This severe condemnation of the idolatrous and vicious Zidon, coupled with the very gracious promise to Israel, with which the prophecy concludes, many instruct us -

I. WHY AND HOW GOD IS AGAINST US. "I am against thee, O Zidon" (Ver. 22). And we know that Jehovah was expressing his high displeasure and was warning of serious national disaster (Ver. 23) because of the iniquities of the state. The worst forms of religious superstition had long existed - idolatrous rites accompanied by immoral practices; the city was utterly corrupt; its condition called for Divine rebuke and chastisement. And the prophet delivers the one while he foretells the other, in the Name of the Lord. God may be "against" us. Not that he ever wishes us evil (Ezekiel 33:11); on the contrary, he always desires the return and restoration of the worst (Luke 15:7). But God is against us:

1. When our spirit and our life are wrong; when these are irreverent, immoral, unworthy, mischievous.

2. He then is seriously displeased with us, especially when his special kindness to us demands a very different return (John 3:19).

3. He

(1) rebukes us in his Word - he condemns us in the strong but yet the merciful language which his Son and his human spokesmen have uttered in his Name; and he

(2) chastens us, - he sends us, as individual souls, that which answers to the national distresses here announced (Ver. 23). He lets sickness and suffering, or defeat and disappointment, or opposition and overthrow, or bereavement and loneliness, come to our home or our heart; we are laid low; some "sword" goes through us, and we are among the slain.

II. HIS AIM JUDGMENT. Jehovah would smite Zidon, that that city, darkened in its mind by its long-continued guilt, might be enlightened; that it might understand that its licentious goddess was impotent to help in the hour of peril, and might know that God "was the Lord" (Vers. 22-24). God's purpose in permitting or in sending trouble to the home and sorrow to the soul, is restorative. He seeks to enlighten, and, by enlightening, to restore us.

1. He wishes us to understand clearly that the earthly forces and human attachments in which we have been putting our trust and seeking our satisfaction are wholly insufficient to us; that they break down when we most need their help; that they are vain; and that we are wrong.

2. He desires to lead us back to himself - to his side and to his service; to an absolute trust in his Son our Savior; and to a whole-hearted consecration to his holy service. And it is well worth while to suffer anything and everything that we may "know that he is Lord;" that we ]nay recognize in him the Savior in whom to hide, the Divine Friend whom we can love with all the strength of our soul, the Leader whom we can follow at every step, the Lord whom it is both our sacred duty and our lasting joy to serve in every sphere.

III. His PROMISE TO HIS PEOPLE. (Vers. 24, 26.) How far this prediction has been fulfilled is matter of sacred history; perhaps it is one of those promises which are only realized by "the springing and germinant" fulfillment of which Lord Bacon speaks. Beside

(1) the historical, there is

(2) the spiritual; and there is also

(3) the heavenly fulfillment.

Of these three, the second is found in the spiritual condition of those who, by a full surrender of spirit to their Divine Lord, find a perfect rest in him (Matthew 11:28; John 14:27; Philippians 4:7; Ephesians 3:16-19). The last will be found when the thorns and the briers which here are felt even in "the garden of the Lord" shall have been cut away by the strong hand of the Divine Husbandman, and there shall be beauty without decay, joy without suffering or satiety, life without any fear of death or of decline.

"Thorn without flowers; flowers on the thorn,
Then thornless, everlasting bloom.
Three crowns; - the first when Faith has worn,
And Hope the next, with brow still torn,
Love shall the last assume." = - c.

The tendency is to measure all things by a money standard. The business that cannot be ruled by Christianity is wrong. What this does for a land, if it grows unchecked, is to make men sell the best things. Phoenicia did, and the spirit of her people died. Her inhabitants became the ministers of vice in every Eastern city. And the man eaten up by love of gain is preparing for himself and all he influences a like fate. Men object that business is a sort of neutral world in which the maxims of New Testament morality cannot come into play. But if this is true, either Christianity cannot be a faith for the whole of a man's life, or the business that cannot be ruled by it is wrong. It is to rule my eating and drinking, my clothing and housing of myself and mine, my buying and selling, my work am! play. Whatsoever ye do, "buying or booking," do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. But men object today that the severity of the competition by which they are pressed makes some moral laxity in the conduct of business most difficult to avoid. They have to contend with others who are not hampered by scrupulosity in the methods by which they obtain orders or make profits. Some time ago, the Rev. Mr. Carter, the Secretary of the Christian Social Union, informs us, the Oxford branch of that society sent out a number of queries to practical men on the subject of commercial morality. In answer to the question: "Do you find it difficult to apply the principles of Christian truth and justice to the conduct of business?" two employers write: "Business is based on the gladiatorial theory of existence. If Christian truth and justice is not consistent with this, business is in a bad case." A commercial traveller writes: "Not only difficult, but impossible, for a man is not master of himself. If one would live, and avoid the bankruptcy court, one must do business on the same lines as others do, without troubling whether, the methods are in harmony with the principles of Christian truth and justice or not. A draper's assistant answers: "Extremely so. The tendency to misrepresent, deceive, or take unfair advantage under circumstances that daily offer the opportunity of so doing is generally too strong to resist where self-interest is the motive power of action, the conventional morality the only check. To me they appear to be opposing principles — the first of self-sacrifice, the second of self-interest." Another says: "If it were possible to do away with competition, the excuse and justification for a large proportion of commercial immorality would be gone." As it is, it is quite plain that honourable trade has to meet with and fight what is unjust. As Arthur Hugh Clough says in one of his poems "Thou shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms of competition."

(G. T. Forbes, M. A.).