THE PRINCE OF PEACE 321
when Israel, by a look at their crucified Messiah, is " redeemed from all his iniquities " and experiences God s " plenteous redemption," l it will be this greater spiritual deliverance that they will celebrate in words which are already familiar and precious to us who know the Messiah of Israel as our personal Redeemer.
" He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay ; and He set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings" (Ps. xl. 2, 3).
And the same double promise of national and spiritual deliverance and blessing is contained also in the I 2th verse:
" Turn ye to the stronghold, ye prisoners of /wpe."
The pi-p, bhitsaron " stronghold," or " fortress " to which the captives are invited to return, is perhaps primarily their own land, which is as a rocky and fortified " fastness " as compared with the low-lying " pit " of their captivity. But even the Jewish commentator Kimchi sees in it a reference also to God, who is the strength and sure refuge of His people, and paraphrases the first words of this verse, " Turn ye to God, for He is a stronghold and tower of strength." And this agrees also with earlier prophetic utterances in which God Himself is spoken of as the safe hiding-place and defence of His people, as, for instance, Joel iii. (which seems to me to be one of the scriptures from i the earlier prophets which was in the mind of Zechariah when writing the last verses of the 9th chapter), where we read that in the day when the Lord shall gather the nations for judgment, and the whole order of nature shall be shaken, "Jehovah will be the refuge of His people , and a stronghold to the children of Israel" z
The expression njpnn "V DN, asirei hatiqvah " prisoners of hope," or of " the hope " truly describes the Jewish people in their banishment and scattering, and marks the difference between the nation which stands in an indissoluble relationship to God by reason of the " blood of the covenant," and all other nations as nations. The
1 Ps. cxxx. 7, 8.
- Joel iii 1-6. Here the word for stronghold is rijfl? (moat). 21
