Isaiah 2:5

e very jaws of a beast of prey: God has not given us as a prey to their teeth, intimating that they had no power over God's people but what was given them from above. They could not be a prey to their teeth unless God gave them up, and therefore they were rescued, because God would not suffer them to be ruined. 2. Like a bird, a little bird (the word signifies a sparrow), out of the snare of the fowler. The enemies are very subtle and spiteful; they lay snares for God's people, to bring them into sin and trouble, and to hold them there. Sometimes they seem to have prevailed so far as to gain their point. God's people are taken in the snare, and are as unable to help themselves out as any weak and silly bird is; and then is God's time to appear for their relief, when all other friends fail; then God breaks the snare, and turns the counsel of the enemies into foolishness: The snare is broken and so we are delivered. Isaac was saved when he lay ready to be sacrificed. Jehovah-jireh—in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. II. That their hearts, and the hearts of others, might be the more encouraged to trust in God in the like dangers ( v. 8 ): Our help is in the name of the Lord. David had directed us ( Ps. cxxi. 2 ) to depend upon God for help as to our personal concerns— My help is in the name of the Lord; here as to the concerns of the public—Our help is so. It is a comfort to all that lay the interests of God's Israel near their hearts that Israel's God is the same that made the world, and therefore will have a church in the world, and can secure that church in times of the greatest danger and distress. In him therefore let the church's friends put their confidence, and they shall not be put to confusion. This short psalm may be summed up in those words of the prophet ( Isa. iii. 10, 11 ), "Say you to the righteous, It shall be well with him. Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him." Thus are life and death, the blessing and the curse, set before us often in the psalms, as well as in the law and the prophets. I. It is certainly well with the people of God; for, 1. They have the promises of a good God that they shall be fixed ( ver. 1 ), and safe ( ver. 2 ), and not always under the hatches, ver. 3 . 2. They have the prayers of a good man, which shall be heard for them, ver. 4 . II. It is certainly ill with the wicked, and particularly with the apostates, ver. 5 . Some of the Jewish rabbies are of opinion that it has reference to the days of th