31 A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for Yahweh hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith Yahweh.

"The wicked are the sword of Yahweh,"

says the prophet; and when they set up their kingdoms and dominions of divers kinds, for the exaltation and perpetuation of their names in all the earth, He not only ultimately defeats their policy in their entire destruction, as in the case of the Flood, of Nineveh and Babylon; but He plays them off upon one another before their end comes; and uses them also as a rod for the chastisement of the people who are called by His name.

The conversion of Nineveh and Babylon, and we might add, of Greece and Rome, into great swords of chastisement and punishment, is strikingly illustrated in the Bible-history of Israel in relation to those powers.

The twelve tribes of Israel in all their career have hitherto proved themselves to be a stiff-necked, perverse and rebellious race.

" I have seen a horrible thing in the house of Israel: there is the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled. Also, O Judah, He hath appointed a harvest for thee: after (the harvest) I brought back the captivity of my people."—(Hos. 6: 11.)

This is heaven's indictment against the Ten Tribes, styled Ephraim, and the rest of Israel, called Judah. They were a stench in Yahweh's nostrils, for their abominations; yet beloved for the sake of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

When, therefore, He brought the sword of Nineveh, Babylon, Greece and Rome, upon them, it was not to exterminate the race, but to chastise its generations, to bring it back from its aberrations, to cure it of its vices, that it might be holiness to Yahweh and His Elohim.

Bro Thomas

The Christadelphian, June 1873