For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning lamp.
The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You will be called by a new name, which Yahweh’s mouth will name.
You will also be a crown of beauty in Yahweh‘s hand, and a royal diadem in your God’s hand.
You will not be called Forsaken any more, nor will your land be called Desolate any more; but you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for Yahweh delights in you, and your land will be married.
For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you. As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you.
I have set watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem. They will never be silent day nor night. You who call on Yahweh, take no rest,
and give him no rest, until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
Yahweh has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, “Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners will not drink your new wine, for which you have labored,
but those who have harvested it will eat it, and praise Yahweh. Those who have gathered it will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.”
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 for the peoples.
Behold, Yahweh has proclaimed to the end of the earth, “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your salvation comes! Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him!’ ”
They will call them “The Holy People, Yahweh’s Redeemed”. You will be called “Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken”.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 The Prophet saith that he will never cease to…
The Prophet saith that he will never cease to declare unto the people the good tidings of their deliverance.
Till they have full deliverance: and this the Prophet speaketh to encourage all other ministers to the setting forth of God’s mercies toward his Church.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–12 Isa 62:1 For Zion’s sake will I not hold…
Isa 62:1 For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp [that] burneth.
Ver. 1. For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace.] Habes hic orationem prophetae sanctissimam, saith Oecolampadius. Here we have the prophet’s oration, yea, here we have the prophet’s panegyric, to the Church, saith Hyperius, {a} by way of congratulation for her felicity and dignity in Christ, her head and husband; as also his resolution to be earnest and importunate with God and men for her deliverance and restitution. Terentius, that noble general under Valens the emperor, asked nothing but that the Church might be freed from Arians; and when the emperor tore his petition, he said that he would never ask anything for himself if he might not prevail for the Church.
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Until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness.] Till Christ come in the flesh, if I should live so long; as long as I have any being howsoever, {1Ti 6:14} and after that by my writings, which shall continue to the world’s end.
{a} Pro panegyrico Ecclesiae dicto omnia quae hoc capite dicuntur recte meo iudicio accipientur. - Hyper.
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 vv1–12 For Zion’s sake, viz. the church’s sake; Zion and…
For Zion’s sake, viz. the church’s sake; Zion and Jerusalem being both put for the church, Heb 12:22.
Will I not hold my peace: these seem to be the words of the prophet, strongly resolving, notwithstanding all difficulties, to solicit God for the church’s happiness, and constantly excite to the belief of it by his preaching, though it were long ere it came, for Isaiah lived near two hundred years before this was accomplished; but his prophecy lived, and the tenor of it was continued by other prophets, whom the Lord stirred up to be still establishing his people till this salvation was wrought: his meaning might be, as long as he lived he would never hold his peace; or he might include himself among those who should be then alive, as Paul doth among the other saints, 1Th 4:17, we which are alive. Thus may we also include God speaking these words, as some would have it, viz. by the mouth of Isaiah, and other of his holy prophets, that never held their peace, till they saw this blessed state of the church appear.
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Until the righteousness: with reference to the Babylonians, understand it of the righteousness of God, who hath promised his people deliverance, and he must be righteous, and so understand salvation before; or rather the vindicating of his people’s cause in the eyes of the nations by the ruin of the Babylonians; he will show that his people have a righteous cause: or with reference to the church, till Christ, who is her righteousness, shall appear and be manifested in the gospel.
Go forth as brightness; clearing up their miserable and dark estate, which the church might be supposed to be in before Christ’s coming, with much joy and happiness.
As a lamp that burneth; and to that purpose is set up where it may be seen continually, to signify how eminently conspicuous this prosperous estate of the church should be among the nations, and as it may particularly relate to revealing of Christ unto the world.
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 vv1, 6, 10 The prophet here tells us,
The prophet here tells us,
I. What he will do for the church. A prophet, as he is a seer, so he is a spokesman. This prophet resolves to perform that office faithfully, Isa 62:1. He will not hold his peace; he will not rest; he will mind his business, will take pains, and never desire to take his ease; and herein he was a type of Christ, who was indefatigable in executing the office of a prophet and made it his meat and drink till he had finished his work. Observe here, 1. What the prophet's resolution is: He will not hold his peace. He will continue instant in preaching, will not only faithfully deliver, but frequently repeat, the messages he has received from the Lord. If people receive not the precepts and promises at first, he will inculcate them and give them line upon line. And he will continue instant in prayer; he will never hold his peace at the throne of grace till he has prevailed with God for the mercies promised; he will give himself to prayer and to the ministry of the word, as Christ's ministers must (Act 6:4), who must labour frequently in both and never be weary of this well-doing. The business of ministers is to speak from God to his people and to God for his people; and in neither of these must they be silent. 2. What is the principle of this resolution - for Zion's sake, and for Jerusalem's, not for the sake of any private interest of his own, but for the church's sake, because he has an affection and concern for Zion, and it lies near his heart. Whatever becomes of his own house and family, he desires to see the good of Jerusalem and resolves to seek it all the days of his life, Psa 122:8, Psa 122:9; Psa 118:5. It is God's Zion and his Jerusalem, and it is therefore dear to him, because it is so to God and because God's glory is interested in its prosperity. 3. How long he resolves to continue this importunity - till the promise of the church's righteousness and salvation, given in the foregoing chapter, be accomplished. Isaiah will not himself live to see the release of the captives out of Babylon, much less the bringing in of the gospel, in which grace reigns through righteousness unto life and salvation; yet he will not hold his peace till these be accomplished, even the utmost of them, because his prophecies will continue speaking of these things, and there shall in every age be a remnant that shall continue to pray for them, as successors to him, till the promises be performed, and so the prayers answered that were grounded upon them. Then the church's righteousness and salvation will go forth as brightness, and as a lamp that burns, so plainly that it will carry its own evidence along with it. It will bring honour and comfort to the church, which will hereupon both look pleasant and appear illustrious; and it will bring instruction and direction to the world, a light not only to the eyes but to the feet, and to the paths of those who before sat in darkness and in the shadow of death.
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II. What God will do for the church. The prophet can but pray and preach, but God will confirm the word and answer the prayers. 1. The church shall be greatly admired. When that righteousness which is her salvation, her praise, and her glory, shall be brought forth, the Gentiles shall see it. The tidings of it shall be carried to the Gentiles, and a tender of it made to them; they may so see this righteousness as to share in it if it be not their own fault. "Even kings shall see and be in love with the glory of thy righteousness" (Isa 62:2), shall overlook the glory of their own courts and kingdoms, and look at, and look after, the spiritual glory of the church as that which excels. 2. She shall be truly admirable. Great names make men considerable in the world, and great respect is paid them thereupon; now it is agreed that honor est in honorante - honour derives its value from the dignity of him who confers it. God is the fountain of honour and from him the church's honour comes: "Thou shalt be called by a new name, a pleasant name, such as thou wast never called by before, no, not in the day of thy greatest prosperity, and the reverse of that which thou wast called by in the day of thy affliction; thou shalt have a new character, be advanced to a new dignity, and those about thee shall have new thoughts of thee." This seems to be alluded to in that promise (Rev 2:17) of the white stone and in the stone a new name, and that (Rev 3:12) of the name of the city of my God and my new name. It is a name which the mouth of the Lord shall name, who, we are sure, miscalls nothing, and who will oblige others to call her by the name he has given her; for his judgment is according to truth and all shall concur with it sooner or later. Two names God shall give her: - (1.) He shall call her his crown (Isa 62:3): Thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, not on his head (as adding any real honour or power to him, as crowns do to those that are crowned with them), but in his hand. He is pleased to account them, and show them forth, as a glory and beauty to him. When he took them to be his people it was that they might be unto him for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory (Jer 13:11): "Thou shalt be a crown of glory and a royal diadem, through the hand, the good hand, of thy God upon thee; he shall make thee so, for he shall be to thee a crown of glory, Isa 28:5. Thou shalt be so in his hand, that is, under his protection; he that shall put glory upon thee shall create a defence upon all that glory, so that the flowers of thy crown shall never wither nor shall its jewels be lost." (2.) He shall call her his spouse, Isa 62:4, Isa 62:5. This is a yet greater honour, especially considering what a forlorn condition she had been in. [1.] Her case had been very melancholy. She was called forsaken and her land desolate during the captivity, like a woman reproachfully divorced or left a disconsolate widow. Such as the state of religion in the world before the preaching of the gospel - it was in a manner forsaken and desolate, a thing that no man looked after nor had any real concern for. [2.] It should now be very pleasant, for God would return in mercy to her. Instead of those two names of reproach, she shall be called by two honourable names. First, She shall be called Hephzi-bah, which signifies, My delight is in her; it was the name of Hezekiah's queen, Manasseh's mother (Kg2 21:1), a proper name for a wife, who ought to be her husband's delight, Pro 5:19. And here it is the church's Maker that is her husband: The Lord delights in thee. God by his grace has wrought that in his church which makes her his delight, she being refined, and reformed, and brought home to him; and then by his providence he does that for her which makes it appear that she is his delight and that he delights to do her good. Secondly, She shall be called Beulah, which signifies married, whereas she had been desolate, a condition opposed to that of the married wife, Isa 54:1. "Thy land shall be married, that is, it shall become fruitful again, and be replenished." Though she has long been barren, she shall again be peopled, shall again be made to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children, Psa 113:9. She shall be married, for, 1. Her sons shall heartily espouse the land of their nativity and its interests, which they had for a long time neglected, as despairing ever to have any comfortable enjoyment of it: Thy sons shall marry thee, that is, they shall live with thee and take delight in thee. When they were in Babylon, they seemed to have espoused that land, for they were appointed to settle, and to seek the peace of it, Jer 29:5-7. But now they shall again marry their own land, as a young man marries a virgin that he takes great delight in, is extremely fond of, and is likely to have many children by. It bodes well to a land when its own natives and inhabitants are pleased with it, prefer it before other lands, when its princes marry their country and resolve to take their lot with it. 2. Her God (which is much better) shall betroth her to himself in righteousness, Hos 2:19, Hos 2:20. He will take pleasure in his church: As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, is pleased with his relation to her and her affection to him, so shall thy God rejoice over thee: he shall rest in his love to thee (Zep 3:17); he shall take pleasure in thee (Psa 147:11), and shall delight to do thee good with his whole heart and his whole soul, Jer 32:41. This is very applicable to the love Christ has for his church and the complacency he takes in it, which appears so brightly in Solomon's Song, and which will be complete in heaven.
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 vv1–12 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace,…
For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,.... By Zion and Jerusalem, the church in Gospel times is meant, as it often is in this book, and elsewhere; see Heb 12:22, for whose glory, prosperity, and safety, a concern is here expressed. Some take them to be the words of God himself, as the Targum and Kimchi; who seems to be silent and at rest, and even as it were asleep, when he does not arise and exert himself on the behalf of his people; but here he declares he would not be as one silent and at rest, nor let the kingdoms and nations of the world be at rest until the deliverer of his people was come, either Cyrus the type, or Christ the antitype: others take them to be the words of Israel in captivity, as Aben Ezra; though he afterwards observes they are the words of God, or of the church of God, soliciting her own restoration, prosperity, and glory: but they are the words of the prophet, expressing his great love and affection for the church, and his importunate desire of her happiness, intimating that he would never leave off praying for it till it was completed; not that he expected to live till the Messiah came, or to see the glory of the latter day, and of the church in it; but the sense is, that he would continue praying for it without ceasing as long as he lived, and he knew his prayers and his prophecies would live after he was dead; and that there would be persons raised up in the church that would succeed him in this work, till all the glorious things promised and prophesied of should be accomplished:
until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness; meaning either till the church's innocence is made as clear as the brightness of the sun at noonday, and she is vindicated from the calumnies and reproaches cast upon her, and open vengeance is taken on her enemies by the Lord, from whom her righteousness is, and by whom her wrongs will be righted; or until the righteousness of Christ, which is by imputation her righteousness, is wrought out by him and revealed in the Gospel, and she appears to all to be clothed with it, as with the sun, Rev 12:1, which will be the case when to her shall be given to be arrayed openly with that fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of the saints, and will be the time of her open marriage to the Lamb, Rev 19:7,
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and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth; which gives light, and is seen afar off; her open deliverance from all her enemies, Pagan, Papal, and Mahometan; and her salvation by Jesus Christ, which will be more clearly published in the Gospel ministry in the latter day, and more openly seen and enjoyed in the effects of it. The Vulgate Latin version of this and the preceding clause is,
"until her righteous one goes forth as brightness, and her Saviour as a lamp that burneth;''
meaning Christ the righteous, and the Saviour of his body the church, who in his first coming was as a burning and shining light, even like the sun, the light of the world; and whose spiritual coming will be in such a glorious manner, that he will destroy antichrist with the brightness of it, and is therefore very desirable, Th2 2:8. The Targum of the whole is,
"till I work salvation for Zion, I will give no rest to the people; and till consolation comes to Jerusalem, I will not let the kingdoms rest, till her light is revealed as the morning, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth.''
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 vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 A prayer of the watchmen for the church in…
A prayer of the watchmen for the church in confidence of God's gracious designs and promises to it, ver. 1-12.
Zion's sake - Zion and Jerusalem are both put for the church, Heb. xii, 22. My peace - These seem to be the words of the prophet strongly resolving, notwithstanding all difficulties, to solicit God for the church's happiness, and constantly excite to the belief of it by his preaching, though it were long before it came, for Isaiah lived near two hundred years before this was accomplished. Righteousness - With reference to the Babylonians, understand it of the righteousness of God, who hath promised his people deliverance, and he must be righteous, and so understand salvation before; or rather, the vindicating of his people's cause in the eyes of the nations by the ruin of the Babylonians; he will shew that his people have a righteous cause. Lamp - And to that purpose is set up where it may be seen continually, to signify how eminently conspicuous this prosperous estate of the church should be among the nations, and as it may particularly relate to revealing of Christ unto the world.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 The prophet opens this chapter with ardent prayers that…
CHAPTER LXII
The prophet opens this chapter with ardent prayers that the
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happy period of reconciliation just now promised, and here
again foretold, may be hastened, 1-5.
