Isaiah 41:14-16 Fear not, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel; I will help you, said the LORD, and your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. A fine touch is lost in the English here. In the Hebrew, Israel is addressed in the feminine gender, as a weak and suffering woman. It is not so in the preceding verses, and in ver. 15 the prophet significantly reverts to the masculine (Cheyne). I. HUMILITY THE CONDITION OF STRENGTH. Jacob is a worm, Israel a "petty folk." This was, we know, a clear historic fact. It was not by armies or by navies, by numerous fortresses and serried ranks, and an impregnable land, that she was strong. She was "diminutive Israel," as the LXX. render. At this moment she might well be thought of as a poor, trembling, defenceless woman. In that one simple oracle, "I will help thee, saith Jehovah," realized, lay her might; and all possible might was there. It is not in human nature to depend where it can stand alone. It is when we feel "what worthless worms are we," that the contrast of God's almightiness comes upon us, and the sense that we may connect ourselves with it. Thrown upon our own resources, and finding them at an end, we "catch at God's skirts, and pray." Then it is no longer we, but our enemies, who fear. We cannot have too low an opinion of ourselves, nor too high an opinion of God. He is here described as the Goel, the Defender of the right, the Avenger of the wrongs of his people. He is the redeeming God (Isaiah 47:3, 4; Jeremiah 50:33, 34). The verbal root means to ransom by the payment of a price, and to deliver from danger, distress, captivity. II. WEAKNESS MADE STRONG. This petty nation shall become a power against which nothing can stand. Israel becomes as a threshing-roller, sharp, new, and double-edged, which shall crush the mountains, and make the hills as chaff; he shall winnow the nations, and they shall be scattered. With the two-edged sword in their hand, they will execute vengeance on the heathen, and punishments on the people, binding their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron (Psalm 149.). Perhaps the allusion is to the Maccabean period, and to the glorious wars of the Jews under the priests Simon and Hyrcanus, against the kings of Syria. The oracle which begins by touching the chord of humility ends with the note of boasting: "Thou shalt exult in Jehovah, and in Israel's Holy One shalt make thy boast" Thus the spirit of the true Israel is the spirit of true religion, the spirit of Christ exemplified in St. Paul: "I will glory in infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." - J. Parallel Verses KJV: Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. |
    |