Bible Commentaries
Isaiah 1

Verse 3

The Unnatural Children

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.— Isaiah 1:3.

The first chapter of Isaiah has been called by Ewald the great arraignment. It contains four leading ideas. They are the ideas, says Skinner, which run through the whole of Isaiah’s teaching, and through the teaching of all the pre-Exilic prophets. These ideas are—(1) the breach between Jehovah and Israel; (2) the inefficiency of mere ritual; (3) the call to national repentance; (4) the certainty of a sweeping judgment.

Ewald’s title suggests a court of justice; and it has often been pointed out that God is both Judge and Plaintiff, Israel the defendant, heaven and earth the jury, while the prophet is both principal witness and prosecuting attorney. But all this is apt to withdraw the attention from the real pathos of the scene. No doubt there is a judge, and judgment is pronounced. But the Judge is a Father. The paraphernalia of the court-room pass into insignificance when there is heard the exceeding bitter cry, “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.”

The third verse is an illustration. It shows the ignorance of the children in contrast to the knowledge of the domestic animals.

I

“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.”

1. It is knowledge of their owner. They both know and acknowledge him. He on his part not only owns but takes care of them. He rears them, tames them, houses them, and heals them. In return they serve him.

True to the life, no sooner had the drove got within the walls than it began to disperse. Every ox knew perfectly well his owner, and the way to his house; nor did it get bewildered for a moment in the mazes of the narrow and crooked alleys. As for the ass, he walked straight to the door, and up to “his master’s crib,” without turning to bid good-night to his companions of the field. I followed some into their habitation, and saw each take his appropriate manger, and begin his evening meal of dry tibn. 1 [Note: 1 Thomson, The Land and the Book, ii. 387.]

2. Their service brings them into fellowship—such fellowship as is possible between man and the lower animals. There is some sense of mutual dependence. There is affection and sometimes self-sacrifice. The prophet speaks of the domestic animals of his own people. We should see his point more clearly if we thought of the horse and the dog.

It is not an uncommon thing in the Argentine pampas—I have on two occasions witnessed it myself—for a riding horse to come home to die. I am speaking of horses that live out in the open, and have to be hunted to the corral or enclosure, or roughly captured with a lasso as they run, when they are required. On going out one summer evening—I was only a boy at the time—I saw one of the horses of the establishment standing unsaddled and unbridled leaning his head over the gate. Going to the spot I stroked his nose, and turning to an old native who happened to be standing near, asked him what could be the meaning of such a thing. “I think he is going to die,” he answered; “horses often come to the house to die.” And next morning the poor beast was found lying dead not twenty yards from the gate.

I now believe that the sensations of sickness and approaching death in the riding horse of the pampas resemble or simulate the pains, so often experienced, of hunger, thirst, and fatigue, combined together with the oppressive sensations caused by the ponderous native saddle, with its huge surcingle of raw hide, drawn up so tightly as to hinder free respiration. The suffering animal remembers how at the last relief invariably came when the twelve or fifteen hours’ torture was over, and when the great iron bridle and ponderous gear were removed, and he had freedom and food and drink and rest. At the gate or at the door of his master’s house the sudden relief had always come to him, and there does he go in his sickness to find it again. 2 [Note: W. H. Hudson, The Naturalist in La Plata.]

II

“Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”

God has been as a Father to Israel. Now, a father has the right to obedience, service, and especially affection. But Israel had come short. Of the two great commandments of the Law they failed especially in the second. So was it with Israel always. The first commandment is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and there was at least much outward appearance of devotion to God. But the second commandment is, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The failure was here. “Of what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me … Relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” The scribe who came to Jesus had no doubt of his duty to God. But, willing to justify himself, he asked, “Who is my neighbour?”

1. Their ignorance consisted in not knowing what God had done for them—“Israel doth not know.” What had He done?

1. He calls heaven and earth to witness. For He had created them and preserved them, and been their bountiful benefactor. They were not ignorant of the wonders of their world. The psalmists were accustomed to consider the heavens ( Psalms 8:3). And they found that the heavens declared the glory of God ( Psalms 19:1).

2. But God had chosen Israel to be His peculiar people. He had been as a Father to them and had done great things for them, as Samuel reminded them that day upon which He consented to give them a king. It was even a commonplace among the heathen. “Then said they among the nations, the Lord hath done great things for them.” And they admitted it when they considered—“The Lord hath done great things for us” ( Psalms 126:2-3).

3. Above all, God had shown them the care involved in training them to become a blessing to all the nations of the earth. “Thou shalt consider in thine heart,” said Moses, “that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee” ( Deuteronomy 8:5). It was this, above all, that they were ignorant of. They mistook the chastening of a father for the wounds of an enemy.

2. Their ignorance was due also to want of consideration—My people doth not consider.” (1) He would have them stop and think. When the rich young ruler came running to Jesus—“Master, what shall I do?”—He stopped him. “Why callest thou me good?” Stop and think. When the Pharisees spoke glibly about the Messiah being David’s son, He recalled the 110th Psalm, where David calls the Messiah his Lord. “How can he be both son and Lord?” He said. Stop and think. (2) It is want of consideration that makes men miss Christ. For the most part they simply pass Him by, they do not consider Him. “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” ( Lamentations 1:12). (3) It is want of consideration that makes men lose life itself. They do not know what life is. They do not know that they have lost it. (4) But consideration of God brings considerateness for man. The two great commandments must always be kept in their right order: first, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” next, “Thy neighbour as thyself.” It was because Israel rebelled against God that they neglected the poor and the fatherless. It is to those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious that St. Paul writes: “Let your considerateness be known unto all men” ( Php_4:5 ).

It was Israel’s lack of perception that was at the root of her sins. Ibsen, in the study of the tragedy of a lost soul in Peer Gynt, teaches that God meant something when He made each one of us, and that it is our duty to find out what He did mean. The devil’s staunchest ally is lack of perception.

When at the end of his career Peer Gynt, who is the type of a compromising self-seeker, meets the button-moulder, who tells him it is his fate to be cast into the melting-pot, this dialogue ensues. ( Peer Gynt, Acts 5:9.)

Peer. One question only: What is it, at bottom, this “being oneself”?

Button-Moulder. A singular question, most odd in the mouth of a man who just now ——

Peer. Come, a straightforward answer.

Button-Moulder. To be oneself is: to slay oneself. But on you that answer is doubtless lost, and therefore we’ll say: to stand forth everywhere with Master’s intention displayed like a signboard.

Peer. But suppose a man never has come to know what Master meant with him?

Button-Moulder. He must divine it.

Peer. But how often are divinings beside the mark—then one is carried ad undas in middle career.

Button-Moulder. That is certain, Peer Gynt; in default of divining, the cloven-hoofed gentleman finds his best hook.

Literature

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women, and Children, 5th Ser., 493.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions, Isaiah i.–xlviii. 7.

Macmillan (H.), The Gate Beautiful, 155.

Momerie (A. W.), Inspiration, 211.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xviii. No. 1059.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxv. 58 (Rogers).

Church Pulpit Year Book, ii. (1905) 44.

Expository Times, iv. 432 (Robertson).

Verse 17

Learning to do Well

Learn to do well.— Isaiah 1:17.

How is man to be distinguished from the lower animals? Man has been called a laughing animal. But do not the apes also laugh, says Carlyle, or attempt to do it? Nor is Carlyle content with the Frenchman’s definition that man is the cooking animal. His own definition is that man is the tool-using animal. 1 [Note: Sartor Resartus, ch. v.] But how will it do to describe him as the being who learns? This is Watkinson’s definition. 2 [Note: The Bane and the Antidote, p. 169.] Other creatures, he says, can scarcely be said to learn; whatever pertains to their species they do immediately, instinctively, perfectly. “A lark builds its first nest as skilfully as its last, a spider’s first embroidery is as exquisite as anything it spins in adult life, whilst a bee constructs its first cell and compounds its first honey, with an efficiency that leaves nothing to be desired.” It is altogether different with human beings; they have everything to learn.

I

1. We have to learn how to make the best use of the body. Hitherto the development of the body has been done mostly out of school; it has been left to the playground. But now some attention is being given to physical training. And we are even beginning to give our boys an opportunity of learning a trade at school. However it is done, we must learn to use the body.

2. We must also educate the mind. We have to learn in order to know, to remember, to appreciate literature and art, to make decisions in the conduct of life.

3. Do we stop there? Is the highest aim of education achieved when we possess “a sound mind in a sound body”? What about the Soul? Besides learning a trade, besides learning to read and to understand what we read, have we not also to learn to do well?

The training of the soul is scarcely recognised as any proper part of public education. Nor is the place of the public teacher always efficiently supplied in the home. We seem to expect that our children should do well naturally.

We are sometimes greatly pained when we detect in our young children pride, cruelty, falsehood, dishonesty, selfishness, avarice, and other vices; but it is a mistake to lay this fact too much to heart and to begin prophesying evil concerning them. Beginning with the piano, children make such sad work of it; when they first try a pen, the characters are exceedingly ambiguous and the page liberally blotted; and when for the first time they essay some task in art, the work of their pencil is utterly grotesque. But we do not therefore despair of them, and write bitter things against them; they were sent to school to learn, and we reasonably hope that by and by their senses will be exercised and developed, that they will shed their barbarisms, and take a worthy place with scholars and artists. They must learn goodness as they learn music, mathematics, languages, and art.

But is not the education of the soul the same thing as the education of the mind? That is just another way of saying, is not cleverness goodness? And we know that cleverness is not always goodness. On the contrary, great intellectual gifts are often found associated with great moral vices. The intellectual and moral organs are so closely related that it is impossible to separate them in thought; yet the light of the one is often eclipsed by the darkness of the other.

Astronomers have recently made very interesting discoveries respecting what are known as binary or companion stars. They tell us that the two stars are in close proximity; indeed, they are so close together that no telescope could separate their images; and yet one of them is dark and the other brilliant. The two orbs are intimately related, and revolve round each other at slight distances; yet whilst one is bright the other is dark, and the dark star is perpetually eclipsing its luminous companion. 1 [Note: The Bane and the Antidote, p. 168.]

It is easy to understand the failure of “goody goody” literature. It is “goody goody” rather than good, because it means well, but is not true either in the lower real or higher ideal sense. Its minor heroes pale and are ineffective, while George Eliot’s Adam Bede, and Mary Garth, and Dinah live with us like friends, and move us by their virtues,—while the heroic self-devotedness of Jean Valjean, and the infinite goodness of the good Bishop in Les Misérables, shine in our minds and hearts as beacon lights of virtue, made visible in the atmosphere of genius. Thus, in order that the examples of literature may work within the mind, the literature must be good in the literary as well as in the ethical sense. 1 [Note: S. Byrant, Short Studies in Character, p. 71.]

II

1. We need Power. We need the gift, the genius. The man who has no music in him will never learn to be a musician. Those who visit the chapel in Milan which contains Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco of the Last Supper see a copy of it first on the wall opposite the entrance door. But when they have seen the original on the wall at the end of the building, they have no hesitation in preferring it. The copy shows traces of careful workmanship, but the original has the stamp of genius.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was taken by a friend to see a picture. He was anxious to admire it, and he looked it over with a keen and careful but favourable eye. “Capital composition; correct drawing; the colour, tone, chiaroscuro excellent; but—but—it wants, hang it, it wants— That!” snapping his fingers; and, wanting “that,” though it had everything else, it was worth nothing. 2 [Note: John Brown, Rab and his Friends, p. 392.]

I once knew a man who had apparently no ear for music. Possessing every opportunity for travel and culture, he resented the fact that others enjoyed what was a closed world to him. So he set to work to study music from the foundation. He became so expert that he could take to pieces a Wagner opera and recompose its motifs. He enjoyed hearing such an opera rendered, but his pleasure involved scarcely any appreciation of music. It was the pleasure accompanying the intellectual process of analysis and synthesis, the kind of joy one has in working a difficult problem in calculus; but the man remained almost as deaf to music as before he undertook the course of training. 3 [Note: E. H. Griggs, Moral Education, p. 22.]

The man of genius, we say, has “the gift.” The power to do well is also a gift.

This, nor gems, nor stores of gold,

Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow;

But God alone, when first His active hand

Imprints the secret bias of the soul.

Or, to put it in another way, as the poet is born, not made, so we must be born again before we learn to do well. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” St. Paul says, “I learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” He does not say, “I have learned,” as though it had been the result of daily discipline; he goes back to the moment of the vision of Christ.’ “It pleased God to reveal his Son in me,” and I learned that day to be content. It flashed upon him, says R. M. Pope, 1 [Note: The Poetry of the Upward Way, p. 24.] in the great moment of his history. When he knew the power of Christ’s resurrection, the true explanation of life dawned upon him; the world suddenly wore a new expression.

World—how it walled about

Life with disgrace,

Till God’s own smile came out;

That was thy face!

It is sometimes said that certain men have a natural genius for religion. What they have is natural ability which, when taken possession of by the Spirit of God, makes them eminently successful as witnesses or saints. How would St. Paul have used his reasoning power, or Bunyan his imagination, apart from the grace of God?

The world is full of people who are ambitious to become poets, painters, musicians, or orators, but, despite wearisome and pathetic application, they never do anything really first-rate; the masterpiece is not forthcoming; they find supreme music, art, or eloquence so difficult as to be, in fact, practically impossible. What do these baffled aspirants really need to make their work easy, and to secure them the rapture of triumph? Give that despairing musician an atom of Mozart’s melodious brain, that halting poet a spark of Shakespeare’s fire, that struggling painter a nerve of Turner’s colour-sense, that stammering orator a lick of Demosthenes’ tongue, and bitter failure will be at an end; there will be no more exhausting difficulty and delay, only the intoxicating sense of mastery, progress, and delight. More power in the learner is what is needed, and every difficulty is vanquished, every aspiration fulfilled. So we experience repeated difficulty and disappointment in the pursuit of holiness, because the power of Christ does not sufficiently rest upon us. “Christ in you the hope of glory”—not the glory of the future only, but the glory of character here and now. Let us plead for more inward vision, receptivity, and responsiveness, for more of the Spirit that worketh mightily in full surrendered souls, and all things fair and perfect shall become possible. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, p. 181.]

2. We need a Pattern. As the child who is to learn to write receives a copybook with a headline, so we need an example if we are to learn to do well. Should the example be good or bad? Some ethical teachers think it best to show us the repulsiveness and horror of vice. Many novelists follow this method. “The drama,” says Mr. Watkinson, “is fond of holding up the mirror to nature, as the phrase goes, and very ugly reflections they commonly are; one might think that the stage existed in the interests of the doctrine of original sin. Newspapers foster purity by raking in the kennels, and journals with religious and moral pretensions go to an extreme in exhuming and exhibiting repulsive incidents in individual and social life.” 2 [Note: Ibid. p. 175.] But how often are drunkards reformed by the sight of a drunkard? It is well known that murders are apt to follow when the details of some ghastly murder are given in the newspapers. We might as well hope to obtain a good style by familiarising ourselves with specimens of bad English. Let the pattern be good, and as good as possible. As William Tell has made many patriots, as Florence Nightingale has trained many nurses, as Lord Shaftesbury has shown the way to many philanthropists, so the Lord Jesus Christ is the Pattern for all who would learn to do well. “Learn of me” is His own invitation, and the Apostles are aware that the only way by which they themselves learned to do well was by “looking unto Jesus.”

I remember speaking severely to a five-year-old child who was misbehaving at table. She answered quite discourteously. On being asked why she had spoken so, she said, “Oh, I only wanted to show you the tone of voice you used!” 1 [Note: E. H. Griggs, Moral Education, p. 190.]

3. We need Practice. How does a young man learn to cycle? By practising it. How does a young medical man attain to usefulness in his profession? By the practice of it. He calls himself a practitioner, and his business a practice.

“Do! Do! Do! Let your picture go, and do another!” said William Hunt to his students when they asked him a thousand curious questions about lines, colours, and effects. In doing, they were to know and excel. And the teachers of science specially demand that all theoretical knowledge shall go hand in hand with experiment. The student must keep on applying his knowledge; only by repeated appeals to the facts of nature does he learn the truth and become a real philosopher. We know only through doing, and through doing ever do better. The famous physician John Hunter used to say to his pupils, “Don’t think, try.”

1. Take the virtue of contentment. In our best moments we feel that fretfulness and ingratitude partake of the nature of blasphemy; yet the repinings and soreness of the soul are subdued only through repeated failure and discipline.

It is true, no doubt, that there is a secret, and that the secret of contentment, as of every other virtue, may be learned in a moment. But for the fulness of the following of Christ in contentment there is need of the patient discipline of years. Contentment, says Dr. J. B. Campbell, is less a gift or a grace than a growth. It is the flower and fruit of careful cultivation. And he mentions three things that aid in its cultivation. (1) A just consideration of the worth of things. We shall never find contentment while we value the things that are seen above those that are not seen, the trivial and temporal above the essential and eternal, the material and physical above the moral and spiritual. (2) Confidence in God. He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. He is never unmindful of our work and labour of love. Then disappointments become His appointments, and all things work together for good. (3) Co-operation with God. For this makes failure impossible, this gives assurance that no word or work is vain. But co-operation with God demands the consecration of self to His service. And so the simple secret of contentment is surrender to God’s will. Does anyone doubt it? Let him try it. Does anyone desire it? Let him do it.

2. Take the virtue of sincerity. Some men are naturally theatrical; they constantly catch themselves making postures; their life is vitiated and disfigured by endless pretence, affectation, and unreality. Through repeated and bitter castigations of the soul, men master this passion for masquerading and attain sincerity, simplicity, and thoroughness of life.

There comes to me a thought of Carlyle’s, which contains a world of wisdom: “The true merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.” That, as a motto for all who think and speak, may be added to a theory of life, and become the hidden text of many a moral lesson indirectly conveyed through intellectual criticism to others. How cheerful it is to think upon! We can all be sincere; we can all be original. 1 [Note: S. Bryant, Studies in Character, p. 75.]

3. Take the virtue of veracity. How much it costs us to learn to speak the truth, to act the truth, to live the truth. We suppress, distort, exaggerate, colour and discolour.

Instead of saying plain “yes,” or plain “no,” “it is so,” “it is not the case,” or some other simple, straightforward phrase of assent or denial, a man swears or protests in some foolish way, thereby weakening, not affirming, what he says. All these unnecessary enlargements show that he who uses them is aware that his simple word is not valuable. He distrusts his own honour. Jesus Christ’s teaching in respect to this there can be no mistaking. Eliciting the spirit of the third commandment, He declares, “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of the evil one.” He would abolish even the solemn oath of the Old Testament, “As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand.” No man who respects himself, certainly no obedient copier of Jesus Christ, will consent to confirm his “yes” or “no,” unless when the law, which knows him not, demands it. 2 [Note: W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 166.]

4. Take the virtue of courtesy. “Good breeding,” says Carlyle, “consists in gracefully remembering the rights of others, high breeding in gracefully insisting on one’s own.” Thus there are three ways of it. There is the discourteous person whose only practice has been in selfishly saying and doing things that hurt others. There is the selfishly courteous person with the polish of a pagan. And there is the person who, having the mind of Christ, learns to put the interests of others before his own. It is the “gift” that makes the difference.

Courtesy is itself a form of service. By gentleness of manner, by an unobtrusive sympathy, by thoughtfulness for others in little things, we may smooth the roughness of life for those with whom we live, soothe their vexations, and contribute more to their real happiness than by great and signal acts of generosity. On the other hand, a harsh, careless word may inflict a worse wound than a blow, and the discomfort created by habitual indifference to the convenience, tastes, opinions, and prejudices of those about us may be harder to bear than positive physical pain. Discourtesy occasions not merely suffering, but sin; and Christian courtesy is a “means of grace” to all who have the happiness to receive it. 1 [Note: R. W. Dale, Laws of Christ for Common Life, p. 121.]

They might not need me,

Yet they might;

I’ll let my heart be

Just in sight—

A smile so small

As mine might be

Precisely their

Necessity.

Literature

Hodgson (A. P.), Thoughts for the King’s Children, 165.

Jerdan (C.), Messages to the Children, 371.

Morris (R. E.), in Welsh Pulpit of To-day, 295.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year, Advent—Christmas, 424, 435, 446.

Parker (J.), People’s Bible, xiv. 206.

Watkinson (W. L.), The Bane and the Antidote, 165.

Christian World Pulpit, xxi. 228 (Beecher).

Christian World Pulpit, xxix. 83 (Burney).

Verse 18

What of the Night?

The burden of Dumah. One calleth unto me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said: The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: turn ye, come.— Isaiah 21:11-12.

I

1. The Situation

1. “Abrupt in form, enigmatical in meaning, this oracle has nevertheless a certain grandeur and sublimity even for those to whom its sense is obscure.” So says Samuel Cox, introducing one of the best sermons ever preached upon it. And he proceeds to recall Mendelssohn’s use of the oracle: “He who has heard Mendelssohn’s ‘Hymn of Praise’ has at least one proof of its power to excite the imagination and rouse emotion. In that fine work of art, the tenor soloist demands, in sharp, ascending minors, ‘Watchman, will the night soon pass?’ and replies, ‘Though the morning come, the night will come also.’ The demand is thrice repeated in the same sequence of notes, but each time it is raised a whole tone in the scale, to denote the growing intensity and urgency of the inquirer; thrice the answer is given in the same sequence, but for the sake of added emphasis it also is raised a tone the second time; while in reply to the third repetition of the inquirer, the soprano breaks in with the joyful proclamation, ‘The night is departing,’ and the chorus take up and swell and prolong the glad news. As we listen, we feel that the music, splendid as it is in itself, owes no little of its sublimity to the splendid dramatic force of the words to which it is set.” 1 [Note: S. Cox, An Expositor’s Note Book, p. 201.]

2. The key to the passage is to be found in its historical circumstances. The period was that of the Assyrian oppression, an oppression which not only harassed and depeopled Judah, but affected the nations around. Sharing in their neighbour’s sin, these nations shared in their neighbour’s punishment, and, like the primary sufferer, were downcast and desponding, asking wearily and anxiously, “How long?” One by one they present themselves to the prophet’s vision—Philistia, Moab, Damascus, Ethiopia, Egypt, Arabia; and now he is speaking of Edom, or, as it is here called, “Dumah,” Judah’s nearest neighbour as well as its oldest and most inveterate foe. “The burden of Dumah,” he says, “What I have to say concerning its present state, what I have to say concerning its future destiny.”

3. The prophet is standing in vision on the border. He has planted himself on the ridge between Judah and Edom—night to right of him, night to left of him; night on the dwellings of Judah, night on the dwellings of Edom, Judah’s ancient foe; the same pall of darkness hangs low over both. And as he waits, the stillness is broken by a solitary cry. It is the voice of some unseen inquirer—not, you observe, in Judah, but in Edom. “Watchman, what of the night?” he says. “Is it nearly over? Are there any streaks of light yet? Do you see the morning star?” And the watchman answers cautiously. He does not commit himself. “I will tell you this much,” he says, “The morning cometh, and also the night.”

Among the many offices that have become obsolete, during the advance of modern civilisation, may be counted that of the watchman. In ancient times, however, the office was considered absolutely necessary for the maintenance of order and safety in towns and cities. It was the watchman’s duty to patrol the streets during the night, to prevent thieves and vagabonds prowling about in the dark. It was his duty to sound the alarm in case of imminent danger. It was his duty to announce the hour, and state the various changes in the weather. Those who listened to his firm, steady, regular step, as he passed their doors, felt a sense of security, and cast themselves with confidence into the arms of sleep. At the entrance of the cities, towers were not infrequently erected, and these were called “watch-towers,” in which watchmen were regularly posted, whose eyes ever swept the distant horizon, to see if anybody was coming, of whom it was necessary to give information. 1 [Note: D. Rowlands, in The Cross and the Dice-Box, p. 217.]

2. The Question

1. The question to the watchman, “What of the night?” means, What part of the night is it now? Is it the first, the second, or the third watch? Will the light soon dawn? The A.V. translation, says Dr. G. A. Smith, 1 [Note: The Book of Isaiah, p. 276.] though picturesque, is misleading. The voice does not inquire, “What of the night?” i.e. whether it be fair or foul weather, but “How much of the night is passed?” literally “What from off the night?” This brings out a pathos that our English version has disguised. Edom feels that her night is lasting terribly long.

2. It is worth while to point out—for the quality of poetry depends on such minute touches of art—that the sentinel not only repeats his question, but repeats it in an abbreviated form. “Watchman, how far is it in the night? Watchman, how far in the night?” expresses in English the Hebrew abbreviation, though in the Hebrew it is much more telling. And both the repetition of the question and the more brief and winged form of the question on the second utterance of it indicate the extreme urgency of the inquiry, the extreme haste and impatience of the inquirer.

3. The word Dumah means “silence,” “the land of silent desolation.” It is a very suggestive thought. Sin is the great silencer. The end of sin is silence. Assuredly that was true in the case of Edom. It was true of it at the time when the prophet spoke, it was to be true of it still more completely in the ages to follow. Travellers tell us that if we want to know how Providence can turn a fruitful land into barrenness, and make a defenced city a heap, for the iniquity of the inhabitants thereof, we have only to look at Edom, with its hills and plains picked clean of every vestige of vegetation, and its ruined palaces, once the home of busy men, now the haunt of vultures and toe lair of scorpions, all human sound gone—the voice of mirth, the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, the voice of the bride!

4. Of course we are not to take Isaiah’s words literally. No voice, no sound, could reach from Mount Seir to Mount Zion. Nor are we to suppose that the Edomites dispatched an embassy to the prophet at Jerusalem to inquire of him concerning the future fate of Edom. Isaiah was a poet, and describes in a dramatic form the thoughts and questions which rose in his soul as he looked through the ages, and the shadows of coming events passed before him. He had already seen that the Babylonians would conquer Jerusalem; and that they, in their turn, would be conquered by the Persians. But when the Babylonians came against Jerusalem, the Edomites would join them in despoiling the city and slaying its inhabitants. If the Babylonians were to be judged for their sin against Israel and the God of Israel, were the Edomites, who had shared their sin, to escape their judgment?

