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Expositor's Bible Commentary Isaiah 24:1 Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. BOOK 5 PROPHECIES NOT RELATING TO ISAIAH'S TIME In the first thirty-nine chapters of the Book of Isaiah-the half which refers to the prophet’s own career and the politics contemporary with that - we find four or five prophecies containing no reference to Isaiah himself nor to any Jewish king under whom he laboured, and painting both Israel and the foreign world in quite a different state from that in which they lay during his lifetime. These prophecies are chapter 13, an Oracle announcing the Fall of Babylon, with its appendix, Isaiah 14:1-23 , the Promise of Israel’s Deliverance and an Ode upon the Fall of the Babylonian Tyrant; chapters 24-27, a series of Visions of the breaking up of the universe, of restoration from exile, and even of resurrection from the dead; chapter 34, the Vengeance of the Lord upon Edom; and chapter 35, a Song of Return from Exile. In these prophecies Assyria is no longer the dominant world-force, nor Jerusalem the inviolate fortress of God and His people. If Assyria or Egypt is mentioned, it is but as one of the three classical enemies of Israel; and Babylon is represented as the head and front of the hostile world. The Jews are no longer in political freedom and possession of their own land; they are either in exile or just returned from it to a depopulated country. With these altered circumstances come another temper and new doctrine. The horizon is different, and the hopes that flush in dawn upon it are not quite the same as those which we have contemplated with Isaiah in his immediate future. It is no longer the repulse of the heathen invader; the inviolateness of the sacred city; the recovery of the people from the shock of attack, and of the land from the trampling of armies. But it is the people in exile, the overthrow of the tyrant in his own home, the opening of prison doors, the laying down of a highway through the wilderness, the triumph of return, and the resumption of worship. There is, besides, a promise of the resurrection, which we have not found in the prophecies we have considered. With such differences, it is not wonderful that many have denied the authorship of these few prophecies to Isaiah. This is a question that can be looked at calmly. It touches no dogma of the Christian faith. Especially it does not involve the other question, so often-and, we venture to say, so unjustly-started on this point, Could not the Spirit of God have inspired Isaiah to foresee all that the prophecies in question foretell, even though he lived more than a century before the people were in circumstances to understand them? Certainly, God is almighty. The question is not, Could He have done this? but one somewhat different: Did He do it? and to this an answer can be had only from the prophecies themselves. If these mark the Babylonian hostility or captivity as already upon Israel, this is a testimony of Scripture itself, which we cannot overlook, and beside which even unquestionable traces of similarity to Isaiah’s style or the fact that these oracles are bound up with Isaiah’s own undoubted prophecies have little weight. "Facts" of style will be regarded with suspicion by any one who knows how they are employed by both sides in such a question as this; while the certainty that the Book of Isaiah was put into its present form subsequently to his life will permit of, -and the evident purpose of Scripture to secure moral impressiveness rather than historical consecutiveness will account for, -later oracles being bound up with unquestioned utterances of Isaiah. Only one of the prophecies in question confirms the tradition that it is by Isaiah, viz ., chapter 13, which bears the title "Oracle of Babylon which Isaiah, son of Amoz, did see"; but titles are themselves so much the report of tradition, being of a later date than the rest of the text, that it is best to argue the question apart from them. On the other hand, Isaiah’s authorship of these prophecies, or at least the possibility of his having written them, is usually defended by appealing to his promise of return from exile in chapter 11 and his threat of a Babylonish captivity in chapter 39. This is an argument that has not been fairly met by those who deny the Isaianic authorship of chapters 13-14, 23, 24-28, and 35. It is a strong argument, for while, as we have seen, there are good grounds for believing Isaiah to have been likely to make such a prediction of a Babylonish captivity as is attributed to him in Isaiah 39:6 , almost all the critics agree in leaving chapter 11 to him. But if chapter 11 is Isaiah’s, then he undoubtedly spoke of an exile much more extensive than had taken place by his own day. Nevertheless, even this ability in 11 to foretell an exile so vast does not account for passages in 13-14:23, 24-27, which represent the Exile either as present or as actually over. No one who reads these chapters without prejudice can fail to feel the force of such passages in leading him to decide for an exilic or post-exilic authorship. Another argument against attributing these prophecies to Isaiah is that their visions of the last things, representing as they do a judgment on the whole world, and even the destruction of the whole material universe, are incompatible with Isaiah’s loftiest and final hope of an inviolate Zion at last relieved and secure, of a land freed from invasion and wondrously fertile, with all the converted world, Assyria and Egypt, gathered round it as a centre. This question, however, is seriously complicated by the fact that in his youth Isaiah did undoubtedly prophesy a shaking of the whole world and the destruction of its inhabitants, and by the probability that his old age survived into a period whose abounding sin would again make natural such wholesale predictions of judgment as we find in chapter 24. Still, let the question of the eschatology be as obscure as we have shown, there remains this clear issue. In some chapters of the Book of Isaiah, which, from our knowledge of the circumstances of his times, we know must have been published while he was alive, we learn that the Jewish people has never left its land, nor lost its independence under Jehovah’s anointed, and that the inviolateness of Zion and the retreat of the Assyrian invaders of Judah, without