Isaiah 62:6

"I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night: ye that are Jehovah's remembrancers, take ye no rest, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Jehovah hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy grain to be food for thine enemies; and foreigners shall not drink thy new wine ... for which thou hast labored: but they that have garnered it shall eat it, and praise Jehovah; and they that have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary."

The marvelous protection promised here was directed to the nation of Israel upon their return from Babylon, and they have an ultimate application to God's people of all ages in the Church of the Redeemer. The great tragedy, as far as the Old Israel is concerned is that they appear to have accepted these glorious promises as inevitably applying to themselves without any regard whatever to the kind of lives they lived. The passage of the Old Testament that Israel seemed never to have believed, or even to have heard of it, is in Jeremiah 18:7-10, where it is revealed that "all of God's promises" are contingent, absolutely, upon faithful human obedience to the will of God. The "faith only" Protestants of our own generation need to heed the warning that Israel ignored.

"Watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem ..." (Isaiah 62:6). Dummelow believed these to be, "Angelic beings who report to Jehovah what happens on earth, and who intercede for mercy to Zion."[7] The problem we find with this view is that it contradicts the New Testament picture of the one intercessor for men, Christ, certainly not a corps of angels! It is much more likely that Jehovah is here speaking of the spiritual Jerusalem, not the old Jerusalem at all. The walls of this New Jerusalem are called "Salvation" and "Praise," as in Isaiah 26:1; 49:16; 60:18. In which case, "The watchmen are not Old Testament priests, prophets, or angels, as thought by some; but they are the apostles and prophets of the New Testament, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, whose work is the perfecting of the saints (Ephesians 4:11-12)."[8]

It is significant that the watchmen are commanded to pray to God day and night and to keep on praying until God indeed accomplishes all of the wonderful promises he has given to his people. Why does God need to be solicited to do that which he has already promised to do? Even in the New Testament we find the example of the importunate widow commended to us by Christ himself, because of her constant petitioning of the unjust judge. We do not pretend to know the answer to this problem. We do know, however, that it is the will of God that his servants pray without ceasing (that is, regularly and faithfully); and therefore, we are certain that such commandments have been given by God for the benefit of his human children.