Observe that emphatic '_told you_'; then the witness here appealed to
is truly a Revelation, though a silent one. 'There is no speech nor
language,' yet 'their line is gone out through all the earth, and their
words to the ends of the world.'
The general idea of the divine nature, as revealed 'from the beginning'
and 'from the foundation of the earth,' is that of Majesty transcending
all comparison.
The contrast is drawn between Him and men, in the magnificent image of
Him as throned above 'the circle of the earth,' and so far above that
all the busy tribes of men 'are as grasshoppers,' their restless
activity but aimless leaping, and 'the tumult of the peoples' only as a
meaningless chirping.
God's creative and sustaining power is further set forth by that great
image of His 'stretching out the heavens as a curtain, and spreading
them out as a tent to dwell in.' As easily as travellers set up their
tents when the day's march is done, did He stretch the great expanse
above the low earth; and all its depths and spaces are, in comparison
with Him, thin, transient, and as easily rolled up and put aside as the
stuff that makes a nomad's home for a night. Nor are the two implied
thoughts that 'the heavens' are a veil screening Him from men even
while they tell of Him to men, and that they are His lofty
dwelling-place, to be left out of view.
But in verse 26 we have a more specific and grander exhibition of God's
relation to the Universe. The stars, in number numberless, are
conceived of as a great army drilled and directed by Him. And that
metaphor, familiar to us as it is, and condensed into the divine title
so frequent in this prophetic book, is pregnant with great truths.
It speaks of God as the Imperator, the Commander, exercising supreme
authority by 'the word of His power,' and of creation as obedient
thereto. 'For ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in the heavens.' The
Commander needs but to speak, and so mystic is the power of His uttered
will, that effects on the material universe follow that altogether
immaterial energy.
It speaks of the harmony and order of the whole Creation. 'By number'
and 'by name' He sways and ranks them. 'All things work together.' They
are an ordered whole--a kosmos, not a chaos. Modern science is slowly
establishing by experiment the truth which is enshrined in that old
name, 'the Lord of hosts,' that all things in the physical universe are
a unity.
It speaks of the perfectness of God's knowledge of each item in the
mighty whole. 'He calleth them all by name.' Thereby are expressed
authority, ownership, particular knowledge of, and relation to, each
individual of the overwhelming aggregate. God knows all, because He
knows each.
It speaks of the inexhaustible energy of His sustaining power, and the
consequent strength of His creatures. 'Preservation is a continued
creation.' The prophet saw much deeper than the mechanical view of the
creative act. To him God was, to use more modern language, 'immanent'
as well as 'transcendent.' True, He 'sits above the circle of the
earth,' but as truly He is working on His creatures, and it is by His
communicated strength that they are strong. If any being--star, or
insect--were separated utterly from Him, it would crumble into
nothingness.
But the appeal to Creation is singularly interrupted by an appeal to
History. The prophet drops from the serene expanse of the silent yet
eloquent heavens to the stormy scenes of changing dynasties and
revolutions of earth's kingdoms. How calm the one, how tumultuous the
other! How the one witnesses to Him by its apparently unchanging
continuance! how the other witnesses by its swift mutations! In the
one, He is revealed as Preserver; in the other, the most clear
demonstration of His power is given in His destroying of rebel
kingdoms. But in these acts by which ancient and firmly rooted
dynasties are rooted up or withered as by the simoom, He reveals a side
of His nature to which the calm heavens bore no witness. He is the
moral Governor of the world, 'The history of the world is the judgment
of the world,' and when hoary iniquities are smitten to death, 'the
Holy One' is revealed as the righteous Judge. And the conjoint witness
of creation and of history attests that none can be 'likened' to Him.