He then calls upon the faithful, particularly the priests and
Levites, to join him, urging the promises, and even the oath,
of Jehovah, as the foundation of their request, 6-9.
And, relying on this oath, he goes on to speak of the general
restoration promised, as already performing; and calls to the
people to march forth, and to the various nations among whom
they are dispersed to prepare the way for them, as God had
caused the order for their return to be universally proclaimed,
10-12.
NOTES ON CHAP. LXII
Verse 1. For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace] These are the words of JEHOVAH declaring his purpose relative to the events predicted in the preceding chapter.
Thou shalt be called by a new name] Viz., CHRISTIAN-or, as in the fourth verse, חפצי בה chephtsi bah, "my delight is in her"-because she has now received that command, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; HEAR HIM."
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 vv1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11 Isa 62:1-2. For Zion’s sake — Namely, the church’s…
Isa 62:1-2. For Zion’s sake — Namely, the church’s sake, Zion and Jerusalem being both put for the church, Heb 12:22. Will I not hold my peace — It appears from the last verse of the preceding chapter, that this is immediately connected with it, and these may be considered as the words of the prophet, or, as Vitringa thinks, of a prophetic choir, representing the whole body of the ministers of God, and, among these particularly, the apostles and evangelists, at the beginning of the gospel; declaring that they will not be silent, till the righteousness of the church, that is, its redemption, (alluding to the redemption of the Jewish Church from Babylon,) shall go forth as brightness, &c. — That is, till the kingdom of God shall be most brightly and completely revealed. Others, however, think that the prophet speaks here as the type of Christ, and in his name, and that Christ is to be considered here as declaring his resolution not to cease interceding for the church until it should be freed from the obloquy and reproach, the vexations and persecutions of the Jews and heathen; until its righteousness should be placed in a clear light, and all those crimes which were falsely charged on the Christians by their enemies, (namely, respecting their nightly assemblies, their killing of infants, and drinking their blood, their promiscuous lust, &c.,) should be undeniably confuted. For when the assemblies of the Christians came to be held openly, and in the day-time, and were frequented by greater numbers, all these calumnies were proved to be false. And when Constantine came to the empire, especially when he came to have the sole command, the Christian religion was raised out of its state of obscurity, was placed in a true and conspicuous point of view, and freed from the unmerited reproach that had been cast upon it. And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness — Thy innocence with respect to the things laid to thy charge, and the blamelessness, usefulness, and the holiness of thy members. Or, they shall acknowledge that God has justly honoured thee, and thereupon shall join themselves to thee. And all kings thy glory — Those that were wont to scorn thee, shall now be taken up with the admiration of thy glory. And thou shalt be called by a new name — Not the seed of Abraham, or the children of Israel, but the people and children of God; or by the name mentioned Isa 62:4. Which the mouth of the Lord shall name — Thou shalt be brought into a new state, far more glorious than formerly, whereof God shall be the author. Or, thou shalt be called by another name, as it is expressed Isa 65:15. A name, the honour whereof shall make thee famous; ye shall be called Christians.
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 vv1–12 For Zion’s sake - (See the notes at Isa…
For Zion’s sake - (See the notes at Isa 1:8). On account of Zion; that is, on account of the people of God.
I will not hold my peace - There have been very various opinions in regard to the person referred to here by the word ‘I.’ Calvin and Gesenius suppose that the speaker here is the prophet, and that the sense is, he would not intermit his labors and prayers until Zion should be restored, and its glory spread through all the earth. The Chaldee Paraphrast supposes that it is God who is the speaker, and this opinion is adopted by Grotius. Vitringa regards it as the declaration of a prophetic choir speaking in the name of the officers of the church, and expressing the duty of making continual intercession for the extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom. Estius supposes it to be the petition of the Jewish people praying to God for their restoration. Amidst such a variety of interpretation it is not easy to determine the true sense. If it is the language of God, it is a solemn declaration that he was intent on the deliverance of his people, and that he would never cease his endeavors until the work should be accomplished.
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If it is the language of the prophet, it implies that he would persevere, notwithstanding all opposition, in rebuking the nation for its sins, and in the general work of the prophetic office, until Zion should arise in its glory. If the former, it is the solemn assurance of Yahweh that the church would be the object of his unceasing watchfulness and care, until its glory should fill the earth. If the latter, it expresses the feelings of earnest and devoted piety; the purpose to persevere in prayer and in active efforts to extend the cause of God until it should triumph. I see nothing in the passage by which it can be determined with certainty which is the meaning; and when this is the case it must be a matter of mere conjecture. The only circumstance which is of weight in the case is, that the language, ‘I will not be silent,’ is rather that which is adapted to a prophet accustomed to pray and speak in the name of God than to God himself; and if this circumstance be allowed to have any weight, then the opinion will incline to the interpretation which supposes it to refer to the prophet. The same thing is commanded the watchman on the walls of Zion in Isa 62:6-7; and if this be the correct interpretation, then it expresses the appropriate solemn resolution of one engaged in proclaiming the truth of God not to intermit his prayers and his public labors until the true religion should be spread around the world.
I will not rest - While I live, I will give myself to unabated toil in the promotion of this great object (see the notes at Isa 62:7).
Until the righteousness thereof - The word here is equivalent to salvation, and the idea is, that the deliverance of his people would break forth as a shining light.
Go forth as brightness - The word used here is commonly employed to denote the splendor, or the bright shining of the sun, the moon, or of fire (see Isa 60:19; compare Isa 4:5; 2Sa 23:4; Pro 4:18). The meaning is, that the salvation of people would resemble the clear shining light of the morning, spreading over hill and vale, and illuminating all the world.
As a lamp that burneth - A blazing torch - giving light all around and shining afar.
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 vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11 Rest, as long as God grants me life, or…
Rest, as long as God grants me life, or till I behold the Saviour; or Cyrus, the figure of Christ. (Calmet) --- True preachers will not be silent on account of any threats, but will labour for the Church, 2 Timothy ii. (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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Isaiah 62
2. A DISTANT VIEW OF THE COMPLETION OF SALTATION
Isaiah 62
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a) How the Redeemer is Himself the Finisher of this Salvation
Isa_62:1-5
1 For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness,
And the salvation thereof as 1 lamp that burneth.
2 And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness,
And all kings thy glory:
And thou shalt be called by a new name,
Which the mouth of the Lord shall name.
3 Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.
4 Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken;
Neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate:
Aut thou shalt be called 2Hephzi-bah,
And thy land 3Beulah:
For the Lord delighteth in thee,
And thy land shall be married.
5 For as a young man marrieth a virgin,
So shall thy sons marry thee:
And 4as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride,
So shall thy God rejoice over thee.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. The speaker is the same in this as in the preceding chapter. Great things had been promised in the previous discourse. Will all be fulfilled? The Anointed of God declares most decidedly, appealing to His love to Jerusalem as the surest guarantee, that He will not rest till Jerusalem is exalted to the highest pitch of glory, and as the appropriate expression of this glory, a new name is promised to her (Isa_62:1-2). Jerusalem will then be the most beautiful royal ornament of the Lord her King (Isa_62:3). The times are past when country and city could become desolate. There will be a double relation between Jerusalem and Jehovah, which cannot be dissolved, because it rests on the deepest and truest love. Jehovah will have pleasure in Jerusalem as a bridegroom in his bride. Therefore Jerusalem cannot again be separated from Jehovah, or from her children (Isa_62:4-5).
2. For Zion’s sake——rejoice over thee. (Isa_62:1-5). We might almost have thought that the promise had reached its maximum at the close of chapter 61, and that nothing greater could be added. But this is not the case. To our surprise we read, Isa_62:1, that the Messiah speaks of increasing effort which He will put forth to bring Jerusalem to the highest pinnacle of glory. We perceive from this that the accomplishment of salvation will take place gradually. That in chapter 62 the speaker is not the Prophet, but the Messiah, I maintain, with Stier and Delitzsch. [Here there is a mistake. Delitzsch makes the speaker in this chapter to be Jehovah. I translate from his Commentary: “That Jehovah here speaks (LXX. Targum, Grotius, Vitringa, Luzzatto), is shown by Isa_62:6 a, and by the use of the word חָשָׁה which is the expression commonly employed by Jehovah when He lets the existing condition of things continue without interposing (Isa_65:6; Isa_57:11; Isa_64:11; Isa_42:14).”—D. M.] The later interpreters for the most part regard the words as an utterance of the Prophet; But how could he hope to see all stages of this salvation accomplished? And how could he appoint the watchers spoken of in Isa_62:6? For to regard these watchmen as pious worshippers of Jehovah whom the Prophet appointed to call to Jehovah even as incessantly as he himself does (Isa_62:1), is exegetical caprice. Intercessors, who by their supplications bring about the restoration of the walls of Jerusalem, are not watchers on the walls. For watchmen are set over something which already exists. Observe, too, the לְמַעַן which significantly stands at the be- ginning of the discourse, and is repeated in the i second member. God’s Anointed rests not, out of love to Zion. In His love, therefore, lies the security that Zion will have her right, that the promise given her will be kept. Is a better guarantee conceivable? He will not rest till her righteousness breaks forth as brightness, namely, the full brightness of the clear day, and her salvation as a blazing torch. The one of these images is taken from the day, the other from the night. By day there is no clearer light than that which comes from the sun; by night no light shines more brightly than a blazing torch. נֹגַהּ is here used as 1.10; Isa_60:3; Isa_60:19. Righteousness and salvation correspond to one another, as in Isa_61:10; Isa_59:17; Isa_56:1; Isa_51:5-6; Isa_51:8, etc. When Israel’s righteousness and salvation have attained their culmination, then they will shine so brightly that all nations and kings must see them. I do not think that there is any essential difference between salvation and glory. Glory is only the side of salvation which strikes the eyes, which is outwardly conspicuous (comp. Isa_58:8). But when Israel has become new outwardly and inwardly, a new name is also appropriate for him. This new name represents, therefore, a new time, the time of which it is said: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev_21:5). But only God Himself can appoint (נָקַב to pierce, perforare, notare, only here in Isaiah) this new name, which exactly corresponds to the essential nature of Israel. We perceive from this trait that the Prophet does not think merely of the restoration by Cyrus (comp. Rev_2:17). How high the renovated Jerusalem will stand is seen from Isa_62:3. The crown is the ornament of a prince’s head. When Jerusalem is Jehovah’s glorious crown, it is the first, highest, most precious jewel which He possesses (comp. Isa_28:1; Isa_28:5; Revelation 21). [“It has been thought by some that there is a want of congruity in representing the crown as in the hand, instead of its being upon the head; but it must be obvious, that with no propriety whatever could the church be spoken of as placed on the head of Jehovah. The language is designed to teach the high estimation in which Jerusalem shall be held by the Most High, and her perfect security under His protection.” Henderson, who rightly substitutes for hand, in the second member of Isa_62:3, palm, or the open I hand (כַּף),—D. M.] The love of Jehovah effects that Jerusalem can never more be called Forsaken, nor her land Desolate; that, on the contrary, the city must be called My-delight-in-her, and the land Married. Thou shalt be called, is equivalent to Thou shalt be. [The E. V. translates the two first names, and gives the original forms of the two last. This is a manifest inconsistency. Azubah and Shemamah are the Hebrew words which are respectively rendered Forsaken and Desolate. Azubah and Hephzibah occur as actual names; the former was that of the mother of Jehoshaphat (1Ki_22:42), the latter was the name of the mother of Manasseh (2Ki_21:1). It is reasonable to suppose that the passage before us was written with allusion to the marriage of Hezekiah with Hephzibah, and that the imagery and form of expression here employed were suggested by that event. That marriage was evidently hailed with joy as full of promise. But Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah by Hephzibah, brought ruin on Judah. This passage, then, could hardly have been written after the death of Hezekiah. Professor Plumptre pertinently asks: “At what period towards the close of the captivity would the mind of a later writer have turned to so disastrous a marriage, and so ill-omened a name as that of Hephzibah, as, suggestive of hope and gladness?”—D. M.] The land shall be called בְּעוּלָהi.e., Maritata. The holy land shall not be a virgin chosen by no man, nor a repudiated wife, nor a widow, but a wife living in the conjugal relation. And to this figure there shall correspond a double reality (Isa_62:5). [Instead of thy sons,Lowth and many others would read thy builders, changing בָּנַיִךְ into בֹּנָיִךְ and they consider the plural to be used for the singular, Jehovah being the builder of Jerusalem, who marries her. This alteration has been made to remove the seeming incongruity of sons marrying their mother. “The idea of the marriage of children with their mother is indeed incongruous, but not only is בָּעַל a noble word, which in itself expresses only taking possession of, but, moreover, church and home are blended together in the prosopopœia.”—Delitzsch. The particles of comparison are to be supplied (Gesen.Gr. § 155,2 h). A young man by marrying “wins for himself an inalienable right to have and to hold.”—Kay.—D. M ]
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b) How the Redeemer accomplishes the Salvation of Jerusalem by means of the watchmen whom he has appointed
Isa_62:6-9
6 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem,
Which shall never hold their peace 5day nor night: 6Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence,
7 And give him no 7rest, till he establish,
And till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
8 The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength,
8Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies;
And 9the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy 10wine,
For the which thou hast laboured:
9 But they that have gathered it shall eat it,
And praise the Lord;
And they that have brought it together shall drink it
In the courts of my 11holiness.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. As the Redeemer had said of Himself (Isa_62:1) that He will not rest till Jerusalem has reached even the highest glory, so He declares here that He will also indirectly, and by means of others, contribute to the attainment of this high end, namely by means of watchmen, who shall do as He Himself: not rest nor be quiet till the end is reached. If these watchmen are to help to reach the goal, their labor takes place in the time which precedes the attainment of the end. And it is naturally assumed in regard to this time, that while it lasts there are still enemies who can hurt Jerusalem, and against whom one must be constantly on his guard. On the other hand, these watchmen are also to be remembrancers for Jehovah, appointed to remind Him incessantly that the work is not yet completed, that Jerusalem is not yet that which it is to be (Isa_62:6-7). But Jehovah gives with an oath the comforting assurance, that Israel shall never again be the prey of the enemy, but shall rejoice evermore undisturbed in communion with their God, and shall partake to His praise of the fruits of their land (Isa_62:8-9).
