Isaiah 54:11-17 O you afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay your stones with fair colors… is an exceedingly lovely colour. It is quiet and subdued, attracting without dazzling the eye, suggestive of peace and repose. It is the most universally distributed of all hues. It forms the pleasing background of nature, on which the more brilliant colours of tree and flower and field come forth to arrest our attention, not only by their own beauty, but also by the force of contrast. We see it in the boundless expanse of the sky which bends over and idealizes our dull cold earth, and forms, with its varied changes, a part of the landscape, not the mere empty space that surrounds it. We see it in the distant hills, that assume on the horizon the azure colour of the sky, from sympathy of beauty and peace. We see it in the far-stretching ocean that covers three-fourths of the surface of the globe; in the lake, the river, and the stream, the mirrors which reflect and spiritualize the changeable beauty of earth and heaven. We see it in the blue-bell that rings out the pensive requiem of nature's mutability on quiet autumn eves; and in the human eye, the most wonderful of God's works, which reflects the world without and the world within — which is at once useful as an organ of vision, and beautiful as a spiritual and expressive window of the soul And as in the temple of nature, from the viewless air to the ethereal lustre of childhood's innocent eye, the hue of the sapphire predominates, so in the tabernacle and temple of old it was pre-eminent, being always mentioned in connection with gold in the enumeration of the sacred furniture. As the gold was emblematic of the glory and majesty of God, so the blue combined with it, in the sacred appointments of the tabernacle, might be aptly employed to represent His love and grace. Such an interpretation would be in strict accordance with the symbolism of nearly all nations, among whom blue has always been associated with ideas of love. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. |
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