"Who bath believed our report? and to whom is Jehovah's arm revealed? For he groweth up before him as a tender shoot, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and we see him, and there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and forsaken of men; a man of sorrows and welt acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."
It is now the testimony of God which is rejected- to One who is, nevertheless, "Jehovah's arm." It has been already said that Jehovah is the title under which God reveals Himself in the book of Exodus, when He undertakes to redeem His people out of Egypt. "And God spake unto Moses and said unto him, I am Jehovah; and I appeared unto Abraham, and unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them ... ..Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am Jehovah: and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments; and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall know that I am Jehovah your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians."
Thus this title speaks of God as the God of salvation. It is not of course that the book of Genesis does not give Him this name, or that the patriarchs did not know that it was His. Unbelief has vainly objected these two things. It is that what this name implies God was now bringing out as it had never been brought out before. This title is essentially the same as "I am:—the One who is: the eternally present and unchangeable God. A blessed name indeed this by which to take up a people from amongst the fallen sons of man, and link Himself with them as their God forever. It is not even yet, alas, that Israel has penetrated the meaning of that name aright. But she shall know it, and be the pillar upon which He will inscribe it forever. Meanwhile it is our privilege to know, under all these titles, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Only He could be indeed Jehovah,—could link abidingly with Himself a company of redeemed sinners. This to our hearts means nothing short of grace, and therefore nothing short of Christ's work, by which alone He can be righteously with us thus. "Jehovah's arm " is thus Christ a Savior: unto us who are called, "the power of God."
But of power in weakness and self-humiliation and sacrifice how many think? Who can see Jehovah's arm in the Man of sorrows? So the prophet goes on to describe this humiliation under which He is veiled to carnal eyes- to faith revealed. "For he groweth up before him as a tender shoot, and as a root out of a dry ground." This He is before God; this He is, too, before man: but He is rejected by man for that for which He is approved of God- "He is despised and forsaken of men."
Let us look first, as we are invited, at the Godward side. He is "a tender shoot, a root out of a dry ground”. This carries us back to the eleventh chapter: "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." This points to the cutting down of the royal stock of David which has gone back to what it was in Jesse, or even less. Out of the roots of this felled and prostrate tree comes this tender shoot. It is a new beginning in weakness of what has already suffered defeat and overthrow. Circumstances too, are adverse: the dry ground provides no sustenance to its youth and weakness. But in this also there is more than at first appears. For why is the Davidic monarchy thus overthrown, and why are the circumstances adverse? People may say it is only as it always has been; the law of nature is a law of change; the stamp of death is upon everything. True, but why but because nature is fallen nature? Here was one to whom God had said: "If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, these children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore." This prostrate tree trunk means then God's covenant profaned, His testimony refused; God in His holiness against it because of sin.
And what of the dry ground? It was out of Israel this house of David sprang, out of Israel that had been God's vineyard, which He had fenced and nurtured and cared for, and which has repaid His care with wild grapes instead of the grapes He looked for. He had said therefore He would take away its hedge, and break down its wall, and lay it waste, not to be pruned or digged; also He would command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. The dry ground, then, was the corrupt and hardened generation unwatered of the Spirit, whom they and their fathers had always resisted. Good reason was there for the circumstances being adverse: truly that was a tender shoot, and out of a dry ground.
But what of this in Jehovah's sight? Was He less the “arm of the Lord,” who, spite of this weak appearance, spite of all by which He was surrounded, grew up, as mastering it all? Surely in His sight this was power that overcame weakness, life that mastered death. He was no creature of circumstances, no product of His surroundings He drew nothing from- was indebted for nothing to- that amidst which He was. There are plants which, by the stores of nourishment they lay up in their own substance, maintain themselves in some measure of independence of the barren soil from which they spring. But these are scarcely more than contrasts to Him who, in the world, not of it, grew up in the sunshine of the divine favor through thirty years of toil and poverty and sorrow, and then to receive the testimony of the Father's voice in perfect unqualified approbation: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
But exactly what made Him the object of divine delight, made Him, and for that reason, the object of man's disfavor. "He hath no form nor comeliness; and we see him, and there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and forsaken of men." He was rejected distinctly and deliberately, as known, not as unknown: "We see Him, and there is no beauty." How false is the thought that ignorance has to do with the rejection of Christ! There is abundant ignorance, but the condemnation is, that "Light is come into the world; and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." This is the terrible reality. Men say they desire heaven; but a Christless heaven does not exist, and Christ they have refused.
No wonder then that He is "a Man of sorrows, and well acquainted with grief."What a world for a heart thoroughly one with God to pass through! bearing upon it all the glory of God, all the burdens under which man groaned! Himself ever with God, this was the shadow cast by that eternal sunshine! With God; and passing through a world which had gone out with Cain out of His presence! He that had seen Him now had seen the Father; and "we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." F. W. G.