2. I have set——courts of my holiness.
Isa_62:6-9. We must here above all hold fast that the subject of הפקדתי must be the same as that of אחשׁה and אשׁקוט Isa_62:1. It is therefore the Anointed of the Lord who here speaks. [The appointment of officers in the church is in the New Testament ascribed to both God and Christ, 1Co_12:28; Eph_4:11.—D. M.]. When He, on the one hand, perceives the necessity of appointing watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, and, on the other hand, has the power to do this, He must be the Lord of Jerusalem, and also in some sense absent from it. And when He charges these watchmen to cry to Jehovah continually, and to let Him have no rest till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth, it is clear that He regards Jehovah as still standing above Himself. [But it is the Prophet who here suddenly breaks in, and addresses the “Lord’s remembrancers.”—D. M.]. The Prophet, then, means to say that the Jerusalem restored according to chapter 61 by the working of the Messiah will be a city well built, and well provided with walls, but will still have enemies to fear, and not yet be the immediate theatre of the might and glory of her Lord. For when her Lord and Bridegroom has appointed watchmen, who cry to God incessantly for her (as e.g., Moses Exo_17:11 sqq., and Samuel 1Sa_7:8 sqq.; 1Sa_8:6; 1Sa_15:11; 1Sa_12:16-23; Psa_99:6; Jer_15:1), this intimates not only the presence of enemies, but also His own absence. He still needs representatives who in His name and Spirit, and also in His place exercise the office of guardians and watchmen in two ways; while they, on the one hand, warn against enemies; on the other, pray to God without ceasing for protection and help. [These watchmen strikingly contrast with those described Isa_56:10.—D. M.]. The Jerusalem that after the Exile was restored, had still, even after the rebuilding of its walls, enemies enough, against whom it needed guardians and watchmen even as much as intercessors. The Zion of the New Testament has also enemies of every kind, but has also guardians and watchmen (Eph_4:11 sqq.), who as Jacob (Gen_32:24 sqq.) have in their office to wrestle with God and men. For the Zion of the New Testament with all her superiority over that of the Old, has yet a still higher ideal which she strives after: the heavenly Jerusalem. [The rendering in the text of the E. V.: Ye that make mention of the Lord can plead in its favor prevailing usage. But the marginal rendering, Ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers is supported by Isa_43:26 where Jehovah speaks put me in remembrance and by the context, in which Zion’s watchmen are commanded to importune Jehovah till He fulfil His promise by glorifying Jerusalem. The הַמַּזְכִּירִים אֶתי֯ here addressed are thus exhibited as those who put Jehovah in remembrance. D. M.]. The prayer of these watchmen is answered. [The assurance that follows is intended rather to inspire them with confidence in prayer. D. M.]. Jehovah has sworn (the distinction between his right hand and the arm of his strength is merely rhetorical) that the still threatening enemies shall not hinder the peaceful prosperity of Jerusalem, nor her communion with her God. Here again the Prophet lays on Old Testament colors. He represents the enemy as a barbarous horde of Amalekites or Midianites, that makes an irruption into Palestine when the harvest is ripe, in order to carry it off (comp. Jdg_6:3; Deu_28:33). This shall not happen any more. The Israelites shall in the future enjoy the fruit of their labor undisturbed, thanking God alone for the same and giving Him the glory (Deu_14:22-26). [“In the courts of my sanctuary cannot mean that the produce of the harvest will be consumed only there (which is inconceivable), but only signifies, with allusion to the legal ordinance respecting the second tithe which was to be consumed by the landed proprietor and his family, with the addition of the Levites and the poor, in the holy place ‘before the Lord,’ Deu_14:22-27, that the partaking of the produce of the harvest will be consecrated by religious feasts. Thoughts of all Israel being then a nation of priests, and of all Jerusalem being a sanctuary, are not contained in this promise. It declares only this, that the enjoyment of the blessing of the harvest will henceforth be unimpaired, and will take place with grateful acknowledgment of the Giver, and so, because sanctified by thanksgiving, it will itself become a religious service. This is what Jehovah has sworn by His right hand, which He lifts up only to attest the truth, and by His mighty arm which irresistibly executes what He has promised.” Delitzsch. D. M.].
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c) General survey of what is accomplished by the Redeemer
Isa_62:10-12
10 Go through, go through the gates;
Prepare ye the way of the people;
Cast up, cast up the highway;
Gather out the stones;
Lift up a standard for the people.
11 Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world,
Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh;
Behold, his reward is with him,
And his 12work before him.
12 And they shall call them,
13The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord:
And thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. The Prophet in these words again briefly states all that belongs to the positive saving work of the Redeemer. He begins, therefore, with the summons to prepare the way for those returning from the Exile, and on all sides to give the signal to set out (Isa_62:10-11); for with the deliverance of Israel from the Babylonian exile, the time of salvation extending to the appearance of the New Jerusalem begins. The last and highest glory the Prophet at the close briefly characterizes by ideal names (Isa_62:12).
2. Pass through——not forsaken.
Isa_62:10-12. The liberation of Israel from the Babylonian captivity is the beginning of redemption. Then the cry shall be heard: Go through the gates. These gates are not those of the cities of Palestine which are to be entered, but the gates of the Babylonian cities out of which they are to move; for this summons stands at the head, and after it comes the mention of the way which is to be prepared. The summons is, therefore, to be understood as Isa_48:20; Isa_52:11. פַּנּוּ and סֹלּוּ are repeated from Isa_57:14. To whom are these imperatives addressed? To all, both Jews and Gentiles (comp. עַל הָעַמִּים at the close of Isa_62:10), who have to assist in making the return home practicable, easy and glorious. But we must not suppose that the summons must be literally carried out. Who built a highway (מְסִלָּה) for the Israelites when they came out of Egypt? Yet it is said in Isa_11:16 that for the remnant returning from Assyria there should be a highway like that on which Israel came out of Egypt. The expression is employed for rhetorical effect. סקלו מאבן means that where the way should be rough and stony, the stones should be removed. This is not to be literally understood, but to be taken generally of the removal of all obstacles (comp. Isa_57:14 b). On the construction, comp. Isa_7:8; Isa_17:1; Hos_9:12. But as the exiles are not all in one country, the chief land of the Exile, but are scattered in all regions of the world, the command is at the same time issued to give them all the signal to return home. [“Lift up a standard above the nations.” This is the most accurate rendering, and is given by Luther, Alexander and Delitzsch.Dr. Naegelsbach takes עַל in a loose sense as equivalent to אֶל or לְ, and supposes that the signals are to be set up for the nations that shall accompany Israel. D. M.]. That what is said in Isa_62:11 does not relate merely to a proclamation published in the realm of Cyrus (Ezr_1:1), is evident, because this call is to sound forth to the end of the earth. The dominion of Cyrus did not reach so far, but the Israelites were in exile to the ends of the earth. The message must therefore reach the most distant nations, and no Israelite, even though living alone among the heathen, shall be forgotten (comp. Isa_11:11; Jer_3:18; Jer_16:14 sqq.). [“It has been made a question whether the pronoun his (in his reward, etc.), refers to Jehovah or to the nearest antecedent, Salvation; and if to the latter, whether that word is to be translated Saviour, as it is by Lowth and in the ancient versions. This last is a question of mere form, and the other is of but little exegetical importance, since the Saviour or salvation meant is clearly represented elsewhere as identical with God Himself. The last clause is a repetition of Isa_40:10, and if ever the identity of thought, expression and connection served to indicate identity of subject, it is so in this case.” Alexander. This interpreter maintains that “the plain sense of the words, the context here, and the analogy of Isa_40:10, are all completely satisfied by the hypothesis that the Messiah (or Jehovah) is here described as coming to His people, bringing with Him a vast multitude of strangers, or new converts, the reward of His own labors, and at the same time the occasion of a vast enlargement to His Church.” D. M.]. The names, Isa_62:12, are memorials of blessing, for Israel will certainly be that which it is called (comp. on Isa_32:5 sqq.). The expression עַם הַקֹּדֶשׁ occurs exactly no where else in the Old Testament. But compare Dan_12:7; Dan_7:27. The expression גְּאֻלֵי יהוה is found in Isaiah only here; further in Psa_107:2 (comp. פְּדוּיִיִ י׳35:10; Isa_51:11). Jerusalem shall be called Derushah, the Sought out (the city desired and beloved by all), and the antithesis is added in the expression לא נעזבה.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. On Isa_62:1. “How could the eternal Word keep silence? Christ is never silent; let us, therefore, never be weary to hear and to learn His word.” Leigh. [Christ loved His church and gave Himself for it that He might sanctify and cleanse it, and that He might present it to Himself a glorious church. His Zion is very dear to Him, and He gives her the glory which the Father gave to Him (Joh_17:22). He never forgets her, never ceases to work for her good, and to intercede for her. What precious consolation we find in the declaration contained in this first verse, when it is regarded as coming from the mouth of Christ Himself! “We may sing upon certainty of success before-hand, even in our winter storm, in the expectation of a summer sun at the turn of the year. No created powers in Hell, or out of Hell, can mar the music of our Lord Jesus, nor spoil our song of joy. Let us then be glad, and rejoice in the salvation of our Lord; for faith had never yet cause to have wet cheeks, and hanging-down brows, or to droop or die....If Christ were buried and rotten among the worms, we might have cause to look like dead folks, but ‘the Lord liveth, and blessed be our Rock., ” Rutherford’s Letters, 182.—D. M.].
2. On Isa_62:2 b. The new name is the correlative of the new creation. But only God Himself will appoint the new name. Only God the omniscient, the searcher of hearts, before whose eyes all things are naked and opened, is able to give this new name, for He only knows perfectly the inward nature of the new creature. When we read (Rev_2:17) that no one will know the new name but he who receives it, this cannot mean that no one will be acquainted with this name, that it will be a hidden, secret name, as, e.g., Macrobius (Saturn. III. 9) speaks of a secret name of the city of Rome with which even the most learned were unacquainted. For we read (Rev_19:12) that Christ has such a name written which no man knew, but He Himself. And this name is then mentioned,Rev_19:13. He is called: the Word of God. The sound of the name is known, but its deep significance no one understands but He who bears it. It follows that what we read in Isa_62:4 of this chapter cannot possibly be the new name referred to in Isa_62:2. For Hephzibah and Beulah are like Azubah (For-saken) and Shemamah (Desolate). The former names come in the place of the latter. But Azubah and Shemamah were never actual names. And so Hephzibah and Beulah cannot be actual names. [“That שֵׁם is not to be understood of a mere name, but has special reference to state and character, is obvious from the common idiom by which anything is said to be called what it really is. See Isa_1:26.” Henderson. Who can understand all that is contained in the name Hephzibah as applied by the Lord to His church? There is a mystery of grace and condescension in this significant name which we cannot fully comprehend. Only God Himself could give such a name to His church.—D. M.].
3. On Isa_62:6 sq. “No one should venture to serve as a spiritual watchman who has not been set by Christ Himself on the walls of Jerusalem.” Leigh. [“God is so far from being displeased With our pressing importunity, as men commonly are, that He invites and encourages it, He bids us cry after Him. He bids us make pressing aplications at the throne of grace, and give Him no rest, Luk_11:5-6. He suffers Himself not only to be reasoned with, but to be wrestled with.” Henry.—D. M.].
4. On Isa_62:7. [“The public welfare and prosperity of God’s Jerusalem is that which we should be most importunate for at the throne of grace; we should pray for the good of the church, 1) That it may be safe, that He would establish it, that the interests of the church may be firm, may be settled for the present, and secured to posterity. 2) That it may be great, may be a praise in the earth; that it may be praised, and that God may be praised for it. We must persevere in our prayers for mercy to the church till mercy comes; we must do as the Prophet’s servant did, go yet seven times, till the promising cloud appear, 1 Kings 17:44. It is a good sign that God is coming to a people in ways of mercy, when He pours out a spirit of prayer upon them, and stirs them up to be fervent and constant in their intercessions.” Henry. The Lord’s Remembrancers put God in remembrance of His own promises. As Jacob, Genesis 32.: Thou saidst. Comp. 2Sa_7:25. This is their all-prevailing plea. Therefore they find in their heart to pray. 2Sa_7:27.—D. M.]
5. On Isa_62:9. [“Nothing is a more certain indication of liberty and prosperity than this—that every man may securely enjoy the avails of his own labor. In nothing is a state of liberty and order more distinguished from tyranny and anarchy than this. Nothing more certainly marks the advance of civilization; and nothing so much tends to encourage industry and to promote prosperity....And as the tendency of true religion is to repress wars, and to establish order, and to diffuse just views of the rights of man, it everywhere promotes prosperity by producing the security that a man shall enjoy the avails of His own productive industry. Wherever the Christian religion prevails in its purity, there is seen the fulfilment of this prophecy; and the extension of that religion everywhere would promote universal industry, order and law.”—Barnes—D. M.]
6. On Isa_62:10. “Every Christian teacher should let the imperatives that are found here sound daily in his ears and heart. For Christ has spoken them to him also. As often as a fit of slumber or laziness comes upon thee in the discharge of thy office, bethink thyself that Christ is standing behind thee and calling to thee: Go through, go through! Prepare the way, prepare the way! Lift up a standard!” Leigh.
7. On. Isa_62:11. “Adventus Christi vulgo triplex statuitur: humiliationis, sanctificationis, glorificationis.” Foerster. Christ first came from above down to earth visible to all in the form of a servant. Secondly, He comes continually from above invisibly, by His Spirit in the word and sacrament that He may sanctify us. Thirdly, He will come again from above visible to all, not in the form of a servant, but in glory (Matthew 25). This three-fold coming of the Lord must be continually held before the church that the Bride may be ready when the Bridegroom comes.
8. On Isa_62:12. [“None are to be called the redeemed of the Lord but those that are the holy people; the people of God’s purchase is a holy nation. And they shall be called sought out; God shall seek them out, and find them wherever they are dispersed, eclipsed or lost in a crowd; men shall seek them out that they may join themselves to them, and not forsake them. It is good to associate with the holy people, that we may learn their ways, and with the redeemed of the Lord, that we may share in the blessings of the redemption.” Henry.—D. M.]
HOMILETICAL HINTS
1. On Isa_62:1-5. We have here an appropriate text for a sermon on the future prospects of the church. Mark 1) The foundation of the church’s hope, 2) The object of that hope. The foundation is the love which the Lord bears to His church (Isa_62:1 : For Zion’s sake, Isa_62:4 b and 5). The object of hope is a. Redemption from long-prevailing evils (Isa_62:4 a); b. A new life (Isa_62:1 b, Isa_62:2 a, Isa_62:3); c. A new name (Isa_62:2 b).
2. On Isa_62:6-7. The duty and aim of Christian ministers. 1) Their duty: a. toward men; not to be silent with exhortations and warnings; b. toward God; not to be silent with intercessions (Isa_62:6 b and 7 a). 2) Their aim: that the church of the Lord be built up and perfected (Isa_62:7 b).
3. On Isa_62:9. [This verse may properly be employed to form the basis of a discourse against the doctrine of the Communists, who would deprive others of the fruit of their industry.—D. M.]
4. On Isa_62:10-12. “Three things are here contained: 1) An invitation to all to meet the Messiah who is about to appear; 2) The proclamation of His advent; 3) The fit designation of those who receive the Lord with joy.” Carpzov.
Footnotes:
[1]aburning torch.
[2]That is; My delight is in her.
[3]That is, Married.
[4]Hob. with the joy of the bridegroom.
[5]all the day and all the night.
[6]Or, ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers.
[7]Heb. silence.
[8]Heb. If I give, etc.
[9]strangers.
[10]new wine.
[11]sanctuary.
[12]recompense.
[13]people of the sanctuary.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–12 (Isa 11:10; Isa 42:1-6; Isa 49:7, Isa 49:22-23; Isa…
(Isa 11:10; Isa 42:1-6; Isa 49:7, Isa 49:22-23; Isa 60:3, Isa 60:5, Isa 60:16).
new name--expression of thy new and improved condition (Isa 62:4), the more valuable and lasting as being conferred by Jehovah Himself (Isa 62:12; Isa 65:15; Rev 2:17; Rev 3:12).
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 vv1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12 1. The “Servant of Jehovah,” or Messiah, is the…
MESSIAH’S HEAVENLY INTERCESSION.
1. The “Servant of Jehovah,” or Messiah, is the speaker still. He will not be at rest till what is promised in the preceding three verses is accomplished. This is the present view of the best commentators.
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For Zion’s sake — Zion is the generic word for the great Messianic cause.
Will I not hold my peace — It is the office of Messiah to ask or to work for the earth as his inheritance, (Psa_2:8,) and that of Jehovah to give it. Does not the passage refer rather to Messiah’s proclamation of the Gospel?
Righteousness… go forth as brightness — Go forth until the holiness of the Church shall be abundantly manifest, as a light shining out of darkness. Righteousness and salvation utter each the very same idea; both are needed only to balance the sentence. The terms brightness and lamp indicate Zion as not yet so fully out of the shade as is needful; but that in good time she will enjoy abundance of light, and diffuse it unto others.
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 vv1–12 1. The speaker here is most naturally to be…
1. The speaker here is most naturally to be supposed the prophet, although the words are often explained as those of Jehovah Himself. This, however, is less probable, in spite of the fact that the verb for “hold my peace” is always in these chapters, except here and Isa_62:6, used by or of Jehovah (ch. Isa_42:14, Isa_57:11, Isa_64:12, Isa_65:6); for when Jehovah breaks His silence salvation has come. The thought of the verse is entirely appropriate on the lips of the prophet who wrote ch. Isa_61:1 ff.; he declares that he will persevere in the course of action there described until the year of Jehovah’s favour has actually come.
until the righteousness … brightness] i.e. until her right, at present obscured, becomes brilliantly manifest (Psa_37:6). Comp. ch. Isa_60:2-3, Isa_58:8.
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a lamp that burneth] a burning torch.
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 vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (1) For Zion’s sake . . .—Opinions again differ…
LXII.
(1) For Zion’s sake . . .—Opinions again differ as to the speaker. Is he the prophet, or the Servant of Jehovah, or Jehovah Himself ? On the whole, the second view seems to be most in harmony with what follows. The true Servant will carry on what in the language of later theology may be called his mediatorial intercessory work, that there may be no delay in the fulfilment of the glorious promises that have just been uttered.
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As brightness.—Better, as the brightness of morning, the word being thus used in Isa_60:3, Pro_4:18.
As a lamp . . .—Better, as a burning torch.
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 vv1–12 Vers. 1-12. FURTHER GRACIOUS PROMISES MADE TO ISRAEL BY…
Vers. 1-12. FURTHER GRACIOUS PROMISES MADE TO ISRAEL BY "THE SERVANT." Some regard the speaker in this chapter as Jehovah; some as the prophet, or the prophetical order; some as "the Servant." The last supposition appears to us the simplest and the best. The close connection with the preceding chapter is evident. If that then be, in the main, "a soliloquy of the Servant," this should he a continuation of the soliloquy. Israel is promised "righteousness," "glory," "a new name," a guard of angels, a time of peace and prosperity, deliverance from Babylon, and triumphant establishment in Zion under God"s protection.
For Zion"s sake will I not hold my peace. In the past God has kept silence. (Isa_42:14 Isa_57:11) "The Servant" has not caused his voice to be heard. Babylon has been allowed to continue her oppression unchecked. But now there will be a change. God will lift up his voice, and the nations will hear; and the "salvation" of Israel will be effected speedily. For Jerusalem"s sake. "Zion" and "Jerusalem" are used throughout as synonyms, (Isa_2:3 Isa_4:3, 4 31:4, 5, and Isa_31:9 Isa_33:20 Isa_40:9 Isa_41:27 Isa_52:1 Isa_64:10, etc.) like "Israel" and Jacob." Strictly speaking, "Zion" is the mountain, "Jerusalem" the city built upon it. Until the righteousness thereof go forth. (comp. Isa_54:17 Isa_61:10, Isa_61:11) As brightness; or, as the dawn. (comp Isa_60:3 Pro_4:18 Dan_6:19) Salvation... as a lamp that burneth; rather, as a torch that blazeth. (Jud_1:15:4 Nah_2:1-4 Zec_12:6) Israel"s "salvation" would be made manifest; primarily by her triumphant return from Babylon, and more completely by her position in the final kingdom of the Redeemer.
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HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-9. Promises of future glory.
Let us assume that Jehovah is the Speaker, and that he utters this oracle in a time of darkness and despondency. What is expressed is the intense passion, if we may so say, of God for the realization of his ideas in the world. The prophet fears not to use the boldest anthropomorphic imagery in setting forth this view of God.
I THE IRREPRESSIBLE DESIRES AND PURPOSES OF THE ETERNAL. He will not be silent nor will he rest. In dark times it seems that God is refraining himself, putting a restraint upon his lips, holding his peace, etc. Four times in the latter portion of Isaiah that thought occurs. (Isa_42:14 Isa_57:11 Isa_64:12 Isa_65:6) When impiety and oppression are rampant, the wicked exclaim, "How doth God know?" and the righteous, "Why is he silent?" And yet there should be fears and scruples on both sides. Silence and reserve need not mean indifference. Nor would the voice of the Eternal be so impressive were it not for the long spaces of silence that lie between. Sooner or later he will uprouse himself, and his mighty voice will go forth, and there will be a turn in affairs.
II THE IDEAL ON WHICH HE HAS SET HIS HEART. It is the glory of the ideal Jerusalem, the spiritual city of God, or his Church.
1. The glory of righteousness and salvation. The two terms seem here nearly to denote the same thing. Negatively, freedom from all external calamity and from all internal impurity; positively, attainment of all prosperity and all moral rectitude. This is to be an all-pervading brilliance, or a torch carried far from hand to hand.
2. The beauty of holiness. "Crown of adorning in Jehovah"s hand," or "diadem of royalty," shall she be. All the associations of forsakenness, desolation, and widowhood shall pass away, and be replaced by those of nuptial beauty and joy. Her name shall be exchanged for a new one, i.e. her afflicted for a glorious condition.
III THE ANGELIC MINISTRY. Angelic watchers are on the walls of the city, incessantly engaged in intercession. The idea of them is that of mediatorial beings. Here they intercede with Jehovah that he will raise the city (or Church) to her proper renown among the nations of the earth. And an answer to the prayer seems indicated, when Jehovah swears that the harvest and the vintage shall no more be pillaged by her foes. J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-7. From night to noon.
The passage rather implies than states a very sad condition in which Israel is found, and it suggests to us, as a starting-point
I DARK DAYS THROUGH WHICH A CHRISTIAN CHURCH MAY PASS, The evils and miseries which may then be endured may include, as with Israel at the time of this prophecy:
1. Reduced numbers, causing weakness and humiliation, perhaps approaching extinction.
2. Submission to some kind of bondage; either to the tyranny of some spiritual delusion, or to the despotism of some other master than the Lord of love and righteousness.
3. The actual withdrawal of Christ; a condition in which it is rightly called "the Forsaken," for "he does not many mighty works because of unbelief." He does not dwell there, but passes by; he does not manifest his presence and his power in regenerating, or renewing, or sustaining grace.
4. The appearance of utter forgetfulness on the part of its Divine Head. There is such an absence of all fruitfulness, all usefulness, all moral and spiritual beauty, that its most appropriate name is "The Desolate One.
II THE DUTY OF ITS MINISTERS and its best friends in these dark days (vers. 1-6).
1. Pleading with God for his people. For Zion"s sake not holding peace, for Jerusalem"s sake not resting, but continually and earnestly interceding with God that he will pity, will interpose, will restore.
2. Pleading with his people in God"s name. The function of the prophet was to speak for God, and especially when his truth was forgotten and his will neglected. The duty and privilege of the minister of Christ is to declare with all fearlessness and fidelity, and with all needful reiteration, the truth which has been forgotten, the commandment which is being disregarded. This duty is shared by any others, particularly by any other officers, to whom the Spirit of God may reveal his will.
III THE FUTURE WHICH IT IS IN THE POWER AND IN THE HEART OF GOD TO CONFER.
1. Deliverance from these distressing evils. There shall be "salvation" (ver.1). The bonds shall be broken, the delusions dispelled, the assumption of power removed, the "evil thing in the midst" which prevented the indwelling of Christ shall be cast out.
2. Manifestation of the Master"s favour. Its "righteousness" in his sight shall "go forth as brightness:" there shall be such tokens of Divine favour that all who dwell around and observe shall "see its righteousness" asserted and behold its "glory" (ver. 2). The possession of its Lord"s regard. Its new name, "Hephzi-bah," shall indicate that its Lord delights in it, looks upon it with a glad approval, holds it in his right hand (Rev_2:1) as a man holds a crown or diadem, as something of rare value, of great price in his esteem (ver. 3).
3. The outpouring of its Lord"s affection. Its new name is also to be "Beulah:" for it is to be dear to his heart as is the bride to the bridegroom, the object of his fervent love. We may be so conscious of our shortcomings and of our departures from God"s will that we may fail to realize the fulness of our privilege. But it is our sacred duty to be dissatisfied with ourselves, as portions of the Church of Christ, until we are such as he can regard with Divine love and affection, such as he can prize as very precious crowns or diadems. If this seems impossible as things are, it behoves us to humble ourselves before him, to plead with him in penitent prayer, to rededicate ourselves to his service, until the hour comes when not only will the darkness have given way to dawn, but the dawn to noontide brightness. C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Ver. 1. Godly desires for the Church.
The Jews were remarkably attached to localities. They cherished the national associations with such places as Bethel, the Red Sea, the Jordan, etc.; but they loved most intensely Jerusalem and Mount Zion. To the better Jews localities were only shrines of spiritual truths. Bethel meant "God near:" the Red Sea meant "God redeeming:" Jordan meant "God faithful to his word." Those Jews saw the spiritual through the local; we are expected to see the spiritual without the help of the local.
I THE FERVENT DESIRES OF A GODLY SOUL. To see Zion the type of Christ"s Church delivered and established in righteousness.
1. Delivered from
(1) its weaknesses, in motive, aim, and work;
(2) its hindrances, in body, business, and relationships;
(3) its prejudices, both individual and sectarian. The Church in the world is like a lamp burning dimly in impure air.
2. Established in righteousness.
(1) The internal character of a Church is the subject of greater anxiety than its outward condition. The King"s daughter must be "all glorious within.
(2) The internal character of a church is only preserved as it has a capacity for growing. The figure in the text is of a "brightness," not a mere flash, but brightness brightening, or going forth.
II THE VARIETY OF MOTIVES THAT INCREASE THE DESIRES.
1. Our consecration vow. We gave ourselves first to Christ, and then to his Church.
2. The emotions of the Christian life. These inspire us to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
3. Love to Christ. This, John tells us, is sure to find expression in love for the brethren.
III THE ONE SUPREME MOTIVE PROMINENT IN THE TEXT, The real welfare of the Church itself. "For Zion"s sake." We ought to feel the utmost anxiety that
(1) the joy of the Church should be increased;
(2) the beauty and Christ-likeness of the Church should be perfected;
(3) the efficiency and power of the Church should lye enlarged. Its righteousness which is its true strength should shine more and more unto the perfect day.
IV THE MAN WHO HAS GOOD DESIRES WELL NOT WITHHOLD HIS PERSONAL EFFORTS. "I will not hold my peace," etc. The real greatness of prayer is only knows to the man who works, and the greatness of work only to him who prays. 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 vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 For Zions sake will I not hold my peace
Isa_62:1
For Zions sake will I not hold my peace
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The Church blessed and made a blessing
(Isa_62:1-12):--The words of the great Deliverer are continued from the foregoing chapter.
