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THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL AND THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY TO THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY, B.C. |
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LECTURE 5: THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH AND THE BEGINNINGS OF ISAIAH'S WORK. "We have now reached the point in the Old Testament history at which the centre of interest is transferred from Ephraim to Judah. Under the dynasties of Omri and Jehu, the Northern Kingdom took the leading part in Israel; even to the Judaean Amos it was Israel par excellence, Judah was not only inferior in political power, but in the share it took in the active movements of national life and thought. In tracing the history of religion and the work of the prophets, we have been almost exclusively occupied with the North; Amos himself, when charged with a message to the whole family that Jehovah brought up out of Egypt, leaves his home to preach in a Northern sanctuary. During this whole period we have a much fuller knowledge of the life of Ephraim than of Judah; the Judaean history consists of meagre extracts from official records, except where it comes into contact with the North, through the alliance of Jehoshaphat with Ahab; through the reaction of Jehu's revolution in the fall of Athaliah, the last scion of the house of Ahab, and the accompanying abolition of Baal worship at Jerusalem, or, finally, through the presumptuous attempt of Amaziah to measure his strength with the powerful monarch of Samaria. While the house of Ephraim was engaged in the great war with Syria, Judah had seldom to deal with enemies more formidable than the Philistines or the Edomites; and the contest with these foes, renewed with varying success generation after generation, resolved itself into a succession of forays and blood-feuds such as have always been common in the lands of the Semites (Amos i.), and never assumed the character of a struggle for national existence. It was the Northern Kingdom that had the task of upholding the standard of Israel: its whole history presents greater interest and more heroic elements; its struggles, its calamities, and its glories were cast in a larger mould. It is a trite proverb that the nation which has no history is happy, and perhaps the course of Judah's existence ran more smoothly than that of its greater neighbour, in spite of the raids of the slave-dealers of the coast, and the lawless hordes of the desert. But no side of national existence is likely to find full development where there is little political activity; if the life of the North was more troubled, it was also larger and more intense. Ephraim took the lead in literature and religion as well as in politics; it was in Ephraim far more than in Judah that the traditions of past history were cherished, and new problems of religion became practical and called for solution by the word of the prophets. So long as the Northern Kingdom endured, Judah was content to learn from it for evil or for good. It would he easy to show in detail that every great wave of life and thought in Ephraim was transmitted with diminished intensity to the Southern Kingdom. In many respects the influence of Ephraim upon Judah was similar to that of England upon Scotland before the union of the crowns, but with the important difference that after the accession of Omri the two Hebrew kingdoms were seldom involved in hostilities. At the first division of North and South, upon the death of Solomon, the house of David was disposed to treat the seceding tribes as rebels, and the accumulated wealth and organised resources of the capital enabled Rehoboam for a time to press hard upon his rival. [2] The invasion of Shishak, in which Rehoboam was impoverished and severely chastised, restored the natural balance of things, and soon after we find Asa, king of Judah, reduced to the necessity of calling on the Syrians to help him against Baasha; but the house of Omri cultivated friendly relations with the Davidic kings. Jehoshaphat was the ally of Ahab and his sons, and an ally on inferior terms, bringing a contingent to their aid in the Syrian and Moabite wars. From this time forward the North and the South seem to have felt that they had common interests and dangers; indeed, when the power of Damascus was at its height Judah as well as Ephraim suffered from the inroads of Hazael (2 Kings xii. 17 seq.). The wanton attempt of Amaziah to provoke a conflict with King Joash, about the close of the Syrian period, ended in humiliation; but Joash made no attempt to incorporate Judah in his dominions, and the popular rising which cost Amaziah his life probably expressed the dissatisfaction of his subjects with his presumptuous policy. Amaziah was succeeded by Uzziah, whose long and prosperous reign appears to have corresponded pretty exactly with that of Jeroboam II. The current chronology, which obscures this correspondence, is certainly corrupt, and we shall not be far wrong if we view Uzziah and Jotham as the contemporaries of Jeroboam II. and Menahem, while Ahaz of Judah came to the throne soon after Menahem's death, and saw the greater part of the wars which began with the invasion of Tiglath Pileser and closed with the fall of Samaria. [3] The date of Hezekiah's accession is much disputed by chronologers; but he appears to have taken the sceptre before the fall of Samaria, while the greater part of his reign certainly falls after that event. Thus, speaking broadly, we may say that in the time of Hosea and Amos, under Kings Uzziah and Jotham, Judah was at peace with Israel, and still free from implication in the stream of larger politics. Ahaz, on the contrary, was attacked by Pekah and Eezin, and to escape this danger accepted the position of an Assyrian vassal; but his land was not yet brought into direct contact with Assyria. Under Hezekiah the Assyrian armies were close to Judah, conducting operations, not only against Samaria, but against other neighbouring states, so as to become a source of imminent danger to Judah itself, which could only hope for safety by patiently fulfilling the duties of a vassal state, and rejecting every temptation to chafe under the Assyrian yoke; but meantime it had become plain that Egypt was the ultimate goal of the Assyrian operations in Palestine. Egyptian diplomacy was busy in the Palestinian states, with tempting promises to encourage revolt against the empire of the Tigris. Judah had to choose between absolute political quietude, accepting the present situation as it stood and leaving the great struggle to be fought out by others, and the task of entering for the first time into the movements of an imperial policy, in which the principal actors were great empires altogether different from the petty states with which it had formerly had to do. The alternative was pregnant with important issues, not only for the political existence of the little nation, but for the religion of Jehovah, and to indicate the religious solution of the problems of this crisis was the work of the greatest of Judaean prophets, Isaiah the son of Amos. The famous expedition of Sennacherib, which marks the culminating point of his prophetic life, fell in the year 701 B.C., twenty years