In the distance the prophet hears a vague tumult, like that of the sea with its roaring, incoming tide. It is the noise of the invading host. Readers will recollect the powerful passage describing the eve of the battle of Waterloo - the dull distant sound repeated until the conviction flashes, "It is - it is - the cannon's opening roar!" So does the prophet listen to the uproar of the advancing Assyrians.

I. THE POETIC REPRESENTATION. It is one of sublimity and terror, appealing through the sense of hearing to the imagination, and calling up indefinable alarm and sorrow. He hears in the distance the gathering of a multitude of nations, represented by the imperial name of Asshur. These hosts spread out in long line like the rolling wave, one excited surging mass, threatening to carry everything before it into destruction. Such an image may represent any great movement which seems at any time to threaten the spiritual life of a Church, of a nation. Never was there a time when anxious listeners did not hear such rising sounds in the distance; the statesman trembling for the welfare of institutions, the believer for the stability of faith. Is there just cause for alarm? Let the prophet answer.

II. THE PROPHECY OF JUDGMENT. Remarkable is the picture of the sudden change. The power of the Divine Word is instantaneously felt. "It costs God simply a threatening word, and the mass all flies apart, and falls into dust, and whirls about in all directions; like the chaff of threshing-floors in high situations, or like dust whirled up by the storm." In the evening the destruction of the Assyrians begins, and in the morning they are completely destroyed. And the oracle ends with an expression of triumph over this portion and lot of the spoiler and the plunderer.

LESSONS.

1. The Church, Christianity, religion, civilization, seem in every age to be threatened; yet they are ever safe. Force, numbers, armies, have but the show of strength when confronted with the spiritual world.

2. God is ever in his heaven - cannot and will not desert his place.

3. His judgments and rebukes are the expression of the eternal truth of things, and must prevail. - J.

These verses read the doom of those that spoil and rob the people of God. If the Syrians and Israelites invade and plunder Judah — if the Assyrian army take God's people captive, and lay their country waste, — let them know that ruin will be their portion. They are here brought in —

I. TRIUMPHING OVER THE PEOPLE OF GOD. They rely upon their numbers. They are very noisy, like the noise of the seas; they talk big, hector and threaten.

II. TRIUMPHED OVER BY THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD. God can dispirit the enemies of His Church, when they are most courageous and confident, and dissipate them when they seem most closely consolidated. This shall be done suddenly (ver. 14).

( M. Henry.)