peter 1:3 tells those of us who belong to God through faith in Jesus’ blood, “According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.”

Rom. 12:1 Says, “I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.”

Putting all these passages together, what have we? Well, I should say that every morning when we wake, we ought to ask God for help to spend the day for Him. No bad tempers should be allowed or anything else that we know we would be ashamed of, if we remembered that God is listening, and looking on, but instead, we should be kind, thoughtful, for everyone, and ready obedience at home, and at school. These are ways for God’s children to give to Him, but you will find much more if you open your Bibles at Col. 3, for instance.

In reading chapter 25, we came to the ark first, and upon it, the mercy seat, which was a symbol of God’s throne. In the next chapter, we found the tabernacle. Now in chapter 36, the tabernacle comes first; and then in chapter 37, the ark. Why? Because in the earlier chapters it was God speaking to Moses. and He had to begin from Himself and come down to man, to us. But in the later chapters, which tell of the work being done, the tabernacle was made before the ark, just as the Church, which in the Bible includes all Christians, had to be formed for God, the Holy Spirit, to make His home in it. (Acts 2, Ephesians 2:21-22).

Exodus 37

Chapter 37 tells about the making of the ark; the table for the twelve loaves: the golden candlestick, and the altar of incense. So far everything speaks of God, and what was suited to Him.

Except for two uses for silver, all the metal work was of gold, the most precious metal that is in general use. In the next chapter we have the making of what was needed for men to draw near to God, and then we find brass—God dealing with sin.

Exodus 38

Now comes the account of the making of the altar of burnt offering. It, as we have seen before, was made of brass (or copper), which is always a “type” in the Bible, of God in judgment. After this large altar, they made the laver. where the priests, who attended the tabernacle, were to wash. This also was of brass.

These two pieces of furniture remind us that we were born sinners, and have sinned many times, and cannot be in God’s house in the sky, unless the precious blood of Jesus has covered our sins, and we ourselves made clean, not so much as to our bodies outside, as in our hearts, with all the badness that is in us confessed to God., Every time the priests came in, they had to wash, as you will see from the last chapter of Exodus 40:30-32.

Not a brass lavatory, or wash basin. but the Word of God, the Bible, (Eph. 5:26), is what Christians have to use often, every day in fact, to be going on with God, for this is a dirty world, as a friend said in a letter I received a few days ago. We need if we are God’s children, to read His Book constantly, and think about what we read there so as to keep our bad thoughts and words and ways confessed to God, and it is in this way that the Holy Spirit teaches us to hate everything in our ways that does not please Him.

None of us, I am sure, think enough about what we are doing and saying and thinking every day, that these should be only what God Would be pleased with.

When the day is over and we go to our rest, how many of us think about how we have spent the day, and include in our prayers to ask that we be given strength to spend the next day better?

This chapter tells of the finishing of the tabernacle, the outer, open part of it, about which we need say no more at present. We shall just notice that little word “all”—all that the Lord commanded (verse 22), Bezaleel and his helpers did. What a word for us to treasure in our hearts; and use for ourselves! all that God’s Word tells us that He wishes for us, we shall try with His help, to be and to do, won’t we?

Then they counted up the gold, and the silver, and the brass, (or copper); silver enough, we read in verses 25-26, to allow half a shekel for each man, twenty years or older in all that big company. It was as we said in the 30th chapter, verses 12-14, the ransom price. The precious blood of Jesus is our ransom price; it is enough for all, but it is not every one who will believe it.

Have you, young reader, believed what God says about that precious blood?

Exodus 39-40

Chapter 39 finishes the work on the tabernacle, with the clothes for the men who were to attend to the service there, and, we see once more that everything was done as the Lord had said (verses 42-43).

Very soon it was different, just as it has always been with whatever God does for this world; just as soon as He puts it into men’s hands to look after, they fail, and sin comes in. How good it is for us, that salvation isn’t given into our hands to take care of, for we who are saved would surely be lost again, and perish with the ungodly who have never turned to God at all. He can’t trust us: can we trust Him? Yes, indeed!

A year had now gone by since that time in Egypt when God was forcing Pharaoh to let His people go, and on the anniversary New Year’s Day (which would not be the first day of January, but in the Spring), Moses, at God’s word set up the tabernacle, and put everything in its place. Everything inside, and the altar of burnt offering and the laver which were in the court of the tabernacle, were touched with the holy anointing oil, to mark them out as belonging to the service of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Moses put the stone tablets, on which were written the ten commandments, into the ark; then he brought in, and put the twelve loaves of “shew bread” on the gold covered table; lit the lamps of the “candlestick”; burned sweet incense on the little golden altar; also burned other offerings about which we read in the next book, Leviticus, on the altar of burnt offering, and put water in the brass laver for washing hands and feet—of all these things we have talked already.

Everything was now done, and when Moses had come out, a cloud covered the tent—the tabernacle itself—so that he could not go in again, and the glory of the Lord filled the place. God had accepted the work, and showed His approval by coming down in this way that might been seen by all.

Day and night, God was there. Over the tabernacle by day always hung that cloud, and by night fire was seen there, where all the people might see. If the cloud rose from the tabernacle, the people of Israel knew it was time to go on with their journey, but as long as it stayed, they were to remain where they were. There is a lesson in this for us who love the Lord, that we should not do anything in self-will, but always try to be directed and guided by God in all our ways. This means that we must be constantly praying that we may be kept from using our own wills which are not safe for us to follow. The Word of God and prayer are safe.

Leviticus 1

In the end of Exodus we saw that God had come down to Make His home in the tabernacle. There the people might go, to have to do with Him.

Now in this book of Leviticus we find how. sinners might draw near. We have noticed before that much of which we read in Genesis, and in Exodus, is not only true, but was also written to tell us about the Lord Jesus, and about God’s ways with man. and about ourselves. The same may be said about Leviticus, and the first chapter has hidden in its verses the story about Jesus, which has pleased the heart of God more than anything else.

All through the earthly life of the Lord Jesus, we find Him, as we read in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, doing and saying, and surely thinking, only that which pleased His father, but at the end, when His enemies were allowed to take Him, and finally to crucify Him, His obedience to that Father lightens up the dark picture so wonderfully. See Him in the garden of Gethsemane, in the agony He there went through, saying so obediently; “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” And afterward as He was nailed to the cross,

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Again in Luke 9:51, “And it came to pass, when the time was come that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (where He was to be crucified, as He well knew).

If the Lord Jesus had not been willing to be obedient as a man down here, and-to give Himself as an offering to God, we would have no way of getting near to God; We should have had no Saviour.

Now this is what the first chapter of Leviticus speaks of, —the highest act of devotion of Jesus —that He “of His own voluntary will” gave Himself up to do the will of God, even to death, and that the death of the cross.

On the face of it, the chapter is about people bringing animals or even birds, to the place God had told them of, where He would meet them, and offering there the creatures to God, to be entirely burned up on the altar. But as we carefully, and prayerfully, read the chapter, we shall see that it was not of the cattle, the sheep, or the doves that God was thinking, but of Jesus, to whom these offerings pointed.

Verse 2. “If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord,”—the Lord Jesus did that, and more; He offered Himself.

Verse 3. “Without blemish:” “of His own voluntary will.”

If my reader is one of God’s children by faith in Christ Jesus, I will ask you. Have you ever seen any blemishes in the story of Jesus, as you have read it in the gospels? And you answer. No, indeed! Everything is just perfect. There never was another like Him. Why, even those hardened soldiers of the temple, when sent to take Jesus, went back to their wicked masters, saying,

“Never man spake like this Man,”

Yes, all was perfect in His life, from first to last. But more wonderful still was this, that He came to die because He chose to, or “of His own voluntary will.” He did not have to come. but He wanted to, and so He came. Men had turned their backs on God, as we read in Isaiah 58,

“All we like sheep,” had “gone astray.” and this Son of God said (Hebrews 9:9),

“Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God!”

He had us in mind too; and so in verse 4 we read, “And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him.” God’s glad receiving of the offering of Jesus is applied to me, if I believe on Him, for Jesus died for me; He satisfied God’s demands on account of me, a poor sinner.

Verse 5. The bullock is killed, and its blood is sprinkled. Jesus really died, and His blood was poured out, the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19). there a testimony to God and man.

Verse 6. The bullock was skinned, and cut into pieces, in order that the fire on the altar might penetrate to every part. So was Jesus tried to the utmost on the cross, as Psalm 22:1-22 so touchingly sets before us.

But before the fire was lit that was to burn the whole body, the inwards and the legs of the bullock must be washed in water, to make a more true picture of the spotless, sinless, character of our Lord, who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22).

And at the end of verse 9, “an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord” (Jehovah). There were those who looked on, and had a certain part in the offering, those on account of whom the sacrifice was accepted as atonement, but the key to these words is found in such verses as Philippians 2:5-11 and John 10:14-18 (especially the 17th verse).

Some could, and gladly would, offer the best of their cattle; others with right thoughts toward God. would bring the best of their sheep; and still others, perhaps very poor. (or was it that they thought it good enough?) might offer turtle doves or young pigeons. One would think that, if any really wished in his heart to please God, he would give the best he could afford, vet of each of these burnt offerings, of cattle, of sheep or of birds, God’s comment is the same. “An offering made by fire; of a sweet savor unto the Lord.” But we ought to think of Jesus as God thinks of Him, — the One who pleased God, no matter what it cost; who honored and glorified Him in giving Himself up to die.

One word more, —in the offering of the birds (verses 14-17), part had to be thrown away, or at least could not be burned as the whole bullock and sheep were. Some, (shall I say, all of us?) when thinking of Jesus in death on the cross, do not rise altogether above the thought of his dying as the Sinbearer for their sins. That is precious too, but it is our side of the cross. The burnt offering is God’s side, and we who are His, are privileged to enter into His thoughts about Jesus.

Worthy of homage and of praise;

Worthy by all to be adored;

Exhaustless theme of heavenly lays,

Thou, Thou are worthy, Jesus, Lord!

Leviticus 2

In the first chapter, the offering was all burned up on the altar, but in this chapter, only a part, called the “memorial” of it, was burned, and the rest was eaten by the priests who attended at the altar. Understanding the Old Testament by the help of the New, we know that the second chapter of Leviticus is about the human nature, spotless and holy, of the Lord Jesus, and God’s delight in Him as a Man, and God’s children enjoying the knowledge of Jesus, as they read about Him in the Book of Books.

“Meat offering” is not quite correct; it is as we see, rather a meal, or flour or bread offering. And it was to be of fine flour, for like every other picture, or type of Jesus, the picture must be just as good as God can make for us out of what we know about, and can understand. What else could He have chosen that would so well set before our minds the perfect evenness of Jesus in all His ways, as finely ground flour?

There is hardly a person we read anything much about in the Bible that we are not told something of, which was not what it should be.

Eve unwisely listened to Satan.

Moses got angry, and spoke “unadvisedly with his lips” (Psalm 106:33).

David, afraid for his life, pretended he was insane.

Paul, the great apostle, said what he wished he had not, but these are only a very few examples of many who might be mentioned. Indeed there. have been faults in every one who ever lived in this world, except One! Never do we find Him pleasing Himself in thought, or word, or act.

As a twelve-year-old boy, in Luke 2:49, Jesus said to His mother and supposed father, “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?”

We read of Him in the temptations Satan brought to Him, after He had had nothing to eat for forty days, that He would not command the stones to be made bread, because that would not be dependence on God. Later on, when He was weary with a long walk, and as it appears, both thirsty and hungry, the Lord Jesus sat down to rest by a well. The woman. who came out for water, listened to His words, and was saved, but she seems to have forgotten to give Him the drink of water He had asked for, and He was more interested in telling the woman about God, than in eating, when His disciples came back from the city with food. He was never rude, nor rough. No one who came to Him was ever turned away, but everything we read of Him in the Bible is just. wonderfully perfect! The more we study the four “gospels” — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the more do we see the perfectness of Jesus in everything, —small things, as well as big ones.

When on two occasions His disciples disputed with one another as to which should be the greatest, the first time (Mark 9:33-37) the Lord took a child, (a little child, Matthew says) and set him in the midst of them to show them how Wrong their thoughts were; the last time (Luke 22:24-27 and John 13:2-17) He washed their feet,—the lowest kind of work, and He the eternal God!

When He touched the leper (Mark 1:41); wept at Lazarus’ grave (John 11:35); took up little children in His arms, and put His hands on them and blessed them (Mark 10:16); or walked with the two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus (Luke 24), His Father was looking on with the greatest delight.

So we can understand why God should use flour to express to us the ways of Jesus,—because it is so even; so free from coarseness, or roughness, such a suggestion of purity, too, in its clean, soft, fine grains.

And the Lord Jesus spoke of the corn, or kernel of wheat, as a type or picture of Himself, in John 12:24: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”

With the fine flour, in verse 1, there was to be oil and frankincense. Oil is always in Scripture a type of the Holy Spirit. Here it is as the power of the Spirit by which Jesus ever acted. The incense was all burned on the altar; this tells us that the Father, who, twice opened the heavens to tell us this Person was His dear Son, appreciated most of all His Son, but the part of the offering that the priests were given for their food, shows that those who belong to Jesus love Him too, and enjoy reading and thinking and talking and, singing about Him. I wonder if you, dear reader, love Jesus?

Verses 4, 5 and 7 go further in what they are meant to tell about, than the first verse which leads God’s children to think of Jesus’ holy human nature as He came into the world. These verses express Jesus in trial, attacked by Satan; misunderstood by all, hated by those hypocritical men who pretended to be so holy, but were ready to murder Him when they might have a chance; in the agony of the garden of Gethsemane, passing through all the shame and pain and grief of what followed, and finally the forsaking by God in the hours of darkness on the cross.

Verse 5 specially tells in the parting in pieces, of the Lord’s being tried to the very utmost, —deserted, giving up what He loved, denied, exposed to shame and cruelty.

The oil was in some cases mingled with the flour, and in others, poured on it, or on the. cakes made of flour. The first refers to the birth of Jesus: His human nature was the work of the Holy Spirit, as both Matthew 1:20, and Luke 1:35 testify. The second speaks of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus at His baptism (Mark 1:10, 11).

Leaven, as we have noticed before, is a type of sin, and in any offering that represented Jesus, there could not be any leaven, because “in Him is no sin.”

Honey is natural sweetness; not what God plants in His children when they are saved. Almost everyone has some nice traits of character apart from being saved. We can think of kind friends and generous people, some that are courteous and gentle, and so on, but except these things are the work of the Spirit of God, they are the honey that God will not accept. There was none of this honey in Jesus.

Salt was needed to express to us that the perfection of Jesus’ human nature, and the memory of His life down here, is to last forever, unchanged.

In verse 12 is a brief reference to a subject of which we learn much more in the twenty-third chapter. It was an offering, something like the meat offering, but it was not burned. Verses 14-16, however, tell of Jesus as a living Man, in not quite the same way as the flour offerings earlier in this chapter. Here He is presented as of Adam’s race, but the First and the Finest of all. This is how the gospel of Luke tells of Jesus.

In the second chapter, as in the first, we see Jesus offering Himself to God; in the one case in life, in the other in death. Only One who was God as well as man could really do that. Besides, in both chapters God’s delight in the offering is shown. He has never, and could never, find such unalloyed pleasure in any man as He has in Jesus, the holy, spotless Lamb of God.

Leviticus 3

Each of these first three chapters is about something, or some One given to God, and in all of them we read the same comment from Him: “[it is] an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord.”

Chapter 11, as we have seen, is the story of Jesus devoting Himself to the death of the cross.

Chapter 2 tells of the living Jesus, what He was as a Man, and how He was tried, but was always the same —

“Unmoved by Satan’s subtle wiles,

Or suffering, shame and loss.”

What then can this chapter tell? All three are one general subject, because the expression, “And the Lord spake unto Moses,” which always marks a change, only comes in to begin the fourth chapter. This chapter is the expression of thanks giving and praise to God from the ones for whom Jesus died. It was closely connected with the burnt offering (verse 5), which we read about in the first chapter but this chapter brings into view the Lord Jesus’ words in Luke 22:19.

“This do in remembrance of Me,” and 1 Corinthians 11:23-25. We shall find much more to hold our attention, and attract our hearts in the seventh chapter about the peace offering, but some things we must notice here.

Seeing that what is the subject here, although it is the adored Lord Jesus giving up His life upon the cross, yet it is our (believers’) thoughts about Him, guided by the Holy Spirit in the main, and with the Word of God for our knowledge. So the offering might be either male or female, the latter typifying that which is not the highest expression of the One that is meant. It must be “without blemish,” however, and the blood and the inward parts, including the fat, the strength or sample of all the animal are burned on the altar. We are not told here, but in the seventh chapter, that the flesh, except these offered parts, was eaten by the offeror, and those whom he invited to share with him.

This chapter’s theme is the Lord Jesus offered up, and giving His life on the cross; but as the first chapter gives us God’s estimation of it, and man has no share in that, here we have the redeemed ones having their share of joy in the same Person in the same act, namely, dying on the cross. There is this to be noticed, that while God wanted to show, I think, that there were three sources of delight to Him in this world—first, the Lord’s giving Himself up to die, laying down His life that He might take it again; second, the pure and altogether lovely human nature of Jesus, and third, the praises of His people on account of the death of the cross; yet as to the last one, He could only, so to speak, show the place, or the purpose He had, when we have seen the sin-hearing side of the dying of Jesus because all those who were to share in the peace offering, had been sinners, and must needs have known their sins charged to Jesus, as the victim on their account. This much fuller account of the peace offering we reach in the seventh chapter.

Leviticus 4

We find in this chapter two words we have not come to before, in Leviticus. Perhaps there are more than two, but these two — “sin” and “forgiven” — mark our chapter 4 as distinct from the chapters we have read. In them we learned something of what Jesus did for God; in this one we see something of what He did for us, who believe on Him. He died for our sins; God punished Him instead of us, who have received Jesus as Saviour; He died for us, and His blood flowed out from His side, and “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22).

Four classes are spoken of in this chapter — the anointed priest (verse 3); the whole congregation (verse 13); one of the rulers (verse 22), and one of the people (verse 27). Evidently it was much more serious when the priest, or the whole people sinned; than when one of the rulers, or one of the common people did, because a more valuable animal had to be taken in those cases, and in other ways we can see a difference, but they were all alike in one way, they all needed the death of a substitute, to be forgiven for their sin.

This substitute, this one in place of ourselves, was, in these story-pictures we are reading, an animal, but those who believed God in those days knew quite well that the bullock’s death, or the goat’s or lamb’s, did not take away their sins. They were only types or shadows, of the “one offering” of Jesus’ precious blood on the cross. So, as we read this chapter, let us think of the glorious Person Who came down from the sky “in tenderest pity for sinners to die.”

The priest has sinned; what must he do? He brings, for his sin a young bullock without a blemish on it, unto the Lord for a sin offering. He brings it to the door of the tabernacle, and there lays his hand on the creature’s head, in token of his sin being put on it, instead of himself. Then the bullock is killed; its blood carefully caught, is put in three places — seven times before that veil behind which God’s dwelling place was; then on the corners of the golden altar of incense; and last, at the bottom of the brass altar of burnt offering. In type, this was the blood of Jesus, the basis of our relationship with God; of communion with Him, and the means of the putting away of our sins.

As in the peace offering of chapter three, the fat, and some of the inner parts, were burned on the brass altar, but here there was a total change from what we have seen in other chapters — the whole body was carried outside the camp to a clean place where the ashes were poured out, and there it was burned. Although there was that in Jesus, as the Sin bearer, that spoke of the real worth of the Victim, yet He was forsaken, not by man, but by God, on the cross, because God could not look upon sin, and Jesus was there taking our place as guilty before Him. The sin offering could not, therefore, be burned on the altar in the tabernacle; it must be taken away from God’s dwelling place, away too from the camp of those who were in a certain way His people, because it represented sin. Faintly, but surely, this sets before us the real fact, most solemn for us to think of, that in dying for our sins, Jesus endured to the uttermost, the anger of God against sin.

When the whole congregation had sinned, the offering, the sprinkling of the blood, and the burning of the body outside the camp, were required just as for the anointed priest, but there is this added. “and the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them” (verse 20).

A ruler who sinned might bring a young male goat; and one of the common people might bring a young female goat, or a female lamb, without blemish. Their blood was not put before the veil, nor on the golden altar; nor was their flesh burned outside the camp. It made a difference who sinned; if the anointed priest, or all the people, the communion of all was spoiled.

Leviticus 5

Many sins are spoken of in these chapters; some which we may consider little sins and some big ones, but sin is always sin in God’s sight. He says what sin is, not we.

When a person knows he has sinned, he is guilty (verse 4), and when he is guilt, he must confess his sin (verse 5); then he must bring his offering, and the priest will make atonement for his sin.

My dear young reader, God’s Word tells you that you have sinned, and if you are not saved, your sins are still upon you. Confess them to Him; atonement has been made by the Great High Priest, Jesus, the Son of God.

“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead; thou shalt be saved.” Romans 10:9.

I may not know as much as others of the work of Jesus, or the immense value of His death on the cross, but if I see Him as the One who has been my Substitute—the One who has borne the judgment of God, which I deserved for my sins—God will accept Him for me. I may come to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is both the burnt offering and the sin offering.

These verses show us the holiness of God, for He could not allow even a sin of ignorance to pass without atonement, to be made for it. A sin of ignorance is some wrong thing done without knowing it was wrong, in connection with the things of God.

Atonement means to cover. God cannot look upon sin, and God must have it covered, and as the wages of sin is death, and we are unable to meet the claims of God and rise triumphant out of it, God, has provided His Son who alone was able to lay down His life for us and take it again.

These types point on to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, and they being types could not take away the sin but Christ having come, has atoned for sin and met all the claims of God, so He said on the cross, “It is finished.” Therefore to all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ the word is,

“Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.” Heb. 10:17, 18.

Christ having died and risen has entered into the holiest, into the presence of God in all the value of His blood.

“His precious blood has spoken there

Before and on the throne:

And His own wounds in heaven declare

The atoning work is done.

`Tis finished!’—here our souls have rest,

His work can never fail:

By Him, our Sacrifice and Priest,

We pass within the wail.”

Leviticus 6-7

In this chapter we begin with a trespass against the Lord in one lying to his neighbor in connection with that which had been delivered to him to keep, or anything taken away in violence, or in deceiving his neighbor; or lying about what he had found.

What a terrible thing it is to lie about anything; to tell what is not true,

We can see that people have not changed one bit, for ‘this was written about 3500 years ago and people are just the same today as then, and the terrible thing is that some do not think anything, of it, but we see how God hates sin of any kind and cannot allow it in His presence. yet He loves His creatures, and He has done everything necessary for them, so that they may come into His ‘presence and be accepted there. He has now given His Son to die for us, and thus bear the punishment for our sins, so that our sins may be blotted out. God has said, “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” Isa. 33:25.

What a God to love us like that! He is too righteous to pass over our sins, and He is too holy to allow them in His presence. In order to maintain these characters, and to show His love for us, He gave the dearest object of His heart in our stead, rather than have us bear what we deserved.

Another lesson in this portion we must mention, and that is, we must make amends for the harm we have done. We always reap in this life what we sow.

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Gal. 6:7.

If therefore we know that the Lord Jesus has borne the result of our sins for eternity, we must remember we reap the result in this life of what we do that is wrong.

The Lord Jesus said, “The Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.” John 8:29.

This section is occupied with the law of the various offerings mentioned previously. Christ’s personal holiness is particularly brought out in the sin offering. thus bringing before us a perfect picture of Christ as the competent One to be the sacrifice for sin. It is good to see the essential holiness of Christ as displayed at the cross of Calvary.

All the detail is full of meaning, but we cannot enter into it in this little paper, though we trust the hints we are giving may be used to cause the earnest reader to search into its depths, and there find Christ as the subject.

We would now draw attention to chapter 7:26-27.

In these days many do not think anything about eating blood, but, remember, dear children, God has strictly forbidden everybody to do so, and that not as a ceremonial law for His people Israel only, but back in Noah’s time, when he came out of the ark, God forbade the eating of blood, because it is the life. (Look at Gen. 9:4).

We shall now go back over the portion we said so little about last week. We come to the “laws”, or rules about the offerings; they are mostly about the priests eating what was offered. But as we have seen before, the “burnt offering”, which told of the Lord Jesus devoting Himself to die, was wholly burned; no part was left for the priest’s food. Only God can really appreciate what it meant for Him. The fire on the altar was, however, to be kept burning all through the long dark night until the morning; it was to be always burning, and must never be put out. The priest who took the ashes off the altar, had to put on linen clothes when he did so, and even when the ashes were carried away, they were to be put in a “clean place,” outside the camp.

These rules remind us, who are God’s children, that this time in which we are living, is called in God’s Word, the night. (John 9:4-5; 1 Thess. 5:4-8; Rom. 13:12, besides other scriptures). All through this long night, from the cross of Christ until His coming again, while the unsaved world is “asleep”, God has before Him the one sacrifice of His Son.

The “meat offering” again comes second; we have noticed that it tells of the holy human nature of the Lord Jesus. Except the memorial of it, which was burned on the altar, this formed part of the priests’ food.

All true Christians are priests, and so if you and I belong to Jesus, we ought to be enjoying God’s Word. Do you, my reader, love to read the four Gospels— Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,—with their deeply interesting chapters about the Lord?

If you are not a Christian,. I am quite sure that you cannot enjoy reading the Bible, but if you are one, I hope you are learning more and more about the Lord Jesus, through reading it constantly. It is in that way the Christian’s food; the Lord is its theme.

The priests could not eat the meat offering . with “leaven”, but with unleavened bread. You will remember that leaven in the Bible is always a type of sin. Christians should be careful what they allow in their lives. Besides, the priests could eat this food only in the holy place of the tabernacle.. We cannot go on with the Lord, and the world together.

Verses 19-23 again present the Lord Jesus, offering Himself wholly to God.

“God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Rom. 5:8.

I must tell you one thing more about this beloved Son. He is coming again to punish all those who refuse His offers of mercy and forgiveness. ‘Do not you then be one of them. Come now—come as you are, receive His message, and follow Him home when He calls you.

The Lord Jesus, when dying on the cross, was both the burnt offering, and the sin offering; and so in the place where the burnt offering was killed, the sin and trespass offerings had to be killed also, to show to faith that there was but one true offering to God for atonement for sin.

Twice the sin offering, and twice the trespass offering here are called “most holy”. In the third verse of the 22nd Psalm, we read,

“But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” This Psalm was written to tell us the thoughts of the Lord when afterwards He was the real sin offering. It is because’ God is holy that sin must be punished, but in our chapters in Leviticus, the offering is called “most holy”. It is the Lord Jesus, when looked upon as the sin, or trespass offering. He ever was holy, and never more so than when charged with the sins of His people on the cross.

The Lord Jesus, being both the sin offering, and the person to whom the priest of verse 26 answers, made our sin His own; this is shown in the priest’s eating the sin offering. The Lord was “wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Isa. 53:5.

Where is He now? “If any man sin, (any believer), we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.” 1 John 2:1.

Leviticus 6:20 and 7:6 tell us in the type, that Christians should carry the burden of one another’s sins. We who belong to the Lord do not feel enough the mistakes and other things that should not be in our fellow believers.

The peace offering here follows the sin offering. In the third chapter it was before it, but now the order is different, because we could not give thanks to God, (the peace offering might be called the thanksgiving offering), until we knew that our sins had been taken away by the dying of Jesus. This giving of thanks here includes unleavened cakes, and wafers mingled and anointed with oil, to picture the holy human nature of the Lord. Yet the 13th verse adds, “Leavened bread,” because the believer’s thanksgiving falls short of the perfection of Jesus,

The food of the peace offering had to be eaten the same day, though in some cases it might be eaten on the second day. Having to do with God at first hand, in prayer and in reading and meditating on His Word, is necessary every day. Every day, the young Christian, and the old one as well, should begin the day with getting into the presence of God; communion depends on this.

A Christian cannot go on in ways displeasing to the Lord, and present the peace, or thanksgiving offering. (verses 20-21).

The “wave breast”, and the “heave shoulder,” emblems of the love and mighty power of God, belonged to the priests.

Leviticus 8

We have had seven chapters about the offerings, and now we come to those who presented the offerings, and acted for the people in the tabernacle.

All the people were gathered together at the door, and Moses began by telling them that what was about to be done was what God had commanded. It was not anything Moses, or any other man had planned. It is good for us to have God’s Word to trust and believe for everything. “Thus saith the Lord.”

First Aaron and his sons are washed with water; Aaron. is a type of the Lord Jesus, but he is only a type, and so he needed to be made clean and pure, just as any other sinner. Of course, washing with water does not make any one’s heart clean; it was only a type, or picture of it.

The Lord Jesus, far from needing cleansing, cleanses—makes pure in God’s sight. (Titus 3:5, 6).
“The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7.

The sons of Aaron are a type of the people of God, those who are saved.

Aaron next, alone, was clothed with all the garments of the high priest, of which we have read in Exodus 39. The Lord Jesus comes first, in type as in reality. As a hymn says,

“Long before Adam’s fall

Crowned me in sin’s dark thrall,

Saviour, and Lord of all—

Thou wert for me.”

The high priest’s clothes tell us of the One who could alone present to God an offering for sin that He could accept, and having gone back to His home in the glory, the Lord is there for us, and He bids us come near in our hearts to Him. (Hebrews 10:5-25).

Next, the tabernacle, and all in it, are anointed with the anointing oil,—a picture of the Holy Spirit’s power in, first, laying claim to the whole universe for the Lord Jesus; and second, in the coming day of the Lord making the claim good. (Col. 1:20). The altar telling us of the foundation of all our blessing, the atoning death of the. Lord, God’s greatest work, was sprinkled with the oil seven times (divine perfection), and anointed, with all its parts; and the laver, with its base, also.

The work of cleansing us in our hearts from the stains of sin, belongs to the Holy Spirit’s power, too.

We have read nothing so far, except in verse 6, of Aaron’s sons. They were washed with water, but now with their being clothed (Luke 15:22), a sin offering was needed, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the bullock before it was killed, and its blood was put on the horns of the altar, and poured out at its foot. Aaron, really, of course, needed the shedding of blood for the remission, or passing over of his sins, and the sin offering should have been offered first in the ceremonies, only that Aaron is a type of the Lord Jesus who needed no blood shed, in one way, (that is, on account of sin, for He had none). Yet, in another way the Lord Jesus needed the shedding of His blood to take the place He has now in Manhood in heaven. (Luke 12:50; Hebrews 13:20; and 9:12).

The burnt offering follows the sin offering here, because seen from our side — our need was such that a Substitute must die for our sins, before we could see that God was glorified in that death.

Still more, another ram must die to show that the blood of Jesus was to be shed to bring His people close to Him in their minds and ways—what they should think, and say, and do, and where they should go,—all should be in obedience to the Lord, all their lives set apart to be devoted to Him.

His was obedience unto death. (Phil. 2:8). Should we who belong to Him be willing to give Him only a little part of our lives — only an hour a week shall we say?

Putting the blood on Aaron’s ear, his hand and his foot, was to make him as a type like the Lord, as we said about his being washed with water. The 24th verse tells us what we ought to be in all things.

All these verses 25-29, speak of the Lord Jesus in different ways, or aspects, as we have seen Him before in connection with the earlier types. They tell of Him, as the One whose energies and inner being (verse 25), and whose human nature (verse 26), were all for God (verses 27-29), though His people, by faith, might have their part in the enjoyment of them (verses 27, 29, 31).

Now, at last, Moses took of the anointing oil, and of the blood that was upon the altar, and sprinkled them upon Aaron, and his garments; and upon his sons and their garments. This could not have been done earlier in the ceremony, because the shedding of blood was needed for the sons of Aaron who are a type of the believing sinners. The oil (type of the Holy Spirit) could not be applied to anyone but Jesus until His blood was shed, but once He had gone through death, and was raised to the Father’s right hand, He could, and He did, send forth the Holy Spirit, who unites all true Christians into one body in the Lord. Being set apart to God by the precious blood of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, what should not all who are saved, be in their lives!

Dear young believer, do you realize what it should mean to you?

Leviticus 9

A week went by after the events of the 8th chapter, and on the eighth day (a type of the Millennium, or one thousand years of the Lord’s reign on this earth (Rev. 20:4), which has not yet begun (2 Thess. 1:7), all that this chapter tells about, happened.

Both for Aaron and the children of Israel, there were sin offerings and burnt offerings; for the Israelites also there was a peace offering and a meat (or food) offering. We can understand why, not Aaron, but the others could present a peace or thanksgiving offering. It was (in type) the people giving thanks to God for Jesus.

The sin offering and the burnt offering are at the foundation of your salvation. for they tell of the Lord Jesus making atonement. The meat offering told of His devotedness all through His life; His perfect, sinless, human nature. We have talked of these before this, just recently.

In chapter 8:5, and in this chapter 9:6, notice that Moses could say, “This is the thing which the Lord commanded.” It was not what some one. or somebody of the people decided what would be the best thing to do, but what God said. He had told them, through Moses, all that they were to do, and left nothing for them to decide. This is God’s way, and it ought to be good enough for God’s children to follow what He has said. But today, so many are going on with what they think is best, or what they like, in a religious way, instead of abiding in God’s way, following what His Word tells, and nothing more.

The answer to Moses’ and Aaron’s obedience, was assured in verses 4 and 6, and was given in the verse 23, “The glory of the Lord appeared.”

In the New Testament, we may find a similar word, “Where two or three are gathered together in (or unto) My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” Matt. 18:20.

It is the Lord Jesus who speaks these words, and many of God’s dear children have felt the fulfillment of them many times when gathered by the Holy Spirit’s power unto the Lord’s name.

O, my dear reader, young or old, do be satisfied with nothing less than full obedience to the written Word of God, and you will realize, by faith, the presence of the Lord.

Leviticus 10

Have you thought of what a book this Bible is? It tells not only of a holy God, who must punish sin, but of His love to sinners. It tells of how much He has done for His creatures to make them happy, and happy in His presence, and tells of those creatures of His, ourselves, who so often displease Him, and so ready to do that which is a dishonor to Him.

He gave the lovely garden of Eden, and Eve listened to Satan’s life. Adam followed in her sin. This was early in Genesis.

God let Himself be known to Moses on the mountain top, and the people were making a golden calf at the base of the mountain, and calling it their god. This was in Exodus. And now what? No sooner had God shown His glory (end of chapter 9), and fire came out from His presence, and burnt up the sacrifice lying on the altar. than Aaron’s two sons, Nadab and Abihu. bring on themselves the quick and unsparing judgment of God by offering strange fire. They knew what had been ordered by Him, and they chose to do something else, and God would not allow it in those young men, so near to Him in their place as priests.

Mishael and Elzaphan carried the dead bodies outside of the camp, and Aaron and his two living sons were told that they must not give in to their grief as others would. It was too serious a thing that had happened; it was open sin, and God had to punish it. The whole camp. though, should mourn over it as the judgment of God on sin in their midst.

The priests were not to go outside of the tabernacle now (verse 7), nor could they be allowed to drink wine or strong drink, which were not suitable for the presence of God. They must act soberly there, neither excited by wine nor giving way to grief, and they must know what was holy, and what was clean.

Another error on men’s part is recorded in verses 16-18, where the two living sons of Aaron were blamed. Failure was now complete, but these two were permitted to live.

Leviticus 11

God took such an interest in these people who had promised to obey Him in everything, that He decided for them the food they should eat. Unquestionably, it was the best suited to them, the healthiest food, but there was a deeper reason than that.

In the creatures (verses 3-8) we can see that God was thinking of this, that His children must not only lead blameless lives—that which is seen by others—but the heart and conscience, the inner life which we do not see in one another, must be suitable to God. Inwardly and outwardly, seen by God, and seen by man, our lives, if we are saved, must be right.

With regard to these animals, two things were necessary to make them clean. “Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is cloven-footed, and cheweth the cud among the beasts, that shall ye eat.” (Verse 3).

All other animals that were not like this, that the people were not to eat. A cow was called a clean animal, because the hoof of its foot has a division in it, which enables it to walk firmly on the ground; and because it chews the cud—that is, chews its food a second time. When a cow gets a good breakfast, it calmly lies down to chew the cud, as it is called.

And what is it for us to “chew the cud”? We should read the Word of God, carefully and prayerfully, meditate upon it—feed our souls upon it, and, as it were, digest it. Thus it will have its effect upon our hearts and consciences, by the Spirit of God, and we shall manifest in our ways and walk that which is pleasing to the Lord.

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” Psa. 1:1-2.

Next come the creatures of the sea, the rivers, and the lakes (verses 9-12). They must have both fins and scales, if to be eaten as food. Here. two other principals are told of—the power to go on through what stands in the way of the Christian—the world— and to resist the world. to keep it out of his life.

Verses 13-23 name the birds and flying creeping things that could not, or could be, eaten. Those that ate flesh, or ate anything and everything, were forbidden. In verses 29-31, 41 and 42, are the creeping things that could not be eaten. In all these details we can see the wisdom and goodness of God; that which was good for food He permitted; that which was not, He rejected.

Then we learn from verses 24-28 that what was unfit for food, was not even to be touched—the Christian must not even associate with those whose lives are not pleasing to God. Death did not even alter the case, so earnestly would God impress upon His people, that they must be clean of everything that had to do with sin. There were two exceptions (verses 36-37), both of .which tell us, in type, of the Holy Spirit; He could not be overcome with evil as we may.

If these children of Israel who were God’s people. were so carefully taught about their ways, their food, their lives. how much should not we, my reader, if we are really God’s children, through faith in Christ. take all this to heart, and seek strength from Him to make our lives pleasing to Him.

“Show me Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths.” Psa. 25:4.

Leviticus 12

This chapter is one for us to think seriously about, though it has only eight verses. It shows us that we are born sinners; not, as some would have us believe, that we only become sinners through being in bad company.

Here we learn that the little, helpless, new born babies need the shedding of blood, for it is true of them, as of us older ones, “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” Heb. 9:22.

Sweet and innocent looking little things, but they ate sinners, because their parents are sinners by nature, and so it has always been since Adam and Eve went out of the garden of Eden, and their first baby, Cain, was born.

If you have believed God’s message about His Son, you are “redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.” 1 Peter 1:18, 19. The question is, Have you believed God’s message.

Another lesson in this chapter is that God does not forget the past, for, as it seems, the reason why the mother was not to come into the holy place of the tabernacle for 80 days when a girl baby was born, (yet she was shut out only 40 days, if it was a boy baby) is, that Eve was the first to sin. (1 Tim, 2:14).

Satan would have us think that what happened a long time ago, doesn’t matter, but in Eccles. 3:15 we read,

“God requireth that which is past.” Yes, He does! Have you ever thought of this seriously?

When the parents of the new baby were too poor to bring the lamb required, (verse 6) they might bring to the priest. for a burnt offering, a turtle-dove, or young pigeon. (Luke 2:22,24).

It was into a poor man’s home that the Lord Jesus was born, when He came down into this world to go through it as a man, and die for our sins. I am glad He did, are you?

Leviticus 13

This chapter is all about the dreadful disease called leprosy. Some folks, of late years, think they have found a cure for it, but it doesn’t seem as though they were very sure about it. It was the worst sickness that anyone could have in “those hot Eastern countries, and no one ever was cured by the doctors they had, nor do I think that anyone who really had a bad case of leprosy, ever has been cured by any doctor.

So we can understand why God chose leprosy when He wanted to tell us how bad a disease sin is; how hateful to Him, and to those who know what it is, and have been freed from it, and how incurable, except we go to the Great Physician.

Sin is something that is “deeper than the skin” (verse 3), and though the poor man who had the disease might not think he had it; or might try to believe that it was not really leprosy, he was not the judge; he had to be brought before the priest (who represented God), and the priest would say whether the man was a leper or not. If he was not sure, the man was shut up for a week, or even for two weeks until it was plain to the priest what the disease was.

If God had left it to us to decide whether we were sinners or not, most of us would have decided that we were not very bad sinners, but God, has not left the matter for us to decide. His sentence is, “All have sinned.” Rom. 3:23.

If you will open your Bibles at Isaiah, first chapter, and read it through, you will see in verses 5 and 6 how He speaks about sinners as He sees them.

The many details in this chapter let us know too, that nothing that looked like leprosy, however small it might be at the first, was passed by. Nothing that looks like sin in a Christian does God pass by; and if we belong to the Lord, we ought to be very careful about our own ways, and who we keep company with. The first Psalm begins with,

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of shiners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”

Verses 12 and 13 seem different, but are really not. If leprosy covered all the skin, from head to foot, wherever the priest looked, it meant that the disease was all out—it was not working any more. So it is, when a sinner has owned to God all that has been at work in him—sin against God—he is forgiven. Has my reader been forgiven? (Luke 7:47, 48, 50).

Leviticus 14

Cleansing of the Leper

The 13th chapter told how the priest could decide if a sick person had leprosy, and if he had, what should be done with him—he must be shut out of the camp, his clothes should be torn, and his head bare; with a covering on his upper lip, he was to cry, “Unclean, unclean.”

Not a word is said about a cure for the disease, but the 14th chapter goes right on to tell about a man who had been cured. As we have said, leprosy is a type, or picture, of sin, and there is no cure for sin, except through God’s power. The priest must go outside of the camp of Israel to meet the leper. Did not Jesus come from heaven to meet us, and do everything for us sinners?

We will think of this leper who has been healed; then as a sinner who has been converted. Sin is not any more the thing that he lives In. As Rom. 6:11 puts it, he is to reckon himself to be “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But that is not the end of the story—it is only its beginning.

Two birds, alive and clean, and cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop are brought. Let us see what is done with them. The priest commands that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. It is that old, old story in God’s Word about the shedding of blood, for this is a type of Jesus, God’s Lamb. The “earthen vessel” tells of the Lord Jesus being really man. and the “running water” is to show that His death was connected, as was His life, with the power of the Holy Spirit.

But the other bird, is alive; what shall be done with it? There was a type needed of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the living bird is a type of that. It was to be set free, but first it must be dipped in the blood of the dead bird, to link together the living and the dead, as Jesus who was dead, and lives again.

But together with the living bird, the cedar wood, the scarlet and the hyssop are all dipped in the blood. What does that mean? Perhaps a glance at 1 Kings 4:33 will help. The cedar was the tallest and grandest of trees; and the hyssop was almost a common weed. These and the scarlet are to tell us, when dipped in the blood of the dead bird, of what this world is to be to a Christian—all changed for him by Jesus’ death. Everything is stained, so to speak, with the blood of the rejected Jesus, for the world will not have Him.

Now the man has to be sprinkled seven times with the blood; the priest can say that he is clean, and the living bird is let loose. Do you see that all that is done is connected with the blood?

“The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleaneth us from all sin,” and the believer is “redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.” The cured leper, and the saved sinner, do nothing to help themselves; God (or the priest who here takes the place of God in the type) does everything. Next, the man washes his clothes, shaves off all his hair and washes himself in water. He has been pronounced clean already, on the authority of God’s Word, and now he can do something for himself; he changes his ways, he gives up bad companions, we will say. He makes a clean, new start, as he goes now into the camp; he is taken in as one who has to do with God.

The man who was a leper, but is one no more—healed and cleansed—is inside the place where God is named. If we look at him as a sinner who has confessed his case to God, we can say, Here is one who has been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. Surely he ought to be happy, whether we think of this man as a cleansed leper, or a confessed and forgiven sinner! But he can be happier, and while God’s children are going to be happy in eternity beyond any one’s present understanding, He has a way to make them more and more happy here, before even they go to be with Him in His eternal home.

First, let us think again about verse 6. Have you noticed that the cedar wood, the scarlet and the hyssop, after they were dipped in the blood, are never spoken of again? I think that is God’s way of telling those who love Him, and seek to please Him, that the world has been changed for them by the Lord’s death, so that they should not love its ways any more. We saw last time that these things were brought in to give us a picture in our minds of the world in its pride and its nature.

Then I think God means us to learn from the “seventh day” of verse 9, that the man in God’s purposes has been thinking of what has been done for him, and the more he thinks about his new place near to God, (because he is no longer outside, in misery, without hope, but cleansed and inside the enclosure that separated the people whom God had chosen from the world around) the more he sees that what comes out from the old bad heart, is not fit for one who belongs to Him, so he cuts off very carefully his hair, even his eyebrows, so careful is he to put away everything that, in a symbol or type, might be called the fruit of the old, bad tree, the believer’s old nature, the one he had before he was born again. (John 3). And again he washes himself and his clothes. If he understood what it all meant, he would be saying to himself,

“All my old ways and the company I used to keep that are not suitable now, for I belong to God, I am done with, and with God’s help I shall live for Him. I lived long enough in my old life.”

The Eight Day

The “eighth day” finishes everything: it is a new beginning; the first day of a new week; the dawn of a new life, practically. The man brings to the priest to be offered, those sacrifices and offerings which we have been talking about in connection with the earlier chapters of Leviticus. Every one of the offerings are here, except the peace or thank offering. The first one we read of here is the trespass offering, because he has been a trespasser against God: He brings first that which calls to mind what he had been.

We have talked about these interesting sacrifices before, though we might well go over them again.

Then like the priests in chapter 8:4, 30, the man is now set apart to God in thought, and act, and way, by the putting of the blood of the trespass offering on his right ear, thumb, and great toe; and after that, the oil which stands, in these types, for the Holy Spirit. The remainder of this oil is poured on his head—he is to be led by the Spirit of God, as well as sealed by the Spirit.

Verses 21 to 32, show again how God thinks of the poor, but in the answer to this in our lives, it is not poor people that are meant, but those whose thoughts of the Lord are not as worthy of Him as they should be, and that takes in you and me, dear young Christian.

Though we do not think of Him as we ought, yet we are not to be discouraged, but to give Him the best we have, and if we do, we shall find our hearts growing warmer in love towards Him.

Now as we say “good bye” to the cleansed leper, or as we should prefer to say, the saved man, we can think of him in all that we have read, with everything to make him happy for ever, if he believed all that God had said—if he knew what those shadows and types stood for.

Once he was an outcast, now in the family of God; once wretched and miserable, now cleansed; once apart from God, now set apart to God, and all as the direct result of the dying of Jesus on the cross. He has seen the Lord in the trespass offering, the sin offering, the burnt offering and the meat offering, telling of Him as offered for the sinner’s sins, and as devoted in death, as in life here below.

Is this all true of my dear young reader?

What a wonderful book the Bible is!

In the Land

Here we come to something different from what has gone before, for the verses begin with, “When ye be come into the land of Canaan.”

They were yet at Mount Sinai, and many years were to pass before the people came to the land which God had appointed for them. But God has been speaking to them, as we have been noting, of sin in the person and in his habits, looked at as leprosy.

One side has not been mentioned,—sin in the Church, in the meeting which we are connected with. The last four verses in this chapter show that it was God’s purpose to tell in these chapters 13 and 14 what should be done when leprosy was found, and what should be done when it was put away. By leprosy, as the Old Testament foreshadowed the New, we may say that in type sin, generally speaking, is meant.

If it was even thought to be in the house, the priest was to be told. Several scriptures tell us that those who profess to be Christians, and to be obedient to the Word of God, are looked at by God as a spiritual house, or dwelling place; an enclosure of which the Lord Jesus is to be the center.

I will not go with my young readers very much into details, interesting though they are, but just to say this, that the Holy Spirit has here given directions about sin of a serious kind coming in among those who profess to be gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, in obedience to His Word.

If sin is found among them, the guilty one or ones are to be put away (verse 40), but if it were so that the whole company was infected, the only thing that could be done would be for the godly ones from outside to “come and look, and, behold, it the plague be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy in the house: it is unclean.” It would have to be set aside as a house owned of God. Sin and Holiness cannot go on together: God and allowed sin cannot be united.

This scripture shows us, that we who are really the Lord’s, we who know Him as Saviour and Lord, need to be most careful about sin. In every way, the Word of God is to be our guide, and in these days of man’s will, and Satan’s power, those who fear the Lord, must be always on the watch, lest Satan entrap us, either ourselves individually, or the meeting, for he has many devices, many traps for unwary feet.

There is a remedy, and verses 49 to 53 tell us that in the shadow-way of the Old Testament, it is always confession, and “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Praise His name for that!

Do you walk with God? Is the Lord Jesus the One you are trying to set first in your life? I trust He is. See, then, that in everything He is first, not yourself, nor friends nor relations, and you will be led on in His paths to glory.

Leviticus 15

What an interest God has in those who profess His name! In this chapter are such repetitions of the word “Unclean,” that one can hardly count them. It is one word from God, one more chapter to show us, if we have eyes to see and, ears to hear, that all that comes out of the “natural man”, out of the human heart, is bad.

In verse 2, the sick man is unclean. In verse 4, his bed, or whatever he sits on, is unclean. Further on, whoever touches the sick man, or touches anything he sat on, is unclean. There are other examples throughout the chapter, and all point to the same thing—all are “under sin; ... there is none righteous” (Rom. 3:9, 10); “for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, ‘pride. foolishness; all these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” Mark 7:21-23,

Human nature is hopelessly bad, defiled and defiling. There is no remedy. Nothing will do but to be born again. Have you been born again, dear reader?

Leviticus 16

Among the many deep lessons God has set before us in the chapters of Leviticus, which we have been reading, He has told of the full result of the dying of Jesus. Chapter 16 does this; it is the foundation or center of the whole book of Leviticus, on which all the rest depends. Here then it is not so much God forgiving individual sins, as it is His putting away sin, having provided a special place of nearness to Himself for the Church—those who receive the Lord Jesus into their hearts in this present day of grace, between Pentecost and the Lord’s coming to take them to His heavenly home.

The high priest and his house are covered by one offering, much greater in value than the offering for the people of Israel, and this superior sacrifice is offered first, and the blood taken on the priest’s first going behind the veil, or curtain. Let us watch him. He carries a vessel containing some of the bullock’s. blood, a censer of burning coals from the altar, and his hands full of sweet incense. He draws the veil to one side, and enters the small room set apart as the Holy of Holies, where the emblems of God’s presence are. It is the first time he has been there for a year.,

Quickly dropping the incense on the fire in the censer, clouds of perfumed incense rise to hide the mercy seat upon the ark. Then the priest takes of the blood with his finger, and sprinkles it on the mercy seat, and seven times in front of the mercy seat. This done, he quickly goes out again, for the priest of old could not stay in the Holy of Holies.

An offering is made separately for the people of Israel. Two young goats are taken; one of them is now killed (verse 15), and its blood is taken within the veil, as was the bullock’s blood. The holy, the tabernacle, and the brazen altar are purified by blood.

After all this has been done, the live goat is brought, the high priest lays both his hands on its head, and confesses over it the sins of the children of Israel (verse 21). Then the goat is sent away, in type bearing their sins to a land not inhabited.

The high priest and his house represent Christians, the heavenly people for whom Christ died. There is but one offering, one sacrificial death, “The death of the cross” for all, whether ourselves of this day, or those of an earlier, or a later time, but the prominence given to the bullock for Aaron and his family agrees with the special place of privilege and nearness to God given to believers now; while the living goat, sent away, when the high priest comes out of the tabernacle, pictures the restoration of the people of Israel at a day which will be when the Lord comes to the earth again.

Sending the live goat away, is God’s way of telling us of His putting away sin out of His presence, but we who are believers in the Lord Jesus do not need to wait till Israel sees and believes, but by faith now we believe and rest in the knowledge that God has put away all our sins, never to bring them up again.

“Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” Heb. 10:17.

The work which took the sins away, of Israel as of the Church, was all done by the Lord Jesus on the cross, 1900 years ago.

Once every year (verses 29-34) the day of atonement was repeated, on the tenth day of the seventh month.

How far at a distance from God these Israelites were, also without the knowledge of forgiveness of sins, and of an offering which has perfected forever those who have believed!

For us, the word is, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh . . . let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.” Heb. 10:19-22.

Leviticus 17

It is good for us to notice carefully the beginnings of the chapters. In our chapter today we see that there is another message from God. Like all the others, it was given first to Moses, but it was to all the people, as well as to Aaron and his sons the priests, and the message begins,

“This is the thing which the Lord ‘lath commanded.”

There is no room left to decide for oneself, when the word is, “This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded.”

In the 16th chapter we found atonement, and what we read here is leading on from that picture of the one sacrifice of Christ, telling us more and more of God’s ways and His character, and what the ways and character of those whose sins have been put away out of God’s sight should be.

So we begin with two things in chapter 17.

First, the one true God was always to be in their thoughts, so that they would come before Him with thankful hearts, remembering that through the blood of a Substitute, they had a place of favor and blessing with Him.

Second, that life belongs to God, and the power of the atonement is in the blood of the substitute, “for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” In a word, They who knew God, were to honor God.

Do you, dear children, seek to honor God in your daily life?

Leviticus 18

Verse 2. “I am the Lord your God.” It is almost the first word in the chapter; it is the last, too, and several other times we can find it in this chapter. He is the one, and the only one for us, our Saviour. our Protector, our Hope.

The children of Israel should not be acting in the ways of the wicked world which they had left, nor of those of the land to which they were going, but they must follow God’s Word. In keeping His commandments, they would live by them. (Verse 5) We must not confuse the law given through Moses, with the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17), but Christians are too easily careless about their ways and thoughts and words.

Verses 24-30. Over and over again, in the verses before these, the solemn words, “thou shalt not” tell us that man is a sinner, and he can’t be trusted. Nothing is too low, too bad, for him to do. The people are warned that the judgment of God will fall upon, not only the wicked nations, but will come upon themselves too, if they should take up with the wickedness which the nations were guilty of.

We who are Christians must not treat God’s grace lightly, and do as we please, or live to please ourselves.

“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Gal. 6:7.

Leviticus 19

Here we learn more of ways that are pleasing to God, and the second verse gives us a key word for the chapter, “Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Verse 3. Notice, dear boys and girls, that the mother comes first. “Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father.” God sets here first the one that naturally we are not so much afraid of, and the one whom we are apt to impose upon. He knows our hearts down to the youngest.

Verse 4. None but the true God is to have our thoughts. Perhaps you do not believe in the idols the poor heathen of China and India and some other countries have: you may laugh at them but if God does not fill your heart, you have something that Satan has given you for an idol, instead of God.

Verses 5-8. We have the sacrifice of peace or thank offerings. Unless we read God’s Word every day, and keep in prayerful nearness to Him, we, who are His children, will have only stale offerings to give of praise to God.

If we are saved, we ought to be happy in the Lord, but, remember, the Word of God every day, and constant prayer, are needed if we are to grow in the new life given to us by Him.

Verses 9-18 tell us of thought and care for the poor, and ways of conduct toward one another that would be acceptable to God. In verse 18, we have the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. None but One ever did this, and that is the Lord Jesus, as we plainly see from Luke 10:25- 37.

Even to things we might think of too small interest for God to take notice, the people are taught the meaning of “Be ye holy; for I am holy,” in this chapter. So we can truly say that we to-day, who belong to the Lord by faith in the precious blood of Jesus, have not been left to decide about our conduct in anything. All that we should be in thought, in word, and in behavior, is written down for God’s children in His Word.

Fifteen times in this chapter the words are repeated “I am the Lord,” or “I am the Lord your God.” Is He your Lord, and your God?

Leviticus 20

A dreadful list of crimes is in this chapter, from which we turn, ashamed to think that anyone could be guilty of such things. But God well knew what human hearts can hold, and so, to a people that wished to be known as His, He must tell of things He would not allow; of sins that would surely bring on punishment—sure, if not always swift.

“Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel ... . he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.”

This, from verse 2, was for those who took up with the idols of the heathen nations, and sacrificed their children to the god Molech, but all through these chapters, the rule was the same—the one who sins is to be punished. But it is not so much man’s, as it is God’s punishment that we have reason to fear. In this God has not changed.

The wages of sin is still death:

Dear young reader, you were born a sinner. You have added to the sinful nature which you received at your birth, many a sin against God. Yet, blessed be God,

“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Have you accepted Him?

Verses 22-26 are a summing up of God’s wishes for those who are His children. “All” His statutes, and “all” His judgments they were to “keep,” and to “do.” They were not to walk in the ways of those rebels against God who were about to come under His judgment.

Then a good land, a land of plenty, God’s land, to be the home of a people separated by Him from all around, was to be their home.

Although these verses were addressed to Israel, and spoke of the land of Canaan, we may surely take them to heart, and if we are really converted, we shall seek to please God in the same ways, looking on to a heavenly home, instead of an earthly one.

Leviticus 21

We have finished with God’s directions to the people of Israel, and in this chapter and the following one, we are given to read what He had to say to those who were able to come near to Him in the tabernacle. In them, the priests, we have a “type” or picture of those who, in our day, are saved.

Every child of God is a priest now, privileged, as 1 Peter 2:5 says, “to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,” and as we are told in Hebrews 13:15,

“By Him (the Lord Jesus) therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. But to do good, and to communicate (to give of what you have) forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”

And being priests, privileged to draw near to God, they must not defile themselves, make themselves unclean, or be guilty of anything that would be dishonoring to God.

Some of the sons might not be able to act as priests (verse 21), but they were priests by birth, and it was only the blemishes that kept them away from the priest’s privileges.

So it is with many Christians: s:Ane are “blind”—unable to “see” clearly, because this world and the Lord divide their thoughts. Others are “lame” in their spiritual lives, and many are “dwarfs” in the things of God, all because the Lord Jesus does not fill their hearts and minds, and the Word of God is not enough for their spiritual food.

Let us take warning, dear young Christian, and by prayer and diligent reading of God’s Word, seek to be of full growth spiritually.

“Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 3:18.

Leviticus 22

Aaron and his sons, who here foreshadow the heavenly people, were more truly separated to God, than the earthly people, the children of Israel. If there was anything that made them unfit to act as priests, because of not realizing what was due to God, they must keep at a distance, until they were clean.

Verse 10: only the family of God could share in’ the priest’s food.

Verses 17 to 25 are addressed to all the people, as well as to Aaron and his sons, and speak of the sacrifices. Nothing but perfect and whole offerings could be accepted, for indeed, nothing else would do as a type, or picture of God’s Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. But, sad to say, we have only to turn to the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, Chapter 1, to find that God was neglected, and dishonored by these very people.

We have both the perfect priest and the perfect sacrifice in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. He having “offered Himself without spot to God,” passed into the heavens as our great High-Priest, where He ever liveth to make intercession for us. The Epistle to the Hebrews dwells elaborately upon these two points. It throws into vivid contrast the sacrifice and priesthood of the Mosaic system and the Sacrifice and Priesthood of Christ. In Him we have divine perfectness, whether as the victim or as the Priest. We have all that God could require, and all that man could need. His precious blood has put away all our sins, and His all-prevailing intercession ever maintains us in all the perfectness of the place into which His blood has introduced us.

“We are complete in Him” (Col. 2.); and yet, so feeble and faltering are we in ourselves; so full of failure and infirmity; so prone to stumble in our onward way, that we could not stand for a moment. were it not that “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” The believer, is “washed, sanctified, and justified” (I Cor. 6.); he is accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6.); he can never come into judgment, as regards his person (see John 5:24, where the word should read judgment); death and judgment are behind him, because he is united to Christ, who has passed through them both on his behalf and in his stead.

All these things are divinely true of the very weakest, most unlettered, and inexperienced member of the family of God; but yet, inasmuch as he carries about with him a nature so incorrigibly bad, and so irremediably ruined that no discipline can correct it, and no medicine cure it, inasmuch as he is the tenant of a body of sin and death—as he is called to cope perpetually with the combined forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil, he could never keep his ground, much less make progress, were he not upheld by the all-prevailing intercession of his great High-Priest, who bears the names of His people upon His breast and upon His shoulders.

Dear Christian reader, let it be our care so to walk, so to “keep ourselves unspotted from the world,” so to stand apart from all unhallowed associations, that we may enjoy the highest privileges and discharge the most elevated functions of our position as members of the priestly house of which Christ is Head. We have “boldness to enter into the holiest through the blood of Jesus.” “We have a Great High-Priest over the house of God.” (Heb. 10.) Nothing can ever rob us of these privileges. But then our communion may be marred, our worship may be hindered, our holy functions may remain undischarged. Those ‘ceremonial matters against which the sons of Aaron Were warned in the section before us, have their antitypes in the Christian economy. Had they to be warned against unholy contact? So have we. Had they to be warned against unholy alliance? So have we. Had they to be warned against all manner of ceremonial uncleanness? So have we to be warned against “all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.” (1 Cor. 7.) Were they shorn of many of their loftiest priestly privileges by bodily blemish and imperfect natural growth? So are we by moral blemish and imperfect spiritual growth.

This it is which renders the close meditation of our section so pre-eminently practical. May we feel its power, through the application of God the Holy Ghost. Then shall we enjoy our priestly place; then shall we faithfully discharge our priestly functions. We shall be able “to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1); we shall be able to “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name” (Heb. 13:15); we shall be able, as members of the “spiritual house” and the “holy priesthood,” to “offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5.); we shall be able, in some small degree, to anticipate that blissful time, when from a redeemed creation, the halleluiahs of intelligent and fervent praise shall ascend to the throne of God and the Lamb throughout the everlasting ages.

Leviticus 23

This is a wonderful chapter about seven holidays which the people of Israel were to have every year. God gave them to the people, and told them just when to have each one.

Holidays are often meant to remind us of something that once happened. This is true of some of God’s holidays in this chapter, but some of them told of a time to come.

First Feast
Sabbath

The first one stood by itself. While all the others came once a year, this was once every week, on the day now called Saturday, the seventh and last day of the week. From Sunday to Friday, Work should be done, but the Sabbath was a day of rest, set apart to God, and on it no work should be done.

Since we began these Bible Lessons, we have noticed a number of times, the mention of the Sabbath. As someone has said, Every time a new subject is mentioned, from Mount Sinai on, God speaks of the Sabbath. It is because He would have His people know of His great promise which goes beyond all others to them,—of bringing them at last into His rest.

Are you one of His own? Hebrews 4:3 tells us plainly that “we which have believed do enter into rest,” and the last verse of the third chapter records that others could not enter in because of unbelief.

Dear young reader, to-day, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts! You will never be at peace with God, never know the Christian’s portion, never sing the new song of which Rev. 5:9 and 10 speaks, unless you claim the Lord Jesus as your own personal Saviour, now while you may.

Come to Jesus now!

The Sabbath was the first day to be mentioned, as it told of the end of God’s purposes for His people,—to bring them into His rest.

Second Feast
Passover

The second one was the passover, and that leads us back to the twelfth chapter of Exodus; and forward in our Bibles to the cross of Christ.

The blood of a lamb was shed, in Old Testament times, as a picture or shadow of the blood of The Lamb that was yet to be shed. Rev. 7:14 tells of some who have washed’ their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Here, then, is our starting point in God’s calendar for sinners.

“The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7.

Were the children of Israel all safe from the visit of God that night in Egypt, because some had the blood of a dead lamb on their door posts? No, only those were safe who were behind the blood. And is it true that since Jesus has died, no one will be lost forever? No, only those are saved who have believed in Him, as their own precious Saviour. Dear reader, have you?

Immediately after the passover, was the week of unleavened bread. Are you saved? If so, then your life should show that you are.

This week without leaven we can understand when we remember that leaven is always a type of sin. With the passover, the dying of Jesus—behind us Christians, we ought to spend our lives without allowing sin. We belong to the Lord Jesus; shall ways and thoughts and talk that He cannot be pleased with, be ours?

The seven days of verse 6 are to speak to us about our whole lives,—the full time we have to spend here. “No servile work” could be done: not for themselves, but for God, were they to live.

“An offering made by fire”—the Lord in His devoting Himself to God—was to be before them every day. Is He as often in your thoughts?

Third Feast
Resurrection

As the Lord’s death was foreshadowed in the second of the seven “feasts”, or set times, so His resurrection and acceptance as a Man in the glory of God, are shown in the third. Two scriptures, in particular, tell us this; one is John 12:24, Where, during the week before the crucifixion, the Lord Jesus said to Andrew and Philip, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

He was the “corn of wheat,” which, unless it die, “abides alone,” but dying, brings forth “much fruit”—-many people to share His glory.

The other scripture, which perhaps more than any other, explains today’s lesson, is in the great resurrection chapter, 1 Con 15:20-23 chiefly. Christ is the “first fruits”, as verse 23 plainly says.

Now in verse 11 of Leviticus 23, you will see that the waved sheaf was “to be accepted” for the people. God has accepted Jesus on our behalf, who trust in Him. We are, as Eph. 1:6 expresses it, “accepted in the Beloved.” So great is the work of His Person who gave Himself for our sins, and so powerful the work which He did in dying for us, that we who have turned to God to wait for His Son from heaven, are “washed from our sins in His own blood, and... made. . . kings and priests unto God.” (Rev. 1:5, 6.)

What kindness, what love! But, have you, dear reader, accepted what God has done? If not, you are neglecting the only way of escape from being lost for eternity.

Fourth Feast
Pentecost

Seven full weeks after the third, came the fourth of the fixed times, or feasts of the Lord. Like the third great day in the year, this one was on the first day of the week, the day following the Sabbath.

In this holiday, God was looking on to that day, just fifty days after the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, of which we read in the second chapter of Acts,—the birthday of the Church. This is why verse 16 speaks of a new offering; and verse 17 of bringing out of their homes, loaves baked with leaven, which is always used in the Bible to refer to sin. In us who compose the Church, there is sin; but in the Lord Jesus, there was none, so we have in verse 18, with the leavened bread, seven lambs without blemish of the first year, one young bullock, and two rams, for a burnt offering, and a sin offering, and a peace or thanksgiving offering in verse 19,—all of these pointing to the precious blood of Jesus, by which all believers are redeemed.

It was a new work that the Holy Spirit began, in Acts 2, gathering out a people for heaven, and when His work is ended with the coming of the Lord (1 Thess. 4:15, 17), it will not be begun again. God will bring blessing to this world afterward, yet through that thousand years, which we call the millennium, though the other holidays of this chapter will be observed. The fourth one will not be at all, because the heavenly people will have been caught away, never to live on this earth again.

The Old Testament does not mention the Church, though it leaves room for it, but in the first chapter of Eph. we learn that it was a mystery, or secret, which God kept back until Jesus died and rose again, and commissioned the apostle Paul to tell the story.

If you, dear reader, are a believer in the Lord Jesus, you are not only saved but belong to the Church of God.

Are you saved? Do you know the Lord as your own personal Saviour?

Fifth Feast
Blowing of Trumpets

This section of the chapter gives us the fifth and sixth of the fixed times which God appointed for the children of Israel to celebrate every year.

The fifth one was on the first day of the seventh month. It was not reckoned from the fourth of the fixed days, but from the Passover in the first month. As each of these “convocations” or gatherings was distinct and different, so the special thing on the fifth day was the blowing of trumpets, but no work could be done then, and an offering was to be made by fire to the Lord. This “feast of trumpets” was a foreshadowing of that future day when God will wake up the sleeping hosts of Israel to seek their God again. “Arid many of them which sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). This is at the beginning of the millennium when God will gather again into their land (Palestine) the twelve tribes of Israel.

Sixth Feast
Atonement

The sixth one of the set days was the day of atonement in the tenth day of the seventh month, ten days after the feast of trumpets. The people were then to “afflict their souls”, as they were told twice, in verses 27 and 32. This also speaks of the time when Israel shall be gathered again into the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They are to learn what they did in turning away from their Redeemer, saying, “Crucify Him! Crucify. Him!” Something of this we see in Zechariah 12:10 to 14, and other passages in the Word of God. The godly ones will then understand Psalm 22, and Isaiah 53, which they do not now.

Dear reader, will you not apply these verses in our lesson to-day to yourself, and ask yourself since, like the Israelites in a coming day (verses 23-25), you have heard the sound of God’s call, the gospel, you have made verses 26 to 32 your own? These verses tell of the finished work of the Son of God; “no work” can be added to what He has done in satisfying God on account of our sins. They were to afflict their souls (to mourn over their sins), and to offer an offering made by fire (a picture of the judgment of sin falling upon Jesus on the cross). Have you owned yourself a sinner to God, and presented Jesus to Him as your Sin bearer?

Seventh Feast
Booths

This section presents the seventh and last of the annual set times which God gave to the people of Israel,—the feast of tabernacles, when all the people were to spend a week living in booths made of branches of trees as a reminder that they had had such houses when God brought them out of Egypt.

By and bye, when the redeemed people of Israel are in their own land in the millennium, they will have this “feast” in a way they never did before. They will look back in their thoughts over all the way God will have brought them, and blessed as they never have been before by Him, in spiritual as well as in natural things, their hearts will go out in praise to Him.

All is connected with the one sinless sacrifice of Jesus. Are all your hopes connected with that, too?

Leviticus 24

After telling, in the meaning of the seven feasts or fixed times of the twenty-third chapter of all His plans for the saving of their souls and bringing His children into full blessing, God reminds them in this chapter that there was to be a long dark night before the dawn of Israel’s day. So we have light provided at the beginning (verses 1 to 4) to be burning continually from the evening to the morning.

This tells us that the Holy Spirit was not going to give them up, but to shed light from God in this dark world; though the mass of the people were asleep as toward God, yet there would be some who had faith in Him, believing His word, and looking for the morning of eternity. “Before the Lord,” too, the twelve loaves, to signify the twelve tribes of Israel, the whole nation, were to be always.

Verses 10 to 23 show that sin was there, and that it must be punished. God does not forget sin; and the agony of the Lord Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:40-44), and on the cross (Matthew 26:45-46 and Psalm 22) tell us that God cannot pass our sins by, even when the blessed Son of God took our sins as though they were His own, Who was ever sinless.

Dear young reader, fly to this deaf Saviour who is ready to receive you.

Leviticus 25

Here we are told, how God counts everything as looking on to the day of eternity, when He shall rest for ever. All the days are past of His working for man’s good, and of bearing with sinners, and the great day of judging and sending the unsaved to the lake of fire.

Nothing will alter God’s plan, and He would have His people live their lives and do all their business affairs and everything else, in view of the rest that remains. Hebrews 4:9 tells us of that rest for the people of God, yet God’s rest; and Revelation 21:1-5 and first sentence of verse 6, brings us to it.

Have you a share in God’s rest? It is only by believing in Jesus, and what He has done for us who were rebels against God, that heaven’s door is opened to you. Come to Him, while mercy is still offered to you!

Leviticus 26

This is one of the many chapters of God’s Book that tell us of His love to us, who deserves nothing from Him.

“Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God.” (Verse 1).

“If the Lord be God, follow Him,” Elijah said to the people in 1 Kings 18: 21. Why, indeed, should we, who profess to belong to Him, let anything or anyone come into our hearts so that God has not the first place there?

Of course, we who live in countries that are not heathen lands, like China and India, have no idols, exactly, to bow down to, but Satan is back of every idol, just as much as he is behind everything that comes into a true Christian’s life to displace the Lord Jesus there.

Be very careful, dear young believer, what thoughts, and wishes, and ways, you allow to have a home in your heart. Read your Bible daily, and pray much for help from God, that you may live as a Christian should, and you will find that the things in which you once found pleasure, will cease to interest you, and your desire will be to please the One who has loved you and given Himself for you.

Verse 2, gives us again the Sabbath, for God is always looking on to His rest, the rest of God, when all His work for man will be over. We who belong to Jesus, long for His rest, too, and we shall have part in it, but there is no rest for God while sin is in the world.

The sanctuary is where God is at home on earth. Where can that be? Stephen, the first martyr, in Acts 7:48, said,

“Howbeit. the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” May we not find the answer in Eph. 2:19, 22, and Matt. 18:20?

Verses 3 to 13 are full of precious promises, which God was ready- and anxious to make good, but you will find in five different times afterwards what sorrows He must send upon the people, if they would not walk in His ways.

So it is with many Christians today: trial upon trial is sent by our God to bring them to let Him have the first place, the chief place, in their hearts. Yet He is always merciful, ever gracious, as verses 40 to 45 so expressly set forth.

Dear young reader, are your sins forgiven?

Leviticus 27

A vow was made to God; it was a gift to Him of oneself or one’s property — it did not matter. There is One who judges; it is the Lord Jesus, for Moses, who is the one spoken of in “thy estimation” again and again in this final chapter of his third book, is a type of the blessed Son of God in a day yet to come, when Israel shall be in their own land once more.

Even the smallest (one month old), and these poorer than the estimation, are accepted — according to ability. It is not the world’s standard of excellence that counts, but something- unknown outside — the “shekel of the sanctuary.”

What is our service for the Lord when weighed and valued by Him? Let each of us who are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, think this over solemnly. What has He obtained in me, for whom He died? Has He my heart, my life? If not, why not? Is He not worthy?

Numbers 1

In Leviticus, we had, we may say, God’s word given to us. In Numbers we are starting on our journey, taught by Him. There are unforeseen dangers in the way, but we are now to put into practice what we have learned, and we shall find in so doing, if we are really converted to God, some painful lessons about ourselves, while learning confidence in Him.

A year almost, has passed at the base of Mount Sinai, the mountain of the law, and a wilderness is mentioned now, in verse 1. A count is to be made of all the people who are able to go out to war, for God well knows what Satan intends to do. How interested God is in all His people, not only in bringing them safely to glory, but their present needs and cares are always before Him; there is nothing in a believer’s life about which He is not concerned.

Verse 18. Can my reader give his pedigree? In other words, Can you say, on the authority of God’s Word,

“I believe on the name of the Son of God, and therefore, I know I have eternal life”? (1 John 5:13).

“Being justified by faith, I have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1.

O, how many, dear to Him, have not fully trusted in Him! They think salvation cannot be sure in this life, and that it is proper to humbly doubt. O do trust His unfailing word, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” John 3:36.

Declare your pedigree, Christian reader! (Read John 5:24).

It is not only for war,—for watchfulness against a great and powerful enemy who knows our weaknesses very well, but also for service to God, that the people are, in this first chapter, set apart.

The Levites are not numbered; theirs is not to fight the enemy, though that be under the eyes of God, but to be associated with Him in a very near place, where He should set His name, and therefore, He will not have them counted as an earthly army, for, typically, heaven is their home. And in the picture, He would have us see, in this first chapter of Numbers, the Levites are the same people as the already counted twelve tribes. So the Christian has two sides,—that towards God, and that towards the world. In both he must be what the Word of God will make him. You cannot he a Christian by trying to be one.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Acts 16:31.

Numbers 2

Everyone was given a place, the place God gave him in the great camp of His people. Read 1 Cor. 12:18,

“But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him.” They did not choose places for themselves, nor did other men choose places for them. The dwelling place of God upon earth was their center; around it they were gathered, though the word is “far off” (verse 2) — distant, because the veil still hung (Matt. 27:51); the blood of the Lamb of God was not shed (John 19:34; 1 Peter 1:18, 19).

Verse 3, presents Judah first, and Judah was to lead the war, (verse 9). This is the tribe with which the Lord Jesus was pleased to take up His earthly connection as a baby.

Verse 10 brings in the eldest son, Reuben, with two tribes attached, as Judah and the others also; but now centrally with the tabernacle are shown the Levites,—-example of the Christian seen, not as fighting his way through an enemy’s country, but as one who serves a heavenly Master. These are followed by the remaining groups of Ephraim (verse 18), and Dan (verse 25).

This was God’s plan, and no doubt, as men have tried their best to “improve”, and alter what He has done in forming and directing the true Church of to-day, which includes every real believer in the Lord Jesus,—every saved soul,—so it must have been then in the camp. But God’s words permitted of no altering, no amending, no improving.

Are you satisfied with what God has done? I am, and amid the ruin that is to-day, He has not changed His Word.

“The Word of our God shall stand for ever.” Isa. 40:8.

Numbers 2

God, as we have seen in our progress through the Bible, plans everything for His people. Here He is seen appointing the place for each, while resting in camp around the Tabernacle, the place of His presence, and the order of their going, and naming their leaders. Nothing was left for them but to obey. So it is with the Christian.

Four groups of three tribes each encircled the Tabernacle, but when two groups are named, the order is stopped in order to tell of that simple, plain looking (outwardly) enclosure and those who were entrusted with its care. Then the record goes on, leaving us with the thought of the precious, inspiring word of Matthew 18:20.

The numbers given are of the men who should be able to fight the enemy when he would appear. Satan is our enemy, and he will not be long in coming against us. As these early Old Testament books, as we have before noticed, are full of “types,” and shadows pointing onward to our own, and still later time, so we see in the two divisions of the Israelites here, the two characters the Christian is to have. He is a fighting maxi, for he is on a journey through what he soon finds to be the place where Satan dwells; and he is a Levite, too, privileged to draw near to God, away from war, to serve. Him in being occupied with what belongs to Him.

We shall, if we go on through this book, read more of both the fighting men, and the servants of God.

Numbers 3

This long chapter tells us what the sons of the tribe of Levi were to do while the people of Israel were on their journey to God’s land. They were first presented (verse 6) to the high priest, for his service. The Lord Jesus is our Great High Priest, if we have been fully converted to God. Only a true Levite could do the work (verse 10). No one that was not real could be accepted.

Dear young reader, if you have not been “born again” ( John 3), you cannot serve God. He demands your heart, your soul, before He can use your voice, your hands, your service.

The Levites were linked with those who were spared from judgement (verse 13), the objects of mercy, and they were counted from the earliest days (verse 15) from long years before they could really serve their Master. A New Testament verse which throws light on this, is Gal. 1:15. Someone has rightly said, “Strength is given before service is claimed.”

Each family of the Levites had its own particular place, and its own particular work, and all was according to God’s plan. The children of Kohath had the first position in service; they were to care for the ark and all the furniture and vessels of the house of God. The family of Gershon came next, to look after the outward frame of. the Tabernacle; and the family of Merari were last, charged with the care of the boards and smaller pieces which went together to make up the walls of the Tabernacle.

No one could decide for himself what he would do. God had decided everything, and He asked only for obedience. The Christian has only to get God’s mind from the Bible, and obey Him, not man.

Verse 40, and following, tell with painstaking care and loving purpose, that the Levites were to take the position of, and act for, all the people. All were one before God, and redemption was needed for all.

Dear child, have you been redeemed: ( See 1 Peter 1:18-21. )

Numbers 4

Here are details we have not had before. God, we may say, is seen lingering over His people, gathered to the one center on earth. Numbers is the book of journeying, for it was to be many years before the ark, the table, the. candlestick, the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt-offering, with all their furnishings, were to be set in a permanent abiding place. When “the camp setteth forward” (verse 5), “Aaron shall come, and his sons” — they, taken together, are a type of the Church of God, set to guard the name of Jesus in a wicked world.

The opening verses, however, (verses 2, 3, 4) mention first the sons of Kohath; theirs was to be the privilege of carrying the precious furniture of the Tabernacle, the things, which to the eye of faith, express the Lord Jesus in His blessed person and work; but here in these verses, it is their place always, to be before God in the place of His dwelling. This is the Christian’s true place, to abide with God, in communion, through the atoning work on the cross.

How God, even in these early shadows, guards His glory! Christians are apt to get careless, and indifferent to the claims of a holy God. There is nothing of that here, though the Tabernacle be a plain, simple structure, and the people full of failure in the midst of whom it stood. The fact that they were on a journey, and the home yet far away, did not alter God’s being among them in holiness and grace.

Let us, if we keep His Word honor Him by carefully following it, and as verse 5 begins the divine order with the ark and the veil, both of which tell us of Jesus, the God Man, let Us also begin our ways, our thoughts, with and from Him.

Each of the pieces mentioned, verses 5-14, except the last one, was to be covered with a blue cloth. Blue is the color of the sky on a clear day, and God has used it to bring to our thoughts the Lord Jesus Christ — the heavenly Man — “the Lord from heaven.”

Every article was covered with badgers’ skins, a type of the separateness from evil, which was in Jesus alone. The table of show bread, and the altar of burnt offering, were covered, the one with a scarlet or crimson cloth; and the other with a purple cloth. The first telling of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel; and the second of the glory He has won through death, the death of the cross.

In this chapter we have the counting of the number of the Levites from thirty to fifty years old, the full grown, able men. God counted on them for His service.

Does He not count upon all his children to serve Him? And shall we seek our own comfort, — we who are washed in the blood of Jesus, — and neglect Him?

The work for each is again plainly named in this chapter. It might be humble work, but nothing that God gives us to do for Him, should be too lowly for us to do.

Numbers 5

Sin and God shall not dwell together. If God was to be among them, the people must put the lepers out. A leper, as is well known in Scripture, is a type of one in whom, sin is at work.

Now, sin is in all Christians, but it must not be allowed to work, and if by chance it does come out, it, must be judged and confessed to God, and given up. It may come out in different ways, and this chapter tells us this; but it is a holy God that we have to do with, and He will not go on with His people if they go on in sin.

Numbers 6

This chapter gives us another picture of the Christian, as God would have him. He is to be separated to God, not having a good time with worldly companions. The Lord Jesus was the only perfect Nazarite; He was always, as a man, “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from: sinners.” (Hebrews 7:26). As a child of twelve He said to His parents, “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). He was ever the Holy One, as we see in the accounts in all of the four evangelists’ stories of Him—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Jesus is the believer’s only perfect example.

But separating ourselves from, evil is not to be forever (verses 4, 5, 6, 8, 13), The believer who seeks to honor God, waits for the Lord’s coming when Nazariteship will be forever over. So the chapter closes with blessing, and joy. Separation from whatever we cannot take God into, must be ours now, but soon we shall be with our Lord in His home in the sky.

Numbers 7

Now God shows us how the hearts of the leaders of the people were moved to bring gifts of love — offerings of their ability to the Lord’s service. True, every one of the twelve offered exactly the same things, but God loves to tell in full detail what each one gave. Every act of true-hearted service — everything with Christ as its object — has notice in glory, and will not fail of remembrance in, the coming day. Day by day, the record is made, in full, of whatever is done out of love for the Lord. None of these gifts went to the sons of Kohath; they carried their burdens on their shoulders or in their hands. The sons of Merari and of Gershon, who had a lesser place in service, were given the oxen and the wagons. This is God’s gracious way. He will give us each one some little service to do for Him, and help us in the doing of it.

Numbers 8

Aaron is a type of the Lord Jesus. He alone lights the lamp of testimony; not one of the priests his sons, nor one of the Levites. The light of God, we, who are believers, are to shine around in dark corners. Are we, dear reader, you and I, shining lights for Him? Now the Levites are separated from the people, and cleansed by water and blood. Though they belonged in a special sense to God, they were identified with all Israel. This double link, may all of us who belong to Jesus realize more than we do. We are His, and we belong to all who are His, too.

Numbers 9

It is just a year since the people of Israel passed under the protecting power of the blood of the lamb in the stricken land of Egypt. What changes had taken place in that year! Then they were slaves, now they were free; then they had questioned if God heard their groans, now they had found deliverance; had seen His power for them, and against their enemies; had heard His voice from Mount Sinai, and finally He Himself had taken up His home among them. Was the passover then to be forgotten, or be only a memory? No, indeed, for God takes the first anniversary of that solemn night when the angel went through the land in judgment, to tell His people, “Ye shall keep it in His appointed season,” and not only so, but “according to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it.”

The remembrance of the judgment of God falling on a substitute, the slain lamb, was never to be separated from the eating of the roasted victim, nor from the bitter herbs, nor from the character God gave His people, as travelers to a better land, with everything ready to go, shoes on, dressed and even the staff in their hands. All of this is closely in keeping with the wish of the Lord Jesus that His loved ones should be found gathered together according to the Word of God, to remember Him in His death, for them.

But some were hindered from carrying out God’s Word that day; they wished to keep the passover, and God took the occasion to say that contact with defilement, or a journey, should not interfere. Even a “stranger” sojourning among them, if he wished, should be allowed to join in the solemn feast. All this shows the believer that the foundation of his blessing is the precious atoning death of Jesus, and that he needs the reminder of it from week to week. The Lord’s desire must be carried out. Much more on this subject will be found in 1 Corinthians 11, where a state of soul is required for the Lord’s supper, but even there the word is “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat.”

Verses 15-23. Day and night, God was among His people—their guard, their protector, their guide. If anything, we may say, that in the night His presence was more realized than in the day, because of the pillar of fire gleaming continuously through the hours of darkness and slumber. This is the night, as several scriptures tell us; the long, dark night of the Lord’s absence. Do we that love Him realize as we should the presence of God among us to cheer, to comfort, to bless and to guide? These people were to be guided by the cloud; if it moved, and where it moved, they went; if it stayed, they stayed. This is a word for Christians, too.

Numbers 10

Connected with the cloud that marked the presence of God among the people of Israel, of which we read in the latter part of the ninth chapter, we are told in the early part of the tenth chapter of two silver trumpets, which were to be used to call the people to meet at the door of the tabernacle; and for their journeyings; and for war.

Above the camp hung the cloud;— God was among His People; in their ears the trumpet sounded, so they learned the will of God and His care for them. Only the priests were to blow the trumpets (verse 8); they were a type of the believer who is in communion with God. By keeping near to God in our lives, we (Christians) may learn God’s mind, and tell it to others, too.

Verse 11 brings us to the moving of the camp from the foot of Mount Sinai. The cloud was taken up from, off the tabernacle,—then, and not till then, the people went on their journey. They went when God told them; where God directed them, and as God ordered them; for the order of going is exactly as given in chapter 2.

Moses, in verse 29, asks his brother-in-law, Hobab, to go with the camp, and in verses 31 and 32, presses him to go, because he would be a help to them. We are not told whether he did go with them or not, but it is good to notice, in the next verse, that God went with them,—went before them; indeed,-to search out a. resting place for them. It is better, a thousand times, to trust God, than any man.

Numbers 11

The first verse shows us a complaining people, not satisfied with what a loving and faithful, unforgetting God, gave them, and we find that they were discontented and even crying, grumbling where they should have been glad, to the end of the record.

Turn to Exodus 3:4-8, and notice what God had said before a finger was lifted to free Israel from the hardhearted and cruel Egyptians. Had He gone back on His word, do you think? Not at all; His purpose was unchanged. But what an ungrateful people! What patience in God, too!

There was a “mixed multitude” with the people. We read about them when the children of Israel left Egypt, and here in verse 4 we find that they were still with them. They were bad company for the Israelites to keep. Look out for “mixed” company, dear young believer. There is only One kind of company for a Christian, and that is, the company of those who are saved, and live and talk as those who are Christ’s. Of course, the mixed multitude were unhappy; having to live like the people of God never could suit them. But the point for us to see is, that they influenced the children of Israel to want, what the mixed multitude wanted.

God’s children ought to be pleased with whatever a loving and gracious Father gives them; but if they keep company with the world, the world’s ways and thoughts and wants, will surely become theirs too.

“We remember,” the people say in verse 5, “we remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely.”

Is that all you remember, redeemed one? Don’t you remember the slavery, the lash of the taskmaster, the demand that the babies be thrown into the river, and all the other cruelties of Egypt? Sad to say, the freedom God had won for them, and the many blessings daily which were theirs and the promised land, were all forgotten. The food He gave them, was despised, and in their hearts they longed for Egypt. Such is man, such are you and I, by nature; we must be born again. We need God’s salvation.

Moses complains, in verses 11 to 15, and surely the people were most ungrateful, but his case reminds us of One who never complained, never gave up, and never will until His people are safe in glory with Him. Jesus is that Friend; there is no change in Him. Is He your Friend, your Saviour?

When the people of Israel had complained so much to Moses, he went to the Lord, and said, “Wherefore hast Thou afflicted Thy servant? that Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.”

But we know Moses was not alone, because God did everything Himself for His people. The Lord did not rebuke Moses. He only said, “Gather unto Me seventy men of the elders of Israel; and bring them to the tabernacle of the congregation, and I will come down and talk with thee there; and I will take of the Spirit that is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.”

This was a dishonor to the Lord, as well as to Moses. If the Lord gives us any work to do for Him, He will give us the strength and ability to carry out His purposes, and we are only an instrument in His hands, to be used of Him. He does not leave us to do anything alone for Him. We would be sure to make great mistakes, and not do the work at all pleasing to Him. It is only as we are in dependence upon Him, and seeking His guidance, that we can do the smallest thing pleasing to Him.

Numbers 12

This chapter gives us a lesson in the contrast between Miriam and Aaron and Moses. How easy it is for the human heart to be stirred with anger and jealousy or envy, and for the tongue to speak out the thoughts that have found a home in the heart.

They said, “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath He not spoken also by us?” But see what God, who has chosen every sentence, and every word for the Bible, put into His book, to follow directly after what Moses’ sister and brother said: “And the Lord heard it!” We may be sure that Moses found out how they felt toward him, if he did not know the words they said, and it is the natural thing to feel provoked and say something in return but Moses could leave his troubles to God. And there the record stands: “And the Lord heard it.” Was that not better than answering again?

There is a wonderful word about Moses in verse 3 of our chapter, and I hope you will think about it, but after all, Moses was not perfect, though he was a great example of forbearance and patience. But there is One Man even Jesus, who has left a perfect record, and the first four books of the New Testament tell us many lovely stories about Him. And in the Epistles, we learn much more, as for instance in 1 Peter 2:21-23, where we read, “Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.”

Perhaps when Miriam and Aaron heard the people complaining in chapter 11, they felt that they would not do such things; that they knew better, and could trust God to take care of them, and a little thought crept in that they were not likely to sin.

I know such thoughts do come to those who belong to Jesus in this day. Well, if they come to you, my reader, look out! for Satan is near, and you will be tested.

But are you saved? And have you confessed Christ as your Saviour and Lord?

Numbers 13

The moving camp of Israel had now reached a place as near to the promised land of Canaan as they were to see for about thirty-seven years. We shall see, if the Lord will, why they did not go right on to the end of their journey, but we have read enough in the last two chapters to feel sure that their ways and thoughts were very far from God’s. Without faith to believe God, though they were quite willing to eat the food He gave them, and to have His protecting care and guidance, they needed some of their number to go on ahead to see if what God had said about their new home was true. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy we learn that Moses, having told the people to go on to the promised land, not to be afraid or discouraged, they came to him, saying,

“We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.”

In our chapter this is not told us; God, knowing what the host of Israel wanted, knowing their hearts too, told Moses to send men to search the land.

They were to be prominent men, leaders of the people, who were to go on this mission. Even their names speak of that, Shammua, the first one named, means, “Famous”, and his father’s name means, “well remembered”; one means “belonging to fortune” (Gaddi), and several speak of God. But God sees deeper than the surface; profession is nothing without possession, and only two of the men who went into the land were men of faith, —men who trusted God.

And did the twelve men find that what God says is true? They surely did.

“Surely,” they said (verse 27), “the land floweth with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. If you will open your Bible at Exodus 3:8 and 17 you will find that God said just that, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” He had told them, too, of enemies — six nations of very wicked people, who lived in that land, but He had said in Exodus 33:2 “I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite,” and all the others. This the spies and the people forgot or did not believe; they evidently had no thought of God being for them, nor of trusting Him to lead them.

Numbers 14

Was the journey of the Israelites across the desert to end in a return to Egypt? Unbelief stood in the way of going any further now in the direction of Canaan, and they proposed to one another to make a new leader instead of Moses, to lead them back to the country of their slavery.

Joshua and Caleb, the only godly ones of the twelve men who had searched the promised land, tried to quiet the people (verses 6-9), telling them God was on their side, and would surely carry out His promise; but they wanted to stone them. Then God appeared, His glory cloud being seen before all the children of Israel. He told Moses He would send disease among them, and have them no longer for His people; instead He would make of Moses a great nation, greater than the Israelites. This was the second time that God had offered to Moses to make him the head of a chosen nation, as you will find if you turn back to Exodus 32:10.

But Moses paid no more attention to the second offer than to the first. He thinks of the name of God, and not of getting honors for himself, and again he pleads for the people’s forgiveness. God answers (verse 20) that He has pardoned, but that none of those who would not believe Him, or trust in His word, would be allowed to enter the promised land. Two men only of all that great army of men and women who set out from Egypt were to set foot in it as their home, but the children, from the youngest up to nineteen years of age, whom their parents said were brought out to die, would be brought into that home-land which God had told of. For forty years the people were to stay in the wilderness, until all that were grown up when they left Egypt, were dead.

The chapter ends with the people, unwilling to obey as always, going on now into the enemy’s country, alone, where before they would not go with God, and so they are driven back by their enemies. There is no power against Satan except God’s power.

Numbers 15

This shows us God’s unchangeable purpose to bring His people to the home He has chosen for them. After the fourteenth chapter, full of rebellion against Him, it is He who says (verse 2),

“When ye be come into the land—which I give unto you, and will make an offering—”. In spite of their ingratitude and self-will, and everything else so unlike the One who had undertaken for them, His people were to be brought into the place prepared. So, though the Christian knows from many Scriptures, that he does not deserve eternal life, or heaven, yet he reads in John 10:28 the words of the Son of God,

“I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” There are lessons to be learned on the road, but they who trust in Jesus’ blood will be in glory, everyone.

When the people were brought into their land, they would bring free-will offerings, —thank offerings to God, and He gave directions as to the offerings, all of them telling of Christ in life or in death.

There should be the same law for the children of Israel, and for the stranger that dwelt in their land. And if they did anything ignorantly, that is, when they did not know it was wrong, they were to offer sacrifices, and their sin should be forgiven; but if any one sinned presumptuously, that is, willfully, God did not say they might offer a sacrifice for him, that person was to be put to death, because he had despised the word of the Lord, and broken His commandment.

The man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath day was stoned to death; his was a presumptuous sin (verse 30), for God had repeatedly said, “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein.” Leviticus 23:3.

The fringes in the edges of their clothes, and the blue ribbons, were to be seen by faith as reminders of the heavenly character of God’s people. Christians are apt to forget that they not only are going to heaven, but that they belong there now. Heaven is their home, and heavenly ways, heavenly thoughts, should be theirs.

Numbers 16

Satan has been watching the camp of the children of Israel as it progressed from, place to place under the pillar of cloud, and he has, as we have seen from time to time, found men and women who were ready enough to do his bidding, and God has had to punish them, even by taking away their lives in judgment.

And now as the journeys’ end gets near, Satan gets more daring in his schemes as this chapter shows. Men who were noted in the camp, religious workers and great ones among the people, gather followers, and come before the two men whom God had appointed as the King and the Priest over His people for their pilgrimage from Egypt to Canaan. Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and those with them, deny in their words that God has given Moses and Aaron the leadership of the people; they are no better than the rest, for all are holy, so these new leaders tell the two who hold their appointment from God Himself.

Now as Moses and Aaron are “types” of the Lord Jesus, and we know how Satan hates Him, we can see that to reject the leader God has given, is a most serious thing.

It is what Satan is moving men, high in the religious world today, to do; for there are not a few now telling us that the Lord Jesus’ birth into this world was just like ours, so that He must then have been born with a sinful nature like our own. They are denying many other things too, which every true believer in the Lord Jesus knows are true, because God’s Word says so. And the end of it all is, to put Jesus out, and to put man in His place; and that is what the world is coming to, —to set up a man in the place of God. (2 Thess. 2:4.)

The end of verse 10 shows what Korah and his company wanted, and Moses and Aaron, instead of arguing with them turn to God for a decision. With them there was no uncertainty, and a fearful death swallowed up those wicked men, the earth opening to receive the one group; and fire coming out from God’s dwelling place, the tabernacle, to destroy the others.

There were others left, however, and a dreadful disease was sent among the rebels the next day. How solemn! They knew the kindness of God; His patience had been great, but the unrepentant are punished! Now is the day of salvation, but judgment is coming on this poor world.

Numbers 17

The story of sin and death ceases for a time here, and instead, we see by a lovely picture of life brought out of death, flowers and fruit out of dry wood, the man of God’s choosing.

God was going to show them that no one had any right at all, unless he was chosen by God. So He said to Moses, Tell all the princes of the twelve tribes to take a rod each, and to write the names of their tribes on each rod, and write Aaron’s name upon the rod of Levi. And the Lord said, ‘The man’s rod whom I shall choose shall blossom, and I will make to cease from Me the murmurings that they murmur against you.’ So Moses laid up the rods before the Lord in the tabernacle; and the next day, when Moses went in, he saw that Aaron’s rod for the house of Levi was covered with buds and blossoms and almond fruit. Aaron’s rod was only a stick like the rest, but God showed, that though the stick had no life or power in itself, yet that He could, if He chose, make blossoms and fruit come from it.

It was the sign of resurrection, that God gave as a proof of the one He had chosen. The Lord Jesus is the believer’s High Priest in glory, since He has died and risen again.

There was no fruit for God from the natural man, and the real fruit-bearing suited for His dwelling place, comes from the Priesthood that He has chosen.

Numbers 18

Aaron and his sons, the priests, being the only ones to go into the holy place, were to be very careful that their ways were such as suited the presence of God.

Then their food is spoken of — whatever in the offering of Christ, in His life and death, is precious—is the food of those who are priests. And this food is to be eaten only in the holy place.

How important is it that Christians, whether young or old, should be very watchful in everything in their lives, to seek to do only the things that please God. And it is true that if the believer is to grow in his spiritual life he must be fed with the Word of God; he must read, prayerfully and thoughtfully read, his Bible daily. Neglect of the Word of God is the cause of most of the unhappiness and worldliness and sin among the children of God.

There was food for others than the priests too, for all the family of God was to be provided for. All true believers are priests, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God; they are also members of the family of God—children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. So we who are His, are looked at as priests, and as children of God, and those who serve the Lord are specially mentioned, too.

Numbers 19

Here we find a new sacrifice; it was for the cleansing of one who had in any way become unfit to come into the tabernacle—God’s dwelling place. Many things may happen to defile the believer, but the precious blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin.

The red heifer had to be without spot or blemish, and it could not have been under a yoke; these tell of Jesus, the spotless, holy One of God, never under the mastery of sin, but led out without the camp to be a sacrifice for the sins of others.

There were thrown into the fire which consumed the body, cedar wood; hyssop and scarlet—all picturing man from the highest to the lowest; earthly glory too, for there is nothing in the natural man, that God can accept, it is put under judgment by fire.

The blood is not re-applied; the heifer’s ashes, and running water, were enough for the cleansing of the defiled one, the blood having been applied once for all in the type when the people met God. There is restoration of communion. in this chapter.

Numbers 20

We are getting near the end of the forty-year journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, and early in this chapter we are told of the death of Miriam, the sister of Aaron.

No water being found, the people gathered together against Moses and Aaron, bitterly complaining of the difficulties of the way. Moses and Aaron took a low place before God (verse 6), and were told what to do. The people were to be gathered, when Aaron’s rod that budded had been taken out of the tabernacle, and Moses and Aaron were to speak to the rock before the people; it would then give out the needed water.

Moses took the rod, as he was directed, but instead of speaking to the rock, he spoke to the people; instead of speaking to the rock, he struck it with his own rod.

It was right to have struck the rock once (Exodus 17), for the rock was a “type” of Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), once only to suffer for sins under the judgment of God. “Speak to the rock” was the right thing to do now; but Moses, for once, speaks and acts in a haughty way, and for this disobedience, God has to tell Moses and Aaron that they shall not bring the people into their homeland.

It must have been a great grief to Moses and Aaron that they were soon to die, and their death would be before the people should go across the Jordan, but it is a serious thing to treat lightly the word of God, and more particularly is this true, we may be sure, in a leader of the people.

As the king of Edom refused to let the people go through his country, the camp of the Israelites is directed southward, to pass around a range of mountains.

Now Aaron dies, and his son, Eleazar is appointed high priest in his stead.

Numbers 21

King Arad is like Satan, his master. He tries to stop, the progress of the people of God, and takes some of them prisoners. But when they ask help of God, He gives power against the enemy. Victory is more dangerous than defeat, however; and the people soon speak against God, and against His chosen leader. The lessons of the past have not been learned as they should, and therefore another lesson must be given to show that death is for them.

The Lord sent poisonous serpents among His people, which bit them dreadfully, so that many of them died. Then they came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that He take away the serpents from us.” And Moses prayed for the people.

And the Lord told Moses to make a serpent of brass, and to put it on a pole, and that whosoever looked up at it, should live.

To us, the serpent of brass is a—figure of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was lifted up on the cross to make men well of the Serpent’s (Satan’s) deadly sting, and all who look to Him shall live eternally. A look to Jesus saves the soul for evermore, for it is eternal life He gives, and it is Satan’s power that He has destroyed.

But after this there is encouragement, and we find the people singing, and going on victoriously toward the home appointed for them.

Numbers 22

The children of Israel had now all but finished their pilgrimage. The land of God’s promise was perhaps already in sight, but the river Jordan rolled between it and them. They were in the land of Moab, and Satan makes his last attack, trying once more to keep the people out of the inheritance God had provided for them.

The king of Moab saw that no human power could stand against Israel while God was with them, and so he turned to a man who had to do with the unseen world of darkness, of evil spirits —Balaam. These demons make themselves out to be the spirits of people now dead—often friends and relatives of those living, and it may be, pretending to be angels, or even God Himself. In verse 8, Balaam professed to be waiting for directions from God, and God indeed came to him that night, and asked, “What men are these with thee?”

Balaam, it seems, was not surprised at a visit from God; it maybe he had often had evil spirits come to him, and did not know that this was not one of his regular visitors. He answered God that they were sent by Balak, the king of Moab, to get him to curse the people that had come from Egypt, and God said to him,

“Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people, for they are blessed.” So Balaam, the next morning told the messengers to go back without him saying, “The Lord refuseth to give me leave to go with you.”

Balak, thinking the reward he had offered, had not been enough to satisfy Balaam, at once sent more and greater men with bigger promises; —anything Balaam wanted he could have if he would only come to Balak’s help, and curse the people.

Balaam then, partly from a wish to get all the pay he could for his coming, and partly held back by God’s unseen hand, answered as verses 18 and 19 tell us. But it was all a pretense; faith knows that God does not change;

“He is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent.” Chap. 23:19.

Balaam wanted to go; the honor and the reward filled his heart.

God therefore, told him he might go; he could follow his own ways, since his heart was set on it. Balaam had been told already that the people were blessed, and could not be cursed, but he proposed to curse them, if he could. So he goes, but God gives him a solemn lesson on the way. Was there not something very humiliating in God’s using the donkey to rebuke the wicked prophet? Yet how gracious of God to make this man, hurrying on to destruction, stop and think, if anything could awaken him to realize what he was doing! But Balaam cared for neither the miracle of the donkey’s speaking, nor for the angel of the Lord carrying a drawn sword, if only he could have his own way.

Nevertheless Balaam went on, even though he was warned again, and was met by Balak, the king, personally, at the boundary of his country.

Numbers 23

Not one altar, but seven, were built, and on each altar both a bullock and a ram were sacrificed, before Balaam was ready to go on with his master, Satan.

Baal means master, or possessor; it was the chief god of the people of the land the children of Israel were coming to take for their home. Balaam means “lord of the people,” and Balak means empty, or waster. These names seem suitable for Satan, and the people who do his work, but the seven altars, with the smoke of the burning sacrifices, must have looked very fine.

The next chapter, in its first verse tells us that it was not God that Balaam went to meet with, though he wanted the king of Moab to think so (verse 3). But God it was that met Balaam, and put the words into his mouth that he was to say when he went back to the seven altars and the king and his princes. He begins to speak, presently, and how astonished the people must have been to hear his words!

“How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed, or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied?” They were God’s people, not to be counted as one of the nations. They were greater than any other people, but Balaam’s only thought for himself is that he would like to die as one of God’s children.

Perhaps even the worst of men and women of today would say the same thing, but there is no wish to live the life of the righteous, and God did not let Balaam have his desire.

Balak was angry, of course. He had been at a lot of trouble to bring Balaam there, and instead of cursing the Israelites he had pronounced their blessing. The, wicked prophet answered truly that he must say what God put in his mouth, but the king would have him try again.

“If God be for us, who can be against us?” Rom. 8:31.

Perhaps, thought Balak, who did not have God in his mind at all, if Balaam goes to some other place he can curse the children of Israel as I want him to do. So he takes him to another height, where only a part of the people can be seen. Again seven altars are built, and cattle and sheep are slaughtered on them,’ as at the first place to which Balaam was taken by Balak.

Balaam, saying, “Stand here by thy burnt offering while I meet yonder,” went away to seek an enchantment (chapter 24, verse 1) —not to meet God, for the words, “the Lord,” in italics in the fifteenth verse should be left out. But God met him again, and gave him what he was to say to Balak, when he should get up to make his speech against the people of Israel. Wonderful words these were that Balaam was used to tell, speaking of God’s purposes and His interest in the people He had formed for Himself, but telling too of Balaam’s bad character, and the coming judgment of God’s enemies.

Man might tell lies, but God would not. He would not, like men, say one thing and do another. He had not seen iniquity in Jacob or perverseness in Israel. God had justified them, and Satan had no power to speak against them. Enchantments and divinations were without power against the people of God, and in a day close at hand, they would drive out their enemies before them. This and more, Balaam told Balak, who of course was very displeased. Yet he proposed to have Balaam try again to curse the people.

Numbers 24

BALAAM was now sure that it was no use for him to try to get enchantments; God was going to bless His people, and Satan would not be allowed to curse them. The Spirit of God came on him, making this address of Balaam’s the most remarkable of the three.

With open eyes, he said, he saw the vision of the Almighty, and he heard the words of God. And, wicked man that he was, he tells what God thought of His people out there in the wilderness, not yet in their land. Balak was angry, as well he might be, for he had called Balaam to curse his enemies, and he had three times blessed them. He told Balaam to go back to his home without the honors he had intended to give him, but Balaam reminded him, of what he had said at the first, that he could only speak that which was given him to say. He now went on to tell Balak what the people of Israel would do to the people of Moab later, and in telling this, Balaam pronounced his own doom:

“I shall see Him (God) but not now; I shall behold Him, but not nigh.”

Remarkable words, and intensely solemn! He will meet God at the great white throne. (Revelation 20:11-15.)

These speeches of Balaam cover the whole purpose of God regarding the people He loved, beginning with their separation from the world of the ungodly, and ending with the coming of Christ.

Numbers 25

If Balaam’s and Balak’s plans to stop the people of God from going on to their promised home by cursing them, failed, another scheme was more successful; the people were led into sin and idolatry. They made themselves one with the world about them, forgetting that God’s first work was to separate them from the ungodly. So judgment falls upon the people, for God deals first with those that are His, and afterwards, perhaps long afterwards, with the world. (1 Peter 4:17, 18) He commends the faithful Phinehas.

He is “not unrighteous to forget” work for Him (Hebrews 6:10), and the Lord Jesus in the last chapter of Revelation, speaking of His coming, says,

“My reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be.”

Those who are Christ’s should seek to be faithful to Him, whatever be the present cost.

Numbers 26

Israel’s journey is about over, and so God has them counted again, as they were about to take the inheritance He had planned for them.

The land was theirs— “Unto these the land shall be divided for an inheritance according to the number of names” (verse 53). Not one was to be forgotten, but the special place of the Levites is again told of; they were not counted or given an inheritance, —the Lord was to be their portion, as He says to them in chapter 18:20-21.

“Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them: I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel. And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.”

All those who were sheltered by the blood in Egypt, and who crossed the Red Sea as full-grown men and women, were now dead, except Caleb and Joshua, and Moses. Had they believed God, they would have lived to enter the land, but they entered not because of unbelief.

It will not do, dear reader, to believe something about God; you must believe God, or be lost eternally.

Numbers 27

The five daughters of Zelophehad, bold in faith, asked for a possession in the land, and God commended them. He loves to see faith in His people, and always honors it.

In verse 12 we begin the last chapter of Moses’ long life. He had been told before that he should not enter the land because of his one disobedience, the record of which is in chapter 20:12, but he was to look from a mountain into the possession of the people he had led there. The leaders God raises up for His people must be faithful to Him, must “sanctify” Him “before their eyes,” or they will be set aside by Him.

Moses, submitting as far as we are told by the Divine Penman, without a murmur, though it must have been a deep sorrow to him, only asks for someone to be appointed to lead the people—God’s congregation, or assembly—that they “be not as sheep which have no shepherd.” Joshua, “a man in whom is the Spirit,” the young man of whom we first read in Exodus 17:9-14, is to be the new leader. His name means “God saves;” it is the same name, in a different language, as “Jesus,” the name given to our blessed Lord when He became man.

“And Moses did as the Lord commanded him” (verse 22). It was not a question with him of pleasing himself; God came first in his plans and in his heart, even though there were disappointments and griefs in the way, for we may be sure that Moses’ deepest joys were in serving that God who had watched over him from his birth in the land of Egypt.

Is this your God, my reader, and do you, like Moses, love and seek to serve Him? Be assured that if this be true, the rewards will be as real as Moses found them.

“By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.” Heb. 11:24-26.

Numbers 28

Looking onward now, into a new order of things, with the passing away of Moses, and the appointment of a new leader, about to enter the promised land which was to be the home of this people of God’s choosing, the people to be no longer on the move, but settled as a nation in their land, the offerings and sacrifices are again spread out.

In verse 3 begins the account of the general offering, telling of the spotless Lamb of God, day by day continually, and both in the morning and in the evening. God would have His people constantly occupied with Jesus; both His death on the cross, and His life as a man, are expressed in verses four and five. On the sabbath day the offerings were doubled; this tells of the millennium when the testimony will be wide spread and fuller than before.

Verse 11; A changing people forgetful of God, and wandering far from Him, need a new start, a restoration of the light which had gradually left them, so with the new moon comes a new energy of devotion to God, greater because of the neglect and departure; this will also be true in the day when Israel shall turn to God after their centuries of unbelief.

Verse 16; This begins the special feasts. Here the atoning death and resurrection of Christ are shown.

Verse 26 brings in Pentecost, the birthday of the Church or assembly of God, the whole body of believers in the Lord Jesus, who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Here our chapter ends. All Scripture is one; the same God is responsible for the whole book, the whole Bible, from first to last, though it shows man just, as he is. This book tells of Jesus, the delight of His Father and the Saviour of sinners. Before Him every knee shall bow!

Numbers 29

In the 23rd chapter of Leviticus we were given a picture of the coming thousand years of enjoyment of God’s blessing on earth, commonly called the millennium, and here is another, but as always in the Scriptures, there is no mere telling again what has once been told, but new light is given.

There are three parts to this story just as in Leviticus 23. First, the sounding of the trumpets calling Israel to be gathered before God. Second, the day of atonement (verses 7 to 11); and third, the feast of tabernacles (beginning at verse 12). For each one, you will find the expression, “Ye shall do no servile work;” or “Ye shall not do any work therein,” and in the third part it is repeated (verses 12 and 35).

Many today are counting on their works to help them to meet God about their sins, but the Bible says,

“To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Rom. 4:5.

The next thing we may notice is that this chapter is all about offerings to God. As we have before seen, these offerings speak of Jesus, God’s Lamb; His precious blood was shed for sins; “by Him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:39). Continuous shedding of blood these picture-stories have to include, so that our eyes will be opened to see that “without shedding of blood is no remission” of sin (Hebrews 9:22; 10:8-22).

Then we should notice that these offerings which were advance pictures of Jesus, the Christ of God, in His devotedness, and the worth that belonged to Him alone, the God-Man, both in His spotless life, and in His death as a substitute for the believing sinner, of them, God says here no less than five times, “a burnt offering of a sweet savor” unto Him. Reader, nothing can please God, that you and I can do, that does not tell Him of His beloved Son in connection with His death on Calvary’s cross. Have you claimed Him as your own personal Saviour?

This chapter, being then an account of the millennium, shows us first the people of Israel, called back to God in that coming day when He will take them in hand again for blessing. We are then shown that they condemn themselves, they “afflict their souls” (verse 7), because of their sins, and they see at last that the Man they rejected was in truth their Messiah, their Saviour, their King.

Next, (verse 12) the people are gathered in full heart to God; it is not perfection (13 bullocks, not 14, which would have expressed full devotedness to God), but the high tide of the millennium. Yet there is even here decline; the millennium will have sinners in it, and even the earthly saints will not be all that they should be for God. This is pictured in the declining number of the young bullocks.

Numbers 30

The subject of this short chapter is the making of vows — solemn promises — before God, and particularly by women. A man making a promise is only mentioned at the beginning, in verse 2. “He shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.”

Here, the Holy Spirit, in moving Moses to write this book, had the only One before him who never had to recall a word, Jesus. He it is whose word stands forever, unchanged. What He has undertaken, He will surely finish, for though “the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, the Word of the Lord endureth forever” (1 Peter 1:24,25). Are you trusting Him?

The young woman in her father’s house in verses 3, 4 and 5; and the married woman spoken of in verses 6-8 and 10-15, present the people of Israel in connection with God who had undertaken for them as a Father and a Husband. He heard their rash promises, all of them, from first to last, and He disallowed what was wrong, though He made them to feel the result of their own badness. This is also God’s way with believers now, —those who are His children by faith in Christ Jesus.

Verse 9 speaks of a widow or a divorced woman, and the way this is brought in, in the midst of the verses about a wife who sat home with her husband, fits in exactly with the place of Israel now. She is a widow, or divorced from her husband, so to speak; they are out of relationship with God, but it is not to be forever. (Isaiah 54:4-7).

Numbers 31

One more war is here told of, the last fighting before the people cross the Jordan and enter the promised land. In chapter 25 we had the cause, and now before Moses is taken away, the reproach must be taken away.

Headed by Phineas the priest, with the “holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow, in his hand,” twelve thousand, a thousand from every tribe, march against the Midianites, and among them the false Balaam loses his life. He had wished for a happier end, — “let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,” was his desire, but he had chosen to serve Satan, and God makes no agreements with sinners to let them live in sin and self-will, and save theme on their death beds.

“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation,” and to wait for another day makes you, my reader, a neglecter of salvation. “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?”

O, do not forget the sad fate of Balaam, who like Lot’s wife (Genesis 19:26), and Cain (Genesis 4:16), and many another, knew of God, and chose to please themselves —to live for the present, and give no thought to eternity!

Numbers 32

The property of the children of Reuben and of Gad divided their thoughts with the promised land, so that they were content, and not only content, but anxious, to have their homes on this side of the river of death, the Jordan. The things of this life (2 Timothy 2: 4) are a danger to every true Christian. For him the true course is shown in Matthew 6:33,

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

There is rest here, in the knowledge of the forgiveness of sins, with many other blessings, but as the eighth chapter of Romans illustrates, there is besides, and beyond these blessings, a hope for which the believer is to wait with patience; it is the coming of the Lord to take His loved people to glory.

It would have been better for the Reubenites and the Gadites, and the children of Manasseh to have patiently waited until they had gone over Jordan, and Moses warned them of their danger. Notice in verse 20 that not God, but Moses, tells them they may have their choice of present blessing, rather than patient hope of something better beyond the river. “From Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, and Reubenites, and the Manassites” was the first of the land of Israel to be taken by a foreign king (2 Kings 10: 32, 33).

“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” Jeremiah 17:7, 8.

Numbers 33

It is impossible to read this chapter without being deeply moved by the tender love and care of God so signally displayed throughout the whole. To think of his deigning to keep such a record of the journeyings of His poor people, from the moment they marched out of Egypt until they crossed the Jordan—from the land of death and darkness to the land flowing with milk and honey.

He went before them every step of the way; He traveled over every stage of the wilderness; in all their afflictions He was afflicted. He took care of them like a tender nurse. He suffered not their garments to wax old, nor their feet to swell, for these forty years; and here He retraces the entire way by which His hand had led them, carefully noting down each successive stage of that marvelous pilgrimage, and every spot in the desert at which they had halted. What a journey! What a Traveling-Companion!

It is very consolatory to the heart of the poor weary pilgrim to be assured that every stage of his wilderness journey is marked out by the infinite love and unerring wisdom of God. He is leading His people by a right way, home to Himself; and there is not a single circumstance in their lot, or a single ingredient in their cup, which is not carefully ordered by Himself, with direct reference to their present profit and their everlasting felicity. Let it only be our care to walk with Him, day by day, in simple confidence, casting all our care upon Him, and leaving ourselves and all our belongings absolutely in His hands. This is the true source of peace and blessedness all the journey through; and then, when our desert wanderings are over—when the last stage of the wilderness has been trodden, He will take us home to be with Himself forever.

God recalls to His people, the way they had come, now that their long journey almost ended. Their stopping places are named, but not a word is said of the murmuring, and even rebellion against Him on the way. How gracious God is! It was good for His people to recall the way they had been brought, and no doubt they thought with shame of their past waywardness as they faced the home prepared for them across the river of death.

The closing verses of the chapter bring out the fact that there was to be war in taking possession of the land; its inhabitants were to be entirely driven away, and all their idols, and everything that belonged to them, were to be destroyed.

Failure to carry out God’s desire for them meant sorrow and vexation, and the certain judgment of God. We shall see what this became, D. V., as we go on through the succeeding books of the Bible.

Numbers 34

Chapter 34 gives the boundaries of the inheritance, as drawn by the hand of Jehovah. The self-same hand which had guided their wanderings, here fixes the bounds of their habitation. Alas! They never took possession of the land as given to them of God. He gave them the whole land, and gave it forever: they took but a part, and that for a time. But, blessed be God, the moment is approaching when the children of Israel shall enter upon the full and everlasting possession of that fair inheritance, from which they are for the present excluded. The Lord will assuredly accomplish all His promises, and lead His people into all the blessings secured to them in the everlasting covenant—that covenant which has been ratified by the blood of the Lamb. Not one jot or tittle shall fail of all that He has spoken. His promises are all yea and Amen in Christ Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. All praise to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit!

Now the boundaries of their land, God’s gift to His people, are set out. The south border was from Mount Seir by the way of Kadesh Barnea (the place from which the twelve spies were sent into the land, where Miriam died and was buried, and where Moses a second time struck the rock, when the people complained about there being no water), to “the river of Egypt,”—not the Nile, but a small winter stream which is shown on most maps,—and so to the sea. The’ west boundary was the Mediterranean sea; the east boundary, the river Jordan, the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. The north boundary was about one hundred miles north of Damascus. This was God’s purpose, but the children of Israel never took real, full possession of all this territory. Reuben, Gad and Manasseh were, as we have already noticed, outside of these boundaries, on the east side of the Jordan.

Men were appointed by God Himself to see that the land was fairly divided among the families of Israel. Let us see what the meaning of some of their names may be. Eleazar— “God is helper”; Joshua, — “God saves”; Caleb— “bold”; Shemuel — “Heard of God”; Elidad— “God is a friend”; Bukki— “mouth of God”; Hanniel— “God is gracious”; Kemuel— “God stands (or rises)”; Elizaphan— “God is protector”; Paltiel— “God delivers”; Ahihud— “brother of honor”; Pedahel “God delivers”. Is God in your name? Not in the name by which your parents and friends speak to you, but is He truly the One you trust? Do you know Him as Helper, Saviour, Hearer of your prayers, Friend, Protector, Deliverer? And when you speak, dear young Christian, remember that name, “mouth of God”—speak of Him and for Him. Guard your words, that there may nothing come from your lips that is displeasing to Him whose name you bear.

Numbers 35

Chapter 34 showed no provision for the Levites, the family or tribe of Israel, who were set apart for the service of God. It was right that they should not be counted in when the land was portioned out to the children of Israel, for theirs was the highest privilege of serving God; we read of His care for them in the eighteenth chapter. God had told Aaron for himself and the tribe of Levi in verse 8 of that chapter,

“Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them. I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel.”

Yet, God will see that His servants are provided for in natural things, and in this chapter today we read of His command that the children of Israel shall give to the Levites, forty-eight cities and land around them for their homes. All over the land of Canaan were these little towns of the Levites to be found, and six of them were to be made hiding places or refuges for those who accidentally or ignorantly killed any person. God would not make little of the shedding of blood, but made a difference between the murderer, and those who killed without realization of what they did.

Verse 25 then appointed, to the one not looked on as a murderer, a shelter until the high priest’s death; until that time he was homeless, and yet in the keeping of God. No doubt, God was, in this appointment, looking on to the time when Israel should be guilty of the death of His Son. Some of them did it knowingly, and through hatred to Jesus; these have borne their punishment on earth, and shall vet bear more in eternity. But the mass of the people were covered by the prayer of Jesus, “Father; forgive them for they know not what they do.”

In Acts 3:17 the apostle Peter declared that “through ignorance ye (Jews) did it”, and 1 Corinthians 2:8 states, “which none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” On this account, God was pleased to offer salvation first to the Jew, and even the unsaved Jews are in a special sense preserved by God. When Christ gives up this place as the believer’s High Priest in heaven (Hebrews 10:21), taking His heavenly people, the Church, home, Israel will go back to their land and have it as their home again.

Numbers 36

This gives us a further evidence of God’s care over His people. We read of the daughters of Zelophehad of the tribe of Manasseh in chapter 27, where they asked for a portion of land. God’s purposes must be carried out, and the tribes must be preserved apart. So at His word, the daughters of Zelophehad are given a possession, and His word here makes that land sure to them. No one with faith in God ever went to Him with a need that He did not satisfy; no cry, however feeble, with Him as its object, failed of an answer.

“As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is tried: He is a buckler to all those that trust in Him.” Psa. 18:30.

Deuteronomy 1

The book we are beginning today is Moses’ review, under God, of the past behavior of the people he had led to the border of the promised land with a forward look through all their coming history. It is his farewell address, and its theme all the way through is obedience. The forms and ceremonies of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, shadows of the deep things of God, had not been, and never were, fully carried out, but assuming that they were to be duly observed, there was something deeper, as regards themselves to whom these writings of God, by His servant Moses, were given, and that was the need for a heart obedience to God.

Israel had failed, lost all title to the promised possession, but God in grace had gone on with them, and was about to bring them into it; would help them to take it, and would keep them in it, if they obeyed His words. Alas! they utterly failed, despite the unweariedness of a God of infinite patience and tender love; they lost their possession, and when the promised One came, Son of God and Son of David, they murdered Him, and are set aside in God’s judicial ways until the Church, the bride of Christ, has been gathered out by the Holy Spirit, and caught away to glory. The Church too has failed, through disobedience, and is today in a ruined condition. Urgently, then, there is a call for obedience to God and His Word. May we learn from the pages of Deuteronomy!

Verses 2 and 3. Eleven days’ journey, but nearly forty years on the way! This chapter tells us why it was so long a trip; (See in particular, verse 40). Lessons were to be learned, painful lessons, that were needed to show the children of God themselves, and the God with whom they had to do.

Verse 19. It was not far to Kadesh Barnea, on the border of the promised land, but unbelief kept them from at once entering,—rebellion against God (verse 26). Notice the care of God for them, told in verses 31 and 33.

Verse 41. “We have sinned” is easily said, and meant nothing, for their ways showed it. Verse 45. They wept, but they were tears of disobedient, self-willed children, and God kept them “many days” without a single step forward.

Deuteronomy 2

It was not because they chose to, but “as the Lord spoke unto me,” as Moses told the people (verse 1), that they had turned back into the wilderness which was behind them. They had shown very plainly that they, as a people —for there were exceptions, —were not fit to go into God’s land. Years had to pass, long years of waiting, and, it is to be hoped, of learning to trust God more, and themselves less, before the children of Israel should hear the call of God to cross the river and enter the land.

His eyes were on them (He never forgets those who are His, though He sends them trial after trial sometimes), and when the right time came, the word was,

“Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; turn you northward” (verse 3). They were reminded that they were only passing through, only travelers to a better land, a home God had prepared for his people, and so they must “take good heed to themselves”, not meddling with the world around, even their relatives that had not the hope set before them that this pilgrim people had.

They had lacked nothing, in all their wandering through that largely uninhabited, uncultivated land, because “the Lord thy God hath been with thee.” What kindness, what love, what mercy, they had experienced from His gracious hand all the way; yes, every day, of the journey through life! And God, in here reminding the children of Israel of their history, does not say a word about their murmuring and complaining; their speaking against Moses, and their many sins.

The strength they had trusted in, more than in God, “the men of war” (verses 14, 15, 16) had to be taken away, and then the forward march to Israel’s land, began in earnest. Then only was it, that dread and fear began among the nations (verse 25) at the report of their coming. Enemies were met; they did not seek them, but rather the enemies came out against them; and the enemies were destroyed.

We may wonder perhaps at God’s directing His people to put whole nations to death, but we must remember these were the nations which God had long before spoken of as to be judged; their day of mercy, long extended, was past.

Deuteronomy 3

When enemies come against the believer, if he is in the path of obedience, the word of God says, “Fear not” (verse 2), though their strength be great. The enemy’s power was utterly destroyed, and his land divided among the children of Israel (verses 12 to 17).

There were other enemies yet to be met across the Jordan, for the land would become the home of the people only as they took possession of it, but the Lord their God would fight for them (verse 22). Moses longed to go over the Jordan with his people, and asked that he might, but it was not to be (verse 26). Yet he was allowed from the mountain top to see its extent, but Joshua was the new leader. He would bring them to inherit the laud which Moses should see.

In these things we are led to see God’s sovereignty; it is His people, and the world, too, is His; He does as He wills, but His judgments are just, and He is long-suffering and full of tender mercy.

Deuteronomy 4

In the first three chapters of this book, we have been retracing the history of the children of Israel, from the time they left the mountain of the law, to the place where they were now encamped. Was it not gracious of God to omit from the story almost every Mention of the sins of the people? The blessings of obedience are shown, and but little is said here of the sorrows the people brought upon themselves by their disobedience.

Having been most wonderfully blessed, the people of Israel are repeatedly urged in this chapter to give the closest attention to God’s Word. This is not only in verse 1, but in verses 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 2:3, & 40, the need is pressed for keeping His word in their minds and hearts. The second verse, too, commanded them to neither add to His Word, nor take anything from it. O, how important the Word of God is! How infallible a guide!

Baal-peor (verse 3) was a solemn memory, but those who stood for God were alive still. God was so near to them, unlike His ways with any other nation, but it made them very responsible; they were to take heed to themselves, for danger lay ahead. They would make idols for themselves, and provoke Him to anger, so that they would he scattered among the nations, serving false gods.

Still, Moses declared, if from thence they should seek the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul, they should find Him. When trouble came on them because of their sins, if they turned to the Lord their God, and should obey His word (for He is a merciful God), He would not forsake them, nor destroy them, nor forget the covenant of their fathers which He had sworn to them, (verses 29-31). How gracious are His words!

Then God, through Moses, reminds the people of the peculiar privileges that had been and were theirs: —His word is, as usual, put first (verse 33); then the Mighty deliverance He had wrought for them, making them. His people, though there were others greater and mightier than they, and giving them a home for an inheritance. This reminds us of the Christian’s happy portion,

Are you a Christian?

Because then these things had been done for them, these earthly people of God, as indeed the least, as we might say, that could be expected of them, should keep His word and do according to it (verse 40).

May our God stir up His people of this present day to a far greater desire to answer to His word in heart and soul and conscience.

Moses (verse 41), sets apart three. cities on the east side of the Jordan, for refuges for those who, without realizing what they were doing, killed another.

It reminds us of the word of the Lord Jesus when they crucified Him,

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), for the punishment, due to Israel for putting their Messiah to death, has not been carried out, though they are set aside until another dealing of God.

This book of Deuteronomy, then, is what God, through His servant Moses, set before the children of Israel as they rested in sight of the home prepared for them by God, already possessors of many blessings secured to them by the same powerful and gracious hand. (verses 44-49).

Deuteronomy 5

The first word is “Hear”, and the next directions are to “learn”, to “keep” and to “do” the word of God. That word was given to them directly, though the people of Israel were afraid because of the fire—a sign of the testing judgment of God which the natural man could not face and live.

This unfolding of directions for the people who had already proved untrustworthy and failures in themselves, begins properly with the ten commandments, the foundation of the covenant God had made, and where obedience began. The first word is the name of Him who had delivered them, and there was to be no one in their hearts before Him.

Down to verse 11, the commandments are exactly, word for word, as we found them in Exodus 20, but in verse 12 there is a change. It comes out in a notable alteration in verse 15, where the reason for keeping the Sabbath is that these people had been servants in the land of Egypt, and had been brought out through a “mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm.” They were then a delivered people, and in thankfulness to God they were privileged to rest in what He had done, —the work of redemption was all His, and wholly done. The later commandments are as given in Exodus 20.

But the people had shown that they desired not to be too close to God, —distance suited them.

“Go thou near,” they had said to Moses, and God, who had heard their words, and read their hearts better than they knew themselves, expressed to Moses His thoughts about them, and His desire for them.

“O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever!”

Satan would tempt them to turn aside from the word of God; if they saw on the “right hand” something they turned away from as wrong, Satan would try to lead them in another way into sin. It takes constant watchfulness on both the “right hand” and on the “left” to preserve the believer in the narrow path of obedience to God.

Deuteronomy 6

God, who loved His people, and would give them to know the only real, lasting happiness, here tells them in simple and plain words how to be happy. It is the very thing the world seeks, in pleasure and in sin, and never finds.

It is one God, not many gods, and He must have all our heart, all our wants, satisfied in Him, and all our strength spent for Him. Then if you are His child, love to Him will lead you to store up His word in your heart (verse 6), and to diligently tell others. Verse 7 is for fathers and mothers, but it is plain that the same principle applies to all, —talking of the Lord and heavenly things when sitting, walking, lying down and rising up. His ways and His thoughts (verse 8), and the believer’s home (verse 9), are all to tell of the One who has loved him and redeemed him. This is the key to happiness, indeed.

We become children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:26).

Deuteronomy 7

Because the world around is to be judged by God, His people are to be in holy separation from it. They are chosen by Him to be a special people to Him, because He loved them, and will keep His promise. He redeemed them from slavery, the terrible slavery of Satan.

If God were given His true place in the believer’s heart, every earthly blessing he could wish for was to be his. Nothing would be held back. And it is still true that “No good thing will He withhold from them who walk uprightly.” Psa. 84:11.

The children of God now have heavenly blessings, rather than earthly ones, yet there is the promise in Philippians 4:19:

“God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” This is always true, though there may be a testing of our faith.

Deuteronomy 8

The dangers and privations of the way were meant of God to humble the people who, like ourselves, had a lot of natural pride about them, to prove them and to know what was in their hearts. They were allowed to be hungry, that God might give them heavenly food. Their clothes never wore out, nor did their feet swell from walking, all through the forty years, because God was with them, watching over and caring for them, chastening (correcting) them too, on the journey. For it was just that, —a journey to a God-given home where happiness and contentment would abound.

Still there was a danger that they would forget the Giver of all, when they received His bounty.

Deuteronomy 9

It was not their power, but the Lord’s, their God, who went before the people, that would destroy His enemies and give the children of Israel their home, their rest. Not because of any goodness in themselves, for they were a “stiff-necked” people, provoking their God again and again to anger against them. It was the wickedness of the nations, and His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that accounted for the blessings of this people.

Deuteronomy 10

How good of God to still go on with a people that had sinned so against Him! It is just that way in which He is acting now towards the world which crucified His Son; He is still sending out the message of forgiveness to everyone who turns to Him.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” is glad news to all who know themselves sinners before God.

Israel had broken the law; it could not then be set up in the sight of the nation as the rule they lived by, for sinners they were, guilty before God. The law is therefore put inside the ark; the sign of God’s presence, where blood, the blood of a spotless substitute was seen as the sign of the acceptance of God’s people; the law was hidden, for it could not save: but Only told their condemnation.

The death of Aaron, and his son’s taking his place as the high priest (verse 6) tell us that the way of approach to God was to remain open, for a poor sinner must, while grace lasts, be able to come to Him in the power of the shed blood.

This, it seems, is why the tribe of Levi is mentioned here, too, for God would have His servants still at work for Him in the world.

Verses 1 to 9 are a parenthesis, and verse 10 connects with the last verse of chapter 9.

The people, though they deserved to die because of their flagrant sin, were not to be destroyed, and Moses as their leader was to go on before them, that they might take possession of the promised land. What ways then should those redeemed people show in their lives,—surely none but what were pleasing to the Lord their God. How much they should have loved Him for the great love wherewith He loved them, and out of that love service to Him would grow. Pride and self-will should not anymore be shown. but the very opposite, and they were to love the strangers who would come among them, because they had been strangers too. God thus reminds His people of their past, and His wonderful works for them.

Deuteronomy 11

This chapter ends the first part of Deuteronomy. It takes into consideration what has gone before, and gives a solemn warning. They had seen what God had done to Pharoah and Egypt; to themselves when they had sinned, and notably to Dathan and Abiram; and having seen the judgment of God, the people were to keep His commandments; to be strong and go in and possess the land to which they were going.

What a land it was, that God had prepared for them, (verses 9-12). It makes one think of heaven, the eternal home of those who are redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus, only that this earthly home of Israel might he lost to those who were given it. How much, we may surely say, God cared for this people, who did nothing to win His love! And that is true of you and me, reader; we have done nothing, for Him to win that love, yet He spared not His Son, but delivered Him up for us all. O, how solemn, how serious, to be refusing God’s love!

His words were to be laid up in their hearts; kept in their minds, always before them; their children, too, were to be taught of God. The very homes of the people were to be marked by the Word of God seen and heard. Should it be different today?

Blessings from God would be theirs if they obeyed Him; disobedience brought a curse. Which would it be? And what of you who read these words? Are you for God on the side of His Son, or for yourself? A blessing or a curse; heaven or hell, —which is your choice?

Deuteronomy 12

We are finished with the introduction to this book, and here begin the statutes and judgments, —the second division of Deuteronomy. The first subjects now have to do with the worship of God; afterwards we come to the affairs of the people.

It was God’s land given to His people to possess, all their days on earth, and the first direction He gives is that every trace of another object of worship than Himself shall be wiped out. There was no choice about it, it had to be done; God must be the only object of His people’s, thoughts. He had a right to choose the center of gathering, —the place of His meeting with His people,—and in this chapter God assured the children of Israel again and again that He would choose a place where He would put His Name. To that center alone they were to come with their glad offerings to Him; it was connected with their happiness (verses 7 and 12) in the blessings of God, and nowhere else could they go, though some place of their own choice might seem suitable enough in their opinion.

There was to be no room for their own wills to work any longer; what they had done might be very good and right to them (verse 8), but hereafter that could not be, for God’s word was to direct them in everything. They had now a guide Book which would decide every question of what was due to God.

It might seem a long way to go, to reach the place where God’s Name should be set, and there is no doubt that Satan would tempt the people on that account to stay away, yet God must have His way; they could eat their feasts at home if the distance was great, but what belonged to God was to be given to Him in the place of His choosing.

Observe and hear all these words! (verse 28). O, that the children of God did that more,—delighting only in searching out of His word, that wonderful book, the Bible, all of His will, and then seeking in lowly dependence on Him, to carry it out day by day. (See verse 32 also).

The close of the, chapter shows again that the ways of the world are a snare to the people of God, and they are to take heed to themselves that they be not trapped into ways that God hated.

Deuteronomy 13

There was the gravest danger that another should take the place of God in the hearts of those who professed to be His people, and He guards them against that in this chapter. They were bound by every tie to the true God, and it would take constant watchfulness against the wiles of Satan to keep out idolatry. Just so is it today, for Satan who came into the garden of Eden to tempt our first parents, is still doing his deadly work, though millions of people now have no images or idols, such as are spoken of in chapter 13.

Most people have what they call a religion, but not all of it will stand the test of verse 4. He who would persuade the people to turn away from the true God, to walk in other ways than what His word points out, was to be put to death, even though he came with signs, and foretold things which actually happened. This might seem hard, yet there was to be no compromise where God is concerned, not even where the dearest ones, —a brother, a son, a daughter, wife or friend,—should propose to give up the true God for some other name, some other object perhaps commonly sought after in the world (verse 7).

For even these, for whom, affection by the strong ties of nature would be strong, there could be no pity. In standing for God, and acting for Him, the ties of nature must be disregarded, and unsparing judgment should be visited; the leader in that solemn and heart-breaking step being the one from whom, if nature should decide, there should be pity, and protection.

Lastly, for every approach of idolatry is here guarded against—this departure from God might mark a whole city, a group or community, and not only individuals here and there; again there was to be no pity, no sparing hand. The city and all its inhabitants, its cattle even, was to be totally destroyed, nothing allowed to remain.

Idolatry is simply the taking by something or someone else, the place of God in the human heart. It does not need to be an image or idol to be prayed to, and given offerings.

Who or what is the center of your heart, my reader? Beware that it be not any substitute for the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), and there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). God demands your whole heart, young Christian; let not the world with its attraction win you from Him.

Deuteronomy 14

Because they were children (it is literally “sons,” here) of the Lord their God, the people of Israel were not allowed to disfigure themselves. A holy people and a chosen people, they were to be for their God outwardly and inwardly. It was not, we see, in order to be His sons, that certain ways should be adopted, but because they were in that relationship.

Verses 3 to 20 correspond to what we have looked at in the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, but there the words were given first to Moses and Aaron, and for them to pass on to the people, for Leviticus was the priest’s guide book. Deuteronomy is addressed directly to all the people, without distinction. And God here tells simply and plainly what was good for them, to eat, naming the different animals, with which the people were familiar. The creatures with names to us uncommon in the fifth verse, are different kinds of deer and wild goats and sheep. Suitable food was that which corresponded in character with the God-given character of His people. The parted hoof refers to a clean and firm walk, conscientious behavior suitable to a believer; the chewing of the cud is related to the effect of God’s Word on me inwardly. This truth is intended to have such a place in my life, that it will be a part of my very self, and be seen in the outward things that are suitable to a child of God.

So, as to fishes, what was according to divine order was food; in birds, those which cannot be tamed were rejected; and in creeping things, because they groveled on the earth, there was nothing of food. These all set before us what is or is not, suitable food for a Christian’s mind in reading and in associations.

Verse 21 marks again the difference between the child of God and the world; there are things which are not suitable in those who hear His name, and are therefore called to a holy, separate life but which might be accepted in the world where God is not honored. To eat a thing which died of itself would be, as another has said, the same in principle as for a Christian to join the world in its pleasures and amusements. He has something better than the poor dead things, of this world to feed upon, —the Living Bread from heaven, the Lord Jesus. But the unconverted know nothing of the most precious things the believer enjoys.

Yet another admonition is needed. “Thou shalt not seethe (boil) a kid in his mother’s milk.” Whatever is contrary to the order of what God has established, or is unbecoming, is forbidden.

Verse 23 brings us again to the question of meeting God in the place where He chooses to put His Name. To that place they were to bring all that was due to God, truly reckoned (verse 22). If the way were long, and the place far off, the Israelite might turn into money what he had to take, and exchange the money again at the chosen place of meeting, for there and there only was God to be met and communion enjoyed, rejoicing in the gracious gifts of the gracious Giver. Surely then there is a present-day counterpart of the earthly center of Israel, and the writer firmly believes it to be set out in the Lord Jesus’ impressive words,

“Where two or three are gathered together to My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:20. And in many other passages of the New Testament which set out the ground, the Center, the power and the authority of gathering.

The Levite, without an earthly inheritance, was not to be forgotten; selfishness is natural to us; strangers, fatherless and widows were all to be remembered, that the blessing of God might rest on His people. The special tithe of verses 28, 29 is only found here, —nowhere else in scripture.

Deuteronomy 15

They had been slaves themselves; could that ever be forgotten? They had been poor indeed; a look backward to the time before God had taken them up, when they were wretched brickmakers under the lash of the taskmaster in Egypt, would remind them of that. What then? Every seven years every debtor among the people of God was to be released, for He would greatly bless His people, if they would “carefully hearken” to His word, to do all His commandments.

Here we have an Old Testament statement of what is expressed in 2 Corinthians 9:6-8,

“He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” The poor human heart is so easily hardened, the hand so easily shut from the poor brother (verse 7). In verse 9 we should read, “a wicked thought in thy heart.” instead of “a thought in thy wicked heart.” as our common version reads. Ah, God can read our thoughts! May He warm the hearts of all His own, to a more real imitation of the Lord Jesus in the grace that was so beautifully shown in Him, the rich One, who for our sakes became poor. that we (believers) through His poverty might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

The Hebrew slave (verses 12-18), was not only to be set free at the end of six years, but he was to be furnished “liberally” out of what God had given. This we may say, is like God. He sets the poor slave of Satan free, and gives him the very treasure house of heaven to draw upon; no grudging God is ours! Then is given the possibility of a willing slave who loved his master, and does not want to go free. Surely each must have treated the other in the fear of God, faithfully, and in love.

Verses 19-23: What was owing to God was to be recognized as His. Year by year He should have His portion in the gathering of His people in the appointed place, — “thou and thy household,” for the whole family ought to be the Lord’s. Nothing with a blemish should be offered to God; it might be eaten at home, but the blood. as always, must be poured out.

Deuteronomy 16

Three times every year a journey was to be made, and not empty handed, to the place, once more mentioned, where the Lord their God set His Name. These occasions were the passover (verses 1-8); the feast of weeks, or pentecost, (verses 9-12), the feast of tabernacles, (verses 13-15). In two other passages of Scripture these and other services of God appear. (Leviticus 23; and Numbers, chapters 28-29.

The passover was at the beginning of the year, the constant reminder of redemption, —God’s foundation act for His people, —and in the place which He should choose to place His Name there (verses 2, 6 and 7), the redeemed ones were to be found, celebrating the great deliverance He had made for them, having put away sin from their dwellings. It was truly a time of remembrance, looking back to the day when they came forth out of the land of Egypt. So the Christian is enjoined, in the touching words of his Lord, “This do in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24-25), to recall the vastly greater work of Christ in the one offering of Himself on the cross of Calvary.

When seven weeks had passed after the beginning of the harvest, the feast of weeks brought all the males, as representing the hosts of Israel, in case all the family could not come, again to the place which the Lord their God had chosen to place His name there. It was now a free will offering, as He had blessed them (verse 10), and all are seen there, —the heads of the families, their sons and daughters and their servants, the Levites too, and the, stranger, the fatherless and the widow were to be brought there to the place of God’s appointment. This is a forecast of the beginning of Christianity on the principle of redemption and a new covenant.

Lastly, after the gathering in of the grain and the grapes, the people are to meet again in the appointed place, now to celebrate the full joy of God’s grace to Israel in the land.

This in its true meaning has not come to pass yet, for there must be first, God’s gathering in of His own (the grain), before the storm of judgment breaks, and treading down His enemies in the wine-press (Revelation 14:14-20; Isaiah 63:1-6), and these events cannot take place before the close of the present day of grace.

Where, we may ask, in the language of 1 Peter 4:18, shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Trusting in themselves, and indifferent to God, they will be eternally lost.

O, dear children, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” 2 Cor. 6:2.

We here open the third section of the book; we have been studying the things that belonged to the religious life of Israel, and now begin upon the ordinary affairs of the people.

Judges and officers were to be provided in plenty, to deal justly in every matter that came up. No groves of trees might be planted near the altar of God, nor might a statue or image be set up, because both of these things led to idolatry. They were thus to avoid the appearance of evil such as marked the nations around. Sacrifices to God could not include any blemished animals. (See Malachi 1). The idolater should be put to death. Two or three witnesses were needed, —the word of one person not being sufficient.

When there were disagreements too. difficult to settle, they were to take them to God—to the place which the Lord their God should choose, there to inquire, and they who abode in His presence, would show what was of Him in the matter. He who refused that judgment should die; he presumed against God. There was no thought here of going to law before the world (1 Cor. 6:1-9), for everything was settled within the assembly of God. Surely it should be no different today!

The last section of the chapter relates to the choosing of a king to rule over the people. God knew they would want a king and here tells them what he must be, and what he must not be. Perhaps it is enough to say here. that all that he should not do, as we here learn, Solomon did; and that which he should do, told here, Solomon failed in, and he was the greatest king in point of splendor of his court, and the works he did, and in wisdom, of all the kings of Israel and Judah.

Man always fails in that which God trusts to him. God is the alone one in whom we can fully trust. Has He your trust, reader, for eternity?

“Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.” Romans 4:7.

This begins a new subject; the last part of the sixteenth chapter should be read with the seventeenth.

There are those who think people are all naturally good; God evidently did not consider this to be true, for judges and officers had to be appointed in all the cities of the country; and they needed to be told to judge rightly too. What a reader of men’s hearts He is, as we may see from verse 19: “Thou shalt not wrest judgment” (turn away from the right, or force a wrong judgment); “thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift.” There is no respect of persons with God, (Romans 2:11; Ephesians 6:9; and Colossians 3:25), but it has ever been found among men (1 Samuel 8:1-3; Luke 18:2-6; James 2).

There was great danger of idol-worship coming in; the nations of the world in general worshiped idols, and the ways of the world very easily become the Christian’s ways. Accordingly, no groves of trees might be planted near the altar of the Lord their God. These groves were not simple rows of trees; they are thought by some to have been not trees at all, but images or pillars, or were stems of trees set in the ground. They were places for idolatry and other wrong things.

Deuteronomy 17

Was it possible that the people would offer to God animals that were not sound and good? Yes, the last book of the Old Testament records (Malachi 1:8) that blind, lame and sick animals were offered in sacrifices. The sacrifices of the Old Testament all pointed on to the sacrifice of the holy, spotless Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us on Calvary’s cross.

Anyone who served the false gods of the nations was to be stoned to death, if it were known to be true by the word of two or three witnesses.

To think that men and women who knew of the true God, could really bow down to the sun, or the moon, or the stars, which have no life, and can neither hear nor speak! Yet everyone has an object that his heart is set upon, and if it be not the Lord Jesus, it is an idol in God’s sight. Perhaps it is one’s self; sometimes it is money, or power, but there are many things that are idols.

The presence of God was the place to seek an answer in matters too hard for man (verse 8), and that word was final (verse 11); whoever refused to abide by the sentence spoken there, should be put to death. This should lead Christians to consider the importance of attending closely to the Word of God, the only safe guide, for man cannot be trusted.

The people would demand a king, that they might be like the godless world around them; he should be king whom God would choose for them.

God chose David to be king, but his son Solomon, when he came to reign. did the very things that were forbidden in verses 16 and 17. What a record the Bible is, of the blessed God, and of poor failing, untrustworthy man!

The Word of God is again brought in, at the close of the chapter, as the rule of life to be followed always.

Deuteronomy 18

The priests the Levites (in Deuteronomy, priests are not separated from Levites, as they are in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers) were in a special way cared for by God. They were His servants, and His offerings were shared with them. If the people were going on in a godly way, their offerings to God would be bountiful, and His servants would be well provided for; while if they were going on badly, the offerings would be poor, and God’s servants would suffer. This is a principle that holds good today. If the believer’s heart is right toward God, the Lord’s servants will be provided for in abundance, and when the servants are poorly cared for, it is a sure sign of coldness of heart toward the Lord.

Verses 9 to 14 and on to the close of the chapter, have a lesson for today also. Christians should have nothing to do with card-readers, astrologists, spiritualists and others who claim to be able to tell the future, “for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.”

God has raised up the Prophet of verses 15 and 18, in the person of the Lord Jesus: “unto Him ye shall hearken . . . and it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto My (God’s) words which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him.”

Deuteronomy 19

The fourth chapter told us of three cities of refuge on the east side of the Jordan, to which one who unintentionally killed another might escape; now in this chapter we find God’s appointment of three more cities within the land, or across the Jordan river.

It was the land their God gave them, verses 1-3 declares. and verse 10 likewise, and as we have before noticed, the people were tenants on good behavior, for it was God’s land after all, and it must be kept in a way pleasing to Him.

To kill another, even unintentionally, was no light matter, as we see here. Immediately the unhappy man, who had killed another, knew what he had done, he had to go with all speed to the nearest city of refuge, even though the avenger of blood might be pursuing him.

If we turn to the New Testament, we shall find that there were two classes of people who had part in the death of Christ, —those who did it knowingly, and with hatred to that blessed One who came in lowly grace to a world of sinners; and those who in ignorance were led by the wicked men who wanted to see Him put to death. One of these classes is seen in Matthew 26:3-5; 27:1-4,20; and the other is shown in the Lord’s prayer on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34): and in Peter’s address to the people in the temple in Acts 3:17. Matthew 21:41 and 22:7 foretold what actually took place about forty years afterward when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. For the ignorant ones there is mercy, and that not only now, when Jews and Gentiles alike hear the Gospel, but in a later day Israel will turn to God, and be His earthly people.

The chapter closes with God’s mind about dishonest and untruthful ways. Evil had to be put away from among His people; sin must be punished.

Deuteronomy 20

The close of the nineteenth chapter and almost the whole of the twentieth, seem quite different in spirit from the teachings of the New Testament, and they are, but both are of God. The difference is not that God’s principles change, but that in our chapter today He was proposing to punish His enemies, and from the time that His son came to earth until now, He is showing mercy, and delaying the punishment of His enemies. When the day of mercy ends, judgment will fall on every sinner who rejects the salvation of God.

There were two classes of enemies of God, as chapter 20 shows. These classes were, those to whom mercy was to be held out (verse 10); and those to whom it was not (verse 16). All deserved judgment; all received the judgment of God, if they neglected or refused the offer. It was not a question of trying to do better, with the people of verse 10; it was to accept or refuse peace offered in the name of God. Just so is it now, in the day in which we live; God is offering peace. Have you accepted it?

“To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Romans 4:5.

Verses 2 to 9 show how God’s service calls for devotion to Him. Those whose hearts and minds are set on earthly things can be of little use to Him in the war against the power of sin and Satan. This war is always going on; the Christian does not fight with human enemies, but Satan’s power.

Deuteronomy 21

This chapter contains some more rules for the children of Israel to follow after they would get into their land, and in that way God’s care is shown over His people, and His determination that the land of His people should be kept clean of wrong-doing in every form. As the Lord Jesus said, speaking of the Old Testament scriptures, “They testify of Me” (John 5:39), so let us consider our chapter in connection with what He did.

Verses 1-9. Jesus has died, and the guilt of His death is upon the people of Israel (Matthew 27:25). When God sets about again to have an earthly people, the rejection to death of His Son will be brought before them; it will be a new generation of Israelites, and they will say (verse 7) “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.” Nevertheless, “the city which is next unto the slain man” (verse 3) is Jerusalem, —Israel is concerned. and the only atonement for the willful sin of shedding the blood of Jesus, is that blood itself. So, both the “one found slain” (verse 1). and the heifer (verse 4), typify Christ. The rough valley is this world, and particularly the land of Israel, to which Jesus came down.

Verses 15-17. Israel and the Gentiles have both been chosen in turn, and Israel is at present the forsaken one, but not forever. When repentance comes to Israel, the inheritance will be theirs.

Verses 18-21. Israel is the rebellious son; this is said over and over again in Scripture. And when the dawn of Israel’s great day begins, most of the nation will be more rebellious than ever, and will be given up to worship the man of sin. They represent this stubborn son whom the godly remnant refuses and reject. Death is his portion.

Verses 22-23 remind us of the place the Lord of glory took in dying on the cross. He was made a curse for us who receive Him by faith. (See Gal. 3:13).

Deuteronomy 22

Perhaps some of us are finding these chapters long and not so very interesting. But remember that it is out of God’s deep interest in a people He loves, that these rules are given. Think how much He must have thought about them, to tell them of even the smallest matters, like lost clothes (verse 3), bird’s nests (verse 6), and eating grapes in a neighbor’s vineyard (Chap. 23:24)! Surely, He has as deep an interest in those who believe in the Lord Jesus in these days. With loving thoughts, He concerns Himself with all our affairs by day and by night! Knowing this, in the twenty-third Psalm, David records of God as his Shepherd, “Thou art with me” “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Chapters 22 and 23 show us not only things that are right, and things that are wrong: they go further and tell us what God’s will is about even the smallest matters in our lives: what is pleasing to Him, and what He cannot be pleased with. How, shall anyone know what he should do or should not do? By studying the Word of God, of course. The Bible is a mine of wealth, as someone has said very truly.

Deuteronomy 23

In the twenty-third chapter we find people of some other countries mentioned: Ammonites and Moabites, Edomites and Egyptians all come in for mention, and we notice that God does not forget the past. The children of Ammon and those of Moab might come to live among the people of God for many years, yet they were not allowed to join God’s people in their meetings; the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of these strangers, even though they were born in the country, were just as much shut out when the people of God came together to speak to Him. Ten generations is a long time, —at least 200 years. If left to ourselves, without the Word of God, in a question like this, you and I would, in a very short time, say, “It is a long while ago that this trouble happened; we might as well forget it, and admit that we have made mistakes too; we must not be too severe”, but since God’s Word is to be the Christian’s guide. we must look to learn what is His mind. Not only here in this 23rd of Deuteronomy do we find instruction on this subject, but in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, verse 15, we get these words: “God requireth that which is past.”

Verse 14 is another important one to guard God’s people against everything not suitable to His presence. Shall His keen eyes, as He “walks” among them, see any unclean thing in them? Let nothing he left unjudged, and not put away, that the Bible condemns.

Deuteronomy 24

It was indeed a hard-hearted people (see Matthew 19:8 and Mark 10:5) to whom God gave these rules. The Holy Spirit in our day has a deeper message, because of the finished work of Christ, and divorce could not now be justified among Christians on such grounds as those of this chapter.

If the people were hard of heart, God was not like them, and the greater part of this chapter speaks in kindness of the poor and defenseless, whether it were one’s brother or a hired servant, or a stranger, or an orphan, or a widow.

“Thou shalt remember,” not how great thou art, or anything of the kind, but “that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence.” (verse 18)

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, dear reader, do you remember often enough that you were a slave of that cruel tyrant Satan until God, in Christ, redeemed you? Turn to Ephesians 2:1-9, and read that wonderful statement, true of everyone who trusts in Jesus.

Deuteronomy 25

Verse 3. God lays down a rule regarding punishment of wrong-doers, and in the next verse He thinks (how good and how gracious He is!) of the humble ox treading out the grain.

Verses 5-10. It was important for an earthly people that the family name should be kept up: this would have no force with a heavenly people, the Church of God. They have no proper hopes on earth, but in heaven.

Honest weights and measures are commanded in verses 13 to 16, and the enemies of God were not to be made friends of (verses 17-19). Amalek cared nothing for God, —did not fear Him and attacked the weaker ones of the flock. It is the true character of this world under the leadership of its prince and god, Satan.

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in Him.” 1 John 2:15.

Deuteronomy 26

This chapter, the last of another section of Deuteronomy, suitably comes at the close of fourteen chapters, mostly warning against sin of various kinds. If the believer has examined himself in the light of the Word of God, and judged and put away everything that the Bible condemns, he is ready to take his offering to the place where God sets His name, to be a worshiper in His presence, and to that place he is directed to come. (Verses 1-11).

We learn from, these verses, and of course others that tell of the mind of God, that He wishes those who are His people to make themselves acquainted with all that He has done for them; to live in heart and ways near to Him. All that they have they owe to Him, not only in earthly things, but particularly in heavenly hopes and joys.

If their hearts are right toward God, their minds will be engaged in all their spare moments with “the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee” —that it, with. the things of God, rather than the objects of this world. Then if the believer’s thoughts are on the things of God, there will be “fruit” to God.

There are many New Testament passages in which this word “fruit” is found, and the reader will be well repaid in searching them out; I mention only Luke 6:43,44; Galatians. 5:22; Hebrews 13:15. Yet, after all, Christ is the first fruits, and it is of Him that the Christian thinks first and best, and of His worthiness he should always be ready to speak, both to God the Father and to his fellow men.

It is sad when Christians are found very ready to talk about their pleasures and their business, yet are almost silent when there is occasion to speak about the Lord. It is the fruit of the condemned world, and not of the “land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” that they have been gathering, is it not?

The chosen place (verse 2) for many years of Israel’s history was Jerusalem, but today there is no earthly city where the Lord has set His name. The place which He honors with His presence now is named in Matthew 18:20: “Where two or three are gathered together unto My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” It may be in some humble home, or on a back street in a great city, for this is the day of small things.

The priest (verse 3) now is the blessed Lord Himself, for since the cross of Christ, a human priesthood has no more place. (See Hebrews chapters 9 and 10. and in particular chapter 10:11-25).

Verse 5. Jacob, the beginning of the nation, was the “Syrian ready to perish” —from famine, who went down to Egypt with his family to be cared for by his great son Joseph, —type of the Lord Jesus. There is little to be said of man at best, but his needs, his sad case upon which God looked with pity, and then brought salvation by power greater than anything this world knew. But this God-fearing Israelite has much to say of the One Who has done everything for him (verses 7-9). Before (verse 7) there was prayer; now (verse 10) there is praise.

Verse 11. There is room for all—even the “stranger”, who longs to be one with the worshipers.

THE subject the twelfth verse takes up seems quite detached from what we have been considering, but it is not. If verse 11 shows the obedient people of God, happy in His presence, rejoicing in every good thing He has given their; verse 12 bids them show that unselfishness! which we can see in its fulness only in the Lord Jesus, who, “though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich.” 2 Cor. 8:9.

Deuteronomy 14:28,29 has already told us of the tithe of the third year, when the people of Israel stayed at home, and gave to those who had not, out of their bounty. The Levite who was in the service of God; the “stranger” who was not an Israelite but had come among them; the fatherless and the widow were not forgotten by God, and He graciously reminds His people in this chapter that their happiness is not complete without care for the friendless, the neglected and the needy. What do you do with what God has given you, Christian reader?

Verse 13: notice the latter part of this verse, and of the next one. The whole Word of God should be observed; there are true Christians who are not willing to obey where it cuts into their pleasures, and in other ways takes from them what is clung to, but is contrary to the mind of God. Personal holiness should characterize the believer, as is brought out in verse 14. “Mourning” in this verse is elsewhere many times translated “iniquity” or “vanity”, and this seems to be the true meaning.

Then follows the prayer of verse 15, for, “No matter how God may bless us, to whatever extent He is pleased to make us a means of blessing to others, there is this further consideration that we are not taken out of the place of dependence.” Heart and soul (verse 16) are to be engaged for God.

What nearness to God the closing verses tell of! Reader, are you saved? If saved, are you seeking to please Him who has bought you with His blood?

Deuteronomy 27

The first part of the chapter is a call to keep the commandments delivered to the people from God. They were to be written upon stones “very plainly” (verse 8). Keeping the land which God gave them, depended upon their keeping His words; an altar, too, was to be erected (verses 5-7) for burnt offerings and peace offerings. So far all looks well. Joshua built the altar, and wrote the law on the stones (Joshua 8:30-32) here prescribed.

In Samaria, not far from the well of Sychar (John 4) are two mountains, near enough together for people in the valley between them to hear words spoken from the side of either. Half the tribes of Israel were to stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people; and the other half were to stand on Mount Ebal to curse (verses 11-26). But when we look for the blessing, there is none; if there were one, it would have been given; instead are only the curses, twelve in number, solemnly spread out. This is indeed serious: the law can only curse; man cannot find blessing from the law in the presence of God. The last verse of this chapter is evidently what is quoted in Galatians 3:10.

“As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.”

Then why do many earnest people try. to keep the law, the ten commandments, in order to be saved?

“Christ hath redeemed us from, the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” Galatians 3:13.

Not any rules to make the natural man good, will ever work,

“All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely (without a cause), by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:23, 24.

Reader, these are God’s words; this is His way of salvation. Is it yours?

Deuteronomy 28

In chapter 27 we saw man, as a sinner, under the curse of a broken law, ruined and hopeless. Chapter 28 opens a new theme. The rule of God in earthly government is here the subject, dealing with the circumstances of His people. The blessings named in verses 3 to 14 are not those which were to have been pronounced from Mount Gerizim (chapter 27:12); they have their corresponding curses later in the chapter. Here we find what befell this people, in but a few centuries after they entered the land of God’s providing. Obedience offered its rich consequences of blessing beyond measure; disobedience, forsaking God, involved the loss of everything, for a time at least. And of this the sad condition of the nation of Israel is a constant reminder to our own selves.

Say you, I’m a Gentile, and the troubles of the Jews do not concern me? Turn then to Acts 17:30-31 and learn that God “now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man (Christ) whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.”

Judgment is coming on the Gentile World, more severe than that which fell upon the Jew.

“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” 2 Cor. 6:2.

Deuteronomy 29

Verses 1, 12 and 15 are particularly important, for they show plainly that it was not the covenant of Sinai, alone, but something added thereto of the kindness of God, “The covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel . . . besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.”

The law—the ten commandments—could never have brought this people into the place of blessing; it could only pronounce a dreadful curse upon them, but as long as they “hearkened diligently unto the voice of the Lord their God” (chapter 28:1), and walked in His ways, His blessing would be upon them.

How wonderfully they had been delivered, and for those many years led in safety, protected and cared for all the way they had traveled; clothes and shoes had not worn out; food had been provided every day; enemies who came out against them were vanquished, and their land taken for a possession. Why should there be any (verse 18) whose hearts would turn away from God? Yet we know what is the truth about men in this present day:

“God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8.

“Today, if ye will hear His voice harden not your hearts.” Hebrews 3:7, 8.

“We which have believed do enter into rest.” Hebrews 4:3.

“This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” John 3:19.

Verse 29: This speaks of what God had, in His purpose of blessing, when all had failed. “The things which are revealed,” were what Moses was telling the people, but behind, to be brought out in “due time” (Romans 5:6) was the hidden, secret purpose of God to provide His beloved Son as a ransom for the sins of the many who would receive Him by faith.

Beloved reader, what think ye of Christ? Are you resting in the one sacrifice He made, on behalf of believing sinners?

Deuteronomy 30

Looking on to that time when Israel would, because of neglect of God and His word, he driven out of the land they were now about to enter, their God speaks to them of a further work He would perform on their behalf. How it would he, the people were not here told the law pronounced only a curse upon him who did not keep every jot and tittle of it, but there were secret things, as the last verse of chapter 29 stated, in God’s purposes: clearly, they would become known in His time.

The secret of God’s further dealings with Israel, and in a remarkable use of verses 11 to 14 here, is disclosed in the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and we are shown that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. The word of faith, (not works) is now preached, that “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall he saved.”

Ruined, hopeless, helpless, but at last humble, the people would, from their far distance, turn to God to obey His voice with all their heart and with all their soul, then would he have compassion on them, return and gather them from all the nations whither He has scattered them on account of their sins. Once more in their land, God would bless them in every way.

Reader, are you clinging to fancied works of your own —merits of yours with which to buy salvation?

“There is none other name (than the name of Jesus) under heaven given among men, whereby we must he saved.” Acts 4:12.

“I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall he saved.” John 10:9.

“He that believeth on Me, though he were (spiritually and morally in God’s sight) dead, yet shall he live.” John 11:25.

There is a choice to he made—life and good, or death and evil (verses 15 and 19). Have you made your choice for eternity?

Do not delay: decide for Christ now!

Deuteronomy 31

We are approaching the close of this deeply impressive book of Deuteronomy, and the aged Moses, now 120 years old, is speaking his last solemn words to that nation which he had led to the border of the promised land. He was not to cross the Jordan, but another would, as his successor in the leadership of the people. To the people, as well as to Joshua, Moses speaks of God’s going before them; they were to be strong and of good courage, with Him to fight their battles: “He will not fail thee nor forsake thee”, is the word both to the people and to their new leader. All power was in their God—but could they follow Him?

Every seven years when the people were called together to celebrate the goodness of God to them, the Word of God, for such it was, was to be read to them, and not to the grown ones only, but to the children too. Notice those important words in verse 12— “hear,”— “learn,”— “fear the Lord,”— “observe to do all the words.” Important indeed, is it to hear the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, but there is responsibility, too, to “learn”, “to fear the Lord”, and “to observe all His word;” without these, true happiness cannot be known.

God now called Moses to bring Joshua out to the tabernacle to receive his charge. To Moses he tells of the sad future of the people down to the present time. They would take up with the false gods of the people of the land, and give up the true God who had done so much for them, and He would be compelled to turn from them, till they should own their sin. Moses was therefore to write a song, not of the triumph of Israel under God, but as a testimony against them because of their unbelief.

Why should God go on with those whose character naturally, was so very bad, as this chapter plainly sets out? Because He is determined to act as a Saviour. Romans 3 shows that all the world is alike in God’s sight. Has my reader seen his picture in that chapter? There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. God can tell nothing good of man; all alike need the blood of Jesus to cleanse them, from all sin. Are you under the title of the blood?

Deuteronomy 32

This is Moses’ song. The heavens and the earth are called to hear its solemn words God is extolled: He is the Rock; a God of truth and without iniquity. As for the people they have corrupted themselves, a perverse and crooked generation.

Verse 8 is an important one, it tells that God, in dividing the world among the nations after the flood in Noah’s day, set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel— a fact the world does not know. This marks a contrast with the Christian’s position; his commonwealth or citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20; Ephesians 1), while Israel’s hopes are earthly.

Verses 11 and 12 compare God’s dealings with His people to the mother-eagle’s habit of tearing up her nest, driving out her young ones to try to fly, then spreading her wings. When they are about to fall, she catches them, and bears them safely to the nest again. Yet Israel “waxed fat, and kicked”; forsook God; became an idol-worshiping people, and God will move them to jealously with those that are not a people. (This passage, quoted in Romans 10:19, is referred to the Gentiles, in connection with the gospel of God’s grace.) Judgment then must fall, for God will not endure to have sin allowed in those who bear any relationship to Him. At last, however, the Gentiles will provoke Him, by their treatment of His earthly people, to act again on behalf of Israel. Yet this is followed by (verse 13) “Rejoice, O ye nations with His people”, —Jew and Gentile considered together among the redeemed in a coming day.

Moses’ marvelous song ends. It begins and ends with God, and takes in the history of His earthly people Israel—past, present and future.

When Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel, he said, unto them, “Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life; and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.” (Verses 46, 47).

Thus we find Moses urging upon the people the solemn duty of implicit, hearty obedience to the Word of God. In this lay the precious secret of life, peace, prosperity—all. They had nothing else to do but to obey. Blessed business! Happy, holy duty! May we find it so, dear children, in these days when there is so little of the fear of God and obedience to His Word.

Moses is now called to climb the mountain opposite Jericho, there to die on account of his failure at Kadesh (Numbers 20). This was God’s discipline on His servant; Moses did not, by this solemn dispensation, lose his eternal portion with Christ, but we—believers and unsaved shall appear — though not together before the judgment seat of Christ.

“Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men.” 2 Cor. 5:10. And if judgment first begins at us (believers); what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17). The believer will learn about his failures, and many other things about his life, at the judgment seat of Christ; but when the unsaved meet Christ in judgment, it will be to meet His unsparing judgment.

O, sinner, flee from the wrath to come! Now is the day of salvation!

Deuteronomy 32

In the forty-three verses of this song which Moses spoke, we find a brief history of the people of Israel, and of God’s dealings with and for them. The importance of what it had to say to any Israelite, is attested by the opening call to the heavens and the earth to attend.

There are two parties here, and one (Israel) has already failed, and would yet more seriously. Thank God, all depends upon Him, and as the last chapters have shown here in Deuteronomy, we find veiled references to a secret thing with God, whereby He would bless them finally when they had all but destroyed themselves. What that secret was we discover in the New Testament, and particularly in its practical foundation in the Epistle to the Romans.

We begin with what God is, upon Whom all security rests. He is the Rock, standing unmoved when all mankind falls. All His ways are just, a God of faithfulness without deceit (New Translation).

And what of those whom He has befriended? They have corrupted themselves, or rather “dealt corruptly with Him,”—a crooked generation.

But, as for God, when He set the boundaries of the countries, He had in mind the children of Israel, for they are His earthly people. He had found them without anything of their own, had led them, preserved them “as the apple of His eye.” In perfect love He had treated them as the eagle does her young—compelling them to leave their comfortable nest to try their wings, then flying beneath the young birds as they fall seemingly to destruction, she “spreadeth abroad her taketh them, beareth them on her wings.” So, through the trials of the long wilderness journey, there were lessons to be learned of the love and purpose of God, as it is with Christians today, if they will but apply their hearts to learn them.

God had proved His power, as well as his love in the great company of the children of Israel’s never having lacked food or clothing all the years of their pilgrimage. The sky had provided food, and the rocks water when their case seemed, humanly speaking hopeless. But Jeshuron (a poetical name of Israel, applied only four times in Scripture), waxed fat and kicked, —gave up God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. Such is man!

But yet further, (verse 17) those whom God had taken up, “sacrificed to devils, not to God,” during the forty years’ journey from Egypt to Canaan. (See the martyr Stephen’s address to his murderers in Acts 7:42, and 1 Corinthians 10:20).

In due time judgment began to fall (verses 10 and following), and God took up the Gentiles (as in verse 21). He said He would (see Romans 10:19). The Gentiles were wicked enough for anything (verse 27), and God stays His hand against Israel. and will not allow the Gentiles to go beyond the bounds He has set in punishing the chosen people.

How many Gentiles are like Israel’ in verse 29: unwise as they were, they do not consider their latter end, when the world of the ungodly will be judged in righteousness by Christ, and those who have not received Him as Saviour will meet Him as Judge.

The song ends with the day of which Romans 9-11 speak, when Israel shall turn to Him whom they have despised and rejected. but when, also unsparing judgment will he poured out upon the enemies of God. Lastly the blessing of the saved among the nations is brought in. God will bring His own purposes to pass, purposes of blessing, and of judgment. How all-important to be right with God, now!

Moses is again told (verse 52) that he should not go into the promised land on account of his sin in Numbers 20 when he struck the rock type of Christ, God having told him to speak to the rock. We do not forget that Moses was still a child of God He had not, because of his sin, lost his eternal portion.

Deuteronomy 33

Moses, who was just about to die, thinks according to God of his beloved people, and tells of his desires for them as almost entering the land, their home. In Genesis 49, we have noticed Jacob’s blessing of the people as expressing their history from first to last, but Deuteronomy 33 is not a complete history; rather like all of this fifth book of the Bible, preparing Israel for entering the home long awaiting them.

Verses 2-5: God was their ruler; He gave them the law—not only, as we have before noticed, the ten commandments, but an entire system whereby a people might go on in relationship with Him. Moses was their visible king, ruling under God.

Verse 6: Reuben had led in sin of old, and God requires that which is past, though in grace He records, “Let Reuben live, and not die; and let his men be few.” (Omit “not” which is in italics).

Verse 7: Judah is the tribe of which Christ came according to the flesh; He it is that is referred to. He will be brought to His people in the day of His power.

Verse 8: Levi is to be blessed on account of faithfulness before, —for example in Numbers 25. God had proved the nation at Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17 and Numbers 20), and they had failed both in themselves as a whole, and in their priest and king (Numbers 20). The children of Levi had however stood for God at Sinai (Exodus 32:26-29), disregarding the closest natural relationship to obey the Word of God (verse 9). It is however only in Christ that perfection is seen; He alone set God first in all His thoughts and ways from beginning to end of His life here below, and verses 10 and 11 surely will have their greatest fulfilment in Him when He comes to earth again to reign.

Verse 12: Benjamin comes next. The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him, covered, dwelling between His shoulders. Notice that all depends on nearness to the Lord: this is the only place of safety, —the place of God’s favor. Literally it is Jerusalem, the city of Gods earthly dwelling place; figuratively again it speaks of Christ, the true Benjamin, Son of the right hand (Genesis 35:18).

Verses 13-17: Joseph, type of Christ, as we have considered him before, in Genesis, both in his history and in his father’s blessing (Genesis 49:22-26): the fulness of blessing is expressed here in Moses’ words.

Verses 18-24 seem to be blessings for the most part yet future.

Verses 25-29: these inspiring words form the closing benediction on the nation. Strength for each day is promised to the people of God; He is their succorer, their refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will, when that day dawns, destroy their enemies, and they shall dwell in safety alone. Happy people!

The tribe of Simeon is not mentioned by name in this chapter; there appear to be two or more reasons for the omission: one, that both Joseph and his sons should be named: another, that Simeon’s character described in Genesis 49:5-7 was unchanged, while Levi had taken a firm stand for God.

Deuteronomy 34

How touchingly gracious of God to show Moses that land of desire, which he was not to enter! The people had provoked this man of God, meek above all the men upon the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3) by their rebellion, so that instead of upholding God before them, he asserts himself (Numbers 20:10-12). Accordingly, God had said to Moses,

“Because ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.”

There was a spiritual reason too, for Moses to be removed at this time he had been the administrator of law, and the people were to enter the land on the ground of grace.

And what grief Moses was spared, in not entering the land, to have seen the unfaithfulness of those he had led, never truly conquering the enemy, and presently turning to idolatry there!

This notable servant of God dies, is buried in secret. Forty years at the court of Pharaoh in Egypt; forty years in the desert alone, and forty years as the leader of the redeemed people to the banks of the Jordan, are closed, with undimmed eye and natural force unabated.

An inspired writer adds (verse 10) that there had been no prophet afterward in Israel like Moses, but a greater came in the person of Christ, in Whom all the prophetic scriptures are fulfilled.

We have finished our brief examination of the five books of Moses. If we have gone over them in faith, in dependence on God, we have profited in our souls. Great principles have been before us, —those according to which God acts in His dealings with man. In Exodus we saw a people delivered by the power of God; in Leviticus and Numbers we saw them, given a marvelous code of rules, perfect as the Giver, and we saw those rules powerless to change human hearts: they, to whom they were given, were first sinners and then transgressors. Lastly, we have seen the grace of God in blessing, and announcing abiding blessing upon this people promising in veiled language to justify them in the power of a new covenant written in their hearts. Such is God, “merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.” Exodus 34:6, 7.

Reader, is He, through the blood of Jesus Christ, your resource?

Joshua 1

There is a new commander now. Joshua having succeeded Moses, and the word goes out to the host of Israel to prepare to enter the land by crossing the Jordan. The wilderness they had traversed was the way, but not the end.

The land was all theirs (verse 2) in one sense; it was theirs also only as they took possession of it (verse 3). So it is with the Christian, in what Canaan typifies, —the rest for the people of God. The Epistle to the Ephesians brings this out, showing in chapter 1, verse 3, the believer’s present portion, blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ (Israel’s blessings were earthly); and in chapter 6, verses 10 and following, having a warfare to carry on against Satan, who will seek to hinder the Christian’s progress in the new life. What then is the subject of the book of Joshua? It is not the rest, but the fight with the powers of Satan, to possess the promises of God.

Verse 4: The limits of the land here given have never been fully taken possession of by the children of Israel, but they will be in the millennium.

Together with God’s promise, “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,” is the injunction, “Be strong and of a good courage ... .Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses My servant commanded thee turn not from it to the right hand or to the left that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.” etc., (verses 5 to 9).

It is forgetfulness of just such directions as these in verses 1 to 9 (notice especially the importance attached to God’s Word here, of course, limited to what was then written) that explains the failure of the children of God to live practically the life of faith in our day, as it explains the failure of Israel in the day of Joshua to take full possession of the land of Canaan.

All the fighting force must cross the Jordan, though the choice of some of them was on this side of the river. They had been attracted by a place which was not Egypt but though it was within Israel’s dominions, it was not Canaan; the docks and herds and goodly pastures were more to them than the place to be won by Joshua in the power of the Spirit of God.

Just so it is with many of the children of God today; their circumstances are what guide them, rather than the heavenly Leader: they lower Christianity to an earthly level; Christ should be our object, not the “much cattle.”

Joshua 2

Why did Joshua send the spies into Jericho, the city soon to be utterly destroyed? Scripture does not furnish an answer; it may have been only with thoughts of the approaching doom of the place, but if we consider what were God’s thoughts about the matter, we know that they were purposes of mercy, even towards a very wicked woman. God is rich in mercy, and His love is great towards those who are dead in trespasses and sins. (Eph. 2:1-5.)

The king of Jericho is like Satan; it displeases him mightily that the messengers of God are received into the house of even a Rahab. He sees the end of his rule in sight. The men had come to “search out all the country”: there is nothing hid from God, for “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Heb. 4:13).

But this wretched woman, who tells lies without hesitation, has determined to throw herself on the mercy of that God of whose power in judgment she has heard; perhaps He will show her mercy, for she sees only destruction before all the people of Jericho. Moved with fear, then, of a greater power than any of earth or hell, Rahab conceals the men whose nationality she had recognized, and now when darkness hides her movements, her voice is heard saying, like Nicodemus in John 3:1, 2, “I know.”

It is not the triumphant “we know” of Romans 8:28 and 1 John 3:2, but a confession of a knowledge that she, or he, is outside of God’s favor. Rahab and Nicodemus, at opposite poles in this world’s reckoning; the one debased by sin in which she lived; and the other highly esteemed among men, alike tell that the lives they have lived leave a guilty conscience, an unsatisfied heart.

Reader, is it not so, that this world cannot give peace of conscience, rest of heart? Try as you will, you cannot find rest within or around. There is One who says,

“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matt. 11:28. Have you had to do with Him?

Rahab asks not for herself alone, but for her fathers’ household. Moses displays the same spirit, we may say, in Exo. 10:9, “And Moses said, we will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds we will go; for we must hold a feast unto the Lord.”

Also in Luke 16:27-31, the once rich man, from the torment of a lost eternity, cries out for his five brothers.

The writer of these lines remembers the oft repeated earnest prayer of his mother now many years absent from the body, present with the Lord, for all her children to be saved.

Perhaps you, dear reader, have long been the subject of heartful prayers for your salvation. If so, I beg you to resist the Holy Spirit no longer. Come to Jesus! Come to Jesus! COME TO JESUS!

Rahab has a promise; true, it was only that of men, but it was on God’s authority that it was given. He who trusts in the sheltering blood of Jesus, has the assurance of God Himself:

“Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man (the risen Christ Jesus) is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses.” Acts 13:38, 39. Judgment will never reach the believer.

One thing more: Rahab had so much before her mind, the coming fulfilment of the promise made to her, that she puts the reminder of it, the scarlet line, in her window. She has turned to God from idols, and never a day, or perhaps an hour passes, that she is not thinking of the day of her salvation.

What of yourself, reader? Is Christ your object seven days in a week, twelve months in the year? He should be. Give Him all you are.

Joshua 3

The cross of Christ is presented in different ways: in the passover night of Exo. 12; the crossing of the Red Sea in Exo. 14; and in Joshua, chapters 3 and 4.

The first tells of putting to death of an acceptable substitute, and of the consequent safety from the judgment of God of those who are under the shelter of the blood.

The second pictures redemption, God’s positive work of freeing the sinner, and bringing him out of Satan’s power, into a new position in relation with God.

The third presents the believer’s entering practically into what God has done for him. In the crossing of the Jordan is seen death and resurrection with Christ, and entrance into what, for the Christian, is a heavenly position, though not literally the glory, for there are enemies to be conquered in that new place.

The people approach to the river’s brink, and halt for three days. Then when the ark (type of Christ) goes before them, they, seeing it, remove from their place and follow it. Yet there must be a measured space between the ark and the people, because of the immeasurable value of the Person whom the ark typified, and His work.

“Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” 1 Cor. 15:3.

This is an immense truth, standing alone through time and eternity, but it is also true that I (the believer) am crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). The ark (Christ) has gone before me into the river of death; I am to follow, in the experience of my soul, associated with Him by faith.

“All that we were in the flesh has found its end in the cross of Christ. We can say, ‘I am dead to sin, dead to the law’ (Rom. 7:4). My eyes, fixed on the ark—on Christ—see in Him the end of my personality as a child of Adam; but in Him also a victorious power, now made mine, introduces me in resurrection life in Him. beyond death into the full enjoyment of the things which this life possesses: I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. 2:20).”

“The living God” (verse 10) was among them, and that was assurance that He would without fail drive out from before His people every enemy. The full flood of death, the waters of sin, was met by the ark (verse 15) (Jesus went down under that which here in the type is cut off. Psa. 69:1-2), and therefore the people passed over on dry ground, the ark making a way. “Thus the Jordan became not a barrier, but an entrance into heavenly places for the people of God. Efficiently Christ is there till all are over.”

Reader, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Where do You stand at this moment? Saved, or lost? And if saved, have you realized that God is done with man according to the flesh?

Joshua 4

We may consider again the steps we have been viewing in connection with the people of Israel — steps in type and shadow of greater things not then revealed, but which the New Testament plainly sets forth.

First, then was God intervening for faith, and providing a lamb, whose blood He would accept as a type of the Son of His love who was afterward to be put to death under the judgment which the sinner should have borne. “When I see the blood”, said He, “I will pass over you.” Exo. 12:13. But to leave the people in Egypt, slaves of the enemy, was not at all God’s purpose, and therefore we are next shown Satan’s efforts to retain his slaves, and his overthrow, together with God’s triumphant deliverance, (and in type, justification) of His people through the Red Sea, fresh type of the death of Christ. Henceforth they are separated to God, out from under the dominion of sin and of Satan. In all this we observe that man has no part; it is wholly God’s work, this of visiting judgment upon an accepted substitute, and of redeeming a people for Himself, while overthrowing the enemy, Satan.

There is much to be learned by the redeemed ones, however, and so there next appear extended humbling lessons of self-distrust, of failure and sin where faith should have triumphed. The scene of these experiences is a wilderness, marked with every evidence of God’s care. But there is something yet more which is important to learn experimentally: God is done with the old nature, the old man; He identifies me, who have believed on His Son. with Him in the place He took for me.

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; and the life I now live—I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Gal. 2:20.

I have, I trust, learned the painful lesson of Romans 7, and I am in the position of Romans 8:1, no condemnation, because viewed by God as in Christ Jesus. I have died with Christ, and am risen with Him, henceforth to walk in newness of life.

“It is important first to see Jesus alone in life and in death: there we have the thing itself in its perfection. It is equally important then to know that God sees us (believers) as having been there, —that it (the death of Christ) expresses our place; that God sees us in Him, and that it is our place before God. But then, there is also our taking that place, by the Spirit, in faith, and in fact. The former was the Red Sea; as to death, it was Christ’s death; while the Jordan exhibits our entering into death with Him.” The crossing of the river then brings us, not as physical death, as so many have hastily supposed, but now in life on earth, as risen with Christ, into the state or condition which makes us fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

What then of chapter 4? The memorials of the thing that has been made mine—viewed by God as dead with Christ, the old nature judged, and I delivered from its power—are set up on the other shore, a continual reminder of the believer’s deliverance from the power of sin, at the very entrance to the place, in resurrection life, that He now enjoys.

“The believer, risen with Christ, has the indelible marks of His death imprinted on him, and if such is my place in Christ, can I live any longer in the things which I have abandoned, which Christ has left in the depths of Jordan? (Rom. 6:2, 11).

The twelve stones taken out of the depths of the river, remind the believer of what he has to be. In the Jordan, God declares him to be dead; on the further shore, He presents him risen with Christ.

But there was another monument, set up in the midst of the Jordan. Who could see it? Faith considers this memorial. “When I think of the stones in Jordan, my heart is in communion with Christ in death. I return to sit, so to speak, on the banks of the river of death, and I say, ‘That is my place; it is there I was; there He has been for me . . .What led Thee, blessed Saviour, to take this place? It was Thy love to me.’”

Joshua 5

An extension of the lesson we have been considering in the crossing of the Jordan, is the main theme of this chapter. Turning to the Epistle to the Colossians let us read chapter three, and in particular, verses 1 and 5, which latter expresses what circumcision stood for as a type. See also Colossians 2:11; in Philippians 3:3; and in 2 Corinthians 4:10.

Christ is dead to sin, in Him I am dead to sin. Therefore I can mortify (put to death, in practical experience) my members, which I could not do as being seen of God as alive in the flesh. We remember the death of Christ, and this mortifying of our members on the earth is accomplished through grace, and in realizing the grace of God to me. In order to “mortify”, there must be life; and if I have life in Christ, I have already died in Him who died for me.

“In every circumstance then we must remember that we are dead, and say to ourselves: If through grace I am dead, what have I to do with sin, which supposes me to be alive?”

The enemies to be met, and of whom we shall, D. V., read in further consideration of this book of Joshua, are spoken of first in this chapter, and then God prepares His people for warfare with them. The reproach of Egypt, (every mark of the world is a reproach to a heavenly people,) is rolled away, and the Passover is kept in the new position, beyond the Jordan, and here the food of the wilderness ceases. Christ in a new character, is their future food. In the wilderness aspect, it is Christ as come down from heaven, and it is His humiliation, His grace, which comfort, relieve and sustain us. But as a heavenly people it is Christ as belonging to heaven and heavenly things, that is our portion. (Colossians 3:1, 2).

First, then, we have the believer’s position, given him by God, to be lived in and enjoyed.

Next, we see that war must follow. There must be the Captain of the host of the Lord to lead His people to victory. It is Christ who leads in this warfare, which knows no neutrality. The believer is on holy ground.

Reader, how much do you and I practically know of these things? O, let us who know Christ as Saviour, look to Him and to the Word of God, for power to enter in positively in the experience of our souls, to the blessed portion He has won for us. Let us be like Joshua, falling on our faces and asking of God,

“What saith my Lord to His servant?”

We have found that the Jordan is behind, and there are enemies before, and they are first spoken of. The kings of the Amorites, and of the Canaanites were afraid when they heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan that the people might pass. But the children of Israel are not ready for war; there is another lesson to be taught.

Before the believer can be ready to fight Satan, he must attend to an enemy within. As we saw in our previous paper the believer is to “mortify”—put to death—his “members which are upon the earth”, not in order that he may win God’s favor and so be safe from His judgment, but because the judgment due to him has been borne by Jesus whose death and resurrection have put him into a new position of acceptance before God. 2 Corinthians 5:15-17 expresses this in the beautiful language of Scripture:

“He (Christ) died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again . . . . Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.”

God considers all that Christ has done, as though it had happened to me His child: Christ has died to sin, and in Him I am dead to sin; I am now risen with Him as to my position before God. Then in everything in my life today I must remember that I am dead, and ask myself, what have I to do with sin? Every likeness to, or mark of, the world is a reproach to the Christian.

“He who possesses this life may pass through the world, and do many things that others do. He eats, works, suffers, but as to his life and his objects, he is not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world. Christ risen and ascended up on high is his life. He subdues his flesh, he mortifies it, for in point of fact he is down here, but he does not live in it.”

Next follows the passover in the plains of Jericho, where enemies were, which suggests Psalm 23:5, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”

The next day the people ate of the old corn of the land, a type of Christ known as heavenly who feeds our souls. The manna, food of the wilderness, ceased; it expressed Him as down here, God manifest in flesh. This character of His is never forgotten, but while knowing what He has been, it is Himself, where He is now, once dead, but alive again, and gone up where He was before, whom I now know.

Joshua 6

We may consider this chapter in two ways. First we shall look at it as a picture of God’s dealings with the world, now in grace, but soon in judgment.

“Jericho was straitly shut up . . . . none went out and none came in.” There was one within its walls who had laid claim to the mercy of God, —Rahab the former harlot,—but the inhabitants generally were shut up in unbelief, awaiting the just judgment of God. Such is this world! And there is no escape, except through joining Rahab in the house of faith. What the most of them saw and heard, they ridiculed or ignored, just like the world today.

Looking down from the strong and high walls of Jericho, its citizens may have said to themselves, as they saw the daily passage of the ark preceded by the priests carrying trumpets, “How absurd; how useless!” And such, doubtless, is the thought of many today.

Dear reader, “Beware, therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets: Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.” Acts 13:40,41.

But the passing days bore witness to eyes and ears (if they would but attend to what God was doing) that mercy was still offered. Rahab hears the trumpets sounding, —sweet notes in her ears; yet warnings of judgment for the rejecters of God’s mercy, —and gathers within her walls, her father, her mother, her brethren, and all whom, she had persuaded to join her in trusting in the word of the living God. Day succeeds day, and the fall of Jericho has not yet occurred.

Scoffers are one of the promised signs of the last day (2 Peter 3:3,4), and there may have been many a derisive laugh from the ramparts of the city before the last moment arrived.

“The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18.

See how on the last day—the last opportunity for any to be saved—the mercy of God is announced from the very dawn of day (verse 15), and seven times the circuit of the city is made. At last there is to be no more mercy, —no more delay the time has come; a long blast of the trumpet, a great shout, and the mighty wall falls down flat. All within the city perish; none escape, —except those in Rahab’s house. As to them, they are welcomed into the camp of Israel on account of their trust in God. None who put their trust in Him perished. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night (2 Peter 3:10).

Reader, have you claimed the shelter of the precious blood of Jesus? “How shall you escape, if you neglect so great salvation?”

WE shall take another view of this interesting chapter. Before the people of God, about to progress through the inheritance they have been given, Satan has erected a terrible obstacle. He proposes to keep them out of possession if he can.

Sooner or later, with every Christian, when the question is raised of taking hold of the heavenly position and character which God has given His people, Satan will be found at the outset with an impediment, —not the same for all, but for each believer something to, if possible, deter him from an unworldly Christian life. One’s business, his friends or associations, his parents and other reasons are advanced by the devil to hinder the believer. O, how many dear children of God lose courage when this stage is reached, and turn back into a worldly Christianity!

But he who depends upon God, trusts His Word; for him there is the cheering word of Hebrews 11:30,

“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days.”

“I have given into thine (Joshua’s) hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valor.” (verse 2)

All that is needed is obedience to God and to His Word. To the world, all is foolishness, —wasted time and energy, —but faith has its rewards, of which the world knows nothing. Faith counts upon the power of God; it has no plans of its own.

AT the close of chapter 5 we saw Joshua inquiring for orders from the heavenly Commander in Chief, and the directions he gets are brief and simple: “Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy.”

The method of attack (verses 3, 4, 5), must have seemed to human eyes foolish indeed, yet “hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? . . . but we preach Christ crucified . . . . unto the Greeks (Gentiles) foolishness.” 1 Corinthians 1:20-23.

It was God’s work, and God’s way that brought the destruction of this solid walled obstruction to the progress of God’s people. The ark was the token of God’s presence; and the power of Satan falls, without the use of any means that could account for it.

There could, we must notice also, be no fellowship with what was under judgment. Holiness, entire separation from evil, are required for victory in this war with Satan. God may use what we cannot, by consecrating them to Himself, if He chooses (verse 19); but the believer must not meddle with the world, or what is its strength.

Jericho is put under a curse (verse 26), and sentence is passed in advance upon whoever should rebuild it. This sentence was carried out about 540 years afterward when Hiel, in the days of the wicked king Ahab built the city again. (1 Kings 10:34).

Joshua 7

Verse 1 tells us that there was sin in the camp of Israel, and though only one person had done what God had forbidden, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the nation. It is plain that Joshua and all the people had become somewhat self-confident after the fall of Jericho. They too, had lost a true sense of the holiness of God. To a large extent a parallel case is found in 1 Corinthians 5. The cases are alike in that the assembly was looked upon by God as responsible for unjudged sin within it, and only was cleared of guilt when the sin was judged and put away; alike also in being in a state of soul, not unlike that of the world around them.

Joshua was at Jericho (verse 2); he might better have been back at Gilgal, considering again the lessons of the river Jordan which we noticed in connection with chapters 3, 4 and 5. But it was from Jericho that he sent men to Ai which was beside Beth-aven (“house of iniquity”), and near Bethel (“house of God” but in Satan’s possession now). The names speak for themselves.

The men return with a confidence that left God out of consideration. It was not necessary that many of the people should go there to attack the little town, they said, but did not inquire of the Lord, and so the three thousand who went against Ai, were driven back with a loss of about 36 men.

Out of communion with God, Joshua, instead of inquiring of Him for the cause of this humbling reverse, mourns over what God had done when He brought them, over the Jordan! The three verses of his lament (verses 7-9) are all concerned about Israel, except at the end when God’s great name is mentioned. But when God answers, He discloses to Joshua that which he might have learned before: Israel had sinned. It was on this account that they could not stand before their enemies, nor would God be with them anymore, unless they destroyed the accursed from among them.

There must then be a separation; and a heart searching follows under the searching eye of God Himself. The guilty one must be punished, but all Israel is first dealt with because all were responsible; they were one in privilege and in responsibility, and the sin of one was the sin of all. Practical corporate holiness, much forgotten in these days of growing lukewarmness, is as important as individual holiness.

“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. Purge out therefore the old leaven that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.” 1 Corinthians 5:3, 7.

The Christian must stand clear of connection with everything contrary to the expressed mind of God.

It was a painful thing indeed to put away the evil, but there could be no advance in the war against Satan’s hosts until it was put away. God requires holiness in His people, as we see also in the case of Ananias and Sapphire in Acts 5:1-11.

This valley, the witness and memorial of the first sin committed after entering the land, is promised in Hosea 2:14, 15 for a “door of hope” in the day when God in sovereign grace will take Israel in hand again. What marvelous grace!

Joshua 8

Once sin is judged, God’s word to His people is, “Fear not, neither be dismayed.” Yet the attack upon Ai is greatly changed from the simple procedure at Jericho. Now, all the people must go up to the little city, and “thirty thousand mighty men of valor” are sent at night to be in ambush, while the remainder of the people are to approach the city openly. These are to appear to run away for their lives, so drawing the men of Ai out of the place after them, and then the Israelites in ambush were to enter the town and destroy it, the end being, the destruction of all the people of Ai.

All of this was a rebuke to the pride and self-confidence shown in the first attack upon Ai. It has been truly remarked that more pains are needed to return into the path of blessing, than to have avoided the evil, but the simplicity of faith and its strength can be regained in no other way.

It does not appear that the ambushed men saw Joshua’s stretching out his spear (verses 18-19); it seems rather to be an illustration of God’s directing His people unseen, and perhaps unrealized by those He acts upon.

There is no rebuilding Jericho and Ai (verse 28). Ai, which means “heap” becomes a heap forever. There can be no restoration of Satan’s rule.

Joshua here by two acts signifies that he has taken possession of the land in God’s name.—first, by his commanding that the body of the king of Ai be taken down at sunset, as Deuteronomy 21:22-23 ordered: and second, in the building of the altar unto the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal, which served both as a witness and a bond between the people and their God who gave them the land. Evidently divine strength and human weakness had both, to be brought out first, otherwise the altar might have been built as soon as the promised land was entered (Deuteronomy 27: 1-8).

All that Moses had commanded was read to the people, —the law, the blessings and the curses (See Deuteronomy 27:11-20.

Joshua 9

Verse 1 shows the enemy aroused; he will not yield without war. Satan well knows how to attack the people of God. Jericho gave way before faith, but Satan got at the people through their lusts, and the accursed thing is found in the camp of Israel; self-confidence, too, was a cause of weakness. We have seen how they were delivered in chapter 8. In chapter 9 Satan is a wily enemy; he does not attack openly, as at Ai; nor stand behind high walls as at Jericho. The apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:11 speaks of being not ignorant of Satan’s devices (thoughts), and in Ephesians 6:11, the believer is directed to put on the whole armor of God that he may be able to stand against the wiles (artifices) of the devil. There is no other defense provided, no other needed.

Satan appears now in the inhabitants of Gibeon who come with deceit; living nearby, they dressed as ambassadors from a distant land, carried old sacks and old wine bottles, wore old and patched sandals and old clothes, and took dry and mouldy bread with them. They found Joshua at the camp at Gilgal and announced that they had come from afar, desiring to make a covenant with Israel. The Israelites had some misgivings about them, but they listened to their lies, and “asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord” (verse 14), and so failure is again recorded. The lesson of Ai was not enough. Quite possibly, news of the confederation of kings mentioned in verses 1 and 2 had reached Joshua and the people of Israel. Certainly, they were not prepared for this sort of an attack, but they should have asked counsel of God. Prayer and supplication should be the constant resource and habit of the believer.

A covenant is made, bat in three days they see they have been led into a trap carefully planned by Satan; —these men were neighbors in the land, and should have been put to death along with the ether wicked inhabitants, but their lives must now be spared. Again is man, even with the best intentions, the best thought of the time, as people say, found at cross-purposes with God (1 Corinthians 1:20). There should be no alliance between the world and the people of God, yet that is what is found in this day in which we live, and a few words in Revelation 2:13— “among you, where Satan dwelleth”— testify to this as of long standing, and many other passages of God’s Word likewise.

The grace of God is however with Israel, and though in this chapter the entrance of evil into the congregation is shown, we do not find its development. God delivers us from certain consequences of our sin, and allows others to remain. The Gibeonites were an accursed race, but to be borne with; and king Saul’s effort to exterminate them in zeal for the congregation, was in no wise after God’s mind (2 Samuel 21:1).

Joshua 10

Aroused to concerted action by the repeated victories of the people of Israel, and incensed at the Gibeonites because of their having sought and obtained peace with them, the kings of the Amorites attacked Gibeon. At once the people of the city sent a message to Joshua at the camp at Gilgal by the Jordan, and said, “Slack not thy hand from thy servants;” “come up to us quickly and save us and help us.” Such a request could not be denied, and Joshua went up from Gilgal with all the people of war and the mighty men of valor. Approaching through the night, they surprised the enemy in the morning, and were delivered into Joshua’s hand by God. The Gibeonites were relieved, but of far greater moment was the utter destruction of the power of the enemy.

So fearful was the destruction, that we are reminded of the judgments which will fall upon this world after the Church of God is taken away, descriptions of which are given in the book of Revelation. One thing is clear: no mercy is shown when the judgment day dawns; the day for mercy is past, its opportunities disregarded.

Reader, you must meet God; there is no escape. Seek Him now, as He delights to make Himself known, as a Saviour; there is none beside Him. Jesus, the spotless lamb of God came into the world to save sinners.

It was a day of fearful carnage when not only through Joshua’s army, but by direct intervention from heaven the power of God was exerted to crush the united kings. Joshua spoke to God, and at his word the powerful rays of the sun were reduced (the command to the sun to “stand still” is properly “be silent”) so that the earth revolved at half speed, and a day of unequalled length occurred. This is one of the miracles of the Bible at which infidels have scoffed, but that it was well known at the time the book of Joshua was written is shown by the reference to a book of Jasher in verse 13, evidently a commonly known record, though not inspired. Although the humble believer accepts what the Word of God says without thought or care whether the more or less fabled histories men have compiled, it is interesting to know that Chinese, Egyptian and Greek records refer to a day of extraordinary length at this time.

The latter part of this chapter tells of the continued victories of Joshua. One by one the cities of Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron and its surrounding towns, and Debir, fall and the whole southern portion of the land at least, is conquered.

The chapter closes with Joshua and all Israel. back at Gilgal, the abiding memorial of (loath as the end of the natural man, place where the heap of stones from the river bed told of life out of death. Happy it is for every child of God if he retrace his steps constantly to the place of which Gilgal is the type—death with Christ, resurrection with Him beyond the grave, and “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus” (2 Cor. 4: 10).

Joshua 11

Satan is not so easily defeated as we might think. He is very powerful, and he has different weapons. We can easily see Jabin, king of Hazor, to be a good picture of the devil, for his name means “intelligent”, and he is the leader against the people of God in the land. He gathers a great army, terrifying in their numbers (verse 4), but numbers make no difference to God; “be not afraid,” is His word to Joshua, “for I will deliver them up all slain.”

How desperately they must have fought at the waters of Merom! Defeated here with his full strength engaged, the power of Satan over the whole land was broken before Joshua and his army.

Is not this a plain picture of Satan’s crushing defeat at the hands of the Lord Jesus when on the cross the victory was won whereby poor sinners are eternally saved? Then and there, on the cross of Calvary the judgment of this world was expressed, and the prince of this world was dealt such a blow that when his punishment is carried out, it will put him in hell forever (John 12:31; Rev. 20:10).

In Joshua 11:4 we read of the associated kings of Canaan and their armies: “And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is upon the seashore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many.”

It is the same energy of Satan as appeared on the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea in Exodus 14, only there Satan’s object was to prevent the deliverance of the people; here in Joshua 11, he was seeking to keep them from taking the place God had given His ransomed and separated people, behind whom rolled the waters of judgment.

Just so is it with Satan today. As to those who are not saved, but troubled about their sins, his determination is to stop them, —to hold them in his fearful slavery; and then with those who have received Christ as their personal Saviour, the devil does all he can to keep them from the enjoyment of the heavenly things which God has made theirs. Where do you stand, dear reader, in this warfare?

The victory must be God’s; no power can long stand against Him, so we learn in verse 8 of our chapter that Joshua’s forces “smote them (His enemies) until they left them none remaining”—their horses were killed and their chariots burned with fire. Hazor, the capital city of all those kingdoms, was utterly destroyed; Satan’s dwelling place will not do for God.

The believer’s heart rejoices in such words as verse 15. “As the Lord commanded Moses His servant, so did Moses command Joshua, and so did Joshua; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses.” Is the whole Word of God in this way before my reader?

Joshua 12

The last verse of the eleventh chapter told us that the whole country was taken, and was given to the people of Israel for an inheritance from God, and that the whole land rested from war. When wars are over, and not before, the Holy Spirit recounts the victories, —reckons them as Israel’s victories, though they were God’s. What victories (defeats, too) God’s people will learn of as God has recorded them, in the day when all their past will pass before their eyes at the judgment seat of Christ, when they shall know as they are known, see no more through a glass dimly, but face to face with their Lord and Saviour, like Him, and for Him eternally!

For the Christian, the time has certainly not arrived to recount victories; this is a day of watchfulness against the wiles of the devil, and the child of God is to be armored with all that belongs to true godliness, and armed with God’s Word (Ephesians 6:10-18), to meet Satan’s attacks. We must not be discouraged in the struggle with him, for soon the place of conflict will be exchanged for the place of God’s rest. Hebrews 11 records many of faith’s victories in others, as God reckons them, and then follows the opening of the twelfth chapter:

“Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses (the faith-worthies of chapter 11), let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith; Who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”

Joshua 13

The land as a whole was now conquered; the kings of the south had been subdued and put to death with their people; in the north, Joshua had made slower progress, and it seems clear that some of the former inhabitants having fled from the country, had returned and settled down again. It is now a question of the faith of the individual members of the elect nation, whether the remaining enemies be dispossessed or not: God’s word was given that He would drive them out from, before the children of Israel (verse 6). The land not yet possessed is described according to its boundaries in verses 2 to 6, but the whole inheritance without regard to the presence of enemies is to be divided among the people, now that the enemy’s power is broken. Where there was faithfulness to God, the enemies were driven out finally and completely, and there was rest for the people who thus acted in dependence upon Him.

The latter part of the chapter gives the possessions of the two-and one-half tribes who were satisfied to dwell on the east of the Jordan. It is humbling- to note that (verse 13) they did not expel the Geshurites and the Maachathites, but left them to dwell among them. Trusting in God, they should have driven out every enemy; these remained, a thorn in their side, to tempt with their evil ways, and mingle with them without that separation to God in heart and soul which is the true and only happy portion of His people.

Sorrowfully we find, as we go through the following chapters, that not one of the tribes drove out all the enemies of God; they were content to have them among them, or at least without spiritual energy to be rid of them.

There is another, and a brighter thing for the children of God to consider.; it is the portion of the sons of Levi, whom far back in the sacred volume we found separated to the service of God. Verse 14 declares that there was no inheritance, no parceling out of the land, for Levi’s children, for “the sacrifices of the Lord God of Israel made by fire are their inheritance, as He said unto them,” and verse 33 gives a yet higher and more intimately blessed portion to them the Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as He said unto them.

Rich indeed, were they, if they lived in the power of these elevating terms. Lands stretching as far as the eye could see, and cattle great in number, were little in value when compared with a close, an intimate association with the God of Israel. As they lived in the power of these things, the hearts of the Levites were surely detached from earth, to look upward to Him who was their inheritance. He would provide for their needs, while at the same time occupying them with Himself and engaging them in His service.

This is the most elevated path of faith. Christian, are you seeking to walk in it? What matter the broad fields, the flocks and herds, in the light of eternity? Christ must fill your heart, or you will never be really resting in His love here.

Joshua 14

We come now to the division of the land west of the Jordan—the true land of Canaan, which God had long purposed for His people Israel, —among the nine and one-half tribes remaining on that side. According to God’s order, the division was made; there was no room for man’s will in any way.

Now appears a bold man, Caleb the son of Jephunneh, whom we found in Numbers 13 and 14, as one of the twelve spies sent to look over the land some forty-five years earlier. Then he had been one of the two who gave a good report of the inheritance, and of him God had said,

“But My servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed Me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it.” I will quote from another:

“Joshua prefigured Christ, the Saviour-Jesus, bringing His people into the rest of the promised land, and Caleb walks in company with him. The great name of Joshua overshadows, so to speak, that of Caleb, and imprints upon it its character. These two men have but one thought, they have the same faith, confidence and courage, the same starting point, the same path, the same purpose of heart, the same goal. Is it so with us, dear reader? Are we so associated with Christ that our name cannot be uttered without His, and that our very existence owes its value to the fact that by grace we have been made companions of the Lord Jesus?

Hebron, Abraham’s and Isaac’s and Jacob’s burial place, was Caleb’s choice, —the place of death, but the place of faith. May we not say that the cross of Christ was thus foreshadowed—the place of the end of man, yet the place where faith lodges, seeing there the sinner’s Substitute in death, presently to come forth as the Lifegiver. There are “Anakims” (giants), and “cities great and fenced”, but “if so be”, said this man of faith, “that the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said.”

Sweet to trust in this God of our refuge! How firm a foundation is under the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus! Poor man or woman of this world, you are suffering an incalculable loss.

“Come to the Saviour, make no delay!”

Joshua 15-21

In these chapters we observe chiefly the exact possession of each tribe of the nine and one-half tribes who made their homes west of the Jordan. These details we shall not enter upon here; we may be sure that they will be read with the very greatest interest by the people of Israel in that time now fast approaching, when they are brought back to Canaan to possess their land as never before, when Israel’s Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:2).

But we notice too that though the place for each tribe was definitely appointed by God, not one of them fully took possession. As to every one we are told that there was failure to drive out the enemies.

We must turn to the first chapter of Judges to find the full record as to this. “This story of human failure is repeated at every occasion throughout the Word of God. We found it in the account of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3; and in the brief statement about the world just before the Word in Genesis 6:5. We found “failure” written on Noah, head of a cleansed earth, when he became intoxicated in Genesis 9:20, 21; and we might mention portion after portion of the Scriptures to the same effect.

It is plain today, to spiritual minds. that the people of God have fallen very far short of taking possession of all that God has made theirs. His Word is plain but they have not made it their own.

There is one last enemy that will never he expelled until the Lord Jesus Himself takes His power, and that is Satan (Revelation 20:1-3), but whatever is permitted that is not of God in the lives and associations of God’s children, in its measure keeps them from the full enjoyment of the Christian’s portion. It is worldliness that causes much of the weakness and coldness of heart among believers today.

Summarizing the chapters: in 15, 10 and 17 we are told in turn of Judah, Ephraim and Manasseh taking their inheritance. In chapter 18, Joshua, after the tabernacle has been set up at Shiloh, seeks to stir the other tribes, because of their slackness in taking possession of the land (generally north of the first three tribes) and Benjamin’s portion is given. In chapter 19, Simeon, Zebulon, Issachar, Asher, Napthali and Dan in turn are located, and Joshua’s portion is given in Mount Ephraim.

In chapter 20, the cities of refuge west of the Jordan are appointed for the unintentional killer of a person; in this, as we have before noticed (Numbers 35). we see a picture of God’s provision of a Saviour for the lost, and of His actions toward Israel concerning the death of His Son, our Lord Jesus.

The chapter 21 gives the portions of the three divisions of the Levites. —Kohathites, Gershonites and Merarites and the sons of Aaron. The closing three verses call for our particular attention: what is of God is perfect. He gave all the land, gave them rest, delivered their enemies into their hands, and nothing of which He had spoken to His people failed. Blessed be God. His ways are unchanging in love to His own, however they may (and do) fail.

Do you believe the testimony He has given concerning His Son: And if so, are you not moved to seek to have Christ for the very object of your heart—to live for Him?

Joshua 22

Before ever the Jordan was crossed and the land entered by the children of Israel, the tribes of Reuben and Gad had chosen for their inheritance the country east of the river which was the proper boundary of Canaan. They had voiced their wishes in Numbers 32, and now that the war of conquest was ended, Joshua told them that they were free to return to their homes and with them were half the tribe of Manasseh. Had their uppermost thought been the God of Israel instead of their “very great multitude of cattle,” a safer place as well as a happier one on the west of the Jordan would have been their choice.

The opening verses of our chapter show that they had been obedient in the matters spoken of, but verse 5 discloses the feeling of danger that Joshua had about them when the Jordan should separate the two and a half tribes from the rest of the nation. Anything short of the place of God’s appointment for His children is indeed a source of danger to them, and we are not surprised to find in 2 Kings 10:32,33 that the king of Syria attacked the tribes east of the Jordan and took part of their land, while 1 Chronicles 5:20 records their being all carried away captive by the Assyrian kings nineteen years before the remaining portions of the Kingdom of Israel and 1:12 years before the Kingdom of Judah was brought to an end.

Not quite at ease, realizing- that they were not in the full divine position of the nine and one-half tribes, the children of Reuben, Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh built a “great altar to see to” by the Jordan at the place where the nation had crossed when entering the land. This monument, by which they intended to show their oneness with Israel, aroused their brethren across the Jordan to go to war with the builders. With earnest words (verses 10-20) they addressed them, reminding the two and one-half tribes of the iniquity of Peor and of Achan, and inviting them to “pass over unto the land of the possession of the Lord, wherein the Lord’s tabernacle dwelleth and take possession among” them. The answer of the Reubenites, Gadites and Manassites (verses 21-29) showed that they meant nothing wrong, so the others returned to their homes.

It will be noticed that the settling on the east of Jordan was not after seeking direction from God, and the erection of the great altar was likewise a human expedient; their own wisdom led the people to these things: not the Word of God. Complications arise and human expedients seem necessary only when the true path of obedience is given up, for a worldly one.

Joshua 23

Joshua was now not far from the age of Moses at the time of his death (Deuteronomy 84:7; Joshua 24:29), and was himself soon to die.

Although he would soon be gone from their sight, the Lord their God was still, as always, the resource of the people if they would but seek Him. Joshua commends them to the Word of God (verse 6) to keep all that is in it, turning not aside to the right hand or the left. The ungodly among them were a source of weakness (verse 7), but they were to cleave to the Lord: He would fight for them while they remained faithful to Him. They must be separate from the ungodly (verse 12), or the chastening hand of God would be on them.

Here then was the testimony of their aged leader: “Ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spoke concerning you: all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof.” Yet Joshua solemnly predicts (verses 15 and 16) the departure of the people from God, and of their removal from the land for which He brought them out of Egypt to possess.

God cannot, and will not, go on with His people in independence of Himself; holiness must be maintained. And yet how great is His patience; His love how amazing!

Joshua 24

If the address of Joshua in chapter 23 is general in its bearing that of this chapter is detailed and pointed. The fathers of this people had been idol worshipers, living on the other side of the “flood” (the river Euphrates is meant). Their history under God’s powerful, protecting hand is given in the verses ending with 13. This was all the exercise of the unwearied grace of God toward His earthly people, and should have moved them to confess their utter failure. But instead, when asked by Joshua “Choose you this day whom ye will serve”—the gods of idolatry or the true God,—and Joshua giving his own testimony: “But as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” the people answered, “We also will serve the Lord for He is our God” (verse 18), and again, upon Joshua’s solemn reply, “Ye cannot serve the Lord; for He is an holy God: He is a jealous God.” their rejoinder is, “Nay but we will serve the Lord.” Then said Joshua, “Ye are witnesses against yourselves, that ye have chosen the Lord, to serve Him.” “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and incline your heart unto the Lord God of Israel.”

How like the scene at Mount Sinai this is, and yet how utterly without thought as to their own history from the Red Sea to the Jordan and since, was the confident promise of Israel to serve Him, Whom they as a nation had never really served, and against Whom they had rebelled in heart and in action not a few times, —and they had even now idols among them! Grace was what they needed, not law, but to law they cling, though it pronounced their ruin.

It should however he observed that the people spoke as they did in some knowledge of and dependence upon the power of God. They had not yet lost the realization of that power acting on their behalf, though their own unfaithfulness was proved by the presence among them of enemies who should have been totally removed, had there been true devotedness to God.

How similar to the Church of God ever since the days of the apostles! Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua. and all the days of the elders who outlived him, and had known all the works of the Lord that He had done for Israel (verse 31).

The book of Joshua has shown us the power of God to bring His people into possessions, into blessings (as identified with Christ in His death and resurrection), beyond forgiveness of sins typified in the passover in Egypt, Exodus 12), beyond redemption, deliverance from Satan’s power (typified in the crossing of the Red Sea, Exodus 14), and beyond the blessings and mercies of the wilderness which followed.

And what are these blessings which are not realized until the soul of the believer apprehends his death and resurrection with Christ? The present realization of the believer’s eternal portion; his inheritance in Christ in glory, —in brief, what the Epistle to the Ephesians sets forth (see chapters 1 and 2). Together with the blessings, is a warfare with Satan, not known before. May God grant to us who trust in His Word, to be more zealous to enter into what He has opened up to us.

Judges 1

Just a word, first, about this book: it is the history of failure on the people’s part, and of God’s delivering them again and again when their disregard of Him and His word brought them into slavery. At first, when Joshua was but lately dead, there was some spiritual energy and of this we read in the opening chapters. But the book is a record of increasing sin, each revival followed by greater decline.

The children of Israel did well indeed, in asking God for guidance (verse 1), and great encouragement they received in the answer (verse 2): “Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.” The sequel, too, in verse 4: “Judah went up and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and Perizzites into their hand” shows the reward of those who put their trust in God.

The captured king, Adoni-bezek, (his name means “Lord of lightning”) had that done to him which he had done to others. He had to own, “as I have done, so God hath requited me” (verse 7). No power can withstand God, however great its boasting.

In verse 10 we learn of the slaying of Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmiai, of whom mention was made by the spies in their report to the people of Israel in Numbers 13:22, 28, 33; and by Moses in Deuteronomy 9:2. Caleb, we were told in Joshua 15:14, had driven these giants out, and here but a line or two is taken to record their being put to death at the hands of the people of Judah.

Fear of these men had been used by Satan to keep the people out of the inheritance God had provided for them. “We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight”, said the spies, but their children, going in God’s strength to the battle, are quickly victorious. “There be more with us than with him” (the enemy), 2 Chronicles 32:7.

Next we have examples of individual faith in Caleb, Othniel and Achsah, first given to us in Joshua 15, and as it appears, faith on the part of some who were not of Israel (verse 16), in forsaking the city of palm trees (thought to be the cursed ruins of Jericho) for the company of God’s people. Again Judah and Simeon are seen warring against their enemies, “and the Lord was with Judah” (verse 19), but their faith in Him was not sufficient for victory over those whose chariots were of iron.

The fourth chapter shows us something different in this respect (verses 13-16, etc.), where the army of Sisera with “nine hundred chariots of iron” was destroyed after the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of twenty years of cruel oppression (verse 3).

Seven of the tribes of Israel, —Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan did not drive out the former inhabitants, and no doubt these latter went on with their idolatry and the wickedness which they practiced along with it. Very soon the Israelites became like those who lived among them, as we may see from chapter 2.

The two-and one-half tribes east of the Jordan are not included in this chapter, —Reuben, Gad, and the half of Manasseh, —but this leaves Issachar not mentioned. Do we find the explanation in what was said by Jacob of him in Genesis 49:14, 15?

O, that God’s people today were stirred in their hearts to serve Him first! To consider their own comfort last!

Judges 2

We noticed in our reading of the book of Joshua, the special place given to Gilgal; there the twelve memorial stones were placed that were taken out of the Jordan; there the Israelites were circumcised (type of separation from the system of things in which the unsaved live), and the reproach of Egypt was rolled away. Gilgal was the first camp in the land, —the starting point in taking possession of it, and the place to which Joshua returned after each campaign. Here we learn that God was there (verse 1).

But the people have not obeyed His voice, and they have sunk to the level of the inhabitants of the land, and the angel of the Lord quits Gilgal, going to Bochim, to the place of weeping, declaring that He will no longer drive out the enemy whom Israel had spared. The tears (verse 4) are for lost blessings, and God accepts them, because His relationship to the people is not altered. This change from Gilgal, the place where self is, so to speak, buried, and divine power supplied, to Bochim, the place of tears, is the key to the book of Judges and it expresses so often the condition of God’s children in our own day.

From verse 6 to chapter 3:7 we are given the historical development of the position of Israel. Like the assembly or Church of God, —preserved during the lives of the apostles, and then falling into unfaithfulness and rebellion, mixing with the unbelieving, and so getting deeper into ungodliness, —so it was in this earlier day with Israel. While Joshua lived and the elders that outlived him, the people served the Lord (verse 7), but another generation arose (verse 10), and they did evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baalim. This worship of Baal, the chief male god (Ashtaroth—verse 13—was the chief female god) of the Canaanites, persisted in Israel until the last, although it was almost entirely stopped under Samuel and Jehu, and in Elijah’s day all his prophets were killed.

Accordingly, the hand of God was against Israel (verse 15) and they were “greatly distressed”; nevertheless He raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those who oppressed them. Then we get the sad record about the people in verses 1 and 19 that they would not listen to the judges, and went after other gods.

This has ever been the history of the people of God, true in all dispensations and in all periods of time, though He in grace has raised up repeatedly devoted ones who gave their lives for Him.

Yet there is a deeper question: As we consider these people of a long past period, has the reader himself peace with God? His word declares how that peace is obtained.

“Therefore 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.” Romans 5:1, 2. There is no other way but through Jesus and by His shed blood!

Do not rest in your feelings, but in Christ and His work on the cross, dying as the divine Substitute for sinners who trust in Him.

Judges 3

Sadly, contrary to the revealed mind of God was the dwelling of the children of Israel among those they should have put to death. In Joshua 23:12-13 their leader had solemnly warned the people on this very point, and spoke of marriage with these idolaters, but the warning was lost upon them, for the Israelites lived among the six nations, and intermarried with them, and became idol worshipers with them. Because of these things the anger of God was hot against Israel, and they were lint under the rule of Chushan—rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia.

Eight years of oppression are ended by God’s raising up Othniel, Caleb’s nephew of whom we have read before, to deliver the children of Israel. After this the land had rest for forty years, and Othniel died. Quick to forget the admonitions of the deliverer God had raised up, now that he was dead, the people fell back into sin. Therefore, God uses Satan’s power to chasten them, in Eglon, king of Moab, aided by the Ammonites and Amalekites. This oppression lasted eighteen years, when Fluid is used to free the people. Eighty years pass, and Shamgar delivered Israel, as it appears, from their western enemy the Philistines.

Weak were the instruments which God raised up to work deliverance for His people here, but they were each just what was needed. Victory in each case we may be sure was won by God’s omnipotent power, however feeble and contemptible the instrument.

It was when the children of Israel cried to their God that He sent deliverance; clearly God was not in their thoughts when everything went well with them.

How like God’s people today! If they had not been put in hard circumstances, their unbelief would not have been less but more, and they would have missed the opportunity to learn of God, as well as to learn what was in their own hearts. For the same reasons God permits His children today to pass through trial.

Judges 4

A second Jabin, king of Hazor in the north country now rules with a heavy hand over the sinful Israelites. The former king and his capital city had been destroyed (Joshua 11:1-13), but the unfaithfulness of God’s people gave occasion to rebuild the city and re-establish the kingdom.

It will be noticed that the source of the trial, its exact form and its length vary in each of the cases we have been noticing, but God’s purpose is the same in every one, —to exercise the people, who had professed to serve Him in regard to their ways. The crying to God always brings an answer from Him in grace, though we may think rightly that there was a great deal more in the people’s prayers of complaint about their sufferings, than of confession of their departure from God and His Word.

Considering the deliverers in order, from Othniel to Deborah and Barak, we see a gradual increase in weakness; their names—for nothing is in vain in Scripture, —themselves indicating it as well as the circumstances in which each appears.

(Othniel—God is force; Ehud—strong; Shamgar—cup-bearer; Deborah —bee, or wasp; Barak—lightning; Jael—chamois or deer).

That a woman judged Israel was contrary to God’s ordinary dealings, and a disgrace to men. It was however a sign of God’s over-ruling power, for Deborah was a prophetess. She learned the mind of God and passed it on to Barak (verses 6, 7), here was safe ground for faith to tread: would Barak act, thus directed and assured from God Himself? He obeys, but sadly lacks faith for the undertaking, for he will not go without the presence of Deborah, who he rightly judges, is walking nearer to God than himself.

The case has a certain parallel in the experience of Moses who was directed of God to appear before the monarch of Egypt, and demand of him liberty for the people of Israel, but, unwilling to act on the hare word of God, has to share his appointment with his brother (Exodus 4:14-17). So the honor will not be Barak’s (verse 9) but a woman’s, and that one not of the children of Israel, but a stranger (verses 11, 17-22).

Following the slender faith of the feeble army under Barak and Deborah, the mighty God, ever interested in and acting, though often unrecognized, for those whom in grace He has picked up, proceeds on behalf of Israel, so that the enemy’s leader, Sisera, flies for his life, his army destroyed to the last man. The stranger, Jael, now takes his life using such a weapon as came to her hand, —the whole incident manifesting God’s power displayed in “earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of Him, and not of us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Judges 5

The song of Deborah and Barak is first of all praise to God for the marvelous victory over Sisera and his army which He had given His people. God had caused the people to willingly offer themselves for the fight (verse 2); they had no weapons of warfare: not a shield or spear (verse 8), but they needed none when He was their dependence.

The roads had been unused and those who traveled went by crooked paths; the villages ceased (verses 6,7) because of the oppression of the king of Canaan. Surely the distress brought on Israel by their sins had been great.

Commencing in verse 14 to 22 the tribes of Israel are named, and their response or the lack of it, to the call of God for war against the oppressing enemy. Ephraim, Benjamin. Machir (in Manasseh), Zebulun, Issachar, Naphtali are commended, Zebulun and Naphtali most of all (verse 18).

Reuben abode among the sheepfolds: was it to hear the bleatings of the flocks? It may be that the tribe of Reuben had not suffered under the oppressor, the king of Canaan; however while they were not at ease (verses 15 and 16) about the call from Deborah and Barak, they did not go to the help of their brothers across the Jordan. Gilead (Gad) also stayed in his place, but, as we may judge, without the concern that the Reubenites had. Dan and Asher also kept on in their own affairs when the call to war against the enemy came. No mention is found of the tribes of Judah and Simeon in the extreme south.

In verse 23 Meroz, (whose location is uncertain but some think it was near the lake of Merom north of the sea of Galilee) is cursed of God because they came not to the war.

It is plain that in these verses we have God’s thoughts about those who stand in some relation to Him. Those who went out in the war for God, and took His side when the prophetess’s message came, form one class; while those who, though a good deal concerned about it, stayed at home, form another, and a third class were indifferent to the call of God. What will eternity show for us of this day, reader, when God’s records of all are opened?

There was a rich farmer once who took no thought but of his ease and his earthly gain and happiness, but in an hour he had not prepared for, the word came, “Thou fool; this night thy soul shall be required of thee.” Luke 12:20. See in this connection Matthew 6:19-24.

Verses 19, 21; the scene of the battle with Sisera’s army was in the northwest, near the Mediterranean Sea, and the river of Kishon is a mountain stream where later Elijah killed the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40).

Verses 24-27. God had foretold that, since Barak was unwilling to take the leadership against Sisera without Deborah’s being associated with him, a woman should be the instrument of the Canaanite’s end (chap. 4:9), and verse 31 classes Sisera as one of God’s enemies; not merely an enemy of Israel. Undoubtedly therefore, Jael was moved by the same fear as possessed Rahab the harlot of Jericho (Joshua 2) when she took a stand for God as against all-natural feeling. We are not told that God justified the means Jael took, —the apparent deceit she employed, but the end was according to His mind; His will was done. There are a number of similar instances in the Scriptures; none of them supply any justification for that which is contrary to the revealed mind of God.

Judges 6

Again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. How quickly they forgot the lessons learned in affliction! Only forty years had elapsed since the Canaanites were vanquished, their cruel oppression ended, and now the Israelites must, because of their sinful ways, be put into Satan’s hands again. More severe was this visitation than the last, so that the people forsook their lands and their homes for dens in the mountains, and caves and strongholds by reason of the Midianites.

We last read of the Midianites in Numbers 22 to 25 and 31, as those who brought Balaam the false prophet to curse Israel, afterward leading the people into sin, and upon whom heavy punishment fell because of this. Now they are a strong nation again, and with them in oppressing God’s people are the Amalekites, ancient enemies, and the children of the east, probably the Assyrians and Babylonians. As the former oppressors seem to have come from the north, these were from the south and east. “Till thou come unto Gaza” (verse 4) seems to show that the whole land was ruined, as Gaza was the furthest south of the cities along the Mediterranean Sea.

When all was well with them, the children of Israel forgot God; now when great evils are befallen them, and they are in dire distress, they cry to Him. Nor does He at once deliver them. He first sends a prophet to them to tell them the cause of their troubles. It is the same word as in chapter 2:2: “Ye have not obeyed My voice.”

This is the cause of the unhappiness of Christians in our day, —neglect of the Word of God. O, that its pages were constantly and devoutly searched by every child of His!

An angel of the Lord went to Gideon the son of Joash, of the tribe of Manasseh, in whom was faith, though it was weak. Clearly Gideon had been deeply moved by the state of things in Israel before the angel visited him, and he thought of God rather than making up his mind to endure the slavery of the Midianites. Thus the angel could say, “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor,” to which Gideon responds, “If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” He would not consider himself, but all Israel —God’s people; this is an important principle of faith. God, he owns, had delivered the nation into the hands of the Midianites. Now Gideon is to go at the command of the Lord Himself in the strength he had received from Him, in connection with his exercise of heart.

Gideon feels his own unimportance (verse 15) but is told, “Surely I will be with thee.” Sweet and powerful encouragement! Realizing, that he has been in the presence of the angel of God, he needs the message of peace now given him. The altar’s name, Jehovah-shalom, means “Jehovah is peace.”

Public service now begins, by reestablishing; in his own family and in his own city of Ophrah the relationship between God and His people (verses 25-32). Baal must be put away lest the deliverance about to be wrought should be ascribed to the false god. Obedience is first required, and then power for action is supplied; this is God’s order. Now the enemy is mustered in full strength, and the Spirit of the Lord comes on Gideon. He gathers a following from the four most northerly tribes, and God graciously grants him a sign to strengthen his weak, but real and sincere faith.

Judges 7

Thirty-two thousand men joined Gideon, but so weak in faith were they, that when in the presence of the Midianites, twenty-two thousand of them were ready to go back to their homes. So, easily is the pride of man raised that spite of their timidity, the people would, if God gave the Midianites into their hands, say, “Mine own hand hath saved me” (verse 2). The number is yet too great, for God’s hand alone must be seen in the overthrow of the enemy. Only those may remain who drank hastily, more concerned with the prospective battle than with their comfort and ease. This reduced the number following Gideon to 300, but his faith is strong; he no longer looks at himself, but to God, trusting in His word Who said, “I have delivered it (the enemy) into thine hand.”

The ways in which God acts on behalf of His own people are various, as we are reminded by the case of the Midianites. Their soldiers are spread out in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude, yet there is terror in their breasts, fear put there by God. “Into his (Gideon’s) hand hath God delivered Midian and all the host” says one soldier to another (verse 14). Gideon, directed by God to go down to their camp that he may learn what they are saying, hearing this, returns to his feeble, unarmed band of 300 men, saying, “Arise, for the Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian.” It is God who does everything for Israel; the trumpets and lamps only announce His presence and that of His servant Gideon, and the terror-stricken enemy, amid the darkness of the night, kill each other, for the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow even throughout all the host.

Now the men of Israel come out of their cities to pursue the enemy, profiting by the work of faith, though without faith themselves, and so the chapter ends. What power in God, open to the appeal of faith; what weakness in man, however he may he blessed!

Judges 8

One hundred and twenty thousand soldiers of the Midianites and their associates, the Amalekites and the children of the east, died in the conflict (verse 10); about 15,000 remained, and these Gideon attacked, in the stronghold to which they fled, and took their two kings. Gideon pursues the enemy in the energy of faith, unmoved from his purpose by the attitude of others. To the men of Ephraim, who thought they had too small a share in the victory, Gideon answers discreetly, and their anger was abated toward him. “A soft answer turneth away wrath” Prov. 15:1.

On the east of the Jordan we again do not see the same energy of faith as in the land distinctly of promise; this is as we have been led to expect, where there is first thought for one’s possessions, and God has the second place in the heart. The men of Succoth and Penuel disown the man to whom under God they owed the mighty work then nearing its conclusion, and on his return Gideon punishes them for their cowardice.

Israel now wished Gideon to reign over them, but he rightly refused, saying, “The Lord shall rule over you:” however he made an ephod (a priest’s garment supposed to have reached from the shoulders to the knees) from the spoil of the Midianites, and this became an object that practically displaced God—became an idol, a snare to Gideon and his house. A memorial of God’s intervention is not present faith in the God who has intervened. The time of victory is a time of peculiar danger, and Gideon failed.

During Gideon’s after life of 40 years, there was quietness in the land, but as soon as he was dead, the children of Israel turned to the worship of idols. How sad!

Must there not be a reckoning day when God will deal with those who turn away from Him? Yes, indeed. Not only did judgment overtake the Israelites then, but God “hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained, —whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” Acts 17:31.

There is a solemn day of judgment awaiting this world, but “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth. in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:10.

Sinner, listen to the voice of the sinner’s Friend, Jesus, the Son of God.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus. Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Acts 16:31.

Judges 9

Plainly the state of Israel was getting worse; the son of Gideon did not tread in his father’s earlier footsteps. The former lessons are forgotten; God Himself is given up for Baal-Berith. The source of some of the evil of the ninth chapter we may trace back to Gideon, whose heart was ensnared by Satan when the victory over the Midianites was complete. Popularity and worldly comfort are dangerous for God’s people; they lost to Gideon and his children the far greater rewards of a walk with God.

Abimelech, son of Gideon, planning to be made king over Israel, went to his native city, Shechem, and so won over to himself his mother’s relations, and through them, the people of the place, that they were disposed to follow him. He hired “vain and light persons” (verse 4) with money taken from the false god Baal-Berith by the people of Shechem, and his next step was to go to his father’s house and murder all his seventy brothers except one who escaped by hiding himself. The citizens of Shechem, far from punishing this man of blood, now gathered together and made Abimelech their king.

Jotham, sole survivor of the seventy sons, delivered a warning, but it appears to have passed without much notice at the time; we hear no more of him, but his testimony was shortly fulfilled. God was pat in their thoughts, whether Shechemites or followers of Abimelech. He had been given up by them for Baal-Berith, and violence and deceit thereafter marked them.

The two last verses of the chapter give the divine side of the whole matter. It was impossible that God should pass over sin. Perhaps to Abimelech it seemed only a question of getting rid of his brothers and thereby becoming king, and afterward of enforcing his claims: the people of Shechem had been for Abimelech, partners in his crime and when their feeling, changed toward him they turned away from him. But God was to be reckoned with nothing escaped His eves, and judgment came; the “wickedness” of the one and “all the evil” of the other, was rendered to them.

Reader, let me press upon you, if unsaved, Romans 2:3, “And thinkest thou this, ........that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?” You may have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1) who is now offered you as a Saviour, but do not delay. Now is the accepted time with God.

Judges 10

Tola and Jair were mercifully raised up by God to preserve Israel for periods exceeding twenty years each, but when both were dead, the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord. They “corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from, their stubborn way.” (chapter 2:19).

More idols than before were adopted from the nations around, and the people whom God had made His own, and by wonderful acts of power and grace had brought from cruel slavery in Egypt to peace and plenty in Canaan, “forsook the Lord and served not Him” (verse 6).

We are not surprised then that “the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel,” and that He sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and the Ammonites to whose gods they bowed down. The chastening they now received was severe, but necessarily so. Left to themselves, the children of Israel invariably fell into the ways of the idolatrous world.

This also has been the experience of the people of God since the cross of Christ, though much more enlightened and blessed. There is no safety in following man no matter how intelligent and however blessed of God. Well may repentant Israel say,

“God is our refuge and strength; a very present help in trouble,” Psalm 46:1; and so, here in our chapter the people, “sore distressed,” cried unto Him, confessing their sin in forsaking their God and in serving idols.

There was not now immediate deliverance; these confessions had been made before, under the rod of affliction, but when once relief was given, the people had gone on with the practices which had brought on the suffering.

“Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen! Let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation!” is God’s answer, and it leads to deeper exercise. The strange gods are now put away, and they serve the Lord. Then His heart is grieved for the misery of Israel (verse 16). In His own time., but none the less certainly, He will deliver them, answering the prayer of their exercised hearts. So James tells us (James 5:16).

“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” We must wait for the next chapter to tell how deliverance came.

Judges 11

Another man of low degree, Jephthah, is now brought forward. Rejected by his own people, he had fled to a district of, Syria northeast of Gilead, where “vain men” were gathered to him and went out with him. Oppressed, as we have seen in the last chapter, by the Ammonites, the elders of Gilead went to Jephthah to persuade him to be their captain to lead the people against their oppressors. With their promise that he should be their head if he led the people to victory, Jephthah went with the elders.

The king of the children of Ammon refusing to listen to the message of Jephthah, war begins. The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah (verse 29), but from this alone we cannot judge that the latter was a believer, for both Balaam and Saul are spoken of in the same way (Numbers 24:2; 1 Samuel 10:10).

In the New Testament from the forming of the Church of God (Acts 2), the Holy Spirit indwells every child of God (Ephesians 1:13), and this is a proof of the new birth (Romans 8:9).

The Spirit’s coming on Jephthah was however to energize him for the fight with the Ammonites; he was raised up for the purpose, and we know from Hebrews 11 That he knew God by faith, though his life was far below the standard of earlier judges and deliverers of Israel.

He made a rash vow (verses 30-31), and suffered the consequences of it, his daughter—his only child—never marrying. It does not seem at all possible that Jephthah killed his daughter; the condemnation to childlessness was a great calamity to an Israelite, sufficient to bring out the father’s expression of grief in verse 35.

Judges 12

Here we find sin breaking out again and as usual, soon after God had wrought a great deliverance for His people. What marvelous forbearance He showed, and still shows, for mercy has not yet given place to judgment! But since the cross of Christ, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (Romans 1:18), and, knowing the terror (judgment) of the Lord, we persuade men (2 Corinthians 5:11). Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), but how shall they escape who neglect so great salvation? (Hebrews 2:3).

The quarrelsome men of Ephraim of whom we have read before (chapter 8). had not followed Jephthah to the war against the Ammonites, but now, when victory is obtained, they blame him for not calling them, and threaten to burn his house over his head. There does not appear the fear of God in the words of the Ephraimites, nor yet in the doings of Jephthah, for the latter gathered all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites suffered death at the hands of Jephthah and his followers from Gilead.

The Word of God does not tell us His judgment about this fight; it does not seem that either side could be commended. Jephthah should have met the angry men of Ephraim with a gracious spirit, as Gideon had met their fathers (chapter 8:1-3). Summing up his life we should rather form an opinion of Jephthah from the meaning of his name (an opposer), and what we have seen of him in the eleventh and twelfth chapters that he was a selfish and violent man of the world who did not know God by faith as Gideon, Deborah and many others before him in the record of the Holy Scriptures, but the divine Penman in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaking of those “faith-worthies” of the Old Testament says:

“And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson and of Jephthah ... ..who through faith subdued kingdoms ... ...

We must be slow to judge others, but apply the Word of God strictly to our own individual selves. It is “sharper that any two-edged sword ... .and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12,13).

Judges 13

Verse 1: When those who are in relationship to Him are marked by ways of sin, God, who is holy as well as loving, and a “consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), allows them to suffer at the hands of their enemies. The divinely given history which we are reading has to say that “the children of Israel did evil again,” but their God is faithful; He had not given them up, though they had all but given Him up, as we have before noticed in this book of the Judges. How slow He is to turn away; how long put off is the day of judgment! And men are today, as of long time, scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?” 2 Peter 3:3-15.

The Philistines here become the oppressors; they were not as the Moabites; the Canaanites under Sisera; the Midianites, Amalekites and children of Ammon, enemies from outside the borders of the land, but enemies inside the enclosure of Israel. The Philistines had already proved themselves enemies (chapter 10:7), and now were at the height of their power. From an enemy within, when the condition of God’s people is such that they cannot be led out against an enemy as in the preceding examples of this book, we are in this chapter pointed directly and at length to the resource provided of God for our own times: entire separation from the evil. (2 Timothy 2:21).

The name “Nazarite”, (found also in Numbers 6, Lamentations 4:7, 8, and Amos 2:11, 12,) means simply “separated”. The Nazarite might not touch, strong drink, or anything that came from the vine, —typical of turning away from sources of earthly energy, and joy; no razor must come upon his head,—suggestive of the giving up of self and of natural rights and proprieties as man (see 1 Corinthians 11:7, 14); he must not touch any dead body,—typical of avoiding contact with moral defilement, association with the world viewed as dead and separated from God because of sin. The one great example of true Nazariteship was the Lord Jesus in His spotless, God-glorifying life on earth, when evil reigned among the people to whom He came; though one of the people, He was not of them, but apart, separate from the evil. And since His resurrection He is completely separate from sinners; the world sees Him no more except in judgment.

Separation to God as indicated in Samson’s case, and in its fulness in Jesus, is, under the circumstances, the only means of enjoying the strength of God.

Samson’s birth, like that of Isaac (Genesis 18:10, 11), of Samuel, (1 Samuel 1) and of John the Baptist (Luke 1:7, 13- 20), and above all of our Lord Jesus who was born into the world in a way peculiar to Himself alone (Luke 1:35), marked the power of God passing by man who is powerless through sin.

Judges 14

The close of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth chapters presents a contrast, for it was not at all according to the mind of God that His people should marry Philistines. Indeed He had solemnly warned them in Deuteronomy 7:3-4 against marriages with the nations who were idolaters:

"Neither shalt thou make marriages with them, thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son, for they will turn away thy son from following Me, that they may serve other gods; so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly." Samson's father and mother knew it was sin on Samson's part to wish a wife of the Philistines, and begged him to give her up, but their son was acting in self-will, and untrue for the time and in this respect, to the separation which God had through the angel imposed on him.

From verse 4 we learn that God makes use of what He does not sanction; God's principles do not alter, but He looks beyond Samson to the discomfiture of the enemy. Samson was weak, morally, and what he did was more individual than any of the earlier judges. He represents to us the tendency of the church, or assembly of God, and of the individual Christian, to fall away from the standing given by God. This tendency does not always produce the same amount of evil fruit, but it leads the heart further and further away from God, into the world. God may and evidently He does still use those who neglect to maintain the position He has purposed for the assembly; He may glorify Himself through them, and doubtless He does, but there is great loss to the unfaithful ones. It cannot be otherwise, and the evil is progressive.

While then Samson is only measurably true to his calling as a separated man, the Spirit of God uses him in feats of strength; he kills a lion, and the riddle he propounds about it leads to his killing thirty of the Philistines.

Samson had strength from God while going on in a measure of faithfulness to Him. This is the "riddle", the secret of God's children. The lion has no strength, though he may roar at them, against those who belong to Christ, and by the Holy Spirit's power, victory is gained and honey is found. Unhappily, Samson did not keep himself apart for God, and he exposed his secret to his own loss.

God mercifully preserves Samson from this marriage, and he returns to his home. The will of God is done, but we do not see much to commend in the ways of the man whom God at this time raised up.

What of ourselves, who profess the name of Jesus?—are we each seeking to occupy the position of true separation from the world which God has given us? Alas! it is to be feared that the self-will of God's children today is relatively greater than Samson's self-seeking. But the remedy is ever available—the Word of God and prayer. May we seek His face!

Judges 15

Another exploit of Samson's, more destructive of the enemies of God's people than the former one, provokes the Philistines exceedingly. They came to take Samson and the circumstance shows the condition of the nation which God had adopted. "Knowest thou not," the three thousand of Judah said to Samson, "that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this that thou hast done to us?"

The Spirit of God did not arouse the people to dispossess the enemy as He had done in the times of Gideon, of Barak and others, and they would give this separated man up to the Philistines in order to keep peace with them. So Samson was delivered up by his own people, as afterward Jesus, the true Nazarite, was delivered up by those whom He came to save.

Again the Spirit of the Lord came mightily on Samson, and a thousand of the Philistines were killed with an instrument so contemptible as the jawbone of an ass.

It is when Samson is a separated man, and now more particularly when he is given up by his brethren, that he is strongest against the enemy. In this again he is a picture, however faint in outline, of the rejected Jesus, Who in the day of His resurrection said to His little band of devoted ones who shared His rejection, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18). And again, it is written of Him, "When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive." Ephesians 4:8.

The end of the chapter gives us a prayer and its answer. Samson owns that the "great deliverance" was God's, and asks for and obtains water for his thirst out of the dead instrument of power. It appears that now for a season the Philistines withdrew to some extent, and Samson was careful to seek no immediate alliance with them. Separation was again his portion.

Judges 16

Pitifully sad is the story of Samson, called to be a Nazarite—one separated to God,—but again and again seeking gratification for his desires among the enemies of God instead of making war against them. This is always a Christian's danger. To yield to the constant pressure to ally oneself with the world, and thus going on with conduct opposed to the believer's true character, always brings disappointment, and the world at heart despises such worldly Christians. Samson showed his strength in freeing himself from the trap set for him in Gaza, but what excuse had he for being there, with such a character given him as chapter 13 discloses?

Verse 4 begins the last and most sorrowful section of Samson's history. Again he seeks enjoyment in the Philistine world, his heart going out after one of the enemies of the people and of God. We see no real affection on Delilah's part toward Samson; rather is she working with the lords of the Philistines to accomplish his downfall. Money was her object in part (verse 5), and God is not in her thoughts. Acknowledging his great strength (which the Philistines had felt and feared) all her artifices are employed to find how Samson got it, that she might take it away, and finally Delilah succeeds, for (verse 17) Samson at last told her "all his heart."

All attempts were powerless while Samson maintained his Nazariteship; this once lost, Samson was apparently as strong, but God was departed from Him (verse 20). He had despised the precious position in which divine grace had placed him, and, in the discipline of God, lost his sight forever.

Yet God remembered His own glory, and His poor failing servant suffering under the chastening his sin had brought him. Samson's strength too returns as God is before his mind. The opportunity is given to destroy the great house full of men and women and the lords of the Philistines,—more falling on that occasion at Samson's hand than in his free days, but he had to perish himself in the judgment. He had identified himself with the world, and he must share in its judgment. What a warning to those who, having believed in Jesus to the salvation of their souls, the true Christians, are exposed to the temptations of the world! May God Himself speak to all who are His, that they may seek to maintain the Nazariteship which is theirs by God's ordination. It is not a question of losing eternal life, which cannot be, but of unfaithfulness to God in identification with the world, involving the loss of spiritual strength and eyesight, and removal in judgment from this scene.

As to the unsaved, it is again our solemn duty to call, attention to the certainty of God's unsparing eternal judgment on those who neglect so great salvation as has been wrought by His Son's sin-atoning death. Delay no longer; turn to Jesus!

Judges 17

We have finished with the Judges, in the order of time, and now are turned back to see the sad state of the people of Israel from near the beginning of the period with which this book is concerned.

Idolatry was there, even a "house of gods" (verse 5), where the name of the true God was professed (verses 2, 3 and 13). Micah had stolen eleven hundred silver pieces from his mother, but confessed it and restored the silver to her; with two hundred an image was made, as it appears, partly moulded, partly "graven". It is referred to in chapter 18 as Micah's graven image. Probably the pedestal was moulded, and the image proper completed by hand work. Idolatry had been forbidden in the second of the ten commandments (Exodus 20:4 and Deut. 5:8), and in at least eight other passages in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

The ephod (verse 5) was a garment worn by the priests of the Lord, but we have already noticed that Gideon (chapter 8:27) made one out of the gold, the ornaments, and the purple garments taken from the Midianites, and that this became a snare to him and to his family and to the people of Israel. Micah's case seems worse, considerably. The teraphim were probably home idols—images used in idol worship. One of Micah's sons, quite in disregard of God's order regarding the sons of Aaron, was made his priest until a young Levite came from Bethlehem-Judah. This young man Micah invited to live with him) and be his priest for a yearly wage.

Everything seems to have been undertaken without the authority of God's Word, yet God's name was attached to it all as though He approved it, and the Levite, who should have known the mind of God perhaps better than Micah, went with him and seems to have been the ground of Micah's confidence (verse 13) that the Lord will do him good. Can we expect good from God if we pay no attention to His Word?

How opposite Micah's course was to the character expressed in the first Psalm concerning one whose "delight is in the law of the Lord and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water . . . . and whatever he doeth shall prosper."

The only right course for anyone at any time is to be found in the Bible, written there for the guidance of those who have believed in the Lord Jesus to the salvation of their souls.

Judges 18

Here we are in the district where Samson was born and lived (see chapter 13, verses 2 and 25), but earlier than his time, as it would appear (see Joshua 19:47).

The tribe of Dan seek their inheritance, sending out five valiant men to search out the land. These came to Micah's house, and finding the young Levite there, they asked him to inquire of God about the success of their trip. The Levite, apparently without seeking to learn God's mind, told them to go in peace; their way he said was before the Lord. The Danites then go on to Laish (in Joshua 19:47 called Leshem) in the far north, and return to tell their brethren its capture is easy, the land spacious and very productive.

Verse 14 seems to indicate that the use of idols was not then limited to Micah and his family, of the children of Israel. How ready man is and has ever been to turn from the living and true God! By show of force, Micah's instruments of idolatry and his man-constituted priest were carried away to serve the desires of the six hundred warriors bound for Laish, the priest being indeed glad to go with them. There is no mention of God as being on the side of the children of Dan in this expedition; how could God act for them when their security lay in idols and other devices of their own? If we compare the account in verses 27-28 with the conquests of Joshua's day when God was with His people in power, and they were measurably obedient to Him, the difference is evident.

Naming the city Dan, after the name of their father, seems a parallel case to the act of Cain, that first fruit of a sinful parentage, in going away from the presence of God to a distant land, and there building a city which he named after his son (Gen. 4:16-17). Cain knew nothing he reckoned more worthy of memory than this (for God was not in his thoughts), and so exalted man, upon whom God's judgment had been expressed and would inevitably fall.

The children of Dan take however a further step, setting up the image which Micah had made, and establishing a spurious priesthood of their own, founded upon a descent from the honored leader Moses, but nevertheless independent of the order which God had established of the sons of Aaron. Here again we may observe a similarity to what God had provided; the Danites were religious, but far from God and disobedient to His Word. We are told prophetically that this priesthood continued "until the day of the captivity of the land" (verse 30)—no doubt the time when the Assyrians carried away the ten tribes (2 Kings 17:6).

Micah's image was set up all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh, which brings the record down to Samuel's day. Among these people God raised up Samson. He would not leave the world without a testimony to Himself, but how little heeded!

Reader, have you peace with God? All is not well with this world, and its judgment has been foretold in the Bible, not once, but many times. Flee from the wrath to come!

Judges 19

In the 17th and 18th chapters we were given a picture of the inner life of the tribe of Dan in the north; now we are to see the character of the tribe of Benjamin in the south, during the times of the Judges. In the former case the religious character of things among the Israelites was emphasized in the present one,—their moral character is exposed.

"When there was no king in Israel" (verse 1),—God was their King, but Israel' was self-willed and without a visible ruler they took up with anything their minds suggested and their hearts desired. How the patience of God must have been tried by the ways and thoughts of those who professed to be His people.

A Levite,—-one of that family set apart by God for His service (Numbers 3 and 4)—following a practice which then perhaps was common, but can never have received God's approval any more than divorce being permitted "because of the hardness of their hearts" (Matt. 19:3-9) took a concubine,—a secondary wife. Going on in sin this woman left her husband and returned to her father's house; there the Levite went to persuade her to return to him. The woman's father was glad to meet him, and got him to stay there several days. Leaving in the afternoon of the fifth day on their way north, the little party passed the future Jerusalem, then called Jebus, and went on to Gibeah, the birthplace of Saul. What followed reminds us of that city in which Lot had his home (Gen. 19), on which judgment fell unsparingly when God's forbearance would wait no longer.

Sometimes we are moved to ask ourselves on account of the present state of the people of God, what difference is there between many Christians and the godless world? Believers are to be not conformed to this world; but be transformed by the renewing of their mind that they may prove what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2).

But here in the inspired record of the book of Judges is the sad record of the will of man—men away from God, who did not like to retain God in their knowledge and were given over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28). Moved by the high-handed violence and unrestraint of the wicked men of Gibeah, the Levite, reaching home with the dead body of his concubine cut her body in twelve pieces and sent it to all the borders of Israel, arousing the feeling of the nation to a high pitch as the next chapter will show.

The world today is steadily forging toward the time, when man for a short time will be permitted to do as he pleases —really as the devil directs, for he is the god and prince of this world, the Word of God tells us. When that hour is reached, violence will be prevalent to a far greater degree than now, and the unsparing judgment of God will fall.

Happily for those who are trusting in Jesus and His blood. They will be gone to be with Him when that dreadful day comes, and it is near.

Judges 20

The effect of the sending of the pieces of the dead woman's body to all the borders of Israel was to arouse the nation to deal with the wickedness going on among them. They were gathered together "as one man" from Dan in the far north to Beersheba on the southern border, not omitting the land of Gilead east of the Jordan. With one purpose they were united now to put away the guilty in Gibeah, yet before proceeding to the place to execute judgment, the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin to bring the matter before them in its true character, and having aroused them, to ask for the delivery of those wicked men for punishment.

But the children of Benjamin would not listen to the messengers, and gathered themselves together to Gibeah to fight against their brethren. How often since then has not the same thing occurred— natural relationship, friendship, nationality, sympathy and other natural ties have been made use of by Satan among God's people to uphold the guilty and to disregard what is due to God, dividing His saints and setting them against each other.

The men of Israel, other than Benjamin, had however failed to ask counsel of God; they were acting in the right direction, but they had a lesson unlearned. They only ask, Who shall go up first? The result of a lack of self-humbling, of owning the sin of Gibeah as but the expression of a low state morally throughout the whole nation, is seen in a defeat where victory should have been decisive. This leads to weeping before the Lord, and asking a deeper question than at first. It is now, Shall I go up to battle? They were to go, but the root of the matter must be judge, so a second defeat, nearly as serious as the first had to take place. More thorough searching of heart succeeds this second defeat (verse 26), and the discipline is received as a chastening from God upon the nation. They are now in a position to be blessed, and the Lord smote Benjamin (verse 35). Fearful destruction followed and not only practically all of the fighting men of Benjamin but of the rest of the men of the tribe were put to death, and their cities desolated.

How humbling all this was! Brother against brother, fighting where unity should have been seen! Yet there was a cause,—sin was condoned, unjudged, among the people of God, and those whose consciences were awakened were guided of God in putting it away.

A far more fearful dealing of God with this world and its people is pending, reader. Are you prepared to meet it? The judgment of this world was pronounced when Jesus died on the cross. He is your only hope. Have you received Him?

Judges 21

The day of judgment was over, and how fearful the destruction had been! All of Gibeah's population was dead, and all of the tribe of Benjamin, except 600 men, while 40,000 of the men of the faithful tribes had given their lives in the war. And if we ask, What caused this terrible carnage! the answer is plain: sin had been tolerated in the camp of Israel, and when it was exposed, and the exclusion of those who were guilty, was required, there was an entire refusal. God had smitten Benjamin (chapter 20:35), but all Israel must feel the chastening as from Him, since they were one in His sight.

Once they fully took the place of self-judgment (chapter 20:26), victory was in their hands, and now that the day of battle is over, the same character is seen (chapter 2:2-4). There is weeping, because it is Benjamin, a brother, who has sinned, but there is a proper regard for what is due to God (verse 4), and neither, we may say, would do without the other.

Wives were provided for the 600 men of Benjamin who were left of the tribe; 400 from the judged city of Jabesh-Gilead (verse 12), and 200 from the place where God was to be met, Shiloh. So Benjamin began anew.

In these last two chapters of Judges we are taken back to the early days after the death of Joshua, for Phinehas was yet high priest (chapter 20:28), the grandson of Aaron. The book of Ruth which follows, belongs also to the days of the judges of Israel.

In the book we are now closing, the record has been almost without exception, of the failure of man. The exposure of the natural heart in one way or another as ever ready to turn away from God, ready to take up with anything which will serve as an object on which to fasten the affections, the desires of nature,—this has been repeatedly shown us in the Judges. We have found, nevertheless, God acting in such a scene.

He is still acting, the scene of today being essentially the same as that of the earlier day. Man still needs a Saviour, yet gives Him little thought; indeed he prefers to be left alone, and Satan would have man left alone till eternity has him in its grasp, too late to receive salvation. 0, reader, hast thou fled from the wrath to come, for refuge in the bosom of the Saviour?

Ruth 1

In the book of Judges we have seen the failure of Israel; in Ruth, during the same general period of time, we find God blessing a poor benighted Gentile of low origin. There was a famine in the land of Israel; there would not have been such a calamity had the people obeyed God; had they taken heed to the warnings of Moses written for them in the book of Deuteronomy. But to get away from this chastening, a certain man of Bethlehem-Judah went to sojourn to stay for a limited time—in the country of Moab, he, his wife and their two sons. They put the Jordan and the Dead Sea between themselves and the land God had put them into.

Elimelech never meant to settle down away from Bethlehem ("place of food"), but it is not easy to retrace wrong steps. God's people were to be a separated people, apart from the guilty world around them, yet Elimelech took his family into that world, and sadder still, he left them there. With such an example we do not wonder that the two sons married women of that land, settling down to make their homes

there. And now there were left only the three widows, the Israelite mother and her two Moabite daughters-in-law. The family had sadly reaped of their sowing for Scripture says (Galatians.:7), "De not deceived: God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall lie also reap."

The news had now reached Naomi that God had visited His people in giving them food, and she longed to return. She had found only bitterness in the way of her choice. Vet the daughters-in-law were a hindrance, for how could she, an Israelite. bring with her, people of a nation concerning which God had declared,

"An Ammonite or 'Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever ... . Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days forever." Deuteronomy 2:3.

To such. Naomi's sons had been married, and their widows were now disposed to go with her to Bethlehem. She felt therefore that they must be persuaded to stay in their own land; to. bring them with her to Bethlehem was unthinkable.

The years spent away from association with God's children, among the idolaters of Moab, had left their mark on Naomi, we judge from what she said to Orpah and Ruth; little thought seems there of the love and condescending kindness of God toward both herself and these idolaters. None will He turn away who seek Him while it is day.

Orpah at length consented to leave the elder widow, but Ruth was determined to go with Naomi. In the touching words of verses 16, and 17, we see one whose heart has been attracted to the desolate widow of Israel, and who proposes to link herself with that one as she returns to the place of God's appointment.

This is clearly a foreshadowing of the millennial day, when God will, in bringing His long set-aside people Israel back to Himself and to the land He once gave them, bless Gentiles through and with the returning remnant.

They came together to Bethlehem. and then was the city stirred to ask, "Is this Naomi?” Surprising, too, will be the return of Israel after the long centuries spent away from God, When that bright day for this earth dawns. It will be the beginning- of a great harvest of souls then, and the restoration of the remnant of Israel will he accomplished with much searching their hearts.

Ruth 2

In the preceding chapter we found a sad story of turning away from God and its serious consequences; the two desolate women, one a stranger to God and His grace; and the other not vet recognizing that she had but reaped the fruit of a course of self-seeking, were now in Bethlehem, the place of food, as its name literally means.

Never is God sought in vain, and He is ever ready to bless far beyond their thoughts and expectations those who put their trust in Him. Accordingly we now learn in chapter 2 of a kinsman, a mighty man of wealth, Boaz, who met the poor stranger, Ruth, and showed her kindness.

It was the beginning of barley harvest, as we learned in the first chapter (verse 22), and the real sense of need to the two women sent the younger out after the reapers. to pick up the stray ears dropped by them.

It was of God that Ruth went into the part of the field that belonged to Boaz, for it was all unknown to herself that she was taking of the bounty of the mighty kinsman of her mother-in-law, when she asked permission of the servant over the reapers to glean the overlooked barley. And Boaz, presently among his servants in the field, noticed the stranger. He already knew all about her, and bade her not go to glean in another field; she should stay close by his maidens, watching for the stray ears of barley they were missing; and if thirsty, there was water already drawn.

All this puts us in mind of the bountiful provision of our Saviour God. He has it in His heart to meet in love every poor sinner who, trembling and fearful it may well be, comes to trust under His wings (verse 12), and out of His great store He gives the Living Food, Christ, and the. living water, the Word of God. How comfortingly Boaz spoke to the empty handed, sad hearted .stranger, who without rightful claim on him, is there before Him!

This again is like God's way with the sinner who comes to Him. He gives peace (John 20:19); He gives eternal life ( John 3:16) to all who turn to Him, and their sins and iniquities will He remember no more (Heb. 10:17). His beloved Son Whom He gave to die in their stead, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God, has undertaken not only to satisfy God's righteous demands for them, but to bring them into the closest and unchanging relationship with Him in heavenly glory. So in this story of Ruth we find the mighty Boaz telling his servants to drop some of the handfuls. of barley they were gathering, on purpose, that she might gather more.

Ruth returned to Naomi, who was cheered by the thought of God's interest in herself as well as in the stranger (verse 20), and told her to continue with the maidens of Boaz. Thus the close of the barley and wheat harvest is reached.

Ruth 3

Ruth, though her needs were met, and much kindness had been shown her, was without a home; she had no rest (verse 1), no home.

Reader, have you an interest, made yours through the Saviour's blood, in the rest, the home, that remains for the people of God? "We which have believed", Hebrews 4:3, plainly states, "do enter into rest", for "there remaineth a rest to the people of God."

Naomi, then, led of God, proposed to Ruth that she boldly lay claim to the mighty kinsman who, had already treated her with much kindness. This she did. and Boaz answered her. "Fear not, I will do to thee all that thou requires (verse 11), but there was a nearer kinsman; if he would not do the kinsman's part, redeeming the inheritance,—then the great man of wealth would.

We are looking at Ruth as a Gentile stranger seeking shelter by faith beneath the wings of the God of Israel and this nearer kinsman typified the law given through Moses, which was never able to re-establish Israel in their inheritance. nor to raise up in grace the name of the dead.

Many today are seeking to establish themselves by keeping the law, or rather by trying to keep the law, thinking thereby to merit heaven; but the law could never make perfect that which was imperfect—there was always the conscience of 'sins (Heb. 10:1-14).

It must be all of grace, the work of God, the ground of the believer's peace. There is an eternal relationship of the closest, the most precious character, planned by God for His beloved Son, that those who have received Him by faith as their Saviour and Lord should be with and like Him, His body indeed and His heavenly bride (Ephesians, etc.), but this is all of God's doing, not at all of man's..

Reader, if you are clinging to any fancied goodness of your own for salvation, I beg you to abandon it once and for all.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23.

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Acts 16:31.

"Through this Man (Jesus) is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." Acts 18:3S.

Ruth 4

Everything for poor Ruth the Moabitess depended upon Boaz, the mighty, and he had given her his word (chapter 3:13). But the kinsman nearer than he must be given his opportunity first. Just so for the poor, empty and needy sinner, everything depends on the mighty Saviour, and He has given His word,

"Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise case out ... . And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day." John 6:37-40.

The nearer kinsman is a picture of the law, and "the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect." Heb. 10:1.

"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:3-4.

Then we notice that this question of Boaz, and the nearer kinsman, must be settled openly, publicly, in the gate of the city. So God has fully shown through many texts, and many examples, in His Word, that "a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ." Gal. 2:16.

Ruth the Moabitess must be blessed, and, not alone the property of the dead Israelites, be redeemed. Here again, at the close of the book, in a blessed forecast of a future day we see a restored Israel, and the Gentile, blessed through Israel, who is no longer "bitterness", but again "pleasant". And Ruth's son is, Obed — "serving"—serving God will be the word in a coming day,—and Obed was the grandfather of David the king. From Matthew 1:5, we are shown that Ruth and Boaz were of the royal line in which the Lord Jesus was pleased to come as a man. What exaltation for the lowly stranger! Yet "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him" I Corinthians 2:9, 10.

Ruth's happy after-life came to an end, but we doubt not that she had a hope beyond the grave, through the work of a greater Kinsman than her husband.

Have you a hope, my reader, founded upon the one sacrifice of Christ? Are you "redeemed with the precious blood of Christ"? (1 Peter 1:18-19).

"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" Heb. 2:3.

1 Samuel 1

We are now entering upon a new phase of Israel's history. They had, under Moses and Joshua, been in a relationship to God, founded upon obedience to the word given through Moses. In the Judges and Ruth we saw Israel under judges whom God raised up, and among them the record of one prophetess, Deborah (Judges 4:4).

There was increasing departure from God from the closing days of Joshua. The two books of Samuel show the beginning of God's sovereign interference with the state of things by means of prophets. We have also the setting up of a king. This last was an important change; thereafter the relationship of God with the people was not direct, but through the king who was responsible to maintain suited conduct in the people, himself an example to them. The kings failed, and eventually the people and their kings were carried away captive. But there will be a king foreshadowed by David and Solomon,—the King of Glory of Psalm 24, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who will reign in righteousness until He has put all enemies under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25).

The name of Elkanah (verse 1)—"God is possessing"—is significant, in connection with the name of Elimelech—" God is King"—in the preceding book of Ruth. God was owned as King in Elimelech's day, but we are not far into this book before a man is elevated to the throne, and Saul was to prove a poor king. God is possessing, however, and acting, as He has ever delighted to act, in grace (the name Hannah means grace), and as in the case of Sarah (Genesis 15, 18 and 21), and Rachel, Jacob's wife, and others. He presently showed His power where nature was powerless. Hannah was childless, and the other wife, Peninnah, having 'children, provoked her very much.

In the bitterness of Hannah's soul, she prayed and wept in the house of God, and her prayer ascended to Him. If He would give her a son, she would give him up to the service of God, and he should be a Nazarite, as Samson should have remained.

Godly people,—and Eli feared God, may be mistaken, and Eli the priest thought that Hannah was drunken, as she was praying. He Who heard her prayer makes no mistakes, and, in due time He answered her petition, for she had His glory before her in making her request. She judged rightly, we may be assured, that Israel were giving up their true king; the priesthood, too was failing, and God must communicate with His people by a new means,—the prophets, of whom Samuel was the first.

Samuel means—heard of God. "The eyes of the Lord", we read in Psalm 34:15, "are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry", and in Philippians 4:6-7 the believer is told to let all his wants and his cares be made known by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to God, and the peace of God, passing all understanding is assured as the garrison of the heart and mind through Christ Jesus.

1 Samuel 2

Her request answered, and her son delivered up to God for His service, Hannah pours out her heart in exultant spirit in her prayer. Led of God far beyond the particular occasion which filled her with His praise, this mother's prophetic utterance carries on to the day when the Lord Jesus shall reign in righteousness in this world (verse 10). Not a word about herself does she say, save to tell that Jehovah is her object. Her once sad heart now rejoiced in Him, her strength—she had been the very picture of weakness as she wept and prayed—was exalted in Him, her mouth was enlarged over her enemies, because she rejoiced in God's salvation. This was enough to say about herself, but her words express the common experience of all the saints of God who, in trial and in need, go to Him with their burdens.

She turns to speak of Jehovah Himself, and at once mentions His holiness, that of which the Lord Jesus spoke in His prayer on the cross (Psalm 22:3); none beside Him, nor any rock like our God! In His presence pride has no place; He is a God of knowledge, weighing the actions of His creatures. Those who are self-satisfied, depending on their own resources, are brought low, while the hungry, the barren, the dead (in figure), the poor, are filled, raised up, enriched.

How exactly these verses express the blessed portion meted out to the confessed sinner who comes to God through Jesus; and the desolation that is theirs who trust in themselves, and await a lost eternity!

From the clear and happy testimony of Hannah, we are directed in verse 12 to the state of the priests who should have been examples of piety, and laboring to cleanse the people of the evil which as we have noticed in our readings in the book of Judges was sadly prevalent at this time. Instead, these 'two young men, though they had a godly father (to whose admonitions they gave no heed), were among the worst. Briefly, and solemnly the spiritual verdict is given in verse 12, and we may turn to verses 17 and 24, 25 for the character of their deeds in God's sight.

In such a scene it is pleasing to think of the child Samuel in verses 18, 21 and 26. God took notice, and the inspired writer of this book was directed to tell of this boy as serving Him in the midst of the flagrant evil of that day.

Eli had sadly failed in dealing with his sons; he had even honored his sons above God,—considered their wishes as superior to the word of Jehovah (verse 29), and a man of God came to the aged man, (God as it were refusing to speak to the priest directly), to bring the approaching judgment went home to his conscience. We are not told that Eli made any answer to the warning.

A faithful priest was to be raised up, and a king is promised before whom the priest should walk. Joshua had gone as directed by the priest of his day, who inquired of God for him, but the reference here is to Christ, the millennial King, greater than any priest.

1 Samuel 3

The lovely story, with which this chapter begins has had an appeal to children in all ages, we may be sure. That God should come into the growing boy's room and call him by name; call him again and again, after he had got up out of his bed and gone to Eli's side, and finally tell him what he needed to know to guard him against joining in the wickedness of the young men, is deeply interesting to old as well as young.

Verse 1. God had withdrawn from the open access to His presence which Moses enjoyed, it seems. Rarely did He speak to Israel now; and he did not tell His mind in dreams as before.

Verse 2. Only Eli is mentioned; the sons devoted to wickedness are left out; we see only the very old man and the young boy in his teens.

Verse 3. Why should the lamp of God have been permitted to go out? Exodus 27:20, 21 speaks of the light burning through the night from evening to morning, always.

Verses 5-9 show a right spirit in Samuel, prompt to obey the calls; no word of complaint is heard at having to leave his bed repeatedly. Surely his mother had sought to bring her boy up in the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom and every, other good. He did not know what the boys in many Christian homes are privileged to know of Christ as Saviour,—but though knowing little (verse 7), Samuel was in favor both with God and also with men, as we learned in chapter 2, verse 26. He was in his day a model boy, though when we think of the standard for all children, we turn to Luke 2:40-52, where Christ is told of as a boy with Mary and Joseph.

There was no purging the iniquity of Eli's house. The mercy of God had been exceeded. He that is often reproved and hardens him-self shall suddenly be cut off, and without remedy. The day when forgiveness was possible, had passed for these who despised God.

Verse 15. What thoughts were Samuel's as he lay through the night before morning dawned! It does not appear that he slept that night.

Verse 18, Eli's comment on Samuel's report in the morning shows submission, for after all he was true in heart to God, but how painful this last announcement of the now near approach of the divine intervention must have been. There could be no doubt in Eli's mind that Samuel was to be a prophet of God, and that he himself was practically set aside as a priest.

Deeply affecting is the story of Eli, and a powerful warning it ought to be to every Christian parent. How much needed in this day!

1 Samuel 4

In chapter 3:11-12, God had said to the boy Samuel that He was going to do a thing in Israel at which both the ears of every one that heard should tingle; in that day He would perform against Eli all that He had spoken concerning his house. The time was now come.

Verse 1. The first sentence should be separated from the second. The word of Samuel, or what Samuel had said happened to all Israel. Perhaps it was a long time before it happened, but we may be sure that what God promises, He will perform.

It was right to fight against the Philistines, but the people of Israel were themselves going, on in sin as chapter 7:3 shows, and God's first controversy is with His people. So at the first engagement, about four thousand men were killed. Rightly is the question then raised (verse 3) "Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines?" but there is no answer nor apparently did they ask of God; instead they tried to connect the presence of God with their own unjudged and sinful condition. But God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7).

All Israel might shout, so that the earth rang again, but it was a vain show, and the Philistines had but to quit themselves like men (verse 9) when the people suffered a second and far greater defeat, losing thirty thousand footmen. Now the ark of God, the sign and the place of God's relationship with Israel, was taken, and the two wicked sons of Eli were killed.

But this is not all; one man escaped from the second battle with the Philistines, and ran to Shiloh, where the ark of God had been, and where the aged Eli anxiously waited (verse 13). Hearing the terrible news from the messenger's lips, the old priest fell backward and died.

His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, on learning of the taking of the ark by the Philistines and the death of Eli and her husband, named the position of Israel as she died: her son just born must bear the name of Ichabod,—"the glory is departed from Israel." Such was indeed their place—the ark was gone, and the empty tabernacle was left without a priest through whom the people might approach to God or offer their sacrifices.

Nevertheless the faithful God did not leave Himself without means of communicating with His wayward people; as the prophet, Samuel, presently comes before us.

1 Samuel 5

The Philistines took the ark of God into their own country, that holy ark that none but God's priests might touch; which was always kept in the most holy place in the tabernacle—God's dwelling place—was now put—where? Into the house of Dag-on, their god.

God allowed the Philistines to take the ark, because He meant to punish Israel for their wickedness, and for the wickedness of Eli's sons, as He told Samuel He would.

The Philistines were very proud of having the ark in the house of their god, but when they went in the next morning, the idol was thrown down before the ark of the Lord.

They set it up again, and the next day when they came in, they found their idol fallen down, and its head and its hands

were cut off for God could not allow a false god to be set up in the presence of His throne, and He sent a dreadful sickness upon the Philistines.

The Philistines then said, "What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?" They sent it to another place,—Ekron,— and the people there cried out that they had brought the ark to them to destroy them, and God heard their cry. He could not allow His ark to be in the hands of wicked, idol worshipers.

1 Samuel 6

It was the purpose of God to bring back the ark to its own place in the land of Israel. At the end of seven months, the lords of the Philistines agreed to send it away, and to send a trespass offering with it. So they gave glory to the God of Israel, because they confessed that He was the holy God who had sent the judgment upon them.

They made a new cart, and tied two cows to the cart to draw it, shutting up their calves at home. They then put the ark upon the cart, and watched to see which way the cows would go. They took the straight road to Israel's country, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. In this God showed He was the Creator, for no one else could so tell the cows to do.

When some of the men of Bethshemesh saw the ark of God coming, they rejoiced. They put the ark on a large stone, broke the cart and set fire to the wood and offered up the cows for a burnt offering to the Lord.

But a very sad thing happened, they looked into the ark, which showed they had forgotten what Moses had told them not to do,

"They shall not go in and see for a moment the holy things, lest they die." Numbers 4:20 (New Trans.).

The Lord smote the people because they looked into the ark.

That is what so many people are doing today trying to look into the divinity of Christ and the blessed Word of God, reasoning about these things which the puny mind of man cannot comprehend.

Christ is the eternal Son of God who became a man in order to go to the cross and die for us, thus becoming our blessed Saviour.

The Word of God cannot be broken, and shall stand for ever.

1 Samuel 7

The men of Kirjath-jearim brought the ark into the house of Abinadab, and it remained ' in Kirjath-jearim for twenty years, but the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. When we are away from the Lord we are not happy, and we should desire to get back into His company. The first thing to be done is to confess all our wrong to God, and separate from everything that had taken His place in our hearts.

"If you do return unto the Lord with all your hearts." Let us weigh every word. He does not want us to be halfhearted for Him.

"Prepare your hearts to serve Him only." If you are a true believer in Him, it will be your delight to serve Him only. How can you serve Him only, and serve the world too?

"Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." James 4:4.

Samuel said "Gather all Israel to Mizpeh; and I will pray for you." Samuel believed that God would hear prayer, and prayer was the only weapon Samuel ever used.

When Israel had fasted and confessed, "We have sinned against the Lord," then He delivered them out of the hand of the Philistine.

1 Samuel 8

When Samuel was old, he made his sons judges over Israel. Their names tell of their godly father: Joel (The Lord is God): and Abiah (The Lord is my Father), but it is not enough to have a godly father and mother; "Ye must be born again" is what God's Word says to one and all, for the natural birth does not make us God's children.

Though Samuel was an honored servant of God, his sons were very different; they turned aside from right ways in order to get money; they even took bribes from those who came to them to settle their disputes. This was very sad indeed, and should have brought the elders and all the people to humble themselves before God, and earnestly to pray for help from Him. But their thoughts were not upon God, rather about the nations around them;

"Behold, thou art old", they said, "and thy sons walk not in thy ways; now make us a king to judge us like all the nations."

God was the only king they needed; He was abundantly able and willing to lead and protect His people, but they liked the ways of the world.

The Scriptures of the New Testament have much to say about the world; in the 17th chapter of John it is mentioned again and again as that system of things from which the Christian is separated; verse 14 speaks of the children of God as not of the world, even as their Lord is not of it. 1 John 2:15-17), too, warns the believer,

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in Him. For all that is in the world is not of the Father but is of the world. and the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

These are warnings indeed, and should be earnestly heeded!

To resume our chapter,—Samuel was displeased at the demand for a king, but in answer to prayer he learned that it was not so much the rejection of the prophet, as the rejection of their God, that He should not reign over them, and now He was going to let the people have their own way. They had always served other gods, forsaking the true God, since the day He had brought them up out of Egypt.

A forecast of the character of their king, when once they had one, was given (verses 11 to 18) by Samuel, but the Israelites would not attend to his words, saying,

"Nay, but we will have a king over us."

They were to get their wish, and Samuel will try no longer to dissuade this selfwilled, God-forsaking people, from their wrong course.

1 Samuel 9

A mighty man named Kish (which means "power"), the son of Abiel, whose name means "father of might", had a son, Saul, a choice young man and a goodly. There was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he (by this we understand, goodly in appearance); from his shoulders and upward he was taller than any one. As far as looks went and to the natural eye, Saul was the best there was; this was the man God had chosen for the king that the people wanted. We shall find that he proved but a poor substitute for God, whom the people had now rejected as their King.

And now through a circumstance in which we might have thought God had no part, Saul and Samuel are brought together. Just so it is often in the history of God's people; by and by they will see (where not always do they see here) that God was in all their circumstances, working out His own gracious purposes of blessing. Saul, as he wearily pursued the missing animals, knew nothing of what God had purposed for him. But Samuel, the day before Saul came, had been told by God that tomorrow He would send him a man out of the tribe of Benjamin who should be anointed captain over His people Israel.

The oppression of the Philistines was still felt, though these enemies within the borders of Israel were humbled (chapter 7:13) for the "hill of God" was the location of a Philistine garrison (chapter 10:5). God had looked upon His people because their cry was gone up to Him. How surpassing the mercy of God, and His deep interest in those who belong to Him! The children of Israel had rebelled against Him all through their history; their journey through the desert from the shores of the Red Sea; and the years of their stay in the promised land were marked with many proofs that this people—redeemed from Egypt's slavery and brought into blessing had but little regard for God. But He had not given them up; He still followed them with pitying love.

Let us notice in verses 15 and 17 that the man who walks with God, learns the mind of God—Samuel was in himself a faithful servant of God, and we saw him acting for his divine Master in chapter 8. Now afresh directed by God, Samuel speaks to the future king, and detains him until the following day.

May this example be used of God to stir the hearts and consciences of those who are His, to seek a walk of closer communion with Himself!

1 Samuel 10

Samuel privately anointed Saul to be king and sent him on his way home. As he went he would find two men by Rachel's sepulchre, that reminder of him who was the father of Saul's tribe, son of his mother's sorrow, yet named son of his father's right hand (Genesis 35:18).

In the light the New Testament affords, we can see that Benjamin was a type of Christ, the One of Israel's sorrow and setting aside, yet the Man at God's right hand.

It is properly the oak of Tabor, rather than the plain of that name, in verse 3. At this point Saul was to meet three men going up to God, to Bethel; faith was still in exercise in Israel and there were some, though few who remembered the God of Bethel, Him who had said to Jacob when in trouble that He would not leave him. The eternal God was for Jacob, and brought him back in peace. (Genesis 28:15; 31:13 and 35:7). These who sought God's presence now, gave food to the future king.

But the hill of God was possessed by the enemies of His people—a third sign or circumstance which should have spoken to the heart of one who had God's glory and His people's blessing before him. Here, at the public seat of God's strength, the power of the enemy is found,—true picture of the state of Israel at this time.

At this place, then, the Spirit of God came on Saul. and he was turned into another man: God here resumes the course of His relations with Israel, though Samuel was still the only one whom God recognized as the link between Himself and the people. It is when Saul has had to do with Samuel that he is another man; blessing was connected with the prophet.

The coming of the Holy Spirit upon Saul was not the indwelling, nor, we may judge, producing the new birth, both of which are so plainly told us in the New Testament. Scripture is silent as to any clear testimony that Saul was a converted man, and some of his acts lead to the conclusion that he could not have been. What is set forth in verses 6 and 9 to 13 is evidently the fitting of Saul to be an office bearer among the people of God.

Gilgal (verse 8) was another reminder, if Saul had faith to take it in, of an important stage in Israel's history. There the "reproach of Egypt" was "rolled away" (Joshua 5:9); nature and all its connections were judged, in figure, and Israel, from the camp at Gilgal, was to enter upon the conquest and possession of the portion God had provided, in the strength of His arm. Alas, it had not been so, but the failure should have, to faith, only served to emphasize the character of Gilgal as God had indicated it.

Though God so provided for the future king as verses 6-13 have shown us, Saul's course shows him a self-seeking, self-important man. This will be more evident as we go on through his later history.

Samuel called the people together at Mizpeh, there delivering a solemn message from God before the formal choice of a king took place. God gave them their wish; He had not forsaken them, and He had, as we have before noticed, chosen for their king one of the best, in nature's reckoning, that the nation afforded. If "the flesh" as Romans 8 terms the natural man, could have served here, nothing was lacking.

God having set up a king, those who will not acknowledge him are "children of Belial."

1 Samuel 11

Nahash the Ammonite came against Jabesh with an army, and proposed to put out the right eyes of the inhabitants. The news was carried to Saul, who until now had not been treated as king, and the Spirit of God again came on him. In great anger because of this attack upon the nation, Saul killed a yoke of oxen, hewing them in pieces and sending them by messengers throughout the land, saying,

"Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen." The fear of God falling on the people, they came out as one man, 330,000 strong.

The next day the hosts of Israel were victorious over the Ammonites, so completely defeating them that two of them were not left together. This evidenced God's presence, and His support of the king. So far all was favorable; the enemy within, the Philistines, had been allowed to remain undisturbed, but the Ammonite attack from without was met with energy supplied by the Spirit of God.

It is much easier to meet an attack from outside, than to expel the enemy within. The Philistines were a snare to Israel, manifesting the power of Satan in the very midst of Israel. Was the king indifferent to this? As we noticed in chapter 10, the "hill of God", though a company of the prophets was met there, was in the hands of a garrison of the Philistines. Here was a real test of faith, and it is here that Saul fails. We shall observe this in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters.

Saul is to be commended for his attitude toward the "men of Belial" who had despised him; none should be put to death, for "today" he said, "the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel." This was both prudent and generous toward the people, and a right acknowledgment of God's power in the deliverance from the Ammonites.

1 Samuel 12

Samuel was now giving up the leadership of God's people Israel on account of their now having the king they had asked for. He had not robbed anyone, nor had he been dishonest in his dealings with them; this they acknowledged. God had delivered the people out of Egypt, and brought them into Canaan, but when they forgot Him, He sent enemies who humbled them; Sisera, the Philistines and the Moabites. These were the nearby enemies; there were other enemies not mentioned from more distant lands. Then the people cried unto God and said,

"We have sinned, because we have forsaken the Lord, . . but deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve Thee." God answered them by raising up deliverers who were used in setting the people free again.

Now, with the approach of a new enemy, Nahash the Ammonite, they had demanded a king, and their demand had been granted, even though Samuel had told them, "The Lord your God was your King."

If God were feared, served, obeyed and not rebelled against, the people should still be under His blessing and guidance; but if they were rebellious, His hand would be against them, as it was against their fathers. God gave a sign: He sent thunder and rain during wheat harvest (verse 18), which confirmed Samuel's words, and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.

God would not give them up, and Samuel would not cease to pray for them. This was grace and love on God's part to a rebellious and self-willed people. Samuel shone here in self-forgetfulness; he was rejected as Israel's leader but he manifested a loving interest in the people of God—an example to all who care for the children of God in our own day. He said to them "Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things He bath done for you" (verse 24).

There is a marked similarity between Samuel's words in this chapter, and the apostle Paul's farewell to the Ephesian Christians in Acts 20:17-35. Both of these men had seen the failure, humanly speaking, of that which God had established; each had been an example of godliness before the people, and both of them warned of the dangers that lay before them. Would that these warnings were more really heeded!

"The end of all things is at hand; be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity (love) among yourselves." 1 Peter 4:7.

1 Samuel 13

We have noticed how God established Saul in the kingdom, and gave him victory over the first enemy who appeared (chapter 11). Now the king is to be put to the test.

After reigning two years he chose three thousand men to form, a standing army; there had been no need of such thing before in Israel; no army was needed while God was their only resource. Two thousand were with Saul in Michmash and in Mount Bethel; and the others were with Jonathan in Gibeah, or Geha, as it is called in verse 3. Jonathan was a man of faith, very unlike his father, and he attacked the Philistine garrison in the place where he was. Saul thereupon "blew the trumpet" throughout all the land, evidently taking credit for the attack himself (verse 4), though he and his two thousand were in another place.

Further, Saul's boastful proclamation was "Let the Hebrews hear!" To the nations around them, this people were indeed "the Hebrews," but to one of themselves who knew God they should have been called "the children of Israel," or "the people of God."

It was certain that Jonathan's attack on the enemy would arouse them to counterattack, and the people were therefore called together after Saul to Gilgal,—the place where the camp of Israel had been in Joshua's day. As to this place, Samuel had given Saul directions in chapter 10:8. The Philistines presently gathered in Michmash, where Saul had established himself as king, with a great company, and when the men of Israel saw how serious was their own situation, the people hid in caves, in thickets, in rocks, in high places, and in pits, and some went over the Jordan, to the land Gad and Gilead. Those who clung to Saul in Gilgal did so trembling; evidently the much wished for king was not any more worthy of confidence than themselves. No human remedy is equal to our God.

The king waited seven days, according to Samuel's word, but as the prophet did not arrive, and more of the people were leaving him, Saul offered a burnt offering and evidently intended to offer a peace offering. This was religion, but it was not obedience; religion in itself is of no value, and disobedience, especially in one to whom responsibility has been committed, is most serious, as Saul presently learned to his sorrow, and was to have again impressed on him (see chapter 15:22-23).

It will be seen that there is no mention of Saul's having, in his extremity, prayed to God for direction or help. This man of religion and pride, without the true knowledge of God, stands in the divine record for an example and a warning to those who might be tempted,—and there are many such today, — to approach God with forms and ceremonies and work which outwardly recognize Him, but which are the fruit of their own minds. There is only one true way of approach to God,— obedience to His Word; and faith is the link which. He provides.

Samuel came, and reproved Saul because of His disobedience, told him that another would succeed him,—a man after God's own heart to be captain over His people. The prophet then went from Gilgal to Gibeah, the scene of Jonathan's attack on the Philistines, and after him went Saul and the remnant of his army, six hundred men.

Surely Israel's case was a pitiful one; the Philistines sent out three bands to rob the country, and Saul and his followers were utterly helpless without weapons. Now the standing camp of the enemy came towards Israel's camp, confident no doubt, of crushing the feeble Hebrews. The next chapter will show how simple, childlike faith was rewarded.

1 Samuel 14

Jonathan is again the man of faith. Of his father it is said that he tarried under a pomegranate tree with the remnant of his weaponless army, while the Philistines were but a short distance away. Saul had with him, too, the priest, Eli's grandson, Ahiah, later called Ahimelech; he was afterwards killed by Saul's orders (chapter 22:10-19 ) .

To neither of these, Jonathan told the purpose he had formed, of attacking the enemy with his armorbearer. His trust was in the living God, and he very likely knew that his father would be a hindrance rather than a help.

We do not have faith by the natural birth, but by a new birth which is of God, by His Spirit and His Word. Faith counts upon God alone; He is its resource, and so we presently see in Jonathan's case,

"It may be," said Jonathan to his armorbearer, "that the Lord will work for us, for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few." These are inspiring words, and betoken a soul which looked to God for direction and help.

The sign that Jonathan asked for, being given, he said to his companion,

"Come up after me, for the Lord path delivered them into the hand of Israel."

This was true faith; would that more of it were seen today!

Climbing up over the rocks, the two men reached the Philistine garrison, and in a short time 20 of them fell before them. Now came one of these marvelous interventions of God in behalf of His people, for the enemy's hosts were utterly shaken, trembling, and presently fell to killing one another, and the earth quaked besides.

Learning of the commotion among the Philistines from his watchmen, Saul now discovered that Jonathan and his armor-bearer were missing. He would ask direction from God through the priest, but as the tumult among the Philistines increased, Saul and all that were with him went to the place, and found that every man was fighting with his fellow. The Hebrews who had been with the Philistines in their camp, now joined with those in the company of Saul and Jonathan, and they who hid in Mount Ephraim came out to join the rest in slaughtering the fleeing enemy. Thus God gave victory where defeat seemed to nature's view, certain.

Saul, ignorant of God as we have before noticed, hindered the battle by keeping the people from food through the day. His thoughts rose no higher than himself, as his words show (verse 24); "that I may be avenged on mine enemies." Truly did his son say (verse 29), "My father bath troubled the land." Saul, in spite of his religiousness, for we read of his here building an altar to God, was no help to the people who had so gladly made him their king. He would even Lave had Jonathan put to death, to whom ruder God the victory was due, had not the people prevented him, and so having proposed to follow the Philistines by night, he finally allowed them to escape to their own place.

Verses 47-51 are a summary of Saul's career as king, including the names of his children, his wife and the captain of his host. The closing verse of our chapter shows Saul building up his army with strong and brave men, but tells nothing of any change in the man himself. We are not even told that he thanked God for the great victory over the Philistines of which this chapter tells.

1 Samuel 15

Samuel, who as we have observed, had retired when Saul became king, now gave him a fresh message from God, reminding him first that it was God who had caused him to be king, and calling him to attend to the message. The Amalekites, enemies who attacked Israel while in the wilderness on their way to the promised land, were now to be utterly destroyed, —a type of Satan's power exerted to turn back God's children into the world from seeking the enjoyment of the heavenly portion He had promised. Amalek was not to be spared, but entirely wiped out as to every vestige of life.

With a large army Saul set out in obedience to God's word, and smote the Amalekites from Havilah to Shur, but he did not carry out his orders, for he left the king, Agag, alive, and kept the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs and all that was good. What was vile and refuse they destroyed utterly. This no doubt seemed very nice, indeed, but it was disobedience to the revealed mind of God.

Samuel felt it deeply to have again and finally to tell Saul that God had rejected him; he "cried unto the Lord all night", but the next morning early, he went to meet Saul, who, returning from his attack on the Amalekites, had gone to Gilgal. But the state of soul for which Gil-gal stood, was not Saul's state; he was a stranger to God with all his religion. To Samuel, Saul said, "I have performed the commandment of the Lord," and claimed that the sheep and oxen brought back were for sacrifices. But Samuel gave him the solemn judgment of God about himself, that because he, the man made by God the king over Israel, had rejected the word of the Lord, He had rejected him from being king.

"Hath the Lord," Samuel said, "as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams, for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry."

Saul owned that he had sinned, but his chief thought was his place of honor before the people. Samuel acted for God where the king had failed, and killed Agag, then went to his home at Ramah, no more to see Saul, yet mourning for him.

How many times the Bible shows that man, even at his best, is not worthy of trust. Men are born sinners, and they need to know Christ as Saviour before they can bring forth anything fit for God. It was "when we were yet without strength", that Christ died for sinners, for the ungodly,—and faith declares, "for me".

Can you truly say that, reader, whoever and wherever you may be,—"Christ died for me"? There is but one Deliverer from the wrath to come, Jesus. Do you know Him? Have you trusted Him with your soul for eternity? Do not delay!

1 Samuel 16

We saw no humbling, no sorrow, on Saul's part because of his disobedience; just a confession, hoping to escape punishment. and as he learned that that could not be, he pleaded with Samuel to honor him before the people. Samuel left him, to meet him no more before his death, but mourning over him.

Saul, however was rejected by God, and Samuel must cease mourning about him; instead, he was to seek out the man after God's own heart (chapter 13:14). Among the sons of Jesse was this one to be found. Is it not a principle of the Word of God, that the natural man shall first be tried and when he has failed, the man of faith is brought in? There are many such instances found in the Scriptures, and of them all, the greatest example is that of the Lord Jesus, the One from heaven, the last Adam.

It is interesting to note that Bethlehem where Jesus lived was only about six miles south of Jerusalem; it was where Rachel was buried (Gen. 35:19); where Boaz lived (Ruth 2:4, etc.), who was David's great-grandfather; and here eleven hundred years later, Jesus was born (Matt. 2:1 ) .

Faithful, God-honoring Samuel was mistaken in attempting to decide which son of Jesse was the Lord's anointed. Neither the position of Eliab as the eldest son, nor his "countenance," nor "the height of his stature" were concerned in God's choice; it was a question of his heart, that which God alone sees and estimates aright. Jesse and Samuel then may have supposed that the second son, Abinadab, must be the chosen one, but it was not he nor any of the rest of the seven whom Jesse had brought to meet Samuel.

There remained one son, so little in his father's thoughts as the one chosen of God, that he had not troubled to bring him in from shepherding the sheep. But as the stone which the builders refused was to be made the head stone of the corner (Psa. 117:22), referring to Christ, so, foreshadowing that, even the one little thought of—David—was to be the king of Israel.

And David must suffer before he reigns; another likeness to Christ. The Holy Spirit who had come upon Saul when he was made king, now left him, and came upon David. (This is not the indwelling of the Spirit, which never took place until Christ was crucified, raised and glorified). And an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. That the evil spirits are subject to God, is shown by the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments (see Job. 1; 1 Kings 22:23; Matt. 8:16; Mark 1:31).

The unhappy king of Israel had set a course for himself; "rebellion" and "stubbornness", and the rejection of the "word of the Lord" (chapter 15:23) marked him, and God had given him up in consequence to Satan. May we not believe this condition to be true in our own day with those to whom much has been given, and who have deliberately turned away from God, though professing His name?

Saul's servants suggested that someone be brought to play the harp before him, and this led to the future king's being as a servant in the house of Saul. This was not exactly like Moses in the court of Pharaoh, but of the same school of God for His children. It must have been humbling to David, but he had more and deeper training before him, ere he took his seat on the throne.

1 Samuel 17

In this long chapter there are but two principal characters, Goliath, the Philistine giant; and David, the future king of Israel,—the one a type of Satan; the other of Christ. The Holy Spirit delights to tell about Jesus, and so the Bible abounds in accounts of men who, in one way or another were marked by events in their lives, or by behavior that, however faintly it might be, yet resembled the Son of God when He was pleased to come to this world as a man, to die for sinners on the cross. We saw in Joseph (Gen. 37 to 50) one principal type of the Lord; and in David we shall find another, the Holy Spirit presenting in the record of both their lives that which was in some degree like Him Who in word and deed was above and beyond all men, and with this in view, the failures and sins of Joseph and David are given but little space in God's Word.

The Philistines had suffered severely in the fourteenth chapter, but were bold again, and reappeared with one at their head who terrified the people of Israel. Goliath was at the least about 8 feet, 4 inches in height, and he was so clothed with brass that he must have been a most dangerous antagonist to one armed with the weapons employed in warfare in his day. Boldly he shouted to the Israelite soldiers his cutting words of defiance, and Saul and all Israel felt their helplessness and were greatly afraid. They might well be, for they had no one able to meet Goliath.

Jonathan was not equal to this occasion as he had been in earlier times.

David must have remained only a very short while with Saul (close of 16th chapter). He had gone back home before this time, to feed his father's sheep, but his three eldest brothers were in the army, and the father, Jesse, gave David an errand to carry food to them and to their captain, and find out how the young men were. Arriving there just before the giant came out, David heard his words, and he seems to have been the only one not frightened. "Who is this ...... that he should defy the armies of the living God?" showed where David's confidence lay.

The haughty spirit of his oldest brother, who knew nothing of what was the secret of David's strength, now came out (verse 28). So Joseph had endured, scorned by his brethren, but the pattern is seen in its perfection in Jesus, Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again. What was it that marked David that he was bold where others were terrified? Faith in God. It was the living God that was in question (verses 26, 36), and that was enough for the man of faith. The giant had no power against Him. David might indeed as a man be judged to be "not able" to meet the veteran soldier, but he knew the One Who had delivered him, and given him victory over the lion and the bear (verses 34-37). Saul knew' nothing of this faith; his was the strength of nature and powerless before the devil.

Saul's fighting clothes and sword therefore are rejected in favor of the simplest weapons.

David took his staff and chose five smooth stones (one stone would have been sufficient, but we see perfection only in Jesus) out of the brook, which he put in a shepherd's bag; then with his sling in his hand, he went out to meet Goliath. The giant treated David with contempt, and cursed him by his gods; he thought he could make short work of him. David, on his part answered:

"Thou comest to me with a sword and with a spear, and with a shield, but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom thou hast defied. The battle is the Lord's, and He will give you into our hands." Bold words, but the speaker was moved by faith and counted upon God's power; he had nothing to say about himself, we notice. David ran to meet Goliath; he put a stone from his bag in his sling, and with it struck the giant 'Philistine with such force that the stone sunk into his forehead, and he fell upon his face to the ground. Then as the Philistines fled, David ran and stood on the fallen Goliath, drew his sword, and slew him, cutting off his head.

It was easy now for the men of Israel and Judah to chase the Philistines, who ran for their lives. They were followed to the gates of their city of Ekron, but the victory was all David's. The chapter closes with David bringing the giant's head to Jerusalem, and with Saul asking about David, having evidently forgotten his being the harp player in his house for a short time.

1 Samuel 18

From what we have seen of Saul, it is clear that he wanted David for personal advantage; as an officer of or attendant upon the king, a member of his official family and one of his soldiers; the glory of Saul should shine more brightly because of David's killing the Philistine giant. With Jonathan it was different, although he was Saul's son; his soul was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. There was a covenant between these two young men—the son of the rebellious king, and the one whom God had chosen, and who had been so wonderfully victorious over the enemy of Israel.

And Jonathan, lost in admiration of David, stripped himself of his robe (literally, mantle), and gave it to David, and his garments (literally, long robe), even to his sword and to his bow and to his girdle. David, we may say was everything to him; self was forgotten.

In Jonathan we see a foreshadowing of the remnant of Israel which clung to Jesus in the time of His rejection; but in his attachment to David is a lovely picture of the devotion of heart to Christ which should mark every one redeemed with His precious blood. Is He not the altogether lovely One, dear Christian reader, the alone worthy One, worthy of homage and of praise, exhaustless theme of heavenly songs? O, how our hearts should go out after the Lord! May it be so increasingly with us who love Him because He first loved us.

The rejoicing in Israel was however not to Saul's liking at all; he became very angry and presently undertook to kill David. So was it with David's antitype, the rejected Son of Man, when He trod this earth. The Jews hated Him, conspired to kill Him, took the guilt of His death. ("His blood be on us, and on our children" Matt. 27:25).

David was to learn by the things which he suffered to depend upon God alone. Painful indeed were the exercises of heart through which he passed after he was anointed to be king, and much of his distress is told in the Psalms. There too we find his subjection to God; the 23rd Psalm was written after David had been put through trial, and it has been of great comfort to many of God's people who have gone through difficulties.

Note that in the dangers and sorrows which beset David at this period, God was with him, though perhaps it did not look that way to him at times.

"The Lord was with him, and was departed from Saul" (verse 12).

"And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was with him" (verse 14). "And Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with 'David." (verse 28).

Like Joseph in the prison (Gen. 39:23), there was One who had His eyes upon him, would never leave him, and looked on to the time when trial would cease for His poor afflicted servant.

1 Samuel 19

Saul was now determined to put an end to David, but Jonathan delighted much in David, and told him to hide until the next day while he tried to turn his father away from his murderous wish. Here might Jonathan have identified himself with David, shared in his reproach and rejection, and afterward in his glory when he took the throne of Israel, but he was not prepared for this. He loved David as his own soul, but his position as the king's son was not so easily given up.

Moses could give up the court of Egypt for the people of God; and Jonathan must have felt that his duty was to leave his wicked father's home to be associated with the one who honored and lived for God; but he may have excused himself with the thought that he could do more good by staying in the king's court, than in going to share David's reproach.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, believers had to be urged to "go forth" unto Jesus "without the camp, bearing His reproach" (chapter 13:13-14), and the same word, in a slightly different sense for the day we live in, is applicable to our own times (see Matt. 18:20).

Saul hearkened to the voice of Jonathan (verse 6), but it was only for a time; let David again be held in honor, be praised, and the servant of Satan (which Saul was) is aroused by his master (verse 10). David had to escape for his life, and he went to the aged Samuel where Saul sent to kill him, and God interfered again.

The latter part of the chapter shows again how the Spirit of God could come upon even wicked men, upon the messengers of Saul, and Saul himself when bent on the murder of God's anointed. This was entirely different from the New Testament activities of the Holy Spirit, and not at all to be confused with His indwelling the one who believes in Jesus.

But the question is, do you believe in Jesus? Now is the accepted time!

1 Samuel 20

Pursued by Saul to the very side of Samuel the prophet, David began to feel yet more deeply the rejection that was to be his as long as Saul lived.

The would-be murderer who sat on the throne of Israel had seemingly lost all respect for the servant of God since he could follow into Samuel's presence with intent to murder him who was the God-appointed king and the victor over the powerful giant Goliath. There Saul was made to acknowledge a power greater than that, of Satan whom he served, but there was no change in his heart. In New Testament days another king of Israel tried his best to kill the chosen One of God (Matt. 2:1-8, 13-16).

We may notice that David remains faithful to the king; he would have served Saul to the day of the latter's death, had he been permitted; he plans for no revenge, nor does he utter (as far as Scripture records) a word in anger against the man who so entirely without cause hated him. In all these respects David is a picture or type of Jesus; the One truly meek and lowly in heart (Matt. 11:29) Who would not strive nor cry (Matt. 12:19), Who loved His enemies and did good to them that hated Him (Luke 6:27), and Who came not to destroy men's lives but to save them, (Luke 9:55-56).

David, though rejected by the willful king, finds some present consolation in Jonathan, who as we have seen, pictures the believing remnant of Israel. Jonathan could not believe that his father would kill David, but though he soon found out that the opposite was true, he preferred the position his natural birth gave him, to sharing the present rejection of the one whom lie recognized as the future king. This is evident from verse 13, as well as from Jonathan's later conduct, for henceforth, with one exception, David and Jonathan are parted for life.

Very touching are the incidents of this chapter, penned for us by the Holy Spirit. Jonathan was deeply attached to David, and David to Jonathan, but what consolation might have been David's had Jonathan but "esteemed the reproach" of David at its true value! And how great was Jonathan's loss? Eternity will tell.

Christian reader, what of the rejection of 'David's Lord today? Are you willing to share it, to keep His word and not deny His name (Rev. 3:8); or does the world's favor claim you? Many are the warnings and admonitions of Scripture in view of our times and for ourselves. (See 1 John 2:15-17; Gal. 6:7-10; 2 Cor. 6:14-18; 2 Tim. 2:15, 19-22).

Christless soul, this Jesus, Son of God and Saviour of sinners, is the stone which was set at naught of the builders and has become the head of the corner; "neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved" Acts 4:12. "Through this man, (whom David faintly foreshadowed), is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things". Acts 13:38-41.

1 Samuel 21

David is now alone, for Jonathan who really loved him, has chosen the place of present ease and comfort, rather than of suffering with the rejected one. The Lord could say to His disciples,

"Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with. Me," John 16:32, and when seized by Judas and his band in the garden of Gethsemane He said,

"If therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way."

But in our chapter David fails altogether of being an advance picture of Jesus. He misrepresents himself to the priest in order to get food and a sword, and presently seeking shelter with a king of the Philistines, resorts to the pretense of insanity, fearing for his life. Expressive of this time are Psalms 34 and 56.

Though David sadly failed here, utterly discouraged as he was, God had not forsaken him, and if we turn to Matthew 12:3-4, we shall find the Lord Jesus referring in no disapproval td the incident of the priest's giving the rejected one the holy bread to eat. When God and the testimony He gives (in Samuel as well as David, here; in Christ in the Gospel of Matthew) are rejected, the ordinances lose their power, their meaning. The important thing was to give David, the true king, food; he was of more value to God than the bread of the tabernacle. Everything centered now in God's sight, in the rejection of His anointed.

With the food so obtained, and the sword of Goliath, David went to Achish, king of Gath of the Philistines for protection. But he is recognized; fear deepens in his breast, and he professes to be insane in order to save his life, fearing that the Philistines will kill him.

Poor David! He was indeed deeply tried. It was one thing to be used of God in overcoming the wicked one, typified by Goliath of Gath; it was quite a different thing to be the causeless object of the malignity of the king, while himself designed by God to occupy the throne. 'David should not have gone among the Philistines, the enemies of God, and he must leave them, to be wholly cast on God, the true resource of those that are His by faith.

1 Samuel 22

Leaving the Philistines to whom he should never have gone, David went to the cave Adullam, the name of which means, "resting place." There God graciously gave him rest, and now that he was separated from Saul and his system of things, many came to be identified with him in the cave. His brethren who had once despised him, went down there to him, and everyone in distress, and all in debt, and all the discontented gathered themselves to him. Their distress was relieved; their debts no longer oppressed them; their discontentment ceased. We hear of none left out; "everyone", is the term used of all three classes in the second verse,—all who were not at rest in their state went to David.

How this pictures for us Jesus and what His grace does for the confessed sinner who comes to Him. Drawn to Him, when here upon earth, were the needy ones of all classes and conditions, and invariably when faith drew them, their burden of sin was removed.

In Matthew 9:10 we read that "many publicans and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples;" and in Luke 15:2 The proud Pharisees and scribes murmuring said, "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them."

All that came to Him then were received; none were turned away, and He is still "receiving sinners" and "eating with them."

Have you come to Jesus, dear reader, you who are reading these lines? Then He would have you "gathered" to Himself (verse 2, and Matt. 18:20), distress of soul gone, in a happy realization that your immense debt has been forgiven when you had nothing to pay (Luke 7:41-50), and contented to abide with Him.

The Holy Spirit now is seeking to gather the loved ones of God to meet around His Son by faith. It is a place where the reproach of Christ (Heb. 11:26) is found, but the unseen though real company of Himself is more than compensation for those who are gathered to Himself alone.

If in this part of David's history we have a picture of what God is now doing for His Son in the time of His rejection here, we may gather that David's sending his parents away (verses 3, 4) expresses in a figure what has happened to Israel, (See Rom. chapters 9, 10, 11). They will be brought back when the present age is ended.

Verse 5 shows us a prophet with David, and the close of the chapter adds the priest, Abiathar, the only remaining one of the house of priests. In Christ the three offices of prophet, priest and king are combined. (See Acts 3:22; Heb. 4:14-16; Matt. 2:2 and many other passages, including Luke 19:12-15).

David may not yet set up the kingdom for which he had been appointed of God, even in the cave Adullam. Through long years he must prove in his own experience the utter rejection of himself by the man who wrongfully held the authority over his people, and be content with a little flock of devoted ones. At verse 6 we are transferred to this false king's court, to hear his thoughts, and view his servants standing about him. Leader of the servants is Doeg the Edomite, one of the children of Esau who became implacable enemies of Israel. (See their destruction prophesied in Ezekiel 35 and Obadiah's short prophecy). He is the fit instrument of Saul (and viewing the cause of Satan) for the murder of the priestly family, and every living thing in the city where they lived, except Abiathar, who escaped to David.

The Herod of Matthew 2:16 was an Fdomite, and his murder of the little ones in and around Bethlehem was equally moved by the devil.

Abiathar finds safety with David whose word was, "Abide thou with me, fear not for he that seeketh my life, seeketh thy life; but with me thou shalt be in safeguard." Those who trust in Jesus have His precious assurance.

"I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of My hand. My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man (no one) is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are one."

"Happy, they who trust in Jesus; Sweet their portion is, and sure."

1 Samuel 23

Keilah was a border town, near to the country occupied by the Philistines, and these enemies were robbing the people. 'David, in communion with God, was directed to go and drive them away; his force was small (about four hundred men, in chapter 22:2), and they were already deeply conscious of their weakness (verse 3); how could they fight with any other outcome than defeat, against the armies of the Philistines? The answer given to faith and dependence was,

"Arise, go down. to Keilah; for I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand."

The word of God was enough for David, who brought away the enemy's cattle, beside smiting them with a great slaughter. So the people of Keilah were saved out of the Philistine's hands.

One purpose alone seems to have animated Saul: David must be destroyed, and it is to be noted that the people were subject to Saul, ready to do his will. Again David is taught of God not to trust in man, even under the best situation, for the people of Keilah who owed their deliverance to him, would give him up to Saul. With his followers, now numbering about six hundred (verse 13), David left Keilah for Ziph in the southeast of Judah, there to remain for a long time. Ziph means "refining place," and such it became to the sorely tried spirit of David. Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand.

Jonathan came there to David, and encouraged him to wait upon God (verse 16), but this was the last time they met. Jonathan's love for David was not equal to the reproach, the present loss, which it would have cost to take his place with the rejected and hated one, and he went back to his house, after seeing, as a visitor, what he might have shared as a follower of the anointed one of God.

Alas! in this day of ours are many Jonathans who really love the Lord, but are not willing to give up worldly advantages for association with Him in His present rejection. (See Rev. 3:7-13).

The Ziphites, no better than the Keilahites, told Saul of David's presence among them. Saul's heart is again revealed (verses 21-23), and David is pursued to the hill of Hachilah ("drought"), on the south of Jeshimon ("desert") even to Maon ("habitation"), where he abode.

But God will not allow the enemy to do more than His own purpose permits, and when David and his men are almost captured (verse 26), Saul is recalled to fight the Philistines, and 'David finds security and refreshment in strong holds at En-gedi (fountain of Gad). God had purposes of richest blessing for His beloved servant, and in due time would manifest them; meanwhile he was to be in training of great, indeed eternal, value to his soul.

1 Samuel 24

David is still the rejected one, object of the malignity of the then ruler who, but for God's forbearance, should have been displaced, and the throne of Israel given at once to the one chosen of God to occupy it. In this, and in David's general behavior, we are reminded of Him of whom he was a type,-Jesus, the God Man, whose every way and word were perfect.

We may notice too, that there were few who companied with David, who shared his rejection; and Saul seems to have had no lack of men to do his bidding. So was it in the history of our Lord as a man here below; then were the thoughts of many hearts revealed (Luke 2:35), as singly and in groups they come before us in the gospel narrative.

David was in the wilderness of En-gedi; the news came to King Saul, and he took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and set out to kill him. He who was David's Son and David's Lord had to say when the hour of Satan's seeming triumph was reached, "Are ye come out as against a thief, with swords and staves for to take Me?" Matt. 26:55. David had done nothing against the king, and left his future with God.

Among the sheepfolds of En-gedi, not far from the Dead Sea and, about midway of its length, was a cave, and, not in the least suspecting that David and his followers were there, Saul entered. The exile's men whispered to him that now was the opportunity to lay hands on the man who stood between him and the throne for which he had been anointed. But they were far from quoting the word of God correctly, as David well knew. He would not harm the unworthy man who sought his life, but stole up behind him and cut off the skirt or wing of his outer garment. For this his conscience smote him presently (verse 6), and when Saul went out of the cave, David followed at a distance and called to him.

Saul was evidently astonished that David had not used the opportunity to do to him what he had so long tried to do to David. Such ways were beyond his understanding (the child of God is never understood by the world, when he acts according to the Word of God), and he confessed to David that he knew that he should surely be king after him. Fearing- that, though David assured him that he would not take his life, he might revenge himself because; of Saul's past on his children, he asked David to promise to not do so. David promised, and Saul and lie parted to meet but once again (chapter 26). The break between the
two was complete and final. But where was Jonathan?

1 Samuel 25

The aged prophet Samuel died and after a national mourning, he was buried at Ramah. Perhaps fearing now that the last restraint was removed which might have held Saul back from pursuing him to death, David went beyond the ordinary boundaries of Canaan to the wilderness of Paran in the peninsula of Sinai. But he sent ten of his young men back to the region west of the Dead Sea where he had been much of the time since leaving Keilah (chapter 23:13), to call on the great Nabal, owner of three thousand sheep and a thousand goats, and a descendant of that outstanding man of faith, Caleb (Numbers 13-14; Joshua 14).

But faith is not inherited, and great possessions are often a snare, as Scripture abundantly shows,

"How hardly shall they that hare riches enter into the kingdom of God!" Mark 10:23.

The meanings of the names Maon (habitation), and Carmen (fruitful place), and Nabal (fool), are strongly suggestive of the parable of Luke 12:16-21. Self and time, and not God and eternity, were the rule of Nabars life. He "minded earthly things,"—the brief and pointed comment of the Holy Spirit in Philippians 3:19, and his end was destruction, as his god was himself and his desires. So Nabal answered the young men, "Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants now-a-days that break away every man from his master. . . . and sent them away empty handed.

Thereupon David failed; had he been permitted by God to do as he at once proposed, viz., to kill Nabal, he would have entirely departed from the typical character—typical of our blessed Lord as He trod this earth—in which we have with much consistency seen him. His followers were yet but six hundred,—the number given in .chapter 23:13; not many were attached to him in the time of his rejection, but in the time of his exaltation they were exalted too (see 2 Sam. 23).

Are you attached to Jesus in this time of His rejection, my reader? Be assured that the reproach of Christ is greater riches than the best this earth affords (Hebrews 11:26), and "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:36.

Nabal was spared by the intervention of his wife Abigail, who went out to meet David and his men. Abigail saw in 'David the rightful occupant of the throne of Israel; faith had taught her that the Lord would make him a "sure house," because he fought the "battles of the Lord," and evil had not been found in him. "Let thine enemies," she said, "and they that seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal" (to be disregarded), and though Saul was seeking to bring about David's death, "the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God."

Abigail, as one has said, thought nothing of Saul, the rejected of God; Samuel was dead, and David was now everything to her. She took a much more humble place than Jonathan, one that answers in the present day to the attitude of the true Christian to his Lord; while Jonathan answers to the Jewish remnant. David received her homage in the character accredited to him by Abigail (verse 35), and she returned to her husband. Nabal's end speedily came as God's judgment because of his treatment of His anointed, and the close of the chapter presents Abigail as the bride of David.

1 Samuel 26

The Ziphites went next to Saul to tell him that David was now near their section, in the hill of Hachilah, to the west of En-gedi (chapter 24:1), and Saul's actions show that he was still quite ready to kill him. With his three thousand picked soldiers he went down to the hill to seek David. How entirely the latter was cast upon God! Only his few personal followers seem to have been faithful to him; the nation at large entirely was in the hands of Saul, the agent of Satan. In Psalm 11 we find David saying,

"In the Lord put I my trust; how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain? The Lord trieth the righteous, but the wicked and him that loveth violence His soul hateth." (verses 1, 5).

David displayed no fear of Saul (verse 5) when he got the news of the king's whereabouts. He went to the place where Saul and his soldiers were encamped, and when night had fallen, he went into their camp with Abishai, one of David's thirty-seven bravest men (2 Samuel 23:18-39). Abishai proposed to kill Saul as he lay asleep, but "David forbade him, unwilling to leave the place of entire dependence on God which he had learned to occupy. Happy the Christian who leaves all his circumstances with God

This was the second time when, judging by outward things and the opinions of his followers, God had put Saul in David's hands, but he knew better than to act without the explicit word of God. How few do, in our day! God was David's resource; in Him he trusted: He would visit Saul in due time (verse 10).

So David and Abishai merely carried away from the sleeping king's side, his spear and his dish or flask of water. A deep sleep from God was fallen on the entire camp, so that no one heard or saw the two visitors come or go. What a strange and unheard of call for one reckoned an enemy, to make on his foe while helpless in his hands! The power of God was with David.

It was now time to arouse Saul, and David went to the top of a distant hill and shouted to Abner, the king's chief army officer (chapter 17:55). This awoke Saul, who recognized the voice as David's, and moved by the humble and godly tone of his appeal, confessed that he had sinned, asked him to return, promising- that he would no longer do him harm. We may notice in David's words the evidence of spiritual growth through the trying circumstances he had known, and was yet in; he brings God in now more fully than before. ( Compare verses 19-20 with chapter 24:10-15). But we see nothing about Saul to show anything but the unchanged child of nature; he could appreciate the largeness of heart of the young man he hated, but the chasm between them was never crossed. The one served Satan and the other the Lord. So is it with men and women today. Whom do. you serve, reader?

1 Samuel 27

And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul shall despair of me, to seek me any more in any coast of Israel; so shall I escape out of his hand." Poor, discouraged saint of God! Think of What that faithful, loving God had done for him, the humble shepherd boy of Bethlehem, and what He was about to do for him. David was not to be troubled again by Saul; God had delivered him out of his hands time after time, and just before this He had stopped Saul from killing him. The heart searching trials he was having, were for his own blessing and future profit.

But 'David was only a man, after all; his faith failed; he left God out of his calculations (see verse 1), and fell from the high position he had occupied, to reasoning from his circumstances. His own later words, inspired of God, in Psalm 27:14 tell us what should have been the expression of his heart at this time: "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on the Lord."

Blinded then, for the time by unbelief. for God had not forsaken him and would never leave him, David went over to the Philistine king of Gath with his household and followers. Saul presently learned of it and sought no more for him God was not indifferent to the needs of his servant who was "beloved" (the meaning of his name, David) no matter how far he might wander from the divine pathway appointed for him. As it appears, David was not comfortable in the court of Achish (nor could he be, one who knew the living and true God, among the servants of Satan), and he asked and received the town of Ziklag in which to live. This was in the far south of the land given by God to Israel for a possession, but from which, as we have noticed again and again, the Philistines had not been driven, due to the lack of faith in the children of Israel.

While among the Philistines, David and his men went out to the south and invaded the territory occupied by the people with whom the Philistines were friendly, as it would seem, and David told a lie to Achish about it, winning his favor by maintaining a false position before him. One wrong step easily leads to another, and forsaking the path of simple dependence on God, is apt to involve the believer in much sorrow. We shall find presently David restored in soul and going on more becomingly before God, but he will first be disciplined as a child of God, because of his failure.

1 Samuel 28

If in chapter, 21:10-13, we saw a saint of God out of the path of faith, out of communion with God, for a season, the David we now see, in chapters 27, 28 and 29, exhibits the same traits in a worse degree. Before, he pretended insanity for fear of his life; now he professes to be a friend of the world, takes a place of influence in it, and consequently maintains himself by living a lie. Sad evidence of a low state of soul in David is the Holy Spirit's record in verses 1 and 2. But. what else can be expected when the believer turns from dependence on the living and true God to depend upon his own resources, and seeks the protection of a guilty world which is soon to meet its judgment?

The Philistines were prepared for war upon Israel and gathered in Shunem, and the Israelites united in Gilboa to meet them. Saul, miserable, self-seeking man, without resource in God whom he had never known by faith, is overcome by fear. God whom he had got along without all his days, or outwardly recognizing but habitually disobeying, will not now answer him.

We are reminded of those solemn words of Proverbs 1:24-32: "Because I have called, and ye refused, ... ye have set at naught all My counsel, and would none of My reproof, ... when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, .... then shall they call upon Me, but I will not answer, .... for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord." May this not be the portion of the reader!

Saul then no longer turns to religion (and outward service to God, as on former occasions, chapters 13:9 15:30, etc.). Has he learned that the time for sham, for empty profession, is past? His heart trembles as he faces, not only the loss of honor and position, but of life itself; with eternity before him, Saul is "without God" (Eph. 2:12). Will he then, now at last take his true place before Him as a confessed sinner seeking mercy from Him who is "rich in mercy" (Eph. 2:4)? Had he done so, he would have found even at this late moment in his life, a pardoning God.

Saul made his choice; he decided to seek satanic help rather than to humble himself before God and acknowledge in brokenness of spirit his many sins. Accordingly, he went to a woman who had a "familiar spirit," which he knew and had condemned as evil. What followed is somewhat parallel to the case of the wicked Balaam in Numbers 22 to 24. Both the woman of En-dor and Balaam (and a large class in our own times who have dealings with the unseen world and profess to be able to foretell events) had to do with Satan and the demons under his control, and in both these cases we see God interfering for His own glory. Instead of a demon, the woman saw Samuel, and was startled and terrified; it was power above her enchantments that met her, the power of God.

Samuel was seen in the likeness he had borne on earth, and in the few sentences he uttered, Saul learned that tomorrow all will be over with him; he and his sons will be in eternity. The realization of the solemn judgment of God upon him, and that not without warnings during his life, was too much now for Saul, and a deeper fear entered his heart. Eternity with the lost, the unrepentant, was Saul's prospect. Is it yours?

"It is appointed unto men once to die,

but after this the judgment," but "unto them which look for Him (Christ) shad He appear the second time without (apart from) sin, unto salvation." He!). 9:27-28.

1 Samuel 29

Aphek and Jezreel, Endor, Shunem and Gilboa, the places mentioned in chapters 28-19 were all in the north, in a district about 15 miles southwest of the Sea of Galilee. Gath and Ziklag (chapter 27) were in the southwest and extreme south, respectively, of Palestine. We see the preparations for battle in verses 1 and 2 of our chapter, but God would not permit His erring child to be longer numbered with the Philistines. Their leaders said. "What do these Hebrews here?", having no confidence in David and his followers.

David now is a sad but true example of a worldly minded believer, out of communion with God, viewed with suspicion by the world which cannot recognize in him one of its own.

David's deception had been believed by the Philistine king (chapter 27:12). His loyalty to Achish we may judge to have been genuine, with reservations which David himself could perhaps not have defined, for faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1), was inactive; his eyes were on himself and not on God, and for the time he judged by circumstances (which all seemed contrary to him), and not by the word of the living God: David had, through occupation with his trials—and they were severe—lost the significance of the words of inspiration in Deuteronomy 33:25-27,

"Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be. There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in His excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy Refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."

Achish, flattered perhaps by having David as his servant, and having found no fault in him (verses 3 and 6), would have taken him to the battle with Israel, but God had pity on His poor, misguided child, and delivered. him from the snare of the devil. We here see David at the lowest ebb of his spiritual life thus far, as perhaps verse 8 most fully evidences. He is now compelled by the Philistines themselves. (but God was at work behind the scenes) to withdraw from them, to resume again his true character before God of a separated man; he and his men journey southward in the direction of the border city of Ziklag, while the Philistine hosts go northeastward to the valley of Jezreel.

1 Samuel 30

On the third day came a fresh and a sharper dealing from God. He it was Who had caused the Philistine lords to refuse David a place in their army when about to fight the hosts of Israel, and as a further, needed circumstance for the restoration of His servant to the path of faith, He had moved the Amalekites to attack Ziklag, carry off all the living, and to destroy the town.

The three day's journey, we may rightly suppose, had given David time to reflect upon his recent course, but it was only when the desolation of Ziklag came into view that his soul was restored to a right state before God. What exercises of heart must he not have passed through as he reviewed his actions and associations since a year and four months before this he had left the wilderness of Ziph. Names in the Scriptures are sometimes very significant, and as we have before noted, Ziph means "refining place"; David had left that character of things where faith was tested, for an easier path, but it had involved him in the most serious way, Better far had it been to have stayed in the trials and tribulations which were involved in the path of faith, than to have lost communion with God, and joined forces with His enemies. Now he could see clearly again, and being fully restored, his heart turns to God as his refuge and strength. a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46).

That David's followers spoke of stoning him was a part of the needed lesson. Had he not left the divinely appointed path, this would not have occurred. In thinking of David as a type of Christ ( and such in general he is seen to be). we find no analogy here.

Asking now direction of God, which he had not done when he left Ziph ( see chapter 27:1), he asked not in vain, and pursuing the departing Amalekites, he overtook them and recovered all.

Typically here we no doubt see the Lord in the work of redemption. bruising the serpent's head (Gen. 8:15); through death destroying (annulling—making of no effect) him that had the power. of death, that is, the devil; and delivering them who were in his hands (see Heb. 2:14-15). Typical too, is the bringing in of the Egyptian found dying by the road side, who was deserted by his master when he could no longer be useful to him; grace is shown to him, though he had been a servant of the enemy: permanent deliverance is assured him, and he becomes of service to him with whom lie is henceforth associated.

David's largeness of heart is marked in the treatment of the faint two hundred who stayed behind at the brook when their strength failed, and in his sending of the spoils of his victory to the elders of Judah and his friends who had done nothing to entitle them to share in them. None who had had to do with him in the time of his rejection was forgotten (verse 31).

1 Samuel 31

Here we are transported to the battlefield of Gilboa, from whose solemn issues David was mercifully spared. Israel's leader, Saul, who also had rejected God, to whom the people had turned as the one who would fulfill their desires (chapter 8: chapter 10:17-19), now at last was laid low, and many perished with him. Deeply saddening to read also that Jonathan, who loved David, and knew him as the rightful leader of the people of God, died among the unbelievers. As we read the sad account of Saul's death, we are constrained to believe that as he had lived, so he died. All the men of Israel fled from the vicinity of the battle, and the Philistines went and lived in their cities. The Philistines made much of Saul's death, but there were some brave men of Jabesh-Gilead who went by night and secured the bodies of Saul and his sons and gave them some sort of burial. In the Second Book of Samuel, chapter 2, David commended the men of Jabesh-Gilead for what they did.

In this First Book of Samuel we have seen man again proved a failure. The people, with their hearts set on being like the heathen world around them, demanded a king. They were given their desire in a man of fine appearance.—perhaps the finest flower of the natural man the country could have produced, but what a loss to the nation! Religious, but without the link of faith connecting him with the true God, Saul proved to have himself as his object, and when another was brought on the scene, who truly served God, David the shepherd of Bethlehem, he hated him and would have killed him. Then we have seen the trials of David; circumstances often extremely painful, and the man whom God purposed to be king over His people, failed to live up to the type of Christ, which in general he was. But the book closes with Saul's death, and David restored to communion with God after his second recorded failure.

Saul was the wrong leader; David the right one. Following- Saul led to destruction; following David had its difficulties, but a brighter day was about to dawn, and devotion to him was going to be rewarded.

There are two leaders today; Satan and Christ. Who are 'you following? It is a searching question; do not put it off! The day is coming when the poor dupes of Satan will be seen at the judgment throne there to hear the dread sentence of eternal judgment, but before that event, those who have received the knowledge of Christ as a personal Saviour, will be caught away to be with Him and to share His glory, the beloved of God. O, decide for Christ at once!

2 Samuel 1

In the last chapter of 1St Samuel we learned how king Saul died, taking his own life by leaning upon the blade of his sword. A stranger, an Amalekite, who was at the battlefield, picked up Saul's crown and bracelet and thought to get a reward from David by going to him with them and claiming to have ended Saul's life. He naturally supposed that David would be very pleased indeed to learn that his enemy,—the man who stood between himself and the throne of Israel,—was dead.

With the outward marks of great grief, the Amalekite came to David and told his story, but its telling produced a very different effect than he had expected. David had always honored the king, even when Saul sought to kill him, and now in the bright prospect of an early end to his wanderings, in elevation to the throne of Israel for which God had long ago appointed him, the heart of 'David was filled with grief. Mourning and weeping and fasting until evening, David lamented the death of Saul and Jonathan, and of "the people of the Lord"—that the nation of

Israel, in a sense, and God's glory was touched in their defeat,—and of "the house of Israel" (the people viewed in a worldly way). Self-condemned in David's opinion, the Amalekite was put to death.

The children of Judah were to be taught to use the bow, the instrument of warfare by which Saul had been brought to his end. The book of Jasher (verse 18) is here mentioned a second time; the first reference to it is in Joshua chapter 10:13. Nothing is now known of this book or its author or authors. "Jasher" means "upright," or "the upright." It was evidently a well-known book but not inspired; a history or book of poems.

David's lament over Saul and Jonathan is very touching. Not a word does it include of condemnation of the dead king who had done little to win his regard. "The beauty of Israel" was slain; the mighty were fallen. Asklon and Gath. principal cities of the Philistines,—the one on the seacoast and the other on their eastern border,—should not hear the news, lest the daughters of the enemy should rejoice.

It must have been a sad reflection for David that Saul and Jonathan were not divided (verse 23). The king's son loved David truly, but he was not willing to give up present things for the future, and the last we saw of him before the battlefield where he died with his father, was in 1 Samuel chapter 23:18.

Esau made his choice in Genesis 25:32-33; Moses decided in Exodus 2:11 (see Hebrews 11:24-26); Jonathan was unlike either, but he made a decision, and it cost him his life; he might have shared David's glory later on, but he would not give up the present world (see 2 Timothy 4:10).

Have you decided? And is your decision for Christ, or for the world? It is a momentous question.

2 Samuel 2

Now that Saul was dead, David may have been tempted to make himself king in his stead, but continuing his course of dependence on God, he inquired of Him, "Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?" and "Whither shall I go up?" Judah was David's own tribe; and Hebron, where he was directed to go, was the region in which Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob had lived and were buried, about 20 miles south of Jerusalem. Having arrived there with his two wives and his men and their families. David was anointed king of the tribe by the men of Judah. He was now thirty years of age (chapter 5:4).

Upon David's being told of the burial of Saul's body by the courageous men of Jabesh-gilead, he sent messengers to thank them and to tell them that he had been made king over the tribe of Judah. Five years appear to have passed without the other tribes of Israel having taken any steps to fill the dead king Saul's place. Then, though God had long before (1 Samuel 16) made known through Samuel the prophet, His purpose that 'David should be the next king, Ish-bosheth, the only remaining son of Saul, was made king over the people of Israel. It was Abner, the leader of Saul's army and Saul's cousin, who brought about the crowning of Ish-bosheth at Mahanaim, a place east of the Jordan quite close to Jabesh-gilead in the land of Gad.

It appears to have been Abner's purpose to get rid of David when he led an expedition as far as Gibeon, a few miles northwest of Jerusalem. There they were met by Joab, David's nephew, who became the head of his army, but a bold unscrupulous, self-seeking man who afterward murdered Abner and Amasa and was himself put to death (1 Kings 2:31-34).

We cannot think that David was led of God to send out Joab and others to meet the followers of Saul's son, or that the fighting that took place was according to His mind, where Israelite killed Israelite. It is a sad part of David's history.

2 Samuel 3

The Holy Spirit, the divine Author of God's Word has chosen to pass by several years of David's life at this period with but little detail.

David was king at Hebron over the tribe of Judah, and Ish-bosheth, Saul's one surviving son, was king over the other tribes of Israel; the position of David grew stronger, and that of Ish-bosheth weaker, as the time passed. Six children were born to David while he lived at Hebron; three of them had violent deaths—Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah,—and of the other three Scripture tells nothing more than their Flames. We shall not anticipate what later chapters bring out, save to remark that the sad course of David's children did not begin until their father fell into terrible sin. God is not mocked, and "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap!" (see chapter 12:9-10).

Through an angry dispute between Ishbosheth and his warrior leader Abner, was the son of Saul seriously weakened. Abner, offended at his master, turned from him to David, so that he offered to bring the people of the whole land to accept 'David as their king. David demanded and obtained his first wife, Michal, who had been given to another man. And Abner went to the elders of Israel and of Benjamin, reminding them that they had before wanted David to be king, and that God had chosen him for that purpose. Then he went to David and arranged with him to gather the nation to him, to receive him as their king.

When Abner had gone away again, Joab came back to Hebron from an expedition with David's fighting men, and it was told him that Abner had been to the king who had sent him away in peace. Joab thereupon went to David, angry that Abner had been treated in such fashion and as the sequel shows, determined upon his murder. He sent messengers after Abner, unknown to David, and when he came back, Joab, on the pretense of speaking to him peaceably, stabbed him to death.

The shocking murder being made known to David, was disowned by him in the plainest terms, but though he expressed the hope that God would not pass the guilt of it, but visit it upon Joab, David did not punish his nephew. He called upon Joab and all the people to mourn Abner's death, and 'David went to the funeral, weeping and lamenting at the grave, nor would he eat until the evening. The king's behavior in the matter of Abner's murder pleased the people, but he was weak as he himself said (verse 39), for the murderer went unpunished for his deed.

2 Samuel 4

This short chapter contains another sad page in the history of the children of Israel. Ishbosheth, Saul's son, who had by this time been recognized as king over all the tribes of Israel, except that of Judah, for something like two years and a half, was much depressed at the news of the murder of Abner upon whom he depended. It had been Abner's work, and not Ish-bosheth's to put the latter on the throne of Israel (chapter 2:8), and we perhaps rightly judge that Saul's son was not a man of strong character. Those who owned him as king were troubled, when Abner was dead, and rightly so, for the strong man of the kingdom was gone.

It was God's purpose, as we have before noticed, that David, and not a son of Saul, should rule over this people, and that end would have been reached by His means and in His own time. Instead, another shocking murder is committed, and that not by a jealous rival, as when Joab took the life of Abner, but by professed friends and supporters of the house of Saul, captains of Ish-bosheth's soldiers.

Like the Amalekite of the first chapter, these murderers thought to be rewarded for the news they brought to David. But David, again taught of God, though he had failed in regard to Joab, refused to consider his personal gain, and commanded that the two Benjamites should be put to death and their bodies exposed to public view.

The five year old son of Jonathan, Mephibosheth, crippled by a fall at the time that the Philistines defeated and killed Saul and his sons,—Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchi-shua,—is mentioned in the fourth verse. God had him marked out for blessing, showing how divine mercy can work in the midst of evil. The ninth chapter brings Mephibosheth before us again.

2 Samuel 5

Without effort on David's part the throne of Israel was now at last his. There had been bloodshed; but he was not connected with it, and the nation turns to David, the long absent, long neglected, but at the same time the long promised one. We see again in David's history likeness to Christ who when He returns to reign will at first be King of Judah, and afterward bring the whole nation of Israel into subjection to Himself.

Jerusalem is first named in the Scriptures in Joshua 10; Joshua 15:63; and Judges 1:8,21 speak of it as captured in part; the children of Israel could not drive the inhabitants out, but shared the city with them. Four hundred years later, David made it the capital city of Israel. There, after another 1075 years Jesus died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. From its eastern hill, the Mount of Olives, He ascended to heaven, and to it He will return (Zechariah 14). It is last mentioned in Revelation 20:9 as "the beloved city", at the close of the Millennium.

The Jehusites, inhabitants of Jerusalem, thought to keep David from taking possession of the city, but he took the strong hold (fortress) of Zion, the higher part of it, on the southwest. From 1 Chronicles 11:6 we learn that Joab, of whose treacherous act of blood we read in the third chapter, at this time became the head of the army, a place hitherto held by David himself.

David became continually greater, and God was with him. Hiram, king of the important northern seacoast city of Tyre, acknowledged David, sending materials and men to build him a house. David saw that God had established him as king, and had exalted his kingdom because of His people Israel.

But now that David's suffering days are over, and power is in his hands, nature asserts itself: he takes more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem. Trial is needed to restore his soul, and this comes in an invasion by the Philistines who encamped in the valley of Rephaim, "Valley of the giants." Perhaps this name brought to David's memory his encounter with Goliath. He "inquired of the Lord", as he had done before (1 Samuel 23:2, 4, 11-12; 30:8; 2 Samuel 2:1); this is always the source of power for the Christian. Victory resulted, and David owned it as God's, not his own.

The Philistines came again, and David again prayed for guidance; it was not enough for him to have once prayed. "Continue (or persevere) in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving," is the word in Colossians 4:2. Specific direction was given for meeting the Philistines, for was not God the Lord God of Hosts (verse 10) to fight His people's battles on this occasion?

In the wonderful fortieth chapter of Isaiah He is called the "everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth," Who gives "power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength .. . . They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." Happy and safe are all who trust in Him!

2 Samuel 6

A right purpose was in David's heart: the ark of God which had been allowed to stay in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim during all of Saul's forty years' reign, and over twenty years before that (see 1 Samuel 7:1,2), should be brought to the place of honor in the kingdom. But how should it be brought? The Scriptures which David and his people had, plainly told that the sons of Kohath of the tribe of Levi should carry the ark by means of staves passed through rings attached to its sides, but they were not to touch the ark; only the priests could do that (Numbers 1:50,51,53; 3:31; 4:15). But the Word of God was neglected, and the pattern for what was done was found in the Philistine priests' "new cart" drawn by cows (1 Samuel 6:7).

How much of this kind of thing is seen in our own day! At a great sacrifice of the truth and testimony of God, Christians are formed after the model of the men of the world, because they think of themselves, plan for themselves, while seeking to honor God. Is His Word not enough? Note carefully the words of the aged apostle Paul to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:14-17) in view of the "perilous times" of the "last days" in which we unquestionably now are.

Notwithstanding the "new cart," the godly Abinadab's sons going before and driving it, and the great and impressive strains of music with which the journey was begun, was begun with disobedience, and ended in judgment, for the nearer a man is to God, the more solemnly will he be dealt with for departure from His word. But, let it be remembered, His word also says that if judgment "first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? Where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" 1 Peter 4:17-18.

Something after the way of Joshua, after the defeat of Ai ( Joshua 7:6-9) was David's behavior upon the death of Abinadab's son. Pained and alarmed, he left the ark in the house of Obed-edom until the news came to him that God had blessed that family. How slow we are to apprehend the mind of God, to judge in ourselves the cause of some painful dealing! David truly desired God's glory, but he did not understand its greatness, and he had forgotten the majesty of Him with whom we have to do.

God is a blesser, and His loving interest in those who in any measure honor Him is presently shown. Then David, in heart restored, caused the ark to be brought after the divine order (see 1 Chronicles 15:2, 13-15, etc.). The sneer of his wife Michal did not move him, since he had acted before God. "I will", said he, "yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight." May the same spirit of self-renunciation mark all the children of God, to His praise!

2 Samuel 7

The same desire for the glory of God which actuated David in the incidents of the sixth, chapter, comes in view in what we read here. David was troubled because he had a house of cedar, while the dwelling place of God on earth—the tabernacle,—was a tent, and he wished to build a house for Him. The desire seemed a good one to Nathan the prophet, but it could not be granted because the time for rest had not come. War was not a thing of the past. David was a type of Christ as suffering and conquering, reestablishing among God's people the glory of His name, but his son and heir, Solomon, was to be a type of Christ as the Prince of Peace; he should build the house, when wars were over.

And that God Who had taken David from the sheepcote, Who was with him whithersoever he went, and had placed him on the throne of Israel, He would make His servant David a house (verse 11). David was more than a type; he was the source of that family from which Christ Himself was afterward to spring as the word of God to Nathan implies, though David's Son was David's Lord; the Root of David indeed (Revelation 5:5).

The revelation which God thus made of His purposes, deeply moved the heart of David, and he went in before Him, not to rejoice in his own good fortune, so to speak, but to bless the Author of it all. Rightly taking a low place, he boasted of the grace of God to him,—so unlike the manner of man. God knew His servant, and in this lay his confidence, and joy. It was for His Word's sake, and according to His own heart that He thus had spoken. David is here a worshiper, occupied with the one Who had won his heart,—a pattern for the follower of Christ in this day. 0, to see more of this among God's people!

The promises concerning David's seed in verses 12-16 go far beyond Solomon, who though he was a wonderful type of Christ as reigning in peace during the Millennial age to come, yet failed most sadly; their ultimate fulfilment awaits that day of glory.

2 Samuel 8

The word in Psalm 18:43, written for the day of the Lord when He shall set up, His kingdom at the beginning of the Millennium, had its first fulfilment in David, as the chapter reveals. The Philistines who lived within the borders of Israel, and had long been merciless enemies, were smitten and subdued, and some of their towns were taken from them. Their final destruction did not occur during Old Testament history, though it is promised in the writings of the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos and Zephaniah.

Moab, ancient enemy, was humbled, yet grace was shown them, for "with two lines" measurement was made to put to death, and with "one full line" to keep alive. Moab is used more than once in Scripture as a representation of the world, away from God, and its ways hated by Him. Yet grace, unmerited favor, is shown, as at this day, while free salvation, abundant pardon, is proclaimed to undeserving sinners, if they will but accept it on God's terms.

Far east to the Euphrates, and northward to the city of Damascus went the conquering hosts of Israel under their great leader, and the nations so visited became servants and brought gifts to David. Other kings owned 'David, and sent him vessels of silver, of gold and of brass, which he dedicated to God. Garrison's were placed in Syria and in Edom, and David executed judgment and justice to all his people, preserved and blessed by God where ever he went. David pictures still the Man of power of the coming day when He shall put down all rule and all authority and power, putting all enemies under His feet (1 Corinthians 15:24-25).

To present David in this typical view, as foreshadowing Christ as the warrior-king when He shall return to this earth in judgment, is the great aim of the Holy Spirit in this book. The same history is told in 1 Chronicles with quite a different object,—that of showing the grace of God exemplified in David's life.

2 Samuel 9

The ninth chapter gives us David's kindness, or as he himself called it, the kindness of God, to a poor friendless one, the grandson of an enemy. It is moreover, a lovely picture of the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man (Titus 3:4). David, once rejected, his life sought so determinedly by the then king of Israel, that he was made a homeless wanderer and an exile, was now on the throne. God had seen to it that he should be exalted, no matter what the will of man might have been.

Could there be mercy, pardon, for any of the family of the would be murderer? Yes, it is God's delight to have mercy (Romans 3:24; 5:6-9; 11:30-36), when we should look for judgment unsparing from Him. Have we not, unitedly,—Gentile with Jew,—put Christ out of the world? Did not the Roman governor Pilate agree that He should be crucified? (See Luke 23:24-25). Yes, as the apostle Peter said in his stirring words to the people in Acts 2:23-24, "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God bath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it," and further (verse 36): "God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." And, marvel of marvels, whosoever believeth in Him, bath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life ( John 3.:16; 5:24).

David, far from planning to imprison or kill any of the family of Saul, asks who of them might be found in order that he should show him kindness. Ziba, the servant, tells him there is one of Saul's grand-children left, Mephibosheth by name; not alone a child of the enemy, he is lame on both feet, and far away from Jerusalem. But neither of these obstacles change David's purpose; in fact such an one, who could do nothing for himself, dejected, hopeless, was just the one upon whom he could bestow a rich gift of love; The first step taken is to bring the poor creature into his presence: he must be "fetched",—all the way, not part way after the young man has done his best. So the fifth verse tells us that Mephibosheth was picked up just where he was; it was equally true that he could do nothing to get to David, and that there was nothing for him to do but to receive what was offered in love. And this he did.

Have you, my reader, you who are reading this paper, have you received Christ as your Saviour? The way of salvation, God's salvation is very simple; there is nothing to do but to receive it, but it must be received, or you are eternally lost. God offers it to you. He says in His Word (Acts 13:39) that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. An enemy of God by nature and practice, He loves you, seeks you. Will you not open your stony heart to receive that love, the kindness of God?

2 Samuel 10

In the ninth chapter we found a man who received kindness, the kindness of God. The present chapter shows us one who refused it and the result of the refusal. The Epistle to the Romans, in chapter 2 verses 4-6, contains a question which perhaps applies to you who are reading this paper. It is this: “Despisest thou the riches of God’s goodness and forbearance and long-suffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, Who will render to every man according to his deeds.”

In both chapters it is “kindness” that is shown, but the advice given Hanun, and on which he acted, was poor advice indeed. He should have made a friend of the great king of Israel, but he made him his enemy by insulting his messengers and sending them away. This is like what many are doing today to those who would tell them of the great salvation God has provided. Revelation 20:12 has no word of comfort for them; it speaks of those who appear before the great white throne as being “judged out of those things which are written in the books according to their works.” Now is the day of mercy; then is the day of judgment without mercy. When the door of mercy is shut, it will not be reopened to those who would say “Lord, Lord, open to us” (Matt. 25:11-12).

Hanun and his people got a great force to come to their help, twenty-thousand from Beth-rehob and Zoba; a thousand from Maacah, and twelve thousand from Ish-tob, but it was all useless and vain trust in a power that could not deliver from the one who had been rejected, and his kindness treated with contempt. They call for help from the more distant land beyond the Euphrates, but this army too was hopelessly defeated; and the survivors made peace with. Israel and served them. These however were not the Ammonites, of whom Hanun was the king; they made no peace, remaining as a nation the bitter enemies of God’s people to be judged later, as the prophetic books of the Bible tell us. Individuals among them turned to God and joined His people, however.

Have you peace with God? Christ has made peace through the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20), and He is our peace (Ephesians 2:14), who trust in Him and His finished work. It is folly to arm yourself against God.

“See that ye refuse, not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who re fused him that spake on earth (God speaking through Moses), much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.” Heb. 12:25.

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom. 6:23.

2 Samuel 11

It is in the natural heart to pass over sin lightly, and even to ignore it altogether (unless oneself be injured by the sin of another person), and God’s Word, speaking of these things in Romans 1:29-32 solemnly declares man away from the true knowledge of Himself; “who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

This chapter gives us the darkest page in David’s history. When the parallel story of grace is told, in 1 Chronicles, not a word of this is given, but here the sins as well as the piety, of David have their place. It is well for us that God should, in telling their life stories, have exposed sin in His children which, as His word says, “doth so easily beset us” (Heb. 1.2:1), else we should look upon such characters as Noah, Abraham, Moses and David as without sin, and wholly beyond ourselves. Instead, we have them principally as examples to be followed, in so far as they were guided by faith, and also as giving us warnings of what the believer may fall into, and must shun with all his power. The believer is set apart to God by the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:2); he should seek “those things which are above,” putting to death the things which characterized him before the light of God’s holy Word broke in on his soul (Colossians 3); he needs the “whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:11, 13-18). If sin overtakes him, he is to confess it to God and be forgiven (1 John 1:5-9).

It was when David did not have on this armor of God, when he was tarrying at home instead of leading his army to battle, that he was tempted and fell. The consequences of that fall followed him to the end of his life, though his sin was confessed and forgiven, but of this we learn in the 12TH and following chapters. One sin was followed, as is often the case, by another in a hope of protecting himself from discovery and shame. Even the godly attitude of Uriah (verse 11) was a rebuke to David, and must have been felt by him. Joab, as to whom we have already noted that he was a self-seeking, unprincipled man, was quite willing, it seems, to put Uriah out in the forefront of battle where he was likely to be killed. And Bathsheba’s husband was killed (verse 17); so far David’s hopes had been realized. Circumstances seemed to favor him; he probably felt very much relieved when the messenger brought the news of Uriah’s being removed by death. Bathsheba mourned for her husband, and when the mourning period was over, David brought her to his house and she became his wife. A little son was born. The last sentence of the chapter is the only hint the chapter gives that there was punishment in store for David. He had sown; would he reap? He would indeed, for God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7-8).

2 Samuel 12

God was, so to speak, left out of the events of the eleventh chapter. There we had man in his desires and his doings. Here we have to do with God. “Every one of us shall give account of himself to God” Romans 14:12; and He has said, “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh Me” Leviticus 10:3.

The governmental dealings of God with His children is a very real thing; Jacob found it out as the result of his deceit toward his father (Genesis 27); Moses learned it through his disobedience at the rock of Merihah (Num. 20:12; Deut. 4:21). Eli proved it in the sad end of his children foretold in 1 Samuel 2:27-36; and now David was to have it impressed on himself in many painful circumstances almost to the end of his life.

David confessed his sin (verse 13), and was forgiven (see 1 John 1:9), but the little baby must die, and the sword should never depart from his house because he had despised God (verse 10). We learn how he felt at this time in the fifty first Psalm, not a word is there of excuse for himself, but the deepest contrition, and David prayed to be washed thoroughly from his iniquity, and cleansed from his sin.

“My sin,” said he, “is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight .... Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”

David besought God for the life of the baby, but when it died, he knew that his prayer could not be answered, and with deepened faith, and chastened spirit, he said to his servants who did not understand what was in his mind, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”

Out of the sad marriage with Bathsheba, however there was to be blessing, for Solomon, David’s glorious son, was hers, and he called his name Jedidiah “the beloved of the Lord.” David went to the war with the Ammonites wherein he had failed before (chapter 11:1). He dealt with them with uncommon ferocity; was it of God? That judgment should have fallen on them is certain, and as a foreshadowing of the day of Gods unsparing judgment of the wicked, it may well stand.

God’s dealings with David were as with a son. “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him, for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” Heb. 12:5,6.

He had received the gift of God, eternal life, and was no more in the position of a sinner, but a sinning child of God.

“For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” 1 Peter 4:17-18.

2 Samuel 13

We come now, to the beginning of David’s reaping as he had sowed. The sorrows of his later years would never have been felt, had he kept before himself that standard of conduct which is set before the Christian in Colossians 3:1-17.

Nor would Jacob have gone through the character of trial he endured, we may conclude, if he had not first deceived his father (Gen. 27).

God has laid it down as a principle of His dealings with mankind (Gal 6:7, 8) that the sower must reap what he sowed, and David who smothered the protest of his conscience to take the wife of Uriah, and afterward to have Uriah exposed to certain death, must learn by example what he would not learn by precept, that is, from the word of God.

When Jacob’s father-in-law, and his sons deceived him, do you not suppose that his thoughts ran quickly back to the time when he had stood before his aged father, pretending to be Esau, that he might get the blessing of the heir? And similarly when David’s eldest son, Amnon, brought the shame and dishonor of the thirteenth chapter upon his father, and presently the third son. Absalom became guilty of the murder of Amnon, was there no voice within that spoke to the king of Israel of his own sin? Assuredly there was. God is not mocked.

While David was a shepherd boy, and fought the giant Goliath, and when a fugitive, his home the cave of Adullam, he was near to God: but once on the throne there was quickly a change, as we have seen in chapter 11. His eight wives, Michal, Ahinoam, Abigail. Maacah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah. Bathsheba, contrast with the one wife of earlier men of God, and they gave him but one son of whom David could think well, (Solomon, the youngest); three sons met violent deaths, and as to the other six the Scriptures are silent. Is it not likely that if they had been godly, we should have been told it in the inspired record?

When Absalom murdered his brother Amnon, he escaped to his grandfather’s home (see chapter 3:3), and David instead of demanding his return that punishment might be meted out according to the divine command (Exo. 21:12; Deut. 19:11-13), forgave the murderer and longed after him.

We turn with relief from the sad details of this chapter to consider the Perfect One, the Lord Jesus, of Whom a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17), of Whom the redeemed say with rapture, “The Son of God Who loved me, and gave Himself for me” Gal. 2:20.

2 Samuel 14

The worldly-wise Joab is the man behind the scenes here. Seeing that David was deeply attached to the unpunished murderer, Absalom, he seeks a way to bring about his return from Geshur. A wise woman lived at Tekoah, 12 miles south of Jerusalem; with her Joab arranged for an artful appeal to the king. She pretended that she was a widow with two sons, one of whom had killed the other, and so excited David’s pity. God had required the death of the murderer in Gen. 9:6 (a command of universal application and never withdrawn), and in Exo. 21:12, and Numbers 35:16- 21; but David had allowed his natural affection for Absalom to take the place of God’s Word—a most serious thing, which was to he visited upon him later in the behavior of that son.

The visit of the woman of Tekoah gave David an excuse to send for Absalom, though his conscience troubled him too much to permit the murderer’s presenting himself at the paternal home. Two years more went by, and it was now five years since Amnon was killed by Absalom’s servants. Absalom judged rightly that there was no intention on his father’s part to have him put to death, and demanded to be restored to full favor. It was done, the king even kissed the man whom the law required to be put to death. He was handsome, the most admired in all the country (verse 25), without seeming blemish from head to foot, but under the judgment of God, which though delayed, would be visited upon him.

It is not likely that this paper will fall into the hands of a murderer; the reader may have a very good opinion indeed, of himself, may be as popular as Absalom was, and as much admired, but let him know that God has declared,

“It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Heb. 9:27.

Truly, as the wise woman of Tekoah said to the king (verse 14), “We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again, neither doth God respect any person; yet doth He devise means that His banished be not expelled from Him,” but Christ is “the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me”. (John 14:6).

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” 1 Tim. 1:15. Has this reached your conscience, filled your heart?

“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16.

2 Samuel 15

Very soon after this, things moved swiftly. The unpunished slayer of his brother aspired to his father’s throne, and would take it by craft and by force. With his chariots and horses and fifty men to run before him, and yet more by his cunning treatment of those who came to see the king with their complaints, Absalom won the people to himself—stole their hearts from David his father. Spies were sent through all the land to prepare the nation for the proclamation of Absalom as king in Hebron.

Ahithophel, who seems to have been Bathsheba’s grandfather (see chapter 11:3, and chapter 23:34), a very wise man and David’s counselor (chapter 16:23). joined Absalom, and presently the news of what his favored son had been doing came to the king. David, the conqueror of the Philistines, must flee before the face of his own son, so the king and all his household left Jerusalem.

Now was shown who were true to David and who were not. The Cherethites and Pelethites, David’s personal guard, and the Gittites, the high priest and the Levites, and Hushai the Archite were attached to the king and were ready to share his exile. Ittai the Gittite was told to go back to Jerusalem with his men, all of them no doubt Philistines, but answered nobly.

“As the Lord liveth, and as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be.”

This was true devotedness to David, and without doubt the more appreciated on account of coming from a stranger who had no interest by nature in Israel or Israel’s king. He and his men foreshadowed the believing Gentiles who are attached to the Lord Jesus in the present time of His rejection, and will share His glory.

The brook Kidron (verse 23) is the little stream, now generally dry, that traverses the valley between the east of Jerusalem and the west of the Mount of Olives. Crossing it, David ascended the mountain, as did the Lord on the night of His betrayal (John 18:1).

David when in trial almost without exception recognized God’s hand in it (verses 25, 26), and here, while feeling the sharpness of that “sword” which he had been told should not depart from his house (chapter 12:10), leaves himself in His keeping. “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth,” and David was learning in these deep exercises; his heart was with God, and his sorrows taught him godliness. The tokens of God’s dwelling place must be maintained in Jerusalem, the place which He had chosen to set His name there, and the weeping king ascends the Mount of Olives with his weeping retinue, to meet Hushai the Archite, and send him back also into the city.

David’s sins had brought this grief upon him, but the loving heart of God was concerned with him, and his return to the throne was not far away.

2 Samuel 16

David’s distress brought many into view, of whom perhaps we should not otherwise have learned. Ittai the Gittite and his band of six hundred followers, and the Cherethites and Pelethites, and Hushai the Archite have come before us, testifying their devotion to the dethroned king; Ahithophel had joined the standard of Absalom.

Now appears the servant of the crippled Mephibosheth, Ziba, to see what he can get for himself at the expense of his master. We find in a later chapter the truth of the matter of Ziba’s presence, and Mephibosheth’s absence, but David was just now deceived. He thought Ziba’s kind heart had devised the plan, provided the asses, the bread, the raisins, summer fruits and wine, but it was a scheming, self-seeking mind that had done it, to defraud his lame and helpless master. To make the matter worse, Ziba deliberately lied about Mephibosheth, saying that the kingdom was what he sought, and why he stayed in Jerusalem. Well it is that God is concerned with those that are His; He is their Refuge and Strength, a very present help in trouble (Psa. 46). For the time, however the deceit and the lie triumphed. All that had been Mephibosbeth’s was to be Ziba’s.

David reached Bahurim on his way to the Jordan, and there came out a man of the house of Saul, Shimei, to curse the king and throw stones at him. Truly David’s cup seemed full as this man shouted his abuse at him. Abishai, Joab’s brother, would have killed Shimei, but David restrained him, saying, “So let him curse, because the Lord hath said into him, Curse David.” It is again the spiritual man that we see in David. Trial brought out in him a heart taught of God. Upon Him his eyes were resting, awaiting the time when sorrow should be turned into joy.

We are taken now, leaving David and his faithful few, back to Jerusalem where Absalom has gone. Hushai, David’s friend is there, and Ahithophel the traitor. Hushai appears to be for Absalom, but his statement in verses 18 and 19 begins with God: the man whom He chose would Hushai serve; if that were the king’s son, he was for Absalom.

Ahithophel is the counselor at first, and his advice was to show to the people that all ties with David were broken. Absalom is exalted; David is rejected, escaping for his life; God is not seen.

Thus for a time, the evil triumphs in this world, as today. So the gospel of the grace of God is “foolishness” to men.

“God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty ....that no flesh should glory in His presence.” 1 Cor. 1:18-31.

In due time, as Absalom’s plans came to ruin, the schemes of men to get along without God will be shown in their worthlessness. It will then be seen that faithfulness to Christ has its reward. Have you decided for Christ?

2 Samuel 17

That Absalom was quite willing to have his father killed is shown by his being well pleased with Ahithophel’s proposal to take twelve thousand men at once and seek David, expecting to kill him and bring the people back to Absalom. Ahithophel’s advice was of the best, if God were to be left out of the reckoning, for David’s fortunes were at the lowest ebb, and his followers, though courageous men, and deeply attached to him, were but few, nor had there been time to prepare and put into use a plan of defense in case of attack. Hushai counseled delay, professing to be true to Absalom, and his words won approval, for God had a controversy with Absalom. How often He works behind the scenes, in due time to show His hand!

It remained for Hushai to warn David, and the message he sent shows that he was not sure that Ahithophel’s advice would not be followed after all. But it pleased God to use weak instruments for the carrying out of His will; there was nothing to mark the circumstances that follow in the inspired record as extraordinary or miraculous at all, yet One was at work to show Himself strong in the behalf of David whose heart was faithful to God, though he had sinned and brought these sorrows upon himself (see 2 Chronicles 16:9).

David and those with him crossed the Jordan northeast of Jerusalem to Mahanaim, the place where Jacob met the angels on his return from his long exile (Genesis 32:1, 2); and where Ishbosheth, son of Saul, had reigned as king over the larger part of the land of Israel (2 Samuel 2:8, etc.). Ahithophel, disappointed because his advice had not been acted upon, went home and hanged himself. Miserable man, he had wisdom for this world (see chapter 16, last verse), but seems to have been an enemy of God.

There were those who showed kindness to David in the time of his rejection (verses 27-29). Among the names we observe that of the man who had taken in the poor crippled Mephibosheth, Machir (chapter 9) and a stranger of the children of Ammon.

2 Samuel 18

Absalom and his army had now come up to David’s men, and a battle was imminent. David divided his followers among three leaders; Joab and his brother Abishai, and Ittai, and proposed to go to the battle himself, but was restrained by the people. Absalom’s army was defeated and he himself was killed, —God’s requirement that the murderer be put to death, as to which David had utterly failed, being thus carried out. Once more the character of Joab comes out; his own hand it was by which Absalom was killed, though the king had charged that he should not be hurt.

Very touching is the account of David’s reception of the news of his son’s death which was brought to him by two messengers, the son of Zadok the priest, who had already served David (chapter 17, verses 17-21), and another. All the anguish of a father’s heart is contained in those words of his at the close of the chapter,

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

But David could not have died for his son, deeply as he loved him. As far as we may judge, Absalom died as he lived, without God. He had staked everything upon a great name, a great honor, which he wanted, and he lost.

What are your objects, reader? Life’s short story is soon told, and more or less of Absalom’s history has been repeated in the lives of many young men, no doubt, since he passed out of this scene. But what of eternity?

Young man, no anguished sobs of a dishonored father will avail you in the day of God’s judgment. One alone can change your destiny; it is Jesus, Whom you have despised. The Just One, He died for the unjust.

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:23. Which will you have, the wages, or the gift?

2 Samuel 19

The weeping king of Israel reminds us of that occasion in the life of Christ (Matthew 19:41) when He also wept over his enemies, brings before us, too, Himself as the One who for His enemies was slain. If David loved his enemies, how far beyond his love is that of Jesus!

David did as his general bade him (verses 7-8), and took his seat in a public place, though his heart was yet deeply pained. The people wanted him back at Jerusalem, for he was still at Mahanaim, east of the Jordan, but their leaders did not at first respond to their wishes. Perhaps we rightly judge that the memory of their deserting David at his son’s call, made them slow to present themselves to him. Conscience makes cowards of us all. The king then took the first step (verses 11-14), and selected Amasa to succeed Joab, the man of blood, at the head of his army.

Shimei, who had cursed David (chapter 16:5-8), and cast stones at him and at his servants, now fearful that his life would be taken, came hastily to greet the king, to seek his pardon; Ziba, too, the unworthy servant of Mephibosheth, came with his fifteen sons and his twenty servants. It was a time now to seek David’s favor, but one of those who went to meet him was not moved by selfish desires; Mephibosheth mourned during the whole time of his master’s absence, and now that he was returning in peace, this delivered son of an enemy cared for nothing else: David was everything to him. Ziba had deceived Mephibosheth, and slandered him to the king, but Mephibosheth was willing for Ziba to have, not only half, but all the land of Saul. David was all he wanted. This was true devotion.

And if the kindness of a man, necessarily limited to his power and willingness, so touched this poor cripple, how should not the transcendent love of Christ move the objects of it to lives of true-hearted devotion to Him? Should not those who have been bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20), live for the One who loved them and gave Himself for them? (Galatians 2:20).

Should they not mourn His absence here, and be marked by real separation from the world, which in fact disowns Him still; be, as it were, counting the hours till He comes? (Revelation 22:20). Shame upon us who are Christ’s, that Mephibosheth’s lamp of testimony shines so much brighter than our own!

The aged Barzillai had given to David at Mahanaim; and now went with him a little way over the Jordan, —another of those who were devoted to the king.

The chapter closes with discord among brethren; they seem to have almost forgotten their delight in David’s return, in an angry dispute. Such, we may say, is man.

2 Samuel 20

So bitter was the dispute mentioned at the close of the last chapter that at the appearance of a leader, howbeit a tool of Satan, all the men of Israel deserted David to follow Sheba of Benjamin. Amasa, the new army head, was directed by David to bring the men of Judah before him within three days, but he took more time, and David, fearing that the insurrection might grow, sent Abishai, Joab’s brother with an armed force after Sheba. On the way Amasa took the lead, and Joab craftily killed him, unwilling to see him take the place that he, Joab, had held, and from which David had removed him. The pursuit of Sheba went on nevertheless, and ended when his head was thrown over the wall of the city whither he had gone. Joab once more went unpunished, through David’s weakness; he was put to death when Solomon came to the throne.

Chapter twenty closes the general history of David’s career. What we get in chapters 21 and 24 is of earlier date, but introduced separately in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. David’s “song” and “last words” occupy the twenty second and twenty third chapters, and the First Book of Kings, which follows, introduces Solomon, with David’s charges to him, and David’s death occurs in chapter 2.

What rich and varied experiences this servant of God passed through, in his course from the sheepfold to the throne. and onward to his death! He is named among the faith-worthies of Hebrews 11, without reference to any particular incident in his life, but the Psalms which bear his name, are deeply instructive, telling as they do, not only of the sufferings and joys of David, but of the afflictions and glory of Israel, and of Israel’s rejected King, the Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Samuel 21

“Then”, at the beginning of the chapter should be omitted; it is a translator’s error. We are not told when the famine occurred it was “in the days of David”, —something that happened while he was king of Israel. He rightly turns to God to learn the cause of the prolonged drought.

The living God was in the circumstance; is He not in everything that, concerns His children? and should they not bring all their perplexities, their trials, indeed, all their circumstances to Him in prayer? Never a trial, never a burden, without a cause, and the Christian should be “exercised thereby” (see Hebrews 12:11 and context).

The cause of the famine was in the government of God. David might forget the wrong done by Saul to the Gibeonites, (those descendants of the men of the 9th chapter of Joshua), but not so God. The people of Israel had promised to preserve the Gibeonites. Saul had, at sometime not recorded, killed some of them in zeal for the people, but not for God. This sinful act had not been judged, and David now inquired of the poor Gibeonites what they wished. He failed in not asking direction of God as to carrying out their demand; had he done so, some happier way might have been found of compensating for the wrong done them. However, the result is that the whole house of Saul is brought to an end, except Mephibosheth, (the one who, though an enemy by nature, was willing to receive from David, and found in him his happy portion, was true to him in his absence, now escaped the judgment which overtook others no worse than himself. This is the character of the grace of God to the lost).

Rizpah guarded her sons’ bodies day and night from beasts and birds for perhaps six months, and when David heard of her devotion, he was moved to have the bones of Saul and Jonathan and the seven young men who had been hanged by the Gibeonites, given an honorable burial in the family sepulcher. Then the famine ceased.

It was not a new thing to have trouble with the Philistines, but David had killed the fearful Goliath when the people were afraid. David was now in power, and with his people who loved and trusted him, lesser victories were obtained over Philistine giants by Abishai, Sibbechai, Elhanan, and Jonathan. It is always harder to subdue the enemy within (as the Philistines), than outside of one’s self.

2 Samuel 22

In David’s song, which is repeated as Psalm 18, the inspired writer was led to express (as generally in the Psalms) feelings which were truly his own, but were realized in the fullest measure only by Christ when here as a man; feelings too which are typical of the faithful among Israel in both early times and late. The song is therefore prophetic.

Verses 2-4 give the theme, the conclusion of the song, and the steps leading up thereto, follow God had delivered from all enemies, him who trusted in Him.

Verses 5 and 6 graphically express the sorrows of Jesus on the cross; not atonement, however. No doubt, too, they show the position of the God-fearing remnant of the Jews during the future great tribulation (see Matthew 24:9 and other passages).

Verses 7 to 20 take us back to the deliverance of Israel from the cruel bondage of the Egyptians (Exodus 1 to 14) while no doubt applicable to the Lord on the cross (see Psalm 22:21).

Verses 20 to 23 truly express the case of Jesus, in Whom alone was all His Father’s delight, the Holy One of God. But we could not ascribe to Him the close of the verse 24: “mine” iniquity, was applicable to David, but not to Jesus; the expression is in view of the state of Israel.

Strength given by God, and victory follow God’s way is perfect; His word is tried. He is a protector of all that trust in Him.

Verses 24 to 40 speak typically of Christ in His Millennial glory—in the thousand years of peace and plenty following the judgment of the living (Revelation 20:1-7, and other passages. See Isaiah 53:10-12).

2 Samuel 23

Few had so rich an experience in the school of God as David, and his “last words” have special interest. Neither in him, nor in any other of the rulers of this world, have we seen the man that answers to the requirement of verses 3 and 4. We are surely carried onward by the inspired words to the day when the Sun of righteousness (Christ) shall arise with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:2).

David acknowledges in verse 5 that his house was not so with, God. What sorrow his acts and the deeds of his children had caused him! “Yet”, he says, “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.” This is grace worthy of God, in Whom alone it abides.

The confessed sinner finds a welcome from the Father (Luke 15:18-24), and the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ is upon all them that believe, though all have sinned and come short of His glory, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:22-24). Whosoever believeth in Him, John 3:16 tells us, shall not perish but has everlasting life. Such a covenant is indeed worthy of God.

David had sadly failed in responsibility, and his desires had not been realized, but the everlasting covenant, and his salvation fill his heart as he speaks. Judgment would inevitably overtake the wicked.

Having considered the faithfulness of God, we are now (verse 8) directed to the devotedness of David’s servants. The energy of David’s faith had brought these men around him, and their notable deeds are mentioned, one by one. We may note a slight error in the translation of verse 8 which should read, “Adino the Ezrite (he stood) against eight hundred who were slain at one time.”

Love of David led some of his worthy ones to risk their lives in his behalf in a special way (verses 15-17). Note that this was when David was rejected, an outcast in the cave of Adullam. Those who shared his reproach, afterward shared in his glory. But we do not find Joab’s among the names of the mighty ones. Of outward appearance there was much in Joab, but it was all selfish, natural desire that carried him along, as we judge.

There is a day coming when every true hearted service for Christ will come into remembrance. There will be some surprises then. O let us who are Christ’s seek to serve Him faithfully, steadfastly, until He calls us to His home! The time is short.

2 Samuel 24

WE are not told when, in David’s most interesting history, the subject of this chapter took place. It presents God’s dealing both in government and in grace. The anger of God was kindled against Israel; evidently pride and a rebellious heart were at work. Joab was an able man, and he saw David’s mistake, but the thing was of God. When the census was taken, David’s conscience was smitten.

Chastening, however, must take place, because sin has been persisted in. Nevertheless the right desires of David’s heart are at once awakened, and of the three punishments set before him, he chooses to fall into the hand of the Lord, “for His mercies are great” (verse 14). The affliction came severely upon that pride which had rested its boast in the thousands of Israel—from end to end of Israel’s land seventy thousand men died tinder the terrible plague. But judgment was tempered with mercy, and in due time the destroying angel is bade to stay his hand.

David took the blame for all upon himself, though as we have observed, the state of the people was the cause of the judgment. “I have sinned, and I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done?” is his word.

Once he had shepherded his sheep, as a boy; now he was speaking for these for whom he was a shepherd, and offering to take their punishment instead. Once more, therefore, we see David as a type of Christ (John 10:11).

At Jerusalem the altar is to be built, and the grace of God to be shown. Does this not at once present the thought of the cross of Christ which is the foundation of the everlasting peace, not only of Israel, but of all who trust in Him? Atonement by sacrifice thus appropriately closes this book of David’s history under God’s government.

“It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”

1 Kings 1

The two books of Kings carry on the history of Israel and of Judah, begun in 1 Samuel, to the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the king and people by the king of Babylon. They cover a period of about 450 years, which we may compare with the 100 years or thereabouts of the two books of Samuel.

Why is so much told of David in the books we have been reading, compared with what is given about the kings who succeeded him? Because David is one of the principal types of Christ, and it is the Holy Spirit’s delight to point us to the Son of God.

The books of Kings give us the history of the kingdom of Israel under responsibility to God, including its glory under Solomon, and its utter failure amid the long-suffering dealings of God, and finally the overtaking in judgment when delay was no longer possible. Only One has ever trodden this earth in unvarying perfection; in One alone has the lamp of testimony burned with undimmed luster; One alone could say without contradiction, “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” (John 8:46). It is Jesus.

The feeble old king David is shown us in the first chapter, the chill of death already drawing upon him. And even then, he had to know sorrow in another son Adonijah. The sword was not to depart from his house, as God bad told David through Nathan the prophet (2 Samuel 12:10) because of his sin. Yet there was failure in responsibility, as verse 6 shows, David had not displeased him at any time in saying “Why past thou done so?”—a warning to Christian parents.

Adonijah now proposed to be king, —his eldest brother, Amnon, and also Absalom and the third in age, were dead: perhaps the second, Chileab, was dead also. However, it was for God to show who should he king after David, and of Solomon alone of all the sons, it is recorded, “and the Lord loved him.” God had told David that Solomon should be his successor. (1 Chronicles 22:9, 10).

The claims of Adonijah attracted Joab, as we might have expected, and Abiathar that descendant of Eli the priest who had escaped the sword of Doeg the Edomite (1 Samuel 22:20), who had taken refuge with David.

Solomon was therefore declared king, and anointed at Gihon, a place near Jerusalem, and when Adonijah and those who had consorted with him, heard, they were afraid and fled. Adonijah was allowed to live as long as he went on a right, but the next chapter shows his end.

1 Kings 2

If David lacked energy and faithfulness in government, he, at least, knew what was due, and instructed Solomon to carry out justice in the cases of Joab, the, as yet unpunished murderer, and Shimei who had cursed David and thrown stones at him and his followers at the time of his humiliation at the hand of Absalom. Solomon was to keep the charge of the Lord, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, commandments, judgments and testimonies, as they were written in the law of Moses. David’s language to his son is similar to what we read in Joshua 1:7-8 of Moses’ injunctions to Joshua,

“Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayst observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayst prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayst observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” And a like word is found in the first Psalm.

Are these words to have no voice for us? Surely they direct us to the only path that is pleasing to God at any time in the world’s history. The Word of God is given us who love the Lord Jesus, that we may read it, learn from it and live according to its precepts. Thus and the only way, we really “prosper” (see 3 John 2).

Solomon took the throne when his father died, and the next thing we are told is that the ambitious Adonijah, who was no friend of the king, came to Bathsheba to propose to marry David’s last wife, Abishag, and thereby apparently to lay some claim to the throne. Solomon evidently thought that this was his object, and had Adonijah put to death.

Abiathar the unfaithful priest was sent away to Anathoth a city of the priests 3 miles north of Jerusalem, and Joab paid at last the penalty of his crimes. On Shimei also judgment fell when he disobeyed the king’s commandment.

Solomon is a type of the Lord Jesus when He shall reign in the millennium. Then will be peace, and sin will be held in check, but unsparing judgment will fall on the wicked. That this is so, is shown by such scriptures as Matthew 25:30-46; Isaiah 66:15, 24 and Malachi 3:1-5. The promised thousand years of blessing on earth when the Lord shall personally return to the earth and reign, when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and the swords and spears shall be made into industrial tools, will be introduced with, judgment, and maintained in righteousness. Before those scenes are enacted, the Lord Jesus will have caught away (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) those who have been brought to know themselves as lost sinners, and to take refuge in the salvation He has made for those who believe His Word.

Have you, dear reader, peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ?

1 Kings 3

Solomon quickly became great. He made an alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and married his daughter, bringing her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem. Thus he prefigures the Lord Jesus in that coming day when He will establish rule over, not only Israel but, the whole earth. The daughter of Pharaoh coming under the protection of Israel’s God, speaks of the Gentiles of that day who will believe the gospel preached to them, and be converted (see Rev. 7:9).

But though David’s faith led him beyond his people’s state before God, this was not the case with Solomon. He was on a spiritual level with them, though he loved the Lord, and walked in the statutes of David his father (verse 3). Gibeon, where the altar and the tabernacle were, attracted both king and people, rather than the ark of the covenant which was in Jerusalem, whither David had brought it.

It must have been a grand sight when a thousand burnt offerings were sacrificed at Gibeon, but Solomon’s father’s heart habitually sought the Lord Himself; the ark, figure of His presence, was the chief object to him. It has been rightly said,— “Better to be little and despised at the ark, than to possess the glory of the kingdom and to worship on high places.”

Notwithstanding that Solomon was not the spiritual man, the exercised believer that his father David was, the Lord appeared to the young king in Gibeon in a dream, and asked him what he wished. Solomon answered wisely, that he desired an “understanding heart” to judge the people. His wish was granted, and he was given wisdom beyond all others; and besides this, great riches and honor. He now returned to Jerusalem, his heart touched with the grace of God, and offered up burnt offerings before the ark of the covenant.

Presently Solomon’s wisdom was put to a severe test when two women came to him, both claiming the one living baby they brought, and each denying being the mother of the baby which had died. There was no witness to establish the word of either woman, but Solomon with great wisdom, drew out the true mother’s heart by proposing to cut the living baby in two, that each woman should have half the body. The real mother, anguished at the thought of killing her child, would rather the other woman should have him, than that he should die, but the other, having lost her own baby, was quite willing to see Solomon’s proposal carried out.

He at once was able to discern which woman was the real mother of the child, and he said, “Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother of the child.”

The decision of the king was told all over the land, and it increased his renown.

1 Kings 4

We are given the names of those who were Solomon’s princes, the men who were concerned with the different departments of his government. If the deposed priest, Abiathar, be omitted, there were ten of them, each holding a different office, except that two were scribes. Then there were twelve who took turns in providing for a month, from their various districts, the food for the king and his numerous household. The country was prosperous, and at peace with the neighboring nations during Solomon’s reign, and his rule extended over all kingdoms, from the river (Euphrates) on the east, to the land of the Philistines bordering the Mediterranean sea, and southward to the border of Egypt. This embraced just about the area given to Abraham in Genesis 15:18, but the subjection of these other nations was only during Solomon’s reign.

The food required to supply Solomon’s household for one day was as much as 400 pounds of flour and meal, 30 oxen, 100 sheep, and deer and fowl, which shows that he had a very large number of attendants and others attached to him, beside his own immediate family. Forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen (verse 26) show that there was quite an army under Solomon.

Three things are said of Solomon as given him by God: “Wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the seashore.” His wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east, and the wisdom of Egypt; he was wiser than all men. He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. The book of Proverbs and the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes are all that have been preserved of his wisdom.

It is a striking thing that this wonderfully endowed man, rich and powerful, wise beyond compare, to whom came people from all lands to hear his wisdom, should sum up life, apart from the true knowledge of God in these words:

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?” Ecclesiastes 1:2-3. We are reminded of the words of the Lord in Matthew 16:26.

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

1 Kings 5

It was that Hiram, king of the seacoast City of Tyre, who had sent cedar trees to David, and carpenters and masons, to build his home (2 Samuel 5:11) who now sent his servants to Solomon.

The glory of the Israel of that day has long faded, and the people are scattered; the judgment of God is upon them according to His promise in Deuteronomy 28:15-68, and upon the Jews in particular, on account of their rejection of Christ. Observe their own words in Matthew 27:25, which are surely being fulfilled, “His blood be on us, and on our children.”

“But in the last days it shall come to pass that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and, people shall flow unto it, and many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and He shall judge among many people;” etc. Micah 4:1-4.

There is then a day yet future, when Israel shall he restored to their land and exceedingly blessed by God, and Solomon’s reign gives us a picture, only partial and faulty it is true, but a picture nevertheless of the coming millennial day. In David’s reign we had a forecast of the beginning of the future thousand years of the reign of Christ on earth (Revelation 20, and numerous Old Testament Scriptures); then the enemies shall be put down with much bloodshed (Isaiah 26:20-21; and 28:14-20; Zephaniah and elsewhere). In Solomon, however, we see the enemies gone, and the earth in peace seeking Jerusalem, as Isaiah 60. and 65:18-25 so beautifully foretell.

To return then to our chapter: Hiram learned from Solomon what was needed to build the house or temple of God, and rejoicing greatly and blessing God, he told him that he would do all his desire about furnishing timber for the house. And so the work was done and paid for. The Lord gave Solomon wisdom as He had promised.

This is a precious word to those who trust in Jesus. Ephesians 3:20, 21, the close of a prayer of the apostle Paul, speaks to the praise of “Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,”—no doubt including the answer to every right desire, every prayer raised in faith by even the weakest believer, regarding earthly needs, as well as spiritual things.

We read of the great number of men engaged in hewing down the trees of Lebanon, and in bringing the materials to Jerusalem, among which were “great stones, costly stones, hewed stones,” for the foundation of the house. Let us think of this a moment: the great trees were living, towering high on the Lebanon hillsides, and they had to be brought down: the axes were laid to the root of the trees (Matthew 3:10), and they were dragged down to the sea. This speaks strikingly of death, as well as of humbling the pride that is natural in us. Then the stones that were used in the building: there was no life there at all: they had to be taken out of the pit or quarry where they lay. Did they lift themselves out? O, no! They could not do that. Power which was outside themselves entirely had to be applied to them. Besides, there was no worth in them at all, except as they were hewed out, taken out of the pit, and squared by the stone squarers.

So it is with man! He may be very well satisfied with himself, never having been humbled by the Word of God, but we may praise God when at last the truth of his lost and ruined condition is brought home to him (see Romans 3:9-20). Then he will learn and drink in as a thirsty soul the precious words of Romans 5:6-8:

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die, but God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And they were not only great stones (great sinners, these stones tell us of), but they were costly stones; a great price was paid for them.

1 Corinthians 6:20 speaks of the believer’s having been “bought with a price,” and 1 Peter 1:18-20 names that price in the touching and forcible language of the Holy Spirit,

“Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, ... ..but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory that your faith and hope might be in God.”

Lastly we think of the stone squaring. There is a lot of fitting to be done by the Holy Spirit in preparing the believer for glory with Christ. Old ways, wrong thoughts, have to be wrought upon by the Spirit through the Word of God, and of this precious work we learn in so many portions of the holy Book that it would be burdensome to make a list. We will therefore just refer to Colossians 2:6 to 3:17, which the reader may examine with much profit.

1 Kings 6

The 480th year in the first verse is evidently reckoned from the time when the children of Israel were settled in the land of Canaan, for the period of the Judges was 390 years (including Eli’s day), and Samuel adds 12 years to Mizpeh when Saul was made king, then Saul and David each reigned 40 years. This, if the part years of judges and reigns, which are called years, be allowed for, will cover the time from Joshua’s death, to the fourth year of Solomon’s reign.

It may be helpful to state the location and plan of the temple area. The summit of Mount Moriah, one of the hills of Jerusalem. was chosen, because there was the threshing floor of Araunah, where the plague was stopped when God was punishing Israel (2 Samuel 24:24; 2 Chronicles 3:1). To provide a level area large enough, a great wall was built enclosing a rectangle about 1500 feet from north to south, and 1000 feet from east to west. The interior which was filled in and paved, was reached by gates and passage ways, leading upward. This wall substantially remains to the present time.

On the paved height just referred to, the temple building which verse 2 mentions, was erected. Reckoning a cubit, for ready convenience, to be the same as 2 feet, though it was probably about 1 foot 10 inches, we place the size of the temple proper at 120 feet by 40 feet, and 60 feet high. It was however divided into two portions, the holy place and the most holy or oracle; the holy place was 80 by 40 feet, and the most holy 40 by 40 feet (verses 16 and 17).

In front of the building just mentioned was a large porch 20 feet broad and 40 feet long, the full width of the building, and a series of rooms was built on either side of the house; they were 90 in number, 30 on each of three floors.

The complete building we have considered, consisting of the central two portions, the entrance porch and the rooms on either side, was built of stone made ready before it was brought there, so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was being built (verse 7).

This temple we may compare with the spiritual temple of Ephesians 2:20-22 which is made up of living persons, —those who have received Christ as Saviour, built together by the Holy Spirit.

It will be well to consider also John 14:2, the Father’s house. heaven itself, where are “many mansions,” or dwellings, as we think of the 90 rooms attached to the temple Solomon built.

The house was covered or ceiled with cedar beams and boards. These beams, were semicircular, thus forming a dome for the covering. In a general way the temple was now complete; its structure was displayed (verse 9).

And now came the word of the Lord to Solomon (verses 11-13) impressing upon him the importance of a life lived before God, the very ground of His dwelling among them. If they turned away from God, He would leave them; this is what has happened. He withdrew His presence (see Ezekiel chapters 9-11), and Israel were given up to their enemies. Observing God’s solemn words, however, Solomon built and finished the house (verse 14).

The temple was covered within and without with cedar and fir (or as some think, cypress). Within, the cedar was carved with knobs or gourds and open flowers (verse 18). The oracle or holiest of all, was again overlaid with gold, and the altar likewise; lastly the whole house was overlaid with gold. Within the holiest, Solomon made two cherubim of olive wood, each 20 feet high, side by side, and their wings were stretched out so that they touched the two side walls, and met at the middle of the forty-foot room. These were overlaid with gold. All the walls of the house were carved with figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers. The floor was overlaid with gold. Doors of olive wood, carved like the walls, and overspread with gold, were provided for the holiest, and folding doors of fir or cypress for the temple door, also carved and covered with gold.

The temple, with its immediate surroundings is called the inner court in verse 36. This occupied the central portion of the level area within the great surrounding wall. Beyond, was the court of the priests, and an enclosing area was the outer or great court. Concerning these, and the temple itself, we are given much information in 2 Chronicles.

Nothing but gold was to be seen; all was bright with the glory of divine righteousness, though the materials beneath were costly stones, and the humbled cedars of Lebanon.

1 Kings 7

Solomon took seven years to build the temple, and thirteen years for his own house. He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon. The latter was (let us say) 200 feet long and 100 feet wide, and 60 feet high. It was built of cedar. This house had a porch 100 feet long, 60 feet wide, and a porch for the throne where Solomon might judge. The house where Solomon lived had another court within the porch, and he made like this porch, a house for Pharaoh’s daughter whom he had married. All these buildings were of costly hewed stones.

It is thought that the temple prefigures the Father’s house (John 14:2) where the believers are to be brought to dwell. Solomon’s house then symbolizes the Church, God’s present dispensation of grace in connection with Christ; the house of the forest of Lebanon prefigures Christ’s glory among the Gentiles in a future day; so also Pharaoh’s daughter’s house tells of the wider glories of Christ’s millennial reign, and the bringing into blessing and favor of the Gentiles.

The work of Hiram (verses 13 and following) is next detailed. This no doubt prefigures the employment of Gentiles in the building of the future temple of God on earth. Two brass pillars were made for, or near, the porch of the temple; they were named Jachin (He will establish), and Boaz (in Him is strength). (See Revelation 3:12 which appears to allude to these pillars). The rest of the equipment made by Hiram, corresponds to what was ordered for the tabernacle in the wilderness, but their number is greater. The molten sea is the “laver” of Exodus 30:18-21, but all was grander, and more glorious. None of the vessels were weighed, because there were so many.

Silver and gold and vessels that David had dedicated were brought in, and the house was finished.

1 Kings 8

The elders of Israel were assembled, and all the heads of the tribes at Jerusalem, to meet Solomon, that the ark of the covenant should be brought out of Zion and put in its resting place in the holiest of all. Sheep and oxen without number were offered in sacrifice upon this occasion. The ark was placed under the wings of the cherubim, and the staves by which it had been carried on the long journey from Sinai to Canaan were long, so that their ends were seen from the holy place,—reminder of that faithful God who had accompanied His people in all their journeys, until at last He could rest in a house where His people might be gathered around, and they to dwell with Him. The ark was not altered, though all its surroundings were changed to suit the grandeur of Solomon’s reign, and as the ark prefigures or typifies Ghrist, we are reminded that He will always be the same unchanging Person. “This same Jesus” as the angels said (Acts 1:11), and Hebrews declares Him (chapter 13:8) “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever.” Aaron’s rod, and the pot of manna which had been in the ark, were now gone; there was nothing in it but the law, —the rule of righteousness had displaced grace. So it will be in the millennium.

When the priests had deposited their burdens in the holy place and gone out, the cloud which marked Jehovah’s presence filled the house so that the priests could not stand to do their service. And now Solomon addressed himself to God in prayer. The heavens, and the heaven of heavens, could not contain God, yet would He condescend to dwell on earth. Solomon’s prayer is not based upon the sovereign favor of God in His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but upon the word expressed by Moses, the law. Much in fact reminds us of Moses’ words in Deuteronomy, in view of the people’s failure. Then he blessed the people, desiring God’s blessing for them, that they should walk in His statutes and keep His commandments.

Twenty-two thousand oxen, and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep, were sacrificed in peace offerings in this dedication of the house; the brazen altar was too small to receive the offerings. Seven days the congregation remained, and then on the eighth day they were sent away, joyful and glad of heart for all God’s goodness.

Sad to say, the rejoicing was soon to end, and the people were soon to turn from the true God to idols!

1 Kings 9

Chapter 8 showed us Solomon in public before the people, but we now view him, in verses 3 to 9, receiving instruction in private.

This is well; the believer’s testimony before men, cannot be powerful unless there be much private prayer and meditation on the Word of God. However we know nothing of Solomon’s true state of soul at this stage of his career.

God had appeared to Solomon at the beginning of his reign (chapter 3:5-14) when he was humble minded; He had granted his desire, and given him much more than he asked. But now it is evident there were dangers in Solomon’s path, and he needed the most solemn warning. God had heard his prayer and supplication; He had hallowed the temple to put His name there; His eyes and heart should be there always. If now Solomon would walk before Him as his father David had done, in true heartedness and right ways, and would do and keep all that God set before him, then would He establish Solomon’s throne forever there would not fail a descendent of his to sit on the throne of Israel.

But if they should at all turn from following the Lord, not keep His word, serve the false gods of the heathen, Israel would be cut off out of the land He had given them, and the temple would be disowned by him. Israel should then become a proverb and a by-word among all nations, and they would know that their ruin was clue to their turning from the God Who had done everything for them, to serve other gods. It is just this that has happened, as is well known, though since their Messiah came, in the person of Jesus, the measure of their sin is vastly greater. A little over four hundred years after this time, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the kingdom, long since reduced to two of the twelve tribes, ceased to exist. In its full glory it has not been, and will not be revived until the Lord Jesus comes to reign on the earth at the beginning of the millennium. It is sadly true that Solomon in his later years showed the people a very bad example, and led them into idolatry. The warning voice of God was but little heeded, and the breakup of his kingdom was soon to follow.

The reader will know that as Israel was put in a responsible place, and failed in it, so has the Church of God been placed in responsibility and has failed most grievously. We may not point the finger of scorn at the children of Israel, for our own failure is far greater, bearing in mind the finished work of Christ, the completion of the Word of God, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The latter part of the chapter is occupied with the record of Solomon’s greatness and his riches. The people generally were employed by Solomon as soldiers and servants, princes and captains, and the Canaanites who still lived among them were compelled to serve, practically as slaves. Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he had built, and the burnt incense on the golden altar in the temple. He had a fleet of ships in what is now called the Gulf of Akaba, the northeastern arm of the Red Sea, which was used to bring gold from Ophir. We do not know where Ophir was; possibly southern Arabia, or India or Africa.

1 Kings 10

This chapter concludes the account of Solomon’s greatness. Sheba was in the south (Matt.12:42), either in the south of Arabia or in north-eastern Africa (Abyssinia). It was a great distance with such means of travel as were then in use, that the queen traveled to see and talk with Solomon.

In a coming day, many nations shall come, and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths,” Micah 4:2. So the visit of the queen of Sheba to Solomon gives us a picture of what will be when a Greater than Solomon is enthroned at Jerusalem.

So wise was Solomon; so magnificent his house; so well managed his court, that the queen of Sheba was astonished beyond measure. She told Solomon that she had been given a true report of him in her own land, but she had not believed it until she had seen with her own eyes, and now she could say that not half had been told.

We are reminded of the passage in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 which is in part quoted from Isaiah 64:4, telling of the wisdom of God, and how little is known to the unconverted man of the things which He has prepared for them that love Him.

If Solomon’s glory and wisdom were so great as to utterly astonish this rich queen. what shall we who know the Lord Jesus as our own personal Saviour say, when we enter the heavenly city, and know as we are known? (1 Corinthians 13:12).

The queen of Sheba was only a visitor. privileged to look in on a scene of glory, and presently returning to her own land, but the Christian is to enter a place far more glorious, the eternal abode of God, where the Forerunner, Jesus, is for us already entered (Hebrews 7:20). He is to be forever with Him (1 Thessalonians 4:17), and like Him (1 John 3:2) in the ages of eternity to be shown the exceeding riches of God’s grace in kindness toward him through Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:7). What grace!

Solomon made two hundred targets or shields of gold, using 600 shekels of gold for each, —about $360 each in value in American or Canadian money today. He made also three hundred smaller shields of gold worth about $100 each.

A magnificent throne was made of ivory overlaid with the best of refined gold. Six steps led up to it, with figures of lions on each step, and at the sides of the throne.

There was no such grandeur anywhere equal to Solomon’s. Ships brought him gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks, and he was beyond all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. God had given him all he possessed.

Did he give Him honor; did he give Him the deepest love of a grateful and humble heart, for all this? Alas, he did not, as the next chapter plainly shows.

1 Kings 11

We may have noticed, as we have read thus far of the history of Solomon, that little is said of any heart-exercises such as David knew. David had once sinned most sadly, yet he was, viewing his life throughout in general, a truly godly man; as the books of Samuel and the Psalms show plainly.

Solomon’s blessings indeed came from God. Besides wisdom, which he asked of God in order to govern His people, God gave him riches, magnificence and glory, but he forsook the law of God, and did not walk according to His Word. He was raised up to be the world’s greatest monarch, but he used his power to please himself, and his heart was turned away from God. He loved many foreign women, besides the daughter of the king of Egypt, —women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites, —the nations of which God had spoken to the children of Israel that they should be entirely separate from them. His seven hundred wives turned away his heart, and when he was old he became an idol worshiper, going after the goddess of the Zidonians, and the god of the Ammonites, and building high places for them, and for the god of the Moabites. These things lasted until the reign of Josiah (2 Kings 23:13).

At last God told Solomon that because of his turning to the false gods of his foreign wives, about which he had been warned, the kingdom was to be taken away from him, and given to his servant (verse 11). On account of David, this should not take place until Solomon’s son should reign.

Is it not something for sober reflection. that even the richest, and the wisest, the most powerful monarch, born of a godly father, and at least a godly great-great-grandfather and grandmother (Boaz and Ruth), with so much blessing from God; should turn out so badly? The believer, it is our firm conviction, thrives best in affliction. It was so with David, and doubtless with countless others of the flock of God.

Solomon, we learn, had several adversaries. There was Hadad the Edomite (verses 14-22), and Rezon the son of Eliadah, king of Syria (verses 23-25), and lastly there was Jeroboam the son of Nebat; all of them were stirred up against Solomon by God, and on account of Solomon’s giving his heart to the foreign women and to idols.

Jeroboam was the “servant” of verse 11, to whom the kingdom was to be given, because of Solomon’s unfaithfulness. He was brave, and a good worker, and Solomon gave him a responsible position (verse 28), but after the prophet Ahijah, the Shilonite, gave him a message from God that he was to have the kingdom, because of Solomon’s allowing idolatry and joining in it himself, Solomon, learning of it, sought to kill Jeroboam who thereupon fled to Egypt.

And now Solomon’s death closed the story of this remarkable man. Israel had now had three kings, each reigning forty years; Saul, David, and Solomon. But only one of them could say,

“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in Him will I trust; He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my Saviour” 2 Samuel 22:2-3.

Reader, what of yourself? Can you echo David’s words from your own heart?

1 Kings 12

Why Shechem (verse 1) was chosen for the place where Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, was to be crowned, does not appear. It was however centrally located, about midway of the land in both directions. Sychar (John 4:5) is a short distance to the east. The hundred or so of Samaritans who are left of that people today, live at Shechem which is now called Nablus.

Jeroboam, recalled from Egypt, led the people before Rehoboam to state their complaint regarding the burden of Solomon’s government, and Rehoboam asked for three days’ time to consider what they asked. The old men who had advised Solomon, gave his son good advice, but he would not follow it, and took the young men’s very bad advice, nevertheless God was in it (verse 15). The consequence was that the nation, except the tribe of Judah, with Benjamin added, revolted at once, and made Jeroboam king.

Rehoboam now proposed to make war on the rebellious tribes, but Shemaiah the man of God was directed to tell him there must be no fighting, for the thing that had happened was from God.

Jeroboam then built Shechem and lived there, and he built Penuel which Gideon had, destroyed (Judges 8:17). Next, fearing that the people who had made him their leader, would return to their lawful king, because of Jerusalem’s being the city where God had chosen to set His name, Jeroboam made two calves of gold as idols; the one he set up in Bethel, some 10 miles north of Jerusalem, and the other in Dan, the most northerly city of Canaan. He made “an house of high places” with an altar on which sacrifices were made—not to God, but to the calves which he had made, and he made priests from all classes of the people (JND), not of the sons of Levi. He ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month (approximating our October). The feasts of the Lord (Leviticus 23) were in the first, third and seventh months of the 12 Comprising the sacred year, or approximately March-April-June and September.

All of this religious system we are told was devised of Jeroboam’s own heart, and through the counsel of his advisers. Jeroboam well knew that it was because of idolatry that the kingdom had been taken away from Solomon’s family (chapter 11:33), and that if he should be allowed to keep it, he must walk in God’s ways as David had (chapter 11:38).

Here was the beginning of the open apostasy of the ten tribes of Israel; it invited the judgment of God which was pronounced on Jeroboam in the fourteenth chapter, and executed in the fifteenth (verse 29). We may note that Jeroboam as the daring leader in idolatry, is mentioned in the two books of Kings after the fifteenth chapter of 1 Kings no less than twenty-one times. God does not forget, and would not have His people forget, the seriousness of sin, and the more responsible a person is, the more solemn is it for him to reject the authority of the Word of God.

1 Kings 13

The faithful God would not leave the ten tribes, led away to idolatry, under Jeroboam without a message from Him, and a man of God came out of Judah, out of the two tribes, faithful to the son of David, with the word of the Lord. Bethel, to which he came, means House of God, but now it was anything but that House of Satan it had become. A golden calf had taken the place of Jehovah in the system of religion Jeroboam had established, and this wicked man was standing before the altar preparing to burn incense in honor of the idol when the unnamed prophet of God appeared.

It is when the light of testimony burns dimly, that prophecy, through God’s gracious forbearance and love for His people, reappears. What is the message the prophet from Judah brings to the ears of this bold leader in idolatry, the king of Israel? That a child should be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, who should condemn and destroy what was being done by Jeroboam; upon that altar he would burn the bones of Jeroboam’s false priests.

This was not to take place for more than three hundred years, for Jeroboam became king of the ten tribes in B. C. 975, and Josiah of the two tribes in B. C. 641.

The house of David, then, was still to be the royal line, though Jeroboam had been used as an instrument of God to punish them for the idolatry and other evil practices of Solomon’s later history.

A sign was promised, —the altar was to be broken, and the ashes poured out. When the king heard the message which the prophet brought, he wanted to seize him, but was not allowed to; his arm which he stretched out was dried up, so that he could not draw it back. Then the promised break occurred in the altar and the ashes streamed out. Jeroboam, thoroughly frightened, begged the man of God to pray that his hand might be restored. He was a godless man, like many, quite content to live without the true knowledge of the true God, indeed, quite content to serve the devil, but like many another, quick to cry out for help when in serious trouble, and as quick to forget God again. God nevertheless answered the prophet’s prayer, and Jeroboam’s hand was restored.

Now, Satan quickly set a trap for the man of God. If he would go home with the king, he should be rewarded, but he had been forbidden to even drink water among the rebellious and idolatrous people. Recalling his instructions, the prophet refused the king’s benefits, and set out for the land of Judah again, by a different route.

But Satan was still determined to make the testimony of God, as expressed by this godly man, of no effect. It could be done, if he could be made in his actions to give the lie to his words; where the king failed, an unfaithful old prophet succeeded in this aim. What a lesson is there in the story that follows (verses 15-30), for every believer in the Lord Jesus to take to heart!

The man of God knew God’s judgment; he had been used to testify about it before the guilty Jeroboam; did he not enter in heart into the truth of the message he delivered? He should have deeply felt the position of the dupes of Satan under Jeroboam, and the Word of God should have been a sufficient guide for him. He knew the course he was instructed to take, but he accepted the word of another, contrary to what he had learned from God Himself, and died. Obedience to the Word of God was his proper engagement; it would have kept him out of what befell him. Happier far and safer is it to walk in the light of God’s Word, regardless of man’s opinions.

Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, and for a time he was allowed to go on in it. No doubt, at times he remembered the Word of God he had heard, but he preferred his own ways, and soon his life was to be over, and he in eternity.

What of my reader?

1 Kings 14

A second time Jeroboam was made to feel the hand of God laid on him, though warnings seem to have been of no avail. Abijah the only child he had, in whom there was piety (verse 13) fell sick, and Jeroboam again showed that he knew there was power in the true God which was not in the demons behind his golden calf. To the prophet of Shiloh, Ahijah, of whom we read in chapter 11, and who wrote a book (2 Chronicles 9:29) which has not been preserved, went Jeroboam’s wife, disguised at her husband’s request in order that it should not be known that the king and leader in idolatry was sending to a servant of the true God. He would be able to tell her what should become of the boy.

Ahijah was very old, and could not see, but He whose eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good (Prov. 15:3), told him that Jeroboam’s wife was approaching, and what was her errand. The Lord God of Israel, whom Jeroboam had provoked to anger by his ways, which were evil above all those who lived before his time, gave Ahijah the answer he was to make to Jeroboam’s wife, to be carried back to her husband. As Ahijah told her when she came into his dwelling, it was a hard message he had to give.

God had exalted Jeroboam to the high place he held, taking the kingdom from the house of David because of Solomon’s sins, but instead of profiting by this, Jeroboam had sinned worse than any that were before him, in making other gods and molten images and turning the people after them. He had rejected the true God entirely. For this reason evil would be brought on the house of Jeroboam; not a man would be left, and the dogs and birds would eat their bodies. (See 2 Chronicles 13:20 for the cause of the death of Jeroboam, and chapter 15:29-30 for the killing of all his sons). The one exception, of Jeroboam’s children, would be the boy on whose account their mother had come to the prophet, and he would die before she got back to him.

The positive statement was now made that Israel would be removed out of the land, and scattered beyond the river (Euphrates), given up because of Jeroboam’s sins, and his making Israel to sin. (See 2 Kings 15:29 and 17:6 for the carrying out of His word). It was in B. C. 740 that the tribes of Israel east of the Jordan were carried away, and nineteen years later, the rest of the kingdom of Israel followed. One hundred and thirty-three years still later, or in B.C. 588, the kingdom of Judah was ended, and its people carried away to Babylon (2 Kings 24:14-16 and 25:11).

The ten tribes of Israel have never been found, but they are to be brought back to their place in the land of Israel after the Lord has appeared on earth to set up His kingdom. Those we know as Jews are of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

Jeroboam’s boy died, and the whole country lamented his death, according to the word of the Lord. Jeroboam had been king for twenty-two years, when he died. Nadab, another of his sons, took the throne when Jeroboam died.

We are now directed to the history of Judah during this period. Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, reigned 17 years in Jerusalem. Led by him the people turned increasingly to idolatry, and the wickedness of the nations was practiced among them. The king of Egypt, Shishak, or Shashank 1 (there are several spellings) was therefore sent against Judah before Solomon had been dead five years, and he carried away much of the gold of Solomon’s magnificent temple, and of his grand house. Twelve years after this, Rehoboam died, and Abijam his son reigned in his stead. How short lived is earthly glory, and how quickly the heart turns away from the true God to serve Satan!

1 Kings 15

Only a few verses are given about Abijam, who followed in the footsteps of his wicked father. For David’s sake he was allowed to reign, and he was king for only three years. We may learn more about this king of Judah if we turn to 2 Chronicles 13, where his name is spelled Abijah. The Books of Kings give the general history of God’s government in Israel, and after Solomon, chiefly the ten tribe kingdom of Israel, bringing in the two tribe kingdom of Judah, only as it is necessary in telling the history of the former kingdom until its end in the Assyrian captivity (2 Kings 17). The Books of Chronicles on the other hand consider the lives of the kings as objects of the grace and blessing of God, and chiefly deal with the house of Judah.

Asa, the third king of Judah, began in a much better way than his father and grandfather in whom so little of regard for God, and of ways suitable to Him was seen. He removed those who lived in wickedness, and took away all the idols his predecessors had made; he removed his mother (or grandmother) from the honored place of queen-mother, because she had made an idol in a grove, and he burned her idol. However, he let many of the high places remain, where idolatrous practices had been carried on, and when the third king of Israel, Baasha, came against him, he asked the help of the king of Syria, sending him all the silver and gold that were left of the treasures in the temple and in Solomon’s house. Asa was very angry with Hanani the seer when he came to him after this to tell him he had done wrong in seeking the help of the Syrians (2 Chron. 16:10), and he put him in prison, also oppressing some of the people at the same time. From the same chapter we learn that when Asa’s feet were diseased, he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. Notwithstanding these things, Asa’s life as a whole was that of one who feared God, though he was not at all the godly man David had been.

Nadab, Jeroboam’s son, who had become king of the ten tribes of Israel when his father died, reigned but two years. He followed his father in wickedness, and Baasha of the tribe of Issachar killed him when Nadab was besieging the Philistine city of Gibbethon.

Baasha then became king and killed every member of Jeroboam’s family; he seems to have been as bad a man as Nadab or as Jeroboam. He was God’s instrument in punishing the guilty house of Jeroboam, but God never approved his crime.

It may be of interest to remark that Ramah (verse 17) was a city of Benjamin, a few miles northwest of Jerusalem; the places and districts named in verse 20 were all in the far north of Palestine, stretching as far south as the sea of Galilee; Tirzah (verse 21) was about 12 miles northeast of the then future capital city of Samaria, in northern central Palestine; Geba and Mizpeh were close to the site of Ramah, Gibbethon (verse 27) was a city of Dan 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem.

1 Kings 16

Jehu, son of that Hanani who had reproved Asa, and been put in prison (1 Chronicles 16:7-10), a prophet of Judah, was now given to pronounce the judgment of God on the murderer Baasha, that the same fate should be his children’s as befell the children of Jeroboam. Baasha died and was buried, and Elah his son became king. but in less than two years he was killed by his servant Zimri who made himself king, and forthwith killed every other member of Baasha’s family, and besides that, his relatives and friends. This bloody man only reigned seven days, for the people generally were encamped against Gibbethon, evidently still trying to capture the place from the Philistines, and when they heard what Zimri had done, they made Omri, the captain of the host (military leader of the nation) their king. Omri and the people left Gibbethon, and besieged and captured Tirzah, whereupon Zimri burned the king’s house, himself being in it, and so died.

Confusion followed this last horror; half of the people followed Tibni who finally died, and Omri reigned. Omri is noted because he built the capital city of Samaria, and much more because he was worse in his ways than all that were before him. Details of his life were written, like those of other kings of Israel in “the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel” which was evidently well known when the Books of Kings were written, but have not been preserved.

It is well to remember that all the books of the Bible as we have it, have been known as such, as to Old Testament books, since before the Lord was here on earth and as to the New Testament books, none have been lost. God has been careful, even though many highly interesting books of history may have been destroyed, to see to it that His Word should be preserved through all the changing events of man’s career.

Omri died and was buried in Samaria, and Ahab his son reigned in his stead, and alas! he was worse in God’s estimation than Omri or Jeroboam. And as if it had been a light thing to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, he married Jezebel. daughter of the king of the Sidonians, and served and worshiped Baal, rearing an altar for his god in a temple built in its honor at Samaria. In Ahab’s days, Jericho was rebuilt. In Joshua 6:26 you will find the curse put upon the man who should restore the city, but the word of God was disregarded at painful cost, for the man who did it lost all his children by death, as the word of Joshua had foretold.

In this stage of Israel’s history, every year, or at least with every king, getting farther and farther sunk in idolatry and other forms of wickedness utterly offensive to God, and now under the leadership of Ahab with his thoroughly wicked wife, Satan apparently triumphant, God was about to introduce a servant whom he had been preparing, Elijah the Tishbite.

1 Kings 17

It may help us now, as Elijah comes into the story of the wayward ten tribes, to review a little: Only sixty years had now elapsed since Solomon’s death, and the division of the kingdom into two unequal parts, but Judah had already enthroned their fourth king, Jehoshaphat; and Israel their seventh, Ahab.

The ten tribes had openly turned to idols under their first king, Jeroboam. Jeroboam’s family had been exterminated by the third king, Baasha; and the latter’s posterity were killed by Zimri who reigned a week, and committed suicide when he saw that his enemies would take his life.

Ahab, reigning when Elijah appeared, was thus the second king of the fourth dynasty of the kings of Israel while Judah kept to the divinely appointed royal line of David’s descendants. The gold calves which Jeroboam had made, still stood in the idol sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, but Ahab, having married Jezebel, a daughter of the king of the Zidonians, brought in the worship of her country’s chief male god, Baal. The ancient Canaanites, whom the children of Israel had dispossessed when under Joshua they conquered the promised land, were Baal worshippers and the Israelites, in no small number had followed them in idolatry until Samuel. (See 1 Samuel 7:3,4).

Jezebel attempted to kill all the prophets of God (chapter 18:13) after she married Ahab, who did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him (chapter 16:33).

In the mountainous region of Gilead, east of the Jordan, Elijah lived; God has not given us any account of his birth, or of his life, ere he appeared before the astonished Ahab (verse 1), but in the New Testament is a brief statement about him which should have our attention, as it gives the key to his sudden appearance in Ahab’s court. (See James 5:17). He prayed, and what is more important he prayed earnestly, on behalf of his people who were given up to idolatry. He thus became a fit messenger for God. Hear his bold words to the wicked Ahab:

“As the Lord God of Israel liveth before Whom I stand, there shall not be clew nor rain these years, but according to my word!”

It was a declaration from the throne of God, that though Israel had given Him up for idols, He would not give up Israel, but sought to bring them back to Himself by His own means.

1 Kings 17

Elijah now disappeared. What wisdom and what power is here shown, in regard for the faithful servant from whom nothing was asked but simple obedience! His place of hiding was of God’s choice; there he was safe, though Ahab’s searchers spared no effort to find him (chapter 18:10); Elijah’s thirst was met in the little mountain torrent, and the ravenous ravens, notorious for greedy appetite, twice every day brought him his food, reversing the laws of nature at the command of nature’s God.

But the stream became dried up. Did Elijah then take alarm as day by day he observed the volume of water decreasing? Perhaps, for he was a man of like disposition with ourselves, but God was his resource, the unfailing resource of the faithful in all ages and countries. Elijah, we may say, was to be taught longer in the school of God before he might reappear in public life, and Israel had only begun to feel the chastening hand of Him who sits in the heavens.

To Zarephath, near to Jezebel’s former home, must Elijah now go—outside of Israel’s dominions, and to a widow in the most straitened circumstances. There were many widows in Israel at this time, but it was not to an Israelite, but a stranger, that the prophet was directed. (See Luke 4:25, 26). How humiliating it must have been to Elijah to be dependent on this poor woman! Yet she feared God, —she must have been one of those individuals who outside of the nation of Israel, appear from time to time in Israel’s history as true to God. Witness Methuselah, Job, Joel, Naaman, and others.

Faith had to be tested, even in the widow’s extremity, for she had gone out to gather fuel for what she believed to be her and her son’s last meal, but acting on God’s word spoken by the prophet, whose coming she was expecting (verse 9), she prepared first the food he asked for, as he was the representative of the true God. Never thereafter did the barrel fail to yield meal, nor the cruse fail to contain oil. Yet again must the widow’s heart be searched by our faithful and loving God her only child fell sick and grew worse till there was no breath left in him. Her conscience reached, she spoke to Elijah about sin she had committed. Elijah prayed; her boy was restored to life, and to his mother.

1 Kings 18

Long was Elijah’s stay at the widow’s house in Zarephath of Zidon, while the famine grew worse, but in the third year he was there, it being now three years and six months (James 5:17) since he had seen Ahab, God answered the prophet’s prayers (James 5:18). Elijah was now to show himself to king Ahab. That evil man was out with his steward, Obadiah, searching for grass to keep the horses and mules alive. Obadiah, like some others of whom we read in God’s Word, was a true child of God in a wrong position. While the servant of the wicked Ahab, he had been able to care for a hundred of God’s prophets, when Ahab’s wife Jezebel undertook to kill them all, but he missed the blessing, and spiritual elevation of Elijah’s position, because he preferred the world’s glory to the separation from it, which Elijah knew and practiced. He could serve the Lord only in secret, being afraid to act openly for Him whom he had known since he was a boy (verse 12). Obadiah was engaged, when Elijah and he met, in trying to improve the condition of things in a scene on which God had passed judgment as though to turn away that judgment. How like so many of God’s beloved people today!

Ahab came to meet Elijah, who gave him a word for his conscience (verse 18), and told him to gather all Israel, and the eight hundred and fifty false prophets to Mount Carmel, a mountain 12 miles long, forming a notable promontory, the only one in Palestine, at the south of the Bay of Acre on the northern seacoast. Ahab sent the call of Elijah to all the children of Israel, and gathered the false teachers together to Carmel. Now came Elijah with a searching question to ask his people:

“How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord (Jehovah) be God, follow Him, and if Baal, follow him!”

There was no answer; indeed they knew not what to say. Long under the influence of the teachers of false doctrines (and having willingly followed them, too), there was yet a memory of other and happier days when the God of Israel had His place among them. Now, Elijah stood alone of the Lord’s prophets, while Baal, the idol, had four hundred and fifty, not including the prophets of the groves.

Elijah proposed and the people agreed, that two bullocks be provided and sacrificed; one by the prophets of Baal, and the other by himself: then the true God would be shown by an answer of fire from the sky. This proposal itself makes clear how far the people were from God; it should have been sufficient to deliver His word to them to reach their consciences.

In the quiet confidence of faith, the servant of God gave the first opportunity to the prophets of Baal, who probably very unwillingly took the bullock given them, and prepared it for the sacrificial fire, afterward calling on the name of Baal from morning to noon, but there was no voice nor any that answered.

At noon Elijah mocked them, telling them to shout louder, and the poor creatures did so, even cutting themselves till the blood gushed out on them. Midafternoon was reached without their being able to get any reply from Baal, and Elijah then called the people near to himself; he repaired the altar of the Lord there, which was broken down, so recognizing that which was due to God. Then taking twelve stones according to the full number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob (not the ten only, of Israel), he built an altar in the name of the Lord.

These two first acts of Elijah have a voice for our own day when the beloved people of God are following leaders who reject His faithful Word, and spread doctrines of their own invention; when also the scriptural Church of God which includes every true believer in Christ, is split up into many bodies.

In order that there might be no room for the suggestion which Satan would readily put in some minds, that Elijah already had fire prepared, and was only pretending to call down fire from God, he asked for a large quantity of water to be thrown on and around the sacrifice and the altar he had just made. Then Elijah prayed, addressing God as the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, — going back to the assured promises, which the law given at Sinai could not annul. And the fire descended, licking up the water, the sacrifice, the wood, and even the stones and the dust. Deeply moved, the waiting people acknowledged their God as so displayed in power, and Elijah demanded the immediate destruction of the four hundred and fifty agents of Satan who had practiced his wiles among them. They were all put to death forthwith at the brook Kishon which flows close to Mount Carmel. Thus was God vindicated before His people, the evil of idolatry judged among them.

As Ahab’s concern before had been, not with searchings of heart as to the cause of the visitation from God in the famine, but with grass for the animals, so now his mind turned readily to eating and drinking, to which Elijah directed him. Then the rain, and Elijah outstripping Ahab in a swift journey to Jezreel where the king’s residence seems to have been at this time, not very far to the eastward of Carmel.

1 Kings 19

It is not surprising that Jezebel should be filled with rage on hearing from her weak husband that Elijah had killed her favorites, the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. Elijah, however, hitherto so courageous, so faithful to God, was not equal to this occasion; we see him now walking by sight after the manner of men. He went at once to Beersheba in Judah, and left his servant there, going on himself a day’s journey further, into the great wilderness of the south. There we find the discouraged prophet wishing to die, and God sending an angel to look after him and give him food. From this first halt on the southern border of the land of Israel, Elijah went on for forty days to Horeb, the mountain where the law was given to Moses. The word of God now came to him in the cave into which he had betaken himself, utterly unhappy: “What doest thou here, Elijah?”

Why had he deserted the post of testimony, the field of service? Because of Jezebel’s threat to kill him and because his ministry had not been as fully accepted as he expected. Poor Elijah’s thoughts were of himself, and this is shown by his two answers to the inquiry: he had been “very jealous” for the Lord, and he and he only was left, and his life was sought. This was not the language of faith.

We are here shown another lesson in the life of this honored servant of God;—now alone on the mountain where no human eye saw him, he learned that God could use many agencies to carry out His will, even the small, still voice which brought him with his face wrapped in his mantle to the mouth of the cave. After all, Elijah, faithful and honored as he had been, was only an instrument in the hands of God.

His desire to die would presently be met (in a most wonderful way), but just now Elijah was to go back whence he came, to anoint a new king over Syria, and a new king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat to be prophet in his stead. Yet, he now learned God had left to Himself seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed to Baal. It was humbling to think that there were seven thousand upon whom the eyes of God had rested, but Elijah knew not at all. If he had been nearer to God, he would surely have known some of them, or have better known Him who knew them.

The servant of God now descended the mountain in a very different spirit than that in which he had climbed it; he had learned that he was only one of seven thousand, instead of being the only servant God possessed. We hear no more of his complaints, but we shall see more of Elijah ere his days were ended. He found Elisha busy plowing, and threw his mantle on him. Elisha. followed Elijah presently, but seems to have returned home, for we next learn of him in 2 Kings 2, when Elijah was about to be taken away.

1 Kings 20

Although Ahab was a wicked man, and had an even more wicked wife, God viewed His people in grace, and would not allow the Syrian attacks of which this chapter treats, to succeed against Israel. He sent a prophet to Ahab to tell him upon the first invasion (verse 13) that He would deliver the great army of the Syrians into his hands, and he, Ahab, should know that it was God’s doing. A victory entirely of God took place when seven thousand Israelites defeated a great host, the Syrian king barely escaping capture. This should have spoken powerfully to Ahab, but it seems to have not moved him at all.

The prophet had told Ahab that the Syrians would return, and they came back again with an army the equal of the former one, and again a man of God brought Ahab an encouraging word as to the conflict to take place. One hundred thousand Syrians died in the great battle, and twenty-seven thousand more were killed by the falling of the city wall at Aphek. Such was God’s regard for His chosen people. The Syrian king now was brought to Ahab, and promised to restore what his father had taken from Israel. Ahab then made an agreement with him, and let him go back to his country. This invited the judgment of God on Ahab, for the Syrian king was appointed by Him to utter destruction, and Ahab was responsible as the ruler of God’s people.

We must, every one of us, give account to God; how solemn the case of this king of Israel, reminded again and again of the faithful, but rejected God who visited His people in the various ways we have seen through Elijah’s ministry, and yet himself without concern for his own soul!

What of the reader? Life’s story will soon be told, and eternity be entered; there God awaits thee.

“Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace.” Job 22:21.

1 Kings 21

It was in Ahab that the iniquity of the kings of Israel reached its greatest degree; in his reign also, the ten tribe kingdom was most prosperous; after his death, the country grew weaker rapidly. God had met the daringly wicked Ahab and his consort Jezebel, who seems to have a worse character than himself, with the great prophet Elijah, but neither Elijah’s testimony, the three-year famine, or the remarkable display of divine power on Mount Carmel (chapter 18) moved the heart or conscience of this leader of Israel, for he had sold himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, as says verse 25. Utterly indifferent to the claims of a holy God, Ahab, with Jezebel’s help, now added a shocking crime to his many sins, as this chapter discloses.

Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard; Ahab wanted it. Naboth valued his little place, because it had been the possession of his forefathers, and would neither sell nor exchange it to please Ahab. The king was very angry at being refused, and in his displeasure went to bed, declining to eat. Jezebel then, learning what had happened, promised her husband the vineyard, and with the help of some men as evil of heart as herself who were prepared to bear false witness against Naboth, the vineyard owner was put to death under a fictious charge of having blasphemed God and the king.

Presently Ahab who lacked natural courage and daring, but was quite willing to profit by his wife’s misdeed, was on the way to take possession of the dead man’s property, and there the eyes of God rested upon him. Shall this bloody deed, coolly planned and executed with the authority of the king of Israel, pass unnoticed? Not so. The word of the Lord came to Elijah, telling him where to go to find Ahab, and the sentence, shortly to be executed, he was to deliver to him. He had killed and taken possession, but in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, they should lick Ahab’s blood (see chapter 22:38). All of Ahab’s seventy sons, his family, his great men, his kinsfolk and his priests were afterward put to death (2 Kings 10, verse 11) according to the word of God now delivered by Elijah (verse 22). And more shocking than the end of Ahab was to be the close of his wife’s life: the dogs would eat her, —and so they did (2 Kings 9:18- 37).

God may and He frequently does, permit the wicked to go on in their evil ways. sometimes for many a long year, but He has told us that judgment will fall. In 2 Peter 2:3 is the word: “Whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not (or, for whom judgment of old is not idle), and their damnation (destruction) slumbereth not.”

Ahab might have repented of his sins, turning to God in full confession and seeking forgiveness, but of this, if it occurred at the last, we have not the slightest hint in the Word of God. He was alarmed frightened, at the prophecy of Elijah concerning himself and his family, and he humbled himself for a time, but that was all. God however took notice of his behavior, and delayed the full carrying out of the promised judgment. How merciful is our God!

Perhaps the reader has, like king Ahab, at times felt alarmed at the thought of the judgment of God, and again his conscience has gone to sleep, fear has vanished, and the old ways have been taken up again.

You may forget God, forget the offer of pardon, forget His great love, and the gift of His only begotten Son, but God will not forget you in the day of judgment. All that are in the graves shall hear the voice of His Son and shall come forth. (John 5:28, 29); in that solemn day, even the sea will give up the dead that are in its depths. (Rev. 20:13).

Receive Him as your Saviour, now; it is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. (2 Cor. 6:2).

1 Kings 22

This chapter brings us to the close of Ahab’s life. In the last years there was peace with his northern neighbor, Syria, and during this time the king of Judah came down from Jerusalem to visit Ahab. Jehoshaphat was the godly son of a godly king, of the lineage of David. and until his occupation of the throne of Judah there had been no peace between the two parts of the divided nation. There should indeed never have been an agreement between them, for the kings of Israel, all of them godless men had banished the testimony of God, and brought in idol worship and the associated evils practiced by the heathen nations who were on their borders, while Judah at least made a profession of the worship of the true God.

We shall not find in the Books of Kings the explanation of Jehoshaphat’s changed behavior toward Ahab, but turning to the Books of the Chronicles, which tell of God’s dealings in grace with the house of David, we may quickly find what we seek. Compare 2 Chronicles 17:1-5 with the next chapter, verse 1, and it will be seen that Jehoshaphat’s heart became so attached to the riches and honor God had given him, that his later life was a good deal like that of his great predecessor, king Solomon. So, no longer whole hearted for God, Jehoshaphat made light of Ahab’s evil was and his marriage with Jezebel, daughter of the king of the Zidonians, and he set aside the principles of the Word of God (see Exodus 22:20 and Deuteronomy 7:3-6) so that his son Jehoshaphat’s son and heir — married Jezebel’s daughter, Athaliah. He did this at his peril.

God is not mocked, and as there was a sowing by Jehoshaphat, there was a reaping even by himself, though the damage was borne mostly by his children.

Jehoshaphat, who knew God, was now on good terms with Ahab, a rebel against God, slighted the plain purpose of God that His people should be separate from those who walked not according to His Word, (see Exodus 19:5, 6; 1 Kings 5:53).

Many a Christian, to his own great loss, is in similar case, forgetting the sharp sword of the Spirit in James 3:4, “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?”

Jehoshaphat betrayed himself when he said to Ahab (verse 4), “I am as thou art, my people as thy people my horses as thy horses,” but he was nevertheless not quite at rest in Ahab’s company, for he asked (verse 5) that the will of God be sought. It then appears that Ahab’s religion had changed its name; the false prophets he recognized were now professedly the prophets of the Lord. Modernism had appeared in some of its features. (But the worship of Baal had not ceased; see 2 Kings 10:18-28). Jehoshaphat therefore, not satisfied with these professed prophets of God asked for another, seeking a genuine one who knew God, and might be expected to know His mind. Such there was in Micaiah the son of Imlah, whom Ahab hated.

Micaiah gave a remarkable testimony (verses 19-24) which discloses how God makes use of the power of Satan in the case of a man given up to judgment, but Ahab will have none of his testimony, his day of mercy over. Even the king of Syria was in the battle carrying out God’s will (verse 31), so that Ahab’s effort to conceal himself added only to Jehoshaphat’s danger. In mercy God permitted his escape. And so Ahab died, seemingly as godless as he had lived. The dogs licked his blood, as he had been told would be the case.

The ships Jehoshaphat made to go to Ophir, after the fashion of king Solomon, were broken by an act of God, as he was told by Eliezer the son of Mareshah (2 Chronicles 20:37). This must give the explanation of Jehoshaphat’s refusing to let Ahaziah’s servants go with his in the ships, —i.e., that he feared to go on with an undertaking in which God had shown his displeasure.

Ahaziah, Ahab’s son was king of Israel not more than two years, and he followed his father’s and mother’s, and Jeroboam’s sinful ways.

2 Kings 1

When Ahab was dead, Moab rebelled against Israel; they had been a subject people while he reigned. Ahaziah, son of Ahab, fell through a lattice or window (made after the fashion of the East, of trellis work, admitting light and air while screening from view), and was sick.

When king Jeroboam’s boy was ill (1 Kings 14), he sent to a prophet of God to inquire about his recovery, though he had given up the worship of God, and had substituted idolatry; evidently, he had little confidence in the idol system he had set up. His successor seventy-five years later knew nothing of the true God, having been brought up in the atmosphere in which Ahab and Jezebel lived, and he sent messengers to inquire of the god of Ekron (Philistine city thirty-five miles southwest of Samaria), Baal-Zebub, or Lord of the Ely by name. This god was, we are told, regarded as a healer of diseases, being first a preserver against poisonous flies.

The blessed Book of God, the Bible, tells us what otherwise we should not know, that behind the idol is Satan; the sacrifices offered to idols were sacrifices to demons (1 Corinthians 10:21). God would not tolerate the king’s inquiring of the idol, and sent Elijah to ask him if it was because there was not a God in Israel that he did so, and to tell him that he should not recover from the injury: he should surely die.

Angry at this intervention, Ahaziah sent bands of men from his army to take Elijah, and they were consumed when the prophet called down fire from heaven upon them. This was God’s answer to the daring of Satan among his people. The third of these parties was spared when Elijah’s power (as from the true God) was owned, and he went with them to the king when the angel of the Lord told him to go. So Ahaziah heard his doom directly from the prophet. He died, and his brother Jehoram became king in his stead, for he had no sons.

We have noticed before in connection with other reference to books not included in the Bible, that there were books of history known generally at the time the Old Testament Scriptures were written. These books, not being inspired, have perished, but God has seen to it that His Word should be preserved. We need concern ourselves with no alleged “missing books of the Bible.” We have all of them as far as is known, and they form, in the commonly accepted Bible, the full guide book for the children of God, as well as containing the full display of the natural heart, sinful and deceitful, desperately wicked, and the announcement of a free pardon from a holy God to all who will accept it. And have you accepted the terms, reader?

2 Kings 2

Elijah had requested that he might die, as utterly discouraged he had left the borders of Israel (1 Kings 19:4), but God purposed to translate His servant so that he should not see death, as He had dealt with Enoch (Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5) and in marked honor, instead of disgrace, the prophet was taken to glory. At this time Elisha reappeared. He was called to succeed Elijah in 1 Kings 19:19, 20, but is not mentioned again except in verse 21 of that chapter until this time.

Elijah and Elisha started from Gilgal on a journey full of significance to Israel that led them out of that highly favored but apostate land in quite a different connection from Elijah’s quitting it in 1 Kings 19. God was in the one case, and Elijah was seen acting in self-will in the other.

Gilgal was a place of marked interest to the Israelite; there His people had entered the land, headed by Joshua, to take possession of the inheritance long before promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; there the “reproach of Egypt” had been rolled away (Joshua 5:1-9), and there was power for victory after victory gained in the necessary warfare for possession of the inheritance. But Gilgal had, in God’s sight, ceased to hold the connection that once had marked it as early as the days of the Judges (chapter 2:1-5). It no longer spoke of a people separated from an ungodly world to the Lord God, but was now connected with sin openly practiced. (See Amos 4:4, and 5:4-5). In like manner the cross of Christ has in the days of Christianity, become connected with idolatry through the devil’s wiles.

From Gilgal Elijah would go, first however testing Elisha’s fitness to succeed him. Elisha stood the test; he would not leave him; he sought to share his spirit, and they journeyed together to Beth-el and to the final parting. Beth-el was the memorial, to the pious Israelite, of the unconditional promise of God to Jacob (Gen. 28:13-15). Yet at this place of hallowed memory was one of the calf idols set up by Jeroboam! Elijah cannot stay there, and bidding Elisha (who refused) to remain, he goes on to Jericho. There under Joshua the power of Satan had met with a crushing defeat, and a curse had been pronounced by God’s authority upon the ruins. Man had nevertheless (1 Kings 16:34) rebuilt it, and suffered the penalty which was attached; the curse was not removed. What more was needed to testify to the heart of the faithful one concerning the departure of the chosen people from divine principles?

2 Kings 2

Elisha will not leave his master, either at Elijah’s bidding, or upon the remarks of the sons of the prophets, and they now approach the Jordan. It was the river that divided the land of earthly promise from the regions outside; in it was seen the memorial and figure of death ever flowing by, separating the people of God from their former estate, from the world; it had been passed in the power of Christ’s victory upon the cross, as set out for faith in the ark carried to the lowest depth of the river’s channel which thereby established a highway for the people to pass over (Joshua 4). In the dark depths of the river, unseen to mortal eye, and on its western bank, stood the memorials of the victory there won over death for the believer. Elijah crossed the Jordan dry of foot. Typically, he passed through death, though he presently ascended without dying.

And now in the wilderness, having withdrawn from the land of Israel which has given up its God, —the land of law and of sin ever rising to a fuller measure, —Elijah can propose blessing to Elisha according as he may ask. The latter realizing that the parting moment has come, and attached to Elijah and to the ministry he had just withdrawn from, could ask only for a double portion of his spirit. His request was granted, as he viewed Elijah in his heavenly condition, heavenward bound. For Elijah, the days of labor amid the ruined people, disobedient and stiff-necked as they had been in Moses’ time; the ignored or rejected appeals to this nation to return to their God, were over. His work was done. But from that home in heaven he came to earth with Moses for a brief visit to speak to our blessed Lord about His death (Luke 9:30, 31), —event of supreme interest we may be sure, in the glory.

Spared then the circumstances of illness and death, Elijah is conveyed to God’s presence in the sight of his successor.

Elisha’s own mantle will do for him no more; henceforth he, as we may say, thinking of Elijah and Elisha’s blessed Saviour, and not of the failing servant who was now translated, who faintly pictures the Lord, will carry the mantle of the rejected and ascended One, Him Who has passed into the heavens (Heb. 4:14) in the power of His own blood (Heb. 9:12).

Elisha returned to Jericho, where he found the characteristic of the natural man, unbelief, yet now as the messenger of grace (law, as represented in Elijah having failed) removed the curse that was upon the place. Going on to Beth-el where judgment falls upon the mockers; and thence to Carmel where judgment had been executed upon Baal the god of this world, Elisha finally retraces his steps to Samaria, there to take up his ministry for God.

2 Kings 3

AS we begin this chapter we observe that Jehoram, younger son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, which does not seem to agree with chapter 1:17, where Jehoram is said to have become king in the second year of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat. Our difficulty begins to dissolve when we remember that the children of Israel reckoned periods of time which entered upon two or more days or calendar years, in whole numbers, not as we do.

A clear example of the Jewish reckoning will be found in the Lord’s word in Matthew 12:40, where He spoke of Himself as to the “three days and three nights” in the grave; the actual elapsed time was one full twenty-four-hour day and parts of two other days, but as parts of three days were included, it was “three days.”

This reckoning will be noticed in connection with other kings of Israel and Judah. It seems clear also, that after Jehoshaphat had reigned about seventeen years (until Ahab’s death), his son Jehoram was made regent, but the father lived six years longer, and both father and son were called king. (See chapter 8:17 also).

The second son of Ahab to sit on the throne, put away the image of Baal that his father had made, but he held to the sins of Jeroboam who caused Israel to sin. He wrought evil in the sight of the Lord, but not like his father Ahab or his mother Jezebel. Jehoram sent to Jehoshaphat to ask his help in putting down Moab, and now for the third and last time the king of Judah joined himself with these enemies of God, the family of Ahab. He had helped Ahab (1 Kings 22:4), and undertaken a partnership with Ahaziah (2 Chronicles 20:35), and now made himself one with Jehoram. How wrong!

We have now the word of God very plainly on this subject (see 2 Cor. 6:14), but Jehoshaphat had been spoken to by Jehu (2 Chronicles 19:2) when he returned from the scene of Ahab’s death.

God is not mocked; He calls for obedience to His word from His children, and as a man sows, so shall he also reap (Galatians 6:7-9). So it was that Jehoshaphat, godly man that he was at heart, reaped sorrow in his children, as the faithful word of God shows, and as we should expect he would.

We notice the difference between Elijah’s ministry and Elisha’s; the nation was rejected when Elijah was taken to glory, and God then ceased to maintain His relationship with the people. Nevertheless He will act in grace when law could only condemn. On the ground of their responsibility, God had judged them, and so Elisha said to the king of Israel,

“What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father and to the prophets of thy mother ... . Were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah. I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.”

Jehoshaphat was something to Elisha, but the prophet is apart from the influence of the whole scene; his ministry is a testimony taking its character from the ascension of Elijah, to the sovereignty of God. Elisha, when the kings are in extremity, announces blessing, —God acts for His own glory amid the ruin of what professed His name.

2 Kings 4

Here we have several examples of the character of God’s dealings with a people from whom, as a nation, He had withdrawn. We may say, reading the story of verses 1-7, here is an example of what the Lord said in Matthew 8:13, “As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.” And likewise, the scene in Gen. 18:23-33, as long as Abraham stood interceding, the Lord stood promising, as another has said,

It was what the poor widow had, that was to be used in faith, —she had nothing “save a pot of oil,”—and what was that with which to meet the creditor? “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” It was enough, under God, to supply the full measure of the faith that now, at the prophet’s prompting, counted upon Him. And this in no public display of power, but unseen by the world (verse 5).

The second portion of the chapter (verses 8-37) deals with the “great woman” of Shunem. She marks this prophet of God, that he walks alone and has nothing, and speaks to her husband so that a little room is provided for him in their dwelling.

Was she not herself one who knew God, and for His sake sought to do something for His servant? Blessing then was to be hers, though earthly honor (verse 13) had no attraction for her. She believed the promise, and as with the widow we have just been considering, faith’s demands are fully met.

There was more; as with Abraham and his dearly loved Isaac, the sentence of death is laid on the child of promise, that the lesson of resurrection may be learned in the heart. No wavering in either case do we see: faith is lively, and calmly in energy of faith the bereaved mother goes, through the prophet, to God for help, and seeks not in vain. And when her faith is answered, it is not astonishment that she exhibits, but gratitude (verse 37); she had counted on Him Who is able (Eph. 3:20).

Lastly (verses 38-44) we have a time of famine, and death is near. The meal (verse 41) is a figure of Christ Who entered this scene of death and Satan’s power, to intercept the course of things. He has “destroyed (annulled the power of) him who had the power of death” (Heb. 2:14).

Carelessly, heedless of consequences, the gathering of the wild fruit had been carried out—such has been the history of man from Adam down. Note that this was not part of Elisha’s provision (verse 38); it was “one” that went out into the field who brought in the deadly thing, spoiling everything. But it becomes harmless, and presently there is abundance to eat.

So God has met in the ruin of all things here, the desires and needs of those who put their trust in Him, so that they can appropriate the words of Psalm 23,

“The Lord is My Shepherd: I shall not want ... ..Thou preparest a table before memy cup runneth over ... ..”

2 Kings 5

There are few portions of the Old Testament that show more plainly than this chapter how a sinner is brought to God. We leave the land of Israel here, for the country of their northern neighbor and enemy, Syria. There were, the Lord said in His brief address to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:27), many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian. The way of power was there, but none would take it. To remind them of this, was to stir the depths of their wicked hearts; the Jew would have confined all blessing to himself, but God purposed to overstep all barriers that He might bless the needy. Naaman’s case, and Ruth’s, and Rahab’s (Joshua 2 and 6, and Matthew 1:5) were but foreshadowings of the grand “whosoever” of John 3:16. Grace can reach even an open enemy.

Naaman was a great man, a mighty man of courage, and highly thought of in his own land, but there was something about him that whenever he thought of it, took away the enjoyment of the king and people’s favor, —he had an incurable disease; he was a leper.

So indeed it is with all who are strangers to God’s grace. They may try to forget that all is not well, may live in the pleasures and satisfaction of “today”, occupying their minds so fully that for the eternal “tomorrow” is left no thought whatever, but it is all a pretense and a failure, for the conscience again and again whispers, “Prepare to meet thy God!”

God uses the great and the small to further His ends. Sometimes it is a tract that is used to bring a lost one to realize his soul’s need, and to pillow his head on the loving bosom of Jesus. Here, the means that He used to send the leper on the most important undertaking of his life, was a little slave girl, a little Hebrew maid who waited on Naaman’s wife. She knew the power of God, and though she might have felt very bitterly toward Naaman and the Syrians because they had taken her away from her home, she thinks only of the poor man’s need, and the One Who could alone meet it.

The king of Syria, ignorant of God as Naaman was, proposes to send a letter to the equally godless king of Israel, and a present of worth, for he thinks much of his great soldier. It was all in vain; man may in his pride think to offer much for the favor of God, but what God offers is free. The kings, and the letter, and the present, are all set aside by Elisha, the man of God; nay more, the pride of man exhibited in Naaman as he stands at the prophet’s door, is thoroughly rebuked. At first indeed, Naaman was angry, very angry. He would not accept God’s way of cleansing a poor leper; he wanted something to be done that would preserve him his pride.

But God will not bargain with the sinner; He has stated the way to deliverance (see among many passages, Romans 4); will the sinner, as pictured by Naaman the leper, receive or refuse? It is one or the other; what say you, my reader? Are you for receiving or refusing the grace of God?

At length Naaman is brought by the very hopeless case in which he realizes he is, to take the one way of God’s providing. Notice that when once he is humble enough to be a receiver at God’s hand, it does not take long before he is the healed, the blessed, the happy man. How changed is Naaman; a short while ago his language was, as he fumed over the disregard of his greatness which Elisha showed: “Behold, I thought he will surely come out to me,” etc. Now he can say, justifying God as he seeks the prophet, “Behold now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel.”

Gratitude is welling up in the Syrian’s heart; his great burden is gone, and he thinks of his infinite debt; will Elisha let him give him something? No, all is of grace, and not the least opportunity may be given to let it appear as though the sinner paid aught for his salvation. Neither offering nor urging will move the prophet, for he knows that what has taken place is a part of God’s free and limitless grace.

Naaman is henceforth to be a worshiper of the true God, though he may be alone in that respect in his own land; and how intelligent he is, this newly converted soul: can he have learned that God long before had declared that an altar of hewn stones He would not accept, because it contained man’s handiwork; or is it the intelligence of faith, as yet untaught? Naaman has a lively conscience too; he thinks of his associations in his own land, and is disturbed in his mind, but as to this, the Holy Spirit will enlighten him when the occasion arrives.

Gehazi’s sin was not so much in the double lie, as that he was spoiling Naaman’s return to Syria with full unbroken measure of his intended present. The leper had received without money and without price (Isaiah 55:1), and he should have gone back to his country to exhibit the proof of a free salvation. So the judgment of which Naaman had been freed, falls upon him who would misrepresent the Saviour God.

Reader, if unsaved, delay not; now is the accepted time. Tomorrow is not yours.

2 Kings 6

It does not appear where Elisha lived at this time (verse 1), nor does it matter, or we should have been told in the story. He had been at Samaria (chapter 2:25); next we saw him with the warring kings of Israel and Judah (chapter 3:11); then at another unnamed place but apparently one of those where “the sons of the prophets” lived (chapter 4:1-7); he was at Shunam, Mount Carmel, and Gilgal in the course of the fourth chapter; where he was when Naaman came (chapter 5), is not said. It is clear that he lived among the people, —quite different from Elijah who lived apart from them.

Elisha in this respect puts us in mind of the Lord Jesus when He trod this earth, as we find Him told of in His unmatched life by the four evangelists (see for example Matthew 11:19; Mark 6:56; Luke 8:1; John 4). Grace as we have before noticed, is what marked the ministry of Elisha, as law did that of Elijah.

Where the sons of the prophets lived with Elisha was too small for them, they said, and he willingly went with them to the Jordan, where before he had sent Naaman the Syrian for his cleansing from leprosy, (and for his new birth, too). And it was after the pattern seen in all its wonderful perfection in Jesus that Elisha, entering into the circumstances of the people, concerned himself with the recovery of the lost axe head.

If there be a typical meaning to this incident, it is in connection with the Jordan which pictures death. Then the house built of wood taken from the river, and the axe head’s being made to swim, would suggest the believer’s position (to be lived out, practically) as expressed in Colossians 2:11-13, 20; 3:1, etc., and the power of the cross of Christ, overcoming the power of death.

Next is illustrated the care of God for His people, and that nothing is hid from Him, (verse 12). Surely “the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers, but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil” 1 Peter 3:12, but on the other hand, both saint and sinner are too apt to forget the truth expressed in Hebrews 4:12,13: “For the Word of God is quick (living), and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.”

Elisha (verse 17) prayed, but it was not now for himself; faith and dependence on God were strong in him, and he would have his servant in the same confidence and trust. No doubt, what was then revealed was a host of angels, generally invisible to mortal eyes, but none the less ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation (Hebrews 1:14). That there are myriads of them, is shown by the Lord’s word to Peter in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:53), and by Hebrews 12:22, but they are not to be worshiped (Colossians 2:18.) In a way wholly unlike that of the world, Elisha deals with the Syrian bands: blinded, helpless, though bent on evil, they are protected, fed and sent back to their master. God was with His people, and attacks upon them then were powerless.

But the unjudged, unrepented of evil of the nation, brought on a fresh dealing, and Samaria was made to suffer severely with the king of Syria at the gates. That word in Numbers 32:23: “Be sure your sin will find you out,” has often been proved. Things may seem to go finely for a while, but that which is sowed must be reaped.

A fearful state of things had been reached in Samaria when the people resorted to eating their children, but the godless king Jehoram did not repent; blaming God for his troubles, he would have God’s servant put to death. The despairing statement at the end of the chapter is apparently the king’s, not as might be supposed, Elisha’s.

2 Kings 7

Man’s extremity, as someone has said, is God’s opportunity, and Elisha, who partook of the circumstances of the people he loved, and among whom he was set as preeminently the man of God of his day, was now made the unconditional promiser of good. There was a “Tomorrow” (but not for unbelief) that presented in the Word of God an immense contrast with the distressing and grievous “Today.”

What suggestions of the gospel are seen in this wonderful chapter! Here is the man, high in this world, who despises the word presented by God’s servant; here too are those lepers, small in their own eyes and wretched, despairing of help within, but determined to seek relief where alone it might be found, who are first satisfied, and then made the bearers of the glad tidings of the mercy and blessing of God. And think of the mighty deliverance He alone had wrought, when those within the city were without strength, and all their resources gone, shut up to die! It was done without them; they even knew nothing about it until the news was brought to them, in the night.

Scripture speaks again and again of the present period, the rapidly closing time of God’s grace as the night; the good news is now going out of the victory He has won through His Son’s becoming. on the cross of Calvary, the one sacrifice for sins, Who is thus able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him (Hebrews 10:12; 7:25).

Millions have received this sacrifice. And have you, accepted Him, reader? If not, don’t delay: eternity approaches; the mercy now extended to this poor world is to be withdrawn, for the Word of God promises it. See among many passages which show this (Acts 17:30,31; John 5:25-29; 1 Thess. 5:2,3; 2 Thess. 2:7-12).

It was at the dusk of evening that the Syrians had fled, and through the night the people (not at the word of the king, but in spite of his word), were having their deep need supplied. It was to them no time to be sleeping; they had heard the message of deliverance, and they went out from the emptiness, the captivity their sins had brought upon them, to a full, a bountiful provision made theirs for the taking, by the power of God. “There was no man there” (verse 5), all was of God.

So with the gospel, precious word of His grace! Free pardon for the sinner who confesses to Jesus; a full Christ for empty sinners. Hunger and thirst satisfied (Isaiah 55:1-3; John 7:37,38; Revelation 22:17; John 6:47-58); “silver” (redemption), and “gold” (divine righteousness), and “raiment” (a standing fitness for God’s presence Luke 15:22; Matthew 22:11-13), are all bountifully provided, as verse 8 typically presents.

Yes, the devil is routed; the Victor is the Crucified One, but Satan still has many followers; many poor dupes. Blinded to their own eternal welfare, they wait in vain for God to make windows in heaven for them, when,

“The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Romans 10:5-11.

Nothing to do; only believe what He says! NOW!

2 Kings 8

The woman being sent (verses 1-2) out of the land of Israel to avoid the famine, illustrates the care of God for those who seek to obey Him. In chapter 4, verses 8-10 and 21-37, we observed that, though an Israelite of the ten apostate tribes, she feared God, and her faith was not only active on behalf of the servant of God, in providing a shelter for him, but it stood the test of death in her boy. Our God delights to bless and comfort those who honor Him.

Gehazi was now (verse 4) a hanger-on at court; there he was recounting, for the king’s benefit, Elisha’s deeds of power, and while so engaged, the woman Elisha had sent out of the country for the period of the famine, appeared. The world, of which the king formed a part, finds occupation at times in considering the power and benefits of Christianity, as yet seen in spite of much unfaithfulness and unbelief, but there is no effect produced on the conscience by such occupation. And of Gehazi what can we say? Was there true faith in him? We can only say in the words of Scripture,

“The Lord knoweth them that are His; and let everyone that nameth the name of the Lord (R. V.) depart from iniquity.” 2 Timothy 2:19.

Our attention is now directed to the Syrian capital, far to the north. Elisha, as Elijah’s successor, was gone to Damascus in connection with the word given to the earlier prophet in 1 Kings 19:15. This Hazael was to be the scourge of Israel on account of their sins. Accepting the declaration of Elisha, that he should be the next king of Syria, he forthwith murdered the sick king (verse 15), and took the rule of the country.

Verses 16 to 24 give us a brief and faithful review of the life of Joram, or Jehoram, king of Judah. The books of the Kings, as we have before noticed, are not occupied very much with the lesser kingdom of Judah, while Israel, the ten tribes, remain, but the two kingdoms were now united by marriage, worshiping the same idols, walking in the same sins, and God was about to visit them in sore displeasure.

Edom and Libnah revolted from the authority of the kings of Judah. Joram’s son reigned but one year, which was enough to mark him out as bad as the other members of the family, since Jehoshaphat allowed the marriage of his son with Athaliah the daughter of Jezebel. Ahaziah went with the king of Israel to fight with the king of Syria, and in the war Joram was wounded, and went to Jezreel to be healed. The chapter closes with Ahaziah and Joram together at Jezreel. There the judgment of God was to fall upon them.

2 Kings 9

The time had come for God to act in behalf of His name in both Israel and Judah, —nations which owed their all to Him, and where the testimony to Him had shone brightly in Joshua, in the Judges, in Samuel and in David, and Solomon’s earlier years.

Elisha sent one of the sons of the prophets to Ramoth-Gilead, the scene of the last war with the Syrians, east of the Jordan, there to anoint Jehu; one of the officers of the army of Israel, to be king in the stead of Joram. The commission Jehu was given, was expressly to put an end to the bloody house of Ahab, including Jezebel. As the sword had fallen on the houses of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and of Baasha the son of Ahijah because of their guilt, so should it be with the house of Ahab: —all were to perish.

Jehu, man of action (we could not say at all, man of God), immediately went to Jezreel, prepared to execute his commission, his companions proclaiming him king. Some forty miles of country he passed over at high speed, and nearing Jezreel, a watcher on the tower there saw and reported him to the king. The anxious Joram sent out messengers to find out the purpose of this approaching party, and finally as they did not return, he with his visitor, the king of Judah, set forth to meet them. Then, at the very place where Naboth had lived, whom Ahab and Jezebel had put to death in order to gain his property, Jehu shot an arrow through the heart of Joram. The king of Judah. equally responsible associate in evil and in departure from God, with Joram was not to escape, and yielded his life likewise.

Then came Jezebel’s turn; there were none now to do her bidding, and in a most revolting fashion she comes to her richly deserved end.

God is long suffering and of great patience, but sin must be punished.

2 Kings 10

Jehu went on with his work of cutting off the entire family of Ahab; he was the instrument God used for this act of unsparing judgment on that apostate king, but all we see of Jehu is natural energy, nothing of the fear of the Lord which the book of Proverbs tells us is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10). So in the book of the prophet Hosea (chapter 1:4), we read that God’s judgment was to fall on Jehu’s house also. We can only judge that it suited Jehu to obey God’s word sent to him through the prophet Elisha; he did not know God by faith, nor seek to know Him. Merely outward energy, or the carrying out of what is known of God’s will, will not do for Him.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Acts 16:31.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation (judgment), but is passed from death unto life.” John 5:24. These are two of the precious gospel portions of Scripture; a third is found in Romans 3:19-26.

Salvation is not by works, and the only way into God’s presence is in the power of the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:14) for all who trust in Him.

Jehu had all of Ahab’s family, and the “brethren” of Ahaziah, king of Judah, also all the prophets, servants and priests of Baal, put to death; the images of Baal were destroyed, and the house of Baal broken down. Thus was the worship of the god of the Phenicians and Canaanites stopped in the ten tribes of Israel. But Jehu lived in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat (see 1 Kings 12:28-33); the golden calves, sign of an idolatrous religion, were left at Bethel and Dan.

To Jehu God promised, because of his obedience in the matter of Ahab’s children that the descendants of Jehu should, to the fourth generation, sit on the throne of Israel. But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart; he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam who made Israel to sin.

Judgment upon the nation therefore began; Hazael the king of Syria attacked the region east of the Jordan, the possession of the children of Reuben and of Gad and of half the tribe of Manasseh (Numbers 32).

This is an illustration of the worldly-minded Christian, those who settled on the wrong side of Jordan; unwilling because of their “much cattle” to enter the promised land—had to resort to an expedient of their own, the altar of Ed (Joshua 22:10-34), to help preserve their oneness with the more faithful ones who had crossed the river, and now they were cut off—the first to go when judgment began to overtake the land.

The Christian poet has said,

“Happy they who trust in Jesus;

Sweet their portion is and sure,

When the foe on other seizes,

God will keep His own secure.”

2 Kings 11

The ways of God with His people in the little kingdom of Judah come before us again, though the chief concern of these Books of the Kings is with the main body of Israel led astray by Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin.

The evil consequences of the believer’s mingling with the world in its affairs, seeking companionship with those who are unbelievers, are again strikingly presented to the Christian heart as we read of the wicked Athaliah.

In no small measure the beginning of all the evil which befell the nation of Judah is traceable back to the agreement of the godly, but world-bordering, Jehoshaphat with Ahab (2 Chronicles 18:1) of whom we are told in 1 Kings 16:29-34 that Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him; and ... ..as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him... . and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel, that were before him.”

Jehoshaphat knew something of the Word of God, and as a young man he showed much godliness, but he in later years, made a league with Ahab. After this he went down to visit him whom once he must have warned his people against. He made himself one with Ahab, saying to him when war against the Syrians was being talked of, “I am as thou art, and my people as thy people, and we will be with thee in the war.” 2 Chron. 18:3. Next and finally, Jehoshaphat saw his son Jehoram (or Joram) married at a very young age to the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, and that son walking “in the way of the kings of Israel, like as did the house of Ahab; for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife; and he wrought that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord.” (2 Chron. 21:6).

How very solemn a warning all this is to the Christian! (See Psalm 1; 2 Corinthians 6:14; James 4:4).

Athaliah, Jezebel’s daughter, mad perhaps with mingled rage and grief because of all that had befallen her family (2 Chronicles 22:1 and 8; 2 Kings 9:27 etc.) now undertook to kill her remaining grandsons. Satan, through this horrible woman whose husband apparently with her connivance had murdered all his six brothers and others (2 Chron. 21:4) was trying to put an end to the royal line of David, but God moved Jehosheba, who seems to have been Athaliah’s daughter to carry away to safety her one-year old nephew Joash. Jehosheba was the wife of the priest Jehoiada, a godly man, and with this couple the baby stayed six years, never being brought out of doors in that time as it would seem. During this period, Athaliah, the murderess and idolater, reigned in Jerusalem in the place once occupied by David and Solomon.

In the seventh year Johoiada strengthened himself, and told the secret to the captains of the army and the Levites, and showed them the king’s son. He appointed guards to look after the boy’s safety, and armed them with king David’s spears and shields. At a suitable moment Jehoiada brought Joash, or Jehoash as his name is also written, out and crowned him, putting into his hands the Word of God.

Athaliah heard the noise of the people as they rejoiced over their new king, and came to the temple to see what might be going on. Her time had come, and she was taken away and put to death. Then Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people, and between the king and the people.

All the people of the land went into the house of Baal and broke it down; broke down the altars and images there, and put to death the priest of Baal. Officers were then appointed over the house of God.

Now for a season, the worship of Baal was at an end in both Israel and Judah. If in Israel the worship of the golden calves still went on, in Judah at least the godly Jehoiada was seeking the honor of God, and teaching the boy-king ways pleasing to Him.

2 Kings 12

While Jehoiada lived, Jehoash (or Joash) did what was right in the sight of the Lord, though the old idol high places were not taken away, and the people sacrificed and burned incense there.

Jehoash showed commendable zeal for God in the matter of the repairing of the temple which had suffered a good deal since Solomon’s glorious reign came to an end. But Jehoiada grew old; he lived to be one hundred and thirty (2 Chronicles 24:15), an unusual age in that day as now. Jehoash seems to have been a good follower as long as there was a good leader, and while he had Jehoiada to follow, all was at least outwardly well, but when the faithful old priest was dead, the princes of Judah came, and he followed them in an evil course.

These princes, —captains, or heads of families—left the temple to serve idols, and the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, that he spoke to the people of their evil ways, whereupon they stoned him to death at the command of Jehoash.

These practices, not mentioned in Kings but in Chronicles, were what brought the Syrians as the agents of God’s chastening hand upon Judah, to Gath and to Jerusalem. They had come with a small army, and Jehoash sent “a very great host” against them, but the Lord delivered the large force of Israel into the hands of the small one of Syria, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers. The temple was stripped of precious things dedicated to God’s service, in order to satisfy the Syrian army.

Jehoash, with so happy, so auspicious a beginning, ended most miserably. A murderer himself — responsible for the killing of Jehoiada’s son—he was killed by his servants.

Is it not possible that some who may read this little paper have been brought up where Christianity is professed, have called themselves Christians and helped in service for God, perhaps been thought by many to be those genuine, and true sheep of Christ’s, of whom He says in His Word ( John 10:28) “My sheep shall never perish”,— that some of those who read these lines are not true believers at all? Profession does not save; works do not give us merits for entering heaven’s bright glory. Matthew 7 contains three very solemn verses we may read with profit: “Not everyone that saith unto Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works?’ And then will I profess unto them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.’” (verses 21-23). No, reader, there is no acceptance with God outside of faith (Hebrews 11:6; Romans 3:22-24; 4:4-8; 5:1).

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:23.

2 Kings 13

We return here to consider again the history of the ten tribes. The merciful God, slow to anger and of great kindness (Neh. 9:17) looked with pity upon His people Israel when they through their king Jehoahaz, cried to Him in their distress and He gave Israel a saviour.

Of Jehoahaz, son of the energetic Jehu who executed God’s judgments upon others more wicked than himself, but cared nothing for Him, we learn that he reigned seventeen years and did evil in the sight of the Lord, following the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin; he departed not there from.

What a record for a man’s life! Summing it all up in a few words is this account of the career of Jehoahaz, and many another has a record no better.

Following in the ways of his predecessors, looking no higher for an example than to his own desires, and to the habits of others—sinners far from God, without thought of eternity—is this also your record, my reader? God knows your every thought, your whole course through life, and His judgment will not err.

The Israelites were delivered into the hands of Hazael and his son Benhadad, kings of Syria, because of their departure from God, and were made to suffer many days. And when Jehoahaz asked God, for Whom he at heart cared naught at all, yet knew His power, God, in pity because of their sufferings, gave Israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians. Nevertheless, they departed not from the sins of the house of Jeroboam. How long would God forbear? The day of reckoning was rapidly approaching.

Joash, or Jehoash, grandson of Jehu, did as his father. Remember, that these kings, and the people over whom they ruled, were not as the heathen; they were the descendants of that Abraham who walked before God, the father of the faithful; their ancestors had been brought out of the misery of Egyptian slavery into this land; by God’s power they had become its possessors as city after city and stronghold after stronghold was taken. Great were their blessings, and their privileges; they had the law of God, the presence of God was among them, yet they turned to worshiping the host of heaven.

Jehoash fought with and defeated the king of Judah who turned to idolatry (2 Chronicles 25:14-24), and when he died, a second Jeroboam became king of Israel. Verses 14-19, 22-25 give details of earlier days.

It is remarkable the way the ungodly kings of Israel knew the reality of the power of God, yet did not trust in Him. Joash, or Jehoash, wept at the prospect of the death of Elisha, and the prophet bade him shoot an arrow, then strike the bundle of arrows on the ground, showing him that he lacked the energy to destroy the power of the northern enemy, yet would be allowed to smite the Syrians.

In verses 20, 21 is a picture of what will happen to Israel in a day yet future. The true Prophet, while apparently lost to the nation, is still the Vessel and Guardian of all their hopes, and He will yet restore them to life in a way both unexpected and powerful.

2 Kings 14

Of Amaziah, son of Joash, we read but little that commends him in the sight of God. We need not doubt that the mention of his mother's name is for a reason, and that seems to be connected with his character and conduct which are referred to immediately afterward. Jehoaddan is one of twelve mothers named in succession in this part of 2 Kings. We judge that she had done what she could for her boy, in training him for the duties and responsibilities of the king of Judah, pointing him to his great ancestor king David, who except for one flagrant sin which cost him dearly, was a man who feared God and walked before Him.

But Amaziah had a poor example in his own father there was a measure of godliness about him, but his record was not better than his father's. 2 Chronicles 25:2 adds the key to Amaziah's history: he served God after a fashion, but not with a full heart.

He righteously punished the murderers of his father, and profiting by the defeat that his father had suffered from the Syrians, he strengthened his army. But this led to Amaziah's worshiping the false gods of the Edomites whom he attacked and subdued. This part of his history is left untold in 2 Kings, because the moral history, the motives of the heart, are rather the subject of the Chronicles than of the Kings.

In our chapter we learn of Amaziah's being lifted up with pride, and what befell him because of it, but Chronicles shows there was a deeper cause—idolatry— which invited his humiliation at the hand of the king of Israel. He came to a violent death, too,—not very unusual for the kings of Israel, yet not so often the case with those of Judah. But Judah was fast following in the footsteps of the larger kingdom.

Azariah, better known by the name of Uzziah given in 2 Chronicles 26; Hosea 1:1, and Amos 1:1 followed Amaziah to the throne of Judah. We learn of his reign in the following chapter, but here we are introduced again to the affairs of Israel, over whom a second Jeroboam was now reigning. This Jeroboam was like so many of his predecessors of whom language similar to verse 24 is used, "He did evil in the sight of the Lord," etc.

Verse 25 fixes the date of the prophet Jonah, and we are reminded in the appearance of the three prophets, Hosea, Amos and Jonah at this time, that God's care for His poor wayward people had not ceased.

Would they return to the God of their fathers? Alas, no.

2 Kings 15

Another mother comes before us here in connection with the new king of Judah, Azariah or Uzziah. There was that to commend about him, and it is mentioned in the brief review of verses 3 and 4. He reigned many years, and 2 Chronicles 26 lets us know that this king sought God in the days of a certain Zechariah. Uzziah had understanding in the visions of God, and just as long as he had God before him, he prospered. He warred, he built, he provided wells and towers, adding to the peace and prosperity of the country; his name spread abroad, for he was marvelously helped till he was strong; but his heart, like that of his father, was lifted up, and he brought on himself the judgment of God.

What no other than a priest had done, he did,—daring to enter the holy place to burn incense there, and he came out a leper. Again, for the inner history of the man, the moral history, we turn to 2 Chronicles, and 2 Kings giving an outline only of his life. Jotham, his son, acted as king during the king's leprosy, and succeeded to the throne upon Uzziah's death.

It was at this period that the great prophet Isaiah was raised up. Indeed, to learn the true state of the nation we must read the prophecies of Isaiah and his contemporaries, Hosea and Amos.

Zachariah, son of the second Jeroboam reigned over Israel only six months; few and evil were his days, ending with his murder, not secretly, but before the people, by Shallum the son of Jabesh who seized the kingdom. Thus ended the reign of the house of Jehu (verse 12), but Shallum was king only a month when Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah and killed him, making himself king.

Menahem began his reign with cruelty, and held the throne ten years, but the king of Assyria came against him, and exacted a heavy tribute. Dying, he was succeeded by his son Pekahiah who reigned two years. His life was like that of those who had gone before him. Pekah the son of Remaliah, one of Pekahiah's captains, conspired against the new king and with others, killed him. This murderer held the throne of Israel twenty years.

Evil as his predecessors, was Pekah; God was forgotten,—disowned. In his reign came another Assyrian king, and entering the northern and eastern portions of the land, carried away many of the people of Israel to be captives.

Hoshea, son of Elah killed Pekah and made himself king, adding another name to the list of murderers occupying in turn the throne of Israel. The chapter closes with a glance back at Judah. Jotham was king sixteen years at Jerusalem; his was a better reign than some of his predecessors; but nationally the people were sinking deeper and deeper in sin, and God sent both the king of Syria and the king of Israel against Judah for punishment.

2 Kings 16

We now reach the history of Ahaz who seems to have despised the record of his father and grandfather and other kings more godly, in the royal line springing from David, for he adopted the abominations of the heathen, walking in the ways of the kings of Israel, and it may be, outdoing them in evil.

Against him came the kings of Syria and Israel, and though they could not overcome Ahaz, they carried away many captives, besides killing many of his fighting men. The captives were restored to Judah, but Ahaz was attacked by one enemy after another, and at last he appealed to the mighty king of Assyria to come to his aid.

Assyria was a new power, gaining strength as Israel went down. It was soon to crush Israel, and threaten Judah, because of their forsaking God.

The reign of Ahaz, given in much detail in both our chapter and in 2 Chronicles 28, was the worst of any thus far of the kings of Judah. Turning away from the true God, he did much to hasten the storm of divine judgment now long gathering upon the land. Linked with the rising Gentile power, this son of David, forgot all the precepts of God's Word; brought in the style of a heathen altar, and mingled the worship of God with that of demons.

What shall we say to all this? Was it with Ahaz, the lack of a proper environment, as some say; or of an honorable parentage,—a creditable family history? None of these. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and led of Satan, will pass all bounds. The marvelous thing is, the grace of God, His forbearance, in the face of a rising tide of evil. How will this history of Israel end? The Word of God shows; and it shows too, the end of the history of man (see Revelation 20).

Today salvation is offered; tomorrow— that great tomorrow whose other name is ETERNITY—where will you be, Christless soul ?

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door"—won't you open the door of your heart, sinner, to Jesus the Saviour ?

2 Kings 17

Hoshea’s reign of nine years marks the end of Israel's history. He had obtained the kingship by killing Pekah, the son of Remaliah (chapter 15:30), and the only difference the Spirit of God indicates between Hoshea and those who had ruled in Samaria and Jezreel before him, is that the evil he practiced was not as remarkable as theirs.

The rising power of Assyria, allowed now by God because of the complete failure and ruin of the nation He had brought out of Egypt, compelled Hoshea to take a subject place, but he secretly appealed to the king of Egypt, and so brought about the end of Israel as a nation. There yet remained the remnant under the son of David at Jerusalem, the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

But of the history of the ten tribes which broke away under Jeroboam the son of Nebat following Solomon's death (1 Kings 12), we are to hear no more till the millennial day when they shall be brought back and united to the two tribes, be one nation again, and serve the living and true God alone. (Ezekiel 37, Revelation 7, etc.).

The Israelites were taken by the Assyrian king to his own country, and have since disappeared from the knowledge of men. Individuals returned to their land. but as a nation there was no return, and there will be none until that time prophesied of by Ezekiel (chapter 20:34-38).

The sins of Israel had not escaped the all-seeing eye of God, nor His all-hearing ear (Psalm 94:9), and the judgment of the nation is fully told out in this chapter. Prophets and seers (those whom God enabled to foresee the judgments coming) were rejected together with His word — statutes, covenant, and testimonies. Idolatry resulted with its associated evils. To Israel rather, than to Judah, were the early prophets sent, but at length, after many warnings and much pleading through these servants of God, the nation was cut off so completely, that none but God knows where its people are.

Strangers were brought into the land to occupy it in the place of Israel's hosts (verse 25), and God asserted His title to the country which indeed He has never given up. One of Jeroboam's priests was then sent to the Samaritans to teach them the fear of the Lord, but every nation represented there made gods of their own.

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four footed beasts and creeping things." Rom. 1:22, 23.

And has the world progressed toward God since ? Progress there has been, indeed, in knowledge, in making life attractive, and in many other ways, but the human heart is still opposed to God. Is not the day of Revelation 13 plainly approaching?

2 Kings 18

Scarcely 140 years before the kingdom of Judah came to an end, the godly Hezekiah began to reign. How remarkable for son to succeed a wicked father. Hezekiah's mother, we conclude, from the mention of her just before the character of her son's reign, must have been a godly woman.

If we turn to 2 Chronicles 29 we find that in the very first month that Hezekiah was king, he began to restore what had been undone in his father's day. Our chapter tells us (verse 5) that he trusted in the Lord God of Israel as none after him, nor any before him. This is most remarkable. It shows that even in days of felt weakness, and amid universal declension, an outstanding measure of faithfulness is possible, and it is recounted for our encouragement in the divine records.

The brazen serpent of Moses (Num. 21) had become an idol, and Hezekiah broke it in pieces. This was vigorous action, indeed, but directed of God.

The God-fearing king of Judah rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not, though Israel was about to be carried away captive. About ten years later, another king of Assyria was permitted by God to attack Judah, and to conquer nearly the whole of the little country. The reason is to be found in verse 19 of the preceding chapter. Hezekiah was at this time not walking by faith, but by sight. We presently find him restored, spiritually, but we can enter into his circumstances, and judge whether we ourselves might not have done worse.

The ten tribes had been carried away about eight years before, and Judah's inheritance was now overrun by the powerful enemy whom none seemed able to resist. To the fortified city of Lachish, now besieged and captured, or soon to be captured, by Sennacherib, Hezekiah sent his promise of subjection and the Assyrian king gave him a heavy tribute to raise. To pay it, Hezekiah had to despoil the temple and his own house, but Sennacherib was not content, and sent a great army to Jerusalem to overthrow the one remaining stronghold, and complete the conquest of the land.

The three names in verse 17 are titles rather than proper names, signifying general (Tartan), chief eunuch (Rabsaris), and chief cup-bearer (Rabshakeh). The latter is thought to have been a proselyte or an apostate Jew, from his knowledge of the Jew's language. They were bold words that lie spoke, and he had a most powerful king to speak for, but God,— He Who has ever answered the cry of the needy, the helpless, when they turn to Him,—God was about to intervene. The flower of the Assyrian army was shortly to perish in a night.

2 Kings 19

It is a chastened Hezekiah whom we find in verse 1. He gives expression to his deep distress, and goes into the house of the Lord It is in God's presence that the tried and harassed saint finds peace and strength. For a time he had gone on in his own strength, and the folly of it had become evident; now he turns to the mighty God whom he knew, and desired His help.

The king's message to Isaiah shows that the chastening (not for the present joyous but grievous) had exercised him. Hezekiah's appeal now is to God, and on the ground of the reproach to His name. The narrow limits of Judah are forgotten; it is the living God that is the object of the enemy; His people are before Him seeking succor of the Mighty One.

The answer is prompt: Isaiah was able to tell the messengers of the king, "Thus saith the Lord, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard.. .." But the trial was not fully removed at once; Rabshakeh went away, but sent messengers with another frightening word to Hezekiah. Who had escaped the kings of Assyria? he asked; what use to resist ?

The new message produced a yet deeper work in Hezekiah, we judge. He now goes direct to God, rather than through Isaiah, and pours out his heart. It was true, he confessed, that the Assyrian power had been irresistible, but the nations they had destroyed knew not the Lord God of Israel who dwelt between the cherubim, the only true God, the living God. Their gods were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone, and therefore those nations perished. Then came the majestic answer, through Isaiah, marvelous in its response to the cry of the burdened Hezekiah. God will not see iniquity in His people when the enemy reproaches them; in His grace He speaks of the remnant who trusted in Him as "the virgin the daughter of Zion," and He will show the proud Assyrian that he has no power against Himself. Times and seasons are naught to God; He will act as sovereignly in the day of small things, as when all is well, outwardly. The trial was at an end; the remnant would he blessed. Without using man in anyway whatever—not even after the fashion of Gideon and his little band of trumpeters—light bearers—(Judges 7), God lays low the Assyrian host; 185,000 men are found dead in their camp. And in due course, Sennacherib fell, by the sword in his own land, as had been promised in verse 7; his own sons killed him while in the act of worshiping his idol. God's Word will be fulfilled; heaven and earth will pass away, but His Word shall be fully and gloriously vindicated.

2 Kings 20

Hezekiah was near death from sickness, and in deep distress prayed for his life. The Old Testament saints did not know the eternal security of the believer; the work of Christ upon the cross was unaccomplished, and they did not enjoy settled peace when they thought of death. All their life time, through fear of death, they were subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:15).

Grace though known, was not enjoyed: the Holy Spirit was not yet indwelling the believers, nor could be until the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). The Christian should be able to say with the apostle Paul (Phil. 1:21-23), "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better," if death should intervene, before the Lord's coming (1 Thess. 1:14-18).

God heard and granted Hezekiah's wish—15 years would be added to his life, and the king of Assyria should not be allowed to conquer Jerusalem. But man cannot stand exaltation; the sign which God had wrought, was observed by the princes of Babylon (2 Chronicles 32:31) who sent ambassadors to Hezekiah, and Hezekiah hearkened to them; showed them all his precious things.

His heart, was lifted up in pride (2 Chronicles 32:25), and he now learns to his sorrow that the things he had boastfully shown would be carried (not into Assyria, but) into Babylon; nothing should be left, and his children would be slaves in the palace of the king there. Hezekiah however receives the rebuke becomingly: "Good is the word of the Lord." He died and his young son Manasseh became king.

We are apt to judge their lives by the failures and weaknesses, the sins of the children of God, and too easily forgetful of our own history. If God has shown us His servant Hezekiah in weakness as well as in strength, in dishonor and in honor, is it not for us who are saved by His grace to seek to walk humbly before Him, profiting by the failure of others in the same heavenward road, and thanking Him for all His mercy ?

2 Kings 21

Manasseh was only twelve years of age when his godly father died; how soon he began on the evil course which characterized his reign, does not appear, but we may at least take note of this, that the fear of God is not born in the human heart at the natural birth. Each of us must for himself be reconciled to God.

If Manasseh's mother's name — the translation of it is "My delight is in her," —was at all true of her life as God saw it, Manasseh's case is the more sad. Many a boy, growing up to manhood, has brought grief and dishonor upon his Christian parents, heedless of their warnings and their example, only to reap the fruit of his evil doings.

God was recording the ways of Manasseh (verses 2, 6, 10-15); nothing escapes that All seeing Eye. The idolatry of the heathen; altars for Baal; worshiping the host of heaven in the place for the worship of God—Solomon's temple; dealing with demons, in what in our day, has been labeled by its followers "spiritualism"—these and other things showed a heart openly in league with the enemy of God. Would God allow it to go on always? No doubt there were hearts in Judah that mourned over the king's course, and saw how his "liberal views" were influencing the people. But the end of Judah as a nation was fast approaching; not much longer was the land to be occupied by the sons of Jacob.

From 2 Chronicles 33:10-19 we learn that Manasseh was at length humbled, and it was then, as a prisoner of the king of Assyria at Babylon, that he learned something of God. His history as a whole was very bad, but if toward its close he was brought to seek God as a poor lost sinner, how thankful we may be.

This is not the experience of all, yet many a praying father and mother may take courage in regard to a wayward son or daughter, from the case of Manasseh. Christian parents take your sorrows to God; doubtless, Hezekiah, and we may hope Hephzibah too, prayed much about their boy, and the day came to answer their prayer.

Amon, Manasseh's son, was just entering manhood when he became king on his father's death. He followed his father's long established course of sin, and was cut short soon in death, his servants killing him in two years. The people of the land dealt with the murderers, and afterward— evidently a few years later, for Amon's son was eight years of age at the time he was crowned, made Josiah, son of Amon, king.

2 Kings 22

Josiah was one of God's miracles of grace, raised up at almost the very end of the sad history of His people in the land of promise. He was the fifteenth son of David to reign over Judah, and his 31 years' rule ended less than 25 years before the two tribes were carried away to Babylon.

That which stands out prominently in considering Josiah's life, is his regard for the Word of God, long neglected and forgotten. 2 Chronicles 34:3-7 lets us know that he began to seek after the God of David his father, "while he was yet young"—when he was 15 or 16 years of age, and that four years later he began to destroy the features of idol worship in the land and outside Judah's narrow borders, too. In another six years Josiah undertook the repairing of the temple, and it was then that the book of the law—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—was discovered. It is with this last period that verses 3 and following, deal.

We may well consider the effect of reading God's Word upon the godly young king, and wish so real and so lasting results were seen in our day. In our times, it has become common for men and women to reject God's Word altogether, despising (to their eternal loss) its warnings, and rejecting Him who is the only Saviour and Lord. Some, also, profess to be Christians, but are as far from the true knowledge of Christ as the benighted heathen.

To both these classes, Josiah stands in most marked contrast. It is enough for him that God has spoken; let it be so with all who confess with their mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in their heart that God path raised Him from the dead.

In Revelation 3:8 and 10 Christ's word, the "word of His patience," is what a feeble band is commended for keeping,—for having it before them in living practice. Can anything less satisfy the heart which truly seeks to please the Lord?

Josiah's godliness could not avert the coming judgment, but he would not be left to see it (verse 20). The people themselves were not as their king (see Jeremiah 3:10), though there were godly ones among them. Hastening on to national ruin, they gave little heed to God and His Word. And you, reader,—what of yourself ? "

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby." 1 Peter 2:2.

2 Kings 23

The effect of hearing the Word of God was most real with Josiah. He caused all the people to be gathered at the temple to hear that which had moved his own soul so deeply, and there he made a covenant before God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His Word. The people outwardly subscribed to the king's desire; this was natural, for they would wish to please their ruler, particularly when he was a good man. But God looks at the heart; profession without possession is worthless, and will only increase the condemnation by and by.

Josiah, enlightened and aroused by the Word of God, goes anew to the task of ridding the land of what spoke of idolatry. Sad indeed it is to learn that within the walls of that magnificent house planned by David, and built by Solomon, were vessels made for the idol Baal, and for the grove, and for the worship of the host of heaven the sun, moon and stars. Near it were the houses of immoral practices (verse 7) which had brought the judgment of God on Sodom.

At the entering in of the temple were horses and chariots that the kings of Judah had given to the sun. Solomon's departure from God comes into view (verse 13).

Going beyond Judah's borders, Josiah destroyed Jeroboam's altar and high place at Bethel, and the idolatrous high places in the cities of Samaria, sacrificing even the priests of the idols on their altars. Those who held communication with evil spirits, and wizards and everything that savored of idolatry, Josiah put down; and a passover, the like of which had never been seen since the days of the judges, was celebrated (verses 21-22).

Happy king Josiah, amid the ruin of what had once been the land of the rich blessing of God, to serve Him still, holding fast to the faithful word with heart, with soul and with might, according to all the law of Moses. He did not pick out part of God's Word, and give heed to that, disregarding what he found irksome, as do some.

Egypt was soon to be humbled, and to sink e'er long into that condition which in general marks it still, and Assyria too was weakening, when Pharaoh-nechoh, ambitious to recover lost territory, set out to attack the king of Assyria. It was the last expedition of conquest the Egyptians made into the Assyrian dominions, but at the time, success attended them. King Josiah should not have interfered; perhaps pride lifted him up. It was of God, however, that he should be taken away before the judgment of Judah should occur.

Jehoahaz, son of Josiah reigned only three months, for Pharaoh-nechoh, returning from Assyria, carried him off to Egypt, after having taken him as a prisoner first to the far north in Syria.

Eliakim, another of Josiah's sons was made king of Judah, his name being changed to Jehoiakim by Pharaoh-nechoh. The two names, it may be remarked, appear to have very similar meanings,— "God is setting up", and "Jah" (an abbreviation of Jehovah, usually translated THE LORD) "sets up". If so, it would seem that the king's change of name was more by way of Pharaoh's showing his power than anything else. Both the sons of Josiah were very unlike their father; their ways were evil in the sight of the Lord according-to the ways of their forefathers. Judgment was about to fall unsparingly.

2 Kings 24

Now entered the rising power of Babylon into Judah's history. It had been foretold in Isaiah's message to the godly king, Hezekiah ( chapter 20:17), when Assyria was the great power, rivaling Egypt at the time. Jehoiakim's story contains nothing that suggests a change of heart such as we read of in Manasseh (2 Chron. 33:12-19). His son Jehoiachin was as evil as the father had been; and in his days, the conquering hosts of Babylon entered Jerusalem, and carried away the king and all the people, except the poorest sort, and with the captives, all the treasures of the temple, and of the king's house.

Here ends Israel's history as the acknowledged people of God in a peculiar place of responsibility and favor among the nations; the "times of the Gentiles" begin now. The temple and the kingdom remained for a brief season, but stripped of the glory.

The king's uncle, Mattaniah, was made the ruler of the land of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar, with his name changed to Zedekiah. This is another change of name without special significance, we judge. It was a mark of the power of the conqueror. Zedekiah's reign was the last, as we shall see in the next chapter.

How is speaks to the heart of the believer, to consider the history of Israel through the years in Egypt; in the wilderness with Moses; the conquest of the land under Joshua; the early decline, beginning almost in Joshua's day; the state of things revealed in the book of Judges and in Samuel's lifetime; the history of David, the man after God's heart (though he sinned, his repentance was deep); of Solomon, and the cleavage in the kingdom; the ten tribes immediately led into idolatry, but followed by their faithful God with such devoted servants as Elijah, Elisha, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others. See 2 Chronicles 36:15, 16, pronouncing the doom of the nation, though grace would deal with them again in the bringing back of a remnant to occupy the land,—alas! then to reject their Messiah to death, the crowning sin of Israel, far eclipsing the sin which brought about their captivity under the Assyrians and Nebuchadnezzar.

2 Kings 25

In the preceding chapter, the young king Jehoiachin (he was 18 years of age) gave himself up a prisoner to Nebuchadnezzar, king of BabyIon (verse 11), and all but the poor of Jerusalem (verse 12) were carried away with Jehoiachin and his court to Babylon. It was then, no doubt, that the youthful Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (Daniel 1, etc.) were taken to Babylon.

Mattaniah, uncle of king Jehoiachin, was made king in his stead, his name being changed by Nebuchadnezzar to Zedekiah. In the ninth year Zedekiah rebelled against the Babylonian rule, as his brother Jehoiakim had done shortly before his death, and Nebuchadnezzar came again to Jerusalem, and besieged it for over a year. Famine resulted and the king and his army at last fled by night, but were overtaken; the sons of the king were put to death before his eyes, and the wretched man's eyes were then put out, and he was carried away to Babylon.

Jerusalem was now reduced almost to ruins, the magnificent temple of Solomon being burned with the king's, and all the other great houses in the city, and the city walls were broken down. The remaining people of Jerusalem were carried away captives, and there were left only the poor of the land, to be vinedressers and farmers. The costly pillars of brass, the brass sea, and the other things of whose making 1 Kings 7 tells, were carried away by the Chaldean army to Babylon. And as a final act of vengeance, no doubt allowed of God because of the wickedness of the leaders of Judah, both of priests and people, of which we are briefly told in 2 Chronicles 36:14, the chief priest, the second priest, and various others in the temple, and in the city were carried away to Nebuchadnezzar and slain.

Nebuchadnezzar put Gadaliah over the people that were left, but ten months afterward he and the Jews and Chaldeans that were with him, were killed by Ishmael, a member of the king's family. Afraid now of severe punishment for the act, all the people fled to Egypt. See Jeremiah 41-44 for most interesting details of this period.

The Second Book of Kings closes this history, with the mention of a gracious act on the part of Nebuchadnezzar's successor, Evil-Merodach in the year that he began to reign, toward Jehoiachin the long imprisoned king of Judah, now about 55 years of age. "He spoke kindly to him," set his throne above that of the kings with him in Babylon, changed his prison garments and allowed him to eat before him the rest of his life. This event took place in B. C. 561; twenty five years yet remained of the seventy years captivity of Judah (Jer. 25:12; Ezra 1).

We have completed our examination of the outward history of Israel and Judah, down to the removal of the earthly people of God from the land He gave them; the ten tribes known as the kingdom of Israel had been removed by the Assyrians in B. C. 722, soon thereafter to disappear from the world's view, and today unknown, but at the word of God, they will reappear (Ezekiel 37). Much that tells of the true state of the people leading to the captivity of the twelve tribes will be found in the books of Jonah, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel and Obadiah, which cover a period of about 250 years, and we may learn much of the moral history of this people from the two books of Chronicles.

1 Chronicles 1

The Books of Chronicles review the history of the earthly people of God, and chiefly that of the royal line of David, from the standpoint of grace. It is as though God were in tender mercy and unchanging love and pity, lingering in memory over His people, sinful and wayward as they had, alas! ever proved.

How different the history of man, from. the life of the Son of God, as He passed through this world from the manger to the cross and the glory! In Him there was nothing to hide, naught to conceal but I lis own personal glory, but in these divinely inspired records of the human race, we notice that which is traceable back to the fall of man sin—though in the Chronicles only that which brings out prominently the grace, and thereby the blessing of God, is seen.

Examining Chapter 1, we first notice the entire absence of the murderer, Cain, and all his descendants (Genesis 4). They set the fashion of things in their day, in going out of the presence of God, in city building, in the lust of the flesh, in music and manufactures, and in other respects, too, no doubt; not all such essentially wrong, but founded upon unconfessed and upon the giving up of God.

After the flood, the peopling of the cleansed earth comes in view, through Noah's three sons, of whom Japheth is mentioned first, and his descendants sufficiently to show what parts of the early world they occupied; their names, shortly applied to the regions they occupied, indicate Europe and a great area of Asia.

Ham is second, of whom came one who began to be mighty upon the earth (verse 10); thus man early began to oppress his fellows. Ham's descendants peopled Africa, and from the Mediterranean Sea eastward.

Third in order of mention appear the sons of Shem, of whom God was to separate a family to Himself, worshipers of the living and true God, when idolatry filled the earth. At verse 24 we are directed to the Peleg line of Shem, of which came Abram; then Abram's offspring according to the flesh, leaving the mention of the family in which divine grace worked to chapter 2.

1 Chronicles 2

In the second chapter we have to do with the sons of Jacob, here spoken of in the later name Israel, applied in the grace of God. Of them all, Judah the fourth, is presented first to lead our thoughts to David and the royal family of Israel, objects of the favor of God, in whom was to be displayed the sovereignty of that free, unmerited favor, and as to whom promises were given that could only, because of man's utter failure, be fulfilled in that Son of David who is Son of God, Christ the Lord. Chapters 2 and 3, and chapter 4 down to verse 24, are concerned with the family of Judah.

Er, firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the Lord, and He slew him (verse 3); sin meets retribution, not always at man's hand, but certainly at God's. And there was a troubler of Israel among Judah's descendants who transgressed, and met swift judgment (verse 7, and Joshua 7). The free electing grace of God is further shown in David's being the seventh and youngest of his family, the least in his father's house (verse 15).

1 Chronicles 3

Chapter 3 gives the line of David to long after the removal of Judah from the land; Jeconiah (verses 16-17) is a form of the name Jehoiachin, the captive king with whom 2 Kings closes.

It is evident that the Chronicles were written, or at least compiled, after the captivity; it is thought by some that Ezra's was the pen which God employed.

1 Chronicles 4

We cannot say that all of the names in the long lists in this section of God's Word were believers, but we are reminded of another record, that unseen book of life, which bears many names (Philippians 4:3) precious to God. What title must one have to be enrolled here ? Sinners saved through Christ.

"All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23.

"We ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another, but after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared. not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." Titus 3:3-7.

In Jabez (verse 9) we see a believer of whom God has taken care to have us know not only that his name is in the book of life, but that he was more honorable than his brethren; grief had attended his birth instead of the usual rejoicing, so that his mother named him Sorrowful, but he called on the God of Israel in a prayer of faith suited to the day in which he lived, and God gave him what he asked.

Does the reader so keep God before him as (lid Jabez, seeking from Himself and not from man, for blessing, for larger ability to serve Him, for His protection and guidance, and to be kept from the evil so abundant in our day?

Simeon's family follows the record of Judah's host (verse 24).

1 Chronicles 5

Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh occupy the fifth chapter. These last, unwilling to make their homes in the promised land, but content to stop short of the Jordan, were the first of Israel to be made captives, and carried away when the nation fell deeply into sin.

It is always a dangerous thing for the believer to stop short of the blessing of a walk with God. The world tempts, and the enemy whispers, "Be broadminded, be liberal; you must make your way in this world," and other deceitful suggestions, which the unstable readily listen to. Are there not enough solemn warnings of the danger of living-at a distance from God, in His Word?

Concerning the history of the two and one-half tribes who would not make their dwelling beyond the Jordan, entirely clear of the world around, the reader will find much to profit him in a study of Numbers 82; Joshua. 22; Judges 5:15,16; 2 Kings 10:32, 33; and 15:29 with 1 Chronicles 5:26, remembering that this part of the nation was carried away into captivity 18 years before the remaining tribes of Israel, and 140 years before Judah fell.

1 Chronicles 6

The tribe of Levi occupies the sixth chapter, giving first the names of the high priests beginning at Aaron, and ending in verse 15 with Jehozadak whose name (God is Just)seems most fitting, when God was dealing in long deferred judgment with His people. After the high priests, are the families of the Levites, the sons of Gershom, Kohath and Merari, and finally the cities and suburbs given to them.

1 Chronicles 7

The seventh chapter gives the descent of Issachar, Benjamin, Naphtali, Manasseh's half on the west of Jordan, Ephraim and Asher.

1 Chronicles 8

Chapter 8 brings Benjamin in again, first to tell of those who lived in Jerusalem, and afterward the connection of the family of Saul.

1 Chronicles 9

In chapter 9 we see the use of these genealogies, for the names given (down to verse 34) are of those who had returned from the seventy years captivity. (See Nehemiah 11; and chapter 7, verses 5 and 64, 65).

Each of the Levites had his service to perform, of that little flock of chastened souls who returned with Ezra and with Nehemiah to the glory-departed city of Jerusalem. The "transgression" of the people (verse 1) had brought this ruin and shame upon Israel, and their return was not in independence, but as subjects of the great Cyrus (Ezra 1).

Some of Ephraim and Manasseh were among the returned exiles (verse 3 of our chapter), as well as those of Judah and Benjamin. Had the first named joined the later when Cyrus opened the way; or were they living in Judah's land when the captivity took place? We can only conjecture as to this.

Verse 35 begins the detailed history, giving the genealogy of the king the people had desired, Saul the son of Kish of Gibeon; but not only to Saul and his four sons, but on down the line through Mephibosheth (Merib-baal) to the period in which this book was written. This is grace indeed. Saul had brought judgment on himself and his house, but God remembers mercy. To Him be eternal praise!

1 Chronicles 10

Chapter 10 tells in the language of the last chapter of 1St Samuel of the ruin of Saul's house. It is in a scene of ruin that God acts in grace. When our first parents sinned, God appeared, both to announce the fruit and penalty of sin, and to speak of a Deliverer (Genesis 3:15-19), and when all the race was in irretrievable ruin,—the guilt of the murder of the Son of God resting upon that people which, almost alone as a nation, had any knowledge of the true God, then it was that God announced justification by His grace, redemption in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:10-26).

The day had been not long past, when Saul was the people's pride. A choice young man and a goodly; there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he; from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people (1 Samuel 9:2), and the people had shouted when he was presented as their king. But now the Philistines, old time enemies within Israel's border, whom Saul should have destroyed, had become strong enough to defeat the men of Israel in battle; Saul was dead and all his sons, and the army he had gathered had fled. The disaster was most serious; the enemies of God and of His people were left in undisputed possession of the battle field, and they made much of their triumph for the honor of their gods and their nation.

We may be tempted to say that God was not in all this; but He was; it was a sorrowful scene, humbling in the extreme from whatever angle we may consider it, but the closing verses tell us that the unseen, but by no means indifferent. God, had brought this defeat and ruin upon Israel, and in particular, upon Israel's king. Saul died for his transgression (verse 13).

As early as 1 Samuel 13:13, 14, when Saul had been king but two years, he was told that his kingdom would not be continued because of his disobedience to God's Word. In the fifteenth chapter again (verse 23) he was told that because lie had rejected the word of the Lord, He had rejected him from being king. Nevertheless Saul was allowed to continue as the ruler over Israel until he had reigned forty years.

Forty is a number in Scripture often connected with testing or trial, whether forty days, or forty years, and Saul's forty years only brought out more and more the wretchedness of the unregenerate heart; from hatred of David and seeking to accomplish his murder, he turned to Satan as his last resource (verse 13, and 1 Samuel 28:7-19). He was removed from the scene in which he had so utterly failed, and David, until now without a possession, a wanderer, while the people's choice occupied the throne, was to take the dominion as the man of God's purpose.

1 Chronicles 11

Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be" (Genesis 49:10) is faintly portrayed in verse 1, for here is a foreshadowing of the day when the Lord Jesus will come to reign over the earth, and in particular, over His people Israel (Revelation 19:6, 11-20; Matthew 24; Isaiah 60; Zephaniah 3:14-20 and many other passages). Though for many years Israel had been under the dominion of a usurper, and the true king was rejected, and hid from them, they now saw in him the one appointed of God, the one foretold by His Word (verse 2).

As in the coming day of the Lord Jesus' return to this world, His first work will be to rid the land of enemies, so here David (verses 4 and following) is first the man of war, and his kingdom as described is characterized by power rather than by blessing. The inhabitants of the land oppose the king's taking possession (see Revelation 19:19), but are powerless against him and those that are with him, his people; God was with David.

And now our attention is directed to the companions of David in the time of his rejection. How different the mention now of those who sought his company, shared his rejection,. in 1 Samuel 22:1. 2. True, the six hundred (1 Samuel 27:2) are not all mentioned, hut not a word is said of any of their faults and their grumblings and even worse things that had been in their minds (1 Samuel 30:6) in this recounting of honored names of faithful ones who had seen in David the one of their heart's desire.

Deeds now are brought to light, acts of devotion to David, and courage exhibited on various occasions because of him: nothing of the kind was ever told of the followers of Saul, nor could be. And David's appraisal of personal devotion. too, is shown in verse 19.

All this points onward to a coming day. We may turn to Malachi 3:16; Matthew 25:14-46; 2 Peter 1; 1 Corinthians 3:13. 14; Revelation 22:12, and many other passages for light upon that time now so near when, first, the Lord Jesus, having taken His (present, heavenly) people home to glory, shall review their lives, and their measures of devotedness to Him for rewards then to be given. Afterward He shall descend to earth to take the throne of Israel, and the government of the earth. shall deal in similar ways with those who shall believe when we who have believed in Him ( John 3:16) in the days of His rejection, shall have been transferred to His heavenly home.

How all-important it is to not only be a believer in the Lord Jesus, but to live in the light of the eternal day ushered in for those who now trust in Him by His coming for them (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), and for the tried and hard-pressed, who never having known the gospel now proclaimed, shall trust in Him afterward, by His coming to them with. His heavenly people (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3; Revelation 19:11-21; Psalm 22:25, and many other passages as well as some of those above mentioned).

1 Chronicles 12

Not only are we given the record of those who early joined themselves to David in the cave of Adullam when he was forced to withdraw from the scene in which Saul ruled, but the grace of God delights in telling of others who later forsook present advantage, and doubtless suffered personal loss for David's sake while he was the rejected, despised, even hated, man, though the victor over Israel's mightiest enemy. (1 Samuel 17).

This chapter then completes the account of those who loved David, and valued association with him above all that the world could give, at a time when there was every reason, perhaps, short of personal devotion to the one chosen of God to rule His people, for them to remain under the protection of, and in attachment to, the present order of things.

The brethren of Saul, those whom we should not have expected at all to see joined to David, since the ties of nature are strong in us all, are included first in this chapter. Not as early as the cave of Adullam, but quite later in David's time of rejection, did they come to him; but that they came at all, must have deeply touched his heart. They became his helpers, among the mighty men that were with him.

Gadites, too, came to David, before Ziklag had become the place of his dwelling, but after Adullam; they also were strong in his service; with David to live for, they put to flight many of his enemies.

Some of the children of Benjamin and Judah came to David about the time of the Gadites, and were given places in his company, and some of Manasseh joined him at the very end,—long in coming, but included nevertheless among the honored ones, privileged to share the path of rejection that was David's, though it were only briefly, and just before his exaltation (verses 19-21). At that time the eyes of many were opened to see that in David was him whom their heart desired; the then prevailing order of things was soon to end. So a great host, " like the host of God," came to David to help him.

This late gathering to David speaks deeply to the Christian heart; it reminds the child of God that the present hour is the closing period of the earthly history of the companions of the rejection of Christ, sets before him the reminder that he, though long in coming to Him, it may be, and certainly long centuries after his Lord was rejected and put to death, was made as welcome, as any poor sinner who received the Saviour and trusted Him, tells him that now is the time for true hearted devotion to Christ.

But this incident of verses 20-22 is also a message to those who have never "joined themselves" to the rejected Saviour.

If this little paper should be read by one, young or old, who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ as his own personal Saviour, let him know now that it is still open to him to come to Him; that "whosoever" (John 3:16, Rev. 22:17) means you; and that now is the accepted time; now the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:2).

From all the tribes of Israel there came large numbers to David when his day of exaltation was come; willingly now they came, and willingly too, will Israel's sons in a coming day receive their Messiah and kindred of Saul long bound by nature's ties, and by personal service to the enemy king, are among those now to welcome the rightful ruler. All came "with a perfect heart" to David, and there was great rejoicing, great joy in Israel; and well there might be, for a day of blessing was dawning.

1 Chronicles 13

The rejoicing and the blessing which were now the portion of those who came to David, were to be shared; others must be brought in till none were left out. What a change all this was from the great display of man, together with the absence of true happiness while Saul reigned!

From "Shihor of Egypt"-the river Nile, or possibly the "river of Egypt" which was the southwest boundary of Palestine, to the "entering of Hemath" (noted city and district in the north of Syria), at the extreme north of Israel's borders, all are gathered together to bring the ark of God, symbol of His presence, from Kirjath-jearim.

Years had passed since the ark came to Kirjath-jearim. Much longer than forty years before, when Eli was priest, and Samuel the prophet a child, the unfaithfulness of the priesthood led to the taking of the emblem of the presence of God by the Philistines to the house of their god (1 Samuel 5), and though it did not (nor could it) remain there, there was not faith in Israel to give it its due place, until Saul was removed, and David on the throne.

But though there was desire after God's glory, and that He should be honored in the land, there was a lack of obedience to the Word of God on David's part, which brought on divine displeasure.

Observe David's word in chapter 15:11-13 when he had been exercised by the occurrence of chapter 13:10.

Obedience to the Word of God is surely a little thing for the believer, who owes God for everything, to yield to Him, yet how many Christians question, in our day, if they need to follow it fully, and decide that they will perhaps in some, or in most respects, but as to other things concerning which clear direction is given, it does not suit them to follow the written Word. To such, it need hardly be said, there is great loss. The reader would do well to read carefully the twenty second and twenty third verses of 1 Samuel 15 in this connection.

David's failure here cannot bar God from blessing His people, and He still blesses, even when full obedience is not yielded Him. Obed-edom and his family tasted the blessedness of the presence of God which David wished for, but through disobedience had not obtained.

1 Chronicles 14

David, though he failed, and sinned most grievously (and reaped as he had sowed), habitually turned to God, and it is in this attitude that he is seen in this chapter. It is well for the believer always to take his circumstances from God, as did David in verse 2; and to God, as we see him doing in verses 10 and 14.

Whether it be in receiving blessing in natural things, or in passing through trials and dangers, we may well emulate David as thus exhibited to us. That his life was not perfect we know, and though God may (and He does) cover sin, as in this book, never to mention David's dreadful deeds in connection with Uriah the Hittite and his wife, He lets us see from almost every example in the Bible, that none but the Son of His love lived sinlessly. Already David had three wives,— Ahinoam, Abigail and Michal, but he was now rich and powerful and could afford to do as he pleased, so he adds to the number of his wives. And what of the children born to these later wives ? Scripture is solemnly silent as to all of them but Solomon, though we find in Joseph, husband of Mary the mother of the Lord, the descent of Nathan (Luke 3:31).

Enemies there yet are, and the Philistines went up to seek David when they heard that he was now king in Saul's stead. They came quite near to Jerusalem, to the valley of Rephaim, a few miles southwest of the city, and there twice suffered defeat, the second time being pursued to Gazer or Gezer, about two-thirds of the distance from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean Sea.

It is not surprising that these victories were David's, since it was his habit to look to God at all times as we see from his life as recorded for us in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, and from the Psalms which he wrote.

David had asked of God at the first appearance of the enemy, and had been directed to victory; but he remains dependent, and at the second coming of the Philistine hosts, he inquired again of Him. We may observe too, that the directions upon this second exhibition of a subject will, are not only fuller, the guidance more plainly given, but "God is gone forth before thee to smite the host of the Philistines."

Thus does our God answer those whose hearts are directed toward Himself. The believers of this dispensation do not meet the enemies with military preparations, but unseen foes in the wiles of the devil, and the rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph. 6:10-18).

1 Chronicles 15

It is pleasant to see a believer growing in the knowledge of the Word of God, and this we observe in David now (verse 2), having learned from it the divine order he had neglected in chapter 13 verse 4 and following. He had no doubt been reading in Numbers 3 and 4, for there he would find that the Kohathites and their brethren of the tribe of Levi, the Merarites and the Gershomites were chosen of God to carry the ark and to minister to God. The "due order" (verse 13), and the "word of the Lord" (verse 15) are now observed.

The sons of Elizaphan, Hebron and Uzziel (verses 8-10) were all Kohathites. Asaph (verses 17 and 19) has his name attached to twelve psalms, numbers 50 and 73 to 83. "Alamoth" (verse 20), is not understood; the same word is found in the title of Psalm 46; it is thought to refer to soprano voices. "Sheminith" (verse 21) was probably a musical instrument of eight strings, or the lowest notes of the scale as sung by men. The word appears in the headings of Psalms 6 and 12.

What a happy company it must have been, singing on the way from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David, as the children of Levi carried the ark on their shoulders. And "God helped the Levites" —, in what way, we are not told, but they owned His gracious dealing, and offered sacrifices of thanksgiving.

As a united people ("all Israel," verse 28) they brought up the ark of the covenant, token of God's presence among them, but one at least saw little to find delight in, in that which occupied David and the Levites that day; Michal "despised him in her heart." Of little moment to her was it that God was owned and His authority and presence recognized by her husband and the nation; she thought of things seen and natural and temporal, and overlooked the unseen and eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18). We shall not find further mention of this daughter of Saul, but we shall either meet her in glory among those whose robes have been made white in the blood of the Lamb; or see her at the great white throne of judgment. Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men (2 Corinthians 5:11).

Let not the reader be like King Agrippa in Acts 26:28: "almost persuaded," and perhaps lost.

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Hebrews 10:31.

1 Chronicles 16

It was not to the tabernacle, now at Gibeon (verse 39) whence it had been removed from Shiloh (Joshua 18:1; 1 Samuel 4:4) and Nob (1 Samuel 21:1-6; 22:18, 19), that the ark of God was now taken. The priesthood of Aaron and his sons had failed, and after the ark's return from the Philistines, it never was restored to the tabernacle (See 1 Samuel 6 and 7; 1 Chronicles 13; and Psalms 78:60-72 and 132:1-8).

All now depended upon the king as the anointed one of God; true, there was failure there, but it is also true that the power has been placed in the house of David according to God's purposes, and all the promises connected therewith will assuredly be fulfilled in Christ, the promised Son of David.

The psalm (verses 7 to 22) given to the Levites, is part of Psalm 105 with some alterations; what follows to verse 33 is part of Psalm 96 with other changes, and the close is that of Psalm 106.

The covenant of verse 16, it will be noticed is not that of Sinai, but that made with Abraham, a promise without condition that has never been reversed and taken away. Verses 23-33 are an adaptation of Psalm 96 suited to the time then present; the Psalm waits for its fulfilment upon the personal reign of Christ, when the nations will be judged righteously.

"His mercy endureth forever," the theme of several of the Psalms, is a reminder that God has not changed, in spite of all the changes Israel has seen, and all the ruin and desolation that favored people have brought upon themselves. All in the psalm of David here given is anticipative of the day when Christ shall have come to reign in Zion, and before His judgments shall have been felt in the world.

Verses 37, 38 show us those whose privilege it was to serve at the ark; and verse 39, to the priests at the tabernacle in Gibeon, while others still were to give thanks to the Lord. Thus was every state of heart provided for,—God condescending to meet the people at the tabernacle, going there it may be, in ignorance where the ark was not. What a God is ours!

1 Chronicles 17

Godly was the desire of David, as he sat in his house, that He who had acted so powerfully, and in such grace on behalf of Israel and their king should have a suitable dwelling place in the city which He had chosen to put His name there. The "house of cedars" and the "curtains" spoke by their very comparison, to the man after God's own heart, but he must learn like Abraham, that the day of fulfilment of promises was not his, though the promises were made to him.

David could die in faith, not having received the promises (i.e., their fulfilment), but having seen them afar off, and been persuaded of them and embraced them, and confessed that he was a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth. (Heb. 11:13).

David's desire toward God brought a rich message that night: God could build him a house, a lasting one, though he could not be permitted to carry out his wish. The house David would have built, his son should provide when wars were over and peace prevailing.

Not yet was the day of conflict at an end, and the Lord of hosts who had gone with His people through their wanderings and remained their preserver and protector in all their days, had not asked for a permanent dwelling place.

He had taken David from the sheepfold (1 Samuel 16:11) that he might be the ruler of Israel; He had been with him whithersoever he had walked, and cut off all his enemies, making him a name like the great men of the earth. Israel should be planted in the place God had ordained for them, to be disturbed no more, and their king should be of David's sons.

The words are in the fullest application only true of the Lord Jesus when He returns to this earth to reign, but the immediate reference is, of course, to Solomon. If reference be made to the corresponding passage in 2 Samuel 7 it will be observed that the latter part of verse 14 is omitted here, because divine grace is the theme of the Chronicles, and we are led to look right on to the personal reign of the King of Kings. (Revelation 19:16).

Deeply moved by the message brought to him by Nathan the prophet, David sat no longer "in his house" (verse 1), but "came and sat before the Lord" (verse 16) and poured out his heart in gratitude and in acknowledgment of the sovereign favor of which he had been made the object.

"Who am I, O Lord God? and what is mine house ?" is the language of one who has learned in the school of God. And further,

"What can David speak more to Thee ? . . . . for Thou knowest Thy servant."

Here we are reminded of that other servant of the Lord, Peter, whose heart also lay exposed in the presence of his Master: "Thou knowest all things" (John 21:17). And should not those who bear His Name today, be seeking such intimacy, breathing such language ?

1 Chronicles 18

What an example David is, in these chapters. of the godly man!

On the one hand is the free flowing grace of God to His child, evidenced in how many ways; God who was with him wherever he went, had taken him from the pasture and the care of the sheep, and assured him of future blessing further than his mind could reach, so that he could well say, "My cup runneth over" (Psalm 23).

On the other hand, what due regard for the glory of God had been wrought, in connection with circumstances of trial, in His servant. (See chapters 13:1-4 and 14:2, 10, 11, 14-16; and more markedly, showing the fruit of continued exercise of heart in David, chapters 15-17).

We do not wonder then, at the victories David was given over the enemies round about, as recorded in this chapter, following and growing out of his putting God first in his life.

Of course, the enemies the Christian has to fight, are not men and women, not "flesh and blood," but the unseen powers of Satan's dominions. The "armor" of God as unfolded in Ephesians 6:11-18 is truth, righteousness, the glad tidings of peace, faith, salvation and the Word of God, all linked together and made powerful by prayer and supplication in the Spirit.

Would that the children of God of this day in which we live, were more consistently walking in the footsteps of His servant David, as these chapters reveal him!

We know there was another side of David; there was the natural, evil heart. which brought him the most piercing sorrows. May we however, who love the Lord Jesus, trusting in His finished work on the cross, be preserved from David's sins, and be moved to pattern our ways after His word, as in 1 Peter 4:1-2.

"Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that bath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from (done with) sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God."

But David's history here, we do not forget, presents an advance illustration of the Lord Jesus in the day of the setting up of His kingdom upon earth, regarding which the Old Testament prophecies have so much to say, and the New Testament not a little. (Among many passages see Isaiah 9:6, 7; Jeremiah 30:9-11; Ezekiel 37:24-28; Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 22:30; Revelation 19:11 to 20:6).

Regarding the cities named in our chapter, it may be of interest to observe that Gath (verse 1) was one of the five royal cities of the Philistines, and where the giant Goliath had lived.

Zobah (verse 3) was in the north of Syria, beyond Damascus. Hadarezer was engaged in conquering the country in the upper reaches of the Euphrates, and it was through or near the territory David's armies must have gone in their pursuit of king Hadarezer.

Hamath (verses 3 and 9) was north of Zobah, toward the Euphrates, the region of Hadarezer's conflicts, and where he was overthrown by 'David's fighting men.

Edom and Moab (verse 11) were on the south and east of the Dead Sea. The Ammonite country adjoining the Moabite on the north, east of the Jordan and near the Dead Sea.

Philistines and Amalekites were west and south, so that David's judgments on the nations embraced those on all sides of the land.

The valley of salt (verse 12) is thought to have been south of the Dead Sea.

Read in connection with this chapter Psalm 60, noting its title.

1 Chronicles 19

Scripture does not tell upon what occasion or in what way, Nahash, king of the children of Ammon showed kindness to David. In general, the Ammonites were bitter enemies of Israel, though there were exceptions, Zelek (chapter 11:39), an Ammonite, being one of David's valiant men.

At some period in the history of David he had been shown kindness by Nahash, and the king of Israel now proposed to comfort the son about his father's death, but the princes of that people suspected an evil motive, and persuaded Hanun to insult David by mistreating his messengers. There could be no other issue in such a case than war; kindness was intended, but when refused, peaceful relations have to cease, and preparation for retribution begins.

This is the position in which this world stands with God. He has sent an embassage of peace, even His own beloved Son, the Only Begotten, the Eternal Son,— (not merely a servant or servants, as David sent to the children of Ammon), and His Son has been rejected. As John 1 records, after speaking of His eternal being, as God's equal, yes, as God Himself, and the Creator of all things, in whom was life.

"He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own (the people of Israel), and His own received Him not" (verses 10-11). "Him", Acts 2:23-24 declares, "being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God bath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it;" and Jude 14 foretells:

"Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." To this the last book of the Bible. the Revelation, in chapter 20:11-15, adds the most solemn, most awesome prophetic word ever told:

"And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat upon it, from Whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God (or, the throne); and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell (here it is hades) gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works ..... . and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

The above is the world's assured prospect, for God has declared it; these are the words of the true God Who cannot lie, and Who could not be so cruel as to deceive His poor creatures. Rather than that, He "now commandeth all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30); and His servant, the apostle Paul, in writing to Timothy could say,

"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting." 1 Tim. 1:15-16.

The Syrians who were hired to help the children of Ammon (verse 6-7); and the Syrians from "beyond the river" sent for when the first mentioned were defeated, were alike powerless against the power of God which was with David.

1 Chronicles 20

It will be noted that the children of Ammon made no peace with David. Enemies they were, and enemies they remained. Opportunity for repentance was given, but there was none, and judgment became therefore unsparing (chapter 20:1-3).

Other great ones fell in the conflicts which David carried on with the enemies of the people of God (verses 4-8).

"Small and great" (Rev. 20:12), and "kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman" (Rev. 6:15) think to "escape the judgment of God" but in "the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God," He "will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom.2:3-16).

1 Chronicles 21

Satan, ever the enemy o of God's people, is named in Scripture 51 Times as Satan, which means "adversary." He is referred to as "the devil" 35 times; this name is from a word which means "to strike through,"—to stab with accusation, or to accuse. As the accuser of the brethren of the heavenly saints, Satan is referred to in Revelation 12:10, but several other titles are given him in the Word of God, such as the serpent, the dragon, the god of this world, the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air, and as Beelzebub the chief or prince of the devils (demons, for the word rightly translated "devil" in Scripture is always in the singular, and refers to Satan himself.

He is evidently the active head of the unseen powers of evil mentioned in Daniel 10:13; Eph. 6:12 and Col. 2:15, but they that be with us, who trust in the living God, whose Saviour is the Lord Jesus Christ, are more than those with him, and in due time his power, always under God's control and used for the ultimate blessing of God's children, will be destroyed. (See Genesis 3:15; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7; 1 Kings 18:17-46; 2 Kings 6:8-23; Heb. 2:14; Rom. 16:20; Rev. 20:1-10, and many other Scriptures).

Satan's connection with what took place in this chapter is not mentioned in the earlier account in 2 Samuel 24, for there the public history is told, while we are here introduced into that which only God knew. Satan ever ready to attack the children of God was only the instrument, after all, for "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28).

David had for the time again got his eyes off God; natural pride, growing out of the expansion and prosperity of his kingdom, and the knowledge he had that the blessing of God rested on him, had possession of this generally godly man. And God Who loves those who are His children, must correct them when they need correction.

"What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?" Hebrews 12:7.

Of chastening, David could at once decide to take that which was directly God's dealing, rather than famine or foes. A pestilence therefore came upon Israel, and seventy thousand men died. Jerusalem itself is threatened, but mercy exceeds the merited judgment, and the destroying angel is told to stay his hand as he is at the threshing floor of Oman the Jebusite. David's humiliation is real, and confession follows: "Even I, it is that have sinned and done evil indeed Let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O Lord my God, be on me."

David is then directed to set up an altar unto the Lord in Oman's threshing floor —God giving him in grace the privilege of setting up the altar where the temple was afterward to be constructed, and meeting him with fire upon the altar he provided.

The tabernacle, still at Gibeon, and the whole legal system connected with it, were now definitely set aside, that the worship of Israel might be founded upon grace, connected with a sacrifice acceptable to God where all had failed. The antitype, that which is here illustrated, is the one sacrifice of Christ, of course.

It remains to speak of the differences between the accounts in 2 Samuel 24, and our chapter in certain numbers. The former gives the number of "valiant men that drew the sword" in Israel as 800,000; and the "men of Judah" as 500,000; while the latter states that there were of Israel 1,100,000 "men that drew sword," and of Judah 470,000 "men that drew sword." A moment's consideration of the terms will show that they express different facts, and that there is no contradiction.

Again, 2 Samuel 24:24 gives the purchase price of Araunah's threshing floor and oxen as 50 shekels of silver, but 1 Chronicles 21:25 tells us that David not only gave the "full price" (verse 24), but paid him in shekels of gold, the weight of 600,—far more than the purchase price, he no doubt realizing that the site was God's choice for the temple.

1 Chronicles 22

A new beginning is here evident, in the manner of approach to God, growing out of the suspension of judgment, and the providing of an altar of burnt offering and sacrifice, the acceptance of which by God was marked by fire from heaven. Now must the work begin that would not cease until the temple of God, grandest, most imposing and most costly of all structures ever erected, was perfect and complete.

Do we not have here something that suggests the far greater and more glorious "holy temple in the Lord" founded by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2), carried on through the centuries past, by Him (Ephesians 2:20-22), and finally to he displayed eternally (Revelation 21:1-5).

"Wrought stones," hewed, were the first things upon which work was under taken. Peter, in his First Epistle, chapter 2:4-8, speaks of stones. The first is a Living Stone (verse 4), Christ.

The wrought stones of our chapter have no counterpart in Him; they were dead stones. But in verse 5, Peter could say, "Ye also as lively (or living) stones are built up a spiritual house." That could only be after they were "wrought" and hewed, and taken out of the quarry and fitted for the place they were to occupy, by a power entirely outside of themselves. And thinking, these now living stones, true believers of the high honor they have of being part of that eternal dwelling for

God, of which Christ Himself is the Chief Corner Stone, should they not be overjoyed, and a sense of the grace that has been shown them, and the power that has been exercised upon them, should it not change their lives more than it has, as they look for that blessed hope, and the appearing of the glory (as it should read) of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13) ? Iron and brass would be needed in the temple, as well as stones; they suggest another thing about the believer: he has to be put into the furnace to be of much value to God; "but the God of all grace, Who bath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you" (1 Peter 5:10). Cedar trees, too, are in the list; tall and straight and stately, the ax must be laid to their roots, and they must be brought clown to be useful. Lastly, we read of gold and silver, corruptible things, Peter could call them (chapter 1:18) when writing to the believers about their purchase price, the precious blood of Christ. But looking at gold and silver as they appear to be used typically in Scripture, we see that gold speaks of divine righteousness; gold tried in the fire was the need of the Laodiceans (Rev. 3:18). And silver, from its use in the making of the tabernacle (Exodus 30, 36 and 38) is an illustration of redemption. The plans were all made, and David saw the completed building in his mind, long before it was built. Are you a "living stone"?

1 Chronicles 23

In chapter 22 we found Solomon definitely presented as David's successor by God's appointment, now that rest and peace had been obtained by the subduing of all enemies.

In chapter 23 Solomon is seen as sharing the throne with his father, and before the book closes David is gone, and Solomon reigns alone (chapter 29:23).

Herein is an illustration, a foreshadowing, of the millennial reign of Christ, Who must first subdue His enemies, and when this has been accomplished, a reign of unparalleled peace, splendor and prosperity begins. Many scriptures may be cited in support of this; it will be sufficient to point to Jer. 30; Matt. 24; Rev. 19:11-20:6; and Zech. 14:3- 21.

It is plain that as all scripture points to Christ (Luke 24:27), there are many persons and incidents recorded in the Book who (or which) present Christ to the enlightened mind of the child of God; not the least among them are David the suffering and conquering one; and Solomon the man of glory reigning. In the Chronicles there may be seen the blending of the two persons as one,—typical of Christ.

David prepared for the house its building materials (chapter 22), and in chapter 23 and following, all the appointments are made for the day of glory, though the temple was as yet unbuilt. (See Ephesians 1:4-2:22, speaking of God's heavenly people,—those who like the jailer at Philippi (Acts 16:31), have believed on the Lord Jesus in this present limited day of God's grace).

Chapter 23 gives the new service of the Levites (who are in the character of their position and service, typical of the Christian, redeemed, cleansed, consecrated to the Lord's service and without inheritance in the earth) now that the tabernacle in the wilderness was to give place to the dwelling place of glory.

1 Chronicles 24

Chapter 24 presents, also as under David's ordering—no longer of Moses— the highest character of blessing found in the Old Testament, and typical, too, of the highest character of blessing expressed as to heavenly things in the New Testament the priestly position. (See Revelation 5:10, 1 Peter 2:5, 9; Hebrews 10:19-22; Revelation 22:16).

The twenty four courses of priests (verses 7-19) ceased to function when Nebuchadnezzar carried Judah and Benjamin away, but were restored in Ezra's day (Ezra 6:18), and still going on when the Lord partook of flesh and blood (Matthew 1:5, etc.—Abia, verse 7, doubtless being Abijah mentioned in 1 Chronicles 24:10).

The twenty four elders of Revelation 4 and 5 seem to plainly express the completeness of the heavenly body of priests, there including every believer.

1 Chronicles 25

Chapter 25 brings in something wholly new; there was no singing; there were no instruments of music, in the system of things ordained under Moses. The explanation is that law never produced joy in the heart; grace does. Here again we are transported in thought to that day of millennial glory when Christ will be the Reigning One here on earth, the King of Glory (Psalm 24).

Then again in the hands of an earthly people, the musical instruments will have acceptance that were designed by man when in heart far from God, and with the blood of an innocent one (type of Christ) on his hands, seeking to find enjoyment and happiness while holding to the depth of unconfessed sin, and desiring not to know God (See Genesis 4:21; Romans 1:19-21).

The spiritual mind will have carefully observed that instrumental music is not mentioned in connection with believers in Christ, (see Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 14:15), and the significant silence regarding anything of musical instruments in the Acts, and the Epistles to the Corinthians, and to Timothy, where the order and behavior of Christians in their meetings are set out for the believer's guidance.

Asaph, a Levite of the family of Gersham, is named in the titles of twelve psalms, numbers 50 and 73 to 83. Psalm 88 bears the name of Heman, but this is thought by some to refer to another person (1 Chronicles 2:6). Jeduthun is named in the titles of Psalms 39, 62 and 77.

1 Chronicles 26

Chapter 26 brings us to the doorkeepers, or porters, and among them are the sons of Korah. (See Psalms 42, 14 to 49, 84, 85, 87, 88 which mention this family in their titles). There seems little room for doubting that they were the descendants of that Korah who rebelled against Moses and Aaron, and was cut off became of his sin (Numbers 16). If so, this is another mark of the grace of God working amidst the evil, bringing glory to Himself in a scene of rebellion.

Obed-Edom (verse 4), unless there were two Levites of the same name, is the man of chapter 13:13-14, whom God blessed. In chapter 26;20 we come to the last of the host of Israelites connected with the temple yet to be built by David's great son—the Levites appointed over the treasures of the house of God and the dedicated things. Other Levites there were, with duties outside the service of the temple, having general charge over Israel (verses 29-32).

All was planned, and the place for each person was chosen long before, by this king who was so much a type of Christ. This of course falls far short of the truth of Ephesians 1:3-14 and 4:7-16, yet it is in these Chapters (22 to 29) that Christ. David's greater Son (see Matthew 22:41- 46) is pictured in the administration of the kingdom when He. shall return (Luke 19:11-27), and also (in the Ephesians) as to His heavenly people, the believers of this present dispensation.

1 Chronicles 27

There were yet other matters to receive attention; nothing needed for the well being of the kingdom was, it seems, unprovided for in David's wise forethought. Twenty four thousand of the sons of Israel every month were called out to serve for that period in a sort of militia or national guard.

Besides these, an overseer or ruler was appointed for each tribe, including Zadok, the priest over the house of Aaron.

Then there were officers of the king in charge of the store houses; others over the farm laborers; over the vineyards, the olive trees and sycamores; over the stores of oil, the herds, the camels, the asses and the flocks.

Lastly we have David's counselors, including Ahithophel who afterwards turned against David to aid the rebellious Absalom. Abiathar, too, who joined an insurrection against Solomon, is mentioned as one of the seven men closest to the king. Do these remind us of Judas Iscariot, and what man is, by nature?

It may be asked, Why has God placed all these names and duties and places of authority, honor and privilege in His Word? Might not all these chapters 23 to 27 have as well been left out? It could not be so. Let us rather admit our own limitations and lack of understanding of a Book essentially divine, its Author God, and every Scripture "divinely inspired and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, fully fitted to every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17 JND)

The explanation, we believe is that it may be shown how much David was in the secret of communion with God, on the one hand; and on the other, the illustration is given of the power and wisdom found and expressed in one who had been the rejected and hated;—in this Christ is seen as the antitype or fulfilment of what is seen faintly in David.

1 Chronicles 28

In chapter 28 representatives of all the people are seen gathered to Jerusalem at David's call, and the aged king addressing them solemnly, speaking not of the law or the priesthood, both of which had utterly failed in their hands and the hands of their forefathers; rather did he speak of the dwelling place for God among them, and of His sovereign grace in the midst of His people. It was not the full, unhindered grace of the gospel, for here it depended on the king's faithfulness (verse 7), and we know that he did not remain steadfast.

How good for us that all depends on One far mightier than Moses or David or Solomon or any of the favored kings of Israel (Romans 3:21-26; 5:1-10; Colossians 1:12-23; Hebrews 10:1-18).

The temple was to be built, not after the pattern of the tabernacle in the wilderness, but wholly new and equally of God (verses 11-19). We readily see in the references to the building, that it was designed as a dwelling, not only for God, but for His people to approach to Him (the porch); and to abide there close to His presence (the "houses", and "chambers") a place of inexhaustible treasure (as it must be to have God's vast provision for His people to draw upon); and withal the place of the blood sprinkled mercy seat.

Again as we read verses 11 to 21 are we led to think of the purpose of God in connection with bringing "many sons to glory"—His heavenly saints all planned and arranged long before the day when there shall be a display of this glory (Revelation 21:9-27) to the millennial world, or apart from the display, in Jude 24 and 1 John 3:1-3.

All is at Solomon's commandment (verse 21)—does it not speak to all of us who are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, of our need of more ready willingness and of greater skill, in His service now?

1 Chronicles 29

It is a happy scene that the last chapter of 1 Chronicles presents; all the people rejoiced, and they brought offerings willingly to the Lord and praised Him. A variety of building materials and of costly fabrics, and precious stones, gold and silver, had been obtained by David for the temple, and in his affection for the house of his God, he had given largely of his own property.

Some idea of the value of David's gifts of three thousand talents of gold, and seven thousand talents of silver, may be obtained by changing the amounts into American money, the gold representing about eighty five million dollars; and the silver about twelve millions. Many added to David's gifts, the worth of what is mentioned in verse 7 being approximately twice the king's personal offering. All was given without grudging and must have been pleasing to Him of Whom the Scripture records that He loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:6-15 not sufficiently thought upon by many of God's dear people).

David's closing prayer clearly expressed his heart; his course was ended, and He Who had undertaken for him as a boy, had brought him through many trials and much discovery of himself, to a position of great honor; he could now say in the language of the twenty-third Psalm,

"Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

All the wealth was God's, and David and his son, and those present, were strangers and sojourners still.

It will be noted that the Christian hope of the coming of the Lord is never found in the Old Testament (see verse 15).

Amid great sacrifices to God, Solomon was a second time made king, now to reign alone. His position was without parallel in any earlier ruler of Israel.

Thus David's career, as the man of war, closes one day; and Solomon, the man of peace, begins his reign upon the next.

Nathan's and Gad's histories are mentioned at the close; we have seen both of these prophets in David's eventful life, coming in to him with messages from God, but their writings have not been preserved. We are assured that if they had been inspired, and part of what is embraced by the Lord's word in Luke 24:27; and the Apostle Paul's word in 2 Timothy 3:15-17, or in Peter's 2nd Epistle 3:16, they would not have been permitted to be destroyed.

Any intelligent reader of the Scriptures can without difficulty see that the purpose of the Divine Author is never to recite history in the fullest sense; what we are given in the Bible is history most truly, but only that is introduced which serves the purpose of that unerring and most wise Penman, the Holy Spirit. Nathan, Gad and others had compiled records, some of which were extant when the unnamed person used of God for writing the Chronicles completed his narrative, and if you wish to know of other matters than have been brought out here, go to the standard histories lacking inspiration, but truthful as records.

2 Chronicles 1

Solomon’s beginning a s king was excellent; he was strengthened in his kingdom, and God was with him and magnified him exceedingly. His first recorded act in this book (not the first in 1 Kings 2 and 3 which tell of judgment upon rebels, while the Chronicles give a record of God's grace) was going to Gibeon where the tabernacle still stood, with the congregation of Israel, and there offering a thousand burnt offerings upon the brazen altar.

We shall not find in Solomon the marks of a David: he was not the rejected one, despised and betrayed, and the object of the malignant hatred of the ruling powers, for Solomon is the reigning one, the man of power and glory. We notice too that Solomon does not at once, at least, gather the people to the ark at Jerusalem, but to the tent of meeting, the tabernacle at Gibeon. He goes where the people are. They are the object of blessing.

Solomon's request (verse 10) the night following his great offering upon the altar at Gibeon, commended himself to God; had he remained in the realization of dependence there indicated, had he continued as one subject to God for everything, and desiring nothing so much as to live in constant nearness to Him, how different his history would have been!

What Solomon did not ask for, God gave him, but he was ensnared by these blessings, not receiving and holding them as a steward of God's gifts,-but we shall talk of this further on. His wealth, and his power and wisdom, and not so much his piety, are told us in these chapters.

2 Chronicles 2

Solomon was now a great king; he was the greatest monarch of his day, and in his position he is a type of Christ in the day of His exaltation, (Matthew 26:64; 25:31; Zechariah 14:9,16 and many other Scriptures). He called upon the king of Tyre (chapter 2) to supply a man skillful to work in metal, in cloth and in wood, and to send cedar, cypress and sandal-wood trees out of Lebanon. For stone cutters, for burden bearers and for overseers in connection with the work now undertaken, Solomon took the 153,600 strangers found in the land. Thus was the great building of David's planning, and Solomon's execution put under way.

2 Chronicles 3

Not immediately upon his becoming king, but in the fourth year of his reign did Solomon begin to build the glorious temple on Mount Moriah, upon the ground where Ornan the Jebusite had had his threshing floor, and where the destroying angel had halted (1 Chronicles 21:14, 15).

The precise size of a cubit is not known; at the least it was 16 inches, so we may approximate the size of the temple proper as not less than eighty feet in length, twenty-six and one-half feet in width, and forty feet high. In front of it was a porch the width of the building and thirteen feet deep, its height was one hundred and sixty-feet. Around the building, not including these dimensions, and not mentioned here, (except as "the greater house" and "the upper chambers," but described in 1 Kings 6), were side chambers three stories high. The building was evidently not, as buildings are reckoned today, of immense size; its costliness and beauty are the features which are most remarkable. Pure gold within was only to be seen, except the floors, and upon this were overlaid precious stones and engraved cherubim on the walls. Even the nails used were of gold.

The cherubim (verse 10) were symbols of God's power in judgment, made of olive wood; they were overlaid with gold. With their outstretched wings they reached from wall to wall of the holy of holies, and their faces were toward the house,— not "inward" as our ordinary version reads, but rather outward. Exodus 37:7-9 gives us the cherubim in the tabernacle; they looked toward the covenant, the ten commandments, but when God has established His throne in righteousness, He can and He will turn toward the world to bless it according to that righteousness.

A veil was provided, similar to the one that hung in the tabernacle (Exodus 36:35). It was the similar veil of a later temple that was rent in two from the top to the bottom when Jesus died (Matthew 27:51).

This shows the character of God's present dealings: the believer now has the privilege of entering boldly through the veil (Hebrews 10:19-20), and to find no veil in heaven, and no temple there (Revelation 21:22), for God and the Lamb are the temple of it.

This place of immeasurable privilege was not granted under law, nor will it be under the reign of Christ: Israel and the earth have not immediate and direct access to Him who is hidden in the heavens. What a portion to be granted those who receive Him now as Saviour, and own Him as Lord!

Before the temple there were two pillars, whose combined length is given as 35 cubits—nearly 24 feet each, capped by crowns or capitals nearly 7 feet high. "Jachin" and "Boaz," their names. ("He will establish", and "In Him is strength") speak of the coming millennial kingdom of Christ.

2 Chronicles 4

An altar of brass equal in size to the holiest place, is described, and a molten sea or laver where the priests were to wash hands and feet when they approached for any service; ten smaller lavers for the washing of sacrifices; ten candlesticks, ten tables and a hundred golden bowls; these all were figures of the true (Hebrews 9:24); they spoke of approach to God, and of the removal of defilement by the washing of water (see Ephesians 5:26), of a more perfect sacrifice, and of heavenly light amid earth's darkness, of service for God, too.

Finally the house was completed, with its place for the priests privileged to be in constant nearness, and the "great court" for all who approached, its golden altar for incense, and all its furniture.

2 Chronicles 5

Solomon now assembled the elders of Israel and the heads of the tribes at Jerusalem, that the ark might be fittingly brought to its resting place within the temple.

The tabernacle also was brought from Gibeon, with all the furniture thereof. Uncounted sacrifices were made by Solomon and all the assembly of Israel, of sheep and oxen, and the priests brought the ark of the covenant into its place, to the oracle, or holy of holies, under the wings of the cherubim.

The gold covered staves were long, that had been used to carry the ark in its journeys with the people from Sinai and could be seen outside the ark, and there they were left; their rest was (in type, or illustration) begun.

In the ark there remained only the two tables of the law which Moses had put there (Exodus 40:20); the manna was gone (Exodus 16:33), and Aaron's rod that budded (Numbers 17:10; Hebrews 9:4), for the wilderness days were over.

Now rejoicing began, and as the sound of the trumpeters and singers, and those with cymbals and lutes and harps was heard, the house was filled with the cloud, the token of God's presence, so that the priests could not stand to do their service.

All this glory was soon to depart, because of an unfaithful people. In Ezekiel 9, 10, and 11, the tokens of God's presence are shown as being removed, because of the evil ways of those who professed nearness to Him, and when next we find the cloud, it is linked with the object of God's delight, Jesus, as He walked the earth:

"This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." Matthew 17:5.

Nevertheless the temple which Solomon had built is a figure of the heavenly dwelling place, our Father's house ( John 14:1, 2). And, as to Israel in a coming day, it is when all has been accomplished for them, that they will celebrate with joy; and God's presence, in the Person of His Son the Man of power, will be realized.

2 Chronicles 6

Solomon blessed the whole congregation of Israel, owning that all the favor in which he and his people stood, was from God. Jerusalem was the city of His choice, and David the king He had chosen. Not David however, but David's son should build the house for God's habitation, and had done so; God had performed His word to David.

Solomon kneeled down before the congregation and addressed God, not on the ground of the law or covenant only, but of mercy (verses 14 and 42). The heaven of heavens could not contain Him; will He indeed dwell with man on the earth ? (See Revelation 21:3).

Solomon asked for dealing in righteousness as between the righteous and the wicked (verse 23), but if Israel were to be defeated in war because of sin, and should turn again and confess and pray to God in the temple, he asked that they be forgiven and returned to their land. If they were afflicted with the stoppage of rain because of their sins, and repented, confessing His name, he asked that the rain be restored; likewise as to all other troubles which God should permit because of their sinful ways, if they prayed to Him, that the affliction should be removed. The stranger, too, was not forgotten; if he came out of a far country for God's great name's sake, and prayed toward the temple.

Solomon's thoughts lastly were carried on to that day when Israel was to be taken away captive to a land far off, and he prayed that if they should then seek God, He would forgive them.

There was no public response to Solomon's entreaty. By night God spoke to him (chapter 7), setting the continuation of His blessing upon obedience, and we know that failure and ruin soon followed.

Whatever God has entrusted to man, he has always failed in; the one Man (1 Cori.15:21-22) who gave Him unceasing delight as He traversed this world, His blessed Son, Jesus, is the One who has wrought deliverance for the captives, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:14). But how few know it; believe the good news; receive Him! Have you?

2 Chronicles 7

Turning back to Leviticus 9, when the priesthood w a s established, we find a scene that in a way parallels what is presented here; the glory of God had then appeared to all the people, and fire from God had consumed the offerings upon the brazen altar. But the priesthood had failed, the people had lost everything of title, by sin; and kingly power had set aside that system that had broken down. All now rested upon the "sure mercies of David", as we have seen fully set out in Solomon's prayer. In the millennium, all will rest upon the Messiah-King, the Lord Jesus, when He takes His power and reigns, for He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25), and there will be no failure in Him.

Solomon's reign of glory was soon over, and brightest at its beginning. Dazzled by earthly power and glory he fell into sin. We may notice the burnt offering singled out for express mention in verse 1 of our chapter; it is because the burnt offering illustrates, typifies, the entire devotion of Christ, His obedience even to death, and that the death of the cross. It is that character of His life and death here which gave the fullest delight to His Father, and was a profound motive for His love (John 10:17).

In the presence of God's displayed glory (see however 2 Corinthians 3 which points to a surpassing glory, that of His grace), the children of Israel bowed with their faces to the ground, and worshiped and thanked Him Whose loving kindness endureth forever. Solomon offered in sacrifice 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep in the dedication of the temple, using the middle of the court, before the building, because the brazen altar, large though it was (chapter 4:1), was not able to receive the burnt offerings and oblations and fat to be burned thereon.

The feast of verses 8 and 9 is the feast of tabernacles, ordained of God for Israel in Leviticus 23:34, and in its order given again in Numbers 29:12, and Deuteronomy 16:13-15. It was not kept with booths of branches of trees, however, from Joshua's day until Nehemiah's (see Nehemiah 8:14-17).

The temple completed, and the king's house, God appeared to Solomon to tell him the conditions under which he was placed, and the people with him that the blessings now possessed might be continued; and if lost by reason of unfaithfulness, how they might be repossessed. If the house of Israel should turn away from God, the nation should be uprooted from the land of their inheritance, and the magnificent temple should become an astonishment to the passer by. Such was to occur in substantially four hundred years, because of Israel's provoking God to anger by idolatry.

God requires faithfulness; should not His children by faith in the risen and exalted Saviour today seek to profit by Israel's failure, and in deep confession, with heartfelt desire endeavor to walk in practical separation from a guilty world, whose judgment, as well as that of Christendom, is not far away?

2 Chronicles 8

Solomon continued his prosperous and indeed glorious reign, adding a little to David's conquests and settling the children of Israel in new and rebuilt cities. Under him the kingdom was in peace (the meaning of his name, Solomon, is peace); the remnant of the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites who were found in the land in the days of Joshua, and were not dispossessed (see Deut. 20:16-18 and Judges 1) were allowed to remain, but as subject peoples. The children of Israel were none of them bondmen, but soldiers and officers of Solomon's army.

Pharaoh's daughter (verse 11) whose connection with Solomon as his bride, told of in 1 Kings 3:1 gives an illustration of what will be true of David's greater Son, when in the establishment of Christ's kingdom, the Gentiles will be brought into blessing with Israel (Micah 4; Zechariah 8:20-23; Isaiah 56:6-8). It is believed that Pinetam II of the 21St dynasty was the Pharaoh whose daughter Solomon married, and who is referred to in 1 Kings 9:16.

All was in order, according to the commandment of Moses (verse 13), and the ordinance of David (verse 14), in these happy days of Solomon's wise and beneficent rule. It was a scene of marvelous blessing, but not characterized by faith; the position of Israel under Solomon was after all far below that of the believer of this present dispensation of grace. Neither does it appear that Solomon's heart, nor the people's, rose to the height of David's, particularly when in his rejection, David reckoned habitually upon God, so that in verse 14 he is called "the man of God". No such term was applied to Solomon, though he loved God, and walked in His statutes.

Is not Solomon, as we see him in God's Word, much like many Christians who do not go on habitually in sin, but do not seek in Christ the deeper knowledge of His will, growing up to Him in all things (Ephesians 4:15).

Solomon went to the seaports at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Akaba (verse 17), and thence ships were sent, which Hiram, king of Tyre, had supplied, to Ophir for gold. It does not appear that this was an act of dependence upon God; he was already very rich, for God had given him as He had promised, but he was now enriching himself, to reap, sorrow in his old age.

2 Chronicles 9

This chapter, which corresponds almost word for word with 1 Kings 10, closes the account of Solomon here given. It will be noted that 1 Kings 11, which tells of Solomon's departure from God, and the infliction of God's chastening hand upon him in consequence, has no counterpart in the Chronicles; the explanation it may not be amiss to again say, is that this second account of Israel's and later Judah's kings is to set out the grace of God and of His blessing, only such faults being mentioned as are needed in order that we may understand the instructions of His grace.

In the books of the Kings, the general and public history of God's government is given, following the line of Israel's kings—the ten tribes—after Solomon, to the end of the line, and the disappearance of the people in captivity. The books of the Chronicles also set out that character of things, particularly in David and Solomon, which could be used to foreshadow the Messiah, that now rejected Son of David, Who is David's Lord, Who ere long shall reign over Israel and the new earth in righteousness.

The queen of Sheba, coming from the far south—it is claimed by the Abyssinians that she was from their land—having heard of Solomon's fame came to Jerusalem to prove him with enigmas, but there was not a thing hidden from Solomon; he explained every one. Astonished, bewildered by his wisdom and the glory of his house and his ascent by which he went up to the temple, there was no more spirit in her. She acknowledged that though the report she had heard in her own land had been wonderful; but what her eyes beheld, and her ears took in, exceeded the report. She owned, too, God as the giver of this glory and wisdom, and gave Solomon much gold, spices and precious stones.

The glory and greatness of Solomon's court brought all the kings of the earth to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart, and they brought him presents year by year. He ruled over all the kings from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt. All this puts us in mind of the coming reign of Christ as Israel's King, the Son of Psalm 2 and the King of Psalms 21 and 24.

"The rest of the acts" of Solomon (verse 29) were written elsewhere; not only in the words of Nathan the prophet, in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer, but in the Scriptures, in 1 Kings 1-11. And he died; the man whose pen indited the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, passed from the scene of his triumphs to meet God.

His warnings, and the example of his life remain, preserved to us who live in closing days of grace; may they stir our hearts, who know Christ as Saviour, to be truer to Him, to be attracted by nothing this world can afford, away from our blessed Lord, the bright, the Morning Star!

Christ is coming, are you ready ?

He is coming for His own;

He will call them up to meet Him,

And will place them on His throne.

2 Chronicles 10

Rehoboam, Solomon's son, went to Shechem, approximately thirty-five miles north of Jerusalem, to be crowned; he must have known of dissatisfaction among the people, and looked with some apprehension upon the appearance of Jeroboam, the former servant of Solomon his father, about whom see 1 Kings 11:26-40.

Rehoboam's birth occurred shortly before David's death, and he was now forty-one; unquestionably then he knew of Jeroboam's opposing himself to Solomon, and he may have known of the word of God by Ahijah the prophet regarding a division of the kingdom, because of the allowance of idolatry under Solomon.

It was Rehoboam's choice to follow the unwise advice of the young men who had grown up with him; and the kingdom, except Judah and Benjamin, fell immediately from his grasp.

It will be observed that upon this momentous occasion, Rehoboam did not commit his problem to God—a strong contrast with his grandfather David whose habit was to seek Him in everything. Yet the result was of God; He is not mocked, and the reaping follows the nature and kind of the sowing as His Word solemnly declares, and instance upon instance of this is found in the Scriptures.

Solomon had, long before his death, turned in heart from God, and in part reaped for his sowing; his son continues the reaping,—a solemn warning to Christian parents.

2 Chronicles 11

Rehoboam would have plunged the land into civil war to hold the ten tribes from secession, but the word of God through Shemaiah forbade him, and he contented himself with strengthening that portion of the land which owned the authority of the son of David. For three years he and his people, humbled by what had occurred, did well, walking in the ways of David and Solomon.

The ten tribes having openly embraced idolatry under Jeroboam (see 1 Kings 12:26-33; 13:33; 11:7-10) , the priests and the Levites that were in his kingdom resorted to Rehoboam out of all their districts, and the Levites left their possessions and came to Judah and Jerusalem. After them, those out of all the tribes of Israel, who set their heart to seek the Lord God of Israel, come to Jerusalem to sacrifice to Him as the God of their fathers. In these years Rehoboam dealt wisely, though later followed the evil example of his father in taking a multitude of wives and other ways (chapter 12), but for the moment, he shines, though not as brightly, it is true, as his father or his grandfather had.

The test was soon to come; Was he profiting by the earnest counsel of the Book of Proverbs ? Did chapters 2 and 3, for example, sink into his heart?

2 Chronicles 12

Jerusalem was the city that God had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put His name there, but Rehoboam with Judah and Benjamin, quickly forgot the lessons which should have been thoroughly learned.

There was one place that God had told them to worship Him (Dent. 12:11), but they had turned their backs on Him, and had put up places of their own choice, and according to their own minds. How displeasing all this was to Him. And this has been done in these days, instead of going according to the plain written Word of God. When his kingdom was established and he had become strong (see verse 17 of the 11TH chapter, and verses 1-4 of this chapter), Rehoboam forsook the law of the Lord.

How many a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, both before and since this first king of Judah, has similarly turned away from God's written Word, refusing His rich provision for the subject heart, and seeking like an early sinner (Genesis 4:16- 24) , or an early saint (Genesis 13:10-13), satisfaction in the world.

Rehoboam's father, Solomon, a poor example he became to his children in his old age, had written down these earnest words,

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Eccles. 11:9.

Rehoboam, forsaking the Word of God as the rule of his life, was joined with his people, and his people with him, for Judah, we are told in 1 Kings 14:22-24, "did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked. Him to jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all that their fathers had done."

Judgment therefore came upon the little nation, and it came in the form of an in vision from Powerful Egypt; Shishak, king of Egypt, in Rehoboam's fifth year came up against Jerusalem, and took. the fortified cities, that belonged to Judah.

With an irresistible enemy before the city, and a message from God brought by Shemaiah the prophet who had been God's mouthpiece at the commencement of Rehoboam's reign (chapter 11:2) the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves, acknowledging that the chastening hand of God was upon them because of their sins. That the princes are mentioned before the king, who should have been the leader in right ways, is significant, and verse 14 adds the brief summary of Rehoboam's life as God saw it, that he did evil, for he applied not his heart to seek the One to whom he owed all, his protector and source of blessing.

Because of the princes and the king humbling themselves, the blow which Shishak was prepared to give the little kingdom was softened; all the treasures of the magnificent Temple, the planning of which had been so much before David, and whose building and equipment had occupied Solomon's mind and heart, and the treasures of the king's house that had taken 13 years to build (1 Kings 7:1)— all these, brought into being but forty years before, were carried away by the Egyptians. Much was left, true, but the loss was great. Shields of brass (bronze) make a poor exchange for shields of gold.

There was that to commend, and the pitiful eyes of God saw it: Rehoboam had humbled himself, and in Judah there were good things (verse 12). Whether for himself or for God's sake, the king maintained a state of war with the several ten tribes (verse 15); chapter 18 shows us a change in this attitude of opposition to the idol worshiping kingdom on the north of Judah, and it came about through the neglect of the generally godly Jehoshaphat.

Rehoboam was 41 years old when he became king at Solomon's death, and after reigning 17 years he died. No word comes to us as to his state 'before God when death came. Is verse 14 the record for the great white throne. (Revelation 20:11) ? Solemn thought 1 Reader, consider!

2 Chronicles 13

A clear example of the different characters and objects of the Chronicles and the Kings is seen in the two accounts of Rehoboam's son Abijah or Abijam. In 1 Kings 15:1-8 we learn nothing good about him, and in 2 Chronicles 13 nothing bad. The reason is clear; the books of the Kings present the history, in brief, of man in responsibility and his failure, while the books of the Chronicles were written after the captivity, to show as we have before noted how God's grace had been at work in the history of the house of David.

In our chapter we find but one incident in Abijah's life, and that an occasion of which we are given no mention in 1 Kings. He maintained the state of war which his father had kept up with Israel, and gathered an army which must have taken every able man in the kingdom; Jeroboam met Abijah with twice as many soldiers.

Whatever the motive or motives behind Abijah's appeal to the ten tribes (verses 5-12), whether he sought first the blessing of the nation as the chosen people of God and His glory, or advantage for himself, he rightly based his address upon God's promises to David (not those to Abraham, nor those conditional promises given through Moses). Abijah here proclaimed the Lord (Jehovah) as the God of Israel—-the 12 tribes (verse 5), the kingdom as Jehovah's (verse 8), and He the God of those with Abijah (verses 10-11), with them to lead them (verse 12).

The ten tribes had, under Jeroboam, adopted golden calves for their gods, no gods at all, but Abijah could speak of the ordered service of the true God as still going on in Jerusalem.

There were the serving priests He had appointed, the sons of Aaron; there the Levites at their work; there every morning and evening burnt-offerings and sweet incense were burned (tokens of the worthiness of Christ as offered to God upon the cross, though Abijah did not know it); there too the twelve loaves, presenting the whole body of Israel as one united people for God, though now because of sin divided; and there amid the darkness, were the seven lamps of the candlestick of gold burning every evening, telling of divine light amid the moral darkness. Further, the priests with their trumpets, as in Joshua's day (Joshua 6), and according to God's word (Numbers 10:1, 2, 9), were with the people in this war.

From a man of faith, from one whose trust was in God, the words of Abijah would have much power, and there were those who really trusted in Him there. And this word, whatever its motive (we may not judge), or whether superficial or deeply felt, was really an appeal to God; it was not spoken in vain. The cry of need (verse 14) was answered, and God smote Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah. Relying upon Jehovah, the God of their fathers, the children of Judah were strengthened, and the idol-serving kingdom was humbled; its king was smitten of God and died.

The prophet Iddo wrote more of Abijah, but what we have read serves the purpose of the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to you and me ?

2 Chronicles 14

Abijah’s short reign was followed by the long one of Asa, marked by godliness. He took away the idol altars and high places, and broke the columns or statues, and cut down the "groves" (which were not rows of trees, but most probably were wooden symbols of a goddess in the form of images or pillars, or mere stems of trees inserted in the earth.—part of the system of idolatry). And he commanded his people to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, and to practice what His word laid upon them.

Asa went further, and removed out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the sun-images. This was most commendable; but when were all these marks of idol worship brought in?

Though idols may have been secretly worshiped right along since Egypt was left behind, the open introduction of idolatry clearly came in Solomon's day (see 1 Kings 11:33). For this evil, the kingdom was, divided, and Solomon's on Rehoboam had but two of the twelve tribes to reign over Yet neither Rehoboam nor his son Abijah seems to have repented of the evil in any measure. It remained for Solomon's great-grandson to make a beginning at the exclusion of idolatry from the land, from the two tribes who recognized the divinely ordered line of David as their rulers, for the ten tribes never gave up the open practice of the worship of idols.

Judah must be protected from enemies without, beside having the grasp of the enemy (idolatry) within weakened, Asa felt, and he caused fortified cities to be built, though the land had rest, for God had given him freedom from war.

In Asa we see a happy combination of profession and practice and prosperity, and he could rightly say, "We have sought the Lord our God; we have sought Him and He has given us rest on every side."

Asa had an army, and it was to be tested lest he become careless and indifferent; the enemy of our souls, too, the devil, always quick to seek occasion against those who fear God, would not wish to leave the pious and peaceful king without attack. Accordingly Zerah the Ethiopian, with an enormous army came, and approached to Mareshah, not twenty-five miles from Jerusalem, on the southwest, one of Asa's fortified cities.

To follow the Lord in the quiet walks of life, gives great sanction to call upon Him for help when trouble is near, and Asa now proved the might of His hand upon Whom he called.

"Thou art our God"; he could say, "let not man (the word used for 'man' here is of man as weak, mortal) prevail against Thee."

God smote the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and they fled, crushed before the Lord and before His army. Thus was God honoring them that honor Him.

Happy Asa, happy Judah, while God was their resource!

2 Chronicles 15

Again was the king as his fathers, reminded that the continuance of God's blessing on the kingdom was founded upon faithfulness: if the king and his people forsook God, He would forsake them. Privilege brings responsibility. See Romans 11:17-22; 1 Corinthians 10; Galatians 6:7-10; Hebrews 10:26-31; 1 Peter 4:17, 18, and many other passages which bear upon the responsibility of man, and of believers, and do not touch the eternal security of him who trusts in Jesus. There is reward for faithfulness too, as Azariah told Asa (verse 7).

The words of the prophet sank deeply into the king's heart; he took courage and put away the abominations—that which was connected with idolatry—out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities he had taken from mount Ephraim, and renewed the altar of the Lord that was before the temple at Jerusalem. He assembled all Judah and Benjamin and the strangers with them out of Ephraim and Manasseh and Simeon who departed from their homes, to Asa when they saw that the Lord his God was with him; this was in the fifteenth year of Asa's reign. Jeroboam, the first head of the northern kingdom of ten tribes, had died in the second year of Asa's reign; his son Nadab reigned less than two years, and was succeeded by Baasha, who killed him, and kept the throne for twenty-four years.

It was a season of rejoicing for the godly in Asa's kingdom, as there gathered the thousands of his people with those from neighboring and more distant tribes of Baasha's kingdom, to sacrifice at Jerusalem, as in brighter days. There they pledged themselves to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul, and that whoever would not seek Him should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. All Judah (verse 15) rejoiced at the oath, for they took it with all their heart, and sought the Lord with their whole desire, and He was found of them, and He gave them rest round about.

If God be the believer's object, he will be blessed, and so these people of old time found; they were only a small part of the great body of His earthly people, who as a mass were worshiping idols and serving Baasha, the murderer, but God is the unfailing resource of those who, in confession of failure and sin and widespread ruin, seek Him with their whole desire; He will be found of them and give them rest.

Asa, yet more emboldened, removed his mother from her position as the queen mother, because she had made an idol for the "grove" or Asherah; he cut down her idol, stamped it and burned it in the valley Kidron, by Jerusalem. He did not remove the last vestiges of idolatry; the high places yet remained; but his heart was toward God all his days, and he added to the treasures and vessels in the temple.

Thus God, Who sees all, and judges with right estimation, records the life of a man who feared Him: without the deeper exercises of David, the man after God's own heart, and without the power of Solomon, the man of peace and power and wisdom.

Asa presents an example the Christian may well take notice of, and find encouragement in, to walk with God, though much of power has been lost; though the enemy of our souls has triumphed, and God's people are misled.

God first! was Asa's motto, and when occasion required, he showed by his action here recorded, that the ties of nature were second to those that held him in obedience to God and His Word.

2 Chronicles 16

An error seems to have crept in, in stating the year when Baasha king of Israel came up against Judah and built Ramah. The account in 1 Kings does not give the time this occurred, but as Baasha died in Asa's 26th year (1 Kings 16:8), it may be well to mention for "thirty fifth" in the last verse of chapter 15, we should read, "twenty fifth"; and in the first verse of our chapter, "twenty sixth" should be substituted for "thirty sixth."

Had it been important that the year should be exactly stated, we are sure that God would have seen to it that no mistakes were made by the men who copied the scriptures in ancient times from book to book.

Baasha built, or strengthened, Ramah to stop the God-fearing Israelites from going to Jerusalem, and it was right that Asa should seek to prevent this work. Satan is ever ready to interfere with the blessing of God's people, but God is able to thwart his designs, and does from time to time, especially when His people ask Him.

Asa, however, does not now seek God's intervention. The regard for God, which had notably marked his earlier years, was not active, and his thought was to seek help from man, even from the sun worshipers of Syria.

To Ben-hadad—"son of the Sun-god" (apparently the official title of Syrian kings), Asa sent silver and gold, taken from the treasures of the temple and from his own house that Soloman had built, with a plea that the Syrians should attack Israel, and thereby stop Baasha from carrying out his plan at Ramah.

Ben-hadad listened to the appeal, and sent the captains of his forces against the nearest (northermost) cities of Israel, and Baasha, as expected, stopped the building of Ramah. Then Asa took all Judah, and they carried away the stones and timber from Ramah, and built or rebuilt with them Geba and Mizpah, cities of Benjamin.

But God would not leave Asa without rebuke, and sent Hanani the seer to him to tell him that he had failed, in relying on the help of the king of Syria, instead of putting his trust in God, and loss was thereby his portion. This was inevitable. The Ethiopians and Libyans, with their million-strong army, were far more dangerous foes than Baasha, but when Asa relied upon God, He delivered them into his hand,

"For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him." (Verse 9.)

What strength for the faint-hearted! What a resource for the feeble, who trust in Jesus! All that is needed is full trust, to make Him the reliance of the heart, and the Christian has naught to fear as he goes from day to day through a scene of the enemy's activities. An unseen, but faithful God, is his friend, his resource, his protector.

Asa was in no mood to receive the rebuke, and he put the seer in the prison, enraged with him; besides he oppressed some of the people at the same time. How untrustworthy man is, at best!

God spoke yet again to Asa, as he neared the end of his long reign: a disease in his feet assailed him, and it became extremely bad. Would he now recognize God's dealing with him, acknowledge his waywardness, and that the affliction was a messenger from Him to speak to his conscience and heart? No, "in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians."

The physicians were powerless in a case like his; this dealing of God's could not be averted by man's power.

It will be plainly seen that this illness of Asa's was not a case for "faith healing", but the opposite; it shows that illness may be a chastening from God, a means of blessing to those who are exercised thereby. Asa, however, was not exercised, and in the third year of the reign of the wicked Ahab of Israel, he died.

2 Chronicles 17

Asa’s son, Jehoshaphat. strengthened himself against Israel, and placed forces in all the fortified cities of Judah, and set garrisons in the land of Judah, and in the cities of Ephraim, that Asa his father had taken.

This was an excellent beginning, but it is not enough to begin well; it is even more important to go on well, and to finish well. Jehoshaphat, nevertheless, was blessed of God on account of his early faithfulness, as Asa had been. God is never in the debt of His people; they are always His debtors!

As to Jehoshaphat, we learn that he walked in the first ways of his father 'David, and sought not unto the Baals—the idols from which the land was never free-but he sought the God of his father, and walked in His commandments, and not after the doings of Israel. This commendable course resulted in the kingdom's being established in his hand, all Judah gave gifts to him, and he had riches and honor in abundance.

Encouraged, and recognizing the favor of God in what had befallen him, Jehoshaphat went on in the ways of God, and he removed the high places and "groves" (Asherahs) out of Judah-traces of idolatry which Asa had allowed to remain, (see chapter 15:17).

In the third year of his reign, he sent his princes to teach in the cities of Judah, and with them Levites and priests, and they went about through all the cities and taught, having the book of the law of the Lord with them,—the same Word of God that is ours today,—the books of Moses. This meant strength for those who would learn humbly from God's Word, and so it was that the terror of the Lord was upon all the kingdoms of the land that were round about Judah, and they made no war upon the country and its godly king. (Dependence upon God's Word brings strength to all who make it their own). Some of the Philistines and Arabians even brought Jehoshaphat gifts.

The seventeenth chapter presents a happy picture; in it, all is well; peace and prosperity were in evidence; at the same time there was a preparedness for war, for enemies were all around.

Of one of the military leaders, Amasiah, the Holy Spirit Who is the true Author of the Scriptures, has told us that he "willingly offered himself unto the Lord" (verse 16).

O, nothing escapes the All-seeing eyes of the Lord, that is truly done for Him, or will miss His commendation in the day that is fast approaching. Would that more of the Lord's people were exercised about a larger measure of devotedness to Him!

2 Chronicles 18

We reach now the evidence of the change in Jehoshaphat; not that God was no longer before him, but that he had become blinded by the favor of the world. He had "riches and honor in abundance"—we read in chapter 17:5 but now the riches and honor had turned his heart away from a simple, childlike trust in God, and he saw but poorly what the character of the world around him was. To the north lay the kingdom of Israel; they spoke the same language, were children of Abraham too: there was a natural tie, and it seemed the part, perhaps, of worldly wisdom to make an alliance with Ahab, son of Omri, of the fifth dynasty of the kings of Israel of whom the Holy Spirit records,

"And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him," etc. etc. 1 Kings 16:30.

The alliance of Jehoshaphat with Ahab did not occur in a moment, we may be sure, but it is evident that it occurred fairly early in his reign,—not more than six years after he ascended the throne, for Jehoshaphat's grandson Ahaziah was born of the marriage of his son with Ahab's daughter in the seventh year, being 22 years of age when he began to reign, about six years after Jehoshaphat's death.

Jehoshaphat's course from this time on is a most solemn warning to the Christian. He had the enjoyment of all that the 17th chapter presents, but the world attracted him, as it had Solomon, to his most serious loss. If he would be friends with the world (strangers to God, enemies of God by wicked works), he must help. fight their battles, be a partner in their affairs.

Lot had proved this, and the folly of such a course is shown in his sad history (Genesis 13:14; and chapter 19), but we are slow to learn, all of us; and the more when our eyes are off the Lord.

Verse 2 brings us to Jehoshaphat's 17th year as King—ten years after the alliance with Ahab was made.

What word for God to hear, Who hears all, sees all, knows what is in the heart! Jehoshaphat said to Ahab,

"I am as thou art, and my people as thy people!" Yet Jehoshaphat's conscience troubled him (and well it might).

"Inquire," said he to Ahab, "I pray thee, at the word of the Lord today."

What did this idol worshiper know of the word of the Lord ? He assembled the prophets—not of God, but of the idols— and asked them to tell him whether to go or not, to battle with the Syrians. Their answer did not satisfy the man who knew God, nor could it.

"Is there not," said he, "here a prophet of the Lord besides, that we might inquire of him ?"

Yes, there was one; God had not left Israel wholly without witness for Himself, and he was sent for, to disclose to Ahab his end.

The prison was the reward of Micaiah for his faithfulness. It has often been so with faithful men, but God is the rewarder of such. The two kings then went together to Ramoth-Gilead on the east of the Jordan,—one of Solomon's strongholds which the Syrians had taken,—and there Ahab fell, though Jehoshaphat was spared by God’s intervention.

2 Chronicles 19

Surely somewhat exercised by what he had gone through, Jehoshaphat returned to Jerusalem, and Jehu the son of that Hanani who had brought the divine rebuke to Asa, went out to meet him with a message from God.

"Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord?" was his message, coupled with the assurance that he had incurred God's displeasure, though there were good things found in him, which were not unnoticed. It would seem that Jehoshaphat received the word from God more humbly than his father had done.

He dwelt at Jerusalem, and stayed away from Samaria, where he never should have gone. Then he went out again from end to end of his little kingdom and "brought them back to the Lord Clod of their fathers." This was good work surely.

Jehoshaphat set judges in the land throughout all the fenced cities of Judah, and admonished them to judge righteously, acting not for man, but for God, whose fear must be upon them—the God with whom is no iniquity, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts (verse 7).

In Jerusalem he set of the Levites, the priests and the chief of the fathers of Israel, for the settlement of the more serious difficulties, and warned them as he had the judges in the other cities, to fear God, serve faithfully, and warn those who should come before them, that they trespass not against Him.

It is evident that Jehoshaphat, though again to be tempted and failing therein, was at this time profiting deeply by his failure; though he had brought sorrow and humiliation upon himself through being attracted by what the world had to offer, the lesson had been impressed upon him that God must have the first place, and he not only set himself to seek Him, but endeavored to arouse his people to the same object. If he could not restore the glory of his great ancestors David and Solomon, he would seek to provide the same sort of guardianship over his own reduced kingdom that David had arranged before his death.

May all God's people profit from the blunders they make, as Jehoshaphat did from his, and as Peter, we may say, did from his great fall, when he denied thrice the One with whom he thought he was ready to go to both prison and death.

May Jehoshaphat's "world-bordering" as it has been called, also be used of God to restrain His people from allying themselves with the present world which has added to the sins of the earlier period we are here considering, by rejecting the Son of God come in grace, and awaits, although ignorant of it, the judgment such rejection calls for. A clean cut separation in heart and in life is needed, and will meet the blessing of God, if practiced by His children.

2 Chronicles 20

Satan’s hand is to be seen in another form in this chapter from what we saw in the eighteenth.

There, successfully, the devil sought to allure the god-fearing king from his life of faith, and humble dependence, by wealth and honor and what else the world could give.

Here he would frighten him, drive him away from God by force and by fear and destroy him.

These are among Satan's chief methods of weakening the people of God, and the believer's security lies in taking everything to God, and receiving everything from God.

Had Jehoshaphat really had God before him at the time, he would never have joined himself with the wicked Ahab and his more wicked wife, Jezebel, nor encouraged in the least the marriage of his son with the daughter of that couple which brought untold damage to the kingdom of Judah.

In chapter 19, however, we found that Jehoshaphat had profited by the experience, bitter as it was, and set himself to bring back his people to Jehovah the God of their fathers; he was therefore prepared of God to receive a new experience of His mercy and grace.

The children of Moab and of Ammon, hereditary enemies, but in David's and Solomon's days subdued, were allowed to come against Jehoshaphat; it was Satan's work, but God was going to overrule for blessing on his servant.

Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord (happy, peace-giving engagement in prayer and reading the Word of God!), and proclaimed a fast throughout Judah. No hurried mobilization of troops; no gathering of fighting materials; no fortifying the cities, or other military preparations do we read of, but what was far more needed,—the people gathered themselves together to ask help of the Lord and to seek Him.

Jehoshaphat in his prayer (verses 6-13) owned God as his one resource; the unseen Ruler, the One of power and might, he asked to intervene in behalf of those who had no might, nor knew what to do, but whose eyes were upon Him.

As they waited before God, the answer came through a Levite, of the sons of Asaph,

"Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's!"

It was their portion to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, as at the overthrow of Pharaoh's army (Exodus 14:13-14). Thanksgiving and praise resulted, for there was faith there to receive and trust in the Word of God.

Early in the morning, when in confidence in God, the people went forth to meet the invaders who had crossed the Dead Sea near its middle, and were marching toward Jerusalem, Jehoshaphat spoke encouragingly to them,

"Believe in Jehovah your God, so ye shall be established: believe His prophets, so ye shall prosper."

The truth of these words has many a time since been felt. To trust in the Lord is fundamental; to give diligent attention to His word, having trusted in Him, is the way to the soul's prosperity (3 John 2).

It was when the song of praise rose on the morning air, that God made the advancing Moabites, Ammonites and associated people of Mount Seir at enmity with each other, so that they made an end of one another till none had escaped. And so the place of battle became the scene of blessing; the hearts of the humble were lifted up in praise to Him Who had wrought for them, and besides, for He deals with a bountiful hand to His people, the terror of God was on all the surrounding kingdoms, and Judah's land was in quiet rest. All was not as it should be, but according to their faith it was done unto them.

Connecting Jehoshaphat's history as shown us in the Chronicles, with the more general history contained in the Kings, we may note that Elijah's work as God's servant, was in Israel and not in Judah; that Jehoshaphat began to reign in Ahab's fourth year, and lived seven years after that wicked king of Israel died on the battle field; and that Jehoshaphat's son Jehoram was regent during the last 7 or 8 years of the former's life, or from about the time of Ahab's death; that before Jehoshaphat's death Elisha the prophet began his ministry in Israel while Elijah was still living; that Elijah's departure occurs after the death of Jehoshaphat.

2 Chronicles 21

With Jehoshaphat's death, his son Jehoram who had acted as regent for about seven years already (see 2 Kings 1:17; 8:16, and 3:1) while his father lived, became king. Jehoram had the benefit of his father's rich experience in the school of God, for he was now 32 years of age, having been about 7 when Jehoshaphat took the throne; like his father, he must have known of the remarkable ministry of Elijah the prophet, and how God had displayed Himself both in judgment and in blessing in Israel and in Judah.

But these things had little or no effect on this young man; he murdered all his brothers and certain of the princes of Israel, and he walked in the way of the kings of Israel as did the house of Ahab, for Ahab's daughter was his wife. He re-established or strengthened idolatry in Judah, and led the people into immorality such as characterized the house of Ahab.

God's forbearance continued in the face of this terrible record; in grace He lingered over the nation.

Is this not comparable with the amazing grace of God at this present moment of the world's history? What increasing proof we have, from day to day, that men, women, and children too, have turned their backs upon the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent to be a Saviour, and established for themselves other objects supreme in the heart. Judgment approaches. If they have read it, they have ignored that Word of God that speaks both of grace and of judgment, and that solemnly warns the young in particular (Eccl. 11:9) that for all these things God will bring them into judgment.

As we gather from what is told of Jehoram's course, though eternity will bring for him the solemn judgment of the great white throne, brought its share of earthly punishment also, for Edom revolted, and set up a king of their own; and Jehoram could not subdue them. Libnah also, in the south, revolted and apparently was not retaken.

To Jehoram came then a message from Elijah (the only reference in the Chronicles to this prophet who now, as we judge had been given his glorious passage to the presence of God, and had left this message in writing, to be delivered in due time), foretelling a visitation from God upon Judah, and in particular upon himself, because of his sins.

Philistines and Arabians, stirred up against Jehoram by God, came up into Judah and carried away all the substance that was found in the king's house; his sons also and his wives, so that there was no son left him except the youngest one, called Jehoahaz and Ahaziah.

Lastly the disease foretold by Elijah's writing came on the godless king, an incurable sickness of the bowels from which he died in cruel sufferings, but apparently unrepentant. He died without being regretted, or desired, another example of God's rule given in Galatians 6:7, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

2 Chronicles 22

The consequences of the good king Jehoshaphat's alliance with the house of Ahab are still evident in the record of Judah's history here given us, and it could not well be otherwise while Jezebel's daughter, Athaliah, was in power. Ahaziah, the youngest and only living son of Jehoram was made king in his father's stead, and his short reign is only spoken of as characterized by the ways of the house of Ahab, king of Israel, his mother being his guide in wickedness apparently from his boyhood on, and Ahab's family were his counsellors after the death of his father. Would these things pass under the eye of God without notice ? Verse 7 tells us otherwise.

Ahaziah's age was 22 when he began to reign; not 42, an error having been made by a copyist and repeated in our translation. He went with the king of Israel, his uncle (his mother's brother) to war with the king of Syria, as Jehoshaphat had done in Ahab's day, and Jehoram was wounded, returning to Jezreel to be healed. Ahaziah later came to see him, for he was sick.

A fuller account of what happened at Jezreel is given in 2 Kings 9. It suffices the Holy Spirit here to show us that when judgment at the hand of Jehu fell upon Ahab's house to the full, it also fell upon the princes of Judah and the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah—his cousins—who were with Ahaziah at Jezreel, and upon Ahaziah also. None of the house of Ahaziah was able to hold the kingdom.

The wicked Athaliah, seeing what had happened to her brothers and her children, moved as it would appear by a Satanic resolve to cut off completely the house of David, killed every male of them that was left, except a baby, Ahaziah's son Joash, whom Jehoshabeath, her daughter took and hid in the bedroom at the time of the slaughter. Thus God intervened, though for six years the murderess-idolater was allowed to reign over Judah.

Jehoshabeath, moved by God to preserve the infant, was the wife of Jehoiada the priest, and the little one was hid in the temple, its existence unknown to its grandmother who would have killed it. What care must have been taken to hide the child so that its presence might not be known! We are reminded of the infant Moses, hid three months (Exodus 2:1-10), and preserved by God for His service.

2 Chronicles 23

At last the time came when the reign of Jezebel's daughter should be terminated; in the seventh year Jehoida strengthened himself and took five captains into covenant with him. The first step, looking to the placing of the sons of David on the throne of Judah was for the captains to go about in Judah and gather together the Levites out of all the cities, and the chief fathers; they came to Jerusalem and all made a covenant with the boy king in the temple.

Jehoida, whose name is significant— "God knows"—then made known to the congregation, of course all unknown to the queen mother, or grandmother, the plan of action he had devised for the introduction of the boy (only remaining male of the royal line) to the people as their king, and for his protection from Athaliah, and any who might do her bidding. All was to be, nevertheless, according to the prescribed order, according to God. Nothing else would please Him.

King David's spears and shields and targets, Jehoida gave to the captains of the hundreds, and attended by armed men, the king's son was brought forth. Upon his head the kingly crown was placed; and in his hands the Word of God; thus was he made king, Jehoiada and his sons anointing him, and saying, "Long live the king!"

Athaliah soon heard the noise of the people running and praising the king, and she came to the temple. There at the entrance on a raised platform stood the young boy, and the princes and the trumpets were by him, and all the people rejoiced and blew with trumpets, and singers were there with the instruments of music, and such as taught to sing praise. This was vastly contrary to the mind of Athaliah!

The hour of her judgment had come, and the murderess, led away from the people, was put to death.

How little Jehoshaphat had anticipated the result of the friendship he had formed with Ahab, the dishonor offered to God, and the injury to His people!

Now, however, Ahab, his wife Jezebel, seventy sons and all that remained to him, Athaliah, her son Ahaziah and all his brethren, 42 in number, and all the males of the royal family of David's lineage, except the boy just made king of Judah, had been removed by death, and in that land, if not in Israel, the true God was again to be worshiped.

Priests of Baal there were in both kingdoms (see 2 Kings 10:18-28), and while that system of religion may have been finally stamped out in Israel at this time, and the worship of Jeroboam's golden calves alone remained there, it was revived again in Judah.

Just now, however, God in His mercy was intervening' through Jehoida the priest. It is Jehoida now, and not the king, who is seen in action; of course the king was yet but a child, nevertheless we shall see that he walked aright only while the high priest lived. Elisha was a prophet in the northern kingdom at this time.

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." 2 Cot, 6:14.

2 Chronicles 24

The story of Joash the baby, the boy and the man contains a deep lesson for the believer. ' Here was one who was rescued from the unsparing hand of his idol worshiping grandmother, who was set upon the death of every one of her offspring that might have lived to sit upon David's throne. It was God who intervened, that the line of David's sons might be maintained till David's great Son should be born of Mary, the virgin of Nazareth (Luke 1:27).

He had likewise intervened to preserve that other infant of promise, the three months' old Moses (Exodus 2).

In the course of time each boy, for the two cases are parallel, having been sheltered in God's various ways from that power of Satan which ruled where he lived, was introduced to a position of responsibility and opportunity for service for God and His earthly people. And presently the parallel ceases; the courses of the two as men diverge; for Moses, though having to go through deep exercises of soul, later was a most faithful servant of God, chosen to lead His people with all their murmurings and self-will and unbelief so often manifested, to the banks of the Jordan; but Joash, somewhat like Lot, Abraham's nephew (Genesis 13:10-11, and later chapters) having lived for a time in the strength of another's faith, later failed most lamentably.

We must not think however, that Joash, while the godly high priest lived, showed none of the energy of faith, for it was the king and not the priest who was minded to repair the sadly neglected and despoiled temple (verses 4, 7), and he reproved Jehoida for his negligence concerning the matter (verse 6).

Observe, also, the happy results of a little energy in the things of God (verses 10 to 14). It was not a day of display, nor of a Solomon in his glory, but of a little testimony amid manifest ruin, and hearts were blessed while God was glorified.

God spared Jehoida, an old man already when Joash was born, to live, as we judge, almost to the close of the king's long reign, and he was buried among the kings because he had done good in Israel, both toward God and toward His house. But after this,—so little is man to be trusted or depended upon,—the princes of Judah had but to come to the king with flattery, or that which appealed to his vanity and pride, and he hearkened to them. And what was their counsel, these leaders of Judah? To abandon the divine Center, and serve Asherahs and idols; and this they did,—the king and the head men of the land; forgotten was the Blesser; ignored the blessings of His hand!

Wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this, for God does not fail to notice the ways of the inhabitants of the world He made, and particularly they who profess His name, and live in privileged countries.

He sent prophets to them, not here named, but as Elisha was yet living, he may have been one; Jonah was perhaps another (2 Kings 14:25). The prophets were refused, and Zechariah the son of Jehoida was put to death in the court of the temple at the commandment of the king, because he gave the people a message from God about their ways.

The rest of Joash's story is soon told; within a year a small army of the host of Syria came and destroyed the princes of the people, carried away all the hallowed things that Jehoshaphat, Jehoram and Ahaziah had dedicated, and his own hallowed things, and all the gold found in the treasures of the temple, and in the king's house (2 Kings 12:17-18).

While in bad health, his servants killed him on his bed, and Amaziah his son reigned in his stead.

2 Chronicles 25

Amaziah was not unlike his father; the light of testimony was burning but dimly now in Judah. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a perfect heart. The murderers of his father he punished, and he gathered Judah together, reestablishing the army after the breakdown in the Syrian invasion. He formed no alliance with the idolatrous kingdom of his brethren of Israel to the north, but he did hire a hundred thousand of their soldiers, and this act brought a man of God to the king to tell him that the army of Israel should not be used, for the Lord was not with the children of Ephraim. If his mind was still, to use these men, God would make him fall before the enemy, for He has over to help and to cast down (verse 8).

Amaziah thought of the $200,000 (reckoned in American and Canadian money) that he had paid for the soldiers' services, but the man of God answered, "The Lord is able to give thee much more than this." How true! God enriches those who are losers in this world's things for His sake, if not in natural blessings, then in the far more valuable spiritual ones. The soldiers returned home in great anger, and presently attacked the nearer defenseless cities of Judah.

Amaziah led forth his people, and went to the valley of salt in the south, against the children of Seir, and defeated them in battle, and in this he may have been doing the will of God, but (such is man!) he brought the gods of the Edomites and set them up to be his gods, bowing down to them, and burning incense to them.

Thus did this privileged son of Abraham, David and Solomon! The anger of the Lord was kindled against him, but as usual He sent first the warning voice of a servant, a prophet, and that refused, judgment followed.

In pride, Amaziah sought battle with the king of Israel, and though advised by him to stay at home, he persisted, and he and his were routed in battle and fled. The victor brought his army to Jerusalem, and further humiliated Amaziah, whom he had captured, and broke down the wall for 400 cubits. All the gold and silver, and all the vessels found in the temple, and the treasures of the king's house, hostages also, the king of Israel carried away.

Amaziah died like his father, the victim of a conspiracy among his servants. God is not mocked.

Was he a believer ? Eternity will disclose.

2 Chronicles 26

Uzziah’s reign stands out as, with one exception, the longest in the history of Judah and Israel; that exception is Manasseh who was carried captive to Babylon by the Assyrians, but later set back on his throne (chapter 33).

It is most remarkable as the reign in which Isaiah, Hosea, Joel (thought to be the earliest of those named), and Amos were raised up of God to testify in Judah, or (as to Amos) in Israel, concerning the state of the people, the certain judgment of God, and the ultimate blessing of a remnant of them, with certain Gentiles.

The books of Isaiah and Hosea should particularly be examined for the condition of the people at this period in which God's patience is shown in the midst of a people plunging headlong to ruin. Jonah had preceded these prophets by a few years.

With Amaziah, his father as his pattern or example, Uzziah in his first years did right in the sight of God; like his father, too, pride was the cause of down fall. We are told that he sought God in the days of Zechariah, one who had understanding in the visions of God, and in the days that he sought God, He made him to prosper.

Uzziah fought against the Philistines who no longer as in David's and Solomon's time was a subject people; and against the Arabians of Gur-Baal and the Maonites.

The Ammonites gave him gifts, and his name spread abroad to the entrance of Egypt, for he became exceeding strong.

He built towers at two of the gates, and a third place in the wall of Jerusalem, and fortified them, and made towers in the desert, and had many cisterns dug for the benefit of his cattle and his farming enterprises which he loved.

A strong army was formed, and the country, and particularly Jerusalem was put in readiness for war.

But when he became strong, like his forefathers, Uzziah's pride arose, and he t:rned away from dependence upon God to be a transgressor. He took upon himself to act as a priest, and went into the temple to burn incense upon the golden altar, and he was angry because he was reproved for doing so by the priest who followed him into the building, but the king was smitten with leprosy.

Thenceforth, to the day of his death, Uzziah lived in a separate house, being a leper, cut off from the temple, and Jotham his son acted as regent till he died.

During Uzziah's later years, Pul, the king of Assyria came against the kingdom of Israel, Judah's brethren of the idol worshiping northern kingdom (2 Kings 15:19-20), and exacted a heavy tribute from the people; very soon some of them were to be carried away captive, and then all the nation followed in less than forty years after Uzziah's death.

2 Chronicles 27

Jotham was the last of four kings following the reign of the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, whose course was marked by a measure of regard for God, but who temporized with the idolatry in the land; whose noble works were in strengthening the kingdom in a military way, or industrially; but not of one of them, — Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, and Jotham—is anything said that may be compared with the record of Jehoshaphat (chapter 17:3-9; 19:4; 20:3- 28) whose walk was itself indeed far from perfect.

Jotham's standard of piety was the example his father had shown him; he did not enter the temple as his father had done, but the people still acted corruptly, or corrupted themselves, as the expression may be translated (verse 2). He built, he fought, and he prepared his ways before the Lord his God, and therefore he prospered.

His father, reigning long: died a leper; his grandfather was the victim of a conspiracy beginning at the time he turned aside from following the Lord, and was killed; Jotham died at the early age of 41. What was the secret of his early death? We cannot say.

2 Chronicles 28

Ahaz reigned as long as his father, sixteen years, but they were years marked by an immediate and swift decline from the standard maintained by the four kings before him. Outstripping all his forefathers of the house of David, Ahaz walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, even made molten images for the Baals, burned incense (or offered burnt offerings) in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his sons in the fire, according to the idol worshiping practices of the nations God had dispossessed from before the children of Israel by Joshua; he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree. Such a course could have but one outcome—judgment, swift and unsparing.

The king of Syria, Rezin, attacked Judah, and God gave him victory, so that he carried away a great multitude as captives, and brought them to Damascus. The king of Israel, Pekah, also came against Ahaz and smote him with a great slaughter;—120,000 in one day.

Zichri, a mighty man of the king of Israel, slew Maaseiah, the king's son, Azrikam, the govenor of the house, and Elkanah the second to the king. 200,000 of the people of Judah were carried away captive to Samaria, and while through God's gracious intervention, they were allowed to return, the humiliation of Judah was great though the full object of the kings of Syria and Israel, who had planned to set up a king of their own choice over Judah, (Isaiah 7:6), failed.

Because of these disasters, Ahaz sent east for help from the kings of Assyria, disregarding the voice of God (Isaiah 7:10-25),—help which did vastly more harm than good, as he had been told, and as Isaiah learned. (Isaiah 8:1-8, etc.) See also Hosea 5:13-15. Before the Assyrians arrived, the Edomites came and smote Judah, carrying away captives, and the Philistines invaded the cities of the lowland and the south, and possessed themselves of a number of towns.

The Assyrians came, ostensibly to Ahaz's help, but they troubled him, and did not support him.

Ahaz went to Damascus to meet his powerful ally, and seeing there the idol altar of the king of Syria, ordered it to be duplicated at Jerusalem. When the new altar was made, Ahaz made sacrifices thereon to the gods of Damascus and told the priest to use it instead of that which Solomon had provided (2 Kings 16:10-18).

Still more of his doings are given us in the chapter just referred to, and in our chapter (verses 24-25).

At length his course was ended, and he died, leaving behind him a record of, to that time, unsurpassed evil among the kings of Judah.

2 Chronicles 29

Hezekiah came to the throne in a day of great departure from God. The ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel were at the very close of their history as a nation, and the land of Judah, because of the wicked king Ahaz, Hezekiah's father, had been humbled by the successive attacks of Israelites, Syrians, Edomites and Philistines; help had been asked by Ahaz of the Assyrians, but they were no help to Judah.

Hezekiah's name means "God is strength", a suitable name, considering this godly man's history. It would appear that he was a boy of about nine years of age when his father became king, and the exceedingly bad example given him all through that father's reign of about sixteen years, must surely have been the great concern of Hezekiah's mother, Abijah or Abi ("my Father is God"). If so, it must have delighted her heart when Hezekiah proceeded, as soon as he became king, to restore what his father had set aside.

In the first month of Hezekiah's reign, he opened the doors of the temple and repaired them; he brought in the priests and Levites, and directed the latter to first purify themselves, and then the house of God, rightly judging that the evils that had befallen the land, were because of their forsaking God.

The beginning of all true restoration must be in that which is due to God, as Hezekiah evidently realized.

Of the Levites, certain sons of Kohath, Merari, Gershom, Elizaphan, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, were aroused to action, gathered their brethren, hallowed themselves, and came to cleanse the temple. The priests went into the inner parts, and carried out all the uncleanness they found into the court, whence the Levites took to it to carry to the brook Kidron. When the work was done, Hezekiah arose early, gathered the princes (heads, or officials) of the city, and went up to the temple.

The long neglected altar of the burnt offering was again put into use when sin offerings were made for the kingdom, for the holy place, and for Judah. This is the first mention of sin-offering since the book of Numbers.

All Israel now came into remembrance (verse 24), for in God's sight the nation was one, though divided because of sin. When the sin-offering was over, atonement made, the burnt offering was sacrificed amid the song of the Lord, the sounding of trumpets and the instruments of David. What a happy day this was in Judah's history! The sin-offering was connected with confession of guilt, but the burnt offering was a recognition of God's glory in a higher sense, than as the Pardoner of the guilty (see Lev. 1:4).

Those who were present, were now directed to bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the house of the Lord, and they did so, and as many as were of a willing heart brought burnt offerings. The priests had been slow to act upon Hezekiah's admonition to the Levites, for they were not as upright in heart as their brethren (God is a discerner of hearts), and the Levites had to help them in flaying the burnt offerings. So was the service of the house of the Lord restored once more. God had prepared the people (verse 36), for the thing was done suddenly.

2 Chronicles 30

The incidents of chapter 29 were limited in their scope to the people of Jerusalem, but the restoration of heart, which had taken place there, was immediately followed by a call to all Israel and Judah. Letters were written to Ephraim and Manasseh, the two nearest tribes of the kingdom of Israel, bidding them come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to hold the passover (Exodus 12:3-28; Lev. 23:4-8) in the second month. It was properly to be observed in the first month of the year, but neither were the priests hallowed in sufficient number, nor were the people gathered together to Jerusalem.

From Beer-sheba to Dan, the extreme south to the far north, the proclamation was to be sounded, calling the people back to the worship of the true God, to hold the long neglected passover.

An earnest appeal it was, that the couriers carried throughout Israel and Judah (verses 6-9), and those to whom it was addressed, had they not been blinded by Satan to their own good, should have taken heed to it, but for the most part they laughed at and scorned it.

Still there were some of Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun who humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem (verse 11); and as to Judah, the hand of God was upon them to give them one heart to do the commandment of the king and the princes, by the word of the Lord. So that a very great number assembled at Jerusalem to hold the feast of unleavened bread (including the passover).

Those who came to Jerusalem, took away the altars which Ahaz had made (chapter 28:24), and all the incense altars, and cast them into the brook Kidron. The passover was slaughtered on the proper day, though of the second month, and the priests and the Levites were ashamed, and hallowed themselves.

The state of the strangers from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, long associated with the evils of idol worship, was not what it should have been, and they ate the passover without cleansing themselves, but Hezekiah prayed for them, and the Lord healed the people. (See as to the Christian's ordinance in this connection. 1 Cor. 11:27-32).

With great gladness, the feast of unleavened bread was held. Those whose hearts were closest together in the knowledge and fear of God—those Levites who had understanding in the good knowledge of the Lord, were encouraged by Hezekiah.

The energy of the moment, led the whole congregation to take counsel to observe other seven days, and it was done with gladness. Offerings of large numbers of bullocks and sheep were given by Hezekiah and the princes, and a great number of the priests hallowed themselves.

The whole congregation of Judah with the priests, Levites and all that came out of Israel, and the "strangers" from Israel and from Judah, rejoiced, and there was great joy in Jerusalem, for nothing like this had occurred since Solomon's days. Even the priests, backward as we have seen in attending to the service of God, are seen blessing the people, and praying acceptably to God.

So did that Blessed One show Himself to be the unchanging One of grace, ever mindful of any return of heart to Himself.

2 Chronicles 31

It is in approach to God, in His presence enjoyed by faith, that the Christian learns His mind, and receives energy to act upon His Word.

We have observed that Hezekiah's first recorded act as king was toward God (Chapter 29:3, etc.); he owns that the evils that had come upon himself and his people were consequent upon their forgetfulness of Him. (Is this not evidently true of believers today?) Hezekiah then acted according to the intelligence given him of God: the divine center must first be cleansed of the defilement that men had brought in, and the cleansing made according to God's mind.

To the cleansed place, the king goes without delay ("early"), and with him a gathering, though the energy of the occasion was chiefly his own. Sin offering, acknowledgment and confession of that which had come in between themselves and God; and burnt offering; the acceptance of the believer with God in the sweet savor of a perfect victim (none other but Christ, typified) offered wholly to God, and heart-felt praise follow.

Desiring to have others share in the blessing, that there might be a true hearted and widespread return to God, Hezekiah and those with him next sent out an invitation to all their brethren to return to the God of their fathers, and His sanctuary.

Chapter 30:14 shows that with attended spiritual intelligence, there followed the putting away of that which was contrary to God close at home.

In our chapter today we see that this work of destruction was continued in a had tasted that the Lord is gracious. Learning His mind, they acted upon it, and put away from among themselves that which was dishonoring to Him. Should it not be so today?

God's order, His appointment for worship and service was restored as at the first (verse 2; and see 1 Chronicles 24-26); those who served God were provided for, and encouraged to go on according to his word (verses 4-10).

What an example for God's dear children of our own day is seen in all that we have been noticing, though we are, necessarily to carefully distinguish between what was suited for an earthly people (Israel), and a heavenly people (the Church of God, comprising all who are true believers in Christ).

Hezekiah would have missed the great spiritual blessings that he received, had he been content to go on with things as they were, but he acted for God in a day of wide spread departure from Him, acted at first alone, but was the means of leading many into blessing too. He did it with all his heart, and prospered (see 2 Kings 18:4-8).

2 Chronicles 32

Three years after Hezekiah became king of Judah, the Assyrians again attacked the northern kingdom of Israel, and overran it. Assyria had been a kingdom since about the days of Joshua, and began to assume the proportions of an empire about forty years before Saul became Israel's first king, but the monarchy shortly became feeble, and only revived in the time of Jehoshaphat.

When Uzziah was king of Judah, the first Assyrian invasion of the west, to the Mediterranean, occurred, but Judah was not attacked.

Just before Ahaz became king of Judah, Assyria began to reach its greatest glory as an empire; Ahaz sent to the Assyrian monarch for help against the kings of Syria, and Israel who had invaded Judah, and the two and a half tribes of Israel, situated on the east of Jordan, were presently carried away to Assyria, with some of Israel west of the Jordan.

Israel became tributary to Assyria, but under Hosea, the last of the kings of Israel, an attempt was made to get help from Egypt, to throw off the Assyrian yoke, and this provoked the Assyrian ruler, Shalmaneser, to make an end of Israel.

Apparently Sargon (named in Isaiah 20:1) succeeded Shalmaneser during the siege of Samaria which lasted three years (ending in Hezekiah's sixth year as king), and he carried away captive the remainder of the ten tribes of Israel.

Sargon's son was the Sennacherib who in Hezekiah's fourteenth year came against the fortified cities of Judah, and took them (2 Kings 18:13, and the chapter now before us).

Though Hezekiah himself was marked by great energy of faith, the state of the people over whom he reigned was but little changed; that which had at length befallen their brethren of Israel—removal as captives to Assyria from the land that God had given them, seems to have but little affected them, nor yet the presence and ministry among them of the prophet Isaiah, now advanced in years. The stroke of judgment must then be laid on this people; the enemy whom God had used in punishment upon the apostate kingdom of Israel, was now to be sent against Judah, though the faithful king and prophet were there. Indeed it was now to be shown that the faithful seed of David was the one, unfailing resource of the people.

As we have before noticed, the Spirit of God, in the writing of the Chronicles, has chosen to display God's grace, and not, any more than was needed in order to show the working of that sovereign favor, of the faults of the sons of David. Accordingly we do not find here, but in 2 Kings 18:14-16, the weakness of Hezekiah at the first approach of the great power of Assyria. Instead we learn of the energy of faith which succeeded the first timidity and lack of dependence upon God (verses 2-8).

Much more detail than our chapter gives will be found both in 2 Kings, and in Isaiah 36-39, the evident intent of the Divine Author in the latter book being to show, through introducing the story of Hezekiah into the prophecy, that as the faithful king was the alone resource of the Jews in the day of the Assyrian attack, so the Lord, David's Greater Son, will be their refuge and resource in the future day of which Isaiah speaks, when the Jew: shall be in their land, and the northern power again attacks them.

Sennacherib’s army was gathered before Lachish, near the sea coast, in the southwest of Judah.

In the British Museum at London is a slab that was discovered at Nineveh representing Sennacherib sitting on his throne, with captives from Lachish kneeling before him, while his troops show the booty they have gathered. They were proud words that he caused to be spoken to the people in Jerusalem.

True it was that none of the powers of his day had been able to stand against him; one by one they had fallen, and Assyria was now the greatest of all countries, surpassing Egypt.

Was it possible, that feeble, insignificant Judah could long resist Sennacherib? It was there that Jehovah God was known, and He became the target for the Assyrian's railing—but not for long. The arm of flesh would be found powerless against the God of Israel (verse 8).

In great distress Hezekiah prayed, and Isaiah likewise, and God answered in His own way. We must turn to 2 Kings 19, or to Isaiah 37 for details which are not here given.

Sennacherib's representative returned to his master, and found him warring against Libnah, another fortified city in the southwest, whose location is not now known.

The Ethiopian king of Egypt was now preparing to dispute Assyria's supremacy, and Sennacherib did not care to attack Jerusalem; he sent messengers there with another intimidating message, but it was his last. An angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians in a single night 185,000 men, and Sennacherib returned with shame of face to his own land. Nineteen years later, he was killed by two of his sons.

God's merciful intervention in behalf of Judah, brought great honor to Hezekiah (verse 23), but his heart was lifted up with pride, and God had to humble him. The people of Jerusalem humbled themselves with Hezekiah, and they were spared the afflictions that were to be poured out upon the land presently.

Hezekiah in the main was remarkable as a man of faith; he failed "in the matter of the ambassadors" (Isaiah 39), when God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart. He knew God, but like God's children today, he needed testing, and humbling,—needed to know what was in his own heart- and the experience was not joyous but grievous, but if exercised thereby, blessing is resultant.

When this Godly king died, he was honored by all his subjects, and was buried in the highest place of the sepulchres of the sons of David.

In considering Hezekiah's life, we admire the strength of his faith in a day of small things, and we love to see how God invariably honors faith, whether in bright days, or days of weakness and failure.

We notice, too, that the luster of Hezekiah's faith was dimmed by the things that belong to the natural man; there is but one Perfect One, the Object of the believer in the glory, Him who lived a matchless life of unvarying glory to God, and died on the cross the substitute for all who trust in Him.

2 Chronicles 33

Manasseh, Hezekiah's son, was as unlike Hezekiah, as Hezekiah was unlike his father Ahaz. Only twelve years old when he began to reign, he was king longer than any other of the sons of David, 55 years reigning at Jerusalem.

Going directly contrary to his father's godly ways, Manasseh restored idolatrous high places, altars and "groves" (Asherahs), and he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them; he built altars in the temple, in both courts of it, not to God, but to the supposed gods of the sun, moon and stars; he caused his children to pass through the fire, used magic and divination and sorcery, appointed necromancers and soothsayers, wrought evil beyond measure in the sight of the Lord. Finally he set graven image of the idol he made, in the house of God. Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations that God had destroyed from before the children of Israel.

A long suffering God spoke to Manasseh and to his people, perhaps by the prophet Nahum; the Scriptures do not enlighten us as to what prophets followed Isaiah, Hosea and Micah, and preceeded Zephaniah and Habakkuk.

As God's Word was refused, the Assyrians were brought again to humble Judah, and Manasseh was bound with fetters, and carried to Babylon. There, in affliction, he prayed to God, and humbled himself greatly, and God hearkened in grace, overlooking his very sinful past, and caused him to be brought again to Jerusalem to reign.

Considering Manasseh's sins, as recounted both in 2 Kings 21, and our chapter, we can but marvel at the grace of God; he is one of the very few of whom Scripture tells of true repentance after a life of sin.

As in the apostle Paul's case, we see that the chief of sinners may be saved; there is no limit to the power of God, and His grace can break down the hardest heart. When that grace really reaches the heart, it changes the man or woman, the boy or girl, whom God has brought to the knowledge of Himself as a Saviour.

Manasseh was only a boy of twelve when he was left without a father, and a very godly one too, but his son Amon, who succeeded him on the throne, was twenty-two when he became king. But only two years was he on the throne—two years of evil after the pattern of his father, though he did not humble himself like his father, his servants put an end to him in his own house, and Josiah became king at the age of eight.

Brief record and most solemn warning to the young, this life of Amon; at twenty two life must have seemed at its brightest, and he was cut off without mercy in two short years.

2 Chronicles 34

If the brief life of Anion presents a solemn warning, his son's history is refreshingly different. The divine Penman begins with him at the early age of eight, and brings us presently to view him at sixteen and at twenty-years of age, and next when he was twenty-six; lastly we see him at thirty-nine when he died in battle.

As to his general course, and almost all we are told about him, too, we observe the reckoning of God when Josiah's days were done:

"And he did that which was right in the sight ()Nile Lord, and walked in the ways of David his Father, and declined neither to the right hand, nor to the left." (Verse 2 and 2 Kings 22:2), and in 2 Kings 23:25 is added:

"And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him."

"While he was yet young'' in his sixteenth year "he began to seek after the God of David his father."

What thoughts does this not suggest of inward stirrings of heart and conscience in this boy eight years fatherless? Was it his mother that, moved by desire to God, and commending her little babe to Him, named him Josiah ("Jehovah heals")? We would not expect it of his father, Anion.

And who planted in his breast the knowledge of that God of David after whom he began to seek? Is it presumptuous to say, his mother?

Eternity will reveal it, and the story of many another mother who has earnestly sought to impress upon her children "While they were yet young," the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.

In the twelfth year of Josiah's reign, that is, when he was not more than twenty —dangerous period for many a youth— he began to act for God. This necessarily followed the "seeking after God" with which Josiah's history as given to us in the Chronicles, began. His activities are the more remarkable when we consider the state of the nation as told us in the prophets (see Isaiah 1; Jeremiah 3:10, and Zephaniah). High places, "groves" (Asherahs), graven and molten images, altars of Baal and sun-pillars on high above the altars of Baal, were broken in pieces, cut down, strewed on the graves of those that had sacrificed to the idols.

Even the bones of the false priests were burned by Josiah upon their altars. And this purging of the symbols of idolatry was carried out, not only in Judah and Jerusalem, but also in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon and Naphtali, now largely desolate through the carrying away to Assyria of Israel.

In Josiah's eighteenth year as king he undertook the repairing of the temple,— long neglected and considerably damaged by earlier kings of Judah. During this work Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord by Moses, evidently long lost,— perhaps since Hezekiah's day. Shaphan the scribe, to whom as the king's messenger Hilkiah gave the book, apparently did not realize that this was God's Word, when he took it to the king (verse 18), and read out of it to him.

When Josiah, Godly young man as he had shown himself to be, heard the words which Shaphan the scribe read to him out of the book of God, and learned God's thoughts about what were the state and the practice of the people of Judah, he was overcome with sorrow. That book had in unmistakable language spoken of judgment unsparing, which would certainly fall upon the nation in the event of their turning away in heart from God, and having other gods before him, and though Josiah had with great energy destroyed the outstanding evidences of idolatry, he well knew that the state of the people was unchanged. Besides, the ten tribes were already in captivity—token of the faithfulness of God to His word. What of Judah? Was there hope for mercy, for restoration?

Josiah sent five men to inquire of the Lord for himself, and for those that were left in Israel and Judah; they went to Huldah, a prophetess who lived in the second quarter of Jerusalem, and told her their reason for their call. Huldah, instructed of God, returned answer that He was about to execute judgment upon Jerusalem and its inhabitants, but that because of the king's personal piety, and his humbling himself when he had heard His word read, and because of his sorrow and tears, he would be taken away before the storm burst.

Grateful as Josiah must have been to learn that he was himself to be spared, his heart yearned over his people, and he gathered the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the Levites at the temple. To them the king caused to be read all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found by the priest during the repairs of the temple.

The king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after Him, and to keep His commandments, testimonies and statutes with all his heart and with all his soul. And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to his covenant.

We are told of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that they did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers; there was then some effect, however brief in duration, from Josiah's effort.

Josiah removed all the outward evidences of idolatry from all the countries that belonged to the children of Israel, and made all that were found in Israel to serve the Lord their God. While he lived they did not depart from following Him. Outwardly all looked well, but to the spiritual mind, the hearts of the people were far from God.

2 Chronicles 35

It is the last bright picture of a son of David on the throne that we look at in this chapter.

What was the principle characteristic of the young man Josiah, who is so commended? The words in italics show that it was a strict attention to the Word of God, which marked his course almost to the last, beyond that of any of his predecessors.

This is remarkable, and as cheering to the Christian heart, as it is remarkable, for in our own day, we have had to see much neglect of the Word of God; on account of which noble men and women of God suffered martyrdom in old time, and for the authority of which, many more have borne reproach and persecution, and to many today who profess the name of Christ, it is anything but the Word of Life, and the Sword of the Spirit.

The Passover was the feast or ceremony at the foundation of all for the Israelite; with it he began the religious year (Exo. 12:2), and precisely according to the commandment of God, Josiah kept it. He might have said, as many in like circumstances have, in their hearts at least,

"It does not matter much that we are not strictly governed by the light we get from the Word of God, because everything has failed, and we should be looked upon as extreme if we were to take the Bible as our rule as to everything we do."

No, to him, the Word of God was "quick (living), and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." Heb. 4:12-13.

The conduct of Josiah puts us in mind of the word of the apostle Paul to Timothy,

"But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and hast been assured of, the holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." 2 Tim. 3:14-15.

Josiah, taught of God, sought for others as well as himself, the advantages of a walk according to the principles of the written Word; he encouraged the priests (verse 2); the Levites (verse 3), and the people (verse 7) by word and act to go on with God.

The good example of Josiah moved his princes to good works also, and the rulers of the temple, and the chief of the Levites (verses 8, 9). Then followed such a passover as had not occurred from the days of Samuel, as we are told both in 2 Kings 23:22, and this chapter (verse 18).

The explanation of this is evidently to be found in the strict compliance with the Word of God which marked the feast, and in the pious young King who ordered it, for the people as a whole, were at almost the lowest ebb, spiritually.

But now, after all this, that old enemy, pride, the allowance of which has been the occasion of many a humbling fall, got possession of the godly Josiah, and brought about his death after so brilliant a reign.

Egypt was disposed to punish the Babylonians; and the King, Pharaoh-Necho, led an army to Karkemish on the upper Euphrates, to fight the new power of the East.

Josiah, strangely misguided, and without divine direction, went out to meet the Egyptians, who would have passed by without attacking Judah; and thus he lost his life in one act of disobedience.

How much more to Josiah's honor it would have been, had he remained quietly at Jerusalem, and let the nations, from whom he and his people were separated by God's Word, fight among themselves.

Josiah is then another example given us of failure of the very best of men, and under the best of advantages.

Only one Person has ever trod this earth in absolutely unvarying perfection. One only is the believer's perfect example (1 Peter 2:21-23).

The believer must go on in the closest dependence upon God, quick to judge anything like the exercise of self will, if he would be like His Master (Phil. 2:12).

Great mourning followed Josiah's untimely end, and his good deeds and piety were long remembered.

Among the really Godly kings of Judah, after Solomon and the division of the Kingdom, there are of note but Asa (2 Chron. chapters 14, 15); Jehoshaphat (chapters 17, 19, 20); Hezekiah (chapters 29-32) and Josiah; and the last, amid deepening darkness, shone with a brighter light than the others, at least, in the matter of adherence to the Word of God.

2 Chronicles 36

While the war between Egypt and Babylonia was progressing in the East, Josiah was buried, and his son, Jehoahaz was made king. in his stead at Jerusalem.

Only three months was this son allowed to reign, for the returning Egyptians, mindful of Judah's attack upon them under Josiah, paused on their way south to put down the new king, and impose a fine upon the country of a hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold. Though Jehoahaz reigned but three months, it was a long enough period to call for the record as to him,

"And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done." 2 Kings 23:32. He was now carried away to Egypt where he died (2 Kings 23:34), and Eliakam his brother was made king in his stead, with his name changed to Jehoiakim.

Jehoiakim reigned eleven years with a record of evil in the sight of God. Against him came the king of Babylon, and after three years, during which he had rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, he was bound with chains of brass (or bronze) to be carried off to Babylon.

We learn details of Jehoiakim's wickedness, and the trouble of his reign. From 2 Kings 24:1-6 it would appear that he never reached Babylon, but died at Jerusalem; however, part of the vessels of the temple of God were carried to Babylon and placed in Nebuchadnezzar's idol temple there (See Dan. 5:2-4).

Jehoiachin succeeded his father, Jehoiakim, on the throne for a brief period; his reign was an evil one according to all that his father had done. Nebuchadnezzar had brought him to Babylon after a short siege at Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:10-17) which ended with the removal of all the treasures of the temple, and of the king's house to Babylon, together with all the princes, all the mighty men, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen, and smiths; none remained, but the poorest sort of the people. Mattaniah, Jehoiachin's uncle, was made king by Nebuchadnezzar, and his name was changed to Zedekiah. This young man reigned eleven years, characterized by evil as his fathers.

Zedekiah did not humble himself before the prophet Jeremiah, speaking from the mouth of the Lord, and he rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar who had made him take oath by God, and he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart, from returning to the Lord God of Israel.

All the chiefs of the priests, also, and the people, increased their unfaithfulness, according to all the abominations of the nations, and they defiled the temple which God had hallowed in Jerusalem. In the ninth year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar came with all his army, and besieged Jerusalem until the eleventh year. Because of the siege, a famine prevailed in the city, and when there was no bread, the wall was broken through, and all the defenders fled with Zedekiah.

They were caught, and the king was taken to Riblah in northern Syria where his sons were slaughtered before his face, and his own eyes were put out. Zedekiah was bound and carried to Babylon.

The temple, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem were burned, and the walls of the city were broken down. 2 Kings 25 gives these details and more.

This was the answer, long withheld, to the rejection of God and His Word, by the kings of Judah, and the people (See verses 15, 16, 21). Seventy years were to pass until Cyrus was on the throne of the Medo-Persian, or Persian Empire, which brings us to the book of Ezra.

Ezra 1

Jerusalem had now been in ruins for seventy years; its matchless temple built by Solomon, was in ashes, and the children of Israel were scattered,-the two tribes known as Judah or the Jews in Babylonia; and the ten tribes known as Israel after Solomon's death, soon to disappear from human ken, if not already gone.

The God of heaven had given Nebuchadnezzar a kingdom supreme among men (Dan. 2:37-38). But the Babylonian kingdom had faded, as Dan. 5:28. 30, 31 shows, and as Isa. 13:17-22, and Jer. 25:12 foretold; in its stead was Media, under Darius (Dan. 9:1) which had become Medo-Persia, and the Persian side under Cyrus was now the greater (Dan. 8:3-4, 20).

Cyrus had been named by Isaiah (Isa. 44:28; 45:1-7) two hundred years before, and according to the prophecy, he made the way open for the Jews to return to their land.

Substantial world dominion had been given to the Gentiles when Israel had utterly broken down, but now God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus that the temple might be restored, both by moving him to permit the Jews to go back to Jerusalem for that purpose, and by the restoration of the vessels of Solomon's temple which Nebuchadnezzar had transferred to Babylon.

Ezra 2

Only a few of the Jews were disposed to return to their land, not quite fifty thousand of them, and these are named by their towns to the number of twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and eighteen men. Among them were priests, Levites, singers, doorkeepers of the temple. Nethinims (subordinate temple servants) whom David and the princes had appointed, and the children of Solomon's servants.

Some who went to the land of Judah could not show their father's house, nor whether they were of Israel at all; and of the children of the priests, there were those who could not show their genealogical register, and as polluted, they were removed from the priesthood; these were told that they should not eat of the most holy things—should not have the full priestly privilege—till there stood up a priest with the Urim and Thummim, that is, till the Lord Jesus comes and reigns, and disentangles all the confusion.

It was rightful that those who professed to bear the name of the Lord; of being near to God, should be required to prove their title; profession without reality, will not do today either.

There was great weakness, the throne of David was not restored, but there was not negligence of what was due to God,— nor was idolatry practiced now; here then was gain from the captivity, for the neglect of what was due to God, and the bringing in of idolatry, were what had brought the hand of God heavily upon them.

Ezra 3

Since the returned exiles were without protection from thieves and others, who may take the opportunity not only to rob, but to kill, it would be natural to expect them to begin their labor of restoration by the reconstruction of Jerusalem's wall. Not so was their decision: they resolved to set first to work upon the altar,—they began with God. Most excellent beginning!

It was fear that possessed the people, fear of man, and they were few and evidently defenseless, but they had learned, some of them at least, to look to Him of whom David wrote.

"The Lord is my Rock, and my Fortress, and my Deliverer! my God, my Strength, in whom I will trust; my Buckler (Shield), and the Horn of my salvation, and my high Tower." Psa. 18:2.

It is happy to see those children of Israel—pattern here for every true child of God—every day seeking Him. Immediately upon the setting up of the altar (verses 1, 2, 6), they began to use it in presenting their offerings to Him according to His Word, both morning and evening, every day,—and so continued.

We speak for the Christian, of course, not of continued blood sacrifices, for the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 10, sets forth very plainly one Sacrifice, one offering for sin, of the body of Jesus Christ, by which the believer is perfected forever in position before God.

No, it is not this that we have in mind, but the secret of a happy life, and of growth in grace and knowledge of God and of His Son, namely,—daily prayer, daily reading His Word and meditation thereon, and embracing every opportunity for being gathered with those that are His, to meet Him by faith, where the Lord is the object and the theme.

This may be in deep consciousness of weakness, and of general and most sorrowful failure, as in the days of the book of Ezra, for similar days are our own.

We notice also in our chapter, that there was progress as well as constancy in these poor Jews:—the altar restored and used, then the restoration of the house is begun (verse 7). What admirable unity there was seen (verse 9), and better than unity, hearts going out unitedly to God in praise and giving thanks (verses 10-11).

There was also weeping,—the ancient men, remembering the glories of Solomon's wonderful temple, wept with a loud voice, and this mingling of the voices of singing and praise to God, with the confession of personal and corporate failure, is suited to our own times.

As to what God had wrought, and had secured to the feeble band of His people, the heart had every reason to overflow, but the rejoicing was tempered with the recognition of the failure in responsibility that had occurred.

It was not the glory, the full expression, of the day of the beginning (2 Chron. 5), for in that in which man's responsibility stood, he had utterly failed; this was but a return to divine principle on the part of a remnant who were, so far at least, content to be governed entirely by the Word of God.

There is a vast difference in display, but there need not be in the exercises of the heart, and the realization of faith, between the scene of Acts 2, and the present day "two or three" of Matt. 18:20.

May the Lord draw all His people into a closer walk of constant communion with Himself, through obedience to His Word.

Ezra 4

Adversaries appear at Jerusalem; they come with "good words and fair speeches," but they did not deceive the hearts of the leaders of Israel. Zerubbabel and his associates in the work, had learned that separation from all that is contrary to God and His Word, was alone pleasing to Him, under whose eyes they labored, and they refused to receive the Samaritans as partners in the work. See 2 Kings 17:24-41 regarding these enemies of the work of God who now proceeded to weaken the hands of the people of Judah. For about fourteen years the Samaritans troubled the Jews.

In the beginning of the reign of Ahasuerus (not the king so named in the book of Esther, who reigned over forty years later, but Cambyses, son of Cyrus), they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem; this was after the building of the temple had been going on for about six years.

After seven years, the Samaritans wrote to the third king of Persia, called here Artaxerxes who reigned less than a year, in a further effort to stop the restoration of the temple and the city (see Haggai 1:4 which shows that houses had been built). This met with success, and the building of the temple ceased for about two years.

We may wonder why God permitted these enemies to interfere with the good work, and to intimidate the workers; why He permitted Artaxerxes to stop the building of the temple.

There are similar cases recorded in the Scriptures, and the children of God in our own day are given to pass through parallel circumstances. It is of God to let His children feel their own weakness, and learn to lean upon Him for strength; to test and strengthen their faith, and to bring them to enter into His own thoughts about the state of things among His people generally.

Every truly useful servant of God has spent years in His training school,—as witness among many who might be named,—Abraham, Joseph, David, Paul, and Peter. The sons of Judah had no need to be discouraged, but rather to look to God for guidance and consolation. In due time His mind would be learned.

Ezra 5

Darius Hystaspes had quickly followed Artaxerxes (the pseudo—Smerdis) on the throne of Persia, and he proved to be a supporter of the policies of the great Cyrus, but what is first set out in this book, is not the friendliness of the new king of Persia to the feeble band in Judah's land; but the ministry of those devoted servants of God, —Haggai and Zechariah, who were raised up at this time to seek the heart restoration of the remnant.

It is evident from the book of Haggai, that what was due to God, was not the first thought of the people, and they were called to consider their ways. Zechariah's prophecy takes up the future of Jerusalem, going on to the last days.

Now stirred to action by the servants of God, Zerubbabel and Jeshua began again to work on the temple, and the prophets helped. The king's ruler in Palestine, and another official and their companions, learning of the resumption of work, came on the scene, and would have stopped it, but it was not of God that they should succeed, and the work continued until the king could be heard from.

The report sent to Darius is most interesting; it contains the fullest acknowledgment of the sin of Judah which had led to the captivity, and to the destruction of the temple. A request was made that the king's treasure house be searched for the orders of Cyrus, of which the Jews had told the present king's representatives.

It was now fifteen years, at least, since Cyrus had authorized the Jews to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, and Cambyses his son and Gomates, a Mede who pretended to be the brother of Cambyses, and was killed after a reign of eight months, had occupied the throne since the death of Cyrus, about seventy years after his proclamation in favor of the Jews. The pseudo-Smerdis had, as we learned from chapter 4, stopped work on the temple, but the new king had no respect for the former king.

Once more then, God is over-ruling in the affairs of men in favor of His people, poor and feeble, and not remarkable for godliness; but they were His people, and dear to Him. The next chapter shows the answer to the prayers of those who feared Him.

Ezra 6

Darius Hystaspes caused a search to be made in the house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon, and there was found in the capital of Great Media a record of decree of Cyrus, specifying the height and breadth of the reconstructed temple, and giving other directions which, under God, settled the mind of Darius.

The governor and his associates were therefore told to let the work alone, and further, that they were to supply means to carry it on, as well as animals, salt, wine and oil for the appointment of the priests at Jerusalem. Anyone who should alter this decree should be hanged, and his house be made a dung hill for doing so.

And so the temple was at length restored and finished, about twenty years after the work was started under the authority of Cyrus. There was again a season of rejoicing.

We observe in the dedication, what showed the leading of the Spirit of God, a sin offering for "all Israel", twelve he-goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel.

This was like what Elijah had done on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:30-32) four hundred years before, but much had happened during those four centuries to humble the heart of one who feared God, and the twelve tribes, if known at this time were, except for fifty thousand,—mostly of Judah and Benjamin,—far from the land God gave to their forefathers.

There was none the less only one scriptural ground upon which to gather,—that of the whole body, however sin and self-will had ruined it practically. So it is today, with reference to the Church of God.

Once more the Word of God is seen as the authority for what was done: priests and. Levites according to their set tasks, were put at work as it was written in the book of Moses, (verse 18). The passover, too, was held on the scriptural day, and the Word of God had a cleansing effect upon many (upon all such as had separated themselves to the returned Israelites from the filthiness of the nations in the land), and they kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy.

It was a day of small things, indeed. No son of David was their king; they were but vassals of the Gentile power. Something of their condition, in addition to what Haggai tells, may be learned from the hook of Esther who became queen of Xerxes (called Ahasuerus in that book; the name is supposed to be a title, as Pharaoh was in Egypt), the sun of Darius Hystaspes.

The book of Esther, historically, belongs between Ezra chapters 6 and 7.

Ezra 7

Ezra, the priest and scribe whose name this book bears, enters the inspired record at this point. An interval of about forty-six years had elapsed since the close of chapter 6, during which Darius Hystaspes had died, and been succeeded on the throne of Persia by Xerxes, his son,—the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther.

Xerxes also had died, and his son Artaxerxes Longimanus had at this time been king for six years. This king, under God's providential overruling, favored the Jews more than Cyrus, who directed the rebuilding of the temple, or Darius Hystaspes who aided in its completion, as we have seen.

Artaxerxes is of perhaps greatest interest on account of his being the king who gave the commandment to restore Jerusalem, marking the beginning of the seventy weeks (of years) of Daniel 9:21. This action was taken in the king's twentieth year (Nehemiah chapters 1, 2),

Chapter 7 then opens at a period about 66 years later than the first year of Cyrus, the time with which the book of Ezra begins, its first six chapters over which we have gone, dealing with the state of the people, and the building of the temple, during the period of twenty years.

Haggai and Zechariah, the prophets, now are gone, their testimony closed,—and Malachi now, last of the Old Testament prophets, is soon to appear.

Ezra's name means "help", and such he was, when the Jews were sinking into the ways of the idolatrous world around them. He had evidently been born in Babylon, the land of Judah's captivity, and there learned what was used of God for the moulding of his life. Verse 10 gives the key to Ezra's enrollment among the servants of God.

It is not that he set out to achieve a place of distinction, or to obtain leadership or power. He "directed his heart to seek the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach it in Israel.”

Mark the order of these things; it was thus that Ezra became a "ready scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given."

Artaxerxes and his counsellors, moved by God, unconsciously to themselves, sent Ezra to Jerusalem to inquire concerning the state of Judah and Jerusalem, according to God's Word, and to carry thither gifts of silver and gold, both money and vessels for the temple., The king further ordered that silver, wheat, wine, oil and salt, in abundance should be supplied by the treasurers beyond the river (Euphrates) to Ezra as he might require.

Whatever God ("the God of Heaven," — or the Heavens) commanded, the king would have supplied for the temple at Jerusalem. No tribute or tax should be imposed upon the priest, Levites and others who were connected with the temple.

Ezra was to appoint magistrates and judges, and to teach those who knew not the law of his God. Punishment was to be inflicted upon those who might be insubordinate.

Every Israelite, who desired to go to Jerusalem with Ezra, was free to do so. In view of all this, the heart of Ezra overflowed in thankfulness, and he gathered together chief men of Israel to go up with him.

Ezra 8

Fifteen hundred males accompanied those of the chief fathers of Israel who returned with Ezra from Babylon. Adding in the priests_ Levites and Nethinim who joined the party, we have a total of approximately 1,760 males, and may suppose Ezra's company, including wives and daughters, to have consisted of 3,500 persons.

Genealogy was an important thing to the Israelite: he must be able to establish his title as a son of Jacob to the inheritance in the land, and to the part of the inheritance which fell to his fathers. The priests and Levites, notably, must show their lineage by descent from Aaron and Levi, and also the tribe of Judah, with the royal line extending from 'David, among whose descendants was promised the Messiah (Genesis 49:10; 1 Chronicles 17:11-15; Psalm 110; Isa. 11, and many other passages).

The Jews have now lost their genealogies, but divine power will restore them in a day now near at hand.

Where there should have been a marked degree of faithfulness to God; of separation from the world, and of forwardness in things belonging to God, it appears to have not been found. There were none of the sons of Levi among those who accepted the king's offer of liberty to return to Judah's land (verse 15).

Ezra therefore sent messengers to Iddo at Casiphia, and through God's overruling, Sherebiah, who later was to become an active helper in the restoration of the people (Nehemiah 8:7; 9:4, 5; 12:24), and others were stirred up to join the party about to go to Jerusalem.

Before setting out on the long and perilous journey, Ezra proclaimed a fast, that the party might humble themselves before their God, to seek from Him a right way for them and their little ones and their substance; he had told the king that God's hand was upon all them that seek Him, for good; but His power and His anger are against all them that forsake Him.

A band of soldiers and horsemen would no doubt have been. supplied by the king, had Ezra asked it, but he proposed to find all his resources in God, and lie was not mistaken.

Assured now, in answer to earnest prayer, that God would guard and guide them on the way to Jerusalem without help from man, Ezra committed to twelve priests the money and vessels which were for the service of the 'temple, and the long journey was begun,

We may observe that no account of the journey of three and a half months (see chapter 7:9) is given, only that the hand of their God was upon them, and He delivered them from the hand of the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the way.

Our thoughts are directed thus to consider the party headed by Ezra as having set out in faith in dependence upon God, and thus confiding in Him, necessarily brought safely to journey's end. This is the assurance of faith. There the precious metals were counted and weighed and given into the hands of the receiving priests at the temple; there, too, sacrifices and offerings were made to God, and the orders of the king, which had been put into Ezra's hands, were delivered to the authorities, who, as they had been directed, aided the people, and the work of the temple.

Ezra 9

We have been considering. the grace and-mercy of God as shown in the chapter preceding, but here a different subject,—the failure of man in responsibility, that too, not as in earlier, brighter days when there was kingly power, nor in the later painful, Humbling story of Israel and Judah which had not been written.

In the face of God's written Word, committed to their forefathers by Moses, and neglecting to profit from the sad history the nation had made for itself, even at this hour, they were captives because of their sins, and only as a remnant permitted to return to the land of promise, these enlightened. and responsible souls had mingled with the idolatrous world around them, and intermarried with the worshipers of false gods.

Ezra was overwhelmed at the news brought to him. Others too were concerned over the unfaithfulness of those who had been carried away, and everyone who trembled: at the words of the God of Israel, was soon, assembled to Ezra.

After hours spent in silent grief, Ezra fell on his knees in fervent prayer, confessing the: sin of the people, as one of themselves, though we have no reason to suppose that he was himself guilty. To him it was as in Joshua’s day, when God saw and the sin of Achan (Joshua 7:11) "Israel hath sinned"; and like Daniel (chapter 9), he took part of the guilt of the nation. People, priests, and Levites were all involved., and the princes and rulers had been leaders in the wrong doing,

Ezra 10

Conscience stricken before God, a very great congregation was afterward gathered to Ezra, both of men, Women and children, and the people wept very much.

Godly sorrow leads to repentance, and this is seen presently, first. in Shechaniah. Painful as it must have been even to consider such an act, he proposes that the foreign wives, and the children born to such marriages, shall be put away. Ezra rose From his knees, and made the chiefs of the people, including priests and Levites, swear that they would do this very thing.

Proclamation was then made to all the children of the captivity to gather together at Jerusalem, and when they came, Ezra addressed diem, confronting them with their. unfaithfulness. Confession of guilt followed, and then it appears steps were taken to withdraw from. a position forbidden by God's Word.

What lesson is there for believers in our own day, in what have been considering? Is it not to note the resemblance between the unfaithfulness to God and His Word here seen, and so evident at the present time, when many of God's dear children are in varying degrees linked with the world through marriage, through business partnerships, through membership in organizations formed for worldly advantage, through intimate friendships with those who are strangers to God's grace? And if there be confession of guilt, there most necessarily be repentance; the blessing of God cannot be expected until the Word has been obeyed, and acted upon. (2 Cor. 6:14-18).

May He arouse who tremble at Ilia Word, to a much greater degree of faithfulness!

Nehemiah 1

This book is historically 12 or 13 years subsequent to the last chapters of the book of Ezra, and except that Malachi may be a little later, it gives the last view of the children of Israel in the Old Testament, as to their current history. Like Ezra, Nehemiah was found among' the captives in Persia; and like him, his heart was on his people in the land of Israel, the remnant that had returned from the Babylonian captivity. Nehemiah was at Shushan, the scene of the chief events of the book of Esther, and over two hundred miles east of Babylon, when certain men of Judah came with news of the Jews that were left of the captivity concerning Jerusalem.

The story they told filled Nehemiah's heart with sorrow, and he sat and wept, and mourned, fasted and prayed, confessing sins of the nation, and seeking help from God in speaking to the king about the matter.

As the king's cupbearer, Nehemiah occupied a position of responsibility and importance, but he was not thinking of what he might do there, but of being identified with his people, the people of God. Like Moses, he was prepared to surrender the present prospect, for the future, to give up the king’s court for the companionship of those that were the people of God; he looked past man, however exalted, and however influential, to God, in whom is all power to act for His own.

It was Israel's sins that had brought upon them the humbling, the affliction, the reproach, as it is the unfaithfulness of the people of God in the present dispensation of grace, that explains the divided and shamefully low state of His Church today. Yet God is faithful (1 Cor. 1:9; Tim. 2:13), and He is always the resource of His own (1 Peter 3:12).

Nehemiah knew this, and prayed, but his sadness was not removed, because he was in grief over the state of the people of God; a deep sense of the ruin that had taken place was upon him.

Nehemiah 2

Four months had passed since Nehemiah had asked Hanani and the men of Judah about the Jews at Jerusalem, and the city itself. He was now at his post of duty, serving the king who noticed his sadness, and asked him about it.

Nehemiah was very sore afraid, for his life was in danger, quite possibly, but he must answer in such wisdom as God would give him at the moment, and so he proceeded to lay before Artaxerxes the state of Jerusalem. The king then inquired for what. he asked, and before answering, Nehemiah prayed to God. It was on his heart to go to Jerusalem to rebuild it, and God granted him favor with the king, so that he was shortly directed to go there. Ezra had gone at the head of a large company of exiles; 'Nehemiah went alone, except for a guard supplied him by the king.

As Nehemiah progressed toward the city which God had chosen long centuries before to set His name there, he delivered to the governors the king's letters. One man is mentioned, apparently a governor, who disapproved strongly of the project Nehemiah had come to carry out. Sanballat the Horonite was an enemy of the Jews; so also was Tobiah the Ammonite; it grieved these two exceedingly that there had come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. But there are always Sanballats and Tobiahs where there is a work of God.

Nehemiah rose in the night with a few men, and went around parts of the wall of the city, observing the ruin,—-and the gates consumed with fire. Afterward he told the leaders of the people what he had seen, and why he was come, asking them to undertake the rebuilding of the wall. There was willingness to begin, and preparation was made, but Sanballat, and Tobiah, and Geshem, the-Arabian sneered at the work.

This is one of Satan's methods of trying to break down the work of God in our day.

Nehemiah, however, told the mockers that God would prosper the builders, but they, the Horonite, the Ammonite and tile Arabian had no portion or right nor memorial in Jerusalem.

Nehemiah 3

This chapter is concerned with those who responded to the call of God brought to them by Nehemiah (Chapter 2:17, 18). Had every one gone to the work, there would have been no list of names; and so the very failure of others is the occasion of bringing out the names of those who even in a small way entered upon that which was the service of God. We observe, too, that the names are given, not in the order of the prominence of the persons, nor with regard to the importance of what they did, but nevertheless in an orderly way, for tile Divine Author had before Him the one work in which all His people might be, and some of them were engaged.

The first step toward restoration, after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar ( 2 Chronicles 36:17-21), was the building of the altar (Ezra 3:2, 3), and the reestablishment of the system of sacrifices according to the Word of God suited for a people haying a relationship to Him, short of the knowledge of an accomplished redemption by the blood of Christ,

The second step taken \vas the reconstruction of the house of God, the temple, typical of God's dwelling- place (Ezra 1 Though there was no manifestation of the presence of God there, as there had been at the dedication of Solomon's temple (2 Chronicles 5:13-14),

The glory had departed, but God was yet mindful of His people, and purposed their blessing.

In the altar and the temple, then, we have the way of approach to God, and Himself dwelling in and among His people, truths made good for the believer in Christ (See Hebrews 10:12-25; Eph. 2:20-22),

A third step was needed,—-the practical separation of the people in their daily life front the unbelieving world, The wall of Jerusalem must be set up to enclose them as a unity, This it was that aroused the most determined opposition, as following chapters disclose.

Among those who labored, we see the high priest, Eliashib, who have become allied with Tobiah the Ammonite (chapter 13:4-5), but perhaps as now seeing the wrong he had done, and the priests and several of the rulers, but not the nobles of the Tekoites who “put not their necks to the work of the Lord;" the daughters of the rulers worked with their father (verse 12); one "earnestly" repaired the part of the wall on which he was engaged (verse 20), These 32 verses tell of what God took notice of in the work of this people according to the flesh.

Is He observing today what His children, by faith in Christ Jesus, are, or may be doing, for Him, in the way of establishing one another in holy separation from the world and its god, its politics, and its artificial pleasures?

See 1 Corinthians 15:5S, which of course is applicable to all true service for the Lord.

Nehemiah 4

That the children of Israel should have again a definite place in the land of their inheritance, was as we have before seen (chapter 2:10, 19), very much against the thoughts and desires of Sanballat the Horonite. Though their position was that of subjects of the king of Persia, and their numbers were few indeed, they were here marked out as God's people, and anything which looked like strengthening them, aroused the opposition of Satan. Sanballat therefore begins with ridicule, and Tobiah joins him in it.

Nehemiah turns to God as his resource, but the building of the wall was continued.

Hearing that the walls of Jerusalem were being repaired, and that the breaches were being stopped, Sanballat and those who presently were joined with him in opposition to the work, became very angry, and conspired to fight against the city and harm it.

In a later day (Acts 4), other enemies of God and His grace, were similarly aroused against a little company who had God before them, but they were no more overthrown by the activities of their enemies, than were these with Nehemiah,.

With prayer, wisdom was given to Nehemiah, and his band of builders, and they set a watch by day and night.

Judah now began to complain about the work, and the enemies talked of surprising and killing the builders.

The Jews who lived near these adversaries, brought news of what they were planning, ten times, mid Nehemiah then set the people armed with their swords. spears and bows, in exposed places, and bade them not fear; but to remember the Lord, great and terrible, and fight.

The expected attack, did not, however, take place, for the enemies heard that their plans were known, and God had defeated their counsel. The people therefore returned to the work, half of them building, and half of them holding the weapons of warfare ready for an attack at any time, and so the wall slowly grew, from dawn to starlight daily.

One of the results of this opposition was, of course, to show what Satan's power is, and who they are that do his bidding; another was the drawing of the people together for protection, and their realizing that they must be prepared always for conflict,

The Christian's position and circumstances are similar, though it is not his to fight with flesh and blood, but with unseen powers of evil, satanic, watchful and relentless (see Ephesians 6:10-18); and he is shown how to meet the enemy,—-not with words and the like, but with a walk according to God, and with the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.

Nehemiah 5

The burden Nehemiah carried, on account of the opposition of Sanballat and Tobiah, the Arabians, the Ammonites and the Ashdodites, was heavy indeed, but he now had to hear of the oppression of the Jews in their own better-off neighbors, their own kinsmen.

By reason of high rates of interest which they had to pay, some had had to pledge their fields, vineyards and houses to procure corn; others had borrowed money for the king's tribute upon their fields and vineyards; and they must bring into bondage their sons and their daughters to be servants; some of their daughters were already brought into bondage, nor was it in the power of the parents to redeem them, for others had possession of their fields and vineyards.

Nehemiah was very angry when he heard this, and he called the nobles and the rulers to task, accusing them of exacting usury. Later he set a great assembly against them, where he spoke more at length to the guilty leaders, and the result was that they promised to restore what they had taken wrongfully. And we are told that the people did according to this promise.

Nehemiah feared God, and though he was an officer of the Persian government, he looked not to the king, but to God, Ile had for twelve years (to the dine lie wrote) not taken his support from the government, which would have meant a burden upon the people he loved. Fie had applied himself to the building of the wall, had added no fields to himself,. and had brought all Ins servants there for the work; also, he had provided food for 150 of the Jews and the rulers, beside those from among the nations that came unto them.

For these things Nehemiah desires that God should remember him, for good; he exhibits thus the marks of man.

A just One, perfect in all His ways, has passed through this world,—-the Son of God,—-Whose every act and word and thought was God-glorifying, and full of grace and truth.+

Nehemiah 6

The building of the wall of Jerusalem was now, in spite of the difficulties and dangers encountered by Nehemiah and his band of helpers, almost completed; only the setting of the doors remained to be done,

What an illustration of the opposition of Satan to everything of God, is seen in the actions of Sanballat; Tobiah and Geshem and those in sympathy with them!

A feeble remnant had been enabled, through divine intervention, to set up again the wall of separation, completing the chain of three things linked in the Scriptures

The altar (Ezra 3), speaking of the ground of faith's approach to God, and of God's present dealing in grace, founded upon the death of a Substitute for him who believes. The temple (Ezra 6), illustrating the spiritual house (see Eph. 2:16-22).

The wall (as to which see 2 Cor. 6:14- 18 and 2 Tim. 2:21).

We may say also, that whenever there is in our own day real energy for God, Satan will be heard from in one way or another, and this is the more likely to be, it seems, when. there is real separation from evil—-God's principle of unity, as illustrated in the book of Nehemiah. which we are examining.

Whether Sanballat and Geshem meant (verse 2) to do bodily injury to Nehemiah, or to propose cooperation or association, it was clear to the servant of God that his path of duty held him where he was; there could be no severing from the object before him, neither compromise with the world, nor fearing its power.

Sanballat next tried intimidation in a more direct way (see verses 6-7), and again afterward through the unfaithfulness of Shemaiah (verse 10).

Others too, in Jerusalem were in correspondence with the enemy (verses 14 and 11-12), and would have stopped the building of the wall. But it was finished, and its completion was a sad thing in the hearts of the enemy; it was seen to be a work of God (verse 16). These were feeble folk, but their trust, or at least Nehemiah's, their leader, was in the living God, and He gave them their desire.

Nehemiah 7

If there be a spiritual significance in the building of the wall, which has so prominent a place in this book, there must also be in the mention of the porters, or doorkeepers (verse 1), and the opening and closing of the doors or gates of the city (verse 3) , and this would seem to illustrate the need for practicing separation from evil. Of what use were the walls, if the gates were left unguarded?

Of what value is the profession of separation from what is contrary to the Word of God, if vigilance be not constantly observed to maintain it practically?

Though much that is brought out in the New Testament, and particularly in the Epistles of Paul, is not expressed in the Old Testament. Verse 5 suggests the further thought that to be reckoned as God's people there must be on the part of each individual the possession of a clear title. Is it asked, What is the "clear title" of the believer today? A hymn expresses it:

"Our title to glory we read in Thy blood."

We find it in Rom. 4:24, 25; Gal. 3:26; Eph. 1:7, and many other passages. This is at the foundation of Scriptural relations between believers,—the company which the Holy Spirit has formed, and is continually adding to, (the Church, or Assembly, of God) is composed only of believers, and only those who are the Lord's, should be unitedly gathered together.

The unbeliever has no title to the privileges of the saints of God,

There is more to he said, as to those who are gathered or desire to meet according to the Scriptures, and we shall find more to consider in the fore-shadowings of the book of Nehemiah as we may continue through it, but at the foundation of all is, "Ye must be born again" (John. 3:7).

Verses 6 to 69 are taken from Ezra 2, and the last three verses of our chapter repeat what is told at the close of that chapter, and the beginning of Ezra 3, of the first company to return to Jerusalem some ninety years earlier than the time of the building of the wall under Nehemiah.

God had brought those feeble folk back from the captivity to seek the divine center; not to restore the ancient glories, but as a remnant to act upon His Word. They were now about to examine that Book, to learn therefrom what was and was not acceptable to God.

Nehemiah 8

A further illustration of what we have been considering is found at the beginning of this chapter: the people, disentangled from the associations of Assyria and Babylonia, Media and Persia, apart, by the gracious dealing of God, from the worldly associations that had been theirs—are now gathered before God as one man, with a new desire born of God in their souls. It is that the Word of God be brought out, —not, we observe that portion of it which recites the providential dealings of God, and the story of His grace, rich as that has been and is for the believers of all generations, but that portion of it which expressed what was divinely ordered as to the relations of God's children with Himself. In thus speaking, we, of course, carefully distinguish between the dispensation. of law, under which the Israelites were, and the present one of grace. The Christian, if intelligent in the things of God, will find his directions as to the divinely ordered relations of God's people with Himself set out in symbols, in figures, and in illustrations and contrasts in the "book of the law of Moses," and in the clearest light in the equally inspired books of the New Testament.

From the morning to mid-day the Scriptures were read aloud by Ezra, who about 12 years before this had returned from Babylon (Ezra 7), and certain others explained the Word of God to the people; all wept, when they heard and understood, but they were told to keep the day holy to God, and the joy of the Lord was their strength.

It was right indeed that they should he exercised and led to self-judgment before God, because His Word is corrective, though it is not only that, but the spiritual food and drink of the believer and much more. (2.Tim. 3:16, 17; Acts 20:32; John 17:14, 17; Psa. 119:105).

Upon the second day those who cared for the people came again to Ezra to learn more from the Book of God (and no one searched it in a humble desire to learn from its pages without finding-blessing to his soul).

They discovered the directions regarding the feast of tabernacles (Lev. 23:34, 36, 39-43; Deut. 16:13-45), looking on to the full and final ingathering and blessing of Israel. It is remarkable that not since the days of Joshua had this been done, and shows that the children of Israel had been so absorbed in their present, that they had practically forgotten their future.

Is there not a striking analogy between this and the practical forgetfulness of Christians that their Lord is coming soon, to take them borne to Himself?

Nehemiah 9

A deep solemnity must have characterized the gatherings of chapter 8; no book of man was being read, but the mighty Book of God (see 2 Cor. 10:4, 5). Self-examination followed, and the conscience and heart were reached so that the children of Israel (note the change from the term previously used "people", for separation had taken place) were assembled now with fasting (the opposite of "feasting"), and with evidences of mourning.

Separated from those who were not God's earthly people, they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. The remarkable prayer which, issuing as a covenant, occupies the chapter, gives the confession of the God-fearing, humbled remnant of His people, carried away into captivity because of their sins, and now restored through divine mercy to the divine center.

If there were today such humbling, such application of the Word of God to the life and associations of the children of God, as a body here on earth, what might not be expected in the way of fruit for God? May we who are Christ's take to heart the spirit of these men and women of God of Nehemiah 9.

We again notice, as in the later days of Israel and Judah's kingdoms, that in speaking to God, the covenant of Sinai has but, small place, if mentioned at all, Under it, the nation had utterly and irrevocably failed, but there was a covenant with Abraham which faith could and did seize upon,

Here, God is acknowledged as the source of all, the Preserver of all, and the object of the worship of the host of heaven, but how different is the state of the millions of earth !

He had chosen Abram, brought him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, changed his name, found him faithful in heart, made a covenant with him and performed his words (verses 7-8).

In their prayer of confession, these chastened souls reviewed, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, we doubt not, the history of their nation from Egypt down, telling of the gracious and merciful dealings of God for and with them, and of His power shown therein, and of their own waywardness which again and again brought His hand upon them, and had at length caused Him to give them into the hand of the people of the lands. Nevertheless for His great mercies' sake He did not utterly consume them, nor forsake them (verses 8-31).

To "the great, the mighty, the terrible God, Who keepest covenant and mercy", they presented their supplication, that all the difficulties in which they were found, might not seem little before Him; however, the responsibility for their situation lay wholly with themselves,—-kings, princes, priests and fathers had not kept God's law, nor hearkened to His commandments and testimonies, and He was Just, and had done right in allowing their afflictions.

Nehemiah 10

Those who acted for the people of Israel in the confession of chapter 9, are named, Nehemiah and the priests, the Levites and the chief of the people, hut the rest of the returned captives, all those who had separated themselves from the people of the lands, to the law of God, having knowledge and understanding, entered in heart into the matter. Henceforth they would walk in God's law, and observe and do all His commandments, His judgments and statutes; there should be no intermarriage with the people of the land; the Sabbath and holy days they would observe, and the seventh year; His service would no longer be neglected nor forsaken. It was evident that a real work of God was going on, and the more His Word was read and entered into in heart and conscience, long forgotten, duties toward Him and His servants were recovered.

Nehemiah 11

The rulers dwelt in Jerusalem, and, by the casting of lots, one tenth of the people were to live there too (chapter 11). The Villages occupied were naturally not far from Jerusalem in general, but Beersheba and Ziklag in the far south are mentioned in verses 27-28. After the names of the chief of the province that had their homes in Jerusalem, then there are given the priests with their duties; likewise the Levites and the porters.

Nehemiah 12

Chapter 12 recounts those priests and Levites who returned with Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, at the beginning of tile restoration (Ezra 1-2), and their children, to the days of Nehemiah and Ezra. At verse 27 begins the account of the dedication of the all of Jerusalem.

From all the country side, the Levites and the singers were gathered, and the priests, and Levites purified themselves and the people, the gates and the wall. Two companies of the princes of Judah were made,—one led by Ezra; the other accompanied by Nehemiah, and they stood and gave thanks, accompanied by the sounding of trumpets by the priests, and the voices of the singers. On that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced.

What a scene it must have been, when with great joy these feeble folk rejoiced over the goodness of God to them, with wives and children; joining, "so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off" (verse 43). Again all was in order, in so far as might be under the hand of the king of Persia.

There was no splendor, as in the days of Solomon, but there was a deep work of God, in those who sought to find in Him their all.

His Word was their spiritual food and light amid the surrounding darkness.

Nehemiah 13

When the Book of God was read before the people, it was found to prohibit an Ammonite or a Nfoabite from entering into the congregation of the Lord (see Deut. 23:3), and as a result, they separated front Israel all the mixed multitude. But other evils were tolerated, as Nehemiah discovered when he came again to Jerusalem, having returned to the king of Persia (verses 6, 7).

Tobiah the Ammonite, servant of Sanballat, (chapter 2:19) had been given by Eliashib the priest, who had oversight of the chamber of the temple, a great chamber therein, a place intended for the offerings. Verse 28 indicates how it may have come about, When Nehemiah learned of this, he caused the Ammonite's household stuff to be put out of the chamber, and have the place cleansed and pot to its proper use.

Nor had the portions of the Levites been given them, so that they had gone to their fields. Nehemiah brought them back, and the people of Judah brought their tithes for them. Treasurers were appointed, to see that a faithful distribution was made.

The Sabbath was being desecrated, too —some working at their daily tasks, others bringing their goods to Jerusalem, and still others were selling on that day, and they, not only strangers of Tyre, but men of Judah as well. Against all of these, Nehemiah raised his voice, and he commanded that the gates of Jerusalem should be shut when it began to be dark, before the Sabbath, and should not be opened until after the Sabbath was passed. He directed the Levites to cleanse themselves, and assist in keeping the Sabbath in the city.

In those days lie saw Jews that had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab, and their children were not able to speak the Jews' language. These men lie boldly attacked, reminding them as lie had others before, that the history of Israel and Judah was one of declension, followed by visitation in judgment of God. Then too one of the sons of Joiada, son of Eliashib the high priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat—had married the daughter of this chief foe of the remnant; Nehenhab refused to associate with him.

