The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 2 (of 2)
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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 2 (of 2)
Author: George Adam Smith
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE BOOK OF ISAIAH, VOLUME 2 (OF 2) ***
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.,
_Editor of "The Expositor," etc._
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH.
VOL. II.
BY THE REV.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, M.A.,
=London:=
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXC.
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
EDITED BY THE REV. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, price_ 7s. 6d. _each vol._
FIRST SERIES, 1887-88.
Colossians.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
St. Mark.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
Genesis.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
Samuel, I.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
Samuel, II.
By the same Author.
Hebrews.
By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
SECOND SERIES, 1888-89.
Galatians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Pastoral Epistles.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Isaiah I.-XXXIX.
By G. A. SMITH, M.A. Vol. I.
The Book of Revelation.
By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
1 Corinthians.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
The Epistles of St. John.
By Rt. Rev. W. ALEXANDER, D.D.
THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
Judges and Ruth.
By Rev. R. A. WATSON, M.A.
Jeremiah.
By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
Isaiah XL.-LXVI.
By G. A. SMITH, M.A. Vol. II.
St. Matthew.
By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
Exodus.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
St. Luke.
By Rev. H. BURTON, B.A.
FOURTH SERIES, 1890-91.
Ecclesiastes.
By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
St. James and St. Jude.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Proverbs.
By Rev. R. F. HORTON, M.A.
Leviticus.
By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
St. John.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Rev. Prof. G. T. STOKES, D.D.
LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
THE
BOOK OF ISAIAH
BY THE REV.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, M.A.,
_Minister of Queen's Cross Church, Aberdeen_
_IN TWO VOLUMES._
VOL. II.--ISAIAH XL.-LXVI.
_WITH A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL FROM ISAIAH
TO THE EXILE._
=LONDON:=
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXC.
_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
TABLE OF DATES viii
INTRODUCTION ix
BOOK I.
_THE EXILE._
CHAP.
I. THE DATE OF ISAIAH XL.-LXVI. 3
II. FROM ISAIAH TO THE FALL OF JERUSALEM 26
701-587 B.C.
III. WHAT ISRAEL TOOK INTO EXILE 36
IV. ISRAEL IN EXILE 48
FROM 597 TILL ABOUT 550 B.C.
BOOK II.
_THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE._
V. THE PROLOGUE: THE FOUR HERALD VOICES 71
ISAIAH xl. 1-11.
VI. GOD: A SACRAMENT 87
ISAIAH xl. 12-31.
VII. GOD: AN ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY 106
ISAIAH xli.
VIII. THE PASSION OF GOD 132
ISAIAH xlii. 13-17.
IX. FOUR POINTS OF A TRUE RELIGION 143
ISAIAH xliii.-xlviii.
X. CYRUS 162
ISAIAH xli. 2, 25; xliv. 28-xlv. 13;
xlvi. 11; xlviii. 14, 15.
XI. BEARING OR BORNE 177
ISAIAH xlvi.
XII. BABYLON 189
ISAIAH xlvii.
XIII. THE CALL TO GO FORTH 205
ISAIAH xlviii.
XIV. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF ISRAEL AND THE
RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD 214
ISAIAH xl.-lxvi.
BOOK III.
_THE SERVANT OF THE LORD._
XV. ONE GOD, ONE PEOPLE 236
ISAIAH xli. 8-20, xlii.-xliii.
XVI. THE SERVANT OF THE LORD 252
ISAIAH xli. 8-20; xlii. 1-7, 18 ff.;
xliii. 5-10; xlix. 1-9; l. 4-11;
lii. 13-liii.
XVII. THE SERVANT OF THE LORD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 278
XVIII. THE SERVICE OF GOD AND MAN 290
ISAIAH xlii. 1-7.
XIX. PROPHET AND MARTYR 313
ISAIAH xlix. 1-9; l, 4-11.
XX. THE SUFFERING SERVANT 336
ISAIAH lii. 13-liii.
BOOK IV.
_THE RESTORATION._
XXI. DOUBTS IN THE WAY 381
ISAIAH xlix.-lii. 12.
XXII. ON THE EVE OF RETURN 397
ISAIAH liv.-lvi. 8.
XXIII. THE REKINDLING OF THE CIVIC CONSCIENCE 408
ISAIAH lvi. 9-lix.
XXIV. SALVATION IN SIGHT 428
ISAIAH lx.-lxiii. 7.
XXV. A LAST INTERCESSION AND THE JUDGEMENT 445
ISAIAH lxiii. 7-lxvi.
INDEX OF CHAPTERS 469
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 471
TABLE OF DATES.
B.C.
721. Fall of Samaria. Captivity of Northern Israel.
701. Deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib.
696?-641. Reign of Manasseh. Supposed time of Isaiah's death.
630. Josiah's Reformation begun.
629 or 628. Jeremiah called to be a prophet.
621. The Book of Deuteronomy discovered.
607. Fall of Nineveh and Assyria. Babylon supreme.
THE EXILE.
599-598. Siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar. First Captivity of
the Jews.
594. Ezekiel begins to prophesy in Chaldea.
587. Destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar. Second Captivity
of the Jews. Flight of many Jews with Jeremiah to Egypt.
585. Battle of the Eclipse. Triple League: Babylon, Media, Lydia.
561. Nebuchadrezzar dies. Evil-Merodach succeeds.
559. Neriglissar succeeds Evil-Merodach.
554. Nabunahid or Nabonidos usurps the throne of Babylon. Harder
times for the Jews.
549. Fall of Median monarchy before Cyrus.
545. Cyrus attacks Babylonia from the north, and is repulsed.
Invades Lydia, and takes Sardis and King Crœsus.
538. Cyrus captures Babylon.
Permission to the Jews to return and rebuild Jerusalem. Zerubbabel,
Joshua.
* * * * *
529. Cyrus dies. Cambyses sole king.
522. Cambyses dies.
521. Babylon revolts. Retaken by Darius.
486. Xerxes succeeds Darius.
466. Artaxerxes Longimanus.
458. Second great return of Jews. Ezra.
401. Revolt and defeat of Cyrus. The Anabasis. #/
INTRODUCTION.
This volume upon Isaiah xl.-lxvi. carries on the exposition of the
Book of Isaiah from the point reached by the author's previous volume
in the same series. But as it accepts these twenty-seven chapters,
upon their own testimony, as a separate prophecy from a century and
a half later than Isaiah himself, in a style and on subjects not
altogether the same as his, and as it accordingly pursues a somewhat
different method of exposition from the previous volume, a few words
of introduction are again necessary.
The greater part of Isaiah i.-xxxix. was addressed to a nation upon
their own soil,--with their temple, their king, their statesmen,
their tribunals and their markets,--responsible for the discharge of
justice and social reform, for the conduct of foreign policies and the
defence of the fatherland. But chs. xl.-lxvi. came to a people wholly
in exile, and partly in servitude, with no civic life and few social
responsibilities: a people in the passive state, with occasion for the
exercise of almost no qualities save those of penitence and patience,
of memory and hope. This difference between the two parts of the Book
is summed up in their respective uses of the word _Righteousness_. In
Isaiah i.-xxxix., or at least in such of these chapters as refer to
Isaiah's own day, righteousness is man's moral and religious duty, in
its contents of piety, purity, justice and social service. In Isaiah
xl.-lxvi. righteousness (except in a very few cases) is something
which the people expect from God--their historical vindication by His
restoral and reinstatement of them as His people.
It is, therefore, evident that what rendered Isaiah's own
prophecies of so much charm and of so much meaning to the modern
conscience--their treatment of those political and social questions
which we have always with us--cannot form the chief interest of
chapters xl.-lxvi. But the empty place is taken by a series of
historical and religious questions of supreme importance. Into the
vacuum created in Israel's life by the Exile, there comes rushing
the meaning of the nation's whole history--all the conscience of
their past, all the destiny with which their future is charged. It
is not with the fortunes and duties of a single generation that
this great prophecy has to do: it is with a people in their entire
significance and promise. The standpoint of the prophet may be the
Exile, but his vision ranges from Abraham to Christ. Besides the
business of the hour,--the deliverance of Israel from Babylon,--the
prophet addresses himself to these questions: What is Israel? What
is Israel's God? How is Jehovah different from other gods? How is
Israel different from other peoples? He recalls the making of the
nation, God's treatment of them from the beginning, all that they and
Jehovah have been to each other and to the world, and especially the
meaning of this latest judgement of Exile. But the instruction and
the impetus of that marvellous past he uses in order to interpret and
proclaim the still more glorious future,--the ideal, which God has
set before His people, and in the realisation of which their history
shall culminate. It is here that the Spirit of God lifts the prophet
to the highest station in prophecy--to the richest consciousness of
spiritual religion--to the clearest vision of Christ.
Accordingly, to expound Isaiah xl.-lxvi. is really to write the
religious history of Israel. A prophet whose vision includes both
Abraham and Christ, whose subject is the whole meaning and promise of
Israel, cannot be adequately interpreted within the limits of his own
text or of his own time. Excursions are necessary both to the history
that is behind him, and to the history that is still in front of
him. This is the reason of the appearance in this volume of chapters
whose titles seem at first beyond its scope--such as From Isaiah to
the Fall of Jerusalem: What Israel took into Exile: One God, One
People: The Servant of the Lord in the New Testament. Moreover, much
of this historical matter has an interest that is only historical.
If in Isaiah's own prophecies it is his generation's likeness to
ourselves, which appeals to our conscience, in chs. xl.-lxvi. of the
Book called by his name it is Israel's unique meaning and office for
God in the world, which we have to study. We are called to follow an
experience and a discipline unshared by any other generation of men;
and to interest ourselves in matters that then happened once for all,
such as the victory of the One God over the idols, or His choice of
a single people through whom to reveal Himself to the world. We are
called to watch work, which that representative and priestly people
did for humanity, rather than, as in Isaiah's own prophecies, work
which has to be repeated by each new generation in its turn, and
to-day also by ourselves. This is the reason why in an exposition of
Isaiah xl.-lxvi., like the present volume, there should be a good
deal more of historical recital, and a good deal less of practical
application, than in the exposition of Isaiah i.-xxxix.
At the same time we must not suppose that there is not very much in
Isaiah xl.-lxvi. with which to stir our own consciences and instruct
our own lives. For, to mention no more, there is that sense of sin
with which Israel entered exile, and which has made the literature
of Israel's Exile the confessional of the world; there is that great
unexhausted programme of the Service of God and Man, which our
prophet lays down as Israel's duty and example to humanity; and there
is that prophecy of the virtue and glory of vicarious suffering for
sin, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Cross.
I have found it necessary to devote more space to critical questions
than in the previous volume. Chs. xl.-lxvi. approach more nearly
to a unity than chs. i.-xxxix.: with very few exceptions they lie
in chronological order. But they are not nearly so clearly divided
and grouped: their connection cannot be so briefly or so lucidly
explained. The form of the prophecy is dramatic, but the scenes
and the speakers are not definitely marked off. In spite of the
chronological advance, which we shall be able to trace, there are no
clear stages--not even, as we shall see, at those points at which
most expositors divide the prophecy, the end of ch. xlix. and of ch.
lviii. The prophet pursues simultaneously several lines of thought;
and though the close of some of these and the rise of others may be
marked to a verse, his frequent passages from one to another are
often almost imperceptible. He everywhere requires a more continuous
translation, a closer and more elaborate exegesis, than were
necessary for Isaiah i.-xxxix.
In order to effect some general arrangement and division of Isa.
xl.-lxvi. it is necessary to keep in view that the immediate problem
which the prophet had before him was twofold. It was political,
and it was spiritual. There was, first of all, the deliverance of
Israel from Babylon, according to the ancient promises of Jehovah:
to this were attached such questions as Jehovah's omnipotence,
faithfulness and grace; the meaning of Cyrus; the condition of the
Babylonian Empire. But after their political deliverance from Babylon
was assured, there remained the really larger problem of Israel's
spiritual readiness for the freedom and the destiny to which God was
to lead them through the opened gates of their prison-house: to this
were attached such questions as the original calling and mission of
Israel; the mixed and paradoxical character of the people; their need
of a Servant from the Lord, since they themselves had failed to be
His Servant; the coming of this Servant, his methods and results.
This twofold division of the prophet's problem will not, it is true,
strike his prophecy into separate and distinct groups of chapters.
He who attempts such a division simply does not understand "Second
Isaiah." But it will make clear to us the different currents of
the sacred argument, which flow sometimes through and through one
another, and sometimes singly and in succession; and it will give us
a plan for grouping the twenty-seven chapters very nearly, if not
quite, in the order in which they lie.
On these principles, the following exposition is divided into Four
Books. The First is called THE EXILE: it contains an argument for
placing the date of the prophecy about 550 B.C., and brings the
history of Israel down to that date from the time of Isaiah; it
states the political and spiritual sides of the double problem to
which the prophecy is God's answer; it describes what Israel took
with them into exile, and what they learned and suffered there,
till, after half a century, the herald voices of our prophecy broke
upon their waiting ears. The Second Book, THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE,
discusses the political redemption from Babylon, with the questions
attached to it about God's nature and character, about Cyrus and
Babylon, or all of chs. xl.-xlviii., except the passages about
the Servant, which are easily detached from the rest, and refer
rather to the spiritual side of Israel's great problem. The Third
Book, THE SERVANT OF THE LORD, expounds all the passages on that
subject, both in chs. xl.-xlviii. and in chs. xlix.-liii., with the
development of the subject in the New Testament, and its application
to our life to-day. The Servant and his work are the solution of all
the spiritual difficulties in the way of the people's Return and
Restoration. To these latter and their practical details the rest of
the prophecy is devoted; that is, all chs. xlix.-lxvi., except the
passages on the Servant, and these chapters are treated in the Fourth
Book of this volume, THE RESTORATION.
As much as possible of the merely critical discussion has been put
in Chapter I., or in the opening paragraphs of the other chapters,
or in foot-notes. A new translation from the original (except where
a few verses have been taken from the Revised English Version) has
been provided for nearly the whole prophecy. Where the rhythm of the
original is at all discernible, the translation has been made in it.
But it must be kept in mind that this reproduction of the original
rhythm is only approximate, and that in it no attempt has been made
to elegance; its chief aim being to make clear the order and the
emphases of the original. The translation is almost quite literal.
Having felt the want of a clear account of the prophet's use of his
great key-word Righteousness, I have inserted for students, at the end
of Book II., a chapter on this term. Summaries of our prophet's use of
such cardinal terms as Mishpat, R'ishonoth, The Isles, etc., will be
found in notes. For want of space I have had to exclude some sections
on the Style of Isaiah, xl.-lxvi., on the Influence of Monotheism on
the Imagination, and on What Isaiah xl.-lxvi. owes to Jeremiah. This
debt, as we shall be able to trace, is so great that "Second Jeremiah"
would be a title no less proper for the prophecy than "Second Isaiah."
I had also wished to append a chapter on Commentaries on the Book of
Isaiah. No Scripture has been so nobly served by its commentaries. To
begin with there was Calvin, and there is Calvin,--still as valuable
as ever for his strong spiritual power, his sanity, his moderation,
his sensitiveness to the changes and shades of the prophet's meaning.
After him Vitringa, Gesenius, Hitzig, Ewald, Delitzsch, all the great
names of the past in Old Testament criticism, are connected with
Isaiah. In recent years (besides Nägelsbach in Lange's _Bibelwerk_)
we have had Cheyne's two volumes, too well known both here and in
Germany to need more than mention; Bredenkamp's clear and concise
exposition, the characteristic of which is an attempt--not, however,
successful--to distinguish authentic prophecies of Isaiah in the
disputed chapters; Orelli's handy volume (in Strack and Zöckler's
compendious Commentary, and translated into English by Professor
Banks in Messrs. Clarks' Foreign Theological Library), from the
conservative side, but accepting, as Delitzsch does in his last
edition, the dual authorship; and this year Dillmann's great work,
replacing Knobel's in the "Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch"
series. I regret that I did not receive Dillmann's work till more
than half of this volume was written. English students will have all
they can possibly need if they can add Dillmann to Delitzsch and
Cheyne, though Calvin and Ewald must never be forgotten. Professor
Driver's _Isaiah: His Life and Times_ is a complete handbook to the
prophet. On the theology, besides the relevant portions of Schultz's
_Alt-Testamentliche Theologie_ (4th ed., 1889), and Duhm's _Theologie
der Propheten_, the student will find invaluable Professor Robertson
Smith's _Prophets of Israel_ for Isaiah i.-xxxix., and Professor A.
B. Davidson's papers in the _Expositor_ for 1884 on the theology
of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. There are also Krüger's able and lucid _Essai
sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi._ (Paris, 1882), and Guthe's _Das
Zukunftsbild Jesaias_, and Barth's and Giesebrecht's respective
_Beiträge zur Jesaiakritik_, the latter published this year.
In conclusion, I have to express my thanks for the very great
assistance which I have derived in the composition of both volumes from
my friend the Rev. Charles Anderson Scott, B.A., who has sought out
facts, read nearly all the proofs and helped to prepare the Index.
BOOK I.
_THE EXILE._
CHAPTER I.
_THE DATE OF ISAIAH XL.-LXVI._
The problem of the date of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. is this: In a book called
by the name of the prophet Isaiah, who flourished between 740 and 700
B.C., the last twenty-seven chapters deal with the captivity suffered
by the Jews in Babylonia from 598 to 538, and more particularly with
the advent, about 550, of Cyrus, whom they name. Are we to take for
granted that Isaiah himself prophetically wrote these chapters, or
must we assign them to a nameless author or authors of the period of
which they treat?
Till the end of last century it was the almost universally accepted
tradition, and even still is an opinion retained by many, that Isaiah
was carried forward by the Spirit, out of his own age to the standpoint
of one hundred and fifty years later; that he was inspired to utter
the warning and comfort required by a generation so very different
from his own, and was even enabled to hail by name their redeemer,
Cyrus. This theory, involving as it does a phenomenon without parallel
in the history of Holy Scripture, is based on these two grounds:
_first_, that the chapters in question form a considerable part--nearly
nine-twentieths--of the "Book of Isaiah;" and _second_, that portions
of them are quoted in the New Testament by the prophet's name. The
theory is also supported by arguments drawn from resemblances of style
and vocabulary between these twenty-seven chapters and the undisputed
oracles of Isaiah; but, as the opponents of the Isaian authorship also
appeal to vocabulary and style, it will be better to leave this kind of
evidence aside for the present, and to discuss the problem upon other
and less ambiguous grounds.
The first argument, then, for the Isaian authorship of chapters
xl.-lxvi. is that they form part of a book called by Isaiah's name.
But, to be worth anything, this argument must rest on the following
facts: that everything in a book called by a prophet's name is
necessarily by that prophet, and that the compilers of the book
intended to hand it down as altogether from his pen. Now there is no
evidence for either of these conclusions. On the contrary, there is
considerable testimony in the opposite direction. The Book of Isaiah
is not one continuous prophecy. It consists of a number of separate
orations, with a few intervening pieces of narrative. Some of these
orations claim to be Isaiah's own: they possess such titles as _The
vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz_.[1] But such titles describe only
the individual prophecies they head, and other portions of the book,
upon other subjects and in very different styles, do not possess
titles at all. It seems to me, that those, who maintain the Isaian
authorship of the whole book, have the responsibility cast upon them
of explaining why some chapters in it should be distinctly said to
be by Isaiah, while others should not be so entitled. Surely this
difference affords us sufficient ground for understanding, that the
whole book is not necessarily by Isaiah, nor intentionally handed
down by its compilers as the work of that prophet.[2]
Now, when we come to chs. xl.-lxvi., we find that, occurring in a
book which we have just seen no reason for supposing to be in every
part of it by Isaiah, these chapters nowhere claim to be his. They
are separated from that portion of the book, in which his undisputed
oracles are placed, by a historical narrative of considerable length.
And there is not anywhere upon them nor in them a title nor other
statement that they are by the prophet, nor any allusion which could
give the faintest support to the opinion, that they offer themselves
to posterity as dating from his time. It is safe to say, that, if
they had come to us by themselves, no one would have dreamt for an
instant of ascribing them to Isaiah; for the alleged resemblances,
which their language and style bear to his language and style, are
far more than overborne by the undoubted differences, and have never
been employed, even by the defenders of the Isaian authorship, except
in additional and confessedly slight support of their main argument,
viz. that the chapters must be Isaiah's because they are included in
a book called by his name.
