'In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a
diadem of beauty.'--ISAIAH xxviii. 5.
'Thou shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord.'--ISAIAH
lxii 3.
Connection of first prophecy--destruction of Samaria. Its situation,
crowning the hill with its walls and towers, its fertile 'fat valley,'
the flagrant immorality and drunkenness of its inhabitants, and its
final ruin, are all presented in the highly imaginative picture of its
fall as being like the trampling under foot of a garland on a
reveller's head, the roses of which fade and droop amid the fumes of
the banqueting hall, and are then flung out on the highway. The
contrast presented is very striking and beautiful. When all that gross
and tumultuous beauty has faded and died, then God Himself will be a
crown of beauty to His people.
The second text comes into remarkable line with this. The verbal
resemblance is not quite so strong in the original. The words for
_diadem_ and _crown_ are not the same; the word rendered _glory_ in the
second text is rendered _beauty_ in the first, but the two texts are
entirely one in meaning. The same metaphor, then, is used with
reference to what God is to the Church and what the Church is to God.
He is its crown, it is His.