Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

“ The woman art thou, O Israel, who hitherto hast sufficiently experienced, what a woman is without the man, how she is a reed exposed to, and a sport of, all winds. The man is the Lord. How foolish would it be on thy part, if thou wert to persevere any longer in thine independence and dissoluteness, and if thou didst refuse to return into the sweet relation of dependence and unconditional surrefender, which alone, being the only natural relation, can be productive of happiness! ”

“ He sees, especially, that, at some future period, the Babylonian power, which began, even in his time, to germinate, would take the place of the Assyrian,--that, like it, it would find the field of Judah white for the harvest,--that, for this oppressor of the world, destruction is prepared by Koresh (Cyrus) , the conqueror from the East, and that he will liberate the people from their exile; and, at the close of the development, he beholds the Saviour of the world, whose image he depicts in the most glowing colours. ”

“ Hear ye now, O house of David: Is it too little for you to provoke man, that you provoke also my God?"
When Ahaz had before refused to believe in the simple announcement of the Prophet, his sin was more pardonable; for, inasmuch as Isaiah had not proved himself outwardly as a divine ambassador, Ahaz sinned to a certain degree against man only, against the Prophet only, by unjustly suspecting him of a deceitful pretension to a divine revelation. Hence, Isaiah continues mild and gentle. ”

“ We are not at liberty to say that the servant who had become blind and deaf shall be converted, shall put off the old man and put on the new man, and shall then accomplish the great things which, in the prophecies of the Servant of God, are assigned to him. For the conversion,--on which everything depends, and apart from which the announcement of the Prophet would be an empty fancy--is, in all these prophecies, not mentioned by a single word. On the contrary, the Servant of God is everywhere, from His very origin, brought before us as the absolutely just. ”

“ The climax of the manifestation of grace has the climax of the manifestation of justice as its inseparable companion. "Behold the storm of the Lord, glowing fire, goeth forth, a continuing storm, on the head of the wicked it shall remain. The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return, until He have done, and until He have performed the intents of His heart; at the end of days ye shall consider it." Formerly, in chap. xxiii. 19, 20, in a threatening prophecy which referred to the exile, the Prophet had uttered the same words. ”

“ But a time shall come when a man shall not learn from the mouth of a man, but from the mouth of the blessed God, for it is written: 'All thy children shall be taught by God.' In these words, it is implied that hitherto the knowledge of the Law was an artificial one obtained by mortal men. But for that reason, it cannot stand long, for the effect stands in proportion to its cause. At the time of the deliverance, however, the knowledge of the Law will be obtained in a miraculous manner." It is, however, quite obvious that this promise, too, must be understood relatively only. ”

“ Who knows whether He is not laying for him a trap; whether, by preventing him from seeking the help of man. He is not to bring upon him the destruction which his conscience tells him he has so richly deserved? At all events the affording of His help is clogged with a condition which he is resolved not to fulfil, viz., his conversion. A better and easier bargain, he thought, could be struck with the Assyrians; how insatiable soever they might be, they did not ask the heart. How many do even now-a-days rather perish in sin and misery, than be converted! ”

“ Now, the Prophet beholds its Author in His humiliation and suffering; then, the most distant Future of the Kingdom of Christ presents itself to his enraptured eye,--the time in which the Gentile world, alienated from God, shall have returned to Him; when all that is opposed to God shall have been destroyed; when inward and outward peace shall prevail, and all the evil caused by sin shall have been removed. ”

“ But, in opposition to such fears, the Prophet declares, in the name of the Lord, that they would not only return, but come, for the first time, in the true and full sense; that where they imagined to behold the end to the forgiveness of sins, there would be its real beginning; that where sin abounded, the grace of God should there so much the more abound. Only, they should not despair, and thus place a barrier in the way of God's mercy. Your God is not a mere hard task-master; He himself will sow and then reap, as surely as He is God, the gracious and merciful One. ”

“ As the bestower of such deliverance, the Prophet beholds a divine child who, having obtained dominion, will exercise it with the skill of the God-man; who will, with fatherly love, in all eternity care for His people and create peace to them; who will, at the same time, infinitely extend His dominion, the kingdom of David, not by means of the force of arms, but by means of right and righteousness, the exercise of which will attract the nations to Him ”

“ And even although I were to grant that it was necessary that a single individual of the human race should bear this punishment, in order to make satisfaction for all, it would, at all events, have been at least more appropriate that some one from among ourselves, some wise man or prophet, had taken upon him the punishment, than that God himself should have done so. For, supposing even that He became incarnate, He would not be like one of us.--It is altogether impossible and self-contradictory that God should assume a body; for God is the first cause, infinite, and omnipotent. ”

“ There are features interwoven with the prophecy which lead to a more than human dignity of its subject. Even this circumstance is of importance here, that the whole earth appears as the sphere of His dominion. Still more distinctly is the human sphere overstepped by the announcement that, under His government, sin, yea, even all destruction in the outward nature is to cease, and the earth is to return to the happy condition in which it was before the fall. ”

