Xations gain power for the sake of others; natious are crushed and humbled for the. sake or ol11crs. Illustration of this point may run along thl'ee lines. l. A ll!AN's OR A NATION'S GENIUS IS NOT FOR SELF, 11 The earth must hear," and know about it. All gift~ are trus~. II. A MAN'S OR A NATION'S SUFFERINGS ARE NOT FOR SELF, The most striking illus- tration in a man is Job; in a nation, the people of Israel. All sufferers bear their part in the moral education, the redemption, of the race. III. A ll!AN's OR A NATION'S JUDGMENTB ARE NOT FOR SELF. We are not punished for our own sakes alone. J udgments follow us for the sake of the on-lookers.-R. T. Ver. 2.-Divine indignations. It is important that we use the words which eil:~~e~s tbe se,ere side of Divine dealings with great judgment and ea refulness. We should resist t.he tendency of modem times to eliminate all the severer features from.the con- ception of the Divine Being. Dr. Bushnell thus expresses it: "Our age is at the point of apogee from all the robuster notions of Deity." Our fathel's made too much of rl,e Divine "wrath;" but we are in danger of making too little. 11 There is a consider- able variety of words that we may nse to express this sterner side of the Divine dealing -'wrath,' 'anger,' 'indignation,' 'fury,' 'vengeance,' 'judgment,' 'justice,'and the like, l,ut they are all more or less defective. Wrath is the term most commonly used in our trauslation, and it is really the best, ii only we can hold it closely enough to the idea of a moral, in distinction from a merely animal, passion; else, failing in this, it will connect· associations of unregulated temper that are painful, and as far as possible from being: sacred. It requires in this view, like the safety-lamps of the miners, a gauze.,of defini~ tion round it, to save it from blazing into an explosion too fierce to serve the purposrs, of light." Indignation is the most unexceptionable word, and it is to one point in· connection with it that attention is now invited. It is especially suited to. express the feeling of God, because it applies to Wf'Q'll,g-doers rather than to.wrong actions. It links; on to the view that the essence of sin is not a wrong thing done, but the wrong will• out of which the doing came. We cannot get up indignation merely at things ·doue; our feeling settles and centres on the bad doers. .In all cases of sin we should keep quite clearly before us that the Divine concern is not, supremely, the disturbed circum- stances, but the sinners and the sufferers. Divine power can readjust and rearraogo all our conditions and circumstances, just as that power can preserve the order, and put straight the broken or deflected order, of creation. It is God's own condition, laid upoR himself, that moral states can only be reached by moral means. Divine indignations, as they cor:cern moral beings, find expression in the persuasions of Divine jndgments; these fall on the man himself, or they may fall on his substitute and representative; and so is opened up for treatment the mystery of Divine indignations resting on Christ· for us, for our sakes.-R. T. •
Ver. 8.-The Lord's controversy. "The year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion." Fausset says, "When Judah was captive in Babylon, Edom in every way insulted over her fa.lien mistress, and killed ma.ny of those Jews whom the Chaldeans had left, and hence was held guilty of fratricide by God (Esau, their ancestor, ha;vin;{ been brother to Ja.cob): this was the cause of the denunciations of the prophets against Edom (ch. lriii. l; Jer. xliL 7; Ezek. xxv.12-14; xxxv. 3-15; Joel iii.19; Amos i.• 11, 12; Obad. 8, 10, 12-18; MaL L 3, 4)." 'lbe Israelites were familiar with the law of retaliation. It was the pervading law of men as gathered into tribes, and their basis-, idea of justice. Moses adopted it for his legal system, but qualified its operation, pre- paring the way for an entire change from personal retaliation for offences, to a calm,. unbiassed, systematic consideration of the case of all wrong-doers, and adjustment of punishments on a fixed scale. So far as the idea of retaliation was right as between men, it may be applied as between God and men, and it is introduced in this verse. Edom took advantage of Israel's weakness to act unbrotherly, and to encroach. 'l'here" fore the Lord has a controversy with Edom; and be will surely retaliate, bringing judgments upon them. 1. RETALIATION AB A PRIMITIVE IDEA OF JUSTICE. "It was an ethical ID4Xim, exteusively accepted among ancieut nations, that men must suffer the same pains that, they have inflicted on others. The later Greeks called this the Neoptolemic '"• fro1u lltr. tti.tv. 1-17.J 'l'HE BOOK OF Tim PROPHET ISAIAH. 567