Post by Lee on May 20, 2014 2:53:33 GMT
Verse eleven of this ninth chapter says: “The Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together.” Bible history shows us the fate of the Gentile prince, who with an Ephraimite conspirator and usurper (2 Kings 15:25), sought to subvert the Kingdom of David, and by the erection of a new dynasty (Isa. 7:6) annul the covenant that God had made with David. But there is no counsel against the Lord. He said by His servant Isaiah: “It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass,” and denounced the overthrow of both the hostile powers. With regard to Rezin, “the word” appointed the King of Assyria to despoil his capital (Isa. 8:4); and so it came to pass, for: “The King of Assyria (Tiglath-Pileser) went up against Damascus and took it, and carried the people thereof captive to Kir, and slew Rezin” (2 Kings 16:9).
This, to Ephraim, was an earnest of the judgment that should as certainly come upon them; but, true to the traditions of their evil history, the warning was utterly disregarded. When their turn came, however, at the hand of Shalmaneser in the ninth year of Hoshea, the word had its ample fulfilment. “The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria” (5:9). God’s comment on these and similar fulfilled threats of judgment is given by a later prophet (Zech. 1:6), “My words and my statutes which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? And they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.” Throughout the entire Scripture there runs this emphasising of the knowledge of God produced by judgment. The plagues of Egypt made Him “an everlasting name,” manifesting for all time that there is none like unto the Lord God of Israel. The dispersion and sufferings of Israel testify to the same great truth. The calm declaration of Christ (pronouncing judgment upon Jerusalem): “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away,” finds fulfilment round the world in scores of millions of Bibles. All the facts of history and of the current situation are such as endorse Christ’s saying that men are foolish not to believe “all that the prophets have spoken.”
Robert Roberts, & Walker, C. C. (1907). The Ministry of the Prophets: Isaiah (184–185
This, to Ephraim, was an earnest of the judgment that should as certainly come upon them; but, true to the traditions of their evil history, the warning was utterly disregarded. When their turn came, however, at the hand of Shalmaneser in the ninth year of Hoshea, the word had its ample fulfilment. “The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria” (5:9). God’s comment on these and similar fulfilled threats of judgment is given by a later prophet (Zech. 1:6), “My words and my statutes which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? And they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.” Throughout the entire Scripture there runs this emphasising of the knowledge of God produced by judgment. The plagues of Egypt made Him “an everlasting name,” manifesting for all time that there is none like unto the Lord God of Israel. The dispersion and sufferings of Israel testify to the same great truth. The calm declaration of Christ (pronouncing judgment upon Jerusalem): “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away,” finds fulfilment round the world in scores of millions of Bibles. All the facts of history and of the current situation are such as endorse Christ’s saying that men are foolish not to believe “all that the prophets have spoken.”
Robert Roberts, & Walker, C. C. (1907). The Ministry of the Prophets: Isaiah (184–185