Whoever abandons the sanctuary, the poor should never go away; whoever closes the Bible, the poor man should keep it lying widely open; he should always have a Bible that opens easily, not stiffly, because it is well handled, and is the continual defence of men who cannot defend themselves.
(J. Parker, D. D.)
Isaiah’s solemn reproof
Returning into the city he silently hovers in and out of the courts of revelry and feasting that open on to the narrow thoroughfares, watching the judges and honourable men of wealth, who had just come in from their ceremonial worship at the temple, to eat, to drink, to talk lewdly, and to amuse themselves with soothsayers and necromancers, and the haughty women, with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, and gay and sumptuous dresses, paid for with the money wrung from the impoverished tenantry of their spouses. As he watches and muses, the fire within his bones flames up, and he reminds them as he passes into the darkness, “the spoil of the poor is in your houses!” (F. Sessions.)