3. The Answer

The answer is not clear to us now. Perhaps we do not know all the circumstances quite intimately enough. Perhaps it is purposely made enigmatical, as was often the case with an oracle. Perhaps the answer was not clear to the prophet himself. Cox thinks that the prophet, dismissing the Edomite inquirer with a prediction so gloomy, felt some compunction. He cannot see beyond the night; yet the night may have a morning beyond it. Let the inquirer return, therefore, and repeat his inquiries. The prophet hopes he will. He reiterates the invitation. He makes it more warm and urgent. “If ye will inquire, ye may,” turns into the entreaty “return, come again.” Davies understands that the Edomite was answered with the promise of alternations of dawning day and darkening night. The Assyrians, Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Romans, Muhammadans would in turn oppress them, and between each oppression there would be but a ray of hope. Perhaps the brightest dawn to them would be the ascendancy of the Herods; but even that would so soon culminate in a darker night.

II

i. The Heart’s Cry to God

It is the cry of the human heart to God. How often do the heavens seem pitiless, and send no answer to our impassioned appeal, but “Morning cometh, and also night.” However sad we are, however racked with suspense, though we have lost the friends we most loved, or apprehend the ill we most fear, the sun shines on, the birds sing, our friends eat and drink and are merry, we have to do our work, to take our food, to talk and smile, to listen to condolences, to endure remonstrance, to go through the whole daily round as though nothing had happened to us. And when the day is over, the night comes, and we have to lie down on a couch which has no rest for us, to drag through the slow weary hours, and long for the morning. At such times, in such moods, our life grows very dark to us. Nature seems to have no sympathy with us; friends and neighbours cannot even understand what our grief is like; our duties are burdensome to us, pleasure even more burdensome than duty. The strain is heavier than we can endure; it seems impossible that we should struggle on long under a burden so heavy. And yet the future holds out no hope to us but death. A few faint, watery gleams of brightness, and then the great darkness will rush down upon us, the night that has no end.

Apart from such special eclipses, times when the darkness thickens, there is the universal and permanent shadow that broods over all, the shadow of this enigmatic and mysterious life. I mean the shadow to which the poet refers when he writes—

So runs my dream: but what am I?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

I mean the shadow of which a great Christian thinker spoke when, after a conversation with a friend on the deepest problems of life and death, he wound up the interview with the words: “Ah! think now of the great God looking down on our babblings in the dark!” We are compassed with mystery. The sky is heavy with it, the heart is oppressed with it. Life has its mysteries. Truth has its mysteries. 1 [Note: W. A. Gray.]

ii. The World’s Cry to the Church

It is the cry of the world to the Church. The voice comes from Seir. It comes from the men and women of the world. It is addressed to God’s watchman on Mount Zion. It is the cry of the world to the Church of God. Notice first the great variety there is in the manner of the cry, and then the fact of it.

1. The manner of it.

(1) Sometimes it is no more than a question of utter carelessness. There are those who haunt our churches from the indolence of habit, who smilingly confess themselves “sinners” without once remembering the tremendous import of the words they employ; who echo the thrilling penitence of our liturgy in the same tone that inquires the news of the day; who are Christians because their fathers were, and would, without a murmur, be heathens for the same reason.

(2) Sometimes it is the question of the merely curious. Most Christian teachers are familiar with a class of inquirers who, without much sympathy with evangelical verities, sometimes without much attention to moral demands, are greatly taken up with speculative difficulties. They want the mist cleared away from this point, they want the uncertainty banished from that. The consistency of God’s sovereignty with man’s responsibility, the nature and occupation of the unseen world, the destiny of the heathen, the fulfilment of prophecy, the order of the last things—that whole class of interesting but not always practical subjects on which a veil of uncertainty hangs, attracts them much. And they turn in curiosity to the Church, with their appeals to the Church’s wisdom, their demands for the Church’s opinion.

(3) Sometimes the question is ironical, or even contemptuous. “How goes the task with you?” says the world. “With all your money and with all your machinery, what have you to show? How many converted heathens? How many converted Jews? What reduction is there in the statistics of immorality? What increase in church attendance among the working classes? Watchman, what of the night?”

(4) But sometimes it is earnest. Not in any light or trifling spirit, but with a deep sense of perplexity, and an honest desire for help, men turn inquiringly to the Church—at times even in anguish of heart. The agonies of remorse have seized their spirit. The night has come down upon them in exceeding great darkness. Conscience suggests retribution; they ask if revelation confirms it.

(5) And sometimes it is undefined and inarticulate, and then it is the saddest cry of all. This is the cry from Seir. The true translation is “ one calleth unto me out of Seir.” It is the utterance of a poor heartbroken weary community; one voice attempting to utter the need, the yearning, the longing of many hearts.

Mr. C. T. Studd once told me a cry of anguish which he heard in China, and which has haunted him ever since. He was negotiating in a Chinese dwelling for the tenancy of a building for an opium refuge. While the negotiations were in progress, he and Mrs. Studd were horrified at a series of piercing shrieks which fell upon their ears. They evidently came from a little girl, and knowing how dangerous it was to interfere in anyone else’s business, they at first disregarded the cries, which were agonising in their character. At last they could bear it no longer, and determined, whatever the consequences, to find out whence the cries proceeded; they followed the sound until they found themselves in a room, where, forcibly held on a rude bed, was a little girl, from whose feet the cruel bandages used in the process of foot-binding were being stripped. One woman held her down by her little arms; another was tearing the bandages from the poor feet; while a third was beating the child with a heavy stick, to divert the pain to other parts of the body, and to punish the little one for her cries. Those cries were heard by a sympathetic man, but there are thousands which are heard only by a sympathetic God. How can we, who have children of our own, be indifferent to the wail of these little ones, into whose cries we may read the agonising question, “Will the night never pass away?” 1 [Note: J. Gregory Mantle.]

