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Yet - (literally, and) the number of the children of Israel … Light springeth out of darkness; joy out of sorrow; mercy out of chastisement; life out of death. And so Holy Scripture commonly, upon the threat of punishment, promises blessings to the penitent “Very nigh to the severest displeasure is the dispersion of sorrows and the promised close of darkness.” What God takes away, He replaces with usury; things of time by things eternal; outward goods and gifts and privileges by inward; an earthly kingdom by heaven. Both Peter 1 Peter 2:10 and Paul Romans 9:25-26 tell us that this prophecy is already, in Christ, fulfilled in those of Israel, who were the true Israel, or of the Gentiles, to whom the promise was made Genesis 22:18, “In thy Seed shall all the nations be blessed,” and who, whether Jews or Gentiles, believed in Him. The Gentiles were adopted into the Church, which, at the Day of Pentecost, was formed of the Jews, and in which Jews and Gentiles became one in Christ Galatians 3:28. Yet of the Jews alone, not only did “many tens of thousands in Jerusalem believe” Acts 21:20, but Peter and James both write “to the dispersed of the ten tribes” James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1; and the Apostles themselves were Jews. Although, then, those Jews who believed in Christ were few in comparison of those who rejected Him, yet they were, in themselves, many, and, through those who, in Christ Jesus, were “begotten by them through the Gospel” 1 Corinthians 4:15, they were numberless. Yet this prophecy, although accomplished in part, will, according to Paul Romans 11:25-26, be yet more completely fulfilled in the end.

In the place where it was said - (or where it shall be said, i. e., at the first) unto them, ye are not My people, there it shall, in after-time, be said unto them, ye are the sons of the living God Both the times here spoken of by the prophet were yet future, for Israel, although they had apostatised from God, had not yet been disowned by God, who was still sending to them prophets, to reclaim them. They ceased to be owned as God‘s people, when, being dispersed abroad, they had no share in the sacrifices, no temple-worship, no prophets, no typical reconciliation for sin. God took no more notice of them than the pagan. The prophet then speaks of two futures; one, when it shall be said to them, “ye are not My people;” and a yet further future, in which it should he said, “ye are the sons of the living God.” The place of both was to be the same. The place of their rejection, the dispersion, was to be the place of their restoration. And so Peter says that this Scripture was fulfilled in them, while still “scattered abroad through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” The place, then, where they shall be called the “sons of the living God,” is, wheresoever they should believe in Christ. Although separated in body, they were united by faith. And so it shall be unto the end. “Nothing now constraineth to go up to Jerusalem, and still to seek for the temple of stones, for neither will they worship God, as aforetime, by sacrifices of sheep or oxen; but their worship will be faith in Christ and in His commandments, and the sanctification in the Spirit, and the regeneration through Holy Baptism, making the glory of sonship their‘s, who are worthy thereof and are called thereto by the Lord”.

It shall be said, ye are the sons of the living God - It was the special sin of Israel, the source of all his other sins, that he had left the “living God,” to serve dead idols. In the times of the Gospel, not only should he own God as his God, but he should have the greatest of all gifts, that the living God, the fountain of all life, of the life of nature, of grace, of glory, should be his Father, and as being his Father, should communicate to him that life, which he has and is. For He who is life, imparts life. God doth not only pour into the souls of His elect, grace and faith, hope and love, or all the manifold gifts of His Spirit, but He, the living God, maketh them to he His living sons, by His Spirit dwelling in them, by whom He adopteth them as His sons, through whom He giveth them grace. For by His Spirit He adopteth them as sons. “We have received the spirit of adoption of sows, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. And if sons, then heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ” Romans 8:15.

God not only giveth us grace, but adopteth us as sons. He not only accounteth us, but He maketh us sons; He maketh us sons, not outwardly, but inwardly; not by inward grace only, but by His Spirit: not only by the birth from the Spirit, but in the Only-Begotten Son; sons of God, because members of Christ, the Son of God; sons of God, by adoption, as Christ is by Nature; but actual sons of God, as Christ is actually and eternally the Son of God. God is our Father, not by nature, but by grace; yet He is really our Father, since we are born of Him, “sons of the living God,” born of the Spirit. He giveth us of His Substance, His Nature, although not by nature; not united with us, (as it is, personally, with His Son,) but dwelling in us, and making us “partakers of the Divine Nature.” “Sons of the living God” must be living by Him and to Him, by His life, yea, through Himself living in them, as our Saviour saith, “If any man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him” John 14:23.

Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together - A little image of this union was seen after the captivity in Babylon, when some of the children of Israel, i. e., of the ten tribes, were united to Judah on his return, and the great schism of the two kingdoms came to an end. More fully, both literal Judah and Israel were gathered into one in the one Church of Christ, and all the spiritual Judah and Israel; i. e., as many of the Gentiles as, by following the faith, became the sons of faithful Abraham, and heirs of the promise to him.

And shall make themselves one Head - The act of God is named first, “they shall be gathered;” for without God we can do nothing. Then follows the act of their own consent, “they shall make themselves one Head;” for without us God doth nothing in us. God gathereth, by the call of His grace; they make to themselves one Head, by obeying His call, and submitting themselves to Christ, the one Head of the mystical body, the Church, who are His members. In like way, Ezekiel foretells of Christ, of the seed of David, under the name of David; “I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even My servant David; and I the Lord will be their God, and My servant David a Prince among them” Ezekiel 34:23-24; and again; “I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms anymore at all” Ezekiel 37:22. But this was not wholly fulfilled, until Christ came, for after the captivity they were under Zorobabel as chief, and Joshua as high priest.

And shall come up out of the land - To “come up” or “go up” is a title of dignity; from where, in our time, people are said to go up to the metropolis, or the University; and in Holy Scripture, to “come up,” or “go up,” out of Egypt (Genesis 13:1; Genesis 45:25, etc.), or Assyria 2 Kings 17:3; 2 Kings 18:9, 2 Kings 18:13; Isaiah 36:1, Isaiah 36:10, or Babylon 2 Kings 24:1; Ezra 2:1; Ezra 7:6; Nehemiah 7:6; Nehemiah 12:1, to the land of promise, or from the rest of the land to the place which God chose Exodus 34:24 to place His name there, Shiloh, 1 Samuel 1:22, or, afterward, Jerusalem; (2 Samuel 19:34; 1 Kings 12:27-28; Psalm 122:4, etc.) and it is foretold that “the mountain of the Lord‘s house shall be exalted above the hills; and many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord” Isaiah 2:2-3; Micah 4:1-2. The land from which they should go up is, primarily and in image, Babylon, from where God restored the two tribes; but, in truth and fully, it is the whole aggregate of lands, the earth, the great “city of confusion,” which Babel designates. Out of which they shall go up, “not with their feet but with their affections,” to the “city set upon a hill” Matthew 5:14, “the heavenly Jerusalem” Hebrews 12:22, and heaven itself, where we are “made to sit together with Christ” Ephesians 2:6, and where “our conversation is” Philemon 3:20, that where He is, there may we “His servants be” John 12:26. They ascend in mind above the earth and the things of earth, and the lowness of carnal desires, that so they may, in the end, come up out of the earth, “to meet the Lord in the air, and forever be with the Lord” 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

For great is the day of Jezreel - God had denounced woe on Israel, under the names of the three children of the prophet, Jezreel, Lo-Ammi, Lo-Ruhamah; and now, under those three names, He promises the reversal of that sentence, in Christ. He begins with the name, under which he had begun to pronounce the woe, the first son, Jezreel. “Jezreel” means “God shall sow,” either for increase, or to scatter. When God threatened, “Jezreel” necessarily meant, “God shall scatter;” here, when God reverses His threatening, it means, “God shall sow.” But the issue of the seed is either single, as in human birth, or manifold, as in the seed-corn. Hence, it is used either of Him who was eminently, “the Seed of Abraham, the Seed of the woman,” or the manifold harvest, which He, the seed-corn John 12:24, should bring forth, when sown in the earth, by His vicarious Death. It means, then, Christ or His Church. Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God before all worlds, was, in time, also “conceived by the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary,” the Son of God Alone, in a way in which no other man was born of God. Great then should be the day, when “God should sow,” or give the increase in mercy, as before He scattered them, in His displeasure.

The Great Day wherein “God should sow, was, first, the day which the Lord hath made” Psalm 118:24, the Incarnation, in which God the Son became Man, “the seed of the woman;” then, it was the Passion, in which, like a seed-corn, He was sown in the earth; then, the Resurrection, when He rose, “the Firstborn among many brethren;” then, all the days in which “He bare much fruit.” It is the one day of salvation, in which, generation after generation, a new seed hath been or “shall be born” unto Him, and “shall serve Him” Psalm 22:30-31. Even unto the end, every time of any special growth of the Church every conversion of Pagan tribe or people, is “a day of Jezereel,” a day in which “the Lord soweth.” Great, wonderful, glorious, thrice-blessed is the day of Christ, for in it He hath done great things for us, gathering together under Himself, the Head, those scattered abroad, “without hope and without God in the world;” making “not My people” into “My people” and those not beloved into His “beloved,” the objects of His tender, yearning compassion, full of His grace and mercy. For so it follows,