after the capture of Samaria and thirty-three after the expedition of Tiglath Pileser against Pekah and Rezin, which gave occasion to the first important series of Isaiah's prophecies. To the student of prophecy these years are the most important in the Old Testament history, and as such they claim from us a very careful study; but to understand them aright it will be necessary to go back to the epoch of prosperity running parallel to the reign of Jeroboam II., and consider the political and religious position of Judah in the reign of Uzziah. Amos, it will be remembered, flourished under this king, and the call of Isaiah, described in chapter vi. of his book, took place in the year of Uzziah's death. Our business, therefore, is to examine the state of things in the Southern Kingdom at the time when Amos and Hosea were prophesying in the North, and at the commencement of Isaiah's ministry. From the overthrow of Athaliah to the accession of Ahaz and the acceptance by him of the position of an Assyrian vassal is something more than a century. It was, on the whole, a century of material progress, of political stability, and of successful war. Two kings indeed, Joash and Amaziah, met a violent death; but, while in the North the assassination of a monarch was always followed by a change of dynasty, the people of Judah remained constantly attached to the house of David, and the order of succession was never broken. The judgments passed upon the character of Judaean sovereigns in the book of Kings have almost exclusive reference to their actions in regard to the affairs of public worship; but the stability of the dynasty is the best proof that the generally favourable estimate of their conduct was borne out by the opinion of their contemporaries. Their religious policy, indeed, may be fairly assumed to be typical of the general principles of their rule. These principles were conservative; the son followed in the footsteps of his father (2 Kings xv. 3; xvi. 3); and so, if no high ideal was aimed at, there were at least no new and crying abuses to excite discontent. The conservative character of the Judaean state is readily explained from the history of the house of David. The earliest political unity in Israel was not the nation, but the tribe or its subdivision the clan. The heads of clans and communities were the hereditary aristocracy, the natural leaders in peace and in war; and we have already seen that this form of organisation is that which history proves to be most conducive to stability and good order among Semitic peoples (supra, p. 93 seq.). The natural aim of a strong monarchy, ruling over a confederation of tribes, is to break down the tribal system, and bring all parts of the kingdom more directly under the control of the capital; while the natural conservatism of the individual provinces opposes this process, and seeks to limit the power of the king to the supreme command in war, and the office of deciding appeals laid before him in peace. In the Northern Kingdom, as we have further seen, the overthrow of the old tribal system was already part of Solomon's policy, and the more powerful of the kings of Ephraim appear, in like manner, to have laboured in the direction of centralisation and political absolutism. Prolonged and exhausting wars naturally favoured this policy, but at the ruinous cost of breaking up old social bonds and opening a fatal gulf between the aristocracy of the court and the mass of the people. In Judah the course of events was different. In his own tribe Solomon appointed no such provincial governors or tax-gatherers as excited the discontent of Northern Israel with his rule, — moved perhaps by the example of his father David, who, after the revolt of Absalom, in which Judah was the first to rise and the last to return to obedience, appears to have deemed it necessary to treat his own tribe with special favour, and recognise its willing support as the chief prop of his throne. The Judaeans remained loyal to Rehoboam, because their prejudices and ancestral usages had not been violated like those of the North; and when the kingdom was practically narrowed to a single tribe, and could no longer pretend to play the part of a great power, neither policy nor interest urged the Davidic kings to startling innovations in government. Thus the internal condition of the state was stable, though little progressive; the kings were fairly successful in war, though not sufficiently strong to maintain unbroken authority over Edom, the only vassal state of the old Davidic realm over which they still claimed suzerainty, and their civil administration must have been generally satisfactory according to the not very high standard of the East; for they retained the affections of their people, the justice and mercy of the throne of David are favourably spoken of in the old prophecy against Moab quoted in Isaiah xv, xvi., and Isaiah contrasts the disorders of his own time with the ancient reputation of Jerusalem for fidelity and justice (i. 21). This reputation hardly proves that any very ideal standard of government was reached or aimed at, but we may conclude that ancient law and usage were fairly maintained, and that administrative or judicial innovations, which irritate an Eastern people much more than individual miscarriages of justice, were seldom attempted. The religious conduct of the house of David followed the same general lines. Old abuses remained untouched, but the cultus remained much as David and Solomon had left it. Local high places were numerous, and no attempt was made to interfere with them; but the great temple on Mount Zion, which formed part of the complex of royal buildings erected by Solomon, maintained its prestige, and appears to have been a special object of solicitude to the kings, who treated its service as part of their royal state. It is common to imagine that the religious condition of Judah was very much superior to that of the North, but there is absolutely no evidence to support this opinion. Throughout the Old Testament history the abuses of popular worship are brought into prominence mainly in connection with efforts after reform. In Judah there was no movement of reform to record between the time of Joash, when the Tyrian Baal was abolished, and the time of Hezekiah, who acted under the influence of Isaiah. Thus, in the narrative of Kings, the history of religion remains an absolute blank during the century with which we are particularly concerned, and it is only just before Hezekiah arose that the historian finds it necessary to call unfavourable attention to the fact that Ahaz sacrificed on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree. His predecessors had undoubtedly done the same, for they accepted the high places as legitimate; the guilt of Ahaz is not measured by his deflection from the standard of his ancestors, but by his refusal to rise to the higher standard which prophets like Isaiah began to set forth. There can be no question that the worship of the Judaean sanctuaries was as little spiritual as that of the Northern shrines. Isaiah has as much to say against idols as Hosea. "Their land," he says, "is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands" (ii. 8). And these idols were not new things; the brazen serpent, destroyed by Hezekiah, was worshipped