I. THE DESTROYING AGENT. Not a deluge, not fire from heaven, but an ordinary human agent, working with energy and thoroughness. The weapon which Babylon in its greed of conquest had used against Jerusalem is turned against itself. First of all, Babylon looks covetously on the land of Israel, and spoils it of its people and their possessions. And then, enriched, Babylon becomes in turn an object of desire. God has only to leave covetousness and grasping alone, whether in nations or individuals. There will generally come in some human agency to dissipate ill-gotten gains. As Babylon became richer in external goods, it became weaker in manly resources. There was more to invite attack, more need of the best defences, and yet at the same time less ability to defend. The sword stands here as the great symbol of human physical force. We must not infer that God approves it: he simply points out how it must have free scope upon the surface of things. Babylon took the sword, and she in turn must perish by the sword; and that same sword, successful against Babylon, points to the destruction of those who wielded it. Nothing abiding, nothing permanently satisfying, is to be achieved by the sword.

II. THE EXTENT OF THE DESTRUCTION. Physical force can make short work of all man's natural treasures; all that is wanted is a sufficient amount of it. Skill compensates for force only up to a certain point. Vain was it for Babylon to count up its mighty men and parade its horses and chariots. If we would arrive at right conclusions in the matter of security we must know the strength of our enemies as well as our own. As to one element in its strength in particular, Babylon would be dreadfully deceived. It could not realize how, as the agent of a punishing Jehovah, there had been more than its wonted strength bestowed on it against sinning Israel. It plumed itself too much on conquered Israel, and thought itself stronger than it really was. - Y.

Among the remarkable provisions of the Mosaic law there were some very peculiar ones affecting the next-of-kin. The nearest living blood-relation to a man had certain obligations and offices to discharge, under certain contingencies, in respect of which he received a special name; which is sometimes translated in the Old Testament "Redeemer" and sometimes "Avenger" of blood. What the etymological signification of the word may be is, perhaps, somewhat doubtful. It is taken by some authorities to come from a word meaning "to set free?"

I. THE QUALIFICATIONS AND OFFICES OF THE KINSMAN-REDEEMER. The qualifications may be all summed up in one — that he must be the nearest living blood relation of the person whose God he was. He might be brother, or less nearly connected, hut this was essential, that of all living men, he was the most closely connected. That qualification has to be kept well in mind when thinking of the transference of the office to God in His relation to Israel, and through Israel, to us. Such being his qualification, what were his duties? Mainly three. The first was connected with property. One great purpose steadily kept in view in all the Mosaic land laws was the prevention of the alienation of the land from its original holders, and its accumulation in a few hands. The obligation on the next-of-kin to buy back alienated property was quite as much imposed on him for the sake of the family, as of the individual. The second of his duties was to buy back a member of his family fallen into slavery. (Leviticus 25:39). The last of the offices of the kinsman-redeemer was that of avenging the blood of a murdered relative. The law of blood-feud among the Hebrews was all in the direction Of restricting the "wild justice of revenge," and of entrusting it to certain chosen persons out of the kindred, of the. murdered man. The savage vendetta was too deeply engrained in the national habit to be done away with altogether. All that was for the time possible was to check and systematise it, and this was done by the institution in question, which did not so much put the sword into the hand of the next-of-kin as strike it out of the hand of all the rest of the clan.

II. THE GRAND MYSTERIOUS TRANSFERENCE OF THIS OFFICE TO JEHOVAH. This singular institution was gradually discerned to be charged with lofty meaning and to be capable of being turned into a dim shadowing of something greater than itself. You will find that God begins to be spoken of in the later portions of Scripture as the Kinsman-Redeemer. I reckon eighteen instances, of which thirteen are in the second half of Isaiah. The reference is no doubt mainly to the great deliverance from captivity in Egypt and Babylon, but the thought sweeps a much wider circle and goes much deeper down than these historical facts. There was in it some dim thought that though God was separated from them by all the distance between finitude and infinitude yet they were nearer to Him than to anybody else; that the nearest living relation that these poor persecuted Jews had was the Lord of hosts, beneath whose wings they might come to trust. Therefore does the prophet kindle into rapture and triumphant confidence as he thinks that the Lord of hosts, mighty, unspeakable, high above our thoughts, our words, or our praise, is Israel's Kinsman, and, therefore, their Redeemer. How profound a consciousness that man was made in the image of God, and that, in spite of all the gulf between finite and infinite, and the yet deeper gulf between sinful man and righteous God. He was closer to a poor struggling soul than even the dearest were, must have been at all events dawning on the prophet who dared to think of the Holy One in the Heavens as Israel's Kinsman.

III. WE HAVE THE PERFECT FULFILMENT OF THIS DIVINE OFFICE BY THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. He is nearer to each of us than our dearest are. He loves us with the love of kindred, and can fill our hearts and wills, and help our weakness in better, more inward ways than all sympathy and love of human hearts can do. Between the atoms of the densest of material bodies there is an interspace of air, as is shown by the fact that everything is compressible if you can find the force sufficient to compress it. That is to say, no particle touches another in the material universe. And so in the spiritual region there is an awful film of separation between each of us and all others, however closely we may be united. We each live on our own little island in the deep "with echoing straits between us thrown." The solemn consciousness of personality, of responsibility unshared by any, of a separate destiny parting us from our dearest. Arms may be twined, but they must be unlinked some day, and each in turn face the awful solitude of death, as each has really faced that scarcely less awful solitude of life alone. But "he that is joined to the Lord is one flesh," and our kinsman, Christ, will come so near to us, that we shall be in Him, and He in us, one spirit and one life. He is our nearest relation, nearer than husband, wife, parent, brother, sister, or friend. He is nearer to you than your very selves. He is your better self. This is His qualification for His office. Because He is man's kinsman, He buys back His enslaved brethren. The bondage from which "one of his brethren" might "redeem" the Israelite was a voluntary bondage into which he had "sold himself." And such is our slavery. None can rob us of our freedom but ourselves. The world and the flesh and the devil cannot put their chains on us unless our own will hold out our hands for the manacles. And, alas! it is often an unsuspected slavery "How sayest thou ye shall be made free? We were never m bondage to any man," boasted the angry disputants with Christ. And if they had lifted up their-eyes they might have seen from the Temple courts in which they stood, the citadel full of Roman soldiers, and perhaps the golden eagles gleaming in the sunshine on the loftiest battlements. Some of us are just as foolish, and try as desperately to annihilate facts by ignoring them, and to make ourselves free by passionately denying that we are slaves. But "he that committeth sin is the slave of sin." Did you ever try to kill a bad habit, a vice! Did you find it easy work? Was it not your master? You thought it was a chain no stronger than a spider's web that was round your wrist till you tried to break it; and then you found it a chain of adamant. Many men who boast themselves free are tied and bound with the cords of their sins. Dreaming of freedom, you have sold yourself, and that "for nought." Is that not true, tragically true? What have you made out of sin? Is the game worth the candle? Will it continue to be so? — "And ye shall be redeemed without money, for Jesus Christ laid down His life for you and me, that by His death we might receive forgiveness and deliverance from-the power of sin." And so your Kinsman, nearer to you than all else, has bought you back.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)