“ The Prophet would thus simply have raised himself to be the Saviour. Umbreit expressly acknowledges this: "He is to be the holy pillar of clouds and fire which leads the people back to their native land, after the time of their punishment has expired. But a still more glorious vocation and destination is in store for the prophets; they receive the highest, the Messianic destination." ”

“ With a knowledge of human nature, and especially of the nature of Israel, as it was peculiar to the people from the beginning, and was firmly and deeply impressed upon them by the Mosaic laws,--after the experience which the journey through the wilderness, the time of the Judges, the reign of David and of Solomon also offered, it was absolutely impossible for the enlightened to entertain the hope that, at the appearance of the Messiah, the whole people would do homage to Him with sincere and cordial devotion. ”

“ Under the New Covenant, the antithesis of teaching by God, and teaching by man, is to cease. The teachers do not teach in their own strength, but as servants and instruments of the Lord. It is not they who speak, Init the Holy Spirit in them. Those who are taught by them hear the word that comes to them through men, not as man's word, but as God's word; and they receive it, not because it satisfies their limited human reason, but because the Spirit testifies that the Spirit is truth. ”

“ If God's will be not with it, princes will not attain to any firm footing and prosperity (they are not planted and sown) ; they are like a cut-down stem which has no more power to take root in the earth. A tree not planted dries up; corn not sown does not produce fruit ”

“ We have thus before us the announcement of the entire destruction of the previous form of the Kingdom of God, but such a destruction of the form as brings about, at the same time, the highest completion of the substance,--a perishing like that of the seed-corn, which dies only, in order to bring forth much fruit; like that of the body, which is sown in corruption, in order to be raised in incorruption. ”

“ He looks around; every thing is dark, dreary, and cold; nowhere is there consolation for the weary soul. "Ah," he exclaims, "I have sweetly dreamed,"--and immediately the hand of the Lord again seizes him, and carries him away from the scenes of the Present.
There is not by any means a different salvation destined for Israel and Judah; it is one salvation to be partaken of by both, who are in future to be re-united into one covenant-people, into a nation of brethren. ”

“ But that, under the Old Testament dispensation, was the deliverance from Egypt, the strongest and most impressive of all those deeds by which the delusion was dissipated, that God was walking upon the vault of heaven, and did not judge through the clouds. In future, a still stronger manifestation of life is to take place. Hence the formula of the oath is altogether general; the deliverance from Egypt comes into consideration as a manifestation of life, and not as an act of grace. ”

“ The people are filled with joy on account of the deliverance granted to them by the Lord,--their deliverance from the yoke of their oppressors, from the bondage of the world which now comes to an end. ”

“ The watchmen are ideal persons, representatives of the truth that the Lord is around His people, and that the circumstances of His Church are to Him a constant call to help; or they may be viewed as the holy angels who, as the servants of the watchmen of Israel, form the protecting power for the Church. These watchmen continue to stand even on the destroyed walls; for, even in her misery, the Lord is Zion's God. The anxious waiting eye of the watchmen, and the mercy-beaming eye of God returning to Zion meet one another. ”

“ While this foreknowledge of the future elevation of Babylon had a historical foundation, the foreknowledge of its humiliation and fate, following soon after, rested on a theological foundation. With a heathenish people, elevation is always followed by haughtiness, with all its consequences; and, according to the eternal laws of the divine government of the world, haughtiness is a matter-of-fact prophecy of destruction. ”

“ The Lord has revealed His arm, His power and glory, as He has manifested them in the mission of His servant, in the eyes of all (comp. chap. lii. 10: "The Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God") ; but it is really seen by those only whose eyes God opens. The deeds of God, even the most manifest, always retain the nature of a mystery which remains concealed to the worldly disposition. God can be recognised only by God. ”

“ The chastisement of our peace is the chastisement whereby peace is acquired for us. Peace stands as an individualizing designation of salvation; in the world of contentions, peace is one of the highest blessings. Natural man is on all sides surrounded by enemies; δικαιωθέντες ἐκ πίστεως εἰρήνην ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, Rom. v. 1, and peace with God renders all other enemies innocuous, and at last removes them altogether. The peace is inseparable from the substitution. If the Servant of God has borne our sins, He has thereby, at the same time, acquired peace ”

“ The Prophet, according to him, formed to himself, by his own authority, an "ideal of a Messiah," the abstraction of what he saw before his eyes in the people, especially in the better portion of them, but chiefly in the order of the prophets, and then persuaded himself that this self-invented image would, at some future period, come into existence as a real person. "The highest ideal of the prophetic order, viewed as teaching, is represented in the unity of a person." ”

“ We have here the reason why the tyranny is broken: for the enemies of the Kingdom of God shall entirely and for ever be rendered incapable of carrying on warfare. If the noisy war-shoes, and their blood-stained garments are to be burned, they themselves must, of course, have been previously destroyed. ”

“ But the security for deliverance from this danger also--the conqueror of the world's power which was soon to begin its course in Asshur, is none other than Immanuel, whom the Prophet, in the beginning of the humiliation of the people of God, makes, so to say, to become man, in order that, during the impending deep humiliation of the people of God, He may accompany it in its history during all the stages of its existence, until He should really become man. ”