as the work of Moses, which certainly implies a cultus of immemorial antiquity. In detail, no doubt, there was considerable difference between the idolatry of the North and the South. We read of a brazen serpent, but not of golden calves as symbols of Jehovah; nor does the name of Baalim, by which the latter were known in Ephraim, appear in Isaiah or Micah. The association of the Godhead with symbols of natural growth and reproductive power, which proved so fatal to religion and morality in the North, was not lacking: in Judah as in Israel the people worshipped under evergreen trees — the Canaanite symbol of the female side of the divine power; and the ashera, which has the same meaning, was found in Judaean as in Northern sanctuaries (Isa. i. 29; xvii. 8; Micah v. 14, where for groves read asheras). Other Canaanite elements were not wanting; the worship of Adonis or Tammuz, for which we have direct evidence in the last days of Jerusalem (Ezek. viii. 14), appears to be already alluded to by Isaiah. But on the whole it is probable that the popular religion was not so largely leavened with Canaanite ideas and Canaanite immorality as in the North; there is nothing in the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah corresponding to the picture of vile licentiousness under the cloak of religion drawn by Amos and Hosea. This, indeed, is what we should expect; for in the population of Judaea the fusion of Canaanite and Hebrew elements was not so great as in Ephraim and Manasseh; in Southern Judah the chief non-Hebrew element was, of Arab stock; and the great sanctuaries of the South do not appear to have been to the same extent as in the North identical with Canaanite holy places. Judah, moreover, was a much poorer country than Ephraim; there was less natural wealth, and apparently the whole conditions of life were simpler and more primitive; so that we should naturally expect to find less sympathy with the luxurious Canaanite worship, but at the same time more relics of the ancient superstitions of the Hebrews before Moses. These, again, can hardly have been without affinity to the original beliefs of the incorporated Arab elements, and a variety of circumstances make it probable that a species of fetichism or totemism was largely current in Judah as in the neighbouring desert. Such ancestral superstitions are probably alluded to in Amos ii. 4, and their nature is illustrated in the worship of family gods, in the form of unclean animals, described in Ezek. viii. 10 seq. One of the most characteristic proofs of the prevalence of the lowest superstitions is the frequent reference made by the Judaean prophets to various forms of magic and divination, such as the consultation of familiar spirits through "wizards that peep and mutter'' — a kind of ventriloquists (Isa. viii. 19, comp, xxix. 4). [4] The practice of divination was not confined to the masses. Isaiah reckons "the cunning magician and the man skilled in enchantments" along-side of the captains and counsellors as recognised props of the state (iii. 3); while Micah characterises the ordinary prophets as diviners (iii. 7, 11, comp. v. 12). Isaiah represents these superstitious practices as of foreign, in part of Philistine, character (ii. 6); and, when we take along with this the undisturbed existence of the sanctuaries built by Solomon for his foreign wives, we must conclude that the opposition to distinctively foreign elements which characterises the worship of Ephraim, from the time of Elijah was not so strongly marked in the religious practices of Judah. Under the dynasty of Jehu Jehovah had nominally undivided allegiance from the house of Ephraim; foreign elements were eschewed, and the superstitions incorporated with the ritual of the sanctuaries, which led Hosea to declare that the popular religion was not Jehovah worship at all, were those indigenous to the land of Canaan. In Judah the influence of the work of Elijah had been only indirectly felt; the nation had passed through no such great crisis as the long battle of the Northern prophets with the house of Ahab; and thus the prevalent superstitions were partly of a different character from those we meet with in Ephraim, and partly indicated a less hopeless condition of religious life, because a higher ideal of Jehovah worship had never been so distinctly set before the mass of the people. All this, of course, must be understood as not excluding a great influence of the North on the minor kingdom. On the one hand it is clear that Amos had thoroughly assimilated the teaching of Elijah, while Isaiah and Micah appropriate the teaching of Hosea on the subject of idolatry. In truth, everything that we possess of the sacred literature and history of the North has been conveyed to us through Judaean channels. On the other hand, the growing corruption of Ephraim in religion and social order was full of peril to Judah. Hosea warns the Judaeans against participation in the guilt of Israel (iv. 15), and Micah tells us that the transgressions of Israel were found in his own land (i. 13, comp. vi. 16). The material prosperity of Ephraim in the last generation of the house of Jehu had its counterpart, as we have already seen, in the condition of Judah under Uzziah. Edom was again reduced to subjection, and thus the harbour of Elath on the Red Sea came into the possession of the house of David, which at the same time obtained the control of the important caravan route from Sela to Southern Arabia (2 Kings xiv. 7, 22). These successes gave Judah an important commercial position, and led to the formation of a fleet (Isa. ii. 16) and a great development of wealth (Isa. ii. 7). The resources of the monarchy were enlarged, and its warlike strength was increased by the multiplication of chariots and horses (Isa. ii. 7; Micah i. 13; v. 10; comp. Hosea i. 7; viii. 14). But to a nation situated like the Hebrews the sudden expansion of commerce brought grave social dangers. Society was constructed on the basis of a purely agricultural life, the merchants of early times were not Hebrews, but Canaanites, who had a trading quarter of their own at Jerusalem (Zeph. i. 11, where for merchant read Canaanite). The newly-developed trade could not but fall largely into the hands of the grandees and courtiers, and the wealth they accumulated changed their relations to the commonalty, and gave them opportunity for the exactions and injustice from which, in Eastern society, the wealthy seldom keep themselves pure. Hosea complains that in Ephraim commerce, deceit, and oppression went hand in hand (xii. 7), and in Judah the case was not otherwise. The centralisation of large capital in a few hands led to the formation of huge estates, the poorer landowners being either bought out when they fell into the power of their creditors, or ejected by violence and false judgment (Isa. V. 8; Micah ii. 2, 9). Judicial corruption increased; every man had his price (Micah iii. 11), and the poor in such a state of things could do nothing against the tyrants who, in the forcible phrase of Micah, "stripped the skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones" (iii. 2). These evils, no doubt, assumed an intenser form after the calamitous war with Pekah and Rezin had spread desolation in the land, and when the burden of taxation, which in the East always falls heaviest on the poor, was increased by the tribute to Assyria; and it is to this later time that the most melancholy prophetic pictures of the state of Judah apply. But the fatal degeneracy of the higher classes, unequal distribution of wealth, oppression of the poor, corrupt luxury, and the like are dwelt on in the earliest utterances of Isaiah (chaps, ii.-v.), at a time when the external prosperity of the nation was still uninterrupted, Isaiah began his work in the year of Uzziah's death, and when he accepted the task of a prophet he already pictures his nation as so corrupt that it could be purified only by a consuming judgment. The year of Uzziah's death cannot be determined with precision. The present chronology gives to his son Jotham a reign of sixteen years, which in all probability is a good deal too much. But at all events Isaiah began to prophesy some years before 734 B.C., and his influence was at its height during the expedition of Sennacherib in 701, so that his career covers a period of some forty years at the least. More happy in his work than Amos and Hosea, he succeeded during this long period in acquiring a commanding position in the state. In the time of Hezekiah, plans which it was known he would condemn were carefully concealed from him by the politicians he opposed (Isa. xxix. 15); and in the day of Jerusalem's sorest trouble the king and his people sought from him the help which only the word of Jehovah could supply. Though we are not expressly told so in the narrative of Kings, there can be no doubt that it was he who inspired Hezekiah's plans of reformation in the national worship, and at his death he left behind him a prophetic party so strong that the counter-reformation of Manasseh was only carried out by the aid of bloody persecution. And, though his work thus seemed for a time to be undone, its influence was not extinguished. It is the teaching of Isaiah that forms the starting-point of the book of Deuteronomy, and of the reformation of Josiah, of which that book was the programme; and thus the ideas of the great prophet continued to exercise a decisive influence on the affairs of Judah more than a century after they were first proclaimed. In truth, the whole subsequent history of the Hebrew people bears the impress of Isaiah's activity. It was through him that the word of prophecy, despised and rejected when it was spoken by Amos and Hosea, became a practical power not only in the state but in the whole life of the nation. We can readily understand that so great a work could not have been effected by an isolated mission like that of Amos, or by a man like Hosea, who stood apart from all the leaders of his nation, and had neither friend nor disciple to espouse his cause. Isaiah won his commanding position, not by a single stroke, but by long-sustained and patient effort. His work must have commenced when he was still a young man, and it was continued into old age with the same unfailing courage which marks his first appearance as a prophet. The work of a prophet was the vocation of his life, to which every energy was devoted; even his wife is called the prophetess (viii. 3); his sons bore prophetic names, not enigmatic like those given by Hosea to Gomer's children, but expressing in plain language two fundamental themes of his doctrine — the speedy approach of judgment by hostile invasion (Maher-shalal-hash-baz, viii. 3), and the hope of return to Jehovah and His grace by the remnant of the nation (Shear-jashub, vii. 3; the name is translated in X. 21). The truths which he proclaimed he sought to make immediately practical in the circle of disciples whom he gathered round him (viii. 16), and through them to prepare the way for national reformation. And in this work he was aided by personal relations within the highest circles of the capital. Uriah, the chief priest of the temple, was his friend, and appears associated with him as witness to a solemn act by which he attested a weighty prophecy at a time when king and people had not yet learned to give credence to his words (viii. 2). His own life seems to have been constantly spent in the capital; but he was not without support in the provinces. The countryman Micah, who prophesied in the low country on the Philistine border near the beginning of Hezekiah's reign, was unquestionably influenced by his great contemporary, and, though his conceptions are shaped with the individual freedom characteristic of the true prophet, and by no means fit mechanically into the details of Isaiah's picture of Jehovah's approaching dealings, the essence of his teaching went all to further Isaiah's aims. Thus Isaiah ultimately became the acknowledged head of a great religious movement. It is too little to say that in his later years he was the first man in Judah, practically guiding the helm of the state, and encouraging Jerusalem to hold out against the Assyrian when all besides had lost courage. Even to the political historian Isaiah is the most notable figure after David in the whole history of Israel. He was the man of a supreme crisis, and he proved himself worthy by guiding his nation through the crisis with no other strength than the prophetic word. His commanding influence on the history of his nation naturally suggests the comparison with Elisha, the author of the revolution of Jehu, and the soul of the great struggle with Syria. The comparison illustrates the extraordinary change which little more than a century had wrought in the character and aims of prophecy. Elisha effected his first object — the downfall of the house of Ahab — by entering into the sphere of ordinary political intrigue; Isaiah stood aloof from all political combinations, and his influence was simply that of his commanding character, and of the imperial word of Jehovah preached in season and out of season with, unwavering constancy. Elisha in his later years was the inspiring spirit of a heroic conflict, encouraging his people to fight for freedom, and resist the invader by armed force. Isaiah well knew that Judah had no martial strength that could avail for a moment against the power of Assyria. He did not aim at national independence; and, rising above the dreams of vulgar patriotism, he was content to accept the inevitable, and mark out for Judah a course of patient submission to the foreign yoke, in order that the nation might concentrate itself on the task of internal reformation till Jehovah Himself should remove the scourge appointed for His people's sin. In this conception he seized and united in one practical aim ideas which had appeared separately in the teaching of his predecessors, Amos and Hosea. Amos had taught the salvation of a righteous remnant in a nation purified by judgment, Hosea had pointed out that warlike effort and political combinations could not help Israel, which must seek its deliverance in repentance and reliance on Jehovah's sovereignty. With Isaiah the doctrine of the remnant becomes a practical principle; the true Israel within Israel, the holy seed in the fallen stock of the nation, is the object of all his solicitude. Living in the very midst of the winnowing judgment which Amos had seen approaching from afar, he sought to give the vital elements of the nation a centre round which they could rally, and a task of internal reformation