Isaiah 14:1
For the LORD will have compassion on Jacob; once again He will choose Israel and settle them in their own land. The foreigner will join them and unite with the house of Jacob.
Sermons
God's Mercy and Israel's ConvertsHomilistIsaiah 14:1
God's Mercy May Delay, it Does not FailR. Tuck Isaiah 14:1
God's Passion to IsraelF. Delitzsch, D. D.Isaiah 14:1
The Victory of LifeCharles KingsleyIsaiah 14:1
The Reign of Sin and the Rest of GodW. Clarkson Isaiah 14:1-3
Song of Redeemed IsraelE. Johnson Isaiah 14:1-23














I. THE OCCASION OF THE SONG. (Vers. 1-3.) The immediate purpose of that awful convulsion of the nations described in the preceding chapter was judgment; but beyond this lies the purpose of mercy. The inspired song of Israel is ever of "mercy and judgment." One loving purpose works, whether through the hiding of the cloud and the storm, or in the manifest brightness of the calm summer day. Whether he makes himself known to us amidst terror and trembling, or in peace and tranquilly flowing hours, "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." After the storm comes the still small voice, heard in the sanctuary, echoed in the heart, "Fear not; I am with thee." Jehovah will give his people rest in their land from the cruel sufferings of slavery. The heathen will look on, astonished at the deliverance of Israel, and wilt be convinced that there is a truth in the religion of Israel superior to that of their own. They will escort the people of Jehovah to the sacred place, and there become attached to their service as dependents. To the prophetic conscience it seems that this is but in accordance with the law of compensation. It seems preposterous, nothing less than an invasion of the true order of things, for a community which holds the purest principles to be enslaved to one whose power is built on falsehood. The conscience of the prophet teaches him that as God is right, so there must be a rectification of the world's wrong. The present first must become the last, and the last first, and the world must be turned upside down, that Israel may obtain and retain her destined lead among the nations. This is a leading ideal of 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 convictions, 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 recognition 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 Western world. The forms of Divine fulfillment seen by the prophets in their forecast may not have been always the truest forms, limited as they were by conditions of space and time. The substance and spirit of their message was of eternal truth.

II. THE CONTENTS OF THE SONG. (Vers. 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 scepter dashed from his hand. His part will be reversed; having incessantly smitten the people in his cruel rage, and trodden them beneath Ills feet in the exercise of arbitrary and unchecked power, he will himself be powerless, as all injustice must be, disjoined from physical force. See the critical notes for the discussion of the meaning of the words, and the strong images of violence, inspired by tyrannic caprice and cruelty, which they call up in the imagination. "The oppressor's scorn, the proud man's contumely," are enumerated by our great poets among those conditions which tempt men to doubt the worth of existence. Take away the freedom of religious life, the placid enjoyment of old customs of family and social life, from a people, and you extract from them the relish for life.

"'Tis 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 ha may be and sympathetic by nature, yet his heart may not expand in the chilling atmosphere which surrounds him. The cruel necessities of power may even render the lot of the oppressor less enviable than that of the oppressed. The heart of the people in every hind 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 potentate 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 of the kingdom of the Messiah. Selfishness, ambition, tyranny of individual wills, - these are the most constant causes of restlessness 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 with man. How exquisite is the poetic feeling for nature in the next verses (7, 8)! Like all the imagery of Hebrew poesy, they are full of simplicity, sublimity, pathos. "Now resteth, now is quiet all the earth; songs of jubilation break forth. The 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 great durability, for his buildings, his besieging apparatus, his ships. A small remnant, heirs of those magnificent trees on Lebanon of the prophet's time, still stands on the spot. They seem, in their robust and beautiful forms, the very type of human life in the ideal freedom and independence of its growth. There is a strong poetic feeling for the tree in the Hebrew psalmists and prophets. The just man is like the tree planted by the flowing stream, or like the palm flourishing in the desert, the image of outward suffering and deprivation. We all yearn for the sight of the trees. We cannot see their leaves fall in autumn without something of a pang. We hail the returning blush on the beech woods of our own land in the springtime, and the dimly deepening green of the hedgerows. A silent sense of sympathy steals to our heart, as if sickness, old age, and death were illusions, life the only reality. The dimpling reflections of the sunlight on the leaves are as smiles, and as a whisper from the spiritual world the rustle or' the wind among them. We can understand how in olden time men felt the trees to be oracular, and believed, or half believed them to be tenanted by supernatural beings. A landscape without a tree, like a sea without a sail, is a sight we cannot long endure without pain. Such feelings have undoubtedly a religious meaning and value. As we listen to them and cultivate them, the faith grows stronger that a Divine love and sympathy is stirring at the very heart of things. It is an ill thing if we permit on every occasion our cold scientific conscience to chide us out of such a mood. In the present exalted mood of the prophet, the trees seem not merely to offer a silent sympathy, but to find tongue and to break forth into articulate triumph. Still more boldly, in Isaiah 4:12, they are conceived as clapping their hands in joy. Here the cypresses and cedars, appropriated by the patriotic eagerness of the prophet, as it were, exult in deliverance from the axe of the alien feller, as he exults in the breaking of the alien scepter.

