withered, they shall be broken off: the women come and set them on fire; for it is a people of no understanding. Many days and years shall ye be troubled, ye careless women; for the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers, yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city; because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks; until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest." The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth; he hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no man. The earth mourneth and languisheth; Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down; Sharon is like a wilderness; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits." Destruction upon destruction. is cried; for the whole land is spoiled. I beheld, and lo the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord; for thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.a How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein ? I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage. Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trod x Isa. xxvii. 10, 11. F y Isa. xxxii. 10-15. den my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourneth unto me; the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to heart. The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness; no flesh shall have peace. They have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns; they have put themselves to pain, but shall not profit; and they shall be ashamed of your revenues, because of the fierce anger of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains of Israel, and to the hills, and to the rivers, and to the valleys, Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you; I will destroy your high places. In all your dwelling-places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate, and your altars shall be laid waste and made desolate; I will stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land more desolate than the wilderness towards Diblath, in all their habitations. I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses: I will also make the pomp of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be defiled. Say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of the land of Israel, They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein. Every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished. Hear this, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. That which the palmer-worm b Jer. xii. 4, 7, 10-13. c Ezek. vi. 3, 6, 14. d Ezek. vii. 24; xii. 19. Jer. xix. 8. years hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. The field is wasted, the land mourneth, and joy is withered from the sons of men. And I will restore unto you the that the locust hath eaten, and the canker-worm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer-worm. And my people shall never be ashamed. The city that went out by a thousand shall leave a hundred, and that which went out by a hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel. Seek not Bethel; Bethel shall come to nought.f Behold, I will set a plumb-line in the midst of my people. Israel: I will not pass by them any more. And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste. I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof."h Numerous and clear as these denunciations are, yet such was the long-suffering patience of God, and such the rebellious spirit of the Israelites of old, that it had become a proverb in the land, "the days are prolonged, and every vision faileth." But though that proverb ceased, when great calamities did overtake them, and a temporary desolation came over their land, yet the curses denounced against it were not obliterated by a partial and transient fulfilment, but, on the renewed and unrepented wickedness of the people, fell upon them and their land with stricter truth, and, as foretold, with sevenfold severity. Moses and all the prophets set blessings and curses before the Israelites, with the avowed purpose that e Joel i. 2-4, 10, 12; ii. 25, 26. 8 Amos vii. 8, 9. f Amos v. 3, 5. h Micah i. 6. they might choose between them. But while the prophetical writings abound with warnings, the scriptural records of Israelitish history shew how greatly these warnings were disregarded. The word of God, which is perfect work, abideth for ever: and it returns not to him void, but fulfils the purpose for which he sent it. And after the statutes and judgments of the Lord had been set before the Israelites for the space of a thousand years from the time that they were first declared, the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi," instead of speaking, even then, of repealed judgments, closes the Jewish Scriptures with this last command, "Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments ;" and, affixed to the command to remember these, the very last words of the Old Testament, which seal up the vision and the prophecies, plainly indicate that however long the God of Israel might bear with the Jews for transgressing the law, while the law only was given them, yet on their refusal to repent when the prophet, who was to be "the messenger of the Lord," would be sent unto them, the Lord would come and "smite the earth, or the land, with a curse." The term of the continuance of these judgments, and of their full completion, is distinctly marked, as commensurate with the dispersion of the Jews, and terminating with their final restoration. So long as they be in their enemies' land, their own land lieth desolate. The judgments were not to be removed from it" until the Spirit be poured (upon the Jews) from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field."k And the prophecies not only portray Judea while forsaken of the Lord, his heritage left, and given into k Isa. xxxii, 15. i Malachi iv. 4. the hands of its enemies, but they also delineate the character and condition of the dwellers therein, while its ancient inhabitants were to be scattered abroad, and ere the time come when he shall reign in Jerusalem before his ancients gloriously. Annunciations of a future and final restoration, almost uniformly accompany the curses denounced against the land. And frequent, and express as words can be, are the references throughout the prophecies to the period yet to come, when the children of Israel shall be gathered out of all nations, and when the land then, at last and for ever, brought back from desolation, and the cities, repaired after the desolations of MANY generations, and the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste, shall be no more desolate, nor the people termed forsaken any more.m After the Messiah was to be cut off, and the sacrifice and oblation to cease, the ensuing desolations were to reach even to the consummation, and till that determined shall be poured upon the desolate." And Jerusalem, as Jesus hath declared, shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.° Neither the dispersion of the Jews nor the desolation of Judea is to cease, according to the prophecies, till other evidence shall thereby be given of prophetic inspiration. The application to the present period, or to modern times, of the prophecies relative to the desolation of Judea, is thus abundantly manifest. And the more numerous they are, so much the more severe is the test which they abide. And while the Jews are not yet gathered from all the nations, nor planted in their own land to be no more pulled out of it,”—nor its destroyers and they that 1 Isa. xxiv. 1, 23. m Isa. lxi. 4. Isa. lxii. 4. n Dan. ix. 27. Ezek. xxxvi. 8, 10 ; xxxvii. 21; xxxviii. 8. |