conformed to the duty of national repentance. This alone was Israel's wisdom; Jehovah's power and Jehovah's spirit must accomplish the rest without help from the arm of flesh. In the supreme crisis of the Assyrian wars Isaiah was not less truly the bulwark of his nation than Elisha had been during the Syrian wars. But his heroism was that of patience and faith, and the deliverance came as he had foretold, not by political wisdom or warlike prowess, but by the direct intervention of Jehovah. When we endeavour to trace the history of Isaiah's prophetic activity by the aid of his own writings, we are met by the difficulty that his book is not arranged in strict chronological order. Thus the inaugural vision in which he received his consecration as Jehovah's messenger to Judah is not the first but the sixth chapter of the book; or again chap, xx., which is dated from the year of the capture of Ashdod by the general of Sargou, i.e. B.C. 711, would in chronological order stand after chap, xxviii., which speaks of the kingdom of Ephraim as still in existence. It is plain, then, that the book as it stands is in a somewhat disordered state. Presumably Isaiah himself issued no collected edition of all his prophecies, but only put forth from time to time individual oracles or minor collections, which were gathered together at a later date, and on no plan which we can follow. Some of the prophecies bear a date, or even have brief notes of historical explanation; others begin without any such preface, and their date and occasion can only be inferred from the allusions they contain. We cannot even tell when or by whom the collection was made. The collection of all remains of ancient prophecy, digested into the four books named from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, was not formed till after the time of Ezra, two hundred and fifty years at least after the death of Isaiah. In one of these four books every known fragment of ancient prophecy had to take its place, and no one who knows anything of the collection and transmission of ancient books will think it reasonable to expect that the writings of each separate prophet were carefully gathered out and arranged together in such a way as to preclude all ambiguity as to their authorship. [5] If every prophecy had had a title from the first the task of the editor would have been simple; or if he did not aim at an exact arrangement we could easily have rearranged the series for ourselves. But there are some prophecies, such as those which occupy the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, which have no title at all, and in some other cases there is conclusive evidence that the titles are not original, because, in point of fact, they are incorrect. In the absence of precise titles giving names and dates to each separate prophecy, an editor labouring after the time of Ezra would be quite as much at a loss as a modem critic, if he made it his task to give what is now called a critical edition of the remains that lay before him. But ancient editors did not feel the need of an edition digested according to the rules of modern literary workmanship. Their main object was to get together everything that they could find, and arrange their material in volumes convenient for private study or use in the synagogue. In those days one could not plan the number of volumes, the number of letters in a page, and the size and form of the pages, with the freedom to which the printing press has accustomed us; the cumbrous and costly materials of ancient books limited all schemes of editorial disposition. In ancient books the most various treatises are often comprised in one volume; the scribe had a certain number of skins, and he wished to fill them. Thus, even in the minor collections that fell into the hands of the editor of the prophets, a prophecy of Isaiah and one from another source might easily occupy the same roll; copies were not so numerous that it was always possible to tell by comparison of many MSS. what pieces had always stood together, and what had only come together by accident; and so, taking all in all, we need not be surprised that the arrangement is imperfect according to our literary lights, but will rather expect to find much more serious faults of order than the lack of a just chronological disposition. If the present book of Isaiah has itself been made up from several MSS., a conclusion which the lack of chronological order renders almost inevitable, we must deem it probable that at the end of some of these MSS. prophecies not by Isaiah at all may have been written in to save waste of the costly material; and so, when the several small books came to be joined together, prophecies by other hands would get to be embedded in the text of Isaiah, no longer to be distinguished except by internal evidence. That what thus appears as possible or even probable actually took place is the common opinion of modern critics. We must not accept this opinion without examination, and we cannot now pause to go over every chapter of the book in detail; but, on the other hand, we cannot hope to get a just picture of Isaiah's life and work without keeping our minds open to the possibilities now suggested. Instead of taking up his prophecies in the order in which they now stand, we must look for internal evidence to connect each oracle with one or other part of his career. Those sections of the book which cannot be read in clear connection with any part of the prophet's life and times must provisionally be set on one side. Even if they are Isaiah's they can have but secondary importance for our present business, which is to study the prophetic word in the light of the history of the prophet's own times; and in fact the more clearly we come to see that the rest of the book is full of references to present history the more shall we be disposed to ask whether these prophecies too have not an historical setting of their own, but one which belongs to a later stage of the Old Testament progress. It may be well to say at once that most parts of the book of Isaiah whose authorship is disputed have a plain connection with the Chaldaean period. Whether this connection is of a kind which justifies us in holding that they were written in that period is a question which almost every critic answers in the affirmative, but which cannot be profitably discussed in these Lectures, because the discussion involves an historical study of the age of the Exile. The critical problems of Isaiah belong to the history of prophecy under the Chaldaean empire, and even those scholars who still believe that the whole book is from the pen of Isaiah ascribe the prophecies against Babylon to his old age, after his active life was over, so that it at least can be completely studied without them. And it is further agreed that these prophecies had no part in the great influence which Isaiah exerted on the immediately subsequent age, so that for the whole study of the Old Testament religion before the Exile we lose nothing by leaving them out of account. The period of Isaiah's ministry falls into three parts: — (1) The time previous to the Syro-Ephraitic war, when Judah enjoyed external peace and apparent prosperity; (2) The troubles under the reign of Ahaz, when the land was invaded by Pekah and Rezin, and the