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.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.
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.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.
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.Matt. iii. 3, viii. 17, xii. 17; Luke iii. 4, iv. 17; John i. 23,
xii. 38; Acts viii. 28; Rom. x. 16-20.
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.Driver's Isaiah, pp. 137, 139.
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 ExilePsalm cxxi.
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.Driver's Isaiah: His Life and Times, p. 191.
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."Calvin on Isa. lv. 3.
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."So quoted by Driver (Isaiah, etc., p. 200), from the British and
Foreign Evangelical Review, 1879, p. 339.
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.See p. 223.
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 writingsProfessor Briggs' Messianic Prophecy, 339 ff.
—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.Ewald is very strong on this.
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 criticsIncluding Professor Cheyne, Encyc. Britann., article "Isaiah."
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,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.
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.Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in Jewish Church, 109.
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.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.
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.
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;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.
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.
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.See vol. i., p. 100 f.
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.Jer. xlv.
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.This is especially clear from ch. xxxi.
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.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.
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.Psalm cii. 14.
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.Isa. xlix. 16.
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.
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.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).
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.For the above details, see Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies of the
Ancient Eastern World, vol. i.
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;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.
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.Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art d'Antiquité, vol. ii.; Assyrie
p. 9.
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.The Book of Daniel.
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.Isa. xlii. 22, xlvii. 6.
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.Records of the Past, second series, vol. i., M. Oppert's Translations.
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.Mr. St. Chad Boscawen's recent lectures, of which I have been
able to see only the reports in the Manchester Guardian.
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.Ch. lviii. 2.
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,Ch. lviii. 13, 14.
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.See vol. i., p. 292 ff.
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 plantJer. xxix.
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,Records of the Past, first series, ix., 95 seq.
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.
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.See p. 47.
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.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.
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.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.
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,See ch. liv., where this figure is developed with great beauty.
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.Lev. xxvii.
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."The technical word to preach or proclaim.
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.
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,See xl. 21, Have ye not known?
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
righteousnessThat is in the sense, in which our prophet uses the word, of
salvation. See Ch. XIV. of this volume.
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.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.
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!See p. 109.
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.If an idol leant over or fell that was the very worst of omens;
cf. the case of Dagon.
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.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.
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.Psalm cxlvii.
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.
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,Media simply means "the country." It is supposed, that of the
six Median tribes only one was Aryan, holding the rest, which were
Turanian, under its influence.
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.There were, besides, a few small independent powers in Asia
Minor, such as Cilicia, whose prince also intervened at the Battle of
the Eclipse; and the Ionian cities in the west. But all these, with
perhaps the exception of Lycia, were brought into subjection to Lydia
by Crœsus, son of Alyattis.
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.Vol. i., p. 92.
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.Other passages are: xli. 5, Isles saw and feared, the ends of the
earth trembled; xlii. 10, The sea and its fulness, Isles and their dwellers;
lix. 18, He will repay, fury to His adversaries, recompence to His enemies:
to the Isles He will repay recompence; lxvi. 19, The nations, Tarshish,
Pul, Lud, drawers of the bow, Tubal, Javan, the Isles afar off that have
not heard my fame. The Hebrew is אי 'î, and is supposed to be
from a root אוה awah, to inhabit, which sense, however, never
attaches to the verb in Hebrew, but is borrowed from the cognate
Arabic word.
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.Of the Philistine coast, Isa. xx. 6; of the Tyrian coast, Isa. xxiii. 2,
6; of Greece, Ezek. xxvii. 7; of Crete, Jer. xlvii. 4; of the islands
of the sea, Isa. xi. 11 and Esther x. 1.
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.xlii. 15: Eng. version, I will turn rivers into islands.
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 of his uses of it,
one is quite sure that the island-meaning of the word
lingers on in his imagination; and that the feeling
possesses him, which has haunted the poetry of all ages,
to describe as coasts or isles any land or lighting-place
of thought which is far and dim and vague; which
floats across the horizon, or emerges from the distance,
as strips and promontories of land rise from the sea to
him who has reached some new point of view. I have
therefore decided to keep the rendering familiar to the
English reader, isles, though, perhaps, coasts would be
better. If, as is probable, our prophet's thoughts are
always towards the new lands of the west as he uses
the word, it is doubly suitable; those countries were
both maritime and remote; they rose both from the
distance and from the sea.
"The sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea
And laugh their pride, where the light wave lisps, 'Greece.'"
But if Babylonia lay thus open to Lydia, and through
Lydia to the isles and coasts of Greece, it was different
with her northern frontier. What strikes us here is
the immense series of fortifications, which Nebuchadrezzar,
in spite of his alliance with Astyages, cast up
between his country and Media. Where the Tigris and
Euphrates most nearly approach one another, about
seventy miles to the north of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar
connected their waters by four canals, above which
he built a strong bulwark, called by the Greeks the
Median wall. This may have been over sixty miles
long; Xenophon tells us it was twenty feet broad by
one hundred high.Anabasis 2, 4.
At Sippara this line of defence
was completed by the creation of a great bason of
water to flood the rivers and canals on the approach
of an enemy, and of a large fortress to protect the
bason. Alas for the vanity of human purposes! It
is said to have been this very bason which caused
the easy fall of Babylon. By turning the Euphrates
into it, the enemy entered the capital through the
emptied river-bed.
The triple alliance—Lydia, Media, Babylonia—stood
firm after its founders passed away. In 555, Crœsus
and Astyages, who had succeeded their fathers at
Sardis and Ecbatana respectively, and Nabunahid,
who had usurped the throne at Babylon, were still at
peace, and contented with the partition of 585. But
outside them and to the east, in a narrow nook of land
at the head of the Persian Gulf, the man was already
crowned, who was destined to bring Western Asia again
under one sceptre. This was Kurush or Cyrus II. of
Anzan, but known to history as Cyrus the Great or
Cyrus the Persian. Cyrus was a prince of the Akhæmenian
house of Persia, and therefore, like the Mede,
an Aryan, but independent of his Persian cousins, and
ruling in his own right the little kingdom of Anzan or
Anshan, which, with its capital of Susan, lay on the
rivers Choaspes and Eulæus, between the head of the
Persian Gulf and the Zagros Mountains.There were two branches of the Persian royal family after Teispes,
the son of Akhæmenes, the founder. Teispes annexed Anshan on the
level land between the north-east corner of the Persian Gulf and the mountains of Persia. Teispes' eldest son, Cyrus I., became king of
Anshan; his other, Ariaramnes, king of Persia. These were succeeded
by their sons, Kambyses I. and Arsames. Kambyses I. was the father
of Cyrus II., the great Cyrus, who rejoined Persia to Anshan, to the
exclusion of his second cousin, Hystaspes. Cyrus the Great was
succeeded by his son, Kambyses II., with whom the Anshan line
closed, and the power was transferred to Darius, son of Hystaspes.
Cf. Ragozin's Media, in the "Story of the Nations" series.
Cyrus the Great is one of those mortals whom the
muse of history, as if despairing to do justice to him
by herself, has called in her sisters to aid her in
describing to posterity. Early legend and later and
more elaborate romance; the schoolmaster, the historian,
the tragedian and the prophet, all vie in
presenting to us this hero "le plus sympathique de
l'antiquité"Halévy, "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil," Études Juives, I.
—this king on whom we see so deeply
stamped the double signature of God, character and
success. We shall afterwards have a better opportunity
to speak of his character. Here we are only
concerned to trace his rapid path of conquest.
He sprang, then, from Anshan, the immediate neighbour
of Babylonia to the east. This is the direction
indicated in the second verse of this forty-first chapter:
Who hath raised up one from the east? But the
twenty-fifth verse veers round with him to the north:
I have raised up one from the north, and he is come.
This was actually the curve, from east to north, which
his career almost immediately took.
For in 549 Astyages, king of Media, attacked Cyrus,Inscription of Nabunahid.
king of Anshan; which means that Cyrus was already
a considerable and an aggressive prince. Probably he
had united by this time the two domains of his house,
Persia and Anshan, under his own sceptre, and secured
as his lieutenant Hystaspes, his cousin, the lineal king
of Persia. The Mede, looking south and east from
Ecbatana, saw a solid front opposed to him, and resolved
to crush it before it grew more formidable.
But the Aryans among the Medes, dissatisfied with so
indolent a leader as Astyages, revolted to Cyrus, and
so the latter, with characteristic good fortune, easily
became lord of Media. A lenient lord he made. He
spared Astyages, and ranked the Aryan Medes second
only to the Persians. But it took him till 546 to complete
his conquest. When he had done so he stood master
of Asia from the Halys to perhaps as far east as the
Indus. He replaced the Medes in the threefold
power of Western Asia, and thus looked down on
Babylon, as v. 25 says, from the north (xli. 25).
In 545, Cyrus advanced upon Babylonia, and struck
at the northern line of fortifications at Sippara. He was
opposed by an army under Belshazzar, Bel-shar-uzzur,
the son of Nabunahid, and probably by his mother's
side grandson of Nebuchadrezzar. Army or fortifications
seem to have been too much for Cyrus, and there
is no further mention of his name in the Babylonian
annals till the year 538. It has been suggested that
Cyrus was aware of the discontent of the people with
their ruler Nabunahid, and, with that genius which distinguished
his whole career for availing himself of the
internal politics of his foes, he may have been content
to wait till the Babylonian dissatisfaction had grown
riper, perhaps in the meantime fostering it by his own
emissaries.
In any case, the attention of Cyrus was now urgently
demanded on the western boundary of his empire,
where Lydia was preparing to invade him. Crœsus,
king of Lydia, fresh from the subjection of the Ionian
Greeks, and possessing an army and a treasure second
to none in the world, had lately asked of Solon, whether
he was not the most fortunate of men; and Solon had
answered, to count no man happy till his death. The
applicability of this advice to himself Crœsus must
have felt with a start, when, almost immediately after it,
the news came that his brother-in-law Astyages had
fallen before an unknown power, which was moving
up rapidly from the east, and already touched the
Lydian frontier at the Halys. Crœsus was thrown
into alarm. He eagerly desired to know Heaven's will
about this Persian and himself, who now stood face
to face. But, in that heathen world, with its thousand
shrines to different gods, who knew the will of Heaven?
In a fashion only possible to the richest man in the
world, Crœsus resolved to discover, by sending a test-question,
on a matter of fact within his own knowledge,
to every oracle of repute: to the oracles of the Greeks
at Miletus, Delphi, Abæ; to that of Trophonius; to the
sanctuary of Amphiaraus at Thebes; to Dodona; and
even to the far-off temple of Ammon in Libya. The
oracles of Delphi and Amphiaraus alone sent an answer,
which in the least suggested the truth. "To the
gods of Delphi and Amphiaraus, Crœsus, therefore,
offered great sacrifices,—three thousand victims of every
kind; and on a great pile of wood he burned couches
plated with gold and silver, golden goblets, purple robes
and garments, in the hope that he would thereby gain
the favour of the god yet more.... And as the sacrifice
left behind an enormous mass of molten gold, Crœsus
caused bricks to be made, six palms in length, three
in breadth and one in depth; in all there were 117
bricks.... In addition there was a golden lion which
weighed ten talents. When these were finished, Crœsus
sent them to Delphi; and he added two very large
mixing bowls, one of gold, weighing eight talents and
a half and twelve minæ, and one of silver (the work
of Theodorus of Samos, as the Delphians say, and I
believe it, for it is the work of no ordinary artificer),
four silver jars, and two vessels for holy water, one of
gold, the other of silver, circular casts of silver, a golden
statue of a woman three cubits high, and the necklace
and girdles of his queen."Herodotus, Book I.
We can understand, that
for all this Crœsus got the best advice consistent
with the ignorance and caution of the priests whom
he consulted. The oracles told him that if he went
against Cyrus he would destroy a great empire; but
he forgot to ask, whether it was his own or his rival's.
When he inquired a second time, if his reign should be
long, they replied: "When a mule became king of the
Medes," then he might fly from his throne; but again
he forgot to consider that there might be mules among
men as among beasts.Herodotus explains this by his legend of Cyrus' birth, according
to which Cyrus was a hybrid—half Persian, half Mede.
At the same time, the oracles
tempered their ambiguous prophecies with some advice
of undoubted sense, for when he asked them who were
the most powerful among the Greeks, they replied the
Spartans, and to Sparta he sent messengers with
presents to conclude an alliance. "The Lacedæmonians
were filled with joy; they knew the oracle which had
been given Crœsus, and made him a friend and ally,
as they had previously received many kindnesses at
his hands."Herodotus, Book I.
This glimpse into the preparations of Crœsus, whose
embassies compassed the whole civilised world, and
whose wealth got him all that politics or religion could,
enables us to realise the political and religious excitement
into which Cyrus' advent threw that generation.
The oracles in doubt and ambiguous; the priests, the
idol-manufacturers, and the crowd of artisans, who
worked in every city at the furniture of the temple,
in a state of unexampled activity, with bustle perhaps
most like the bustle of our government dockyards on
the eve of war; hammering new idols together, preparing
costly oblations, overhauling the whole religious
"ordnance," that the gods might be propitiated and the
stars secured to fight in their courses against the
Persian; rival politicians practising conciliation, and
bolstering up one another with costly presents to stand
against this strange and fatal force, which indifferently
threatened them all. What a commentary Herodotus'
story furnishes upon the verses of this chapter,
in which Jehovah contrasts the idols with Himself.
It may actually have been Crœsus and the Greeks
whom the prophet had in his mind when he wrote
vv. 5-7: The isles have seen, and they fear; the ends of
the earth tremble: they draw near and they come. They
help every man his neighbour, and to his brother each
sayeth, Be strong. So carver encourageth smelter,
smoother with hammer, smiter on anvil; one saith of the
soldering, It is good: and he fasteneth it with nails lest it
totter. The irony is severe, but true to the facts as
Herodotus relates them. The statesmen hoped to keep
back Cyrus by sending sobbing messages to one another,
Be of good courage; the priests "by making a particularly
good and strong set of gods."Sir Edward Strachey.
While the imbecility of the idolatries was thus manifest,
and the great religious centres of heathendom
were reduced to utter doubt that veiled itself in
ambiguity and waited to see how things would issue,
there was one religion in the world, whose oracles gave
no uncertain sound, whose God stepped boldly forth
to claim Cyrus for His own. In the dust of Babylonia
lay the scattered members of a nation captive and exiled,
a people civilly dead and religiously degraded; yet it
was the faith of this worm of a people, which welcomed
and understood Cyrus, it was the God of this people
who claimed to be his author. The forty-first chapter
looks dreary and ancient to the uninstructed eye,
but let our imagination realise all these things: the
ambiguous priests, oracles that would not speak out,
religions that had no articulate counsel nor comfort
in face of the conqueror who was crushing up the
world before him, but only sobs, solder and nails; and
our heart will leap as we hear how God forces them
all into judgement before Him, and makes His plea as
loud and clear as mortal ear may hear. Clatter of idols,
and murmur of muffled oracles, filling all the world;
and then, hark how the voice of Jehovah crashes His
oracle across it all!
Keep silence towards Me, O Isles, and let the peoples
renew their strength: let them approach; then let them
speak: to the Law let us come.
Who hath stirred up from the sunrise Righteousness,
calleth it to his foot? He giveth to his face peoples, and
kings He makes him to trample; giveth them as dust to
his sword, as driven stubble to his bow. He pursues
them, and passes to peace a road that he comes not with
his feet. Who has wrought it and done it? Summoner
of generations from the source,Lit. from the head, "da capo." I am not sure, however, that it
does not rather mean beforehand, like our on ahead.
I Jehovah the First,
and with the Last; I am He.
Crœsus would have got a clear answer here, but it
is probable that he had never heard of the Hebrews or
of their God.
After this follows the satiric picture of the heathen
world, which has already been quoted. And then,
after an interval during which Jehovah turns to His
own people (vv. 8-20),—for whatever be His business
or His controversy, the Lord is mindful of His own,—He
directs His speech specially against the third class
of the leaders of heathendom. He has laughed the
foolish statesmen and imagemakers out of court
(vv. 5-7); He now challenges, in ver. 21, the oracles
and their priests.
We have seen what these were, which this vast
heathen world—heathen but human, convinced as we
are that at the back of the world's life there is a secret,
a counsel and a governor, and anxious as we are to
find them—had to resort to. Timid waiters upon time,
whom not even the lavish wealth of a Crœsus could
tempt from their ambiguity; prophets speechless in
face of history; oracles of meaning as dark and shifty
as their steamy caves at Delphi, of tune as variable as
the whispering oak of Dodona; wily-tongued Greeks,
masters of ambiguous phrase, at Miletus, Abæ, and
Thebes; Egyptian mystics in the far off temple of
"Lybic Hammon,"—these are what the prophet sees
standing at the bar of history, where God is Challenger.
Bring here your case, saith Jehovah; apply your strong
grounds, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring out
and declare unto us what things are going to happen;
the first thingsSee p. 121.
announce what they are, that we may
set our heart on them, and know the issue of them;
or the things that are coming, let us hear them. Announce
the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know
that ye are gods. Yea, do good or do evil, that we may
stare and see it together. Lo! ye are nothing, and your
work is of nought; an abomination is he who chooseth
you.
Which great challenge just means, Come and be
tested by facts. Here is history needing an explanation,
and running no one knows whither. Prove your
divinity by interpreting or guiding it. Cease your
ambiguities, and give us something we can set our
minds to work upon. Or do something, effect something
in history, be it good or be it evil,—only let it be
patent to our senses. For the test of godhead is not
ingenuity or mysteriousness, but plain deeds, which
the senses can perceive, and plain words, which the
reason and conscience can judge. The insistance upon
the senses and mental faculties of man is remarkable:
Make us hear them, that we may know, stare, see all
together, set our mind to them.
But as we have learned from Herodotus, there was
nobody in the world to answer such a challenge.
Therefore Jehovah Himself answers it. He gives His
explanation of history, and claims its events for His
doing.
I have stirred up from the north, and he hath
come; from the rising of the sun one who calleth upon
My Name: and he shall trample satraps like mortar, and
as the potter treadeth out clay.
Who hath announced on-aheadThis seems to me to be more likely to be the meaning of the
prophet, than the absolute from the beginning. It suits its parallel
beforehand, and it is more in line with the general demand of the chapter for anticipation of events. It is literally from the head, "da
capo," cf. p. 117.
that we may know,
and beforehand that we may say, "Right!" Yea, there is
none that announced, yea, there is none that published, yea,
there is none that heareth your words. But a prediction—or
predicter, literally a thing or man on-ahead (r'ishôn
corresponding to the me-r'osh of ver. 26)—a prediction to
Zion, "Behold, behold them," and to Jerusalem a herald of
good news—I am giving. The language here comes
forth in jerks, and is very difficult to render. But I
look and there is no man even among these, and no counsellor,
that I might ask them and they return word. Lo, all of
them vanity! and nothingness their works; wind and
waste their molten images.
Let us look a little more closely at the power of
Prediction, on which Jehovah maintains His unique
and sovereign Deity against the idols.
Jehovah challenges the idols to face present events,
and to give a clear, unambiguous forecast of their issue.
It is a debatable question, whether He does not also
ask them to produce previous predictions of events
happening at the time at which He speaks. This latter
demand is one that He makes in subsequent chapters;
it is part of His prophet's argument in chs. xlv.-xlvi.,
that Jehovah intimated the advent of Cyrus by His servants
in Israel long before the present time. Whether
He makes this same demand for previous predictions in
ch. xli. depends on how we render a clause of ver. 22,
declare ye the former things. Some scholars take former
things in the sense, in which it is used later on in this
prophecy, of previous predictions. This is very doubtful.
I have explained in a note, why I think them wrong; but
even if they are right, and Jehovah be really asking the
idols to produce former predictions of Cyrus' career,
the demand is so cursory, it proves so small an item
in His plea, and we shall afterwards find so many
clearer statements of it, that we do better to ignore it
now and confine ourselves to emphasizing the other
challenge, about which there is no doubt,—the challenge
to take present events and predict their issue.ראשנות r'ishonôth is a relative term, meaning head things,
things ahead, first things, prior things, whether in rank or time. Here
of course the time meaning is undoubted. But ahead of what? prior
to what?—this is the difficulty. Ewald, Hitzig, A. B. Davidson,
Driver, etc., take it as prior to the standpoint of the speaker; things
that happened or were uttered previous to him,—a sense in which the
word is used in subsequent chapters. But Delitzsch, Hahn, Cheyne,
etc., take it to be things prior to other things that will happen in the
later future, early events, as opposed to הבאות of the next clause,
which they take to mean subsequent things, things that are to come
afterwards. I think Dr. Davidson's reasons (see Expositor, second series,
vol. vii., p. 256) are quite conclusive against this view of Delitzsch,
that in this clause the idols are being asked to predict events in the
near future. It is difficult, as he says, to see why the idols should be
given a choice between the earlier and the later future: nor does the
הבאות of the contrasted clause at all suggest a later future; it
simply means things coming, a term which is as applicable to the
near as to the far future. Nevertheless, I am not persuaded that Dr.
Davidson's own view of r'ishonôth is the correct one. The rest of the context (see above) is occupied with predictions of the future
only. And r'ishonôth does not necessarily mean previous predictions,
although used in this sense in the subsequent chapters. It simply
means, as we have seen, head things, things ahead, things beforehand,
or fountain-things, origins, causes. That we are to understand it here
in some such general and absolute sense is suggested, I think, by the
word אחריתן which follows it, their result or issue, and is confirmed by
ראשן, r'ishôn (masc. singular) of ver. 27, which is undoubtedly used in
a general sense, meaning something or somebody on ahead, an anticipator,
predicter, forerunner (as Cheyne gives it), or as I have rendered
it above, neuter, a prediction. If r'ishôn in ver. 27 means a thing or a
man given beforehand, then r'ishonôth in ver. 22 may also mean things
given beforehand, predictions made now, or at least things selected
and announced as causes now, whose issue, אחריתן, may be recognised
in the future. In a word, r'ishonôth would mean things not
necessarily previous to the speech in which they were allowed, but
simply things previous to certain results, or anticipating certain events,
either as their prediction or as their cause.
Crœsus
had asked the oracles for a forecast of the future. This is
exactly what Jehovah demands in ver. 22, declare unto us
what things are going to happen; in ver. 23, declare the
things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye
are gods; in ver. 26 (spoken from the standpoint of the
subsequent fulfilment of the prediction), who declared it
on-ahead that we may know, and beforehand that we may
now say, "Right!" Yea, there is none that declared, yea,
there is none that published, yea, there is none that heareth
your words. But a prediction unto Zion, "Behold, behold
them," and to Jerusalem a herald of good news—I give.
I give is emphatically placed at the end,—"I Jehovah
alone, through my prophets in Israel, give such a prediction
and publisher of good news."
We scarcely require to remind ourselves, that this
great challenge and plea are not mere rhetoric or idle
boasting. Every word in them we have seen to be
true to fact. The heathen religions were, as they are
here represented, helpless before Cyrus, and dumb about
the issue of the great movements which the Persian
had started. On the other hand, Jehovah had uttered
to His people all the meaning of the new stir and
turmoil in history. We have heard Him do so in
ch. xl. There He gives a herald of good news to Jerusalem,—tells
them of their approaching deliverance,
explains His redemptive purposes, proclaims a gospel.
In addition, He has in this chapter accepted Cyrus for
His own creation and as part of His purpose, and has
promised him victory.
The God of Israel, then, is God, because He alone
by His prophets claims facts as they stand for His own
deeds, and announces what shall become of them.
Do not let us, however, fall into the easy but vulgar
error of supposing, that Jehovah claims to be God simply
because He can predict. It is indeed prediction, which
He demands from the heathen; for prediction is a
minimum of godhead, and in asking it He condescends
to the heathen's own ideas of what a god should be able
to do. When Crœsus, the heathen who of all that time
spent most upon religion, sought to decide which of the
gods was worthiest to be consulted about the future and
propitiated in face of Cyrus, what test did he apply to
them? As we have seen, he tested them by their ability
to predict a matter of fact: the god who told him what
he, Crœsus, should be doing on a certain day was to be
his god. It is evident, that, to Crœsus, divinity meant
to be able to divine. But the God, who reveals Himself
to Israel, is infinitely greater than this. He is not merely
a Being with a far sight into the future; He is not only
Omniscience. In the chapter preceding this one His
power of prediction is not once expressed; it is lost in
the two glories by which alone the prophet seeks to
commend His Godhead to Israel,—the glory of His power
and the glory of His faithfulness. Jehovah is Omnipotence,
Creator of heaven and earth; He leads forth
the stars by the greatness of His might; Supreme
Director of history, it is He who bringeth princes to
nothing. But Jehovah is also unfailing character: the
word of the Lord standeth for ever; it is foolishness to
say of Him that He has forgotten His people, or that
their right has passed from Him; He disappoints none
who wait upon Him. Such is the God, who steps down
from ch. xl. into the controversy with the heathen in
ch. xli. If in the latter He chiefly makes His claim
to godhead to rest upon specimens of prediction, it is
simply, as we have said, that He may meet the gods of
the heathen before a bar and upon a principle, which
their worshippers recognise as practical and decisive.
What were single predictions, here and there, upon the
infinite volume of His working, who by His power
could gather all things to serve His own purpose, and
in His faithfulness remained true to that purpose from
everlasting to everlasting! The unity of history under
One Will—this is a far more adequate idea of godhead
than the mere power to foretell single events of history.
And it is even to this truth that Jehovah seeks to raise
the unaccustomed thoughts of the heathen. Past the
rude wonder, which is all that fulfilled predictions of fact
can excite, He lifts their religious sense to Himself and
His purpose, as the one secret and motive of all history.
He not only claims Cyrus and Cyrus' career as His own
work, but He speaks of Himself as summoner of the
generations from aforehand; I Jehovah, the First, and with
the Last; I am He. It is a consummate expression of
godhead, which lifts us far above the thought of Him
as a mere divining power.
Now, it is well for us—were it only for the great
historic interest of the thing, though it will also further
our argument—to take record here that, although this
conception of the unity of life under One Purpose and
Will was still utterly foreign, and perhaps even unintelligible,
to the heathen world, which the prophecy has
in view, the first serious attempt in that world to reach
such a conception was contemporary with the forty-first
chapter of Isaiah. It is as miners feel, when, tunnelling
from opposite sides of a mountain, they begin to hear
the noise of each other's picks through the dwindling
rock. We, who have come down the history of Israel
towards the great consummation of religion in Christianity,
may here cease for a moment our labours, to
listen to the faint sound from the other side of the wall,
still separating Israel from Greece, of a witness to God
and an argument against idolatry similar to those with
which we have been working. Who is not moved by
learning, that, in the very years when Jewish prophecy
reached its most perfect statement of monotheism, pouring
its scorn upon the idols and their worshippers, and
in the very Isles on which its hopes and influence were
set, the first Greek should be already singing, who used
his song to satirize the mythologies of his people, and
to celebrate the unity of God? Among the Ionians,
whom Cyrus' invasion of Lydia and of the Ægean coast
in 544 drove across the seas, was Xenophanes of
Colophon.Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, English translation, i., 51.
After some wanderings he settled at Elea
in South Italy, and became the founder of the Eleatic
school, the first philosophic attempt of the Greek mind
to grasp the unity of Being. How far Xenophanes
himself succeeded in this attempt is a matter of controversy.
The few fragments of his poetry which are
extant do not reveal him as a philosophical monotheist,
so much as a prophet of "One greatest God." His
language (like that of the earlier Hebrew prophets in
praising Jehovah) apparently implies the real existence
of lesser divinities:—
"One God, 'mongst both gods and men He is greatest,
Neither in shape is He like unto mortals, nor thought."Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Bk. V., ch. iv., and by
Eusebius, Præp. Evang. xiii., 13.
Xenophanes scorns the anthropomorphism of his
countrymen, and the lawless deeds which their poets
had attributed to the gods:—
"Mortals think the gods can be born, have their
feelings, voice and form; but, could horses or oxen
draw like men, they too would make their gods after
their own image."Ibid.
"All things did Homer and Hesiod lay on the gods,
Such as with mortals are full of blame and disgrace,
To steal and debauch and outwit one another."Quoted by Ueberweg, as above.
Our prophet, to whose eyes Gentile religiousness was
wholly of the gross Crœsus kind, little suspected that
he had an ally, with such kindred tempers of faith and
scorn, among the very peoples to whom he yearns to
convey his truth. But ages after, when Israel and
Greece had both issued into Christianity, the service of
Xenophanes to the common truth was recounted by
two Church writers—by Clement of Alexandria in his
Stromata, and by Eusebius the historian in his Præparatio
Evangelica.
We find, then, that monotheism had reached its most
absolute expression in Israel in the same decade, in
which the first efforts towards the conception of the
unity of Being were just starting in Greece. But there
is something more to be stated. In spite of the splendid
progress, which it pursued from such beginnings, Greek
philosophy never reached the height on which, with
Second Isaiah, Hebrew prophecy already rests; and
the reason has to do with two points on which we are
now engaged,—the omnipotence and the righteousness
of God.
Professor Pfleiderer remarks: "Even in the idealistic
philosophy of the Greeks ... matter remains, however
sublimated, an irrational something, with which the
Divine power can never come to terms. It was only
in the consciousness, which the prophets of Israel had of
God, that the thought of the Divine omnipotence fully
prevailed."Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion: Contents of the Religious
Consciousness, ch. i. (Eng. trans., vol. iii., p. 291).
We cannot overvalue such high and
impartial testimony to the uniqueness of the Hebrew
doctrine of God, but it needs to be supplemented.
To the prophets' sense of the Divine omnipotence,
we must add their unrivalled consciousness of the
Divine character. To them Jehovah is not only the
Holy, the incomparable God, almighty and sublime;
He is also the true, consistent God. He has a great
purpose, which He has revealed of old to His people,
and to which He remains for ever faithful. To express
this the Hebrews had one word,—the word we translate
righteous. We should often miss our prophet's
meaning, if by righteousness we understood some of the
qualities to which the term is often applied by us: if,
for instance, we used it in the general sense of morality,
or if we gave it the technical meaning, which it bears
in Christian theology, of justification from guilt. We
shall afterwards devote a chapter to the exposition of
its meaning in Second Isaiah, but let us here look at its
use in ch. xli. In ver. 26, it is applied to the person
whose prediction turns out to be correct: men are to
say of him "right" or "righteous." Here it is evident
that the Hebrew—ssaddîq—is used in its simplest
meaning, like the Latin rectus, and our "right," of what
has been shown to be in accordance with truth or fact.
In ver. 2, again, though the syntax is obscure, it seems
to have the general sense of good faith with the ability to
ensure success. Righteousness is here associated with
Cyrus, because he has not been called for nothing,
but in good faith for a purpose which will be carried
through. Jehovah's righteousness, then, will be His
trueness, His good faith, His consistency; and indeed
this is the sense which it must evidently bear in
ver. 10. Take it with the context: But thou, Israel, My
servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham who
loved Me, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth
and its corners, I called thee and said unto thee, Thou art
My servant. I have chosen thee, and will not cast thee
away. Fear not, for I am with thee. Look not round in
despair, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee; yea, I
will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of
My righteousness. Here righteousness evidently means
that Jehovah will act in good faith to the people He has
called, that He will act consistently with His anciently
revealed purpose towards them. Hitherto Israel has
had nothing but the memory that God called them, and
the conscience that He chose them. Now Jehovah will
vindicate this conscience in outward fact. He will
carry through His calling of His people, and perform
His promise. How He will do this, He proceeds to
relate. Israel's enemies shall become as nothing
(vv. 11, 12). Israel himself, though a poor worm of
a people, shall be changed to the utmost conceivable
opposite of a worm—even a sharp threshing instrument
having teeth—a people who shall leave their mark on the
world. They shall overcome all difficulties and rejoice
in Jehovah. Their redemption shall be accomplished in a
series of evident facts. The poor and the needy are seeking
water, and there is none, their tongue faileth for thirst;
I, Jehovah, will answer them, I the God of Israel will not
forsake them. And this shall be done on such a scale,
that all the world will wonder and be convinced,
vv. 18-19: I will open on the bare heights rivers, and
in the midst of the plains fountains. I will make the
desert a pool of water, and the dry ground water-springs.
I will plant in the wilderness cedars and acacias and
myrtles and oil-trees; I will plant in the desert pines,
planes and sherbins together. Do not let us spoil the
meaning of this passage by taking these verses literally,
or even as illustrative of the kind of restoration which
Israel was to enjoy. This vast figure of a well-watered
and planted desert the prophet uses rather to illustrate
the scale on which the Restoration will take place: its
evident extent and splendour. That they may see and
know and consider and understand together, that Jehovah
hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.
The whole passage, then, tells us what God means by
His righteousness. It is His fidelity to His calling of
Israel, and to His purpose with His people. It is the
quality by which He cannot forsake His own, but carries
through and completes His promises to them; by which
He vindicates and justifies, in facts so large that they
are evident to all mankind, His ancient word by His
prophets.See further on the subject the chapter on the Righteousness of
Israel and of God, Chapter XIV. of this volume.
This lengthened exposition will not have been in
vain, if it has made clear to us, that Hebrew monotheism
owed its unique quality to the emphasis, which the
prophets laid upon the two truths of the Power and
the Character of God. There was One Supreme Being,
infinite in might, and with one purpose running down
the ages, which He had plainly revealed, and to which
He remained constant. The people, who knew this, did
not need to wait for the fulfilment of certain test-predictions
before trusting Him as the One God. Test-predictions
and their fulfilment might be needful for
the heathen, from whose minds the idea of One
Supreme Being with such a character had vanished;
the heathen might need to be convinced by instances of
Jehovah's omniscience, for omniscience was the most
Divine attribute of which they had conceived. But
Israel's faith rested upon glories in the Divine nature
of which omniscience was the mere consequence. Israel
knew God was Almighty and All-true, and that was
enough.
Note upon Jehovah's Claim to Cyrus.
In ver. 25 a phrase is used of Cyrus which is very obscure,
and to which, considering its vagueness even upon the most
definite construction, far too much importance has been attached.
The meaning of the words, the tenses, the syntax—perhaps even
the original text itself—of this verse are uncertain. The English
revisers give, I have raised up one from the north, and he is
come; from the rising of the sun one that calleth upon My
Name. This is probably the true syntax.And that which runs: ... he is come, from the rising of the sun
he calleth upon My name (Bredenkamp) is wrong.
But in what tense
is the verb to call, and what does calling upon My name mean?
In the Old Testament the phrase is used in two senses,—to invoke
or adore, and to proclaim or celebrate the name of a person.The former of these in ch. lxiv. 7; the latter in xliv. 5.
As
long as scholars understood that Cyrus was a monotheist, there
was a temptation to choose the former of these meanings, and
to find in the verse Jehovah's claim upon the Persian, as a
worshipper of Himself, the One True God. But this interpretation
received a shock from the discovery of a proclamation of
Cyrus after his entry into Babylon, in which he invokes the
names of Babylonian deities, and calls himself their "servant."Translation of the Cyrus-cylinder in "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil,"
by Halévy, Revue des Études Juives, No. 1, 1880.
Of course his doing so in the year 538 does not necessarily
discredit a description of him as a monotheist eight years before.
Between 548 and 546—the probable date of ch. xli.—a prophet
might in all good faith have hailed as a worshipper of Jehovah
a Persian who still stood in the rising of the sun,—who had not
yet issued from the east and its radiant repute of a religion
purer than the Babylonian; although eight years afterwards, from
motives of policy, the same king acknowledged the gods of his
new subjects. This may be; but there is a more natural way
out of the difficulty. Is it fair to lay upon the expression, calleth
on My name, so precise a meaning as that of a strict monotheism?
Some have turned to the other use of the verb, and, taking it in
the future tense, have translated, who shall proclaim or celebrate
My name,—which Cyrus surely did, when, in the name of Jehovah,
he drew up the edict for the return of the Jews to Palestine.Ezra i. 2; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23.
But do we need to put even this amount of meaning upon the
phrase? In itself it is vague, but it also stands parallel to
another vague phrase: I have raised up one from the north, and
he is come; from the sunrising one who calleth on My name.
Taken in apposition to the phrase he is come, calleth on My name
may mean no more than that, answering to the instigation of
Jehovah, and owning His impulse, Cyrus by his career proclaimed
or celebrated Jehovah's name. In any case, we have said enough
to show that, in our comparative ignorance of what Cyrus' faith
was, and in face of the elastic use of the phrase to call on the
name of, it is quite unwarrantable to maintain that the prophet
must have meant a strict monotheist, and therefore absurd to
draw the inference that the prophet was incorrect. A way has
been attempted out of the difficulty by slightly altering the text,
and so obtaining the version, I have raised up one from the
north, and he is come; from the sunrise I call him by name.אקרא בשמו for יקֹרא בשמי.
This is a change which is in harmony with ch. xlv. 3, 4, but has
otherwise no evidence in its favour.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PASSION OF GOD.
Isaiah xlii. 13-17.
At the beginning of ch. xlii. we reach one of those
distinct stages, the frequent appearance of which
in our prophecy assures us, that, for all its mingling and
recurrent style, the prophecy is a unity with a distinct,
if somewhat involved, progress of thought. For while
chs. xl. and xli. establish the sovereignty and declare the
character of the One True God before His people and
the heathen, ch. xlii. takes what is naturally the next
step, of publishing to both these classes His Divine
will. This purpose of God is set forth in the first
seven verses of the chapter. It is identified with a
human Figure, who is to be God's agent upon earth,
and who is styled the Servant of Jehovah. Next to
Jehovah Himself, the Servant of Jehovah is by far the
most important personage within our prophet's gaze.
He is named, described, commissioned and encouraged
over and over again throughout the prophecy; his
character and indispensable work are hung upon with a
frequency and a fondness almost equal to the steadfast
faith, which the prophet reposes in Jehovah Himself.
Were we following our prophecy chapter by chapter,
now would be the time to put the question, Who
is this Servant, who is suddenly introduced to us?
and to look ahead for the various and even conflicting
answers, which rise from the subsequent chapters.
But we agreed, for clearness' sake,See Introduction.
to take all the
passages about the Servant, which are easily detached
from the rest of the prophecy, and treat by themselves,
and to continue in the meantime our prophet's main
theme of the Power and Righteousness of God as
shown forth in the deliverance of His people from
Babylon. Accordingly, at present we pass over xlii.
1-9, keeping this firmly in mind, however, that God
has appointed for His work upon earth, including, as
it does, the ingathering of His people and the conversion
of the Gentiles, a Servant,—a human figure of
lofty character and unfailing perseverance, who makes
God's work of redemption his own, puts his heart into it,
and is upheld by God's hand. God, let us understand,
has committed His cause upon earth to a human agent.
God's commission of His Servant is hailed by a
hymn. Earth answers the proclamation of the new
things which the Almighty has declared (ver. 9) by a
new song (vv. 10-13). But this song does not sing of
the Servant; its subject is Jehovah Himself.
Sing to Jehovah a new song,
His praise from the end of the earth;
Ye that go down to the sea, and its fulness,
Isles, and their dwellers!
Let be loud,—the wilderness and its townships,
Villages that Kedar inhabits!
Let them ring out,—the dwellers of Sela!
From the top of the hills let them shout!
Let them give to Jehovah the glory,
And publish His praise in the Isles!
Jehovah as hero goes forth,
As a man of war stirs up zeal,
Shouts the alarm and battle cry,
Against his foes proves Himself hero.
The terms of the last four lines are military. Most of
them will be found in the historical books, in descriptions
of the onset of Israel's battles with the heathen.
But it is no human warrior to whom they are here
applied. They who sing have forgotten the Servant.
Their hearts are warm only with this, that Jehovah
Himself will come down to earth to give the alarm, and
to bear the brunt of the battle. And to such a hope
He now responds, speaking also of Himself and not of
the Servant. His words are very intense, and glow
and strain with inward travail.
I have long time kept my peace,
Am dumb and hold myself in:
Like a woman in travail I gasp,
Pant and palpitate together.
Remember it is God who speaks these words of Himself,
and then think what they mean of unshareable
thought and pain, of solitary yearning and effort. But
from the pain comes forth at last the power.
I waste mountains and hills,
And all their herb I parch;
And I have set rivers for islands,
And marshes I parch.
Yet it is not the passion of a mere physical effort that
is in God; not mere excitement of war that thrills
Him. But the suffering of men is upon Him, and He
has taken their redemption to heart. He had said to
His Servant (vv. 6, 7): I give thee ... to open the
blind eyes, to bring out from prison the bound, from the
house of bondage the dwellers in darkness. But here
He Himself puts on the sympathy and strain of that
work.
And I will make the blind to walk in a way they know not,
By paths they know not I will guide them;
Turn darkness before them to light,
And serrated land to level.
These are the things that I do, and do not remit them.
They fall backwards, with shame are they shamed,
That put trust in a Carving,
That do say to a Cast, Ye are our Gods.So the grammar of the original.
Now this pair of passages, in one of which God lays
the work of redemption upon His human agent, and in
another Himself puts on its passion and travail, are
only one instance of a duality that runs through the
whole of the Old Testament. As we repeatedly saw
in the prophecies of Isaiah himself,Vol. i., pp. 144, 334.
there is a double
promise of the future through the Old Testament:—first,
that God will achieve the salvation of Israel by an
extraordinary human personality, who is figured now
as a King, now as a Prophet and now as a Priest;
but, second also, that God Himself, in undeputed, unshared
power, will come visibly to deliver His people
and to reign over them. These two lines of prophecy
run parallel, and even entangled, through the Old
Testament, but within its bounds no attempt is made
to reconcile them. They pass from it still separate, to
find their synthesis, as we all know, in One of whom
each is the incomplete prophecy. While considering
the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah, which run upon the
first of these two lines, we pointed out, that, though
standing in historical connection with Christ, they were
not prophecies of His divinity. Lofty and expansive
as were the titles they attributed to the Messiah, these
titles did not imply more than an earthly ruler of
extraordinary power and dignity. But we added that
in the other and concurrent line of prophecy, and
especially in those well-developed stages of it which
appear in Isa. xl.-lxvi., we should find the true Old
Testament promise of the Deity in human form and
tabernacling among men. We urged that, if the
divinity of Christ was to be seen in the Old Testament,
we should more naturally find it in the line of promise,
which speaks of God Himself descending to battle and
to suffer by the side of men, than in the line that lifts a
human ruler almost to the right hand of God. We have
now come to a passage, which gives us the opportunity
of testing this connection, which we have alleged
between the so-called anthropomorphism of the Old
Testament, and the Incarnation, which is the glory of
the New.
When God presents Himself in the Old Testament
as His people's Saviour, it is not always as Isaiah
mostly saw Him, in awful power and majesty—a King
high and lifted up, or as coming from far, burning and
thick-rising smoke, and overflowing streams; causing the
peal of His voice to be heard, and the lighting down of His
arm to be seen, in the fury of anger and devouring fire—bursting
and torrent and hailstones.Isa. xxxi.
But in a large
number of passages, of which the one before us and the
famous first six verses of ch. lxiii. are perhaps the most
forcible, the Almighty is clothed with human passion
and agony. He is described as loving, hating, showing
zeal or jealousy, fear, repentance and scorn. He bides
His time, suddenly awakes to effort, and makes that
effort in weakness, pain and struggle, so extreme that
He likens Himself not only to a solitary man in the
ardour of battle, but to a woman in her unshareable
hour of travail. To use a technical word, the prophets
in their descriptions of God do not hesitate to be
anthropopathic—imparting to Deity the passions of
men.
In order to appreciate the full effect of this habit of
the Jewish religion, we must contrast it with some
principles of that religion, with which at first it seems
impossible to reconcile it.
No religion more necessarily implies the spirituality
of God than does the Jewish. It is true that in the
pages of the Old Testament, you will nowhere find this
formally expressed. No Jewish prophet ever said in so
many words what Jesus said to the woman of Samaria,
God is spirit. In our own prophecy, spirit is frequently
used, not to define the nature of God, but to express
His power and the effectiveness of His will. But the
Jewish Scriptures insist throughout upon the sublimity
of God, or, to use their own term, His holiness. He is
the Most High, Creator, Lord,—the Force and Wisdom
that are behind nature and history. It is a sin to make
any image of Him; it is an error to liken Him to man.
I am God and not man, the Holy One.Hosea xi. 9.
We have seen
how absolutely the Divine omnipotence and sublimity are
expressed by our own prophet, and we shall find Him
again speaking thus: My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher
than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.Ch. lv. 8, 9.
But perhaps the doctrine of our prophet which most
effectively sets forth God's loftiness and spirituality is
his doctrine of God's word. God has but to speak and
a thing is created or a deed done. He calls and the
agent He needs is there; He sets His word upon him
and the work is as good as finished. My word that
goeth forth out of My mouth, it shall not return unto Me
void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and
shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.Ibid. ver. 11.
Omnipotence
could not farther go. It would seem that all
man needed from God was a word,—the giving of a
command, that a thing must be.
Yet it is precisely in our prophecy, that we find the
most extreme ascriptions to the Deity of personal effort,
weakness and pain. The same chapters which celebrate
God's sublimity and holiness, which reveal the eternal
counsels of God working to their inevitable ends in time,
which also insist, as this very chapter does, that for the
performance of works of mercy and morality God brings
to bear the slow creative forces that are in nature, or
which again (as in other chapters) attribute all to the
power of His simple word,—these same Scriptures
suddenly change their style and, after the most human
manner, clothe the Deity in the travail and passion of
flesh. Why is it, that instead of aspiring still higher
from those sublime conceptions of God to some consummate
expression of His unity, as for instance in
Islam, or of His spirituality, as in certain modern
philosophies, prophecy dashes thus thunderously down
upon our hearts with the message, scattered in countless,
broken words, that all this omnipotence and all
this sublimity are expended and realised for men only
in passion and in pain?
It is no answer, which is given by many in our day,
that after all the prophets were but frail men, unable
to stay upon the high flight to which they sometimes
soared, and obliged to sacrifice their logic to the fondness
of their hearts and the general habit of man to
make his god after his own image. No easy sneer
like that can solve so profound a moral paradox. We
must seek the solution otherwise, and earnest minds
will probably find it along one or other of the two
following paths.
1. The highest moral ideal is not, and never can be,
the righteousness that is regnant, but that which is
militant and agonizing. It is the deficiency of many
religions, that while representing God as the Judge and
almighty executor of righteousness, they have not
revealed Him as its advocate and champion as well.
Christ gave us a very plain lesson upon this. As He
clearly showed, when He refused the offer of all the
kingdoms of the world, the highest perfection is not to
be omnipotence upon the side of virtue, but to be there
as patience, sympathy and love. To will righteousness,
and to rule life from above in favour of righteousness,
is indeed Divine; but if these were the highest attributes
of divinity, and if they exhausted the Divine interest
in our race, then man himself, with his conscience to
sacrifice himself on behalf of justice or of truth,—man
himself, with his instinct to make the sins of others
his burden, and their purity his agonizing endeavour,
would indeed be higher than his God. Had Jehovah
been nothing but the righteous Judge of all the earth,
then His witnesses and martyrs, and His prophets who
took to themselves the conscience and reproach of their
people's sins, would have been as much more admirable
than Himself, as the soldier who serves his country on
the battle-field or lays down his life for his people is
more deserving of their gratitude and more certain of
their devotion, than the king who equips him, sends him
forth—and himself stays at home.
The God of the Old Testament is not such a God.
In the moral warfare to which He has predestined His
creatures, He Himself descends to participate. He is
not abstract—that is, withdrawn—Holiness, nor mere
sovereign Justice enthroned in heaven. He is One
who arises and comes down for the salvation of men,
who makes virtue His Cause and righteousness His
Passion. He is no whit behind the chiefest of His
servants. No seraph burns as God burns with ardour
for justice; no angel of the presence flies more swiftly
than Himself to the front rank of the failing battle.
The human Servant, who is pictured in our prophecy, is
more absolutely identified with suffering and agonizing
men than any angel could be; but even he does not
stand more closely by their side, nor suffer more on
their behalf, than the God who sends him forth. For
the Lord stirreth up jealousy like a man of war; in all His
people's affliction He is afflicted; against His enemies He
beareth Himself as a hero. So much from the side of
righteousness.
2. But take the equally Divine attribute of love. When
a religion affirms that God is love, it gives immense
hostages. What is love without pity and compassion
and sympathy? and what are these but self-imposed
weakness and pain? Christ has told us of the greatest
love. Greater love than this hath no man, that a man
lay down his life for his friends; and the cost and
sacrifice in which He thus outmatched man is one that
the prophets before He came did not hesitate to impute
to God. As far as human language is adequate for
such a task, they picture God's love for men as costing
Him so much. He painfully pleads for His people's
loyalty; He travails in pain for their new birth and
growth in holiness; in all their affliction He is afflicted;
and He meets their stubbornness, not with the swift
sentence of outraged holiness, but with longsuffering and
patience, if so in the end He may win them. But the
pain, that is thus essentially inseparable from love,
reaches its acme, when the beloved are not only in
danger but in sin, when not only the future of their
holiness is uncertain, but their guilty past bars the way
to any future at all. We saw how Jeremiah's love thus
took upon itself the conscience and reproach of Israel's
sin; how much distress and anguish, how much sympathy
and self-sacrificing labour, and at last how much
hopeless endurance of the common calamity, that sin
cost the noble prophet, though he might so easily have
escaped it all. Now even thus does God deal with His
people's sins; not only setting them in the light of His
awful countenance, but taking them upon His heart;
making them not only the object of His hate, but the
anguish and the effort of His love. Jeremiah was a
weak mortal, and God is the Omnipotent. Therefore,
the issue of His agony shall be what His servant's never
could effect, the redemption of Israel from sin; but in
sympathy and in travail the Deity, though omnipotent,
is no whit behind the man.
We have said enough to prove our case, that the true
Old Testament prophecy of the nature and work of
Jesus Christ is found not so much in the long promise
of the exalted human ruler, for whom Israel's eyes
looked, as in the assurance of God's own descent to
battle with His people's foes and to bear their sins. In
this God, omnipotent, yet in His zeal and love capable
of passion, who before the Incarnation was afflicted
in all His people's affliction, and before the Cross made
their sin His burden and their salvation His agony, we
see the love that was in Jesus Christ. For Jesus, too, is
absolute holiness, yet not far off. He, too, is righteousness
militant at our side, militant and victorious. He,
too, has made our greatest suffering and shame His
own problem and endeavour. He is anxious for us just
where conscience bids us be most anxious about ourselves.
He helps us, because He feels when we feel
our helplessness the most. Never before or since in
humanity has righteousness been perfectly victorious as
in Him. Never before or since, in the whole range of
being, has any one felt as He did all the sin of man with
all the conscience of God. He claims to forgive, as God
forgives; to be able to save, as we know only God can
save. And the proof of these claims, apart from the
experience of their fulfilment in our own lives, is that
the same infinite love was in Him, the same agony
and willingness to sacrifice Himself for men, which we
have seen made evident in the Passion of God.
CHAPTER IX.
FOUR POINTS OF A TRUE RELIGION.
Isaiah xliii.-xlviii.
We have now surveyed the governing truths of
Isa. xl.-xlviii.: the One God, omnipotent and
righteous; the One People, His servants and witnesses
to the world; the nothingness of all other gods and
idols before Him; the vanity and ignorance of their
diviners, compared with His power, who, because He
has a purpose working through all history, and is both
faithful to it and almighty to bring it to pass, can
inspire His prophets to declare beforehand the facts
that shall be. He has brought His people into captivity
for a set time, the end of which is now near. Cyrus
the Persian, already upon the horizon, and threatening
Babylon, is to be their deliverer. But whomever He
raises up on Israel's behalf, God is always Himself their
foremost champion. Not only is His word upon them,
but His heart is among them. He bears the brunt of
their battle, and their deliverance, political and spiritual,
is His own travail and agony. Whomever else He
summons on the stage, He remains the true hero of the
drama.
Now, chs. xliii.-xlviii. are simply the elaboration and
more urgent offer of all these truths, under the sense of
the rapid approach of Cyrus upon Babylon. They declare
again God's unity, omnipotence and righteousness,
they confirm His forgiveness of His people, they repeat
the laughter at the idols, they give us nearer views of
Cyrus, they answer the doubts that many orthodox
Israelites felt about this Gentile Messiah; chs. xlvi. and
xlvii. describe Babylon as if on the eve of her fall,
and ch. xlviii., after Jehovah more urgently than ever
presses upon reluctant Israel to show the results of her
discipline in Babylon, closes with a call to leave the
accursed city, as if the way were at last open. This
call has been taken as the mark of a definite division of
our prophecy. But too much must not be put upon it.
It is indeed the first call to depart from Babylon; but
it is not the last. And although ch. xlix., and the
chapters following, speak more of Zion's Restoration and
less of the Captivity, yet ch. xlix. is closely connected
with ch. xlviii., and we do not finally leave Babylon
behind till ch. lii. 12. Nevertheless, in the meantime
ch. xlviii. will form a convenient point on which to
keep our eyes.
Cyrus, when we last saw him, was upon the banks
of the Halys, 546 b.c., startling Crœsus and the Lydian
Empire into extraordinary efforts, both of a religious and
political kind, to avert his attack. He had just come
from an unsuccessful attempt upon the northern frontier
of Babylon, and at first it appeared as if he were to
find no better fortune on the western border of Lydia.
In spite of his superior numbers, the Lydian army
kept the ground on which he met them in battle. But
Crœsus, thinking that the war was over for the season,
fell back soon afterwards on Sardis, and Cyrus, following
him up by forced marches, surprised him under
the walls of the city, routed the famous Lydian cavalry
by the novel terror of his camels, and after a siege of
fourteen days sent a few soldiers to scale a side of the
citadel too steep to be guarded by the defenders; and
so Sardis, its king and its empire, lay at his feet. This
Lydian campaign of Cyrus, which is related by Herodotus,
is worth noting here for the light it throws on
the character of the man, whom according to our
prophecy, God chose to be His chief instrument in
that generation. If his turning back from Babylonia,
eight years before he was granted an easy entrance to
her capital, shows how patiently Cyrus could wait upon
fortune, his quick march upon Sardis is the brilliant
evidence that when fortune showed the way, she found
this Persian an obedient and punctual follower. The
Lydian campaign forms as good an illustration as we
shall find of these texts of our prophet: He pursueth
them, he passeth in safety; by a way he almost treads
not with his feet. He cometh upon satraps as on mortar,
and as the potter treadeth upon clay (xli. 3, 25). I
have holden his right hand to bring down before him
nations, and the loins of kings will I loosen,—poor ungirt
Crœsus, for instance, relaxing so foolishly after his
victory!—to open before him doors, and gates shall not
be shut,—so was Sardis unready for him,—I go before
thee, and will level the ridges; doors of brass I will shiver,
and bolts of iron cut in sunder. And I will give to thee
treasures of darkness, hidden riches of secret places
(xlv. 1-3). Some have found in this an allusion to the
immense hoards of Crœsus, which fell to Cyrus with
Sardis.
With Lydia, the rest of Asia Minor, including the
cities of the Greeks, who held the coast of the Ægean,
was bound to come into the Persian's hands. But the
process of subjection turned out to be a long one. The
Greeks got no help from Greece. Sparta sent to Cyrus
an embassy with a threat, but the Persian laughed at it
and it came to nothing. Indeed, Sparta's message was
only a temptation to this irresistible warrior to carry his
fortunate arms into Europe. His own presence, however,
was required in the East, and his lieutenants
found the thorough subjection of Asia Minor a task
requiring several years. It cannot have well been
concluded before 540, and while it was in progress we
understand why Cyrus did not again attack Babylonia.
Meantime, he was occupied with lesser tribes to the
north of Media.
Cyrus' second campaign against Babylonia opened in
539. This time he avoided the northern wall from
which he had been repulsed in 546. Attacking
Babylonia from the east, he crossed the Tigris, beat
the Babylonian king into Borsippa, laid siege to that
fortress and marched on Babylon, which was held by the
king's son, Belshazzar, Bil-sar-ussur. All the world
knows the supreme generalship by which Cyrus is
said to have captured Babylon without assaulting the
walls from whose impregnable height their defenders
showered ridicule upon him; how he made himself
master of Nebuchadrezzar's great bason at Sepharvaim,
and turned the Euphrates into it; and how, before the
Babylonians had time to notice the dwindling of the
waters in their midst, his soldiers waded down the river
bed, and by the river gates surprised the careless citizens
upon a night of festival. But recent research makes
it more probable that her inhabitants themselves surrendered
Babylon to Cyrus.
Now it was during the course of the events just
sketched, but before their culmination in the fall of
Babylon, that chs. xliii.-xlviii. were composed. That,
at least, is what they themselves suggest. In three
passages, which deal with Cyrus or with Babylon, some
of the verbs are in the past, some in the future. Those
in the past tense describe the calling and full career of
Cyrus or the beginning of preparations against Babylon.
Those in the future tense promise Babylon's fall or
Cyrus' completion of the liberation of the Jews. Thus,
in ch. xliii. 14 it is written: For your sakes I have sent to
Babylon, and I will bring down as fugitives all of them,
and the Chaldeans in the ships of their rejoicing. Surely
these words announce that Babylon's fate was already
on the way to her, but not yet arrived. Again, in the
verses which deal with Cyrus himself, xlv. 1-6, which
we have partly quoted, the Persian is already grasped
by his right hand by God, and called; but his career is
not over, for God promises to do various things for him.
The third passage is ver. 13 of the same chapter, where
Jehovah says, I have stirred him up in righteousness,
and, changing to the future tense, all his ways will I
level; he shall build My city, and My captivity shall he
send away. What could be more precise than the
tenor of all these passages? If people would only
take our prophet at his word; if with all their belief
in the inspiration of the text of Scripture, they would
only pay attention to its grammar, which surely, on
their own theory, is also thoroughly sacred, then
there would be to-day no question about the date of
Isa. xl.-xlviii. As plainly as grammar can enable it
to do, this prophecy speaks of Cyrus' campaign against
Babylon as already begun, but of its completion as still
future. Ch. xlviii., it is true, assumes events as still
farther developed, but we will come to it afterwards.
During Cyrus' preparations, then, for invading
Babylonia, and in prospect of her certain fall, chs.
xliii.-xlviii. repeat with greater detail and impetuosity
the truths, which we have already gathered from chs.
xl.-xlii.
1. And first of these comes naturally the omnipotence,
righteousness and personal urgency of Jehovah Himself.
Everything is again assured by His power and
purpose; everything starts from His initiative. To
illustrate this we could quote from almost every
verse in the chapters under consideration. I, I
Jehovah, and there is none beside Me a Saviour. I
am God—El. Also from to-day on I am He.From to-day on, Ez. xlviii. 35; but others take it Also to-day I am
He.
I will
work, and who shall let it? I am Jehovah. I, I am He
that blotteth out thy transgressions. I First, and I Last;
and beside Me there is no God—Elohim. Is there a God,
Eloah, beside Me? yea, there is no Rock; I know not
any. I Jehovah, Maker of all things. I am Jehovah,
and there is none else; beside Me there is no God. I am
Jehovah, and there is none else. Former of light and
Creator of darkness, Maker of peace and Creator of evil,
I am Jehovah, Maker of all these. I am Jehovah, and
there is none else, God, Elohim, beside Me, God-Righteous,
El Ssaddîq, and a Saviour: there is none
except Me. Face Me, and be saved all ends of the earth;
for I am God, El, and there is none else. Only in Jehovah—of
Me shall they say—are righteousnesses and strength.
I am God, El, and there is none else; God, Elohim, and
there is none like Me. I am He; I am First, yea, I am
Last. I, I have spoken. I have declared it.
It is of advantage to gather together so many
passages—and they might have been increased—from
chs. xliii.-xlviii. They let us see at a glance what a part
the first personal pronoun plays in the Divine revelation.
Beneath every religious truth is the unity of
God. Behind every great movement is the personal
initiative and urgency of God. And revelation is, in
its essence, not the mere publication of truths about
God, but the personal presence and communication to
men of God Himself. Three words are used for Deity—El,
Eloah, Elohim—exhausting the Divine terminology.
But besides these, there is a formula which puts the
point even more sharply: I am He. It was the habit
of the Hebrew nation, and indeed of all Semitic peoples,
who shared their reverent unwillingness to name the
Deity, to speak of Him simply by the third personal
pronoun. The Book of Job is full of instances of the
habit, and it also appears in many proper names, as
Eli-hu, "My God-is-He," Abi-hu, "My-Father-is-He."
Renan adduces the practice as evidence that the
Semites were "naturally monotheistic,"Renan's theory of the "natural monotheism" of the Semites was
first published in his Histoire des Langues Semitiques some forty years
ago. Nearly every Semitic scholar of repute found some occasion or
other to refute it. But with Renan's charming genius for neglecting
all facts that disturb an artistic arrangement of his subject, the overwhelming
evidence against the natural monotheism of the Semite has
been ignored by him, and he repeats his theory unmodified in his
Histoire du Peuple d'Israel, i., 31, published 1888.
—as evidence
for what was never the case! But if there was no
original Semitic monotheism for this practice to prove,
we may yet take the practice as evidence for the personality
of the Hebrew God. The God of the prophets
is not the it, which Mr. Matthew Arnold so strangely
thought he had identified in their writings, and which,
in philosophic language, that unsophisticated Orientals
would never have understood, he so cumbrously named
"a tendency not ourselves that makes for righteousness."
Not anything like this is the God, who here
urges His self-consciousness upon men. He says, I am
He,—the unseen Power, who was too awful and too dark
to be named, but about whom, when in their terror and
ignorance His worshippers sought to describe Him,
they assumed that He was a Person, and called Him,
as they would have called one of themselves, by a
personal pronoun. By the mouth of His prophet this
vague and awful He declares Himself as I, I, I,—no
mere tendency, but a living Heart and urgent Will,
personal character and force of initiative, from which
all tendencies move and take their direction and strength.
I am He.
History is strewn with the errors of those, who have
sought from God something else than Himself. All the
degradation, even of the highest religions, has sprung
from this, that their votaries forgot that religion was a
communion with God Himself, a life in the power of
His character and will, and employed it as the mere
communication either of material benefits or of intellectual
ideas. It has been the mistake of millions to see
in revelation nothing but the telling of fortunes, the
recovery of lost things, decision in quarrels, direction
in war, or the bestowal of some personal favour. Such
are like the person, of whom St. Luke tells us, who
saw nothing in Christ but the recoverer of a bad debt:
Master, speak unto my brother that he divide the inheritance
with me; and their superstition is as far from true
faith as the prodigal's old heart, when he said, Give me
the portion of goods that falleth unto me, was from the
other heart, when, in his poverty and woe, he cast
himself utterly upon his Father: I will arise and go to
my Father. But no less a mistake do those make, who
seek from God not Himself, but only intellectual
information. The first Reformers did well, who brought
the common soul to the personal grace of God; but
many of their successors, in a controversy, whose dust
obscured the sun and allowed them to see but the
length of their own weapons, used Scripture chiefly as
a store of proofs for separate doctrines of the faith, and
forgot that God Himself was there at all. And though
in these days we seek from the Bible many desirable
things, such as history, philosophy, morals, formulas of
assurance of salvation, the forgiveness of sins, maxims
for conduct, yet all these will avail us little, until we
have found behind them the living Character, the Will,
the Grace, the Urgency, the Almighty Power, by trust
in whom and communion with whom alone they are
added unto us.
Now the deity, who claims in these chapters to be
the One, Sovereign God, was the deity of a little tribe.
I am Jehovah, I Jehovah am God, I Jehovah am He.
We cannot too much impress ourselves with the
historical wonder of this. In a world, which contained
Babylon and Egypt with their large empires, Lydia
with all her wealth, and the Medes with all their force;
which was already feeling the possibilities of the great
Greek life, and had the Persians, the masters of the
future, upon its threshold,—it was the god of none of
these, but of the obscurest tribe of their bondsmen,
who claimed the Divine Sovereignty for Himself; it
was the pride of none of these, but the faith of the
most despised and, at its heart, most mournful religion
of the time, which offered an explanation of history,
claimed the future and was assured that the biggest
forces of the world were working for its ends. Thus
saith Jehovah, King of Israel, and his Redeemer Jehovah
of Hosts, I First, and I Last; and beside Me there is no
God. Is there a God beside Me? yea, there is no Rock;
I know not any.
By itself this were a cheap claim, and might have
been made by any idol among them, were it not for
the additional proofs by which it is supported. We
may summarise these additional proofs as threefold:
Laughter, Gospel and Control of History,—three
marvels in the experience of exiles. People, mournfullest
and most despised, their mouths were to be
filled with the laughter of Truth's scorn upon the
idols of their conquerors. Men, most tormented by
conscience and filled with the sense of sin, they were
to hear the gospel of forgiveness. Nation, against
whom all fact seemed to be working, their God told
them, alone of all nations of the world, that He
controlled for their sake the facts of to-day and the
issues of to-morrow.
2. A burst of laughter comes very weirdly out of
the Exile. But we have already seen the intellectual
right to scorn which these crushed captives had. They
were monotheists and their enemies were image
worshippers. Monotheism, even in its rudest forms,
raises men intellectually,—it is difficult to say by how
many degrees. Indeed, degrees do not measure the
mental difference between an idolater and him who
serves with his mind, as well as with all his heart
and soul, One God, Maker of heaven and earth: it is
a difference that is absolute. Israel in captivity was
conscious of this, and therefore, although the souls of
those sad men were filled beyond any in the world
with the heaviness of sorrow and the humility of
guilt, their proud faces carried a scorn they had every
right to wear, as the servants of the One God. See
how this scorn breaks forth in the following passage.
Its text is corrupt, and its rhythm, at this distance
from the voices that utter it, is hardly perceptible;
but thoroughly evident is its tone of intellectual
superiority, and the scorn of it gushes forth in
impetuous, unequal verse, the force of which the
smoothness and dignity of our Authorised Version has
unfortunately disguised.
1.
Formers of an idol are all of them waste,
And their darlings are utterly worthless!
And their confessorsLiterally witnesses—i.e., of the idols.
—they! they see not and know not
Enough to feel shame.
Who has fashioned a god, or an image has cast?
'Tis to be utterly worthless.
Lo! all that depend on't are shamed,
And the gravers are less than men:
Let all of them gather and stand.
They quake and are shamed in the lump.
2.
Iron-graver—he takesThis word is wanting in the text, which is corrupt here. Some
supply the word sharpeneth, imagining that חדד has fallen away
from the beginning of the verse, through confusion with the יחד
which ends the previous verse; or they bring יחד itself, changing it
to חדד. But evidently חרשׁ ברזל begins the verse; cf. the parallel
חרשׁ עצים which begins ver. 13.
a chisel,
And works with hot coals,
And with hammers he moulds;
And has done it with the arm of his strength.
—Anon hungers, and strength goes;
Drinks no water, and wearies!
3.
Wood-graver—he draws a line,
Marks it with pencil,
Makes it with planes,
And with compasses marks it.
So has made it the build of a man,
To a grace that is human—
To inhabit a house, cutting it cedars.Here, again, the text is uncertain. With some critics I have
borrowed for this verse the first three words of the following verse.
4.
Or one takes an ilex or oak,
And picks for himself from the trees of the wood;
One has planted a pine, and the rain makes it big,
And 'tis there for a man to burn.
And one has taken of it, and been warmed;
Yea, kindles and bakes bread,—
Yea, works out a god, and has worshipped it!
Has made it an idol, and bows down before it!
Part of it burns he with fire,
Upon part eats flesh,
Roasts roast and is full;
Yea, warms him and saith,
"Aha, I am warm, have seen fire!"
And the rest of it—to a god he has made—to his image!
He bows to it, worships it, prays to it,
And says, "Save me, for my god art thou!"
5.
They know not and deem not!
For He hath bedaubed, past seeing, their eyes,
Past thinking, their hearts.
And none takes to heart,
Neither has knowledge nor sense to say,
"Part of it burned I in fire—
Yea, have baked bread on its coals,
Do roast flesh that I eat,—
And the rest o't, to a Disgust should I make it?
The trunk of a tree should I worship?"
Herder of ashes,Perhaps feeder on ashes.
a duped heart has sent him astray,
That he cannot deliver his soul, neither say,
"Is there not a lie in my right hand?"
Is not the prevailing note in these verses surprise at
the mental condition of an idol-worshipper? They see
not and know not enough to feel shame. None takes it to
heart, neither has knowledge nor sense to say, Part of it I
have burned in fire ... and the rest, should I make it a
god? This intellectual confidence, breaking out into
scorn, is the second great token of truth, which distinguishes
the religion of this poor slave of a people.
3. The third token is its moral character. The
intellectual truth of a religion would go for little, had
the religion nothing to say to man's moral sense—did
it not concern itself with his sins, had it no redemption
for his guilt. Now, the chapters before us are full of
judgement and mercy. If they have scorn for the idols,
they have doom for sin, and grace for the sinner. They
are no mere political manifesto for the occasion, declaring
how Israel shall be liberated from Babylon. They
are a gospel for sinners in all time. By this they farther
accredit themselves as a universal religion.
God is omnipotent, yet He can do nothing for Israel
till Israel put away their sins. Those sins, and not the
people's captivity, are the Deity's chief concern. Sin
has been at the bottom of their whole adversity. This is
brought out with all the versatility of conscience itself.
Israel and their God have been at variance; their sin
has been, what conscience feels the most, a sin against
love. Yet not upon Me hast thou called, O Jacob; how
hast thou been wearied with Me, O Israel.... I have
not made thee to slave with offerings, nor wearied thee
with incense ... but thou hast made Me to slave with
thy sins, thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities
(xliii. 22-24). So God sets their sins, where men most
see the blackness of their guilt, in the face of His love.
And now He challenges conscience. Put Me in remembrance;
let us come to judgement together; indict, that
thou mayest be justified (ver. 26). But it had been agelong
and original sin. Thy father, the first had sinned; yea,
thy representative men—literally interpreters, mediators—had
transgressed against Me. Therefore did I profane
consecrated princes, and gave Jacob to the ban, and
Israel to reviling (vv. 27, 28). The Exile itself was but
an episode in a tragedy, which began far back with
Israel's history. And so ch. xlviii. repeats: I knew that
thou dost deal very treacherously, and Transgressor-from-the-womb
do they call thee (ver. 8). And then there
comes the sad note of what might have been. O that
thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy
peace been as the river, and thy righteousness as the waves
of the sea (ver. 18). As broad Euphrates thou shouldst
have lavishly rolled, and flashed to the sun like a
summer sea. But now, hear what is left. There is no
peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked (ver. 22).
Ah, it is no dusty stretch of ancient history, no long-extinct
volcano upon the far waste of Asian politics, to
which we are led by the writings of the Exile. But
they treat of man's perennial trouble; and conscience,
that never dies, speaks through their old-fashioned
letters and figures with words we feel like swords. And
therefore, still, whether they be psalms or prophecies,
they stand like some ancient minster in the modern
world,—where, on each new soiled day, till time ends,
the heavy heart of man may be helped to read itself,
and lift up its guilt for mercy.
They are the confessional of the world, but they
are also its gospel, and the altar where forgiveness is
sealed. I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions
for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.
O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of Me. I have blotted
out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy
sins; turn unto Me, for I have redeemed thee. Israel
shall be saved by Jehovah with an everlasting salvation;
ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without
end.Chs. xliii. 25; xliv. 21, 22; xlv. 17.
Now, when we remember who the God is, who
thus speaks,—not merely One who flings the word of
pardon from the sublime height of His holiness, but, as
we saw, speaks it from the midst of all His own passion
and struggle under His people's sins,—then with what
assurance does His word come home to the heart. What
honour and obligation to righteousness does the pardon
of such a God put upon our hearts. One understands
why Ambrose sent Augustine, after his conversion, first
to these prophecies.
4. The fourth token, which these chapters offer for
the religion of Jehovah, is the claim they make for it to
interpret and to control history. There are two verbs,
which are frequently repeated throughout the chapters,
and which are given together in ch. xliii. 12: I have published
and I have saved. These are the two acts by
which Jehovah proves His solitary divinity over against
the idols.
The publishing, of course, is the same prediction, of
which ch. xli. spoke. It is publishing in former times
things happening now; it is publishing now things that
are still to happen. And who, like Me, calls out and
publishes it, and sets it in order for Me, since I appointed
the ancient people? and the things that are coming, and
that shall come, let them publish. Tremble not, nor fear:
did I not long ago cause thee to hear? and I published, and
ye are My witnesses. Is there a God beside Me? nay,
there is no Rock; I know none (xliv. 7, 8).
The two go together, the doing of wonderful and
saving acts for His people and the publishing of them
before they come to pass. Israel's past is full of such acts.
Ch. xliii. instances the delivery from Egypt (vv. 16, 17),
but immediately proceeds (vv. 18, 19): Remember ye not
the former things—here our old friend ri'shonôth occurs
again, but this time means simply previous events—neither
consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a
new thing; even now it springs forth. Shall ye not
know it? Yea, I will set in the wilderness a way, in the
desert rivers. And of this new event of the Return,
and of others which will follow from it, like the building
of Jerusalem, the chapters insist over and over again,
that they are the work of Jehovah, who is therefore a
Saviour God. But what better proof can be given, that
these saving facts are indeed His own and part of His
counsel, than that He foretold them by His messengers
and prophets to Israel,—of which previous publication
His people are the witnesses. Who among the peoples
can publish thus, and let us hear predictions?—again
ri'shonôth, things ahead—let them bring their witnesses,
that they may be justified, and let them hear and say,
Truth. Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, to Israel
(xliii. 9, 10). I have published, and I have saved, and I
have shewed, and there was no strange god among you;
therefore—because Jehovah was notoriously the only
God who had to do with them during all this prediction
and fulfilment of prediction—ye are witnesses for Me,
saith Jehovah, that I am God (id. ver. 12). The meaning
of all this is plain. Jehovah is God alone, because He
is directly effective in history for the salvation of His
people, and because He has published beforehand what
He will do. The great instance of this, which the
prophecy adduces, is the present movement towards
the liberation of the people, of which movement Cyrus
is the most conspicuous factor. Of this xlv. 19 ff. says:
Not in secret have I spoken, in a place of the land of
darkness. I have not said to the seed of Jacob, In vanity
seek ye Me. I Jehovah am a speaker of righteousness,See ch. xiv. of this volume.
a publisher of things that are straight. Be gathered and
come in; draw together, ye survivors of the nations: they
have no knowledge that carry about the log of their image,
and are suppliants to a god that cannot save. Publish,
and bring it here; nay, let them advise together; who
made this to be heard,—that is, who published this,—of
ancient time? Who published this of old? I Jehovah,
and there is none God beside Me: a God righteous,—that
is, consistent, true to His published word,—and a
Saviour, there is none beside Me. Here we have joined
together the same ideas as in xliii. 12. There I have
declared and saved is equivalent to a God righteous and a
Saviour here. Only in Jehovah are righteousnesses, that
is, fidelity to His anciently published purposes; and
strength, that is, capacity to carry these purposes out
in history. God is righteous because, according to
another verse in the same prophecy (xliv. 26), He
confirmeth the word of His servant, and the advice of
His messengers He fulfilleth.
Now the question has been asked, To what predictions
does the prophecy allude as being fulfilled in those
days when Cyrus was so evidently advancing to the
overthrow of Babylon? Before answering this question
it is well to note, that, for the most part, the prophet
speaks in general terms. He gives no hint to justify
that unfounded belief, to which so many think it
necessary to cling, that Cyrus was actually named by
a prophet of Jehovah years before he appeared. Had
such a prediction existed, we can have no doubt that
our prophet would now have appealed to it. No: he
evidently refers only to those numerous and notorious
predictions by Isaiah, and by Jeremiah, of the return of
Israel from exile after a certain and fixed period. Those
were now coming to pass.
But from this new day Jehovah also predicts for the
days to come, and He does this very particularly, xliv. 26,
Who is saying of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited; and
of the cities of Judah, They shall be built; and of her waste
places, I will raise them up. Who saith to the deep, Be dry,
and thy rivers I will dry up. Who saith of Koresh, My
Shepherd, and all My pleasure he shall fulfil: even saying
of Jerusalem, She shall be built, and the Temple shall be
founded.
Thus, backward and forward, yesterday, to-day and
for ever, Jehovah's hand is upon history. He controls
it: it is the fulfilment of His ancient purpose. By
predictions made long ago and fulfilled to-day, by the
readiness to predict to-day what will happen to-morrow,
He is surely God and God alone. Singular fact, that
in that day of great empires, confident in their resources,
and with the future so near their grasp, it
should be the God of a little people, cut off from their
history, servile and seemingly spent, who should take
the big things of earth—Egypt, Ethiopia, Seba—and
speak of them as counters to be given in exchange for
His people; who should speak of such a people as the
chief heirs of the future, the indispensable ministers of
mankind. The claim has two Divine features. It is
unique, and history has vindicated it. It is unique: no
other religion, in that or in any other time, has so rationally
explained past history or laid out the ages to come
upon the lines of a purpose so definite, so rational, so
beneficent—a purpose so worthy of the One God and
Creator of all. And it has been vindicated: Israel
returned to their own land, resumed the development
of their calling, and, after the centuries came and went,
fulfilled the promise that they should be the religious
teachers of mankind. The long delay of this fulfilment
surely but testifies the more to the Divine foresight of
the promise; to the patience, which nature, as well as
history, reveals to be, as much as omnipotence, a mark
of Deity.
These, then, are the four points, upon which the
religion of Israel offers itself. First, it is the force of
the character and grace of a personal God; second, it
speaks with a high intellectual confidence, whereof its
scorn is here the chief mark; third, it is intensely moral,
making man's sin its chief concern; and fourth, it
claims the control of history, and history has justified
the claim.
CHAPTER X.
CYRUS.
Isaiah xli. 2, 25; xliv. 28-xlv. 13; xlvi. 11; xlviii. 14, 15.
Cyrus, the Persian, is the only man outside the
covenant and people of Israel, who is yet entitled
the Lord's Shepherd, and the Lord's Messiah
or Christ. He is, besides, the only great personality,
of whom both the Bible and Greek literature treat at
length and with sympathy. Did we know nothing
more of him than this, the heathen who received the
most sacred titles of Revelation, the one man in history
who was the cynosure of both Greece and Judah, could
not fail to be of the greatest interest to us. But apart
from the way, in which he impressed the Greek
imagination and was interpreted by the Hebrew
conscience, we have an amount of historical evidence
about Cyrus, which, if it dissipates the beautiful
legends told of his origin and his end, confirms most
of what is written of his character by Herodotus and
Xenophon, and all of what is described as his career
by the prophet whom we are studying. Whether of
his own virtue, or as being the leader of a new race
of men at the fortunate moment of their call, Cyrus
lifted himself, from the lowest of royal stations, to
a conquest and an empire achieved by only two or
three others in the history of the world. Originally
but the prince of Anshan, or Anzan,Identified by Delitzsch as East, Halévy as West, and Winckler
as North, Elam. Cyrus, though reigning here, was a pure Persian,
an Akhæmenid or son of the royal house of Persia.
—a territory
of uncertain size at the head of the Persian Gulf,—he
brought under his sway, by policy or war, the
large and vigorous nations of the Medes and Persians;
he overthrew the Lydian kingdom, and subjugated
Asia Minor; he so impressed the beginnings of Greek
life, that, with all their own great men, the Greeks
never ceased to regard this Persian as the ideal king;
he captured Babylon, the throne of the ancient East,
and thus effected the transfer of empire from the
Semitic to the Aryan stock. He also satisfied the
peoples, whom he had beaten, with his rule, and
organised his realms with a thoroughness unequalled
over so vast an extent till the rise of the Roman
Empire.
We have scarcely any contemporary or nearly
contemporary evidence about his personality. But his
achievements testify to extraordinary genius, and his
character was the admiration of all antiquity. To
Greek literature Cyrus was the Prince pre-eminent,—set
forth as the model for education in childhood, self-restraint
in youth, just and powerful government in
manhood. Most of what we read of him in Xenophon's
Cyropædia is, of course, romance; but the very fact,
that, like our own King Arthur, Cyrus was used as
a mirror to flash great ideals down the ages, proves
that there was with him native brilliance and width of
surface as well as fortunate eminence of position. He
owed much to the virtue of his race. Rotten as the
later Persians have become, the nation in those days
impressed its enemies with its truthfulness, purity and
vigour. But the man, who not only led such a nation,
and was their darling, but combined under his sceptre,
in equal discipline and contentment, so many other
and diverse peoples, so many powerful and ambitious
rulers, cannot have been merely the best specimen of
his own nation's virtue, but must have added to this,
at least much of the original qualities—humanity,
breadth of mind, sweetness, patience and genius for
managing men—which his sympathetic biographer
imputes to him in so heroic a degree. It is evident
that the Cyropædia is ignorant of many facts about
Cyrus, and must have taken conscious liberties with
many more, but nobody—who, on the one hand, is
aware of what Cyrus effected upon the world, and
who, on the other, can appreciate that it was possible
for a foreigner (who, nevertheless, had travelled through
most of the scenes of Cyrus' career) to form this rich
conception of him more than a century after his death—can
doubt that the Persian's character (due allowance
being made for hero-worship) must have been in
the main as Xenophon describes it.
Yet it is very remarkable, that our Scripture states
not one moral or religious virtue as the qualification of
this Gentile to the title of Jehovah's Messiah. We
search here in vain for any gleam of appreciation of
that character, which drew the admiring eyes of
Greece. In the whole range of our prophecy there is
not a single adjective, expressing a moral virtue, applied
to Cyrus. The righteousness, which so many passages
associate with his name, is attributed, not to him, but
to God's calling of him, and does not imply justice or
any similar quality, but is, as we shall afterwards see
when we examine the remarkable use of this word in
Second Isaiah, a mixture of good faith and
thoroughness,—all-rightness.The parallel which Professor Sayce (Fresh Light from the Ancient
Monuments, p. 147) draws between the statement of the Cyrus-cylinder,
that Cyrus "governed in justice and righteousness, and was
righteous in hand and heart," and Isa. xlv. 13, "Jehovah raised him
up in righteousness," is therefore utterly unreal. It is very difficult
to see how the Deputy-Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford
could have been reminded of the one passage by the other, for in
Isa. xlv. 13 righteousness neither is used of Cyrus, nor signifies
the moral virtue which it does on the cylinder.
The one passage of our prophet, in
which it has been supposed by some that Jehovah
makes a religious claim to Cyrus, as if the Persian
were a monotheist—he calleth on My name—is, as we
have seen,See note to ch. vii.
too uncertain, both in text and rendering,
to have anything built upon it. Indeed, no Hebrew
could have justly praised this Persian's faith, who called
himself the "servant of Merodach," and in his public
proclamations to Babylonia ascribed to the Babylonian
gods his power to enter their city.The following are extracts from the Cylinder of Cyrus (see
Sayce's Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, pp. 138-140):—"Cyrus,
king of Elam, he (Merodach) proclaimed by name for the
sovereignty.... Whom he had conquered with his hand, he
governed in justice and righteousness. Merodach, the great lord, the
restorer of his people, beheld with joy the deeds of his vicegerent,
who was righteous in hand and heart. To Babylon he summoned his
march, and he bade him take the road to Babylon; like a friend and
a comrade he went at his side. Without fighting or battle he caused
him to enter into Babylon, his city of Babylon feared. The god ...
has in goodness drawn nigh to him, has made strong his name. I
Cyrus ... I entered Babylon in peace.... Merodach the great
lord (cheered) the heart of his servant.... My vast armies he
marshalled peacefully in the midst of Babylon; throughout Sumer
and Accad I had no revilers.... Accad, Marad, etc., I restored the
gods who dwelt within them to their places ... all their peoples I
assembled and I restored their lands. And the gods of Sumer and
Accad whom Nabonidos, to the anger of the lord of gods (Merodach), had brought into Babylon, I settled in peace in their sanctuaries by
command of Merodach, the great lord. In the goodness of their
hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong
places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should grant
me length of days; may they bless my projects with prosperity,
and may they say to Merodach my lord, that Cyrus the king, thy
worshipper, and Kambyses his son (deserve his favour)."
Cyrus was very
probably the pious ruler, described by Xenophon, but
he was no monotheist. And our prophet denies all
religious sympathy between him and Jehovah, in words
too strong to be misunderstood: I woo thee, though thou
hast not known Me.... I gird thee, though thou hast
not known Me (ch. xlv. 4, 5).
On what, then, is the Divine election of Cyrus
grounded by our prophet, if not upon his character
and his faith? Simply and barely upon God's
sovereignty and will. That is the impressive lesson
of the passage: I am Jehovah, Maker of everything; that
stretch forth the heavens alone, and spread the earth by
Myself ... that say of Koresh, My shepherd, and all
My pleasure he shall accomplish (xliv. 24, 28). Cyrus is
Jehovah's, because all things are Jehovah's; of whatsoever
character or faith they be, they are His and for
His uses. I am Jehovah, and there is none else: Former
of light and Creator of darkness, Maker of peace and
Creator of evil; I, Jehovah, Maker of all these. God's
sovereignty could not be more broadly stated. All
things, irrespective of their character, are from Him
and for His ends. But what end is dearer to the
Almighty, what has He more plainly declared, than
that His peopleWhy so sovereign a God should be in such peculiar relations with
one people, we will try to see in ch. xv. of this volume.
shall be settled again in their own
land? For this He will use the fittest force. The
return of Israel to Palestine is a political event,
requiring political power; and the greatest political
power of the day is Cyrus. Therefore, by His prophet,
the Almighty declares Cyrus to be His people's deliverer,
His own anointed. Thus saith Jehovah to His Messiah, to
Koresh: ... That thou mayest know that I am Jehovah,
Caller of thee by thy name, God of Israel, for the sake
of My servant Jacob and Israel My chosen. And I have
called thee by thy name. I have wooed thee, though thou
hast not known Me (xlv. 1, 3, 4).
Now to this designation of Cyrus, as the Messiah,
great objections rose from Israel. We can understand
them. People, who have fallen from a glorious
past, cling passionately to its precedents. All the
ancient promises of a deliverer for Israel represented
him as springing from the house of David. The deliverance,
too, was to have come by miracle, or by the
impression of the people's own holiness upon their
oppressors. The Lord Himself was to have made bare
His arm and Israel to go forth in the pride of His favour,
as in the days of Egypt and the Red Sea. But this
deliverer, who was announced, was alien to the commonwealth
of Israel; and not by some miracle was the
people's exodus promised, but as the effect of his
imperial word—a minor incident in his policy! The
precedents and the pride of Israel called out against
such a scheme of salvation, and the murmurs of the
people rose against the word of God.
Sternly replies the Almighty: Woe to him that
striveth with his Moulder, a potsherd among the potsherds
of the ground! Saith clay to its moulder, What
doest thou? or thy work of thee, No hands hath he?
Woe to him that saith to a father, What begettest thou?
or to a woman, With what travailest thou? Thus saith
Jehovah, Holy of Israel and his Moulder: The things
that are coming ask of Me; concerning My sons, and
concerning the work of My hands, command ye Me! I
have made Earth,Earth here without the article, but plainly the earth, and not the
land of Judah.
and created man upon her: I, My
hands, have stretched Heaven, and all its host have I
ordered. In that universal providence, this Cyrus is but
an incident. I have stirred him up in righteousness, and all
his ways shall I make level. He—emphatic—shall build
My City, and My Captivity he shall send off—not for price
and not for reward, saith Jehovah of Hosts (xlv. 9-13).
To this bare fiat, the passages referring to Cyrus in
ch. xlvi. and ch. xlviii. add scarcely anything. I am
God, and there is none like Me.... Who say, My counsel
shall stand, and all My pleasure will I perform. Who
call from the sunrise a Bird-of-prey, from a land far-off
the Man of My counsel. Yea, I have spoken, yea, I will
bring it to pass. I have formed, yea, will do it (xlvi. 9,
10, 11). Bird-of-prey here has been thought to have
reference to the eagle, which was the standard of Cyrus.
But it refers to Cyrus himself. What God sees in this
man to fulfil His purpose is swift, resistless force. Not
his character, but his swoop is useful for the Almighty's
end. Again: Be gathered, all of you, and hearken; who
among them hath published these things? Jehovah hath
loved him: he will do His pleasure on Babel, and his arm
shall be on the Chaldeans. I, I have spoken; yea, I have
called him: I have brought him, and will cause his way to
prosper, or, I will pioneer his way (xlviii. 14, 15). This
verb to cause to prosper is one often used by our prophet,
but nowhere more appropriately to its original meaning,
than here, where it is used of a way. The word signifies
to cut through; then to ford a river—there is no word for
bridge in Hebrew; then to go on well, prosper.Cf. with this Hebrew word צלח the Greek προκοπτειν, to beat or cut a way through like pioneers; then to forward a work, advance,
prosper (Luke ii. 52; Gal. i. 14; 2 Tim. ii. 16).
In all these passages, then, there is no word about
character. Cyrus is neither chosen for his character nor
said to be endowed with one. But that he is there, and
that he does so much, is due simply to this, that God
has chosen him. And what he is endowed with is force,
push, swiftness, irresistibleness. He is, in short, not a
character, but a tool; and God makes no apology for
using him but this, that he has the qualities of a tool.
Now we cannot help being struck with the contrast
of all this, the Hebrew view of Cyrus, with the well-known
Greek views of him. To the Greeks he is first
and foremost a character. Xenophon, and Herodotus
almost as much as Xenophon, are less concerned with
what Cyrus did than with what he was. He is the
King, the ideal ruler. It is his simplicity, his purity,
his health, his wisdom, his generosity, his moral
influence upon men, that attract the Greeks, and they
conceive that he cannot be too brightly painted in his
virtues, if so he may serve for an example to following
generations. But bring Cyrus out of the light of the
eyes of this hero-worshipping people, that light that
has so gilded his native virtues, into the shadow of the
austere Hebrew faith, and the brilliance is quenched.
He still moves forcibly, but his character is neutral.
Scripture emphasizes only his strength, his serviceableness,
his success: Whose right hand I have holden, to
subdue nations before him, and I will loosen the loins of
kings; to open doors before him, and gates shall not be shut.
I will go before thee, and make the rugged places plain.
I will shiver doors of brass, and bars of iron will I
sunder (xlv. 1, 2). That Cyrus is doing a work in God's
hand and for God's end, and therefore forcibly, and sure
of success—that is all the interest Scripture takes in
Cyrus.
Observe the difference. It is characteristic of the
two nations. The Greek views Cyrus as an example;
therefore cannot too abundantly multiply his
morality. The Hebrew views him as a tool; but with
a tool you are not anxious about its moral character,
you only desire to be convinced of its force and its
fitness. The Greek mind is careful to unfold the
noble humanity of the man,—a humanity universally
and eternally noble. By the side of that imperishable
picture of him, how meagre to Greek eyes would have
seemed the temporary occasion, for which the Hebrew
claimed that Cyrus had been raised up—to lead the
petty Jewish tribe back to their own obscure corner of
the earth. Herodotus and Xenophon, had you told
them that this was the chief commission of Cyrus from
God, to restore the Jews to Palestine, would have
laughed. "Identify him, forsooth, with those provincial
interests!" they would have said. "He was
meant, we lift him up, for mankind!"
What judgement are we to pass on these two characteristic
pictures of Cyrus? What lessons are we to
draw from their contrast?
They do not contradict, but in many particulars
they corroborate one another. Cyrus would not have
been the efficient weapon in the Almighty's hand,
which our prophet panegyrises, but for that thoughtfulness
in preparation and swift readiness to seize the
occasion, which Xenophon extols. And nothing is more
striking to one familiar with our Scriptures, when reading
the Cyropædia, than the frequency with which the
writer insists on the success that followed the Persian.
If to the Hebrew Cyrus was the called of God, upheld
in righteousness, to the Greek he was equally conspicuous
as the favourite of fortune. "I have always,"
Xenophon makes the dying king say, "seemed to feel
my strength increase with the advance of time, so that
I have not found myself weaker in my old age than in
my youth, nor do I know that I have attempted or
desired anything in which I have not been successful."Cyropædia, Book VIII., ch. vii., 6.
And this was said piously, for Xenophon's Cyrus was a
devout servant of the gods.
The two views, then, are not hostile, nor are we
compelled to choose between them. Still, they make
a very suggestive contrast, if we put these two questions
about them: Which is the more true to historical
fact? Which is the more inspiring example?
Which is the more true to historical fact? There
is no difficulty in answering this: undoubtedly, the
Hebrew. It has been of far more importance to the
world that Cyrus freed the Jews than that he inspired
the Cyropædia. That single enactment of his, perhaps
only one of a hundred consequences of his capture of
Babylon, has had infinitely greater results than his
character, or than its magnificent exaggeration by
Greek hero-worship. No one who has read the Cyropædia—out
of his school-days—would desire to place
it in any contrast, in which its peculiar charm would be
shadowed, or its own modest and strictly-limited claims
would not receive justice. The charm, the truth of the
Cyropædia, are eternal; but the significance they borrow
from Cyrus—though they are as much due, perhaps, to
Xenophon's own pure soul as to Cyrus—is not to be
compared for one instant to the significance of that
single deed of his, into which the Bible absorbs the
meaning of his whole career,—the liberation of the
Jews. The Cyropædia has been the instruction and
delight of many,—of as many in modern times, perhaps,
as in ancient. But the liberation of the Jews meant
the assurance of the world's religious education. Cyrus
sent this people back to their land solely as a spiritual
people. He did not allow them to set up again the
house of David, but by his decree the Temple was
rebuilt. Israel entered upon their purely religious
career, set in order their vast stores of spiritual experience,
wrote their histories of grace and providence,
developed their worship, handed down their law, and
kept themselves holy unto the Lord. Till, in the fulness
of the times, from this petty and exclusive tribe,
and by the fire, which they kept burning on the altar
that Cyrus had empowered them to raise, there was
kindled the glory of an universal religion. To change
the figure, Christianity sprang from Judaism as the
flower from the seed; but it was the hand of Cyrus,
which planted the seed in the only soil, in which it
could have fructified. Of such an universal destiny
for the Faith, Cyrus was not conscious, but the Jews
themselves were. Our prophet represents him, indeed,
as acting for Jacob My servant's sake, and Israel's My
chosen, but the chapter does not close without proclamation
to the ends of the earth to look unto Jehovah and be
saved, and the promise of a time when every knee shall
bow and every tongue swear unto the God of Israel.
Now put all these results, which the Jews, regardless
of the character of Cyrus, saw flowing from his policy,
as the servant of God on their behalf, side by side with
the influence which the Greeks borrowed from Cyrus,
and say whether Greek or Jew had the more true and
historical conscience of this great power,—whether
Greek or Jew had his hand on the pulse of the world's
main artery. Surely we see that the main artery of
human life runs down the Bible, that here we have a
sense of the control of history, which is higher than
even the highest hero-worship. Some may say, "True,
but what a very unequal contest, into which to thrust
the poor Cyropædia!" Precisely; it is from the inequality
of the contrast, that we learn the uniqueness
of Israel's inspiration. Let us do all justice to the
Greek and his appreciation of Cyrus. In that, he
seems the perfection of humanity; but with the Jew
we rise to the Divine, touching the right hand of the
providence of God.
There is a moral lesson for ourselves in these two
views about Cyrus. The Greeks regard him as a hero,
the Jews as an instrument. The Greeks are interested
in him that he is so attractive a figure, so effective an
example to rouse men and restrain them. But the
Jews stand in wonder of his subjection to the will of
God; their Scriptures extol, not his virtues, but his
predestination to certain Divine ends.
Now let us say no word against hero-worship. We
have need of all the heroes, which the Greek, and every
other, literature can raise up for us. We need the
communion of the saints. To make us humble in our
pride, to make us hopeful in our despair, we need our
big brothers, the heroes of humanity. We need them
in history, we need them in fiction; we cannot do
without them for shame, for courage, for fellowship,
for truth. But let us remember that still more indispensable—for
strength, as well as for peace, of mind—is
the other temper. Neither self nor the world is
conquered by admiration of men, but only by the fear
and obligation of God. I speak now of applying this
temper to ourselves. We shall live fruitful and consistent
lives only in so far as we hear God saying to
us, I gird thee, and give ourselves into His guidance.
Admire heroes if thou wilt, but only admire them and
thou remainest a slave. Learn their secret, to commit
themselves to God and to obey Him, and thou shalt
become a hero too.
God's anointing of Cyrus, the heathen, has yet another
lesson to teach us, which religious people especially need
to learn.
This passage about Cyrus lifts us to a very absolute
and awful faith. I am Jehovah, and none else: Former
of light and Creator of darkness, Maker of peace and
Creator of mischief; I Jehovah, Maker of all these things.
The objection at once rises, "Is it possible to believe
this? Are we to lay upon providence everything that
happens? Surely we Westerns, with our native scepticism
and strong conscience, cannot be expected to
hold a faith so Oriental and fatalistic as that."
But notice to whom the passage is addressed. To
religious people, who professedly accept God's sovereignty,
but wish to make an exception in the one case
against which they have a prejudice—that a Gentile
should be the deliverer of the holy people. Such
narrow and imperfect believers are reminded that they
must not substitute for faith in God their own ideas of
how God ought to work; that they must not limit His
operations to their own conception of His past revelations;
that God does not always work even by His
own precedents; and that many other forces than conventional
and religious ones—yea, even forces as destitute
of moral or religious character as Cyrus himself seemed
to be—are also in God's hands, and may be used by
Him as means of grace. There is frequent charge
made in our day against what are called the more
advanced schools of theology, of scepticism and irreverence.
But this passage reminds us that the most
sceptical and irreverent are those old-fashioned believers,
who, clinging to precedent and their own
stereotyped notions of things, deny that God's hands
are in a movement, because it is novel and not orthodox.
Woe unto him that striveth with his Moulder;
shall the clay say to its moulder, What makest thou?
God did not cease moulding when He gave us the
canon and our creeds, when He founded the Church and
the Sacraments. His hand is still among the clay, and
upon time, that great "potter's wheel," which still moves
obedient to His impulse. All the large forward movements,
the big things of to-day—commerce, science,
criticism—however neutral, like Cyrus, their character
may be, are, like Cyrus, grasped and anointed by God.
Therefore let us show reverence and courage before
the great things of to-day. Do not let us scoff at their
novelty or grow fearful because they show no orthodox,
or even no religious, character. God reigns, and He
will use them, for what has been the dearest purpose of
His heart, the emancipation of true religion, the confirmation
of the faithful, the victory of righteousness.
When Cyrus rose and the prophet named him as
Israel's deliverer, and the severely orthodox in Israel
objected, did God attempt to soothe them by pointing
out how admirable a character he was, and how near
in religion to the Jews themselves? God did no such
thing, but spoke only of the military and political
fitness of this great engine, by which He was to batter
Babylon. That Cyrus was a quick marcher, a far
shooter, an inspirer of fear, a follower up of victory,
one who swooped like a bird-of-prey, one whose weight
of war burst through every obstruction,—this is what
the astonished pedants are told about the Gentile, to
whose Gentileness they had objected. No soft words
to calm their bristling orthodoxy, but heavy facts,—an
appeal to their common-sense, if they had any, that
this was the most practical means for the practical end
God had in view. For again we learn the old lesson
the prophets are ever so anxious to teach us, God is
wise. He is concerned, not to be orthodox or true to
His own precedent, but to be practical, and effective
for salvation.
And so, too, in our own day, though we may not see
any religious character whatsoever about certain successful
movements—say in science, for instance—which
are sure to affect the future of the Church and of Faith,
do not let us despair, neither deny that they, too, are
in the counsels of God. Let us only be sure that they
are permitted for some end—some practical end; and
watch, with meekness but with vigilance, to see what
that end shall be. Perhaps the endowment of the
Church with new weapons of truth; perhaps her emancipation
from associations which, however ancient, are
unhealthy; perhaps her opportunity to go forth upon
new heights of vision, new fields of conquest.
CHAPTER XI.
BEARING OR BORNE.
Isaiah xlvi.
Chapter xlvi. is a definite prophecy, complete
in itself. It repeats many of the truths which
we have found in previous chapters, and we have
already seen what it says about Cyrus. But it also
strikes out a new truth, very relevant then, when men
made idols and worshipped the works of their hands,
and relevant still, when so many, with equal stupidity,
are more concerned about keeping up the forms of
their religion than allowing God to sustain themselves.
The great contrast, which previous chapters have been
elaborating, is the contrast between the idols and the
living God. On the one side we have had pictures of
the busy idol-factories, cast into agitation by the advent
of Cyrus, turning out with much toil and noise their
tawdry, unstable images. Foolish men, instead of
letting God undertake for them, go to and try what
their own hands and hammers can effect. Over against
them, and their cunning and toil, the prophet sees the
God of Israel rise alone, taking all responsibility of
salvation to Himself—I, I am He: look unto Me, all the
ends of the earth, and be ye saved. This contrast comes
to a head in ch. xlvi.
It is still the eve of the capture of Babylon; but the
prophet pictures to himself what will happen on the
morrow of the capture. He sees the conqueror following
the old fashion of triumph—rifling the temples of
his enemies and carrying away the defeated and discredited
gods as trophies to his own. The haughty
idols are torn from their pedestals and brought head
foremost through the temple doors. Bel crouches—as
men have crouched to Bel; Nebo cowers—a stronger
verb than crouches, but assonant to it, like cower to
crouch.Crouches, Kara`; cowers, Kores.
Their idols have fallen to the beast and to the
cattle. Beast, "that is, tamed beast, perhaps elephants
in contrast to cattle, or domestic animals."Bredenkamp.
The things
with which ye burdened yourselves, carrying them shoulder
high in religious processions, are things laden, mere
baggage-bales, a burden for a hack, or jade. The
nouns are mostly feminine—the Hebrew neuter—in
order to heighten the dead-weight impression of the
idols. So many baggage-bales for beasts' backs—such
are your gods, O Babylonians! They cower, they crouch
together (fall limp is the idea, like corpses); neither are
they able to recover the burden, and themselves!—literally
their soul, any real soul of deity that ever was in them—into
captivity are they gone.
This never happened. Cyrus entered Babylon not
in spite of the native gods, but under their patronage,
and was careful to do homage to them. Nabunahid, the
king of Babylon, whom he supplanted, had vexed the
priests of Bel or Merodach; and these priests had been
among the many conspirators in favour of the Persian.
So far, then, from banishing the idols, upon his entry
into the city, Cyrus had himself proclaimed as "the
servant of Merodach," restored to their own cities the
idols that Nabunahid had brought to Babylon, and
prayed, "In the goodness of their hearts may all the
gods whom I have brought into their strong places
daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should
grant me length of days. May they bless my projects
with prosperity, and may they say to Merodach, my
lord, that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and Kambyses,
his son (deserve thy favour)."Sayce, Fresh Light, etc., p. 140.
Are we, then, because the idols were not taken into
captivity, as our prophet pictures, to begin to believe
in him less? We shall be guilty of that error, only
when we cease to disallow to a prophet of God what
we do allow to any other writer, and praise him when
he employs it to bring home a moral truth—the use of
his imagination. What if these idols never were packed
off by Cyrus, as our prophet here paints for us? It
still remains true that, standing where they did, or
carried away, as they may have been later on, by conquerors,
who were monotheists indeed, they were still
mere ballast, so much dead-weight for weary beasts.
Now, over against this kind of religion, which may be
reduced to so many pounds avoirdupois, the prophet
sees in contrast the God of Israel. And it is but
natural, when contrasted with the dead-weight of the
idols, that God should reveal Himself as a living and
a lifting God: a strong, unfailing God, who carries and
who saves. Hearken unto Me, O House of Jacob, and
all the remnant of the House of Israel; burdens from the
womb, things carried from the belly. Burdens, things
carried, are the exact words used of the idols in ver. 1.
Even unto old age I am He, and unto grey hairs I will
bear—a grievous word, used only of great burdens. I
have made, and I will carry; yea, I will bear, and will
recover. Then follow some verses in the familiar style.
To whom will ye liken Me, and match Me, and compare
Me, that we may be like? They who pour gold from
a bag, and silver they measure off with an ellwand—gorgeous,
vulgar Babylonians!—they hire a smelter, and
he maketh it a god—out of so many ells of silver!—they
bow down to it, yea, they worship it! They carry
him upon the shoulder, they bear him,—again the grievous
word,—to bring him to his station; and he stands; from
his place he never moves. Yea, one cries unto him, and
he answers not; from his trouble he doth not save him.
Remember this, and show yourselves men—the playing
with these gilded toys is so unmanly to the monotheist
(it will be remembered what we said in ch. iii. about
the exiles feeling that to worship idols was to be less
than a manSee p. 39 f.
)—lay it again to heart, ye transgressors.
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, El, and
there is none else; God, Elohim, and there is none like Me.
Publishing from the origin the issue, and from ancient
times things not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand,
and all My pleasure shall I perform; calling out of the
sunrise a Bird-of-prey, from the land that is far off the
Man of My counsel. Yea, I have spoken; yea, I will
bring it in. I have purposed; yea, I will do it. Hearken
unto Me, ye obdurate of heart—that is, brave, strong,
sound, but too sound to adapt their preconceived notions
to God's new revelation;—ye that are far from righteousness,
in spite of your sound opinions as to how it ought
to come. I have brought near My righteousness, in
distinction to yours. It shall not be far off, like your
impossible ideas, and My salvation shall not tarry, and
I will set in Zion salvation, for Israel My glory. It is
evident that from the idolaters Jehovah has turned
again, in these last verses, to the pedants in Israel,
who were opposed to Cyrus because he was a Gentile,
and who cherished their own obdurate notions
of how salvation and righteousness should come.
Ah, their kind of righteousness would never come,
they would always be far from it! Let them rather
trust to Jehovah's, which He was rapidly bringing
near in His own way.
Such is the prophecy. It starts a truth, which bursts
free from local and temporal associations, and rushes
in strength upon our own day and our own customs.
The truth is this: it makes all the difference to a man
how he conceives his religion—whether as something
that he has to carry, or as something that will carry him.
We have too many idolatries and idol manufactories
among us to linger longer on those ancient ones. This
cleavage is permanent in humanity—between the men
that are trying to carry their religion, and the men that
are allowing God to carry them.
Now let us see how God does carry. God's carriage
of man is no mystery. It may be explained without
using one theological term; the Bible gives us the best
expression of it. But it may be explained without a
word from the Bible. It is broad and varied as man's
moral experience.
1. The first requisite for stable and buoyant life is
ground, and the faithfulness of law. What sends us
about with erect bodies and quick, firm step is the
sense that the surface of the earth is sure, that gravitation
will not fail, that our eyes and the touch of our
feet and our judgement of distance do not deceive us.
Now, what the body needs for its world, the soul needs
for hers. For her carriage and bearing in life the soul
requires the assurance, that the moral laws of the
universe are as conscience has interpreted them to her,
and will continue to be as in experience she has found
them. To this requisite of the soul—this indispensable
condition of moral behaviour—God gives His
assurance. I have made, He says, and I will bear.There is a play on the words 'anî `asîthî, wa'anî, 'essā'—I have
made, and I will aid.
These words were in answer to an instinct, that must
have often sprung up in our hearts when we have been
struggling for at least moral hope—the instinct which
will be all that is sometimes left to a man's soul when
unbelief lowers, and under its blackness a flood of
temptations rushes in, and character and conduct feel
impossible to his strength—the instinct that springs
from the thought, "Well, here I am, not responsible
for being here, but so set by some One else, and the
responsibility of the life, which is too great for me, is
His." Some such simple faith, which a man can hardly
separate from his existence, has been the first rally
and turning-point in many a life. In the moral drift
and sweep he finds bottom there, and steadies on it,
and gets his face round, and gathers strength. And
God's Word comes to him to tell him that his instinct is
sure. Yea, I have made, and I will bear.
2. The most terrible anguish of the heart, however,
is that it carries something, which can shake a man off
even that ground. The firmest rock is of no use to the
paralytic, or to a man with a broken leg. And the most
steadfast moral universe, and most righteous moral
governor, is no comfort—but rather the reverse—to the
man with a bad conscience, whether that conscience be
due to the guilt, or to the habit, of sin. Conscience
whispers, "God indeed made thee, but what if thou
hast unmade thyself? God reigns; the laws of life
are righteousness; creation is guided to peace. But
thou art outlaw of this universe, fallen from God of
thine own will. Thou must bear thine own guilt,
endure thy voluntarily contracted habits. How canst
thou believe that God, in this fair world, would bear
thee up, so useless, soiled, and infected a thing?" Yet
here, according to His blessed Word, God does come
down to bear up men. Because man's sunkenness
and helplessness are so apparent beneath no other
burden or billows, God insists that just here He is
most anxious, and just here it is His glory, to lift men
and bear them upward. Some may wonder what guilt
is or the conviction of sin, because they are selfishly or
dishonestly tracing the bitterness and unrest of their
lives to some other source than their own wicked wills;
but the thing is man's realest burden, and man's realest
burden is what God stoops lowest to bear. The grievous
word for bear, "sabal," which we emphasized in the
above passage, is elsewhere in the writings of the Exile
used of the bearing of sins, or of the result of sins.
Our fathers have sinned, and are not, and we bear their
iniquities,Lam. v. 7.
says one of the Lamentations. And in the
fifty-third of Isaiah it is used twice of the Servant, that
He bore our sorrows, and that He bare their iniquities.Ver. 4, second clause, and vii.
Here its application to God—to such a God as we have
seen bearing the passion of His people's woes—cannot
fail to carry with it the associations of these passages.
When it is said, God bears, and this grievous verb is
used, we remember at once that He is a God, who does
not only set His people's sins in the awful light of His
countenance, but takes them upon His heart. Let us
learn, then, that God has made this sin and guilt of
ours His special care and anguish. We cannot feel it
more than He does. It is enough: we may not be
able to understand what the sacrifice of Christ meant
to the Divine justice, but who can help comprehending
from it that in some Divine way the Divine love has
made our sin its own business and burden, so that that
might be done which we could not do, and that lifted
which we could not bear?
3. But this gospel of God's love bearing our sins is of
no use to a man unless it goes with another—that God
bears him up for victory over temptation and for attainment
in holiness. It is said to be a thoroughly
Mohammedan fashion, that when a believer is tempted
past the common he gives way, and slides into sin
with the cry, "God is merciful;" meaning that the
Almighty will not be too hard on this poor creature,
who has held out so long. If this be Mohammedanism,
there is a great deal of Mohammedanism in modern
Christianity. It is a most perfidious distortion of God's
will. For this is the will of God, even our sanctification;
and God never gives a man pardon but to set him free
for effort, and to constrain him for duty. And here we
come to what is the most essential part of God's bearing
of man. God, as we have seen, bears us by giving us
ground to walk on. He bears us by lifting those
burdens from our hearts that make the firmest ground
slippery and impossible to our feet. But He bears us
best and longest by being the spirit and the soul and
the life of our life. Every metaphor here falls short of
the reality. By inspired men the bearing of God has
been likened to a father carrying his child, to an eagle
taking her young upon her wings, to the shepherd with
the lamb in his bosom. But no shepherd, nor mother-bird,
nor human father ever bore as the Lord bears.
For He bears from within, as the soul lifts and bears
the body. The Lord and His own are one. To me,
says he who knew it best, To me to live is Christ.
It is, indeed, difficult to describe to others what this
inward sustainment really is, seating itself at the centre
of a man's life, and thence affecting vitally every organ
of his nature. The strongest human illustration is not
sufficient for it. If in the thick of the battle a leader is
able to infuse himself into his followers, so is Christ.
If one man's word has lifted thousands of defeated
soldiers to an assault and to a victory, even so have
Christ's lifted millions: lifted them above the habit and
depression of sin, above the weakness of the flesh,
above the fear of man, above danger and death and
temptation more dangerous and fatal still. And yet
it is not the sight of a visible leader, though the
Gospels have made that sight imperishable; it is not
the sound of Another's Voice, though that Voice shall
peal to the end of time, that Christians only feel. It
is something within themselves; another self—purer,
happier, victorious. Not as a voice or example, futile
enough to the dying, but as a new soul, is Christ in
men; and whether their exhaustion needs creative
forces, or their vices require conquering forces, He
gives both, for He is the fountain of life.
4. But God does not carry dead men. His carrying
is not mechanical, but natural; not from below, but from
within. You dare not be passive in God's carriage;
for as in the natural, so in the moral world, whatever
dies is thrown aside by the upward pressure of life, to
rot and perish. Christ showed this over and over again
in His ministry. Those who make no effort—or, if
effort be past, feel no pain—God will not stoop to
bear. But all in whom there is still a lift and a spring
after life: the quick conscience, the pain of their poverty,
the hunger and thirst after righteousness, the sacredness
of those in their charge, the obligation and honour of
their daily duty, some desire for eternal life—these, however
weak, He carries forward to perfection.
Again, in His bearing God bears, and does not overbear,
using a man, not as a man uses a stick, but as a
soul uses a body,—informing, inspiring, recreating his
natural faculties. So many distrust religion, as if it
were to be an overbearing of their originality, as if it
were bound to destroy the individual's peculiar freshness
and joy. But God is not by grace going to undo
His work by nature. I have made, and I will bear—will
bear what I have made. Religion intensifies the
natural man.
And now, if that be God's bearing—the gift of the
ground, and the lifting of the fallen, and the being a
soul and an inspiration of every organ—how wrong
those are who, instead of asking God to carry them,
are more anxious about how He and His religion are
to be sustained by their consistency or efforts!
To young men, who have not got a religion, and are
brought face to face with the conventional religion of
the day, the question often presents itself in this way:
"Is this a thing I can carry?" or "How much of it
can I afford to carry? How much of the tradition of
the elders can I take upon myself, and feel that it is not
mere dead weight?" That is an entirely false attitude.
Here you are, weak, by no means master of yourself;
with a heart wonderfully full of suggestions to evil; a
world before you, hardest where it is clearest, seeming
most impossible where duty most loudly calls; yet
mainly dark and silent, needing from us patience oftener
than effort, and trust as much as the exercise of our
own cleverness; with death at last ahead. Look at life
whole, and the question you will ask will not be, Can
I carry this faith? but, Can this faith carry me? Not,
Can I afford to take up such and such and such
opinions? but, Can I afford to travel at all without
such a God? It is not a creed, but a living and a
lifting God, who awaits your decision.
At the opposite end of life, there is another class of
men, who are really doing what young men too often
suppose that they must do if they take up a religion,—carrying
it, instead of allowing it to carry them; men
who are in danger of losing their faith in God, through
over-anxiety about traditional doctrines concerning Him.
A great deal is being said just now in our country of
upholding the great articles of the faith. Certainly let
us uphold them. But do not let us have in our churches
that saddest of all sights, a mere ecclesiastical procession,—men
flourishing doctrines, but themselves with
their manhood remaining unseen. We know the pity
of a show, sometimes seen in countries on the
Continent, where they have not given over carrying
images about. Idols and banners and texts will fill a
street with their tawdry, tottering progress, and you
will see nothing human below, but now and then
jostling shoulders and a sweaty face. Even so are
many of the loud parades of doctrines in our day by
men, who, in the words of this chapter, show themselves
stout of heart by holding up their religion, but
give us no signs in their character or conduct that their
religion is holding up them. Let us prize our faith,
not by holding it high, but by showing how high it
can hold us.
Which is the more inspiring sight,—a banner carried
by hands, that must sooner or later weary; or the
soldier's face, mantling with the inexhaustible strength
of the God who lives at his heart and bears him up?
CHAPTER XII.
BABYLON.
Isaiah xlvii.
Throughout the extent of Bible history, from
Genesis to Revelation, One City remains, which
in fact and symbol is execrated as the enemy of God
and the stronghold of evil. In Genesis we are called
to see its foundation, as of the first city that wandering
men established, and the quick ruin, which fell upon its
impious builders. By the prophets we hear it cursed
as the oppressor of God's people, the temptress of the
nations, full of cruelty and wantonness. And in the
Book of Revelation its character and curse are transferred
to Rome, and the New Babylon stands over
against the New Jerusalem.
The tradition and infection, which have made the
name of Babylon as abhorred in Scripture as Satan's
own, are represented as the tradition and infection of
pride,—the pride, which, in the audacity of youth, proposes
to attempt to be equal with God: Go to, let us
build us a city and a tower, whose top may touch heaven,
and let us make us a name; the pride, which, amid the
success and wealth of later years, forgets that there is
a God at all: Thou sayest in thine heart, I am, and there
is none beside me. Babylon is the Atheist of the Old
Testament, as she is the Antichrist of the New.
That a city should have been originally conceived by
Israel as the arch-enemy of God is due to historical
causes, as intelligible as those which led, in later days,
to the reverse conception of a city as God's stronghold,
and the refuge of the weak and the wandering. God's
earliest people were shepherds, plain men dwelling in
tents,—desert nomads, who were never tempted to
rear permanent structures of their own except as altars
and shrines, but marched and rested, waked and slept,
between God's bare earth and God's high heaven;
whose spirits were chastened and refined by the hunger
and clear air of the desert, and who walked their wide
world without jostling or stunting one another. With
the dear habits of those early times, the truths of the
Bible are therefore, even after Israel has settled in
towns, spelt to the end in the images of shepherd life.
The Lord is the Shepherd, and men are the sheep of His
pasture. He is a Rock and a Strong Tower, such as
rise here and there in the desert's wildness for guidance
or defence.Cf. Doughty, Arabia Deserta.
He is rivers of water in a dry place, and
the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And man's
peace is to lie beside still waters, and his glory is, not
to have built cities, but to have all these things put
under his feet—sheep and oxen and the beasts of the
field, the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea.
Over against that lowly shepherd life, the first cities
rose, as we can imagine, high, terrible and impious.
They were the production of an alien race,The Turanians, who occupied Mesopotamia before the Semitic
invasion, were the first builders of cities.
a people
with no true religion, as it must have appeared to
the Semites, arrogant and coarse. But Babylon had a
special curse. Babylon was not the earliest city,—Akkad
and Erekh were famous long before,—but it is Babylon
that the Book of Genesis represents as overthrown and
scattered by the judgement of God. What a contrast
this picture in Genesis,—and let it be remembered that
the only other cities to which that book leads us are
Sodom and Gomorrah,—what a contrast it forms to the
passages in which classic poets celebrate the beginnings
of their great cities! There, the favourable omens,
the patronage of the gods, the prophecies of the
glories of civil life; the tracing of the temple and the
forum; visions of the city as the school of industry,
the treasury of wealth, the home of freedom. Here,
but a few rapid notes of scorn and doom: man's miserable
manufacture, without Divine impulse or omen; his
attempt to rise to heaven upon that alone, his motive
only to make a name for himself; and the result—not,
as in Greek legend, the foundation of a polity, the rise
of commerce, the growth of a great language, by which
through the lips of one man the whole city may be
swayed together to high purposes, but only scattering
and confusion of speech. To history, a great city is
a multitude of men within reach of one man's voice.
Athens is Demosthenes; Rome is Cicero persuading
the Senate; Florence is Savonarola putting by his
word one conscience within a thousand hearts. But
Babylon, from the beginning, gave its name to Babel,
confusion of speech, incapacity for union and for progress.
And all this came, because the builders of the
city, the men who set the temper of its civilisation, did
not begin with God, but in their pride deemed everything
possible to unaided and unblessed human ambition,
and had only the desire to make a name upon
earth.
The sin and the curse never left the generations, who
in turn succeeded those impious builders. Pride and
godlessness infested the city, and prepared it for doom,
as soon as it again gathered strength to rise to heaven.
The early nomads had watched Babylon's fall from afar;
but when their descendants were carried as captives
within her in the time of her second glory,Babylon, as far as we can learn, first rose to power about the time
of that Amraphel who fought in the Mesopotamian league against the
neighbours and friends of Abraham. Amraphel is supposed to have
been the father of Hammurabis, who first made Babylon the capital of
Chaldea. It scarcely ever again ceased to be such; but it was not
till the fall of Assyria, about 625 b.c., and the rebuilding of Babylon
by Nebuchadrezzar (604-561), that the city's second and greatest
glory began.
they found
that the besetting sin, which had once reared its head
so fatally high, infected the city to her very heart.
We need not again go over the extent and glory of
Nebuchadrezzar's architecture, or the greatness of the
traffic, from the Levant to India, which his policy had
concentrated upon his own wharves and markets.See ch. iv., pp. 53-56.
It
was stupendous. But neither walls nor wealth make
a city, and no observant man, with the Hebrew's faith
and conscience, could have lived those fifty years in the
centre of Babylon, and especially after Nebuchadrezzar
had passed away, without perceiving, that her life was
destitute of every principle which ensured union or
promised progress. Babylon was but a medley of
peoples, without common traditions or a public conscience,
and incapable of acting together. Many of
her inhabitants had been brought to her, like the Jews,
against their own will, and were ever turning from
those glorious battlements they were forced to build
in their disgust, to scan the horizon for the advent
of a deliverer. And many others, who moved in freedom
through her busy streets, and shared her riches
and her joys, were also foreigners, and bound to her
only so long as she ministered to their pleasure or
their profit. Her king was an usurper, who had insulted
her native gods; her priesthood was against
him. And although his army, sheltered by the fortifications
of Nebuchadrezzar, had repulsed Cyrus upon
the Persian's first invasion from the north, conspiracies
were now so rife among his oppressed and insulted
subjects, that, on Cyrus' second invasion, Babylon
opened her impregnable gates and suffered herself to
be taken without a blow. Nor, even if the city's
religion had been better served by the king, could it
in the long run have availed for her salvation. For, in
spite of the science with which it was connected,—and
this "wisdom of the Chaldeans" was contemptible
in neither its methods nor its results,—the Babylonian
religion was not one to inspire either the common
people with those moral principles, which form the
true stability of states, or their rulers with a reasonable
and consistent policy. Babylon's religion was broken
up into a multitude of wearisome and distracting details,
whose absurd solemnities, especially when administered
by a priesthood hostile to the executive, must have
hampered every adventure of war, and rendered futile
many opportunities of victory. In fact, Babylon, for
all her glory, could not but be short-lived. There was
no moral reason why she should endure. The masses,
who contributed to her building, were slaves who hated
her; the crowds, who fed her business, would stay with
her only so long as she was profitable to themselves;
her rulers and her priests had quarrelled; her religion
was a burden, not an inspiration. Yet she sat proud,
and felt herself secure.
It is just these features, which our prophet describes
in ch. xlvii., in verses more notable for their moral
insight and indignation, than for their beauty as a work
of literature. He is certain of Babylon's immediate
fall from power and luxury into slavery and dishonour
(vv. 1-3). He speaks of her cruelty to her captives
(ver. 6), of her haughtiness and her secure pride
(vv. 7, 8). He touches twice upon her atheistic self-sufficiency,
her "autotheism,"—"I am, and there is none
beside me," words which only God can truly use, but
words which man's ignorant, proud self is ever ready
to repeat (vv. 8-10). He speaks of the wearisomeness
and futility of her religious magic (vv. 10-14). And
he closes with a vivid touch, that dissolves the reality
of that merely commercial grandeur on which she
prides herself. Like every association that arises only
from the pecuniary profit of its members, Babylon shall
surely break up, and none of those, who sought her
for their selfish ends, shall wait to help her one moment
after she has ceased to be profitable to them.
Here now are his own words, rendered literally
except in the case of one or two conjunctions and
articles,—rendered, too, in the original order of the
words, and, as far as it can be determined, in the rhythm
of the original. The rhythm is largely uncertain, but
some verses—1, 5, 14, 15—are complete in that measure
which we found in the Taunt-song against the king of
Babylon in ch. xiii.,Vol. i., pp. 409-315.
and nearly every line or clause
has the same metrical swing upon it.
Down! and sit in the dust, O virgin,
Daughter of Babel!
Sit on the ground, with no throne,
Daughter of Khasdîm!
For not again shall they call thee
Tender and Dainty.
Take to thee millstones, and grind out the meal,
Put back thy veil, strip off the garment,
Make bare the leg, wade through the rivers;
Bare be thy nakedness, yea, be beholden thy shame!
Vengeance I take, and strike treaty with none.
Our Redeemer! Jehovah of Hosts is His Name,
Holy of Israel!
Sit thou dumb, and get into darkness,
Daughter of Khasdîm!
For not again shall they call thee
Mistress of Kingdoms.
