CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 12
Here we have a song of praise and thanksgiving for their deliverance. “Thou shalt say,” etc. (verse 1) means unequivocally Israel. God’s anger has not only turned away and ceased, but He is their salvation (verse 2). For all Israel in that day shall be saved. Therefore with joy they draw water out of those exhaustless wells and say Hallelujah (verse 3, 4). But it is Jah Jehovah, not the Father as we know Him now through the Lord Jesus. The effect of their deliverance is that His glory as the Eternal is known in all the earth (verse 5). The Father is known in His family, not in all the earth as such, though by His children everywhere. But here it is the kingdom, and He is known as the Holy One of Israel in Zion. Jehovah reigns, and by Israel He makes Himself known in all the earth.
If we have well seized these two chapters, we cannot confound what is said of Israel and of the church. Christ as the Judge of all must have slain the wicked with the breath of His lips (see chapter 30: 33) in order that the blessing should come to pass. Otherwise we confound the kingdom of Christ’s patience with the kingdom of righteous government. If one leads the church to believe that this happy time is come, and that she is to make good all these things, it is to mislead the faithful and to encourage unbelievers. For natural pride is increased by these misapplications of what can only be realised by Christ’s coming to reign. Our place meanwhile is to suffer with Christ.
Here we can remark the force of 2 Peter 1: 20: no prophecy of scripture is of its own [particular] interpretation. It is not a question of Nineveh, etc., nor of any other thing in or by itself, but finally of the glory of Jesus, where all meets and all ends. It speaks of a vast and connected system of glory which must be taken as a whole, even as the Spirit wrote it.
In the preceding chapters we have the relationship of God with His people closed by the manifestation of Christ in glory. Here begins a new prophecy, which presents to us the relationship of Israel with the nations. This section of the prophecy goes from chapter 13 to the end of chapter 27, terminating with songs of joy and deliverance, as in the first section.