76-79. Here are the dying echoes of this song; and very beautiful
are these closing notes--like the setting sun, shorn indeed of its
noontide radiance, but skirting the horizon with a wavy and quivering
light--as of molten gold--on which the eye delights to gaze, till it
disappears from the view. The song passes not here from Christ to John,
but only from Christ direct to Christ as heralded by His forerunner.
thou child--not "my son"--this child's relation to himself being
lost in his relation to a Greater than either.
prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before him--that is, "the
Highest." As "the Most High" is an epithet in Scripture only of
the supreme God, it is inconceivable that inspiration should apply
this term, as here undeniably, to Christ, unless He were "God over all
blessed for ever"
(Ro 9:5).
JFB.
Picture Study Bible