d that the [Hebrew: ihih] in ver. 1 evidently
connects it with what immediately precedes. But the reference and
connection are far more close. The promise in iv. 1, 2, is, throughout,
contrasted with the threatening in iii. 12. "The mountain of the house
shall become as the high places of the forest,"--hence, despised,
solitary, and desolate. In iv. 1, there is opposed to it, "The mountain
of the house of the Lord shall be established on the top of the
mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and upon it people
shall flee together." "Zion shall be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem
become a heap of ruins." Contrasted with this, there is in iv. 2 the
declaration: "For the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the
Lord of Jerusalem." The desolate and despised place now becomes the
residence of the Lord, from which He sends His commands over the whole
earth, and of which the brilliant centre now is Jerusalem. In order to
make this contrast so much the more obvious, the prophet begins,
in the promise, with just the mountain of the temple, which, in the
threatening, had occupied the last place; so that the opposites are
brought into immediate connection. Nor is it certainly merely
accidental that, in the threatening, he speaks of the mountain of the
house only, while, in the promise, he speaks of the mountain of the
house of the Lord; compare Matt. xxiii. 38, where "your house,"
according to _Bengel_, "is the house which, in other passages, is
called the house of the Lord," just as the Lord, in Exod. xxxii. 7,
says to Moses, "_Thy people._" The temple must have ceased to be the
house of the Lord, before it would be destroyed; for [Pg 420] which
reason, as we are told In Ezekiel, the Shechinah removed from it before
the Babylonish destruction. And in point of form, the [Hebrew: ihih] in
iv. 1 so much the more corresponds with the [Hebrew: thih] in iii. 12,
as from the latter [Hebrew: ihih] must be supplied for the last clause
of the verse; compare _Caspari_, S. 445. That ver. 5 must not be
separated from the prophecy which Isaiah had before him, is seen from a
comparison of Is. ii. 5: "O house of Jacob, come ye and let us walk in
the light of the Lord." According to the true interpretation, "the
light of the Lord" signifies His grace, and the blessings which,
according to what precedes, are to be bestowed by it; and "to walk in
the light of the Lord," means to participate in the enjoyment of grace.
These words