Ezekiel 39:3 And I will smite your bow out of your left hand, and will cause your arrows to fall out of your right hand. God would smite the bow out of the left hand and cause the arrows to fall out of the right hand of the impious invader. He would disarm him; he would interpose to break his purpose, to arrest him in his evil course. We have here - I. GOD'S RIGHTEOUS INTERPOSITION. God Permits evil - in the form of bad institutions, wicked governments or powers, unprincipled men - to go certain lengths, and when they think they have finally established themselves he lays his hand upon them, takes away their weapons, reduces them to helplessness and humiliation. "A fool doth not understand it," but the very prosperity of the wicked is only a preparation for their utter and irrecoverable downfall; "When the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed forever" (Psalm 92:6, 7). God interposes to smite the weapons out of the hand of the disloyal and of the mischievous when: 1. He causes death to overtake the guilty before his time. And he is continually doing this; for under the action of his laws, which are at once severe and beneficent, the vicious man is the victim of his vice and the violent man of his violence. The one can sow no more of his pernicious seed, and the other can do no more of his lawless harm, because God has smitten them, and their weapons fall from their hand. 2. He makes the unprincipled adventurer to suffer an irretrievable disaster; when the man who has climbed to a throne by usurpation and bloodshed, and wielded authority in the exercise of despotic power, suffers some disaster which sends him to the lonely rock or to the quiet country house for the rest of his days. 3. He breaks the schemes of the wily plotter; when some dissatisfied, and consequently malignant and even (it may be) murderous citizen determines to wreak his vengeance on those whom he takes to be his enemies, and when, in the midst of his machinations, his plans are discovered and overthrown. (1) Let the wicked pause before they begin their wicked course. They take many things into the account; let them not leave us, is one out of their reckoning, that when they have reached the field of their proposed achievement, though they may reach it well armed and eager for the fight, there may come down upon them, out of the heavens, a blow which will smite their weapons out of their hand, and leave them "naked to their enemies." (2) Let the righteous hope, even if they be outnumbered and out-weaponed. It is not every well-equipped army that wins the battle. Victory does not necessarily go with the latest rifles and the cannon that carry the furthest. There is one Power that presides over all the forces that are at work; when he will and at he will, he will interpose on behalf of his children, and those who seemed so strong and so invincible will stand like a disarmed soldier in the midst and in the power of his enemies. It is worth while, by way of contrast, to glance at - II. GOD'S GRACIOUS RESUMPTION. He who "smites the bow out of the hand" of the enemy is the One who gently and graciously takes the sword out of the hand of his own soldiers, that he may place on their head the "crown of righteousness," the "crown of life." When God sends the feebleness which can do no more active work below, or when he comes to us in death, he resumes the weapon he once put into our hands, and either (in the one case) bids us wait his time and our reward, or (in the other) he takes us where a stronger and a wiser hand will wield a far better weapon in a much nobler sphere. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. |
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