Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Isaiah 28:23 - 28:29

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Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Isaiah 28:23 - 28:29


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The Chastisement of the Lord of Hosts

v. 23. Give ye ear and hear My voice; hearken and hear My speech,
close attention being demanded all the more since the illustration which now follows concerning the work of the farmer is not explained any further.

v. 24. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow?
Does he continue the same process in endless repetition? Doth he open and break the clods of his ground? by the process of harrowing. To keep on with the same work all the time would manifestly be absurd.

v. 25. When he hath made plain the face thereof,
prepared the top of the ground, so that it is even, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, rather, the black cumin, and scatter the cumin, the ordinary kind, and cast in the principal wheat, planting the best grain in rows, and the appointed barley, in a place by itself, and the rye, or spelt, in their place? apparently along the edge of the field, in order to protect the nobler grains against wild animals and stray cattle.

v. 26. For his God doth instruct him to discretion,
to do his work with understanding, and doth teach him. It was God who taught the rules of husbandry to man, Gen_3:23.

v. 27. For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing-instrument,
the threshing-sledge, neither is a cart-wheel, the broad wheel of the threshing-wagon, turned about upon the cumin, for either one of these seeds would be crushed by such a process; but the fitches, the black cumin, are beaten out with a staff and the cumin with a rod, the threshing-staff, or flail, being used in their case

v. 28. Bread-corn is bruised,
rather, "Is the bread-corn bruised?" Would a farmer be foolish enough to continue the process of threshing until the grain is crushed? The answer implied is, No; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen, as the horses trod out the grain from the husks.

v. 29. This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful In counsel and excellent in working,
that is, this parable teaches the wisdom of God in the higher plane, the manner in which He deals with His harvest on earth. The Lord punishes, but only in order to bless; He threshes, but not with crushing blows, not with the purpose of destroying. His object in sending tribulation is to separate the moral chaff from the wheat and to obtain the fullness of the harvest.