“He who has seen the misery of man only,” Victor Hugo tells us, “has seen nothing, he must see the misery of a woman; he who has seen the misery of a woman only, has seen nothing, he must see the misery of childhood.”

2. The fact of it. Three things are to be observed here.

(1) When night hangs heavily on the Church, it hangs still more heavily on the world. The Assyrian oppression lay like a cloud on Judah, but in lying on Judah it projected a still heavier cloud upon Edom. We take Judah (as we are bound to do) as a type of the Kingdom of God, and we take Edom (as we are also bound to do) as a type of the kingdoms of sense and sin; and the lesson to be first noted is this, that whatsoever casts a gloom on the one casts the same gloom or a deeper gloom on the other. There never was a greater mistake than to suppose that, because Christianity is bound up with problems, the abandonment of belief is the abandonment of mystery, mystery will meet you still. Do you get rid of the mystery of human sin, or of human pain, or of human inequalities, or of human death, or of any one of those great and pressing perplexities that make existence a puzzle, our belief in the kindness and righteousness of Providence hard? No, you do not. But you get rid of the one fund of hope that can soften these mysteries, the one source of light that can brighten them.

(2) In the midst of this common night there is the significant fact that the world does turn to the Church. It is very suggestive that in the general pressure of the general gloom the Edomite is represented as appealing to the Jew—a votary of the Jewish worship, a representative of the Jewish God. Was there none to consult nearer home? Where were the seers of Idumæa? No doubt there were seers in abundance, necromancers, astrologers, wizards that peeped and muttered. But it is not to these that the questioner turns. He looks away from them all to yonder lonely man on the serrated ridge, clad in camel-skin, now standing still, now pacing backwards and forwards, as he swept the cloud-hung horizon with his eye. It is from him the Edomite expects the oracle. It is on him he depends for the truth. “Watchman,” he says, “prophet of Israel’s race, servant of Israel’s God, what of the night?” Through all ages the principle is the same. Ever, in the midst of the cloud that surrounds us all, the world puts its questions to the Church. It puts them to the Church’s representatives, puts them to the Church’s ministers. We have no more significant testimony to the place which God gives to the witnesses of religion than the way, friendly or unfriendly as the case may be, in which those most removed from their habits and thoughts continually ask their opinion. They are the mark of perpetual notice. They are the subjects of unceasing examination. The question, “Watchman, what of the night?” is raised in a variety of forms, comes through a variety of channels. But there it is, and those applied to must take account of it and face it.

(3) The Church must be ready with some answer. Has the Church an answer to give? It has. The Church is the watchman standing on the tower to look into and ascertain the nature of the world’s night. That, when you come to examine it, gives us a very wide range, perhaps wider than we sometimes think. For what would we include in the night—the world’s night? First of all, unquestionably and fundamentally, the world’s sin, the world’s alienation from God, the world’s wandering from holiness and purity and truth, the world’s rejection of the Divine Spirit in its beneficent and soul-healing power. But that is the starting-point. By the world’s night you must understand all its need, all its heart-breaking, all the problems that weary, harass, and perplex the brain of man, all the tears it is shedding, all the burdens it is bearing, all the sorrows it is enduring, all its chaos, all its discomfort, all its failure, all its darkness. That is the world’s night; and the Christian Church has to do with all of it. And more than that, I say this, that it is the Christian Church, as I have defined it, and that alone, that is competent to understand the meaning of it, to look into the nature of it. And if a remedy is to be found for it at all, it must be found in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ; it must be found by the watchman that has been set upon the tower to note the progress of the night, and to declare the passing away of the darkness. It is only the spirit that rules the Church, or should rule it, that can see clearly into the night.

The Church has an answer, but it is not always ready to give it. The Church is sometimes taken aback by the world’s moral or religious questions, because it does not appreciate the world’s moral or religious difficulties.

Sad, were the question to go up from Edom, “Watchman, what of the night?” and the answer to come back from Judah, “ ‘Night,’ did you say? we are scarcely aware that there is a night!” With one class, that, then, is the reason of the absence of reply—want of perception of the difficulty. And for another class, the reason may be that, while feeling the pressure of the difficulty, they have not obtained a solution for themselves. That is just as sad. Sad, were outsiders to appeal to us, doubting and looking to us for faith, ignorant and looking to us for knowledge, to find that the faith and knowledge they look for are absent—never truly possessed, or if once in a fashion possessed, now well-nigh vanished. Sad, we say, were the question to arise from Edom, “Watchman, what of the night?” and the answer from Judah to be this, “The truth is, we are brothers in blindness; in spite of position, in spite of profession, we know as little as yourselves.”

iii. The Answer of the Church

The answer of the Church is twofold

1. Throughout her history there have been both night and morning. There is a rhythm everywhere here on earth. Things vary and alternate. We have day and night, summer and winter; we sleep and we wake, we have youth and age, we live and die. Tides ebb and flow; moons wax and wane; the flowers have yearly their resurrection and their death. “The morning cometh and also the night.”

