through them as they tell of the bitter harvest sown by sin. The
penetrating question, 'Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt
more and more?' brings out the solemn truth that all which men gain by
rebellion against God is chastisement. The ox that 'kicks against the
pricks' only makes its own hocks bleed. We aim at some imagined good,
and we get--blows. No rational answer to that stern 'Why?' is possible.
Every sin is an act of unreason, essentially an absurdity. The
consequences of Judah's sin are first darkly drawn under the metaphor of
a man desperately wounded in some fight, and far away from physicians or
nurses, and then the metaphor is interpreted by the plain facts of
hostile invasion, flaming cities, devastated fields. It destroys the
coherence of the verses to take the gruesome picture of the wounded man
as a description of men's sins; it is plainly a description of the
consequences of their sins. In accordance with the Old Testament point
of view, Isaiah deals with national calamities as the punishment of
national sins. He does not touch on the far worse results of individual
sins on individual character. But while we are not to ignore his
doctrine that nations are individual entities, and that 'righteousness
exalteth a nation' in our days as well as in his, the Christian form of
his teaching is that men lay waste their own lives and wound their own
souls by every sin. The fugitive son comes down to be a swine-herd, and
cannot get enough even of the swine's food to stay his hunger.

The note of pity sounds very clearly in the pathetic description of the
deserted 'daughter of Zion.' Jerusalem stands forlorn and defenceless,
like a frail booth in a vineyard, hastily run up with boughs, and open
to fierce sunshine or howling winds. Once 'beautiful for situation, the
joy of the whole earth,... the city of the great King'--and now!

Verse 9 breaks the solemn flow of the divine Voice, but breaks it as it