We learn -
I. THAT THE NATURAL RESULT OF FOLLY IS TO BE GOVERNED BY THOSE WHO HAVE NO RIGHT TO RULE.
1. The nation suffers this penalty. As with Judah now (ver. 12), so with each and every country in its turn and in its way. Unmanliness, frivolity, wickedness among the people, will be reflected in the sovereign power. A nation that lives supremely for material enrichment, or for military conquest, or for pleasurable excitement, must expect to see upon the throne - in the government - men who will represent their evil genius, who will pamper their evil tastes, who will "cause them to err" more wildly, and "destroy them in the way of thy paths." Action and reaction are here as everywhere; the folly of the people expresses itself in the weakness and perversity of the ruler, and these qualities on his part tell in their time and measure upon them.
2. The Church endures the same evil. Unspirituality, discord, unbelief, laxity in the Christian community, will certainly issue in a degenerate ecclesiastical authority, and the ruler, using or abusing his opportunity, will lead astray and destroy.
3. The individual finds the same natural law operating on him and on his life. By his folly he allows passions instead of principles, impulses instead of convictions, men instead of God, to be his rulers, his "oppressors;" and these cause him to err; they pervert the way of his paths.
II. THAT THEY WHO ARE GUILTY OF MISRULE AND PERVERSITY MUST LOOK FOR THE RIGHTEOUS VISITATION OF GOD. (Vers. 13-15.) "The Lord standeth up to plead," "to judge the people." He confronts and confounds those who have wronged and oppressed his people. If the usurper, the tyrant, the oppressor, the debauchee, the misleader of the nation (the Church), should not meet with the resentment and feel the blows of those whom he has wronged, he must lay his account with the facts that God takes note of all that passes in our human communities, that he holds those who are in power responsible for the effects of their administration, that he regards with severest indignation those who abuse their trust, that he will visit them in his own time and way, here or hereafter, with proofs of his Divine displeasure. - C.
The Lord standeth up to plead.
The management of this controversy.
I. GOD HIMSELF IS THE PROSECUTOR.
II. THE INDICTMENT IS PROVED BY THE NOTORIOUS EVIDENCE OF THE FACT (ver. 15).
III. THE CONTROVERSY IS ALREADY BEGUN IN THE CHANGE OF THE MINISTRY. To punish those that had abused their power to ill purposes, God sets those over them that had not sense to use it to any good purposes (ver. 12).
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People
IsaiahPlaces
Jerusalem,
Sodom,
ZionTopics
Arises, Cause, Contend, Court, Forward, Judge, Peoples, Plead, Ready, Rises, Setteth, Standeth, Standing, Stands, StoodOutline
1. The great calamities which come by sin10. The different rewards of the righteous and wicked12. The oppression and covetousness of the rulers16. The judgments which shall be for the pride of the women25. The general desolationDictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 3:13 1310 God, as judge
Isaiah 3:11-15
5931 resistance
Isaiah 3:13-17
5270 court
Library
A Paradox of Selling and Buying
'Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money.'--ISAIAH iii. 3. THE first reference of these words is of course to the Captivity. They come in the midst of a grand prophecy of freedom, all full of leaping gladness and buoyant hope. The Seer speaks to the captives; they had 'sold themselves for nought.' What had they gained by their departure from God?--bondage. What had they won in exchange for their freedom?-- only the hard service of Babylon. As Deuteronomy puts it: …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy ScriptureMarching Orders
'Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord. 12. For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight: for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your reward.'--ISAIAH iii. 11, 12. These ringing notes are parts of a highly poetic picture of that great deliverance which inspired this prophet's most exalted strains. It is described with constant allusion to the first Exodus, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture
The Christian view of Sorrow
"A man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief" Is. Iii. 3. There is one great distinction between the productions of Heathen and of Christian art. While the first exhibits the perfection of physical form and of intellectual beauty, the latter expresses, also, the majesty of sorrow, the grandeur of endurance, the idea of triumph refined from agony. In all those shapes of old there is nothing like the glory of the martyr; the sublimity of patience and resignation; the dignity of the thorn-crowned Jesus. …
E. H. Chapin—The Crown of Thorns
The Personal History of Herod - the Two Worlds in Jerusalem.