I was wroth with My people, profaned Mine inheritance,
Gave them to thy hand:
Thou didst show them no mercy, on old men thou madest
Thy yoke very sore.
And thou saidst, For ever I shall be mistress,
Till thou hast set not these things to thy heart,
Nor thought of their issue.
Therefore now hear this, Voluptuous,
Sitting self-confident:
Thou, who saith in her heart, "I am: there is none else.
I shall not sit a widow, nor know want of children."
Surely shall come to thee both of these, sudden, the same day,
Childlessness, widowhood!
To their full come upon thee, spite of the mass of thy spells,
Spite of the wealth of thy charms—to the full!
And thou wast bold in thine evil; thou saidst,
"None doth see me."
Thy wisdom and knowledge—they have led thee astray,
Till thou hast said in thine heart, "I am: there is none else."
Yet there shall come on thee Evil,
Thou know'st not to charm it.
And there shall fall on thee Havoc,
Thou canst not avert it.
And there shall come on thee suddenly,
Unawares, Ruin.
Stand forth, I pray, with thy charms, with the wealth of thy spells—
With which thou hast wearied thyself from thy youth up—
If so thou be able to profit,
If so to strike terror!
Thou art sick with the mass of thy counsels:
Let them stand up and save thee—
Mappers of heaven, Planet-observers, Tellers at new moons—
From what must befall thee!
Behold, they are grown like the straw!
Fire hath consumed them;
Nay, they save not their life
From the hand of the flame!
—'Tis no fuel for warmth,
Fire to sit down at!—
Thus are they grown to thee, they who did weary thee,
Traders of thine from thy youth up;
Each as he could pass have they fled;
None is thy saviour!
We, who remember Isaiah's elegies on Egypt and
Tyre,Vol. i., pp. 275, 286, 294.
shall be most struck here by the absence of all
appreciation of greatness or of beauty about Babylon.
Even while prophesying for Tyre as certain a judgement
as our prophet here predicts for Babylon, Isaiah spoke
as if the ruin of so much enterprise and wealth were a
desecration, and he promised that the native strength of
Tyre, humbled and purified, would rise again to become
the handmaid of religion. But our prophet sees no
saving virtue whatever in Babylon, and gives her not the
slightest promise of a future. There is pity through his
scorn: the way in which he speaks of the futility of the
mass of Babylonian science; the way in which he speaks
of her ignorance, though served by hosts of counsellors;
the way in which, after recalling her countless partners
in traffic, he describes their headlong flight, and closes
with the words, None is thy saviour,—all this is most
pathetic. But upon none of his lines is there one
touch of awe or admiration or regret for the fall of
what is great. To him Babylon is wholly false, vain,
destitute—as Tyre was not destitute—of native vigour
and saving virtue. Babylon is sheer pretence and
futility. Therefore his scorn and condemnation are
thorough; and mocking laughter breaks from him, now
with an almost savage coarseness, as he pictures the
dishonour of the virgin who was no virgin—Bare thy
nakedness, yea, be beholden thy shame; and now in
roguish glee, as he interjects about the fire which
shall destroy the mass of Babylon's magicians, astrologers
and haruspices: No coal this to warm oneself
at, fire to sit down before. But withal we are not
allowed to forget, that it is one of the Tyrant's poor
captives, who thus judges and scorns her. How vividly
from the midst of his satire does the prisoner's sigh
break forth to God:—
"Our Redeemer! Jehovah of Hosts is His Name,
Holy of Israel!"
Not the least interesting feature of this taunt-song
is the expression which it gives to the characteristic
Hebrew sense of the wearisomeness and immorality of
that system of divination, which formed the mass of
the Babylonian and many other Gentile religions.
The worship of Jehovah had very much in common
with the rest of the Semitic cults. Its ritual, its
temple-furniture, the division of its sacred year, its
terminology, and even many of its titles for the Deity
and His relations to men, may be matched in the
worship of Phœnician, Syrian and Babylonian gods, or
in the ruder Arabian cults. But in one thing the "law
of Jehovah" stands by itself, and that is in its intolerance
of all augury and divination. It owed this
distinction to the unique moral and practical sense
which inspired it. Augury and divination, such as the
Chaldeans were most proficient in, exerted two most
evil influences. They hampered, sometimes paralysed,
the industry and politics of a nation, and they more
or less confounded the moral sense of a people. They
were, therefore, utterly out of harmony with the practical
sanity and Divine morality of the Jewish law, which
strenuously forbade them; while the prophets, who
were practical men as well as preachers of righteousness,
constantly exposed the fatigue they laid upon
public life, and the way they distracted attention from
the simple moral issues of conduct. Augury and
divination wearied a people's intellect, stunted their
enterprise, distorted their conscience. Thy spells,—the
mass of thy charms, with which thou hast wearied thyself
from thy youth. Thou art sick with the mass of thy
counsels. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge! they have
led thee astray. When "the Chaldean astrology"
found its way to the New Babylon, Juvenal's strong
conscience expressed the same sense of its wearisomeness
and waste of time.See especially Satires III. and VI., and cf. Bagehot's Physics and
Politics.
Ashes and ruins, a servile and squalid life, a desolate
site abandoned by commerce,—what the prophet predicted,
that did imperial Babylon become. Not, indeed,
at the hand of Cyrus, or of any other single invader;
but gradually by the rivalry of healthier peoples, by
the inevitable working of the poison at her heart,
Babylon, though situated in the most fertile and
central part of God's earth, fell into irredeemable
decay. Do not let us, however, choke our interest
in this prophecy, as so many students of prophecy
do, in the ruins and dust, which were its primary
fulfilment. The shell of Babylon, the gorgeous city
which rose by Euphrates, has indeed sunk into heaps;
but Babylon herself is not dead. Babylon never dies.
To the conscience of Christ's seer, this mother of harlots,
though dead and desert in the East, came to life
again in the West. To the city of Rome, in his day,
John transferred word by word the phrases of our
prophet and of the prophet who wrote the fifty-first chapter
of the Book of Jeremiah. Rome was Babylon, in so
far as Romans were filled with cruelty, with arrogance,
with trust in riches, with credulity in divination, with
that waste of mental and moral power which Juvenal
exposed in her. I sit a queen, John heard Rome say in
her heart, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see
mourning. Therefore in one day shall her plagues come,
death and mourning and famine, and she shall be utterly
burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God which judged
her.Rev. xvii., xviii.
But we are not to leave the matter even here:
we are to use that freedom with John, which John
uses with our prophet. We are to pass by the particular
fulfilment of his words, in which he and his day
were interested, because it can only have a historical
and secondary interest to us in face of other Babylons
in our own day, with which our consciences, if they are
quick, ought to be busy. Why do some honest people
continue to confine the reference of those chapters in the
Book of Revelation to the city and church of Rome?
It is quite true, that John meant the Rome of his day;
it is quite true, that many features of his Babylon may
be traced upon the successor of the Roman Empire, the
Roman Church. But what is that to us, with incarnations
of the Babylonian spirit so much nearer ourselves
for infection and danger, than the Church of Rome can
ever be. John's description, based upon our prophet's,
suits better a commercial, than an ecclesiastical state,—though
self-worship has been as rife in ecclesiasticism,
Roman or Reformed, as among the votaries of Mammon.
For every phrase of John's, that may be true of the
Church of Rome in certain ages, there are six apt
descriptions of the centres of our own British civilisation,
and of the selfish, atheistic tempers that prevail in
them. Let us ask what are the Babylonian tempers
and let us touch our own consciences with them.
Forgetfulness of God, cruelty, vanity of knowledge
(which so easily breeds credulity) and vanity of wealth,—but
the parent of them all is idolatry of self. Isaiah
told us about this in the Assyrian with his war; we see
it here in Babylon with her commerce and her science;
it was exposed even in the orthodox Jews,Ch. xlv.
for they
put their own prejudices before their God's revelation;
and it is perhaps as evident in the Christian Church as
anywhere else. For selfishness follows a man like his
shadow; and religion, like the sun, the stronger it
shines, only makes the shadow more apparent. But to
worship your shadow is to turn your back on the sun;
selfishness is atheism, says our prophet. Man's self
takes God's word about Himself and says, I am, and
there is none beside me. And he, who forgets God, is sure
also to forget his brother; thus self-worship leads to
cruelty. A heavy part of the charge against Babylon is
her treatment of the Lord's own people. These were
God's convicts, and she, for the time, God's minister
of justice. But she unnecessarily and cruelly oppressed
them. On the aged thou hast very heavily laid thy yoke.
God's people were given to her to be reformed, but she
sought to crush the life out of them. God's purpose
was upon them, but she used them for her aggrandisement.
She did not feel that she was responsible to
God for her treatment even of the most guilty and
contemptible of her subjects.
In all this Babylon acted in accordance with what was
the prevailing spirit of antiquity; and here we may
safely affirm that our Christian civilisation has at least a
superior conscience. The modern world does recognise,
in some measure, its responsibility to God for the care
even of its vilest and most forfeit lives. No Christian
state at the present day would, for instance, allow its
felons to be tortured or outraged against their will in
the interests either of science or of public amusement.
We do not vivisect our murderers nor kill them off by
gladiatorial combats. Our statutes do not get rid of
worthless or forfeit lives by condemning them to be
used up in dangerous labours of public necessity. On
the contrary, in prisons we treat our criminals with
decency and even with comfort, and outside prisons we
protect and cherish even the most tainted and guilty
lives. In all our discharge of God's justice, we take
care that the inevitable errors of our human fallibility
may fall on mercy's side. Now it is true that in the
practice of all this we often fail, and are inconsistent.
The point at present is that we have at least a
conscience about the matter. We do not say, like
Babylon, "I am, and there is none beside me. There is
no law higher than my own will and desire. I can,
therefore, use whatever through its crime or its uselessness
falls into my power, for the increase of my
wealth or the satisfaction of my passions." We
remember God, and that even the criminal and the
useless are His. In wielding the power which His
Law and Providence put into our hands towards many
of His creatures, we remember that we are administering
His justice, and not satisfying our own revenge, or
feeding our own desire for sensation, or experimenting
for the sake of our science. They are His convicts, not
our spoil. In our treatment of them we are subject to
His laws,—one of which, that fences even His justice,
is the law against cruelty; and another, for which His
justice leaves room, is that to every man there be granted,
with his due penalty, the opportunity of penitence and
reform. There are among us Positivists, who deny that
these opinions and practices of modern civilisation are
correct. Carrying out the essential atheism of their
school—I am man, and there is none else: that in the
discharge of justice and the discharge of charity men
are responsible only to themselves—they dare to recommend
that the victims of justice should be made the
experiments, however painful, of science, and that
charity should be refused to the corrupt and the useless.
But all this is simply reversion to the Babylonian type,
and the Babylonian type is doomed to decay. For
history has writ no surer law upon itself than this—that
cruelty is the infallible precursor of ruin.
But while speaking of the state, we should remember
individual responsibilities as well. Success, even
where it is the righteous success of character, is a
most subtle breeder of cruelty. The best of us need
most strongly to guard ourselves against censoriousness.
If God does put the characters of sinful men
and women into our keeping, let us remember that our
right of judging them, our right of punishing them, our
right even of talking about them, is strictly limited.
Religious people too easily forget this, and their cruel
censoriousness or selfish gossip warns us that to be a
member of the Church of Christ does not always mean
that a man's citizenship is in heaven; he may well be
a Babylonian and carry the freedom of that city upon
his face. To "be hard on those who are down" is
Babylonian; to make material out of our neighbours'
faults, for our pride, or for love of gossip, or for prurience,
is Babylonian. There is one very good practical rule
to keep us safe. We may allow ourselves to speak about
our erring brothers to men, just as much as we pray for
them to God. But if we pray much for a man, he will
surely become too sacred to be made the amusement of
society or the food of our curiosity or of our pride.
The last curse on Babylon reminds us of the fatal
looseness of a society that is built only upon the
interests of trade; of the loneliness and uselessness
that await, in the end, all lives, which keep themselves
alive simply by trafficking with men. If we feed life
only by the news of the markets, by the interest of
traffic, by the excitement of competition, by the fever
of speculation, by the passions of cupidity and pride,
we may feel healthy and powerful for a time. But
such a life, which is merely a being kept brisk by the
sense of gaining something or overreaching some one,
is the mere semblance of living; and when the inevitable
end comes, when they that have trafficked with us
from our youth depart, then each particle of strength
with which they fed us shall be withdrawn, and we shall
fall into decay. There never was a truer picture of the
quick ruin of a merely commercial community, or of the
ultimate loneliness of a mercenary and selfish life, than
the headlong rush of traders, each as he could find
passage, from the city that never had other attractions
even for her own citizens than those of gain or of
pleasure.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CALL TO GO FORTH.
Isaiah xlviii.
On the substance of ch. xlviii. we have already
encroached, and now it is necessary only to
summarise its argument, and to give some attention
to the call to go forth from Babylon, with which it
concludes.
Chapter xlviii. is addressed, as its first verse declares,
to the exiles from JudahBredenkamp will have it, that the prophet here mentions first
Northern Israel and then Judah: O House of Jacob, the general
term, both those that are called by the name of Israel, and that have
come forth from the waters of Judah. But this is entirely opposed to
the syntax, and I note the opinion simply to show how precarious
the arguments are for the existence of pre-exilic elements in Isa.
xl.-xlviii. The point, which Bredenkamp makes by his rendering
of this verse, is that it could only be a pre-exilic prophet, who would
distinguish between Judah and Northern Israel; and that, therefore, it
might be Isaiah himself who wrote the verse!
: Hear this, Oh House of
Jacob, that call yourselves by the name of Israel, and
from the waters of Judah have come forth: that is, you
so-called Israelites, who spring from Judah. But their
worship of Jehovah is only nominal and unreal: They
who swear by the name of Jehovah, and celebrate the God
of Israel, not in truth and not in righteousness; although
by the Holy City they name themselves, and upon the God
of Israel they lean—Jehovah of Hosts is His Name!
The former things I published long ago;Former things (ri'shonôth). It is impossible to determine whether
these mean predictions which Jehovah published long ago, and which
have already come to pass, or former events which He foretold long
ago, and which have happened as He said they would. The
distinction, however, is immaterial.
from My
mouth they went forth, and I let them be heard—suddenly
I did them, and they came to pass. Because I knew how
hard thou wert, and a sinew of iron thy neck, and thy
brow brass. And I published to thee long ago; before it
came to pass I let thee hear it, lest thou shouldest say: Mine
idol hath wrought them, and my Image and my Casting
hath commanded them. Thou didst hear it: look at it
whole,—now that it is fulfilled,—and you! should ye not
publish it? All the past lies as a unity, prediction and
fulfilment together complete; all of it the doing of
Jehovah, and surely enough of it to provide the text
of confession of Him by His people. But now,—
I let thee hear new things—in contrast with the former
things—from now, and hidden things, and thou knewest
them not. Now are they created, and not long ago;
and before to-day thou hadst not heard them, lest thou
shouldest say, Behold I knew them. Verily,Literally, also. But נם, a cumulative conjunction, when it is introduced
to repeat the same thought as preceded it, means yea, truly,
profecto, imo.
thou hadst
not heard, verily, thou hadst not known, verily, long
since thine ear was not open; because I knew thou
art thoroughly treacherous, and Transgressor-from-the-womb
do they call thee.
The meaning of all this is sufficiently clear. It
is a reproach addressed to the formal Israelites. It
divides into two parts, each containing an explanation
Because I knew that, etc.: vv. 3-6a, and vv. 6b-9. In
the first part Jehovah treats of history already finished,
both in its prediction and fulfilment. Many of the
wonderful things of old Jehovah predicted long before
they happened, and so left His stubborn people no
excuse for an idolatry to which otherwise they would
have given themselves (ver. 5). Now that they see that
wonderful past complete, and all the predictions fulfilled,
they may well publish Jehovah's renown to the world.
In the first part of His reproach, then, Jehovah is dealing
with stages of Israel's history that were closed before
the Exile. The former things are wonderful events,
foretold and come to pass before the present generation.
But in the second part of His reproach (vv. 6b-9)
Jehovah mentions new things. These new things are
being created while His prophet speaks, and they have
not been foretold (in contradistinction to the former
things of ver. 3). What events fulfil these two conditions?
Well, Cyrus was on his way, the destruction
of Babylon was imminent, Israel's new destiny was
beginning to shape itself under God's hands: these are
evidently the things that are in process of creation while
the prophet speaks. But could it also be said of them,
that they had not been foretold? This could be said,
at least, of Cyrus, the Gentile Messiah. A Gentile
Messiah was something so new to Israel, that many,
clinging to the letter of the old prophecies, denied, as
we have seen, that Cyrus could possibly be God's
instrument for the redemption of Israel. Cyrus, then,
as a Gentile, and at the same time the Anointed of
Jehovah, is the new thing which is being created while
the prophet speaks, and which has not been announced
beforehand.
How is it possible, some may now ask, that Cyrus
should be one of the unpredicted new things that are
happening while the prophet speaks, when the prophet
has already pointed to Cyrus and his advance on
Babylon as a fulfilment of ancient predictions? The
answer to this question is very simple. There were
ancient predictions of a deliverance and a deliverer
from Babylon. To name no more, there were
Jeremiah'sCh. xxv., which is undoubtedly an authentic prophecy of Jeremiah.
and Habakkuk's; and Cyrus, in so far as
he accomplished the deliverance, was the fulfilment
of these ancient r'ishonôth. But in so far as Cyrus
sprang from a quarter of the world, not hinted at in
former prophecies of Jehovah—in so far as he was a
Gentile and yet the Anointed of the Lord, a combination
not provided for by any tradition in Israel—Cyrus
and his career were the new things not predicted beforehand,
the new things which caused such offence to
certain tradition-bound parties in Israel.
We cannot overestimate the importance of this
passage. It supplies us with the solution of the
problem, how the presently-happening deliverance of
Israel from Babylon could be both a thing foretold from
long ago, and yet so new as to surprise those Israelites
who were most devoted to the ancient prophecies.
And at the same time such of us as are content to
follow our prophet's own evidence, and to place him
in the Exile, have an answer put into our mouths, to
render to those, who say that we destroy a proof of the
Divinity of prophecy by denying to Isaiah or to any other
prophet, so long before Cyrus was born, the mention of
Cyrus by name. Let such objectors, who imagine
that they are more careful of the honour of God and
of the Divinity of Scripture, because they maintain that
Cyrus was named two hundred years before he was
born, look at verse 7. There God Himself says, that
there are some things, which, for a very good reason,
He does not foretell before they come to pass. We
believe, and have shown strong grounds for believing,
that the selection of Cyrus, the mention of his name,
and the furtherance of his arms against Babylon, were
among those new things, which God says He purposely
did not reveal till the day of their happening, and
which, by their novel and unpredicted character, offended
so many of the traditional and stupid party in Israel.
Must there always be among God's people, to-day as in
the day of our prophet, some who cannot conceive a thing
to be Divine unless it has been predicted long before?
In vv. 3-8, then, God claims to have changed His
treatment of His people, in order to meet and to
prevent the various faults of their character. Some
things He told to them, long before, so that they might
not attribute the occurrence of these to their idols.
But other things He sprang upon them, without predictions,
and in an altogether novel shape, so that they
might not say of these things, in their familiarity with
them, We knew of them ourselves. A people who
were at one time so stubborn, and at another so
slippery, were evidently a people who deserved nothing
at God's hand. Yet He goes on to say, vv. 9-11, that
He will treat them with forbearance, if not for their
sake, yet for His own: For the sake of My Name I
defer Mine anger, and for My praise—or renown, or
reputation, as we would say of a man—I will refrain for
thee, that I cut thee not off. Behold I have smelted thee,
but not as silver: I have tested thee in the furnace of
affliction. For Mine own sake, for Mine own sake, I am
working;—for how was My Name being profaned!The Hebrew has not the words My Name. The LXX. has them.
—and
My glory to another I will not give.
Then he gathers up the sum of what He has been
saying in a final appeal.
Hearken unto Me, O Jacob, and Israel My Called: I am
He; I am First, yea, I am Last. Yea, My hand hath
founded Earth,A second time without article though applied to the whole world.
and My right hand hath spread Heaven;
when I call unto them they stand together.
Be gathered, all of you, and hearken, Who among them—that
is, the Gentiles—hath published these things?—that
is, such things as the following, the prophecy given in
the next clause of the verse: Whom Jehovah loveth shall
perform His pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on
the Chaldeans. This was the sum of what Jehovah
promised long ago;Giesebrecht takes this as an actual quotation from some former
prophet: a specimen of the ancient prophecies which Jehovah sent to
Israel, and which were now being fulfilled. At least it is the sum of
what Jehovah's prophets had often predicted.
not Cyrus' name, not that a Gentile,
a Persian, should deliver God's people, for these are
among the new things which were not published beforehand,
at which the traditional Israelites were offended,—but
this general fiat of God's sovereignty, that whomever
Jehovah loves, or likes, he shall perform His pleasure
on Babylon. I, even I, have spoken—this, in ver. 14b,
was My speaking. Yea, I have called him; I have
brought him, and he will make his way to prosper. Again
emphasize the change of tense. Cyrus is already called,
but, while the prophet speaks, he has not yet reached
his goal in the capture of Babylon.
Some ambassador from the Lord, whether the
prophet or the Servant of Jehovah, now takes up the
parable, and, after presenting himself, addresses a final
exhortation to Israel, summing up the moral meaning
of the Exile. Draw near to me, hear this; not from
aforetime in secret have I spoken; from the time that it
was, there am I: and now my Lord, Jehovah, hath sent
me with His Spirit.This very difficult verse has been attributed either to Jehovah
in the first three clauses and to the Servant in the fourth (Delitzsch);
or in the same proportion to Jehovah and the prophet (Cheyne and
Bredenkamp); or to the Servant all through (Orelli); or to the
prophet all through (Hitzig, Knobel, Giesebrecht. See the latter's
Beiträge zur Kritik Jesaia's, p. 136). It is a subtle matter. The
present expositor thinks it clear that all four clauses must be understood
as the voice of one speaker, but sees nothing in them to decide
finally whether that speaker is the Servant, the people Israel, in which
case I am there would have reference to Israel's consciousness of every
deed done by God since the beginning of their history (cf. ver. 6a);
or whether the speaker is the prophet, in which case I am there would
mean that he had watched the rise of Cyrus from the first. But cf.
Zech. ii. 10-11, Eng. Ver., and iv. 9.
Thus saith Jehovah, thy Redeemer, Holy of Israel, I am
Jehovah thy God, thy Teacher to profit, thy Guide in the
way thou shouldest go: Would that thou hadst hearkened
to My commandments, then were like the River thy peace,
and thy righteousness like the waves of the sea! Then
were like the sand thy seed, and the offspring of thy bowels
like its grains!Or like its bowels, referring to the sea.
He shall not be cut off, nor shall perish
his name from before Me.
And now at last it is time to be up. Our salvation
is nearer than when first we believed. Day has dawned,
the gates are opening, the Word has been sufficiently
spoken.
Go forth from Babel, fly from the Chaldeans;
With a ringing voice publish and let this be heard,
Send ye it out to the end of the earth,
Say, Redeemed hath Jehovah His Servant Jacob.
And they thirsted not in the deserts He caused them to walk;
Waters from a rock He let drop for them,
Clave a rock and there flowed forth waters!
No peace, saith Jehovah, for the wicked.
We have arrived at the most distinct stage of which
our prophecy gives trace. Not that a new start is made
with the next passage. Ch. xlix. is the answer of the
Servant himself to the appeal made to him in xlviii. 20;
and ch. xlix. does not introduce the Servant for the
first time, but simply carries further the substance of
the opening verses of ch. xlii. Nor is this urgent
appeal to Go forth from Babylon, which has come to
Israel, the only one, or the last, of its kind. It is renewed
in ch. lii. 11-12. So that we cannot think that our
prophet has even yet got the Fall of Babylon behind
him. Nevertheless, the end of ch. xlviii. is the end of the
first and chief stage of the prophecy. The fundamental
truths about God and salvation have been laid down; the
idols have been thoroughly exposed; Cyrus has been
explained; Babylon is practically done with. Neither
Babylon, nor Cyrus, nor, except for a moment, the
idols, are mentioned in the rest of the prophecy.
The Deliverance of Israel is certain. And what now
interests the prophet is first, how the Holy Nation
will accomplish the destiny for which it has been set
free, and next, how the Holy City shall be prepared
for the Nation to inhabit. These are the two themes of
chs. xlix. to lxvi. The latter of them, the Restoration
of Jerusalem, has scarcely been touched by our prophet
as yet. But he has already spoken much of the
Nation's Destiny as the Servant of the Lord; and
now that we have exhausted the subject of the
deliverance from Babylon, we will take up his prophecies
on the Servant, both those which we have
passed over in chs. xl.-xlviii. and those which still lie
ahead of us.
Before we do this, however, let us devote a chapter
to a study of our prophet's use of the word righteousness,
for which this seems to be as convenient a place
as any other.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF ISRAEL AND THE
RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD.
Isaiah xl.-lxvi.
In the chapters which we have been studying we
have found some difficulty with one of our prophet's
keynotes—right or righteousness. In the chapters
to come we shall find this difficulty increase, unless we
take some trouble now to define how much the word
denotes in Isa. xl.-lxvi. There is no part of Scripture,
in which the term righteousness suffers so many developments
of meaning. To leave these vague, as readers
usually do, or to fasten upon one and all the technical
meaning of righteousness in Christian theology, is not
only to obscure the historical reference and moral force
of single passages,—it is to miss one of the main
arguments of the prophecy. We have read enough
to see that righteousness was the great question of the
Exile. But what was brought into question was not
only the righteousness of the people, but the righteousness
of their God. In Isa. xl.-lxvi. righteousness is
more often claimed as a Divine attribute, than enforced
as a human duty or ideal.It is only by confining his review of the word to its applications
to God, and overlooking the passages which attribute it to the people,
that Krüger, Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi., can affirm that the prophet holds throughout to a single idea of righteousness (p. 36).
On this, as on many other points, it is Calvin's treatment, that is most
sympathetic to the variations of the original.
I. Righteousness.
Ssedheq, the Hebrew root for righteousness, had, like
the Latin "rectus," in its earliest and now almost forgotten
uses, a physical meaning. This may have been
either straightness, or more probably soundness,—the
state in which a thing is all right.In Arabic the cognate word is applied to a lance, but this may
mean a sound or fit lance as well as a straight one. "Originem
Schult. de defect. hodiernis § 214-224 ponit in rigore, duritia, coll.
lancea dura, al. aequabilis" (Gesenii Thesaurus, art. צדק).
Paths of righteousness,
in Psalm xxiii., ver. 4, are not necessarily straight
paths, but rather sure, genuine, safe paths.It is not certain whether righteousness is here used in a physical
sense; and in all other cases in which the root is applied in the Old
Testament to material objects, it is plainly employed in some reflection
of its moral sense, e.g., just weights, just balance, Lev. xix. 36.
Like all
physical metaphors, like our own words "straight" and
"right," the applicability of the term to moral conduct
was exceedingly elastic. It has been attempted to
gather most of its meaning under the definition of
conformity to norm;"Der Zustand welcher der Norm entspricht." Schultz, Alt. Test.
Theologie, 4th ed., p. 540, n. 1.
and so many are the instances in
which the word has a forensic force,Cf. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 388, and Kautzsch's
paper, which is there quoted.
as of vindication
or justification, that some have claimed this for its
original, or, at least, its governing sense. But it is
improbable that either of these definitions conveys the
simplest or most general sense of the word. Even if
conformity or justification were ever the prevailing
sense of ssedheq, there are a number of instances in
which its meaning far overflows the limits of such
definitions. Every one can see how a word, which
may generally be used to express an abstract idea, like
conformity, or a formal relation towards a law or person,
like justification, might come to be applied to the actual
virtues, which realise that idea or lift a character into
that relation. Thus righteousness might mean justice,
or truth, or almsgiving, or religious obedience,—to each
of which, in fact, the Hebrew word was at various
times specially applied. Or righteousness might mean
virtue in general, virtue apart from all consideration
of law or duty whatsoever. In the prophet Amos, for
instance, righteousness is applied to a goodness so
natural and spontaneous that no one could think of
it for a moment as conformity to norm or fulfilment
of law."Die Begriffe צדקה und צדק ... bedeuten nun wirklich bei Amos
mehr als die juristische Gerechtigkeit. Indirect gehen die Forderungen
des Amos über die blos rechtliche Sphäre hinaus" (Duhm, Theologie
der Propheten, p. 115).
In short, it is impossible to give a definition of the
Hebrew word, which our version renders as righteousness,
less wide than our English word right. Righteousness
is right in all its senses,—natural, legal, personal,
religious. It is to be all right, to be right-hearted, to
be consistent, to be thorough; but also to be in the
right, to be justified, to be vindicated; and, in particular,
it may mean to be humane (as with Amos), to be just
(as with Isaiah), to be correct or true to fact (as sometimes
with our own prophet), to fulfil the ordinances of
religion, and especially the command about almsgiving
(as with the later Jews).
Let us now keep in mind that righteousness could
express a relation, or a general quality of character, or
some particular virtue. For we shall find traces of all
these meanings in our prophet's application of the term
to Israel and to God.
II. The Righteousness of Israel.
One of the simplest forms of the use of righteousness
in the Old Testament is when it is employed in the case
of ordinary quarrels between two persons; in which for
one of them to be righteous means to be right or in the
right.Gen. xxxviii. 26. Cf. 2 Sam. xv. 4.
Now to the Hebrew all life and religion was
based upon covenants between two,—between man and
man and between man and God. Righteousness meant
fidelity to the terms of those covenants. The positive
contents of the word in any single instance of its use
would, therefore, depend on the faithfulness and delicacy
of conscience by which those terms were interpreted. In
early Israel this conscience was not so keen as it afterwards
came to be, and accordingly Israel's sense of
their righteousness towards God was, to begin with, a
comparatively shallow one. When a Psalmist asseverates
his righteousness and pleads it as the ground for God
rewarding him, it is plain that he is able with sincerity
to make a claim, so repellent to a Christian's feeling,
just because he has not anything like a Christian's
conscience of what God demands from man. As Calvin
says on Psalm xviii., ver. 20, "David here represents
God as the President of an athletic contest, who had
chosen him as one of His champions, and David knows
that so long as he keeps to the rules of the contest, so
long will God defend him." It is evident that in such
an assertion righteousness cannot mean perfect innocence,
but simply the good conscience of a man, who,
with simple ideas of what is demanded from him, feels
that on the whole "he has" (slightly to paraphrase
Calvin) "played fair."
Two things, almost simultaneously, shook Israel out
of this primitive and naïve self-righteousness. History
went against them, and the prophets quickened their
conscience.The first chapter of Isaiah is a perfect summary of these two.
The effect of the former of these two
causes will be clear to us, if we recollect the judicial
element in the Hebrew righteousness,—that it often
meant not so much to be right, as to be vindicated or
declared right. History, to Israel, was God's supreme
tribunal. It was the faith of the people, expressed over
and over again in the Old Testament, that the godly
man is vindicated or justified by his prosperity: the way
of the ungodly shall perish. And Israel felt themselves
to be in the right, just as David, in Psalm xviii., felt
himself, because God had accredited them with success
and victory. But when the decision of history went
against the nation, when they were threatened with
expulsion from their land and with extinction as a
people, that just meant that the Supreme Judge of
men was giving His sentence against them. Israel
had broken the terms of the Covenant. They had lost
their right; they were no longer righteous. The keener
conscience, developed by prophecy, swiftly explained
this sentence of history. This declaration, that the
people were unrighteous, was due, the prophet said,
to the people's sins. Isaiah not only exclaimed, Your
country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; he
added, in equal indictment, How is the faithful city
become an harlot! it was full of justice, righteousness
lodged in it, but now murderers: thy princes are rebellious,
they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the
widow come before them. To Isaiah and the earlier
prophets Israel was unrighteous because it was so
immoral. With their strong social conscience, righteousness
meant to these prophets the practice of civic
virtues,—truth-telling, honesty between citizens, tenderness
to the poor, inflexible justice in high places.
Here then we have two possible meanings for Israel's
righteousness in the prophetic writings, allied and
necessary to one another, yet logically distinct,—the
one a becoming righteous through the exercise of
virtue, the other a being shown to be righteous by
the voice of history. In the one case righteousness
is the practical result of the working of the Spirit of
God; in the other it is vindication, or justification, by
the Providence of God. Isaiah and the earlier prophets,
while the sentence of history was still not executed and
might through the mercy of God be revoked, incline to
employ righteousness predominantly in the former sense.
But it will be understood how, after the Exile, it was
the latter, which became the prevailing determination of
the word. By that great disaster God finally uttered the
clear sentence, of which previous history had been but
the foreboding. Israel in exile was fully declared to be
in the wrong—to be unrighteous. As a church, she lay
under the ban; as a nation, she was discredited before
the nations of the world. And her one longing, hope
and effort during the weary years of Captivity was to
have her right vindicated again, was to be restored to
right relations to God and to the world, under the
Covenant.
This is the predominant meaning of the term, as
applied to Israel, in Isa. xl.-lxvi. Israel's unrighteousness
is her state of discredit and disgrace under
the hands of God; her righteousness, which she
hopes for, is her restoral to her station and destiny as
the elect people. To our Christian habit of thinking,
it is very natural to read the frequent and splendid
phrases, in which righteousness is attributed or promised
to the people of God in this evangelical prophecy, as if
righteousness were that inward assurance and justification
from an evil conscience, which, as we are taught
by the New Testament, is provided for us through the
death of Christ, and inwardly sealed to us by the Holy
Ghost, irrespective of the course of our outward fortune.
But if we read that meaning into righteousness in
Isa. xl.-lxvi., we shall simply not understand some
of the grandest passages of the prophecy. We must
clearly keep in view, that while the prophet ceaselessly
emphasizes the pardon of God spoken home to the heart
of the people, as the first step towards their restoral, he
does not apply the term righteousness to this inward
justification,But the verb to make righteous or justify is used in a sense akin
to the New Testament sense in liii. 11. See our chapter on that
prophecy.
but to the outward vindication and accrediting
of Israel by God before the whole world, in
their redemption from Captivity, and their reinstatement
as His people. This is very clear from the way in
which righteousness is coupled with salvation by the
prophet, as (lxii. 1): I will not rest till her righteousness
go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that
burneth. Or again from the way in which righteousness
and glory are put in parallel (lxii. 2): And the nations shall
see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory. Or again
in the way that righteousness and renown are identified
(lxi. 11): The Lord Jehovah will cause righteousness and
renown to spring forth before all the nations. In each
of these promises the idea of an external and manifest
splendour is evident; not the inward peace of justification
felt only by the conscience to which it has been
granted, but the outward historical victory appreciable
by the gross sense of the heathen. Of course the
outward implies the inward,—this historical triumph is
the crown of a religious process, the result of forgiveness
and a long purification,—but while in the New
Testament it is these which would be most readily
called a people's righteousness, it is the former (what
the New Testament would rather call the crown of life),
which has appropriated the name in Isa. xl.-lxvi.
The same is manifest from another text (xlviii. 18):
O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments; then
had thy peace been as the River, and thy righteousness like
the waves of the sea. Here righteousness is not only not
applied to inward morality, but set over against this as
its external reward,—the health and splendour which a
good conscience produces. It is in the same external
sense that the prophet talks of the robe of righteousness
with its bridal splendour, and compares it to the
appearance of Spring (lxi. 10-11).
For this kind of righteousness, this vindication by
God before the world, Israel waited throughout the
Exile. God addresses them as they that pursue righteousness,
that seek Jehovah (li. 1). And it is a closely
allied meaning, though perhaps with a more inward
application, when the people are represented as praying
God to give them ordinances of righteousness (lviii. 2),—that
is, to prescribe such a ritual as will expiate their
guilt and bring them into a right relation with Him.
They sought in vain. The great lesson of the Exile
was that not by works and performances, but through
simply waiting upon the Lord, their righteousness should
shine forth. Even this outward kind of justification
was to be by faith.
The other meaning of righteousness, however,—the
sense of social and civic morality, which was its usual
sense with the earlier prophets,—is not altogether
excluded from the use of the word in Isa. xl.-lxvi.
Here are some commands and reproaches which seem to
imply it. Keep judgement, and do righteousness,—where,
from what follows, righteousness evidently means observing
the Sabbath and doing no evil (lvi. 1 ff). And
justice is fallen away backward, and righteousness standeth
afar off, for truth is fallen in the street, and steadfastness
cannot enter (lix. 14). These must be terms for human
virtues, for shortly afterwards it is said: Jehovah was
displeased because there was no justice. Again, They seek
Me as a nation that did righteousness (lviii. 2); Hearken
unto Me, ye that know righteousness, a people—My law is
in their hearts (li. 7); Thou meetest him that worketh
righteousness (lxiv. 5); No one sues in righteousness,
and none goeth to law in truth (lix. 4). In all these
passages righteousness means something that man can
know and do, his conscience and his duty, and is rightly
to be distinguished from those others, in which righteousness
is equivalent to the salvation, the glory, the
peace, which only God's power can bring. If the
passages, that employ righteousness in the sense of
moral or religious observance, really date from the
Exile, then the interesting fact is assured to us that
the Jews enjoyed some degree of social independence
and responsibility during their Captivity. But it is a
very striking fact that these passages all belong to
chapters, the exilic origin of which is questioned even
by critics, who assign the rest of Isa. xl.-lxvi. to
the Exile. Yet, even if these passages have all to be
assigned to the Exile, how few they are in number!
How they contrast with the frequency, with which, in
the earlier part of this book,—in the orations addressed
by Isaiah to his own times, when Israel was still an
independent state,—righteousness is reiterated as the
daily, practical duty of men, as justice, truthfulness
and charity between man and man! The extreme
rarity of such inculcations in Isa. xl.-lxvi. warns us
that we must not expect to find here the same practical
and political interest, which formed so much of the
charm and the force of Isa. i.-xxxix. The nation
has now no politics, almost no social morals. Israel
are not citizens working out their own salvation in the
market, the camp and the senate; but captives waiting
a deliverance in God's time, which no act of theirs can
hasten. It is not in the street that the interest of
Second Isaiah lies: it is on the horizon. Hence the
vague feeling of a distant splendour, which, as
the reader passes from ch. xxxix. to ch. xl., replaces
in his mind the stir of living in a busy crowd,
the close and throbbing sense of the civic conscience,
the voice of statesmen, the clash of the weapons of
war. There is no opportunity for individuals to reveal
themselves. It is a nation waiting, indistinguishable
in shadow, whose outlines only we see. It is no longer
the thrilling practical cry, which sends men into the
arenas of social life with every sinew in them strung:
Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge
the fatherless, plead for the widow. It is rather the cry
of one who still waits for his working day to dawn:
I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh
my help? Righteousness is not the near and daily
duty, it is the far-off peace and splendour of skies, that
have scarce begun to redden to the day.
III. The Righteousness of God.
But there was another Person, whose righteousness
was in question during the Exile, and who Himself
argues for it throughout our prophecy. Perhaps the
most peculiar feature of the theology of Isa. xl.-lxvi.
is its argument for the righteousness of Jehovah.
Some critics maintain that righteousness, when applied
to Jehovah, bears always a technical reference to His
covenant with Israel. This is scarcely correct. Jehovah's
dealings with Israel were no doubt the chief of His
dealings, and it is these, which He mainly quotes to
illustrate His righteousness; but we have already
studied passages, which prove to us that Jehovah's
righteousness was an absolute quality of His Godhead,
shown to others besides Israel, and in loyalty
to obligations different from the terms of His covenant
with Israel. In ch. xli. Jehovah calls upon the
heathen to match their righteousness with His; righteousness
was therefore a quality that might have been
attributed to them as well as to Himself. Again, in
xlv. 19,—I, Jehovah, speak righteousness, I declare things
that are right,—righteousness evidently bears a general
sense, and not one of exclusive application to God's
dealing with Israel. It is the same in the passage
about Cyrus (xlv. 13): I have raised him up in righteousness,
I will make straight all his ways. Though
Cyrus was called in connection with God's purpose
towards Israel, it is not that purpose which makes his
calling righteous, but the fact that God means to carry
him through, or, as the parallel verse says, to make
straight all his ways. These instances are sufficient
to prove that the righteousness, which God attributes
to His words, to His actions and to Himself, is a
general quality not confined to His dealings with Israel
under the covenant,—though, of course, most clearly
illustrated by these.
If now we enquire, what this absolute quality of
Jehovah's Deity really means, we may conveniently
begin with His application of it to His Word. In
ch. xli. He summons the other religions to exhibit predictions
that are true to fact. Who hath declared it on-ahead
that we may know, or from aforetime that we may
say, He is ssaddîq.At first sight this is remarkably like the cognate Arabic root,
which is continually used for truthful. But the Hebrew word never
meant truthful in the moral sense of truth, and here is right or
correct.
Here ssaddîq simply means right,
correct, true to fact. It is much the same meaning in
xliii. 9, where the verb is used of heathen predicters,
that they may be shown to be right, or correct (English
version, justified). But when, in ch. xlvi., the word is
applied by Jehovah to His own speech, it has a meaning,
of far richer contents, than mere correctness, and
proves to us that after all the Hebrew ssedheq was
almost as versatile as the English "right." The following
passage shows us that the righteousness of Jehovah's
speech is its clearness, straightforwardness and practical
effectiveness: Not in secret have I spoken, in a place of
the land of darkness,—this has been supposed to refer
to the remote or subterranean localities in which heathen
oracles mysteriously entrenched themselves,—I have not
said to the seed of Jacob, In Chaos seek Me. I am Jehovah,
a Speaker of righteousness, a Publisher of straight things.
Be gathered and come, draw near together, O remnants of
the nations. They know not that carry the log of their
image, and pray to a god who does not save. Publish
and bring near, yea, let them take counsel together. Who
caused this to be heard of old? long since hath published
it? Is it not I, Jehovah, and there is none else God beside
Me; a God righteous and a Saviour, there is none except
Me. Turn unto Me and be saved, all ends of Earth,Earth again without article, though obviously referring to the
world.
for
I am God, and there is none else. By Myself have I sworn,
gone forth from My mouth hath righteousness: a word and
it shall not turn; for to Me shall bow every knee, shall
swear every tongue. Truly in Jehovah, shall they say of
Me, are righteousnesses and strength. To Him shall it
come,Sense doubtful here. Bredenkamp translates by a slight change
of reading: Only speaking by Jehovah: Fulness of righteousness and
might come to Him, and ashamed, etc.
and shamed shall be all that are incensed against
Him. In Jehovah shall be righteous and renowned all
the seed of Israel (xlv. 19-25).
In this very suggestive passage righteousness means
far more than simple correctness of prediction. Indeed,
it is difficult to distinguish how much it means, so
quickly do its varying echoes throng upon our ear,
from the new associations in which it is spoken. A
word such as righteousness is like the sensitive tones of
the human voice. Spoken in a desert, the voice is
itself and nothing more; but utter it where the landscape
is crowded with novel obstacles, and the original
note is almost lost amid the echoes it startles. So with
the righteousness of Jehovah; among the new associations
in which the prophet affirms it, it starts novel
repetitions of itself. Against the ambiguity of the
oracles, it is echoed back as clearness, straightforwardness,
good faith (ver. 19); against their opportunism and
want of foresight, it is described as equivalent to the
capacity for arranging things beforehand and predicting
what must come to pass, therefore as purposefulness;
while against their futility, it is plainly effectiveness
and power to prevail (ver. 23). It is the quality in
God, which divides His Godhead with His power,
something intellectual as well as moral, the possession
of a reasonable purpose as well as fidelity
towards it.
This intellectual sense of righteousness, as reasonableness
or purposefulness, is clearly illustrated by the
way in which the prophet appeals, in order to enforce
it, to Jehovah's creation of the world. Thus saith
Jehovah, Creator of the heavens—He is the God—Former
of the Earth and her Maker, He founded her; not Chaos
did He create her, to be dwelt in did He form her
(xlv. 18). The word Chaos here is the same as is
used in opposition to righteousness in the following
verse. The sentence plainly illustrates the truth, that
whatever God does, He does not so as to issue in confusion,
but with a reasonable purpose and for a practical
end. We have here the repetition of that deep, strong
note, which Isaiah himself so often sounded to the comfort
of men in perplexity or despair, that God is at least
reasonable, not working for nothing, nor beginning only
to leave off, nor creating in order to destroy. The same
God, says our prophet, who formed the earth in order
to see it inhabited, must surely be believed to be consistent
enough to carry to the end also His spiritual
work among men. Our prophet's idea of God's righteousness,
therefore, includes the idea of reasonableness;
implies rational as well as moral consistency, practical
sense as well as good faith; the conscience of a reasonable
plan, and, perhaps also, the power to carry it
through.
To know that this great and varied meaning belongs
to righteousness gives us new insight into those passages,
which find in it all the motive and efficiency of the
Divine action: It pleased Jehovah for His righteousness'
sake (xlii. 21); His righteousness, it upheld
Him; and He put on righteousness as a breastplate
(lix. 16, 17).
With such a righteousness did Jehovah deal with
Israel. To her despair that He has forgotten her He
recounts the historical events by which He has made
her His own, and affirms that He will carry them on;
and you feel the expression both of fidelity and of the
consciousness of ability to fulfil, in the words, I will
uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.
Right hand—there is more than the touch of fidelity in
this; there is the grasp of power. Again, to the Israel
who was conscious of being His Servant, God says,
I, Jehovah, have called thee in righteousness; and, taken
with the context, the word plainly means good faith
and intention to sustain and carry to success.
It was easy to transfer the name righteousness from
the character of God's action to its results, but always,
of course, in the vindication of His purpose and word.
Therefore, just as the salvation of Israel, which was the
chief result of the Divine purpose, is called Israel's
righteousness, so it is also called Jehovah's righteousness.
Thus, in xlvi. 13, I bring near My righteousness; and in
li. 5, My righteousness is near, My salvation is gone forth;
ver. 6, My salvation shall be for ever, and My righteousness
shall not be abolished. It seems to be in the same
sense, of finished and visible results, that the skies are
called upon to pour down righteousness, and the earth to
open that they may be fruitful in salvation, and let her cause
righteousness to spring up together (xlv. 8; cf. lxi. 10, My
Lord Jehovah will cause righteousness to spring forth).
One passage is of great interest, because in it
righteousness is used to play upon itself, in its two
meanings of human duty and Divine effect—lvi. 1,
Observe judgement—probably religious ordinances—and
do righteousness; for My salvation is near to come, and
My righteousness to be revealed.
To complete our study of righteousness it is necessary
to touch still upon one point. In Isa. xl.-lxvi. both the
masculine and feminine forms of the Hebrew word for
righteousness are used, and it has been averred that
they are used with a difference. This opinion is
entirely dispelled by a collation of the passages. I
give the particulars in a note, from which it will be seen
that both forms are indifferently employed for each of
the many shades of meaning which righteousness bears
in our prophecies.צדק, the masculine, is used sixteen times; צדקה, twenty-four.
Both are used of Jehovah: xlii. 21 צדקו, and lix. 16 צדקתו. Both of
His speech: masc. in xlv. 19, fem. in xlv. 23 and lxiii. 1. Perhaps
the passage in which their identity is most plain is li. 5, 6, where
they are both parallel to salvation: ver. 5, My righteousness (m.) is
near; ver. 6, My righteousness (f.) shall not be abolished. Both
are used of the people's duty: lix. 4, None sueth in righteousness (m.);
xlviii. 1, But not in truth nor in righteousness (f.); lvi. 1, Keep justice
and do righteousness (f.) And both are used of the people's saved and
glorious condition: lviii. 8, Thy righteousness (m.) shall go before thee;
lxii. 1, Until her righteousness (m.) go forth as brightness; xlviii. 18,
Thy righteousness (f.) as the waves of the sea; liv. 17, Their righteousness
(f.) which is of Me. Both are used with prepositions (cf. xlii. 6
with xlviii. 1), and both with possessive pronouns. In fact, there is
absolutely no difference made between the two.
That the masculine and feminine forms sometimes
occur, with the same or with different meanings, in the
same verse, or in the next verse to one another, proves
that the selection of them respectively cannot be due to
any difference in the authorship of our prophecy. So
that we are reduced to say that nothing accounts for
their use, except, it might be, the exigencies of the
metre. But who is able to prove this?
BOOK III.
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD.
BOOK III.
Having completed our survey of the fundamental
truths of our prophecy, and studied the subject
which forms its immediate and most urgent interest,
the deliverance of Israel from Babylon, we are now
at liberty to turn to consider the great duty and
destiny which lie before the delivered people—the
Service of Jehovah. The passages of our prophecy
which describe this are scattered both among those
chapters we have already studied and among those
which lie before us. But, as was explained in the
Introduction, they are all easily detached from their
surroundings; and the continuity and progress, of
which their series, though so much interrupted, gives
evidence, demand that they should be treated by us
together. They will, therefore, form the Third of the
Books, into which this volume is divided.
The passages on the Servant of Jehovah, or, as the
English reader is more accustomed to hear him called,
the Servant of the Lord, are as follows: xli. 8 ff; xlii.
1-7, 18-25; xliii. passim, especially 8-10; xliv. 1, 21;
xlviii. 20; xlix. 1-9; l. 4-11; lii. 13-liii. The main
passages are those in xli., xlii., xliii., xlix., l., and lii.-liii.
The others are incidental allusions to Israel as the
Servant of the Lord, and do not develop the character
of the Servant or the Service.
Upon the questions relevant to the structure of these
prophecies—why they have been so scattered, and
whether they were originally from the main author of
Isa. xl.-lxvi., or from any other single writer,—questions
on which critics have either preserved a discreet
silence, or have spoken to convince nobody but themselves,—I
have no final opinions to offer. It may
be that these passages formed a poem by themselves
before their incorporation with our prophecy; but the
evidence, which has been offered for this, is very far
from adequate. It may be that one or more of them
are insertions from other authors, to which our prophet
consciously works up with ideas of his own about the
Servant; but neither for this is there any evidence worth
serious consideration. I think that all we can do is to
remember that they occur in a dramatic work, which
may, partly at least, account for the interruptions which
separate them; that the subject of which they treat is
woven through and through other portions of Isa. xl.-liii.,
and that even those of them which, like ch. xlix.,
look as if they could stand by themselves, are led up to
by the verses before them; and that, finally, the series
of them exhibits a continuity and furnishes a distinct
development of their subject. See pp. 313, 314, and
336 ff.
It is this development which the following exposition
seeks to trace. As the prophet starts from the idea
of the Servant as being the whole, historical nation
Israel, it will be necessary to devote, first of all, a
chapter to Israel's peculiar relation to God. This will
be ch. xv., "One God, One People." In ch. xvi. we
shall trace the development of the idea through the
whole series of the passages; and in ch. xvii. we shall
give the New Testament interpretation and fulfilment of
the Servant. Then will follow an exposition of the
contents of the Service and of the ideal it presents to
ourselves, first, as it is given in Isa. xlii. 1-9, as the
service of God and man, ch. xviii. of this volume; then
as it is realised and owned by the Servant himself, as
prophet and martyr, Isa. xlix.-l., ch. xix. of this volume;
and finally as it culminates in Isa. lii. 13-liii., ch. xx. of
this volume.
CHAPTER XV.
ONE GOD, ONE PEOPLE.
Isaiah xli. 8-20, xlii.-xliii.
We have been listening to the proclamation of a
Monotheism so absolute, that, as we have seen,
modern critical philosophy, in surveying the history of
religion, can find for it no rival among the faiths of the
world. God has been exalted before us, in character
so perfect, in dominion so universal, that neither the
conscience nor the imagination of man can add to
the general scope of the vision. Jesus and His Cross
shall lead the world's heart farther into the secrets of
God's love; God's Spirit in science shall more richly
instruct us in the secrets of His laws. But these shall
thereby only increase the contents and illustrate the
details of this revelation of our prophet. They shall
in no way enlarge its sweep and outline, for it is
already as lofty an idea of the unity and sovereignty
of God, as the thoughts of man can follow.
Across this pure light of God, however, a phenomenon
thrusts itself, which seems for the moment to affect the
absoluteness of the vision and to detract from its
sublimity. This is the prominence given before God
to a single people, Israel. In these chapters the
uniqueness of Israel is as much urged upon us as the
unity of God. Is He the One God in heaven? they
are His only people on earth, His elect, His own, His
witnesses to the end of the earth. His guidance of them
is matched with His guidance of the stars, as if, like
the stars shining against the night, their tribes alone
moved to His hand through an otherwise dark and
empty space. His revelation to humanity is given
through their little language; the restoration of their
petty capital, that hill fort in the barren land of Judah,
is exhibited as the end of His processes, which sweep
down through history and affect the surface of the whole
inhabited world. And His very righteousness turns
out to be for the most part His faithfulness to His
covenant with Israel.
Now to many in our day it has been a great offence
to have "the curved nose of the Jew" thus thrust in
between their eyes and the pure light of God. They
ask, Can the Judge of all the earth have been thus
partial to one people? Did God confine His revelation
to men to the literature of a small, unpolished tribe?
Even most uncritical souls have trouble to understand
why salvation is of the Jews.
The chief point to know is that the election of Israel
was an election, not to salvation, but to service. To
understand this is to get rid of by far the greater part
of the difficulty that attaches to the subject. Israel
was a means, and not an end; God chose in him
a minister, not a favourite. No prophet in Israel
failed to say this; but our prophet makes it the
burden of his message to the exiles. Ye are My
witnesses, My Servant whom I have chosen. Ye are
My witnesses, and I am God. I will also give thee
for a light to the nations, to be My salvation to the
end of the earth (xliii. 10). Numbers of other verses
might be quoted to the same effect, that "there is no
God but God, and Israel is His prophet."Wellhausen.
But if
the election of Israel is thus an election to service,
it is surely in harmony with God's usual method,
whether in nature or history. So far from such a
specialisation as Israel's being derogatory to the Divine
unity, it is but part of that order and division of labour
which the Divine unity demands as its consequence
throughout the whole range of Being. The universe
is diverse. To every man his own work is the proper
corollary of God over all, and Israel's prerogative was
but the specialisation of Israel's function for God in
the world. In choosing Israel to be His mediator with
mankind, God did but do for religion what in the
exercise of the same practical discipline He did for
philosophy, when He dowered Greece with her gifts
of subtle thought and speech, or with Rome when
He trained her people to become the legislators of
mankind. And how else should work succeed but
by specialisation,—the secret as it is of fidelity and
expertness? Of fidelity—for the constraint of my
duty surely lies in this, that it is due from me and no
other; of expertness—for he drives best and deepest
who drives along one line. In lighting a fire you begin
with a kindled faggot; and in lighting a world it was
in harmony with all His law, physical and moral, for
God to begin with a particular portion of mankind.
The next question is, Why should this particular
portion of mankind be a nation, and not a single
prophet, or a school of philosophers, or a church
universal? The answer is found in the condition of
the ancient world. Amid its diversities of language
and of racial feeling, a missionary prophet travelling
like Paul from people to people is inconceivable; and
almost as inconceivable is the kind of Church which
Paul founded among various nations, in no other bonds
than the consciousness of a common faith. Of all possible
combinations of men the nation was the only form,
which in the ancient world stood a chance of surviving
in the struggle for existence. The nation furnished
the necessary shelter and fellowship for personal
religion; it gave to the spiritual a habitation upon
earth, enlisted in its behalf the force of heredity, and
secured the continuity of its traditions. But the service
of the nation to religion was not only conservative, it
was missionary as well. It was only through a people
that a God became visible and accredited to the world.
Their history supplied the drama in which He played the
hero's part. At a time when it was impossible to spread
a religion, by means of literature, or by the example of
personal holiness, the achievements of a considerable
nation, their progress and prestige, furnished a universally
understood language, through which the God
could publish to mankind His power and will; and in
choosing, therefore, a single nation to reveal Himself by,
God was but employing the means best adapted for His
purpose. The nation was the unit of religious progress
in the ancient world. In the nation God chose as
His witness, not only the most solid and permanent,
but the most widely intelligible and impressive."Revelation is never revolutionary.... As a rule, revelation
accepts the fragments of truth and adopts the methods of religion
already existing, uniting the former into a whole, and purifying the
latter for its own purposes."... For instance, "in the East each
people had its particular god. The god and the people were correlative
ideas, that which gave the individuals of a nation unity and made them
a people was the unity of its god; as, on the other hand, that which
gave a god prestige was the strength and victorious career of his people. The self-consciousness of the nation and its religion re-acted
on one another, and rose and fell simultaneously. This conception
was not repudiated, but adopted by revelation; and, as occasion
demanded, purified from its natural abuses."—Professor A. B.
Davidson, Expositor, Second Series, vol. viii., pp. 257-8.
The next question is, Why Israel should have been
this singular and indispensable nation? When God
selected Israel to serve His purpose, He did so, we are
told, of His sovereign grace. But this strong thought,
which forms the foundation of our prophet's assurance
about his people, does not prevent him from dwelling
also on Israel's natural capacity for religious service.
This, too, was of God. Over and over again Israel
hears Jehovah say: I have created thee, I have formed
thee, I have prepared thee. One passage describes the
nation's equipment for the office of a prophet; another
their discipline for the life of a saint; and every now
and then our prophet shows how far back he feels this
preparation to have begun, even when the nation, as
he puts it, was still in the womb. How easily these
well-worn phrases slip over our lips! Yet they are
not mere formulas. Modern research has put a new
meaning into them, and taught us that Israel's creation,
forming, election, polishing, carriage, and defence were
processes as real and measurable as any in natural or
political history. For instance, when our prophet says
that Israel's preparation began from the womb,—I am
thy moulder, saith Jehovah, from the womb,—history takes
us back to the pre-natal circumstance of the nation,
and there exhibits it to us as already being tempered
to a religious disposition and propensity. The Hebrews
were of the Semitic stock. The womb from which
Israel sprang was a race of wandering shepherds, upon
the hungry deserts of Arabia, where man's home is the
flitting tent, hunger is his discipline for many months of
the year, his only arts are those of speech and war, and
in the long irremediable starvation there is nothing to
do but to be patient and dream. Born in these deserts,
the youth of the Semitic race, like the probation of
their greatest prophets, was spent in a long fast, which
lent their spirit a wonderful ease of detachment from
the world and of religious imagination, and tempered
their will to long suffering—though it touched their
blood, too, with a rancorous heat that breaks out through
the prevailing calm of every Semitic literature.Mr. Doughty, in his most interesting account of the nomads of
Central Arabia, the unsophisticated Semites on their native soil,
furnishes ample material for accounting for the strange mixture of
passion and resignation in these prophet-peoples of the world.
They
were trained also in the desert's august style of
eloquence. He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me.Ch. xlix. 2.
A "natural
prophecy," as it has been called, is found in all the
branches of the Semitic stock. No wonder that from
this race there came forth the three great universal
religions of mankind—that Moses and the prophets,
John, Jesus Himself and Paul, and Mohammed were
all of the seed of Shem.
This racial disposition the Hebrew carried with him
into his calling as a nation. The ancestor, who gave the
people the double name by which they are addressed
throughout our prophecy, Jacob-Israel, inherited with
all his defects the two great marks of the religious
temper. Jacob could dream and he could wait. Remember
him by the side of the brother, who could so
little think of the future, that he was willing to sell its
promise for a mess of pottage; who, though God was
as near to him as to Jacob, never saw visions or wrestled
with angels; who seemed to have no power of growth
about him, but carrying the same character, unchanged
through the discipline of life, finally transmitted it in
stereotype to his posterity;—remember Jacob by the
side of such a brother, and you have a great part of
the secret of the emergence of his descendants from the
life of wandering cattle-breeders to be God's chief
ministers of religion in the world. Their habits, like
their father's, might be bad, but they had the tough
and malleable constitution, which it was possible to
mould to something better. Like their father, they
were false, unchivalrous, selfish, "with the herdsman's
grossness in their blood," and much of the rancour and
cruelty of their ancestors, the desert-warriors, but with
it all they had the two most potential of habits—they
could dream and they could wait. In his love and
hope for promised Rachel, that were not quenched or
soured by the substitution, after seven years' service for
her, of her ill-favoured sister, but began another seven
years' effort for herself, Jacob was a type of his strange,
tenacious people, who, when they were brought face
to face with some Leah of a fulfilment of their fondest
ideals, as they frequently were in their history, took
up again with undiminished ardour the pursuit of their
first unforgettable love. It is the wonder of history,
how this people passed through the countless disappointments
of the prophecies to which they had given
their hearts, yet with only a strengthening expectation
of the arrival of the promised King and His kingdom.
If other peoples have felt a gain in character from such
miscarriages of belief, it has generally been at the expense
of their faith. But Israel's experience did not take faith
away or even impair faith's elasticity. We see their
appreciation of God's promises growing only more
spiritual with each postponement, and patience performing
her perfect work upon their character; yet this
never happens at the cost of the original buoyancy and
ardour. The glory of it we ascribe, as is most due,
to the power of the Word of God; but the people who
could stand the strain of the discipline of such a word,
its alternate glow and frost, must have been a people of
extraordinary fibre and frame. When we think of how
they wore for those two thousand years of postponed
promise, and how they wear still, after two thousand
years more of disillusion and suffering, we cease to
wonder why God chose this small tribe to be His
instrument on earth. Where we see their bad habits,
their Creator knew their sound constitution, and the
constitution of Israel is a thing unique among mankind.