effecting the captivity of the Jews, are absolutely essential to the endurance of God’s kingdom on earth. In other chapters we find that the Jews have left their land, have been long in exile (or from other passages have just returned), and that the religious essential is no more the independence of the Jewish State under a theocratic king, but only the resumption of the Temple worship. Is it possible for one man to have written both these sets of chapters? Is it possible for one age to. have produced them? That is the whole question. CHAPTER XXVIII THE EFFECT OF SIN ON OUR MATERIAL CIRCUMSTANCE DATE UNCERTAIN Isaiah 24:1-23 THE twenty-fourth of Isaiah is one of those chapters which almost convince the most persevering reader of Scripture that a consecutive reading of the Authorised Version is an impossibility. For what does he get from it but a weary and unintelligent impression of destruction, from which he gladly escapes to the nearest clear utterance of gospel or judgment? Criticism affords little help. It cannot clearly identify the chapter with any historical situation. For a moment there is a gleam of a company standing outside the convulsion, and to the west of the prophet, while the prophet himself suffers captivity. But even this fades before we make it out; and all the rest of the chapter has too universal an application-the language is too imaginative, enigmatic, and even paradoxical-to be applied to an actual historical situation, or to its development in the immediate future. This is an ideal description, the apocalyptic vision of a last, great day of judgment upon the whole world; and perhaps the moral truths are all the more impressive that the reader is not distracted by temporary or local references. With the very first verse the prophecy leaps far beyond all particular or national conditions: "Behold, Jehovah shall be emptying the earth and rifling it; and He shall turn it upside down and scatter its inhabitants." This is expressive and thorough; the words are those which were used for cleaning a dirty dish. To the completeness of this opening verse there is really nothing in the chapter to add. All the rest of the verses only illustrate this upturning and scouring of the material universe. For it is with the material universe that the chapter is concerned. Nothing is said of the spiritual nature of man-little, indeed, about man at all. He is simply called "the inhabitant of the earth," and the structure of society ( Isaiah 24:2 ) is introduced only to make more complete the effect of the convulsion of the earth itself. Man cannot escape those judgments which shatter his material habitation. It is like one of Dante’s visions. "Terror, and Pit and Snare upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth! And it shall come to pass that he who fleeth from the noise of the Terror shall fall into the Pit, and he who cometh up out of the midst of the Pit shall be taken in the Snare. For the windows on high are opened, and the foundations of the earth do shake. Broken, utterly broken, is the earth; shattered, utterly shattered, the earth; staggering, very staggering, the earth; reeling, the earth reeleth like a drunken man: she swingeth to and fro like a hammock." And so through the rest of the chapter it is the material life of man that is cursed: "the new wine, the vine, the tabrets, the harp, the song," and the merriness in men’s hearts which these call forth. Nor does the chapter confine itself to the earth. The closing verses carry the effect of judgment to the heavens and far limits of the material universe. "The host of the high ones on high" ( Isaiah 24:21 ) are not spiritual beings, the angels. They are material bodies, the stars. "Then, too, shall the moon be confounded, and the stars ashamed," when the Lord’s kingdom is established and His righteousness made gloriously clear. What awful truth is this for illustration of which we see not man, but his habitation, the world and all its surroundings, lifted up by the hand of the Lord, broken open, wiped out and shaken, while man himself, as if only to heighten the effect, staggers hopelessly like some broken insect on the quaking ruins? What judgment is this, in which not only one city or one kingdom is concerned, as in the last prophecy of which we treated, but the whole earth is convulsed, and moon and sun confounded? The judgment is the visitation of man’s sins on his material surroundings-"The earth’s transgression shall be heavy upon it; and it shall rise, and not fall." The truth on which this judgment rests is that between man and his material circumstance-the earth he inhabits, the seasons which bear him company through time, and the stars to which he looks high up in heaven - there is a moral sympathy. "The earth also is profaned under the inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant." The Bible gives no support to the theory that matter itself is evil. God created all things: "and God saw everything that He had made; and, behold, it was very good." When, therefore, we read in the Bible that the earth is cursed, we read that it is cursed for man’s sake; when we read of its desolation, it is as the effect of man’s crime. The Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues of Egypt and other great physical catastrophes happened because men were stubborn or men were foul. We cannot help noticing, however, that matter was thus convulsed or destroyed, not only for the purpose of punishing the moral agent, but because of some poison which had passed from him into the unconscious instruments, stage, and circumstances of his crime. According to the Bible, there would appear to be some mysterious sympathy between man and Nature. Man not only governs Nature; he infects and informs her. As the moral life of the soul expresses itself in the physical life of the body for the latter’s health or corruption, so the conduct of the human race affects the physical life of the universe to its farthest limits in space. When man is reconciled to God, the wilderness blossoms like a rose; but the guilt of man sullies, infects, and corrupts the place he inhabits and the articles he employs; and their destruction becomes necessary, not for his punishment so much as because of the infection and pollution that are in them. The Old Testament is not contented with a general statement of this great principle, but pursues it to all sorts of