"Sing aloud, O heavens! and shout, O earth!
Ye mountains! burst forth into a song:
For JEHOVAH hath comforted His people,
And on His afflicted He will have compassion.
But Zion sayeth, JEHOVAH hath forsaken me,
And my Lord hath forgotten me.

Can a woman forget her sucking infant,

That she should have no tenderness for the child of her womb (Lowth)?

Even though mothers should forget,

I will not forget thee.

Behold, on the palms of my hands I have graven thee;

Thy walls are continually in my sight.

And kings shall be thy foster-fathers,

And their princesses thy nurses (Delitzsch):

With face to the ground shall they bow to thee,

And lick the dust of thy feet;

And thou shalt know that I am JEHOVAH,

He whose hoping ones shall not be ashamed" (Delitzsch).

-ISAIAH xlix. 13-16, 23.

XV.

Comfort ye, comfort

ye my people,

saith your God."

"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me."

Unforgetting Love.

-ISAIAH xlix. 15, 16.

JUST as the rapturous notes of the triumphant hymn, quoted at the close of the preceding, are dying away on the ear, we are met with a strain on the minor key—a plaintive wail, like the tones of a funeral dirge.

It is Zion impersonated; she is represented as giving utterance to words of deep dejection (ver. 14)" The Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me." As Jehovah had just been announcing His purposes of world-wide

mercy-salvation "to the ends of the earth we may take these words, in the first instance, as the plaint of literal Israel-The Lord has chosen the Gentile, and in doing so, He has forgotten me. The wild olive has been grafted in; will not the natural olive be rejected?' Or it may be taken as the wail of the Church universal, prompted in times of rebuke and blasphemy, defection and apostasy, cruelty and persecution, when blood is flowing and martyrfires are lighted; or worse, when faith is weak, and love is waxing cold, and knees are bowing to Baal. The vessel is in danger, and the cry of the panic-stricken crew is, "Lord, carest Thou not that we perish!" Or again, the utterance may be regarded as the exclamation of the individual soul, amid frowning providences and baffling dispensations, when there is no silver lining to the cloud, or in that most awful of human experiences, when, apparently deserted and forsaken, it makes the sorrowful appeal, 'Where is now my God?'

In all the three cases

Jehovah's reply is the same-the assurance of His inviolable, unchanging, everlasting love.

This He enforces by two arguments. He answers the unworthy plaint of Zion, by the use of two beautiful and expressive figures.

The first (what we shall reserve for fuller illustration in a future exposition) is the mother's instinctive fondness for her babe. It is earth's most touching picture of constant devotion (ver. 15)—“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget." They have a thousand times over. To cover shame; to hush a guilty secret; in the midst of the siege to satisfy the rage of hunger; or at the heathen altar to propitiate a bloodthirsty god,-they have forgotten. Nature may be thus untrue to her tenderest relationships

-a mother may prove herself unworthy of the sacred name; "yet," God says, "will I not forget thee." My love is stronger than the strongest

of earthly ties. "Many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it." Or, as it is beautifully said in 'the Song of Songs' of this divine affection, "The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame” (viii. 6)-[lit. 'the coals of God']. It is a God-like emotion; there is nothing of the fitful or capricious, of the human element, in it;-to-day furnace-heat, to-morrow cooled down. It is divine, constant, everlasting. These flames of love on the heavenly altar are fed with "the coals of God!"

The second figure, and one equally beautiful, is taken from the graver's art (ver. 16)—“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me." We have noted, in a previous chapter, the ancient practice of marking or tattooing the skin. These punctures, coloured with indigo, were rendered indelible by hot brands; and the custom being often connected with religious