The speaker of this verse can be no other than God, or the Spirit of God in Scripture. The sentence is no mere quotation. It re-utters, in the style of Mary's or Zechariah's song, the promise of the Old Covenant from the lips of the New. It gathers up the import of the prophecies concerning the salvation of Christ, as they sounded in the apostle's ears and as he conveyed them to the world. Isaiah lx. 1-3 supplies the basis of our passage, where the prophet awakens Zion from the sleep of the Exile and bids her shine once more in the glory of her God and show forth His light to the nations: "Arise," he cries, "shine, for thy light is come!" There are echoes in the verse, besides, of Isaiah li. 17, xxvi. 19; perhaps even of Jonah i. 6: "What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, and call upon thy God!" We seem to have here, as in chapter iv. 4-6, a snatch of the earliest Christian hymns. The lines are a free paraphrase from the Old Testament, formed by weaving together Messianic passages--belonging to such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in the Pauline Churches. Certainly those Churches did not wait until the second century to compose their hymns and spiritual songs (comp. ver. 19). Our Lord's sublime announcement (John v. 25), already verified, that "the hour had come when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard should live," gave the key to the prophetic sayings which promised through Israel the light of life to all nations.
With this song on her lips the Church went forth, clad in the armour of light, strong in the joy of salvation; and darkness and the works of darkness fled before her.
[135] Mr. Wesley adopted this and other emendations from Bengel, "that great light of the Christian world," in the translation accompanying his _Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament_. He there supplied the Methodist preachers with many of the most valuable improvements made in the Revised Version, a hundred years before the time.
[136] The word belongs to Paul's vocabulary; it is found besides in 2 Thess. i. 11; Rom. xv. 14; and Gal. v. 22. See the Commentary on this last epistle in the _Expositor's Bible_, pp. 384, 385.
[137] F. W. Robertson: _Sermons_ (First Series), xix., on "The Kingdom of the Truth."