connection with the background upon which it stands out. For just a
verse before the prophet has given another emblem of what God is and
does, and if you will carry with you all those thoughts of tenderness
and maternal care and solicitude, and then connect them with that verse,
I think the thought of His tenderness will start up into new beauty. For
here is what precedes the text: 'Like as a lion, and the young lion
roaring on his prey when a multitude of shepherds is called forth
against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor bow himself for
the noise of them. So shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for
Mount Zion.' Look at these two pictures side by side, on the one hand
the lion, with his paw on his prey, and the angry growl that answers
when the shepherds vainly try to drag it away from him. That is God. Ay!
but that is only an aspect of God. 'As birds flying, so the Lord will
defend Jerusalem.' We have to take that into account too. This
generation is very fond of talking about God's love; does it believe in
God's wrath? It is very fond of speaking about the gentleness of Jesus;
has it pondered that tremendous phrase, 'the wrath of the Lamb'? The
lion that growls, and the mother-bird that hovers--God is like them
both. That is the first picture that is here.

The second one is not so obvious to English readers, but it is equally
striking, though I do not mean to dwell upon it. The word that is
translated in our text twice, 'defend' and 'defending'--'So will the
Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem, and defending will deliver'--means,
literally, 'shielding.' Thus we have the same general idea as that in
the previous metaphor of the mother-bird hovering above the nest: God is
like a shield held over us, and so flinging off front the broad and
burnished surface of the Almighty buckler, all the darts that any foe
can launch against as. 'Our God is a Sun and Shield.' I need not enlarge
on this familiar metaphor.