The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 259

prophecy, and we find it reappearing in the days of Christ, We may, indeed, without straining a point, say that such predictions, born of the profoundest religious con- viotions; have been fulfilled in the course of our religion. It will hardly be denied that the great spiritual principles summed up in the phrase, "the kingdom of God upon earth," have grown upon the world, have obtained a larger and more commanding teoognition with every great change among the nations. Israel, Greece, broke up as nations only to resign their deposit of truth, to a larger stewardship; and Rome's work was fulfilled when she became the vehicle of Christianity to the wide We~tern world. The forms of Divine fulfilment seen by the prophets in their forecast may not have been always the truest forms, limited as they were by conditions of 11pace and time. The substance and spirit of their message was of eternal truth. II. THE CONTENTS OF THE BONG. (Vera. 4-8.) 1. The picture of rest from tyranny. The Babylonian oppressor shall be quelled; his lordly pride and wrath shall cease. For the staff of authority wielded by impious hands shall be broken, the tyrant's sceptre dashed from his hand. His part will be reversed ; roving incessantly smitten the people in his cruel rage, and trodden them beneath his feet in the exercise of arbitrary and unchecked power, he will himself be powerless, as all inj1Lstice must be, clisjoined from physical force. See the critical notes for the discussion of the meaning of the words, a.nd the strong images of violence, inspired by tyrannic caprice an,t cruelty which they call up in the imagination. "The oppressor's scorn, the proud man's contun{ely," are enumerated by our great poets among those conditions which tempt men to doubt the worth of existence. 'l'ake away the freedom of religious life, the placid enjoyment of old customs of family a.nd social life, from a people, and you extract from them the relish for life. "'Tia liberty, fair liberty alone, That gives the fleeting flower of life its sweetness and perfume.• There is no deeper passion, nor one more just, than the hatred of tyranny, m the human breast. . If we look at the question from the point of view of the tyrant himself, his lot is odious. Xenophon represents Hiero of Syracuse lamenting to the poet Simonides his unhappiness. He must surround himself with guards whom he cannot trust. Intimate friendship; such as blesses the meanest of his subjects, must be to him denied. He cannot close the sleepless eye of suspicion. Amiable he may be a.ad sympathetic by nature, yet his heart may not expand in the chilling atmosphere which surrounds him. 'l'he cruel necessities of power may even render the lot of the oppres.sor less enviable than that of the oppressed. The heart of the people in every land and age cries out. against tyranny as an abuse of the moral order, a violence done to the nature of things. And the true prophet, ever feeling in unison with that heart, translating its dim yearnings into articulate oracles, denounces and predicts the downfall of tyranny as inevitable, if the kingdom of Jehovah on earth is a reality. "There remaineth a rest for the people of God." "The empire is peace." These words, once uttered vainly by a poteutate in our time, and soon sternly refuted by the roar of artillery from around the walls of his fair city and from a score of battle-fields throughout his pleasant land, contain the policy or the kingdom of the Messiah. Selfishness, ambition, tyranny of individual wills,-these are the most constant causes of r(Stkssness and war. When" all man's good" shall be "each man's rule," such evils will be impossible; the "unsuffering kingdom" of the Messiah will come, and the meek will inherit the earth. 2. The sympathy of nature urith man. How exquisite is the poetic feeling for nature in the next verses (7, 8) I Like all the imagery of Hebrew poesy, they are full of sim- plicity, sublimity, rathos. "Now resteth, now is quiet a.II the earth; songs of jubilation break forth. 'l'he cypresses rejoice on thy account, the cedars of Lebanon. Since thou liest low (they say) none will come up to lay the axe against us." The Chaldean used the wood of these trees, of gre11t durability, for his buildings, his besieging app.iratus, his ships. A small remnant, heirs of those magnificent trees on Lebanon of the pro- phet's time, still stands on the spot. They seem, iu their robust nnd beautiful forms, the very type of human life in the ideal freedom and independence of its growth. 'fhere is a strong poetic feeling for the tree in the Hebrew psalmists and prophets. 'l'he just man is like tho tr,'e pl1111ted by the flowiu·~ stream, or liko the palm flourishing in the desert, tho image of ontwnrd suffering and de1iriv11tion. We all yearn for ilie 252 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. [on. nv.1--82.