A remnant.
When the corn is threshed by the flail, or by the teeth of the threshing-implement, as in the literal "tribulation," its bulk is reduced; for the grain is separated from the straw and the husk. It is so with a nation visited by the calamities which came upon the Hebrew people. Pestilence, famine, and sword are the means by which multitudes may perish; yet some may be left, and these are "a remnant."
I. THE CALAMITIES AND JUDGMENTS WHICH LEFT THE FEW AS A REMNANT. These were they who escaped. When the horrors that came upon the land are considered, the wonder is that there were survivors. As he who is saved from a fire looks back upon the sudden and furious conflagration, surveys the smoking ruins from which he has been rescued; as he who is the sole survivor from a shipwreck remembers with shuddering the violence of the tempest by which his comrades were engulfed in the ocean;—so may those who have been spared in time of national calamity profit as they recall the circumstances of peril and terror by which they, with others, were encompassed, from which they, as distinguished from other's, have been delivered. Who is there who, looking back upon the past scenes of even an uneventful life, cannot call to mind many of his early companions who have been the victims of disease, of misfortune, of accident, of temptation, whose earthly probation has been brought to a sudden close, whilst he himself, and a few others with him, are, as it were, "a remnant," and that through no personal merit?
II. THE MERCY THAT SPARES THEM AS A REMNANT. The same inscrutable wisdom which suffers some to be overtaken and overwhelmed, provides that others shall be spared and saved. As Noah and his family were spared, whilst a vast population was engulfed in the Flood; as Lot and his household were spared, whilst the inhabitants of the guilty city were consumed by fire from heaven;—so again and again has the forbearance of God been revealed in providing for the escape of "a remnant," who have remained to witness to Divine justice, and to use aright the opportunity afforded by Divine mercy towards themselves.
III. THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH A REMNANT IS PERMITTED TO SURVIVE. This is only very partially explained in the context. The mind of the prophet was so absorbed with the consideration of the guilt of his idolatrous and rebellious fellow countrymen, and with their impending fate, that for the time he was not able to reflect upon the ultimate ends for which some were spared amidst the awful catastrophe. Yet this was present to his mind as one immediate result of the mingled judgments and mercies of God; those spared from the calamities of the nation should know and acknowledge that Jehovah was the Lord. As a matter of fact, the lesson was learnt; and the remnant who returned to Palestine returned free henceforth from all inclination to idolatry. And if they did not cease to sin, at all events they were henceforth free from sin of this form. They lived to remember for themselves, and to witness to their children, that the nations are ruled by a God of righteousness, and that in subjection to his authority and in obedience to his Law man's true welfare must ever lie. Their song was of mercy and of judgment. If they were few in numbers they were purified and strengthened, and fitted to fulfil the peculiar vocation of the sons of Abraham among the nations of the earth.
APPLICATION. Who is there who has not experienced the sparing mercy and long suffering kindness of the Lord? Who has not been delivered from danger, from calamity, from destruction? Let all who acknowledge themselves to be, as it were, "a remnants" indebted to God's compassion, acknowledge the peculiar obligation under which they have been laid, to witness to the mercy of their heavenly Father, and by their practical loyalty to him to prove that they have not been spared in vain.—T.