Nehemiah's words in point of time closed the records of the Old Testament, except for the book of Malachi. How much he sought to reach the heart and conscience of the little flock of Judah, and how little apparent return there was for his labor, yet that day that is now so near, will see him rewarded according to his faithfulness.

May we who, in any way feel the low state of God's people today, be stirred by Nehemiah's example, to much more devotedness and thankfulness.

Esther 1

The book we now take up belongs in point of time to the period of the book of Ezra, between chapters 6 and 7 (see chapter 6:15 and chapter 7:1, the king Ahasuerus of the book of Esther being the son of Darius, and the father of Artaxerxes).

About forty thousand had returned to the land of Israel, and had set up the altar at Jerusalem, and begun work on the rebuilding of the temple which had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.

But most of the Jews remained in the land to which they had been transferred under the judgment of God, unresponsive to the offer of Cyrus (Ezra 1).

With these, the book of Esther deals, and we cannot wonder that the name of God is never mentioned in it, though the hand of God is seen throughout its pages, because Israel now Lo-ammi ("not My people," see Hosea 1:9), and the mass of the people were moreover content to stay in the land of their exile, far from God in heart, and far from the land of their fathers, His land. But He had not forgotten them and watched over them, moved the actors unconsciously to themselves, preserved His earthly people though He could not own them as His, because of their unbelief.

Ahasuerus, it is well known, was a title in Persia, as Pharoah was in Egypt, and not the personal name of the ruler here who is known to profane history as Xerxes.

For six months, in the third year of his comparatively short reign (10 years), this arbitrary, capricious, vain autocrat caused a grand display of the riches of the Persian empire, now at the very height of its glory, and of the magnificence of his grandeur.

At the close there was a seven-day feast for all the people in Shushan, and upon the final day, the king decided to display his beautiful queen, Vashti, to his assembled subjects, but she refused to answer to his call, and was set aside in consequence.

Although it was likely modesty that moved the queen to refuse to appear publicly, the king made the occasion one for establishing by royal decree the authority of husbands in Persia, sending the decree to each of the many provinces of the empire.

Thus far, not a word or act has disclosed the unseen hand of God in behalf of the people of His choice. The Gentile queen has been rejected because of her refusal to display her beauty, and we are to see the daughter of Israel taking her place. Is this not illustrative of the coming cutting off of the Gentiles, the grafting in of Israel? (Romans 11).

Esther 2

An interval of perhaps four years is passed substantially between the first and second chapters. Profane history tells us that in this period Persia was occupied with an attempt to conquer Greece, and Xerxes was absent from the Persian capitol directing the war. Not being of moment here, this is not mentioned in the book of Esther.

The anger of the king abated, and he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against her. The servants who attended to his wants and whims, then ventured to suggest that fair young virgins should be sought, from among whom a suitable queen, chosen by the royal personage himself, might be obtained. They proposed that officers be appointed in all the provinces to gather together all those Who might appear suitable to grace the position vacated by the beautiful Vashti. These suggestions pleased the king, and he issued the necessary orders.

God's interests in and concern for the poor Jews in Persia now appears. The Hebrew maiden Hadassah, or Esther (her Persian name), is among those chosen for presentation to the king.

Her cousin Mordecai, when her parents were dead had taken her for his own daughter, and he and she and the chosen race of Israel, or as many of them as were subjects to the king of Persia, are hereafter seen to be the persons on behalf of whom the unseen, and here unnamed God, is at work, moulding the affections and will of a capricious king who knew not Himself.

Esther, object of the tender care of Him who will not here declare Himself openly, becomes, under God, pleasing to the keeper of the women, who shows her kindness and gives her the best place in the house.

The circumstance reminds us of Joseph in prison in Egypt (Gen. 39), and Daniel (1:9) in the court of Nebuchadnezzar.

Esther's being an Israelite is however concealed, at Mordecai's request. At length Esther is presented, having obtained favor of all them that looked upon her, and the self-indulgent monarch loved her above-all the women. She obtained grace and favor in his sight, more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head, and made her queen instead of Vashti. What a transition for the captive maiden!

A great feast was made in celebration of the choice of the king, and henceforth Mordecai sat in the king's gate. There he learned of the plans of two of the king's servants to get rid of the king, and he told it to Esther, who told the king of the plot, as the discovery of Mordecai, and the result was, when investigation was made, that the two servants were hanged.

Undoubtedly we have here an illustration the choice of the Jew, as the earthly bride of Christ, when the Gentile's day is run; and Mordecai's reporting the offenders, and their summary punishment, speak of the character of God's government during the Millennium.

Esther 3

In chapter 2 it is plain that God was acting behind the scenes, when the Israelitish maiden, Esther, was chosen to be the queen of Persia, but chapter 3 shows an enemy of God's people at the head of the princes of the kingdom, and the signing of a decree by the king for tile killing of every Jew in Persia.

Where God is at work, it seems to generally follow that Satan will try to spoil and to destroy.

So it was in the garden of Eden, and so in every stage of the world's history until now. But the Serpent's (Satan's) head has been bruised through the dying of Jesus on the cross, and he will shortly be shut up where he can do no harm (Rev. 20).

The Word of God, too, shows that though Satan's power is great (2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2), God is infinitely greater (Eph. 2; Col. 1:13, 14; 2 Kings 6:8-23, and other passages).

After Esther had been made queen, and her uncle had exposed the plot of the chamberlains to lay hands on tile king, Haman the Agagite, and not Mordecai, was promoted to a high place in the kingdom.

Haman appears to have been, not only an Amalekite, but of the royal family of that nation of which God had said (Exo. 17:8-14; Dent, 25:17-19; 1 Sam. 15) that it should be utterly blotted out of memory, because of their hatred of His people.

To Haman, all the king's servants that were in the king's gate bowed and did reverence, according to the command of the king, but Mordecai, Esther's uncle, did neither, though he also set in the king's gate,

To the questioning servants who did not understand why he would not bow to Haman, Mordecai made no answer, but lie had told them that he was a Jew.

How could he reverence an enemy so bitter as Amalek, whom God had judged? This must explain Mordecai's unwillingness to bow to Haman, the reason not being given, because the name of God is not mentioned in this book, nor any reference to Him.

When Haman learned about Mordecai, he was full of wrath, as might well be expected, but his wicked heart stopped not at the thought of killing him, but planned to destroy all the people of Mordecai, all the Jews, in the entire kingdom of Persia. Ile decided by "casting lots" when the attack on the Jews should be made; it was to be in the twelfth month, eleven months away,—time for much to happen, as Haman found out.

To decide a matter by casting lots, it was common to mark on pieces of wood, baked clay tablets or something similar, the various names or dates from which a selection was to be made, and these things were then shaken together in a fold of a garment, or in a vessel, until one came out.

We can guess what sort of a man the king was, from what we read of him in chapters 1 and 2, and his readiness to agree to Haman's wishes (verses 8-11), he seems to have been at once, and without any conscience, quite willing to have all the Jews in the country killed, and letters so ordering Were sent to all the officers in charge of the provinces. The day for his wholesale slaughter was fixed at the thirteenth of the twelfth month.

No wonder that the city of Shushan was perplexed ! Would God all Haman's plans to succeed?

Esther 4

The news carried by the Persian mail carriers, of death to every Jew on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, threw the children of Israel into the deepest mourning (verses 1-3). The decree once made could not be reversed (chapter 8, verse 8, and Daniel 6:15), and apparently nothing but a violent death was in prospect for every one of them.

Mordecai with his clothes torn, and wearing sackcloth with ashes, came before the king's gate, but he might not enter there. Within the gate, Esther and her maids and chamberlains were quite ignorant of what had happened, until Mordecai's strange appearance was noticed, and the whole story was learned from him.

One only hope remained: Queen Esther must intercede with the king for her people; so Mordecai felt. But to do so, she must endanger her own life, for none might go to the king in the inner court unless called, or except the king should hold out the golden scepter, and he had not sent for Esther for thirty days.

But Mordecai sent back to Esther a warning and a danger appeal, he did not say that God would send help if she did not speak to the king, but it is plain that this is what he meant when he said that if Esther failed, "then shall there enlargement (relief) and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place. Mordecai's faith looked to God in this great peril, but the name of God is not mentioned, He is hidden, as throughout the book of Esther.

Esther's answer was on the same order: she asked that the Jews in Shushan be gathered together, and that they should neither eat nor drink for three days; she and her maidens would likewise fast; after that she would go in to the king. They were thus to humble themselves before God;—would He look upon His sorely tried people and deliver them?

Esther 5

On the third day Esther appeared before the king as she had promised; she went unasked, and if the royal scepter were not held out, she would be seized by the servants and put to death. But God, we cannot doubt, was behind the scenes, though all that we read of is of man. Esther "obtained favor" in the eyes of the king; he would grant her desires "to the half of the kingdom-. What did she wish? She was given wisdom for the occasion and she only invites the king and his counselor Haman to a banquet that day. There the monarch asks again what his queen desired, quite ready, it seemed, to give her anything she wished. Tomorrow, she said, she would tell, but first asks for the presence of the king and Haman at another banquet.

Haman then delightedly went home, his happiness only marred by the sight of Mordecai (verse 9). At the suggestion of his wife and friends, a gallows was made, on which, if Haman's plans did not fail, Mordecai should be hanged before the time of Esther's banquet. God willed otherwise, as the next chapter shortly discloses.

Faith looks to Him, and is not disappointed.

Esther 6

The Jews had been brought to feel their entire helplessness apart from God. Satan's plans too, were well laid, and in a way, seemed very likely to succeed. Tomorrow a word from Haman to the king would send Mordecai to be hung on the gallows in Haman's house, but tonight, by God's ordination, the king was sleepless.

He who had of old spoken to kings, (Genesis 12:17; 20:3; 41:1-7, etc.), and moved them to do His will (Exodus 2:5-10, and other passages), now caused the king of Persia to spend a. wide awake night, and to call for the book of records of the Chronicles to be brought and read to him.

Therein was it written that Mordecai had exposed the plot of Bigthana and Teresh, thus saving the life of the king, and no honor or dignity had been given to him for this. As the king was musing over what reward was most suitable for Mordecai, Haman arrived to see the king about having him hanged.

To Haman, the king then puts the question without saving if whom he was thinking,

"What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honor?"

The Agagite, believing himself to in the king's thoughts, said, what he himself wanted; the highest honors, rarely if ever before paid to a subject. He would wear the king's clothes, and ride upon the king's horse, wearing the royal crown, be led through the street of the city by one of the king's most noble princes, proclaiming, "Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor."

What a change in Haman's feelings when he now learned that the hated Mordecai, for whose death he had just come to ask, was the man whom the king wished to be honored, and that he, the exalted Haman, was to deck Mordecai the Jew in the royal clothing, and lead him through, the street of Shushan, proclaiming him as the man whom the king delighteth to honor !

The king's word was law, and Haman could only do as he was told, but when Mordecai came to the king's gate, the other hurried home mourning to tell his wife and friends what had happened. When they heard it they agreed that if Mordecai was a Jew before whom Haman had begun to fall, no change could be looked for; Haman would certainly fall before him. Their fears were soon to be realized. So it will be when God's day for restoring Israel dawns; Gentile greatness will disappear, for the Jew is the intended bead On this earth. (See Isaiah; Zechariah 8:20-23; 14:12-19).

While Haman, his wife, and his wise men were talking-together about the unexpected and (to them) sad turn in events, the king's messengers came to bring Haman to the banquet that Esther had prepared.

So far, Satan had not won a lasting victory. Would he finally? No, the enemy of God and man will be found at last the defeated one, when the world's history is closed, though he be the accuser of the brethren now to God; and sometimes a roaring lion; sometimes an angel of light in appearance, on earth, to believers.

Esther 7

Again and for the third time, the king asked Esther, "What is thy petition, Queen Esther?"

Now, at last she answers, and it is to make plea for her life and for her people who were all marked for death. Esther who was given wisdom from God, said just what was needed to reach the king's heart. Who, he asked, could he be that had planned anything so wicked against the one he loved above all in the kingdom, and against her people? It was none other than Haman, "this wicked Haman," Esther told him.

Haman was now terrified, and the king was angered beyond words as be went into the palace gardens.

Realizing that the sentence of death was his, Haman stood up and asked Esther for his life, and in agony he fell on the couch on which she was. There the king found him as he returned from the garden, and the result was that at the suggestion of one of the chamberlains, Haman was hanged on the very gallows lie had prepared for Mordecai. Thus did this enemy of the Jews come to unexpected hut not undeserved end.

Esther 8

The same day, the king gave Haman's house to Esther, and Mordecai came before the king, and received the ring taken from Haman. Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman.

Surely, a brighter day had suddenly dawned for the Jews! But the decree mentioned. in chapter 3, verses 12-15 still stood the thirteenth day of the twelfth month all Jews, both old and young, little children and women were to be killed, And the laws of the Medes and Persians were unalterable.

Esther therefore spoke again to the king, beseeching him with tears to put away Hainan's mischief, and he gave permission to Esther and Mordecai to write in his name and seal with his ring, a new decree to all the provinces. The decree was written by Mordecai, stating that the king granted the Jews in every city to gather themselves together and to stand for their life, to destroy all that might attack them, and to take their property, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month.

Mordecai was now no more the despised Jew, but was clothed in the royal apparel of blue and white and with a great crown of gold and mantle of byssus (fine, white cloth) and purple, and the city of Shushan rejoiced. The Jews were joyful, and many among the people of the land became Jews because the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.

In all this, it is plain, the unseen tine unnamed, but not unknown God, was exercising His power. The Jews had, or account of their transgressions, been carried away from their homes by the Baby, Ionians, and now the Medes and Persian; were their rulers, but God's eyes rested upon them in their distress, and He would not allow them to be destroyed. Far from their homes, and a subject people, the were suddenly, by divine power brought into favor with the great king.

Esther 9

The day came which Haman had planned for the slaughter of all the Jews; he was no longer to carry out the cruel decree, but there were others who would have willingly done so! But by the second decree, the Jews were allowed to destroy all who attacked. them, and all the officers of the king helped the Jews, because they feared Mordecai who had become great, and became continually greater. So it was that the Jews smote all their enemies to death, including the ten sons of Taman, but they took none of their enemies property which the decree allowed them to take,

In Shushan the slaughter of the enemies occupied two days, and the bodies of Haman's sons were hung upon the gallows, A feast was founded upon this intervention of God, on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month every year, This feast of Purim is still observed by the Jews, about the first of March.

Esther 10

The book closes with a final word about Mordecai; he was second to the king, and great. among the Jews, seeking the welfare of his people, and speaking peace to all of them.

It is not for Christians to take vengeance upon their enemies; they are to love them (Matthew 5:44). There is no connection between the Book of Esther, and the position of the children of God today, except that we there see God as He is still working through the earthly governments for the good of those who fear Him. Circumstances in Esther's day and with ourselves, may seem to promise the worst things, but God is above all He does not disown those that fear Him,

God does not provide exalted places for Christians in this world, but He has blessed them with every spiritual blessing in heavenly things in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), and sees that they are provided for here too.

The name of God is entirely absent from the Book of Esther; His people's relationship with Him there appears to have been broken, yet He did not cease to provide for them in the place to which their willfulness and waywardness had brought them. But with the true believer, the relationship once formed can never be broken.

The Christian has the place of a child of God, has been made such by faith (Galatians 3:26), and has been taken into favor in God's beloved Son (Ephesians 1:6). Nothing can separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:89), and he has a rule of life far beyond the ten commandments (Ephesians chapters 4 and 5).

The book of Esther is a remarkable one, and in a very singular way the mercy and love of God shine out in it, It is the same God Who deals with its today in far different circumstances.

None can without the blood

Of Jesus be forgiven;

'Tis resting on the blood alone

That fits the soul for heaven.

Job 1

We have been considering in these weekly Bible lessons, first the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses: next the Historical Books, from Joshua to Esther, and we now enter upon the study of the Poetical books, including Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Job and the four books next following are not prophecies; they express as given to us by God, man's thoughts and feelings under the government of God before the cross of Christ, though some of the Psalms go much further and tell of His sufferings and glory.

All that is known of the history of Job is contained in the book which bears his name. He is named in Ezekiel 14 times, and in James 5 times. He lived in the north of Arabia, or in the East of Edom and Moab, that is, southeast of Palestine toward the Arabian desert. He evidently lived not earlier than Abraham, nor much later than Jacob, so that we are now brought back to the time of the book of Genesis, and the book of Job appears to have been written in the time of Moses, and probably by Moses.

The book of job shows God deeply interested in a man outside of the children of Israel and of Abrahatn, and so may be compared with the Book of Ruth, though Ruth was joined to Israel for her blessing, while in this book Israel is never mentioned. But no Jew would naturally have written either because each shows God interested in and blessing one who did not belong to the chosen race of Israel at all.

The theme of the book of Job is, "Why do the righteous suffer so much; is God just in allowing the people of God to suffer more than other men and women?" Job was a genuine man of God, as the first verse shows, and he was greater than all the children of the east, but riches. had not turned him away from God, as happens with so many. There was however in him a. need which he did not yet know. There was too much of Job in his life and too little of the true, knowledge of God.

He was to be taught in the school of God a most valuable lesson from which we may profit.

In the first two chapters we see for a moment, part of what is no doubt going on continually in God's presence, but is hid from our eyes. Among the mighty angels who came to present themselves before God, came Satan also. The Adversary or enemy, for that is what the name Satan means, came to God from the world, where he had been going around (see I Peter 5:8).

Satan's "seat" or throne is now in the wor1d. (Rev. 2:18), and he has the world in his hands not a little (Luke 4:5-8), to do with it as he pleases.

We know too that Satan's power reaches higher than the world, for in Eph. 2:2 he is called the prince (or ruler) of the power (authority) of the air, and in Eph, 11:11, 12, he is referred to again in the same way.

Daniel 10:13 shows Satan's power opposed to God's in the "prince of Persia" trying to keep an angel from bringing an important message to Daniel.

Zechariah 3:1, 2 is another passage that may be referred to.

In Job 1 and 2 we are shown that Satan, though powerful, can only do what God permits him to do, and we know from Rev, 12:7-9 that he is going to be put out of God's presence, and in Rev. 20, we are given to see him cast into the place of eternal torment, no more to work for the injury of man or of believers in particular, as he has been since the garden of Eden (Genesis 3).

When God asked Satan, "Hast thou considered My servant Job?" He had Himself been considering him in tender love; there was none like Job on the earth.

Satan, ignorant of God's work Job’s soul, believed that he would, if tested, curse God to His face, and was allowed to test poor Job most severely. Satan caused Job to be robbed of all his possessions both by arousing enemies, and by means of lightning; he was even permitted to bring about the death of Job's children by a great wind, Yet Job acknowledged God in it all, and did not sin against Him.

Job 2

Again Satan came among the angels before God who anew directed His attention to Job. Satan now said that man, and particularly Job, would give anything to keep his life; if his bone and ins flesh were touched, Satan was sure job would do as he said before.—-would curse God to His face. And God, who had great purposes of blessing in view for Job now put him again into Satan's hands, except as to his life.

Of all that had been said in the presence of God about himself, Job knew nothing, of course. He only felt the heaviness of the trials laid upon him, but he would not, did not, sin.

Satan smote Job with a grievous botch, a dreadful disease touching every part of his skin from head to foot, and he took a potsherd, a fragment of pottery, to scrape himself with, and sat among the ashes. What a pitiful object he must have been, and what a contrast there was from what he had been not long before!

His wife, angry with God because of His allowing her husband to be so tried, bade him curse God—the thing Satan hoped for. But Job would not; they had received good from Him should they not receive evil, also?

Satan, twice defeated, is heard of no more in connection with Job; he had taken away everything on which in his poor opinion Job's piety was built, and the poor man was only acknowledging God in his calamities; his devotion to God only shone out more clearly.

But if Satan was through with Job, God was not. The depths of his heart were not reached, nor the full lesson learned; he did not know what he was in himself, what the first part of Rom. 7:18 expresses; he had never been really in the presence of God, hut see his words in chapter 42:5-6, when his lesson was truly learned. As yet, though a pious man, his conscience had not been duly exercised before God, and true peace and the love of God were not known and enjoyed.

God now proceeds to work upon Job through three men,—three friends of Job who, having heard what had befallen him, came to sympathize with and comfort him. When the three friends saw him from the distance, they wept aloud, tore their clothes in their grief, and sprinkled dust on their heads. Finally sitting down with Job on the ground for seven days and seven nights, they said not a word to him, seeing how great his anguish was, and surely it was great!

Job 3

During the seven days, while his three friends sat around him without speaking, job was thinking about himself and his sufferings, and all that had befallen him. We cart not wonder at this, for very likely we should do worse than Job, if we were in the same case, His trials were great, and his patience or endurance under them was very remarkable, so that it is mentioned in the Epistle of James, chapter 5, where patience and endurance, (going on without complaining or rebelling against one's trials), are spoken of.

But Job did not think of God, or rather did not begin with God, in connection with his troubles. He had been, in a way. admiring himself, as a godly man, and now with the loss of everything in which he had been satisfied and contented, he wishes he had never lived, and that he may die to get away from his distress. But Job had been looking at the wrong object; he knew that his Redeemer liveth (chapter 19:25), but he did not know that self, that which Scripture calls the flesh (Romans 7 and 8) is to be "abhorred". He found this out at the end of his trials (chapter 42:6) that he needed to have God for his object.

The ways, thoughts and words of Christ as He passed through this world, finding everything contrary to Him, are the Christian's example; meek and lowly in heart was He, and those who having first come unto Him, afterward take His yoke of obedience and submission to the Father's will, find rest to their souls (Matt. 11:28-30).

In chapter 3 then, some of the things stored up in Job's heart came out. Much more came out afterward, as his friends talked on. He had not been entirely happy, not entirely at rest, he says in verses 25, 26, nor could he be, when he was so self-satisfied. The Christian's peace comes from the fullest submission to and trust in God.

Job 4-5

Eliphaz

Eliphaz, the first of the three to speak to Job, was very nice in his language, but he managed to tell Job some things that were untrue and unjust. It was the same with the others; part of what they said was true, and it has been used by the Holy Spirit, but a good deal was not true of Job or of God either,

None of the three were as well acquainted with God as Job was, and they were judging Job out of their own thoughts and opinions. Eliphaz was entirely wrong when he tried to make Job out to be a hypocrite (verses 7-8). He reasoned from a mistaken idea of God, and knew little of what He is, or how He deals with His children.

Job 6-7

The afflicted saint resumed his complaint, The most distressing disease was his; his flesh clothed with worms and clods of dust; his skin broken and loathsome (chapter 7:5), and his friends sitting in judgment on him,—this was more than he could bear.

He looked to God in his anguish, but though we who know and love the Lord Jesus, can enter into poor Job's feelings, and realize something of his sufferings, we see that he as yet was only thinking of justifying himself.

Job knew not that the love of God moved Him to afflict His child in order that he might learn a lesson for which he would ever afterward thank Him.

It was not that God took pleasure in seeing His child suffer, and he would not give Job his request—that he be allowed to die—(chapter 6:9 and 7:15),—because He was leading him through deep trial to deeper blessing.

Job compared his friends with the quickly vanishing streams of the desert (chapter 6:9-7:15), and rightly reproved them (verses 24-27, etc.). Instead of being a comfort to him, they were accusing him of being a hypocrite, which he was not. Job knew God better than they did, though he had much to learn through the heavy trial laid on him.

Chapter 7:20, "Preserver of men" should be read "Observer of men." Job realized that God was looking at him. He did not know what it was that God seemed to be judging him for, but could he not be forgiven?

Job 8

Bildad

Bildad takes upon himself to answer Job (chapter 8). Like Eliphaz (chapters 4 and 5), only not so lengthy in his remarks, he condemns Job as being under a punishment from God. Job's children, too, who had been taken away,—their lives must have been taken, Bildad thinks, because of their sins. And if Job were pure and upright, God would surely act to relieve hind

Eliphaz had talked about what he had seen,—his own experience; Bildad thinks of what he has been told.

"Inquire," he says, "of the former age."

Job, to him, was a hypocrite, a bad man trying to appear good, and now overtaken by the hand of God. Bildad was wrong; he was reasoning from his own thoughts of God, which were far from right. God was engaged in teaching Job a deep lesson, and neither the three friends, nor Job, as yet, knew it.

"Show me Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths. Lead me in Thy truth and teach me: for Thou art the God of my salvation.” Psa. 25:4-5.

Job 9-10

Job speaks again; he God's power, for he sees Him as a Judge, and knew of none to stand between himself and that Judge (verse 33). To him it was indeed a problem, "How can man be just with God?" But since the atoning death of Christ, and the proclamation of free grace to lost sinners, the problem has ceased to be. The Epistle to the Romans tells the secret. (See chapter 3, and particularly verses 21 to 26, and chapter 5:1-12, the truth of which Job could not know).

But Job continues to justify himself, and he blames God (Chapter 9:16-18, Chapter 10:2-10, 11-17). The close of the book will give us the key to Job's feelings, and the thoughts of many another saint of God who does not see that God is for him, not against him.

Chapter 9:9 gives us the present names of well-known stars in the northern sky,—-Orion and the Pleiades. "Arcturus," it is now generally agreed is really the group of stars called the Great Bear, or the Dipper, ceaselessly sweeping around the North Star. Job knew that Satan is the present ruler of this world (verse 21); he allows the judges to decide unjustly.

Job knew, too, that he was not good-enough for God; the goodness he rather rested in, would not stand before God (verses 30-31), and he did not, and could not know that there is (now) one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time (1 Timothy 2:5, 6). Compare this verse with Job 9:33.

At the end of chapter 10, Job speaks of death, and we see how little he knew of the happy portion of the children of God. It was not that he feared death, but he was entirely ignorant of the eternally blessed place of the redeemed. God had not made it known then, and did not until His Son had died upon the cross, and ascended up where He was before.

Job 11

Zophar

Now the third of Job's friends will add his testimony against the agonizing sufferer. Brazenly he accused Job of being entirely false. Put away your iniquity, he said, and then your troubles, shall cease.

It was all wrong; Job was no hypocrite. There might be, the poor man thought, some sin he did not know about, because of which God was punishing him, and part of his suffering was because he could not think what it might be.

Job believed that he had been living' in a clear conscience before God, and what his friends said hurt him very deeply, for it is always hard to be misjudged, especially by one's friends, But Job had too good an opinion of himself, and that is a hard thing to lose,

Job 12

He answered his friends sharply in chapters 12 and 13. They deserved the rebuke, but it did not change their minds about Job at all. He tells them to ask the beasts, the birds, the fishes (verses 7-8) — do they not show that things on this earth are not as God would have them, while the strong overcome the weak? Everything is out of order (verses 15-25).

Job 13

In verse 15 Job shows that his trust in God went beyond the grave.

Job 14

In Job 14 he again takes up death (verses 10-15).

He did not know of the coming of the Lord, and the two resurrections, spoken of so many times in the New Testament (John 5:28, 29; 1 Thess. 4:15-17; 5:1-11; 2 Thess. 1:8-10 and Rev. 20:5, 11-15 tell of these things as do other scriptures).

But Job is speaking of "man, born of woman," not of those born again (John 3), and till the heavens be no more, the wicked will lip, in their graves, as we see confirmed as in Revelation 20:11 and Rev. 21:1. This is not at the beginning, but at the end of the millennium,

"The grave" in verse 13 is not in the cemetery, but is another word,—"Sheol," the same word as is translated "hell" in Psalm 16:10, where the souls of the dead are until the resurrection. See Luke 16:23 which speaks of the same place, there called "hell", also, the place of departed spirits, though the saved and unsaved are not together. It is the place where the saved ones are with Christ, and where the lost wait for the judgment of the great white throne.

Job longs to be there, having confidence in God as his hope and salvation, but has no joy such as the apostle Paul had,

"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain ... . For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better," Phil. 1:21-23.

Job 15

Eliphaz

Eliphaz, the first of Job's friends to speak to him in his trials (chapters 4 and 5) speaks again, and with much more boldness than. before. His theme is again what he has seen in the world. To him now job is evidently a wicked man, long concealing his wickedness, but at last overtaken by the judgment of God. How trying it was for this saint, in such circumstances as were his, and not understanding God's dealings with him, to have to listen to the charges of his friend! Eliphaz, in verse 4, chides him with holding back from prayer or meditation with God. With many of God's dear children passing through deep trial, there are times in which they do not feel able to pray, or to enjoy meditation on His Word; it even seems as though they could not pray, And Satan uses this to remove them, if lie can, farther away from God.

What Job needed, like many another child of God, was to condemn himself, and yet he was justifying- himself as much as he could. He lived too much in his own good opinion, and the good opinion of others—always a danger to the Christian. But he was not afraid of meeting God; he knew that all would be well with him in the end, in eternity, if not in life, That is one of the proofs that he was a child of God.

Job 16

Job told his friends, when Eliphaz finished speaking, that if he could exchange places with. them, he could speak against them, and. shake his head at them, but lie would encourage them, and speak soothingly to them—the opposite of what they were doing to him.

But he turns away from the thought of his friends, to again consider God, and as in the tenth chapter, he even speaks against Him in wholly unbecoming language.

In verse 19 Job shows again that he knows God His Witness is in the heavens, and He that vouches for him (so it should read) is in the heights. Yet the need that only Christ could fill, is expressed in t verse 21.

Job 17

In chapter 17, we learn, though we might have supposed it, that Job was not only misjudged by his three friends, but by all the people (verse 6). His hope was for relief in death, though by reason of anguish (as well as being quite satisfied with himself), he failed entirely to justify God, job is confident that the ungodly and the righteous have very different futures before them (verses 8-9).

He was in deep distress over his circumstances of trial, but there was no cloud on his soul as he thought of eternity, though he knew little of what God had and has in store for them that love Him (verses 13-16, and 1 Corinthians 2:9, 10.).

Job 18

Bildad

Bildad, the second of Job's friends, who filled chapter 8 with his opinions and accusations against the suffering saint, speaks again. Angry with Job because he would not acknowledge that he was wicked, Bildad predicts his death as a judgment on him (verse 1), and tells the poor man that strangers shall dwell in his tent, his remembrance should perish from the earth, and gives a bitter thrust in verse 19 —his sons were all killed, not one remained to him.

Job 19

To these fresh reproaches Job answered in chapter 19, pleading for pity, that his friends would cease from speaking against him. The loss of his "glory", and of his "crown" (verse 9) distressed him, and we are by this reminded of the word of a more enlightened saint in New Testament days.

What a contrast between Job as we see him in these chapters, and the apostle Paul! (Gal. 6:14). Yet, as we have noted before, all was not darkness with Job, for he knew that his Redeemer lives, who should stand where he would see Him, and he would see Him in his body, and with his own eyes. This is a remarkable utterance, going farther in the language of faith than anything we have heard from Job before.

In chapter 14 he was speaking of "man," not the resurrection of the righteous among men. He might die, and his body be consumed away, but in the resurrection, he would have a new body; he did not have a doubt about that, nor fear of meeting God, because, however feebly he understood it, his faith had laid hold of the Redeemer yet to come, to die,—the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God.

Compare these words of Job with the solemn utterance of the wicked Balaam.

"I shall see Him, but not now: I shall behold Him, but not nigh," Numbers 24:1.7

Job 20

Zophar

The third friend, Zophar, goes farther in charges against Job as he adds his second thoughts to the rest. Job, says he, has oppressed, he has forsaken the poor, he has violently taken away, or robbed a house he did not build, and because he knew no limit to what he wanted, he would save nothing of what he most desired; the heavens will reveal his iniquity and the earth will rise up against him.

Job 21

Job answers again, telling his friends the truth which they seemed to have overlooked, that in the present order of things, since Satan has taken rule on earth, generally the wicked live, grow old, become mighty in power: they are established; their houses are safe from fear and everything goes well with them; they spend their days in prosperity and when death comes, they are quickly gone.

They say to God, "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve Him, and what are we profited if we pray unto Him?" And this was the state of things. on earth as long ago as when Job lived—4,000 years ago!—as it is today.

Job did not know what happens to the wicked at death; that was left to the Lord Jesus to tell in Luke 16:22-31, but lie could agree with his friends to this extent, that the wicked is reserved for the day of calamity; they will be led forth to the day of wrath, the day of the judgment of the ungodly.

Zophar the Naamathite was put to silence; we hear from him no more.

Job 22

Eliphaz

Eliphaz (see chapters 4, 5, and 15) will try again to fasten iniquity on Job. He mistakenly thinks that God can have no pleasure in a man who tries to please Him (verses 2 and 3). And he counts up more things to imagine Job has been guilty of, beside what Zophar had said. (See verses 5 to 9), He must have done these things, Eliphaz thinks, believing as before, that God was punishing Job for his sins,

The correct translation of verse 30 is, "Even him that is not innocent (or guiltless) shall he deliver; yea, he shall be delivered by the pureness of thy hands."

Eliphaz was speaking of himself, Zophar and Bildad, but his words were prophetic, as the close of the book shows. God gave him here to utter more than he knew.

Job 23

Job continues his complaint, and again becomes daring in his speech against God (verses 6 and 13); his good opinion of himself leads him to speak foolishly. As yet he has, it seems, never been in the presence of God, though a pious man. He is confident for eternity, as we have before seen, for his trust is in a coming Redeemer then living, but his conscience has not been searched out before God, and consequently he has no peace as yet; he does not really know God in His grace and love. In verse 6, read "No, but He would give heed unto me."

Job 24

Job was distressed because God does not more often deal with the wicked now. The answer is, Christ will judge when the day of His forbearance is ended (Acts 17:31), Today is the day of His patient, gracious dealing with man, but it is limited, and none of us knows when. it will end. "Now is the accepted time, now the day of salvation." 2 Cor. 6:2.

Job 25

Bildad

Bildad speaks again. It is the last time the three friends are heard, and his remarks are few. He seems to have felt the uselessness of saving anything more about Job's character; in fact about everything bad that the three could have thought to accuse the poor man of, had been said already.

Bildad's last speech is not about Job at all, nor does it apply to his case, although all he said was true. God is exalted, and the question unanswerable until the work of Christ in making atonement for sins upon the cross is asked, "How should man be just before God?" The answer is found in Romans 3:21-26.

Job had asked the same question (chapter 9:2), and gone into it very fully, but he could not give the answer. The three friends had entirely failed to meet the needs of poor tried and deeply suffering Job. They had only tried to fasten wickedness on him, of which he had not been guilty, because they had decided that his having been brought into such sore distress must have been the judgment of God on him. It was not what they thought at all. He was nearer to God than they who judged him.

Job 26-27

Through six chapters Job continued; at first he leas justifying-himself before his friends,—-and as far as their accusations went, he was right and they were wrong.

Job 28

He looks at the state of mankind, generally. He talks of what men, even in that early day were doing, in mining silver and gold, iron and "brass" (copper), and changing the course of streams. But such knowledge and ability were not wisdom—where should it be found? Man knows not its value, only destruction and death can say, "We have heard its report with our ears" (verse 22).

But God not only gave to man the knowledge and ability to do great engineering feats; He put man in relationship with Himself, and the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding (verse 28).

Job 29

Job begins his last appeal, rather than an argument. His heart is fully poured out. He longs for the old days that were happier, when everyone thought much of him, and when he was full of good deeds; now those that then were little thought of, derided him; lie was their song and by-word,

Job 30

He speaks to God again in the bitterness of his soul (verses 20-23).

Job 31

He examines his history finally, and no doubt what he tells of himself there, was every bit true.

He was an almost blameless man in his life, and there was none like him in all the earth. Wealth was not what he lived for (verses 24-25), nor was lie in any way turned to idolatry, bowing down to the sun and moon,—the first form of worshiping idols (verses 26-28). Yet with all that he could testify about himself, Job could not find rest for his poor troubled heart in that.

How hard it was for this excellent man to turn away from himself, to see with God how worthless the best that man can do is a means of becoming just in God’s sight! In what follows we shall find that job is for the most part a listener, but not to the false charges of his friends.

Job 32

Elihu

We are now introduced to another person when Job's friends can say no more to convince him that he is wicked. and that God is Punishing him, and when Job himself has said all that he can think of to say with truth in his own favor, He was suffering as much as ever, for neither the advice of his friends, nor his own thoughts about himself had brought any relief. Elihu turned the thoughts of all to God, for he speaks for Him.

We shall find God speaking too, later, but Job's wish for one to come between himself and God (chapter 9:32-35; chapter 16:21) is first answered in the person of Elihu.

Chapter 32 is introductory, and in it Elihu tells the three friends that they were wrong in what they said to Job. None of them had answered. what the sufferer said, though they tried hard enough to do so,

Job 33

In chapter 33, Elihu tells Job that he was there, a man like himself, to speak for God; he had heard Job's bitter words, and they were not right. Why strive against God? He gives no account of any of His matters.

In verses 14-28 God has given a remarkably full account of His ways with man from the earliest times, which is beyond anything else in the Old Testament. It is almost the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, but Elihu 'lid. not know, and could not tell of a crucified, dead and risen Saviour, or of the new nature now given to everyone that believes in Jesus.

God speaks once, twice, and man perceives it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, He will open men's ears, and seal their instruction, that He may draw them away from. their work, and hide pride from them, He keeps back their souls from the pit of hell, and their lives from passing away by the sword. illness conies, aches and pains; the wished for food is gone, and the sick one is wasting away; his bones that were not stick out. He draws near to death.

At such a time, if there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand – Elihu was that now, but the Holy Spirit is the real Interpreter of God's Word, to show to man his duty, or his uprightness, that is, in judging himself, then God will be gracious to him, and say,

"Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom !"

That is as far as God's Word could tell before the Son of His love came into the world to save sinners. He had "found a ransom," but the price was not yet paid; His Son must die for the ungodly, a ransom for all. (Romans 5; 1 Timothy 2:6),

In verse 25 is presented the new birth spoken of by the Lord to Nicodemus in John 3, and verse 26 follows with the sinner in prayer to God, and received by Him, ("Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out," John 6:37).

He, this converted one, shall see His face with shootings, and He will render unto man His righteousness. This is a look onward to eternity (See 1 John 3:2; 1 Thess. 4:17; Rom. 8:30-34; Rev. 5:9-10).

Verses 27 and 28 are connected with the present privilege of confession of Christ before men, and seeking to bring others to the blessed knowledge of Himself,

God has been, we see doing these things that verses 14 to 28 tell of, constantly from before Job's early day, only in the New Testament there is more, for a Saviour is now proclaimed (See Romans 10:5-13).

Job 34

Elihu continuing his discourse, pointed out something that Job had not realized, that in complaining as he did against God, he was going in company with workers of iniquity,—with wicked men. Job began with, "I am righteous," and presently he was saying, "It profiteth man nothing if he delight himself. in God." Far be wickedness from God, and wrong from the Almighty! Yet what Job had been saying was practically to accuse Him of just that, so anxious was he to establish himself as righteous.

God acts in a certain way with man (verse 11): He will render to him, according to his work and his way; as a man sows, so shall he also reap, as we are also told in the Epistle to the Galatians (6:7). God does not do wickedly, nor pervert judgment. Who gave Him charge of the earth, or disposed the whole world? Who started it rolling through space, and keeps it going on without a pause? Was it man, indeed? "Why," said. Elihu (verse 11), "if God thought only of Himself, and gathered unto Him His spirit and His breath, all flesh would die together, and man would return to dust."

Was Job right in speaking against the All-Just (or Mighty Just)? It would not be right to speak wrongfully of a king (verse 18). What then of One mightier than all kings, both rich and poor being the work of His hands? God overtakes men in their lives, and because they have turned back from Him, and would consider none of His ways, He takes them away in judgment. There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves (verse 22). Adam and Eve tried to hide from God (Genesis 3:8), but could not, and in the closing book of the Bible we see man, both great and small trying to hide from the wrath of God (Revelation 6:15-16).

"When He giveth quietness, who then will disturb?" Job should be saying to God, "I will bear chastisement; I will not offend. What I see not, teach Thou me; if I have done wrong, I will do so no more" (verses 31-32). Instead, he was rebellious against Him, and adding to his words against Him, because he spoke without knowing, and without wisdom.

Elihu wished therefore, that Job should be tried to the end, because of his answers after the manner of evil men,

Job 35

It was a searching question that Elihu asked of Job: "Thinkest thou this to be right, that thou saidst, My righteousness is more than God's?" Not in just those words had Job spoken, but in chapter 10:7-8, in chapter 16:17, and in chapter 23:11-13, he had said what really meant that; it was his partly formed thought.

Elihu was showing Job his faults, which his friends had not been able to do. If Job asked what profit it was, what he gained more than if he had sinned, Elihu would point him to the heavens, the skies stretching far beyond the reach of puny man.

Sinning or righteous as Job might be, his ways or his doings could neither injure nor give to God, though his wickedness, as his righteousness might affect another man (verse 8).

As for men, on account of those who oppress them, they cry out, but none of them say,

"Where is God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night; who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowl of the heavens?"

Is it not so with men today? God is not in their thoughts except as One to be avoided till the last. He would be their Friend, their Deliverer from the wrath to come, but they say "No God" (Psalm 14), and do not like to retain God in their knowledge (Romans 1:28). He alone has power to "give songs in the night,"—not only to Paul and Silas in the prison at Philippi (Acts 16:23-25),—but to all who love Him, He it is, as every Christian knows, who teaches us more than the beasts, and makes us wiser than the birds.

If pride keeps men away from God (verses 12-13), what about Job? (verses 15-16).

He was, without realizing it, feeling and speaking very much like the wicked who forget God, but God was dealing with him, and using Elihu just now to bring him to see the error of his way.

Job 36-37

In chapter 36, Elihu speaks of God's ways with those who fear Him.

You will remember that in chapter 33, we were shown God's frequent way of bringing sinners to Himself—the gospel in the book of Job,—and in chapter 34, His dealings with mankind,—those who forget God, and would have nothing to do with Him.

What was Job thinking, as he listened to this, younger man whose name means "God Himself," and who was really speaking with God-given wisdom and truth? (verse 4).

Elihu always speaks first of God; he justifies Him in all that He does. God is mighty, but He despises not any; He saves not the wicked alive, but He does justice to the afflicted; He withdraws not His eyes from the righteous—does not turn away from them, though He may send them severe trials.

If He does this, it is that they may see their own ways, have their ears opened, and receive His command to return from iniquity. Then (verses 11-15) we are given the comparison of the godly and the ungodly: the one hearkens, the other hearkens not, Job would have been delivered out of the jaws of distress into a broad place, only that he was full of the judgments of the wicked; Elihu bids him beware lest God's wrath take him away through chastisement.

In verse 21 word is very direct;
"Turn not to iniquity, for this hast thou chosen rather than affliction."

Job must have been confounded by Elihu's pointed words, of truth; we do not hear a single sentence from him.

But are there not many Jobs in our own day,—self-satisfied believers, and if brought into deep trial, holding to their own supposed uprightness and integrity, instead of seeking to be emptied, that God may fill them?

Is there not a reason for telling so little of Job's history before his trials, and so much of what took place in those trials? Surely there is, that we may ourselves learn the lesson Job had to learn.

Commencing at verse 22, and continuing through to the close of chapter 37, Elihu returns to the consideration of God; he exalts Him, and speaks of His power and wisdom, He would have Job to see and understand the wondrous works of God, and he closes his discourse in verses 23 and 24, attributing to Him power, judgment and justice. But it is not Elihu, but God Himself that brings Job to a right state, as the following chapters show.

Job 38

He who has been listening a long time, though unseen, now enters and answers His servant's questions, and presently leads poor Job to say (chapter 40:4) "Behold I am vile, what shall I answer Thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth;" and (chapter 42:1-6) his final confession:

"Now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Job had the best of the argument in all his talks with his three friends, but Elihu told him he was wrong, and pointed him to the One he was misjudging, and the poor afflicted man could not answer him. It is then that God speaks to Job; there is no voice like His, to set poor Job or any other saint right. It will be seen that it is here "the LORD," but the name "God" is used all through the book of Job after chapter 2, except chapter 12:9. "The LORD," or properly "Jehovah," tells of God in relation to man on the earth.

There are several names by which God makes Himself known in His Word, but "El," commonly translated "God,"—the Mighty, or Strong One, and. Jehovah," generally translated "the LORD," meaning "to exist" or The Eternal One, He who was and is and is to come, are the most frequently used.

Magnificent language is found in the chapters which follow; it is the voice of divine majesty that speaks here before His poor, self-occupied servant. Was it not "darkening counsel by words without knowledge," that Job had been doing?

What did he know of God, really? Where was Job when God founded the earth? Who set the measures of it, if he knew, or who stretched a line upon it? Whereupon were the foundations of it sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job knew more than many men of science who lived after him, in regard to the world when he said:

"He stretched out the north over empty space; He hangeth the earth upon nothing," (chapter 26:7), but he knew not how to answer the Lord's questions.

The earth's "foundations" and "cornerstone" speak of its steadiness, its stability and regularity in its course from day to day and year to year, and the morning stars are here shown to have been formed before the world, as were also the "sons of God,"—the angels.

"Singing," here said of the stars, is thought by many to be a poetical expression, but it may be as some have thought, that the starry light is really musical, though we of the earth cannot hear it.

Then God turns to the restless, resistless sea; He had shut it up with doors, made its boundaries and said, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther."

Next, Job is asked of the morning, the dawn of day, when the wicked (most evil, most of the crimes are committed in the night) are "shaken out" of the earth; their "light" (verse 15), is the darkness. The sea is again considered, only to turn (verse 17) to something more powerful—death, or rather the place of the departed spirits, Sheol, or Hades.

The earth's great surface,—did Job's understanding take it all in? And where does light dwell, and the place of darkness, where?

So Job is carried on to consider in turn the wonders of God's creation, including the things without life. We shall stop today at verse 38.

Verses 31-33 refer to the stars.

Verse 31 should be read, "the bands of Pleiades," rather than "sweet influences."

"Mazzaroth" (verse 32), is not exactly understood today; it is thought to mean the constellations.

"Arcturus" is apparently the Great Bear or Dipper.

Job 39

We begin at verse 39 of chapter 38, where this chapter should properly begin, taking up the ° subject of things that have life, as in chapter 38, God spoke of things without life that He had made,—a part of His creation.

Had Job anything to do with hunting the lioness's food, or satisfying the hunger of the young lions? Or was he looking after the ravens? Did he know the lives of those timid creatures, the mountain goats, or the wild ass?

The "unicorn," verses 9 and 10 is properly the buffalo or wild ox, and this is so wherever the word is used in Scripture.

In verse 13 read, "The wing of the ostrich beats (or waves) joyously. But is it the stork's pinion and plumage?" Tile point here (verses 13 to 18) is that the ostrich leaves her eggs, cares little or nothing for her young ones, while the stork is just the opposite, as God has made these creatures. The stork is one of the most affectionate of the creatures we know.

Another of God's creatures, well known to us all, is the horse, and horses trained for use in war are spoken of in verses 19 to 25. Had Job given strength to the horse, or clothed his neck with the quivering mane?

In these days of automobiles, we see few horses, but older ones will remember the horses of the fire departments of our cities, how they ran from their stalls at the sound of the fire-alarm, and seemed to enter into the purpose of the brave firemen as they dashed down the streets to a blazing house; the war horses of other days must have been like these as they galloped into battle.

Then Job is told to consider the hawk and the eagle, both very different from the horse, for they have not been tamed, so they avoid man.

How wonderful and bow various is God's handiwork! Each of these creatures we have read of forms a part of the creation which God has formed by His word.

Genesis 1:20-25 tells of these creatures being made, and here their habits are spoken of by Him who made them, and gave to each kind of His creatures its own ways, all of them fitted for the life they were to live.

Men who reject the Bible, do not believe that God made everything, and many of those who owe their life and breath and all things to Him, deny that there is any God; they try to make themselves, and those who listen to them believe that everything happened without anyone, without a God to create the universe, and to design the birds, beasts and fishes, and above all, man.

The Christian sees the folly of such thoughts, knowing from God's Word that He was the Author of what we see in nature (not the author of sin, however).

God fitted each creature to the life it was to live, designed its body, and provided for its food and shelter, too.

Job 40

Two more of God's creatures He will mention, but first Job's conscience must be reached: He had contended with the Almighty, even reproved God—could he, should he, instruct Him? He answers, "I am vile, what shall I answer Thee?" Job has been convinced, or at least put to silence, but God has more to say to him, for the work in his soul must be deep and thorough. Would Job also make God's judgments of no effect? Would he condemn God that he, Job, might be righteous? Did he think to compare himself with God, whose power is so great?

Let him adorn himself with everything he could of glory and excellency; of majesty and splendor, and cast abroad the ragings of his anger: Could he now look on every one that is proud, and bring him down; could he tread down the wicked, hide them in the dust and bind their faces in secret? If Job could do that, God would praise him, because his right hand saved him.

This dealing with man is God's work only; He only who formed man can humble him. And He will!

Now He turns to the behemoth (perhaps and indeed quite likely, the rhinoceros, that creature of immense strength and fury, "the chief of God's ways"), shall this animal be taken in front? Can it be caught and tamed? Certainly not a full grown one; in fact they are never tamed.

Job 41

Leviathan (the crocodile, we understand to be meant) is the second creature to be spoken of in these closing words of God to Job (Chapter 41). Could this reptile be subdued, made useful to man? Will Job play with one as a bird, and bind it for his maidens? Its hide is so thick that darts and spears will not pierce it, and even the modern rifle has no power to go through it. It might well terrify the men of Job's early day.

Well, these two unconquerable and dangerous creatures are spoken of in God's discourse to Job, to show him how puny his strength really was against the things of nature which God had made, and to which He gave life.

How small man is, and how little his power, how great, too his ignorance, how little his wisdom, when God is brought into the scene.

All that God had spoken to Job about were earthly things, or things in which the earth had a part. What of the deeper things unseen and eternal so often scorned by man?

How dependent we are, and everyone is, upon God for His favor! And what of the priceless gift of a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ? None but God could have planned so great a Gift to poor helpless man.

Job 42

How changed Job was after God had spoken to him! Nearly all that Job had said in twenty chapters, he now confessed was obscuring counsel without knowledge, tittering what he did not understand. And how few words—less than a hundred—are needed to tell that the old self-confidence was now gone.

The speaking Job had now become the listening Job, and now his eyes (his spiritual eyes, or understanding, no doubt) saw the One he had so misjudged, and he detested, or loathed himself, and repented in dust and ashes.

We may say that, Job had long before heard about God, but now, prepared by Elihu's godly counsel; he had heard God, —God had spoken to him, and shown him how very wrong he was in resting in his own righteousness, and blaming God for his troubles.

It is the same today with everyone who prayerfully reads the Bible, receiving it as it is in truth, the Word of God; for God no longer speaks to men in dreams and visions, but through the written Word, whether it be received through the eye-gate, as reading; or the ear-gate, as hearing it from the lips of one of God's servants.

God would not and did not, leave Job until he had learned the lesson he had needed to be taught. This book shows us God's faithfulness, and His knowledge of His own people; shows us Satan at work, carrying out, quite unintentionally however, God's purposes; it shows us, too, that even the best of men, as we may judge Job's three friends to have been, may sadly err, and add to the sufferings of those who are passing through trial by misjudging them, and not understanding God's ways with them. The book shows further that the child of God needs training, because there is easily much of "self" about one, to be distrusted and rejected.

The wrong with Job was that he was quite a little contented with what he saw of the work of God in himself; when in his thoughts, humbled and chastened, he saw God, and blessing followed when once the depths of his own heart were revealed to him.

And Job's three friends must hear from God, too. Eliphaz and the two others had not spoken rightly of God; if Job had erred, they had done so, grievously, and to Job they must go with a burnt offering to God for themselves, and he, Job, would pray for them. After Job had prayed for those who had spoken so wrongfully about him and to him, his trials ceased. (Is this not a lesson in humility, too)?

He had twice as much of property as before, and the same number of children as he had lost.

But Job's wife,—was she only an onlooker, or did she learn the lesson of trusting God and looking away from self at its best, that her husband had learned? We cannot say, but as we close this most interesting book, may we ask ourselves if we have learned aught from it.

Psalm 1

The one-hundred and fifty Psalms were written at various times, and by a number of men; like all of the Bible, they were given by the inspiration of God, the Holy Spirit moving the persons who wrote them to write what, in general, expressed their own feelings at the time, feelings made theirs by the same Divine Person.

Some of the Psalms, in their expressions, go quite beyond the experience of the writers; Psalm 22 is an example of this—it tells of the sufferings of Christ on the cross.

The Psalms have been exactly arranged according to an order clearly seen, so that they foretell the position and the feelings of the Jews in that fast approaching time when they will turn to God in their own land of Palestine.

The Psalms are really five sections or books, and in the Hebrew they are shown that way.

Book 1 includes Psalms 1 to 41

Occupied with the state of the God-fearing Jews, among the ungodly ones in Judea.

Book 2 includes Psalms 42 to 72.

Tells that they have left Jerusalem, which is given over to wickedness.

Book 3 includes Psalms 73 to 89.

Shows Israel (the nation) restored to their land, but not yet fully blessed.

Book 4 includes Psalms 90 to 106.

The Lord appears as their Messiah

Book 5 includes Psalms 107 to 150.

Is more general; it is a sort of summing up, ending with the fullest praise to God for His goodness and mercy.

Psalms 1 and 2 are an introduction to all the Psalms.

Psalms 3 to 8 are also introductory.

The first Psalm speaks of the godly Jew, but it is certain that the only person of whom it gives a true description, the only one of whom it ever was really true, is He upon whom the heavens were opened, (Mark 1:9, 11); as man the Son of God took His, place among the godly few of Israel (Matthew 3:15); He was the truly separate one, apart from all the "counsel" of the wicked, and the "way" of sinners, and the company of scorners.

The Word of God was His delight, and He, as a tree planted by brooks of water, gave His fruit in its season, whether it was to meet Satan in the wilderness (Luke 4:1,13); or Nicodemus the Jewish ruler with uneasy heart seeking Him by night ( John 3); or the lawyer of Luke 10:25; or the chief priests, scribes and elders in Mark 11:27. In Him all was perfection.

The last two verses speak of judgment sure to come, when the wicked shall not "stand," and their "way" shall perish.

Is there anything the world thinks less of than the judgment of God? Ample warning of it is given in the Bible; it is certain (Hebrews 9:27); the time is fixed (Acts 17:30, 31), and its fearful, unsparing character is told (1 Peter 4:17, 18; Revelation 20: 11, 15).

"Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for a new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 2 Peter 3:13.

Psalm 2

If Psalm 1 shows the godly few among the Jews in the last days, and their blessing, as distinct as can be from the ungodly, it holds out the promise of judgment upon the wicked.

The second Psalm lets us know that all the plots and plans of the wicked will be brought to nothing by God's Anointed One, His King, His Son.

We may turn to Revelation 13 for the New Testament prophecy corresponding to what is told in verses 1 to 3. It is a solemn thing to consider, that God's Word shows beyond any doubt in many passages, that the preaching of the gospel of the grace of God will be rejected by mankind, who will turn away entirely from God and Christ, and believe Satan's lies.

Revelation 19-20; Jude; 2 Thessalonians 1-2; and many other scriptures declare that the present course of this world will end in the appearing of the Lord Jesus to judge the wicked, and set up His kingdom, as is intimated in Psalm 2,

The "people" in verse 1 are the races of mankind, kings and princes, perhaps already, and certainly soon will, want to have nothing to do with God and his Son.

We know from 2 Thessalonians 2 That there is a restraint on the world (verse 7) which will be removed, and then the lawless one shall be revealed.

When the Church of God is taken away at the coming of the Lord, and this event may occur at any moment, that of which Psalm 2 speaks, will shortly follow.

Notice, there is no thought of mercy in this Psalm; the wicked have had their opportunity to be saved, and have neglected it to their eternal loss.

Pharaoh (Exodus 5, 12) was shown signs and wonders six times, and each time he hardened his heart against God. After that, God hardened Pharoah's heart, his day of mercy was over. (See Hebrews 3:7 to 4:13).

"Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee" (Hebrews 1:7), refers to the Lord's birth as Mary's son in Bethlehem (See Matthew 1:20, 23 and 2:15; Luke 1:32 and 35; 2:49; Romans 1:3, 4; Hebrews 1). The Son born in time, is the Son from eternity, as these same Scriptures show,—Him of whom John 3:11,18,35,36 and John 5:17,47 tell.

Compare.. verse 8 of our Psalm Isaiah 53:12; Joel 3; Psalm 110. The Lord has not yet asked for the inheritance. In John 17 He asked not for that (see verse 9), but about those whom the Father had given Him, when He was about to leave the world.

But when the time for reigning has come, Jerusalem will be the world's center, and Christ its king. Then will be irresistible power (verse 9), putting down all that resist Him.

In this Psalm, though the nations are spoken of, the rebellious Jews are included in the judgment that is foretold, for they will be joined with the Gentile enemies.

"Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him," a good word for any one at any time; but it is fearfully solemn to think of what eternal loss awaits those who will not put their trust in Him!

Psalm 3

Confidence in God is the theme of the third Psalm.

The third Psalm, expressing David's feelings when he fled from before his rebellious son Absalom (2 Samuel:15,17, has been made by the Holy Spirit the first of a second series of introductory Psalms (verses 3 to 8).

Psalms 3 to 7 tell the feelings of the small number of the Jews who will look to God for salvation when His heavenly people (the believers in Christ in this present age) have been taken away from the earth (1 Corinthians 15; 1 Thessalonians 4), and Palm 8 gives God's answer to the prayers included in the five preceding Psalms.

The expressions used in Psalms 3 and 4 were surely somewhat the Lord's own feelings as He took His place with the godly Jews in His path from Nazareth to Calvary. None knew rejection as He did. Although the cross is not particularly in view in Psalm 3, we may compare verses 2 and 3 with Matthew 27:39, 44.

These Psalms also express the sufferings of the godly in Israel in a future time.

The word: "Selab" (verse 2) found often in the Psalms and also in Habakkuk 3, has not been entirely explained, but it seems to mark a place to pause and consider what has been said.

The close of the third Psalm (verses 7 and 8) expresses the confidence of faith that the enemies will surely be destroyed, and that God's people will be blessed, because salvation is of the Lord.

Psalm 4

Dependence on God, and godliness and righteousness the theme of the fourth.

"Neginoth” in the heading of the fourth Psalm, and in six others is understood to mean "on stringed instruments."

The "sons of men," (verse 2), are the great ones of the earth; they are reminded that God has set apart the godly for Himself. He will hear when the one who speaks (it is Christ as man, first), calls to Him.

In verses 4 and 5 the Spirit of Christ is speaking to the believing Jews, the remnant, as they are called; they are told how they should live.

"Sacrifices of righteousness" (verse 5) may be compared with Psalm 51:16, 17 and 19.

In verse 6, notice "us",—this is surely Christ joining with the remnant, in spirit.

Verse 7 is remarkable; it is a time of great trial, yet the writer declares that he has now happiness more than in the day when all was outwardly well. How can this be? It is because of the knowledge of the truth expressed in verse 3.

In Psalms 3 and 4, and in the three directly following, the general state of the godly remnant is set out, without telling their circumstances. We shall come to their real circumstances farther on.

It must be remembered that those for whom, and of whom, the Psalms were written, will not know the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God, as the Christian does, Their hopes are of the rejected Messiah's coming back to the earth to set up His kingdom, and put down all enemies, This He will do, we know from many Scriptures, but the Christian's hope is centered upon the coming of the Lord to call away the living saints, and raise the dead, as so expressively told in 1 Thessalonians 4.

Psalm 5

“NEHILOTH," in the heading of the fifth Psalm, is thought by some to refer to a wind instrument of music, but its meaning is not certain.

Psalm 5 shows the very earnest wish of the godly remnant of the Jews in the coming day, to have their ways according to God, pleasing to Him.

The true knowledge of God always leads the believer to correct his ways. There are many examples of this in the Word of God, and many precepts such as are found in 1 Peter 1:13, 25.

"In the morning," verse 3, these poor tried saints will not wait until the day is over to present their prayers to God. The habit of praying (and reading the Word of God) before the day's cares and duties begin is a very good one for the children of God of all ages, and at all seasons. And the fervent (or operative) supplication of the righteous man, has much power (James 5:16, New Translation).

God will hear the prayers of those who ask to be led in His righteousness (verse 8), and He will bless the righteous, and surround them with favor as with a shield (verse 12),

He is not a God who has pleasure in wickedness (verse 4). Insolent fools shall not stand before His eyes (verse 5), and He will destroy them that speak lies (verse 6).

It is God's loving kindness that has made it possible for poor sinners to enter His house (verse 7), as John 3:16, and other passages tell so plainly; not on the principle of works which have been done in righteousness which we had done, but according to His own mercy has God saved those that believe (Titus 3:4, 8 New Translation).

The verse 9 gives the truth about the enemies of God and of His people; it seems strange to a Christian, however, to read such words as are in verse 10, but these are not Christians for whom these words are written.

The Christian is never taught to pray that the wicked shall be punished. The blessed Lord gave us an example that we who belong to Him should follow in His words when He was crucified,

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Luke 23:34. And the first martyr Stephen, followed Him when he cried with a loud voice, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Acts 7:60.

But when the day has come, for which the Psalms were written, the judgments, long withheld, will be about to fall. Then will the Lord in righteousness, judge and make war (Revelation 19:11).

Verses 11 and 12 are, blessed be God, forever true of those who trust in the living and true God.

"And all that trust in Thee shall rejoice: forever shall they shout joyously, and Thou wilt protect them; and they that love Thy name shall exult in Thee. For Thou, Jehovah, wilt bless the righteous man; with favor wilt Thou surround him as with a shield." (New Translation).

Psalm 6

“NEGINOTH" in the heading of this. Psalm means "on stringed instruments;" the meaning of "Sheminith" is perhaps "upon the octave" or "with eight strings." Under the stress of sore trial, the Jewish saints of the coming day will plead with God for relief.

Well may God be angry with the Jews, for they rejected and killed their Messiah, and took the guilt of it in their awful words, "His blood be on us, and on our children." Matthew 27:25.

For a description of the day that is soon to dawn for this world, and particularly for the Jews, see the prophecy of Zephaniah.

"O Lord, how long?" ask the believing Jews, How long shall it be before their Messiah comes again, and to reign? They do not deny that what shall then have come upon them of affliction from God, is because of the sins of the people. But they are in heart separated from the ungodly, as verses 7, 8 and 10, particularly show, and so they look for mercy.

In the spirit of Matthew 21:9, 13, they wait, not for the resurrection moment (1 Corinthians 15:51, 58) as Christians do, or should, but for the promised "end" to which they look.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved (Matthew 24:13) from wrath, and brought into blessing in the kingdom which the Lord will set up on earth. So they pray that they might live and not die. This is a proper Jewish hope, at such a time, but very different from the Christian hope, as given in Philippians 1:21, 23,

Verse 5 is not a revelation by God, but the expression of man's ignorance. In the gospel of Luke, 16:19, 31, the Lord Jesus told about the place where the dead are, and we see there that there is memory after death.

"The grave," (verse 5) is from a Hebrew word, "Sheol," which means the place where the dead are, that is spoken of in Luke 16. This word is translated "the grave" nine times, and "hell" seven times, in the Psalms. This word occurs 65 times in the Old Testament, and the translators 31 Times made it "the grave," and 31 Times they translated it as "hell," 3 times they called it "the pit."

Hell, the place of the lost for eternity, is not often named in God's Word. It is hardly mentioned in the Old Testament, but the Lord Jesus named it 10 times in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and it is given the awful name of "the lake of fire" in the Revelation (chapters 19, 20 and 21).

Those who are the Lord's and die, are "absent from the body, present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). For them to die is "gain," and to be "with Christ" (Philippians 1:21,23). Also Luke 23:43; they "sleep in Jesus" their bodies, (not their souls or spirits sleeping), and they will receive the resurrection body at the coming of the Lord in the same moment with those who are living when the Lord comes (1 Corinthians 15;51,53; 1 Thessalonians 4:13,18).

As regards those who die unsaved, we have, beside the account given by the Lord in Luke 16, Samuel's word to Saul in 1 Samuel 28:19; 1 Peter 3:19; and Revelation 20:12.

No one is, we believe, yet in hell (the lake of fire), though those who have died unsaved evidently, (from Luke 16) know that they are under the judgment of God, as truly as those who have known Christ as their Saviour, know and enjoy the presence of the Lord, where they are now. They are entirely separate, the one from the other.

The thought of a "purgatory" is not found in Scripture; nor any opportunity for the unconverted dead to be saved.

The close of our Psalm declares that God has heard the cry of His suffering saints; He will give them their desire, as later Psalms go on to show.

Psalm 7

“SHIGGAION," in the heading of the Psalm is not understood. Like other Hebrew words in the Psalm titles, it may refer to the musical instruments used when the Psalms were sung, Cush the Benjamite was evidently one of David's enemies, like Shimei (2 Samuel 16:5-8), Written by David on account: of his wicked son Absalom's seeking his life.

Psalm 7 has been set in its place in this Book by the Holy Spirit as telling the feelings of the believing Jews in the latter days.

Upon reading this Psalm we are reminded of James 5:10,

"The effectual fervant prayer of a righteous man availeth much," because it is a prayer of one who both trusts in God (verse 1), and is upright in heart (verse 10).

Yet the words of this Psalm could only have their fullest expression in the Lord Jesus when He went about in this world, hated without a cause, except that He exposed their wicked hearts. He was the one altogether dependent Man (see Philippians 2:8, and the whole record of His life as a man here below; Matthew 3:15; Mark 1:35; Luke 2:49, and John 18:11 are examples).

In His hands there was no iniquity (verse 3); He had freed him that without cause oppressed Him (verse 4)—this was seen in His whole life of service, and most of all in His atoning death (Isaiah 53:5 speaking of the latter as verses 3 and 4 do of His life).

Here then we may see Jesus taking His place with the godly among the Jews, perfect in all His way, and leaving an example that the godly should follow His steps, who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:21, 22).

Verses 6 to 16, as we have observed in connection with other Psalms, speak of the certain judgment of God; it will come, but such language, proper enough from God's earthly people in the coming day, is never given to the Christian, because this is the day of God's grace.

"The people," in verses 7 and 8, does not refer to the Jews, but to the Gentile nations who are going to meet God in judgment.

It will be seen that in this Psalm there is no confession of guilt, or looking for mercy; the words are those of one whose ways are pleasing- to God. Such can expect an answer to their prayers; God hears their cry (see, among many passages, Philippians 4:9).

This is the last prayer-Psalm of the series (Psalms 3 to 8), for the next one gives God's answer to the cry of His people.

Psalm 8

“GITTITH" in the title of this Psalm, is not understood; it may, very likely refer to the instruments of music used in Solomon's reign. This Psalm, the last of the group of six giving a general introduction to what follows, expresses the delight of the believing Jews, over the answer to their prayers (Psalms 3 to 7), when their once rejected and crucified, but now looked for Messiah, the Lord Jesus, shall have descended from heaven to take the authority long appointed for Him.

This Psalm is referred to, or quoted from, in John 15, Luke 9:26; Ephesians 1:20, 21; 1. Corinthians 15:27, and Hebrews 2:11-8

Here the Lord Jesus is shown to be over everything as Man. It is in considerable degree the answer to Psalm 2 That is-here, but God will not only set His Son upon Zion, the hill of His holiness, but give Him the heathen for His inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession; Ile has put all things under His feet.

When the Lord was rejected by the Jews, He told His disciples that they should not any longer tell any that He was the Christ or Messiah (Matthew 16:20; Mark 9:30, 31; Luke 9:21, 22). If He was refused as the Christ, the greater glory was His, as Son of man, and this is what is brought out here, the Lord Jesus is both LORD (Jehovah) (verse 1), and Son of Man (verses 4-6).

And the believing Jews, are "babes and sucklings," (see Matthew 11:25); they are weak, and little thought of by the world, but out of such He has ordained, or established, praise.

To consider the mighty works of His hand (verse 3), and then think of puny man (verse 4), makes one think how insignificant we really are; but the Holy Spirit then brings in Jesus as the Son of Man, made a little lower than the angels (for the suffering of death as we learn from Hebrews 2:9), and crowned with glory and splendor.

How excellent His name will be then, in all the earth! He is worthy of all that shall be His,—

"Worthy of homage and of praise; Worthy by all to be adored," and the Christian exalts Him now in the time of His rejection.

May He be the one desire of every heart, as now He will so quickly come for His own.

Psalm 9

“MUTH-LABBEN" in the title of this Psalm, perhaps means "the death of the son," or "of his son."

The eight Psalms we have already looked at, form a sort of introduction to all that follow.

Psalms 9 and 10 stand alone, in a way; they lead to Psalms 11 to 15. These two Psalms tell the state or condition or circumstances of the Jewish believers in the coming day; they are then oppressed by the wicked Jews and the heathen.

The humble ones are seen praising with their whole heart, and recounting all the marvelous works of the Lord.

Victory over the enemies of these poor believers, when it comes, is God's doing.

Verses 5 to 8 of Psalm 9 tell the very important principle for faith at all times, that all the schemes and successes of Satan are only for time; he can destroy as God may let him, but God goes on forever.

He will have His way always, at the end, and faith looks on that day, content to wait for Him.

But God is not only certain to be a Judge (verses 7-8) He has another character, blessed he His name; He is a refuge (strictly, a high fortress, or high tower) to the oppressed one, and in times of distress. They that know His name will confide in Him, for He has not forsaken them that seek Him (verses 9-10); He remembers, the cry of the afflicted ones, He does not forget (verse 12).

Higgaion (verse 16), may mean "to be played on the harp," if not "meditate."

Psalm 10

This psalm is particularly about the character of the wicked. What a description there is! In the latter part of verse 4, the marginal reading is better than the text: "All his thoughts are, there is no God." He says in his heart, "God bath forgotten; He hideth His face; He will never see it," but in this he is very much mistaken, for God will arise in answer to the cry of His oppressed and suffering people of that day.

Verses 16-18 celebrate God's (the Lord's) coming in to deliver His own, and to put down the oppressors.

It is well known from Scripture that there will be in the last days a man who is called the Antichrist, the fierce enemy of the godly Jews; these Psalms tell of the time when he will be ruling in Jerusalem. In Psalm 9:5 "the wicked" is one person, not many, it is evidently the Antichrist.

Psalm 9 shows the regard God has and will have, for those who are humble and seek Him; while Psalm 10 shows how differently He looks at the wicked.

Psalm 11

In the tenth Psalm we were told of the exceedingly wicked people among whom the God-awakened Jews will be in the day of which the Psalms tell.

Let us remember that the Psalms were written for the children of Israel in view of the time now very near when the Lord Jesus will have called away the Christians (true ones, none of the mere professors) to His heavenly home, and when after that, the Holy Spirit will have reached the consciences and hearts of some of the Jews then in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, so that they will be looking for the Lord to set up His kingdom.

The Psalms do not, in general, express the Spirit-taught feelings of Christians.

Psalms 1 to 5 give the thoughts and the feelings of these Jews in the difficult and perilous times pictured in Psalms 9 and 10. Their godless neighbors may taunt them with their lack of numbers and of influence and power, but they answer,

"In the Lord put I my trust; how say ye to my soul, flee as a bird to your mountain"?

Yet these poor Jewish believers see that they are drawing near to the end of everything;

"If the foundations be destroyed," say they, "what can the righteous do?"

Faith has its answer, however, in verses 4-7. The Lord is over all; above the sin and the conflict, between the forces of Satan and the people of God, is He whose eyes behold, whose eyelids try the children of men.

Let us particularly note verse 5, though every one of these verses calls for study "The Lord trieth the righteous."

This is ever true; He loves His people too well to give them always an easy time as they live their life in the world. He is far more painstaking than we really understand. God is trying, or training them for eternity; they must be in character suited for the home He has for them, and even now should be (see Hebrews 12:10). Because Christians do not understand this, or forget what is shown again and again through the Bible, they sometimes complain and even feel very wrongly that God is against them.

Psalm 12

In the twelfth Psalm they are feeling their weakness before the wicked, but they value God's Word which has promised them deliverance. He will put an end to all that now distresses and grieves, very soon.

We see here the parallel and the difference between the position of the Jewish remnant, and the Christians; both feel the growing wickedness in the world, the pressure against them, because it is Satan's world; on the other hand the Jews will expect the Lord to come to the earth, and display His power in setting up His kingdom, putting down all enemies.

But Christians look for Him to come before that time, unseen by the world, to take them away to glory.

The Psalm seems to refer to Jews who had professed to believe in the Lord and gone back,—the godly cease, the faithful fail.

In somewhat similar circumstances are believers today; may it lead us more to prayer and supplication!

Psalm 13

We here see the open enemies (Psalms 13 and 14), bringing in the deepest distress of the Jewish believers, with the wicked reaching the height of daring against God.

Has He forgotten the feeble few who have repented and believed His Word? How long will He hide His face from them? Sorrow of heart is continually present in these poor and afflicted ones, but in the last two verses we see that God has encouraged them. They have trusted. in His mercy, and are sure that He will come to their help, and their hearts shall rejoice in His salvation. They will sing unto Him, for He has already dealt bountifully with them, they say, as they think of what they already enjoy of God's favor.

Psalm 14

"The fool"—that is God's name for the wicked—"has said in his heart, there is no God. They have corrupted themselves (so the First verse of Psalm 14 should read); they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."

Turning to Romans 3:10 to 18, we find the summing up of what is said here, and in the later books of the Old Testament, including other Psalms, about man away from God.

What David was given to see, and to write, more than a thousand years before the Epistle to the Romans was written, is not a pleasing record, but could anything better be written on such a subject today, nearly three thousand years after David penned the 14th Psalm? No, except where the grace of God has made a change. Man has sought out many inventions, but gone farther from God.

The close of the psalm brings before the reader, Zion, the hill of God's holiness, as it will be, and the end of the captivity of His earthly people. This introduces the question, Who shall sojourn in the Lord's tent; who shall dwell in that hill of Zion where holiness will reign?

Zion is Jerusalem (see 1 Chronicles 11:4, 5; and the 16th chapter particularly) as God's earthly dwelling place in the corning thousand-year kingdom.

Psalm 15

Psalm 15 shows the character of those who will be preserved through the fearful days of the great tribulation (See Revelation 7:14-17).

We are again at the close of a series of Psalms. From them we may profit, seeing the confidence under trial of these believers of a future day. They do not, as the Christian, know God as their Father, but they have His gracious interest; He is concerned about them, and will deliver them.

Psalm 16

Here we begin a very important series of Psalms, showing Christ in connection with the Jewish remnant of the latter days.

In this sixteenth Psalm, He is seen as a Man (pattern for all, but none beside Him), dependent upon God.

"Preserve Me, O God, for in Thee do I put My trust. Thou (My soul) hast said to Jehovah, Thou art the Lord My goodness (extendeth) not to Thee; to the saints that are on the earth and to the excellent (thou hast said), 'In them is all My delight.'

Here we are reminded of Philippians 2:7; Matthew 3:15; and Luke 18:19, New Testament records of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ.

So fully did He take the servant's form, that His divine glory is veiled, yet could not be entirely hid; having every title to God-head, He takes the place of dependence and trust. And with this, alone and solitary in all human perfection, as He was when He took manhood in Bethlehem's manger, and walked this world till He reached the cross, He took His place with the saints on earth, and will do so again. (See Matthew 25:40).

A yet higher portion than for the saints on earth is reserved for those who trust in Him now, whose portion is heavenly, (see John 17:24), but there is nothing in the Old Testament to correspond with that.

Having His delight in the earthly saints in the day for which the Psalms were written, He does not fail to notice the rejectors, of God (verse 4); their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another. Jesus was and is entirely separate from the wicked.

Does not the expression, "drink offerings of blood," show that they are murderers in heart? Drink offerings to God were to be of wine (Numbers 15:5, etc.,) never of blood.

Precious it is to the Christian heart to observe the thoughts of Jesus seen on His way to the cross, as the separate, holy Man, the entirely dependent One, as in this Psalm. Yet He speaks as one with the Jewish remnant,—and the example for the godly in Israel.

As one of them He looks away from the scenes of conflict, and sees God (Jehovah, the personal God of the Jews), as the portion of His inheritance and of His cup. The lines (or portions) are fallen unto Him in pleasant places. He blesses Jehovah who gives Him counsel, even in the nights. And who but Jesus could fully say (verse 8), "I have set Jehovah continually before Me; because He is at My right hand, I shall not be moved"?

His heart rejoices, his glory (or honor) exults; His flesh moreover shall dwell in hope (or rest in safety), for Jehovah will not leave His soul in Sheol, neither will He allow His holy One (or Gracious One to see corruption.

Resurrection is His hope, as Man, and Jehovah's right hand where are pleasures for evermore.

Nothing here but God was His desire, and death His prospect (verse 10), but He—blessed forever be His name!—goes on,

"Unmoved by Satan's subtle wiles,

Or suffering shame and loss,

Thy path uncheered by earthly smiles,

Led only to the cross.

Thy love, by man so sorely tried,

Proved stronger than the grave;

The very spear that pierced Thy side

Drew forth the blood to save."3

Psalm 17

This Psalm, like Pslam 16, applies to Christ, but not to Him only; it is more His position in connection with others, as verse 11 shows, where the godly remnant of Israel are evidently included. It is a call to God to judge the right.

There was but one righteous Person, but One perfect in every act, thought, word, yet it is in the Psalm the same spirit working in the Jewish believers of the day that is coming near now, though the first application is to Christ. Without Him, none could take those words to God, "Hear the right!"

"Let My judgment come forth from Thy presence; let Thine eyes regard equity. Thou hast proved My heart; Thou hast visited Me by night; Thou hast tried Me; Thou hast found nothing; My thought goeth not beyond My word. Concerning the works of men, by the word of Thy lips I have kept from the paths of the violent (man). When Thou boldest My goings in Thy paths My footsteps slip not." (Verses 2-5).

The blessed Lord is here reviewing the path that He trod from the manger to the grave. What matchless perfection! As the obedient One, He went along on that path of devotion, of singleness of heart; in which He was alone every step of the way.

He called upon God (verse 6) and was heard; we Christians have the same confidence, and can appeal 'to Him as "Thou that savest by Thy right hand them that trust in Thee from those that rise up against them" (verse 7).

As the apple of the eye, and hidden under the shadow of God's wings, He (and we, in our day, we may surely say) would be kept safely from the wicked who oppress. They are prosperous and proud (verse 10), like a lion greedy of its prey, but Jehovah is looked to, to deliver.

The wicked were, after all, only the hand of God (verse 14); their portion is in this life; they may be well supplied here, but what of the next world? For that is what comes into view at the close of the Psalm.

But those who live for this world give no serious thought to the next,—Where will they spend eternity?

"As for Me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness, I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness." This is the prospect Christ had before Him. Doubtless, there was more that He looked for—having others to delight in, that should be redeemed by His blood, but that is not spoken of here, nor could we expect it. (See Hebrews 12:2; and for the Christian's portion, 1 John 3:1-3).

In Psalm 16 we saw Jesus as the lowly, dependent One, having His own joy in God.

In Psalm 17 we see Him still as the lowly, dependent One, but here He is with the wicked, and His comfort is beyond this world.

What an example for us who wait for Him in a contrary scene!

Psalm 18

This Psalm is almost word for word 2 Samuel 22, and in this way is proof and illustration of an important principle in all the Psalms,—that the Holy Spirit used the circumstance or circumstances of the writer in order to bring out, through him, much more of God's purposes, and the circumstances in which Christ, or the believers among the Jews in that day which is now at hand, should be found.

It is plain that the language of the Psalm goes far beyond the experiences of David up to the time he wrote, or thereafter. It tells of the far larger order of things of which Christ only is the center.

Psalm 18, as the Psalms in general, begins with a few verses which tell its 'subject, or thesis; this we have in verses 1-3.

Verse 4 begins the account of Christ's entering into the sorrows of death, particularly as for the children of Israel. In fact it is the whole history of Israel that is remembered in the Psalm, when, or rather looking on to when, the day of their deliverance has come. Christ suffering for sin is not referred to here.

Verses 7 to 16 are believed to speak of the deliverance under Moses of Israel from Egypt, and 17 and 18 of enemies encountered on the way to the promised land.

But there is something else, which we have observed in earlier Psalms, notably the 17th,—the righteousness in which God delights, which was found in perfection only in Jesus, but through grace marks the feeble company of Israelites for whom these Psalms were written. This is the theme of verses 20-26. In verse 23, the true sense, it is thought, is, "I kept myself from the iniquity which lay before Me in this path in which I had to walk."

The expression does not refer to a sinful nature, which Christ never had, though all of us have it, and if we are His own. we have a new, spiritual nature too.

In verses 27 to 45 we are considering power, the power of God, coming in on behalf of the weak believers. At the beginning of the Psalm, Christ had taken the sorrow, then the remnant are seen to be delivered (Himself not separated from them in interest and association), so when the day of power comes, He must take the power in His own person, too.

Verse 43, it will be noted, brings in three classes:

"The people,"—Christ (the Messiah) is delivered from the ungodly Jews;

"The heathen" (or, the nations),—He is made their head; and,

"A people I knew not,"—those who have been strangers hitherto, shall serve Him, become now a people to Him. They will submit at once, acknowledging Him so long despised, whose glory will now be displayed.

This applies even to some not sincere at all, for none will dare to disobey, when He takes His great power and reigns. If they sin openly, they will be punished during His reign.

Verses 46-50 bring us to that with which the Psalm began, its conclusion. Suffering or victorious. Christ is seen as the dependent man, on earth.

It has been remarked by one now with the Lord, that nothing can be more beautiful, more perfect and complete, than the three Psalms, 16, 17 and 18, which combine to give us the joy of Christ in going to His Father. (See John 14).

Psalm 19

Psalms 19 to 22 show the testimony God has given to man; in 19, the creation, and afterward the law; in 20 and 21, the suffering and exalted Christ; and in 22, Christ suffering at the hand of God. This leads to 23, the Shepherd's care, where Christ as the Man united to Israel, speaks for it to God as its Shepherd,—the Psalm gives the effect of the 22nd, for faith in the believer; and in 24, the smitten One of Psalm 22, comes in glory.

After Psalm 24 to Psalm 41, we are shown the exercises of soul connected with the circumstances of the Jews who will believer after the Church of God is translated to glory, and finally (Psalm 40 and 41), Christ is brought again before the reader.

It is well to bear in mind that the words printed in italics under the psalm numbers in the ordinary Bible, for the purpose of telling the subject of each psalm, are not inspired, and are often very misleading; for example, for Psalm 20, we are told that it expresses "the Church's confidence in God's succor."

This is a mistake, for the Psalms were not written for or about the Church of God, but for the Jews who will hear the Word of God after the Church has been taken away at the Lord's coming.

In Psalm 19, verses 1 to 6, the subject is the creation, particularly that part of it which man has not been able to spoil,—the sky.

The same testimony of God is referred to in Romans 1:18-20. The Gentiles are without excuse, as we are there told.

In verse 3, the correct reading is, "There is no speech, and there are no words, yet their voice is heard." Even the heathen have this testimony of God.

The latter part of the psalm is about the Word of, God, called here the law of the Lord (Jehovah). Notice the change of the name,—"God" in the first verse, because everyone sees the works of God in creation; but in verses 7, 8, 9, 14, it is "the Lord," or properly "Jehovah," God's covenant name, His name that speaks of His interest in a people on earth. The Jew had the law (Romans 9:4); did he not know it? (Romans 10:19).

The Christian can enter into the truth of verses 7 to 11; and much more, as he reads and meditates upon the precious Word of God.

It is perfect; it restores the soul; it is sure; it makes wise the simple (verse 7).

Its precepts are right, rejoicing the heart; its commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes (verse 8).

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are truth, they are righteous altogether (verse 9).

More precious than much fine gold, and sweeter than honey and the dropping of the honey comb, is the Word of God (verse 10). By it His servants are enlightened, and in keeping it, there is great reward (verse 11).

Every Christian who reads the Bible as God's Word (which it is), and prayerfully seeks to learn from it, finds it by far the most valuable book in the world; it cannot be compared with any other book. But do not fill your mind with newspapers and magazines, and then try to enjoy the Word of God.

Put God's Word first, and you will find the great reward.

Psalm 20

The testimonies to the heart and eyes of man which God gave in His creation and in the Word of God, occupy the 19th, and is followed in the 20th Psalm by the testimony of their Messiah seen by the believing Jews in His human sufferings.

Those who did not believe, saw no beauty that they should desire Him; despised and left alone of men, like one from whom men hide their faces, despised—such is the testimony of Isaiah 53.

Puzzling to the Jew as the rejected and suffering Messiah was (as the four evangelists record), His course is explained in Psalms 20 and 21, and this, those whose eyes are opened will read and believe.

In Psalm 20 we are shown the place which He took that they might have part in His sympathies, and to make their deliverance possible, though this last is more expressed in Psalm 22, the complement of Psalms 16 to 18 and 20, 21.

He placed Himself in the path of perfect obedience—and love, too—for the encouragement of the remnant of the Jews who should after believe on Him, who must pass through deep trial, great sorrow, according to the righteous ways of God on account of their waywardness and wickedness.

In the midst of sorrows then, we find Jesus (verse 1), the Messiah, the faithful witness. He is among an ungodly people, but there are those who in heart enter into His distress, and look to God to hear His Anointed. These are Jews, and it is to the God of Jacob they look, and for strength out of Zion, as though He dwelt among them.

Verse 6 shows how sure faith is, and more intelligence is shown too,—the answer to Messiah's call comes not from the forsaken sanctuary in Mount Zion at Jerusalem, but "from the heavens of Jehovah's holiness." Jesus is the king in verse 9, and in Psalm 21 where the suffering One is the crowned One, and will judge His enemies presently.

In Psalm 20, Christ is seen in Jewish sorrows.

Psalm 21

In Psalm 21 He is on the other side of death and resurrection, and glorified. His heart's desire has been met with "the blessings of goodness" (verse 3).

In verses 8 to 13 the Messiah, Jesus is the Person addressed. In this Psalm is the Jewish Remnant's joy in the position of Christ with God: they had slighted Him when He was here, but now they understand His resurrection and ascension, and on Him their hopes are fixed.

The reader will note that there is no thought of the Christian hope here; not heaven, but earth is in view.

Psalm 22

“AIJELETH-SHAHAR" in the heading of the psalm means "according to the hind of the morning," which may be the name of the tune to which it was sung, though some have thought it has a spiritual meaning connected with the subject of this psalm. "On the cross, alone, forsaken, Where no pitying eye was found," the Holy sufferer hung. Hear His lips pronounce those words of Matthew 27:46 with which the psalm begins:

"My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

Why was He forsaken by His God? Isaiah 53 answers:

"He was wounded for our transgression, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed."

"All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and Jehovah hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all."

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of Man be lifted up: that every one who believes on Him, may not perish, but have life eternal. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him may not perish, but have life eternal." John 3:14-16.

"Who (Christ) Himself, bore our sins in His body on the tree." 1 Peter 2:24.

He was forsaken by God, that we who believe, might never be punished for our Sins. Here is the work which is the foundation of every blessing, now and eternally, for Jew, Gentile and Church of God.

He bore in His soul all that God is against evil. What it was, in its depths, no human heart can ever measure or know.

Only He could ask "Why," for He was the one righteous Person who had glorified God in all His ways. But He is not answered.

O, those fearful three hours of darkness on the cross! (Mark 15:33, 34). He is yet to see of the fruit of the travail of His soul (Isaiah 53:11).

He speaks as a Jew (the Psalms, we have noted, are Jewish, throughout, written for Jews),

"Our fathers confided in Thee and Thou didst deliver them" (verse 4). Others had suffered, and known small parts of the path which He trod: it was their privilege: but with Him it was willingness, His own grace. They were delivered, but for Him there was no deliverance.

Solitary in its awfulness, through time and eternity, stands that hour when The Righteous One was forsaken of God. By His death, God was perfectly glorified about evil, and that substitutional death was once for all, that all may believe and be saved.

When the work of atonement was completed, He was heard from the horns of the unicorns, or buffaloes (verse 21), that is, from the point of death. At this time, John 19:30 records His words "It is finished," and Luke 23:46 shows in this last utterance, that then all His suffering for our sins was past.

"Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit."

He had secured the glory of God; had glorified Him when He (Jesus) could not be heard, and now He was heard, for He had emptied the cup of woe. He goes down into the grave, which witnesses that all was closed, but rises again the Victorious One.

"I will declare Thy name unto My brethren" (verse 22). (See John 20:17).

In this 22nd Psalm there is no word of judgment on man; it could not be, where the whole theme is of Him who bore God's judgment. But let none deceive himself; he that believes on the Son has life eternal, and he that is not subject to the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him (John 3:36).

Psalm 23

Verse 1 tells what the psalm is about,—the Shepherd. Of Him and His kindness and love, it speaks all the way through. The sheep throughout the psalm tells of its circumstances, but in the telling, our thoughts are directed, not to the sheep or its circumstances, but to the faithful Shepherd.

Because "the Lord is my Shepherd," it follows that, "I shall not want," for He has undertaken to do everything for me, "having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end"—and there is no end.

The Lord Jesus is called the Good Shepherd in John 10:11; He showed His wonderful, changeless love to His sheep when He died on the cross for their sins.

He is called the Great Shepherd in Hebrews 13:20.

His suffering time is over, but He is leading on His sheep to the home He went to prepare for them. And who are His sheep? Those who trust in Jesus.

Their Shepherd knows their needs, and provides for them as best may seem to Him. Green pastures He has for them to lie down in, and He leads them beside waters of quietness. These words picture to us food and rest, comfort, safety, peace; all are the proper portion of the believer.

If the heart be troubled, in sorrow, or gone astray from this dear Shepherd, He revives or restores it. For His name's sake He leads the sheep in paths of righteousness; how important this is! The paths of righteousness are the ways of obedience to His Word, ways before men that God can approve of.

In this psalm we are given a complete picture of the life of a child of God, and so we are next led to consider the day of cloud and darkness, of deepest sorrow: the valley of the shadow of death, speaking of experience of one whose beloved mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, child it may be, has died. Then the world and all its charms become to the desolate heart, the valley of the shadow of death, where "Thou art with me" is the only comfort and stay, and thereby looking up to Jesus, Satan's snares are avoided ("T will fear no evil"),

We may think of the world, as at all times, the valley of the shadow of death to the believer, because his Lord has been here to die, taking such a place as the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). It has been rightly said, that the shadow of the cross of Christ is on everything here, to the renewed heart.

"Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me." The "rod" here is not the rod of chastisement, but of position or title, as a scepter. It speaks of Him upon Whom the believer rests. He who could say,

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of My hand." John 10:27, 28. (R. V.)

The "staff" speaks of strength given for the day (Philippians 4:19).

The table prepared before the sheep of Christ in the presence of enemies (verse 5), is refreshment on the journey, and to the Christian it speaks of the Lord's Table, and "This do in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19).

The head anointed with oil is a mark of high honor. The Pharisee in Luke 7:46 had not done this for his Guest.

The cup running over, is the fulness of blessing. The psalm closes with dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.

This psalm expresses the heart, feelings and path of Jesus as He passed through the world, to the delight of His Father; how perfectly it answers to what the gospels tell of Him as the lowly, dependent One!

It is rightly placed between the 22nd, telling of His cross; and the 24th, telling of His glory.

Psalm 24

In Psalm 22 we had the death of Christ, the foundation of all our blessing; in Psalm 23 is the present portion of the sheep of Christ; and in Psalm 24, scenes of glory are reached. It is earthly glory, for as we have before noted, the Psalms are for an earthly people, the Jews primarily.

First, the claim of Jehovah to the earth and its fulness; the world and they that dwell therein, is set forth. He made it, and though Satan has taken sovereignty over it (as far as God has allowed it), He will presently make good His claim, and rule the world in righteousness by that Alan ( Jesus) whom He hath ordained.

And if He will claim the world and take possession again, who shall ascend into the mount of Jehovah? Who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath blameless hands and a pure heart, who lifteth not up his soul unto vanity, nor sweareth deceitfully,—he shall receive blessing from Jehovah, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek unto Him, that seek thy face, O Jacob (or, Thy face in Jacob).

From these words it is clear that saved Gentiles are included. Jacob (Israel) is to have the preeminence, as shown us in Isaiah 2:2-3, and other passages of Scripture, in the day of the Lord, but many Gentiles will be saved then, also.

But if the Gentiles are to be blessed, as well as the Jews, in that day, He whom Jerusalem rejected and crucified, must enter in power. So we have the four closing verses, telling of the lowly Jesus, once thorn-crowned, now glorified, entering the gates of glory as the victorious Deliverer —proclaimed here as Himself Jehovah of hosts.

What a day will that be when He appears (Matthew 24:30) on earth, to set up His kingdom and put an end to oppression.

Before then He will have come for His heavenly people, and taken them out of the world to their heavenly home (John 14:3; 1 Cor. 15:51, 52; 1 Thess. 4:1518).

And how do you stand, reader, in connection with all this? Are you, like the Christians in Thessalonica, awaiting God's Son from the heavens, whom He raised from among the dead, Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath?

Psalm 25

In the Hebrew the alphabet is followed in the first letter of each verse of this psalm. Here begin a series of psalms which give the thoughts and personal feelings of the troubled and anxious saints of the next dispensation, when God is working out His purposes with regard to the children of Israel, and the world oppresses the godly among them as never before. We are now to find the confession of sins for the first time in the psalms, and much pouring out of the heart to God.

These psalms, we may notice, though showing confidence in God, do not exhibit the knowledge of the finished work of Christ which the Christian has; that will not be known, it appears, until they see Him. What earnest pleadings are in Psalm 25. Enemies there are (verse 2), but he who speaks, looks only to God for help. It will be seen that verse 4 goes beyond asking to know the way he should go; he wishes to know God's ways. Such desires could only be found in one born again.

Tender mercy and loving kindness, God is besought to remember, and not the individual's sins of youth, and transgressions. Meekness is the proper mark of the saints of that day, a suited grace at any time, but particularly when oppressors abound. The meek will He guide in judgment, and will teach them His way. Keeping His covenant and His testimonies, brings the certainty of blessing in verse 10; and fearing the Lord, has its reward in verses 12 to 14. Verse 13 shows the Jewish character of the psalms. The Christian has no inheritance in the earth (see Philippians 3:20, 21; 1 Peter 1:4, 5).

The Christian cannot intelligently make as his own, such words as in the latter part of verse 18, for he is privileged to know that his sins are forgiven. He may, and should, confess his sins (1 John 1:9), but he is conscious that as to his standing before God, they are forgiven for His name's sake (1 John 2:12).

At the close of this beautiful psalm, the heart takes in the whole of Israel in distress—"Redeem Israel, 0 God, out of all His troubles." That redemption will not be long delayed.

Psalm 26

There is a consciousness of a clean walk in Psalm 26 which carries on the substance of what we have looked at in Psalm 25. God is invited to prove the one who addresses Him; there is nothing- that so gives boldness toward God like the possession of a good conscience. The saint here considers his course in verses 4 and 5, as taken in separation from evil; he can then approach to God with clean hands (verse 6), and give thanks to Him (verse 7).

Verse 8 brings out the positive side of a godly life; there is love for God's dwelling place. The unbeliever cannot understand this, but to him, the happiness and joy of those who trust in God, is quite unknown.

Psalm 27

In Psalm 27 there are two parts, comprised in verses 1 to 6, and 7 to 12. The first part shows the confidence of the saints, and the second part brings out his distress; at the close is the conclusion he has reached.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; the strength of my life" (verse 1). Then "of whom shall I be afraid?"

When God is looked to, trusted in, when heart and soul are committed to Him, there is the utmost confidence and rightly so, for He has given His Word. And with this confidence is also the desire to dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold His beauty (or graciousness), and to inquire of Him in His temple. This is Jewish, of course, for it looks on to the presence of the Lord in the temple at Jerusalem, but the Christian, appropriating the language of verse 4, applies it to the thought of being forever with the Lord in that heavenly home which He went to prepare.

From verse 7 is an appeal to God out of distress. God had bade those who trusted in Him to seek His face; would He hide it from them after all? He had been their help, let Him not cast them off or forsake them.

These verses, and those following, let us see the severity of the pressure that will be upon the godly Jews in that day. They can but wait upon God, but their distress is great; He will come to their help at the needed time, and meanwhile they will be the gainers by trusting Him fully.

This is a lesson Christians often have to learn, too.

Psalm 28

In Psalm 28 the judgment of God upon the wicked and workers of iniquity—-the mass of the Jews, apparently is looked for as not far off, and the godly plead that they may not be drawn away with the wicked. Unto God they call, their Rock,—-if He does not answer, they are become like them that go down into the pit (the speaker looks at the result at the end of their course).

The believing Jews are still, at the time of this psalm, at and near Jerusalem; the Man of sin has not proclaimed Himself to be God (see Matthew 24:15, and 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4) , and God is looked to as in the oracle, or holy of holies, in the temple. Already separate in heart and life from the apostate Jews, they call for judgment on these according to their deserts, for they regard not the mighty works of God.

God hears; the closing verses of this psalm are the voice of Christ in the remnant of believers, and the "anointed one" in verse 8 is Himself as received and acknowledged by them. Christ is the intercessor in the last verse.

Psalm 29

Psalm 29 calls upon the mighty to hear the far more powerful voice of the Lord. Will they heed the call? His voice is upon the waters; in all creation He speaks.

Elijah learned something of it when he fled to the mount of God (1 Kings 19:11, 12), but the lesson there taught the prophet had a different object than what we have presented in this psalm. Here it is, following the cry for judgment to come in Psalm 28, an appeal to the godless to seek God,-He has a temple and a people on earth. He rules, and He will give strength unto His people; He will bless them with peace.

But what of the despisers of His long suffering patience? Fearful judgment awaits those who neglect His great salvation, whether it be His present offer of grace, or that offered to those of another day.

Psalm 30

HIS dedication song of the house (Psalm 30) looks to the gathering in of all the people of God. It is a song of deliverance when the godly Jews shall have been delivered from all their enemies. God has brought them up from death, has quickened them from among those that go down to the pit. It is a time for rejoicing, singing psalms unto the Lord, and giving thanks in remembrance of His holiness.

Short was God's displeasure with His people,—'Tor a moment is passed in His anger, a life in His favor; at even, weeping cometh for the night; and at morn there is rejoicing" (verse 5, New Translation).

With another hope, in Christ, the Christian adopts this language; as the hymn says,—

This life's wild, wintry blast

Soon will be over, past;

We shall reach Home at last,—

Heaven is our Home.

The great apostle in Romans 8:31-39; and 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 makes little of the trials of the present time, in view of the glory to come for those who are Christ's. So the Remnant of the Jews, trusting in God, will rejoice exceedingly, when their brief days of trial are over.

Verses 6, 7, 8 show the worthlessness of worldly prosperity,—if God hide His face, security and peace are gone. By Him the mourning is presently turned into dancing; the sack-cloth of the days of deep trial is loosed, and there is in its place a girding with gladness, singing, instead of silence.

Psalm 31

Psalm 31 was used by the Lord at the end of His suffering on the cross (verse 5; Luke 23:46), but we could not say that all of the psalm applied to Him; it could not be true of Him that is said in verses 9 to 12, for example. It is another prayer of the godly Jews in the coming day. To God they look for deliverance in an outpouring of heart that shows great depth of suffering.

In verse 19 the subject is no longer myself and my troubles, but the goodness of God laid up for them that fear Him, and which He has wrought for those that trust in Him.

Verse 20 seems to look on to the time when the godly Jews would have to flee from Jerusalem to be cared for by God, after the pattern of Elijah in 1 Kings 17. (See Matthew 24:16 and following).

The closing verses encourage the faithful to love the Lord; He preserves them; let their heart take courage, for their hope will be brought to pass. The night of weeping will soon be past, and the unclouded morning appear.

Psalm 32

SOMETHING more is needed than relief from distress, the subject of preceding psalms: it is forgiveness of sins.

"Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly," but what of past sins?

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered."

"Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity."

The 32nd psalm, like all the others, is first of all for the Jew in the last days, but its range covers Gentile and Jew in our own time, as is witnessed by Romans 4:6-8.

The Jews who in that day are brought to trust in and wait for the Messiah (Christ) whom they as a nation rejected and crucified nineteen hundred years ago, will not have the peace of salvation until He appears. They will realize their guilt, their sins will press upon them; they will know that their Messiah has gone within the veil on their account, like the high priest in Leviticus 16:17 (See Hebrews 9:7-12; Zechariah 12:10, and John 20:2729) , but they must wait until they see Him to enter into settled peace, being in this, quite distinct from the position of the Christian.

The subject of the psalm is told in verses 1 and 2.

Verses 3 and 4 describe the state of the man until he confessed his sins, and verses 5-7 are addressed to God.

What a contrast there is between the anguish and unrest of verses 3 and 4, and the song of deliverance in verse 7. Only one who has liken the place of verse 5, can enter into the reality of the seventh verse. What a hiding place His is, a Preserver through trouble, our God!

Verses 8-11, are the Lord's answer; He answers those who confide in Him. He will instruct and teach the confessed sinner the way in which he shall go; will counsel him with His eye upon him.

Then follows admonition to be not like the horse or mule which have to be controlled with bit and bridle. It should be a delight to be guided by God's unfailing word, learning from it from day to day what is pleasing in His sight, and endeavoring to do it.

"Many sorrows hath the wicked, but he that confideth in Jehovah, loving kindness shall compass him" (verse 10, New Translation). The Christian knows the truth of this.

Psalm 33

This is the result of, the comment of the heart upon, the 32nd psalm. It is a song of deliverance, not yet known in actual experience, but anticipated with assurance given by God. We notice how entirely God is the theme of the psalm. His word is right, and His work is in faithfulness (verse 4).

As the Creator of the heavens above (verse 6), and the waters below (verse 7), all the earth is called upon to fear Him, for when He commanded it was done. But the earth does not yet fear Him (verse 10); the nations take counsel, and He frustrates it; He makes the thoughts of the peoples of none effect, but His counsel, and the thoughts of His heart stand for ever (verse 11).

Blessed then is the nation whose God is Jehovah, the people that He has chosen for His inheritance. Of Israel this speaks, of course, for of no other nation could it be true. But their day has not yet dawned, for the Lord is seen looking from the heavens upon the inhabitants of the earth. When He comes to deliver His earthly people, the "king," the multitude of forces, the mighty man with his great resources, —the power of man—will be of no avail (verses 13-17).

The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear Him, on them that hope in His loving kindness, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine (verse 18). Precious words!

The Christian who has gone through trial, knows their truth.

Waiting for the Lord, their help and shield, the remnant will not wait in vain, for in Him shall their heart rejoice (verse 21).

How admirably is the language of the psalms fitted for the needs, the experiences, the hopes of the Jews in the approaching of trial of the severest kind.

Reviewing this psalm, we may observe that the believer of whatever period, past, present or future, has only to praise the Author and Divine Source of all, and walk in the light of His revealed Word, for His eye is upon His own to deliver, to preserve; He is their help and shield. May the Lord thus engage the hearts of all who love Him, and wait for Him in this "little while" of His absence.

Psalm 34

Like Psalm 25, the verses of this psalm begin with the Hebrew letters in the order of the alphabet. It was written at the time of 1 Samuel 21:10-15, we learn from the title, for "Abimelech," meaning "Father-king," was a title of the Philistine kings, like "Pharoah" for the Egyptian, and as "Caesar" was afterward for the Roman rulers.

David, fleeing from the wicked king Saul, had gone to Achish the king of Gath, but found no welcome there, and in terror for his life, for his faith was low, pretended to be insane. From thence he escaped to the cave of Adullam, and became the gathering center, the attraction that brought to the cave and to himself the distressed, those in debt, and those of embittered spirit, and David became a captain over them.

David's thoughts, led by the Holy Spirit at this time, thus become a part of the Scriptures. The first two verses tell the subject of the psalm; the force of it is in the words "at all times" (verse 1). David had learned to trust God at all times, and his heart was overflowing in thankfulness and praise. He calls upon the meek, the suffering saints, to magnify the Lord with him. Verse 4 is David's experience, and in verse 5 the same is foretold of those who should heed the word spoken.

Verses 6 to 10 appear to be the language of the Holy Spirit, and then from verse 11, David resumes-yet is it not more than David's word? It is Jesus who speaks from the experience of His own earthly path for the comfort and encouragement of those who should after pass through trial.

The whole psalm presents the saints in trial, but not in anxiety; having needs and in danger, but looking to God and resting in the security He gives. What harm could touch "them that fear Him," with the angel of the Lord encamped round about them? The lion in Scripture is a symbol of strength, yet the young lions are in need and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good. How encouraging to faith are these precious words of God!

Verses 12 to 16 are quoted by Peter in his first Epistle, chapter 3. The whole psalm sets livingly before us, God in His interest in those who trust Him and His needy saints quietly resting in His care, confident that in due time He will work their full deliverance. Faith may be tried (indeed we are sure it will be), and deliverance out of trial seem long in coming, but our trust is in the living God, and none who trust in Him will ever be confounded.

Psalm 35

In this psalm we have the appeal of Israel's Messiah, Jesus, on behalf of the tried and afflicted ones. He makes their cause His own, speaks as identified with them, though He is high in the glory and they in trouble in and around Jerusalem. It will be observed that there is no confession of sin or guilt, nor complaint at the ungodliness of the mass of the Jews, in this psalm. Hated and plotted against by their brethren, they in their Messiah call for judgment upon their enemies.

In verse 8 one man is singled out. Who is he? We must look back to Judas Iscariot who betrayed his Master, and onward to the Antichrist, the leader in the wickedness of the last days. The stronger than he, of verse 10, is the Lord, of course.

Verses 13 to 14 could have their perfect fulfilment in none but Himself, we know, but they show the spirit of the godly Jews of that time that is soon to come. Other verses tell of the varied character of the opposition,—with craft-setting traps for the godly (verse 7); unrighteous witnesses (verse 11) bringing false charges; slander (verse 15); open, undisguised hatred (verse 16); deceit (verse 20); and contempt (verse 21). By these and other means the unbelieving Jews and their Gentile allies will seek to destroy the godly.

Verse 17 sets forth evidently Jesus,—"my only one,"—the name used in Psalm 22:20. Translated in both passages as "my darling," the same Hebrew word is "thy only" (son) in Genesis 22:2 and 12, where Isaac is a type of God's beloved Son. The great congregation in verse 18 —the same expression as in Psalm 22:25, is all Israel, redeemed, when the great tribulation is over.

Psalm 36

In Psalm 36 the course of the wicked is plain to the servant of God: "there is no fear of God before his eyes." He is in fact, as verses 2-4 make clear, very far indeed from the true knowledge of God. From such the believer turns to think of, to speak to, the Lord.

"Thy loving kindness is in the heavens, and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds; Thy righteousness is like the high mountains; Thy judgments are a great deep." In all His ways God is above and beyond puny man (verses 5-6).

God preserves man and beast, though man has rebelled against Him, and though the world invites His judgment, His loving kindness is such that the sons of men take refuge under the shadow of His wings. We are reminded of His yet more amazing grace in sending His Son into the world to die for poor, unworthy, hell deserving sinners.

Verses 8 and 9 present a living hope, and the confidence of faith; those who put their trust in Him, shall never be disappointed. Life and light are His to give (verse 9).

It is good to see the confidence in God, confidence in Him both as to the outcome for the believer (verses 8, 9), and for the worker of iniquity (verse 12).

Psalm 37

In Psalm 37 the great theme is waiting for God to act, and not being alarmed or fretting because of the wicked. The workers of unrighteousness shall soon be cut down.

A striking object lesson in this is found in Elijah in 1 Kings 19, after his wonderful victory for God at Mount Carmel. He had been very faithful and steadfast for God, but that was when he knew he was wholly dependent on Him (chapters 17, 18). At the beginning of chapter 19, Queen Jezebel frightened Elijah with a few words, and with his mind on Jezebel instead of God, he shamefully and needlessly fled for his life.

The Christian cannot answer to the directions in verses 3 and 4, except by daily reading the Word of God, and meditating upon it; this is "dwelling in the land"—getting acquainted with the believer's portion in Christ, and "delighting thyself in the Lord" is a result of such a course.

The prosperity of the wicked (verse 7) is not an unusual thing in the world, but yet a little while and the wicked is not (verse 10).

The meek (note that word) shall inherit, or more properly, shall possess the land. It is the meek, the humble, that God blesses; seven times they are spoken of in the Psalms: (in 22:26, 25:9 (twice);17:11; 76:9; 147:6; 149:4). In all these cases they are the blessed, and the only blessed ones.

How striking are verses 12 and 13; the wicked plot, and gnash their teeth; the Lord laughs at them, for He sees that the day' of reckoning is near. "Their sword shall enter their own heart" (verse 15); (see Matthew 26:52).

Every verse of this psalm calls for our attention; written for the believers among the Jews after the heavenly people, the Church, so much occupying the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, is removed from the earth to heavenly glory. The Christian can nevertheless draw deeply from the truths here set out.

Psalm 38

The Jews are here under the chastening hand of God because of their sins, and the godly among them have to take their share in it, though thoroughly repentant and assured of His forgiveness (Psalm 32 ).

Enoch—type of the present day believers comprising the Church of God according to the Scriptures—was taken away without dying; but Noah—type of the redeemed of Israel in the day now near at hand—had to pass through the storm of God's judgment, yet was preserved from harm because sheltered by God's provision of the ark (Genesis 5:22-24; and chapters 6 and 7).

Only in a general way is Noah to be looked on as an illustration of God's dealings with the Jews, because the Scriptures commend Noah, and there is no suggestion of punishment of him in his passing through the flood (Genesis 6:8-9; 7:1), but concerning the Jews there are many references to their sins, the culmination of which was the putting to death of the Holy One, and to God's purpose to deal with them severely on this account (See Matthew 24:9-30; Jeremiah 30:8-9; Daniel 12:1, and in this connection Matthew 27:21-25). No less reason can there be for the Jews being for nineteen centuries without a national home, a temple, an altar, or a priest.

In Psalm 38 there is recognition that God is dealing with them on account of their sins (verses 4-8, and 18). To Him they look when friends fail, and enemies are active and strong. To man they will be silent, dumb. Firm confidence is there in God: He will answer (verse 15), when the hour for their deliverance has arrived.

Psalm 39

Psalm 39 is similar to Psalm 38 in that in both, the godly man is under the chastening hand of God. Here the thoughts of the godly are turned inward to consider his ways. At length he asks to know his end, and the measure of his days, thus to know how frail he is. How short life is, short indeed to man, and how little to God! Man heaps up riches, and knows not who shall gather them. But the godly are not so (verse 7):

"What wait I for, Lord? My hope is in Thee."

To be delivered from all his transgressions; to be not the reproach of the foolish; this is the prayer of Psalm 39 which is the last of the series of experience psalms for the "remnant" (the Jews to be turned to God at the end of the present dispensation of grace) while still mingling with the ungodly in and near Jerusalem. Psalms 40 and 41, which complete Book 1 of the psalms as arranged in the Hebrew Scriptures, have a special character.

Psalm 42 and following relate to the period when the believing repentant Jews have been forced to leave Jerusalem, and their sufferings grow more intense.

Psalm 40

Psalm 39 properly closed the first book of the psalms (1-41) only that it must be shown that Christ has gone through the same kind of sorrows with those of the suffering and tried "remnant" of the Jews, and that He patiently endured all, waiting on God. Psalm 40 then introduces the Lord in association with the Jewish believers whose condition we have been noticing in the preceding psalms. Verses 1, 2, 3, tell the subject of psalm 40. Christ's making atonement for sin is not referred to in this psalm.

He would not take Himself out of the trying circumstances He was in; He would not call upon His Father for angelic aid (Matthew 26:53), nor drink the stupifying myrrh (Mark 15:23), or rebuke Herod and the chief priests and scribes (Luke 23:10, 11); He was the unresisting One, drinking the cup which the Father had given Him ( John 18:8-11). Other evidences of His holy submission abound in the Scriptures.

In verse 3 He says "praise unto our God," linking Himself with the remnant, and the same is seen in verse 5: "Thy thoughts toward us." Learning of the path of their Redeemer, many in the coming day will fear and trust in God.

Verses 6-8 are quoted in Hebrews 10:5-7 as the language of Christ. He came to do God's will, the altogether obedient One. He took his place in Israel, the great congregation (verses 9 and 10), and this brought on Him rejection by His people. He asks then in verses 11 and following, in full dependence for preservation, for help and deliverance. All of this He knew in His experience before the cross; He is not here seen as the forsaken One, but as about to assume the burden of our sins, and the sorrow of that position.

"Mine iniquities" (verse 12), shows how completely the sinless One identified Himself with those He loved, for whom He came to die, that He who knew no sin could call their iniquities His own. He asks that those who are found to be His enemies, shall be confused and confounded, and that those that seek God, may be glad and rejoice in Him. All is perfect here, for the alone perfect One is revealed in the hour 'of His deep trial. Matchless Jesus, we bow at Thy feet!

It may be interesting to compare verse 6: "Mine ears hast Thou opened," or properly, "ears hast Thou digged, (or hollowed out, or prepared Me"), with Hebrews 10:5: "A body hast Thou prepared Me," which is the reading of the translation of the Scriptures current when and after the Lord was on earth,—the LXX, or Septuagint. What is meant is that He took the place of a servant, by becoming man, and it is apparent that the Holy Spirit, in using in Hebrews 10:5 the Septuagint interpretation of the words in the Psalm, accepted it as having the same meaning. The expression is not the same as in Exodus 21:6, nor in Isaiah 50:4-5.

Psalm 41

This is the closing psalm of Book 1 of the Psalms. In this First Book, as before noted, the Jews are considered, their thoughts and feelings, as led out by the Holy Spirit, are told, while still they are tolerated among the godless majority of their nation.

Psalm 42, opening the Second Book, deals with the godly Jews outside of Jerusalem, compelled to withdraw because of the danger from their enemies, and the city being now given over to wickedness.

Psalm 41 points to the blessedness of understanding God's ways in the present contrary circumstances. Those who do so are sustained, and will be delivered, shall be made happy ultimately, and are now watched over in their weakness and exposure to their enemies. The realization that sin has brought on the present chastening, is seen again here (verse 4).

Verse 9 puts in our minds that particular sorrow of Jesus, that Judas, one of the twelve, should betray Him (Matthew 26:21).

The Psalm, and the Book, closes with blessing God from eternity to eternity.

Surely adoration flows out from every. Christian heart to Him, as we think of His love and what He has been pleased to do in giving His Son for us by sin undone.

In this First Book of the Psalms we have had many glimpses of Jesus, the Beloved One, as He was while traversing this world of sin and woe: in every scene perfectness shines, whether He be seen alone, as the Sin Bearer; or identifying Himself with the remnant of the Jews for their encouragement and hope. We are also privileged to see and enter into the earlier feelings of the remnant as under the influence of the Holy Spirit, without the greater knowledge and intelligence properly belonging to those who are children of God today. Those look for deliverance, for the setting up of Christ's kingdom, and meanwhile they suffer because of their sins.

Psalm 42

This psalm begins the Second Book which ends with Psalm 72. In this section of the Psalms, the Jewish remnant Romans 9:27; Isaiah 10:20-22; Jeremiah 23:3) of the latter day is seen historically as driven out of Jerusalem according to the word set forth in Matthew 24:15-30.

Psalm 45 brings in thee appearing of the Lord Jesus as their long awaited Messiah, and in Psalms 48-50 the glory is re-established in Zion, the city of David. The later psalms express the heart searchings, and the praise of the godly during this time.

For a right understanding of the Psalms it must be remembered that they are written, first of all for the Jews, for Israel, in the day when the believers of the present dispensation (who comprise the Church of God, the body of Christ, the heavenly people, a subject occupying the New Testament Epistles of the apostle Paul) shall have been called away to heavenly glory at the coming of the Lord, and when the Holy Spirit will, through the Word of God, begin a new work among the people of Israel.

Psalm 42, the first of this second section of the psalms, shows, in the unerring forecast of the Holy Spirit, the deep feelings of the Jews recovered to God, when separated from their ungodly brethren and the associated Gentiles: What longing after God is here!

The Christian, rightly instructed out of God's Word, hopes for the coming of the Lord to take all His heavenly people away to the place He has prepared for them (John 14:1-3).

But the Jewish hope is for His appearing to-Set up His earthly kingdom, a subsequent event. Jerusalem is the place from which His world-wide dominion will extend.

The living God (verse 2) suggests the contrast of the lifeless, vain idols of the apostate Jews, with Him with whom we have to do. Jewish thoughts of Him were and will be connected with the temple at Jerusalem; from it these believers of the last days are shut off; they remember (verse 4) their happiness when they could go there together. Adversaries are taunting them with, "Where is thy God?" (verses 3 and 10). This reminds us of the language of Judah in Matthew 27:43, 44, 47, 4f, (note Psalms 22, verses 1-8, for the same character of suffering, only far more intense).

Verse 6 seems to suggest where the remnant will be during the great tribulation (see Matthew 24:16 and Revelation 12:6). If so, "the land of the Jordan" would refer to the north; Hermon is the loftiest mountain (9,200 feet) in Palestine, situated west and south of Damascus in the far north; Mizar is not now known.

God will be the desire of these suffering saints, as this psalm shows, He occupies their hearts as "the living God" (verse 2), "the God of my life" (verse 8); "God my rock" (verse 9), and "my God" (verses 6 and 11); He will be praised for the health (literally "salvation") of His countenance (verse 5), and He is "the health of my countenance" in the last words of this psalm. These expressions bring Him before the heart in the circumstances of trial here seen.

Surely the Holy Spirit would have us who know God through Jesus Christ our Lord, at least equally occupied with Him for His grace and love.

Psalm 43

The short 43rd psalm, while containing the theme of the 42nd is marked by a development of confidence in God which rightly follows that out-pouring of the soul in distress. In character this is according to Christian experience (see Philippians 4:6-7).

"Judge me," in verse 1 is in effect, "Do me justice." The ungodly nation is of course the mass of the Jews who by this time are following to their ruin, the man variously called "the beast" (Rev. 13:11); "the man of sin" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4); "the wicked king" (Daniel 11:36); "the Antichrist" (1 John 2:22) him who "shall come in his own name" (John 5:43); the "foolish shepherd" (Zechariah 11:15-17), and in our psalm, "the deceitful and unjust," or unrighteous man.

"The God of my strength" (verse 2), and "the God of the gladness of my joy" as the fourth verse should be read (see the margin), are titles which indicate that there will be (as there should be) a growing knowledge of Him, for these expressions go beyond those we noticed in the 42nd psalm. God, there, was the life giver, and the immovable rock of His people's defense; here, He is their strength for life's battles, and He who is the source of their happiness, though they be in the furnace of affliction.

Verse 4 looks for a return to Jerusalem, as the same verse in Psalm 42 looked back to former days there.

Psalm 44

Psalm 44 is the remnant looking with the understanding of faith at the nation as it was, and as it then will be, with an appeal to God at the close. They will recall that it was God's power that gave Israel her land; He had by His hand dispossessed the nations that were occupying Palestine, and had planted Israel there; He had afflicted the races of mankind, but caused the children of Israel to spread out (verses 1-3).

Looking to God as their King, as He was of old their King, the godly here await the hour when He will again lead them to battle. Already they have been separated from those who were their adversaries (the godless Jews with their Gentile associates), and are rejoicing in the partial deliverance (verses 4-8).

Verses 9-16 consider the then present state of the people, suffering because of the greatest of all their many sins—the rejection of their Messiah (Matthew 27:21-26; Zechariah 13:6-9).

In verses 17-22 the remnant acknowledge their true place, but having through divine mercy been converted to God, they look to Him in confidence as those who walk in His ways (James 5:16, last sentence).

Verse 22 as quoted in Romans 8:36, began when Christ was crucified, rose again and ascended; there was severe persecution then, and there will be again in the day for which this psalm was written.

The last four verses contain the appeal of the remnant for God to come to their help. In verse 26, observe, it is "for Thy mercy's, (or loving-kindness) sake," not for any measure of faithfulness in those who plead.

Psalm 45

Here the long awaited Messiah, Jesus, is introduced.

Psalm Titles

The title of the psalm "To the chief musician. Upon Shoshannim. Of the sons of Korah. An instruction; a song of loves (or rather of the Beloved)" attracts our first attention.

"To the chief musician" is part of the title of 19 of the 41 psalms of the First Book; 25 of the 31 Composing the Second Book; 8 of the 17 composing the Third Book, and 3 of the 44 included in the Fifth Book—altogether 55 psalms; these psalms are varied in character, and it is not clear that there is a special significance in this title:

"Shoshannim" means "the lilies;" it is part of the title of three psalms, numbers 45, 60 and 80, and also (Shushan—"lily") psalm 60.

In Psalm 80 it is "Shoshannim—Eduth"—the lilies of testimony. Considering that the lilies are used in the Song of Solomon to describe the Israelite bride of Christ, and the expression in Hosea 14:5 regarding redeemed Israel—"He shall blossom as the lily," it would seem that there may be spiritual significance in this psalm title.

"The Sons of Korah" is part of the title of 11 psalms, Nos. 42, 44 to 49, 84, 85, 87, and 88. Korah died under the judgment of God (Numbers 26:10, 11), but his children were objects of mercy.

"A song of the Beloved" is about Christ, and so the psalm proves to be.

In verse 1, the marginal reading "bubbleth up" or "welling forth" is preferred to "inditing."

Verse 6 shows the Messiah acknowledged to be God (see Hebrews 1:8-9). "Thy fellow's" (or companions) are His disciples through grace.

"The queen" (verse 9) is believed to be Jerusalem.

"Within" in verse 13 refers to the royal dwelling, shows the close relationship of the remnant with the Lord as king.

In verse 16 it is the greater glory in the sons' day that is compared or contrasted with the early days of Israel's long history.

The psalm is all about the Messiah; He is spoken of as man, and God is His God, yet, as we have observed, He is owned as God Himself in verse 6. We know that today Satan is leading many, blinded by unbelief, to deny the eternal Sonship of the Saviour—to claim that He was a created being; or if they perchance do not deny His divinity, they deny that God in the person of the Son became flesh, took up manhood and suffered the agonies of the cross of Calvary for guilty sinners, He is now their only hope and salvation.

Let us hold fast to the faithful word, believing, whether we understand or not.

Psalm 46

Last week we were considering psalm titles: it is perhaps necessary in view of what has been inserted for the 46th, to caution some of our readers against the explanatory notes in the King James version at the head of each of the psalms in many instances (as in this one) they are altogether misleading. The thought seems to have been in the minds of the men who added these notes, that in the Psalms where comfort, blessing, deliverance, happiness, glory, are spoken of, the Church of God is in general the subject.

If we have been following these Bible Lessons, it will have been seen that the psalms are not concerned with God's present dealing with the world; or His calling out a people to share heavenly glory with His Son. In various cases they give the experiences of David, of Moses, and of others unnamed, but the Psalms have evidently been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and collected and set in an evident order under His guidance, for the spiritual help and encouragement of the Israel which is to be God's earthly people when the Church has been transferred to heaven. At the same time, as part of the "all scripture" of 2 Timothy 3:15-17, they are "profitable" to the Christian reader, and in circumstances of trial, they have rightly comforted many Christians.

"On Alamoth," in the title of this psalm, is thought to mean that it was to be sung by young women. This word appears also in 1 Chronicles 15:20.

Psalm 46 tells the immediate effect upon the remnant of the coming of Israel's Messiah—an event of supreme importance which is shown in Psalm 45 to have taken place. All fear is gone, though there may (and apparently there will) be after this, an attack upon the Holy Land by a northern enemy who will be destroyed.

"The City of God" (verse 4) is none other than Jerusalem, and the river whose streams are mentioned as gladdening it, is a vivid picture of blessings, wide, deep and ever flowing, as in the heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 22:1)..

God is here spoken of as the "Most High," a title relating to His sovereignty over the whole earth (Genesis 14:19 Psalm 83:18).

In verse 7 and again in verse 11, He is the LORD (Jehovah), name of relationship with man, and particularly with Israel, and He is the God of Jacob, a name that speaks of His faithfulness.

Jacob through most of his life was a grasping, self-seeking man, and full of the energy of the natural man, but God never gave him up, and He brought him into blessing after letting him reap what he had sown.'

Psalm 47

How appropriate it seems, that Psalms 42 and 44 to 49 should be "of (or for) the sons of Korah" whose father was the leader in the rebellion of Numbers 16, but who themselves were spared (Numbers 26:11), objects of mercy just as the remnant of Judah here.

These two psalms complete the series celebrating the coming of the Lord to reign. In Psalm 47 He is reigning as King over all the earth, subduing the peoples and nations. This will be the character of His reign at the beginning, as David who subdued all enemies (see 2 Samuel 5:6-10, 17-25, and chapter 8). Holiness marks His rule, and all that offends is removed in power.

If the God of Jacob be rightly celebrated in Psalm 46, here He is the God of Abraham. The faithfulness of God was exhibited in Jacob's case, in bringing him back when a wanderer, suffering because of his own bad ways (Genesis 28:15); but to bring in Abraham's name is to go back to the unconditional promise (Genesis 12:1, 2; 13:14-16). Sinai's broken covenant has no place here. How beautiful is God's Word!

Psalm 48

In Psalm 48 the enemies have been dealt with, and the peaceful, righteous reign of the Son of David, who is David's Lord, is described; the character of Solomon's glorious reign, except as it was marred by his sad failure, is seen to be a foreshadowing of the thousand years' reign of Christ after the preliminary judgments of which David's reign was an illustration or "type."

The sorely tried remnant had been asked by the hardened sinners (Psalm 42) "Where is thy God?" Then, they had to endure with patience, but now, they can answer in the language of verses 8, 12, 13.

Faith has its sure reward.

Psalm 49

This psalm is a call to all the inhabitants of the world, in view of the subject matter of the preceding psalms.

In verse 5 "adversity" should be read instead of "evil," and "supplanters" (or "them who would trip me up") instead of "my heels." It is these adversaries that are meant in verse 6.

"They depend upon their wealth, and boast themselves in the abundance of their riches."

"Why should I fear in the days of adversity?" is a challenge which has a New Testament counterpart in the magnificent language of Romans 8:31-39; there the Christian is assured that God is for him, and that nothing can separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Of what value is wealth in the redemption of the soul?

Verse 7 answers: "None can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him, for (verse 8) the redemption of their soul is costly, and must be given up forever" (New Translation). Yet though so costly, salvation is free (Revelation 22:17; Romans 5:17 and 6:23; John 3:16; 1 Peter 1:18-19).

We shall not find the gospel of the grace of God set out plainly in the Old Testament, for its proclamation had to wait until Christ died for the ungodly, but from the beginning, faith laid hold upon the promise of a Deliverer, and knew that "without shedding of blood is no remission" of sin. (See verse 15 of our psalm).

A true picture of the natural man's thoughts is given in verses 11, 13, 18. Not all the centuries of time that have passed since these words were written, have altered man,—nor can, but a new birth (John 3) is needed; "Ye must be born again." Earthly, worldly hopes do not last; sorrow and death are never far away, and when the careless and godless are gone into judgment, those whose trust is in the living God shall have dominion (verse 14).

Verse17, in regard to the rich carrying none of their gains away with them when they die, suggests a reference to 1 Timothy 6:7,

"For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out."

Having Christ is possessing true riches, and He can never be taken from us. These are heavenly and not earthly riches.

Whatever we do that is pleasing to the Lord, is laying up treasure in heaven, to be given to us when we are with Him, and we shall have them throughout eternity.

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matt. 6:19-21.

Verse 20 is a scathing reflection on man with all his gains, who does not know God; he is like the beasts that perish. No wonder many of the world's great men scorn the Bible, — its truth hurts. They are not rich toward God (Luke 12:21).

Psalm 50

Psalm 50 announces the day of God's judgment upon His earthly people.

Verses 1 and 2 give the subject of the psalm, and verses 3 to 6 are the introduction; in verses 7 to 21, 22 and 23, God speaks.

Long has He been silent as to any audible voice from heaven. There has been none since the day that Saul of Tarsus was arrested in his guilty course near Damascus (Acts 9:3-6).

In grace He has been occupied during these nineteen centuries past, in bringing unworthy sinners to know their lost condition, and to trust in the Lord Jesus. Presently He will begin His strange work, His unwonted act (Isaiah 28:21) of judgment. Fire (verse 3) is a symbol of unsparing judgment.

Heaven and earth are called to witness the judgment of Israel, and the Jewish remnant (verse 5) are gathered to Him, those who have believed His Word, with whose circumstances and feelings, Books 1 and 2 of the Psalms are chiefly occupied. The remnant will have already seen Christ, owned Him as whom they pierced (Zechariah 12:10), who gave Himself a sacrifice for them on the cross. These are looked upon as having made a covenant with God by (or over) sacrifice. The covenant is the new one of Jeremiah 31: 31-34.

The heavens will declare His righteousness (verse 6); what can this mean but that the heavenly saints are there? (See 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:2; Revelation 19:14 and 20:4).

It is not here, in Psalm 50, a question of sacrifices offered under the Mosaic system, but of a state; God will have righteousness. Wickedness He will no longer tolerate. And withal, how like Him, as His Word reveals Him to faith,

"Call upon Me in the day of trouble; will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me" (Verse 15).

What measureless grace to His poor, weak, failing people this is! Striking also is the last verse of the psalm,

"Whoso offereth praise (or thanksgiving) glorifieth Me; and to Him that ordereth his way will I show the salvation of God" (new translation).

What a portion is that of the child of God! May we individually seek to know it better, practically!

Psalm 51

The title of this psalm tells us that is was composed by David upon his conviction of the crowning sin of his life, when Nathan the prophet came to him (2 Samuel 12). By the Holy Spirit's guidance, it was composed with suited accuracy of expression for the confession of the far greater sin of rejection to the death of God's Beloved, which will come from the afflicted souls of the future remnant of the Jews.

Their sin is too deep, too dreadful, for Old Testament sacrifice and sin offering. Mercy alone can meet their case. The confession is complete, and without any reservation; but on the other hand, there is evident a confidence; the convicted sinner's confidence, once confession is from the heart, that the' offended God will pardon.

"Wash me ... . cleanse me," in verse 2, and the language of verses 7 and following, show this and more, that God will bless those who thus seek Him.

How solemnly those fearful words of Matthew 27:25 will come back in the thoughts of the convicted, yet confiding, sons and daughters of Judah! The latter part of verse 4 is quoted in Romans 3:4, where the portion of the Jew is considered in connection with God's dealings; and verse 5 in condemning man after the flesh, is only stating what is more fully declared in the same chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

Verse 7 may be compared with Isaiah 1:18; "as white as snow" is something rare indeed, if it can be found at all, as everyone knows who has compared the whitest cloth with freshly fallen snow; yet the deep dye of guilt of sins innumerable is removed by taking the salvation God offers.

Whiter than snow surpasses anything on earth; this is the estimation of a saint who has fallen into sin, and in deep contrition looks to God for cleansing from all unrighteousness. The result of true self judgment after failure in a child of God, is a deeper sense of the holiness of God than ever before.

Verse 11 could not rightly be the language of any Christian, for the Holy Spirit does not leave those in whom He dwells (John 14:16, 17; Romans 8:9, 11; 1 Corinthians 6:11, 19; 2 Corinthians 5:5; 2 Timothy 1:14; 1 John 4:4; Jude 19; Revelation 22:17).

The Holy Spirit is spoken of many times in the Old Testament; He was in the prophets (1 Peter 1:11), but did not and could not dwell or abide in anyone but the God-Man, until His death and resurrection and ascension, the finished work of the cross to which the Old Testament believers looked in hope (John 15:26; 16:13-14).

Nor is it possible to lose salvation; nowhere does the Word of God admit such a thing as possible. See John 10:27-29 as an example of what is said with equal assurance in other passages. Verse 12 asks for the restoration of the joy of God's salvation, not the restoration of salvation, which the believer never can lose.

The psalm closes with desires to declare the praise of God, and for the rebuilding of Jerusalem according to His purposes of old, when blessing will be worldwide.

Psalm 52

In 1 Samuel 21 and 22 are found the circumstances which led to David's writing the 52nd psalm; he wrote about Doeg, the sheep herder of King Saul, but the Holy Spirit who directed David's writing, had in mind the evil man of the coming day, called in various passages of the Scriptures the willful king, the man of sin, the son of perdition, the second beast, the false prophet, the Antichrist. (See Daniel 11:36-39; John 5:43; 2 Thess. 2:3, 4, 8-10; Revelation 13:11-18, and 19, 20, among many references) .

This man, wicked and daring beyond all others in a religious way, will be the great enemy of the godly Israelites in the Holy land in the time for which the psalms were written. Faith sees the victory through God over this man.

Verse 8. Israel was called a green olive tree, fair, of goodly fruit (Jeremiah 11:16), and such it will be again (Hosea 14:6). Romans 11:17-24 speaks of the Gentiles as now having the place of favor belonging to Israel, but to lose it when God takes up the sons of Jacob again.

Psalm 53

Psalm 53 is, except for verse 5, almost exactly the language of Psalm 14. The Second Book (Psalms 42-72) takes up the feelings and the state of the believing Israelites at a later time than the First Book; they are then shut off from the temple, and no longer in Jerusalem. This explains the change from "the Lord" (Jehovah) in Psalm 14 to "God" in Psalm 53, because the Remnant is cut off from the place where God had set His name. It tells why the change from "God" is in "the generation of the righteous" (Psalm 14:5) to the language of Psalm 53:5.

Psalm 54

The occasion of this psalm is found in 1 Samuel 26. In verse 1 we should read, "and by Thy strength do me justice." Verse 6 speaks of "the Lord" ( Jehovah) when deliverance comes.

These three psalms form a group by themselves, telling as they do the godly judgment of the time,

First, in 52, the wicked head of the apostate Jews;

Second, in 53, the state of the nation, from which the God-fearing remnant are separated;

Third in 54, the look of faith to God, to Him alone.

His name (verse 1) is what He is; this is what is trusted, and this (verse 6) bring forth praise in the day of deliverance.

Psalm 55

What a picture we have in this psalm of the sufferings of the remnant of Israel in the time of their great trouble. They will be learning what many of the children of God have learned by experience, that the way to blessing is often through trial.

In verse 3 are apparently two distinct parties,—"the enemy," and "the wicked." Isaiah 28:14 and 18, and Zechariah 14:2, tell of the coming of enemies to Jerusalem after the wickedness of the nation has come to its height. The speaker in the psalm is evidently looking back to the time when he was in Jerusalem, and had to leave it (verses 6-8). He prays for the judgment of the godless within the city (verse 9), and in vivid description tells what they were doing (verses 10-11). And this is man, freed at last from the restraining power of the Holy Spirit (2 Thess. 2:7) in the believers of the present dispensation.

What is harder to bear than treachery? (verses 12-14), but this the Lord had to endure as none other (Matthew 26:21-23, 47-50; Mark 14:18-20; Luke 22:47, 48; John 13:18, 21-30). Faith's confidence in God's deliverance is expressed in verses 16-17. The godly do not know when deliverance will come; they present their petitions at "evening, and morning and at noon," assured that He will hear.

Tried saints today may well follow the example here set before them, and in prayer and supplication let their requests be made known unto God. He is not indifferent to the call of His own. (See James 1:2-4; and verse 22 of our psalm).

In "Cast they burden" upon the Lord, (verse 22), the "burden" is the portion assigned to you. Often in the varying circumstances of life, what seems a very heavy burden has to be borne: something too heavy, it may seem to be, for the believer's strength,—affliction, sorrow, the loss of a loved one—there are many "burdens" that our God assigns to His children, and many they bring upon themselves. Sweet then is the gracious invitation:

"Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee."

This Psalm exhibits in a marked way the different character given the believing sons of Israel in the coming day, from the desires proper to the Christian. Never is the latter taught to call for judgment upon his enemies, for this is the day of grace. By and by the day of judgment having come, a call for vengeance will be according to God's mind.

Psalm 56

The circumstances which led to the writing of Psalm 56 are told in 1 Samuel 21:10-12. David, fleeing from the murderous Saul, went to the Philistines for refuge, but dared not stay there. But as with others, the Holy Spirit adapted the psalm to the needS of a yet future day. The power of the enemy, of Satan, acting through and in the rejectors of God's grace, will be great, but they cannot pass the boundaries God will set: His own shall be preserved, though they would if they could "swallow" the godly, that is, they, like wild beasts, thirst for the blood of these. There is a question whether "O Thou most High" in verse 2 is a correct translation; it is a name of God, a title of promise (Gen. 14:19, 22).

Three times in the psalm the word of God is spoken of as the solace of the harassed saint, and three times the expression of trust in God, or confidence in Him as to the outcome of the present trying circumstances, is found in the psalm. Thus the confidence of faith is seen in a day of sorest trial, when fear would, apart from God, take possession of the soul. The Word of God was to be Joshua's meditation (Joshua 1:7-9); through it, the believer is preserved from the attacks of Satan (Ephesians 6:17)', and is built up, and given an inheritance among all the sanctified (Acts 20:32. The 119th Psalm whose theme is the Word of God, contains that often quoted verse (105):

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my Path,"—it lights up the believer's way, and cheers him onward through the darkness of this world.

In verses 6 and 8 is a contrast: "They (the wicked) mark my steps," but "Thou (God) tellest—recountest—my wanderings"—eyes from above are watching with deep interest the path of His own that are in the world. Even the tears of the saint are His concern. The close of the psalm is full of confidence in Him, the present distress is forgotten in the onward glance of faith.

May it be more thus with every child of God!

Psalm 57

Psalm 57 is of the same character with Psalm 56, but in the former, confidence is increased, and the onward look is not only to the point of deliverance, but to the full display of the glory of God (verse 11) which will follow. Calamities continue, but in the shadow of His wings the godly Israelite will take refuge (verse 1).

There is no fear in this psalm, though the sense of danger is present (verse 4). Verse 6 looks on to the end, as yet not reached. It is evidently felt to be near, and the last 5 verses look at the trials by the way as all past; the day of glory as already dawned.

Psalm 58

Psalms 58 and 59 are a pair; they speak of the enemies of the godly Israelites. The first verse of Psalm 58 is better read, "Is righteousness indeed silent? Do ye speak it? Do ye judge with equity, ye sons of men?"

In verse 2 the sense of "weigh" is to ponder, or deliberate over, the violence these men were engaged in. Verses 3 to 5 declare the Scriptural verdict upon man by nature. (See Romans 3:9-18; 2
Timothy 3:1-8; 4:3, 4). How keen the characteristics of the wicked in verses 4 and 5!

The expressions found in verses 6-10 would be entirely out of place for a Christian, because this is the day of grace; soon will dawn the day of judgment, when grace is no more shown to an unrepentant world; at that time these calls upon God for vengeance upon the wicked, will be quite according to His mind. (See Revelation 6:10, 11-18).

Psalm 59

Psalm 59 in point of time takes us back to 1 Samuel 19:11, 12, when king Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, and to kill him in the morning, and his wife let him escape by a window. After the same order the remnant of the latter day will be hunted and persecuted, but their minds are fixed upon a deliverance God will bring to them. The closing verses, 16 and 17, show that there will be a day of joy for those who are persecuted for God's sake, and that, that hope, that prospect will cheer the sorely tried saints of the great tribulation period. (See Luke 6:22, 23). The secret of happiness is not found by believers apart from trial in one form or another, and sharing the rejection of their Messiah these Israelites will enter the joy of their Lord when trials are forever behind them.

O, that we whose present, as well as eternal portion, is so much more blessed than theirs, may know more of communion with the Lord in the time of His absence, and reckoned more like the great apostle, that to be present in the body is expressed as, to be absent from the Lord!

Psalm 60

The title of the 60th psalm tells us it is connected with what we read in 2 Samuel 8, but its position in the Book of Psalms shows that it is intended by the Holy Spirit for the coming day when God will take up Israel again for blessing. The psalm is the voice of the remnant,—those among the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who, when the Christians have been caught away to meet the Lord in the air, and to be forever with Him (1 Thessalonians 4), will read the Bible with believing minds, and find in both the old and New Testaments the proof of Israel's waywardness and terrible sins. Owning their guilt, confessing their sins to God, these repentant ones will look for redemption at the appearing of the Lord Jesus as their Messiah. For them, as we have before noted, the Psalms were written.

In verse 5, "Thy beloved," a name of Jesus (Matthew 3:17) is in the plural, and should be read "Thy beloved ones,"—the remnant identified in the grace of God with the lowly Man who once trod the earth and found rejection far more deeply than the remnant will feel it. Verses 6-8 are God's answer to the cry of faith; He will reclaim the land so long given up to the enemy.

Psalm 61

Psalm 61 is the cry of the godly; it does not speak of sins. The "rock that is higher than I" is a rock which is higher than the speaker, where he will be safe from the coming storm. Nearness to God in the day of glory is the confident hope of the remnant (verses 4-5).

"The king" in verses 6 and 7 was David when the psalm was written, but it is plain that in the prophetic sense in which the expression appears in the Book, the Lord Jesus as the Messiah—King of Israel is meant. (See Isaiah 53:10):

"He shall prolong His days;" also Daniel 7:14. The reference in the psalm is to the abiding life into which He entered as man.

Psalm 62

It is sometimes difficult to determine whether certain psalms are the voice of the godly Israelites in the coming day of tribulation; or of Christ speaking as one with them, as He who was the remnant Himself when here on earth enjoying the favor of God, when all around were those who sought His life, and out of His own experience, as the rejected One, speaks for their comfort and support with whom in grace He links Himself. Psalm 61 to 69 are in varying degree of this character.

Psalm 62, true in principle of the godly, evidently has its fullest application in Jesus. Against Him was the full power of Satan massed, when He neared the close of His matchless path from the manger at Bethlehem, to Gethsemane and Calvary's cross.

We may read verse 1 as "Upon God alone Both my soul rest peacefully; from Him is my salvation," and in verse 3 the better translation is: "How long will ye assail a man; will ye seek, all of you, to break him down as a bowing wall, or a tottering fence?"

Enemies may assail, but confidence in God is the theme of the psalm. The spirit of Christ in verse 8 encourages the remnant to confide in God at all times, to pour out their hearts before Him; "God is our refuge" (Christ joining Himself thus in grace with the remnant of the latter day).

Men of low degree and of high degree are only vanity or a lie (verse 9). The heart of the godly is not to be centered here (verse 10). Strength and mercy (or loving kindness) belong to God. These are weighty words.

Psalm 63

Psalm 63 yet more fully applies to Christ as He walked this world, a homeless stranger. None could say as full as He, "My God" (verse 1). (See Psalm 22:1, 10; and John 20:17). The whole of this beautiful psalm expresses His thoughts while passing through this earth —the valley of the shadow of death—finding all His joys in His Father, and in those whom in matchless grace He drew to Himself.

The language is, however, such that the repentant Israelite might utter, when awakened from the sleep of moral death, and longing for the day when the restored temple at Jerusalem would again be God's earthly dwelling place; and the Christian, too, who has been led by faith to know Christ in glory, adopts the language as his own.

This world, to those who have found their all in Christ, is a dry and weary land without water; and there is a longing within, that nothing can ever quite displace, to see Him face to face whose presence will make heaven, heaven to us.

Verse 3 is a remarkable utterance for the Old Testament, but its truth proved to faith, we may judge, in all generation: "Thy loving kindness is better than life."

"Satisfied as with marrow and fatness" —how can this be where it is a "dry and weary land?" The Christian who draws his daily supplies of grace from above, knows the secret. This psalm calls for meditation more than explanation; may we who love Him of whom it tells, find such expressions as it contains, more and more the expressions of our own hearts until we meet Him.

Psalm 64

Psalms 64 is a last call to God for preservation from the enemy of the day that is coming soon. It is a prayer that breathes confidence, though troubles assail the godly, when the evildoers counsel together secretly, and the workers of iniquity are openly threatening. Conscienceless they attack with bitter words suddenly the unoffending Israelites who shall be looking for the Messiah they once crucified to come again. It will be a day, when the power of Satan is at its height. (See Revelation 12:12-17; Matthew 24:9-29). The end will be that the righteous shall rejoice in the Lord, and trust in Him; and all the upright in heart shall glory (verse 10).

The next four psalms are songs, as their titles let us know: songs of praise for deliverance that is very near.

Psalm 65

Psalm 65 begins with a striking expression: “Praise waiteth for Thee in since, O God, in Zion” (see marginal note and New Translation). Praise will presently be heard; it is already, so to speak, in the heart, and will soon be on the lips.

Out of the experience of deep trial which always is profitable to those who are exercised by it (Hebrews 12:11), comes that name for God found in verse 2: “Thou that hearest prayer.” How many, their number only known to Him, have in all ages gone to Him in prayer, earnest, supplicating prayer, for needs both theirs and others; and found the assurance that He hears (Philippians 4:6-7), and in due course have received the answer, too, as it has pleased Him.

Verse 3 is confession, and faith’s assurance of forgiveness; verse 4 owns the election of grace, and declares the believer’s contentment with the prospect thus made his. But the dawn of that day when righteousness shall reign must bring judgment: “By terrible things in righteousness wilt Thou answer us, O God of our salvation” (verse 5). It is a mistake to suppose that the end of the present order of things in the world will be peace; that it will end in terrible judgments, many scriptures tell us.

Past the scenes of judgment, the psalmist however looks, in verses 9 to 13, to the great millennial day when the creation will no more groan, when the hills shall be girded with gladness and the meadows are clothed with flocks. What a day of rejoicing it will be!

Yet for the Christian there is a prospect far excelling the delights of the thousand years of Christ’s righteous reign; for this, one may turn to such scriptures as John 14:2-3; 17:24; Romans 8:29-30; 1 Corinthians 15:49; Ephesians 1:3-14, 22-23; 2:5-8; Colossians 3:20-21.

Psalm 66

These two psalms continue the song of praise begun in the 65th. Psalm 66 is addressed to all the earth in view of the Lord’s having come to set up His authority here; He will have put down all that oppose Him. He must reign, 1 Corinthians 15:25 tells us, until, He has put all enemies under His feet, though that will not be entirely accomplished at the beginning, but at the end of the millennium. What triumph for the Crucified One when His enemies, who once nailed Him to a cross and now despise Him, come cringing to Him (verse 3)!

Verse 6 refers to the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt at the Red Sea (Exodus 14).

Verses 8 to 12 make known that the afflictions of the remnant were intended by God to be not only a blessing to them, but to the Gentiles who would believe through their word.

“Thou has tried us” in verse 10 is “Thou hast refined us.” (See in this connection Isaiah 48:10; Zechariah 13:9 and Malachi 3:3).

Silver was the metal used for redemption, a type of a ransom for the soul, in Exodus 30:12-16. See its use in the tabernacle, God’s dwelling place in the wilderness with His people, in Exodus 36:20-31, to support the acacia wood boards which formed the sides, and to faith represents the believers brought together by power not their own to form the house of God. (See Ephesians 2:19-22).

Not in cold, lifeless formality does the renewed heart consider the prospect of going to the appointed place of meeting (verses 13-15); the voice of testimony is heard (verses 16-19), and the psalm closes with praise to God. Such should be the habit of the Christian as he passes on his way to glory with Christ.

Psalm 67

In Psalm 67 the song of praise reaches its height, and all the inhabitants of the earth are again before the inspired writer for their blessing.

Truly blessed will be the inhabitants of this world when He reigns, for whom creation waits.

Psalm 68

Psalm 68, also a “song,” is of different character to those which have preceded it, a sort of review or reflection upon what has happened. Here the subject changes, yet praise to our God continues, and will continue without end eternally, for all the mercy and grace He has shown to those who have, all unworthy in themselves, been led to put their trust in Him,—in the Son of His love.

This is the fourth and greatest of the series of songs (Psalms 65 to 68), and celebrates the judgments of God, the setting up of His authority on earth with the blessing of the righteous, and the scattering of the enemies. The opening verse is the word of Numbers 10:35, when God let His people of Israel through the wilderness to the promised land. Verses 1 to 6 comprise the preface or brief of the psalm.

There will be no standing out against Him in that day verse 2 lets us know, but the righteous shall rejoice exceedingly, as we learn from verse 3. The distress and agony of the godly during the fearful three years and a half of Daniel 7:25; 9:27; 12:11; Matthew 24:15-29, and Relation 11:3-13 will then be, over, and tears and fears will have given place to peace and joy (see Isaiah 52:7-12 in connection with this psalm).

In verse 4 the better reading is “ ... . cast up a way for Him that rideth in the deserts; His name is Jah; and rejoice before Him.” Jah is a name of God which is found twice in Exodus; 40 times in the Psalms, and three times in Isaiah, and is usually translated LORD, like the name Jehovah. Jah is Him who was, and is, and is to come, the existing One.

Except for the “rebellious,” who are the unrepentant Israelites (verses 5 and 6), describe the humble and God-fearing who have suffered for righteousness’ sake, and who will be blessed in that day of deliverance.

Verse 7 brings us to the body of the psalm, and like verse 1, the first thought is of that early day of Israel’s history when, fresh from the slavery of Egypt, they were led by the pillar of the cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night to the border of the land designed for their dwelling place. (See Judges 5:4-5).

The psalm speaks much of God as active in goodness in behalf of His poor afflicted people; though they have lain among the refuse, they shall be as wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with greenish yellow gold (verse 13). What a contrast! Kings of armies flee, and the housekeepers divide the spoil (verse 12). Great indeed must then be the number of those (women apparently, for the word is feminine) who tell out the glad news of God’s restoring grace toward His people (verse 11).

Verse 15-17 refer to the cleansed Jerusalem, fitted for God’s dwelling place. In verse 17 the translation should be: “The chariots of God are twenty thousand; thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; tis a Sinai in holiness.”

The first part of verse 18 is quoted in Ephesians 4:8 as referring to Christ, and it is evident from a reading of the psalm that it is He who is spoken of as Jehovah, God, the Lord; the close of verse 18 shows this in a very marked way, for it tells that the once rebellious, but soon to be repentant Israel is to have the earthly dwelling place of Jah Elohim, the Lord God,—here no other than the rejected Messiah!

Why is not all of verse 18 quoted in Ephesians 4? Because the latter part is about Israel and the earth, and Ephesians is occupied with Christ and the Church, His heavenly bride.

The close of the psalm shows reunited Israel (verses 26, 27), and the subjection of kings who will bring presents to Jerusalem to Him who is God and Son of David (verse 29).

Verse 30 seems to refer particularly to the Antichrist and those of his company, and the last five verses show the millennial reign of Christ fully established.

Psalm 69

The language of this psalm points us directly to the rejected Messiah, Jesus the Lord, and the occasion, His crucifixion. We have not here God forsaking Him as the Holy Sin Bear, as in Psalm 22, but His sufferings at the hands of men. It is plain that our blessed Lord is here seen (as in many other psalms), occupying the place of the godly remnant of the future day, experiencing rejection on account of His faithfulness. In the fullest way the expressions found in the first twenty-one verses were fulfilled in Jesus; some of them can only in a limited sense be true of the godly among Israel during the great tribulation, but all is for their help and encouragement.

The feelings of the Holy One of God as here told, are deeply touching to the Christian heart; there was the one Perfect Man whose feelings were not at all blunted by indwelling sin, as every other man’s (even the subjects of redeeming grace), meeting the full tide of human enmity poured upon Him without a cause.

Death is before Him; the waters are come into His soul; the flood overflows Him. How real, and how intense His sufferings—far beyond the thoughts of David as he penned the psalm for the sinless One, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

It was when man’s wickedness rose to its height that He restored that which He took not away: He glorified God in the fullest way as the obedient Man in a scene where man was in revolt, —at enmity with God. And how His Father must have delighted in Him thus obedient unto death! (See John 12:27, 28; Philippians 2:6-11; Isaiah 53:12; 1 Peter 2:22, 23). What a contrast between the first and last Adam, between Genesis 3 and Luke 22 and 23!

In verse 5 the cause and the occasion of the remnant’s sufferings is told: folly and sins (trespasses), and, we may add, the greatest sin of the Jews, in the rejection of the Just One (Acts 7:52; Zechariah 12:10).

It is only in the deep sympathies of His loving heart with the remnant that verse 5 could express our Lord’s feelings, Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. And how precious is the prayer of verse 6, considering in the agonies of the cross those who might be stumbled by reason of these unprecedented sufferings of the only Righteous One!

Verses 7 to 12 show how rejection was Christ’s portion all through, and not just at the close of His life. The zeal of God’s house had devoured Him—so far had Israel’s guides gone in departure from the law and the prophets.

Notice the difference, characteristic of the psalm in the language of verse 13, from that in Psalm 22:1-2. Psalm 69 we may consider as Christ’s portion, in part, during the first three hours, and Psalm 22 The last three hours, on the cross, but the distinction cannot be applied throughout.

Verses 22 to 28 show that Psalm 69 is not occupied with Christ as the Sin Bearer as making atonement for our sins; they are the call of the Righteous One for judgment upon the wicked, when the day of God’s long-suffering patience is over. Such language will suit the epoch of the great tribulation, but is not for the Christian.

In verses 29 to 36 is the application of the psalm distinctly the remnant with the creation praising God, Zion saved, and the cities of Judah inhabited by those that love His Name.

Psalm 70

The 70th Psalm which is almost exactly the language of five verses in Psalm 40, is linked with the 69th in the thoughts that are expressed.

It calls for help for Him of whom Psalm 69 speaks, and that those who take pleasure in His adversity should be turned backward and confounded. Verse 3 may be compared with Mark 15:29, 30, where “Ah” should be “Aha!” —the expression of malicious joy.

He thinks of those—His own, through divine grace that seek God, and desires that they shall be glad and rejoice in Him, and say continually, “Let God be magnified.”

Verse 5 puts us in mind of 2 Corinthians 8:9; both speak of the same blessed Person who gave all that He had for the object set before Him (Matthew 13:44-46).

Psalm 71

Psalm 71 is David’s language when his wicked son Absalom sought to take the throne of Israel from him and to kill him (2 Samuel chapters 15-18). This period in David’s life supplied the background for many of the psalms of the Second Book (Nos. 42 to 72). But it is plain that the 71St psalm has a place in God’s Word as having to do with the history of Israel, once young and now old, and pleading to be not cast off in the time of old age.

This is the last psalm that takes up the case of the remnant as distinguished from the nation. The prayer is for deliverance out of the hands of the wicked, the unrighteous and cruel, for in the Lord Jehovah is full trust. Observe the confidence expressed in verse 3.

Verse 5 does not mean that Israel has depended upon God from the first, but that in Him only have the faithful of all times confided. That which was of God in Israel, was as a wonder to many. It will be seen that the ways of God, and not the failure and sin of David or of Israel occupy the Divine Penman of this psalm.

And now it is the old age of Israel, as of David, when this psalm was written; will God cast off in the day of weakness? The answer is in verse 20 and the remaining verses of the psalm. Well may the inspired writer say, “O God, who is like unto Thee?” (verse 19), for He will bring back again to spiritual life the dead members of the chosen nation, so that the earth shall resound with the praise of Jehovah.

Psalm 72

This, the last psalm of the Second Book, is briefly headed “for Solomon,” and yet it speaks of an infinitely greater Son of David than the last sovereign of united Israel; verse 17 for example, but others also, were never true of Solomon. The king and the king’s Son of verse 1 are both, in the prophetic sense of the psalm, the Lord Jesus, David’s Son who is David’s Lord (Psalm 110, verse 1; Matthew 22:41-45). He will bring about the long-awaited reign of righteousness and peace, and none shall reign after Him.

Of the times of refreshing (Acts 3:1921) which will be known then, verses 6, 7, etc., give assurance. When Satan is bound (Revelation 20:1-3), and the Crucified One is the Exalted and Reigning One, the whole creation will rejoice (Romans 8:19-23). None will dispute His dominion (verses 8-11); all nations shall serve Him.

In verse 16, instead of “There shall be an handful of corn,” read, “There shall be an abundance of corn.”

Verses 18 and 19 of this psalm are really separated from it; they are the outflow of a full heart reflecting upon the ways of God as witnessed in the entire Book. What believer will not echo the words, and long for that awaited day of Christ! (Psalm 72:18-19.)

The Second Book of the Psalms at whose close we have now come, records the casting out from Jerusalem of the goy when the Antichrist reached out to claim divinity for himself (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4; Matthew 24:7-18, etc.), and the distress, as well as the faith of these earthly saints; this was followed by the appearing of the Messiah to deliver them and to set up His kingdom. At this point, the remnant cease to be viewed separately from the whole nation, for the Third Book (Psalms 73-89) considers Israel nationally.

May the Lord’s blessing be with us in these studies in His word!

Psalm 73

We here begin the short Third Book of the Psalms, which ends with Psalm 89. It continues but one of David’s psalms —the 86th.

In the First Book, ending with Psalm 41, are the great principles of the position of the Jewish remnant in connection with Christ, the rejected and glorified One.

In the Second Book the remnant is seen separated from the wicked inhabitants of Jerusalem, and gone from the city; in it too we found the Lord coming to cheer and deliver the remnant, and to set up His kingdom.

The Third Book now looks at the condition of Israel as a nation restored to their land, though it distinguishes the goy or true-hearted among them. In this Book the coming of the Lord is not included; the Fourth Book will again set that glorious event forth.

In Psalm 73 the saint has been troubled seeing the prosperity of the wicked, and the trials of the godly. Is it not often so today? Pride, violence, riches, oppression, boastfulness, — these are still the common marks of the ungodly in the world, and the people of God on the other hand are usually not prosperous, are even in deep distress and suffering from oppression through the selfishness that is natural to man; waters in fullness are wrung out to them (verse 10). They wonder if God knows how they are tread, and that it is the wicked that prosper and heap up riches.

Thinking over it all, the saint at first decides that he has cleansed his heart and hands for naught, because all the day he has been plagued, and every morning chastened. But if he should say this he would be faithless to the generation of God’s children (verse 15). He could not understand; the state of things was so contrary to what one would expect, for an Israelite looked upon riches and possessions as proof of God’s blessing. Going into the sanctuaries of God, he understood their end. (verses 19-20); he was all wrong, as ignorant of the ways of God as a beast.

Instructed of God, the saint is comforted in a contrary scene; God has preserved him; He will guide him by His counsel, and after the glory, after it has been revealed by the coming of the Lord —he will be received and blessed on earth. (See Zechariah 2:8). He realizes his blessed portion through the exercise of soul he has been experiencing, and sees and desires none but the Lord. Flesh and heart fail indeed, for man is a frail creature at all times, but the intelligent language of faith at all times and in all circumstances is “God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.” In God alone is safety and true blessing. It is through affliction that the believer learns the truth of verse 28 of the psalm,

“It is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all Thy works.”

Psalm 74

Plainly this psalm, this pleading prayer will rise from Jerusalem and the Holy land, and the time for which it speaks is when Gentiles as well as apostate Jews are enemies of the godly ones there. For many years Jews have been going to Palestine to make their home in that land which God long ago anointed for Israel (Exodus 3:8; Deuteronomy 32:8), and since the great war, increased numbers of them have been settling there. Just now there is a hindrance to Jewish immigration, but it cannot last long, for God’s Word shows in many passages that the Holy land will be the possession of the Jews when His dealings with them as a nation begin again.

Touching is the appeal to God here; faith addresses Him on the ground of His original purchase of them, and there is not a word of confidence in themselves in the entire psalm. The language employed is the work of the Holy Spirit; it will be the fruit of His work in them. They claim deliverance on the ground of being His, — they are His sheep (verse 1); His assembly or congregation, His inheritance (verse 2); and so it is His place of assembly (verse 4); His sanctuary, the dwelling place of His name (verse 7); His synagogues or places of assembly (verse 8).

From verse 12, God is addressed as He who asserted His authority, and displayed His power of old. An enemy had reproached Jehovah; a foolish people had blasphemed or treated with contempt His name; they were His adversaries (verses 22- 23). Can such an appeal fail?

This psalm adds to our knowledge obtained from other Scriptures of the events of the last days, showing that the temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem will be desecrated: everything in it will be destroyed by the enemy (verse 3); they will break down its carved work altogether with hatchets and hammers (verse 6), and set the building on fire (verse 7), will even burn up all God’s places of assembly in the land. Daniel 9:27; Isaiah 10:5, 6; Zechariah 14:1, 2; Isaiah 28:14, 15, 1820; Revelation 13:11-18; Matthew 24:551, and many other scriptures throw much light on the state of things in and around Jerusalem when the Church of God, composed of all true Christians, shall have been called away by the summons of Christ to the heavenly scene (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57), and God by the Holy Spirit will take up Israel again for blessing (Ezekiel 37).

Verse 4 speaks of signs and wonders of the last days (Matthew 24:24; Revelation 13:13, etc.). No signs will be given by God to meet these Satanic signs (verse 9); we know from Revelation 11:3-6 that there will be signs given by chosen witnesses of God, but they are essentially different in character and limited in display.

There will be no prophets then (verse 9), but if these saints have the Scriptures before them, they will learn that the day of the Lord’s return for their deliverance is set (Daniel 9:27; 12:6, 7, 11-13). It will be 7 years from the beginning of the seven-year agreement for carrying on the Jewish system of religious observance in the Holy land, or 3 1/2 years from the time that the false prophet-king takes that important step of assuming God’s place as the object of worship—the “abomination” that will bring the Assyrian desolator (Matthew 24:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-9).

In this the Christian hope is distinct; there are no “times and seasons” (1 Thessalonians. 4:15-18; 5:3) for us who have been led to own ourselves lost sinners and to claim the guilty sinner’s Saviour in this wonderful day of God’s grace. O, that we were more constantly looking for Him to come!

Saviour, come, we long to see Thee, Long to dwell with Thee above,

And to know in full communion

All the sweetness of Thy love.

Psalm 75

In the 75th psalm we have the Messiah speaking, except in verse 1 where the voice of believing Israel is heard giving thanks for the blessing they are assured is near. When the Messiah shall receive the assembly (or, when He shall reach the set time, —the exact reading is not clear) He will judge with equity. When everything on earth is broken up, He will be found to have established that which will abide. He will rule, as is said of Him in Isaiah 11.

If He shall reign in righteousness, the wicked shall not be passed by; the cup of the fury of God will be drunk by the nations (see Jeremiah 25).

Singing psalms to the God of Jacob (verse 9) brings in the thought of His faithfulness, for Jacob’s self-seeking course brought him much sorrow but he was a worshiper when nature’s energy was weakened (Hebrews 11:21). The horn (verse 10) is a figure of power.

Psalm 76

Psalm 76 continues the theme of the 75th, but it is not now the Messiah speaking; but the godly of Israel, rather.

“In Judah is God known; His name is great in Israel,” seems to show as Psalm 80 and others, that the remnant of Israel, of the lost ten tribes are looked at as united with the remnant of the Jews, the two tribes of Judah, in this Third Book of the Psalms.

“Salem”, verse 2, is Jerusalem, and Hebrews 7:2 tells us that “King of Salem” is “King of Peace”. It is nevertheless there that the Lord as Israel’s Messiah will break the power of the confederate kings, who will come up against the city, not knowing that He is there (See Micah 4:11-13, and Zechariah 12:2-5; 14:3). Verses 1-3 present the result of what is set forth in verses 4-12.

The intervention of God in behalf of Jerusalem in king Hezekiah’s day, told of in 2 Kings 19:35, and Isaiah 37:36 is a picture, doubtless, of what will occur at the time for which Psalm 76 was written, when the Beast and the False Prophet shall have been destroyed (Revelation 19: 19, 20).

Who the enemies are that come against Jerusalem after that event is shown in Psalm 83, and what they will do there is said in Psalm 79; it is apparent that these enemies will come twice; the first time they will take half the city, but on their return they are surprised to find the Lord is there, and they are destroyed. Who can stand against Him? He will make their fury to praise Him.

Very instructive are these Psalms, pointing as they do to a time of trouble without parallel in the history of the world (Matthew 24:21), and telling of the salvation to be brought to the godly in that day.

The Christian, having a heavenly hope, will not pass through the described tribulation. Revelation 3:10 speaks for him its encouraging word, and in the last chapter of that little-read book (verse 20) is a promise which must now be very close to fulfillment. All here below is, to the watchful child of God, evidently drawing near to a solemn judgment; the apostacy is at hand. Christian, are you ready for the coming of the Lord?

Psalm 77

This psalm and Psalm 73 are the musings of an exercised, afflicted soul; in the latter he considers the ways of God in connection with the wicked, his enemies, but in Psalm 77 he is learning about God’s way with himself; both are needed lessons. It is through deep exercise of soul in the presence of God that the believer learns and is blessed.

Verses 1 to 3 (as often) show the suspect of the psalm; deep distress leads to a cry to God who will give ear to the suppliant. He thinks of the days long past (verse 5); happy days, when the loving kindness of God was known. Then was Israel enjoying God’s favor, but now is the day of trouble. Overwhelmed with grief, the question is raised, Will the Lord cast off forever? Will He be favorable no more? Hath God forgotten to be gracious, or hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies? Such thoughts are not of faith, and in verse 10 they are owned.

Instead of occupying his mind with thoughts of unbelief, the psalmist will meditate upon all God’s work and upon His doing (verse 12). The result is seen in verse 13, “O God, Thy way is in the sanctuary;” that is, He deals with His children according to His own nature, and having before Him their real state, inwardly.

Verse 19 views the same subject from another angle; if man in his own natural thoughts will judge what He does, it must be to acknowledge that God’s ways are in the sea, His footsteps are not known, —they cannot be traced by man.

The believer is privileged to know Him in the holy place, but it requires a guarded, watchful, self-distrustful habit of life, occupation with the Word of God and prayer, to thus know Him and understand His “way”. What an incalculable blessing He has made possible for the believer! May we all seek more earnestly to realize the portion thus offered to us.

Psalm 78

This instructive psalm tells of the way of God with Israel of old, (answering to the 77th Psalm, verses 5, 10-12, etc.), from the time of their slavery in Egypt, to David’s being made their king. At the same time, the ways of Israel are faithfully told. The story is told that the children should not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation that prepared not their heart, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.

O, the patience, forbearance and amazing love of God! A believing Israel, unlike the Israel of old, and today; but a generation to come, will tell His praise when their hearts are turned to receive the Messiah they crucified 1900 years ago.

Ephraim (verse 9 and verse 67) had the firstborn’s place (Genesis 48:14-20), but his tribe, except for Joshua (Numbers 13:8), and that Shiloh, where the tabernacle was until Samuel’s day (Joshua 18:1; 1 Samuel 4), was in their territory, was not zealous for God. Proud and envious their history shows them to have been; they allowed the Canaanites to live among them (Judges 1:29), and refused to take part in the war to free the country of the oppressing Ammonites,—for which they were punished (Judges 11 and 12:1-6). Afterward they took the chief place in the division of the country following Solomon’s death, turning quickly to idolatry. (See Hosea 4:17 and 14:8, also Isaiah 11:13, for Ephraim will yet be blessed).

Zoan (verse 12) was a town in lower Egypt. Verses 12 to 31 recite Israel’s history as told in Exodus chapters 1 to 17, and in Numbers 11. For all that they saw of God’s gracious provision for them, and of his unsparing judgment of sin, they sinned still, and believed not in His marvelous works. (In connection with verses 32 to 41, see Deuteronomy 1:34, 35, 41-46; 2:14, 15; 4:3; Exodus 32; Leviticus 10:1-7; Numbers, chapters, 14, 16, 20, 21 and 25). But “they remembered not His hand, the day when He delivered them from the oppressor;” God’s mighty works for the children of Israel in the land of Egypt (verses 42-51); how He had brought them safely through the wilderness to the promised land; had driven out the nations who lived there, worshiping idols and most wicked in their lives, and that He had given the tribes of Israel to dwell in that land as their inheritance (verses 52-55).

Verses 56 to 58 declare what Israel did after Joshua was dead. (See Judges 2:11-19). Verses 60 to 64 set before us the story told in 1 Samuel 2:27 to 36. In what follows to the end of the psalm, Saul, first king of Israel, is left out as the people’s choice and rejected by God (1 Samuel 16:1). It is David and Jerusalem that are brought in, for the purpose is to present the Son of David, David’s Lord, whose reign will begin with smiting His adversaries, and putting them to everlasting reproach.

Like all other Psalms, this one was written for the fast approaching time when God will turn from the gospel hardened Gentiles to Israel, many of whom then will be ready to hear Him.

To the Christian it speaks of Him whose abundant love, grace, and mercy have gone out in fullest measure, Gentiles who were without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:11, 12).

Psalm 79

In point of time we have now reached in Book 3 of the Psalms, nearly to the appearance of the Lord Jesus as the long awaited Messiah-King of Israel, Son of David, King of kings and Lord of lords. It will be remembered that the Third Book which includes Psalms 73 to 89, deals with Israel nationally, (the 12 tribes); while the Second Book (Psalms 42 to 72) took up the case of the remnant of the Jews as driven out of Jerusalem, because of their faithfulness to God at the beginning of the last 3 1/2 years, before the Lord comes to the world to set up His earthly kingdom.

Not very long before the Lord will descend in power, He will bring about the attack by the desolator spoken of by Him in Matthew 24:15. The “abomination of desolation” is a reference to idolatry which is abomination to God to be begun in the temple at Jerusalem, which God will punish by causing a desolating army, or armies, to overrun the land of Palestine and capture Jerusalem. It is this situation which is the occasion of Psalm 79. (Scriptures which tell of the invasion are Daniel 9:27; 11:40-45; Joel 1 and 2; Zechariah 14:1, 2; Ezekiel 38 and 39; Micah 5:5, 6; Isaiah 10 and 28:2).

This psalm is then an appeal to God on behalf of Israel when the northern and other armies (not part of the to-be-revived Roman Empire) will have ruthlessly attacked Jerusalem and defiled the rebuilt temple, destroyed much of the city, killed many of its inhabitants. Will God allow this to go unnoticed? His people deserve the punishment they are receiving, but will He be angry with them forever? Shall His jealousy burn like fire? (verse 5). In due time, doubtless, He will answer the supplications here found.

As in many other psalms, the language used with regard to enemies (verses 6, 10, 12), entirely suitable for the righteous in the coming dispensation, is wholly unsuited for the Christian who is called to love his enemies, to bless when cursed. Indeed, the language of the psalm while speaking deeply to our hearts of sorely tried saints just before the Millennium, does not express the Christian’s position; we who believe, in this singularly privileged period of grace, know ourselves accepted in the Beloved One, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1:6-7). To apply the language of Psalm 79 to ourselves, is to make Jews of ourselves. We must rightly divide the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15).

Psalm 80

Psalm 80 continues the cry of the 79th psalm on behalf of the people of Israel. Notice that the language used refers not to the godly remnant in the midst of, or separated from, an ungodly generation, as in the Second Book of the Psalms, or to the trials of the righteous man in the midst of those who reject God’s testimony (often it is Christ that is spoken of) as in the First Book; here the appeal is for Israel, the nation, that it be restored and revived as of old.

This psalm looks to God as the Shepherd of Israel, as Israel’s God. (See Isaiah 40:10, 11; Exodus 25:10-22). Past the centuries of their wanderings as “Not My People” (Hosea 1:9), scattered among the Gentiles, this psalm turns back to the first, bright days of Israel, and so in verse 2 we have the three tribes who were nearest the ark in the camp on the wilderness journey (Numbers 2:18-24), and who immediately followed the sanctuary on the march (Numbers 10:22-24). Israel then here in faith looks to Jehovah, God of hosts to lead them in displayed power as of old.

He had brought out a vine from Egypt, and planted it; it had grown great, but its fences were broken down; it was wasted and became food for the beast of the field. (See Isaiah 5:1-7). All this is acknowledged, it was God’s dealing with Israel because of fearful sins; but to Him Israel is here seen to look, and to call for deliverance.

Verse 17 introduces the Lord Jesus, the lowly One, despised and rejected of men, the Son of Man as He is here called, and in that title, He will appear. (See Daniel 7:13, 14; Matthew 20:18, and 26:64).

All Israel’s blessing depends upon the Man they rejected and scorned and crucified, Whom God has made the Man of His right hand, made Him strong for Himself, as the verse reads. In Christ we see the eternal God become man in lowly grace; manhood once assumed, He will never give it up, and as man, yes, as Son of Man, He will come forth in power to reign where He was crucified.

Verses 18-19 ascribe to God the power for which Israel waits: “Revive us, and we will call upon Thy name; Restore us, and we shall be saved.”

When faith thus looks to God, there will be blessing. Does not the earnestness, the confidence expressed in the prayers in the Psalms, remind us who are believers, that we do not pray as often, and as earnestly, as believingly, as we should?

Psalm 81

This psalm is a call to Israel to gather together for the “new moon” (verse 3). This expression refers to the reappearance of Israel to reflect upon the earth the light of heaven. For centuries Israel’s light has been extinguished, but it is about to shine again.

Verse 5 is a reference to the sojourn of the children of Israel in the land of bondage. “I heard a language that I knew not,” —God is speaking of that foreign land. Canaan was His land. Since then Israel has gone through far deeper and more protracted sorrows than were known by them in Egypt. From the captivity of the Pharaohs, God set them free (verse 6), and when they called in trouble, He delivered them. The secret place of thunder (verse 7) is the throne of God (Revelation 4:5) in connection with the judgment of the world. He requires holiness and righteousness, and He will not share His glory with another.

He not only answers the call of the needy; he proves those who profess to trust in Him. Israel tempted Him (Exodus 17:2), doubting His word, but He was testing them with difficulties as at Meribah, and He answered them in grace, met their thirst with an abundance of water.

How touching is the language of verses 8, 9, 10, addressed to an ungrateful and heedless people. Had Israel refused other gods (Exodus 20:3), the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt would have satisfied their souls, but they would not hearken to His voice, would have none of Him. Therefore, He gave them up unto their own heart’s stubbornness; they walked after their own counsels (verse 12).

What yearning love is there not, in the words of verse 13; what grace!

If Israel had walked in His ways (and why did they not?), how different, how much happier their history would have been! They were on the ground of law, or law and grace mingled, and utterly afraid. Only unconditional grace will do for man, as the New Testament reveals.

Of course the failure of man, and of highly favored Israel, gave God the opportunity to bring in salvation through Christ, and thus the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1) have been revealed to Gentile and Jew alike. (Romans 11:32-36).

Psalm 82

This psalm continues the general theme of the 81St psalm; Israel had broken down utterly, departing from the ways of God, and their judges (called gods in verse 1) judged unrighteously; they had His word to guide them, and authority to act for Him, but made light of it. He, however, judged among them, and though “gods” as representing Him, they should die like men. The call is therefore to God to arise to judge the earth for it is His, and He must soon take it in hand to set things right.

Psalm 83

In Psalm 83 we have another glance at the history of Israel at the close. It is the last gathering of the nations around the land of Canaan, a last effort of Satan’s to cut off Israel from being a nation (verse 4).

Then we have a list of the nations that will make an alliance to attack Palestine. Edom, Moab, Ammon, Amalek, Philistia and Asshur, we might suppose to have died out as nations, but it is clear from Scripture that they are only waiting for the coming day to be known by their old names again, meanwhile they cannot be known among the nations.

Turn to Isaiah 11:14 and 63:1; Jeremiah 2:4-15; Obadiah; Ezekiel 25; Zephaniah 2:4-15; all of which await for fulfilment, the day of the Lord, and in these scriptures see the punishment God has in store for them.

The 83rd psalm is the last which precedes the Lord’s appearing to establish His kingdom, and set up His throne as Israel’s rightful King.

Psalm 84

This much loved psalm, dear to the Christian heart and rightly so, for its language is as suited to the believers of the present dispensation of grace, as to the coming one of power and glory, expresses the feelings of Israelites whose hearts have been touched and consciences exercised so that they are one by one returning to Zion, the temple site at Jerusalem. The Lord, at the time for which Psalm 84 is written; will have come to the earth to set up His kingdom; will have brought to an end the brief but fear-full persecution of His earthly people. Jerusalem is once more the center, and thither the godly will betake themselves.

So long given up to desolation and to the wicked, the city of God’s choice will again be His earthly dwelling place. (See Isaiah 40:9-11; Jeremiah 50:4, 5; Zephaniah 3:14-20).

The believer thinks of the blessedness of drawing near to God, come down in grace, and longs, even faints for His courts; heart and flesh—spirit and soul—cry out for the living God. Surely every saint of God should heartily echo the language of verses 1 and 2. And is not the presence of the Lord among His saints—His tabernacle—to be known to faith today? Wherever two or three are gathered tether unto His Name, there is He in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). What condescension! What grace! Can any other place or manner of gathering but this, satisfy one who truly loves Him and desires His glory?

Verse 3 brings before our minds the least of His creatures, —the despised sparrow and the restless swallow both secure and at rest, —precious tokens of the fullness of His grace to man. Blessed indeed are they that will dwell in His house. It is the redeemed of Israel that are here in view, as in Psalm 23:6, but the Christian’s thoughts are rightly directed to the heavenly home. (John 14:2, 3; Revelation 5; 1 Peter 1:3-5).

To be with Christ will draw out constant praise (verse 4). How could it be otherwise? The heart fills with joy at the thought of being with Him, like Him, with all the redeemed, —all debtors to grace unfathomable.

Verses 5 to 7 speak of the way to the scene of glory, the path of blessing. It is through suffering and trial, through the valley of tears, but those whose strength is in the Lord, make it a wellspring; they go from strength to strength; each one will appear before God in Zion. The road may be rough, but it cannot be long; the end is near, and prayer should characterize us (verse 8) that we may have the Lord before us all the way. He will surely the strength and the deliverance as needed.

Verse 11, “grace and glory”—unmerited favor, and the delights of a scene where sin is banished, and the Rejected One is the Honored One—these are bestowed freely by our God.

“No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” Mark those words well. We cannot expect to enjoy His bountiful provision here and hereafter, unless we seek constantly to answer to His Word in our ways.

Verse 13 is the meditation of the heart upon the happy portion of the redeemed. Blessed, indeed, are they who trust in the Lord!

Psalm 85

The 85th psalm is founded upon God’s deliverance of His people Israel which Psalm 84 views as accomplished, as we have seen. The land is His, though for many centuries His earthly people have had hardly a foothold on it; now He, in the person of His beloved Son will have asserted title to it, and taken possession. The captivity of Jacob is ended (verse 1).

Israel as a nation has not been a free people since the assault of Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria in 2 Kings 15:29, and 1 Chronicles 5:26, unless an exception be made of the brief span of years of the Maccabean period.

The captivity of Reuben, Gad and the half tribe of Manassah occurred about 735 years before the birth of Christ; to this add the 1926 years since that time, and it will be seen that the captivity of Jacob, i.e., the time since the first of them were taken captive, and carried away beyond the Euphrates to be presently lost to sight, is already 2,661 years. Counting from the first captivity of Judah, it is 2,526 years.

It may be objected that the Jews, who comprise two of the twelve tribes of Israel, are not now captives; this is undeniable, but nevertheless they have no title to their own land, and are only tolerated there. Where Solomon’s temple stood on Mount Zion is now a Mohamman Mosque, and the existence of the Jews’ wailing place where sons and daughters of Jacob poured out their lamentations, is a present testimony in Jerusalem that their captivity is not over.

Verses 2 and 3 tell of the national deliverance brought about by the Lord’s coming in power, but verses 4 to 7 refer to the inward state of the people. Does not Zechariah 12:10-14 make plain that there will be (as is surely called for) a deep work in the consciences and hearts of the Israelites after the Lord has come to their help?

Verses 8 to 13 express the result in blessing. Verse 10 particularly attracts our attention, because it is a definite answer to the cross of Christ. Consequent upon that, righteousness and peace have kissed each other, and in the millennium, truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from the heavens. Blessing will be great, but it will not be without the accompaniment of righteousness. A king, Isaiah 32:1 declares, shall reign in righteousness, speaking of the Lord Jesus when He comes to the world again.

The closing verse should read “and shall set His footsteps on the way,” or “shall set itself in the way of His steps.”

Psalm 86

Psalm 80 is the one psalm of David in the Third Book. Psalm 83 as we have seen, presented the last attack of the nations, and Psalm 84 is founded on the Lord’s having come for the deliverance of His people. What follows to the end of this Book (at Psalm 89) relates to the feelings of the godly thus delivered.

It is a known and trusted God that is addressed here; One in whom there is confidence growing out of having known Him. It is interesting to observe His attributes as here given: lie keeps the soul of the godly, and will save His servants who confide in Him (verse 2); He will be gracious to those who call upon Him (verse 3); He can make His servants re-puce (verse 4); Ile is good, forgiving, and of great loving kindness to all that call upon Him (verse 5); He is a prayer-answering God (verse 7); He is exalted in power above all the mighty ones (verse 8); every knee shall bow to Him (verse 9); Ile is great and does wondrous things, He is God alone (verse 10).

The first section of this psalm is a prayer for help in distress, —such a request as is often made to God by His saints; but the second section, verses 11, 12, 13, goes a step further:

“Teach me Thy way.... I will walk in Thy truth; unite my heart to fear Thy name,” and again,

“I will praise Thee, O Lord my God with my whole heart.” This should be the language of every believer. We are prone to seek only for escape out of trouble, and having received the answer to our prayer, then to settle down in a natural, self-centered fashion. Rather should we be seeking to learn from the Bible, His Word, what is “His way” for us, and to walk in His truth. From such occupation comes true happiness and the outflow of praise to God with one’s “whole heart.” Verse 13 expresses that which is true of every believer.

Verses 14 to 17 appear to point to the wicked not yet dealt with by the Lord. It is evident from various scriptures that the enemies will not all, at one time, be dealt with by Him; David’s reign, —type of the beginning of the Lord’s millennial reign, was one in which enemy after enemy was subdued.

Psalm 87

The 87th psalm is about that Jerusalem that shall be, when the Lord shall have appeared and put down His enemies. Then, as Obadiah 17 says, “Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness, and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.” Of the city in that coming day it is written in Zechariah 2:4, “Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein, for I, saith Jehovah, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her;” and in verse 10: “Sing and rejoice, daughter of Zion, for behold I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith Jehovah.” See also Zechariah 8; Micah 4; Isaiah 4 and 62, which tell of Jerusalem’s coming glory.

What He has founded is in the holy mountains (or mountains of holiness). Verse 1 thus lets us know that the Jerusalem of the day of the Lord will have a very different character from the city as it is today. Then holiness will be everywhere in the city and the country around it. What a wonderfully blessed place it will be when the Lord reigns there, —the world’s center of peace and of divine glory, as well as holiness.

Rahab (verse 4) is a poetical name given to Egypt; it is found also in Psalm 89:10; and in Isaiah 51:9. The name means “insolence,” some think, and others “tumult.” Egypt and Babylon were Jerusalem’s greatest rivals, the centers of Gentile power when Israel’s glory was fading after Solomon’s reign. Philistia and Tyre on the west, and Ethiopia in the south were neighbors of Israel.

Their greatness is gone, and so will all man’s boasted grandeur disappear when He reigns whose title is supreme.

The first half of this short psalm is concerned with the city; the last half is about those who belong to it.

Christ is the man of whom the psalm tells that was born there; not as an infant, though Bethlehem was but 6 miles south of the city, but as the One who rose the conqueror over death and Satan’s power (See Psalm 2:6-12, which speak of Him as the Son begotten in resurrection).

Through the atoning and delivering power that belong to Him, there will be a new redeemed Israel whose joys are centered in the place of His choice, —Jerusalem.

Psalm 88

If we have read with profit the psalms which have been-bore us week by week, we have learned much of the experiences, the sorrows, dangers, persecutions and the hopes and prayers of those among the people of Israel who will seek God when they shall have gone in far greater numbers than now back to the land that He gave their fore-fathers.

Many of the psalms we have examined speak of the God-fearing Jews’ enemies, —enemies among their own people and the Gentiles, but Psalm 88 speaks of neither class. Every psalm and group or series of psalms was designed of God to foretell some part of the circumstances and feelings of those who will turn in heart to Him in the age to come.

Psalm 51 describes the sorrow and repentance of the Jews over the blood guiltless that is theirs through the cross of Christ, and Psalm 88 pictures their realization of the guilt of the whole nation on account of the broken law.

When God gave Israel the law (Exodus 20), and the statutes and judgments which occupy so much of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, they quickly turned to idols (Exodus 32), and not once only (see Amos 5:25, 26; Judges 2:12-19; Ezekiel 8, and many other passages). Thus they broke both the first and second commandments. And these early sins were quickly adopted by the nation; deer and deeper in transgression went Israel as is told out in such solemn scriptures as Isaiah 1; Amos 3 and 2 Kings 17:7-17. Other scriptures foretell the state of Israel in the future as worse than ever before.

Psalm 88 will have its season when the Lord has come to deliver the remnant of Judah and to set up His earthly kingdom. It will be then that the believing Jews will realize how the nation has offended God; their consciences will be thoroughly searched.

The ten commandments are “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not,” without any provision for passing over the transgressor. The great distance between themselves as Israelites and God, whose wrath they have incurred and whose severe judgment they deserve, must be realized bore they can enter into blessing.

Psalm 88 is addressed to the “Lord (Jehovah) God of my salvation,” so that there is a knowledge of and confidence in Him, but it is without a single word of comfort; for this we must look to the next-psalm.

Psalm 89

This is the last psalm included in the Third Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible. Its theme is the mercy, or more exactly, the loving kindness and faithfulness of God, and the fulfillment of the promises to Israel through Christ the Son of David, when the nation has lost everything as Psalms 88, 51 and others show. Happy for Israel that there is One worthy of their trust, their Redeemer as well as ours, for the Christian’s Saviour is the Hope of Israel.

Psalms 88 and 89 bear respectively the names of Heman and Ethan who are mentioned in 1 Kings 4:31, and 1 Chronicles 2:6, and 15:19. How many of the saints of God of all ages and climes not even known to us by name, we shall know in the great unending eternal day!

Verses 1 and 2 tell the result, —the purpose of what the Psalm reveals, —a song of praise to God. Verses 3 and 4 are His assurance of blessing through David; see 1 Chronicles 17, and 2 Samuel 7, where the unconditional favor of God is promised to David and his house

In Matthew 1 we see the line of David’s descendants down to Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.

In verses 5 to 18 the psalmist’s thoughts are centered upon God because of His faithfulness. It will be noted that He is alone in this section of the psalm, except where in verses 15 to 18 “the people” who are blessed by Him.

Verse 10 speaks of “Rahab” (Egypt), crushed as one that is slain when by divine power Israel was led across the Red Sea, and the Egyptians essaying to follow them, were drowned.

Tabor and Hermon (verse 12), are notable mountains of Palestine. Hermon on the northern boundary, is the highest of all the peaks in the land, —9,200 feet, and nearly always snow-capped. Tabor, southwest of the Sea of Galilee, is not lofty, only 1,843 feet, but a conspicuous hill.

It is interesting to observe that when “the people” are brought in (verse 15), and God is seen to be the giver of the new-found joy, Christ is spoken of (verse 18). Through Him that new joy is to be realized. This mention of the Holy One of Israel at once brings out God’s thoughts about Him as David’s son (verses 19-37).

Verses 38 to 51 show again the sense of rejection which Israel must feel before they can enter into full blessing when the Lord appears. So verse 46 pleads, “How long, O Lord,”—that the chastening hand of God may be removed.

Verse 52 concludes Book 3 with “Blessed, be the Lord (Jehovah) for evermore. Amen and Amen.”

Thinking of God in His amazing kindness and free favor, whether to man as such, or to Israel, or the Church, the exercised believer joins his own Amen and Amen, to the words of this closing verse.

Psalm 90

Psalms 90 to 106 form the Fourth Book of the Psalms. In the First Book (Psalms 1 to 41) it may be well to repeat the subject is the state of the Jewish remnant in the first period after their consciences are reached by the Holy Spirit, when, returning to the Holy Land to make their home there, they are living among the ungodly of their nation.

The Second Book looks at the Jewish remnant as having been forced to leave Jerusalem and awaiting the Messiah’s appearing.

In the Third Book which we have just gone through, Israel, the nation, is considered in relation to His coming.

The Fourth Book brings in full deliverance, and the Messiah—who is seen as Jehovah, the Lord—reigning over the earth.

The Fifth book gives a general survey of God’s ways, and closes with praise.

Psalm 90 bears the title “A prayer of Moses, the man of God,” but unlike the 18th Psalm which is taken from 2 Samuel 22, this psalm is not found elsewhere in the Bible. God is Israel’s dwelling place, their home, and from eternity to eternity He is God; time, however long in man’s reckoning, is of small account to Him. Thus, the Fourth Book begins. It is mortal man looking to the eternal and discerning-God.

“Thou makest mortal man to return to dust, and sayest, etc.,” (verse 3, JND). Man is like grass that grows up only to be soon cut down, but there has been dine wrath against iniquity, and Israel—that is, the godly ones—are consumed by God’s anger, troubled by His fury.

The three score and ten years given as life’s ordinary span (verse 10) reminds us of the great change from the days bore the flood when men past nine hundred years old were living. After the flood man’s life was much shortened. Abraham lived to be 175, and Isaac 180 years, Jacob 147, Moses 120, Joshua 110, Eli 98, and these last seem to have been exceptionally long lived for their time. The object in mentioning man’s years in the psalm is evidently by way of contrast with God and eternity. In the millennium evidently, none but sinners will die (see Isaiah 65:20-22).

In the latter part of verse 10 the better reading is “yet is their pride labor and vanity.” Verse 13 is an appeal to God to return for deliverance; how long would they have to wait for the display of His power? Faith looks to Him, that as He had afflicted His people, in due time He would turn their sorrow into joy.

Psalm 91

This psalm is about the Messiah, and the part He will take, identifying Himself with the Jews. Verse 1 declares, concerning Him, that He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High, that is, enters into the purposes of Him who is over heaven and earth, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

In this verse are two names of God; the Most High is His title of absolute supremacy when He takes possession over the earth (see Genesis 14:18-20); the Almighty is the name of complete power by which He was in relationship with Abram (Genesis 17:1).

Verse 2 is the language of the Messiah (Jesus); He says that He will take the place of which verse it speaks; Jehovah, translated “the Lord”—God’s name of relationship with man, and especially with Israel (see Exodus 6:2, 3). It means the Ever Existing One is His refuge and His fortress, His God, and He will confide in Him.

In verses 3 to 8 the Holy Spirit makes answer to the speaker of verse 2. God will deliver Him from the snare of the fowler, cover Him with His wings. The language used would be true of any godly Israelite, but it is the coming Messiah that occupies the Spirit’s mind.

Verses 9 to 13 are believed to be the expression of the Jewish remnant led by the Holy Spirit. The Lord would not take the place and the promises of Psalm 91 when He was on earth before, as Satan found when he quoted verses 11 and 12 in the second temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:5-7).

In the last three verses of our Psalm, Jehovah speaks of Him as the One who has set His love upon Him, setting His seal on what has been said. It is a most interesting Psalm. All is in connection with the earth, and the sufferings of the cross of Calvary are not referred to, but to the spiritual mind, here is a precious revelation concerning Jesus, and the place He will shortly take on behalf of His earthly people. The psalm presents Him in a different way than He is known by faith now, but it is the same blessed Peon, whom having not seen we love.

Psalm 92

Psalms 90, 91 and 92 together form an introduction to the subject which occupies Psalms 93 to 100, that Jehovah (“the Lord”) reigns. In Psalm 45 the immediate results of the Lord’s coming to deliver the remnant are seen, and more in Psalms 66-68 and 72. But that He will not immediately set up His throne at Jerusalem seems plain. The exercises disclosed in various psalms must first be experienced by His people, and great changes will take place before the Messiah reigns (see Matthew 25:31-46; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Zechariah 13:8, 9; 14:8; Romans 8:19-22; Isaiah 2:4; 11:6-9 and 55:13).

Psalm 92 is a song of thanksgiving in the day of rest on account of the redemption wrought by God. The wicked had sprung up as the grass, and flourished, but destruction has come upon them; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. The righteous shall now shoot forth like a palm tree. Thus are the full results of the Messiah’s coming to be seen.

Psalm 93

Psalm 93 begins the word: “Jehovah reigns!” He has clothed Himself with majesty and girded Himself with strength. The floods (or rivers) of lawless men had risen against Him, but He is mightier than the voices of many waters. His testimonies are very sure, so that faith can count (and has counted) upon them at all times. And holiness suits His house Forever.

How comprehensive is this short psalm! It reaches from past eternity (in verse 2) to the settled order of the millennium (verse 5). It begins with the simple statement that Jehovah reigns, and it shortly states that He is mightier than the voices of many waters, than the mighty breakers of the sea, thus picturing the sinners who have stood against Him. So we have the Lord, and wicked men, and the blessed ones here; the trials and dangers of the way are over, and, as to the discouragements and weariness of it, forgotten.

Psalm 94

This psalm is the call of the remnant that the wicked shall be judged. Fullest confidence in God is seen throughout. He is the God of vengeances, the Judge of the earth, but also the high tower and the rock of refuge for the righteous.

In verse 13 of Psalm 90 is the same “How long” as in verse 3 of this psalm, and Revelation 6:10 has it too. It is the earnest and urgent asking of God by His saints, that long deserved punishment shall be meted out to the rebellious, and, that blessing may abound in the earth. All is laid before Him that He may act according to His own glory, so it is not “us”, but “Thy people”, “Thine inheritance” that suffer at the hands of the wicked (verse 5).

The weak and defenseless (verse 6) are oppressed by the workers of iniquity; so it has ever been since man turned away from God to his own way. Verses 8 to 11 are addressed to the unbelievers in Israel. It might seem to them that God, because He has not interfered openly with the course of things, does not concern Himself with the world, will not punish the wicked; but “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that instructeth the nations, shall He not correct?”

In verses 12 to 15 are weighty words regarding the trials of the godly. Blessed are they whom God chastens, and whom He teaches out of His Word (verse 12); yielding up their wills to Him, looking to Him to guide and keep them, they are given rest from the days of evil until the pit be digged for the wicked. Judgment shall return unto righteousness; they have been far apart; see for example judgment in Pilate, and righteousness in Jesus, in Luke 23.

The godly, in verses 16 to 23, express their dependence upon God in the trials and anxieties of life. He had been their help (verse 17); their sustainer when in danger (verse 18), and their comforter in deepest anxiety (verse 19).

What of the throne of wickedness, shall it be united to God? (verse 20) The last verse gives the answer: He will bring upon them their iniquity, and will cut them off in their own evil. God will never compromise with evil.

Psalm 95

Psalm 95 is a call to Israel, and Psalm 96 is addressed to all the earth. The time has now come of which Psalms 2, 24 and 45 speak, and Jehovah the Lord of the earth takes His power and reigns. What a contrast these psalms present to the first coming of the Messiah as portrayed by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John! For Jehovah here is Jesus whom the heavens have received until the time of restitution of all things (Acts 3:19-23).

Notice how the Holy Spirit makes use of the latter part of Psalm 95 in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 3. It is a last appeal for repentance; presently the opportunity for salvation will be closed forever. What a story of divine grace this psalm contains!

Psalm 96

Psalm 96 presents Jehovah to the nations in the spirit of the everlasting gospel (see Revelation 14:6-7). At the close, the heavens, earth and sea are called upon to rejoice. In its full expression, this rejoicing is shown in the last three psalms, 148, 149 and 150.

The Christian rejoices already in the thought of the day of which these psalms speak. We too own Jesus as Jehovah, but He is our Lord whom we have known by faith (whom having not seen we love) in the time of His rejection and absence, and when Israel beholds Him we shall be with Him. Then the heavens, the heavenly people, will rejoice with the earth. What hallelujahs will fill both heaven and earth when the once thorn crowned, now glory crowned Jesus is revealed to adoring hearts!

Psalm 97

At the time of which this psalm treats, the Lord Jesus will have taken His throne as the Son of David, Israel’s King and King of nations, the long-promised Messiah. It will be observed in this and following psalms, that the words used are not “The Messiah reigns!”, but “the LORD reigns!” and this word “LORD” is not at all the same as “Lord,” as we say, “Lord Jesus,” His title as the glorified One, but the name of God, well known to Israel— “Jehovah.” In other words, when the once rejected Jesus of Nazareth returns, as He will in power and glory, to this earth, He will be seen to be God, as we, believers, know Him now to be, coequal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 97 is the introduction, the beginning of His reign. How different it all is from that for which the Christian looks, —the coming of the Lord for His heavenly saints, which is spoken of so many times in the New Testament, and vividly told in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17. It is this for which believers who have searched the Word of God are waiting. But His coming for His own is separated by a number of years (just how many, the Scriptures do not tell), from His coming with them to deliver the earth from oppression, and to put its present god and prince, —the devil, —in chains. The Psalms are occupied with this later coming, of which both Old and New Testaments tell on many pages.

Psalm 97

Verse 1, which, like many other psalm-beginnings, sums up the whole of the Psalm, makes clear that the blessings of the Lord’s thousand year reign will not be limited to the children of Israel, —“the earth” and the many islands must include the world; both near to and far from Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Verses 2 to 9 give the character of His reign, and the judgments that will be carried out. Clouds and darkness (verse 2) express the presence of God in majesty and judgment; the throne is one of righteousness, where sin will be dealt with. There is no thought of a mercy seat (Hebrews 9:5) here.

Fire (verse 3) is a figure of the unsparing judgment of adversaries, and verses 4 and 5 show what power will attend the Lord’s appearing.

The heavens (verse 6) declare His righteousness, whom the world rejected and crucified. Where will the idols be when that day of power and glory dawns? (verse 7). “All ye gods” is a reference to the angels, the same expression as in the fifth verse of the 8th psalm. (See also Hebrews 1:6).

The long afflicted Zion—Jerusalem— have reason to rejoice, and the daughters of Judah will be glad (verse 8) when the King of Israel—God’s King—establishes His throne there, and His rule is begun.

In verse 9 the expression “high” applied to the Lord, is properly translated “the Most High,”—one of the names of God (See Genesis 14:18-20).

Verses 10-12 are addressed to those who had believed the message of God’s grace to Israel, —the remnant, —for their encouragement. If they love Jehovah, they should hate evil.

He preserves the souls of His saints, and not that only, He delivers them from the wicked.

Light and joy, and no longer darkness and grief, are the portion of the godly. So the Psalm closes with a call to them to rejoice in Jehovah, and to give thanks in remembrance of His holiness.

Psalm 98

Psalm 98, the second Psalm about His millennial reign, celebrates the result of the Lord’s setting up His authority on earth. A new song is mentioned seven times in the Old Testament: twice in Book 1 of the Psalms (33 and 40); twice in the Fourth Book (96 and 98), and twice in the Fifth Book (144 and 149); once in Isaiah 42. Twice in the New Testament (Revelation 5:9, and 14:3) is this expression found. In these passages the song is of praise to God on amount of His victorious power. In Psalm 40:3, the Lord Jesus as the obedient man is heard; but in the other five psalms mentioned, it is the believers, redeemed Israel —that are prompted to sing a new song.

Revelation 5:9 is the new song of the heavenly people, and Revelation 14:3 that of the earthly people. All of these passages except Psalm 40 belong to a time not yet come.

The 98th Psalm calls for a new song, because of what the Lord Jesus has done,— i.e., since His taking the throne of Israel. Wondrous indeed will be the change in this poor world when He shall have taken over its government. There will be then a display of power coupled with holiness (verse 1), and righteousness (verse 2) such as has never been seen on this earth, “Salvation” (or deliverance) as ‘the glad portion of all who accept the last offer of free grace is now known; those who will have believed the Jewish messengers bringing the Word of God, and warned of the wrath to come, suffer shame and contempt, cruel persecution, and, perhaps, imprisonment because of their trusting in the Lord, will now be seen to be the truly blessed.

The house of Israel (not only the Jews, but the long lost 10 tribes), God’s earthly people, though they have long slept in the dust of the earth, will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame, and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2).

In dealing with these and with the nations (Matthew 25:31-46), His righteousness will be openly shown in the sight of the world (see Isaiah 53:11). Israel will thankfully own that His loving kindness and faithfulness, and nothing of their doing, are responsible for the favor and blessing which will have become theirs un the Lord’s return.

These considerations bring out the joyous expressions found in verses 4 to 9. Judgment there will necessarily be, but it will be of a character not before known by the world; with righteousness and with equity. There will be no partiality then; the rich and poor will fare alike, and no mistakes will be made, as man makes now.

Psalm 99

This Psalm is a further development of the millennium theme: The Lord (Jehovah) reigns.

“The peoples” (verses 1 and 2) refers, not to Israel, but to the Gentile nations who will be blessed and brought into divine favor through Israel. So, “He sitteth between (or dwells above) the cherubim,” once the place of God’s dwelling in the midst of Israel (Numbers 7:89; 1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2; 2 Kings 19:15; 1 Chronicles 13:6; Isaiah 37:16; Psalm 80) points to the place that He will then have taken as the Judge or Governor of the nations, as well as of Israel.

Cherubim (verse 1) are always seen in Scripture in connection with God’s ways in government. When man had lost that original state of innocence, and as a sinner was driven out of the garden of Eden, they were set to guard the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24). In symbolic figures they were in the tabernacle, over the ark of the covenant, shadowing the mercy seat (Exodus 25 and 37; Hebrews 9:5); afterward in Solomon’s temple the figures of two cherubim were in the holiest (2 Chronicles 3 and 5; 1 Kings 6 and 8).

Seraphim are seen in Isaiah 6; and the living creatures (mistakenly called “beasts”) in Revelation 4 and 5 combine the characters of cherubim and seraphim. The seraphim give the thought of the consuming holiness of God.

“And the strength of the King that loveth justice” (verse 4)—The King is the Messiah, but also the LORD (Jehovah); He it is that will bring equity and establish judgment and righteousness in Jacob, who for a long time has been far from God in heart and way.

The Holy Spirit here turns back to those faithful men of old, Moses and Aaron and Samuel; they had called to Jehovah in the days of their pilgrimage, and He had answered them; they kept His testimonies. And He was a forgiving God to them, though He never forgot His government in dealing with them; He “took vengeance of their inventions,” or doing.

This will be His way in the time to which these. Psalms refer, yet it has always been His way: grace to all who will receive it, and government as holy and true as He is. The Israel that will be, is thus linked with the Israel of early days.

It will be noticed that the holiness of the Divine Person who reigns is emphasized in this Psalm, as His faithfulness was in the 98th, and His righteousness in the 97th.

Psalm 100

Psalms 100, as its title tells, is a psalm of thanksgiving. “All ye lands” in verse 1 is properly read “all the earth,” or “all the land” (of Israel)

The ground or occasion for thanksgiving is “His mercy (or loving kindness) endureth forever, and His truth (or faithfulness) from generation to generation.”

Once His people, but having lost all title, Israel will again be His people, and the sheep of His pasture, because of immeasurable mercy. Thus His gates may he entered with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Psalm 100 ends the series of psalms presenting the coming of Messiah, Jesus-Jehovah, to set up a rule of righteousness in the world, and to take the throne of Israel.

Psalm 101

Psalm 101 speaks of the King, of the principles according to which He will rule when He takes the kingdom in the name of the LORD (Jehovah). David wrote it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for his great Son, when He should take the throne as Israel’s King (John 1:41, 49), so he asks “When wilt Thou come to Me?”—when will the day of the Solomon-like reign of glory begin?

Psalm 101 is simple in character, and seems to call for little of exposition. In it we see the holiness and righteousness, the grace and perfectness of the Lord Jesus when He “the same Jesus” (Acts 1:11), will again be on earth; no longer the despised and rejected of men, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but the Son of Psalm 2, and the Branch of Isaiah 11.

In verse 8, instead of “I will early destroy,” read: “Every morning will I destroy.” There will be sin in the millennium, but it will be promptly punished (See Isaiah 65:20).

Psalm 102

This has been called the most remarkable of the Psalms. It presents Christ as the chosen but rejected ruler of Israel, and the particular time of it is just before His crucifixion. He is looking to Jehovah who had called Him to the place of Messiah, and speaking of His full rejection by His people.

Knowing fully what lay before Him bore He entered upon that path of matchless grace and lowliness, yet our blessed Lord felt with perfect sensibility—our feelings are blunted by sin—all that rejection meant.

Let us trace Him in the Gospels a little. In Matthew 12:9-13, He enters a synagogue and heals a man’s withered hand while the Pharisees watch, ready to accuse Him for doing good on the Sabbath; then we are told, “But the Pharisees, having gone out, took counsel against Him, how they might destroy Him.”

Mark 3:16 lets us know that the Herodians were partners with the Pharisees in this plotting against the Lord. Did He, this holy, harmless, undefiled stranger from heaven not feel this enmity? Surely He did, and deeply, though He knew what was in man (John 2:24-25).

We turn to Luke’s Gospel, and hear Him say (chapter 9), when James and John would desire to command that fire should come down from heaven and consume the Samaritans who did not receive Him,

“Ye know not of what Spirit ye are.” And presently to one who unthinkingly said that he would follow Him wherever He went, He said,

“The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven roosting places, but the Son of Man has not where He may lay His head.” Luke 9:58. (JND)

And what were the feelings of this blessed One when, as John records (chapter 19), the soldiers platted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe on Him; and mockingly said, “Hail, king of the Jews,” and gave Him blows on the face. Before this He had felt the traitor’s kisses; afterward as He looks out upon the crowd outside of the judgment hall of Pilate, He hears as from the very depth of Satan-ruled hearts,

“Crucify Him; crucify Him!” Were these words and actions not felt intensely by Him?

Lastly, the shame and exposure, the riling He had to endure on the cross, both from the passersby, the chief priests, the rulers and the scribes, and from the thieves crucified with Him: how these must have wounded Him who presently was to take upon Himself the iniquity of us all who trust in Him!

Observe that this blessed Sufferer received all from Jehovah. He had lifted Him up and cast Him down (verse 10). There is no call for vengeance on His enemies, but He is fully the despised and rejected of men, rejected because of His faithfulness and entire devotion. Born a King (Matthew 2:2; John 18:37) He must die with malefactors, the death of the cross.

Jehovah, He says, Thou wilt rise up: Thou wilt have mercy upon Zion, and a people that shall be created shall praise Jehovah.

Abruptly the language of the psalm changes in verses 24-28. The humbled, desolate One, sharing the rebuke of Israel, having taken the place of the godly remnant there, and become the pattern for all who should follow in His steps, is seen to be the Creator, Jehovah, the Eternal One. (See the application of these verses in Hebrews 1:10-12).

Psalm 103

OUR related psalms now complete the Fourth Book. They give the answer to the Messiah’s rejection in the thanksgiving of His earthly people and the world. What mercy to Israel is seen in a comparison of Psalms 102 and 103. All, it is plain, depends for Israel as for the Church, upon the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Psalm 103 begins and ends with “Bless Jehovah, O my soul”; it is Israel’s praise-song as Psalm 104 is all creation’s praise-song to the Lord Jesus.

Man’s first need as a sinner is forgiveness (verse 3), and the fruits of sin in disease cannot continue in the presence of the Messiah. These two things are seen together strikingly in the narratives of the paralyzed man in Matthew 9; Mark 2 and Luke 5.

Verse 4 brings in the realization of what the sinner’s desert had been—destruction, or “the pit”—as the new translation reads, but he is redeemed, and not only redeemed—bought with a price—but crowned with loving kindness and tender mercies. What a change from what we deserve, to what grace has provided!

Verse 5, no doubt, refers to Israel’s “old age,” now to be satisfied with the good things of that age of unparalleled blessing, and youth renewed like the eagles.

In verse 6 we are turned from consideration of the blessings to consider the Blesser. He executes righteousness and justice for all that are oppressed. This is the character of His reign. But there is much more that the godly may learn, for He made known His ways unto Moses, while Israel the nation, saw only His acts.

It is in communion with God that we learn practically His ways, as they are spoken of in verses 8 and following.

Verse 12: How far is the east from the west? It cannot be measured.

Verses 15, 16 show the frailty of man and the shortness of human life, but verse 17 meets this with the loving kindness of Jehovah from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children, such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His precepts to do them. There is no change in His ways; time does not alter His loving kindness or His righteousness. These blessings are for the obedient (verse 18).

It is the earth that is in view here, of course, but Jehovah’s throne is established in the heavens; it is there that blessing is secured to Israel, for the King of Israel, the King of Kings indeed is none less than Jehovah, eternal God, in the person of the Son.

Well, therefore, does the psalm conclude with a call to His angels, the heavenly host, to bless Him; to all His works in all places of His dominion to bless Him, and finally the saint says to himself as at the beginning, “Bless Jehovah, O my soul!”

Psalm 104

In Psalm 103 we were shown the praise of the redeemed of Israel in the latter day on account of the place of favor, into which by divine grace, they will have been brought. In Psalm 104 the Lord is still the object before the redeemed ones, and now the earth as His handiwork, apart from man, is considered.

As in the 103rd psalm, the beginning and ending is “Bless the Lord (properly Jehovah, as we have before noticed) O my soul.” In that coming day He will in very truth inhabit, or dwell amid, the praises of Israel (Psalm 22:3).

How very great is the person who will rule the earth when it is set right by His power, verses 1 to 4 tell. There is no mention in the psalm of the depth to which the Lord stooped, but Philippians 2:6-11 gives in six short verses what He was, what He became in lowly grace, and what is the unique place reserved for Him because of that humiliation and death. (See also Hebrews 1). The Bible is the only book that can properly set forth the glory of His Person.

Genesis 1:9, 10 may be referred to, in connection with verses 6-8 of our psalm, and Genesis 9:14-17 in connection with verse 9. The gracious, providential provision of God in creation is witnessed in verses 10 to 30. The recording of this leads out the testimony of verse 24.

All depends on the Creator-King, for it will be observed that the Person spoken of in these psalms as Jehovah, the LORD, is Jesus, acknowledged as the eternal God.

This psalm seems to call for little explanation, but every verse tells of His glory.

Psalm 105

Psalms 105 and 106 bring to a close the series of psalms celebrating the reigning of the Lord Jesus as Israel’s King. They declare the faithfulness of God to His covenant, and in Psalm 106 His mercy is prominent. Thanksgiving is called for, and the proclamation in word and song of Jehovah’s praise. Thus does Psalm 105 begin.

In verse 2 there is a deeper thought than “talk ye of” all His wondrous works; the expression is better translated, “meditate upon” all His wondrous works. In this modern age of hurry, meditation—centering one’s thoughts upon the. Word of God, is but little known among Christians, and there is not the blessing that there ought to be, in consequence.

Observe also, in verses 3 and 4, the recurrence of the word “seek.” This is more than to “inquire after”; the word implies having an earnest desire and using diligence to obtain it. And how shall we “seek the Lord, and His strength; seek His face evermore?” O, this is a step further for the believer beyond meditating upon His wondrous works; it is to seek to know Him through His Word. Consider the following,

“And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee,” John 17:3, etc.

“He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel.” Psalm 103:7. “Acts” are what are seen, but “ways” are deeper, we know; they are known only to those who are well acquainted with the person spoken of.

May our Lord stir us up to seek to know Him better through diligent occupation of mind with His Word; coupled with prayer.

Our psalm treats of God’s unconditional promise to Abraham, renewed and confirmed to Isaac and Jacob (See Genesis 12:1-3; 26:2-5, and 28:13-14). This covenant will yet be fulfilled, though because of Israel’s sins under the covenant of the law (Exodus 19:5 to 24:8), and most deeply in Judah’s putting to death the Messiah (Matthew 27), they are now set aside, while God in grace goes out to the Gentiles with the gospel of the glory.

The psalm considers Israel’s history from Abraham to the exodus, and to Canaan, setting out God’s acting on their behalf in delivering them from oppression, overruling the earth’s mighty ones (Genesis 12:17; 20:3-7; 31:24; 35:5; 11:38-43; Exodus chapters 6-12, 14), and finally placing His people in the land promised to Abraham.

In view of the behavior, the stony-hearted unbelief and sin, which marked the children of Israel from Egypt to Canaan and afterward, verses 39 to 45 are very remarkable. Their failure and ruin are set out in the next psalm, but here the inspired writer sees only God as the covenant-keeping God, the Deliverer, the Protector, the Provider, the Giver of all Israel’s blessings. What a God is ours!

Psalm 106

In this, the last psalm of the Fourth Book, we reach the end of what might be called the historic portion of the Psalms.

In the First Book (Psalms 1-41), after a number of psalms which are a sort of introduction to the whole, the godly remnant of Judah is revealed in Jerusalem or nearby, and free to go there to worship.

The Second Book (Psalms 42-72), shows them driven out by the Antichrist and his Gentile and Jewish friends, and in exile waiting for the Messiah’s coming to deliver them, and to set up His throne at Jerusalem.

In the Third Book, which commences with Psalm 73, the view is of the nation of Israel as a whole, redeemed, and not just the believers among the Jews.

The Fourth Book, beginning with Psalm 90, has brought in the Messiah’s reigning. Psalms, at the closing of both the Second and Third Books, indicate the Messiah’s coming to the help of those who wait for Him, but He will not immediately take the throne.

All of this, it will be understood, is yet in the future; the Psalms were written for a time to come, when the children of Israel, brought back to the land of their forefathers, will become a nation again under the protection of the— to be— revived Roman empire. When that time arrives, what the Scriptures call the Church of God will have been taken from the earth at the coming of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52: 1 Thessalonians. 4:16-17), to be with Him in heavenly glory. This event Christians are assured is very near.

The keynote of Psalm 106, it is plain, is the “loving kindness,” or mercy of God to a sinful and wayward people. The psalm takes up the history of Israel in this light, and views them from Egypt to Canaan and thereafter, until He turns away ungodliness from them and makes them again His people.

An important verse, showing what God has allowed to self-seeking saints of our own times, and not only to Israelites, is verse 15:

“And He gave them their request”—they were seeking worldly things— “but sent leanness into their soul.” Is not this the cause of much of the low state of soul met with among Christians? Let us bare of making an object of anything short of Christ in our lives.

It will be noticed that in this psalm, the rejection of the Messiah is not mentioned: the reason is, no doubt, that in this Fourth Book as in the Third, the twelve tribes of Israel are seen, —the long lost ten tribes united with the two tribes of Judah or the Jews. The latter only were guilty of the crowning sin of putting their Messiah, our Lord Jesus, to death, as well as the Gentiles (Matthew 27:22).

Psalm 107

At this point we begin the Fifth and last Book of the Psalms. If we have profited by our study of the first four books, we have discovered how admirably they supplement the writings of the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, and illuminate the portions of the New Testament which speak of what is to take place on earth in connection with the Jews and the whole nation of Israel. How marvelous in its scope and its unity is the Word of God!

We have been considering in the psalms recently examined, the reign of the Son of David, Jehovah-Jesus, with its consequences, — His rule established, enemies put down, His earthly people blessed as they have never been before, in the thousand years of righteousness and peace foretold by other scriptures for this sin-racked, sorrow-laden world. At this point the Divine Author pauses, as it were, and then in the psalms which follow, gives us a comment on, or review of, the subjects and circumstances presented in the preceding 106 psalms.

Psalm 107 forms a sort of introduction to the Fifth Book. It is a call for the giving of thanks to Jehovah because He is good; because His loving kindness endureth forever, and because of His wondrous works to the children of men (verses 1, 8, 15, 21, 31). The redeemed ones here spoken of comprise all the twice-born souls who will form the Israel of God, and we observe in verses 2 and 3 the two classes into which they fall.

The Jews who are delivered in and near the Holy Land when at extremity of trial, as we have learned from Matthew 24:9-30; Psalms 54, 55, 56, 69, 70, and other passages, are referred to in verse 2; while the redeemed of the lost ten tribes of Israel, yet to be brought back from other lands (Matthew 24:31; Isaiah 11:11-13; Jeremiah 31:7-9; Ezekiel 20:34-44) are seen in verse 3 together with the Jews.

With what rejoicing, what heartfelt thanksgiving will the redeemed of Israel consider their former and present case, we may gather from these psalms. The long years of oppression and of homeless wandering, away from God in heart, are then forever past, but their deliverance is owned as entirely God’s doing.

Three times in this Psalm (verses 4-9; 10-16; 17-22), in deepening understanding, the objects of divine forbearance view their former condition, and (later) what in themselves was the cause of it.

In the first of these, they were simply homeless and needy, and as such they cried to Jehovah and found deliverance in Him; He had brought them to a city of habitation.

But a deeper work is going on in their souls, we judge, and they see themselves more as God saw them; they now reckon that they had been in a pitiable state—prisoners bound in affliction and iron, in darkness and the shadow of death, and that this was due to their rebellion against His words, and despising His counsel; He had bowed down their hearts with labor; they stumbled, and there was none to help. In such evil case as this, had the redeemed of Jehovah been, but, crying to Him in their trouble, He had brought them out and freed them.

Again, in verse 17, the matter is taken up, and this third time the evil is judged at its source: it is not so much the trouble into which they were, but their own character as they now see themselves: fools persons without understanding, and wicked besides. Jehovah answered their cry, sent His Word and healed them, delivered them from their pitfalls.

In verses 23-30 the sovereign power of God, both in bringing man into troubled circumstances, and in taking him out of them when he has learned his helplessness and cries out for deliverance, is set out in the example of the shipmen in a great storm at sea.

Verses 33 to 41 carry on the thought of Jehovah’s power, exercised in delivering His redeemed ones, to consider what He will do in altering the course of things on this earth.

The psalm closes with a word of encouragement: first to the righteous or upright, and after to the wise. The saint of God rejoices in all that His Lord does (verse 42), and the wise—those saints who seek to add to their knowledge of Him—will understand His loving kindnesses. May we be not only “upright,” but “wise” before God.

Psalm 108

The words of this psalm are identical with the latter parts of Psalm 57 and 60 except for an occasional word. In those psalms they gave faith’s confidence concerning the outcome expressed in prayers for deliverance from the enemy, at the time oppressing God’s earthly people. The prayers will have been answered, and the redeemed ones are arming for battle against those enemies within the boundaries of the promised land, who were not put to death with the Beast and the False Prophet and their armies, at the appearing of the Lord Jesus (Revelation 19:19-21).

Many passages of Scripture indicate that the establishment of universal peace will be preceded by conflict with certain enemies in and near Palestine: Moab, Edom, Philistia and northeastern nations spoken of as the Assyrian or the King of the north. (Read Psalm 83; Isaiah 10:12; 11:14; 25:10-12, and chapter 34; Ezekiel 25:12-17; chapters 35, 38 and 39). Also the prophesy of Obadiah and Micah and other Scriptures, as well as the closing verse of our psalm, from which it is clear that there will be warfare, and that it will be waged by the reborn Israelites, after the Lord’s appearing, and before the reign of peace begins.

He will be first the antitype of David, the man of war; and afterward antitype of Solomon in a reign of peace and displayed glory.

It may be said that the nations of Moab, Edom and the Philistines have disappeared from the lands they occupied in Israel’s day, and are unknown today. It is evident that they will reappear, as will the lost ten tribes of Israel, to be actors in the last days, for God’s Word must stand, and “He requireth that which is past.”

Psalm 109

In this psalm we are brought back to the earthly life of Jesus, to consider again His lonely path of rejection, the enemies who daily sought to destroy Him, and His dependence upon His God as He passed as the obedient man through a scene of man’s guilt and Satan’s triumph.

Evidently, too, as in earlier psalms, those Israelites who should become His disciples and taste His rejection, —the “remnant” of Scripture—are included in the language of Psalm 109. Peter in Acts 1 quoted from this psalm regarding Judas, the betrayer of his Master; and in Matthew 10:16-26 and other scriptures, the Lord points to a path of suffering, after the pattern of His own, for His followers, particularly among the Jews.

Matthew 26:47-68 conies before us as we read verses 2-5. All the power of Satan in deceived, willful and guilty man, full of malignity and scorn, came out in the closing scenes of our blessed Lord’s life here below. How much He suffered from His creatures (and far more God-ward as the Sin Bearer during the second three hours on the cross) we shall never fully measure, but not the least of His suffering was that His love was met with hatred (verse 5); for it they were His adversaries (verse 4).

Christians, instructed in the New Testament to love their enemies, to bless when cursed, are apt to wonder at the calls for vengeance upon the wicked which are found in the Psalms. We are apt to forget that the judgment of the wicked will take place upon earth at the appearing and kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the answer to the suffering of His earthly people is not translation to heaven with Him as is the Christian’s hope, but the setting up of a rule of righteousness, with sin curbed and glory displayed on earth.

Verse 27 looks forward to the day when it will he seen that God was on the side of His afflicted ones, as verse 26 looks to Him for help and deliverance.

Psalm 110

How evident it is that this psalm supplies the divine answer to the riddle of a suffering Messiah. In Psalm 109:4-5, “For My love they are My adversaries ... . and they have rewarded Me evil for good, and hatred for My love,” and in this one, “Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool ....Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.” “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.” Isaiah 53:11.

Verse 1 is quoted five times in the New Testament; the first time (Matthew 22:41-46) when the Lord Jesus asked the Pharisees concerning the promised Messiah; the second time, and the third (Mark 12:36 and Luke 20:4144) when He asked the same question of the scribes and Sadducees; the fourth time, when Peter in Acts 2:34 gives the answer the Jewish leaders could not or would not give because of unbelief. Last of all this verse is quoted in Hebrews 1 in declaring various glories of the Son of God (verse 13).

It will be noticed that in the Psalms, the present period of grace, and the taking out of a people for heaven, chiefly from the Gentiles, is wholly left out. In verse 1 of our psalm, the despised and rejected Man of Psalm 109 is invited to sit at the right hand of Jehovah until His enemies are made His footstool. They are not being made His footstool now, certainly, for the gospel of the grace of God is proclaimed to all, both Jew and Gentile. That the Church of God to be composed of all who believe in the Lord Jesus from the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) to His soon-coming descent from heaven to claim them (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17), was secret not disclosed in Old Testament days, is expressly told in Ephesians 3:1-13.

The position of Psalm 110 is that the Lord Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, has appeared again on earth according to prose; has defeated and destroyed the mighty host assembled by the Western powers in the land of Israel, and has set up His authority as Israel’s King in Zion (Jerusalem). His people who formerly demanded and secured His crucifixion, crying, “Away with Him; crucify Him,” will now be willing in the beauties of holiness (or, in holy splendor), and as born again in that day.

Verse 4 speaking of the order of Melchizedek, invites a reference to brews, chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8, where the subject is taken up and explained. It will suffice here to remark that believers need and have been given, a High Priest in the blessed Lord Jesus; and that He could not be a priest according to the law of Moses, because He was not of the tribe of Levi, but of Judah. Melchizedek furnished an illustration which the Holy Spirit has made use of, of a priest not tracing his descent from a family of priests, nor passing on his priesthood to others after him.

“He shall drink of the brook by the way” (verse 7), refers to His lowly, dependent life while passing through this world on the way from the manger to the cross.

Psalm 111

Psalms111 and 112 are acrostic psalms, the initial letter in each half-verse following the Hebrew alphabet. Psalms 25, 37 (with double verses), 119 (in periods of 8 verses, each of which begins with the same Hebrew letter), and 145 (verse 14 being an exception) are also alphabetical psalms.

Psalms 111, 112, and 113 go together in one theme of praise to Jehovah. The first of the three speaks of His works; the exhibitions of His power will be much spoken of by redeemed Israel, because by power He will bring them into undisturbed possession of their land at last. There is a marked difference between the earthly saints and the heavenly ones; of the former we have the Lord’s testimony to Thomas (John 20:29),

“Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed,” and to the nobleman (John 4:48), “Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.”

See also 1 Corinthians 1:22-24; 2:9, 10, and 1 Peter 1:8 which give the character of the Christian’s faith in contrast with Israel’s unrealized hopes.

We cannot rightly consider God’s works without thinking of Him, and this comes out in verses 4 and 5, 7, 8 and 9 of Psalm 111. To fear Him we are told is the beginning of wisdom; to live according to His Word is (more than the beginning of wisdom) to have a good understanding. Similarly, the word in 2 Peter 3:18 is “Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” showing that we who know Him should be advancing in the truth. Let us seek this worthwhile gain.

Psalm 112

Psalm 112 shows the result of such a life of godliness; he who fears Jehovah and delights greatly in His commandments, is blessed. The blessings spoken of are earthly and connected with the millennial reign of Christ, but there is a spiritual lesson here for the Christian.

Psalm 113

Psalm 113 returns to the praise of Jehovah “from this time forth and for evermore.” Verses 3 and 4 would make it plain that the blessing is world-wide, and not limited to the land of Palestine. There is none like Him, who, having placed His dwelling on high, humbles Himself to look on the heavens and on the earth. The poor and the needy are those whom He has blessed, lifting them from the lowest place to an exalted one, and the barren woman is made to keep house as a joyful mother of children.

All blessing is seen to be from God, and this we well know is true of the Christian, equally as it shall be true of the Israelites in the time of which the psalms treat. God delights to bless His people.

Psalm 114

Psalms 114 is a poem of high quality, as are many of the psalms we have been studying. This short one attracts our close attention. Why is God not named early in the psalm? Is it not because the hearts of these saints will be full of His praise, and He so much the subject of conversation among them, that the personal pronoun as in verse 2 is appropriate?

What hath God wrought? will be the theme of His earthly saints, as well as of His heavenly people, eternally. In Psalm 114, redeemed Israel looks back over the centuries to God’s power and goodness exercised in the exodus from Egypt’s land of slavery to Canaan’s land of liberty and blessing. The redemption yet to be wrought for Israel will be eternal in value, for then all will know Jehovah; all Israel will be twice-born souls at the beginning of the millennium.

Psalm 115

In Psalm 115 the glory of Israel’s new found blessing is ascribed wholly to God. During the perilous times, before the appearing of the Lord Jesus for their deliverance, the Jewish believers, feeble and few, were derided by their unbelieving kinsmen who said, “Where then is their God?” See in this connection Psalms 42 and 79, though other psalms tell of the bitter taunts of the enemies.

The trial of faith establishes the saint in God, leads to growth in a spiritual way, and so verses 3 to 8 give the answer of confidence in Him:

“Our God is in the heavens; He hath clone whatsoever He pleased; their idols are ... .the work of men’s hands ... .They that make them are like unto them—every one that confideth in them.” This high level is faith’s position, supplied by God.

Verses 11 and 13 bring in the believers among the Gentiles in the future day, and verse 16 again makes plain that the psalms, and the blessing of Israel are connected with the earth.

Those who receive the Word of God in the present dispensation of grace, are being formed into a body, the assembly or Church of God, the bride of Christ, to share His heavenly glory. So there will be a heavenly people, and an earthly people, eternally to the praise of the Iamb. Hallelujah!

Psalm 116

The first two verses of Psalm 116, like the opening verses of many others, give the key to what is brought out in the course of the psalm. It is another song of praise, the heart exulting in the Saviour God who has heard the cry of distress and answered it in power. Love to Him wells up in the breast of every redeemed one.

“We love Him,” says the apostle John in his first Epistle, chapter 4:19, “because. He first loved us.” How could it be otherwise?

At the close of Psalm 115 (verse 17) death is spoken of, and it is referred to several times in the 116th. Those whose hopes for glory and blessing are all connected with the earth—as are Israel’s—will try to keep their lives through the fearful days of persecution that are to come after the Church of God has been removed, and Psalm 116 expresses their feelings when their trials are over.

Verse 3 pictures the intensity of suffering these afflicted saints will experience.

Verse 5 names three characteristics, if one may use such a word, about Him, three attributes of God:

First, He is gracious; it is His nature to look with favor on His creatures, to view them with tender compassion.

Second, that which is essentially His, the foundation of His throne: He is righteous, just. How strikingly this was shown in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, “Who died for our sins according to the Scriptures!”

Lastly, He is merciful; mercy is for offenders, sinners, those ill deserving.

Thankful we are that God is both gracious, righteous and merciful, for otherwise there could have been no salvation for us.

We might couple these three characters, and say, in grace God gave His only begotten Son; in righteousness He visited upon Him the punishment we deserved, and in mercy, He forgives the confessed sinner. And this is only the doorway, so to speak, into fullness of blessing eternally for the forgiven ones.

The “simple” in verse 6 are the guileless. (See Psalms 19:7, and 119:130, the only other passages in the Psalms where this word is used).

Verse 10 is quoted in 2 Corinthians 4:13, a striking use of the passage as a principle for all of God’s children.

The word “haste” in verse 11 does not mean that the speaker was wrong in saying what he did; it is rather that when he was in great distress, in terror because of the persecution he had gone through, he said of all mankind, They are liars. The passage brings to mind Romans 3:4, “Let God be true, but every man a liar.”

Verse 13. The “cup” of salvation is salvation enjoyed. “Cup” is used many times in the Scriptures in connection with both favor and affliction.

“My cup runneth over.” Psalms 23:5.

“The cup which My Father giveth Me.” John 8:11.

In verse 15, “precious” means that God does not lightly permit His saints to die. This will have a special significance in the troublous times that are foretold for the sons of Jacob, but it is a truth for all saints.

Psalm 117

The short 117th Psalm is a call to all the nations by redeemed Israel to praise Jehovah. The ground of it is the divine mercy upon Israel, and His truth enduring forever. It is the language of those born again, entirely different from the spirit which characterized the Jews in the time of Christ and the apostles. (See 1 Thessalonians. 2:15, 16).

Psalm 118

This is the last of the series of praise psalms which began with the 111TH. The new Israel will never weary of telling the praise of Him whose mercy (or loving kindness) endureth forever. Israel; the house of Aaron, and “them that fear Jehovah,” in verses 2, 3 and 4 are linked together in His praise just as in Psalm 114:9-11. They were besought to confide in Him.

In verses 5 to 28 is the voice of the redeemed of Israel. What can man do unto him who has Jehovah on his side? (verse 6). It is better to trust in Him than to put confidence in man, or in princes or nobles (verses 8, 9).

In verses 10 to 18 Israel looks back to the time of persecution, of severe trial, only lately experienced. All nations sought their destruction, and were near to success when the mighty Deliverer came; then came their destruction (verses 10-12).

Verse 13 introduces another enemy, the old Serpent, the Devil; he had tried his best to destroy all that trust in Jehovah.

Notice the three ‘s’ in verse 14: my strength, my song, my salvation: He is all of these for all who, whether Jew or Gentile, put their trust in the Lord. Do we know Him in all these ways, satisfyingly?

Verse 18 brings in the third side, or aspect, of Israel’s distresses: God has chastened them sore, though He had not given them up to death. There was a cause for this chastening, as Israel will well know: a long course of departure from God, crowned with the murder of the Son of God.

Sometimes we who know the Lord Jesus as our Saviour, pass through circumstances in which we too feel the full character of trial—both the enmity of man and of Satan, and the chastening hand of God upon us. This psalm is instructive and comforting in such a case.

Having owned God’s hand, not only in chastening but in deliverance, as expressed in the preceding verses, the precious result of trial is revealed in verses 19, 20, and 21.

The Psalm would not be complete without the Messiah’s being brought in. And this is done in a striking way, —The Stone which the (Jewish) builders rejected, has become the head of the corner, or the corner stone (verse 22). This passage is quoted four times: Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10, and Luke 20:17, when the Lord brought it before the religious leaders who were plotting to kill Him; and in Acts 4:11, when the apostle Peter told the same men a few weeks later that Jesus of Nazareth is the stone rejected by “you the builders.”

With entirely changed feelings and repentant hearts, the Israel of God shall say (verse 23), “This is of Jehovah, it is wonderful in our eyes.” Verse 26, too. will be on their lips, as the Lord foretold in Matthew 23:39.

How plainly these passages (not to speak of many others) show who it is that wrote the Psalms: None other than the Holy Spirit; and also how plainly do they show the time to which the Psalms refer: the coming day of Jacob’s trouble, the great tribulation.

Psalm 118 closes with the words with which it began, —of thankfulness and of praise to Jehovah for His unchangeable ways of grace.

Psalm 119

The 119th psalm is another example of the use of the Hebrew alphabet in acrostic form in the Psalms. It is divided into 22 sections, each containing 8 verses, and over each section is a Hebrew letter with its name in English. These Hebrew letters are arranged in alphabetical order, “aleph” being the Hebrew A, “beth” the Hebrew B, and so on to the 22nd and last letter of that alphabet, “tau” or “tav” corresponding to our letter T or TH. Each of the eight verses in a section in the original language begins with the letter written over it.

Section 1 ALEPH

The first section of 8 verses is a sort of introduction to the whole psalm. It is the fourth “blessed” psalm; Psalms 1:32; 41; and 128, are the others which tell who the blessed, ones are; compare particularly Psalms 1; 32 and 119th (verses 1, 2).

The marginal reading “perfect” is beer than “undefiled” in verse 1 of the 119th psalm. This first section seems to call for no exposition here.

Section 2 BETH

The subject of the second section is the cleansing power of the Word of God. The opening verse 9 asks and answers a question, and in connection with it we may refer to John 3:5; 13:3-15; 15:3 and 19:34; Ephesians 5:26; Titus 3:5; 1 John 5:68, all of which speak of water in a symbolic way. Water we know cleanses, and the Word of God cleanses, purifies the believer morally by the power of the Holy Spirit. This cleansing is connected in the most striking way with the death of Christ; both atonement for sin, and the cleansing of the sinner are seen in the blood and water flowing from the side of the dead Saviour. The. Bible shows us that we were dead in trespasses and sins, and that through Christ’s death alone we have life, eternal life.

The Word of God known in the heart is not only to cleanse our ways however; it is also the secret of a happy life as verses 10, 11, 14, 16 show.

Section 3 GIMEL

The third section of this long psalm brings to view the saint of God in trial. Here the Word of God has been the guide, and the meditation of one sustained in hope. Already he has been relieved by God’s intervention, but he looks for yet fuller blessing, and connects his hopes and prayers with the Word, of which he desires to know more.

Section 4 DALETH

The fourth section, verses 25 to 32, carries on the thought of a saint of the coming day on earth, in trial. He is not here occupied with the judgment of the proud as in verses 17-24, but is thinking of his own failure. He looks to God for strength and for enlargement of heart, that he may live according to God’s Word.

Section 5 HE

In the fifth section (verses 33 to 40) is seen the result of trial gone through in dependence on God; the saint asks to be taught by Him, to be given understanding; he would be made to walk in the path pointed out in the Word of God. He desires to be established, and to find even more enjoyment in His Word.

Section 6 VAU

The sixth section looks for mercies, so that the saint may be able to answer those that reproach him, and to testify before kings for God.

Section 7 ZAIN

In the seventh section, verses 49 to 56, there is the sense of comfort in the Word of God giving rise to songs in the house of pilgrimage.

What gives Psalm 119 its special character is the Word of God written on the heart—the fulfillment of Hebrews 10:16. It is not the Christian’s position that we see in this psalm, but that of the recovered Israelite in the time of the Messiah’s showing Himself again to that nation. The heart opens out to God, and the thoughts and feelings of these faithful ones are set out as they view His statutes and judgments.

What a contrast there is between the language of Psalm 119, and the behavior of the Jews when the Lord was here 1900 years ago! (See Romans chapters 9, 10 and 11.)

Section 8 CHETH

In the eighth section of our psalm, Jehovah is the portion of the believer. He has been thinking of his own ways, and the blessed result is, that he has turned his feet to the Word of God. Would that all God’s children did this!

In verse 55 the name of Jehovah was remembered in the night, but verse 62 shows a yet happier state when the saint is awake at the midnight hour.

Section 9 TETH

The benefits of affliction are before us in the ninth section: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Thy Word.” Verse 67.

“It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn Thy statutes.” Verse 71.

The Christian is apt to murmur when trials come, not seeing that God has purposes of blessing which wait upon this necessary training of His children. Can each of us say, as the expression of cur own hearts, what verse 72 declares? It is well with us if we can.

Section 10 YOD

In verse 73 Jehovah is asked, as His Creator, to give His servant understanding in order that he may learn His commandments. But He is more than Creator,—He rules, He governs, He is interested in all those who fear Him, and acts in mercy toward them; in faithfulness He afflicts them.

Verses 75 to 80 are the response to Him of one whose heart has been touched by the goodness of God to him. Verse 80 should find an echo in every Christian’s breast.

Section 11 CAPH

The eleventh section is written for one in trouble. He is like a leather bottle in the smoke of the curing house, and pleads for the comfort which only God can give him. He has however learned the value of the Word of God, as nearly every verse shows.

Section 12 LAMED

In the twelfth section God is again looked upon as the Creator, His Word stands in the heavens where none can reach it, and His faithfulness is unchanging. He established the earth and it stands by His ordinances while century succeeds century of time. In the written Word of this changeless and faithful Jehovah, the tried and troubled saint rests in hope.

All of this psalm is connected with the exercises of heart which the children of Israel will pass through who will turn to God in the last days. Other psalms have told of their circumstances; this tells the effect of the writing of the law on their hearts while in the furnace of affliction, and afterward.

How precious is the mercy of God, to be shown, after centuries of dealing with the Gentiles, again to the Jews, whose bitter cry was, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” Matthew 27:25.

Section 13 MEM

The 13th section of the psalm tells the new and deep delight of the saint in God’s Word. In it he meditates; through it he is made wiser than his enemies, and obtains more understanding than all his teachers, and the aged. Along with these gains, he has learned to keep out of every evil path, and to not depart from God’s judgments. Verse 104 calls for more than passing notice.

“From Thy precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false path.” O, that God’s Word were in this way more and more in the heart and mind of every believer today!

Section 14 NUN

Section 14 carries the subject further, “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (verse 105).

The book of God, the Bible, makes altogether plain the way that you and I are going, dear Christian. It throws a clear light just where I need it, as I take my way through a morally dark world, and its bright rays lighten up the whole path for me. This is as true in days of trial as in quiet, untroubled days.

Section 15 SAMECH

The 15th section is closely connected with the 14th, because when the Word of God gives me light on my pathway through life, it leads me to walk carefully. Verse 113 is rightly translated,

“The double-minded have I hated, but Thy law do I love.” (See James 1:8).

Judgment will come upon the wicked, and the thought of that time makes the saint to tremble. We cannot call this fear, a right feeling in believers of our own day; with greater light and richer blessing, we can take our stand upon 1 John 4:17, though not unmindful of 2 Corinthians 5:10.

Section 16 AIN

The 16th section looks for Jehovah to act; the Israel of nature having made void His law. Those who oppressed the faithful, will be still in the land at this time, it is clear. Not all at once will the Lord, Israel’s mighty Deliverer, bring to an end the power of rebellious man.

Section 17 PE

In the 17th section is an important principle worthy of our study,

“The entrance of Thy Words giveth light, giving understanding to the simple.” Verse 130.

The Word of God has power over the conscience and the heart, the mind too, if we are subject to it. How much we owe to the wisdom, love and power of our Saviour God! Blessed be His name forever!

Section 18 TZADE

The 18th section of this psalm upholds God’s righteous ways and His faithfulness in the difficulties of the godly in the time to come for which the psalms were written.

Section 19 KOPH

The 19th section calls upon Him out of trouble, as having His law written in the heart.

Section 20 RESH

Section 20 is similar, but looks for deliverance, the wicked persecutors and oppressors being many, but His tender mercies many, too.

Section 21 SHIN

In the 21St section, the believer is occupied with God and His Word. He has experienced persecution without a cause. Verse 162 tells the story of a believer who has found the key to happiness, “I have joy in Thy Word as one that findeth great spoil.”

Such is the Bible to those who study it prayerfully, seeking to learn God’s ways, and more of the Lord Jesus Christ our hope.

One result of this diligent study of the Word of God is seen in verse 163, another in verse 164 and another in verse 165; indeed the whole section is a testimony to the power of the Book to draw the earnest, devout believer near to God. Shall not we take encouragement from verses 161 to 168, and addict ourselves to the humble study of the Book of Books?

Section 22 TAU

The last section is more general, a prayer for full deliverance from trial, and for understanding according to His Word. Hebrews 12:11 and this section may be compared.

It will have been noticed that every verse of the 176 has included some mention of the Word of God. Shall we not henceforth more highly regard this invaluable Book, and read it prayerfully, and with a purpose, every day? It is, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, a complete guide for the child of God. It reproves, corrects, blesses, cheers and strengthens those who love the Lord, enlarges their understanding, deepens their love to Him who died for them and lives again, is coming soon to take them to His eternal home, eternally His love to share.

Psalm 120

Psalms 120 to 134 are 15 “songs of degrees;” four were written under inspiration by David, and one by Solomon; the others have no author’s name; we are not told of the particular circumstances under which they were written. The word translated “drees” means “going up” or “ascent;” it is translated “steps” as steps to a throne in 1 Kings 10:19; and as steps to an altar in Exodus 20:26; but in 2 Kings 20 the word is translated “degrees” in connection with a sun dial.

The sun dials of the ancients were however not the clock-like dials which most of us have seen, but probably a series of steps arranged so that the shadow cast by a pillar nearby would fall on them, and so with the passage of the sun across the sky, the time of day could be told. Evidently therefore the songs of degrees are really “songs of ascent,” and it is thought that they were written to be sung on the way up to Jerusalem, and that they will be sung again when redeemed Israelites go there to worship. We shall find the theme of these psalms to ascend gradually from the low ground of distress to the high elevation, of Jerusalem’s walls.

Psalm 120 appears to begin the series with the time spoken of in Daniel 8:23-25, and the liar and deceiver is the man spoken of by other prophets, as the Assyrian or the king of the north, the power which will rise again to the northeast of Palestine, under Russian over lordship. This seems to be borne out by the” names of Mesech (which is Moscow) and Kedar which is in the same direction.

Psalm 121

Psalm 121 is an expression of the fullest trust in Him who is both Creator and the Sovereign Keeper and Guardian of Israel, the mighty Jehovah. Safely will He guard all those who commit themselves to His keeping. How good to be in His hands, who has undertaken, to preserve His beloved ones from all evil!

The subject of Psalm 121 is, of course, in connection with the earth, where all of Israel’s hopes are centered, and it therefore falls short of the Christian’s full blessing, but the same guarding care attends us, as is promised Israel, we can have no doubt.

Psalm 122

Jerusalem rightly comes next in the songs of degrees, for there the hopes of redeemed Israel will be centered; to it they will earnestly hope to come. (See Zechariah 8:3-8; Psalm 147 verses 2, 12-14; Isaiah 2:2,3; and 45:18, 19). Jerusalem once was and will be again the city of God’s earthly dwelling place, and to be there while the long rejected, once crucified and slain Messiah reigns, will be the bright hope of the godly while waiting for that day.

We whose hopes are heavenly; how much is the eternal day of glory before us! how much is the admonition in Colossians 3:1-4 effective in our lives? Does the thought that the Lord is coming soon to take His heavenly people away to spend eternity with Him thrill our hearts with joy unspeakable and full of glory? O, it should!

Psalm 123

The brief Psalm 123 is very precious; here the tried and troubled Israelites have, we may say, made another advance not only in the way to Jerusalem, but in the experience of their souls, for how could Jerusalem’s coming splendors satisfy the heart unless Jehovah be there? To Him they now address themselves; to Him they look; for Him they wait until He shall have mercy upon them. Not yet are their sorrows wholly past; the scorners and the proud have not been put down, nor the lowly exalted.

Psalm 124

Psalm 124 follows the destruction of the last great enemy, the northern army of which Joel; Micah; Isaiah in chapters 10 and 14; Zechariah in chapter 14; Daniel 11:40-45, and Ezekiel 38- 39 treat.

Quickly after the Lord has destroyed the western or Roman power at His coming, but before He has taken the throne of David; the king of the north, or the Assyrian, appears in the land of Israel with an immense army. It appears beyond any doubt to be the Russian power or influence that controls, but all the nations of eastern and northeastern Asia will be joined together, bent on making Palestine their own. But it will be a vain effort, and the king of the north will be put to death like the Beast or head of the Roman empire; and the false prophet of the Jews; but not at the same time.

It is at the end of these momentous days that Psalm 124 has its place, evidently. The deliverance of the godly remnant of Judah and Israel is owned to be all of God’s power.

Psalm 125

The 125th psalm is faith’s acknowledgment of the gracious and powerful dealing of God on behalf of His earthly people and their homeland. The days of trial, of fear and distress unparalleled, are then over.

“They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion which cannot be removed but abideth forever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His People from henceforth even forever.”

Blessed be God, He will finish His work in righteousness when Israel shall have turned to Him, owning the fearful sin which compelled Him to disown them and to scatter them worldwide.

Psalm 126

The 126th begins a series of three praise psalms. Israel’s woes are over and joy is in the heart. They who had sown in tears, will be reaping with rejoicing. Blessing from heaven has surely always been found by those who go forth and weep, bearing seed for scattering. God’s best servants have been those who mingled tears with their prayers; the spiritual results of such exercise will be seen at the resurrection of the just.

Psalm 127

All depends upon the Lord; unless He builds the house, the builders labor in vain; unless He keeps the city, the keeper watches in vain; in vain too was the rising up early, and lying down late, for Jerusalem as man built it had come to naught. Blessing to the full, in an earthly sense was now before them (Psalm 127).

Psalm 128

Psalm 128 continues the subject entered upon in No. 127. It gives a beautiful picture of the life to be enjoyed by the earthly saints during the Lord’s millennial reign. Anxiety and care and even want, so often marring the happiness of many a home in these days, will be banished in that day. How sweet that rest and peace must be to the faithful Israelite!

Yet for us, the believers of the present dispensation of grace, how much more blessed, more glorious, the future! We shall be like the Lord (1 John 3:2), and with Him (1 Thessalonians. 4:17) forever. Heaven, not earth, is our home. He will have us with Himself (John 14:3 and 17:24), and we long to be with Him (Revelation 22:20) in the home above.

“Lord, haste that day of cloudless ray.

That prospect bright, unfailing!”

Psalm 129

Psalm 129 speaks of the enemies which had afflicted Israel; many a time during the long period from the captivity and cruel bond slave of Egypt in the early history of the people to the last enemy, the king of the north, or the Assyrian, the children of Israel has or will yet have suffered at the hands of those who hated them. God has protected them from destruction as a people; what other nation has endured such persecution and scattering, and continued to this day? Surely none. True, the ten tribes carried away by the Assyrians (see 2 Kings 17:6) have disappeared, so that for many centuries they have been searched for in vain, but they will be soon brought back to join the two tribes of the Jews. (Ezekiel 37: 21).

The enemies, those who hate Zion, the center of Israel's future glory, will be brought to naught as the grass upon the house tops. This psalm affords a fresh illustration of what has been remarked before, that all the psalms are for and of Israel, though Christians find much in them of comfort in trial, and, above all, they picture in most touching language the suffering One, the crucified One who is God's King and David's Lord.

Psalm 130

In Psalm 130 Israel's deep dye of sin, brought under consideration in a number of the psalms which have been before us, is again the theme. Here mercy is counted upon (verse 3 and 4); there is forgiveness with Jehovah, and the soul in confidence will wait for Him as for no other hoped for object. Have you ever spent the night in anxiety, and longed for the morning's first rays to chase the gloom away? (Verse 6).

This beautiful psalm links together in our Saviour God forgiveness, loving kindness (or mercy), plenteous redemption (ransom), and an unchangeable purpose to bless His people.

Psalm 131

In the short 131St psalm the suited state of the believer, if he would be blessed, is set forth. It is again Israel, of course, and now subject, as once and for long insubordinate, willful, disobedient.

We may observe that the latter part of verse 1 is without exact counterpart in the Epistles of the New Testament which are written for the members of Christ's heavenly body. There the edifying and upbuilding of the saints is prominent as in Ephesians 4:11-16; Col. 3:16; 2 Tim. 3:14-17.

Children of God, let us not neglect the reading of His Word!

Psalm 132

We reach in these three psalms the close of the "songs of degrees"—songs of the upward, homeward (Zionward) journey of the redeemed of Israel.

Psalm 132 speaks of David, but it is not difficult to see that David's great Son, Jehovah's Anointed One was in the mind of the Holy Spirit in writing this psalm.

David had wished to see the ark of God put in a worthy place. (See 2 Samuel 6:2-5 and 12-17; 7:1, 2; 1 Chronicles 13: 1-8; 15:1-16; 16:1, and chapter 22.

Ephratah, verse 6, is Bethlehem (Ruth 4:11; Micah 5:2) where both David, and his Son, Jesus, the Son of God, as to His earthly life, and His humanity, were born. "The fields of the wood" may be a reference to Kirjath-jearim (meaning city of forests), where the ark long remained after the Philistines had carried it away in battle (1 Samuel 7:1, 2). What then do these places signify in the psalm? Is it not to set forth the lowly birth of the Messiah of Israel, and the place which Israel gave Him when He was here in grace? "They received Him not" (John 1:11).

Verses 8-10 is the language of Solomon at the dedication of the temple in 2 Chronicles 6:41, 42. Solomon's magnificent temple long ago disappeared, but a greater dwelling place for God will yet adorn the hill of Zion.

Verse 11 is the divine answer to verse 10. Verses 13, 14 remind us of God's election, all of His own grace. He has chosen Zion, there will He dwell. So has He chosen poor sinners and provided most wonderfully for them.

Verses 15-16: He will abundantly bless and cause Zion's saints to shout for joy in the scene where sin and death have reigned.

The closing verses of Psalm 132 refer to the Lord Jesus; He is the horn or strength of David, as well as the Anointed One, and the crowned One.

Blessed Lord! How our rapturous hearts and tongues will sound forth Thy praise in that day!

Psalm 133

Psalm 133 speaks of the unity of Israel, at length brought about after so many centuries of division. The fullest earthly blessing will then have been granted.

Psalm 134

Psalm 134 closes the chain of songs with the blessing of Jehovah by His servants, and His blessing them out of Zion—the mighty God, maker of the heavens and earth making His dwelling place among the favored sons of Israel.

Looking back over the 15 psalms called songs of degrees which we have just finished studying, can we not see in them the believer's journey (although in detail and circumstance the language is Jewish) from sin's dark valley, and a world of enmity, toward God, to our heavenly portion with Christ.

May God put more into our hearts the spirit and desire of the little verse,

"O, how we thirst the chains to burst,

That weight our spirits downward;

And there to flow, in love's full glow,

With hearts like Christ's surrounded."

Psalm 135

These two psalms are connected in thought with the "songs of degrees," Psalms 120 to 134. The journey upward to the place of God's earthly sanctuary as portrayed in those psalms is ended, and praise now flows out without hindrance. "Praise ye the Lord" is the language at the beginning and the end of Psalm 135.

"Worthy of homage and of praise;

Worthy by all to be adored:

Exhaustless theme of heavenly lays,

Thou, Thou art worthy, Jesus, Lord,"

is the song of the Christian pilgrim as he journeys toward the heavenly Jerusalem.

In verse 4 we are reminded of the sovereign, free choice of God; He hath chosen Jacob unto Himself, Israel for His peculiar treasure. God is great, above all gods (verse 5), and this has been observed in His ordering of the heavens and the earth (verses 6-7), and in what He did to Egypt (verses 8-9), and to the nations in and near the land which He designed for an inheritance for Israel (verses 10-12) .

Verse 13 is from Exodus 3: 15, where God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush and directed him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt.

Verse 14 is from Deuteronomy 32:36, a part of Moses' prophetic song about Israel, in which he told them what should be their history. When ruined and undone, God would assuredly come to their help, and would set them back in His favor. And this, presently He will do.

Israel plunged into idolatry in Old Testament days, and more deeply will they do it in the future, but when delivered by God's sovereign mercy, they will think of the idols according to verses 15-17. They that make idols and confide in them are like them. Can we add that they who trust in the only true God and His beloved Son, grow in likeness to the Lord? It should be so.

Psalm 136

Psalm 136 sings the great refrain, "His mercy (or loving kindness) endureth for ever." This expression is in each of the twenty-six verses. Each verse exalts Jehovah: "He is good" (verse 1); “He is the God of gods," and "Lord of lords" (verses 2-3).

Verses 4-9 tell His creation glory, and verses 10-22 His acts on behalf of. Israel and against their enemies, while verses 23-24 refer to the later history of the people.

Every verse is significant, but these last verses are very precious. He hath remembered us in our low estate, delivered us, gives food to all for His loving kindness endureth forever,—setting forth the amazing love, grace and mercy of our Saviour God who has freed the confessed sinner from the slavery of Satan, and made the fullest, richest provision for his case for all eternity. Here again, then, Israel and the Church can join in a song of redemption.

Psalm 137

We have completed our examination of the history-telling psalms. What remain are a supplementary series, and the final outburst of praise with which this most interesting book closes. Psalm 137 tells how, long ago in far-away Babylon (2 Chron. 36:20, and Esther, Ezekiel, Daniel) the faithful Israelites thought upon Zion. How could they sing a song of Jehovah's upon a foreign soil? They could not be contented there, but longed for Jerusalem's walls, and nowhere else could be at home.

In a certain way, the same spirit rightly characterizes the Christian; if the Word of God is really dwelling in and governing us, we cannot be contented here, where our blessed Saviour and Lord is absent. The Lord is a stranger to this present world, and we desire to share His rejection and be strangers too, and pilgrims, looking on to His rest, but we are to be happy on the way, and sing the songs of our heavenly land. (See Ephesians 5: 18-21, and Colossians 3: 16-17).

It is difficult, sometimes, to understand the demands for vengeance upon enemies which are found in the Psalms, as in verses 7 to 9 of this one, but the difficulty arises from not seeing that our own dispensation, and really from the birth of Christ, to His coming to take away His heavenly people (1 Thess. 4) is one of grace, when the righteous judgment of a sin-hating God is withheld. Presently, when the Church has been translated, like Enoch in Genesis 5:24, the stored-up judgment will begin, for God is righteous. (Romans 2:2-16; Jude 5-15).

Psalm 138

Psalm 138 briefly gives the ground of faith—the Word of God. Great as His name is, what He has written, the Bible, He has magnified above all His name (verse 2). Upon that unchangeable Word, faith rests. We received and believe what He has said. In the day when we, individually, called upon Him, He answered us: He encouraged us with strength in our souls (verse 3). Presently, when His word reaches the ears of the kings of the earth, they will own Him and sing of His ways (verse 5).

He looks upon the lowly (verse 6); were it not so, how would salvation have ever been ours who trust in Jesus? And in verse 8 is the reminder that He will finish what He has begun (Philippians 1:6) .

Psalm 139

Here is the language of an exercised heart. Our Father can never be satisfied without bringing us to know Himself. Wonderful as is the knowledge of the forgiveness of sins, and of the gift of eternal life, we are not to stop there. Does not the Word tell us, in the Lord's prayer (John 17) that "this is life eternal, that they (believers) might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent?"

Ours is a faithful God; His purpose is to bless, and He will bless, though His children may need trial not easy to bear, in order to be brought before Him in love.

David, in this psalm, has learned in the school of God; he is in the hands of Him with whom we have to do. From Him nothing is hid, neither habits, nor thoughts, nor the path of the believer, his words, his seasons of rest and of activity; all his ways are known to God.

In verse 3 the expression "Thou compassest my path" is literally "Thou siftest my path, and my lying down," etc.

Verse 5 is God dealing with His child needing correction; he is beset behind and before, and His hand is upon him. This would be terrifying, only that the action is in love to his soul.

"If ye be without chastisement, (chastening, properly) . . . then are ye bastards and not sons," as Hebrews 12 brings before us. Is this a hard saying? Surely it should not be; yet sometimes His children have needed much training before they were prepared to rest quietly in His care. Shall we not rather leave all in his hands, yield ourselves gladly to Him?

Our consciences perhaps would wish at times to be out of His presence, but verses 7 to 13 tell us we can not go where His eyes will not see us.

"Hell" in verse 8 is the Hebrew word Sheol, the present waiting place of the dead (Luke 16:22-26), and not the lake of fire where the devil and the unrepentant will be eternally.

The result in the soul is seen in verses 17-18 and thereafter to the close of this precious psalm. If He knows my thoughts (verse 2) I may learn (blessed fact!) His thoughts, and they will be precious to me; how great is the sum of them! I lie down to sleep, and become unconscious of everything, but when I awake I am still with Him,—what comfort, what peace, what communion may I not have with Him who loves me so, cares for me so constantly!

And if drawn near to God, whether by trial or not, there is a complete break with the wicked (verses 19-22). The psalm, being for Israel in the latter day, looks on to the out-pouring of judgment on the enemies. It closes in language we may well appropriate for ourselves (verses 23, 24 ) .

Psalm 140

Here is a series of five psalms (140-144) connected in thought. Israel in them is in trouble, not yet fully blessed, though enough has been realized to give the believer confidence that full blessing will be known when trials are over.

Psalm 140 tells of open violence and hidden snares; the way is encumbered with dangers every day. Yet faith has set up her banner: "I have said unto Jehovah, Thou art my God" (verse 6), and "Jehovah the Lord is the strength of my salvation" (verse 7). Further, (verse 12) "I know that Jehovah will maintain the cause of the afflicted One;" the righteous sIia1l, give thanks unto His name, and the upright shall dwell in His presence (verse 13).

Psalm 141

Psalm 141 presents urgent need, and counts upon the desired answer. Practical points for all believers, whether in trial or not are seen in verses 2-6.

In verse 2, prayer is to be as according to God's holy character; verse 3 reminds us of our constant need to have a watch before our mouths (James 3:2). Holy separation from evil is in verse 4; verse 5 is the acceptance of chastisement as needed correction, and verse 6 gives the desire that the wicked shall yet be broken down, so as to receive the Word of God.

Psalm 142

Psalm 142 gives comfort; "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then Thou knewest my path." This is consolation indeed. God is our refuge, our portion now. Do we go to Him as often as we should, fellow Christian?

Psalm 143

We are still looking at the condition of the believers in Israel shortly before the Lord Jesus as their Messiah will appear to deliver them. The psalmist addresses God upon the ground of His faithfulness, not His mercy. In truth the faithfulness of God is called for—His ancient promise to Abraham shall yet be carried out, when Israel has no right to claim mercy, so dreadful their sins against Him. "He is faithful that promised," as says Hebrews 10:23.

In verse 2, God cannot be met as a judge. How can man be justified in His sight? Never, in his own person, but Acts 13:38-39 gives the secret now that Christ has died and is risen again, and exalted to the highest heaven. Such knowledge will not be possessed at this time by the quickened children of Israel, however.

All hope, apart from God's coming in, in some way to effect deliverance, is gone (verses 3-6). Earthly enemies will have driven these saints to despair as these verses show, yet God is remembered when of old He acted in power. In His perfect wisdom, and perfect love, He lets His people suffer, that they may find in Him all their resource, their comfort, their joy, their hope, their everlasting portion with His Son.

Confidence that all will be well is most marked in verses 8 and 10; the desire is to learn the way in which the believer should walk, and to learn what pleases Him. This, Hebrews 12:11 lets us know, is the fruit of an exercised heart. The soul that rebels under trial misses the purposed blessing.

The enemies spoken of in verses 3, 9 and 12 are the unbelievers of the coming day who will hate those God-fearing Israelites who profess His name in truth, and wait for redemption. The day of God's long suffering will be over, and the wicked will be quickly punished. In that day the language of verse 12 will be quite suitable (see Rev. 6:10), though quite contrary to the spirit of the Christian taught of God. Romans 12:14; Colossians 4:5, 6; 1 Thessalonians 5:15, and many other passages combine to show how Christians should feel and act toward those who would injure them.

Psalm 144

Verses 1 and 2 remind us how admirably and perfectly God meets the needs,—the wants of His people. He is their immoveable Rock, and if warfare be called for, either with flesh and blood as Israel will experience, or with the invisible power of Satan (Ephesians 6:12) which the Christian has to contend with, God teaches the hands and fingers to fight. He is our blessed Preserver, our strength, our hiding place, He in whom we trust.

Verse 3 apparently repeats the inquiry of Psalm 8:4, but the words in the original Hebrew are changed about; there it was Christ as Son of Man, here it is sinful man, frail and powerless, that is meant. So (verse 4) man is like to vanity, or a breath; his days are as a shadow that passes away. Judgment will overtake the wicked; there is no thought here of giving time for repentance, for the day of grace will then be over (verses 5-8, and 11).

The end is praise to God (verse 9) from a people of His here on earth, whose hopes and joys are connected with the earth (verses 12-16).

Note the contrast in Philippians 3:20, (New Translation): "For our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens," and John 14:2-3.

Many scriptures make plain that the Lord Jesus will have an earthly people, as well as a heavenly people eternally, but all of them redeemed with His blood, the fruit of the travail of His soul.

From here to the close of the Psalms, all is praise. We are reminded of Revelation 5:9-14 and Isaiah 53:10-12. What infinite grace it is that has made it possible that poor unworthy sinners such as ourselves shall have part with Christ eternally.

"Unto Him who loves us and has washed us from our sins in His blood .. ..to Him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages! Amen." Rev. 1:5-6.

Psalm 145

This is another "alphabet" psalm, omitting the fourteenth, but otherwise including in the original language as the first letter of each verse, in order, the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It is the last psalm bearing David's name, and we judge that it is the Lord Jesus in spirit who here speaks—-the leader of His people's praise (Psalm 22:22-26).

Think of what a change this will mean for the earth, when Jehovah's praise shall be on every tongue from sea to sea. Today on every hand, we may say, God is not in their thoughts; then, when judgment long withheld has swept the world, the inhabitants will learn righteousness. The believer's heart wells up in a deep Amen! to verse 3,

"Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable." Psalm 145:3. The lines of a hymn read:

"His love is as great as His power, And knows neither measure nor end."

The reminders of this precious truth are found throughout the psalm.

It is a psalm for meditation rather than for exposition. In it we read of Jehovah's majesty, His unsearchable greatness, His terrible acts, His great goodness and His righteousness. We linger over the thought of His graciousness and mercifulness, His tender mercy. He, and He only, upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all that are bowed down. Who is like unto Him?

The eyes of all wait upon Him and He gives them their food in its season; He opens His hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing. Righteous in all his ways, yet He is near unto all that call upon Him in truth. He is also the fulfiller of the desire of them that fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them; He keeps all that love Him; and, solemn prospect! All the wicked will He destroy. This word "destroy" does not mean to annihilate, but to remove their power to do evil; God will exercise His power upon them in judgment.

What a God is ours! Revealed to us in the person of His dear Son, we may well raise our voices in His praise,

Worthy of homage and of praise;

Worthy by all to be adored;

Exhaustless theme of heavenly lays,

Thou, Thou art worthy, Jesus Lord!

Psalm 146

Each of the remaining psalms begins with Hallelujah, and each one ends with the same word, translated in the King James' version, "Praise ye the Lord." His praise should be in our hearts and on our lips every day of our lives (verse 2); it will be the theme of the redeemed,

"While endless ages roll,
And time shall ne'er grow old."

In verse 3 "the son of man" should be "a son of man"—-the meaning being mankind in general. The psalm contrasts man whose life is soon over, with the God of Jacob, maker of the heavens and the earth. Blessed is he who has Him for his help, whose hope is in Jehovah his God.

And this God, known already to faith, at whose word the whole creation sprang into being, He it is who keepeth truth forever; Who executeth judgment for the oppressed; Who giveth bread to the hungry. The mighty God! Truth is the foundation of His majestic throne, and His gracious hand is stretched out on behalf of the oppressed and the hungry.

"He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust." Psalm 103:14.

A second chain of three precious links follows: He looseth the prisoners; He opens the eyes of the blind; He raiseth up them that are bowed down.

In the four gospels we are given vivid illustrations of these acts of power; for example, in Luke 8:27-35 is an account of a prisoner set free from Satan's rule; in Luke 18:35-43 is seen a blind man given his sight, and in Luke 13:11-13 a woman bowed down and helpless to aid herself, is loosed from her infirmity.

But we are sure that the power of God has in our own case set free one who was held fast by Satan in his cruel hands; one who was blind, unable to see his own need of a Saviour, and unable to see any attraction in Him, now sees, and if it be through a glass, dimly, it will soon be "face to face" (1 Cor. 13:12); and one who was bowed down under the heavy load of sins is now loosed forever from it by His grace.

The third chain of three links is, He loves the righteous; He preserves the strangers; He lifts up the fatherless and the widow. How gracious! His heart goes out to His dear people, He keeps them safe, and those who are the very picture of defenselessness He lifts up.

Well may we sing, with triumph sing, The great Redeemer's praise!

Psalm 147

Praise to God continues to flow from the redeemed of Israel. Jerusalem is being built up; the outcasts of Israel are gathered in. This is the bright hope of the sons and daughters of Jacob, spread out on many pages of the Old Testament prophets. (See Isaiah 65: 18-25; Jeremiah 3:17, and 33:16, etc.; Zechariah 8:3-8). Israel will never be gathered together as a nation until in the land of Canaan, and then Jerusalem shall be as described in Zechariah 14:8-21, God's dwelling place in the midst of His earthly people.

Verse 3. The best that man can suggest for an aching heart is pleasure, or business; God only can (and does) heal the broken hearted. Omnipotent in power, so as to do what man never has been able to do (verse 4), yet He concerns Himself with the meek, the lowly (verse 6).

Thanksgiving will flow from countless hearts of the redeemed in the day for which heaven and earth wait. What a scene it will be, when the whole creation no longer groans.

Look back to Genesis 4:21, and reflect that the music of that day was devised to still the voice of the conscience; to bring in a false happiness where God was not known and where the knowledge of Him was not desired; music was designed by Cain's family to make it easier to forget God. But in the day we are considering, when the outcasts of Israel shall be returned to Jerusalem, the instruments of music will be to celebrate God, to remember Him in all His ways of grace and power.

Verses 8-9 praise Him for His wise and beneficient provision for the earth and the lower creation, but (verses 10-11) His joys are not in nature even at its best, but in those that fear Him, them that hope in His loving kindness. This is what cheers and delights the believer's heart,—that God has pleasure in those who have put their trust in Him.

Jerusalem will be a place of security and blessing, peace and satisfaction (verses 13-14).

In verses 15-18 God's power in natural things is considered, but this occupation leads to the knowledge and understanding of His Word, and His will possessed by those He has made His own people. Singularly blessed are they (verse 20).

The whole psalm is about Jehovah, and rightly so. He is worthy.

"He is worthy; take it with thee,

Just this thought to ponder o'er,

Till His loveliness and beauty

Fill Thy soul yet more and more."

Psalm 148

Psalm 148 begins with heaven and all that are in it, living and inanimate, made and sustained by God and for His glory. Then it turns to earth and closes with His people. All are to praise the name of Jehovah; His name alone is exalted.

Psalm 149

Psalm 149 bids Israel to rejoice, for Jehovah takes pleasure in His people; He beautifies the meek with salvation. The meek are not much thought of in the world today; they are pushed aside very often, or just tolerated, but we have already seen in Psalm 25:9 what God thinks of them and will do for them. It is the meek in Israel that are delivered and blessed. Yet there will be the execution of judgment joined with the high praises of God (verses 5-9).

Psalm 150

Psalm 150 is the closing word; this very remarkable book, full of the sorrows and experiences of a people under the chastening hand of God, full, too, of the purposes of God, and telling of the sufferings of all the saints, earthly and heavenly, when the days of our pilgrimage are over. The memory of the trials and difficulties, the heartaches and tears we have known while we are absent from the Lord, will only lead us out in sweeter praise, in louder and deeper Hallelujahs.

Proverbs 1

This book of wisdom shows the safe, the divine path for man in a crooked world. It tells unmistakably the consequences of the ways in which man may choose to go. Solomon (in 2 Chronicles 1:7-12) had asked for wisdom and knowledge, that he might rightly govern his people and God gave him his desire in a way surpassing all others.

The purpose of this book is given in verses 2 to 4. "Subtilty," in verse 4 is "prudence." Verse 7 gives the key to what is true knowledge: the fear of the Lord (Jehovah).

The book divides into two quite distinct portions, the first nine chapters give the general principles of behavior, and the succeeding twenty are comprised of the proverbs or moral sentences which show the path of wisdom. At the close are two chapters of special character.

In a day like this, the instruction contained in verses 8 and 9 is very important; "children obey your parents" is God's word, not in Old Testament only but in the New (Ephesians 6:1; Colossians 3: 20) .

The two well-known forms in which sin, or the will of man is seen, are first spoken of. Corruption, in verse 10: "If sinners entice thee, consent not." Refuse to listen to them.

Violence, in verses 11-14: "Walk not in the way with them; keep back thy foot from their path." Wholesome words these are, and the sure light of God's Word for the Christian's conduct.

The consequences of sin are plainly told in verses 18 and 19. Verse 20 introduces a solemn warning, one of the most solemn words of the Scriptures. Those who make light of the Bible may well take heed to the fearful language of verses 24 to 28 which portrays the end of those who refuse, ignore or reject the true wisdom, who do not choose the fear of the Lord.

In verse 28 "early" has the sense of "earnestly."

Proverbs 2

In the first chapter the sad end of those who reject the true wisdom was seen; in the second the reward of those who receive God's Word and lay it up with them, apply their heart to understanding, is given with equal plainness. Observe that diligence is called for; Christians are too easily content with an occasional reference to God's Word for the pathway here below.

God has laid up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to them that walk in integrity, guarding the paths of just judgment and keeping the way of His saints (verses 7-8). Thus the believer is fully and wonderfully provided for in every way.

When this wisdom enters into the heart, and this knowledge is pleasant to the soul, discretion keeps, understanding preserves, the saint of God. He is delivered from the way of evil, from the corruption and immorality which abound, and are planned especially to ensnare the young.

How thankful we must be to God for setting out in His Word the clear light needed for a clean walk in a defiled and defiling world. Here His children are guarded and warned against the evils, and encouraged to lay hold of the good; according to God's ways in government, whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap; for he that sows to his flesh shall reap corruption from the flesh; but he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life.

"Let us not lose heart in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." Galatians 6:7-9.

Proverbs 3

This chapter is full of safe instructions for the right ways of life. The truly happy life is one of continual (not just occasional) dependence upon God, as every Christian ought to know, and many have proved in their own experience.

Seven rewards for living according to God's Word are named in verses 1-10 which also set out seven certain marks of the godly. Let us first weigh well the true marks of the godly which are named in these verses.

The first one is that God's Word is in the mind, not forgotten, and in the heart, kept, stored up. Depend upon it, if the Bible is one's treasured daily companion, the daily life will show it in many ways.

Verse 3 gives the second and third marks: Mercy (really loving kindness) and truth. These are admirable qualities surely, which should be shown out in every contact with our fellowmen.

Verses 5-6 give the fourth mark of a godly person: He confides in God with all his heart; he does not rely upon his own intelligence or discernment. In all his ways he looks to God as over him.

Verse 7 points out the fifth and sixth marks: the godly than is not puffed up about himself; he distrusts himself, indeed. And, fearing the Lord, he departs from evil; he separates himself from every wrong thought, word, way and companionship.

The last of the seven marks of a godly person is in verse 9: he honors God with what he possesses; he gives to Him; in His name he gives to the Lord's servants and for the Lord's work, liberally.

God has chosen these seven marks, by which those who trust in Him are to be known. Shall we not, each of us who love the Lord Jesus, earnestly seek to have all of these marks seen in us, constantly?

Now for the seven rewards, contained in the same ten verses. The first (verse 2) is length of days and years of life added. The Christian does not expect to die but looks for the Lord Jesus to end his earthly stay by His coming to take His heavenly people away to glory; nevertheless and in view of that a long life spent in the fear of God, and lived in the light of His Word, is full of testimony for the Lord, and is a great blessing. (See Isaiah 26: 3; 57: 21, also Philippians 4: 6, 7).

Favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man (verse 4) are the third and fourth in the list.

The fifth is in verse 6. God assures us all who confide in Him, a plain way; they will know the way they should go as they journey through life.

Verse 8 brings us the sixth blessing: health. Verse 10 gives the seventh, abundance of food and drink.

We can see that all of these seven blessings are earthly, and we know that it often pleases God to not let His children have every earthly blessing, in order that they may have their minds centered on the glorious future, eternity with the Lord Jesus. (But see Mark 10:29-31; Philippians 4:19, and Luke 12:22-31).

The word "chastening" in verse 11 is perhaps better translated "instruction"; it means also warning, correction or discipline, and "correction" at the end of the verse is rather "reproof." To "despise" the instruction or correction of the Lord, is not to make little of it, as though it were something of no account and contemptible, but the word used here has the sense of loathing, rejecting with abhorrence. The believer is not to refuse the Lord's instruction, nor be weary of His reproof. Obedience is a hard lesson for some of us to learn, and by nature we are disobedient. (See Psalm 32:8, 9).

Whom He loves, He chastens, and of this the Hebrew Christians had to be reminded (Hebrews 12:5-13), and so do we in this day who know Christ as our Saviour. It is the son in whom He delighteth that the father corrects.

We may compare this with the interest of the Father in the fruit bearing branches in John 15: 2, for the Father now judges His children; by and by the Son will judge the world.

Turning back to our key verse, chapter 1:7, we see the meaning of verse 13,

"Happy (or blessed) is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding."

It is not the wisdom spoken of in 1 Corinthians 1:17, 19, 20, 22, 26; but that of verse 30 in that chapter. The gain of this wisdom and understanding is better than the precious things of this world for which men and women strive so hard all their lives (verses 14-15).

How alluring the description of this heavenly wisdom is in verses 15 to 18. "All the things thou canst desire are not equal unto her" (wisdom looked at here as a person), and all that makes for happiness and life—even everlasting life (verse 18) is found in her.

Shame on us who have confessed with our mouth the Lord Jesus, and believed in our heart that God bath raised Him from the dead, that we do not value nearly as much as we should this true wisdom. The people of this world are far more in earnest about the things the world has to give them, than the children of God are in seeking the things that concern Him (See 2 Peter 3:18).

God by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens; by His knowledge the deeps were broken up (see Genesis 7:11), and the skies drop down the dew. This sound wisdom and discretion, garnered from the Bible, God's written Word, is the safeguard of the believer as he passes through a wicked world.

What security, what calmness, in such a troubled scene, is confidently assured to those who trust in Him, in verses 23-26!

Verses 27 to 31 speak of our relationships with men, for the knowledge of a Saviour God teaches us right ways toward our fellowmen as well as toward God.

God has a perfect judgment concerning the wicked; they are an abomination to Him (verse 32). His secret is however with the upright (see Psalm 25:14); they know Him and what pleases Him.

God distinguishes those that fear Him, and He blesses them, and gives grace to the lowly.

Verse 35 tells the end of the course, and here there are two classes still, but they are now described like the virgins in Matthew 25:1-13, as "wise" and "foolish,"—wise, because they gave heed to God's Word; or foolish, because they scorned that Word, and met His inevitable judgment.

Proverbs 4

This deeply interesting and profitable chapter does not include any name of God, but it is speaking for Him in whom is all wisdom and all intelligence, instructing all who own the authority of His Word regarding the safe ways of life in a scene where evil abounds. The first half of the chapter, to verse 13, presses the importance of wisdom and intelligence; the second half shows the application of this wisdom to the dangers that are present in the world. This is admirable; he who is taught of God is prepared for the snares of the devil.

No one ever has found God's Word to fail him; its teachings are infallible, suitable and always good. Of it alone can it he said, "Keep Thy commandments and live."

To have wisdom—a rare thing now-a-days, it seems,—is to have the ability to discern what is true and right; this is to be gained by diligent, humble study of God's Word though it is also a gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8).

Intelligence is the capacity to understand. The believer needs both wisdom and intelligence, and how shall he get them? From God, and through His Word, we answer without hesitation.

The learning is worth far more than "all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22), valuable though that may be in its proper place, and God here presses the importance of it upon His children.

"Forsake her (wisdom) not, and she shall keep thee; love her, and she shall preserve thee."

"Exalt her, and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honor when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thy head a garland of grace; a crown of glory will she bestow upon thee." Of what other reading than the Word of God could this be said? What share of our reading has the newspaper, or other worldly literature, and what the Bible?

The way of wisdom and the paths of righteousness (verse 11, N.T.), are very far from the path of the wicked, and the way of evil men (verse 14). Sometimes we are tempted to think that we can allow a little measure of company with what is wrong; verse 15 meets this with no uncertainty.

The path of the righteous is as the shining light, going on and brightening until the day be fully come (verse 18 JND). How wonderful, that this is God's provision for them that love Him! The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble, because they know not God, and desire not His knowledge.

The chapter concludes with weighty words, the ear (verse 20), the eyes, the heart (verse 21), the mouth and lips (verse 24) and the feet (verse 26) being mentioned in turn with God's directions for the use of each member (see Romans 12).

Proverbs 5

Corruption is the particular form of sin with which fallen man is most familiar, and it is against this that chapter 5 warns the children of God, as violence was spoken against in chapter 4:14-19. In verse 2, read "reflection," or "well considered thoughts," instead of "discretion," which hardly carries the true meaning.

Again the true wisdom is seen in avoiding every form of evil. The "strange woman" is to be avoided, lest dishonor, suffering, poverty and a heavy burden of grief be the portion of the offender to the end of life.

Contrasted with her is the happiness of married life as God designed it, but man has introduced his own ideas and lowered, as he has everything else entrusted to him, God's ordinance.

An important word is in verse 21: "For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He pondereth all his goings" (or paths).

More of the characteristics of wisdom are set out in chapter 6. For neither friend nor stranger should one be surety (verses 6-11); nor violent (verses 12-15); nor linked with deceit (verses 24-35).

Verses 16 to 19 let us see how well God knows the human heart, for the picture they give is of man away from God. It will be found profitable as well as interesting to compare the two lists in chapter 4:20-27, and here.

The first thing spoken of in the former passage is the ear; the believer is to know his dependence upon God for instruction. And the haughty eyes are first spoken of in the list of chapter 6; this tells of the pride and self-sufficiency of man. Both lists end with the feet,—and how different are the ways of the godly and the ungodly!

Verses 20-24 again press the great importance of God's Word as the believers guard and guide through the world. It is to be thought upon and acted upon continually. Verse 22 gives the result in daily life: When thou walkest, the Word of God shall lead thee; when thou sleepiest it shall keep thee; and when thou wakest, it shall talk with thee. This is very precious. But is it your and my constant experience, beloved reader?

Proverbs 6

Violence and corruption, the two evils early in the world, even from Noah's day (Genesis 6:11), and much in evidence in our own times, are the subject of warnings again in verses 12-15 and verses 24-35. Adultery is a sin far more serious than stealing, for the thief, if found, must restore sevenfold, even to all the substance of his house; but the reproach of the adulterer shall not be wiped away. These are solemn considerations in a day when immoral conduct is by the world looked upon with less severity than formerly.

May God preserve His people from a lower standard of sin and righteousness than He has.

Proverbs 7

If we were allowed to suggest a sub-title for the Book of Proverbs, it would be what Galatians 6:7 provides, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man shall sow, that also shall he reap.” As another has written,

“God deigns to apply His wisdom to the circumstances of our practical life, and to show us, with His own intelligence, the consequences of all the ways in which man may walk. It is a great blessing to be provided for the labyrinth of this world, in which a false step may lead to such bitter consequences, with a book (the Book of Proverbs) that sets forth the path of prudence and of life, and this in connection with a wisdom which comes from God.”

Once again the urgent plea is made that God’s Word shall be given the important place it should have. Its teachings are to be valued as the apple of the eye—to be carefully guarded as most precious. They are to be bound upon the fingers, and so connected with what one does, and what is seen by others; and to be written upon the tablet of the heart, where no eye sees but God’s.

May we not ask ourselves, what is written on the tablet of my heart? What is its chief desire, and with what is it occupied as the hours of day flit by?

Wisdom and intelligence (verse 4) are to be claimed as blood-relations that they may keep us from the “strange woman” who flatters with her words. Corruption has ever threatened the children of God on earth, and, viewing the history of God’s people, how often the devil has succeeded with some form of it, when violence failed to move them away from simple trust in God. We may, then, safely consider the warning voice of God in the Proverbs regarding the strange woman as applicable both to the moral dangers, and to the spiritual dangers which may engulf us at any age.

The children of Cain and the children of Seth walked apart in the early world until moral corruption among the latter came in. (Gen. 6).

The children of Israel were a people alone and separated, positionally, to God until Numbers 25.

Jehoshaphat was a great and godly ruler of Judah (2 Chronicles 17), but the latter part of his life was marred through his association with Ahab and Ahaziah, kings of Israel (chapters 18, 19, 20).

It was the abominations of the nations which, adopted and practiced by the ten tribes of Israel (2 Kings 17:7-18), and the two tribes of Judah (2 Chronicles 36:14-21), brought upon them the solemn judgment of God in their banishment from their homeland.

And the letters to the seven Churches (Revelation 2-3) show the disastrous results of an alliance with the world (Revelation 2:4).

Let us make no mistake; the Christian cannot dally with evil in any form. Satan is bent upon attracting us away from the Lord Jesus, and he will, if he can draw us from the narrow path of full dependence on God and His Word, with either moral corruption (We are living in a time fraught with much danger from that source); or spiritual corruption.

Satan can rob us of true joy, a good conscience and communion (1 John 1:3-7).

Verses 24 to 27, the final words of the chapter, therefore call for our earnest consideration, both regarding the necessity for a clean, pure life apart from the moral depravity all around us, and the equal importance of true hearted separation from all that does not uphold Christ as the Word of God upholds Him.

Proverbs 8

That God is not indifferent to man’s need is shown at the beginning of this deeply interesting chapter. Wisdom’s call is urgent on the great highway of life. Connect what we have here with 1 Corinthians 1:18-31.

Verse 9 states a very blessed fact, for the believer justifies God in all His sayings. And we who have by grace received Christ as our Saviour, know well the truth of the eleventh verse.

Verses 12 to 16 tell important principles of divine wisdom for man. Prudence; knowledge which comes from reflection; fearing God; hating evil, pride, arrogancy, the evil way arid the froward mouth are part of this-wisdom of God, provided for us. In it is counsel, strength; by it kings, princes, nobles, judges, rule and carry on their responsibilities.

Verse 17 introduces another subject which was before us a little in considering chapter 3,—that there are rewards for the diligent seeker after wisdom. This verse carries a pointed message:

“I love those that love me, and they that seek me early (or earnestly) shall find me.”

God knows how to encourage His beloved children to apply themselves diligently to what concerns their eternal blessing!

Verses 18-21, it will be seen, tell of more than riches and honor; durable wealth and righteousness, fruit better than fine gold, revenue better than choice silver: these are spiritual blessings with which our God has endowed those of His heaven bound children who prize His Word above all things earthly. Precious is the last verse 21 with its positive assurance of blessing from above. May we look more constantly to the great Blesser!

The Holy Spirit has been occupying these chapters with the theme of God’s wisdom for man; Christ is the wisdom of God and the center of all; the object of God’s ceaseless and eternal love. In Him the wisdom of God is revealed. (See Ephesians 1:9, 10; 1 Corinthians 1:24, 30; 2:6-10). Accordingly Christ is presented in our chapter, from verse 22-36.

Every reference to the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament (though we never find that blessed name of Jesus there) is of the deepest, interest to the believer, and these verses, in Proverbs 8 are very precious. The mystery of the Godhead is here: the Father and the Son, with the Holy Spirit writing the words. The Son was set up (literally, anointed) from eternity, from the beginning, before the earth was.

Our limited minds cannot grasp eternity; the subject is too vast, and God uses the words “the beginning” to bring to our thoughts that which we can take in. So in Genesis 1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” tells us of the beginning of creation, untold ages, it may be, ago, for it was before the events of the six days of verses 3-21, which are commonly reckoned as occurring 4000 years before Christ. But John 1 proceeds back into past eternity as far as our minds can grasp, when it says,

"In the beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And so here in Proverbs 8,

"Jehovah possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old."

Here is the furthest point our finite minds can travel. Avoiding the speculations of the natural mind, we rest in the knowledge of the Father who gave His Son; of the Son who laid down His life on Calvary's cross, and of the Holy Spirit, seal of the purchase of every believer, with the precious blood of Christ. Matthew 11: 27; Luke 10:22, and John 1:1-3, shut off all speculation about the Son.

Before we close our scripture study today, let us notice the Father's delight in the Son, in verse 30, and the Son's delight in man, in verse 31.

"It is in connection with men that Christ is seen, when considered as uniting and developing in Himself every feature of wisdom and the counsels of God. The life that was in Him was the light of men."

Christ's delight in man will have its full expression in the Millennium, not before, and in the meanwhile He calls upon men to hearken unto Him.

"Whoso findeth Me findeth life" (verses 32-36).

Proverbs 9

We have been occupied with the wisdom and intelligence needed—and provided by God—for the earthly path of the believer, and in the latter part of chapter 8 the Divine Author told us of Him who is Wisdom itself, the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour. There remains, to complete the story, the place of rest and joy at the end of the path. For there is more for us who trust in Him than an earthly path or pilgrimage; there remaineth a rest for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9).

“Wisdom hath built her house,” perfect in strength and endurance. Food and drink for a feast have been prepared; the table is ready and wisdom’s maidens have been sent forth. The invitation is being cried upon the summits of the high places,

“Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither .... Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mingled. Forsake follies and live, and go in the way of intelligence” (verses 4-6 N.T.).

This is not the full story of the gospel. but O, how it tells of a God who delights in giving. His is always the more blessed part of giving, .and it is man’s to receive, if he will. If we view these verses as earthly in their application, we are remind ed of the position of security, peace and joy that is ours now who trust in Jesus. But looking on to the end of our pilgrim age, we think of the rest of glory, the Father’s house. There the returned prodigal was received, though first greeted with the Father’s kisses and clad in the best robe, the ring of eternal love put on his hand, and sandals for the walk put on his feet. (Luke 15:20-24).

This loving entreaty of divine wisdom is met by some with scorn, as we know. The scorners and the wicked will not regard the word brought to them for their instruction or reproof, but the wise will love him who reproves. The wise become wiser, and the righteous increase learning, for they willingly accept teaching (verses 7-9).

The fear (holy regard) of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom (verse 10), as well as of knowledge (chapter 1:7), and the knowledge of the Holy (or of holy things), is intelligence. The knowledge of God is the very foundation of the believer’s life; upon it, is built all that will endure to eternity of our works.

A final warning is contained in the closing verses, speaking of the foolish woman. In her is no fear of the Lord; she calls to the passers-by on life’s way, inviting them deceitfully in the very words of wisdom (compare verses 4 and 16), but she has no feast to offer. Her offer is of forbid den things, the desire for which Satan first awakened in the garden of Eden when he tempted Eve with the lie that God was withholding what was good, and he has pursued the same tactics with Adam’s children ever since. The only right life is one lived in the fear of God. And God here shows the end of a course of sin: the foolish woman’s guests die in the hopeless state of the lost (see chapter 2:18-19).

Proverbs 10

Wisdom is set forth in the details of life in the six hundred or more proverbs which comprise nearly the whole of the remainder of this wonderful book. The first proverb is:

“A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother.” How true! The young men of Solomon’s day were evidently not much different from those of today, though customs change, and the world grows old.

“Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivereth from death” (verse 2). Many have proved the worthlessness of the pursuit of sin, too late to profit much by a changed course.

Everyone of these treasures of wisdom calls for our study, and for the needed application to one’s own life. We may notice prudence, righteousness, integrity, love, wise speech, laying up knowledge, the labor of the righteous, the desire of the righteous, the hope of the righteous and the way of the Lord, among the subjects of these proverbs; as well as their opposites, such as sleeping in harvest time, hatred, forsaking reproof, the want of understanding, the expectation of the wicked.

The proverbs are all practical, suited for the needs of everyday life. They tell of trust in God, of His interest in the righteous, of right and wrong conduct under all circumstances. From them, each of us may gather much wisdom for our so widely different circumstances in life.

Proverbs 11

In examining these chapters let us bear in mind that what they contain is not merely the wisdom of a great king, but the wisdom of God communicated through Solomon (2 Chronicles 1:7-ll; 9:22-23). Every “proverb” calls for our study as designed of God for His children’s help and blessing, though we can refer to a few of them in these lessons only.

Verse 1, applied literally, tells the tradesman he must give good measure, but it is a word for everyone. God is just; should His people have a lower standard ?

Pride is found in everyone by nature; it was the cause of Satan’s downfall (1 Timothy 3:6). It leads to shame in the day of judgment, if not before. With the lowly, or modest, those who have no confidence in the flesh (to use a New Testament expression, Philippians 3:3), is wisdom obtained from the knowledge of God through His Word.

More than lowliness or modesty is however, necessary for a clean, good life, integrity, uprightness or righteousness is needed in full measure, and of this a number of verses in chapter 11 (and others following) treat. The integrity of the upright guideth them (verse 3); righteousness delivereth from death (verse 4); the righteousness of the perfect maketh plain his way (verse 5); the righteous is delivered out of trouble (verse 8); through knowledge—instruction received from God—are the righteous delivered (verse 9); he that soweth righteousness bath a sure reward now, (verse 18)—as well as in eternity; the righteous shall be requited (or repaid) on the earth (verse 31). Thus has God declared concerning those who love Him.

To lowliness and uprightness of heart and life is added understanding (verse 12); of great value in the believer's life is this gift of God,—to know Him well through His Word, the Bible; divinely given intelligence enables the submissive Christian to trace the path of Christ through the world, and in some measure to walk in it. He will keep apart from both greater and lesser evils in the world, holding his peace on occasion, and again faithfully concealing that which is unprofitable or damaging to tell concerning others (verses 13-14). What important lessons God's Word teaches!

A great contrast is contained in verse 16, in the gracious woman's retaining honor (freely given her), and the violent person's retaining riches in selfish greed. God is a discerner of hearts (Hebrews 4:12), as these proverbs constantly disclose. He sees within.

Verse 20: They that are of a froward (perverse) heart are abomination to the Lord, but such as are upright in their way are His delight.

What contrast is again seen in verse 23, where the two classes of humanity, "the righteous" and "the wicked," are shown in the springs or sources of their actions, which only God fully knows.

Verses 24 and 25 encourage the saint of God to use the means given to him for the help and blessing of others, "scattering" yet increasing in the truest wealth, for the liberal soul (literally, the blessing soul) shall be made fat, and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.

Proverbs 12

In the first verse “instruction” is really discipline, training under the faithful and gracious hand of our God. He has set Himself to a blessed work which will not be finished until we are taken out of the world altogether. (See Titus 2:14; Ephesians 5:26; Hebrews 12:5-10; 1 Corinthians 11:32). All of the children of God may thus undergo a preparatory work here, for their own blessing as well as His glory. All the principles of an acceptable life before Him are set out in this book for our help and guidance.

A good man, one who learns and profits by the discipline of which verse 1 speaks, obtains favor of the Lord. Scripture affords us example of this (see Genesis 4:4; 6:8, 9; 13:14-17; 39:2, 21-23; Daniel 1:9, 17; 6:22, 28, and many other passages).

God has laid down a rule from which there is no swerving, in verse 3: A man shall not be established by wickedness, though wickedness abounds in these times, and abounded long before Solomon's day. Look back over the history of mankind, of any nation: What ruler, what government founded upon wickedness has continued very long? And looking forward, what of that approaching day when the King of Kings shall reign, putting down all authority and power that dares dispute His title?

Verse 7 is best translated, "Overthrow, the wicked and they are no more, but the house of the righteous shall stand." We may link this with verse 19: "The lip of truth shall be established forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment," and with verse 28: "In the way (or path) of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death." Upon this solid foundation of God's truth, the believer takes his stand content to wait God's time, when He will fully and finally vindicate His Word.

Sound instruction, particularly for young men and young women, setting out from the home of their childhood, abounds in the Proverbs. How marked is the distinction between the two classes of persons which they continually set forth. Truly the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he that is wise hearkeneth unto counsel (verse 15).

May God graciously preserve our young people from the evils of today!

The coming of the Lord is most unmistakably near, and Satan is busier than ever, no doubt knowing that the time must be short.

Proverbs 13

A wise son heareth his father’s instruction;. but, we may say this is not much seen in our day! True, and the consequences of slighting the parents’ authority and advice are very evident in the world today, too.

Again we have a chapter full of forcible contrasts, pointing out in nearly every verse the way of life and happiness; and the way of sin and death. Note that the soul of the diligent shall be made fat (verse 4). May God stir up His people to redeem the time.

Righteousness keeps (preserves) him that is upright in the way; but wickedness overthrows the sinner (verse 6). Thus a man is consciously or unconsciously building for the future, for good or for evil. As he shall have sown, so shall he also reap, for God declares it.

Verse 7 is rightly read “There is that feigneth himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.” In a spiritual sense this is illustrated by the address to Laodicea (Revelation 3:17), and that to Smyrna (Revelation 2:9), but we do not doubt that the immediate application is to the natural life. Pretence and reality are in contrast.

Verse 13 contains an important principle with regard to God’s Word;

“Whoso despiseth the Word shall be destroyed” (more correctly translated, shall be held accountable by it); but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded!” The Bible is God’s Word, and they who make light of it, do so at their peril; contrariwise, they who walk in its light are blessed in the way. So the law for teaching) of the wise is a fountain of life, to turn away from the snares of death (verse 14). And poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction, but he that regardeth reproof shall be honored (verse 18).

Does not verse 19 point to the Lord’s statement to Nicodemus in John 3: “Ye must be born again” ? Verse 20 conveys a warning to the young (and the old, too) to avoid the company of sinners, while pointing to the gain from keeping company with the wise, i.e., those who have wisdom from God.

It is a modern thought that a child should be allowed to develop without any attention from his parents. Has the present astonishing growth of youthful crime, the prisons and penitentiaries now filled with those barely into their twenties, nothing to do with the new ideas?

Christian parents may well conclude that what God has said in the Proverbs about the training of children is still the best. “He that spareth his rod, hateth his son; but he that loveth him seeketh him early (or earnestly) with discipline” (verse 24 literally translated).

Proverbs 14

Verse 1. Wisdom builds; folly plucks down. We are living in an age of folly masquerading as wisdom, an unconscious return of the modern world to the state portrayed in Romans 1:28-32.

True of our own day is verse 2: “He that walketh in his uprightness feareth the Lord, but he that is perverted in his ways despiseth Him.”

Verse 6. Scorners are on every hand, seeking wisdom but not finding it. They are not unlike the five foolish virgins of Matthew 25, who went away to buy, but never got what they needed, and are of the same class as the mockers of 2 Peter 3, who, walking according to their own lusts are saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? for all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”

Verse 12. There is still, in 1932, a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof, God solemnly warns, is the ways of death. Such leave God out of their thoughts, reject the Bible which shows their folly, and continue on the broad road which leads to destruction.

The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to turn away from the snares of death (verse 27). The Christian is safe, saved, happy; as the hymn says,

“Death and judgment are behind him;

Grace and glory are before.”

The righteous trusteth, even in his death (verse 32); his confidence is in God, and he can now say, since Christ has died and is raised again and at the right hand of God,

“I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38. What heights and depths of grace!

Wisdom rests in the heart of the intelligent (verse 33); the believer (for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom) has the true knowledge of God, the assurance of salvation, is at rest about his soul’s eternal destiny. The foolish, on the other hand, have no depth; their trust is in themselves like a ship fast drifting on the rocks with its anchor on board. The fault with those who know Christ as their own Saviour and own Him as their Lord, is that they do not apply themselves to learning and practicing what will please Him. The Bible tells us what is pleasing to Him. Shall we not seek out this true wisdom for ourselves?

Proverbs 15

How practical, how suited to everyday and to the particular circumstances which may engage us at any time, are the Proverbs!

Verses 1, 2, and 4 give the light of God’s Word on the use of the tongue, so often in trouble. (See also James 3:13-18).

Verse 3 is one of a number of passages about the eyes of the Lord. They are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Sobering thought! No voice is heard, but the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, see everything. They looked upon the world of Noah’s time, before the flood (Genesis 6:8); they rested upon the land He had chosen for Israel’s possession (Deuteronomy 11:12), and upon that nation early and late in its Old Testament history (Exodus 3:7, 9; Jeremiah 52:2); they searched the whole earth when Israel had been carried away to Assyria and Babylon (Zechariah 4:10), as not long before the captivity of the two tribes when their king Asa heard from the lips of Hanani the seer,

“The eyes of the Lord run to and from throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him” (2 Chronicles 16:9. See also Job 34:21; Psalm 34:15; 1 Peter 3:12).

Verse 8. The sacrifice of the wicked is conscienceless, or in hypocrisy or deceit (See chapter 21:27, and Psalm 51:17). But the prayer of the upright is God's delight,—how cheering to the troubled saint! Happiness and wealth are not necessarily companions (verses 16-17), but godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Timothy 6:6).

Verse 20: A godly son honors his parents, but the wicked, without natural affection often despise their mothers (2 Timothy 3:2, 3).

Verse 11 is solemnizing, though the words are few. Eternity, the dead and the living, and God's all seeing eyes—and a day of final judgment is to come!

Proverbs 16

Verse 1 is better translated “The purposes of the heart are of man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” We may link this with verse 9: “A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps,” and verse 33: “The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof (or whole decision) is of the Lord.”

Nothing happens without God; somewhere in the course of things, however self-willed, or heedless of consequences we may be, He will enter the believer’s path,—and the unbeliever’s too, for He is sovereign.

In the day that Adam and Eve sinned, God announced His purpose to overcome the power of Satan, and in faith our first parents heard and believed it.

Abraham following his natural sight, went down into Egypt, forsaking the path of faith, but God so ordered his circumstances that he returned, chastened and blessed.

Jacob brought upon himself much sorrow by his selfish and deceitful course, but God brought him, through letting him suffer for his wrong doing, into the unclouded enjoyment of His favor.

Pharaoh, without the fear of God, became the willing tool of Satan in fighting against the Omnipotent One, and by and by God entered and hardened his heart. His forbearance had reached its full limit.

The Scriptures give many more examples of God’s entering into a man’s life and ordering his circumstances, if we have but eyes to see it, examples abound all around us today.

Has God His right place in your plans and purposes, and mine? Do we habitually. so to speak, invite Him to guide us with His counsel; or are we careless of Him and of what concerns Him, and so He must interfere, perhaps through painful experiences for us, to bless us at the last ? (Study verses 2 to 9 in this connection).

Verse 4, it will be noted, should be read with verses 5 and 6: God is not the source of evil (See Romans 1:18 to 2:11).

The king (verse 10 and following) is God’s representative in the government of the world, looked upon as acting in God’s fear. Solomon was, in the earlier part of his reign, a ruler according to God’s design, as was David his father. The later kings of Israel and of Judah, with few exceptions, departed far from God, and in the books of Kings and Chronicles they, rather than their subjects, are held responsible and judged for it. (See for example 1 Kings 14:7-14; 2 Chronicles 33:2-9).

Verse 20 in the revised version is an excellent motto for the believer’s home:

“He that giveth heed to the Word shall find good; and whoso confideth in Jehovah, happy is he.” Space will not permit commenting on more of the proverbs in this chapter which are full of wisdom for our earthly path.

Proverbs 17

Many have had occasion to prove the truth of verse 1, and of verse 3, each in its season.

Verse 3 shows the purpose of trial, sometimes grievous to the believer: it is to purge away the dross. (See 1 Peter 1:5-7).

There are certain marks of evildoers, and quite different characteristics of those who are wise, who fear God, and these marks and characteristics are plainly set forth in the Proverbs. Verse 4: The evildoer gives heed to iniquitous lips; the liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue. Verse 20: He that hath a froward (perverse) heart findeth no good. Verse 10: A reproof entereth more (deeply) into a wise (or understanding) man, than a hundred stripes into a fool, and verse 27: He that hath knowledge spareth his words, and a man of under standing is of an excellent (or cool) spirit.

Verse 9: “He that covereth transgression seeketh love,” tells of a trait of character much to be admired, yet the thought of our blessed God who has found, at infinite cost, a way to cover sin and forgive transgression (Psalm 32:1-2), leads us to consider that which shall fill our hearts forever,—His amazing grace.

Verse 17 tells what a friend is: and a true brother a good thing for us each to remember for application to our own selves, for where we fail is that something comes in between us and our friend, and the love that was there fades away. Of but one Friend, our Saviour God, is it true that He loves us at all times.

Verse 20: “He that hath a perverse heart findeth no good” seems to fit those who scoff at the Bible and at Christians. They never find any good, and they continue to spend money for that which is not bread (Isaiah 55:2), and their labor for that which does not satisfy.

Verses 2, 21 and 25 speak of sons who cause shame, fools, in the language of Scripture.

How many a parent since Solomon has had grief and bitterness over a son or daughter who rejected the earnest counsels abundantly given, and lived for folly. Any such sorrowing parents who may read these lines, the writer would affectionately commend to God, that their prayers and supplications might be constantly ascending to Him, making request that in His own time, and by His own way, the wanderer may be brought back.

Proverbs 18

Verse 1 speak's of one who refuses the true wisdom. The marginal reading is better than the text: He that separateth himself seeketh according to (or seeketh his pleasure). It is not God or the things of God that he seeks, but what will please himself.

The fool in verses 2, 6 and 7 is a self-confident person: how many there are today! They have no delight in understanding; they like to contend, but only show their vanity, their entire emptiness of real wisdom.

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower, and the righteous runs into it and is set in a high retreat” (verse 10).

“How good is the God we adore,

Our faithful, unchangeable Friend

Whose love is as great as His power,

And knows neither measure nor end.”

So read the lines of a familiar hymn reflecting the truth of God’s Word.

“Safe in Christ, the weakest child,

Stands in all God’s favor.”

Blest is the trouble that drives us to God for safety and help.

Verse 15. Intelligence, knowledge and wisdom spoken of in the Proverbs are in connection with the true knowledge of God. Having through His Word reached our consciences, so that we have seen ourselves as guilty, undone, hell deserving sinners: and then spoken to our hearts, comforting us with the testimony of His love,—love which now flows from a Father’s heart to us as His beloved children, He would occupy our minds in an ever increasing knowledge of Him, of His abounding grace, and of His purposes in connection with the Son of His love in whom we have obtained an inheritance.

Here we sadly fail to make use of God's gifts; too easily we are content with our passport to glory, not seeking to learn more than the knowledge of the forgiveness of our sins.

The closing verse of our chapter speaks of a Friend who never fails those who know Him. The new translation is so much better than the King James version that I shall give it here,

“A man of many friends (or companions) will come to ruin, but there is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” How blessed are we who know and trust Him.

“Earthly friends may fail and leave us,

One day soothe, the next day grieve us,

But this Friend will ne’er deceive us,

O how He loves!”

Proverbs 19

The first verse gives us the opinion of one of earth’s richest, (and certainly its wisest man; but it is after all, the judgment of the Holy Spirit; it is this that gives the Proverbs their value, being part of the Word of God. Uprightness of character cannot be bought with money, but it is worth more than anything money can buy; it is gained through the knowledge of God.

Self-will (perverseness) and self-confidence (folly) of the latter part of the first verse, so common in our day, do not come from God. He would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). This is the best and truest knowledge for the soul (verse 2).

He that hasteth with his feet sins (or, makes false steps); it is a mark of the foolish to act without thinking soberly, without counting the cost. (See verses 20, 23, 27 and 29 in this connection). Unheeding the solemn and urgent warnings of death and judgment contained in the Word of God, the majority? of mankind are hasting after pleasure, after power, or what they consider success in some other direction. But few gain their object, and when the prize is won, it is short-lived and unsatisfying, and wasted effort as a preparation for that eternity which lies before each of us.

So it is that the foolishness, or folly, of man distorts his way, and his heart is irritated against God (verse 3 ). What a picture of worldly life is found in verses 4, 6 and 7. Wealth addeth many friends, but the poor is separated from his friend.

“Earthly friends,” as the old hymn says, “may fail or leave us, but this Friend (our Saviour-God) will ne’er deceive us; O, how He loves !”

He is the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother (chapter 18:24), and among those who trust Him are many Christians whose friendship is not changed by either riches or poverty.

“Delight” in verse 10 is rather good living or luxury, and in verse 14 the New Translation is to be preferred:

“House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from Jehovah.” Verse 18 is better read: “Chasten thy son, seeing there is hope; but set not thy soul upon killing him”—a warning not to carry punishment too far.

In verse 22 “desire” is charm, and in verse 24 read, “A sluggard burieth his hand in the dish, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again.”

All of this chapter (as with all of the Proverbs) is full of weighty instruction. As each verse expresses a different truth, we cannot in our limited space comment upon many of them. Attention is called particularly to verses 16, 17, 21, 23 in addition to those mentioned.

Proverbs 20

We thank God for the clear light the Proverbs shed upon the ways that are safe for the Christian and right in His sight. He who governs his conduct by the wisdom of this book will never fail.

Here in our chapter today are warnings against the consequences of indulgence in drink (verse 1); of incurring the anger of rulers (verse 2); of laziness (verse 4); of falsehood (verse 17); about talebearers (verse 19); about recompensing evil (verse 22).

In connection with verse 2 see the opening verses of Romans 13. Bearing in mind verse 3 will save much regret. The New Translation makes the latter part of this verse read, “but every fool rusheth into it.”

Verse 4 shows the necessity for energy diligence, perseverance in natural things that are right; we are apt to be sluggards in much greater degree about spiritual things and the service of God. How easy it is to stay at home instead of going to the meeting, particularly if the weather is disagreeable! (See chapter 13:4.)

Verse 9. God has given to man great powers—mind, memory, love, conscience and many more,—but with all we possess, none can say in truth that he has made his heart clean, is pure from his sin by any act of his own. David in his great confession (Psalm 51) had learned a lesson when he besought God to purge him with hyssop and he should be clean; to wash him, and he should be whiter than snow.

It is not man's endeavor, but the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, that cleanses from all sin (1 John 1:7).

Twice found in this chapter is a word about false weights and measures; it was also in chapters 11 and 16. This is one of the fruits of a sinful nature in man, a hidden dishonesty, perhaps never suspected by the customers of the storekeeper, but known to God.

Verse 27. It is a great mercy from God to man, that we have the light of His Word—the Bible—to shine not only around us, but within us, exposing whatever in the heart and mind is displeasing to Him.

God made man a three-part being,—spirit, and soul and body (1 Thess. 5:23), —and we know from Genesis 2:7 that a special gift was given to man from God, and a link was formed with Him.

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Genesis 2:7. This was not given to the beasts.

Intelligence and judgment, which the animals have not, belong to the spirit; while the affections, desires, appetites, etc. belong to the soul, as the scriptures in many places declare. (See also Romans 8:16.) It is in man's spirit that God is known, and thus His Word is received.

Proverbs 21

Great comfort it is, often, to the child of God, to know that God overrules the hearts of those in authority; if it were not so, the path of the Christian would be involved with many difficulties and dangers, for the world knows not God and cares not for those who are His.

Verse 2. Man doing what is right in his own eyes, and God weighing, or pondering the hearts; this verse gives us a true picture of the course of this age, and lets us know that the unseen and almost forgotten Creator, Saviour and Judge is taking notice and will in due time reveal Himself. Sinner, beware! (Revelation 20:12.) Child of God, be watchful of yourself (Romans 14:12).

Verse 4. The plowing of the wicked is rather the “lamp”, or the “tillage”, of the wicked. Lofty eyes and a proud heart are the fruit of the sinful nature within.

Verse 6 compares, O so pointedly! One of the great aims of man lost and ruined by the fall, with the fearful prospect of eternity under the judgment of God. (See 1 Kings 21.) When one thinks of eternity for such as forsake the true knowledge of God, life is “a vanity tossed to and fro,” or more simply translated in modern speech, a fleeting breath.

Verse 13 is one of many telling of God’s concern for the poor. Sound principles for the believer’s conduct fill the verses of this chapter; everyone deserves our close consideration.

Verse 15 is a pointed observation: the righteous man finds joy in doing what is right, but the workers of iniquity would be ruined if they did as the righteous do; they need a change of heart.

Another subject several times mention ed in the Scriptures is the need for watch fulness about the tongue (verse 23). With this little member (James 3:5) almost every one offends at one time or another. We know of but one who never had to regret or apologize for a single word: the Lord, our perfect Example. (See 1 Peter 2:22, 23; John 18:23.)

Sacrifices, however costly, or whatever else may be done, professedly in the name of the Lord, are valued by Him according to the heart of the offerer (verses 3 and 27). The outward display may deceive one’s fellowmen, but not God, to whom the sacrifice of the wicked is abomination.

Verse 30 today is another testimony to the unchangeable purpose of our God. There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against Him. The devil’s wicked plans will all prove unavailing when the day of the Lord is present.

Proverbs 22

A man of unbounded wealth (2 Chronicles 1:12; 9:13-28) tells his judgment about riches in verse 1; we do well to take heed to it as the word of God, for the love of money is a root of every evil and godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Timothy 6:10 and 6).

In verse 3 we observe an apt picture of the Christian and of those who neglect salvation' (Hebrews 2:3). The Christian has been prudent; foreseeing the evil to come, he has fled for refuge (Hebrews 6.18-20) to Christ whom God has provided for the guilty (see Numbers 35:9 and following, and Romans 5:8, 9), there finding that there is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). The “simple” refuse to be alarmed about the wrath to come (Matthew 3:7, John 3:36, Romans 1:18, Colossians 3:6), and pass on, and are punished.

If verse 3 gives the choice between the narrow path which leads to life eternal and the broad road so many are choosing, which leads to judgment, verses 4 and 5 make plain for the young Christian,—and the old one too,—how to live in a world which is full of snares for the unwary. He that keeps his soul holds himself far from them.

Verse 6 (see also verse 15) is the scriptural guide for parents, with Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21. The present is a day of independence of authority and of neglect of home responsibilities, but the Christian who is wise will hold to God’s Word in regard to his children as well as to all else.

Though the practice of endorsing a friend’s note for payment of a debt is very common, it will be noticed that the Book of Proverbs several times speaks against it. as in verse 26.

Proverbs 23

Mighty words of wisdom for the daily life fill this chapter. How much we miss through neglecting the study of the Book of Proverbs! It furnishes a complete guide past the pitfalls and dangers, the rocks and shoals encountered in the voyage of life.

Wholesome is the advice given in the first verse, through divinely given know ledge of the frailty of poor fallen man. Many have been proving the truth of verse 5 in the present depression, having been reduced from plenty to poverty in a short time. Treasures laid up for ourselves in heaven are far more enduring investments,

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Matthew 6:19-21.

Verses 10-11. God will judge those who take advantage of others; ours is a day when there is much of the spirit of “might is right,” and the removal of the ancient landmark may be an easy way secretly to shift the boundary of my farm to take in land which is someone’s else. The “fields of the fatherless” speak of feeble folk, easily robbed, but their Redeemer is mighty and He will plead their cause with the oppressor.

Verse 12. By nature we do not like to be corrected; yet it is only by diligence in reading and study of the Scriptures, and by taking earnest heed to the ministry of servants of the Lord more intelligent in and acquainted with the Scriptures than ourselves, that we grow spiritually.

Verses 15-16, 24-25. Christian fathers and mothers are happy when they are able to see their children saved and growing in the Christian life.

Verses 17-18. .“All the day long,” not just at bed-time, kneeling in prayer, nor only on rising after a night’s rest. It is the believer’s privilege to be in the fear of the Lord all of the day, moment by moment. And “surely there is an end” (or result) or future. (Titus 2:12-14; Colossians 3:23, 24; Hebrews 6:10-12; Philippians 3:20, 21.)

Verse 23. That would be a poor bargain, to sell the truth and wisdom and instruction and intelligence, for the passing things of life. Nothing in this world could compensate for the loss of the fear of God and the enjoyment of His Word as the food of the soul and mind.

Verses 26-35 consider two of the world's attractions that have occasioned the ruin of many. It is only in God's Word that we learn the true character of evil. The "dek3 ditch" and "narrow pit" (verse 27), once fallen into are hard, if not impossible to escape. And by indulgence in sin, in things forbidden in the Word of God, the conscience is weakened, the sense of wrong is perverted, and the man (or woman) becomes a willing slave. Note the last words of the chapter,—buffeted and suffering because of drunkenness, but "I will seek it yet again." Such is man, with all his boasting and pride!

Proverbs 24

How good for the believer that he has the plain, simple, understandable Word of God for his help and guidance through life! Let us make more diligent use of it.

Verse 1. Evil men are often prosperous, and their troubles seem light, or at least they make light of them. We are warned against enjoying such, or wishing to be with them, because they are the wrong kind of companions for those who would please God.

Verses 3 and 4 in the figure of a house, set out the great importance of beginning right and going on right, God having freely proved the wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30; 2:6), understanding (Luke 24:45) , and knowledge (Romans 15:14) needed by the believer for his passage through life.

Verses 11, 12. Man's course since Cain has been marked by the open or the covered avowal concerning his fellows, "I am not my brother's keeper," and from this principle of fallen man the present depression is sprung. In these verses the opposite, the divine principle is seen. I am to look with the deepest interest upon my fellow-men, to do what is in my power for them. Man being a sinner, and the wages of sin death, but the gift of God eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, we see in verses 11 and 12 the call of God to seek the salvation of all whom we can reach with the good news. With a direct commission of the highest order, the apostle Paul could say,

"Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel." 1 Corinthians 9:16. O, for more earnest seeking the salvation of the lost in these closing days!

Verse 29 speaks of another principle of man's, but for the believer it is "Say not!"

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (Luke 6:31), is the language of our blessed Lord concerning ways that are pleasing to Him. Verses 30-34 are, of course, the truth concerning our natural lives, but a lesson is contained in them for the Christian. Are the things of God, things which concern Him, receiving due attention from us His children? Is our "vineyard" all grown over with "thistles and nettles," instead of the "vines" being carefully tended and cultivated? Is our "stone wall", intended to keep all intruders out, all broken down? Amusements, filling the mind with the literature of the day, the pursuit of business,—these divert the Christian from the Bible and prayer, from the prayer meeting, and make him barren (or idle) and unfruitful as regards the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (See 1 Peter 1:1-11.)

Proverbs 25

Only God could justly conceal (verse 2). This is, in its fullest expression, the glory of His grace (Ephesians 1:3- 14). Psalm 32 speaks of the blessed portion of him whose sin is covered, and Hezekiah in Isaiah 38:17 says,

"Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back," speaking of his deliverance from the pit of destruction, as due to the love of God. Though many Old Testament passages speak of the covering or putting away by God of the sins of the repentant, He could not tell the full story of His grace until upon the cross His righteous demands were fully met in the sin-atoning death of the holy Sufferer, His beloved Son (Romans 1;1.4; 8, 11-25.)

Verses 2-5. We reflect from these verses upon this, that the rulers of this world, no matter how great, fall far short of Him whom we worship as God and Father. in Him was love; in them only Power (verse 2). In Him we can fully confide, assured that all will be well; in them is no such confidence (verse 3). In His throne is infinite holiness (Isaiah 6, Revelation 4); in them is much imperfection—sin is present (verses 4-5).

Verse 6. It is a trait of man without the knowledge of God to push into the best place. (Luke 14:7, Mark 12:39.) What an example of another spirit we have in Christ! (See Philippians 2:5-8.)

Verse 21 is again the opposite of man by nature, and, hard for man to accept. We should prefer, naturally, to let those who have ill-treated us go hungry and thirsty. When we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son (Romans 5:10), and this is a theme that shall be our delight eternally.

In verse 23 the translation is defective: "driveth away" should be read "bringeth forth," and so the latter part of the verse becomes plain.

Verse 25. Once as poor lost sinners we heard good news from a far country, even heaven itself; it was a message of redeeming love. And not only has He so blessed us that we can speak of songs in the night (Job 35:10, Psalm 42:8, Acts 16:25), but He has said, "Surely I come quickly," to which our hearts respond with fervent desire, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" Surely we have good news from a far country.

Proverbs 26

Three words in the Hebrew, translated "fool", are used in the Book of Proverbs; the one occurring eleven times in chapter 26 is kesil, meaning self-confident. Honor is as unsuited to such as snow is out of place in summer and as rain at harvest time (verse 1).

In verse 2 the preferred reading is "As the sparrow for flitting about, as the swallow for flying, so a curse undeserved shall not come." The sparrow and the swallow are also mentioned together in Psalm 84;3. The sparrow is a common bird in Palestine, flitting about all the time, as is its habit in the western countries; and the swallow roves about like a homeless wanderer, according to its nature. So, as a bird is known by its habitual ways, where there is a curse, there must have been a cause. Man likes to think himself good, but he is self-deceived (Romans 1:18 and 3:23).

Verses 4 and 5 appear to be contradictory, but they are not. The purpose of the instruction in them is so to answer the self-confident that he may be helped, and that one may not become like him. God will give wisdom for this. In verse 9 "parable" is correctly "proverb."

Verse 10 appears difficult. It will be seen that words have been added (in italics) by the translators of three hundred years ago. The best translation is believed to. be: "A man roughly worketh every one: he both hireth the fool and hireth passers-by," The Hebrew verb translated "rewardeth" is generally written "hireth, (as for wages) elsewhere in the King James version. The meaning is that when employing people, a man will not be certain who will prove valuable and who of those he hires will not be; God is not referred to at all.

Verse 27 is another of God's rules regarding man: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" is the form in which it appears in Galatians 6:7. There are many examples, both good and bad, of this in the Scriptures: for instance, Cain, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Caleb, David. It is well to remember that we each (whether saved or lost), are going to get back according to our deeds, according to the way we have spent our time. This is entirely apart from the salvation of the soul. That question once settled can never be brought up again, thank God! (John 3:16 and 10:28.)

Proverbs 27

God has made this Book of Proverbs a wonderful guide for the young believer, and the old believer too, on the pathway of life.

In connection with verse 1, turn to Luke 12:16-21, where we find a contented farmer boasting to himself of tomorrow, a morrow that did not dawn for him. When the sun rose the next day he was gone where time is not reckoned. How solemn, and how unexpected, that call to another world for which he had not made preparation!

Luke 17:28-29 also gives a picture of some to whom "tomorrow" meant just another day like today. The people of Sodom bought, sold, planted and builded, counting on many tomorrows; but the dawn of the day when Lot went out of Sodom was shortly followed by unsparing, devouring judgment, and they and all that they labored for disappeared in it.

James 4:13-16 addresses a word about "tomorrow" to believers.

Verse 2 is a companion passage to verse 1. Boasting of tomorrow is often linked with self-confidence and self-praise. (Compare 2 Cor. 10:17, 18; Galatians 6:3; Luke 14:11).

In verses 3 and 4 four of the fruits of man's corrupt nature, as it was then and is yet, are brought together:—the heavy vexation of a fool, cruel fury, outrageous anger, and jealousy. Centuries have rolled by; empires have risen, flourished and decayed; fashions have changed; education has increased, etc., etc., but man at heart is still a slave of Satan and of his own lusts as he has been ever since the fall (Genesis 3; Romans 1:18-32). In amazing condescension God has come down to man who has no strength to help himself. (See Romans 5:6; John 3:14-16).

Verses 5 and 6 go together; open rebuke is better than hidden love; faithful are the wounds of one who loves, but the kisses of an enemy are profuse.

"Whom the Lord loves He chastens: and scourges every son whom He receives." Hebrews 12:6. His is perfect love. See Matt. 16:23; Mark 16:14; Luke 24:25; John 14:9 for instances of the Lord's correcting those He loved, faithfully but in tender love.

We bless God for His active love for us, and when in eternity we review each his own path here below, we shall understand better than we have here, how there was love behind each trial, connected with each sorrow. Let us beware lest we murmur or rebel against the circumstances, sometimes hard to understand, which befall us, remembering that

"A Father's heart will never cause His child a needless tear."

Verse 12 repeats the important warning given in chapter 22:3.

Verse 13 is another reminder that one should not become surety for a stranger.

Verse 16 may be read, "Whosoever will restrain her, restraineth the wind and his right hand encountereth oil."

"Hell" in verse 20 is a mistranslation, and should be read "Sheol," corresponding to the Greek word "Hades" in the New Testament, which has also been mistakenly translated "hell," but refers to the unseen state in which the dead are. (See Luke 16:23; Psalm 16:10; Revelation 1:18, and 20:13, none of which refer to the place of eternal punishment called the lake of fire in Revelation 19:20 and 20:10, 14, 15). All who have died in faith are with Christ (see Philippians 1:21-23).

"Destruction" in verse 20 of our chapter is not annihilation, and never means that in the Scriptures; here it appears to refer to the body as coming to decay when death occurs.

Verse 21, closing part, should be read "so let a man be to the mouth that praiseth him." The silver must be tried in the fining pot and the gold in the furnace until at length the dross and everything worthless is purged away. (See John 15:2.) It is that which cheers and encourages the tried saint of God.

Proverbs 28

Verse 1. What a difference a bad conscience makes! Verse 3. God does not forget the poor, though we are very apt to think of ourselves first, and perhaps only. See how the poor are in God's thoughts in verses 6, 8, 11, 15 and 27.

"The poor always ye have with you." John 12:8. (See James 2:14-16.)

Verse 5. Note that it is "they who seek the Lord," who understand the judgments of God. The youngest believer knows that God does right, always, and those who are in the secret of His purposes are not necessarily people of great learning. But it cannot be said that all Christians make it part of their daily life to "seek the Lord." Verse 11 shows that the poor man that has knowledge-the light shed by the Word of God on the world, and the right way through it-searches out the rich man with his boasted wisdom.

The truth of verse 8 has been proved over and over again. Ill-gotten riches take wings, sooner or later.

Verse 9 comes from God, Who knows the heart. He is not deceived. His ear is always open to the prayer of faith, but drawing nigh with the lips while the ear turns away from hearing His Word is abomination to Him.

Verse 12 is better translated, "When the righteous triumph there is great glory; but when the wicked rise, men conceal themselves." (See verse 28.)

Verse 13 tells an important principle with God. He is ready to show mercy to whosoever confesses and forsakes his sins, and whoever he be that hides his sins shall not prosper. Sin cannot be got rid of by concealing it. See Cain trying to cover his fearful sin in Genesis 4:9-11.

An excellent motto for the Christian is in verse 14, "Happy is the man that feareth alway." Abiding in the fear of the Lord, seeking to please Him in all of our ways is the way of happiness. And, on the contrary part, he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief. This is a word for Christians too.

Those who are expecting the Lord's coming—the true Christian hope (Romans 8:23-25; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18) do not look for long life here, yet if granted (verse 16 and 1 Peter 3:10-12), what opportunity may be given for spending it usefully in the service of the Lord and of His people! It should be with us all who love Him, as with the apostle in his letter to the Philippians (chapter 1:21), "to me to live is Christ!"

Verses 18, 20, 25, 26, 27 shed various light upon the important principle that the life of faith has great value in the sight of God. Every verse in these chapters is important and should be studied with profit.

Proverbs 29

Verse 1. A solemn warning stands at the head of our chapter. "Often reproved," but the reproof unheeded; then sudden destruction—overtaken by the judgment of God, and that "without remedy." The word translated "suddenly" in this verse has the sense of "any instant." He has no "lease on life" and God may call him at any moment. Has there not been long patience? Yes, the Epistle to the Romans (chapter 2:3-5) speaks of man's despising the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, and his having become hardened, impenitent. God has but one way to offer poor rebellious man, and that is, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." After death the judgment is the fearful prospect of the despiser of God's grace.

Verse 5. The natural man likes to be flattered; flattery is a very successful weapon in the hands of the worldly, to get what they want. But when we turn to the Scriptures we find that no flattery deceived the Lord, as He passed on His way from Bethlehem's manger to Calvary's cross. See Him in Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, and in Luke 11:27, 28,

In verse 6, the righteous person is preserved from the snare; the cause of the poor has a place in his life, (verse 7); is wise turn away anger which might have destroyed a city (verse 8). After this fashion our God has plainly set out in His; Word the holy and separate walk becoming His people.

Verse 13. The poor and the deceitful (it is really the oppressor here, or as in the margin, the usurer) meet together before God; He gives light to both. Thus is the power of God manifested in changing lives, so that the poor man will have sufficient, and the oppressor (such no more) still has enough for himself. This is according to the Word (2 Cor. 8:14-15).

Verses 15 and 17 are contrary to modern thought, but this only shows that the thoughts of the moderns are wrong. We are born with an evil nature, and a firm hand to guide the young into right paths is necessary. We who are older bless God for the rod and reproof of our parents that kept us out of much that would have brought sorrow and shame to them, and worse things to us.

Wickedness now abounds, but the wicked will fall, and the righteous will see it (verse 16). In the day when Satan introduced sin into the world, he learned that the woman's Seed would crush his head. Now nothing delays the full display of that action but the ingathering of a few more precious souls who must be saved. Soon the Lord shall descend from heaven, and we who believe in Him shall rise to meet Him, to go with Him to the heavenly home long prepared for us; presently thereafter the judgments will begin which are portrayed in the Revelation, culminating in the judgment of the great white throne (Revelation 20:11).

Verse 18 should be read, "Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he that keepeth the law." God in Old Testament times spoke to men in visions (see Job 33:14-17, and 1 Samuel 3:1, New Translation), but now with the Bible, men reject God because they do not see constant examples of His power. (See 2 Peter 3:3-15.) Unmoved by the unbelief and lack of restraint in the world, the God-fearing Christian keeps "the law" which is for him the whole Word of God, the full revelation of His mind and will, given to us since the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 25 is a needed word to encourage God's children. (See 2 Timothy 1:7-10, and Romans 1:16-18.)

Verse 27 tells of a difference in life and nature between the world and the believer, in connection with which, refer to James 4:4; John 15:18, 20.

Proverbs 30

The answers to the questions which Agur asked in verse 4 are to be found in John 3:13; Jeremiah 51:15, 16; Psalm 135:6, 7; Job 38 and John 1:18. In verse 5 he acknowledges the Word of God, that it is pure, or tried. There is nothing like it,—the Book of Books; on it we rest our hopes for eternity; in it we have found the matchless story of the grace of a Saviour God; heavenly light and heavenly, spiritual food fill its pages. It is a living Book, and it tells of the living God who is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him.

Verse 7 is rather “ask” than “demand,” and the request has the fear of God in it. He would be kept in a happy sense of dependence upon Him, distrustful of self. We may compare this passage with the expression in Philippians 3:3,

“We .... worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” This and the verses following set out the Christian’s position and prospect.

Verse 10 is in the New Translation, Speak not too much about a servant to his master, lest he curse thee and thou be held guilty.” The master may be expected to defend his servant if too much is said about him.

Verses 11 to 14 mirror the generation of those who reject God and His Christ today. Without natural affection, unthankful, unholy, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 2 Timothy 3 tells about them, and that they have a form of godliness or piety while denying the power of it.

Verses 15-16 go on to show that in this life, short of the knowledge of God, there is no satisfaction. Sheol (here, although translated the grave, is the spirit state, the unseen world) takes away by death the objects of affection. That is one sorrow, and another is the unanswered longing for children which some married couples experience. The elements, too, add their testimony to the human heart’s grief; there is no satisfaction here.

Verses 18-19 tell of four things that cannot be searched out,—inscrutable; the eagle in its flight far above the earth; the serpent beneath; the ship in its course which like the others leaves no path behind it; and the seductive arts of man, are surveyed in turn.

Next follow four things which are hard to bear with, intolerable, as people say,—a servant reigning; a vile person or fool when he is filled with meat; an odious woman when married; and a servant-maid who is heir to her mistress (verses 21-23).

This is followed by four creatures which in themselves are utterly weak, but God has provided amply for them: the ants, which provide their food in the summer; the rock badgers (the Syrian hydrax), which make their house in the cliff; the locusts, which go forth by bands; and the lizard, which was in kings’ palaces (verses 24-28).

Lastly are four stately creatures: the lion; the horse (perhaps the war-horse); the he-goat; and a king against whom none can rise up.

In all of these “fours” there are doubt less object lessons for the believer. Perhaps the course of this world, and of the believer in it, is set forth in them, beginning in the first of the series (verses 11-14). If so, the fifth one, verses 24-28, sets out the dependence of faith upon God.

Proverbs 31

Who king Lemuel was is not known; some have thought that Solomon is referred to; a prophecy is also attributed to Agur, chapter 30. This final chapter of the remarkable book we have been studying, and one hopes, with profit to each of us, begins with sound advice to a king.

He must not give his strength to women, but Solomon did this very thing (1 Kings 11:1-8). He should not drink wine nor desire strong drink. These are (verses 6-7) for one ready to perish, or bitter of soul, to restore him. (See chapter 20:1). The king must be ready to provide for the dumb, and for orphans (verse 8). He must judge righteously and justly (verse 9).

Verses 10 to 31 describe the busy life of a good wife and mother. One of the evils of the modern age (and they are many) is the giving up by wives and mothers of their true responsibilities and privileges in their homes. These verses, in the Hebrew were in acrostic form, the first letter of each verse following the Hebrew alphabet as do a number of the Psalms to which attention has been called.

The woman of worth here pictured has her husband's full confidence (verse 11); he is for her, as she is for him (verse 12). She does not grumble (verse 13). She rises while it is still dark and gives food to her household and the day's work to her maidens.

She is concerned with matters of business within her sphere (verse 16), and is a pattern of industry (verses 17-19). The afflicted and needy (we have before noticed that God does not forget them, and would have them cared for by His children) are given help (verse 20).

She prepares winter clothing for cold weather (verse 21); she makes clothing to sell (verse 24). But all these virtues, desirable as they are, would not be sufficient without moral and spiritual qualities. Divinely given wisdom, and upon her tongue the law of kindness (verse 26), with the testimony of her children and her husband, complete the picture.

May the study of this chapter prove a blessing to Christian women in this day. Favor (really gracefulness) is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Women in Old Testament days did not enjoy the equality with men which has been theirs since the dawn of Christianity in the world.

Ecclesiastes 1

This book, whose name means "preacher" or strictly, a "framer of assemblies," is in a marked way the opposite of the Proverbs. There God is owned: in fact it is the book of wisdom from God for man. But in the book we commence with today, we find man having his own experience on earth. It is an interesting fact to note in this connection, that the covenant name of God, Jehovah (translated generally The LORD in the ordinary Bible), is not once found in Ecclesiastes, though it is 87 times in Proverbs.

Solomon was used by God to write three books of which this is the second, and the purpose of this one is to show that it is vain for man to seek happiness in the world, ruined as it is by sin since our first parents listened to Satan in the garden of Eden. We may glance at the beginning of Ecclesiastes, and then at the end (chapter 12:13-14) to learn the conclusion that the writer reached,—that man, apart from any trace of knowledge of redemption cannot find rest or happiness in the world.

Bearing in mind, then, that Ecclesiastes is not wisdom from God for man, as in the Proverbs, but man's experience apart from the knowledge of God, we begin our study of this book. Fitly, at the beginning is the conclusion that all is vanity, indeed vanity of vanities. The dictionary defines vanity as "empty of real worth and of capacity to satisfy the more profound wants of human nature."

Verse 8 tells its own story of man seeking pleasure: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Solomon had applied his heart to seek and to search out by wisdom greater than anyone else had, concerning all that is done under the heavens (verse 13). He had seen all the works that are done under the sun, and he affirms that all is vanity and vexation of spirit (or pursuit of the wind, as in the New Translation). What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is wanting cannot be numbered (verse 15).

Pursuing his thought, Solomon declares that the knowledge of wisdom, and of madness and folly (to obtain happiness apart from God) is a striving after the wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow. Such is the best of man's experience, with the greatest wisdom ever known in man, can find here. How can man, an exile from paradise, find happiness in a ruined creation? (See Genesis 3:24; 4:16-22).

Ecclesiastes 2

Seeking to find happiness and rest, if that were possible apart from the knowledge of redemption, Solomon with his great wealth and power, and his wisdom too, tried mirth; but says he, I said of laughter, madness, and of mirth, what availeth it? He sought how to gain by wine, and how to lay hold on folly (verse 3), until he should see what might be good for the children of men, but pleasure does not satisfy.

He tried great works, houses, vineyards, gardens and parks (so read instead of "orchards") and planted trees in them of every kind of fruit; he made ponds of water to supply the trees (verses 4-6); but there was no satisfaction in such things.

He acquired servants and maidens, and had servants born in his house; he had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all that had been in Jerusalem before him; he gathered silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces, which we may suppose consisted of ivory, sandalwood, precious stones, spices, apes, peacocks and the like (1 Kings 10; 2 Chronicles 9); he got singers of both sexes, and a wife and concubines (for this is believed to be the correct reading of the last 8 words of verse 8). But these possessions gave no lasting joy.

He became great, and increased more than all that had been before him in Jerusalem, and his wisdom remained with him. He got whatever he wished for, and this in no half-hearted way (verse 10). And then he looked at all he had gained, and considered the labor he had put in to get it; and, behold, all was vanity and pursuit of the wind, and there was no profit under the sun.

Again he turns to consider wisdom and madness and folly; nothing that might lead to happiness without God does he miss (verse 12). He sees that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise man's eyes are in his head, and the fool walks in darkness, but one event happens to them all (verse 14). They died and are forgotten, the wise man even as the fool (verse 16).

Thinking of all this, he hated life, and he hated all his labor and toil because he must leave all his possessions to the man who should be after him, who might be a wise man or a fool (verses 17-19).

What, says he, will man have of all his labor, and of the striving (rather than vexation) of his heart, wherewith he has wearied himself under the sun? All his days are sorrows, and his travail vexation; even in the night his heart taketh no rest (verses 22-23).

He pauses to consider God, and decides that there is nothing good for man but eating and drinking and enjoying good. For God, he concludes, gives to those who are good in His sight wisdom, knowledge and joy, but to the sinner He gives travail (the hardest of labor) to gather and help up, that he may give to him that is good in God's sight.

We may surely thank God for this book, written to show to man the folly of trying to find happiness in the world. There is no true and abiding happiness apart from the knowledge of redemption through Christ.

Ecclesiastes 3

The experience of man apart from the knowledge of redemption is continued in this chapter. He concludes that there is a time for everything and every purpose under the heavens and, man must do each in its season: a time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to seek and a time to lose; and so on. And what profit is there in it for man (verse 9)?

God has made everything beautiful in its time, and since they desired not to know Him, He has set the world (the age) in their heart, so that man findeth not out from the beginning to the end the work that God doeth (verse 11).

See Romans 1, verses 18 and following, which tell how men turned from God, and, as they did not like (or did not think good) to have God in their knowledge, He gave them up to a reprobate mind, a mind void of moral discernment. It was His purpose that men should yet seek Him, and find Him (Acts 17:25-27), but the world by its wisdom has never known Him (1 Corinthians 2:11-14).

Verses 14 and 15 hold our attention: "I know that whatever God doeth, it shall be forever: there is nothing to be added to it, nor anything to be taken from it; and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him. That which is was long ago, and that which is to be, hath already been; and God requireth (or bringeth back) that which is past" (literally, "seeketh what is driven away").

God does not change, though man does. His Word unchangeably stands forever. It declares man's utter and irrecoverable ruin, but man will not admit it. It announces the riches of God's grace in the provision of a glorious Saviour and an eternal home for the redeemed; but man prefers his present lot, though he is told that the outcome will be the judgment of God for eternity. Solemn, too, is the consideration that God requires what is past. Man has a conveniently short memory concerning the evil he has done, but God will bring man to account for every idle word spoken. (Matt. 12:36.)

Ecclesiastes, we must again point out, is not the book of the wisdom of God for man here below, to guide the godly through a wicked world; this we had in the Proverbs. It is the book of man's greatest experience under the sun, apart from the knowledge of redemption. Accordingly there is no looking beyond death (verses 18-22). Men die, and beasts die. All go to one place (as far as man knows anything about it), since all are of the dust and return to dust. Yet there is a realization of something more, for verse 21 indicates that the spirit of man goes upward to God, and that this cannot be the case with the beasts. What becomes of man afterward, he does not know apart from the revelation of God. Thanks be to God, we who trust in the Lord Jesus know that death is not to be the portion of all.

"It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment and unto them that look for Him (Christ) shall He appear the second time without sin (apart from the sin question) unto salvation." Hebrews 9:27-28. All will not die (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17), and all believers who have died are with the Lord (Philippians 1:23; Acts 7:59). See John 5:28-29; 1 Corinthians 15:51-52; Romans 8:14-17, etc.

Ecclesiastes 4

We owe much to God for providing us with this wonderful treatise on life apart from Him. O, if the heedless, the pleasure seekers and the pursuers after power and wealth, would read and profit from this short book in which a man of unsurpassed wisdom and of unlimited wealth has written down that which he saw in the world, "under the sun."

He turns to consider all the oppressions that are done under the sun; the world has not changed for the better since Solomon's day, but rather for the worse. The tears of the oppressed who have no comforter are still being shed, though more than 29 centuries have elapsed since Ecclesiastes was written.

Man boasts, when it suits him, of brotherhood, declares that all men were created equal, and so forth; but such is the natural selfishness that greed for power, for wealth, for advantage of one sort or another, override all right principles on occasion.

Oppression has been practised since the dawn of time; Cain was the first oppressor, and the murderer of his brother (Genesis 4). Soon after Noah's family began to people the earth after the flood, Nimrod the mighty began to oppress his weaker brethren (Genesis 10:8).

Tears are not usually a subject for mention in the histories which men have compiled; God's Word is a faithful record, and its history is true. It may be interesting to know that 25 of the 39 Old Testament books speak of weeping, as do 13 of the 27 New Testament books. The first weeper mentioned in the Scriptures is Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian slave, and the mother of Ishmael (Genesis 21:16).

Blessed be God, there is day coming when oppressors will cease, and when the tears of His children will be dried by His hand (Revelation 21:4). Meanwhile we are in the world where Jesus wept, in the deep sympathy of His heart (John 11:35 ).

The New Translation (J.N.D.) makes the meaning of verse 4 clear:

"And I saw all labor, and all successor skilfulness) of work, that it is man's jealousy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and pursuit of the wind."

Is not the wise Solomon's judgment still the truth in 1932? Man tries to get an advantage over his fellows; competition, it is called, nowadays. What is it worth, in the light of eternity, in which we shall all soon be?

Verse 5 is the fool; only the believer is wise (verse 6). See 1 Timothy 6:6-10; 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12.

Verse 8 brings to our minds the unsaved, living for present advantage, but to ultimate loss.

Verses 9 to 12 are worldly wisdom, men join together in business for their advantage.

Verses 13 to 16 point again to the uncertainties of life, and to dissatisfaction, if this world be one's object.

Ecclesiastes 5

We must not forget the purpose of this book, plainly set out in chapter 1 and chapter 2:1-11. It is to show that man neither by wisdom, wealth nor power, can attain happiness.

In chapter 5 the thought of God is introduced, and we shall find God mentioned again and again to the close of the book. But He is not known as a Saviour, or as the Refuge of the burdened sinner, fleeing from the wrath to come. That would be quite outside of the scope of Ecclesiastes.

God then is owned (verse 1) though not trusted in for salvation. The sweet accents of the gospel of His grace find no place here. He is to be reverenced; one should draw near to hear, rather than to speak. Promises to Him are to be kept, and rash words to be avoided; He is to be feared (verse 7).

Though God permits the oppression of the poor, He knows what is going on, and we may conclude from verse 8 that He will take the reins of government again someday. Indeed, we know this to be true; He will judge the world in righteousness, and every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account of in the day of judgment. Meanwhile He causes all things to work together for good, no matter how different they may seem, to them that love Him (Romans 8:28).

The earth was intended to supply mares natural wants, and all are dependent upon it, even the man of power (verse 9), Yet there is no satisfaction in it. He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loves abundance, with increase (verse 10).

Verse 12 speaks a homely truth. The rich are much envied, but riches do not bring contentment. As a help to understanding verses 13-17, we quote verse 14 from the New Translation:

"Or those riches perish by some evil circumstance, and if he have begotten a son, there is nothing in his hand."

We turn with joy from this discouraging picture to Matthew 6:19-21, where is mentioned a bank (so to speak) which hard times and depression never affect.

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

In verses 18 to 20 the Preacher tells us that he has seen something that is not vanity and pursuit of the wind; he has seen it, but it is not a part of the world which he has been so critically examining. How is this contentment, this joy of the heart to be attained? The wisdom of this world cannot answer, and so Ecclesiastes is silent on this point. Only those who believe the Lord Jesus Christ know what contentment and peace and joy are.

Ecclesiastes 6

O be rich, is the earnest wish of many, perhaps of most of mankind. They think that if they had "plenty of money" they would be happy. And the Preacher considers again this goal of the natural mind.

A man might have riches, wealth and honor given him by God, and lack nothing for his soul that he desires, yet if God does not give him power to eat thereof, and it goes to a stranger to possess, what shall it profit the man once so blessed in a natural way? And this is frequent among men.

The wise man reflects that though a man beget a hundred sons, and live many years, but his soul be not filled with good, and also he has no burial, an untimely birth is better than he. Everything that the eye rests upon proclaims to the wise,

"There is no satisfaction here.

But how can the soul of a poor lost sinner be filled with good? His character is written out fearlessly and accurately in Romans 3:10-18, but Ecclesiastes gives no remedy. It only shows that man with every natural advantage is unable to find happiness in the world.. And death, which is the appointment of man, is feared all through life (Heb. 9:27-28).

"Do not all go to one place?" says the wisdom of man (verse 6). Yes, and no; some are to be "forever with the Lord" (1 Thess. 4:17), and others who chose not the way of salvation, are to spend eternity (solemn, fearfully solemn thought!) in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:15). Even now where the spirits of the departed are, there is a great gulf or chasm fixed between saved and lost (Luke 16:26).

With something suggestive of despair verses 7 to 12 complete this chapter:

"All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite (really, the soul) is not filled." We recall the words of Him who sat at the well of Sychar (John 4:13):

"Whoso drinketh of this water shall thirst again," for man is a sinner, and he cannot find peace and rest and joy apart from the saving knowledge of Christ.

What advantage, after all, has the wise above the fool? That which is, has already been named; what man is, is known, and that he cannot contend with Him that is mightier than he. Many things increase vanity; what is man advantaged by all that is spread out to allure him? All true, but man cannot find a remedy for this.

As we have noticed already, the god of this world has blinded the eyes of many, lest they should get a glimpse of the deliverance the gospel brings. Afraid of God, they keep on trying to find satisfaction for the heart and conscience by means which Ecclesiastes shows cannot bring peace.

Lastly comes the question that is a confession of hopelessness:

"Who knoweth what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he spends as a shadow? for who can tell man what shall be after him under the sun?" (verse 12.)

Thus man's highest thought falls short of what God has made known in sovereign grace. He has surveyed everything under the sun, at least Solomon has for him, and with far greater opportunity than the rest of mankind (chapter 1:12 to chapter 2:10), with the advantage of wisdom and knowledge, riches, wealth and honor unequalled (2 Chron. 1:12), and the conclusion is reached that he does not know what is good for him, that his life is without result of abiding worth, and he does not know what is to be after he is gone.

If the poor, deluded slaves of Satan who abound on every hand, could only be persuaded to give up, to surrender to God, to receive His free and priceless gift of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord, their joy and satisfaction would be unbounded all through this life, and for eternity.

Ecclesiastes 7

The Preacher has discoursed much about the folly and the evils present in the world. His conclusion, stated at the beginning of the book, and again and again afterward, is that all under the sun is vanity and vexation of spirit (or pursuit of the wind). He finds, however, that there are some better things, seven, indeed, and with these the beginning of chapter 7 is occupied.

The seven things which he recounts will make life better, no doubt, but they leave the sinner in his sins, without God and without hope in the world. Nevertheless, they form a very remarkable part of this very remarkable book, written to show that man, try as he may, cannot attain happiness without being reconciled to God.

Surely every right-minded person will agree that a good name is better than precious ointment (verse 1), but few of the world's seekers after satisfaction in things under the sun would admit, even to themselves, that the day of death is better than the day of birth. That would be to confess that life without God is a failure, and this, man at large is unwilling to acknowledge, true though it is.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, because man needs to be reminded of death, that he may open the door of his heart to receive the message of God in the gospel. It is so evidently true that man cannot meet the deeper needs of his own soul. He may, and he will, if wise, fear to die, but he cannot prepare for death except by acquainting himself with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

"Sorrow (or vexation) is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better" (Verse 3). But is it better in God's sight? If my circumstances lead me to seek refuge in Christ, it is well for me, but vexation alone leaves me without a remedy for the canker within my breast.

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, is the sixth of the Preacher's observations. How hopeless man is of betterment when he turns away from his best, yes, his only Friend! Life is worth living, if Christ be its object, and the darkest hour of the Christian's experience is lit up by the Christian hope,—the coming of the Lord.

But there is almost no light from God in Ecclesiastes. Indeed there is what smacks of infidelity in verses 15-17, and we cannot wonder at it, because man, left to himself, has never sought God; has rather turned away from Him. Notwithstanding, there is the knowledge in man that he that feareth God comes forth from all troubles (verse 18).

Verse 29 again acknowledges God: "He made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions" (or devices). The fault in the system of things that has produced all the misery and unhappiness in the world, is not with God, but with man.

"Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord." Jer. 17:7.

Ecclesiastes 8

This chapter begins with praise of the wise, but what is that wisdom worth that can give no peace to the guilty conscience; that cannot soothe the sorrowing heart? It is the part of wisdom, nevertheless, to obey the authorities, to persist not in an evil thing (verses 2-4).

Yet, (verse 6) the misery of man is great upon him, slave of his own habits and of Satan. Unwilling to yield to God, be clings to his own thoughts and ways. He knows that life is uncertain; he cannot avert death when it comes, for there is no discharge in that war (verse 8). "It is appointed unto men once to die," as says Hebrews 9:27, and after this, judgment.

Verses 11 to 13 are rays of divine light amid the general gloom of Ecclesiastes. The heart of man is corrupt before God; he persists in evil ways, comforting himself with the thought that because God has not yet begun to punish the guilty, he may escape punishment altogether. But though God may allow a sinner to do evil a hundred times, and prolong his days, yet "I know (says the Preacher) that it shall be well with them that fear God .... but it shall not be well with the wicked." (Read Revelation 21:6-8.)

Verse 14 speaks of a thing that has troubled many. The world, as it has been said, is out of joint, for the righteous often suffer and the guilty often escape punishment here. Man's reaction to this is (verse 15) "eat, drink and be merry," but the believer refuses such a course; he knows that God will in due time set things in order in the world, and he is content to await His time.

Wisdom of the sort that leaves God out, as the Preacher found when he applied his heart to know it (verses 16-17), reveals nothing regarding the mystery of life and death.

Precious thought, that the simplest of God's children may understand (Matt. 11:25, 26, 28). Earthly, natural wisdom does not receive from God, and therefore remains in darkness.

Ecclesiastes 9

The eighth chapter closed with the admission that man's wisdom does not, cannot reach to God, cannot comprehend Him; there is no communication from man to God. This we well know is because man through sin has become alienated from God, and with all his wisdom, his philosophy and whatever else he has obtained, God is wholly unknown to him.

In chapter 9 the Preacher observes (verse 1) that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God—the unknown God. Man, he says, knows neither love nor hatred; he cannot look beyond the scenes in which he is an actor. He sees that all things come alike to all, one event without distinction to the righteous and to the wicked, to the clean and to the unclean; as is the good, so is the sinner. And this he regards as an evil.

Now God has not promised in His Word, except in connection with Israel, and then on the ground of obedience, to give those who trust Him an easy path, and plenty of goods, etc., etc., as they journey through life. It is a part of His forbearance to make the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and to send rain on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45). Trying circumstances are the portion of all mankind in large or small degree, and God has an object in allowing them, as He tells us in Job 33:14-30; Rom. 8:23-39; Heb. 12:10-11, and 1 Pet. 1:6-9.

See Psalm 73, where a distressed saint looks at the wicked, seemingly without trouble, and then learns that God was dealing with them though he did not know it. And, finally, turn to 2 Chron. 16:9: "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him."

Outwardly the Christian's circumstances and trials are pretty much the same as those which befall the world, but

"A Father's hand will never cause
His child a needless tear."

Verse 5 expresses the judgment of man, be it noted, and not the truth of God, concerning the dead. Ecclesiastes does not profess to speak for God, the object of the Holy Spirit here being evidently to show that man's wisdom, intelligence, experience—yes, all that there is in him cannot comprehend God; that with all the gifts which a beneficent Creator has bestowed upon His creatures, they cannot be happy until they trust Him as Saviour.

1 Sam. 28:15-19; Luke 16:22-31; Phil. 1:23 and Revelation 6:9, 10 let us know that the dead are not asleep, "know not anything," whatever man's wisdom may conclude about them.

Verses 7 to 10 are simply worldly wisdom; they are the best thoughts the world can offer for happiness, but the Christian knows something better. Compare this passage, for example, with Eph. chapters 4, 5 and 6.

The Preacher talks much of wisdom (and well he may, so wonderfully gifted as Solomon was, but we cannot fail to notice that for the sinners and wicked persons of whom he speaks occasionally, he has no remedy. Ecclesiastes is, after all, an exposure of what the world is; sin has ruined it, and there is but one thing for the poor worldling to do, and that is, to seek the Lord while He may be found.

Ecclesiastes 10

Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to stink and ferment” (verse 1), but why allow the dead flies to get into the ointment? Ah, it is a picture of the world; its choice “ointment” prepared with consummate skill and much pride, is found to be spoiled by the admixture of the “dead flies.” Sin and folly and death are here, and man has no remedy. The canker of sin at the heart is, however, by common consent, never to be mentioned, and death is to be glossed over, in the world, with flowers and fair speeches. It is only Ecclesiastes that gives us the true state of things with man, from his own point of view.

The book is drawing near to its close; happiness has not been found; all is vanity and profitless under the sun; a little folly is weightier than wisdom and honor. And all this the believer accepts as true of man “after the flesh,” and thankfully turns away from the world and its delusions, to the heavenly Man, to Him who has captivated his heart forever by His matchless grace and love.

Let us, nevertheless, follow the Preacher’s discourse to its end. He compares (verse 2) the wise man and the fool again, as he did in chapter 2 (verses 13-14). The “fool” in Ecclesiastes is the self-confident one; his judgment is perverted. As this book can offer no remedy for man’s condition, so the “fool” continues a fool to the end, though the grace of God. Its transformed many a self-confident man into a useful member of His family.

The Preacher notes again the disorder that prevails in the world (verses 5-7), but he offers no solution for the problem. There will be none, nor can be, until He comes who has the title to rule and will reign, though, He was once rejected and cast out.

The verses which follow illustrate the ills and dangers with which life is connected. Some of them are the consequences of doing wrong; some are due to the lack of wisdom, and others are occasioned by tampering with danger. Verse 11 is better rendered,

“If the serpent bite before (or without) enchantment, then the charmer hath no advantage.”

Wisdom is a great gift from God, if it be used in His fear. The words of a wise man’s mouth in such a case are gracious. The fool, on the other hand, causes mischief; he speaks of what he knows not, and his labor is wearisome and unprofitable. That land is happy where the government is a model for good (verses 12-17).

Slothfulness is to be guarded against; pleasure has its place, but money is more useful; the king and the rich should not be cursed, because they may hear about it. Such is earthly wisdom, far less satisfying than the wisdom which is from above.

Ecclesiastes 11

This chapter surprises us with wisdom that seems unearthly. Is it the thought of God that moves the Preacher to vary, now at the close, from the theme he has pursued from the very first words of his discourse?

“Cast thy bread upon the waters:” give away your substance where there would seem no likelihood of being repaid: “for thou shalt find it after many days.” Not only is liberality thus commended, but, “Give a portion to seven and also to eight,” for you do not know what need may not come to yourself later on. Perhaps long, long afterward you may be in a position to receive, where now it is your privilege to give. This is not the narrow, selfish thought of man, surely.

“Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn thou not away.” Matt. 5:42.

“Lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall be great, ... . Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again.” Luke 6:35-38. These are the gracious words of the Lord, of Him Who gave Himself for those who trust in Him, our Example, as well as our Hope.

Verses 3 to 6 carry on this thought of open-handed giving. The clouds, full of rain, empty themselves upon the earth, only to receive again in due time, when the earth has benefited from the moisture; it is not to be a matter of much concern which way the tree falls,—the wind, or the way it was cut, perhaps, gives it direction, but once down, there it lies for the use of man.

Further, there should not be too much concern over circumstances in giving;

“He that observeth the wind will not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds will not reap.” Give, as needs may become known to you, and leave the results with God.

“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand.” This is part of the wisdom of God, gracious and kind to all His creatures, and He would have men to learn from Himself.

The “Churches of Macedonia” furnished, in the apostle Paul’s day, a refreshing example of giving, and we may profitably consider the eighth and ninth chapters of 2nd Corinthians before we leave this interesting and important subject.

Verses 7 to 10 we shall reserve for our consideration of the last chapter, if the Lord will.

“He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will He pay him again.” Prov. 19:17.

“God loveth a cheerful giver.” 2 Corinthians 9:7.

Ecclesiastes 12

Within the few pages of Ecclesiastes the Preacher has given a truly remarkable picture of man, and of man without the saving knowledge of God. He has set down as his own observation five principal statements the truth of which cannot he denied. These are:

(1) That the human heart and soul cannot be satisfied with what the world can supply (chapter 1:8, 18; chapter 2:4-22; chapter 6:7).

(2) Where judgment and righteousness should be, wickedness is found, for though God made men upright, they have sought out many devices, and the heart is fully set to do evil; there is not a righteous man on earth that doeth good and sinneth not (chapter 3:16; chapter 7:29; chapter 8: 11; chapter 9:3; chapter 7:20).

(3) What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is wanting cannot be numbered (chapter 1:15).

(4) All man’s days are sorrows, and his travail vexation. Even in the night his heart takes no rest; he eats in darkness and has much vexation and sickness and irritation (chapter 2:23; chapter 5:17; chapter 8:6).

It is appointed unto men once to die (chapter 3:19; chapter 8:8; chapter 9:3).

Well may the Preacher declare, after having applied his heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under the heavens, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

But now as he draws to the close of his work, the Preacher calls again earnestly to man. After death the judgment!

“Rejoice,” he says, “O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things, God will bring thee into judgment” chapter 11:9.

“Put away evil ... . and remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil days come and the years draw nigh of which thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” Chapter 11:10; 12:1.

Since happiness is not attainable in and from the world, seek it where it may be found! Let your restless, unsatisfied heart find the peace which only God can give, and freely gives, to those who come to Him through His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 4:23 to 5: 11).

Verses 2-7, looks at man in the evening of life, as the pleasures once enjoyed are ended, and sorrow quickly succeeds sorrow (verse 2); the keepers of the house are, of course, the hands; the strong men are the knees; the grinders are the teeth; the windows are the eyes (verse 3). The doors are the ears, no longer hearing well (verse 4); fears take possession of the mind; “the almond tree flourishes” refers to the white hairs of old age; the least weight, as of a grasshopper, is a burden; and desire has failed (verse 5); the silver cord is perhaps the spinal cord, and the golden bowl, pitcher and cistern wheel, have been spoken of as the brain, the heart and the blood,—the vital organs of life are undoubtedly pictured in this poetic language.

Ecclesiastes being limited to the experience and the reasonings of man in connection with what happens “under the sun,” has no word from God of comfort to the believer; it is a book of negatives recording on every page, there is no happiness here!

We thankfully turn to the positives of the gospel of the glory of God and read again Romans 8; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Revelation 1:5; blessing Him for showing us so plainly in Ecclesiastes that life without Christ as the peace and joy and hope of the believer is indeed folly.

The Song of Solomon 1

In Ecclesiastes we had man, trying to be happy without the knowledge of the only true God, and finding no satisfaction here, and at the end of life death (unwelcome visitor!) and the promise of judgment after death. The book we now enter upon has a far happier theme. Written as a song or poem, it has Christ for its subject, and Himself in connection with the redeemed of the Jews in the day now at hand, when the heavenly saints shall be gone away to glory, and great events are happening and about to happen in the ancient homeland of Israel.

The Song of Solomon will be to the “remnant,” as Scripture terms the repentant Jews, assurance that the Lord Jesus their once rejected and crucified Messiah, loves them and in Him they will find joy forever. While the place of these Jewish believers will not be equal to the Christian’s portion, there is much in the song that finds a response in the heart that loves Him in our own day.

Verse 2 is the language of a soul who already knows Christ, and seeks to know Him better. Is this the state of our own hearts? It is well for us if it is so, “That I may know Him” is the longing wish of Paul the pattern saint in Philippians 3, who desires to “win” Christ, though he knew Him, we make bold to say, more deeply than any of the children of God today. Truly the love of Christ is better than wine, the token or symbol of earthly joy.

Verse 3 speaks about the fragrance of His person. “Thine ointments savor sweetly; Thy name is an ointment poured forth” (JND).

Oil, when used as a symbol in Scripture, refers to the Holy Spirit; and ointment, fragrant oil (Exodus 30:22-33) tells of the worth, the moral glory, of the Son as Man sealed with the Holy Spirit, in all His wondrous journey from the manger at Bethlehem to the cross of Calvary.

What delight the Father must have had in His Son as He saw Him at Samaria’s well (John 4); by the grave of Lazarus (John 11); meeting the leper (Mark 1)—and all along His course! We who having believed, have tasted of the love of Christ, do not we find our delight in Him, as we meditate upon His perfect ways? “Ointment poured forth,” too, so that all, even the feeblest and most neglectful of the saints, may enjoy the fragrance! O, search the Word, learn more of Him. (2 Corinthians 3:18).

“Draw me, we will run after Thee,” (verse 4). Be this the language of all our hearts. There is an answer: “The King hath brought me into His chambers.” “King,” He will be, for Israel; King of Kings and Lord of Lords in the millennial day (Revelation 19:16), but the heavenly bride knows Him as the Lord, our Lord Jesus (Luke 22:31, 33; John 20:13, 18; John 21:7; Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3, etc.).

In verses 5 and 6 the earthly bride speaks of herself. She is black, scorched with heat, for she will then have passed through the judgments which are to fall upon the Jews in the last days (Matthew 24; see Lamentations 4:8; also Job 30:30). And she has been hated by her mother’s children—the apostate Jews of whom the Psalms so often speak (see Psalms 31, 32, 35 and others), for the believing Jews will be cast out of Jerusalem, and made to hide for their lives because of the hatred of the unbelievers of their race. She has been made to toil for the Gentiles as foretold in Genesis 49:14-15, but her own vineyard, the Land of Israel, has she not kept. Yet she is comely to the Bridegroom, her King; black as the tents of Kedar; beautiful as the curtains of Solomon; whiter than snow in Christ.

Verses 7 and 8 in question and answer, tell of the desire of the bride to know the bridegroom as Shepherd (Psalm 23, and see Ezekiel 34:11-15), and Of His love for her and care for even the little ones (end of verse 8).

But where is the flock of God (John 10) today? Scattered and divided by the wolf as foretold in Acts 20:28-30. Yet still, we are persuaded, there is a place or ground of gathering according to the mind of the Great Shepherd, where He feeds His flock, and makes it to rest (Matthew 18:20).

Verses 9-11 are still the voice of the Bridegroom, and verses 12-14 the bride’s language. We can only refer to these passages very briefly. The Bridegroom not only loves His earthly bride, but He will ornament her with gifts from Himself. See the mention of the gifts to Rebekah in Genesis 24, also read Ezekiel 16:10-13.

Mary in John 12:1-3 answers to verse 12. And does not communion of heart with the Lord give the key to the figure of verse 13? Is He embalmed in our breasts, in our hearts, as He should be? (John 14:21, 23).

Myrrh (verse 13) carried in a bundle is hidden from the eye, but the cluster of camphire (henna flowers) is carried openly (verse 14). Myrrh, we are told, is the juice of a tree, which flows through broken parts of the bark, and the camphire tree flowers grow in dense clusters, beautiful as well as fragrant. The vineyards of Engedi were celebrated for their rich fruits and costly spices.

Verse 15 is the Bridegroom’s voice again, and in verses 16-17 it is the bride speaking to Him who has won her heart. She has nothing now to say of herself; faith goes on and says “our bed,” “our house,” “our rafters,” linking Him with herself, looking on to His visible presence on earth as the Husband of redeemed Israel (Isaiah 54:5). The first verse of chapter 2 belongs to this utterance of the bride. She is the rose, or narcissus of Sharon. Sharon is the fertile region of western Palestine, between Caesarea and Joppa.

The Song of Solomon 2

Verse 1, as remarked already, should have been placed as a part of the first chapter, since it is a part of the words at the end of chapter 1 of the figurative bride who represents the believers among the Jews in the future day. It is well known that the chapter and verse divisions of our Bible were made in comparatively modern times; they are not inspired and are often faulty.

Although there are roses in Palestine, the first verse should read “I am a narcissus of Sharon, a lily of the valleys,” Sharon being the very fertile plain between Joppa and Mount Carmel, near the Mediterranean; it is named in Isaiah 33:9; 35:2, and 65:10, and in Acts 9:35 where it is called Saron.

Verse 2 is the Bridegroom’s rejoinder to His bride’s last words. What grace is in our Lord Jesus, thus to speak of the Jews who once cast Him out and crucified Him!

In verses 3 to 6 we get the bride again; her beloved is likened to the apple tree (or, properly, the citron tree) among the trees of the wood. This tree’s thick foliage gives shelter from the sun, and its fruit is both refreshing and fragrant. Thus near to Him she would rest (Luke 10:39-42).

Verse 4 brings the bride to the banqueting house, or house of wine, a token that her happiness is full.

“The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.” Isaiah 35:10.

“Sing, O daughters of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem ... .the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more. . . . The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save; He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love; He will joy over thee with singing.” Zephaniah 3:14-17.

Thus the prophets speak of Israel’s future glory. Then shall a different Israel than we have known, —redeemed, new born Israel,—find their joy in the person of their King.

Verse 7 is the Bridegroom’s voice; the bride, now resting in His love, must not be disturbed by anything, however slight. The roes (or gazelles) and hinds of the field are creatures very easily alarmed; so this verse speaks of the tender love of the Lord for His own, for all who trust in Him. He would not have the peace He gives, the rest, and spiritual joy, disturbed. (At the end of the verse read she, instead of he).

Verses 8 to 15 take up, as the Jewish bride’s language, her expectation of the coming of the Lord as Israel’s King to establish His throne and bring in the glory of His kingdom; and what that will mean to the remnant which shall have waited for Him. She repeats with delight His own words (verses 10 to 15). The dawn of the long day of blessing here is looked at as come; the “winter” of dread and suffering for the faithful Jews will be over at the appearing of the rightful Ruler, and He bids her (or them) to leave their hiding places, the bitter persecution of the three and a half years being ended.

The desire of the Lord, as the Bridegroom for Israel, His earthly bride as expressed in verse 14 and other passages, is most touching. The little ones, He warns (verse 15), must be guarded against; they are enemies of the vineyard. So must the Christian guard himself from every little thing that would interfere with his own fruitfulness for God.

With sweet confidence begotten of God, the bride now says,

“My Beloved is mine, and I am His; He feedeth (His flock) among the lilies until the day break and the shadows flee away.”

The first part of verse 17 should be read with verse 16, the latter part of the 17th verse then reading “Turn (or return) my beloved; be Thou like a roe, etc.” It expresses the heart’s longing for the coming of the Lord as Israel’s King.

How good is our God to provide, in the Psalms and in the Song of Solomon, for the consolation and cheer of the remnant of the Jews while they wait for the return of their Messiah. These books, it will be seen, have as important a place as the prophetic books which are likewise for their instruction and comfort.

The Song of Solomon 3

We can discover no change in the Bridegroom (Hebrews 13:8), but this cannot be said of the bride.

Verse 1: It is night, the “night” of His absence from this world as for the Christian (Romans 13:11, 12; Mark 13:35; Matt. 25:6; Isa. 21:11, 12). The bed is for rest, but energy, spiritual energy, is needed if there is to be nearness to Christ. See the virgins in Matthew 25:5 who were not following the exhortation of Romans 12:11. How has the bride of the Song become separated from her Beloved? The fault is in herself.

Nevertheless, the bride seeks the heavenly Object of her love. She speaks of Him as “Him whom my soul loveth” four times in the first four verses. Does love to the Lord Jesus fill our hearts, fellow Christians so that we think of Him, as the Jewish remnant is encouraged to do, as Him whom our soul loves? Are we not too apt to be at ease in the rest and peace He has given us, and to forget Him to whom we owe all? Who was it that said, “This do in remembrance of Me?” 1 Corinthians 11:24, 25.

It was love to the Lord that led Mary Magdalene out early on the morning of the first day of the week, while it was yet dark (John 20:1), and kept her at the empty grave (verse 11), while the more privileged John and Peter returned to their home. It was not intelligence in Mary, we may say, but it was love, and love to Christ is of more value to Him, we are persuaded, than intelligence in the things of God, though both assuredly have their place.

So the bride in the Song, like Mary Magdalene, seeks the Object of her affection, and both find Him, though they looked for Him where He was not to be found. Why should the bride here look for Him in the City, in the streets and in the broadways? He is not there. The heavenly stranger finds no welcome in man’s busy world. Has the bride forgotten that He told her (chapter 1:7-8) of a meeting place the Shepherd has appointed with His flock?

She finds Him, as Mary Magdalene found Him, speedily, because love to Him has its reward. The references to the mother in verses 4 and 11 are to Israel (see Ezekiel 23 and Hosea 2).

The Lord, first delivering the remnant of the Jews from their enemies when He comes again to the world presently, will bring the lost ten tribes back to form again with Judah and Benjamin the nation of Israel (Ezekiel 37). This is the meaning of the bride’s not letting Him go until she has brought Him into her mother’s house, and explains the mother’s afterward crowning Him, the true Solomon of the Song. Then will He be the acknowledged Son of David, King of Israel.

Verse 5 is, as in the corresponding passage of chapter 2 (verse 7), the language of the Bridegroom; He desires rest for His people, and there remains a rest to the people of God (Hebrews 3 and 4; Matthew 11:28-29). But the present enjoyment of this rest is easily lost”; earthly things coming in destroy the Christian’s communion with the Lord. How careful we should be!

Verse 6 sees the bride coming up from the wilderness which has been her home during the years of persecution, and with her is the King—Bridegroom; this is to be the hope of the Jews while suffering for His sake. The Jew will look for Christ’s coming to the earth, while the Christian’s hope is to be caught up to meet Him in the air, and to share His heavenly home and glory. Each hope will be fulfilled in its own time.

Verse 7. Christ will be the Warrior—King of Israel at the beginning of His reign, and His earthly people will be used in putting down at least one enemy (the Assyrian).

The wood of Lebanon speaks of earthly grandeur; the strong pillars of silver, of redemption; gold, of divine righteousness; purple of wealth and power. These are linked with love from (rather than “for”) the laughter of Jerusalem. (Verse 10).

Go forth, behold Him! is the call to the daughters of Zion,—a term we judge to be applied to those of the remnant most devoted to Christ. What heart can there be that will not then be full to overflowing, as they behold the glory-crowned Victor? And what of our own hearts, today, as we journey toward a more glorious eternity than redeemed Israel’s? Can we join the Christian poet in singing,

“What will it be to dwell above,

And with the Lord of glory reign,

Since the blest knowledge of His love

So brightens all this dreary plain?”

The Song of Solomon 4

One is impressed with the thought that this chapter answers to the promise in Isaiah 53:11,

“He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.”

That Scripture cannot be fulfilled in its entirety until, not only the Church and other heavenly saints, but the earthly saints, Israel and saved Gentiles (Revelation 15:2-4; Matthew 25:31-40, 46; Micah 4:1-6, etc.) are brought into the full blessing designed for them by God, and won for them by Christ’s atoning death.

The desire of the Bridegroom (chapter 2:14) was to see the face of His chosen; chapter 4 shows, in prospect, the fulfilment of that desire. Seven (the number of spiritual completeness in Scripture) things about the earthly bride are noted in speaking of her beauty in His sight. May we be able to grasp their spiritual meaning.

Eyes like a dove surely suggest that the character represented by the dove in Scripture is to be seen in these Jewish believers—the clean dove finds no rest amid the corruption in which the unclean raven is at home (Gen. 8). Christ’s words to His disciples were, “Be ye ... .harmless (guileless) as doves.” Matthew 10:16. In Leviticus the dove or pigeon is mentioned repeatedly as acceptable to God as an offering for sin under the law, and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John record the Holy Spirit’s descending upon Christ at His baptism as like a dove.

Hair as a flock of goats on the slopes of Mount Gilead is believed to refer to the long hair of the Nazarites (Numbers 6), separated to God from the attractions of the world.

Teeth (verse 2) like a flock of shorn sheep, etc., the context appears to show, tell of purity within in full measure. (How different from Acts 7:54).

Lips and speech (verse 3) are fashioned anew for His praise.

The temples (upper cheeks) as a piece of a pomegranate, may refer to fruitfulness, which the pomegranate represents in Scripture. May we not then connect verse 3 with Ephesians 5:19-20, and Colossians 3:16?

Neck like the tower of David (verse 4) speaks of security with God against the power of Satan (see 1 Peter 1:5).

The breasts like roes (fawns of a gazelle) which feed among the lilies, tell of affection for the Lord, and toward His people who are the lilies (chapter 2:1, 2, 16. See 1 John 5:1).

Beloved Christian reader, have we all of these seven characteristics in full display?

The Bridegroom waits until the day dawns, and the shadows dee away (verse 6). Then will He come to the help of His people who will be waiting for Him. Meanwhile He abides where the prayers and praises of the saints are incense (Revelation 5:9). There He has gone in the virtue and power of His work on the cross, and in the fragrance (see Psalm 45:8 and Exodus 30:34-38) of His matchless life and God glorifying, sin-atoning death.

Verse 7 is a fresh call to the bride. Her bridegroom a second time tells her she is all fair, all beautiful, and adds, “and there is no spot in thee.” Most comforting to the troubled Jewish saints will these words be when they are in the lions’ dens, and the mountains of the leopards—apt figures for the fearful persecution which the believing Jews will experience (Matthew 24:9-22).

He bids the bride come with Him from Lebanon, the range of mountains near the Mediterranean sea north of Palestine, to look from the top of Amana (believed to be one of the northern peaks of the range east of the Lebanon), from the top of Senir (apparently to the south of Amana and one of the lesser peaks of Hermon), and from Hermon, the continually snow clad mountain which far exceeds in height (9,381 feet above the sea) all other mountains of the Holy Land. All these heights are in the north, near and beyond Damascus. (See Deuteronomy 34:1-6 where Moses viewed the land from the east, though he could not enter it).

Space prevents our consideration here of verses 9 to 15, the outpouring of the love of Christ for His people, the Jews, who will be converted at last. The language is figurative, yet the land of Israel, when blessed in the Millennium will be the most fertile land in the world.

The bride answers in verse 16, in language which we believe refers, in the north wind and south wind to the Holy Spirit without Whom the “garden’s spices” would not “flow forth.” She invites her Beloved to come into His garden and eat its precious fruits, and the next chapter brings Him there.

The Song of Solomon 5

At the invitation of His beloved people, the Bridegroom of the Jews yet to be redeemed, has (verse 1) come into His garden of fragrant shrubs and precious fruits. He has “gathered,” He has “eaten,” and He has “drunk” there what they have provided Him.

Have you and I, Christian reader, realized what these words mean in application to the believers of our day, to ourselves? Have we done our little share to provide Him a feast?

If God had His own joy in the sacrifices of Leviticus (chapter 1:9, 13, 17; chapter 2:2; chapter 3:5, etc.) when offered in faith, do not John 4:32; Hebrews 13:15 and 1 Peter 2:5 with Matthew 18:20 tell us of our blessed Lord coming into His “garden” now gathering, eating, drinking, what His saints have brought in their baskets to the appointed place of meeting each Lord’s day? (Deuteronomy 26:2). And have we not, alas! often, failed to give Him the worship of a full heart? To our shame be it said, yes.

Verse 2 is a confession of failure. His beloved one has fallen asleep, though as she says, her heart was awake; she dozed when she knew she should have been wide awake. The voice of the Bridegroom awakened her; He knocks but she has locked Him out in order that she may be at ease without Him. Has this been my portion, too, to be enjoying myself without His company, without a thought of Christ? “Open to Me;” His voice is heard, but I am not at once ready to let Him in.

His words touch the heart, but her state of soul is not right, and she makes excuses (verse 3). At length she does open the door, but He is gone! The door bears traces of His loving hand for there is myrrh upon the handles of the lock (verse 5). How near He was! Now He must be sought, and this takes diligence. To recover communion with the Lord when it has been lost is not the work of a moment, as many dear children of God have found.

The bride goes out to seek for her Beloved, but her spiritual sense is not keen, and she looks as before (chapter 3:2, 3) where He is not. She calls, but He does not answer (verse 6). Sorrows increase; the world is no help to a believer (verse 7). She realizes what she has lost.

What we have in this passage is a picture of what our souls may have often experienced, but it is not true Christian experience. It is the result of neglecting the Word of God, and sinking into self-indulgence in some form.

With a returning sense of His worth, His beauty, the bride is seen in the last verses, telling the daughters of Jerusalem about the Bridegroom.

If the whiteness of verse 10 represents spotless purity and holiness, “ruddy” surely speaks of His blood shed for our pardon and eternal blessedness. The head of gold (verse 11) stands for the righteousness of God. Perennial youth is seen in the bushy locks, black as a raven. Eyes, not merely as doves, as was said of the bride, but by the rivers of waters, washed with milk and fitly set. Who can fully set this forth?

Blessed Lord, we read of Thee, and these figures of speech of the earthly bride stir the hearts of Thy heavenly redeemed ones, to see Thee face to face. Lord, haste that day!

The cheeks (verse 13) bring to us memories of Calvary, when He was buffeted by man, and spat upon, and the kisses of the traitor, Judas, were there. Lips like lilies; hands as gold rings set with the beryl, body as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires; legs as marble set upon sockets of fine gold (verses 14-15) are representations that bring to our minds the worth, the beauty, the love, the power, the glory of Christ.

But we pass from imagery, from symbols, to what speaks directly, and in language the veriest child may understand (verse 16),

“His mouth is most sweet; yea, He is altogether lovely. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend.” He is ours too, is He not?

The Song of Solomon 6

WE cannot question the state of the bride’s heart after her description of the Bridegroom in the closing verses of chapter 5. She is happy again. That He has never changed in His love for her, is amply shown in His utterance beginning in verse 4.

Well is it for God’s children that their security, their everlasting portion, depends not upon themselves or their feelings, but upon the finished work of Christ.

The daughters of Jerusalem, not realizing the change that has come over the bride, ask her where her Beloved is gone, where turned aside (as though the fault lay with Him!), and they would seek Him with her. She knows where He is (verse 2); it is where she wished Him to be (end of chapter 4) —among His people, finding enjoyment as in a garden of spices and lilies.

He speaks to His beloved, and in His words, there is no reproach. There is no love like His! Sadly, had she failed to welcome Him when He came before (verse 3, chapter 5) but she has learned a lesson, and is before Him with not a cloud between.

In chapter 2:16, in her happiness, the bride had said “My Beloved is mine, and I am His.” A deeper work has gone on in her breast, and now she says, “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.” It is now her greatest joy to know that she belongs to Him, is His. Is this our chief joy, too?

In language of perfect grace, the Bridegroom tells her again what he had said in chapter 4, before her coldness to Him; could He more perfectly express the unchangeability of His love for her? But the language is not only purposeful repetition; there is addition to what He had before told her.

The earthly bride is compared in beauty to Tirzah, capital of Israel’s ten tribes before the city of Samaria was founded by Omri (1 Kings 16:23). Tirzah means “delight” or pleasantness. She is also comely as Jerusalem, terrible as troops with banners. What Jerusalem will be is described in Psalm 48, Isaiah 62 and Zechariah 14:8-11, 16, 20, 21, beside other passages. There will be but one capital city then, the rivalry of Samaria and Jerusalem (John 4:20) will be over, and the New Israel will be far beyond the old Israel in glory (Isaiah 54), and the chief city of the world.

Verses 8-10 compare all others with the bride; no city like Jerusalem; no earthly people so beloved as the remnant of Judah. Jerusalem’s and Judah’s day of glory, shining as the moon by night and the sun by day, is about to arrive.

Verses 11-12. The Bridegroom—King of Israel—has come to see His land, and His willing people set Him upon their chariots. It is the scene of earthly glory, the answer to His own word in Matthew 23:39.

Verse 13. Shulamite is the feminine of Solomon; it is the new name, the name of the married wife of the true Solomon. She is with her Husband, David’s son and David’s Lord. Israel and Judah are one, not two anymore, and Christ is their King. The prophecies of the Old Testament are thus completed.

The Song of Solomon 7

This chapter brings us to the farthest point reached by the Song in the history of the Jewish people viewed as the beloved one of the King (Christ), for chapter 8 is supplemental.

In sinless perfection, beautiful and glorious as the handiwork of God in new creation, the bride is seen in verses 1 to 5. Because the description begins at the feet and ends at the head, it is by some thought that the language is that of the daughters of Jerusalem, rather than of the King. It is the perfect work of the divine Penman, the Holy Spirit, Author of all of the Bible.

The wonders of the grace of our Saviour God are beyond our minds to take in. Think of the poor, degraded, despised Jew, hated and cast out by his unbelieving brethren, brought into a place and condition of glory beyond anything this world has ever seen, and this in association with their King, the once rejected Messiah. It is the Israel of God, ransomed, redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, that is portrayed in the verses before us in figurative language which tell of beauty, wealth and honor in abundance. And this beauty fills, captivates, the heart of the King (verse 5).

In verse 10 the bride’s statement should be compared with chapter 6:3, and with chapter 2:16, for there is progress in each repetition. The Bridegroom-King at last fully occupies her heart, and self is lost to view:

“I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is toward me.”

It is the work of the Holy Spirit to occupy the saints, not with themselves, or their feelings, but with Christ their Head.

Verses 11 to 13 are also the words of the bride; she calls upon her Husband to go with her through the land. It is early perhaps for such a visit, yet the reunited twelve tribes of Israel will already have found the land to be far more fertile than ever it proved under the hands of their forefathers.

The beginning of the joy of the millennial earth is set out in the last verses of the chapter. The earthly people of God will find it a happy theme while they wait in the years of tribulation for the Lord Jesus as their Messiah to appear for their deliverance, and to establish His rule of peace and prosperity in this now groaning scene, but the joy will be fully consummated during His reign, and for all eternity. The Word of God will be in the hearts and minds of heavenly and earthly saints forever.

The Song of Solomon 8

This closing chapter stands alone, but the theme is still, Christ as the Bridegroom; and the poor, outcast Jews as the bride, who will put their trust in Him in the interval between what is foretold in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17, and in Matthew 24:27-44.

Chapter 7 ends with the Bridegroom and the bride together in the glory and blessing of the Millennium.

Chapter 8 goes to the beginning of this action of divine grace to complete the story.

Before chapter 1, in order of time, stands chapter 8:1. There will be a longing on the part of the redeemed to know their Redeemer and King, to have Him with them. They have learned of His love, have seen His power on their behalf, and would lavish their love upon Him to whom they owe every blessing.

If He were as a brother! Now in infinite grace He will take that very place with them. (See Psalm 22:22; Matthew 12:46-50; Matthew 25:40, and Joseph’s dealings with his brethren (Genesis 42- ,15) which foreshadow Christ’s dealings with His earthly brethren).

The “mother” spoken of in verses 1, 2, 5, as in chapter 1:6, and chapter 3:4, 11, is Israel. Verse 4 gives the Bridegroom’s voice, and “he”, at the end, is properly read “she.” He desires that the objects of His love and grace shall rest in the enjoyment of His gifts. This we have seen in chapters 2:7, and 3:5.

In verse 5 our spiritual gaze is directed toward the bride. “Who is this?” is asked, to occupy our minds with the amazing change which divine love has brought about. What hath God wrought! as Balaam truly said in Numbers 23:23 of Israel’s yet future glory. Behold then the bride, the earthly bride (for the Church, the heavenly bride of Christ, is entirely distinct), coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her Beloved! The wilderness scenes and experiences will then be forever behind, but memories of grace and mercy amid her failure, sin and coldness of heart will remain. And thus the day of Millennial glory dawns on this earth.

I, says the Beloved, I awoke thee under the apple tree (properly we believe citron tree, as noted in connection with chapter 2:3); there thy mother (Israel) brought thee forth. The natural birth is not enough; new life must be received from the Life Giver. (John 5:24, 25; Ephesians 2:1).

Verse 6 begins the bride’s response with which this lovely little book draws to its close. She desires that she may be set in tokens of His love and His power as a seal upon the Bridegroom-King’s heart and His mighty arm, there to abide. Thoughts of His love, proved strong as death, unquenchable by many waters fill her heart. What songs of praise will well up from grateful, adoring hearts!

The bride has a “little sister” (verse 8); this is evidently Ephraim, —the ten tribes lost to our sight since 2 Kings 17, but to be brought back, as Hosea 1:10, 11; Zechariah 10:7-12, and other scriptures foretell. These other Israelites have never known what the Jews have experienced; Christ’s earthly ministry was unknown to them; they had no part in His crucifixion, and only after His return in glory, and delivering the sorely tried remnant of believing Jews, will the long hidden ten tribes return to the land of Israel.

So the bride will instruct and build up her sister (verse 9). She herself is strong, through the grace of God, and well favored (verse 10); “then was I in His eyes as one that findeth peace” (see the marginal note).

Solomon and his vineyard (verse 11) are figures of speech; it is the Lord Jesus and the whole earth that are in view. All will then bring to Him His due—the converse of Matthew 21:33-41.

The Bridegroom speaks in verse 13 to His bride. All the world will be looking toward Jerusalem, but He says, “Let Me hear thy voice.”

Blessed Lord, Thou shalt hear our praises in the endless ages of eternity, the voices of the redeemed will never weary of Thy praise.

Verse 14 fitly closes this Song of Songs with a call to the Beloved to hasten, to come with all speed. So does the last book of the Bible close: “Surely, I come quickly;” “even so come, Lord Jesus!”

This Song is for the future earthly bride, but how much there is in it that fits the saints of God today. It speaks of a heart affection for the Lord, of desire toward Him. May this be deepened in our hearts!

Isaiah 1

We enter upon the study of the last great section of the Old Testament — the Prophets. Isaiah stands at the head of the line of these faithful witnesses in the darker days of Judah’s history, and his prophecy is the fullest, most varied in subjects. He was the first, or among the first, of the writing prophets who were raised up during the last two hundred years before, and the first two hundred years after, the carrying away of the Jews to Babylon.

It was during the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah (2 Chronicles 26), about 200 years after Solomon, and 50 years before the ten tribes were carried into captivity by the Assyrians, that Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah and possibly Jonah (who may have been earlier), came forward to urge the claims of God, to warn of coming judgments and to tell of a day of glory which is yet to dawn on this earth.

A little later Micah gave his testimony; then came Habakkuk, Zephaniah and Jeremiah not long before Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem. Afterward Jeremiah in Judea and Egypt, Ezekiel in Chaldea, and Daniel in Babylon spoke and wrote. When the 70-year captivity had been ended by Cyrus, king of Persia, Haggai and Zechariah were raised up by God to speak to His people.

Last of all the prophets after what is recorded in the books of Ezra, Esther and Nehemiah, at the brink of the “four hundred silent years,” Malachi gave his stirring testimony.

The first chapter of Isaiah is a preface to the book. What an appeal to the conscience of rebellious Israel is here! God speaks, and calls upon the heavens and the earth to hear His complaint,

“I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me.” Even the ox and the ass, —creatures far beneath man, put Israel to shame (verse 3).

The state of the people was so bad, and had been so long continued, that judgment must soon fall. They had not benefited from the dealings of God with them, but rather grew worse. The picture presented in verses 5 and 6 is indeed a grievous one of the inward state of the nation, and as for their land, it was desolate, far different from the purpose of God when He gave it to Israel (Exodus 3:8, Numbers 13:26).

The history of Israel and Judah in 2 Chronicles, and 1 and 2 Kings is a history of decline and fall. With Israel (the ten tribes) there was rarely any change for the better, but Judah had several kings who feared God and tried to stem the tide of evil. Isaiah in verse 9 acknowledges that if it had not been for God’s mercy, the nation should have been destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah.

There was much outward show of religion, we gather from verses 10 to 17, but little heart for God, and He who reads the heart, so judged of their sacrifices, the gatherings at the new moons and the sabbaths; to their multiplied prayers He would not listen. Yet in unmeasured grace to such a people He will say,

“Come now, and let us reason together .... though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow ... .” If they would but give ear to Him, they would soon learn how their sins might be put away. If willing and obedient, they should eat the good of the land, but if they refused and rebelled, the sword would devour them.

The latter part of the chapter looks on to the day in which the Lord Jesus will appear again to the world, will purge Judah and Israel and punish the wicked.

Isaiah 2

The first chapter showed that the coming day of blessing on earth would not be introduced without the punishment of the wicked.

The second chapter begins with a very important statement about Jerusalem, —that in the last days God’s dwelling place on earth will be there, and that all the nations shall flow unto it. This prophecy has not yet been fulfilled, and wars and rumors of wars continue as of old.

Before it can be fulfilled, several things must happen. The Lord Jesus must return to the world in power; the devil must be shut up; the world must be cleansed by judgment, there must be a change of nature both in the Jew and in the Gentile nations so that they will be lovers of God; Jerusalem and the Holy Land must again be the home of Israel.

That this prophecy is shortly to be fulfilled, is, we believe, certain. Recent years have seen the revival of the Jewish hope of a national home in the land of their fathers, and other changes have taken place, or are in process which lead to the conclusion that the day of the Lord is now not far off.

Before it dawns He will have called away all who now trust in Him, to be His heavenly people, His body and His bride. Then a new work will begin, centering in the Jews, some of whom will believe, and a new gospel message will go worldwide.

From verses 6, 7, 8 we gather that though, like the Church in Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22), the house of Jacob was rich and increased with goods that are valued in this world, they were desperately poor toward God. They were filled with what the east could provide; they used auguries (soothsaying) like the Philistines (see Deuteronomy 18:10-12, and 2 Chronicles 33:6); they allied themselves with the children of foreigners; their land was full of silver and gold and there was no end of their treasures; it was full of horses and there was no end of their chariots; also it was full of idols. They had forgotten that they were to be a separate people, and had joined hands with the world around, disregarding God and His Word given to them through Moses and Joshua (Deuteronomy 6 and 7; Joshua 23). The loss was great indeed.

Because of this, God will yet enter into judgment with the Jews. He gave them up to captivity under the Babylonians, but this chapter looks on to the coming day. In that day the Lord alone will be exalted; man will be humbled, and the false gods on which he has leaned, will be thrown away in the terror of the judgment scene. We know that the judgments will be poured out on Gentiles as well as Jews (Revelation 6:14-17).

This is what the Scriptures promise concerning this world, and not the gradual conversion of all men by the spreading of the gospel. Meanwhile, the gospel is being received into human hearts, and thus the Holy Spirit is gathering out of the world a people for heaven.

Has that gospel found lodgment in your heart?

Isaiah 3

In these chapters we reach the end of the first section, the introductory part, of the book of Isaiah. There was soon to fall upon Judah and Jerusalem a partial fulfilment of the promise of unsparing judgment, but what is spoken of, in its direct application, waits for the last days, when the Jews are again to be in their homeland.

Verse 1: We have before called attention to the habit of the translators of our English Bible of substituting “the LORD” for Jehovah which means “HE WHO IS,” a name expanded into “Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come” in Revelation 1:4. Only four times (in Exodus 6:3; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 12:2 and 26:4) have the translators preserved the name Jehovah in our Bible. It is God’s name in relationship with man, first appearing in Genesis 2, and often thereafter until Malachi 4.

The Hebrew word Adonai translated “the Lord” is also often found in the Old Testament; it first appears in Genesis 15: 2, where Abram speaks to God as “Lord Jehovah” (Adonai Jehovah); lord, or master is its meaning, but it is only used for God.

In verse 1 we have “the Lord, Jehovah of hosts,” a name of God first to be found in 1 Samuel 1:3, after Israel had become weak and corrupt. It tells of His power, the mighty hosts of angels and all the forces of nature at His command for use in behalf of His people, or in dealing with the wicked as in our chapter.

Men have been learning ways of making war upon each other in terrible fashion, but when God begins to deal with this world, every man will tremble (see Revelation 6:12-17).

Here in chapter 3 everything upon which mankind rests—food and drink, men for war, judges, prophets, the wise and the elderly, the honorable, and statesmen, clever mechanics and inventors, and those who deal in enchantments—all will be removed from Jerusalem and from Judah. Unfit persons will be the rulers, and oppression and insolence will abound. Sin will be open, unconcealed. They will have brought evil upon themselves.

Nevertheless, it shall be well with the righteous; they, like the wicked, will eat the fruit of their doings, or the desert of their hands. The leaders of the people, who have misguided and robbed them, will be dealt with according to their guilt.

Note that in verse 13 the Gentiles are meant; it is properly “the peoples,” not “the people,” which might be limited to Israel or Judah; mankind will be judged

In considering verses 18 to 23 we are reminded of the verse in Psalm 94:9: “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” He from whom nothing is hidden, noticed the ways and the details of the dress of the daughters of Zion, and passed judgment upon them. Fashions have changed many times since Isaiah’s day; the things of vanity of today have been substituted for those of 2,700 years ago.

In the last days there will be fearful losses of men in war (verse 25), so that women will far outnumber the men (chapter 4:1).

Isaiah 4

The short fourth chapter, after verse 1, presents a glorious picture of the coming age, when once the judgments are past.

“In that day there shall be a Branch (the true meaning is Sprout) of Jehovah for beauty and glory, and the fruit of the earth for excellency and for ornament for those that are escaped of Israel.” (JND)

The Branch is the Lord Jesus. (See Jeremiah 23:5, 6, where we are told His name, — “Jehovah our Righteousness,” and Zechariah 6:12).

Every blessing, whether to the redeemed of earth, or the heavenly saints, comes through Christ, and as the result of His God-glorifying, sin-atoning death. The blessing of this earth will however not be brought about through the gospel, as some think, but by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning (verse 4).

Over Mount Zion in the Millennium a cloud by day, and brightness of a flame of fire by night, will be as a covering or canopy over all the glory. These tokens of God’s presence were over the tabernacle during Israel’s journey of old (Exodus 40:38).

Isaiah 5

Familiar to every Israelite were the hillside vineyards of the fertile land God had given his forefathers. They yielded their fruit in season every year for the enjoyment of the owner of the vineyard, generally paying him back bountifully.

Isaiah, led by the Spirit of God to consider Israel as God’s vine, in this chapter brings before His people what God had done for them, and the shameful return they had made for all His care.

The 80th Psalm completes the picture of Israel as the vine, first as the work of God, and then in the desolation which was the fruit of their sins.

In Matthew 21:33; Mark 12:1 and Luke 20:9 and following verses, the Lord convicted the Jews of their crowning sin: their land was the vineyard; God was the husbandman. He had sent messenger after messenger to them, seeking fruit, and these servants were cruelly treated; He at last sends His Son, and they become His murderers. He was, as come into the world, the true vine (John 15:1), taking the rejected Israel’s place and bearing fruit for God. Afterward, in Revelation 14:18-19, we read of the vine of the earth—a corrupt thing of religious profession, to be swept away in judgment. Then Israel will be restored, and there will be fruit for God from that reborn nation.

Israel was favored and blessed as no other nation had been, having every advantage that could be given by a benefit cent and wise Creator; redeemed from Egypt’s slavery, and given to know the true God, while the world in general was sunk in the darkness of idolatry and immorality; brought by His power into possession of the richest land on earth, and there set apart with Him as their Head and Protector, from all around that would have defiled and corrupted; His word in the 5 books of the Pentateuch given through Moses, with an admirable religious system provided by God for their case. Such and more was Israel’s place as set up in the land. But this favored vine, which should have brought forth in abundance the choicest grapes, produced wild (or bad) grapes.

What will the owner of this vineyard do? He will take away its hedge and break down its wall, that enemies may come in; the vineyard shall be trodden under foot; He will make it a waste, neither pruned nor hoed; briers and thorns shall come up, and He will command the clouds that they shower no rain upon it.

This accounts for the present condition of the Holy Land; some small patches have been put under cultivation by returned Jews from other lands, but the country as a whole waits for Israel’s change of heart in the days to come, when judgment shall have accomplished what the gospel has not.

WOE is now pronounced upon the rejectors of the claims and the mercy of God; these are grouped under six heads, six classes of humanity, and all of them are at least as plainly to be found today as they were when Isaiah wrote.

The first group is described in verse 8. These bring to mind the men of Genesis 11, and the rich farmer of Luke 12; an hour comes for which they are totally unprepared. Men justify such, but God says, “Thou fool!” Israel’s blessings, unlike the Christian’s are connected with this earth, and so we read of the very, very poor return (verse 10), they got for all their work—6 1/2 gallons from 10 acres of vineyard, and of the seed planted only one-tenth harvested.

“What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36.

Verses 11 and 12 describe the second class; pleasure is their object in life. Thus does Satan lure many nowadays to destruction. It will be noticed that the word concerning such, in verses 13, 14 particularly, is especially solemn.

The third class of people is named in verses 18 and 19. Here are they who think nothing of sin, and laugh and sneer at the warnings and pleadings of the servants of God.

In verse 20 is the fourth group whose numbers, or whose boldness, or both, have been growing rapidly of late. These devote themselves to the breaking down of right conduct, and of recognized moral standards, of corrupt mind, they seek to corrupt everyone else. This is very noticeable in the literature of the present time.

The fifth group or class of the enemies of God is singled out in verse 21. These are the learned, or would be learned, the philosophers, professors and teachers, and such like; not all of them, thank God, for there are faithful men of God among the highly educated. But there is a very evident class of thinkers, doctors of religion, scientists, etc., who push aside the Word of God and substitute the conclusions of their own minds—science falsely so-called.

Verse 22 names the sixth and last class of mankind who desire not the knowledge of God. These appear to be the corrupt men in the governments, and judges who accept bribes. Upon these last the judgment of Jehovah of hosts will fall in consuming power.

But because of all this, the anger of Jehovah was kindled against His people; He had stretched out His hand against them, and smitten them, and His hand is stretched out still (verse 25).

He was about to call a nation far off, the Assyrians, or not long after the Babylonians, to execute His judgment upon the despisers of His Word. But the language of verses 26 to 30 cannot be limited to the events of Hezekiah’s reign, and of the last two kings of Judah; evidently the fulfilment of this prophecy awaits the day to which the prophetic Scriptures nearly all point, when Judah will be again in the land of Palestine.

Isaiah 6

Chapter 6 is one of the very few passages of Scripture in which the unseen is revealed. Here is the very presence of God. By and by this will be made good here on earth, in Christ, and what is revealed in this passage is in view of the day of the Lord, as well as to show that man, even the godliest, is in himself unfit for God’s presence.

In this scene of glory are seraphim, a symbolic representation not named elsewhere in Scripture; in Revelation 4 are four “beasts” (properly “living creatures”) who seem to combine the characters of the cherubim of Genesis 3:24, and the seraphim of Isaiah 6. Six wings are seen on the seraphim, two cover their faces, two cover their feet, and with two they flew. The representations of cherubim in the tabernacle and the temple (Exodus 25 and 37; 1 Kings 6 and 8, and 2 Chronicles 3 and 5) had two wings; in Ezekiel 1 and 10 four wings are mentioned, and in Revelation 4, six wings. Evidently these are all symbolic, and when Scripture does not explain or gratify our curiosity, we shall not speculate.

Holiness, the precise opposite of the uncleanness and defilement so characteristic of the world that now is, marks the scene of glory which Isaiah beheld. What he saw filled him with a deep sense of his own unfitness, and the unfitness of the people among whom he dwelt.

“Woe is me!” is his cry, not now pronouncing for God woes upon the unbelieving as in chapter 5.

One of the seraphim took a glowing coal from off the altar and made it touch Isaiah’s mouth. Thus cleansed and set free he can say,

“Here am I, send me!”

It is not however, the blessed message of the gospel that has reached our ears, that Isaiah is to deliver to Judah and Jerusalem, but a solemn indication of impending judgment.

How long? “Until the cities be wasted, without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land become an utter desolation, and Jehovah have removed men far away, and the solitude be great in the midst of the land. But a tenth part shall still be therein, and it shall return and be eaten; as the terebinth and as the oak whose trunk (or stump, or sap) remaineth after the felling; the holy seed shall he the trunk (or stump, or sap) thereof.” (JND).

Here we have the first assurance that there will be a remnant saved in the last days; not including any who have heard and refused the gospel of the grace of God, but many who having never heard the glad tidings of this dispensation, will receive the gospel of the kingdom, that Christ is coming to reign. Thus grace and mercy will have their part amid the awful scenes of judgment on earth. Here, too, is the key to the condition of the land of Israel at the present time. It will not be fully restored until Judah and Israel are back there, a redeemed, worshiping people before God.

Isaiah 7

Chapter 6 refers to the year of Uzziah’s death; chapter 7 passes by the 16 year reign of his godly son Jotham and tells of the time of the wicked Ahaz, Uzziah’s grandson. 2 Chronicles 28 gives the inspired account of this thoroughly bad king; God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria, and into the hand of the king of Israel; many were killed in battle and far more were carried away as captives. The Edomites also attacked Judah, and carried away captives, and the Philistines seized several cities during Ahaz’ reign.

We learn from Isaiah 7 that the kings of Syria and Israel were not able to capture Jerusalem; God spared Judah to that extent—yet the people as well as the king and his family were stricken with fear, and no wonder, since the king who sat on David’s throne walked in ways utterly displeasing to God.

It was the intent of these northern kings (and one of them an Israelite) to substitute for David’s line a king of their own choice. God would not allow this; His word to David must stand. Those who in unbelief have criticized our Bible, have pointed to the sixty-five years of verse 8, as a blunder, because the ten tribes were carried away in about 21 years, but the 65 year limit was reached when a colony of foreigners was planted in their land, in Samaria. God does not err; the word is “within 65 years shall Ephraim be broken so as to be no more a people.” They then lost their land, and have never gone back to it.

Ahaz, utterly unbelieving, will not ask of God (verse 12), but Isaiah is privileged to tell him of a marvelous sign that God would and did give,

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a Son, and call His name Immanuel” (meaning “God with us”). (See Matthew 1:23 for the fulfilment in the birth of Jesus the Lord).

Thus is the promise of Genesis 3:15 made clear. Not partaking of the sinful nature of Adam, but truly man, yet fully and essentially God, came the eternal Son of God into the world to save sinners.

The end of verse 16 should read, “the land whose two kings thou fearest (or abhorrest) shall be forsaken.”

Verse 17 adds a promise of judgment not long to be deferred: the king of Assyria was coming! Coming not as a friend or ally but as a conqueror! Ahaz had before sent there for help instead of humbling himself because of his sins and seeking God’s forgiveness and help, but the Assyrian king has been no help (2 Chronicles 28:16-21).

The Assyrians were coming; they came twice in Hezekiah’s day and ravaged the land of Judah.

Isaiah 8

Chapters 7, 8 and 9 to the end of verse 7 should be considered together as one prophecy, growing out of the attack upon Jerusalem by the kings of Israel and Syria, Pekah, the son of Remaliah, and Rezin.

In chapter 7 the son of David reigning over Judah had no faith, and in chapter 8 the people are seen to be as faithless as their king. They refused the softly flowing waters of Shiloah (Siloam in John 9:7, a pool on the south of Jerusalem by the king’s garden. Nehemiah 3:15). God known in grace they despised; and rejoiced in the wicked kings of the northern countries who were soon to be overthrown, and to lose their lives.

Grace despised, brings sure judgment, and this is indicated in the names of Isaiah’s two little boys: “A remnant shall return” (chapter 7:3), and “Swift for spoil, hasty for prey” (chapter 8:3). Before the older boy knew to refuse the evil and to choose the good; and before the younger one knew to cry “My father!” and “My mother!” the kings of Israel and Syria would be no more, and the glory of their countries would be gone (See 2 Kings 16:9, and 15:29, 30. In the latter passage, the “twentieth year of Jotham” is the fourth year of Ahaz; see verse 33). The Assyrian attack upon Syria and Israel was in the year 740 B. C.

Israel as a nation (the ten tribes) had so exceeded in sin, that their removal into captivity was now near at hand, but Judah (the two tribes still professing the worship of the true God and owning the line of David as their rulers, and Jerusalem as their capital city) was not far behind Israel in wickedness. Therefore the Assyrians were to be brought like an overflowing river through Judah,— “Thy land, O Immanuel!” (chapter 7:8).

Christ then is the key to the Scriptures (John 5:39; Luke 24:27). He is the Immanuel of Isaiah 7:14 and 8:18, as Matthew 1:20-25 shows. The prophet is here again led on to the future day when the nations, with godless Judah will, according to Psalm 2, set themselves against God and His Anointed, and be broken in pieces. This has been before us in our reading of the Psalms, particularly. The remnant of Judah believing in Him will be preserved and blessed when the Lord Jesus appears for the setting up of His kingdom.

Those then who fear God are warned to keep out of the schemes of the unbelieving mass of the Jews (verses 11-17), and told not to fear them, but to fear Jehovah of hosts. In verse 14 is a passage quoted in 1 Peter 2:6-8, the truth of which is seen on every page of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Christ, and not Isaiah, is in view in verse 18, as we learn from Hebrews 2:13. With Him is seen the believing remnant. and in contrast we have the unbelieving Jews in verses 19-22, who, rejecting God and their Messiah will seek for help from the necromancers and soothsayers, and become the very picture of wretchedness, to be later judged according to their works.

Isaiah 9

Matthew 4:12-16 gives the answer to the opening verses of our chapter. The “dimness,” darkness or gloom that fell upon the land of God’s earthly people because of their sins, was to be penetrated by the light. And this was to take place in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, Galilee of the nations, rather than in Jerusalem. (See John 1:43-46; 7:48-52 and Matthew 23: 37-39 and 28:7).

In days to come when the Jews in great numbers shall have returned to the land of their fathers, proud, religious Jerusalem will again be the seat of rebellion against and hatred of God and Christ, and the believing remnant of that time will be despised as were the Galileans when Jesus trod this earth. More, they will be hated because of their testimony, and some will suffer martyrdom for His sake.

Omit the word “not” which has mistakenly been added to the third verse, and the sense of it becomes clear. The rejoicing is in view of the Lord’s appearing in the latter day, when He will break the power of the oppressors of His people.

The correct translation of verse 5 is: “For every boot of him that is shod for the tumult, and the garment rolled in blood, shall be for burning, fuel for fire.” It tells of the end of war, brought about by the Lord Jesus when He has put down all power and authority that opposes His righteous rule.

Again the Holy Spirit presents the Lord (verses 6-7), for upon Him depends all of Israel’s future. Despised and rejected when He came in grace nineteen hundred years ago, the government will be upon His shoulder when the Jews see Him. Remark His titles as here given; many more are His, but these suit the purposes of the Divine Author here. Many times, are Jehovah’s works spoken of in the Scriptures as wonderful, but here we have Himself, the Doer of them all. In one word, what is He?

“Wonderful!” beyond compare. We shall adore Him eternally because of what He has done, and the ground of it all is, “Thou art worthy ... . because Thou hast been slain, and hast redeemed to God by Thy blood,” etc. (Revelation 5:9).

“Counselor” is His name, too (Romans 11:33-36).

“Mighty God” He is, as the Scriptures again and again amply testify, —as fully and eternally God as is the Father, and as is the Holy Spirit.

“Everlasting Father,” or more exactly, “Father of Eternity,” or “Father of the Coming Age,” and “Prince of Peace” are worthy titles for Him who shed His blood that poor unworthy sinners, both Jews and Gentiles might live, and that peace may fill this troubled world.

“Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end.” His kingdom will not decline and fall, as have the kingdoms of men all through the past.

Verses 8 and following, resume the general history of Israel which was left in chapter 5. Israel, blinded by sin and pride, rejected the judgments already brought upon them, and heavier punishment was to come (verses 11-12).

This would not be limited to the invasion of the country by the Assyrians; destruction and desolation were to be wrought in the land. The leaders, both ancient and honorable and the prophet teaching lies, were to be cut off in one day, and no man would spare his brother. It is a fearful picture of anarchy that is presented in the closing verses.

Isaiah 10

Verses 1-4 are connected with chapter 9 in subject. One class — the judges — should have remained on the solid ground of truth and righteousness when the people and their guides went astray. But all were now corrupt in the northern kingdom, and the visitation of divine wrath was about to take place. Then what would they do who decreed iniquitous decrees, and prescribed oppression, that widows might be their prey, and that they might rob the fatherless? They could but crouch under the prisoners, and should fall under the slain, in the day when the Assyrian army swept over the land.

The Assyrian is then again made the subject of prophecy (verses 5 to 34). He is the Rod of God’s anger and His indignation against His people, sent by Him against them because of their hypocrisy and their mounting sins. The king of the Assyrians did not realize that he Was only a tool in God’s hands working out His purposes.

The later Assyrian empire, as it is called, is generally considered to have been founded by Tiglath-Pileser in 745 B.C., and five years later that monarch destroyed Damascus and carried away the tribes of Israel who lived east of the Jordan. The king of Judah seems to have acknowledged him in a way as his overlord, but he was bent on seizing Jerusalem as he had Damascus and Samaria and other foreign capitals. This, God would not allow him to do, as Isaiah himself later shows. He would overrun Judah, and besiege Jerusalem, but would not be permitted to capture the city.

The Assyrian empire has crumbled into dust long since, but it is to live again, and when the Lord has performed His whole work upon Mount Zion and upon Jerusalem, He will punish the fruit of the stoutness of heart of the king of that land, and the glory of his high looks (verse 12). In that day the Lord will be at the head of His earthly people, and a short work will they make of the Assyrian army (verses 16-19).

Then the remnant of Israel will no more rely upon those who smote them, but will rely upon the Holy One of Israel, the Lord. The unbelieving mass of Israel will die in their sins (verses 22-23).

Those who turn to God are comforted in verse 24 and following, with. the assurance that though the Assyrian smite them with the rod, they need not be afraid of him. Only a very little while would he appear to have his own way, and then he would be overwhelmed in destruction. While this prophecy had an early fulfilment (in Isaiah’s life time) in the larger sense, it awaits for fulfilment the long promised time when Israel will be again in their land with the Lord Jesus as their King.

The last verses of this chapter, 28-34, trace the course of the Assyrian army, coming from the north toward Jerusalem. Not all of the places can now be identified, but Aiath is believed to be Ai, near Jericho; Migron, Michmash and Anathoth are nearer to Jerusalem, and can be found on a map of Palestine. The Assyrian king will seem to have everything his own way, but the beauty and pride of Assyria will unexpectedly meet with a power they have never known, and utter defeat will follow. He shall fall by a mighty One.

Isaiah 11

In order, in our progress through this most instructive book, we have found,

First, the state of man (Israel, it is true, but man nevertheless), and God’s proposal of cleansing and blessing, with the assurance that His enemies would be dealt with (chapter 1).

Second, the declaration that Jerusalem shall be the capital city of the world, the seat of government and the center of earthly blessing of the highest order, when the day of Jehovah has come, and He shall judge among the nations, and wars shall cease (chapter 2).

Third, that in that day there will be a Branch, or Sprout, of Jehovah for beauty and glory, —Jehovah will dwell in Zion (chapter 4).

In chapter 7 we found the promise of the virgin’s Son Immanuel, taking up the declaration of God to Satan in Genesis 3:15.

In chapter 8 the land of Israel under the heel of the invading Assyrian is Immanuel’s land, and He will subdue every enemy, though for a time He would be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but afterwards He is seen with “the children that Jehovah hath given Me,”—the begotten-again of Israel.

In chapter 9 Immanuel, the child born to Israel, is the Head of all Government, the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of the Coming Age, the Prince of Peace.

Chapter 11 briefly describes the Branch, Immanuel, the Hope of Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ who died on Calvary’s cross that sinners lost and perishing might live eternally. He is of the seed of David truly (2 Timothy 2:8; Luke 1:32,33), but here of the stock of Jesse, David’s father, taking His place thus with the humblest of the children of Israel.

Upon Him shall the spirit of Jehovah rest. In verse 3 the best text is “And His delight will be in the fear of Jehovah, and He shall not judge, etc.” Blessed will be this poor world, when He rules it and its present ruler (Matthew 4:8, 9; Revelation 2:13; John 11:30) is deposed and in chains (Revelation 20:1-3).

In that day deep changes will be wrought in the very animals and reptiles, so that the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatted beast together, and a little child shall lead them (verses 6-9). Impossible today, for such a thing to be! Romans 8:19-22 is not yet fulfilled.

Then will Jehovah set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His earthly people which shall be left when His judgments are over. Pathros (verse 11) is upper Egypt; Cush is Ethiopia, Elam is Persia; Shinar is west of Persia—pact of Irak. Hamath is north of Damascus.

There will be physical changes too (verses 15-16). Read “into seven streams” instead of “in the seven streams.”

Isaiah 12

Chapter 12 Concludes this most interesting and instructive section of the prophecy of Isaiah with a song of praise, Israel’s praise to God. The sighs, and groans and tears of the past will be remembered only to magnify the grace of our Saviour God.

The reader will note that God’s purposes for Israel are entirely distinct from His purposes for the Church; the one is earthly in prospect, the other a heavenly body. The present period of grace, from the cross to the Lord’s coming to take His Church away (1 Thessalonians 4) is entirely passed by in Isaiah’s prophecy.

Isaiah 13

We begin in this chapter the second chief section of the book, which ends with chapter 27. As we noticed in examining early chapters, the Holy Spirit groups together the events and characters of Isaiah’s times with those of the last days. The reason for this is that Israel is in view, set aside from the Babylonian captivity (B. C. 606) until the last days, while the Gentiles rule them; it is as though time were not reckoned during this long period, for when God takes up Israel again, the Assyrian will reappear and also the Roman Empire.

Particularly is the period from the cross of Christ to the rapture of the Church (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17) entirely omitted from Old Testament scripture; indeed the Church is never mentioned in the Old Testament; it was a secret until made known to the apostle Paul (Ephesians 1:9; 3:3-11, etc.)

It is the nations in connection with Israel, rather than Israel, that are the subjects of the section of Isaiah’s prophecies on which we now enter, though Israel is reached at the end, and then the whole world is brought into blessing.

The first subject is Babylon, and we shall find that it is not only the actual city of that name and its king, but the power of the last days which will have the same character,—the revived Roman Empire. (See Daniel 2:37-45 and 7:1- 27; Revelation 13: 1-8; 16:19).

The actual Babylon must have stood not far from the early tower of Babel (Genesis 11). It began as a city very early, but the kingdom which rose to wide dominion under Nebuchadnezzar, was not founded until 120 years after Isaiah’s prophecy, and the Jews were not taken captive and carried away to Babylon until nearly 20 years after that. The site is desolate today, and has not been inhabited for many centuries.

The capture of Babylon by the Medians is referred to in Daniel 5:30, 31, but the future destruction of the last great empire occupies a larger place in our chapter. Note for example the connection with the day of Jehovah (verses 6-9), and the punishment of the world (verse 11). In connection with verse 10 see Joel 2:10, and 30, 31; 3:15; Ezekiel 32:7, 8; Matthew 24:29, 30. The capture of the literal 1-abylon is indicated in verses 14, 18, while its later destruction, hundreds of years afterward, is stated in verses 19 to 22, and continues to the present time.

Babylon was the first power to which God delivered up the Jews, when people and king had alike fully turned to idolatry and kindred corruption. Its fall and destruction picture the greater fall and destruction of the great power of the west, the Roman empire, last of the four beasts seen by Daniel, but called Babylon in the Revelation.

Rome was and will be characterized, as was ancient Babylon, by excessive pride, cruelty and idolatry. There is no warrant in Scripture for supposing that there will be an actual Babylon, built on the plain of the Euphrates, in the last days. The future Babylon is the city built a seven hills, the capital of Italy.

Isaiah 14

The time is approaching when the Roman Empire, broken into fragments in the beginning of the Christian era, will again appear, with boundaries corresponding to those it possessed in the time of Christ. The city of Rome, Scripture clearly indicates, will be the capital of the revived system of empire, and it is not without interest that we observe today the extensive improvement and enlargement of that city.

But the mighty empire, challenging (as it presently will) the admiration and wonder of those left upon the earth after the Church is gone, meets its doom at the mouth of Him who suffered crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. (For scriptures relating to this subject, see Rev. 13:14; 17:8-14; 19:11-21).

It is in that day, and linked with the destruction of imperial Roman power, that as verse 1 recites, Jehovah will have mercy on Jacob and will yet choose Israel and set them in rest in their own land. Then the peoples (plural) i.e., the Gentile nations will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of Jehovah for servants and for handmaids (verse 2). (See among many related passages Zechariah 8).

The King of Babylon, spoken of in verse 4 and following, is the last head of Gentile dominion, as Nebuchadnezzar was the first. The old enemy of the Jews serves as the type of the final one of whom Daniel 9:26, 27 and Revelation 13 and 17 tell so much,

Verses 9 to 14, while applying first to Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, refer in the fullest way to the coming head of the Roman Empire. This man, to whom Satan will give his power, will surpass all his predecessor rulers in pride and in the service of the devil.

At first, under papal control, this will be thrown off before the Lord destroys him with the breath of His mouth, but in the holy land, at least, he will be the protector of the Anti-christ or Man of Sin, the false prophet, the second “beast” of Revelation 13:11, and the arch enemy of the believing remnant of the Jews whose experiences fill so much of the Psalms.

Verse 24 introduces again briefly the Assyrian; the ancient Assyrian perished before Babylon’s brief but more exalted splendor, but when these powers are brought into being at the end, Babylon will receive its doom first. Afterward the Assyrian will be broken in God’s land, and will be trodden under foot upon its mountains.

Verse 28 (not 29 as indicated by paragraph mark) takes up Philistia (“whole Palestina” is properly read “Philistia, all of thee” both in verse 28 and verse 31). No doubt the Philistines saw the weakness of Judah after Uzziah, who had warred against them successfully (2 Chronicles 26:6, 7), and his son Jotham were dead, for Ahaz was notorious for his disregard of God, and suffered greatly from attacks by the kings of Syria and Israel, and also from the Edomites. The Philistines invaded the cities of the lowland, and of the south of Judah, and dwelt there (2 Chronicles 28:18), while Ahaz reigned.

The address to Philistia no doubt looks on to the coming day when nations long since gone in name, at least, will be revived. The Philistines, ancient enemies of the children of Israel, must again appear, with Moab and Syria, for judgment when the Lord comes again.

Isaiah 15

The pride of Moab is spoken of in Jeremiah 48. He magnified himself against Jehovah; Israel was a derision unto him, and they shall be destroyed from being a people. Zephaniah 2:8, 11 takes up the same subject and declares that their land shall be as Sodom, a possession of nettles and salt pits and a perpetual desolation on account of their pride, because they reproached and magnified themselves against the people of Jehovah of hosts. Little did they realize that they would have to do with God about their treatment of His earthly people!

Today their land once populous and fertile, is desolate as the prophecy promised, but that they will reappear as a people we know from Daniel 11:41 and Isaiah 11:14. God has not finished with them.

Chapters 15 and 16 view Moab as passing under the judgment of God, —both the events that shortly followed Isaiah’s inspired writing, and what shall yet come to pass. Where there had been arrogance, there is weeping; they cry and flee; their abundance is carried off; the waters of Dimon (Dibon) are full of blood, token of great slaughter. God’s judgments may be long deferred, but “He requireth (or bringeth back) that which is past.” Ecclesiastes 3:15.

Isaiah 16

Chapter 16 calls upon the Moabites to send the lamb of the ruler of the land to the mount of the daughter of Zion, because the throne of David shall be established and the oppressor will be consumed. The lamb is evidently an acknowledgment of subjection to Israel. (See 2 Kings 3:4).

As to the chastisement then to fall on Moab, verse 14 names the time as three years distant, and its severity so great that of that great multitude but a remnant should be left. Scripture does not say at whose hands this infliction would occur. It may have been the Assyrian of that day.

In the future day they will escape the armies of the Assyrian, perhaps because thought of too little consequence to bother with them, but they will be dealt with by restored Israel.

Isaiah 17

The burdens of the preceding chapters have taken up the great oppressors of the Jews, Babylon and the Assyrian, the Philistines on the west and Moab on the east. Now Damascus, the once great city on the north in Syria, is before the prophet.

We may wonder at the promises of judgment upon cities and countries which either do not now exist, or are but shadows of former greatness. Nothing is however so sure as the Word of God, and He will not only fulfil His Word as to those mentioned, but will bring to light the lost ten tribes of Israel, as to whom no one today has a certain clue.

Damascus is taken away from being a city, and shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer, a district nearby, are to be forsaken and shall be for flocks. Dominion shall cease from Damascus and Syria; all will be Israel’s in the glorious time that awaits God’s earthly people. Yet before the glory, Israel will be judged along with Syria (verses 4-6).

At the time of Isaiah’s prophecy, it would appear that Damascus had been destroyed (by Tiglath-pileser, 2 Kings 16:9). The prophecy however looks on to the yet future time when it will be overthrown under the hand of God.

In that future day man shall look to his Maker, and not any longer to the altars, the work of his hands, nor to the idols and things connected with idolatry. This passage (verses 7-11) refers to Israel as well as the neighboring countries (see chapter 28).

Verses 12 to 14 properly begin, “Ho! to a tumult of many people,” etc. It is the gathering of the nations to spoil the land of Israel. But the rebuke comes, and they flee like thistle down before the whirlwind.

What light the Word of God affords concerning the recovery of His people in their land, the schemes and efforts of their enemies, and the ultimate triumph under the Lord Jesus!

Isaiah 18

One of many remarkable developments in the world during the past 20 years has been the changing prospect of the Jews. In the light of the prophetic Scriptures, General Allenby’s capture of Jerusalem on December 9, 1917, was a significant event, and since that time the Jews have become much more interested in plans for making Palestine again their national home. Indeed, a beginning has been made, several colonies of Jews having settled in portions of the Holy Land; but opposition of the Arabs has hindered progress in this direction.

It is plain from the Scriptures that the Jews will go back to Palestine without faith in God. What circumstances will lead them to return? The restriction of their liberties, persecution in one form or another, seem the most probable.

Chapter 18 lets us know that a country doing much business by means of ships will aid the Jews in getting back to Palestine. The name of the country is not given; it will be one further away from Israel’s homeland than the Nile and the Euphrates, the rivers of Ethiopia.

“Shadowing with wings” is believed to indicate the protection of the Jews from hostile nations, as a bird guards its young under its wings. The opening words of the chapter should read,

“Ho! to the land shadowing with wings,” etc. “Vessels of bulrushes” (or papyrus), it is thought, refers to light, fast ships, without regard to the materials of which they are made.

The return of the Jews to the land of their forefathers will, we judge, take place soon after the coming of the Lord for His heavenly people (1 Cor. 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), an event there is much reason to believe to be now close at hand.

But though the help given by the unnamed friendly country will be great, the Jews will not be very long in the land before they are despoiled by Gentile enemies. All the inhabitants of the world are invited to see what happens (verse 3).

God will apparently have no part in what takes place (verse 4), but when everything seems to prosper with the Jews, and glorious days apparently are just ahead, they will be made to suffer greatly. This we know will be during the great tribulation, after the Church is taken away to be with the Lord.

It is only under God that they can be blessed, and in the Millennium, they will be delivered and wonderfully blessed (verse 7).

Isaiah 19

Egypt fell from the high place it held during much of Old Testament history, when Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Empire rose. It then suffered after the order of Isaiah’s prophecy, but chapter 19 awaits the last days, for its fulfilment, as we believe, now near at hand. Jeremiah 43:-13, and chapter 46, and Ezekiel, chapters 29 to 32 give the description of the early judgments carried out under Nebuchadnezzar.

For many centuries Egypt lay under Turkish misrule, but since 1879, largely through British interest, it has recovered some of its former importance. From December, 1914, it has had a king of its own, under British protectorate, and a movement is on foot to secure complete independence.

Our chapter reveals that greater calamities are coming on Egypt than befell when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the country about B. C. 590. A land without rain, Egypt depends upon the river Nile which every year has supplied the moisture for the crops; canals carry the water the width and length of the fertile valley.

So although the river failed them in Joseph’s time (Genesis 41:54), the Egyptians became proud, self-sufficient, boastful (Ezekiel 29:3, 9. See also Exodus 5:2). They rejected the only true God, and worshiped idols. In due time God will visit Egypt in swift and unsparing judgment (verse 1).

A picture of an awful state of things is presented in verses 2-10; civil war; the failure of the spirit of the people; the loss of men of counsel, and the Egyptians seeking vainly for help from their idols and from the sorcerers and wizards; a cruel lord and fierce king (believed to be the Assyrian of the last days, “the king of the North”—Daniel 11:40-43) ruling over them; added to all this, the Nile failing with disastrous results to the country. Surely the cup of the people of Egypt will seem full!

In verse 5, the word translated “the sea” may mean either a sea or a large river, —in this case it is the Nile. Verses 6 and 7 have been retranslated:

“And the rivers shall stink, and the streams of Egypt shall be diminished and drain away; the reeds and sedges shall wither. The meadows by the Nile, on the banks of the Nile, and everything sown by the Nile, shall be dried up, be driven away and be no more.”

In verse 8 “the brooks” is read— “the Nile,” and in verse 10 the correct translation is believed to be “And her pillars shall be broken in pieces and all workers for hire shall be sad of soul.” (These variations from our excellent King James translation are not mentioned in criticism of its general accuracy which has not been questioned, nor could it be. No serious error has ever been found in it).

Zoan, verse 11, was a city in lower Egypt, the capital city where Moses and Aaron met Pharaoh. Noph, verse 13, is Memphis, another of the capital cities which Egypt had.

