Until the Spirit be poured out.
How constantly does Scripture speak of every happy reformation as due to the "outpouring of the Spirit," or the sending or breathing of the Spirit on human-kind! Language none the less expressive because mysterious. Those epochs cannot be forecast: no meteorology can explain to us these movements "from on high." But they may be waited for and prepared for, without fear of disappointment. Again and again they had come to the prophet's heart; and from his heart he knew they must some time come also in a wider sphere of operation.
I. UNTIL THEN—WHAT? The women are addressed, the daughters of Zion. The manners of the women must be a sure index of the state of a nation. New religious feeling kindles quickly in their hearts; they welcome and further revivals. Their indifference to spiritual things seems to belie their nature; atheism in woman is monstrous. The Jewish women are in a state of careless unconcern. This attitude of "ease," of apathetic nonchalance, arouses the indignation and the alarm of the prophets, perhaps more than vivacity in sin. It is an ominous symptom in the bodily life, not less so in the soul. It offers a dull prosaic resistance to enthusiasm of any kind, which it holds in smiling, sensuous contempt. A psalmist's soul is "exceedingly filled" with perturbation at this attitude (Psalms 123:4); Amos denounces woe (Amos 6:1), and Zechariah the great displeasure of Jehovah against them that "are at ease." Perhaps the vintage-harvest was over when the prophet spoke. The time would come when a shudder would pass through those luxurious frames; the outer garment would be torn off, the sackcloth assumed, the breasts that once heaved only with the sigh of pleasure be beaten in wild lament for the "days that are no more," for the pleasant fields and the fruitful vine. Those fields will be thorn and briar overgrown; the houses of the city deserted, its mirth quelled. The wild cattle will sport around the temple hill, the palaces be forsaken. Impossible to dissociate in our minds the desolation of once populous scenes from the sin of man and the withdrawal of the gracious Spirit of God. Take these descriptions as figures of the state of the soul; then power and beauty remain. The well-kept garden, the sweet fields in the harvest-time, the mirth of reapers and in-gatherers; these sights, these sounds, provide unsought expression for the soul that feels itself "at ease." The untilled fields, the signs of wild nature creeping to old ascendency over the works of man,—such sights carry symbolic meaning which depresses the most cheerful heart. "Until the Spirit be outpoured from on high"—that is our state, and that it must remain.
II. AFTER THEN—WHAT?
1. "Justice shall inhabit the pasture-country, and righteousness shall dwell in the garden-land." "Men ought not to be like cattle, which seek nothing but plenty of food and abundance of outward things. We should not, like hogs in a sty, judge of the happiness of life by abundance of bread and wine (Calvin). Righteousness alone exalts, righteousness alone can uplift a fallen nation.
2. "The fruit of righteousness shall be peace." This is inwardly and outwardly, subjectively and objectively, true. Peace in the heart is the companion of rectitude; it flows from right order in the home and family, and from just administration in the state. Peace, quietness, confidence: a triple blooming in one; a threefold band of prosperity and condition of all welfare. "Homes of peace, dwellings of confidence, easeful resting-places,—these are the pictures that all men draw in fancy; this the life for which they dream they were made. Such a state depends upon piety, upon personal and social morality. "It is as true now as it was in the time of Isaiah. True religion would put an end to strifes and litigations; to riots and mobs; to oppressions and tumults; to alarms and robbery; to battle and murder and conflict among the nations."
3. These blessings cannot come without suffering. The hail of judgment will fall upon forest and upon city. The refuge of lies and the hiding-place of falsehood must be swept away. Renewing and reforming forces work destructively on one side, as creatively on the other. Upon whom these judgments will fall is not evident from the text. Hail is an image of Divine judgment (Isaiah 28:2, Isaiah 28:17; Isaiah 30:30).
4. The happiness of the tiller. He sows beside all waters—a reference to the Oriental custom of casting the seed upon the waters of overflowing streams and rivers, so that, when the waters subside, it will be found again in the springing crop and the abundant harvest. The ox and the ass are employed to tread the moistened earth and prepare for the sowing (cf. Ecclesiastes 11:1, Ecclesiastes 11:6). In a figurative sense—happy those who go steadily on with useful work, the work that lies nearest them, the sowing which looks for a "far-off interest of good," amidst the most troubled times. No troubles of the lime should divert us from our daily task, or unsettle us from the habit of continuous useful labor.—J.
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM