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Mine hand also hath laid … - I am the Creator of all things, and I have all power, and am abundantly able to deliver you from all your foes.

And my right hand hath spanned the heavens - Margin, ‹The palm of my right hand hath spread out.‘ The sense is, that he by his right hand had spanned, or measured the heavens. The phrase is designed to show his greatness and his power (see the notes at Isaiah 40:12).

When I call unto them - (See the note at Isaiah 40:26). The sense here is, that he who had power thus to command the hosts of heaven, and to secure their perfect obedience by his word, had power also to defend his people, and to deliver them from their foes, and conduct them in safety to their own land.

We have nothing ourselves to plead with God, why he should have mercy upon us. It is for his praise, to the honour of his mercy, to spare. His bringing men into trouble was to do them good. It was to refine them, but not as silver; not so thoroughly as men refine silver. If God should take that course, they are all dross, and, as such, might justly be put away. He takes them as refined in part only. Many have been brought home to God as chosen vessels, and a good work of grace begun in them, in the furnace of affliction. It is comfort to God's people, that God will secure his own honour, therefore work deliverance for them. And if God delivers his people, he cannot be at a loss for instruments to be employed. God has formed a plan, in which, for his own sake, and the glory of his grace, he saves all that come to Him.

“Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion,
And turneth the shadow of death into the morning,
And maketh the day dark with night;”
“He that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind,
And declareth unto man what is His thought;”
“He that buildeth His spheres in the heaven,
And hath founded His arch [Noyes's translation]
in the earth;”
“He that calleth for the waters of the sea,
And poureth them out upon the face of the earth;
Jehovah is His name.” MH 414.1

Amos 5:8, A.R.V.; Amos 4:13, A.R.V.; Amos 9:6, margin; Amos 9:6, A.R.V. MH 414

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