JOHN CALVIN

67
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD
hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. ( Isaiah 53:6)
We see that here none are excepted, for the Prophet includes “all.” The whole human race would
have perished, if Christ had not brought relief. He does not even except the Jews, whose hearts
were puffed up with a false opinion of their own superiority, but condemns them
indiscriminately, along with others, to destruction. By comparing them to sheep, he intends not
to extenuate their guilt, as if little blame attached to them, but to state plainly that it belongs to
Christ to gather from their wanderings those who resembled brute beasts.
For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired [it] for his habitation. This [is] my rest for
ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it. (Psalm 132:13-14)
Thus he dwelt in Zion, in the sense that there his people worshipped him according to the
prescription of his law, and found besides the benefit of the service in his favorable answer to
their requests. It was eventually seen, in a very striking manner, that this was the promise of an
infallible God, when, after the Temple had been overthrown, the altar cast down, and the whole
frame of legal service interrupted, the glory of the Lord afterwards returned to it once more, and
remained there up to the advent of Christ. We all know in what a wicked and shameful manner
the Jews abused the divine promise which is here made, under the impression that it necessarily
laid God under an obligation to favor them, taking occasion from if, in the pride of their hearts,
to despise, and even cruelly persecute the Prophets. Luther on this account calls it “the bloody
promise;” for, like all hypocrites who make God’s holy name a covert for iniquity, they did not
hesitate, when charged with the worst crimes, to insist that it was beyond the power of the
Prophets to take from them privileges which God had bestowed. With them to assert that the
Temple could be stripped of its glory, was equivalent to charging God with falsehood, and
impeaching his faithfulness. Under the influence of this spirit of vain confidence they proceeded
such inconceivable lengths in shedding innocent blood.