Bible Commentaries

Psalms 106:24 — not unto the voice of Jehovah. Therefore he sware unto them, That he would overthrow them in the wilderness, And that he would overthrow their seed among the nations, And scatter them in the lands." "They despised the pleasant land" (Psalms 106:24). The last half of Numbers 13, reports this. The ten spies brought back an evil report of the land of Canaan, affirming in the strongest terms possible that the Israelites would never be able to take it. "And they brought up an evil report of the

Psalms 116:12 — stressed was that, once made, they had to be kept punctiliously."[15] Apparently, vows were often made and seldom kept. In the case of Jonah's prayer from the belly of "the great fish" he promised God that, "I will pay that which I have vowed" (Jonah 2:9). Here the rescued psalmist asks, "Just what could be appropriate as a gift to God in appreciation for all he has done for me?" It would be well indeed for every Christian to ask himself the same question. We naturally ask questions similar to

Psalms 29:9 — "The voice of Jehovah maketh the hinds to calve, And strippeth the forests bare: And in his temple, everything saith, Glory." "Maketh the hinds to calve" (Psalms 29:9). This is usually interpreted to mean that wild animals, mammals, living in the forests were caused to bring forth their young prematurely because of their terror of the violent thunderstorm. The hinds here are the female deer. Dahood affirmed

Psalms 30:11 — sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee and be not silent. O Jehovah my God, I will give thanks unto thee forever." "Thou hast turned" (Psalms 30:11). What had happened so quickly? The explanation is in 2 Samuel 24:18, which records how God sent the Prophet Gad to David with word that the plague was ended. "Thou hast loosed my sackcloth" (Psalms 30:11). "That the king had clothed himself in sackcloth upon this occasion is mentioned in 1 Chronicles

Song of Solomon 6:1 — with thee? My beloved is gone down to his garden, To the beds of spices, To feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: He feedeth his flock among the lilies." What we have here is: (1) a question and (2) the answer. The question is from "the daughters of Jerusalem," whether understood as God's people generally, or as the members of Solomon's harem. The question: Where is your lover that we also may seek him? The lover described by the maiden was

Isaiah 3:1 — value-judgments of paganism, inevitably culminating in the bitter predictive prophecy of Isaiah 3:8, "Jerusalem is mined!" The fulfillment of this, no doubt, had already become evident in the great Assyrian invasion that occurred in the times of Isaiah (702 B.C.); "But the real fulfillment waited a century till Nebuchadrezzar's removal of the ablest citizens, leaving behind an utterly weak and irresponsible regime."[2] Isaiah 3:1 "For behold, the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem

Ezekiel 16:49 — hast justified thy sisters." These verses put the icing on the cake for Ezekiel's efforts to make her abominations known to Jerusalem. It must be admitted that the prophet had done a remarkably effective job of fulfilling his assignment (Ezekiel 16:2). As for the reasons why Jerusalem's sins were so much worse than those of her sisters Sodom and Samaria, they are resident in the privileges and obligations of the covenant. "To whom much is given, of him much is required" (Luke 12:48). The terrible

Daniel 2:14 — Esther defied tradition and custom by going unbidden into the presence of a Persian king at a later time shows how this was true. Therefore, we must conclude that all necessary formalities were observed on this occasion, just as they were in Daniel 2:24, below, and that they were merely passed over here by the abbreviated account. The great fact working for Daniel and the wise men was that the king had a burning desire to find out what the dream meant. Another indication that the account is abbreviated

Daniel 2:31 — of it which Daniel promptly revealed to the king. That this image was indeed the feature of Nebuchadnezzar's dream appears in the fact that the king accepted it as the revelation of the dream which he had. "No place was found for them ..." (Daniel 2:35) is merely an archaic way of saying that, "No trace of them was found."[7] "A stone cut out by no human hand would be heaven-sent."[8]

Joel 2:4 — "The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so do they run. Revelation 9:7-12 has a remarkable elaboration of this same comparison of the locusts to "many horses rushing to war," even the sound of the locust's wings being compared to the noise of a cavalry charge. The impossibility of understanding John's words in Revelation