Nations rise and fall. Greece cultivates the garden, and Rome breaks down all her hedges; Rome builds walls, and the Goth scales them; patriots purchase liberty, and by and by the people throw their liberty away. And thus, in human history, the continual variation and alternation go on. “The morning cometh and also the night.”

The Church goes down into Egypt, and she is ransomed; again, she is bound with fetters and borne to Babylon. She has palmy days, and then days of adversity. She knows revival, and soon reaction and depression follow. Her Reformation grows to rationalism, her noblest Puritanism to prudishness and politics. The church of the parish falls cold and dead, and the chapels become the centres of spiritual light and life; anon the chapel is made the club-house of petty interests in the village, and life and work revive in the church. The dawn of civilisation seems to break on heathen Africa when the pioneer missionary touches its shore, and ere long civilisation casts darker shadows there than those of heathendom’s midnight. So true it is that “The morning cometh and also the night”!

2. Yet the night is far spent and the day is at hand. Many forms of wrong, cruelty, and vice are impossible now which were possible and even common before the Son of God and Son of Man dwelt among us; nay, even before the Reformation carried through Europe a light by which such deeds of darkness were reproved. The individual man may stand little higher, whether in wisdom or in goodness, than of old; but the number of men capable of high thoughts, noble aims, and lives devoted to the service of truth and righteousness, is incomparably larger. The world took long to make, and may take still longer to remake; but its re-creation in the image of God is just as certain as its creation.

(1) We see the approach of the day in matters of faith. There never was a time in human history when men were so loyal to the landmarks of truth. There never was a time when the blessed Bible was entrenched in so many faithful hearts. True, there are controversies. God be praised! The worst that can ever befall the Christian Church is stagnation. The Kingdom of God is not likely to suffer from any investigation of its truth. To be sure, there are heretics and schismatics. They perish by the way and their work serves to strengthen the battlements of truth, as coral insects toiling in unknown depths leave their bones as a contribution to the continents of coming ages. The truth had never so many stalwart friends as it has this day.

(2) We see it in social and ethical life. Ideals are higher than ever. Character means more. The character of Jesus stands out more distinctly as the Exemplar of morals. His incomparable portrait is the touchstone of character. More is expected of men than ever before in human history. More is expected of kings, of politicians, of merchants, of the average man. Compare the dignitaries of our time with those of a few centuries ago: Queen Victoria with Elizabeth, the President of the French Republic with Louis the Grand, Gladstone with Machiavelli, President Harrison with our continental governors, the citizen, the country gentleman, the ordinary church-goer or the non-church-goer, with those of a hundred years ago. I say ideals are higher and men more eager in striving after them. There is more respect for common honesty, for chastity and temperance, for benevolence. Many of the vices that were common have disappeared from public view.

(3) And we see it in the coming of the Kingdom. It was but a hundred years ago that William Carey sat in his cobbler shop in Northamptonshire, his attention divided between the lapstone on his knee and a map of the world hanging on the wall. He said, “There is gold to be mined in India. I will go down after it if you will hold the ropes.” He sailed for that pagan land a hundred years ago, went down into the mine, and souls have been responding to that deed of consecration, born out of Carey’s travail, in countless multitudes—gold minted in the heavenly treasury and stamped with the image and superscription of our King! Oh, friends, everything is going right. The nations of the earth are coming unto our God. “Watchman, what of the night?” There is no night. The darkness is past and gone, the Sun of Righteousness hath risen with healing in His beams! Be glad and rejoice, O people of God; the sun shineth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day! 1 [Note: D. J. Burrell.]

What of the Night?

Burrell (D. J.), Morning Cometh, 1.

Burrell (D. J.), Wayfarers of the Bible, 207.

Butler (A.), Sermons, ii. 339.

Campbell (J. M.), Bible Questions, 204.

Cox (S.), Expositions, iv. 336.

Cox (S.), Expositor’s Notebook, 201.

Crosthwait (E. G. S.), Heavenward Steps, 7.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women, and Children, 3rd Ser., 263.

Gray (W. A.), Laws and Landmarks of the Spiritual Life, 185.

Hunt (W. H.), Preachers from the Pew, 174.

Hutton (R. E.), The Crown of Christ, i. 19.

M‘Kim (R. H.), The Gospel in the Christian Year, 72.

Magee (W. C), Growth in Grace, 25.

Mantle (J. G.), God’s To-morrow, 185.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, i. 385.

Robinson (S.), Discourses of Redemption, 380.

Thomas (J.), Myrtle Street Pulpit, iv. 67.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons ( Brighton Pulpit), xxiv. No. 1266; xxvi. No. 1308.

Wilmot Buxton (H. J.), Mission Sermons for a Year, 14.

The Cross and the Dice Box, 217 (D. Rowlands).

Sermons by American Rabbis, i. (D. Philipson).

Christian Age, xxxi. 356 (Talmage).

Christian World Pulpit, iii. 193 (Statham); vi. 213 (Currie); xiv. 152 (Robjohns); xxxv. 85 (Pearson); xlvii. 17 (Farrar); 133 (Landels); lxiv. 409 (Milne); lxvi. 40 (Campbell Morgan).

Church of England Pulpit, xxxi. 157 (Henrey); xxxix. 205 (Farrar).