IS IT NOT YET A LITTLE WHILE … THE FRUITFUL FIELD SHALL BE ESTEEMED AS A FOREST?

Having charged the people that they had turned things upside down, that they had perverted things, Jehovah now warns them that He too is about to turn things around. This would be, perhaps, in a way which they did not anticipate.

In His sovereign ways the uncultivated forest land of Leba­non would become a fruitful field. The expression ‘fruitful field’ is, in Hebrew, karmel, signifying a planted garden, an orchard, or a parkland. What a transformation! Lebanon would become as Carmel. On the other hand, that which was formerly a fruitful field would become as a forest. Carmel would become as Lebanon.

It would be a revolution indeed, but what exactly is intended by the metaphor? The commentator Adam Clarke, with other expositors, takes a distant view, distant that is from Isaiah’s day, and with great probability sees the setting aside of Israel and the bringing of Gentiles into divine favour. Car­mel, in the metaphor, is Israel, intended to be fruitful for God. Lebanon represents the Gentiles, uncultivated and disadvan­taged. Things would change. Israel, so tended and cared for like the vineyard of Isaiah chapter 5, would become like a wil­derness. Lebanon would become fruitful. This change is not necessarily physical or literal, although that might also be envisaged, but this is primarily a moral and spiritual transfor­mation and a transferring of privilege.

Is this what the Saviour meant when He said, ‘The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof’, Matt. 21. 43? They had rejected John, herald of the Messiah. They had rejected the prophets, beating some and killing others. Now the Son of God Himself had come to them and they would reject Him. Jehovah would deal with them and, in those early days of gospel testimony, Paul has to say to them as they contradicted him and blasphemed, ‘It was neces­sary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles’, Acts 13. 46.