outlines and suggestive comments.
Surely it was wisdom in the king and people of Nineveh, instead of bringing their city into a snare by scornful rebellion, to avert by timely humiliation the impending destruction (Jonah iii. 5–10). Let the people be gathered; let the ministers of the Lord gird themselves to their work of weeping and accepted pleaders for the land (Joel ii. 17). Surely “except the Lord of Hosts had left us a very small remnant” of these powerful intercessors, “we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isa. i. 9). Praised be God! The voice is yet heard—“Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it” (Ib. lxv. 8). The salt of the earth preserves it from corruption (Matt. v. 13). Shall not we, then, honour these wise men with reverential gratitude—“My father—my father! the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof?” . . . Moses—Exod. xxxii. 10–14; Deut. ix. 8–20; Ps. cvi. 23; Aaron—Num. xvi. 48; Phinehas—Num. xxv. 11; Ps. cvi. 30. Elijah—1 Kings xviii. 42–45; James v. 16, 18; Jer. xviii. 20; Dan. ix. 3–20; Amos vii. 1–6. The righteous remnant—Isa. i. 9, vi. 13. Comp. Gen. xviii. 32; Job xxii. 30; Jer. v. 1; Ezek. xxii. 30, 31. Contrast Ezek. xiii. 5.—Bridges.
For Homiletics on the subject of verse 9, see on chaps. [xxiii. 9] and [xxvi. 3–11], pages 665 and 716.
main homiletics of verse 10.
Soul-Seekers and Soul-Haters.
I. A proof of the unnatural condition of the human family. When we look at a human body we see that every limb and organism belonging to it ministers to the well-being of the whole frame, and thus to the comfort of the living soul that inhabits it. This we recognise to be a natural and fitting state of things—just what we should have expected to find before experience. If in any human body we at any time see the hand inflicting injury upon the head, or any one member causing discomfort to another, we conclude, and with reason, that some disturbance of the natural condition has taken place—that there is physical disease in some bodily organism, or moral disease in the spirit that animates the body. So our human instincts and our reason force us to the conclusion that the natural relation of the members of the great body of humanity is one in which “each for all and all for each” should be the rule of action. That it is not so, can but strike all thinking men and women as a terrible incongruity. That most men not merely regard their human brethren with indifference, but that many actually hate and seek to injure their fellow-creatures is surely an evidence that some fatal moral distemper has laid hold of the race. And the evidence becomes stronger when we consider the truth of the first assertion in the proverb—that not only do bloodthirsty men seek to injure other men in general, but that the objects of their especial malignity are the upright—those who have given them no provocation, but whose desire and aim it is to bless their human brothers and sisters.
II. An example in renewed men of what human brotherhood ought to be. Notwithstanding the great amount of self-seeking and enmity that is found in the world, there always has been found a small minority who have been seekers of the good of others, and in whom love to their human brethren has been the keynote of existence. And this love has been felt, and this seeking has been active, in behalf of those who hated them, and sought to do them ill. All such members of the human family are doing their part towards restoring men to the condition of peace and goodwill in which their Creator intended them to live, and help us to form some idea of what earth would have been if sin had never entered it. It is true they would then have had no opportunity of loving their enemies, and of doing good to those who hate them, but the love which “seeketh not her own” would have found free scope for her activities in going out towards those animated by the same spirit of love and would never have had to sorrow over efforts to seek and save that have been apparently fruitless. All just men who are seekers of the well-being of others, and especially those who seek the good of their enemies, are followers of that Just One who was hated by the bloodthirsty of His day, and who sought their souls while they sought His life. The history of the martyr Church in all ages has been the history of the “bloodthirsty hating the upright,” and of the just treading in the footsteps of their Divine Master, and “seeking the souls” of their persecutors.
outlines and suggestive comments.
These words may mean—and probably do mean—that the upright, in opposition to the blood-thirsty by whom the just is hated, “seek his soul,”—that is, the soul or life of the object of the hatred—of the just or the upright. Of the Lord Himself it is said—“He loveth the righteous.” And in this all His people resemble Him. It is one of their characteristic distinctions. They pray for the upright, and endeavour, by all means in their power, to preserve them from the deadly machinations of their persecutors. The amount of love required of God’s people towards God’s people is that they be ready to “lay down their lives for the brethren.” And if “for the brethren”—how much more for the Just One.—Wardlaw.
The just seek his soul. As Paul did of his countrymen the Jews, of whom five times he received forty stripes save one (2 Cor. xi. 24); as the disciples did of those spiteful Pharisees that had causelessly accused them (Matt. xv. 2–12); as that martyr Master Saunders did: “My lord,” said he to Bishop Bonner, “you seek my blood, and you shall have it. I pray God you may be so baptized in it as hereafter you may loathe blood-sucking, and so become a better man.”—Trapp.