1. He will not rest until the glorious change in the condition of His people is accomplished (Isa_62:1).
2. They shall be recognized by kings and nations as the people of Jehovah (Isa_62:2-3).
3. She who seemed to be forsaken is still His spouse (Isa_62:4-5).
4. The Church is required to watch and pray for the fulfilment of the promise (Isa_62:6-7).
5. God has sworn to protect her and supply her wants (Isa_62:8-9).
6. Instead of a single nation, all the nations of the earth shall flow into her (verse ,10).
7. The good news of salvation shall no longer be confined, but universally diffused (Isa_62:11).
8. The glory of the Church is the redemption of the world (Isa_62:12). (J. A. Alexander.)
The gradual development of the glory of Jerusalem
For Zions sake I shall not be silent, and for Jerusalems sake I shall not rest, until her righteousness breaks forth like morning-splendour, and her salvation like a burning torch. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The moral illumination of the world
I. THE PRESENT IMPLIED OBSCURITY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. The righteous One and the Saviour (Vulgate). Whenever the righteous One and Saviour are hidden there is obscurity.
II. HER ANTICIPATED GLORY. The burning lamp is a symbol of the presence of Jehovah. Jesus is termed the brightness of His Fathers glory and the express image of His person. Connect both the figures in the text. The Sun of Righteousness shall go forth like the light of the morning.
1. Manifestly. Light maketh manifest.
2. Irresistibly, as the light of the morning.
3. Universally. As all the earth turns to the sun, all are visited by the morning light. Righteousness shall go forth as brightness in all the earth.
III. THE MEANS BY WHICH THE WORK IS TO BE ACCOMPLISHED. For Zions sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalems sake I will not rest. Some think these are expressions of Jehovah. Correct or not, it is a Scriptural truth; it has long lain near the heart of God! Others, that Jesus is the speaker. The world is His purchased property, but His own world received him not. Yet the Father has pledged Himself to vindicate His right: Ask of me. The most common opinion is that these words are Isaiahs, as a man of God and as a minister of God. It is proper to be used by all who mention the name of the Lord. Human agency, then, is the means employed. In providence God helps man by man. In grace the same. The Word of God is to be carried and held forth as light. The text indicates the manner also.
1. It shall be consistent--prayer and exertion. Not hold my peace, not rest.
2. Affectionate exertions also--from a principle of love. For Zions sake.
3. Persevering. Until the righteousness go forth. (J. Summerfield, M. A.)
The extension of the Gospel
I. THE BLESSING OF THE GOSPEL AS APPLIED TO YOUR OWN SOULS. Two inclusive blessings, righteousness and salvation.
II. THE EXTENSION OF THIS BLESSING THROUGHOUT THE EARTH. It is evident that it is in the promise of God that it shall be so, because it is made the subject of the persevering intercession of Christ. For Zions sake will I, etc.
III. THE GROUND OF OUR ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE EXTENSION OF THIS BLESSING. What can be stronger? It is the grace of the intercession of the Son of God. (C. Bridges, M. A.)
Divine unrest
(with Isa_62:6-7):--
I. THE CAUSE OF DIVINE UNREST. The needs of the Church, Zion; the condition of the city, Jerusalem. It is in the lack of righteousness, the need of salvation. This is still true of our Churches and cities. The sin is pro found, the sorrow unfathomable. Yet there is not total darkness. There is twilight; but all the Divine yearning is, that the twilight may brighten into noon.
II. THE NATURE OF THIS DIVINE UNREST. It is not chiefly that of indignation at wrong, but it is the unrest of anxiety for others, the unrest of pity. It is--
1. Unselfish.
2. Universal. Even God will share it.
III. THE MANIFESTATION OF THIS DIVINE UNREST.
1. In loud human proclamation of the truth.
2. In prayer to God.
3. In Gods unrest, in which He gives Jesus to save and bless. Christs piercing cry of grief, O Jerusalem, utters the unrest in God. Learn--
(1) The remedy for all the unrest of the universe. Righteousness, Salvation.
(2) The opportunity good men have for communion with God. Be unhappy because of the sin and sorrow in the world. Have fellowship with Christ. Share the Divine unrest. (U. R. Thomas, B. A.)
The heavenly workers and the earthly watchers
(with verses6, 7)--
1. The preceding chapter brings in Christ as proclaiming the great work of deliverance for which He is anointed of God; the following chapter presents Him as treading the wine-press alone, which is a symbol of the future judgment by the glorified Saviour. Between these two prophecies of the earthly life and the still future judicial energy, this chapter lies, referring, as I take it, to the period between these two--i.e to all the ages of the Churchs development on earth. For these Christ here promises His continual activity, and His continual bestowment of grace to His servants who watch the walls of Jerusalem.
2. Notice the remarkable parallelism in the expressions: I will not hold My peace; the watchmen shall never hold their peace. And His command to them is literally, Ye that remind Jehovah--no rest (or silence) to you! and give not rest to Him. So we have here Christ, the Church and God, all represented as unceasingly occupied in the one great work of establishing Zion as the centre of light, salvation and righteousness for the whole world.
I. THE GLORIFIED CHRIST IS CONSTANTLY WORKING FOR HIS CHURCH. We are too apt to regard our. Lords real work as all lying in the past, and, from the very greatness of our estimate of what He has done, to forget the true importance of what He evermore does.. He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. In that session on the throne manifold and mighty truths are expressed. It proclaims the full accomplishment of all the purposes of His earthly ministry; it emphasizes the triumphant completion of His redeeming work by His death; it proclaims the majesty of HIS nature, which returns to the glory which He had with the Father before the world was; it shows to the world, as on some coronation day, their King on His throne, girded with power. But whilst on the one side Christ rests as from a perfected work which needs no addition nor repetition, on the other He rests not day nor night. When the heavens opened to the rapt eyes of John in Patmos, the Lord whom he beheld was not only revealed as glorified in the lustre of the inaccessible light, but as actively sustaining and guiding the human reflectors of it. He holdeth the seven stars in HIS right hand, and walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. Not otherwise does my text represent the present relation of Christ to His Church. I will not rest. Through all the ages His power is in exercise. He inspires in good men all their wisdom: and every grace of life and character. Nor is this all. There still remains the wonderful truth of His continuous intercession for us. In its widest meaning that word expresses the whole of the manifold ways by which Christ undertakes and maintains our cause. So we have not only to look back to the cross, but up to the throne. From the cross we hear a voice, It is finished. From the throne a voice, For Zions sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalems sake I will not rest.
II. CHRISTS SERVANTS ON EARTH DERIVE FROM HIM A LIKE PERPETUAL ACTIVITY FOR THE SAME OBJECT. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night. On the promise follows, as ever a command Ye that remind Jehovah, keep not silence. There is distinctly traceable here a reference to a twofold form of occupation devolving on these Christ-sent servants. They are watchmen, and they are also Gods remembrancers. In the one capacity as in the other, their voices are to be always heard. The former metaphor is common in the Old Testament, as a designation of the prophetic office, but, in accordance with the genius of the New Testament, as expressed on Pentecost, when the spirit was poured out on the lowly as well as on the high, on the young as on the old, and all prophesied, may be fairly extended to disignate not some select few, but the whole mass of Christian people. The remembrancers priestly office belongs to every member of Christs priestly kingdom, the lowest and least of whom has the privilege of unrestrained entry into Gods presence-chamber, and the power of blessing the world by faithful prayer.
1. Our voices should ever he heard on earth. A solemn message is committed to us by the very fact of our belief in Jesus Christ and His work.
2. Our voices should ever be heard in heaven. They who trust God remind Him of His promises by their very faith; it is a mute appeal to His faithful love, which He cannot but answer. Beyond that, their prayers come up for a memorial before God and have as real an effect in furthering Christs kingdom on earth as is exercised by their entreaties and proclamations to men.
3. These two forms of action ought to be inseparable. Each, if ,genuine, will drive us to the other, for who could fling himself into the watchmans work, with all its solemn consequences, knowing how weak his voice was, and how deaf the ears that should hear, unless he could bring Gods might to his help? And who could honestly remind God of His promises and forget his own responsibilities?
4. The power for both is derived from Christ. He sets the watchmen; He commands the remembrancers. And, as the Christian power of discharging these twofold duties is drawn from Christ, so our pattern is His manner of discharging them, and the condition of receiving the power is to abide in Him. Christ asks no romantic impossibilities from us, but He does ask a continuous, systematic discharge of the duties which depend on our relation to the world, and on our relation to Him.
III. THE CONSTANT ACTIVITY OF THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST WILL SECURE THE CONSTANT OPERATION OF GODS POWER. Give Him no rest: let there be no cessation to Him. These are bold words. Those who remind God are not to suffer Him to be still. The prophet believes that they can regulate the flow of Divine energy, can stir up the strength of the Lord. It is easy to puzzle ourselves with insoluble questions about the co-operation of Gods power and mans; but practically, is it not true that God reaches His end, of the establishment of Zion, through the Church? The great reservoir, is always., full to the brim; however much may be drawn from it, the water sinks not a hairs breadth; but the bore of the pipe and the power of the pumping-engine determine the rate at which the stream flows from it. He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief. (A. Maclaren, D. D.
Hindrances to the spread of the Gospel
Our particular inquiry is, What obstacles to the conversion of the world are found among those who, in different ways, are enlisted in the cause of foreign missions?
I. THE DEFECT OF OUR CHRISTIAN CHARACTER, OR THE WANT OF A HIGHER DEGREE OF HOLINESS.
II. THE DIRECT INDULGENCE OF AFFECTIONS WHICH ARE SELFISH AND EARTHLY.
III. DIVISION AND STRIFE AMONG CHRISTS FOLLOWERS.
IV. THE UNNECESSARY EXCITEMENT OF POPULAR PREJUDICE.
V. FALLING SHORT IN OUR DUTY IN REGARD TO THE BENEVOLENT USE OF
PROPERTY.
VI. THE WANT OF A PROPER FEELING AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF OUR
DEPENDENCE ON GOD FOR THE SUCCESS OF OUR EFFORTS. (Leonard Woods, D. D.)
I. ENCOURAGEMENTS.
The encouragements and duties of Christians
1. There are declarations respecting the character and essential attributes of God, as, for example, His sovereignty, His power, His justice, His wisdom, His love; even from which, if we had no express or specific direction, we might justly and safely infer that the Almighty cannot always permit His own world to remain the almost unmitigated form of general apostasy and wretchedness; and that for the sake of His own glory He will cause a vast and mighty change, by which the revolt of the world shall be terminated, and by which it shall be recovered and reclaimed to Himself.,
2. There are declarations with regard to the sufficiency and design of our Saviours sacrifice (Joh_1:29; Joh_12:32; Heb_2:9; 1Jn_2:2). That the sacrifice of Christ, of which such is the declared sufficiency and design has hitherto but very partially and imperfectly accomplished its object is plain; that, so long as the world continues as it is, that partiality and imperfection must still continue is plain also; and we must therefore judge that it never can fulfil the objects for which it was originally offered, except in the final effusion of the Divine Spirit among all the nations of the earth.
3. There are declarations in regard to thee majesty and extent of the Saviours exaltation and royalty. As the reward and the recompense of His sufferings, He has been made the possessor of a wonderful mediatorial kingdom, a kingdom in the gaining and maintaining of the authority of which the Spirit is the agent, and the Word is the instrument--that kingdom in which the Spirit, through the Word, is destined to maintain a universal sway (Psa_2:7-8; Isa_9:6; Psa_62:8, etc.).
4. There are those declarations with regard to the final and renovating change, as we find them expressed throughout the general structure of the prophetical writings. Because He who cannot lie has promised, therefore we believe.
II. OBLIGATIONS.
1. There are peculiar duties pressing upon the ministers and other public officers of the Church of Christ. The ministers are called upon to cultivate peculiar eminence in personal holiness; they ought to cultivate an enlarged and most accurate acquaintance with evangelical truth, an ardent zeal for the glory of God, a tender compassion for the souls of men! They ought to give themselves up wholly to their high vocation. They ought to labour with quenchless ardour and perseverance, while prayer ought to be, as it were, their very food, their very air, and their very being. As to the other public officers of the Church, their special duty appears to be the following--exemplary firmness in the belief of Christian doctrine, in the practice ofChristian precepts, and in the manifestation of a Christian spirit; fervent, brotherly love amongst themselves, towards all their fellow-Christians, and especially towards the poor, whose interest they are invoked to superintend; cheerful assistance to the pastors of the flock, in all measures which may be deemed proper for preserving the purity of the Church, and for the conversion of the ungodly; and an earnest endeavour with regard to all departments of Christian character, that they may shine as lights in the world.
2. But there are general duties which press upon all the members of a Christian Church.
(1) A careful avoidance of all worldly conformity.
(2) The practice of sincere brotherly affection towards all other followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
(3) Increased zeal in maintaining and extending that ministry which has been ordained for the conversion of men.
(4) A strong mental confidence in the fact that the change upon which our aspirations have been fixed shall actually be accomplished. There is nothing by which God is so much dishonoured as unbelief.
(5) There must also be the spirit of importunate prayer (Isa_62:1; Isa_62:6). (James Parsons.)
Intercessory prayer and the Divine reapers
The prophet here tells us--
I. WHAT HE WILL DO FOR THE CHURCH (Isa_62:1).
II. WHAT GOD WILL DO FOR THE CHURCH (Isa_62:2-5).
1. The Church shall be greatly admired. And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness etc.
2. She shall be truly admirable. Thou shalt be called by a new name, etc. Two names God shall give her.
(1) He shall call her His crown (Isa_62:8).
(2) He shall call her His spouse (Isa_62:4-5). (M. Henry.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 12 Isa_62:1; Isa_62:6-7. For Zion’s sake will I not hold…
THE HEAVENLY WORKERS AND THE EARTHLY WATCHERS
Isa_62:1; Isa_62:6-7. For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, &c.
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Two expository remarks.
