Behold, a King shall reign in righteousness
Asayria and Judah
Such (Isaiah 31:8-9) will be the ignominious end of the proud battalions of Assyria.
For Judah a happier future immediately begins. There should be no break between the two Chapter s. The representation which follows (Isaiah 32:1-8) is the positive complement to Isaiah 31:6 f., and is parallel to Isaiah 30:23-26, completing under its ethical and spiritual aspects the picture of which the external material features were there delineated. Society, when the crisis is past, will be regenerated. Kings and nobles will be the devoted guardians of justice, and great men will be what their position demands that they should be--the willing and powerful protectors of the poor. All classes, in other words, will be pervaded by an increased sense of public duty. The spiritual and intellectual blindness (Isaiah 29:10) will have passed away (Isaiah 30:3); superficial and precipitate judgments will be replaced by discrimination (Isaiah 30:4 a); hesitancy and vacillation will give way before the prompt and clear assertion of principle (Isaiah 30:4 b). The present confusion of moral distinctions will cease; men and actions will be called by their right names. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
A new era
For Judah--sifted, rescued, cleansed--a new era opens.
I. JUST GOVERNMENT IN BLESSING TO THE PEOPLE is the first good fruit (Isaiah 32:1-2).
II. The second is AN OPEN UNDERSTANDING AFTER THE CURSE OF HARDNESS (Isaiah 32:3-4).
III. A third good fruit is CALLING AND TREATING EVERYONE ACCORDING TO HIS TRUE CHARACTER (Isaiah 32:5-8). Nobility of birth and riches will give place to nobility of disposition, so that the former will not be found, nor find recognition without the latter. (F. Delitzsch.)
A flourishing kingdom
It may be taken as a directory both to magistrates and subjects, what both ought to do. It is here promised and prescribed--
I. THAT MAGISTRATES SHOULD DO THEIR DUTY IN THEIR PLACES, and the powers answer the great ends for which they were ordained of God (Isaiah 32:1-2).
1. There shall be a king and princes that shall reign and rule; for it cannot go well when there is no king in Israel.
2. They shall use their power according to law, and not against it.
3. Thus they shall be great blessings to the people (Isaiah 32:2). “A man”--that man, that king that reigns in righteousness--“shall be as a hiding-place.”
II. THAT SUBJECTS SHALL DO THEIR DUTY IN THEIR PLACES.
1. They shall be willing to be taught, and to understand things aright (Isaiah 32:3). When this blessed work of reformation is set on foot, and men do their part towards it, God will not be wanting to do His. Then “the eyes of them that see”--of the prophets, the seers--“shall not be dim,” &c.
2. There shall be a wonderful change wrought in them by that which is taught them (Isaiah 32:4).
(1) They shall have a clear head, and be able to discern things that differ, and distinguish concerning them.
(2) They shall have a ready utterance.
3. The differences between good and evil, virtue and vice, shall be kept up and no more confounded by those who put darkness for light, and light, for darkness (Isaiah 32:5). (Matthew Henry.)
Reformed society
Though Isaiah s words are only perfectly ful-filled in Jesus Christ, it was not concerning Christ that they were spoken. The prophet is speaking of the religious future and social progress of his people. He is presenting a picture of regenerated Judah. He points to the essential elements of all national stability and greatness. He speaks first of the righteousness that shall be exalted, and exemplified in the government of king and rulers; and then he goes on to speak of the moral conditions of real blessedness and progress, as they shall appear among the people. Great characters are the outstanding feature in the reformed society that he anticipates. Through them the progress of the nation is secured; in them the greatness of the nation will consist. But great characters can only exercise their full and proper influence when they move among those who are able to discern their greatness. Hence Isaiah declares that in that glorious time for which he confidently looks the moral blindness of the people, over which he had so often and so deeply mourned, the moral insensibility dulness, with all the confusion and false judgment it occasioned, shall have ceased (verse 3). Men shall know true manhood when they see it, and honour the manhood that they see. They shall no longer debase the moral currency, and make false use of terms denoting moral qualities. The great men shall be seen in all their greatness, and shall raise others to a moral elevation like their own. They shall protect the weak, and encourage the faint-hearted; they shall foster the growth of all goodness, and be an unfailing source of noblest inspiration. As they stand there in all their moral grandeur, rooted and grounded in the eternal righteoushess, they are indeed--and they are known to be--“as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rook in a weary land.” (E. A. Lawrence.)
Isaiah’s Utopia
The first eight verses of this chapter are like the sudden opening of a window. The hall behind you resounds with the clamour of fierce contentions; the window before you frames in the prospect of a fair country, all bathed in rosy light, a land of corn and wine and oil, a land of plenty and peace. Isaiah is not the only politician who has found relief from the anxieties of a stormy time in a Utopia of his own imagining. The air was full of the noise of change, the Reformation was in full career on the Continent, and the ground-swell of the great movement already trembling on the shores of England, when Sir Thomas More wrote his description of the ideal state. When, as they think, everything is going wrong, men often have brightest visions of what the world would be if everything were going right. Isaiah’s Utopia has three grand characteristics:
1. The triumph of righteousness in government. His programme for the ruling power is this: “A king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.”
2. The new state shall be broad-based, not upon the people’s will, but upon the people’s character. Men shall not be, as they have been, weak and unstable, and ungenerous; but, rock-like and river-like, they shall be strong and bountiful.
3. The ideal Israel, themselves judged justly, shall be just judges of others. They shall be able to discriminate character, and to recognise and honour the truly good. “The quack and the dupe,” says Carlyle, “are upper and under side of the same substance.” So, in the kingdom of the future, “the vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.” There will be no quacks, because there will be no dupes. Those who are liberal themselves are not likely to err in what constitutes liberality in others. (W. B. Dalby.)