In contrast with the destruction of the high and haughty Assyrian under the stroke of Jehovah, we have in the eleventh chapter a remarkable and full description of the Messiah; first, in a moral point of view; and, next, in His kingdom, its character and accompaniments, closed with a suited song of praise (chap. 12.) in the lips of Israel, now indeed and forever blessed of the Lord, their Holy One in their midst.
To look and contend for a fulfillment of this prophecy in Hezekiah or Josiah would be idle, and only shows the straits to which the rationalistic enemies of revelation are reduced. No king, let him be ever so pious or glorious, that followed Ahaz, no, nor David nor Solomon in the past, even approached the terms of the prediction, either personally or in the circumstances of their reign. Did the “Spirit of the Lord” rest upon the better of the two when he said, “I shall now perish by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines?” Was it “the spirit of wisdom and understanding,” when he feigned himself mad, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard? Was it “the spirit of counsel and might,” when David amused his credulous host of Gath with his fictitious razzias against the south of Judah, when in truth he was invading the Geshurites, Amalekites, &c., without leaving a human being to tell the tale? Was it the “spirit of knowledge” that dealt with Absalom? Was the numbering of Israel done in “the fear of the Lord?” Was the matter of Uriah a proof that “righteousness” was “the girdle of his loins,” or “faithfulness” “of his reins?” When was the earth smitten with the rod of any king's mouth, or whose lips had breathed to the destruction of the wicked? And who has seen that wondrous change, depicted in verses 6-9, passing over the fierce beasts and the most timid, and man's lordship owned at length by all, subject and harmonious, even in the person of a babe? Equally impossible, at the least, is it to say, that the latter part of the chapter was met by anything resembling its predictions in any era of Israel. The idea of Zerubbabel fulfilling it is preposterous.
Is it contended, on the other hand, that this glowing picture of the great King and His kingdom is realized spiritually in the Church and in the blessings of the gospel? Without descending so low as the gross pretensions of papal ambition. the spiritual or rather mystical interpretation which suits worldly. minded Christendom, finds its expression in Theodoret or earlier still. This writer sees the apostolic doctrine change earth into heaven, and the picture in verses 6-8 accomplished in kings, prefects, generals, soldiers, artisans, servants, and beggars partaking together of the same holy talk and bearing the same discourses! Paul with the philosophers at Athens illustrates, according to him, the weaned child putting his hand on the cockatrice' den; as the promise to Peter (Matt. 16:18) answers to the predicted absence of any destructive thing! The Lord's holy mountain he explains as the loftiness, strength, and immutability of His divine teaching. Theodoret justly explodes the folly of applying such a prophecy to Zerubbabel, who was only governor of a few Jews, and in no way whatever of Gentiles; but he offers an alternative, hardly preferable, in the Acts of the Apostles, specially of Paul.
This kind of interpretation is not only false in fact, but injurious and corrupting in principle. It confounds the Church with Israel; it lowers the character of our blessing in Christ from heaven to earth; it weakens the word of God by introducing a haziness needful to the existence of such applications; it undermines the mercy and the faithfulness of God because it supposes that the richest and most unconditional of His promises to Israel are, notwithstanding, taken from them and turned into a wholly different channel. If God could so speak and act towards Israel, where is the guarantee for the Christian or the Church? The apostle can and does quote from the prophets, and this very chapter of our prophet, to vindicate the blessing of the Gentiles and their glorifying God for His mercy; but the self-same apostle maintains that there is now the revelation of a mystery which was hid from ages and generations, the mystery of Christ and the Church, wherein there is neither Jew nor Gentile.
In this prophecy, however, as in the Old Testament generally, we see the distinctive blessing of Israel, though there is hope for the Gentiles, as well as judgment on the enemies. All this supposes a state of things essentially differing from God's ways with His Church, during which Israel ceases to be the depositary of His testimony and promise. For as the natural Jewish branches were broken off from the olive-tree and the Gentile wild olive was grafted in, so because of non-continuance in God's goodness, the Gentile will be broken off and the natural branches grafted in again; “And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.” Meanwhile, blindness in part is happened unto Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. Then they will hail their rejected Messiah, and the universal blessing of the earth will follow His destruction of their foes as the initiatory act of His kingdom. Of this (not of the gospel, as regards which the Jews are enemies on our account) our chapters speak; and thus viewed, all flows harmoniously onward, both as a whole and in the smallest detail.