From the racial temper of the elect nation we pass
to their history, on the singularity of which our prophet
dwells with emphasis. Israel's political origin had
no other reason than a call to God's service. Other
peoples grew, as it were, from the soil; they were the
product of a fatherland, a climate, certain physical
environments: root them out of these, and, as nations,
they ceased to be. But Israel had not been so nursed
into nationality on the lap of nature. The captive
children of Jacob had sprung into unity and independence
as a nation at the special call of God, and
to serve His will in the world,—His will that so lay
athwart the natural tendencies of the peoples. All
down their history it is wonderful to see how it was the
conscience of this service, which in periods of progress
was the real national genius in Israel, and in times of
decay or of political dissolution upheld the assurance
of the nation's survival. Whenever a ruler like Ahaz
forgot that Israel's imperishableness was bound up with
their faithfulness to God's service, and sought to preserve
his throne by alliances with the world-powers,
then it was that Israel were most in danger of absorption
into the world. And, conversely, when disaster came
down, and there was no hope in the sky, it was upon
the inward sense of their election to the service of God
that the prophets rallied the people's faith and assured
them of their survival as a nation. They brought to
Israel that sovereign message, which renders all who
hear it immortal: "God has a service for you to serve
upon earth." In the Exile especially, the wonderful
survival of the nation, with the subservience of all
history to that end, is made to turn on this,—that
Israel has a unique purpose to serve. When Jeremiah
and Ezekiel seek to assure the captives of their return
to the land and of the restoration of the people, they
commend so unlikely a promise by reminding them that
the nation is the Servant of God. This name, applied
by them for the first time to the nation as a whole,
they bind up with the national existence. Fear thou not,
O My Servant Jacob, saith Jehovah; neither be dismayed,
O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed
from the land of their captivity.Jer. xxx. 10, cf. xlvi. 27; also Ezek. xxxvii. 25: And they shall
dwell in the land that I have given My servant Jacob. Cf. xxviii. 25.
These words plainly
say, that Israel as a nation cannot die, for God has a
use for them to serve. The singularity of Israel's redemption
from Babylon is due to the singularity of the
service that God has for the nation to perform. Our
prophet speaks in the same strain: Thou, Israel, My Servant,
Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover,
whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners.
I have called thee and said unto thee, My Servant art thou,
I have chosen thee and have not cast thee away (ch. xli. 8 ff).
No one can miss the force of these words. They are the
assurance of Israel's miraculous survival, not because
he is God's favourite, but because he is God's servant,
with a unique work in the world. Many other verses
repeat the same truth.xliv. 1, 21; xlviii. 20, etc.
They call Israel the Servant,
and Jacob the chosen, of God, in order to persuade the
people that they are not forgotten of Him, and that
their seed shall live and be blessed. Israel survives
because he serves—Servus servatur.
Now for this service,—which had been the purpose
of the nation's election at first, the mainstay of its unique
preservation since, and the reason of all its singular
pre-eminence before God,—Israel was equipped by
two great experiences. These were Redemption and
Revelation.
On the former redemptions of Israel from the power
of other nations our prophet does not dwell much. You
feel, that they are present to his mind, for he sometimes
describes the coming redemption from Babylon in
terms of them. And once, in an appeal to the Arm of
Jehovah, he calls out: Awake like the days of old, ancient
generations! Art thou not it that hewed Rahab in pieces,
that pierced the Dragon? Art thou not it which dried up
the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made the depths of
the sea a way of passage for the redeemed?Ch. li. 9, 10.
There is,
too, that beautiful passage in ch. lxiii., which makes
mention of the lovingkindnesses of Jehovah, according to
all that He hath bestowed upon us; which describes the
carriage of the people all the days of old, how He brought
them out of the sea, caused His glorious arm to go at the
right hand of Moses, divided the water before them, led
them through the deeps as a horse on the meadow, that they
stumbled not. But, on the whole, our prophet is too
much engrossed with the immediate prospect of release
from Babylon, to remember that past, of which it has
been truly said, He hath not dealt so with any people. It
is the new glory that is upon him. He counts the
deliverance from Babylon as already come; to his
rapt eye it is its marvellous power and costliness,
which already clothes the people in their unique
brilliance and honour. Thus saith Jehovah, your Redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel: For your sake have I sent
to Babylon, and I will bring down their nobles, all of
them, and the Chaldeans, in the ships of their exulting.Ch. xliii. 14.
But it is more than Babylon that is balanced against
them. I am Jehovah, thy God, the Holy One of Israel,
thy Saviour. I am giving as thy ransom, Egypt, Cush
and Seba in exchange for thee, because thou art precious
in mine eyes, and hast made thyself valuable (lit., of
weight); and I have loved thee, therefore do I give mankind
for thee, and peoples for thy life.Ib. 3, 4.
Mankind for
thee, and peoples for thy life,—all the world for this
little people? It is intelligible only because this little
people are to be for all the world. Ye are My witnesses
that I am God. I will also give thee for a light to nations,
to be My salvation to the end of the earth.
But more than on the Redemption, which Israel
experienced, our prophet dwells on the Revelation, that
has equipped them for their destiny. In a passage, in
ch. xliii., to which we shall return, the present stupid
and unready character of the mass of the people is
contrasted with the instruction which God has lavished
upon them. Thou hast seen many things, and wilt not
observe; there is opening of the ears, but he heareth not.
Jehovah was pleased for His righteousness' sake to magnify
the Instruction and make it glorious,—but that—the result
and the precipitate of it all—is a people robbed and spoiled.
The word Instruction or Revelation is that same technical
term, which we have met with before, for Jehovah's
special training and illumination of Israel. How special
these were, how distinct from the highest doctrine and
practice of any other nation in that world to which
Israel belonged, is an historical fact that the results
of recent research enable us to state in a few sentences.
Recent exploration in the East, and the progress of
Semitic philology, have proved that the system of religion,
which prevailed among the Hebrews, had a very great
deal in common with the systems of the neighbouring
and related heathen nations. This common element
included not only such things as ritual and temple-furniture,
or the details of priestly organization, but
even the titles and many of the attributes of God, and
especially the forms of the covenant in which He drew
near to men. But the discovery of this common element
has only thrown into more striking relief the presence
at work in the Hebrew religion of an independent and
original principle. In the Hebrew religion historians
observe a principle of selection operating upon the
common Semitic materials for worship,—ignoring some
of them, giving prominence to others, and with others
again changing the reference and application. Grossly
immoral practices are forbidden; forbidden, too, are
those superstitions, which, like augury and divination,
draw men away from single-minded attention to the
moral issues of life; and even religious customs are
omitted, such as the employment of women in the
sanctuary, which, however innocent in themselves,
might lead men into temptations, not desirable in connection
with the professional pursuit of religion.Robertson Smith, Burnett Lectures in Aberdeen, 1889-90.
In
short, a stern and inexorable conscience was at work
in the Hebrew religion, which was not at work in
any of the religions most akin to it. In our previous
volume we saw the same conscience inspiring the
prophets. Prophecy was not confined to the Hebrews;
it was a general Semitic institution; but no one doubts
the absolutely distinct character of the prophecy, which
was conscious of having the Spirit of Jehovah. Its
religious ideas were original, and in it we have, as all
admit, a moral phenomenon unique in history. When
we turn to ask the secret of this distinction, we find the
answer in the character of the God, whom Israel served.
The God explains the people; Israel is the response
to Jehovah. Each of the laws of the nation is enforced
by the reason, For I am holy. Each of the prophets
brings his message from a God, exalted in righteousness.
In short, look where you will in the Old Testament,—come
to it as a critic or as a worshipper,—you discover
the revealed character of Jehovah to be the
effective principle at work. It is this Divine character,
which draws Israel from among the nations to their
destiny, which selects and builds the law to be a wall
around them, and which by each revelation of itself
discovers to the people both the measure of their
delinquency and the new ideals of their service to
humanity. Like the pillar of cloud by day and the
pillar of fire by night, we see it in front of Israel at every
stage of their marvellous progress down the ages.
So that when Jehovah says that He has magnified
the Revelation and made it glorious, He speaks of a
magnitude of a real, historical kind, that can be tested
by exact methods of observation. Israel's election by
Jehovah, their formation, their unique preparation for
service, are not the mere boasts of an overweening
patriotism, but sober names for historical processes as
real and evident as any that history contains.
To sum up, then. If Jehovah's sovereignty be absolute,
so also is the uniqueness of Israel's calling and
equipment for His Service. For, to begin with, Israel
had the essential religious temper; they enjoyed a
unique moral instruction and discipline; and by the
side of this they were conscious of a series of miraculous
deliverances from servitude and from dissolution. So
singular an experience and career were not, as we
have seen, bestowed from any arbitrary motive, which
exhausted itself upon Israel, but in accordance with
God's universal method of specialisation of function,
were granted to fit the nation as an instrument for a
practical end. The sovereign unity of God does not
mean equality in His creation. The universe is diverse.
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the
moon, and another glory of the stars; and even so in the
moral kingdom of Him, who is Lord of the Hosts of
both earth and heaven, each nation has its own destiny
and function. Israel's was religion; Israel was God's
specialist in religion.
For confirmation of this we turn to the supreme witness.
Jesus was born a Jew, He confined His ministry
to Judæa, and He has told us why. By various passing
allusions, as well as by deliberate statements, He
revealed His sense of a great religious difference between
Jew and Gentile. Use not vain repetitions as the
Gentiles do.... For after all these things do the nations
of the world seek; but your Father knoweth that you
have need of these things. He refused to work except
upon Jewish hearts: I am not sent but to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. And He charged His
disciples, saying, Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and
enter not into any city of the Samaritans; but go rather
to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. And again He
said to the woman of Samaria: Ye worship ye know
not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of
the Jews.
These sayings of our Lord have created as much
question as the pre-eminence given in the Old Testament
to a single people by a God, who is described as the one
God of Heaven and earth. Was He narrower of heart
than Paul, His servant, who was debtor to Greek and
Barbarian? Or was He ignorant of the universal
character of His mission till it was forced upon His
reluctant sympathies by the importunity of such heathen
as the Syrophenician woman? A little common-sense
dispels the perplexity, and leaves the problem, over
which volumes have been written, no problem at all.
Our Lord limited Himself to Israel, not because He
was narrow, but because He was practical; not from
ignorance, but from wisdom. He came from heaven
to sow the seed of Divine truth; and where in all
humanity should He find the soil so ready as within
the long-chosen people? He knew of that discipline
of the centuries. In the words of His own parable,
the Son when He came to earth directed His attention
not to a piece of desert, but to the vineyard which His
Father's servants had so long cultivated, and where
the soil was open. Jesus came to Israel because He
expected faith in Israel. That this practical end was
the deliberate intention of His will, is proved by the
fact that when He found faith elsewhere, either in
Syrian or Greek or Roman hearts, He did not hesitate
to let His love and power go forth to them.
In short, we shall have no difficulty about these
Divine methods with a single, elect people, if we only
remember that to be Divine is to be practical. Yet God
also is wise, said Isaiah to the Jews when they preferred
their own clever policies to Jehovah's guidance. And
we need to be told the same, who murmur that to
confine Himself to a single nation was not the ideal
thing for the One God to do; or who imagine that
it was left to one of our Lord's own creatures to
suggest to Him the policy of His mission upon earth.
We are shortsighted: and the Almighty is past finding
out. But this at least it is possible for us to see,
that, in choosing one nation to be His agent among
men, God chose the type of instrument best fitted at
the time for the work for which He designed it, and
that in choosing Israel to be that nation, He chose a
people of temper singularly suitable to His end.
Israel's election as a nation, therefore, was to Service.
To be a nation and to be God's Servant was pretty
much one and the same thing for Israel. Israel were
to survive the Exile, because they were to serve the
world. Let us carry this over to the study of our next
chapter—The Servant of Jehovah.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD.
Isaiah xli. 8-20; xlii. 1-7, 18 ff; xliii. 5-10; xlix. 1-9; l. 4-10;
lii. 13-liii.
With chapter xlii. we reach a distinct stage in our
prophecy. The preceding chapters have been
occupied with the declaration of the great, basal truth,
that Jehovah is the One Sovereign God. This has
been declared to two classes of hearers in succession—to
God's own people, Israel, in ch. xl., and to the
heathen in ch. xli. Having established His sovereignty,
God now publishes His will, again addressing these
two classes according to the purpose which He has
for each. Has He vindicated Himself to Israel, the
Almighty and Righteous God, Who will give His
people freedom and strength: He will now define to
them the mission for which that strength and freedom
are required. Has He proved to the Gentiles that He
is the one true God: He will declare to them now
what truth He has for them to learn. In short, to use
modern terms, the apologetic of chs. xl.-xli. is succeeded
by the missionary programme of ch. xlii. And although,
from the necessities of the case, we are frequently
brought back, in the course of the prophecy, to its
fundamental claims for the Godhead of Jehovah, we
are nevertheless sensible that with ver. 1 of ch. xlii.
we make a distinct advance. It is one of those logical
steps which, along with a certain chronological progress
that we have already felt, assures us that Isaiah, whether
originally by one or more authors, is in its present
form a unity, with a distinct order and principle of
development.
The Purpose of God is identified with a Minister or
Servant, whom He commissions to carry it out in the
world. This Servant is brought before us with all the
urgency with which Jehovah has presented Himself,
and next to Jehovah he turns out to be the most
important figure of the prophecy. Does the prophet
insist that God is the only source and sufficiency of
His people's salvation: it is with equal emphasis that
He introduces the Servant as God's indispensable agent
in the work. Cyrus is also acknowledged as an elect
instrument. But neither in closeness to God, nor in
effect upon the world, is Cyrus to be compared for an
instant to the Servant. Cyrus is subservient and
incidental: with the overthrow of Babylon, for which
he was raised up, he will disappear from the stage of
our prophecy. But God's purpose, which uses the gates
opened by Cyrus, only to pass through them with the
redeemed people to the regeneration of the whole
world, is to be carried to this Divine consummation by
the Servant: its universal and glorious progress is
identified with his career. Cyrus flashes through these
pages a well-polished sword: it is only his swift and
brilliant usefulness that is allowed to catch our eye.
But the Servant is a Character, to delineate whose
immortal beauty and example the prophet devotes as
much space as he does to Jehovah Himself. As he
turns again and again to speak of God's omnipotence
and faithfulness and agonising love for His own, so
with equal frequency and fondness does he linger on
every feature of the Servant's conduct and aspect:
His gentleness, His patience, His courage, His purity,
His meekness; His daily wakefulness to God's voice,
the swiftness and brilliance of His speech for others,
His silence under His own torments; His resorts—among
the bruised, the prisoners, the forwandered
of Israel, the weary, and them that sit in darkness,
the far-off heathen; His warfare with the world,
His face set like a flint; His unworldly beauty,
which men call ugliness; His unnoticed presence in
His own generation, yet the effect of His face upon
kings; His habit of woe, a man of sorrows and acquainted
with sickness; His sore stripes and bruises,
His judicial murder, His felon's grave; His exaltation
and eternal glory—till we may reverently say that
these pictures, by their vividness and charm, have
drawn our eyes away from our prophet's visions of
God, and have caused the chapters in which they
occur to be oftener read among us, and learned by
heart, than the chapters in which God Himself is lifted
up and adored. Jehovah and Jehovah's Servant—these
are the two heroes of the drama.
Now we might naturally expect that so indispensable
and fondly imagined a figure would also be defined
past all ambiguity, whether as to His time or person
or name. But the opposite is the case. About Scripture
there are few more intricate questions than those
on the Servant of the Lord. Is He a Person or
Personification? If the latter, is He a Personification
of all Israel? Or of a part of Israel? Or of the
ideal Israel? Or of the Order of the Prophets? Or
if a Person—is he the prophet himself? Or a martyr
who has already lived and suffered, like Jeremiah? Or
One still to come, like the promised Messiah? Each
of these suggestions has not only been made about the
Servant, but derives considerable support from one or
another of our prophet's dissolving views of his person
and work. A final answer to them can be given only
after a comparative study of all the relevant passages;
but as these are scattered over the prophecy, and our
detailed exposition of them must necessarily be interrupted,
it will be of advantage to take here a prospect
of them all, and see to what they combine to develop
this sublime character and mission. And after we
have seen what the prophecies themselves teach concerning
the Servant, we shall inquire how they were
understood and fulfilled by the New Testament; and
that will show us how to expound and apply them
with regard to ourselves.
I.
The Hebrew word for Servant means a person at the
disposal of another—to carry out his will, do his work,
represent his interests. It was thus applied to the
representatives of a king or the worshippers of a god.A king's courtiers, soldiers, or subjects are called his servants. In
this sense Israel was often styled the servants of Jehovah, as in
Deut. xxxii. 36; Neh. i. 10, where the phrase is parallel to His
people. But Jehovah's servants is a phrase also parallel to His worshippers
(Psalm cxxxiv. 1, etc.); to those who trust Him (Psalm
xxxiv. 22); and to those who love His name (Psalm lxix. 36). The
term is also applied in the plural to the prophets (Amos iii. 7); and
in the singular, to eminent individuals—such as Abraham, Joshua,
David and Job; also by Jeremiah to the alien Nebuchadrezzar, while
engaged on his mission from God against Jerusalem.
All Israelites were thus in a sense the servants of
Jehovah; though in the singular the title was reserved
for persons of extraordinary character or usefulness.
But we have seen, as clearly as possible, that God
set apart for His chief service upon earth, not an individual
nor a group of individuals, but a whole nation in
its national capacity. We have seen Israel's political
origin and preservation bound up with that service; we
have heard the whole nation plainly called, by Jeremiah
and Ezekiel, the Servant of Jehovah.See p. 244.
Nothing could
be more clear than this, that in the earlier years of the
Exile the Servant of Jehovah was Israel as a whole,
Israel as a body politic.
It is also in this sense that our prophet first uses
the title in a passage we have already quoted (xli. 8);
Thou Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed
of Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends
of the earth and its corners! I called thee and said unto
thee, My Servant art thou. I have chosen thee, and not
cast thee away. Here the Servant is plainly the historical
nation, descended from Abraham, and the subject of
those national experiences which are traced in the
previous chapter. It is the same in the following
verses:—xliv. 1 ff: Yet now hear, O Jacob My servant;
and Israel, whom I have chosen: thus saith Jehovah thy
Maker, and thy Moulder from the womb, He will help
thee. Fear not, My servant Jacob; and Jeshurun, whom
I have chosen.... I will pour My spirit upon thy seed,
and My blessing upon thine offspring. xliv. 21: Remember
these things, O Jacob; and Israel, for My servant
art thou: I have formed thee; a servant for Myself art
thou; O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of Me.
xlviii. 20: Go ye forth from Babylon; say ye, Jehovah
hath redeemed His servant Jacob. In all these verses,
which bind up the nation's restoration from exile with
the fact that God called it to be His Servant, the title
Servant is plainly equivalent to the national name Israel
or Jacob. But Israel or Jacob is not a label for the
mere national idea, or the bare political framework,
without regard to the living individuals included in it.
To the eye and heart of Him, Who counts the number
of the stars, Israel means no mere outline, but all the
individuals of the living generation of the people—thy
seed, that is, every born Israelite, however fallen or
forwandered. This is made clear in a very beautiful
passage in ch. xliii. (vv. 1-7): Thus saith Jehovah, thy
Creator, O Jacob; thy Moulder, O Israel.... Fear not,
for I am with thee; from the sunrise I will bring thy
seed, and from the sunset will I gather thee; ... My
sons from far, and My daughters from the end of the
earth; every one who is called by My name, and whom for
My glory I have created, formed, yea, I have made him.
To this Israel—Israel as a whole, yet no mere abstraction
or outline of the nation, but the people in
mass and bulk—every individual of whom is dear to
Jehovah, and in some sense shares His calling and
equipment—to this Israel the title Servant of Jehovah
is at first applied by our prophet.
2. We say "at first," for very soon the prophet has
to make a distinction, and to sketch the Servant as
something less than the actual nation. The distinction
is obscure; it has given rise to a very great deal of
controversy. But it is so natural, where a nation is
the subject, and of such frequent occurrence in other
literatures, that we may almost state it as a general
law.
In all the passages quoted above, Israel has been
spoken of in the passive mood, as the object of some
affection or action on the part of God: loved, formed,
chosen, called, and about to be redeemed by Him. Now,
so long as a people thus lie passive, their prophet will
naturally think of them as a whole. In their shadow
his eye can see them only in the outline of their mass;
in their common suffering and servitude his heart will
go out to all their individuals, as equally dear and
equally in need of redemption. But when the hour
comes for the people to work out their own salvation,
and they emerge into action, it must needs be different.
When they are no more the object of their prophet's
affection only, but pass under the test of his experience
and judgement, then distinctions naturally appear
upon them. Lifted to the light of their destiny, their
inequality becomes apparent; tried by its strain, part
of them break away. And so, though the prophet continues
still to call on the nation by its name to fulfil
its calling, what he means by that name is no longer
the bulk and the body of the citizenship. A certain
ideal of the people fills his mind's eye—an ideal, however,
which is no mere spectre floating above his own
generation, but is realised in their noble and aspiring
portion—although his ignorance as to the exact size
of this portion, must always leave his image of them
more or less ideal to his eyes. It will be their quality
rather than their quantity that is clear to him. In
modern history we have two familiar illustrations of this
process of winnowing and idealising a people in the
light of their destiny, which may prepare us for the
more obscure instance of it in our prophecy.
In a well-known passage in the Areopagitica, Milton
exclaims, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and
puissant nation rousing herself and shaking her invincible
locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her
mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the
full midday beam, ... while the whole noise of timorous
and flocking birds, with those also that love the
twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means." In
this passage the "nation" is no longer what Milton meant
by the term in the earlier part of his treatise, where
"England" stands simply for the outline of the whole
English people; but the "nation" is the true genius of
England realised in her enlightened and aspiring sons,
and breaking away from the hindering and debasing
members of the body politic—"the timorous and flocking
birds with those also that love the twilight"—who
are indeed Englishmen after the flesh, but form no part
of the nation's better self.
Or, recall Mazzini's bitter experience. To no man
was his Italy more really one than to this ardent son
of hers, who loved every born Italian because he was
an Italian, and counted none of the fragments of his
unhappy country too petty or too corrupt to be included
in the hope of her restoration. To Mazzini's earliest
imagination, it was the whole Italian seed, who were
ready for redemption, and would rise to achieve it at
his summons. But when his summons came, how few
responded, and after the first struggles how fewer still
remained,—Mazzini himself has told us with breaking
heart. The real Italy was but a handful of born
Italians; at times it seemed to shrink to the prophet
alone. From such a core the conscience indeed spread
again, till the entire people was delivered from tyranny
and from schism, and now every peasant and burgher
from the Alps to Sicily understands what Italy means,
and is proud to be an Italian. But for a time Mazzini
and his few comrades stood alone. Others of their
blood and speech were Piedmontese, Pope's men, Neapolitans,—merchants,
lawyers, scholars,—or merely
selfish and sensual. They alone were Italians; they
alone were Italy.
It is a similar winnowing process, through which we
see our prophet's thoughts pass with regard to Israel.
Him, too, experience teaches that the many are called,
but the few chosen. So long as his people lie in the
shadow of captivity, so long as he has to speak of
them in the passive mood, the object of God's call
and preparation, it is their seed, the born people in bulk
and mass, whom he names Israel, and entitles the
Servant of Jehovah. But the moment that he lifts
them to their mission in the world, and to the light
of their destiny, a difference becomes apparent upon
them, and the Servant of Jehovah, though still called
Israel, shrinks to something less than the living generation,
draws off to something finer than the mass of
the people. How, indeed, could it be otherwise with
this strange people, than which no nation on earth had
a loftier ideal identified with its history, or more frequently
turned upon its better self, with a sword in
its hand. Israel, though created a nation by God for
His service, was always what Paul found it, divided
into an Israel after the flesh, and an Israel after the
spirit. But it was in the Exile that this distinction
gaped most broad. With the fall of Jerusalem, the
political framework, which kept the different elements
of the nation together, was shattered, and these were
left loose to the action of moral forces. The baser
elements were quickly absorbed by heathendom; the
nobler, that remained loyal to the divine call, were
free to assume a new and ideal form. Every year
spent in Babylonia made it more apparent that the
true and effective Israel of the future would not coincide
with all the seed of Jacob, who went into exile.
Numbers of the latter were as contented with their
Babylonian circumstance as numbers of Mazzini's
"Italians" were satisfied to live on as Austrian and
Papal subjects. Many, as we have seen, became
idolaters; many more settled down into the prosperous
habits of Babylonian commerce, while a large multitude
besides were scattered far out of sight across the world.
It required little insight to perceive that the true,
effective Israel—the real Servant of Jehovah—must needs
be a much smaller body than the sum of all these: a
loyal kernel within Israel, who were still conscious of
the national calling, and capable of carrying it out;
who stood sensible of their duty to the whole world,
but whose first conscience was for their lapsed and lost
countrymen. This Israel within Israel was the real
Servant of the Lord; to personify it in that character—however
vague might be the actual proportion it would
assume in his own or in any other generation—would
be as natural to our dramatic prophet as to personify
the nation as a whole.
All this very natural process—this passing from the
historical Israel, the nation originally designed by God
to be His Servant, to the conscious and effective Israel,
that uncertain quantity within the present and every
future generation—takes place in the chapters before
us; and it will be sufficiently easy for us to follow if
we only remember that our prophet is not a dogmatic
theologian, careful to make clear each logical distinction,
but a dramatic poet, who delivers his ideas in groups,
tableaux, dialogues, interrupted by choruses; and who
writes in a language incapable of expressing such delicate
differences, except by dramatic contrasts, and by the
one other figure of which he is so fond—paradox.
Perhaps the first traces of distinction between the
real Servant and the whole nation are to be found in
the Programme of his Mission in ch. xlii. 1-7. There
it is said that the Servant is to be for a covenant of the
people (ver. 6). I have explained below why we are to
understand people as here meaning Israel.The definite article is not used here with the word people, and
hence the phrase has been taken by some in the vaguer sense of a
people's covenant, as a general expression, along with its parallel clause,
of the kind of influence the Servant was to exert, not on Israel, but
on any people in the world; he was to be a people's covenant, and a
light for nations. So practically Schultz, A. T. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 284.
But the Hebrew word for people עם is often used without the article
to express the people Israel, just as the Hebrew word for land ארץ is
often used without the article to express the land of Judah. (הארץ
with the article, is in Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Earth.) And in ch. xlix.
the phrase a covenant of the people again occurs, and in a context in
which it can only mean a covenant of the people, Israel. Some render
ברית עם a covenant people. But in xlix. 8 this is plainly an impossible
rendering.
And in
ver. 7 it is said of the Servant that he is to open blind
eyes, bring forth from prison the captive, from the house
of bondage dwellers in darkness: phrases that are descriptive,
of course, of the captive Israel. Already,
then, in ch. xlii. the Servant is something distinct
from the whole nation, whose Covenant and Redeemer
he is to be.
The next references to the Servant are a couple of
paradoxes, which are evidently the prophet's attempt to
show why it was necessary to draw in the Servant of
Jehovah from the whole to a part of the people. The
first of these paradoxes is in ch. xlii. ver. 18.
Ye deaf, hearken! and ye blind, look ye to see!
Who is blind but My Servant, and deaf as My Messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as Meshullam, and blind as the Servant of Jehovah?
Vision of many things—and thou dost not observe,
Opening of ears and he hears not!
The context shows that the Servant here—or Meshullam,
as he is called, the devoted or submissive one,
from the same root, and of much the same form as the
Arabic MuslimMeshullam is found as a proper name in the historical books of
the Old Testament, especially Nehemiah, e.g., iii. 4, 6, 30.
—is the whole people; but they are
entitled Servant only in order to show how unfit they
are for the task to which they have been designated,
and what a paradox their title is beside their real
character. God had given them every opportunity by
making great His instruction (ver. 21, cf. p. 247), and,
when that failed, by His sore discipline in exile (vers.
24, 25). For who gave Jacob for spoil and Israel to
the robbers? Did not Jehovah? He against whom we
sinned, and they would not walk in His ways, neither were
obedient to His instruction. So He poured upon him the
fury of His anger and the force of war. But even this
did not awake the dull nation. Though it set him on
fire round about, yet he knew not; and it kindled upon him,
yet he laid it not to heart. The nation as a whole had
been favoured with God's revelation; as a whole they
had been brought into His purifying furnace of the
Exile. But as they have benefited by neither the one
nor the other, the natural conclusion is that as a whole
they are no more fit to be God's Servant. Such is the
hint which this paradox is intended to give us.
But a little further on there is an obverse paradox,
which plainly says, that although the people are blind
and deaf as a whole, still the capacity for service is
found among them alone (xliii. 8, 10).
Bring forth the blind people—yet eyes are there!
And the deaf, yet ears have they!...
Ye are My witnesses, saith Jehovah, and My Servant whom I have chosen.
The preceding verses (vv. 1-7) show us that it is
again the whole people, in their bulk and scattered
fragments, who are referred to. Blind though they be,
yet are there eyes among them; deaf though they be, yet
they have ears. And so Jehovah addresses them all, in
contradistinction to the heathen peoples (ver. 9), as His
Servant.
These two complementary paradoxes together show
this: that while Israel as a whole is unfit to be the
Servant, it is nevertheless within Israel, alone of all the
world's nations, that the true capacities for service are
found—eyes are there, ears have they. They prepare us
for the Servant's testimony about himself, in which,
while he owns himself to be distinct from Israel as a
whole, he is nevertheless still called Israel. This is
given in ch. xlix. And He said unto me, My Servant
art thou; Israel, in whom I will glorify Myself. And now
saith Jehovah, my moulder from the womb to be a Servant
unto Him, to turn again Jacob to Him, and that Israel
might not be destroyed; and I am of value in the eyes
of Jehovah, and my God is my strength. And He said,
It is too light for thy being My Servant, merely to raise
up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of
Israel; I will also set thee for a light of nations, to be My
salvation to the end of the earth (xlix. 3-6). Here the
Servant, though still called Israel, is clearly distinct from
the nation as a whole, for part of his work is to raise
the nation up again. And, moreover, he tells us this
as his own testimony about himself. He is no longer
spoken of in the third person, he speaks for himself in
the first. This is significant. It is more than a mere
artistic figure, the effect of our prophet's dramatic
style—as if the Servant now stood opposite him, so
vivid and near that he heard him speak, and quoted him
in the direct form of speech. It is more probably the
result of moral sympathy: the prophet speaks out of
the heart of the Servant, in the name of that better
portion of Israel which was already conscious of the
Divine call, and of its distinction in this respect from
the mass of the people.
It is futile to inquire what this better portion of
Israel actually was, for whom the prophet speaks in the
first person. Some have argued, from the stress which
the speaker lays upon his gifts of speech and office of
preaching, that what is now signified by the Servant is
the order of the prophets; but such forget that in these
chapters the proclamation of the Kingdom of God is the
ideal, not of prophets only, but of the whole people.
Zion as a whole is to be heraldess of good news (xl. 9).
It is, therefore, not the official function of the prophet-order
which the Servant here owns, but the ideal of
the prophet-nation. Others have argued from the
direct form of speech, that the prophet puts himself
forward as the Servant. But no individual would call
himself Israel. And as Professor Cheyne remarks, the
passage is altogether too self-assertive to be spoken by
any man of himself as an individual; although, of
course, our prophet could not have spoken of the true
Israel with such sympathy, unless he had himself been
part of it. The writer of these verses may have been,
for the time, as virtually the real Israel as Mazzini
was the real Italy. But still he does not speak as
an individual. The passage is manifestly a piece of
personification. The Servant is Israel—not now the
nation as a whole, not the body and bulk of the
Israelites, for they are to be the object of his first
efforts, but the loyal, conscious and effective Israel,
realised in some of her members, and here personified
by our prophet, who himself speaks for her out of his
heart, in the first person.
By ch. xlix., then, the Servant of Jehovah is a
personification of the true, effective Israel as distinguished
from the mass of the nation—a Personification,
but not yet a Person. Something within Israel has
wakened up to find itself conscious of being the Servant
of Jehovah, and distinct from the mass of the nation—something
that is not yet a Person. And this definition
of the Servant may stand (with some modifications)
for his next appearance in ch. l. 4-9. In this passage
the Servant, still speaking in the first person, continues
to illustrate his experience as a prophet, and carries it to
its consequence in martyrdom. But let us notice that
he now no longer calls himself Israel, and that if it
were not for the previous passages it would be natural
to suppose that an individual was speaking. This
supposition is confirmed by a verse that follows the
Servant's speech, and is spoken, as chorus, by the
Prophet himself. Who among you is a fearer of
Jehovah, obedient to the voice of His Servant, who walketh
in darkness, and hath no light. Let him trust in the
name of Jehovah, and stay himself upon his God. In
this too much neglected verse, which forms a real
transition to ch. lii. 13-liii., the prophet is addressing
any individual Israelite, on behalf of a personal God.
It is very difficult to refrain from concluding that therefore
the Servant also is a Person. Let us, however, not
go beyond what we have evidence for; and note only
that in ch. l. the Servant is no more called Israel, and is
represented not as if he were one part of the nation,
over against the mass of it, but as if he were one
individual over against other individuals; that in fine
the Personification of ch. xlix. has become much more
difficult to distinguish from an actual Person.
3. This brings us to the culminating passage—ch.
lii. 13-liii. Is the Servant still a Personification
here, or at last and unmistakably a Person?
It may relieve the air of that electricity, which is apt
to charge it at the discussion of so classic a passage as
this, and secure us calm weather in which to examine
exegetical details, if we at once assert, what none
but prejudiced Jews have ever denied, that this great
prophecy, known as the fifty-third of Isaiah, was
fulfilled in One Person, Jesus of Nazareth, and achieved
in all its details by Him alone. But, on the other hand,
it requires also to be pointed out that Christ's personal
fulfilment of it does not necessarily imply that our
prophet wrote it of a Person. The present expositor
hopes, indeed, to be able to give strong reasons for
the theory usual among us, that the Personification of
previous passages is at last in ch. liii. presented as a
Person. But he fails to understand, why critics should
be regarded as unorthodox or at variance with New
Testament teaching on the subject, who, while they
acknowledge that only Christ fulfilled ch. liii., are yet
unable to believe that the prophet looked upon the
Servant as an individual, and who regard ch. liii. as
simply a sublimer form of the prophet's previous pictures
of the ideal people of God. Surely Christ could and
did fulfil prophecies other than personal ones. The
types of Him, which the New Testament quotes from
the Old Testament, are not exclusively individuals.
Christ is sometimes represented as realising in His
Person and work statements, which, as they were first
spoken, could only refer to Israel, the nation. Matthew,
for instance, applies to Jesus a text which Hosea wrote
primarily of the whole Jewish people: Out of Egypt
have I called My Son.Hosea xi. 1; Matt. ii. 15
Or, to take an instance from
our own prophet—who but Jesus fulfilled ch. xlix.,
in which, as we have seen, it is not an individual, but
the ideal of the prophet people, that is figured? So
that, even if it were proved past all doubt—proved
from grammar, context, and every prophetic analogy—that
in writing ch. liii. our prophet had still in view
that aspect of the nation which he has personified
in ch. xlix., such a conclusion would not weaken the
connection between the prophecy and its unquestioned
fulfilment by Jesus Christ, nor render the two less
evidently part of one Divine design.
But we are by no means compelled to adopt the
impersonal view of ch. liii. On the contrary, while
the question is one, to which all experts know the
difficulty of finding an absolutely conclusive answer
one way or the other, it seems to me that reasons
prevail, which make for the personal interpretation.
.
Let us see what exactly are the objections to taking
ch. lii. 13-liii. in a personal sense. First, it is very
important to observe, that they do not rise out of the
grammar or language of the passage. The reference of
both of these is consistently individual. Throughout,
the Servant is spoken of in the singular.Of all the expressions used of him the only one which shows
a real tendency to a plural reference is in his deaths (ver. 9), and
even it (if it is the correct reading) is quite capable of application to
an individual who suffered such manifold martyrdom as is set forth
in the passage.
The name
Israel is not once applied to him: nothing—except that
the nation has also suffered—suggests that he is playing
a national rôle; there is no reflection in his fate of
the features of the Exile. The antithesis, which was
evident in previous passages, between a better Israel and
the mass of the people has disappeared. The Servant
is contrasted, not with the nation as a whole, but with
His people as individuals. All we like sheep have gone
astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the
Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. As far as
grammar can, this surely distinguishes a single person.
It is true, that one or two phrases suggest so colossal
a figure—he shall startle many nations, and kings shall
shut their mouths at him—that for a moment we think
of the spectacle of a people rather than of a solitary
human presence. But even such descriptions are not
incompatible with a single person.Not one word in them betrays any sense of a body of men or an
ideal people standing behind them, which sense surely some expression
would have betrayed, if it had been in the prophet's mind.
On the other
hand, there are phrases which we can scarcely think are
used of any but a historical individual; such as that he
was taken from oppression and judgement, that is from
a process of law which was tyranny, from a judicial
murder, and that he belonged to a particular generation—As
for his generation, who considered that he was cut off
out of the land of the living. Surely a historical individual
is the natural meaning of these words. And, in
fact, critics like Ewald and Wellhausen, who interpret
the passage, in its present context, of the ideal Israel,
find themselves forced to argue, that it has been
borrowed for this use from the older story of some
actual martyr—so individual do its references seem to
them throughout.
If, then, the grammar and language of the passage
thus conspire to convey the impression of an individual,
what are the objections to supposing that an individual
is meant? Critics have felt, in the main, three objections
to the discovery of a historical individual in
Isa. lii. 13-liii.
The first of these that we take is chronological, and
arises from the late date to which we have found it
necessary to assign the prophecy. Our prophet, it is
averred, associates the work of the Servant with the
restoration of the people; but he sees that restoration
too close to him to be able to think of the appearance,
ministry and martyrdom of a real historic life happening
before it. (Our prophet, it will be remembered,
wrote about 546, and the Restoration came in 538.)
"There is no room for a history like that of the
suffering Servant between the prophet's place and the
Restoration."A. B. D., in a review of the last edition of Delitzsch's Isaiah, in
the Theol. Review, iv., p. 276.
Now, this objection might be turned, even if it were
true that the prophet identified the suffering Servant's
career with so immediate and so short a process as the
political deliverance from Babylon. For, in that case,
the prophet would not be leaving less room for the Servant,
than, in ch. ix., Isaiah himself leaves for the birth,
the growth to manhood, and the victories of the Prince-of-the-Four-Names,
before that immediate relief from
the Assyrian, which he expects the Prince to effect.
But does our prophet identify the suffering Servant's
career with the redemption from Babylon and the
Return? It is plain that he does not—at least in those
portraits of the Servant, which are most personal. Our
prophet has really two prospects for Israel—one, the
actual deliverance from Babylon; the other, a spiritual
redemption and restoration. If, like his fellow prophets,
he sometimes runs these two together, and talks of the
latter in the terms of the former, he keeps them on the
whole distinct, and assigns them to different agents.
The burden of the first he lays on Cyrus, though he
also connects it with the Servant, while the Servant is
still to him an aspect of the nation (see xlix. 8a, 9b). It
is temporary, and soon passes from his thoughts, Cyrus
being dropped with it. But the other, the spiritual
redemption, is confined to no limits of time; and it
is with its process—indefinite in date and in length of
period—that he associates the most personal portraits
of the Servant (ch. l. and lii. 13-liii.). In these the
Servant, now spoken of as an individual, has nothing
to do with that temporary work of freeing the people
from Babylon, which was over in a year or two, and
which seems to be now behind the prophet's standpoint.
His is the enduring office of prophecy, sympathy, and
expiation—an office in which there is all possible "room"
for such a historical career as is sketched for him. His
relation to Cyrus, before whose departure from connection
with Israel's fate the Servant does not appear as a
person, is thus most interesting. Perhaps we may best
convey it in a homely figure. On the ship of Israel's
fortunes—as on every ship and on every voyage—the
prophet sees two personages. One is the Pilot through
the shallows, Cyrus, who is dropped as soon as the
shallows are past; and the other is the Captain of the
ship, who remains always identified with it—the Servant.
The Captain does not come to the front till the Pilot has
gone; but, both alongside the Pilot, and after the Pilot
has been dropped, there is every room for his office.
The second main objection to identifying an individual
in ch. lii. 13-liii. is, that an individual with such
features has no analogy in Hebrew prophecy. It is
said that, neither in his humiliation, nor in the kind of
exaltation, which is ascribed to him, is there his like in
any other individual in the Old Testament, and certainly
not in the Messiah. Elsewhere in Scripture (it
is averred) the Messiah reigns, and is glorious; it is
the people who suffer, and come through suffering to
power. Nor is the Messiah's royal splendour at all
the same as the very vague influence, evidently of a
spiritual kind, which is attributed to the Servant in the
end of ch. liii. The Messiah is endowed with the military
and political virtues. He is a warrior, a king, a judge.
He sits on the throne of David, He establishes David's
kingdom. He smites the land with the rod of His mouth,
and with the breath of His lips He slays the wicked. But
very different phrases are used of the Servant. He is
not called king, though kings shut their mouths at him,—he
is a prophet and a martyr, and an expiation; and
the phrases, I will divide him a portion with the great, and
he shall divide the spoil with the strong, are simply metaphors
of the immense spiritual success and influence
with which His self-sacrifice shall be rewarded; as a
spiritual power He shall take His place among the
dominions and forces of the world. This is a true
prophecy of what Israel, that worm of a people, should
be lifted to; but it is quite different from the political
throne, from which Isaiah had promised that the
Messiah should sway the destinies of Israel and
mankind.
But, in answer to this objection to finding the
Messiah, or any other influential individual, in ch. liii.,
we may remember that there were already traces in
Hebrew prophecy of a suffering Messiah: we come
across them in ch. vii. There Isaiah presents Immanuel,
whom we identified with the Prince-of-the-Four-Names
in ch. ix., as at first nothing but a sufferer—a
sufferer from the sins of His predecessors.Isaiah I. i.-xxxix., pp. 134, 135.
And,
even though we are wrong in taking the suffering
Immanuel for the Messiah, and though Isaiah meant him
only as a personification of Israel suffering for the error
of Ahaz, had not the two hundred years, which elapsed
between Isaiah's prophecy of Israel's glorious Deliverer,
been full of room enough, and, what is more, of experience
enough, for the ideal champion of the people to be
changed to something more spiritual in character and
in work? Had the nation been baptized, for most of
those two centuries, in vain, in the meaning of suffering,
and in vain had they seen exemplified in their noblest
spirits the fruits and glory of self-sacrifice?See p. 42.
The
type of Hero had changed in Israel since Isaiah wrote
of his Prince-of-the-Four-Names. The king had been
replaced by the prophet; the conqueror by the martyr;
the judge who smote the land by the rod of his mouth,
and slew the wicked by the breath of his lips,—by
the patriot who took his country's sins upon his own
conscience. The monarchy had perished; men knew
that, even if Israel were set upon their own land again,
it would not be under an independent king of their own;
nor was a Jewish champion of the martial kind, such as
Isaiah had promised for deliverance from the Assyrian,
any more required. Cyrus, the Gentile, should do all
the campaigning required against Israel's enemies, and
Israel's native Saviour be relieved for gentler methods
and more spiritual aims. It is all this experience, of
nearly two centuries, which explains the omission of
the features of warrior and judge from ch. liii., and
their replacement by those of a suffering patriot,
prophet and priest. The reason of the change is, not
because the prophet who wrote the chapter had not,
as much as Isaiah, an individual in his view, but
because, in the historical circumstance of the Exile,
such an individual as Isaiah had promised, seemed no
longer probable or required.
So far, then, from the difference between ch. liii. and
previous prophecies of the Messiah affording evidence
that in ch. liii. it is not the Messiah who is presented,
this very change, that has taken place, explicable as
it is from the history of the intervening centuries,
goes powerfully to prove that it is the Messiah, and
therefore an individual, whom the prophet so vividly
describes.
The third main objection to our recognising an
individual in ch. liii. is concerned only with our
prophet himself. Is it not impossible, say some—or
at least improbably inconsistent—for the same prophet
first to have identified the Servant with the nation,
and then to present him to us as an individual? We
can understand the transference by the same writer
of the name from the whole people to a part of the
people; it is a natural transference, and the prophet
sufficiently explains it. But how does he get from a
part of the nation to a single individual? If in ch. xlix.
he personifies, under the name Servant, some aspect of
the nation, we are surely bound to understand the same
personification when the Servant is again introduced—unless
we have an explanation to the contrary. But
we have none. The prophet gives no hint, except by
dropping the name Israel, that the focus of his vision
is altered,—no more paradoxes such as marked his
passage from the people as a whole to a portion of
them,—-no consciousness that any explanation whatever
is required. Therefore, however much finer the personification
is drawn in ch. liii. than in ch. xlix., it is
surely a personification still.
To which objection an obvious answer is, that our
prophet is not a systematic theologian, but a dramatic
poet, who allows his characters to disclose themselves
and their relation without himself intervening to
define or relate them. And any one who is familiar
with the literature of Israel knows, that no less than
the habit of drawing in from the whole people upon a
portion of them, was the habit of drawing in from
a portion of the people upon one individual. The
royal Messiah Himself is a case in point. The original
promise to David was of a seed; but soon prophecy
concentrated the seed in one glorious Prince. The
promise of Israel had always culminated in an individual.
Then, again, in the nation's awful sufferings,
it had been one man—the prophet Jeremiah—who had
stood forth singly and alone, at once the incarnation
of Jehovah's word, and the illustration in his own
person of all the penalty that Jehovah laid upon the
sinful people. With this tendency of his school to
focus Israel's hope on a single individual, and especially
with the example of Jeremiah before him, it is
almost inconceivable that our prophet could have
thought of any but an individual when he drew his
portrait of the suffering Servant. No doubt the
national sufferings were in his heart as he wrote; it
was probably a personal share in them that taught him
to write so sympathetically about the Man of pains,
who was familiar with ailing. But to gather and
concentrate all these sufferings upon one noble figure,
to describe this figure as thoroughly conscious of their
moral meaning, and capable of turning them to his
people's salvation, was a process absolutely in harmony
with the genius of Israel's prophecy, as well as with
the trend of their recent experience; and there is,
besides, no word in that great chapter, in which the
process culminates, but is in thorough accordance with
it. So far, therefore, from its being an impossible or
an unlikely thing for our prophet to have at last
reached his conception of an individual, it is almost
impossible to conceive of him executing so personal a
portrait as ch. lii. 13-liii., without thinking of a definite
historical personage, such as Hebrew prophecy had
ever associated with the redemption of his people.
4. We have now exhausted the passages in Isa.
xl.-lxvi. which deal with the Servant of the Lord. We
have found that our prophet identifies him at first with
the whole nation, and then with some indefinite portion
of the nation—indefinite in quantity, but most marked
in character; that this personification grows more and
more difficult to distinguish from a person; and that
in ch. lii. 13-liii. there are very strong reasons, both
in the text itself and in the analogy of other prophecy,
to suppose that the portrait of an individual is intended.
To complete our study of this development of the substance
of the Servant, it is necessary to notice that it
runs almost stage for stage with a development of his
office. Up to ch. xlix., that is to say, while he is still
some aspect of the people, the Servant is a prophet.
In ch. l., where he is no longer called Israel, and
approaches more nearly to an individual, his prophecy
passes into martyrdom. And in ch. liii., where at last
we recognise him as intended for an actual personage,
his martyrdom becomes an expiation for the sins of the
people. Is there a natural connection between these
two developments? We have seen that it was by a
very common process that our prophet transferred the
national calling from the mass of the nation to a select
few of the people. Is it by any equally natural tendency
that he shrinks from the many to the few, as he passes
from prophecy to martyrdom, or from the few to the
one, as he passes from martyrdom to expiation? It
is a possibility for all God's people to be prophets:
few are needed as martyrs. Is it by any moral law
equally clear, that only one man should die for the
people? These are questions worth thinking about.
In Israel's history we have already found the following
facts with which to answer them. The whole living
generation of Israel felt themselves to be sinbearers:
Our fathers have sinned, and we bear their iniquities.
This conscience and penalty were more painfully felt
by the righteous in Israel. But the keenest and
heaviest sense of them was conspicuously that experienced
by one man—the prophet Jeremiah.See ch. ii. of this volume.
And yet
all these cases from the past of Israel's history do
not furnish more than an approximation to the figure
presented to us in ch. liii. Let us turn, therefore, to
the future to see if we can find in it motive or
fulfilment for this marvellous prophecy.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
In last chapter we confined our study of the Servant
of Jehovah to the text of Isa. xl.-lxvi., and to
the previous and contemporary history of Israel. Into
our interpretation of the remarkable Figure, whom
our prophet has drawn for us, we have put nothing
which cannot be gathered from those fields and by the
light of the prophet's own day. But now we must
travel further, and from days far future to our prophet
borrow a fuller light to throw back upon his mysterious
projections. We take this journey into the future for
reasons he himself has taught us. We have learned
that his pictures of the Servant are not the creation
of his own mind; a work of art complete "through
fancy's or through logic's aid." They are the scattered
reflections and suggestions of experience. The prophet's
eyes have been opened to read them out of the still
growing and incomplete history of his people. With
that history they are indissolubly bound up. Their
plainest forms are but a transcript of its clearest facts;
their paradoxes are its paradoxes (reflections now of the
confused and changing consciousness of this strange
people, or again of the contrast between God's design
for them and their real character): their ideals are
the suggestion and promise which its course reveals to
an inspired eye. Thus, in picturing the Servant, our
prophet sometimes confines himself to history that has
already happened to Israel; but sometimes, also, upon
the purpose and promise of this, he outruns what has
happened, and plainly lifts his voice from the future.
Now we must remember that he does so, not merely
because the history itself has native possibilities of
fulfilment in it, but because he believes that it is in
the hands of an Almighty and Eternal God, who shall
surely guide it to the end of His purpose revealed in
it. It is an article of our prophet's creed, that the
God who speaks through him controls all history, and
by His prophets can publish beforehand what course it
will take; so that, when we find in our prophet anything
we do not see fully justified or illustrated by the
time he wrote, it is only in observance of the conditions
he has laid down, that we seek for its explanation in
the future.
Let us, then, take our prophet upon his own terms,
and follow the history, with which he has so closely
bound up the prophecy of the Servant, both in suggestion
and fulfilment, in order that we may see whether it
will yield to us the secret of what, if we have read his
language aright, his eyes perceived in it—the promise
of an Individual Servant. And let us do so in his faith,
that history is one progressive and harmonious movement
under the hand of the God in whose name he speaks.
Our exploration will be rewarded, and our faith confirmed.
We shall find the nation, as promised, restored
to its own land, and pursuing through the centuries
its own life. We shall find within the nation what
the prophet looked for,—an elect and effective portion,
with the conscience of a national service to the world,
but looking for the achievement of this to such an
Individual Servant, as the prophet seemed ultimately to
foreshadow. The world itself we shall find growing
more and more open to this service. And at last, from
Israel's national conscience of the service we shall see
emerge One with the sense that He alone is responsible
and able for it. And this One Israelite will not only
in His own person exhibit a character and achieve a
work, that illustrate and far excel our prophet's highest
imaginations, but will also become, to a new Israel
infinitely more numerous than the old, the conscience
and inspiration of their collective fulfilment of the ideal.
1. In the Old Testament we cannot be sure of any
further appearance of our prophet's Servant of the Lord.
It might be thought, that in a post-exilic promise,
Zech. iii. 8, I will bring forth My Servant the Branch,
we had an identification of the hero of the first part
of the Book of Isaiah, the Branch out of Jesse's roots
(xi. 1), with the hero of the second part; but servant
here may so easily be meant in the more general sense
in which it occurs in the Old Testament, that we are
not justified in finding any more particular connection.
In Judaism beyond the Old Testament the national and
personal interpretations of the Servant were both current.
The Targum of Jonathan, and both the Talmud of
Jerusalem and the Talmud of Babylon, recognise the
personal Messiah in ch. liii.; the Targum also identifies
him as early as in ch. xlii. This personal interpretation
the Jews abandoned only after they had entered on
their controversy with Christian theologians; and in
the cruel persecutions, which Christians inflicted upon
them throughout the middle ages, they were supplied
with only too many reasons for insisting that ch. liii. was
prophetic of suffering Israel—the martyr-people—as a
whole.Cf. The Jewish Interpreters on Isa. liii., Driver and Neubauer,
Oxford, 1877. Abravanel, who himself takes ch. liii. in a national sense,
admits, after giving the Christian interpretation, that "in fact Jonathan
ben Uziel, 'the Targumist,' applied it to the Messiah, who was still to
come, and this is likewise the opinion of the wise in many of their
Midrashim." And R. Moscheh al Shech, of the sixteenth century,
says: "See, our masters have with one voice held as established and
handed down, that here it is King Messiah who is spoken of." (Both
these passages quoted by Bredenkamp in his commentary, p. 307.)
It is a strange history—the history of our
race, where the first through their pride and error so
frequently become the last, and the last through their
sufferings are set in God's regard with the first. But of
all its strange reversals none surely was ever more complete
than when the followers of Him, who is set forth
in this passage, the unresisting and crucified Saviour
of men, behaved in His Name with so great a cruelty
as to be righteously taken by His enemies for the very
tyrants and persecutors whom the passage condemns.
2. But it is in the New Testament that we see the
most perfect reflection of the Servant of the Lord, both
as People and Person.
In the generation, from which Jesus sprang, there
was, amid national circumstances closely resembling
those in which the Second Isaiah was written, a counterpart
of that Israel within Israel, which our prophet has
personified in ch. xlix. The holy nation lay again in
bondage to the heathen, partly in its own land, partly
scattered across the world; and Israel's righteousness,
redemption and ingathering were once more the questions
of the day. The thoughts of the masses, as of
old in Babylonian days, did not rise beyond a political
restoration; and although their popular leaders insisted
upon national righteousness as necessary to this, it was
a righteousness mainly of a ceremonial kind—hard,
legal, and often more unlovely in its want of enthusiasm
and hope than even the political fanaticism of the vulgar.
But around the temple, and in quiet recesses of the land,
a number of pious and ardent Israelites lived on the true
milk of the word, and cherished for the nation hopes
of a far more spiritual character. If the Pharisees laid
their emphasis on the law, this chosen Israel drew their
inspiration rather from prophecy; and of all prophecy it
was the Book of Isaiah, and chiefly the latter part of it,
on which they lived.
As we enter the Gospel history from the Old Testament,
we feel at once that Isaiah is in the air. In this
fair opening of the new year of the Lord, the harbinger
notes of the book awaken about us on all sides like the
voices of birds come back with the spring. In Mary's
song, the phrase He hath holpen His Servant Israel;
in the description of Simeon, that he waited for the
consolation of Israel, a phrase taken from the Comfort
ye, comfort ye My people in Isa. xl. 1; such frequent
phrases, too, as the redemption of Jerusalem, a light of
the Gentiles and the glory of Israel, light to them that
sit in darkness, and other echoed promises of light
and peace and the remission of sins, are all repeated
from our evangelical prophecy. In the fragments of
the Baptist's preaching, which are extant, it is remarkable
that almost every metaphor and motive may be
referred to the Book of Isaiah, and mostly to its exilic
half: the generation of vipers,Isa. lix. 5.
the trees and axe laid
to the root,Id. vi. 13; ix. 18; x. 17, 34; xlvii. 14.
the threshing floor and fan,Id. xxi. 10; xxviii. 27; xl. 24; xli. 15 ff.
the fire,Id. i. 31; xlvii. 14.
the
bread and clothes to the poor,Isa. lviii. 7.
and especially the proclamation
of Jesus, Behold the Lamb of God that beareth the sin
of the world.Undoubtedly taken from Isa. liii.
To John himself were applied the words
of Isa. xl.: The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make
ye ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight;
and when Christ sought to rouse again the Baptist's
failing faith it was of Isa. lxi. that He reminded him.
Our Lord, then, sprang from a generation of Israel,
which had a strong conscience of the national aspect
of the Service of God,—a generation with Isa. xl.-lxvi.
at its heart. We have seen how He Himself insisted
upon the uniqueness of Israel's place among the nations—salvation
is of the Jews—and how closely He identified
Himself with His people—I am not sent but to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. But all Christ's strong
expression of Israel's distinction from the rest of mankind,
is weak and dim compared with His expression
of His own distinction from the rest of Israel. If they
were the one people with whom God worked in the
world, He was the one Man, whom God sent to work
upon them, and to use them to work upon others.
We cannot tell how early the sense of this distinction
came to the Son of Mary. Luke reveals it in Him,
before He had taken His place as a citizen and was
still within the family: Wist ye not that I must be
about My Father's business? At His first public appearance
He had it fully, and others acknowledged it.
In the opening year of His ministry it threatened to be
only a Distinction of the First—they took Him by force,
and would have made Him King. But as time went on
it grew evident that it was to be, not the Distinction
of the First, but the Distinction of the Only. The
enthusiastic crowds melted away: the small band,
whom He had most imbued with His spirit, proved
that they could follow Him but a certain length in
His consciousness of His Mission. Recognising in
Him the supreme prophet—Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life—they immediately
failed to understand, that suffering also must be endured
by Him for the people: Be it far from Thee,
Lord. This suffering was His conscience and His
burden alone. Now, we cannot overlook the fact,
that the point at which Christ's way became so solitary
was the same point at which we felt our prophet's
language cease to oblige us to understand by it a
portion of the people, and begin to be applicable to
a single individual,—the point, namely, where prophecy
passes into martyrdom. But whether our prophet's
pictures of the suffering and atoning Servant of the
Lord are meant for some aspect of the national experience,
or as the portrait of a real individual, it is
certain that in His martyrdom and service of ransom
Jesus felt Himself to be absolutely alone. He who
had begun His Service of God with all the people on
His side, consummated the same with the leaders and
the masses of the nation against Him, and without a
single partner from among His own friends, either in
the fate which overtook Him, or in the conscience
with which He bore it.
Now all this parallel between Jesus of Nazareth and
the Servant of the Lord is unmistakable enough, even
in this mere outline; but the details of the Gospel
narrative and the language of the Evangelists still
more emphasize it. Christ's herald hailed Him with
words which gather up the essence of Isa. liii.: Behold
the Lamb of God. He read His own commission from
ch. lxi.: The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me. To describe
His first labours among the people, His disciples again
used words from ch. liii.: Himself bare our sicknesses.
To paint His manner of working in face of opposition
they quoted the whole passage from ch. xlii.: Behold
My Servant ... He shall not strive. The name Servant
was often upon His own lips in presenting Himself:
Behold, I am among you as one that serveth. When
His office of prophecy passed into martyrdom, He
predicted for Himself the treatment which is detailed
in ch. l.,—the smiting, plucking and spitting: and in
time, by Jew and Gentile, this treatment was inflicted
on Him to the very letter.Cf. with the Greek version of Isa. l. 4-7, Luke xviii. 31, 32;
Matt. xxvi. 67.
As to His consciousness
in fulfilling something more than a martyrdom, and
alone among the martyrs of Israel offering by His
death an expiation for His people's sins, His own
words are frequent and clear enough to form a counterpart
to ch. liii. With them before us, we cannot
doubt that He felt Himself to be the One of whom
the people in that chapter speak, as standing over
against them all, sinless, and yet bearing their sins.
But on the night on which He was betrayed, while
just upon the threshold of this extreme and unique
form of service, into which it has been given to no
soul of man, that ever lived, to be conscious of following
Him—as if anxious that His disciples should not
be so overwhelmed by the awful part in which they
could not imitate Him as to forget the countless
other ways in which they were called to fulfil His
serving spirit—He took a towel and girded Himself, and
when He had washed their feet, He said unto them, If I,
then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you
also ought to wash one another's feet—thereby illustrating
what is so plainly set forth in our prophecy, that short
of the expiation, of which only One in His sinlessness
has felt the obligation, and short of the martyrdom,
which it has been given to but few of His people to
share with Him, there are a thousand humble forms
rising out of the needs of everyday life, in which men
are called to employ towards one another the gentle
and self-forgetful methods of the true Servant of God.
With the four Gospels in existence, no one doubts
or can doubt that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the cry,
Behold My Servant. With Him it ceased to be a mere
ideal, and took its place as the greatest achievement in
history.
3. In the earliest discourses of the Apostles, therefore,
it is not wonderful that Jesus should be expressly
designated by them as the Servant of God,—the Greek
word used being that by which the Septuagint specially
translates the Hebrew term in Isa. xl.-lxvi.In Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Septuagint translates the Hebrew for Servant
by one or other of two words—παις and δουλος. Παις is used in
xli. 8; xlii. 1; xliv. 1 ff.; xliv. 21; xlv. 4; xlix. 6; l. 10; lii. 13.
But δουλος is used in xlviii. 20; xlix. 3 and 5. In the Acts it is
παις that is used of Christ: "An apostle is never called παις (but
only δουλος) Θεου" (Meyer). But David is called παις (Acts iv. 25).
: God hath
glorified His Servant Jesus. Unto you first, God, having
raised up His Servant, sent Him to bless you, in turning
away every one of you from your iniquities.... In this
city against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou didst
anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles
and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together to do
whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to
pass. Grant that signs and wonders may be done through
the name of Thy Holy Servant Jesus.Acts iii. 13, 26; iv. 27-30.
It must also be
noticed, that in one of the same addresses, and again
by Stephen in his argument before the Sanhedrim,
Jesus is called The Righteous One,Acts iii. 14; vii. 52.
doubtless an allusion
to the same title for the Servant in Isa. liii. 11. Need
we recall the interpretation of Isa. liii. by Philip?Acts viii. 30 ff.
It is known to all how Peter develops this parallel in
his First Epistle, borrowing the figures but oftener the
very words of Isa. liii. to apply to Christ. Like the
Servant of the Lord, Jesus is as a lamb: He is a patient
sufferer in silence; He is the Righteous—again the classic
title—for the unrighteous; in exact quotation from the
Greek of Isa. liii.: He did no sin, neither was found
guile in His mouth, ye were as sheep gone astray, but
He Himself hath borne our sins, with whose stripes ye are
healed.1 Peter i. 19; ii. 22, 23; iii. 18.
Paul applies two quotations from Isa. lii. 13-liii. to
Christ: I have striven to preach the Gospel not where
Christ was named; as it is written, To whom He was not
spoken of they shall see: and they that have not heard
shall understand; and He hath made Him to be sin for
us who knew no sin.Rom. xv. 20 f.; 2 Cor. v. 21.
And none will doubt that when
he so often disputed that the Messiah must suffer, or
wrote Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
he had Isa. liii. in mind, exactly as we have
seen it applied to the Messiah by Jewish scholars a
hundred years later than Paul.
4. Paul, however, by no means confines the prophecy
of the Servant of the Lord to Jesus the Messiah. In a
way which has been too much overlooked by students
of the subject, Paul revives and reinforces the collective
interpretation of the Servant. He claims the Servant's
duties and experience for himself, his fellow-labourers
in the gospel, and all believers.
In Antioch of Pisidia, Paul and Barnabas said of
themselves to the Jews: For so hath the Lord commanded
us saying, I have set thee to be a light of the
Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation to the ends
of the earth.Acts xiii. 47, after Isa. xlix. 6.
Again, in the eighth of Romans, Paul
takes the Servant's confident words, and speaks them
of all God's true people. He is near that justifieth me,
who is he that condemneth me? cried the Servant in our
prophecy, and Paul echoes for all believers: It is God
that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?Isa. l. 8, and Rom. viii. 33, 34.
And again,
in his second letter to Timothy, he says, speaking of
that pastor's work, For the servant of the Lord must
not strive, but be gentle towards all; words which were
borrowed from, or suggested by, Isa. xlii. 1-3.2 Tim. ii. 24. We may note, also, how Paul in Eph. vi. takes the
armour with which God is clothed in Isa. lix. 17, breastplate and helmet,
and equips the individual Christian with them; and how, in the same
passage, he takes for the Christian from Isa. xl. the Messiah's girdle
of truth and the sword of the Spirit,—he shall smite the land with the
rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.
In
these instances, as well as in his constant use of the
terms slave, servant, minister, with their cognates, Paul
fulfils the intention of Jesus, who so continually, by
example, parable, and direct commission, enforced the
life of His people as a Service to the Lord.
5. Such, then, is the New Testament reflection of
the Prophecy of the Servant of the Lord, both as
People and Person. Like all physical reflections, this
moral one may be said, on the whole, to stand reverse
to its original. In Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Servant is People
first, Person second. But in the New Testament—except
for a faint and scarcely articulate application to
Israel in the beginning of the gospels—the Servant is
Person first and People afterwards. The Divine Ideal
which our prophet saw narrowing down from the Nation
to an Individual, was owned and realised by Christ.
But in Him it was not exhausted. With added warmth
and light, with a new power of expansion, it passed
through Him to fire the hearts and enlist the wills of
an infinitely greater people than the Israel for whom it
was originally designed. With this witness, then, of
history to the prophecies of the Servant, our way in
expounding and applying them is clear. Jesus Christ
is their perfect fulfilment and illustration. But we who
are His Church are to find in them our ideal and duty,—our
duty to God and to the world. In this, as in so
many other matters, the unfulfilled prophecy of Israel
is the conscience of Christianity.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SERVICE OF GOD AND MAN.
Isaiah xlii. 1-7.
We now understand, whom to regard as the Servant
of the Lord. The Service of God was a commission
to witness and prophesy for God upon earth,
made out at first in the name of the entire nation Israel.
When their unfitness as a whole became apparent, it
was delegated to a portion of them. But as there were
added to its duties of prophecy, those of martyrdom
and atonement for the sins of the people, our prophet,
it would seem, saw it focussed in the person of an
individual.
In history Jesus Christ has fulfilled this commission
both in its national and in its personal aspects. He
realised the ideal of the prophet-people. He sacrificed
Himself and made atonement for the sins of men. But
having illustrated the service of God in the world,
Christ did not exhaust it. He returned it to His people,
a more clamant conscience than ever, and He also gave
them grace to fulfil its demands. Through Christ the
original destination of these prophecies becomes, as
Paul saw, their ultimate destination as well. That
Israel refused this Service or failed in it only leaves it
more clearly to us as duty; that Jesus fulfilled it not
only confirms that duty, but adds hope and courage to
discharge it.
Although the terms of this Service were published
nearly two thousand five hundred years ago, in a petty
dialect that is now dead, to a helpless tribe of captives
in a world, whose civilisation has long sunk to ruin,
yet these terms are so free of all that is provincial or
antique, they are so adapted to the lasting needs of
humanity, they are so universal in their scope, they
are so instinct with that love which never faileth,
though prophecies fail and tongues cease, that they come
home to heart and conscience to-day with as much
tenderness and authority as ever. The first programme
of these terms is given in ch. xlii. 1-7. The authorised
English version is one of unapproachable beauty, but
its emphasis and rhythm are not the emphasis and
rhythm of the original, and it has missed one at least
of the striking points of the Hebrew. The following
version, which makes no attempt at elegance, is almost
literal, follows the same order as the original that it
may reproduce the same emphasis, and, as far as
English can, repeats the original rhythm. The point,
which it rescues from the neglect of the Authorised
Version, is this, that the verbs used of the Servant in
ver. 4, He shall not fade nor break, are the same as are
used of the wick and the reed in ver. 3.
Lo, My Servant! I hold by him;
My Chosen! Well-pleased is My soul!
I have set My Spirit upon him;
Law to the Nations he brings forth.
He cries not, nor lifts up,The English equivalent is, nor is loud.
Nor lets his voice be heard in the street.
Reed that is broken he breaks not off,
Wick that is fading he does not quench:
Faithfully brings he forth Law.
He shall not fade neither break,
Till he have set in the EarthThis time with the article, so not the land of Judah only, but the
Earth.
Law;
And for his teaching the Isles are waiting.
Thus saith the God, Jehovah,
Creator of the heavens that stretched them forth,
Spreader of Earth and her produce,
Giver of breath to the people upon her,
And of spirit to them that walk therein:
I, Jehovah, have called thee in righteousness,
To grasp thee fast by thy hand, and to keep thee,
And to set thee for a covenant of the People,
For a light of the Nations:
To open blind eyes,
To bring forth from durance the captive,
From prison the dwellers in darkness.
I. The Conscience of Service.
As several of these lines indicate, this is a Service to
Man, but what we must first fasten upon is that before
being a Service to Man it is a Service for God. Behold,
My Servant, says God's commission very emphatically.
And throughout the prophecy the Servant is presented
as chosen of God, inspired of God, equipped of God,
God's creature, God's instrument; useful only because
he is used, influential because he is influenced, victorious
because he is obedient; learning the methods of his
work by daily wakefulness to God's voice, a good
speaker only because he is first a good listener; with
no strength or courage but what God lends, and
achieving all for God's glory. Notice how strongly it
is said that God holds by him, grasps him by the hand.
We shall see that his Service is as sympathetic and
comprehensive a purpose for humanity as was ever
dreamed in any thought or dared in any life. Whether
we consider its tenderness for individuals, or the
universalism of its hope for the world, or its gentle
appreciation of all human effort and aspiration, or its
conscience of mankind's chief evil, or the utterness of
its self-sacrifice in order to redeem men,—we shall own
it to be a programme of human duty, and a prophecy
of human destiny, to which the growing experience of
our race has been able to add nothing that is essential.
But the Service becomes all that to man, because it
first takes all that from God. Not only is the Servant's
sense of duty to all humanity just the conscience of
God's universal sovereignty,—for it is a remarkable
and never-to-be-forgotten fact, that Israel recognised
their God's right to the whole world, before they felt
their own duty to mankind,—but the Servant's character
and methods are the reflection of the Divine. Feature
by feature the Servant corresponds to His Lord. His
patience is but sympathy with Jehovah's righteousness,—I
will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.
His gentleness with the unprofitable and the
unlovely—He breaks not off the broken reed nor quenches
the flickering wick—is but the temper of the everlasting
God, who giveth power to the faint, and to them that
have no might He increaseth strength. His labour and
passion and agony, even they have been anticipated in
the Divine nature, for the LORD stirreth up seal like a
man of war; He saith, I will cry out like a travailing
woman. In no detail is the Servant above his Master.
His character is not original, but is the impress of
his God's: I have put My spirit upon him.
There are many in our day, who deny this indebtedness
of the human character to the Divine, and in the
Service of Man would have us turn our backs upon
God. Positivists, while admitting that the earliest
enthusiasm of the individual for his race did originate
in the love of a Divine Being, assert nevertheless that
we have grown away from this illusory motive; and
that in the example of humanity itself we may find
all the requisite impulse to serve it. The philosophy
of history, which the extreme Socialists have put
forward, is even more explicit. According to them, mankind
was disturbed in a primitive, tribal socialism—or
service of each other—by the rise of spiritual religion,
which drew the individual away from his kind and
absorbed him in selfish relations to God. Such a
stage, represented by the Hebrew and Christian faiths,
and by the individualist political economy which has
run concurrent with the later developments of Christianity,
was (so these Socialists admit) perhaps necessary
for temporary discipline and culture, like the land
of Egypt to starved Jacob's children; but like Egypt,
when it turned out to be the house of bondage, the
individualist economy and religion are now to be
abandoned for the original land of promise,—Socialism
once more, but universal instead of tribal as of old.
Out of this analogy, which is such Socialists' own,
Sinai and the Ten Commandments are, of course,
omitted. We are to march back to freedom without a
God, and settle down to love and serve each other by
administration.
But can we turn our backs on God, without hurting
man? The natural history of philanthropy would seem
to say that we cannot. This prophecy is one of its
witnesses. Earliest ideal as it is, of a universal service
of mankind, it starts in its obligation from the universal
Sovereignty of God; it starts in every one of its affections
from some affection of the Divine character. And
we have not grown away from the need of its everlasting
sources. Cut off God from the Service of man,
and the long habit and inherent beauty of that Service
may perpetuate its customs for a few generations; but
the inevitable call must come to subject conduct to the
altered intellectual conditions, and in the absence of
God every man's ideal shall surely turn from, How can
I serve my neighbour? to, How can I make my neighbour
serve me? As our prophet reminds us in his
vivid contrast between Israel, the Servant of the Lord,
and Babylon, who saith in her heart: I am, and there is
none beside me, there are ultimately but two alternative
lords of the human will, God and Self. If we revolt
from the Authority and Example of the One, we
shall surely become subject, in the long run, to the
ignorance, the short-sightedness, the pedantry, the
cruelty of the other. These words are used advisedly.
With no sense of the sacredness of every human life
as created in the image of God, and with no example
of an Infinite Mercy before them, men would leave to
perish all that was weak, or, from the limited point of
view of a single community or generation, unprofitable.
Some Positivists and those Socialists, who do not
include God in the society they seek to establish, admit
that they expect something like that to follow from their
denial of God. In certain Positivist proposals for the
reform of charity, we are told that the ideal scheme of
social relief would be the one which limited itself to
persons judged to be of use to the community as a
whole; that is, that in their succour of the weak, their
bounty to the poor, and their care of the young, society
should be guided, not by the eternal laws of justice and
of mercy, but by the opinions of the representatives of
the public for the time being and by their standard of
utility to the commonwealth. Your atheist-Socialist is
still more frank. In the state, which he sees rising
after he has got rid of Christianity, he would suppress,
he tells us, all who preached such a thing as the fear
of the future life, and he would not repeat the present
exceptional legislation for the protection of women and
children, for whom, he whines, far too much has been
recently done in comparison with what has been
enacted for the protection of men.Bax, Religion of Socialism.
These are, of
course, but vain things which the heathen imagine
(and some of us have an ideal of socialism very
different from the godlessness which has usurped the
noble name), but they serve to illustrate what clever
men, who have thrown off all belief in God, will bring
themselves to hope for: a society utterly Babylonian,
without pity or patience,—if it were possible for these
eternal graces to die out of any human community,—subject
to the opinion of pedants, whose tender mercies
would be far more fatal to the weak and poor than
the present indifference of the rich; seriously fettering
liberty of conscience and destitute of chivalry. It may
be that our Positivist critics are right, and that the
interests of humanity have suffered in Christian times
from the prevalence of too selfish and introspective a
religion; but whether our religion has looked too
intensely inward or not, we cannot, it is certain, do
without a religion that looks steadily up, owning the
discipline of Divine Law and the Example of an Infinite
Mercy and Longsuffering.
But, though we had never heard of Positivism or of
the Socialism that denies God, our age, with its popular
and public habits, would still require this example
of Service, which our prophecy enforces: it is an
age so charged with the instincts of work, with the
ambition to be useful, with the fashion of altruism;
but so empty of the sense of God, of reverence, discipline
and prayer. We do not need to learn philanthropy,—the
thing is in the air; but we do need
to be taught that philanthropy demands a theology
both for its purity and its effectiveness. When philanthropy
has become, what it is so much to-day, the
contest of rival politicians, the ambition of every
demagogue, who can get his head above the crowd,
the fitful self-indulgence of weak hearts, the opportunity
of vain theorists, and for all a temptation to work with
lawless means for selfish ends,—it is time to remember
that the Service of Man is first of all a great Service for
God. This faith alone can keep us from the wilfulness,
the crotchets and the insubordination, which spoil so
many well-intentioned to their kind, and so wofully
break up the ranks of progress. Humility is the first
need of the philanthropist of to-day: humility, discipline
and the sense of proportion; and these are qualities,
which only faith in God and the conscience of law are
known to bestow upon the human heart. It is the
fear of God that will best preserve us from making our
philanthropy the mere flattery of the popular appetite.
To keep us utterly patient with men we need to think
of God's patience with ourselves. While to us all
there come calls to sacrifice, which our fellow-men
may so little deserve from us, and against which our
self-culture can plead so many reasons, that unless
God's will and example were before us, the calls would
never be obeyed. In short, to be most useful in this
life it is necessary to feel that we are used. Look at
Christ. To Him philanthropy was no mere habit
and spontaneous affection; even for that great heart
the love of man had to be enforced by the compulsion
of the will of God. The busy days of healing and
teaching had between them long nights of lonely prayer;
and the Son of God did not pass to His supreme self-sacrifice
for men till after the struggle with, and the
submission to, His Father's will in Gethsemane.
II. The Substance of Service.
The substance of the Servant's work is stated in one
word, uttered thrice in emphatic positions. Judgement
for the nations shall he bring forth.... According to
truth shall he bring forth judgement.... He shall not
flag nor break, till he set in the earthThis time "arets" with the article. So not the land of Judah only
but the world.
judgement.
The English word judgement is a natural but misleading
translation of the original, and we must dismiss
at once the idea of judicial sentence, which it suggests.
The Hebrew is "mishpat," which means, among other
things, either a single statute, or the complete body
of law which God gave Israel by Moses, at once their
creed and their code; or, perhaps, also the abstract
quality of justice or right. We rendered it as the latter
in Isa. i.-xxxix. But, as will be seen from the note
below,The following are the four main meanings of "mishpat" in
Isa. xl.-lxvi.: 1. In a general sense, a legal process, xli. 1, let us come
together to the judgement, or the law (with the article), cf. l. 8, man of my
judgement, i.e., my fellow-at-law, my adversary; liii. 8, oppression and
judgement, i.e., a judgement which was oppressive, a legal injustice.
2. A person's cause or right, xl. 27, xlix. 4. 3. Ordinance instituted by
Jehovah for the life and worship of His people, lviii. 2, ordinances
of righteousness, i.e., either canonical laws, or ordinances by observing
which the people would make themselves righteous. 4. In general,
the sum of the laws given by Jehovah to Israel, the Law, lviii. 2,
Law of their God; li. 4, Jehovah says My Law (Rev. Ver. judgement),
parallel to "Torah" or Revelation (Rev. Ver. law). Then absolutely,
without the article or Jehovah's name attached, xlii. 1, 3, 4. In lvi. 1
parallel to righteousness; lix. 14 parallel to righteousness, truth
and uprightness. In fact, in this last use, while represented as
equivalent to civic morality, it is this, not as viewed in its
character, right, upright, but in its obligation as ordained by God:
morality as His Law. The absence of the article may either mean
what it means in the case of people and land, i.e., the Law, too much
of a proper name to need the article, or it may be an attempt to
abstract the quality of the Law; and if so mishpat is equal to justice.
when used in Isa. xl.-lxvi. without the article,
as here, it is the "mishpat" of Jehovah,—not so much
the actual body of statutes given to Israel, as the
principles of right or justice which they enforce. In
one passage it is given in parallel to the civic virtues
righteousness, truth, uprightness, but—as its etymology
compared with theirs shows us—it is these viewed
not in their character as virtues, but in their obligation
as ordained by God. Hence, duty to Jehovah as
inseparable from His religion (Ewald), religion as the
law of life (Delitzsch), the law (Cheyne, who admirably
compares the Arabic ed-Dîn) are all good renderings.
Professor Davidson gives the fullest exposition. "It
can scarcely," he says, "be rendered 'religion' in the
modern sense, it is the equity and civil right which is
the result of the true religion of Jehovah; and though
comprehended under religion in the Old Testament
sense, is rather, according to our conceptions, religion
applied in civil life. Of old the religious unit was the
state, and the life of the state was the expression of its
religion. Morality was law or custom, and both reposed
upon God. A condition of thought such as now prevails,
where morality is based on independent grounds,
whether natural law or the principles inherent in the
mind apart from religion, did not then exist. What the
prophet means by 'bringing forth right' is explained
in another passage, where it is said that Jehovah's
'arms shall judge the peoples,' and that the 'isles
shall wait for His arm' (ch. li. 5). 'Judgment' is that
pervading of life by the principles of equity and humanity
which is the immediate effect of the true religion of
Jehovah."Expositor, second series, vol. viii., p. 364.
In short, "mishpat" is not only the civic
righteousness and justice, to which it is made parallel
in our prophecy, but it is these with God behind them.
On the one hand it is conterminous with national virtue,
on the other it is the ordinance and will of God.
This, then, is the burden of the Servant's work, to
pervade and instruct every nation's life on earth with
the righteousness and piety that are ordained of God.
He shall not flag nor break, till he have set in the
earth Law,—till in every nation justice, humanity and
worship are established as the law of God. We have
seen that the Servant is in this passage still some
aspect or shape of the people,—the people who are not
a people, but scattered among the brickfields of Babylonia,
a horde of captives. When we keep that in mind,
two or three things come home to us about this task
of theirs. First, it is no mere effort at proselytism. It
is not an ambition to Judaise the world. The national
consciousness and provincial habits, which cling about
so many of the prophecies of Israel's relation to the
world, have dropped from this one, and the nation's
mission is identified with the establishment of law, the
diffusion of light, the relief of suffering. I will give thee
for a light to the nations: to open blind eyes, to bring
out from durance the bound, from the prison the dwellers
in darkness.This might, of course, only mean what the Servant had to do for
his captive countrymen. But coming as it does after the light of
nations, it seems natural to take it in its wider and more spiritual sense.
Again, it is no mere office of preaching,
to which the Servant's commission is limited, no mere
inculcation of articles of belief. But we have here the
same rich, broad idea of religion, identifying it with
the whole national life, which we found so often
illustrated by Isaiah, and which is one of the beneficial
results to religion of God's choice for Himself of a
nation as a whole.See ch. xv. of this volume.
What such a Service has to give
the world, is not merely testimony to the truth, nor
fresh views of it, nor artistic methods of teaching it;
but social life under its obligation, the public conscience
of it, the long tradition and habit of it, the breed—what
the prophets call the seed—of it. To establish true
religion as the constitution, national duty, and regular
practice of every people under the sun, in all the
details of order, cleanliness, justice, purity and mercy,
in which it had been applied to themselves,—such was
the Service and the Destiny of Israel. And the marvel
of so universal and political an ideal was, that it came
not to a people in the front ranks of civilisation or of
empire, but to a people that at the time had not even a
political shape for themselves,—a mere herd of captives,
despised and rejected of men. When we realise this,
we understand that they never would have dared to
think of it, or to speak of it to one another, unless they
had believed it to be the purpose and will of Almighty
God for them; unless they had recognised it, not only as
a service desirable and true in itself, and, needed also by
humanity, but withal as His "mishpat," His judgement
or law, who by His bare word can bring all things
to pass. But before we see how strongly He impressed
them with this, that His creative force was in their
mission, let us turn to the methods by which He commanded
them to achieve it,—methods corresponding to
its purely spiritual and universal character.
III. The Temper of Service.
1. He shall not cry, nor lift up,
Nor make his voice to be heard in the street.
There is nothing more characteristic of our prophecy
than its belief in the power of speech, its exultation in
the music and spell of the human voice. It opens with
a chorus of high calls: none are so lovely to it as
heralds, or so musical as watchmen when they lift up
the voice; it sets the preaching of glad tidings before
the people as their national ideal; eloquence it describes
as a sharp sword leaping from God's scabbard. The
Servant of the Lord is trained in style of speech; his
words are as pointed arrows; he has the mouth of the
learned, a voice to command obedience. The prophet's
own tones are superb: nowhere else does the short sententiousness
of Hebrew roll out into such long, sonorous
periods. He uses speech in every style: for comfort,
for bitter controversy, in clear proclamation, in deep-throated
denunciation: Call with the throat, spare not, lift
up the voice like a trumpet. His constant key-notes are,
speak a word, lift up the voice with strength, sing, publish,
declare. In fact, there is no use to which the human
voice has ever been put in the Service of Man, for comfort's
sake, or for justice, or for liberty, for the diffusion
of knowledge or for the scattering of music, which our
prophet does not enlist and urge upon his people.
When, then, he says of the Servant that he shall not
cry, nor lift up, nor make his voice to be heard in the street,
he cannot be referring to the means and art of the
Service, but rather to the tone and character of the
Servant. Each of the triplet of verbs he uses shows
us this. The first one, translated cry, is not the cry
or call of the herald voice in ch. xl., the high, clear
Kārā; it is ssa`aḳ, a sharper word with a choke in the
centre of it meaning to scream, especially under excitement.
Then to lift up is the exact equivalent of our
"to be loud." And if we were seeking to translate
into Hebrew our phrase "to advertise oneself," we
could not find a closer expression for it than to make his
voice be heard in the street. To be "screamy," to be
"loud," to "advertise oneself,"—these modern expressions
for vices that were ancient as well as modern
render the exact force of the verse. Such the Servant
of God will not be nor do. He is at once too strong,
too meek and too practical. That God is with him,
holding him fast, keeps him calm and unhysterical; that
he is but God's instrument keeps him humble and
quiet; and that his heart is in his work keeps him
from advertising himself at its expense. It is perhaps
especially for the last of these reasons that Matthew (in
his twelfth chapter) quotes this passage of our Lord.
Jesus had been disturbed in His labours of healing
by the disputatious Pharisees. He had answered
them, and then withdrawn from their neighbourhood.
Many sick were brought after Him to His privacy,
and He healed them all. But He charged them that
they should not make Him known; that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying,
Behold, My Servant ... he shall not strive, nor cry aloud,
neither shall any one hear his voice in the streets. Now
this cannot be, what some carelessly take it for, an
example against controversy or debate of all kinds,
for Jesus had Himself just been debating; nor can it
be meant as an absolute forbidding of all publishing
of good works, for Christ has shown us, on other
occasions, that such advertisement is good. The
difficulty is explained, by what we have seen to explain
other perplexing actions of our Lord, His
intensely practical spirit. The work to be done
determined everything. When it made argument necessary,
as that same day it had done in the synagogue,
then our Lord entered on argument: He did not only
heal the man with the withered hand, but He made
him the text of a sermon. But when talking about
His work hindered it, provoked the Pharisees to come
near with their questions, and took up His time and
strength in disputes with them, then for the work's
sake He forbade talk about it. We have no trace of
evidence that Christ forbade this advertisement also for
His own sake,—as a temptation to Himself and fraught
with evil effects upon His feelings. We know that it is
for this reason we have to shun it. Even though we are
quite guiltless of contributing to such publication ourselves,
and it is the work of generous and well-meaning
friends, it still becomes a very great danger to us. For
it is apt to fever us and exhaust our nervous force,
even when it does not turn our heads with its praise,—to
distract us and to draw us more and more into
the enervating habit of paying attention to popular
opinion. Therefore, as a man values his efficiency in
the Service of Man, he will not make himself to be heard
in the street. There is an amount of making to be heard
which is absolutely necessary for the work's sake;
but there is also an amount which can be indulged in
only at the work's expense. Present-day philanthropy,
even with the best intentions, suffers from this over-publicity,
and its besetting sins are "loudness" and
hysteria.
What, then, shall tell us how far we can go? What
shall teach us how to be eloquent without screaming,
clear without being loud, impressive without wasting
our strength in seeking to make an impression?
These questions bring us back to what we started
with, as the indispensable requisite for Service—some
guiding and religious principles behind even the kindliest
and steadiest tempers. For many things in the
Service of Man no exact rules will avail; neither logic
nor bye-laws of administration can teach us to observe
the uncertain and constantly varying degree of duty,
which they demand. Tact for that is bestowed only by
the influence of lofty principles working from above.
This is a case in point. What rules of logic or
"directions of the superior authority" can, in the
Service of Man, distinguish for us between excitement
and earnestness, bluster and eloquence, energy and
mere self-advertisement; on whose subtle differences
the whole success of the service must turn. Only the
discipline of faith, only the sense of God, can help us
here. The practical temper by itself will not help us.
To be busy but gives us too great self-importance; and
hard work often serves only to bring out the combative
instincts. To know that we are His Servants shall
keep us meek; that we are held fast by His hand
shall keep us calm; that His great laws are not abrogated
shall keep us sane. When for our lowliest and
most commonplace kinds of service we think no religion
is required, let us remember the solemn introduction
of the evangelist to his story of the foot-washing.
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His
hands, and that He came forth from God and goeth unto
God, riseth from supper, and layeth aside His garments;
and He took a towel, and girded Himself; then He
poureth water into the bason, and began to wash His
disciples' feet.
2. But to meekness and discipline the Servant adds
gentleness.
Reed that is broken he breaks not off,
Wick that is fading he does not quench;
Faithfully brings he forth law.
The force of the last of these three lines is, of
course, qualificative and conditional. It is set as a
guard against the abuse of the first two, and means
that though the Servant in dealing with men is to
be solicitous about their weakness, yet the interests
of religion shall in no way suffer. Mercy shall be
practised, but so that truth is not compromised.
The original application of the verse is thus finely
stated by Professor Davidson: "This is the singularly
humane and compassionate view the Prophet takes
of the Gentiles,—they are bruised reeds and expiring
flames.... What the prophet may refer to is the
human virtues, expiring among the nations, but not
yet dead; the sense of God, debased by idolatries,
but not extinct; the consciousness in the individual
soul of its own worth and its capacities, and the glimmering
ideal of a true life and a worthy activity almost
crushed out by the grinding tyranny of rulers and the
miseries entailed by their ambitions—this flickering
light the Servant shall feed and blow into a flame.Expositor, second series, viii., pp. 364, 365, 366.
...
It is the future relation of the 'people' Israel to other
peoples that he describes. The thought which has now
taken possession of statesmen of the higher class, that
the point of contact between nation and nation need
not be the sword, that the advantage of one people is
not the loss of another but the gain of mankind, that
the land where freedom has grown to maturity and is
worshipped in her virgin serenity and loveliness should
nurse the new-born babe in other homes, and that the
strange powers of the mind of man and the subtle
activities of his hand should not be repressed but
fostered in every people, in order that the product may
be poured into the general lap of the race—this idea is
supposed to be due to Christianity. And, immediately,
it is; but it is older than Christianity. It is found in
this Prophet. And it is not new in him, for a Prophet,
presumably a century and a half his senior, had said:
The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many
peoples as a dew from the Lord, as showers upon the
grass (Micah v. 7)."Ibid., p. 366.
But while this national reference may be the one
originally meant, the splendid vagueness of the metaphor
forbids us to be content with it, or with any solitary
application. For the two clauses are as the eyes of the
All-Pitiful Father, that rest wherever on this broad earth
there is any life, though it be so low as to be conscious
only through pain or doubt; they are as the healing
palms of Jesus stretched over the multitudes to bless
and gather to Himself the weary and the poor in spirit.
We contrast our miserable ruin of character, our feeble
sparks of desire after holiness, with the life, which
Christ demands and has promised, and in despair we
tell ourselves, this can never become that. But it is
precisely this that Christ has come to lift to that. The
first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount closes with
the awful command, Be ye perfect, as your Father in
Heaven is perfect; but we work our way back through
the chapter, and we come to this, Blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled; and to this, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Such is Christ's treatment
of the bruised reed and the smoking flax. Let
us not despair. There is only one kind of men, for
whom it has no gospel,—the dead and they who are
steeped in worldliness, who have forgotten what the
pain of a sore conscience is, and are strangers to
humility and aspiration. But for all who know their
life, were it only through their pain or their doubt,
were it only in the despair of what they feel to be a
last struggle with temptation, were it only in contrition
for their sin or in shame for their uselessness, this
text has hope. Reed that is broken he breaketh not
off, wick that is fading he doth not quench.
This objective sense of the Servant's temper must
always be the first for us to understand. For more
than he was, we are, mortal, ready ourselves to break
and to fade. But having experienced the grace, let us
show the same in our service to others. Let us understand
that we are sent forth like the great Servant of
God, that man may have life, and have it more abundantly.
We need resolutely and with pious obstinacy
to set this temper before us, for it is not natural to our
hearts. Even the best of us, in the excitement of our
work, forget to think of anything except of making
our mark, or of getting the better of what we are at work
upon. When work grows hard, the combative instincts
waken within us, till we look upon the characters God
has given us to mould as enemies to be fought. We
are passionate to convince men, to overcome them with
an argument, to wring the confession from them that
we are right and they wrong. Now Christ our Master
must have seen in every man He met a very great deal
more to be fought and extirpated than we can possibly
see in one another. Yet He largely left that alone, and
addressed Himself rather to the sparks of nobility He
found, and fostered these to a strong life, which from
within overcame the badness of the man,—the badness
which opposition from the outside would but have beaten
into harder obduracy. We must ever remember that
we are not warriors but artists,—artists after the fashion
of Jesus Christ, who came not to condemn life because
it was imperfect, but to build life up to the image of God.
So He sends us to be artists; as it is written, He gave
some apostles, and some prophets, and some pastors and
teachers. For what end? For convincing men, for
telling them what fools they mostly are, for crushing
them in the inquisition of their own conscience, for
getting the better of them in argument?—no, not for
these combative purposes at all, but for fostering and
artistic ones: for the perfecting of the saints, for the
building up of the body of Christ; till we all come unto a
full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ.
He who, in his Service of Man, practises such a temper
towards the breaking and the fading, shall never himself
break or fade, as this prophecy implies when it uses the
same verbs in verses three and four. For he who is
loyal to life shall find life generous to him; he who is
careful of weakness shall never want for strength.
IV. The Power behind Service.
There only remains now to emphasize the power that
is behind Service. It is, say verses five and six, the
Creative Power of God.
Thus saith The God, Jehovah,
Creator of the heavens, that stretched them forth,
Spreader of the earth and her produce,
Giver of breath to the people upon her,
And of spirit to them that walk thereon,
I Jehovah have called thee in righteousness,
That I may grasp thee by thy hand, and keep thee.
Majestic confirmation of the call to Service! based
upon the fundamental granite of this whole prophecy,
which here crops out into a noble peak, firm station
for the Servant, and point for prospect of all the future.
It is our easy fault to read these words of the Creator as
the utterance of mere ceremonial commonplace, blast of
trumpets at the going forth of a hero, scenery for his
stage, the pomp of nature summoned to assist at the
presentation of God's elect before the world. Yet not for
splendour were they spoken, but for bare faith's sake.
God's Servant has been sent forth, weak and gentle,
with quiet methods and to very slow effects. He shall
not cry, nor lift up, nor make his voice to be heard in the
streets. What chance has such, our service, in the ways
of the world, where to be forceful and selfish, to bluster
and battle, is to survive and overcome! So we speak,
and the panic ambition rises to fight the world with its
own weapons, and to employ the kinds of debate, advertisement
and competition by which the world goes
forward. For this, the Creator calls to us, and marshals
His powers before our eyes. We thought there were
but two things,—our own silence and the world's noise.
There are three, and the world's noise is only an interruption
between the other two. Across it deep calleth
unto deep; the immeasurable processes of creation cry
to the feeble convictions of truth in our hearts, We are
one. Creation is the certificate that no moral effort is
a forlorn hope. When God, after repeating His results
in creation, adds, I have called thee in righteousness,
He means that there is some consistency between His
processes in creation, rational and immense as they
are, and those poor efforts He calls on our weakness
to make, which look so foolish in face of the world.
Behind every moral effort there is, He says, Creative
force. Right and Might are ultimately one. Paul sums
up the force of the passage, when, after speaking of the
success of his ministry, he gives as its reason that the
God of Creation and of Grace are the same. Therefore
seeing we have received this ministry we faint not. For
God, who hath commanded the light to shine out of darkness,
hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The spiritual Service of Man, then, has creative forces
behind it; work for God upon the hearts and characters
of others has creative force behind it. And nature is
the seal and the sacrament of this. Let our souls,
therefore, dilate with her prospects. Let our impatience
study her reasonableness and her laws. Let our weak
wills feel the rush of her tides. For the power that is
in her, and the faithful pursuance of purposes to their
ends, are the power and the character that work behind
each witness of our conscience, each effort of our heart
for others. Not less strong than she, not less calm, not
less certain of success, shall prove the moral Service
of Man.
CHAPTER XIX.
PROPHET AND MARTYR.
Isaiah xlix. 1-9; l. 4-11.
The second great passage upon the Servant of the
Lord is ch. xlix. 1-9, and the third is ch. l. 4-11.
In both of these the servant himself speaks; in both he
speaks as prophet; while in the second he tells us that
his prophecy leads him on to martyrdom. The two
passages may, therefore, be taken together.
Before we examine their contents, let us look for a
moment at the way in which they are woven into the
rest of the text. As we have seen, ch. xlix. begins a
new section of the prophecy, in so far that with it the
prophet leaves Babylon and Cyrus behind him, and
ceases to speak of the contrast between God and the
idols. But, still, ch. xlix. is linked to ch. xlviii. In
leading up to its climax,—the summons to Israel to
depart from Babylon,—ch. xlviii. does not forget that
Israel is delivered from Babylon in order to be the
Servant of Jehovah: say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed His
Servant Jacob. It is this service, which ch. xlix. carries
forward from the opportunity, and the call, to go forth
from Babylon, with which ch. xlviii. closes. That opportunity,
though real, does not at all mean that Israel's
redemption is complete. There were many moral
reasons which prevented the whole nation from taking
full advantage of the political freedom offered them by
Cyrus. Although the true Israel, that part of the nation
which has the conscience of service, has shaken itself
free from the temptation as well as from the tyranny of
Babel, and now sees the world before it as the theatre
of its operations,—ver. 1, Hearken, ye isles, unto Me; and
listen, ye peoples, from far,—it has still, before it can
address itself to that universal mission, to exhort, rouse
and extricate the rest of its nation, saying to the bounden,
Go forth; and to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves
(ver. 9). Ch. xlix., therefore, is the natural development
of ch. xlviii. There is certainly a little interval
of time implied between the two—the time during which
it became apparent that the opportunity to leave Babylon
would not be taken advantage of by all Israel, and that
the nation's redemption must be a moral as well as
a political one. But ch. xlix. 1-9 comes out of chs.
xl.-xlviii., and it is impossible to believe that in it we
are not still under the influence of the same author.
A similar coherence is apparent if we look to the
other end of ch. xlix. 1-9. Here it is evident that
Jehovah's commission to the Servant concludes with
ver. 9a; but then its closing words, Say to the bound, Go
forth; to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves, start
fresh thoughts about the redeemed on their way back
(vv. 9b-13); and these thoughts naturally lead on to a
picture of Jerusalem imagining herself forsaken, and
amazed by the appearance of so many of her children
before her (vv. 14-21). Promises to her and to them
follow in due sequence down to ch. l. 3, when the
Servant resumes his soliloquy about himself, but
abruptly, and in no apparent connection with what
immediately precedes. His soliloquy ceases in ver. 9,
and another voice, probably that of God Himself, urges
obedience to the Servant (ver. 10), and judgement to
the sinners in Israel (ver. 11); and ch. li. is an address
to the spiritual Israel, and to Jerusalem, with thoughts
much the same as those uttered in xlix. 14-l. 3.
In face of these facts, and taking into consideration
the dramatic form in which the whole prophecy is cast,
we find ourselves unable to say that there is anything
which is incompatible with a single authorship, or which
makes it impossible for the two passages on the
Servant to have originally sprung, each at the place at
which it now stands, from the progress of the prophet's
thoughts.This, of course, goes against Prof. Briggs's theory of the composition
of Isa. xl.-lxvi. out of two poems (see p. 18).
Babylon is left behind, and the way of the Lord is
prepared in the desert. Israel have once more the
title-deeds to their own land, and Zion looms in sight.
Yet with their face to home, and their heart upon
freedom, the voice of this people, or at least of the
better half of this people, rises first upon the conscience
of their duty to the rest of mankind.
Hearken, O Isles, unto Me;
And listen, O Peoples, from far!
From the womb Jehovah hath called me,
From my mother's midst mentioned my name.This line is full of the letter m.
And He set my mouth like a sharp sword,
In the shadow of His hand did He hide me;
Yea, He made me a pointed arrow,
In His quiver He laid me in store,
And said to me, My Servant art thou,
Israel, in whom I shall break into glory.
And I—I said, In vain have I laboured,
For waste and for wind my strength have I spent!
Surely my right's with Jehovah,
And the meed of my work with my God!
But now, saith Jehovah—
Moulding me from the womb to be His own Servant,
To turn again Jacob towards Him,
And that Israel be not destroyed.This is as the text is written; but the Massoretic reading gives,
that Israel to Him may be gathered.
And I am of honour in the eyes of Jehovah,
And my God is my strength!
And He saith,
'Tis too light for thy being My Servant,
To raise up the tribes of Jacob,
Or gather the survivors of Israel.
So I will set thee a light of the Nations,
To be My salvation to the end of the earth.
Thus saith Jehovah,
Israel's Redeemer, his Holy,
To this mockery of a life, abhorrence of a nation, servant of tyrants,So it seems best to give the sense of this difficult line, but most
translators render despised of soul, or thoroughly despised, abhorred by
peoples, or by a people, etc. The word for despised is used elsewhere
only in ch. liii. 3.
Kings shall behold and shall stand up,
Princes shall also do homage,
For the sake of Jehovah, who shows Himself faithful,
Holy of Israel, and thou art His chosen.
Thus saith Jehovah,
In a favourable time I have given thee answer,
In the day of salvation have helped thee,
To keep thee, to give thee for covenant of the people,
To raise up the land,
To give back the heirs to the desolate heirdoms,
Saying to the bounden, Go forth!
To them that are in darkness, Appear!
"Who is so blind as not to perceive that the consciousness
of the Servant here is only a mirror in which
the history of Israel is reflected—first, in its original call
and design that Jehovah should be glorified in it; second,
in the long delay and apparent failure of the design;
and, thirdly, as the design is now in the present juncture
of circumstances and concurrence of events about
to be realized?"Prof. A. B. Davidson, Expositor, Second Series, viii., 441.
Yes: but it is Israel's calling, native
insufficiency, and present duty, as owned by only a part
of the people, which, though named by the national name
(ver. 3), feels itself standing over against the bulk of the
nation, whose redemption it is called to work out (vv. 8
and 9) before it takes up its world-wide service. We
have already sufficiently discussed this distinction of the
Servant from the whole nation, as well as the distinction
of the moral work he has to effect in Israel's redemption
from Babylon, from the political enfranchisement of the
nation, which is the work of Cyrus. Let us, then, at
once address ourselves to the main features of his consciousness
of his mission to mankind. We shall find
these features to be three. The Servant owns for his
chief end the glory of God; and he feels that he has to
glorify God in two ways—by Speech, and by Suffering.
I. The Servant glorifies God.
He did say to me, My servant art thou,
Israel, in whom I shall break into glory.
The Hebrew verb, which the Authorised Version translates
will be glorified, means to burst forth, become visible,
break like the dawn into splendour. This is the scriptural
sense of Glory. Glory is God become visible. As
we put it in Volume I.,Page 68.
glory is the expression of holiness,
as beauty is the expression of health. But, in
order to become visible, the Absolute and Holy God
needs mortal man. We have felt something like a
paradox in these prophecies. Nowhere else is God
lifted up so absolute, and so able to effect all by His
mere will and word; yet nowhere else is a human agency
and service so strongly asserted as indispensable to the
Divine purpose. But this is no more a paradox, than
the fact that physical light needs some material in which
to become visible. Light is never revealed of itself, but
always when shining from, or burning in, something
else. To be seen, light requires a surface that will
reflect, or a substance that will consume. And so, to
break into glory, God requires something outside Himself.
A responsive portion of humanity is indispensable
to Him,—a people who will reflect Him and spend itself
for Him. Man is the mirror and the wick of the Divine.
God is glorified in man's character and witness,—these
are His mirror; and in man's sacrifice,—that is His
wick.
And so we meet again the central truth of our
prophecy, that in order to serve men it is necessary
first to be used of God. We must place ourselves at
the disposal of the Divine, we must let God shine on us
and kindle us, and break into glory through us, before
we can hope either to comfort mankind or to set them
on fire. It is true that ideas very different from this
prevail among the ranks of the servants of humanity in
our day. A large part of our most serious literature
professes for "its main bearing this conclusion, that the
fellowship between man and man, which has been the
principle of development, social and moral, is not dependent
upon conceptions of what is not man, and that
the idea of God, so far as it has been a high spiritual
influence, is the ideal of a goodness entirely human."So George Eliot wrote of her own writings shortly before her
death. See Life, iii., 245.
But such theories are possible only so long as the still
unexhausted influence of religion upon society continues
to supply human nature, directly or indirectly, with
a virtue which may be plausibly claimed for human
nature's own original product. Let religion be entirely
withdrawn, and the question, Whence comes virtue?
will be answered by virtue ceasing to come at all. The
savage imagines that it is the burning-glass which sets
the bush on fire, and as long as the sun is shining it
may be impossible to convince him that he is wrong;
but a dull day will teach even his mind that the glass
can do nothing without the sun upon it. And so,
though men may talk glibly against God, while society
still shines in the light of His countenance, yet, if they
and society resolutely withdraw themselves from that
light, they shall certainly lose every heat and lustre of
the spirit which is indispensable for social service.Lady Ponsonby, to whom George Eliot wrote the letter quoted above, confessed that, with the disappearance of religious faith from
her soul, there vanished also the power of interest in, and of pity for,
her kind.
On this the ancient Greek was at one with the ancient
Hebrew. Enthusiasm is just God breaking into glory
through a human life. Here lies the secret of the
buoyancy and "freshness of the earlier world," whether
pagan or Hebrew, and by this may be understood the
depression and pessimism which infects modern society.
They had God in their blood, and we are anæmic.
But I, I said, I have laboured in vain; for waste and for
wind have I spent my strength. We must all say that,
if our last word is our strength. But let this not be
our last word. Let us remember the sufficient answer:
Surely my right is with the Lord, and the meed of my
work with my God. We are set, not in our own strength
or for our own advantage, but with the hand of God
upon us, and that the Divine life may break into glory
through our life. Carlyle said, and it was almost his
last testimony, "The older I grow, and I am now on
the brink of eternity, the more comes back to me the
first sentence of the catechism, which I learned when a
child, and the fuller does its meaning grow—'What is
the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify
God and enjoy Him for ever.'"
It was said above, that, as light breaks to visibleness
either from a mirror or a wick, so God breaks to glory
either from the witness of men,—that is His mirror,—or
from their sacrifice—that is His wick. Of both of
these ways of glorifying God is the Servant conscious.
His service is Speech and Sacrifice, Prophecy and
Martyrdom.
II. The Servant as Prophet.
Concerning his service of Speech, the Servant speaks
in these two passages—ch. xlix. 2 and l. 4-5:
He set my mouth like a sharp sword,
In the shadow of His hand did He hide me,
And made me a pointed arrow;
In His quiver He laid me in store.
My Lord Jehovah hath given me
The tongue of the learners,
To know how to succour the weary with words.
He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear
To hear as the learners.
My Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear.
I was not rebellious,
Nor turned away backward.
At the bidding of our latest prophet we have become
suspicious of the power of speech, and the goddess of
eloquence walks, as it were, under surveillance among
us. Carlyle reiterated, "All speech and rumour is
short-lived, foolish, untrue. Genuine work alone is
eternal. The talent of silence is our fundamental one.
The dumb nations are the builders of the world."
Under such doctrine some have grown intolerant of
words, and the ideal of to-day tends to become the
practical man rather than the prophet. Yet, as somebody
has said, Carlyle makes us dissatisfied with
preaching only by preaching himself; and you have
but to read him with attention to discover that his
disgust with human speech is consistent with an immense
reverence for the voice as an instrument of
service to humanity. "The tongue of man," he says,
"is a sacred organ. Man himself is definable in
philosophy as an 'Incarnate Word;' the Word not
there, you have no man there either, but a Phantasm
instead."
Let us examine our own experience upon the merits
of this debate between Silence and Speech in the service
of man. Though beginning low, it will help us quickly
to the height of the experience of the Prophet Nation,
who, with nought else for the world but the voice that
was in them, accomplished the greatest service that the
world has ever received from her children.
One thing is certain,—that Speech has not the
monopoly of falsehood or of any other presumptuous
sin. Silence does not only mean ignorance,—by some
supposed to be the heaviest sin of which Silence can be
guilty,—but many things far worse than ignorance, like
unreadiness, and cowardice, and falsehood, and treason,
and base consent to what is evil. No man can look
back on his past life, however lowly or limited his
sphere may have been, and fail to see that not once or
twice his supreme duty was a word, and his guilt was
not to have spoken it. We all have known the shame
of being straitened in prayer or praise; the shame of
being, through our cowardice to bear witness, traitors
to the truth; the shame of being too timid to say No
to the tempter, and speak out the brave reasons of
which the heart was full; the shame of finding ourselves
incapable of uttering the word that would have
kept a soul from taking the wrong turning in life; the
shame, when truth, clearness and authority were required
from us, of being able only to stammer or to
mince or to rant. To have been dumb before the ignorant
or the dying, before a questioning child or before the
tempter,—this, the frequent experience of our common
life, is enough to justify Carlyle when he said, "If the
Word is not there, you have no man there either, but a
Phantasm instead."
Now, when we look within ourselves we see the
reason of this. We perceive that the one fact, which
amid the mystery and chaos of our inner life gives certainty
and light, is a fact which is a Voice. Our nature
may be wrecked and dissipated, but conscience is
always left; or in ignorance and gloom, but conscience
is always audible; or with all the faculties strong and
assertive, yet conscience is still unquestionably queen,—and
conscience is a Voice. It is a still, small voice,
which is the surest thing in man, and the noblest;
which makes all the difference in his life; which lies at
the back and beginning of all his character and conduct.
And the most indispensable, and the grandest service,
therefore, which a man can do his fellow-men, is to get
back to this voice, and make himself its mouthpiece
and its prophet. What work is possible till the word
be spoken? Did ever order come to social life before
there was first uttered the command, in which men
felt the articulation and enforcement of the ultimate
voice within themselves? Discipline and instruction
and energy have not appeared without speech going
before them. Knowledge and faith and hope do not
dawn of themselves; they travel, as light issued forth
in the beginning, upon the pulses of the speaking
breath.
It was the greatness of Israel to be conscious of
their call as a nation to this fundamental service of
humanity. Believing in the Word of God as the
original source of all things,—In the beginning God said,
Let there be light; and there was light,—they had the
conscience, that, as it had been in the physical world,
so must it always be in the moral. Men were to be
served and their lives to be moulded by the Word.
God was to be glorified by letting His Word break
through the life and the lips of men. There was in the
Old Testament, it is true, a triple ideal of manhood:
prophet, priest and king. But the greatest of these was
the prophet, for king and priest had to be prophets too.
Eloquence was a royal virtue,—with persuasion, the
power of command and swift judgement. Among the
seven spirits of the Lord which Isaiah sees descending
in the King-to-Come is the spirit of counsel, and
he afterwards adds of the King: He shall smite the
earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his
lips shall he slay the wicked. Similarly, the priests had
originally been the ministers, not so much of sacrifice,
as of the revealed Word of God. And now the new
and high ideal of priesthood, the laying down of one's
life a sacrifice for God and for the people, was not the
mere imitation of the animal victim required by the
priestly law, but was the natural development of
the prophetic experience. It was (as we shall presently
see) the prophet, who, in his inevitable sufferings
on behalf of the truth he uttered, developed that consciousness
of sacrifice for others, in which the loftiest
priesthood consists. Prophecy, therefore, the Service
of Men by the Word of God, was for Israel the
highest and most essential of all service. It was the
individual's and it was the nation's ideal. As there
was no true king and no true priest, so there was no
true man, without the Word. Would to God, said Moses,
that all the Lord's people were prophets. And in our
prophecy Israel exclaims: Listen, O Isles, unto me; and
hearken, ye peoples from far. He hath made my mouth
like a sharp sword, in the shadow of His hand hath
He hid me.
At first it seems a forlorn hope thus to challenge the
attention of the world in the dialect of one of its most
obscure provinces,—a dialect, too, that was already
ceasing to be spoken even there. But the fact only
serves more forcibly to emphasize the belief of these
prophets, that the word committed to what they must
have known to be a dying language was the Word of
God Himself,—bound to render immortal the tongue
in which it was spoken, bound to re-echo to the ends
of the earth, bound to touch the conscience and commend
itself to the reason of universal humanity. We
have already seen, and will again see, how our prophet
insists upon the creative and omnipotent power of God's
Word; so we need not dwell longer on this instance of
his faith. Let us look rather at what he expresses as
Israel's preparation for the teaching of it.
To him the discipline and qualification of the prophet
nation—and that means, of every Servant of God—in
the high office of the Word, are threefold.
1. First, he lays down the supreme condition of
Prophecy, that behind the Voice there must be the
Life. Before he speaks of his gifts of Speech, the
Servant emphasizes his peculiar and consecrated life.
From the womb Jehovah called me, from my mother's
midst mentioned my name. Now, as we all know,
Israel's message to the world was largely Israel's
life. The Old Testament is not a set of dogmas,
nor a philosophy, nor a vision; but a history, the
record of a providence, the testimony of experience,
the utterances called forth by historical occasions from
a life conscious of the purpose for which God has called
it and set it apart through the ages. But these words,
which the prophet nation uses, were first used of an
individual prophet. Like so much else in "Second
Isaiah," we find a suggestion of them in the call of
Jeremiah. Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,
and before thou camest forth from the womb I consecrated
thee: I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.Jer. i. 5.
A prophet is not a voice only. A prophet is a life
behind a voice. He who would speak for God must
have lived for God. According to the profound insight
of the Old Testament, speech is not the expression of
a few thoughts of a man, but the utterance of his whole
life. A man blossoms through his lips;See vol. i., p. 70.
and no man
is a prophet, whose word is not the virtue and the
flower of a gracious and a consecrated life.
2. The second discipline of the prophet is the Art of
Speech. He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, in
the shadow of His hand hath He hid me: He hath made
me a polished shaft, in His quiver hath He laid me in
store. It is very evident, that in these words the
Servant does not only recount technical qualifications,
but a moral discipline as well. The edge and brilliance
of his speech are stated as the effect of solitude, but of
a solitude that was at the same time a nearness to God.
Now solitude is a great school of eloquence. In speaking
of the Semitic race, of which Israel was part, we
pointed out that, prophet-race of the world as it has
proved, it sprang from the desert, and nearly all its
branches have inherited the desert's clear and august
style of speech; for, in the leisure and serene air of the
desert, men speak as they speak nowhere else. But
Israel speaks of a solitude, that was the shadow of
God's hand, and the fastness of God's quiver; a seclusion,
which, to the desert's art of eloquence, added a
special inspiration by God, and a special concentration
upon His main purpose in the world. The desert sword
felt the grasp of God; He laid the Semitic shaft in store
for a unique end.See p. 240 f.
3. But in ch. l., vv. 4-5, the Servant unfolds the most
beautiful and true understanding of the Secret of
Prophecy, that ever was unfolded in any literature,—worth
quoting again by us, if so we may get it by
heart.
My Lord Jehovah hath given me
The tongue of the learners,
To know how to succour the weary with words.
He wakeneth, morning by morning He wakeneth mine ear
To hear as the learners.
My Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear,
I was not rebellious,
Nor turned away backward.
The prophet, say these beautiful lines, learns his
speech, as the little child does, by listening. Grace is
poured upon the lips through the open ear. It is the
lesson of our Lord's Ephphatha. When He took the
deaf man with the impediment in his speech aside
from the multitude privately, He said unto him, not,
Be loosed, but, Be opened; and first his ears were opened,
and then the bond of his tongue was loosed, and he spake
plain. To speak, then, the prophet must listen; but
mark to what he must listen! The secret of his
eloquence lies not in the hearing of thunder, nor in the
knowledge of mysteries, but in a daily wakefulness to
the lessons and experience of common life. Morning
by morning He openeth mine ear. This is very characteristic
of Hebrew prophecy and Hebrew wisdom, which
listened for the truth of God in the voices of each
day, drew their parables from things the rising sun
lights up to every wakeful eye, and were, in the bulk
of their doctrine, the virtues, needed day by day, of
justice, temperance and mercy, and in the bulk of their
judgements the results of everyday observation and
experience. The strength of the Old Testament lies
in this its realism, its daily vigilance and experience of
life. It is its contact with life—the life, not of the
yesterday of its speakers, but of their to-day—that
makes its voice so fresh and helpful to the weary. He
whose ear is daily open to the music of his current life
will always find himself in possession of words that
refresh and stimulate.
But serviceable speech needs more than attentiveness
and experience. Having gained the truth, the prophet
must be obedient and loyal to it. Yet obedience and
loyalty to the truth are the beginnings of martyrdom,
of which the Servant now goes on to speak as the
natural and immediate consequence of his prophecy.
III. The Servant as Martyr.
The classes of men, who suffer physical ill-usage at
the hands of their fellow-men, may roughly be described
as three,—the Military Enemy, the Criminal, and the
Prophet; and of these three we have only to read
history to know that the Prophet fares by far the worst.
However fatal men's treatment of their enemies in war
or of their criminals may be, it is, nevertheless, subject
to a certain order, code of honour or principle of
justice. But in all ages the Prophet has been the target
for the most licentious spite and cruelty; for torture,
indecency and filth past belief. Although our own
civilisation has outlived the system of physical punishment
for speech, we even yet see philosophers and
statesmen, who have used no weapons but exposition
and persuasion, treated by their opponents—who would
speak of a foreign enemy with respect—with execration,
gross epithets, vile abuse and insults, that the offenders
would not pour upon a criminal. If we have this under
our own eyes, let us think how the Prophet must have
fared before humanity learned to meet speech by speech.
Because men attacked it, not with the sword of the
invader or with the knife of the assassin, but with
words, therefore (till not very long ago) society let
loose upon them the foulest indignities and most
horrible torments. Socrates' valour as a soldier did
not save him from the malicious slander, the false
witness, the unjust trial and the poison, with which
the Athenians answered his speech against themselves.
Even Hypatia's womanhood did not awe the mob from
tearing her to pieces for her teaching. This unique
and invariable experience of the Prophet is summed up
and clenched in the name Martyr. Martyr originally
meant a witness or witness-bearer, but now it is the
synonym for every shame and suffering which the cruel
ingenuity of men's black hearts can devise for those
they hate. A Book of Battles is horrible enough, but at
least valour and honour have kept down in it the baser
passions. A Newgate Chronicle is ugly enough, but
there at least is discipline and an hospital. You have
got to go to a Book of Martyrs to see to what sourness,
wickedness, malignity, pitilessness and ferocity men's
hearts can lend themselves. There is something in
the mere utterance of truth, that rouses the very devil
in the hearts of many men.
Thus it had always been in Israel, nation not only of
prophets, but of the slayers of prophets. According to
Christ, prophet-slaying was the ineradicable habit of
Israel. Ye are the sons of them that slew the prophets....
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets and stoner of
them that are sent unto her! To them who bare it the
word of Jehovah had always been a reproach: cause of
estrangement, indignities, torments, and sometimes of
death. Up to the time of our prophet there had been
the following notable sufferers for the Word: Elijah;
Micaiah the son of Imlah; Isaiah, if the story be true
that he was slain by Manasseh; but nearer, more lonely
and more heroic than all, Jeremiah, a laughing-stock
and mockery, reviled, smitten, fettered, and condemned
to death. In words which recall the experience of so
many individual Israelites, and most of which were
used by Jeremiah of himself, the Servant of Jehovah
describes his martyrdom in immediate consequence
from his prophecy.
And I—I was not rebellious,
Nor turned away backward.
My back I have given to the smiters,
And my cheek to tormenters;
My face I hid not from insults and spitting.
These are not national sufferings. They are no
reflection of the hard usage which the captive Israel
suffered from Babylon. They are the reflection of the
reproach and pains, which, for the sake of God's word,
individual Israelites more than once experienced from
their own nation. But if individual experience, and
not national, formed the original of this picture of the
Servant as Martyr, then surely we have in this another
strong reason against the objection to recognise in the
Servant at last an individual. It may be, of course,
that for the moment our prophet feels that this frequent
experience of individuals in Israel is to be realised by
the faithful Israel, as a whole, in their treatment by
the rest of their cruel and unspiritual countrymen.
But the very fact that individuals have previously
fulfilled this martyrdom in the history of Israel, surely
makes it possible for our prophet to foresee, that the
Servant, who is to fulfil it again, shall also be an
individual.
But, returning from this slight digression on the
person of the Servant to his fate, let us emphasize
again, that his sufferings came to him as the result of
his prophesying. The Servant's sufferings are not
penal, they are not yet felt to be vicarious. They are
simply the reward with which obdurate Israel met
all her prophets, the inevitable martyrdom which followed
on the uttering of God's Word. And in this the
Servant's experience forms an exact counterpart to that
of our Lord. For to Christ also reproach and agony
and death—whatever higher meaning they evolved—came
as the result of His Word. The fact that Jesus
suffered as our great High Priest must not make us
forget, that His sufferings fell upon Him because He
was a Prophet. He argued explicitly He must suffer,
because so suffered the prophets before Him. He put
Himself in the line of the martyrs: as they had killed
the servants, He said, so would they kill the Son.
Thus it happened. His enemies sought to entangle
Him in His talk: it was for His talk they brought
Him to trial. Each torment and indignity which the
Prophet-Servant relates, Jesus suffered to the letter.
They put Him to shame and insulted Him;How all their meanness, how all the sense of shame from which
He suffered, breaks forth in these words: Are ye come out as against a
robber?
His
helpless hands were bound; they spat in His face and
smote Him with their palms; they mocked and they
reviled Him; scourged Him again; teased and tormented
Him; hung Him between thieves; and to the
last the ribald jests went up, not only from the soldiers
and the rabble, but from the learned and the religious
authorities as well, to whom His fault had been that
He preached another word than their own. The literal
fulfilments of our prophecy are striking, but the main
fulfilment, of which they are only incidents, is, that like
the Servant, our Lord suffered directly as a Prophet.
He enforced and He submitted to the essential obligation,
which lies upon the true Prophet, of suffering for
the Word's sake. Let us remember to carry this over
with us to our final study of the Suffering Servant as
the expiation for sin.
In the meantime, we have to conclude the Servant's
appearance as Martyr in ch. l. He has accepted his
martyrdom; but he feels it is not the end with him.
God will bring him through, and vindicate him in the
eyes of the world. For the world, in their usual way,
will say that because he gives them a new truth he must
be wrong, and because he suffers he is surely guilty
and cursed before God. But he will not let himself be
confounded, for God is his help and advocate.
But my Lord Jehovah shall help me;
Therefore, I let not myself be rebuffed:
Therefore, I set my face like a flint,
And know that I shall not be shamed.
Near is my Justifier; who will dispute with me?
Let us stand up together!
Who is mine adversary?Literally, lord of my cause; my adversary or opponent at law.
Let him draw near me.
Lo! my Lord Jehovah shall help me;
Who is he that condemns me?
Lo! like a garment all of them rot;
The moth doth devour them.
These lines, in which the Holy Servant, the Martyr
of the Word, defies the world and asserts that God
shall vindicate his innocence, are taken by Paul and
used to assert the justification, which every believer
enjoys through faith in the sufferings of Him, who was
indeed the Holy Servant of God.Epistle to the Romans, viii., 31 ff.
The last two verses of ch. l. are somewhat difficult.
The first of them still speaks of the Servant,Though Cheyne takes His Servant in ver. 10 to be, not the
Servant, but the prophet.
and
distinguishes him—a distinction we must note and
emphasize—from the God-fearing in Israel.
Who is among you that feareth Jehovah,
That hearkens the voice of His Servant,
That walks in dark places,
And light he has none?
Let him trust in the name of Jehovah,
And lean on his God.
That is, every pious believer in Israel is to take the
Servant for an example; for the Servant in distress
leans upon his God. And so Paul's application of the
Servant's words to the individual believer is a correct
one. But if our prophet is able to think of the Servant
as an example to the individual Israelite, that surely is
a thought not very far from the conception of the
Servant himself as an individual.
If ver. 10 is addressed to the pious in Israel, ver. 11
would seem to turn with a last word—as the last words
of the discourses in Second Isaiah so often turn—to the
wicked in Israel.
Lo! all you, players with fire,Kindlers of fire is the literal rendering. But the word is not the
common word to kindle, and is here used of wanton fireraising.
That gird you with firebrands!
Walk in the light of your fire,
In the firebrands ye kindled.
This from my hand shall be yours;
Ye shall lie down in sorrow.
It is very difficult to know, who are meant by this
warning. An old and almost forgotten interpretation
is, that the prophet meant those exiles who played with
the fires of political revolution, instead of abiding the
deliverance of the Lord. But there is now current
among exegetes the more general interpretation that
these incendiaries are the revilers and abusers of the
Servant within Israel: for so the Psalms speak of the
slingers of burning words at the righteous. We must
notice, however, that the metaphor stands over against
those in Israel who walk in dark places and have no
light. In contrast to that kind of life, this may be the
kind that coruscates with vanity, flashes with pride, or
burns and scorches with its evil passions. We have a
similar name for such a life. We call it a display of
fireworks. The prophet tells them, who depend on
nothing but their own false fires, how transient these
are, how quickly quenched.
But is it not weird, that on our prophet's stage, however
brilliantly its centre shines with figures of heroes
and deeds of salvation, there should always be this
dark, lurid background of evil and accursed men?
CHAPTER XX.
THE SUFFERING SERVANT.
Isaiah lii. 13-liii.
We are now arrived at the last of the passages
on the Servant of the Lord. It is known to
Christendom as the Fifty-third of Isaiah, but its verses
have, unfortunately, been divided between two chapters,
lii. 13-15 and liii. Before we attempt the interpretation
of this high and solemn passage of Revelation, let us
look at its position in our prophecy, and examine its
structure.
