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We must take ver. 12 as invocatory rather than indicative. The prophet speaks suitably in the language of apostrophe as he refers to the throne of Jehovah and the holy heights where he dwells. "O throne of glory, height of beginning, place of our sanctuary!" It will be felt that this apostrophe is well fitted to make the Hope of Israel a source of real hope in the hearts of Israel.

I. THE THRONE OF GLORY. This may be taken as having, by contrast, a double reference. He who sits on this throne is the Deity, Jehovah; hence all the seats of the Gentile gods may in like manner be considered as thrones. And because he who sits on a throne is reckoned as a king, there is also a contrast with human kings. This reference to the throne of glory amounts, therefore, to a condemnation of all idol shrines and human thrones as places to be ashamed of. The shrines were richly decorated and regarded with the utmost veneration, but this did not make them glorious. The practices of those connected with the shrines and the character of the worshippers showed that instead of glory there was shame. It has been the mark of all who have turned from formal idolatry or from the equally real idolatry of a worldly spirit to the living God, the God of Sinai and the tabernacle, of Calvary and of Pentecost, that they have become more and more ashamed of their ungodly past. Its defilement and unworthiness have been seen in a new light and with new eyes. When the slave becomes a freeman, servitude is more and more seen to be inexpressibly degrading. And so with regard to the thrones of human kings: these are just the places where human selfishness and pride are most conspicuous. To see how base and fiendish a man can become, we have only to select from the occupants of thrones. It is not meant that kings have been worse than common men; but their elevated position has both enlarged their opportunities for mischief, and also exposed them to the gaze of all succeeding generations. A Tiberius or a Nero gets an immortality of infamy, whereas an obscure villain of the same age passes swiftly into oblivion. Those kings who have really glorified thrones did so only as far as they were viceroys to him who is the King of kings. Human thrones may or may not be thrones of glory so far as glory can belong to the creature. Jehovah's throne must be glorious seeing that it is forever transfigured with the effulgence of him who sits thereon.

II. THE HEIGHT OF BEGINNING. "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." It is man coming in afterwards who has misemployed and degraded what God fashioned with certain Divine and supremely beneficial ends in view. Out of that which God has made for his glory man raises up things to glorify himself. The proudest system of idolatry, the system most deeply rooted in the hearts of millions, is but of yesterday when compared with those heavens which are God's throne and that earth which is his footstool. Measured against this height of beginning, the most ancient of human families is only an upstart. It is like the mushroom of a night when set over against some immemorial tree. The abode where and whence the glory of Jehovah is manifested is not a Babel edifice, which, however high it may rise, is humiliatingly conditioned by the unstable foundation on which it rests. Human power, at the summit of its splendor, has traversed and conquered large tracts of the earth; and so kings get the name of great; but the greatness is only a momentary, unsubstantial swelling. Their power, like that of the sudden torrent, swiftly passes away. One can imagine how the prophet, while he talked of this height of beginning, looked to the heavens, so unaffected by all the strife and pride of the generations which succeed one another in this lower world. Jehovah has not climbed through long struggles to his height of glory. There may be evolution and graduation among the creatures of his hand, but such conceptions of progress are nothing less than blasphemous when we try to apply them to him.

III. THE PLACE OF OUR SANCTUARY. The place which God had condescended to make holy in his special connection with Israel - the place where the Ark of the Covenant rested - had become also a place (the history of Israel being witness) where the people of Israel might have every confidence in God. The temples of idols had not an invariable connection with the triumphs of their worshippers; but just in proportion as Israel honored the Ark of the Covenant and the God of the ark, in the same proportion they were made to see the effect of their conduct in triumph over their enemies and success in their own affairs. It was because they forsook the ark that they themselves were forsaken in humiliation, adversity, and shame. Not, of course, that the prophet is thinking of the ark only here. The true place of sanctuary is also in his mind - the invisible abode of the invisible Jehovah. - Y.

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KJV: A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.

WEB: A glorious throne, [set] on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.