Let us understand, therefore, at this very outset, that in discussing
the question of the authorship of "Second Isaiah," we are not
discussing a question, upon which the text itself makes any statement,
or into which the credibility of the text enters. No claim is made by
the Book of Isaiah itself for the Isaian authorship of chs. xl.-lxvi.
A second fact in Scripture, which seems at first sight to make
strongly for the unity of the Book of Isaiah, is that in the New
Testament, portions of the disputed chapters are quoted by Isaiah's
name, just as are portions of his admitted prophecies. These
citations are nine in number.[3] None is by our Lord Himself. They
occur in the Gospels, Acts and Paul. Now if any of these quotations
were given in answer to the question, Did Isaiah write chs. xl.-lxvi.
of the book called by his name? or if the use of his name along
with them were involved in the arguments which they are borrowed to
illustrate (as, for instance, is the case with David's name in the
quotation made by our Lord from Psalm cx.), then those who deny the
unity of the Book of Isaiah would be face to face with a very serious
problem indeed. But in none of the nine cases is the authorship of
the Book of Isaiah in question. In none of the nine cases is there
anything in the argument, for the purpose of which the quotation has
been made, that depends on the quoted words being by Isaiah. For
the purposes, for which the Evangelists and Paul borrow the texts,
these might as well be unnamed, or attributed to any other canonical
writer. Nothing in them requires us to suppose that Isaiah's name is
mentioned with them for any other end than that of reference, viz.,
to point out that they lie in the part of prophecy usually known
by his name. But, if there is nothing in these citations to prove
that Isaiah's name is being used for any other purpose than that of
reference, then it is plain--and this is all that we ask assent to at
the present time--that they do not offer the authority of Scripture
as a bar to our examining the evidence of the chapters in question.
It is hardly necessary to add that neither is there any other
question of doctrine in our way. There is none about the nature of
prophecy, for, to take an example, ch. liii., as a prophecy of Jesus
Christ, is surely as great a marvel if you date it from the Exile
as if you date it from the age of Isaiah. And, in particular, let
us understand that no question need be started about the ability
of God's Spirit to inspire a prophet to mention Cyrus by name one
hundred and fifty years before Cyrus appeared. The question is not,
_Could_ a prophet have been so inspired?--to which question, were it
put, our answer might only be, God is great!--but the question is,
_Was_ our prophet so inspired? does he himself offer evidence of the
fact? Or, on the contrary, in naming Cyrus does he give himself out
as a contemporary of Cyrus, who already saw the great Persian above
the horizon? To this question only the writings under discussion can
give us an answer. Let us see what they have to say.
Apart from the question of the date, no chapters in the Bible are
interpreted with such complete unanimity as Isa. xl.-xlviii. They
plainly set forth certain things as having already taken place--the
Exile and Captivity, the ruin of Jerusalem, and the devastation of
the Holy Land. Israel is addressed as having exhausted the time of
her penalty, and is proclaimed to be ready for deliverance. Some of
the people are comforted as being in despair because redemption
does not draw near; others are exhorted to leave the city of their
bondage, as if they were growing too familiar with its idolatrous
life. Cyrus is named as their deliverer, and is pointed out as
already called upon his career, and as blessed with success by
Jehovah. It is also promised that he will immediately add Babylon to
his conquests, and so set God's people free.
Now all this is not predicted, as if from the standpoint of a previous
century. It is nowhere said--as we should expect it to be said, if
the prophecy had been uttered by Isaiah--that Assyria, the dominant
world-power of Isaiah's day, was to disappear and Babylon to take her
place; that then the Babylonians should lead the Jews into an exile
which they had escaped at the hands of Assyria; and that after nearly
seventy years of suffering God would raise up Cyrus as a deliverer.
There is none of this prediction, which we might fairly have expected
had the prophecy been Isaiah's; because, however far Isaiah carries
us into the future, he never fails to start from the circumstances of
his own day. Still more significant, however--there is not even the
kind of prediction that we find in Jeremiah's prophecies of the Exile,
with which indeed it is most instructive to compare Isa. xl.-lxvi.
Jeremiah also spoke of exile and deliverance, but it was always with
the grammar of the future. He fairly and openly predicted both; and,
let us especially remember, he did so with a meagreness of description,
a reserve and reticence about details, which are simply unintelligible
if Isa. xl.-lxvi. was written before his day, and by so well-known
a prophet as Isaiah. No: in the statements, which our chapters make
concerning the Exile and the condition of Israel under it, there is
no prediction, not the slightest trace of that grammar of the future
in which Jeremiah's prophecies are constantly uttered. But there is
a direct appeal to the conscience of a people already long under the
discipline of God; their circumstance of exile is taken for granted;
there is a most vivid and delicate appreciation of their present fears
and doubts, and to these the deliverer Cyrus is not only named, but
introduced as an actual and notorious personage already upon the midway
of his irresistible career.
These facts are more broadly based than just at first sight appears.
You cannot turn their flank by the argument that Hebrew prophets were
in the habit of employing in their predictions what is called "the
prophetic perfect"--that is, that in the ardour of their conviction
that certain things would take place they talked of these, as the
flexibility of the Hebrew tenses allowed them to do, in the past or
perfect as if the things had actually taken place. No such argument
is possible in the case of the introduction of Cyrus. For it is not
only that the prophecy, with what might be the mere ardour of vision,
represents the Persian as already above the horizon and upon the
flowing tide of victory; but that, in the course of a sober argument
for the unique divinity of the God of Israel, which takes place
throughout chs. xli.-xlviii., Cyrus, alive and irresistible, already
accredited by success, and with Babylonia at his feet, is pointed out
as the unmistakable proof that _former_ prophecies of a deliverance for
Israel are at last coming to pass. Cyrus, in short, is not presented as
a prediction, but as the proof that a prediction is being fulfilled.
Unless he had already appeared in flesh and blood, and was on the point
of striking at Babylon, with all the prestige of unbroken victory, a
great part of Isa. xli.-xlviii. would be utterly unintelligible.
This argument is so conclusive for the date of Second Isaiah, that it
may be well to state it a little more in detail, even at the risk of
anticipating some of the exposition of the text.
Among the Jews at the close of the Exile there appear to have been
two classes. One class was hopeless of deliverance, and to their
hearts is addressed such a prophecy as ch. xl.: _Comfort ye, comfort
ye My people_. But there was another class, of opposite temperament,
who had only too strong opinions on the subject of deliverance. In
bondage to the letter of Scripture and to the great precedents of
their history, these Jews appear to have insisted that the Deliverer
to come must be a Jew, and a descendant of David. And the bent of
much of the prophet's urgency in ch. xlv. is to persuade those
pedants, that the Gentile Cyrus, who had appeared to be not only
the biggest man of his age, but the very likely means of Israel's
redemption, was of Jehovah's own creation and calling. Does not such
an argument necessarily imply that Cyrus was already present, an
object of doubt and debate to earnest minds in Israel? Or are we to
suppose that all this doubt and debate were foreseen, rehearsed and
answered one hundred and fifty years before the time by so famous a
prophet as Isaiah, and that, in spite of his prediction and answer,
the doubt and debate nevertheless took place in the minds of the very
Israelites, who were most earnest students of ancient prophecy? The
thing has only to be stated to be felt to be impossible.
But besides the pedants in Israel, there is apparent through these
prophecies another body of men, against whom also Jehovah claims the
actual Cyrus for His own. They are the priests and worshippers of the
heathen idols. It is well known that the advent of Cyrus cast the
Gentile religions of the time and their counsellors into confusion. The
wisest priests were perplexed; the oracles of Greece and Asia Minor
either were dumb when consulted about the Persian, or gave more than
usually ambiguous answers. Over against this perplexity and despair
of the heathen religions, our prophet confidently claims Cyrus for
Jehovah's own. In a debate in ch. xli., in which he seeks to establish
Jehovah's righteousness--that is, Jehovah's faithfulness to His word,
and power to carry out His predictions--the prophet speaks of ancient
prophecies which have come from Jehovah, and points to Cyrus as their
fulfilment. It does not matter to us in the meantime what those
prophecies were. They may have been certain of Jeremiah's predictions;
we may be sure that they cannot have contained anything so definite
as Cyrus' name, or such a proof of Divine foresight must certainly
have formed part of the prophet's plea. It is enough that they could
be quoted; our business is rather with the evidence which the prophet
offers of their fulfilment. That evidence is Cyrus. Would it have been
possible to refer the heathen to Cyrus as proof that those ancient
prophecies were being fulfilled, unless Cyrus had been visible to the
heathen,--unless the heathen had been beginning already to feel this
Persian "from the sunrise" in all his weight of war? It is no esoteric
doctrine which the prophet is unfolding to initiated Israelites about
Cyrus. He is making an appeal to men of the world to face facts. Could
he possibly have made such an appeal unless the facts had been _there_,
unless Cyrus had been within the ken of "the natural man"? Unless
Cyrus and his conquests were already historically present, the argument
in xli.-xlviii. is unintelligible.
If this evidence for the exilic date of Isa. xl.-xlviii.--for all these
chapters hang together--required any additional support, it would
find it in the fact that the prophet does not wholly treat of what is
past and over, but makes some predictions as well. Cyrus is on the
way of triumph, but Babylon has still to fall by his hand. Babylon
has still to fall, before the exiles can go free. Now, if our prophet
were predicting from the standpoint of one hundred and forty years
before, why did he make this sharp distinction between two events which
appeared so closely together? If he had both the advent of Cyrus and
the fall of Babylon in his long perspective, why did he not use "the
prophetic perfect" for both? That he speaks of the first as past and
of the second as still to come, would most surely, if there had been
no tradition the other way, have been accepted by all as sufficient
evidence, that the advent of Cyrus was behind him and the fall of
Babylon still in front of him, when he wrote these chapters.
Thus the earlier part, at least, of Isa. xl.-lxvi.--that is, chs.
xl.-xlviii.--compels us to date it between 555, Cyrus' advent, and
538, Babylon's fall. But some think that we may still further narrow
the limits. In ch. xli. 25, Cyrus, whose own kingdom lay east of
Babylonia, is described as invading Babylonia from the north. This,
it has been thought, must refer to his union with the Medes in 549,
and his threatened descent upon Mesopotamia from their quarter of
the prophet's horizon.[4] If it be so, the possible years of our
prophecy are reduced to eleven, 549-538. But even if we take the
wider and more certain limit, 555 to 538, we may well say that there
are very few chapters in the whole of the Old Testament whose date
can be fixed so precisely as the date of chs. xl.-xlviii.
If what has been unfolded in the preceding paragraphs is recognised
as the statement of the chapters themselves, it will be felt that
further evidence of an exilic date is scarcely needed. And those, who
are acquainted with the controversy upon the evidence furnished by
the style and language of the prophecies, will admit how far short
in decisiveness it falls of the arguments offered above. But we
may fairly ask whether there is anything opposed to the conclusion
we have reached, either, _first_, in the local colour of the
prophecies; or, _second_, in their language; or, _third_, in their
thought--anything which shows that they are more likely to have been
Isaiah's than of exilic origin.
1. It has often been urged against the exilic date of these
prophecies, that they wear so very little local colour, and one
of the greatest of critics, Ewald, has felt himself, therefore,
permitted to place their home, not in Babylonia, but in Egypt, while
he maintains the exilic date. But, as we shall see in surveying the
condition of the exiles, it was natural for the best among them,
their psalmists and prophets, to have no eyes for the colours of
Babylon. They lived inwardly; they were much more the inhabitants
of their own broken hearts than of that gorgeous foreign land; when
their thoughts rose out of themselves it was to seek immediately the
far-away Zion. How little local colour is there in the writings of
Ezekiel! Isa. xl.-lxvi. has even more to show; for indeed the absence
of local colour from our prophecy has been greatly exaggerated.
We shall find as we follow the exposition, break after break of
Babylonian light and shadow falling across our path,--the temples,
the idol-manufactories, the processions of images, the diviners
and astrologers, the gods and altars especially cultivated by the
characteristic mercantile spirit of the place; the shipping of that
mart of nations, the crowds of her merchants; the glitter of many
waters, and even that intolerable glare, which so frequently curses
the skies of Mesopotamia (xlix. 10). The prophet speaks of the
hills of his native land with just the same longing, that Ezekiel
and a probable psalmist of the Exile[5] betray,--the homesickness
of a highland-born man whose prison is on a flat, monotonous plain.
The beasts he mentions have for the most part been recognised as
familiar in Babylonia; and while the same cannot be said of the
trees and plants he names, it has been observed that the passages,
into which he brings them, are passages where his thoughts are
fixed on the restoration to Palestine.[6] Besides these, there are
many delicate symptoms of the presence, before the prophet, of a
people in a foreign land, engaged in commerce, but without political
responsibilities, each of which, taken by itself, may be insufficient
to convince, but the reiterated expression of which has even betrayed
commentators, who lived too early for the theory of a second Isaiah,
into the involuntary admission of an exilic authorship. It will
perhaps startle some to hear John Calvin quoted on behalf of the
exilic date of these prophecies. But let us read and consider this
statement of his: "Some regard must be had to the time when this
prophecy was uttered; for since the rank of the kingdom had been
obliterated, and the name of the royal family had become mean and
contemptible, during the captivity in Babylon, it might seem as if
through the ruin of that family the truth of God had fallen into
decay; and therefore he bids them contemplate by faith the throne of
David, which had been cast down."[7]
2. What we have seen to be true of the local colour of our prophecy,
holds good also of its style and language. There is nothing in
either of these to commit us to an Isaian authorship, or to make an
exilic date improbable; on the contrary, the language and style,
while containing no stronger nor more frequent resemblances to the
language and style of Isaiah than may be accounted for by the natural
influence of so great a prophet upon his successors, are signalised by
differences from his undisputed oracles, too constant, too subtle, and
sometimes too sharp, to make it at all probable that the whole book
came from the same man. On this point it is enough to refer our readers
to the recent exhaustive and very able reviews of the evidence by Canon
Cheyne in the second volume of his Commentary, and by Canon Driver in
the last chapter of _Isaiah: His Life and Times_, and to quote the
following words of so great an authority as Professor A. B. Davidson.
After remarking on the difference in vocabulary of the two parts of
the Book of Isaiah, he adds that it is not so much words in themselves
as the peculiar uses and combinations of them, and especially "the
peculiar articulation of sentences and the movement of the whole
discourse, by which an impression is produced so unlike the impression
produced by the earlier parts of the book."[8]
3. It is the same with the thought and doctrine of our prophecy.
In this there is nothing to make the Isaian authorship probable,
or an exilic date impossible. But, on the contrary, whether we
regard the needs of the people or the analogies of the development
of their religion, we find that, while everything suits the Exile,
nearly everything is foreign both to the subjects and to the methods
of Isaiah. We shall observe the items of this as we go along, but
one of them may be mentioned here (it will afterwards require a
chapter to itself), our prophet's use of the terms _righteous_ and
_righteousness_. No one, who has carefully studied the meaning which
these terms bear in the authentic oracles of Isaiah, and the use to
which they are put in the prophecies under discussion, can fail to
find in the difference a striking corroboration of our argument--that
the latter were composed by a different mind than Isaiah's, speaking
to a different generation.[9]
* * * * *
To sum up this whole argument. We have seen that there is no evidence
in the Book of Isaiah to prove that it was all by himself, but much
testimony which points to a plurality of authors; that chs. xl.-lxvi.
nowhere assert themselves to be by Isaiah; and that there is no
other well-grounded claim of Scripture or of doctrine on behalf of
his authorship. We have then shown that chs. xl.-xlviii. do not only
present the Exile as if nearly finished and Cyrus as if already come,
while the fall of Babylon is still future; but that it is essential to
one of their main arguments that Cyrus should be standing before Israel
and the world, as a successful warrior, on his way to attack Babylon.
That led us to date these chapters between 555 and 538. Turning then to
other evidence,--the local colour they show, their language and style,
and their theology,--we have found nothing which conflicts with that
date, but, on the contrary, a very great deal, which much more agrees
with it than with the date, or with the authorship, of Isaiah.
It will be observed, however, that the question has been limited to
the earlier chapters of the twenty-seven under discussion, viz., to
xl.-xlviii. Does the same conclusion hold good of xlix. to lxvi.? This
can be properly discovered only as we closely follow their exposition;
it is enough in the meantime to have got firm footing on the Exile. We
can feel our way bit by bit from this standpoint onwards. Let us now
merely anticipate the main features of the rest of the prophecy.
A new section has been marked by many as beginning with ch. xlix.
This is because ch. xlviii. concludes with a refrain: _There is no
peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked_, which occurs again at the end
of ch. lvii., and because with ch. xlviii. Babylon and Cyrus drop
out of sight. But the circumstances are still those of exile, and,
as Professor Davidson remarks, ch. xlix. is parallel in thought to
ch. xlii., and also takes for granted the restoration of Israel
in ch. xlviii., proceeding naturally from that to the statement
of Israel's world-mission. Apart from the alternation of passages
dealing with the Servant of the Lord, and passages whose subject
is Zion--an alternation which begins pretty early in the prophecy,
and has suggested to some its composition out of two different
writings[10]--the first real break in the sequence occurs at ch. lii.
13, where the prophecy of the sin-bearing Servant is introduced. By
most critics this is held to be an insertion, for ch. liv. 1 follows
naturally upon ch. lii. 12, though it is undeniable that there is
also some association between chs. lii. 13-liii., and ch. liv.[11] In
chs. liv.-lv. we are evidently still in exile. It is in commenting on
a verse of these chapters that Calvin makes the admission of exilic
origin which has been quoted above.
A number of short prophecies now follow, till the end of ch. lix.
is reached. These, as we shall see, make it extremely difficult to
believe in the original unity of "Second Isaiah." Some of them,
it is true, lie in evident circumstance of exile; but others are
undoubtedly of earlier date, reflecting the scenery of Palestine,
and the habits of the people in their political independence, with
Jehovah's judgement-cloud still unburst, but lowering. Such is ch.
lvi. 9-lvii., which regards the Exile as still to come, quotes the
natural features of Palestine, and charges the Jews with unbelieving
diplomacy--a charge not possible against them when they were in
captivity. But others of these short prophecies are, in the opinion
of some critics, post-exilic. Cheyne assigns ch. lvi. to after the
Return, when the temple was standing, and the duty of holding fasts
and sabbaths could be enforced, as it was enforced by Nehemiah. I
shall give, when we reach the passage, my reasons for doubting his
conclusion. The chapter seems to me as likely to have been written
upon the eve of the Return as after the Return had taken place.
Ch. lvii., the eighteenth of our twenty-seven chapters, closes with
the same refrain as ch. xlviii., the ninth of the series: _There is no
peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked._ Ch. lviii. has, therefore, been
regarded as beginning the third great division of the prophecy. But
here again, while there is certainly an advance in the treatment of the
subject, and the prophet talks less of the redemption of the Jews and
more of the glory of the restoration of Zion, the point of transition
is very difficult to mark. Some critics[12] regard ch. lviii. as
post-exilic; but when we come to it we shall find a number of reasons
for supposing it to belong, just as much as Ezekiel, to the Exile. Ch.
lix. is perhaps the most difficult portion of all, because it makes
the Jews responsible for civic justice in a way they could hardly be
conceived to be in exile, and yet speaks, in the language of other
portions of "Second Isaiah," of a deliverance that cannot well be other
than the deliverance from exile. We shall find in this chapter likely
marks of the fusion of two distinct addresses, making the conclusion
probable that it is Israel's earlier conscience which we catch here,
following her into the days of exile, and reciting her former guilt
just before pardon is assured. Chs. lx., lxi., and lxii. are certainly
exilic. The inimitable prophecy, ch. lxiii. 1-6, complete within
itself, and unique in its beauty, is either a promise given just before
the deliverance from a long captivity of Israel under heathen nations
(ver. 4), or an exultant song of triumph immediately after such a
deliverance has taken place. Ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv. implies a ruined temple
(ver. 10), but bears no traces of the writer being in exile. It has
been assigned to the period of the first attempts to rebuild Jerusalem
after the Return. Ch. lxv. has been assigned to the same date, and its
local colour interpreted as that of Palestine. But we shall find the
colour to be just as probably that of Babylon, and again I do not see
any certain proofs of a post-exilic date. Ch. lxvi., however, betrays
more evidence of being written after the Return. It divides into two
parts. In verses 1 to 4 the temple is still unbuilt, but the building
would seem to be already begun. In verses 5 to 24, the arrival of the
Jews in Palestine, the resumption of the life of the sacred community,
and the disappointments of the returned at the first meagre results,
seem to be implied. And the music of the book dies out in tones of
warning, that sin still hinders the Lord's work with His people.
