Isaiah 33:24

This whole chapter was a gracious message from God to a people who were in extremis. They were made to drink the foulest dregs of sorrow through the invasion of the Assyrians. The highways were waste, the wayfarer ceased. The earth mourned and languished. Lebanon was ashamed and hewn down. Sharon was like a wilderness and Bashan and Carmel shook off their fruits. Then did God arise. When the worst had come to the worst, He laid bare His arm and brought deliverance for His people! Is not this a general rule with God?

This whole chapter was a gracious message from God to a people who were in extremis. They were made to drink the foulest dregs of sorrow through the invasion of the Assyrians. The highways were waste, the wayfarer ceased. The earth mourned and languished. Lebanon was ashamed and hewn down. Sharon was like a wilderness and Bashan and Carmel shook off their fruits. Then did God arise. When the worst had come to the worst, He laid bare His arm and brought deliverance for His people! Is not this a general rule with God? Is it not a Truth of God fraught with comfort to any of you whose day has darkened down into a seven-fold midnight? When nothing else is left you, God remains and God appears! When all your own strength fails you, your strength shall be to sit still while God arises and becomes your arm every morning, your salvation in the time of trouble! I would encourage all who are in spiritual distress to gather hope from this chapter, since it is addressed to Zion in her sore affliction. If it is really so, that the joys and blessings which are described in the passage before us come to a people who are driven to the last extremity, why should not such blessings come to you? We have often noted how the Lord delights to look upon the poor and needy and comes with succor to those who are in distress. It is the way of the Lord to look in pity upon those who are cast down. Lift up your heart to Him and cry unto Him out of the depth! Let your prayer rise to His Throne out of the low dungeon. Expect that He will be very pitiful and will have compassion upon you in your misery. Jerusalem was on the brink of destruction when the Lord answered the prayer of Hezekiah and smote the vast host of Assyria. The peril of Jerusalem serves as a dark background to bring out the brightness of my text.

And the inhabitant shall not say - This verse is somewhat obscure.

And the inhabitant - The inhabitant of Jerusalem. Shall not say, I am sick - That is, probably, the spoil shall be so abundant, and the facility for taking it so great, that even the sick, the aged, and the infirm shall go forth nerved with new vigor to gather the spoil. The people that dwell therein - In Jerusalem. Shall be forgiven their iniquity - This is equivalent to saying that the calamities of the invasion would be entirely removed. This invasion is represented as coming upon them as a judgment for their sins. When the Assyrian should be overthrown, it would be a proof that the sin which had been the cause of the invasion had been forgiven, and that God was now disposed to show them favor and mercy. It is common in the Scriptures to represent any calamity as the consequence of sin, to identify the removal of the calamity and the forgiveness of the sin. Thus, the Saviour said Mar 2:5 to the man afflicted with the palsy, ‘Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.’ And when the scribes complained, he urged that the power of forgiving sins and of healing disease was the same, or that the forgiveness of sin was equivalent to the removal of disease Mar 2:9.