This first voice, with the music of which our hearts have been thrilled ever since we can remember, speaks twice: first in a whisper, then in a call--the whisper of the Lover and the call of the Lord. _Speak ye home to the heart of Jerusalem, and call unto her._
Now Jerusalem lay in ruins, a city through whose breached walls all the winds of heaven blew mournfully across her forsaken floors. And the _heart of Jerusalem_, which was with her people in exile, was like the city--broken and defenceless. In that far-off, unsympathetic land it lay open to the alien; tyrants forced their idols upon it, the peoples tortured it with their jests.
_For they that led us captive required of us songs,_ _And they that wasted us required of us mirth._
But observe how gently the Divine Beleaguerer approaches, how softly He bids His heralds plead by the gaps, through which the oppressor has forced his idols and his insults. Of all human language they might use, God bids His messengers take and plead with the words with which a man will plead at a maiden's heart, knowing that he has nothing but love to offer as right of entrance, and waiting until love and trust come out to welcome him. _Speak ye_, says the original literally, _on to_, or _up against_, or _up round the heart of Jerusalem_,--a forcible expression, like the German "An das Herz," or the sweet Scottish, "It cam' up roond my heart," and perhaps best rendered into English by the phrase, _Speak home to the heart_. It is the ordinary Hebrew expression for wooing. As from man to woman when he wins her, the Old Testament uses it several times. To _speak home to the heart_ is to use language in which authority and argument are both ignored, and love works her own inspiration. While the haughty Babylonian planted by force his idols, while the folly and temptations of heathendom surged recklessly in, God Himself, the Creator of this broken heart, its Husband and Inhabitant of old,[39] stood lowly by its breaches, pleading in love the right to enter. But when entrance has been granted, see how He bids His heralds change their voice and disposition. The suppliant lover, being received, assumes possession and defence, and they, who were first bid whisper as beggars by each unguarded breach, now leap upon the walls to call from the accepted Lord of the city: _Fulfilled is thy time of service, absolved thine iniquity, received hast thou of Jehovah's hand double for all thy sins._