Judaean monarch became a vassal of Assyria to obtain the help of Tiglath Pileser; (3) The time of Assyrian suzerainty, when Judah's growing impatience of the yoke at length led the nation to intrigue with Egypt, and exposed it to the vengeance of Sennacherib. The last section of the prophet's life culminates in the great invasion and marvellous deliverance of the year 701 B.C. We may not in every case be able to give a precise chronological view of the progress of the prophet's work, but at least we may hope to distribute his prophecies under these three periods, and to gain an approximate conception of the order of those which belong to the last and longest of the three, especially by comparing the many historical allusions with the Assyrian monuments. Without going into detail at the present stage of the discussion, it may be convenient to indicate broadly some conclusions to which we are led by this method. In the first place, then, it is plain that the general survey of the state of Judah given in chap. i. cannot belong to the first period of Isaiah's work, for it represents the land as reduced to the utmost distress by foreign invasion. It must have been chosen to open the book on account of its general character, and so displaced from its proper chronological setting. On the other hand, the prophecy which begins, with a separate title, at chap. ii. 1 belongs to the earliest part of Isaiah's ministry. Here there is no allusion to present wars, and at ii. 16 the ships of Tarshish appear as one of the glories of the nation. But Elath, the only Judaean harbour, was taken in the war of Pekah and Rezin, and the Syrians (or Edomites) continued to hold the town long after (2 Kings xvi. 6). This prophecy, or at least a connected series of prophecies which presumably were published by Isaiah in a single book, goes on to the end of chap, v., and there is great probability that ix. 8 to x. 4 originally formed part of the close of this publication. So common an accident as the displacement of part of a manuscript would sufficiently account for the transposition of these verses to their present place. The account of the inaugural vision of the prophet in chap. vi. does not belong to Isaiah's first published work, but stands at the head of a new series of prophecies dating from the great trouble at the commencement of Ahaz's reign. There is no reason to doubt that this arrangement is due to Isaiah himself. He might have many reasons for not speaking of the vision at the time when it occurred, and its contents form a very appropriate introduction to the series of prophecies which it now precedes, extending from vii. 1 to ix. 7. The prophecy of the downfall of Damascus (xvii. 1-11) plainly belongs to the same period. All the remaining parts of the book appear to be subsequent to the Assyrian intervention (B.C. 734). Most of them refer more or less clearly to successive stages in the progress of the Assyrians, which in the present state of our knowledge must often remain obscure. They cannot have been all published at once, and probably Isaiah himself, in reducing selections of his prophecies to writing from time to time, united oracles of various date. Chap. xxviii., for example, must have been first spoken before the fall of Samaria, but as we now read it it is closely connected with several following chapters which seem to be of later composition. For our present purpose it is enough to regard all the prophecies of Isaiah's third period as one group, without attempting at this stage to arrange them more exactly. The parts of the book which do not fall under any one of the three groups now spoken of, and which, as already explained, I shall pass over altogether, are the prophecies against Babylon, xiii. 1 to xiv. 23; xxi. 1-10; [6] the very remarkable and difficult section, chaps, xxiv. to xxvii.; the prophecy against Edom, chap, xxxiv; and the great prophecy, chaps, xl. to lxvi., which is separated from the rest of the book by an historical section, certainly not written by Isaiah himself. There are also two lyrical chapters, xii. and xxxv., of which the latter seems to go with chap, xxxiv. Both are so unlike the style of Isaiah that it will be prudent to pass them over also. [7] Although Isaiah did not publish the account of the vision in which he received his prophetic consecration until the second period of his work (chap, vi.), it is reasonable that we should take it first. In the year of Uzziah's death, he tells us, he saw Jehovah seated on a lofty throne, while the skirts of His kingly robes filled the palace. Jehovah's palace is the common name of the great temple at Jerusalem, and the features of the temple are reproduced in the vision. There was an altar (ver. 6), a threshold (ver. 4, where for posts of the door read sockets of the thresholds), and a cloud of smoke filling the house during the adoration of the seraphim, like the smoke of incense or sacrifice during ordinary acts of worship. In the earlier history of the temple the Debir or Holy of Holies appears not to have been shut off by doors from the holy place (1 Kings vi. 21 as contrasted with ver. 31), and in like manner Isaiah's palace forms one great hall, so that the prophet standing at the door, where he felt the rocking of the thresholds at the thunder of the Trisagion, could see the seat of Divine majesty within. Yet the palace of Isaiah's conception is not the earthly temple but the heavenly seat of Jehovah's sovereignty. The lofty throne of Jehovah takes the place of the ark, and the ministers of the palace are not human priests but fiery beings, — the seraphim. It is plain that the very idea of the dwelling-place of Jehovah involves to human minds the aid of figure and symbol; it cannot be realised at all except under images derived from visible things. The scenery of Isaiah's vision is of necessity purely symbolical, and the form of the symbol was naturally determined by the old Hebrew conception of the sanctuary as God's palace on earth, while the additional feature of the fiery, winged seraphim appears to have been suggested by a current conception analogous to that of the cherubim. The Old Testament contains more than one trace of weird personification of atmospheric or celestial phenomena. The cherubim are possibly a personification of the thunder cloud, and the seraphim of the lightning. [8] But the origin of the scenery is immaterial for the ideal meaning of Isaiah's vision; temple and seraphim are nothing more than the necessary pictorial clothing of the supreme truth that in this vision his soul met the Infinite and Eternal face to face, and heard the secrets of Jehovah's counsel directly from His own mouth. Nor can it be of importance to us to determine how far the description is conscious poetry, and how far the pictures described passed without any effort of thought or volition before his inward eye. Even in the highest imaginings of poetical genius this question would be hard to answer; much less can we expect to be able to analyse the workings of the prophet's soul in a supreme moment of converse with God. In some quarters a great deal too much stress has been laid upon the prophetic vision as a distinctive note of supernatural revelation. People speak as if the divine authority of the prophetic word were somehow dependent on, or confirmed