Judges 5:31 So let all your enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goes forth in his might… If we think of the singer, of the age, and the occasion of the song, such purely spiritual, lofty words must seem very remarkable. I. Note, first, how here we have A PENETRATING INSIGHT INTO THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. This woman had been nourished upon a more or less perfect edition of what we know as the "Mosaic law." Her faith had been fed by forms. She moved amidst a world full of the cruelties and dark conceptions of a mysterious Divine power which torture heathenism apart from Christianity. She had forced her way through all that, and laid hold of the vital centre. And there, away out amidst cruelty and murder, amidst the unutterable abominations and terrors of heathenism, in the centre of a rigid system of ceremonial and retaliation, the woman's heart spoke out and taught her what was the great commandment. Deborah had got as far, in a moment of exaltation and insight, as the teaching of the apostle John, although her thought was strangely blended with the fierceness of the times in which she lived. Her approval of Jael's deed by no means warrants our approving it, but we may thankfully see that though she felt the fierce throbbing of desire for vengeance, she also felt this — "Them that love Him; that is the Alpha and Omega of all." Our love must depend on our knowledge. Deborah's knowledge was a mere skeleton outline as compared with ours. Contrast the fervour of emotional affection that manifestly throbbed in her heart with the poor, cold pulsations which we dignify by the name of love, and the contrast may put us to shame. II. Further, note THE GRAND CONCEPTION OF THE CHARACTER WHICH SUCH A LOVE PRODUCES: "Let them be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might." Think of the fierce eastern sun, with "sunbeams like swords," that springs up from the east and rushes to the zenith, and "nothing is hid from the heat thereof" — a sun the like of which we, in our cloudy skies, know little about, but which, to the Oriental, is the very emblem of splendour and of continuous victorious power. There are two things here — radiance and energy, light and might. "As the sun when he goeth forth in his strength." Deborah was a "prophetess," and people say, "What did she prophesy? "Well, she prophesied the heart of religion in reference to its essence, and, as one sees by this phrase, in reference to its effects. What is her word but a partial anticipation of Christ's saying, "Ye are the light of the world"; and of His disciple's utterance, "Ye were sometimes darkness, and now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of the light"? "Is Deborah's aspiration fulfilled about me? "Let each of us ask that. "As the sun when he goeth forth in his strength" — would anybody say that about my Christian character? Why not? Only because the springs have run low within is the stream low through the meadows. Only because the love is cold is the light feeble. There is another thing here. There is power in sunlight as well as radiance. On that the prophetess especially lays a finger. "As the sun when he goeth forth in his strength." She did not know what we know, that solar energy is the source of all energy on this earth, and that, just as in the deepest analysis "there is no power but of God," so in the material region we may say that the only force is the force of the sun, which not only stimulates vegetation and brings light and warmth — as the pre-scientific prophetess knew — but in a hundred other ways, unknown to her and known to modern science, is the author of all change, the parent of all life, and the reservoir of all energy. And so we come to this thought: the true love of God is no weak, sentimental thing, such as narrow and sectional piety has often represented it to be, but it is a power which will invigorate the whole of a man and make him strong and manly as well as gentle and gracious; being, indeed, the parent of all the so-called heroic and of all the so-called saintly virtues. If you love God you will surely be a strong man as well as an emotional and affectionate Christian. That energy is to be continuous and progressive. The sun that Deborah saw day by day spring from his station in the east and climb to his height in the heavens and ray down his beams, has been doing that for millions of years, and it will probably keep doing it for uncounted periods still. And so the Christian man, with continuity unbroken and progressive brilliance and power, should shine more and more till the unsetting noontide of the day. III. Here is A PROPHECY OF WHICH THE UTTERER WAS UNAWARE. There is a contrast drawn in the words of our text and in those immediately preceding. "So," says Deborah, after the fierce description of the slaughter — "so let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord! but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he shineth in his strength." She contrasts the transiency of the lives that pit themselves against God with the perpetuity that belongs to those which are in harmony with Him, because the livers are lovers of Him. The truth goes further than she probably knew; certainly further than she was thinking when she chanted these words. Let us widen them by other words which use the same metaphor and say, "They that be wise" — that is a shallower word than "them that love Thee" — "they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." Let us widen and deepen them by sacreder words still, for Jesus Christ laid hold of this old metaphor and said, describing the time when all the enemies shall have perished and the weeds have been flung out of the vine-yard, "Then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in the kingdom of My Father." A brilliancy that will fill heaven with new galaxies, bright beyond all that we see here, amidst the thick atmosphere and mists and clouds of the present life! (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years. |
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