Jehovah is here represented as throwing down His own temple, as treating it as if it were a temporary shelter, as disregarding all its glory, and merely throwing it from Him as men might tear down and east away a shed from an orchard, a garden, or a field. Who can set a measure to the wrath of God? Continually does the Lord assert that He will have nothing to do with mere form or ceremony, with mere locality or consecration; He will only accept living obedience, living faithfulness, living sacrifice. He will have no mercy upon polluted temples and polluted altars; nor will His own Book be spared ii men have used it as an idol: He will destroy and utterly drive away everything that once was sacred if it has been perverted to unholy purposes. Let not men say that they will be safe in God’s temple from God’s wrath, because when law has been violated there is no sanctuary where God will regard man as safe from the visitation of His penal sword. How living and real does all this make the providence of heaven! How near does this bring God to our daily life and conduct!(J. Parker, D. D.)
God destroying His own ordinances
1. It is the Lord alone that giveth safety unto His Church, or layeth His people open to spoilers (Isa_5:5-6; Psa_80:12-13).
2. No place on earth hath any holiness in it, or promise of a continuance, further than it is holily used.
3. God is angry with His own ordinances, and layeth a curse upon them, for the sins of those that abuse them (Psa_74:5-7; Isa_1:13; Isa_6:10).
4. The Church of God on earth is not always visible and apparent to the eyes of men (Rev_12:14).
5. When God will afflict a people, He will spoil them of the means of their peace and comfort (Isa_3:1-5).
6. It is a grievous plague of God for a people to be spoiled of their rulers; and to enjoy them is a great blessing.
7. It is the heaviest judgment that God’s Church can have falling upon her in this life, to be deprived of that holy ministry which should build her up in true religion (Psa_74:9; Mic_2:6). (J. Udall.)
The Lord hath cast off His altar.
Altars destroyed
1. It is the duty of God’s people to labour their affections, that they may be rightly touched with the loss of the outward exercises of religion.
2. When God is angry with His people, He will take from them the outward signs of His favour.
3. When God’s people grow obstinate in their sins, He spoileth them of all those things wherein they trust.
4. when the Church is spoiled, the commonwealth cannot go free.
5. The wicked could never prevail against the godly, but that God giveth them into their hands.
6. God giveth the wicked (for the sins of His people) occasion to blaspheme His name and to deride His holy ordinances. (J. Udall.)
The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall . . . of Zion.--
Privileges no protection
1. No privilege can free the impenitent sinners from the plague that God meaneth to bring upon them, though they persuade themselves otherwise (Jer_7:4).
2. The ruins of kingdoms and strong cities come to pass only by the immutable decree of God; and not by fortune, man’s power, or any other thing (Dan_4:22; 1Sa_15:26; 1Sa_15:28).
3. The Lord doth both decree his judgments and also determine the measure of them (Dan_4:29).
4. The dumb and senseless creatures do mourn according to their kind when we are punished in them for our sins (Rom_8:22).
5. The sin of men bringeth strongest things to nothing when God calleth them to an account (Isa_13:19-20).
6. God’s hand prevaileth as easily against the strongest and most as the weakest and fewest. (J. Udall.)
Her gates are sunk into the ground.--
Gates sunk
1. When God punisheth His people, He will especially destroy those things wherein they put most confidence.
2. When God meaneth thoroughly to afflict a people, He will spoil them of the means of their peace and comfort.
3. When God by punishments showeth His anger against a people, He especially plagueth their princes and rulers,
4. It is a grievous punishment unto the godly to live with or to serve them that are wicked (Psa_120:4-5).
5. It is a fearful judgment to have the ministry of the Word that heretofore we enjoyed, taken away from us (Psa_74:9; Mar_6:10-11). (J. Udall.)
The desolations of Zion
I. The present desolate and miserable state of the Hebrew nation. No people, since the creation, are in so anomalous a state as the Jews--without a country or a city, a temple or a service, a priest or a sacrifice, worthy of the name. Enter a Jewish synagogue, and you will see “Ichabod is written on its walls”--“the glory has departed”: it is no longer the “house of God” or “of prayer,” but “a house of merchandise,” if not worse.
II. For such stupendous evils “is there not a cause”? If the heinousness of sin he in proportion to the favours which the sinner has received, or to the light against which it has been committed, no ingratitude seems to be so great as that of the Jewish nation.
III. The only remedy. God, by the prophet Hosea, after charging Israel with complicated guilt, gives a gleam of hope and a ray of mercy. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thy help.” This is the burden of my message today, that “with God there is mercy, yea, plenteous redemption”; and that, though others can neither profit nor deliver, He can and shall “redeem Israel from all his sins.”
