SHADOW FROM THE HEAT

On Isaiah’s lips is a note of deep gratitude as he lauds the God whose people know Him as a stronghold in their distress. He adds that his God is also ‘a shadow from the heat’, v. 4. Times of extreme heat came with the changing season, but this heat, described in verses 4-5, is as unnatural ‘as snow in summer’, Prov. 26.1. The heat being experienced is unnaturally fierce for it is the fierce heat of persecution. It is an intensified form of ‘when the sun was up’, which the Lord Jesus interpreted in His parable as ‘when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word’, Matt. 13. 6, 21.

Isaiah tells us that the extremity is such that the branch of ‘the terrible ones’ shall wither in the prevailing desert conditions. These ‘terrible ones’ are most likely the cause of the persecution and, like those who fuelled the fiery furnace seven times more than normal, they perish in their sin, Dan. 3.19, 22. But how can God protect His own on this occasion? Will there be another with them in their affliction, Dan. 3. 25?

Isaiah reveals the God of the persecuted as the shadow from the heat. Furthermore, he tells of a cloud lowering the temperature in the unnaturally oppressive heat, v. 5. But surely in the intense heat our prophet envisages there would be no cloud. In the heat, surely ‘the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away’, Job 7. 9. Did not God provide a cloud during Israel’s day-time journeyings, over a period of forty years? Metaphorically, He will do so again. He will be their cloud in the heat. He will shelter His own in the fierce persecution of the coming period of Rachel’s trouble, the great tribulation.

And He does so for us today, whether the persecution is physical, as in some lands, or mental or spiritual. He is to His own a shadow in the searing heat. Men think they can ‘turn up the heat’ on the Lord’s people, when, and as, they will. But they cannot control the clouds. Of old time men considered that God pavilioned Himself in clouds that He might remain hidden, Ps. 18. 11; Job 22. 14 etc. What concealed God from carnal prying eyes is now seen protecting His children from cruel persecutions. He is indeed a shadow from the scorching heat.