III. LESSON ON THE SYMPATHY OF MIND WITH NATURE. Let us not be tempted to idle words in speaking of that high faculty of poetic fancy exercised upon the objects and scenes of nature, and illustrated in this passage. A great spiritual poet of our age - Wordsworth - has taught us religiously to cherish it. We accept the teaching, but not in its exaggerated forms. It has been asserted as a principle of primary and universal import, that "it has pleased God to educate mankind from the beginning through impressions derived from the phenomena of the natural world." A sounder theology and a juster theory of the imagination teaches otherwise. The home, the school, the Church, the state, society, - these are the scenes of our spirit's training in religion and in morals, for time and for eternity. We cast upon the forms of the external world reflections of sentiments and truths we could not divine from that world. We know the physical cosmos through the moral cosmos, not vice versa. As to poets of the highest order, all have been at home in the grandeurs of the spiritual world, not all have been affected by the forms of nature. This has been especially remarked of Dante. This observation is fixed almost exclusively upon the Divine and human world. And, indeed, it must be admitted that the noblest objects of contemplation are God and man himself. "The universe and all its fair and glorious forms is indeed included in the wide empire of imagination; but she has placed her home and her sanctuary amidst the inexhaustible varieties and impenetrable mysteries of the human mind.... Is it not the fact that external objects never strongly excite our feelings but when they are contemplated with reference to man, as illustrating his destiny or as influencing his character?" (Macaulay). We can find in Nature only what we take to her. The key to her mystical meanings is to be found in the awakened conscience, the heart made pure. Petrarch, unlike Dante, loved the face of nature. But on one occasion, in the midst of a glow of delight in a glorious prospect, he remembered that he had a volume of St. Augustine in his pocket. Opening the book at random, he read these words: "Men go to admire the lofty mountains, the mighty sea-billows, the broad courses of the rivers, the circuit of the ocean, the orbit of the stars; and they neglect themselves." He closed the book and reproached himself. Even the heathen philosophers might have taught him a deeper truth. Doubtless. Socrates said that "trees did not teach him anything, but man." Let us adapt the saying to religious feeling. The trees will yield no oracles but those which have been first heard in the inmost conscience. And if there are times when they seem to whisper of gladness, or to smile and clap their hands for joy, it is because God has already opened a fountain of perennial trust and hope within the soul. Then "fruitful trees and all cedars" will praise the Lord, when the heart is filled with praise. "The outward face of nature is a religious communication to those who come to it with the religious element already in them, but no man can get a religion out of the beauty of nature. Those who have first made the knowledge of themselves and their own souls their care, its glory has ever turned to light and hope. They have read in nature an augury and a presage; they have found in it a language and a revelation' (Moztey). - J.

For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob.
Homilist.
I. THE PRINCIPLE OF GOD'S MORAL GOVERNMENT — Mercy. This people had grievously sinned.

1. They had sinned against light. The direct revelation of heaven had been given to them as a nation

2. They rebelled amid privileges. The Mighty God interfered to protect them from their foes.

3. They had sinned in spite of rebukes and punishments. The rebellious people had been carried captive into a heathen nation.

II. THE CONSTANCY OF DIVINE PURPOSES — "I will yet choose," etc. Notwithstanding all their rebellion I will yet have mercy on them. Nothing can separate from the love of God.

III. THE RESTORATIVE BLESSEDNESS OF RELIGION. When God takes a man in hand, He restores him. In paradise he was the image and associate of God. Salvation will make him nothing more. Heaven will contain additional elements of joy, but the man will be restored.

IV. THE CONTAGION OF ENTHUSIASM. When the Jews should return, many of the heathen, leaving their own country and their idols, would return along with them. "And the strangers shall be joined with them." This was part of God's design in the Captivity. It was not only to punish His people for their sin, but also to render them a blessing to others. God often appoints the afflictions of His people for His own glory, and we must not mourn but rejoice if we are counted worthy of forwarding His cause.

V. THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF RELIGION. It commands affection and regard. It is our duty to render it attractive so as to win others.

(Homilist.)

We have here in nuce the comforting substance of chaps. 40-46. Babylon falls in order that Israel may rise.

(F. Delitzsch, D. D.)

People
Ahaz, Isaiah, Jacob, Lucifer, Saraph
Places
Babylon, Lebanon, Philistia, Zion
Topics
Admitted, Aliens, Attach, Choose, Cleave, Compassion, Family, Fixed, Foreigner, Jacob, Join, Joined, Loveth, Mercy, Rest, Settle, Sojourner, Special, Strange, Stranger, Strangers, Themselves, Unite, United, Yet
Outline
1. God's merciful restoration of Israel
3. Their triumphant exultation over Babel
24. God's purpose against Assyria
29. Philistia is threatened

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 14:1

     1030   God, compassion
     4207   land, divine gift
     4209   land, spiritual aspects
     6214   participation, in Christ
     6622   choice
     6640   election, privileges
     7031   unity, God's goal
     7530   foreigners

Isaiah 14:1-2

     5424   nationalism
     7259   promised land, later history

Library
The victory of Life (Preached at the Chapel Royal. )
ISAIAH xxxviii. 18, 19. The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee. I may seem to have taken a strange text on which to speak,--a mournful, a seemingly hopeless text. Why I have chosen it, I trust that you will see presently; certainly not that I may make you hopeless about death. Meanwhile, let us consider it; for it is in the Bible, and, like all words in the Bible, was written
Charles Kingsley—The Water of Life and Other Sermons

The Life and Death of Mr. Badman,
Presented to the World in a Familiar Dialogue Between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive. By John Bunyan ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. The life of Badman is a very interesting description, a true and lively portraiture, of the demoralized classes of the trading community in the reign of King Charles II; a subject which naturally led the author to use expressions familiar among such persons, but which are now either obsolete or considered as vulgar. In fact it is the only work proceeding from the prolific
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

The First Trumpet.
The first trumpet of the seventh seal begins from the final disturbance and overthrow of the Roman idolarchy at the close of the sixth seal; and as it was to bring the first plague on the empire, now beginning to fall, it lays waste the third part of the earth, with a horrible storm of hail mingled with fire and blood; that is, it depopulates the territory and people of the Roman world, (viz. the basis and ground of its universal polity) with a terrible and bloody irruption of the northern nations,
Joseph Mede—A Key to the Apocalypse

The Evil of Sin visible in the Fall of Angels and Men.
1 When the great Builder arch'd the skies, And form'd all nature with a word, The joyful cherubs tun'd his praise, And every bending throne ador'd. 2 High in the midst of all the throng, Satan, a tall archangel, sat, Amongst the morning stars he sung [1] Till sin destroy'd his heavenly state. 3 ['Twas sin that hurl'd him from his throne, Grov'ling in fire the rebel lies: "How art thou sunk in darkness down, "Son of the morning, from the skies!" [2] 4 And thus our two first parents stood Till sin
Isaac Watts—Hymns and Spiritual Songs

Epistle xviii. To John, Bishop.
To John, Bishop. Gregory to John, Bishop of Constantinople [1586] . At the time when your Fraternity was advanced to Sacerdotal dignity, you remember what peace and concord of the churches you found. But, with what daring or with what swelling of pride I know not, you have attempted to seize upon a new name, whereby the hearts of all your brethren might have come to take offence. I wonder exceedingly at this, since I remember how thou wouldest fain have fled from the episcopal office rather than
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great

Epistle xxi. To Constantina Augusta .
To Constantina Augusta [1593] . Gregory to Constantina, &c. Almighty God, who holds in His right hand the heart of your Piety, both protects us through you and prepares for you rewards of eternal remuneration for temporal deeds. For I have learnt from the letters of the deacon Sabinianus my responsalis with what justice your Serenity is interested in the cause of the blessed Prince of the apostles Peter against certain persons who are proudly humble and feignedly kind. And I trust in the bounty
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great

That the Ruler Should Be, through Humility, a Companion of Good Livers, But, through the Zeal of Righteousness, Rigid against the vices of Evildoers.
The ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, and, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evil-doers; so that in nothing he prefer himself to the good, and yet, when the fault of the bad requires it, he be at once conscious of the power of his priority; to the end that, while among his subordinates who live well he waives his rank and accounts them as his equals, he may not fear to execute the laws of rectitude towards the perverse. For, as I remember to
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

