Isaiah 8:19,20

And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits

Wizards

Wizards and “they that have familiar spirits,” are what we should now call “mediums,” through whom the dead speak.

(A. B. Davidson, D. D.)

Wizards that peep and mutter

“Peep” (i.e., chirp) and “mutter” refer to the faint voice, like that of a little bird, which antiquity ascribed to the shades of the departed: “The sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome” (see Isaiah 29:4). The LXX suggests that the voice of the ghost was imitated by ventriloquism, which is not unlikely. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)

Religion and superstition

Religion and superstition contrasted (Isaiah 8:19). (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)

Should not a people seek unto their God?--

Gripping old truths and seeing new visions

We must learn to recognise the friends and foes of our life even when they are presented to us in an Oriental and old-world dress.

I. WE HAVE HERE A PLEA FOR THE LIBERTY AND INDEPENDENCE OF THE LIVING PRESENT. “On behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?” Such is the sarcastic question that the disciples of the great prophet are required to ask the people when the latter desire to resort to wizards and witches to help them out of their straits. The retort goes much further than merely striking a blow at the silly superstition of seeking by enchantment to bring back and question the shades of the dead. It contains a principle which lies at the very foundation of the world’s development,--a principle the reverent recognition of which will enable us to work out unfettered the full mission of our lives, and give us unbounded faith in the future of the race which Christ has come to redeem. Every new generation has its own special mission to fulfil; it is a new life charged with the duty of working out its own salvation. It is a new stage in the manifestation of the Divine through the human. The living present claims for itself a dignity and a mission, and, if we are lax in upholding the former, we are likely to fall short of fulfilling the latter. There is a way of worshipping the past, and of appealing to it which puts the present in chains, or, at least, compels it to be stationary. Has human life in very deed exhausted the thought of God? Surely the very history of the past itself ought to teach us the essential liberty and power of life. What epochs of the past are those that call forth our highest admiration and homage! Not such a period as that of the middle Ages when the living fortified and entrenched themselves in the sepulchres of the dead; but rather such times as those of the Lutheran reformation, when men felt the holy freedom of their own life, cast away the swathings of the past, and fearlessly took a new step in the name of God. I believe that God reigns through the rich movements of life, and not through traditional and external fetters. Given an earnest generation, awake to the responsibilities of its own life, and I can trust God to direct the flowing tide to a sacred shore. We cannot assert that an active and earnest generation will not make any mistakes. Every age has its own peculiar dangers, the vices which are the excess of its virtues. There are shallow lives that lose their gravity with the slightest movement, and dash themselves into thin vapour around the deeper movement of the time. And there are the men that pride themselves upon being fearless spirits in the realm of thought; which often means that they take advantage of a new movement to rush into one-sided and extreme conclusions upon the most precarious basis--conclusions which a truer judgment will anon reverse or correct. And even the most earnest and reliable spirits find it difficult to discover the golden mean between the bondage of the old and the violence of the new.

II. THAT THE TRUE LIFE OF THE PRESENT CAN BE ATTAINED ONLY BY LIVING CONTACT WITH THE LIVING GOD. The prophet’s message has not ended with the declaration that life is essentially movement and a force, having a Divine right to cast off the encrusting forms of the dead past. In order to prevent this awful liberty from being abused, and this vast movement from being misdirected, he must supply it with a guiding Spirit, and a directing force. It is a dangerous thing for men to become suddenly conscious of a vast and unused power unless they at the same time feel the grip of the eternal principles along which this power should move. Every movement of life presupposes an appointed orbit, without which it runs wild, and ends in a crash. The prophet, therefore, directs the people to root and ground their liberty in living contact with God--“Should not a people seek unto their God?” In examining, therefore, any particular case of movement in the moral and religious sphere it is all-important to inquire whether it exhibits the living energy of the Divine life in the human, whether it enriches men with a profounder apprehension of the beating, quickening life of God here in our very midst; in fine, whether the movement is marked with the sacred brand of living contact with the living God. Every true life movement brings God nearer--never drives Him further away. Let us apply this test in one particular and crucial case--the great question of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps our formal deflations may undergo a slight change; but of this I feel sure--that it will never be necessary or rational for me to accept a theory of inspiration which will make the Bible less Divine than I hold it to be at present. There is no truly onward movement which is not also upward. Life’s true mission is fulfilled and life’s true path pursued, only in proportion as a people seek to their God.

III. So we are led to our last thought: THAT THE TRUTHS WHICH WERE THE ESSENTIAL BASIS OF THE BEST LIFE OF THE PAST MUST BE THE BASIS OF THE ENLARGING LIFE OF THE PRESENT. “To the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.” So the cycle of thought is completed. True progress and true conservatism are not opposed to one another, but are rather supplementary. The only true liberty is that which runs along the lines of eternal law. The world was not begun yesterday, and we have not been deputed to lay its foundations anew. So Isaiah’s last position is not only consistent with his first; it is necessarily involved in it. The living, says the prophet, need not consult the shades of the dead, for they have a living God to guide them and to give them ever larger supplies of power. True; but God is one. He does not change with each new generation. The great principles by which He ennobles human life are well known, for they have been writ large in His self-manifestations in the past. God will not reveal Himself in the present to those that are too blind to recognise His glory as revealed in the past. God has revealed Himself to the world long ago. If we would have more light in the present, we must be true to the radiance that lights up the history of the past. (J. Thomas, M. A.)

God to be sought by nations

The history of our own coronary coincides with the record which the Holy Spirit has given of the history of Judah and of Israel, in illustrating the important fact that God in the dispensations of His providence, deals with nations in their collective capacity according to their faithfulness in His service. The condition of Judah in the time of Isaiah demanded this remonstrance. There prevailed much of avowed irreligion and immorality.

I. IN WHAT MANNER CAN WE PERSONALLY INFLUENCE THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF THE NATION AT LARGE? The nation is made up of the aggregate of its individual members. Each person, therefore, may justly consider his own character and conduct in a two-fold view: as it affects himself, and as it affects the whole country. The influence of each distinct member on the whole community, as contributing to the formation of its character, whether for good or for evil, is a subject of deep importance. In this respect, indeed, the more prominent the station in which a man is placed, the greater is his responsibility. But the religious character of the nation does not rest with these alone: piety or impiety in all other men of influence, of wealth, of talent, are likewise the constituent parts of the nation’s excellence or the nation’s, guilt, while they are also productive of a corresponding character in the various subordinate ranks of life. Nor is there any single person, however subordinate his station, who does not in the same manner contribute towards the formation of the general character of the nation of which he constitutes a part.

II. IN WHAT DOES THIS SEEKING UNTO GOD CONSIST? Nations and individuals seek unto the Lord--

1. By applying to Him for true knowledge and instruction (verse 20; John 5:39).

2. By taking refuge in Him as their confidence and hope.

(1) Nationally, we have examples of this confidence in God, in the sacred records concerning Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, in sevens of public alarm, and difficulty.

(2) Every man is called on to seek to the Lord for the foundation of his personal hope and comfort, not merely as to the concerns of this life, but in reference, also, to his eternal welfare. And, according as the hope of the people in general is well or ill grounded, will be the state and condition of the Church or of the nation professing the religion of Christ.

3. By following His guidance as to their character and conduct. (J. Hill, B. D.)

The duty of seeking unto God

I. THE REASONS WHY WE OUGHT TO SEEK UNTO OUR GOD.

1. We should seek to Him for light and guidance in perplexity and doubt. No state is more painfully trying to man than to have the mind tossed and agitated like a bark on the stormy waves, without chart and compass. There is an eager impatience in such a state, which lays men open to imposition. They become the easy dupes of crafty deceivers. Hence magicians and necromancers, in an age of ignorance and credulity, gamed such an ascendency over the vulgar. You have read what history records of the oracles of Greece, and the sibyls of Italy. But a superstition, very similar, prevailed over all Asia, and at times penetrated into Judea. Now all such practices were dishonouring and forsaking Jehovah. The mind of a sincere believer may, both on points of faith and practice, be in a state of doubt and suspense. And to whom should he look, but to the Father of lights who can scatter every cloud?

2. For support and consolation in sorrow and distress (Job 5:8; Psalms 50:15).

3. For protection and defence amidst difficulties and dangers.

4. For strength to fit us for all the active duties of life and religion.

II. HOW WE ARE TO SEEK UNTO OUR GOD.

1. By diligently and impartially consulting His revealed will in the Holy Scriptures.

2. By constantly and seriously frequenting the public ordinances of His house.

3. By carefully marking and observing the openings and leadings of Providence. “In particular cases,” says Mr. Newton, “the Lord opens and shuts for His people, breaks down walls of difficulty which obstruct their path, or hedges up their way with thorns, when they are in danger of going wrong, by the dispensations of His providence. They know that their concernments are in His hand; they are willing to follow whither and when He leads, but they are afraid of going before Him.”

4. By offering up humble sad earnest petitions at the throne of His heavenly grace. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

From light to darkness: from darkness to light

(Isaiah 8:18; Isaiah 9:2):--The experience of Israel is here described in three pictures, eachmarking a distinct stage in that experience--

I. ISRAEL REJECTING THE LIGHT. The prophet comes with a Divine message to his people. The people will not believe--

1. From inability, being unused to exercise simple trust in God.

2. From pride, for the mingling of judgment with mercy in Isaiah’s message offends them.

3. Disbelieving Isaiah, and finding no help in human wisdom, they turn like Saul in his extremity, with the proverbial credulity of unbelief, to the oracles of necromancy. The old watchword, of religion, “To the law and to the testimony!” “Should not a people, seek unto their God?” are forgotten. “For those who act thus,” says Isaiah, “there is no morning dawn,” for they wilfully turn from the light.

II. A TIME COMES WHEN ISAIAH’S WARNINGS ARE FULFILLED. Calamity, famine, distress drive the people to despair. Them is no voice of hope from their wizards and soothsayers. Haunted by the memory of the time when the watchword of faith might have saved them, they feel that they have grieved the Spirit and He is gone! “Hardly bestead and hungry they pass through the land and curse their king and their God.”

III. IN THE MIDST OF THEIR DESPAIR THEY LOOK UPWARDS, SCARCE KNOWING WHY. All other helpers failing, they direct towards heaven a despairing glance, as if hardly daring to think of God’s help, and then at last light shines through the gloom.

IV. SUCH ALSO MAY BE THE EXPERIENCE OF AN INDIVIDUAL SOUL. First, the Divine warning is despised, and the Word of God neglected, set aside as a worn-out superstition. The voice of religion seems to have lost its hold upon such a soul. Then all manner of refuges are tried, alliance with the world power--immersion in secular business; the superstition of unbelief, agnosticism, etc. All in their turn fail to alleviate the weary heartache which prompts the cry, “Who will show us any good?” The whole universe seems out of joint, and the soul hardly bestead and hungry curses its king and its God, the whole order of things in the world, and every form of religion the fake and the true. At length, in very despair, as if feeling it is no use, “for me there is no morning dawn;” the soul looks upwards. The darkness is past, the true light now shineth, the soul that walked in darkness and the shadow of death sees the salvation of the Lord. (Hugh H. Currie, B. D.)

Superstition

In the years which preceded the French Revolution, Cagliostro was the companion of princes--at the dissolution of paganism, the practisers of curious arts, the witches and the necromancers, were the sole objects of reverence in the known world; and so before the Reformation, archbishops and cardinals saw an inspired prophetess in a Kentish servant girl; Oxford heads of colleges sought out heretics with the help of astrology; Anne Boleyn blessed a bason of rings, her royal fingers pouring such virtue into the metal that no disorder could resist it; Wolsey had a magic crystal, and Thomas Cromwell, while in Wolsey’s household, “did haunt to the company of a wizard.” These things were the counterpart of a religion which taught that slips of paper, duly paid for, could secure indemnity for sin. (A. Freud)