856 SAFETY 7N THE G1tAVE.', [t)1SC.8t ;place for his people :" It is his appointed shelter and retreat for his favourites, when he finds them over- pressed either with present dangers or calamities, or when he foresees huge calamities and dangers, like storms and billows, ready to overtake them ; Is. lvii. 1. " The righteous is taken away fronz the evil to come," God our heavenly Father beholds this evil advancing forward through all the pleasant smiles of nature, and all the peaceful circumstances that su;round us. He hides his children in the grave from a thousand sins, and sorrows, and distresses of this life, which they foresaw not : And even when they are actually beset behind and before, so that there seems to be no natural way for their escape, God calls them aside into the chambers of death, in the same sort of language as he uses in another case ; Is. xxvi. 20 " Came my people, enter thou into thy cham- bers, and shut thy doors about thee, hide thyself as it ttverefor a little moment, until the indignation be over- passed." And vet perhaps it is possible that this very language d the Lord in Isaiah may refer to the grave, as God's biding-place, for the verse before promises a resurrec- tion. " Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise : Awake, and sing ye that dwell in the dust : For thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." And if we may suppose this last verse to Lave been transposed by any ancient transcribers, so as to have followed originally 'verse 20, or 21, it is very natural then to interpret the whole paragraph concerningdeath, as God's hiding-place for his people, and their rising again through the virtue of the resurrection of Christ as their joyful release. Many a time God is pleased to shorten the labours, and travels, and fatigues ofgood men in this wilderness, and he opens a door of rest to them where he pleases, and perhaps surprizes them into a state of safety and peace, " where the weary are at rest, and the wicked cease from troubling ;" and holy Job seems to desire this favour from his Maker here ; Job iii. 17. Sometimes indeed, in the history of this book, he seems to break out into these desires in too rude and an- gry a manner ofexpression ; and in a fit of criminal im- patience he murmurs against God for upholding him in the land of the living : But at other times, as in this text,
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