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The history of the nation is the history of the individual magnified. The records of God's dealings with the nation represent to us, on a larger scale, God's dealings with the individual. The dealings of God with the individual human heart are generally of so delicate a character, and are so frequently concealed in the secret experiences of our inner life, that it is extremely difficult for even a careful observer to follow them in detail, and apprehend them with any degree of completeness. We are helped, however, by having the history of God's dealings with the nation, and knowing that these are His dealings with the individual magnified. In this chapter we have the record of God's dealings with Israel at a period of national apostasy and backsliding. It is evident that God does not think slightingly of sin. The first consequence of national sin is national judgment, inflicted by a rejected God, At last judgments begin to produce the designed effect, and Israel begins .to discover that the God who seemed to be her enemy is her real and only faithful friend. In all this we have a picture of God's dealing with the wayward heart, by which His Divine love designs to win it back from its apostasy and forgetfulness of Him. Observe the first step that Divine love and pity takes. God finds us in our pride and wilfulness, and endeavouring to obtain that satisfaction in the creature which is only to be found in the Creator; and He begins by opening our eyes to the emptiness of all these things in which we have sought our satisfaction; and however slow we are to learn the lesson, He waits His opportunity to allure us into the wilderness. And a dreary wilderness it is. It is a painful process, this opening of the eyes. We shrink from being undeceived; we are reluctant to believe that the world is a grand imposture. We try to persuade ourselves that we shall find in it all we want, and shrink from the dissipation of our fondly cherished anticipations. Sometimes it is by sorrow and bereavement that we are allured into the wilderness. Sometimes God deals with His wandering ones by an inward impression, by the direct and indescribable influences of His Holy Spirit, by outward circumstances, by unlooked-for relief and deliverance. Thus He allures us into the wilderness, to draw us away from our love for, and our confidence in earthly things, and then, when we are thus prepared, to speak to our hearts as He only can. "Speak comfortably," should be, "speak to her heart." The world can speak to our fancy, and to our intellect, God can speak to our heart; that heart whose wants you have ignored, or to which you have denied what it most needed. He brings to our mind all His wondrous dealings with us in the past. As we look back a flood of recognition rolls over the soul, and a burden of contrition begins to weigh upon our heart, such as it never felt before. Yet from the wilderness where God's voice has spoken to the heart, the new era of true fruitfulness is to begin. "I will give her her vineyards from thence." The firstfruits of the new life are to be gathered in the vintage of joy — the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. Other fruits may follow, but this generally comes first. But how are we to enter upon this new life of fruitful joy and of joyful fruit? If we are to get into the vineyards, we must enter them through God's appointed door — the "valley of Achor." God makes it a "door of hope." What we need above everything is a "door of hope," a way out of the hideous desolation of our despair. But where shall it be found? None but God knows of a door of hope for perishing man, and He must give it, or our hope is vain. The valley of Achor recalls a national repentance for a national sin: an act of solemn repudiation of sin; it was the place of a great and tragic national expiation. We, too, have a door of hope, strangely similar, and yet strangely different from this. There was One found among the sons of men, who was able and willing to make expiation for man's sins.

(W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)

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KJV: Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

WEB: "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.