Our text belongs, we may suppose in a special sense to the Jew. It may in part have been accomplished in his past history, but its thorough fulfilment is to be looked for in the future. But there is every reason why the passage should admit of a secondary application an application to ourselves as the subjects of the chastisements which God appoints or permits.
I. Notice, first, the expression "allure." There is no apparent keeping between the process and the result; the process that of allurement; the result that of a wilderness. Yet if we think for a moment we shall see, that we are often actually allured into the wilderness. For what are all those brilliant and fascinating hopes, which God suffers for a time to float before our vision, but so many allurements? And when these hopes vanish, as they frequently do, where are we left but in a wilderness a wilderness into which the hopes had led us?
II. God speaks comfortably in the wilderness. If we force Him to make a wilderness in order that He may be heard, He does not make it that He may speak terror and despair to our souls. The object is, with the wicked, to draw off their attention from earth and its vanities; with the righteous to discipline them for an "exceeding and eternal weight of glory; and what, in both cases, is this but comfortable speaking?
III. The text is more than an assertion as to God's comforting His people under affliction; it declares that their afflictions may be made an occasion of advantage, or be converted into instruments of spiritual good."I will give her her vineyards from thence: "Christians gather their best grapes from the thorn. "And the valley of Achor for a door of hope:" Sorrows which are especially the chastisements of misdoing may issue in a firmer hope of everlasting salvation. God never breaks a man's heart except that He may be able to pour in, like the good Samaritan, the oil and the wine. He brings the sinner into the valley, the terrors of the law urge him forward and prevent all retreat. But just then it is when the sinner feels himself utterly lost and at the same time confesses God's justice in destroying him that the Almighty shows him, as it were, a cleft in the rock, into which he may run. The valley of Achor terminates in a door of hope; gladness comes back into the soul, the sense of pardon, the sense of reconciliation; he sings in the valley "as in the days of his youth, and as in the day when he came up out of the land of Egypt."
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1843.
I. The text expresses the constancy and tenderness of the Divine love. (1) The relation between Jehovah and His people is spoken of in terms of the relation between husband and wife: "I will betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness." Blended with the Divine wrath against idolatry yea, lying at the very root of that wrath is the eternal love. God does not spurn Israel away, and bid her begone again to the lot which she has chosen; but, in the exercise of that affection which has survived all her shame, He says, "Behold, I will allure her... and speak comfortably unto her." (2) These words not only reveal constancy, they also breathe tenderness. To speak comfortably is, literally, to speak to the heart. Such speaking is not addressed to the ear only; nor does it merely inform the understanding; it reaches the affections; it thrills the soul; it awakens responsive echoes there. God has His unobtrusive yet mighty forces. Goodness, as well as evil, woos the soul.
II. The text points to the beneficent purpose of the Divine discipline and chastisement. (1) The wilderness is typical of the discipline to which God subjects His people. Through all trial there runs the same beneficent purpose. God designs to bring us into a true and safe prosperity; and so He seeks, by strengthening our character, to prepare us for entering into the land of "vineyards." (2) "The valley of Achor" may be taken as typical, more especially, of the Divine chastisements. The afflictions with which we are visited often assume to our consciences the aspect of correction. This is because our calamities bringing us more directly into the light of God bring us also face to face with the sins which that light condemns. Only accept your trouble as the chastisement of One who loves you and there, in the valley of your humiliation, where the blackness of your sin is revealed to you, rise up against the traitor, lust, and stone it to death. Then "the valley of Achor" shall be made unto you also a "door of hope;" and with confident expectation, because with purified heart you will march on to fuller conquest and final victory.
T. Campbell Finlayson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 251.