When 'dndw is translated " the poor " or " the afflicted, oppressed," or " the helpless, the meek," its exact significance will be best understood if we bear in mind the traits in the character of the toil-worn man, his poverty of spirit, his slow- ness to insist upon his rights, his patient forbearance, his long enduring of any number of wrongs. It may be said that this is introducing into the slow-moving, tranquil Eastern world the conditions of life which pertain only to Western civilisation. But an enslaved nation, as the Israelites were more than once in the earlier part of their history, would be likely to know some- thing of the wearing effect of laborious toil on both the body and the mind, and that knowledge has left its impression on the plastic surface of their language.^
IT The Eev. Thomas Guthrie, fresh from his Forfarshire parish, bounded by the restless North Sea, with singing larks and decent peasants, looked down through the iron gratings on George rv. Bridge on the one he had come to cultivate. It was before the age of the City Improvement Commission, and the Cowgate showed battered humanity in a state not now visible there. High- flatted houses, each having the population of a village, with windows innocent of glass and stuffed with dirty rags, some of these tenements were the scene of domestic tragedies, for in one of their upper fiats five families had been made fatherless through the fever. But the dwellers did not mind, for Guthrie noted
* W. Sanday in The Sxjwsitor, 4th series, iii. p. 313.
* A. T. Burbridge in The Preacher's Magazine, 1901, p. 542.
ISAIAH 449
women lying over window-sills, and others at close mouths with children in arms, chaffing passers-by, or screaming each other down. It looked to the new minister a venture into the darkness of a coal-pit from the light of day. A hand was laid on his shoulder. Then the voice of Dr. Chalmers, whose face glowed with enthusiasm as, waving his arm, he exclaimed, "A beautiful field, sir, a very fine field of operation." ^
2. The hroken-hearted. — These have more than a general sense of need. They have learned in the school of suffering. They can recall loss, perhaps betrayal, at least disappointment. They cannot help recalling it. For its scar is on them. They bear about in their hearts the marks of wrong — wrong which they have suffered, and, yet more deeply, wrong which they have done. They are broken-hearted ; they cannot receive or they cannot give restitution.
The exact significance of shabhar is " to break in pieces " ; thus there is contained in it the idea of destruction, with its resultants, " helplessness, uselessness, inactivity." For instance, shabhar is used of ships broken by the storm, of the tearing asunder of wild beasts, of the dismembering of corporate bodies, e.g. a kingdom, a city, a people. And the verb must suffer no impoverishment of meaning if the exact significance of the now familiar expression, " the broken-hearted," is to be retained. The phrase, " a broken heart," is descriptive not simply of an organ full of aching and suffering, but of an organ which, while it is racked with pain, is also helpless, unable to do what is required of it. That which can happen to any physical orga,n or limb of the body can happen also to the heart conceived of as the centre of man's emotional life. Struck with a sudden blow, the arm is broken, hangs down suffering and useless. Overtaken by a sudden calamity the heart is broken, suffering intensely, but amid all its suffering useless. The broken heart can still feel, it is not dead or hardened like the heart of the wicked or the stubborn, but it can no longer prompt, purpose inspire, urge on to fresh effort, to victory or death ; its vital strength is gone. Some forms of suffering act as a stimulus, they arouse new energy in a man, but the suffering of the broken-hearted is accompanied by a listlessness, an apparent
^ T. Cochrane, Home Mission Fields p. 7- 29
450 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
inability to do anything but suffer, an utter helplessness not simply of body but also of mind and soul. It is this element of helplessness which constitutes the tragedy of a broken heart, and it is this element of helplessness which is emphasised in the Hebrew term nishhere-lehh. Yet even in this most disastrous effect of human trouble, when sorrow robs the heart of its last resources and strength, the Bible discovers an opportunity for the coming of God : " The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart," " a broken and a contrite heart, 0 God, thou wilt not despise." Is not every form of human helplessness a recom- mendation to the Deity ? Must not this extreme form be so most of all ? ^
IT An old woman came into the city from the country to buy medicine at a native medicine vendor's. While the man was pre- paring the medicine, his wife came into the shop, and noticing the old woman looking very sad and unhappy, asked her the reason. The old woman replied, "Last year I lost my husband. Now my eldest son is ill at home, and I am afraid he is going to die, and I am taking this medicine to see if it will do him any good." " Ah," replied the shopman's wife, " I am sorry for you. I wish I could help you. If you want the words that comfort men's hearts, go to the Gospel Hall across the way there. They have the words that comfort men's hearts."