Isaiah 55:12

The accomplishment of the predictions relating to that great deliverance would be a pledge and earnest of the performance of all the other promises; for thereby it shall appear that he is faithful who has promised. [2.] It shall be a representation of the blessings promised and a type and figure of them.

go out--from the various countries in which ye (the Jews) are scattered, to your own land (Eze 11:17). led--by Messiah, your "Leader" (Isa 55:4; Mic 2:12, 13). mountains . . . trees, &c.--images justly used to express the seeming sympathy of nature with the joy of God's people.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — starts-lowercase

THIS is a text for the springtime! If you read it through tomorrow morning, before the smoke has clouded the heavens, while yet the earliest birds are calling up their mates to sing, you will understand its meaning better than I can make you comprehend it by any words of mine. The whole four verses seem to describe a scene in nature which is only to be witnessed about this time of the year, yet I am not going to look into the poetical meaning of the text so much as to use it as a description of personal experience. I think, no—I am sure that there are many of us who have passed through our spiritual winter. We have also had our spring—we are even coming to our summer—and there are some whose ripe and mellow experience has the peacefulness of autumn about it. Our lives are, in miniature, like the years that so quickly follow one another and every year does but repeat the changes in our lives! I want, at this time, to speak about springtime in our spiritual experience—touching, however, upon a more advanced period, as it will be necessary to do—but my first word is to be concerning our springtime experience. Brothers and Sisters, by nature we lie in the cold and death of winter—everything is frost-bound, withered, dead. We are nothing. We yield nothing. We can do nothing. The Word of God comes to us as the beams of the sun pour down their warmth from the heavens and, by a mighty and mysterious influence, that Word begins to work upon us and we soon feel that we have entered upon quite another season of life. We are no longer in the cold winter—we have come to a blessed springtime! That is the theme upon which I am going to now speak. I. First, notice in the text the descent of the Word, THE DOWNCOMING—"As the rain comes down, and the snow from Heaven." Our spring begins with April showers alternating with rough winds.

THIS is a text for the springtime! If you read it through tomorrow morning, before the smoke has clouded the heavens, while yet the earliest birds are calling up their mates to sing, you will understand its meaning better than I can make you comprehend it by any words of mine. The whole four verses seem to describe a scene in nature which is only to be witnessed about this time of the year, yet I am not going to look into the poetical meaning of the text so much as to use it as a description of personal experience.

For ye shall go out with joy - This language is that which is properly applicable to the exiles in Babylon, but there can be no doubt that the prophet looks also to the future happier times of the Messiah (compare the notes at Isa 52:7). The mountains and the hills - Language like this is common in Isaiah, where all nature is called on to rejoice, or where inanimate objects are represented as expressing their sympathy with the joy of the people of God (see the note at Isa 14:8; Isa 35:1-2, Isa 35:10; Isa 42:10-11; Isa 44:23). Indeed, this imagery is common in all poetry. Thus, Virgil: Ipsi laetitia voces ad sidera jactant, Intonsi montes: ipsae jam carmina rupes, Ipsa sonant arhusta. Ec. v. 62ff. The untill’d mountains strike the echoing sky; And rocks and towers the triumph speed abroad. Wrangham Such language occurs especially in the poetry of the Orientals. Thus, when the god Ramar was going to the desert, says Roberts, it was said to him, ‘The trees will watch for you; they will say, He is come, he is come; and the white flowers will clap their hands. The leaves as they shake will say, Come, come, and the thorny places will be changed into gardens of flowers.’ And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands - To clap the hands is expressive of joy and rejoicing (compare 2Ki 11:12; Psa 47:1). Thus, in Psa 98:8, it is said: Let the floods clap their hands; Let the hills be joyful together. Among the Jews the language was sometimes used to express malignant joy at the calamity of others (compare Job 27:3; Job 34:37; Lam 2:15; Eze 25:6). Here it is an expression of the universal rejoicing which would attend the extension of the kingdom of God on the earth.