I cannot but think with others that the allusion to the stem of Jesse is significant. Elsewhere Messiah is viewed as David's son, or styled David himself; here He is a scion from the trunk of Jesse and a branch or shoot from his roots, for the purpose, it would seem, of drawing attention to the lowly condition into which the royal race should have sunk at the birth of the Christ. It was from that family, when of no account in Israel, that David was anointed for the throne. The prophet designates the rise of a greater than David, not from the glory that had been conferred on the house, but in a way readily suggestive of obscurity. From this stock, lowly of old, lowly once more, sprang the hope of Israel on whom the Spirit rested without measure; or, as Peter preached, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the. Holy Ghost and with power. Here, however, it is not in the activity of grace among the sorrows of men and the oppressions of the devil, but in view of His government. Thoroughly subject to Jehovah, He rules, not according to appearance but righteously, in His fear. Such is the effect of the power that rested on Him. It “shall make him of quick understanding, [or scent,] in the fear of the Lord; he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.” The Holy Spirit portrays the Messiah's moral fitness for His earthly reign. I say, His earthly reign, for so it evidently is throughout, to every reader who is free from prejudice or prepossession. And this is confirmed by the latter part of verse 4: “and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” We need no human comment here, because we have already divine light in 2 Thess. 2:8. The inspired apostle applies it to the Lord's future destruction of the lawless one, the man of sin, the issue of the apostasy of Christendom, the same personage, doubtless, that the beloved disciple describes in 1 John 2:22: “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.” This latter testimony helps to link all together. 2 Thess. 2 views him specially as the result yet to be manifested of that mystery of lawlessness which was even then working unseen. Isaiah shows not only the great outside enemy, the Assyrian, judged in chapter 10., but, in chapter 11:4, the internal enemy, “that wicked,” whom the apostate will accept as their Messiah, destroyed by the true Messiah appearing in glory. 1 John describes him, first, as the denier of the Messianic glory of Jesus; and next, in his full character of antichrist (as well as liar) in denying the Father and the Son (that is, the glory of Christ as revealed in Christianity).
Being thus shown the setting aside of the Antichrist at the end of this age, we have next a display of the reign of the true Christ and its beneficent effects. “And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the bole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” It is the world or habitable earth to come whereof we speak (Heb. 2)—not heaven but earth, and especially the land of Israel under Him whose right it is. What ground is there to doubt its plain, literal accomplishment? I have never heard of any serious objection, save for Sadducean minds, which know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should, in honor of the reign of Jesus, change not the face only, but the habits and bent of all animated nature, delivering the creature from the bondage of corruption under which it now groans? The Psalms celebrate this great day with songs of joy; the prophets are not silent about it; the Apostle Paul repeatedly treats it as a settled Christian expectation, only awaiting the revelation of Christ and the sons of God along with Him. There is a grievous gap in every scheme and every heart which does not look for the world's jubilee: without it, the earth would only seem made to be spoiled of Satan; whereas, to one taught as to this of God, if there were a single creature not put manifestly under the feet of the exalted Son of man, the enemy would be allowed so far to defraud Him of His just reward and supreme rights. In that day we shall see (for now we see not yet) all things put under Him: divine judgment on the quick, executed by Christ, brings it in, as we have gathered from verse 4 compared with 2 Thess. 2.
But this is not all: Israel must be received back in order that the world may thus know life from the dead. “In that day there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign of the people(s); to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.” Those do the enemy's work who contend that these scriptures are fulfilled, or even in course of fulfillment. Save the general principle (which is, no doubt, conspicuous in the gospel)—that Gentiles seek, and hope for, and find eternal blessedness in Christ—it is a scene wholly future. The person of the Messiah has been revealed and we know how truly He was the vessel of the Spirit on earth, and how His humiliation displayed every grace that became man towards God, or God towards man, in Christ Jesus, who was, withal, God over all, blessed for evermore. But He is not yet seated on His own throne nor exercising His kingdom here below; and the remnant of His people are not yet recovered from north, south, east, and west. Are we, therefore, to suppose that His arm is shortened? or that He has abandoned His cherished purpose, and that His gifts and calling are subject to repentance?
Such is not our God. Is He ours only and not also of the Jews? Yes, theirs also; “And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.” The moral history of Israel shall be reversed, as decidedly as natural history must be taught anew for the lower creation. Their old jealousies and mutual enmities, too well known after Solomon, fade away for restored Israel. And as for their plotting neighbors, they may re-appear, but it is to be put down forever. “They shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines towards the west; they shall spoil them of the east together; they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them.” From the Assyrian, the towering king of the north, Edom and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon contrived to escape; (Dan. 11;) but not so from the hands of Israel, “out of weakness made strong.” The Lord shall be seen over the sons of Zion, and His arrow shall go forth as the lightning; and the Lord God shall blow the trumpet and shall go with whirlwinds of the south.
Then, in verses 15, 16, we have the Lord's supernatural dealing with external nature on behalf of His people, when He utterly destroys the tongue of the Egyptian sea and smites the river into seven streams, so that men may pass dry shod, and there is an highway for the remnant from Assyria, as of old from Egypt. In all this latter portion the mystical reading is at utter fault; and greater wonders than in the destruction of Pharaoh's hosts await the final deliverance of Israel from Egypt and from Assyria in the face of a gainsaying and incredulous age.
The song, chapter 12., concludes this section of our prophet, and is divided into two parts: the first of which (ver. 1-3) is Israel's praise for what God has been and is to itself; the second (ver. 4-6) is the spread of His praise in all the earth, though Zion is still the center where God dwells.