The peculiarities of the style and of the vocabulary of
ch. lii. 13-liii., along with the fact, that, if it be omitted,
the prophecies on either side readily flow together,
have led some critics to suppose it to be an insertion,
borrowed from an earlier writer.Thus Ewald supposed ch. lii. 13-liii. to be an elegy upon some
martyr in the persecutions under Manasseh. Professor Briggs, as we
have noticed before, claims to have discovered that all the passages in
the Servant are parts of a trimeter poem, older than the rest of the
prophecy, which he finds to be in hexameters. See p. 315.
The style—broken,
sobbing and recurrent—is certainly a change from the
forward, flowing sentences, on which we have been
carried up till now, and there are a number of words
that we find quite new to us. Yet surely both style
and words are fully accounted for by the novel and
tragic nature of the subject, to which the prophet has
brought us: regret and remorse, though they speak
through the same lips as hope and the assurance of
salvation, must necessarily do so with a very different
accent and set of terms. Criticism surely overreaches
itself, when it suggests that a writer, so versatile and
dramatic as our prophet, could not have written ch.
lii. 13-liii. along with, say, ch. xl. or ch. lii. 1-12 or ch.
liv. We might as well be asked to assign to different
authors Hamlet's soliloquy, and the King's conversation,
in the same play, with the ambassadors from Norway.
To aver that if ch. lii. 13-liii. were left out, no one who
had not seen it would miss it, so closely does ch. liv.
follow on to ch. lii. 12, is to aver what means nothing.
In any dramatic work you may leave out the finest
passage,—from a Greek tragedy its grandest chorus, or
from a play of Shakespeare's the hero's soliloquy,—without
seeming, to eyes that have not seen what you
have done, to have disturbed the connection of the
whole. Observe the juncture in our prophecy at which
this last passage on the Servant appears. It is one
exactly the same as that at which another great passage
on the Servant was inserted (ch. xlix. 1-9), viz., just
after a call to the people to seize the redemption
achieved for them and to come forth from Babylon. It
is the kind of climax or pause in their tale, which
dramatic writers of all kinds employ for the solemn
utterance of principles lying at the back, or transcending
the scope, of the events of which they treat.
To say the least, it is surely more probable that our
prophet himself employed so natural an opportunity to
give expression to his highest truths about the Servant,
than that some one else took his work, broke up
another already extant work on the Servant and thrust
the pieces of the latter into the former. Moreover, we
shall find many of the ideas, as well as of the phrases,
of ch. lii. 13-liii. to be essentially the same as some we
have already encountered in our prophecy.I may quote Dillmann's opinion on this last point: "Andererseits
sind nicht blos die Grundgedanken und auch einzelne Wendungen
wie 52, 13-15. 53, 7. 11. 12 durch 42, 1 ff. 49, 1 ff. 50, 3 ff. so wohl
vorbereitet und so sehr in Übereinstimmung damit, dass an eine fast
unveränderte Herübernahme des Abschnitts aus einer verlornen
Schrift (Ew.) nicht gedacht werden kann, sondern derselbe doch
wesentlich als Werk des Vrf. angesehen werden muss" (Commentary
4th ed., 1890, p. 453).
There is then no evidence that this singular prophecy
ever stood apart from its present context, or that it
was written by another writer than the prophet, by
whom we have hitherto found ourselves conducted.
On the contrary, while it has links with what goes
before it, we see good reasons, why the prophet should
choose just this moment for uttering its unique and
transcendent contents, as well as why he should
employ in it a style and a vocabulary, so different from
his usual.
Turning now to the structure of ch. lii. 13-liii., we
observe that, as arranged in the Canon, there are
fifteen verses in the prophecy. These fifteen verses
fall into five strophes of three verses each, as printed
by the Revised English Version. When set in their
own original lines, however, the strophes appear, not of
equal, but of increasing length. As will be seen from
the version given below, the first (ch. lii. 13-15) has
nine lines, the second (ch. liii. 1-3) has ten lines, the
third (vv. 4-6) has eleven lines, the fourth (vv. 7-9)
thirteen lines, the fifth (vv. 10-12) fourteen lines. This
increase would be absolutely regular, if, in the fourth
strophe, we made either the first two lines one, or the
last two one, and if in the fifth again we ran the first
two lines together,—changes which the metre allows
and some translators have adopted. But, in either case,
we perceive a regular increase from strophe to strophe,
that is not only one of the many marks with which this
most artistic of poems has been elaborated, but gives
the reader the very solemn impression of a truth that
is ever gathering more of human life into itself, and
sweeping forward with fuller and more resistless
volume.
Each strophe, it is well to notice, begins with one
word or two words which summarise the meaning of
the whole strophe and form a title for it. Thus, after
the opening exclamation Behold, the words My Servant
shall prosper form, as we shall see, not only a summary
of the first strophe, in which his ultimate exaltation
is described, but the theme of the whole prophecy.
Strophe ii. begins Who hath believed, and accordingly
in this strophe the unbelief and thoughtlessness of
them who saw the Servant without feeling the meaning
of his suffering is confessed. Surely our sicknesses
fitly entitles strophe iii., in which the people describe
how the Servant in his suffering was their substitute.
Oppressed yet he humbled himself is the headline of
strophe iv., and that strophe deals with the humility and
innocence of the Servant in contrast to the injustice
accorded him. While the headline of strophe v., But
Jehovah had purposed, brings us back to the main theme
of the poem, that behind men's treatment of the Servant
is God's holy will; which theme is elaborated and
brought to its conclusion in strophe v. These opening
and entitling words of each strophe are printed, in the
following translation, in larger type than the rest.
As in the rest of Hebrew poetry, so here, the
measure is neither regular nor smooth, and does not
depend on rhyme. Yet there is an amount of assonance,
which at times approaches to rhyme. Much of
the meaning of the poem depends on the use of the
personal pronouns—we and he stand contrasted to each
other—and it is these coming in a lengthened form at
the end of many of the lines that suggest to the ear
something like rhyme. For instance, in liii. 5, 6, the
second and third verses of the third strophe, two of
the lines run out on the bisyllable -ênū, two on înu,
and two on the word lānū, while the third has ênu,
not at the end, but in the middle; in each case, the
pronominal suffix of the first person plural. We transcribe
these lines to show the effect of this.
Wehu' meholal mippesha'ênū
Medhukka' me`ăwōnōthênū
Mūṣar shelōmēnū `alaw
Ubhahăbhurātho nirpa'-lānū
Kullānū kass-ss'on ta`înū
'îsh ledharko panînū
Wa Jahweh hiphgî`a bô 'eth-`awon kullānū.
This is the strophe in which the assonance comes
oftenest to rhyme; but in strophe i. êhū ends two lines,
and in strophe ii. it ends three. These and other
assonants occur also at the beginning and in the middle
of lines. We must remember that in all the cases
quoted it is the personal pronouns, which give the
assonance,—the personal pronouns on which so much
of the meaning of the poem turns; and that, therefore,
the parallelism primarily intended by the writer is one
rather of meaning than of sound. The pair of lines,
parallel in meaning, though not in sound, which forms
so large a part of Hebrew poetry, is used throughout
this poem; but the use of it is varied and elaborated to
a unique degree. The very same words and phrases
are repeated, and placed on points, from which they
seem to call to each other; as, for instance, the double
many in strophe i., the of us all in strophe iii., and nor
opened he his mouth in strophe iv. The ideas are very
few and very simple; the words he, we, his, ours, see,
hear, know, bear, sickness, strike, stroke, and many form,
with prepositions and particles, the bulk of the prophecy.
It will be evident how singularly suitable this
recurrence is for the expression of reproach, and of
sorrowful recollection. It is the nature of grief and
remorse to harp upon the one dear form, the one most
vivid pain. The finest instance of this repetition is
verse 6, with its opening keynote "kullanu"—of us all
like sheep went astray, with its close on that keynote
guilt of us all, "kullanu." But throughout notes are
repeated, and bars recur, expressive of what was done
to the Servant, or what the Servant did for man, which
seem in their recurrence to say, You cannot hear too
much of me: I am the very Gospel. A peculiar
sadness is lent to the music by the letters h and l
in "holie" and "hehelie," the word for sickness or
ailing (ailing is the English equivalent in sense and
sound), which happens so often in the poem. The new
words, which have been brought to vary this recurrence
of a few simple features, are mostly of a sombre
type. The heavier letters throng the lines: grievous
bs and ms are multiplied, and syllables with long
vowels before m and w. But the words sob as well as
tramp; and here and there one has a wrench and one
a cry in it.
Most wonderful and mysterious of all is the spectral
fashion in which the prophecy presents its Hero. He
is named only in the first line and once again: elsewhere
He is spoken of as He. We never hear or see
Himself. But all the more solemnly is He there: a
shadow upon countless faces, a grievous memory on the
hearts of the speakers. He so haunts all we see and
all we hear, that we feel it is not Art, but Conscience,
that speaks of Him.
Here is now the prophecy itself, rendered into
English quite literally, except for a conjunction here
and there, and, as far as possible, in the rhythm of the
original. A few necessary notes on difficult words
and phrases are given.
I.
lii. 13: Behold, my Servant shall prosper,This verb best gives the force of the Hebrew, which means both
to deal prudently and to prosper or succeed. See p. 346.
Shall rise, be lift up, be exceedingly high.Vulgate finely: "extolletur, sublimis erit et valde elatus."
Like as they that were astonied before thee were many,
—So marred from a man's was his visage,
And his form from the children of men!—
So shall the nations he startles"The term rendered 'startle' has created unnecessary difficulty
to some writers. The word means to 'cause to spring or leap;'
when applied to fluids, to spirt or sprinkle them. The fluid spirted
is put in the accusative, and it is spirted upon the person. In the
present passage the person, 'many nations,' is in the accusative, and
it is simply treason against the Hebrew language to render 'sprinkle.'
The interpreter who will so translate will 'do anything.'"—A. B.
Davidson, Expositor, 2nd series, viii., 443. The LXX. has θαυμασονται εθνη πολλα.
The Peschitto and Vulgate render sprinkle.
be many,
Before him shall kings shut their mouths.
For that which had never been told them they see,
And what they had heard not, they have to consider.
II.
Who gave believing to that which we heard,And not our report, or something we caused to be heard, as in the
English Version,—שמועה is the passive participle of שמע, to hear,
and not of השמיע, to cause to hear. The speakers are now the
penitent people of God who had been preached to, and not the
prophets who had preached.
And the arm of Jehovah to whom was it bared?
For he sprang like a sapling before Him,Tender shoot. Masculine participle, meaning sucker, or suckling.
Dr. John Hunter (Christian Treasury) suggests succulent plant, such
as grow in the desert. But in Job viii. 16; xiv. 7; xv. 30, the
feminine form is used of any tender shoot of a tree, and the feminine
plural in Ezek. xvii. 22 of the same. The LXX. read παιδιον,
infant. Before Him, i.e. Jehovah. Cheyne, following Ewald, reads
before us. So Giesebrecht.
As a root from the ground that is parched;
He had no form nor beauty that we should regard him,
Nor aspect that we should desire him.
Despised and rejected of men,
Man of pains and familiar with ailing,
And as one we do cover the face from,
Despised, and we did not esteem him.
III.
Surely our ailments he bore,
And our pains he did take for his burden.Took for his burden. Loaded himself with them. The same
grievous word which God uses of Himself in ch. xlvi. See p. 180.
But we—we accounted him stricken,
Smitten of God and degraded.There is more than afflicted (Authorised Version) in this word.
There is the sense of being humbled, punished for his own sake.
Yet he—he was pierced for crimes that were ours,The possessive pronoun has been put to the end of the lines,
where it stands in the original, producing a greater emphasis and
even a sense of rhyme.
He was crushed for guilt that was ours,The possessive pronoun has been put to the end of the lines,
where it stands in the original, producing a greater emphasis and
even a sense of rhyme.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him,
By his stripes healing is ours.The possessive pronoun has been put to the end of the lines,
where it stands in the original, producing a greater emphasis and
even a sense of rhyme.
Of us allכלנו Kūllanū so rendered instead of "all of us," in order to be
assonant with the close of the verse, as the original is, which closes
with kullam.
like to sheep went astray,
Every man to his way we did turn,
And Jehovah made light upon him
The guilt of us all.
IV.
Oppressed, he did humble himself,
Nor opened his mouth—
As a lamb to the slaughter is led,
As a sheep 'fore her shearers is dumb—
Nor opened his mouth.
By tyranny and law was he taken;That is, by a form of law that was tyranny, a judicial crime.
And of his age who reflected,
That he was wrenchedCut off violently, prematurely, unnaturally.
from the land of the living,
For My people's transgressions the stroke was on him?
So they made with the wicked his grave,
Yea, with the felonSee p. 368.
his tomb.
Though never harm had he done,
Neither was guile in his mouth.
V.
But Jehovah had purposed to bruise him,
Had laid on him sickness;
SoThe verbs, hitherto in the perfect in this verse, now change to the
imperfect; a sign that they express the purpose of God. Cf. Dillmann,
in loco.
if his life should offer guilt offering,
A seed he should see, he should lengthen his days.
And the purpose of Jehovah by his hand should prosper,
From the travail of his soul shall he see,From the travail of his soul shall he see, and by his knowledge
be satisfied. Taking בדעתו with ישבע instead of with יצדיק. This
reading suggested itself to me some years ago. Since then I have
found it only in Prof. Briggs's translation, Messianic Prophecy, p. 359.
It is supported by the frequent parallel in which we find seeing and
knowing in Hebrew.
By his knowledge be satisfied.
My Servant, the Righteous, righteousness wins he for many,
And their guilt he takes for his load.
Therefore I set him a share with the great,Some translate many, i.e., the many to whom he brings righteousness,
as if he were a victor with a great host behind him.
Yea, with the strong shall he share the spoil:
Because that he poured out his life unto death,
Let himself with transgressors be reckoned;
Yea, he the sin of the many hath borne,
And for the transgressors he interposes.
Let us now take up the interpretation strophe by
strophe.
I. Ch. lii. 13-15. When last our eyes were directed to
the Servant, he was in suffering unexplained and unvindicated
(ch. l. 4-6). His sufferings seemed to have
fallen upon him as the consequence of his fidelity to the
Word committed to him; the Prophet had inevitably
become the Martyr. Further than this his sufferings
were not explained, and the Servant was left in them,
calling upon God indeed, and sure that God would hear
and vindicate him, but as yet unanswered by word of
God or word of man.
It is these words, words both of God and of man,
which are given in Isaiah ch. lii. 13-liii. The Sufferer
is explained and vindicated, first by God in the first
strophe, ch. lii. 13-15, and then by the Conscience of
Men, His own people, in the second and third (liii. 1-6);
and then, as it appears, the Divine Voice, or the Prophet
speaking for it, resumes in strophes iv. and v., and
concludes in a strain similar to strophe i.
God's explanation and vindication of the Sufferer is,
then, given in the first strophe. It is summed up in the
first line, and in one very pregnant word. Jeremiah
had said of the Messiah, He shall reign as a King and
deal wisely or prosper;Jer. xxiii. 5.
and so God says here of the
Servant, Behold he shall deal wisely or prosper. The
Hebrew verb does not get full expression in any English
one. In rendering it shall deal wisely or prudently our
translators undoubtedly touch the quick of it. For it
is originally a mental process or quality: has insight,
understands, is farseeing. But then it also includes the
effect of this—understands so as to get on, deals wisely so
as to succeed, is practical both in his way of working and
in being sure of his end. Ewald has found an almost
exact equivalent in German, "hat Geschick;" for
Geschick means both skill or address and fate or destiny.
The Hebrew verb is the most practical in the whole
language, for this is precisely the point which the
prophecy seeks to bring out about the Servant's sufferings.
They are practical. He is practical in them.
He endures them, not for their own sake, but for some
practical end of which he is aware and to which they must
assuredly bring him. His failure to convince men by
his word, the pain and spite which seem to be his only
wage, are not the last of him, but the beginning and the
way to what is higher. So shall he rise and be lift up
and be very high. The suffering, which in ch. l. seemed
to be the Servant's misfortune, is here seen as his
wisdom which shall issue in his glory.
But of themselves men do not see this, and they need
to be convinced. Pain, the blessed means of God, is
man's abhorrence and perplexity. All along the history of
the world the Sufferer has been the astonishment and
stumbling-block of humanity. The barbarian gets rid of
him; he is the first difficulty with which every young
literature wrestles; to the end he remains the problem
of philosophy and the sore test of faith. It is not native
to men to see meaning or profit in the Sufferer; they
are staggered by him, they see no reason or promise
in him. So did men receive this unique Sufferer, this
Servant of Jehovah. The many were astonied at him;
his visage was so marred more than men, and his form
than the children of men. But his life is to teach them
the opposite of their impressions, and to bring them
out of their perplexity into reverence before the revealed
purpose of God in the Sufferer. As they that were
astonied at thee were many, so shall the nations he startles
be many; kings shall shut their mouths at him, for
that which was not told them they see, and that which
they have heard not they have to consider,—viz., the
triumph and influence to which the Servant was consciously
led through suffering. There may be some
reflection here of the way in which the Gentiles regarded
the Suffering Israel, but the reference is vague,
and perhaps purposely so.
The first strophe, then, gives us just the general
theme. In contrast to human experience God reveals
in His Servant that suffering is fruitful, that sacrifice is
practical. Pain, in God's service, shall lead to glory.
II. Ch. liii. 1-3. God never speaks but in man He
wakens conscience, and the second strophe of the
prophecy (along with the third) is the answer of conscience
to God. Penitent men, looking back from the
light of the Servant's exaltation to the time when his
humiliation was before their eyes, say, "Yes: what
God has said is true of us. We were the deaf and
the indifferent. We heard, but who of us believed what
we heard, and to whom was the arm of the Lord—His
purpose, the hand He had in the Servant's sufferings—revealed?"Hitzig (among others) held that it is the prophets who are the
speakers of ver. 1, and that the voices of the penitent people come in
only with ver. 2 or ver. 3. In that case שמועתינו would mean what we
heard from God (שמועה is elsewhere used for the prophetic message)
and delivered to the people. This interpretation multiplies the
dramatis personæ, but does not materially alter the meaning, of the
prophecy. It merely changes part of the penitent people's self-reproach
into a reproach cast on them by their prophets. But there is
no real reason for introducing the prophets as the speakers of ver. 1.
Who are these penitent speakers? Some critics have
held them to be the heathen, more have said that they
are Israel. But none have pointed out that the writer
gives himself no trouble to define them, but seems
more anxious to impress us with their consciousness
of their moral relation to the Servant. On the whole,
it would appear that it is Israel, whom the prophet
has in mind as the speakers of vv. 1-6. For, besides
the fact that the Old Testament knows nothing of a
bearing by Israel of the sins of the Gentiles, it is
expressly said in ver. 8, that the sins for which the
Servant was stricken were the sins of my people; which
people must be the same as the speakers, for they own
in vv. 4-6 that the Servant bore their sins. For these
and other reasons the mass of Christian critics at the
present day are probably right when they assume that
Israel are the speakers in vv. 1-6;For the argument that it is Israel who speaks here, see Hoffmann
(Schriftbeweis), who was converted from the other view, and
Dillmann, 4th ed., in loco. A very ingenious attempt has been made by
Giesebrecht (Beiträge zur Jesaia Kritik, 1890, p. 146 ff.), in favour of the
interpretation that the heathen are the speakers. His reasons are these:
1. It is the heathen who are spoken of in lii. 13-15, and a change to
Israel would be too sudden. Answer: The heathen are not exclusively
spoken of in lii. 13-15; but if they were a change in the next verse
to Israel would not be more rapid than some already made by the
prophet. 2. The words in liii. 1 suit the heathen. They have already
received the news of the exaltation of the Servant, which in lii. 15
was promised them. This is the שמועתנו, that is news we have just
heard. האמין is a pluperfect of the subjunctive mood: Who could
or who would have believed this news of the exaltation we have just
heard, and the arm of Jehovah to whom was it revealed! i.e., it was
revealed to nobody. Answer: besides the precariousness of taking
האמין as a pluperfect subjunctive, this interpretation is opposed to
the general effort of the prophecy, which is to expose unbelief before
the exaltation, not after it. 3. To get rid of the argument—that, while
the speakers own that the Servant bears their sins, it is said the
Servant was stricken for the sins of my people, and that therefore the
speakers must be the same as "my people":—Giesebrecht would utterly
alter the reading of ver. 8 from מפשע עמו ננע למו, for the transgression
of my people was the stroke to him to מִפִּשְׁעָם יְנֻנַּע, for their stroke was
he smitten.
but the reader
must beware of allowing his attention to be lost in
questions of that kind. The art of the poem seems
intentionally to leave vague the national relation of the
speakers to the Servant, in order the more impressively
to bring out their moral attitude towards him. There
is an utter disappearance of all lines of separation
between Jew and Gentile,—both in the first strophe,
where, although Gentile names are used, Jews may
yet be meant to be included, and in the rest of the
poem,—as if the writer wished us to feel that all men
stood over against that solitary Servant in a common
indifference to his suffering and a common conscience
of the guilt he bears. In short, it is no historical situation,
such as some critics seem anxious to fasten him
down upon, that the prophet reflects; but a certain
moral situation, ideal in so far as it was not yet realised,—the
state of the quickened human conscience over
against a certain Human Suffering, in which, having
ignored it at the time, that conscience now realises that
the purpose of God was at work.
In vv. 2 and 3 the penitent speakers give us the
reasons of their disregard of the Servant in the days
of his suffering. In these reasons there is nothing
peculiar to Israel, and no special experience of Jewish
history is reflected by the terms in which they are
conveyed. They are the confession, in general language,
of an universal human habit,—the habit of letting the
eye cheat the heart and conscience, of allowing the aspect
of suffering to blind us to its meaning; of forgetting in
our sense of the ugliness and helplessness of pain, that
it has a motive, a future and a God. It took ages to
wean mankind from those native feelings of aversion
and resentment, which caused them at first to abandon
or destroy their sick. And, even now, scorn for the
weak and incredulity in the heroism or in the
profitableness of suffering are strong in the best of
us. We judge by looks; we are hurried by the physical
impression, which the sufferer makes on us, or by
our pride that we are not as he is, into peremptory and
harsh judgements upon him. Every day we allow the
dulness of poverty, the ugliness of disease, the
unprofitableness of misfortune, the ludicrousness of failure,
to keep back conscience from discovering to us our
share of responsibility for them, and to repel our hearts
from that sympathy and patience with them, which
along with conscience would assuredly discover to us
their place in God's Providence and their special significance
for ourselves. It is this original sin of man,
of which these penitent speakers own themselves
guilty.
But no one is ever permitted to rest with a physical
or intellectual impression of suffering. The race, the
individual, has always been forced by conscience to the
task of finding a moral reason for pain; and nothing
so marks man's progress as the successive solutions he
has attempted to this problem. The speakers, therefore,
proceed in the next part of their confession,
strophe iii., to tell us what they first falsely accounted
the moral reason of the Servant's suffering and what
they afterwards found to be the truth.
III. liii. 4-6. The earliest and most common moral
judgement, which men pass upon pain, is that which is
implied in its name—that it is penal. A man suffers
because God is angry with him and has stricken him.
So Job's friends judged him, and so these speakers
tell us they had at first judged the Servant. We had
accounted him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted,—stricken,
that is, with a plague of sickness, as Job was,
for the simile of the sick man is still kept up; smitten
of God and degraded or humbled, for it seemed to them
that God's hand was in the Servant's sickness, to punish
and disgrace him for his own sins. But now they
know they were wrong. The hand of God was indeed
upon the Servant, and the reason was sin; yet the sin
was not his, but theirs. Surely our sicknesses he bore,
and our pains he took as his burden. He was pierced for
iniquities that were ours. He was crushed for crimes that
were ours. Strictly interpreted, these verses mean no
more than that the Servant was involved in the consequences
of his people's sins. The verbs bore and made
his burden are indeed taken by some to mean necessarily,
removal or expiation; but in themselves, as is clear
from their application to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the
whole of the generation of Exile, they mean no more
than implication in the reproach and the punishment
of the people's sins.נשׂא and סבל. In speaking of his country's woes, Jeremiah (x. 19)
says: This is sickness, or my sickness, and I must bear it, ואשׂאני זה חלי.
Ezekiel (iv. 4) is commanded to lie on his side, and in that
symbolic position to bear the iniquity of His people, תשא עונם. One of
the Lamentations (v. 7) complains: Our fathers have sinned and are
not, and we bear (סבל) their iniquities. In these cases the meaning of
both נשא and סבל is simply to feel the weight of, be involved in.
The verbs do not convey the sense of carrying off or expiating. But
still it had been said of the Servant that in his suffering he would be
practical and prosper; so that when we now hear that he bears his
people's sins, we are ready to understand that he does not do this
for the mere sake of sharing them, but for a practical purpose, which,
of course, can only be their removal. There is, therefore, no need
to quarrel with the interpretation of ver. 4, that the Servant carries
away the suffering with which he is laden. Matthew makes this
interpretation (viii. 17) in speaking of Christ's healing. But it
is a very interesting fact, and not without light upon the free
and plastic way in which the New Testament quotes from the Old,
that Matthew has ignored the original and literal meaning of the
quotation, which is that the Servant shared the sicknesses of the
people: a sense impossible in the case for which the Evangelist uses
the words.
Nevertheless, as we have
explained in a note below, it is really impossible to
separate the suffering of a Servant, who has been
announced as practical and prosperous in his suffering,
from the end for which it is endured. We cannot
separate the Servant's bearing of the people's guilt
from his removal of it. And, indeed, this practical end
of his passion springs forth, past all doubt, from the
rest of the strophe, which declares that the Servant's
sufferings are not only vicarious but redemptive. The
discipline of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes
we are healed. Translators agree that discipline of our
peace must mean discipline which procures our peace.
The peace, the healing, is ours, in consequence of the
chastisement and the scourging that was his. The
next verse gives us the obverse and complement of
the same thought. The pain was his in consequence
of the sin that was ours. All we like sheep had gone
astray, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all,—literally
iniquity, but inclusive of its guilt and consequences.
Nothing could be plainer than these words.
The speakers confess, that they know that the Servant's
suffering was both vicarious and redemptive.But they do not tell us, whether they were totally exempted from
suffering by the Servant's pains, or whether they also suffered with
him the consequence of their misdeeds. For that question is not now
present to their minds. Whether they also suffer or not (and other
chapters in the prophecy emphasize the people's bearing of the
consequences of their misdeeds), they know that it was not their
own, but the Servant's suffering, which was alone the factor in their
redemption.
But how did they get this knowledge? They do not
describe any special means by which it came to them.
They state this high and novel truth simply as the last
step in a process of their consciousness. At first they
were bewildered by the Servant's suffering; then they
thought it contemptible, thus passing upon it an intellectual
judgement; then, forced to seek a moral reason
for it, they accounted it as penal and due to the Servant
for his own sins; then they recognised that its penalty
was vicarious, that the Servant was suffering for them;
and finally, they knew that it was redemptive, the means
of their own healing and peace. This is a natural
climax, a logical and moral progress of thought. The
last two steps are stated simply as facts of experience
following on other facts. Now our prophet usually
publishes the truths, with which he is charged, as the
very words of God, introducing them with a solemn
and authoritative Thus saith Jehovah. But this novel
and supreme truth of vicarious and redemptive suffering,
this passion and virtue which crowns the Servant's office,
is introduced to us, not by the mouth of God, but by
the lips of penitent men; not as an oracle, but as a
confession; not as the commission of Divine authority
laid beforehand upon the Servant like his other duties,
but as the conviction of the human conscience after the
Servant has been lifted up before it. In short, by this
unusual turn of his art, the prophet seeks to teach
us, that vicarious suffering is not a dogmatic, but an
experimental truth. The substitution of the Servant
for the guilty people, and the redemptive force of that
substitution, are no arbitrary doctrine, for which God
requires from man a mere intellectual assent; they
are no such formal institution of religion as mental
indolence and superstition delight to have prepared
for their mechanical adherence: but substitutive suffering
is a great living fact of human experience, whose
outward features are not more evident to men's eyes
than its inner meaning is appreciable by their conscience,
and of irresistible effect upon their whole moral
nature.
Is this lesson of our prophet's art not needed? Men
have always been apt to think of vicarious suffering,
and of its function in their salvation, as something
above and apart from their moral nature, with a value
known only to God and not calculable in the terms of
conscience or of man's moral experience; nay, rather
as something that conflicts with man's ideas of morality
and justice. Whereas both the fact and the virtue of
vicarious suffering come upon us all, as these speakers
describe the vicarious sufferings of the Servant to have
come upon them, as a part of inevitable experience. If
it be natural, as we saw, for men to be bewildered by
the first sight of suffering, to scorn it as futile and to
count it the fault of the sufferer himself, it is equally
natural and inevitable that these first and hasty theories
should be dispelled by the longer experience of life and
the more thorough working of conscience. The stricken
are not always bearing their own sin. "Suffering is
the minister of justice. This is true in part, yet it
also is inadequate to explain the facts. Of all the
sorrow which befalls humanity, how small a part falls
upon the specially guilty; how much seems rather to
seek out the good! We might almost ask whether it
is not weakness rather than wrong that is punished
in this world."Mystery of Pain, by James Hinton, p. 27.
In every nation, in every family,
the innocent suffer for the guilty. Vicarious suffering
is not arbitrary or accidental; it comes with our
growth; it is of the very nature of things. It is
that part of the Service of Man, to which we are all
born, and of the reality of which we daily grow more
aware.
But even more than its necessity life teaches us
its virtue. Vicarious suffering is not a curse. It is
Service—Service for God. It proves a power where
every other moral force has failed. By it men are redeemed,
on whom justice and their proper punishment
have been able to effect nothing. Why this should
be is very intelligible. We are not so capable of
measuring the physical or moral results of our actions
upon our own characters or in our own fortunes as
we are upon the lives of others; nor do we so awaken
to the guilt and heinousness of our sin as when it
reaches and implicates lives, which were not partners
with us in it. Moreover, while a man's punishment is
apt to give him an excuse for saying, I have expiated
my sin myself, and so to leave him self-satisfied and
with nothing for which to be grateful or obliged to a
higher will; or while it may make him reckless or
plunge him into despair; so, on the contrary, when he
recognises that others feel the pain of his sin and have
come under its weight, then shame is quickly born
within him, and pity and every other passion that can
melt a hard heart. If, moreover, the others who bear
his sin do so voluntarily and for love's sake, then how
quickly on the back of shame and pity does gratitude
rise, and the sense of debt and of constraint to their
will! For all these very intelligible reasons, vicarious
suffering has been a powerful redemptive force in the
experience of the race. Both the fact of its beneficence
and the moral reasons for this are clear enough to lift
us above a question, which sometimes gives trouble
regarding it,—the question of its justice. Such a question
is futile about any service for man, which succeeds
as this does where all others have failed, and which
proves itself so much in harmony with man's moral
nature. But the last shred of objection to the justice
of vicarious suffering is surely removed when the
sufferer is voluntary as well as vicarious. And, in
truth, human experience feels that it has found its
highest and its holiest fact in the love that, being
innocent itself, stoops to bear its fellows' sins,—not
only the anxiety and reproach of them, but even the
cost and the curse of them. Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;
and greater Service can no man do to man, than to
serve them in this way.
Now in this universal human experience of the
inevitableness and the virtue of vicarious suffering,
Israel had been deeply baptized. The nation had
been served by suffering in all the ways we have just
described. Beginning with the belief that all righteousness
prospered, Israel had come to see the righteous
afflicted in her midst; the best Israelites had set
their minds to the problem, and learned to believe, at
least, that such affliction was of God's will,—part of
His Providence, and not an interruption to it. Israel,
too, knew the moral solidarity of a people: that citizens
share each other's sorrows, and that one generation
rolls over its guilt upon the next. Frequently had the
whole nation been spared for a pious remnant's sake;
and in the Exile, while all the people were formally
afflicted by God, it was but a portion of them whose
conscience was quick to the meaning of the chastisement,
and of them alone, in their submissive and
intelligent sufferance of the Lord's wrath, could the
opening gospel of the prophecy be spoken, that they
had accomplished their warfare, and had received of the
Lord's hand double for all their sins. But still more
vivid than these collective substitutes for the people
were the individuals, who, at different points in Israel's
history, had stood forth and taken up as their own the
nation's conscience and stooped to bear the nation's
curse. Far away back, a Moses had offered himself for
destruction, if for his sake God would spare his sinful
and thoughtless countrymen. In a psalm of the Exile
it is remembered that,
He said, that He would destroy them,
Had not Moses His chosen stood before Him in the breach,
To turn away His wrath, lest He should destroy.Psalm cvi. 23; cf. also ver. 32, where the other side of the
solidarity between Moses and the people comes out. They angered
Him also at the waters of Strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their
sakes ... he spake unadvisedly with his lips.
And Jeremiah, not by a single heroic resolve, but by
the slow agony and martyrdom of a long life, had taken
Jerusalem's sin upon his own heart, had felt himself
forsaken of God, and had voluntarily shared his city's
doom, while his generation, unconscious of their guilt
and blind to their fate, despised him and esteemed him
not. And Ezekiel, who is Jeremiah's far-off reflection,
who could only do in symbol what Jeremiah did in
reality, was commanded to lie on his side for days, and
so bear the guilt of his people.See p. 352.
But in Israel's experience it was not only the human
Servant who served the nation by suffering, for God
Himself had come down to carry His distressed and
accursed people, and to load Himself with them. Our
prophet uses the same two verbs of Jehovah as are
used of the Servant.Isa. xlvi. 3, 4. See pp. 179, 180 of this volume.
Like the Servant, too, God was
afflicted in all their affliction; and His love towards
them was expended in passion and agony for their
sins. Vicarious suffering was not only human, it was
Divine.
Was it very wonderful that a people with such an
experience, and with such examples, both human and
Divine, should at last be led to the thought of One
Sufferer, who would exhibit in Himself all the meaning,
and procure for His people all the virtue, of that
vicarious reproach and sorrow, which a long line of
their martyrs had illustrated, and which God had
revealed as the passion of His own love? If they had
had every example that could fit them to understand
the power of such a sufferer, they had also every
reason to feel their need of Him. For the Exile had
not healed the nation; it had been for the most of
them an illustration of that evil effect of punishment to
which we alluded above. Penal servitude in Babylon
had but hardened Israel. God poured on him the fury
of anger, and the strength of battle: it set him on fire
round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he
laid it not to heart.Ch. xlii. 25.
What the Exile, then, had failed
to do, when it brought upon the people their own sins,
the Servant, taking these sins upon himself, would
surely effect. The people, whom the Exile had only
hardened, his vicarious suffering should strike into
penitence and lift to peace.
IV. Ch. liii. 7-9. It is probable that with ver. 6 the
penitent people have ceased speaking, and that the
parable is now taken up by the prophet himself. The
voice of God, which uttered the first strophe, does not
seem to resume till ver. 11.
If strophe iii. confessed that it was for the people's
sins the Servant suffered, strophe iv. declares that he
himself was sinless, and yet silently submitted to all
which injustice laid upon him.
Now Silence under Suffering is a strange thing in the
Old Testament—a thing absolutely new. No other Old
Testament personage could stay dumb under pain, but
immediately broke into one of two voices,—voice of
guilt or voice of doubt. In the Old Testament the
sufferer is always either confessing his guilt to God, or,
when he feels no guilt, challenging God in argument.
David, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Job, and the nameless
martyred and moribund of the Psalms, all strive and are
loud under pain. Why was this Servant the unique
and solitary instance of silence under suffering? Because
he had a secret which they had not. It had been
said of him: My Servant shall deal wisely or intelligently,
shall know what he is about. He had no guilt of his
own, no doubts of his God. But he was conscious of the
end God had in his pain, an end not to be served in any
other way, and with all his heart he had given himself
to it. It was not punishment he was enduring; it was
not the throes of the birth into higher experience,
which he was feeling: it was a Service he was performing,—a
service laid on him by God, a service for
man's redemption, a service sure of results and of glory.
Therefore as a lamb to the slaughter is led, and as a
sheep before her shearers is dumb, he opened not his
mouth.
The next two verses (8, 9) describe how the Servant's
Passion was fulfilled. The figure of a sick man was
changed in ver. 5 to that of a punished one, and the
punishment we now see carried on to death. The two
verses are difficult, the readings and renderings of most
of the words being very various. But the sense is clear.
The Servant's death was accomplished, not on some far
hill top by a stroke out of heaven, but in the forms of
human law and by men's hands. It was a judicial
murder. By tyranny and by judgement,—that is, by a
forced and tyrannous judgement,—he was taken. To this
abuse of law the next verse adds the indifference of public
opinion: and as for his contemporaries, who of them reflected
that he was cut off from, or cut down in, the land of
the living,—that in spite of the form of law that condemned
him he was a murdered man,—that for the transgression
of my people the stroke was his? So, having conceived
him to have been lawfully put to death, they consistently
gave him a convict's grave: they made his grave with the
wicked, and he was with the felon in his death, though—and
on this the strophe emphatically ends—he was an
innocent man, he had done no harm, neither was guile
in his mouth.
Premature sickness and the miscarriage of justice,—these
to Orientals are the two outstanding misfortunes
of the individual's life. Take the Psalter, set aside its
complaints of the horrors of war and of invasion, and
you will find almost all the rest of its sighs rising either
from sickness or from the sense of injustice. These
were the classic forms of individual suffering in the age
and civilisation to which our prophet belonged, and it
was natural, therefore, that when he was describing an
Ideal or Representative Sufferer, he should fill in his
picture with both of them. If we remember this,If we remember this we shall also feel more reason than ever
against perceiving the Nation, or any aspect of the Nation, in the
Sufferer of ch. liii. For he suffers, as the individual suffers, sickness
and legal wrong. Tyrants do not put whole nations through a form
of law and judgement. Of course, it is open to those, who hold that
the Servant is still an aspect of the Nation, to reply, that all this is
simply evidence of how far the prophet has pushed his personification.
A whole nation has been called "The Sick Man" even in our
prosaic days. But see pp. 268-76.
we
shall feel no incongruity in the sudden change of the
hero from a sick man to a convict, and back again in
ver. 10 from a convict to a sick man. Nor, if we remember
this, shall we feel disposed to listen to those interpreters,
who hold that the basis of this prophecy was
the account of an actual historical martyrdom. Had
such been the case the prophet would surely have held
throughout to one or the other of the two forms of
suffering. His sufferer would have been either a leper
or a convict, but hardly both. No doubt the details in
vv. 8 and 9 are so realistic that they might well be the
features of an actual miscarriage of justice; but the like
happened too frequently in the Ancient East for such
verses to be necessarily any one man's portrait. Perverted
justice was the curse of the individual's life,—perverted
justice and that stolid, fatalistic apathy of
Oriental public opinion, which would probably regard
such a sufferer as suffering for his sins the just vengeance
of heaven, though the minister of this vengeance
was a tyrant and its means were perjury and murder.
Who of his generation reflected that for the transgression
of my people the stroke was on him!
V. Ch. liii. 10-12. We have heard the awful tragedy.
The innocent Servant was put to a violent and premature
death. Public apathy closed over him and the
unmarked earth of a felon's grave. It is so utter a
perversion of justice, so signal a triumph of wrong over
right, so final a disappearance into oblivion of the fairest
life that ever lived, that men might be tempted to say,
God has forsaken His own. On the contrary—so
strophe v. begins—God's own will and pleasure have
been in this tragedy: Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise
him. The line as it thus stands in our English version
has a grim, repulsive sound. But the Hebrew word has
no necessary meaning of pleasure or enjoyment. All it
says is, God so willed it. His purpose was in this
tragedy. Deus vult! It is the one message which
can render any pain tolerable or light up with meaning
a mystery so cruel as this: The LORD Himself had
purposed to bruise His Servant, the LORD Himself
had laid on him sickness (the figure of disease is
resumed).
God's purpose in putting the Servant to death is
explained in the rest of the verse. It was in order that
through his soul making a guilt-offering, he might see a
seed, prolong his days, and that the pleasure of the Lord
might prosper by his hand.
What is a guilt-offering? The term originally meant
guilt, and is so used by a prophet contemporary to our
own.Jer. li. 4.
In the legislation, however, both in the Pentateuch
and in Ezekiel, it is applied to legal and sacrificial
forms of restitution or reparation for guilt. It is only
named in Ezekiel along with other sacrifices.xl. 39; xlii. 13; xliv. 29; xlvi. 20.
Both
Numbers and Leviticus define it, but define it differently.
In Numbers (v. 7, 8) it is the payment, which a transgressor
has to make to the human person offended, of the
amount to which he has harmed that person's property:
it is what we call damages. But in Leviticus it is the
ram, exacted over and above damages to the injured
party (v. 14-16; vi. 1-7), or in cases where no damages
were asked for (v. 17-19), by the priest, the representative
of God, for satisfaction to His law; and it was
required even where the offender had been an unwitting
one. By this guilt-offering the priest made atonement for
the sinner and he was forgiven. It was for this purpose
of reparation to the Deity that the plagued Philistines
sent a guilt-offering back with the ark of Jehovah,
which they had stolen.1 Sam. vi. 13.
But there is another historical
passage, which though the term guilt-offering is not
used in it, admirably illustrates the idea.Cf. Wellhausen's Prolegomena, ch. ii., 2.
A famine in
David's time was revealed to be due to the murder of
certain Gibeonites by the house of Saul. David asked
the Gibeonites what reparation he could make. They
said it was not a matter of damages. But both parties
felt that before the law of God could be satisfied and
the land relieved of its curse, some atonement, some
guilt-offering, must be made to the Divine Law. It was
a wild kind of satisfaction that was paid. Seven men
of Saul's house were hung up before the Lord in
Gibeon. But the instinct, though satisfied in so murderous
a fashion, was a true and a grand instinct,—the
conscience of a law above all human laws and rights,
to which homage must be paid before the sinner could
come into true relations with God, or the Divine curse
be lifted off.
It is in this sense that the word is used of the Servant
of Jehovah, the Ideal, Representative Sufferer. Innocent
as he is, he gives his life as satisfaction to the Divine
law for the guilt of his people. His death was no
mere martyrdom or miscarriage of human justice: in
God's intent and purpose, but also by its own voluntary
offering, it was an expiatory sacrifice.There is no exegete but agrees to this. There may be differences
of opinion about the syntax,—whether the verse should run, though
Thou makest his soul guilt, or a guilt-offering; or, though his soul
make a guilt-offering; or (reading ישים for תשים), while he makes
his soul a guilt-offering,—but all agree to the fact that by himself or
by God the Servant's life is offered an expiation for sin, a satisfaction
to the law of God.
By his death
the Servant did homage to the law of God. By
dying for it He made men feel that the supreme
end of man was to own that law and be in a right
relation to it, and that the supreme service was to help
others to a right relation. As it is said a little farther
down, My Servant, righteous himself, wins righteousness
for many, and makes their iniquities his load.
It surely cannot be difficult for any one, who knows
what sin is, and what a part vicarious suffering plays
both in the bearing of the sin and in the redemption of
the sinner, to perceive that at this point the Servant's
service for God and man reaches its crown. Compare
his death and its sad meaning, with the brilliant energies
of his earlier career. It is a heavy and an honourable
thing to come from God to men, laden with God's
truth for your charge and responsibility; but it is a far
heavier to stoop and take upon your heart as your
business and burden men's suffering and sin. It is a
needful and a lovely thing to assist the feeble aspirations
of men, to put yourself on the side of whatever
in them is upward and living,—to be the shelter, as the
Servant was, of the bruised reed and the fading wick;
but it is more indispensable, and it is infinitely heavier,
to seek to lift the deadness of men, to take their guilt
upon your heart, to attempt to rouse them to it, to
attempt to deliver them from it. It is a useful and a
glorious thing to establish order and justice among men,
to create a social conscience, to inspire the exercise
of love and the habits of service, and this the Servant
did when he set Law on the Earth, and the Isles waited for
his teaching; but after all man's supreme and controlling
relation is his relation to God, and to this their righteousness
the Servant restored guilty men by his death.
And so it was at this point, according to our prophecy,
that the Servant, though brought so low, was nearest his
exaltation; though in death, yet nearest life, nearest the
highest kind of life, the seeing of a seed, the finding of
himself in others; though despised, rejected and forgotten
of men, most certain of finding a place among the
great and notable forces of life,—therefore do I divide
him a share with the great, and the spoil he shall share with
the strong. Not because as a prophet he was a sharp
sword in the hand of the Lord, or a light flashing to
the ends of the earth, but in that—as the prophecy
concludes, and it is the prophet's last and highest
word concerning him—in that he bare the sin of the
many, and interposed for the transgressors.
We have seen that the most striking thing about
this prophecy is the spectral appearance of the Servant.
He haunts, rather than is present in, the chapter.
We hear of him, but he himself does not speak.
We see faces that he startles, lips that the sight of
him shuts, lips that the memory of him, after he has
passed in silence, opens to bitter confession of neglect
and misunderstanding; but himself we see not.
His aspect and his bearing, his work for God and
his influence on men, are shown to us, through the
recollection and conscience of the speakers, with a vividness
and a truth that draw the consciences of us who
hear into the current of the confession, and take our
hearts captive. But when we ask, Who was he then?
What was his name among men? Where shall we
find himself? Has he come, or do you still look for
him?—neither the speakers, whose conscience he so
smote, nor God, whose chief purpose he was, give us
here any answer. In some verses he and his work
seem already to have happened upon earth, but again
we are made to feel that he is still future to the prophet,
and that the voices, which the prophet quotes as
speaking of having seen him and found him to be
the Saviour, are voices of a day not yet born, while
the prophet writes.
But about five hundred and fifty years after this
prophecy was written, a Man came forward among the
sons of men,—among this very nation from whom the
prophecy had arisen; and in every essential of consciousness
and of experience He was the counterpart,
embodiment and fulfilment of this Suffering Servant
and his Service. Jesus Christ answers the questions,
which the prophecy raises and leaves unanswered. In
the prophecy we see one, who is only a spectre, a dream,
a conscience without a voice, without a name, without a
place in history. But in Jesus Christ of Nazareth the
dream becomes a reality; He, whom we have seen in
this chapter only as the purpose of God, only through
the eyes and consciences of a generation yet unborn,—He
comes forward in flesh and blood; He speaks, He
explains Himself, He accomplishes almost to the last
detail the work, the patience and the death that are here
described as Ideal and Representative.
The correspondence of details between Christ's life
and this prophecy, published five hundred and fifty
years before He came, is striking; if we encountered
it for the first time, it would be more than striking, it
would be staggering. But do not let us do what so
many have done—so fondly exaggerate it as to lose
in the details of external resemblance the moral and
spiritual identity.
For the external correspondence between this prophecy
and the life of Jesus Christ is by no means perfect.
Every wound that is set down in the fifty-third of
Isaiah was not reproduced or fulfilled in the sufferings
of Jesus. For instance, Christ was not the sick, plague-stricken
man, whom the Servant is at first represented
to be. The English translators have masked the leprous
figure, that stands out so clearly in the original Hebrew,—for
acquainted with grief, bearing our griefs, put him
to grief, we should in each case read sickness. Now
Christ was no Job. As Matthew points out, the only
way He could be said to bear our sicknesses and to carry
our pains was by healing them, not by sharing them.
And again, exactly as the judicial murder of the Servant,
and the entire absence from his contemporaries of
any idea that he suffered a vicarious death, suit the case
of Christ, the next stage in the Servant's fate was not
true of the Victim of Pilate and the Pharisees. Christ's
grave was not with the wicked. He suffered as a felon
without the walls on the common place of execution, but
friends received the body and gave it an honourable
burial in a friend's grave. Or take the clause, with the
rich in his death. It is doubtful whether the word is
really rich, and ought not to be a closer synonym of
wicked in the previous clause; but if it be rich, it is
simply another name for the wicked, who in the East, in
cases of miscarried justice, are so often coupled with the
evildoers. It cannot possibly denote such a man as
Joseph of Arimathea; nor, is it to be observed, do the
Evangelists in describing Christ's burial in that rich and
pious man's tomb take any notice of this line about the
Suffering Servant.
But the absence of a complete incidental correspondence
only renders more striking the moral and spiritual
correspondence, the essential likeness between the
Service set forth in ch. liii. and the work of our Lord.
The speakers of ch. liii. set the Servant over against
themselves, and in solitariness of character and office.
They count him alone sinless where all they have
sinned, and him alone the agent of salvation and
healing where their whole duty is to look on and
believe. But this is precisely the relation which
Christ assumed between Himself and the nation. He
was on one side, all they on the other. Against their
strong effort to make Him the First among them, it was,
as we have said before, the constant aim of our Lord
to assert and to explain Himself as The Only.
And this Onlyness was to be realised in suffering.
He said, I must suffer; or again, It behoves the Christ to
suffer. Suffering is the experience in which men feel
their oneness with their kind. Christ, too, by suffering
felt His oneness with men; but largely in order to
assert a singularity beyond. Through suffering He
became like unto men, but only that He might effect
through suffering a lonely and a singular service for
them. For though He suffered in all points as men did,
yet He shared none of their universal feelings about
suffering. Pain never drew from Him either of those two
voices of guilt or of doubt. Pain never reminded Christ
of His own past, nor made Him question God.
Nor did He seek pain for any end in itself. There
have been men who have done so; fanatics who have
gloried in pain; superstitious minds that have fancied
it to be meritorious; men whose wounds have been
as mouths to feed their pride, or to publish their fidelity
to their cause. But our Lord shrank from pain; if it
had been possible He would have willed not to bear it:
Father, save Me from this hour; Father, if it be Thy will,
let this cup pass from Me. And when He submitted and
was under the agony, it was not in the feeling of it, nor
in the impression it made on others, nor in the manner
in which it drew men's hearts to Him, nor in the seal
it set on the truth, but in something beyond it, that He
found His end and satisfaction. Jesus looked out of
the travail of His soul and was satisfied.
For, firstly, He knew His pain to be God's will for an
end outside Himself,—I have a baptism to be baptized
with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished:
Father, save Me from this hour, yet for this cause came I
to this hour: Father, Thy will be done,—and all opportunities
to escape as temptations.
And, secondly, like the Servant, Jesus dealt prudently,
had insight. The will of God in His suffering was no
mystery to Him. He understood from the first why
He was to suffer.Cf. Baldensperger (Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, p. 119 ff.) on the
genuineness of Christ's predictions and explanations of His sufferings.
The reasons He gave were the same two and in
the same order as are given by our prophet for the
sufferings of the Servant,—first, that fidelity to God's
truth could bring with it no other fate in Israel;Cf. p. 330.
then
that His death was necessary for the sins of men, and
as men's ransom from sin. In giving the first of these
reasons for His death, Christ likened Himself to the
prophets who had gone before Him in Jerusalem; but
in the second He matched Himself with no other, and
no other has ever been known in this to match himself
with Jesus.
When men, then, stand up and tell us that Christ
suffered only for the sake of sympathy with His kind, or
only for loyalty to the truth, we have to tell them that
this was not the whole of Christ's own consciousness,
this was not the whole of Christ's own explanation.
Suffering, which leads men into the sense of oneness
with their kind, only made Him, as it grew the nearer and
weighed the heavier, more emphatic upon His difference
from other men. If He Himself, by His pity, by His
labours of healing (as Matthew points out), and by all His
intercourse with His people, penetrated more deeply
into the participation of human suffering, the very days
which marked with increasing force His sympathy with
men, only laid more bare their want of sympathy with
Him, their incapacity to follow into that unique conscience
and understanding of a Passion, which He bore
not only with, but, as He said, for His brethren. Who
believed that which we heard, and to whom was the arm of
the Lord revealed? As to His generation, who reflected ...
that for the transgression of my people He was stricken?
Again, while Christ indeed brought truth to earth from
heaven, and was for truth's sake condemned by men to
die, the burden which He found waiting Him on earth,
man's sin, was ever felt by Him to be a heavier burden
and responsibility than the delivery of the truth; and was
in fact the thing, which, apart from the things for which
men might put Him to death, remained the reason of
His death in His own sight and in that of His Father.
And He told men why He felt their sin to be so heavy,
because it kept them so far from God, and this was His
purpose, He said, in bearing it—that He might bring
us back to God; not primarily that He might relieve us
of the suffering which followed sin, though He did so
relieve some when He pardoned them, but that He
might restore us to right relations with God,—might, like
the Servant, make many righteous. Now it was Christ's
confidence to be able to do this, which distinguished
Him from all others, upon whom has most heavily fallen
the conscience of their people's sins, and who have
most keenly felt the duty and commission from God
of vicarious suffering. If, like Moses, one sometimes
dared for love's sake to offer his life for the life of his
people, none, under the conscience and pain of their
people's sins, ever expressed any consciousness of
thereby making their brethren righteous. On the contrary,
even a Jeremiah, whose experience, as we have
seen, comes so wonderfully near the picture of the Representative
Sufferer in ch. liii.,—even a Jeremiah feels,
with the increase of his vicarious pain and conscience
of guilt, only the more perplexed, only the deeper in
despair, only the less able to understand God and the
less hopeful to prevail with Him. But Christ was sure
of His power to remove men's sins, and was never more
emphatic about that power than when He most felt those
sins' weight.
And He has seen His seed; He has made many
righteous. We found it to be uncertain whether the
penitent speakers in ch. liii. understood that the Servant
by coming under the physical sufferings, which were
the consequences of their sins, relieved them of these
consequences; other passages in the prophecy would
seem to imply, that, while the Servant's sufferings were
alone valid for righteousness, they did not relieve the rest
of the nation from suffering too. And so it would be
going beyond what God has given us to know, if we said
that God counts the sufferings on the Cross, which were
endured for our sins, as an equivalent for, or as sufficient
to do away with, the sufferings which these sins
bring upon our minds, our bodies and our social relations.
Substitution of this kind is neither affirmed by
the penitents who speak in the fifty-third of Isaiah, nor
is it an invariable or essential part of the experience
of those who have found forgiveness through Christ.
Every day penitents turn to God through Christ, and
are assured of forgiveness, who feel no abatement in
the rigour of the retribution of those laws of God,
which they have offended; like David after his forgiveness,
they have to continue to bear the consequences
of their sins. But dark as this side of experience undoubtedly
is, only the more conspicuously against the
darkness does the other side of experience shine. By
believing what they have heard, reaching this belief
through a quicker conscience and a closer study of
Christ's words about His death, men, upon whom conscience
by itself and sore punishment have worked in
vain, have been struck into penitence, have been assured
of pardon, have been brought into right relations with
God, have felt all the melting and the bracing effects of
the knowledge that another has suffered in their stead.
Nay, let us consider this—the physical consequences of
their sins may have been left to be endured by such
men, for no other reason than in order to make their
new relation to God more sensible to them, while they
feel those consequences no longer with the feeling of
penalty, but with that of chastisement and discipline.
Surely nothing could serve more strongly than this to
reveal the new conscience towards God that has been
worked within them. This inward righteousness is
made more plain by the continuance of the physical
and social consequences of their sins than it would
have been had these consequences been removed.
Thus Christ, like the Servant, became a force in the
world, inheriting in the course of Providence a portion
with the great and dividing the spoils of history with the
strong. As has often been said, His Cross is His
Throne, and it is by His death that He has ruled the
ages. Yet we must not understand this as if His
Power was only or mostly shown in binding men, by
gratitude for the salvation He won them, to own Him
for their King. His power has been even more conspicuously
proved in making His fashion of service
the most fruitful and the most honoured among men.
If men have ceased to turn from sickness with aversion
or from weakness with contempt; if they have learned
to see in all pain some law of God, and in vicarious
suffering God's most holy service; if patience and self-sacrifice
have come in any way to be a habit of human
life,—the power in this change has been Christ. But
because these two—to say, Thy will be done, and to
sacrifice self—are for us men the hardest and the most
unnatural of things to do, Jesus Christ, in making these
a conscience and a habit upon earth, has indeed shown
Himself able to divide the spoil with the strong, has
indeed performed the very highest Service for Man of
which man can conceive.
BOOK IV.
THE RESTORATION.
BOOK IV.
We have now reached the summit of our prophecy.
It has been a long, steep ascent, and we have
had very much to seek out on the way, and to extricate
and solve and load ourselves with. But although a
long extent of the prophecy, if we measure it by
chapters, still lies before us, the end is in sight; every
difficulty has been surmounted which kept us from
seeing how we were to get to it, and the rest of the
way may be said to be down-hill.
To drop the figure—the Servant, his vicarious suffering
and atonement for the sins of the people, form for
our prophet the solution of the spiritual problem of
the nation's restoration, and what he has now to do is
but to fill in the details of this.
We saw that the problem of Israel's deliverance from
Exile, their Return, and their Restoration to their position
in their own land as the Chief Servant of God to
humanity, was really a double problem—political and
spiritual. The solution of the political side of it was
Cyrus. As soon as the prophet had been able to make
it certain that Cyrus was moving down upon Babylon,
with a commission from God to take the city, and irresistible
in the power with which Jehovah had invested
him, the political difficulties in the way of Israel's Return
were as good as removed; and so the prophet gave, in
the end of ch. xlviii., his great call to his countrymen to
depart. But all through chs. xl.-xlviii., while addressing
himself to the solution of the political problems of Israel's
deliverance, the prophet had given hints that there were
moral and spiritual difficulties as well. In spite of their
punishment for more than half a century, the mass of
the people were not worthy of a return. Many were
idolaters; many were worldly; the orthodox had their
own wrong views of how salvation should come (xlv. 9 ff.);
the pious were without either light or faith (l. 10). The
nation, in short, had not that inward righteousness, which
could alone justify God in vindicating them before the
world, in establishing their outward righteousness, their
salvation and reinstatement in their lofty place and calling
as His people. These moral difficulties come upon
the prophet with greater force after he has, with the close
of ch. xlviii., finished his solution of the political ones.
To these moral difficulties he addresses himself in
xlix.-liii., and the Servant and his Service are his
solution of them:—the Servant as a Prophet and a
Covenant of the People in ch. xlix. and in ch. l. 4 ff.;
the Servant as an example to the people, ch. l. ff.; and
finally the Servant as a full expiation for the people's
sins in ch. lii. 13-liii. It is the Servant who is to raise
up the land, and to bring back the heirs to the desolate
heritages, and rouse the Israel who are not willing to
leave Babylon, saying to the bound, Go forth; and to them
that sit in darkness, Show yourselves (xlix. 8, 9). It is
he who is to sustain the weary and to comfort the pious
in Israel, who, though pious, have no light as they walk
on their way back (l. 4, 10). It is the Servant finally
who is to achieve the main problem of all and make
many righteous (liii. 11). The hope of restoration, the
certainty of the people's redemption, the certainty of
the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the certainty of the growth
of the people to a great multitude, are, therefore, all
woven by the prophet through and through with his
studies of the Servant's work in xlix., l., and lii. 13-liii.,—woven
so closely and so naturally that, as we have
already seen (pp. 313 f., 336 ff.), we cannot take any part
of chs. xlix.-liii. and say that it is of different authorship
from the rest. Thus in ch. xlix. we have the road
to Jerusalem pictured in vv. 9b-13, immediately upon
the back of the Servant's call to go forth in ver. 9a.
We have then the assurance of Zion being rebuilt and
thronged by her children in vv. 14-23, and another
affirmation of the certainty of redemption in vv. 24-26;
In l. 1-3 this is repeated. In li.-lii. 12 the petty people
is assured that it shall grow innumerable again; new
affirmations are made of its ransom and return, ending
with the beautiful prospect of the feet of the heralds
of deliverance on the mountains of Judah (lii. 7b) and
a renewed call to leave Babylon (vv. 11, 12). We shall
treat all these passages in our Twenty-First Chapter.
And as they started naturally from the Servant's
work in xlix. 1-9a and his example in l. 4-11, so upon
his final and crowning work in ch. liii. there follow
as naturally ch. liv. (the prospect of the seed that
liii. 10 promised he should see), and ch. lv. (a new call
to come forth). These two, with the little pre-exilic
prophecy, ch. lvi. 1-8, we shall treat in our Twenty-Second
Chapter.
Then come the series of difficult small prophecies
with pre-exilic traces in them, from lvi. 9-lix. They will
occupy our Twenty-Third Chapter. In ch. lx. Zion is
at last not only in sight, but radiant in the rising of her
new day of glory. In chs. lxi. and lxii. the prophet,
having reached Zion, "looks back," as Dillmann well
remarks, "upon what has become his task, and in connection
with that makes clear once more the high goal
of all his working and striving." In lxiii. 1-6 the
Divine Deliverer is hailed. We shall take lx.-lxiii. 6
together in our Twenty-Fourth Chapter.
Ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv. is an Intercessory Prayer for the
restoration of all Israel. It is answered in ch. lxv., and
the lesson of this answer, that Israel must be judged,
and that all cannot be saved, is enforced in ch. lxvi.
Chs. lxiii. 7-lxvi. will therefore form our Twenty-Fifth
and closing Chapter.
Thus our course is clear, and we can overtake it
rapidly. It is, to a large extent, a series of spectacles,
interrupted by exhortations upon duty; things, in fact,
to see and to hear, not to argue about. There are few
great doctrinal questions, except what we have already
sufficiently discussed; our study, for instance, of the
term righteousness, we shall find has covered for us
a large part of the ground in advance. And the only
difficult literary question is that of the pre-exilic and
post-exilic pieces, which are alleged to form so large a
part of chs. lvi.-lix. and lxiii.-lxvi.
CHAPTER XXI.
DOUBTS IN THE WAY.
Isaiah xlix.-lii. 12.
Chapters xlix.-liii. are, as we have seen, a series
of more or less closely joined passages, in which
the prophet, having already made the political redemption
of Israel certain through Cyrus, and having dismissed
Cyrus from his thoughts, addresses himself to
various difficulties in the way of restoration, chiefly
moral and spiritual, and rising from Israel's own feelings
and character; exhorts the people in face of them
by Jehovah's faithfulness and power; but finds the
chief solution of them in the Servant and his prophetic
and expiatory work. We have already studied such of
these passages as present the Servant to us, and we
now take up those others, which meet the doubts and
difficulties in the way of restoration by means of general
considerations drawn from God's character and power.
Let it be noticed that, with one exception (ch. l. 11),See p. 334.
these passages are meant for earnest and pious minds in
Israel,—for those Israelites, whose desires are towards
Zion, but chill and heavy with doubts.
