All Articles For Harbach Robert C

1. Incompetency. “And I will give boys (as) their princes, and infants shall be ruling over them” (v. 4, Hebrew). Not merely inferior kings would rule over them, but without a king, inept rulers, incapable of “Solomonian” quality, would be of a more “Rehoboamian” hotheaded, reckless despotism. The mere shadow of a king, a boy, would rule, whose advisers would be mental and moral weaklings, the impudent, the imprudent, the effeminate, the cowardly!

“And lambs graze as (in) their pastures and deserts (where the flocks got) fat will sojourners (nomad shepherds) consume” (v. 17, Heb.). 1. Here the second woe ends, the longest of them all. The literal fulfillment of this we see today where modern Jerusalem, about thirty-five feet above the ancient Jerusalem, is a Mohammedan city, and much of Palestine is pasture land for Arab shepherds. Sheep graze over the ruins of Jerusalem as their pasture. (Once Jehovah’s vineyard, now a pasture!) These sheep are God’s people from among the Gentiles.

1. Why Government Office is Refused. “For Jerusalem is failed and Judah fallen, because their tongue and their deeds (are) against Jehovah, to embitter (insult) the eyes of His glory,” (v. 8, Heb.). “For, ” expressing “the reason why the conscripted man refuses to accept the reins of public office” (E.J. Young). For the ruin (v. 3) of any nation, generally, it has only itself to thank, and that because of its profane and blasphemous offending of the holiness and glory of God. There is no exception with the nation whose God is the Lord.

I.THE CONFOUNDING OF AHAZ (vv. 1-2). 1. In a dangerous plot against Jerusalem (1). A conspiracy arose against the kingdom of Judah. Two monarchs were in league plotting Judah’s destruction. Ahaz the king was in trouble. But in a strategic place he is met by Isaiah the prophet with a message of assurance that the threatened invasion would not succeed, for God would destroy both enemy nations (1-9). 

“And He shall judge among the goyim and shall do justice to many peoples; and they shall forge their swords to ploughshares and their spears to pruning-knives. Goi shall not lift up sword against goi, and neither shall they learn war again. “House of Jacob, Come! and we shall walk in the light of Jehovah!” (Isa. 2:4-5).

“For Thou hast rejected Thy people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled from the East, and (with) sorcerers, like the Philistines: and with the children of foreigners they go hand in hand.” Isaiah 2:6

The prophet had just expressed his great thought, “Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well with him,” setting down a magnificent truth. It is well with the righteous because his greatest trouble is past. His present sufferings are but a pin-prick compared to the promised glories of heaven. It is well with the righteous because his next worst trouble is doomed. The penalty of his sin is removed. The power of sin, which always plagues him, is conquered. Indwelling sin is defeated in the blood of Christ. For the Cross is the spear thrust through the heart...

I. Israel, Unreformed, Threatened with Punishment. “Whereupon can ye be stricken any more, increasing turning away?” (v. 5), i.e., going on, heaping apostasy to apostasy. If their purpose had been to make themselves abjectly miserable, they could not have more thoroughly succeeded. Upon what part of them can they stand another blow? They have been beaten black and blue over every inch of their bodies.

“Now Jehovah says, because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched out throat, and with ogling eyes they go, walking and tripping, and with their feet they make a tinkling, there-fore Adonai will make the crown (of the head) of the daughters of Zion bald, and Jehovah will uncover their nakedness.” 

I. The Call to Hear His Word (10).