The new revelation.
The verses contain a summary of the contents of Isaiah 40-47. God is the First and the Last—the sole Creator. Prophecy is an evidence of his claims; and so is the mission of Cyrus.
I. THE REVELATION CONCERNING GOD. First Jacob and Israel, the chosen people, are called to listen. Jehovah is the Alpha and the Omega of the universe. The First Cause and Reason of things; he gave the first impulse to their course, the goal of which will still be himself. Before the earth and the heavens were, his was the creative hand, guided by the creative mind. Then the idolatrous nations are summoned to assemble, and challenged to produce a power of prophecy to rival that of Jehovah.
II. CONCERNING CYRUS. "He whom Jehovah hath loved," to whom he hath spoken, whom he hath called, shall have a prosperous career, performing the Divine pleasure on Babylon and on Chaldea. In verse 20 the prophet sees the destruction of Babylon as an accomplished fact. Thence let a ringing cry go forth to the end of the earth! Jehovah hath redeemed the people! Already they have drunk of the refreshing waters in the desert. And that peace, which is the sum of all blessings, and which can never be the portion of the ungodly, is theirs.
III. APPEAL TO CONSCIENCE AND EXPERIENCE. Let the chosen people draw neat. and commune with their God. From the first he has spoken to them, not in dark and ambiguous oracles, but in words of clearness and unmistakable purport. And now he is to speak again by the mouth of his present servant, and to crown his revelations by the greatest of them all. And what of Israel? Doubly tender is the reproach and the expostulation. Why have the people not walked in the straight way in which he would have led them? He is their "Teacher to their profit;" why have they chosen what is unprofitable? and followed after the "not-profitable" gods (Jeremiah 2:11; cf. Micah 6:8; Psalms 23:3)? He would lead them in the straight path, but Israel has forced him, as it were, to lead them by the circuitous path of affliction. The appeal to experience turns upon this point—the profitableness of godliness, which has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. "Deep down in human nature lies the idea of a covenant between the worshipper and his god. In return for external service, the god gives help and protection. The prophets, with a generous freedom, retain so much of this theory as matches with the truths revealed to them. Jehovah's protection is still conditional, but the conditions extend to the inner as well as the outer man" (Cheyne). Obedience alone brings peace and prosperity. If men had but hearkened to God, their peace would have been as the great volume of the Euphrates, and their blessedness, reflecting the favour of Jehovah, as the multitudinous waves of the sea; its posterity as the sand of the sea, or as the fishes that swarm in its waters. Its name would have been imperishable. It is, then, the "hearing ear" and the "perceiving heart" which above all are needed as conditions of true temporal and spiritual well-being. To hear so as to be pricked in heart; to hear so as to follow and prosecute the things we hear;—this alone is to hear in the Scripture sense. And here we are reminded of the need of the Holy Spirit's influence, without which we may see and never perceive, and hear and never understand. There must be an aptness between the object and the faculty. Things sensible must be known by sense; things mental by the mind; and things spiritual by some principle infused into the soul from above. "Two sit together and hear the same sermon. One finds a hidden spiritual virtue in the Word, by which he lives and grows and thrives. Another finds no such virtue in it; perhaps it pleases his reason, and there is an end. This proceeds from the want of the spiritual, perceiving heart. Why is it that a man is so affected with music that all his passions are moved by it, while brutes are not at all pleased? Because there is in man a principle of reason concurring with his sense, which discovers the sweetness and harmony of the sounds that bare sense is not able to discern." And so of the things of God. Open thou mine eyes and mine ears; let my noblest faculties be ever in communion with the noblest, my spiritual nature be awakened by the Spirit, and again respond to his influence!—this should be our prayer. We will hearken unto and obey him who hath the words of eternal life: this should be our resolve.—J.
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM