[1] He inquired how long this service of hardening and this
state of hardness were to continue,--a question forced from
him by his sympathy with the nation to which he himself
belonged (cf. Exod. xxxii. 9-14), and one which was
warranted by the certainty that God, who is ever true to
His promises, could not cast off Israel as a people for
ever. The answer follows in ver. 11_b_-13: _"Until towns
are wasted without inhabitant, and houses are without man,
and the ground shall be laid waste, a wilderness, and
Jehovah shall put men far away, and there shall be many
forsaken places within the land. And is there still a tenth
therein, this also again is given up to destruction, like
the terebinth and the oak, of which, when they are felled,
only a root-stump remains: such a root-stump is the holy
seed."_ The hardening judgment would come to an end only
when the land of Israel had been made utterly desolate. Up
to the words "given up to destruction," the announcement is
a threatening one; but from this point to "remains" a
consolatory prospect begins to dawn; and in the last three
words this brighter prospect, like a distant streak of
light, bounds the horizon of the gloomy prophecy. It shall
happen as with the terebinth and the oak. These trees were
selected as illustrations, not only because they are so
near akin to evergreens, and produced a similar impression,
or because there were so many associations connected with
them in the olden times of Israel's history; but also
because they formed such fitting symbols of Israel, on
account of their peculiar facility for springing up again
from the root (like the beech and nut, for example), even
when they had been completely felled. . . . The root-stump
was the remnant that had survived the judgment, and the
remnant would become a seed, out of which a new Israel
would spring up after the old had been destroyed. Thus in a
few words is the way sketched out which God would
henceforth take with His people. The passage contains an
outline of the history of Israel to the end of time. Israel
as a nation was indestructible, by virtue of the promise of
God; but the mass of the people were doomed to destruction
through the judicial sentence of God, and only a remnant,
which would be converted, would perpetuate the nationality
of Israel, and inherit the glorious future. This law of a
blessing sunk in the depths of the curse actually inflicted
still prevails in the history of the Jews. The way of
salvation is open to all. Individuals find it, and give us
a presentiment of what might be and is to be; but the great
mass are hopelessly lost, and only when they have been
swept away will a holy seed, saved by a covenant-keeping
God, grow up into a new and holy Israel, which, according
to chap. xxvii. 6, will fill the earth with its fruits, or,
as the Apostle expresses it in Romans xi. 12, become "the
riches of the Gentiles."--_Delitzsch._
[2] _Homiletic Encyclopædia of Illustrations,_ 86-90, 99-115.
[3] As the eye of the cunning lapidary detects in the rugged
pebble, just digged from the mine, the polished diadem that
shall sparkle in the diadem of a king; or as the sculptor
in the rough block of marble, newly hewn from the quarry,
beholds the statue of perfect grace and beauty which is
latent there, and waiting but the touch of his hand,--so He
who sees all, and the end from the beginning, sees
oftentimes greater wonders than these. He sees the saint in
the sinner, the saint that shall be in the sinner that is;
the wheat in the tare; the shepherd feeding the sheep in
the wolf tearing the sheep; Paul in the preacher of the
faith in Saul the persecutor of the faith; Israel a prince
with God in Jacob the trickster and the supplanter; Matthew
the Apostle in Levi the publican; a woman that should love
much in a woman sinning much; and in some vine of the earth
bringing forth wild grapes and grapes of gall a tree which
shall yet bring forth good fruit, and wine to make glad the
heart; so that when some, like those over-zealous servants
in the parable, would have Him pluck it up, and to cast it
without more ado into the wine-press of the wrath of
Almighty God, He exclaims rather, "Destroy it not, for a
blessing is in it" (Isa. lxv. 8), and is well content to
await the end.--_Trench._
See also _Homiletic Encyclopædia,_ &c., 2454 and 3056.