The primary reference is to the exiles returning from captivity, passing through the land of drought, the valley of Baca (Ps. lxxxiv. 6), and refreshing themselves at “the wells of salvation;” but there is a glow and a glory in the language, as in so many other parts of the Scriptures, that carries it far beyond this, though the Rationalist, if he chooses, may rest in the lower sense, and maintain it on undeniable exegetical grounds. The spiritually-minded reader finds something more—something which alone comes up to the splendour of the style, and without which the hyperbole, beautiful as it is, would seem tumid and extravagant. It is a mounting sense, as we may call it, rather than a “double” or enigmatical representation. The lower is the basis, undoubtedly, but we cannot rest in it. As elsewhere, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, the earthly salvation is described in terms and figures powerfully suggestive of higher spiritual realities. The exegesis, therefore, that comes from this is not arbitrary. To the mind in spiritual harmony, it seems to be the only one that truly satisfies the emotional glow and fervour of the language. The mirage of this world in the highest reality it can claim—still more the mirage our “vain imaginations” create in it—is worse than the dry desert itself; its delusions, when discovered, produce more pain; the disappointment intensifies the thirst. Hence the exceeding impressiveness of the prophet’s figure when rightly understood. The unreal shall vanish; truth, substance, eternal reality shall take the place of all that is false. Man shall cease “walking in a vain show” (betselem), an image, a shadow (Ps. xxxix. 6). This mirage of time shall become a fountain of real water, of “living water, springing up to everlasting life.” “With joy shall ye draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isa. xii. 3).
“The shadows are gone, truth has come.” Mohammed seems to have, in some way, caught a spark from the prophetic inspiration, when he represents the righteous saying this, as they lift up their hands in the morning of the resurrection. In the Arabic, as in the Hebrew, the power comes from the graphic mode which both languages possess, in so high a degree, of picturing the future in the present, and even in the past. “Joy and triumph are overtaking them, sorrow and sighing have fled away.” This is not the land of reality. The idea comes down from the pilgrim language of the patriarchs, who so pathetically declared themselves to be but “travellers and sojourners upon the earth.” They were looking for “the better country,” the real home, the “city which hath foundations,” firm and everlasting. Something of the same idea, and from the same early source, perhaps, may be traced in the most ancient Arabian poets who lived before the days of Mohammed. From them he most probably borrowed the striking similar figure we find in the Koran (Sura xxiv. 29), entitled “Light.” It has the same word (sharab), and, in other respects is immediately suggestive of the passage in Isaiah: “As for the unbelieving, their works are like the sarab, the mirage of the plain. The thirsty traveller thinks there is water there; but lo, he comes and finds it nothing.“ The latter parts remind us of the description in Job vi. 17, which may be cited, too, as one of the examples of its Arabian imagery. It is a picture of the thirsty traveller sustained by the hope of finding the refreshing wady stream; but instead of the imagined reality, nothing meets the eye but dried-up bed whose waters have vanished, “gone up to tohu,” the formless void, as the Hebrew so graphically expresses it
“What time they shrink deserted of their springs,
As quenched in heat they vanish from their place;
’Tis then their wonted ways are turned aside:
Their streams are lost, gone up in emptiness.
The caravans of Tema look for them;
The companies of Sheba hope in vain;
Confounded are they where they once did trust;
They reach the spot and stand in helpless maze.”
Another very striking passage, where the same word is used, may be found in the Koran (Sura lxxviii. 20): “When the hills are set in motion, and become like the sarab”—the vanishing mirage. It is a description of the day of judgment, when the world will be found to have been a sarab, a departing dream. Or it may represent its exceeding transitoriness, like that other name ajalun, the rolling, hastening, passing world, which the Koran and the early Arabian poets give to this present mundane system as compared with the reality of Paradise. Hence the word sarab becomes a common or proverbial expression, pro re evanida, for anything light, transient, and unsubstantial. There is a beautiful allusion to it in the very ancient poem of Lebid (Moallaka de Lebid, De Sacy’s ed., p. 294). See also the account of the phenomenon as given by Diodorus Siculus, lib. iii. ch. 50. It differs, however, from the picture usually presented by the Arabian poets, in that the appearances are those of animals and wild beasts, rather than of rivers and fountains. The particular kind of phantoms, however, would depend very much on the kind of imagination possessed by the travellers, and the circumstances by which it was excited. It is, in any way, an apt representation of a delusive world, whether in its images of terror or of attraction. That the word is thus frequently used in the Arabic, and that it corresponds well to its ancient Hebrew etymology, is sufficient to warrant us in thus interpreting the idea the prophet so impressively sets forth.—Taylor Lewis.
The Exiles’ Return.
xxxv. 8–10. And an highway shall be there, &c.
The chapter of which these words are a part testifies of Christ. The prophet, while foretelling it in the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, is enabled to look forward to a more spiritual and much greater deliverance. With the eye of faith he sees the kingdom of the Messiah established in the earth, and beholds Him open a new and blessed road by which a multitude of the enslaved and perishing escape from their miseries and are led to His kingdom. This prophecy calls upon us to consider—1. The travellers of whom it speaks; 2. The way along which they are journeying; 3. The home to which it is leading them.—Charles Bradley: Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 127, 128.
Whatever primary reference this prophecy might have to the return of the tribes from captivity, it is evident that all its interesting and beautiful descriptions can only be fully realised in the blessedness and glory of the Gospel dispensation. Consider it as spiritually referring to the Gospel way of salvation.
I. The way itself.
A religious course is often spoken of as a way (Prov. xv. 21; Jer. xxi. 8; Matt. vii. 14). The way of which our text speaks is described—1. As a highway. It is not a secluded private path, but a public highway opened by the authority of the King of kings; a way designed for the general accommodation of the human race, and leading to the metropolis of the universe. 2. It is a holy way. 3. It is a plain way. Not a way requiring extensive philosophical knowledge or deep metaphysical research to comprehend it. All the Gospel requirements and duties are plain. 4. It is a safe way.[1] Satan may try to allure us from it, but he cannot interrupt us while walking in it.