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What is true of a converted Jew, is true also of a converted Gentile.

I. THE CHARACTER OF GODLY SORROW. It is like a parent's sorrow for the death of a child. This is a real, not a pretended sorrow. If we look into our hearts many of us will see that our sorrow for sin is all pretence. This is a deep, not a superficial or slight sorrow. We may really mourn for a friend, and yet mourn for him very little. Not so when our children die. Our grief then is pungent and bitter. It is not only in the heart, but do, as very low in it. It is a secret sorrow. Most of us, when our hearts are full, wish to be alone. Deep emotions of any kind send us to our chambers.

II. ONCE OF THE CAUSES THAT EXCITE GODLY SORROW. "Look on Me whom they have pierced." Who is the speaker here? God Himself, but God in Christ. What is meant by "looking" on Him? Outward bodily actions are made use of to describe inward operations, the actings of the mind. These penitents look on Him as "pierced." Some say the reason why the Jews are not converted is that we do not sufficiently exhibit the Lord Jesus to them in His exaltation and glory. Others say if we want to prize the Lord Jesus more, we must think of Him more as enthroned in heaven. We must not suffer men to mislead us. If we want life for our perishing souls, if we wish to have our hard hearts broken to pieces, it is on His Cross, not on His throne, that we must contemplate our Lord. And these contrite sinners look on Jesus as pierced by them. "The chastisement of our peace was on Him," so we wounded Him.

III. HOW IS IT THAT GODLY SORROW ARISES FROM THIS SOURCE? Why does looking on the crucified Lord make the believer mourn? How, I would ask, can it be other wise, as we think of our dying Lord, dying for us? Learn the high place that we ought to give sorrow for sin among the Christian graces.

(C. Bradley, M. A.)

I. THE OBJECT OR SPECTACLE PROPOUNDED. Certain it is that Christ is here meant.

1. Specify and particularise the person of Christ, by the kind and most peculiar circumstances of His death. Not a natural but a violent death. The Psalmist says, "They pierced my hands and my feet," which is only proper to the death of the Cross. The prophet intimates that his heart was pierced, and this was peculiar to Christ.

2. Sever Christ from the rest of His doings and sufferings, to see what that is which we specially are to look to — Christ pierced. The perfection of our knowledge in or touching Christ, is the knowledge of Christ pierced. Know this, you know all. In the object, two things offer themselves.

(1) The passion, or suffering itself. Consider the degree; for transfixerunt is a word of gradation; expressing the piercing, not of whips and scourges, or of nails and thorns, but of the spear point, which went through the very heart itself. May a soul be pierced? It is not a spear head of iron that entereth the soul, but a metal of another temper, the dint whereof no less goreth and woundeth the soul in proportion than those do the body. Soul-piercing includes sorrow and reproach.

II. THE PERSONS. When one is found slain, it is usual to inquire by whom he came by his death. We incline to lay the sin of Christ's death on the soldiers, the executioners; on Pilate the judge; on the people who urged Pilate; or on the elders of the Jews who animated the people. The prophet here says that they who are willed to "look upon Him," are they who "pierced Him." In every case of condemnation to death, sin, and sin only is the murderer. It was not Christ's own sin that He died for. It must have been for the sin of others that Christ Jesus was pierced. God laid on Him the "transgressions of us all." It was the sin of our polluted hands that pierced His hands; the swiftness of our feet to do evil that nailed His feet; the wicked devices of our heads that gored His head; and the wretched desires of our hearts that pierced His heart. If we feel that we were the cause of this His piercing, we ought to have remorse, to be pierced with it.

III. THE ACT OR DUTY ENJOINED. To look upon Him. A request most natural and reasonable. To this look Christ invites us. "Upon Me." Our own profit inviteth us. Our danger may move us to look. In the act itself are three things.

1. That we do it with attention.

2. That we do it oft, again and again; with iteration.

3. That we cause our nature to do it, as it were, by virtue of an injunction.In the original it is a commanding injunction. Look upon Him, and be pierced. Look upon Him, and pierce that in thee that was the cause of Christ's piercing, sin and the lusts thereof. As it was sin that gave Christ these wounds, so it was love to us that made Him receive them, being otherwise liable enough to have avoided them all. So that He was pierced with love, no less than with grid. And it was that wound of love made Him so constantly endure all the other. Which sight ought to pierce us with love too, no less than before it did with sorrow. We should join looking with believing. And believing, what is there that the eye of our hope shall not look for from Him? What would He not do for us, that for us would suffer all this? Our expectation may be reduced to these two things, — the deliverance from the evil of our present misery; and the restoring to the good of our primitive felicity Shall we always receive grace, even streams of grace, issuing from Him that is pierced, and shall there not from us issue something back again, that He may look for and receive from us, that from Him have and do daily receive so many good things? No doubt there shall; if love which pierced Him, have pierced us aright.

(Bishop Launcelot Andrewes.)

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KJV: And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

WEB: It will happen in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.