Joel 2:7 — turning aside neither to the right or the left, and even scaling walls and houses in their procedure, it has never been alleged by anyone that the locusts were definitely arrayed in "ranks" and "echelons." The prophecy throughout this section (Joel 2:4-11) moves beyond the locust plague to something more terrible. However, the locust plague was also terrible in its own right: When a wall or a house lies in their way, they climb straight up, going over the roof. When they come to water, whether

Amos 4:10 — I slain with the sword, and have carried away your horses; and I have made the stench of your camp to come up even into your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith Jehovah." Two more disasters are recounted here, (1) pestilence, and (2) military disaster. The New English Bible renders "plagues of Egypt" instead of "pestilence after the manner of Egypt"; but despite this there remains some doubt of what, exactly, is meant. All of the disasters mentioned in these verses were known

Micah 3:1 — composed of three brief sections exposing the sins of the rulers of the people, the princes and judges (Micah 3:1-4), the sins of the false prophets (Micah 3:5-8), and the sins of the establishment, actually including those already mentioned (Micah 3:9-12). The highlight of the chapter is Micah 3:12 in which the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the Temple mountain itself are specifically predicted, events that occurred some 125 years, at least, after the times of Micah, being fulfilled in the

Habakkuk 1:17 — states raised up against them) would continue to devastate the earth as long as God's mercy for all men (in the purpose of redeeming some of them) would prevail. The answer to this question by the prophet, "He himself gave by inspiration in Habakkuk 2."[32] That answer lay in the prophecy of the doom of Babylon, "The remnant of the peoples shall plunder thee"; but such an answer did not promise any alleviation of the distress of humanity derived from rampant unrighteousness that without intermission

Zephaniah 1:10 — Maktesh; for all the people of Canaan are undone; all they that are laden 'with silver are cut off." "The fish gate ..." This was one of the north entrances to Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:1-6). The second quarter was where Huldah the prophetess lived (2 Kings 22:14). Maktesh is not elsewhere mentioned in the Bible. Perhaps all of these places were in the north sector of the city, indicating that the invasion would come from the north. "The hills ..." probably refers to the terrain upon which

Zechariah 1:10 — identifying clause "stood among the myrtle trees" here and in Zechariah 1:11. Keil has stated the reasons for the two identities thus: "The `angel that talked with me' appears in company with other angels and receives instructions from them (Zechariah 2:5-8). His whole activity is restricted to the duty of conveying higher instructions to the prophet, and giving him an insight into the higher meaning of the visions; whereas the angel of Jehovah stands on an equality with God, being sometimes identified

Zechariah 1:14 — remained, and the word of the Lord would yet "go forth from Jerusalem" on the Day of Pentecost when the Gospel Age began. Zion ..." The use of this term appears to be significant. This was the ancient name (pre-Israelite) of the hill captured by David (2 Samuel 5:7); and, as Baldwin said, "It sometimes stands for the people of Jerusalem in their religious privilege and responsibility."[29] We believe that to be the reason why the term is used here. The true covenant with God on Israel's part

Matthew 1:22 — 7:14) fully understood this as applying to the virgin birth of Christ is irrelevant. God's great prophets did not always know the true meaning of the words God gave them. Peter did not know the full meaning of what he prophesied on Pentecost (Acts 2:38,39); and a miracle was required later (Acts 10) to convince Peter that the Gentiles should be permitted entry into the church. See 1 Peter 1:11,12. In this verse, Matthew uses for the first time an expression found ten times in his gospel

Matthew 5:3 — all necessary and desirable blessing. The poor in spirit are the opposite of the proud, conceited, arrogant and disdainful. Only the poor in spirit can enter God's kingdom. Others will never feel their need nor know their poverty until too late. (2) Another conception of the poor in spirit is seen in the account of this beatitude by Luke (Luke 6:20), "Blessed are ye poor." Dummelow expressed it thus, "A Christian, whether rich or poor, must have the spirit of poverty, he must possess his wealth

Matthew 7:1 — composed of miscellaneous exhortations and is not easily conformable to any formal outline. Judge not that ye be not judged. (Matthew 7:1) The word "judge" in this place is translated from a Greek word, [@krino], also found in such passages as John 12:48; Acts 17:31; and 2 Timothy 4:1, indicating that the type of judging forbidden in this place is that of presuming to determine salvation, or the lack of it, in others. Not even Christ did this while on earth. "I came not to judge the world