Malachi 3:1(v3)“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the…
Mark 1:2-5(v3)As it is written in the prophets, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you: the voice of one…
John 1:23(v3)He said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Matthew 3:1-3(v3)In those days, John the Baptizer came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” For…
Luke 1:16-17(v3)He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the…
Show all 57 cross-references
Luke 1:76-77(v3)And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give…
Malachi 4:5-6(v3)Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of Yahweh comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the…
Isaiah 57:14(v3)He will say, “Build up, build up, prepare the way! Remove the stumbling-block out of the way of my people.”
Isaiah 43:19(v3)Behold, I will do a new thing. It springs out now. Don’t you know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
Isaiah 62:10-11(v3)Go through, go through the gates! Prepare the way of the people! Build up, build up the highway! Gather out the stones! Lift up a banner…
Isaiah 35:8(v3)A highway will be there, a road, and it will be called “The Holy Way”. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it will be for those who…
Luke 3:2-6(v3)in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. He came into all the…
Isaiah 49:11(v3)I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be exalted.
Luke 3:5(v4)Every valley will be filled. Every mountain and hill will be brought low. The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth.
Isaiah 11:15-16(v3)Yahweh will utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his scorching wind he will wave his hand over the River, and will…
Psalms 68:4(v3)Sing to God! Sing praises to his name! Extol him who rides on the clouds: to Yah, his name! Rejoice before him!
Habakkuk 2:14(v5)For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Yahweh’s glory, as the waters cover the sea.
Ezekiel 21:26(v4)the Lord Yahweh says: “Remove the turban, and take off the crown. This will not be as it was. Exalt that which is low, and humble that…
Isaiah 52:10(v5)Yahweh has made his holy arm bare in the eyes of all the nations. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Joel 2:28(v5)“It will happen afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your old men will…
Luke 18:14(v4)I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who…
Isaiah 42:15-16(v4)I will destroy mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs. I will make the rivers islands, and will dry up the pools. I will bring the…
Isaiah 45:2(v4)“I will go before you and make the rough places smooth. I will break the doors of bronze in pieces and cut apart the bars of iron.
Isaiah 60:1(v5)“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and Yahweh’s glory has risen on you.
Luke 3:6(v5)All flesh will see God’s salvation.’ ”
2 Corinthians 4:6(v5)seeing it is God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory…
Isaiah 11:9(v5)They will not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea.
Ezekiel 17:24(v4)All the trees of the field will know that I, Yahweh, have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green…
Acts 2:17(v5)‘It will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young…
Psalms 72:19(v5)Blessed be his glorious name forever! Let the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and amen.
Isaiah 6:3(v5)One called to another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of Armies! The whole earth is full of his glory!”
Isaiah 58:14(v5)then you will delight yourself in Yahweh, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the…
John 1:14(v5)The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Job 40:11-13(v4)Pour out the fury of your anger. Look at everyone who is proud, and bring him low. Look at everyone who is proud, and humble him. Crush the…
Isaiah 66:23(v5)It shall happen that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh will come to worship before me,” says Yahweh.
Revelation 21:23(v5)The city has no need for the sun or moon to shine, for the very glory of God illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb.
Psalms 113:7-8(v4)He raises up the poor out of the dust. Lifts up the needy from the ash heap, that he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his…
Isaiah 1:20(v5)but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it.”
Isaiah 2:12-15(v4)For there will be a day of Yahweh of Armies for all that is proud and arrogant, and for all that is lifted up; and it shall be brought low:…
Isaiah 35:2(v5)It will blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing. Lebanon’s glory will be given to it, the excellence of Carmel and…
Zechariah 2:13(v5)Be silent, all flesh, before Yahweh; for he has roused himself from his holy habitation!”
Luke 1:52-53(v4)He has put down princes from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things. He has sent the rich away…
John 12:41(v5)Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory, and spoke of him.
2 Corinthians 3:18(v5)But we all, with unveiled face seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even…
Hebrews 1:3(v5)His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, who, when he had…
1 Samuel 2:8(v4)He raises up the poor out of the dust. He lifts up the needy from the dunghill to make them sit with princes and inherit the throne of…
Psalms 96:6(v5)Honor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
Psalms 102:16(v5)For Yahweh has built up Zion. He has appeared in his glory.
Isaiah 42:11(v4)Let the wilderness and its cities raise their voices, with the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sela sing. Let them…
Isaiah 49:6(v5)Indeed, he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of…
Jeremiah 9:12(v5)Who is wise enough to understand this? Who is he to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? Why has the land perished…
Micah 4:4(v5)But they will sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and no one will make them afraid: For the mouth of Yahweh of Armies has…
John 17:2(v5)even as you gave him authority over all flesh, so he will give eternal life to all whom you have given him.
Isaiah 66:16(v5)For Yahweh will execute judgment by fire and by his sword on all flesh; and those slain by Yahweh will be many.
Jeremiah 32:27(v5)“Behold, I am Yahweh, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me?
Luke 2:10-14(v5)The angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born…
Luke 2:32(v5)a light for revelation to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (18 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv3–5To wit, of the Prophets.
To wit, of the Prophets.
That is, in Babylon and other places, where they were kept in captivity, and misery.
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Meaning Cyrus and Darius which should deliver God’s people out of captivity, and make them a ready way to Jerusalem: and this was fully accomplished, when John the Baptist brought tidings of Jesus Christ’s coming, who was the true deliverer of his Church from sin and Satan, Matt. 3:3.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv3–5Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in…
Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Ver. 3. The voice of him that crieth.] See Mat 3:1-3; Joh 1:25, {See Trapp on "Mat 3:3"} {See Trapp on "Joh 1:25"} but Luke citeth this text more fully than the other evangelists, applying it to the Baptist crying in the wilderness - sc., of Judea, where he first preached, or, as some sense it, in the ears of a waste and wild people. Hereby is meant the world, saith one, {a} void of God’s grace, barren in all virtue, having no pleasing abode, nor sure direction of any good way in it, being full of horror and accursed.
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{a} Diod.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv3–5The voice; an abrupt and imperfect speech, such as…
The voice; an abrupt and imperfect speech, such as there are many in the Hebrew language. Methinks I hear a voice; or, a voice shall be heard.
Of him that crieth in the wilderness; which words declare the place either,
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1. Where the cry was made; or,
2. Where the way was to be prepared, as it is expressed in the following clause, which is added to explain this. And such places being commonly pathless, and many ways incommodious to passengers, it was the more necessary to prepare a way there. But both come to one thing, for the cry was to be in that place which was to be prepared. This place seems to be understood immediately of the deliverance of the Jews out of Babylon, and of smoothing their passage from thence to Judea, which lay through a great wilderness; but ultimately and principally concerning their redemption by the Messiah, whose coming is ushered in by the cry of John the Baptist, who did both cry and prepare the way in the wilderness, as we read, Mat 3:1, &c.; where this text is directly expounded of him. But withal the terms of wilderness and desert seem to be here chiefly used in a metaphorical sense, to express the desolate and forlorn condition of the Jewish nation, and especially of the Gentile world, when Christ came to redeem them; for so these words are frequently used in prophetical writings, as hath been noted in divers places.
Prepare ye the way; you to whom this work belongs. He alludes to the custom of princes, who send pioneers before them to prepare the way through which they intend to pass. The meaning is only this, that God shall by his Spirit so dispose men’s hearts, and by his providence so order the empires and affairs of the world, as to make way for the accomplishment of this promise.
Of the Lord; for the Lord, as it is expounded in the next clause, that the Lord may walk in it; which though it may be understood of their coming out of Babylon, when God might in some sort be said to march in the head of them, conducting and preserving them, yet it was much more evidently and eminently fulfilled when Christ, who was and is God blessed for ever, came into the world in a visible manner. Straight; either direct, in opposition to crooked, or even and level, in opposition to the mountains and valleys mentioned in the next verse.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry1710 · Public DomainOn v3The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time,…
The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time, having come, the people of God must be prepared, by repentance and faith, for the favours designed them; and, in order to call them to both these, we have here the voice of one crying in the wilderness, which may be applied to those prophets who were with the captives in their wilderness-state, and who, when they saw the day of their deliverance dawn, called earnestly upon them to prepare for it, and assured them that all the difficulties which stood in the way of their deliverance should be got over. It is a good sign that mercy is preparing for us if we find God's grace preparing us for it, Psa 10:17. But it must be applied to John the Baptist; for, though God was the speaker, he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and his business was to prepare the way of the Lord, to dispose men's minds for the reception and entertainment of the gospel of Christ. The way of the Lord is prepared,
I. By repentance for sin; that was it which John Baptist preached to all Judah and Jerusalem (Mat 3:2, Mat 3:5), and thereby made ready a people prepared for the Lord, Luk 1:17.
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1. The alarm is given; let all take notice of it at their peril; God is coming in a way of mercy, and we must prepare for him, Isa 40:3-5. If we apply it to their captivity, it may be taken as a promise that, whatever difficulties lie in their way, when they return they shall be removed. This voice in the wilderness (divine power going along with it) sets pioneers on work to level the roads. But it may be taken as a call to duty, and it is the same duty that we are called to, in preparation for Christ's entrance into our souls. (1.) We must get into such a frame of spirit as will dispose us to receive Christ and his gospel: "Prepare you the way of the Lord; prepare yourselves for him, and let all that be suppressed which would be an obstruction to his entrance. Make room for Christ: Make straight a highway for him." If he prepare the end for us, we ought surely to prepare the way for him. Prepare for the Saviour; lift up your heads, O you gates! Psa 24:7, Psa 24:9. Prepare for the salvation, the great salvation, and other minor deliverances. Let us get to be fit for them, and then God will work them out. Let us not stand in our own light, nor put a bar in our own door, but find, or make, a highway for him, even in that which was desert ground. This is that for which he waits to be gracious. (2.) We must get our hearts levelled by divine grace. Those that are hindered from comfort in Christ by their dejections and despondencies are the valleys that must be exalted. Those that are hindered from comfort in Christ by a proud conceit of their own merit and worth are the mountains and hills that must be made low. Those that have entertained prejudices against the word and ways of God, that are untractable, and disposed to thwart and contradict even that which is plain and easy because it agrees not with their corrupt inclinations and secular interests, are the crooked that must be made straight and the rough places that must be made plain. Let but the gospel of Christ have a fair hearing, and it cannot fail of acceptance. This prepares the way of the Lord; and thus God will by his grace prepare his own way in all the vessels of mercy, whose hearts he opens as he did Lydia's.
2. When this is done the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, Isa 40:5. (1.) When the captives are prepared for deliverance Cyrus shall proclaim it, and those shall have the benefit of it, and those only, whose hearts the Lord shall stir up with courage and resolution to break through the discouragements that lay in their way, and to make nothing of the hills, and valleys, and all the rough places. (2.) When John Baptist has for some time preached repentance, mortification, and reformation, and so made ready a people prepared for the Lord (Luk 1:17), then the Messiah himself shall be revealed in his glory, working miracles, which John did not, and by his grace, which is his glory, binding up and healing with consolations those whom John had wounded with convictions. And this revelation of divine glory shall be a light to lighten the Gentiles. All flesh shall see it together, and not the Jews only; they shall see and admire it, see it and bid it welcome; as the return out of captivity was taken notice of by the neighbouring nations, Psa 126:2. And it shall be the accomplishment of the word of God, not one iota or tittle of which shall fall to the ground: The mouth of the Lord has spoken it, and therefore the hand of the Lord will effect it.
II. By confidence in the word of the Lord, and not in any creature. The mouth of the Lord having spoken it, the voice has this further to cry (he that has ears to hear let him hear it), The word of our God shall stand for ever, Isa 40:8.
1. By this accomplishment of the prophecies and promises of salvation, and the performance of them to the utmost in due time, it appears that the word of the Lord is sure and what may be safely relied on. Then we are prepared for deliverance when we depend entirely upon the word of God, build our hopes on that, with an assurance that it will not make us ashamed: in a dependence upon this word we must be brought to own that all flesh is grass, withering and fading. (1.) The power of man, when it does appear against the deliverance, is not to be feared; for it shall be as grass before the word of the Lord: it shall wither and be trodden down. The insulting Babylonians, who promise themselves that the desolations of Jerusalem shall be perpetual, are but as grass which the spirit of the Lord blows upon, makes nothing of, but blasts all its glory; for the word of the Lord, which promises their deliverance, shall stand for ever, and it is not in the power of their enemies to hinder the execution of it. (2.) The power of man, when it would appear for the deliverance, is not to be trusted to; for it is but as grass in comparison with the word of the Lord, which is the only firm foundation for us to build our hope upon. When God is about to work salvation for his people he will take them off from depending upon creatures, and looking for it from hills and mountains. They shall fail them, and their expectations from them shall be frustrated: The Spirit of the Lord shall blow upon them; for God will have no creature to be a rival with him for the hope and confidence of his people; and, as it is his word only that shall stand for ever, so in that word only our faith must stand. When we are brought to this, then, and not till then, we are fit for mercy.
2. The word of our God, that glory of the Lord which is now to be revealed, the gospel, and that grace which is brought with it to us and wrought by it in us, shall stand for ever; and this is the satisfaction of all believers, when they find all their creature-comforts withering and fading like grass. Thus the apostle applies it to the word which by the gospel is preached unto us, and which lives and abides for ever as the incorruptible seed by which we are born again, Pe1 1:23-25. To prepare the way of the Lord we must be convinced, (1.) Of the vanity of the creature, that all flesh is grass, weak and withering. We ourselves are so, and therefore cannot save ourselves; all our friends are so, and therefore are unable to save us. All the beauty of the creature, which might render it amiable, is but as the flower of grass, soon blasted, and therefore cannot recommend us to God and to his acceptance. We are dying creatures; all our comforts in this word are dying comforts, and therefore cannot be the felicity of our immortal souls. We must look further for a salvation, look further for a portion. (2.) Of the validity of the promise of God. We must be convinced that the word of the Lord can do that for us which all flesh cannot - that, forasmuch as it stands for ever, it will furnish us with a happiness that will run parallel with the duration of our souls, which must live for ever; for the things that are not seen, but must be believed, are eternal.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv3–5The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,....…
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,.... Not the voice of the Holy Ghost, as Jarchi; but of John the Baptist, as is attested by all the evangelists, Mat 3:3 and by John himself, Joh 1:23, who was a "voice" not like the man's nightingale, "vox et praeterea nihil" a voice and nothing else; he had not only a sonorous, but an instructive teaching voice; he had the voice of a prophet, for he was a prophet: we read of the voices of the prophets, their doctrines and prophecies, Act 13:27, his voice was the voice of one that crieth, that published and proclaimed aloud, openly and publicly, with great eagerness and fervency, with much freedom and liberty, what he had to say; and this was done "in the wilderness", in the wilderness of Judea, literally taken, Mat 3:1, and when Judea was become a Roman province, and the Jews were brought into the wilderness of the people, Eze 20:35 and when they were, as to their religious affairs, in a very forlorn and wilderness condition (m): what John was to say, when he came as a harbinger of Christ, and did, follows:
prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God: by whom is meant the Messiah to whose proper deity a noble testimony is here bore, being called "Jehovah" and "our God": whose way John prepared himself, by preaching the doctrine of repentance, administering the ordinance of baptism, pointing at the Messiah, and exhorting the people to believe in him; and he called upon them likewise to prepare the way, and make a plain path to meet him in, by repenting of their sins, amending their ways, and cordially embracing him when come, laying aside all those sentiments which were contrary to him, his Gospel, and kingdom. The sense of this text is sadly perverted by the Targum, and seems to be, done on purpose, thus,
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"prepare the way before the people of the Lord, cast up ways before the congregation of our God;''
whereas it is before the Lord himself. The allusion is to pioneers, sent before some great personage to remove all obstructions out of his way, to cut down trees, level the way, and clear all before him, as in the following verse.
(m) Though, according to the accents, the phrase, "in the wilderness", belongs to what follows, "in the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord"; where it is placed by Junius and Tremellius, commended for it by Reinbeck, de Accent, Heb. p. 416. though the accent seems neglected in Matt iii. 3. Mark 1. 3.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn v3The voice - An abrupt speech. Methinks I hear…
The voice - An abrupt speech. Methinks I hear a voice. Wilderness - This immediately relates to the deliverance of the Jews out of Babylon, and smoothing their passage from thence to Judea, which lay through a great wilderness; but principally to their redemption by the Messiah, whose coming was ushered in by the cry of John the baptist, in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way - You to whom this work belongs. He alludes to the custom of princes who send pioneers before them to prepare the way through which they are to pass. The meaning is, God shall by his spirit so dispose mens hearts, and by his providence so order the affairs of the world, as to make way for the accomplishment of his promise. This was eminently fulfilled, when Christ, who was, and is God, blessed forever, came into the world in a visible manner.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv3–5Verse 3. The voice of him that crieth in…
Verse 3. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness - "A voice crieth, In the wilderness"] The idea is taken from the practice of eastern monarchs, who, whenever they entered upon an expedition or took a journey, especially through desert and unpractised countries, sent harbingers before them to prepare all things for their passage, and pioneers to open the passes, to level the ways, and to remove all impediments. The officers appointed to superintend such preparations the Latins call stratores. Ipse (Johannes Baptista) se stratorem vocat Messiae, cujus esset alta et elata voce homines in desertis locis habitantes ad itinera et vias Regi mox venturo sternendas et reficiendas hortari. - Mosheim, Instituta, Majora, p. 96. "He (John the Baptist) calls himself the pioneer of the Messiah, whose business it was with a loud voice to call upon the people dwelling in the deserts to level and prepare the roads by which the King was about to march."
Diodorus's account of the marches of Semiramis into Media and Persia will give us a clear notion of the preparation of the way for a royal expedition: "In her march to Ecbatana she came to the Zarcean mountain, which, extending many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could not be passed without taking a great compass about. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up; and at a great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious road, which to this day is called from her the road of Semiramis. Afterward she went into Persia, and all the other countries of Asia subject to her dominion; and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and precipices to be levelled, raised causeways in the plain country, and at a great expense made the ways passable." - Diod. Sic. lib. ii.
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The writer of the apocryphal book called Baruch expresses the same subject by the same images, either taking them from this place of Isaiah, or from the common notions of his countrymen: "For God hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God." Baruch 5:7.
The Jewish Church, to which John was sent to announce the coming of Messiah, was at that time in a barren and desert condition, unfit, without reformation, for the reception of her King. It was in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and good works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preaching repentance. I have distinguished the parts of the sentence according to the punctuation of the Masoretes, which agrees best both with the literal and the spiritual sense; which the construction and parallelism of the distich in the Hebrew plainly favours, and of which the Greek of the Septuagint and of the evangelists is equally susceptible.
John was born in the desert of Judea, and passed his whole life in it, till the time of his being manifested to Israel. He preached in the same desert: it was a mountainous country; however not entirely and properly a desert; for though less cultivated than other parts of Judea, yet it was not uninhabited. Joshua (Jos 15:61-62) reckons six cities in it. We are so prepossessed with the idea of John's living and preaching in the desert, that we are apt to consider this particular scene of his preaching as a very important and essential part of history: whereas I apprehend this circumstance to be no otherwise important, than as giving us a strong idea of the rough character of the man, which was answerable to the place of his education; and as affording a proper emblem of the rude state of the Jewish Church at that time, which was the true wilderness meant by the prophet, in which John was to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv3, 5Isa 40:3-4. The voice of him that crieth —…
Isa 40:3-4. The voice of him that crieth — Or, as the Hebrew may be properly rendered, A voice crieth; an abrupt and imperfect speech, implying, “Methinks I hear a voice;” or, “A voice shall be heard;” in the wilderness — Which word signifies the place, either where the cry was made, or where the way was to be prepared, as it is expressed in the following clause, which seems to be added to explain this. Bishop Lowth understands it in this latter sense, and translates the words, A voice crieth, In the wilderness, prepare ye the way of Jehovah. Which he thus interprets, “He hears a crier giving orders, by solemn proclamation, to prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; to remove all obstructions before Jehovah marching through the desert; through the wild, uninhabited, unpassable country. The idea is taken from the practice of the eastern monarchs, who, whenever they entered upon an expedition, or took a journey, especially through desert and unpractised countries, sent harbingers before them to prepare all things for their passage, and pioneers to open the passes, to level the ways, and to remove all impediments. The officers appointed to superintend such preparations the Latins called stratores.” The bishop understands the prophet as referring to the return of the Jews from Babylon, which he has “no doubt was the first, though not the principal thing in his view.” This deliverance, he says, “is considered as parallel to the former deliverance of them from the Egyptian bondage. God was then represented as their king, leading them in person through the vast deserts which lay in their way to the promised land of Canaan. It was not merely for Jehovah himself that in both cases the way was to be prepared, and all obstructions to be removed; but for Jehovah marching in person at the head of his people.” “Babylon,” the bishop adds, “was separated from Judea by an immense tract of country, which was one continued desert; that large part of Arabia, called very properly Deserta. This was the nearest way homeward for the Jews; and whether they actually returned by this way or not, the first thing that would occur, on the proposal or thought of their return, would be the difficulty of this almost impracticable passage. Accordingly, the proclamation for the preparation of the way is the most natural idea, and most obvious circumstance, by which the prophet could have opened his subject.”
But though Bishop Lowth considers the prophet as first intending to comfort the Jews in their captivity, by predicting, in these words, that God would make the way plain for their return, yet he views him also as employing this deliverance out of Babylon, “as an image to shadow out a redemption of an infinitely higher and more important nature.” “Obvious and plain,” says he, “as I think this literal sense is, we have nevertheless the irrefragable authority of John the Baptist, and of Christ himself, as recorded by all the evangelists, for explaining this exordium of the prophecy of the opening of the gospel by the preaching of John, and of the introduction of the kingdom of Messiah, who was to effect a much greater deliverance of the people of God, Gentiles as well as Jews, from the captivity of sin, and the dominion of death. And this we shall find to be the case in many subsequent parts also of this prophecy, where passages, manifestly relating to the deliverance of the Jewish nation, effected by Cyrus, are, with good reason, and upon undoubted authority, to be understood of the redemption of mankind by Christ.” This interpretation supposes the wilderness to be the place where the way was prepared, rather than the place where the cry was made, and, in the spiritual or mystical application now mentioned, that wilderness signifies “the Jewish Church, to which John was sent to announce the coming of Messiah, and which was, at that time, in a barren and desert condition, unfit, without reformation, for the reception of her king. It was in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and good works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord, by preaching repentance.” It must be observed, however, that, according to the translation of this clause by the LXX., and the punctuation, as we have it in their copies, and as it is understood by all the evangelists, the voice cried in the desert. For they all read, φωνη βοωντος εν τη ερημω, Ετοιμασατε, &c. The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare ye, &c. But, omitting the consideration of the pointing, we may allow, with some interpreters of the first authority, that “the words, in the desert, belong to both parts of the sentence. The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare ye in the desert the way of the Lord. And the word desert may be understood both in a proper and mystical sense, for it is certain that John proclaimed this approach of the Messiah in a desert, in the wilderness of Judea; and thence took occasion to consider that people, in which the kingdom of God was to be manifested under the figure of a desert, to be levelled before the face of Jesus Christ; for the metaphorical expressions which follow refer to that great preparation of mind which is necessary for the reception of Christ: see Mal 3:1. That raising the low, that debasing the high, that refutation of all false and erroneous doctrine, and introduction of truth and righteousness, which was the consequence of the revelation of Christ.” See Vitringa.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv3–5The voice of him that crieth - Lowth and…
The voice of him that crieth - Lowth and Noyes render this, ‘A voice crieth,’ and annex the phrase ‘in the wilderness’ to the latter part of the sentence:
A voice crieth, ‘In the wilderness prepare ye the way of Yahweh.’
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The Hebrew (קורא קול qôl qôrē') will bear this construction, though the Vulgate and the Septuagint render it as in our common version. The sense is not essentially different, though the parallelism seems to require the translation proposed by Lowth. The design is to state the source of consolation referred to in the previous verses. The time of the exile at Babylon was about to be completed. Yahweh was about to conduct his people again to their own country through the pathless wilderness, as he had formerly conducted them from Egypt to the land of promise. The prophet, therefore, represents himself as hearing the voice of a herald, or a forerunner in the pathless waste, giving direction that a way should be made for the return of the people. The whole scene is represented as a march, or return of Yahweh at the head of his people to the land of Judea. The idea is taken from the practice of Eastern monarchs, who whenever they entered on a journey or an expedition, especially through a barren and unfrequented or inhospitable country, sent harbingers or heralds before them to prepare the way.
To do this, it was necessary for them to provide supplies, and make bridges, or find fording places over the streams; to level hills, and construct causeways over valleys, or fill them up; and to make a way through the forest which might lie in their intended line of march. This was necessary, because these contemplated expeditions often involved the necessity of marching through countries where there were no public highways that would afford facilities for the passage of an army. Thus Arrian (Hist. liv. 30) says of Alexander, ‘He now proceeded to the River Indus, the army’ that is, ἡ στρατιά hē stratia, a part of the army, or an army sufficient for the purpose, ‘going before, which made a way for him, for otherwise there would have been no mode of passing through that region.’ ‘When a great prince in the East,’ says Paxton, ‘sets out on a journey, it is usual to send a party of men before him to clear the way.
The state of those countries in every age, where roads are almost unknown, and, from want of cultivation, in many places overgrown with brambles and other thorny plants, which renders traveling, especially with a large retinue, incommodious, requires this precaution. The Emperor of Hindoostan, in his progress through his dominions, as described in the narrative of Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy to the court of Delhi, was preceded by a very great company, sent before him to cut up the trees and bushes, to level and snmoth the road, and prepare their place of encampment. We shall be able, perhaps, to form a more clear and precise idea from the account which Diodorus gives of the marches of Semiramis, the celebrated Queen of Babylon, into Media and, Persia. “In her march to Ecbatana,” says the historian, “she came to the Zarcean mountain, which, extending many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could not be passed without taking a great compass. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up; and at a great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious road; which to this day is called from her the road of Semiramis. Afterward she went into Persia, and all the other countries of Asia subjected to her dominion, and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and precipices to be leveled, raised causeways in the plain country, and, at a great expense, made the ways passable.”
The writer of the apocryphal Book of Baruch, refers to the same subject by the same images: ‘For God hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God’ Isa 5:7. It is evident that the primary reference of this passage was to the exiles in Babylon, and to their return from their long captivity, to the land of their father. The imagery, the circumstances, the design of the prophecy, all seem to demand such an interpretation. At the same time it is as clear, I apprehend, that the prophet was inspired to use language, of design, which should appropriately express a more important event, the coming of the forerunner of the Messiah, and the work which he should perform as preparatory to his advent. There was such a striking similarity in the two events, that they could be grouped together in the same part of the prophetic vision or picture the mind would naturally, by the laws of prophetic suggestion (Introduction, Section 7, III. (3), glance from one to the other, and the same language would appropriately and accurately express both. Both could be described as the coming of Yahweh to bless and save his people; both occurred after a long state of desolation and bondage - the one a bondage in Babylon, the other in sin and national declension. The pathless desert was literally to be passed through in the one instance; in the other, the condition of the Jews was that which was not unaptly likened to a desert - a condition in regard to real piety not unlike the state of a vast desert in comparison with fruitful fields. ‘It was,’ says Lowth, ‘in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preaching repentance.
That this passage has a reference to John as the forerunner of the Messiah, is evident from Mat 3:3, where it is applied to him, and introduced by this remark: ‘For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice,’ etc. (see also Joh 1:23) The events were so similar, in their main features, that the same language would describe both. John was nurtured in the desert, and passed his early life there, until he entered on his public work Luk 1:80. He began to preach in a mountainous country, lying east of Jerusalem, and sparsely inhabited, and which was usually spoken of as a desert or wilderness Mat 3:1; and it was here that his voice was heard announcing the coming of the Messiah, and that he pointed him to his own followers Joh 1:28-29.
In the wilderness - Babylon was separated from Judea by an immense tract of country, which was one continued desert. A large part of Arabia, called Arabia Deserts, was situated in this region. To pass in a direct line, therefore, from Babylon to Jerusalem, it was necessary to go through this desolate country. It was here that the prophet speaks of hearing a voice commanding the hills to be leveled, and the valleys filled up, that there might be a convenient highway for the people to return (compare the notes at Isa 35:8-10).
Prepare ye the way - This was in the form of the usual proclamation of a monarch commanding the people to make a way for him to pass. Applied to the return of the exile Jews, it means that the command of God had gone forth that all obstacles should be removed. Applied to John, it means that the people were to prepare for the reception of the Messiah; that they were to remove all in their opinions and conduct which would tend to hinder his cordial reception, or which would prevent his success among them.
Of the Lord - Of Yahweh. Yahweh was the leader of his people, and was about to conduct them to their own land. The march therefore, was regarded as that of Yahweh, as a monarch or king, at the head of his people, conducting them to their own country; and to prepare the way of Yahweh was, therefore, to prepare for his march at the head of his people. Applied to the Messiah, it means that God was about to come to his people to redeem them. This language naturally and obviously implies, that he whose way was thus to be prepared was Yahweh, the true God. So it was undoubtedly in regard to him who was to be the leader of the exile Jews to their own land, since none but Yahweh could thus conduct them. And if it be admitted that the language has also a reference to the Messiah, then it demonstrates that he was appropriately called Yahweh. That John the Immerser had such a view of him, is apparent from what is said of him.
Thus, Joh 1:15, he says of him that, ‘he was before’ him which was not true unless he had an existence previous to his birth; he calls him, Joh 1:18, ‘the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father;’ and in Joh 1:34, he calls him ‘the Son of God’ (compare Joh 10:30, Joh 10:33, Joh 10:36). In Joh 3:31, he says of him, ‘he that cometh from above is above all; he that cometh from heaven is above all.’ Though this is not one of the most direct and certain proof texts of the divinity of the Messiah, yet it is one which may be applied to him when that divinity is demonstrated from other places. It is not one that can be used with absolute certainty in an argument on the subject, to convince those who deny that divinity - since, even on the supposition that it refers to the Messiah, it may be said plausibly, and with some force, that it may mean that Yahweh was about to manifest himself by means of the Messiah; yet it is a passage which those who are convinced of the divinity of Christ from other source, will apply without hesitation to him as descriptive of his rank, and confirmatory of his divinity.
Make straight - Make a straight or direct road; one that should conduct at once to their land. The Chaldee renders this verse, ‘Prepare a way before the people of Yahweh; make in the plain ways before the congregation of our God.’
A highway - (See the note at Isa 35:8).
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv3–5God, that he may conduct his people from Babylon.…
God, that he may conduct his people from Babylon. (Sanchez) --- Yet the prophet speaks chiefly of John the Baptist, (Matthew iii. 3.; Calmet) who is evidently foretold. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv3–5crieth in the wilderness--So the Septuagint and Mat 3:3…
crieth in the wilderness--So the Septuagint and Mat 3:3 connect the words. The Hebrew accents, however, connect them thus: "In the wilderness prepare ye," &c., and the parallelism also requires this, "Prepare ye in the wilderness," answering to "make straight in the desert." Matthew was entitled, as under inspiration, to vary the connection, so as to bring out another sense, included in the Holy Spirit's intention; in Mat 3:1, "John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness," answers thus to "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." MAURER takes the participle as put for the finite verb (so in Isa 40:6), "A voice crieth." The clause, "in the wilderness," alludes to Israel's passage through it from Egypt to Canaan (Psa 68:7), Jehovah being their leader; so it shall be at the coming restoration of Israel, of which the restoration from Babylon was but a type (not the full realization; for their way from it was not through the "wilderness"). Where John preached (namely, in the wilderness; the type of this earth, a moral wilderness), there were the hearers who are ordered to prepare the way of the Lord, and there was to be the coming of the Lord [BENGEL]. John, though he was immediately followed by the suffering Messiah, is rather the herald of the coming reigning Messiah, as Mal 4:5-6 ("before the great and dreadful day of the Lord"), proves. Mat 17:11 (compare Act 3:21) implies that John is not exclusively meant; and that though in one sense Elias has come, in another he is yet to come. John was the figurative Elias, coming "in the spirit and power of Elias" (Luk 1:17); Joh 1:21, where John the Baptist denies that he was the actual Elias, accords with this view. Mal 4:5-6 cannot have received its exhaustive fulfilment in John; the Jews always understood it of the literal Elijah. As there is another consummating advent of Messiah Himself, so perhaps there is to be of his forerunner Elias, who also was present at the transfiguration.
the Lord--Hebrew, Jehovah; as this is applied to Jesus, He must be Jehovah (Mat 3:3).
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Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn v33-5. The voice of him that crieth — Rather,…
3-5. The voice of him that crieth — Rather, A voice crieth, though the Septuagint and the Vulgate translate as in our version. It is rhetorically suitable to read, “Hark! a crier.” So Delitzsch. Who is the crier is not given; nor is it important. More important is what follows.
In the wilderness — Not unlikely the allusion here is, as if to a voice across the desert five hundred miles from Babylon toward Jerusalem. The scene is dramatic: Jehovah heads a column of exiles returning to Zion, as he did of old when, across from Egypt to Canaan, he conducted Israel. Both are sub-type and type of John the Baptist heralding the great coming One at a stage which completed the then pending preparatory dispensation.
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Prepare ye the way — The meaning, spiritually applied, is clear. “Prepare the roadway (of a custom immemorially far back is this an oriental picture) for the coming retinue of redeemed believers; remove rocks, level up gorges, excavate hills, and straighten crooked courses; Jehovah’s glory of victorious leading shall be seen by all.” Of this the last of Isa_40:5 is the solemn voucher. For reference of this scene to John the Baptist, see Mat_3:3; Mar_1:1, and Luk_3:4-6. See also remarks at pages 169, 170, showing Isaiah’s authorship of this chapter.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv3–53. The voice of him that crieth] The word…
3. The voice of him that crieth] The word “voice” here and often has the force of an interjection; render accordingly: Hark! one crying. The voice is not that of God (on account of the following “our God”), neither is it a human voice; it comes from one of the angelic ministers of Jehovah and is addressed to beings of the same order. The words in the wilderness should be joined with prepare ye etc., in accordance with the accents (R.V.). A.V. agrees with LXX. and Vulg. and the N.T. citations (Mat_3:3; Mar_1:3; Luk_3:4); but sense and parallelism alike shew that the Heb. accentuation is right.
Prepare] strictly “clear of obstacles” (see Gen_24:31; Lev_14:36; Psa_80:9; cf. ch. Isa_57:14, Isa_62:10; Mal_3:1). The figure is taken from the well-known Eastern practice of repairing the roads for a royal journey. It may be difficult to say how far the representation is ideal. Allusions to the march through the desert are too constant a feature of the prophecy (ch. Isa_40:10 f., Isa_41:18 f., Isa_42:16, Isa_43:19 f., Isa_48:21, Isa_49:9 ff., Isa_55:12 f.) to be treated as merely figurative; the prophet seems to have expected the deliverance to issue in a triumphal progress of Jehovah with His people through the desert between Babylonia and Palestine, after the analogy of the exodus from Egypt. But all such passages probably look beyond the material fulfilment and include the removal of political and other hindrances to the restoration of Israel.
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3–5. The prophet hears a voice calling on angelic powers to prepare the way of the Lord. It is doubtful whether Duhm is right in regarding this as a case of true prophetic “audition”; it is more naturally understood as a flight of poetic imagination.
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Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv3–5(3) The voice of him that crieth . .…
(3) The voice of him that crieth . . .—The laws of Hebrew parallelism require a different punctuation: A voice of one crying, In the wilderness, prepare ye . . . The passage is memorable as having been deliberately taken by the Baptist as defining his own mission (Joh_1:23). As here the herald is not named, so he was content to efface himself—to be a voice or nothing. The image is drawn from the march of Eastern kings, who often boast, as in the Assyrian inscriptions of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal (Records of the Past, i. 95, vii. 64), of the roads they have made in trackless deserts. The wilderness is that which lay between the Euphrates and Judah, the journey of the exiles through it reminding the prophet of the older wanderings in the wilderness of Sin (Psa_68:7; Jdg_5:4). The words are an echo of the earlier thought of Isa_35:8. We are left to conjecture to whom the command is addressed: tribes of the desert, angelic ministers, kings and rulers—the very vagueness giving a grand universality. So, again, we are not told whether the “way of Jehovah” is that on which He comes to meet His people, or on which He goes before and guides them. The analogy of the marches of the Exodus makes the latter view the more probable.
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The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv3–5The voice of him that crieth; rather, the voice…
The voice of him that crieth; rather, the voice of one that crieth. A voice sounds in the prophet"s ear, crying to repentance. For God to come down on earth, for his glory to be revealed in any signal way, by the restoration of a nation, or the revelation of himself in Christ, or the final establishment of his kingdom, the "way" must be first "prepared" for him. The hearts of the disobedient must be turned to the wisdom of the just. In the wilderness; either, "the wilderness of this world" (Kay), or "the wilderness separating Babylonia from Palestine" (Delitzsch), in a part of which John the Baptist afterwards preached. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. The "way of the Lord" is "the way of holiness". (Isa_35:8) There is one only mode of "preparing" it the mode adopted by John Baptist, (Mat_3:2-12) the mode pointed out by the angel who announced him, (Luk_1:17) the mode insisted on in the Collect for the Third Sunday in Advent. The voice enjoins on the prophets of the captive nation to prepare the hearts of the people for the coming manifestation of God.
Vers. 3-5. The golden age.
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Every valley shall be exalted," etc. Everything depends upon how we view the future, whether with the horoscope of history or prophecy. History says the old evils return war, strife, wrong, selfishness. Then the heart sinks, and inspiration to duty is weakened. But when we go with the prophet to the mountain-tops, we see
I PATHS OF PREPARATION. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." There are the ruins of the old military roads of the Caesars, but the Caesars are gone. There the Ptolemies of olden time made incursions, but their sway is past. But the highways of commerce, the freer intercourse of peoples; the more humanizing influences of equity in law, and reformation in punishment, the kindly workings of pity and charity to the neglected and forgotten; all these are preparation-paths for the great King who is to reign in righteousness. Not alone through the royal gates of olden prophecies, but through the triumphal arches of redeeming ideas and influences which he has set at work, the Messiah shall come.
II OBSTACLES REMOVED. "Every valley," etc. This is but a figurative way of stating that no hindrance can affect the onward march of the Redeemer. In Eastern countries the things described here were obstacles sufficient to hinder Solomon in his Eastern journeys. There were limits to his progress when he left his grand basilica to visit his wide domains. Not so will it be with One greater than Solomon.
III GLORY REVEALED. It is hidden now. Men are dazzled with false glory, with meretricious ideas of empire, and they see no beauty in Christ that they should desire him. But one day as the aesthetic student realizes in time what is true art, as the musician understands the majesty of Beethoven the moral nature of men being quickened and renewed by the Spirit, they shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. Not some here and there, but man everywhere; "all flesh shall see it together." What a vision! and what a day of jubilee! We need cherish no doubt about it. The vision is not imagination. The grand climacteric result is not predicated from a mere study of the triumph of the strongest forces. God has pledged his own word: "For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. W.M.S.
Vers. 3-6. Human preparation for the Divine advent.
We shall find, with very little seeking, a threefold application for these words:
(1) a primary one in the restoration of the Jews to Jerusalem;
(2) a historical and human one in the advent of our Lord and the founding of his kingdom;
(3) a future one in the restoration of the race to the likeness and the favour of God. The keystone of the passage we find in the fifth verse; it is the idea of the manifestation of God"s glory, which all mankind is to witness. We have, then
I THE MANIFESTED GLORY OF GOD. This was to be displayed and has been shown in two illustrations which are now historical.
1. The faithfulness and the power of Jehovah in the accomplishment of his people"s redemption from exile.
2. A more striking instance of Divine faithfulness, wisdom, and power, in the giving of the gospel of his grace, in preparing the nations of the earth for its reception, in its actual initiation and inauguration, and in its early and widespread diffusion among men.
II THE GLORY WHICH WAITS TO RE REVEALED. Christ has come, and we celebrate his advent with joy and gratitude. But it is also and equally true that he is coming. He is still "the Coming One." Across the arid wastes of indifference, and over mountains of opposition and gulfs of apparent impossibility, he is coming, and in time we shall see him the present, reigning, triumphant Lord. It is a glorious spiritual advance he is to make, and presence he is to confer, and power he is to exert; but it will be none the less glorious or gracious for its spirituality. That, indeed, will immeasurably enhance its worth, for it will be the grander, the truer, the more lasting achievement.
III THE STRENGTH OF OUR ASSURANCE CONCERNING IT. "All flesh shall see it: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." There may be many indications that Jesus Christ will one day secure a glorious victory over the disbelief, the vice, the superstition, the selfishness, the indifference of the world; but the strongest assurance we can take to our striving, yearning, sometimes wondering and doubting hearts is that "the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it:" "I, if I be lifted up," etc.
IV OUR CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS ITS COMING. "Prepare ye the way," etc.; "make straight a highway," etc. The Christian Church has to ask itself the urgent, practical question, what it can do to quicken the coming of its Lord in his redeeming and regenerating power. And it may find its answer here.
1. Fill up the gulfs of unbelief; let not lack of faith on the part of Christian men hinder the putting forth of Divine power. (Mat_13:58)
2. Remove the hills of inconsistency; let not profession and exhortation be neutralized by immoralities in life, by wide departures from the will and Word of God.
3. Take up the stones of blemish; make a patient effort to cast aside lesser evils which, if not serious obstacles, do yet trouble and impede.
4. Lay down a highway by prayer and zeal. C.
Needed preparations for Christ.
"Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord." The figure used by the prophet is one whose forte could only be fully apprehended in that country to which he belonged. Until recent years there were no roads, at least no roads on which vehicles might be drawn; only such paths, often very rough, and steep, and dangerous, as would be made by the passing to and fro of cattle and of men. But a few years ago, when Ibrahim Pasha proposed to visit certain places in Lebanon, the emirs and skeikhs sent forth messengers to all the people on the way the pasha was coming, with a proclamation very similar to this of Isaiah, commanding them that they should gather out the stones, make straight the crooked places, level the rough places, and so prepare the way for his grand cavalcade to march through. Applying this figure to Messianic times, we note that the world wanted Christ, but it was not prepared for him when he came; and it is still true of many human hearts they do really want Christ, but they are not prepared for him in his spiritual comings.
I THE WORLD WANTED CHRIST. There is no word which so exactly describes the condition of the world when Christ appeared as the term darkness. "Darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people." When God created man, or, let us say, set him forth as the Head of his creation, he put light within him, and was light unto him. But when man sinned by exalting self-will, God took his light away, and left humanity to work out the problem of life in the power of its own self-will. That problem may be stated thus: Man is satisfied with himself, with the light that is in him: then can he find his own way to God and righteousness? Can he answer for himself this question, "How shall man be just with God?" You cannot understand the history of Israel, or of the ancient world, save in the light which this representation throws upon them. Each nation took its own way in trying to solve the problem. Egyptians, and Persians, and Syrians, and Grecians, and Romans, all were working at it. But man, by himself, has always failed to discover any satisfactory solution. The light he had faded. Twilight passed into night; night grew blacker and darker; the stars were hidden by low overhanging clouds; and it was the gloom of moral midnight over all the earth when Messiah came. But the heathen, in their debasing idolatries, were conscious of bondage, and looked for a Deliverer. The Jews, though corrupted with formalism, held passionately to their hope of Messiah. The sins of the world wanted Christ. The woes of the world wanted Christ. The minds and hearts of men wanted Christ, though they could not put into shape of words their inarticulate longings. Humanity had its watchmen at every point of advantage, and again and again the question was eagerly asked, "Watchman, what of the night? watchman, what of the night?" It is interesting to notice that, whilst Christ was a babe, and as yet no shame had gathered about him, all humanity offered homage to him by its representatives, and bade him welcome to the world that so greatly needed him. Shepherds, representing the whole Jewish people, followed the angelic sign, and welcomed the Messiah-Child. Eastern Magi, star-directed, representing the whole heathen world, offered him their gold and frankincense and myrrh. And Simeon and Anna. representing the spirituals the religious classes, hailed him with the joy of believing and loving hearts.
II THE WORLD WAS NOT HEADY FOR CHRIST. They had made no room for him. The inn was full. He must find a place for himself, where he could some strange place, out in the stable, in the manger. And there was no better room for him in men"s hearts. Only let the story of his life unfold a little. Only let his hands begin to do deeds of charity; only let his lips speak words of spiritual conviction; only let him point out the follies and sins of the age; only let him show that his mission was to the poor, the sorrowing, and the sinning; only let the purity of his perfect life, like a Divine light, reveal the corruption of his times; and then he is the "despised and rejected of men;" then they hurry him forth out of the synagogue to throw him over the hanging rock; then they lead him forth, bearing his cross, and crucify him between two thieves. How is this? Why does the world want Christ, and yet, when he comes, he finds men so unprepared that they reject instead of receive him? The answer is a very simple one, but a very painful one. Men get to love sin for its own sake. They dislike, indeed, the penalties attached to it; they tremble at the consequences of it; but they love the sin and cherish it. They would gladly enough have welcomed a Saviour who would break off those chains of bondage to Rome, which had been fixed on them as a judgment for their national sins; but they did not want to part with their national pride and exclusiveness. They would gladly have welcomed a Christ who could burn up the great book of death, which so surely treasured up for them "wrath against the day of wrath;" but they did not want to give up the sins that led to spiritual death the hypocrisy, the sensuality, the multiplied forms of moral evil, which they loved and sought. Therefore who can wonder that, when Christ came as a Saviour from sin, men were not prepared for him men refused such a Christ? It is evident that the world, in its unpreparedness, needed the intense, arousing, almost terrible, preaching of John the Baptist. The work given to John was to try and alter the views of men in respect of Messiah. He preached "Repent;" change your minds; get another view of sin; see the essential evil and hatefulness of it. To all who came he spoke directly and plainly of the particular sins they loved; he demanded the giving up and putting away of individual and social sins as the necessary preparation for Messiah"s coming. This, then, is the one wrong thing sin loved for its own sake. This was the mountain that must be levelled, this the crooked place that must be made straight, this the rough place that must be made plain, before the glory of the Saviour from sin "could be revealed, and all flesh see the salvation of our God.
III WHAT WAS TRUE OF THE WORLD IS TRUE OF US. Our souls want Christ. It is sad, indeed, to be sinners, living without God, and without hope in the world. We have often felt that all was not right with us; dark shadows hung all around us, and all before us. We have looked and longed for the light. When we have thought of God and sin and the future we have cried out, "Oh that I knew where I could find him! I would come even unto his seat." Sin in us wants Christ the Saviour. Conscious separateness from God wants Christ the Reconciler. Ignorance wants Christ the Teacher. And Christ wants us. Then why is the old fact of the time of his first coming repeated among us to-day? They wanted him, but were offended at him, and cast him out; cruel hands smote him, fierce nails pierced him, scorn howled around him, and a violent death freed him from a world that was not prepared to greet him. The reason for our rejecting him is the same as theirs. We, too, are unwilling to give up our sins for Christ. We want a Saviour from punishment, from consequences, from fears, from death, from hell; but not a Saviour from sin, from self-confidence, from pride, from independence of God, from our rebelliousness, our lustings, and our self-indulgences. We want a Saviour who will give us a secure title to future bliss; but not one who will take the stony heart away, and give us a heart of flesh; not a Saviour who can deliver us from the very love of sinning, and "create in us a clean heart." Is, then, your path full of the stones, the crooked ways, the rough places, of loved sins? remember that Christ is a Saviour from sin. He is named Jesus, because he shall save his people from their sins. He will not save you at all unless you are heartily willing that he should save you from your evil self, from your loved iniquities. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv3–5The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness
Isa_40:3
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness
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The Baptist a pattern preacher
I.
DEPRECIATION OF SELF. Isaiah had predicted simply a voice; and John Baptist, accordingly, with a humility which ministers of the New Testament should follow, laid no stress on anything personal to himself--the announcement of his birth by an angel, his priestly descent, his years of preparation--though all these supplied advantages to his ministry. He concentrated attention on what he had to tell In me there is nothing to attract or benefit. I am only what centuries ago was predicted--a voice.
II. EXALTATION OF HIS MESSAGE AS DIVINE.
III. A PROCLAIMING AS THE CENTRAL TOPIC IN THE EVERLASTING MESSAGE A DIVINE, AND THEREFORE EFFECTUAL, HELPER FOR THE RUINED. He shall gather; He shall carry; He shall gently lead; All flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord (verses 10, 11, with 5). And John Baptist accordingly announced, as ministers of the New Testament should now announce, the presence in Christ Jesus of a perfect Saviour (Joh_1:26-27; Joh_1:29; Mat_3:11; Joh_3:29-30). Who among the audience of the faithful ambassador have rightly caught the message? (1Pe_2:3.)
1. Those who surrender all habits inconsistent with his call
2. Those who rejoice greatly in the guardianship and guidance of the great Deliverer proclaimed (1Pe_1:5-6).
3. Those who steadily tread in the blessed steps of His life (Luk_1:74, 1Pe_1:21). His sheep hear His voice; He knows them; they follow Him. (D. D. Stewart, M. A.)
Isa_40:3-5
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
The way of the Lord prepared
I.
THE JEWISH THEOCRACY. It is a favourite statement with those who seek to account for Christianity on entirely mundane principles, that Christ grew, as it were, out of His age. The age was waiting for some such Teacher, some such Gospel--and Teacher and Gospel came. Just as the wreck of the Roman Republic demanded a hand and brain like Caesars, and they appeared at the critical moment and reorganised the State, so the Great Preacher of the universal Gospel was called for by His times, and He came. There is something in the spirit of an age, we are told, which creates the heroes and teachers of the age. This is very interesting, and has a large measure of truth in it. Men of high genius are singularly sensitive to the influences around them, and are created while they create; but it is blankly impossible to account for Christ and Christianity by natural evolution, with the Jewish theocracy, a grand prophetic system which for nearly two thousand years looked unto and prophesied of the Messiah, standing in the way. There was existing for ages in the world, kept alive by marvellous interventions of a higher hand, a national community, whose function was distinctly, from first to last, to prepare the way for the Advent, for the Divine kingdom which was to rule over and to bless mankind. These Jews were set to bear witness of the reality of the Divine rule, and its necessity, if states were to be saved from chaos, and the whole world from wreck. There was a period, when Moses led them in the wilderness, when the theocracy came out with wonderful clearness. Then there was a period, under their kings, when, through their worldly conformity to the life of surrounding nations, the theocracy was obscured. But the captivity ended that conformity in sorrow and in shame. From the time of the captivity the idea of the theocracy was restored. The prophets are throughout its great witnesses. The expectation, as matter of history, grew intense as the Advent approached. The expectation of the Advent of a Being, a Person, who should fulfil the promise and the prophecy with which their national life and literature were charged; who should bring, what Christ has brought--a Gospel of salvation to the world. It is a wonderful feature of thepreparation, that just as the nation which exhibited the theocracy was dying away as a nation its belief in the theocracy grew more intense, and its witness grew more clear and impressive to the approaching Advent of the great world theocrat--the Christ.
II. THE JEWISH DISPERSION. It was a very wonderful chain of providential agencies which, before the Advent, scattered that people, these witnesses so charged with the promise and the prophecy, through the civilised world. Up to the time of the captivity the Jews kept themselves in a kind of stem, or, as the heathen around them called it, a sullen isolation. They cherished the sense of a lofty superiority. But, after the captivity, they displayed a singular facility of dispersion, a happy art of settling and flourishing among the Gentile peoples, which makes them to this day, pace the Anglo-Saxon, the first settlers of the world. In every chief city of the empire which Alexander founded a colony of Jews was sure to be settled; and the same state of things afterwards obtained in the far wider empire of Rome. In order to appreciate the significance of this, you must estimate the utter confusion of human beliefs and ideas about Divine things and beings which had been the fruit of the Greek and Roman conquests. Neither Greek nor Roman had belief enough in his gods to impose them on the conquered nations; nor did they find anything Divine among the conquered nations which seemed better worth worshipping than their own. This confusion of religious ideas and systems and deities, none of which had power to emerge with absolute or even strong claims to belief, was profoundly detrimental to moral earnestness, and indeed to any high-toned belief about Divine things. There was an utter confusion and decay of faith. But here were communities settled among them who had an absolute and indestructible belief in their Revelation. They had a God to worship of whom they could give intelligible account. The Jews lived among the heathen in isolation still; but the isolation was visibly based on a religious faith, and on religious records. These Jews, scattered abroad, were witnesses everywhere of the reality and necessity of Divine revelation to, and Divine legislation for, man. They familiarised men with the ideas which Christianity proclaimed, and on which it rested its authoritative claim to the homage and the obedience of mankind.
III. THERE WAS A VERY REMARKABLE CHANGE WITHIN THE BOSOM OF HEATHEN SOCIETY ITSELF, IN ITS INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL IDEAS, WHICH NOT ONLY OPENED THE WAY FOR THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, BUT SEEMED TO DEMAND SOME SUCH REVELATION OF TRUTH TO MANKIND. Students of philosophy note a very decided progress between the age of Socrates and the age of Seneca in the consideration of questions bearing on mans individual life and destiny. The supreme interest of a mans life in the golden age of Greek philosophy lay in his relations, as a member of a society, as a citizen of a State. Within the little circle of Athenian society men realised a closeness of relation to each other, which made the State something of a household. The conquests of Alexander created an entirely new order of things. The Greek became, not the citizen of a State almost domestic in its magnitude and character, but the subject of a great Empire, lost in an undistinguished mass of fellow-subjects, and quite cut adrift from the landmarks and the moorings by which he had been wont to steer and stay his life. The Greek must think about himself and his world, and Alexander led him out into a world too big for him, which oppressed and distracted him, and overthrew all the traditions of his schools. It was a world, too, of ceaseless conflict and change. The state of the Greek world between Alexanders conquests and the establishment of Roman supremacy, say, roughly, two hundred years, was such as to throw the thinker back upon himself, to lead him to realise his individual responsibility, to force on him the question, What, after all, am I? Whence did I come? For what am I here? Whither do I tend? I am in a world full of confusion and misery--how am I to regulate my life, so that my happiness may not become a wreck? So the great thinkers increasingly concerned themselves with questions which had to do with the individual man, his duty, his responsiblilty, his destiny, his means of arming himself for the battle of life, his means of saving himself from utter and hopeless loss. Thus there was a growing tendency in men to consider very much the question which Christianity came to treat of as salvation. The thoughts of man, the longings and aspirations of man, seem to be led up step by step to the point in which the cry, Lord, save, or I perish! was ready, did he but know all the meaning of his dumb pain, to fashion itself on his lips. All was waiting for the proclamation, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, etc. When men went abroad and proclaimed the Advent of a Saviour, they found a ready entrance to the worlds sad, wistful heart.
IV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Incomparably the most important secular herald of the Advent was the Empire--an Empire under whose sceptre such a decree could go forth (Luk_2:1). There are many points of view from which the Empire may be regarded as the herald of the kingdom which was destined to master it, and found on it the edifice of Christian society. We are working and building on the foundations of the Empire still. The whole of modern European society is but the fully developed Empire of Rome. It is the centre of the secular, as the Advent of Christ is the centre of the spiritual, history of mankind. I might say much about the universal peace, which made the preaching of a universal Gospel possible. About the universal law and language, which made the career of the preachers, at any rate, far easier and more rapid than it could have been in any previous state of society. The fundamental question opened by the Empire is also a fundamental question of Christianity, the relation of men to each other. Is it enmity? is it brotherhood? Is the struggle for existence the ruling principle of progress, or brotherly sympathy, care, and love? The state of natural enmity and constant war gave way to a state in which peace, good-fellowship, and mutual ministries were regarded as the natural condition of society. Briton and Egyptian, Syrian and Spaniard, formed together a great political unity; and were drawn into bonds of relation to each other, the nature and bearings of which men were eager to explore. There rose on the minds of men the idea of human brotherhood. Men began to speculate about a common good in which civilised humanity was to share, and a duty of the whole human community to its weaker members, its sick, its poor, its wretched. Men wanted to know why and how they were brethren, why and how they were to love. And so arose perhaps the greatest herald of the Advent in secular society, the longing for a kingdom which should fulfil the promise which Rome in the nature of things was constantly breaking; and give peace, concord, love to a distracted world. Thus the way was prepared, the highway through the desert was made. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
The Divine glory revealed in Christ
I. ITS LITERAL ACCOMPLISHMENT.
1. In the appearance of John the Baptist. Ages rolled away, and no such preparing voice was heard in the desert of Judea. But it was at length heard.
2. Following the footsteps of the servant, comes the Master. And as John had said, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, then was the glory of God manifested; and all flesh, living at that time in Judea, saw it together: the glory of God in human nature. Jesus Christ was the visible image of the glory of God all the time He was on earth. The visible image--
(1) Of the power of God. His works were Divine; His word was power. See His power over the elements.
(2) Of the truth of God. The doctrine of Christ has brought us nearer to the unclouded truth of the Divine mind than men were ever brought before.
(3) Of the holiness of God; and that even while He was man upon earth.
(4) Of the justice of God. Though this is not so frequently adverted to as other attributes, yet it is important. Why did Christ die so willingly? If, then, the glory of God was revealed even in the lowliness and sufferings of the Saviour, I ask if the coming of Christ had not in it more real pomp than if He had come with all the grandeur of an Eastern monarch, to a people who waited for Him?
II. ITS SPIRITUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. This is seen in the manifestation of Christ to the hearts of men. In this there is both preparation and manifestation; for Christ, in mercy, no more bursts upon the soul at once than He did upon the world; He sends His messenger to prepare the way before Him; this is the first part of the process. That preparing herald, figured by John the Baptist, is repentance. Consider what repentance is, and you will see how it prepares the soul for Christ, for pardon, happiness, and purity.
1. The first element is a deep and serious conviction of the fact of our sin. For if we justify ourselves, there will be no preparation.
2. The second element is a conviction of the extreme danger of sin and its infinite desert.
3. The third element is a burdened and disquieted spirit. This supposes a feeling that we are not able to deliver ourselves. The way of the Lord is then plain; all obstructions are removed when we come to this; for all true repentance, like the preaching of John the Baptist, concludes by saying, Behold the Lamb of God! It is here alone that we see the glory of God. For what is the happiness of a pardoned soul, but one of the brightest manifestations of the glory of God upon earth? Here is a visible manifestation of the glory of the Divine patience; that man, amidst all his repeated provocations, should at last be saved and made happy. The glory of the grace of God! What a comment on the words of the apostle, By grace are ye saved! And then, see the glory of that working of the Divine power by which the soul is finally brought into the enjoyment of all the mind that was in Christ; the soul changing from glory to glory, and the work completed by an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom. This is the manifestation of Christ to the soul.
III. ITS ALLEGORICAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. It is seen in the establishment of Christs kingdom upon earth. He sends forth His heralds. It is by the ministry of His Gospel that His dominion is established. The doctrine to be preached is that of repentance. So St. Paul preached at Athens. The manifestation of the master follows. Here is a manifestation of the glory of the heavenly wisdom, raising, exalting, and purifying the human intellect; of the Divine righteousness, putting a stop to all cruelty and injury. The glory of peace and harmony; the union of mans heart to man, the extinction of external wars, and the diffusion of internal harmony. The glory of that order among families, and societies, and nations, preserved, and sanctified, and so regulated that no part infringes on the other, but the whole proceeds harmoniously, like a piece of sound mechanism. The glory of mercy and charity: teaching men to remember those that are in afflictions, as being themselves in like manner afflicted. This is a glory peculiar to the Christian revelation. (R. Watson.)
Preparation for the Advent Messiah
A positive preparation of the race itself was necessary, before the plan of redemption could be successfully revealed. This preparation was gradually going forward at the same time that our moral helplessness was so amply illustrated. If we reflect upon the nature of the Christian revelation we shall be convinced that its conceptions belong to an advanced period of civilisation. It addresses itself exclusively to the spiritual nature of man. But, in the earlier periods of our race, our conceptions are all from without; they have to do almost exclusively with sensible objects. The Gospel has to do with thought, feeling, sentiment, motive, and all their various attributes; and it could not be well understood until the mind of man had become somewhat at home in these conceptions. Nor is this all. The Christian religion addresses itself to the moral nature, the conscience of man.
I. Hence, a remedial dispensation would naturally be delayed, until the moral character of man, both individual and social, had been fully displayed; and MANKIND HAD BECOME IN SOME DEGREE CAPABLE OF APPRECIATING THE FACTS THUS PRESENTED TO THEIR NOTICE. But, besides this, the Gospel is a revelation communicated to man by language, and its authenticity, as is meet, is attested by miracles. Now, considerable progress must have been made in civilisation before such testimony could be given as we would be willing to receive on a question of so vital importance. Until the laws of nature are to some extent known, we cannot determine whether the Creator has or has not in a particular case departed from them. And this leads us to observe, again, that a revelation from God to man, informing him of this wonderful change in the conditions of his probation,--a revelation designed for all ages to the end of time, and destined towork a perfect transformation in the moral character of our race,--could not have been completed until language had arrived at a considerable degree of perfection. It was necessary that the doctrines and motives peculiar to the new dispensation should be promulgated with all possible explicitness, and yet guarded from all tendency either to incompleteness or excess. Amidst all the agitations of society, throughout all the overturnings of empire, the human mind, during this long period, had been gradually attaining maturity. Each nation, during its brief existence, had either added something to the stock of human knowledge, or made some contribution to the materials for human thought. Every revolution had illustrated in some new phase the principles of conduct, and had bequeathed the lesson to succeeding generations.
II. We see, then, that God not only prepared a language in which this revelation for all coming ages could, be written, but HE DIFFUSED THAT LANGUAGE OVER THE CIVILISED WORLD. He created a suitable vehicle for the truth, and He made that vehicle, as far as was necessary, universal. And this work was accomplished by means of the ambition of Alexander, and the all-grasping love of dominion of the citizens of Rome. Men ignorant of the existence and character of the true God, bowing down to the senseless images which their own hands had fashioned, indulging without restraint their own corrupt passions, were thus advancing His purposes, and opening the way for the advent of His Son.
III.
One other condition remains yet to be observed.
The nations inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean were originally distinct in government, dissimilar in origin, diverse in laws, habits, and usages, and almost perpetually at war.
To pass from one to the other without incurring the risk of injury, nay, even of being sold into slavery, was almost impossible.
A stranger and an enemy were designated by the same word.
It was necessary that these various peoples should all be moulded into one common form; that one system of laws should bind them all in harmony. This seems to have been needful, in order that the new religion might be rapidly and extensively promulgated. In order to accomplish this purpose WAS THE ROMAN EMPIRE RAISED UP, AND ENTRUSTED WITH THE SCEPTRE OF UNIVERSAL DOMINION. In many respects it resembled the dominion of Great Britain at the present day in Asia. We perceive that the overturnings of forty centuries were required in order to prepare the world for the advent of the Messiah. The same omniscient wisdom has ever since been engaged in carrying forward the work which was then commenced. (D. Wayland, LL. D.)
Vox clamantis
It were surely a vain thing for a voice to cry in the wilderness where none can hear but the startled wild animals; where there are no sympathetic human hearts that can thrill with its message. But we must remember that of old the wilderness had a strange, weird attraction for many who aspired to live a holy life. And other souls who had similar longings, but did not possess the means or the courage to gratify them, would resort to the hermit of the wilderness for counsel and benediction.
1. The metaphor, so wild and striking, of a voice crying in the wilderness, is as appropriate as metaphor could be for representing the man of God who, in a degenerate age, lifts up his voice to declare the truth, to reprove sin, to call men to a new life. Rocks are not harder than hearts sometimes; the wandering blustering winds are not more inattentive to the speakers message than are some souls. To a divinely taught spirit nothing is so truly a desert as the crowded city. To him it is lonely, forbidding, sad, yet mightily attractive, awakening his tenderest compassions, calling forth his mightiest and most patient exertions.
2. Now that it has been done, we probably fall into the way of thinking that nothing was easier than for John the Baptist to preach to the Jews of the time of Herod, or for our Lord to open His mission to the same people, or for Paul to preach Christ at Corinth and Athens and Rome. How different the reality! Could any one of the inhabitants of these places have been consulted by Gods messenger beforehand he would probably have said: Do you think that these cavilling, disputing doctors and philosophers will ever give credence to such stories as you bring? Do you think that these pleasure-loving people will ever wear the yoke of such an austere religion of self-sacrifice as you proclaim? Go home to your ordinary work again, and dont trouble yourself to speak a message which nobody will hear; or if you cannot be at peace unless you say something about it, then go into the desert and speak it to yourself and to nature; for your chances of succeeding will be as great there as anywhere. Strange all this, yet more strange the fact that it is the wilderness and the solitary place which shall rejoice and be glad for the messenger of God who comes to prepare Messiahs way. The unlikely ground yields the harvest; they that are afar off come nigh. The voice in the wilderness is that of a herald announcing that a Greater One is on His way; be ye ready to receive Him. Widespread, radical, and lasting reformation was not achieved through the word of the Baptist; but such souls as could be prepared for the coming of the Lamb of God were aroused, called, separated from the hardened and worldly and unbelieving, and placed under discipline and teaching. From among their number our Lord chose His first disciples and chief apostles. Beyond the fringe of that little company which kept close to the Baptist something of good also was done. A wave of spiritual feeling passed over a great part of the nation; Jerusalem was greatly excited, if not savingly renewed. A general condition of desire was produced.
3. There are many advents of the Son of God, and for every one of them there is some forerunner, some voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye His way; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The voice of some John the Baptist has gone ringing through the wilderness of a dead faith, of a formal worship, of a worldly life, and men have been startled into attention, have been made conscious of shortcomings and sins. And although God never ceases to work among men, yet we come on barren dreary years of history, a very desert, when the signs of the Divine working are not apparent. Then arises some John the Baptist, or a general sense of dissatisfaction pervades the Churches, a sense of shortcoming and of shame, and the obstructions to a Divine manifestation are swept out of the way. Hardly a decade passes now without a cry arising from the Churches themselves: Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight. Their conscience becomes increasingly quick and true; their ideal grows nobler; their conception of the Christian life assimilates to the standard given in the Word of God. And with attainment comes a longing for more, a sense of need, a craving for God. Then let us prepare His way, as we would that of a dear Friend whom we long to see, and whom we would not keep from us by any neglect or disrespect of ours. (J. P. Gledstone.)
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
I. GOD HAS MANY MESSENGERS, AND THEY HAVE OFTEN LIFTED UP THEIR VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. Some speak with a voice of thunder to arouse a sleeping world. The doctrine of others distils as the dew. Some open new paths to the seekers after wisdom: to others it is given to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. Ever since man was driven from Eden he has been a wanderer in the desert. The thorn and the thistle around him are the emblems of the sin and the sorrow which spiritually mark his nomad state of existence. No wonder, then, that the wilderness is so often used as an emblem of this present life, in which you and I must listen to the voice of Heavens messengers. We want more law work. Our consciences are too easily satisfied. Modern religion is far too superficial. The law prepares for the Gospel. The Comforter must first convince of sin.
II. ISAIAH USES IT AS AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS OWN MINISTRY. He, too, living now probably in the idolatrous reign of Manasseh, felt himself in a spiritual desert. Yet by faith he sees afar off, and the seer is himself transported into that bright future. Already foreseeing the seventy years captivity of Judah, and then the joyful return of the exiles under the decree of Cyrus, Isaiah writes of these events as if himself living and acting among them. Yea more, he pictures the dawn of the day as ushered in by that return from Babylon.
III. THE TRANSITION IS EASY TO THE PERSONAL TIMES OF THE MESSIAH, AND OF HIS HERALD, JOHN THE BAPTIST. The homely and heart-searching appeals of the Baptist proved him to be the pioneer of the righteous King. Before this wilderness preacher the mountains of Pharisaic pride were levelled, the valleys of Sadducean unbelief were filled up, the tortuous vices of the courtly Judaean were corrected, and the rude ignorance of the Galilean smoothed and reformed.
IV. But even in this day THE WORDS HAD A WIDER SIGNIFICATION. Not only the land of Israel, but the Gentile world, even all flesh, was then being prepared to see the salvation of God. The former was accomplished by Johns own preaching; of the latter he was only the herald. Providential agencies were even then at work preparing Christs way among the Gentiles.
1. At the time when our Saviour was born the knowledge of the Greek language had spread more widely throughout Asia and Europe than has since been the case with any other tongue. What a preparation was this for the spread of the Christian religion. We know that there is no greater harrier separating nations than a difference of language. But at the very period when Christianity began to be published it found one language generally read and understood from the Alps to the Caucasus; and so the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament could now travel, with the gospels and epistles, to the many provinces of the Roman Empire; for the valleys had been exalted, and the mountains and hills made low.
2. A second preparation designed by Gods providence was--the extent of Roman dominion. The chief means employed by that great Empire for consolidating her possessions were her roads and her laws.
(1) It was literally true that, owing to Roman dominion, both in Europe and Asia, the crooked had been made straight and the rough places plain. That sagacious people recognised the civilising power of good roads through their Empire just as we do now of railways in our Indian and other colonies.
(2) It is the province of law to rectify abuses and remove difficulties: and to effect this among the nations Rome ever felt to be her mission. Wherever she planted her colonies she invited all people to share her privileges, and to dwell in safety under the aegis of her laws. Was not this, then, a moral via strata made for the spread of Christianity?
V. HOW THIS PROPHECY SHEDS A LUSTRE ON THE WORLDS FUTURE. Once more in this wide desert the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and not one, but all lands shall see it together. Yes, He who ascended into heaven shall so come again. Are we ready for that day? Are we making others ready? I believe that every Christian should be as the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The true Church, in short, must remain in the desert until the mystic times are fulfilled. She is to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Meanwhile the voice of prophecy is given to cheer her amidst trial and disappointment. We labour for years to tunnel through the Alps: shall we not labour patiently to prepare the way of the Lord? (S. P. Jose, M. A.)
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
I. THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS WHICH HINDER THE SPREAD OF THE REDEEMERS KINGDOM, spoken of here as valleys, hills, etc. Heathenism abroad: ignorance and vice at home. Intemperance hinders the progress of Gods kingdom on every hand.
1. Intemperance hinders the progress of Gods kingdom at home. Our country is occupied by three armies--an army of paupers, an army of criminals, and an army of police, to stand between the vicious and the virtuous, and protect the latter from the assaults of the former. How is this? There is this huge evil established amongst us, which casts its dread shadow over everything that is lovely and of good report. Where, e.g., are the working men of England to be found to-day? Not in the house of prayer. In the case of many of them, they have no suitable clothes; but why is this? Because wages are low? Because trade is bad? I answer, because the money is carried to the public-house, and is thus worse than wasted. There are some who go many times, perhaps regularly, to the house of God, and yet are not saved. Why? The grand neutraliser of the Gospel is the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors.
2. It is also a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel abroad.
(1) They tell us that we cannot, as Christians, take possession of the world, because we have not the means. Is it a truth that England, the richest land upon earth, made rich too by her Christianity, has done what she could for Him who redeemed her when she gives eightpence per head for the conversion of the world? Is it so? Alas! no; for while we have done this, we have spent £4 per head on strong drink.
(2) They say the world is not converted because we have not the men--especially suitable men. How is this? There are men to be found for everything else. One reason is, that the drinking customs have done much to enervate the Church. Strong drink aims high. It aims at the men of active brain and warm heart.
(3) Then there is the third reason--want of success. There are European barriers that are much stronger than heathenism and idolatry. The missionary tells us, over and over again, that he is far more afraid of English drinking than of native idolatry.
II. IT IS THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO SWEEP THIS ENEMY AWAY. God has decreed that these mountains shall perish.
1. The Church can remove this mountain. Look at her power as a teacher. Are not the children of our country in her hands? Look at the political power which she possesses. Is there an election in which the Christian Church cannot turn the balance? She has not only the ordinary power which men have, but she has omnipotence at her command.
2. The Church must, if she would hold her own. If we are not assailing strong drink, it is assailing us.
3. The Church must, if she would please her Master. How are we to proceed? Abstinence first; then entire prohibition of the traffic.
III. THE GLORIOUS RESULT. (C. Garrett.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
I. THE ADVENT IMPLIED. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
1. The Lord here spoken of is doubtless the supreme Jehovah; and from the appropriation of the passage by inspired authority to Christ, I apprehend nothing less can be intended than to intimate that He who was coming was the true God and eternal Life. This was that Immanuel who was to bring in an everlasting righteousness, to redeem and restore the Israel of God, and accomplish salvation for all the ends of the earth. Let us, then, inquire, Is this interpretation of the passage justified by other scriptures, and especially by the event itself? Assuredly He came with all the signs and demonstrations of incarnate Deity. He Himself laid express claim to this high character, and most manifestly displayed the perfections which it involves. With these sublime views of His character agrees the testimony of all His inspired apostles.