1. The speaker is the personal Messiah (Isa_61:1).
The remarkable parallelism in the expressions selected as the text should be noticed: “I will not hold My peace;” the watchmen “shall never hold their peace.” And His command to them is literally: Ye that remind Jehovah—no rest (or silence) to you! and give not rest to Him. Christ, the Church, and God are all represented as unceasingly occupied in the one great work of establishing “Zion” as the centre of light, salvation, and righteousness for the whole world. Consider these three perpetual activities—
I. THE GLORIFIED CHRIST IS CONSTANTLY WORKING FOR HIS CHURCH. The greatness of Christ’s work in the past may lead us to forget the true importance of what He evermore does. His present life is presented in Scripture under two contrasted and harmonious aspects—as being rest, and as continuous activity in the midst of rest [1761]
[1761] His session on the throne proclaims the full accomplishment of all the purposes of His earthly ministry. It points backwards to the forces lodged in the world’s history by Christ’s finished work,—the basis of all our hopes; it points to a future as the goal of all these hopes. But while He rests as from a perfected work, He also rests not day nor night. “The right hand of God” is significant of the operative energy of the Divine nature; “sitting” there is equivalent to possessing and wielding that measureless power. The Evangelist who uses the expression says “they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them.” The words at the beginning of Acts—“all which Jesus began both to do and teach”—suggest the same thought. The whole history of that book is shaped by this conviction. The Lord adds to the Church daily; His name works miracles, &c. Not the Acts of the Apostles, but the Acts of the Lord in and by His servants is the accurate title of this book. Stephen beheld his Lord “standing”—as if risen with intent to help—“on the right hand of God.” John in Patmos saw Him who “holdeth the seven stars in His right hand,” and “walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.” The text speaks of a continuous forthputting of power: “I will not rest.” His power is in exercise as the inspiration of good men, using them as His weapons, and the axe must not boast itself against Him that heweth. He orders providences, and shapes the course of the world for the Church (1Ch_16:21-22). The word of this Master is never “Go,” but “Come.” There is besides, the wonderful truth of His continuous intercession for us. His work on earth is ever present to the Divine mind as the ground of our acceptance and the channel of our blessing (Joh_17:24).—Dr. Maclaren.
II. CHRIST’S SERVANTS ON EARTH DERIVE FROM HIM A LIKE PERPETUAL ACTIVITY FOR THE SAME OBJECT (Isa_62:7). Note a twofold form of occupation devolving on these Christ-sent servants. They are watchmen, and they are also God’s remembrancers. The former metaphor is commonly applied in the Old Testament to the prophetic office, but in accordance with the genius of the New Testament, as expressed on Pentecost, should be extended to the whole mass of Christian people.
1. Our voices should ever be heard on earth. With faith in Christ come responsibilities. We are watchmen. Let us ponder the pattern.
2. Our voices should ever be heard in heaven. Faith is a mute appeal to God’s faithful love; and, beyond that, our prayers come up for a memorial before God. They remind God. The prayer that prevails is a reflected promise. These two forms of action ought to be inseparable. Prayerless work will soon slacken, and never bear fruit; idle prayer is worse than idle.
3. The power for both is derived from Christ. He sets the watchmen; He commands the remembrancers. And our pattern is His manner of discharging them, and the condition of receiving the power is to abide in Him.
III. THE CONSTANT ACTIVITY OF THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST WILL SECURE THE CONSTANT OPERATION OF GOD’S POWER. “Give Him no rest.” Bold words. The prophet believes that those who remind God can stir up the strength of the Lord. Practically, God reaches His end—the establishment of Zion, through the Church. The great reservoir is always full; but the bore of the pipe and the power of the pumping-engine determine the rate at which the stream flows from it (Mat_13:58). We may have as much of God as we want, as much as we can hold, far more than we deserve. An awful responsibility lies on us. With what grand confidence may the weakest go to his task.
STIMULATING LESSONS.—
1. Look at the energy around us. Do we work as hard for God as the world does for itself.
2. Look at the energy beneath us. If we are sitting drowsy by our camp fires, the enemy is on the alert. It is no time for God’s sentinels to nod.
3. Look at the energy above us. On the throne of the universe is the immortal Power who slumbereth not. Before the altar of the heavens is the Priest of the world. Round Him stand perfected spirits, who “rest not day and night.” Do we work for God as He and all that are with Him do? Alas! have we not been like the three Apostles sleeping, even while the Lord was wrestling with the tempter in Gethsemane. Let us lift up our cry to God: “Awake, awake” (Isa_51:9); and the answer shall be an echo of the prayer turned into a command (Isa_52:1).—A. Maclaren, D.D.: Sermons, Second Series, pp. 19–38.
THE FUTURE GLORY OF THE CHURCH
Isa_62:1. For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, &c.
I. The implied obscurity of Zion.
The modern Church is obscured—
1. By its divisions.
2. By its assimilation to the world.
3. By its peculiar position as an agency in progress, working for the world’s highest good.
II. The ultimate extension of the Church’s glory.
This is the night of the Church’s history; she is now in the shade. But as the morning sunlight bursts on the scene, banishing every lingering shred of twilight, and revealing the rarest scene of life and loveliness that was before but dimly seen, so shall her righteousness by and by appear. There are indications of the coming glory—
1. In the triumphs of the Gospel at home.
2. In the salient features of the present age (see p. 333).
III. The Divine energy is pledged to accomplish the Church’s future glory.
Inspiring fact! Jehovah is ceaselessly, in speech and action, working for His people. In this we have the inviolable guarantee of Zion’s future glory.
1. God’s Word is His voice. This voice has sounded through the ages of the past, protesting against every prevalent form of iniquity, instructing the nations in sublimest truths, and preparing them for a loftier destiny. Like a many-toned bell it still peals through the world in strains at once monitory and joyous. Never shall that voice be hushed till its mission is fulfilled,
2. God’s providence is His action. The world is governed by Jehovah in the interest and furtherance of the higher purposes of Christianity.
3. The motive influencing the Divine energy—the love of God for Zion. God loves His Church, because He sees in her a photograph of Himself, a reflection of His own image, the embodiment and universal manifestation of His own glory. She is the fruit of sufferings unparalleled, &c. His own honour is involved in the ultimate triumph and glory of His Church.
Lessons.
1. We see the vanity and groundlessness of our fears for the Church’s safety and ultimate victory.
2. We see the blessedness of consecrated service for the Church of God.—George Barlow: The Study, vol. iii. p. 450, &c.
THE LOVE OF THE CHURCH.
I. THE PURE AND HOLT INCENTIVES THAT MOVED THE PROPHET TO RELIGIOUS ACTIONS.
1. For Zion’s sake. He loved Zion for the beauty, joy, strength, and safety she afforded the world. Analogies between Zion and the Church (Psalms 48).
2. For Jerusalem’s sake (see p. 436).
II. THE EARNEST RESOLUTIONS OF THE PROPHET IN REGARD TO THE DISCHARGE OF THE APPROPRIATE DUTIES OF HIS OFFICE AND MINISTRY TOWARD ZION AND JERUSALEM. I. He resolved not to hold his peace. He was not only a praying prophet, but a preaching prophet,
2. He was resolved not to rest or cease from his ministerial labours.
III. THE WISE AND USEFUL ENDS THE PROPHET HOPED TO ACCOMPLISH.
1. The establishment of righteousness in Zion and Jerusalem.
2. The promotion of their salvation.—Geo. Nestor: The Preachers’ Monthly, vol. vii. pp. 50–52.
The prophets were true philanthropists—their love of country was deep and ardent. The heaven-kindled passion was not quenched by afflictions however sore, or by apostasy however general. O that their mantles might fall on us! that we may experience a quenchless passion to promote the welfare of Zion. Notice—
I. THE SUBJECTS OF THE PROPHET’S SOLICITUDE. To the devout Jew “Zion” was the dearest spot on earth. Zion remains “beautiful fur situation,” &c. The temple which graced its heights was its glory. Type of the Christian Church (1Pe_2:5).
II. THE MODE OF MANIFESTING HIS SOLICITUDE.
1. “I will not hold my peace.” He resolved to lift up his voice and cry aloud—
(1) Before God. Prayer the natural outlet of the believer’s solicitude. Let us plead with God as did Abraham, Moses, Daniel, &c. Power of prayer.
(2) Before men. There is a time to be silent, and a time to speak. Those who are deeply concerned for the welfare of Zion will be sure to speak.
2. “I will not rest.” Our solicitude and activity must be ceaseless. A spasmodic and fitful zeal is unhealthy. Perseverance is nowhere more needful than in religion. Whether men hear or forbear, it should be ours to give “line upon line,” &c.
III. THE BRILLIANT RESULTS DESIRED. The allusion is to a marriage ceremony, &c.—Benjamin Browne.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Isa 62:1-6
Isa 62:1-6
The speaker of these words is the personal Messiah. Notice the remarkable parallelism in the expressions selected as the text: "I will not hold My peace;" the watchmen "shall never hold their peace." And His command to them is literally, "Ye that remind Jehovah—no rest (or silence) to you! and give not rest to Him." So that we have here Christ, the Church, and God all represented as unceasingly occupied in the one great work of establishing Zion as the centre of light, salvation, and righteousness for the whole world.
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I. The glorified Christ is constantly working for His Church. Scripture sets forth the present glorious life of our ascended Lord under two contrasted and harmonious aspects—as being rest, and as being continuous activity in the midst of rest. Through all the ages His power is in exercise. We have not only to look back to the cross, but up to the throne. From the cross we hear a voice, "It is finished." From the throne a voice, "For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest."
II. Christ’s servants on earth derive from Him a like perpetual activity for the same object. The Lord associates Himself with watchmen, whom He appoints and endows for functions in some measure resembling His own, and exercised with constancy derived from Him. They are watchmen, and they are also God’s remembrancers. In the one capacity, as in the other, their voices are to be always heard. The watchman’s office falls to be done by all who see the coming peril and have a tongue to echo it forth. The remembrancer’s priestly office belongs to every member of Christ’s priestly kingdom, the lowest and least of whom has the privilege of unrestrained entry into God’s presence-chamber, and the power of blessing the world by faithful prayer. (1) Our voices should ever be heard on earth. (2) Our voices should ever be heard in heaven. (3) The power for both is derived from Christ.
III. The constant activity of the servants of Christ will secure the constant operation of God’s power. Those who remind God are not to suffer Him to be still. The prophet believes that they can regulate the flow of Divine energy, can stir up the strength of the Lord. An awful responsibility lies on us. We can resist and oppose, or we can open our hearts and draw into ourselves His strength. We can bring into operation these energies which act through faithful men faithfully proclaiming the faithful saying; or we can limit the Holy One of Israel. On all sides motives for strenuous toil press in upon us. Look at the energy around, beneath, above us. When are we in all this magnificent concurrence of energy, for purposes which ought to be dear to our hearts, as they are to the heart of God?
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, 3rd series, p. 19.
References: Isa 62:1.—J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 89; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 50. Isa 62:1-7.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 56. Isa 62:2.—Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times" vol. ix., p. 3. Isa 62:5.—B. Waugh, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 118. Isa 62:6, Isa 62:7.—W. J. Mayers, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 276. Isa 62:10.—Outline Sermons to Children, p. 97; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1131.
Isa 62:12
One of the deadliest thoughts which can infect a human spirit is this—I am of no use, no worth, to earth or to heaven. And yet it is a natural thought, the natural utterance of our selfish, sensual lives. Who has not groaned out the confession of Asaph: "I was as a beast before Thee"? Man is profoundly conscious at once of sinfulness and impotence. The worst sin against heaven is despair. The idea the Lord hath need of thee is a very fundamental principle of the Gospel, the good news from God to man.
I. Is there not something radically false in this connection of need or want with the Divine name? The writers of the Scripture see this difficulty plainly. They are full of sublime statements of the awfulness of the Divine supremacy. God absolute and infinite; the creature dependent and limited. But, on the other hand, they present and reiterate ideas as to the relation of the creature to the Creator, as to God’s need of man in a very solemn sense, and man’s need of God in every sense, which we are unable to square with any definition of the Divine attributes in which the intellect can find no flaw.
II. It is through Christ and Christ alone that we attain to the knowledge of the name and the mind of God. His love is essentially redeeming. It is a love which seeks and seeks to save. And this love which redeems has a great sorrow and want in the heart of it. It misses something which is infinitely dear to it, and it prepares to endure infinite toils and pains to recover that and to bring it home. The whole expression of the Incarnate One is a seeking, a longing, a loving.
III. It is impossible that God can seek us with more intense earnestness of purpose, or in more effectual modes, than those which are embodied in the mission of Christ to recover us to Himself. We may say reverently that the Father hath exhausted all the riches of His love in the gift of Christ to the world.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 62.
References: Isa 62:12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 525; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 71.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 6 Isa 62:1, Isa 62:6 - Isa 62:7.
Isaiah
THE HEAVENLY WORKERS AND THE EARTHLY WATCHERS
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Isa 62:1, Isa 62:6 - Isa 62:7.
Two remarks of an expository nature will prepare the way for the consideration of these words. The first is that the speaker is the personal Messiah. The second half of Isaiah’s prophecies forms one great whole, which might be called The Book of the Servant of the Lord. One majestic figure stands forth on its pages with ever-growing clearness of outline and form. The language in which He is described fluctuates at first between the collective Israel and the one Person who is to be all that the nation had failed to attain. But even near the beginning of the prophecy we read of ‘My servant whom I uphold,’ whose voice is to be low and soft, and whose meek persistence is not to fail till He have ‘set judgment in the earth.’ And as we advance the reference to the nation becomes less and less possible, and the recognition of the person more and more imperative. At first the music of the prophetic song seems to move uncertainly amid sweet sounds, from which the true theme by degrees emerges, and thenceforward recurs over and over again with deeper, louder harmonies clustering about it, till it swells into the grandeur of the choral close.
In the chapter before our text we read, ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.’ Throughout the remainder of the prophecy, with the exception of one section which contains the prayer of the desolate Israel, this same person continues to speak; and who he is was taught in the synagogue of Nazareth. Whilst the preceding chapter, then, brings in Christ as proclaiming the great work of deliverance for which He is anointed of God, the following chapter presents Him as ‘treading the wine-press alone,’ which is a symbol of the future judgment by the glorified Saviour. Between these two prophecies of the earthly life and of the still future judicial energy, this chapter of our text lies, referring, as I take it, to the period between these two-that is, to all the ages of the Church’s development on earth. For these Christ here promises His continual activity, and His continual bestowment of grace to His servants who watch the walls of His Jerusalem.
The second point to be noticed is the remarkable parallelism in the expressions selected as the text: ‘I will not hold My peace’; the watchmen ‘shall never hold their peace.’ And His command to them is literally, ‘Ye that remind Jehovah-no rest {or silence} to you, and give not rest to Him.’
So we have here Christ, the Church, and God all represented as unceasingly occupied in the one great work of establishing ‘Zion’ as the centre of light, salvation, and righteousness for the whole world. The consideration of these three perpetual activities may open for us some great truths and stimulating lessons.
I. First, then, The glorified Christ is constantly working for His Church.
We are too apt to regard our Lord’s real work as all lying in the past, and, from the very greatness of our estimate of what He has done, to forget the true importance of what He evermore does. ‘Christ that died’ is the central object of trust and contemplation for devout souls-and that often to the partial hiding of Christ that is ‘risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.’ But Scripture sets forth the present glorious life of our ascended Lord under two contrasted and harmonious aspects-as being rest, and as being continuous activity in the midst of rest. He was ‘received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.’ In that session on the throne manifold and mighty truths are expressed. It proclaims the full accomplishment of all the purposes of His earthly ministry; it emphasises the triumphant completion of His redeeming work by His death; it proclaims the majesty of His nature, which returns to the ‘glory which He had with the Father before the world was’; it shows to the world, as on some coronation day, its King on His throne, girded with power and holding the far-reaching sceptre of the universe; it prophesies for men, in spite of all present sin and degradation, a share in the dominion which manhood has in Christ attained, for though we see not yet all things put under Him, we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour. It prophesies, too, His final victory over all that sets itself in unavailing antagonism to His love. It points us backward to an historical fact as the basis of all our hopes for ourselves and for our fellows, giving us the assurance that the world’s deliverance will come from the slow operation of the forces already lodged in its history by Christ’s finished work. It points us forwards to a future as the goal of all these hopes, giving us that confidence of victory which He has who, having kindled the fire on earth, henceforward sits at God’s right hand, waiting in the calm and sublime patience of conscious omnipotence and clear foreknowledge ‘until His enemies become His footstool.’
But whilst on the one side Christ rests as from a perfected work which needs no addition nor repetition, on the other He ‘rests not day nor night.’ And this aspect of His present state is as distinctly set forth in Scripture as that is. Indeed the words already quoted as embodying the former phase contain the latter also. For is not ‘the right hand of God’ the operative energy of the divine nature? And is not ‘sitting at the right hand of God’ equivalent to possessing and wielding that unwearied, measureless power? Are there not blended together in this pregnant phrase the ideas of profoundest calm and of intensest action, that being expressed by the attitude, and this by the locality? Therefore does the evangelist who uses the expression expand it into words which wonderfully close his gospel, with the same representation of Christ’s swift and constant activity as he had been all along pointing out as characterising His life on earth. ‘They went forth,’ says he, ‘and preached everywhere’-so far the contrast between the Lord seated in the heavens and His wandering servants fighting on earth is sharp and almost harsh. But the next words tone it down, and weave the two apparently discordant halves of the picture into a whole: ‘the Lord working with them.’ Yes! in all His rest He is full of work, in all their toils He shares, in all their journeys His presence goes beside them. Whatever they do is His deed, and the help that is done upon the earth He doeth it all Himself.
Is not this blessed conviction of Christ’s continuous operation in and for His Church that which underlies, as has often been pointed out, the language of the introduction to the Acts of the Apostles, where mention is made of the former treatise that told ‘all which Jesus began both to do and teach’? The gospel records the beginning, the Book of the Acts the continuance; it is one biography in two volumes. Being yet present with them He spoke and acted. Being exalted He ‘speaketh from heaven,’ and from the throne carries on the endless series of His works of power and healing. The whole history is shaped by the same conviction. Everywhere ‘the Lord’ is the true actor, the source of all the life which is in the Church, the arranger of all the providences which affect its progress. The Lord adds to the Church daily. His name works miracles. To the Lord believers are added. His angel, His Spirit, bring messages to His servants. He appears to Paul, and speaks to Ananias. The Gentiles turn to the Lord because the hand of the Lord is with the preachers. The Lord calls Paul to carry the gospel to Macedonia. The Lord opens the heart of Lydia, and so throughout. Not ‘the Acts of the Apostles,’ but ‘the Acts of the Lord in and by His servants,’ is the accurate title of this book. The vision which flashed angel radiance on the face, and beamed with divine comfort into the heart, of Stephen, was a momentary revelation of an abiding reality, and completes the representation of the Saviour throned beside Almighty power. He beheld his Lord, not seated, as if careless or resting, while His servant’s need was so sore, but as if risen with intent to help, and ready to defend-’standing on the right hand of God.’
And when once again the heavens opened to the rapt eyes of John in Patmos, the Lord whom he beheld was not only revealed as glorified in the lustre of the inaccessible light, but as actively sustaining and guiding the human reflectors of it. He ‘holdeth the seven stars in His right hand,’ and ‘walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.’
Not otherwise does my text represent the present relation of Christ to His Church. It speaks of a continuous forth-putting of power, which it is, perhaps, not over-fanciful to regard as dimly set forth here in a twofold form-namely, work and word. At all events, that division stands out clearly on the pages of the New Testament, which ever holds forth the double truth of our Lord’s constant action on, in, through, and for His Zion, and of our High Priest’s constant intercession.
‘I will not rest.’ Through all the ages His power is in exercise. He inspires in good men all their wisdom, and every grace of life and character. He uses them as His weapons in the contest of His love with the world’s hatred; but the hand that forged, and tempered, and sharpened the blade is that which smites with it; and the axe must not boast itself against him that heweth. He, the Lord of lords, orders providences, and shapes the course of the world for that Church which is His witness: ‘Yea, He reproved kings for their sake, saying, Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm.’ The ancient legend which told how, on many a well-fought field, the ranks of Rome discerned through the battle-dust the gleaming weapons and white steeds of the Great Twin Brethren far in front of the solid legions, is true in loftier sense in our Holy War. We may still see the vision which the leader of Israel saw of old, the man with the drawn sword in his hand, and hear the majestic word, ‘As Captain of the Lord’s host am I now come.’ The Word of God, with vesture dipped in blood, with eyes alit with His flaming love, with the many crowns of unlimited sovereignty upon His head, rides at the head of the armies of heaven; ‘and in righteousness doth He judge and make war.’ For the single soul struggling with daily tasks and petty cares, His help is near and real, as for the widest work of the collective whole. He sends none of us tasks in which He has no share. The word of this Master is never ‘Go,’ but ‘Come.’ He unites Himself with all our sorrows, with all our efforts. ‘The Lord also working with them’ is a description of all the labours of Christian men, be they great or small.
Nor is this all. There still remains the wonderful truth of His continuous intercession for us. In its widest meaning that word expresses the whole of the manifold ways by which Christ undertakes and maintains our cause. But the narrower signification of prayer on our behalf is applicable, and is in Scripture applied, to our Lord. As on earth, the climax of all His intercourse with His disciples was that deep yet simple prayer which forms the Holy of Holies of John’s Gospel, so in heaven His loftiest office for us is set forth under the figure of His intercession. Before the Throne stands the slain Lamb, and therefore do the elders in the outer circle bring acceptable praises. Within the veil stands the Priest, with the names of the tribes blazing on the breastplate and on the shoulders of His robes, near the seat of love, near the arm of power. And whatever difficulty may surround that idea of Christ’s priestly intercession, this at all events is implied in it, that the mighty work which He accomplished on earth is ever present to the divine mind as the ground of our acceptance and the channel of our blessings; and this further, that the utterance of Christ’s will is ever in harmony with the divine purpose. Therefore His prayer has in it a strange tone of majesty, and, if we may so say, of command, as of one who knows that He is ever heard: ‘I will that they whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.’
The instinct of the Church has, from of old, laid hold of an event in His earthly life to shadow forth this great truth, and has bid us see a pledge and a symbol of it in that scene on the Lake of Galilee: the disciples toiling in the sudden storm, the poor little barque tossing on the waters tinged by the wan moon, the spray dashing over the wearied rowers. They seem alone, but up yonder, in some hidden cleft of the hills, their Master looks down on all the weltering storm, and lifts His voice in prayer. Then when the need is sorest, and the hope least, He comes across the waves, making their surges His pavement, and using all opposition as the means of His approach, and His presence brings calmness, and immediately they are at the land.
So we have not only to look back to the Cross, but up to the Throne. From the Cross we hear a voice, ‘It is finished.’ From the Throne a voice, ‘For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.’
II. Secondly, Christ’s servants on earth derive from Him a like perpetual activity for the same object.
The Lord, who in the former portion of these verses declares His own purpose of unwearied action for Zion, associates with Himself in the latter portion the watchmen, whom He appoints and endows for functions in some measure resembling His own, and exercised with constancy derived from Him. ‘I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night.’ On the promise follows, as ever, a command {for all divine gifts involve the responsibility of their use, and it is not His wont either to bestow without requiring, or to require before bestowing}, ‘Ye that remind Jehovah, keep not silence.’
There is distinctly traceable before a reference to a two-fold form of occupation devolving on these Christ-sent servants. They are watchmen, and they are also God’s remembrancers. In the one capacity as in the other, their voices are to be always heard. The former metaphor is common in the Old Testament, as a designation of the prophetic office, but, in the accordance with the genius of the New Testament, as expressed on Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out on the lowly as well as on the high, on the young as on the old, and all prophesied, it may be fairly extended to designated not to some selected few, but the whole mass of Christian people. The watchman’s office falls to be done by all who see the coming peril, and have a tongue to echo it forth. The remembrancer’s priestly office belongs to every member of Christ’s priestly kingdom, the lowest and least of whom has the privilege of unrestrained entry into God’s presence-chamber, and the power of blessing the world by faithful prayer. What should we think of a citizen in a beleaguered city, who saw enemy mounting the very ramparts, and gave no alarm because that was the sentry’s business? In such extremity every man is a soldier, and women and children can at least keep watch and raise shrill cries of warning. The gifts, then, here promised, and the duties that flow from them, are not the prerogatives or the tasks of any class or order, but the heritage and the burden of the Lord to every member of His Church.
Our voices should ever be heard on earth. A solemn message is committed to us, by the very fact of our belief in Jesus Christ and His work. With that faith come responsibilities of which no Christian can denude himself. To warn the wicked man to turn from His wickedness; to blow the trumpet when we see the sword coming; to catch ever gleaming on the horizon, like the spears of an army through the dust of the march, the outriders and advance-guard of the coming of Him whose coming is life or death to all, and to lift up our voices with strength and say, ‘Behold your God’; to peal into the ears of men, sunken in earthliness and dreaming of safety, the cry which may startle and save; to ring out in glad tones to all who wearily ask, ‘Watchman, what of the night? will the night soon pass?’ the answer which the slow dawning east has breathed into our else stony lips, ‘The morning cometh’; to proclaim Christ, who came once to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, who comes ever, through the ages, to bless and uphold the righteousness which He loves and to destroy the iniquity which He hates, who will come at the last to judge the world-this is the never-ending task of the watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem. The New Testament calls it ‘preaching,’ proclaiming as a herald does. And both metaphors carry one common lesson of the manner in which the work should be done. With clear loud voice, with earnestness and decision, with faithfulness and self-oblivion, forgetting himself in his message, must the herald sound out the will of his King, the largess of his Lord. And the watchman who stands on his watch-tower whole nights, and sees foemen creeping through the gloom, or fire bursting out among the straw-roofed cottages within the walls, shouts with all his might the short, sharp alarm, that wakes the sleepers to whom slumber were death. Let us ponder the pattern.
Our voices should ever be heard in heaven. They who trust God remind Him of His promises by their very faith; it is a mute appeal to His faithful love, which He cannot but answer. And, beyond that, their prayers come up for a memorial before God, and have as real an effect in furthering Christ’s kingdom on earth as is exercised by their entreaties and proclamations to men.
How distinctly these words of our text define the region within which our prayers should ever move, and the limits which bound their efficacy! They remind God. Then the truest prayer is that which bases itself on God’s uttered will, and the desires which are born of our own fancies or heated enthusiasms have no power with Him. The prayer that prevails is a reflected promise. Our office in prayer is but to receive on our hearts the bright rays of His word, and to flash them back from the polished surface to the heaven from whence they came.
These two forms of action ought to be inseparable. Each, if genuine, will drive us to the other, for who could fling himself into the watchman’s work, with all its solemn consequences, knowing how weak his voice was, and how deaf the ears that should hear, unless he could bring God’s might to his help? and who could honestly remind God of His promises and forget his own responsibilities? Prayerless work will soon slacken, and never bear fruit; idle prayer is worse than idle. You cannot part them if you would. How much of the busy occupation which is called ‘Christian work’ is detected to be spurious by this simple test! How much so-called prayer is reduced by it to mere noise, no better than the blaring trumpet or the hollow drum!
The power for both is derived from Christ. He sets the watchmen; He commands the remembrancers. From Him flows the power, from His good Spirit comes the desire, to proclaim the message. That message is the story of His life and death. But for what He does and is we should have nothing to say; but for His gift we should have no power to say it; but for His influence we should have no will to say it. He commands and fits us to be intercessors, for His mighty work brings us near to God; He opens for us access with confidence to God. He inspires our prayers. He ‘hath made us priests to God.’
And, as the Christian power of discharging these twofold duties is drawn from Christ, so our pattern is His manner of discharging them, and the condition of receiving the power is to abide in Him. He proposes Himself as our Example. He calls us to no labours which He has not Himself shared, nor to any earnestness or continuance in prayer which He has not Himself shown forth. This Master works in front of His men. The farmer that goes first among all the sowers, and heads the line of reapers in the yellowing harvest-field, may well have diligent servants. Our Master ‘went forth, weeping, bearing precious seed,’ and has left it in our hands to sow in all furrows. Our Master is the Lord of the harvest, and has borne the heat of the day before His servants. Look at the amount of work, actual hard work, compressed into these three short years of His ministry. Take the records of the words He spake on that last day of His public teaching, and see what unwearied toil they represent. Ponder upon that life till you catch the spirit which breathed through it all, and, like Him, embrace gladly the welcome necessity of labour for God, under the sense of a vocation conferred upon you, and of the short space within which your service must be condensed. ‘I must work the work of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.’
Christ asks no romantic impossibilities from us, but He does ask a continuous, systematic discharge of the duties which depend on our relation to the world, and on our relation to Him. Let it be our life’s work to show forth His praise; let the very atmosphere in which we move and have our being be prayer. Let two great currents set ever through our days, which two, like the great movements in the ocean of the air, are but the upper and under halves of the one movement-that beneath with constant energy of desire rushing in from the cold poles to be warmed and expanded at the tropics, where the all-moving sun pours his directest rays; that above charged with rich gifts from the Lord of light, glowing with heat drawn from Him, and made diffusive by His touch, spreading itself out beneficent and life-bringing into all colder lands, swathing the world in soft, warm folds, and turning the polar ice into sweet waters.
In the tabernacle of Israel stood two great emblems of the functions of God’s people, which embodied these two sides of the Christian life. Day by day, there ascended from the altar of incense the sweet odour, which symbolised the fragrance of prayer as it wreathes itself upwards to the heavens. Night by night, as darkness fell on the desert and the camp, there shone through the gloom the hospitable light of the great golden candlestick with its seven lamps, whose steady rays outburned the stars that paled with the morning. Side by side they proclaimed to Israel its destiny to be the light of the world, to be a kingdom of priests.
The offices and the honour have passed over to us, and we shall fall beneath our obligations unless we let our light shine constantly before men, and let our voice rise like a fountain night and day’ before God- even as He did who, when every man went to his own house, went alone to the Mount of Olives, and in the morning, when every man returned to his daily task, went into the Temple and taught. By His example, by His gifts, by the motive of His love, our resting, working Lord says to each of us, ‘Ye that remind God, keep not silence.’ Let us answer, ‘For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.’
III. Finally, The constant activity of the servants of Christ will secure the constant operation of God’s power.
‘Give Him no rest’: let there be no cessation to Him. These are bold words, which many people would not have been slow to rebuke if they had been anywhere else than in the Bible. Those who remind God are not to suffer Him to be still. The prophet believes that they can regulate the flow of divine energy, can stir up the strength of the Lord.
It is easy to puzzle ourselves with insoluble questions about the co-operation of God’s power and man’s; but practically, is it not true that God reaches His end, of the establishment of Zion, through the Church? He has not barely willed that the world should be saved, nor barely that it should be saved through Christ, nor barely that it should be saved through the knowledge of Christ; but His will is that the world shall be saved, by faith in the person and work of Christ, proclaimed as a gospel by men who believe it. And, as a matter of fact, is it not true that the energy with which God’s power in the gospel manifests itself depends on the zeal and activity and prayerfulness of the Church? The great reservoir is always full-full to the brim; however much may be drawn from it, the water sinks not a hairsbreadth; but the bore of the pipe and the power of the pumping-engine determine the rate at which the stream flows from it. ‘He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.’ The obstruction of indifference dammed back the water of life. The city perishes for thirst if the long line of aqueduct that strides across the plain towards the home of the mountain torrents be ruinous, broken down, choked with rubbish.
God is always the same-equally near, equally strong, equally gracious. But our possession of His grace, and the impartation of His grace through us to others, vary, because our faith, our earnestness, our desires, vary. True, these no doubt are also His gifts and His working, and nothing that we say now touches in the least on the great truth that God is the sole originator of all good in man; but while believing that, as no less sure in itself than blessed in its message of confidence and consolation to us, we also have to remember, ‘If any man open the door, I will come in to him.’ We may have as much of God as we want, as much as we can hold, far more than we deserve. And if ever the victorious power of His Church seems to be almost paling to defeat, and His servants to be working no deliverance upon the earth, the cause is not to be found in Him who is ‘without variableness,’ nor in His gifts, which are ‘without repentance,’ but solely in us, who let go our hold of the Eternal Might. No ebb withdraws the waters of that great ocean; and if sometimes there be sand and ooze where once the flashing flood brought life and motion, it is because careless warders have shut the sea-gates.
An awful responsibility lies on us. We can resist and refuse, or we can open our hearts and draw into ourselves His strength. We can bring into operation those energies which act through faithful men faithfully proclaiming the faithful saying; or we can limit the Holy One of Israel. ‘Why could not we cast him out?’ ‘Because of your unbelief.’
With what grand confidence, then, may the weakest of us go to his task. We have a right to feel that in all our labour God works with us; that, in all our words for Him, it is not we that speak, but the Spirit of our Father that speaks in us; that if humbly and prayerfully, with self-distrust and resolute effort to crucify our own intrusive individuality, we wait for Him to enshrine Himself within us, strength will come to us, drawn from the deep fountains of God, and we too shall be able to say, ‘Not I, but the grace of God in me.’
How this sublime confidence should tell on our characters, destroying all self-confidence, repressing all pride, calming all impatience, brightening all despondency, and ever stirring us anew to deeds worthy of the ‘exceeding greatness of the power which worketh in us’-I can only suggest.
On all sides motives for strenuous toil press in upon us-chiefly those great examples which we have now been contemplating. But, besides these, there are other forms of activity which may point the same lesson. Look at the energy around us. We live in a busy time. Life goes swiftly in all regions. Men seem to be burning away faster than ever before, in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. Do we work as hard for God as the world does for itself? Look at the energy beneath us: how evil in every form is active; how lies and half-truths propagate themselves quick as the blight on a rose-tree; how profligacy, and crime, and all the devil’s angels are busy on his errands. If we are sitting drowsy by our camp-fires, the enemy is on the alert. You can hear the tramp of their legions and the rumble of their artillery through the night as they march to their posts on the field. It is no time for God’s sentinels to nod. If they sleep, the adversary does not, but glides in the congenial darkness, sowing his baleful tares. Do we work as hard for God as the emissaries of evil do for their master? Look at the energy above us. On the throne of the universe is the immortal Power who slumbereth not nor sleepeth. Before the altar of the heavens is the Priest of the world, the Lord of His Church, ‘who ever liveth to make intercession for us.’ Round Him stand perfected spirits, the watchmen on the walls of the New Jerusalem, who ‘rest not day and night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’ From His presence come, filling the air with the rustle of their swift wings and the light of their flame-faces, the ministering spirits who evermore ‘do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word.’ And we, Christian brethren, where are we in all this magnificent concurrence of activity, for purposes which ought to be dear to our hearts as they are to the heart of God? Do we work for Him as He and all that are with Him do? Is His will done by us on earth, as it is heaven?
Alas! alas! have we not all been like those three apostles whose eyes were heavy with sleep even while the Lord was wrestling with the tempter under the gnarled olives in the pale moonlight of Gethsemane? Let us arouse ourselves from our sloth. Let us lift up our cry to God: ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, as in the ancient days in the generations of old’; and the answer shall sound from the heavens to us as it did to the prophet, an echo of his prayer turned into a command, ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 1. The speaker is probably Jehovah Himself. Hold my…
1. The speaker is probably Jehovah Himself. Hold my peace] cp. Isa_42:14. The righteousness] i.e. her vindication, the setting of her right in the eyes of the world (cp. Isa_58:8). Salvation] i.e. deliverance.
2. New name] as befits her new character (Isa_1:26; Jer_33:16): see Isa_42:4.
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3. In the hand] so held for the admiration of the world.
4. The figure is again that of a bride (Isa_54:6) in whom her husband delights. Hephzibah.. Beulah] meaning, 'My delight is in her,' and 'Married.'
5. The same image differently applied, the people being regarded as the bridegroom and their country as the bride.
6. Watchmen] These are angelic beings who report to Jehovah what happens on earth, and intercede for mercy to Zion (Zec_1:11-12).
Ye that make, etc.] RV 'ye that are the Lord's remembrancers, take ye no rest.'
8, 9. The foe will no more rob them of their harvests, but the produce of the land shall be used for the service of the Temple. Holiness] RV 'sanctuary.'
10. A command to prepare the way for the returning exiles (Isa_40:8; Isa_57:14).
For the people] RV 'for the peoples,' that they may escort the Israelites.
11. His reward, etc.] see on Isa_40:10. Work] RV 'recompence.'
12. Holy people] Israel's ideal character realised (Exo_19:6 cp. Isa_61:6). Sought out] contrast Jer_30:17. Not forsaken] Cp. Isa_62:4.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv4, 12 i.e. My delight is in her.
Hephzibah
i.e. My delight is in her.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Zion’s Glory
CHAPTER 62
Zion’s Glory
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1. He will not rest (Isa 62:1) 2. The new names (Isa 62:2-5) 3. The intercession and the answer (Isa 62:6-9) 4. The accomplishment at hand (Isa 62:10-12) The intercession in the beginning of the chapter is that of Christ. He will not rest till He has accomplished His purpose in His earthly people and in Zion. When it is accomplished Gentiles and kings will witness it. Zion then shall be called by a new name. The forsaken one will no longer be forsaken; the desolation of the land will cease. She shall be called Hephzibah (my delight in her) ; the land will be Beulah (married). All points to the glorious consummation of the kingdom, and other watchmen intercede and give Him no rest till He establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Faithful Jews, men of prayer will during the great tribulation call on God to make good His Word and fulfil His promises. May God’s people even now plead and intercede for the hastening of all His purposes. “Behold, thy salvation cometh, behold His reward is with Him and His work before Him.” Note the results of His coming in Isa 62:12.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Zion the Bride of Jehovah.
Zion the Bride of Jehovah.
The prophecy concerning the glory of Zion’s perfection here reaches the highest point of exaltation: the congregation of the redeemed as the bride and spouse of the Lord.
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v. 1. For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace, so the Lord calls out through His prophet, in His eagerness to picture the glory which would pertain to Zion in the new dispensation, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, He will not feel satisfied, He will not abate in His zeal, until the righteousness thereof, the salvation guaranteed by His covenant, go forth as brightness, like the light of the dawn, and the salvation thereof as a lamp, a torch or cresset, that burneth, dispelling the gloom and darkness of ignorance.
v. 2. And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, the salvation intended to be revealed to the whole world, and all kings thy glory, the mighty ones of the earth noting the revelation of God’s mercy upon His Zion; and thou shalt be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord shall name, this in itself being a distinction which shows the exceeding greatness of God’s love to lost and condemned mankind.
v. 3. Thou shalt also be a crown of glory, a glorious diadem, in the hand of the Lord, under His gracious protection, and a royal diadem, a turban of the finest material, in the hand of thy God, ready to be placed upon His head. Cf Mal 3:17; Rev 6:2; Rev 19:12.
v. 4. Thou, Jerusalem, representing the Church of Christ, shalt no more be termed Forsaken, as a wife deserted by her husband; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate, as a mother forsaken by her children; but thou shalt be called Heplizi-bah (My delight is in her), and thy land Beulah (Thou art married), as a testimony of the relation existing between the Church and Jehovah, her Lord; for the Lord delighteth in thee, as the first name states, and thy land shall be married, as the second name says, not only ownership, but also protection by Jehovah being implied.
v. 5. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy Sons marry thee, the land being returned to the possession of the children of Zion, the Church coming into her own; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, with a chaste and exalted delight, so shall thy God rejoice over thee, for He delights in glorifying His Church, in entering into the most intimate fellowship with her. Having thus stated His relation to His Zion, the Lord now urges the watchmen of His Church to insist upon His fulfilling His promise.
v. 8. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, the prophets and teachers who were to be on the lookout for the enemies, lest disaster overtake His flock, which shall never hold their peace day nor night, being engaged continually in promoting the glorification of Zion; ye that make mention of the Lord, the inhabitants of Zion, including the children of strangers who had joined them, keep not silence. All those who confess their faith in the Lord, teachers and hearers, should give themselves and the Lord no rest until their glorification is accomplished, as the text continues:
v. 7. And give Him no rest till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth, so that His Church will be an object of praise and of reverence throughout the world.
v. 8. The Lord hath sworn by His right hand and by the arm of His strength, in a most solemn oath, with the definite assurance that His almighty power is able to carry out His will, Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies, as had been the case whenever the enemies invaded the land, and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine for the which thou hast labored, enjoy the fruits of the Church’s labor;
v. 9. but they that have gathered it shall eat it, the believers enjoying what they had worked for with such trouble, and praise the Lord, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of My holiness, in connection with sacrifices of thanksgiving made in honor of the Lord. The believers are the only truly happy people in the world, and they enjoy the blessings of the Lord with due thankfulness. Moreover, they invite all the children of Zion to share their happiness and the name given them by Jehovah.
v. 10. Go through, go through the gates, so the members of the Church appeal to the strangers without, asking them to assemble in their own cities and make ready for the final great home-coming; prepare ye the way of the people, removing all obstacles and hindrances; cast up, cast up the highway, preparing the road as for the movement of a large army; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people, so that they all might gather under the banner of the Cross.
v. 11. Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, so that all nations could hear the glorious message, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh, namely, in the person of the Messiah. Behold, His reward is with Him and His work before Him, for He brings the trophies of His victory over all the enemies of mankind and offers them to His believers.
v. 12. And they shall call them, the children of Zion, the believers, the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, those who have received and are enjoying the salvation prepared for them; and thou, Zion herself, shalt be called "sought out," many-people being eager to partake of the deliverance which the Church enjoys, a city not forsaken, one whose streets are always alive with people desiring to receive the benefit of the salvation offered to all men in the Gospel-message which she proclaims. This inner glory of the Church is hers even here in time, in the midst of the tribulations of these latter days, and it will he hers without cover or measure in the eternal home above.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11 For Zion's sake I will not be silent, and…
For Zion's sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet
Both of these statements mean the same thing. Here "Zion" and "Jerusalem" both represent the people who live in Jerusalem. AT: "For the sake of the people of Jerusalem I will not be silent" (See: Parallelism and Metonymy)
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I will not be silent
It is most likely that "I" refers to Isaiah.
until her righteousness proceeds brightly, and her salvation as a burning torch
Both clauses reassure the people that God will eventually come and save the people of Israel and that it will be as apparent as light is. (See: Simile and Parallelism)
translationWords
Zion
Jerusalem
righteous
save
nation
king
glory
name
Yahweh
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 vv1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 62:1-12 The servant here commits himself to proclaiming the…
62:1-12 The servant here commits himself to proclaiming the good news continuously until the glory of Zion is realized.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.