The form and the terms of these passages are in
harmony with their purpose. They are a series of
short, high-pitched exhortations, apostrophes and lyrics.
One, ch. lii. 9-12, calls upon the arm of Jehovah,
but all the rest address Zion,—that is, the ideal people
in the person of their mother, with whom they ever
so fondly identified themselves; or Zion's children;
or them that follow righteousness, or ye that know righteousness;
or my people, my nation; or again Zion
herself. This personification of the people under the
name of their city, and under the aspect of a woman,
whose children are the individual members of the
people, will be before us till the end of our prophecy.
It is, of course, a personification of Israel, which is
complementary to Israel's other personification under
the name of the Servant. The Servant is Israel
active, comforting, serving his own members and the
nations; Zion, the Mother-City, is Israel passive, to
be comforted, to be served by her own sons and by
the kings of the peoples.
We may divide the passages into two groups. First,
the songs of return, which rise out of the picture of the
Servant and his redemption of the people in ch. xlix.
9b, with the long promise and exhortation to Zion
and her children, that lasts till the second picture of
the Servant in ch. lii. 4; and second, the short pieces
which lie between the second picture of the Servant and
the third, or from the beginning of ch. li. to ch. lii. 12.
I.
In ch. xlix. 9b God's promise of the return of the
redeemed proceeds naturally from that of their ransom
by the Servant. It is hailed by a song in ver. 13, and
the rest of the section is the answer to three doubts,
which, like sobs, interrupt the music. But the prophecy,
stooping, as it were, to kiss the trembling lips through
which these doubts break, immediately resumes its high
flight of comfort and promise. Two of these doubts are:
ver. 14, But Zion hath said, Jehovah hath forsaken me, and
my Lord hath forgotten me; and ver. 24, Shall the prey
be taken from the mighty or the captives of the terrible be
delivered? The third is implied in ch. l. 1.
The promise of return is as follows: On roads shall
they feed, and on all bare heights shall be their pasture.
They shall not hunger nor thirst, nor shall the mirage nor
the sun smite them: for He that yearneth over them shall
lead them, even by springs of water shall He guide them.
And I will set all My mountains for a way, and My high
ways shall be exalted. Lo, these shall come from far: and,
lo, these from the North and from the West, and these from
the land of Sinim.The question whether this is the land of China is still an open
one. The possibility of intercourse between China and Babylon is
more than proved. But that there were Jews in China by this time
(though they seem to have found their way there by the beginning
of the Christian era) is extremely unlikely. Moreover, the possibility
of such a name as Sinim for the inhabitants of China at that date has
not been proved. No other claimants for the name, however, have
made good their case. But we need not enter further into the question.
The whole matter is fully discussed in Canon Cheyne's excursus,
and by him and Terrien de Lacouperie in the Babylonian and Oriental
Record for 1886-87. See especially the number for September 1887.
Sing forth, O heavens; and be glad,
O earth; let the mountains break forth into singing: for
Jehovah hath comforted His people, and over His afflicted
He yearneth.
Now, do not let us imagine that this is the promise of
a merely material miracle. It is the greater glory of a
purely spiritual one, as the prophet indicates in describing
its cause in the words, because He that yearneth over
them shall lead them. The desert is not to abate its
immemorial rigours; in itself the way shall still be as
hard as when the discredited and heart-broken exiles
were driven down it from home to servitude. But their
hearts are now changed, and that shall change the road.
The new faith, which has made the difference, is a very
simple one, that God is Power and that God is Love.
Notice the possessive pronouns used by God, and mark
what they put into His possession: two kinds of things,—powerful
things, I will make all My mountains a way;
and sorrowful things, Jehovah hath comforted His people,
and will have compassion on His afflicted.His humbled, His poor in the exilic sense of the word. See
Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. 432 ff.
If we will
steadfastly believe that everything in the world which is
in pain, and everything which has power, is God's, and
shall be used by Him, the one for the sake of the other,
this shall surely change the way to our feet, and all the
world around to our eyes.
1. Only it is so impossible to believe it when one looks
at real fact; and however far and swiftly faith and hope
may carry us for a time, we always come to ground again
and face to face with fact. The prophet's imagination
speeding along that green and lifted highway of the
Lord lights suddenly upon the end of it,—the still dismantled
and desolate city. Fifty years Zion's altar
fires have been cold and her walls in ruin. Fifty years
she has been bereaved of her children and left alone.
The prophet hears the winds blow mournfully through
her fact's chill answer to faith. But Zion said, Forsaken
me hath Jehovah, and my Lord hath forgotten me! Now
let us remember, that our prophet has Zion before him
in the figure of a mother, and we shall feel the force of
God's reply. It is to a mother's heart God appeals.
Doth a woman forget her sucking child so as not to yearn
over the son of her womb? yea, such may forget, but I
will not forget thee, desolate mother that thou art!On the "Motherhood of God" cf. Isaiah i.-xxxix., p. 245 ff.
Thy life is not what thou art in outward show and
feeling, but what thou art in My love and in My sight.
Lo, upon both palms have I graven thee; thy walls are
before Me continually. The custom, which to some
extent prevails in all nations, of puncturing or tattooing
upon the skin a dear name one wishes to keep in mind,
is followed in the East chiefly for religious purposes,
and men engrave the name of God or some holy text
upon the hand or arm for a memorial or as a mark of
consecration. It is this fashion which God attributes to
Himself. Having measured His love by the love of a
mother, He gives this second human pledge for His
memory and devotion. But again He exceeds the
human habit; for it is not only the name of Zion which
is engraved on His hands, but her picture. And it is
not her picture, as she lies in her present ruin and
solitariness, but her restored and perfect state: thy walls
are continually before Me. For this is faith's answer to
all the ruin and haggard contradiction of outward fact.
Reality is not what we see: reality is what God sees.
What a thing is in His sight and to His purpose, that it
really is, and that it shall ultimately appear to men's
eyes. To make us believe this is the greatest service
the Divine can do for the human. It was the service
Christ was always doing, and nothing showed His
divinity more. He took us men and He called us,
unworthy as we were, His brethren, the sons of God.
He took such an one as Simon, shifting and unstable,
a quicksand of a man, and He said, On this rock I
will build My Church. A man's reality is not what he
is in his own feelings, or what he is to the world's
eyes; but what he is to God's love, to God's yearning,
and in God's plan. If he believe that, so in the
end shall he feel it, so in the end shall he show it
to the eyes of the world.
Upon those great thoughts, that God's are all strong
things and all weak things, and that the real and the
certain in life is His will, the prophecy breaks into a
vision of multitudes in motion. There is a great stirring
and hastening, crowds gather up through the verses, the
land is lifted and thronged. Lift up thine eyes round
about, and behold: all of them gather together, they come
unto thee. As I live, saith Jehovah, thou shalt surely
clothe thyself with them all as with an ornament, and
gird thyself with them, like a bride. For as for thy waste
places and thy desolate ones and thy devastated land—yea,
thou wilt now be too strait for the inhabitants, and far off
shall be they that devoured thee. Again shall they speak in
thine ears,—the children of thy bereavement (that is, those
children who have been born away from Zion during
her solitude), Too strait for me is the place, make me
room that I may dwell. And thou shalt say in thine heart,
Who hath borne me these,—not begotten, as our English
version renders, because the question with Zion was not
who was the father of the children, but who, in her own
barrenness, could possibly be the mother,—Who hath
borne me these, seeing I was first bereft of my children, and
since then have been barren, an exile and a castaway!
And these, who hath brought them up! Lo, I was left by
myself. These,—whence are they! Our English version,
which has blundered in the preceding verses, requires
no correction in the following; and the first great
Doubt in the Way being now answered, for they that
wait on the Lord shall not be ashamed, we pass to the
second, in ver. 24.
2. Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives
of the tyrantFor צדיק, the righteous or just, which is in the text, the Syr., Vulg.,
Ewald, and others read עריץ, as in the following verse, terrible or
terribly strong. Dillmann, however (5th ed., 1890, p. 438), retains צדיק
takes the terms mighty and just as used of God, and reads the question,
not as a question of despair uttered by the people, but as a triumphant
challenge of the prophet or of God Himself. He would then make
the next verse run thus: Nay, for the captives of the mighty may be taken,
and the prey of the delivered, but with him who strives with thee I will
strive.
be delivered? Even though God be full of
love and thought for Zion, will these tyrants give up
her children? Yea, thus saith Jehovah, Even the captives
of the mighty shall be taken, and the prey of the tyrant be
delivered; and with him that quarreleth with thee will I
quarrel, and thy children will I save. And I will make
thine oppressors to eat their own flesh, and as with new
wine with their blood shall they be drunken, that all flesh
may know that I am Jehovah thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer
the Mighty One of Jacob.
3. But now a third Doubt in the Way seems to have
risen. Unlike the two others, it is not directly stated,
but we may gather its substance from the reply which
Jehovah makes to it (l. 1). Thus saith Jehovah, What
is this bill of divorce of your mother whom I have
sent away, or which of My creditors is it to whom I
have sold you? The form, in which this challenge is
put, assumes that the Israelites themselves had been
thinking of Jehovah's dismissal of Israel as an irrevocable
divorce and a bankrupt sale into slavery.The English version, Where is the bill, is incorrect. The phrase is the same as in lxvi. ver. 1, What is this house that ye build for Me?
what is this place for My rest? It implies a house already built; and
so in the text above What is this bill of divorce implies one already
thought of by the minds of the persons addressed by the question.
"What now is this letter of divorce,—this that you
are saying I have given your mother? You say that
I have sold you as a bankrupt father sells his children,—to
which then of my creditors is it that I have sold
you?"
The most characteristic effect of sin is that it is always
reminding men of law. Whether the moral habit of
it be upon them or they are entangled in its material
consequences, sin breeds in men the conscience of
inexorable, irrevocable law. Its effect is not only
practical, but intellectual. Sin not only robs a man of
the freedom of his own will, but it takes from him the
power to think of freedom in others, and it does not
stop till it paralyses his belief in the freedom of God.
He, who knows himself as the creature of unchangeable
habits or as the victim of pitiless laws, cannot help
imputing his own experience to what is beyond him, till
all life seems strictly lawbound, the idea of a free agent
anywhere an impossibility, and God but a part of the
necessity which rules the universe.
Two kinds of generations of men have most tended to
be necessitarian in their philosophy,—the generations
which have given themselves over to do evil, and the
generations whose political experience or whose science
has impressed them with the inevitable physical results
of sin. If belief in a Divine Redeemer, able to deliver
man's nature from the guilt and the curse of sin, is
growing weak among us to-day, this is largely due to
the fact that our moral and our physical sciences have
been proving to us what creatures of law we are, and
disclosing, especially in the study of disease and
insanity, how inevitably suffering follows sin. God
Himself has been so much revealed to us as law, that
as a generation we find it hard to believe that He ever
acts in any fashion that resembles the reversal of a
law, or ever works any swift, sudden deed of salvation.
Now the generation of the Exile was a generation, to
whom God had revealed Himself as law. They were a
generation of convicts. They had owned the justice of
the sentence which had banished and enslaved them;
they had experienced how inexorably God's processes
of judgement sweep down the ages; for fifty years they
had been feeling the inevitable consequences of sin.
The conscience of Law, which this experience was
bound to create in them, grew ever more strong, till
at last it absorbed even the hope of redemption, and the
God, who enforced the Law, Himself seemed to be forced
by it. To express this sense of law these earnest
Israelites—for though in error they were in earnest—went
to the only kind of law, with which they were
familiar, and borrowed from it two of its forms, which
were not only suggested to them by the relations in
which the nation and the nation's sons respectively stood
to Jehovah, as wife and as children, but admirably
illustrated the ideas they wished to express. There
was, first, the form of divorce, so expressive of the ideas
of absoluteness, deliberateness and finality;—of absoluteness,
for throughout the East power of divorce rests
entirely with the husband; of deliberateness, for in
order to prevent hasty divorce the Hebrew law insisted
that the husband must make a bill or writing of divorce
instead of only speaking dismissal; and of finality, for
such a writing, in contrast to the spoken dismissal, set
the divorce beyond recall. The other form, which the
doubters borrowed from their law, was one, which,
while it also illustrated the irrevocableness of the act,
emphasized the helplessness of the agent,—the act of
the father, who put his children away, not as the husband
put his wife in his anger, but in his necessity, selling
them to pay his debts and because he was bankrupt.
On such doubts God turns with their own language.
"I have indeed put your mother away, but where is the
bill that makes her divorce final, beyond recall? You
indeed were sold, but was it because I was bankrupt?
To which, then, of My creditors (note the scorn of the
plural) was it that I sold you? Nay, by means of your
iniquities did you sell yourselves, and by means of your
transgressions were you put away. But I stand here
ready as ever to save, I alone. If there is any difficulty
about your restoration it lies in this, that I am
alone, with no response or assistance from men. Why
when I came was there no man? when I called was there
none to answer? Is My hand shortened at all that it cannot
redeem? or is there in it no power to deliver?" And so
we come back to the truth, which this prophecy so often
presents to us, that behind all things there is a personal
initiative and urgency of infinite power, which moves
freely of its own compassion and force, which is
hindered by no laws from its own ends, and needs no
man's co-operation to effect its purposes. The rest of the
Lord's answer to His people's fear, that He is bound
by an inexorable law, is simply an appeal to His
wealth of force. This omnipotence of God is our
prophet's constant solution for the problems which
arise, and he expresses it here in his favourite figures
of physical changes and convulsions of nature. Lo, with
My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make rivers a wilderness:
their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for
thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, and sackcloth
I set for their covering. The argument seems to be: if
God can work those sudden revolutions in the physical
world, those apparent interruptions of law in that sphere,
surely you can believe Him capable of creating sudden
revolutions also in the sphere of history, and reversing
those laws and processes, which you feel to be unalterable.
It is an argument from the physical to the
moral world, in our prophet's own analogical style, and
like those we found in ch. xl.
II. li.-lii. 12.
Passing over the passage on the Servant, ch. l. 4-11,
we reach a second series of exhortations in face of
Doubts in the Way of the Return. The first of this
new series is li. 1-3.
Their doubts having been answered with regard to
God's mindfulness of them and His power to save them,
the loyal Israelites fall back to doubt themselves. They
see with dismay how few are ready to achieve the
freedom that God has assured, and upon how small and
insignificant a group of individuals the future of the
nation depends. But their disappointment is not made
by them an excuse to desert the purpose of Jehovah:
their fewness makes them the more faithful, and the
defection of their countrymen drives them the closer to
their God. Therefore, God speaks to them kindly, and
answers their last sad doubt. Hearken unto Me, ye that
follow righteousness, that seek Jehovah. Righteousness
here might be taken in its inward sense of conformity to
law, personal rightness of character; and so taken it
would well fall in with the rest of the passage. Those
addressed would then be such in Israel, as in face of
hopeless prospects applied themselves to virtue and
religion. But righteousness here is more probably used
in the outward sense, which we have found prevalent
in "Second Isaiah," of vindication and victory; the
"coming right" of God's people and God's cause in the
world, their justification and triumph in history.Cf. p. 221. Dillmann's view that righteousness means here personal
character is contradicted by the whole context, which makes it
plain that it is something external, the realisation of which those
addressed are doubting. What troubles them is not that they are personally
unrighteous, but that they are so few and insignificant. And
what God promises them in answer is something external, the establishment
of Zion. Cf. also the external meaning of righteousness
in vv. 5, 6.
They
who are addressed will then be they who, in spite of
their fewness, believe in this triumph, follow it, make
it their goal and their aim, and seek Jehovah, knowing
that He can bring it to pass. And because, in
spite of their doubts, they are still earnest, and though
faint are yet pursuing, God speaks to comfort them
about their fewness. Their present state may be very
small and unpromising, but let them look back upon
the much more unpromising character of their origin:
look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and the hole of
the pit whence ye were digged. To-day you may be
a mere handful, ridiculous in the light of the destiny
you are called to achieve, but remember you were once
but one man: look unto Abraham your father, and to
Sarah who bare you: for as one I called him and blessed
him, that I might make of him many.
When we are weary and hopeless it is best to sit
down and remember. Is the future dark: let us look
back and see the gathering and impetus of the past!
We can follow the luminous track, the unmistakable
increase and progress, but the most inspiring sight of
all is what God makes of the individual heart; how a
man's heart is always His beginning, the fountain of the
future, the origin of nations. Lift up your hearts, ye
few and feeble; your father was but one when I called
him, and I made him many!
Having thus assured His loyal remnant of the
restoration of Zion, in spite of their fewness, Jehovah in
the next few verses (4-8) extends the prospect of His
glory to the world: Revelation shall go forth from Me,
and I will make My Law to light on the nations. Revelation
and Law between them summarise His will. As
He identified them both with the Servant's work (ch. xl.
11), so here He tells the loyal in Israel, who were in
one aspect His Servant, that they shall surely come to
pass; and in the next little oracle, vv. 7, 8, He exhorts
them to do that in which the Servant has been set
forth as an example: fear ye not the reproach of men,
neither be dismayed at their revilings. For like a garment
the moth shall eat them up, and like wool shall the
worm devour them. It is a response in almost the
same words to the Servant's profession of confidence in
God in ch. l. 7-9. By some it is used as an argument
to show that the Servant and the godly remnant are to
our prophet still virtually one and the same; but we
have already seen (ch. l. 10) the godfearing addressed
as distinct from the Servant, and can only understand
here that they are once more exhorted to take him as
their example. But if the likeness of the passage on the
Servant to this passage on the suffering Remnant does
not prove that Remnant and Servant are the same, it is
certainly an indication that both passages, so far from
being pieced together out of different poems, are most
probably due to the same author and were produced
originally in the same current of thought.
When all Doubts in the Way have now been removed,
what can remain but a great impatience to
achieve at once the near salvation? To this impatience
the loosened hearts give voice in vv. 9-11: Awake,
awake, put on strength, Arm of Jehovah; awake as in the
days of old, ages far past! Not in vain have Israel
been called to look back to the rock whence they were
hewn and the hole of the pit whence they were digged.
Looking back, they see the ancient deliverance manifest:
Art thou not it that hewed Rahab in pieces, that pierced
the Dragon! Art thou not it that dried up the sea, waters
of the great flood; that did set the hollows of the sea a way
for the passage of the redeemed. Then there breaks
forth the March of the Return, which we heard already
in the end of ch. xxxv.,Isaiah. i.-xxxix., p. 441.
and to His people's impatience
Jehovah responds in vv. 9-16 in strains similar to
those of ch. xl. The last verse of this reply is notable
for the enormous extension which it gives to the purpose
of Jehovah in endowing Israel as His prophet,—an
extension to no less than the renewal of the
universe,—in order to plant the heavens and found the
earth; though the reply emphatically concludes with
the restoration of Israel, as if this were the cardinal
moment in the universal regeneration,—and to say to
Zion, My people art thou. The close conjunction, into
which this verse brings words already applied to Israel
as the Servant and words which describe Israel as
Zion, is another of the many proofs we are discovering
of the impossibility of breaking up "Second Isaiah" into
poems, the respective subjects of which are one or
other of these two personifications of the nation.Cf. p. 315.
But the desire of the prophet speeds on before the
returning exiles to the still prostrate and desolate city.
He sees her as she fell, the day the Lord made her
drunken with the cup of His wrath. With urgent
passion he bids her awake, seeking to rouse her now
by the horrid tale of her ruin, and now by his exultation
in the vengeance the Lord is preparing for His
enemies (li. 17-23). In a second strophe he addresses
her in conscious contrast to his taunt-song against Babel.
Babel was to sit throneless and stripped of her splendour
in the dust; but Zion is to shake off the
dust, rise, sit on her throne and assume her majesty.
For God hath redeemed His people. He could not
tolerate longer the exulting of their tyrants, the blasphemy
of His name (lii. 1-6). All through these two strophes
the strength of the passion, the intolerance of further
captivity, the fierceness of the exultation of vengeance,
are very remarkable.
But from the ruin of his city, which has so stirred
and made turbulent his passion, the prophet lifts his hot
eyes to the dear hills that encircle her; and peace takes
the music from vengeance. Often has Jerusalem seen
rising across that high margin the spears and banners
of her destroyers. But now the lofty skyline is the
lighting place of hope. Fit threshold for so Divine an
arrival, it lifts against heaven, dilated and beautiful,
the herald of the Lord's peace, the publisher of
salvation.
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that
bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation!
Hark thy watchmen! they lift up the voice, together they
break into singing; yea, eye to eye do they see when
Jehovah returneth to Zion.
The last verse is a picture of the thronging of the
city of the prophets by the prophets again—so close,
that they shall look each other in the face. For this is
the sense of the Hebrew to see eye in eye, and not that
meaning of reconciliation and agreement which the
phrase has come to have in colloquial English. The
Exile had scattered the prophets and driven them into
hiding. They had been only voices to one another,
like Jeremiah and Ezekiel with the desert between the
two of them, or like our own prophet, anonymous
and unseen. But upon the old gathering-ground, the
narrow but the free and open platform of Jerusalem's
public life, they should see each other face to face, they
should again be named and known. Break out, sing
together, ye wastes of Jerusalem: for Jehovah has comforted
His people, has redeemed Jerusalem. Bared has
Jehovah His holy arm to the eyes of all the nations, and
see shall all ends of the earth the salvation of our God.
Thus the prophet, after finishing his long argument
and dispelling the doubts that still lingered at its close,
returns to the first high notes and the first dear subject
with which he opened in ch. xl. In face of so open a
way, so unclouded a prospect, nothing remains but to
repeat, and this time with greater strength than before,
the call to leave Babylon:
Draw off, draw off, come forth from there, touch not the unclean;
Come forth from her midst; be ye clean that do bear the vessels of Jehovah.
Nay, neither with haste shall ye forth, nor in flight shall ye go,
For Jehovah goeth before thee, and Israel's God is thy rearward.
CHAPTER XXII.
ON THE EVE OF RETURN.
Isaiah liv.-lvi. 8.
One of the difficult problems of our prophecy
is the relation and grouping of chs. liv.-lix.
It is among them that the unity of "Second Isaiah,"
which up to this point we have seen no reason to doubt,
gives way. Ch. lvi. 9-lvii. is evidently pre-exilic, and
so is ch. lix. But in chs. liv., lv., and lvi. 1-8 we have
three addresses, evidently dating from the Eve of the
Return. We shall, therefore, treat them together.
I. The Bride the City (ch. liv.).
We have already seen why there is no reason for
the theory that ch. liv. may have followed immediately
on ch. lii. 12.Cf. pp. 336 ff.
And from Calvin to Ewald and
Dillmann, critics have all felt a close connection
between ch. lii. 13-liii. and ch. liv. "After having
spoken of the death of Christ," says Calvin, "the
prophet passes on with good reason to the Church:
that we may feel more deeply in ourselves what is the
value and efficacy of His death." Similar in substance,
if not in language, is the opinion of the latest critics,
who understand that in ch. liv. the prophet intends to
picture that full redemption which the Servant's work,
culminating in ch. liii., could alone effect. Two keywords
of ch. liii. had been a seed and many. It is the
seed and the many whom ch. liv. reveals. Again, there
may be, in ver. 17 of ch. liv., a reference to the earlier
picture of the Servant in ch. l., especially ver. 8. But
this last is uncertain; and, as a point on the other side,
there are the two different meanings, as well as the two
different agents, of righteousness in ch. liii. 11, My
Servant shall make many righteous, and in ch. liv. 17,
their righteousness which is of Me, saith Jehovah. In
the former, righteousness is the inward justification;
in the latter, it is the external historical vindication.
In ch. liv. the people of God are represented under
the double figure, with which the Book of Revelation
has made us familiar, of Bride and City. To imagine
a Nation or a Land as the spouse of her God is a habit
natural to the religious instinct at all times; the land
deriving her fruitfulness, the nation her standing and
prestige, from her connection with the Deity. But in
ancient times this figure of wedlock was more natural
than it is among us, in so far as the human man and
wife did not then occupy that relation of equality, to
which it has been the progress of civilisation to approximate;
but the husband was the lord of his wife,—as
much her Baal as the god was the Baal of the people,—her
law-giver, in part her owner, and with full
authority over the origin and subsistence of the bond
between them. Marriage thus conceived was a figure
for religion almost universal among the Semites. But
as in the case of so many other religious ideas common
to the Hebrews and their heathen kin, this one, when
adopted by the prophets of Jehovah, underwent a
thorough moral reformation. Indeed, if one were asked
to point out a supreme instance of the operation of that
unique conscience of the religion of Jehovah, which was
spoken of before,See pp. 247 ff.
one would have little difficulty in
selecting its treatment of the idea of religious marriage.
By the neighbours of Israel, the marriage of a god to
his people was conceived with a grossness of feeling
and illustrated by a foulness of ritual, which thoroughly
demoralised the people, affording, as they did, to licentiousness
the example and sanction of religion. So debased
had the idea become, and so full of temptation to
the Hebrews were the forms in which it was illustrated
among their neighbours, that the religion of Israel might
justly have been praised for achieving a great moral
victory in excluding the figure altogether from its
system. But the prophets of Jehovah dared the
heavier task of retaining the idea of religious marriage,
and won the diviner triumph of purifying and
elevating it. It was, indeed, a new creation. Every
physical suggestion was banished, and the relation was
conceived as purely moral. Yet it was never refined
to a mere form or abstraction. The prophets fearlessly
expressed it in the warmest and most familiar terms of
the love of man and woman. With a stern and absolute
interpretation before them in the Divine law, of the
relations of a husband to his wife, they borrowed from
that only so far as to do justice to the Almighty's
initiative and authority in His relation with mortals;
and they laid far more emphasis on the instinctive and
spontaneous affections, by which Jehovah and Israel
had been drawn together. Thus, among a people
naturally averse to think or to speak of God as loving"Das eigentliche Wort 'Liebe' kommt im A. T. von Gott fast gar
nicht vor,—und wo es, bei einem späten Schriftsteller, vorkommt, ist es Bezeichnung seiner besondren Bundes-liebe zu Israel, deren
natürliche Kehrseite der Hass gegen die feindlichen Völker ist."—Schultz,
A. T. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 548.
men, this close relation to Him of marriage was expressed
with a warmth, a tenderness and a delicacy,
that exceeded even the two other fond forms in which
the Divine grace was conveyed,—of a father's and of a
mother's love.
In this new creation of the marriage bond between
God and His church, three prophets had a large share,—Hosea,
Ezekiel and the author of "Second Isaiah."
To Hosea and Ezekiel it fell to speak chiefly of unpleasant
aspects of the question,—the unfaithfulness of
the wife and her divorce; but even then, the moral
strength and purity of the Hebrew religion, its Divine
vehemence and glow, were only the more evident for
the unpromising character of the materials with which
it dealt. To our prophet, on the contrary, it fell to
speak of the winning back of the wife, and he has
done so with wonderful delicacy and tenderness. Our
prophet, it is true, has not one, but two, deep feelings
about the love of God: it passes through him as the
love of a mother, as well as the love of a husband.
But while he lets us see the former only twice or thrice,
the latter may be felt as the almost continual undercurrent
of his prophecy, and often breaks to hearing,
now in a sudden, single ripple of a phrase, and now in a
long tide of marriage music. His lips open for Jehovah
on the language of wooing,—speak ye to the heart of
Jerusalem; and though his masculine figure for Israel
as the Servant keeps his affection hidden for a time,
this emerges again when the subject of Service is
exhausted, till Israel, where she is not Jehovah's
Servant, is Jehovah's Bride. In the series of passages
on Zion, from ch. xlix. to ch. lii., the City is the Mother
of His children, the Wife who though put away has
never been divorced. In ch. lxii. she is called Hephzi-Bah,
My-delight-is-in-her, and Beulah, or Married,—for
Jehovah delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.
For as a youth marrieth a maiden, thy sons shall marry
thee; and with the joy of a bridegroom over a bride, thy
God shall joy over thee.The reserve of this—the limitation of the relation to one of
feeling—is remarkable in contrast to the more physical use of the
same figure in other religions.
But it is in the chapter now
before us that the relation is expressed with greatest
tenderness and wealth of affection. Be not afraid, for
thou shalt not be shamed; and be not confounded, for
thou shalt not be put to the blush: for the shame of thy
youth thou shalt forget, and the reproach of thy widowhood
thou shalt not remember again. For thy Maker is thy
Husband, Jehovah of Hosts is His name; and thy
Redeemer the Holy of Israel, God of the whole earth is
He called. For as a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit
thou art called of Jehovah, even a wife of youth, when she
is cast off, saith thy God. For a small moment have I
forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.
In an egre of angerEgre, or sudden rush of the tide, or spate, or freshet. The
original is assonant: Beshesseph qesseph.
I hid My face a moment from thee,
but with grace everlasting will I have mercy upon thee,
saith thy Redeemer Jehovah.
In this eighth verse we pass from the figure of the
Bride to that of the City, which emerges clear through
flood and storm in ver. 11. Afflicted, Storm-beaten,
Uncomforted, Lo, I am setting in dark metal (antimony,
used by women for painting round the eyes, so as to
set forth their brilliance more) thy stones,—that they
may shine from this setting like women's eyes,—and I
will found thee in sapphires: as heaven's own foundation
vault is blue, so shall the ground-stones be of the
New Jerusalem. And I will set rubies for thy pinnacles,
and thy gates shall be sparkling stones,So literally; LXX. crystals, carbuncles or diamonds.
and all thy borders
stones of delight,—stones of joy, jewels. The rest of the
chapter paints the righteousness of Zion as her external
security and splendour.
II. A Last Call to the Busy (ch. lv.).
The second address upon the Eve of Return is
ch. lv. Its pure gospel and clear music render detailed
exposition, except on a single point, superfluous. One
can but stand and listen to those great calls to repentance
and obedience, which issue from it. What can
be added to them or said about them? Let one take
heed rather to let them speak to one's own heart! A
little exploration, however, will be of advantage among
the circumstances from which they shoot.
The commercial character of the opening figures of
ch. lv. arrests the attention. We saw that Babylon
was the centre of the world's trade, and that it was in
Babylon that the Jews first formed those mercantile
habits, which have become, next to religion, or in
place of religion, their national character. Born to be
priests, the Jews drew down their splendid powers of
attention, pertinacity and imagination from God upon
the world, till they equally appear to have been born
traders. They laboured and prospered exceedingly,
gathering property and settling in comfort. They
drank of the streams of Babylon, no longer made bitter
by their tears, and ceased to think upon Zion.
But, of all men, exiles can least forget that there is
that which money can never buy. Money and his
work can do much for the banished man,—feed him,
clothe him, even make for him a kind of second home,
and in time, by the payment of taxes, a kind of second
citizenship; but they can never bring him to the true
climate of his heart, nor win for him his real life. And
of all exiles the Jew, however free and prosperous in
his banishment he might be, was least able to find his
life among the good things—the water, the wine and
the milk—of a strange country. For home to Israel
meant not only home, but duty, righteousness and
God.Cf. Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. 440 ff.
God had created the heart of this people to
hunger for His word, and in His word they could
alone find the fatness of their soul. Success and comfort
shall never satisfy the soul which God has created for
obedience. The simplicity of the obedience that is here
asked from Israel, the emphasis that is laid upon mere
obedience as ringing in full satisfaction, is impressive:
hearken diligently, and eat that which is good; incline
your ear and come unto Me, hear and your soul shall
live. It suggests the number of plausible reasons,
which may be offered for every worldly and material
life, and to which there is no answer save the call of
God's own voice to obedience and surrender. To
obedience God then promises influence. In place of
being a mere trafficker with the nations, or, at best,
their purveyor and money-lender, the Jew, if he
obeys God, shall be the priest and prophet of the
peoples. This is illustrated in vv. 4b-6, the only hard
passage in the chapter. God will make His people like
David; whether the historical David or the ideal David
described by Jeremiah and Ezekiel is uncertain.The structure of this difficult passage is this. Ver. 3 states the
equation: the everlasting covenant with the people Israel=the sure,
unfailing favours bestowed upon the individual David. Vv. 4 and 5
unfold the contents of the equation. Each side of it is introduced by
a Lo. Lo, on the one side, what I have done to David; Lo, on the other,
what I will do to you. As David was a witness of peoples, a prince and
commander of peoples, so shalt thou call to them and make them obey
thee. This is clear enough. But who is David? The phrase the
favours of David suggests 2 Chron. vi. 42, remember the mercies of
David thy servant; and those in ver. 5 recall Psalm xviii. 43 f.: Thou
hast made me the head of nations; A people I know not shall serve me;
As soon as they hear of me they shall obey me; Strangers shall submit
themselves to me. Yet both Jeremiah and Ezekiel call the coming
Messiah David. Jer. xxx. 9: They shall serve Jehovah their God and
David their King. Ezek. xxxiv. 23: And I will set up a shepherd over
them, and he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I
Jehovah will be their God, and My servant David prince among them.
After these writers, our prophet could hardly help using the name
David in its Messianic sense, even though he also quoted (in ver. 5)
a few phrases recalling the historical David. But the question does
not matter much. The real point is the transference of the favours
bestowed upon an individual to the whole people.
God
will conclude an everlasting covenant with them, equivalent
to the sure favours showered on him. As God set
him for a witness (that is, a prophet) to the peoples, a
prince and a leader to the peoples, so (in phrases that recall
some used by David of himself in the eighteenth Psalm)
shall they as prophets and kings influence strange
nations—calling a nation thou knowest not, and nations
that have not known thee shall run unto thee. The effect of
the unconscious influence, which obedience to God, and
surrender to Him as His instrument, are sure to work,
could not be more grandly stated. But we ought not
to let another point escape our attention, for it has
its contribution to make to the main question of the
Servant. As explained in the note to a sentence above,
it is uncertain whether David is the historical king of that
name, or the Messiah still to come. In either case, he
is an individual, whose functions and qualities are transferred
to the people, and that is the point demanding
attention. If our prophecy can thus so easily speak of
God's purpose of service to the Gentiles passing from
the individual to the nation, why should it not also be
able to speak of the opposite process, the transference
of the service from the nation to the single Servant?
When the nation were unworthy and unredeemed, could
not the prophet as easily think of the relegation of their
office to an individual, as he now promises to their
obedience that that office shall be restored to them?
The next verses urgently repeat calls to repentance.
And then comes a passage which is grandly meant to
make us feel the contrast of its scenery with the toil,
the money-getting and the money-spending from which
the chapter started. From all that sordid, barren,
human strife in the markets of Babylon, we are led out
to look at the boundless heavens, and are told that as they
are higher than the earth, so are God's ways higher than our
ways, and God's reckonings than our reckonings; we are
led out to see the gentle fall of rain and snow that so easily
maketh the earth to bring forth and bud, and give seed to the
sower and bread to the eater, and are told that it is a
symbol of God's word, which we were called from our
vain labours to obey; we are led out to the mountains
and to the hills breaking before you into singing, and
to the free, wild natural treesEnglish version, trees of the field, but the field is the country
beyond the bounds of cultivation; and as beasts of the field means
wild beasts, so this means wild trees,—unforced, unaided by man's
labour.
tossing their unlopped
branches; we are led to see even the desert change, for
instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead
of the nettle shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to
Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall
not be cut off. Thus does the prophet, in his own
fashion, lead the starved worldly heart, that has sought
in vain its fulness from its toil, through scenes of
Nature, to that free omnipotent Grace, of which Nature's
processes are the splendid sacraments.
III. Proselytes and Eunuchs (ch. lvi. 1-8).
The opening verse of this small prophecy, My salvation
is near to come, and My righteousness to be revealed,
attaches it very closely to the preceding prophecy. If
ch. lv. expounds the grace and faithfulness of God
in the Return of His people, and asks from them only
faith as the price of such benefits, ch. lvi. 1-8 adds the
demand that those who are to return shall keep the law,
and extends their blessings to foreigners and others,
who though technically disqualified from the privileges
of the born and legitimate Israelite, had attached themselves
to Jehovah and His Law.
Such a prophecy was very necessary. The dispersion
of Israel had already begun to accomplish its
missionary purpose; pious souls in many lands had
felt the spiritual power of this disfigured people, and
had chosen for Jehovah's sake to follow its uncertain
fortunes. It was indispensable that these Gentile converts
should be comforted against the withdrawal of
Israel from Babylon, for they said, Jehovah will surely
separate me from His people, as well as against the time
when it might become necessary to purge the restored
community from heathen constituents.Neh. xiii.
Again, all the
male Jews could hardly have escaped the disqualification,
which the cruel custom of the East inflicted on
some, at least, of every body of captives. It is almost
certain that Daniel and his companions were eunuchs,
and if they, then perhaps many more. But the Book of
Deuteronomy had declared mutilation of this kind to be
a bar against entrance to the assembly of the Lord. It
is not one of the least interesting of the spiritual results
of the Exile, that its necessities compelled the abrogation
of the letter of such a law. With a freedom that foreshadows
Christ's own expansion of the ancient strictness,
and in words that would not be out of place in the
Sermon on the Mount, this prophecy ensures to pious
men, whom cruelty had deprived of the two things
dearest to the heart of an Israelite,—a present place,
and a perpetuation through his posterity, in the community
of God,—that in the new temple a monumentThe original is a hand; a term applied (perhaps because it consisted
of tapering stones) to an index, or monument of victory, 1 Sam.
xv. 12; or to a sepulchral monument, 2 Sam. xviii. 18.
and a name should be given, better and more enduring
than sons or daughters. This prophecy is further noteworthy
as the first instance of the strong emphasis
which "Second Isaiah" lays upon the keeping of the
Sabbath, and as first calling the temple the House of
Prayer. Both of these characteristics are due, of
course, to the Exile, the necessities of which prevented
almost every religious act save that of keeping fasts
and Sabbaths and serving God in prayer. On our
prophet's teaching about the Sabbath there will be
more to say in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE REKINDLING OF THE CIVIC CONSCIENCE.
Isaiah lvi. 9-lix.
It was inevitable, as soon as their city was again
fairly in sight, that there should re-awaken in the
exiles the civic conscience; that recollections of those
besetting sins of their public life, for which their city
and their independence were destroyed, should throng
back upon them; that in prospect of their again becoming
responsible for the discharge of justice and
other political duties, they should be reminded by the
prophet of their national faults in these respects, and of
God's eternal laws concerning them. If we keep this
in mind, we shall understand the presence in "Second
Isaiah" of the group of prophecies at which we have
now arrived, ch. lvi. 9-lix. Hitherto our prophet, in
marked contrast to Isaiah himself, has said almost nothing
of the social righteousness of his people. Israel's
righteousness, as we saw in our fourteenth chapter, has
had the very different meaning for our prophet of her
pardon and restoration to her rights. But in ch. lvi. 9-lix.
we shall find the blame of civic wrong, and of other
kinds of sin of which Israel could only have been guilty
in her own land; we shall listen to exhortations to
social justice and mercy like those we heard from
Isaiah to his generation. Yet these are mingled with
voices, and concluded with promises, which speak of
the Return as imminent. Undoubtedly exilic elements
reveal themselves. And the total impression is that
some prophet of the late Exile, and probably the
one, whom we have been following, collected these
reminiscences of his people's sin in the days of their
freedom, in order to remind them, before they went
back again to political responsibility, why it was they
were punished and how apt they were to go astray.
Believing this to be the true solution of a somewhat
difficult problem, we have ventured to gather this
mixed group of prophecies under the title of the
Rekindling of the Civic Conscience. They fall into
three groups: first, ch. lvi. 9-lvii.; second, ch. lviii.;
third, ch. lix. We shall see that, while there is no
reason to doubt the exilic origin of the whole of the
second, the first and third of these are mainly occupied
with the description of a state of things that prevailed
only before the Exile, but they contain also exilic
observations and conclusions.
I. A Conscience but no God (ch. lvi. 9-lvii.).
This is one of the sections which almost decisively
place the literary unity of "Second Isaiah" past
possibility of belief. If ch. lvi. 1-8 flushes with the
dawn of restoration, ch. lvi. 9-lvii. is very dark with
the coming of the night, which preceded that dawn.
Almost none dispute, that the greater part of this prophecy
must have been composed before the people left
Palestine for exile. The state of Israel, which it pictures,
recalls the descriptions of Hosea, and of the
eleventh chapter of Zechariah. God's flock are still
in charge of their own shepherds (lvi. 9-12),—a description
inapplicable to Israel in exile. The shepherds
are sleepy, greedy, sensual, drunkards,—victims to the
curse, against which Amos and Isaiah hurled their
strongest woes. That sots like them should be spared
while the righteous die unnoticed deaths (lvii. 1) can
only be explained by the approaching judgement. No
man considereth that the righteous is taken away from the
Evil. The Evil cannot mean, as some have thought,
persecution,—for while the righteous are to escape it
and enter into peace, the wicked are spared for it.
It must be a Divine judgement,—the Exile. But he
entereth peace, they rest in their beds, each one that hath
walked straight before him,—for the righteous there is the
peace of death and the undisturbed tomb of his fathers.
What an enviable fate when emigration, and dispersion
through foreign lands, are the prospect of the
nation! Israel shall find her pious dead when she
returns! The verse recalls that summons in Isa. xxvi.,
in which we heard the Mother Nation calling upon the
dead she had left in Palestine to rise and increase her
returned numbers.
Then the prophet indicts the nation for a religious
and political unfaithfulness, which we know was their
besetting sin in the days before they left the Holy
Land. The scenery, in whose natural objects he
describes them seeking their worship, is the scenery
of Palestine, not of Mesopotamia,—terebinths and wâdies,
and clefts of the rocks, and smooth stones of the wâdies.
The unchaste and bloody sacrifices with which he
charges them bear the appearance more of Canaanite
than of Babylonian idolatry. The humiliating political
suits which they paid—thou wentest to the king
with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst
send thine ambassadors afar off, and didst debase thyself
even unto Sheol (ver. 9)—could not be attributed to a
captive people, but were the sort of degrading diplomacy
that Israel learned from Ahaz. While the painful
pursuit of strength (ver. 10), the shabby political
cowardice (ver. 11), the fanatic sacrifice of manhood's
purity and childhood's life (ver. 5), and especially the
evil conscience which drove their blind hearts through
such pain and passion in a sincere quest for righteousness
(ver. 12), betray the age of idolatrous reaction
from the great Puritan victory of 701,—a generation
exaggerating all the old falsehood and fear, against
which Isaiah had inveighed, with the new conscience
of sin which his preaching had created.See vol. i., pp. 363, 364.
The dark
streak of blood and lust that runs through the condemned
idolatry, and the stern conscience which only
deepens its darkness, are sufficient reasons for dating
the prophecy after 700. The very phrases of Isaiah,
which it contains, have tempted some to attribute it
to himself. But it certainly does not date from such
troubles as brought his old age to the grave. The evil,
which it portends, is, as we have seen, no persecution
of the righteous, but a Divine judgement upon the whole
nation,—presumably the Exile. We may date it, therefore,
some time after Isaiah's death, but certainly—and
this is the important point—before the Exile. This,
then, is an unmistakably pre-exilic constituent of
"Second Isaiah."
Another feature corroborates this prophecy's original
independence of its context. Its style is immediately
and extremely rugged. The reader of the original feels
the difference at once. It is the difference between
travel on the level roads of Mesopotamia, with their
unchanging horizons, and the jolting carriage of the
stony paths of Higher Palestine, with their glimpses
rapidly shifting from gorge to peak. But the remarkable
thing is that the usual style of "Second Isaiah" is
resumed before the end of the prophecy. One cannot
always be sure of the exact verse at which such a
literary change takes place. In this case some feel it
as soon as the middle of ver. 11, with the words, Have
not I held My peace even of long time, and thou fearest
Me not?So Ewald, Cheyne and Briggs. Ewald takes lvi. 9-lvii. 11a as an
interruption, borrowed from an earlier prophet in a time of persecution,
of the exilic prophecy, which goes on smoothly from lvi. 8 to lvii.
11b. We have seen that it is an error to suppose that lvi. 9-lvii.
rose from a time of persecution.
It is surely more sensible, however, after
ver. 14, in which we are arrested in any case by an
alteration of standpoint. In ver. 14 we are on in the
Exile again—before ver. 14 I cannot recognise any
exilic symptom—and the way of return is before us.
And one said,—it is the repetition to the letter of the
strange anonymous voice of ch. xl. 6,—and one said,
Cast ye up, Cast ye up, open up, or sweep open, a way, lift
the stumbling block from the way of My people. And
now the rhythm has certainly returned to the prevailing
style of "Second Isaiah," and the temper is again
that of promise and comfort.
These sudden shiftings of circumstance and of
prospect are enough to show the thoughtful reader
of Scripture how hard is the problem of the unity
of "Second Isaiah." On which we make here no further
remark, but pass at once to the more congenial task
of studying the great prophecy, vv. 14-21, which rises
one and simple from these fragments as does some
homogeneous rock from the confusing débris of several
geological epochs.
For let the date and original purpose of the fragments
we have considered be what they may, this prophecy
has been placed as their conclusion with at least some
rational, not to say spiritual, intention. As it suddenly
issues here, it gathers up, in the usual habit of Scripture,
God's moral indictment of an evil generation,
by a great manifesto of the Divine nature, and a
sharp distinction of the characters and fate of men.
Now, of what kind is the generation, to whose indictment
this prophecy comes as a conclusion? It is a
generation which has lost its God, but kept its conscience.
This sums up the national character which
is sketched in vv. 3-13. These Israelites had lost
Jehovah and His pure law. But the religion into
which they fell back was not, therefore, easy or cold.
On the contrary, it was very intense and very stern.
The people put energy in it, and passion, and sacrifice
that went to cruel lengths. Belief, too, in its practical
results kept the people from fainting under the weariness
in which its fanaticism reacted. In the length
of thy way thou wast wearied, yet thou didst not say, It
is hopeless; life for thy hand—that is, real, practical
strength—didst thou find: wherefore thou didst not
break down. And they practised their painful and
passionate idolatry with a real conscience. They were
seeking to work out righteousness for themselves
(ver. 12 should be rendered: I will expose your righteousness,
the caricature of righteousness which you
attempt). The most worldly statesman among them
had his sincere ideal for Israel, and intended to
enable her, in the possession of her land and holy
mountain, to fulfil her destiny (ver. 13). The most
gross idolater had a hunger and thirst after righteousness,
and burnt his children or sacrificed his purity
to satisfy the vague promptings of his unenlightened
conscience.
It was indeed a generation which had kept its
conscience, but lost its God; and what we have in vv.
15 to 21 is just the lost and forgotten God speaking
of His Nature and His Will. They have been worshipping
idols, creatures of their own fears and cruel
passions. But He is the high and lofty one—two of
the simplest adjectives in the language, yet sufficient
to lift Him they describe above the distorting mists
of human imagination. They thought of the Deity
as sheer wrath and force, scarcely to be appeased by
men even through the most bloody rites and passionate
self-sacrifice. But He says, The high and the holy I
dwell in, yet with him also that is contrite and humble
of spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive
the heart of the contrite ones. The rest of the chapter
is to the darkened consciences a plain statement of
the moral character of God's working. God always
punishes sin, and yet the sinner is not abandoned.
Though he go in his own way, God watches his ways
in order to heal him. I create the fruit of the lips,
that is, thanksgivings: Peace, peace, to him that is far
off and him that is near, saith Jehovah, and I will heal
him. But, as in ch. xlviii. and ch. l., a warning comes
last, and behind the clear, forward picture of the
comforted and restored of Jehovah we see the weird
background of gloomy, restless wickedness.
II. Social Service and the Sabbath (ch. lviii.).
Several critics (including Professor Cheyne) regard
ch. lviii. as post-exilic, because of its declarations
against formal fasting and the neglect of social charity,
which are akin to those of post-exilic prophets like
Zechariah and Joel, and seem to imply that the people
addressed are again independent and responsible for the
conduct of their social duties. The question largely
turns on the amount of social responsibility we conceive
the Jews to have had during the Exile. Now we
have seen that many of them enjoyed considerable
freedom: they had their houses and households; they
had their slaves; they traded and were possessed of
wealth. They were, therefore, in a position to be
chargeable with the duties to which ch. lviii. calls
them. The addresses of Ezekiel to his fellow-exiles
have many features in common with ch. lviii., although
they do not mention fasting; and fasting itself was a
characteristic habit of the exiles, in regard to which it
is quite likely they should err just as is described in
ch. lviii. Moreover, there is a resemblance between
this chapter's comments upon the people's enquiries of
God (ver. 2) and Ezekiel's reply when certain of the
elders of Israel came to enquire of Jehovah.Ezek. xxi.; cf. xxxiii. 30 f.
And
again vv. 11 and 12 of ch. lviii. are evidently addressed
to people in prospect of return to their own
land and restoration of their city. We accordingly
date ch. lviii. from the Exile. But we see no reason
to put it as early as Ewald does, who assigns it to a
younger contemporary of Ezekiel. There is no
linguistic evidence that it is an insertion, or from
another hand than that of our prophet. Surely there
were room and occasion for it in those years which
followed the actual deliverance of the Jews by Cyrus,
but preceded the restoration of Jerusalem,—those
years in which there were no longer political problems
in the way of the people's return for our prophet to
discuss, and therefore their moral defects were all the
more thrust upon his attention; and especially, when
in the near prospect of their political independence,
their social sins roused his apprehensions.
Those, who have never heard an angry Oriental speak,
have no idea of what power of denunciation lies in the
human throat. In the East, where a dry climate and
large leisure bestow upon the voice a depth and suppleness
prevented by our vulgar haste of life and teasing
weather, men have elaborated their throat-letters to a
number unknown in any Western alphabet; and upon
the lowest notes they have put an edge, that comes up
shrill and keen through the roar of the upper gutturals,
till you feel their wrath cut as well as sweep you before
it. In the Oriental throat, speech goes down deep
enough to echo all the breadth of the inner man; while
the possibility of expressing within so supple an organ
nearly every tone of scorn or surprise preserves anger
from that suspicion of spite or of exhaustion, which is
conveyed by too liberal a use of the nasal or palatal
letters. Hence in the Hebrew language to call with the
throat means to call with vehemence, but with self-command;
with passion, yet as a man; using every
figure of satire, but earnestly; neither forgetting wrath
for mere art's sake, nor allowing wrath to escape the
grip of the stronger muscles of the voice. It is to lift
the voice like a trumpet,—an instrument, which, with
whatever variety of music its upper notes may indulge
our ears, never suffers its main tone of authority to
drop, never slacks its imperative appeal to the wills of
the hearers.
This is the style of the chapter before us, which opens
with the words, Call with the throat, spare not, lift up
thy voice like a trumpet. Perhaps no subject more
readily provokes to satire and sneers than the subject
of the chapter,—the union of formal religion and
unlovely life. And yet in the chapter there is not a
sneer from first to last. The speaker suppresses the
temptation to use his nasal tones, and utters, not as the
satirist, but as the prophet. For his purpose is not to
sport with his people's hypocrisy, but to sweep them out
of it. Before he has done, his urgent speech, that has
not lingered to sneer nor exhausted itself in screaming,
passes forth to spend its unchecked impetus upon final
promise and gospel. It is a wise lesson from a master
preacher, and half of the fruitlessness of modern preaching
is due to the neglect of it. The pulpit tempts men
to be either too bold or too timid about sin; either to
whisper or to scold; to euphemise or to exaggerate;
to be conventional or hysterical. But two things are
necessary,—the facts must be stated, and the whole
manhood of the preacher, and not only his scorn or
only his anger or only an official temper, brought to
bear upon them. Call with the throat, spare not, like a
trumpet lift up thy voice, and publish to My people their
transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sin.
The subject of the chapter is the habits of a religious
people,—the earnestness and regularity of their religious
performance contrasted with the neglect of their social
relations. The second verse, "the descriptions in which
are evidently drawn from life,"Delitzsch.
tells us that the people
sought God daily, and had a zeal to know His ways, as
a nation that had done righteousness,—fulfilled the legal
worship,—and had not forsaken the lawMishpat and mishpatim, cf. p. 299.
of their God:
they ask of Me lawsMishpat and mishpatim, cf. p. 299.
of righteousness,—that is, a legal
worship, the performance of which might make them
righteous,—and in drawing near to God they take delight.
They had, in fact, a great greed for ordinances and
functions,Such as is also expressed by exiles in Psalms xlii., xliii. and lxiii.,
but there with what spiritual temper, here with what a hard legal
conception of righteousness.
—for the revival of such forms as they had
been accustomed to of old. Like some poor prostrate
rose, whose tendrils miss the props by which they were
wont to rise to the sun, the religious conscience and
affections of Israel, violently torn from their immemorial
supports, lay limp and windswept on a bare land, and
longed for God to raise some substitute for those altars
of Zion by which, in the dear days of old, they had lifted
themselves to the light of His face. In the absence of
anything better, they turned to the chill and shadowed
forms of the fasts they had instituted.For these see p. 61.
But they did
not thereby reach the face of God. Wherefore have
we fasted, say they, and Thou hast not seen? we have
humbled our souls, and Thou takest no notice? The
answer comes swiftly: Because your fasting is a mere
form! Lo, in the very day of your fast ye find a business
to do, and all your workmen you overtask. So formal
is your fasting that your ordinary eager, selfish, cruel
life goes on beside it just the same. Nay, it is worse
than usual, for your worthless, wearisome fast but puts
a sharper edge upon your temper: Lo, for strife and
contention ye fast, to smile with the fist of tyranny. And
it has no religious value: Ye fast not like as you are
fasting to-day so as to make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,—a day for a man to afflict
himself? Is it to droop his head like a rush, and grovel
on sackcloth and ashes? Is it this thou wilt call a fast
and a day acceptable to Jehovah? One of the great
surprises of the human heart is, that self-denial does
not win merit or peace. But assuredly it does not,
if love be not with it. Though I give my body to be
burned and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
Self-denial without love is self-indulgence. Is not this
the fast that I choose? to loosen the bonds of tyranny, to
shatter the joints of the yoke, to let the crushed go free,
and that ye burst every yoke. Is it not to break to the
hungry thy bread, and that thou bring home wandering
poor?Literally, the poor, the wandering. It was a frequent phrase in the
Exile: Lam. iii. 19, Remember mine affliction and my homelessness;
i. 7, Jerusalem in the day of her affliction and her homelessness. LXX.
αστεγοι, roofless.
when thou seest one naked that thou cover him,
and that from thine own flesh thou hide not thyself?
Then shall break forth like the morning thy light, and
thy healthProbably the fresh flesh which appears through a healing wound.
Made classical by Jeremiah, who uses it thrice of Israel,—in the famous
text, Is there no balm, etc., x. 22; and in xxx. 17; xxxiii. 6.
shall immediately spring. Yea, go before
thee shall thy righteousness, the glory of Jehovah shall
sweep thee on, literally, gather thee up. Then thou shalt
call, and Jehovah shall answer; thou shalt cry, and He
shall say, Here am I. If thou shalt put from thy midst
the yoke, and the putting forth of the finger, and the
speaking of naughtiness—three degrees of the subtlety of
selfishness, which when forced back from violent oppression
will retreat to scorn and from open scorn to backbiting,—and
if thou draw out to the hungry thy soul,—tear
out what is dear to thee in order to fill his need,
the strongest expression for self-denial which the Old
Testament contains,—and satisfy the soul that is afflicted,
then shall uprise in the darkness thy light, and thy gloom
shall be as the noonday. And guide thee shall Jehovah
continually, and satisfy thy soul in droughts, and thy limbs
make lissom; and thou shalt be like a garden well-watered,Jer. xxxi. 12.
and like a spring of water whose waters fail not. And
they that are of thee shall build the ancient ruins; the
foundations of generation upon generation thou shalt raise
up, and they shall be calling thee Repairer-of-the-Breach,
Restorer-of-Paths-for-habitation.Cf. Job xxiv. 13.
Thus their righteousness
in the sense of external vindication and stability,
which so prevails with our prophet, shall be due to
their righteousness in that inward moral sense in which
Amos and Isaiah use the word. And so concludes a
passage, which fills the earliest, if not the highest, place
in the glorious succession of Scriptures of Practical
Love, to which belong the Sixty-first chapter of Isaiah,
the Twenty-fifth of Matthew and the Thirteenth of First
Corinthians. Its lesson is,—to go back to the figure of
the draggled rose,—that no mere forms of religion, however
divinely prescribed or conscientiously observed, can
of themselves lift the distraught and trailing affections
of man to the light and peace of Heaven; but that
our fellow-men, if we cling to them with love and
with arms of help, are ever the strongest props by
which we may rise to God; that character grows rich
and life joyful, not by the performance of ordinances
with the cold conscience of duty, but by acts of service
with the warm heart of love.
And yet such a prophecy concludes with an exhortation
to the observance of one religious form, and places
the keeping of the Sabbath on a level with the practice
of love. If thou turn from the Sabbath thy foot, from
doing thine own business on My holy day;Cf. Amos viii. 5.
and callest the
Sabbath Pleasure,—the word is a strong one, Delight,
Delicacy, Luxury,—Holy of Jehovah, Honourable; and dost
honour it so as not to do thine own ways, or find thine
own business, or keep making talk: then thou shalt find
thy pleasure, or thy delight, in Jehovah,—note the parallel
of pleasure in the Sabbath and pleasure in Jehovah,—and
He shall cause thee to ride on the high places of the
land, and make thee to feed upon the portion of Jacob thy
father: yea, the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken.
Our prophet, then, while exalting the practical Service
of Man at the expense of certain religious forms,
equally exalts the observance of Sabbath; his scorn
for their formalism changes when he comes to it into a
strenuous enthusiasm of defence. This remarkable fact,
which is strictly analogous to the appearance of the
Fourth Commandment in a code otherwise consisting
of purely moral and religious laws, is easily explained.
Observe that our prophet bases his plea for Sabbath-keeping,
and his assurance that it must lead to prosperity,
not on its physical, moral or social benefits, but
simply upon its acknowledgment of God. Not only is
the Sabbath to be honoured because it is the Holy of
Jehovah and Honourable, but making it one's pleasure
is equivalent to finding one's pleasure in Him. The
parallel between these two phrases in ver. 13 and
ver. 14 is evident, and means really this: Inasmuch
as ye do it unto the Sabbath, ye do it unto Me. The
prophet, then, enforces the Sabbath simply on account
of its religious and Godward aspect. Now, let us remember
the truth, which he so often enforces, that the
Service of Man, however ardently and widely pursued,
can never lead or sum up our duty; that the Service of
God has, logically and practically, a prior claim, for
without it the Service of Man must suffer both in
obligation and in resource. God must be our first resort—must
have our first homage, affection and obedience.
But this cannot well take place without some amount
of definite and regular and frequent devotion to Him.
In the most spiritual religion there is an irreducible
minimum of formal observance. Now, in that wholesale
destruction of religious forms, which took place at the
overthrow of Jerusalem,See pp. 43 f.
there was only one institution,
which was not necessarily involved. The Sabbath did
not fall with the Temple and the Altar: the Sabbath
was independent of all locality; the Sabbath was possible
even in exile. It was the one solemn, public and
frequently regular form in which the nation could turn
to God, glorify Him and enjoy Him. Perhaps, too,
through the Babylonian fashion of solemnising the
seventh day, our prophet realised again the primitive
institution of the Sabbath, and was reminded that, since
seven days is a regular part of the natural year, the
Sabbath is, so to speak, sanctioned by the statutes of
Creation.
An institution, which is so primitive, which is so
independent of locality, which forms so natural a part
of the course of time, but which, above all, has twice—in
the Jewish Exile and in the passage of Judaism to
Christianity—survived the abrogation and disappearance
of all other forms of the religion with which it was
connected, and has twice been affirmed by prophecy or
practice to be an essential part of spiritual religion and
the equal of social morality,—has amply proved its
Divine origin and its indispensableness to man.
III. Social Crimes (ch. lix.).
Ch. lix. is, at first sight, the most difficult of all of
"Second Isaiah" to assign to a date.Ewald conceives chs. lviii., lix. to be the work of a younger contemporary
of Ezekiel, to which the chief author of "Second Isaiah" has
added words of his own: lviii. 12, lix. 21. The latter is evidently an
insertion; cf. change of person and of number, etc. Delitzsch puts
the passage down to the last decade of the Captivity, when for a little
time Cyrus had turned away from Babylon, and the Jews despaired
of his coming to save them.
For it evidently
contains both pre-exilic and exilic elements. On the
one hand, its charges of guilt imply that the people addressed
by it are responsible for civic justice to a degree,
which could hardly be imputed to the Jews in Babylon.
We saw that the Jews in the Exile had an amount of
social freedom and domestic responsibility which amply
accounts for the kind of sins they are charged with in
ch. lviii. But ver. 14 of ch. lix. reproaches them with
the collapse of justice in the very seat and public office
of justice, of which it was not possible they could have
been guilty except in their own land and in the days of
their independence. On the other hand, the promises
of deliverance in ch. lix. read very much as if they were
exilic. Judgement and righteousness are employed in
ver. 9 in their exilic sense,See pp. 219 ff.
and God is pictured exactly
as we have seen Him in other chapters of our prophet.
Are we then left with a mystery? On the contrary,
the solution is clear. Israel is followed into exile by
her old conscience. The charges of Isaiah and Ezekiel
against Jerusalem, while Jerusalem was still a "civitas,"
ring in her memory. She repeats the very words.
With truth she says that her present state, so vividly
described in vv. 9-11, is due to sins of old, of which,
though perhaps she can no longer commit them, she still
feels the guilt. Conscience always crowds the years
together; there is no difference of time in the eyes of
God the Judge. And it was natural, as we have said
already, that the nation should remember her besetting
sins at this time; that her civic conscience should
awake again, just as she was again about to become a
civitas.Another slight trace reveals the conglomerate nature of the
chapter. If, as the earlier verses indicate, it was Israel that sinned,
then it is the rebellious in Israel who should be punished. In ver.
18a, therefore, the adversaries or enemies ought to be Israelites. But
in 18b the foreign islands are included. The LXX. has not this addition.
Bredenkamp takes the words for an insertion. Yet the consequences
of Israel's sin, according to the chapter, are not so much the punishment
of the rebellious among the people as the delay of the deliverance
for the whole nation,—a deliverance which Jehovah is represented
as rising to accomplish, the moment the people express the sense of
their rebellion and are penitent. The adversaries and enemies of ver.