particular and private applications. The curses of the Lord fell, not only on the sinner, but on his dwelling, on his property, and even on the bit of ground these occupied. This was especially the case with regard to idolatry. When Israel put a pagan population to the sword, they were commanded to raze the city, gather its wealth together, burn all that was burnable and put the rest into the temple of the Lord as a thing devoted or accursed, which it would harm themselves to share. { Deuteronomy 7:25-26 ; Deuteronomy 13:7 } The very site of Jericho was cursed, and men were forbidden to build upon its horrid waste. The story of Achan illustrates the same principle. It is just this principle which chapter 24 extends to the whole universe. What happened in Jericho because of its inhabitants’ idolatry is now to happen to the whole earth because of man’s sin. "The earth also is profane under her inhabitants, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant." In these words the prophet takes us away back to the covenant with Noah, which he properly emphasises as a covenant with all mankind. With a noble universalism, for which his race and their literature get too little credit, this Hebrew recognises that once all mankind were holy unto God, who had included them under His grace, that promised the fixedness and fertility of nature. But that covenant, though of grace, had its conditions for man. These had been broken. The race had grown wicked, as it was before the Flood; and therefore, in terms which vividly recall that former judgment of God-"the windows on high are opened"-the prophet foretells a new and more awful catastrophe. One word which he employs betrays how close he feels the moral sympathy to be between man and his world. "The earth," he says, "is profane." This is a word whose root meaning is "that which has fallen away" or "separated itself," which is "delinquent." Sometimes, perhaps, it has a purely moral significance, like our word "abandoned" in the common acceptance: he who has fallen far and utterly into sin, "the reckless sinner." But mostly it has rather the religious meaning of one who has fallen out of the covenant relation with God and the relevant benefits and privileges. Into this covenant not only Israel and their land, but humanity and the whole world, have been brought. Is man under covenant grace? The world is also. Does man fall? So does the world, becoming with him profane. The consequence of breaking the covenant oath was expressed in Hebrew by a technical word; and it is this word which, translated curse, is applied in Isaiah 24:6 to the earth. The whole earth is to be broken up and dissolved. What then is to become of the people of God-the indestructible remnant? Where are they to settle? In this new deluge is there a new ark? For answer the prophet presents us with an old paradise ( Isaiah 24:23 ). He has wrecked the universe; but he says now, "Jehovah of hosts shall dwell in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem." It would be impossible to find a better instance of the limitations of Old Testament prophecy than this return to the old dispensation after the old dispensation has been committed to the flames. At such a crisis as the conflagration of the universe for the sin of man, the hope of the New Testament looks for the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, but there is no scintilla of such a hope in this prediction. The imagination of the Hebrew seer is beaten back upon the theatre his conscience has abandoned. He knows "the old is out of date," but for him "the new is not yet born"; and, therefore, convinced as he is that the old must pass away, he is forced to borrow from its ruins a provisional abode for God’s people, a figure for the truth which grips him so firmly, that, in spite of the death of all the universe for man’s sin, there must be a visibleness and locality of the Divine majesty, a place where the people of God may gather to bless His holy name. In this contrast of the power of spiritual imagination possessed respectively by the Old and New Testaments we must not, however, lose the ethical interest which the main lesson of this chapter has for the individual conscience. A breaking universe, the great day of judgment, may be too large and too far off to impress our conscience. But each of us has his own world-body, property, and environment-which is as much and as evidently affected by his own sins as our chapter represents the universe to be by the sins of the race. To grant that the moral and physical universes are from the same hand is to affirm a sympathy and mutual reaction between them. This affirmation is confirmed by experience, and this experience is of two kinds. To the guilty man Nature seems aware, and flashes back from her larger surfaces the magnified reflection of his own self-contempt and terror. But, besides, men are also unable to escape attributing to the material instruments or surroundings of their sin a certain infection, a certain power of recommunicating to their imaginations and memories the desire for sin, as well as of inflicting upon them the pain and penalty of the disorder it has produced among themselves. Sin, though born, as Christ said, in the heart, has immediately a material expression; and we may follow this outwards through man’s mind, body, and estate, not only to find it "hindering, disturbing, complicating all," but reinfecting with the lust and odour of sin the will which gave it birth. As sin is put forth by the will, or is cherished in the heart, so we find error cloud the mind, impurity the imagination, misery the feelings, and pain and weariness infect the flesh and bone. God, who modelled it, alone knows how far man’s physical form has been degraded by the sinful thoughts and habits of which for ages it has been the tool and expression; but even our eyes may sometimes trace the despoiler, and that not only in the case of what are preferably named sins of the flesh, but even with lusts that do not require for their gratification the abuse of the body. Pride, as one might think the least fleshly of all the vices, leaves yet in time her damning signature, and will mark the strongest faces with the sad symptoms of that mental break-down, for which unrestrained pride is so often to blame. If sin thus disfigures the body, we know that sin also infects the body. The habituated flesh becomes the