IV. Answer objections. One says, “This is not the time.” But who, I ask, is God’s time keeper? Times and events are in God’s hands; and it is neither in our power, nor would it be for our good, to know them. Who, then, can say what is not, when he confessedly knows not what is the time? Again I ask, “For what is it not the time?” For reaping?--for triumph? We never led you to expect it was; but, for breaking up the ground it is always opportune. Again, “we shall probably never live to see any fruits of our labours.” This we cannot know for certain; and if we could, it is as selfish and ungenerous, as it is unwise, to use such an argument. We may set up the hoard, or erect the scaffolding, or lay the foundation: another generation may carry up the walls; and a third may put the finishing stroke with shoutings, songs, and triumphs. “After all,” says another, “you will do no real good you may make hypocrites of your converts, and those only of the poorest, but you will not make Christians: the prejudices of the Jew are too deeply rooted to be removed by a tract, or even by the New Testament; your labour will therefore be in vain.” Formidable as this objection is, it is as flimsy as it is false. We make Christians! We make no such pretensions: it is not in us: this is God’s work--His high and exclusive prerogative. Believers “are God’s husbandry, and God’s building.” “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” is a key which will open any lock which unbelief shall place in its way. One class of objectors, of all others the most to be lamented and feared, is that who say, respecting the Jews, “Let them alone: do not meddle with them: they will not attend to your instructions, nor have they any wish to change their religion; besides, what need? one religion is as good as another, if a man does but act up to that he has, and does as well as he can! Bigotry and intolerance will do them more harm than good.” To this specious reasoning I reply, It is criminal indifference, and cruel inhumanity, to let men live and die in sin. True charity will make an effort to save those it loves. We know, from bitter experience, in our own cases, that, if left to themselves, the Israelites will not attend to us but God, who commanded, has promised his blessing on our labours. Sinners must not be left to themselves. (J. W. Niblock, D. D.)
Her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.--
Prophets without a vision
In deploring the losses suffered by the daughter of Zion, the elegist bewails the failure of her prophets to obtain a vision from Jehovah. To understand the situation, we must recollect the normal place of prophecy in the social life of Israel. The great prophets whose names and works have come down to us in Scripture were always rare and exceptional men--voices crying in the wilderness. Possibly they were not more scarce at this time than at other periods. This was not an age like the time of Samuel’s youth, barren of Divine voices. Yet the idea of the elegist is that the prophets who might be still seen at the site of the city were deprived of visions. These must have been the professional prophets, officials who had been trained in music and dancing to appear as choristers on festive occasions, the equivalent of the modern dervishes; but who were also sought after like the seer of Ramah, to whom young Saul resorted for information about his father’s lost asses, as simple soothsayers. Such assistance as these men were expected to give was no longer forthcoming at the request of troubled souls. The low and sordid uses to which everyday prophecy was degraded may incline us to conclude that the cessation of it was no very great calamity, and perhaps to suspect that from first to last the whole business was a mass of superstition affording large opportunities for charlatanry. But it would be rash to adopt this extreme view without a fuller consideration of the subject. The prophets were regarded as the media of communication between heaven and earth. It was because of the low and narrow habits of the people that their gifts were often put to low and narrow uses which savoured rather of superstition than of devotion. The belief that God did not only reveal His will to great persons and on momentous occasions, helped to make Israel a religions nation. That there were humble gifts of prophecy within the reach of the many, and that these gifts were for the helping of men and women in their simplest needs, was one of the articles of the Hebrew faith. When we have succeeded in recovering this Hebrew standpoint, we shall be prepared to recognise that there are worse calamities than bad harvests and seasons of commercial depression; we shall be brought to acknowledge that it is possible to be starved in the midst of plenty, because the greatest abundance of such food as we have lacks the elements requisite for our complete nourishment. As we look across the wide field of history, we must perceive that there have been many dreary periods in which the prophets could find no vision from the Lord. Now what is the explanation of these variations in the distribution of the spirit of prophecy? Why is the fountain of inspiration an intermittent spring, a Bethesda? We cannot trace its failure to any shortness of supply, for this fountain is fed from the infinite ocean of the Divine life. Neither can we attribute caprice to One whose wisdom is infinite, and whose will is constant. It may be right to say that God withholds the vision, withholds it deliberately; but it cannot be correct to assert that this fact is the final explanation of the whole matter. God must be believed to have a reason, a good and sufficient reason, for whatever He does. Can we guess what His reason may be in such a case as this? It may be conjectured that it is necessary for the field to lie fallow for a season in order that it may bring forth a better crop subsequently. Incessant cultivation would exhaust the soil. The eye would be blinded if it had no rest from visions. Until we have obeyed the light that has been given us, it is foolish to complain that we have not more light. Even our present light will wane if it is not followed up in practice. But while such considerations must be attended to, they do not end the controversy, and they scarcely apply at all to the particular illustration of it that is now before us. There is no danger of surfeit in a famine; and it is a famine of the word that we are now confronted with. Moreover, the elegist supplies an explanation that sets all conjectures at rest. The fault was in the prophets themselves. Addressing the daughter of Zion, the poet says: “Thy prophets have seen visions for thee.” The visions were suited to the people to whom they were declared--manufactured, shall we say?--with the express purpose of pleasing them. Such a degradation of sacred functions in gross unfaithfulness deserved punishment; and the most natural and reasonable punishment was the withholding for the future of true visions from men who in the past had forged false ones. There is nothing so blinding as the habit of lying. People who do not speak truth ultimately prevent themselves from perceiving truth, the false tongue leading the eye to see falsely. This is the curse and doom of all insincerity. It is useless to inquire for the views of insincere persons; they can have no distinct views, no certain convictions, because their mental vision is blurred by their long-continued habit of confounding true and false. Then, if for once in their lives such people may really desire to find a truth in order to assure themselves in some great emergency, and therefore seek a vision of the Lord, they will have lost the very faculty of receiving it.(W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