* * * * *
This rapid survey has made two things sufficiently clear. _First_,
that while the bulk of chs. xl.-lxvi. was composed in Babylonia during
the Exile of the Jews, there are considerable portions which date from
before the Exile, and betray a Palestinian origin; and one or two
smaller pieces that seem--rather less evidently, however--to take for
granted the Return from the Exile. But, _secondly_, all these pieces,
which it seems necessary to assign to different epochs and authors,
have been arranged so as to exhibit a certain order and progress--an
order, more or less observed, of date, and a progress very apparent (as
we shall see in the course of exposition) of thought and of clearness
in definition. The largest portion, of whose unity we are assured and
whose date we can fix, is found at the beginning. Chs. xl.-xlviii.
are certainly by one hand, and may be dated, as we have seen, between
555 and 538--the period of Cyrus' approach to take Babylon. There
the interest in Cyrus ceases, and the thought of the redemption from
Babylon is mainly replaced by that of the subsequent Return. Along
with these lines, we shall discover a development in the prophecy's
great doctrine of the Servant of Jehovah. But even this dies away, as
if the experience of suffering and discipline were being replaced by
that of return and restoration; and it is Zion in her glory, and the
spiritual mission of the people, and the vengeance of the Lord, and the
building of the temple, and a number of practical details in the life
and worship of the restored community, which fill up the remainder of
the book, along with a few echoes from pre-exilic times. Can we escape
feeling in all this a definite design and arrangement, which fails to
be absolutely perfect, probably, from the nature of the materials at
the arranger's disposal?
We are, therefore, justified in coming to the provisional conclusion,
that Second Isaiah is not a unity, in so far as it consists of a
number of pieces by different men, whom God raised up at various
times before, during, and after the Exile, to comfort and exhort
amid the shifting circumstance and tempers of His people; but that
it is a unity, in so far as these pieces have been gathered together
by an editor very soon after the Return from the Exile, in an order
as regular both in point of time and subject as the somewhat mixed
material would permit. It is in this sense that throughout this
volume we shall talk of "our prophet," or "the prophet;" up to ch.
xlix., at least, we shall feel that the expression is literally true;
after that it is rather an editorial than an original unity which
is apparent. In this question of unity the dramatic style of the
prophecy forms, no doubt, the greatest difficulty. Who shall dare to
determine of the many soliloquies, apostrophes, lyrics and other
pieces that are here gathered, often in want of any connection save
that of dramatic grouping and a certain sympathy of temper, whether
they are by the same author or have been collected from several
origins? We must be content to leave the matter uncertain. One great
reason, which we have not yet quoted, for supposing that the whole
prophecy is not by one man, is that if it had been his name would
certainly have come down with it.
Do not let it be thought that such a conclusion, as we have been led
to, is merely a dogma of modern criticism. Here, if anywhere, the
critic is but the patient student of Scripture, searching for the
testimony of the sacred text about itself, and formulating that.
If it be found that such a testimony conflicts with ecclesiastical
tradition, however ancient and universal, so much the worse for
tradition. In Protestant circles, at least, we have no choice. _Litera
Scripta manet_. When we know that the only evidence for the Isaian
authorship of chs. xl.-lxvi. is tradition, supported by an unthinking
interpretation of New Testament citations, while the whole testimony
of these Scriptures themselves denies them to be Isaiah's, we cannot
help making our choice, and accepting the testimony of Scripture. Do
we find them any the less wonderful or Divine? Do they comfort less?
Do they speak with less power to the conscience? Do they testify with
more uncertain voice to our Lord and Saviour? It will be the task of
the following pages to show that, interpreted in connection with the
history out of which they themselves say that God's Spirit drew them,
these twenty-seven chapters become only more prophetic of Christ, and
more comforting and instructive to men, than they were before.
But the remarkable fact is, that anciently tradition itself appears
to have agreed with the results of modern scholarship. The original
place of the Book of Isaiah in the Jewish canon seems to have been
after both Jeremiah and Ezekiel,[13] a fact which goes to prove that
it did not reach completion till a later date than the works of these
two prophets of the Exile.
If now it be asked, Why should a series of prophecies written in
the Exile be attached to the authentic works of Isaiah? that is a
fair question, and one which the supporters of the exilic authorship
have the duty laid upon them of endeavouring to answer. Fortunately
they are not under the necessity of falling back, for want of other
reasons, on the supposition that this attachment was due to the error
of some scribe, or to the custom which ancient writers practised
of filling up any part of a volume, that remained blank when one
book was finished, with the writing of any other that would fit the
place.[14] The first of these reasons is too accidental, the second
too artificial, in face of the undoubted sympathy which exists among
all parts of the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah himself plainly prophesied of
an exile longer than his own generation experienced, and prophesied
of a return from it (ch. xi.). We saw no reason to dispute his claims
to the predictions about Babylon in chs. xxi. and xxxix. Isaiah's,
too, more than any other prophet's, were those great and final hopes
of the Old Testament--the survival of Israel and the gathering of
the Gentiles to the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem. But it is for
the express purpose of emphasizing the immediate fulfilment of such
ancient predictions, that Isa. xl.-lxvi. were published. Although our
prophet has _new things to publish_, his first business is to show
that the _former things have come to pass_, especially the Exile,
the survival of a Remnant, the sending of a Deliverer, the doom of
Babylon. What more natural than to attach to his utterances those
prophecies, of which the events he pointed to were the vindication
and fulfilment? The attachment was the more easy to arrange that the
authentic prophecies had not passed from Isaiah's hand in a fixed
form. They do not bear those marks of their author's own editing,
which are borne by the prophecies both of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It
is impossible to be dogmatic on the point. But these facts--that
our chapters are concerned, as no other Scriptures are, with the
fulfilment of previous prophecies; that it is the prophecies of
Isaiah which are the original and fullest prediction of the events
they are busy with; and that the form, in which Isaiah's prophecies
are handed down, did not preclude additions of this kind to
them--contribute very evident reasons why Isa. xl.-lxvi., though
written in the Exile, should be attached to Isa. i.-xxxix.[15]
* * * * *
Thus we present a theory of the exilic authorship of Isa. xl.-lxvi.
within itself complete and consistent, suited to all parts of the
evidence, and not opposed by the authority of any part of Scripture.
In consequence of its conclusion, our duty, before proceeding to the
exposition of the chapters, is twofold: first, to connect the time
of Isaiah with the period of the Captivity, and then to sketch the
condition of Israel in Exile. This we shall undertake in the next
three chapters.
NOTE TO CHAPTER I.
Readers may wish to have a reference to other passages of this
volume, in which the questions of the date, authorship and
structure of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. are discussed. See pp. 65-68, 112,
146 f., 212, 223; Introduction to Book III.; opening paragraphs
of ch. xviii. and of ch. xix., etc.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Chs. i., ii., etc. The only title that could be offered as
covering the whole book is that in ch. i., ver. 1: _The vision of
Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem,
in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah._
But this manifestly cannot apply to any but the earlier chapters, of
which Judah and Jerusalem are indeed the subjects.
[2] There are, it will be remembered, certain narratives in the Book
of Isaiah, which are not by the prophet. They speak of him in the
third person (chs. vii., xxxvi.-xxxix.), while in other narratives
(chs. vi. and viii.) he speaks of himself in the first person. Their
presence is sufficient proof that the Book of Isaiah, in its extant
shape, did not come from Isaiah's hands, but was compiled by others.
[3] Matt. iii. 3, viii. 17, xii. 17; Luke iii. 4, iv. 17; John i. 23,
xii. 38; Acts viii. 28; Rom. x. 16-20.
[4] Driver's _Isaiah_, pp. 137, 139.
[5] Psalm cxxi.
[6] Driver's _Isaiah: His Life and Times_, p. 191.
[7] Calvin on Isa. lv. 3.
[8] So quoted by Driver (_Isaiah_, etc., p. 200), from the _British
and Foreign Evangelical Review_, 1879, p. 339.
[9] See p. 223.
[10] Professor Briggs' _Messianic Prophecy_, 339 ff.
[11] Ewald is very strong on this.
[12] Including Professor Cheyne, _Encyc. Britann._, article "Isaiah."
[13] According to the arrangement given in the Talmud (Baba bathra,
f. 14, col. 2): "Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the Twelve." Cf. Bleek,
_Introduction to Old Testament_, on Isaiah; Orelli's _Isaiah_, Eng.
ed., p. 214.
[14] Robertson Smith, _The Old Testament in Jewish Church_, 109.
[15] It is the theory of some, that although Isa. xl.-lxvi. dates
as a whole from the Exile, there are passages in it by Isaiah
himself, or in his style by pupils of his (Klostermann in Herzog's
_Encyclopædia_ and Bredenkamp in his _Commentary_). But this, while
possible, is beyond proof.
CHAPTER II.
_FROM ISAIAH TO THE FALL OF JERUSALEM._
701-587 B.C.
At first sight, the circumstances of Judah in the last ten years of
the seventh century present a strong resemblance to her fortunes
in the last ten years of the eighth. The empire of the world, to
which she belongs, is again divided between Egypt and a Mesopotamian
power. Syria is again the field of their doubtful battle, and the
question, to which of the two shall homage be paid, still forms the
politics of all her states. Judah still vacillates, intrigues and
draws down on herself the wrath of the North by her treaties with
Egypt. Again there is a great prophet and statesman, whose concern is
righteousness, who exposes both the immorality of his people and the
folly of their politics, and who summons the _evil from the North_
as God's scourge upon Israel: Isaiah has been succeeded by Jeremiah.
And, as if to complete the analogy, the nation has once more passed
through a puritan reformation. Josiah has, even more thoroughly than
Hezekiah, effected the disestablishment of idols.
Beneath this circumstantial resemblance, however, there is one
fundamental difference. The strength of Isaiah's preaching was bent,
especially during the closing years of the century, to establish the
inviolableness of Jerusalem. Against the threats of the Assyrian
siege, and in spite of his own more formidable conscience of his
people's corruption, Isaiah persisted that Zion should not be taken,
and that the people, though cut down to their roots, should remain
planted in the land,--the stock of an imperial nation in the latter
days. This prophecy was vindicated by the marvellous relief of
Jerusalem on the apparent eve of her capture in 701. But its echoes
had not yet died away, when Jeremiah to his generation delivered the
very opposite message. Round him the popular prophets babbled by
rote Isaiah's ancient assurances about Zion. Their soft, monotonous
repetitions lapped pleasantly upon the immovable self-confidence of
the people. But Jeremiah called down the storm. Even while prosperity
seemed to give him the lie, he predicted the speedy ruin of Temple
and City, and summoned Judah's enemies against her in the name of
the God, on whose former word she relied for peace. The contrast
between the two great prophets grows most dramatic in their conduct
during the respective sieges, of which each was the central figure.
Isaiah, alone steadfast in a city of despair, defying the taunts of
the heathen, rekindling within the dispirited defenders, whom the
enemy sought to bribe to desertion, the passions of patriotism and
religion, proclaiming always, as with the voice of a trumpet, that
Zion must stand inviolate; Jeremiah, on the contrary, declaring the
futility of resistance, counselling each citizen to save his own
life from the ruin of the state, in treaty with the enemy, and even
arrested as a deserter,--these two contrasting figures and attitudes
gather up the difference which the century had wrought in the
fortunes of the City of God. And so, while in 701 Jerusalem triumphed
in the Lord by the sudden raising of the Assyrian siege, three years
after the next century was out she twice succumbed to the Assyrian's
successor, and nine years later was totally destroyed.
What is the reason of this difference, which a century sufficed
to work? Why was the sacredness of Judah's shrine not as much an
article of Jeremiah's as of Isaiah's creed,--as much an element of
Divine providence in 600 as in 700 B.C.? This is not a very hard
question to answer, if we keep in our regard two things--firstly,
the moral condition of the people, and, secondly, the necessities of
the spiritual religion, which was identified for the time with their
fortunes.
The Israel, which was delivered into captivity at the word of
Jeremiah, was a people at once more hardened and more exhausted
than the Israel, which, in spite of its sin, Isaiah's efforts had
succeeded in preserving upon its own land. A century had come and
gone of further grace and opportunity, but the grace had been
resisted, the opportunity abused, and the people stood more guilty
and more wilful than ever before God. Even clearer, however, than the
deserts of the people was the need of their religion. That local and
temporary victory--after all, only the relief of a mountain fortress
and a tribal shrine--with which Isaiah had identified the will and
honour of Almighty God, could not be the climax of the history of
a spiritual religion. It was impossible for Monotheism to rest on
so narrow and material a security as that. The faith, which was to
overcome the world, could not be satisfied with a merely national
triumph. The time must arrive--were it only by the ordinary progress
of the years and unhastened by human guilt--for faith and piety
to be weaned from the forms of an earthly temple, however sacred;
for the individual--after all, the real unit of religion--to be
rendered independent of the community and cast upon his God alone;
and for this people, to whom the oracles of the living God had been
entrusted, to be led out from the selfish pride of guarding these
for their own honour--to be led out, were it through the breaches
of their hitherto inviolate walls, and amid the smoke of all that
was most sacred to them, so that in level contact with mankind they
might learn to communicate their glorious trust. Therefore, while the
Exile was undoubtedly the penance, which an often-spared but ever
more obdurate people had to pay for their accumulated sins, it was
also for the meek and the pure-hearted in Israel a step upwards even
from the faith and the results of Isaiah--perhaps the most effectual
step which Israel's religion ever took. Schultz has finely said: "The
proper Tragedy of History--doom required by long-gathering guilt,
and launched upon a generation which for itself is really turning
towards good--is most strikingly consummated in the Exile." Yes: but
this is only half the truth. The accomplishment of the moral tragedy
is really but one incident in a religious epic--the development of a
spiritual faith. Long-delaying Nemesis overtakes at last the sinners,
but the shock of the blows, which beat the guilty nation into
captivity, releases their religion from its material bonds. Israel on
the way to Exile is on the way to become Israel after the Spirit.
With these principles to guide us, let us now, for a little, thread
our way through the crowded details of the decline and fall of the
Jewish state.
Isaiah's own age had foreboded the necessity of exile for Judah.
There was the great precedent of Samaria, and Judah's sin was not
less than her sister's. When the authorities at Jerusalem wished
to put Jeremiah to death for the heresy of predicting the ruin of
the sacred city, it was pointed out in his defence that a similar
prediction had been made by Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah. And
how much had happened since then! The triumph of Jehovah in 701,
the stronger faith and purer practice, which had followed as long
as Hezekiah reigned, gave way to an idolatrous reaction under his
successor Manasseh. This reaction, while it increased the guilt of
the people, by no means diminished their religious fear. They carried
into it the conscience of their former puritanism--diseased, we might
say delirious, but not dead. Men felt their sin and feared Heaven's
wrath, and rushed headlong into the gross and fanatic exercises
of idolatry, in order to wipe away the one and avert the other.
It availed nothing. After an absence of thirty years the Assyrian
arms returned in full strength, and Manasseh himself was carried
captive across the Euphrates. But penitence revived, and for a time
it appeared as if it were to be at last valid for salvation. Israel
made huge strides towards their ideal life of a good conscience
and outward prosperity. Josiah, the pious, came to the throne. The
Book of the Law was discovered in 621, and king and people rallied
to its summons with the utmost loyalty. All the nation _stood to
the covenant_. The single sanctuary was vindicated, the high places
destroyed, the land purged of idols. There were no great military
triumphs, but Assyria, so long the accepted scourge of God, gave
signs of breaking up; and we can feel the vigour and self-confidence,
induced by years of prosperity, in Josiah's ambition to extend his
borders, and especially in his daring assault upon Necho of Egypt
at Megiddo, when Necho passed north to the invasion of Assyria.
Altogether, it was a people that imagined itself righteous, and
counted upon a righteous God. In such days who could dream of exile?
But in 608 the ideal was shivered. Israel was threshed at Megiddo,
and Josiah, the king after God's own heart, was slain on the field.
And then happened, what happened at other times in Israel's history
when disillusion of this kind came down. The nation fell asunder
into the elements of which it was ever so strange a composition. The
masses, whose conscience did not rise beyond the mere performance
of the Law, nor their view of God higher than that of a Patron of
the state, bound by His covenant to reward with material success the
loyalty of His clients, were disappointed with the results of their
service and of His providence. Being a new generation from Manasseh's
time, they thought to give the strange gods another turn. The idols
were brought back, and after the discredit which righteousness
received at Megiddo, it would appear that social injustice and crime
of many kinds dared to be very bold. Jehoahaz, who reigned for
three months after Josiah, and Jehoiakim, who succeeded him, were
idolaters. The loftier few, like Jeremiah, had never been deceived
by the people's outward allegiance to the Temple or the Law, nor
considered it valid either to atone for the past or now to fulfil
the holy demands of Jehovah; and were confirmed by the disaster at
Megiddo, and the consequent reaction to idolatry, in the stern and
hopeless views of the people which they had always entertained. They
kept reiterating a speedy captivity. Between these parties stood
the formal successors of earlier prophets, so much the slaves of
tradition that they had neither conscience for their people's sins
nor understanding of the world around them, but could only affirm in
the strength of ancient oracles that Zion should not be destroyed.
Strange is it to see how this party, building upon the promises of
Jehovah through a prophet like Isaiah, should be taken advantage of
by the idolaters, but scouted by Jehovah's own servants. Thus they
mingle and conflict. Who indeed can distinguish all the elements of
so ancient and so rich a life, as they chase, overtake and wrestle
with each other, hurrying down the rapids to the final cataract? Let
us leave them for a moment, while we mark the catastrophe itself.
They will be more easily distinguished in the calm below.
It was from the North that Jeremiah summoned the vengeance of God
upon Judah. In his earlier threats he might have meant the Scythians;
but by 605, when Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar of Babylon's son, the
rising general of the age, defeated Pharaoh at Carchemish, all men
accepted Jeremiah's nomination for this successor of Assyria in the
lordship of Western Asia. From Carchemish Nebuchadrezzar overran
Syria. Jehoiakim paid tribute to him, and Judah at last felt the grip
of the hand that was to drag her into exile. Jehoiakim attempted
to throw it off in 602; but, after harassing him for four years by
means of some allies, Nebuchadrezzar took his capital, executed him,
suffered Jehoiachin, his successor, to reign only three months, took
Jerusalem a second time, and carried off to Babylon the first great
portion of the people. This was in 598, only ten years from the death
of Josiah, and twenty-one from the discovery of the Book of the Law.
The exact numbers of this first captivity of the Jews it is
impossible to determine. The annalist sets the soldiers at seven
thousand, the smiths and craftsmen at one thousand; so that, making
allowance for other classes whom he mentions, the grown men must
alone have been over ten thousand;[16] but how many women went, and
how many children--the most important factor for the period of the
Exile with which we have to deal--it is impossible to estimate. The
total number of persons can scarcely have been less than twenty-five
thousand. More important, however, than their number was the quality
of these exiles, and this we can easily appreciate. The royal family
and the court were taken, a large number of influential persons,
_the mighty men of the land_, or what must have been nearly all the
fighting men, with the necessary artificers; priests also went,
Ezekiel among them, and probably representatives of other classes not
mentioned by the annalist. That this was the virtue and flower of the
nation is proved by a double witness. Not only did the citizens, for
the remaining ten years of Jerusalem's life, look to these exiles for
her deliverance, but Jeremiah himself counted them the sound half of
Israel--_a basket of good figs_, as he expressed it, beside _a basket
of bad ones_. They were at least under discipline, but the remnant of
Jerusalem persisted in the wilfulness of the past.
