Isaiah 33:23 Your tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their mast, they could not spread the sail… I got an illustration of this when I happened to be staying in a farm-house. With one exception the family consisted of robust, hearty children, but there was one little lame boy. Whilst I was staying, there came in a great hamper of apples, and at once all the boys and girls in the family, having eyed them wistfully, proceeded to appropriate, and to appropriate very lavishly, the apples. The little lame fellow, with his puny, wan face, looked forward eagerly as those apples disappeared, and no one thought of him, till mother came, a bustling, quick-tempered woman. She said, "What is that you are doing? Put all those apples back again, I tell you." And very ruefully they replaced .them. "Now," she said, "Jimmy, you come and take your pick." And the little lame fellow on the crutch pushed his way up to the table, took the ripest and juiciest, and filled his pockets as full as they would hold, and then went back with a flush upon his pale cheeks. Then mother said to the other children, "Now do what you like with the rest." I saw how in mother's love the lame take the prey! (F. B. Meyer, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their mast, they could not spread the sail: then is the prey of a great spoil divided; the lame take the prey. |
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