And an highway, &c.— According to Vitringa the meaning of this verse is, that the rule of faith and morals, according to which the Israel of God must walk, shall be so clearly and fully shewn at this time from the word of God, that men of the most simple and uncultivated understandings, lovers of the truth, and desirous of the communion of the church, shall not be able to stray from it; and he thinks the meaning of the clause, למו והוא vehu lamo, But it shall be for those, is, "It shall be for those holy persons before mentioned, those ransomed of the Lord, Isaiah 35:10. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be the way of the clean or holy:" Bishop Lowth, however, is of opinion that the passage is ill understood, from a wrong punctuation. He would read it thus:
No unclean person shall pass through it: But He himself shall be with them, walking in the way, And the foolish shall not err therein.
He, i.e. our GOD, mentioned Isaiah 35:4. "He who dwelt among us, for whom a way was prepared in the desart; who came in and went out before us." The ancient Jews themselves understood these passages of the Messiah. Dr. Chandler observes, that if you take wilderness in the prophet literally for the place of the converse of Jesus, or figuratively for the poor and illiterate that he was to converse with, Jesus fully answered the prophet's description, by doing his wonderful cures both in the desart and upon the diseased of the poor; and manifested himself in a remarkable manner, by the specific nature of his miracles, and by the scene or theatre on which they were performed. See Chandler's Defence, Bishop Lowth's 20th Prelection, and Vitringa.