Because Of The Plundering

Isaiah 22:4-5

Therefore I said, "Look away from me,
I will weep bitterly;
Do not labour to comfort me
Because of the plundering of the daughter of my people."
For it is a day of trouble and treading down and perplexity
By the Lord GOD of hosts
In the Valley of Vision--
Breaking down the walls
And of crying to the mountain.

Wreckage after a Russian attack on a Ukrainian town

With so much distress across the World, it is perhaps no wonder that Gill felt that The LORD spoke to her about plunder and plundering. However, that Spirit Word also came as ‘line upon line; precept upon precept’, a God-given follow-on from our previous meditation ‘Set Your Boundaries’.

Isaiah is speaking ‘a proclamation against Jerusalem’ — a warning to God’s people, which begins with ‘The burden against the Valley of Vision. What ails you now, that you have all gone up to the housetops’. Here, ‘burden’ signifies a prophecy, ‘valley of vision’ speaks of pride in perception or revelation, which is underlined when he talks of ‘housetops’, a high place, but not high enough, thus indicating self-elevation. This is not ‘love lifted me’.

And in verse 2, we hear of ‘a joyous city’, where ‘joyous’, meaning ‘exultant in triumph’, appears to have been used sarcastically, and certainly without any suggestion of the joy of The Lord. Verse 3, has rulers fleeing, captured by the archers — giving us the picture of weak leaders caught in a trap that should have been foreseen and thus avoided.

This prophecy goes on to reveal that, inevitably, there will be ‘the plundering of the daughter of my people‘, or put another way, ‘the desolation and ruin of the apple of His eye … His people.’ This plundering can only take place when boundaries fall, when our misplaced self-confidence and arrogance allows the enemy into the camp to wreak havoc; trampling down, stealing salvation and draining away life.

Thus, because of the enemy’s plundering, we stand to lose every thing that we hold dear, but have not held dearly enough. We cannot afford to hold our faith lightly, or to dip in and out of The LORD’s covering, otherwise we are merely aiming for the housetop instead of the mountaintop.

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‘Meditate on these things…’

PSALM 91:1-6
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust."
Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler
And from the perilous pestilence.
He shall cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you shall take refuge;
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

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PSALM 91 — Esther Mui

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A HOLY COMMAND: Oswald Chambers on LOVE
— Love with all your HEART --

IT NEVER COST a disciple anything to follow Jesus; to talk about cost when you are in love with anyone is an insult. The point of suffering is that it costs other people — fathers, mothers, households; consequently we decline to go on, consideration for others causes us to hold back.
[from ‘The Servant As His Lord’]

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