suggester of crime to the will which first constrained it to sin, and now wearily, but in vain, rebels against the habits of its instrument. But we recall all this about the body only to say that what is true of the body is true of the soul’s greater material surroundings. With the sentence "Thou shalt surely die," God connects this other: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake." When we pass from a man’s body, the wrapping we find next nearest to his soul is his property. It has always been an instinct of the race, that there is nothing a man may so infect with the sin of his heart as his handiwork and the gains of his toil. And that is a true instinct, for, in the first place, the making of property perpetuates a man’s own habits. If he is successful in business, then every bit of wealth he gathers is a confirmation of the motives and tempers in which he conducted his business. A man deceives himself as to this, saying, Wait till I have made enough; then I will put away the meanness, the harshness, and the dishonesty with which I made it He shall not be able. Just because he has been successful, he will continue in his habit without thinking; just because there has been no break-down to convict of folly and suggest penitence, so he becomes hardened. Property is a bridge on which our passions cross from one part of our life to another. The Germans have an ironical proverb: "The man who has stolen a hundred thousand dollars can afford to live honestly." The emphasis of the irony falls on the words in italics: he can afford, but never does. His property hardens his heart, and keeps him from repentance. But the instinct of humanity has also been quick to this: that the curse of ill-gotten wealth passes like bad blood from father to child. What is the truth in this matter? A glance at history will tell us. The accumulation of property is the result of certain customs, habits, and laws. In its own powerful interest property perpetuates these down the ages, and infects the fresh air of each new generation with their temper. How often in the history of mankind has it been property gained under unjust laws or cruel monopolies which has prevented the abolition of these, and carried into gentler, freer times the pride and exclusiveness of the age, by whose rude habits it was gathered. This moral transference, which we see on so large a scale in public history, is repeated to some extent in every private bequest. A curse does not necessarily follow an estate from the sinful producer of it to his heir; but the latter is, "by the bequest itself," generally brought into so close a contact with his predecessor as to share his conscience and be in sympathy with his temper. And the case is common where an heir, though absolutely up to the date of his succession separate from him who made and has left the property, nevertheless finds himself unable to alter the methods, or to escape the temper, in which the property has been managed. In nine cases out of ten property carries conscience and transfers habit; if the guilt does not descend, the infection does. When we pass from the effect of sin upon property to its effect upon circumstance, we pass to what we can affirm with even greater conscience. Man has the power of permanently soaking and staining his surroundings with the effect of sins in themselves momentary and transient. Sin increases terribly by the mental law of association. It is not the gin-shop and the face of wanton beauty that alone tempt men to sin. Far more subtle seductions are about every one of us. That we have the power of inflicting our character upon the scenes of our conduct is proved by some of the dreariest experiences of life. A failure in duty renders the place of it distasteful and enervating. Are we irritable and selfish at home? Then home is certain to be depressing, and little helpful to our spiritual growth. Are we selfish and niggardly in the interest we take in others? Then the congregation we go to, the suburb we dwell in, will appear insipid and unprofitable; we shall be past the possibility of gaining character or happiness from the ground where God planted us and meant us to grow. Students have been idle in their studies till every time they enter them a reflex languor comes down like stale smoke, and the room they desecrated takes its revenge on them. We have it in our power to make our workshops, our laboratories, and our studies places of magnificent inspiration, to enter which is to receive a baptism of industry and hope; and we have power to make it impossible ever to work in them again at full pitch. The pulpit, the pew, the very communion-table, come under this law. If a minister of God have made up his mind to say nothing from his accustomed place, which has not cost him toil, to feel nothing but a dependence on God and a desire for souls, then he will never set foot there but the power of the Lord shall be upon him. But there are men who would rather set foot anywhere than in their pulpit-men who out of it are full of fellowship, information, and infective health, but there they are paralysed with the curse of their idle past. How history shows us that the most sacred shelters and institutions of man become tainted with sin, and are destroyed in revolution or abandoned to decay by the intolerant conscience of younger generations! How the hidden life of each man feels his past sins possessing his home and hearth, his pew, and even his place at the Sacrament, till it is sometimes better for his soul’s health to avoid these! Such considerations give a great moral force to the doctrine of the Old Testament that man’s sin has rendered necessary the destruction of his material circumstances, and that the Divine judgment includes a broken and a rifled universe. The New Testament has borrowed this vision from the Old, but added, as we have seen, with greater distinctness, the hope of new heavens and a new earth. We have not concluded the subject, however, when we have pointed this out, for the New Testament has another gospel. The grace of God affects even the material results of sin; the Divine pardon that converts the sinner converts his circumstance also; Christ Jesus sanctifies even the flesh, and is the Physician of the body as well as the Saviour of the soul. To Him physical evil abounds only that He may show forth His glory in curing it. "Neither did this man sin nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." To Paul the "whole creation groaneth and travaileth with the sinner" till now, the hour of the sinner’s redemption. The Gospel bestows an evangelic liberty which permits the strong Christian to partake of meats offered to idols. And, finally, "all things work together for good to them that love God," for although to the converted and forgiven sinner the material pains which his sins have brought on him may continue into his new life, they are experienced by him no more as the just penalties of an angry God, but as the loving, sanctifying chastisements of his Father in heaven. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty. Isaiah 24:1-5 "The earth J. Skinner, D. D. not the "land" (R.V. marg.) of Judah or Palestine. "The prophecy leaps far beyond all particular or national conditions." ( J. Skinner, D. D. ) The sources and consequences of anarchy J. Erskine, D. D. I. THE FATAL CONSEQUENCES OF ANARCHY. Of these we may be convinced, by viewing the greatness of the blessings which anarchy destroys. Happy the prince, happy the people, when lawful government is well established, wisely administered, duly honoured, and cheerfully obeyed! The persons, characters, and properties of the innocent are protected; good order is preserved; and the duties of every different situation, employment, and rank are faithfully discharged. The political body is healthy and safe. Distinguished genius and penetration, improved in wisdom by careful attention and long experience, are as eyes to the community: while the hands of the mechanic and labourer supply its necessities. These blessings are interrupted when the power of such a government is suspended; and, when it is destroyed, they cease. Anarchy, by levelling all ranks, transgresses a great law of nature, and of the God of nature; and stops a chief source of social happiness. Where abilities, dispositions, situations, and enjoyments differ, power and influence cannot be equal. A land, where there is no order, is a land of darkness and of the shadow of death. A community, which hath no eyes and guides, must wander and perish in the paths of destruction and misery. II. THE SOURCES OF ANARCHY, in rulers, or subjects, transgressing the laws, and neglecting the maxims, which reason or revelation prescribes, for securing the happiness and peace of society. 1. Anarchy is occasioned by violating the laws which prescribe patriotism, public spirit, love of liberty, and regard to the rights of mankind. 2. Neglect of the maxims of wisdom, taught by reason or Scripture, is sometimes the immediate, and sometimes the remote, source of anarchy. 3. Anarchy is occasioned, and the power of preventing or removing it diminished, by rulers and subjects transgressing the precepts of industry and frugality. 4. Anarchy is occasioned by neglect of the laws of reason and revelation, which prescribe peaceableness and union. Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. 5. Anarchy is occasioned by transgressing the great laws of religion. Religion produces the most perfect union: for it inspires, with the same general principle of action, supreme regard to the glory of God, unfeigned affection to our neighbour, and a willingness to sacrifice, whatever in its own nature opposes, or, through peculiar circumstances, becomes incompatible with these. ( J. Erskine, D. D. ) National desolation W. Reading, M. A. I. THE NATURE OF THE CALAMITY WHICH SHOULD COME UPON THE LAND — the emptiness or desolation of the earth. This is one of the rods which God holds over the heads of people, to make them stand in fear of Hun ( Leviticus 26:19 ; Deuteronomy 28:38 ). II. THE AUTHOR OR EFFICIENT CAUSE OF SUCH DESOLATION is God. It does not happen by say blind chance. III. THE MEANS OR SECOND CAUSES whereby God makes a land waste. Pestilence, sword, fire, unseasonable weather, noxious creatures, etc. IV. THE MERITORIOUS CAUSE (ver. 5). ( W. Reading, M. A. ) And it shall be, as with the people, go with the priest. Isaiah 24:2 The mutual assimilation of minister and people Homiletic Review. The minister makes the people and the people make the minister. I. THE MINISTER'S INFLUENCE. 1. As a preacher and teacher — upon the conceptions of truth and duty, the understanding of the Word of God, and the practical conduct of the people. 2. As a man, in his own example and life. 3. As a pastor, in his pastoral intercourse with his flock. 4. As a public leader of reforms, etc. II. THE PEOPLE'S INFLUENCE. 1. In getting him audience. Giving him their own ears and attention and gathering in others. 2. In making him eloquent. Gladstone says, "Eloquence is pouring back on an audience in a shower what is first received from the audience in vapour." 3. In making him spiritual. They can encourage him to spiritual growth and culture; to earnest and edifying preaching. They can pray for him and help him to feel that they want and wish only spiritual food. 4. In making him a power for good. says, "Truth is what a thing is in itself, in its relations and in the medium through which it is viewed." Goethe says, "Before we complain of the writing as obscure we must first examine if all be clear within." In the twilight a very plain manuscript is illegible. So the attitude of a hearer largely limits the power of a preacher; the cooperation of a Church member may indefinitely increase the effectiveness of a pastor's work. ( Homiletic Review. ) Preachers affected by their congregations R. W. Dale, LL. D. A few years ago, after a minister had been preaching in a Wesleyan chapel not far from my house, one of the older officials of the circuit began to talk to him of the glories of a past generation, and said with some fervour, "Ah, sir, there were great preachers in those days." "Yes," was the reply of the minister, "and there were great hearers in those days." The answer was a wise and just one. If preachers form and discipline their congregations, it is equally true that congregations form and discipline their preachers. ( R. W. Dale, LL. D. ) As with the buyer, so with the seller. Buying and selling R. W. Overbury. are of very ancient date. The earliest instance we read of occurs in the history of Abraham. The purchase made was a burying place; and is connected with the death of Sarah, Abraham's wife. Various nations and states have distinguished themselves at different times by their trade and commerce. In ancient times we may enumerate Arabia, Egypt, and especially Tyre — the crowning city where "merchants were princes — where traffickers were the honourable of the earth." In more modern times we may mention Greece, Rome, Venice, the Hanse, Spain, Portugal, and above all Great Britain. Well might Napoleon Buonaparte call us a nation of shopkeepers. ( R. W. Overbury. ) The relative duties of buyers and sellers R. W. Overbury. I. POINT OUT SOME OF THE EVILS BY WHICH THE RELATION BETWEEN BUYER AND SELLER IS VIOLATED. This relation is violated by every violation of those two important principles that lie at the foundation of all society — justice and truth. Justice consists in giving everyone his due; and truth or veracity in keeping our engagements, and avoiding lying and dissimulation. These principles and the relative duties arising out of them are violated — 1. By the practice of any and every kind of fraud in the transaction of business. 2. By the contracting of debts without any reasonable prospect of being able to pay them.(1) But what is an individual to do who in the course of regular business finds himself, through the fluctuation to which every branch of trade is liable, insolvent at the end of the year? If he be a man of an honourable character and standing in trade, he will not want friends who are willing to lend him a sufficient sum to extricate him from his present difficulties, and to enable him to make a fresh trial under the blessing of God to succeed in that line of business which he has hitherto followed. But if, after having renewed the attempt, Divine providence does not see fit to succeed his endeavours, then from a false shame of appearing what he is in worldly circumstances before his fellow men, to keep on in business till he involve many others in ruin is most unjustifiable.(2) Further, if an individual who has failed in another's debt, should at any future time possess the means of paying his debts, we hold it that justice requires that he should so pay them. 3. Another way in which the relation between buyers and sellers is violated is, by making ourselves responsible for the debts of others, when we are not in possession of sufficient capital to warrant it. 4. By the very prevalent practice of underselling. Where does the injury fall? First, upon the poor operatives, who labour day and night by the sweat of their brow, to furnish conveniences and luxuries for the higher ranks of society, whilst their labour is remunerated at a price that hardly keeps them and their families from starving. The other party upon whom the injury falls is other tradesmen in the same line, who, shrinking from the use of such unscrupulous and oppressive means of realising large profits, lose either a part or the whole of their custom. II. SHOW THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT. 1. In a secular view. The permanent prosperity of our trade, and consequently the temporal welfare of society depend upon the principles which pervade our business transactions. Every deviation from right principles inflicts injury somewhere, and in proportion to the extent of that deviation contributes to augment the sum of national distress. Nations, as such, are punished in this life — individuals hereafter. An invisible Being, too little recognised in the marts of trade, presides over our national affairs, and distributes or withholds national blessings in proportion as the principles of eternal truth and justice are practically acknowledged. 2. In a religious view. It has been well said, that "a Christian is the highest style of man."(1) A man who cares not by what means he obtains money, provided he succeeds in making a fortune, cannot be a Christian. The character and doom of such are too plainly written in Scripture to be mistaken for a single moment.(2) We do not, perhaps, sufficiently reflect that the predominance of the love of gain is equally incompatible with true piety; although a feeling of justice and benevolence, joined with self-respect, may lead us to abhor and reject all that is dishonourable in business.(3) Nor must we omit to observe, that whilst the habitual predominance of a worldly spirit is incompatible with personal piety, the too great prevalence of it is highly injurious. It either lifts a man up with vanity and pride, or it depresses him with anxiety and care; both of which unfit him for the service of God. In proportion as the spirit of the world prevails over the people of God, it stints their piety and usefulness, and counteracts the end for which they are constituted "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people," — "that ye should show forth the praises of Him, who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light." ( R. W. Overbury. ) The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof. Isaiah 24:5 The earth polluted by sin R. Macculloch. The inhabitants of the earth pollute it by their sins: the children of Israel defiled God's land by filling His inheritance with the carcasses of their abominable things, with their idolatries, with their wicked inventions and corrupt ways. ( R. Macculloch. ) Transgression R. Macculloch. "They have transgressed the laws" of nature, of conscience, and of nations — the ceremonial, judicial, and moral laws, delivered to them by Jehovah Himself. These laws, stamped by the sacred authority of the one great Lawgiver, which they ought to have religiously observed, they presumptuously transgressed, omitting to do what He required and committing what He had forbidden. ( R. Macculloch. ) The earth cursed for man's sake G. A. Smith, D. D. The Bible gives no support to the theory that matter itself is evil. God created all things; "and God saw everything that He had made; and, behold, it was very good." When, therefore, we read in the Bible that the earth is cursed, we read that it is cursed for man's sake; when we read of its desolation, it is as the effect of man's crime. ( G. A. Smith, D. D. ) The everlasting covenant A. B. Davidson, LL. D. The covenant is that with Noah, and the law that against bloodshed ( Genesis 9:5, 6 ). ( A. B. Davidson, LL. D. ) Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires. Isaiah 24:15 Glorifying the Lord in the fires J. N. Norton. The suffering child of God will glorify Him in the fires — I. BY ACKNOWLEDGING HIS POWER. The same Almighty One who fed Elijah, in the terrible days of dearth, and who delivered Daniel from the power of the lions, still watches over and provides for His people. II. BY RECOGNISING HIS WISDOM. He knows (as no short-sighted mortal can) when it is safe for us to enjoy prosperity, and when it is needful for our soul's health to endure disappointment and trouble. III. BY A FRANK ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS GOODNESS. If Our Heavenly Father had ceased to feel an interest in our welfare, He would not have employed the means to do us good. ( J. N. Norton. ) The Lord glorified by His suffering people W. W. Tyler. I. WHO ARE EXPECTED TO GLORIFY THE LORD. 1. "to glorify" is exemplified in 1 Chronicles 29:10-18 -1. Then the wicked cannot do that ( Job 20:5 ). 