2. The disciples of John were required to contemplate here the true Messiah coming to effect salvation, to fulfil all the promises made of old to their fathers. It is, therefore, of great interest and importance to ascertain what was involved in that character, and what was the work assigned Him to do. It is expressly declared that He came to do the will of God,--to magnify the law and make it honourable,--to render to it a perfect obedience, and make reconciliation for iniquity.
3. The way of the Lord to us must be understood of His approach to our consciences and hearts by His word and spirit.
II. The charge to prepare the way of the Lord implies that there ARE DIFFICULTIES OR OBSTACLES IN HIS WAY.
1. There is the pride and self-righteousness of the human heart,
2. The heart is by nature hard and impenitent, blinded to its own defects, and, even after the confession of them, unwilling to have them condemned or to give them up.
3. The state of human desires and affections presents other and formidable obstacles to the claims of the Lord. Their desires are low--their affections carnal. The poor grovelling heart must be raised to noble and exalted ends and aims.
4. In some there exists a mass of prejudice, and the truth of Christ is viewed under a false light, or through a perverting medium. They will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, and they cannot enter therein. Some are prejudiced against the authority of revelation--some against the mysteries of godliness--some against the doctrines of grace or salvation by the merit of another; and many dislike the holiness, the self-denial, the separation from the world which Christianity inculcates.
5. Repentance is necessary to prepare the way; humility, to receive and learn the doctrine; prayer, to give it success in the heart; and watchfulness, to carry it out into practice. Every one who is himself a disciple of the Lord, has something to do in preparing the way of Christ in the earth. (G. Redford, LL. D.)
The road maker
(with Mattheew 3:3):--To the writers of the Gospel story this vivid expression seems to have commended itself as peculiarly applicable to the Baptist. He came heralding the speedy advent of the Messiah, and his life and ministry were a preparation for the greater life and more potent ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. In all essentials that task still remains to be performed. The modern road maker--the herald and hastener of a better and holier day--must be distinguished--
I. BY A PROFOUND SENSE OF THE EVIL OF THE PRESENT. The prophet was no blind optimist cherishing a foolish hope of a happier future because he did not see the abounding evils around him. He saw with clear, penetrating eyes the moral and spiritual degradation of his nation and day. He speaks of it, ay, and of the national evils which must issue from it--exile, defeat, the overthrow of their beautiful city. That is true of the prophetic band from first to last--from Elijah to John. The man who deliberately closes his eyes to the evils of his day, or seeing them minimises their importance, or in thought disguises them by some euphonious phrase, will never--let his life be prolonged to beyond the age of the patriarchs--prepare the way of the Lord. Too many of us live in an imaginary world as different as possible from the world of stern fact. The men who do most in their own generation to make a way for a better day in the future are usually the men who see clearly one wrong which needs righting, one obstacle which needs removing, one lie which needs refuting, and give themselves to the doing of that one thing--e.g., Wilberforce and slavery, Wesley and Evangelism, Cobden and Free Trade, Booth and the submerged tenth. One word of warning. To look fearlessly at the evils of your own day is not without danger. Not until that Voice which speaks of comfort through forgiveness has been heard and welcomed does the call come which bids hands and feet and active will prepare the way of the Lord.
II. BY AN UNQUENCHABLE FAITH IN THE FUTURE. The road maker is an optimist because he is a man of faith. There is an optimism which is both foolish and unfounded. But if the optimist has first looked facts in the face, and then rises by sheer force of faith in God above all that contradicts his hope, his optimism is not a vice, but a shining and beneficent virtue. Such was this prophets. So with John. He is certain, despite the manifold evils--moral and social--that afflict his people, that the day of the Lord sanointed will be a glorious day--a day of great things; and he speaks of it and of Him whose shoe-latchet he is not worthy to unloose with an unbounded faith. He must increase; I must decrease. Note on what the road maker rests--not on man. All flesh is grass; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God endureth for ever. The people have Gods Word; when all their human leaders have fallen, and every visible authority for God is taken away, this shall be their rally and their confidence.
III. BY HIS READINESS TO SERVE OR SUFFER. So Isaiah: so John. No good cause but has exacted its toll of both from heroic hearts that have espoused it. (W. H. Williams.)
Comfort for the afflicted Church
I. THE DESIGN OF THIS PROPHECY is to speak peace and comfort to an afflicted Church. Not only to the Jewish Church under a temporal captivity, but to every Christian Church, and every faithful soul.
1. Every valley shall be exalted. As the way St. John was sent to prepare by repentance was in the hearts of men, this must express some change to be wrought in those hearts. And what does it proclaim, but that humility is the way to glory?
2. Every mountain and hill shall be made low. As the lowly and fruitful valleys represent the meek and pious servants of Christ, so do the lofty and barren mountains point out to us the haughty and unprofitable children of this world that oppose Him.
3. The crooked shall be made straight. This is a most essential part in a highway, the end and intent of which is, to lead those who travel in it directly to the place and city where they would be. Man, at his creation, was placed in the straight way to heaven and happiness. Had he kept the eyes of his faith steadily fixed upon it, and walked directly on in the path of Gods commandments, he had soon arrived at it. But he listened to the suggestions of the devil, who drew him out of it, pretending to show him a pleasanter and shorter road than that appointed. But no sooner was man a sinner than God was a Saviour. When the valley of humility is exalted by faith and the mountain of pride and self-sufficiency brought low in your hearts, the crooked shall instantly be made straight before you.
4. The rough places plain. When the low ground is raised, the high levelled, and the whole marked out with a line and made straight, nothing remains but to clear away all obstructions.
II. The words thus explained, what remains but that we APPLY THEM TO OURSELVES, FOR THE DIRECTION OF OUR PRACTICE? (Bp. Horne.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
I. THE DUTY OF PREPARING THE WAY OF THE LORD.
1. The herald. Allusion is here made to an ancient custom, according to which heralds were sent before to prepare the way for the monarch when he was about to march from one place to another. Christian ministers are the voice of God crying in the wilderness. The very circumstance of this voice being needed shows the disordered state of man by nature. It is not enough for ministers gently to remind men of their state and duty--they must cry. Very many are the souls that need to be thus roused.
2. The scene of his labours--the wilderness. This is highly descriptive of the state of men in every age. A wilderness, a desert, indeed, is this world, while void of Gods grace; destitute of beauty, and unfruitful as to every good work.
3. What is the work to which the herald calls? As far as we have it in our power, we are to aid in removing whatever hinders the reception of Christ in the world. What is it hinders the reception of Christ in our own hearts? The success of the messenger will ever depend upon his looking up to the Lord.
II. OUR ENCOURAGEMENTS.
1. Every difficulty, however formidable, shall be surmounted. For every valley shall be exalted, etc. What are the difficulties which present themselves? In the work of salvation there are two leading classes of impediments.
(1) Internal. These are in every heart. There is much anxiety and depression: we are ready to imagine there is no hope; here are the valleys to be exalted. Some are puffed up with conceit of their own merit, and will not come to Christ; here are mountains to be made low. There are some untractable, obstinate passions; here are the roughnesses which are to be made plain. Who is sufficient for all this? None but the Lord alone.
(2) External. In introducing the Gospel among the heathen there are many difficulties.
2. There shall be an universal manifestation of the Divine glory. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. There was a great manifestation of the Divine glory when Cyrus and the foes of the Church were made the instruments of delivering Gods people from their captivity. Christians! this is not our work, or we should soon be dismayed. It is the way of the Lord. He is to work; He is to display His own glory. What tenderness and-condescension has God shown!
3. The certainty of all this. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. When one promises who can fulfil our wishes, we have all the encouragement we can possibly need. In no blindness of mistaken zeal, in no rashness of enthusiasm, yet with all holy boldness, let us labour to prepare the way of the Lord. (W. Williams.)
The Kings highway
I. VALLEYS MUST BE LEVELED UP.
1. Inattention.
(1) If we attend not to the Gospel message we can neither realise its importance nor secure its benefits.
(2) Those who absent themselves from the house of God are indifferently prepared for the coming of the Lord.
(3) So those who while there allow their minds to wander upon their merchandise, pleasures, etc., are ill prepared for the coming of the King.
2. Apathy.
(1) Thousands of professors of religion put forth little effort in the cause of God.
(2) Begin with yourself. Make a stir among your neighbours. Begin now.
3. Despondency.
(1) There are those who are so affected with a sense of their sinfulness that they fear to trust in Christ for salvation.
(2) Some professors take a morbid, gloomy view of the work of God.
II. EMINENCES MUST BE LEVELLED DOWN.
1. The mountain of pride must be reduced.
(1) The pride that will not make full confession of sin.
(2) The pride that will not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child.
(3) The pride of reason that will not accept salvation until its mysteries are comprehended.
(4) The progress of Christ is also hindered by the worldly pride of professors.
2. The mountain of presumption must be depressed.
(1) Sinners are presumptuous when, without forsaking their sins, they attempt to believe for salvation.
(2) Professors are presumptuous when they expect the work of God to revive in the Church without exerting themselves to promote a revival.
(3) While we work as though everything depended upon working, we must trust as though everything depended upon trusting.
3. The hills of ingratitude must be brought low.
(1) Some are ostensibly so zealous for the conversion of sinners that they forget to thank God for the good He is bestowing.
(2) There are others who will not rejoice when they hear good tidings of the work of God, because they are not themselves the subjects of that work.
III. THE CROOKED PLACES MUST BE STRAIGHTENED.
1. Prejudice.
(1) Some object to the movements of the blessed Jesus because He comes too loudly.
(2) Others complain because He comes too silently.
(3) Some dislike them because publicans and harlots are getting converted.
(4) Others find fault because the work of grace takes hold upon the better classes.
(5) And there are those who disparage the work of God among the children because they are too young. Nothing pleases crooked prejudice.
2. Jealousy.
(1) It hears that sinners are converted, but is not pleased because the converts have joined other churches.
(2) We may be anxious for the prosperity of Gods work for party purposes.
(3) How admirable was the spirit of Paul, who rejoiced that Christ was preached, no matter by whom!
3. Censoriousness.
(1) None of us are so perfect that we can afford to be severely scrutinised. We should therefore endeavour to put the best construction upon each others conduct.
(2) We should be especially careful not to impeach good men with want of zeal for God because they differ from us in judgment as to the best way to promote His work.
4. Covetousness.
(1) The acquisition of property is the one end for which some persons appear to exist. It is to no purpose to remind such persons that the world is perishing, and that the Church missions are languishing for want of funds
(2) Can the God of benevolence bless a covetous Church?
(3) The cure for covetousness is giving.
IV. THE ROUGH PLACES MUST BE SMOOTHED.
1. That ugly rock of Sabbath desecration must be removed.
(1) God did not institute His day for our amusement.
(2) It was not instituted to encourage idleness. It is separated from the toil of secular business.
2. That rut of drunkenness must be filled up.
3. Those sinks of immorality must be filled. Lying, cheating, oppression, uncleanness.
4. The rough places of instability must be smoothed.
(1) Like the chameleon, which takes the colour of every object on which it rests, there are those who never remain the same person for four-and-twenty hours. Treating Church membership as a coat that might be put on or off at pleasure.
(2) At one moment they are all in a flame, the next moment they are cold as ice. Sometimes they appear like the oak, at other times like the reed that is shaken with the wind.
(3) In the Church they are one thing, in the world another. Yet are they the noisiest fault-finders against the quiet, steady, unostentatious workers. (F. W.Macdonald, M. A.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
(with Luk_3:10-14):--
I. EXTERNAL PREPARATION (Isa_40:3-5). Our King has notified usthat He wants to encircle this world with His glory, and we are the pioneers to make way for His chariot. Let me indicate a few things about this work if you are going to make it a grand success.
1. There must be a willingness to undertake it. Indifference will kill the enterprise. Difficulties will appear; there must be courage and a cool head to guide a brave heart. Three things must be prominent--
(1) Regularity of effort.
(2) A desire to find ones own particular work.
(3) Surrender to the guidance of the Spirit.
2. There must be an appreciation of the importance of the work. If the King has given an order, there must be some reason for it; and when the carrying out of that order involves careful planning and difficult execution we must infer the importance of the result, and hence of the preparation.
(1) Cutting down forests. What are the dead trees in the way? Apostate Christians. They lie right across the Kings track, and He has to rein up until somebody removes them. What are the strong, sturdy, even luxuriant trees on the way? Worldly Christians.
(2) Levelling the hills. Pride is a high hill. Unbelief is a considerable mountain. Criticism is a rocky mound.
(3) Filling up the hollows. Oh, the deficiencies in the Church to make up!
II. INTERNAL PREPARATION (Luk_3:10-14). Every pioneer of the coming King must observe these demands.
1. Generosity. A niggardly nature is too narrow quarters for the Lord to dwell in.
2. Justice.
3. Peaceableness. It was the soldiers duty to fight, but only when necessary, and only to secure peace. The ultimate aim of justifiable war is always peace. When you have got the way all prepared, you will find that it is--
(1) A highway for the King.
(2) A way of blessing for His subjects.
(3) A way beginning with a cross and ending with a crown. (W. H. G. Temple.)
A great work requires preparation
There is a lesson which man is taught in many ways, but which he is very slow to learn. It is the necessity of preparation before any great work can be taken in hand and brought to a prosperous end. Before men begin to build, they must dig the foundation. Before they reap the harvest they must sow the seed and prepare the soil. The truth is an elementary one and yet through neglect of it, many a good work has failed, many an earnest worker has despaired. And the greater and more lasting the work, the longer and deeper the preparation must be. Things which shoot up quickly, quickly pass away. A tree does not spring up in a night. A nation is not born in a day. History shows us the long period of conception, and the painful period of travail, before great ideas can be brought to the birth and great changes can be wrought in the political world. Geology again teaches us the countless number of the ages of preparation in which this earth was fitted to be the home of man. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Preparation for the coming of Christ
There is one event in the worlds history which by every Christian must be admitted to be unique, alike in itself and in its consequences. The coming of God in the flesh, bringing life to a dying world, light to a dark world, peace to a world at enmity with God, may find its types and shadows, but it can find no parallels amongst other historical facts. There had been comings of great men, but never the coming of the great God. There had been revelations of truth, but now the Truth Himself was revealed. Great kingdoms had been set up quickly to pass away, but now the world-wide eternal kingdom was established. We may call it a crisis in history; indeed it was. It was the crisis, the turning-point in the history of the world, the turning-power in the history of each individual man. We may describe it in its results as a re-creation, but even that word is inadequate, unless it means much more than a restoration of the old creation to its original beauty and perfection. The preparation for this unique event, how can we exaggerate its importance! So much preparation was needed for any one of the ages; how much more for that which is described as the fulness of them all! So many agencies were set at work to fit this world to be the home of man; how can we overestimate the preliminary work by which men were prepared to be the home of God? (F. Watson, M. A.)
The gnostic gospel
It is well worthy of notice that almost the earliest heresy with which the Church battled was one which denied the reality of this preparation. A fundamental gnostic doctrine was the suddenness of the appearance of the Christ in human fashion. There was indeed a preparation, a development, so to speak, of the Supreme Being before He could stoop so low as earth. But there was no preparation of man for the reception of his God. Suddenly, at the time of His baptism, the Christ appeared in human form upon the earth. His human nature, or human body, if indeed it could be called human, had no previous history. It did not grow like ours. It could not trace its origin from the parents of the race like ours. It was an instrument which the heavenly Christ took to Himself for His work, and which He flung away when He had no further use for it. Thus teaching, the gnostics cut off the Christ from all the men before or after Him. They were not bone of His bone, or flesh of His flesh. Thus was denied all preparation of the human nature by which the Saviour of men worked. And the world into which He came, it also had not been prepared for His coming. If the supreme spiritual God bad in any way come in contact with this material world, it had been by accident; nay, rather by mishap. In this world of ours God had not been the king, and never could be king. With this human nature of ours, God had not been and never could be united. The Christ did not come to give this earth, in their fulness, truths of which He had already vouchsafed us foretastes, but He came to deprive us of a higher life, which had unawares come in contact with material bodies, and had been contaminated by them. Instead of light struggling with the darkness to subdue it, the gnostics imagined light struggling in the darkness to escape from it. If fuller light was revealed by their Christ, it was only that He might gather up the stray light lost from heaven and take it for ever away. This is the gnostic gospel. This is the gospel without the Old Testament. This is the gospel without preparation of the Man Christ or mans world. Not such the teaching of the Church. She has taught us to regard the history of the world as the unfolding of the great plan by which God would gather all nations and peoples to Himself. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Preparation among the heathen for the reception of Christianity
This preparation is not to be regarded as confined to the chosen people of Israel. It is true, Darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the peoples. But even darkness, thick darkness, may be preparatory to light. It was so at the creation of the world. It is so in everyday experience. If we believe, as believe we must, that man was created with capacities for comprehending the light; if we believe that in his pure and unfallen state it was natural for him to love the light; if we believe that his higher nature is never wholly lost: then we must confess that the very darkness in its depth and grossness must have caused longings deep and vast. When men groped in the darkness, and missed their way, and felt they had missed it, they must have longed for the Day Star to arise and shine. They must have said, we were meant for something better than this. They must have hoped for happier times. They sat in darkness and the shadow of death, being fast bound in misery and iron. They fell down, and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress. He in whose heart a longing for better things has arisen, albeit that longing may be indefinite and ill-directed, has not been left unprepared for receiving a gift from God. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Israels preparation for the coming of Christ
Beyond this general preparation of the nations there was also a special preparation of a particular people. We are entitled to argue this from the condition of that people when the Saviour appeared. You find that nation scattered all over the world; though in it, yet not of it. It was disliked and despised. It was persecuted and down-trodden. In most places it was a mere handful. In no place had it the supreme authority. Numbers, educated opinion, popular prejudice, and state power were all against it and its distinctiveness. Yet it was never crushed, and it was never absorbed; it never ceased to exert power and influence. Low as its fortunes then were, none of any nation were so proud of their history, none were more hopeful of their future. Indeed, it might be said, with some truth, that at that time the Jews alone had hope. The nations were groaning in their pains. Old institutions and old religions were worn out. Mens hearts were failing them for fear, and for looking for those things which were coming upon the earth. The Jews alone hoped for the coming of new and better times. The Jews alone thought that the pains they were suffering were not pains of dissolution, but birth-pangs, the pains followed by new life and fresh joy. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Vox clamantis
The note of all times that are progressive is a note of urgency, preparation, advance. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The appealing voice
Sometimes there is nothing to instruct us but a voice. We hear it, but cannot trace it. It is called the spirit of the times, the voice of the day, the genius of the hour. Sometimes it is personated in one man, one policy; at other times it is a diffused voice, coming, apparently to the ear, from all the points of the compass at once, but with singular unanimity, emphasis, truthfulness. It is never a voice of despair, or a tone that would cast the soul into dejection, but always like a clarion, or a chiming bell, or a fathers call, or a soldiers resounding peal. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God
A highway in the wilderness
We ought to read here, not the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, but rather, the voice of one crying, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord. Now, the voice of one crying in the wilderness--if you read so--will have a sufficiently direct application to John Baptist and to few menbesides. But the voice of one crying, Prepare a highway in the wilderness, is no more exclusively applicable to him than to John Calvin or John Knox or John Ruskin. It is applicable to everybody who does anything for the world, especially in its waste places and its worst places, in the way of improvement. It is applicable to Copernicus, Bacon, James Watt. Above all, it is applicable to Christ Himself. It is an anticipation of better and still better times for all mankind.
1. Does it matter at all to us who can have no hope of seeing it in our time, who have certainly, as it would seem, to live out our lives in a condition of things in which not so much the presence of improvement as the need of it is conspicuous? To this question, I think, there are two answers, both of which, for religious minds at any rate, have some weight.
(1) Our idea of God, of a Divine order in the world, is very much our whole stock-in-trade in the matter of religion. The question with us, as regards religion, is, how much we can see of God in what is not God, and in what seems opposed to God? Is that which we see of Him, though it must be little, yet enough to give us feeling, emotion, to fill our minds, not with a thousand anxieties and alarms about things clean and unclean, but to fill them to overflowing with reverence, all that constitutes the mysterious life of a spirit conversing with that unutterable Spirit behind the veil? Second to this even, though of infinite importance, is the question whether we shall devour widows houses and for a pretence make long prayers, or meditate upon the Good Samaritan, and go and do likewise. It obviously, then, concerns very much our idea of God, our experience of Him, what we see or feel of Him, our stock-in-trade in the matter of religion, what notion we form and entertain of the future destiny of mankind We know that the past has not been all that could be wished. Plenty of desert in that backward view. Will the future be better? Evidently that is a matter which must go to shape our idea of God, of a Divine order of the world. This is to look at the whole instead of a small part, and form some conclusion or other about the whole. It does matter a good deal to us, therefore, though we are not to live to see it, that, if it is possible or right to entertain it, we should entertain the belief that the endless ages that are yet to come will exhibit the Divine order as beneficent and beautiful in a way in which past ages and our own age have had scanty experience of it.
(2) Another answer to the question, What does it matter to us what the future of mankind may be? is obviously this: It is not so much a duty as an instinct for man to live for posterity. We are all of one stock. With reference to this instinct and this satisfaction, the case is plain as regards the future being other and better than the past or the present. We have all something to do, and can do something for posterity. We have the conviction or the hope in doing this, that it is not going to be in vain.
2. Prepare ye in the wilderness a highway for our God. In this, possibly, rather than in any other form, there comes the Divine call to those in every age, and especially in this age, to whom the Divine order is most of a reality and a power. Personal piety--you must have that, say the professors of ecclesiastical pedagogy--before entering upon this or that work, It is quite true: personal piety you must have to be fit to live, not to say to teach others or help others to live well. But if you have piety enough to have any satisfaction in helping to leave the world a little better than you have found it, then that is enough of a qualification and commission for taking part in work which will occupy your whole life. This general view of the Divine order and of the demands which it makes upon those who are most conscious of the reality of it suggests one or two reflections.
(1) In regard to the fulfilment of the Divine order, it often happens that, while weaker agencies at work in forwarding it are recognised, greater ones, even the greatest of all, escape notice. Since the Divine order is not always clear, it must often happen, in the case of lives of good men and even great men devoted to the advancement of it, that efforts to advance it have other results than those who made them contemplated--great results which they did not expect, no results where they expected great results.
(2) As it is often not the mightier but the weaker agencies at work in furthering the Divine order that are recognised and appreciated, so in the case of men who are more or less consciously devoted to the advancement of it, there is often a failure of insight; and they are found working for issues which they did not anticipate, both in the way of failure and in the way of success. In regard to the Divine order embracing the life of all that is, has been, shall be, the clearest sighted of mankind see through a glass darkly. Constantine was agreed that the triumph of the Christian faith was assured by his making it the religion of the State, though John Wesley had afterwards some reason, in his time, for thinking perhaps that more harm was done to it by that event than by all the Christian persecutions. The Christian world, all but a small part of it, was certain that the devil had broken loose in the Reformation in Germany, and few people who heard it did not devoutly believe that Luthers mother was a witch. John Baptist himself is not so remarkable for what he knew as for what he did not know of his own life-work and its effects. I mean, as regards the eternal order, in which he was no doubt a devout and a brave believer. As a forerunner he was nothing of a foreseer. Not only are the greater agencies at work in furthering the Divine order least recognised among the mass of men, but even among choice spirits devoted to the furthering of that order, misunderstanding as to the results of their own activity and the activity of others is more common than insight. Thus stands the case as regards one class of agencies at work in furthering the Divine order. That which is valued in regard to it is the old ecclesiastical machinery, creak and groan and rattle as it may. In the meantime, discredited to some extent by its association with enlightenment not always orthodox, the spirit of humanity enters from the outside into the religious world, to the creation of new social conditions for whole communities.
(3) What promise there is in this of a better era both for the Church and for the world is better seen as yet by the world, perhaps, than by the Church. The importance of the fact cannot at any rate be overrated. Nothing is so common in religious circles, among good people, as lamentation. The good old times of religion are no more. That is their complaint.
(4) In the meantime, religious people who are so much disposed to complain of the good old times passing away are helping to prepare for times infinitely better than the good old times, in ways of which they are as far as possible from conceiving. They are deepening dissatisfaction with the life, even the religious life of the day, by their lamentations. That is one thing--a negative sort of thing. More positive is the effect of their keeping in their own view and that of others a certain high ideal of life, though it be not the highest of all. (J. Service, D. D.)
Christ requires a straight road
The Kings chariot is coming; you must fill up the ravines and level down the hill,. He will not accommodate His chariot to the tortuous lines of your life. If the Lord Jesus Christ is coming into your soul, He is not going to follow the crooked ways of your iniquitous conduct. You have got to make a straight road for Him. (A. T.Pierson, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On v3A voice cries out
A voice cries out
The word "voice" represents the person who cries out. AT: "Someone cries out" (See: Synecdoche)
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In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh; make straight in the Arabah a highway for our God
These two lines are parallel and mean basically the same thing. The people preparing themselves for Yahweh's help is spoken of as if they were to prepare roads for Yahweh to travel upon. (See: Parallelism and Metaphor)
Arabah
See how you translated this word in Isaiah 35:1.
Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be leveled
These phrases explain how the people are to prepare a highway for Yahweh. They can be stated in active form. AT: "Lift up every valley, and level every mountain and hill" (See: Active or Passive)
Every valley will be lifted up
Making the valleys level with the rest of the ground is spoken of as if it were lifting up the valleys. AT: "Every valley will be filled in" (See: Metaphor)
and the rugged land will be made level, and the rough places a plain
These phrases explain how the people are to prepare a highway for Yahweh. They can be stated in active form. AT: "make the rugged land level, and make the rough places into a plain" (See: Active or Passive and Ellipsis)
the glory of Yahweh will be revealed
This can be stated in active form. AT: "Yahweh will reveal his glory" (See: Active or Passive)
for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it
The word "mouth" represents Yahweh himself. AT: "for Yahweh has spoken it" (See: Synecdoche)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv3, 540:3-5 There is now a shift from the general…
40:3-5 There is now a shift from the general announcement of the good news to the specific expectation of God’s coming. The good news (40:1-2) is grounded in God himself. Isaiah portrayed the Lord as coming on a highway through the desert (see ch 35), although the imagery is here reversed: In ch 35, the people were traveling to Zion, toward the Lord. Here, the Lord is coming toward his people (see also 52:8, where the two images are brought together).
40:3 the voice of someone shouting: In Mal 3:1 this person (possibly the Elijah of Mal 4:5) was God’s messenger who prepared the way for God’s coming. In the Gospels, this announcer was identified with John the Baptist (Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23). • Clear the way . . . Make a straight highway: The announcer’s message would expedite God’s coming (see Isa 35:8). As God made a way for Israel through the Red Sea (43:16), so a way would be opened up for the Lord (see 52:11-12).
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv3–5 To wit, of the Prophets.
To wit, of the Prophets.
That is, in Babylon and other places, where they were kept in captivity, and misery.
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Meaning Cyrus and Darius which should deliver God’s people out of captivity, and make them a ready way to Jerusalem: and this was fully accomplished, when John the Baptist brought tidings of Jesus Christ’s coming, who was the true deliverer of his Church from sin and Satan, Matt. 3:3.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv3–5 Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in…
Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Ver. 3. The voice of him that crieth.] See Mat 3:1-3; Joh 1:25, {See Trapp on "Mat 3:3"} {See Trapp on "Joh 1:25"} but Luke citeth this text more fully than the other evangelists, applying it to the Baptist crying in the wilderness - sc., of Judea, where he first preached, or, as some sense it, in the ears of a waste and wild people. Hereby is meant the world, saith one, {a} void of God’s grace, barren in all virtue, having no pleasing abode, nor sure direction of any good way in it, being full of horror and accursed.
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{a} Diod.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv3–5 The voice; an abrupt and imperfect speech, such as…
The voice; an abrupt and imperfect speech, such as there are many in the Hebrew language. Methinks I hear a voice; or, a voice shall be heard.
Of him that crieth in the wilderness; which words declare the place either,
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1. Where the cry was made; or,
2. Where the way was to be prepared, as it is expressed in the following clause, which is added to explain this. And such places being commonly pathless, and many ways incommodious to passengers, it was the more necessary to prepare a way there. But both come to one thing, for the cry was to be in that place which was to be prepared. This place seems to be understood immediately of the deliverance of the Jews out of Babylon, and of smoothing their passage from thence to Judea, which lay through a great wilderness; but ultimately and principally concerning their redemption by the Messiah, whose coming is ushered in by the cry of John the Baptist, who did both cry and prepare the way in the wilderness, as we read, Mat 3:1, &c.; where this text is directly expounded of him. But withal the terms of wilderness and desert seem to be here chiefly used in a metaphorical sense, to express the desolate and forlorn condition of the Jewish nation, and especially of the Gentile world, when Christ came to redeem them; for so these words are frequently used in prophetical writings, as hath been noted in divers places.
Prepare ye the way; you to whom this work belongs. He alludes to the custom of princes, who send pioneers before them to prepare the way through which they intend to pass. The meaning is only this, that God shall by his Spirit so dispose men’s hearts, and by his providence so order the empires and affairs of the world, as to make way for the accomplishment of this promise.
Of the Lord; for the Lord, as it is expounded in the next clause, that the Lord may walk in it; which though it may be understood of their coming out of Babylon, when God might in some sort be said to march in the head of them, conducting and preserving them, yet it was much more evidently and eminently fulfilled when Christ, who was and is God blessed for ever, came into the world in a visible manner. Straight; either direct, in opposition to crooked, or even and level, in opposition to the mountains and valleys mentioned in the next verse.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v3 The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time,…
The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time, having come, the people of God must be prepared, by repentance and faith, for the favours designed them; and, in order to call them to both these, we have here the voice of one crying in the wilderness, which may be applied to those prophets who were with the captives in their wilderness-state, and who, when they saw the day of their deliverance dawn, called earnestly upon them to prepare for it, and assured them that all the difficulties which stood in the way of their deliverance should be got over. It is a good sign that mercy is preparing for us if we find God's grace preparing us for it, Psa 10:17. But it must be applied to John the Baptist; for, though God was the speaker, he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and his business was to prepare the way of the Lord, to dispose men's minds for the reception and entertainment of the gospel of Christ. The way of the Lord is prepared,
I. By repentance for sin; that was it which John Baptist preached to all Judah and Jerusalem (Mat 3:2, Mat 3:5), and thereby made ready a people prepared for the Lord, Luk 1:17.
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1. The alarm is given; let all take notice of it at their peril; God is coming in a way of mercy, and we must prepare for him, Isa 40:3-5. If we apply it to their captivity, it may be taken as a promise that, whatever difficulties lie in their way, when they return they shall be removed. This voice in the wilderness (divine power going along with it) sets pioneers on work to level the roads. But it may be taken as a call to duty, and it is the same duty that we are called to, in preparation for Christ's entrance into our souls. (1.) We must get into such a frame of spirit as will dispose us to receive Christ and his gospel: "Prepare you the way of the Lord; prepare yourselves for him, and let all that be suppressed which would be an obstruction to his entrance. Make room for Christ: Make straight a highway for him." If he prepare the end for us, we ought surely to prepare the way for him. Prepare for the Saviour; lift up your heads, O you gates! Psa 24:7, Psa 24:9. Prepare for the salvation, the great salvation, and other minor deliverances. Let us get to be fit for them, and then God will work them out. Let us not stand in our own light, nor put a bar in our own door, but find, or make, a highway for him, even in that which was desert ground. This is that for which he waits to be gracious. (2.) We must get our hearts levelled by divine grace. Those that are hindered from comfort in Christ by their dejections and despondencies are the valleys that must be exalted. Those that are hindered from comfort in Christ by a proud conceit of their own merit and worth are the mountains and hills that must be made low. Those that have entertained prejudices against the word and ways of God, that are untractable, and disposed to thwart and contradict even that which is plain and easy because it agrees not with their corrupt inclinations and secular interests, are the crooked that must be made straight and the rough places that must be made plain. Let but the gospel of Christ have a fair hearing, and it cannot fail of acceptance. This prepares the way of the Lord; and thus God will by his grace prepare his own way in all the vessels of mercy, whose hearts he opens as he did Lydia's.
2. When this is done the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, Isa 40:5. (1.) When the captives are prepared for deliverance Cyrus shall proclaim it, and those shall have the benefit of it, and those only, whose hearts the Lord shall stir up with courage and resolution to break through the discouragements that lay in their way, and to make nothing of the hills, and valleys, and all the rough places. (2.) When John Baptist has for some time preached repentance, mortification, and reformation, and so made ready a people prepared for the Lord (Luk 1:17), then the Messiah himself shall be revealed in his glory, working miracles, which John did not, and by his grace, which is his glory, binding up and healing with consolations those whom John had wounded with convictions. And this revelation of divine glory shall be a light to lighten the Gentiles. All flesh shall see it together, and not the Jews only; they shall see and admire it, see it and bid it welcome; as the return out of captivity was taken notice of by the neighbouring nations, Psa 126:2. And it shall be the accomplishment of the word of God, not one iota or tittle of which shall fall to the ground: The mouth of the Lord has spoken it, and therefore the hand of the Lord will effect it.
II. By confidence in the word of the Lord, and not in any creature. The mouth of the Lord having spoken it, the voice has this further to cry (he that has ears to hear let him hear it), The word of our God shall stand for ever, Isa 40:8.
1. By this accomplishment of the prophecies and promises of salvation, and the performance of them to the utmost in due time, it appears that the word of the Lord is sure and what may be safely relied on. Then we are prepared for deliverance when we depend entirely upon the word of God, build our hopes on that, with an assurance that it will not make us ashamed: in a dependence upon this word we must be brought to own that all flesh is grass, withering and fading. (1.) The power of man, when it does appear against the deliverance, is not to be feared; for it shall be as grass before the word of the Lord: it shall wither and be trodden down. The insulting Babylonians, who promise themselves that the desolations of Jerusalem shall be perpetual, are but as grass which the spirit of the Lord blows upon, makes nothing of, but blasts all its glory; for the word of the Lord, which promises their deliverance, shall stand for ever, and it is not in the power of their enemies to hinder the execution of it. (2.) The power of man, when it would appear for the deliverance, is not to be trusted to; for it is but as grass in comparison with the word of the Lord, which is the only firm foundation for us to build our hope upon. When God is about to work salvation for his people he will take them off from depending upon creatures, and looking for it from hills and mountains. They shall fail them, and their expectations from them shall be frustrated: The Spirit of the Lord shall blow upon them; for God will have no creature to be a rival with him for the hope and confidence of his people; and, as it is his word only that shall stand for ever, so in that word only our faith must stand. When we are brought to this, then, and not till then, we are fit for mercy.
2. The word of our God, that glory of the Lord which is now to be revealed, the gospel, and that grace which is brought with it to us and wrought by it in us, shall stand for ever; and this is the satisfaction of all believers, when they find all their creature-comforts withering and fading like grass. Thus the apostle applies it to the word which by the gospel is preached unto us, and which lives and abides for ever as the incorruptible seed by which we are born again, Pe1 1:23-25. To prepare the way of the Lord we must be convinced, (1.) Of the vanity of the creature, that all flesh is grass, weak and withering. We ourselves are so, and therefore cannot save ourselves; all our friends are so, and therefore are unable to save us. All the beauty of the creature, which might render it amiable, is but as the flower of grass, soon blasted, and therefore cannot recommend us to God and to his acceptance. We are dying creatures; all our comforts in this word are dying comforts, and therefore cannot be the felicity of our immortal souls. We must look further for a salvation, look further for a portion. (2.) Of the validity of the promise of God. We must be convinced that the word of the Lord can do that for us which all flesh cannot - that, forasmuch as it stands for ever, it will furnish us with a happiness that will run parallel with the duration of our souls, which must live for ever; for the things that are not seen, but must be believed, are eternal.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv3–5 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,....…
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,.... Not the voice of the Holy Ghost, as Jarchi; but of John the Baptist, as is attested by all the evangelists, Mat 3:3 and by John himself, Joh 1:23, who was a "voice" not like the man's nightingale, "vox et praeterea nihil" a voice and nothing else; he had not only a sonorous, but an instructive teaching voice; he had the voice of a prophet, for he was a prophet: we read of the voices of the prophets, their doctrines and prophecies, Act 13:27, his voice was the voice of one that crieth, that published and proclaimed aloud, openly and publicly, with great eagerness and fervency, with much freedom and liberty, what he had to say; and this was done "in the wilderness", in the wilderness of Judea, literally taken, Mat 3:1, and when Judea was become a Roman province, and the Jews were brought into the wilderness of the people, Eze 20:35 and when they were, as to their religious affairs, in a very forlorn and wilderness condition (m): what John was to say, when he came as a harbinger of Christ, and did, follows:
prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God: by whom is meant the Messiah to whose proper deity a noble testimony is here bore, being called "Jehovah" and "our God": whose way John prepared himself, by preaching the doctrine of repentance, administering the ordinance of baptism, pointing at the Messiah, and exhorting the people to believe in him; and he called upon them likewise to prepare the way, and make a plain path to meet him in, by repenting of their sins, amending their ways, and cordially embracing him when come, laying aside all those sentiments which were contrary to him, his Gospel, and kingdom. The sense of this text is sadly perverted by the Targum, and seems to be, done on purpose, thus,
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"prepare the way before the people of the Lord, cast up ways before the congregation of our God;''
whereas it is before the Lord himself. The allusion is to pioneers, sent before some great personage to remove all obstructions out of his way, to cut down trees, level the way, and clear all before him, as in the following verse.
(m) Though, according to the accents, the phrase, "in the wilderness", belongs to what follows, "in the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord"; where it is placed by Junius and Tremellius, commended for it by Reinbeck, de Accent, Heb. p. 416. though the accent seems neglected in Matt iii. 3. Mark 1. 3.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v3 The voice - An abrupt speech. Methinks I hear…
The voice - An abrupt speech. Methinks I hear a voice. Wilderness - This immediately relates to the deliverance of the Jews out of Babylon, and smoothing their passage from thence to Judea, which lay through a great wilderness; but principally to their redemption by the Messiah, whose coming was ushered in by the cry of John the baptist, in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way - You to whom this work belongs. He alludes to the custom of princes who send pioneers before them to prepare the way through which they are to pass. The meaning is, God shall by his spirit so dispose mens hearts, and by his providence so order the affairs of the world, as to make way for the accomplishment of his promise. This was eminently fulfilled, when Christ, who was, and is God, blessed forever, came into the world in a visible manner.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv3–5 Verse 3. The voice of him that crieth in…
Verse 3. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness - "A voice crieth, In the wilderness"] The idea is taken from the practice of eastern monarchs, who, whenever they entered upon an expedition or took a journey, especially through desert and unpractised countries, sent harbingers before them to prepare all things for their passage, and pioneers to open the passes, to level the ways, and to remove all impediments. The officers appointed to superintend such preparations the Latins call stratores. Ipse (Johannes Baptista) se stratorem vocat Messiae, cujus esset alta et elata voce homines in desertis locis habitantes ad itinera et vias Regi mox venturo sternendas et reficiendas hortari. - Mosheim, Instituta, Majora, p. 96. "He (John the Baptist) calls himself the pioneer of the Messiah, whose business it was with a loud voice to call upon the people dwelling in the deserts to level and prepare the roads by which the King was about to march."
Diodorus's account of the marches of Semiramis into Media and Persia will give us a clear notion of the preparation of the way for a royal expedition: "In her march to Ecbatana she came to the Zarcean mountain, which, extending many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could not be passed without taking a great compass about. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up; and at a great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious road, which to this day is called from her the road of Semiramis. Afterward she went into Persia, and all the other countries of Asia subject to her dominion; and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and precipices to be levelled, raised causeways in the plain country, and at a great expense made the ways passable." - Diod. Sic. lib. ii.
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The writer of the apocryphal book called Baruch expresses the same subject by the same images, either taking them from this place of Isaiah, or from the common notions of his countrymen: "For God hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God." Baruch 5:7.
The Jewish Church, to which John was sent to announce the coming of Messiah, was at that time in a barren and desert condition, unfit, without reformation, for the reception of her King. It was in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and good works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preaching repentance. I have distinguished the parts of the sentence according to the punctuation of the Masoretes, which agrees best both with the literal and the spiritual sense; which the construction and parallelism of the distich in the Hebrew plainly favours, and of which the Greek of the Septuagint and of the evangelists is equally susceptible.
John was born in the desert of Judea, and passed his whole life in it, till the time of his being manifested to Israel. He preached in the same desert: it was a mountainous country; however not entirely and properly a desert; for though less cultivated than other parts of Judea, yet it was not uninhabited. Joshua (Jos 15:61-62) reckons six cities in it. We are so prepossessed with the idea of John's living and preaching in the desert, that we are apt to consider this particular scene of his preaching as a very important and essential part of history: whereas I apprehend this circumstance to be no otherwise important, than as giving us a strong idea of the rough character of the man, which was answerable to the place of his education; and as affording a proper emblem of the rude state of the Jewish Church at that time, which was the true wilderness meant by the prophet, in which John was to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv3, 5 Isa 40:3-4. The voice of him that crieth —…
Isa 40:3-4. The voice of him that crieth — Or, as the Hebrew may be properly rendered, A voice crieth; an abrupt and imperfect speech, implying, “Methinks I hear a voice;” or, “A voice shall be heard;” in the wilderness — Which word signifies the place, either where the cry was made, or where the way was to be prepared, as it is expressed in the following clause, which seems to be added to explain this. Bishop Lowth understands it in this latter sense, and translates the words, A voice crieth, In the wilderness, prepare ye the way of Jehovah. Which he thus interprets, “He hears a crier giving orders, by solemn proclamation, to prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; to remove all obstructions before Jehovah marching through the desert; through the wild, uninhabited, unpassable country. The idea is taken from the practice of the eastern monarchs, who, whenever they entered upon an expedition, or took a journey, especially through desert and unpractised countries, sent harbingers before them to prepare all things for their passage, and pioneers to open the passes, to level the ways, and to remove all impediments. The officers appointed to superintend such preparations the Latins called stratores.” The bishop understands the prophet as referring to the return of the Jews from Babylon, which he has “no doubt was the first, though not the principal thing in his view.” This deliverance, he says, “is considered as parallel to the former deliverance of them from the Egyptian bondage. God was then represented as their king, leading them in person through the vast deserts which lay in their way to the promised land of Canaan. It was not merely for Jehovah himself that in both cases the way was to be prepared, and all obstructions to be removed; but for Jehovah marching in person at the head of his people.” “Babylon,” the bishop adds, “was separated from Judea by an immense tract of country, which was one continued desert; that large part of Arabia, called very properly Deserta. This was the nearest way homeward for the Jews; and whether they actually returned by this way or not, the first thing that would occur, on the proposal or thought of their return, would be the difficulty of this almost impracticable passage. Accordingly, the proclamation for the preparation of the way is the most natural idea, and most obvious circumstance, by which the prophet could have opened his subject.”
But though Bishop Lowth considers the prophet as first intending to comfort the Jews in their captivity, by predicting, in these words, that God would make the way plain for their return, yet he views him also as employing this deliverance out of Babylon, “as an image to shadow out a redemption of an infinitely higher and more important nature.” “Obvious and plain,” says he, “as I think this literal sense is, we have nevertheless the irrefragable authority of John the Baptist, and of Christ himself, as recorded by all the evangelists, for explaining this exordium of the prophecy of the opening of the gospel by the preaching of John, and of the introduction of the kingdom of Messiah, who was to effect a much greater deliverance of the people of God, Gentiles as well as Jews, from the captivity of sin, and the dominion of death. And this we shall find to be the case in many subsequent parts also of this prophecy, where passages, manifestly relating to the deliverance of the Jewish nation, effected by Cyrus, are, with good reason, and upon undoubted authority, to be understood of the redemption of mankind by Christ.” This interpretation supposes the wilderness to be the place where the way was prepared, rather than the place where the cry was made, and, in the spiritual or mystical application now mentioned, that wilderness signifies “the Jewish Church, to which John was sent to announce the coming of Messiah, and which was, at that time, in a barren and desert condition, unfit, without reformation, for the reception of her king. It was in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and good works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord, by preaching repentance.” It must be observed, however, that, according to the translation of this clause by the LXX., and the punctuation, as we have it in their copies, and as it is understood by all the evangelists, the voice cried in the desert. For they all read, φωνη βοωντος εν τη ερημω, Ετοιμασατε, &c. The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare ye, &c. But, omitting the consideration of the pointing, we may allow, with some interpreters of the first authority, that “the words, in the desert, belong to both parts of the sentence. The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare ye in the desert the way of the Lord. And the word desert may be understood both in a proper and mystical sense, for it is certain that John proclaimed this approach of the Messiah in a desert, in the wilderness of Judea; and thence took occasion to consider that people, in which the kingdom of God was to be manifested under the figure of a desert, to be levelled before the face of Jesus Christ; for the metaphorical expressions which follow refer to that great preparation of mind which is necessary for the reception of Christ: see Mal 3:1. That raising the low, that debasing the high, that refutation of all false and erroneous doctrine, and introduction of truth and righteousness, which was the consequence of the revelation of Christ.” See Vitringa.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv3–5 The voice of him that crieth - Lowth and…
The voice of him that crieth - Lowth and Noyes render this, ‘A voice crieth,’ and annex the phrase ‘in the wilderness’ to the latter part of the sentence:
A voice crieth, ‘In the wilderness prepare ye the way of Yahweh.’
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The Hebrew (קורא קול qôl qôrē') will bear this construction, though the Vulgate and the Septuagint render it as in our common version. The sense is not essentially different, though the parallelism seems to require the translation proposed by Lowth. The design is to state the source of consolation referred to in the previous verses. The time of the exile at Babylon was about to be completed. Yahweh was about to conduct his people again to their own country through the pathless wilderness, as he had formerly conducted them from Egypt to the land of promise. The prophet, therefore, represents himself as hearing the voice of a herald, or a forerunner in the pathless waste, giving direction that a way should be made for the return of the people. The whole scene is represented as a march, or return of Yahweh at the head of his people to the land of Judea. The idea is taken from the practice of Eastern monarchs, who whenever they entered on a journey or an expedition, especially through a barren and unfrequented or inhospitable country, sent harbingers or heralds before them to prepare the way.
To do this, it was necessary for them to provide supplies, and make bridges, or find fording places over the streams; to level hills, and construct causeways over valleys, or fill them up; and to make a way through the forest which might lie in their intended line of march. This was necessary, because these contemplated expeditions often involved the necessity of marching through countries where there were no public highways that would afford facilities for the passage of an army. Thus Arrian (Hist. liv. 30) says of Alexander, ‘He now proceeded to the River Indus, the army’ that is, ἡ στρατιά hē stratia, a part of the army, or an army sufficient for the purpose, ‘going before, which made a way for him, for otherwise there would have been no mode of passing through that region.’ ‘When a great prince in the East,’ says Paxton, ‘sets out on a journey, it is usual to send a party of men before him to clear the way.
The state of those countries in every age, where roads are almost unknown, and, from want of cultivation, in many places overgrown with brambles and other thorny plants, which renders traveling, especially with a large retinue, incommodious, requires this precaution. The Emperor of Hindoostan, in his progress through his dominions, as described in the narrative of Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy to the court of Delhi, was preceded by a very great company, sent before him to cut up the trees and bushes, to level and snmoth the road, and prepare their place of encampment. We shall be able, perhaps, to form a more clear and precise idea from the account which Diodorus gives of the marches of Semiramis, the celebrated Queen of Babylon, into Media and, Persia. “In her march to Ecbatana,” says the historian, “she came to the Zarcean mountain, which, extending many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could not be passed without taking a great compass. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up; and at a great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious road; which to this day is called from her the road of Semiramis. Afterward she went into Persia, and all the other countries of Asia subjected to her dominion, and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and precipices to be leveled, raised causeways in the plain country, and, at a great expense, made the ways passable.”
The writer of the apocryphal Book of Baruch, refers to the same subject by the same images: ‘For God hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God’ Isa 5:7. It is evident that the primary reference of this passage was to the exiles in Babylon, and to their return from their long captivity, to the land of their father. The imagery, the circumstances, the design of the prophecy, all seem to demand such an interpretation. At the same time it is as clear, I apprehend, that the prophet was inspired to use language, of design, which should appropriately express a more important event, the coming of the forerunner of the Messiah, and the work which he should perform as preparatory to his advent. There was such a striking similarity in the two events, that they could be grouped together in the same part of the prophetic vision or picture the mind would naturally, by the laws of prophetic suggestion (Introduction, Section 7, III. (3), glance from one to the other, and the same language would appropriately and accurately express both. Both could be described as the coming of Yahweh to bless and save his people; both occurred after a long state of desolation and bondage - the one a bondage in Babylon, the other in sin and national declension. The pathless desert was literally to be passed through in the one instance; in the other, the condition of the Jews was that which was not unaptly likened to a desert - a condition in regard to real piety not unlike the state of a vast desert in comparison with fruitful fields. ‘It was,’ says Lowth, ‘in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preaching repentance.
That this passage has a reference to John as the forerunner of the Messiah, is evident from Mat 3:3, where it is applied to him, and introduced by this remark: ‘For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice,’ etc. (see also Joh 1:23) The events were so similar, in their main features, that the same language would describe both. John was nurtured in the desert, and passed his early life there, until he entered on his public work Luk 1:80. He began to preach in a mountainous country, lying east of Jerusalem, and sparsely inhabited, and which was usually spoken of as a desert or wilderness Mat 3:1; and it was here that his voice was heard announcing the coming of the Messiah, and that he pointed him to his own followers Joh 1:28-29.
In the wilderness - Babylon was separated from Judea by an immense tract of country, which was one continued desert. A large part of Arabia, called Arabia Deserts, was situated in this region. To pass in a direct line, therefore, from Babylon to Jerusalem, it was necessary to go through this desolate country. It was here that the prophet speaks of hearing a voice commanding the hills to be leveled, and the valleys filled up, that there might be a convenient highway for the people to return (compare the notes at Isa 35:8-10).
Prepare ye the way - This was in the form of the usual proclamation of a monarch commanding the people to make a way for him to pass. Applied to the return of the exile Jews, it means that the command of God had gone forth that all obstacles should be removed. Applied to John, it means that the people were to prepare for the reception of the Messiah; that they were to remove all in their opinions and conduct which would tend to hinder his cordial reception, or which would prevent his success among them.
Of the Lord - Of Yahweh. Yahweh was the leader of his people, and was about to conduct them to their own land. The march therefore, was regarded as that of Yahweh, as a monarch or king, at the head of his people, conducting them to their own country; and to prepare the way of Yahweh was, therefore, to prepare for his march at the head of his people. Applied to the Messiah, it means that God was about to come to his people to redeem them. This language naturally and obviously implies, that he whose way was thus to be prepared was Yahweh, the true God. So it was undoubtedly in regard to him who was to be the leader of the exile Jews to their own land, since none but Yahweh could thus conduct them. And if it be admitted that the language has also a reference to the Messiah, then it demonstrates that he was appropriately called Yahweh. That John the Immerser had such a view of him, is apparent from what is said of him.
Thus, Joh 1:15, he says of him that, ‘he was before’ him which was not true unless he had an existence previous to his birth; he calls him, Joh 1:18, ‘the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father;’ and in Joh 1:34, he calls him ‘the Son of God’ (compare Joh 10:30, Joh 10:33, Joh 10:36). In Joh 3:31, he says of him, ‘he that cometh from above is above all; he that cometh from heaven is above all.’ Though this is not one of the most direct and certain proof texts of the divinity of the Messiah, yet it is one which may be applied to him when that divinity is demonstrated from other places. It is not one that can be used with absolute certainty in an argument on the subject, to convince those who deny that divinity - since, even on the supposition that it refers to the Messiah, it may be said plausibly, and with some force, that it may mean that Yahweh was about to manifest himself by means of the Messiah; yet it is a passage which those who are convinced of the divinity of Christ from other source, will apply without hesitation to him as descriptive of his rank, and confirmatory of his divinity.
Make straight - Make a straight or direct road; one that should conduct at once to their land. The Chaldee renders this verse, ‘Prepare a way before the people of Yahweh; make in the plain ways before the congregation of our God.’
A highway - (See the note at Isa 35:8).
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3–5 God, that he may conduct his people from Babylon.…
God, that he may conduct his people from Babylon. (Sanchez) --- Yet the prophet speaks chiefly of John the Baptist, (Matthew iii. 3.; Calmet) who is evidently foretold. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3–5 crieth in the wilderness--So the Septuagint and Mat 3:3…
crieth in the wilderness--So the Septuagint and Mat 3:3 connect the words. The Hebrew accents, however, connect them thus: "In the wilderness prepare ye," &c., and the parallelism also requires this, "Prepare ye in the wilderness," answering to "make straight in the desert." Matthew was entitled, as under inspiration, to vary the connection, so as to bring out another sense, included in the Holy Spirit's intention; in Mat 3:1, "John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness," answers thus to "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." MAURER takes the participle as put for the finite verb (so in Isa 40:6), "A voice crieth." The clause, "in the wilderness," alludes to Israel's passage through it from Egypt to Canaan (Psa 68:7), Jehovah being their leader; so it shall be at the coming restoration of Israel, of which the restoration from Babylon was but a type (not the full realization; for their way from it was not through the "wilderness"). Where John preached (namely, in the wilderness; the type of this earth, a moral wilderness), there were the hearers who are ordered to prepare the way of the Lord, and there was to be the coming of the Lord [BENGEL]. John, though he was immediately followed by the suffering Messiah, is rather the herald of the coming reigning Messiah, as Mal 4:5-6 ("before the great and dreadful day of the Lord"), proves. Mat 17:11 (compare Act 3:21) implies that John is not exclusively meant; and that though in one sense Elias has come, in another he is yet to come. John was the figurative Elias, coming "in the spirit and power of Elias" (Luk 1:17); Joh 1:21, where John the Baptist denies that he was the actual Elias, accords with this view. Mal 4:5-6 cannot have received its exhaustive fulfilment in John; the Jews always understood it of the literal Elijah. As there is another consummating advent of Messiah Himself, so perhaps there is to be of his forerunner Elias, who also was present at the transfiguration.
the Lord--Hebrew, Jehovah; as this is applied to Jesus, He must be Jehovah (Mat 3:3).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On v3 3-5. The voice of him that crieth — Rather,…
3-5. The voice of him that crieth — Rather, A voice crieth, though the Septuagint and the Vulgate translate as in our version. It is rhetorically suitable to read, “Hark! a crier.” So Delitzsch. Who is the crier is not given; nor is it important. More important is what follows.
In the wilderness — Not unlikely the allusion here is, as if to a voice across the desert five hundred miles from Babylon toward Jerusalem. The scene is dramatic: Jehovah heads a column of exiles returning to Zion, as he did of old when, across from Egypt to Canaan, he conducted Israel. Both are sub-type and type of John the Baptist heralding the great coming One at a stage which completed the then pending preparatory dispensation.
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Prepare ye the way — The meaning, spiritually applied, is clear. “Prepare the roadway (of a custom immemorially far back is this an oriental picture) for the coming retinue of redeemed believers; remove rocks, level up gorges, excavate hills, and straighten crooked courses; Jehovah’s glory of victorious leading shall be seen by all.” Of this the last of Isa_40:5 is the solemn voucher. For reference of this scene to John the Baptist, see Mat_3:3; Mar_1:1, and Luk_3:4-6. See also remarks at pages 169, 170, showing Isaiah’s authorship of this chapter.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–5 3. The voice of him that crieth] The word…
3. The voice of him that crieth] The word “voice” here and often has the force of an interjection; render accordingly: Hark! one crying. The voice is not that of God (on account of the following “our God”), neither is it a human voice; it comes from one of the angelic ministers of Jehovah and is addressed to beings of the same order. The words in the wilderness should be joined with prepare ye etc., in accordance with the accents (R.V.). A.V. agrees with LXX. and Vulg. and the N.T. citations (Mat_3:3; Mar_1:3; Luk_3:4); but sense and parallelism alike shew that the Heb. accentuation is right.
Prepare] strictly “clear of obstacles” (see Gen_24:31; Lev_14:36; Psa_80:9; cf. ch. Isa_57:14, Isa_62:10; Mal_3:1). The figure is taken from the well-known Eastern practice of repairing the roads for a royal journey. It may be difficult to say how far the representation is ideal. Allusions to the march through the desert are too constant a feature of the prophecy (ch. Isa_40:10 f., Isa_41:18 f., Isa_42:16, Isa_43:19 f., Isa_48:21, Isa_49:9 ff., Isa_55:12 f.) to be treated as merely figurative; the prophet seems to have expected the deliverance to issue in a triumphal progress of Jehovah with His people through the desert between Babylonia and Palestine, after the analogy of the exodus from Egypt. But all such passages probably look beyond the material fulfilment and include the removal of political and other hindrances to the restoration of Israel.
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3–5. The prophet hears a voice calling on angelic powers to prepare the way of the Lord. It is doubtful whether Duhm is right in regarding this as a case of true prophetic “audition”; it is more naturally understood as a flight of poetic imagination.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–5 (3) The voice of him that crieth . .…
(3) The voice of him that crieth . . .—The laws of Hebrew parallelism require a different punctuation: A voice of one crying, In the wilderness, prepare ye . . . The passage is memorable as having been deliberately taken by the Baptist as defining his own mission (Joh_1:23). As here the herald is not named, so he was content to efface himself—to be a voice or nothing. The image is drawn from the march of Eastern kings, who often boast, as in the Assyrian inscriptions of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal (Records of the Past, i. 95, vii. 64), of the roads they have made in trackless deserts. The wilderness is that which lay between the Euphrates and Judah, the journey of the exiles through it reminding the prophet of the older wanderings in the wilderness of Sin (Psa_68:7; Jdg_5:4). The words are an echo of the earlier thought of Isa_35:8. We are left to conjecture to whom the command is addressed: tribes of the desert, angelic ministers, kings and rulers—the very vagueness giving a grand universality. So, again, we are not told whether the “way of Jehovah” is that on which He comes to meet His people, or on which He goes before and guides them. The analogy of the marches of the Exodus makes the latter view the more probable.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv3–5 The voice of him that crieth; rather, the voice…
The voice of him that crieth; rather, the voice of one that crieth. A voice sounds in the prophet"s ear, crying to repentance. For God to come down on earth, for his glory to be revealed in any signal way, by the restoration of a nation, or the revelation of himself in Christ, or the final establishment of his kingdom, the "way" must be first "prepared" for him. The hearts of the disobedient must be turned to the wisdom of the just. In the wilderness; either, "the wilderness of this world" (Kay), or "the wilderness separating Babylonia from Palestine" (Delitzsch), in a part of which John the Baptist afterwards preached. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. The "way of the Lord" is "the way of holiness". (Isa_35:8) There is one only mode of "preparing" it the mode adopted by John Baptist, (Mat_3:2-12) the mode pointed out by the angel who announced him, (Luk_1:17) the mode insisted on in the Collect for the Third Sunday in Advent. The voice enjoins on the prophets of the captive nation to prepare the hearts of the people for the coming manifestation of God.
Vers. 3-5. The golden age.
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Every valley shall be exalted," etc. Everything depends upon how we view the future, whether with the horoscope of history or prophecy. History says the old evils return war, strife, wrong, selfishness. Then the heart sinks, and inspiration to duty is weakened. But when we go with the prophet to the mountain-tops, we see
I PATHS OF PREPARATION. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." There are the ruins of the old military roads of the Caesars, but the Caesars are gone. There the Ptolemies of olden time made incursions, but their sway is past. But the highways of commerce, the freer intercourse of peoples; the more humanizing influences of equity in law, and reformation in punishment, the kindly workings of pity and charity to the neglected and forgotten; all these are preparation-paths for the great King who is to reign in righteousness. Not alone through the royal gates of olden prophecies, but through the triumphal arches of redeeming ideas and influences which he has set at work, the Messiah shall come.
II OBSTACLES REMOVED. "Every valley," etc. This is but a figurative way of stating that no hindrance can affect the onward march of the Redeemer. In Eastern countries the things described here were obstacles sufficient to hinder Solomon in his Eastern journeys. There were limits to his progress when he left his grand basilica to visit his wide domains. Not so will it be with One greater than Solomon.
III GLORY REVEALED. It is hidden now. Men are dazzled with false glory, with meretricious ideas of empire, and they see no beauty in Christ that they should desire him. But one day as the aesthetic student realizes in time what is true art, as the musician understands the majesty of Beethoven the moral nature of men being quickened and renewed by the Spirit, they shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. Not some here and there, but man everywhere; "all flesh shall see it together." What a vision! and what a day of jubilee! We need cherish no doubt about it. The vision is not imagination. The grand climacteric result is not predicated from a mere study of the triumph of the strongest forces. God has pledged his own word: "For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. W.M.S.
Vers. 3-6. Human preparation for the Divine advent.
We shall find, with very little seeking, a threefold application for these words:
(1) a primary one in the restoration of the Jews to Jerusalem;
(2) a historical and human one in the advent of our Lord and the founding of his kingdom;
(3) a future one in the restoration of the race to the likeness and the favour of God. The keystone of the passage we find in the fifth verse; it is the idea of the manifestation of God"s glory, which all mankind is to witness. We have, then
I THE MANIFESTED GLORY OF GOD. This was to be displayed and has been shown in two illustrations which are now historical.
1. The faithfulness and the power of Jehovah in the accomplishment of his people"s redemption from exile.
2. A more striking instance of Divine faithfulness, wisdom, and power, in the giving of the gospel of his grace, in preparing the nations of the earth for its reception, in its actual initiation and inauguration, and in its early and widespread diffusion among men.
II THE GLORY WHICH WAITS TO RE REVEALED. Christ has come, and we celebrate his advent with joy and gratitude. But it is also and equally true that he is coming. He is still "the Coming One." Across the arid wastes of indifference, and over mountains of opposition and gulfs of apparent impossibility, he is coming, and in time we shall see him the present, reigning, triumphant Lord. It is a glorious spiritual advance he is to make, and presence he is to confer, and power he is to exert; but it will be none the less glorious or gracious for its spirituality. That, indeed, will immeasurably enhance its worth, for it will be the grander, the truer, the more lasting achievement.
III THE STRENGTH OF OUR ASSURANCE CONCERNING IT. "All flesh shall see it: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." There may be many indications that Jesus Christ will one day secure a glorious victory over the disbelief, the vice, the superstition, the selfishness, the indifference of the world; but the strongest assurance we can take to our striving, yearning, sometimes wondering and doubting hearts is that "the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it:" "I, if I be lifted up," etc.
IV OUR CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS ITS COMING. "Prepare ye the way," etc.; "make straight a highway," etc. The Christian Church has to ask itself the urgent, practical question, what it can do to quicken the coming of its Lord in his redeeming and regenerating power. And it may find its answer here.
1. Fill up the gulfs of unbelief; let not lack of faith on the part of Christian men hinder the putting forth of Divine power. (Mat_13:58)
2. Remove the hills of inconsistency; let not profession and exhortation be neutralized by immoralities in life, by wide departures from the will and Word of God.
3. Take up the stones of blemish; make a patient effort to cast aside lesser evils which, if not serious obstacles, do yet trouble and impede.
4. Lay down a highway by prayer and zeal. C.
Needed preparations for Christ.
"Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord." The figure used by the prophet is one whose forte could only be fully apprehended in that country to which he belonged. Until recent years there were no roads, at least no roads on which vehicles might be drawn; only such paths, often very rough, and steep, and dangerous, as would be made by the passing to and fro of cattle and of men. But a few years ago, when Ibrahim Pasha proposed to visit certain places in Lebanon, the emirs and skeikhs sent forth messengers to all the people on the way the pasha was coming, with a proclamation very similar to this of Isaiah, commanding them that they should gather out the stones, make straight the crooked places, level the rough places, and so prepare the way for his grand cavalcade to march through. Applying this figure to Messianic times, we note that the world wanted Christ, but it was not prepared for him when he came; and it is still true of many human hearts they do really want Christ, but they are not prepared for him in his spiritual comings.
I THE WORLD WANTED CHRIST. There is no word which so exactly describes the condition of the world when Christ appeared as the term darkness. "Darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people." When God created man, or, let us say, set him forth as the Head of his creation, he put light within him, and was light unto him. But when man sinned by exalting self-will, God took his light away, and left humanity to work out the problem of life in the power of its own self-will. That problem may be stated thus: Man is satisfied with himself, with the light that is in him: then can he find his own way to God and righteousness? Can he answer for himself this question, "How shall man be just with God?" You cannot understand the history of Israel, or of the ancient world, save in the light which this representation throws upon them. Each nation took its own way in trying to solve the problem. Egyptians, and Persians, and Syrians, and Grecians, and Romans, all were working at it. But man, by himself, has always failed to discover any satisfactory solution. The light he had faded. Twilight passed into night; night grew blacker and darker; the stars were hidden by low overhanging clouds; and it was the gloom of moral midnight over all the earth when Messiah came. But the heathen, in their debasing idolatries, were conscious of bondage, and looked for a Deliverer. The Jews, though corrupted with formalism, held passionately to their hope of Messiah. The sins of the world wanted Christ. The woes of the world wanted Christ. The minds and hearts of men wanted Christ, though they could not put into shape of words their inarticulate longings. Humanity had its watchmen at every point of advantage, and again and again the question was eagerly asked, "Watchman, what of the night? watchman, what of the night?" It is interesting to notice that, whilst Christ was a babe, and as yet no shame had gathered about him, all humanity offered homage to him by its representatives, and bade him welcome to the world that so greatly needed him. Shepherds, representing the whole Jewish people, followed the angelic sign, and welcomed the Messiah-Child. Eastern Magi, star-directed, representing the whole heathen world, offered him their gold and frankincense and myrrh. And Simeon and Anna. representing the spirituals the religious classes, hailed him with the joy of believing and loving hearts.
II THE WORLD WAS NOT HEADY FOR CHRIST. They had made no room for him. The inn was full. He must find a place for himself, where he could some strange place, out in the stable, in the manger. And there was no better room for him in men"s hearts. Only let the story of his life unfold a little. Only let his hands begin to do deeds of charity; only let his lips speak words of spiritual conviction; only let him point out the follies and sins of the age; only let him show that his mission was to the poor, the sorrowing, and the sinning; only let the purity of his perfect life, like a Divine light, reveal the corruption of his times; and then he is the "despised and rejected of men;" then they hurry him forth out of the synagogue to throw him over the hanging rock; then they lead him forth, bearing his cross, and crucify him between two thieves. How is this? Why does the world want Christ, and yet, when he comes, he finds men so unprepared that they reject instead of receive him? The answer is a very simple one, but a very painful one. Men get to love sin for its own sake. They dislike, indeed, the penalties attached to it; they tremble at the consequences of it; but they love the sin and cherish it. They would gladly enough have welcomed a Saviour who would break off those chains of bondage to Rome, which had been fixed on them as a judgment for their national sins; but they did not want to part with their national pride and exclusiveness. They would gladly have welcomed a Christ who could burn up the great book of death, which so surely treasured up for them "wrath against the day of wrath;" but they did not want to give up the sins that led to spiritual death the hypocrisy, the sensuality, the multiplied forms of moral evil, which they loved and sought. Therefore who can wonder that, when Christ came as a Saviour from sin, men were not prepared for him men refused such a Christ? It is evident that the world, in its unpreparedness, needed the intense, arousing, almost terrible, preaching of John the Baptist. The work given to John was to try and alter the views of men in respect of Messiah. He preached "Repent;" change your minds; get another view of sin; see the essential evil and hatefulness of it. To all who came he spoke directly and plainly of the particular sins they loved; he demanded the giving up and putting away of individual and social sins as the necessary preparation for Messiah"s coming. This, then, is the one wrong thing sin loved for its own sake. This was the mountain that must be levelled, this the crooked place that must be made straight, this the rough place that must be made plain, before the glory of the Saviour from sin "could be revealed, and all flesh see the salvation of our God.
III WHAT WAS TRUE OF THE WORLD IS TRUE OF US. Our souls want Christ. It is sad, indeed, to be sinners, living without God, and without hope in the world. We have often felt that all was not right with us; dark shadows hung all around us, and all before us. We have looked and longed for the light. When we have thought of God and sin and the future we have cried out, "Oh that I knew where I could find him! I would come even unto his seat." Sin in us wants Christ the Saviour. Conscious separateness from God wants Christ the Reconciler. Ignorance wants Christ the Teacher. And Christ wants us. Then why is the old fact of the time of his first coming repeated among us to-day? They wanted him, but were offended at him, and cast him out; cruel hands smote him, fierce nails pierced him, scorn howled around him, and a violent death freed him from a world that was not prepared to greet him. The reason for our rejecting him is the same as theirs. We, too, are unwilling to give up our sins for Christ. We want a Saviour from punishment, from consequences, from fears, from death, from hell; but not a Saviour from sin, from self-confidence, from pride, from independence of God, from our rebelliousness, our lustings, and our self-indulgences. We want a Saviour who will give us a secure title to future bliss; but not one who will take the stony heart away, and give us a heart of flesh; not a Saviour who can deliver us from the very love of sinning, and "create in us a clean heart." Is, then, your path full of the stones, the crooked ways, the rough places, of loved sins? remember that Christ is a Saviour from sin. He is named Jesus, because he shall save his people from their sins. He will not save you at all unless you are heartily willing that he should save you from your evil self, from your loved iniquities. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv3–5 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness
Isa_40:3
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness
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The Baptist a pattern preacher
I.
DEPRECIATION OF SELF. Isaiah had predicted simply a voice; and John Baptist, accordingly, with a humility which ministers of the New Testament should follow, laid no stress on anything personal to himself--the announcement of his birth by an angel, his priestly descent, his years of preparation--though all these supplied advantages to his ministry. He concentrated attention on what he had to tell In me there is nothing to attract or benefit. I am only what centuries ago was predicted--a voice.
II. EXALTATION OF HIS MESSAGE AS DIVINE.
III. A PROCLAIMING AS THE CENTRAL TOPIC IN THE EVERLASTING MESSAGE A DIVINE, AND THEREFORE EFFECTUAL, HELPER FOR THE RUINED. He shall gather; He shall carry; He shall gently lead; All flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord (verses 10, 11, with 5). And John Baptist accordingly announced, as ministers of the New Testament should now announce, the presence in Christ Jesus of a perfect Saviour (Joh_1:26-27; Joh_1:29; Mat_3:11; Joh_3:29-30). Who among the audience of the faithful ambassador have rightly caught the message? (1Pe_2:3.)
1. Those who surrender all habits inconsistent with his call
2. Those who rejoice greatly in the guardianship and guidance of the great Deliverer proclaimed (1Pe_1:5-6).
3. Those who steadily tread in the blessed steps of His life (Luk_1:74, 1Pe_1:21). His sheep hear His voice; He knows them; they follow Him. (D. D. Stewart, M. A.)
Isa_40:3-5
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
The way of the Lord prepared
I.
THE JEWISH THEOCRACY. It is a favourite statement with those who seek to account for Christianity on entirely mundane principles, that Christ grew, as it were, out of His age. The age was waiting for some such Teacher, some such Gospel--and Teacher and Gospel came. Just as the wreck of the Roman Republic demanded a hand and brain like Caesars, and they appeared at the critical moment and reorganised the State, so the Great Preacher of the universal Gospel was called for by His times, and He came. There is something in the spirit of an age, we are told, which creates the heroes and teachers of the age. This is very interesting, and has a large measure of truth in it. Men of high genius are singularly sensitive to the influences around them, and are created while they create; but it is blankly impossible to account for Christ and Christianity by natural evolution, with the Jewish theocracy, a grand prophetic system which for nearly two thousand years looked unto and prophesied of the Messiah, standing in the way. There was existing for ages in the world, kept alive by marvellous interventions of a higher hand, a national community, whose function was distinctly, from first to last, to prepare the way for the Advent, for the Divine kingdom which was to rule over and to bless mankind. These Jews were set to bear witness of the reality of the Divine rule, and its necessity, if states were to be saved from chaos, and the whole world from wreck. There was a period, when Moses led them in the wilderness, when the theocracy came out with wonderful clearness. Then there was a period, under their kings, when, through their worldly conformity to the life of surrounding nations, the theocracy was obscured. But the captivity ended that conformity in sorrow and in shame. From the time of the captivity the idea of the theocracy was restored. The prophets are throughout its great witnesses. The expectation, as matter of history, grew intense as the Advent approached. The expectation of the Advent of a Being, a Person, who should fulfil the promise and the prophecy with which their national life and literature were charged; who should bring, what Christ has brought--a Gospel of salvation to the world. It is a wonderful feature of thepreparation, that just as the nation which exhibited the theocracy was dying away as a nation its belief in the theocracy grew more intense, and its witness grew more clear and impressive to the approaching Advent of the great world theocrat--the Christ.
II. THE JEWISH DISPERSION. It was a very wonderful chain of providential agencies which, before the Advent, scattered that people, these witnesses so charged with the promise and the prophecy, through the civilised world. Up to the time of the captivity the Jews kept themselves in a kind of stem, or, as the heathen around them called it, a sullen isolation. They cherished the sense of a lofty superiority. But, after the captivity, they displayed a singular facility of dispersion, a happy art of settling and flourishing among the Gentile peoples, which makes them to this day, pace the Anglo-Saxon, the first settlers of the world. In every chief city of the empire which Alexander founded a colony of Jews was sure to be settled; and the same state of things afterwards obtained in the far wider empire of Rome. In order to appreciate the significance of this, you must estimate the utter confusion of human beliefs and ideas about Divine things and beings which had been the fruit of the Greek and Roman conquests. Neither Greek nor Roman had belief enough in his gods to impose them on the conquered nations; nor did they find anything Divine among the conquered nations which seemed better worth worshipping than their own. This confusion of religious ideas and systems and deities, none of which had power to emerge with absolute or even strong claims to belief, was profoundly detrimental to moral earnestness, and indeed to any high-toned belief about Divine things. There was an utter confusion and decay of faith. But here were communities settled among them who had an absolute and indestructible belief in their Revelation. They had a God to worship of whom they could give intelligible account. The Jews lived among the heathen in isolation still; but the isolation was visibly based on a religious faith, and on religious records. These Jews, scattered abroad, were witnesses everywhere of the reality and necessity of Divine revelation to, and Divine legislation for, man. They familiarised men with the ideas which Christianity proclaimed, and on which it rested its authoritative claim to the homage and the obedience of mankind.
III. THERE WAS A VERY REMARKABLE CHANGE WITHIN THE BOSOM OF HEATHEN SOCIETY ITSELF, IN ITS INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL IDEAS, WHICH NOT ONLY OPENED THE WAY FOR THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, BUT SEEMED TO DEMAND SOME SUCH REVELATION OF TRUTH TO MANKIND. Students of philosophy note a very decided progress between the age of Socrates and the age of Seneca in the consideration of questions bearing on mans individual life and destiny. The supreme interest of a mans life in the golden age of Greek philosophy lay in his relations, as a member of a society, as a citizen of a State. Within the little circle of Athenian society men realised a closeness of relation to each other, which made the State something of a household. The conquests of Alexander created an entirely new order of things. The Greek became, not the citizen of a State almost domestic in its magnitude and character, but the subject of a great Empire, lost in an undistinguished mass of fellow-subjects, and quite cut adrift from the landmarks and the moorings by which he had been wont to steer and stay his life. The Greek must think about himself and his world, and Alexander led him out into a world too big for him, which oppressed and distracted him, and overthrew all the traditions of his schools. It was a world, too, of ceaseless conflict and change. The state of the Greek world between Alexanders conquests and the establishment of Roman supremacy, say, roughly, two hundred years, was such as to throw the thinker back upon himself, to lead him to realise his individual responsibility, to force on him the question, What, after all, am I? Whence did I come? For what am I here? Whither do I tend? I am in a world full of confusion and misery--how am I to regulate my life, so that my happiness may not become a wreck? So the great thinkers increasingly concerned themselves with questions which had to do with the individual man, his duty, his responsiblilty, his destiny, his means of arming himself for the battle of life, his means of saving himself from utter and hopeless loss. Thus there was a growing tendency in men to consider very much the question which Christianity came to treat of as salvation. The thoughts of man, the longings and aspirations of man, seem to be led up step by step to the point in which the cry, Lord, save, or I perish! was ready, did he but know all the meaning of his dumb pain, to fashion itself on his lips. All was waiting for the proclamation, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, etc. When men went abroad and proclaimed the Advent of a Saviour, they found a ready entrance to the worlds sad, wistful heart.
IV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Incomparably the most important secular herald of the Advent was the Empire--an Empire under whose sceptre such a decree could go forth (Luk_2:1). There are many points of view from which the Empire may be regarded as the herald of the kingdom which was destined to master it, and found on it the edifice of Christian society. We are working and building on the foundations of the Empire still. The whole of modern European society is but the fully developed Empire of Rome. It is the centre of the secular, as the Advent of Christ is the centre of the spiritual, history of mankind. I might say much about the universal peace, which made the preaching of a universal Gospel possible. About the universal law and language, which made the career of the preachers, at any rate, far easier and more rapid than it could have been in any previous state of society. The fundamental question opened by the Empire is also a fundamental question of Christianity, the relation of men to each other. Is it enmity? is it brotherhood? Is the struggle for existence the ruling principle of progress, or brotherly sympathy, care, and love? The state of natural enmity and constant war gave way to a state in which peace, good-fellowship, and mutual ministries were regarded as the natural condition of society. Briton and Egyptian, Syrian and Spaniard, formed together a great political unity; and were drawn into bonds of relation to each other, the nature and bearings of which men were eager to explore. There rose on the minds of men the idea of human brotherhood. Men began to speculate about a common good in which civilised humanity was to share, and a duty of the whole human community to its weaker members, its sick, its poor, its wretched. Men wanted to know why and how they were brethren, why and how they were to love. And so arose perhaps the greatest herald of the Advent in secular society, the longing for a kingdom which should fulfil the promise which Rome in the nature of things was constantly breaking; and give peace, concord, love to a distracted world. Thus the way was prepared, the highway through the desert was made. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
The Divine glory revealed in Christ
I. ITS LITERAL ACCOMPLISHMENT.
1. In the appearance of John the Baptist. Ages rolled away, and no such preparing voice was heard in the desert of Judea. But it was at length heard.
2. Following the footsteps of the servant, comes the Master. And as John had said, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, then was the glory of God manifested; and all flesh, living at that time in Judea, saw it together: the glory of God in human nature. Jesus Christ was the visible image of the glory of God all the time He was on earth. The visible image--
(1) Of the power of God. His works were Divine; His word was power. See His power over the elements.
(2) Of the truth of God. The doctrine of Christ has brought us nearer to the unclouded truth of the Divine mind than men were ever brought before.
(3) Of the holiness of God; and that even while He was man upon earth.
(4) Of the justice of God. Though this is not so frequently adverted to as other attributes, yet it is important. Why did Christ die so willingly? If, then, the glory of God was revealed even in the lowliness and sufferings of the Saviour, I ask if the coming of Christ had not in it more real pomp than if He had come with all the grandeur of an Eastern monarch, to a people who waited for Him?
II. ITS SPIRITUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. This is seen in the manifestation of Christ to the hearts of men. In this there is both preparation and manifestation; for Christ, in mercy, no more bursts upon the soul at once than He did upon the world; He sends His messenger to prepare the way before Him; this is the first part of the process. That preparing herald, figured by John the Baptist, is repentance. Consider what repentance is, and you will see how it prepares the soul for Christ, for pardon, happiness, and purity.
1. The first element is a deep and serious conviction of the fact of our sin. For if we justify ourselves, there will be no preparation.
2. The second element is a conviction of the extreme danger of sin and its infinite desert.
3. The third element is a burdened and disquieted spirit. This supposes a feeling that we are not able to deliver ourselves. The way of the Lord is then plain; all obstructions are removed when we come to this; for all true repentance, like the preaching of John the Baptist, concludes by saying, Behold the Lamb of God! It is here alone that we see the glory of God. For what is the happiness of a pardoned soul, but one of the brightest manifestations of the glory of God upon earth? Here is a visible manifestation of the glory of the Divine patience; that man, amidst all his repeated provocations, should at last be saved and made happy. The glory of the grace of God! What a comment on the words of the apostle, By grace are ye saved! And then, see the glory of that working of the Divine power by which the soul is finally brought into the enjoyment of all the mind that was in Christ; the soul changing from glory to glory, and the work completed by an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom. This is the manifestation of Christ to the soul.
III. ITS ALLEGORICAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. It is seen in the establishment of Christs kingdom upon earth. He sends forth His heralds. It is by the ministry of His Gospel that His dominion is established. The doctrine to be preached is that of repentance. So St. Paul preached at Athens. The manifestation of the master follows. Here is a manifestation of the glory of the heavenly wisdom, raising, exalting, and purifying the human intellect; of the Divine righteousness, putting a stop to all cruelty and injury. The glory of peace and harmony; the union of mans heart to man, the extinction of external wars, and the diffusion of internal harmony. The glory of that order among families, and societies, and nations, preserved, and sanctified, and so regulated that no part infringes on the other, but the whole proceeds harmoniously, like a piece of sound mechanism. The glory of mercy and charity: teaching men to remember those that are in afflictions, as being themselves in like manner afflicted. This is a glory peculiar to the Christian revelation. (R. Watson.)
Preparation for the Advent Messiah
A positive preparation of the race itself was necessary, before the plan of redemption could be successfully revealed. This preparation was gradually going forward at the same time that our moral helplessness was so amply illustrated. If we reflect upon the nature of the Christian revelation we shall be convinced that its conceptions belong to an advanced period of civilisation. It addresses itself exclusively to the spiritual nature of man. But, in the earlier periods of our race, our conceptions are all from without; they have to do almost exclusively with sensible objects. The Gospel has to do with thought, feeling, sentiment, motive, and all their various attributes; and it could not be well understood until the mind of man had become somewhat at home in these conceptions. Nor is this all. The Christian religion addresses itself to the moral nature, the conscience of man.
I. Hence, a remedial dispensation would naturally be delayed, until the moral character of man, both individual and social, had been fully displayed; and MANKIND HAD BECOME IN SOME DEGREE CAPABLE OF APPRECIATING THE FACTS THUS PRESENTED TO THEIR NOTICE. But, besides this, the Gospel is a revelation communicated to man by language, and its authenticity, as is meet, is attested by miracles. Now, considerable progress must have been made in civilisation before such testimony could be given as we would be willing to receive on a question of so vital importance. Until the laws of nature are to some extent known, we cannot determine whether the Creator has or has not in a particular case departed from them. And this leads us to observe, again, that a revelation from God to man, informing him of this wonderful change in the conditions of his probation,--a revelation designed for all ages to the end of time, and destined towork a perfect transformation in the moral character of our race,--could not have been completed until language had arrived at a considerable degree of perfection. It was necessary that the doctrines and motives peculiar to the new dispensation should be promulgated with all possible explicitness, and yet guarded from all tendency either to incompleteness or excess. Amidst all the agitations of society, throughout all the overturnings of empire, the human mind, during this long period, had been gradually attaining maturity. Each nation, during its brief existence, had either added something to the stock of human knowledge, or made some contribution to the materials for human thought. Every revolution had illustrated in some new phase the principles of conduct, and had bequeathed the lesson to succeeding generations.
II. We see, then, that God not only prepared a language in which this revelation for all coming ages could, be written, but HE DIFFUSED THAT LANGUAGE OVER THE CIVILISED WORLD. He created a suitable vehicle for the truth, and He made that vehicle, as far as was necessary, universal. And this work was accomplished by means of the ambition of Alexander, and the all-grasping love of dominion of the citizens of Rome. Men ignorant of the existence and character of the true God, bowing down to the senseless images which their own hands had fashioned, indulging without restraint their own corrupt passions, were thus advancing His purposes, and opening the way for the advent of His Son.
III.
One other condition remains yet to be observed.
The nations inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean were originally distinct in government, dissimilar in origin, diverse in laws, habits, and usages, and almost perpetually at war.
To pass from one to the other without incurring the risk of injury, nay, even of being sold into slavery, was almost impossible.
A stranger and an enemy were designated by the same word.
It was necessary that these various peoples should all be moulded into one common form; that one system of laws should bind them all in harmony. This seems to have been needful, in order that the new religion might be rapidly and extensively promulgated. In order to accomplish this purpose WAS THE ROMAN EMPIRE RAISED UP, AND ENTRUSTED WITH THE SCEPTRE OF UNIVERSAL DOMINION. In many respects it resembled the dominion of Great Britain at the present day in Asia. We perceive that the overturnings of forty centuries were required in order to prepare the world for the advent of the Messiah. The same omniscient wisdom has ever since been engaged in carrying forward the work which was then commenced. (D. Wayland, LL. D.)
Vox clamantis
It were surely a vain thing for a voice to cry in the wilderness where none can hear but the startled wild animals; where there are no sympathetic human hearts that can thrill with its message. But we must remember that of old the wilderness had a strange, weird attraction for many who aspired to live a holy life. And other souls who had similar longings, but did not possess the means or the courage to gratify them, would resort to the hermit of the wilderness for counsel and benediction.
1. The metaphor, so wild and striking, of a voice crying in the wilderness, is as appropriate as metaphor could be for representing the man of God who, in a degenerate age, lifts up his voice to declare the truth, to reprove sin, to call men to a new life. Rocks are not harder than hearts sometimes; the wandering blustering winds are not more inattentive to the speakers message than are some souls. To a divinely taught spirit nothing is so truly a desert as the crowded city. To him it is lonely, forbidding, sad, yet mightily attractive, awakening his tenderest compassions, calling forth his mightiest and most patient exertions.
2. Now that it has been done, we probably fall into the way of thinking that nothing was easier than for John the Baptist to preach to the Jews of the time of Herod, or for our Lord to open His mission to the same people, or for Paul to preach Christ at Corinth and Athens and Rome. How different the reality! Could any one of the inhabitants of these places have been consulted by Gods messenger beforehand he would probably have said: Do you think that these cavilling, disputing doctors and philosophers will ever give credence to such stories as you bring? Do you think that these pleasure-loving people will ever wear the yoke of such an austere religion of self-sacrifice as you proclaim? Go home to your ordinary work again, and dont trouble yourself to speak a message which nobody will hear; or if you cannot be at peace unless you say something about it, then go into the desert and speak it to yourself and to nature; for your chances of succeeding will be as great there as anywhere. Strange all this, yet more strange the fact that it is the wilderness and the solitary place which shall rejoice and be glad for the messenger of God who comes to prepare Messiahs way. The unlikely ground yields the harvest; they that are afar off come nigh. The voice in the wilderness is that of a herald announcing that a Greater One is on His way; be ye ready to receive Him. Widespread, radical, and lasting reformation was not achieved through the word of the Baptist; but such souls as could be prepared for the coming of the Lamb of God were aroused, called, separated from the hardened and worldly and unbelieving, and placed under discipline and teaching. From among their number our Lord chose His first disciples and chief apostles. Beyond the fringe of that little company which kept close to the Baptist something of good also was done. A wave of spiritual feeling passed over a great part of the nation; Jerusalem was greatly excited, if not savingly renewed. A general condition of desire was produced.
3. There are many advents of the Son of God, and for every one of them there is some forerunner, some voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye His way; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The voice of some John the Baptist has gone ringing through the wilderness of a dead faith, of a formal worship, of a worldly life, and men have been startled into attention, have been made conscious of shortcomings and sins. And although God never ceases to work among men, yet we come on barren dreary years of history, a very desert, when the signs of the Divine working are not apparent. Then arises some John the Baptist, or a general sense of dissatisfaction pervades the Churches, a sense of shortcoming and of shame, and the obstructions to a Divine manifestation are swept out of the way. Hardly a decade passes now without a cry arising from the Churches themselves: Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight. Their conscience becomes increasingly quick and true; their ideal grows nobler; their conception of the Christian life assimilates to the standard given in the Word of God. And with attainment comes a longing for more, a sense of need, a craving for God. Then let us prepare His way, as we would that of a dear Friend whom we long to see, and whom we would not keep from us by any neglect or disrespect of ours. (J. P. Gledstone.)
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
I. GOD HAS MANY MESSENGERS, AND THEY HAVE OFTEN LIFTED UP THEIR VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. Some speak with a voice of thunder to arouse a sleeping world. The doctrine of others distils as the dew. Some open new paths to the seekers after wisdom: to others it is given to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. Ever since man was driven from Eden he has been a wanderer in the desert. The thorn and the thistle around him are the emblems of the sin and the sorrow which spiritually mark his nomad state of existence. No wonder, then, that the wilderness is so often used as an emblem of this present life, in which you and I must listen to the voice of Heavens messengers. We want more law work. Our consciences are too easily satisfied. Modern religion is far too superficial. The law prepares for the Gospel. The Comforter must first convince of sin.
II. ISAIAH USES IT AS AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS OWN MINISTRY. He, too, living now probably in the idolatrous reign of Manasseh, felt himself in a spiritual desert. Yet by faith he sees afar off, and the seer is himself transported into that bright future. Already foreseeing the seventy years captivity of Judah, and then the joyful return of the exiles under the decree of Cyrus, Isaiah writes of these events as if himself living and acting among them. Yea more, he pictures the dawn of the day as ushered in by that return from Babylon.
III. THE TRANSITION IS EASY TO THE PERSONAL TIMES OF THE MESSIAH, AND OF HIS HERALD, JOHN THE BAPTIST. The homely and heart-searching appeals of the Baptist proved him to be the pioneer of the righteous King. Before this wilderness preacher the mountains of Pharisaic pride were levelled, the valleys of Sadducean unbelief were filled up, the tortuous vices of the courtly Judaean were corrected, and the rude ignorance of the Galilean smoothed and reformed.
IV. But even in this day THE WORDS HAD A WIDER SIGNIFICATION. Not only the land of Israel, but the Gentile world, even all flesh, was then being prepared to see the salvation of God. The former was accomplished by Johns own preaching; of the latter he was only the herald. Providential agencies were even then at work preparing Christs way among the Gentiles.
1. At the time when our Saviour was born the knowledge of the Greek language had spread more widely throughout Asia and Europe than has since been the case with any other tongue. What a preparation was this for the spread of the Christian religion. We know that there is no greater harrier separating nations than a difference of language. But at the very period when Christianity began to be published it found one language generally read and understood from the Alps to the Caucasus; and so the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament could now travel, with the gospels and epistles, to the many provinces of the Roman Empire; for the valleys had been exalted, and the mountains and hills made low.
2. A second preparation designed by Gods providence was--the extent of Roman dominion. The chief means employed by that great Empire for consolidating her possessions were her roads and her laws.
(1) It was literally true that, owing to Roman dominion, both in Europe and Asia, the crooked had been made straight and the rough places plain. That sagacious people recognised the civilising power of good roads through their Empire just as we do now of railways in our Indian and other colonies.
(2) It is the province of law to rectify abuses and remove difficulties: and to effect this among the nations Rome ever felt to be her mission. Wherever she planted her colonies she invited all people to share her privileges, and to dwell in safety under the aegis of her laws. Was not this, then, a moral via strata made for the spread of Christianity?
V. HOW THIS PROPHECY SHEDS A LUSTRE ON THE WORLDS FUTURE. Once more in this wide desert the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and not one, but all lands shall see it together. Yes, He who ascended into heaven shall so come again. Are we ready for that day? Are we making others ready? I believe that every Christian should be as the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The true Church, in short, must remain in the desert until the mystic times are fulfilled. She is to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Meanwhile the voice of prophecy is given to cheer her amidst trial and disappointment. We labour for years to tunnel through the Alps: shall we not labour patiently to prepare the way of the Lord? (S. P. Jose, M. A.)
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
I. THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS WHICH HINDER THE SPREAD OF THE REDEEMERS KINGDOM, spoken of here as valleys, hills, etc. Heathenism abroad: ignorance and vice at home. Intemperance hinders the progress of Gods kingdom on every hand.
1. Intemperance hinders the progress of Gods kingdom at home. Our country is occupied by three armies--an army of paupers, an army of criminals, and an army of police, to stand between the vicious and the virtuous, and protect the latter from the assaults of the former. How is this? There is this huge evil established amongst us, which casts its dread shadow over everything that is lovely and of good report. Where, e.g., are the working men of England to be found to-day? Not in the house of prayer. In the case of many of them, they have no suitable clothes; but why is this? Because wages are low? Because trade is bad? I answer, because the money is carried to the public-house, and is thus worse than wasted. There are some who go many times, perhaps regularly, to the house of God, and yet are not saved. Why? The grand neutraliser of the Gospel is the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors.
2. It is also a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel abroad.
(1) They tell us that we cannot, as Christians, take possession of the world, because we have not the means. Is it a truth that England, the richest land upon earth, made rich too by her Christianity, has done what she could for Him who redeemed her when she gives eightpence per head for the conversion of the world? Is it so? Alas! no; for while we have done this, we have spent £4 per head on strong drink.
(2) They say the world is not converted because we have not the men--especially suitable men. How is this? There are men to be found for everything else. One reason is, that the drinking customs have done much to enervate the Church. Strong drink aims high. It aims at the men of active brain and warm heart.
(3) Then there is the third reason--want of success. There are European barriers that are much stronger than heathenism and idolatry. The missionary tells us, over and over again, that he is far more afraid of English drinking than of native idolatry.
II. IT IS THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO SWEEP THIS ENEMY AWAY. God has decreed that these mountains shall perish.
1. The Church can remove this mountain. Look at her power as a teacher. Are not the children of our country in her hands? Look at the political power which she possesses. Is there an election in which the Christian Church cannot turn the balance? She has not only the ordinary power which men have, but she has omnipotence at her command.
2. The Church must, if she would hold her own. If we are not assailing strong drink, it is assailing us.
3. The Church must, if she would please her Master. How are we to proceed? Abstinence first; then entire prohibition of the traffic.
III. THE GLORIOUS RESULT. (C. Garrett.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
I. THE ADVENT IMPLIED. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
1. The Lord here spoken of is doubtless the supreme Jehovah; and from the appropriation of the passage by inspired authority to Christ, I apprehend nothing less can be intended than to intimate that He who was coming was the true God and eternal Life. This was that Immanuel who was to bring in an everlasting righteousness, to redeem and restore the Israel of God, and accomplish salvation for all the ends of the earth. Let us, then, inquire, Is this interpretation of the passage justified by other scriptures, and especially by the event itself? Assuredly He came with all the signs and demonstrations of incarnate Deity. He Himself laid express claim to this high character, and most manifestly displayed the perfections which it involves. With these sublime views of His character agrees the testimony of all His inspired apostles.
2. The disciples of John were required to contemplate here the true Messiah coming to effect salvation, to fulfil all the promises made of old to their fathers. It is, therefore, of great interest and importance to ascertain what was involved in that character, and what was the work assigned Him to do. It is expressly declared that He came to do the will of God,--to magnify the law and make it honourable,--to render to it a perfect obedience, and make reconciliation for iniquity.
3. The way of the Lord to us must be understood of His approach to our consciences and hearts by His word and spirit.
II. The charge to prepare the way of the Lord implies that there ARE DIFFICULTIES OR OBSTACLES IN HIS WAY.
1. There is the pride and self-righteousness of the human heart,
2. The heart is by nature hard and impenitent, blinded to its own defects, and, even after the confession of them, unwilling to have them condemned or to give them up.
3. The state of human desires and affections presents other and formidable obstacles to the claims of the Lord. Their desires are low--their affections carnal. The poor grovelling heart must be raised to noble and exalted ends and aims.
4. In some there exists a mass of prejudice, and the truth of Christ is viewed under a false light, or through a perverting medium. They will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, and they cannot enter therein. Some are prejudiced against the authority of revelation--some against the mysteries of godliness--some against the doctrines of grace or salvation by the merit of another; and many dislike the holiness, the self-denial, the separation from the world which Christianity inculcates.
5. Repentance is necessary to prepare the way; humility, to receive and learn the doctrine; prayer, to give it success in the heart; and watchfulness, to carry it out into practice. Every one who is himself a disciple of the Lord, has something to do in preparing the way of Christ in the earth. (G. Redford, LL. D.)
The road maker
(with Mattheew 3:3):--To the writers of the Gospel story this vivid expression seems to have commended itself as peculiarly applicable to the Baptist. He came heralding the speedy advent of the Messiah, and his life and ministry were a preparation for the greater life and more potent ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. In all essentials that task still remains to be performed. The modern road maker--the herald and hastener of a better and holier day--must be distinguished--
I. BY A PROFOUND SENSE OF THE EVIL OF THE PRESENT. The prophet was no blind optimist cherishing a foolish hope of a happier future because he did not see the abounding evils around him. He saw with clear, penetrating eyes the moral and spiritual degradation of his nation and day. He speaks of it, ay, and of the national evils which must issue from it--exile, defeat, the overthrow of their beautiful city. That is true of the prophetic band from first to last--from Elijah to John. The man who deliberately closes his eyes to the evils of his day, or seeing them minimises their importance, or in thought disguises them by some euphonious phrase, will never--let his life be prolonged to beyond the age of the patriarchs--prepare the way of the Lord. Too many of us live in an imaginary world as different as possible from the world of stern fact. The men who do most in their own generation to make a way for a better day in the future are usually the men who see clearly one wrong which needs righting, one obstacle which needs removing, one lie which needs refuting, and give themselves to the doing of that one thing--e.g., Wilberforce and slavery, Wesley and Evangelism, Cobden and Free Trade, Booth and the submerged tenth. One word of warning. To look fearlessly at the evils of your own day is not without danger. Not until that Voice which speaks of comfort through forgiveness has been heard and welcomed does the call come which bids hands and feet and active will prepare the way of the Lord.