For although Jeremiah remained in the city, and the house of David
and a considerable population, and although Jeremiah himself held a
higher position in public esteem since the vindication of his word
by the events of 598, yet he could not be blind to the unchanged
character of the people, and the thorough doom which their last
respite had only more evidently proved to be inevitable. Gangs of
false prophets, both at home and among the exiles, might predict a
speedy return. All the Jewish ability of intrigue, with the lavish
promises of Egypt and frequent embassies from other nations, might
work for the overthrow of Babylon. But Jeremiah and Ezekiel knew
better. Across the distance which now separated them they chanted,
as it were in antiphon, the alternate strophes of Judah's dirge.
Jeremiah bade the exiles not to remember Zion, but "let them settle
down," he said, "into the life of the land they are in, building
houses, planting gardens, and begetting children, and _seek the peace
of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives,
and pray unto Jehovah for it, for in the peace thereof ye shall have
peace_--the Exile shall last seventy years." And as Jeremiah in Zion
blessed Babylon, so Ezekiel in Babylon cursed Zion, thundering back
that Jerusalem must be utterly wasted through siege and famine,
pestilence and captivity. There is no rush of hope through Ezekiel.
His expectations are all distant. He lives either in memory or in
cold fancy. His pictures of restoration are too elaborate to mean
speedy fulfilment. They are the work of a man with time on his hands;
one does not build so colossally for to-morrow. Thus reinforced
from abroad, Jeremiah proclaimed Nebuchadrezzar as _the servant of
Jehovah_, and summoned him to work Jehovah's doom upon the city. The
predicted blockade came in the ninth year of Zedekiah. The false
hopes which still sustained the people, their trust in Egypt, the
arrival of an Egyptian army in result of their intrigue, as well as
all their piteous bravery, only afforded time for the fulfilment of
the terrible details of their penalty. For nearly eighteen months the
siege closed in--months of famine and pestilence, of faction and
quarrel and falling away to the enemy. Then Jerusalem broke up. The
besiegers gained the northern suburb and stormed the middle gate.
Zedekiah and the army burst their lines only to be captured on an
aimless flight at Jericho. A few weeks more, and a forlorn defence by
civilians of the interior parts of the city was at last overwhelmed.
The exasperated besiegers gave her up to fire--_the house of
Jehovah, the king's house, and every great house_--and tore to the
stones the stout walls that resisted the conflagration. As the city
was levelled, so the citizens were dispersed. A great number--and
among them the king's family--were put to death. The king himself
was blinded, and, along with a host of his subjects, impossible
for us to estimate, and with all the temple furniture, was carried
to Babylon. A few peasants were left to cultivate the land; a few
superior personages--perhaps such as, with Jeremiah, had favoured the
Babylonians, and Jeremiah was among them--were left at Mizpah under a
Jewish viceroy. It was a poor apparition of a state; but, as if the
very ghost of Israel must be chased from the land, even this small
community was broken up, and almost every one of its members fled to
Egypt. The Exile was complete.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] The figure actually mentioned in 2 Kings xxiv. 14, but, as
Stade points out (_Geschichte_, p. 680), vv. 14, 15 interrupt the
narrative, and may have been intruded here from the account of the
later captivity.
CHAPTER III.
_WHAT ISRAEL TOOK INTO EXILE._
Before we follow the captives along the roads that lead to exile, we
may take account of the spiritual goods which they carried with them,
and were to realise in their retirement. Never in all history did
paupers of this world go forth more richly laden with the treasures
of heaven.
1. First of all, we must emphasize and define their MONOTHEISM. We must
emphasize it as against those who would fain persuade us that Israel's
monotheism was for the most part the product of the Exile; we must
analyse its contents and define its limits among the people, if we
would appreciate the extent to which it spread and the peculiar temper
which it assumed, as set forth in the prophecy we are about to study.
Idolatry was by no means dead in Israel at the fall of Jerusalem.
On the contrary, during the last years which the nation spent
within those sacred walls, that had been so miraculously preserved
in the sight of the world by Jehovah, idolatry increased, and
to the end remained as determined and fanatic as the people's
defence of Jehovah's own temple. The Jews who fled to Egypt applied
themselves to the worship of the Queen of Heaven, in spite of all
the remonstrances of Jeremiah and him they carried with them, not
because they listened to him as the prophet of the One True God,
but superstitiously, as if he were a pledge of the favour of one
of the many gods, whom they were anxious to propitiate. And the
earliest effort, upon which we shall have to follow our own prophet,
is the effort to crush the worship of images among the Babylonian
exiles. Yet when Israel returned from Babylon the people were wholly
monotheist; when Jerusalem was rebuilt no idol came back to her.
That this great change was mainly the result of the residence in
Babylon and of truths learned there, must be denied by all who
remember the creed and doctrine about God, which in their literature
the people carried with them into exile. The law was already written,
and the whole nation had sworn to it: _Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our
God; Jehovah is One, and thou shalt worship Jehovah thy God with
all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength._
These words, it is true, may be so strictly interpreted as to mean
no more than that there was one God for Israel: other gods might
exist, but Jehovah was Sole Deity for His people. It is maintained
that such a view receives some support from the custom of prophets,
who, while they affirmed Jehovah's supremacy, talked of other gods
as if they were real existences. But argument from this habit of
the prophets is precarious: such a mode of speech may have been
a mere accommodation to a popular point of view. And, surely, we
have only to recall what Isaiah and Jeremiah had uttered concerning
Jehovah's Godhead, to be persuaded that Israel's monotheism, before
the beginning of the Exile, was a far more broad and spiritual faith
than the mere belief that Jehovah was the Sovereign Deity of the
nation, or the satisfaction of the desires of Jewish hearts alone.
Righteousness was not coincident with Israel's life and interest;
righteousness was universally supreme, and it was in righteousness
that Isaiah saw Jehovah exalted.[17] There is no more prevailing
witness to the unity of God than the conscience, which in this matter
takes far precedence of the intellect; and it was on the testimony of
conscience that the prophets based Israel's monotheism. Yet they did
not omit to enlist the reason as well. Isaiah and Jeremiah delight
to draw deductions from the reasonableness of Jehovah's working in
nature to the reasonableness of His processes in history,--analogies
which could not fail to impress both intellect and imagination with
the fact that men inhabit a universe, that One is the will and mind
which works in all things. But to this training of conscience and
reason, the Jews, at the beginning of the Exile, felt the addition of
another considerable influence. Their history lay at last complete,
and their conscience was at leisure from the making of its details
to survey it as a whole. That long past, seen now by undazzled eyes
from under the shadow of exile, presented through all its changing
fortunes a single and a definite course. One was the intention of it,
one its judgement from first to last. The Jew saw in it nothing but
righteousness, the quality of a God, who spake the same word from the
beginning, who never broke His word, and who at last had summoned to
its fulfilment the greatest of the world-powers. In those historical
books, which were collected and edited during the Exile, we observe
each of the kings and generations of Israel, in their turn,
confronted with the same high standard of fidelity to the One True
God and His holy Law. The regularity and rigour, with which they are
thus judged, have been condemned by some critics as an arbitrary and
unfair application of the standard of a later faith to the conduct
of ruder and less responsible ages. But, apart from the question of
historical accuracy, we cannot fail to remark that this method of
writing history is at least instinct with the Oneness of God, and the
unvarying validity of His Law from generation to generation. Israel's
God was the same, their conscience told them, down all their history;
but now as He summoned one after another of the great world-powers
to do His bidding,--Assyria, Babylon, Persia,--how universal did He
prove His dominion to be! Unchanging through all time, He was surely
omnipotent through all space.
This short review--in which, for the sake of getting a complete view
of our subject, we have anticipated a little--has shown that Israel
had enough within themselves, in the teaching of their prophets and
in the lessons of their own history, to account for that consummate
expression of Jehovah's Godhead, which is contained in our prophet,
and to which every one allows the character of an absolute monotheism.
We shall find this, it is true, to be higher and more comprehensive
than anything which is said about God in pre-exilic Scriptures. The
prophet argues the claims of Jehovah, not only with the ardour that is
born of faith, but often with the scorn which indicates the intellect
at work. It is monotheism, treated not only as a practical belief or
a religious duty, but as a necessary truth of reason; not only as the
secret of faith and the special experience of Israel, but also as an
essential conviction of human nature, so that not to believe in One
God is a thing irrational and absurd for Gentiles as well as Jews.
God's infinitude in the works of creation, His universal providence in
history, are preached with greater power than ever before; and the gods
of the nations are treated as things, in whose existence no reasonable
person can possibly believe. In short, our great prophet of the Exile
has already learned to obey the law of Deuteronomy as it was expounded
by Christ. Deuteronomy says, _Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all
thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength_. Christ
added, _and with all thy mind_. This was what our prophet did. He held
his monotheism _with all his mind_. We shall find him conscious of it,
not only as a religious affection, but as a necessary intellectual
conviction; which if a man has not, he is less than a man. Hence the
scorn, which he pours upon the idols and mythologies of his conquerors.
Beside his tyrants, though in physical strength he was but a worm to
them, the Jew felt that he walked, by virtue of his faith in One God,
their intellectual master.
We shall see all this illustrated later on. Meantime, what we are
concerned to show is, that there is enough to account for this high
faith within Israel themselves--in their prophecy and in the lessons
of their history. And where indeed are we to be expected to go in
search of the sources of Israel's monotheism, if not to themselves?
To the Babylonians? The Babylonians had nothing spiritual to teach
to Israel; our prophet regards them with scorn. To the Persians, who
broke across Israel's horizon with Cyrus? Our prophet's high statement
of monotheism is of earlier date than the advent of Cyrus to Babylon.
Nor did Cyrus, when he came, give any help to the faith, for in his
public edicts he owned the gods of Babylon and the God of Israel with
equal care and equal policy. It was not because Cyrus and his Persians
were monotheists, that our prophet saw the sovereignty of Jehovah
vindicated, but it was because Jehovah was sovereign that the prophet
knew the Persians would serve His holy purposes.
2. But if in Deuteronomy the exiles carried with them the Law of the
One God, they preserved in Jeremiah's writings what may be called the
charter of the INDIVIDUAL MAN. Jeremiah had found religion in Judah
a public and a national affair. The individual derived his spiritual
value only from being a member of the nation, and through the public
exercises of the national faith. But, partly by his own religious
experience, and partly by the course of events, Jeremiah was enabled
to accomplish what may be justly described as the vindication of the
individual. Of his own separate value before God, and of his right
of access to his Maker apart from the nation, Jeremiah himself was
conscious, having belonged to God before he belonged to his mother,
his family, or his nation. _Before I found thee in the belly I knew
thee, and before thou camest out of the womb I consecrated thee._ His
whole life was but the lesson of how _one_ man can be for God and
all the nation on the other side. And it was in the strength of this
solitary experience, that he insisted, in his famous thirty-first
chapter, on the individual responsibility of man and on every man's
immediate communication with God's Spirit; and that, when the ruin of
the state was imminent, he advised each of his friends to _take his
own life_ out of it _for a prey_.[18] But Jeremiah's doctrine of the
religious value and independence of the individual had a complement.
Though the prophet felt so keenly his separate responsibility and
right of access to God, and his religious independence of the
people, he nevertheless clave to the people with all his heart. He
was not, like some other prophets, outside the doom he preached.
He might have saved himself, for he had many offers from the
Babylonians. But he chose to suffer with his people--he, the saint of
God, with the idolaters. More than that, it may be said that Jeremiah
suffered for the people. It was not they, with their dead conscience
and careless mind, but he, with his tender conscience and breaking
heart, who bore the reproach of their sins, the anger of the Lord,
and all the agonizing knowledge of his country's inevitable doom. In
Jeremiah one man did suffer for the people.
In our prophecy, which is absorbed with the deliverance of the nation
as a whole, there was, of course, no occasion to develop Jeremiah's
remarkable suggestions about each individual soul of man. In fact,
these suggestions were germs, which remained uncultivated in Israel
till Christ's time. Jeremiah himself uttered them, not as demands for
the moment, but as ideals that would only be realised when the New
Covenant was made.[19] Our prophecy has nothing to say about them. But
that figure, which Jeremiah's life presented, of One Individual--of
One Individual standing in moral solitude over against the whole
nation, and in a sense suffering for the nation, can hardly have been
absent from the influences, which moulded the marvellous confession of
the people in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, where they see the
solitary servant of God on one side and themselves on the other, _and
Jehovah made to light on him the iniquities of us all_. It is true that
the exiles themselves had some consciousness of suffering for others.
_Our fathers_, cried a voice in their midst, when Jerusalem broke
up, _Our fathers have sinned, and we have borne their iniquities_.
But Jeremiah had been a willing sufferer for his people; and the
fifty-third chapter is, as we shall see, more like his way of bearing
his generation's guilt for love's sake than their way of bearing their
fathers' guilt in the inevitable entail of sin.[20]
3. To these beliefs in the unity of God, the religious worth of the
individual and the virtue of his self-sacrifice, we must add some
experiences of scarcely less value rising out of the DESTRUCTION
OF THE MATERIAL AND POLITICAL FORMS--the temple, the city, the
monarchy--with which the faith of Israel had been so long identified.
Without this destruction, it is safe to say, those beliefs could not
have assumed their purest form. Take, for instance, the belief in the
unity of God. There is no doubt that this belief was immensely helped
in Israel by the abolition of all the provincial sanctuaries under
Josiah, by the limitation of Divine worship to one temple and of valid
sacrifice to one altar. But yet it was well that this temple should
enjoy its singular rights for only thirty years and then be destroyed.
For a monotheism, however lofty, which depended upon the existence
of any shrine, however gloriously vindicated by Divine providence,
was not a purely spiritual faith. Or, again, take the individual. The
individual could not realise how truly he himself was the highest
temple of God, and God's most pleasing sacrifice a broken and a
contrite heart, till the routine of legal sacrifice was interrupted and
the ancient altar torn down. Or, once more, take that high, ultimate
doctrine of sacrifice, that the most inspiring thing for men, the most
effectual propitiation before God, is the self-devotion and offering up
of a free and reasonable soul, the righteous for the unrighteous--how
could common Jews have adequately learned that truth, in days when,
according to immemorial practice, the bodies of bulls and goats bled
daily on the one valid altar? The city and temple, therefore, went up
in flames that Israel might learn that God is a Spirit, and dwelleth
not in a house made with hands; that men are His temple, and their
hearts the sacrifices well-pleasing in His sight; and that beyond
the bodies and blood of beasts, with their daily necessity of being
offered, He was preparing for them another Sacrifice, of perpetual and
universal power, in the voluntary sufferings of His own holy Servant.
It was for this Servant, too, that the monarchy, as it were, abdicated,
yielding up to Him all its title to represent Jehovah and to save and
rule Jehovah's people.
4. Again, as we have already hinted, the fall of the state and city of
Jerusalem gave scope to ISRAEL'S MISSIONARY CAREER. The conviction,
that had inspired many of Isaiah's assertions of the inviolableness
of Zion, was the conviction that, if Zion were overthrown and the
last remnant of Israel uprooted from the land, there must necessarily
follow the extinction of the only true testimony to the living God
which the world contained. But by a century later that testimony was
firmly secured in the hearts and consciences of the people, wheresoever
they might be scattered; and what was now needed was exactly such a
dispersion,--in order that Israel might become aware of the world
for whom the testimony was meant, and grow expert in the methods by
which it was to be proclaimed. Priesthood has its human as well as its
Godward side. The latter was already sufficiently secured for Israel
by Jehovah's age-long seclusion of them in their remote highlands--a
people peculiar to Himself. But now the same Providence completed its
purpose by casting them upon the world. They mixed with men face to
face, or, still more valuably to themselves, on a level with the most
downtrodden and despised of the peoples. With no advantage but the
truth, they met the other religions of the world in argument, debating
with them upon the principles of a common reason and the facts of a
common history. They learned sympathy with the weak things of earth.
They discovered that their religion could be taught. But, above all,
they became conscious of martyrdom, the indispensable experience of a
religion that is to prevail; and they realised the supreme influence
upon men of a love which sacrifices itself. In a word, Israel, in
going into exile, put on humanity with all its consequences. How real
and thorough the process was, how successful in perfecting their
priesthood, may be seen not only from the hopes and obligations towards
all mankind, which burst in our prophecy to an urgency and splendour
unmatched elsewhere in their history, but still more from the fact that
when the Son of God Himself took flesh and became man, there were no
words oftener upon His lips to describe His experience and commission,
there are no passages which more clearly mirror His work for the world,
than the words and the passages in which these Jews of the Exile,
stripped to their bare humanity, relate their sufferings or exult in
their destiny that should follow.
5. But with their temple in ruins, and all the world before them for
the service of God, the Jews go forth to exile upon the distinct
PROMISE OF RETURN. The material form of their religion is suspended,
not abolished. Let them feel religion in purely spiritual aspects,
unassisted by sanctuary or ritual; let them look upon the world and
the oneness of men; let them learn all God's scope for the truth
He has entrusted to them,--and then let them gather back again and
cherish their new experience and ideas for yet awhile in the old
seclusion. Jehovah's discipline of them as a nation is not yet
exhausted. They are no mere band of pilgrims or missionaries, with
the world for their home; they are still a people, with their own
bit of the earth. If we keep this in mind, it will explain certain
apparent anomalies in our prophecy. In all the writings of the Exile
the reader is confused by a strange mingling of the spiritual and the
material, the universal and the local. The moral restoration of the
people to pardon and righteousness is identified with their political
restoration to Judah and Jerusalem. They have been separated from
ritual in order to cultivate a more spiritual religion, but it is to
this that a restoration to ritual is promised for a reward. While
Jeremiah insists upon the free and immediate communication of every
believer with Jehovah, Ezekiel builds a more exclusive priesthood,
a more elaborate system of worship. Within our prophecy, while one
voice deprecates a house for God built with hands, affirming that
Jehovah dwells with every one who is of a poor and contrite spirit,
other voices dwell fondly on the prospect of the new temple and
exult in its material glory. This double line of feeling is not
merely due to the presence in Israel of those two opposite tempers
of mind, which so naturally appear in every national literature.
But a special purpose of God is in it. Dispersed to obtain more
spiritual ideas of God and man and the world, Israel must be gathered
back again to get these by heart, to enshrine them in literature,
and to transmit them to posterity, as they could alone be securely
transmitted, in the memories of a nation, in the liturgies and canons
of a living Church.
Therefore the Jews, though torn for their discipline from Jerusalem,
continued to identify themselves more passionately than ever with
their desecrated city. A prayer of the period exclaims: _Thy saints
take pleasure in her stones, and her dust is dear to them._[21] The
exiles proved this by taking her name. Their prophets addressed
them as _Zion_ and _Jerusalem_. Scattered and leaderless groups of
captives in a far-off land, they were still that City of God. She had
not ceased to be; ruined and forsaken as she lay, she was yet _graven
on the palms of Jehovah's hands; and her walls were continually
before Him_.[22] The exiles kept up the register of her families;
they prayed towards her; they looked to return to build her bulwarks;
they spent long hours of their captivity in tracing upon the dust of
that foreign land the groundplan of her restored temple.
* * * * *
With such beliefs in God and man and sacrifice, with such hopes and
opportunities for their world-mission, but also with such a bias back
to the material Jerusalem, did Israel pass into exile.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] See vol. i., p. 100 f.
[18] Jer. xlv.
[19] This is especially clear from ch. xxxi.
[20] Having read through the Book of Jeremiah once again since I
wrote the above paragraph, I am more than ever impressed with the
influence of his life upon Isa. xl.-lxvi.
[21] Psalm cii. 14.
[22] Isa. xlix. 16.
CHAPTER IV.
_ISRAEL IN EXILE._
FROM 589 TILL ABOUT 550 B.C.
It is remarkable how completely the sound of the march from Jerusalem
to Babylon has died out of Jewish history. It was an enormous
movement: twice over within ten years, ten thousand Jews, at the
very least, must have trodden the highway to the Euphrates; and
yet, except for a doubtful verse or two in the Psalter, they have
left no echo of their passage. The sufferings of the siege before,
the remorse and lamentation of the Exile after, still pierce our
ears through the Book of Lamentations and the Psalms by the rivers
of Babylon. We know exactly how the end was fulfilled. We see most
vividly the shifting panorama of the siege,--the city in famine,
under the assault, and in smoke; upon the streets the pining
children, the stricken princes, the groups of men with sullen,
famine-black faces, the heaps of slain, mothers feeding on the bodies
of the infants whom their sapless breasts could not keep alive; by
the walls the hanging and crucifixion of multitudes, with all the
fashion of Chaldean cruelty, the delicate and the children stumbling
under heavy loads, no survivor free from the pollution of blood.
Upon the hills around, the neighbouring tribes are gathered to jeer
at _the day of Jerusalem_, and to cut off her fugitives, we even
see the departing captives turn, as the worm turns, to curse _those
children of Edom_. But there the vision closes. Was it this hot hate
which blinded them to the sights of the way, or that weariness and
depression among strange scenes, that falls upon all unaccustomed
caravans, and has stifled the memory of nearly every other great
historical march? The roads which the exiles traversed were of
immemorial use in the history of their fathers; almost every day they
must have passed names which, for at least two centuries, had rung
in the market-place of Jerusalem--the Way of the Sea, across Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles, round Hermon, and past Damascus; between
the two Lebanons, past Hamath, and past Arpad; or less probably by
Tadmor-in-the-Wilderness and Rezeph,--till they reached the river
on which the national ambition had lighted as the frontier of the
Messianic Empire, and whose rolling greatness had so often proved
the fascination and despair of a people of uncertain brooks and
trickling aqueducts. Crossing the Euphrates by one of its numerous
passages--either at Carchemish, if they struck the river so high, or
at the more usual Thapsacus, Tiphsah, _the passage_, where Xenophon
crossed with his Greeks, or at some other place--the caravans
must have turned south across the Habor, on whose upper banks the
captives of Northern Israel had been scattered, and then have
traversed the picturesque country of Aram-Naharaim, past Circesium
and Rehoboth-of-the-River, and many another ancient place mentioned
in the story of the Patriarchs, till through dwindling hills they
reached His--that marvellous site which travellers praise as one
of the great view-points of the world--and looked out at last upon
the land of their captivity, the boundless, almost level tracts of
Chaldea, the first home of the race, the traditional Garden of Eden.
But of all that we are told nothing. Every eye in the huge caravans
seems to have been as the eyes of the blinded king whom they carried
with them,--able to weep, but not to see.
One fact, however, was too large to be missed by these sad, wayworn
men; and it has left traces on their literature. In passing from home
to exile, the Jews passed from the hills to the plain. They were
highlanders. Jerusalem lies four thousand feet above the sea. From
its roofs the skyline is mostly a line of hills. To leave the city
on almost any side you have to descend. The last monuments of their
fatherland, on which the emigrants' eyes could have lingered, were
the high crests of Lebanon; the first prospect of their captivity
was a monotonous level. The change was the more impressive, that to
the hearts of Hebrews it could not fail to be sacramental. From the
mountains came the dew to their native crofts--the dew which, of
all earthly blessings, was likest God's grace. For their prophets,
the ancient hills had been the symbols of Jehovah's faithfulness.
In leaving their highlands, therefore, the Jews not only left the
kind of country to which their habits were most adapted and all
their natural affections clung; they left the chosen abode of God,
the most evident types of His grace, the perpetual witnesses to His
covenant. Ezekiel constantly employs _the mountains_ to describe his
fatherland. But it is far more with a sacramental longing than a mere
homesickness that a psalmist of the Exile cries out, _I will lift up
mine eyes to the hills: from whence cometh mine help?_ or that our
prophet exclaims: _How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of
him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that saith
unto Zion, Thy God reigneth_.
By the route sketched above, it is at least seven hundred miles from
Jerusalem to Babylon--a distance which, when we take into account
that many of the captives walked in fetters, cannot have occupied
them less than three months. We may form some conception of the
aspect of the caravans from the transportations of captives which
are figured on the Assyrian monuments, as in the Assyrian basement
in the British Museum. From these it appears as if families were not
separated, but marched together. Mules, asses, camels, ox-waggons,
and the captives themselves carried goods. Children and women
suckling infants were allowed to ride on the waggons. At intervals
fully-armed soldiers walked in pairs.[23]
I.
Mesopotamia, the land "in the middle of the rivers," Euphrates and
Tigris, consists of two divisions, an upper and a lower. The dividing
line crosses from near Hit or His on the Euphrates to below Samarah
on the Tigris. Above this line the country is a gently undulating
plain of secondary formation at some elevation above the sea. But
Lower Mesopotamia is absolutely flat land, an unbroken stretch of
alluvial soil, scarcely higher than the Persian Gulf, upon which it
steadily encroaches. Chaldea was confined to this Lower Mesopotamia,
and was not larger, Rawlinson estimates, than the kingdom of
Denmark.[24] It is the monotonous level which first impresses the
traveller; but if the season be favourable, he sees this only as the
theatre of vast and varied displays of colour, which all visitors vie
with one another in describing: "It is like a rich carpet;" "emerald
green, enamelled with flowers of every hue;" "tall wild grasses and
broad extents of waving reeds;" "acres of water-lilies;" "acres of
pansies." There was no such country in ancient times for wheat,
barley, millet, and sesame;[25] tamarisks, poplars, and palms; here
and there heavy jungle; with flashing streams and canals thickly
athwart the whole, and all shining the more brilliantly for the
interrupting patches of scurvy, nitrous soil, and the grey sandy
setting of the desert with its dry scrub. The possible fertility
of Chaldea is incalculable. But there are drawbacks. Bounded to
the north by so high a tableland, to the south and south-west by
a superheated gulf and broad desert, Mesopotamia is the scene of
violent changes of atmosphere. The languor of the flat country, the
stagnancy and sultriness of the air, of which not only foreigners but
the natives themselves complain, is suddenly invaded by southerly
winds, of tremendous force and laden with clouds of fine sand, which
render the air so dense as to be suffocating, and "produce a lurid
red haze intolerable to the eyes." Thunderstorms are frequent, and
there are very heavy rains. But the winds are the most tremendous.
In such an atmosphere we may perhaps discover the original shapes
and sounds of Ezekiel's turbulent visions--_the fiery wheels; the
great cloud with a fire infolding itself; the colour of amber_, with
_sapphire_, or lapis lazuli, breaking through; _the sound of a great
rushing_. Also the Mesopotamian floods are colossal. The increase of
both Tigris and Euphrates is naturally more violent and irregular
than that of the Nile.[26] Frequent risings of these rivers spread
desolation with inconceivable rapidity, and they ebb only to leave
pestilence behind them. If civilisation is to continue, there is need
of vast and incessant operations on the part of man.
Thus, both by its fertility and by its violence, this climate--before
the curse of God fell on those parts of the world--tended to develop
a numerous and industrious race of men, whose numbers were swollen
from time to time both by forced and by voluntary immigration. The
population must have been very dense. The triumphal lists of Assyrian
conquerors of the land, as well as the rubbish mounds which to-day
cover its surface, testify to innumerable villages and towns; while
the connecting canals and fortifications, by the making of them and
the watching of them, must have filled even the rural districts with
the hum and activity of men. Chaldea, however, did not draw all her
greatness from herself. There was immense traffic with East and West,
between which Babylon lay, for the greater part of antiquity, the
world's central market and exchange. The city was practically a port
on the Persian Gulf, by canals from which vessels reached her wharves
direct from Arabia, India and Africa. Down the Tigris and Euphrates
rafts brought the produce of Armenia and the Caucasus; but of greater
importance than even these rivers were the roads, which ran from Sardis
to Shushan, traversed Media, penetrated Bactria and India, and may be
said to have connected the Jaxartes and the Ganges with the Nile and
the harbours of the Ægean Sea. These roads all crossed Chaldea and met
at Babylon. Together with the rivers and ocean highways, they poured
upon her markets the traffic of the whole ancient world.
It was, in short, the very centre of the world--the most populous
and busy region of His earth--to which God sent His people for
their exile. The monarch, who transplanted them, was the genius
of Babylonia incarnate. The chief soldier of his generation,
Nebuchadrezzar will live in history as one of the greatest builders
of all time. But he fought as he built--that he might traffic. His
ambition was to turn the trade with India from the Red Sea to the
Persian Gulf, and he thought to effect this by the destruction of
Tyre, by the transportation of Arab and Nabathean merchants to
Babylon, and by the deepening and regulation of the river between
Babylon and the sea.
There is no doubt that Nebuchadrezzar carried the Jews to Babylon not
only for political reasons, but in order to employ them upon those
large works of irrigation and the building of cities, for which his
ambition required hosts of labourers. Thus the exiles were planted,
neither in military prisons nor in the comparative isolation of
agricultural colonies, but just where Babylonian life was most busy,
where they were forced to share and contribute to it, and could not
help feeling the daily infection of their captors' habits. Do not let
us forget this. It will explain much in what we have to study. It
will explain how the captivity, which God inflicted upon the Jews as
a punishment, might become in time a new sin to them, and why, when
the day of redemption arrived, so many forgot that their citizenship
was in Zion, and clung to the traffic and the offices of Babylon.
The majority of the exiles appear to have been settled within the city,
or, as it has been more correctly called, "the fortified district,"
of Babylon itself. Their mistress was thus constantly before them, at
once their despair and their temptation. _Lady of Kingdoms_ she lifted
herself to heaven from broad wharves and ramparts, by wide flights
of stairs and terraces, high walls and hanging gardens, pyramids and
towers--so colossal in her buildings, so imperially lavish of space
between! No wonder that upon that vast, far-spreading architecture,
upon its great squares and between its high portals guarded by giant
bulls, the Jew felt himself, as he expressed it, but a poor _worm_. If,
even as they stand in our museums, captured and catalogued, one feels
as if one crawled in the presence of the fragments of these striding
monsters, with how much more of the feeling of the worm must the abject
members of that captive nation have writhed before the face of the
city, which carried these monsters as the mere ornaments of her skirts,
and rose above all kingdoms with her strong feet upon the poor and the
meek of the earth?
Ah, the despair of it! To see _her_ every day so glorious, to be
forced to help _her_ ceaseless growth,--and to think how Jerusalem,
the daughter of Zion, lay forsaken in ruins! Yet the despair
sometimes gave way to temptation. There was not an outline or horizon
visible to the captive Jew, not a figure in the motley crowds in
which he moved, but must have fascinated him with the genius of his
conquerors. In that level land no mountain, with its witness of God,
broke the skyline; but the work of man was everywhere: curbed and
scattered rivers, artificial mounds, buildings of brick, gardens torn
from their natural beds and hung high in air by cunning hands to
please the taste of a queen; lavish wealth and force and cleverness,
all at the command of one human will. The signature ran across the
whole, "_I_ have done this, and with mine own hand have I gotten me
my wealth;" and all the nations of the earth came and acknowledged
the signature, and worshipped the great city. It was fascinating
merely to look on such cleverness, success and self-confidence; and
who was the poor Jew that he, too, should not be drawn with the
intoxicated nations to the worship of this glory that filled his
horizon? If his eyes rose higher, and from these enchantments of
men sought refuge in the heavens above, were not even they also a
Babylonian realm? Did not the Chaldean claim the great lights there
for his patron gods? were not the movements of sun, moon, and planets
the secret of his science? did not the tyrant believe that the very
stars in their courses fought for him? And he was vindicated; he was
successful; he did actually rule the world. There seemed to be no
escape from the enchantments of this sorceress city, as the prophets
called her, and it is not wonderful that so many Jews fell victims to
her worldliness and idolatry.
II.
The social condition of the Jews in Exile is somewhat obscure, and
yet, both in connection with the date and with the exposition of
some portions of "Second Isaiah," it is an element of the greatest
importance, of which we ought to have as definite an idea as possible.
What are the facts? By far the most significant is that which faces us
at the end of the Exile. There, some sixty years after the earlier, and
some fifty years after the later, of Nebuchadrezzar's two deportations,
we find the Jews a largely multiplied and still regularly organised
nation, with considerable property and decided political influence.
Not more than forty thousand can have gone into exile, but forty-two
thousand returned, and yet left a large portion of the nation behind
them. The old families and clans survived; the social ranks were
respected; the rich still held slaves; and the former menials of the
temple could again be gathered together. Large subscriptions were
raised for the pilgrimage, and for the restoration of the temple; a
great host of cattle was taken. To such a state of affairs do we see
any traces leading up through the Exile itself? We do.
The first host of exiles, the captives of 598, comprised, as we
have seen, the better classes of the nation, and appear to have
enjoyed considerable independence. They were not scattered, like
the slaves in North America, as domestic bondsmen over the surface
of the land. Their condition must have much more closely resembled
that of the better-treated exiles in Siberia; though of course, as
we have seen, it was not a Siberia, but the centre of civilisation,
to which they were banished. They remained in communities, with
their own official heads, and at liberty to consult their prophets.
They were sufficiently in touch with one another, and sufficiently
numerous, for the enemies of Babylon to regard them as a considerable
political influence, and to treat with them for a revolution against
their captors. But Ezekiel's strong condemnation of this intrigue
exhibits their leaders on good terms with the government. Jeremiah
bade them throw themselves into the life of the land; buy and sell,
and increase their families and property. At the same time, we cannot
but observe that it is only religious sins, with which Ezekiel
upbraids them. When he speaks of civic duty or social charity, he
either refers to their past or to the life of the remnant still in
Jerusalem. There is every reason to believe, therefore, that this
captivity was an honourable and an easy one. The captives may have
brought some property with them; they had leisure for the pursuit
of business and for the study and practice of their religion. Some
of them suffered, of course, from the usual barbarity of Oriental
conquerors, and were made eunuchs; some, by their learning and
abstinence, rose to high positions in the court.[27] Probably to
the end of the Exile they remained _the good figs_, as Jeremiah had
called them. Theirs was, perhaps, the literary work of the Exile; and
theirs, too, may have been the wealth which rebuilt Jerusalem.
But it was different with the second captivity, of 589. After the
famine, the burning of the city, and the prolonged march, this
second host of exiles must have reached Babylonia in an impoverished
condition. They were a lower class of men. They had exasperated
their conquerors, who, before the march began, subjected many of
them to mutilation and cruel death; and it is, doubtless, echoes of
their experience which we find in the more bitter complaints of our
prophet. _This is a people robbed and spoiled; all of them snared
in holes, and hid in prison-houses: they are for a prey, and for a
spoil._ _Thou_, that is, Babylon, _didst show them no mercy; upon the
aged hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke_.[28] Nebuchadrezzar used
them for his building, as Pharaoh had used their forefathers. Some of
them, or of their countrymen who had reached Babylonia before them,
became the domestic slaves and chattels of their conquerors. Among
the contracts and bills of sale of this period we find the cases of
slaves with apparently Jewish names.[29]
In short, the state of the Jews in Babylonia resembled what seems to
have been their fortune wherever they have settled in a foreign land.
Part of them despised and abused, forced to labour or overtaxed;
part left alone to cultivate literature or to gather wealth. Some
treated with unusual rigour--and perhaps a few of these with reason,
as dangerous to the government of the land--but some also, by the
versatile genius of their race, advancing to a high place in the
political confidence of their captors.
Their application to literature, to their religion, and to commerce
must be specially noted.
1. Nothing is more striking in the writings of Ezekiel than the
air of large leisure which invests them. Ezekiel lies passive; he
broods, gazes and builds his visions up, in a fashion like none
of his terser predecessors; for he had time on his hands, not
available to them in days when the history of the nation was still
running. Ezekiel's style swells to a greater fulness of rhetoric;
his pictures of the future are elaborated with the most minute
detail. Prophets before him were speakers, but he is a writer. Many
in Israel besides Ezekiel took advantage of the leisure of the Exile
to the great increase and arrangement of the national literature.
Some Assyriologists have lately written, as if the schools of Jewish
scribes owed their origin entirely to the Exile.[30] But there were
scribes in Israel before this. What the Exile did for these, was to
provide them not only with the leisure from national business which
we have noted, but with a powerful example of their craft as well.
Babylonia at this time was a land full of scribes and makers of
libraries. They wrote a language not very different from the Jewish,
and cannot but have powerfully infected their Jewish fellows with the
spirit of their toil and of their methods. To the Exile we certainly
owe a large part of the historical books of the Old Testament, the
arrangement of some of the prophetic writings, as well as--though the
amount of this is very uncertain--part of the codification of the Law.
2. If the Exile was opportunity to the scribes, it can only have
been despair to the priests. In this foreign land the nation was
unclean; none of the old sacrifice or ritual was valid, and the
people were reduced to the simplest elements of religion--prayer,
fasting and the reading of religious books. We shall find our
prophecy noting the clamour of the exiles to God for _ordinances
of righteousness_--that is, for the institution of legal and valid
rites.[31] But the great lesson, which prophecy brings to the people
of the Exile, is that pardon and restoration to God's favour are
won only by waiting upon Him with all the heart. It was possible,
of course, to observe some forms; to gather at intervals to inquire
of the Lord, to keep the Sabbath, and to keep fasts. The first
of these practices, out of which the synagogue probably took its
rise, is noted by our prophet,[32] and he enforces Sabbath-keeping
with words, that add the blessing of prophecy to the law's ancient
sanction of that institution. Four annual fasts were instituted in
memory of the dark days of Jerusalem--the day of the beginning of
Nebuchadrezzar's siege in the tenth month, the day of the capture in
the fourth month, the day of the destruction in the fifth month, and
the day of Gedaliah's murder in the tenth month. It might have been
thought, that solemn anniversaries of a disaster so recent and still
unrepaired would be kept with sincerity; but our prophet illustrates
how soon even the most outraged feelings may grow formal, and how on
their days of special humiliation, while their captivity was still
real, the exiles could oppress their own bondsmen and debtors. But
there is no religious practice of this epoch more apparent through
our prophecies than the reading of Scripture. Israel's hope was
neither in sacrifice, nor in temple, nor in vision nor in lot, but
in God's written Word; and when a new prophet arose like the one
we are about to study, he did not appeal for his authorisation, as
previous prophets had done, to the fact of his call or inspiration,
but it was enough for him to point to some former word of God, and
cry, "See! at last the day has dawned for the fulfilment of that."
Throughout Second Isaiah this is what the anonymous prophet cares to
establish--that the facts of to-day fit the promise of yesterday. We
shall not understand our great prophecy unless we realise a people
rising from fifty years' close study of Scripture, in strained
expectation of its immediate fulfilment.
3. The third special feature of the people in exile is their
application to commerce. At home the Jews had not been a commercial
people.[33] But the opportunities of their Babylonian residence seem
to have started them upon those habits, for which, through their
longer exile in our era, the name of Jew has become a synonym. If
that be so, Jeremiah's advice _to build and plant_[34] is historic,
for it means no less than that the Jews should throw themselves into
the life of the most trafficking nation of the time. Their increasing
wealth proves how they followed this advice,--as well as perhaps such
passages as Isa. lv. 2, in which the commercial spirit is reproached
for overwhelming the nobler desires of religion. The chief danger,
incurred by the Jews from an intimate connection with the commerce
of Babylonia, lay in the close relations of Babylonian commerce with
Babylonian idolatry. The merchants of Mesopotamia had their own
patron gods. In completing business contracts, a man had to swear
by the idols,[35] and might have to enter their temples. In Isa.
lxv. 11, Jews are blamed _for forsaking Jehovah, and forgetting My
holy mountain; preparing a table for Luck, and filling up mixed wine
to Fortune_. Here it is more probable that mercantile speculation,
rather than any other form of gambling, is intended.
III.
But while all this is certain and needing to be noted about the
habits of the mass of the people, what little trace it has left
in the best literature of the period! We have already noticed in
that the great absence of local colour. The truth is that what we
have been trying to describe as Jewish life in Babylon was only
a surface over deeps in which the true life of the nation was at
work--was volcanically at work. Throughout the Exile the true Jew
lived inwardly. _Out of the depths do I cry to Thee, O Lord._ He was
the inhabitant not so much of a foreign prison as of his own broken
heart. _He sat by the rivers of Babylon_; but _he thought upon Zion_.
Is it not a proof of what depths in human nature were being stirred,
that so little comes to the surface to tell us of the external
conditions of those days? There are no fossils in the strata of the
earth, which have been cast forth from her inner fires; and if we
find few traces of contemporary life in these deposits of Israel's
history now before us, it is because they date from an age in which
the nation was shaken and boiling to its centre.
For if we take the writings of this period--the Book of Lamentations,
the Psalms of the Exile, and parts of other books--and put them
together, the result is the impression of one of the strangest
decompositions of human nature into its elements which the world has
ever seen. Suffering and sin, recollection, remorse and revenge,
fear and shame and hate--over the confusion of these the Spirit of
God broods as over a second chaos, and draws each of them forth in
turn upon some articulate prayer. Now it is the crimson flush of
shame: _our soul is exceedingly filled with contempt_. Now it is the
black rush of hate; for if we would see how hate can rage, we must
go to the Psalms of the Exile, which call on the God of vengeance
and curse the enemy and dash the little ones against the stones. But
the deepest surge of all in that whirlpool of misery was the surge
of sin. To change the figure, we see Israel's spirit writhing upward
from some pain it but partly understands, crying out, "What is this
that keeps God from hearing and saving me?" turning like a wounded
beast from the face of its master to its sore again, understanding
as no brute could the reason of its plague, till confession after
confession breaks away and the penalty is accepted, and acknowledged
guilt seems almost to act as an anodyne to the penalty it explains.
_Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment
of his sins? If thou, Jehovah, shouldest mark iniquity, who shall
stand?_ No wonder, that with such a conscience the Jews occupied
the Exile in writing the moral of their delinquent history, or that
the rest of their literature which dates from that time should have
remained ever since the world's confessional.
But in this awful experience, there is still another strain, as
painful as the rest, but pure and very eloquent of hope--the sense
of innocent suffering. We cannot tell the sources, from which this
considerable feeling may have gathered during the Exile, any more
than we can trace from how many of the upper folds of a valley the
tiny rivulets start, which form the stream that issues from its
lower end. One of these sources may have been, as we have already
suggested, the experience of Jeremiah; another very probably sprang
with every individual conscience in the new generation. Children
come even to exiles, and although they bear the same pain with
the same nerves as their fathers, they do so with a different
conscience. The writings of the time dwell much on the sufferings
of the children. The consciousness is apparent in them, that souls
are born into the wrath of God, as well as banished there. _Our
fathers have sinned and are not, and we bear their iniquities._ This
experience developed with great force, till Israel felt that she
suffered not under God's wrath, but for His sake; and so passed from
the conscience of the felon to that of the martyr. But if we are to
understand the prophecy we are about to study, we must remember how
near akin these two consciences must have been in exiled Israel,
and how easy it was for a prophet to speak--as our prophet does,
sometimes with confusing rapidity of exchange--now in the voice of
the older and more guilty generation, and now in the voice of the
younger and less deservedly punished.
* * * * *
Our survey of the external as well as the internal conditions of Israel
in Exile is now finished. It has, I think, included every known feature
of their experience in Babylonia, which could possibly illustrate our
prophecy--dated, as we have felt ourselves compelled to date this, from
the close of the Exile. Thus, as we have striven to trace, did Israel
suffer, learn, grow and hope for fifty years--under Nebuchadrezzar till
561, under his successor Evil-merodach till 559, under Neriglassar till
554, and then under the usurper Nabunahid. The last named probably
oppressed the Jews more grievously than their previous tyrants, but
with the aggravation of their yoke there grew evident, at the same
time, the certainty of their deliverance. In 549, Cyrus overthrew the
Medes, and became lord of Asia from the Indus to the Halys. From that
event his conquest of Babylonia, however much delayed, could only be a
matter of time.
It is at this juncture that our prophecy breaks in. Taking for
granted Cyrus' sovereignty of the Medes, it still looks forward to
his capture of Babylon. Let us, before advancing to its exposition,
once more cast a rapid glance over the people, to whom it is
addressed, and whom in their half century of waiting for it we have
been endeavouring to describe.
_First_ and most manifest, they are a People with a Conscience--a
people with the most awful and most articulate conscience that ever
before or since exposed a nation's history or tormented a generation
with the curse of their own sin and the sin of their fathers. Behind
them, ages of delinquent life, from the perusal of the record of
which, with its regularly recurring moral, they have just risen:
the Books of Kings appear to have been finished after the accession
of Evil-merodach in 561. Behind them also nearly fifty years of
sore punishment for their sins--punishment, which, as their Psalms
confess, they at last understand and accept as deserved.
But, _secondly_, they are a People with a Great Hope. With their
awful consciousness of guilt, they have the assurance that their
punishment has its limits; that, to quote ch. xl., ver. 2, it is a
_set period of service_: a former word of God having fixed it at not
more than seventy years, and having promised the return of the nation
thereafter to their own land.
And, _thirdly_, they are a People with a Great Opportunity. History
is at last beginning to set towards the vindication of their hope:
Cyrus, the master of the age, is moving rapidly, irresistibly, down
upon their tyrants.
But, _fourthly_, in face of all their hope and opportunity, they are
a People Disorganised, Distracted, and very Impotent--_worms and not
men_, as they describe themselves. The generation of the tried and
responsible leaders of the days of their independence are all dead,
for _flesh is like grass_; no public institutions remain in their
midst such as ever in the most hopeless periods of the past proved a
rallying-point of their scattered forces. There is no king, temple,
nor city; nor is there any great personality visible to draw their
little groups together, marshal them, and lead them forth behind
him. Their one hope is in the Word of God, for which they _wait more
than they that watch for the morning_; and the one duty of their
nameless prophets is to persuade them, that this Word has at last
come to pass, and, in the absence of king, Messiah, priest, and great
prophet, is able to lift them to the opportunity that God's hand has
opened before them, and to the accomplishment of their redemption.
Upon Israel, with such a Conscience, such a Hope, such an
Opportunity, and such an unaided Reliance on God's bare Word, that
Word at last broke in a chorus of voices.
Of these the first, as was most meet, spoke pardon to the people's
conscience and the proclamation that their set period of warfare was
accomplished; the second announced that circumstances and the politics
of the world, hitherto adverse, would be made easy to their return; the
third bade them, in their bereavement of earthly leaders, and their
own impotence, find their eternal confidence in God's Word; while the
fourth lifted them, as with one heart and voice, to herald the certain
return of Jehovah, at the head of His people, to His own City, and His
quiet, shepherdly rule of them on their own land.
These herald voices form the prologue to our prophecy, ch. xl. 1-11,
to which we will now turn.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] If we would construct for ourselves some more definite idea
of that long march from Judah to Babylon, we might assist our
imagination by the details of the only other instance on so great a
scale of "exile by administrative process"--the transportation to
Siberia which the Russian Government effects (it is said, on good
authority) to the extent of eighteen thousand persons a year. Every
week throughout the year marching parties, three to four hundred
strong, leave Tomsk for Irkutsk, doing twelve to twenty miles daily
in fetters, with twenty-four hours' rest every third day, or three
hundred and thirty miles in a month (_Century Magazine_, Nov. 1888).
[24] For the above details, see Rawlinson's _Five Great Monarchies of
the Ancient Eastern World_, vol. i.
[25] _Herodotus_, Bk. I.; "Memoirs by Commander James Felix Jones, I.
N.," in _Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government_, No.
XLIII., New Series, 1857; Ainsworth's _Euphrates Valley Expedition_;
Layard's _Nineveh_.
[26] Perrot and Chipiez, _Histoire de l'Art d'Antiquité_, vol. ii.;
Assyrie p. 9.
[27] The Book of Daniel.
[28] Isa. xlii. 22, xlvii. 6.
[29] _Records of the Past_, second series, vol. i., M. Oppert's
Translations.
[30] Mr. St. Chad Boscawen's recent lectures, of which I have been
able to see only the reports in the _Manchester Guardian_.
[31] Ch. lviii. 2.
[32] Ch. lviii. 13, 14.
[33] See vol. i., p. 292 ff.
[34] Jer. xxix.
[35] _Records of the Past_, first series, ix., 95 _seq._
BOOK II.
_THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE._
CHAPTER V.
_THE PROLOGUE: THE FOUR HERALD VOICES._
ISAIAH xl. 1-11.
It is only Voices which we hear in this Prologue. No forms can be
discerned, whether of men or angels, and it is even difficult to
make out the direction from which the Voices come. Only one thing is
certain--that they break the night, that they proclaim the end of a
long but fixed period, during which God has punished and forsaken
His people. At first, the persons addressed are the prophets, that
they may speak to the people (vv. 1, 2); but afterwards Jerusalem
as a whole is summoned to publish the good tidings (ver. 9). This
interchange between a part of the people and the whole--this
commission to prophesy, made with one breath to some of the nation
for the sake of the rest, and with the next breath to the entire
nation--is a habit of our prophet to which we shall soon get
accustomed. How natural and characteristic it is, is proved by its
appearance in these very first verses.
The beginning of the good tidings is Israel's pardon; yet it seems
not to be the people's return to Palestine which is announced in
consequence of this, so much as their God's return to them. _Prepare
ye the way of Jehovah, make straight a highway for our God. Behold the
Lord Jehovah will come._ We may, however, take _the way of Jehovah in
the wilderness_ to mean what it means in the sixty-eighth Psalm,--His
going forth before His people and leading of them back; while the
promise that He will come to _shepherd His flock_ (ver. 11) is, of
course, the promise that He will resume the government of Israel upon
their own land. There can be no doubt, therefore, that this chapter
was meant for the people at the close of their captivity in Babylon.
But do not let us miss the pathetic fact, that Israel is addressed not
in her actual shape of a captive people in a foreign land, but under
the name and aspect of her far-away, desolate country. In these verses
Israel is _Jerusalem_, _Zion_, _the cities of Judah_. Such designations
do not prove, as a few critics have rather pedantically supposed, that
the writer of the verses lived in Judah and addressed himself to what
was under his eyes. It is not the vision of a Jew at home that has
determined the choice of these names, but the desire and the dream of
a Jew abroad: that extraordinary passion, which, however distant might
be the land of his exile, ever filled the Jew's eyes with Zion, caused
him to feel the ruin and forsakenness of his Mother more than his own
servitude, and swept his patriotic hopes, across his own deliverance
and return, to the greater glory of her restoration.[36] There is
nothing, therefore, to prevent us taking for granted, as we did in the
previous chapter, that the speaker or speakers of these verses stood
among the exiles themselves; but who they were--men or angels, prophets
or scribes--is lost in the darkness out of which their music breaks.[37]
Nevertheless the prophecy is not anonymous. By these impersonal
voices a personal revelation is made. The prophets may be nameless,
but the Deity who speaks through them speaks as already known and
acknowledged: _My people, saith your God._
This is a point, which, though it takes for its expression no more
than these two little pronouns, we must not hurriedly pass over.
All the prophecy we are about to study may be said to hang from
these pronouns. They are the hinges, on which the door of this new
temple of revelation swings open before the long-expectant people.
And, in fact, such a conscience and sympathy as these little words
express form the necessary premise of all revelation. Revelation
implies a previous knowledge of God, and cannot work upon men, except
there already exist in them the sense that they and God somehow
belong to each other. This sense need be neither pure, nor strong,
nor articulate. It may be the most selfish and cowardly of guilty
fears,--Jacob's dread as he drew near Esau, whom he had treacherously
supplanted,--the vaguest of ignorant desires, the Athenians' worship
of the Unknown God. But, whatever it is, the angel comes to wrestle
with it, the apostle is sent to declare it; revelation in some form
takes it as its premise and starting-point. This previous sense of
God may also be fuller than in the cases just cited. Take our Lord's
own illustration. Upon the prodigal in the strange country there
surged again the far-ebbed memory of his home and childhood, of
his years of familiarity with a Father; and it was this tide which
carried back his penitent heart within the hearing of his Father's
voice, and the revelation of the love that became his new life. Now
Israel, also in a far-off land, were borne upon the recollection of
home and of life in the favour of their God. We have seen with what
knowledge of Him and from what relations with Him they were banished.
To the men of the Exile God was already a Name and an Experience, and
because that Name was _The Righteous_, and that Experience was all
grace and promise, these men waited for His Word more than they that
wait for the morning; and when at length the Word broke from the long
darkness and silence, they received it, though its bearers might be
unseen and unaccredited, because they recognised and acknowledged in
it Himself. He who spoke was _their God_, and they were _His people_.
This conscience and sympathy was all the title or credential which
the revelation required. It is, therefore, not too much to say, as
we have said, that the two pronouns in ch. xl., ver. 1, are the
necessary premise of the whole prophecy which that verse introduces.
* * * * *
With this introduction we may now take up the four herald voices of
the Prologue. Whatever may have been their original relation to one
another, whether or not they came to Israel by different messengers,
they are arranged (as we saw at the close of the previous chapter) in
manifest order and progress of thought, and they meet in due succession
the experiences of Israel at the close of the Exile. For the first
of them (vv. 1 and 2) gives the _subjective assurance_ of the coming
redemption: it is the Voice of Grace. The second (vv. 3-5) proclaims
the _objective reality_ of that redemption: it may be called the
Voice of Providence, or--to use the name by which our prophecy loves
to entitle the just and victorious providence of God--the Voice of
Righteousness. The third (vv. 6-8) uncovers the pledge and earnest
of the redemption: in the weakness of men this shall be the Word of
God. While the fourth (vv. 9-11) is the Proclamation of Jehovah's
restored kingdom, when He cometh as a shepherd to shepherd His people.
To this progress and climax the music of the passage forms a perfect
accompaniment. It would be difficult to find in any language lips that
first more softly woo the heart, and then take to themselves so brave
a trumpet of challenge and assurance. The opening is upon a few short
pulses of music, which steal from heaven as gently as the first ripples
of light in a cloudless dawn--
Năhămu, năhămu ammi:
_Comfort ye, comfort ye my people_:
Dabbĕru `al-lev Yerushālaîm.
_Speak upon the heart of Jerusalem._[38]
But then the trumpet-tone breaks forth, _Call unto her_; and on that
high key the music stays, sweeping with the second voice across hill
and dale like a company of swift horsemen, stooping with the third
for a while to the elegy upon the withered grass, but then recovering
itself, braced by all the strength of the Word of God, to peal from
tower to tower with the fourth, upon the cry, _Behold, the Lord
cometh_, till it sinks almost from sound to sight, and yields us,
as from the surface of still waters, that sweet reflection of the
twenty-third Psalm with which the Prologue concludes.
1. _Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.
Speak ye home to the heart of Jerusalem, and call unto her,_
_That accomplished is her warfare, that absolved is her iniquity;
That she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins._
This first voice, with the music of which our hearts have been
thrilled ever since we can remember, speaks twice: first in a
whisper, then in a call--the whisper of the Lover and the call of the
Lord. _Speak ye home to the heart of Jerusalem, and call unto her._
Now Jerusalem lay in ruins, a city through whose breached walls all
the winds of heaven blew mournfully across her forsaken floors. And
the _heart of Jerusalem_, which was with her people in exile, was
like the city--broken and defenceless. In that far-off, unsympathetic
land it lay open to the alien; tyrants forced their idols upon it,
the peoples tortured it with their jests.
_For they that led us captive required of us songs,_
_And they that wasted us required of us mirth._
But observe how gently the Divine Beleaguerer approaches, how softly
He bids His heralds plead by the gaps, through which the oppressor
has forced his idols and his insults. Of all human language they
might use, God bids His messengers take and plead with the words
with which a man will plead at a maiden's heart, knowing that he
has nothing but love to offer as right of entrance, and waiting
until love and trust come out to welcome him. _Speak ye_, says the
original literally, _on to_, or _up against_, or _up round the heart
of Jerusalem_,--a forcible expression, like the German "An das Herz,"
or the sweet Scottish, "It cam' up roond my heart," and perhaps best
rendered into English by the phrase, _Speak home to the heart_.
It is the ordinary Hebrew expression for wooing. As from man to
woman when he wins her, the Old Testament uses it several times. To
_speak home to the heart_ is to use language in which authority and
argument are both ignored, and love works her own inspiration. While
the haughty Babylonian planted by force his idols, while the folly
and temptations of heathendom surged recklessly in, God Himself, the
Creator of this broken heart, its Husband and Inhabitant of old,[39]
stood lowly by its breaches, pleading in love the right to enter. But
when entrance has been granted, see how He bids His heralds change
their voice and disposition. The suppliant lover, being received,
assumes possession and defence, and they, who were first bid whisper
as beggars by each unguarded breach, now leap upon the walls to
call from the accepted Lord of the city: _Fulfilled is thy time of
service, absolved thine iniquity, received hast thou of Jehovah's
hand double for all thy sins._
Now this is no mere rhetorical figure. This is the abiding attitude
and aim of the Almighty towards men. God's target is our heart. His
revelation, whatever of law or threat it send before, is, in its own
superlative clearness and urgency, Grace. It comes to man by way of
the heart; not at first by argument addressed to the intellect, nor by
appeal to experience, but by the sheer strength of a love laid _on to
the heart_. It is, to begin with, a subjective thing. Is revelation,
then, entirely a subjective assurance? Do the pardon and peace which
it proclaims remain only feelings of the heart, without anything to
correspond to them in real fact? By no means; for these Jews the
revelation now whispered to their heart will actually take shape in
providences of the most concrete kind. A voice will immediately call,
_Prepare ye the way of the Lord_, and the way will be prepared. Babylon
will fall; Cyrus will let Israel go; their release will appear--most
concrete of things!--in "black and white" on a Persian state-parchment.
Yet, before these events happen and become part of His people's
experience, God desires first to convince His people by the sheer
urgency of His love. Before He displays His Providence, He will speak
in the power and evidence of His Grace. Afterwards, His prophets shall
appeal to outward facts; we shall find them in succeeding chapters
arguing both with Israel and the heathen on grounds of reason and the
facts of history. But, in the meantime, let them only feel that in His
Grace they have something for the heart of men, which, striking home,
shall be its own evidence and force.
Thus God adventures His Word forth by nameless and unaccredited men
upon no other authority than the Grace, with which it is fraught for
the heart of His people. The illustration, which this affords of
the method and evidence of Divine revelation, is obvious. Let us,
with all the strength of which we are capable, emphasize the fact
that our prophecy--which is full of the materials for an elaborate
theology, which contains the most detailed apologetic in the whole
Bible, and displays the most glorious prospect of man's service and
destiny--takes its source and origin from a simple revelation of
Grace and the subjective assurance of this in the heart of those to
whom it is addressed. This proclamation of Grace is as characteristic
and dominant in Second Isaiah, as we saw the proclamation of
conscience in ch. i. to be characteristic of the First Isaiah.
Before we pass on, let us look for a moment at the contents of this
Grace, in the three clauses of the prophet's cry: _Fulfilled is her
warfare, absolved her guilt, received hath she of Jehovah's hand
double for all her sins._ The very grammar here is eloquent of grace.
The emphasis lies on the three predicates, which ought to stand in
translation, as they do in the original, at the beginning of each
clause. Prominence is given, not to the warfare, nor to the guilt,
nor to the sins, but to this, that _accomplished_ is the warfare,
_absolved_ the guilt, _sufficiently expiated_ the sins. It is a great
AT LAST which these clauses peal forth; but an At Last whose tone is
not so much inevitableness as undeserved grace. The term translated
warfare means _period of military service_, _appointed term of
conscription_; and the application is apparent when we remember that
the Exile had been fixed, by the Word of God through Jeremiah, to a
definite number of years. _Absolved_ is the passive of a verb meaning
to _pay off what is due_.[40] But the third clause is especially
gracious. It declares that Israel has suffered of punishment more
than double enough to atone for her sins. This is not a way of
regarding either sin or atonement, which, theologically speaking, is
accurate. What of its relation to our Articles, that man cannot give
satisfaction for his sins by the work of his hands or the pains of
his flesh? No: it would scarcely pass some of our creeds to-day. But
all the more, that it thus bursts forth from strict terms of dealing,
does it reveal the generosity of Him who utters it. How full of
pity God is, to take so much account of the sufferings sinners have
brought upon themselves! How full of grace to reckon those sufferings
_double the sins_ that had earned them! It is, as when we have seen
gracious men make us a free gift, and in their courtesy insist that
we have worked for it. It is grace masked by grace. As the height of
art is to conceal art, so the height of grace is to conceal grace,
which it does in this verse.
Such is the Voice of Grace. But,
2. _Hark, One calling!
In the wilderness prepare the way of Jehovah!
Make straight in the desert an highway for our God!
Every valley shall be exalted,
And every mountain and hill be made low:
And the crooked grow straight,
And rough places a plain:
And the glory of Jehovah be revealed,
And see it shall all flesh together;
For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken._
The relation of this Voice to the previous one has already been
indicated. This is the witness of Providence following upon the
witness of Grace. Religion is a matter in the first place between
God and the heart; but religion does not, as many mock, remain an
inward feeling. The secret relation between God and His people issues
into substantial fact, visible to all men. History vindicates faith;
Providence executes Promise; Righteousness follows Grace. So, as
the first Voice was spoken _to the heart_, this second is for the
hands and feet and active will. _Prepare ye the way of the Lord._ If
you, poor captives as you are, begin to act upon the grace whispered
in your trembling hearts, the world will show the result. All
things will come round to your side. A levelled empire, an altered
world--across those your way shall lie clear to Jerusalem. You shall
go forth in the sight of all men, and future generations looking back
shall praise this manifest wonder of your God. _The glory of Jehovah
shall be revealed, and see it shall all flesh together._
On which word, how can our hearts help rising from the comfort of
grace to the sense of mastery over this world, to the assurance of
heaven itself? History must come round to the side of faith--as it
has come round not in the case of Jewish exiles only, but wheresoever
such a faith as theirs has been repeated. History must come round
to the side of faith, if men will only obey the second as well as
the first of these herald voices. But we are too ready to listen to
the Word of the Lord, without seeking to prepare His way. We are
satisfied with the personal comfort of our God; we are contented to
be forgiven and--oh mockery!--left alone. But the word of God will
not leave us alone, and not for comfort only is it spoken. On the
back of the voice, which sets our heart right with God, comes the
voice to set the world right, and no man is godly who has not heard
both. Are we timid and afraid that facts will not correspond to
our faith? Nay, but as God reigneth they shall, if only we put to
our hands and make them; _all flesh shall see it_, if we will but
_prepare the way of the Lord_.
Have we only ancient proofs of this? On the contrary, God has done like
wonders within the lives of those of us who are yet young. During our
generation, a people has appealed from the convictions of her heart to
the arbitrament of history, and appealed not in vain. When the citizens
of the Northern States of the American Republic, not content as they
might have been with their protests against slavery, rose to vindicate
these by the sword, they faced, humanly speaking, a risk as great
as that to which Jew was ever called by the word of God. Their own
brethren were against them; the world stood aloof. But even so, unaided
by united patriotism and as much dismayed as encouraged by the opinions
of civilisation, they rose to the issue on the strength of conscience
and their hearts. They rose and they conquered. Slavery was abolished.
What had been but the conviction of a few men, became the surprise, the
admiration, the consent of the whole world. _The glory of the Lord was
revealed, and all flesh saw it together._
3. But the shadow of death falls on everything, even on the way of the
Lord. By 550 B.C.--that is, after thirty-eight years of exile--nearly
all the strong men of Israel's days of independence must have been
taken away. Death had been busy with the exiles for more than a
generation. There was no longer any human representative of Jehovah
to rally the people's trust; the monarchy, each possible Messiah who
in turn held it, the priesthood, and the prophethood--whose great
personalities so often took the place of Israel's official leaders--had
all alike disappeared. It was little wonder, then, that a nation
accustomed to be led, not by ideas like us Westerns, but by personages,
who were to it the embodiment of Jehovah's will and guidance, should
have been cast into despair by the call, _Prepare ye the way of the
Lord_. What sort of a call was this for a people, whose strong men were
like things uprooted and withered! How could one be, with any heart, a
herald of the Lord to such a people!
_Hark one saying "Call."_[41]
_And I said:_
"_What can I call?_
_All flesh is grass,_
_And all its beauty like a wild-flower!_
_Withers grass, fades flower,_
_When the breath of Jehovah blows on it._
_Surely grass is the people._"
Back comes a voice like the east wind's for pitilessness to the
flowers, but of the east wind's own strength and clearness, to
proclaim Israel's everlasting hope.
_Withers grass, fades flower,_
_But the word of our God endureth for ever._
Everything human may perish; the day may be past of the great
prophets, of the priests--of the King in his beauty, who was
vicegerent of God. But the people have God's word; when all their
leaders have fallen, and every visible authority for God is taken
away, this shall be their rally and their confidence.
All this is too like the actual experience of Israel in Exile not
to be the true interpretation of this third, stern Voice. Their
political and religious institutions, which had so often proved the
initiative of a new movement, or served as a bridge to carry the
nation across disaster to a larger future, were not in existence. Nor
does any Moses, as in Egypt of old, rise to visibleness from among
his obscure people, impose his authority upon them, marshal them, and
lead them out behind him to freedom. But what we see is a scattered
and a leaderless people, stirred in their shadow, as a ripe cornfield
is stirred by the breeze before dawn--stirred in their shadow by the
ancient promises of God, and everywhere breaking out at the touch
of these into psalms and prophecies of hope. We see them expectant
of redemption, we see them resolved to return, we see them carried
across the desert to Zion, and from first to last it is the word of
God that is their inspiration and assurance.
They, who formerly had rallied round the Ark or the Temple, or who had
risen to the hope of a glorious Messiah, do not now speak of all these,
but their _hope_, they tell us, _is in His word_; it is the instrument
of their salvation, and their destiny is to be its evangelists.
4. To this high destiny the fourth Voice now summons them, by a vivid
figure.
_Up on a high mountain, get thee up,_
_Heraldess of good news, O Zion!_
_Lift up with strength thy voice,_
_Heraldess of good news, Jerusalem!_
_Lift up, fear not, say to the cities of Judah:--_
_Behold, your God._
_Behold, my Lord Jehovah, with power He cometh,_
_And His arm rules for Him._
_Behold, His reward with Him,_
_And His recompense before Him._
_As a shepherd His flock He shepherds;_
_With His right arm gathers the lambs,_
_And in His bosom bears them._
_Ewe-mothers He tenderly leads._
The title which I have somewhat awkwardly translated _heraldess_--but
in English there is really no better word for it--is the feminine
participle of a verb meaning to _thrill_, or _give joy, by means of
good news_. It is used generally to tell such happy news as the birth
of a child, but mostly in the special sense of carrying tidings of
victory or peace home from the field to the people. The feminine
participle would seem from Psalm lxviii., _the women who publish
victory to the great host_, to have been the usual term for the
members of those female choirs, who, like Miriam and her maidens,
celebrated a triumph in face of the army, or came forth from the city
to hail the returning conqueror, as the daughters of Jerusalem hailed
Saul and David. As such a chorister, Zion is now summoned to proclaim
Jehovah's arrival at the gates of the cities of Judah.
The verses from _Behold, your God_, to the end of the Prologue
are the song of the heraldess. Do not their mingled martial and
pastoral strains exactly suit the case of the Return? For this is
an expedition, on which the nation's champion has gone forth, not
to lead His enemies captive to His gates, but that He may gather
His people home. Not mailed men, in the pride of a victory they
have helped to win, march in behind Him,--_armour and tumult and
the garment rolled in blood_,--but a herd of mixed and feeble folk,
with babes and women, in need of carriage and gentle leading,
wander wearily back. And, therefore, in the mouth of the heraldess
the figure changes from a warrior-king to the Good Shepherd. _With
His right arm He gathers the lambs, and in His bosom bears them.
Ewe-mothers He gently leads._ How true a picture, and how much it
recalls! Fifty years before, the exiles left their home (as we
can see to this day upon Assyrian sculptures) in closely-driven
companies, fettered, and with the urgency upon them of grim soldiers,
who marched at intervals in their ranks to keep up the pace, and who
tossed the weaklings impatiently aside. But now, see the slow and
loosely-gathered bands wander back, just as quickly as the weakest
feel strength to travel, and without any force or any guidance save
that of their Almighty, Unseen Shepherd.
We are now able to appreciate the dramatic unity of this Prologue.
How perfectly it gathers into its four Voices the whole course of
Israel's redemption: the first assurance of Grace whispered to the
heart, co-operation with Providence, confidence in God's bare Word,
the full Return and the Restoration of the City.
But its climax is undoubtedly the honour it lays upon the whole
people to be publishers of the good news of God. Of this it speaks
with trumpet tones. All Jerusalem must be a herald-people. And how
could Israel help owning the constraint and inspiration to so high
an office, after so heartfelt an experience of grace, so evident a
redemption, so glorious a proof of the power of the Word of God? To
have the heart thus filled with grace, to have the will enlisted in
so Divine a work, to have known the almightiness of the Divine Word
when everything else failed--after such an experience, who would not
be able to preach the good news of God, to foretell, as our prophet
bids Israel foretell, the coming of the Kingdom and Presence of
God--the day when the Lord's flock shall be perfect and none wanting,
when society, though still weary and weak and mortal, shall have no
stragglers nor outcasts nor reprobates.
O God, so fill us with Thy grace and enlist us in Thy work, so manifest
the might of Thy word to us, that the ideal of Thy perfect kingdom may
shine as bright and near to us as to Thy prophet of old, and that we
may become its inspired preachers and ever labour in its hope. Amen.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See p. 47.
[37] From the sequence of the voices, it would seem that we had in
ch. xl. not a mere collection of anonymous prophecies arranged by
an editor, but one complete prophecy by the author of most of Isa.
xl.-lxvi., set in the dramatic form which obtains through the other
chapters.
[38] Every one who appreciates the music of the original will agree
how incomparably Handel has interpreted it in those pulses of music
with which his _Messiah_ opens.
[39] See ch. liv., where this figure is developed with great beauty.
[40] Lev. xxvii.
[41] The technical word to preach or proclaim.
CHAPTER VI.
_GOD: A SACRAMENT._
ISAIAH xl. 12-31.
Such are the Four Voices which herald the day of Israel's redemption.
They are scarcely silent, before the Sun Himself uprises, and horizon
after horizon of His empire is displayed to the eyes of His starved
and waiting people. From the prologue of the prophecy, in ch. xl.
1-11, we advance to the presentation, in chs. xl. 12-xli., of its
primary and governing truth--the sovereignty and omnipotence of God,
the God of Israel.
We may well call this truth the sun of the new day which Israel is
about to enter. For as it is the sun which makes the day, and not the
day which reveals the sun; so it is God, supreme and almighty, who
interprets, predicts and controls His people's history, and not their
history, which, in its gradual evolution, is to make God's sovereignty
and omnipotence manifest to their experience. Let us clearly understand
this. The prophecy, which we are about to follow, is an argument not
so much from history to God as from God to history. Israel already
have their God; and it is because He is what He is, and what they
ought to know Him to be,[42] that they are bidden believe that their
future shall take a certain course. The prophet begins with God,
and everything follows from God. All that in these chapters lends
light or force, all that interprets the history of to-day and fills
to-morrow with hope, fact and promise alike, the captivity of Israel,
the appearance of Cyrus, the fall of Babylon, Israel's redemption, the
extension of their mission to the ends of the earth, the conversion
of the Gentiles, the equipment, discipline and triumph of the Servant
Himself,--we may even say the expanded geography of our prophet, the
countries which for the first time emerge from the distant west within
the vision of a Hebrew seer,--all are due to that primary truth about
God with which we are now presented. It is God's sovereignty which
brings such far-off things into the interest of Israel; it is God's
omnipotence which renders such impossible things practical. And as
with the subjects, so with the style of the following chapters. The
prophet's style is throughout the effect of his perfect and brilliant
monotheism. It is the thought of God which everywhere kindles his
imagination. His most splendid passages are those, in which he soars
to some lofty vision of the Divine glory in creation or history; while
his frequent sarcasm and ridicule owe their effectiveness to the sudden
scorn, with which, from such a view, scattering epigrams the while,
he sweeps down upon the heathen's poor images, or Israel's grudging
thoughts of his God. The breadth and the force of his imagination, the
sweep of his rhetoric, the intensity of his scorn, may all be traced
to his sense of God's sovereignty, and are the signs to us of how
absolutely he was possessed by this as his main and governing truth.
This, then, being the sun of Israel's coming day, we may call what
we find in ch. xl. 11-xli. the sunrise--the full revelation and
uprising on our sight of this original gospel of the prophet. It is
addressed to two classes of men; in ch. xl. 12-31 to Israel, but
in ch. xli. (for the greater part, at least) to the Gentiles. In
dealing with these two classes the prophet makes a great difference.
To Israel he presents their God, as it were, in sacrament; but to
the Gentiles he urges God's claims in challenge and argument. It is
to the past that he summons Israel, and to what they ought to know
already about their God; it is to the future, to history yet unmade,
that he proposes to the Gentiles they should together appeal, in
order to see whether his God or their gods are the true Deity. In
this chapter we shall deal with the first of these--God in sacrament.
* * * * *
The fact is familiar to all, that the Old Testament nowhere feels the
necessity of proving the existence of God. That would have been a proof
unintelligible to those to whom its prophets addressed themselves. In
the time when the Old Testament came to him, man as little doubted the
existence of God as he doubted his own life. But as life sometimes
burned low, needing replenishment, so faith would grow despondent and
morbid, needing to be led away from objects which only starved it, or
produced, as idolatry did, the veriest delirium of a religion. A man
had to get his faith lifted from the thoughts of his own mind and the
works of his own hand, to be borne upon and nourished by the works of
God,--to kindle with the sunrise, to broaden out by the sight of the
firmament, to deepen as he faced the spaces of night,--and win calmness
and strength to think life into order as he looked forth upon the
marshalled hosts of heaven, having all the time no doubt that the God
who created and guided these was his God. Therefore, when psalmist or
prophet calls Israel to lift their eyes to the hills, or to behold how
the heavens declare the glory of God, or to listen to that unbroken
tradition, which day passes to day and night to night, of the knowledge
of the Creator, it is not proofs to doubting minds which he offers: it
is spiritual nourishment to hungry souls. These are not arguments--they
are sacraments. When we Christians go to the Lord's Supper, we go not
to have the Lord proved to us, but to feed upon a life and a love
of whose existence we are past all doubt. Our sacrament fills all
the mouths by which needy faith is fed--such as outward sight, and
imagination, and memory, and wonder, and love. Now very much what the
Lord's Supper is to us for fellowship with God and feeding upon Him,
that were the glory of the heavens, and the everlasting hills, and the
depth of the sea, and the vision of the stars to the Hebrews. They were
the sacraments of God. By them faith was fed, and the spirit of man
entered into the enjoyment of God, whose existence indeed he had never
doubted, but whom he had lost, forgotten, or misunderstood.
Now it is as such a minister of sacrament to God's starved and
disheartened people that our prophet appears in ch. xl. 12-31.
There were three elements in Israel's starvation. Firstly, for nearly
fifty years they had been deprived of the accustomed ordinances
of religion. Temple and altar had perished; the common praise and
the national religious fellowship were impossible; the traditional
symbols of the faith lay far out of sight; there was at best only
a precarious ministry of the Word. But, in the second place, this
famine of the Word and of Sacraments was aggravated by the fact that
history had gone against the people. To the baser minds among them,
always ready to grant their allegiance to success, this could only
mean that the gods of the heathen had triumphed over Jehovah. It is
little wonder that such experience, assisted by the presentation,
at every turn in their ways, of idols and a splendid idol-worship,
the fashion and delight of the populations through whom they were
mixed, should have tempted many Jews to feed their starved hearts at
the shrines of their conquerors' gods. But the result could only be
the further atrophy of their religious nature. It has been held as a
reason for the worship of idols that they excite the affection and
imagination of the worshipper. They do no such thing: they starve
and they stunt these. The image reacts upon the imagination, infects
it with its own narrowness and poverty, till man's noblest creative
faculty becomes the slave of its own poor toy. But, thirdly, if the
loftier spirits in Israel refused to believe that Jehovah, exalted
in righteousness, could be less than the brutal deities whom Babylon
vaunted over Him, they were flung back upon the sorrowful conviction
that their God had cast them off; that He had retreated from the
patronage of so unworthy a people into the veiled depths of His own
nature. Then upon that heaven, from which no answer came to those
who were once its favourites, they cast we can scarcely tell what
reflection of their own weary and spiritless estate. As, standing
over a city by night, you will see the majestic darkness above
stained and distorted into shapes of pain or wrath by the upcast
of the city's broken, murky lights, so many of the nobler exiles
saw upon the blank, unanswering heaven a horrible mirage of their
own trouble and fear. Their weariness said, He is weary; the ruin
of their national life reflected itself as the frustration of His
purposes; their accusing conscience saw the darkness of His counsel
relieved only by streaks of wrath.
But none of these tendencies in Israel went so far as to deny that
there was a God, or even to doubt His existence. This, as we have
said, was nowhere yet the temptation of mankind. When the Jew lapsed
from that true faith, which we have seen his nation carry into
exile, he fell into one of the two tempers just described--devotion
to false gods in the shape of idols, or despondency consequent upon
false notions of the true God. It is against these tempers, one after
another, that ch. xl. 12-31 is directed. And so we understand why,
though the prophet is here declaring the basis and spring of all
his subsequent prophecy, he does not adopt the method of abstract
argument. He is not treating with men, who have had no true knowledge
of God in the past, or whose intellect questions God's reality. He
is treating with men, who have a national heritage of truth about
God, but they have forgotten it; who have hearts full of religious
affection, but it has been betrayed; who have a devout imagination,
but it has been starved; who have hopes, but they are faint unto
death. He will recall to them their heritage, rally their shrinking
convictions by the courage of his own faith, feed their hunger after
righteousness[43] by a new hope set to noble music, and display to
the imagination that has been stunted by so long looking upon the
face of idols the wide horizons of Divine glory in earth and heaven.
His style corresponds to his purpose. He does not syllogize; he
exhorts, recalls and convicts by assertion. The passage is a series
of questions, rallies and promises. _Have ye not known? have ye not
heard?_ is his chief note. Instead of arranging facts in history or
nature as in themselves a proof for God, he mentions them only by way
of provoking inward recollections. His sharp questions are as hooks
to draw from his hearers' hearts their timid and starved convictions,
that he may nourish these upon the sacramental glories of nature and
of history.
Such a purpose and style trust little to method, and it would
be useless to search for any strict division of strophes in the
passage.[44] The following, however, is a manifest division of subject,
according to the two tempers to which the prophet had to appeal. Verses
12 to 25, and perhaps 26, are addressed to the idolatrous Jews. But in
26 there is a transition to the despair of the nobler hearts in Israel,
who, though they continued to believe in the One True God, imagined
that He had abandoned them; and to such vv. 27 to 31 are undoubtedly
addressed. The different treatment accorded to the two classes is
striking. The former of these the prophet does not call by any title of
the people of God; with the latter he pleads by a dear double name that
he may win them through every recollection of their gracious past,
_Jacob_ and _Israel_ (ver. 27). Challenge and sarcasm are his style
with the idolaters, his language clashing out in bursts too loud and
rapid sometimes for the grammar, as in ver. 24; but with the despondent
his way is gentle persuasiveness, with music that swells and brightens
steadily, passing without a break from the minor key of pleading to the
major of glorious promise.
1. AGAINST THE IDOLATERS. A couple of sarcastic sentences upon
idols and their manufacture (vv. 19, 20) stand between two majestic
declarations of God's glory in nature and in history (vv. 12-17
and 21-24). It is an appeal from the worshippers' images to their
imagination. _Who hath measured in his hollow hand the waters, and
heaven ruled off with a span? Or caught in a tierce the dust of the
earth, and weighed in scales mountains, and hills in a balance?
Who hath directed the spirit of Jehovah, and as man of His counsel
hath helped Him to know? With whom took He counsel, that such an
one informed Him and taught Him in the orthodox path, and taught
Him knowledge and helped Him to know the way of intelligence?_ The
term translated _orthodox path_ is literally _path of ordinance or
judgement, the regular path_, and is doubtless to be taken along
with its parallel, _way of intelligence_, as a conventional phrase
of education, which the prophet employed to make his sarcasm the
stronger. _Lo nations! as a drop from a bucket, and like dust in
a balance, are they reckoned. Lo the Isles!_[45] _as a trifle He
lifteth. And Lebanon is by no means enough for burning, nor its
brute-life enough for an offering. All the nations are as nothing
before Him, as spent and as waste are they reckoned for Him._
When he has thus soared enough, as on an archangel's wings, he swoops
with one rapid question down from the height of his imagination upon
the images.
