Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

The Destruction of Israel

I saw the L ord standing beside the altar, and he said:

Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake,

and shatter them on the heads of all the people;

and those who are left I will kill with the sword;

not one of them shall flee away,

not one of them shall escape.

Though they dig into Sheol,

from there shall my hand take them;

though they climb up to heaven,

from there I will bring them down.

Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,

from there I will search out and take them;

and though they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea,

there I will command the sea-serpent, and it shall bite them.

And though they go into captivity in front of their enemies,

there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them;

and I will fix my eyes on them

for harm and not for good.

The Lord, G od of hosts,

he who touches the earth and it melts,

and all who live in it mourn,

and all of it rises like the Nile,

and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt;

who builds his upper chambers in the heavens,

and founds his vault upon the earth;

who calls for the waters of the sea,

and pours them out upon the surface of the earth—

the L ord is his name.

Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,

O people of Israel? says the L ord.

Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt,

and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?

The eyes of the Lord G od are upon the sinful kingdom,

and I will destroy it from the face of the earth

—except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,

says the L ord.

For lo, I will command,

and shake the house of Israel among all the nations

as one shakes with a sieve,

but no pebble shall fall to the ground.

All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,

who say, “Evil shall not overtake or meet us.”

The Restoration of David’s Kingdom

On that day I will raise up

the booth of David that is fallen,

and repair its breaches,

and raise up its ruins,

and rebuild it as in the days of old;

in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom

and all the nations who are called by my name,

says the L ord who does this.

The time is surely coming, says the L ord,

when the one who plows shall overtake the one who reaps,

and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed;

the mountains shall drip sweet wine,

and all the hills shall flow with it.

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,

and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;

they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,

and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

I will plant them upon their land,

and they shall never again be plucked up

out of the land that I have given them,

says the L ord your God.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Here the Prophet denounces horrible punishments; but not without reason, for there was astonishing torpidity in that people, as there is usually in all hypocrites when they have any shadow of excuse. They were then the only elect people in the whole world. When, therefore, they thought that they excelled others and that they were endued with singular privileges beyond all other nations, this glory inebriated them, and they imagined that God was in a manner bound to them, as we have seen in other places. This, then, was the reason why the Prophet in so many ways enlarged on the judgment of God on hypocrites; it was, that they might be terrified by the vehemence and severity of his words.

Hence he says, If they dig for themselves passages to hell, that is, to the center of the earth, for שאול, shaul, is here put for the center; thence shall my hand draw them forth; and then, If they ascend to heaven, thence I will draw them down, saith the Lord; If they hide themselves in deserts, if they flee to the top of Carmel, I will trace them out: in short, they shall find no corner either in heaven, or on the earth, or in the sea, where they can be hid from my sight. There is no need here to understand by heavens high citadels, as the Chaldean paraphraser explains it: it is a frigid paraphrase. But the Prophet speaks in an hyperbolical language of the center of the earth, of the heavens, and of the deep of the sea; as though he had said, “Should all the elements open themselves for hiding-places, yet the Israelites shall in vain try to escape, for I will follow them when sunk in the depth of the sea, I will draw them down from heaven itself; there shall, in a word, be no hiding-place for them either above or below.”

We now understand the Prophet’s meaning; and an useful warning may be hence gathered, — that when God threatens us, we in vain seek subterfuges, as his hand extends itself to the lowest deep as well as to heaven; as it is said in Psalm 139:7-9,

‘Where shall I flee from thy presence, O Lord?
If I ascend into heaven, thou art there;
if I descend to the grave, thou art present;
if I take the wings of the dawn, (or, of the morning star,)
and dwell in the extremities of the sea,
there also shall thy hand lead me.’

The Prophet speaks not in that psalm, as some have very absurdly philosophized, of the unlimited essence of God; but he rather shows, that we are always in his sight. So then we ought to feel assured that we cannot escape, whenever God designs to make a scrutiny as to our sins, and to summon us to his tribunal.

But we must at the same time remember, that the Prophet has not employed a superfluous heap of words; there is not here one syllable which is not important though at the first view it seems to be otherwise. But the Holy Spirit, as I have already reminded you, knowing our heedlessness, does here shake off all our self-flatteries. There is in us, we know, an innate torpor by nature, so that we despise all threatenings, or at least we are not duly moved by them. As the Lord sees us to be so careless, he rouses us by his goads. Whenever then Scripture denounces punishment on us, let us at the same time learn to join with it what the Prophet here relates; “Thou hast to do with God, what can’t thou effect now by evasions? though thou climbest to heaven, the Lord can draw thee down; though thou descendent to the abyss, God’s hand will thence draw thee forth; if thou seekest a hiding-place in the lowest depths, he will thence also bring thee forth to the light; and if thou hidest thyself in the deep sea, he will there find thee out; in a word, wherever thou betakest thyself, thou canst not withdraw thyself from the presence and from the hand of God.” We hence see the design of all these expressions, and that is, that we may not think of God as of ourselves, but that we may know that his power extends to all hiding-places. But these words ought to be subjects at meditations though it be sufficient for our purpose to include in few words what the Prophet had in view. But as we are so entangled in our vain confidences, the Prophet, as I have said, has not in vain used so many words.