18, therefore, are the oppressors of Israel, the foreigners and heathen;
and 18b with its islands comes in quite naturally.
Note on mishpat and Ssedhaqah in ch. lix. This chapter is a
good one for studying the various meanings of mishpat. In ver. 4 the
verb shaphat is used in its simplest sense of going to law. In vv. 8 and
14 mishpat is a quality or duty of man. But in ver. 9 it is rather
what man expects from God, and what is far from man because of his
sins; it is judgement on God's side, or God's saving ordinance. In this
sense it is probably to be taken in ver. 15,—Ssedhaqah follows the same
parallel. This goes to prove that we have two distinct prophecies
amalgamated, unless we believe that a play upon the words is intended.
The whole of this chapter is simply the expansion
and enforcement of the first two verses, that keep
clanging like the clangour of a great, high bell: Behold,
Jehovah's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither
is His ear heavy that it cannot hear; but your iniquities
have been separators between you and your God, and your
sins have hidden His face from you, that He will not hear.
There is but one thing that comes between the human
heart and the Real Presence and Infinite Power of God;
and that one thing is Sin. The chapter labours to show
how real God is. Its opening verses talk of His Hand,
His Ear, His Face. And the closing verses paint Him
with the passions and the armour of a man,—a Hero in
such solitude and with such forward force, that no imagination
can fail to see the Vivid, Lonely Figure. And
He saw that there was no man, and He wondered that
there was none to interpose; therefore His own right arm
brought salvation unto Him, and His righteousness it
upheld Him. And He put on righteousness like a breastplate
and salvation for an helmet upon His head; and He
put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped
Himself in zeal like a robe. Do not let us suppose this
is mere poetry. Conceive what inspires it,—the great
truth that in the Infinite there is a heart to throb for
men and a will to strike for them. This is what the
writer desires to proclaim, and what we believe the
Spirit of God moved his poor human lips to give their
own shape to,—the simple truth that there is One, however
hidden He may be to men's eyes, who feels for
men, who feels hotly for men, and whose will is quick
and urgent to save them. Such an One tells His people,
that the only thing which prevents them from knowing
how real His heart and will are—the only thing which
prevents them from seeing His work in their midst—is
their sin.
The roll of sins to which the prophet attributes the
delay of the people's deliverance is an awful one; and
the man who reads it with conscience asleep might conclude
that it was meant only for a period of extraordinary
violence and bloodshed. Yet the chapter implies that
society exists, and that at least the forms of civilisation
are in force. Men sue one another before the usual
courts. But none sueth in righteousness or goeth to the
law in truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. All
these charges might be true of a society as outwardly
respectable as our own. Nor is the charge of bloodshed
to be taken literally. The Old Testament has so great
a regard for the spiritual nature of man, that to deny
the individual his rights or to take away the peace of
God from his heart, it calls the shedding of innocent
blood. Isaiah reminds us of many kinds of this moral
murder when he says, your hands are full of blood: seek
justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for
the widow. Ezekiel reminds us of others when he tells
how God spake to him, that if he warn not the wicked,
and the same wicked shall die in his iniquity, his blood will
I require at thy hand. And again a Psalm reminds us
of the time when the Lord maketh inquisition for blood, He
forgetteth not the cry of the poor.Isa. i. 17; Ezek. ii. 18; Psalm ix. 12.
This is what the Bible
calls murder and lays its burning words upon,—not
such acts of bloody violence as now and then make all
humanity thrill to discover that in the heart of civilisation
there exist men with the passions of the ape and the
tiger, but such oppression of the poor, such cowardice
to rebuke evil, such negligence to restore the falling,
such abuse of the characters of the young and innocent,
such fraud and oppression of the weak, as often
exist under the most respectable life, and employ the
weapons of a Christian civilisation in order to fulfil
themselves. We have need to take the bold, violent
standards of the prophets and lay them to our own
lives,—the prophets that call the man who sells his
honesty for gain, a harlot, and hold him blood-guilty
who has wronged, tempted or neglected his brother.
Do not let us suppose that these crimson verses of the
Bible may be passed over by us as not applicable to
ourselves. They do not refer to murderers or maniacs:
they refer to social crimes, to which we all are in perpetual
temptation, and of which we all are more or less
guilty,—the neglect of the weak, the exploitation of the
poor for our own profit, the soiling of children's minds,
the multiplying of temptation in the way of God's
little ones, the malice that leads us to blast another's
character, or to impute to his action evil motives for
which we have absolutely no grounds save the envy and
sordidness of our own hearts. Do not let us fail to
read all such verses in the clear light which John the
Apostle throws on them when he says: He that loveth
not abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a
murderer.
CHAPTER XXIV.
SALVATION IN SIGHT.
Isaiah lx.-lxiii. 7.
The deliverance from Babylon has long been certain,
since ch. xlviii.; all doubts in the way of Return
have been removed, ch. xlix.-lii. 12; the means for
the spiritual Restoration of the people have been sufficiently
found, ch. liii. and preceding chapters on the
Servant; Zion has been hailed from afar, ch. liv.;
last calls to leave Babylon have been uttered, ch. lv.;
last councils and comforts, lvi. 1-8; and the civic
conscience has been rekindled, ch. lvi. 9-lix. There
remains now only to take possession of the City herself;
to rehearse the vocation of the restored people;
and to realise all the hopes, fears, hindrances and
practical problems of the future. These duties occupy
the rest of our prophecy, chs. lx.-lxvi.
Ch. lx. is a prophecy as complete in itself as ch. liv.
The City, which in liv. was hailed and comforted from
afar, is in ch. lx. bidden rise and enjoy the glory that
has at last reached her. Her splendours, hinted at
in ch. liv., are seen in full and evident display. In
chs. lxi.-lxii. her prophet, her genius and representative,
rehearses to her his duties, and sets forth her place
among the peoples. And in ch. lxiii. 1-7 we have
another of those theophanies or appearances of the—Sole
Divine Author of His people's salvation, which,
abrupt and separate as if to heighten the sense of the
solitariness of their subject—occur at intervals throughout
our prophecy,—for instance, in ch. xlii., vv. 10-17,
and in ch. lix. 16-19. These three sections, ch. lx.,
chs. lxi.-lxii. and ch. lxiii. 1-7, we will take together in
this chapter of our volume.
I. Arise, Shine (ch. lx.)
The Sixtieth chapter of Isaiah is the spiritual counterpart
of a typical Eastern day, with the dust laid and
the darts taken out of the sunbeams,—a typical Eastern
day in the sudden splendour of its dawn, the completeness
and apparent permanence of its noon, the
spaciousness it reveals on sea and land, and the barbaric
profusion of life, which its strong light is sufficient
to flood with glory.
Under such a day we see Jerusalem. In the first
five verses of the chapter, she is addressed, as in ch.
liv., as a crushed and desolate woman. But her lonely
night is over, and from some prophet at the head of
her returning children the cry peals, Arise, shine, for
come hath thy light, and the glory of Jehovah hath risen
upon thee. In the East the sun does not rise; the
word is weak for an arrival almost too sudden for
twilight. In the East the sun leaps above the horizon.
You do not feel that he is coming, but that he is come.
This first verse is suggested by the swiftness with
which he bursts upon an Eastern city, and the shrouded
form does not, as in our twilight, slowly unwrap itself,
but shines at once, all plates and points of glory. Then
the figure yields: for Jerusalem is not merely one
radiant point in a world equally lighted by the sun, but
is herself Jehovah's unique luminary. For behold the
darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the
peoples, but upon thee shall Jehovah arise, and His glory
upon thee shall be seen. And nations shall come to thy light,
and kings to the brightness of thy rising. In the next two
verses it is again a woman who is addressed. Lift up
thine eyes round about and see, all of them have gathered,
have come to thee: thy sons from afar are coming, and thy
daughters are carried in the arms.Literally, on the side or hip, the Eastern method of carrying
children.
Then follows the
fairest verse in the chapter. Then thou shalt see and be
radiant, and thy heart shall throb and grow large; for
there shall be turned upon thee the sea's flood-tide, and
the wealth of the nations shall come to thee. The word
which the Authorised English version translated shall
flow together, and our Revised Version lightened, means
both of these. It is liquid light,—light that ripples and
sparkles and runs across the face; as it best appears
in that beautiful passage of the thirty-fourth Psalm,
they looked to Him and their faces were lightened. Here
it suggests the light which a face catches from sparkling
water. The prophet's figure has changed. The stately
mother of her people stands not among the ruins of her
city, but upon some great beach, with the sea in front,—the
sea that casts up all heaven's light upon her face
and drifts all earth's wealth to her feet, and her eyes
are upon the horizon with the hope of her who watches
for the return of children.
The next verses are simply the expansion of these
two clauses,—about the sea's flood and the wealth of
the Nations. Vv. 6-9 look first landward and then
seaward, as from Jerusalem's own wonderful position
on the high ridge between Asia and the sea: between
the gates of the East and the gates of the West. On
the one side, the city's horizon is the range of Moab and
Edom, that barrier, in Jewish imagination, of the hidden
and golden East across which pour the caravans here
pictured. Profusion of camels shall cover thee, young
camels of Midian and Ephah; all of them from Sheba
shall come: gold and frankincense shall they bring, and
the praises of Jehovah shall they publish. All the flocks
of Kedar shall be gathered to thee, the rams of Nebaioth
shall minister to thee: they shall come up with acceptance
on Mine altar, and the house of My glory will I glorify.
These were just what surged over Jordan from the
far countries beyond, of which the Jews knew little
more than the names here given,—tawny droves of
camels upon the greenness of Palestine like a spate of
the desert from which they poured; rivers of sheep
brimming up the narrow drove-roads to Jerusalem:—conceive
it all under that blazing Eastern sun. But
then turning to Judah's other horizon, marked by the
yellow fringe of sand and the blue haze of the sea
beyond, the prophet cries for Jehovah: Who are these
like a cloud that fly, and like doves to their windows?
Surely towards Me the IslesOr coasts. See pp. 109 ff.
are stretching, and ships of
Tarshish in the van, to bring thy sons from afar, their
silver and their gold with them, to the Name of Jehovah
of Hosts and to the Holy of Israel, for He hath glorified
thee. The poetry of the Old Testament has been said
to be deficient in its treatment of the sea; and certainly
it dwells more frequently, as was natural for the imagination
of an inland and a highland people to do, upon
the hills. But in what literature will you find passages
of equal length more suggestive of the sea than those
short pieces in which the Hebrew prophet sought to
render the futile rage of the world, as it dashed on the
steadfast will of God, by the roar and crash of the
ocean on the beach;Isa. xiv.; Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. 281 ff.
or painted a nation's prosperity
as the waves of a summer sea;Isa. xlviii. 18.
or described the long
coastlands as stretching out to God, and the white-sailed
ships coming up the horizon like doves to their
windows!
The rest of the chapter, from ver. 10 onwards, is occupied
with the rebuilding and adornment of Jerusalem,
and with the establishment of the people in righteousness
and peace. There is a very obvious mingling of
the material and the moral. The Gentiles are to become
subject to the Jew, but it is to be a voluntary
submission before the evidence of Jerusalem's spiritual
superiority. Nothing is said of a Messiah or a King.
Jerusalem is to be a commonwealth; and, while her
magistracy shall be Peace and her overseers Righteousness,
God Himself, in evident presence, is to be her
light and glory. Thus the chapter ends with God and
the People, and nothing else. God for an everlasting
light around, and the people in their land, righteous,
secure and growing very large. The least shall become
a thousand, and the smallest a strong nation: I Jehovah
will hasten it in its time.
This chapter has been put through many interpretations
to many practical uses:—to describe the ingathering
of the Gentiles to the Church (in the Christian year
it is the Lesson for Epiphany), to prove the doctrine
that the Church should live by the endowment of the
kingdoms of this world, and to enforce the duty of
costliness and magnificence in the public worship of
God. The glory of the Lebanon shall come unto thee, fir-tree,
plane-tree and sherbin together, to beautify the place
of My sanctuary, and I will make the place of My feet
glorious.
The last of these duties we may extend and qualify.
If the coming in of the Gentiles is here represented as
bringing wealth to the Church, we cannot help remembering
that the going out to the Gentiles, in order to
bring them in, means for us the spending of our wealth
on things other than the adornment of temples; and that,
besides the heathen, there are poor and suffering ones
for whom God asks men's gold, as He asked it in olden
days for the temple, that He may be glorified. Take
that last phrase:—And—with all that material wealth
which has flowed in from Lebanon, from Midian,
from Sheba—I will make the place of My feet glorious.
When this singular name was first uttered it was
limited to the dwelling-place of the Ark and Presence
of God, visible only on Mount Zion. But when God
became man, and did indeed tread with human feet
this world of ours, what were then the places of His
feet? Sometimes, it is true, the Temple, but only
sometimes; far more often where the sick lay, and the
bereaved were weeping,—the pool of Bethesda, the
death-room of Jairus' daughter, the way to the centurion's
sick servant, the city gateways where the beggars
stood, the lanes where the village folk had gathered,
against His coming, their deaf and dumb, their palsied
and lunatic. These were the places of His feet, who
Himself bare our sicknesses and carried our infirmities;
and these are what He would seek our wealth to make
glorious. They say that the reverence of men builds
now no cathedrals as of old; nay, but the love of man,
that Christ taught, builds far more of those refuges
and houses of healing, scatters far more widely those
medicines for the body, those instruments of teaching,
those means of grace, in which God is as much glorified
as in Jewish Temple or Christian Cathedral.
Nevertheless He, who set the place of His feet, which
He would have us to glorify, among the poor and the
sick, was He, who also did not for Himself refuse that
alabaster box and that precious ointment, which might
have been sold for much and given to the poor. The
worship of God, if we read Scripture aright, ought to be
more than merely grave and comely. There should
be heartiness and lavishness about it,—profusion and
brilliance. Not of material gifts alone or chiefly, gold
incense or rare wood, but of human faculties, graces
and feeling; of joy and music and the sense of beauty.
Take this chapter. It is wonderful, not so much for the
material wealth which it devotes to the service of God's
house, and which is all that many eyes ever see in it, as
for the glorious imagination and heart for the beautiful,
the joy in light and space and splendour, the poetry and
the music, which use those material things simply as
the light uses the wick, or as music uses the lyre, to
express and reveal itself. What a call this chapter is
to let out the natural wonder and poetry of the heart,
its feeling and music and exultation,—all that is within
us, as the Psalmist says,—in the Service of God. Why
do we not do so? The answer is very simple. Because,
unlike this prophet, we do not realise how present and
full our salvation is; because, unlike him, we do not
realise that our light has come, and so we will not arise
and shine.
II. The Gospel (chs. lxi.-lxii.)
The speaker in ch. lxi. is not introduced by name.
Therefore he may be the Prophet himself, or he may
be the Servant. The present expositor, while feeling
that the evidence is not conclusive against either of
these, and that the uncertainty is as great as in
ch. xlviii. 16,See p. 210, note. Some points of the speaker's description of
himself—for example, the gift of the Spirit and the anointing—suit
equally well any prophet, or the unique Servant. The lofty mission
and its great results are not too lofty or great for our prophet, for
Jeremiah received his office in terms as large. That the prophet has
not yet spoken at such length in his own person is no reason why he
should not do so now, especially as this is an occasion on which he
sums up and enforces the whole range of prophecy. It can, therefore,
very well be the prophet who speaks. On the other hand, to say
with Diestel that it cannot be the Servant because the personification
of the Servant ceases with ch. liii. is to beg the question. A stronger
argument against the case for the Servant is that the speaker does not
call himself by that name, as he does in other passages when he is
introduced; but this is not conclusive, for in l. 4-9 the Servant,
though he speaks, does not name himself. To these may be added
this (from Krüger), that the Servant's discourse never passes without
transition into that of God, as this speaker's in ver. 8, but the prophet's
discourse often so passes; and this, that בשׂר, קרא and נחם are often
used of the prophet, and not at all of the Servant. These are all the
points in the question, and it will be seen how inconclusive they are.
If any further proof of this were required, it would be found in the
fact that authorities are equally divided. There hold for the Servant
Calvin, Delitzsch, Cheyne (who previously took the other view),
Driver, Briggs, Nägelsbach and Orelli. But the Targums, Ewald,
Hitzig, Diestel, Dillmann, Bredenkamp and Krüger hold by the
prophet. Krüger's reasons, Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi.,
p. 76, are specially worthy of attention.
inclines to think that there is, on the
whole, less objection to its being the prophet who
speaks than to its being the Servant. See the appended
note. But it is not a very important question,
which is intended, for the Servant was representative of
prophecy; and if it be the prophet who speaks here, he
also speaks with the conscience of the whole function
and aim of the prophetic order. That Jesus Christ
fulfilled this programme does not decide the question
one way or the other; for a prophet so representative
was as much the antetype and foreshadowing of Christ
as the Servant himself was. On the whole, then, we
must be content to feel about this passage, what we
must have already felt about many others in our prophecy,
that the writer is more anxious to place before
us the whole range and ideal of the prophetic gift than
to make clear in whom this ideal is realised; and for
the rest Jesus of Nazareth so plainly fulfilled it, that it
becomes, indeed, a very minor question to ask whom the
writer may have intended as its first application.
If ch. lx. showed us the external glory of God's
people, ch. lxi. opens with the programme of their inner
mission. There we had the building and adornment
of the Temple, that Jehovah might glorify His people:
here we have the binding of broken hearts and the
beautifying of soiled lives, that Jehovah may be glorified.
But this inner mission also issues in external splendour,
in a righteousness, which is like the adornment of a
bride and like the beauty of spring.
The commission of the prophet is mainly to duties
we have already studied in preceding passages, both on
himself and on the Servant. It will be enough to point
out its special characteristics. The Spirit of my Lord
Jehovah is upon me, for that Jehovah hath anointed me
to bring good tidings to the afflicted; He hath sent me
to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim to the captive
liberty, and to the prisoners open ways;Literally, opening; but the word is always used of opening of the
eyes. Ewald renders open air, Dillmann hellen Blick.
to proclaim an
acceptable year for Jehovah, and a day of vengeance
for our God; to comfort all that mourn; to offer to
the mourners of Zion, to give unto them a crestAny insignia or ornament for the head.
for
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the mantle of praise
for the spirit of dimness;The same word as in xlii. 3, fading wick.
so that men may call them
Oaks-of-Righteousness, the planting of Jehovah, that He
may break into glory.
There are heard here all the keynotes of our prophet,
and clear, too, is that usual and favourite direction of his
thoughts from the inner and spiritual influences to the
outward splendour and evidence, the passage from the
comfort and healing of the heart to the rich garment,
the renown, and his own dearest vision of great forest
trees,—in short, Jehovah Himself breaking into glory.
But one point needs special attention.
The prophet begins his commission by these words,
to bring good tidings to the afflicted, and again says,
to proclaim to the captive. The afflicted, or the poor, as
it is mostly rendered, is the classical name for God's
people in Exile. We have sufficiently moved among
this people to know for what reason the bringing of good
tidings should here be reckoned as the first and most
indispensable service that prophecy could render them.
Why, in the life of every nation, there are hours, when
the factors of destiny, that loom largest at other times,
are dwarfed and dwindle before the momentousness of
a piece of news,—hours, when the nation's attitude in a
great moral issue, or her whole freedom and destiny,
are determined by telegrams from the seat of war. The
simultaneous news of Grant's capture of Vicksburg and
Meade's defeat of Lee, news that finally turned English
opinion, so long shamefully debating and wavering, to
the side of God and the slave; the telegrams from the
army, for which silent crowds waited in the Berlin
squares through the autumn nights of 1870, conscious
that the unity and birthright of Germany hung upon
the tidings,—are instances of the vital and paramount
influence in a nation's history of a piece of news. The
force of a great debate in Parliament, the expression of
public opinion through all its organs, the voice of a
people in a general election, things in their time as
ominous as the Fates, all yield at certain supreme
moments to the meaning of a simple message from
Providence. Now it was for news from God that Israel
waited in Exile; for good tidings and the proclamation
of fact. They had with them a Divine Law, but no
mere exposition of it could satisfy men who were
captives and waited for the command of their freedom.
They had with them Psalms, but no beauty of music
could console them: How should we sing the Lord's
song in a strange land? They had Prophecy, with its
assurance of the love and the power of their God; and
much as there was in it to help them to patience and
to hope, general statements were not enough for them.
They needed the testimony of a fact. Freedom and
Restoration had been promised them: they waited for
the proclamation that it was coming, for the good
news that it had arrived. Now our prophecy is mainly
this proclamation and good news of fact. The prophet
uses before all other words two,—to call or proclaim, kara,
and to tell good tidings, bisser. We found them in his
opening chapter: we find them again here when he
sums up his mission. A third goes along with them,
to comfort, naham, but it is the accompaniment, and
they are the burden, of his prophecy.
But good tidings and the proclamation meant so
much more than the mere political deliverance of Israel—meant
the fact of their pardon, the tale of their
God's love, of His provision for them, and of His
wonderful passion and triumph of salvation on their
behalf—that it is no wonder that these two words came
to be ever afterwards the classical terms for all speech
and prophecy from God to man. We actually owe the
Greek words of the New Testament for gospel and
preaching to this time of Israel's history. The Greek
term, from which we have evangel, evangelist and evangelise,
originally meant good news, but was first employed
in a religious sense in the Greek translation of our
prophecy. And our word "preach" is the heir, though
not the lineal descendant, through the Latin prædicare
and the Greek κηρυσσειν, of the word, which is translated
in ch. lx. of our prophet to proclaim, but in ch. xl. to
call or cry. It is to the Exile that we trace the establishment
among God's people of regular preaching side
by side with sacramental and liturgical worship; for it
was in the Exile that the Synagogue arose, whose pulpit
was to become as much the centre of Israel's life as was
the altar of the Temple. And it was from the pulpit
of a synagogue centuries after, when the preaching had
become dry exposition or hard lawgiving, that Jesus
re-read our prophecy and affirmed again the good news
of God.
What is true of nations is true of individuals. We
indeed support our life by principles; we develop it
by argument;—we cannot lay too heavy stress upon
philosophy and law. But there is something of far
greater concern than either argument or the abstract
principles from which it is developed; something that
our reason cannot find of itself, that our conscience but
increases our longing for. It is, whether certain things
are facts or not; whether, for instance, the Supreme
Power of the Universe is on the side of the individual
combatant for righteousness; whether God is love;
whether Sin has been forgiven; whether Sin and
Death have ever been conquered; whether the summer
has come in which humanity may put forth their shoots
conscious that all the influence of heaven is on their
side, or whether, there being no heavenly favours,
man must train his virtue and coax his happiness to
ripen behind shelters and in conservatories of his own
construction. Now Christ comes to us with the good
news of God that it is so. The supreme force in the
Universe is on man's side, and for man has won victory
and achieved freedom. God has proclaimed pardon.
A Saviour has overcome sin and death. We are free
to break from evil. The struggle after holiness is not
the struggle of a weakly plant in an alien soil and
beneath a wintry sky, counting only upon the precarious
aids of human cultivation; but summer has
come, the acceptable year of the Lord has begun, and
all the favour of the Almighty is on His people's side.
These are the good tidings and proclamation of God, and
to every man who believes them they must make an
incalculable difference in life.
As we have said, the prophet passes in the rest of
this prophecy from the spiritual influences of his mission
to its outward effects. The people's righteousness
is described in the external fashion, which we have
already studied in Chapter Fourteen; Zion's espousals to
Jehovah are celebrated, but into that we have also gone
thoroughly (pp. 398 ff.); the restoration of prophecy in
Jerusalem is described (lxii. 6-9), as in ch. lii. 8; and
another call is given to depart from Babylon and every
foreign city and come to Zion. This call coming now,
so long after the last, and when we might think that
the prophet had wholly left Babylon behind, need not
surprise us. For even though some Jews had actually
arrived at Zion, which is not certain, others were hanging
back in Babylon; and, indeed, such a call as this might
fitly be renewed for the next century or two: so many
of God's people continued to forget that their citizenship
was in Zion.
III. The Divine Saviour (ch. lxiii. 1-7).
Once again the prophet turns to hail, in his periodic
transport, the Solitary Divine Hero and Saviour of His
people.
That the writer of this piece is the main author of
"Second Isaiah" is probable, both because it is the
custom of the latter to describe at intervals the passion
and effort of Israel's Mighty One, and because several
of his well-known phrases meet us in this piece. The
speaker in righteousness mighty to save recalls ch. xlv.
19-24; and the day of vengeance and year of my redeemed
recalls ch. lxi. 2; and I looked, and there was no helper,
and I gazed, and there was none to uphold, recalls lix. 16.
The prophet is looking out from Jerusalem towards
Edom,—a direction in which the watchmen upon Zion
had often in her history looked for the return of her
armies from the punishment of Israel's congenital and
perpetual foe. The prophet, however, sees the prospect
filled up, not by the flashing van of a great army, but
by a solitary figure, without ally, without chariot, without
weapons, swaying on in the wealth of his strength.
The keynote of the piece is the loneliness of this Hero.
A figure is used, which, where battle would only have
suggested complexity, enthrals us with the spectacle of
solitary effort,—the figure of trampling through some
vast winefat alone. The Avenging Saviour of Israel
has a fierce joy in being alone: it is his new nerve
to effort and victory,—therefore mine own right arm, it
brought salvation to me. We see One great form in the
strength of one great emotion. My fury, it upheld me.
The interpretation of this chapter by Christians has
been very varied, and often very perverse. To use
the words of Calvin, "Violenter torserunt hoc caput
Christiani." But, as he sees very rightly, it is not
the Messiah nor the Servant of Jehovah, who is here
pictured, but Jehovah Himself. This Solitary is the
Divine Saviour of Israel, as in ch. xlii. 7 f. and in
ch. lix. 16 f. In Chapter Eight of this volume we spoke
so fully of the Passion of God, that we may now refer
to that chapter for the essential truth which underlies
our prophet's anthropomorphism, and claims our worship
where a short sight might only turn the heart away in
scorn at the savage and blood-stained surface. One or
two other points, however, demand our attention before
we give the translation.
Why does the prophet look in the direction of Edom
for the return of his God? Partly, it is to be presumed,
because Edom was as good a representative
as he could choose of the enemies of Israel other than
Babylon.See Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. 438-40.
But also partly, perhaps, because of the
names which match the red colours of his piece,—the
wine and the blood. Edom means red, and Bossrah is
assonant to Bôsser, a vinedresser.Cf. Krüger, Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi., pp. 154-55.
Lagarde has proposed to read מְאָדָּם, past participle, for מֵאֱדֹם and
מִבּצֵר for מִבָּצְרָה. Who is this that cometh dyed red, redder in his
garments than a vinedresser?
Fitter background
and scenery the prophet, therefore, could not have for
his drama of Divine Vengeance. But we must take
care, as Dillmann properly remarks, not to imagine that
any definite, historical invasion of Edom by Israel, or
other chastening instrument of Jehovah, is here intended.
It is a vision which the prophet sees of Jehovah
Himself: it illustrates the passion, the agony, the
unshared and unaided effort which the Divine Saviour
passes through for His people.
Further, it is only necessary to point out, that the
term in ver. 1 given as splendid by the Authorised
Version, which I have rendered sweeping, is literally
swelling, and is, perhaps, best rendered by sailing on
or swinging on. The other verb which the Revised
Version renders marching means swaying, or moving
the head or body from one side to another, in the pride
and fulness of strength. In ver. 2 like a wine-treader
is literally like him that treadeth in the pressing-house—Geth
(the first syllable of Gethsemane, the oil-press).
But ור ה in ver. 3 is the pressing-trough.
Who is this coming from Edom,
Raw-red his garments from Bossrah!
This sweeping on in his raiment,
Swaying in the wealth of his strength?
I that do speak in righteousness,
Mighty to save!
Wherefore is red on thy raiment,
And thy garments like to a wine-treader's?
A trough I have trodden alone,
Of the peoples no man was with me.
So I trod them down in my wrath,
And trampled them down in my fury;
Their life-blood sprinkled my garments,
And all my raiment I stained.
For the day of revenge in my heart,
And the year of my redeemed has come.
And I looked, and no helper;
I gazed, and none to uphold!
So my righteousness won me salvation;
And my fury, it hath upheld me.
So I stamp on the peoples in my wrath,
And make them drunk with my fury,
And bring down to earth their life-blood.
CHAPTER XXV.
A LAST INTERCESSION AND THE JUDGEMENT.
Isaiah lxiii. 7-lxvi.
We might well have thought, that with the section
we have been considering the prophecy of
Israel's Redemption had reached its summit and its end.
The glory of Zion in sight, the full programme of
prophecy owned, the arrival of the Divine Saviour
hailed in the urgency of His feeling for His people, in the
sufficiency of His might to save them,—what more, we
ask, can the prophecy have to give us? Why does it
not end upon these high notes? The answer is, the
salvation is indeed consummate, but the people are not
ready for it. On an earlier occasion, let us remember,
when our prophet called the nation to their Service of
God, he called at first the whole nation, but had then
immediately to make a distinction. Seen in the light of
their destiny, the mass of Israel proved to be unworthy;
tried by its strain, part immediately fell away. But
what happened upon that call to Service happens again
upon this disclosure of Salvation. The prophet realises
that it is only a part of Israel who are worthy of it. He
feels again the weight, which has been the hindrance of
his hope all through,—the weight of the mass of the
nation, sunk in idolatry and wickedness, incapable of
appreciating the promises. He will make one more effort
to save them—to save them all. He does this in an
intercessory prayer, ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv., in which he states
the most hopeless aspects of his people's case, identifies
himself with their sin, and yet pleads by the ancient
power of God that we all may be saved. He gets his
answer in ch. lxv., in which God sharply divides Israel
into two classes, the faithful and the idolaters, and
affirms that, while the nation shall be saved for the
sake of the faithful remnant, Jehovah's faithful servants
and the unfaithful can never share the same experience
or the same fate. And then the book closes with a
discourse in ch. lxvi., in which this division between
the two classes in Israel is pursued to a last terrible
emphasis and contrast upon the narrow stage of Jerusalem
itself. We are left, not with the realisation of
the prophet's prayer for the salvation of all the nations,
but with a last judgement separating its godly and
ungodly portions.
Thus there are three connected divisions in lxiii. 7-lxvi.
First, the prophet's Intercessory Prayer, ch. lxiii.
7-lxiv.; second, the Answer of Jehovah, ch. lxv.; and
third, the Final Discourse and Judgement, ch. lxvi.
I. The Prayer for the Whole People (ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv.).
There is a good deal of discussion as to both the date
and the authorship of this piece,—as to whether it comes
from the early or the late Exile, and as to whether it
comes from our prophet or from another. It must have
been written after the destruction and before the rebuilding
of the Temple; this is put past all doubt by these
verses: Thy holy people possessed it but a little while:
our adversaries have trodden down Thy sanctuary. Thy
holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion has become a
wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. The house of our
holiness and of our ornament, wherein our fathers praised
Thee, is become for a burning of fire, and all our delights
are for ruin.Ch. lxiii. 18 and lxiv. 10, 11. In the Hebrew ch. lxiv. begins a
verse later than it does in the English version.
This language has been held to imply that the disaster
to Jerusalem was recent, as if the city's conflagration
still flared on the national imagination, which in later
years of the Exile was impressed rather by the long, cold
ruins of the Holy Place, the haunt of wild beasts. But
not only is this point inconclusive, but the impression
that it leaves is entirely dispelled by other verses, which
speak of the Divine anger as having been of long continuance,
and as if it had only hardened the people
in sin; compare ch. lxiii. 17 and lxiv. 6, 7. There is
nothing in the prayer to show that the author lived in
exile, and accordingly the proposal has been made to
date the piece from among the first attempts at rebuilding
after the Return. To the present expositor this
seems to be certainly wrong. The man who wrote
vv. 11-15 of ch. lxiii. had surely the Return still before
him; he would not have written in the way he has done
of the Exodus from Egypt unless he had been feeling
the need of another exhibition of Divine Power of the
same kind. The prayer, therefore, must come from
pretty much the same date as the rest of our prophecy,—after
the Exile had long continued, but while the
Return had not yet taken place. Nor is there any
reason against attributing it to the same writer. It is
true the style differs from the rest of his work, but this
may be accounted for, as in the case of ch. liii., by the
change of subject. Most critics, who hold that we still
follow the same author, take for granted that some time
has elapsed since the prophet's triumphant strains in
chs. lx.-lxii. This is probable; but there is nothing to
make it certain. What is certain is the change of mood
and conscience. The prophet, who in ch. lx. had been
caught away into the glorious future of the people, is
here as utterly absorbed in their barren and doubtful
present. Although the salvation is certain, as he has
seen it, the people are not ready. The fact he has
already felt so keenly about them,—see ch. xlii., vv. 24,
25,—that their long discipline in exile has done the
mass of them no good, but evil, comes forcibly back upon
him (ch. lxiv. 5b ff.). Thou wast angry, and we sinned
only the more: in such a state we have been long,
and shall we be saved! The banished people are
thoroughly unclean and rotten, fading as a leaf, the
sport of the wind. But the prophet identifies himself
with them. He speaks of their sin as ours, of their
misery as ours. He takes of them the very saddest
view possible, he feels them all as sheer dead weight:
there is none that calleth on Thy name, that stirreth himself
up to take hold on Thee: for Thou hast hid Thy face
from us, and delivered us into the power of our iniquities.
But the prophet thus loads himself with the people in
order to secure, if he can, their redemption as a whole.
Twice he says in the name of them all, Doubtless Thou
art our Father. His great heart will not have one of
them left out; we all, he says, are the work of Thy hand,
we all are Thy people.
But this intention of the prayer will amply account
for any change of style we may perceive in the language.
No one will deny that it is quite possible for the same
man now to fling himself forward into the glorious vision
of his people's future salvation, and again to identify
himself with the most hopeless aspects of their present
distress and sin; and no one will deny that the same
man will certainly write in two different styles with
regard to each of these different feelings. Besides
which, we have seen in the passage the recurrence of
some of our prophecy's most characteristic thoughts.
We feel, therefore, no reason for counting the passage
to be by another hand than that which has mainly
written "Second Isaiah." It may be at once admitted
that he has incorporated in it earlier phrases, reminiscences
and echoes of language about the fall of Jerusalem
in use when the Lamentations were written. But this
was a natural thing for him to do in a prayer, in which
he represented the whole people and took upon himself
the full burden of their woes.
If such be the intention of chs. lxiii. 7-lxiv., then in
them we have one of the noblest passages of our prophet's
great work. How like he is to the Servant he pictured
for us! How his great heart fulfils the loftiest ideal of
Service: not only to be the prophet and the judge of
his people, but to make himself one with them in all
their sin and sorrow, to carry them all in his heart.
Truly, as his last words said of the Servant, he himself
bears the sin of many, and interposes for the transgressors.
Before we see the answer he gets, let us make clear
some obscure things and appreciate some beautiful ones
in his prayer.
It opens with a recital of Jehovah's ancient lovingkindness
and mercies to Israel. This is what perhaps
gives it connection with the previous section. In ch.
lxii. the prophet, though sure of the coming glory, wrote
before it had come, and urged upon the Lord's remembrancers
to keep no silence, and give Him no silence till He
establish and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
This work of remembrancing, the prophet himself takes
up in lxiii. 7: The lovingkindnesses of Jehovah I will
record, literally, cause to be remembered, the praises of
Jehovah, according to all that Jehovah hath bestowed upon
us. And then he beautifully puts all the beginnings of
God's dealings with His people in His trusting of them:
For He said, Surely they are My people, children that will
not deal falsely; so He became their Saviour. In all their
affliction He was afflicted, the Angel of His Face saved
them. This must be understood, not as an angel of the
Presence, who went out from the Presence to save the
people, but, as it is in other Scriptures, God's own
Presence, God Himself; and so interpreted, the phrase
falls into line with the rest of the verse, which is one
of the most vivid expressions that the Bible contains of
the personality of God.Semites had a horror of painting the Deity in any form. But
when God had to be imagined or described, they chose the form of
a man and attributed to Him human features. Chiefly they thought
of His face. To see His face, to come into the light of His countenance,
was the way their hearts expressed longing for the living God.
Exod. xxiii. 14; Psalm xxxi. 16, xxxiv. 16, lxxx. 7. But among the
heathen Semites God's face was separated from God Himself, and worshipped
as a separate god. In heathen Semitic religions there are a
number of deities who are the faces of others. But the Hebrew writers,
with every temptation to do the same, maintained their monotheism,
and went no farther than to speak of the angel of God's Face. And in
all the beautiful narratives of Genesis, Exodus and Judges about the
glorious Presence that led Israel against their enemies, the angel
of God's face is an equivalent of God Himself. Jacob said, the God
which hath fed me, and the angel which hath redeemed me, bless the lads.
In Judges this angel's word is God's Word.
In His love and in His pity He
redeemed them, and bare them, and carried them all the days
of old. Then he tells us how they disappointed and
betrayed this trust, ever since the Exodus, the days of
old. But they rebelled and grieved the Spirit of His holiness:
therefore He was turned to be their enemy, He Himself
fought against them. This refers to their history down to,
and especially during, the Exile: compare ch. xlii., vv.
24, 25. Then in their affliction they remembered the days
of old—the English version obscures the sequence here
by translating he remembered—and then follows the
glorious account of the Exodus. In ver. 13 the wilderness
is, of course, prairie, flat pasture-land; they were led as
smoothly as a horse in a meadow, that they stumbled not.
As cattle that come down into the valley—cattle coming
down from the hill sides to pasture and rest on the green,
watered plains—the Spirit of Jehovah caused them to rest:
so didst Thou lead Thy people to make Thyself a glorious
name. And then having offered such precedents, the
prophet's prayer breaks forth to a God, whom His
people feel no longer at their head, but far withdrawn
into heaven: Look down from heaven, and behold from
the habitation of Thy holiness and Thy glory: where is Thy
zeal and Thy mighty deeds? the surge of Thy bowels and
thy compassions are restrained towards me. Then he
pleads God's fatherhood to the nation, and the rest
of the prayer alternates between the hopeless misery
and undeserving sin of the people, and, notwithstanding,
the power of God to save as He did in times of old;
the willingness of God to meet with those who wait for
Him and remember Him; and, once more, His fatherhood,
and His power over them, as the power of the
potter over the clay.
Two points stand out from the rest. The Divine
Trust, from which all God's dealing with His people is
said to have started, and the Divine Fatherhood, which
the prophet pleads.
He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not
deal falsely: so He was their Saviour. The "surely" is
not the fiat of sovereignty or foreknowledge: it is the
hope and confidence of love. It did not prevail; it was
disappointed.
This is, of course, a profound acknowledgment of
man's free will. It is implied that men's conduct must
remain an uncertain thing, and that in calling men
God cannot adventure upon greater certainty than is implied
in the trust of affection. If one asks, What, then,
about God's foreknowledge, who alone knoweth the end
of a thing from the beginning, and His sovereign grace,
who chooseth whom He will? are you not logically
bound to these?—then it can only be asked in return,
Is it not better to be without logic for a little, if at
the expense of it we obtain so true, so deep a glimpse
into God's heart as this simple verse affords us?
Which is better for us to know—that God is Wisdom
which knows all, or Love that dares and ventures all?
Surely, that God is Love which dares and ventures all
with the worst, with the most hopeless of us. This is
what makes this single verse of Scripture more powerful
to move the heart than all creeds and catechisms. For
where these speak of sovereign will, and often mock
our affections with the bare and heavy (if legitimate)
sceptre they sway, this calls forth our love, honour and
obedience by the heart it betrays in God. Of what
unsuspicious trust, of what chivalrous adventure of
love, of what fatherly confidence, does it speak! What
a religion is this of ours in the power of which a man
may every morning rise and feel himself thrilled by the
thought that God trusts him enough to work with His
will for the day; in the power of which a man may
look round and see the sordid, hopeless human life
about him glorified by the truth, that for the salvation of
such God did adventure Himself in a love that laid
itself down in death. The attraction and power of such
a religion can never die. Requiring no painful thought
to argue it into reality, it leaps to light before the
natural affection of man's heart; it takes his instincts
immediately captive; it gives him a conscience, an
honour and an obligation. No wonder that our prophet,
having such a belief, should once more identify himself
with the people, and adventure himself with the weight
of their sin before God.
The other point of the prayer is the Fatherhood of
God, concerning which all that is needful to say here
is that the prophet, true to the rest of Old Testament
teaching on the subject, applies it only to God's relation
to the nation as a whole. In the Old Testament no one
is called the son of God except Israel as a people, or
some individual representative and head of Israel. And
even of such the term was seldom employed. This was
not because the Hebrew was without temptation to
imagine his physical descent from the gods, for neighbouring
nations indulged in such dreams for themselves
and their heroes; nor because he was without appreciation
of the intellectual kinship between the human and
the Divine, for he knew that in the beginning God had
said, Let us make man in our own image. But the same
feeling prevailed with him in regard to this idea, as we
have seen prevailed in regard to the kindred idea of God
as the husband of His people.See pp. 398 ff.
The prophets were
anxious to emphasize that it was a moral relation,—a
moral relation, and one initiated from God's side by
certain historical acts of His free, selecting, redeeming
and adopting love. Israel was not God's son till God
had evidently called and redeemed him. Look at how
our prophet uses the word Father, and to what he makes
it equivalent. The first time it is equivalent to Redeemer:
Thou, O Lord, art our Father; our Redeemer from old is
Thy name (lxiii. 16b). The second time it is illustrated
by the work of the potter: But now, O Lord, Thou art
our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we
are all the work of Thy hand (lxiv. 8). Could it be
made plainer in what sense the Bible defines this relation
between God and man? It is not a physical, nor
is it an intellectual relation. The assurance and the
virtue of it do not come to men with their blood or
with the birth of their intellect, but in the course of
moral experience, with the sense that God claims them
from sin and from the world for Himself; with the
gift of a calling and a destiny; with the formation of
character, the perfecting of obedience, the growth in
His knowledge and His grace. And because it is a
moral relation time is needed to realise it, and only
after long patience and effort may it be unhesitatingly
claimed. And that is why Israel was so long in claiming
it, and why the clearest, most undoubting cries to
God the Father, which rise from the Greek in the
earliest period of his history, reach our ears from
Jewish lips only near the end of their long progress,
only (as we see from our prayer) in a time of trial and
affliction.
We have a New Testament echo of this Old Testament
belief in the Fatherhood of God, as a moral and
not a national relation, in Paul's writings, who in the
Second Epistle to the Corinthians (vi. 17, 18) urges
thus: Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye
separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing;
and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you,
and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord
Almighty.
On these grounds, then,—that God in His great love
had already adventured Himself with this whole people,
and already by historical acts of election and redemption
proved Himself the Father of the nation as a whole,—does
our prophet plead with Him to save them all again.
The answer to this pleading he gets in ch. lxv.
II. God's Answer to the Prophet's Intercession (ch. lxv.).
God's answer to his prophet's intercession is twofold.
First, He says that He has already all this time been
trying them with love, meeting them with salvation;
but they have not turned to Him. The prophet has
asked, Where is Thy zeal? the yearning of Thy bowels and
Thy compassions are restrained towards me. Thou hast
hid Thy face far from us. Wilt Thou refrain Thyself for
these things, O Jehovah? wilt Thou hold Thy peace and
afflict us very sore. And now, in the beginning of
ch. lxv., Jehovah answers, not with that confusion of
tenses and irrelevancy of words with which the English
version makes Him speak; but suitably, relevantly and
convincingly. I have been to be inquired of those who
asked not for Me. I have been to be found of them that
sought Me not. I have been saying, I am here, I am here,
to a nation that did not call on My name. I have stretched
out My hands all the day to a people turning away, who
walk in a way that is not good, after their own thoughts;
a people that have been provoking Me to My face continually,—and
then He details their idolatry. This,
then, is the answer of the Lord to the prophet's
appeal. "In this I have not all power. It is wrong to
talk of Me as the potter and of man as the clay, as if
all the active share in salvation lay with Me. Man is
free,—free to withhold himself from My urgent affection;
free to turn from My outstretched hands; free to
choose before Me the abomination of idolatry. And
this the mass of Israel have done, clinging, fanatical and
self-satisfied, to their unclean and morbid imaginations
of the Divine, all the time that My great prophecy by
you has been appealing to them." This is a sufficient
answer to the prophet's prayer. Love is not omnipotent;
if men disregard so open an appeal of the Love
of God, they are hopeless; nothing else can save them.
The sin against such love is like the sin against the Holy
Ghost, of which our Lord speaks so hopelessly. Even
God cannot help the despisers and abusers of Grace.
The rest of God's answer to His prophet's intercession
emphasizes that the nation shall be saved for the
sake of a faithful remnant in it (vv. 8-10). But the
idolaters shall perish (vv. 11, 12). They cannot possibly
expect the same fare, the same experience, the same
fate, as God's faithful servants (vv. 13-15). But those
who are true and faithful Israelites, surviving and experiencing
the promised salvation, shall find that God
is true, and shall acknowledge Him as the God of Amen,
because the former troubles are forgotten—those felt so
keenly in the prophet's prayer in ch. lxiv.—and because
they are hid from Mine eyes. The rest of the answer
describes a state of serenity and happiness wherein
there shall be no premature death, nor loss of property,
nor vain labour, nor miscarriage, nor disappointment of
prayer nor delay in its answer, nor strife between man
and the beasts, nor any hurt or harm in Jehovah's Holy
Mountain. Truly a prospect worthy of being named as
the prophet names it, a new heaven and a new earth!
Ch. lxv. is thus closely connected, both by circumstance
and logic, with the long prayer which precedes it.
The tendency of recent criticism has been to deny this
connection, especially on the line of circumstance.
Ch. lxv. does not, it is argued, reflect the Babylonish
captivity as ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv. so clearly does; but, on
the contrary, "while some passages presuppose the
Exile as past, others refer to circumstances characteristic
of Jewish life in Canaan."Cheyne. Similarly Bredenkamp, who contends that the prophecy
is Isaianic, and to be dated from the time of Manasseh.
But this view is only
possible through straining some features of the chapter
adaptable either to Palestine or Babylon, and overlooking
others which are obviously Babylonian. Sacrificing
in gardens and burning incense on tiles were practices
pursued in Jerusalem before the Exile, but the latter
was introduced there from Babylon, and the former was
universal in heathendom. The practices in ver. 5 are
never attributed to the people before the Exile, were all
possible in Babylonia, and some we know to have been
actual there.Cf. Dillmann, in loco.
The other charge of idolatry in ver. 11
"suits Babylonia," Cheyne admits, "as well as (probably)
Palestine."Among Orientals the planets Jupiter and Venus were worshipped
as the Larger and the Lesser Luck. They were worshipped as Merodach
and Istar among the Babylonians. Merodach was worshipped
for prosperity (cf. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 460, 476, 488). It may
be Merodach and Istar, to whom are here given the name Gad, or
Luck (cf. Genesis xxii. 11, and the name Baal Gad in the Lebanon
valley) and Meni, or Fate, Fortune (cf. Arabic al-manijjat, fate; Wellhausen,
Skizzen, iii., 22 ff., 189). There was in the Babylonian
Pantheon a "Manu the Great who presided over fate" (Lenormant,
Chaldean Magic, etc., p. 120). Instances of idolatrous feasts will be
found in Sayce, op. cit., p. 539; cf. 1 Cor. x. 21, Ye cannot partake of
the table of the Lord and of the table of devils. See what is said in
p. 62 of this volume about the connection of idolatry and commerce.
But what seems decisive for the
exilic origin of ch. lxv. is that the possession of
Judah and Zion by the seed of Jacob is still implied
as future (ver. 9). Moreover the holy land is alluded
to by the name common among the exiles in flat
Mesopotamia, My mountains, and in contrast with the
idolatry of which the present generation is guilty the
idolatry of their fathers is characterised as having
been upon the mountains and upon the hills, and again
the people is charged with forgetting My holy mountain,
a phrase reminiscent of Psalm cxxxvii., ver. 4, and
more appropriate to a time of exile, than when the
people were gathered about Zion. All these resemblances
in circumstance corroborate the strong logical
connection which we have found between ch. lxiv. and
ch. lxv., and leave us no reason for taking the latter
away from the main author of "Second Isaiah," though
he may have worked up into it recollections and remains
of an older time.
III. The Last Judgement (ch. lxvi.).
Whether with the final chapter of our prophecy we
at last get footing in the Holy Land is doubtful.Bleek (5th ed., pp. 287, 288) holds ch. lxvi. to be by a prophet
who lived in Palestine after the resumption of sacrificial worship
(vv. 3, 6, 30), that is, upon the altar of burnt-offering which the
Returned had erected there, and at a time when the temple-building
had begun. Vatke also holds to a post-exilic date, Einleitung in das
A.T., pp. 625, 630. Kuenen, too, makes the chapter post-exilic. Bredenkamp
takes vv. 1-6 for Palestinian, but pre-exilic, and ascribes them
to Isaiah. With ver. 1 he compares 1 Kings viii. 27; and as to
ver. 6 he asks, How could the unbelieving exiles be in the neighbourhood
of the Temple and hear Jehovah's voice in thunder from it?
Vv. 7-14 he takes as exilic, based on an Isaianic model.
It
was said on p. 20 that, "in vv. 1 to 4 of this chapter
the Temple is still unbuilt, but the building would seem
to be already begun." This latter clause should be
modified to, "the building would seem to be in immediate
prospect." The rest of the chapter, vv. 6-24, has
features that speak more definitely for the period after
the Return; but even they are not conclusive, and their
effect is counterbalanced by some other verses. Ver. 6
may imply that the Temple is rebuilt, and ver. 20 that
the sacrifices are resumed; but, on the other hand,
these verses may be, like parts of ch. lx., statements of
the prophet's vivid vision of the future.So Dillmann and Driver; Cheyne is doubtful.
Vv. 7 and 8
seem to describe a repeopling of Jerusalem that has
already taken place; but ver. 9 says, that while the
bringing to the birth has already happened, which is,
as we must suppose, the deliverance from Babylon,—or
is it the actual arrival at Jerusalem?—the
bringing forth from the womb, that is, the complete
restoration of the people, has still to take place. Ver.
13 is certainly addressed to those who are not yet
in Jerusalem.
These few points reveal how difficult, nay, how impossible,
it is to decide the question of date, as between
the days immediately before the Return and the days
immediately after. To the present expositor the balance
of evidence seems to be with the later date. But the
difference is very small. We are at least sure—and it
is really all that we require to know—that the rebuilding
of Jerusalem is very near, nearer than it has been
felt in any previous chapter. The Temple is, so to
speak, within sight, and the prophet is able to talk of
the regular round of sacrifices and sacred festivals
almost as if they had been resumed.
To the people, then, either in the near prospect of
Return, or immediately after some of them had arrived
in Jerusalem, the prophet addresses a number of oracles,
in which he pursues the division, that ch. lxv. had
emphasized, between the two parties in Israel. These
oracles are so intricate, that we are compelled to take
up the chapter verse by verse. The first of them begins
by correcting certain false feelings in Israel, excited
by former promises of the rebuilding and the glory
of the Temple. Thus saith Jehovah, The heavens are
My throne, and earth is My footstool: what is this for a
house that ye will build—or, are building—Me, and what
is this for a place for My rest? Yea, all these things—that
is, all the visible works of God in heaven and earth—My
hand hath made, and so came to pass all these
things, saith Jehovah. But unto this will I look, unto
the humble and contrite in spirit, and that trembleth at My
word. These verses do not run counter to, or even go
beyond, anything that our prophet has already said.
They do not condemn the building of the Temple: this
was not possible for a prophecy which contains ch. lx.
They condemn only the kind of temple which those
whom they address had in view,—a shrine to which the
presence of Jehovah was limited, and on the raising and
maintenance of which the religion and righteousness of
the people should depend. While the former Temple
was standing, the mass of the people had thus misconceived
it, imagining that it was enough for national
religion to have such a structure standing and honoured
in their midst. And now, before it is built again, the
exiles are cherishing about it the same formal and
materialistic thoughts. Therefore the prophet rebukes
them, as his predecessors had rebuked their fathers,
and reminds them of a truth he has already uttered,
that though the Temple is raised, according to God's
own promise and direction, it will not be to its structure,
as they conceive of it, that He will have respect,
but to the existence among them of humble and sincere
personal piety. The Temple is to be raised: the place
of His feet God will make glorious, and men shall gather
round it from the whole earth, for instruction, for
comfort and for rejoicing. But let them not think it
to be indispensable either to God or to man,—not to
God, who has heaven for His throne and earth for His
footstool; nor to man, for God looks direct to man,
if only man be humble, penitent and sensitive to His
word. These verses, then, do not go beyond the Old
Testament limit; they leave the Temple standing, but
they say so much about God's other sanctuary man,
that when His use for the Temple shall be past, His
servant StephenActs vii. 49.
shall be able to employ these words
to prove why it should disappear.
The next verse is extremely difficult. Here it is
literally: A slaughterer of the ox, a slayer of a man;
a sacrificer of the lamb, a breaker of a dog's neck; an
offerer of meat-offering, swine's blood; the maker of
a memorial offering of incense, one that blesseth an idol,
or vanity. Four legal sacrificial acts are here coupled
with four unlawful sacrifices to idols. Does this mean
that in the eye of God, impatient even of the ritual He
has consecrated, when performed by men who do not
tremble at His word, each of these lawful sacrifices
is as worthless and odious as the idolatrous practice
associated with it,—the slaughter of the ox as the
offering of a human sacrifice, and so forth? Or does
the verse mean that there are persons in Israel who
combine, like the Corinthians blamed by Paul,1 Cor. x.
both
the true and the idolatrous ritual, both the table of the
Lord and the table of devils? Our answer will depend
on whether we take the four parallels with ver. 2, which
precedes them, or with the rest of ver. 3, to which they
belong, and ver. 4. If we take them with ver. 2, then
we must adopt the first, the alternative meaning; if
with ver. 4, then the second of these meanings is the
right one. Now there is no grammatical connection,
nor any transparent logical one, between vv. 2 and 3,
but there is a grammatical connection with the rest
of ver. 3. Immediately after the pairs of lawful and
unlawful sacrificial acts, ver. 3 continues, yea, they have
chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their
abominations. That surely signifies that the unlawful
sacrifices in ver. 3 are things already committed and
delighted in, and the meaning of putting them in
parallel to the lawful sacrifices of Jehovah's religion is
either that Israelites have committed them instead of
the lawful sacrifices, or along with these. In this case,
vv. 3, 4 form a separate discourse by themselves, with
no relation to the equally distinct oracle in vv. 1 and 2.
The subject of vv. 3 to 4 is, therefore, the idolatrous
Israelites. They are delivered unto Satan, their choice;
they shall have no part in the coming Salvation. In
ver. 5 the faithful in Israel, who have obeyed God's
word by the prophet, are comforted under the mocking
of their brethren, who shall certainly be put to shame.
Already the prophet hears the preparation of the judgement
against them (ver. 6). It comes forth from the
city where they had mockingly cried for God's glory
to appear. The mocked city avenges itself on them.
Hark, a roar from the City! Hark, from the Temple!
Hark, Jehovah accomplishing vengeance on His enemies!
A new section begins with ver. 7, and celebrates to
ver. 9 the sudden re-population of the City by her
children, either as already a fact, or, more probably,
as a near certainty. Then comes a call to the children,
restored, or about to be restored, to congratulate their
mother and to enjoy her. The prophet rewakens the
figure, that is ever nearest his heart, of motherhood,—children
suckled, borne and cradled in the lap of their
mother fill all his view; nay, finer still, the grown
man coming back with wounds and weariness upon
him to be comforted of his mother. As a man whom
his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye shall
be comforted in Jerusalem. And ye shall see, and rejoice
shall your heart, and your bones shall flourish like the
tender grass. But this great light shines not to flood
all Israel in one, but to cleave the nation in two, like a
sword of judgement. The hand of Jehovah shall be
known towards His servants, but He will have indignation
against His enemies,—enemies, that is, within
Israel. Then comes the fiery judgement, For by fire will
Jehovah plead, and by His sword with all flesh; and the
slain of Jehovah shall be many. Why there should
be slain of Jehovah within Israel is then explained.
Within Israel there are idolaters: they that consecrate
themselves and practise purification for the gardens, after
one in the middle;So, in literal translation of the text, the One being a master of ceremonies,
who, standing in the middle, was imitated by the worshippers
(cf. Baudissin, Studien zur Semitischen Religions-geschichte, i., p. 315,
who combats Lagarde's and Selden's view, that אהד, one, stands for
the God Hadad). The Massoretes read the feminine form of one,
which might mean some goddess.
eaters of swine's flesh, and the
Abomination, and the Mouse. They shall come to an end
together, saith Jehovah, for I know, or will punish,Know, Pesh. and some editions of the LXX.; punish, Delitzsch
and Cheyne.
their
works and their thoughts. In this eighteenth verse the
punctuation is uncertain, and probably the text is corrupt.
The first part of the verse should evidently go,
as above, with ver. 17. Then begins a new subject.
It is coming to gather all the nations and the tongues,
and they shall come and shall see My glory; and I will
set among them a sign,—a marvellous and mighty act,
probably of judgement, for he immediately speaks of
their survivors,—and I will send the escaped of them
to the nations Tarshish, PutThe Hebrew text has Pul, the LXX. Put. Put and Lud occur
together, Ezek. xxvii. 10-xxx. 5. Put is Punt, the Egyptian name
for East Africa. Lud is not Lydia, but a North African nation.
Jeremiah, xlvi. 9, mentions, along with Cush, Put and the Ludim in
the service of Egypt, and the Ludim as famous with the bow.
and Lud, drawers of the
bow, to Tubal and Javan,—that is, to far Spain, and
the distances of Africa, towards the Black Sea and to
Greece, a full round of the compass,—the isles far off
that have not heard report of Me, nor have seen My glory;
and they shall recount My glory among the nations. And
they shall bring all your brethren from among all the
nations an offering to Jehovah, on horses and in chariots
and in litters, and on mules and on dromedaries, up on
the Mount of My Holiness, Jerusalem, saith Jehovah, just
as when the children of Israel bring the offering in a clean
vessel to the house of Jehovah. And also from them will
I take to be priests, to be Levites, saith Jehovah. For like
as the new heavens and the new earth which I am making
shall be standing before Me, saith Jehovah, so shall stand
your seed and your name. But again the prophecy
swerves from the universal hope into which we expect it
to break, and gives us instead a division and a judgement:
the servants of Jehovah on one side occupied
in what the prophet regards as the ideal life, regular
worship—so little did he mean ver. 1 to be a condemnation
of the Temple and its ritual!—and on the other
the rebels' unburied carcases gnawed by the worm and
by fire, an abomination to all. And it shall come to
pass from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to
sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before Me, saith
Jehovah: and they shall go out and look on the carcases
of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm
dieth not, and their fire is not quenched, and they shall be
an abhorrence to all flesh.
We have thus gone step by step through the chapter,
because its intricacies and sudden changes were not
otherwise to be mastered. What exactly it is composed
of must, we fear, still remain a problem. Who can tell
whether its short, broken pieces are all originally from
our prophet's hand, or were gathered by him from
others, or were the fragments of his teaching which the
reverent hands of disciples picked carefully up that
nothing might be lost? Sometimes we think it must be
this last alternative that happened; for it seems impossible
that pieces so strange to each other, so loosely
connected, could have flowed from one mind at one
time. But then again we think otherwise, when we
see how the chapter as a whole continues the separation
made evident in ch. lxv., and runs it on to a last
emphatic contrast.
So we are left by the prophecy,—not with the new
heavens and the new earth which it promised: not
with the holy mountain on which none shall hurt nor
destroy, saith the Lord; not with a Jerusalem full of
glory and a people all holy, the centre of a gathered
humanity,—but with the city like to a judgement floor,
and upon its narrow surface a people divided between
worship and a horrible woe.
O Jerusalem, City of the Lord, Mother eagerly desired
of her children, radiant light to them that sit in darkness
and are far off, home after exile, haven after
storm,—expected as the Lord's garner, thou art still
to be only His threshing-floor, and heaven and hell
as of old shall, from new moon to new moon, through
the revolving years, lie side by side within thy narrow
walls! For from the day that Araunah the Jebusite
threshed out his sheaves upon thy high windswept
rock, to the day when the Son of Man standing over
against thee divided in His last discourse the sheep
from the goats, the wise from the foolish, and the
loving from the selfish, thou hast been appointed of
God for trial and separation and judgement.
It is a terrible ending to such a prophecy as ours.
But is any other possible? We ask how can this
contiguity of heaven and hell be within the Lord's own
city, after all His yearning and jealousy for her, after
His fierce agony and strife with her enemies, after so
clear a revelation of Himself, so long a providence, so
glorious a deliverance? Yet, it is plain that nothing
else can result, if the men on whose ears the great prophecy
had fallen, with all its music and all its gospel,
and who had been partakers of the Lord's Deliverance,
did yet continue to prefer their idols, their swine's
flesh, their mouse, their broth of abominable things,
their sitting in graves, to so evident a God and to so
great a grace.
It is a terrible ending, but it is the same as upon
the same floor Christ set to His teaching,—the gospel
net cast wide, but only to draw in both good and
bad upon a beach of judgement; the wedding feast
thrown open and men compelled to come in, but among
them a heart whom grace so great could not awe even
to decency; Christ's Gospel preached, His Example
evident, and Himself owned as Lord, and nevertheless
some whom neither the hearing nor the seeing nor the
owning with their lips did lift to unselfishness or stir
to pity. Therefore He who had cried, Come all unto
Me, was compelled to close by saying to many, Depart.
It is a terrible ending, but one only too conceivable.
For though God is love, man is free,—free to
turn from that love; free to be as though he had never
felt it; free to put away from himself the highest,
clearest, most urgent grace that God can show. But
to do this is the judgement.
Lord, are there few that be saved? The Lord did not
answer the question but by bidding the questioner take
heed to himself: Strive to enter in at the strait gate.
Almighty and most merciful God, who hast sent this
book to be the revelation of Thy great love to man,
and of Thy power and will to save him, grant that our
study of it may not have been in vain by the callousness
or carelessness of our hearts, but that by it we
may be confirmed in penitence, lifted to hope, made
strong for service, and above all filled with the true
knowledge of Thee and of Thy Son Jesus Christ.
Amen.