Isaiah 54:11-17 O you afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay your stones with fair colors… Nature's temple is not a hueless, monotonous structure like the pyramids of Egypt. It is richly decorated. It is overlaid with chaste and beautiful ornamentation. Every stone is painted with fair colours, accurately toned, and in perfect keeping. Not a rock that peers above the surface of the earth but is clothed with the rainbow tints of moss and lichen, and wreathed with the graceful tenderness of fern and wild-flower. Every mountain is clothed with the variegated verdure of forest and pasture, blending gradually upwards into the sober grey of crag, and the silvery whiteness of snow, and the quiet blue of the cloud-flecked sky. And when the living hues of plants are absent, there is compensation in the rich colours of the rocks, or in the bright reflections of the heavens. The brilliant crimson of Sinai's granite and sandstone cliffs makes up for their naked sterility; and if the mountain ranges of northern Europe are destitute of the emerald verdure of the Alps, they are covered instead with purple light as with a robe, and gather out of the sky at sunrise and twilight hues softer than the plumage of a dove, and more radiant than the petals of rose and violet. Even works of human art are decorated by nature with a picturesque glory of colour and light, in harmony with her own landscapes. The castle or the abbey, left untenanted, falls into ruin; but Nature — whose profound peace succeeds all strife of man, and whose passive permanency mocks his fast-perishing creeds — steps in to claim her reversion; and wherever her soft finger touches, there new beauties spring up and shame the artist's proudest triumphs. (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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