II. BY AN UNQUENCHABLE FAITH IN THE FUTURE. The road maker is an optimist because he is a man of faith. There is an optimism which is both foolish and unfounded. But if the optimist has first looked facts in the face, and then rises by sheer force of faith in God above all that contradicts his hope, his optimism is not a vice, but a shining and beneficent virtue. Such was this prophets. So with John. He is certain, despite the manifold evils--moral and social--that afflict his people, that the day of the Lord sanointed will be a glorious day--a day of great things; and he speaks of it and of Him whose shoe-latchet he is not worthy to unloose with an unbounded faith. He must increase; I must decrease. Note on what the road maker rests--not on man. All flesh is grass; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God endureth for ever. The people have Gods Word; when all their human leaders have fallen, and every visible authority for God is taken away, this shall be their rally and their confidence.
III. BY HIS READINESS TO SERVE OR SUFFER. So Isaiah: so John. No good cause but has exacted its toll of both from heroic hearts that have espoused it. (W. H. Williams.)
Comfort for the afflicted Church
I. THE DESIGN OF THIS PROPHECY is to speak peace and comfort to an afflicted Church. Not only to the Jewish Church under a temporal captivity, but to every Christian Church, and every faithful soul.
1. Every valley shall be exalted. As the way St. John was sent to prepare by repentance was in the hearts of men, this must express some change to be wrought in those hearts. And what does it proclaim, but that humility is the way to glory?
2. Every mountain and hill shall be made low. As the lowly and fruitful valleys represent the meek and pious servants of Christ, so do the lofty and barren mountains point out to us the haughty and unprofitable children of this world that oppose Him.
3. The crooked shall be made straight. This is a most essential part in a highway, the end and intent of which is, to lead those who travel in it directly to the place and city where they would be. Man, at his creation, was placed in the straight way to heaven and happiness. Had he kept the eyes of his faith steadily fixed upon it, and walked directly on in the path of Gods commandments, he had soon arrived at it. But he listened to the suggestions of the devil, who drew him out of it, pretending to show him a pleasanter and shorter road than that appointed. But no sooner was man a sinner than God was a Saviour. When the valley of humility is exalted by faith and the mountain of pride and self-sufficiency brought low in your hearts, the crooked shall instantly be made straight before you.
4. The rough places plain. When the low ground is raised, the high levelled, and the whole marked out with a line and made straight, nothing remains but to clear away all obstructions.
II. The words thus explained, what remains but that we APPLY THEM TO OURSELVES, FOR THE DIRECTION OF OUR PRACTICE? (Bp. Horne.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
I. THE DUTY OF PREPARING THE WAY OF THE LORD.
1. The herald. Allusion is here made to an ancient custom, according to which heralds were sent before to prepare the way for the monarch when he was about to march from one place to another. Christian ministers are the voice of God crying in the wilderness. The very circumstance of this voice being needed shows the disordered state of man by nature. It is not enough for ministers gently to remind men of their state and duty--they must cry. Very many are the souls that need to be thus roused.
2. The scene of his labours--the wilderness. This is highly descriptive of the state of men in every age. A wilderness, a desert, indeed, is this world, while void of Gods grace; destitute of beauty, and unfruitful as to every good work.
3. What is the work to which the herald calls? As far as we have it in our power, we are to aid in removing whatever hinders the reception of Christ in the world. What is it hinders the reception of Christ in our own hearts? The success of the messenger will ever depend upon his looking up to the Lord.
II. OUR ENCOURAGEMENTS.
1. Every difficulty, however formidable, shall be surmounted. For every valley shall be exalted, etc. What are the difficulties which present themselves? In the work of salvation there are two leading classes of impediments.
(1) Internal. These are in every heart. There is much anxiety and depression: we are ready to imagine there is no hope; here are the valleys to be exalted. Some are puffed up with conceit of their own merit, and will not come to Christ; here are mountains to be made low. There are some untractable, obstinate passions; here are the roughnesses which are to be made plain. Who is sufficient for all this? None but the Lord alone.
(2) External. In introducing the Gospel among the heathen there are many difficulties.
2. There shall be an universal manifestation of the Divine glory. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. There was a great manifestation of the Divine glory when Cyrus and the foes of the Church were made the instruments of delivering Gods people from their captivity. Christians! this is not our work, or we should soon be dismayed. It is the way of the Lord. He is to work; He is to display His own glory. What tenderness and-condescension has God shown!
3. The certainty of all this. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. When one promises who can fulfil our wishes, we have all the encouragement we can possibly need. In no blindness of mistaken zeal, in no rashness of enthusiasm, yet with all holy boldness, let us labour to prepare the way of the Lord. (W. Williams.)
The Kings highway
I. VALLEYS MUST BE LEVELED UP.
1. Inattention.
(1) If we attend not to the Gospel message we can neither realise its importance nor secure its benefits.
(2) Those who absent themselves from the house of God are indifferently prepared for the coming of the Lord.
(3) So those who while there allow their minds to wander upon their merchandise, pleasures, etc., are ill prepared for the coming of the King.
2. Apathy.
(1) Thousands of professors of religion put forth little effort in the cause of God.
(2) Begin with yourself. Make a stir among your neighbours. Begin now.
3. Despondency.
(1) There are those who are so affected with a sense of their sinfulness that they fear to trust in Christ for salvation.
(2) Some professors take a morbid, gloomy view of the work of God.
II. EMINENCES MUST BE LEVELLED DOWN.
1. The mountain of pride must be reduced.
(1) The pride that will not make full confession of sin.
(2) The pride that will not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child.
(3) The pride of reason that will not accept salvation until its mysteries are comprehended.
(4) The progress of Christ is also hindered by the worldly pride of professors.
2. The mountain of presumption must be depressed.
(1) Sinners are presumptuous when, without forsaking their sins, they attempt to believe for salvation.
(2) Professors are presumptuous when they expect the work of God to revive in the Church without exerting themselves to promote a revival.
(3) While we work as though everything depended upon working, we must trust as though everything depended upon trusting.
3. The hills of ingratitude must be brought low.
(1) Some are ostensibly so zealous for the conversion of sinners that they forget to thank God for the good He is bestowing.
(2) There are others who will not rejoice when they hear good tidings of the work of God, because they are not themselves the subjects of that work.
III. THE CROOKED PLACES MUST BE STRAIGHTENED.
1. Prejudice.
(1) Some object to the movements of the blessed Jesus because He comes too loudly.
(2) Others complain because He comes too silently.
(3) Some dislike them because publicans and harlots are getting converted.
(4) Others find fault because the work of grace takes hold upon the better classes.
(5) And there are those who disparage the work of God among the children because they are too young. Nothing pleases crooked prejudice.
2. Jealousy.
(1) It hears that sinners are converted, but is not pleased because the converts have joined other churches.
(2) We may be anxious for the prosperity of Gods work for party purposes.
(3) How admirable was the spirit of Paul, who rejoiced that Christ was preached, no matter by whom!
3. Censoriousness.
(1) None of us are so perfect that we can afford to be severely scrutinised. We should therefore endeavour to put the best construction upon each others conduct.
(2) We should be especially careful not to impeach good men with want of zeal for God because they differ from us in judgment as to the best way to promote His work.
4. Covetousness.
(1) The acquisition of property is the one end for which some persons appear to exist. It is to no purpose to remind such persons that the world is perishing, and that the Church missions are languishing for want of funds
(2) Can the God of benevolence bless a covetous Church?
(3) The cure for covetousness is giving.
IV. THE ROUGH PLACES MUST BE SMOOTHED.
1. That ugly rock of Sabbath desecration must be removed.
(1) God did not institute His day for our amusement.
(2) It was not instituted to encourage idleness. It is separated from the toil of secular business.
2. That rut of drunkenness must be filled up.
3. Those sinks of immorality must be filled. Lying, cheating, oppression, uncleanness.
4. The rough places of instability must be smoothed.
(1) Like the chameleon, which takes the colour of every object on which it rests, there are those who never remain the same person for four-and-twenty hours. Treating Church membership as a coat that might be put on or off at pleasure.
(2) At one moment they are all in a flame, the next moment they are cold as ice. Sometimes they appear like the oak, at other times like the reed that is shaken with the wind.
(3) In the Church they are one thing, in the world another. Yet are they the noisiest fault-finders against the quiet, steady, unostentatious workers. (F. W.Macdonald, M. A.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
(with Luk_3:10-14):--
I. EXTERNAL PREPARATION (Isa_40:3-5). Our King has notified usthat He wants to encircle this world with His glory, and we are the pioneers to make way for His chariot. Let me indicate a few things about this work if you are going to make it a grand success.
1. There must be a willingness to undertake it. Indifference will kill the enterprise. Difficulties will appear; there must be courage and a cool head to guide a brave heart. Three things must be prominent--
(1) Regularity of effort.
(2) A desire to find ones own particular work.
(3) Surrender to the guidance of the Spirit.
2. There must be an appreciation of the importance of the work. If the King has given an order, there must be some reason for it; and when the carrying out of that order involves careful planning and difficult execution we must infer the importance of the result, and hence of the preparation.
(1) Cutting down forests. What are the dead trees in the way? Apostate Christians. They lie right across the Kings track, and He has to rein up until somebody removes them. What are the strong, sturdy, even luxuriant trees on the way? Worldly Christians.
(2) Levelling the hills. Pride is a high hill. Unbelief is a considerable mountain. Criticism is a rocky mound.
(3) Filling up the hollows. Oh, the deficiencies in the Church to make up!
II. INTERNAL PREPARATION (Luk_3:10-14). Every pioneer of the coming King must observe these demands.
1. Generosity. A niggardly nature is too narrow quarters for the Lord to dwell in.
2. Justice.
3. Peaceableness. It was the soldiers duty to fight, but only when necessary, and only to secure peace. The ultimate aim of justifiable war is always peace. When you have got the way all prepared, you will find that it is--
(1) A highway for the King.
(2) A way of blessing for His subjects.
(3) A way beginning with a cross and ending with a crown. (W. H. G. Temple.)
A great work requires preparation
There is a lesson which man is taught in many ways, but which he is very slow to learn. It is the necessity of preparation before any great work can be taken in hand and brought to a prosperous end. Before men begin to build, they must dig the foundation. Before they reap the harvest they must sow the seed and prepare the soil. The truth is an elementary one and yet through neglect of it, many a good work has failed, many an earnest worker has despaired. And the greater and more lasting the work, the longer and deeper the preparation must be. Things which shoot up quickly, quickly pass away. A tree does not spring up in a night. A nation is not born in a day. History shows us the long period of conception, and the painful period of travail, before great ideas can be brought to the birth and great changes can be wrought in the political world. Geology again teaches us the countless number of the ages of preparation in which this earth was fitted to be the home of man. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Preparation for the coming of Christ
There is one event in the worlds history which by every Christian must be admitted to be unique, alike in itself and in its consequences. The coming of God in the flesh, bringing life to a dying world, light to a dark world, peace to a world at enmity with God, may find its types and shadows, but it can find no parallels amongst other historical facts. There had been comings of great men, but never the coming of the great God. There had been revelations of truth, but now the Truth Himself was revealed. Great kingdoms had been set up quickly to pass away, but now the world-wide eternal kingdom was established. We may call it a crisis in history; indeed it was. It was the crisis, the turning-point in the history of the world, the turning-power in the history of each individual man. We may describe it in its results as a re-creation, but even that word is inadequate, unless it means much more than a restoration of the old creation to its original beauty and perfection. The preparation for this unique event, how can we exaggerate its importance! So much preparation was needed for any one of the ages; how much more for that which is described as the fulness of them all! So many agencies were set at work to fit this world to be the home of man; how can we overestimate the preliminary work by which men were prepared to be the home of God? (F. Watson, M. A.)
The gnostic gospel
It is well worthy of notice that almost the earliest heresy with which the Church battled was one which denied the reality of this preparation. A fundamental gnostic doctrine was the suddenness of the appearance of the Christ in human fashion. There was indeed a preparation, a development, so to speak, of the Supreme Being before He could stoop so low as earth. But there was no preparation of man for the reception of his God. Suddenly, at the time of His baptism, the Christ appeared in human form upon the earth. His human nature, or human body, if indeed it could be called human, had no previous history. It did not grow like ours. It could not trace its origin from the parents of the race like ours. It was an instrument which the heavenly Christ took to Himself for His work, and which He flung away when He had no further use for it. Thus teaching, the gnostics cut off the Christ from all the men before or after Him. They were not bone of His bone, or flesh of His flesh. Thus was denied all preparation of the human nature by which the Saviour of men worked. And the world into which He came, it also had not been prepared for His coming. If the supreme spiritual God bad in any way come in contact with this material world, it had been by accident; nay, rather by mishap. In this world of ours God had not been the king, and never could be king. With this human nature of ours, God had not been and never could be united. The Christ did not come to give this earth, in their fulness, truths of which He had already vouchsafed us foretastes, but He came to deprive us of a higher life, which had unawares come in contact with material bodies, and had been contaminated by them. Instead of light struggling with the darkness to subdue it, the gnostics imagined light struggling in the darkness to escape from it. If fuller light was revealed by their Christ, it was only that He might gather up the stray light lost from heaven and take it for ever away. This is the gnostic gospel. This is the gospel without the Old Testament. This is the gospel without preparation of the Man Christ or mans world. Not such the teaching of the Church. She has taught us to regard the history of the world as the unfolding of the great plan by which God would gather all nations and peoples to Himself. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Preparation among the heathen for the reception of Christianity
This preparation is not to be regarded as confined to the chosen people of Israel. It is true, Darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the peoples. But even darkness, thick darkness, may be preparatory to light. It was so at the creation of the world. It is so in everyday experience. If we believe, as believe we must, that man was created with capacities for comprehending the light; if we believe that in his pure and unfallen state it was natural for him to love the light; if we believe that his higher nature is never wholly lost: then we must confess that the very darkness in its depth and grossness must have caused longings deep and vast. When men groped in the darkness, and missed their way, and felt they had missed it, they must have longed for the Day Star to arise and shine. They must have said, we were meant for something better than this. They must have hoped for happier times. They sat in darkness and the shadow of death, being fast bound in misery and iron. They fell down, and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress. He in whose heart a longing for better things has arisen, albeit that longing may be indefinite and ill-directed, has not been left unprepared for receiving a gift from God. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Israels preparation for the coming of Christ
Beyond this general preparation of the nations there was also a special preparation of a particular people. We are entitled to argue this from the condition of that people when the Saviour appeared. You find that nation scattered all over the world; though in it, yet not of it. It was disliked and despised. It was persecuted and down-trodden. In most places it was a mere handful. In no place had it the supreme authority. Numbers, educated opinion, popular prejudice, and state power were all against it and its distinctiveness. Yet it was never crushed, and it was never absorbed; it never ceased to exert power and influence. Low as its fortunes then were, none of any nation were so proud of their history, none were more hopeful of their future. Indeed, it might be said, with some truth, that at that time the Jews alone had hope. The nations were groaning in their pains. Old institutions and old religions were worn out. Mens hearts were failing them for fear, and for looking for those things which were coming upon the earth. The Jews alone hoped for the coming of new and better times. The Jews alone thought that the pains they were suffering were not pains of dissolution, but birth-pangs, the pains followed by new life and fresh joy. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Vox clamantis
The note of all times that are progressive is a note of urgency, preparation, advance. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The appealing voice
Sometimes there is nothing to instruct us but a voice. We hear it, but cannot trace it. It is called the spirit of the times, the voice of the day, the genius of the hour. Sometimes it is personated in one man, one policy; at other times it is a diffused voice, coming, apparently to the ear, from all the points of the compass at once, but with singular unanimity, emphasis, truthfulness. It is never a voice of despair, or a tone that would cast the soul into dejection, but always like a clarion, or a chiming bell, or a fathers call, or a soldiers resounding peal. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God
A highway in the wilderness
We ought to read here, not the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, but rather, the voice of one crying, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord. Now, the voice of one crying in the wilderness--if you read so--will have a sufficiently direct application to John Baptist and to few menbesides. But the voice of one crying, Prepare a highway in the wilderness, is no more exclusively applicable to him than to John Calvin or John Knox or John Ruskin. It is applicable to everybody who does anything for the world, especially in its waste places and its worst places, in the way of improvement. It is applicable to Copernicus, Bacon, James Watt. Above all, it is applicable to Christ Himself. It is an anticipation of better and still better times for all mankind.
1. Does it matter at all to us who can have no hope of seeing it in our time, who have certainly, as it would seem, to live out our lives in a condition of things in which not so much the presence of improvement as the need of it is conspicuous? To this question, I think, there are two answers, both of which, for religious minds at any rate, have some weight.
(1) Our idea of God, of a Divine order in the world, is very much our whole stock-in-trade in the matter of religion. The question with us, as regards religion, is, how much we can see of God in what is not God, and in what seems opposed to God? Is that which we see of Him, though it must be little, yet enough to give us feeling, emotion, to fill our minds, not with a thousand anxieties and alarms about things clean and unclean, but to fill them to overflowing with reverence, all that constitutes the mysterious life of a spirit conversing with that unutterable Spirit behind the veil? Second to this even, though of infinite importance, is the question whether we shall devour widows houses and for a pretence make long prayers, or meditate upon the Good Samaritan, and go and do likewise. It obviously, then, concerns very much our idea of God, our experience of Him, what we see or feel of Him, our stock-in-trade in the matter of religion, what notion we form and entertain of the future destiny of mankind We know that the past has not been all that could be wished. Plenty of desert in that backward view. Will the future be better? Evidently that is a matter which must go to shape our idea of God, of a Divine order of the world. This is to look at the whole instead of a small part, and form some conclusion or other about the whole. It does matter a good deal to us, therefore, though we are not to live to see it, that, if it is possible or right to entertain it, we should entertain the belief that the endless ages that are yet to come will exhibit the Divine order as beneficent and beautiful in a way in which past ages and our own age have had scanty experience of it.
(2) Another answer to the question, What does it matter to us what the future of mankind may be? is obviously this: It is not so much a duty as an instinct for man to live for posterity. We are all of one stock. With reference to this instinct and this satisfaction, the case is plain as regards the future being other and better than the past or the present. We have all something to do, and can do something for posterity. We have the conviction or the hope in doing this, that it is not going to be in vain.
2. Prepare ye in the wilderness a highway for our God. In this, possibly, rather than in any other form, there comes the Divine call to those in every age, and especially in this age, to whom the Divine order is most of a reality and a power. Personal piety--you must have that, say the professors of ecclesiastical pedagogy--before entering upon this or that work, It is quite true: personal piety you must have to be fit to live, not to say to teach others or help others to live well. But if you have piety enough to have any satisfaction in helping to leave the world a little better than you have found it, then that is enough of a qualification and commission for taking part in work which will occupy your whole life. This general view of the Divine order and of the demands which it makes upon those who are most conscious of the reality of it suggests one or two reflections.
(1) In regard to the fulfilment of the Divine order, it often happens that, while weaker agencies at work in forwarding it are recognised, greater ones, even the greatest of all, escape notice. Since the Divine order is not always clear, it must often happen, in the case of lives of good men and even great men devoted to the advancement of it, that efforts to advance it have other results than those who made them contemplated--great results which they did not expect, no results where they expected great results.
(2) As it is often not the mightier but the weaker agencies at work in furthering the Divine order that are recognised and appreciated, so in the case of men who are more or less consciously devoted to the advancement of it, there is often a failure of insight; and they are found working for issues which they did not anticipate, both in the way of failure and in the way of success. In regard to the Divine order embracing the life of all that is, has been, shall be, the clearest sighted of mankind see through a glass darkly. Constantine was agreed that the triumph of the Christian faith was assured by his making it the religion of the State, though John Wesley had afterwards some reason, in his time, for thinking perhaps that more harm was done to it by that event than by all the Christian persecutions. The Christian world, all but a small part of it, was certain that the devil had broken loose in the Reformation in Germany, and few people who heard it did not devoutly believe that Luthers mother was a witch. John Baptist himself is not so remarkable for what he knew as for what he did not know of his own life-work and its effects. I mean, as regards the eternal order, in which he was no doubt a devout and a brave believer. As a forerunner he was nothing of a foreseer. Not only are the greater agencies at work in furthering the Divine order least recognised among the mass of men, but even among choice spirits devoted to the furthering of that order, misunderstanding as to the results of their own activity and the activity of others is more common than insight. Thus stands the case as regards one class of agencies at work in furthering the Divine order. That which is valued in regard to it is the old ecclesiastical machinery, creak and groan and rattle as it may. In the meantime, discredited to some extent by its association with enlightenment not always orthodox, the spirit of humanity enters from the outside into the religious world, to the creation of new social conditions for whole communities.
(3) What promise there is in this of a better era both for the Church and for the world is better seen as yet by the world, perhaps, than by the Church. The importance of the fact cannot at any rate be overrated. Nothing is so common in religious circles, among good people, as lamentation. The good old times of religion are no more. That is their complaint.
(4) In the meantime, religious people who are so much disposed to complain of the good old times passing away are helping to prepare for times infinitely better than the good old times, in ways of which they are as far as possible from conceiving. They are deepening dissatisfaction with the life, even the religious life of the day, by their lamentations. That is one thing--a negative sort of thing. More positive is the effect of their keeping in their own view and that of others a certain high ideal of life, though it be not the highest of all. (J. Service, D. D.)
Christ requires a straight road
The Kings chariot is coming; you must fill up the ravines and level down the hill,. He will not accommodate His chariot to the tortuous lines of your life. If the Lord Jesus Christ is coming into your soul, He is not going to follow the crooked ways of your iniquitous conduct. You have got to make a straight road for Him. (A. T.Pierson, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v3 A voice cries out
A voice cries out
The word "voice" represents the person who cries out. AT: "Someone cries out" (See: Synecdoche)
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In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh; make straight in the Arabah a highway for our God
These two lines are parallel and mean basically the same thing. The people preparing themselves for Yahweh's help is spoken of as if they were to prepare roads for Yahweh to travel upon. (See: Parallelism and Metaphor)
Arabah
See how you translated this word in Isaiah 35:1.
Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be leveled
These phrases explain how the people are to prepare a highway for Yahweh. They can be stated in active form. AT: "Lift up every valley, and level every mountain and hill" (See: Active or Passive)
Every valley will be lifted up
Making the valleys level with the rest of the ground is spoken of as if it were lifting up the valleys. AT: "Every valley will be filled in" (See: Metaphor)
and the rugged land will be made level, and the rough places a plain
These phrases explain how the people are to prepare a highway for Yahweh. They can be stated in active form. AT: "make the rugged land level, and make the rough places into a plain" (See: Active or Passive and Ellipsis)
the glory of Yahweh will be revealed
This can be stated in active form. AT: "Yahweh will reveal his glory" (See: Active or Passive)
for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it
The word "mouth" represents Yahweh himself. AT: "for Yahweh has spoken it" (See: Synecdoche)
translationWords
voice
desert
Yahweh
God
glory
reveal
people group
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3, 5 40:3-5 There is now a shift from the general…
40:3-5 There is now a shift from the general announcement of the good news to the specific expectation of God’s coming. The good news (40:1-2) is grounded in God himself. Isaiah portrayed the Lord as coming on a highway through the desert (see ch 35), although the imagery is here reversed: In ch 35, the people were traveling to Zion, toward the Lord. Here, the Lord is coming toward his people (see also 52:8, where the two images are brought together).
40:3 the voice of someone shouting: In Mal 3:1 this person (possibly the Elijah of Mal 4:5) was God’s messenger who prepared the way for God’s coming. In the Gospels, this announcer was identified with John the Baptist (Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23). • Clear the way . . . Make a straight highway: The announcer’s message would expedite God’s coming (see Isa 35:8). As God made a way for Israel through the Red Sea (43:16), so a way would be opened up for the Lord (see 52:11-12).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.