Isaiah 48:18 O that you had listened to my commandments! then had your peace been as a river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea: 1. Is not the first idea of the waves of the sea their multitudinousness? Righteousness, then, like these waves of the sea, would mean an unfailing movement, an active goodness, strong or gentle, reaching over the boundless surface of life, breaking in pure foam and music on every beach. It would mean a kind of limitless and incalculable force, too, not contracted like waters in a pool or pond, but issuing out of vast depths and distances, and swayed by cosmic impulses, so that there is no end, no pause, no exhaustion — a sense of the infinite, a promise of eternity. 2. The second idea must be that of the beauty of the waves of the sea. That is not a modern sentiment; it occurs in the earliest poetry of the world. It was AEschylus that coined the exquisite phrase, "the countless smile of the many-sounding sea," and a poet like Isaiah must have felt that poetry of the sea as you have done. 3. May we add a third suggestion, which would hardly occur, perhaps, to those who knew only the tideless Mediterranean, namely, the beneficence of the waves of the sea. They are for ever washing the land. Our righteousness is intended to have a cleansing effect on the shores of earth. Not like the troubled waters, which throw up mire and dirt — they are intended to ring human life with a belt of ozone, to wash out into the depths the corruptions of the earth, and to fling high upon the shore the sting and the strength of the salt. To influence the world for good is a thought to thrill you with hope and desire, to be good, to do good, to make good. (R. F. Horton, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: |
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