Introduction: Thinking in a single plane (eg an x-y graph) and thinking with an added dimension (an x-y-z graph) makes the problem and the answer very different! We tend, as human beings, to easily forget that we live in a ‘space’ which is anything but a flat plane.We can easily remember the ups and downs on the surface of our lives, but often, and I think the devil has something to do with it, we forget that there is a vertical component to life. And that vertical component reaches rapidly into eternity which has a different time scale from the strictly 24 hour day, 7 day week, 52 week year of living on planet earth! You can read this prophecy with an understanding which excludes eternity, but I suggest that there is also a readily discernible ‘eternal’ understanding of this passage. The first line of this prophecy reads ‘Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty.‘ Which ‘king’ is this referring to? Hezekiah was king at the time of which this prophecy speaks. He was considered a ‘good’ king but ended up doing ‘bad’ things – he was a vassal to Sennacherib, paying a huge tribute so that he stayed ‘boxed up’ in Jerusalem! I, and many others, consider Jesus of Nazareth appointed by God as the last and present King of the Jews. History tells us that between Hezekiah and Jesus there were seven other kings who sat on the throne in Jerusalem and six of these history records as ‘bad’! You will remember that Pilate had nailed above Jesus’ head, on the cross, ‘King of the Jews’. So who do you think that this first line is referring to?
Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty;
they will see a land that stretches afar.
Your heart will muse on the terror:
“Where is he who counted, where is he who weighed the tribute?
Where is he who counted the towers?”
You will see no more the insolent people,
the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend,
stammering in a tongue that you cannot understand.
Behold Zion, the city of our appointed feasts!
Your eyes will see Jerusalem,
an untroubled habitation, an immovable tent,
whose stakes will never be plucked up,
nor will any of its cords be broken.
But there the LORD in majesty will be for us
a place of broad rivers and streams,
where no galley with oars can go,
nor majestic ship can pass. – war ships needed deep water.
For the LORD is our judge; the LORD is our lawgiver;
the LORD is our king; he will save us.
Your cords hang loose; – do ‘cords’ refer to ‘tackling ropes’, which unless tied firmly cannot hold sails in place or possibly, metaphorically, laws in place to keep justice ‘rolling down like a river‘?
they cannot hold the mast firm in its place
or keep the sail spread out.
Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided;
even the lame will take the prey. – Do you see this being true when the Jews will see that Jesus is the King of the Jews? Can you see the Jews as ever seeing Jesus as their Messianic King?
And no inhabitant will say, “I am sick”;
the people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity. – Can you remember this happening in the history of the Jews, up to this time? Could it be referring to the future?
Proverbs 1: 20-22 – Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? – The word ‘Wisdom’ in Proverbs is thought by most to refer to the Messiah.
Prayer: Help me God not to miss what You want me to read in Your Word, nor to read into it things which are untrue.
As I read it! 