The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.
The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. [This is rendered pretty closely from the Hebrew-not at all from the Septuagint, as usual, which here goes quite aside from the original.] The prophetic strain to which these words belong commences with Isaiah 7:1-25, to which Matthew 6:1-34 is introductory, and goes down to the end of Matthew 12:1-50, which hymns the spirit of that whole strain of prophecy. It belongs to the reign of Ahaz, and turns upon the combined efforts of the two neighbouring kingdoms of Syria and Israel to crush Judah. In these critical circumstances Judah and her king were, by their ungodliness, provoking the Lord to sell them into the hands of their enemies. What, then, is the burden of this prophetic strain, on to the passage here quoted? First, Judah shall not, cannot perish, because IMMANUEL, the Virgin's Son, is to come forth from his loins.
Next, One of the invaders shall soon perish, and the kingdom of neither be enlarged. Further, While the Lord will be the Sanctuary of such as confide in these promises and await their fulfillment, He will drive to confusion, darkness, and despair the vast multitude of the nation who despised His oracles, and, in their anxiety and distress, betook themselves to the lying oracles of the pagan. This carries us down to the end of the eighth chapter. At the opening of the ninth chapter a sudden light is seen breaking in upon one particular part of the country, the part which was to suffer most in these wars and devastations - "the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles." The rest of the prophecy stretches over both the Assyrian and the Chaldean captivities, and terminates in the glorious Messianic prophecy of Matthew 11:1-30, and the choral hymn of Matthew 12:1-50. Well, this is the point seized on by our Evangelist. By Messiah's taking up His abode in those very regions of Galilee, and shedding His glorious light upon them, this prediction, he says, of the evangelical prophet was now fulfilled; and if it was not thus fulfilled, we may confidently affirm it was not fulfilled in any age of the Jewish economy, and has received no fulfillment at all. Even the most rationalistic critics have difficulty in explaining it in any other way.