Isaiah 65:8-10 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

With an eye to this gracious promise, the Holy Ghost here sets forth, under the similitude of a poor apparently dry and fruitless vine, how the mercy for Israel is preserved, and how at length it shall be accomplished. To all human observation, the vine brings forth nothing; but there is one who looks on and knows all, who takes notice of a cluster in which the new wine is found. My beloved, (said the Church, speaking of Jesus) is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi, Song of Solomon 1:14. Sweet consideration! Jesus in our nature, became the preservative of our poor blighted nature, all along from the fall. For though not then openly appearing in substance of our flesh; yet the Church subsisted in him, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, Revelation 13:8; Colossians 1:17. Hence therefore, He that looked on, and who could this be, but He that felt so highly interested in the preservation of his Church and people, as to become, from everlasting, the Church's Husband, Head, and Surety? said, Destroy it not; there is a blessing in it. Jesus, the promised seed, is in it, and must come out of it for its salvation. And hence Jehovah saith, For my servant's sake, I will not destroy them all. There is a remnant according to the election of grace; and hence Sharon and Achor shall flourish and open a door of hope to poor transgressing Israelites, to make one fold with the Gentile church. Here shall they lie down, and in Christ's pasture shall they be fed. The Reader will not forget, as a farther confirmation of those blessed promises, and in proof that the eye of the Lord, at the time of delivering them, was looking on the very spot where Jesus, in after ages, should open the gospel, and give testimony to those truths that Sharon was near to Joppa, on the west, and Achor lay to the eastward, near Jordan, the sacred river, where the Lord Jesus entered on his ministry.