2. But the Church triumphant does ( Revelation 7:11 , 19). 3. And the Church militant ought to have this one aim. Let us take as an example, St. Paul ( Philippians 3:10-14 ). II. WHAT THE FIRES ARE IN WHICH WE GLORIFY GOD. 1. Determined self-humiliation, etc.; duties unpleasant, but religious. 2. Personal troubles are often perplexing. Faith is given, not to annihilate these, but to endure them. 3. Others' trials. 4. Our bodily afflictions. 5. Amongst the hottest "fires" are fiery darts. Paul was thus tried. 6. Enmity against our beloved Church. Foes within and without. 7. Fear of death. III. BUT ONE IS EVER PRESENT IN THE FIRES. 1. In them once, alone. 2. Leads others safely through. IV. THE FIRES ARE BURNING BY GOD'S PERMISSION. Like powerful remedies of surgeon or physician. 1. To manifest His chosen. 2. To purify. 3. To strengthen. Opposition invigorates. ( W. W. Tyler. ) How to honour God in trouble W. Jay. "Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." What an extensive admonition is this! And yet even this does not include the whole of God's claim upon us. We are required to honour Him, not only in all we do, but in all we suffer. I. THE STATE HERE SUPPOSED. "In the fires." Stripped of metaphor, the passage supposes a state of suffering. In this state we may be found — 1. As men. "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." 2. As Christians. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." II. THE DUTY HERE ENJOINED. "Glorify ye the Lord in the fires." The glory of God is essential or declarative. We cannot add to the former. But, "the heavens declare the glory of God." All His works praise Him. How? By the impressions and displays of His perfections; by showing us what He is, and what He deserves. Thus, Christians are appointed to "show forth the praises" — virtues — excellences — "of Him who hath called them," etc.; which is done by their language and their lives. Hence, we glorify God in our afflictions when we verbally and practically acknowledge — 1. His agency. 2. His rectitude. He is "righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works." 3. His wisdom. 4. His goodness. 5. His power. III. THE REASONS. 1. Because you have the finest opportunity. The scene naturally awakens attention. Nothing is so impressive as the graces of a Christian in trouble. 2. The obligations you are under to the blessed God. 3. Hope should influence you. "Verily there is a reward for the righteous." ( W. Jay. ) Glorifying God in affliction J. N. Norton. "There never was such affliction as mine," said a poor sufferer, restlessly tossing on a sick bed, in a city hospital. "I don't think there ever was such a racking pain." "Once," was faintly uttered from the next bed. The first speaker paused for a moment, and then began, in a still more impatient tone: "Nobody knows what I pass through; nobody ever suffered more pain." "One," was again whispered from the adjoining bed. "I take it you mean yourself, poor soul! but — Oh! not myself — not myself," exclaimed the other, her pale face flushing as if some wrong had been offered, not to herself but to another. There was a short pause, and then the sweet, gentle voice uttered the sacred words, "When they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand: and they bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon Him, and took the reed, and smote Him on the head. And when they came unto a place called Golgotha, they gave Him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall. And they crucified Him. And, about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The voice ceased, and the nurse handed a cup of barley water, flavoured with a grateful acid, to the lips of both sufferers. "Thank you, nurse," said the last speaker. "They gave Him gall to eat, and vinegar to drink." "She is talking about Jesus," said the other sick woman, "but talking about His sufferings can't mend mine." "But it lightens hers," said the nurse. "I wonder how?" Hush!" said the nurse. The gentle voice began: "Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." Verily, even in the midst of affliction and suffering God's true children will learn to glorify Him. ( J. N. Norton. ) Galileo's recognition of God in his blindness J. N. Norton. How touching that saying of blind Galileo, "It has pleased God that it shall be so, and it must please me too." ( J. N. Norton. ) "The fires T. W. Chambers, D. D. The term "fires" is a local designation meaning the east, as the land of sunrise, or of dawning light, and so standing in opposition to the west, which is represented in the next clause as "the isles of the sea." The deliverance is one that calls for a chorus of praise from one end of the earth to the other. ( T. W. Chambers, D. D. ) Fear and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee. Isaiah 24:17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare R. Macculloch. The expressions here used seem to have formed a proverbial saying, as appears from their being repeated by the prophet Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 48:43, 44 ). They allude to the different methods of taking wild beasts that were anciently in use. The fear, or terror, was a line strung with feathers of different colours, which was so constructed as to flutter in the air and to make a terrifying noise, that frightened the beasts into the pit, or the snare, that was prepared for them. The pit was digged deep in the ground, and covered over with boughs or turf, in order to deceive them, that they might fall into it unawares. The snare was composed of nets, enclosing a large space of ground that the wild beasts were known to haunt, which was drawn gradually