Isaiah 28:22 Now therefore be you not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption… In the tropical forests of South America, where everything climbs, and everything seeks to overcome everything else, there is a curious class of plants, to which the natives give the name of lianas or bush ropes. They are creeping plants, and twine round large trees in order to be lifted up above the dense mass of vegetation into the pure air and bright sunshine overhead. The lianas do not belong to the same family of plants; often there are great differences between their leaves and flowers; but they have this peculiarity in common, that they all climb round certain trees to reach the full, unbroken sunshine above the billowy top of the forest. When the seed of one of them, say the one known to the natives as the Sipo Matador, or Murderer Liana, is dropped by the wind or by a bird at the foot of a tree that is suitable, it begins to grow at once. At first it sends forth a slender, thread-like stem, that leans upon the tree for support. At this stage it is soft and brittle, and looks like a vein of sap flowing and hardening as it flows, and a child's finger could snap it across with ease. But as it grows and lengthens it becomes thicker and tougher, and twines itself round the tree like a strongly twisted cable, composed of several strands. Its grasp of the tree becomes tighter the older it grows; and by and by the tree becomes strangled by its thick bands, which it would require an axe to cut. The leaves of the poor victim wither and fall off, the veins cannot circulate the sap through the branches, and thus it slowly dies and becomes a mere mass of dry, rotten wood, still clasped by its cruel enemy, which flourishes, green and vigorous, upon its decay. Ephraim was the noblest of the tribes of Israel But it suffered certain evil habits to grow around it. It indulged in idolatry, and covetousness, and drunkenness. And these evil habits, which might at first have been given up without any great difficulty, became at last so strong that they could not be broken, and completely bound and enslaved the people. (H. Macmillan, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth. |
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