widow. If sin be harboured within the walls, lamentation and mourning are near her gates.
CHAP. IV.
In this chapter, we have, I. A threatening of the paucity and scarceness of men, (v. 1.) which might fitly enough have been added to the close of the foregoing chapter, to which it has a plain reference. II. A promise of the restoration of Jerusalem's peace and purity, righteousness and safety, in the days of the Messiah, v. 2..6. Thus, in wrath, mercy is remembered, and gospel grace is a sovereign relief, in reference to the terrors of the law, and the desolations made by sin.
1.AND in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.
It was threatened (ch. iii. 25.) that the mighty men should fall by the sword in war; and it was threatened as a punishment to the women that affected gaiety, and a loose sort of conversation. Now here we have the effect and consequence of that great slaughter of men;
1. That, though Providence has so wisely ordered that, communibus annis—on an average of years, there is nearly an equal number of males and females born into the world, yet through the devastations made by war, there should scarcely be one man in seven left alive. As there are deaths attending the bringing forth of children, which are peculiar to the woman, who was first in the transgression, so, to balance that, there are deaths peculiar to men; those by the sword in the high places of the field, which perhaps devour more than childbed does. Here it is foretold, that such multitudes of men should be cut off, that there should be seven women to one man.
2. That, by reason of the scarcity of men, though marriage should be kept up, for the raising of recruits, and the preserving of the race of mankind upon earth, yet the usual method of it should be quite altered; that whereas men ordinarily, make their court to the women, the women should now take hold of the men, foolishly fearing (as Lot's daughters did, when they saw the ruin of Sodom, and perhaps thought it reached further than it did) that in a little time there would be none left; (Gen. xix. 31.) and that, whereas women naturally hate to come in sharers with others, seven should now, by consent, become the wives of one man; and that, whereas, by the law, the husband was obliged to provide food and raiment for his wife, (Exod. xxi. 10.) which with many would be the most powerful argument against multiplying wives, these women will be bound to find themselves, they will eat bread of their own earning, and wear apparel of their own working; and the man they court shall be at no expense with them, only they desire to be called his wives, to take away the reproach of a single life. They are willing to be wives upon any terms, though ever so unreasonable; and perhaps the rather, because in these troublesome times it would be a kindness to them to have a husband for their protector. St. Paul, on the contrary, in the time of distress, thinks the single state preferable, 1 Cor. vii. 26. It were well if this were not introduced here partly as a reflection upon the daughters of Zion, that, notwithstanding the humbling providences they were under, (ch. iii. 18.) they remained unhumbled, and, instead of repenting of their pride and vanity, when God was contending with them for it, all their care was to get them husbands—that modesty, which is the greatest beauty of the fair sex, was forgotten, and with them the reproach of vice was nothing to the reproach of virginity; a sad symptom of the irrecoverable desolations of virtue.
2. In that day shall the Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. 3. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: 4. When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. 5. And the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence. 6. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.
By the foregoing threatenings, Jerusalem is brought into a very deplorable condition; every thing looks melancholy: but here the sun breaks out from behind the cloud; many exceeding great and precious promises we have in these verses, giving assurance of comfort which may be discerned through the troubles, and of happy days which shall come after them. And these certainly point at the kingdom of the Messiah, and the great redemption to be wrought out by him, under the figure and type of the restoration of Judah and Jerusalem by the reforming reign of Hezekiah after Ahaz, and the return out of their captivity in Babylon; to both which it may have some reference, but chiefly to Christ.
It is here promised, as the issue of all these troubles,
I. That God will raise up a righteous Branch, which should produce fruits of righteousness; (v. 2.) In that day, that same day, at that very time, when Jerusalem shall be destroyed, and the Jewish nation extirpated and dispersed, the kingdom of the Messiah shall be set up; and then shall be the reviving of the church, when every one shall fear the utter ruin of it.
1. Christ himself shall be exalted; he is the Branch of the Lord, the Man, the Branch: it is one of his prophetical names, my Servant, the Branch, (Zech. iii. 8.—vi. 12.) the Branch of righteousness, (Jer. xxiii. 5.—xxxiii. 15.) a Branch out of the stem of Jesse; (ch. xi. 1.) and that, as some think, is alluded to when he is called a Nazarene, Matth. ii. 23. Here he is called the Branch of the Lord, because planted by his power, and flourishing to his praise. The ancient Chaldee Paraphrase here reads it, The Christ, or Messiah of the Lord. He shall be the Beauty, and Glory, and Joy. (1.) He shall himself be advanced to the joy set before him, and the glory which he had with the Father before the world was. He that was a Reproach of men, and whose visage was marred more than any man's, is now, in the upper world, beautiful and glorious, as the sun in his strength, admired and adored by angels. (2.) He shall be beautiful and glorious in the esteem of all believers, shall gain an interest in the world, and a name among men, above every name. To them that believe he is precious, he is an Honour, (1 Pet. ii. 7.) the Fairest of ten thousand, (Cant. v. 10.) and altogether glorious. Let us rejoice that he is so, and let him be so to us.