narrower, until they were at last entangled and shut up. Our prophet, addressing himself to the inhabitants of the earth, declares, that calamities corresponding to each of these ways of destroying wild beasts, were to seize upon them, and that they should be so ordered, that those who escaped one sort would be arrested by another. ( R. Macculloch. ) The foundations of the earth do shake. Isaiah 24:18-20 The religious improvement of earthquakes S. Davies, M. A. (preached in 1756): — The works of Creation and Providence were undoubtedly intended for the notice and contemplation of mankind, especially when God "comes out of His place," that is, departs from the usual and stated course of His providence to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquities; then it becomes us to observe the operation of His hands with fear and reverence. To this the Psalmist repeatedly calls us: "Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He hath made in the earth." "Come, and see the works of God; He is terrible in His doing toward the children of men." This world is a state of discipline for another; therefore chastisements of various kinds and degrees are to be enumerated among the ordinary works of Providence — pain, sickness, losses, bereavements, disappointments. But when these are found too weak and ineffectual for their reformation; or when, from their being so frequent and common, men begin to think them things of course, and not to acknowledge the Divine hand in them; then the universal Ruler uses such signal and extraordinary executioners of His vengeance, as cannot but rouse a slumbering world, and render it sensible of His agency. These extraordinary ministers of His vengeance are generally these four: the Famine, Sword, Pestilence, and Earthquakes. I. Let the majestic and terrible phenomenon of earthquakes put you in mind of THE MAJESTY AND POWER OF GOD AND THE DREADFULNESS OF HIS DISPLEASURE. II. This desolating judgment may justly lead you to reflect upon THE SINFULNESS OF OUR WORLD. III. This melancholy event may carry your minds gratefully to reflect upon THE PECULIAR KINDNESS OF HEAVEN towards our country, in that it was not involved in the same destruction. IV. That which I would particularly suggest to your thoughts from the devastations of the late earthquake, is THE LAST UNIVERSAL DESTRUCTION OF OUR WORLD AT THE FINAL JUDGMENT. Of this, an earthquake is both a confirmation to human reason, and a lively representation ( S. Davies, M. A. ) "Removed like a cottage Sir E. Strachey, Bart. (ver. 20): — "Swayeth to and fro like a hammock." Such is the more literal rendering. The hammock (the same word as in Isaiah 1:8 ) is still used throughout the East by the night-watchers of vineyards. ( Sir E. Strachey, Bart. ).

24:1-12 All whose treasures and happiness are laid up on earth, will soon be brought to want and misery. It is good to apply to ourselves what the Scripture says of the vanity and vexation of spirit which attend all things here below. Sin has turned the earth upside down; the earth is become quite different to man, from what it was when God first made it to be his habitation. It is, at the best, like a flower, which withers in the hands of those that please themselves with it, and lay it in their bosoms. The world we live in is a world of disappointment, a vale of tears; the children of men in it are but of few days, and full of trouble, See the power of God's curse, how it makes all empty, and lays waste all ranks and conditions. Sin brings these calamities upon the earth; it is polluted by the sins of men, therefore it is made desolate by God's judgments. Carnal joy will soon be at end, and the end of it is heaviness. God has many ways to imbitter wine and strong drink to those who love them; distemper of body, anguish of mind, and the ruin of the estate, will make strong drink bitter, and the delights of sense tasteless. Let men learn to mourn for sin, and rejoice in God; then no man, no event, can take their joy from them. 24:13-15 There shall be a remnant preserved from the general ruin, and it shall be a devout and pious remnant. These few are dispersed; like the gleanings of the olive tree, hid under the leaves. The Lord knows those that are his; the world does not. When the mirth of carnal worldlings ceases, the joy of the saints is as lively as ever, because the covenant of grace, the fountain of their comforts, and the foundation of their hopes, never fails. Those who rejoice in the Lord can rejoice in tribulation, and by faith may triumph when all about them are in tears. They encourage their fellow-sufferers to do likewise, even those who are in the furnace of affliction. Or, in the valleys, low, dark, miry places. In every fire, even the hottest, in every place, even the remotest, let us keep up our good thoughts of God. If none of these trials move us, then we glorify the Lord in the fires. 24:16-23 Believers may be driven into the uttermost parts of the earth; but they are singing, not sighing. Here is terror to sinners; the prophet laments the miseries he saw breaking in like a torrent; and the small number of believers. He foresees that sin would abound. The meaning is plain, that evil pursues sinners. Unsteady, uncertain are all these things. Worldly men think to dwell in the earth as in a palace, as in a castle; but it shall be removed like a cottage, like a lodge put up for the night. It shall fall and not rise again; but there shall be new heavens and a new earth, in which shall dwell nothing but righteousness. Sin is a burden to the whole creation; it is a heavy burden, under which it groans now, and will sink at last. The high ones, that are puffed up with their grandeur, that think themselves out of the reach of danger, God will visit for their pride and cruelty. Let us judge nothing before the time, though some shall be visited. None in this world should be secure, though their condition be ever so prosperous; nor need any despair, though their condition be ever so deplorable. God will be glorified in all this. But the mystery of Providence is not yet finished. The ruin of the Redeemer's enemies must make way for his kingdom, and then the Sun of Righteousness will appear in full glory. Happy are those who take warning by the sentence against others; every impenitent sinner will sink under his transgression, and rise no more, while believers enjoy everlasting bliss.