Are we then left with a mystery? On the contrary, the solution is clear. Israel is followed into exile by her old conscience. The charges of Isaiah and Ezekiel against Jerusalem, while Jerusalem was still a "civitas," ring in her memory. She repeats the very words. With truth she says that her present state, so vividly described in vv. 9-11, is due to sins of old, of which, though perhaps she can no longer commit them, she still feels the guilt. Conscience always crowds the years together; there is no difference of time in the eyes of God the Judge. And it was natural, as we have said already, that the nation should remember her besetting sins at this time; that her civic conscience should awake again, just as she was again about to become a civitas.[273][274]
The whole of this chapter is simply the expansion and enforcement of the first two verses, that keep clanging like the clangour of a great, high bell: _Behold, Jehovah's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is His ear heavy that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have been separators between you and your God, and your sins have hidden_ His _face from you, that He will not hear._ There is but one thing that comes between the human heart and the Real Presence and Infinite Power of God; and that one thing is Sin. The chapter labours to show how real God is. Its opening verses talk of _His Hand_, _His Ear_, _His Face_. And the closing verses paint Him with the passions and the armour of a man,--a Hero in such solitude and with such forward force, that no imagination can fail to see the Vivid, Lonely Figure. _And He saw that there was no man, and He wondered that there was none to interpose; therefore His own right arm brought salvation unto Him, and His righteousness it upheld Him. And He put on righteousness like a breastplate and salvation for an helmet upon His head; and He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped Himself in zeal like a robe._ Do not let us suppose this is mere poetry. Conceive what inspires it,--the great truth that in the Infinite there is a heart to throb for men and a will to strike for them. This is what the writer desires to proclaim, and what we believe the Spirit of God moved his poor human lips to give their own shape to,--the simple truth that there is One, however hidden He may be to men's eyes, who feels for men, who feels hotly for men, and whose will is quick and urgent to save them. Such an One tells His people, that the only thing which prevents them from knowing how real His heart and will are--the only thing which prevents them from seeing His work in their midst--is their sin.
The roll of sins to which the prophet attributes the delay of the people's deliverance is an awful one; and the man who reads it with conscience asleep might conclude that it was meant only for a period of extraordinary violence and bloodshed. Yet the chapter implies that society exists, and that at least the forms of civilisation are in force. Men sue one another before the usual courts. But none _sueth in righteousness or goeth to the law in truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies._ All these charges might be true of a society as outwardly respectable as our own. Nor is the charge of bloodshed to be taken literally. The Old Testament has so great a regard for the spiritual nature of man, that to deny the individual his rights or to take away the peace of God from his heart, it calls the shedding of innocent blood. Isaiah reminds us of many kinds of this moral murder when he says, _your hands are full of blood: seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow_. Ezekiel reminds us of others when he tells how God spake to him, that if he _warn not the wicked, and the same wicked shall die in his iniquity, his blood will I require at thy hand_. And again a Psalm reminds us of the time _when the Lord maketh inquisition for blood, He forgetteth not the cry of the poor_.[275] This is what the Bible calls murder and lays its burning words upon,--not such acts of bloody violence as now and then make all humanity thrill to discover that in the heart of civilisation there exist men with the passions of the ape and the tiger, but such oppression of the poor, such cowardice to rebuke evil, such negligence to restore the falling, such abuse of the characters of the young and innocent, such fraud and oppression of the weak, as often exist under the most respectable life, and employ the weapons of a Christian civilisation in order to fulfil themselves. We have need to take the bold, violent standards of the prophets and lay them to our own lives,--the prophets that call the man who sells his honesty for gain, _a harlot_, and hold him _blood-guilty_ who has wronged, tempted or neglected his brother. Do not let us suppose that these crimson verses of the Bible may be passed over by us as not applicable to ourselves. They do not refer to murderers or maniacs: they refer to social crimes, to which we all are in perpetual temptation, and of which we all are more or less guilty,--the neglect of the weak, the exploitation of the poor for our own profit, the soiling of children's minds, the multiplying of temptation in the way of God's little ones, the malice that leads us to blast another's character, or to impute to his action evil motives for which we have absolutely no grounds save the envy and sordidness of our own hearts. Do not let us fail to read all such verses in the clear light which John the Apostle throws on them when he says: _He that loveth not abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer._