The blessedness of Zion.
Throughout the book the idea of temporal blends with that of spiritual weal. The images are drawn from the state of temporal happiness and prosperity. Yet Zion and Jerusalem may be regarded as symbolical of the Church in general.
I. JOY IN GOD. There will be "no more weeping." Tears are significant of the lot of humanity; and in the poetry of the Old Testament we hear, as Lord Bacon says, "as many hearse-like airs as carols," and the pencil of the Holy Ghost has labored more in depicting the sorrows of David than the felicities of Solomon. It is because the gospel meets the mood of tears in us that its assurances fall so sweetly on the heart. Burns the poet said, "After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few, favored by partial Heaven, whose souls are tuned to gladness, and riches, and honors, and prudence, and wisdom; I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days, are sold to the minion of fortune." It is this way of thinking—it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor miserable children of men. If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm, "what truth on earth so precious as the lie?" What is needed is "the expulsive power of a new affection in the sense of the nearness of God—the sense that he does hear and that he does answer out of the vastness and the void." And he will so answer, if he be sought for with "all the heart" (Jeremiah 29:12-14).
II. THE BLESSING OF TEACHERS. On the one hand, here is physical want—"bread of adversity, and water of affliction." On the other hand, a perpetual supply of spiritual food and spiritual consolation. The best of the people felt that it was the saddest thing that could be suffered—to have no more "signs" from God, to be destitute of the prophet, and of the man of superior insight (Psalms 74:9). The famine of "not hearing the Word of Jehovah" (Amos 8:11) is bitterer than hunger or thirst. The effect may be traced to a definite cause—the sin of the people or of the teachers themselves (Isaiah 43:27). The one might be unworthy to listen to, the other to deliver, the truth of God (Isaiah 43:27). There is no calling more glorious, none which leads to a more lustrous immortality (Daniel 12:3), than that of the religious teacher, none which is of greater service in the promotion of the kingdom of God. If so great be the blessing of the ministry of the truth, it flows from the goodness of God that, in the happy times to come, teachers shall never be absent from the people.
III. THE BLESSING OF INWARD ILLUMINATION. The "word behind them" may be the Bath-Kol, the daughter of the Voice, as the Jews say, or, according to a way of thinking more familiar to ourselves, the voice of conscience. "God is not a hidden God in the sense that his life is closed up within himself. His Word goes forth to the world, that it may come into being, and to the children of men that they may know it and find life in it (Psalms 33:6; cf. Deuteronomy 4:12; 1 Samuel 3:4; 1 Kings 19:11, sqq.). (On the Bath-Kol, see Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5; John 12:28.) The notion is that of invisible and unexpected agency. The admonitions of providence, of conscience, of the Holy Spirit, seem often to come behind us—to recall us from the path on which we were going, from the course that would be fraught with danger. When in danger of straying to this side or to that, the voice will call us back. In this respect the Divine voice is like the daemonion of Socrates, which was a restraining influence.
IV. PURITY AND PROSPERITY. A symptom of a return to true religion will be the casting away of the relics and reminders of idolatry—the defiling in the Name of the holy God of that which to heathen eyes was holy. Josiah's conduct was an example of this (2 Kings 23:1-37.). The expression of abhorrence for the symbol expresses at the same time abhorrence for the thing symbolized. The repentance of the individual, the reformation of the nation, must be signalized by the "rending of the idol," not merely from its high place, but from the heart itself. When the heart is brought into the fuller knowledge of God, it loves what he loves, and hates what he hates. The thought of what is "an abomination to Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 7:25) is reflected in an intense distaste in the soul.
2. This will be consistent with external prosperity. Rain will come down upon the sown seed. As the withholding of the rain followed upon national iniquity as the greatest curse (Zechariah 14:17, Zechariah 14:18), so the giving of the rain meant at once all physical blessing and all Divine favors (Zechariah 10:1, etc.). Bread—rich and abundant produce of the land—cattle teeming in the wide pastures;—it is the happy picture of a golden age. Bread and water—simple elements of living; yet what poetry hangs upon their supply! and what woe, what tragedy and horror, upon the want of them!—J.
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM