2-5). Each trait of the glowing description is appropriate to the
condition of Israel under Ahaz; but each has a meaning far beyond that
limited application. Isaiah may, or may not, have been aware of 'what'
or 'what time' his words portrayed in their deepest, that is, their true
meaning, but if we believe in supernatural prediction which, though it
may have found its point of attachment in the circumstances of the
present, was none the less the voice of the Spirit of God, we shall not
make, as is often done now, the prophet's construction of his words the
rule for their interpretation. What the prophecy was discerned to point
to by its utterer or his contemporaries, is one thing; quite another is
what God meant by it.

First we have the picture of the nation groping in a darkness that might
be felt, the emblem of ignorance, sin, and sorrow, and inhabiting a land
over which, like a pall, death cast its shadow. On that dismal gloom
shines all at once a 'great light,' the emblem of knowledge, purity, and
joy. The daily mercy of the dawn has a gospel in it to a heart that
believes in God; for it proclaims the divine will that all who sit in
darkness shall be enlightened, and that every night but prepares the way
for the freshness and stir of a new morning. The great prophecy of these
verses in its indefiniteness goes far beyond its immediate occasion in
the state of Judah under Ahaz. As surely as the dawn floods all lands,
so surely shall all who walk in darkness see the great light; and
wherever is a 'land of the shadow of death,' there shall the light
shine. It is 'the light of the world.'

Verse 3 gives another phase of blessing. Israel is conceived of as
dwindled in number by deportation and war. But the process of
depopulation is arrested and reversed, and numerical increase, which is
always a prominent feature in Messianic predictions, is predicted. That