Isaiah 8:19-20 And when they shall say to you, Seek to them that have familiar spirits, and to wizards that peep, and that mutter… (Isaiah 8:18-22; Isaiah 9:2): — The experience of Israel is here described in three pictures, each marking a distinct stage in that experience — I. ISRAEL REJECTING THE LIGHT. The prophet comes with a Divine message to his people. The people will not believe — 1. From inability, being unused to exercise simple trust in God. 2. From pride, for the mingling of judgment with mercy in Isaiah's message offends them. 3. Disbelieving Isaiah, and finding no help in human wisdom, they turn like Saul in his extremity, with the proverbial credulity of unbelief, to the oracles of necromancy. The old watchword, of religion, "To the law and to the testimony!" "Should not a people, seek unto their God?" are forgotten. "For those who act thus," says Isaiah, "there is no morning dawn," for they wilfully turn from the light. II. A TIME COMES WHEN ISAIAH'S WARNINGS ARE FULFILLED. Calamity, famine, distress drive the people to despair. Them is no voice of hope from their wizards and soothsayers. Haunted by the memory of the time when the watchword of faith might have saved them, they feel that they have grieved the Spirit and He is gone! "Hardly bestead and hungry they pass through the land and curse their king and their God." III. IN THE MIDST OF THEIR DESPAIR THEY LOOK UPWARDS, SCARCE KNOWING WHY. All other helpers failing, they direct towards heaven a despairing glance, as if hardly daring to think of God's help, and then at last light shines through the gloom. IV. SUCH ALSO MAY BE THE EXPERIENCE OF AN INDIVIDUAL SOUL. First, the Divine warning is despised, and the Word of God neglected, set aside as a worn-out superstition. The voice of religion seems to have lost its hold upon such a soul. Then all manner of refuges are tried, alliance with the world power — immersion in secular business; the superstition of unbelief, agnosticism, etc. All in their turn fail to alleviate the weary heartache which prompts the cry, "Who will show us any good?" The whole universe seems out of joint, and the soul hardly bestead and hungry curses its king and its God, the whole order of things in the world, and every form of religion the fake and the true. At length, in very despair, as if feeling it is no use, "for me there is no morning dawn;" the soul looks upwards. The darkness is past, the true light now shineth, the soul that walked in darkness and the shadow of death sees the salvation of the Lord. (Hugh H. Currie, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? |
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