A bruised reed shall he not break... — Physical, moral, spiritual weakness are all brought under the same similitude. In another context the image has met us in Isaiah 36:6. The simple negative “he shall not break” implies, as in the rhetoric of all times, the opposite extreme, the tender care that props and supports. The humanity of the servant of the Lord was to embody what had been already predicated of the Divine will (Psalms 51:17). The dimly burning flax, the wick of a lamp nearly out, He will foster and cherish and feed the spiritual life, all but extinguished, with oil till it burns brightly again. In Matthew 25:1-13 we have to deal with lamps that are going out, and these not even He could light again unless the bearers of the lamps “bought oil” for themselves.
Judgment unto truth — i.e., according to the perfect standard of truth, with something of the sense of St. John’s “true” in the sense of representing the ideal (John 1:9; John 15:1).