Isaiah 5:24, 25 Therefore as the fire devours the stubble, and the flame consumes the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness… The Prophet Isaiah lived in anxious times. He was keenly observant of the social and moral features of his age - a discerner of the "signs of the times." He was sent by God to show the people how national wrong-doing bore its sure fruitage in bad harvests and in national calamities, and to help them to see in such fruitage the operation of Divine judgments. In the text the prophet clearly sees trouble coming on apace, and taking form as scant and withered harvests, either through unkindly seasons or the visitation of locusts. "Their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust." Ewald well describes the social conditions which Isaiah observed in their more serious aspects in relation to the Divine will and Law. "The constant increase of the power and security of the realm, and the profusion of an age rendered prosperous by the development of arts and distant commerce, were accompanied by an equally vigorous growth of other things; the craving for enjoyment and luxury among the people, and especially among the women of the capital; the foolish predilection for foreign manners and foreign superstitions of every kind, and a wantonness of life, from which many, even of the judges, were not altogether free, and under which the defenseless inhabitants had to suffer with increasing severity; all of which Isaiah, the great prophet of his age, who lived in Jerusalem, recognized and depicted in the sharpest outlines." Dean Stanley gives a yet more striking picture of that luxurious age. "The luxury and insolence of the nobles was in a high degree oppressive and scandalous. Bribery was practiced in the seats of judgment, and enormous landed property was accumulated against the whole spirit of the Israelite commonwealth. With the determination and, we may add, the avarice of their race, they laid their deep schemes at night, and carried them out with their first waking. They "did evil with both hands;" they skinned the poor to the very quick; they picked their bones and ground them to powder. The great ladies of Zion were haughty, and paced along the streets tossing their necks, and leering with their eyes, walking and mincing as they went, covered with tinkling ornaments, chains, bracelets, mantles, veils, of all fashions and sizes." Isaiah declares that Jehovah observed all these moral and social evils, and that he used the agencies of nature to execute his judgments on such sinners. They would find, when the harvest came round, that "ten acres of land would only yield one bath, and the seed of a homer would only yield an ephah." God would smite them through the fields. Is Isaiah's teaching obsolete? Does God speak to the men of this age by the voice of nature? Having found out that the world is ruled by law, have we gained the right to banish the Lawgiver? Whether men call us superstitious or not, we unhesitatingly say that God is in the harvest still, and its limitation is the voice of God calling on us to humble ourselves concerning our social and national iniquities. That this is a right and reasonable view to take will appear if we consider - I. MAN IS SENSITIVE TO NATURE, AND NATURE TO MAN. If we are still thus sensitive, God can use nature still as a medium by which to communicate his will to us. Nature has not yet become one of the dead languages; God can speak to us in it. We are affected by the nature-moods of each passing day. Crisp frost braces us to exertion; glowing sunshine and clear skies are reflected in bright and cheerful feelings; cloudy, dull days make our work drag heavily. Storm-times fill us with fear. Everybody anxiously observes the character of the seasons. The nation alternates between hope and fear as reports come of rains, or late frosts, or blight, or flood. Nature is ever bringing to us messages from God, gracious testimonies of his acceptance or of his reproof. And no voices are so loud or so clear as those of the harvest, which is God's yearly replenishing of our exhausted stores, and so the intimation of Divine regard or Divine disfavor. And nature is sensitive to man, and responsive to man's conditions and doings. Go into some parts of our land, some metal and mining districts, and notice how nature, in response to man, has changed her aspect. Her trees cannot live. Her atmosphere has become damp and chill. See her fields responding to man's draining. She now runs off her moisture in sudden and desolating floods. See the thick smoke-cloud hanging over great towns. Nature responds by breeding fatal diseases beneath it. God is ever fitting issues to actions, and in the issues revealing the character of the action. "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Visit the Holy Land, now desolate and barren, once fruitful and cultivated. It has but responded to the destruction of its timber, by the invading armies that have tramped over it again and again. The prophets seem to have, as one great part of their mission, to show that changes in seasons, loss of fruitage, bad harvests, fearful storms, locusts and caterpillars, are really the judgment-responses of nature to the doings, the wrong-doings, of men. Close up our Scriptures if it is no longer true that God speaks to men through nature; for St. Paul says, "God gave them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness." Surely the invisible things of God may be clearly understood by the things that are made. II. NATURE CAN STILL BE USED AS AN AGENT OF DIVINE JUDGMENT ON MAN. If God is, then he cannot pass by sin. If God visits the sins of cities and of nations as such, then he must find some instruments of chastisement which will directly affect cities and nations. His instruments may be the destructive forces of nature - famine, pestilence, fear, and war - which directly reach corporate and national feeling. Herein is a curious thing. Men are ready enough to hear the voice of God when he sends a bountiful harvest. The whole land rings with the harvest-song, and men do not mind our saying that God sent the harvest. Bat how blind and deaf men become when harvest fails! Our blessings come from God; but how we try to make out that our disasters are only consequences of some unwisdom, or some neglect of social or agricultural laws! We need not see God's hand in them. Let us not, however, be afraid of either side of the great truth. If God would recognize our faithfulness to him, he can find rich golden corn, and sunny autumn for its ripening and its ingathering. If he needs to chastise, and awaken in us the sense of sin, then he can make withered ears stand in the fields, summer floods damage the shocks, and sunless autumn hinder the ripening. Can it ever take away from the judgment-aspect of national calamity that we are able to explain how the earth, in its movements through space, has come rote a damp region, or rote a cold region; how certain atmospheric conditions have developed the blight; and how the current of certain winds has brought the locusts; and how a disturbance of nature's limiting agencies has developed unduly the caterpillar? But if God speaks to us in judgment, let us never forget that he really speaks to us in mercy. He ever blends mercy with judgment; and the response he asks from our hearts will go into the old words: "Come, let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight." "To the Lord our God belongeth mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him." - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. |
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