The Doctrine of Satan.
I. HIS EXISTENCE AND PERSONALITY. 1. EXISTENCE. 2. PERSONALITY. II. HIS PLACE AND POWER. 1. A MIGHTY ANGEL. 2. PRINCE OF POWER OF THE AIR. 3. GOD OF THIS WORLD. 4. HEAD OF KINGDOM OF DARKNESS. 5. SOVEREIGN OVER DEATH. III. HIS CHARACTER. 1. ADVERSARY. 2. DIABOLOS. 3. WICKED ONE. 4. TEMPTER. IV. OUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS SATAN. 1. LIMITED POWER OF SATAN. 2. RESIST HIM. V. HIS DESTINY. 1. A CONQUERED ENEMY. 2. UNDER ETERNAL CURSE. VI. DEMONS. THE DOCTRINE OF SATAN. Throughout the Scriptures Satan is set
Rev. William Evans—The Great Doctrines of the Bible

The Disciple, -- Master, Some People Say that the Comfort and Joy that Believers Experience...
The Disciple,--Master, some people say that the comfort and joy that believers experience are simply the outcome of their own thoughts and ideas. Is this true? The Master,--1. That comfort and abiding peace which believers have within themselves is due to My presence in their hearts, and to the life-giving influence of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. As for those who say that this spiritual joy is the result only of the thoughts of the heart, they are like a foolish man who was blind from his birth,
Sadhu Sundar Singh—At The Master's Feet

The Power of God
The next attribute is God's power. Job 9:19. If I speak of strength, lo, he is strong.' In this chapter is a magnificent description of God's power. Lo, he is strong.' The Hebrew word for strong signifies a conquering, prevailing strength. He is strong.' The superlative degree is intended here; viz., He is most strong. He is called El-shaddai, God almighty. Gen 17:7. His almightiness lies in this, that he can do whatever is feasible. Divines distinguish between authority and power. God has both.
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Sargon of Assyria (722-705 B. C. )
SARGON AS A WARRIOR AND AS A BUILDER. The origin of Sargon II.: the revolt of Babylon, Merodach-baladan and Elam--The kingdom of Elam from the time of the first Babylonian empire; the conquest's of Shutruh-nalkunta I.; the princes of Malamir--The first encounter of Assyria and Elam, the battle of Durilu (721 B.C.)--Revolt of Syria, Iaubidi of Hamath and Hannon of Gaza--Bocchoris and the XXIVth Egyptian dynasty; the first encounter of Assyria with Egypt, the battle of Raphia (720 B.C.). Urartu
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 7

Use to be Made of the Doctrine of Providence.
Sections. 1. Summary of the doctrine of Divine Providence. 1. It embraces the future and the past. 2. It works by means, without means, and against means. 3. Mankind, and particularly the Church, the object of special care. 4. The mode of administration usually secret, but always just. This last point more fully considered. 2. The profane denial that the world is governed by the secret counsel of God, refuted by passages of Scripture. Salutary counsel. 3. This doctrine, as to the secret counsel of
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

The Holy War,
MADE BY SHADDAI UPON DIABOLUS, FOR THE REGAINING OF THE METROPOLIS OF THE WORLD; OR, THE LOSING AND TAKING AGAIN OF THE TOWN OF MANSOUL. THE AUTHOR OF 'THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.' 'I have used similitudes.'--Hosea 12:10. London: Printed for Dorman Newman, at the King's Arms in the Poultry; and Benjamin Alsop, at the Angel and Bible in the Poultry, 1682. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. Bunyan's account of the Holy War is indeed an extraordinary book, manifesting a degree of genius, research, and spiritual
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

Covenanting According to the Purposes of God.
Since every revealed purpose of God, implying that obedience to his law will be given, is a demand of that obedience, the announcement of his Covenant, as in his sovereignty decreed, claims, not less effectively than an explicit law, the fulfilment of its duties. A representation of a system of things pre-determined in order that the obligations of the Covenant might be discharged; various exhibitions of the Covenant as ordained; and a description of the children of the Covenant as predestinated
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Opposition to Messiah in Vain
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. T he extent and efficacy [effects] of the depravity of mankind cannot be fully estimated by the conduct of heathens destitute of divine revelation. We may say of the Gospel, in one sense, what the Apostle says of the Law, It entered that sin might abound (Romans 5:20) . It afforded occasion for displaying the alienation of the heart of man from the blessed God, in the strongest light. The sensuality, oppression and
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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