Out of the tribulation which the Egyptians will have to endure, there will come blessing (verses 18-25), for there will be repentance at last (verses 20-22), and in the Millennium the land of Israel, God’s inheritance, will be flanked on the south by Egypt, and on the north and east by Assyria, peopled by Gentiles, who have been born again, and whose delight it will be to serve the Israel of God.

Isaiah 20

This short chapter forms a sort of appendix to the nineteenth chapter, dealing further with the history of Egypt. It shows that before ever the Babylonians came on an expedition of conquest into Egypt, the Assyrians came there and led away captives.

The purpose of what is here told is clearly to show that in God alone, never in man, should His people trust. Fearing first the Assyrians and afterward the Babylonian king, many of the Jews turned to Egypt for help instead of to God.

The year that Tartan (which is apparently the title of a general, perhaps the chief military officer of the Assyrian armies) came to Ashdod, a city near the sea coast, west from Jerusalem, on the road to Egypt, would appear to be about the time when Sennacherib, co-regent with Sargon of Assyria invaded Judah (Isaiah 26 and 37, —see verse 9 of the latter chapter). It was then that the king of Egypt and Ethiopia, Tirhakah, set forth with an army to make war on the Assyrians.

Ashdod was formerly a stronghold of the Philistines; there they had the house of their god Dagon, and thither they brought the ark of God, only to find their god humiliated before that representation of Jehovah’s presence (1 Samuel 5:1-8). Ashdod reappears in the New Testament as Azotus (Acts 8:40).

It was, then, at the time when an Assyrian army was in Judah, that God graciously gave a warning to the Jews that they should not look for help in Egypt against the Assyrians.

Isaiah was directed to remove his outer garments (already sackcloth), and his sandals, for a sign of what was to happen to the Egyptians. The term “naked” here does not mean absolute nudity.

If God permitted Egypt to be thus treated, what could Judah expect, knowing the true God, but dishonoring Him with the worship of idols in open indifference to Himself?

What, too, of our own day? Is there no lesson for us in the moral pointed out to the Jews? Let believers go to God, and not to man, with the difficulties of the present hour.

Isaiah 21

Babylon was first in the series of “burdens” whose beginning was in chapter 13, and it now reappears as we draw near to the close of them. The “desert of the sea” seems a strange name for the great world capital of its day, but “desert” it became under the judgment of God, overwhelmed by an irresistible force for which the figure of the sea is used (see Jeremiah 50:41-42; 51:42).

Babylon, as Daniel 5 intimated, and Isaiah 47:11 and Jeremiah 51:31 foretold, was captured with stealthy swiftness, the inhabitants being taken by surprise on a night of revelry, by the attacking armies of Elam (Persia) and Media in B. C. 538.

With its capture, the sighing (verse 2) of the captives of Judah ceased, for they were allowed to return to the land of their forefathers if they chose to do so (see Psalm 137 and 2 Chronicles 36:20-23).

Verses 3 and 4 express the feelings of the Babylonians when the invaders rushed in upon them. Verse 5 shows that while the feasting was going on, there was a watch provided against attack, but it did not save the city from capture.

The intent of verses 7-9 is to show the approaching armies of the Medes and Persians; the pleasure-loving citizens were otherwise occupied, and before they knew of danger, the invaders had entered the gates of Babylon and the first empire was at an end. The second empire (Medo-Persia) now began.

Dumah (verse 11) represents the children of Esau who had no love for Israel or Israel’s God. Scornful is the inquiry,

“Watchman, what of the night?” but solemn in its warning note is the watchman’s answer,

“The morning cometh, and also the night.” Yet there is hope, —still time for repentance, for turning to God while His mercy waits:

“If ye will inquire, inquire ye; return, come!”

If this reply of the watchman is considered in connection with the Lord’s appearing on earth with which it is really concerned, so much the subject of prophecy in Old Testament and New, we know that the dawn of the day of the Lord will bring blessing to those who will be waiting for Him, and judgment upon those who have refused the offer of grace.

But we may apply the watchman’s answer to the skeptic, to our own time, and to the prospect of the coming of the Lord in the air to call His saints away; when that moment comes, the great eternal day will have begun for them, and just as certainly the “night” of judgment will have closed in on the rejectors of the gospel.

Arabia (verses 13-17) is evidently the section of that large country which adjoins the land of Edom. A warning is given, that though for a time the people shall see judgment descending on others, and they be able to succor them, in a set time not far away, judgment would reach their own people; there is no escaping out of the hand of God.

“Prepare to meet thy God!” Amos 4:12.

Isaiah 22

The valley of vision is Jerusalem, and the scenes portrayed in verses 2 to 11 (although partial fulfilment of the prophecy is recorded in 2 Kings 25 and 2 Chronicles 32) belong to days which are yet to come.

We may turn with profit to several scriptures from which the time and occasion of and participants in the siege of Jerusalem here spoken of will be readily seen.

We have already noticed (in chapter 18) the return in unbelief of many Jews to the land of their fathers. They will set up their old religious observances under the protection of the head of the Roman Empire, but having a king of their own whom Scripture calls the false prophet and the Antichrist (see Revelation 13; Daniel 11:36-39 and 9:27). A covenant is made with the head of the Roman Empire yet to be revived, for the period of seven years, during which the Jews are to be allowed to carry on their sacrifices as when they were in their land in olden times; notwithstanding this covenant, the sacrifices will be stopped in the middle of the period, and idolatry be set up instead.

Because of the protection of abominations (God’s term for idolatry) there shall be a desolator—this is the true reading of Daniel 9:27—and this desolator is the Assyrian of the last days, called in Daniel the king of the North.

The apostate Jews will think they will be safe from that “overflowing scourge” because of the covenant protection of the western powers (see Isaiah 28:14-19). But they will not be, for God will use the Assyrian to punish them. Evidently the great power of the Roman Empire will be moving toward Palestine with its chief, when the Assyrian with an immense army comprising the forces of Asia and northeastern Europe descends upon Israel’s land from the north (Daniel 11:40-45; Isaiah 5:26-30; 8:7-10; 10:5-7 and 24-34), besieges and captures Jerusalem, taking half of the city captive (Zechariah 14:1,2).

It is this siege and capture that is represented in Isaiah 22. Pursuing the subject further, it appears that the head of the Roman Empire and his great army shortly after this reach the vicinity of Jerusalem where the false prophet-king of Judah is. Then, while the Assyrian is gone down to Egypt on an expedition of conquest, the Lord descends from heaven (see Revelation 19:11-21, and 2 Thessalonians 1:7-2:10), and overwhelms His enemies then in the land.

When the Assyrian shortly afterwards returns, he will meet a power he had not expected (Isaiah 10:12-19; 14:24, 25). He will come to the same end as the head of the Roman Empire and the false prophet-king, being sent direct to the lake of fire —hell (Isaiah 30:27-33).

After that, along with other judgments on the living (see Matthew 25:31-46 and Isaiah 1:24-31) the Lord will establish the thousand years’ reign of peace and righteousness, wherein sin will be held in restraint and war and blood shed be unknown, the devil being shut up (Revelation 20:1-6; Isaiah 11:1-12:6).

Returning to our chapter, verses 12 to 14 show the spirit so prevalent in the world today, —heedless of approaching doom, unrepentant; “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” God is treated with contempt, and His Word rejected. More solemn then, will be the judgment, when it comes, as it certainly will. How escape it, if so great salvation is neglected?

The rejection of the self-seeking Shebna, and the putting in his place of the worthy Eliakim is a true part of Isaiah’s prophecy, and not a disconnected piece of history without reference to the future. See Revelation 3:7, and it is at once plain that Eliakim, godly man of Hezekiah’s reign (Isaiah 36:3), was used by the Holy Spirit as a “type” of Christ. Shebna, then, is a foreshadowing of the false prophet-king of the Jews, who will be cast alive into the lake of fire at the coming of the Lord to the earth.

The man whom Shebna is intended to bring before the mind is variously characterized in the Scriptures, but always as a leader in evil. Referring to him, the Lord said to the Jews (John 5:43),

“I am come in My Father’s Name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

In 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10 is the fullest reference to this man of unsurpassed wickedness. He will oppose and exalt himself above all called God or object of worship, showing himself as God. He will in an extraordinary way be energized by Satan, having power to do signs and wonders beyond anything now known, —not for good, of course, but in serving his master who is a murderer and liar from the beginning (John 8:44), by means of falsehood and all deceit of unrighteousness to them that perish.

Revelation 13:11 presents this enemy of God in symbolic language, and chapter 19:20 shows his end. 1 John 2:22 calls him the Antichrist, while warning believers that there are many antichrists in our own time. Zechariah 11 speaks of him as a foolish and worthless shepherd.

Daniel 11:36-39 presents him as “the king,” and we learn from this passage that he will be a Jew, for he will not regard the God of his fathers, or Christ (the desire of Jewish women was to be the mother of the Messiah).

This, then, is the final culmination of the present order of things; the world is not getting better, but worse and worse (2 Timothy 3:13; Acts 20:28-32; 2 Peter 3:3, 4). On the great election day, Barabbas the murderer was chosen, and Jesus was rejected and crucified (Mark 15).

This Jesus hath God raised up and exalted at His right hand according to His Word,

“Sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.”

Meanwhile the gospel goes out in a dispensation of grace and forbearance (Acts 2-4, etc.), that whosoever believes in that rejected One, God’s only begotten Son, shall not perish but have everlasting life.

He is coming again to the earth in judgment according to Psalm 2; Matthew 24: 27-51; Jude 14, 15; 1 Corinthians 6:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10. He is coming in glory, attended by not only the angels, but by all those raised or changed at His coming for His heavenly people (1 Thess. 4:16, 17).

When He comes in judgment the government shall be upon His shoulder (Isaiah 9:6), and the key of the house of David will be laid upon His shoulder, so He shall open and none shall shut, and He shall shut and none shall open. All power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18).

What a day that will be for this world, when He reigns!

“The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and forever.” Rev. 11:15.

Isaiah 23

As in the burdens of Babylon, Philistia, Moab, Damascus, Egypt, Dumah, Arabia and Jerusalem, which have on previous occasions been before us, there had been a partial fulfilment of the prophecy, and the final development will be seen in the coming day.

Tyre

Tyre was a very ancient city; it is even said to have been founded as early as the flood which engulfed the world in Noah’s time. However, that may be, it was a fortified city, when the children of Israel under Joshua took possession of the land God had designed for them.

Tyre was within the boundaries of the tribe of Asher, but the Asherites settled down among, instead of driving out, the inhabitants of the country (Joshua 19:29; Judges 1:31).

It was an independent kingdom in David’s and Solomon’s times, we know from 2 Samuel 5:11; 1 Kings 5:1 and 9:11, and other passages. Of its wealth Zechariah 9:3 testifies.

But it is from Ezekiel 27:1-25, that we get our knowledge of the importance of Tyre in that day. Its trade was with countries near and far, to the east and north, and the south and west, by land and sea. The builders of the city had adorned it with costly wood and ivory, fine linen with broidered work, blue and purple, and the city’s boast was “I am perfect in beauty.”

With devotion to commerce and the adornment of their city, the citizens had not neglected the arts of war; an army was maintained, besides the walls and towers of defense around the place.

Tyre thus very fully represents the world and its ways, upon which judgment is soon to fall, and not the less severely because long delayed. When in Ezekiel 26-28 the judgment of Tyre is pronounced, it will be noticed the prophecy goes on to include the judgment of Satan (28:11- 19) since he is the ruler and god of this world.

Judgment fell on Tyre in a 13 year siege by Nebuchadnezzar, lasting from B. C. 585 to B. C. 572. They would have escaped it, had they heeded the word of Jeremiah the prophet (chapter 27:1-11), but they were full of self-confidence and rejoiced over Jerusalem’s fall (Ezekiel 26:1-14). Serious are the consequences of warnings despised.

The ancient Tyre has disappeared, both the original main land city and its later island site, but Tyre will be found a city in the day to come, for Psalm 83:7 numbers it among the enemies which will unite with Assyria in the attack upon the Holy Land which we have before considered, and Jeremiah 25:22 includes it as one of the kingdoms to come under the judgments of the last days which will take in the whole world. Then Isaiah 23 will be fulfilled.

Nevertheless, the Millennium will bring in a restored Tyre, for her merchandise and her hire shall be holy to Jehovah (verse 18 of our chapter). Psalm 45:12 sees the “daughter of Tyre” coming with a gift then, and Psalm 87:4 includes Tyre with Egypt, Babylon, Philistia and Ethiopia as enjoying the blessing of God in that day.

The Lord in Matthew 11:21, 22 and Luke 10:13, 14 spoke of the past judgment on Tyre and its neighbor, Sidon, saying that if the mighty works He had done in Chorazin and Bethsaida of Galilee had been done in them, they would have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

It is pleasing to note the present work of grace in such a scene of judgment, connecting together Mark 3:8; Luke 6:17 and Acts 21:3, 4 with its record of disciples found, perhaps to the surprise of the travelers, at Tyre.

Isaiah 24

This chapter gives the result of all the judgments upon the nations and the Jews which have engaged our attention in recent weeks. Nothing short of unsparing judgment will answer in the day of the Lord.

Matthew 3 in giving the testimony of John the Baptist speaks of “the wrath to come,” and concerning Him for whom he was the herald,

“He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire; whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

The baptism with the Holy Ghost only has taken place. The references to fire refer unmistakably to sharp, unsparing dealing in judgment with the wicked, which in the long suffering of God has not yet begun.

In Acts 17:30, 31, the apostle Paul, speaking to Greeks at Athens, told his hearers that God, now commanding all men everywhere to repent, has “appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained.”

Enoch’s testimony, given to us in Jude 14, but uttered by Noah’s great-grandfather about 700 years after Adam and Eve were formed, is the earliest warning of judgment on the living, of which the Scriptures tell.

Psalms 2, 46 and 110, several passages in Isaiah which have been before us, and others, some of which have been already referred to in other portions of the Word of God, tell of the beginning of the day of the Lord in its effect upon man, and the world he has used as his own.

What a picture of ruin, of desolation, this chapter presents in the first 12 verses! All of mankind is made to feel the out pouring of God’s judgment, though we know that the believers of that day will be spared from that fury which shall consume the wicked.

Notice in verse 3, “the land,” referring to the land of Israel, and in verse 4 the wider, or universal terms “the earth” and “the world,” referring to the whole world. The cause of the judgments is stated in verse 5:

“The earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance (or statute), broken the everlasting covenant.” It is because God has been disowned and dishonored, His mercy despised, the gospel rejected.

Verses 13-15 bring in the saved remnant, —as the few olives left on the tree after it has been shaken, and the handfuls of grapes left by the gleaners. These shall rejoice in that day; yet withal the godly shall groan because of their low condition, and because of the apostacy of the great majority of their kinsmen according to the flesh (verse 16).

Verse 21 brings in the judgment of the “high ones” (the angels who sinned) “on high” (not, “that are on high”). These, with whom Satan is united, are judged and will no longer be allowed to mislead man, and to oppose the work of God in grace.

All that we have had before us, it will be noted, has to do with the judgment of the living, at the beginning of the Millennium. The judgment of the dead at the great white throne (Revelation 20:7-15) is not expressed in the Old Testament.

Isaiah 25

Chapters 25 and 26 express the thoughts of the delivered believing Israelites, when God’s judgments will have been poured out on the earth, as we saw in our study of chapter 24:23, showing the conclusion of those judgments in Christ’s reigning in Mount Zion.

Brought through fearful times of suffering, these earthly saints will be filled with thankfulness to Him.

“O Jehovah,” they will say (verse 1), “Thou art my God; I will exalt Thee.”

Wonderfully will He have worked, according to counsels of old which are faithfulness and truth.

For many long centuries has He been compelled to hide His face from His earthly people, because of their sins, of which the greatest is the rejection of their Messiah; but He has never given up His purpose to bless Israel, and the Gentiles through them.

The works of man at enmity with God will then have been utterly destroyed, never to be rebuilt (verse 2), and those of the Gentile nations who will have been preserved alive will glorify and fear Him (verse 3).

In the very depths of trial, the believers who make up the “remnant” (Isa. 10:22-23) will have learned His compassion, and known His protection: He has been a fortress to the poor; a fortress for the needy in his distress; a refuge from the storm; a shadow from the heat; for the blast of the terrible ones (their enemies) will have been as the storm against a wall (verse 4).

In Israel’s land (spoken of as “this mountain” because it will be to the whole earth the particular country where Jehovah will be exalted) Jehovah of Hosts will make to all people, spared through the fearful judgments of the last days, such a provision out of His bountiful goodness as has never been known (verse 6). It will be the richest earthly blessing, seen and acknowledged as from God.

The world today receives much from God, but in unbelief never owns Him as the giver; in the Millennial day the darkness connected with man’s unbelief will be removed (verse 7).

Verse 8 gives us the expression quoted in 1 Cor. 15:54, for, the first resurrection (Rev. 20:1-6) will then be an accomplished thing, with Christ and His risen saints come to be seen by Israel and the nations.

The Word of God does not tell us when the earthly saints will receive the new resurrection body; apparently it will not be until the close of the Millennium or thousand years’ reign of Christ, and before the new heavens and new earth appear (Rev. 21:1-4). The making “all things new,” of Rev. 21:5, will necessarily include the clothing of the earthly saints with the new body, if it shall not have been done before then.

Verses 9-12 show very plainly that the blessing of the coming day will be first of all for Israel, and that their position will not be the same as that of the heavenly saints, —as indeed the whole of the prophetic scriptures indicate. We observe, for example, in verse 9, “He will save us,” referring to those Jews who have trusted in God during the interval between the Lord’s coming for His heavenly saints, and His return in power. But the heavenly saints are already saved, and do not wait for that day in order to be saved.

Moab was one of Israel’s proud enemies, and they will rightly look to see them put down, but the Christian is taught of God to love his enemies, and to seek to get the gospel before them, desiring their salvation.

Isaiah 26

Marvelous changes are to take place in Israel’s land when God begins the long deferred outpouring of blessing, but greater will be the change in the hearts of His earthly people. When they have owned their crowning sin in putting to death their Messiah, and adopting the language of Psalm 51 (for example) as their confession of blood guiltiness, have been enabled to make Psalm 103 their own, then will they be able to sing (verse 1),

Poor and feeble they will have been, but now, in the time to which the chapter refers, all is changed. The enemy has been vanquished, and Jehovah reigns in Jerusalem; His people are at rest.

Read Psalm 118, and note particularly verses 19 and 20 in connection with verse 2 of our chapter.

Precious to the saint of God in trial or out of it, is verse 3: “Perfect peace” assured, and not for a moment, or during a passing hour, but, “Thou wilt keep in perfect peace the mind stayed on Thee,” and for what reason, upon what ground, is this blessed gift bestowed? “Because he trusteth (or confideth) in Thee.” This cannot be limited to the Israel to come: it is for faith today to lay hold of.

We have before considered the practice of the translators of our common English Bible, of using a title “the LORD,” for Jehovah and Jah, two names of God. In verse 4 these two names occur. We may read the verse thus, as perhaps the best translation known,

“Confide ye in Jehovah forever, for in Jah, Jehovah is the rock of ages.”

Jehovah is God’s name of relationship with Israel, but the Christian knows Him in a nearer way, as Father (See John ‘20:17.) “Jah,” a name which occurs 47 times in Exodus, the Psalms and Isaiah, refers to God as the Absolute Being, supreme, over all.

Verse 9 answers a question raised as to the world’s prospects for getting better. It is stated positively in the Word of God that it will get worse and worse until He deals with it in judgment, and so here we have, “When Thy judgments are in the earth” (not till then) “the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness,” and verse 10 confirms this.

The end of verse 11 may be better understood if read, “Yea, the fire which is for Thine adversaries shall devour them.” God’s infinite patience will have reached its limit, and pent up judgment, richly deserved, will be poured out upon the despisers of His forbearance.

Verse 14 speaks of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, —death had overtaken them because of their ways. They will reappear at the judgment of the great white throne (Rev. 20:12), like all other unrepentant sinners. “They shall not rise’’ means that they shall not return in power to trouble the godly.

“All that are in the graves” shall come forth at the call of the Son of God (John 5:28-29).

In verses 16-18 the believing Israelites are considering their past; they had been in sore distress, and had cried to God, but they had not in all their history carried out God’s purposes (verse 18). “Wrought any deliverance in the land” is better translated, “wrought the deliverance of the land”—indeed, the land of Canaan they had entirely lost because of their sins, and it has for centuries been overrun by the Gentiles without fear of God.

Verse 19 brings the answer to the confession of sinful failure to do the will of God through, Israel’s history: “Thy dead shall live!”—not the physically dead, but the morally, spiritually dead. (See Ezekiel 37: 1-14, and Daniel 12:2 in this connection). In neither case is actual death and resurrection referred to but a national revival of Israel.

Some place of refuge of security (its location is not given), will God provide for His earthly saints when the judgment of the living takes place (verse 20). In this we have an example in Lot, taken out of Sodom just before its judgment fell (Gen. 19:15-22).

Abraham’s place, entirely out of the scene (verses 27, 28) is an illustration of the position of the Church of God when the promised storm breaks: we shall be taken up to the scene of heavenly glory, to the Father’s house. Afterward, when the Lord comes to execute judgment, we shall come with Him.

Isaiah 27

With this chapter we are brought to the close of the important section of Isaiah’s prophecy which began at chapter 13. Principally occupied with God’s purposes in the judgment of the Gentiles, especially those nations which were much in relationship with Israel, this series of prophetic outlines has shown also the position of Israel and the nations in the last days (chapter 18); the judgment of the whole world (chapter 24), and the full blessing to be made good to Israel in the Millennium (chapters 25:27).

Before that blessing can be enjoyed, “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan” (Rev. 20:2) must be dealt with on earth; Isa. 24:21 and 12:9 show him driven out from the heavens above.

Verse 1 of our chapter, with Rev. 20:1-3 and 10 gives us to know that man’s great enemy will, in God’s own time, be dealt with finally and eternally never more to deceive nor to work craftily through men as now. “In that day” (verse 1) we understand to refer to the period called the day of the Lord, which includes the Millennium and a little more,

Blessing, not judgment, is God’s delight He turns in verse 2 to consider His earthly people, the objects of His love and tender care, though because of their sins He had had to punish them. Had he smitten Israel as He smote those that smote them (verse 7)? No; they were enemies; these are His own, and the character and purpose of their punishment is explained in verses 9-10: “In measure, when sending her away didst ‘Thou contend (or debate) with her? He hath removed her with His rough wind in the day of the east wind. By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit of taking away his sin,” etc. (JND)

As for the Gentile powers, which had opposed God and His Son to the last, their fortified cities are seen to be solitary, desolate, forsaken as a wilderness (verses 10-11), unsparing judgment having fallen upon these enemies of God and His people.

The Israelites will be gathered one by one (verses 12-13). (See Matt. 24:31). Wherever they may be, over the face of the whole earth, angelic power will be used to bring them together to the land God gave their forefathers, and there, in the holy mountain at Jerusalem, they shall worship Jehovah.

It will be noticed that while chapter 26 begins with Judah, the Jews, chapter 27 looks at the whole reunited nation of Israel, —all the twelve tribes gathered back in the land.

Isaiah 28

From chapters 28 to 35 we learn the details of what is to happen to the Jews in their own land in the last days. We have had before us a general outline in earlier chapters of Isaiah, and the Psalms have told much of the last days as we found in reading them. What sovereign favor of our God, to tell His children what so deeply interests those whose hopes are heavenly, and so directly concerns those not yet children of His, who are to be delivered from Satan’s power to be His earthly people!

“Ephraim” and “Judah” are the names frequently found in the prophetic scriptures of the Old Testament, designating the ten tribes which revolted after Solomon’s death; and the two tribes which continued to own the son of David as king. “Ephraim,” or the ten tribes, occupied the northern part of the Holy Land, and “Judah” the southern portion. ‘Ephraim” has for many centuries been gone from sight, and we judge from various scriptures that the ten tribes will not reappear and he brought back to Israel’s land until after the invasion spoken of in chapter 28.

It is, we believe, the Jews that will by occupying the northern part of the land that are referred to in verse 1 as the drunkards of Ephraim. Of course, there may be today, among the Jews, as in the Lord’s time on earth, some of other tribes than the two of Judah (Luke 2:36).

The language of verse 1 is not to be understood literally; it speaks of the state of the people as full of pride, pleasure seeking, stupefied like drunkards, so that they do not know what they should, nor heed the warnings of coming trouble; they will be deaf to God and His Word, sunk in infidelity and idolatry.

Against this people will come a mighty and strong one as a storm of hail and a destroying tempest; as a storm of mighty waters overflowing, he shall cast down to the earth, and the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden under foot; the fading flower of his (Ephraim’s) glorious adornment shall he like an early fig, seized by the finder and eaten in a moment.

This overwhelming invader is the Assyrian or king of the north who occupies the Holy Spirit so much in the prophetic scriptures. We have found him referred to already several times in Isaiah.

The Jewish rulers at Jerusalem, relying on their league with the imperial head at Rome, and thoroughly in Satan’s power, will be confident that the northern power, independent of the Roman Empire, will not touch them. As Rev. 13:2 discloses that the devil will give the head of the western empire his power and his throne and great authority, these scornful rulers may well say (verse 15).

“We have made a covenant with death, and with hell (rather Sheol) are we at agreement; when the overflowing; scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.”

Daniel 11:40-43 shows that the Assyrian, or as there called, the king of the north, will be the chief, but not the only power which will attack Palestine’s willful king (the Antichrist). The first will be the king of the south (Egypt), but he evidently withdraws when the king of the north comes down from Asia Minor, bringing the armies of other countries with him (Psa. 83; see Psa. 79 also).

Isaiah 5:20-30 gives the manner of the coming of the Assyrian, and chapter 22:1-14 with Zech. 14:1-2 tells what will be the state of Jerusalem when besieged by him. To this we must add, after the promise in verse 10 of our chapter, the solemn words of verses 17-22, though we believe that in part this will be fulfilled at the Lord’s appearing, which will shortly follow the Assyrian’s attack on Jerusalem here described.

In verses 24-28 the people are besought to give heed to the warning of judgment; men do not plow, or sow always; they reap, and in reaping they employ different methods for differing grains; so the longsuffering-God will reap, presently; He will not always leave man to do his own wicked will, unrestrained. (See Matt. 24 and 25; Rev. 14 and 19.)

Isaiah 29

Ariel, meaning “Lion of God” is a name for Jerusalem, only found in this chapter. It speaks of what Jerusalem should have been, and what for a short time it was, in in measure; the place of brightest glory, of power which God bestowed on David and Solomon. But not now as when David dwelt there!

Yet it is the city God chose, and the Assyrian’s first attack upon it (in chapter 28) is shortly to be followed by the return of Israel’s Messiah, the rejected Christ of God. First, however, Jerusalem must be brought low (verse 4). The enemy must, as a part of God’s dealings with this people, camp against it, lay siege with watch-posts and raise forts against it. Verse 4 must be fulfilled ere God intervenes. The rebels of Israel will be brought to a state of terror, all their resources gone; no help avails (verses 5-6).

What has the great federation of the west been doing at this time? Has the powerful head of the Roman Empire (which is yet, according to the Scriptures, to be revived) neglected the Jewish kingdom under his authority, since the news must have quickly reached him of the attacks from south and north? What more natural than that all the military power he can muster shall be sent, as rapidly as possible, to the shore of the Holy Land, and sent inland to fight the daring Assyrian, now pursuing the Egyptians, and conquering their land (Dan. 11:42-43)?

Turn to Rev. 19:11-21, and Zech. 14:3-5; 12:1-9, the former giving the destruction of the Roman chief, and the head of the Jewish state (called the false prophet, but evidently the same person as the king and the Antichrist), and the armies of Europe under the command of the Roman emperor; the latter including the destruction of the Assyrian or king of the north whom Daniel 11:44-45 shows getting bad news from the north and the east, and returning to Jerusalem to meet an unexpected end.

We may conjecture what news it will be, that will cause the Assyrian (or king of the north, for they are evidently one) to be troubled; if the news from the north is that the Roman arms is ready to meet him near Jerusalem: or that it has been destroyed (at the Lord’s coming), and what the news from the east may be, Scripture does not enlighten us on these points. We are amazed that God should have told so much, in His Word; but it is there for the help of His people, more particularly in that awful day to come.

We would just point out, while on this subject, that the correct reading of Dan. 11:45 is: “And he (the Assyrian) shall plant the tents of his palace between the sea and the mountain of holy beauty, and he shall come to his end, and there shall he none to help him.” It is not in Jerusalem, then, but between the city and the Mediterranean Sea, that he encamps for the last time.

Returning to Isa. 29, verse 5 is better understood if “enemies” (the true meaning) is read instead of “strangers.” Verse 6 and the passages in Zechariah show with what demonstration of divine power the coming of the Lord with His saints will be attended.

In Acts 1, the apostles had asked the risen Lord about His restoring the kingdom to Israel, and He had left them to be witnesses for Him while absent. Then as they gazed steadfastly after Him as He ascended from the Mount of Olives to the scenes of eternal glory, two “men” are seen standing by them in white apparel, who tell them that this same Jesus should in like manner return. From Rev. 19:11-21 we have the manner of His coming; and from Zech. 14:4, the place—the Mount of Olives.

The remainder of chapter 29 is quite plain, and calls for no special comment. Verses 9-16 are addressed to those who should give heed to God and His Word; their sins have taken them far from Him; but in verses 18-24 is the glad news of a recovery out of all the wretchedness and misery man has brought on himself. Great events that have come before us in considering this chapter are:

(1) The coming of the Lord in judgment, attended by His heavenly hosts;

(2) The destruction of all nations arrayed in battle against Him;

(3) The blessing of His earthly people. For this the world waits, but the Christian, taught of God, waits for the Lord Jesus from heaven, to meet Him in the air, to have the body of mortality and corruption changed to an incorruptible one like His own, to be forever with Him, knowing Him as we are now known,—and this and more to be ours who trust in Him, long before this groaning earth shall be set free following His coming to the Mount of Olives. (1 Thess. 4:15-17; Phil. 3:20, 21; 1 Cor. 15:51, 52).

Isaiah 30

It is a principle with God, in His Word, to show the result that He will certainly bring about, and then to introduce details of practical instruction for those who are to be blessed in what He has stated already. So in chapters 28 and 29 we had the warring Gentiles, and God overturning their plans, disposing indeed of themselves, turning them out of His world who oppose Him, and now in chapter 30 we find the moral condition of those whom God would bless.

Egypt (verse 2) serves repeatedly in the Scriptures as an illustration or type of the world; why should those who have God for their help, seek help from the world or worldly wisdom? Was it not both dishonoring to Him, and debasing to themselves? It was not right, is not right for believers today, either.

The latter part of verse 7 should be read: “Therefore have I named her Rahab (Arrogance), that doeth nothing.”

Verses 8-11 contain a charge which exposes the human heart. We do not by nature (Gentiles are in this the same as Jews) like the truth to be told about ourselves. Some of us have even gone out of our way to avoid meeting a faithful servant of the Lord; we have in heart refused His Word, despised the gospel.

And to rebellious, self-willed Jew (and Gentile) He says, “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength,”— “and ye would not” (verse 15). For Israel it was in their doubts and fears as to the future, to return to their God, finding rest in Him and in His Word. So the apostle Paul, looking on into the future with some of the Lord’s people, said to them.

“I commend you to God, and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.” Acts 20:32.

God has in perfect wisdom given to us His Word, and His ear to hear our prayers. The Word cannot be detached from the Person, so that we cannot make our say by depending on the Bible’s instruction while neglecting prayer, or by resorting to prayer while neglecting the Book of Books. God must be waited on, as well as His Word be drunk from.

This is not according to man’s will (verse 16). He will “flee upon horses.” Yes, says God, you shall flee indeed, and that at the rebuke of five (verse 17). It has been rightly said that God constantly makes the earthly object of trust to be the rod for the fool’s back.

Pointed have been these lessons, sharp the rebuke. But blessing is His object. He must pull us down from the seat of pride, and bring us into trouble, sometimes deep distress, but all for our ultimate blessing. So verse 18 begins the sweet story of His gracious love and mercy to all who will receive it.

“Blessed are all they that wait for Him.”

The weeping days will come to an end; there will be necessarily the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, but the Word of God will have its place (verses 20-21). And when restored in heart they would rid themselves of everything that had drawn their hearts away from Him (verse 22).

Earthly blessings follow (verses 23-26), appropriate for Israel, whose hopes are all earthly. The Christian, whose hopes are all connected with heaven and the heavenly One, is never promised riches or plenty of good things on earth; for him, though blessed indeed now, there is to be the realization that the truest blessing will be found in the home above where Christ is.

Since the people of God have been spoken to, verse 27 now turns to their great enemy. He had been used by God to punish them; what is for him? Israel had sinned, but the Assyrian had been merciless, and vengeance will overtake him.

In verse 32 read the “appointed staff” instead of the “grounded staff;” “battles of shaking” is “tumultuous battles.”

Tophet (verse 33) is the figure of the judgment God has prepared, the lake of fire, as we learn from Rev. 19:20. Solemn word! “It is prepared of old.” The true reading is, “for the king also it is prepared.” The king is the false king of the Jews, the false prophet of Rev. 19, called “the king” in Dan. 11:36-39.

Isaiah 31

Chapter 31 is a sort of supplement, in its theme, to chapter 30; a reminder of the purposes of God to punish the wicked, and to bless those who trust in Him, and a repeated call to seek God and not rely on man when in need.

He does not now say, as in chapter 31, “Woe to the rebellious children,” but “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help”—trusting in horses, and chariots, and horsemen; not looking to God, nor seeking Him. How prone believers are in this day of ours to lean on natural things and not upon God! Thus they lose, though they do it because they think they will gain.

“Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord ... .Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” Jer. 17:5, 7. (Read verses 5-10.)

“Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God ... ..My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Phil. 4:6, 19.

Are we wiser than God’s infallible Word?

God also (not man only, or chiefly) is wise. Indeed, what is man’s wisdom worth, in the path of a believer? “He will bring evil, and will not call back His words.” Men have to recall their words often enough, promising what they cannot perform; not so God. “He will arise against the house of the evil-doers, and against the help of them that work iniquity” (verse 2). I can safely leave all that, and every problem and perplexity, to Him; but do I? To decide without waiting on Him for direction in the things that confront us in life, is sin against Him, self-will.

There is no enjoyment such as is found in the path of simple obedience, subjecting oneself to His will, and learning it day by day in prayer and reading His Word for profit to one’s soul.

Verse 3: The Egyptians are men and not God. What is man, to lean upon. after all? Wise within a narrow compass, and rich perhaps, and resourceful, but is that safe leadership? (1 Pet. 5:6-7; 2 Peter 2:9). Is God turned back by man? is He afraid of their voice? (verse 4).

Isaiah 32

In chapter 32, Christ is the King who reigns in righteousness. His rule will extend over the whole earth in the Millennium, and in a special sense over the land of Israel. The nations will still have their kings, but there will be the central, supreme government of the earth under Christ. Isa. 49:23; 60:3, 10, 16, and Rev. 21:24 show that the nations’ kings will continue during this period of blessing never before known on earth.

The thousand years will then be marked by a righteous rule, but this would not alone satisfy our God. Through His beloved Son there must be rest, peace, satisfaction, comfort, enjoyment of what is good. So “a man,”—it is Christ, of course, in Manhood—shall be as a hiding place from the wind; a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. What figures these are of a mighty change for those who shall be brought through the terrible judgments of the last days!

Verses 4-8: In that time, things and persons will be seen in their true character. False and deceitful appearances will have disappeared. Should wickedness appear, it will be dealt with openly and at once (chapter 66:23-24).

Verses 9-16: Not until the Holy Spirit is poured out, as in Joel 2:28-29, will the earthly saints be out of sorrow. Note that it is only those who compose the Church who are spoken of as indwelt by the Holy Spirit; this incomparable boon and privilege is reserved for the bride of Christ. (John 14:16, 17; 1 Cor. 12:13; Eph. 1:13, 14; Rev. 22:17.

Acts 2:17 declares that what was seen on the day of Pentecost was the same in character as Joel 2:28-29 promised, but it was not the same in extent, for “all flesh” did not then (nor could) receive the outpouring; nor will the future day reveal the same measure of the gift that is the believer’s in this day of the gospel of the grace of God.

There will be no room for man’s natural pride in the Millennium, however prominent it is today in every sphere of life. The “forest”—pride and loftiness of man—will be destroyed by the “hail;” and the “city”—Cain’s first step when departing from God’s presence (Gen. 4:17) shall be low in a low place then. The judgment of God will have accomplished all this.

The closing word of chapter 32 is precious. “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth the feet of the ox and the ass.” This verse stands apart from what has gone before, a reminder to serve the Lord in spreading the good seed of His truth, to thus occupy ourselves for Him while we wait for His coming. May we he stirred up to do this more faithfully, more wholeheartedly!

Isaiah 33

Here an unnamed enemy comes up for judgment. Who is he? It is believed to be none other than the Gog of Ezekiel 38 and 39, the last earthly enemy to be dealt with in the judgments attending the personal return of the Lord to the earth.

Turning to Ezekiel 38:2, we find his title, “The chief prince of Meshech and Tubal,” and this is repeated in verse 3, and in verse 1 of chapter 39. It has been known for an extended period that the words translated “The chief prince” are properly rendered “Prince of Rosh,” Rosh being the ancient name corresponding to Russia, while Meshech is represented in. Moscow, and Tribal in Tobolsk, important City of Siberia.

The Assyrian, or king of the north, whom we have considered in reading previous chapters, it is believed will get his support from Russia, but that vast country, joining with others named in Ezekiel 38:5-6, must meet its judgment too, and latest of all.

Indeed, in one or other of the conflict; of which Isaiah prophesied, occurring and following the Lord’s appearing, the power of all nations will meet His judgment, and those who remain of the Gentiles after those conflicts must meet Him in the tribunal of Matthew 25:31-46.

The special marks of this last enemy are his immunity from attack, and his habits of spoiling and dealing treacherously with other countries. He will reap according to his sowing. Nevertheless, the threatened attack, regarding which (read the two chapters in Ezekiel which have been referred to) will cause the greatest alarm in the land of Israel, although they will have seen the defeat and destruction at the hand of the Lord of all other hostile powers.

This alarm is but brief however, for verse 3 continues “At the lifting up of Thyself the nations were scattered,” and the Lord tells His fearsome people that “your spoil shall be gathered like the gathering of the caterpillar; as the running of locusts shall they run upon them.”

Verses 7 to 9 show how deeply the people of God will be concerned over the approach of the last enemy, and verses 11 and 12 are the Lord’s answer to the insolent challenge of the leader. We must turn again to Ezekiel for the account of the disaster which will overtake Gog and his hosts, for Isaiah refers to it only briefly in verse 23.

It is evident also, from this chapter and other prophetic scriptures that the Lord’s dealing with sinners will not be all in a moment; it will go on for some time after He has descended from heaven. So verses 13 to 16 indicate that there are then, at that time, sinners in Jerusalem. For them judgment is certain, and will he early, we may be sure.

Verses 17 to 22 picture Israel in their new happy, blessed state. They shall behold the King (the Lord Jesus) in His beauty, and no longer shut in by fear and alarm, but free to look at the far stretch-big land (as verse 17’s close should read). They will meditate on the terror they had experienced; the men who had been so important, so fierce, before the Lord’s appearing, are gone forever from Israel’s land. Jerusalem is now seen as a quiet habitation, where Jehovah will be with them in Majesty. He is their Judge, their Law-giver, their King.

Isaiah 34

The day of judgment has a large and important place in the Word of God. There may be difficulty in putting together in the precise order in which they will occur, the various events which the prophetic Scriptures reveal in connection with the coming of the Lord Jesus to the world, soon to take place, but every true saint knows that God has promised to judge the world and its inhabitants.

This is, in our own times, an unpopular subject for discussion; the modernists will have none of it. But the Holy Spirit has given ample testimony in both Old and New Testaments, that the day of God’s bearing with man’s wickedness will end in judgment, both of living and dead.

Isaiah 34 begins with a call to the nations and peoples (or races of mankind) to hear and hearken to a promise that concerns themselves. They have heard of the love of God, but have not received the gift of God, and shall therefore know the wrath of God. He has never promised that everyone shall be saved. He has said indeed that all those who receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved, who have not believed the truth, but have found pleasure in unrighteousness, shall be judged (2 Thess. 2).

The wrath of Jehovah is therefore rightly against all the nations, and His fury against all their armies (verse 2). The language used in this chapter is clearly figurative in part, but there is no mistaking what it means: fearful and unsparing vengeance on those enemies of God who are here in view.

Edom, the ancient home of the descendants of Esau lying south and southeast of the land God gave to Israel, is the scene of the action here depicted, and the desolation of Edom is to be complete, as not only this chapter, but Ezek. 35 and the prophecy of Obadiah show.

God has graciously made known much through His Word regarding the state of the world when the Lord Jesus will appear, accompanied by His heavenly saints and angels; He has shown what must and shall be done to cleanse the world—the scene of Christ’s kingdom—of all things that offend, and to fit a people for Himself, among which Israel, reborn, will be the center of blessing and privilege.

It is plain that some time must elapse during which enemies will be dealt with, and a work of God will go on, —among Jews and the lost ten tribes especially. It is well known that in Scripture a definite period is set for the time just before the Lord’s appearing; this is variously called “a time and times and a half time” (Dan. 7:25, JND); one-half week (a week being reckoned as 7 years, not 7 days) (Dan. 9:27); 42 months (Rev. 11:2), and 1260 days (Rev. 11:3). In the closing verses of Daniel’s prophecy, however, two other periods are named without explanation—1,290 days, and 1,335 days,

“Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand, three hundred and thirty-five days” (Dan. 12:12) seems to indicate that by that time all open enemies will have been judged, and the people and land of Israel, at least, be cleansed and at rest.

The scene pictured in Isa. 34, (with which compare Isa. 63:1-6) is the destruction of the armies associated with the Assyrian or king of the north. Previous to this, the head and the armies of the Roman empire, and the Antichrist will have been judged (Dan. 7:11 and 26; Rev. 19:19-21), and the Assyrian likewise in his turn (Isa. 14:24, 25; 30:30-33; Joel 2:20).

Apart from these acts of righteous vengeance, a singular work will have been going on among the Jews (Zech. 12:10- 13:9), the first result of which will be mourning and deep confession such as Psalms 51 and 88 and other passages give; the lost ten tribes of Israel will be recovered and brought, after passing under God’s chastening rod, to their places in the land once theirs (Ezek. 20:33-44; Matt. 24:31). Then Psa. 107 will be fulfilled.

Edom, singled out above other nations for judgment in chapter 34 and other scriptures, will be confederate with other neighbors of Israel in the attack planned and executed by the Assyrian (Psa. 83). The complete destruction of Edom will be God’s answer to their undying hatred to the people of God (Ezek. 35:5). The unbelieving Jews will die under the Lord’s dealings, directly, as well as during the invasion by the Assyrian who will be an executor of divine judgments before he is himself judged.

Isaiah 35

This short chapter gives a little picture—one of several in the Scriptures—of the thousand years when the Lord Jesus shall reign as Israel’s Messiah, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, when He shall have put down all enemies on earth, and cleansed the land and its inhabitants.

In considering the contents of this chapter which tells so much of the true hope of Israel, the Christian may well survey his own exalted prospect. Preceded by no storm of trial; heralded by no “signs”; appearing not as a warrior King, but as the Church’s Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus will make His coming known by a shout, by archangel’s voice and trump of God. Instantly the dead in Christ shall rise, followed within the twinkling of an eye by us (believers) who are alive and remain, caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall ever be with Him (1 Thess. 4:15-17).

When about to leave the world at the close of His matchless life on earth as the God-glorifying Man, He made it known that in His Father’s house are many abodes; that in leaving those He called His own, for whom He died, He was going to prepare a place for them, and would come again and receive them unto Himself, that where He is they may be also (John 14:2-3). Amazing prospect for poor confessed sinners, deserving the torments of hell!

Israel’s hopes are also founded upon God’s Word; with them reliance is upon His promises to Abraham and David, for which reference may be made to Gen. 17:1-8; 1 Chron. 17; Jer. 33:7-26, and numerous other passages. Israel’s hopes, it is well to remember, are all earthly; the Christian’s are all heavenly, although we shall be with the Lord when He comes to reign, and we shall reign with Him over the earth.

Everything here has been touched by sin, and while sin will still be found in the world, it will be restrained; (Isa. 65:20; Psa. 101 would seem also to be applicable, its last verse in the best reading being “Every morning will I destroy all the wicked,” etc.); Satan will not be free as now to deceive (Rev. 20:2-3), and in the land of Israel there will be few indeed, that are not born again. In large measure the curse will be removed from the ground; compare Gen. 3:18 with Isa. 55:13. The wilderness and the dry land (“solitary place”) shall be gladdened; the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, the comparison being made with Lebanon, Carmel and Sharon, three most favored regions in olden times (verses 1-2).

If the barren land shall be so wonderfully altered, what of man, long exhibiting the effects of sin? Verses 3-6 answer: the weak, the feeble, the fearful will find salvation in their God—their fears will be banished. The eyes of the blind shall be opened; the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped; the lame shall leap as the hart, the dumb shall sing.

Where no water is, there shall be abundance, and there shall be a highway which Isaiah mentions a number of times (chapter 11:16; 49:11; 62:10), a way to Zion which shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass through it. It shall be for those that seek God.

“Those that go this way—even fools—shall not err therein.”

Along that new road, the ransomed of Jehovah shall return, coming to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Happy prospect, indeed! Meanwhile, the whole creation groans (Rom. 8:22), and believers too, but with a higher, a heavenly prospect (2 Cor. 5:2).

Isaiah 36

AT this central position in Isaiah’s prophecy, the Holy Spirit has directed the inclusion of the account of the Assyrian invasion of Judah and purpose to capture Jerusalem which is given in 2 Kings 18, 19 and 20. Two reasons for this are plain: in the future day of which prophecy treats there will be another invasion of Israel’s land by another Assyrian—an event we have had before us in examining many earlier chapters; the manner in which the pious Hezekiah conducted himself on the former occasion is a pattern for the conduct of those God-fearing souls who will be in the place of danger in the time to come. Beside this, the incident in Hezekiah’s history showed that Isaiah was a faithful and true prophet; that he spoke as God’s mouthpiece and what he said actually came to pass; the historical portion is therefore a testimony in support of the prophetic portion, yet to be fulfilled.

The year was 713 B. C. Seven or eight years earlier, the ten tribes of Israel under Hoshea had been carried away by the Assyrians into a captivity from which they have never returned. Lachish (verse 2) appears to have been not far from the seacoast, southwest of Jerusalem, on the highway to Egypt. “Rabshakeh” is a title, not a personal name; it means “chief cup-bearer.”

Where Ahaz and Isaiah had met nearly 30 years before (chapter 7:3), the messenger of Sennacherib awaited the representatives of Hezekiah. Little did he realize that One far more to be feared than Hezekiah’s steward and secretaries was listening to his speech and would return answer in due time.

Rabshakeh’s knowledge of the Jew’s language, and of what Hezekiah had done in removing the high places and altars which his forefathers had made contrary to the Word of God, suggests the thought that he may have been a renegade Israelite; Scripture does not, however, tell anything about him.

He knew that some of the people had wished to get help against the invaders from Egypt (verse 6); he sought to misrepresent Hezekiah’s zealous act for God so as to impress his hearers with the notion that it was against God, and that God was now punishing Hezekiah for a wicked act (verse 7). He spoke contemptuously of the Jew’s ability to defend the city (verses 8-9); and finally he claimed that God had told him to invade and destroy. In his later utterance, he boldly declared himself greater in power than Israel’s Jehovah (verse 20).

It was a moment of sore trial to Hezekiah. He had been faithful to God far beyond any of his forefathers since the days of David, although he had swerved a little from the course of full dependence upon God (2 Kings 18:14-16, not mentioned in 2 Chron. 32). It may have been suggested to his mind, and to the minds of his people, that God did not value what he had done (see 2 Chron. 29-31); perhaps that He was giving up Judah now, as He had Israel a few years back.

We, like Hezekiah of old, do not always know or understand what God is doing, or will presently do for His tried and afflicted saints. But we are in the very best of hands, when we depend upon that God and Father who sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. It is always safe to wait on God, when the way is not clear; we shall not lose thereby.

Isaiah 37

WHEN the Assyrian armies came into the land of Judah on an expedition of conquest, Hezekiah had not gone to God about it, but tried in his own wisdom to pacify Sennacherib with a payment of gold and silver. The invader was not so easily turned away, and the appearance of Rabshakeh and his companions outside the wall of Jerusalem with the message from Sennacherib (chapter 36) showed poor Hezekiah that his tribute payment had been in vain; Sennacherib was determined to seize the country and take all the people away, as the ten tribes had been removed eight years before.

The king of Judah, overwhelmed at the prospect, went into the temple, now committing his burden to God. His message to Isaiah (verses 3-4) reveals a heavy heart, with but little faith that God would come to his help. (It is better to go to God first rather than last.)

The answer to Hezekiah’s faint hope seems to have been given by God to Isaiah so quickly that the messengers returned with it to the king. “Be not afraid”— words of unspeakable comfort to the distressed ruler; “. . . he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land” (verses 6-7).

Rabshakeh had gone back to his master whose attention was diverted by news of the coming out of the king of the south to fight him; nevertheless he sent another message to Hezekiah, one far more daring than the first: “Let not thy God deceive thee.”

If Hezekiah had any doubt before as to the issue, it must have been dispelled now, the invader had insulted the living and true God, in whose hand his breath was, and whose were all his ways.

We notice a change in Hezekiah not in fear anymore, but in the confidence of faith he goes with the letter into the temple, and there addresses God, owning Him in devout expressions as Israel’s God, Jehovah of hosts, God of all the kingdoms of the earth, Creator of the heavens and the earth. He prays that His ear may be inclined to hear, His eyes opened to see, what Sennacherib had sent to reproach the living God. That boastful ruler had met and overcome the nations and their false gods, but was he not now to have to do with Jehovah, Israel’s God?

As before, it was through Isaiah that God let His mind be known. (Such was the state of God’s people in their later Old Testament history that He raised up prophets through whom to speak to the people; the priests are not even mentioned at this time).

Majestic was the answer to Isaiah’s prayer; God was for His feeble saints, and against their terrifying enemy. Sennacherib should presently learn that he had gone too far in his pride, even lifting his hand against the God who had commissioned him to carry out His purposes (verses 26-27).

Hezekiah got a message of comfort (verses 30-32), but as to the Assyrian, he would not be permitted to enter Jerusalem, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come against it with shield or fortifications (verses 33-34). God would defend the city, for His own sake and His servant David’s sake.

Whether at Libnah or elsewhere, we are not told, but in the night 185,000 of the Assyrians died at the hand of an angel of Jehovah. Sennacherib returned to Nineveh, and there his own sons killed him, fulfilling the word of God (verse 7).

Isaiah 38

What we have been reading in chapter 37 is an indication of the end of the Assyrian of the future day, though he will be allowed to capture Jerusalem and shed the blood of some of its inhabitants. In that time Jerusalem and Judah will be visited as never before because of sin.

And now in chapter 38 we have both history and a picture of what is to come in the story of Hezekiah’s illness, apparently unto death. Israel in the coming day will be brought low, as it were to death, in order that God may work in them a great and necessary spiritual change.

Hezekiah’s grief over the thought of death is in remarkable contrast to the apostle Paul’s expressed desire to depart (Phil. 1:21-24); but we must remember that the hopes of Israel are earthly; their great desire will be to live to see the Messiah reigning as king of the land; so Hezekiah mourned that he should not (if he died) see God in the land of the living (verse 11); “the living, the living, he shall praise Thee” (verse 19).

The Epistle to the Hebrews makes clear the difference between Israel under the law, and the present dispensation of grace; a few passages from it will suffice:

“That through death He (Christ) might annul him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and might set free all those who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage.” Chapter 2:14-15.

“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the corners thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins? . . . For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins . . . He taketh away the first, that He may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Chapter 10:1-22.

Israel must be delivered from outward enemies, as we have before seen; they must also know deliverance from the power of death working in them. For all that, they will not have the faith or the experience of the Christian, properly speaking; nor will they be changed from the natural to the spiritual body before the Millennial kingdom begins, but only at its end.

Death should never be a dread-prospect for the Christian; it is release, as 2 Timothy 4:6 is properly read; — “the time of my release is come.” And in 2 Corinthians 5:1-8 is the apostle’s expression of confidence always, and pleasure in the thought of being absent from the body and present with the Lord.

God is however presenting in His Word Hezekiah as an example or foreshadowing of the quickening of the Jews in the latter days. It will take place, in at least the Jewish remnant, before the delivery from outward enemies is accomplished.

Isaiah 39

Babylon here first appears in the history of the people of Israel. At this time it was a petty independent kingdom, most of whose history was linked with Assyria, but 90 years later the Babylonian empire was founded, of which Nebuchadnezzar was the outstanding ruler. Under him Judah ceased to be a kingdom, the people being transported to Babylon, and Jerusalem was burned.

Hezekiah’s piety was not so marked when riches and honor came to him, as when he first reigned, or when the Assyrian invasion threatened. This is evident from our chapter, but we have the Holy Spirit’s comments upon this period of his life in 2 Chronicles 32: verses 25, 26.

“But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him, for his heart was lifted up; therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem. Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the wrath of the Lord came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah.” And in verse 31:

“Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart.”

It was (so deceptive are our hearts!) what God had done for him in recovery from illness, and the possession of wealth and honor that turned Hezekiah’s head the interest of the king of Babylon in his sickness, and the curiosity of the princes regarding the wonder (chapter 38:8-9), with the sending of the ambassadors, afterward lifted him in pride altogether unworthy of a Godfearing man. The result was that he showed the visitors all his treasures, everything that could impress them with his riches, his honors:

Then came the prophet Isaiah to inquire about the visitors, and, when Hezekiah told him what he had done, to give to him a message from Jehovah of hosts foretelling the breaking up of all in which his heart naturally delighted.

What the Assyrian was not allowed to do, a king of Babylon would —to take away to captivity. God as the judge of His people, had pronounced the sentence, their guilt being great, and only its execution was put off until later. Hezekiah had not been in the current of God’s thoughts, when the ambassadors came!

The Word of God quickly did its work in the conscience of this really godly man, as we see from his answer to Isaiah (verse 8).

It is a mark of the child of God that he bows under God’s rebuke, owns that, He is right in all that He does, and finds blessing to his soul that he otherwise would have missed.

This concludes the historical section of Isaiah, introduced as we have seen to throw light upon the events of the last days, when both Assyria and Babylon will reappear as troublers of Israel, and meet their doom separately from Israel’s Messiah.

Isaiah 40

In the historical section chapters 36 to 39, we saw the contrast between the gods of the nations, and the living God with whom we have had to do. We found there too, the outward enemies, whose actions toward or against Israel and Judah, and their judgment at the hands of God and His people when later restored, occupied the first part of this book.

We now begin upon what has been called the second book of Isaiah because the subject brought out in it by the Holy Spirit is the inward or moral history of this people in their God-given place of testimony against idolatry. With this we shall find their relationship with Christ, and the salvation of a remnant of the nation through the mercy of God.

The second part of Isaiah’s prophecy begins with the comfort of God. How gracious of Him! He sees the end from the beginning, and though what follows will expose unsparingly the nation’s moral condition, His purposes in grace are interwoven throughout.

Verses 1 and 2 look then at the result; the details; how this result will be reached, occupies the Holy Spirit to the end of the book. When God can say that Jerusalem has received from His hand double, we know He is thinking of what His Son suffered on their behalf. Upon Him was laid, as the remnant will say (Isaiah 53:5-6), “The iniquity of us all.” What they will have endured is but the needed correction, cleansing of heart and conscience in connection with the discovery to themselves of the enormity of their sin. Yet God here says to them, you have received double for all your sins; this is the reckoning of His gracious compassionate love.

In verses 3 to 8, though the beginning be concerned particularly with Israel—presenting John the Baptist’s mission to Israel (see the quotations in Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3 and Luke 3:4-6) we see the principles according to which God acts toward man. “All flesh is grass,” and Peter in his First Epistle, chapter 1 reminds us of this humbling fact; “but the Word of our God abideth forever.” Peter adds “And this is the Word which by the gospel is preached unto you,” which could not be said by Isaiah, the gospel being then unknown.

Jerusalem will be the city of richest blessing, of highest favor, in the day toward which the prophets looked. What will be the state of the inhabitants when they may say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” (verse 9)?

We have read in the first part of Isaiah much about the judgments that will be poured out when He comes; here (verses 10-11), though His coming is with power and authority, Jehovah is Israel’s tender, gracious Shepherd, carrying the lambs in His bosom, and gently leading their mothers.

In what follows, Isaiah tells of the glory of God in language surpassing any attainment of man with all his boastful learning. Of course all of the Bible has a character which none of the world’s best literature approaches. Here, it is a question of God or idols.

In Job 38-41 is a comparable passage, where God declares His glory to the end that His servant may learn a lesson which none of his friends, not even Elihu, could teach him.

What moves our hearts in His praise is that this High and Lofty One stoops down to our feeble selves.

“He giveth power to the faint, and to him that hath no might He increaseth strength.”

“They that wait upon Him shall renew their strength; they shall mount up; with wings as eagles; they shall run and not tire; they shall walk and not faint” (verses 29, 31). Blessed be His Name forever!

Isaiah 41

The Gentiles are next challenged, for the nations are the islands and the people (peoples, as should be read here). “Let them come near, then let them speak; let us come near together to judgment.” It is still Jehovah speaking, “Who raised up from the east him whom righteousness calleth to its foot?” (verse 2). The person thus introduced we shall find named a few chapters further in this book; it is Cyrus, called “The Great” in profane history, —the conqueror of Babylon.

God gave this Persian king the power to destroy Babylon, notorious for its idolatry; and directed him to let the Jews go back to their land. We have read of him in our journey together by means of these “Bible Lessons” through the Scriptures, in the closing verses of 2 Chronicles and the first chapter of Ezra. But Isaiah’s prophecy was written about a hundred years before the birth of this Persian king.

Scoffers who reject both God and His Word, knowing nothing of their state as sinners before Him, and therefore in complete moral darkness regarding the Word of God, have found in Isaiah’s prophecy a favorite theme for display of their “Learning.” That God is the Author of the Book, they of course deny. If He is its Author, and no intelligent Christian doubts it, why should there be any difficulty over His telling about Cyrus a century before he was born? Far more wonderful things, than this are found all through God’s Holy Word.

As before in Isaiah, we observe that events yet future are linked with what was soon to happen when Isaiah wrote; so the Holy Spirit evidently had Christ in mind, in His future reign, when Cyrus came before Him.

The Gentiles turn to their idols; verses 5-7 are the sequel to the call, in verse 1. What folly engages man, that he will make his own idols, and then bow down to them!

Cyrus is not God’s servant, but Israel is (verse 8). God never gives up His purposes of grace, and though the chosen nation is set aside during many centuries, He will bring them into far greater blessing than they have ever known (verses 9-13).

“Thou worm Jacob” is a reference to the past and the present of this people; but the day of their power is not now far off (verses 14-16), and when that day dawns, the wilderness will rejoice, the thirsty land will become water springs. In the wilderness there shall be cedar, acacia, myrtle, oleaster; in the desert, the cypress, pine (or perhaps plane tree, or evergreen oak) and box tree together (verses 14-20).

Again the nations are challenged (verses 21-29); let them bring forward proof of the divinity claimed for their idols. “Let them bring them forward and declare to us what shall happen; show the former things, what they are, that we may give attention to them and know the end of them; or let us hear things to come; declare the things that are to happen hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods; yea, do good, or do evil that we may be astonished (or examine) and behold it together.

Behold ye are less than nothing ... ..” (verses 21-24).

Yet man rejects the true God and returns to his idolatry!

Did the idols or their priests and soothsayers, astrologers, and the like tell of Cyrus’s, coming? Only Judah knew before the Babylonian empire was founded, that it was to take them captives, and that that empire would in due time be destroyed by Cyrus the Persian.

Isaiah 42

There are two “servants” in this chapter; the Servant of verse 1 is Immanuel, God’s beloved Son, the only Man upon whom God has ever been able to look with unqualified delight. The servant of verse 19 is Israel.

The Son of God was not revealed to man until His coming into the world as the virgin’s Son; though His coming was foretold, we know, from the light the New Testament throws on the Old. We need the revelations made to the New Testament apostles and prophets in order to understand the prophecies of the Old.

The opening verses of our chapter are shown in Matt. 12:18-20 to refer to Jesus, the God-Man, as He passed on His solitary way from the manger of Bethlehem to the cross of Calvary; Isaiah, however could not have understood this at all clearly when he wrote his prophecy. He spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Pet. 1:21).

The Old Testament saints did not know of God’s secret purpose to seek a bride for His Son, chiefly among the Gentiles, to share the Son’s glory eternally. That purpose was revealed to the apostle Paul, and we learn of it in the Epistle to the Ephesians (compare 1 Pet. 1:10-12 with Ephesians, chapters 1, 2, 3).

There will be a heavenly, and there will also be an earthly people of God, for His Word cannot fail. But the two bodies will never be merged into one, if we rightly understand the Scriptures.

Isaiah then passes at once, without the suggestion of any break or interval such as has occurred now for 1900 years, from the earthly life of our adorable Saviour and Lord to His coming again with power and glory (verses 2-4).

And now, from consideration of the Son of His love, God turns in verse 8 to the subject of idolatry. Many would scorn the thought that idol worship will ever be practiced generally by the enlightened people of the world, but if we believe God’s Word, we know that it is certainly coming back, and to be practiced by all except those who will receive Christ as their Saviour (Matt. 12:43-45; 24:16 Rev. 13:14-15).

He and He only is the light of the Gentiles, and the One who will make good the new covenant with Israel. Through Him and His redemption work on the cross, Israel will have a new song (verse 10) though not the same song as the heavenly saints (Rev. 5:9).

Verses 19-20, though addressed to Israel, in substance are true of mankind generally; shutting their eyes and stopping their ears to every message from God, they plunge along with ever hastening steps, toward a lost eternity.

May we not apply the present state of the Jews in certain lands to verses 22-24? Modern Germany adds its name to the list of oppressors of Jacob’s sons, and the dwellers in Palestine resent their appearing in that land that once was theirs as God’s gift.

As yet however, the fury of God’s anger and the strength of battle (verse 25) have not fallen on the Jews. This awaits the time of Jacob’s trouble, the time when God will visit them on account of their sins, before He blesses them as they never have been blessed before.

Isaiah 43

We are constrained to say, again and again, as we read of God’s ways with man in both Old and New Testaments, How marvelous is His grace! How amazing is His love! The gifts and calling of God (Rom. 11:9) are without repentance (or, not subject to repentance). Having determined to bless, He will bless; He will not give up His purpose because of the unworthiness of the objects of His love, His care.

In the latter part of chapter 42 God has spoken in the most positive way about Israel’s sins, their present state and coming judgment; He goes on in chapter 43 to speak words of deepest comfort to His redeemed. Out of the fearful judgment through which the Jews and (though separately) the last ten tribes, will pass after the present day of grace is ended, there will be a remnant of faith, as the Old Testament prophecies abundantly show.

For them is this exceedingly precious message to encourage the remnant in the fearsome days to come,

“Fear not: for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee; for I am Jehovah thy God, the Holy One of Israel thy Saviour. ... Fear not, for I am with thee. ... (verses 1-7).

The little land of Palestine, which many unbelieving Jews think too small and too far from the busy centers of the world, will be large enough for all of Israel that shall be converted to God. And as to its capacity to sustain them, we need only turn to Dent. 8:7-9; 11:12 and 32:8.

All the earth will see what God has wrought in that day, —the blind that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears (Israel), and the nations and peoples, idolaters witnessing to the truth of the living God and the worthlessness of their idols (verses 8-9).

“I am He,” in verses 10 and 13 is a name of God the Hebrew word for which is found in chapter 41:4; in Deut. 32:39; 2 Sam. 7:28; Neh. 9:6-7; Psa. 44:4 and 102:27 and is quoted in Heb. 1:12. It has the meaning of “the Same,” “the self-existent One who does not change,” in contrast to man who is so changeable.

The God who has revealed Himself in His Word, is eternal in His existence; before Him there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Him; He is the covenant-keeping God; and beside Him there is no Saviour.

“The eternal God is thy refuge.” Deut. 33:27. “A just God and a Saviour, there is none beside Me.” Isa. 45:21. How suited to the dire need of poor, lost, undone man!

Verses 14-17 refer to the judgments to be executed on the nations in the last days, and verses 18-21 to the blessing that will follow the judgments.

But that day has not come; until it does, the conscience-searching words of verses 22-24 hold against Israel. How touching is the language of this passage:

For His own sake, God will not blot out their transgressions, and will not remember their sins. They will have no merits of their own to plead; they can take refuge in nothing less than the only acceptable plea of any poor sinner today (Isa. 53:5-6; Acts 10:43; Rom. 3:23-24; Tit. 3:3-5),

“Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me,

And that Thou bidst me come to Thee—

Lamb of God, I come!”

“Thy first father” (verse 27) is Adam; by one man sin entered into the world (Rom. 5:12). “Thy teachers” is literally “thy interpreters,” and it is so given in Job 33:23; it is those who were in position as God’s ambassadors to the people.

In 2 Chron. 32:31 The same Hebrew word is translated “ambassadors.” The whole nation was far from God—people, prophets and priests; therefore judgment long deferred was overtaking them.

Isaiah 44

The first five verses are in subject connected with the preceding chapter, but the division of the Bible into chapters and verses, while very useful, is a human arrangement, and far from perfect. It was in 1250, nearly 700 years ago, that a cardinal of Rome named Hugo divided the Bible into chapters as it is today. In 1551, an Englishman, Sir Robert Stephens; put out a Greek New Testament with the verse arrangement we have in our Bibles; in 1560 the whole Bible was printed in this form for the first time.

“Fear not!” (verse 2). These words of inexpressible comfort to faint-hearted saints are found in the Bible no less than 33 times as uttered by God, or spoken by angels, His messengers, who delight to do His bidding. Well might the Psalmist say,

“I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” Psa. 23:4.

Should the Christian fear when John 10:27-30; Rom. 8; 2 Cor. 5:1-5; 1 John 4:17 assure him on God’s authority of his security now and eternally?

“Jeshurun,” a name given to Israel in Deut; chapters 32 and 33, and in our chapter, is believed, to mean “the upright (people).”

Faith grasps God’s “I wills” (verse 3), wherever they are found. They speak of the blessed purposes of our gracious God, as we sometimes sing,

“Whose love is as great as His power. And knows neither measure nor end.”

See Gen. 9:15 to Noah and his descendants; Gen. 17: 1-8 to Abraham; Ex. 12:13; to Moses and the children of Israel; Matt. 8:3 to the leper; John 14:3 to the Lord’s people of this day, and Heb. 13:5 for believers at all times.

It fills the heart with gladness to think of the day to come when God’s earthly people, the Jews, now blind and deaf (chapter 42:19-20) to the gospel of His grace, will carry out what verse 5 foretells of them.

Verses 6 to 20 take up again the needful discussion of the idols to whose worship Israel was so prone, Who can speak as God can? To the heart and the conscience His Word is directed; why would not His chosen people hear, and repent with humble confession of their sinfulness?

We may think ourselves free from the besetting sin that was Israel’s, but let us recall that, after all, anything which is allowed to take the supreme place in the heart which belongs to God, is an idol. Not to those who bowed down before images of false gods, but to Christians, children of God by faith in Christ Jesus is 1 John 5:21 addressed, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

It is the living and eternal God who speaks (verse 6): the First and the Last, and beside Him there is no God. Compare this name of God with it as used by our risen Lord of Himself in Revelation 1:17, 18; there He is “the First and the Last, and the Risen One;”—He was dead, but is alive for evermore, and has the keys of hales and of death, —the mighty Conqueror of Satan and of death’s power, through His own death has brought deliverance to all who trust in Him.

All the issues of life are in the hands of God; who but He has foretold with absolute truth, what has happened, and what will happen? (verse 7). Have the substitutes for Himself that Satan has provided, —the idols, or the sorcerers, the necromancers, the star-gazers, on the one hand: or man, boastful in his pride, self-sufficient as he deems, —have these proved themselves trustworthy? Let such answer the demand of verse 7; for the children of God, there can be no question at all, —Satan, the father of lies, held out to Eve in the garden of Eden a bright prospect (Gen. 3:5). But what misery, what tears, and groans, what fearful consequences have followed believing Satan’s lie!

Coming down to the measure of man’s darkened mind, God in verses 9-20 shows the utter folly of idol worship (see Rom. 1:21-23). The first mention of idolatry is in Gen. 31:19, but Josh. 24:14, 15 shows that it was from it that Abraham was called, the “flood” being the great river Euphrates (See Amos 5:25, 26 and Jer. 2:28).

In most touching language God brings Himself before His people. “Remember these things, O Jacob and Israel (the old and new names of the father of the nation) for thou art My servant; ... thou shalt not be forgotten of Me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions ... return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee” (verses 21-22). This language will yet reach the stony heart of Israel, God’s Word will not return to Him void.

At the close of the chapter, the Persian deliverer of the Jews from the oppression of the Babylonians, already referred to in chapter 41, is named though then unborn. Man in his unbelief may reject the inspiration of the Bible, but for the Christian there can be no doubt that it is God Himself who speaks from its pages, and He alone declares in truth things to come. Cyrus is not the only case of a man’s being named long before his birth (see 1 Kings 13:2, 3, fulfilled in 2 Kings 23:16).

Isaiah 45

Then Israel rejected God's messengers the prophets, who sought to bring the people back to Him, He at length turned them over to enemies who transported them to the regions of Assyria and Babylonia.

Isaiah lived during the last days of the tell tribes whose capital was at Samaria, when they were carried away by the Assyrians, but he died about a hundred years before Jerusalem was destroyed, by one of the two nations which overcame Assyria-Babylonia.

The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar took the Jews to their country, but after 70 years the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Persian king Cyrus, of whom our chapter speaks, and he, in the first year of his reign, proclaimed liberty to the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple which Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed (2 Chronicles 36; Ezra 1).

Babylon was the greatest city, and Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful monarch. world had ever known. When Israel sinned so deeply that God was compelled to give them up, He gave power to the Gentiles, and empire succeeded empire (Daniel 2:37-45), since then have been "the times of the Gentiles" (Luke 21:24).

It was a part of the chastening God visited upon the Jews, that they, like their brethren of the ten tribes, should be captives in a land devoted to idolatry. The Persians, on the other hand would have nothing to do with idols, though they had false gods of their own.

God raised up Nebuchadnezzar for a scourge for the Jews, and again raised up. Cyrus to restore to them a measure of liberty. Cyrus is used in Isaiah as a foreshadowing of Christ under whom the true and final restoration of Israel will take place.

Babylon was thought to be so well provided with defensive walls and gates that it could not be captured, but God was on Cyrus's side (verse 1-7) and the city was taken as recorded in Daniel 5.

Verse 8, leaving Cyrus and his work for God, begins the consideration of the events which are yet future. When the time is come for blessing on earth, God will bring it in, but let not any presume to strive with their Maker! (verse 9).

God's hiding Himself (verse 15) is because of His forbearance; when He reveals Himself again on earth in the Person of His Son, it will be, first of all, to execute judgment. Notice in this connection the Lord's words to the Jews in Matthew 23:39. Those who are numbered among the redeemed in that day will receive Him by faith in their hearts before they see Him.

Verse 18 throws light upon the earth's creation as briefly stated in Genesis 1 in Genesis 1:2 a condition is described which Isaiah 45:18 shows was not in the beginning. The true rendering of this verse is, " ... . He hath established it,—not as waste did He create it; He formed it to be inhabited."

Verse 21: How could He be "a just God and a Saviour?" The only way was to have His beloved and only Son take the guilty sinner's place on the cross, exhaust sin's judgment (for all who believe) upon Him. This has been done, blessed forever be His name!

Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess (verse 23, which compare with Phil. 2:9-11), but the believer in the Lord Jesus has already done this in heart. Have you?

Isaiah 46

Bel and Nebo were chief among the idols of Babylonia. Ere long the Jews were to be carried away captives of Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, as their brethren, comprising the ten tribes of Israel now lost to our eyes, had been already taken captive by Babylonia's predecessor in power, Assyria. It was a just punishment for God's unfaithful people who had been sinking deeper and deeper into idolatry, that they should be brought under the rule of people whose worship of idols surpassed, as we judge any other land with which the Jews had to do. The Assyrians and Babylonians worshiped the same false gods.

When brought to Babylon the names of some at least of the Jews were changed to bear the names of idols (Daniel 1:6-7); the faithful Daniel was renamed Belteshazzar, which may mean "Bel is the keeper of secrets," or "Beltis (goddess, wife of Bel) protects the king;" Azariah was given the name of Abed-nepo, or Abel-nebo, meaning "slave of Nebo." The meaning of the names given Hananiah and Mishael is not known.

When Cyrus's army entered Babylon seventy years after the captivity, the idols were treated with disdain, the Persians scorning the idols of their western neighbor.

Verse 1 refers to the carrying out of the Babylonian idols on the backs of the animals used by the Persian conqueror to take away the spoils of war.

Why should any, particularly those who know about the true God, the living God, give their hearts, their minds to the false gods which the darkened minds of sinful men have invented? Alas! man away from God has always sunk lower and lower; to what depths have not men gone in sin ?

Yet God in patience and love still stretches out His hands to sinners, saying, Hearken unto Me! (verse 3). He who gave them the breath of life, and by whose power they continue, pleads through Isaiah with His earthly people. "Even to old age," "unto hoary hairs," He will carry those who trust in Him. He who made, will bear, will carry, will deliver. With whom can He be compared, to whom likened? (verse 5).

What folly idolatry is, as the living God exposes it in these chapters of Isaiah ! There he stands,—the thing of gold and silver fashioned by art and man's device (Acts 17:29:),——he does not remove from his place; yea, one cries unto him, and he answers not; he saves him not out of his trouble. Remember this! says God; call it to mind.

Yes, remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is none else. What God has said, has never failed. Not a prophecy, nor a promise, whose fulfilment was to be in the past, has failed, nor will the things that are not yet done, fail of accomplishment: His counsel will stand, and He will do all His pleasure.

The bird of prey (verse 11) is Cyrus, called from the east, from a country far from Palestine to give liberty to Judah, and to punish the idolatry of Babylon. Yet God's righteousness (contrasted with man's) will be brought near.

In the coming day of blessing for this earth, He will reveal His salvation. For whom is it ? For them that believe, that trust His Word, turning to Him in heart. Thus it has ever been.

Isaiah 47

Not only have we the contemptuous end of Babylon's idols as in chapter 46, but now also the dismal end of Babylon's pride when the Persian conqueror should take the city. All this, be it remembered, was yet in the future some one hundred and severity years when Isaiah wrote.

Babylon, lofty in its pride, was to he humbled, the throne was to be exchanged for a seat on the ground (verse 1). Instead of exaltation, there should be common labor as of a slave.

Because the Babylonians had treated the Jews with severity, showing them no mercy, God would take vengeance on them, and He would meet none to stay Him (verse 3). No more should Babylon be called Mistress of kingdoms (verses 5 and 7).

Men may think of God as paying no attention to what is going on in the world, but they are mistaken. What concerns and affects His people (even Israel today is not forgotten, we may be sure) is of the deepest interest to Him (See Genesis 6:12-13 and 18:20, 21; Exodus 3:7-8; 9:16-18; Esther; Obadiah 9-16; Matthew 25:32-46; Acts 22:4-8; Revelation 17:6 and 19:1-2).

Substantially the language used here for Babylon of old, now utterly destroyed, is used for the religious corruptress of the last days (Revelation 18:7-8), also called Babylon, though her seat of power is Rome (chapter 17:9, that being the well-known city on seven hills).

The desolation of ancient Babylon's glory came suddenly, unexpectedly (Daniel 5:30), and with equal swiftness will come the crushing judgment of the religious oppressor and deceiver which will attain its. greatest power after the Lord's coming for His heavenly saints, and will be destroyed before His return to reign. Then will follow the judgment of the imperial power of Rome at the hand of the Lord Himself.

The ancient and modern Babylons are alike in enslaving and ill-treating the people of God; in idolatry; in opposition to God. Ancient Babylon's history as given in the book of Daniel will be duplicated in the history Of the mystic Babylon of the last days.

Verse 13 gives a suggestion of what the Babylonians relied on in difficulties, doubts and distress. What-were the astrologers, who professed to be able to reveal secrets' by studying the heavens, or the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators who predicted what was (they said) to come, according to the new moons,—what were they worth when an enemy was at Babylon's gates? “Let them. stand up and save thee," says the, Word of, God. What folly is in man's mind,. to reject the true God, and accept the delusive devices of Satan, to eternal loss!

Indeed; these trusted persons shall not even save themselves (verse 14), and the chapter concludes with, "There is none to save thee."

Poor, besotted. man, refusing the loving warnings of the blessed God will learn, when it is too late, when the door of mercy, long held wide open, will be closed, that security, rest, peace, happiness, both in tittle and for eternity could have been had but for the asking!

Isaiah 48

We here reach the last of the series of appeals to Israel which began with chapter 40, and deal with their giving up their true King and Redeemer to worship the idols of the nations.

The name of Jacob applied to the people is a humbling reminder to them of the self will, the unloveliness of nature, that so long characterized the patriarch who was the father of the twelve tribes.

“Called by the name of Israel;” they, because of their sins unjudged and unconfessed, were not equal to the title Jacob was given when the strength of nature in him was subdued by the finger of God (Genesis 32:24-28).

“Out of the waters of Judah,” out of the ruin of the land, and that portion of it that God had assigned to the two tribes to whom Isaiah prophesied, to reach their guilty consciences,—were these captives-to-be, who swore by the name of Jehovah, and made mention of the God of Israel, not in truth nor in righteousness.

He spoke to them as to His ancient people; long had they known His word, His acts. His prophets from Moses down, had told them as God’s chosen messengers, and Israel was obstinate, their neck was an iron sinew, their brow brass.

This has not been only Israel’s history or character, man, whether Jew or Gentile, has made such a character for himself, and retains it to this day. The knowledge of the true God is not sought by either the high or the low, the educated or the ignorant. Yet, marvel of marvels, God still beseeches man to listen, to heed His offer of mercy (2 Cor. 5:18—6:2).

For His Name’s sake (verse 9) He will defer His anger. The hour is fast approaching when the door of mercy will be shut. The Redeemer of Israel speaks; He teaches for their profit those who should hearken to Him,

“O, that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! Then would thy peace have been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea ’ (verses 17-19).

It is only they who listen to God’s voice speaking through His Word, who find peace and true happiness. There is naught but ruin and misery in their ways who know not God's salvation, as Romans 3:10-18 shows in a series of quotations from the Old Testament scriptures.

Cyrus, the Persian king, is referred to in verses 14-15. “Fie whom Jehovah hath loved shall execute his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans” (JND). Yet it is God’s ordering; He directed Cyrus, so we have “Jehovah hath redeemed His servant Jacob” (verse 20).

The call to go forth from Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans, was God’s direction for the time when Cyrus made his proclamation of liberty for the Jews. Ezra 1 and 2 tell of the return to Jerusalem of nearly fifty thousand. Among those who did not return were Daniel, Esther and Mordecai. Daniel at least knew that the deliverance accorded the Jews was not the final one from all enemies of which the prophets had spoken (Daniel 9). It was a foreshadowing of that.

It is clear that Isaiah’s prophecy is intended to reach the Jews in the coming day; when the Church has been caught away to the heavenly home of her Lord, and the Holy Spirit takes up the work of awakening a remnant of Judah to realize the enormity of their sin, and that God still loves them, the pages of Isaiah will be searched and pondered over as the light penetrates their long darkened minds. Then the nation will again be steeped in idolatry from which they are now free. Then will they be—those who receive God’s message of repentance and deliverance—oppressed, hated by the Babylon of that day, until Cyrus’s antitype their Messiah, the Crucified One, comes to set them free.

“There is life in a look at the Crucified One,

There is life at this moment for thee;

Then look, sinner, look unto Him and be saved

Unto Him who was nailed to the Tree.”

Isaiah 49

This chapter introduces another important section of Isaiah’s prophecy, wherein Christ is presented, as Israel’s true King, their Messiah, and their rejection of Him is set out, with their final blessing through Him. The Jews turned to idols, and because of this, lost their homeland; but a greater, far greater, sin became theirs when He presented Himself to them, and they put Him to death. This deeply instructive portion of Isaiah ends with chapter 57.

The Gentiles are first addressed; not Israel only shall be blessed in the Millennium, as this chapter goes on to show, though in their pride and moral distance from1 God arid ignorance of His Word, the nation of Israel deluded themselves with the thought that He would not go beyond their border to bless.

At the outset the person of God’s Elect is presented,—His beloved Son, though that relationship is not revealed in the Old .Testament. Verse 1 finds its fulfilment . concerning Him in Matthew 1:18-21, and the beginning of verse 2 brings before us Himself as the Word of God (Hebrews 4:12; Revelation 1:16; 2:12,16; 19:15).

Hidden from our view and knowledge until He came forth as Man, God’s only perfect Servant to execute His will (“a polished shaft”), but Himself unknown as He passed through the world (John 1:10-11) is the One upon whom all blessing for Israel and for the Gentiles, rests.

He, when the nation could no longer be considered God's servant, took that place, and in Him God will glorify Himself (John 12:28; 17:4; Phil, 2:9-11).

However the Servant was rejected; His work was without result through the hard hearted unbelief of those to whom He came,

"I have labored in vain; I have spent My strength for naught and in vain" (Matthew 11:20-26; 23:13-39).

Such was the immediate result; Israel would not hearken, would not be gathered. Yet in the purposes of God (such is His grace) a better prospect than that which they lost is in view for the nation that crucified His Son their Messiah.

The immediate answer to the cross of Christ was His exaltation as Man to the throne of God (Psalm 110), and the sending forth of the Holy Spirit with the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 2:33-36; Romans 3:21-26) and with it, taking out those who are to form the heavenly bride of Christ. When the present day of grace is ended, the Spirit will once more work among Israel nationally, and among the Gentiles that have not known the gospel, that Christ may have an earthly people as He surely will.

God's response to His Son's rejection then, was to publish His purpose to far more fully honor Him (verse 5-9), At the close of verse 7 the text should read, "Who hath chosen Thee"; and in verse 2i1, "I had lost my children and was desolate, an exile, and driven about" is a better translation than the authorized version.

Verse 12 mentions a land of Sinim, whose position is not understood, but it is thought to be western China; the purpose would seem to be to indicate a distant land, apparently east of Palestine.

What infinite compassion, what immeasurable love and grace and mercy on God's part, does this chapter reveal! God is love (1 John 4:8), though He is light also (1 John 1:5), and must punish sin, But since His own Son has suffered for sins, the just One for the unjust ones, that He might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18), He can receive everyone who believes the testimony He has given concerning Him.

A mother may forget her babe; she may fail to have compassion on her own son, but Jehovah, in love will not forget Israel—Israel that grieved Him to the heart, hard, stiffnecked, rebellious Israel, which crowned their career of sin by putting to death God's only and beloved Son.

And love equally beyond measure is ours who, not having seen, believe.

Isaiah 50

Jehovah asks of the children of Israel a pointed question: “Where is the bill of your mother’s divorce, whom I have put away?” Deuteronomy 24:1 gave provision whereby a husband in whose eyes his wife found no favor, because he had discovered some unseemly thing in her, could divorce her. Was this Israel’s experience—that God had given them up lightly, as many marriage contracts are broken when one tires of the companionship? Or was He in debt, and had sold His people to satisfy a creditor?

He answers His own questions in words for Israel to consider deeply:

“Behold, through your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.”

Idolatry was their first great sin, which brought upon them the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, and the later oppressions of the Jews, down to the time their Messiah came. His rejection, and the refusal of the message of the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51-60) who came down to testify for the ascended Christ, closed the door to Israel’s blessing as a nation until a new work of grace shall be begun. Until then they are “Lo-Ammi,”—“Not My people” (Hosea 1:9).

Chapter 49:4 has its reflection in chapter 50: “Wherefore did I come, and there was no man ? I called, and there was none to answer?”

Jehovah, God Himself, was here, not received by His people Israel (John 1:11), yet having an unchanging interest in them and a pitying love for them. Is His hand at all shortened that He cannot redeem, or has He no power to deliver? His power is still seen in the heavens, and on the earth (verses 2 and 3), though as for mankind (not the Jews only now, but the Gentiles also) they have turned away from His love, desire not to know Him.

In lowly grace He came, the Son of God, into the world which He had made (John 1:3) and upholds by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:2-3).

“The Lord, Jehovah,” He says, speaking of Himself as man, “hath given Me the tongue of the instructed, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary” (verse 4). Does it not speak deeply to our often cold hearts that Jehovah has learned how to speak to comfort the weary, for Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equally Jehovah, equally God. (Romans 1:1-4, where the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of holiness; Galatians 4:4-6; Matthew 28:19; Romans 9:5; Zechariah 13:7).

We meditate in adoration upon the Person who is here revealed, the Holy Spirit in verse 6 anticipating the sufferings that lay in the path of the Man of sorrows. Fully and entirely God, the Son became man, body (Hebrews 2:14; 10:5; John 4:6; 2:27; Psalm 22:14-15); sold (Matthew 26:38; John 12:27; Acts 2:27, 31), and spirit (Mark 2:8; 8:12; Luke 10:21; 23:46; John 11:33; 13:21), and through death and in resurrection He has become Lord and Saviour (2 Peter 2:20; 3:18; Acts 2:36).

Compare verse 7 with Mark 10:32-34; Luke 9:51-53, and note how the language Romans 8:33,34, the Holy Spirit there showing that we who trust in Jesus as secure as He was, passing through the world.

Verse 10 however makes plain that unlike those who have a heavenly calling i.e., the believers of this present dispensation of grace, upon whom the full light of God's truth has been shed, the believers of that day to come, will walk in darkness, and only know their eternal security when they see the Lord. Those then who will profess to have light, are deluded (verse 11).

How highly favored we are! Do we appreciate it, and bless God for His marvelous kindness and love? And do we seek as much as we should to understand and live in the light of the Word of God?

Isaiah 51

Chapters 51 and 52 (down to verse 12, comprise a series of seven exhortations dealing with the believing remnant of Israel in the future day, founded, though the Messiah is not mentioned, upon Him whose humiliation is strikingly set forth in chapter 50; and whose rejection, substitutional death and future glory are in chapter 53.

Verses 1 to 3 introduce the series of appeals to the Jewish believers, once so highly favored by God, but now set aside, who are yet to be found among the nation. The opening address is to those that follow after righteousness, that seek Jehovah.

With joy the Christian looks forward to that day when the veil will be removed from Israel (2 Corinthians 3:16), when righteousness will be followed, and Jehovah really sought by Jacob’s sons and daughters.

God will own this change in the heart, but before He can bless, the objects of His mercy must “look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged.” God’s children, in all ages, have had to realize that the sovereign mercy and goodness of God alone account for their blessing.

We are reminded of the symbolic stones taken out of the bed of the river Jordan, and carried over to the lodging place of the children of Israel when they entered the land of God’s promise (Joshua 4:1-8); of the great stones, costly stones, hewn stones, which were taken out of the mountains and brought to Jerusalem for Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 5:17; 6:7); and the living stones now being built up a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4-5).

Verse 2. Shall the God fearing ones be occupied with the smallness of their number? They need to recall the day in which Abraham and Sarah lived, alone, in an idol worshiping age; and to consider how God had called Abraham and blessed him, multiplied him. Then they will have His Word, the promise of Him who cannot lie (Titus 1:2), that He will richly bless the chosen land and His people Israel (verse 3).

In verses 4-6 those who were addressed in verse 1 are owned as “My people,” and “My nation,”—words of immense importance to the seekers after God among Israel in view of the solemn pronouncement through Hosea (“Lo-Ammi,” “Not My people”, chapter 1:9), which is still in effect. “The peoples” (i.e., the Gentiles) should be the reading in verses 4-5; the whole earth will be judged and afterward blessed. None will endure in the coming day of retribution except those who trust in Jehovah’s salvation. The language of verse 6, while figurative, is symbolic of the fearful times to come before the earth will enjoy abiding peace.

Verses 7-8 point, in the language used, to an increase of intelligence granted to the humble, contrite believers in the day when God begins again to work in Israel renewing their long dead hopes of blessing in the land of their forefathers We may be sure that as believers in our day grow in the knowledge of God through occupying them minds with His Word so it will he it that coming period with the renewed Israelites.

Accordingly they are addressed in verse 7 as "Ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law." They are not to fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their revilings, because the enemies are to be consumed, and God's righteousness shall he forever, and His salvation from generation to generation.

The fourth of these brief addresses is the response of the waiting believers on earth; led by the Holy Spirit they cry, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Jehovah!"

"It" in verses 9 and 10 is an error in translation, "Art Thou not He that hath cut Rahab....Art Thou not He which hath dried the sea...."

In days of old Jehovah had hewn Rahab (a name used for Egypt several times in Scripture; it means "insolence") in pieces, wounded the dragon (or monster—the power of Satan exercised through Pharaoh). He had dried the Red sea to make a way for the ransomed host of Israel to pass through. Will a greater miracle be seen in the deliverance of the Israel to come?

Beautiful is the answer of Jehovah to the cry of His people for deliverance (verses 9-10): “Therefore (or, So) the ransomed of Jehovah shall return, and come to Zion with singing; they shall obtain gladness and joy; sorrow and sighing shall flee away. I, even I, am He that comforteth you” (verses 11-12). When God promises, shall He not fulfil His word?

But now the question is asked, “Who art thou, that thou fearest a man that shall die, and the son of man that shall become as grass, and forgettest Jehovah thy Maker who hath stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth ... ?”

Psalms 55 and 56 express the fear that the godly in Israel will experience, in dread of their bitter enemies, the apostate Jews and the Gentiles in league with them.

The oppressor will prepare, but when he thinks to destroy, destruction will be his own portion, as 2 Thessalonians 2: 8-9 shows.

“He that is bowed down (a prisoner) shall speedily be loosed, and he shall not die in the pit, nor shall his bread fail. And I am Jehovah thy God, who raiseth the sea, so that its waves roar. Jehovah of hosts in His name” (verses 14-15 N.T.).

He will exhibit His power against His enemies, the enemies of His people, but (verse 16) His own will be blessed in the knowledge and communication of His word; they will be protected from the storm of judgment (covered with the shadow of Jehovah’s hand), and in the cleansed and renewed earth. Zion will be the scene of the display of divine favor of the highest order for this world.

Verse 17 begins the fifth of the seven addresses comprised in chapters 51 and 52. It deals with the affliction of Jerusalem, because of her sins, and closes with God’s taking away the cup of His fury from her, and putting it into the hand of those who afflict her. There must be a visitation in judgment upon Jerusalem (upon the nation, but especially upon the city of high privilege and great guiltiness), but God’s unchangeable purposes of blessing shall be carried out when there is a realization of their guilt, and true repentance has resulted.

Isaiah 52

The sixth call is to the Jerusalem to be (verses 1-6), a Jerusalem such as there never has been. How the heart of God is told out in the touching expressions of His love concerning the city where His Son was crucified! The holy city it will be, but as yet it is in name only (Matthew 27:53; Revelation 11:2).

“Henceforth (after the cleansing judgments are over) there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.”

They had sold themselves for what? for nothing; Satan had deceived them into turning away from God, and bitter has been the fruit of it; they shall be redeemed without money when God undertakes to free the poor prisoners.

The seventh and concluding theme of the series we have been considering includes verses 7-12. It views the peaceful and happy scene when the judgments which introduce the Millennium shall have been completed; then the voice of singing shall be heard where groans and tears have been; then all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of Israel's God.

Anticipating this happy issue of the years of travail, the godly are bade to depart from all that is about to be judged—the Gentile nations, evidently, among whom they have been so long, and at whose hands they have suffered, As in days of old, Jehovah will go before them, and be their rearguard (Exodus 13:21-22; 14:19-20).

Chapter 49 introduced the Messiah of Israel as God’s Servant, taking Israel’s place, for Israel had been God’s servant and was rejected because of unfaithfulness. But the Messiah is rejected by Israel (verses 4-7). In chapter 50, He, though Jehovah’s Equal (verses 2-3) is the subject One, taught through suffering (verses 4-9). Chapters 51 and 52 (to verse 12) in seven striking exhortations treat of the redemption of Israel, leading the remnant on step by step in the knowledge of what God will have done for and in them, knowledge which must lead to the realization of their treatment of the Messiah, and what He did for them.

And now verses 13-15 of chapter 52 which should be the first verses of chapter 53 had the chapters been rightly arranged, Jehovah’s Servant is again the subject of the prophetic word. “Behold, My Servant (it is God who speaks) shall deal prudently (or, shall prosper); He shall be exalted and extolled (or lifted up) and be very high.” For that day the redeemed wait with longing; they joy already in anticipation of the time when the Crucified One will be the Crowned Victor.

When He came into the world as a Man; when He passed through the years of His ministry to Israel; when the bearing of grief and sorrow caused that blessed face and form to appear marred than any man—then Israel, seeking their own glory, insensible to the grace and loveliness of their Messiah-King was "astonished;" they stumbled at that stumbling stone (Romans 9:32-33).

So—as the Son of Man—shall He sprinkle (cleanse) many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at Him, etc. In Psalm 2:2,10, kings are seen in the day of the Lord's coming, and in Revelation 21:21 They are, in the peaceful years of the Millennium, subject to Him.

Isaiah 53

"Who hath believed our report?" Indeed the unbelief of Israel will seem marvelous to the believing remnant, themselves so long in stony-hearted unbelief. "Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life" (John 5:40) is still true, and not of Israel only, but of Gentiles also.

The arm of Jehovah is His power (chapter 51:9). To whom has the knowledge of Him who is so soon to rise up in Israel's defense, been made known? O, how few! But this was declared in chapter 1:9. "Except Jehovah of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, etc."

"He shall grow up before Him as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground" (verse 2); no appearance of grandeur, of glory in that heavenly Stranger was there for the natural eye to discern as He passed on His way to the cross. "He hath no form nor lordliness, and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him," is the humbling confession of rebellious hearts of old.. Think not that this refers to 'Him in the day when we shall see Him,—-see Him as He is (1 John 3:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:17); nor of the time when the remnant shall see Him (Isaiah 33:17). All of verses 2-3 (and verses 4-9) refer to what is now past, and never to be repeated in the experience of the Lord Jesus,

"He is despised and rejected (or left alone) of men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (or suffering), and like one from whom men hide their faces; and we esteemed Him not" (verse 3), He came unto His own, and. His own received Him not (John 1:11). Such is the record concerning God's dear Son in the treatment He got when He spent His blessed life on this earth. Could any other than He ever have been treated as He was by His creatures, and His chosen people?

Love to man, obedience to God, held Him here, until the purpose for which He came—the death of the cross—was His portion.

Isaiah 53:4-6

Since Jesus was a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, as the preceding verse speaks of Him, what gave Him those sorrows, that grief? The fourth verse tells: “Surely He hath born our griefs and carried (sustained) our sorrows.” The consequences of sin in the race of mankind,—sicknesses of varied character, as leprosy, dumbness, deafness, blindness, paralysis, demon possession, and death itself (the wages of sin)—to these He was not indifferent, we well know from reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. By a word, or the touch of His hand, He cleansed the leper, the palsied man rose from his cot, Lazarus dead and buried four days came forth from the tomb. But it was not enough that Jesus should take pity upon the sufferers among whom He labored and compassionately relieve them. He bore the griefs, carried, in His own tender heart, the sorrows of humanity, Himself sinless and untouched by sin in His holy nature and Person. This entering into the sufferings of His creatures while He was here upon earth, is blessedly illustrated in John 11:33-38.

Yet “we, we did regard Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted”—such is the blindness of the natural man, such the state of even the enlightened Jew with the Word of God in his keeping.

A valley of tears this world has ever been since sin entered, and death by sin; and man’s endeavor, since Cain and his family set the example (Genesis 4:16-22) has been to ignore or to mask as far as possible this painful truth,—to make merry with music, to occupy the mind with productive labor, etc. In such a scene the heavenly Stranger walked alone.

Yet, though Jesus entered most deeply in the exercises of His heart into the suffering He saw on every hand, a far deeper need of man than relief from sickness and sorrow was before Him. It is this which the Holy Spirit next discloses (verse 5), as the light of the work of redemption enters the conscience and heart of the poor sinner.

“Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone.” (John 12:24), and,

“I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50), show what was before our blessed Saviour’s mind, looking on to His cross, and the bearing of our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24).

It is faith’s acceptance of God’s truth that we see in verse 5:

“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.” Here is the explanation of the cry from the center cross,

“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1.

Without His bearing our sins, there would be nothing before man, from Adam downward, but the woes of a lost eternity in which the whole race would be involved. Faith takes God at His word, believes what He has said (John 3:14-17), rejoices in a new and eternal standing before God revealed in Romans 3:21 25: 2 Corinthians 5:21 and many other Scriptures.

Verse 6 again blessedly contrasts "we" and "Him"—we have gone astray (ever so far, we humbly own), and turned, each of us, to his own way, and Jehovah (not because of anything in us, but in love which was in Himself) hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. The "us all" is the people of faith—all who believe (Acts 18:39). And does the reader know this for himself?

Isaiah 53:7-10

In verses 7 to 9 the Holy Spirit, writing through Isaiah (2 Peter 1:21) looks at the lowly One in the closing scenes of His blessed life, in Isaiah’s time more than 700 years distant.

“He was oppressed (or ill-treated), and He was afflicted, but He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and was as a sheep dumb before her shearers, and He opened not His mouth. He was taken from detention and from judgment, and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living.” Here in fewest words is a picture of the scenes which Matthew 26:57 to 27:50, and Mark, Luke and John portray.

These verses will speak deeply to the repentant Jews in the coming day, as they consider Who He was, who came to them 19 centuries ago, and in what grace and compassion He conducted Himself when rejection was His portion, from the beginning, and when they reflect over their treatment of Him.

The death of Christ levels all the pretensions of man, be he Jew or Gentile, and in His death we see not alone the judgment of our sins borne by a sinless and holy Substitute, but also in Him see the moral beauty, the moral glory as it has been called, the infinite perfection of His every thought, word, deed, which draw from the Christian heart the adoration and worship that belong to Him, the Lord and Saviour.

“For the transgression of My people was He stricken.” Thus are we reminded that His death was not (as vain men have declared) due to the malice of a few high religious persons, or a misunderstanding of His mission. True, the fullest guilt attached to those who planned His death, and crucified Him, but totally eclipsing their guilt before God was the fact of immeasurable weight and eternal consequence,— His bearing the sins of many.

In the first three hours on the cross He was enduring from man, His creatures; and in the second three hours He was forsaken of God as the Sin-Bearer, stricken for the transgression of “My people,” yet not Israel only, but all who receive Him by faith. He had come into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15); to this end He was delivered up to death for our offences, and has been raised for our justification (Romans 4:25).

The Holy Spirit draws attention to another fact connected with the putting to death of Jesus; the common English translation is defective here. “And men appointed His grave with the wicked, but He was with the rich in His death, because He had done no violence neither was there guile in His mouth” (verse 9). This throws light on Matthew 27:57-60; Mark 16:42-46; Luke 24:50-53 and John 19:38-42, which give the burial in the rich man’s tomb: the bodies of the two thieves who were crucified with Him, were given no such burial as attended the body of Jesus.

It will be—noted that the two things which are spoken of as not true of Him, at the close of verse 9, are the two characteristic forms which sin takes, and has ever taken, with fallen man: violence and corruption. Sinless, He died for sinners, the Just One for the unjust (1 Peter 3:1*).

"Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him; He hath subjected. Him to suffering (or grief)" (verse 10). Amazing truth! It underlies the whole doctrine of the Word of 'God from Genesis 3:15 to Ephesians 2:4 to 7 and Revelation 22:21.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16.

Isaiah 53:10-11

When thou shalt make His soul (or, When His soul shall have made, or been made) an offering for sin (or trespass offering,—it is the same Hebrew word translated “trespass offering” in Leviticus chapters 5, 7, 14 and elsewhere), He shall see a seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the fruit of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied (verses 10-11).

Faith, here again, is seen to be the ground upon which God deals with man in blessing. On Christ and His work on the cross for our sins, on His shed blood and His resurrection and ascension to heavenly glory, all blessing depends. There must be the realization in my own soul that in Him, through His death for me, for my sins, God is fully and eternally satisfied; if not, I cannot have peace with God. No Cain-like offering of what my hands may bring, or my mind devise will meet my case; I must, like Abel have an offering that cost death (Genesis 4:3-5). Redemption is by the precious blood of Christ alone (1 Peter 1:19; Hebrews 9:14).

He who was cut off out of the land of the living, about Whom the question was asked in verse 8, Who shall declare His generation? shall see a seed — not of natural descent, but God-given children (Isaiah 8:18), redeemed souls whom He in grace has referred to as “My brethren” in Matthew 25:40.

Apart from these earthly saints, there are those who are being saved in our own times to form the Church of God, the bride of Christ; these He has destined for heavenly glory, and has graciously spoken of them as “My brethren” (John 20:17), and we learn from Hebrews 2:11 That He is not ashamed to call them brethren; no word of Scripture warrants our referring to Him as our Elder Brother, however.

The prolonging of His days, and the pleasure of Jehovah prospering in His hands, refer to the place of Christ in the Millennium. We have noticed this earlier in our readings in Isaiah, and in the Psalms. Philippians 2:9-11 includes that time, but is of much wider scope, as is Ephesians 1:9-10.

We must recall that the mystery of Christ and the Church was not revealed to the Old Testament prophets, and Isaiah in foretelling a coming day of richest blessing on earth, does not take in the wider vision which the Epistles of Paul give.

He shall see of the travail of His soul, first, surely, when the resurrection morning brings to Him, in heavenly bodies all the redeemed up to that time, including the Old Testament saints and all who died in faith up to the founding of the Church (Acts 2), and the Church itself for which in a special sense He gave Himself. But the passage in our chapter refers to an earthly people, the redeemed of the last days, when the gospel we have heard shall be heard no more, and another message of grace shall go out to sinners of the Jews and Gentiles that have never had the opportunity to receive the present gospel.

Heaven and earth will be peopled by those who are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, saved for all eternity from the consequences of their sins. Then, looking upon the result of the travail of His soul, He will be satisfied. Great has been the cost of redemption, and poorly. we often realize how poor is our return to Him for His love, but He shall have all our hearts in that day.

Isaiah 53:11-12

His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many” (or rather, instruct in righteousness many). “Many” is literally “the many”—including all who are in relationship with Christ. This instruction He gave in the so-called sermon on the mount, and in other places and times during His earthly life: it is preserved to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’s gospels. But more than instruction is needed for sinful souls and so we have, “and (rather than “for”) He shall bear their iniquities.” Without the cross of Christ there is no salvation.

In view of all the humiliation and suffering of God’s Servant even to death, the death of the cross, the recital of which has occupied the Divine Penman in this chapter, God has declared, “Therefore will I divide (assign) Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong” (Verse 8).

This will have its evident fulfilment when the Lord comes to earth and reigns; it speaks of Him as Man, the God-man, truly but nevertheless man (untouched by sin), and the Holy Sufferer as no other has been. As such He will be exalted to the highest place, and then He will bring His earthly people (“the strong ) into blessing.

The place of highest glory is accorded the Servant, the despised and rejected of men, because of four things concerning Him as He hung’ on the cross in deepest suffering.

(1) “Because He hath poured out His soul unto death.” The word here translated. 'poured" is not one one ordinarily used it has the sense of making naked, bare, empty does this not bring before us a touching sense of the grace of our Lord. Jesus Christ who though He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9), and of Himself as that Man who sold all that He had to buy the field in which was hidden a treasure; and as the Merchant man seeking goodly pearls, Who when He has found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that He had and bought it (Matthew 13:44-46). Sweetly does this passage conform with Galatians 2:20,— "Who loved me and gave Himself for me."

(2) "Because He was reckoned with the transgressors." Mark's gospel which. speaks of Jesus as the Servant of God, in chapter 15:28 applies this to Him when the thieves were placed on crosses beside Him, "And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, 'And He was numbered with the transgressors.' " God noted that, in the treatment given His Son.

(3) "Because He bore the sin of many." Note that Scripture while declaring emphatically that He died for all, never says that He bore the sins of all (Romans 5:6; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15; Hebrews 9:28). No salvation, no hope, for man apart from His death. And O, what fathomless love that He should bear our sins—the sins of every poor, unworthy, guilty sinner that looks to Him for salvation! On Him our guilt was charged, upon Him divine justice was poured as the sinner's holy Substitute. Eternally His hands., feet, side, will bear the tokens of His death on the cross,— tokens of love unfathomable, inexhaustible.

(4) "Because He made intercession for the transgressors." It is Luke that records this utterance (chapter 23:34). "And Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" If this has touched our hearts, what did it not mean to His Father, as He looked upon the Son nailed to a cross!

Isaiah 54

When Israel, that is to say, the remnant of the nation, shall have entered in heart and conscience into the truth of Isaiah 53, Isaiah 54 will follow in quick fulfilment. The barren one, desolate, the widow of verses 1-4, is Israel rejected by Jehovah, her Husband, because of her sins. Israel, as the unfaithful wife, occupies many pages of Old Testament prophecies.

As the result of the Holy Spirit’s future work in Israel as a nation (following the close of the present dispensation of grace to Jew and Gentile alike), a remnant of the people will be brought to repentance (Zechariah 12:10-14), reaching its full measure after the Lord appears with His heavenly people (Revelation 19:14; Jude 14-15; 1 Corinthians 6:2, etc.).

The remnant will then behold not only Israel’s Son (chapter 9:6, 7) but with Him the great number who have believed during the time Israel has been set aside; and these, the Christian saints, are here regarded as the children of the desolate, far exceeding the number of Israel in the brightest days of their past history.

The word also has an application further in the future (verses 2-3 with which compare chapter 49:20 and chapter 60:21-22). An immense increase of Israel’s numbers is foretold here and in Hosea 1:10. Israel's shame will be no more as today (verse 4) for Jehovah will own them as His people, never to need to turn from them again.

Five names of God are given in verse 5; in Israel’s Maker we are reminded of the beginning of the Nation in the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3); Jehovah of Hosts speaks of Israel’s mighty Protector and Governor from the day when faith grew feeble and enemies arose to spoil Israel. What enemy can stand against Him? But the state of His people prevented His acting for them, for He cannot be linked with sin. This title of God occurs no less than 280 times in the Old Testament, being found first in 1 Samuel 1:3.

Israel’s case is such that they must be redeemed; their sins have estranged them from God, and, scattered and oppressed, they need a Redeemer to set them free, and recompense their enemies in poured out vengeance. Then amazing grace! He will dwell among them as the Holy One of Israel; then all the inhabitants of this sphere will know and trust in Him, the God of the whole earth. Blessed prospect!

Verse 6 looks on to the day when Israel will again be owned as God’s people. Small improvements in translation are suggested in verse 8: "In the outpouring of wrath" instead of "In a little wrath;" also at the close of verse 9: "that I will no more be wroth with thee," rather than "that I would not be wroth with thee," and in verse 10—-"My covenant of peace," instead of "the covenant of My peace,"

He whose heart is not touched deeply by the language of this chapter must he far from God indeed. What unfathomable love and grace are here for the Jew, the Israelite in the day to come! Yet the love and grace made ours who have believed without seeing (John 20:29) are greater, far greater. Do we truly value what God has done for us?

Isaiah 55

In chapter 54 we found a wonderful promise, guaranteed by God’s unfailing word, and chapter 55 fitly follows with a wide invitation to Israel. The offer is Millennial glory; the invitation is free; all that is required, we note, is that the “thirsty” shall come, and those that have “no money.”

Israel is now set aside, and a grander offer of eternal glory with Christ is going out to Jew and Gentile on one common footing that “all have sinned.”

“If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” John 7:37.

“Whosoever drinketh of the water that shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:14.

But the present day of grace is waning, plainly drawing near its close, and after the children of Israel will hear God’s word with the hearing of faith, they will accept the gracious invitation of Isaiah 55 and welcome their Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, when He comes again. Countless Gentiles to 'whom the present gospel has never been brought, will be saved through the preaching of converted Jews.

Precious are the pleadings of the Holy Spirit in these opening verses of our chapter; there is nothing to compare with them except the present invitation to accept God’s offer of salvation. The sure mercies of David (verse 3) are referred to in Psalm 89:3-4, 19-37, 49; in 2 Samuel 7, and 1 Chronicles 17. They will be made good in Christ: of Him verse 4 in our chapter speaks, viewing Him as not for Israel only but for the Gentiles, the Prince of the kings of the earth (Revelation 1:5). The word “people”, twice in verse 4, is “peoples”,—the nations, as distinct from Israel.

The principles upon which God deals in grace with His fallen creatures, with mankind, whether Jew or Gentile, are set forth in verses 6-11. As for the sinner, there is the solemn consideration that God must be sought, called upon, while there is opportunity. Proverbs 1:20-33; 2 Corinthians 6:2; Hebrews 3:7-19 witness to the importance of accepting His grace without delay.

The whole plan of redemption is God’s, and man has no part in it, to do aught for himself, but only to believe it, to take God at His word. Nothing to do but acknowledge the truth about one’s self to Him, and then to receive mercy, abundant pardon (verse 7).

All blessing for man is founded upon believing, receiving, God’s Word. Men refuse the Word, deny its inspiration, its authority, but He has declared (and we bless Him for it!) that it shall not return to Him void, it shall accomplish that which He pleases, and that for which He sent it (verse 11).

The result on earth of the acceptance of His Word by Israel is foretold in verses 12 and 13.

Much more than this is the portion of those who believe to the saving of the soul, we know.

Isaiah 56

Chapter 55 is, we saw last week, a message of grace to sinners; chapter 56 is, at its beginning, for saints—for believers of the dispensation which will shortly follow the present one.

The chapter opens with what is neither the law of Moses, nor the present revelation of God. It is a distinct word for the day in view of which it was uttered. The believers of that day will be anxiously waiting for deliverance from their enemies, and not without deep concern about their sins, in view of the appearing of Israel’s Messiah, shortly to occur.

They are to keep judgment and to do justice (or righteousness) because Jehovah’s salvation is near to come, and His righteousness to be revealed (verse 1). Blessed is the man that doeth this and the son of man that layeth hold on it (or holdeth fast by it).

Now one of the great blessings which the Christian enjoys (or should enjoy) is that salvation is already possessed. Thus Ephesians 2 declares, “by grace ye are saved.” Truly, in one aspect salvation is still before us (Romans 3:11; Philippians 2:12; 3:20-21) but we have already the great first need met, soul salvation (1 Peter 1:9). This the waiting saints of the day to come will not know; for them it is “near to come”, and God’s righteousness “to be revealed”,—which compare with Romans 3:21-24 showing the present work of God’s grace.

That the sabbath (verses 2 and 6) will be rightly observed again, when Israel as a Nation comes before God for blessing, the Church period being then over, is clear from such passages as Isaiah 66:23; Ezekiel 44:24 and 45:17.

The sabbath is not for Christians (Colossians 2:16-17) and it is significant that the Lord Jesus lay in death throughout the whole extent of that particularly high sabbath which followed His cross. He rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and Pentecost, the day of the Holy Spirit’s forming the Church (Acts 2), being the 50th day after the resurrection, was also the first day of the week. There was plenty of opportunity for the inspired writer of the Acts to have mentioned the sabbath as a day set apart for the Church, for Christians, if it had been so, but in the nine times where the word is used, not one is in connection with meetings of and for believers.

If there is any one day of greater significance than others to the Christian, it is the first day of the week, and we find that day spoken of, surely not without significance, in Acts 20:7. We believe that this day, the day of Christ’s resurrection, and of His Church’s founding, is the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10).

The sabbath was given in connection with the earth, commemorating God’s rest after the six days of Genesis 1, but that rest was quickly broken (see John 5:16, 17). Christianity is not a development of, nor a supplement to Judaism, but a new thing, as the Epistle to the Galatians shows.

The grace of God will provide a portion both for the son of the stranger— the Gentile—who seeks Him (verses 3, 6, 7), and the childless eunuchs (verses 4-5). Every heart will be satisfied, and full of His praise.

Verse 7 brings before us the words of the Lord Jesus when He cleansed the temple of the money changers and the traders (Mark 11:17).

Verse 8 speaks of Him; the whole world will seek Him, when the judgments of the living are over and the wicked are gone.

Chapters 55, 56, 57 are one subject; disclosing the grace and the judgment with which the Millennium will be introduced. We have been reading of the grace of God, and now we come to His judgments.

In verse 9 is a call to destroy, to lay waste; it is addressed to the Gentile oppressors of the Jews, and concerns the land of Israel. The watchmen,—those who should have been on guard, watching with tender care over the flock that was Jehovah’s, are blind; without knowledge; dumb dogs that cannot bark; dreaming, living a life of ease; greedy, too, living for themselves and utterly indifferent to God and without true regard for His people.

Isaiah 57

Verse 1. The true Shepherd of Israel is not indifferent to His people; He takes away the righteous from the evil to come. But the death of these occurs without any laying it to heart. This discloses the true condition before God of those who are left.

These dead who thus pass into eternity are entered into peace; they rest in their beds each one that has walked in his up rightness (verse 2). It is only in the New Testament that we find the veil drawn aside and the unseen world reveal ed (Philippians 1:21, 23).

Verses 3 to 13 arraign the wicked Jews variously; idolatry, though mentioned, is not their only sin. Verse 9 speaks of “the king,” evidently the same person as is mentioned in Daniel 11:36-40, under that title; in John 5:43 as one coming in his own name; in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10 as the man of sin, the son of perdition; in 1 John 2 as the Antichrist, and in Revelation chapters 13 and 19 as the second beast and the false prophet.

He that putteth his trust in Jehovah shall possess the land, shall inherit His holy mountain (verse 13). He may have been as wicked as any; his past works do not commend him, but his present faith does. With this class Jehovah will dwell (verse 15).

His Word is that He will not contend forever, nor be always wroth, for the spirit should fail before Him, and the souls which He has made. Israel is in view, and “for the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and smote him.” But he will be healed, will be led; comforts will be restored to him, and to those of his that mourn,— and all this will be God’s doing. The fruit of many lips, both of those “far off”—the saved Gentiles, and those “near”—the children of Israel—will be giving thanks to Jehovah’s Name, for peace brought to them, and healing (verse 19). But the wicked do not change; judgment is for them, and not peace.

Let us compare the ends of chapters 48 and 57, each of them ending a subdivision of Isaiah’s wide prophecy. Chapters 40 to 48, as we have seen, take up God’s controversy with Israel on account of idolatry; and chapters 49 to 57 His dealings with them because of their rejection of His Son, their Messiah. The latter is of course by far the greater evil. This explains “saith Jehovah” in the one passage, and “saith thy God” in the other.

Isaiah 58

We begin now upon the last section or division of Isaiah's prophecy, a sort of appendix to what has gone before.

First is an exposure of the state of the people: "Cry aloud: spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins" (verse 1). In outward appearance all is well (verse 2), but "the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).

Their fasting is hypocritical: "Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure and exact all your labors. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness; ye fast not this day to cause your voice to be heard on high" (verses 3-4).

David's Psalm of confession (the 51St) rightly states: "Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts." Can anything different be acceptable in the all-seeing eyes of a holy God?

Instead of much religious display which looks to their fellowmen like piety, but is utterly false, "Is not this the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor wanderers to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?" (verses 6-7). Had they really known God, and trusted in Him, these would be their ways, and His blessing would be with them.

Then should happiness, health and other earthly blessings be theirs, with God's approval shown. Then they would not have occasion to complain as in verse 3, as verse 9 shows.

The way of true earthly happiness is further set forth in the remaining verses of the chapter. The happy life is one devoted to the service of God and His people, with self lost sight of. Thus, "If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and the speaking vanity, and if thou proffer thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then Olaf' thy light rise in darkness, and thine obscurity be as the noonday" (verse 10).

Yet more: "And Jehovah will guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought"—happy portion!—"and make strong thy bones; and thou shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters deceive not."

The ruin of former generations would be repaired, the waste places built up, providing habitations for the homeless (verse 12).

More blessed yet is the portion of the Israelite who truly puts God first in all his ways: "If thou turn back thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of Jehovah, honorable; and thou honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking idle words; then shalt thou delight thyself in Jehovah, and I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken (verses 13-14).

These words are not addressed to Christians, but the principles expressed are true at all times. Are we negligent as to honoring the Lord with our substance, our energies, our opportunities?

Isaiah 59

The early verses of chapter 58 exposed the sham, the pretense of the seemingly pious, but in this chapter we have an accurate picture of man, even of the favored few. From it the Holy Spirit has copied into Romans 3, that other and fuller God-given portrait of man which shows the human race as He sees it apart from a work of grace in the soul.

Jehovah's hand is riot shortened, nor is His ear heavy; sin has caused a separation between. Israel, indeed between all mankind, and Himself (verses 1-2). The only true and acceptable ground of approach for a sinner to God is the confession of his guilt, and turning away from his sins will inevitably accompany it.

Prayers in our day that set aside the truth of Scripture as to man's being a sinner, and God's costly provision for meeting the sinner's need—the precious, atoning blood of Christ, however eloquent and reverend in style they may be, cannot reach God's ear,

The description of man given in verses 3-8 is what no human biographer ever originated. Hands, fingers, lips, tongues, feet, thoughts, principles of action, works and ways are all viewed by the all-seeing eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.

In verses 9-15 the Holy Spirit guides some into confession that makes no reservations. The case is hopeless,—except for God!

What follows is not the cross of Christ, nor the gospel which we have believed (if we are saved); it is the return of the Lord Jesus this world to set up His kingdom. Before that manifestation to the world, He will have caught away to heaven the heavenly saints much as Enoch was taken away without dying before the flood, through which Noah and his family were safely borne (Gen. 5:24; 7:13; 8:19).

How different, as we have before noted, the coming of the Lord for His heavenly saints, will be from His coming with His saints! 1 Thess. 4 gives the one; and a number of prophetic scriptures, the passage before us in Isa. 59 among them, describe the other. One will be unknown to the world; the other will be seen and felt by the world.

By widespread, unsparing judgment, and not by the preaching of the gospel, will the promised kingdom be established on earth. The believers in Israel's land will be delivered when at extremity due to the devil's determination to destroy the name of Christ from the earth.

Gentiles, who will have believed the gospel of the kingdom preached by Jewish witnesses, will be saved; so also will some of the Israelites included in the lost 10 tribes, Of these things the closing verses of the chapter briefly treat. Salvation then granted will be eternal, as the last verse shows.

But how solemn this coming of the Lord Jesus—now to be accepted as Saviour, but if this be neglected, then to be met as Judge both of the living and the dead—in view of the description of men which verses 3 to 8 afford.

Isaiah 60

A lovely contrast is afforded in this chapter with the one we have just been studying. Chapter 59 turned the light of God's truth on man, and particularly the Israelites, revealing a state beyond remedy at the end of the present day of grace with which the Lord Jesus will deal at His appearing.

Chapter 60 shows us the Jerusalem that will be when the outpouring of judgment on the living is over, and the world is no longer the scene of Satan's power.

We are again reminded that the world will not be converted to God through the preaching of the gospel,

"For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples" (verse 2).

This is at the climax of the world's boasted progress. Telephone, telegraph, steam and electric power, the gasoline motor, the radio, the air plane, and countless other inventions have been contributed to our day, but God has not the place in human planning that He had even a few years ago. We are hastening to the end of the day of grace.

"The morning cometh, and also the night!" Isa. 21:12.

There will be no rivalry of cities or of nations, then; Jerusalem will be the central city, the metropolis of the whole earth. And the nations shall walk in her light, and kings by the brightness of her rising.

From far off lands the sons and daughters of Israel will come, no longer content to live anywhere that they can make money. To the land of Israel, the "abundance of the sea" shall be turned, and the wealth of the nations by land and sea. Not unwillingly will gifts be brought: the carriers shall "publish the praises of Jehovah." May that day soon come!

"Midian" is the Arabs; Sheba's position is not so easily found; Kedar and Nebaioth are Ishmaelites. "Tarshish" is another locality which has not been identified. It was to that place that the ship on which Jonah sailed from Joppa was bound, but whether this was, as some think, a port of Spain, or somewhere south or southeast, cannot now be determined. The ships of Tarshish are mentioned in 1 Kings 10:22 and 22:48; 2 Chiron. 20:36-37 and Psa. 48:7.

After all, the "ships of Tarshish" (verse 9) may be a term to symbolize the principal shipping lines of the world. Whatever it may mean, it is clear that many ships will be called upon to bring Israel's sons, their silver and their gold, to the land of their fathers and to Jerusalem (verse 9).

What a change is in early prospect for Jerusalem and the Holy Land! (verses 11-21). The glory of Jehovah will so mark the city, that the sun and the moon will riot be looked on as the sources of light.

"Jehovah shall he thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous."

Isaiah 61

The opening verse of chapter 61 brings to mind that sabbath day in the synagogue at Nazareth when our blessed Lord was present and stood up to read (Luke 4:16-21). He read the words written for Him 750 years before:

"The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon Me, because Jehovah hath anointed Me to announce glad tidings unto the meek; He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of Jehovah,"—and there He stopped. He would not say, "And the day of vengeance of our God," for had come in lowly grace, and what He had read disclosed His blessed mission in His first coming.

Yet His speaking to the people that day filled them with hatred for Himself, They sought to accomplish His death, and only divine power kept them from casting Hint headlong from the precipice. Men and women today, like those, unconcerned about their eternal destiny, select portions of the Scriptures and quote them to serve their own purposes, invariably making use of only such passages as do not reach their consciences; they reject the Bible as the Word of God, and are angry if directed to its disclosures of the natural heart, and the one way of salvation,

The day of vengeance belongs to His second coming to this earth, and cannot now be far off. After it, the old wastes and former desolations, the waste cities, places desolate from generation to generation, which are found in the Holy Land, will be rebuilt, for Israel's land will be populated as never before, ere the Millennium closes,

Then mercy will flow in abundance, and the earthly people of God will fully delight in Him, themselves born anew (John 3),

It is remarkable how the Holy Spirit in Old Testament prophecy passes over the long interval between the Lord's first and second comings, without a hint of what would take place during this interval, in the forming of the Church, a heavenly body. God chose to withhold that secret (Eph. 1:9; 3:3-6) until Israel, that is to say, the Jews, had sealed their rejection of the Messiah in the most positive manner.

Isaiah 62

The heart fills with joy in the knowledge of Him who, despite the treatment He received 1900 years ago, purposes to come again to bless as this world has never been blessed. He will not be content until Jerusalem's "righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a torch that burneth." He must judge the wicked. He cannot be true to Himself, and allow sin to continue forever, But judgment, the punishment of the Wicked, is His “strange work” (Isa. 28:21).

Chapters 61 and 62 are a very precious portion of God's Word, written in such language that little of exposition seems needed. They testify of Christ, and that is ever enough to satisfy the Christian heart.

Isaiah 63

In verses 1-6 is a brief account of the appearance of the Lord Jesus in Judah's land when as Israel's Messiah He will have destroyed the allied armies of the nations bordering Palestine, the blow falling in the country of Esau's children-Edom, or Idumea (the Greek form of the same name). His first act, on corning back to the world, to Jerusalem where He was crucified, will be to judge the western power, the revived Roman Empire in its head, and the Antichrist. This will be shortly followed by judgments falling on the eastern powers represented by the Assyrian or king of the north, and the nearby nations with which Edom will be associated. The prophetic Scriptures tell much of coming judgments upon the children of Israel and tile nations, but the object of the Holy Spirit being to tell of the character of the judgments, long withheld and richly deserved, and upon whom they will fall, and when, we are not given uncalled for detail, nor the order or precise time of most of the judgments.

Bozrah, verse 1, was an important place in Edom, and will be again. In verses 3 and 6, "the people" refers to the nations, not to Israel. Israel will have a share in the judgment on Edom (Isa. 11:1.4: Obadiah 18).

Verses 3, 4 and 6, we should read as the Lord's speaking of what He will have done, rather than of what He will thereafter (16; read for example, in verse 3: "I have trodden them in Mine anger and their blood is sprinkled upon My garments, and I have stained all My garments."

Verse 7 begins the last division of Isaiah's very extended and most inclusive prophecy. The remainder of chapter 63 and the whole of chapter 64 are the voice of the Spirit in the remnant of Israel, seeking, with confession of past sin and acknowledgment of God's mercy, deliverance from the consequences for their sin. In chapters 65 and 66 we have God's answer of grace, in language which moves the heart.

In verse 8, the last clause may be read "and He became their Saviour." "Him" at the end of verse 14, is Moses. Verse 14 is properly plural in form,—"As cattle go down into the valley, the Spirit of Jehovah gave them rest, etc." Verses 7-14 are a review of Israel's history as watched over and cared for by God from the slavery of Egypt to their resting place in the land of Palestine.

Founded upon the nation's former experience of divine favor, the God-fearing children of Israel of the fast approaching day will plead for a renewal of it (verses 15-19), They will press a relationship not equal to that in which the Christian stands, but one owned of God for the reborn children of Israel:

"Thou, O Jehovah, art our Father; our Redeemer, from everlasting is Thy name."

A mere remnant of the nation which has been for many centuries under God's disfavor because of sin upon sin, they declare that Abraham may be ignorant of them,—and certainly the mass of Israel, apostate from God, will not acknowledge them; under judicial hardening, too, the nation has been, like Pharaoh of old, who first hardened his heart, and afterward was hardened (Ex. 9:12),—-yet are they His people, and in the deepest need.

Isaiah 64

The petition of the godly remnant of Israel for God's delivering power to be exercised on their behalf becomes more earnest; "O that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at Thy presence!" (verse 1).

Strikingly different is this from the language which befits the Christian (Rev 22:17). If we are to groan here, it is that our bodies shall be redeemed (Rom. 8:23) at the Lord's secret coming to take His heavenly people away before the dawn of the eternal day. Our citizenship is not on earth, but has its existence in the heavens, from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour (Phil 3:20-21), He went to prepare us a place in His Father's house, and is coming again to receive us to Himself that where He is, we also may (John 14:3).

In days of (sad, God did terrible things for Israel had not looked; the judgments in Egypt; the deliverance of the people from Pharaoh's power in the death of the first born, the crossing of the Red Sea, and all the exhibitions of divine power from that time unto the day when God gave up Israel and Judah as His people, all testified for Him and to His interest in the nation He had chosen (verse 8).

Indeed, "never have Men heard, nor perceived by the ear, nor hath eve seen a God beside Thee, Who acteth for him that waiteth for Him" (verse 1, N.T. ) The substance of this verse is repeated in 1 Cor. 2:9, with changes to suit the peculiarly blessed position of the Christian made known only after the cross of Christ. It is profitable to compare the two passages and note the differences. The "heart of man" met its judgment at the cross; and "the things which God path prepared for them that love Him" is an expression, the exact counterpart of which we would scarcely find in the Old Testament., since it was only at and since the cross that the love of God has been fully revealed. The contrast of the two passages is made yet stronger by 1 Cor. 2:10, which many fail to note, though it is the key to the Christian position today. The Holy Spirit will, in the coming dispensation commonly called the millennium, he "poured out" upon all who are God's children, but only those who in the present dispensation of grace believe, are spoken of in the Scriptures as "sealed" and "indwelt" by the Holy Spirit.

Verse 5 in the "authorized" version of the Bible is a little difficult to understand. Another has translated it from the original tongue thus: "Thou meetest him that rejoiceth to do righteousness, those that remember Thee in Thy ways; (behold, Thou wast wroth, and we have sinned;) in those (ways) is perpetuity, and we shall be saved.”

But the confession is deep, from the heat,—-"We are all as an unclean thing-, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away: and there is none that calleth upon name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee" (verses 6 and 7). It is only when we take our real place in humility and confession of failure, that God can freely bless us.

So this supplication of the godly, joining a petition which it is according to God to grant, with the acknowledgment from the heart that they have been rightly afflicted for their iniquities, seeks mercy as well as blessing. The following chapters bring the answer.

Isaiah 65

When grace was offered to the Jews, as a nation they rejected it (Acts 7:51 to 8:3; 13:38-17, etc.), and God's answer to the pleading of chapters 63 and 64 therefore begins by pointing to the Gentiles who accepted His gift: "I am sought (out) of them that asked not for Me; I am found of them that sought Me not; I said, Behold Me, behold Me! unto a nation that was not called by My name."

As for Israel, His word is, "I have spread out My hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way not good, after their own thoughts, a people that provoketh Me to anger continually to My face...." In Rom. 10:20, 21, the application of these two verses to the Gentile and the Jew is made plain.

John 12:20-33, in the desire of the Greeks who came up to Jerusalem to see Jesus,—a desire which led Him to speak of His cross and His return to scenes of heavenly glory—gave a foreshadowing of the Gentile reception of the gospel of God's grace when the good news was offered them (Acts 10:44-45; 11:19-26, etc.) Acts 8:51-53 furnishes a striking contrast in the testimony of the first Christian martyr before the Jewish council. We cannot doubt that the Holy Spirit was then in Stephen witnessing to the truth of Israel's state.

Verses 8 and 4 of our chapter refer to the practice of idolatry, to which Israel was of old devoted, and will be again more than before. (See Matt. 12:43-45.)

Judgment will surely fall upon the unrepentant (verses 6 and 7); God's pardoning mercy is for those who will accept it; the rejecters are assured of unsparing dealing in which there will be no mercy. This principle is set forth in many places in. God's holy Word; we may refer to Prov. 1:24-38; John 3:15-18, and 5:24. Never does the Bible intimate that by and bye, through the spread of Christianity, all the world will he saved; this is a delusion.

In verse 11 the marginal readings of "Gad" and "Meni", which are believed to represent the planets Jupiter and Venus, are better; the first meant "fortune" or "chance'', and the other "number"; this explains the use of the word "number" in verse 12.

Verse 17: The Millennium is in view, with such blessings as the earth has never known since the fall of our first parents, and no wonder, for Satan will he shut up, and the Lord and His heavenly people will be seen on earth, while open sin will have no place. At its close the new heaven and new earth will appear, to abide eternally.

A lovely picture is presented to our minds of the land of Israel, and in a way the whole earth, in verses 19-25. To think of a day to conic on earth when there shall. be no weeping; nor sorrow; when death will be rare, and people will live longer than Methuselah; when selfishness and greed and violence shall he excluded, is wonderful indeed! It can only be realized when judgment has purged the world of all that offends God.

In that day there will be no waiting for answers to prayer, at least for personal need, for "before they call, I will answer; while they are yet speaking, I will hear'' (verse 24).

Then shall not only the earth yield her bountiful measure, but the wolf and the lamb which now it would delight to devour, shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; yet, mark, dust shall be the serpent's meat. God does not forget the part of the serpent taken by Satan (Gen. 3, Rev. 12:9), and would not have His people forget it.

For Christians there is a prospect far beyond the joys of the Millennium; heaven is their home; Christ their portion forever. To be with Him is the longing desire of those who love and seek to honor Him here; soon He will come and take them to the scene of radiant glory that is His home above.

Isaiah 66

The answer of Jehovah to the cry of His people is full of peace and blessing for the believer, but with grave assurance of judgment to the full upon the unbelieving. Verses 1-2 of this chapter were quoted in the weighty testimony of Stephen to the Jewish nation's leaders when they were about to stone him to death (Acts 7:49-50).

God had approved of David's desire to build him a house, and chose Solomon to do the work (1 Chron. 28:2-6). Upon its completion He bestowed the token of His presence upon the magnificent structure Solomon erected (2 Chron. 7:1). That building was destroyed when the sins of Judah brought about the captivity in Babylon, but when a remnant returned to the land of their fathers, and neglected to build again a house for Jehovah, the prophet Haggai (1:2-11) voiced his Master's displeasure. Why then did God condemn die house-building of His earthly people in the closing chapter of Isaiah's prophecy?

We need only look ever so briefly at the record God has given concerning His Son as He passed through the world, and see there the hypocrisy and wickedness that characterized the chief men of the Jews in Christ's day; how could God acknowledge the temple Herod the Edomite! built, when those who conducted its ceremonies were the murderers of His Son—in desire first, in reality later. They venerated the house, but cared naught for Him for whose professed service it was erected,

In the future day the Jews will build another temple at Jerusalem, but it will shelter the Antichrist, and must yield place to the temple Ezekiel's prophecy describes, which will be constructed after the judgments are over.

In our day the earthly dwelling place of God is not in Jerusalem, nor in any building, however grand, that may he dedicated to Him. He dwells in His Blood-bought people (see 1 Cor, 3:16; Eph.2:19-22; 1 Tim, 3:15). Does the realization of this immense fact sufficiently affect us who are the recipients of such favor?

What a picture is this that verse 3 discloses, of the thoughts of a holy God concerning the offerings of those who are in heart far from Him! Retribution will he theirs in due time, for "As they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations, I also will choose their delusions (or calamities), and Will bring their fears upon them."

Verse:5: Would that there were more trembling at God's Word today! It is the key to blessing. Verse 6: The Lord has appeared, and the judgment of His enemies is begun. Verses 7 to 10 graphically express the rebirth of Israel through the Holy Spirit's work.

From verses 19-20 we learn that after the moral cleansing of Israel, those who escape judgment will he sent to distant lands to make known what God has done, and to bring to the Holy Land all of their brethren who are scattered abroad.

The closing verses bring both sweet and solemn thoughts before us who are the Lord's,—-sweet to think of the Millennial peace and joy, when without alteration, throughout the whole of ten centuries, "all flesh” shall come to worship the true God at Jerusalem;—solemn, to think of the lasting memorial of the judgment of the wicked; to them, once salvation was offered; now the door of mercy is forever closed.

Jeremiah 1

Jeremiah, like Isaiah, tells the period during which he prophesied. He must have been born 40 to 50 years after Isaiah's death,—-late in Manasseh’s reign. Half of the writing prophets were now past and gone; Jonah, Amos, Joel, Hosea, Micah, Nahum and Isaiah had all rendered their testimonies and gone from the world; Zephaniah and Habakkuk were living in Jeremiah's time but there is no record of the voice or pen of a prophet for the span of about seventy years between Isaiah's and Jeremiah's testimonies.

During the reign of Manasseh (years) a fearful advance was made in departure from God, as may be seen from 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 73. Manasseh, however, humbled himself in the last years of his life, but his son Amon, who reigned only two years, imitated his father's evil ways. Then came Josiah to the throne at the age of 8, and when he was 20 or 21 God called Jeremiah into His service. It was then B.C. 628 or 629.

Jeremiah continued to speak and write for God for 40 years, until the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, when Jerusalem was destroyed. He was not taken away to Babylon but remained with a few in the land of Israel, and was taken to Egypt afterward. How long he lived, the Scriptures do not tell.

His very name is of special interest; it is believed to mean "Jab is exalted"—-a suitable name for one who so often brought the name Jehovah into his ministry.

In Jeremiah's. prophecy we shall not. find the wide measure of the purposes of God which was revealed through Isaiah; his portion was rather to stand and testify in sorrow amid the increasing moral darkness, the growing iniquity, of the professed people of God, until at length they were swept away in judgment, the king if Babylon being God's instrument for the chastening of His erring people.

Jeremiah tells us, with becoming humility, of his commission as a prophet; he felt his own unfitness for the task that awaited him, but was blessedly assured by God that He knew him, and had purposed before his birth to use him in His service; He would be with His confessedly weak servant, would direct him to whom to go, and what to say; further, Jeremiah need not fear the outcome of his ministry, for "I am with thee to deliver thee," was Jehovah's promise (verse 8). Would that all the servants of God would deeply profit by what we here learn of the incompetency of man at best, and the all-sufficiency of the mighty One in whose name they seek to labor.

Two symbols were brought to the prophet's notice (verses 11-16) — (a) a rod of an almond tree, the Hebrew name of which was formed from a word meaning "to watch" or "to awaken'', the almond tree being the earliest tree to show signs of life in the spring; and (b) a seething pot.

The tree rod was a token that God would be watchful over His word, to perform it, and the seething pot, whose face was from, not toward the north (new translation), was to show that out of the north should evil break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. Sentence had been pronounced and would shortly be executed upon guilty Jerusalem and the cities of Judah (verses 15-16).

Jeremiah was therefore to testify against the whole land, its kings, its princes, its priests and its people. They would rebel against his message, and try to do him harm, but should not overcome him for "f am with thee to deliver thee" (verse 19), precious word, twice given,

Jeremiah 2

The first message from Jehovah to Jerusalem through Jeremiah extends through chapter 2 to chapter 3:5. As we read it and seek to learn for the profit of our souls from what it contains, let us remember that the people to whom the message was sent were, like ourselves, living at the end of a long period of God's dealing in grace; like ourselves, too, they had the light of the Word of God (in the measure in which He had then made Himself known), and faithful servants of His had been their guides; as with us, Satan had been very busy, seeking (and O, so successfully!) to turn the heart away from God; finally, as today, the judgment of God was about to fall.

How then shall He, the measure of whose compassion, forbearance, and love to man exceed our highest thought, address Himself to those who walk among scenes where judgment is soon to fall, who know something of Hint, yet are marked by the ways of the world?

He speaks first, tenderly, of their early love to film (amazing that God should value the love of our heart, and feel its growing cold toward Him!): "I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. Israel was holiness .unto Jehovah, the first-fruits of His increase; all that devour him are guilty; evil shall come -upon them, with Jehovah."

It is good for the believer thus to be put in remembrance of the first days, when love to the Lord was, perhaps, much more ardent than in later years. Ten thousand things come in to engage the mind and heart, and if we are not very watchful indeed, the first love is soon relaxed; our lives become selfish, self-centered; we are laid open to Satan's many devices to ensnare our feet. In Rev. 2:4, the Lord Jesus, tile Church's Head, had to speak with sorrow of the decline of the first love of His people for Himself – the first step in a course away from Him.

What iniquity (or injustice) have your fathers found in Me, that they are gone far from Me?" (verse 5), is the next word from our gracious God. O, the fault is all our own, with shame we confess. Priests, pastors, prophets and people—all—are alike rightly under condemnation. The idolaters of the heathen world east and west (verse 10) have kept their false gods, but those who profess the knowledge of the only true god have dishonored Him on every hand.

"Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this ... for My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." How true today! And in the light of God's Word with its full revelation of the truth concerning ourselves, and of His amazing provision, at infinite cost, of a Saviour that saves eternally, how solemn is the position of those who now neglect so great salvation!

The world in its attractions—pictured in verse 16 in the mention of two cities of Egypt and its river Nile (Sihor) in verse 18 and the world in its present open enmity to the people of God—pictured in the reference to Assyria and its river (verse 18), have done much to wean the heart of the believer from the true and heavenly Object of his affections.

Yet the world cannot be blamed; the fault lies within (verse 19), We are aware that Jeremiah was sent to speak to a people outwardly linked with God, in many of whom there was not faith, nevertheless what is brought out in this chapter has much to commend it to the earnest consideration of every true child of God in our own day.

Verses 20 to 30 deal with the national sin of idolatry under the figure, much used in the Old Testament prophecies, of adultery; it was their turning from the true God to the gods of the heathen that brought on the Babylonian captivity. Yet were there other sins, for Satan has plenty of occupation for all who serve him.

Jeremiah 3

The first commandment of the ten was, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me;" and the second, "Thou shalt not make thyself any graven image, or any form of what is in the heavens above, or what is in the earth beneath, or what is in the waters under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I, Jehovah thy God, am a jealous God ...." Exodus 20:3-5.

But these first commandments (and the other 8, also) were speedily set aside by those to whom they were given. Israel and Judah, particularly after Solomon's reign, in large measure became idolaters. Israel was already banished because of this, but Judah yet remained for a little. So Judah is here seen as guilty of turning away from God to idols after the example of a wicked woman departing from her husband to live in sin with other men.

Josiah (verse 6) was the first king under whose reign Jeremiah prophesied. 2 Chronicles 34 and 35 give the character, under grace, of this young man's reign;—young, for he was made king when eight years old, and died before he was forty. But Jeremiah's prophecy shows that the people were not, in heart, one with the king in his determination to cleanse the kingdom of everything contrary to God's word, and their following Him all of Josiah's days (2 Chron. 34:33) was a pretense—hypocrisy not hidden from God.

"Israel" (verses 6, 8, 11, and 12) refers to the 10 tribes carried away by the Assyrians in 721 B,C.—-80 years before Josiah became king of Judah. The two tribes did not take warning from what had happened to Israel; however, while the ten tribes had been openly worshipers of idols, the two that remained kept up the outward appearance of serving the true God, while idolaters at heart. Thus backsliding Israel was in God's sight more just than treacherous Judah (verse 11), and Jeremiah was directed to proclaim mercy toward the north (the former home of the ten tribes); if they would but acknowledge their iniquity (verses 12 and 13).

From verse 14 to the end of the chapter is taken up with the day, still future, but not now distant, when Israel as well as Judah shall be brought back to dwell in the land of their forefathers.

It is in abounding grace that, after all the dark pages of the history of Jacob's children, God will say (as verse 14), "Return, backsliding children, for I am a husband unto you," and (verse 22), "I will heal your backslidings." We know that many will be cut off in unbelief; so it is said, "And I will take you, one of a city arid two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion."

In the Millennium there will be no ark; that which was made at Sinai (Ex. 37) must have been destroyed 900 years afterward when Jerusalem was destroyed (2 Chron. 36:19), for it is never mentioned again.

Verses 21 to 25 anticipate the day when the twelve tribes shall return, in weeping supplication. Jehovah will call, and they will answer:

"Behold, we come unto Thee, for Thou art Jehovah our God.... truly in Jehovah our God is the salvation of Israel. . . . We he down in our shame, and our confusion covereth us, for we have sinned against Jehovah our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not hearkened to the voice of Jehovah our God."

Such confession as this, coming from hears cleansed of hypocrisy, will be a part of that day when the once crucified King of Israel shall see of the fruit of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied (Isaiah 58:11).

Jeremiah 4

Is there yet hope of repentance? "If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith Jehovah, return unto Me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of My sight, then shalt thou not be a wanderer . . . .”

The most thorough repentance was called for, because of the evil of their doings (verses 3-4), yet God foreknew it would not take place; therefore He said, "Declare ye in Judah, and cause it to be heard in Jerusalem and say.... and blow the trumpet in the land; cry aloud and say, 'Assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fenced cities. Set up, a banner toward Zion; take to flight; stay not!'

Evil was to come from the north,—the destroyer of the nations was on his way; 4 years after Josiah's death, Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, and after 18 years more, he destroyed the city completely. From this prospect the heart of Jeremiah shrank; he had hoped that there would be repentance, and that Jerusalem and Judah would thus be spared (verse 10) .

Would there be a taking to heart of the admonition in verse 14? We know there was not; the people were set in their evil ways., and, like those of our own times, they would have many excuses for paying no attention to the warnings of coming judgments.

Long had God guarded Judah, and earlier, Israel, from the nations that would have seized the land for themselves, but now the time for forbearance was over, and the king of Babylon was soon to arrive on an errand of conquest. "Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, yea, it is bitter, yea it reacheth unto thine heart" (verse 18).

Verses 19-21 and 23-31 portray the scenes of war and desolation soon to be in Judah's land. Is not the latter part of verse 22 truly applicable to the present day, as it is also the contradiction of what should mark those who bear the name of Christ?

Fearful would be the state of the triflers with God's messages of coming trouble, when the long deferred judgment should fall on Judah.

Far worse indeed will be the position of those who in this day are scoffing at the gospel, when once the patience of God has been exhausted.

Jeremiah 5

Verse 1 invites a search of the streets of Jerusalem of that day, to find if there be one person that does justice, that seeks fidelity, faithfulness to God. It is plain that there was not one there, for Jerusalem was not pardoned. What fearful decline there had been, during the four centuries since 'David was king! But a far more solemn day was to come, when the only righteous One, the Son of God, was crucified just outside the city walls.

In Genesis 18, another city, Sodom, was the subject of a search before its judgment took place; there was one, and only one, righteous man there—-a rather worldly-minded believer whose name is not to be found in Hebrews 11. Yet, though Lot's course is not one we are encouraged to follow, the Holy Spirit has given a pleasing testimony in his favor (2 Peter 2:7-8).

Jeremiah pours out his heart in lament over his people (verses 3-5). God looks for faithfulness in His people today, as He did in the days of His servant Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah. Jehovah had smitten Judah, because they were His people, and as we read in Hebrews 12:6, "Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth"; but they had refused to receive correction.

It was hard for the prophet who loved his nation to believe that all the people were alike turned away from God. "Surely these," he thought, concerning those who first refused his testimony, "are the Wretched ones; they are foolish; for they know not the way of Jehovah, the judgment of their God" (verse 4). So to the great men he went, expecting to find encouragement there, but his report is that they have with one consent, "broken the yoke, have burst the bonds"; they too, would not submit themselves to God (verse 5).

Judgment, then, will overtake all, a lion, a wolf and a leopard being used to express the great strength of the Babylonian power that was soon to come against Judah; the wasting or emptying of the land that would follow, the people being transported to Babylon; and the swiftness with which the blow would fall on Judah and Jerusalem.

"Shall I not visit for these things?", Jehovah inquires (verse 9); He knows, as we are reminded in 2 Peter 2:9, "how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust unto the day o judgment to be punished"—-and that for eternity.

The judgment day of which Jeremiah prophesied was not the last one, when the wicked shall stand before the great white throne (Revelation 20:11-15), but the captivity under Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, which shortly took place during Jeremiah's own time (chapter 39), Then mercy would be shown; a "full end" (verses 10, 18) was not to be made of Judah, and as we know, they were afterward allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it, reestablish their homes in the land God had given their fathers.

When the foretold judgments took. place, Jeremiah was to tell his fellows that it was God's just retribution upon them because of their forsaking Him and serving strange gods in their land that they were to serve strangers in a land not theirs (verse 19).

Far more guilty than Judah (verses 20-28) is the world of our own day, particularly that part of it that has come under the sound of the gospel (2 Thessalonians 2).

The last two verses of the chapter solemnly sum up the state of things at that time, closing with a question for the unbelieving to answer.

Jeremiah 6

The city which God had chosen, where He had set His name, was about to be judged. Jerusalem, which David had built when Jehovah was with him (1 Chronicles 11:4-9: 15:1, etc.) and where Solomon had afterward erected the very costly temple for the worship of the only true God (2 Chronicles 2-7), was to be overwhelmed by strangers out of the north. The time was not yet come to tell who the enemy would be, but "the north" must have been a true token to those who heard Jeremiah's early prophecies, of Babylonia, which had just (B.C. 625) taken Assyria's place as the great northeastern power equal to, and presently greater than Egypt, Israel's ancient southern neighbor.

Comparing Jeremiah's prophecy in this and preceding chapters with our own times, a. parallel is plain. Judgment, far more intense,—unsparing – is soon to descend upon the inhabitants of this modern world, but, as in verse 1 the children of Benjamin were directed to flee for safety from connection with the guilty city, and sound an alarm; so are those today who have ears to hear, bidden to seek Him Whose hands are yet outstretched in mercy, and to warn others to flee from the wrath to come.

Verses 3 to 6 no doubt gave to the people of Jerusalem the manner of the approach of the Babylonians to Jerusalem, and the final siege, at the end of which the city was destroyed. Not at the first appearance of the invading hosts of Babylon was Jerusalem defended against them; rather it seems did the then king of Judah submit to Nebuchadnezzar. (See 2 Kings 21-25).

The state of Jerusalem, that is, its inhabitants, was by this time beyond recovery, as verse 7 in chosen words declares. The example of the godly king Josiah, particularly during the first eighteen years of his 31 year reign (2 Kings 22 and 23; 2 Chronicles 34 and 35) was not sufficient to turn the nation back to their God.

It was not now true of the people, as in an earlier day (2 Chronicles 15:15) that with all their heart and their whole desire they sought Jehovah. Had this been so, He would have been found of them, and given them rest.

The judgment, long: promised and long withheld, should, when executed, be unsparing, because there was no willingness to listen to God speaking through His servants (verse 10). Even yet His counsel was given (verses 16-17)—-how weighty for today if only heeded!—-to "stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls,"

This was the soft-spoken voice of mercy, heard where the trumpet tones of judgment would soon be heard. The sacrifices of a disobedient people were not acceptable, not pleasing to their God (verse 20). Just so was it with Cain (Genesis 1:3-4) and Jude verse 11 declares that the way of Cain will bring eternal woe; that "way" is much practiced today, man denying that he is a sinner and that he must needs approach God by blood, even the precious blood of Jesus.

In this scene of approaching overwhelming judgment was Jeremiah placed (verse 27), and his two books (Jeremiah and Lamentations) witness to us how his tender heart was wrung by the hardheartedness of his people. He did not try to make his words pleasing to his hearers, but faithfully delivered the message of God to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah.

Jeremiah 7

The day of Judah's overwhelming judgment was set, and the time of it drew on apace; yet the offer of mercy to the wicked (if they would but avail themselves of it!) must go out again, though it should fall upon utterly deaf ears (verses 1-7). How like to our own days is this! Heedless of the call of God, the mass of mankind hasten on to certain judgment, now assuredly near at hand, wherein not one nation only, but the whole world will meet the King of Kings Who once outside Jerusalem's walls, as the crucified One, offered Himself to God, bearing,—as every believer can say in the language of faith and of Scripture,—our sins in His own body on the cross.

We note here also, another parallel with our own times, that while refusing the gospel message of that day, and going on in their own perverted ways, the profession of the worship of God was kept up; the priests and the Levites, though not spoken of here, must have been at their appointed posts, carrying on the forms of religious observance. What did they think of the solitary member of the priestly family (Jeremiah was, he tells us at the beginning, a priest) and his message, who stood in the gate of the temple grounds faithfully witnessing for his Master? 2 Timothy 3:5 gives us a word for the character of empty religious profession in Jeremiah's day as well as in on-own times for which it was written.

Was indeed Jehovah's house become a den of thieves (verse 11)? This passag we doubt not was in the Lord's mind. when He cast out the tradesmen and money-changers from the temple which Herod built (Matthew 21:13). Shiloli was a witness (verses 12-15) that the name of Jehovah may not be connected with wickedness. (See Psalm 78:60, and 1. Samuel 1-4). The ark of the testimony which had been placed there when the land was possessed by the children of Israel (Joshua 18) never returned to Shiloh after this, and the last mention of the place, aside from the Psalms and Jeremiah's prophecy, is in 1 Kings 14. The place was within the boundaries of the tribe of Ephraim, 20 or more miles north of Jerusalem, and so was included in the territory of the ten tribes of Israel who had been removed as captives by the Assyrians a hundred years before Jeremiah's time.

All were alike, the children, the fathers, the mothers (verse 18),—turned from God to the service of idols; the "queen of heaven'', object of their worship, appears to have been the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth. or Astarte, the moon. What a hopeless scene it must have been, in which Jeremiah was left to testify for God! But He will never be without witnesses until the day of mercy is finally closed upon this guilty world, and the final act of judgment opens upon the unrepentant.

Jeremiah was to speak for God, though assured in advance that his hearers would disregard his message (verse 27) . The high places of Topheth in the valley of the son of Hinnom, where the worship of a false god reached its height in burning their sons and daughters in the fire, was chosen by God as the at valley of slaughter, an emblem of the eternal judgment in the lake of fire. The Greek word "Gehenna", translated "hell" in Luke 12:5 and other passages in Matthew, Mark and James, and referring to the place of everlasting punishment for the lost, is derived from the Hebrew words for "valley of Hinnom".

Jeremiah 8

Fearful scenes of desolation and woe are promised in the closing verses of chapter 7 and the opening verses of chapter 8. Does God love to take vengeance? It is far from His desire; but though merciful and compassionate and loving the sinner (how has He not shown His great love, in giving His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life?) the day of reckoning must cone. The day of the Lord will come, as says Peter in 2 Peter 3:10, though men choose to ignore the testimony God has given.

In that day, of what avail will be the false gods which man has made for himself, or the delusions he has cherished concerning the future? Revelation 6:15-17 affords a striking picture of the very beginning- of judgment yet to be on earth; at the end there will be no caves, no rocks for hiding places (Revelation 20:12-13).

In natural things, men falling, rise again; turning away, they return (verse 1). There is recovery, as when a man blunders in his course he turns back on seeing his mistake. But it was not so with Judah in their relations with God. They had become confirmed in their self-chosen path; they refused to return to God. The race is no different today, wherever the gospel has gone and men have become hardened to it.

God proclaims Himself a listener (verse 6), Ah, what does He hear from the lips of many of His creatures of the stock of Adam in our days! God's humble creatures, to which we attribute very little intelligence, put man to shame (verse 7); they are wiser than men, for they know when the time has come, as winter draws near, to fly away to warmer clinics; but the human race (and not only Judah) know not the judgment to come.

The rejection of God's word carries in its tram every evil, and we are not surprised that deceit (verse 5), and its close relative lying (verse 8) and covetousness (verse 10) are mentioned as characteristic of the people who professed God's name, but cared naught for Him. As they deceived others, they were also self-deceived (verse 11): Hardened in sin (as those become who are under the sound of the gospel and reject it) they are unashamed, but their judgment is set (verse 12).

In verses 14-16 the prophet's interest in his people, wayward and laden with sins, deaf to his entreaties, leads him to anticipate their feelings when the Babylonian instruments of God's judgments should appear in the land. In verse 19 he sees them as already in the country of their captivity, and turns to express Jehovah's indignation against them. Again he speaks for Judah, the "harvest" of God's bountiful dealing with them over, the "summer" with its pleasures, ended—opportunity gone and the cold blasts of "winter" anticipated for which they are not prepared: "we are not saved."

Why not? is a question which comes to the mind; why not saved? Jeremiah's use of the word was in connection with the prospect of the coming of Nebuchadnezzar's army, but its New Testament use in connection with the gospel of God's grace is before us now

The disease with which 'Udall was afflicted was beyond human remedy; none but Jehovah could heal them, and they refused His mercy. Such is man, the dupe of Satan and the prey of his own folly. Well might Jeremiah weep, and the servants of God of our times likewise!

Jeremiah 9

Jeremiah has been rightly termed the weeping prophet; he was the last of the prophets before the Babylonian captivity, for Habakkuk and Zephaniah gave their testimony in Jeremiah's youth, and Ezekiel and Daniel, the prophets of the captivity, were younger than he, beginning their testimony after Nebuchadnezzar’s forces had carried away part of Judah to Babylon.

Well might Jeremiah weep, as he thought of his people and the miseries that lay before them! Had they but hearkened to the voice of Jehovah speaking through the prophets, they should have remained in peaceful and happy possession of their land. But they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would have none of His counsel; they despised all His reproof; therefore they were about to eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices (Proverbs 1:29-31).

The land was now to be emptied, and Jerusalem reduced to heaps, a dwelling place of jackals (“dragons"); Judah's cities were to be a desolation; without inhabitant. When God determined that His earthly people should be removed from the land He gave them, He so ordered that no others might profit from its fruitfulness.

A far more serious sin than idolatry and its related evils which occasioned the Babylonian captivity (verses 12-16) accounts for the nineteen centuries since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, during none of which has the land yielded its God-given bounty.

The Jew is a standing testimony to the word of God, and so is the land of his forefathers. Long have they been scattered among the nations because of the rejection and putting to death of their Messiah, and they have been no strangers to persecution in almost every country to which they have gone.

The tendency in the natural heart is ever to vaunt itself at the expense of others, and verses 23-24 show the only. true ground of boasting, if the Gentiles are. disposed to scorn the Jew suffering at the hand of God because of a national sin.

Thanks be to God that "understanding and knowing" Him is not limited to the wise, the mighty or the rich; indeed 1 Corinthians 1:26 lets us know that not many of these three classes, in which the world numbers its great ones, know the heavenly calling.

Loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness are Jehovah's delight in connection with the earth; Satan has succeeded in giving quite a different character to this scene, but God still overrules for His own glory and for the blessing of His creatures, particularly for them that love .Him (Romans S:25). The Millennium will he the occasion of the display of Jehovah's loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness as never before shown on earth.

The chapter closes with the promise of judgment particularly upon Judah's neighbors, but reaching out over the whole world. In its full measure that judgment awaits the coming of the true Ruler of this world.

Jeremiah 10

Idolatry was a snare to Israel from ...the beginning. We have no account of the making and veneration of idols before the flood in Noah's time, but Genesis 31:19 speaks of household images belonging to Laban the Syrian, stolen from her father by Rachel, Jacob's wife. This was 900 years after the flood. But Joshua (Joshua 24:2) declared that Abraham's father and other ancestors of his served other gods; this brings the record to within 350 years after the food. The same chapter (verse 14) shows that idolatry was practiced by the Israelites while in Egypt.

Then, when God delivered Israel from their wretched states of slaves of the Egyptians, and brought them with Moses as their leader to the border of Canaan, we have the incident of the golden calf at Sinai (Exodus 32) and the testimony in Amos (5:25-26) that they carried false gods with them during those forty years in the wilderness. Joshua 24, to which reference has been made (verses 14-23), is proof that those gods were still worshiped, after the conquest of the land given them by God for their dwelling place. Judges 2:11-13 and chapters 17 and 18 may be referred to. showing the continuance of idolatry until Samuel's day. Indeed it was never given up, though it remained for Solomon to bring in the practice openly (1 Kings 11), and later kings followed in his steps. (See 2 Kings 2:5, 11-14 ) .

This chapter, as Isaiah 40, 44, etc., takes up the subject of idols in a charge to the house of Israel. They are not to learn the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens which troubled the nations (verse 2). "This would seem to have particular importance in view of the religion and practice„ of the Babylonians among whom they were shortly to live.

Folly is written upon the worship of the idols of men's contriving (verses 3-5). The true God is extolled, with His Millennial title (made good in Christ) of King of nations. (See Revelation 15:3, where the marginal reading is King of nations, and Rev. 19:11-21).

"King of eternity", as the margin shows, is the true reading, instead of "an everlasting king" in verse 10 of our chapter. None other is the ultimate Ruler of the world, Who is also its Creator (verses 11-12). And it is grace alone that leads Him to speak of Himself as the "Portion of Jacob" and of Israel as the rod or tribe of His inheritance (verse 16).

Nevertheless the need for governmental dealing with Judah is not forgotten; the exile to Babylon is nowhere said to be a final cutting off of the people, nor was it, as Ezekiel and Daniel and the still later prophets witnessed.

Jeremiah, in verses 19 to 25, speaks for Judah, but as justifying God in His dealings with them. He knows that man is a dependent creature; his way is not his own, and it is not in a man that walketh to direct his steps (verse 23). He therefore asks (for Judah) for correction with judgment, not in God's anger lest he be brought to nothing, The fury of God will be poured out in due time on the nations that know Him not (verse 25), and particularly will those who have oppressed God's earthly people suffer in that day, as we noticed in our studies in Isaiah.

Jeremiah 11

Judah must be reminded of the covenant made at Sinai (Exodus 24:3-8), which required the fullest obedience, Israel had indeed never kept it, so that its commandments only condemned them, but the curses of Deuteronomy 38:15-69 were now in process of fulfilment, as Daniel in chapter 9:11 Said in his confession of the nation's sins.

The case of Judah was now equal to that of the ten tribes which had been carried off by the Assyrians a hundred years earlier; it was beyond remedy. God had protected Judah from enemies round about, but to no avail; they would not walk in His ways. Now they must suffer the fruit of their own ways. They would not be able to escape from the powerful young nation of Babylonia whose king would shortly send his army against Judah and Jerusalem. Then would the cry to Jehovah for help as of old, He promises that He will not hearken to them (verse 11).

They would then go and cry unto the gods unto whom they had burned incense, but there would be no help there. That their gods were as numerous as their cities was said in chapter 2:28; now it is added (verse 13) that altars for burning incense to Baal were as many as the streets in Jerusalem.

Jeremiah is no longer to pray for Judah; forbearance is impossible now (verse 14). Yet were they loved by God, "My beloved" is still His name for them, We marvel at the love and mercy of God as we read so much in the prophets of the hard hearted unbelief of His earthly people, and their wicked ways, and at. His unwillingness to give them up.

Yet His dealings with the Gentiles during the present day of grace are equally marvelous. Why, we may ask, does God forbear to execute summary judgment upon a world that daily shows it has little regard for His Son? that after nineteen centuries remains indifferent to the offer of salvation through the atoning death of Christ? Who can measure the depth of His love to man, His patience, His reluctance to take vengeance upon His creatures? Yet there is a limit; once He said, "The end of all flesh is come before Me!", and shortly destroyed the world that then was with a flood. Again, there came a day When Sodom and Gomorrah were overthrown, not one escaping except Lot and his two daughters. And the day is Fixed when the present world of the ungodly shall meet their Judge (Acts 17:30-31).

Israel was Jehovah's olive tree of promise, green, fair and of goodly fruit, but its branches were broken because of unbelief and sin (verse 16-17). See 'Romans 11:16-36, where the subject is connected with the present place of the Gentiles, soon to be given back to Israel.

Jeremiah's grief over the state of his people was great, but now he had to add to his sorrows the threat of the men of Anathoth, his home town, to kill him if he persisted in prophesying in Jehovah's name. He looks, and not in vain, to God to deal with them (verses 18-23).

Jeremiah 12

In verses 1-4 Jeremiah appeals to God. He acknowledges that 'His acts are righteous, though he does not fully understand. Why, he asks, as has many another, why does the way of the wicked prosper? This is part of the complaint voiced in Psalm 73, which also gives the answer. Those whom Jeremiah referred to were empty religious professors; God was near in their mouth, but far from their reins (their inward thoughts). He asks that they be judged; the Christian is never taught of God to seek vengeance upon his enemies, but such desires will be right in the believing children of Israel when the day of reckoning for this world approaches. So many of the Psalms breathe language suited for that time, and Revelation 6:9-11 shows a company of martyrs of the future day calling for the judgment of their former oppressors.

In verse 5 and 6 God brings the state and coming judgment of Judah pointedly before His servant Jeremiah, Those who would serve Him well in the gospel must themselves realize in their own souls the prospect before the sinner going on heedlessly to eternal judgment.

In verse 7 Jeremiah is told that all is over with Judah; there remains only the actual emptying of the land, which would shortly be done by Nebuchadnezzar as God's instrument of judgment. Never since that day has God dwelt among His earthly people; never since have they been in the enjoyment of divine favor as a nation, nor will they be until there is a national repentance, not only of their sins of idolatry and rejection of the Word of God, but now also the sin of deeper dye—the rejection of their Messiah.

The land of Israel is unlike any other, as we have noticed before. Let us refer to Deuteronomy 32:7-43; Exodus 3:8; Isaiah 5:1-7; Ezekiel 33:24-20; Joel 2 and 3. From that land, first possessed by the sons of Jacob nearly 3,400 years ago (B.C. 1451) ten of the twelve tribes of Israel were removed because of their sins in little more than 700 years (B.C. 721); they have never returned, and only God knows where they are today.

The two tribes referred to as Judah, the Jews, as they have long been designated, were removed after 845 years (some remained 18 years longer) in the land, and though permitted to return to it by proclamation of the Persian king Cyrus 70 years later, though not all did so. Those who slid return were in large measure unsubdued in. heart, and the final test cane when Jehovah—-Jesus in lowly grace came among them. Him they crucified, and since then their land has been desolated; they are a homeless people, and their country, God's heritage, awaits their return, and their full repentance, as to which the Old Testament prophets have spoken.

That day, we believe, is near, Already the land is attracting thousands of Jews, and its resources are being developed, but the time has not come (nor will it, we are persuaded, short of the Lord’s return) when it will yield what God has in prospect for it.

The chapter closes with the promise of blessing for Judah, and, if their Gentile neighbors "diligently learn the ways" (not, of course, the old sinful ways, but the ways of a redeemed and born-again people) of His people, God will build them up in the midst of Israel. If they will not obey, they will be plucked up and destroyed. This fulfilment belongs to the Millennium which is yet future, but not, we believe, far distance.

Jeremiah 13

It has pleased God not only to tell directly in His word what He desired to communicate to man, but also to include, as an aid to its understanding, many illustrations. Thus we learn from what is told in the Bible about persons,—for example, Adam, Abel, Cain, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and above all others, God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the same way He has made use of things such as sheep, trees, the wind, the grass, leaven (in its modern form, yeast). So in our chapter a girdle or belt, part of the clothing of the East, is used to present a picture of God's earthly people, what they should have been, and what they were Jeremiah was directed by God to get a linen girdle, and put it on he was not to put it in water. If this refers, as we suppose, to cleansing it when soiled, it would seem to point to the sad fact that Israel did not cleanse themselves as a nation of the sins with which they became defiled. Rather did they steadily grow worse.

The girdle was to be taken off and hidden by the Euphrates,—-a foreshadowing of the captivity soon to take place, Some have questioned if Jeremiah actually went to the river, the nearest point on which would he about four hundred miles northeast of Jerusalem, but we see nothing- in the chapter to lead us to think that what is recorded was only a vision. Jeremiah's people were soon to be transported more than twice four hundred miles as captives.

After many days Jeremiah was sent by the Euphrates to get the girdle; it was spoiled, good for nothing. Verses 8 to 11 give the explanation of what must have puzzled the prophet; the girdle was a picture or symbol of God's earthly people. "The whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah," verse 11, in, eludes the twelve tribes, ten of whom were already gone into captivity under the Assyrians. Seeing their brethren taken away should have led Judah and Benjamin to repentance, but they were set upon their own evil ways. And now nothing lay before them but a judgment as severe as Israel's.

Jeremiah was to tell the people by means of another figure,—the skin bottles of his day—that the judgments to befall them would be so terrible that all, from the highest to the lowest, would be as persons filled with drunkenness. Fearful times were coming, and there would be no mercy shown.

Verses 15 to 17 reveal the tender heart of Jeremiah; he pleads with his brethren to hear; to repent; if they would not, his soul would weep in secret places for their pride; his eve should weep sore because Jehovah's flock is gone into captivity. The prophet thus brings to our minds One Far greater than himself, the Lord Jesus, drawing near to the same city of Jerusalem six hundred years later, when about to give His life a ransom for all that should believe in Fran, (See Luke 19:11-44),

Verse 18: The king, and the queen-mother (who is meant here, rather than the king's wife) must humble themselves, for from their heads the crown of their magnificence was coming down. We are not told who this king was, but judge that it was Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, placed on the throne of Judah by Pharaoh-Necho after his capture of Carchemish, important city on the upper Euphrates, At that time (about B. C. 610) Assyria had ceased to be a kingdom, and Nineveh its capital, was destroyed,

Verse 20 points to the north as the direction from which punishment was to be measured out on the iniquitous Jews.

If we are right in connecting Jeremiah’s prophecy in this chapter with Jehoiakim, it was spoken not more than 3 years before Nebuchadnezzar, at the head of his father's army defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish, and pushed his way through Palestine to Egypt. Returning to Babylon to become king, he took part of the vessels of Solomon's temple, beside captives of Judah, (see Daniel 1; 2 Kings 23:34 to 24:7; Jeremiah 46:2). This was the beginning of the seventy years' captivity.

Judah's sins against a God whose forbearance will not always continue, were the cause of the sweeping of the last of the twelve tribes of Israel out of the land (verses 22-27).

If the Ethiopian could change his skin, or the leopard his spots, the children of Judah might do good, who were accustomed to do evil.

Jeremiah 14

The chapter opens with a vivid description of the effect on Judah and Jerusalem of a drouth, more severe than that of 1934 in the western central region of the United States as well as in other lands. Famine is one of God's "four sore judgments" (Ezekiel 11:21) upon the living, and who of His children would deny that He is speaking to the world as well as to believers in the great depression which has continued for five years, and in the drouth of 1934? Millions have been proving the emptiness of a life centered in this world, but how many have found relief in accepting God's offer of salvation through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ?

Judah mourned because of vanished prosperity; the gates thereof (no doubt referring to the rulers and judges, the leaders of the people) languished; they were black unto the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem went up. But neither the mourning nor the crying was in repentance because of their sins,

“Chapt,” verse 4, is "chapped",—rough and broken, because of the absence of rain. "Dragons", verse 6, are the creatures we call jackals.

In verses 7 to 9 the godly are heard; they acknowledge the iniquities, backsliding and sin that had characterized Judah, humbly taking their part in the judgments which God was laying on the nation.

They only ask Him to act for His name's sake; thus they could trust Him; they were receiving their due, but in Jehovah alone was the Hope of Israel, their Saviour in the time of trouble. It is good to see this looking to God alone, in trial; why is there not more of it today?

The answer to the prayer in verses 7-9 is in verse 10; God was, as they said, as a stranger, a traveler turning aside to stay a night; as a man astonished, a mighty man that cannot save; because He cannot put up with sin. Long had He waited in patience that seemed without limit, but the people loved to wander; they had not refrained their feet; nor would they repent.

He must in faithfulness deal with them; He will remember their iniquity and visit their sins. Since many warning's had been disregarded, their case was now closed; Jeremiah was not to pray for the people for their good; God would not hear their cry, nor accept their offering's; He purposed to consume them by sword, by famine and by pestilence (verse 12).

Jeremiah complained of the false, lying prophets who assured the people that peace, and not the sword or famine, was coming. There are many such today, telling their hearers that there is no hell nor judgment to come; that salvation is not by believing in Christ as the sinner's Substitute; that man is not lost, and therefore needs no Saviour, and other lies of Satan. What will be the judgment that befalls such for eternity? We may well leave the answer to God, who has given in a single verse, Revelation 21:8, a most solemn statement regarding the doom of the lost, "The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers ... . and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." Rev. 21:8.

In the Old Testament, references to eternal judgment and eternal blessing are few. For the truth on these subjects we turn to the pages of the New Testament where both are plainly set forth. Suitably then, verses 15-16 only tell of the manner of their death who prophesied falsely in Jeremiah's days. After death, for them, the judgment for eternity, (Hebrews 9:27; 2 Peter 3:7; John 5:26- 29).

The end of Judah's stay in the land is in view in verses 15-18. It was, as we have before noted, then close at hand; Jeremiah saw the closing scenes, but was spared from going to Babylon.

Verses 19 to 22 bring in again the exercises of the feeble remnant who had faith; Jeremiah was not entirely alone. They look to God, asking once more that on the ground of what Jehovah is, He will not spurn them, nor break His covenant with them, On no other ground could they expect mercy, but it is the confessed sinner that meets forgiveness, (Luke 15:21- 24; Acts 16:29-34; Romans 3:21-26).

"HE" in verse 22, is one of the names of God; upon Him the believers wait, nor will they wait in vain.

Jeremiah 15

In each of the servants of God of olden time, as we learn about them in the Bible, we see the results of training in God's school, in the lives they led or the words they were given to speak, Not, of course, that they did not err; they surely did; imperfection is stamped on everything of man. We see, in Abraham's life, faith in constant exercise; David habitually kept God before him, particularly before he became king; Samson was an example of true separation to God. But we need not present further examples. The divine Author of the Bible (verse 1) names two of His servants here because of their deep love for His people and earnest prayers for their blessing, which He heard and answered.

Such was Judah's state, however, that though Moses and Samuel were to stand before Him on their behalf, God would not hearken. "Send them out of My sight and let them go forth," is the word for sinful and unrepentant Judah.

Should they ask, Whither shall we go forth?, Jeremiah was to tell them of death and captivity. Death was the appointment of some, but not at the end of a long, happy life; they would be cut off because of their sins, (see chapter 21:1). For others there would be death by the sword, violent death, at the hand of an enemy. Still others were to suffer death through starvation, when a worse famine than they had known should be their experienced. (see 2 Kings 25:3, and Jeremiah 19:9). For the survivors there was captivity. Verses 3 and 4 enlarge upon this fearful prospect. Some would be aroused at Jeremiah's warning of judgment, but the mass, like many today, were hardened by sin.

Jeremiah's faithfulness to God had made him a man of strife and of contention to the whole land. He was cursed by everyone (verse 10). But his bitter cup was sweetened by the knowledge that God was for him, "Verily I will set thee free for thy good"—the true reading of the early part of verse 11. The enemy would be caused to treat Jeremiah well in the time of evil and of affliction (see chapter 39:11-14).

Verses 12 to 14 are addressed to the unrepentant mass of Judah. "Will iron break? iron from the north? and bronze?" (verse 12, N.T.) shows that it was a strong power that was coining against them. Thus would the people be made to pass into a land (Babylon) that they knew not.

Verse 15 is the complaint of Jeremiah, and evidently of others joined with him, a believing remnant of Judah. Christians do not seek vengeance on their enemies; rather they seek their blessing- and pray for them even while suffering from them, (Acts 7:54-60, Romans 12:14, 19). Israel, under a different dispensation, not of grace going out to God's enemies, but looking on to His certain righteous rule over the earth, could rightly and according to His mind, desire that their enemies (God's unrepentant enemies) should be punished; and they will be. This spirit is much in evidence in the Psalms, which are for Israel, though Christians profit from their reading.

Note that the key to a right position before God is the knowledge of His word (verse 16); it leads (1) to a separation from company once enjoyed, taking sides with Him as against the world of the ungodly (verse 17); here Satan assails, and would hinder the progress of the renewed soul with questions, even to doubting the sincerity of God (verse 18); but the word of God, given its place, leads the believer (2) to know his acceptance before God, and (3) to lead a life pleasing to Him, seeking what is precious in God's sight, and rejecting what is "vile."

O, to know more truly this God-honoring path through the world!

One word more is needed to complete this guidebook-in-miniature for the believer; "Let them return unto thee, but return not thou unto them'' (verse 19).

Jeremiah, as we have seen, felt keenly the place of rejection in which. he found himself, and he may have been tempted to return to the easier path he had left, with the thought that his opportunities for serving his Master would be wider there than in the narrow path of holy separation; but "return not thou unto them" was a positive direction which is still good for all who desire to honor their Lord. In this position he would be preserved, for God was for him and with him (verses 20-21).

Jeremiah 16

The first part of this chapter continues the subject brought out in chapter 15,—- the believer's position in the world in view of the failure of the responsible body before God. The state of his kinsmen according to the flesh – the people of Judah—had become such that Jeremiah could not go on with them, and God directed him to stand wholly apart, a witness for his Master 'Who had Himself rejected them, and had announced their coming judgment.

The principles of action put before Jeremiah for his behavior under these circumstances are exactly those that are stated for the guidance of Christians (2 Corinthians 6:14-18; 2 Timothy 2:19-22; Hebrews 13:13), though few indeed give much heed to them in our day.

What would an earthly master have to say to his servants if they followed the easier part of his directions, and left the harder things undone, doing what pleased themselves rather than applying themselves with energy both to do and to be altogether according to their master's mind? God, we may be sure, is not indifferent to the trifling with His Word, though He hears with ignorance.

Jeremiah was forbidden an unequal yoke, i.e., he must not marry one who was under the judgment of God. (Has such a marriage of believer and unbeliever ever been attended with God's blessing?) He was not to comfort the ungodly in their grief, since God was dealing with them because of their sins; neither was he to have fellowship with them in their pleasures, but to be a testimony in staying away from their feasts (verses 1-9).

So self-satisfied, so blinded by Satan, were those among whom Jeremiah lived, that they viewed their sins as small and trifling (if indeed they acknowledged that they had ever sinned). They would ask the prophet what was the occasion of the promised woes, and it is plain that they did not believe that such an end was before them.

Thus is it today; God has long spoken in the clearest, most positive way of judgment to come, and the necessity for it, but the mass of mankind continue to reject His Word.

Yet such is the grace of God, and His unchangeable purpose to bless bankrupt, ruined, hell-deserving sinners that in the very announcement of the casting out of Judah from the land He had given them, He speaks of a day when He will bring hack the .children of Israel—all of the 12 tribes—to that very land. This promise (verses 14-18)—not without assurance of great tribulation in carrying it out—has not been fulfilled; it awaits the end of the present dispensation, now close at hand, when God will turn from extending special favor to the Gentiles, to extend it anew to Israel (Romans 11:1-32).

The time of Jacob's trouble, as Scripture terms it (Jeremiah. 30:7) occupies a considerable place in the Word of God. In our chapter the reference is brief; God will have the children of Israel "fished" for, and "hunted", wherever they are.

They cannot get out of His knowledge or His sight, nor is their iniquity hidden from Him. In all ages, since they ceased to be His people (Hosea 1:9), the Jews have suffered. at the hands of the Gentiles, but the heaviest infliction is to come (verse 18) as many Scriptures foretell.

Faith, however, trusts God; it justifies Him in judgment, and counts upon Him for deliverance (verse 19); it looks forward to the day when not only Israel, but also the Gentiles from the ends of the earth shall acknowledge Him. This, we believe, does not refer to the present work of God's grace among the Gentiles, to which there is almost no reference in the Old Testament, but something to be carried out when Israel is restored to their land and blessed by Him as never before, in the Millennium.

The last two verses of our chapter return to the subject of the judgment about to fall on Judah, and its cause. Holiness and truth are the foundations of His throne, Who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life; he that believes not shall be judged. This is the truth of the gospel.

Jeremiah 17

The sin of Judah might be a trifling matter to them, as they asked Jeremiah why God should have pronounced such evil upon them (chapter 10:10), but it was written with a style of iron, with the point of a diamond, engraven upon the tablet of their heart, and upon the horns of the altars, while their children remembered their altars and their groves.

"The tablet of the heart'' is within, hidden from sight, and there SIN was written, not, however, on the hearts of Judah's children only. God has made use of this expression, "tablet of the heart", four times in His Word: twice in Proverbs (3:3 and 7:3), where the believer is taught what should be written on it—-weighty words to which we do well to give earnest heed—and in 2 Corinthians 3:3, where the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer's heart is spoken of. A record for God to see is thus in every human heart; what does what I have written tell?

The horns of the altar were its corner projections and the only intended use of them indicated by the Scriptures was for the blood of sin offerings to he put there, — on both the altar of incense and that of burnt offering (Leviticus 4), thus maintaining before God the ground of communion and of the forgiveness of sin, the atoning blood of a Substitute. There, now, was Judah's sin written

"Their altars and their groves'', in verse 2, refers to the worship of idols, carried on by the people at the same time as the professed worship of the true God. The "groves" were not groups of trees, as might be supposed, but shrines, made of wood and erected under trees; it is thought that they were images of gods or goddesses.

God's "mountain in the field" was Jerusalem (verse 3 ). Verses 5 to 8 contrast in the clearest way "the man that trusteth in man," with "the man that trusteth in Jehovah." These are God's statements, and unalterably true, and there are many instances of their truth in the lives of our acquaintances.

There is much in Scripture about the heart: it is mentioned nearly eight hundred times in the Old Testament, and 158 times in the New. The first place where it is found in the Bible is in Genesis 6:5:

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

That was 1,740 years, approximately, before Jeremiah wrote what we have in verse 9; since then, more than 2,500 years have passed. Has the human heart improved, think you, or grown worse with the lapse of twenty-five centuries since Jeremiah wrote?

Verse 11: The translators slightly missed the sense here, The correct reading is, "As the partridge sitteth on eggs it hath not laid, so is he that getteth riches and not by right; he shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.'

Verses 19-27: The Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, was the peculiar possession of Israel; the nations around them did not observe the day, and so it was a continual temptation to God's earthly people to give it up. But it was to them a command (Exodus 20:8-11), and a sign of relationship under covenant between God and themselves (Exodus 31:10-17) enjoined again and again in Exodus and Leviticus, and once more in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 (see Ezekiel 20:12-24). It is evident that the Sabbath meant little to God-rejecting Judah; the message Jeremiah was given to deliver would show by its acceptance or rejection (it was rejected) whether they would turn back in heart or not. Only a God of infinite mercy and unwearied patience would have offered them another opportunity for repentance.

Jeremiah 18

Jeremiah now got another object-lesson from God Who directed him to go down to the potter's house, promising there to speak to His servant.

The potter was busy at his trade, and the vessel he made of clay was marred in his hand; so he made it over into another vessel as seemed good to him (verse 1-4).

It was then that the word of Jehovah came to the prophet, saying,

"O house of Israel, can not I do with you as with this potter? saith Jehovah. Behold as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in Mine hand, O house of Israel" (verses 5-6). The reborn Israel of the last days will, ere long, say, "But now, O Jehovah, Thou art our Father; we are the clay and Thou our potter, and we all are the work of Thy hand" (Isaiah 64:8). This was, however, far from the language of erring, willful Judah in the days of Jeremiah.

God is sovereign, as He here pointed out (verses 7-10), and we may turn to Romans 9:21 where it is written, concerning His limitless power, "Hath not the potter authority over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?" Why are men not afraid, and hurrying to seek His mercy while yet there is hope?

About two hundred years before the time in which Jeremiah's prophecies were given, Nineveh, the great city of its day, the capital of the powerful kingdom of Assyria, was appointed for destruction, and God sent Jonah to tell the Ninevites of it. They repented, and He did not, until two centuries had passed, carry out the judgment He had spoken of through Jonah. Indeed, Nahum's prophecy, pronouncing the final doom of Nineveh, was spoken about one hundred years before God caused it to be executed. The people of Judah must have known this, unless the service of Satan had completely blinded them.

Assyria, too, once feared by the king: of Judah, the conqueror of the ten tribes of Israel, came to its end at this time ii Judah did not recognize that God was concerned with that and with Babylon. Assyria's greater successor in the rule of the East, they would soon have it told them (Jeremiah 25).

Judah must be warned again (How many warnings they had already been given!), Jeremiah telling them that Jehovah was preparing evil against them, and bidding them turn everyone from his evil way and amend their ways and doings (verse 11).

The answer of the hardened people of the land to this gracious appeal is in substance in verse 12. There is no hope; they care naught for God now, and will walk after their own devices; each one will do according to the stubbornness of his evil heart. For this cause judgment is again pronounced upon Judah (verses 13-17), We venture to suggest a clearer translation of verse 14; "Shall the snow of Lebanon cease from the rock of the field? Shall the. cool flowing waters coming from afar he dried up (or abandoned)?"

Now the long pent up enmity toward Jeremiah because of his prophecies of evil to come, takes definite form (verse 18). Wholly misled, they are trusting their Satan-controlled priests, wise men and false prophets; and scorning the Word of God truly given them by Jeremiah they propose to "devise devices" against him: The beginning is to smite him with the tongue, but their thoughts take in his murder, if needed to silence the faithful witness.

Jeremiah now raises a prayer to Jehovah (verses 19-23). His language, his desire for vengeance upon his enemies, are not what befit Christians, as we have before observed, but they according to the mind of God, suited to the coming dispensation in which He will judge His enemies while delivering from them those who will be suffering at their hands,

Jeremiah 19

In the southern and southwestern sides of Jerusalem is a valley which is mentioned several times in the Old Testament—the valley of the son of Hinnom. About 130 years before Jeremiah's visit to it, of which this chapter tells, a young man named. Ahaz, of the royal line of David, and the son of a God-fearing king, was ruling over the people of Judah. Among many wicked things which this young man did during the sixteen years of his reign—more wicked than any before him he burned incense (or offered burnt offerings) in this valley, and burned his sons in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations which were in the land of Canaan before Israel drove them out (2 Chronicles 28). If he was the first to do this, he was not the last, nor can we assume that his example was not followed by his people.

The grandson of Ahaz, Manasseh, outdid, in evil, his grandfather and the Amorites who possessed the land before Israel (2 Kings 21:11); he, too, caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom (2 Chronicles 83:6).

Manasseh's grandson, Josiah, did much to destroy the results of his grandfather's wickedness; it is recorded of him that he defiled Topheth which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no man might cause his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech (2 Kings 28:10). Nevertheless, though Josiah was unequaled in regard for God and His Word by any king before him, the anger of God against Judah was not turned away. He had declared during Manasseh’s reign, that He would empty Jerusalem and turn over Judah and Benjamin to their enemies (2 Kings 21:10-15), and, while Scripture is silent about it, it is evident that Josiah's outstanding piety was not shared by his people; it was certainly not imitated by his sons who reigned after hint until the end of the kingdom of Judah.

To the valley of such evil record, Jeremiah. led the elders of the people and the elders of the priests, bearing with him a potter's earthen bottle or flagon (the Hebrew word is translated "cruse" in 1 Kings 11:3), and there he laid before them a fresh message from God concerning the fearful guilt of the nation, and the unexampled judgment about to fall upon them. The valley should be renamed the valley of slaughter, and the city should become an astonishment and a hissing to everyone that passed by because of what was befallen it.

A siege was coming in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem would be reduced, because of the scarcity of food, to eating the flesh of their sons and daughters and friends. This was the siege which resulted in Nebuchadnezzar’s carrying off to Babylon as his prisoners what were left of the Jews, and in his causing the city to be desolated.

Jeremiah's breaking' the flagon in the sight of his hearers was an indication of what God would do with Judah and Jerusalem, as a potter's vessel is broken, that cannot be made whole again. Topheth, in the valley, where idolatrous fires had burned, was to be a burying ground until there was no place to bury there. Jerusalem itself, the city where God had put His name and tokens of His presence, would be as Topheth.

It would he refreshing- to find that even one of those who that day listened to the prophet's words, was touched in his conscience and humbled before God, sought pardon for his sins. It would seem however, that there was no such happy result, rather that all returned to the city more than ever determined to continue as they had been.

Jeremiah took his place in the court of the temple on his return from the valley, and testified in the name of his Master, "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God Of Israel," (would none heed a word from Him to Whom they owed everything they had?), "Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her cities, all the evil that have spoken against it, for they have hardened their necks not to hear My words!" What return did this bring? Chapter 20 tells.

Jeremiah 20

One in authority heard Jeremiah's prophecy of evil to come (verse 1). Like others of whom we read, whose position Would lead us to expect piety, a good conscience, the fear of God (see, for example, Matthew 26:69 and following), Pashur, the son of lmmer, the priest and chief officer in the house of Jehovah, was a tool of Satan and a wicked man,

For Jeremiah's faithfulness to God he was rewarded (by religious man) with smiting, and put in the stocks,—a wooden frame in which the feet, hands and neck of a culprit were held, not only tightly but also painfully. There he stayed until the next day, when Pashur brought him out; fearlessly the prophet then spoke to his captor: "Jehovah hath not called thy name Pashur" (which is thought to mean "free"), "but Magormissabib" (meaning "terror on every side");—gave him a message from God, telling him that in the fearful days to come he was to become a terror to himself and to all his friends; they should fall by the sword of their enemies and he would see it. God would give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, who Would carry them captive into Babylon, and smite them with the sword. All the wealth of Jerusalem, its gains, its precious things, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah, were going to Babylon as the spoil of their enemies. Pashur and his household were going into captivity, to Babylon, there to die and be buried with the friends to whom he had prophesied falsehood.

This was, perhaps, the first disclosure by God through Jeremiah that Babylon was the power that was to overcome Judah and empty the city both of wealth and inhabitants, transporting all to the distant city on the lower Euphrates. Jeremiah's prophecies are not distinguished in many case by marks of time, but it seems likely, hat this experience with the temple officer was not early in his course, but occurred not long before the final siege of the city, The next chapter, at least, has to do with that time.

We hear no more of this Pashur; another person of the same name appears in chapters 21 and 38, but not as a companion or friend of Jeremiah. As for the prophet, he was deeply affected by what befell him, and verses 7-18 tell the thoughts that occupied him at this time.

"Deceived" (verse 7) is not quite the meaning of the Hebrew word in the original, but rather "enticed." Jehovah had brought His servant into the path of trouble where he found himself; it was not Jeremiah's choice, but plainly God's doing. He does not blame God for his sufferings (which, in point of fact, were to become much more intense) , but the circumstances made him lay his burden before his Master above.

He had intended to be silent, because his proclaiming violence and spoil only brought him reproach and derision, but he could not cease from testifying. He beard What many were saying; saw that those with whom he was familiar were watching his course, hoping to take revenge upon him. "But," said he, "Jehovah is with me as a mighty, terrible One therefore my persecutors shall stumble and shall not prevail . . . “ Thus was the prophet sustained in trial, as many another of God': servants has been in circumstances of the same character, finding strength and rest in waiting upon Him.

Jeremiah looks to God, "Who tries the righteous, Who sees the reins (the motives) and the heart," to execute vengeance upon his persecutors; this desire foreign to the Christian who has Christ as his example, will be according to the mind of God. When the present day of grace is over, as before remarked. in anticipation of that day of deliverance for the righteous, Jeremiah's thoughts turn to a song of praise to Jehovah.

Nevertheless, the present grief greatly burdens the much tried prophet's soul, He speaks like Job amid the calamities that befell that saint; we cannot wonder at his anguish; his godly fear, his love for his people and desire to turn them from the evil upon which they were fully bent, and his faithfulness. to God in delivering His word to them, had brought upon him all this suffering. Further, unlike the Christian, he had not the full knowledge of God's grace, nor was he indwelt by the Holy Spirit Who leads the Christian in trial to such feelings as are expressed in Romans 8:35-39 and 2 Corinthians 4.

Jeremiah 21

We are here in the closing scenes of Judah's history as a kingdom, about the year 590 B. C. It may help in our understanding of the situation of Jerusalem and the king and his advisers, to review briefly the events of the last twenty years, as told to us in the Scriptures. Josiah, exceptionally godly ruler of Judah in his early years, lost his life through going out against Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt, who led an army to the river Euphrates (2 Kings 23:9), He had three wicked sons who in turn ascended the throne of Judah, until in the judgment of God, that throne was finally removed, and the people and their king were carried away to Babylon.

Jehoabaz, not the eldest son, was made king by the people when his father died; he reigned only 3 months, yet long enough for his character to be seen. "He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that his fathers had done." The Egyptian king Necho made him a prisoner, took him to Egypt and put his brother Eliakim, whom he renamed Jehoiakim, in his place as king of Judah,

In the third year of Jehoiakim's rule, Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian came to Jerusalem and after a siege of the city, carried off part of the vessels of the temple and a number of people as his prisoners; among these were Daniel and his three companions (see Daniel 1). Then began a period of 70 years of captivity for Judah, spoken of in Jeremiah 25:11-12 and Daniel 9:2.

Jehoiakim was allowed to remain king of Judah; after three years he rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, and thereafter until his death, Judah was ravaged by the Chaldean, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites. He reigned 11 years; at his death his son Jehoiachin became king, but after three months was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar and carried off to Babylon with many other captives, including Ezekiel the prophet. At this time all the treasures of the temple, and all but the "poorest sort" of the people were removed to Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar made Mattaniah, a third son of Josiah, (apparently the youngest) king of Judah, changing his name to Zedekiah. 2 Chronicles 36:12-13 gives an evil report of this last king of Judah who "humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet .... and rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God."

Consequent upon his flagrantly wicked course, and breaking the promise he had made in God's name (see Ezekiel 17:12-21), in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, Nebuchadnezzar's hosts began a siege of Jerusalem which lasted for a year and a half, until further resistance was impossible. 2 Kings 25 tells of the closing scenes of the siege and the punishment the Babylonians inflicted upon king, people, and city. Jeremiah 21 evidently relates to the first appearance of Nebuchadnezzar's army.

It was only when fear possessed him, that Zedekiah thought of God. Proverbs 29:1 is a word suited to his case, and he was to experience it though he hoped to find relief from the consequences of his sins.

Psalm 50:15 was not written for the unrepentant, as verse 16 shows, though Zedekiah must have thought of the time when his ancestor Hezekiah, 107 years before, had God for his helper against the Assyrians, and hoped that the same powerful Arm might be stretched out for his help.

Verses 8 and 9 presenting the way of escape from richly deserved punishment for the sins of the people, illustrate the present gracious offer of the longsuffering God (the gospel of His grace) whereby the way of life eternal is offered to all that come to Him through His Son Jesus Christ Our Lord.

"Whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:15.

Jeremiah 22

The latter part of chapter 21, and chapters 22 and 23 are occupied with the true state of king Zedekiah, his counselors and servants, the people and prophets. In view of this inward state, God could not grant the king's petition (chapter 21:2).

A godly walk is sure to bring blessing, for as a man sows, so shall he also reap, —a principle with God that we often see in action. How could Zedekiah and his people expect God's delivering power when verse 3 etc. plainly indicate that the opposite of what is there said was characteristic of them? Their course, persisted in, would bring, by the infallible word of God, judgment to the full.

Just so is it in this our day, dear reader, for there is a striking parallel in the course of Judah's favored people (see 2 Chronicles 86:11-10) and that of the professors. of Christianity in our times.

Gilead and the summit of Lebanon (verse 6) remind us that God's Word uses natural objects to illustrate His meaning; these are mountainous regions, one on the east, the other on the west of the Jordan. The loftiness, the pride and self-sufficiency of the house of the king of Judah would not avail in the day when the judgment of God fell upon the land; it was indeed imminent; the destroyer was encamped outside Jerusalem's wall.

Verse 10. More deeply affecting than the death of one's friends and relatives was the prospect that lay before the people who yet lived. Here the Holy Spirit has brought forward testimony concerning each of Josiah’s wicked sons and one grandson, as it were gathered together to hear the judgment of God. Shallum (i.e. Jehoahaz) the first to reign, carried away to Egypt a prisoner of Pharaoh Necho, might long to return, to see again the land clear to every Israelite, but he would nevermore tread its soil; where he was gone in chains he should die. In this was the token for the present king and in general his people; soon to be transported as Nebuchadnezzar's captives to Babylon—much further off than Egypt—they, too, would not see the land again. Actually. the king was blinded, and his sons were put to death by Nebuchadnezzar.

That some individuals lived through the captivity and returned to Jerusalem, we know from Ezra 3:12, but bearing in mind that seventy years elapsed from the first carrying away; and 63 years for most of the people, or 52 years for the few left with Zedekiah until Jerusalem was destroyed, were spent in and near Babylon, it is evident that few of those that came back in B. C. 530 had previously seen the land of Israel.

Jehoiakim, the second of Josiah's sons to reign, and we may suppose the eldest, is next dealt with (verses 13-19). Jeremiah alone gives us to know much of this king's schemes and ways: he tells in chapter 26 of Jehoiakim's killing Urijah, a prophet, and in the verses before us we see his character expressed. How different Josiah had been (verses 15-16). Verse 19 is our only information regarding Jehoiakim's death; we do not know what was the cause of it, but he evidently died in dishonor. Was this not a picture drawn for Zedekiah's consideration, of what lay before him?

Lastly in the chapter, Coniah (Jehoiachin) is the subject of the solemn word of God (verses 20-30). He was Jehoiakim's son, Josiah's grandson, and after a reign of three months was taken to Babylon, there to be imprisoned for 37 years (2 Kings 25:27-80). What is said of him was of course literally fulfilled; he and his mother (verse 26) were taken captive to Babylon (2 Kings 21:15). In these verses we see a warning to Zedekiah that there would not be another king; he was the last of David's sons to reign until David's Lord reigns in the Millennium.

Jeremiah 23

The "pastors (shepherds) that destroy and scatter the sheep of Jehovah's pasture" (verses 1-2) were the kings of Judah; David (see, for example, 1 Chronicles 21:17) was a true shepherd of God's flock, though he sinned deeply (and suffered at God's hand all his later days for it). Hezekiah and Josiah, too, were shepherds who cared for the sheep, but the greater number of the kings of Judah were untrue to their responsibility; among these, and, sad to say, among the worst of them, were the sons of Hezekiah and Josiah. God will deal with every one according to the responsibility each has carried.

But grace will work in the scenes of judgment; He will gather the remnant of His flock out of all countries whither He has driven them, and will bring them again to their pastures, and they shall be fruitful and shall multiply (verse 3). Thus does our God look beyond all of the record of man's failure, self-will, ingratitude, and sin of deepest dye, to the day when He will bring back to Himself His wayward earthly people. That day is not far distant now, surely; we believe it is near.

Then there will be shepherds of Israel who will care for them true-heartedly (verse 4); but this introduces the Shepherd, the Branch (see Isaiah 11). Prophecy is never complete without the key to it all, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Observe that the promised one is plainly shown, as in Isaiah repeatedly, to be Jehovah in His own Person. Such, in fact, is the meaning of His name as Man, Jesus meaning "Jehovah the Saviour."

Verses 7-8; Ever since the Exodus, Israel has recalled the Passover, memory of their deliverance out of Egypt; in the coming day they will observe the Passover, but a new, deep sense of God's love will be upon them then because of His!:ringing them back after their many sins caused Him to disown them as His people.

From verse 9, the prophets of Judah, unfaithful men who prophesied falsely in Jehovah's name, are denounced unsparingly. We see in verse 9, as earlier, that Jeremiah entered deeply, on God's account, into the sorrow of his people's sins; would that there were more such servants of the Lord in our days! we again say.

And how dreadful was the state of God's earthly people, still professing His name! Immorality was everywhere, swearing was common; both prophet and priest were ungodly; even in the house of God their wickedness went on. Turning to Ezekiel 8 we find, in a vision given to that prophet while among the captives in Babylonia, what was actually going on in the temple at Jerusalem at this very time; no wonder the judgment of God was about to burst on the guilty city.

The prophets of Samaria (verse 13) were gone,—swept away in the captivity of the ten tribes of the kingdom of Israel those prophesied by the false god Baal, but the prophets of Judah professed to speak for the true God, yet knew Him not. These committed adultery, walked in falsehood, strengthened the hands of evildoers so that none returned from his wickedness. All were become, before a holy, sin-hating God, as Sodom and as Gomorrah, the cities of the plain destroyed in. Abraham's day (Genesis 18:20-19:20). \A/hat should the end be of such, who were more degraded than the sinners of the nations who knew nothing of the Word of God?

Satan has been able also in our times, to provide prophets of lies; as in the days of Jeremiah, their word is to everyone that walks in the stubbornness of his heart "No evil shall come upon you" (verse 17). But they have not stood in the council of the Lord, and perceived and heard His word (verse 18), should have caused His words to be and should have turned their hearers from their evil way, and from the wickedness of their doings (verse 22).

The false prophets of Judah had perverted the words of the living God (verse 36) while they professed to know His mind so as to tell, if asked, what was the burden of Jehovah (i.e., the message He had for them).

They would then be cast off, far from His face, far from the city of Jerusalem, bearing everlasting reproach, everlasting shame. It is eternal judgment that is here spoken of—an awful prospect, to spend eternity with their dupes.

Jeremiah 24

In chapter 24 we are taken back a few years from the time last brought before us (in chapter 21), to the beginning of Zedekiah's eleven year reign,—just after the "great captivity", as it is called, had removed from Israel’s land to far off Babylon all but the “poorest sort” of the people (2 Kings 24:14). The occasion spoken of at the opening of chapter 25 was seven years before that, and shortly before Nebuchadnezzar's army first appeared before Jerusalem,—so that all the people were there to hear Jeremiah's words.

The short chapter 24 brings into view two things that are constantly shown in the Word of God,—the utter ruin of man, and the sovereignty of God. We know from the unvarying testimony of the prophets, and the history of Israel and Judah given in the books of Kings and Chronicles, that the people as a whole were in heart far indeed from God.

Yet, though elsewhere exposing their guilt, here God speaks of what in His grace He will yet accomplish (verses 6-7). If this were not in His purpose, none would be saved, all would perish., the lake of fire their place eternally. Just so is it with the Gentiles also; except for the gospel of the grace of God reaching many a heart and conscience, the whole world would be, without exception, awaiting only eternal judgment at the hand of God.

In the two baskets of figs then we see two classes of people: the objects of the grace of God, on the one hand.; and the unrepentant, on the other. In the gospel of John 5:28-29, these two classes into which. mankind is divided, are seen in resurrection; not death, nor the passage of thousands of years since the first person died (Genesis 4:8) alter the case for any of the children of Adam; as in life, so in death, and so also in eternity, is what God's Word clearly sets forth.

The Scriptures abound with evidence as to these two classes; all have sinned, but justification is free to those who accept it, as in Romans 5:21-26; the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but to those that are saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). By nature all of us were in the one class—-sinners awaiting God's judgment; if now we are in the other class—-enjoying the favor of God, having peace with Him and rejoicing in hope of His glory, it is because we have believed in His Son, the Lord Jesus, Christ (Acts 1.6:27-32).

It will be noted that there is not a word in Jeremiah 24 regarding the characters of the people who were divided, in God's estimation, into two groups; He chose to bless, and He will bless, where His grace finds lodgment in human hearts. It is not a question of human goodness, for His holy eyes see none.

A solemn consideration is that Zedekiah and his princes, and the remnant of Jerusalem that remained, were not awakened about their sins because of the judgments which had overtaken and were shortly to overwhelm them. They were, like many today, confirmed in their own ways, and would not hearken to the words of God's servants.

Jeremiah 25

In the early part of chapter 25 we learn when it was that Jeremiah had begun speaking to the people for God. It was in king Josiah's thirteenth year,—about 628 B. C., 18 years before Josiah died in battle. Much had occurred during those 23 years, (verse 3). The Babylonian empire had been revived and Egypt's day of power was now about over; the last God-fearing king of Judah had died; Nineveh, the great city of its time, was destroyed and Assyria as a kingdom had come to its end with it; Nebuchadnezzar had just been made co-ruler with his father of Babylonia, and was about to besiege Jerusalem and carry away to Babylon both the vessels of the temple and some of the people.

All the warnings given through Jeremiah and other servants of the living and true God had fallen on deaf ears. Yet when Nebuchadnezzar should presently appear, no one could say he had not been warned. Now we come to the definite length of that captivity that was shortly to be Judah's: 70 years (verse 11). At the further end of this period we find Daniel 9 then 85 or 90 years of age (for he was one of the youths first carried away by Nebuchadnezzar), praying in view of the early return of some of the Jews to Jerusalem. Daniel then learned that 70 weeks of years (verse 24) were to be fulfilled before Israel’s troubles should cease, nor did that period—suspended when Israel's Messiah was crucified while yet one week remained unfulfilled—begin until Nehemiah was authorized to rebuild Jerusalem's wall. (Nehemiah 2).

We have seen in many of the chapters of this book that have been before us, the fearful guilt of Judah, and, though they were loved by God, we found there the promise of unsparing judgment upon that highly favored people. But if judgment falls upon those who profess God's name, shall a guilty world escape? It cannot be! The apostle Peter in 1 Peter 4:17 speaks of judgment beginning at the house of God, and adds, "If it first begins at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?''

We get then in this chapter the assurance of divine intervention, in punishing the king of Babylon and his people, Israel's neighbors, too; and finally, the whole world is to be judged. Part of the promised dealings, are past, but the worldwide judgments are yet in the future.

Babylon's high glory came to an end when the Medes and Persians seized the city in B. C. 538 (Daniel 5:30-31), and the whole district surrounding the site of the once great city—-land of Chaldea – is now uninhabited and desolate, much of it having become marshy ground. The judgment of the lands bordering Israel occurred before that of Babylon. Chapters 46 to 49 tell prophetically of their downfall which accompanied that of Jerusalem and Judah, for all those who opposed him were crushed by Nebuchadnezzar.

The list of countries in verses 19 to 25 is not limited to those close to the land of Israel; it widens until in verse 26 we reach "all the kings of the north, far and near, one with another, and all the kingdoms of the world which are upon the face of the earth."

"The king of Sheshach" (verse 26) refers to Babylon; this name is found again in chapter Si. The meaning of the name is not known, but some have thought that it was used to avoid giving offence to the Babylonians, and for this reason was made by taking the second and twelfth letters, reckoning backward from the end of the Hebrew alphabet, in place of the second and twelfth letters counted in the usual way from the beginning, which are used for the name Babel or Babylon. Psalm 110, the reader is reminded, has all the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet in their order, 8 verses for each letter.

Fearful will that day be when a long-suffering God unsheathes, His sword; Isaiah 34 and Revelation 19 present two vivid pictures of the scenes yet to be enacted on this earth, when judgment, long withheld, takes place among the living; with these, and all other prophecies in the Scriptures concerning the day of judgment to come upon the world, Jeremiah 25 of course agrees.

Neither armies nor navies nor aircraft will be of service in that day; the most powerful nation will be as the weakest; science and invention will profit nothing in the hour when God's controversy with the nations shall be revealed. And, note (verse 31) He will enter into judgment with "all flesh"; many a proud religionist will have a terrible awakening when he finds that all his "good works" (apart from salvation) are worthless, (See Matthew 7:21-23).

Fearful is the picture presented to our minds by verse 33, yet God must be true to Himself. He cannot leave sin unpunished; whosoever has not Christ for his Saviour will bear the punishment of his guilt, and that, according to the Scriptures, eternally.

Judgment will fall upon all the wicked, but most heavily upon those who have led others, by word or example, to turn away from God. Thus verses 34-38 are directed against the shepherds of Israel, the noble ones of the flock. The language however, is such that we may well consider it applicable to all human leaders who are without the fear of God. Those who have made the most of their. positions of leadership, enriching themselves, it may be, at the expense of the "flock", shall at last give account to Him who "without respect of persons" judges His creatures. Nine times in the Word of God, this character of His dealings with men is declared about God. (Deuteronomy 10:17; 2 Chronicles 19:7; Job 31:19; Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3: 2:5; 1 Peter 1:17).

Jeremiah 26

The reader has no doubt noticed that Jeremiah's prophecies are not given in the order in which they were spoken; there is a moral order in the way they are presented. For example, the subject of chapter 25 was the coming judgment in which not only Judah, but the neighboring lands, Babylon and the whole world would be involved.

Chapter 26 continues the subject of judgment, and the prophecy uttered three years before, was set in its present and proper place by the divine Author when Jeremiah's prophecies were committed to writing. The same disregard of the time of writing is seen in the Book of Psalms; one instance of this must suffice: Psalm 51 refers to a time long after that of Psalm 54.

Jeremiah found what all of God's servants who serve Him faithfully have found, namely, that both the message he brought and himself the messenger, were rejected by the many. He was to say all that God gave him to tell, diminishing not a word, whether the message was accepted or refused.

Verse 3 once more shows, as the Word of God constantly reveals, that God does not willingly punish mankind; righteousness and holiness are the foundations of His throne, and sin is intolerable to Him, yet instead of at once sweeping the universe clean so that not a sinner should remain unjudged, He speaks in accents of mercy and tender compassion.

However judgment must fall upon the unrepentant (verse 6). Shiloh was a solemn reminder of this; it was there that the ark and the tabernacle of, the wilder. ness were first placed, after the children of Israel got into possession of Canaan, but the day came when Shiloh was connected with God's dishonor (4 Samuel 2 to 4), and the ark (token of Jehovah's presence amid His people) was removed, never to return there. (See Jeremiah 7:12).

The people and their leaders were not permitted to put Jeremiah to death, but verse 8 shows that his murder was in their hearts. Our blessed Lord experienced this hatred of His creatures as none other ever did; but many servants of His in olden times have laid down their lives for His sake. No one is yet indifferent to the Word of God; it enters the heart by the avenue of the conscience, and produces within either love to Him or hatred against Him.

People like to boast of the enlightened age in which we live, and the great advance in every way which the last decades have seen, but we are sure that what God has said about the human heart, which the reader will find by looking back at chapter 17:9, is still true.

In the face of those wicked men gathered together against him at the temple designed for God's glory, Jeremiah was enabled to testify again boldly and faithfully for his Master (verses 12-15). It was not his word, his testimony, but God's, and the message of coming judgment was mingled with mercy (let them despise it at their peril!).

The courageous and faithful words of the prophet were not without effect on the princes and the people (not upon the priests and the prophets, we note); the elders were reminded of Micah, and his prophecy (chapter 3:12), which brought hint no harsh treatment from the godly Hezekiah. They also thought of Urijah, another faithful man of whom we only know from the reference here given; he had, evidently not long before this time, given his life for his faithfulness to God. Jeremiah's life might have been taken too but God did no permit it, and moved Ahikam the son of Shaphan to take his part.

Jeremiah 27

The translators or copyists seem to have erred in writing "Jehoiakim" in verse 1, for these two chapters relate to the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, the last son of Josiah to sit on the throne of Judah. The mistake is a trifling one, and we thank God that those who translated or made copies of the original text were preserved from serious error in performing the work. By a new figure, a new illustration (bonds and yokes, verse 2), God set before the kings of five neighboring lands and before Zedekiah their need to humble themselves before Nebuchadnezzar.

It seems clear from verse 3 that there was at the beginning of Zedekiah's eleven year reign, a conspiracy among these six kings to rebel against the rule of Babylon, but they reckoned without God, who made the earth, man and beast, by His great power and outstretched arm, and gives them to whom it seems right in His eyes.

Man has, ever since the fall of our first parents in the garden of Eden, endeavored to forget God. The Scriptures abound with testimony regarding this.

"Their inward thought is that their houses are forever, their dwelling places from generation to generation; they call the lands after their own names (or, their names are proclaimed in the lands). Nevertheless, man being in honor abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish," Psalm 49:11-12.

Israel was God’s chosen people, and Jerusalem the city He had chosen to set His, name there. the promises toy Abraham will yet be carried out to the full, and the glory of Solomon's royal splendor will he far exceeded in the Millennial reign of Christ. But, as we have seen, the kings of Israel and of Judah sinned deeply, led the people into idolatry and other evils, until God set aside the nation He had chosen.

It was then that He gave earthly dominion to the Gentiles, represented first in Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. Babylon has perished; Persia's power has long since faded; the glory of ancient Greece and Rome centuries ago turned to dust, but the sun of the Gentile day, though far past the zenith, has not yet set; already, however, there are signs that the time of Israel's recovery according to the sure word of God, is not far off.

In verse 9 we have a list of five forms of deception employed by Satan twenty-five and more centuries ago,. With slight change, they are still being used in the world. There are yet "prophets" who profess to know the mind of God, but speak for the adversary, the Devil, with fair speeches deceiving the unstable. There are still "diviners'', "dreamers", "soothsayers" and "sorcerers'', plying their trade in every city, ready to tell you, as they say, what the future holds for you. Such prophesy falsehood, and the Christian does well to avoid them wholly. God's Word is the only sure guide (Psalm 119:105).

Jeremiah 28

Hananiah the son of Azzur, one of the false prophets with whom Jeremiah had to contend, made a lying statement about the prospect before Judah (chapter 28). He dared to say that he spoke for Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, announcing that "within two full years" all that Nebuchadnezzar took away Would be returned, his yoke being broken.

The "modernist" of our day has learned his trade in the same school, we fear. He, too, would set aside the plain statements of God's holy Word about man's condition and judgment to come, with the still offered gospel of His grace. We recall that early day in the world's history when Satan said to Eve, giving the lie to what God had said, "Ye shall not surely die, etc." (Genesis 3:6).

No doubt it looked very fine when Hananiah took and broke the yoke which Jeremiah wore in token of what God had said concerning the king of Babylon, but be shortly learned that an unbreakable yoke of iron would be laid on the neck of all those nations, and himself was marked for death before that year was over. God is not mocked.

Jeremiah 29

God does not forget His own, even when they are suffering because of their waywardness and sin; thus we find a comforting message from Himself going to the captives in Babylon who had been carried away in the Great Captivity. They might have thought bitterly of Nebuchadnezzar as the cause of their deep distress, but they are reminded that it was God, their God, “Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel,” who had moved the king of Babylon to do what he did (verse 4).

They were to settle down in the place where they were, though far from their homes and the city of Jerusalem; and were to seek the peace of Babylon, and pray for it (verses 5-7). Their natural feeling would be far otherwise, even to be planning revenge for what had befallen them; but submission was called for. Babylon was a place preeminent for idol worship, and the children of Judah who feared God must have been continually grieved at what they saw and heard there. Nevertheless God had committed government in the earth to the Gentiles, even to Nebuchadnezzar, because His earthly people had utterly failed in the responsibility committed to them. And having mingled the worship of idols with the professed worship of the true God, they must now for a season leave their land to dwell among a people thoroughly steeped in idolatry.

False prophets and dreamers were among the captives of Judah, and God’s message to His people in a strange land warned them against heeding what they taught. When the seventy years (chapter 25:12) were over, He would visit them and perform His good word toward them, in bringing them back to Jerusalem (verses 8-10).

Such is the human heart that hard thoughts against God arise within in circumstances of trial, when the burden seems heavy and the way dark and dreary.

But hear His gracious accents, speaking in tender love:

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jehovah—thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (literally, a latter end and hope) (verse 12).

The end of these painful circumstances (for some truly had faith in Him) would be blessing (verses 12-15). This is always the purpose of the trials God allows to burden His people.

Although there was a measure of recovery in the state of Judah at the time when, ending the seventy years’ captivity, Cyrus the Persian conqueror of Babylon proclaimed liberty to the Jews to return to Jerusalem, that measure was small (see Ezra and Nehemiah), and for its literal fulfillment, the word of verses 12-14 awaits the day long foretold that is yet to come.

In verses 15-19 the solemn judgment of God upon the people left in Jerusalem, which was given in chapter 24, is repeated in view of the relation evidently existing between the false prophets and false leaders who had gone to Babylon, and the wicked men remaining in Jerusalem.

Two of these prophets of lies and abandoned life are singled out in verses 20 to 23; they would not escape from God’s hand because in faraway Babylon: for them death in a fearful form was coming. We are told nothing more than these verses disclose about these men who died for their iniquity in a foreign land. It is enough for us that the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. (Proverbs 15:3).

Shemaiah the Nehelamite, another of the captives at Babylon, who showed by his letters whom he served, even Satan, tried to get Jeremiah imprisoned for his faithfulness to God. It does not appear that Jeremiah tried to defend himself against this attack; if he did, it was needless, for God takes care of those who seek wholeheartedly to serve Him; takes notice of all that seek to illtreat them and will in due time reward their enemies according to their deserts, as the last verse of the chapter shows (See 2 Timothy 4:14, which should be read, “The Lord will reward him according to his works.”)

Jeremiah 30

Because Israel and Judah are to be brought back to the land of their forefathers, not being cast away finally and forever (Romans 9:25-28; 11:1-2), Jeremiah was directed to commit to writing what God had said to him (verse 2). It is this unalterable purpose of God to bless, however unworthy the objects of His grace may be, that fills the believing heart with adoration to Him who gave His Son for all who trust in Him.

What kind of “book” did Jeremiah have, in which to write? The Hebrew word translated “book” actually means “a writing”, but in chapter 36 we come to “a roll of a book” written with ink, and this book, in the end, was cut with a knife and cast into the fire by king Jehoiakim. In Psalm 40:7, the same Hebrew words have been translated “volume of the book”: this passage is quoted in Hebrews 10:7.

Although writing on stone and on clay tablets and cylinders was a common practice in Babylonia and adjacent lands, prepared skins of animals and papyrus were also in large use in the East, and we have little reason to doubt that it was on this form of writing material, made into a roll, that Jeremiah’s prophecies were written. It was in such “books” or scrolls that the Bible was handed down from generation to generation of the children of Israel, books as we now know them having come into general use after the invention of the printing press. It may be of interest to refer to Daniel 9:2; Deut. 31:24-26; 2 Kings 22; Nehemiah 8.

Verses 4 to 7 are concerned with a time yet to be; the children of Israel have known many sorrows since they turned away from God, and more particularly since Judah delivered up their Messiah to be crucified, but the fearful days of Matthew 24 and Mark 13 have yet to be experienced by them.

God is love, we know, but it is equally true that God is light. Both these truths are found in 1 John, and we would not forget that the former is not first in that Epistle; chapter 4 includes it, but “God is light” is in the first chapter. Both are evidenced in verse 11 of our chapter; the testimony of His love is “I am with thee to save thee”; but “I will correct thee with judgment” betokens the character of light in which God dwells. Men delude themselves with the thought that He will not deal with sins and sinners, since “all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Pet. 3:4), See Eccles, 8:11; Rom. 2:3-10, and the last two verses of our chapter.

After the promised severe judgments upon the Jews, God will bless them, and before the blessing is really known, He will have broken the yoke of the oppressor (verse 8). This enemy of the last days is the to-be-revived Roman empire, composed of the nations who occupy the territory held by the Caesars when Christ was upon earth. The ancient Babylon will be duplicated in its character (in God’s sight), but its duration will be short, and its end complete destruction.

Verse 9: David the king is here used to foreshadow Christ—”great David’s greater Son.” See 1 Chron. 17; Isa. 9:7; Psa. 110. Though the ten tribes of Israel were gone into captivity (and have since disappeared from the knowledge of men), and only Judah and. Benjamin remained in the land God had given them, this chapter and the next look onward to a reunited and restored Israel and Judah. The lost ten tribes will reappear, as Ezekiel 37 testifies.

Mark the utterly undone condition of Israel, as expressed in verses 12-15, and the purpose of God in verses 17-22; this is nothing less than sovereign grace—of the same character as the Christian has experienced—love flowing out to the unworthy. And it is the more remarkable because of the assurance of unsparing judgment (verses 16, 23-24) that flanks the promise of grace.

Jeremiah 31

In our study of the book of Isaiah we learned much about the blessing that will be the portion of the children of Israel when reestablished by God’s power in the land of Palestine. What we find in that way in Jeremiah’s prophecies has a special interest to the believer because of the time the message was given, namely, when the times of the Gentiles (Luke 21:21; Rom. 11:25) were beginning: and God’s earthly people were just about to be (or were already being) transferred to Babylon as the captives of the first great Gentile power.

It was given to Jeremiah, as perhaps to no other prophet of the Old Testament, to tell of the love of God for Israel; this is the more striking because of the then state of the people—so bad that they were being cast out of the land that was their inheritance. It is the knowledge of the love of God, without cause and without measure (declared in the Old Testament and marvelously proved in the New), that draws forth the believer’s adoration and praise. Had it not been for His love, all without a single exception, would be in nature’s darkness and under condemnation, but “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. Precious truth!

Verse 1: “At the same time” is really “At that time,” referring to chapter 30; “all the families of Israel” takes in the lost ten tribes who are yet to be brought back and united with Judah. Verse 2 is also future, for the true reading is “when I go to give him rest”; it speaks, we believe, of the ten tribes and the way God will deal with them before bringing them into the land of their forefathers. (See Ezek. 20:35-88.)

Verse 3: The marginal reading “from afar” should be taken instead of “of old”. “The Lord (Jehovah) hath appeared from afar unto me”; the people were in heart far indeed from Him. In accents of infinite tenderness, nevertheless, He addresses them— “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. I will build thee again, etc.” Why should love be thus felt and expressed by God for a people so wayward? we may ask; yet we need only consider that the Gentile world is at least equal with Israel in departure from the living God. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” as says Romans 3:28, which adds: for all that believe: “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Because of His love, which nothing can turn away from its objects, utterly unworthy in themselves, He, with lovingkindness, draws them to Himself. Perhaps you beloved reader, have resisted Him in seeking to draw you to Himself. Yield yourself, if yet unsaved, to that loving Saviour; if now a child of God, to that compassionate Father who seeks to bless you; and taste to the full that everlasting love of which Jeremiah witnessed to the children of Judah twenty-five centuries ago.

Verses 5-6: “Samaria” and “Ephraim” both speak of the former home of the ten tribes; note the positive assurance in these verses, telling of what God in sovereign mercy will do.

Verse 8: “the coasts of the earth” means the uttermost parts of the world. Verse 9: Why is Ephraim called Jehovah’s first-born? Gen. 41:51-52 shows that Manasseh was the elder, Ephraim the younger of Joseph’s sons; yet in Genesis 48 Ephraim is given the firstborn’s blessing. A number of scriptures may be referred to in seeking the answer to the question, but we shall here refer only to Deut. 33:13-17, Psa. 108:7, 8 and Ezek. 37:15-19, bearing in mind that both Judah and Joseph are used in the Word of God to foreshadow Christ—one as possessor of the title to reign upon earth and the other as the once rejected, now exalted Kinsman, revealing Himself as their abundant Blesser when Israel is at extremity. Ephraim then, whose name means “double fruitfulness”, stands for the reborn nation of Israel in the passages referred to. As to what Ephraim was, historically, in the land of promise, the prophets speak with one voice and that of condemnation; but in Jer. 31 The blessed prospect through mercy of God, and not the dreadful past, is in view.

Verse 10: God has not forgotten Israel, and the nations will learn it to their astonishment and bewilderment and sorrow. He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd does his flock. In verses 12-14 is shown what the Millennium will bring to those who are spared through the judgments to be poured out on the earth at the Lord’s appearing; fulness of blessing in earthly things together with the joy of the ransomed. Satan; the deceiver, will be confined then, and all of Israel at least, will be children of God by faith. What a change that day will bring, from the times in which we are living! But for the Christian there is a prospect far more entrancing (Phil. 3:20).

The language of verse 15 is figurative, speaking in the main of sorrows not yet experienced by the children of Israel. Ramah was in the land of Benjamin; Rachel was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, dying when the latter was born. The town (which Rachel never saw) was five miles north of Jerusalem, on the road over which the Jews were led on their journey to Babylon as Nebuchadnezzar’s prisoners (see chapter 40:1). Rachel’s name is no doubt used here because she was Joseph’s mother and the beloved wife of Jacob; Ramah’s position just outside of Jerusalem is suggestive in view of the fearful judgments which have since swept over the capital, and the more terrible scenes to be enacted there in the last days. This passage is quoted in Matt. 2:17-18 in connection with the slaughter of the little ones in and near Bethlehem—a fulfillment, but not the final one, of this Scripture.

The prophetic view here is, however, chiefly of the Millennial peace when bloodshed shall have stopped (verse 10). Then “Rachel” shall wipe away her tears, for the joy of the ransomed will fill the land of Israel.

“And there is hope for thy latter-end, saith Jehovah, and thy children shall come again to their own border” (JND).

The spiritual awakening of the lost ten tribes is taken up in verses 18-19. Where are these Israelites today? We cannot venture to offer an opinion; they are hidden so effectually that no one is able to identify them among the nations, though many vain efforts have been made. When the day dawns for their reappearance, and their journey to the land of their forefathers occurs, the mystery will be solved.

In verse 20 we have God’s promise (affecting to the Christian heart) of mercy upon the long-banished ten tribes; in verse 21, their homeward way is to be made plain; “make thee signposts” (translated “high heaps”); and He calls them to return.

Verse 22 is also addressed to Ephraim which is spoken of as a woman—symbolic of weakness—overcoming a man: thus is shown the character of their return to Palestine,—the very expression of weakness, yet by God’s intervention, overcoming every effort of the nations to hinder their way there.

Verses 23-30 are of absorbing interest, telling of God’s deep concern over the blessing of His earthly people when they reach the land that once was, and will again be, their home. No more will they suffer because of the waywardness of their forefathers (verses 29-30).

Verses 31-37: The covenant of Sinai (Ex. 19-20) was broken in the wilderness; there were however unconditional promises to Abraham 130 years earlier (Gen. 12:1-3), and to David about 450 years after the covenant of Sinai (2 Sam. 7:10-16); if the hope of Israel was founded on the covenant of law, all would be over with them. See, however, Lev. 26:42; Isa. 55:3 and Jer. 33:19-21.

Our chapter brings out the foundation of Israel’s future blessing—a new covenant which goes far beyond all that preceded it, in that it involves new birth; all who come under it will be born again. Without this immense boon, it is impossible to enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:5); it brings eternal life and the true knowledge of God, besides being the foundation for every other blessing which He has been pleased to bestow on those who trust in Him, whether of the past, the present, or future dispensations. The new covenant with Israel will be wholly of God:

“I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts and will be their God, and they shall be My people....they shall all know Me, from the least.... to the greatest.... for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.”

The references in the New Testament to this future covenant with Israel are numerous; however in almost half the cases the translators have written “testament” where the original Greek word justifies “covenant”. This passage in Jeremiah is quoted in Hebrews 8, and referred to in chapters 9 and 10 of that Epistle. The Lord Jesus in instituting the memorial supper (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25) said, “This is My blood of the new covenant....” Christians are in the good of the covenant without being under it.

Verses 38-40 speak of what will evidently be a large addition to Jerusalem— “to Jehovah”; it is not possible now to trace the places mentioned, but the children of Israel will see the promise fulfilled in Millennial days.

Jeremiah 32

The reader will here again observe how many of Jeremiah’s prophecies are not given in the Scriptures in the order in which they were uttered. The prophecies being grouped according to their subjects, what is before the mind of the Holy Spirit in these chapters, is clearly the unalterable purpose of God to bless His people, though punishment of their sins must precede blessing.

Chapter 32 shows us God’s servant in prison; already there for some time, he was to remain until the city was taken by Nebuchadnezzar’s army (See chapters 37, 38, 39). Jeremiah was a prisoner because of his service to God. We are thus reminded of the words of the martyr Stephen (Acts 7:51-52) before the Jewish council: “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?” Jeremiah, who had been a prophet for 40 years, was sharing what earlier and later servants of God, and above all, their blessed Master, have endured because of faithful testimony given.

The last year of Judah’s existence as a kingdom was now passing; the Babylonian army was again besieging Jerusalem, and the total destruction of the city was to follow its capture. The word of Jehovah at this time came to Jeremiah, directing him to buy his uncle’s field in Anathoth, the prophet’s birth-place, northeast of Jerusalem. To Jeremiah there could be no less purpose in this than to assure him again that God, though bringing His people into captivity to the great Gentile power, would certainly restore them to their land. The break-up of everything might seem—and it surely was—at hand, but faith’s resources are in God and His Word, which He will never allow to fail.

It is often the case that the exercise of faith in a saint of God is designed for the strengthening of others equally weak, and even for the awakening of the lost to a realization of their need of salvation,—to the reality of having to do with God. Thus the circumstances connected with Jeremiah’s purchase of the parcel of land, while outside the city walls lay a powerful army that was soon to secure an entrance and carry away the inhabitants to a far off land, have been chosen by the Holy Spirit for inclusion in the written Word of God.

Faith shines brighter in dark days; by it the elders obtained a good report, and Jeremiah did not lose by reposing his trust in the word of the living God. Nor can the testing of his faith have been without effect on the Jews who were sitting in the court of the prison, and others who heard through them.

Jeremiah’s prayer (verses 16-25) shows the state of his mind; he was realizing, perhaps more deeply than ever bore, his entire dependence upon God. His faithfulness had issued in the king’s severe displeasure, so that his voice was no longer heard in the broad ways in testimony for his Master; he was practically friendless and alone, and the end of all naturally dear to him was near. But God was his resource, and to Him he turns, pouring out the burden of his heart to an attentive Ear.

No word of immediate comfort came to the lonely prisoner in answer to his prayer (for it was too late for any improvement in Judah), but it became his happy portion to learn that “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him” (Psa. 25:14), and Jeremiah was given, as God’s friend, to know more of what lay in His mind than he had ever known before. He was in communion with God over the state of Judah, and we find the divine mind being unburdened (we desire to say it with the utmost reverence) to Jeremiah as he awaited the assured end of everything to which an Israelite rightly clung.

Jeremiah 33

The frequent use of God’s name in Jeremiah’s prophecy has been remarked upon; in most instances it is “the LORD” (or Jehovah), His name of covenant relationship with Israel (Ex. 3:15) but “Jehovah of hosts”—with all power at His command to carry out His will in connection with His people,—and “Jehovah the God of Israel”—presenting Himself as the true object of Israel’s worship in contrast with the false gods of the nations—appear a number of times in this book. In our last chapter, there is “Jehovah the God of all flesh’’, and in that next preceding, He declares that He will be the “God of all the families of Israel”; the first proclaims Him the only true God of all mankind, overriding all national and racial boundaries while the second is a forward look into Israel’s glorious future when restored to His favor.

Chapter 33 brings before us another significant name or title of God (verse 2). “Jehovah the doer of it; Jehovah that formeth it to establish it; Jehovah is His name” (JND); this gave to Jeremiah the confidence that God, even in the very distressing circumstances of that hour, was overruling all things for the future blessing of Israel. The setting aside of Israel and Judah was a necessity that would not and could not interfere with the high purposes of God; rather was it, in the light of eternity, working to that end, that the true state of the people might be known, and judged and confessed before Him.

Jeremiah was “yet shut up in prison”, and that was for God’s glory and His servant’s blessing; it was not the time for God to display His power; rather did it seem as though He were defeated when the people who bore His name were, after 863 years in the land He gave them, carried away as captives of the young kingdom of Babylonia. But God is never defeated; not all the power of Satan or the wicked plans of men have kept Him from His purposes, nor ever shall.

Perhaps the reader has passed, or is even now passing, through circumstances as trying as Jeremiah’s, and no relief has seemed to come in answer to much beseeching prayer. He did not realize, nor are we ourselves apt to take it in, that by means of these very circumstances, God draws His children nearer to Himself, deepening His work in the soul for our eternal blessing, and, it may be also, for greater usefulness here below. In such ways, what is contrary to the purposes of God is made to work for the blessing of His own and thus redounds to His glory. We may with profit read the cheering words of Rom. 8:16-30 and another portion written for the suffering saints in 1 Pet. 5:10.

The end of the war between the Jews and the Chaldeans was to be, in its effect, God’s judgment upon the wicked (verse 5), but it was only Jeremiah that was altogether in the secret of this, because he walked with God.

Verses 10 and 12 describe the appearance of Judah’s land and Jerusalem when the Chaldean or Babylonian army should have completed its work. The Babylonians were, for the most part, descendants of the ancient. Chaldeans, and are often called Chaldeans, though Chaldea, as a nation, had long ceased to exist. The land of Israel has never yielded its best since God’s earthly people fell into sin, and since their crowning sill of putting their Messiah to death, it has fallen into a low state indeed, from which the schemes of Jews and Gentiles since the Great War have not raised it; nor can they be realized until the new Israel occupies its soil.

This will not be without the return of the-Messiah; the Branch of righteousness (verse 15) holds the key to the blessing of Israel and of the whole world. It is impossible to understand the Scriptures without seeing Christ’s place in the Word of God. He, David’s Son and David’s Lord, the God-Man, shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land (or, upon the earth). In those days shall Judah be saved and Jerusalem shall dwell in safety (verse 16). Verse 17 passes by the centuries from God’s giving up Judah as “Lo-ammi” (Hosea 1) until He takes them up again in sovereign mercy (See Rom. 9:25-26).

The chapter closes with a double assurance that the promise of God shall not fail. Israel is in view here, of course, but it is a precious reflection for every believer in the Lord Jesus that God’s Word concerning those who trust in Him can not fail. He has given His Word, and faith believes it, awaits with certainty its fulfilment, though present circumstances be altogether contrary.

Jeremiah 34

Chapter 34 opens with another division or section of the prophecy of Jeremiah, in which is shown the actual state of the people at the last, which brought on them unsparing judgment. Zedekiah’s course, following on that of his predecessors, had so inflamed Nebuchadnezzar that he brought a great army against Judea, determined to destroy that country; in this we know that he was carrying out the will of God.

Jeremiah, God’s mouthpiece for the king of Judah, carries to Zedekiah the mournful news that God was not for him, would give Jerusalem into the hand of the king of Babylon who should burn it. Zedekiah would, of course, hope to escape when the end drew near, but he learned from Jeremiah that this should not be; he should go to Babylon, a prisoner with other survivors of the siege. Not all the sad prospect (see chapter 39:6-7) was revealed to the king of Judah, but Jeremiah begged him to hear God’s word.

Zedekiah had pursued a wicked course, as 2 Kings 24:19; 2 Chron. 36:12, 13; Ezek. 17:11-21, and the unvarying testimony of Jeremiah record; from chapters 37 and 38 it seems clear that lie was greatly influenced by others and this must account for the promise of a peaceful death, lamented by his people (verses 4-5).

It is only God that can truly estimate the measure of responsibility carried by each, and appoint to them in eternity with accurate discernment. The question of the eternal destiny of Zedekiah is not referred to; we cannot tell whether he ever came as a confessed and repentant sinner before God, though we may hope that he did, and thus only and not on any ground of his own behavior (impossible of attainment) escaped the judgment of the great white throne.

Zedekiah, moved, we doubt not, by fear of the coming judgment upon his kingdom, made a covenant with all the people at Jerusalem to proclaim liberty to all who were in bondage. It is evident that the commandment of God given in Ex. 21:2 and Deut. 15:12, had long been ignored, through the hardhearted selfishness of the people. Now, for a short space with an awakened conscience, the Word of God as to this matter had weight with the remnant of this guilty nation; but it was only a brief thing; enslaved in Satan’s chains they returned to their old ways, (verses 8-11). Therefore the sword should descend upon them, and pestilence and famine, and they should be driven hither and thither among all the kingdoms of the earth (verses 15-17).

The covenant to which verses 18-20 refers is that into which Zedekiah had entered with Nebuchadnezzar, promising in the name of Jehovah to be loyal to the king of Babylon (2 Chron. 36:13; Ezek. 17:13-19). The pagan, idol-serving king might well think that an oath given him in the name of Israel’s God would be kept, and the breaking of it was to him an exceedingly serious act; nor was God indifferent to it, as these verses show.

At this time, the Egyptians having entered the land for the purpose of helping Judah against Nebuchadnezzar’s army, the Babylonian forces were withdrawn to fight against the newcomers. Zedekiah and his princes no doubt hoped that the Babylonian army would be defeated in battle, but God assured them (verse 22) that they would return, take the city and destroy it; the cities of Judah were to become a desolation, without inhabitant. God had spoken; within the space of a year and a half His word was fulfilled.

Jeremiah 35

The occasions spoken of in chapters 35 and 36 took place about 18 years before the closing days of Zedekiah’s reign which have been before us in recent chapters. They are clearly chosen to give further illustrations of the inward state of Judah at the end of the nation’s history.

Jonadab the son of Rechab, has a place in the Scriptures (2 Kings 10:15-28); he was evidently of the tribe of Judah (1 Chron. 2:15) though apparently in the land of Ephraim when Jehu met him. We may judge that he was a man of marked godliness, who mourned over the state of God’s earthly people and because of it, became a Nazarite (Num.6:1-12). For more than 250 years his descendants had maintained the life of separation from the world which he had enjoined upon them. They were no doubt reckoned a very peculiar people, neither drinking wine, nor building houses, nor sowing seed, nor planting or possessing vineyards; but always dwelling in tents. O, that there were more true-hearted separation from the world seen among God’s children today! We have no thought of urging peculiarity of dress or dwelling, but long to see the people of God practicing in increased measure, a life that is toward God, and according to His Word. To please Him while here below should be the deepest desire of every Christian heart, and it is not without present reward.

Jeremiah, directed of God, went to the house of the Rechabites, and brought them all into one of the chambers of the temple building, there offering them bowls full of wine, and cups or goblets. Would they disregard the command of their father? Not they! They answered the invitation with “We will drink no wine! We have hearkened unto the voice of... our father in all that he commanded us ... and have obeyed and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us” (verses 6-10 JND). They reckoned themselves strangers, having only come into Jerusalem when Nebuchadnezzar first came into the land, from a desire to get away from the contending armies (verse 11).

The latter part of the chapter reveals the reason for this testing of the Nazites of Jeremiah’s day. The prophet was to go to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem with a message from God charging them with their stony-hearted unbelief. The Rechabites among them were, as Jeremiah was to tell them, a living testimony of obedience to the commands of an ancestor, while the commandments of God—Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel—had no regard from the people to whom Jeremiah was sent.

Not the voice of one long dead, but the voice of the living God, speaking through all His servants the prophets, had been bore them constantly. All their blessings depended on obedience, but they loved to disobey; they would not hearken. There could be now but one issue of the matter (verse 17): “Behold, I will bring upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil that I have pronounced against them, because I have spoken unto them, but they have not hearkened, and I have called unto them but they have not answered.”

But in that day the Rechabites would be spared; they were not to be judged with the world from which they walked in separation.

Jeremiah 36

The fourth year of Jehoiakim was the year following Nebhadnezzar’s first visit to Judah (See Dan. 1:1). This, the second son of Josiah to become king appears to have been the most wicked member of the family. 2 Chron. 36:8 gives a brief statement about his life; Jer. 22:17-19 gives a slightly longer one and promises for him the burial of an ass; Jer. 26:21-23 tells of his seeking out and murdering the prophet Urijah. He was made king of Judah by the reigning Pharaoh of Egypt, and later had to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, but rebelled after three years (2 Kings 24:1). Scripture does not record his death, and his name is omitted in the short chronology in Matthew 1.

Jeremiah appears from verse 5 to have suffered imprisonment at Jehoiakim’s hands. In chapter 26 we learn that he was seized by the priests, prophets and people because of the testimony he gave for God, and it was thought to kill him, but his life was spared. He may have been kept in prison from that time.

Divinely directed, Jeremiah got a roll of a book, and Baruch the son of Nerijah wrote down all the words of Jehovah which He had spoken to the prophet. In chapter 30, where the latter was instructed to write in a book what God had spoken to him, the object in view was to give written assurance that Israel and Judah would return to the land from which they were removed into captivity. Here the purpose was to reach the consciences of the people; perhaps they would, hearing the testimony of God’s word, return from their evil way when God could forgive their iniquity and sin. There is no evidence that the people were affected at all by the reading (verse 8).

We pass over to the following year in verse 9, with Baruch reading from the book in the ears of the people. Micah, the grandson of that Shaphan the scribe who lived in the time of Josiah and carried the long lost book of the law to the king (2 Kings 22; 2 Chron 34) heard the word of God and went down to Jehoiakim’s house where his father and others were sitting, to tell what Baruch had been reading. They therefore sent for the reader, and bade him read the writing to them.

Fear now filled the listeners; they would tell the king, but first told Baruch to hide both himself and Jeremiah. Next, by God’s ordering, Jehoiakim heard the word, with all the princes that stood beside him. This wicked man, though begged not to do it, destroyed the whole book in the fire which warmed the apartment, and next commanded that Baruch and Jeremiah be taken, doubtless with the intention of putting them to death. But Jehovah hid them; in these few words we learn that in some way the hand of God was stretched out to preserve His servants.

The burning of the roll added to the burden of sin at the door of the king, but did not affect the work of God. Jeremiah was directed to get another roll and write in it again all that had been written in the first one. To it more was added (verse 32). Jehoiakim, too, was to get a word from God as to himself (verse 30), and the judgment to come upon him and his children, his servants and the people of Jerusalem and Judah (verse 31).

This chapter give unmistakable testimony that God’s word was totally rejected by Judah,—king, priests, prophets and people.

Jeremiah 37

This chapter, like chapters 21 and 32 to 34, deals with the events of the last two years of the kingdom of Judah.

Verse 2 is an exceedingly solemn testimony concerning the king, his servants and the people of the land; the solemnity of it is heightened by the fact that the day of judgment for them was at hand. We speak only of this life, for they, with the rest of the unrepentant dead, have yet to face the judgment of the great white throne (Revelation 20).

The Word of God gives one unvarying testimony about mankind, namely, that His gracious and merciful offers have ever been ignored or refused by the mass of those addressed. There are many examples of this, the earliest being in the days before the flood when not a soul outside of Noah’s family accepted God’s warning and took shelter in the ark. The time is now plainly close at hand when the gospel will fall entirely upon deaf ears; when that time has been reached, the closing scenes on earth will begin, the heavenly saints having first been taken away at the Lord’s coming for them. God is not mocked. Well may the inspired writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (12:25) say, “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh” (i.e., from heaven).

Man in his inner self knows that there is a God, but he shuns all thought of his benefactor. In times of deep distress the man of the world, finding all that he leans upon but shifting sand, will cry out to God for help, having neither repentance nor faith. This is seen in Zedekiah’s message to Jeremiah (verse 3). See 2 Chron. 36:12. In speaking of Jehovah as “our God”, he evidenced that he belonged to that class of which Isaiah wrote in chapter 29:13, and of which One infinitely greater than he spoke in Matthew 15:8.

The Egyptians with whom Zedekiah had made an alliance when he broke his oath to Nebuchadnezzar, sent an army to fight against the Babylonians (or Chaldeans, as they are called in verse 5), who thereupon abandoned the siege of Jerusalem in order to meet Pharaoh’s hosts. This removal was only temporary, and the soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar presently returned to their posts around the doomed city. The answer which God gave Jeremiah concerning Zedekiah (verses 7 to 10) gave the latter no relief from his fears. In truth, God had given up His earthly people because of their wickedness, and He who had long fought for Israel was now, of necessity, on the side of their adversaries.

Verse 12 Jeremiah would gladly have withdrawn from Jerusalem, when the opportunity offered, but it is evident that God willed otherwise; he was to remain in the city until the end of the siege, a testimony there for his divine Master, and not this only; he was to taste more deeply than before, of suffering for His sake. Thus the prophet became an example for those Jews of the last days, who will comprise the believing and suffering remnant God will preserve through the unparalleled tribulation called the time of Jacob’s trouble. We are persuaded that it is chiefly for this reason (the encouragement of Jewish believers in that time) that the Scriptures reveal so much about Jeremiah’s suffering at the hands of his unbelieving countrymen.

Verses 16-17: King Zedekiah appears to have been quite content to leave God’s faithful servant in a dungeon (literally, “house of the pit” or cistern) and after many days of cold indifference to Jeremiah’s suffering, he sends for him only to inquire, “Is there any word from Jehovah?”

The prison house has been honored with the presence of not a few faithful men of God and the Scriptures name some of them; we think of Joseph, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul among these, and Daniel and the three companions of his youth belong to the same noble army of sufferers for His name. Jeremiah’s faith blessedly was sustained through the very trying circumstances he was required to face; it was a severe test, but God had him in His keeping, and we do not doubt that many times since then he has rejoiced because he was permitted to suffer for His sake.

There was a word from Jehovah for the young king, and it was an unwelcome message (verse 17). If in Jeremiah’s words to Zedekiah we see imperfection, as in Joseph in his similar case—looking to man instead of entirely to God for relief from his suffering—let us recall that but One perfect in every way has walked this earth—the lowly Jesus. He never of man sought relief from the trials that beset His path as He journeyed from the manger to the cross.

Blessed Master, may we be growing more like Thee here until we meet Thee in the air!

Jeremiah 38

The four men whose names are given in the first verse, little thought that they would be singled out fur mention in the Word of God as concerned in a plan to bring about the death of the prophet. Had their thoughts risen above the level of this world it might have entered their minds that every idle (unprofitable) word that men shall speak they shall give account for in the day of judgment (Matt. 12:36).

Chapter 21:9 gives the same language as verse 2 in our chapter; it was of the mercy of God that this way of safety was made known, and from verse 19 we know that some of the people wisely heeded it and went over to the Babylonian army encamped around the city walls. But the princes—heads, chief men, or captains are meant—were as far from God as their king, and deceived by Satan to their own ruin. It was not a question about what Jeremiah had said but the mighty God had spoken; His word will stand forever.

Zedekiah was again quite willing to have the prophet illtreated, or even, as it seems, put to death, and he was now cast into an empty cistern, a prison worse than the first place of confinement (chapter 37:15-16), his offense being that lie told the truth. But, as God was with Joseph (Gen. 89:21), so was He with Jeremiah; He moved Ebed-melech, a Cushite or Ethiopian—not an Israelite but a believing (see chapter 39:18) stranger, who in some way had become a member of the Judean king’s household—to appeal to Zedekiah to spare Jeremiah’s life. The king granted the request and the victim of his fellowmen’s hatred was drawn out of the cistern, though still kept under guard.

Again did the king seek the prophet (verse 14); altogether a dupe of Satan, he yet knew where the truth was to be learned. The occasion was the last meeting, as far as we know, between the two men. Zedekiah wished to save his life, to keep his honors as the king of Judah; he clung to what was slipping front his grasp, and he had nothing but what this poor world has to give. Pitiable, indeed, is the case of the man of the world facing the loss of the glittering, but empty show in winch he has lived. How much better off than himself, was the king’s prisoner who knew and trusted the true God!

Zedekiah could not say, like Elijah in an earlier day, “As the Lord of hosts liveth before Whom I stand” (1 Kings 18:15), but, “As the Lord liveth that made us this soul” (verse 16). He thus owned as Creator, Him he would not accept as his God. Is it not in the same way that men speak of God today: “the Creator”, say they, as of someone with whom they have nothing to do, nor are they concerned about His will as to themselves.

Verse 17: O, the mercy of our God! Even at this late hour in Zedekiah’s course He would spare him, his family and the city. Would Zedekiah accept the only way of escape from the prospect that the next chapter brought to him in dread reality? He appears to have entered the class included at the beginning, of Rev. 21:8—the fearful and unbelieving. He feared the consequence before his fellow men of taking the path of safety which God held out before him; he clung to the present, fading away before his eyes, rather than trust his soul with God. “I am afraid,” said he, “of the Jews”—those that had already gone over to the besiegers; “they will mock me.” There is One whom Zedekiah should have feared;—Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (see Matt. 10:28).

Again the prophet speaks “Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the Lord which. I speak unto thee; so it shall be well unto thee, and thy soul shall live.” There is no answer; Jeremiah remains in the court of the prison (or guard) until Jerusalem is taken; the king, on his part, rejected the mercy of God, and remained within the city until it was too late to escape the punishment the judgment of God meted out to him.

Part of verse 22 may be obscure to some readers. The word “women” which the translators have added in italics, should he omitted, “those” referring to the Babylonian princes. These princes would tell Zedekiah the real truth, that his familiar friends had occasioned his downfall and deserted him.

Jeremiah 39

The “eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month” is a date of painful memory to the children of Israel, for on that day Judah ceased to be a kingdom; then there came off his throne the last son of David to hold dominion over God’s earthly people until that Son reigns Who is David’s Lord. The city which Jehovah had chosen to set His name there, now forsaken by Him, was entered by the princes of Nebuchadnezzar, representing the power of Babylon.

It is well known that Babylonia was devoted to idolatry; even their children were given names intended to honor national or local false gods. Nebuchadnezzar (or Nebuchadnezzar, as the name is spelled in Daniel and commonly) means in the Chaldean language, “Nebo protects the youth”, or perhaps “Nebo is the protector of landmarks’, Sanwar-Nebo is “One who is devoted to Nebo”, and Nergal-sharezar is “Nergal protects the king”. Except that God had given us to know (1 Cor. 10:19-20) that the worship of idols is really the worship of demons, we should feel only pity for those who bow before images, Think, however, of these men whose lives were bound up with the service of the devil, sitting in the place of authority in the city of the great King!

In view of what we have learned in reading through Isaiah and Jeremiah, we shall not ask who was to blame for the calamity which had now become Jerusalem’s and Judah’s. The cause was the giving up of the true God for the false gods of the nations, on the part of the king of Judah, his princes, his prophets and his people. Had they been warned of the evils to come upon them if they persisted in their ways? Yes, not only had they the testimony of Jeremiah and Isaiah, but also that of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah, Habakkuk and Zephaniah on this very subject, and going further back in the Word of God, Moses in Deut. 28:36; Joshua in chapter 23:13 of the book which bears his name, and in 2 Chron. 7:19-22 God speaking in answer to king Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple; all these passages contain forewarnings of what took place at this time.

In verse 3 it may be of interest to note that two of the names are not personal but official; Rab-saris is “chief-eunuch” or chief chamberlain; Rab-mag is “chief priest”. 2 Kings 8:17 and Isaiah 36:2 give a third official title: Rab-shakeh, meaning “chief officer” or chief cup-bearer.

Verse 4: Zedekiah and his men of war did not get far in their effort to escape by night; how could they since they had no regard for God and had refused His counsel? The Holy Spirit has in the New Testament, spoken in words few and easily remembered by all: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Zedekiah and his companions chose sin, and received the wages thereof.

Nebuchadnezzar, who had been with his besieging army around Jerusalem, was now at Riblah, about 70 miles north of Damascus on the way to the Euphrates, and to him was Zedekiah brought. Perhaps because of his broken promise of loyalty, given in Jehovah’s name, Nebuchadnezzar treated Zedekiah with marked cruelty, slaughtering his sons before his eyes, and blinding him before taking him in chains to Babylon. All the nobles of Judah were put to death; the king’s house and the houses of the people were burned, and Jerusalem’s walls were broken down; Nebuzar-adan (“Nebo has given offspring”), the captain of the bodyguard of Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive into Babylon the rest of the people, except “the poor who had nothing.”

Jeremiah was given his liberty under Nebuchadnezzar’s orders (verses 11-14), and Ebed-melech (“slave of the king”), because he had put his trust in Jehovah, was spared from the judgments that bell the wicked (verses 10-18). We find no further reference to this man of dark skin in the Scriptures, but we are assured that we shall meet him in the glory of God above.

Jeremiah 40

Though all around may perish in the governmental dealings of God, the believer has yet Himself as his bulwark; God will not forsake those who trust in Him. So the sorrowing Jeremiah found after witnessing the burning of Jerusalem, including the temple that Solomon had built, and the breaking down of the city’s walls. He had been singled out for exceptional treatment by the king of Babylon (chapter 39:11-12) through God’s overruling, and was now set free at Ramah, the place of weeping (chapter 31, verse 15), 5 miles north of Jerusalem. We are not told what “word” (verse 1) it was that God gave to His servant, but it must have been-a word of encouragement for that dark hour in. Judah’s history. Our thoughts turn to the apostle Paul, when, in similar case, his path of service apparently ended (See Acts 23:11).

The Babylonian soldier was more intelligent than the leaders of Judah had been, in regard to the cause of Jerusalem’s downfall (verses 2-3). And we may say, the world is always ready to point out the inconsistencies and faults and even grievous sins into which believers, or those who only pro-fess to be Christians, fall. When the finger can thus be pointed at a believer, the power of his testimony is gone. Judah’s sins were of the blackest, though Jeremiah had not shared in them; nevertheless, silence became him before Nebuzar-adan. Jeremiah was in the blessed place of one who walked with God, though the nation outdid all others in evil.

The prophet chose to remain amid the desolation of Judah’s land, rather than to seek the security and comfort which Babylon could afford him. And in this we may well judge that he had the mind of God. Ezekiel was among the captives transported to Babylonia 11 years before this, and Daniel had now been in the king’s palace 18 years, each serving God in his different place and circumstances. There were left in the land of Judah, and near it, certain children of Israel, and among these Jeremiah appears to have finished his course, a witness for God and against themselves.

In verse 5, “reward” is, in the present day meaning of words, “a present”, given to Jeremiah on leaving the party bound for Babylon. Verse 6 reveals the presence in the land, of men of Judah who had, by reason of being outside of Jerusalem and the other towns, escaped the hand of the king of Babylon; so also does verse 11 bring out the fact that there were others living in the adjoining countries of Moab, Ammon, and Edom, and in other lands, who now returned to the land of Israel. All these came to Gedaliah at Mizpah, a place a few miles north of Jerusalem whose location is not now exactly known (see 2 Chron. 16:6 which may refer to the place of that name to which Samuel called the children of Israel; 1 Samuel 7 and 10). The state before God of these people—one trusts there were exceptions, however—was bad indeed, as we shall Not all the miseries that had come on their king and nation, under God’s judgment because of the almost universal turning to idolatry and the other evil ways of the heathen, moved these to return to the true God. Does the reader know what will cause men to turn to God?

A plot of the king of Amnion to have Gedaliah killed (verse 14) became known, and Johanan the son of Kareah (whose afterlife does not commend him) warned him, but in vain., as the next chapter shows. Why should the Ammonite king wish to put an end to the man left in charge of Judah’s poor and feeble few? Hatred of the people of God, and desire to possess their land may have been the reason (see Ezek. 25:1-7 and 2 Chron. 20:10-11).

The human heart, where God is not known, is capable of anything, but the day of judgment will come for all who have not salvation through Christ.

Jeremiah 41

Of Gedaliah, the governor of the few Israelites left in the country, we know nothing more than the statements about him in 2 Kings 25:22-25 and Jer. 39-41. From Jer. 20:24, we know that his father stood on the side of the prophet when there was talk of putting him to death; the father is also mentioned in 2 King’s 22:12 when the lost book of God was found.

The unsuspecting. Gedaliah was not long (two to three months) in Mizpah, when there came to visit him the man concerning whom he had been warned (chapter 40), Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, together with ten men, and after eating bread with Gedaliah they killed him. Forthwith, they slew every other person that was with Gedaliah, so that none would be left to spread the tale of the murder.

This shocking, premeditated crime was almost of necessity followed by another, when 80 men arrived on the second day after with oblations and incense to bring to the house of Jehovah. Although we cannot trace anything approved of God in their having cut themselves (see Lev. 21:5 and Deut. 14:1 which compare with Isa. 15:2 and Jer. 48:37 referring to the practices of the Moabites), the newcomers seem to have been moved by genuine feeling of grief over that which had befallen Judah. There was no “house of Jehovah” since the destruction of the temple, and the priests were all gone into captivity, yet the fear of God seems to have actuated the men from Shechem, Shiloh and Saria.

The chief murderer went out to meet these men, hypocritically weeping all along as he went, as though moved by grief over the destruction of Jerusalem, and invited them to come to Gedaliah, but only to slay them when they got into the town. Ten of the eighty were spared because they said they had hidden stores of food. How little could king Asa (godly in the early part of his reign,—2 Chron. 14-15) have anticipated the use which Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah would make of the pit (or cistern) he had made at Mizpah!

Ishmael, his bloody work done, now proposed to return to the safe haven of the children of Ammon, and took with him all that remained alive in Mizpah. Of Jeremiah at this time, we are not told; had not God undertaken his defense, we might wonder why he, too, was not killed, whether at Mizpah or somewhere else. If there had been a real regard for the governor, would Johanan, the son of Kareah and all the captains of the forces that were with him have left Gedaliah exposed to the danger of assassination? Since he had taken service under the king of Babylon to whom they had not submitted themselves, they are not likely to have esteemed him highly. Natural feeling, hover, over the crime that had been committed, sent these men with Johanan, after the murderer, and they caught up with him at the great waters in Gibeon.

Ishmael escaped with eight men into the land of Ammon, and those he was carrying off returned with Johanan and his men, but fear of the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar led the party’s steps southward to go into Egypt. There they hoped to be safe from the forces of the king of Babylon. Our chapter closes with them near Bethlehem, a few miles south of Jerusalem on the highway to Hebron.

In all this chapter contains, we see only fresh evidence that the children of Israel were drinking the bitter cup they had filled for themselves. They had given up God (save in an empty profession which was an insult to Himself) and ran greedily after the pleasures of the heathen world, adopting their idols and their idolatrous practices as their own. God had given up the nation to judgment as He had long foretold through His prophets, and they were now suffering in Babylon or in the land of their forefathers because of their sins.

Jeremiah 42

A fresh picture of the few left in the land of Judah is afforded in this chapter. The old yearning after Egypt (so often in Scripture a type of the world in its attractions) manifested itself under cover of a profession of dependence upon God and devotion to His will.

All the people from the least to the greatest, together with the captains of the forces, came to Jeremiah to ask him to pray for them to Jehovah “thy God”, that He would show them the way wherein they should walk, and the thing that they should do. Jeremiah’s answer was that he would pray to Jehovah “your God” according to their wish. To this they answered with the assurance that whether the voice of Jehovah “our God” should be good or evil in their estimation they would hearken to it. Empty words they proved to be!

God in His wisdom did not answer for ten days. Whenever an immediate answer to prayer is needed, He gives it, but the answer is always sent at the right time; the delay over which we sometimes fret is good for the child of God, teaching dependence, submission.

Notwithstanding the departure of the ten tribes and the two tribes into banishment because of the national sin of idolatry, God can take no lower title in connection with this earth than “Jehovah the God of Israel” (verse 9). In amazing grace He would still undertake for these exceedingly wayward people who had proved utterly unworthy of the least of His mercies.

“If ye will still abide in this land, then will I build you, and not overthrow you, and I will plant you, and not pluck you up, for I repent Me of the evil that I have clone unto you” (verse 10).

They need not fear the king of Babylon, “for I will be with you to save you and to deliver you from His hand. And I will grant mercies to you, that he may have mercy upon you, and cause you to return to your own land” (verses 11-12). What kindness, what love, from the Omnipotent One, and to those so ungrateful, so unworthy!

If, however, they were resolved that they would not dwell in the land, but would go into Egypt expecting to see no war nor have hunger, “thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel,” the sword which they feared should overtake them there, and the famine of which they were afraid should follow hard after them in Egypt, and there should they die! “All the men that have set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, and none of them shall remain or escape from the evil that I will bring upon them” (verse 17). This was solemn, indeed, and, with what followed in verse 18, should have banished from their minds any thought of going to Egypt.

Jeremiah, in communicating God’s answer to the people, spoke plainly to them: “Ye deceived yourselves in your own souls when ye sent me unto Jehovah your God saying, Pray for us unto Jehovah our God, and according to all that Jehovah our God shall say, so declare unto us, and we will do it. And I have this day declared it to you, but ye have not obeyed the voice of Jehovah your God, nor anything for which He Hath sent me unto you. And now know certainly that ye shall die by the sword, by the famine and by the pestilence, in the place whither ye desire to go to sojourn” (verses 20-22).

Why should men reject the grace of God and choose the evil way? Why, after many centuries of the gospel of His grace offered to “Whosoever will”, do men persist in the path that leads to eternal judgment? Dare anyone say that God is to blame?

Jeremiah 43

The Word of God, spoken in faithfulness, is never without effect upon the hearer; it draws out the depths of the heart toward God, whether of the believer or the sinner—but O, how different the feelings aroused! What had been hidden (though well known to God and revealed to Jeremiah) under a fair appearance, came out fully as Azariah and Johanan and all the proud men shod their opposition to what Jeremiah told them. Poor, deluded servants, slaves indeed, of Satan! Men and women are either serving God or His—and their—enemy the devil, though it is quite coon to hear people speak of man’s “free will”—a term for which there is no Scriptural warrant.

The people left in the land of Israel were determined to leave it to go to Egypt, though they were assured that death awaited them there; the plain fact is that they did not believe God; in that respect they were no different from thousands today, though many would resent being told the truth about it.

There was over with these sons of disobedience, too, so that they were able to take with them to Egypt all of the people that were left, including Jeremiah and Baruch (verse 7). They went as far as Tahpanhes, a place which does not exist today; its site was not far from the northern end of the Suez canal.

But not all that men are able to do can keep God from speaking to His servants, telling them His purposes. The word of Jehovah could as well reach Jeremiah in Tahpanhes as in Jerusalem. Jeremiah’s first testimony to the Jews in Egypt was concerning the judgment of that land, and Nebuchadnezzar was to be the instrument of it. There could be no resistance to his power, when this Gentile to whom God had committed the government of the world should undertake the conquest of Egypt. Beth-shemesli (verse 13) means “House (or Temple) of the sun”, called by the Greeks Heliopolis; the Egyptian name was On,—the place where Joseph’s father-in-law was priest (Genesis 11:45).

Jeremiah 44

Chapter 44 presents the latest view, historically, of the Israelites in Egypt, which the book of Jeremiah gives. It shows that they were committed as fully to idolatry as ever the nation had been in their own land. Migdol and Noph (Memphis) were cities in Northern Egypt; Pathros was in upper (southern) Egypt.

In verses 2 to 10 we have God’s gracious reminder to the people of what had befallen their land, and why—spoken in view of their carrying on the worship of false gods in Egypt. Had they forgotten the wickedness of their fathers, and of the kings and their wives, their own and their wives’ wickedness, committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?

Because there was no humbling of themselves, nor fear of God, nor walking in His law or statutes, Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, was now setting His face against them for evil, and to cut off all Judah (verses 11-14). The solemn words of Prov. 1:24-31 may be noted as expressive of the judgment here pronounced on the rebellious children of Israel. None was to return to the land of Judah (whither they had a desire to return to dwell) but such as should escape the sword, the famine and the pestilence—a very small company (verse 28).

This fresh communication from God, spoken through Jeremiah, brought no repentance on the part of the Jews in Egypt (verses 15-19). God was wholly given up, and the “queen of the heavens”—commonly thought to be the moon, worshipped as Astarte—was enthroned in their minds in His stead. The evils that had befallen them they attributed to God, their good to the “queen of the heavens”.

The Scriptures do not record the execution of the judgment pronounced on Egypt, but it is a matter of profane history that four years after the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar invaded that land, put the king to death and raged the country. This would apparently be the time of which Jer. 52:30 tells—the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule.

Jeremiah 45

The fourth year of Jehoiakim” leads us back to chapter 36:1-8. It was then that God had bidden Jeremiah to put in writing all that He had told him, and the prophet had called upon Baruch, a scribe, to do the work at his dictation. The realization of the bitter cup which Judah would have to drink, with a deepening sense of the nation’s sins as viewed by a holy God, overcame Baruch with grief as he wrote down what Jeremiah told him. He could foresee the breaking up of his own home-ties and everything that a godly Israelite counted dear—a hard thing to bear, as anyone would agree, but we must remember, too, that not until the proclamation of the gospel of the grace of God, following the atoning death of Christ, was peace with God known, or the security of the believer. Baruch could hope for God’s mercy, but lacked the certainty of it; that was reserved until the death of Christ and His resurrection and exaltation as Man to the right hand of God (Acts 2). Well might he then be weary with his sighing, finding no rest.

Verse 5: “Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not”, is a word as appropriate for the believer now as then. The world in which. Baruch lived was about to meet its judgment—not finally, of course, but enough to put an end to all that Judah meant as a kingdom; the world that now is, is 2500 years near the last and utterly unsparing judgment, which cannot now be far off. Ere the thunders of divine wrath begin to sound, all that are Christ’s will be gathered in the ‘Father’s house above, with their Lord; and His word, which we believe is just now speaking afresh to the hearts of His own, is, “Surely I come quickly!” May it be ours to look for Him with increasing desire, while faithfully performing our daily tasks.

Jeremiah 46

Chapter 46 is the first of a series of prophecies of judgment to come on 1ridab’s neighbors. In turn they pass before the vision of God: Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar, Elam, Babylon.

Since God’s earthly people must feel His righteous indignation, those who looked on could not expect to escape the chastisement they richly deserved. He deals with those who hear His name first, because of that very fact of relationship, real or only professed, but it is a principle plainly revealed in the Word of God that His judgments, once begun, shall go on until the world is judged. We have this shown in Isaiah, and here in Jeremiah; notably is it seen in the Revelation, chapters 2 and 3 dealing with the professors of Christ’s name, and the remainder of the book with the world. Other examples might be cited, but we only mention the word in 1 Peter 4:17, 18.

The judgments pronounced on Egypt begin with the battle at the head of navigation on the Euphrates, Carchemish, occurring when Nebuchadnezzar had led his father’s army there, and southward to besiege Jerusalem. This battle is not mentioned in the historical books of the Old Testament, as it did not directly concern God’s earthly people, but the occasion is referred to in 2 Kings 21:1; 2 Chron. 36:6, 7 and Dan. 1:1, 2.

“Brigandines”, verse 4, were coats of mail. In verse 9, the peoples mentioned were all Africans, joined with Egypt in a vain effort to crush the young and aggressive kingdom of Babylonia.

Verse 10: They did not know it, but God had ordered this conflict for the punishment of Egypt because of idolatry and oppression.

Verses 13 to 26 have to do with the further humiliation of Egypt which followed the migration of all that were left of Judah to that land, as we have seen in chapter 43. In verse 23, locusts are meant rather than grasshoppers, and in verse 25, “the Multitude of No” as the marginal note tells, is properly “Amon of No,”—an Egyptian idol at No (Thebes).

Verses 27 and 28 speak a precious, assuring word to Jacob and Israel— two names of the 12 tribes, “Jacob” being the reminder of their character by nature, and “Israel” of what they shall be when purified by God’s correction of them with judgment. The last lines are better translated “but I will not make a full end of thee, but I will correct thee with judgment, and I will not hold thee altogether guiltless.”

Jeremiah 47

The Philistines, perpetual enemies of Israel, are next singled out for an announcement of overwhelming disaster. Chapter 47 is a fresh example of the divinely chosen order in the book of Jeremiah, for what is here recorded bongs, in time of utterance, to a period early in the prophet’s service for God. It is given thus late in the book that all the judgments may be stated in a single group, beginning with Judah, and in turn including each of her neighbors and finally Babylon itself, the first Gentile empire to which all the others were subjected.

Pharaoh was to strike Gaza (during the campaign which took the Egyptian army to Carchemish on the Euphrates — 2 Chronicles 35:20), but a far worse affliction would follow, coming from the north; this was the conquering host of Babylon headed by Nebuchadnezzar. The figure of an irresistible flood of water is used to portray that invasion which would result in the ruin of Philistia and largely the Mediterranean coast, for Tyre, and Sidon in the north, far outside of the region occupied by the Philistines, were to be cut off from every helper that remained. In this destruction of the Philistines, Nebuchadnezzar would only be a weapon in the hands of God, as the latter part of chapter 47 shows.

Caphtor, the land from which the Philistines came, is believed to have been a part of Egypt (see Genesis 10:13, 14). Gaza and Ashkelon were two of the five principal cities of the Philistines. Isaiah 14:29-32, Ezekiel 25:15-17, Amos 1:6-8, Zechariah 2:4-7, and Zechariah 9:5-7 are other prophecies dealing with the Philistines; all of them have not yet been fully accomplished, although the Philistines as a people have disappeared. They will reappear in the last days when Israel again becomes the center of God’s dealings with the earth.

Jeremiah 48

Chapter 48 is occupied with the crushing blow to fall upon Moab through the king of Babylon. Jeremiah, in the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, twenty-one or twenty-two years before Jerusalem’s destruction, had sent to the kings of Moab, Edom, the Ammonites, Tyre and Sidon, a message from God calling upon them to submit to Nebuchadnezzar. Those nations that would not serve him were to be severely punished (Jeremiah 27:1-11). It is plain that the message was ignored by all of them; need we wonder at it, when Judah’s last king also treated with contempt every word that Jeremiah brought him from God? In these chapters, we are reading of what befell those who refused God’s mercy.

No less than 27 places are named in this chapter (48), and among them are several north of the river Amon which had separated Moab from the tribe of Reuben. When the Reubenites were smitten by Hazael, king of Syria (2 Kings 10:32, 33), and later by Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria (1 Chronicles 5:26), the Moabites must have repossessed their land, which had been Moab’s until shortly bore the children of Israel crossed the wilderness from Egypt on their way to Canaan.

“Madmen” (verse 2) is not a term of reproach here, but the name of one of the many small towns in Moab. Chemosh (verse 7) was the principal god of the Moabites and Ammonites. In verse 12 read, “pourers that shall pour him off”, instead of “wanderers that shall cause him to wander”; the reference is to verse 11. The house of Israel’s being ashamed of Bethel relates to Jeroboam’s placing there one of his golden calves, and an idolatrous altar (1 Kings 12:28-33; see also Genesis 35:1, 7).

Verse 34: “An heifer of three years old” is believed to lie the name of a town, Eglath-shelishijan, rather than a reference to an animal.

The land of Moab was to become a desolation, and this, travelers tell us, is its present condition. (Other Scriptures telling of God’s dealings with Moab are Psalm 83, Isaiah 11:14, Isaiah 15-16, Isaiah 25:10-12; Zephaniah 2:8-11, Daniel 11:41, Amos 2:1). As said of the Philistines, all the prophecies concerning Moab are not fulfilled; they await the day to come when the Jews shall be undergoing the fearful experiences of the time of Jacob’s trouble in their land, from which deliverance will come by the Lord’s appearing. Jeremiah, however, except in verse 47, deals only with the time then imminent, when Nebuchadnezzar was to be the instrument of God for Moab’s punishment.

Jeremiah 49

The Holy Spirit now turns to the children of Ammon, and the judgment of God upon them which was executed by Nebuchadnezzar not long after the first Gentile empire began. Verse 1 inquires, in substance, Why are the Ammonites in possession of that part of Israel’s land which was the home of the tribe of Gad? Now it was because of idolatry and related evils that the Reubenites, Gadites, and that part of Manasseh who shared with Reuben and Gad so much of the land of Israel as lay east of the Jordan, were carried away to captivity by the Assyrians; but the passage before us is not occupied with Israel’s sins, but with the Ammonites’ seizure of the territory of Gad, Israel’s land.

As with Egypt, the Philistines and Moab, other Scriptures may be referred to for further light as to the occasion for the judgments pronounced. Jeremiah 27:1-11, Ezekiel 25:1-7, Amos 1:13-15, Jeremiah 9:26, Ezekiel 21:18-32, and Zephaniah 2:8-9 are principally concerned with the visitation of God through Nebuchadnezzar; Ammon is to be restored for the final scenes of judgment when the Lord comes to set up His kingdom on earth.

The land of the children of Ammon was north and east of the land of Moab, and separated from the Jordan valley by the possessions of the tribe of Gad. Rabbah was almost their only town, the Ammonites being of a roving disposition as are the Bedouins of the present day. Their country, like that of the Moabites, is a desolation according to Zephaniah 2:9; Rabbah’s site is occupied by a few Arabs, being the capital of Transjordania with the present name of Amman.

Verses 7-22 are concerned with Edom, the people of Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, whose land was south and southeast of Canaan. Severe as was the treatment promised to Moab and Ammon, the portion allotted to Edom exceeds in severity, though here, as with the others, we have the chastisement inflicted by Nebuchadnezzar, with little reference to the time yet to be.

Teman (verses 7 and 20) and Dedan (verse 8) seem to have been districts, rather than towns, in Edom. Bozrah (verses 13 and 22) was the royal city of the country. True wisdom (verse 7) is to give heed to the Word of God, and in that day to His warning that they must submit to Nebuchadnezzar. See Jeremiah 27:1-11 and chapter 25:15-38, which promised the judgments of which the present chapters give assurance. There was, however, complete disregard of God’s Word, and in due time the day of recompense dawned.

How like our own times was this rejection of God speaking in mercy to His creature, man! For many centuries the gospel has been proclaimed to sinners far and near, but men and women treat it with contempt. Eternal judgment, however draws near.

Edom’s desolation was to be complete, not like grape gatherers who leave a gleaning, or thieves who destroy only till they have enough; Edom would be reduced to orphans and widows (verses 8-11). Verse 12 seems to refer to chapter 25:15,27-29; the Edomites decided that they would not drink of that cup, but what God has determined, the proud will of man cannot avert (verse 13).

Verses 14-15: The judgment executed by the king of Babylon on Edom was concurred in, and apparently joined in, by other nations, for God had ordered that the aggressive Edomite kingdom should be despised among men. In this we may see a foreshadowing of the last days, when Edom will be destroyed forever.

Verse 16 mentioned the rock-dwellings of the land of Esau; they were quite secure against men, but would not be against the power of God which was behind Nebuchadnezzar’s army. Verse 19 is better understood if make him run away from her” is read as “make them (the Edomites) run away from it” (their strong habitation). This is the true reading. Edom occupies a prominent place in the prophetic Scriptures, but principally in connection with future judgments. Amos 1:11 and the short, prophecy of Obadiah refer to what is now past, but also look on to the future day.

Next in the series of judgments are the cities of the north: Damascus, beyond the northern limit of Dan, and Hamath and Arpad far northward. Nebuchadnezzar’s forces would strike them before entering the land of Israel. Ben-Hadad (verse 27) was a title of the kings of Syria. Kedar was northern Arabia, and Razor, whose location has not been fixed, was apparently also to the north and east of Palestine.

Elam (verses 35-39) was an ancient monarchy bordering Persia on the west and Babylonia (Chaldea) on the north; it became part of the Babylonian empire; in later times it was identified with Persia.

With the exception of Babylon, which occupies the next two chapters, we have seen the testimony of the Holy Spirit touching the state of the world of that day in relation to His people Israel, and as to that people also. Judah and Israel had fallen under the judgment of God; the others would not escape.

There is a parallel in our day, and what is soon to be: the Church of God has darted from the Word of God, and Christendom will be judged; but when that day comes, the whole world will meet the unsparing dealing of God. The Word of God shows the prospect, provides the way of escape, but the world, as such, will have none of it; it remains for those whose consciences are awakened, to believe God and own Christ, as their personal Saviour and Lord.

Jeremiah 50

Chapters 50 and 51 pronounce judgment upon the Gentile empire which God had permitted to rise to preeminence when the house of Israel had sinned so deeply, and without repentance, that He could not continue to own them as His people. Chapter 25:12-14, in the call for subjection to Nebuchadnezzar’s rule, had briefly promised the fall of his empire when seventy years should have passed over the captive Jews in Babylon, and the last two verses of Daniel 5 tell of the slaughter of Belshazzar, the young Babylonian ruler, with the government passing to Darius the Mede, who served under Cyrus, the conquering Persian, with the title of king of Babylon. (See 2 Chronicles 36:22, 23; Ezra 1; Isaiah 44: 28, 45:1-4, Daniel 9:1, 2).

Babylonia as a kingdom, and presently under Nebuchadnezzar as an empire, was a revival of the very ancient Chaldean monarchy which had been destroyed by the Assyrians when they rose to power. When Assyria fell, the Chaldeans or Babylonians (the same people) took a large part of her territory; thus the names of “Chaldea” and “the Chaldeans” are found frequently in the references to the Babylonish empire or kingdom and people, in the books of Jeremiah and Daniel.

When Babylon fell, the Babylonian religion passed into eclipse, for the conquering Persians and Medes despised the idols of Babylon, among the chief of which were Bel and Merodach (verse 2 in our chapter).

Verse 3: The nation to rise out of the north was Media, northern neighbor of Babylonia proper (the ancient Chaldea). Media and Persia had practically the same language and the same religion; and Persia, formerly subject to Media, had, under Cyrus, acquired supremacy over Media and other lands a few years before the Babylonian empire came to an end.

Babylon’s site is now, as verses, 3, 13 and 39 and other passages (Isaiah 13, Jeremiah 25) foretold, a waste, uninhabited and uninhabitable marshy land. The judgment of God was, however, concerned not alone with the putting down of Babylon, but also with the return to Canaan of His erring and now, to some extent at least, repentant people (verses 4-8, 17, 19, 20, 33, 34). Some of the children of Israel—part of “the lost ten tribes” as they are called—returned with the children of Judah when Cyrus opened the way for the Jews to go back to Jerusalem. Thus we find a member of the tribe of Asher in Jerusalem when the infant Jesus was brought there according to the custom of the Jewish law (Luke 2:36).

God had committed power to Nebuchadnezzar (chapter 27:5-6) but that power had been misused; the Babylonians had treated the Jews cruelly (see verse 17) and defended their severity on the ground that the captives had sinned against Jehovah (verse 7). They did not know that God was taking notice of every act of cruelty done to His people, and would visit the Gentile empire for it.

Nor was this the only cause for the destruction of Babylon: the captors of the Jews delighted in the ruin of God’s heritage (verse 11); they had rebelled against Him (verse 21, for “Merathaim” read “the land of double rebellion” or “of apostasy”) as verse 24 also shows, and verse 29 which speaks of their acting proudly against Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel.

In verses 31-32 Babylon is called “pride”, as the marginal note indicates; verse 33 adds to the charges against the Gentile power, that they refused to let the children of Israel and of Judah go, and verse 38 that they were “mad after frightful idols” (JND). We may also turn to Isaiah 47:6-10 for other grounds for the cutting off, after so brief a history, of the Babylonian empire.

Verse 12: “Your mother” is evidently a reference to ancient Chaldea (see Isaiah 17:1, 6), in a figurative sense put to shame by the excesses of Babylon. The true sense of the latter part of the verse is “she is become hindmost (or the last) of the nations, a wilderness, a dry land and a desert.”

In verse 17 Israel is a hunted sheep, and in the end of verse 20 pardon is for those whom God will “leave remaining”—a remnant of the nation. “Pekod” in verse 21, is not the name of a town or district, but the Hebrew word for “visitation”, referring to the judgment of Babylon.

Jeremiah 51

This chapter completes the pronouncement of destruction upon the first Gentile empire, and brings us to the close of Jeremiah’s prophecies, for chapter 52 is the writing of another and unnamed pen of inspiration.

The reader will notice a certain similarity of expression in the language of Revelation 17 and 18 with what is said in Jeremiah 50 and 51. The New Testament Babylon is not the Asiatic city or country of the times of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, but a politico-religious development having its center in Rome, which, though existent almost from apostolic days, has not yet the character it will possess after the true Church has been removed from the earth.

What distinguishes and identifies both the literal. (Old Testament) and figurative (New Testament) Babylons is the assumption of supremacy in civil government by the highest religious profession (false before God, Satan himself being the fountain-head of it) which enslaves and corrupts those who come under its influence. Along with this there is the cruelest persecution of the true people of God. The end of both Babylons is no gradual process but a work of complete destruction, carried out with astonishing swiftness by men who, unconsciously to themselves, are directed and empowered by God to do it.

Verse 4: The destruction of Old Testament Babylon —the empire of Nebuchadnezzar—occurred in and near the city of that name, the empire’s capital; not a blow seems to have been struck by the Persians and Medes outside of Chaldea. All of Babylon’s outlying dominions owned the sovereignty of Cyrus, the head of the second Gentile empire, as soon as the capture of Babylon and its king’s execution became known.

Verse 5: The literal translation of the original Hebrew is very expressive: “For Israel is not in widowhood, nor Judah of his God,” etc.

The “land” referred to here is Chaldea.; “for their land is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel.” Verse 9 is also significant as telling the inward feeling of the Persian conquerors of Babylon: “We have treated (or would have healed) Babylon, but she is not healed; forsake her, and let us go every one into his own country,” etc. Not at once, but ere long, Babylon was left without inhabitant. Verse 10 shows the association of the Jews with what Cyrus accomplished and their desire to return to Zion to exalt their God.

Verse 12: Had the people of Babylon been watchful, the forces of Cyrus could not have gained entrance within the walls, but they were given over to feasting; Daniel 5 portrays the scene in the king’s palace while the Medes and Persians were digging a new channel to divert the river which passed through the city, and so made themselves a way of entry over the dry river bed.

Verse 13: Dwelling “upon many waters” is significant of prosperity; much commerce. “Covetousness” seems hardly strong enough to express the thought in English; it is rather “rapacity”—seizing by force, extortionate. In verse 16 read “lightnings for the rain”, and in verse 17, “Every man is become brutish so as to have no knowledge; every founder is put to shame by the graven image.” In verse 18 “errors” hardly conveys the sense of the Hebrew; it is rather “delusion”, or “mockery”.

Verses 15 and 16 bring our minds back from thoughts of man and his doings to consider Him by whose word the whole creation exists and Who continues His control of all things; as in Job’s day (chapter 12:9-25; 38:1-38) so it was in Isaiah’s (chapter 10:12-31) and Jeremiah’s, and is not less in these last days in which we live (Hebrews 1:1-4) while the gospel is being announced.

Verses 20 to 23 await the full recovery of Israel. Verse 24 does not link Israel with the judgment of Babylon of which Jeremiah treats; for that work Cyrus was used, because Israel was not in a fit state to be used of God.

Verse 27: Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz belong to Armenia, 500 miles northwest of the city of Babylon; they were the most northerly of Cyrus’ dominions.

Verse 31: “At one end” is really “from end to end.” Verse 30, “her sea” is the Euphrates, the Hebrew word being applicable to a large river, a lake or the sea.

Verse 41: Sheshach, as remarked in connection with chapter 25, is a name applied to Babylon. Verse 51 is the answer of the remnant of the Jews to the call in verse 50; in affliction of soul they returned to the ruins of Jerusalem (See Ezra).

Verses 59- 61 relate to a time 7 years before the desolation of Jerusalem, and before Ezekiel’s prophecies began, when Zedekiah made a journey to Babylon—probably at the order of Nebuchadnezzar. Seraiah’s characterization as a “quiet prince” is a defective translation; see the margin which reads “prince of Menucha, or chief chamberlain.” In verse 61 the latter part is rightly “see that thou read all these words.”

Jeremiah 52

The tongue and pen of Jeremiah have ceased, but his earnest words, spoken fearlessly during and shortly after the last years of the kingdom of Judah remain with us. That his messages concerning the people of Israel and the surrounding nations were not believed, is testimony both to the faithfulness of God, and the hardness and folly of the human heart. Jeremiah never had an honored place on earth, nor indeed have many of God’s servants; his reward will be seen in the corning day.

Verses 1-27 are almost an exact copy of 2 Kings, from chapter 24:18 to chapter 25:21. Nebuchadnezzar in 2 Kings is Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah; the Chaldean spelling is Nabu-kudurriuzur, but the name as given in the Old Testament is evidently that used by the Jews. It is quite common in our times for the spelling and pronunciation we apply to foreign names, to differ from the spelling and pronunciation used by the people whose language they are.

The account in Jeremiah 52 includes, what the passage in 2 Kings does not, that the king of Babylon slaughtered all the princes of Judah in Riblah (verse 10), and that he put Zedekiah in prison till the day of his death (verse 11). There are also more details in verses 19-23 than 2 Kings gives, and minor differences in two or three places.

Verses 28 to 30 are not found elsewhere. The number carried away by Nebuchadneezzar on his first visit to Jerusalem, in B. C. 606, when Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were taken to Babylon (Daniel 1:1-6) is not given.

“The seventh year” was B. C. 599, the date of what is called the “great captivity”; Ezekiel was among the captives taken at that time, and Zedekiah was then made king of Judah, ruling over the poor of the land that were left.

The “eighteenth year” marked the end of the siege that closed Judah’s history as a nation, when Jerusalem was destroyed.

The “twenty-third year” is not mentioned elsewhere, and we must conclude that the taking of captives at that time was a feature of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Egypt, foretold in chapter 46, which took place about this time.

The number of captives taken by Nebuchadnezzar is surprisingly small, if it be read as the number of the people of Judah whose lives were spared at the end of hostilities. About fifty thousand returned after the proclamation of Cyrus (see Ezra 2:64-65), and these were by no means all of the Jews in Babylon; five hundred thousand men of Judah are mentioned in 2 Samuel 24:9. Though war and famine and pestilence must have had no small effect on the population, yet it must be evident that the number of persons named in verses 29-30 can only be those seized at Jerusalem, and a much larger number were taken from other towns and the countryside.

Verses 31-34 are similar to 2 Kings 25:27-30. Evil-merodach was a son of Nebuchadnezzar who reigned only two years. Perhaps the dealings of God with his father, which are recorded by Daniel, made such an impression upon him that he resolved to treat the Jews kindly, and as a part of this purpose he took Jehoiachin out of prison and favored him above the other subject kings in Babylon. For Zedekiah there was no relief; he finished his life in prison; against him was the breaking of a promise made in Jehovah’s name to Nebuchadnezzar, while Jehoiachin had reigned only three months (2 Kings 24:8), and was probably too young (18) at that time to plan mischief against the great king; he would be 55 by the time he left his prison.

Lamentations 1

Sometimes a sorely troubled saint of God will exclaim, “Does God care that I suffer so?” This book is an answer to that question, though it is much more than that. It forms a sequel to Jeremiah’s prophecy.

The subject before Jeremiah in this inspired writing, is the ruin of Jerusalem, the city where God had placed His name, and where He chose to dwell in the midst of His people Israel, but now desolated because of their persistent attempt for centuries to link the name of Jehovah with sin. The prophecies of Jeremiah have set this fully before the reader, and in them we have traced something of the heart of this dear servant of God who entered into the state and the sufferings of his people, and to no little extent suffered with them. In this, as we have had occasion to observe, Jeremiah resembled his Master more than many others have done. (See Luke 16:41-44, John 11:33-38, Matthew 8:17).

When we were reading through the Psalms, mention was made of the acrostic farm of a number of them where, in the original, the initial letters of the verses correspond in order to the Hebrew alphabet. Psalms 25 and 34 were noted as examples of this, and Psalm 119 strikingly so, for there the Hebrew Alphabet’s 22 letters are actually named in their order, and each one of the eight verses under each letter begins, in the original language, with the Hebrew letter heading the group. The same plan has been followed in all but the last of the five chapters in this book; in chapters 1 and 2 The initial letter of each of the 22 verses follows the alphabetical order. Why is this done? Is it not to attract the godly to the study of the book?

Jeremiah well knew that sin had brought the grief of which he told; in fact, amid the complaint of departed glory and divine favor which he voices for his people, we find again and again the confession of the sin that led to the suffering.

There is weeping now (verse 2) where there had been hardness of heart. The “lovers” who had led Jerusalem away from God to seek happiness in the ways of a guilty, godless world, were now no help whatever to her; among all there was no comforter; her “friends” dealt treacherously, became her enemies. Satan is a hard master, and he pays poor wages at best, but he has always been able to deceive the simple. They strangely forget that as a man sows, so shall he also reap, though the Word of God declares it (Galatians 6:7) and the evidence of it is shown in the only altogether reliable history the world has ever had—the Bible; the truth of it will be fully manifested at the judgment seat of Christ and the great white throne, but we may notice many examples of “reaping” among our fellow men, sometimes in youth, often in the later years of life.

In the beginning, the Lamentations are occupied altogether with the circumstances of grief, as we are all apt to be when plunged into distress; relief comes after God is acknowledged, as we shall see in our progress through this remarkable little book. A full measure of sorrow was meted out when Jerusalem was destroyed, as verses 12-17 most touchingly bring out. Was ever sorrow like this? Yes, and deeper far! Psalm 22—with its fulfillment on Calvary’s hill (Matthew 27:45, 46), the antechamber to which was the garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:41-44) — presents the occasion of the deepest anguish this world will ever know.

In verses 12-15 God is seen as the source of the chastening, and verse 18 brings in confession consequent upon the realization that He is dealing with His people. “Jehovah is righteous; for I have rebelled against His commandment.” Next, in verse 20, is a call to Him: “See, Jehovah, for I am in distress, my bowels are troubled, my heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled ... .” Not yet is the burden gone, but the pressure of it is relieved, when once God is given His place in the believer’s trials.

Lamentations 2

In Lamentations 1 we observed that in the sufferings of God’s people which form the subject of the Lamentations, there was, first, occupation with the trial itself, and later the sufferers were led to occupation with God who had permitted the trial. Since many of the children of God are in trial in the difficult times of depression and unemployment, through which the world is now passing, may it please Him to make our study of Jeremiah and the Lamentations helpful because trial, though the circumstances of it may be widely different, is always designed for the rich blessing of the tried saint. It is only as we acknowledge God’s hand in our trials that we get into the state to receive the intended blessing.

Chapter 2 Continues the theme with which Chapter 1 ended, verses 1-9 being occupied with God, as the earlier part of chapter 1 was with circumstances alone. It is of moment to notice that the name of God commonly used here is not Jehovah, His name of covenant relationship, (usually, as has been before remarked, translated in the English Bible “The LORD”), but “the Lord”—a different Hebrew word meaning “Master”. The reason for this is, without doubt, that sin has put a distance between God and His people; they need, through trial, to be restored in their souls before they can again enjoy His presence.

The reader will note the growing intelligence as to God’s displeasure manifested in the language of verses 1-4, A little of this was evident in chapter 1, where we have “Jehovah is righteous, for I have rebelled,” etc. (verse 18); and “See, Jehovah, for I am in distress” (verse 20), but this chapter begins with the Lord righteously angry.

“How hath the Lord in His anger covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud!” Now “the daughter of Zion” is, ordinarily, a name of grace, of divine favor, but grace abused has led to judgment.

Verse 2 makes use of a stronger term than anger;—wrath, “He hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah.” The dearest place on earth to us all in a natural way,— home these —”the dwellings of Jacob”—the Lord had swallowed up.

In verse 3 we come to “fierce anger”; “He hath cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel...and He burned up Jacob like a flaming-fire...” The “horn” in Scripture means power, or strength. Then in verse 4 there is “fury”. “In the tent of the daughter of Zion He hath poured out His fury like fire.” It is not, we apprehend, that the indignation of God grew as He looked upon different objects, but rather that the understanding of the exercised saint grows as he inclines, his ear to hear what God has to say to him. It is only through deep and prolonged exercise that the believer thinks of sin in any measure as God does. We may illustrate this by reference to the forsaking of Christ on the cross; how little any of us apprehend what that meant to Him, and in many Christians there seems almost no intelligence as to the cause of it, and the meaning of that cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The young believer is happy because his sins are forgiven, but he does not realize at first very much how God hates sin.

All of Jerusalem passes away: in verse 6, the place of assembly, and in verse 7, the altar and sanctuary, His house; in verse 8 the wall, and in verse 9 the gates; the king and princes are among the Gentiles, the law is no more, the prophets fine( no vision from Jehovah. A pitiful picture of the state of the people is afforded in verses 10-12.

The ruin is complete, great: as the sea; the “virgin daughter of Zion”—again the name that speaks of God’s wonderful grace to Judah—is beyond earthly power of healing (verse 13), Her prophets had deceived her (verse 14), and now the passersby express their amazement at what has happened, while the enemies against whom God had guarded her, utter their hatred and exult over the downfall of the city.

Yet, the calamity was Jehovah’s work; He had purposed it; He had fulfilled His word which He had commanded from days of old (verse 17). From Moses onward, the word of God uttered through His faithful servants had warned the people that He must deal with them in unsparing judgment, if they went in the paths of sin.

Verses 18-19: What encouragement is here penned by the Spirit of God for those that are His, plunged in the deepest grief, even though their own ways have brought upon themselves the chastening band of the Lord!

“Their heart cried limo the Lord...let tears run down...give thyself no respite ... pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord; lift up thy hands toward Him...”

Into God’s ever attentive ear pour thy grief; He will not turn thee away!

Lamentations 3

In this chapter of 66 verses, the same acrostic form is used as in chapters 1 and 2, only that there are three verses for each letter; verses 1, 2, and 3 begin with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet,— aleph; 4, 5, and 6 begin with both, the second letter, and so on to verses 64, 65, and 66 which begin with tau, the last letter.

Jeremiah, in this chapter, represents in himself the believing remnant of Judah into whose sorrows he deeply entered. In verses 1-18 we have the tale of their sufferings before hope enters. How intense is the sorrow, how deep the anguish that here is portrayed; their cup is indeed filled full! Nor are the suffering’s absent that were peculiarly Jeremiah’s. “I am become a derision to all my people; their song all the day.” Blessed servant of God! he was treading, however feebly, in the path where Christ was afterward, in sinless perfection, to go. (See Psalm 69:7-12).

Observe now that word “Thou” in verse 17; it is God that is addressed. Shall we not say it again, that it is only when the tried heart has turned to God that there is blessing ahead? Let us seek Him then and at all times, not only when in trial. In verse 19 it is rather “Remember Thou” than my remembrance, for that comes in in its proper place in verses 20 and 21. My affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall are to be before me that I may be humbled, but I long to have Him take knowledge of them. And so I tell Him about all my pain. What is the result? The tried saint who has sought this Refuge from earth’s woes well knows, and the outflow of the chastened spirit is seen in verses 22-27, with the precious and needed meditation that follows in verses 28-42.

The word “mercies” in verses 22 and 32 as in other Old Testament passages, has the sense of “loving kindness”; mercy alone would not be enough to express the heart of God toward His people. Though mercy is first, because we have failed and sinned against Him, it is clothed in love, “loving kindness”; His compassions fail not; they are new every morning. How singularly blessed is the child of God! Do we truly enter into the children’s portion, we who are His?

“Great is Thy faithfulness,” (verse 23)—we could have nothing to say about our own, it is not worthy of mention,— “He is faithful,” as His Word so often reminds us. Upon our God, who abideth faithful (2 Timothy 2;13) our eternal portion rests and can never fail.

“Jehovah is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him” (verse 25). Shame upon us, if we have ever been tempted to doubt His goodness! But mark the importance of those two words: “them that wait for Him”; “the soul that seeketh Him.” Verse 26 follows with “It is good that one should both wait, and that in silence for the salvation of Jehovah” (JND), and verses 28-30 give us an exhibition of this quiet, humble waiting.

The Lord again engages the mind and heart in verses 31-35 very preciously with some searching of the conscience, as in verses 39-42. “Thou hast not pardoned” (verse 42), and the three following verses belong to the particular case of the) eves under the law; these passages are not applicable to the Christian who is privileged as they have not been, and will not be, in the knowledge of forgiveness until they have passed through both the tribulation and Zechariah 12:10-13:1. So also verses 59-66 are not for believers in the present dispensation of grace, who are taught of God to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44).

Lamentations 4

In the fourth chapter, the acrostic style is again used, the initial letters of the verses, as written in the original Hebrew, comprising the alphabet in its due order.

We come now to the prophet’s meditation upon the scene of judgment through which he has gone. How great the change from Jerusalem as it was! The gold that early adorned the city is become dim; the stones of the sanctuary are poured out, and the sons of Zion are esteemed as earthen pitchers.

Verse 6: The punishment of Judah is greater than that of Sodom upon which no hands were violently laid. It is because God deals with every one according to what he knows—the responsibility he carries, Thus the servant who knew his master’s will and did it not, is to be beaten with many stripes, while he who knew not, and did that which called for punishment, shall he beaten with few (Luke 12:47-48).

“You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will visit upon you all your iniquities,” is God’s solemn pronouncement upon Israel and Judah in Amos 3:1-2, and the Scriptures abound with examples of God’s dealing more severely with His own than with the world in this life.

Verses 7-8: “Nazarite” means “separated”, and the marks of the true Nazarite in unblemished perfection were to be seen only in Christ as He passed through the world, but Numbers 6 and the history of Samson, who was untrue to his Nazariteship (Judges 13-16), show what Nazarites should have been in Old Testament days.

Verse 12: The world which does not know God, does not understand what He does; they know nothing of His holiness, and vainly suppose that He will never interfere with the course of events on earth. “They would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy should enter into the gates of Jerusalem.” The Word, of God, however, gives the key (verse 13), for He does not leave His children in ignorance of His ways.

It was indeed a day of unsparing governmental dealing upon Judah, but her punishment will be over when that of Edom begins (compare verses 21 and 22). Edom, as we have before noted, is the relentless enemy of Israel—never repentant.

Lamentations 5

Chapter 5 has 22 verses, equal to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, but the acrostic form seen in the preceding chapters was not used in this one. It is a pitiful appeal to God, addressed as Jehovah (“the LORD” in the ordinary translation) without a word of complaint. “Our fathers have sinned, and they are not; and we bear their iniquities” (JND) is a true confession, in verse 7; yet more is confessed in verse 16: “Woe unto us, for we have sinned!”

But there is hope in Jehovah, the unchanging One. “Wherefore dost Thou forget us forever? Turn Thou us unto Thee...and we shall be turned” (verses 19-21). In Him alone is the power to bring the wayward nation back. Verse 22 is rightly rendered, “Or is it that Thou hast utterly rejected us? Wouldest Thou be exceeding wroth against us?”

The Spirit of God it is that produces these exercises in the saints. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, and yet more in the Lamentations, through which we have been privileged to journey together, we see, as another wrote many years ago, “the Spirit of God enters into all these details, not only of the ways of God, but of that also which passes through a heart in which the judgement of God is felt by grace; until all is set right in the presence of God Himself. Inspiration gives us, not only the perfect thoughts of God, and Christ the perfection of man before God, but also all the exercises produced in our poor hearts when the perfect Spirit acts in them, so far as these thoughts, all mingled as they are, refer in the main to God, or are produced by Him. So truly cares He for us! He hearkens to our sighs, although much of imperfection and of that which belongs to our own heart is mixed with them.”

“Can we not discern what a gap for the Bible if we had not Lamentations?”, another has said, “and we bless God for giving us this book which, though written to record past sorrows, and having in view the unparalleled sufferings that await the remnant of the future day, has in it pointed our own hearts anew to the God of all grace, the Father of mercies, Who comforteth us in all our tribulation...” (2 Corinthians 1:3, 4).

Ezekiel 1

We may note from the opening chapter of this prophecy, a marked difference from the style of Jeremiah. The latter suffered with his beloved people in the land of Israel, and in Jerusalem, as we have seen, but Ezekiel writes from Babylonia where he was a captive among others of his race by the river Chebar. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel: all three were living at this time but they were widely separated from each other.

Ezekiel, whose name means “Strength of God”, began his prophecies about thirty-five years later than Jeremiah’s binning. The thirtieth year (verse 1) is a Babylonian reckoning, referring to the time when the later empire was found by the father of Nebuchadnezzar, Nabo-Polassar.

The “fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity” is a reminder of Israel’s sins, for had they kept the Word of God before them they would have remained a free people; now all were subjects of the king of Babylon, and most of them were in his land. Upon the others, judgment was soon to fall, for Ezekiel’s early testimony begins several years before Jerusalem was overthrown and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.

God was about to make known to his servant Ezekiel the true state of the people of Israel, and the judgment to be executed on them because of their ways; He began by giving the prophet a vision of His throne of judgment, not now, as formerly in, or in relation with, Jerusalem, but wholly apart from it, and set for the punishment of that guilty city and its people. It is seen as coming out of the north, the direction from which the Babylonians would enter the land of Israel. They were to be the instruments of God’s next dealings with His people; such we have seen they had been already.

A description of the throne of God, and Him who sits upon it must necessarily be clothed in symbolic language, for it is bond the human mind to grasp what God is, or to comprehend the scope of all His ways; what we have here, as elsewhere in the Scriptures, is God in grace stooping down to the measure of man’s understanding, to make Himself known, even in a limited way, by His creatures. Figures are therefore adopted by which, with the Holy Spirit’s aid, we may here learn what God had to communicate concerning His governmental dealings with His people Israel. In the Revelation largely the same symbols are found.

The first of the symbols to attract our attention is the “whirlwind”, better translated (as it is in some other passages) “stormy wind.” Both terms are found in the Scriptures, but the particular Hebrew term used in verse 4 occurs in Job 38:1 and 40:6, where God is answering Job “out of the whirlwind,” and again in stating the manner of the removal of Elijah from earth to heaven (2 Kings 2:1 and 11). The symbol before us, then, is not wind in the ordinary sense, but indicative of divine power invisible to man, at work in the world, accomplishing God’s own purposes though man sees the result of its action. John 3:8 is an illuminative passage in this connection; so also Acts 2:2 Concerning the Holy Spirit’s descent on the day of Pentecost, where a rushing, mighty wind was an outward sign granted.

The “great cloud”, in verse 4, was a symbol of the presence of the God of Israel well known to the Jews. See Exodus 13;21, and 81:5, 1 Kings 8:10, Daniel 7:18 and Matthew 17:5, among many passages.

The “infolding fire” also tells of God—His holiness testing everything which comes before Him and consuming all that is unfit for His presence. Exodus 3:2 and 24:17, and Isaiah 6:6 are passages which, among many, may be helpful as to this symbol.

The four “living creatures” are evidently the cherubim of chapter 10, and in large measure correspond to the living creatures (called “beasts” in our English Bible) in the Revelation (chapter 4:6-8, etc.). First seen in Genesis 3:24 when sin had entered the world, they are the symbol of God’s judicial power in putting down evil. The faces evidently betoken intelligence (man); strength (the lion); stability or patience (the ox), and swiftness (the eagle); these are the attributes, or qualities, we would reverently say, of God in judgment.

The wheels and rings (rims) refer, no doubt, to the earthly side of God’s judgments; Ezekiel sees the throne of God on earth. John, in the Revelation, sees it in heaven, and there “wings” as in Ezekiel’s vision but not “wheels”, are observed. The rims are full of “eyes” in Ezekiel’s vision; in Revelation 4:6 this characteristic is applied to the living creatures. Evidently they picture for us the fullest insight concerning everything; nothing is hid from God.

All the action proceeds according to the purpose of Him who sits upon the throne (verses 12, 14, 17, 20, etc.); that throne is above (verse 26); consuming holiness marks Him (verse 27) yet there is mercy too, as verse 28 makes plain (in the symbol of the rainbow, as to which see Genesis 9:12-17 and Revelation 4:3). Well might Ezekiel prostrate himself bore the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God, who thus revealed Himself!

Ezekiel 2

The name “son of man” occurs nearly one hundred times in the book of Ezekiel. It was thus the Son of God spoke of Himself as He passed through this world on His journey from Bethlehem’s manger to Calvary’s cross (Mark 8:31; John 5:27; Matthew 8:20, etc.). That name belongs to the testimony of a God whom His chosen people have rejected, and Himself no longer dwells among them. Their judgment is before Him, though in grace He lingers over them. Marvelous grace it was, that brought His beloved Son into the world, not merely to testify for God to Israel, but to die in the stead of the sinner—whether he be Jew or Gentile—who believes in Him.

In verse 2 and again twice in chapter 3, the Holy Spirit is referred to: “the Spirit entered into me when He spoke unto me, etc.” The marginal note as to verse 3 shows that God viewed Israel now as “nations,” like, yet worse than, the Gentiles who had never borne a relationship to Him: “nations that are rebellious, which have rebelled against Me.” “They and their fathers” are classed together as transgressors against God, but the children are “stiff of face,” as the Hebrew reads, and hard-hearted. Nevertheless they were to hear the Word of God. His name, characteristically in Ezekiel is “the Lord Jehovah” (see chapter 3:11,27; 4:14, etc.), the translators have rendered it “the Lord GOD”. As Jehovah, the children of Israel had known Him, had rejected Him; they were going to have to bear the punishment of their many sins at His hand Who is Lord (Master) as well as Jehovah.

Ezekiel was to say to Israel, “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,” and the people, whether they would give heed or not, should know that a prophet, had been among them. They would learn, too late it might be, that by the favor of the God whom they dishonored, they had been given a true testimony from Himself, concerning themselves, which, heeded in time, brought His abiding blessing. That it was unheeded by’ the many, we well know, as is the gospel of the grace of God in our own times, but His purposes will be carried out whether men believe or not.

The prophets were never “popular” men, as people speak; we do not read concerning any of them that a large number received their messages and consorted with them. Jeremiah, we have seen, was made to feel the open enmity of the men of his day, and Ezekiel was now to have the same experience. Foreknowing what he would meet with of opposition among the people before whom he was to testify, God bade our prophet to be not afraid of them (verse 6), and in chapter 3 (verses 8-9) told him He had strengthened him for the difficult task before him.

Ezekiel 3

Ezekiel was given a book to eat, telling of the judgment to be executed on Israel, and though there was written therein “lamentations, and mourning, and woe” (verse 10) it was in his mouth as honey for sweetness (chapter 3:3). The believer rejoices that God will put down His enemies; will cleanse the world of evil; but when the fearful end of the wicked is seen, as John saw it in prospect in Revelation 10:9-10, the sweetness yields place to bitterness.

A solemn responsibility was committed to the prophet (verses 17-21); he must give warning from God to the wicked and to the righteous; if he failed to do it, the blood of the guilty would be required at Ezekiel’s hand. How important is the duty of every professed servant of God, to fulfill the service allotted to him!

Yet was Ezekiel to be wholly directed by his Master, who would cause him to be dumb or to speak, as He chose (verses 26-27). True service for God is not often unceasing labor, and not a little of the religious activity of the present day may not have His approval.

Ezekiel 4

The prophet, now within his own house (chapter 3:21), was to make a representation of the siege of Jerusalem for a sign to the house of Israel (verse 3). Ezekiel, as Jeremiah and as Daniel, though each in a different way, was brought into a deep realization of the iniquity of the people of God, to feel their distance from Him, and the justness of the judgment executed, and to be executed, upon them.

Ezekiel 5

Thus it was that Ezekiel was to bear the iniquity of the house of Israel (verse 1),—not in atonement; Christ alone, on the cross, did that. God here laid bare the whole case of His people’s sin: it began, responsibly, after David’s death, very quickly in the history of his son Solomon, who ruled in splendor over the widest domain Israel ever possessed.

Ezekiel 6

If the solemn pronouncements of chapter 5 had Jerusalem particularly in view, in chapters 6 and 7 the whole land falls under God’s solemn dealing, and the reason for it is plainly expressed: it was idolatry, the forsaking of God for another god. Upon the mountains and hills, the watercourses and valleys once described, even by the unbelieving spies (Exodus 13:27), as a land flowing with milk and honey, God was about to bring a devouring sword.

The altars should be desolate, their sun-images (see margin) broken and the worshipers slain before their idols. The Hebrew Scriptures contain several words for idols, but that which Ezekiel uses in every instance is one of contempt, meaning “objects rolled about.” To faith this was a fit name for them, but they were the means Satan’s craft successfully employed to lead men to give up God. When the sword of vengeance passed through the land, the children of Israel would know that Jehovah had visited them, and their idols would be powerless to help them.

In mercy to Israel God would leave a remnant (verse 8), but these would be only they who escaped the sword, and they should be scattered through the countries. Such is Israel, or at least Judah, today, (for the ten tribes are lost to our view)—a people under God’s displeasure, making their homes as best they can among the Gentiles they once despised.

Verses 9-10 bring a gleam of hope for Israel; not yet have they been fulfilled, though the people have not worshiped idols since the Babylonian captivity.

Verses 13-14 emphasize the judgment upon all the abominations of the iniquities of the house of Israel, and show that Nebuchadnezzar’s hosts ravaged the land beside besieging Jerusalem. Where-ever idol worship was carried on—round their altars, on every high hill, on all the tops of the mountains, under every green tree, and under every thick terebinth— the places where they offered sweet savor to all their idols, there would the slain be found, their last steps leading them to seek these Satanic substitutes for the worship of the true God.

Diblath, a wilderness whose identity is now unknown, we may well suppose to have been a very desolate place in Ezekiel’s day, but the whole land of Israel was to be more desolate than Diblath had been.

Ezekiel 7

Chapter 7 enlarges upon the desolation of the land, completing the prophetic word whose beginning was in chapter 4. An end, the end, indeed, was come for Israel whose abominations (a term in Scripture associated with idolatry) brought upon the nation the unsparing judgment of a longsuffering God.

There could be no pity in that judgment, since forbearance had ever been despised, and the words of God’s prophets refused. The rod had blossomed, pride was full blown; violence was risen up into a rod of wickedness; nothing of them should remain, nor of their multitude (verses 10-11). Outside would be the sword; within, pestilence and famine; death in one form or another threatened all. Some would escape with their lives, bemoaning their state (verses 15-16). They gird on sackcloth; horror covers them; shame is upon all faces, baldness on all heads (verse 18). These are all part of the wages of sin, but it does not appear that conviction would come to many, with confession and humiliation before God. When men and women will not heed God’s Word while there is opportunity, there is little ground to suppose that when death threatens they will believe and be saved. Rather are they apt to be hardened then, and die determinedly in their sins.

What use are gold and silver when life’s bright day is over? Silver and gold shall not be able to deliver the possessor in the day of Jehovah’s wrath, nor would they satisfy the soul or fill the belly in the famine which besieged-Jerusalem would experience (verse 19).

The costly temple Solomon had erected was profaned by the images of idols and of detestable things; God had forsaken it, and would give it to strangers, to the wicked. The worst of the nations would shortly enter the land now full of bloody crimes, and the city full of violence (verses 20-24). Peace sought when destruction comes is not found, nor will prophet, priest or elder be of avail then.

A mourning king and a dismayed prince, and trembling people, complete the picture of human woe in that day (verses 25-27).

Fearful are the closing words of chapter 7: “I will do unto them (the unrepentant sinners of Israel who were involved in the judgment of that day) according to their way, and with their judgments will I judge them; and they shall know that I am Jehovah.” What then of the despisers of God’s Word in 1935?

Ezekiel 8

Ezekiel’s first vision occurred in the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity, as we learned from chapter 1; the second, of which chapters 8 to 11 tell, was in the sixth year — midway in the eleven year reign of the last king of Judah, and five years before Jerusalem’s destruction at the hands of the Babylonians.

The elders of Judah had gathered in Ezekiel’s house, perhaps to inquire after any word of hope for them that he might have received from God; it was then that the second vision was given him. In spirit, and by the Spirit of God, he was taken to Jerusalem to behold the wickedness going on there, on account of which the chastisement of God was about to fall on the city and people. First, however, Jehovah as judge is again revealed to him; there is a likeness as the appearance of fire; from the appearance of His loins and downward, fire; and from His loins and upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the look of glowing “brass” (all unknown substance some think to be gold and silver).

How different are these revelations of God in Chapters 1 and 8 from what we know of Him as manifested in grace to those who trust in His Son and seek to walk in ways pleasing to Him! In the vision granted to Ezekiel, however, as in the vision of John at Patmos (Revelation it), it is the holiness of a God who cannot bear evil, and not His love, that is prominent, and Christendom will, in its own time, be judged as unsparingly as Israel.

In succession, five scenes at Jerusalem pass before the eyes of Ezekiel. First is the entry of the inner gate that looked toward the north (verse 8); there was the seat of the image of Jealousy, which provoked God to jealousy. The glory of the God of Israel was there, for He had not then actually forsaken Jerusalem. The image was, perhaps, of Baal, perhaps Ashtoreth; its identity does not matter; it was enough that an idol was set up, and God was therefore disowned.

We may suppose that the reigning king Zedekiah was responsible for the placing of this image. Josiah, his father, had made a clean sweep of idols and places of idol-worship in the land of Israel (2 Kings 23), but of his sons and grandson not one seems to have walked in his steps.

Ezekiel was now directed to look afresh toward the north, and he saw, northward of the gate of the altar, this image of jealousy in the entry. Thus had idolatry raised its brazen face near to the place where sacrifices were wont to be offered for the sins of the people. Was it not an invitation to Jehovah to go far off from His sanctuary?

The prophet was next brought, in the vision, to the entry of the court of the temple, where a more shameful sight greeted him when a concealed resort was exposed to view. Around the room were drawn or painted upon the walls, every form or pattern of creeping thing and of abominable beast, and, besides, all the idols of the house of Israel.

How degrading is idolatry! This was no heathen land, where God was unknown; nor were the worshipers ignorant of Him, for we are expressly told that the seventy were the elders of the house of Israel, and their leader was a son of Shaphan. If this be that Shaphan who served the godly Josiah (2 Kings 22; 2 Chronicles 31), how great was the decline from father to son! In their wicked hearts these men were saying, Jehovah seeth us not; Jehovah hath forsaken the land! “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” (Psalm 14:1-3; 53:1-3).

Then at the entry of the gate of the temple that was toward the north, Ezekiel sees women sitting, weeping for the Phoenician god Tammuz—apparently the same as the later Greek Adonis. Lastly, in the inner court of the temple, at the entry, between the porch and the altar, about 25 men worshiping the sun are seen by Ezekiel. Were they the high priest and the heads of the twenty-four courses of priests of the Lord?

Along with the devotion of the people to the false gods of the heathen, there was the accompaniment of violence, the twin of corruption, as it has ever been. Contempt for God, of course, came with these (verse 17). Can we wonder that, Israel’s cup being now full of their iniquities, unsparing judgment would shortly be the portion of this people?

Ezekiel 9

In the prophet’s vision he is brought to the day of slaughter, the day of the vengeance of God upon Jerusalem, which occurred almost five years later. In view of the working of wickedness which was revealed in the 8th chapter, we can but marvel at the divine forbearance that permitted another 5 years to pass before the city and its inhabitants were overwhelmed in judgment long withheld.

As before, the action here is symbolic; what we see in figure is the judgment of God poured out on the people of Jerusalem, with angels as the doers of His bidding. When the final scenes were enacted, the soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar were God’s visible instruments.

From the north—the direction from which the enemy would approach for Jerusalem’s siege and destruction—come six men, each with his slaughter (literally “dashing-in-pieces”) weapon, and in the midst of them one clothed with linen, with a writer’s ink-horn on his loins. These angelic beings take their places at the brazen altar—place of the judgment of sin—but no victim to be offered as the sinner’s substitute is seen upon it now. The day for that is past; the sinner himself is about to be judged.

The linen clothing of the man with the ink-horn indicates a priest, or priestly work. He stands, in what follows, between those who sighed and cried for all the abominations that were practiced, and the sword of vengeance which should have devoured them. Does he not then present an apt figure of Christ’s work on behalf of those who trust in Him? We are reminded, too, in the marking-of those to be preserved from judgment, of His precious word in John 10:1.4; “I know My sheep.”

Verse 3 records the beginning of the departure of the visible token of the presence of God—the glory cloud—from the temple at Jerusalem. He cannot longer remain among a people who have sold themselves to Satan, but chapter 10:19, and chapter 11:23 show with what lingering steps Israel’s God darted from His earthly habitation. Chapter 43, in a prophecy yet to be fulfilled, presents the return of the glory to a new, a cleansed, Jerusalem where righteousness will reign.

Verse 6: The unbelieving, of course, reject the Word of God, but that Word, both by promise and example, points to unsparing judgment as the portion of those who are destined to meet Him as Judge. In the flood of Noah’s day, who escaped of those outside the ark of safety? None whatever! When Sodom’s judgment fell, who escaped from the city? None whatever!

These two examples were before the Lord Jesus in Luke 17, in speaking of judgment to come. And if we turn to Revelation 20, where the wicked dead are seen gathered before the great white throne, we search in vain for mention of any who shall he spared from the lake of fire. None? None whatever!

Judgment begins at the house of God, as Peter records, in 1 Peter 4:17. It is a principle the exercise of which is discernible throughout the Scriptures. God requires holiness in those who draw near to Him. Accordingly the word to the executioners in verse 6 is: “Begin at My sanctuary!”

Verse 7: The temple having been defiled by the introduction of other objects of worship, as told in chapter 8, God will no longer dwell there; the house has become common, and He directs His servants to defile it, and fill the courts with the slain.

Verses 8-10: Like Abraham, in Genesis 18:22-33, Ezekiel pleads for the objects of consuming judgment, but the iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah was exceeding great; the land was full of blood, and the city full of perverseness. They said, “Jehovah hath forsaken the earth;” “Jehovah seeth not.” (See Psalm 94:9). God’s eye shall not spare, in the judgment; He will recompense their way upon their head.

Verse 11 gives the fitting close to the chapter: the priestly office has been fulfilled, and those who fear the Lord are marked out to be spared; they are safe in the day of judgment.

Ezekiel 10

The prophet’s vision of coming judgment continues, and he sees again the judgment throne of God which he had observed in his first vision in the land of Chaldea. When Moses went up in Mount Sinai with Aaron and his sons and 70 elders of Israel (Exodus 24:9-10) they saw the God of Israel, in so far as He chose to reveal Himself to human sight, and there was under His feet as it were work of transparent sapphire. This stone, azure, or sky-blue in color; is clearly used in Scripture as emblematic of heavenly glory.

The man clothed with linen, who in chapter 9 placed a mark on every one who groaned because of the wickedness going on at Jerusalem, is here instructed to go, (or rather come, for such is the true reading) in between the wheels that he may fill his hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city. This is plainly a figure of consuming judgment.

The cloud, token of God’s presence, fills the inner court, but there is no mention of the most holy place: He dwells there no longer. Indeed His presence at Jerusalem is as ordering the execution of wrath upon it, and “the sound of the wings of the cherubim” (verse 5) gives the impression of readiness for immediate departure.

The beryl (verse 9) is believed to be the golden topaz or chrysolite, and from other passages where it appears it would seem to represent the righteousness of God, not as conferred upon others by sovereign grace, but here as judging all that is contrary to it. It is therefore the “appearance of the wheels,”—that which in the divine operations touches the earth, —that was as the look of a chrysolite stone.

In general, the description of the throne of judgment and its action, corresponds with what is set forth in chapter 1. In the present chapter, the eyes which were observed to characterize the rims of the wheels in the first chapter, are seen to cover the body, backs, hands and wings of the cherubim (See Revelation 4:8). May we not with reverence say that the judgment of God demands (and has as its invariable accompaniment) the fullest knowledge, or discernment. There is no respect of persons with Him, nor is aught unknown to Him (Hebrews 4:13; Romans 2:2, 16).

As to the faces of the cherubim, we observe a change from chapter 1 in that the similitude of the ox (endurance, or patience) is gone, and the face of a cherub (judgment) takes its place. The time for endurance is past, and judgment will now proceed. Nevertheless, they are the same as when Ezekiel saw the cherubim by the river Chebar; Jehovah is the Same: He who changes not, as men change, though sin demands judgment and will have it.

Verse 18: The glory departs from the temple, never to return until the dawn of the Millennium, yet it lingers near, as though loath to depart. Thus has our God ever acted toward His wayward, self-seeking creature, man. Nevertheless the judgment day of this world approaches, a day of retribution to every one according to his work.

Ezekiel 11

There is marked significance in the scene which the Spirit of God here (verses 1-3) set before Ezekiel in his vision. In the 8th chapter he saw Israel both openly and secretly connecting the temple of Jehovah with the worship, of false gods, and this on the part of the leaders who stood in greatest responsibility, and of the people also. Israel’s God, in practice, was utterly disowned, while yet His name was professed. Chapters 9 and 10, therefore, gave assurance of unsparing judgment, coupled with the tokens of God’s judgment throne, leaving that place which He had chosen to set His name there.

But there was another form or character of wickedness against God, just as today in the world there are found not only the corrupters of what people call “religion”, whereby God’s Christ is falsified and denied in the words of many a pulpit sermonizer, but also (another mark of the last days) in growing numbers are seen a godless party whose principle is expressed in the language of the fool who said in his heart, “There is no God”—the rejecters of any sort of religion. Such we have presented in the opening’ verses of chapter 11. They are seen congregated at the entrance to the temple as though blocking the way where, under God’s gracious provision, a poor, confessed sinner might approach Him, seeking-forgiveness for his sins.

Jeremiah 38, while not naming the peons mentioned here in verse 1, shows the same class of rejecters of the counsel of God. The names of the two princes are significant: Jaazaniah, meaning Jah (a name of God) is hearing; and Pelatiah, meaning Jah delivers.

Another Jaazaniah was the leader of the party of idolatrous worshipers in chapter 8:11. God was indeed “hearing” what was going on, though neither of the Jaazaniahs cared aught for Him. God “delivers”, but He did not deliver Pelatiah (see verse 13). Was it desire toward God that led the parents of these wicked men to name their children as they did, or were they considered “nice names”, and given without serious thought to the little ones?

The irreligious class of verse 1 despised the message of Jehovah brought to them by Jeremiah, and dwelt in a false security, confident that Jerusalem would not be captured and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and they themselves brought to death or slavery. Judgment to the full, hover, was hanging over them; the storm, long preparing, was soon to burst.

When God is rejected, the heart of man, unrestrained, lets forth what is stored up within, and murder was common (verse 6), but the murderers were to fall by the sword, not, indeed, in Jerusalem, but within the borders of Israel (verses 10-11); for the fulfillment of this promise see Jeremiah 39:5-6.

Verse 15: Lifted up in pride for which there was no ground whatever, the unworthy inhabitants of Jerusalem, the poorest sort of the people of the land (2 Kings 24:14) considered themselves favored of God, and despised their kinsmen who had been carried away to Babylon and, further back in Israel’s history, to old Assyria. See Jeremiah 24 for God’s thoughts about the captives of Judah and the wicked men of Jerusalem.

But this expression of the proud heart of the people of Jerusalem only leads to a blessed promise concerning the captives (verses 17-20), a promise whose fulfillment awaits the dawn of Israel’s national recovery when the Lord shall come to the earth again to set up His Millennial kingdom. It is that bright day for which the Old Testament prophets looked, when a new Israel shall he born, that is here in view.

In verse 17 “the people” (properly, “the peoples”) refers to the Gentiles among whom the Jews have for almost twenty centuries sought a home. Palestine is their true home, and the only one that they will be allowed to keep. The present influx of Jews to the Holy Land, while deeply interesting to every intelligent student of prophecy, is not the promised work which will issue in the return of a meat number of the sons of Jacob to the land of promise; this awaits God’s time, and it does not appear that it will occur before the heavenly saints are taken away at the Lord’s coming for His saints, though that longed-for event must surely be near now.

In connection with verses 18-21, read chapter 36:17-38, and Jeremiah 31:31-34. Verses 22-23 give the last view of the symbols of the presence of God; they were then upon the mount of Olives, the peak which is opposite Jerusalem on the east, (see Zechariah 14:4) speaking of the Lord’s future appearing at Jerusalem at the moment when all hope of deliverance for the godly remnant of Judah will seem to have vanished.

We have reached the end of this long vision, and Ezekiel told the people, his companions in Chaldea, what he had learned from God.

Ezekiel 12

The Jerusalem-Jews were not alone in an evil course, for in verse 1 Ezekiel is reminded that he dwelt in the midst of a rebellious house (the captive Jews). Having eyes, they saw not; having ears, they heard not, being insubject to God. Nothing can be compared to the patience He has shown toward His creature, man, and we have fresh evidence of it here in His regard for Israel.

Altogether marvelous is the patience of God in our own times, when an enlightened but unbelieving world ignores, even treats with contempt, the gospel of His grace. Eyes to see, but seeing not; ears to hear, but hearing not, are the rule today in the countries commonly called Christian, where the Word of God is known. How long will the patience of God. Continue? In the time of Ezekiel’s prophecy it was soon to end in the judgment of the last of unrepentant Israel, and many things in these days point to an early end of the day of grace for the Gentiles, when the Jews also will pass under the rod of God’s wrath far more than hitherto.

The captives among whom Ezekiel lived, cherished flue delusion that Jerusalem would never be destroyed, nor the last of Israel be removed from the land of their forefathers. Similarly, in these times, scoffers abound, walking after their own lusts, and in effect saying, “Where is the promise of Christ’s coming?” See 2 Peter 3:3-4 which present a true picture of the world today, for the willing ignorance of God and His Word so evident in our times assures us that judgment, long pronounced, is soon to be executed.

The Jews desired signs (1 Corinthians 1:22-24; Matthew 12:38-39), and God graciously showed them, in the actions of Ezekiel, what was shortly to occur at Jerusalem (verses 3-7). The prophet was directed to portray scenes in a besieged city; in turn to prepare a captive’s, or exile’s baggage, to bring it forth in the evening as though going into exile, to dig a passage by which to go out through the wall in the dark of night (“twilight” it is called, but darkness is meant—the time when the king and his soldiers were to seek to escape from the doomed city. Jeremiah 39:1).

Another sign, not understood at the time, we may suppose, foreshadowed the blindness to be inflicted upon king Zedekiah: “Thou shalt cover thy face that thou see not the ground” (verse 6). (Jeremiah 39:7).

By these signs, explained in due course by Ezekiel, the captives where he dwelt were assured that all hope was gone of averting the removal of the last of their countrymen, together with their king, from Jerusalem into captivity.

While the city remained, and a king of Judah sat on his throne, the glory of Israel was not entirely gone, and hope remained that the kingdom might be strengthened. This was not to be, for all God’s offers of mercy had been refused; the last opportunity had passed, and only the execution of the sentence of judgment remained to be carried out.

Verses 17 to 20: Further tokens of the last days of the siege of Jerusalem were given Ezekiel. There would be fear and trembling because of foes without, and the growing shortage of food within, and this the prophet was to illustrate before his fellow-captives in Chaldea, by eating his bread with quaking, and drinking his water with trembling and with anxiety.

Verses 21 to 25; Idol serving, God forsaking Israel had a proverb of unbelief, but like every other deceit of the natural heart, its folly becomes apparent in God’s own time. He purposes will infallibly be done, and they who heard were soon to see it performed.

Verses 20-28 carried a message for those who were not so hold as others in open unbelief. To them the day of God’s judgment might be a sure prospect, but it would riot come for a long while; not in their time, surely, these slighters of the prophetic word thought and said, would the vials of Jehovah’s wrath be poured out. Yet mercy’s day was nearly over; the clouds of judgment already covered the sky, we may say, and soon the storm from which there would be no escape, would descend on guilty Jerusalem.

And what of the prospect for this careless, pleasure-bent world in which it is ours to live?

Ezekiel 13

The true prophet speaks the mind of God, but those with whom this chapter deals were false; they prophesied out of their own hearts (verse 2), followed their own spirit and had seen nothing. This was God’s estimate of them. (verse 3). They had had no communication from Him. (See Jeremiah 23:25-32 and chapter 28 of that book for more about this class). The prophets of Israel were no more to be considered than the foxes in the deserts (verse 4).

The wall of separation from the nations, which God had set up, was now in ruins; “gaps,” or breaches, abounded in it so that Israel, mingling with and imitating their heathen neighbors, had become worse than they. (See chapter 5:5-7). None endeavored to close these gaps to restore true separation to God among the people of Judah, nor looked onward to the day of the Lord (for Ezekiel’s prophecies leap over all the centuries of Gentile dominion without mention of them. That “day” is the period of at least one thousand years which occupies a large place in the Old Testament prophetic Scriptures, in which the Lord will set the world in order, cleansing it of all that offends Him.

Verse 5 tells what the false prophets had not done, neglecting their plain duty, if they had been what they claimed to be—servants of the living and true God. The sharp, unerring word of the Holy Spirit, the word of God, declares in two words what these men did and taught: “vanity” (in the sense of worthless, unsatisfying talk or pursuits), and “lying” (verses 6 to 9).

They professed to know His will by divination and by visions, but it was a fabric of falsehood. Ignorant souls, not looking to God for help, were deceived by these men into expectations that were not to be fulfilled (verses 6, 10). Changing “whereas” to “when” in verse 7 makes the meaning of that challenging inquiry clearer, The case against these wicked perverters of God’s truth is complete, and verses 8 and following tell of their end as far as this life goes. The judgment of the great white throne (Revelation 20) lies on before, but is not mentioned here.

We have noticed in the book of Jeremiah the character of these prophets; in their estimation (blinded, morally) Jerusalem would never be taken and destroyed; they are here (verses 10-15) in the same occupation, expressed as the builders of a wall with untempered mortar, which would fall before the “overflowing shower” of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege. In that day, near at hand then, the builders of the wall—the promoters of resistance to the revealed will of God concerning the king of Babylon—would perish.

How like the untrue prophets of our own times were these men of old! The latter saw “visions of peace, when there is no peace, saith the Lord God” (verse 16), and after the same pattern do they of today talk of peace and prosperity with no judgment to come, denying in terms the solemn words of Holy Writ.

There were women, too, in the days of Ezekiel who, like the men, prophesied out of their own heart (verse 17). They had enticements to catch souls, and lying was their constant practice. We may read the latter part of verse 18: “Will ye catch the souls of My people, and will ye save your own souls alive?” So also verse 20 has been retranslated, “Behold, I am against your pillows, that the souls which ye catch by their means may fly away; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, the souls that ye catch, that they may fly away.”

God has His eyes upon His beloved and often tried people—those who trust in Him—as verse 22 brings freshly before us: “Because with lies ye have grieved the heart of the righteous whom I have not made sad.” Blessed God! the trials of His saints are all before Him. See Revelation 2:9, reading “railing” instead of “blasphemy” which is a translator’s mistake.

Little do they think, who preach a false gospel, of the light in which God views their “Modernism”, so called, which is at least as old as the times of Jeremiah and Ezekiel “... with lies ye have...strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, to save his life...” These blind and wicked leaders would learn in the end (too late to do them good) who God is, and His people upon whom they imposed their lies would be delivered out of their hands (verse 23).

Ezekiel 14

The elders of Israel, the old men of the nation, by reason of their years, should have been faithful men, examples of righteousness and godliness, but those who came to Ezekiel, evidently to get him to inquire of God for them, were not a whit better than the other leaders of the people spoken of in earlier chapters.

The heart-knowing God (Acts 1:24; 15:8) from whom nothing is hidden, told His servant what sort of persons his callers were: they had set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face. Thoroughly joined to idolatry, their minds were closed to any call to repentance; with seared conscience they approached God as though He were like themselves, or that He was indifferent to His dishonor. There was no fear of Him before their eyes (Romans 3:18).

The answer God gave Ezekiel to return for Him to the elders was a direct rebuke, a revelation to them that He discerned them through and through, and a promise of certain judgment except they repented (verses 4-8). Marvelous, indeed, is the grace of our God, who speaks of mercy when any but Himself would have long since ceased to consider it. Yet will He never compromise with sin, and if a prophet were to join hands with the sinners of that day, linking God’s name with. His dishonor, both the prophet and the man who sought him, should be punished for their iniquity (verses 9-10).

Verse 11: Here again, as previously noted in connection with the book of Ezekiel, is a promise of God’s unchangeable purpose to bless Israel, without mention of the centuries of Gentile dominion which were to elapse before that, yet future, but now no longer distant, day shall dawn.

Verses 12-21, while in principle applicable to any land where God has been known, refers, primarily, to Israel, for they alone, among the nations, have occupied a place of special relationship to God.

“When a land sinneth against Me by working unfaithfulness, and I stretch out My hand upon it, etc.” (verse 13, N.T.) describes the position of guilt in which the whole people stood before Him, and the wrath which was poured out upon them.

Righteous persons (and there were such, even in that dark hour in Israel’s history) would not avail to stay the execution of divine judgment upon the land. Abraham’s intervention in behalf of Sodom (Genesis 18:23-33) and Jeremiah 15, where Moses and Samuel are named, recalling times of special intercession for Israel, (Exodus 32:80-35; 1 Samuel 7:3-12) throw light upon this portion of chapter 14, but here it is clear that Israel’s sins were now such in God’s sight that no intercession would avail them.

Noah, Daniel and Job are therefore singled out for mention as righteous persons in God’s reckoning.

Noah (Genesis 6:8-9; 7:1) a righteous man and a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5) with his family of seven persons passed through the judgment flood that swept away the early world.

Job, who evidently lived about the time of the patriarch Jacob, was another man righteous in his generation (Job 1:1), and there was none like him in the earth (verse 8); he prayed for his three friends and was heard (chapter 42:7-10). When these two, Noah and Job, lived and died; the nation of Israel was as yet unborn.

With whom, in Israel’s long history, shall these honored names be linked? The Spirit of God chooses: it is the young man Daniel, at the court of, or at least in authority under, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon at this time (Daniel 2:18, 49). After this, when Daniel was old, we have God’s testimony concerning him, that he was “greatly beloved” (Daniel 9:23; 10:11, 19), but the divine record of his life shows him to have been from his youth one who feared and honored God (Daniel 1:8; 2:17 etc.; 5:11-23; 6:3-22).

Though these three men were in the land, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness in the day when God’s four sore judgments were sent. Yet in affecting grace, God’s prose is given (verses 22-23) that there shall be a remnant delivered out of the all-including judgment. Of this Isaiah and Jeremiah have testified.

Ezekiel 15

THE short 15th chapter treats Israel under the well-known figure of the vine—God’s vine, responsible to bring forth fruit. (Psalm 80:8-11: Jeremiah 2:21; Hosea 10:1, and many other passages refer to Israel as the vine, or the vineyard, which God had planted and cared for). The vine had failed to yield fruit to God, its husbandman, and now His word to Ezekiel is, “What is the vine (or, the wood of the vine) more than any wood, the vine branch which is among the trees of the forest? Shall wood be taken thereof to do any work?”

It is not useful as the wood of other trees, and even as fuel its value is low. Israel had already experienced the fire of God’s indignation in the captivity of both “ends” of the nation—the ten tribes and the two, and only the small part was left in possession of the land; these were more wicked than their fellows who had gone into captivity.

God was therefore about to give to the fire the inhabitants of Jerusalem who are viewed as representative of the people left in the land of their forefathers. He would set His face against them, and when they would seek to escape front one fire, another would devour them. This, we may gather, referred to the effort to escape from the besieged city, which ended in the capture of those who fled. (Jeremiah 39:4-9).

Ezekiel 16

Chapter 16 takes up Jerusalem in another way, under the symbol of an unfaithful wife. The city’s beginning was Canaanitish, and there was evidently nothing in its early history of which to be proud. Its first name was Jebus, which is said to mean “Trodden down”. Captured after the death of Joshua (Judges 1:8) it was only fully taken possession of by David when he made it the capital city (2 Samuel 5:6-9), It was then that God bestowed His favor on the place, and after David’s death, when Solomon built the magnificent temple and beautified Jerusalem, it became a city of extra-regal splendor, But the pinnacle of glory thus attained was quickly followed by fearful departure from God, even in Solomon’s day (1 Kings 1:1-8). The course of Israel thereafter was an evil one for the most part, as is shown by 1 Kings 14:22-24; 2 Kings 17:7-23; 2 Chronicles 36:12-16, and many other passages.

Idolatry was the great snare of the children of Israel in all their history until they were carried as captives into the land of idols,—Babylon. Since then they have left idols alone. With the spread of idolatry there was abandonment of the place of separation from the Gentile world, and seeking alliance in turn with Egypt and with Assyria; God, as Israel’s Husband and Protector, was given up. So acting, it was impossible but that immorality and violence abounded, for one wrong step leads to another.

Judgment is pronounced upon Jerusalem because of all this (verse 35 and following). More corrupt than Samaria and Sodom was the city once marked out as God’s choice; indeed Samaria (the capital of the ten tribe kingdom of Israel) had not sinned according to half of Jerusalem’s sins.

Nevertheless, Jehovah will remember His covenant with His earthly people, and will establish an everlasting covenant (see Jeremiah 31: 31-34). For this, Israel must be redeemed—brought back from among the dead (Romans 11:15).

Ezekiel 17

In this chapter, history is stated. The great eagle of verse 3 was Nebuchadnezzar, head of the Babylonian empire. The description given carries with it the thought of great power and glory (great wings, long wings or pinions, rich in many colors). (See Isaiah 13:19), He came to Lebanon and took the highest branch of the cedar.

Lebanon’s cedars express, in Scripture, the loftiness of man, and here the house of David, the royal line of Judah, is meant, subjected however (because of their departure from God) to the Gentile power. By the “highest branch” is meant Jehoiachin (2 Kings 21:8-16), the young man who succeeded to the throne of Judah on the death of his father Jehoiakim, but was quickly carried away to Babylon.

Verses 5-6 refer to Nebuchadnezzar’s making Zedekiah (Jehoiakim’s brother, and uncle of Jehoiachin) king of Judah, giving him rule at Jerusalem over what remained of the people. At that time, or earlier still, when Jehoiakim became king (Jeremiah 27:1-15) God sent word through Jeremiah to the kings of Judah and the neighboring countries that they should acknowledge Nebuchadnezzar’s overlordship. For some years Zedekiah yielded tribute to the ruler of Babylon, but afterward he rebelled (2 Chronicles 36:13), to his own utter undoing.

There was another great eagle with great wings it was Egypt — and the vine of verse 6 (Zedekiah) bent her roots toward him, shot forth her branches tard him. Zedekiah was courting the favor of the Egyptians, in order that he might break the yoke of Babylon, to whose king he had sworn to be faithful, by an oath in the name of Jehovah. Neither his oath nor the word of God to him, directing him to be subject to Nebuchadnezzar, weighed very much in Zedekiah’s mind. God, however, is not mocked, and Zedekiah, in a few years reaped as he had sown. Verses 9-10 foretell the end of his kingdom, which might have cautioned and been blessed, had he feared God and kept covenant with Nebuchadnezzar (verse 8).

In verse 12, for “is come”, read “came.” Verses 13-15 add to what is told elsewhere concerning the cause of Nebuchadnezzar’s warring against Jerusalem (Jeremiah 21, 32, 34, and 39). It was the breaking of a promise, sworn to in the name of Jehovah the God of Israel, that so angered the king of Babylon that he determined to put an end to Jerusalem, destroying the city, and that he put out the eyes of his unfaithful servant Zedekiah after slaughtering his sons.

It was the judgment of God, through Nebuchadnezzar as its instrument, which fell upon this son of David (verses 16-21). Pharaoh might sally forth with a mighty army (verse 17, and Jeremiah 37:5) to help Zedekiah, but a mightier Power than Pharaoh’s or Babylon’s had decreed the outcome of this war. God’s oath he had despised; God’s covenant he had broken; for the king of Judah had promised the idolater of Babylon in the name of his God, and Nebuchadnezzar naturally put confidence in such a promise. Judgment must therefore begin at the house of God, for He will be sanctified in all that come nigh Him.

Verses 22 to 24 again bring forward the bright, the blessed prospect that will yet be Israel’s. The “highest branch of the high cedar” is none other than the Messiah Himself, rightfully ruling over a clean-hearted, renewed Israel, The high tree of man’s sinful pride will have been brought down, and the humble will be exalted; the “green tree” under which the power of Satan had flourished will be gone, and the “dry tree”, the desolate, will flourish in that day.

“I Jehovah have spoken and will do it” (N.T.) fitly closes the promiseful last verses of the chapter.

Ezekiel 18

Chapter 18 continues the exposure of the wickedness of Israel which has been so much the theme of preceding chapters.

God had, in Exodus 34:6-7, announced to Moses the ground of His government of His people. He would be “merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and...will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”

We have seen in the testimony of God’s Word in 1 and 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations, and now in Ezekiel, that the children of Israel went further into sin as generation succeeded generation. Hosea, Amos, Micah and other prophets assert this too. Godly exceptions there were, among the people, but the state of the nation as a whole grew worse and worse.

Amid this ever-deepening guilt before God the people had devised a proverb (verse 2) to account for the distresses in which they were involved, by putting the blame for them upon their (more wicked) forefathers in the first place, and then upon God because of His governmental rule in Exodus 34:7.

His answer is, You will have no further occasion to use the proverb in Israel. Thenceforth the people of Israel were to suffer, each individually for his own sins. And would their burden, the hardship of which they complained, thus be lightened? Indeed not, for they were more wicked than the generation before their own.

In what follows (verses 4-18) three cases are put forward, and God’s dealing with each of them. The reader will observe that the subject is the government of God; not the exercise of His grace in forgiving the sinner who turns to Him in repentance. Both are found in His Word. An illustration may help: David’s great sin was forgiven, yet its consequences were reaped by him and his family all of his days. See 2 Samuel 12:13 and the two preceding verses. Galatians 6:7, 8 is the governmental dealing of God in this world, and John 3:16 is His grace; there is no possibility of conflict between the two.

All the souls are God’s; the soul that sinneth, it shall die (verse 4). It is not here a question of the eternal doom of the lost, but the cutting off of life prematurely because of sin. See chapter 11:1,13, which, among many passages to which reference may be made, shows judgment called for and executed on one of the leaders of Israel.

In verses 5-9 a man devoid of offense against God and man is described. We might have difficulty in finding one who filled all the requirements here expressed, but we would not waste time in seeking for such persons among the ungodly. First, then of the three cases, is conduct that is acceptable with God. Would His governmental dealing overtake such a one in death? By no means.

Verses 10-13 set forth a very different case: one who turns away from a good example to become reprobate. We are not surprised that there is no mention of God and His Word in connection with him, for he has plainly turned his back upon God. Corruption and violence are his chosen companions, and false gods are enthroned in his heart, Shall he then live? He shall die; his blood shall be upon him.

The third case is presented in verses 14-17: the son of a wicked man who sees all his father’s sins, and considers and avoids them. He becomes like the first man in verses 5-9. He shall not die for the iniquity of his father. The father, however, shall die in his iniquity (verse 18).

Is there not in all this a voice for many a conscience? Israel was convicted, for the piercing sword of the Word of God brought to every hearer, every reader, the solemn question, In which of the three classes am I? and forthwith revealed the true answer. All, or nearly all, were in the middle class.

Yet there was still opportunity for repentance, even at that late hour, when judgment overwhelming in character was only a few short years away (verses 30-32).

Ezekiel 19

The closing chapter of the section of Ezekiel’s prophies, which began with chapter 8, views the last years of the history of Israel (here Judah, the remnant of Israel) before the removal of the last of the people into captivity. The closing verse expresses the theme of the chapter, “This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.”

The mother, a lioness (verse 2) refers to Israel in the place which God had given. His people, when under David and Solon the kingdom rose to a pinnacle of glory,—shortly lost, it is true, because of idolatry; but for nearly four hundred years after Solomon’s death the house of David was permitted to reign at Jerusalem.

The young lion of verse 3 is unmistakably Jehoahaz, first of the godly Josiah’s sons to take the throne after their father’s death, in battle (2 Chronicles 35-36). Short though his reign was (only 3 months) this young man did evil in the sight of Jehovah according to all that his fathers had dune (2 Kings 23). Pharaoh-necho imprisoned him and afterward carried him to Egypt, and there he died.

The, history of Jehoiakim, second of Josiah’s sons to reign over Judah is omitted from chapter 19; his wickedness exceeded that of his brother (2 Kings 23:37-24:5; Jer. 22:13-19), and at his death he was not even given proper burial. If there were no other reason, this alone would explain the omission of Jehoiakim’s reign from our chapter.

Verse 5 introduces the son of Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, whose three months’ reign was ended when the king of Babylon took him a prisoner to his city, to remain such for 37 years, until Nebuchadnezzar’s death (2 Kings 35:27-30). After Jehoiachin’s removal, his uncle Zedekiah was given the throne, becoming Judah’s last king of the royal line of David, until the birth of One in Bethlehem of Judea troubled the Edomite then sitting on the throne, and all Jerusalem with him (Matt. 2).

Zedekiah’s reign had yet a few years remaining when Ezekiel’s prophecy was uttered, and he is not distinctly referred to in our chapter, though his and his nephew’s records may be combined, being similar in character, in the reference to Jechoniah (verses 5-9).

Verse 10 returns to the nation of Israel as God had established it: like a fruitful vine planted by the waters and full of branches. There was fitness then for rule, but God will not allow His name to be linked with idolatry and the kindred evils practiced by the degraded worshipers of false gods, and verse 12 declares what had happened to that luxuriant vine.

Now the vine is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground, and a fire is gone out of a rod of its branches. What fruit there was for God had been destroyed by the wickedness of the king. His real power was little now, for he was a vassal of Nebuchadnezzar, who permitted him to reign over the few left in the land of Israel, spared from the captivity.

The cause of Israel’s decline is not named here; it has been fully shown on the pages of Old Testament history and prophecy. A single word is enough to explain the ruin of God’s earthly people: SIN.

Ezekiel 20

The opening verse with its reference to a new date marks the beginning of a fresh series of communications (chapters 20-23) from God to His servant Ezekiel.

Some of the elders are a third time visiting the prophet (verse 1), to inquire of Jehovah through him. The revelation given in chapters 8-11 should have shut off any further inquiry as to the early restoration of the nation to God’s favor, nevertheless “certain of the elders” were before Ezekiel again in chapter 14, learning that their hearts and minds, where idolatry was enthroned, were fully known to God. He would indeed answer their inquiry, but by cutting off the inquirers in judgment. Judgment was impending, but a remnant would be preserved through it.

Chapter 20, in verses 5-29, takes up the history of Israel and reveals that idolatry had always characterized them from the years of their sojourn in Egypt. How marvelous is the forbearance of God, that He would go on with a people so perverse in heart! The answer to be given the elders, still hopeful that the captivity of the nation would soon end in restoration to the former state of Israel in the land of their fathers, is “As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I will not be inquired of by you”, with direction to Ezekiel to cause the elders to know the abominations of their fathers. “Abominations” in the Old Testament, in general, relates to idol worship and what was associated with it.

The house of Israel was alike in Egypt, in the wilderness journey of forty years, and in the land, the ornament of all lands, flowing with milk and honey, They rebelled against their God , walked not in His statutes, despising, His ordinances and greatly profaned. His sabbaths, for their heart went after their idols. The prophet Amos bore testimony to the idolatry from Egypt onward (chapter 5:25-26), and the martyr Stephen repeated his word in Acts 7:42-43.

The righteous anger of God should have been poured out upon the guilty in the midst of Egypt (verse 8), in the wilderness after the law was given (verse 13), and again when the generation that left Egypt were dead, and their children were grown (verse 21); but instead of wielding the sword of judgment, He had wrought for His name’s sake, in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt, that it should not be polluted before the heathen.

Verses 23 and 24 find their reflection in Leviticus 26:33, and Deuteronomy 4:16-28. Verses 25 and 26 relate to the oppressors of Israel in the land, both in the times from Joshua to Samuel (see Judges 2:11-15), and after the division of the kingdom when idolatry was openly sanctioned by Solomon’s son. (See 1 Kings 14:22-26; 2 Chronicles 12:1-9; 2 Kings 17:6-23, and the later history of Judah.)

Verses 33-38 pass on to the day now near at hand when God will bring back Israel to their land; the promised dealing is with the lost ten tribes who were not guilty of the rejection of the Lord. The two tribes we know as the Jews will pass through the fearful tribulation of which Matthew 24:15-30, and many other passages tell, and will suffer under the Antichrist; but the ten tribes, whose whereabouts are unknown today, will be led into a wilderness and there be purged of the rebels, the transgressors, only a remnant being permitted to enter the land of Israel. This is evidently to be accomplished after the Lord’s appearing on earth to deliver the believing Jews from their enemies, to execute judgment upon all who reject Him., and to establish His kingdom here.

Thus (verse 40) shall all Israel, every tribe, be gathered again in the land of their forefathers, serving God as never before.

Verses 45-49 we shall look at with chapter 21.

Ezekiel 21

We begin at chapter 20, verse 45, the natural division between chapters 20 and 21. The promise of judgment has been made, and the causes stated leading up to it; we come now to prophecy concerning the outpouring of God’s wrath upon Israel’s land, at this time only two or three years’ distant.

The iniquity of Israel was now full, as the iniquity’ of the Amorites had been, when the hosts of Israel led by Joshua entered the country of God’s choosing (Genesis 15;16).

Fire is often used in Scripture to indicate unsparing judgment, and the execution of God’s wrath upon the land of Judah is described in chapter 20:47-48 under the figure of a fire burning a forest. Jehovah was about to kindle a fire which would not be quenched; it would devour every green tree and every dry tree—all classes and conditions of mankind; all would go down under the flashing flame. Such would be the character of this judgment: that “all flesh” should see it as Jehovah’s work. The last verse of chapter 20 shows the unwillingness (as today, too) of men to receive the Word of God; they make difficulties when there are none.

Chapter 21 is therefore very plain; not now “the south,” but Jerusalem and the land of Israel are expressly named. Jehovah’s sword, like the-fire, is a figure, but of no doubtful meaning. Long in its sheath, it was about to be drawn, and both the righteous and the wicked would be cut off from the land of Israel. It is again said (verse 5) that all flesh should know that the destruction was Jehovah’s work. (See Jeremiah 22:8-9.)

Such is the callousness (more than indifference) of the natural heart that the promise of divine intervention in judgment does not give serious concern to those who hear of it. Ezekiel is therefore directed to sigh, with breaking of the loins and with bitterness, before their eyes. This would lead the people to ask him the occasion for his grief, and give him an opportunity to tell them of the awful visitation shortly to take place.

The sword is not called Jehovah’s in verses 8-17, which are transitional—passing over from what we have read to the direct mention of the king of Babylon (verses 18-27), for as other scriptures have told, Nebuchadnezzar was the chosen instrument of God in the judgments which befell Judah. The language of verses 9-15, referring to the “sharpening” and “furbishing” (polishing) of the sword, its strokes doubled the third time (referring to Nebuchadnezzar’s two previous visits to Judah and Jerusalem, carrying away captives both times), etc., give a vivid impression of his determination that this time he would bring to an end the Jewish kingdom and put to death those who opposed him.

In verses 10-13 the “rod” is the scepter, token of kingly rule; Zedekiah, Judah’s last king, is referred to, but the kingdom should be no More. Verse 17 tells of God’s connection with the judgment of Judah—though Nebuchadnezzar had little thought of film. The middle clause of the verse is better understood if it be read, “and I will satisfy My fury.”

Verses 18-27 foretold the hesitation of Nebuchadnezzar as to which kingdom to attack first, when he came with his army about two years after this: Ammon on the left, east of the Jordan, with its chief town of Rabbath, or Judah and Jerusalem on the right, west of the river. Both countries were rebellious, and both appear to have been dealt with severely.

In verse 21, three heathen ways of deciding a problem are revealed. First, the king shakes his arrows (the true reading); this would be after marking them with the names of the places to be attacked, and placing them in a quiver; whichever arrow was taken with the right hand decided the question as to which road was to be taken. Not satisfied, for some reason, he resorts to another method of divination: he consults with images, or teraphim; how an answer was thought to be gained from this method we do not know. Lastly, he “looks in the liver”; this was to study the intestines of an animal offered in sacrifice, the position or condition of them being taken as a good or had augury. The Christian has a more certain way of learning what to do when need arises; he has the living God as his resource.

At Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar’s divination would be considered false—not knowing that God was directing that monarch’s steps. The king of Babylon could not forgive the king of Judah’s breaking his oath, given in the name of Jehovah; “he will call to remembrance the iniquity, that they (Zedekiah and his counselors) may be taken” (verse 23).

Verses 24-27 are the words of the Lord Jehovah to Judah and their king; the day of grace was past and richly earned chastisement was about to descend on that profane wicked prince. The latter half of verse 26 is clearer in its meaning if read, “What is shall be no more. Exalt that which is low, and abase, that which is high.” (JND)

God will not honor a king of Judah or Israel until His Son comes, whose right it is to reign, and He will give it to Him (verse 27).

Verses 28-32 give promise of the destruction of the Ammonite kingdom. They would not expect that to take place, thinking that Judah alone would suffer from Nebuchadnezzar’s approach, and rejoicing in the prospect of her downfall.

Ezekiel 22

HereE we find the guilt of Jerusalem specifically stated. The holy city was become the bloody city (verse 2), a city that shed blood in her midst.

Violence and corruption, anciently associated in the ways of sinful man, are seen linked together here where idolatry ruled (see Jeremiah 6:6-7 and 7:9). Indeed, they are found wherever God’s Word is despised, and restraint is cast off.

Jerusalem’s full time was come (verse 4) and she was about to be exposed, in spite of all her seeming religiousness; indeed it was because of uniting the professed service of Jehovah, the true God, with idolatry and every sin, that the city was now to be to the heathen a reproach, and a mocking to all countries. “Much vexed,” in verse 5, in modern English is “full of tumult.”

Verses 6-12 enumerate many of the ways of wickedness which were ping on in Jerusalem, offenses against both God and man; the key to this dreadful course is seen in the end of verse 12; “thou hast forgotten Me, saith the Lord Jehovah.”

It was amid all this that the prophet Jeremiah lived and testified.

The world today is, in outward appearance, somewhat better than what is written of Jerusalem, but what does God not see? Some things are now being done almost openly, that before it was customary to cover up. The tide of iniquity deepens and widens. Surely the Lord’s coming must be near at hand.

Verse 14: There is no thought of a reckoning day in those who reject God’s grace; and indeed believers are prone to overlook the promise of the Scriptures that we, too, are to give account of ourselves. See Romans 14:10-12, and 2 Corinthians 5:10, the latter including all men, though the judgment of the wicked at the great white throne will be a very different thing from the manifestation of the children of God before the judgment seat of Christ.

Verse 15: The scattering of the Jews is a proof of the truth of God’s Word; it is said that they are in most of the countries of the world, but they have yet to learn to trust in God, for the great majority are far from Him in heart.

In verses 17-22 the house of Israel is dealt with under a new figure—dross, the less valuable metals found with silver ore when it is melted in the furnace. Once more the figure presents the certainty of overwhelming judgment, for Jerusalem was to be the furnace, and there the anger and fury of a long patient God would expend itself upon them who had despised Him and His goodness.

From verse 23 to the end of the chapter, God is stating the iniquities of the house of Israel which compelled the uplifting of His hand in an unexpected infliction. Prophets, priests, princes and people are dealt with separately, each according to the character and the measure of guilt.

The prophets, whom we may believe to be the false prophets whom Satan raised up to deceive the people, are compared with a roaring lion, the king of beasts as it is called.

The princes are like wolves, not so bold, but just as destructive. Murder is charged to both, told there may have been a partnership in crime between the prophets and princes, in view of the language of verse 28.

The priests, who should have been up, holders of God’s truth, did violence to His law, and profaned His holy things. The presence of God and their being called as the sons of Aaron to serve in the temple for Him on behalf of a sinful people, did not reach the hearts or consciences of these men who were indifferent to their calling.

The people of the land used oppression and practiced robbery; the poor and needy and strangers suffered from them. Was there one man in the whole country that should make up the fence, stand in the breach before God on behalf of a truly separated Jerusalem and Israel? There was none, for the people were all gone after the service of Satan.

Verse 31 should be read, “And I will pour out...I will consume,... will I recompense...” It refers to the then pending siege, capture and complete destruction of Jerusalem.

Ezekiel 23

This chapter gives the last and most solemn testimony against Israel before the closing scenes when Nebuchadnezzar’s army besieged and captured Jerusalem, and what remained of Judah. (Chapter 24 is dated from the day that the siege began.)

The sin of idolatry that became so great a snare to all Israel is much dwelt upon in the Old Testament prophetic Scriptures. Jeremiah 2 and 3 may be taken for an example; there God was exposing their guilt, but pleading for the return to Himself of a repentant people. Now all is over with the nation, for His word of grace, His long forbearance too, have been despised, until there is no remedy.

In the book of Exodus (chapters 1 to 13), where the children of Israel are seen in Egypt nothing is said of their worshipping the idols of that land. God had, in that book, another purpose in view, viz., to show the state of wretched slavery in which the people He had chosen for Himself was found, for whose deliverance He acted in power; and He brought them out, and covenanted with them that they should be His, gave them His law, etc. Idolatry appeared at Sinai (chapter 32), when they had been three months out of Egypt, and had the memory of God’s wonderful works of power on their behalf fresh in memory.

We have already noticed (chapter 20) that the idol worship that became the ground of God’s rejecting the nation ban in Egypt, and this is again set forth in verse 3, concerning Aholab and Aholibah, the elder and younger “daughters” of Israel.

“Aholah” means “her tent,” speaking of the independence of the ten tribes which broke off from the son of David after Solomon’s death, and turned to idolatry under Jeroboam (1 Kings 12).

“Aholibah” means “My tent is in her,” for the two tribes among whom Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, with Habakkuk and Zephaniah also, each in his day, served God, up to this time had His temple as the very center of their system, and He had dwelt there according to His promise to David and Solomon (2 Chronicles 6-7).

Aholah (the ten tribes) sought the friendship of Assyria, and adopted, as we should expect, the Assyrian idols as their own, for in seeking alliance with the world they were turning away from God. See Hosea, and 2 Kings 15:19 and 16:7-8, which indicate the attitude of “Aholah” to Assyria. Verses 9-10 of our chapter refer to the historical facts set forth in 2 Kings 15:29 and 17:3-6.

Aholibah (the two tribes called Judah, or the Jews) merited more severe punishment than Aholah; verses 11-21 recount her sins. 1 Kings 14:22-24 tells of the early course of these more favored ones when Solomon’s son was reigning, a course never given up, though several God-fearing kings were raised up; and for a few years there was an altered appearance, the heart of the people being, however, unchanged.

Ezekiel is here giving the moral history of the twelve tribes, as seen by God. Though the historical books of the Old Testament do not expressly mention the friendship between Israel and Judah and Assyria, the ways of wickedness of which we read in them were not learned in that separation from the Gentile world to which God had called His people, and from this prophet we learn that Assyria was the source. This is not surprising, because Assyria rose to greatness with the decline of Solomon’s kingdom.

Chaldea and Babylon (verses 14-17) evidently refer to Assyria’s, successor in power, Babylonia, which rose out of the collapse of Assyria, attaining its height of glory under Nebuchadnezzar.

Judah’s sin was far more flagrant than that of the ten tribes, because of their linking their idolatry with the worship of Jehovah, as verses 38-39 tell.

Verse 47 declares the judgment to be executed—that accorded an immoral woman in Deuteronomy 22:21.

Ezekiel 24

Man’s inventions can, on occasion, serve the children of God, but many centuries bore the telegraph, the telephone and the radio were thought of, the prophet Ezekiel in Chaldea learned from God of the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar and his armed forces in the vicinity of Jerusalem, on the day when it occurred. (See Jeremiah 52:1.) It was a day to be remembered, for God had withdrawn His help from His earthly people; He was against them as formerly He had fought for them against their enemies. A word of Solomon’s (Proverbs 29:1) was about to be proved true in the government of God: “He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”

It will be noted that until God has had long patience, He bears with men; message after message goes, to the rebellious; but at length forbearance is past, and the judgment of the sinner proceeds, or at least his day of grace is over, and judgment will certainly follow. The judgment, when it comes, will be reckoned according to the responsibility of the guilty. The principal laid down by the Lord in Luke 12:47, 48 is of wider bearing than the “servants” spoken of there.

Verses 3-14 are very solemn as showing the merciless dealing that was to be measured out by Nebuchadnezzar to Jerusalem the rebellious. In the figure of a cooking pot, first with water to boil what is thrown into it, and afterward placed dry on the fire to burn what was left, God gave fresh assurance of the end of every hope that the city and its inhabitants might be preserved from destruction.

In chapter 11:3- 11, we learned of a proverb used by the wicked men there spoken of. They felt quite secure in Jerusalem, quite safe from enemies without.

“It is not near,” said they, “let us build houses; this city is the caldron, and we be the flesh”—and God told them that the city was truly the caldron, but He would bring them out of it to die by the sword in the border of Israel. Chapter 24 takes up the subject again, and shows that the people as a whole should be consumed in the siege by Nebuchadnezzar.

“Consume the flesh” and “let the bones be burned” (verse 10) testify to an end for the bloody city, sealed by the word of Jehovah ill verse 14.

Ezekiel, in verse 16, receives the heartrending news that his wife, the desire of his eyes, was about to be taken from him in death. What an affliction this must have been to the prophet whose faithfulness to God among his faithless fellow-captives made him a stranger in their midst! Nor was he to mourn or to weep, but to sigh in silence, giving none of the usual tokens of great grief, that the Jews should take him for a sign and do as he did (verse 24).

The captives in Chaldea were to learn that God was about to profane His sanctuary (the temple of Solomon), the pride of their strength, the desire of their eyes and their soul’s longing (as the text in Verse 21 is best translated).

Though the nation had given themselves to idol worship, they were proud of the temple that Solomon had built as a dwelling place for God. It carried an appeal to religious man, but as they were without an exercised conscience—indeed they had a seared one, the fear of Jehovah had little place in their hearts. Yet we may hope that there were some few in that dark day beside Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel in Chaldea, and Daniel and his three companions in Babylon, who were God’s children by faith; and to all these the destruction of the temple would bring very great sorrow.

The sons and daughters of the captives, left behind in Jerusalem were to fall by the sword, too (verse 21); yet the parents were not to mourn nor weep, but to waste away in their iniquities and moan one toward another. Unjudged sin in departing from the living God was the cause of all this woe, and God requires what is past.

Are there not in our own times many parents who are indifferent to the spiritual welfare of their children, and themselves negligent of God and His Word? What of the reaping day, the day when all that is now will be no more?

Thank God, the chapter does not close without the assurance that some would survive the pending judgment (verse 20). When such objects of mercy should come to Ezekiel he should open his mouth and be no more dumb (chapter 3:26 and 33:22).

Ezekiel 25

The Word of God plainly and repeatedly sets forth as quite distinct the ways of God in the government of His people, on the one hand, and His dealings with the world that does not own Him, on the other. We see for example, Lot, a believer, living in the valley of Sodom instead of on the heights of faith in godly separation like Abraham. And what is God’s action there? (Genesis 19:15-25.) He brings Lot out of the place whither his own neglect of what is clue to God had brought him, and afterward destroys Sodom and all its inhabitants, but He does not fail to deal with Lot also, That saint’s conscience must have afflicted him sorely as he realized that all his gains (Genesis 13:5), all for which he had given up the walk of faith, were gone, and this time, finally (see chapter 14:12,19). Dishonor marked his last days on earth, but we shall meet him in the glory, (2 Peter 2:6-8) though he be not among the faith-worthies of Hebrews 11.

In the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, not to speak of others, there is set forth, first, God’s dealing in richly merited rebuke and chastening with His chosen people, Israel. They are punished because they are His and walk contrary to His Word. He has had long patience with them, but He cannot be untrue to Himself, and in due time judgment falls upon the people who profess His name. Then, having’ executed His righteous wrath un these, He turns to their enemies, their neighbors who had oppressed them and rejoiced in their downfall, and He pronounces judgment upon them. Israel remains to this day a people, but Ammon, Moab, Edom,—where are these nations now? Gone from the ken of man under the government of God over this world.

The prophecies of Jeremiah 46-51, together with those of Ezekiel 25-32, present this line of things,—God’s dealings with a guilty world, apart from His punishment of His own people, (See also 1 Peter 4:17-18,)

The children of Ammon are first in Ezekiel 25, the reason being, no doubt, that they were Judah’s nearest neighbors, and first to show their delight in Judah’s fall. They were always, enemies of Israel, to whom they were related by blood. What is said of them in verse 3 relates to the time of the desolation of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar at the close of the siege of Jerusalem. They rejoiced at Judah’s fall and captivity, but their joy was short lived, for God visited them.

The children of the east (verse 4) appear to be the Ishmaelites, substantially the Arabs of the desert of the present day, who are the inhabitants of the land of Ammon. Rahbah is now the seat of the government, such as it is, of Transjordania, an Arab kingdom. “Palaces” in verse 4 is really just enclosures for cattle, or tent villages, such as are found today in what was the land of the children of Ammon. (See Zephaniah 2:8-11.)

Moab and Seir (Edom) were also relatives of Israel, the former like Amnion through Lot, and the latter through. Esau,—the fathers of their nations. These countries, to the east and south of Judah, were glad when the children of Israel, of whom they were jealous, went into captivity. Edom had been revengeful. (See Psalm 137:7; Amos 1:11, and Obadiah 12-14.) Verse 14, for its fulfillment, waits upon Israel’s recovery in the last days (Obadiah 18).

The Philistines (verses 15-17) were, in their day, powerful enemies of the children of Israel, until David overcame them. Their seeking revenge was to be returned upon their own heads. Today they cannot be found.

Ezekiel 26

The eleventh year (verse 1) brought the kingdom of Judah and the city of Jerusalem to destruction at the hands of the Babylonians (Jeremiah 52:5-27), and God here links with that most solemn dealing with His earthly people what is in type and representation the judgment of the world—the present order of things, as we may say.

Tyre, in the prophecies of Ezekiel 26-28 represents the world, not the physical earth, but that worldly system which had its beginning with Cain (Genesis 4:16-21), and after the flood substantially expanded under Nimrod (Genesis 10:8-10), others patterning after these through the centuries until the present hour.

The people of God have ever been called on to walk in holy separation from the world, and the believer’s true path is not difficult to discover in the writings of inspiration, both Old and New Testaments. Enoch’s life and testimony (Genesis 5:22-24; Jude 11,15), and Abraham’s, Jeremiah’s and Daniel’s histories—to which we would add Balaam’s testimony in. Numbers 23:9 (not to multiply refences) all speak loudly of the rightful position of the child of God while passing through this earthly scene. The Christian, truly, is called to a measure of separation quite beyond and distinct from that of the Old Testament saints, as John 17:14; Philippians 3:20, 21 and other scriptures abundantly prove, but the principle of separation is the same for both Old and New Testament believers.

Israel’s utterly failing to maintain separation to God from the world according to His Word, was the cause of their fall, but even so long as Judah and Jerusalem remained, the world of that day felt in some measure restrained, hindered from the aims before it, which left out God entirely. We may see illustrations of this restraint and the character and enmity of the world in 2 Thessalonians 2:7-8; Revelation 11:7-10, and how much more manifested in the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John concerning the earthly life of the Faithful and True Witness, the Lord Jesus!

Tyre, therefore, rejoiced in the day of Jerusalem’s fall, not as Ammon, Moab and Edom did, in their jealous hatred of Israel, but because the hindrance was now removed which kept back the development of their city as the great market of the eastern world: “Aha, she is broken, the gate of the peoples! She is turned unto me; I shall be replenished now she is laid waste” (verse 2). God sees and knows every heart; its “thoughts and intents” (Hebrews 4:12) are manifest to Him who is the Author of the written Word.

Tyre was to be assailed in due time by many nations; its walls and towers to be destroyed; so complete was to be the work of destruction that her dust should be scraped from her, herself made a bare rock. Today Tyre is but a small fishing village near the ruins of the once proud city; the Word of God has been fulfilled.

Nebuchadnezzar attacked Tyre, and kept it under siege for thirteen years. Alexander the Great afterward conquered it. It is thought that verse 12 refers to this second conquest, as it does not appear that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the place.

When the city finally lost its greatness we can well understand the consternation felt in the various cities and countries with which it had carried on an extensive trade. Thus Tyre’s judgment served God’s purpose as a type of this world and its judgment, as suggesting in some measure the day of terror which will be when the world is actually judged.

When this world meets its Judge, far greater than the distress of the nations of which verses 16-18 tell will be the anguish of the despisers of God’s grace. The Scriptures afford us no word regarding it. Revelation 6:15-17 tells of the first alarm which will soon pass away, and chapter 18:15-19 refers to the destruction to be visited by men upon the religious corruptress of the last days, but the judgment of God will be after these events.

Ezekiel 27

TYRE had built up an enormous trade between the east and the west, thirty-four districts and towns being mentioned in this chapter as concerned with the city in a business way. Its inhabitants had grown rich through die trade that was carried on, and it is evident that they greatly beautified the place, having confidence in its future. They forgot, as did the rich man in Luke 12:16-21, that God was to be reckoned with.

Situated at the entries of the sea, and trafficking with the peoples of many countries, Tyre had said, “I am perfect in beauty,” and God acknowledges it: “Thy borders are in the heart of the seas; thy builders have perfected thy beauty.” He then likens the famous city to a ship. (verses 5-11).

Senir (verse 5) is one of the peaks of Mount Hermon, the snowy mountain north of Palestine, to the east of Lebanon. Bashan is east of the upper reaches of the Jordan, and the “isles of Chittim” refers to Cyprus and other islands belonging to its people. Elishah (verse 7) has not been identified, but is thought to have been west of Tyre, somewhere bordering on the Mediterranean Sea.

Verses 8-11 show how Tyre drew upon countries both near and far for the carrying on of its great business. Zidon, Arvad and Gebal were Phenician neighbors of Tyre, while Persia, Lud and Phut where distant, the former eastward, and the others southwest (on the north coast of Africa). “Gammadims” in verse 11 is a name not understood; it is thought to mean guards or watchman, rather than the name of a particular place or country.

Verses 12-25 name the places (or some of them) from which merchandise, animals and even slaves were brought to Tyre for barter or sale.

“Tarshish dealt with thee by reason of the abundance of all substance; with silver, iron, tin and lead they furnished thy markets” (verse 12, N.T.). This tells of a place whose ships are mentioned a number of times in the Old Testament. (See Psalm 48:7; Isaiah 2:16, and 23:1 as examples.)

It has not been determined where this city was, and there seems a possibility that there were two places so named, one in the far East (Ceylon, perhaps), and the other and chief one in Spain or on the north African coast.

Javan (verse 13) refers to Greece, but in verse 19 it is believed that the same name relates to a place in southern. Arabia. Tubal and Meshech are names of portions of southeastern Russia, near the eastern side of the Black Sea; from there the trade was in “the persons of men”—human slavery—and in vessels of bronze.

What variety there was to be found in the market at Tyre! Metal from Tarshish, horses, horsemen and mules from Togarmah (Armenia); “many isles” paid for their purchases with horns of ivory and ebony; Syria traded with precious stones, purple and embroidered work, fine linen and coral (or pearls); and other countries and districts sent in other merchandise and animals the kinds of which are mentioned in verses 17-24.

Verse 25 contains a slight mistranslation; read, “The ships of Tarshish were thy caravans for thy traffic,” and the first part of the verse becomes intelligible.

Verses 20-30 tell of the end of all this prosperity. The ship of Tyre (following the figure employed in verses 5-11), has been brought into great waters; the east wind of which Psalm 48:7 tells, the Euroclydon of Acts 27:14-29, has broken the vessel in the heart of the seas. All the substance, the markets, the merchandise for barter, and all the people, were going down in the ruin that overtook Tyre, the city of the world’s trade. God is not mentioned; they cared not for Him in their prosperity, and in the day of judgment He was not sought. The sorrow of the world worketh death (2 Corinthians 7:10); despair, not repentance, is the result of this overwhelming disaster when it finally came in B.C. 322.

Ezekiel 28

This third chapter dealing with the ancient market city of Tyre takes up first its “prince” (verses 1-10) and afterward its “kind”. The “prince” (and the “king”) here addressed, may very well have been the then ruler of the city, but what is written about him is as the representative of what was characteristic of the place. Tyre was a proud city; its people were world-traders, and their markets had brought them great wealth. The spirit of the Tyrians was the spirit of the world then, and it is the character of the world today as a great commercial system.

The same principles may be traced in Nebuchadnezzar in the grand palace of Babylon (Daniel 4:29-30), in the thoughts of the “certain rich man” of Luke 12:16-20, and in the language of the Assyrian conqueror in Isaiah 10:7-14.

In these representative cases God is forgotten; it is as though He were not, and that man is altogether master of himself and of the world in which he was born and grew up, and in which, unless converted, he will in due time, die under the appointment of God, and meet His judgment.

Full of pride and ignorant of the truth of God, he readily thinks of himself as supreme, as wiser than Daniel (Daniel 1:17-20, etc.); nothing secret is difficult for him to solve. That is man’s boastful opinion of himself, when business success has crowned his efforts, and he stops to take measure of his accomplishments. God, however, is not thus to be disposed of, and verses 6 to 10 promise a certain end to the pride, the wisdom, and the glory of man. There was a day coming in which Tyre should be humbled, and there is a day fixed by God when judgment will overtake all who will not before its dawn have fled for refuge to lay hold of His offer of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verses 11-19, while addressed to the ruler of Tyre under the title of “king”, as the earlier portion of the chapter gives him the lesser title of “prince”, are believed to have a much deeper significance than could have attached to the seaport of ancient renown and its head. The language of these verses, telling of a very exalted person who, enjoying God’s favor, but carried away with pride-and, rejected by Him, is to be dealt with in consuming vengeance, goes deeper than the position of Tyre, and of the world at large, pointing in fact to God’s enemy, the prince and god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4; John 12:31 and 14:30).

Applied to Tyre, verses 11-17 present the position of the city before God gave Hp Israel, while His earthly people were still in the land and His throne was in Jerusalem. Israel was then the center of His government and of blessing on earth. Tyre, being within its borders (Joshua 19:24-31, Judges 1:31-32) was in the garden of God—a term which, however, included the nations bordering Israel (see chapter 31:8-9), if not, broadly, the whole world as God’s creation.

In a special way, the king and people of Tyre had enjoyed a relationship with Israel (see 1 Kings 5, and 2 Samuel 5:11), but this position of favor was despised as pride filled the heart; they exalted themselves against God, boasted their equality with Him. Privileges despised bring greater judgment.

Now the world has enjoyed God’s favor, as His Word fully shows, but how has it treated Him? The same Book declares this, also, and the centuries since the apostles’ days have not altered the character of man before God, except as there is evidently progress downward, away from God, where there is not faith in exercise. Judgment, therefore, draws near. And the judgment of the world and its god, its usurping ruler, will take place at the same time (Rev. 12:7-17; 19:11 to 20:15).

In so far as the language of verses 12-17 appears to be applicable to Satan, it describes the position of an exalted person among the angels of God. He was the (or an) anointed covering cherub, acting in the government of God; he had been on the holy mountain of God (where God’s authority was exercised). He walked up and down in the midst of stones of fire, Where the moral perfections of God were displayed in a glory before which evil could not abide. No outward temptation (as with man) befell this person; “thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness” (verse 17).

Verses 20-24 state the judgment of Sidon, north of the city of Tyre. Thrice in these verses is it said that “they shall know that I am Jehovah”; this is a prose, not of salvation, but that the subjects, of His judicial dealings would be compelled to own His power.

Verses 25-26 foretell that blessed time on earth when God shall have gathered the house of Israel (all the twelve tribes). Then shall they know that He is Jehovah, their God. Surely the dawn of that day must be near, ushered in, we know, with fearful events, but preceded by the resurrection and the rapture—the coming of the Lord for His heavenly people according to 1 Thess. 4:16-17, and 1 Corinthians 15:51-52.

Are we who know Him, prepared for that meeting in the air? The time is at hand!

Ezekiel 29

We have had three chapters dealing with the judgment of Tyre; there follow four with reference to God’s humbling the nation of Egypt. With Tyre, as we have seen, the direct cause of downfall was pride on account of commercial or business success. Egypt was lifted up with pride of a different sort: they sought power, took pride in their political wisdom, aimed to be the ruling nation in the world.

In verse 3 the figure of a monster (a crocodile, we may assume) is applied to Pharaoh. If the then reigning king of Egypt was particularly in view in the prophecy, as we may suppose, he was Pharaoh-Hophra, who is named in Jeremiah 44:30, and referred to in chapters 37:5-11, and 46, and in. Ezekiel 17:15-17. Complete overthrow of his power was promised him who said, “My river is my own.” The Nile was (and is) Egypt’s dependence for prosperity, its fertile lands being sustained by that stream, rain being unknown there.

Fitly, therefore, the judgment of Egypt is expressed in the figure of the crocodile taken by putting hooks in his jaws, and cast into the wilderness together with the other inhabitants of the river, to be for meat to the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the heavens. God is sovereign, and He yet rules over the kingdom of men, and gives authority to whomsoever He will (Daniel 2:21; 4:17), though Satan has power and uses it to the extent permitted him.

Another cause than the immense pride and self-sufficiency which marked ancient Egypt was before God, in proposing to punish that land; this is revealed in verses 6-7. That His people erred in seeking help from Egypt other Scriptures amply show (Isaiah 30-31; Jeremiah 42-44, etc.), but He had dealt, and would further deal, with them for that.

Because of this lofty pride and the ill-treatment of God’s people, a heavy blow was about to fall upon Egypt (verses 8-12); it was to lie desolate and waste for forty years, from Migdol (see the marginal note in your Bible at verse 10) to Syene. Migdol is shown by Exodus 14:2 to have been near the Red Sea, in the north of Egypt; and Syene is the present town of Assuan or Aswan, at the first cataract of the Nile, where a great dam has been in recent times constructed across the river. The border of the present Ethiopia lies, much further south, but in olden times it was at the first cataract.

After forty years, God who scattered, would again gather the Egyptians in their land, in Pathros-(upper Egypt), and Egypt should thereafter be a petty kingdom, never to exalt itself above the nations or rule over them. This corresponds to the Egypt of our day. Never more would Israel turn to Egypt for help.

In verses 17-21 is a prophecy sixteen years later than that which occupies verses 1-16. In date, it shortly follows Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Tyre in B.C. 573, which ended a 13-year siege of the city. When the great king finally subdued the defenders, they had sent away by ship almost everything of value (the Babylonians had no navy), so that he had no “wages” for the service he performed. God, who had used Nebuchadnezzar in the humbling of Tyre, and was about to use him against Egypt, therefore caused the latter country’s spoil to fall into his hands as compensation for his labor against Tyre.

Then and not till then, following the desolating of Egypt, blessing was to begin again for Israel, and Ezekiel’s mouth be opened in testimony; then would they of Israel’s race know that He who had preserved and blessed them is Jehovah, and (we may be sure) would give up the idols they had loved.

Scripture is silent as to the death of Jeremiah, who had been taken to Egypt; and Ezekiel, who was in Chaldea, nor do we know that either of them returned to the land of Israel. Nebuchadnezzar lived ten or eleven years after he completed the conquest of Tyre; Ezekiel may have survived him a few years, but this is a matter of conjecture; Jeremiah must have been an old man when Tyre fell, if he was yet living.

Ezekiel 30

A new word from Jehovah with regard to Egypt, undated, is comprised in the first and major portion of this chapter. It begins (verses 2- 9) with a short reference to the still future day of the Lord (day of Jehovah) introducing the Millennium with terrible judgments. Of that day the prophet Isaiah, and the Psalms have told much, and Ezekiel’s later chapters contribute to the accounts of it which God’s word contains.

“Howl ye; Alas for the day! For the day is at hand, yea, the day of Jehovah is at hand, a day of clouds; it shall be the time of the nations” (verses 2-3, JND). Unparalleled blessing will be poured upon this earth, but this cannot be until after the judgment of those living-on it, the Church of God meanwhile having been removed to heavenly glory.

Ethiopia, Libya, Lydia, the mingled people, and Chub are named together with Egypt as chief, as to be visited heavily in that day. Libya and Lydia are west of Egypt, and the ancient-Ethiopia covered much more territory than the present country of that name. Chub has not been identified, but as the others named belong to northern Africa it is thought to be another of Egypt’s neighbors. The “men of the land that is in league” (or land of the covenant), would seem to be Jews then living in Egypt.

Verses 10-26 take up the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar already spoken of in chapter 29. The land was to be filled with the slain, made utterly desolate (verse 12); the idols and images were to be destroyed; not again should there be a prince out of the land of Egypt; instead, God would put fear in the land (verse 13).

The principal cities of Egypt are, one by one, spoken of as to fall under the judgment of God,—places of renown in their day, but in ruins if found at all today. First named is Noph, or Memphis, which is believed to have been not far south of the present city of Cairo; it and Zoan were one-time capitals of Egypt, and Zoan, close to the Mediterranean Sea, was the place where Moses and Aaron met the Pharaoh of their day and performed miracles (Psalm 78:12, 48).

No, or Thebes, was a noted place, built on both banks of the Nile in southern Egypt; its massive ruins remain to this day. Sin, or Pelusium, called the strength or stronghold of Egypt (verse 15), is believed to have been near one of the mouths of the Nile. Aven, or On (Heliopolis) was some distance north of Cairo; Joseph was given as wife a daughter of Potipherah, priest of On (Genesis 41:45). It at one time was the capital of Lower Egypt; Pibeseth, or Bubastis, in the Nile delta was another place of grandeur; its ruins remain; here also was a capital city of Lower Egypt.

Tehaphnehes was the place to which the Jews in Palestine fled, taking Jeremiah, with them (Jeremiah 43). Pharaoh had a house there, and Nebuchadnezzar was to set his own throne in the place in the conquest of the country (Jeremiah 43:8-10). The damage inflicted on the cities of ancient Egypt under Nebuchadnezzar was never recovered from. That there were other, later conquerors of the country is well-known, but God’s judgment upon it was initially wrought by the king of Babylon; then it was that the pride of her strength ceased in her (verse 18).

The date of the word of Jehovah to Ezekiel which occupies verses 20-26 is a few months before the Babylonian besiegers broke down the defenses of Jerusalem and put many of the inhabitants to death (Jeremiah 39 and 52). Shortly Jerusalem itself was a ruin, fire and pillage having removed all that remained that belonged to the glory of Solomon’s reign. Nebuchadnezzar’s armies were then free to attack Egypt, only that the siege of Tyre, which held out a strong resistance for thirteen years, delayed the opening of the war against the southern kingdom. The last seven verses give promise of what was in due time accomplished by Nebuchadnezzar, wielding the sword of Jehovah, and already Egypt’s ruler could anticipate that end to his power which lay only a few years distant.

Ezekiel 31

This chapter gives God’s answer to the ambition of the king of Egypt who would have his country exalted to the supreme place among the nations, left vacant for a time by the fall of Assyria. We have already seen (Jeremiah 27, etc.) that God had chosen Nebuchadnezzar and the kingdom of Babylonia to take Assyria’s place, and indeed to be the world’s first empire, but if the Egyptian Pharaoh had learned of His purpose, he did not regard it.

Egypt was the first great nation, as far as the Scriptures, and human records too, reveal. It was a substantial country when Abraham lived, and he was born only 352 years after the flood.

Assyria’s beginning was later, and not much has been learned concerning that people before the period in which the children of Israel entered Canaan. They began to assume some importance as a nation about fifty years before Saul became Israel’s first king.

Tiglathpileser, who is regarded as the founder of the second empire of Assyria is named in 2 Kings 15:29. From about B. C. 745 to B. C. 606 when Nineveh was destroyed by the Medes and Babylonians, Assyria was the most powerful of the nations. It overcame Egypt at one time (about B. C. 671) under Esar-had-don who is named in Isaiah 37:38.

Egypt had, before Israel’s possession of the land of Canaan, held the country, and after Solomon’s death, God moved that nation, with Ethiopia, to attack Judah (2 Chronicles 12:1-12). A second invasion under an Ethiopian general took place in Asa’s reign (2 Chronicles 14:9-13), and a military expedition was sent (B. C. 610) by Pharaoh-Necho to the head of navigation on the Euphrates, while Josiah was king of Judah (2 Chronicles 35:20 to 36:5). A few years later, about the time of the destruction of Nineveh, Nebuchaezzar and Necho, met in battle, and the latter was defeated (2 Kings 24:7; Jeremiah 46:2).

Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, had bound himself by an oath of allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, but broke his promise, forming an alliance with Pharaoh-Hophra (Jeremiah 44:30), the second ruler of Egypt after Necho. Of this act of rebellion, the Babylonian king learned, and sent an army to besiege Jerusalem and destroy the city, ending the kingdom of Judah. He also defeated Hophra in battle during the siege of Jerusalem.

In the message to Hophra contained in chapter 31, he is reminded of Assyria’s greatness, God using the figure of a cedar in Lebanon to describe Assyria after the unfaithfulness to Himself of Solomon and his successors, the kings of Judah;

“No tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty. I had made him fair by the multitude of his branches, and all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, (i.e., the neighboring nations) envied him” (verses 8-9).

God had lifted up Assyria, but its king exalted himself in the greatest degree of pride and boastfulness; therefore “I have given him into the hand of the mighty one of the nations” (Nebuchadnezzar), So reads verse 11, and in verse 14 it is declared that no other nation should exalt itself after Assyria; in the government of God, death awaited them all.

Verses 15-18 refer to Assyria’s fall; that event had produced a very profound effect in the world. The Hebrew word translated “the grave” in verse 15 and “hell” in verses 16-17, is Sheol; it does not refer to the lake of fire, but to the unseen world, like the Greek word Hades. The application of the history of Assyria to Egypt’s proud monarch and his people is made in the last verse of the chapter. Did he think to arise to Assyria’s, former height? He would be brought down to the lowest place, according to the word of the Lord Jehovah.

Ezekiel 32

The time of the first prophecy in the chapter was a year and a half after the end of the siege of Jerusalem, and its blackened ruins were now all that remained to testify of that city’s darted glory. The second prophecy, unveiling the unseen world (verses 17-32) is separated from the first by two weeks.

Verse 2: Pharaoh was like a young lion among the nations, and as a monster (not likely a whale, but, as in a former case, probably a crocodile) in the waters; he had gone beyond his proper limits and troubled other peoples. Judgment was shortly to be executed upon him by means of many peoples; but it was God’s doing: “they shall bring thee up with My net” (verse 3).

Verses 4-6 repeat what was said in chapter 20:5, and supplement it in language which suggests terrible and unexampled slaughter. “All the fowls of the heavens” and “the beasts of the whole earth” were to be fed with the slain. More fearful will be the carnage at the Lord’s coming in judgment (see Revelation 1.9:17-18).

That Egypt was to be made desolate from Migdol to Syene for forty years, we have already learned (chapter 29:10-12); indeed, it is said that Nebuchadnezzar ravaged the country so savagely that it was utterly desolate, his anger against Hophra being the greater, because he had sheltered the Jews who murdered Gedaliah, the governor of the land formerly Israel’s, and other persons, and fled the country to escape the vengeance of the Babylonian government (Jeremiah 11-41).

The judgment of God, unlike that which men give to their fellows, is ever according to perfect justice; the measure of guilt and of responsibility of every one with whom Fie deals in His governmental ways with the living is exactly known to Him, and Egypt’s visitation as portrayed in this chapter is thus far more severe than that of Assyria, spoken of in chapter 31. Egypt’s ancient grandeur, its riches, etc., much exceeded the glory of Assyria in its prime, and the news of its desolation cast dismay upon the world (verses 7-11).

God will be known by His judgments (verse 15); better far to know Him through His grace! But mercy despised, brings heavier strokes of judgment, as this poor world will find when God no longer speaks in grace, offering salvation to the lost.

What follows (verses 17-32) has been called the most solemn elegy over a heathen people ever composed. The close of verse 21 should be read “...out of the midst of Sheol; they are gone down, they lie still, the uncircumcised, slain by the sword.” (The “uncircumcised” is a term distinguishing the nations from Israel).

“Asshur” (verses 22-23) is Assyria; “Elam” (verses 24-25) is the ancient monarchy mentioned in Genesis 14, but their country became a part of Persia, and the reference may be to the Persian empire, as in other prophetic passages. In verses 24-25 and 30, “confusion”, it is believed, better expresses the meaning of the original language than “shame”.

Meshech and Tubal (verses 26-28) will come before us in connection with chapter 38. It will be noted that they and their multitude’ do not lie with the mighty (verse 27) who are gone down to Sheol. They are the last of the enemies of Israel who will meet with God’s vengeance in the judgments to be executed in the coming day.

Verse 30 will become clearer if the central portion he read “ashamed of the terror which they caused through their might.”

In these verses God recounts the names of several of the war-like nations which endured for a season and crumbled into dust: In their day they caused terror to many, but when life’s swift journey is over, and eternity has dawned, what then?

What is in view here, as in Old Testament prophecies generally, is the governmental dealing of God with the inhabitants of the earth and their rulers.

Eternal judgment, and the salvation of the soul are not Old Testament themes though spoken of there. The full light of the gospel of the grace of God was reserved until the work of redemption by the precious blood of Christ was accomplished, and the Redeemer had ascended to the throne of God.

Ezekiel 33

After the pronouncement of divine judgment upon the troublers of Israel, from the Ammonites to the Egyptians, in chapters 25 to 32, God returns to the consideration of His earthly people. As a nation, Israel had been put under the rod of His displeasure; Jerusalem was now in ruins, three kings of. Judah were captives in Egypt and Babylon, and hardly an Israelite remained in the land of promise; the ruin of Israel was complete.

“The children of thy people”, a term found in verses 2, 12, 17, and 30 (and in chapter 3:11, and later in this book) is significant of the altered position of the nation; Israel is “not My people” (Hosea 1:9), yet objects of mercy are among them, and a compassionate God seeks their good. He had told them through Ezekiel in chapters 3 and 18, and now a third time, in chapter 33, that thenceforth His dealings would be with individuals; their national position as God’s favored people was gone. The prophet had been made a watchman unto the house of Israel to warn them of judgment to come (chapter. 3:17-21), but they had not hearkened to the word of God which he delivered to them, and since then Jerusalem had been captured and destroyed, and its remaining inhabitants for the most part put to death by the Babylonian conqueror.

In the long-suffering and mercy of God, Ezekiel is again declared a watchman to the house of Israel, and directed to hear the word at His mouth and to warn them (verse 7). The wicked, if they do not turn from their wicked ways, shall die in their iniquity; the prophet, if he gave warning, whether it was heeded or not, had delivered his own soul (verses 8-9).

Man is ever ready to blame. God for his condition as a sinner, and verse 10 gives an example of this: “Thus ye speak, Our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we waste away in them; how then should we live?” The answer is ready,

“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his own way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (verse 11, N.T.).

After the same manner of entreaty God has spoken to man in the gospel of His grace, in the inspired words of the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 5:20-21):

“Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech... by us; we pray... in Christ’s stead, Be ye reconciled to God; for He hath made Him to be sin (or sin-offering) for us, Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Alas! that the many spurn the offer of mercy!

What follows in our chapter (verses 12-20) is not the gospel of the grace of God, which was only published when His beloved Son had met the full demands of divine righteousness and holiness as the sinner’s Substitute on the cross of Calvary. It is a declaration of individual responsibility in a day of judgment, not a day of grace. Life is for those who live in the fear of God; death is for them who turn away from His Word. The way was still open for individual repentance, though the nation of Israel as a whole was under the judgment of God.

Verse 21, if the reckoning of time be from the same date as in Jeremiah’s last chapter, shows that a very long time elapsed from the fall of Jerusalem until the news reached Ezekiel in far off Chaldea. Now at length the mouth of Ezekiel was opened in testimony (see chapters 3:20,27, and 24:24-27). That testimony (verses 25-33) is of further judgment.

There were yet in the land of Palestine some Israelites who had escaped the sword of Nebuchadnezzar and the captivity of many of their fellows. These had thought to possess the land for themselves, but their state is exposed, and their judgment is announced in verses 25-29. As for the captives where Ezekiel was, they heard his words, but at heart they were unchanged; they were indifferent to the messages he gave them from God. The day was coming when they would know that a prophet had been among them.

Ezekiel 34

Firstly, after the 33rd chapter, telling of individual responsibility before God, comes this one on the responsibility of the leaders and caretakers of His flock. Who of the kings of Israel and Judah had walked in David’s footsteps? With notable exceptions, they lived to please themselves, and cared little for the flock of God. That David sinned, and very grievously, too (and reaped of his sowing), is well-known, but comparing his course as a whole with his successors’, the contrast is not, in general, to their credit. (See 2 Samuel 24:17; 1 Kings 9:4 and 11:4-6; 2 Chronicles 12:1; 21:5, 6; 28:1-4; 33:1-9; 30:11-13, telling of some of the kings of Judah).

Of the kings of Israel (the ten tribes), not one feared God; Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:20-33 and 13:33-34), and Ahab (1 Kings 16:30-33) were outstanding among them as leaders in iniquity.

More wicked, however, will be the shepherds of the last days, just before the Lord’s appearing and kingdom.

Ezekiel was therefore directed to prophesy against the shepherds (rulers) of Israel who feed themselves, eat the fat and clothe themselves with the wool, killing the fattened sheep and neglecting to feed the flock (verses 2-3). Their whole course lay exposed before God: the weak they have not strengthened; they have not healed the sick, nor bound up what was broken, nor brought again what was driven away, nor sought for, what was lost; with harshness and with rigor they have ruled over the flock (verse 4).

As to the flock: they were scattered because there was no shepherd; they became meat to all the beasts of the field. Jehovah’s sheep wandered through all the mountains, were scattered upon all the face of the earth, and there was none that searched or that sought for them (verses 5-6). The language is figurative and looks on to the last days. The shepherds will then be held to account, and the sheep will be delivered from them by God (verse 10).

Verses 11-16 tell of the coming gathering of all Israel again in their own land, not in unbelief, as is the case with the Jews who have been and are returning to Palestine in our times. Then the blessed God, — “I, even I”, He says in the touching language of verses 11-13— “will both-search for My sheep, and tend them. As a shepherd tendeth his flock in the day that he is among his scattered sheep, so will I tend My sheep, and will deliver them out of all places whither they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries; will bring them to their own land, and I will feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the water courses, and in all the habitable places of the country.”

And as if this were not enough of grace to the undeserving recipients of divine favor, verses 14-16 tell yet more of God’s unfailing purpose to bless Israel.

Necessarily, judgment will in that day overtake the “fat” and the “strong”—those who have enriched or strengthened themselves at the expense of the flock. Nor are all the oppressors shepherds or rulers, as verses 17-22 make plain. “Between cattle and cattle” in verse 17 means, as the marginal note shows, “between sheep and sheep”; in verses 20-22, likewise, sheep are referred to, rather than cattle. All the children of Israel are sheep in the figure used here of a flock belonging to God, but some of them will be dealt with on account of their ill treatment of their fellows.

Verses 23-31 introduce the Lord Jesus as the Shepherd of the royal line of David, who will feed His flock. A fresh and lovely picture is afforded of the thousand years of blessing on earth following which the history of this present world will close. It will be noted that there is no mention here of the Lord’s humiliation, as in Isaiah, for example; the reason is that in Ezekiel the whole of the twelve tribes are in view; the ten were not guilty of the rejection of their Messiah, as were the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Nor is the Messiah’s being Jehovah presented in Ezekiel’s prophecies for the reason that His humiliation is not mentioned.

God will make with Israel a covenant of peace; evil beasts shall cease in the land, and the people shall dwell in safety in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. Jerusalem (“My hill”) will be the center of blessing on earth, with Israel dwelling in God’s special favor. A “plant of renown” will God raise up for His people, even the Lord Jesus. The reproach of the Jew will be gone forever then (verses 25-29).

Israel (the believing and blest remnant) will know that Jehovah their God is with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are His people, God’s flock, the flock of His pasture; they are men, and He is their God. What grace is this that God will thus work in the scenes of man’s rebellion and the rejection of His Son!

Yet is there far richer blessing in store for those who give heed to the present message of grace to Jew and Gentile.

Ezekiel 35

The promise of Millennial blessing in chapter 34 leads the divine Author of the prophecies of Ezekiel to speak further about the closing scenes leading to the establishment of peace and righteousness on earth. An enemy to the south of Israel, Edom, the people of Esau, Jacob’s brother, has been briefly mentioned in chapter 25:12-14, and to that land of perpetual hatred the Holy Spirit here returns in His forecast of events yet to come. The reason for again mentioning Edom is plain: When all the earth rejoices, the land of Edom will be a desolation, an abiding token of the judgment of God to be seen throughout the coming thousand years of peace and blessing.

Mount Seir (verse 3) is the range of hills extending from north to south through the land of Edom, and Seir and Mount Seir are names applied to the country in Scripture. “Most desolate” in verses 3 and 7 hardly expresses the full sense of the Hebrew original; it has been translated “a desolation and an astonishment.” In verses 4, 14 and 15, also, “desolate” is “a desolation”, a somewhat stronger term.

Little did the children of Esau reckon that God was taking notice, and would in due time visit them as a nation on account of their feeling toward their brother Jacob, and the treatment they accorded him, when opportunity arose.

It is idle for men, even Christians, in the light of the promised judgment of Edom, and (not to mention other Old Testament nations which will be revived to meet God’s righteous anger on account of the past) of that proud religious system called in Revelation 17 and 18 “the great whore” and “Babylon the great”, to deny that the offenses against God, His truth and His people, committed by bygone generations, will not be dealt with in judgment upon the living who occupy the same ground morally before Him.

God requires what is past, as the Preacher declares in Ecclesiastes 3:15, and the prophetic word in both Old and New Testaments gives abundant proof of this principle of His government.

Edom, non-existent today, as a nation, will be found again in its homeland as time draws on to the end of God’s patience with this world, and they will there again plot against the children of Israel (Psalm 83:6; Isaiah 34:5-17; Jeremiah 49:7-22).

The Edomites will, in the day of their judgment, know that He who deals with them is Jehovah’ (verses 4, 9 and 15). They will know it in His judgments. Philippians 2:10, 11, Revelation 1:7, and other passages point to those who will be in the class of the Edomites, —owning the power, and the just judgment of God, but strangers to His grace.

The Edomites had a deep-seated hatred of their kinsmen according to the flesh, the children of Jacob, and when Nebuchadnezzar’s army was accomplishing the destruction of Jerusalem, they helped them. Verse 5 in our chapter may be read: “Because thou...has given over the children of Israel to the power of the sword, in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity, of the end...,” See also Amos 1:11-12; Obadiah 11-14, and Psalm 137:7 which tell of the attitude of Edom when Jerusalem fell.

Of no other, land does Scripture promise such a judgment as that to be poured out on Edom:—perpetual desolations, and their cities without inhabitants (verses 9 and 15). They had planned to seize the land of Israel (“these two nations and these two countries” referring to Israel and Judah), but they forgot that that land is set apart for God’s earthly people (Deuteronomy 32:8). It never has been and it never will be a blessing to any other nation, but only to the Israel of God. They forgot, too, that Jehovah, the eternal God, heard all their reproaches, uttered against the mountains of Israel (verse 12), and their many words against Himself (verse 13).

“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” Ecclesiastes 8:11.

God’s long continued forbearance is misjudged by man, yet His word (if they would but believe it) fully declares that the day of His grace will end, Truly is it said,

“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” (Psalms 14 and 53), and, “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” Psalm 94:9.

Ezekiel 36

As chapter 35 was occupied with the rebuke of Mount Seir, an equal portion of chapter 36 is taken up with the blessing of the mountains, etc., of rivers of Israel’s land. The blasphemies (or reproaches) of Mount Seir, and their planning with other countries (verses 2-5) to make the land of Israel their own, move God to declare what He will do on behalf of that very portion of this world.

We must bear in mind that in Ezekiel’s prophesies, the times of the Gentiles which commenced with the rule of Nebuchadnezzar, and will end at the Lord’s appearing, are passed over; the coming of the Messiah as the lowly Son of Man, and His rejection are not referred to. Ezekiel is concerned with the 12 tribes of Israel, and the state of the neighboring nations, and the execution of judgments by Nebuchadnezzar as the instrument of God, are linked directly with the state of things at the Lord’s second appearance on earth.

God has never given up His purpose of blessing Israel; the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12:3,7; 13:14-16; 15:5,18-21; 17:7-8; 22:17-18, will be exactly fulfilled when Israel and the world have been cleansed by judgments far exceeding those of the past.

Verses 2-5 point to His full knowledge of what is done and said on earth, for, as Hannah said (1 Samuel 2:3.), “Jehovah is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed.”

We need only to turn to the Scriptures to learn why Palestine is, and for many centuries has been, largely uncultivated, its former abundance exchanged for seemingly barren wastes, where the few degraded inhabitants eke out a bare existence.

God’s Word does not mention the present activity in scattered portions of the country, carried on under British protection, because it is neither the work of God, nor of a believing remnant of Israel. That it is directing the thoughts of many, both Jews and Gentiles, to Israel’s ancient land, is clear, and in that way it is moving toward the closing scenes which cannot take their final form until the Church of God is gone from the earth.

In verse 8, the last clause refers to the “branches” and “fruit” of the mountains of Israel. Full blessing is assured to Israel in the day to come, for “I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and you shall be tilled and sown,” is a promise without condition, as is also “I will cause you to be inhabited as in your former times, yea, I will make it better than at your beginnings” (verse 11, JND). What astounding grace this is!

It had been falsely said by the spies sent by Moses into Canaan (Numbers 13:33), that the land ate up its inhabitants, and now that it was emptied and waste, men were saying it of Israel (verse 13), but it will never be true again.

In verses 16-20, the cause of God’s dealing with His people and its character are considered, and it is added, that when they came to the nations whither they went, they profaned His holy Name, when it was said of them, “These are the people of Jehovah, and they are gone forth out of His land.” Not for their sakes, then, but for His holy Name will He work among Israel in the coming day.

Verses 24-36 forecast the work of grace which God will yet accomplish in Israel, — a passage to which the Lord clearly referred when speaking with Nicodemus in John 3:3-12. It will be seen that the promises to Israel do not extend into eternity; they are occupied with the earth, but faith (as in Hebrews 11:10, etc.) grasped what was not, until New Testament times plainly revealed.

Ezekiel 37

The prophecies which have occupied us, have shown the abounding wickedness of the people of Israel which led to their banishment from the land; God’s dealings with them as a nation because of their sins; and their future restoration and blessing according to His mercy. Is there then an element of goodness in the chosen people that only needs culture and favorable conditions that it may spring forth in full vigor? Chapter 37 gives the answer, and Romans 11:15 bears further witness that the restoration of Israel, when it takes place, will be as life from the dead.

By the power of God and in His Spirit, Ezekiel was carried out and set down in the midst of a valley that was full of bones; he was caused to pass by them round about, and saw that there were very many, and that they were very dry, —a vast sepulcher of those long dead. The scene represented the whole house of Israel, morally, in the sight of God (verse 11).

God asks His servant, “Son of man, shall these bones live?”

“Lord Jehovah” (the name habitually used in Ezekiel, and translated Lord GOD) “Thou knowest” is his answer; there is and could be no hope of life in such a scene of death apart from the power of God. By the Word of God, then, and by His Spirit, the dry bones before the prophet’s eyes are made to become clothed with flesh, and life enters the bodies; they stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army. it is the Israel of God viewed in their new birth of water (typifying the Word of God) and the Spirit, without which there can be no entering the kingdom of God, —as Nicodemus, who ought to have known Ezekiel 31 and 37, was reminded by the Lord in John 3:342.

The believing remnant (see Isaiah 53:1) will say, “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off,” but God will give life to the nation which for many centuries has been spiritually dead; and bring them to the land of Israel. All of these Israelites will then be born again.

It will be seen that the resurrection of the believing dead is not in view in this passage; it refers to those among the children of Israel living on earth, who will be the subjects of a new work of the Holy Spirit leading them to repentance toward God in view of their Messiah’s near return. The unbelieving mass of Israel are not referred to in this chapter.

Verses 15-28 portray the reunion of Israel, the two tribes of Judah with the ten of Ephraim, forming one nation in their own land, with one King over them, even the Lord Jesus, ruling as the Son of David. That Kingdom will never give place to another, nor will God’s covenant of peace with them ever be broken. His sanctuary shall be in the midst of them, and His tabernacle over them; He will be their God, and they shall be His people. The nations, too, (for there will be nations in the Millennium), shall know that Jehovah hallows Israel (See Zechariah 8:20-23; Isaiah 2:2-3; Jeremiah 3;17-18).

“Forever”, “everlasting”, and “evermore” in verses 25, 26, and 28 are not eternal in their meaning, but “age-lasting”. At the conclusion of the Millennium (one thousand years) the eternal state will begin; then there will be nations no longer: the tabernacle of God will be with “men” (Revelation 21:3) who will be on a new earth. (See also 2 Peter 3:7-13).

Ezekiel 38

Chapters 38 and 39 have to do with the last enemy that will come up against Israel at the beginning of the Millennium.

Verses 2-3: “Gog” is a symbolic name, meaning “high” or “mountain”; it is also applied to the enormous host that Satan will deceive at the end of the Millennium to their own destruction (Revelation 20:7-9). In both passages, Magog is mentioned, but in our chapter it is “the land of Magog”; he was one of the seven sons of Japheth (Gen. 10:2); Meshech and Tubal were also Japheth’s children.

That Russia with its Asiatic dominions is meant here cannot be doubted, since it has long been known that “the chief prince”, in verse 2 is a mistake in translation, the true reading being “Gog, the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal.” These were three great tribes known to the ancients as Scythians, occupying the country north of the Black and Caspian seas and east of the latter.

“Rosh” has since given its tribal name to Russia; Meshech is represented now in the name of Russia’s capital, Moscow, and Tubal in the city of Tobolsk in western Siberia, formerly the administrative center of a Siberian province of the same name.

Verses 5-6: Under Russian leadership there will be Persia and Ethiopia (but not necessarily the country now so named, for Ethiopians settled on the Euphrates as well as upon the Nile (See Isaiah 18:1); Libya (on the north African coast west of Egypt); Gomer (eldest son of Tapheth, a tribe whose geographic limits are not defined as they have spread over much of Europe, and include the Celtic peoples and others) “and all his bands.” Togarmah (Armenia) “and all his bands”; “and many peoples (JND) with thee.” An immense army is indicated here, and in chapter 39.

It is believed that Asia and that part of Europe which lies outside of the boundaries of the old Roman Empire, as it existed when the Lord Jesus was on earth will join with Russia, in this attack on the children of Israel.

The time of the invasion is, from verse 8, just after the twelve tribes are settled in the land. The Antichrist and those associated with him, together with the power of the Roman Empire will have met the consuming judgment of the Lord at His coming; the king of the north, or Assyrian, with his allies, will also have been destroyed, and we may suppose that Edom will already have been dealt with separately in promised judgments.

Verse 17: Isaiah 33 is the only other prophecy which appears to point directly to Russia, but that great power is included with its instrument, the Assyrian, or king of the north, in prophecies dealing with the latter (Turkey, it is believed, with nearby nations), so that those concerning the judgment of the latter look on to the more terrible scenes involving the former’s end.

Verses 19 to 23 promise an event without parallel in the history the world, when sea, earth and air, and their inhabitants, are mightily affected and disease bloodshed (Israel’s enemies killing each other), hail and fire and brimstone, bring to naught this mighty aggregation of the power of man.

Ezekiel 39

Verse 1; “the chief prince of”, as in chapter 38, should be read “prince of Rosh.” The marginal note regarding verse 2 refers to uncertainty as to the meaning of the rare Hebrew word translated “and leave but the sixth part of thee.” It has been read “and lead thee” (JND).

Verse 4, compared with Revelation 19: 17 is suggestive of the much more numerous army to be brought against Palestine by Russia and its allies; the latter passage speaks of the western empire’s hosts which will then have been destroyed, that is, at the Lord’s appearing.

Verse 6 is a promise of an infliction of judgment upon Russia and the countries with which it will be allied, for “the isles” means distant lands, not necessarily islands (verses 9-10). The weapons of warfare here named are little used in our times, but as God’s Word is true, there will be enough wood in war material left by the slaughtered hosts of the north to serve the children of Israel for fire wood for seven years.

Verse 11: The burial place of this vast army will be where many will see it,—the valley of the passersby to the east of the sea; but the translators erred in adding the “noses” of the passengers; it is rather their way that will be stopped. For seven months the bones of the dead will be in process of burial.

“Heathen” in verses 21-23 should be “nation”; all will know God who are spared when the Millennium begins. Israel will know Him in a nearer relationship than the nations (verse 22), and the latter will know that Israel’s troubles were afflictions from Him for their iniquity, because they were unfaithful to Him.

Verses 25-29 close the chapter and this section of the book with a bright picture of the coming day of blessing. As usual in Ezekiel, the whole of Israel’s twelve tribes is in view. The latter part of verse 26 should be read, “when they shall dwell safely in their land, and none shall make them afraid.” All of Israel will then be gathered in their own land; no more will the spectacle be seen of Jews in nearly every country of the world.

Never again will God turn away from His earthly people, for He will have poured out His Spirit upon the house of Israel (verse 29).

He never has hidden His face from the Christian, because the believer is now brought into the full value before God of the sacrifice of Christ. Blessed as Israel will be, the Christian’s blessing far exceeds.

Ezekiel 40

In chapter 29:17 the 27th year of captivity was mentioned, the latest date given by the prophet. The chapters which now follow have no connection with the subject matter of that, but deal with the position of restored Israel in their home land, after the cleansing by judgment which is set forth in the chapters through which we have passed.

It is quite a common thought that the day of the Jew, of Israel, is forever past, that the Gentile has a position in God’s favor which will never be taken away; but the intelligent reader of the Scriptures knows that these thoughts clash with the word of God (See Romans 11). The Gentile’s day is ending, the day of Israel’s glory will soon dawn.

Ezekiel is in a vision brought again into the land from which he had been taken as a captive nearly a quarter-century earlier. To Moses the plan of the tabernacle was given in Mount Sinai; to David a revelation of the temple was granted, afterward built by his son; to Ezekiel was given the plan of the temple of the Millennium, and because it has not yet been built, its description was committed to writing for the day to come.

Verses 2-3: The prophet is set upon a very high mountain, upon or by which is as the building of a city, on the south. He sees a man whose appearance is like that of brass; now brass is in Scripture a symbol of righteousness according to the claims of God upon man. The line or cord of flax (from which linen is made), and the measuring rod also speak of righteousness, in the symbolism of Scripture.

Verse 5: The measuring reed is judged to have been slightly longer than 10 feet, 6 inches long; the ordinary cubit was roughly 18 inches and the span 9 inches. The wall here mentioned briefly, reappears at the close of chapter 42.

The remainder of our chapter, together with chapters 41 and 42, details the dimensions of the future temple. The entrances are described in turn in chapter 40, beginning with the chief one, at the east, followed by that at the north (verse 20), and that at the south (verse 24). It is of God thus to signify its figure, that He has made a way whereby men may approach Him; we know that in reality it is only through Christ and His atoning death.

Among the details, the prayerful study of which will reward the believer, we find in verses 38-43 references to animal sacrifices, for which provision was made in the dispensation of law communicated through Moses at Mount Sinai. The sacrifices will have a commemorative character, looking back to the cross of Christ, instead of forward to it as of old.

Verse 46 names the sons of Zadok as the priests of tile Millennium. In David’s reign there were two priests, Zadok and Abiathar; the latter was set aside by Solomon when he took part in Adonijah’s rebellion, but it was, after all, fulfillment of the word of God concerning Eli (1 Samuel 2-3; 1 Kings 2:27). Verses 47-49 give the measurements of the porch of the temple.

Ezekiel 41

In the vision given to the prophet of the plan of Israel’s Millennial temple, he is taken in chapter 41 to the principal building, containing the most holy place, set apart for God. This room is to be the same in size as that in Solomon’s temple 20x20 cubits (1 Kings 6: 16-20; 2 Chronicles 3:8). In other respects the temple which Solomon erected was very much smaller than that which was revealed to Ezekiel.

The only ornamentation spoken of here consists of cherubim and palm trees—tokens of power and of victory (verse 18-20, 25-26). The faces of a man and a lion which are seen on the cherubim fall short of the display of these representatives of God in judicial power seen in chapter 1:10, and in Revelation 4:7. These four faces are needed to set forth intelligence (man), strength (lion), endurance (ox or calf), and swiftness (eagle).

The temple of the Millennium as seen by Ezekiel, includes no mention of gold, so much displayed in the temple of Solomon. The omission, we cannot doubt, is intentional, and we are not to conclude thereby that gold and other precious adornments will not be there. It would rather seem that the purpose of God is to show that the thousand years of the reign of Christ will not be a period where sin is unknown; all will not be according to the mind of God as it will be in eternity.

While Satan is bound, and peace and plenty are everywhere, why should sin enter? Alas! the heart of man is utterly bad, and the devil will be no sooner loosed at the end of the Millennium than he will gather a countless host of unredeemed men, born during the period, who are willing to do his bidding, and ready, if it were possible to destroy the people of God (Revelation 20:7-9).

If earth will not, during the thousand years, be free from defilement, Revelation 21:9-27 reveals a Millennial scene that will answer to the mind of God in every part, — the Church of God, the bride of Christ, presented in the figure of a city related to, but not a part of the earth. All is perfection there, and all of God. What grace it is that has taken up poor sinners who have been constrained in this day of grace to believe His message of salvation, and has provided for them a portion in Christ for eternity!

Ezekiel 42

Chapter 42 Completes the description of the temple of the future day, by showing the many rooms, arranged in lower, middle and upper stories, and finally the wall enclosing the temple grounds. The rooms are for the priests, as verses 13-14 explain. Israel will still be at a distance from God, having access through the priesthood, though redemption will be known.

Ezekiel 43

In chapters 10 and 11 The glory of God was seen leaving Jerusalem and pausing on the mount of Olives — compelled to leave the city where He had chosen to set His name, for it was wholly given up to wickedness. Chapter 43 prophetically shows the return of that glory as soon as the Millennial temple is completed by the redeemed ones of Israel. See 1 Kings 8 and 9, when the token of God’s presence was given at the dedication of the first temple, with the conditional promise that His name should remain there; the warning then given was disregarded, and the words of verses 7-9 of the latter chapter were literally fulfilled in the days of Ezekiel and Jeremiah as we have seen.

Verses 7-8 contain the precious assurance for the children of Israel that God will not again give up the place of His throne, or His dwelling in their midst, nor shall the house of Israel defile His holy name after they are reestablished in the land of their fathers. Verses 9-11 are addressed to the consciences of Ezekiel’s hearers and those of Israel who read his words; at the time they were uttered, little heed was paid to them, but as part of God’s living word they will be heard by the Israel that shall be, with deep conviction of sin.

The measurements, of the altar follow with its ordinances (verses 13-27). It will be profitable to compare the sacrifices of Leviticus 8 with the ordinances attending the new beginning in the Millennial age. No high priest is here, nor any comparable to “Aaron and his sons”; there is no anointing oil. Not a little of the system made known to Moses has no counterpart in the Millennium; it foreshadowed the present portion of the Church, the office of the Holy Spirit in connection with it, the present action of the Lord as our High Priest within the veil, and much more.

The annual day of atonement (Leviticus 16) will not be found among the holy days of the Millennium, nor will the feast of weeks or the day of Pentecost (Leviticus 23:15-22).

The day of atonement ceases, because it was, although the most solemn of all Israel’s special days, only temporary, and looked on to a perfect sacrifice (Hebrews 9:6 to 10:18).

The day of Pentecost had its fulfillment in Acts 2 in the descent of the Holy Spirit, forming into one body, the Church of God, all believers, whether Jew or Gentile. Jew and Gentile will be separate in the Millennium, with Israel’s place the more blessed of the two, though both on the ground of redemption.

Of no ordinary character is the cleansing of the altar in Ezekiel 43; for seven days, day by day, a goat, a young bullock, and a ram are to be offered in sacrifice for the purifying of the altar and its consecration.

How will not this action speak to the consciences and hearts of redeemed Israel, impressing deeply upon them the enormity of the sin which has separated them as a nation from God for more than twenty-five centuries.

Ezekiel 44

A third time (see chapters 40:6, etc., and 43:1-4) the prophet in his vision was brought to the east gate of the Millennial temple. The outer gate was now shut, and never again to be opened, because Jehovah, the God of Israel, had entered by it. There will be a member of the house of David, here called the prince, who will be the immediate ruler over the people, acting for the Lord, and he shall sit in the gate to eat bread before His. He shall enter and leave by the way of the porch of the gate, while the common people will use the north and south entrances.

Ezekiel was now brought the way of the north gate, and beholding the glory of Jehovah which filled the temple, he fell upon his face. A message was then given him to deliver to Israel. The house will never be defiled, as the former house had been (verses 7-9). Righteousness will rule in the coming da, and there will be remembrance of past unfaithfulness (verses 10-14), promising for the Levites who went away from Jehovah after idols, that they shall not have the full privileges that would have been theirs in the temple service.

There will, however, be priests, Levites, sons of Zadok, who shall minister unto Jehovah (verses 15-16). No such privilege will be allowed the people as such, — so different from the present dispensation of grace will be the future dealing of God when Israel again takes the lead in the world. Now, all believers are priests; then only a limited class will be.

Exact rules with regard to the dress, etc., of the priests follow. As under the old covenant. (Exodus 28:42), they are to be clothed with linen garments when they are at work. They may not wear wool while ministering in the gates of the inner court, and within. The garments of service are to be left in the holy chambers, and other clothes put on when going forth into the outer court. The treatment of their hair is regulated, and they may not drink wine when they enter the inner court (see Leviticus 10:9-11).

In marriage, the priests are given rules exceeding those laid down in Leviticus 21:7, but as to defilement for the dead, the order is the same as in verses 1-3 of that chapter.

The food of the priests is provided according to the forethought of Jehovah, as under the Mosaic system, —the meat (or meal) offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering, and every dedicated thing, together-with the first of all the first fruits of every kind, etc., are for the priests.

Ezekiel 45

Not until chapter 48 do we find the division of the land of Canaan for the inheritance of the twelve tribes, but here (verses 1-8) the portion for God in it is set apart, with provision also for the priests, after that for the Levites, and lastly for the city of Jerusalem. God in that day will be first in the ways and thoughts of His earthly people, however His word be set aside by them in our times.

“Oblation” is “offering,” or more fully “heave offering,” and is so rendered by the translators in most passages where the same Hebrew word occurs; examples will be found in Exodus 25:2 and 29:27-28. The portion of the land here denoted lies between the future inheritances of Judah and Benjamin, the seventh and eighth tribes in order, counting from north to south.

We may rightly omit the word “and” in the last line of verse 3, reading the clause, “the sanctuary, the most holy place.” Verse 4 is better read “This is the holy Portion of the land; it shall be, etc.” Within the strip of land set apart as the holy portion in verses 1-4, 25000 cubits (rather than reeds), or substantially seven miles across, and 10,000 cubits or nearly 3 miles from north to south, is to be the temple whose description is given in chapters 40-42, surrounded by the dwellings of the priests who do the service of it. The temple area, 500 reeds (approximately one mile) square, corresponds with chapter 42:16; round it is to be a space of 50 cubits (about 75 feet).

Verse 5 refers to the second area, adjoining on the south that of verses 1-4 and equal in size to be given the Levites who do the service of the house of God. The beginning of the verse is correctly translated “And (a space of) five and twenty thousand;” “for twenty chambers,” at the end of this verse is considered a copyist’s error, the true reading being “for their habitations.” No serious mistake has ever been found in the King James translation, God having preserved His Word through all the centuries from alterations that would have changed its substance.

In verse 6 Jerusalem is provided for in an area 7 miles from east to west, adjoining the portion for the Levites on the south, but its extent from north to south is to be a little less than 1 1/2 miles. Thus the city and the temple will in the Millennium be separated by a distance of more than 3 miles. The three parcels of land here marked out are thus in all approximately 7 miles square. The prince who will rule is to be given the land on both sides—east and west—of this area, to the borders of the country—the Mediterranean on the west and the Jordan. and Dead Sea on the east (Chapter 47:18).

Verse 8 brings the assurance that the leaders of Israel shall no more oppress God’s people. That will be a day of rejoicing in the earth when man ceases to oppress his fellows; it will not be until the King of Kings reigns (Revelation 19:11-20:4).

God’s word is meant for the conscience of the reader, though in this Book of Ezekiel it looks far onward from the time it was written to a time not yet come. So verses 9-12 were meant for Ezekiel’s day, but they will come freshly before the Israelites who enter the Millennium, and they have a message for us who now are privileged to read God’s Word.

The natural heart was the same when Ezekiel gave his prophecies as it is today—deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9) if this were not so, God would not have said it, and such as verses 9-12 would not have been written.

The ephah was the Hebrew dry measure and the bath their liquid measure, each holding nearly six and a half gallons. The homer was equal to ten ephahs or ten baths; as a liquid measure it was also called a cor (as in verse 14). The maneh weighed two pounds and equaled 60 shekels (20 plus 25 plus 15).

In verse 13 we pass front the consideration of measures and weights in honest dealings with men to what is due to God. All the people are to bring an offering of wheat, barley and oil, and a lamb or young goat to make atonement for themselves. The sixth part is not without spiritual meaning, and as seven is a number used symbolically in the Scriptures for spiritual completeness, six appears to stand for incompleteness, imperfection; the blessedness of the Millennium will not be perfection. That belongs to eternity, the eternal state. In the institution of the offerings, in Leviticus 1 to 7 there is no mention of a sixth part; it would be out of place, for there they point directly to Christ in His death and in. His matchless life.

It will be the prince’s part (he who will rule Israel for the Lord Jesus) to supply the burnt offerings, the meat offerings and drink offerings at the feasts, at the new moons and on the sabbaths in all the solemnities of the house of Israel. He also is to prepare the four offerings to make reconciliation (atonement) for the house of Israel (verse 17).

At the beginning of the year the sanctuary (temple) is to be purged, and on the seventh day of the month there will be a repetition of the sacrifice for everyone that erreth, and for the simple. A week later the passover is to be celebrated as of old (Exodus 12:14-20), only that the prince is to offer for himself and all the people, a bullock for a sin offering, and during each of the seven days a burnt offering-and a sin offering, together with a meat (or meal) offering. The passover as then observed will be a remembrance, not of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt so much as it will be of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and this, no doubt, explains the offering of seven bullocks, and seven rams daily for seven days—telling of the infinite worth of His death in the sight of God.

Verse 25 renews the feast of tabernacles (or booths) reminder then of the centuries when Israel was without a home.

Leviticus 23 names the seven fixed “feasts of Jehovah”, given by Him to Israel. Four of these are omitted in the Millennium.

There is to be no feast of the first fruits, because that foreshadowed the resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:23).

The feast of weeks or Pentecost had its fulfillment on what has been called the Church’s birthday (Acts 2), when the Church of God was formed at the descent of the Holy Spirit to indwell all who believe in the Lord Jesus, receiving the present message of God’s unfathomable grace which is offered to Jew and Gentile without distinction.

The feast of trumpets will have been fulfilled in the great ingathering of all Israel in their land.

And the day of atonement could not have a place after the cross of Christ. (see Hebrews chapters 9, 10) bearing in mind that redeemed Israel in the Millennium will not have all the blessings and privileges that are the Christian’s.

There will be a visible priesthood, which God will own, to come between the people and Himself, and there will be constant sacrifices, not in view of a redemption to be accomplished, but having a memorial character, looking backward to the atoning death of Christ.

Ezekiel 46

The gate of the inner court that looked toward the east is part of the entrance reserved for the God of Israel (chapter 43:1-5), where the prince, as a mark of particular favor, is to be permitted to enter so far as to stand at the threshold while his burnt offerings and peace offerings are presented by the priests, and there he may worship. Such occasions are limited to the sabbath and the day of the new moon, and the gate is then to remain open until the evening, the people worshiping at the door of it (verses 1-3).

In chapter 40 we learned that there will be three entrances to the temple grounds, east, north and south of the building; of these the north and south gates will be open to the people at the set feasts, but they are to pass through, not returning by the way they went in (verse 9). At these times the prince is to go with the people (verse 10). However, when he offers voluntary burnt and peace offerings, the gate that looks toward the east will be opened for him, to be closed when he shall go out again.

In all this it will be seen that the Millennium will bring no such access to God as the. Christian has; boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19-22) will not be possessed by Israel. Through Christ Jesus we (Christians) have access by one Spirit unto the Father (Ephesians 2:18).

A change in the sacrifices connected with the passover was noted in comparing chapter 45 with Exodus 12. A similar change is observed in connection with the sacrifice on each recurring sabbath. The sabbath of old was observed with an offering of two lambs, two tenths of an ephah of flour mingled with oil and a drink offering of the fourth part of a hin for each lamb (Numbers 28;9, 10). In the coming day of Israel’s restoration, six lambs and a ram, a whole ephah of flour for the ram alone, and flour for the lambs as the ruler shall be able to give, with a drink offering of a hin (one-sixth of an ephah or bath) for each ephah, will be the rule.

The new moon has a marked place in the Millennial order; it expresses the reestablishment of Israel—the nation’s appearing anew in the world. On the first of each lunar month, the prince is to make an offering of a young bullock, six lambs and a ram with their accompaniment of flour and oil (verses 6-7).

In Numbers 28:1-8 a daily sacrifice of two lambs for a continual burnt offering was required, one lamb each morning, and one each evening; in the Millennium there is to be but one lamb offered, and that each morning (verses 13-15). The explanation appears to be that there will be then no fading out of Israel’s day in darkness as when the nation was removed from the land God had given them, because of sin that compelled their banishment.

