Q.-(1). Isa. 53:8. What is meant by " Who shall declare his generation?" H. D.
(2). Isa. 53:9. How are we to understand " His grave with the wicked and with the rich in His death? " R. M.
A.-(1). It appears to be as contrary to general usage as to the particular context, that we should here conceive " posterity " (even though of course in a spiritual sense). The meaning is rather His contemporaries. How blind they were, not only to His glory, but to the wondrous work His humiliation was about to achieve by His atoning death on the cross I They in their murderous hatred were but hurrying on that which would give effect, in the grace of God, to taking away the transgression of His people.
(2). The next verse refers, not only to the grave which was appointed to one reckoned with lawless men, but to that honor which God took care should notwithstanding be paid in His burial. As is well known, " the wicked " is plural, whereas " rich " is singular. The simple facts are thus the best comment on the prediction. Man proposed, but God disposed, Who alone could and did set it out long before. Men assigned Him in his thought a grave with the wicked, but He was in fact according to His purpose with a rich man in His death.
Q.-What is the real bearing of Jer. 31:22? Bp. Pearson treats it as the prophet's prediction of the Incarnation, as you will know, declaring this interpretation " ancient, literal, and clear." " Ancient " it may be, both for Rabbis and Fathers; but is it either literal or clear? Is it the truth intended? E.
A.-The context clearly looks on to the gathering of all the families of Israel, not to a mere remnant of Jews provisionally (in a day when Jehovah will be their God) and they His people. He that scattered Israel will gather him and keep him as a flock; when priests and people shall be satisfied with His goodness (vers. 1-14). Rachel's tears are to be no more; her children instead of perishing shall come to their own border. Ephraim turns and repents; and Jehovah says He will surely have mercy on him (15-20). Then, as filling up the beautiful picture of Israel's return, we hear the call to set up way marks and signposts, yea to set their heart toward the highway, once of sorrow, now of joy; for Jehovah bids the virgin of Israel, forgiving all past delinquency, to " turn again to these thy cities." " How long wilt thou wander about, thou backsliding daughter? " What has one word of all this to do with the miraculous conception, all-important as it is in Isa. 7:14? " For Jehovah hath created a new thing in the earth; a woman shall encompass a man " (22). No matter what their weakness, they need not fear the strong, but should go round about him. The word here used is never employed to express any such idea as is assumed, but is suitable for a phrase that imports one out of weakness made strong. And this is confirmed by all that follows to the end of the chapter. Even Calvin, unintelligent as he was in prophetic truth, understood the verse correctly. The Incarnation rests on grounds so plain and solid as to need no forced construction. For a female compassing a mighty one has nothing in common with giving birth, but rather to freedom and exemption from his power, however weak in herself. Usage quite agrees with the force of the words. Where is the phrase applied to gestation? Scripture speaks similarly where any strikingly divine intervention wholly distinct appears; as, for instance, of the earth opening its mouth to swallow the apostate rebels, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num. 16:30). The phrase employed therefore embraces a far wider range than the Incarnation, to which the terms of a woman compassing a man are in themselves wholly alien.
Q.-Matt. 13:5, 6. Can a believer lose life eternal? R. C.
A.-It would not be life eternal if it could be lost. Animal life can perish; but even the soul is immortal for man, being inbreathed by Jehovah-God (Gen. 2). How much less can that life perish, which the believer hath (not merely shall have) in Christ, the Son of God! What then means the withering away of what sprang up on the stony places? Our Lord explains in vers. 20, 21. There is more than one way of ruin for mere professors of His name: 1st. Satan hindering the entrance of the word, as in ver. 19; 2nd. as in vers. 20, 21 the flesh receiving the word hastily without conscience before God, and therefore quickly giving up under pressure; and 3rd. as in ver. 22, the anxiety of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choking all fruit, the necessary issue of life. It is the world. He who hears in faith is no longer Satan's prey and does bear fruit, though even so the flesh and the world may hinder the hundredfold which ought to be.
Q.-Matt. 13:25. What is the true force of the word (ζιζάνια) translated " tares " in the A. & R. Versions? Is there any ground for the strange notion, among many of old to our day, that the noxious weed intended is degenerate wheat? QUERIST.
A.-The word beyond doubt means " darnel," which is in Latin " lolium," or "l. temulentum " because of its deleterious properties. The " tare " or vetch is in Latin " vicia," and, far from being a noxious weed, a leguminous grain wholesome in itself and useful to the agriculturist in spring and winter for feeding his cattle. There is no more ground in natural science to confound tares with darnel than there is in philology. The things are as distinct as the terms. Nor is there the smallest evidence, since man began to observe, that wheat ever degenerated into either. It is a mere and baseless fancy. Yet so farmers talked and fathers wrote, to say nothing of natural philosophers like Pliny of old, and grave divines, as Dr. J. Lightfoot down to Abp. Trench, who goes so far as to treat as a Manichean error that wheat and tares (or rather darnel) are different in kind, and their spiritual counterparts incapable of passing from the one into the other I As his assumption is not the fact in natural history, so it is a mistake doctrinally to deduce from our Lord's words that the sons of the kingdom and those of the evil one are interchangeable. They are viewed as the results of the respective sowings. It is still more palpably the error of ancients and moderns to overlook our Lord's interpretation of " the field " as " the world." To regard it as " the church " opens the door to confusion and evil without end, as every Christian ought to see.
Q.-Matt. 17:10. What mean "their angels?" R. M.
A.-Not the spirits, but the angelic representatives, of the little ones. Compare what is said of Peter in Acts 12:15. It is well however to abide within the limits of what is revealed without prying beyond. See Col. 2
Q.-Matt. 18:5; 19:13-15. Is it a little one only, or a believing one, or both? R. M.
A.-The Lord at the beginning of the chapter corrects the ambition of the disciples by the figure of a little child as far as possible from any such thought. But it is certain from ver. 6 that He goes forward to the "little ones that believe on Me." But it seems worthy of Him before closing the subject to give us comfort in a more distinct way than elsewhere respecting " little ones " like the one that He called and set in the midst of them. How many die at an early age? Do they perish? We are not left to spiritual instinct, or to reasoning from general principles. Nor is it the unbelieving and unspiritual plea that they are " innocent." They do belong to the fallen race, for whose sake the good Shepherd came and died: " even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish." Are we not entitled to look beyond those that believe to " these little ones " for assurance that, if called before believing could be, they are not to perish? Compare also chap. 19 13-15.
Q.-(1). Mark 1:23, Luke 4:33-36. The late Dr. Trench, Abp. of Dublin, in his well-known Notes on the Miracles of our Lord (p. 233, seventh ed. 1862), speaks of the healing of this demoniac as " the second miracle " of the kind which the evangelists record at any length. Is this correct?
(2). He connects in p. 234 " the Holy One of God " in the accounts of this miracle with Psa. 16:10, as " the first appearance of this phrase." Is it really so?
(3).Dean Alford in the fifth edition of his Greek Testament, 1 313, says that this demoniac's healing in the synagogue at Capernaum was " not immediately after the preceding. The calling of the apostles, the Sermon on the Mount, the healing of the leper, and of the centurion's servant, precede the following miracle." Is this the fact? or ignorance of the chronology? QUERIST.
A.-(1). The Abp. cannot have carefully examined the relative order of the events in the Gospels; else he must have known that the cure of the demoniac at Capernaum was the first case of detailed account, and long before that related in Matt. 8 28-36. Mark and Luke are explicit that the cure in the synagogue at Capernaum was on the same sabbath when he healed Simon's mother-in-law, soon after the four apostles were called as Mark proves, whereas only Luke reserves that call for fuller development in the miraculous draft which so powerfully acted on Peter's soul (Luke 5:1-11). But both conclusively show that the cure of legion (Matthew telling us of two demoniacs) was after the day when the parables of the kingdom were delivered (Matt. 13), and the storm on the lake when the Lord rebuked the winds and the raging water.
(2). Dr. Trench is not less mistaken as to the phrase, " Holy One of God." " Holy " here answers to ἅγιος, whereas the corresponding Greek in the Sept. rendering of the Psalm (and quite accurately) is ὅσιος. The former means strictly holy, as separate from evil; and this the angel announced even of the Lord's humanity, in a way never said of any other born of woman, nor yet of Adam unfallen. Compare also 1 John 2:20. The latter is often in the Sept. said of Christ as the " pious " or " gracious " One, which comes practically to the sense of " holy " as said of man, and " merciful " of God. This is the word that occurs in Psa. 16 as quoted in Acts 13:35, as also in Heb. 7:26. Psa. 89 is very instructive, in that we have the former said of the Holy One of Israel, our King, in ver. 18; whereas He is said to speak in vision of His Holy or gracious One in ver. 19, the One in Whom His loving-kindnesses or mercies centered.
(3). From what has been already remarked on Dr. T., it will be plain how far from all intelligence of the structure of the Gospels, and of Matthew's in particular, was Dean Alford. For there is no ground to doubt that the healing of the demoniac at Capernaum is the first recorded miracle of our Lord after calling the four apostles, that the leper was healed not long after, and considerably before what is called the Sermon on the Mount, and that the centurion's servant was not healed till after it, as is shown in Luke 6 7 beyond cavil. Matthew was led to displace the events in order to group together a divine dispensational picture; Luke brings together events for the moral purpose which reigns in his account. Mark had no such reason to depart from the sequence of fact. Failure in apprehending the truth of things has wrought serious mischief in immature harmonies of the Gospels, and still worse in those whose lack of insight emboldened them to tax inspired men with discrepancies and errors.