Isaiah 42:3-4 A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment to truth.… The reed, or "calamus," is a plant with hollow stem, which grew principally by the side of lakes or rivers. Those who have been in Palestine are familiar with it in the tangled thickets which still line the shores of the ancient Merom and Genesis nesaret, or, above all, in the dense copse fringing the banks of the Jordan. The plant might well be taken as an emblem of whatever was weak, fragile, brittle. The foot of the wild beast that made its lair in the jungle, trampled it to pieces. Its slender stalk bent or snapped under the weight of the bird that sought to make it a perch. The wind and hail-storm shivered its delicate tubes, or laid them prostrate on the ground. "A reed shaken by the wind" was the metaphor employed by One whose eyes, in haunts most loved and frequented by Him, had ofttimes gazed on this significant emblem of human weakness and instability. Once broken, it was rendered of no use. Other stems which had been bent by the hurricane might, by careful nursing and tending, be recovered; but the reed, with its heavy culm, once shattered, became worthless. In a preceding chapter (Isaiah 36:6) it is spoken of as an emblem of tottering, fragile Egypt. (J. R. Macduff, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. |
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