Even of late my people is risen up as an enemy:

Ye pull off the robe with the garment from them that pass by
securely as men averse from war.

The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses;
From their children have ye taken away my glory for ever.

Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest :

Because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.

If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying,

I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink;

He shall even be the prophet of this people.

I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee;

I will surely gather the remnant of Israel:

I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah,

As the flock in the midst of their fold:

They shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men.
The breaker is come up before them :

They have broken up, and have passed through the gate,

And are gone out by it:

And their king shall pass before them,

And the LORD on the head of them. (Micah ii. 7—13.)

See how the robber nobles are reproached for stripping the peaceable, and turning the widows of the men they have 'misused out of their pleasant homes, while by corrupting their children they destroyed God's glory in them! Then comes the sudden warning that Canaan shall no more be their rest; they have polluted it. The prophets they liked were men who, instead of milk and honey, promised them wine and strong drink. And with another sudden burst, Micah promises that though they should be cast out from their polluted land, yet that they should be assembled like the flocks of Bozrah, the great sheep-fold city of Edom; and not merely glimpsing at the opening of the gates of their captivity at Babylon, he speaks to all ages. Our rest, as he has said, is not here, but there is one who gathers us as His sheep-the Breaker; He who hath broken the gates of the grave, and passed through it, leaving it open for ever for us to pass out, our King and Lord at our head. The Jews always knew this was a prophecy of the Messiah, and called him the Breaker. It is one of the first prophecies of the Resurrection of Christ and of ourselves :

In those days the LORD began to send against Judah Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah.

And Jotham slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father: and Ahaz his son reigned in his stead.

Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem but he did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD, like David his father:

:

For he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim.

Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel.

He sacrificed also and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.

Wherefore the LORD his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter.

For Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; because they had forsaken the LORD God of their fathers.

And Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, slew Maaseiah the king's son, and Azrikam the governor of the house, and Elkanah that was next to the king.

And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria.

But a prophet of the LORD was there, whose name was Oded: and he went out before the host that came to Samaria, and said unto them, Behold, because the LORD God of your fathers was wroth with Judah, he hath delivered them into your hand, and ye have slain them in a rage that reacheth up unto heaven.

And now ye purpose to keep under the children of Judah and Jerusalem for bond-men and bond-women unto you: but are there not with you, even with you, sins against the LORD your God?

Now hear me therefore, and deliver the captives again, which ye have taken captive of your brethren: for the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you. Then certain of the heads of the children of Ephraim, Azariah the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth, and Jehizkiah the son of Shallum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai, stood up against them that came from the war,

And said unto them, Ye shall not bring in the captives hither: for whereas we have offended against the LORD already, ye intend to add more to our sins and to our trespass: for our trespass is great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel.

So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the princes and all the congregation.

*

And the men which were expressed by name rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brethren: then they returned to Samaria.

* Mentioned in lists

We are not told what corrupted Ahaz, after being brought up by so good a father, or what tempted him to turn to the gods of the heathen. Most likely his princes perverted him, but he bears the sin, and both he and they bore the punishment. He imitated the kings of Israel, kept, as Micah says, the statutes of Omri, and not only worshipped in the high places, but brought in other gods, going so far as even to set up a temple to the horrible Phœnician Moloch, in the valley of Hinnom, just outside Jerusalem, and there sacrifice his own children.

Punishment soon began. Even in Jotham's time, there had been a scheme formed by the kings of Syria and Israel for deposing the house of David and setting up a man to be king of Judah, named, as we find from the Assyrian inscriptions, Azariah, the son of Jabeal. Probably Ahaz hoped that to depart from the old exclusive worship practised by the family of David might render him better liked among other kings, but instead of his neighbours being conciliated, the warlike Pekah of Samaria, and Rezin, king of Damascus, allied themselves against him, and made a dreadful havoc, slaying Ahaz's son, and carrying off a great number of captives. But the exhortations of the prophets had raised a better spirit among some of the Israelites. Oded, a prophet, went forth to meet the conquerors, and upheld to them the iniquity of making slaves of their brethren of Judah, and adding this to their long list of crimes. And so powerful were his words, that some of the chiefs of Ephraim, rulers of Samaria, absolutely forbade the captives to be brought into the city, but so urged on the returning warriors the danger and offence of enslaving the people of the one tribe that had comparatively deserved God's favour, that they absolutely gave up their spoil and captives; and these generous men, good Samaritans already, fed and refreshed the poor prisoners, gave them clothes, mounted the feeble on asses, and guarded them safely back-not past the robber priests of Bethel, but to Jericho, the city of palm-trees, which belonged to Judah. One cannot help thinking that the action of these good Ephraimites may have been rewarded by some of the tenderer blessings of their own prophet Hosea, or by Isaiah's promise of a happy time, when

Ephraim shall not envy Judah,
Neither shall Judah vex Ephraim.

LESSON LXVI.

THE SIGN TO A HAZ.

B.C. 741.-ISAIAH vii. 1—17.

And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.

And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and. Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field;

And say unto him,

Take heed, and be quiet;

Fear not, neither be faint-hearted

For the two tails of these smoking firebrands,

For the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah,
Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah,

Have taken evil counsel against thee, saying,

Let us go up against Judah, and vex it,

And let us make a breach therein for us,

And set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal :

Thus saith the Lord GOD, It shall not stand, neither shall it come

to pass.

For the head of Syria is Damascus,

And the head of Damascus is Rezin;

And within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that

it be not a people.

And the head of Ephraim is Samaria,

And the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son.

If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.

Moreover the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying,

Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God;

Ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.

But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.

And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David;

Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my
God also?

Therefore the LORD himself shall give you a sign;

Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,

And shall call his name Immanuel.+

Butter and honey shall he eat,

* A remnant shall return.

+ God with us.

VOL. III.

That he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
For before the child shall know

To refuse the evil, and choose the good,

The land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
The LORD shall bring upon thee,

And upon thy people, and upon thy father's house,

Days that have not come,

From the day that Ephraim departed from Judah;
Even the king of Assyria.

COMMENT.-After the defeat and disaster of Judah, the terror of Ahaz was great when he learned that another league was being formed against him by Syria and Israel, whose kings even proposed to depose him and the house of David, and set up a stranger, "the son of Jabeal." He was in the utmost fear and trembling, though the interposition on behalf of the captives at Samaria itself might have taught him God's care for His people. An idolater, however, could have no trust in the Lord, and the king's expedient was to send and entreat the aid of the mighty king of Assyria, who was already so terrible to Syria. But the prophet Isaiah was sent to prevent this fatal project. He was bidden to go forth, with his son Shear-jashub, whose prophetic name promised that a remnant should return, and promise him safety. The king was apparently getting ready for a siege, and had been inspecting the pools of Gihon, those in the royal gardens to the west of the city, where Solomon had been anointed. There were two of these, an upper and a lower; a conduit or aqueduct carried the water into the city, and by its side the fullers, or persons whose trade was to whiten garments of wool and linen, had their field, since they required a great deal of water. It seems almost as if these points of time and place were so exactly specified because of the exceeding greatness of the prophecy that was there to be delivered. There came the king from his inspection, in his haste and confusion. There stood the prophet, himself of the house of David, and the first words of his chant were, "Take heed, and be quiet." Strange advice it seemed, but the prophet went on calmly to assure him that none of the plans of his enemies should stand. Two tails of smoking firebrands, he calls them; for they were like the ends of torches all but burnt out, the last and last but one of the kings of their nations; and in sixty-five years more Israel should be so broken as never again to be a power. There it would seem that Isaiah