Yet - (literally, and) the number of the children of Israel … Light springeth out of darkness; joy out of sorrow; mercy out of chastisement; life out of death. And so Holy Scripture commonly, upon the threat of punishment, promises blessings to the penitent “Very nigh to the severest displeasure is the dispersion of sorrows and the promised close of darkness.” What God takes away, He replaces with usury; things of time by things eternal; outward goods and gifts and privileges by inward; an earthly kingdom by heaven. Both Peter 1 Peter 2:10 and Paul Romans 9:25-26 tell us that this prophecy is already, in Christ, fulfilled in those of Israel, who were the true Israel, or of the Gentiles, to whom the promise was made Genesis 22:18, “In thy Seed shall all the nations be blessed,” and who, whether Jews or Gentiles, believed in Him. The Gentiles were adopted into the Church, which, at the Day of Pentecost, was formed of the Jews, and in which Jews and Gentiles became one in Christ Galatians 3:28. Yet of the Jews alone, not only did “many tens of thousands in Jerusalem believe” Acts 21:20, but Peter and James both write “to the dispersed of the ten tribes” James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1; and the Apostles themselves were Jews. Although, then, those Jews who believed in Christ were few in comparison of those who rejected Him, yet they were, in themselves, many, and, through those who, in Christ Jesus, were “begotten by them through the Gospel” 1 Corinthians 4:15, they were numberless. Yet this prophecy, although accomplished in part, will, according to Paul Romans 11:25-26, be yet more completely fulfilled in the end.

In the place where it was said - (or where it shall be said, i. e., at the first) unto them, ye are not My people, there it shall, in after-time, be said unto them, ye are the sons of the living God Both the times here spoken of by the prophet were yet future, for Israel, although they had apostatised from God, had not yet been disowned by God, who was still sending to them prophets, to reclaim them. They ceased to be owned as God‘s people, when, being dispersed abroad, they had no share in the sacrifices, no temple-worship, no prophets, no typical reconciliation for sin. God took no more notice of them than the pagan. The prophet then speaks of two futures; one, when it shall be said to them, “ye are not My people;” and a yet further future, in which it should he said, “ye are the sons of the living God.” The place of both was to be the same. The place of their rejection, the dispersion, was to be the place of their restoration. And so Peter says that this Scripture was fulfilled in them, while still “scattered abroad through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” The place, then, where they shall be called the “sons of the living God,” is, wheresoever they should believe in Christ. Although separated in body, they were united by faith. And so it shall be unto the end. “Nothing now constraineth to go up to Jerusalem, and still to seek for the temple of stones, for neither will they worship God, as aforetime, by sacrifices of sheep or oxen; but their worship will be faith in Christ and in His commandments, and the sanctification in the Spirit, and the regeneration through Holy Baptism, making the glory of sonship their‘s, who are worthy thereof and are called thereto by the Lord”.

It shall be said, ye are the sons of the living God - It was the special sin of Israel, the source of all his other sins, that he had left the “living God,” to serve dead idols. In the times of the Gospel, not only should he own God as his God, but he should have the greatest of all gifts, that the living God, the fountain of all life, of the life of nature, of grace, of glory, should be his Father, and as being his Father, should communicate to him that life, which he has and is. For He who is life, imparts life. God doth not only pour into the souls of His elect, grace and faith, hope and love, or all the manifold gifts of His Spirit, but He, the living God, maketh them to he His living sons, by His Spirit dwelling in them, by whom He adopteth them as His sons, through whom He giveth them grace. For by His Spirit He adopteth them as sons. “We have received the spirit of adoption of sows, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. And if sons, then heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ” Romans 8:15.

God not only giveth us grace, but adopteth us as sons. He not only accounteth us, but He maketh us sons; He maketh us sons, not outwardly, but inwardly; not by inward grace only, but by His Spirit: not only by the birth from the Spirit, but in the Only-Begotten Son; sons of God, because members of Christ, the Son of God; sons of God, by adoption, as Christ is by Nature; but actual sons of God, as Christ is actually and eternally the Son of God. God is our Father, not by nature, but by grace; yet He is really our Father, since we are born of Him, “sons of the living God,” born of the Spirit. He giveth us of His Substance, His Nature, although not by nature; not united with us, (as it is, personally, with His Son,) but dwelling in us, and making us “partakers of the Divine Nature.” “Sons of the living God” must be living by Him and to Him, by His life, yea, through Himself living in them, as our Saviour saith, “If any man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him” John 14:23.

Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together - A little image of this union was seen after the captivity in Babylon, when some of the children of Israel, i. e., of the ten tribes, were united to Judah on his return, and the great schism of the two kingdoms came to an end. More fully, both literal Judah and Israel were gathered into one in the one Church of Christ, and all the spiritual Judah and Israel; i. e., as many of the Gentiles as, by following the faith, became the sons of faithful Abraham, and heirs of the promise to him.

And shall make themselves one Head - The act of God is named first, “they shall be gathered;” for without God we can do nothing. Then follows the act of their own consent, “they shall make themselves one Head;” for without us God doth nothing in us. God gathereth, by the call of His grace; they make to themselves one Head, by obeying His call, and submitting themselves to Christ, the one Head of the mystical body, the Church, who are His members. In like way, Ezekiel foretells of Christ, of the seed of David, under the name of David; “I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even My servant David; and I the Lord will be their God, and My servant David a Prince among them” Ezekiel 34:23-24; and again; “I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms anymore at all” Ezekiel 37:22. But this was not wholly fulfilled, until Christ came, for after the captivity they were under Zorobabel as chief, and Joshua as high priest.

And shall come up out of the land - To “come up” or “go up” is a title of dignity; from where, in our time, people are said to go up to the metropolis, or the University; and in Holy Scripture, to “come up,” or “go up,” out of Egypt (Genesis 13:1; Genesis 45:25, etc.), or Assyria 2 Kings 17:3; 2 Kings 18:9, 2 Kings 18:13; Isaiah 36:1, Isaiah 36:10, or Babylon 2 Kings 24:1; Ezra 2:1; Ezra 7:6; Nehemiah 7:6; Nehemiah 12:1, to the land of promise, or from the rest of the land to the place which God chose Exodus 34:24 to place His name there, Shiloh, 1 Samuel 1:22, or, afterward, Jerusalem; (2 Samuel 19:34; 1 Kings 12:27-28; Psalm 122:4, etc.) and it is foretold that “the mountain of the Lord‘s house shall be exalted above the hills; and many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord” Isaiah 2:2-3; Micah 4:1-2. The land from which they should go up is, primarily and in image, Babylon, from where God restored the two tribes; but, in truth and fully, it is the whole aggregate of lands, the earth, the great “city of confusion,” which Babel designates. Out of which they shall go up, “not with their feet but with their affections,” to the “city set upon a hill” Matthew 5:14, “the heavenly Jerusalem” Hebrews 12:22, and heaven itself, where we are “made to sit together with Christ” Ephesians 2:6, and where “our conversation is” Philemon 3:20, that where He is, there may we “His servants be” John 12:26. They ascend in mind above the earth and the things of earth, and the lowness of carnal desires, that so they may, in the end, come up out of the earth, “to meet the Lord in the air, and forever be with the Lord” 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

For great is the day of Jezreel - God had denounced woe on Israel, under the names of the three children of the prophet, Jezreel, Lo-Ammi, Lo-Ruhamah; and now, under those three names, He promises the reversal of that sentence, in Christ. He begins with the name, under which he had begun to pronounce the woe, the first son, Jezreel. “Jezreel” means “God shall sow,” either for increase, or to scatter. When God threatened, “Jezreel” necessarily meant, “God shall scatter;” here, when God reverses His threatening, it means, “God shall sow.” But the issue of the seed is either single, as in human birth, or manifold, as in the seed-corn. Hence, it is used either of Him who was eminently, “the Seed of Abraham, the Seed of the woman,” or the manifold harvest, which He, the seed-corn John 12:24, should bring forth, when sown in the earth, by His vicarious Death. It means, then, Christ or His Church. Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God before all worlds, was, in time, also “conceived by the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary,” the Son of God Alone, in a way in which no other man was born of God. Great then should be the day, when “God should sow,” or give the increase in mercy, as before He scattered them, in His displeasure.

The Great Day wherein “God should sow, was, first, the day which the Lord hath made” Psalm 118:24, the Incarnation, in which God the Son became Man, “the seed of the woman;” then, it was the Passion, in which, like a seed-corn, He was sown in the earth; then, the Resurrection, when He rose, “the Firstborn among many brethren;” then, all the days in which “He bare much fruit.” It is the one day of salvation, in which, generation after generation, a new seed hath been or “shall be born” unto Him, and “shall serve Him” Psalm 22:30-31. Even unto the end, every time of any special growth of the Church every conversion of Pagan tribe or people, is “a day of Jezereel,” a day in which “the Lord soweth.” Great, wonderful, glorious, thrice-blessed is the day of Christ, for in it He hath done great things for us, gathering together under Himself, the Head, those scattered abroad, “without hope and without God in the world;” making “not My people” into “My people” and those not beloved into His “beloved,” the objects of His tender, yearning compassion, full of His grace and mercy. For so it follows,