“Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; He will come and save you” Isaiah 35:4

Surely this is one of the strangest “Fear nots” of the Bible! We have to strengthen the weak hands, confirm the feeble knees, and establish the faint-hearted by the declaration of His sure and imminent coming to wreak vengeance! And this thought is by no means confined to the Old Testament Scriptures, for it is to be found in the New Testament: “And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is a message to the downtrodden and oppressed, to those writhing under cruel wrong, smarting from oppression, indignant through some gross injustice. Brooding over the wrongs they suffer people are tempted to take vengeance into their own hands, and, moved by hasty and unrighteous impulses, make mistakes over which they will long mourn. “Avenge not thyself,” is the Divine command. “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Justice will be meted out some day to those oppressors by the God of Righteousness, hence be patient, and fret not thyself because of evildoers. Let not the wrongs you have suffered sour you. There comes to mind a tragic instance and illustration of this. A young woman who should have benefited largely under her father’s will, was cruelly defrauded of most of her money by a solicitor who had to do with the estate, and from a position of affluence she sank into a state of extreme poverty. She so brooded over the cruel wrong she had suffered, that her whole life was ruined thereby. She cherished hard thoughts of God, questioning His justice, cultivated a spirit of suspicion toward all mankind, and allowed herself to be so overwhelmed by bitterness that she became a bugbear to all her fellows, and this was so pronounced as old age crept on, that she was avoided by all. Remember, persecuted, defrauded, or oppressed one, that the eyes of God are upon you; He knows all. He will now bind up your broken heart, soothe your bruised and troubled spirit, granting ample compensations even in this life, and will most certainly, sooner or later, meet out justice to the oppressors, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

This is also a message to those who, though not hurting from wrong done to them, yet are appalled at the sight of cruel oppression and wrong inflicted on others. There are many tenderly sympathetic souls who suffer more from the wrongs inflicted on others than if they personally were the aggrieved ones. Noting how these oppressors seem to flourish, and how slow the wheels of God grind, they are liable to become “hasty of heart” (note, the KJV margin “fearful), rush to rash conclusions, even going to the length of denying either the existence or the power of God. A sympathetic naturalist so brooded over the present conditions of the world — the work of nature, red in tooth and claw, and the world of men at strife and enmity one with another—that he was so moved with indignation as to exclaim that, if he had been the Creator of the world, the patent facts would break his heart. He spoke truer than he thought, for the Creator of the world died of a broken heart on account of the sin of the world. No, no, we must not lose heart or patience. God still observes, and will most certainly rectify wrong, and mete out punishment to the oppressors sooner or later. Therefore “Be strong, fear not; behold your God will come with vengeance.”

This is a message particularly for the Jew. Many members of this people of the “wandering foot” have so brooded over the wrongs Israel has suffered now for two millenniums, that they have thrown overboard their faith, and have become rank atheists. Certainly no nation has suffered such cruel oppression and wrong. But if we read prophecy correctly, Israel has yet a far more awful ordeal to pass through, “the time of Jacob’s trouble.” But the Lord is neither forgetful nor unobservant of His people. He is quietly noting everything. Even now, blessed are those who bless Israel, and cursed are they who curse. But “behold your God will come.” And His coming will mean salvation for Israel, vengeance on the enemies of Israel, and recompense for the friends of Israel.