Page:An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828) vol 4.djvu/73

Rh be all; it shall be safe, and shall set him at defiance; the daughter of Jerusalem, to be even with him, shall shake her head at him, ch. xxxvii. 22.

4. How fatal it would prove, in the issue, to himself; when he shakes his hand at Jerusalem, and is about to lay hands on it, then is God's time to appear against him; for Zion is the place of which God has said, This is my rest for ever; therefore those who threaten it, affront God himself. Then the Lord shall lop the bough with terror, and cut down the thickets of the forests, v. 33, 34. (1.) The pride of the enemy shall be humbled, and the boughs that are lifted up on high shall be lopped off, the high and stately trees shall be hewn down, the haughty shall be humbled; those that lift up themselves in competition with God, or opposition to him, shall be abased. (2.) The power of the enemy shall be broken; the thickets of the forest he shall cut down. When the Assyrian soldiers were under their arms, and their spears erect, they looked like a forest, like Lebanon: but when in one night they all became as dead corpses, the pikes were laid, on the ground, and Lebanon was of a sudden cut down by a mighty one, the destroying angel, who in a little time slew so many thousands of them: and if this shall be the exit of that proud invader, let not God's people be afraid of him. Who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die?

CHAP. XI.

It is a very good transition in prophecy, (whether it be so in rhetoric or no,) and a very common one, to pass from the prediction of the temporal deliverances of the church to that of the great salvation, which in the fulness of time shall be wrought out by Jesus Christ, of which the other were types and figures to which all the prophets bare witness; and so the ancient Jews understand them. For what else was it that raised so great an expectation of the Messiah at the time he came. Upon occasion of the prophecy of the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib, here comes in a prophecy concerning Messiah the Prince: I. His rise out of the house of David, v. 1. II. His qualifications for his great undertaking, v. 2, 3. III. The justice and equity of his government, v. 3..5. IV. The peaceableness of his kingdom, v. 6..9. V. The accession of the Gentiles to it, (v. 10.) and with them the remnant of the Jews, that should be united with them in the Messiah's kingdom, v. 11..16. And of all this, God would now shortly give them a type, and some dark representation, in the excellent government of Hezekiah, the great peace which the nation should enjoy under him, after the ruin of Sennacherib's design, and the return of many of the ten tribes out of their dispersion to their brethren of the land of Judah, when they enjoyed that great tranquillity.

ND there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 2. And the Spirit of the shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the ; 3. And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the : and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears. 4. But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 5. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 7. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. 9. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the, as the waters cover the sea.

The prophet had before, in this sermon, spoken of a Child that should be born, a Son that should be given, on whose shoulders the government should be; intending this for the comfort of the people of God in times of trouble, as dying Jacob, many ages before, had intended the prospect of Shiloh for the comfort of his seed in their affliction in Egypt. He had said, (ch. x. 27.) that the yoke should be destroyed because of the anointing; now here he tells us on whom that anointing should rest. He foretells,

I. That the Messiah should, in due time, arise out of the house of David, as that Branch of the Lord, which he had said (ch. iv. 2.) should be excellent and glorious; the word is Netzer, which some think is referred to, Matth. ii. 23. where it is said to be spoken by the prophets of the Messiah, that he should be called a Nazarene. Observe here,

1. Whence this Branch should arise: from Jesse. He should be the Son of David, with whom the covenant of royalty was made, and to whom it was promised with an oath, that of the fruit of his loins God would raise up Christ, Acts ii. 30. David is often called the son of Jesse, and Christ is called so, because he was to be not only the Son of David, but David himself, Hos. iii. 5.

2. The meanness of his appearance. (1.) He is called a Rod, and a Branch; both the words here used signify a weak, small, tender product, a twig, and a sprig; so some render them; such as is easily broken off. The enemies of God's church were just before compared to strong and stately boughs, (ch. x. 33.) which will not, without great labour, be hewn down; but Christ, to a tender branch; (ch. liii. 2.) yet he shall be victorious over them. (2.) He is said to come out of Jesse, rather than David, because Jesse lived and died in meanness and obscurity; his family was of small account, (1 Sam. xviii. 18.) and it was in a way of contempt and reproach that David was sometimes called the son of Jesse, ch. xxii. 7. (3.) He comes forth out of the stem, or stump, of Jesse; when the royal family that had been as a cedar, was cut down, and only the stump of it left, almost levelled with the ground, and lost in the grass of the field, (Dan. iv. 15.) yet it shall sprout again, Job xiv. 7. Nay, it shall grow out of his roots, which are quite buried in the earth, and, like the roots of flowers in the winter, have no stem appearing above ground. The house of David was reduced and brought very low at the time of Christ's birth, witness the obscurity and poverty of Joseph and Mary. The Messiah was thus to begin his estate of humiliation, for submitting to which he should be highly exalted, and would thus give early notice that his kingdom was not of this world. The Chaldee Paraphrase read this, There shall come forth a king from the sons of Jesse, and the Messiah (or Christ) shall be anointed out of his sons' sons.

II. That he should be every way qualified for that great work to which he was designed; that this