The latter part of the chapter provides against unrighteousness on the part of the prince, and points out that there will be sin that must be met by sacrifice in the Millennium.

Ezekiel 47

In verses 1-12 we are given all account of a wonderful river which is to be in Israel’s land, a life-giving stream that will have its source at the Millennial temple, God’s earthly throne. Joel, who lived before Isaiah, prophesied concerning it (chapter 3:18) that “a fountain. shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim”—a place about seven miles east of the Dead Sea as it now exists (see Numbers 25:1; Joshua 2:1, and 3:1).

Zechariah, one of the last Old Testament prophets, wrote (chapter 14:8) of “living waters (that) shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the former (the Dead) sea, and half of them toward the hinder (the Mediterranean) sea; in summer and in winter shall it be.”

It is plain from these and other passages that important physical changes will be made in Palestine at the Lord’s appearing, and it may be questioned if any of man’s “improvements” will be allowed to remain there during the thousand years of His reign.

The man of chapter 40:3, with the measuring line, who in Ezekiel’s last vision showed him the measurements of the temple, now leads him to the source of the stream, and along its banks. It is, however, Ezekiel, and not the man, who measures the depth of the river, and finds it to reach to the ankles, the knees, the loins, and finally at the furthest point to which he is led, it proves to be a river that he cannot pass over. This will be a real river in the Millennium, but does it not present a lovely illustration of the grace and love of God to man?

Wherever the river flows it brings blessing; along its banks are very many trees (verse 7); the waters of the Dead Sea are healed (verse 8), and a very great multitude of fish are to be found in that body of water which has long been a token of the judgment of God.

Another reminder that the Millennium will not be a perfect slate is seen in verse 11: the miry places and marshes of the Dead Sea will not be healed. Again, at the close of verse 12, the reference to medicine shows that there will be sickness in that day.

The latter half of the chapter names the boundaries of the land of Israel, which will be seen to considerably exceed at both northern and southern extremities the extent of the land occupied of old by the twelve tribes. The boundaries are, however, identical with those named in Numbers 34. The northern boundary cannot, with our present knowledge, be exactly fixed; it will be between Damascus and, Hamath. Part of the southern boundary will be at the small stream called The River of Egypt, about eighty miles east of the Suez Canal. The Mediterranean Sea is the western boundary, and the Jordan and the Dead Sea form a considerable part of the eastern boundary.

Provision is made, in the grace of God, for a place for strangers that may sojourn in the land—Gentiles who seek to dwell among the chosen people.

Ezekiel 48

In this final chapter of Ezekiel’s book, the relative positions of all the twelve tribes in the land are described: their allotments are quite altered from those made by Moses and Joshua (Joshua 13-19). The possession of each tribe will extend across the breadth of the land from the Mediterranean Sea coast to the Jordan or eastern boundary, beginning with Dan far to the north of Sidon, the northern extremity of Israel’s land under Joshua’s apportionment.

We are not told how large a parcel of land will be given to each tribe, but if they are equal in measurement from north to south Dan, Asher, and Naphtali will be north of Sidon and Ephraim will include both the Waters of Merom and the Sea of Galilee; Judah’s southern boundary will evidently be about six miles north of the city of Jerusalem.

South of Jerusalem the tribal inheritances would appear to be smaller, since five tribes will be accommodated between the city and Kadesh-barnea, the border town whence the spies were sent into the promised land (Numbers 13), and where Moses struck the rock when the people demanded water for their thirst (Numbers 20).

The reasons for the order in which the tribes will be arranged in the land are not altogether plain. That Judah and Benjamin should be nearest to the temple is not difficult to understand on the ground of sovereign grace, for they were the rejectors of the Messiah, delivering Him up to be crucified. Reuben, the first born, who lost his title because of sin, is restored to a place next to Judah. Simeon, the second of Jacob’s children, may, by the position accorded the tribe, be another example of God’s sovereign grace, for Simeon’s behavior brought a curse from his father in Genesis 49:5-7, and he is not mentioned in Deuteronomy 33. Though the tribe was given by Joshua the most southerly part of the land, it seems doubtful if they remained in possession of it very long.

It will be necessary in the day of Israel’s recovery that each Israelite shall know to what tribe he belongs. The Jews have wholly lost their genealogies, but God will meet this need for the redeemed remnant (See Nehemiah 7:64-65).

Verses 15-19 give the dimensions of Jerusalem and its position exactly in the center of the parcel set apart for it in chapter 45:6, and the last six verses of the book tell of the twelve gates named after the tribes. Here Joseph is represented, rather than his two sons, and Levi appears, the priestly tribe, whose portion in the land will be close to the temple.

It will be profitable to refer to the Millennial scene pictured in Revelation 21:9 to 22:5. The city in Ezekiel is a literal city, but in the Revelation that described is figurative, representing the heavenly bride of Christ, the true Church of God, which will have a special place in relation to the earth during the thousand years.

Daniel 1

The book of the prophet Daniel is closely linked in time and otherwise with the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Jeremiah was at Jerusalem, testifying for God until the end of the kingdom of Judah, while Ezekiel was being given the equally important communications of God which occupy the book we have just examined, and while Daniel, taken to Babylon? years before Ezekiel, was being used as a witness for God in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel, the youngest, evidently long outlived the others.

The subjects of the prophecies differ; it may suffice here to remark that while Ezekiel passes over the many centuries of the times of the Gentiles (Luke 21:21) to tell of the day of Israel’s coming revival, Daniel is largely concerned with those times, and looks no further than the dawn of that day of Israel’s glory.

Light on the scope of the four “major” prophets (so called because of the length of their prophecies) is reflected in the meaning of their names: Isaiah, “Salvation of Jah” one of the names of God); Jeremiah, “Jah is exalted” (or so it is believed, is the meaning of his name); Ezekiel, “Strength of God”; Daniel, “God is judge.”

The book of Daniel begins at the year 606 B.C. which included parts of the third and fourth years of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, when Jeremiah prophesied concerning the seventy years of captivity which lasted until 536 B. C. (See Jeremiah 25:12; Daniel 9:2).

It was then, among the first spoils of Nebuchadnezzar, idol-worshiping head of the first Gentile empire God permitted to rise when Israel had fulfilled a course to His dishonor, that Daniel and other youths were carried off to Babylon.

Daniel does not speak of his father’s house, but it is evident front verses 3-4 that if not of the royal family, he was a son of one of the princes or nobles of Judah. We may with profit compare the experiences of three youths of Scripture in foreign lands, faithful to their God in difficult circumstances: Joseph (Genesis 39-41); Moses (Exodus 2, Hebrews 11:24-27), and Daniel, as we find him in this book.

Daniel (verse 8) purposed in his heart that he would not touch the food of the idolatrous king; he would live in true separation of heart to God, notwithstanding the orders of the king, and the changing of his name to Belteshazzar (“according to the name of my god” as Nebuchadnezzar said of it, chapter 4:8;—Bel is “the keeper of secrets” is believed to be the meaning, Bel being one of the Babylonian gods).

Among the youths taken away by the conqueror were three others of like mind with Daniel; of the rest we learn nothing in chapter one or thereafter.

God honored the faith of Daniel, and the other three (verses 9, 17, 19-20) and gave them not only favor in the sight of the king and his servants, but knowledge and skill in all learning-and wisdom.

“Them that honor Me I will honor.” 1 Samuel 2:30.

Daniel 2

God had made Israel the center of a world of independent nations having their origin in the dispersion that followed the confusion of tongues (Genesis Chapters 10, 11) but, as we have seen in the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, they had become so sinful that He disowned and executed judgment upon them, and removed His throne from the earth. He then gave supremacy to a young nation, Babylon (see Jeremiah 27). The times of the Gentiles had now begun.

Chapter 1 is introductory; the second chapter begins the first section of the prophecy, presenting in substance the exterior history of the four successive Gentile empires; the second part, comprising chapters 7 to 12, consists of communications from God to Daniel in which His earthly people are directly concerned.

By means of a dream, God brought to the knowledge of Nebuchadnezzar the course of empire from his day forward, with the judgments that will introduce the universal dominion of Christ. He showed him, too, that though He had committed power to the king, His heart was with the captives of His people, and is them His mind was made known.

In the ordering of God, the king forgot the dream that had so deeply affected him, and he demanded of the wise men of his realm that they tell him what it was, and explain its meaning. They, of course, had to confess their helplessness before such a demand, and Nebuchadnezzar in anger ordered their execution.

Soon learning of what had happened, and that he and his young companions were included with those to be put to death, Daniel’s actions show the unfeigned faith that was in him, The first prayer meeting which the. Scriptures record (verses 16-17) was followed by the answer given to Daniel, whose heart went out in praise to God ere he sought the presence of the king.

To Nebuchadnezzar Daniel spoke of a God whom the heathen ruler had not known, Who reveals secrets, and Who was making known to him things that were to be. As for himself, Daniel disclaimed any wisdom more than any others.

The image the king had seen represented dominion in the hands of men. Beginning at the head of gold (Babylonia) there would follow a second empire (Persia); a third (Macedonia or Greece); and a fourth (Rome). Chapter 5:28 marks the end of the first empire and the beginning of the second, and chapter 8:21 names the third empire, which had not begun when the Old Testament was completed. The fourth empire was in existence when the Lord was on earth (Luke 2:1). It will reappear, but meet His judgment at His coming again.

The succeeding empires from Babylonia were inferior, each in turn, to what had gone before; this was not in the extent of their dominions, but in the limiting of the ruler’s power, and in the lessening splendor of the court.

In verse 44 the reference to “the days of these kings” has to do with the last (future) form of the Roman empire, when there will be both an emperor and subordinate kings.

Daniel 3

In chapter 2 we have seen a man, Nebuchadnezzar, exalted by God to the highest position of authority on earth; the third chapter shows what that man shortly did with the authority he derived from God. No doubt he thought lie was doing the wisest thing for the good of his empire, in seeking to unite all his subjects in the bond of one common religion.

We can see that purpose at work in certain countries at the present time, and it will be tried again before the Lord Jesus descends in power to take rule over the whole world.

There was everything for the sight and hearing in the display in the plain of Dura. An image of gold ninety feet high, and nine feet in breadth, surrounded by all the chief and petty rulers of the empire, and with a great variety of musical instruments sounding their notes, were enough to impress anyone not in the secret of the true God.

Three only, it seems (for Daniel at least was not there) of the many of Nebuchadnezzar’s, servants who were present, failed to prostrate themselves before the colossal image, and these were quickly detected and reported to the king. Their failure to bow down would be particularly offensive to him, because of the prominent place they had in the government of the province of Babylon.

All must accept the religion imposed by the sovereign, or die, He asks the three Hebrew believers in the only true God if they will not worship the idol, threatening them with death in the Barnes of the furnace, but there is no yielding on their part. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego raise no protest, it will be seen, against the authority of the king, or his wicked plans.

Their trust is in their God whom they serve, and He is able to deliver them; “and He will deliver us out of thy hand, O king,” though they did not know how that would be accomplished — perhaps through death. But if He should not overcome Nebuchadnezzar’s power with His own, these faithful men were ready to give up their lives. The king’s decree was such that God must be obeyed rather than himself (Acts 5:29).

The impotence of man in the presence of God is shortly seen, when the three objects of the king’s diabolical rage are observed to be walking, unharmed, in the midst of the flames; and further, completing Nebuchadnezzar’s confounding, there is a fourth with them. We note the heathen king’s description of this Person. No mere man did he see; and there can scarcely he doubt that He who walked in the fire with His faithful servants was none other than the Son of God.

Deeply affected, frightened indeed, by the answer of God to the treatment accorded His witnesses, Nebuchadnezzar begs them to come forth. The God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego he now acknowledges a second time, and declares that none may speak amiss concerning Him. The three are promoted in the province—a testimony to their faithfulness which they could not have anticipated.

Daniel 4

In the first three chapters of this prophecy we have seen Nebuchadnezzar the idolater. In this one, where he appears for the last time, we discover a great change; the worshiper of idols, the proud man of the world, has been humbled, is now a servant of the true God. He tells the story in his proclamation which fills chapter 4. Being practically a world-wide ruler, he addresses his words to “all the peoples, nations and languages, that dwell in all the earth,” and begins with “Peace be multiplied unto you”—almost a Christian message.

His purpose in writing is stated in verse 2; the “high God’’ is the “Most High God”, as in verses 17, 24, 25 and 34. This name of God first appears in Genesis 14:17-24, referring to Him as the possessor of heaven and earth; that title will be exercised by and by, as the demons know (Acts 16:16-18); then Gentile kings will acknowledge the true God as Nebuchadnezzar did at the close of the events of which he tells here.

The great ruler, occupying a more exalted place than any Gentile before him, had profited not at all by the things he had heard and seen concerning the God of Israel, though impressed for a (chapters 2:47 and 3:24-30), God was, however, going to show him mercy. He dreamed, and the dream, he confesses, made him afraid (verse 5). The men to whom He looked for an interpretation of the dream, failed him; Daniel seems to have been forgotten at first, and we need not wonder at this, for the believer who walks before God is not much in the thoughts of the men of this world.

Verse 9: “Master of the magicians” is rightly “master of the scribes” or writers. In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream a great image, the head of which represented himself and the empire of Babylon; here he views a great tree (verses 10-12) which also represented himself, as he presently learned from Daniel. But the tree, by the decree of the watchers and the word of the holy ones—angelic powers acting for God (see verse 24)—was to be hewn down, leaving only the stump with a band of iron and brass. His portion (for in the latter portion of verse 15 the reference to a man becomes plain) is to be with the beasts; his heart is to be changed to a beast’s, and seven times (which may have been 7 years) are to pass over him thus.

Twelve months, passed, and the stroke fell as the king was walking in (or on) the royal palace, boasting about himself (verse 30). The words he spoke in Babylon were heard in the presence of God; the time for repentance was over. At the end Nebuchadnezzar lifted up his eyes unto the heavens and his understanding returned.

Now he blessed the Most High in language totally new to him (verses 34-37), the language of faith. His throne has been held for him, and he is reestablished in the rule of the empire. Firstly he extols God as the “King of the heavens”, for He is not now openly ruling the earth; He has given authority to the Gentiles, giving up His throne at Jerusalem until the day of the Lord introduces a new dealing with the world.

Daniel 5

Nebuchadnezzar’s long reign—exceeding 43 years—came to an end when he died in B. C. 561 or 562. The capture of Babylon mentioned in this chapter occurred about 24 years after the great king’s death. Belshazzar was a grandson of his.

It is thought that the “great feast” had been an annual event; on this occasion it took place when the powerful army of the Medes and Persians was assembled outside the walls of the city, preparing to break in under cover of night upon the inhabitants who thought the defenses perfect. God had pronounced judgment upon Babylon before ever the later empire was founded (Isaiah chapters 13, 21,16, and 47) and again during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (Jeremiah 25), but its end and the king’s death came as God’s swift answer to a daring insult, offered to Him by Belshazzar at the banquet here told of.

Nebuchadnezzar had been permitted, because of Judah’s deeply sinful state, to take the vessels of the temple at Jerusalem to Babylon, and to place them in the house of his god (chapter 1:2). There they evidently remained, undisturbed for nearly seventy years, until his grandson ordered them brought out for use it the feast he had made. Out of the vessels the king, his princes, his wives, and his concubines drank wine and praised the gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood and stone.

This daring act, this crowning sin against God, brought an answer the same hour, written on the wall of the banquet hall before the king’s eyes. Terror seized him as he gazed; the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against the other; he cried aloud to bring in the wise men of Babylon, offering a great reward for the reading of the writing and its interpretation. The words were Chaldean, and plain to all there who could read, but the wise men were baffled. Was it not because the natural mind does not receive the things of the Spirit of God? (1 Cor. 2:14).

The queen, really the queen-mother, now entered the scene of the feast, and spoke of the forgotten Daniel who, when sent for, at once told Belshazzar what in fact the young ruler knew concerning his ancestor (verses 18-21). In fewer words the aged prophet told the king what his course had been; no offer of mercy, nor counsel for repentance as had been given Nebuchadnezzar (chapter 4:27) was included; the judgment of God, long withheld was about to be executed.

The words Belshazzar saw were, in English, “Numbered, numbered, weighed, divided.” Peres and upharsin have the same meaning; the former is the singular, the latter the plural form of the word.

Daniel 6

Darius the Mede, the last king of Media, known to historians as Astyages, took the throne of the Medo-Persian empire. Together with Cyrus the Persian he had captured Babylon, and what had been the Babylonian empire ceased to exist.

The Babylonian government under Nebuchadnezzar practically centered in the king alone; all the power was in his hands. The Medo-Persian empire which followed was governed by kings with a large measure of power, but limited by laws which could not be changed; the responsibilities committed to 120 princes and 3 presidents under Darius seem to have been without counterpart in the Babylonian system.

It was these presidents and princes who led the king unwittingly, in their jealousy of Daniel, into making a decree which, apart from God’s intervention, would have cost that faithful man his life.

Daniel, in all the glimpses which the Scriptures give of him, from youth, when carried off to Babylon, to old age, under Darius the Mede, lived for God, let the circumstances be what they might. When the jealous overseers sought to find occasion against him they failed (verse 4), and they concluded that he could only be got rid of by reason of his faithfulness to God.

With a flattering proposal they came before Darius; he was for thirty days to take the place of God, to have all the prayers and petitions of his subjects directed to himself. If, as we must suppose, Darius was a stranger to the true and living God, the crafty scheme of these servants, of the devil would find him an easy victim. Their plan, indeed, seems to have met with quick success (verse 9).

And now we are directed to observe the behavior of Daniel, he would honor the king’s decrees, but he must give God His place, which the king had now usurped; it was a question of God or the king, which? The prophet was therefore on his knees pouring out his heart to his God just as before the decree was written. The listening presidents and princes came to Daniel’s house to make sure of his praying, and betook themselves to Darius, confident now of the success of their scheme.

The king-evidently had not considered Daniel in connection with his decree; thinking very highly of him (verse 3) and knowing him to be a faithful servant of the living-God (verses 16-20), he now tried his best to save him from the horrible death which that decree provided. It was in vain; the law must stand, and the presidents and princes made it quite plain that they intended to see Daniel cast into the lion’s den. It was done; but at break of day the king, after a sleepless night, went in haste to the place, hoping that Daniel might, in sonic miraculous fashion, have been preserved.

“Hath thy God, whom thou servest continually, been able to save thee from the lions?”, is his mournful inquiry.

Overjoyed at Daniel’s answer from the lion’s den (verses 21-22), Darius ordered his release, and the presidents and princes having-shown very plainly that they had deliberately planned Daniel’s death, the king commanded that they and their families be committed to the ferocious animals. Then he published a decree which betokens stronger convictions than those of Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 3:2.

Daniel 7

Here we begin the study of the second part of the book of the prophet Daniel, in which God communicated His mind concerning coming events directly to His servant. These communications supplement and throw much heavenly light upon the prophetic outline given in the first part of this book.

In chapter 2, God had revealed to Nebuchadnezzar the progressive stages of the history of empires in the hands of the Gentiles, beginning. with that great king, who was viewed as the head of gold, and ending with the appearance of the stone cut out without hands. In passing through chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6, the brevity of these lessons forbade our considering their prophetic character; all that the chapters record is deeply interesting because of the bearing those events had on Daniel and the three companions of, at least, his early years, and because of the revelation they afford of God’s interest in and care for His people. But chapters 3 to 6 mirror the course of Gentile supremacy from the day when God gave up what we may call His earthly throne at Jerusalem, and committed rule to Nebuchadnezzar, until the now rapidly approaching day of the Lord, the Millennium, as it is commonly called.

Reviewing the chapters in the light of prophecy, it is easily seen that in the third we have the record of the first great step taken after imperial power was given to man: the setting up of idolatry on a scale not before attempted; one common religion was ordered for all, for everyone, on pain of a cruel death. In a word, all the power God had entrusted to Nebuchadnezzar was used to deny Him. This principle has continued, in varying degree, throughout the centuries; it is discernible today, and it will appear in full dower when the Holy spirit’s restraining hand is removed (Rev. 13).

Chapter 4 gave the second great mark of Gentile rule: pride, leading to the rejection of all responsibility to God. There have been godly kings and queens, presidents and premiers, but where is the country whose affairs are conducted in subjection to His authority? In the Millennium that will be the rule (Isaiah 49:6-7,23; 60:3,10-12; Revelation 21:24-26). Then will the stump of the tree of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream grow again.

Chapter 5 gave us a view of the last phase of the Babylonian empire, and its judgment; it was not merely pride, but insolence to God; treating and His with the fullest contempt and unveiled blasphemy. This will be the character of the last days of Gentile rule also (Rev. 13:5-6). Chapter 6 affords still another view of the last days, as we may readily see by reference to 2 Thess. 2:4, and Revelation 13:8; man attempting to take the place of God.

Daniel’s First Vision

Chapter 7 begins the second part of Daniel’s book with a dream and visions given to the prophet in the first year of Belshazzar. The four winds of the heaven tell of God’s providential actions over this world, and the sea is a figure of the world of humanity, as in Revelation 13:1, in a state of confusion. Four great beasts come up from the sea; they represent the four world-empires of which Nebuchadnezzar learned in chapter 2. We are not to suppose that they came forth together; indeed, the language of verses 6-7 makes it quite plain that they did not. They are given in historical order, telling of Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome.

God, in chapter 2, presenting the four successive Gentile empires in the figure of a man, gave their characters before men, in diminishing glory till at length the fifth appears, and after destroying the fourth and what remains of the first, second, and third, fills the whole earth. In chapter 7 and afterward, we have the four empires as God saw them, made known to Daniel for the edifying of His people. Here, therefore, they are beasts, i.e., creatures without intelligence of God.

Babylonia is viewed as like a lion, with eagles’ wings-combining in one figure the king of beasts and the king of birds. Majesty, power, the highest rule, was given by God to this first world empire, but it was short-lived; the wings were plucked; the beast was made to stand as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. Its dominion ceased, though it continued as a nation.

The Persian empire, which began as a union of old Media and young Persia, is seen as a bear, one side of which became greater than the other; it was savage, but had neither the energy nor the swiftness in action under Cyrus the Great, which Babylonia under Nebuchadnezzar had exhibited. Darius the Median was the first ruler of the empire (see chapter 5:31 and chapter 6), but after him the kings were all Persians, the Median element of the conquerors of Babylonia growing weak, while the Persian gained and kept the ascendancy. Except in their treatment of the Jews, which was ordered of God, the Persians were harsh and cruel toward their subject peoples. They possessed themselves of all of the territory embraced in the Babylonian empire, and spread beyond it westward to Macedonia in Europe, and eastward to the borders of India. The Persian empire, reckoning from the taking of Babylon, lasted 207 years, and references to its rulers are found in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Haggai. Nehemiah 12:22 gives the latest reference in point of time to a Persian monarch (Darius II); Malachi; the last Old Testament prophet, was giving his testimony about that time, midway in the period of the Persian empire.

The Macedonian or Grecian empire, as it came to be known, formed under the leadership of Alexander the Great, appears in verse 3. Alexander died at the early age of 33, only eight years after the Persian empire came to an end in B. C. 331. Extraordinary swiftness in conquest was what characterized him, as foretold in the figure of the leopard upon whose back were four wings of a bird. Conquering the Persian empire by the time he was 25, Alexander the Great planned to unite the whole civilized world of his day, making into one the two leading peoples of Europe (Greece) and Asia (Persia), but his early death left no one in command with capacity to carry out his plans, and four generals, after squabbling over the control of the empire, divided it among themselves—an action foreshadowed in the four heads which the prophet noticed last in the description he gives of the leopard-like creature. The Grecian empire’s history, it will be seen, was entirely included in the four hundred years between the Old Testament’s close, and the birth of Christ. After it, sprang up the Roman Empire, the description of which belongs to Daniel’s second vision (verse 7).

The verses we have looked at, perhaps appear to be only history stated in advance, but the purpose of the Scriptures is never to fill the mind without reaching the conscience and heart. The recital of history here, as elsewhere in the Word of God, is purposed to show what man does, when left to himself, with blessings, privileges and responsibilities committed to him, and how God overrules, though unseen, for His glory and the preservation and help of His people.

Daniels Second Vision

In the second vision of Daniel, verses 7-12, he sees the last of the four Gentile empires, that of Rome, and a judgment scene with solemn issue. Much attention is given to the fourth beast, because the empire it represents was in existence when the Lord was upon earth, and under its authority He was crucified (see Luke 2:1; Matthew 22:17-21; John 19:12, 15). The empire will be revived in the days now rapidly approaching (Rev. chapters 13, 17, 19) when it will serve Satan as no power has clone heretofore.

What marked the fourth empire was resistless strength; what it did not absorb, it destroyed. It was unlike its three predecessors, because it introduced some features of a republic; professing to be a government of the people, it was as despotic as any monarchy that has ever existed. The beast which Daniel saw had ten horns; these belong to the future reappearance of the empire which came to an end nearly 1460 years ago.

In verse 24 the ten horns are explained as ten kings. The revived Roman empire will be comprised of or include ten countries of Europe, each of which will have a king of its own (see Rev. 17:12), No doubt these will be within the territory of the empire as it formerly existed. Among the ten kings there will appear another having a small beginning but quickly becoming the most important of all, and taking the place of three of them; he becomes the imperial head. He will be great in intelligence and pretension, not so much in brute force (verse 8).

In verse 9 we should read “set” or “placed” instead of “cast down”. The “Ancient of days” can be none other than the eternal God; the language used suggests the Person who is seen in Revelation 1:13-10. (See also John 5:22-23, 27). The Son is, however, not revealed in verses 9-10 of our chapter, but in the second reference, in verses 13-14. Rev. 4 and 5 may be compared with this passage; in the former is a throne of judgment, and God sits upon it; the Persons are not distinguished there, but in chapter 5 the Lamb is introduced as the Executor of the judgments. The Rejected One becomes the Judge (Phil. 2:9:11). So in our chapter.

The saints of God are not mentioned until verse 18 is reached. In verses 18-22, the saints of the high places (see margin) are the heavenly saints of all ages, and with them will be those mentioned in Revelation 20:4. In verses 21-25 the saints are the believing Jews, converted after the removal of the Church of God to heavenly glory, suffering under the persecution of the last days. In verse 22 “the saints” is a term plainly general, referring to the heavenly and earthly saints, and in verse 27, “the people of the saints of the high places” are evidently the Jews.

The judgment (verse 11) ends in the slaying of the fourth beast; his body is destroyed and given to the burning flame (Rev. 19:20). It is after this that the Millennial kingdom (verse 27) is set up.

Verses 15 and 28 tell of Daniel’s feelings in view of what he had been told. The restoration of Israel was now far off; not until the Babylonian empire, under which he then lived, and three others, should have run their course (and as we know, too, the long interval of the gospel of the grace of God) would the promised day of blessing dawn.

Daniel 8

The book of Daniel was, in the purposes of God, written in two languages, Hebrew, the usual language of the Old Testament, and Chaldee or Aramaic. From chapter 2:4 to the close of chapter 7, Chaldee was used, no doubt because what is therein contained directly concerned the Gentiles in whose hands the government of the world was placed. The remainder of the book was written in Hebrew, as primarily for God’s earthly people.

Shushan or Susa (verse 2) was a summer capital of Babylonia over 200 miles east of Babylon; it became the capital of the Persian empire, as may be seen from the book of Esther.

Chapter 8 takes up again the second and third empires which were represented in chapter 7 in the figures of a bear and a leopard; here they are seen as a ram and a he goat, and their names are given in verses 20 and 21. Evidently the two horns of the ram represent Media and Persia; the victorious campaigns of Cyrus the Great, and in measure, some of the later kings are referred to in verse 4. Darius Histaspis, one of them, carried the Persian banner into Macedonia, and his son Xerxes afterward set out to conquer Greece but failed. The military expeditions greatly angered the peoples of those lands, and long afterward, under Alexander the Great, they attacked the Persians with irresistible force and broke their rule (verses 5-7).

Alexander’s early death, and the partition of the Grecian Empire among foil-of his military leaders (verse 8) leads to the mention of Antiochus Epiphanes. This “little horn” in B. C. 175 became the ruler over what is now Turkey; he was called “king of the North” because his territory was north of the land of Israel. More of his history is given in chapter 11; the Jews of Palestine suffered greatly from him, and the casting down of some of “the host of heaven” and “the stars” refers to his treatment of principal men of Israel, who were degraded and treated with great cruelty.

Verse 11 and the first half of verse12 form a parenthesis; the marginal reading, “from him”, should be substituted for “by him”; the reference is to the Prince of the host, to God, and the sacrifices of the temple rebuilt by the returned remnant (Ezra 3-6). “An host was given against” the daily sacrifice, means that a time of distress was appointed; it was “by reason of transgression”—because of the sinful ways of the earthly people of God. This king’s reign came to an end in B. C. 164.

Verses 13-26 make clear that the conduct of this wicked enemy of the Jews was a foreshadowing of the ways of another king, occupying the same territory when the Jews are again settled in their own land (before the Lord’s appearing), and this is the reason why Antiochus is mentioned. The final fulfillment of the vision is to be “at the time of the end”, “when the transgressors are come to the full”.

In that time, which many things lead us to believe to be near now, a bold king of the north, understanding riddles or wiles (verse 23), whose power will be mighty, (supported by an unnamed country or countries stronger than his own) will, after lulling them into a false security, attack the Jews in Palestine, opposing even the Lord Himself, Who at that time will appear on earth. This king is the Assyrian of Isaiah 10 and elsewhere, to be used of God for the chastisement of His people and afterward destroyed.

Daniel 9

Both Isaiah and Jeremiah had prophesied of a brighter day to dawn for the Jews when the rule of Babylonia should be ended, and Jeremiah in chapters 25:11 and 29:10 had foretold the limit of the captivity at Babylon as seventy years. Sixty-eight of those years were past when Daniel understood by the books (of these prophets) that the time of deliverance was fast approaching.

Feeling deeply the inward state of the people which had caused the captivity (a state that it is very plain had not been truly judged and confessed to God by very many), Daniel made intercession for them, pouring out his heart in confession of their sins and the hardness of their hearts. Though little more than a child when carried off to Babylon, and living a life of holy separation and marked godless there, he identified himself fully with the people he loved, in his prayer: “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity.”

While he was engaged in prayer, Gabriel was sent to enlighten Daniel regarding the restoration of; Jerusalem and of Israel for which he prayed. Seventy weeks of years, it is plain were to pass to complete the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make expiation for iniquity, to bring in the righteousness of the ages, to seal the vision and prophet, and to anoint the holy of holies (verse 24). The weeks are in verses 25-27 divided into periods of 7, 62 and 1, the last being separated from the 62 by the cutting off of the Messiah.

The 70 weeks began “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem”, an event recorded in Nehemiah 2:1-9, Cyrus in B. C. 536 opened the way for the captives’ return (Ezra 1), and Artaxerxes in B. C. 468 authorized, the restoration of the temple (Ezra 7), but it was not until B. C. 455, eighty years after the close of the seventy years foretold by Jeremiah, that the seventy weeks of our chapter began.

The “seven weeks” or forty-nine years are evidently the period during which the “street and the wall” were built, and Jerusalem became a city again,—of which time the book of Nehemiah tells.

In verse 26, a marginal note shows a better reading, than “but not for Himself”; it is “and shall have nothing.” The reference is to the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, Israel’s Messiah. Here the recording of prophetic time is suspended; His people rejected their Messiah, and on that account are wholly set aside as the people of God. Presently, for the last week has not begun, God will take them up again. Verse 20 points no further than the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple Herod built, which occurred in A. D. 70, and to a period of undefined length: “and the end thereof shall be with an overflow, and unto the end, war—the desolation determined” (JND)

Verse 27 gives the last week. The (Roman) “prince that shall come’’ will confirm a covenant with “many’’ (or, the many, the majority of the Jewish people) for seven years, and in the middle of the period the sacrifices will be stopped. “And because of the protection of abominations there shall be a desolator, even until, etc.,” (JND)

The appearing of the Lord in glory at Jerusalem will mark the end of the seventieth week, but this is not spoken of here.

Daniel 10

Chapter 9:24-27: From the month Nisan in B. C. 455 when Artaxerxes Longimanus, son of Xerxes, authorized the rebuilding of Jerusalem (see Nehemiah 2:1) to the time of the Lord’s crucifixion—the same month in A.D. 29—there were exactly 69 weeks of yeas (69 x 7=483). Nisan and Abib are two names, one Babylonian, the other Hebrew, for the first month of the religious year of Israel, when the passover lamb was killed. The seventieth week has not yet begun, the clock of prophetic time, it is said, having been stopped upon the rejection by the, Jews of their Messiah. Between the sixty ninth and seventieth weeks is the present interval of the gospel of the grace of God. When that ends, and the end must now be very near, the “clock” will be started again.

Chapter 10: Daniel was now, we may suppose, about ninety years of age, for he had been in Babylon from B.C. 606 and the third year of Cyrus as the sole ruler of the empire would he B.C. 534. The prophet was again mourning, no doubt because of the state of his people and the city of Jerusalem, since that was his grief in chapter 9; and as before, his mourning was accompanied by fasting.

The Hiddekel is now called the Tigris; it is the second great river of the East. There he saw a “certain man”, the description of whom suggests none other than the Lord of glory; the sight affected the prophet as, long afterward, the apostle John in Revelation 1:12-18, who fell at His feet as dead. Daniel, however, only tells us that he heard the “voice of His words”, for the communications that follow were made to him through angels.

An angelic hand touched him; he was raised from his prostrate position and bidden to stand, while the angel addressed him as “greatly beloved”, and told him to “fear not”, Thus strengthened and calmed, made to understand what God was pleased to make known to him, Daniel learned the great revelations comprised in chapters 10, 11, and 12. These include an unveiling of the unseen world in which are wicked spirits, the instruments of Satan, and a detailed outline of Gentile history such as is found nowhere else in the Scriptures.

An encouraging word to other feeble, tried saints beside Daniel, is given in verse 12: “From the first day..., thy words were heard.” The heartfelt prayer of a child of God surely reaches His ear. (1 Peter 3:12). There was, however, a hindrance which God permitted; the “prince of the kingdom of Persia”—a Satanic angel influencing unseen the affairs of the country where Daniel lived—withstood the angel of God for 21 days, the whole of the time since the prophet began his fast (verse 9). Satan cannot thwart die purpose of God, and that his hindering is allowed gives occasion for the blessing of the praying saint who is directed to continue in prayer (Colossians 4:2).

Michael, spoken of again in chapter 12:1 and in Revelation 12:7, is called in the epistle of Jude (verse 9) “the archangel”; watching over the children of Israel he aided the angel sent to instruct Daniel. Verses 16 and 18, and chapter 12:5, show that the angel who brought the revelations to Daniel was not alone. The power of Satan is arrayed against the saints, but the angels of God, though interfered with, perform their service for His own. This passage throws much interesting light on Ephesians 6:11-18 and Romans 8:38 concerning wicked. angels, and 2 Kings 6:17, Ephesians 1:21, Colossians 1:16, 2:10 and 1 Peter 3:22, also Hebrews 1:13-14, and many Scriptures telling of the angels of God.

Daniel 11

Daniel 11:1-9

Verse 1 is properly connected chapter 10:21; it throws interesting light on the behavior of Darius the Mede in chapter 6, explaining that king’s regard for Daniel, and his deep concern over the prophet’s being committed to the den of lions. Darius was now dead, and Cyrus reigned alone over the Mede-Persian empire.

The four kings of verse 2 are named in Scripture; Ezra 4:5-7 gives Ahasuerus (Camhyses), Artaxerxes (Pseudo-Smeis) and Darius (Davius Hystaspes); the book of Esther deals with another called Ahasuerus (Xerxes), the fourth king after Cyrus. “Ahasuerus” is believed to have been a title, like “Pharaoh” in. Egypt. There were nine kings of Persia after Xerxes, but the object in the Scriptures is never the mere recording of history; the four named had each a part in connection with God’s earthly people, and that is why they are mentioned. Nor was it the course of the later kings, but that of Xerxes in conquering Greece, that prompted the revengeful invasion of Persia’s dominions by Alexander the Great 143 years after Xerxes’ death.

Alexander, the “mighty king” of verse 3, the “he goat” of chapter 8:5-8, and the “great horn” of chapter 8:21, was 20 years of age when he began his career of rapid conquest. By the time he was 26 he had overthrown the rule of Persia and established the Grecian empire. He and his soldiers penetrated as far as the eastern tributary of the river Indus. The city of Alexandria, in Egypt, where the Septuagint (LXX) translation of the Old Testament into Greek was made after Alexander’s death, was founded by him.

As the prophecies in chapter 8 and verse 5 foretold, Alexander’s death at the age of 32 left the empire without a head; out of the rival schemes for power on the part of his principal men a breaking-up occurred, four presently dividing the bulk of the empire among themselves. With but two of these is Scripture concerned, because the others did not interfere with the Jews or their land in any way general Selencus became the first king of the north (Syria), and Ptolemy, another of his generals, was the first king of the south (Egypt). Seleucus was more powerful than Ptolemy (verse 5 has been rendered “ ... .but another shall be stronger than he and have dominion.”)

Verse 6: In fulfilment of this passage, Ptolemy II gave his daughter Berenice in marriage to Antiochus II, the third “king of the north”. The two countries had been at war and this was a condition of peace, but the former wife, of Antiochus killed him and brought about the, death of Berenice and her son. The second Ptolemy was now dead, the third, Berenice’s brother (verse 7: “out of a branch of her roots”), avenged his sister’s death by attacking Syria and carrying off into Egypt their gods, their princes and their precious vessels. The third Ptolemy outlived the third and fourth kings of the north (verse 8); but war continued between the two countries for the northern king invaded the realm of the king of the south, and returned to his own land (verse 9, N.T.).

Why is any account of these kings given in the Word of God? Because Israel, and Israel’s land—God’s land—were concerned. In these contests between the kings of the north and the south; that land was ravaged and the Jews suffered severely. What we have been reading in verses 2-9 covers a period of three hundred years, from. B.C. 529 to B.C. 222.

Men without faith have ever scoffed at the Word of God; they deny its inspiration, and because of its accurate foretelling of events which have since become history, they assert that the chapter before us and other passages were written after the events transpired, “Daniel the prophet” is quite sufficiently accredited by the Lord, as in Matthew 24:15.

Daniel 11:10-27

It was pointed out that verse 9 refers to an invasion of Egypt’s dominions by Syria; the best reading is “And (the same) shall come into the realm of the king of the south, but shall return into his own land.” Verse 10 describes the unsuccessful efforts of the fifth and sixth kings of the north to subdue the fourth king of the south; their defeat filled the latter with pride (verse 12).

The fourth Ptolemy died after recovering the land of Israel from the king of the north, and his successor was a child of. The sixth king of the north, Antiochus the Great, thereupon, with the aid of the king of Macedonia, proceeded to take possession of all he could of the dominions of Egypt. Many of the Jews, the “robbers”, or violent ones among them, sided with Antiochus, who seemed irresistible; Rome, now becoming a power to be reckoned with, was, however, appealed to by Egypt, and Antiochus was told to leave that country alone. However, he had seized the land of Israel, the “glorious land”, or the land of beauty (verse 16). An army from Egypt regained it, but Antiochus again got possession.

“The daughter of women” (verse 17) was Antiochus’ daughter Cleopatra, whom he moved the young king of Egypt to marry, hoping that she would serve his own ends but she proved to be loyal to her husband. Then Antiochus seized many islands of Greece, an act which aroused Rome, and Lucius Scipio, the “prince” of verse 18, was sent against him with an army decisive blow, so that he to relinquish much of his territory and pay a large sum to the victors, Mule robbing, a temple in order to get gold fur the Roman demands, he was killed. Seleucus IV is the next northern king whose chief occupation was raising the money to pay the debt to Rome; he was poisoned one of his sons (verses 19-20).

Verse 21 begins the inspired account of a very wicked man, Antiochus Epiphanes, the eighth king of the north. He was a “vile person,” not the heir to the throne, but obtained it by flattery, Opposition to him was unsuccessful; a league was made with him, but after it he worked deceitfully, becoming strong with a small people. His power and wealth increasing, he squandered much, while continuing to plan the capture of the fortified places (of Syria which held out against the usurper of the throne, we may suppose).

Having established himself in the ride of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, like his predecessors began to war against Egypt, and the latter met him with a yet greater army, but there, was treachery in the Egyptian court, and the army was dissolved. A treaty of peace was made between the two kings, but both of them were deceitful; they “spoke lies at one table”, and lasting peace was at obtained. Such is the manner of men shell God is not acknowledged.

God had not forgotten his earthly people, though not a prophet of whom we have knowledge was raised up after Malachi’s and Nehemiah’s inspired records were closed, two hundred years before the time we have now reached. The Jews had already suffered much under the contentions of the kings of the north and the south, it far greater sorrows were shortly to be theirs. Malachi had brought the most solemn charges against them wit had returned from Babylonian captivity. but as a body there was no repentance; when the Word of God is rejected, He will not long delay His judgments, as we shall see.

Daniel 11:28-35

Verse 28: The king of the north whose exploits we ban to read in verse 21, Antiochus Epiphanes, returned, as here foretold, from his war with the king of the south greatly enriched. His heart was “against the holy covenant”, against the Jews who lived in the land God promised to Abraham and gave to their fathers. A poor and feeble people, they had learned in the sorrows of the captivity that the one true God who kept His covenant with them was more worthy of their confidence than the hosts of idols they had worshiped; not since the seventy years spent in Babylon have the Jews been idolaters.

The name of “Epiphanes” taken by Antiochus, means “illustrious”, but he was the opposite,—a degraded, morally abominable man, given a place in the prophetic Scriptures because of his cruelty to the Jews, and that he foreshadowed future enemies, including the king of the north, who will come up against them in the coming day of trial.

Verses 29-32: Antiochus was not long at rest in Syria; his ambition and his former success in humiliating Egypt, led him forth again with his armies, but now “the ships of Chittim”—Rome’s navy and soldiers—came against him, as in verse 18, an earlier check was put by the Roman legions upon his predecessor. The Roman consul came to Antiochus and forbade his going further with his plans of conquest, and even drew a circle round him when he delayed giving his promise, insisting on a reply before the king stepped over the line.

Humiliated and filled with rage, Antiochus returned to Syria, and found in the defenseless Jews, a people upon whom he could vent his wrath, for a time at least, without hindrance. First, he got advantage over them by flattery and deceit, making friends with the apostate Jews; later he resorted to violence. He was determined to stamp out the worship of the true God, and to substitute heathen worship, especially that of Jupiter Olympus. Because they stood in the way of his success, Antiochus treated the Jewish leaders with great cruelty, degrading them (see chapter 8:9-14). He enforced idolatry in the temple itself, stopping-the daily sacrifices under the law. of Moses, and setting up an image even in the holy of holies, —the “Abomination of him that desolates”, as the expression in verse 31 may be rendered. All the Jews who resisted Antiochus were put to death.

Verses 32-35. “The people that do know their God,” led by the Maccabees and others, were able at last, with some help from the Romans, to drive the oppressor out of their country, the temple was cleansed and the Jewish worship was resumed. However, the trials of the Jews did not end with the departure of this wicked king, for a long period of sorrow and trouble followed with the Romans at last taking over the government of the country, as it was when the Lord Jesus was on earth.

The prophecies of chapter 11 to this point (verse 35) have been fulfilled. What follows belongs to the future, not now far distant.

Daniel 11:36-39

At verse 36 of our chapter a new person is abruptly introduced into the prophecy, — “the king”. It is not “the king of the north”, or “the king of the south”, both of whom are mentioned as his enemies in verse 40, but a king of the Jews who has not yet reigned, of whom other Scriptures tell. In Antiochus Epiphanes, and in Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Darius, God has shown both the character and the actions of the principal oppressors of His people in a time soon to come, for the purpose of preparing those who, at that time trusting Him, are to pass through those fearful experiences.

“The king” of verse 36 is mentioned as such in Isaiah 30:33 and 57:9. He is referred to as the “idol shepherd” in Zechariah 11:15-17. It is he of whom the Lord spoke in John 5:43: “If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

2 Thess. 2:3-10 tells of him as the “man of sin”, and “that wicked”; the First Epistle of John names him “the Antichrist”, and in the Rev. (13:11-18, and chapters 16 and 19), he is the miracle-working false prophet. All of these passages, and others in the Psalms declare his wickedness.

This false king of the Jews—how he will attain the title is not disclosed by the Scriptures—will be a man of great self-will—the very opposite of Him who is the true King (John 4:34; 5:30), Whose obedience is set before believers as their pattern (1 Peter 1:2; Phil. 2:8). He will exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, hesitating not to speak with great daring against the true God, who will permit him to prosper until “the indignation” is accomplished. Isaiah 5, and many other passages have foretold the pouring out of God’s righteous indignation upon Israel, and “that that is determined shall be done”, this wicked man unconsciously serving His purposes.

Verse 37 shows that the false king is a Jew for he shall not regard the God of his fathers. “The desire of women” refers to the hope of Jewish women to be the mother of the Messiah: He will have no regard for Christ the Son of God. Yet, while he sets himself as superior to all, there will be an object or being whom he will venerate: “the god of forces”, a god, whom his fathers knew not. Is it a pagan god of war, associated with his connection with the Roman Empire yet to be revived as when the Lord was on earth? The Scriptures tell no more, and we need not speculate; it is enough that he who claims to be above all, will yet venerate a superior power which, not being divine, can only be of Satan. The king will divide the land (of Israel) among those who are in league with him (verse 39).

God will allow all this, and more, to go on in the land of His choice, It belongs to the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7) during which the Jews will be gathered in great numbers in the Holy Land, and they will be confirmed in its possession by a covenant between themselves (or “the many”—the unbelieving majority), and the last head of the Roman Empire, for the period of 7 years (chapter 9:27).

Daniel 11:40-45

“At the time of the end” (verse 40) carries the reader on to a time immediately before the Lord’s appearing. The seven-year period forming the last of the seventy weeks foretold in Daniel 9:24 will be nearing its end, when the king of the south (Egypt) will attack the false king of the Jews. The king of the north (Turkey, with certain allies, as it would appear) will then invade the south with a great force moving very fast before which resistance will be difficult. He will enter into other countries, and pass over to “the glorious land” (the land of Israel), but Edom; and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon will escape. Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia fall into his hands. Isaiah 28, and the judgment of “Ariel” (Jerusalem) in chapter 29; also Zechariah 12 and 14, should be read in connection with what is given in the book of Daniel, but many other passages may be profitably examined, as the king of the north of the last days is repeatedly referred to in Old Testament prophecies as the Assyrian”.

While the victor is far south of Israel’s land, news that troubles him will come out of the east and the north. Whatever it may be (for Scripture does not tell), it causes the king of the north to return northward with great fury (verse 44). He will proceed to Jerusalem, and there, or near there, he and his armies will come to their end. (See Isaiah 30:3). For the Lord will then have descended and delivered His earthly saints out of the hands of their enemies, and the false king will have been judged.

Daniel 12

The Time of the End

Chapter 12 Continues the subject chapter 11:40-46, viz., “the time of the end.” God’s word gives the names of but two angels, Gabriel, named in chapters 8 and 9 and in Luke 1; and Michael (chief prince or archangel) in chapters 10 and 12, in the Epistle of Jude, and Rev. 12.

The believer is warned in Col. 2:18 against the worshiping of angels, and Hebrews 1:14 tells their office as ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. In the day now near at hand, Michael will be engaged in a new work for Israel, looking to their restoration and blessing. Satan will oppose, as he always does, but he cannot thwart the work of God.

Verses 2 and 3 speak not of resurrection, but of a work of God in the souls of the spiritually dead children of Israel in which some of them will be used for the blessing of others. (See Ezekiel 36-37).

Daniel (verse 4) is to seal the book; John (Rev. 22:10) was not to seal the book committed to him, and the reason is given. As to Daniel, the words were for Israel at the time of the end; when they again become the earthly people of God, and are passing through the great tribulation, the prophecies will be understood by them.

The fourth verse marks the end of the prophetic outline begun in chapter 10:20, foretelling the history of Gentile rule from the Persian empire until the Son of Man shall take dominion. That no reference is made in it to the present interval of grace to Gentile and Jew alike (which began when He, rejected and crucified, rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high) is entirely in harmony with all other Old Testament prophecies, none of which tell of the present gathering out of a people to share Christ’s heavenly glory. (See Eph. 3:1-12).

Verses 5 and 6: Angelic beings are seen again, but the central figure is, as before (chapter 10:5, 6), the glorious Person we believe to be the Son of God. In chapter 10, Daniel “heard the voice of His words”, but all that follows, until chapter 11:7 is reached, was communicated to him through angels.

Verse 7: “A time, times and an half” (or the dividing of a time), is believed to mean 1 year, 2 years, and one-half year, (three and a half years in all), and this is confirmed by chapter 7:25, and chapter 9:27 which relate to the same period of time. Taking the prophetic year as comprised of 360 days, or 12 months of 30 days each, it will be seen that the period referred to in verse 7 is 1,260 days. The periods named in verses 11 and 12 are 30 and 75 days longer.

Verse 8: Daniel heard, but understood not. The words are “closed up and sealed till the time of the end” (verse 9). Such was the character of much of the revelations of the purposes of God in Old Testament times; compare Rev, 22:10, where it is said that the book (of Revelation) should not be sealed, “for the time is at hand”. (See also 1 Peter 1:10-12), The Christian is taught to expect the coming of the Lord at any moment, and he is given intelligence as to the purposes of God, not only as to his own future place as linked with Christ in glory, but concerning Israel and the Gentiles.

Verse 10 tells in briefest language of the time of trial at the close of Gentile rule; the “wise” of Israel’s race shall understand then, but none of the wicked shall understand. It is ever true that only those who are subject to God understand His Word (1 Cor. 1:17-31).

Verses 11-12: It is clear from Rev. 19:11-21, and 2 Thess. 2:8-10 that the first act of the Lord upon His return in glory to this world will be to put down the Antichrist, the false king of the Jews; this, we gather. will take place 1,260 days after the daily sacrifice is stopped at Jerusalem and an idol is set up in the temple—the abomination of desolation (See Matt. 21:15).

The Scriptures do not reveal the order in which His other enemies will be dealt with, but it is clear that they will meet judgment in succession, the last being the northern power called Gog in Ezekiel 38 and 39; the end of the period of 1335 days, named in verse 12 no doubt marks the complete establishment of abiding peace in the world, and the 1,290 relates to an intermediate period of blessing.

The last verse of the Book (verse 13) gives assurance to Daniel in keeping with the character of Old Testament prophecy: the prose is sure, but it is not the Christian hope which was reserved for New Testament prophecy (1 Thess. 4:13-18).

Hosea 1

The opening verses of the book of Isaiah and Hosea reveal that those servants of God gave their testimonies during the same. period that Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah also prophesied during, or very near to Isaiah’s time is fairly evident, if not in every case disclosed in their writings. The 12 Minor Prophets (so called because shorter than the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel), are, like the 4 Major Prophets evidently arranged in our Bibles substantially in the order in which they were written.

Hosea alone of all the 16 Prophets, addresses all Israel, and in fact his book is concerned with the 10 tribes much more than the 2 of Judah. It is significant that only he names a king of Israel (verse 1) reigning during the time of his testimony. Unlike Daniel, Hosea does not mention the times of the Gentiles.

2 Kings 14:24, and 2 Chronicles 26-29 describe the true inward state of the people in Hosea’s days; it was bad, indeed, but God was not yet willing to give them up entirely. When His word had failed to reach their consciences, He gave them a picture of their condition before Himself in the wife of Hosea.

The prophet must marry a woman with a dark stain on her character; in fact, one who would continue in immorality after her marriage. Deeply painful it must have been to Hosea, whose desire was to be a clean vessel for God to use, to have Gomer as his wife, and later, when she had gone away to live a sinful life, to take her back again.

Israel as a whole had turned away from Jehovah her Husband to the idol worship, of the heathen, and no repentance of her course had occurred (except in individuals, as the Scriptures show). Would He always bear with her guilt? The names of the three children born to Gomer tell the answer very plainly.

Jezreel was the firstborn; this name is connected with blood shedding (verse 4), for it was at Jezreel in Issachar that the wicked king Ahab and his more wicked wife Jezebel lived, and there she met her terrible end (2 Kings 9: see 1 Kings 21 also). The name means “God scatters,” and it is applied in this book both to the taking away of the 10 tribes in judgment, and their being placed again in the land as the sower scatters his seed.

Jehu had been appointed by God for the cutting off of Ahab and his house, and he slaughtered the worshipers of Baal, and destroyed his images and temple; nevertheless he and his sons continued in the sins of the first-Jeroboam (see 2 Kings 15:8-12).

The second child was named Lo-ruhamah: “Not having obtained mercy,” pointing to the captivity of the 10 tribes which was soon to occur (2 Kings 17). Mercy was to be shown to the 2 tribes of Judah for a season; they were to be preserved from the hands of the Assyrian conquerors of the 10 tribes (2 Kings, chapters 18, 19). But in time Judah, too, would be rejected as the people of God, and this was prefigured in the name of the third child, Lo-Ammi;— “Not My people.” Judah outlasted Israel as a kingdom only 133 years (2 Chronicles 36).

In verses 10-11, the forecasts of judgment give place; there God looks forward, past the centuries of Gentile dominion, to the day of blessing for all Israel which is yet to dawn. The use of the latter part of verse 10 in Romans 9: 24-26 shows, however, that not only Millennial blessing was in the mind of God when Hosea was inspired to write those words, but the quotation is applied to the present work of grace to the Gentile, as well as the Jew.

Hosea 2

In verse 1 a believing remnant is owned of God. Hosea is directed to “Say unto your brethren, Arnmi (“My people”) and to your sisters, Ruhamah (“Having obtained mercy”). Some had humbled themselves before God because of their sins and the sins of the nation, and to these He had respect; they were His people, while Israel as a whole was worshiping idols.

Verse 2: “Your mother” is Israel, and Jehovah was her Husband (Jeremiah 31:32), but now, because of her turning to the idols of her heathen neighbors, He cannot acknowledge a relationship to which she has been habitually untrue. (Isaiah 1:21; Jeremiah 2 and 3; Ezekiel 16 and 28; 2 Kings 17:7-23, 23:26-27, etc). Hosea was used to recall to Israel their departure from God, but their after-history has shown that though several prophets were raised up at this time, their testimony was unheeded by the mass of the people.

Verse 4: “Her children” are the separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah as already seen in Ezekiel 23. Forgetful of God, who had brought them out of Egypt to be to Him a people of inheritance (Deuteronomy 4:20), they had gone after idols. The “lovers” of verse 5 were these false gods, owned by Israel as the source of the blessing’s enjoyed. (See as an example of this 2 Chronicles 28:23).

Verse 6: In mercy, God would hedge up the way with thorns, and fence guilty Israel in with a wall, so that they should not find it easy to go on in ungodliness. 2 Kings 15 and 16 give the circumstance’s which God employed to that end: attacks from the neighboring nations and conspiracy and murder within Israel. There were moments when the voice of conscience stirred the people to a measure of repentance (verse 7), but there was no permanency about it, and God had resort to famine (verse 9). (See 2 Chronicles 20:8). Worse days were however to come, for though there were godly kings (over the two tribes of Judah only) the nation knew no lasting repentance. The ten tribes were soon removed into captivity, and the two tribes ere long followed them, fulfilling the promise of verses 10-13.

Verses 14-23 await their fulfillment in the day to come, when God will bless His earthly people in such measure as they have never known heretofore. First they are to be “allured” by Him, and brought into the “wilderness”, where He will speak to their heart (see margin). This points to the time of trial and of searching. judgment through which both the Jews and the long lost ten tribes will be passed. See Ezekiel 20:10-26, 33-49, verses 33-38 relating to the ten tribes who will be dealt with before they reach the land of their forefathers, while the two tribes will be judged within its borders.

The valley of Achor was a scene of judgment when the children of Israel first entered the promised land (Joshua 7:24-26). Equally unsparing will be the judgments yet to fall upon Israel, but a remnant will be saved, so that the valley of Achor (trouble) will be a door of hope. Then shall they know Jehovah in their hearts, and no longer in an unbelieving profession. His name will be “my Husband” instead of “my Master”, —a term also used for a husband in the Old Testament.

Hosea 3

If it was hard for Hosea to marry such a person as he had been told Gomer would prove to be (chapter 1), now that her character had come out in full display it cannot have been pleasant for him to go on with her again. She cannot now be owned as his wife, but Hosea is to love her as “a woman beloved of a friend, and an adulteress.” He bought her to himself for the price of a female slave (verse 2), and told her, “Thou shalt abide (literally “sit”) for me many days; thou shalt not commit lewdness, and thou shalt not be to a man; so I also toward thee.”

This action on Hosea’s part toward his former wife was an illustration of the love of Jehovah for the children of Israel though they turned to other gods and loved, as it is said, flagons of wine (really cakes of grapes, or raisins offered to the “queen of heaven”—see Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:19). Though estranged from His earthly people because of their sins, He yet cares for them; has not finally given them up.

Verse 4 in a remarkably brief summing up, describes the condition of the earthly people of God, following the rejection of their Messiah. For many centuries now the children of Israel have remained a nation without a king or prince, or any sort of government. Nor have they offered the sacrifices required under the law of Moses, the reason being that their genealogies are entirely lost, so that they do not know who among them are of the priestly family.

They are not idolaters any more— “without image” (or idol statue); “without teraphim” (domestic idols, used in some way for divination). They are “without ephod” too, a part of the priestly garb worn when inquiring or professing to inquire of God, or an idol; there is no priesthood, and God does not acknowledge Israel now as His people.

The description exactly fits the present state of the Jews, —a nation which continues to exist, century after century, in the face of the lurking jealousy, and at times sharp persecution, of the Gentiles among whom they seek to live; having no national home of their own, except in the limited measure in which Palestine has, particularly of late, appealed to them apart from faith in God. What a witness to the truth of the Bible is the Jewish people today!

Verse 5 promises a return; they shall seek Jehovah their God, and David their king, and shall turn with fear toward Jehovah and toward His goodness, at the end of the days. (See Romans 11).

It was not given to Hosea to tell of the preaching of the gospel of God’s grace to Jew and Gentile alike; we know that when Israel was set aside because of the cross of God’s beloved Son, a new work was begun, —the gathering out by the Holy Spirit of a people for heaven, who know God as their Father, and Israel’s Messiah as their exalted Lord and Saviour.

Hosea 4

With this chapter we enter upon the second and larger part of Hosea’s prophecy, containing a series of addresses to Israel in regard to their sins, written with the pen of the Holy Spirit.

The first word of our chapter is “Hear” — “Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel.” It is God who speaks from the pages of the Bible. Who will give attention to what He says? Luke 11:28, John 5:24; Matthew 7:24-25, 1 Thess. 2:13 among many passages, testify to the value of hearing His word.

God had a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, and the ground of it is plainly told in verses 1-2. Since Hosea’s day, the controversy has become much more weighty; man in all his sins now stands exposed before God. (Romans 1:18-3:20). And the Son of God has come into the world, has been rejected and slain. Now the heart of a Saviour God is revealed. (John 3:14-18). Yet men do not believe.

It is in the New Testament that God makes known how He can save the lost, but lie was delivering souls from the power of Satan, making them His own, all through Old Testament days. Was there an ear to hear, or an eye that looked to Him? Then did He bless with salvation, for faith has ever been acceptable with God, and without it, it is impossible to please Him. (Hebrews 11:6).

When God is given up, and false gods take His place in the heart (for everyone has an object or objects for which he lives), there is moral decline also, though it may be covered up for the good opinion of one’s fellows. Apparently there was not much attempt to hide their evil ways when Hosea gave his testimony.

And what of this day, reader? With an open Bible, and the preaching of the gospel, has the world now a different character than it had in Hosea’s day?

Because of the unjudged evil in Israel, the land, the beasts, the birds, and even the fishes, were to be affected (verse 3). It was by man that sin came into the world, and the whole creation has suffered by reason of it. Prophets, priests and people were all guilty; none need accuse another (verses 4-5).

Verses 6-11: Israel had stood in a priestly character before God, but should do so no longer; a holy God cannot go on with a people whose heart is set on sin. Idolatry had taken hold upon them, and in its train came immorality (verses 12-14).

Verses 15-18 distinguish between the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom, and the two tribes which clung to David’s line. Israel was about to be removed into captivity; let not Judah trespass! Gilgal, the starting point from which the land was taken by Joshua, had altogether lost its character, and instead of Beth-el (house of God) we read of nearby Bethaven (house of idols, or house of iniquity). Ephraim (Israel—the 10 tribes) was joined to idols; let him alone! Solemn decision, but fully called for.

The end of verse 18 has been translated, “her great men passionately love their shame.” (JND)

Hosea 5

Priests, people, and rulers were alike in sin against God. Instead of “being witnesses for Him in a world given up to the worship of idols, they were a snare on Mizpah (“watch tower”) and a net spread upon Tabor (“mountain height”).

Verse 2 should be read, “And they have plunged themselves in the corruption of apostasy” (or, “with sacrifices do they go deeply in revolt”), “but I will be a chastiser of them all.”

It was vain to suppose that God did not see and hear all that was going on in the kingdom: “I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from Me.’’ The use here and later of both names for the ten tribes is significant of the height from which they had fallen, Ephraim meaning “doubly fruitful,” and Israel “prince of God.”

Their doings did not allow them to return to their God; they were devoted to sinful practices, “and they have not known”, or rather they know not the Lord (verse 4). They had known Him in earlier days of their history, but the service of Satan attracted them and God was given up.

Pride (verse 5) is one of the three things that give the world its character before God (1 John 2:16). It is again spoken of in connection with Ephraim in Hosea 7:10. One of the earth’s greatest monarchs has testified to what he had proved in his own experience, that “those that walk in pride God is able to abase.” (Daniel 4:37). Israel and Ephraim were shortly to fall by their iniquity, but Judah was to fall also, having profited not at all by the punishment of the ten tribes.

The time was at hand when they would go to seek Jehovah (verse 6), but it would be too late to find Him. There comes a time when a long-suffering God will shut the door of mercy.

“Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him. while He is near.” Isaiah 55:6.

In Noah’s day there were few that gave heed to the preaching, but when the door of the ark was shut by God, and the flood came, few indeed of the despisers of divine mercy that did not wish they were safe inside.

There would be alarm in Gibeah, Ramah, and Beth-aven, but Ephraim was ordained to desolation. Judah too would be punished (verse 10), but at this time Ephraim led in sin, and in self-will he walked after the commandment of man (or, the king) (verse 11).

When the two nations saw that their power to resist an enemy was gone, Ephraim sent to the king of Assyria for help; but their case was of God, and no human arm could deliver them. Had they humbly sought the God of their fathers, deliverance would have been theirs, but now there was to come to pass that word of Proverbs 29:1:

“He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”

Yet in the coming day for Israel’s recovery, the last verse of our chapter will be fulfilled.

Hosea 6

Now the prophet, speaking according to the mind of God, and linking himself with his people, pleads with them:

“Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten and He will bind us up.”

God had not entirely and forever given them up, though their sins were enough to have cut them off from any further hope of His favor.

Surely there is a present-day application of this appeal! What lack of affection for the Lord is noticeable now among His heavenly people! What neglect of the Word of God! What worldliness! Come and let us return into the Lord!

Verse 2 points to an interval before God would turn again to His earthly people—an interval during which He would present the gospel of His grace to Jew and Gentile alike, and the Church would be formed; though of this Hosea knew nothing. See John 2, where “the third day” is evidently a foreshadowing of the millennial blessing of Israel. The language of the verse brings to mind the Lord’s death and resurrection; it is a token to Israel that as their messiah rose again after two days, their nation will be revived by divine power also.

In verse 3 the meaning is more clearly expressed thus: “And we shall know, we shall follow on to know the Lord (Jehovah); His going forth is assured as the morning dawn; and He will come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain which watereth the earth.” (N.T.) Such is Israel’s bright prospect when born again.

In verse 4 it is God that speaks: “What shall I do unto thee, Ephraim? What shall I do unto thee, Judah?”

Their goodness was as short lived as a morning, cloud and as the dew. Therefore, He had sent to them the prophets, “hewing” and “slaying” the people by the keen edge of the Word of God. In the latter part of verse 5 read “My judgments”, instead of “thy judgments”. “Mercy”, in verse 6, is the same word in the Hebrews as is translated “goodness” in verse 4. God delights in the ways of His people that are consistent with His own character; it is the heart that He seeks, and not an exhibition of empty religion.

Verse 7 is rightly read with the marginal note; “They, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant.” Adam and Israel were alike in being offenders against God’s declared order. To Adam there was a commandment (Genesis 2:17), and he broke it. From Adam to Moses there was no law. (Romans 5:12-14).

Verses 8-10 show the true and hopelessly had state of Israel (the ten tribes), and the last verse points to Judah’s as calling for judgment. It is rightly read,

“Also for thee, Judah, is a harvest appointed, when I shall turn again the captivity of My people.” The “harvest” will be a time of searching judgment.

Hosea 7

When God, who is rich in mercy, would stretch forth His hand to heal, the iniquity. of Ephraim and the wickedness of Samaria are discovered. Samaria was the seat of government; front it the kings who led the people in God’s dishonor ruled the country.

Hosea was the last prophet among the ten tribes, and his long-period of testimony—evidently exceeding 60 years (see chapter 1:1) must have ended not far from the time when they were made captives of the Assyrian conqueror, in B.C. 721 (2 Kings 18:9-12).

Chapter 7 thus unfolds the true moral character of that people at the end of their possession of the land bestowed on them by God’s favor—no more to return there until they shall have been recalled by divine power at the Lord’s appearing.

They practiced falsehood, and thieves within and robbers without carried on their doings apparently unchecked. These evidences of Satan’s service were early introduced into the world; are increasingly common in our day and will continue until God interferes in judgment.

It is significant that a lie was the means whereby Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44) deceived Eve in the garden of Eden, thereby robbing God of the confiding trust of His creatures, and indeed robbing Him of the world, the fair creation of His own hands, Satan is still a thief, robbing men (did they but realize it!) of all he can, as witnessed by Mark 4:15 and Luke 10:30; and all false leaders among God’s sheep are thieves and robbers, like their master (John 10:1, 8, 10).

“They consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness” (verse 2)—how true of the present age! Today few are concerned when they are told that God, who offers salvation to all, will ere long become the Judge of the world; then “the books” will be opened, and the dead will be judged out of those things which are written in them according to their works (Rev. 20:12-13), even to “every idle word” (Matthew 12:30).

The whole nation is shown to be devoted to wickedness (verse 8). Immorality —fruit of the nation’s turning away from the true God, and in those days associated with the worship of idols—abounded. It appears to be gaining ground rapidly nowadays. (Verse 8): Ephraim mixed himself among the peoples—the nations of those who knew not God, from whom Israel was designed to be separate (Exodus 19:6; 34:12-16).

The latter part of verse 13 should be read, “And I would redeem them, but they speak lies against Me.” The time came when they cried out because of the distress in which they found themselves (by reason of sin), but it was not a cry addressed in sincerity to God, when they howled upon their beds. Trouble did not turn their heart to Him any more than His mercy, and though they had called (in vain) on Egypt for help, they would be overwhelmed by the Assyrians, and in the day of their dire calamity the Egyptians would deride them (verse 10).

Hosea 8

In Scripture the trumpet is used symbolically as the voice of God, whether to call His people together; or to sound an alarm; or to publicly proclaim His rights (Numbers 10; Joshua 6; Isaiah 27:13; Jeremiah 6:17; Matthew 21:31; 1 Thessalonians 4:10; Revelation 8). In Hosea 8:1 it is used to announce judgment about to take place on the hearers.

The responsibility—woefully neglected, however—of the 12 tribes as God’s earthly people, is plainly, set forth; nor is the promise of judgment ever found in Scripture without the occasion for it being plainly stated. Who was to be the agent of God in judgment is not said: “He shall come as an eagle against” (not merely the nation but) “the house of the Lord”, and the occasion for this action is given in the latter part of the first verse. “Trespassed against My law’’ is hardly sufficient to express the meaning of the original Hebrew; it is really “they have rebelled against My law.”

The righteousness of God and His holiness demand that sin be punished, but, as we know from many scriptures, there had been ample warning given; mercy had long been shown, and was slighted, too. Now with swiftness, seeing the prey front afar, as an eagle or vulture, an enemy would attack the nation that professed the name of Jehovah, but in heart had forsaken Him.

As generally in Hosea, the ten tribes are chiefly in view, but what was true of them was in substance. true of Judah also, though the latter still clung to the house of David their king. It is mere profession in verse 2, just as, in our own times, the unconverted call upon the name of God when alarmed, as though entitled to call Him “my God” apart from heart belief in His word. But God is a discerner of hearts, and they who cry “My God, we know Thee”, had cast off good; therefore the enemy should pursue them (verse 3).

Independence of God (characteristic of mankind ever since the fall of Adam and Eve) marked the course of the ten tribes, and their kings had almost no regard for Him; out of their wealth they made themselves idols, that they might be cut off (verse 1). So the calf, or calves, which the rulers of Israel had made as a substitute for the worship of the true God at Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:28; 2 Kings 10:20; 17:16; Hosea 10:5), gave this wayward people no help in time of need; it should, in fact, be broken in pieces.

In the end of verse 5, the best reading is “how long will they be incapable of purity” (or innocency). Israel had sown the wind, and should reap the whirlwind. They had coveted the ways of the ungodly, and were now to be captives among them. They should begin to be straightened under the burden of the king of princes (verse 10 N.T.)

“They shall return to Egypt” (verse 13) refers to the state of the nation as recorded in the early chapters of Exodus; back into slavery of like kind were the ten tribes about to go, though the scene of it would be Assyria. Israel had forgotten his Maker, and built idol temples; Judah relied on walled cities for protection, and forgot God also, but their day of reckoning was to come.

Hosea 9

The chapter begins with a warning-to Israel against rejoicing exultantly like the Gentiles, and goes on to tell the doom of the nation. The false gods of the heathen had been installed as their own when they turned away from the living and true God, and they had received their grain and fruit as their pay for serving the idols (verse 1).

But the God they had dishonored and disowned had decreed that the corn floor and the winepress should not continue to provide for them, and the new wine should fail them, for Israel was no longer to dwell in His land. They were to return to the condition in which their forefathers had lived in Egypt, and in Assyria they would eat what was unclean (see Leviticus 11).

There they would pour out no offerings of wine, nor would their sacrifices be pleasing to Him. No more could they go into the house of Jehovah; what would they do in the day of assembly and in the day of the feast of the Lord? If, to escape the Assyrian captivity some should flee to Egypt, they would find it a place of burial. Nettles were to possess their pleasant things of silver; thorns would be in their tents.

The days of visitation, of recompense, long foretold, were come, and Israel would know that, at least. They had considered God’s prophets and spiritual or inspired men as fools and mad; now, because of the greatness of their iniquity, and the great enmity, they would find their false prophets to be what they had unjustly said of the true.

“The days of Gibeah” (verse 9) refers to the bad state of things in the times of the judges (Judges 19). In verse 10, God speaks of Israel when He took them out of Egypt; as they neared the land He had promised them, they were enticed, through the wicked prophet Balaam, to commit wickedness with the daughters of Moab and to join in the worship of their false gods (Numbers 25 and 31). These occasions of Gibeah and Baal-Peor exposed the badness of the natural heart, and the memory of them should have kept the children of Israel from a repetition of such sin, but it had not.

Ephraim’s glory was about to fly away as a bird. Unsparing judgment would fall (verses 12-10). Ephraim was planted, like Tyre, in a beautiful place, but his children are to be brought forth to the slayer. Gilgal (verse 15) had been a place of goodly remembrance in Israel; it was there that the reproach of Egypt was rolled off the people by the rite of circumcision upon their entering the promised land, and thither they had returned after expeditions in its conquest (Joshua 5:9-10, 14). But its former character before God had now been wholly lost (Hosea 4:15; 12:11; Amos 4:4; 5:5).

“Wanderers among the nations” (verse 17) is a term exactly suited to the condition of Israel today, no doubt as true of the ten lost tribes as of the Jews.

Hosea 10

We have before noticed the references to Israel as a vine. Psalm 80, Isaiah 5, Jeremiah 2:21 and John 15:1-5 show the nation’s failure to yield fruit to God, and they being set aside, Christ is the true vine. Israel was an empty vine — one which “emptied” itself in wood and leaves, but gave forth no grapes. He brought forth fruit unto himself, i.e., there was prosperity in the kingdom, but it was turned to their own advantage, and to an increase of idolatry (verse 1).

Verse 2: Their heart was divided; they knew a responsibility to God, but gave the honor due to Him to their idols; they would be ‘found guilty, and altars and images—tokens of idolatry—would be cut off and spoiled.

Verse 3: In the last years of Israel’s history, their king was in prison (2 Kings 17:4-5); they realized that this happened because they feared not God, hut instead of this circumstance humbling them with other distresses then occurrent, they brazenly said, “What then should a king do for (not to) us?”

The immediate cause of Israel’s being carried off into captivity, was their being untrue to a covenant with the Assyrian king; so was it also, later on, with Judah. Both acknowledged the dominant power of the east—Assyria at this time, Babylonia a century later—and both broke their pledge by negotiating with the ruler of Egypt (2 Kings 17:1; 2 Chronicles 36:13). Thus judgment sprang up as the hemlock in the furrows of the fields, for as a man soweth, so shall he also reap.

Verses 5 and 6 deal with Jeroboam’s golden calves, called the calf of Samaria in chapter 8, and here the calves of Bethaven (house of vanity or house of idols). These tokens of idolatry—powerless in the day of trouble—now to be mourned over, with fear in the heart (for the false gods whom men have set up in place of the true God have always been revengeful beings) were to be carried to Assyria a present to king Jareb (or, the contentious king).

Verse 9: Gibeah was referred to in chapter 9, but here is in even more solemn connection. Israel had sinned “from the days of Gibeah”, when the tribe of Benjamin was almost destroyed because of flagrant sin. At that time Israel had stood firmly; the battle against the children of iniquity did not overtake them, but afterward there was grave decline, as we know. Verses 10-11 speak of the judgment impending.

The peoples (Gentiles) were to be gathered against Israel when they are bound for their two iniquities (Jeremiah 2:13). Ephraim had been diligent in service, but not for God; He would make them to draw, or to bear a rider (N.T.). Judah, too, was to be brought down to labor for others; thus Jacob (the whole of the 12 tribes) was to till the ground for the peoples.

The chapter closes with an exhortation to turn to God; plowing wickedness had been followed by reaping iniquity, and then by eating the fruit of lies; far worse was the day near at hand. Shalman (verse 14) is believed to have been Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, but Beth-arbel has not been identified. Beth-el (house of God) was the location of one of the golden calves, and is elsewhere called Bethaven, house of vanity, or house of idols.

Hosea 11

How great had been the moral decline in Israel since “he was a child”—since the days of Moses, and Joshua, and David! The latter part of verse 1 is in Matthew 2:15 applied to the Lord in connection with His being brought out of Egypt like the nation of Israel. As we have seen in many of the Psalms, and in Isaiah, notably, He identifies Himself in grace with that nation which has altogether lost its title to be considered the earthly people of God, but will yet be blessed in a marvelous way through. Him whom they despised and put to death.

Verse 2: Though loved by God, and the objects of His favor, they sacrificed to idols.

Verses 3-4: He led them through the desert, cared for them all through that forty-year journey, but they did not know, nor understand what He did for them.

Verses 5-7: Now at the close of Ephraim’s history as a kingdom they had incurred the anger of their master, the ruler of Assyria, and were looking to Egypt for a refuge, but God had determined otherwise; they would not return to Himself, therefore the Assyrian should be their king, and the sword would visit their land.

Verses 8-9: Such is the marvelous grace of God to the utterly unworthy, that He loves His people with an unchanging affection.

“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?”, He says to this nation which had long since given Him up, choosing rather the worship of idols and the moral corruption of the heathen. Admah and Zeboim were cities near to, and destroyed with. Sodom and Gomorrah (Deuteronomy 29:23.).

Verses 10-11 await for their fulfillment, —Israel’s day of blessing.

Hosea 12

The last verse of chapter 11 and the first of chapter 12 go together, the chapter division being faulty. If Ephraim is to be blessed, as promised in the sure word of God, it will not be because of anything in themselves that might be thought to win for them His favor (Ezekiel 36:22, 32).

In verse 2, Judah is brought in, and thus “Jacob” (i.e., the whole of the twelve tribes springing from the patriarch) was to be punished according to his ways. Jacob had been exceedingly self-seeking in his course; there was much of the energy of nature about him, though he was a child of God by faith.

Genesis 32:24-31 is referred to in verses 3-4 and 35:1-15 in verse 5. These passages tell of the faithfulness of God, His interest in His people and His purpose to bless them, though trials must beset them on the way.

Ephraim’s character is further dwelt upon in verses 7-8, yet blessing will be his in the end (verse 9). Verse 11 speaks of idolatry in Gilgal, the place connected so intimately with Israel’s first arrival in the land of their inheritance. In verses 12-13 the wayward people are reminded that God had protected both their patriarchal head and their forefathers, when enemies would have done them ill.

Hosea 13

When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he exalted himself in Israel, but he trespassed through Baal, and he died” (JND).

It is a short moral history of the foremost tribe of the northern kingdom of Israel. The Scriptures do not tell of any great accomplishments by the tribe of Ephraim, but they had the firstborn’s place (Jeremiah 31:9; 1 Chronicles 5:1; Genesis 48:13-20); the fact that Joshua was an Ephraimite (Numbers 13:9), and that Shiloh, where the tabernacle and the ark of God were first placed (Joshua 18:1; 1 Samuel 4:3) was in the territory of the tribe of Ephraim, would naturally lead to pride among the people.

But the worship of Baal, god of the Canaanites, which had gone on during the time of the Judges, was given royal recognition when Ahab became king (1 Kings 10:31-33) with, his capital in Samaria. Of him it is written that he did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were bore him.

And new (verse 2) “they sin more and more”; the testimony of Hosea regarding the moral state of Israel is complete and unanswerable. Judgment was certain, and it would be overwhelming (verses 3, 7, 8, 13, 15, 10). Nevertheless God remembers mercy; He is Jehovah their God from the land of Egypt, where He redeemed them from the cruel slavery of the taskmasters. In verse 4 “thou hast known no God but Me” is more accurate translation.

Verse 10: The marginal note in most Bibles gives the correct reading: “Where is thy king, that he may save thee in all thy cities?” Verse 14 is an unconditional promise: “I will ransom them ... ..I will redeem them ... .” Death is the wages of sin, but the day approaches when “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” will have its full realization.

Hosea 14

Chapter 14 is a lovely close for this remarkable book. “O Israel, return!” True repentance is foreseen in verses 2-3; what a change from the state which required their God to say “No more mercy”, and “not My people” (chapter 1)!

Verses 4-7 tell of the profound depth of God’s grace which will be seen in the restoration of Israel in the coming day. Then shall Ephraim say, “What have I to do any more with idols?” (Compare chapter 4:17).

This word of Ephraim’s, yet to be spoken, draws forth the comment of their God,— “I have heard him, and observed him.” Then we hear the Ephraim to be speaking again,— “I am like a green fir tree,”—symbol of the unfailing beauty of Israel in the Millennium; and God responds ‘From Me is thy fruit found’, for there will be fruit for God in that day in the ways of His earthly people.

The last verse (verse 9) is a comment on the whole of Hosea’s prophecy. They that are wise will understand, and the just shall walk in the ways of Jehovah, but the transgressors shall fall therein.

“Hosea” means “deliverance”, and his brief prophecy has exposed the wickedness of the human heart and revealed the astonishing depths of divine grace to meet man’s dire need. No other book of the Bible surpasses Hosea in passionate pleadings to lost, ruined man to give heed to God who must deal in judgment unless there be true repentance.

Joel 1

There are no indications in the prophecy of Joel of the time in which he wrote, but it is believed that he prophesied during the latter part of the long reign of Azariah, or Uzziah, who was king of Judah from B. C. 810 to B. C. 758 (2 Chronicles 20). Joel’s name means “Jah is God”, which may be translated, “The Supreme Being is God.” Hosea was concerned chiefly with the 10 tribes of Israel, and Joel, about the same time, with the 2 tribes of Judah.

A series of calamities had recently come upon the land, the like of which had not been known before, First came the palmer-worm, then the locust; next appeared the canker-worm, and lastly the caterpillar, as they are here called; it is supposed that all four belonged to the locust or grasshopper family, the first one being a sort of grub or caterpillar, and the others flying or leaping insects; between them everything that grew out of the ground was devoured.

The theme of Joel is the yet future day of the Lord, and the prophet was used to arouse the people of Judah to consider it, taking, in chapter 1, the locust invasion for an illustration of it. As to the time then present, the unprecedented scarcity was of God, and was meant for Judah’s warning. He had given them a good land, a land where they were to eat bread without scarceness, where they should lack nothing; but He had also told them that such calamities as the drought that had now overtaken their country would be theirs if they did not hearken to His voice (Deuteronomy 8:7-9; 28:15, 38-39, 42). In verses 6-7, the locusts are spoken of as a nation, come up on Jehovah’s land; no doubt this was in view of the destructive enemy of the last days, spoken of in chapter 2, and for this, verses 15-20 of our chapter prepare the hearers of the prophecy. It was Jehovah’s land, His vine and fig tree (verses 6-7); and His people should never forget their relationship to Him, their debt to Him, whether they be Israelites under the law, or believers of the present dispensation of grace.

Thus verses 13-14 present a call for the deepest lamentation because what was clue to God (verse 9) was withheld. A fast was to be appointed, a holy day; a solemn assembly was to lie proclaimed, and old and young were to be gathered to the house of Jehovah their God, to cry unto Him. Would that there were more of the spirit of this today!

In verse 15 the day of the Lord, or day of Jehovah, is first spoken of, and what follows to the end of the chapter gives something of the character of that day. Nearly all of the Old Testament prophets speak of that day; it is the period in which the world will be judged by God, when He will no longer work unseen, but will take it in hand openly, and put down evil, afterward, establishing and visiting with His blessing what has His approval on earth. The second and third chapters develop the subject.

Joel 2

In Numbers 10:9, on the occasion of war, an alarm was to be sounded. It is this that is referred to in the first verse, and Zion, God’s Holy mountain at Jerusalem, is in view, with all the inhabitants of the land called on to tremble, because the day of Jehovah’s coming, is at hand.

In the verse mentioned, in Numbers 9, there was a promise of deliverance from enemies, and this took place on the first appearance of the Assyrian (2 Kings 18-19); here, as often in the prophetic Scriptures, there is first a partial fulfillment, the complete fulfillment awaiting a day still future.

This chapter, then, is principally concerned with the future appearance of the Assyrian in the land of Israel. There is today no nation called Assyria, but there will be again, when the Old Testament prophecies are being fulfilled, the Jews being then in Palestine under the protection of European nations. At that time, the power of which Isaiah speaks as the Assyrian, and Daniel as the king of the north, will descend on Palestine with a vast army, and Jerusalem will be captured (Zechariah 14). It will be a judgment from God on the apostate Jews; thus verse 11 speaks of the attacking forces as His army, His camp.

Fearful will that day be in the land of Israel, and in Jerusalem, as verses 2-10 make plain. Yet mercy is offered (verses 12-14). For those who will seek it with true repentance, the way is open (verses 15-17).

The trumpet blowing in verse 15 is that provided for in Numbers 10:30, but it will be seen that it is now to be associated with the alarm of war in verse 9 of that chapter, tile congregation (the believing remnant of the Jews) in faith claiming the promise of the latter part of that verse: “Ye shall be remembered bore the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.”

Nor will faith’s pleading be in vain (verses 18-27); the answer of God is worthy of Himself, and the fullest earthly blessing will be theirs who truly seek His face. They are “Children of Zion” (verse 23), and gladness and rejoicing are their portion thenceforth; prayer will have given place to praise (verse 20). Again, as of old, God will dwell in the midst of Israel, their God, nor will they seek another.

In verse 20 the “east sea” is the Dead Sea, and the “utmost sea” is the Mediterranean. The last clause of this verse should be read as in the marginal note, “because he hath magnified himself to do great things” (See Isaiah 10:12-18). In verse 24, “fats”, is vats. Verse 25 refers to the Assyrian, of whose coming the locust plague of chapter 1 was an illustration.

“And it shall come to pass afterward”,—after the fulfillment of the promised judgments and the blessing of Israel in their land as described in verses 1-27 — “that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh” (verse 28). “All flesh” takes in the saved Gentiles as well as Jews, for though Israel will, during the Millennium, stand in very close relationship with God, a countless number of Gentiles will then be blessed also (Revelation 7:9-10).

This passage in Joel was referred to by the apostle Peter in Acts 2:16-21, to convince the incredulous multitude that what had happened that morning was not human excitement, but exactly according to the greatest favor God has promised for the coming kingdom, namely, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He did not say that what they saw and heard was the fulfillment of the prophecy, nor was it, but of the same nature.

The Holy Spirit in Old Testament times came upon “holy men of God” who “spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21.), but He did not indwell believers until the day of Pentecost (Acts 2); in His power they have all been baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles (1 Corinthians 12:13), and are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22); beside much more that the Scriptures reveal regarding His present work, He is the earnest of the believer’s inheritance (Ephesians 1:14 These blessings are peculiar to the present dispensation, and the passage in Joel does not promise any of them to the earthly saints who will be in the Millennium.

Verses 30-32: In our times, no signs are given but that of Jonas the prophet (Matthew 12:39-40), but when the present day of grace is over, and God is about to show His power, there will be wonders, warning the world of what is to come (See Revelation 6, and following chapters).

Joel 3

In that day many who have not heard God’s present message of salvation, will be delivered from the coming wrath. 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 closes the door against the neglectors and rejectors of the gospel now made known.

When the Lord descends to this earth, the mighty Conqueror over all His foes, He will “bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem” (verse 1), and they will be a free people in their own land. There will be a judgment of the Gentiles for their treatment of Israel from the earliest oppression of them, down to the last.

Verses 9-12 bid the nations come to the valley of Jehoshaphat, prepared with all their resources, both of fighting, equipment and of men; God’s mighty ones, the angels, whom the Lord in. His hour of trial would not call to His aid (Matthew 26:53) will be there to meet them.

Two symbols of judgment, found again in the Revelation 14 are used here; —in reaping the harvest there will be made a separation between the objects of mercy and the objects of wrath, but the winepress speaks only of vengeance upon the wicked. The nations here referred to are evidently those headed by the Assyrian of the last days.

The prophecy closes with a glowing description of the land of Israel in the Millennium, when the judgments are executed and peace reigns. Egypt will suffer, and Edom much more, because of past guiltiness concerning Judah.

Amos 1

Amos, as before noted, was an early prophet; compare verse 1 with Hosea 1:1. His name means “burden bearer”, and he was a herdman or sheep master, and a gatherer or dresser of sycamore fruit (thought to be the sycamore-fig, or fig-mulberry) (See chapter 7:14-15). Tekoa was a few miles from Bethlehem.

The burden laid on Amos was the state of God’s earthly people, the two nations of Israel and Judah, and the chastisement which was shortly to fall upon them because of their many sins. God was about to deal, also, with their neighbors on both borders, and these are spoken of briefly, at the beginning of the prophecy. As yet, He dwelt in Zion, where before long He will again have His earthly dwelling place, when the restoration of Israel is undertaken.

In Joel 3:16 is language similar to verse 2, except that Joel’s words refer to the yet future day of judgment, while Amos’s relate to that which was shortly to come to pass. God has long patience, but He will not compromise with evil.

The expression, “for three transgressions...and for four,” used repeatedly in chapters 1 and 2, covers a course of sin, rather than a certain number of offences, as three, or four, or seven.

God would not turn away from the judgment of Damascus, the capital of Syria, because of the cruelty the Syrians had practiced in taking Gilead, the northeastern section of Israel’s land—beyond the Jordan (2 Kings 8:12,28; 10:32-33). “Ben-Hadad” was a title of the kings of Syria, meaning “Son of Hadad”, the Sun-god of the Syrians. The “bar” of Damascus referred to its defenses against an enemy, the plain (or valley) of Aven tells of the prevalence of idolatry; Beth-Eden appears to have been a name for the city of Damascus, as it means “House of delight”. Kir has not been identified, but it is thought to be a region between the Black and Caspian seas (See 2 Kings 16:9 for the fulfilment of this prophecy).

Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Ekron were the royal cities of the Philistines; formerly they were five in number, but Gath may have been abandoned about this time (See 2 Chronicles 26:6). The captivity mentioned in verses 6 and 9 is not identified in the historical books. The Philistines are yet to perish as a people (verse 8; see Isaiah 14:29-31; Jeremiah 47; Ezekiel 25:15-17; Zephaniah 2:4-7; Zechariah 9:5-7).

Tyre’s glory was to end, and it did when first Nebuchadnezzar, and later Alexander the Great captured the city; but it will come into judgment at the Lord’s appearing, and after that Isaiah 23:18 will be literally fulfilled, with Psalm 45:12 also.

Edom with its district of Teman and capital city of Bozrah will be judged in the coming day, as several Scriptures witness. It was the land of Esau, whose children came to hate the children of Jacob with an undying hatred (Psalm 83; Psalm 137:7; Isaiah 11:14,31; 63:1-6; Jeremiah 49:7-22; Lamentations 4:21; Ezekiel 25:12-14; 35; Joel:19; Obadiah; Malachi 1:2-5).

The nations spoken of in this chapter and in the next have disappeared with the glory of their kings, —and their cities are decadent or desolate; but Syria, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon and Moab will reappear as distinct peoples in the regions they formerly occupied, to be judged at the Lord’s appearing, now not far distant.

Had the tribes of Reuben and Gad and half of Manasseh been content to go over the Jordan with their brethren (Numbers 32; Joshua 13), they would not have been so exposed to attack. Joshua 22; 2 Kings 10:32, 33; 1 Chronicles 5:26, and verse 13 of Amos 1, tell what befell them because of their seeking, what seemed like natural advantage instead of acting on the word of God. The children of Ammon were their immediate neighbors on the east, and these to gain more territory for themselves, wantonly and brutally killed women of Gilead. The judgment of Ammon is accordingly pronounced.

Amos 2

Moab, as well as Ammon, is the subject of prophecy, and in each case there is promise of judgment on them. Isaiah 11:14; 15 and 16; 25:10-12; Jeremiah 9:25, 26; Jeremiah 48 and 49; Ezekiel 25, and Zephaniah 2:8-11 disclose the penalty for their guilt concerning Israel. The occasion spoken of in verse 1 is evidently that recorded in 2 Kings 3:26, 27, when the eldest son of the king of Edom, and probably joint king of that country, was made a burnt offering by the king of Moab who had got possession of him in war.

And now (verse 4) we reach the solemn pronouncements of God. upon His own earthly people, which occupy the remainder of the prophecy of Amos. Judah comes first; the charge against the two tribes is despising the law of Jehovah and lying, which had caused them to err. Israel, the ten tribes, is accused of utter selfishness, covetousness, immorality, and idolatry.

God had destroyed the Amorites for them; powerful enemies they had been; He had indeed brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt; had graciously led them forty years in the wilderness, and given them the land for a possession. He had raised up prophets from among their sons, and Nazarites, separated to God, among their young men; but the prophets were commanded to not prophecy, and the Nazarites (who were never to touch wine) were given it to drink.

What then shall God do to a nation that professes His name, but is guilty more than the nations that know Him not? He will commence to deal with them by removing flight from the swift, strength from the strong, power from the mighty, courage from the brave. Chapter 3 introduces a more solemn word from Him.

Amos 3

In chapters 1 and 2 The people of Israel were included in the judgments pronounced upon the nations occupying the land of Palestine and its borders, but from the third chapter to the end they alone are addressed, and that in the most solemn way. “Hear this word” is the introduction to three successive chapters, followed in the fourth by “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.”

The ground of God’s dealing with Israel is stated in verse 2: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.” They were God’s peculiar people, standing before Him in a very different position from that of the other nations, who were idol worshippers. “Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities,” (See Luke 12:47-48).

Seven questions are asked, in verses 3-6, all of them bearing upon the state of Israel. The first has to do with their relationship with God: “Shall two walk together, except they be agreed?” It was impossible that a holy God could go on with a people full of transgressions.

The second and third questions speak of Israel as shortly to become the prey of devouring enemies who would not spare them, and the fourth and fifth picture them as ensnared to their destruction who had been God’s free people. The latter part of the fifth verse has been rendered, “Will the snare spring up from the earth when nothing at all has been taken?” (JND)

The last two questions bring the warning of coming judgment home to those addressed. The blowing of the trumpet told of an enemy’s approach, and the “evil” in a city was a visitation from God there; it might be in a plague, or the capture of the place by an enemy, or some other dealing from Himself.

Israel then was warned; there was cause for an infliction of divine judgment, and that judgment would soon fall. Yet God will not act without revealing it beforehand to His servants the prophets (verse 7). This principle of His dealings with man is to be seen throughout the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation.

“The lion hath roared, —who will not fear? The Lord Jehovah hath spoken, —who can but prophesy?” O, that there were more faithful men in these closing days of God’s grace, to warn sinners of judgment to come!

Verses 9-15 forecast the judgment to fall upon the ten tribes, which preceded that of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin by 132 years. The Philistines and Egyptians were invited to behold the confusion and the oppressions in Samaria, the capital of Israel’s kingdom. An adversary round about the land was foretold, who should bring down their strength and spoil their palaces, and only a very small remnant (verse 12) should escape. The “corner” of a bed, or rather a couch or divan, was the best place in the houses of the rich,

The chapter closes with a warning intended to reach Judah as well as Israel (verses 13-15). The iniquity of idolatry, represented by Jeroboam’s altar at Bethel was to come into remembrance in the day of Israel’s punishment.

Amos 4

To be addressed, and that by God Himself, as cows, cows of Basilan (the grazing country east of the Jordan where many cattle were raised), must have been humiliating to the rulers of the kingdom of Israel, but it fitly expressed their state as He saw them. Of true intelligence they now had none, gone far from their God in all their ways.

In chapter 2:6-7) Israel is rebuked for despising the poor, and here a second time their treatment of them is spoken of; we find the subject mentioned again, in chapter 5 (verse 11). It is of man’s selfish heart to neglect and deal unjustly with the poor, but such conduct does not pass unnoticed by the all-seeing eyes of God. The leaders of Samaria (the ten-tribe kingdom) thought themselves secure in their houses of ivory, their winter houses and summer houses, but the Lord Jehovah had sworn by His holiness concerning this unholy people (verses 2-3).

Bethel and Gilgal were names that formerly spoke of God’s deep interest in His people; at Bethel He had spoken to Jacob when a wanderer from his father’s home; at Gilgal the reproach of Egypt was rolled away, when the Israelites entered the promised land. But now these were places of transgression; Bethel had become Beth-aven, house of idols instead of house of God, and Gilgal, as we judge from verse 4, was an even greater center of idolatry.

God had visited Israel because of their perverseness, and five measures He had employed are spoken of; it will be seen that these increased in severity from the first to the last (verses 6-11), but His complaint is that none of them moved the people to return to Him. Therefore (verse 12) He would meet them in judgment more intense; “Prepare to meet thy God.”

Amos 5

Jehovah the God of hosts will be heard, and verses 2-3 declare His word concerning the house of Israel, that “the virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more arise.” There is no hope now of recovery.

Yet there is an offer of mercy: “Seek ye Me, and ye shall live” (verses 4-9). In verses 10-13 a further exposure of the national sins is made, with warning of certain judgment, and (verses 14-15) a call to repentance follows, but (verses 16-17) mourning and wailing everywhere are assured. How plainly all this testifies of the love of God for man! God is beseeching and man is refusing His goodness to this very day.

In false security some desired the day of the Lord; it will prove a time of distress for every sinner. That day will come as a thief in the night, and in it both the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up (2 Peter 3:10).

In verses 21-27 God declares His full rejection of His people’s gatherings, supposedly in His honor, and will have none of their offerings, will not hear their songs, and reminds them of their sad history in the wilderness journey of 40 years from Egypt to Canaan. Verses 25-27 were quoted by the martyr Stephen (Acts 7:42-43) from the translation which was in common use when the Lord was on earth —the Septuagint.

Amos 6

That the iniquity of Israel was now about full, these chapters of Amos’s prophecy make plain. In chapter 3:2, God had said, “I will punish you for all your iniquities,” and the recital of them is an exposure of a state thoroughly bad, and demanding (and about to receive) His unsparing judgment.

A people who had always practiced idolatry while professing to be the people of Jehovah their God; who turned judgment to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth; who hated reproof and abhorred one that spoke uprightly; who trampled upon the poor; who afflicted the just; who took bribes, and turned aside the right of the needy when they asked for their due; whose transgressions were manifold and whose sins were mighty, they were yet supremely confident that all was well with themselves.

At the time of Amos the northern kingdom was prospering. Jeroboam II had added to the military successes of his father so that the northern part of the kingdom, which the Syrians had seized, was wholly restored (2 Kings 14:23-29). After his death decline was rapid; four of the six kings who reigned after him were murdered, and there were periods during which the country was without a ruler; then came the siege of Samaria and the captivity of the nation.

“The prophecy of Amos, while chiefly directed toward the ten tribes, embraces in its scope the two tribes also, for, except that they clung to the line of David their king, there was little difference between the northern and southern kingdoms (See 2 Kings 17:19), Accordingly, in verse 1 The opening word is “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion” (the kingdom of Judah) “and trust,” or are secure “in the mountain of Samaria” (the kingdom of Israel).

Verse 2: Calneh was an ancient city, only mentioned in Scripture here and in Genesis 10:10, and Isaiah 10:9; its location is in dispute. Hamath was both a city and a district north of Syria; it had been conquered by the Assyrians. Gath was captured by the Syrians (2 Kings 12:17).

Verses 3-6 present a picture of ease, of luxury and self-indulgence from which self-judgment was wholly absent. There was no grief among his children over the affliction (or breach) of Joseph; indeed, we may gather that the people of Israel would for the most part have denied that there was any such thing as decline among them.

Just so is it today in what is called Christendom, for there are evidently few among the millions of professors of Christianity who realize and mourn over the great departure from God and His word which marks the present hour.

Because of this blindness and self-confidence in the face of many warnings, added to their many sins, the ten tribes would go first into captivity (verse 7).

Verses 9-14 forecast a fearful time, the condition of the people being now hopeless; a nation that would afflict the house of Israel from end to end of their land, would be raised up against them by God.

Amos 7

Three tokens of judgment from God are presented for Amos to see; first, grasshoppers or locusts; next fire; and, lastly, a plumb line. These are believed to represent the three successive attacks which the .Assyrians were to make upon the ten tribes of Israel; first, that spoken of in 2 Kings 15:19, when Pul was given tribute; second, that mentioned in verse 29 of the same chapter, when the northeastern part of the country was seized by Tiglath-Pileser, and the inhabitants were taken captive to Assyria; third, the overrunning of the whole land by Shalmaneser and the captivity of the nation, told of in 2 Kings 17:5, 6.

God had borne long with this people who drew near him with their lips, but whose heart was far from Him, and the time was near when intercession would be without avail, He would forbear no longer. He would then set a plumbline in the midst of His people, and that meant judgment that would deal with all the transgressors.

“The high places of Isaac” (verse 9), and “the house of Isaac” (verse 16), are expressions not found elsewhere in the Scriptures. Isaac was Abraham’s heir, and these terms appear to have been adopted by the people to exalt their country, forgetful that their ways were very far from the God-pleasing course of those of their forefathers whom they professed to honor.

“The house of Jeroboam” (verse 9), though the then reigning king (2 Kings 14:23-29) bore tint name, may well refer to established ruler of the ten tribes, who established the evil course of the nation which it held to the end (1 Kings 14:16; 2 Kings 17:21-23).

The prophecy of the end of Israel naturally aroused the anger of the priest of Bethel, and he sent word of it to the king. The truth of God is always offensive to the natural heart, which prefers a religion of its own after the general pattern of Cain’s (Genesis 4:3; 1 John 3:12; Jude 11). The first Jeroboam had arranged such a religion for his nation in order to secure the kingdom to himself and his successors (1 Kings 12:26-33). Of this religion, the king, and not God, was its head (verse 13).

Amos therefore is told to flee away to the land of Judah; there he might speak for God, but not in Israel! But it was God, and not man, that called Amos to speak. He was, as he told the priest of Bethel, no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but a herdman and a gatherer of fruit, and Jehovah took him as he followed the flock. The word which he proclaimed was God’s, and He had said to this man of humble life, “Go, prophesy unto My people Israel.”

There was an exceedingly solemn word for this priest who would silence the voice of God speaking through His servant (verse 17). In the troublous times which lay before the kingdom of Israel, Amaziah’s family would not be spared; his wife would become a dissolute woman; his sons and daughters would die by the sword; his land would be given to others; the country would be polluted; and (in from sixty to eighty years) Israel would certainly go into captivity, as God had declared.

Amos 8

One more sign was given to the prophet (verse 1), a token that Israel’s summer was past, her fruit was gathered; and as God looked at it, He said, “The end is come upon My people Israel.” (Compare with Genesis 6:13). The songs of the present would soon give place to howlings of misery, of woe, when the long-promised judgment of this people should take place. There would then be no word of complaint against God; the many dead would be cast out in silence. There can be no complaint at the just judgment of Jehovah when it falls.

One more word of warning from Him Who reads the thoughts and intents of the human heart is given in verses 4-6; but would the hearers listen, and humble themselves? “Jehovah bath sworn by the glory of Jacob, Certainly I will never forget any of their works!”

Verses 8 to 14 and chapter 9:1-10 express in striking language the judgment to fall on Israel; part of it is as yet unexecuted, for God has not visited His earthly people to the full measure for their sins. Isaiah 17 and 28, Jeremiah 30, Joel 2 and Zechariah 13:8-9 may be referred to among many passages relating to future judgments upon the earthly people of God; Ezekiel 20:33-38 gives the particular dealing with the ten tribes of Israel, who, unlike the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, will be punished outside of the land of their inheritance.

In verse 8, the “flood” is the river of Egypt, the Nile, comparison being made of the promised day of trouble with the annual rising of that stream, “and it shall surge and sink down, as the river of Egypt” (JND) (See also chapter 9:5). The word of God was despised, and His prophets were rejected; the people were, in retribution, to suffer for lack of that divine guidance they had refused (verses 11-14).

Amos 9

Chapter 9 opens with a vision of the Lord standing where offerings were wont to be made; sacrifices would now be unavailing. None of the rebels from His government will escape. “Hell” in verse 2 is not the lake of fire, but where the dead are awaiting eternal judgment. “Heaven” is “the heavens”; the expression does not mean the Christian’s heavenly home. Carmel is not a high mountain, but has deep and winding gorges overhung by trees, where hiding would not be difficult. But there can be no hiding from God, as these verses show.

The sinful kingdom of Israel (verse 8) was to be destroyed, but the house of Jacob not utterly. There would be a dispersion of them among all the nations (verse 9), and all the sinners are to die by the sword, who said that evil should not overtake nor befall them (verse 10). The kingdom of Israel perished, the Jews are scattered and are found today in many countries, but verse 10 has been only partially fulfilled.

God will not allow this book of judgment to be closed without His assurance of blessing for the remnant in whom is faith (verses 11-15). In the coming day He will raise up the tabernacle, not of two kingdoms, but of one, that of David, for Israel and Judah will be united. In that day there will be such blessing as this world has never known, and Israel will be the chief of the nations.

And where will the Church be then, — those who have believed the present message of God’s grace? With, Christ. Their home will never be on earth again, and the earthly blessings mentioned here are for God’s earthly people.

Obadiah

This short book is wholly concerned with the judgment of the nation which sprang from Esau, Jacob’s elder brother. They had taken possession of the territory of the Horites between the Dead Sea and the arm of the Red Sea called the Gulf of Akaba (Genesis 36:6-8, Deuteronomy 2:4-8, 12), and thus it became the land of Edom. The Horites had made their dwellings in caves cut high up in the sides of the sandstone hummocks which abound in that country, and the Edomites made these caves their homes.

A jealous hatred of Jacob’s children early possessed the children of Esau; this first appears in the Scriptures in Numbers 20:14-21. The people of Israel were forbidden in the law to abhor an Edomite (Deuteronomy 23:7), but they were numbered among their enemies (1 Samuel 14:47). David subdued them (2 Samuel 8:14), but they revolted in the reign of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings 8:20, 22), and more than once attacked Judah now grown weak because of turning from God (2 Chronicles 28:17).

Obadiah’s prophecy looks forward to a day still future, when the Jews will be settled in Palestine in much greater numbers than at present; the time will be just before the Lord, having already come for His heavenly saints, raising the dead and changing the living ones, will descend to the earth to set up His kingdom. There will be an alliance among nations north and east of Palestine, and with these Edom will be associated at first; their object will be to seize the Holy Land for themselves. References, to this alliance under the “king of the north” or “Assyrian” have occupied us in our studies of the Psalms, and Isaiah and other prophets.

In verse 1 “rumor” is better translated “report”. The ambassador’s purpose will be to arouse the nations with which Edom will be in league to light against the little kingdom. God had made the descendants of Esau a small nation, but their pride knew no bounds. “Wound”, in verse 7, is rightly “snare”. Teman (verse 9) was the principal place in Edom.

Verses 10-14, with other Scriptures, tell the cause of God’s anger against the nation. Hatred toward the children of Israel led the Edomites to seek the favor of Nebuchadnezzar and his conquering host of Babylonians when Jerusalem was besieged and Judah was carried away captive, as in the future day in the same way they will seek association with the stranger against Jacob their kinsman.

They will be recompensed according to their deeds (verses 15-16), and there shall not be any left of the house of Esau when the judgments at the Lord’s appearing are completed, and all the earth is in quietness. Their land will be uninhabited, a monument to the righteous judgment of God, throughout the Millennium.

Other scriptures dealing with the future punishment of Edom are numerous. Psalms 83 and 137, Isaiah 31, Jeremiah 49 (which repeats part of Obadiah’s prophetic language), Ezekiel 25:12-11 and chapter 35, and Malachi 1:2-5 are the principal ones.

The land of Edom is today almost uninhabited; the Edomites were dispossessed many centuries ago, and they, like the lost 10 tribes of Israel, and the Moabites, Ammonites and other former neighbors of God’s earthly people are not now recognized, but they will reappear for the closing scenes.

Jonah 1

The prophecy of Jonah, it has been remarked, has, like the Epistle of James in the New Testament, a peculiar place, a special character. Jonah, unlike his fellow prophets, in the prophecy before us, was sent to Gentiles with a message from God. That he also served his Master among the ten tribes of Israel is witnessed, though briefly, in 2 Kings 14:25, where also it is shown that he was, contrary to the word of the chief priests and Pharisees in John 7:52, a Galilean, for Gath-hepher (called Gittah-hepher in Joshua 19:13) was in the land of Zebulun, not far, it is thought, from the New Testament town of Cana.

The precise time of Jonah’s prophecy has not been determined, it was, it is believed, somewhere between the years 840 and 775, B. C., while Amaziah or Uzziah was king of Judah, and Jeroboam II ruled the ten tribes. Opinions differ as to who was the Assyrian king mentioned in the prophecy. These questions are of little importance; it is enough for the Christian that Jonah lived, and that the book before us is part of God’s own Word (Matthew 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32).

The history of Israel—the whole people of 12; tribes—during and after the later years of Solomon’s reign was marked by great decline before God, as we have had much occasion already to notice; and as His earthly people declined, He allowed Assyria to rise to an important place in the world of that day, and used the nation for the chastening of His earthly people, We need not wonder then, that Jonah (chapter 4:2) did not wish to carry a message to Nineveh, Assyria’s capital city, particularly as he thought, and rightly, that if they repented, God would be merciful, and would spare the Ninevites from the overwhelming judgment promised them. The mercy of God cannot be reserved to one race or nation (Acts 10:34-35), though favored Israel wished to limit Him to their own borders (Luke 4:25-29). Accordingly, when His hand must soon fall upon the great city (of that day) He will first warn them; perhaps they will heed His word, though Israel had not done so.

Jonah should go east; he will go west, and he finds his way to Joppa. His course is an easy one, at first. A ship was there to take him far away, and he had the fare for the voyage “from the presence of the Lord” (verse 3). But circumstances, without God’s approval of one’s course, are a poor guide. One had His eyes on His self-willed servant, and he presently provided a great wind, so that a mighty tempest developed, and the ship was in much danger. The shipmen, accustomed to storms, were afraid in this one, yet Jonah slumbered on, and the commander had to arouse him, to join the crew in praying, each man to his god. Lots were cast, and God used this means of pointing out Jonah as the cause of the storm,

Now at last (verse 9) Jonah’s mouth was opened to testify for the true God, Maker of sea and land, although in doing so he had to tell of his own guilty conduct. Thus was Jehovah made known to some who knew Him not, and from verses 18-16 we may gather that they put their trust in Him. Thus even the willfulness of one of His children is made to serve His purposes.

A great fish was prepared by God to swallow Jonah, and in its belly he remained three days and three nights. It may have been a species of whale; the Greek word translated “whale” in Matthew 12:40 really means a sea monster or great fish.

Jonah 2

Blind unbelief may at its peril hold that no fish ever made could have swallowed Jonah alive and whole, and that it is impossible for life to continue in any living thing after it has been swallowed. To the Christian all is simple, — “The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” The Maker of heaven and earth and sea and land, and all that is on and in them is not restricted from designing and making a special monster for an occasion that calls for it, or causing one of the regular inhabitants of the sea to do this extraordinary service for Him. Also, be it said, that to deny the truth of the account of the great fish is to challenge the words of the Son of God in Matthew 12:40.

It is good to see Jonah praying. He, we may be sure, had not prayed very much about the voyage that he undertook in disobedience, but now he prayed to the Lord, as it is said, his God, God whom he now knew as His own in a way he had not known Him before.

The apostle Paul, having learned by experience God’s sufficiency for all his needs, could say to the poor Philippian saints (chapter 4:19) “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

Jonah was however, a type or foreshadowing of the Jewish remnant of the last days, as he was also of the Lord when He was, as He said, “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Jonah’s strange experience was the result of his own sin, but Christ suffered only for others, for the sins of His people. Both were rejected, put out of the world, but for causes how vastly different!

As a type of the remnant yet to be, Jonah is seen to be an unfaithful witness for God, but preserved by Him, and presently to be brought out for His glory in the earth. In deep affliction because of their sins, they will cry to Him for deliverance, and will be heard (Psalms 42, 77, 88, 102).

Hell (verse 2) as has been remarked in another case is not the lake of fire; the marginal note in the King James Bible reads “or, the grave”, but this is not correct. When death occurs, the soul returns to God’s keeping. In John 5 the Lord tells of two resurrections, in one or other of which all will be raised who have died. One of these will include only believers; the other will include only the unbelieving. In Luke 16, the Lord has given a view of the present state of the departed, and we see that there are two classes there, the saved and the lost, though they are separated, and in widely different cases. When the martyr Stephen died, he prayed and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59), and the apostle Paul in Philippians 1 told of his pressing desire to depart (that is, to die) and to be with Christ. Jonah, however was not in Sheol, though brought down in the experience of his soul very near to death.

When his soul fainted within him, he remembered Jehovah (verse 7). Thus was God’s purpose to bless His servant attained. Then was it that prayer came up to God from him, and Jonah now adds his note of thanksgiving and “Salvation is of Jehovah.” When God is thus owned, He brings the tried saint out of his circumstances well-nigh overwhelming; the great fish that had been ordered to swallow him, is now commanded to put him on the dry land, and does so.

Jonah 3

It is a humbled, obedient servant of God that we now see taking his long journey (his own willfulness had made it longer) to the capital city of the Assyrian kingdom. It is only in the measure in which we who are the Lord’s realize that we ourselves are objects or vessels of mercy that we can rightly make known a message of God to man. Had Jonah been dealt with according to his deserts, he should have perished in the sea or in the belly of the great fish, but he was raised up as a monument of God’s grace, with a message to deliver for Him.

Nineveh was a very large city for that day; its site is on the east of the river Tigris, opposite the present city of Mosul, center of Mesopotamian oil fields. Enough of the ancient ruins remain to reveal that the west side of the Assyrian capital (then bordering the river, which has changed its channel) was 272 miles in length. Along the north side, the city wall stretched in a straight line for 7000 feet; the southern wall was less than half that length, —3000 feet, and the eastern one was a little over three miles long.

It would have taken Jonah at least three days to go through all the streets repeating his direful message, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”, but he had hardly covered one-third of the town when the people, conscience-stricken, believed God (verse 5). It was no merely surface repentance, but real, as verses 5-10 show.

Heaven took notice of the change in the Ninevites that day, and the Lord, long after, in Matthew 12:41, spoke of it: “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas....”

All classes were affected, from the greatest to the least, and the message of God was even carried within the royal palace to the king on his throne.

All of Nineveh was speedily clad in sackcloth — even the beasts — and the king, whom we may suppose to be the ruler of all Assyria, it is said that he descended from his royal throne and sat in ashes. Under his decree both eating and drinking were suspended while prayer was made to God; and of what value would that be, did they not also turn, everyone, from his evil way, and from the violence that was in their hands? Would God turn from His purpose, from His fierce anger?

Has there ever been a time when true repentance did not touch the heart of God? Never! Only let it be said that opportunity for repentance is only afforded in life; the rich man in torment (Luke 16:23-31) prayed for some relief from his suffering, and for a messenger to go to his father’s house, but no word indicative of repentance came from him; there is no passing from torment to heaven’s joys.

God saw their works, the fruit of a changed heart, and Nineveh’s day of doom did not come until the time of Nahum’s prophecy — about two hundred years later.

Jonah 4

One of the tokens that the Bible is the Word of God, is its accurate and searching exposure of the heart of man; and not only is the light of His truth turned therein upon the sinner in his sins, but His saints, on occasion, are also seen in it in ways unworthy and shameful, and even worse. It is thus that the failures, as well as the faith, of God’s elect are set forth for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are come.

Here therefore we see Jonah on a low plane indeed. Did we not know something, by God’s great mercy, of our own selves, that in us, apart from Him, good does not dwell, we might well be surprised at such a change in the man who, but a little season before, humbly prayed in the belly of the great fish. He was angry now; much grieved because, as it seems, he felt that his name as a prophet would suffer since the people of Nineveh were to be spared after being marked for soon-to-be-executed judgment.

How unlike his Master, and how unworthy of Him this was! Jonah knew, he says, that that One at whose bidding he had gone to the Gentiles, is a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger and of great loving kindness; and he would rather, thinking of the people of Nineveh, that He had not been so. Better was it, in Jonah’s opinion, that the hundreds of thousands in the city should perish, then that the luster of his own name as a prophet should be dimmed; therefore he wishes to die.

Observe now the answer of God after the manner of a patient parent with a petulant child, “Doest thou well to be angry?”—an inquiry enough, surely, to bring Jonah back to Himself; but he was not yet ready to listen, to pause and consider his way. He went out of the city and sat on the east side of it, perhaps on the rocky high ground not far from the eastern wall, from which he could view the place.

Observe again the tender compassion of the heart of God, not hindered from flowing out by the narrow and hard selfishness of the natural heart of man. Though Jonah’s inward state is still rebellious, God prepares a gourd to shade the prophet from the heat, “to deliver him from his grief” (or trouble); and it had that effect.

But God also prepared a worm, and a sultry east wind, and Jonah again wished to die; he pitied the gourd, because of the good it had done him; poor, impatient child of God! What was the gourd in comparison with the great city of the Gentiles on which God had pity? The Book does not tell us the result of these dealings of God with His servant, but we may well conclude that they taught him the lesson he so much needed, of sharing His thoughts and desires concerning the unworthy.

Micah 1

From verse 1 it is seen that this prophet served God in the land of Judah at the same time as Isaiah, but beginning later, for Isaiah 1:1 includes an earlier king, Uzziah, the father of Jotham, whose long reign ended with his death in B. C. 758. “Morasthite” means an inhabitant of Moresheth, a town in the west of Judah, in which section the other places mentioned in verses 10-16 were found.

The prophecy of Micah has been called a key to the much more extended book of Isaiah, since it has largely the same character, though again differing, so as to have a character of its own. Both tell of the Messiah’s coming and rejection, and as we shall see, Micah contains important details of prophecy found nowhere else.

The first two chapters are introductory. The whole earth is called to hear (verse 2), and judgment, awful in its intensity, is announced for the day of Jehovah’s coming out of His place (verses 3-4). (See Isaiah 2:12-22; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8).

There is always a divine purpose (which will repay prayerful study) in the names by which God is spoken of in His Word, and as three names are used in verses 2-3 it may be appropriate to remark that “the Lord GOD” (the Lord Jehovah) combining His Old Testament name of relationship with man and particularly with Israel, with one telling of lordship, of authority and power, is associated with the judgment of the rebels against Him, whether of Israel or of the world at large. “The LORD” is the translator’s usual substitute for “Jehovah” in the Old Testament, and is not the same as “The Lord”. “Jehovah” is the name used generally in the book of Micah, “Lord Jehovah” being used but once, “Lord” twice, and “God” ten times (in chapters 3 to 7).

It is because of the transgression of Jacob, and for the sins of the house of Israel, that God will come forth, —because His people have left Him no testimony in the earth (except a false one). He must render a testimony, therefore, to Himself, and in view of that, all the sins of the Gentiles must be judged.

Samaria and Jerusalem, respectively the seats of government in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, were the chief places of departure from God; Samaria the worse of the two, devoted to idolatry, was to be made a heap of ruins, and its idols beaten to pieces, the idol gifts burned with fire.

Verses 8-16 speak of the coming- of the Assyrian enemy which was to overthrow the ten tribes and carry them off to captivity in the east, and to menace Judah, even to the gate of Jerusalem. (See the parallel passage in Isaiah 10:28-34). In both cases the events connected with the Assyrian invasion are used to introduce the scenes of the last days which are yet to be enacted—for the Assyrian will reappear as the king of the north, the last enemy of Israel to be dealt with at the beginning of the Millennium.

Micah 2

Idolatry, the crowning sin of the children of Israel, has been mentioned, and chapter 2 makes further disclosures of the inward state of the people. They were deep, in iniquity and planned their evil schemes during the bedtime hours, so as to employ the daytime fully in wickedness. Covetousness, oppression, violence, marked their ways (verses 1-2). God therefore declares that He too will devise—an evil, from which these guilty ones shall not escape. Men do not realize that God is to be met; that His eyes see all that goes on in the world.

In verse 10 an important principle is stated: “Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest; because it is polluted. . .” God would never have His people at rest amid defilement; separation from iniquity is the necessary path of those who would walk with Him.

Verse 12 brings the blessed promise of God for Israel; His unfailing word guarantees to “all” of Jacob, though it be but a “remnant” they will be put together as sheep are gathered into the fold by their watchful shepherd. There will be a joyful noise from that multitude!

But a “breaker” must act for these sheep (verse 13); it is God, who will break down every hindrance and clear the way as none but He can do, for the settlement of His earthly people in the land He appointed for them long, long ago.

Micah 3

In chapter 3 we enter upon the body of Micah’s prophecy. Those directly responsible for the awful condition of the children of Israel, the heads and princes, and the prophets, seers and diviners are confronted with the truth about their own lives. What a picture these verses present! Was it not for the governors of the land to know and to practice judgment? but they hated the good, and loved the evil; they devoured the substance of those without power to resist them.

God is not mocked (verse 4): “Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but He will not hear them.” He will hide His face from them because of the working evil.

Verses 5-7 deal with the prophets, seers and diviners, —false, all of them, using their positions to deceive and to get advantage over their victims. The day drew near when they should be quite unable to pretend to get an answer from God; their trade would be gone.

In verses 8-12 Micah speaks as God’s messenger, closing with the prophecy, fulfilled in the time of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, that Zion should be plowed as a field and Jerusalem heaps. (See the reference to this part of his prophecy in Jeremiah 26:18).

Micah 4

A lovely contrast to the story in chapter 3 of man, his guilt and its punishment, is presented in the fourth chapter, all the painful history of Israel from the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, six hundred years before the birth of the heavenly Stranger at Bethlehem, until the Millennium’s dawn, being passed over.

In the last days a season of blessing will begin, the like of which never has been known on this earth since sin first entered. It is the promised restoration of Israel, made known in the Psalms, and more fully in the writings of most of the Old Testament prophets, when Jerusalem will be the center both of blessing and of government as never before. Verses 1-3 present a striking example of the Holy Spirit’s work in communicating through chosen persons the exact language of the Word of God, for they correspond with Isaiah 2:2-4. These two prophets lived at the same time and used the same words, but as is readily seen, in different connections.

Reading the close of verse 1 “and the peoples shall flow unto it” (i.e. Jerusalem), makes clear the meaning of the passage, for all nations are referred to. There will be then, as before remarked, none living but believers, and Israel will be the head, no longer the tail, among the dwellers on earth. Only when the Son of God shall have taken His great power and begun to reign can verses 1-8 have their fulfilment; man’s boasted advancement has made no progress toward God in all the centuries past.

What a change from the present state of things in a large part of the world is promised in verses 3 and 4! Then (verse 5) all the peoples will walk, everyone in the name of his God; no longer the false gods of the past but now the only true God. “We” (the saved remnant of Israel) “will walk in the name of Jehovah our God”—the same Person, but known to Israel by a name that speaks of an old relationship— “for ever and ever.”

Verses 6-8 as is plain, refer to Israel. Rulers may plan for preeminence for themselves or their countries, but God has decreed what shall be (See Psalm 2).

Jerusalem and its hill of Zion, on which, when cleansed, the temple will be built, will be the central point of the whole world, and Christ as Man, the King. Then shall righteousness reign, and truth be exalted when God is owned on earth as never since the fall of the first man.

In the five last verses we trace again the path of affliction which Israel has traveled and must yet travel, before the blessings of the former verses are to be tasted. It is not alone for God’s glory, but for His people’s blessing, that they are disciplined. There must be deep searching of heart and conscience, as the Christian, if he desires to walk with God, proves in his own experience (See Zechariah 12-14, and, as illustrative of this, Genesis 49:21-22, and chapter 44).

Verses 12 and 13 show that the very gathering of nations against the people of Israel in their land in the future day (just before the Lord’s appearing), though planned by their rulers, will be of God for their overthrow, and He will make use of the redeemed of Israel in their destruction.

Micah 5

The reference in verse 1 is to the warlike Assyrians (“daughter of troops”) and their king. They attacked and carried off as captives the now lost ten tribes of Israel, and shortly afterward came against Judah and Benjamin under Sennacherib (2 Kings 17 and 18). It is clear, however, from what follows in the chapter that this Scripture looks on to the last days, as does chapter 4. Then the prophetic Assyrian, or king of the north, will invade the land, but he will come to an unlooked for end. The divine reason for this invasion is given in verse 1, —the treatment accorded the Judge of Israel when He came in lowly grace to the Jews, and they had Him crucified, saying, “We will not have this Man to reign over us.”

Verse 2 is a parenthesis, naming the place where the Messiah was to be born; the chief priests and scribes were familiar with the passage so as to tell Herod their king, but they would not trouble themselves to go there to pay the child Jesus homage (Matthew 2:5-6). The reader will note the reference to the deity of the Lord here as elsewhere in Scripture, where His partaking of human nature is spoken of, “Whose goings forth are from of old, from the days of eternity.” (JND)

He—the Judge or Ruler of Israel, will give them up until the time when she which travaileth shall have brought forth (See Isaiah 9:6-7, Revelation 12:1-6, and the story of Naomi (whose history presents a picture of that of the children of Israel) in the book of Ruth, culminating in chapter 4:14-17).

The long centuries before the second coming of the Messiah are passed over by Micah to tell of the time yet to come, when the “remnant of His brethren shall return unto the children of Israel.” The Church of God will then be complete, the coming of the Lord for His heavenly saints will have taken place, and the Jews will be in Palestine in large numbers, with a temple at Jerusalem.

The Lord as Israel’s once rejected Messiah now appearing shall stand and feed [His flock] in the strength of Jehovah (verse 4). He shall be Peace. The Assyrian will have come into the land of Israel shortly before this, but the Lord, using the believing remnant of the Jews, and perhaps also of the ten tribes, then returning from their long banishment, will destroy his power.

Two figures are used to characterize the Israel to come: they shall be as “dew” (verse 7), and as a “lion” (verse 8), telling of them as the channels of blessing, as well as the agents of divine governmental dealing in the earth, even to cutting off their enemies—(verse 9). There will, however, be a thorough cleansing of the people and the land of Israel, (verses 10-14), with vengeance executed upon the nations, accomplished by God through His Son.

Micah 6

Once more is the call to hear, and now the earth itself is bidden to witness that Jehovah has a controversy with His people, and will plead with Israel. A touching address follows in verses 3-5, —an address which found but little response in Micah’s day, but will sink deeply into Jewish hearts that will be opened to receive it when the Lord is about to return to take His earthly throne and establish His kingdom.

In verse 4, “servants” is really “bond-men” (slaves), as the same Hebrew word is translated in Deuteronomy 7:8 and Jeremiah 34:13.

Verse 5 brings to memory the spectacle of Balaam, the false prophet, seeking to curse, but compelled to bless Israel when they were about to enter the promised land (Numbers 22-21). In his inspired utterances God made known the whole portion of Israel’s blessing, —which has never been realized, because of their grievous departure from Himself. He well knew what they then were, a stiff-necked and rebellious people, but He chose to view them before their enemies in the light of what they will be, when He shall have dealt with them in judgment and in tender mercy.

It will be observed that in verses 3-5 there is only a record of divine compassion and faithfulness; much humbling and sad history of Israel before the crossing of the Jordan, as well as after it, might have been mentioned, but it would have been out of place in such an appeal to the hearts of God’s earthly people.

In verses 6-8 the thoughts of those who will hear are brought out and answered. We have not here the clear light of the gospel of God’s grace, note, for man is seen in the Old Testament under law. The 32nd Psalm is one of many evidences that God then received those who owned with broken spirit and contrite heart that they were not able to meet His requirements. In the Millennium the redeemed of Israel will as never before, answer to verse 8, for then Satan, the tempter and deceiver, will be bound, and what evil appears will be punished.

The “controversy” (verse 2) has, however, not been told, and verses 9-12 declare it. “Hear ye the rod, and Who bath appointed it”, for it is Jehovah Himself who speaks. Treasures of wickedness were yet in the house of the wicked; scant measures, unjust balances (scales) and deceitful weights were used in trading; violence characterized the rich, and lying and deceit the people.

Punishment, long withheld, therefore awaited this guilty nation; God’s “thou shalt”, and “thou shalt not” (verses 14-15) could no longer be avoided. The last verse of the chapter reveals that the laws of Omri (1 Kings 16:16-28), and the works of the house of Ahab his son (1 Kings 16:29-2 Kings 10:11) were followed generally in Judah and Jerusalem as well as in the kingdom of Israel and in Samaria. Omri, we gather, showed the way, and his descendants carried out in practice what he had planned. Sad as is the prospect of those who follow in sin, what must the punishment be of them who have led the way in such things?

Micah 7

This final chapter of our prophet has a distinct character. It begins with Micah’s grief-laden acknowledgment of the evil state of the people he feels the solitude, being alone, or nearly alone, in a generation of the godless. No doubt his words are, as those of David and others in the Psalms, and Jeremiah in his writings, intended by God for the believing remnant of the coming days.

The verse 3 has been retranslated thus: “Both hands are for evil, to do it well! The prince asketh, and the judge (is there) for a reward; and the great (man) uttereth his soul’s greed, and together they combine it.” (N.T.)

Verses 5-6 suggest a reference to Matthew 10:35-36, where the Lord spoke of the effect of the hearing of the gospel, and, we may suppose, having Micah’s words in mind as He spoke. Many have had for His sake to pass through the experience of the loss of friends, and faced bitter opposition in the home, perhaps for long years; such can say in the confidence of faith with the prophet.

“But as for me, I will look unto Jehovah; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” (N.T.)

The enemies of God (the believer’s enemies) rejoice when His people fall (verse 8); humbleness of mind is, however, given to bear the chastening which He has seen to be needed (verse 9). In due time relief will come, and for Israel, that will be when the wicked are overtaken by God’s judgment (verse 10).

We have next Jehovah’s word (verses 11-13), speaking for the encouragement of the remnant

“In the day when thy walls shall be built, on that day shall the established limit (or bound) recede” (JND). Jerusalem’s former walls will not contain the city that shall be, when God’s grace shall have followed His “strange work” of judgment.

“In that day they shall come to thee from Assyria and the cities of Egypt, and from Egypt to the river (Euphrates), and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain” (verse 12, JND). Instead of Israel’s being as now a people not desired, they will occupy the central sphere of earthly blessing, honored as they were not even in Solomon’s day of glory. First, however, the land of Israel must be desolate because of them that dwelt there (verse 13); this part of the prophecy was fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar finished his conquest of Judah (2 Chronicles 36:17-21; Jeremiah 44:2).

In verse 14, Micah, speaking for the remnant who fear God, asks Him for the return to them of all of Israel’s land. The answer of God to this request in verses 15-16 is altogether worthy of Himself:

“As in the days of thy coming forth out of the land of Egypt, will I show them marvelous things. The nations shall see, and be ashamed for all their might, etc.”

The last three verses are an ascription of praise to Him from Whom all blessings flow, Who pardons the sinner, and delights in mercy. He will surely carry out all He has promised for Israel. For us who have believed in the Lord in the day of His rejection, a yet brighter prospect is in view (Ephesians 1-3; Revelation 1:5-6).

Nahum 1

As in Isaiah 13 to 23, the “burdens” of Babylon, Moab, etc., are given, so here we have the “burden” (prophecy of judgment) of Nineveh, the capital city of the great kingdom of Assyria. Nahum is believed to have prophesied late in Isaiah’s long life., about the time when Sennacherib first invaded Judea (2 Kings. 18:13-16), which may be set down as roughly 120 years after Jonah went to Nineveh. Elkosh, Nahum’s city, is supposed to have been in Galilee, the region where Jonah had lived; if this conclusion is well founded, the Pharisees were doubly wrong when they declared that no prophets had come out of Galilee (John 7:52).

The destruction of Nineveh, which Nahum foretold, occurred about a century later at the hands of the Medes, aided by the Babylonians who shortly after took the supremacy in the first empire, that of Nebuchadnezzar. But Nahum’s prophecy, like the prophecies of other Old Testament writers, is not to be limited to the prospect then near at hand; it looks forward to scenes of judgment in which another Assyrian will have a part, when Israel shall be in the land of their fathers in far greater number than today.

When Jonah went to Nineveh, there was widespread repentance, but the hearers of his message, and all their children too, we may well suppose were now dead, and the lesson of that day was almost forgotten. Verses 2-6 therefore set forth God as judge, jealous and avenging and full of fury. He is slow to anger, great in power and doth not at all clear the guilty. Why then do not sinners flee for refuge to Him?

Who can stand before His indignation? who can abide in the fierceness of His anger (verse 6)? Let us remember that what we have here is not eternal judgment, but the punishment of living enemies on earth. Eternal judgment is but little referred to in the Old Testament, and this is true also of eternal blessing, of eternity itself. Nevertheless, the judgment of the living as here portrayed gives a clear picture of the awful character of the judgment of the great white throne which will follow (Revelation 20:10-15).

How precious to the believer is the note of praise and of the confidence of faith in verse 7! “A stronghold in the day of trouble” our God has been for His tried saints in all generations, and comforting thought, “He knoweth them that trust in Him!” Not one is forgotten by Him, not one overlooked for a moment.

“The place thereof,” in verse 8 is Nineveh; it was to perish, though those who trusted in Jehovah there would be spared in the day of its destruction. Verse 11 speaks of the Assyrian of the future day, as well as Sennacherib, the wicked counselor of Hezekiah’s time. Verse 12 has been translated,

“Though they be complete in number, and many as they be, even so shall they be cut down, and he shall pass away (referring to the Assyrian), and though I have afflicted thee (Judah), I will afflict thee no more.” (N.T.)

Verse 13 is addressed to Judah, and verse 14 to the Assyrian, while verse 15 tells of the joy that will be felt when that enemy is cut off shortly after the Lord has come to the world to establish His throne as Son of David (Isaiah 10:5-27, etc.)

Nahum 2

Chapter 2 vividly pictures the attack, a century after the prophet wrote of it, of the Medes and Babylonians upon the ancient city of Nineveh. Led by Cyaxares, king of Media, who is called, in verse 1, “He that dasheth in pieces” (or “the Maul”), the invading hosts destroyed the place, at the same time bringing to an end the Assyrian kingdom which had been mighty in its day. Its king is said to have set fire to his palace, when he saw that continued resistance was useless, and burned to death himself and his wives. Nineveh has never been rebuilt.

The defenders are told to prepare for the siege, to strengthen the fortress (verse 1); because (verse 2) Jehovah has turned away the “excellency”—glory, or pride —of Jacob as the “excellency” of Israel; the “emptiers” have emptied them and marred their vine branches. Judgment, according to the principle stated in 1 Peter 4:17 had begun with those who stood in a special relationship before God (2 Kings 17:20), the ten tribes being carried away into captivity, perhaps before Nahum wrote, by the king of Assyria, and the remaining two tribes were not long to remain in Israel’s land. Having first given attention to His earthly people, God now turned to their chief oppressor of that day.

“His” mighty men, in verse 3, refers to God, making use of the Median hosts for the destruction of Nineveh. “Flaming torches” shows a difficulty the translators had in putting into English what seems to refer to the glitter of polished steel. The last clause of verse 3 is believed to speak of soldiers’ spears.

Verse 5. “He shall recount his worthies” tells of the Assyrian king who thinks of his important men, and calls them to the defense of the city. But the city is entered, and by a way of which verse O affords a hint.

“The gates of the rivers shall be opened;” the river Tigris rose to an extraordinary height flooding a considerable part of Nineveh, and through this occurrence the Medes were able to enter in force, easily capturing the city.

Verse 7. Whether “Huzzab” was the name of the Assyrian queen, or Nineveh, is meant, is not clear; the language used here tells of captivity and great mourning. Verses 8-10 describe the collapse of the defense, and the plundering of the wealthy city.

The Assyrians have left a reputation of being a bloodthirsty nation, cruel to their enemies, and verses 11-12 seem to bear this out. God was about to visit their iniquities upon them; fire and the sword would bring Nineveh to its end (verse 13).

Nahum 3

“Woe to the city of blood!” This was Nineveh’s character as seen, not alone by men, but by God Himself. Evil in its two usual forms was there, — the city was “full of lies”, and “robbery”, or rather violence. (See Genesis 6:11). The same characteristics are becoming more prevalent now, as time passes, though not yet in as pronounced a form as foretold in the prophetic Scriptures for the period following the Church’s removal to glory, and before the Lord’s appearing and kingdom.

“The prey departeth not” refers, no doubt, to the keeping of captives, as, notably, the ten tribes of Israel who were never permitted to return to their home land. (2 Kings 16:9; 17:6).

To the account of Nineveh’s siege and capture given in chapter 2:2-3 add expressive detail, from the cracking of the charioteers’ whips to the vast multitude of the slain. What a scene of carnage it must have been! Verse 4 refers to the idol worship, and the related practice of sorcery, among the Assyrians; they had many gods, and sought to spread their false and deceiving beliefs wherever they could.

Jehovah of hosts, Who had formerly spared Nineveh when He saw that they turned from their evil way (Jonah 3:10), was now against the city, and with full reason. Was it better than “populous No” (Thebes, a noted city of Egypt, situated on the Nile which here as elsewhere is called “the sea”)? Thebes had been captured by the Assyrians, it is thought under Sargon. (See Isaiah 20). The city afterward suffered at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, and still later from Cambyses the Persian.

In chapter 1:10 drunkenness is spoken of as the state of the Ninevites when overthrown, and verse 11 of our chapter bears out the same thought. Apart from the figurative use of the term, it is an interesting fact that the beginning of the end of Nineveh’s siege was a surprise attack by the besiegers during a drunken feast of the gods in the camp of the Assyrian soldiers.

When Nineveh fell, it was an easy prey; the sword and the torch destroyed people and city (verses 12-13, 15, 17-18). So will it be when the King of glory comes, and all dominion is given into His hands; then shall the proudest and the cruelest of the enemies of God’s people be as Nineveh at its capture. Nineveh perished forever in the day of its overthrow by the Medes, and there will be no return to the rule of unregenerate man when the Lord shall have set up His authority in the earth.

The prophecy of Nahum throws much light on the character of things in the last days (now near), and upon the judgments which will be executed in the earth. The Assyrian of the last days, whom Isaiah, Daniel and Zechariah in particular speak of, will fall after the Lord’s coming, though his capital city will not be Nineveh. While in Nahum’s prophecy, the king has not a large place, the judgment of the city forecasts his own doom, as what is said of its cruelty, its corruption, etc., is descriptive of him.

Habakkuk 1

Like many of the Psalms, and the writings of Jeremiah, the book of Habakkuk in the wisdom and forethought of God, expresses some of the exercises of heart His people experience while passing through trial, and shows His interest in and care for them; faith and love to Him are seen to grow through the responses He makes to the cries of His tried ones.

Nahum was the last of the seven earlier “Minor Prophets”, while Habakkuk is joined in time with Jeremiah and Zephaniah, these three being raised up for a testimony in Judah during and following the reign of Josiah, the last godly king.

In verses 2-4 the prophet is distressed because God has not answered his prayers; the state of Judah was very bad indeed, as Jeremiah, chapters 5-8, etc. shows, and Habakkuk had earnestly sought the ear of God about it; but evil went on unchecked, and there was no evidence that He would interfere. Spoiling and violence, strife and contention abounded; the law (given by Moses) was treated lightly, and justice did not go forth; perverted judgment was the rule, because the wicked were strong and the righteous weak.

God does answer prayer (verses 5-11), but in His own time and according to His own wisdom; He is slow to anger, but will not at all acquit the wicked (Nahum 1:3). Among the nations great changes were developing under His hand; Assyria was declining, Media and Babylonia were rising; before long Nineveh would be besieged and destroyed, add the proud Assyrian kingdom would cease to exist. A little later the Babylonian empire was to be erected with old Chaldea at its base, and Nebuchadnezzar, its greatest monarch, would be given such authority as had never before been committed to a man (Daniel 2:37-38; 4:20-22). Verse 5 was evidently before the Apostle Paul, with other passages in his reference to the prophets in Acts 13:41.

When the Chaldeans should come against Judah, they would be more violent, more relentless, and far more swift in attack than the Assyrians had been. In verse 6, for “the land”, read “the earth”, and in verse 9 for “the captivity” read “captives”. No power could long withstand them.

Habakkuk was overwhelmed at the thought of what was to come (unmistakably pointing to the captivity of Judah, like that of Israel), and the instruments that God would employ (verses 12-17). He turns again to prayer. The Chaldeans, he recalls, remonstrating with Him, were ordained for judgment, appointed for correction; why then should these wicked people he allowed to swallow up Judah, more righteous than themselves? Why should God look upon the treacherous Chaldeans? They would be like one catching fish with hook and net, mercilessly gathering human captives for themselves in abundance, and praising their false gods because of the success that was theirs. The end of the first chapter is properly at the close of chapter 2:1, where the prophet is seen to be waiting upon God; what will He say to His servant, and what shall Habakkuk answer? A faithful shepherd, he stands upon his watch beside the flock God has entrusted to his care.

Habakkuk 2

The answer of God to His waiting servant, the prophet, is a solemn word regarding the course and the end of the Chaldean enemy who was to assail and carry off Judah. Like other prophetic utterances, it cannot be limited to the then prospective fulfilment; the northern enemy of Israel in the last days is also in view.

Habakkuk was directed to write the vision, engraving it upon tablets so that it might be readily understood, and that the reader should hasten to tell others what he learned. Prophecy has been given by God for the encouragement of His people in dark days.

Verse 3 is applied in a remarkable way in Hebrews 10, culminating in verse 37, the coming of Christ being set forth there as the Christian hope. The time of deliverance is fixed, though unknown to the believer, who is to wait for it, meanwhile having God’s assurance that “at the end it shall speak” or, more exactly, “it hasteth to the end, and shall not lie”; it will surely come and will not delay (or be behind hand). It is good to have these precious assurances from Himself that let us know He is not slack concerning His promise (2 Peter 3:9) What is directly in view in Habakkuk 2 is, however, the deliverance of Judah and Israel from the last of their enemies.

Verse 4 presents a contrast, setting down the character of man at a distance from God, on the one hand; and the subject, and divinely guided believer, on the other. What a contrast it is! He who is lifted, or puffed up, —his soul is not upright within him; such is God’s estimation. Might this be said of a believer? Pride is an early and late snare in the human soul.

“But the just shall live by his faith.” This word is so important that the Holy Spirit has caused it to be repeated, word for word, three times in the Epistles of Paul. It appears in Romans 1:17, where “the just” is emphasized; then we find it in Galatians 3:11, where “by faith” is pressed, and lastly it occurs in Hebrews 10:38, where “shall live” is the point dwelt upon.

Faith is the gift of God, and an exceedingly precious gift it is. Through faith the believer apprehends the mind of God, discerns the character of the scene in which he lives, and is given direction as to his course through it. The reader will note that this brief statement, “The just shall live by his faith” sheds its bright rays of divine light over the whole of the chapter, whose subject thereafter is the Chaldean.

Verse 5 describes the great enemy’s character in a general way. Verse 6 speaks of the nations he conquers. Verse 14 interrupts the series of woes to forecast the day of glory on earth. Verses 18-19 deal with idolatry, and verse 20 turns to God as supreme.

Habakkuk 3

The prophet’s feelings, in view of these communications front God (chapters 1 and 2), are expressed in the prayer psalm with which this book closes. The precious fruit of an exercised heart, directed and developed by the Holy Spirit, is seen throughout these nineteen verses.

Habakkuk had been afraid, but now he is at rest; he understands that though judgment must be expended on the sons of Judah, the hand that God employs for that work will in turn be dealt with, and when Israel is restored, the Chaldean enemy will be no more.

Now he pleads for a revival: “Revive Thy work in the midst of the years!”— Wait not until that distant day of universal blessing (chapter 2:14)! — “In the midst of the years make it known! In wrath remember mercy!” Often have such prayers ascended to God, even repeating the very words of Habakkuk, in the past century, and He has granted precious measures of revival; but we long for fresh tokens of His love to the Church of God.

The prophet’s thoughts go back to that early day in Israel’s history, when “God came from Tetuan, and the Holy One from Mount Paran”; the localities mentioned were passed as the forty-year journey from Egypt to Canaan neared its end. Then the enemies who disputed the way were defeated, for God was with His people.

The language used in verses 4-11 is poetical, but its meaning is quite plain; see the words of Rahab in Joshua 2:9-11; and the utterances of Balaam in Numbers 23:22, 23. Verses 11-12 relate to the conquest of Canaan under Joshua (see Joshua 10:12-14).

In verse 13, the second clause should be read, “for the salvation of thine anointed”, referring to Israel; and in the beginning of the next verse an altered reading is warranted: “Thou didst strike through with his own spears the head of his leaders.” We would on no account discredit the excellent “King James” translation in common use; it contains not a single serious error, but careful study of the oldest manuscripts has brought to light many small defects in the work of the faithful men who served as translators in 1611. In part these faults were due to the exact meaning of some Hebrew words and expressions, and even Greek ones, not then being understood.

The latter part of verse 16 should be read, “that I might rest in the day of trouble (or distress), when their invader (or he that rusheth in troops upon us) shall come up against the people.” It is the Chaldean conqueror; Habakkuk here mentions again his former fear as in verse 2, growing out of God’s first communication to him, in chapter 1.

Space forbids more than passing reference to verses 17-19, in which faith is seen to rise entirely above circumstances —the most discouraging, —and the saint rejoices in the Lord, the God of his salvation. It makes a glorious ending for this precious portion of the Word of God.

Zephaniah 1

Zephaniah is the last of the Minor Prophets before the return from Babylon. He tells us that the word of the Lord came to him in the days of Josiah, that godly son of an ungodly father; whose mother, however, taught her boy well out of the Word of God, and was much in prayer for him (2 Kings 21:19 to 22:2; 23:25). There were few in those days whose ways were pleasing to the Lord, and as far as the Scriptures tell about them, none of Josiah’s children turned out well. Twenty-two years after his death, Jerusalem was destroyed and Judah was gone into captivity.

The nation had now passed the forbearance of God, yet He would not leave the without another warning of what their sins were about to bring upon them, and so He raised up Jeremiah, Habakkuk and Zephaniah to speak for Him, together with Josiah their king.

Not the warning voices of the former prophets, nor the carrying off of the ten tribes of Israel, had affected the state of Judah; like the world today, they pursued their course, heedless of the word of God; there were then, as there are today, believers, but then and now constituting only a minority without noticeable influence on the general trend of the age. (See 2 Kings 22:15-20).

The prophecy of Zephaniah (whose name, fittingly, means “Jah is darkness” – God shut up to judgment) is therefore a prophecy of judgment, especially in chapter 1; the cup of Judah’s iniquity was full, and the godliness of a few could have no effect in the way of staying the outpouring of divine vengeance.

In verses 2-3 the judgment promised is universal; in verses 4-13 it is chosen people that are in view, and verses 14-18 embrace all who pass through the fearful day of the Lord. As has been remarked already, the prophecies of the Old Testament had a partial fulfilment long ago; at the same time they point forward to a day when there will be complete fulfilment.

The “stumbling blocks” of verse 3 are idols. The “remnant of Baal” and the “name of the Chemarims with the priests” (verse 4), and those mentioned in verses 5-6 suggest a reference to 2 Kings 23; it is evident that Josiah’s vigorous work for God did not remove all that savored of idolatry and indifference to Him. The “Chemarims” are named in verse 5 of that chapter, but the translators in that case gave the English sense, “idolatrous priests” (see marginal note).

Maktesh (verse 11) was in or near Jerusalem.

Zephaniah 2

Chapter 2 begins a distinct section of the prophecy of Zephaniah, addressed to the God fearing in Israel, in view of the judgment already declared and to be executed. In the manner of divine grace an invitation is sent to all the people (verses 1-2); they are called, “O nation not desired”, or more exactly, “O nation without shame”, for such was, and is, the truth as to them. How gracious of God to remind those who seemed so indifferent to His interests and to their own real blessing, that there was yet time to seek His face before the day of His anger should come upon them!

In verse 3 we come to the godly remnant, called “the meek of the earth”. Meekness is not thought much of in the world; those who make much headway in it are as a rule the opposite of meek, — pushing, self-assertive persons, given to demanding, and on occasion taking by force. But what God commends is a very different character, one which we discern in perfection in the Lord as He passed from the manger to the cross.

The meek of the earth are those who have wrought His judgment, or, as it has been translated, “who have performed His ordinance”— those who have regarded God’s word. To them it is said, “Seek ye the Lord”; “seek righteousness; seek meekness; it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.” This is very different from the hopes of the Christian, who knows that before the dawn of the day of the Lord he with all other living saints will be caught away to meet Him in the air; heaven, and not the earth is the home of those who are the Lord’s at His coming.

Strikingly the book of Genesis sets out in the history of two men an illustration of the prospects, on the one hand of the believers of the present dispensation of God’s grace, and on the other, of those who will be blessed in a new working of divine grace after the removal of the church to glory. Enoch’s translation without passing through death foreshadows the one (chapter 5:24) and. Noah, preserved through the deluge and blessed in the earth (chapters 8-9) exhibits in type the other.

The godly remnant of Israel, chiefly of Judah, for the lost ten tribes will not then have returned, will be preserved, apart from the godless mass of the nation, in the dark hours of the great tribulation, as Isaiah 26:20-21, Revelation 12:6 and Matthew 24:15-28 indicate; they will be “hid” in the day of Jehovah’s anger, and preserved, though with much trial, until the Lord appears.

Verses 4-7 deal with the Philistine strongholds on the west, and verses 8-10 with the Moabites and Ammonites on the east border of the land of Israel. More distant enemies are treated of in verses 12-15. There was a literal fulfilment of these declarations of ruin within thirty years of the time the prophet wrote, but the day of the Lord has not yet begun, and the scenes of judgment to come will be far more fearful than those of the past. How blest is the Christian who seeks to walk in obedience to the word of God, looking for the coming of his risen and exalted Lord before the judgments begin on earth!

Zephaniah 3

From Nineveh’s destruction and Assyria’s complete overthrow as a nation, of which the last verses of chapter 2 treat, God passes at once to Jerusalem. If the ancient city (Genesis 10:11) was shortly to perish forever, should Jerusalem, the city of God’s dwelling place, but now filthy (or rather, rebellions) and polluted (or corrupted), escape the sword of divine vengeance? Verses 1 to 8 furnish the answer.

The charges against the capital of Israel’s favored land are conclusive: there is rebellion, corruption, oppression there, and in such measure as to characterize the city. And did she heed the voice of God speaking through His servants? did she trust in Jehovah, or draw near to her God? The answer is definitely in the negative.

The princes (or rulers) were as roaring lions, the judges as evening wolves; the prophets (by profession, —not owned by God as His servants) were boastful and treacherous persons, and the priests profaned the holy place, did violence to the law given by Moses.

And had God failed them? had He withdrawn the light of His word from the city where He had set His name? He had not; indeed, He had caused the recovery of His word, long lost to sight through the failure of man (2 Chronicles 34:14-19, 27, 30-33). He failed not, but the unjust (unrighteous) knew no shame.

God had cut off nations; their battlements were desolate, their streets waste, their cities left without inhabitant (referring to the countries overcome by the Assyrians and others); and He had said, “Only fear Me; receive correction”, so Jerusalem should not be cut off, however He might punish them; but they “rose early”—bent upon their evil course with full energy—and corrupted all their doings.

The shameful story is told, and Jerusalem is beyond recovery. “Therefore”, says Jehovah to the believing remnant of Judah, “wait ye for Me, until the day that I rise up for the prey.” Then shall all the world come under His executed wrath (verse 8).

From verse 9 to the end of the prophecy overflows with the wonders of His grace. “The people” in verse 9 is properly read “peoples”, referring to the nations in the Millennium. “From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia” (verse 10) refers to the most distant enemies of Israel when in their own land, the rivers being the Nile and the Euphrates, since Ethiopia meant the race, and not only the country now called by that name.

Is there in Scripture any language more touching than verse 17, recalling what Israel’s past has been?

Chapter 3, like the earlier chapters, has had a partial fulfilment; the prophecy awaits, for its full display, the Millennial judgments and blessings.

Haggai 1

About a century elapsed between the prophecies of Zephaniah and Haggai; during that time Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel had served God in faithful testimony, and had gone from the scenes of their labor; Judah had perished as a kingdom; Jerusalem had been destroyed and the people were carried off into captivity. The span of Babylon’s greatest glory under Nebuchadnezzar, her most noted monarch, had begun and ended, and the Persian empire was now in power, though not yet at its greatest extent of territory. After the foretold seventy years in Babylon, less than fifty thousand (Ezra 2:64-65) had returned under the leadership of Zerubbabel of the royal line of David (see Matthew 1:12-13) to Jerusalem’s ruins some fifteen years before Haggai’s prophecies. They built first an altar to Jehovah, then began work on a temple to take the place of the magnificent structure erected by Solomon; but through the opposition of their adversaries, and lack of faith, that work was allowed to stop for twelve or more years (Ezra 4).

Verse 1. Darius Hystaspes, the third king of Persia after the great Cyrus, had now reigned a year and five months; he was, in the ordering of God, friendly to the Jews as Cyrus had been; but faith looks to God, not at circumstances. The consciences of the Jews were indeed slumbering; they had made themselves comfortable when opposition hindered the work of God, for which they had been permitted to return to Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Ezra 1). It is surprising how easily believers, to this day, slip into habits of indolence when the service of God involves a little difficulty or hardship; the thought of going to meeting on a stormy night; or even less than that, furnishes an excuse for neglect of duty and privilege, for which an account must be rendered at the judgment seat of Christ (Romans 11:7-12).

Verse 3. The heart-knowing God (Acts 15:8) speaks. What indeed is hid from His eyes, His ears? How little even Christians realize that actions, words and thoughts are all known to Him! God’s thoughts, are centered upon His interests in the world; should not His blood-bought people make what concerns Him the chief object of their lives?

“Consider your ways” (verses 5 and 7) is a call that should not go unheeded, coming from God Himself, and we who profess His name may well take it to ourselves. Have we discerned in our own lives the truth of verse 6, which declares, in substance, that not all of man’s endeavor to provide for himself in a natural way really satisfies; that without God as the center and circumference of our lives life is a failure?

Let God be first, and all is well with His people; the reverse is also true; Let God be set aside, practically, while we pursue earthly ambitions, and the loss to the soul is great (verse 9). As Israel’s characteristic blessings were earthly, so departure from God brought losses that they felt, and everyone saw (verse 11).

The Christian, on the other hand, who seeks earthly gain, may not realize the loss of God’s spiritual blessings, which he is bound to suffer, but his spiritual brethren observe, and grieve for him, for the loss is deep, and unless there is recovery, in the mercy of God, it is for eternity.

Happily, for Zerubbabel the governor, and Joshua the high priest, and the remnant of the people, they hearkened to the voice of their God, and as He stirred up their spirits, and cheered them with His gracious word, “I am with you”, they engaged in the work He had given them (verses 11-15).

Haggai 2

The throne of God was not again established in Jerusalem after its departure (Ezekiel 11:22-23), and though a son of David now supervised the remnant of the people that had returned, his position was that of a deputy of the king of Persia. The temple for which Cyrus had provided was indeed larger than that of Solomon (compare Ezra 6:3-4 with 1 Kings 6, and 2 Chronicles 2 to 4), but in every other respect it was greatly inferior.

Another circumstance was the hostility of the people who now occupied the land, and the attitude of Darius toward the building of the temple was not yet known at Jerusalem. In so far as they judged by circumstances, then, there was much to depress and discourage those who feared God. (See Ezra 3:12-13, though it relates to the beginning of the work, a dozen years earlier).

Now, God is always for His people; though He may allow them to pass through circumstances painful and humbling; this is for their true and abiding blessing. His hand at times falls in discipline upon fits children, too, for we have a faithful, as well as a loving Father and the past course of Israel had not without due and repeated warnings, brought upon them their present ruin and dishonor.

There is much to make the child of God today mourn, when, considering the state of things in the days of Haggai and Zechariah, and the former glory of Israel, he turns to view the present state of God’s heavenly people, the Church, and compare it with the bright years of the beginning of Christianity. The substance of the confession of the godly Daniel (Daniel 9:3-19) should be the language of every true-hearted saint of God today.

Verses 2-3: His people were then to feel what had taken place, and to be humbled over it. But (verse 4) they were not to be discouraged; “Be strong, and work, for I am with you”, was the message of Jehovah to His feeble and few people, and observe, He speaks of Himself as “Jehovah of hosts”—His name of power. They had, as they are reminded (verse 5) His word and His Spirit, as in the beginning; “fear ye not!” Are these not enough for faith to go on in obedience?

And here God points onward to the day now at hand (see Hebrews 12:26-27), when He will deal with the world in righteousness, and the “Desire” of all nations —the Lord Jesus as the true and rightful Ruler—shall come. Then His house—called “this house” in verses 7 and 9, because it is His earthly dwelling- place at Jerusalem that is in view—He will fill with glory. (In verse 9 read “The latter glory of this house”).

Another word follows (verses 10-19), the burden of which is the defilement that is everywhere. The New Testament counterpart of this passage, written for the guidance of the present-day children of God, is found in 2 Timothy 2:19-21. Mistaken is the notion of some to go into the world to cleanse and improve it; the inevitable result is to contract defilement from, instead of reforming it. In verses 15-19, God points to His own faithfulness to His word; have we not found Him always thus?

A last brief message closes the book (verses 20-23). It looks forward to the day of Christ’s glory as Son of David—of whom Zerubbabal was, as Israel’s ruler a type or foreshadow.

Zechariah 1

Haggai and Zechariah prophesied at the same time, but their messages are quite distinct in character; the one was concerned with the building of the temple, and the other with the then future history of the Jews, particularly in connection with Jerusalem. Yet the two prophets are linked together in Ezra 5:1, and 6:14 as fellow laborers in the service of God who used both of them to arouse the slow-hearted sons of Jacob to go on with the construction of the house.

The beginning of the word of God through Zechariah is an earnest address to the remnant returned from Babylon (verses 2-6). Though they were no longer owned as His people, because of their sinfulness, He yet cared for them, and sought to win them back to Himself. With much reason God had been “sore displeased” with their forefathers, and it was because His warnings had fallen on deaf ears that the present generation was in such evil case. God is faithful, however unfaithful they may be to whom He speaks, and what He had foretold came true, as always in the prophecy which begins with verse 7, several symbols are used, and we are thus reminded of the books of Ezekiel and Daniel and the Revelation. Symbols are used in the Scriptures with divine purpose and wisdom, evidently to give to the believer, intelligent in God’s ways, a knowledge of principles or characteristics, etc., which many words could not better convey. The horse is the symbol of divine energy in the earth, as may be seen from Revelation 19:11, 14, 19, 21.

In the book of Daniel, four successive monarchies of great power are mentioned, —Babylonia, Persia, Greece and Rome; the first of these was now gone, and the second ruled the civilized world. The red horses in verse 8 evidently refer to Persia; the “speckled”, or bay horses to Greece, and the white to Rome; the red horse and his rider represent God’s angelic servant concerned with the government of Persia —him who spoke to Daniel in chapters 10-12 (See Daniel 10:13, and 11:1).

The Gentile world was at rest (verse 11), since the twelve tribes of Israel were no longer a thorn in their sides. The nations had afflicted Israel more than God had intended, and they would be dealt with because of this cruelty in due season (verses 11, 15, 21). These four great enemies, which have been named, are the horns of verses 18-19; four “carpenters”, or smiths, in verse 20 represent the means God employed to bring to naught these enemies. He sets up kings, and removes them.

Verses 16-17 are chiefly future in fulfilment, for the return from Babylon was in very small measure, an answer to the promise here made.

Zechariah 2

Chapter 2 outlined the purposes of God, in so far as this world is concerned, Jerusalem being the future seat of government, and the center to which all will look in the Millennium. The man with the measuring line, at the beginning of the second chapter is a token of God’s taking possession of the city, not yet literally, of course, for that would carry with it His sanction of what is allowed to go on there what has gone on there, since. It is for faith a declaration of what He will do, when the Lord Jesus returns to this earth, and Revelation 11:15 shall be in fulfilment.

Verses 4-5 beautifully add to the promise of possession with the assurance of such a condition as Jerusalem has never known, though in the short time of Solomon’s reign there was a semblance of it. Never since the prophecy was given has there been anything at all approaching its fulfilment.

Verses 6-13: The exiles will be recalled to Zion (Jerusalem) from the land of the north—a reference to their first captivity from which a few, including Zechariah and Haggai, had returned. Israel as a whole has never returned to the land of promise, nor will until the Church has been removed to heavenly scenes, and God’s purposes for this world begin fulfilment. Instead of regathering, following the rejection to death of their Messiah, there has been a world-wide scattering of the Jews. “The daughter of Babylon” is a figure of Gentile supremacy, begun in Nebuchadnezzar, and to end only when the Lord returns and restores Israel.

Verse 8: “After the glory” is after the Lord’s appearing (Matthew 24:27,31), The same expression is found in Psalm 73:24, rightly translated:

“Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and after the glory receive me” (JND).

In the Millennial day “many nations” (verse 11) will be joined to Jehovah; this will not result from the preaching of the gospel now being preached, but a new work of God.

Zechariah 3

Chapter 3 fitly shows that the restoration of God’s earthly people to His favor must be accompanied by a moral cleansing. Here Joshua, the high priest of that day is seen clad, not in the priestly garments of his office, but in filthy clothing as representing the people before God. Satan, ever the adversary of the believer, stands ready to accuse, but God will not listen to him, for He purposes to act in grace. He will remove the sin, and spare the sinner, indeed He will clothe him in costly (or festival) robes, for “change of raiment” (verse 4) hardly expresses what is in the original language. Israel will then be a nation of priests (Isaiah 61:6).

Joshua, for the people, is put on probation, so to speak, (verse 7), but lasting blessing will only come when Christ as the Branch, or more exactly the Sprout, returns to the earth. (See Isaiah 4:2; Jeremiah 23:5, and Luke 1:78 (margin).

Zechariah 4

Chapter 1 gave a general view, necessarily very brief; the second chapter pointed to God’s reclaiming Jerusalem, and dwelling there, amid His recovered people, with many nations joined to Him in that day; the third chapter showed both the need for a moral cleansing, and His purpose to perform that work according to His own mind. As with Nicodemus in John 3, the question natural to the Jew is, “How can these things be?” The fourth chapter is God’s answer, in language purposely veiled.

The awakening of the prophet (verse 1) to receive what follows, in a figure, expresses the change which must occur in his people. They must he awakened from the spiritual slumber of centuries when God begins to work in and for them.

The candlestick or light bearer all of gold, having seven lamps fed by seven pipes from the golden bowl above, is a striking picture of the Holy Spirit’s operations, particularly in giving the light of divine testimony on the earth; by Him God’s work is done, whether in blessing or in judgment. (See Revelation 4; Exodus 25:31-40). Gold is the well-known symbol of what is of God, and the number seven expresses spiritual completeness.

The olive trees (verses 3 and 11-14) evidently represent Christ as king; and priest—offices dimly foreshadowed by Zerubbabel (king), and Joshua (priest). The two witnesses in Revelation 11:4 will be a last pledge for faith of God’s unalterable purpose to bring to completion the Old Testament prophecies through Christ, and by the Holy Spirit.

For its fulfilment verse 6 awaits the last years immediately before the Lord’s coming again to the world, when God will take up the Jew (and the lost ten tribes) for blessing. Neither with a display of force, nor in connection with authority and dominion, brit by the Holy Spirit none the less, will Israel’s rebirth be accomplished. 1 Kings 19:11,12 illustrates the, divine principle here indicated.

Zerubbabel is constantly used as a type of the Lord as Son of David; before Him no obstacle however great (verse 7), can stand. Zerubbabel had laid the foundation of the house of God (Ezra 3-8), and he was to finish the building (in the sixth year of the reign of Darius Hystaspes. Ezra 6:15). But the bringing forth of the headstone with shoutings because of the favor of God, looks onward as prophecy in general does, to the coining day of Israel’s recovery. Then through the Lord’s mercy and goodness, the house of God will be reestablished at Jerusalem (Micah 4).

Meanwhile, there is the word of God, the infallible word of prophecy; at its fulfilment it will be realized, even by the dullest, that He had spoken. But he who despises the present day of small things, will not share in the joys of the day of glory.

Verse 10, as will be seen from the marginal note, involves a little difficulty in the rendering. It is believed that the true reading, following the first clause, is, “Yea, they shall rejoice—even those seven —and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel; these are the eyes of Jehovah, which run to and fro in the whole earth.” The faithfulness of God takes notice of everything. (See 2 Chronicles 16:9; Jeremiah 3:2:19; Proverbs 15:3; Zechariah 3:9, the last pointing to Christ, the true Foundation Stone of God’s temple).

Zechariah 5

God would not be God if He slighted sin, and in this chapter evil in His earthly people is exposed, and its judgment pronounced, together with the promise of the removal of sin from the land of Israel.

What is sin? What gives offense to God? His written word answers these questions, for Israel the book of the law. This it is which the prophet now sees; flying, that all in the land may observe; and great in size that its importance may be realized by everyone. It carries a curse, for “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4).

Only two offenses are mentioned, but they are evidently chosen as examples of the two classes dealt with in the law—against man, and against God; the thief denies the rights of his fellow man, and the swearer denies God His place. Mercy is not in question, but judgment, which will be unsparing, in the day of judgment.

Not only, however, were there such sins as these practiced among the earthly people of God; there was idolatry, to which the prophet’s attention is next directed (verses 5-11). It is an ephah that he sees, the ordinary measure, roughly corresponding to a bushel, used by the Israelites; but not here serving for the measurement of an article of trade, such as flour or grain. Was idolatry then to this people closely linked with their everyday life? It is evident that it had been, though when the remnant returned from Babylon, the lesson had by that generation been learned; they were wearied front idols.

Idolatry will, however, return after the “many days” of Hosea 3:4, which are no yet entirely past. This is set forth in Matthew 12:43-45; Daniel 9:27; Matthew 24:15; Daniel 11:38; Revelation 13:14-15.

The weight of lead cast on the mouth of the ephah seems to refer to the present suppression of idolatry among the Jews. The worship of idols had its great center, if not also its beginning, in the land of Shinar (Babylonia), and it will meet its destruction in the judgment of the future Babylon, the last days’ oppressor of the Jews. This form of iniquity will be taken entirely away from Israel’s land at the Lord’s appearing.

Zechariah 6

This chapter gives the last of the prophet’s visions; its connection with the first is plain, though here are four, rather than three symbolic representations. Chapter 1, however, has to do with Persia, which had succeeded Babylonia, and the then wholly future empires of Greece (or Macedonia) and Rome, while chapter 6, like the prophecies of Daniel, embraces the whole period of Gentile dominion, from Nebuchadnezzar to the coming of the Lord to set up His kingdom. The purpose of this vision is to show that though God had set aside Israel, and allowed the Gentiles to attain the supremacy, He still controls “the powers that be.”

The mountains of brass are symbolic of God’s throne; see Psalm 86:6, where a literal translation is, “Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God.” As in chapter 1, horses (here with chariots) are used to represent the angelic instruments by means of which God maintains control of the governments of the world. They are “the four spirits of the heavens”, going forth from presenting themselves before “the Lord of the whole earth” (verse 5). It is not of course, that all that the world’s rulers may do is according to His mind; but they can go no further than He is willing, and though allowed to do of their own wills pretty much, the results will be seen to be according to the will of God.

The believer who has intelligence in the ways of God stands apart from things political, assured that His purposes are being worked out, for the Scriptures tell him that all things work together for good to them that love God. (See also Romans 13:1-7).

The red horses, here mentioned only in verse 2, refer evidently to God’s overruling the government of the first empire, which came to its end when the city of Babylon fell. The black-horse chariot has to do with Persia, the conqueror of Babylonia, called the “north country” in verses 6 and 8. The third chariot is linked with the third empire, that of Alexander the Great, who conquered the Persians (verse 6).

The grisled (gray) horse chariot was concerned with the Roman empire; the going forth toward the south country (i.e., south of Palestine), in verse 6 belongs to its early history when Egypt became subject to Rome—about 30 B. C. The later history of the fourth empire is referred to in the seventh verse. The destruction of the Babylonian empire was according to God (verse 8, —see also Daniel 5:22-30).

Fitly after verses 1-8 covering the long centuries of Gentile rule, the chapter directs attention to the Lord Jesus, that glorious Ruler who shall in a day not now far distant, put down all who oppose Him and set up again the throne of David. Four or five Jews, not numbered among the remnant, who at the invitation of Cyrus had returned to the land of their forefathers, were at this time stirred in heart before God to make the long journey from Babylon to Jerusalem, bringing gifts of silver and gold. Out of this material the prophet was to make crowns and place them on the head of the high priest as a sign or promise of the BRANCH (or SPROUT, as the Hebrew word is rightly translated) (See Isaiah 11). The crowns were afterward to be placed in the temple for a memorial of the godly men who brought the gifts.

Verse 13. “Between them both” speaks of God and His Son as the Priest-King ruling the world in the Millennium.

Zechariah 7

The building of the temple to replace that of Solomon which the king of Babylon had razed was still not completed, though it had been going on for more than two years without ceasing when the word of Jehovah again came to the prophet. It was now about nineteen years since the return of the remnant from Babylon under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua, and seventy-two years since Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple had been destroyed.

The beginning of verse 2 is rightly read, “When Bethel had sent Sherezer and Regern-melech”; and the errand which brought these men reveals the true state of all the people. They had been fasting and mourning and separating themselves in the fifth month all through the captivity, in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in that month (2 Kings 25:9); and also in the seventh month, commemorating the assassination of Gedaliah (2 Kings 25:25); and it occurred to the men. of Bethel to ask if it were necessary to observe these memorial days now that they were back in Israel’s land. Hao they really entered into the meaning of the two fasts, they would have welcomed the days each year as fresh opportunities to pour out their hearts to God because of the continued broken state of the nation, due to past sins not thoroughly repented of.

God then asks a pointed question of all the people and their priests: When they fasted and mourned during the seventy years, did they really fast unto Him? And when they ate and drank, was it not themselves that were eating and drinking? See His answer to the Jews of an earlier day in Isaiah 58:3, etc. The fast days were begun well, we may suppose, at least on the part of some; but as the years passed there came a lack of sincerity, and the observances became mere matters of routine; God was not their object.

Israel’s land had been populous; all the people, and not a detachment of them had been dwelling there in peace. Why was this not now? The answer was not far to seek; and it was surely known to every one whose conscience was not utterly hardened, but God now reminded them of their heartless conduct toward Himself (verses 11-12), which had brought upon the nation a dealing so severe that neither in Zechariah’s time nor until this day has it been ended. The return of the few of which the book of Ezra tells was not the recovery God’s prophets had foretold.

Zechariah 8

This chapter sets out that day of Israel’s glory which is yet to be, of which many of the prophets have been given to tell. Here we again see God’s unalterable purpose to bless His earthly people, after He shall have dealt with them because of their grievous, yea terrible, sins.

In verse 2, we should read “am” far “was”, in both instances: “I am jealous for Zion . . . and I am jealous for her with great fury.” It is not uncommon to find, as in verses 2-3, in the prophetic Scriptures reference to a wholly future action as though it were already occurrent. While the student of Scripture may learn much front the study of prophecy, it is plain that such portions of the Word of God have been provided, principally, for the help of those who pass through the very circumstances mentioned, and to such the “I am jealous for Zion . . . I am returned to Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem,” will be most comforting when the time is at hand, as indicating that God’s purposes are ever before Him, and are about to be executed.

Apart from the power and the purposes of God in grace, what future would lie before the Jews? Surely nothing of what this chapter tells! A scattered and homeless nation for many centuries, they have long been under the rod of God, particularly because of the rejection of their Messiah (See Matthew 27:2; Acts 7:51-60; Romans 11:26-27).

As indicated by the marginal note, “marvelous”, occurring twice in verse 6, should be read “hard”, or “difficult.” In verse 11, “the residue of this people,” refers to the remnant which is to be brought through the inflictions of the last days. In that time of happiness on earth, exceeding anything the world has ever known, Judah (the Jews), and Israel (the lost ten tribes), will have the preeminent place—the reverse of what they have experienced. They have tasted deeply of Deuteronomy 28:64-68, but shall, through yet heavier chastening, be brought into Deuteronomy 30:3-9.

The fasts mentioned in verse 19 appear to have all been times of mourning in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar; these occasions are, in the Millennium, to be remembered, but no longer with grief; instead, the recollection will bring joy and gladness, because of the good hand of God upon them.

The close of the chapter makes plain the blessing of the Gentiles in the cleansed earth, through the Jews; these Gentiles will be saved for earthly blessing out of many who have never heard the gospel; for the rejector of the gospel of God’s grace there is no “second chance” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-12).

Zechariah 9

Judgment because of past sins is as certain for this world as the promised outflow of blessing, as many prophets have testified. What happened long ago, though never confessed and atoned for, men desire forgotten, but it is not so with God, and it is with Him that we have to do.

When Israel, and not as now, largely an alien race, people of the land of promise, there were enemies on their borders who looked with jealous eye at the chosen people of God, and on occasion troubled them, robbed them. These nations are not to be found today, but the prophetic Scriptures which have been before us hitherto from Isaiah onward (as well as some of the Psalms) tell us that all of Israel’s former neighbors and enemies will reappear for the closing scenes when the Lord returns to set up His Millennial kingdom, and they will then meet His judgment because of their past conduct toward Israel.

The enemies on the north and west are spoken of, and their judgment foretold in verses 1-8. These dealings from God have already had a measure of fulfillment—as is often seen in connection with the prophecies of Scripture—for Alexander the Great, founder of the short-lived Grecian or Macedonian empire, was used for their partial accomplishment. That king in his conquests circled round the land of Israel, sparing the Jews, but attacking and overwhelming their enemies. Damascus, Sidon, Tyre (which he destroyed), Gaza and other strongholds were subdued by him.

That chapter 9 is future in its application is, however, clear from the verse 1: “When the eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord”; this time has never yet been reached. Some of the Philistines will be spared (verse 7): “he that remaineth ... shall be for our God,” and shall be as a governor, or leader, in Judah and Ekron (formerly a Philistine royal city) as a Jebusite— that is, preserved, and allowed to live in the country as the former inhabitants of Jerusalem were preserved alive after its capture by David (2 Samuel 5:6, 24:16-23).

Matthew 21 and John 12 quote verse 9 with important omissions which may be studied with much profit; what is omitted would have been out of character with the Lord’s first coming.

All that man looks to for defense in war will be removed from “Ephraim” (the ten tribes of Israel), and Jerusalem (the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin), when the Lord comes to establish peace in this warring world. His dominion will be worldwide (verse 10). Verses 11-12 are addressed to believing children of Israel, particularly the Jews, who for many centuries have been in God’s sight prisoners in a pit wherein is no water. By the blood of the covenant He will send them forth into liberty who have been, while under varying degrees of oppression, preserved alive by God’s power. Prisoners “of hope” the believing remnant will be, and they are then invited to turn (again) to the stronghold, the city of God’s choice, Jerusalem.

Verse 13 rightly begins, “For I have” instead of “When,” and this and the following verses speak of the day when the Lord will not only judge their enemies but will also make use of the recovered remnant of Israel in the putting down of those who oppose them. The last verse combines a tribute of praise to Him with the promise of plenty in the repossessed land.

Zechariah 10

The reader will have observed that the successive chapters do not afford a continuous account of the events and developments of the last days.

Other prophetic books are similar in this respect, notably the Revelation; the divine Author in them all looks on to the end to be attained, and again returns to give details which unfold and add to the preceding communications. Nothing is written in God’s word for the intellect; everything is for the conscience and heart, and the saint who seeks God’s glory may profit much by prayerful study of the Book of Books, the Bible.

The closing, verse of chapter 9 views, as though already begun, the Millennial state of earthly blessedness, but chapter 10 treats of the time preceding the Lord’s coming in glory to set up His kingdom, and of the service His earthly saints are to perform following that coming.

Verse: 1 The early days of the Church were the time of the early rain; the time of the latter rain is yet future, speaking of the pouring out of rich blessing in the Millennium upon a world that has been cleansed in judgment. The Jews refused the early rain, and were set aside while the gospel went out to the Gentiles, but ere long the Jew will be restored to the chief place, the Church having meanwhile been completed and caught away on the resurrection morning, (1 Thessalonians 4:10, 17).

Verse 2 refers to Israel’s past devotion, to idols, and the captivity out of which their trusted idols could not deliver them. “They were troubled” is not an exact rendering; it should be read, “they are troubled (or in distress) because there is no shepherd;” that is, from the time of the Babylonian captivity, when God had given up the Jews as no longer His people, they have been without a true shepherd.

They rejected Christ when He came to them; but other shepherds, other leaders have led them astray, and verse 3 therefore speaks of God’s anger as kindled against the shepherds, and He will punish the he goats. Whether the latter are a distinct class from the shepherds is not clear; this passage is by some thought to be related to the judgment foretold by the Lord in Matthew 25:31-16, viewing the goats of Zechariah 10 as Gentiles who have mingled with and become leaders of the Jews. Ezekiel 34:17 (and the whole chapter), and Jeremiah 23:1-4 should be read in connection with verse 3.

The whole of verses 3-4 should be read in the present tense, or as that which is to be immediately brought to pass. When the Lord returns to the earth, His first act will be to destroy the western powers and the false prophet (Revelation 19:11-21). In this work He will not make use of the believing Jews, but other judgments will follow, and in these they, and, later, also the believers of the lost ten tribes, will be used by the Lord. (See Isaiah 11-13-14; Ezekiel 25:14; Obadiah 18; Psalms 60 and 108 (last verses).

Out of the house of Judah, hereafter to be Jehovah’s majestic horse in the battle, has already come the Corner-stone (1 Peter 2:3-8), and the Nail (Isaiah 22:20-25), that is to say, Christ Himself; out of Judah are yet to come the battle bow for war, and every oppressor (or ruler),

Verse 6 (“the house of Joseph”) and 7 (“they of Ephraim”) show the return of the 1ost ten tribes, which will be attended by a passage through affliction (verse 11).

Zechariah 11

The eleventh chapter is very instructive. It begins with a Gentile invasion (verses 1-3) of the land of Israel, when the Jews will be settled there again in unbelief. See Isaiah 18, which foretells both the mass return of the nation (a yet unfulfilled prophecy, notwithstanding the constant emigration of Jews to Palestine of late), and the taking away of their peace and prosperity when they are about to enjoy them.

The enemy who will despoil the Jews at this tune is the “king of the north” of Daniel 11:40-45, the invader of Isaiah 5:26; Joel 2:1-17; Psalms 79 and 83, called “the king of Assyria” or “the Assyrian” in Isaiah 8:7-10 and 10:1-14, 24-34. Daniel 8:23-25 tells more of this enemy, and Isaiah 28:14-20 calls him the “overflowing scourge.”

The stately and strong trees of verses 1-2 are figures representing the leaders or shepherds of Judah who will suffer from the invasion. The marginal note referring to the last clause of verse. 2 is a more accurate rendering than is given in the text. The “pride of Jordan” (verse 3), is a term used to express the resources and power of the nation.

In verses 4-14 the prophet speaks for Christ. At the time of the end, the believing remnant of the Jews will be hated by the unbelieving majority; they are the flock of slaughter (verse 4). Their feelings at this time are expressed in many of the Psalms; see Psalms 10-12, 28, 42, 56, 60, 71, 79. But the flock of slaughter, the poor of the flock, will be spared and cared for (verse 7), though the sword goes through the land.

Two staves express the authority committed to Christ: “Beauty”, to bring the world into blessing through Israel; and “Bands”, to bring together as one nation Judah (the two tribes we know as the Jews) and Israel (the long lost ten tribes). Who or what were the three shepherds is not revealed in Scripture; they must necessarily be heads of the Jews; but Matthew’s, Mark’s, Luke’s and John’s Gospels show very plainly the fulfillment of the latter half of verse 8: “And my soul loathed” (or more correctly translated, “was vexed, or grieved with”) “them”—the shepherds of the Jews when the Lord was on earth— “and their soul also abhorred Me,” Their ways repelled Him, and, besides, they hated Him, without a cause.

The unbelieving mass of the Jews He therefore gave up to the immediate result of their course—the siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Romans which were marked by fearful scenes (verse 9). Consequently the staff, “Beauty,” was broken the promise of blessing: to the Gentiles must wait for another day, when the state of the Jews will be such before God that He can bless both them and the Gentiles. See Genesis 19:10; both there and in verse 10, the word should be peoples, not “people,” —referring to the nations.

The present work of God in grace among the Gentiles is but dimly forecast in the Old Testament and is not referred to in Zechariah’s prophecy.

Verse 11: “the poor of the flock” who give heed to the Word of God have intelligence in divine things.

Everyone is familiar with the story of Judas Iscariot, who for thirty pieces of silver delivered up his Master to the false shepherds of the Jews (Matthew 26:14-16, 47-50; 27:3-10). But here in Zechariah’s prophecy, that occasion is anticipated, and we hear the blessed One Himself expressing beforehand through the prophet the value or “hire” at which He was estimated by His people when His years of service as a man on earth were ended.

“If ye think good, give My hire, and if not, forbear. So they weighed for My hire thirty pieces of silver.”

This was the value of a slave (Exodus 21:32; see also Leviticus 27). What thoughts must have occupied the minds of those wicked priests and Judas as they together discussed the sum to be paid for the betrayal of the Son of God!

No mention of a betrayer is here; only the value set upon the Man that is Jehovah’s Fellow, and the pieces of silver are cast in the temple to the potter, thus showing what would be done with the sum received by Judas. Now the staff, “Bands”, was cut asunder; the way to the reunion of the twelve tribes of Israel was closed when Christ was betrayed into the hands of sinful men and crucified (See His solemn words in Matthew 23, culminating in verses 33-39).

In the day of His coming in power and glory, the twelve tribes will all be regathered; first the two, and then the ten, and allotted their places in the Millennial kingdom, but all will be worshipers then, the unbelieving having been removed from among them.

Antichrist – The Man of Sin

Next (verse 15) the prophet is directed to take a very different part: Now he is to represent or impersonate the man of sin, of 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 4, the antichrist of 1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; the second beast of Revelation 13:11, called “the false prophet” in chapters 16:13-16, and 19:20. This dreadful person is also referred to in the Psalms. A man of wickedness who comes in his own name (John 5:43) he is evidently a Jew who by some means will become king of the restored (but largely unbelieving) nation in Palestine (See Daniel 11:36-39). He will reintroduce idolatry, the old sin of Israel and Judah (Matthew 12:43-45; Luke 11:24-26), and is here called the foolish shepherd, and the idol (or worthless) shepherd.

The Jews would not receive their own Messiah-King, and will receive a man. who is His very opposite in every quality —willful, characterized by sin, seeking his own honor, etc.; he will not visit those about to perish; nor seek that which is strayed away (so read “the young one” in verse 16); nor heal that which is wounded; nor feed that which is sound; but will have the characteristics of the wolf, though professing to be the shepherd of the flock. (See John 10). He deserts the flock afterward, and allies himself with the last Gentile empire (Rome) when the Jewish worship is caused to cease and idolatry is made compulsory. The end of this man of unsurpassed wickedness is pronounced here, but in Revelation 19:20 we are given to see him, in prospect, cast alive into hell.

Zechariah 12

The mention of the antichrist in the eleventh chapter leads to the events associated with Jerusalem in the last days. Not a word is said about Christianity; that was part of the secret which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men (Ephesians 3:3-6).

Jehovah, the Creator, speaks here of Israel, His chosen, though so wayward, people. All the nations, except those comprised in the Roman empire which will have already met its judgment at the instant of the Lord’s coming again to the earth, will be assembled together against Jerusalem (Psalm 83). That land and that city have again and again been coveted by the kings of the earth, and not knowing of the Lord’s intervention on behalf of the Jews and the destruction of the western hosts, the associated Gentile powers under the king of the north or in league with him, will continue with a previously begun campaign to ravage the land of Israel.

When the Lord comes to the earth a second time, all that fear Him among the Jews will have long before left Jerusalem in obedience to His instructions in Matthew 24:15-20, upon the setting up of idolatry in the temple there. Having first destroyed the western Gentile powers, he will deliver the oppressed remnant and deal in instant and unsparing judgment with the Jewish rebels, cleansing Jerusalem before the (second) appearance of the eastern Gentile powers who are concerted in the siege.

Jerusalem and Judah will be made of God a cup of trembling (or bewilderment) unto all the peoples round about (verse 2), and a burdensome stone for all. All that burden themselves with Jerusalem shall be wounded (verse 3), and this siege will be unlike any of the city’s many past ones, for Jehovah will, upon this occasion, act on behalf of His people, smiting every horse with astonishment and his rider with blindness, every horse of the peoples (Gentiles) with blindness.

The (new) leaders of Judah, front among the believing remnant, —the former leaders exercising authority under the wicked and apostate king having been put to death by the Lord—will say in their heart. The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in (or rather, through) Jehovah of hosts their God. What a change this means, in Judah and Jerusalem, so long the center of godlessness and manifold wickedness, the scene of the cross of Christ!

Then will He (that is to say, the Lord, who will be owned as Jehovah equally with His Father and the Holy Spirit) make the leaders of Judah executors of His judgments on the peoples round about, and Jerusalem shall he inhabited again in her own place. Of all the tribes of Israel, deepest in sin has been Judah, the tribe responsible for rejection of the Messiah when He came in lowly grace. The other tribes of the sons of Jacob might well hold this against their brethren of Judah, and therefore (amazing depth of divine grace!) Jehovah shall save the tents of Judah first (verse 7).

As the Christian rightly looks onward to the coming of the Lord for His heavenly saints (1 Thess. 4:15-17, and many other New Testament passages), so the Jew, when awakened by divine power after the Church of God has been completed and removed to scenes of heavenly glory, will long for the day of the Lord— “that day”, which is mentioned. seven times in this chapter.

“In that day” Jehovah will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem (verse 8). It is the time of the invasion of the land by the nations led by the king of the north (often in Isaiah referred to as the Assyrian), and, as it would appear also, a later one by Russia herself. See Isaiah 8:7 to 12:6 and Psalm 83, Daniel 8:23-25, Ezekiel 38-39, the fulfillment of all of which will shortly follow the judgment of western powers at the Lord’s return to the earth (Matthew 24:26-30, Revelation 19:11-21).

For an understanding of the order of prophetic unfoldings, it must be apprehended that the eastern and western powers will be dealt with separately by the Lord Jesus when He comes again. Except Daniel, the Old Testament prophets chiefly tell of the eastern oppressors of Israel, with little reference to the western power under which the Lord was crucified. Shortly before His coming, the eastern powers led by the Assyrian or king of the north (north in relation to the land of Israel) will have successfully invaded the country of the Jews, being used of God unconsciously to themselves (Isaiah 10:5-8, 12-14; 28:14 to 29:8, etc. to punish the unrepentant who will comprise the majority of the earthly people of God.

After capturing Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:2) the associated eastern nations under the king of the north will continue southward into Africa (Daniel 11:41-15), and it is while there engaged in war (as many judge) that the Lord will suddenly appear at Jerusalem, will destroy the western powers and the false prophet, and will undertake the cleansing of the land of all the sinners who remain there. Shortly, alarmed by news which seems to call for an immediate movement northward, the king of the north returns, and Jerusalem will again be invested, but now the Lord is with His people, and the eastern armies will be completely defeated.

The appearing of the Lord for His earthly saints as expressed here, presents a marked contrast with Ills appearing for His heavenly saints, for the Jews must pass through an experience like that of Joseph’s brethren in Genesis 42, 44 and 45. Psalm 51 will be the language of every Jew as he reflects upon the rejection of Christ when He came to His own, 1900 years ago. The mourning of Hadadrimmon (verse 11) appears to be that which occurred upon the death of Josiah, the last godly king of Judah.

Zechariah 13

“In that day”—the day upon which chapter 12 dwells, when the Lord shall return to this world to establish His kingdom, —there shall be fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness. From this passage the Christian poet Cowper wrote the well-known hymn “There is a fountain filled with blood”, but he was mistaken; the fountain is not of blood but of water, Already those who remain of the earthly people of God, converted during the years immediately preceding the Lord’s return to establish His kingdom, will have entered into the value of the precious blood of Christ for their redemption, as verses 10-14 of chapter 12 unmistakably show.

They will have deeply felt the measure of their guilt, individually confessing their sins and seeking forgiveness. The house of David—the royal tribe, which after David’s death plunged into idolatry; the house of Nathan—standing for the line of the prophets (2 Samuel 7, etc.,); the house of Levi—the priestly tribe; and the house of Shimei—standing for the common people;— “all the families that remain”, will know the power of the blood of Christ, shed for even His Jewish murderers (Acts 2-3).

But there is something more, —communion with God, —and this can only be realized by the cleansing power of His Word (See 1 John 1:6-9; 2:3-6 and Ephesians 5:20). This is what is signified by the fountain of verse 1. Then idolatry will be completely banished, and with it the false prophets and the unclean spirits which together brought about Israel’s undoing. Verse 3: Should one venture to prophesy, —then there will be such faithfulness as in the days of Phinehas the priest (Numbers 25:7-8). The day of prophecy will be past.

Verse 5 abruptly introduces the Lord, for Zechariah’s great object is to prepare the Jews to meet Him in the coming day. “But” (or, And) “He shall say, I am no prophet; I am an husbandman” (or tiller of the ground), “for man” (as it should read) “acquired me [as bondman or slave] from my youth”. He came into the world for God, but man refused Him from the beginning, and He became in lowly grace the servant of man (See Phil. 2:6-8).

Verse 6: The Jewish conscience must be again probed: How came those wounds in the hands of the Blessed One? They are the ineffaceable marks of the cross (Luke 24:40; John 20;25-27); wounds received in the house of His friends. But His cross was more than the act of Jewish hatred of Him; it was Jehovah’s smiting His fellow, the Shepherd of Israel, without which there is no salvation for any.

Our Lord had verse 7 in His holy mind on the night of His betrayal (Matthew 26:31), when by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God, as Peter said in Acts 2:23, He was about to be delivered into the hands of His murderers. The true sheep were scattered, but preserved as “little ones” under God’s protecting hand. Between verses 7-8 occurs the present long period of the day of grace, with Israel nationally set aside, while the heavenly bride of Christ, composed principally of Gentiles, is being called out of the earth.

Verses 8-9 point onward to the fearful times which are coming for the Jews, concerning which the Lord spoke in Matthew 24. God has not forgotten their ancient idolatry and other sins, nor their flagrant act of crucifying His Son, the guilt of which they owned, though they did not know what they did (Matthew 27:25; Luke 23:34). There. is forgiveness for them, when they repent, but only a remnant (Isaiah 10:20-22) will do so.

Zechariah 14

Verses 1-5 describe the events of the first attack by the king of the north upon Jerusalem, which, as earlier remarked, will shortly precede the Lord’s return to this world. Verse 1 is rightly read, “Behold, the day cometh for Jehovah, and thy spoil. etc.” It speaks of a heavy stroke of judgment to fall upon the unrepentant Jews; the believers acting upon the Lord’s directions given in Matthew 24:15-25, will have long before this left Jerusalem in the hands of the false king and his supporters. The “overflowing scourge” (Isaiah 28:18) will then pass through Judah, overflowing “to the neck” (Isaiah 8:8), but the elect of God, the believing remnant, will be spared by divine intervention.

Though Jerusalem has been besieged several times since Zechariah wrote, the circumstances named in verse 2 have not yet occurred; nor could they, because verse 3 is closely connected with that terrible day. The vast army of the eastern powers led by the king of the north will have gone through Judah’s land, halting at Jerusalem until it is captured, and then continuing victoriously southward to Egypt and other northern African countries, but returning, will be met by the Lord Jesus (verse 3). His feet will stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which adjoins Jerusalem on the east, a hill significant in the Scriptures (Ezekiel 11:23; Matthew 24:3; John 8:1, etc.) and apparently from a low part of it the Lord ascended to heaven Luke 24:50-51; Acts 1:12). Terror will seize all hearts when the Mount of Olives cleaves in the midst—token of the presence of Jesus—Jehovah. We are not told here of the end of the king of the north. Isaiah and Daniel tell that.

Zechariah 14:5-21

The division of our Bible into chapters and verses has made it very easy to refer to passages of Scripture, but it was the work of men not inspired, and sometimes appears (as here) to have been hurriedly done. The last part of verse 5 should have been separated from the first part of the verse, and as beginning a new (and the last) section of Zechariah’s prophecy, ought to be the first verse of a new chapter.

“The Lord my God shall come”, says the prophet, and then, addressing Him, adds, “and all the saints with Thee” — for those who have believed in the Lord Jesus during the present dispensation of grace, formed by the Holy Spirit into one body, the bride of Christ and the Church of God, will be with the Lord when He comes to reign (Jude 14-15; Revelation 19:6-14; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10; 1 Corinthians 6:2). The Scriptures do not disclose whether or not the Old Testament saints will also be with the Lord when He comes.

Verses 6-7 present a little difficulty in translating into English, but it is plain from the passage that the day of the Lord will be introduced by a notable departure from the ordinary order of night following day as evening comes on. (See Isaiah 30:26). This is not surprising when we consider the majesty the Person Who is coming, and the great consequences of His coming. There will be physical changes, then, also, as verse 10 declares, and the river of verse 8 has no counterpart today (See Ezekiel 47; Joel 3:18; Psalm 46:4). The river of Revelation 22:1, 2 is, we think, symbolic, rather than an actual flowing stream of water.

The “former sea”, as the marginal note points out, is the Dead Sea, and the “hinder sea” is the Mediterranean, but the Dead Sea will no longer be without life in its waters (Ezekiel 47:8-10). The Lord will be the one and only King (verse 9). Geba, in verse 10, was about six miles north of Jerusalem, but the site of Rimmon has not been identified.

Other passages have foretold the destruction of the armies which under the king of the north will compass Jerusalem immediately before and after the Lord’s coming to establish His kingdom; verses 12-15 disclose what will be the character of their end, and of this, the Word of God provides at least two examples in past history: —Judges 7:22 and 2 Kings 19:35.

Millennium

Verses 16 to 21 bring to a close Zechariah’s prophecy with a view of the Millennial years which may profitably be compared with Isaiah 2:1-4; 4:2-6; 9:2-7; 11:1-10; 19:18-25; 25:6-9; 27:6; 28:5; 30; 41:18-20; 65:17-25; Jeremiah 31:31-10; Ezekiel 10-48; Hosea 2;18-23; Amos 9:13; Micah 4; Habakkuk 2:14; Zechariah 8:3-5 and Revelation 21:9-27; 22:1-5, the last mentioned presenting in expressive symbols, the relation of the Church to the earth during the Millennium.

The thousand years, glorious though they will be, and an important part of the answer of God the Father to His Son’s humiliation and His cross, will come to an end; the judgment of the great white throne will follow, and the eternal state will begin (Revelation 20:5-15; 21:1-5; 1 Corinthians 15:24-28). But of these things the Old Testament prophets were not told.

Malachi 1

We have at length reached the last book of that part of the Holy Scriptures which is commonly called the Old Testament. The prophecy of Malachi does not contain a reference to the time of its utterance, but its message is exactly suited to the end position which it occupies in both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. As the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah belong to the period of Ezra, so that of Malachi suggests the time of Nehemiah, and he is believed to be the last inspired penman of the Old, as the apostle John was of the New Testament. The Old Testament Scriptures were now complete, and we have no knowledge of subsequent prophets, if there were such, until Christ came.

The burden of the word of Jehovah to Israel by Malachi is a very solemn, searching message, but it begins with a touching expression of His heart: “I have loved you.” How unfeeling, how cold, is their answer: “Wherein hast Thou loved us?”

Thirteen hundred years had now passed since Esau and Jacob completed their spans of life and passed into eternity, but their lives now pass in review before God, as He declares “I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau,” The occasion for this sentence is found in the history of each as told in Genesis, but the children of Esau closely followed in the footsteps of then father, and God identifies them with him here. We have seen in several Scriptures, notably Obadiah’s short prophecy, the judgment of God concerning the nation which sprang from Esau; like their father, they had no regard for God (Scripture records not one as turning to Him), and they hated Jacob and his children. Yet it is only at the end of the Old Testament that God says, “And I hated Esau”; this is not the sovereignty of God (as in Romans 9), but what He felt having seen the course of one who made himself an enemy, and whose children kept up the enmity, deepened it.

Verse 3: “dragons” may be read “jackals”—wild creatures of the desert, Verse 4: “the border of wickedness” means the territory, or land, of wickedness. Verse 5 is more exactly translated “ ... ..and ye shall say, the Lord (Jehovah) is magnified beyond the border of Israel” (JND)

After speaking of His love for the children of Jacob, God in verse 6 begins to lay before them their shameful treatment of Himself; and, mark, this is after the return from the seventy years’ captivity in Babylon. Alas! the majority of the people had evidently not profited at all by the humbling God had given them, Deeper lessons must yet be put before the Jews, and fearful trials given them, before they will turn in heart to their God. The end of this book however reveals that there was a remnant at this time who really feared Him and thought upon His name, giving joy to Himself in an utterly contrary scene.

The hypocrisy and selfishness of the people, and particularly the priests, have been exposed in verses 6-10, for however men may deceive themselves and one another, God is not deceived. He declares that He has no delight in this people, and He will not accept (or be pleased with) an offering at their hand. Immediately after, however, He speaks of His determination that over this wide world, His name shall be great among the nations.

What a day that will be for this globe, when verse 11 is at length fulfilled; but it will not be accomplished through the preaching of the gospel of God’s grace which began when the Holy Spirit descended to form and indwell the “one body” of Christ, the Church, on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). (See 2 Thessalonians 2; 2 Timothy 3; Jude 14-25).

Nor will that happy fruition be attained through the Jews without a national repentance which has not yet begun among them. See Psalm 51:13; the whole of the Psalm awaits a future day for its fulfillment. The fact is that the chosen people never have given to God His due; the truth of their own history was told them by the Holy Spirit in Acts 7, speaking through the first Christian martyr.

The present position of man, and in particular of the Gentiles, who have long known of the gospel, is in no small measure comparable to that of the Jews in the days of Malachi. The profession of God throughout the so-called Christian lands is in the many linked with an attitude toward Himself that must invite His judgement. Nor can it be said that God has left the world without warning (Acts 17:30-31). Judgment will assuredly fall, for He will not suffer the present state of things (rapidly growing worse) to continue indefinitely.

It is enough, thought the Jews of Malachi’s time, to give to God that which is of little value, and which we cannot devote to our own. advancement. Is not this also sadly true in measure of very many of God’s people—His children—in our own day? Do we not give our own wants the first place, and yield to Him altogether too often the little that remains after our comforts and our plans for this and that have been cared for to the best of our ability?

Malachi 2

A solemn word to the priests, who stood between the people and God, follows in the second chapter. They are reminded of the head of the family; Levi, and God’s covenant with him, for it is to the Word of God alone and not the teachings, or the practices of men, however pious, that His people are ever directed by Him. These, Levi’s children, were far removed from God’s holy Word in their conduct, and they had caused many to stumble; this assured to them just retribution (verse 9).

Today the Jews have no priests, to offer sacrifices, fulfilling Hosea 3:4.

We have seen, in what has been before us in this book God dishonored; and this not by heathen, but by those who stood in a position of privileged relationship with Him, who professed to be, by birth and by religious observance, His people. When God is not given that place in heart and conscience which is rightly His, other evils are sure to follow. Some of them are mentioned in verses 10-16.

The first is a selfish disregard of the rights of one’s fellowmen. “Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously” (or more exactly, and in each case in this chapter, “unfaithfully”), “every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” See Nehemiah 5:1-13, which shows that man in our own times is of the same fibre as twenty-four centuries ago. The ten commandments set forth duty to God and duty to man, but the children of Israel neglected the one as they did the other. Selfishness is deeply rooted in the human heart, and where God is not known, no higher principles may be expected to govern.

Verses 11-12 deal with a different character of sin: the intermarriage of the (professed) people of God and the world. (See Ezra 9:10, Nehemiah 6:17-18; 13:23-28). The sanctuary of Jehovah which He loved, was profaned by the marriage of Jews to idolaters.

How can a true believer be united in marriage with an unbeliever? Alas! it is done even in the time in which we live, but 2 Cor. 6:14-16 is thereby violated, to God dishonor and the saint’s abiding loss.

Verses 13-16 bring out a third sin against God and man: divorce. Does not verse 13 tell in perfect truth of what follows in the train of this great evil: “ ... ... tears, with weeping, and with sighing”? Broken homes, children without proper parental care and affection—these are the current and immediate fruits of despising God’s ordinance for the human family (Genesis 2:24), It should never be found among the children of God, where His Word is known. The Jews made the most trivial grounds sufficient for divorcing their wives, trying to find sanction for the allowance of their own evil hearts, in Deuteronomy 24:1.

For the Christian all is settled by the Lord’s words in Matthew 5 and 19, which precisely and effectively limit the divine sanction of divorce to one cause only. Apart from that ground, the divorced wife (or husband) is still in God’s reckoning, married to the former partner, as our verses in Malachi 2 indeed show: “the wife of thy youth against whom thou hast dealt unfaithfully, yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.”

The early part of verse 15 is a little difficult in the English translation. The subject is the nature and purpose of marriage as given under God’s ordination: husband and wife are “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The Holy Spirit is referred to in the second sentence, —the Spirit of God; but in the latter part of the verse it is “your spirit”—the spirit of man, as in verse 16.

The marginal reading for verse 16 is unwarranted. The best translation is believed to be, “(for I hate putting away, saith Jehovah the God of Israel); and he covereth with violence his garment, saith Jehovah of hosts, etc.” (JND), —the latter referring to the unlovely ways of the natural man when angered. See Eph. 5:25 for a lovely contrast.

Verse 17 will come before us in our consideration of chapter 3.

Malachi 3

The answer to the question asked at the end of chapter 2 immediately follows:

“Behold, I will send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me; and the Lord, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in, ... .”

Two persons are here spoken of, the first being John the Baptist, at the Lord’s first coming, though we must also look onward to a coming day when that which John failed to accomplish, will be wrought before the Lord’s second coming to the earth (Mark 1:2, however, clearly identifies John the Baptist with the first “messenger” of Malachi 3:1. See also Luke 1:76-79; and Isaiah 40:3, which is quoted in Mark 1:3 and John 1:23).

John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded, and Whom he served was crucified, but here as generally in the Old Testament prophecies, no indication is given of the unmeasured period from the cross to the awakening of the Jews which will take place before the Lord’s second appearing on earth.

The Lord, the second person spoken of in verse 1 is of course the Son of God, Israel’s Messiah. They looked for the Messiah, but when He suddenly came to His temple they would not receive Him (John 1:11). He is the Messenger, or Angel, of the covenant, — regarding which see Exodus 23:20-23, and when He comes it will not be on the ground of the old broken covenant of Sinai, but the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31-34; Matthew 20:28; Hebrews 9:15, etc., where, “covenant” should be read instead of “testament”).

“But who”, is asked, “who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?”

It is the fearful day of the Lord, told of in so many Scriptures, including Malachi, Two New Testament Scriptures may with profit be referred to in this connection (Revelation 6:15-17 (for the world) and 1 John 4:17 (for Christians), the true reading of the latter being,

“Herein has love been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that even as He is, so also are we in this world” (JND).

Verses 2-4: We have here another evidence of the contrast between the coming of the Lord for His earthly people, and His coming for His heavenly bride.

Isaiah 33:14-17 gives the answer to the questions asked in verse 2; it will be a time of deep searchings of heart on the part of the believing Jews of that day, who will, like Noah in Genesis 7-8, pass through the storm of God’s judgment that will fall on the world, and in a special way upon the Jews.

At the very instant of the Lord’s coming for His heavenly people, they will be given heavenly bodies; the old nature will be gone forever; heaven will thenceforth be their dwelling place; but the Jewish believers of the coming day must pass through the refining and purifying of which verse 2-3 tell, before they are brought into peace and rest oil earth.

The sons of Levi, the priestly family, through whom God will again deal with His earthly people, will come in for a special governmental dealing from Him to fit them morally for their work. See Ezekiel 44:6-31 which relates to the Millennial place of the priests.

That the judgment of sin is inseparable from the throne of God, has been exhibited on many of His Word, yet how many deceive themselves with the thought that evil will unpunished! Hearken to that cry from the Holy Sufferer while bearing our sins on the cross,

“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? . . . But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” (Psalms 22:1-3; Matthew 27:45-46). It was then that the sins of every confessed sinner who has looked in faith. to God for salvation met their judgment (2 Cor. 5:21); for the unbelieving there remains the wrath of God. (John 3:30; See Psalm 94:1-9; 1 Thess. 5:1-3).

Verse 5, as in the Old Testament generally where the judgment of God is spoken of, refers to an earthly dealing; but in the New Testament, eternity is unveiled, and eternal judgment, as well as eternal blessing, are disclosed.

“It is appointed unto men once to die, but, after death, the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27. The judgment of the great white throne (Revelation 20:11-15) must then be the later portion of those who are overtaken by the earthly judgment of verse 5.

Verses 6-7 give a touching address to the wayward children of Israel, breathing the grace and sovereign mercy of our God.

“I am Jehovah; I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed,” “Sons of Jacob”, rather than “sons of Israel”, is no accident of terms, but suited to their case, for the phrase brings forward the untrustworthy natural, rather than the spiritual, character of their ancestor.

In the same way the Lord said to Peter, reminding him in the use of his old name of what he was in nature, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?” John 21:15.

“But ye said, Wherein shall we return?” reveals a characteristic of moral distance from God. And this is seen again in the inquiry which follows in verse 8, “Wherein have we robbed ‘Thee?” ‘How unfeeling must be the heart of any true child of God that would so think of Him!

It is easy to think of other Christians as in need of taking to heart what is said in verses 7-8, but it is well to apply them in unsparing self-judgment, to ask oneself alone, in the presence of God. Have I, perhaps, unconsciously, drifted away from an inward life that will bear His searching gaze, so that He is speaking to me, too, in this word, “Return unto Me”?

Give God His due place in heart and conscience, and there will be the richest blessing; this is the lesson of verse 10. Do we not find here the explanation of much in both of the lives and the meetings of Christians that is not what it should be? His word is plain, — “Bring”; and then, “prove Me now, herewith.” Prayer for blessing is excellent, but a selfish withholding from His servants who do His bidding, in order to have more for ourselves, is without doubt, often a real hindrance; it is the one hindrance named in verses 8 to 10. God’s readiness to bless is fully shown; when it is not given, we must look within for the hindrances, and remove them; then blessing can be counted upon.

Verse 11. If there is obedience, the devourer will be rebuked, as it is said, “for your sakes,” so that he shall not destroy the fruits of the ground. This passage is general in scope, no doubt, for the reward promised to Israel for obedience to God’s Word is earthly blessing; nevertheless it must specifically refer to the day of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7), when the whole land, because of Jehovah’s righteous indignation, shall be devoured. (Zephaniah 1:18). The devourer then will be the Assyrian or king of the north (Isaiah 10:5-6; 28:2-4).

The Christian is not to expect earthly prosperity; his truest blessings are heavenly, as many Scriptures tell; 1 Timothy 6:6-8 may be contrasted with Dent, 8:7-9, the one giving the Christian’s right earthly position, while the other exhibits Israel’s.

The happy slate to which verse 12 refers has never been seen, nor can it be, until sins, national and individual, are owned in the fullest way of repentance. Thus verse 13 brings to the chosen people a charge of guilt more flagrant than any before named in this prophecy: “Your words have been stout against Me.” It is the last accusation Malachi was given to set before God’s earthly people, but as in each preceding case, the callousness of their hearts is such that they unfeelingly reply, “What have we spoken against Thee?” And, they add, “And now we call or consider) the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set (or built) up; yea, they tempt God, and they escape” (JND). This is the character of man at a distance from God which will be fully displayed before His judgment falls upon them.

Thank God, there are those who, perhaps moved by the growing wickedness of the scene in which they live, are aroused in their consciences; of these the next verse 16 tells.

How encouraging, how refreshing, is the action in verse 16— “Then”, when the tide of evil is surging high; “Then” when the heart of man is daring in impiety, “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another”; and the end of the verse brings in this further word about them, that “they thought upon His name.” There are two Hebrew words frequently translated “fear” in our Bible: one is yirah, meaning reverence; the other is pachad, meaning dread. The former, which occurs much more often than the latter, is represented here; “they that reverenced Jehovah.” These two words are found close together in several passages; for example, in Proverbs 1:7,29 (reverence); verses 26-27, 33 (dread).

“And the Lord hearkened”—His attention, we may with reverence say, was attracted to the feeble few who often spoke to one another; what they said reached His ear; all unknown to them He listens; He causes a “book of remembrance” to be written before Him for them; and He who changes not, whose word shall stand forever, declares “They shall be Mine in that day when I make up My jewels.”

In an earlier day, He had promised deliverance by power through a remnant, as for example, in Judges 6:11-14, etc.; but no change is here promised the remnant until the day of the Lord; all is to be allowed to go on, man pursuing his evil course, but a work of God will be maintained amid it, until iniquity has reached its height, and the Lord appears.

Verse 16 has ever, and rightly, spoken comfortably to Christian hearts, because they, too, have a remnant character in a world ripening for judgment; they too, are given no promise of a display of divine power, but are to go on in faithfulness to their Lord until He takes them to Himself.

What we have in verses 17-18 is without exact parallel in Christian doctrine, relating to the deliverance and bringing into Millennial blessing of the earthly saints, and, particularly the Jews who will be converted after the Church’s removal to glory. They will be Jehovah’s “jewels” or “special treasure”, as the marginal, reading puts it, in the day that He prepares. Before that day the heavenly saints, including us (believers) who are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with the dead in Christ, in heavenly bodies, to meet the Lord in the air and to be forever with Him (1 Thess. 4:16-17).

Although the Old Testament prophecies are almost without reference to the heavenly saints (part of the mystery revealed by the Lord to the apostle Paul), that would be a cold heart indeed, among them, that would be indifferent to the day when the Crucified One shall be glorified on the earth in a redeemed and blest earthly people, objects of divine grace, as are we for whom a place in the Father’s house is prepared.

Malachi 4

The “sparing” of Malachi 3:17 refers to the coming scenes of judgment of which the last chapter treats—-chapter 3:1 and 3. Then shall the Lord appear for Israel’s blessing as the Sun of righteousness; for the church there is an earlier appearing as the Morning Star, herald of the morning (2 Peter 1:19; Rev. 22:16).

Between these two events one, like John the Baptist in the spirit of Elijah, will be used to bring about for God the accomplishment of verses 5-6, a work for which the Baptist labored with small result, being rejected and cut off as was his Master, four hundred years after Malachi closed his prophecy (See John 1:21; Matthew 11:14; 17:10-12).

These “Bible Lessons” are now concluded.

Bible Lessons: Genesis - Malachi

Table of Contents

Genesis 1

Genesis 2

Genesis 3

Genesis 4

Genesis 5

Genesis 6

Genesis 7

Genesis 8

Genesis 9

Genesis 10

Genesis 11

Genesis 12

Genesis 13

Genesis 14

Genesis 15

Genesis 16

Genesis 17

Genesis 18

Genesis 19

Genesis 20

Genesis 21

Genesis 22

Genesis 23

Genesis 24

Genesis 25

Genesis 26

Genesis 27

Genesis 28

Genesis 29

Genesis 30

Genesis 31

Genesis 32

Genesis 33

Genesis 34

Genesis 35

Genesis 36

Genesis 37

Genesis 39

Genesis 40

Genesis 41

Genesis 42

Genesis 43

Genesis 44

Genesis 45

Genesis 46

Genesis 47

Genesis 48

Genesis 49

Genesis 50

Exodus 1

Exodus 2

Exodus 3

Exodus 4

Exodus 5

Exodus 6

Exodus 7

Exodus 8

Exodus 9

Exodus 10

Exodus 11

Exodus 12

Exodus 13

Exodus 14

Exodus 15

Exodus 16

Exodus 17

Exodus 18

Exodus 19

Exodus 20

Exodus 21-22

Exodus 23

Exodus 24

Exodus 25:1-9

Exodus 25:10-16

Exodus 25:17-22

Exodus 25:23-30

Exodus 25:31-40

Exodus 26:1-14