by, the fact that the prophets enjoyed visions. That, however, is not the doctrine of the Bible. In the New Testament Paul lays down the principle that in true prophecy self-consciousness and self-command are never lost — the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets (1 Cor. xiv. 32). In like manner the prophets of the Old Testament never appeared before their auditors in a state of ecstasy, being thus clearly marked off from heathen soothsayers, who were held to be under the influence of the godhead just in proportion as they lost intelligent self-control. And, as the true prophets never seek in heathen fashion to authenticate their divine commission by showing themselves in a state of visionary ecstasy, so also they do not record their visions as a proof that they are inspired. They knew very well that vision and ecstasy were common in heathenism, and therefore could prove no commission from Jehovah (Jer. xxiii.); and so, as we have seen, Isaiah did not even publish his inaugural vision at the time, but reserved it till his ministry had been public for years. Moreover, the Hebrews were aware that the vision, in which spiritual truth is clothed in forms derived from the sphere of the outer senses, is not the highest method of revelation. In the twelfth chapter of Numbers, which belongs to the part of the Pentateuch composed before the rise of written prophecy, Moses, who received his revelation in plain words not involved in symbolic imagery, is placed above those prophets to whom Jehovah speaks in vision or in dream. This view is entirely conformed to the conclusions of scientific psychology. Dream and vision are nothing more than a peculiar kind of thought, in which the senses of the thinker are more or less completely shut to the outer world, so that his imagination moves more freely than in ordinary waking moments among the pictures of sensible things stored up in the memory. Thus, on the one hand, the images of fancy seem to stand out more brightly, because they are not contrasted with the sharper pictures of sense-perception, while, on the other hand, the power of the will to conduct thought in a predetermined direction is suspended, or so far subdued that the play of sensuous fancy produces new combinations, which appear to rise up of themselves before the mind like the images of real things before the physical senses. The ultimate elements of such a vision can include nothing absolutely new; the conceptions of which it is built up are exclusively such as are supplied by previous waking experience, the whole novelty lying in their combination. So far, therefore, as its structure is concerned, there is no essential difference between a vision and a parable or other creation of poetic fancy; and this is as strictly true for the visions of the prophets as for those of other men, so that it is often difficult to say whether any particular allegory set forth by a prophet is visionary or not — that is to say, we often cannot tell whether the prophet is devising an instructive figure by a deliberate act of thought, or whether the figure rose, as it were, of itself before his mind in a moment of deep abstraction, when his thoughts seemed to take their own course without a conscious effort of will. In the experience of the greatest prophets visions were of very rare occurrence. Isaiah records but one in the course of forty years' prophetic work. As a rule, the supreme religious thought which fills the prophet's soul, and which comes to him not as the result of argument but as a direct intuition of divine truth, an immediate revelation of Jehovah, is developed by the ordinary processes of the intellect. There is nothing rhapsodical or unintelligible in the prophetic discourses; they address themselves to the understanding and the heart of every man who feels the truth of the fundamental religious conceptions on which they rest. But all thought about transcendental and spiritual things must be partly carried out by the help of analogies from human life and experience, and in the earlier stages of revelation, before the full declaration of God in His incarnate Son, the element of analogy and symbol was necessarily larger in proportion as the knowledge of God's plan was more imperfect. The prophets, as we are taught in the first verse of the Epistle to the Hebrews, saw only fragmentary parts and individual aspects of divine truth. This is not a peculiarity of early revelation alone; it applies equally to early thought about the things of nature, which in like manner reveal themselves only in isolated aspects to the primitive observer, so that all thought is in its beginnings fragmentary, and, being so, requires to bridge over gulfs by the aid of analogy and figure, in a way which in later ages is mainly confined to the poetic imagination. And for this reason early thought is less clearly self-conscious than the scientific reasonings of later time. The thinker loses himself in his thought, and seems to be swept on by his own ideas instead of ruling and guiding them. The further back we can go in the history of human ideas the more closely do we approach a stage in which all new intellectual combinations are expressed in symbol, and in which the symbol, instead of being used only for purposes of illustration, is the necessary vehicle of thought. At this stage new ideas appear, not as logical inferences, but as immediate intuitions, in which the volition of the thinker has little or no share; and when such symbolic views of abstract or spiritual things rise before the mind in a moment of deep abstraction, as they most naturally do, they may without impropriety be called visions, though they are not necessarily associated with the symptoms of ecstasy in the strict sense. It is thus easy to understand that vision, in the sense now defined, was a predominant characteristic of the earliest stages of prophecy, as Num. xii. seems to imply, but that it fell more and more into the background with the great prophets of the eighth century, as their conceptions of spiritual truth became more articulate and wider in range. For purposes of exposition it was still necessary to make a large use of symbol and analogy, but vision begins to merge more and more into conscious parable, till at length in the teaching of Jesus we reach a stage where vision altogether disappears in direct communion with the Father, and parable is no longer a means of thinking out religious problems, but simply a method of bringing truth home to popular understanding. At every stage, however, in the history of prophecy the spiritual value of vision is precisely the same as that of parable, and is proportioned to the measure in which the symbolic picture presents spiritual things under a true analogy. Whether the prophet merely set forth in symbolic form truths which he had reached in another way, or whether he consciously devised a symbol, in order to have the aid of analogy to bridge over gaps in his view of divine things, or whether the symbol rose up before his mind without a conscious effort of the intellect, does not affect its value as a vehicle of spiritual truth. The value of the symbol or vision depends simply on the fact that in one or other way he was guided to the use of imagery fitted to give larger and deeper views of spiritual realities.
