'Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf
shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the
tongue of the dumb sing.'--ISAIAH xxxv. 5,6.
'Then'--when? The previous verse answers, 'Behold, your God will come,
He will come and save you.' And what or when is that 'coming'? A glance
at the place which this grand hymn occupies in the series of Isaiah's
prophecies answers that question. It stands at the close of the first
part of these, and is the limit of the prophet's vision. He has been
setting forth the Lord's judgments upon all heathen, and His
deliverance of Israel from its oppressors; and the 'coming' is His
manifestation for that double purpose. Before its flashing brightness,
barrenness is changed into verdure, diseases that lame men's powers
vanish, the dry and thirsty land gleams with the shining light of
sudden streams. Across the wilderness stretches a broad path, raised
high above the bewildering monotony of pathless sand, too plain to be
missed, too lofty for wild beasts' suppleness to spring upon it: along
it troop with song and gladness the returning exiles, with hope in
their hearts as they journey to Zion, where they find a joyful home
undimmed by sorrow, and in which sighing and sorrow are heard and felt
no more.
Now this is poetry, no doubt; the golden light of imagination suffuses
it all, but it is poetry with a solid meaning in it. It is not a mere
play of fancy exalting the 'coming of the Lord' by heaping together all
images that suggest the vanishing of evil and the coming of good. If
there is a basis of facts in it, what are they? What is the period of
that emphatic 'then' at the beginning of our text? The return of the
Jews from exile? Yes, certainly; but some greater event shines through
the words. Some future restoration of that undying race to their own
land? Yes, possibly, again we answer, but that does not exhaust the
prophecy. The great coming of God to save in the gift of His Son? Yes,
that in an eminent degree. The second coming of Christ? Yes, that too.
All the events in which God has come for men's deliverance are shadowed
here; for in them all, the same principles are at work, and in all,
similar effects have followed. But mainly the mission and work of Jesus
Christ is pointed at here--whether in its first stage of Incarnation
and Passion, or in its second stage of Coming in glory, 'the second
time without sin, unto salvation.'
And the bodily diseases here enumerated are symbols, just as Christ's
miracles were symbolical, just as every language has used the body as a
parable of the soul, and has felt that there is such a harmony between
them that the outward and visible does correspond to and shadow the
inward and spiritual.
I think, then, that we may fairly take these four promises as bringing
out very distinctly the main characteristics of the blessed effects of
Christ's work in the world. The great subject of these words is the
power of Christ in restoring to men the spiritual capacities which are
all but destroyed. We have here three classes of bodily infirmities
represented as cured at the date of that blessed 'Then.' Blindness and
deafness are defects in perception, and stand for incapacities
affecting the powers of knowledge. Lameness affects powers of motion,
and stands for incapacity of activity. Dumbness prevents speech, and
stands for incapacity of utterance.