_To whom then will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye range by
Him?_
_The image! A smith cast it, and a smelter plates it with gold, and
smelts silver chains. He that is straitened for an offering--he
chooseth a tree that does not rot, seeks to him a cunning carver to
set up an image that will not totter._[46]
The image shrivels up in face of that imagination; the idol is
abolished by laughter. There is here, and for almost the first time
in history, the same intellectual intolerance of images, the same
burning sense of the unreasonableness of their worship, which has
marked all monotheists, and turned even the meekest of their kind
into fierce scorners and satirists--Elijah, Mohammed, Luther, and
Knox.[47] We hear this laughter from them all. Sometimes it may sound
truculent or even brutal, but let us remember what is behind it. When
we hear it condemned--as, in the interests of art and imagination,
its puritan outbursts have often been condemned--as a barbarian
incapacity to sympathise with the æsthetic instincts of man, or to
appreciate the influence of a beautiful and elevating cult, we can
reply that it was the imagination itself which often inspired both
the laughter at, and the breaking of, images, and that, because the
iconoclast had a loftier vision of God than the image-maker, he has,
on the whole, more really furthered the progress of art than the
artist whose works he has destroyed. It is certain, for instance,
that no one would exchange the beauties of the prophecy now before
us, with its sublime imaginations of God, for all the beauty of all
the idols of Babylonia which it consigned to destruction. And we dare
to say the same of two other epochs, when the uncompromising zeal of
monotheists crushed to the dust the fruits of centuries of Christian
art. The Koran is not often appealed to as a model of poetry, but
it contains passages whose imagination of God, broad as the horizon
of the desert of its birth, and swift and clear as the desert dawn,
may be regarded as infinitely more than compensation--from a purely
artistic point of view--for the countless works of Christian ritual
and imagery which it inspired the rude cavalry of the desert to
trample beneath the hoofs of their horses. And again, if we are to
blame the Reformers of Western Christendom for the cruelty with which
they lifted their hammers against the carved work of the sanctuary,
do not let us forget how much of the spirit of the best modern art
is to be traced to their more spiritual and lofty conceptions of
God. No one will question how much Milton's imagination owed to his
Protestantism, or how much Carlyle's dramatic genius was the result
of his Puritan faith. But it is to the spirit of the Reformation,
as it liberated the worshipper's soul from bondage to artificial
and ecclesiastical symbols of the Deity, that we may also ascribe
a large part of the force of that movement towards Nature and the
imagination of God in His creation which inspired, for example,
Wordsworth's poetry, and those visual sacraments of rainbow, storm,
and dawn to which Browning so often lifts our souls from their
dissatisfaction with ritual or with argument.
From his sarcasm on the idols our prophet returns to his task of
drawing forth Israel's memory and imagination. _Have ye not known?
Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning?
Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? He that is
enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its dwellers are before
Him as grasshoppers; who stretcheth as a fine veil the heavens, and
spreadeth them like a dwelling tent_--that is, as easily as if they
were not even a pavilion or marquee, but only a humble dwelling
tent. _He who bringeth great men to nothing, the judges of the earth
He maketh as waste. Yea, they were not planted; yea, they were not
sown; yea, their root had not struck in the earth, but_ immediately
_He blew upon them and they withered, and a whirlwind like stubble
carried them away. To whom, then, will ye liken Me, that I may match
with him? saith the Holy One._ But this time it is not necessary to
suggest the idols; they were dissolved by that previous burst of
laughter. Therefore, the prophet turns to the other class in Israel
with whom he has to deal.
2. TO THE DESPAIRERS OF THE LORD. From history we pass back to nature
in ver. 26, which forms a transition, the language growing steadier
from the impetuosity of the address to the idolaters to the serene
music of the second part. Enough rebuke has the prophet made. As he
now lifts his people's vision to the stars, it is not to shame their
idols, but to feed their hearts. _Lift up on high your eyes and see!
Who hath created these? Who leads forth by number their host, and all
of them calleth by name, by abundance of might, for He is powerful in
strength, not one is amissing._ Under such a night, that veils the
confusion of earth only to bring forth all the majesty and order of
heaven, we feel a moment's pause. Then as the expanding eyes of the
exiles gaze upon the infinite power above, the prophet goes on. _Why
then sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel? Hidden is my way
from Jehovah, and from my God my right hath passed._
Why does the prophet point his people to the stars? Because he is
among Israel on that vast Babylonian plain, from whose crowded and
confused populations, struggling upon one monotonous level, there
is no escape for the heart but to the stars. Think of that plain
when Nebuchadrezzar was its tyrant; of the countless families of
men torn from their far homes and crushed through one another upon
its surface; of the ancient liberties that were trampled in that
servitude, of the languages that were stifled in that Babel, of the
many patriotisms set to sigh themselves out into the tyrant's mud and
mortar. Ah heaven! was there a God in thee, that one man could thus
crush nations in his vat, as men crushed shell-fish in those days,
to dye his imperial purple? Was there any Providence above, that
he could tear peoples from the lands and seas, where their various
gifts and offices for humanity had been developed, and press them
to his selfish and monotonous servitude? In that medley of nations,
all upon one level of captivity, Israel was just as lost as the most
insignificant tribe; her history severed, her worship impossible,
her very language threatened with decay. No wonder, that from the
stifling crowd and desperate flatness of it all she cried, _Hidden is
my way from Jehovah, and from my God my right hath passed._
But from the flatness and the crowd the stars are visible; and it was
upon the stars that the prophet bade his people feed their hearts.
There were order and unfailing guidance; _for the greatness of His
might not one is missing_. And He is your God. Just as visible as those
countless stars are, one by one, in the dark heavens, to your eyes
looking up, so your lives and fortunes are to His eyes looking down
on this Babel of peoples. _He gathereth the outcasts of Israel....
He telleth the number of the stars._[48] And so the prophet goes on
earnestly to plead: _Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard? that
an everlasting God is Jehovah, Creator of the ends of the earth.
He fainteth not, neither is weary. There is no searching of His
understanding. Giver to the weary of strength! And upon him that is
of no might, He lavisheth power. Even youths may faint and be weary,
and young men utterly fall; but they who hope in Jehovah shall renew
strength, put forth pinions like eagles, run and not weary, walk and
not faint._ Listen, ears, not for the sake of yourselves only, though
the music is incomparably sweet! Listen for the sake of the starved
hearts below, to whom you carry the sacraments of hope, whom you lift
to feed upon the clear symbols of God's omnipotence and unfailing grace.
This chapter began with the assurance to the heart of Israel of their
God's will to redeem and restore them. It closes with bidding the
people take hope in God. Let us again emphasize--for we cannot do so
too often, if we are to keep ourselves from certain errors of to-day
on the subject of Revelation--the nature of this prophecy. It is not
a reading-off of history; it is a call from God. No deed has yet been
done pointing towards the certainty of Israel's redemption; it is not
from facts writ large on the life of their day, that the prophet bids
the captives read their Divine discharge. That discharge he brings from
God; he bids them find the promise and the warrant of it in their God's
character, in their own convictions of what that character is. In order
to revive those convictions, he does, it is true, appeal to certain
facts, but these facts are not the facts of contemporary history which
might reveal to any clear eye, that the current and the drift of
politics was setting towards the redemption of Israel. They are facts
of nature and facts of general providence, which, as we have said, like
sacraments evidence God's power to the pious heart, feed it with the
assurance of His grace, and bid it hope in His word, though history
should seem to be working quite the other way.
This instance of the method of revelation does not justify two
opinions, which prevail at the present day regarding prophecy. In
the first place, it proves to us, that those are wrong who, too
much infected by the modern temper to judge accurately writers so
unsophisticated, describe prophecy as if it were merely a philosophy
of history, by which the prophets deduced from their observation of
the course of events their idea of God and their forecast of His
purposes. The prophets had indeed to do with history; they argued
from it, and they appealed to it. The history that was past was full
of God's condescension to men, and shone like Nature's self with
sacramental signs of His power and will: the history that was future
was to be His supreme tribunal, and to afford the vindication of the
word they claimed to have brought from Him. But still all this--their
trust in history and their use of it--was something secondary in
the prophetic method. With them God Himself was first; they came
forth from His presence, as they describe it, with the knowledge
of His will gained through the communion of their spirits with His
Spirit. If they then appealed to past history, it was to illustrate
their message; or to future, it was for vindication of this. But God
Himself was the Source and Author of it; and therefore, before they
had facts beneath their eyes to corroborate their promises, they
appealed to the people, like our prophet in ch. xl., to _wait on
Jehovah_. The day might not yet have dawned so as to let them read
the signs of the times. But in the darkness they _hoped in Jehovah_,
and borrowed for their starved hearts from the stars above, or other
sacrament, some assurance of His unfailing power.
Jehovah, then, was the source of the prophets' word: His character
was its pledge. The prophets were not mere readers from history, but
speakers from God.
But the testimony of our chapter to all this enables us also to
arrest an opinion about Revelation, which has too hurriedly run off
with some Christians, and to qualify it. In the inevitable recoil
from the scholastic view of revelation as wholly a series of laws and
dogmas and predictions, a number of writers on the subject have of
late defined Revelation as a chain of historical acts, through which
God uttered His character and will to men. According to this view,
Revelation is God manifesting Himself in history, and the Bible is
the record of this historical process. Now, while it is true that
the Bible is, to a large extent, the annals and interpretation of
the great and small events of a nation's history--of its separation
from the rest of mankind, its miraculous deliverances, its growth,
its defeats and humiliations, its reforms and its institutions; in
all of which God manifested His character and will--yet the Bible
also records a revelation, which preceded these historical deeds;
a revelation the theatre of which was not the national experience,
but the consciousness of the individual; which was recognised and
welcomed by choice souls in the secret of their own spiritual life,
before it was realised and observed in outward fact; which was
uttered by the prophet's voice and accepted by the people's trust in
the dark and the stillness, before the day of the Lord had dawned
or there was light to see His purposes at work. In a word, God's
revelation to men was very often made clear in their subjective
consciousness, before it became manifest in the history about them.
And, for ourselves, let us remember that to this day true religion is
as independent of facts as it was with the prophet. True religion is a
conviction of the character of God, and a resting upon that alone for
salvation. We need nothing more to begin with; and everything else, in
our experience and fortune, helps us only in so far as it makes that
primary conviction more clear and certain. Darkness may be over us, and
we lonely and starved beneath it. We may be destitute of experience to
support our faith; we may be able to discover nothing in life about us
making in the direction of our hopes. Still, let _us wait on the Lord_.
It is by bare trust in Him, that we _renew our strength, put forth
wings like eagles, run and not weary, walk and not faint_.
_Put forth wings--run--walk!_ Is the order correct? Hope swerves from
the edge of so descending a promise, which seems only to repeat
the falling course of nature--that droop, we all know, from short
ambitions, through temporary impulsiveness, to the old commonplace
and routine. Soaring, running, walking--and is not the next stage, a
cynic might ask, standing still?
On the contrary, it is a natural and a true climax, rising from the
easier to the more difficult, from the ideal to the real, from dream to
duty, from what can only be the rare occasions of life to what must be
life's usual and abiding experience. History followed this course. Did
the prophet, as he promised, think of what should really prove to be
the fortune of his people during the next few years?--the great flight
of hope, on which we see them rising in their psalms of redemption as
on the wings of an eagle; the zeal and liberality of preparation for
departure from Babylon; the first rush at the Return; and then the long
tramp, day after day, with the slow caravan, at the pace of its most
heavily-laden beasts of burden, when _they shall walk and not faint_
should indeed seem to them the sweetest part of their God's promise.
Or was it the far longer perspective of Israel's history that bade
the prophet follow this descending scale? The spirit of prophecy
was with himself to soar higher than ever before, reaching by truly
eagle-flight to a vision of the immediate consummation of Israel's
glory: the Isles waiting for Jehovah, the Holy City radiant in His
rising, and open with all her gates to the thronging nations; the
true religion flashing from Zion across the world, and the wealth
of the world pouring back upon Zion. And some have wondered, and
some scoff, that after this vision there should follow centuries of
imperceptible progress--five-and-a-half centuries of preparation
for the coming of the Promised Servant; and then--Israel, indeed
gone forth over the world, but only in small groups, living upon
the grudged and fitful tolerance of the great centres of Gentile
civilisation. The prophet surely anticipates all this, when he
places the _walking_ after the _soaring_ and the _running_. When he
says last, and most impressively, of his people's fortunes, that
they _shall walk and not faint_, he has perhaps just those long
centuries in view, when, instead of a nation of enthusiasts taking
humanity by storm, we see small bands of pioneers pushing their way
from city to city by the slow methods of ancient travel,--Damascus,
Antioch, Tarsus, Iconium, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth and
Rome,--everywhere that Paul and the missionaries of the Cross found
a pulpit and a congregation ready for the Gospel; toiling from day
to day at their own trades, serving the alien for wages, here and
there founding a synagogue, now and then completing a version of
their Scriptures, oftentimes achieving martyrdom, but ever living a
pure and a testifying life in face of the heathen, with the passion
of these prophecies at their hearts. It was certainly for such
centuries and such men that the word was written, _they shall walk
and not faint_. This persistence under persecution, this monotonous
drilling of themselves in school and synagogue, this slow progress
without prize or praise along the common highways of the world and
by the world's ordinary means of livelihood, was a greater proof of
indomitableness than even the rapture which filled their hearts on
the golden eve of the Return, under the full diapason of prophecy.
And so must it ever be. First the ideal, and then the rush at it with
passionate eyes, and then the daily trudge onward, when its splendour
has faded from the view, but is all the more closely wrapped round
the heart. For glorious as it is to rise to some great consummation
on wings of dream and song, glorious as it is, also, to bend that
impetus a little lower and take some practical crisis of life by
storm, an even greater proof of our religion and of the help our God
can give us is the lifelong tramp of earth's common surface, without
fresh wings of dream, or the excitement of rivalry, or the attraction
of reward, but with the head cool, and the face forward, and every
footfall upon firm ground. Let hope rejoice in a promise, which does
not go off into the air, but leaves us upon solid earth; and let
us hold to a religion, which, while it exults in being the secret
of enthusiasm and the inspiration of heroism, is daring and Divine
enough to find its climax in the commonplace.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] See xl. 21, _Have ye not known?_
[43] That is in the sense, in which our prophet uses the word, of
salvation. See Ch. XIV. of this volume.
[44] Some intention of division undoubtedly appears. Notice the
double refrain, _To whom will ye liken_, etc., of vv. 18 and 25;
and then at equal distance from either occurrence of this challenge
the appeal, _Dost thou not know_, etc., vv. 21 and 28. But though
these signs of a strict division appear, the rest is submerged by
the strong flood of feeling which rushes too deep and rapid for any
hard-and-fast embankments.
[45] See p. 109.
[46] If an idol leant over or fell that was the very worst of omens;
_cf._ the case of Dagon.
[47] When John Knox was a prisoner in France, "the officers brought
to him a painted board, which they called Our Lady, and commanded
him to kiss it. They violently thrust it into his face, and put it
betwixt his hands, who, seeing the extremity, took the idol, and
advisedly looking about, he cast it into the river, and said, 'Let
Our Lady now save herself; she is light enough; let her learn to
swim!' After that was no Scotsman urged with that idolatry."--Knox,
_History of the Reformation_.
[48] Psalm cxlvii.
CHAPTER VII.
_GOD: AN ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY._
ISAIAH xli.
Having revealed Himself to His own people in ch. xl., Jehovah now
turns in ch. xli. to the heathen, but, naturally, with a very
different kind of address. Displaying His power to His people in
certain sacraments, both of nature and history, He had urged them to
_wait upon Him_ alone for the salvation, of which there were as yet
no signs in the times. But with the heathen it is evidently to these
signs of the times, that He can best appeal. Contemporary history,
facts open to every man's memory and reason, is the common ground on
which Jehovah and the other gods can meet. Ch. xli. is, therefore,
the natural complement to ch. xl. In ch. xl. we have the element in
revelation that precedes history: in ch. xli. we have history itself
explained as a part of revelation.
Ch. xli. is loosely cast in the same form of a Trial-at-Law, which
we found in ch. i. To use a Scotticism, which exactly translates
the Hebrew of ver. 1, Jehovah goes _to the law_ with the idols. His
summons to the Trial is given in ver. 1; the ground of the Trial is
advanced in vv. 2-7. Then comes a digression, vv. 8-20, in which the
Lord turns from controversy with the heathen to comfort His people.
In vv. 21-29 Jehovah's plea is resumed, and in the silence of the
defendants--a silence, which, as we shall presently see by calling in
the witness of a Greek historian, was actual fact--the argument is
summed up and the verdict given for the sole divinity of Israel's God.
The main interest of the Trial lies, of course, in its appeal to
contemporary history, and to the central figure Cyrus, although it is
to be noted that the prophet as yet refrains from mentioning the hero
by name. This appeal to contemporary history lays upon us the duty
of briefly indicating, how the course of that history was tending
outside Babylon,--outside Babylon, as yet, but fraught with fate both
to Babylon and to her captives.
* * * * *
Nebuchadrezzar, although he had virtually succeeded to the throne of
the Assyrian, had not been able to repeat from Babylon that almost
universal empire, which his predecessors had swayed from Nineveh.
Egypt, it is true, was again as thoroughly driven from Asia as
in the time of Sargon: to the south the Babylonian supremacy was
as unquestioned as ever the Assyrian had been. But to the north
Nebuchadrezzar met with an almost equal rival, who had helped him
in the overthrow of Nineveh, and had fallen heir to the Assyrian
supremacy in that quarter. This was Kastarit or Kyaxares, an Aryan,
one of the pioneers of that Aryan invasion from the East, which,
though still tardy and sparse, was to be the leading force in
Western Asia for the next century. This Kyaxares had united under
his control a number of Median tribes,[49] a people of Turanian
stock. With these, when Nineveh fell, he established to the north of
Nebuchadrezzar's power the empire of Media, with its western boundary
at the river Halys, in Asia Minor, and its capital at Ecbatana under
Mount Elwand. It is said that the river Indus formed his frontier
to the east. West of the Halys, the Mede's progress was stopped by
the Lydian Empire, under King Alyattis, whose capital was Sardis,
and whose other border was practically the coast of the Ægean. In
585, or two years after the destruction of Jerusalem, Alyattis and
Kyaxares met in battle on the Halys. But the terrors of an eclipse
took the heart to fight out of both their armies, and, Nebuchadrezzar
intervening, the three monarchs struck a treaty among themselves,
and strengthened it by intermarriage. Western Asia now virtually
consisted of the confederate powers, Babylonia, Media and Lydia.[50]
Let us realise how far this has brought us. When we stood with Isaiah
in Jerusalem, our western horizon lay across the middle of Asia Minor
in the longitude of Cyprus.[51] It now rests upon the Ægean; we are
almost within sight of Europe. Straight from Babylon to Sardis runs a
road, with a regular service of couriers. The court of Sardis holds
domestic and political intercourse with the courts of Babylon and
Ecbatana; but the court of Sardis also lords it over the Asiatic
Greeks, worships at Greek shrines, will shortly be visited by Solon
and strike an alliance with Sparta. In the time of the Jewish exile
there were without doubt many Greeks in Babylon; men may have spoken
there with Daniel, who had spoken at Sardis with Solon.
This extended horizon makes clear to us what our prophet has in
his view, when in this forty-first chapter he summons _Isles_ to
the bar of Jehovah: _Be silent before me, O Isles, and let Peoples
renew their strength_,--a vision and appeal which frequently recur
in our prophecy. _Listen, O Isles, and hearken, O Peoples from afar_
(xlix. 1); _Isles shall wait for His law_ (xlii. 4); _Let them give
glory to Jehovah, and publish His praise in the Isles_ (xlii. 12);
_Unto me Isles shall hope_ (li. 5); _Surely Isles shall wait for
me, ships of Tarshish first_.[52] The name is generally taken by
scholars--according to the derivation in the note below--to have
originally meant _habitable land_, and so _land_ as opposed to water.
In some passages of the Old Testament it is undoubtedly used to
describe a land either washed, or surrounded, by the sea.[53]
But by our prophet's use of the word it is not necessarily
_maritime provinces_ that are meant. He makes _isles_ parallel
to the well-known terms _nations_, _peoples_, _Gentiles_, and in
one passage he opposes it, as dry soil, to water.[54] Hence many
translators take it in its original sense of _countries_ or _lands_.
This bare rendering, however, does not do justice to the sense of
_remoteness_, which the prophet generally attaches to the word,
nor to his occasional association of it with visions of the sea.
Indeed, as one reads most
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