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1. The general drift of the parable is obvious. The husbandman does not forever vex and wound the tender bosom of the earth with the keen edge of the ploughshare or the sharp teeth of the harrow. He ploughs only that he may sow; he harrows the ground only that he may produce a level and unclodded surface on which to cast his seeds. And when he sows, he gives to every seed its appropriate place and usage. He scatters the dill and strews the cummin broadcast; but the wheat he sets, according to the Oriental fashion, in long rows, and the barley in a place specially marked out for it, so marked as to exclude the borders of the field: and here, along the edges of the field, where it is most likely to be bitten or trampled by passing beasts, he sows the less valuable spelt. And this he does because God has given him discretion. Is God, then, less wise than the husbandman whom He has taught? So, again, when the harvest is gathered in, the wise husbandman still varies and adapts his means to his end. He does not go on threshing "forever"; his single aim is to separate the chaff from the wheat, to save as much of the grain as he can, and to save it in the best condition he can, that it may be gathered into his garner. And he thus varies his modes of treatment, and adapts them to the several kinds of seeds, because God has given him sagacity and wisdom. Will God, then, who gave the husbandman this sagacity, be less observant of time and measure? Will He crush and waste the precious grain of His threshing floor?

2. Nor is the historical application of the parable difficult to recover. Isaiah had to warn and admonish the chosen nation at a period in which they were utterly corrupt, when the judges took bribes and the priests mocked at the Word of the Lord, and the very prophets saw "lying visions," or pretended to see them, and the people had made a covenant with Death and Hades. He had to threaten them with disaster on disaster. So corrupt were they, however, that they made a jest of him for his fidelity to their King and God. In their drunken carousals the priests and prophets mimicked and burlesqued the simplicity and directness of his speech, and turned his warnings into a theme for laughter and derision. But even in this godless and scoffing age there was a "remnant" faithful among the faithless, who were true to God and to the Word which He sent by the prophet. Were they to be consumed in the fire of the Divine indignation against the popular sins? Or, if they were preserved, were they to stand by and see the elect nation destroyed out of its place? Was there no hope for them? none even for the nation at large! There was hope; and that they might see it and be sustained by it in the cloudy and dark day of judgment, Isaiah discloses to them, in his parable, the secret of the Divine administration, namely, that judgment is mercy, and that it prepares the way for a mercy more open and full than itself. But the prophet has a message to the faithful remnant, as well as to the nation at large. And to them his message is, that even the good grain must be threshed, that even those who are faithful to Jehovah must share in the judgments which are about to fall on the entire nation. They cannot be exempted from the misery of the time; they must suffer, as for their own sins, so also for the sins of their neighbours. But this is their comfort, that the Divine Husbandman measures out His strokes with wisdom and grace. God is but separating that which is good in those whom He loves from that which is evil and imperfect in them; and, even in this process of separation, He will not lay upon them more than they are able to bear.

3. So that, in this parable, the mystery of the Divine providence is laid open, its secret disclosed. All ploughing is for sowing; all threshing is intended for the preservation of the grain. When God chastens us, it is not because He means to destroy us, but because He has set His heart on saving us, because He has appointed us to life and not to death. Nor are the ordinances and chastening of His providence arbitrary and without discrimination. He employs various methods, sends "sorrows of all sorts and sizes," that He may adapt Himself to every man's needs, and to all our varieties of place, time, and circumstance. "Cure sin and you cure sorrow," say the reason and conscience of the world: and the sorrow comes that the sin may be cured, adds the prophet; the very miseries that spring from evil are intended to eradicate the evil from which they spring. It was in the strength of this sublime conception of the ministry of pain and sorrow that the Hebrew prophets met the terrible miseries they were called to endure and behold.

(S. Cox, D. D.)

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KJV: Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.

WEB: Give ear, and hear my voice! Listen, and hear my speech!