QUES. 9.-Will you please answer in Help and Food the following questions:

(1) In the 17th chapter of Isaiah to the sixth verse, does the prophet deal with the ten tribes only ?

(2) In the 3rd verse," They shall be as the glory of the children of Israel"-what was the glory, and did Israel represent the ten tribes? What was the glory of Jacob?

(3) From the 6th to the 9th verses mercy is reserved:Is this for the ten tribes only?

(4) Verses 9 to 11, the prophet returns to foretell the woeful desolations that should be made in the land of Israel by the army of the Assyrians. Is that only against the ten tribes ?

(5) In the 7th chapter, ver. 1, was Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, king of the ten tribes only ?

ANS.-To answer these questions intelligently it is necessary to briefly state the historical conditions at the time the prophecy of Isaiah 17 was given. , In Isaiah 7, and also 2 Kings 16:5, we learn there was a conspiracy on the part of Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, the object of which was to dethrone Ahaz, king of Judah. Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, who in response, went against Damascus, captured it and put Rezin to death (see 2 Kings 16 :9). 2 Kings 15:29 shows that a little later the king of Assyria overran northern Israel and deported its inhabitants.

In these circumstances Isaiah, illuminated by the Spirit of God, saw a picture of a greater desolation of Israel's land at the end of her history, as a disobedient and rebellious people, when Israel will be confederated with the Roman Beast against Christ. In the days of this confederacy the land of Israel will be overrun and .desolated by armies of which the army of Tiglath-pileser was a type (see Isaiah 10). So great will 'be the destruction and desolation that those spared shall but a small remnant.

Isaiah 17 is called, "The burden of Damascus." The evident object of the Spirit in Isaiah in dwelling at such length on this "day of grief and desperate sorrow" for the land of Israel is to remind Syria that if the Lord puts His hand so heavily upon His own people-the nation that is the object of His special favor- what hope can she have of escaping the power of His hand when He rises up to settle His controversy with the enemies of His people (see verse 3) ?

(1) Isaiah 17:4-6 is not so much what will happen to the ten tribes as what will take place in the land of Israel.

(2) It was the glory of the children of Israel to be God's special people-the nation which was the object of His special favor. The glory of Jacob has tho same significance. Israel refers to what God made them ; "Jacob " to what they are in themselves.

(3) The mercy suggested in verses 6-9 is the mercy God will show in His sovereign grace in sparing and protecting a remnant in the land of Israel, when it will be overrun by the scourge.
(4) It is rather the land of Israel.

(5) Pekah was king over the ten tribes, but as in the land.

C. Crain.