Sorrows Turned to Blessings
J. Macnaughton, A. M. Nehemiah 13:2 Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them… We might tell of the blessed effects of the captivity of Joseph — the means of preserving his father's household and the lives of the thousands of Egypt. We might speak of the happy results of Israel's national calamities; how they were led to seek the Lord in their sorrow, and the Lord hearkened and heard them. We might tell of Paul's imprisonment issuing in the conversion of his jailor and his household; or we might speak of John's banishment to the lonely Isle of Patmos, where his spirit was refreshed with those wondrous discoveries of God's doings and purposes that form the last book in the Canon of Sacred Writ. In these instances sorrow is not to be denominated a cures, but a blessing — not a punishment, but a medicine. True it is that sorrow has been Styled the winter of the soul, because it freezes up the streams of comfort, and ices the soul over with the frosts of sadness; but, like as that season, rough and stormy and bleak as it is, is conducive to the ultimate fertility of the earth, so the moral Winter at once prepares for the fuller enjoyment of the coming spring of peace, and is productive of a richer harvest of righteousness to the praise and glory of our God. Affliction has been styled the storm of life; but, like as those tempests that agitate the bosom of the ocean serve alike to overpower the shattered bark, and to urge forward others more speedily to their desired haven, so these moral tempests, while they may overwhelm the wicked and impenitent, are ever conducive in speeding forward the journey of the children of the kingdom to heaven and to God. (J. Macnaughton, A. M.) Parallel Verses KJV: Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them: howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing. WEB: because they didn't meet the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, to curse them: however our God turned the curse into a blessing.