Isaiah 23:6














Egypt was the first of nations, and the masts of the vessels stood hike tall river-reeds by her banks. How expressive the words are! There is life where the river comes, life along the emerald banks to which the cattle come, and on the fields where the waters overflow.

I. ALL LANDS HAVE THEIR RIVERS. Think of the Tiber, the Tigris, the Thames, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Nile, the Niger. Cities rise on their banks which are, like Tyre, populous and prosperous. The harvest is vast indeed. Ships which are freighted with necessaries and luxuries, with the works of art, the spoils of the sea, and the produce of far-away lauds, all come up the river. What wonder that the river should become a type of the blessings of the gospel - that the prophet should tell us "living waters shall flow out of Jerusalem!"

II. THE HARVESTS ARE MANIFOLD. We are so accustomed to think of the golden sheaves of the corn-fields when we mention the rivers, that we are liable to forget how indebted we are to the broad estuaries which bear on their bosom the wealth of many nations. How manifold, too, are our harvests under the gospel! Where that comes philanthropy lives, and social purity flows, and justice is sacred in its rivers of righteousness, and salvation comes, delivering us from sensuality and sin. Harvests? Surely the Christian should notice how wide and vast the gospel waters are.

III. THEIR DRYING UP IS DEATH. We cannot live without rain and rivers. Cattle perish. Verdure withers. Man himself dies. No wealth can purchase what God gives so plentifully. "Hath the rain a Father?" Oh yes. Not a mere Creator, but a Father; for it is rich in evidences of his universal care and love. God gives "the former and the latter rain," and all through the ages the rivers flow into the sea. So God's truth remains! The living water flows, and the voice is still heard, "He, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." - W.M.S.

The sea hath spoken, even the strength of the sea.
God, through the wildly wailing winds, and loudly surging waves, has often uttered a voice of warning and of woe to cities filled with corruption and vice. And how, too, through these winds and waves, has the sea spoken in its strength to crushed and broken hearts, when its surface has been thickly strewn with shattered wrecks, and the floating and sinking bodies of its helpless victims.

I. But the sea often speaks to us in other language than this, addressing us, as it does, through the eye as well as the ear, and CALLING UPON US TO ADORE AND LOVE GOD for the beauty with which He clothes and overhangs it, and for the blessings which, by means of the sea, He conveys to us, no less than to tremble and bow down before Him in view of the vastness and the majestic grandeur of the ocean in its more excited and terrific moods.

II. The sea hath spoken, even the strength of the sea, by ITS VASTNESS AND FORCE AND GRANDEUR OF ITS MOVEMENTS.

III. The sea hath spoken, too, and will, we trust, thus ever speak, through THE ELECTRIC WIRE, which here and there lies far down in its lowest depths, and which, in coming years, will be more widely extended abroad.

IV. Yet again the sea hath spoken, in that IT APPEALS TO OUR KIND CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY AND INTEREST in behalf of those who, as seamen, go forth upon the deep.

V. When the sea in its strength thus speaks to us, with the voice of wailing, lamentation, and woe, HOW OUGHT WE TO PRAY FOR SEAMEN AND THOSE CONNECTED WITH THEM, with all the power of faith which God shall give us, that He would save them from a watery grave, or, if they thus perish, that He would comfort those who mourn their loss, and that in the day in which the earth and the sea shall give up the dead that are in them, they may all together enter the haven of eternal rest. So, too, should we ever pray that the time may soon come when the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto God, and the isles shall wait for His law.

(C. Rockwell.)

Scientific Illustrations and Symbols.
The sea, as a rule, is tranquil. Yet what awful power it possesses when it is aroused to fury! Blocks of stone weighing over thirteen tons have been known to be hurled by it a distance of more than thirty feet, and blocks of three tons to more than one hundred yards. Jetties and bridges are dashed about like toys. The entire harbour of Fecamp was destroyed by its rage, and the mass of earth torn from the north side of Cape la Heve was estimated at more than 300,000 square yards. Yet these are only among the trifling achievements of the sea when it passes from its peaceful to its furious mood. Violence often slumbers under an appearance of serenity. A crowd of joyous holiday makers today may become tomorrow a foaming mob of insurrectionists!

(Scientific Illustrations and Symbols.)

That part of Hey Head; in Orkney, which is called the Brow of the Brae, is one sheer unbroken crag of 1150 feet. The Orcadians told me that in a hurricane they have seen an Atlantic wave strike this headland in such volume and with such power, that it has rushed half-way up the cliff, throwing itself in its great but impotent rage to the height of nearly 600 feet. Hurled by such a sea against such a crag, a man-of-war, though built of the strongest oak, and bound with the toughest iron, would be shattered like a ship of glass.

( T. Guthrie, D. D.)

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.

(George Herbert.)

People
Assyrians, Isaiah, Kittim, Tarshish, Zidon
Places
Assyria, Canaan, Cyprus, Egypt, Nile River, Shihor, Sidon, Tarshish, Tyre
Topics
Coast, Coastland, Coast-land, Cries, Howl, Inhabitants, Island, Isle, O, Pass, Sea-land, Sorrow, Tarshish, Wail
Outline
1. The miserable overthrow of Tyre
15. Her restoration and unfaithfulness

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 23:4

     5663   childbirth

Library
The Agony, and the Consoler
Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? Isaiah xxiii. 7. It is difficult to describe the agony of terror which fell on the wretched inhabitants of the gayest city of the East when they awoke to a sense of the folly into which they had been driven. These soft Syrians had no real leaders and no settled purpose of rebellion. They had simply yielded to a childish impulse of vexation. They had rebelled against an increase of taxation which might be burdensome, but was by no means
Frederic William Farrar—Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom

A Prayer for the Spirit of Devotion
6. O Lord my God, Thou art all my good, and who am I that I should dare to speak unto Thee? I am the very poorest of Thy servants, an abject worm, much poorer and more despicable than I know or dare to say. Nevertheless remember, O Lord, that I am nothing, I have nothing, and can do nothing. Thou only art good, just and holy; Thou canst do all things, art over all things, fillest all things, leaving empty only the sinner. Call to mind Thy tender mercies, and fill my heart with Thy grace, Thou
Thomas A Kempis—Imitation of Christ

How those are to be Admonished who have had Experience of the Sins of the Flesh, and those who have Not.
(Admonition 29.) Differently to be admonished are those who are conscious of sins of the flesh, and those who know them not. For those who have had experience of the sins of the flesh are to be admonished that, at any rate after shipwreck, they should fear the sea, and feel horror at their risk of perdition at least when it has become known to them; lest, having been mercifully preserved after evil deeds committed, by wickedly repeating the same they die. Whence to the soul that sins and never
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

On the Interpretation of Scripture
IT is a strange, though familiar fact, that great differences of opinion exist respecting the Interpretation of Scripture. All Christians receive the Old and New Testament as sacred writings, but they are not agreed about the meaning which they attribute to them. The book itself remains as at the first; the commentators seem rather to reflect the changing atmosphere of the world or of the Church. Different individuals or bodies of Christians have a different point of view, to which their interpretation
Frederick Temple—Essays and Reviews: The Education of the World

The Essay which Brings up the Rear in this Very Guilty Volume is from The...
The Essay which brings up the rear in this very guilty volume is from the pen of the "Rev. Benjamin Jowett, M.A., [Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, and] Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford,"--"a gentleman whose high personal character and general respectability seem to give a weight to his words, which assuredly they do not carry of themselves [143] ." His performance is entitled "On the Interpretation of Scripture:" being, in reality, nothing else but a laborious denial of
John William Burgon—Inspiration and Interpretation

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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