'The redeemed shall walk there: And the ransomed of the Lord shall
return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their
heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall
flee away.'--ISAIAH XXXV 9,10.
We have here the closing words of Isaiah's prophecy. It has been
steadily rising, and now it has reached the summit. Men restored to all
their powers, a supernatural communication of a new life, a pathway for
our journey--these have been the visions of the preceding verses, and
now the prophet sees the happy pilgrims flocking along the raised way,
and hears some faint strains of their glad music, and he marks them,
rank after rank, entering the city of their solemnities, and through
the gates can behold them invested with joy and gladness, while sorrow
and sighing, like some night-loving birds shrinking from the blaze of
that better sun which lights the city, spread their black wings and
flee away.
The noble rhythm of our English version rises here to a strain of
pathetic music, the very cadence of which stirs thoughts that lie too
deep for tears, and one shrinks from taking these lofty words of
immortal hope--which life's sorrows have interpreted, I trust, for many
of us--as the text of a sermon. But I would fain try whether some of
their gracious sweetness and power may not survive even our rude
handling of them.
The prophet here is not only speaking of the literal return of his
brethren from captivity. The place which this prophecy holds at the
very close of the book, the noble loftiness of the language, the entire
absence of any details or specific allusions which compel reference to
the Captivity, would be sufficient of themselves to make us suspect
that there was very much more here. The structure of prophecy is
misunderstood unless it be recognised that all the history of Israel
was itself a prediction, a great supernatural system of types and
shadows, and that all the interventions of the divine hand are one in
principle, and all foretell the great intervention of redeeming love,
in the person of Jesus Christ. Nor need that be unlikely in the eyes of
any who believe that Christ's coming is the centre of the world's
history, and that there is in prophecy a supernatural element. We are
not reading our own fancies into Scripture; we are not using, in
allowable freedom, words which had another meaning altogether, to adorn
our own theology, but we are apprehending the innermost meaning of
prophecy, when we see in it Christ and His salvation (1 Peter i. 10).
We have then here a picture of what Christ does for us weary journeyers
on life's road,