It is an intensely painful history, [581] in the course of which Herod made his way to the throne. We look back nearly two and a half centuries to where, with the empire of Alexander, Palestine fell to his successors. For nearly a century and a half it continued the battle-field of the Egyptian and Syrian kings (the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ). At last it was a corrupt High-Priesthood - with which virtually the government of the land had all along lain - that betrayed Israel's precious trust. …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
How those are to be Admonished who Praise the Unlawful Things of which they are Conscious, and those who While Condemning Them, in no Wise Guard
(Admonition 32.) Differently to be admonished are they who even praise the unlawful things which they do, and those who censure what is wrong, and yet avoid it not. For they who even praise the unlawful things which they do are to be admonished to consider how for the most part they offend more by the mouth than by deeds. For by deeds they perpetrate wrong things in their own persons only; but with the mouth they bring out wickedness in the persons of as many as there are souls of hearers, to …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great
"But Whereunto Shall I Liken this Generation?"
Matth. xi. 16.--"But whereunto shall I liken this generation?" When our Lord Jesus, who had the tongue of the learned, and spoke as never man spake, did now and then find a difficulty to express the matter herein contained. "What shall we do?" The matter indeed is of great importance, a soul matter, and therefore of great moment, a mystery, and therefore not easily expressed. No doubt he knows how to paint out this to the life, that we might rather behold it with our eyes, than hear it with our …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning
Brief Memoir of Thomas Watson
Compiled by C. H. Spurgeon Thomas Watson's Body of Practical Divinity is one of the most precious of the peerless works of the Puritans; and those best acquainted with it prize it most. Watson was one of the most concise, racy, illustrative, and suggestive of those eminent divines who made the Puritan age the Augustan period of evangelical literature. There is a happy union of sound doctrine, heart-searching experience and practical wisdom throughout all his works, and his Body of Divinity is, beyond …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity
Of Civil Government.
OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. This chapter consists of two principal heads,--I. General discourse on the necessity, dignity, and use of Civil Government, in opposition to the frantic proceedings of the Anabaptists, sec. 1-3. II. A special exposition of the three leading parts of which Civil Government consists, sec. 4-32. The first part treats of the function of Magistrates, whose authority and calling is proved, sec. 4-7. Next, the three Forms of civil government are added, sec. 8. Thirdly, Consideration …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion
Letter Li to the virgin Sophia
To the Virgin Sophia He praises her for having despised the glory of the world: and, setting forth the praises, privileges, and rewards of Religious Virgins, exhorts her to persevere. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, to the Virgin Sophia, that she may keep the title of virginity and attain its reward. I. Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised (Prov. xxxi. 31). I rejoice with you, my daughter, in the glory of your virtue, whereby, as I hear, you …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux
"All Our Righteousnesses are as Filthy Rags, and we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. "
Isaiah lxiv. 6, 7.--"All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." Not only are the direct breaches of the command uncleanness, and men originally and actually unclean, but even our holy actions, our commanded duties. Take a man's civility, religion, and all his universal inherent righteousness,--all are filthy rags. And here the church confesseth nothing but what God accuseth her of, Isa. lxvi. 8, and chap. i. ver. …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning
"Thou Shalt Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. "
From this Commandment we learn that after the excellent works of the first three Commandments there are no better works than to obey and serve all those who are set over us as superiors. For this reason also disobedience is a greater sin than murder, unchastity, theft and dishonesty, and all that these may include. For we can in no better way learn how to distinguish between greater and lesser sins than by noting the order of the Commandments of God, although there are distinctions also within the …
Dr. Martin Luther—A Treatise on Good Works
Concerning Salutations and Recreations, &C.
Concerning Salutations and Recreations, &c. [1273] Seeing the chief end of all religion is to redeem men from the spirit and vain conversation of this world and to lead into inward communion with God, before whom if we fear always we are accounted happy; therefore all the vain customs and habits thereof, both in word and deed, are to be rejected and forsaken by those who come to this fear; such as taking off the hat to a man, the bowings and cringings of the body, and such other salutations of that …
Robert Barclay—Theses Theologicae and An Apology for the True Christian Divinity
A Sermon on Isaiah xxvi. By John Knox.
[In the Prospectus of our Publication it was stated, that one discourse, at least, would be given in each number. A strict adherence to this arrangement, however, it is found, would exclude from our pages some of the most talented discourses of our early Divines; and it is therefore deemed expedient to depart from it as occasion may require. The following Sermon will occupy two numbers, and we hope, that from its intrinsic value, its historical interest, and the illustrious name of its author, it …
John Knox—The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.
The Prophet Micah.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS. Micah signifies: "Who is like Jehovah;" and by this name, the prophet is consecrated to the incomparable God, just as Hosea was to the helping God, and Nahum to the comforting God. He prophesied, according to the inscription, under Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We are not, however, entitled, on this account, to dissever his prophecies, and to assign particular discourses to the reign of each of these kings. On the contrary, the entire collection forms only one whole. At …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament
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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