Upon the ten single "burdens" as they were called forth by the threatening Assyrian catastrophe, there follows here a comprehensive description of the judgments of God upon His people, and upon the world's power hostile to His Kingdom, The characteristic feature in it is, that the Prophet abstains from all details.
The prophecy begins in chap. xxiv. 1-13, with the threatening of the judgment upon Judah, The fact that Judah is here spoken of, not alone, it is true, but together with his companions in suffering, with all the other nations crushed like him by the world's power in its various phases (verse 4 most clearly shows that it is not Judah alone which is spoken of; comp. the same comprehensive mode of representation in Jer. xxv.; Hab. ii. 6), appears from ver. 5: "For they transgressed the _laws_, violated the _ordinances_, broke the everlasting _covenant_," where there can exist only a collateral reference to the Gentile world; from ver. 13, where the continuing gleaning is characteristic of the covenant-people (comp. xvii. 6); but especially from ver. 23, where, after the time of punishment, the Lord reigneth on Mount Zion.
The judgment upon Judah bears a comprehensive character. [Pg 150] As the single phases of the world's power, by which the sins of the people of God are visited, there had been mentioned in the cycle of the _burdens_, Asshur in chap. xiv. 25; Babylon in chap. xiii., xiv., xxi., (the circumstance that the first _burden_ of the first half of the _burdens_, and likewise the first _burden_ of the second half of the _burdens_--the ten _burdens_ being thus divided into twice five--is directed against Babylon, shows that specially heavy judgments were to be inflicted by Babel); Elam in chap. xxii. 6 (comp. remarks on chap. xi. 11). Here the idea of judgment upon the covenant-people is viewed _per se_, and irrespective of the particular forms of its realisation.
In vers. 14, 15, there is a sudden transition from the threatening to the promise: "They (the remnant left according to ver. 13) shall lift their voice, they shall shout for the majesty of the Lord, they shall cry aloud from the sea,"--from the sea into which they were driven away by the storm of the judgments of the Lord. To the "sea" here, correspond the "islands of the sea," in ver. 15; compare the mention of the islands in chap. xi. 11. Ver. 15. "Therefore, in the light praise ye the Lord, in the isles of the sea the name of the Lord God of Israel." The words are addressed to the elect in the time of salvation. The Plural ארים denotes the _fulness_ of light or salvation, comp. chap. xxvi. 19; ב is, in both instances, used in a local sense. The light is the spiritual territory; the isles of the sea, the natural.