Of the spiritual realities impressed on Isaiah's mind
in his great vision, and which continued to exercise a
profound influence on his whole career, the first is the
holiness of Jehovah. The notion of holiness belongs to
the ancient stock of common Semitic conceptions, being
expressed in all the Semitic languages by the same root
(
we see that Isaiah does not find the starting-point of his prophetic work in the contemplation of any one attribute of Jehovah — His universal justice, as it is set forth by Amos, or His love, as developed in the teaching of Hosea — but in the thought that all the predicates of true Godhead are concentrated in Jehovah, and in Him alone. The prophets who preceded Isaiah did not preach a doctrine of abstract monotheism, they did not start from the idea that there can be only one God; but, looking at Jehovah, Israel's God, as He was actually known to His people, they interpreted His being and character in a way that placed a great gulf between Him and the nature-gods of the heathen. Thus the Godhead of Jehovah as taught by the prophets meant something quite different from the godhead or holiness attributed to idols or to heathen deities. There was no longer any meaning in applying the same terms to both; Jehovah alone was holy, or, what is practically the same thing, He alone was God in the true sense of these words. It is this truth which forms the foundation of Isaiah's teaching. The whole earth is full of the signs of Jehovah's sovereignty; He dwells on high, exalted over all (xxxiii. 5); He reigns supreme alike in the realm of nature and the sphere of human history; and the crash of kingdoms, the total dissolution of the old order of the Hebrew world, which accompanied the advance of Assyria, is to the prophet nothing else than the crowning proof of Jehovah's absolute dominion, asserting itself in the abasement of all that disputes His supremacy. The loftiness of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day (ii. 17). But with all this Isaiah does not cease to regard Jehovah's kingship as essentially a kingship over Israel. At first sight this may seem to us a strange limitation on the part of one who declares that all that the earth contains is Jehovah's wealth; but in reality the limitation gives to his doctrine a concrete and practical force otherwise unattainable. The kingship of Jehovah is to our prophet not a mere figure but a literal truth, and so His kingdom can only consist of the nation whose affairs He administers in person, whose human rulers reign as His representatives, and which receives its law and polity from His mouth. To Isaiah, therefore, Jehovah is not simply the Holy One in an abstract sense; He is the Holy Being who reigns over Israel; or, to use the prophet's favourite phrase, "The Holy One of Israel." When the idea of holiness is thus brought into connection with Jehovah's relation to His people, it becomes at once a practical factor in religion; for in the ordinary language of the Hebrews holiness was not limited to the Deity, but could also be predicated of earthly things specially set apart for Him. The sanctuary was a holy place, the religious feasts were holy seasons, material things were consecrated or rendered holy by being appropriated to use in the worship of the Deity, or presented to the sanctuary. And in like manner holiness could be predicated of persons; the prophet who stood in a particular relation of nearness to the Godhead was "a holy man of God" (2 Kings iv. 9); the ordinary Israelite was not holy in this sense, but at least he was consecrated, or made holy, by special ceremonies before engaging in an act of sacrificial worship (1 Sam. xvi. 5); and the same expression is used of the ceremonial purification employed to purge away those impurities which excluded an Israelite from participation in holy functions (2 Sam. xi. 4). In all this, you observe, there is nothing proper to spiritual religion, nothing that goes beyond the sphere of the primitive conceptions common to the Israelites with their heathen neighbours. Holy places, things, or times are such as are withdrawn from common use and appropriated to a religious purpose, and in like manner holiness, as ascribed to persons, is no moral attribute; it refers only to the ritual separation from things common and unclean, without which the worshipper dare not approach the divine presence. Holiness and immorality might even go side by side; the "holy women" (kedeshot) of the Canaanite religion, found also in the popular Hebrew shrines, were Hierodouloi consecrated to immoral purposes. But when the teaching of the prophets brought Jehovah's holiness into sharp contrast with the pretended godhead of the Baalim, the holiness of Jehovah's people could not but in like manner take a sense different from that which prevailed in heathenism. So already in Amos the licentious practices of the Hierodouloi are said to profane Jehovah's holy name (Amos ii. 7). But with Isaiah this transformation of the notion of Israel's holiness has a wider scope. He does not develop the idea in special connection with distinctively religious acts. The holiness of Israel rather depends on the thought that Israel, in all its functions, civil as well as religious, is Jehovah's people, Jehovah's property (His vineyard, as he puts it in chap, v.), the immediate sphere of His personal interest and activity. Thus the whole land of Judah, but more especially Jerusalem, the centre of the state, is, as it were, a great sanctuary, the holy mountain of Jehovah (xi. 9), and within this holy mountain everything ought to be ordered in conformity with His sanctity. The requisites of ceremonial sanctity fall altogether into the background; the task of Israel as a holy nation is to give practical recognition to Jehovah's holiness — that is, to acknowledge and reverence His Godhead, in those moral characters which distinguish Him from the idols and false gods (viii. 13; xxix. 23). According to Isaiah, "the knowledge and fear of Jehovah" (xi. 2) are the summary requisites for the right ordering of the state of Israel; where these are supreme the conditions of Israel's holiness are satisfied. The ideal condition of Jehovah's holy mountain is one in which the earth is full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea (xi. 9). And, conversely, where these things are lacking, where the homage due to Him is shared by idols, where heathen divinations are looked to instead of "the revelation and the testimony " of Jehovah (viii. 20), where injustice and oppression flourish in defiance of the righteous king of Israel, the holiness of His people is changed to uncleanness, and cannot be restored save by fiery judgment purging away the filth of the daughters of Zion and the bloodguiltiness of Jerusalem (iv. 3, 4). It is easy to see that in this view of the religious problem of his times, Isaiah builds on the foundations laid by his predecessors Amos and Hosea. But his treatment of the problem is more comprehensive and all-sided. The preaching of Amos was directed only to breaches of civil righteousness, and supplied no standard for the reformation of national worship — it left even the golden calves untouched. Hosea, on the other hand, has a clear insight into the right moral attitude of the religious subject to God; but that subject is to him the personified nation, sinning and repenting as one man, and therefore he has no practical suggestions applicable to the actual mixed state of society; his prophecy leaves an unexplained hiatus between Israel's present sin and its future return to Jehovah. Isaiah, on the contrary, finds in Jehovah's holiness a principle equally applicable to the amendment of the state and the elevation of religious praxis, an ideal which supplies an immediate impulse to reformation, and which, though it cannot be fully attained without the intervention of purging judgments, may at least become the practical guide of those within Israel who are striving after better things. In every question of national conduct presented by the eventful times in which he lived Isaiah was ready with clear decisive counsel, for in every crisis Israel's one duty was to concentrate itself on the task of shaping the internal order of the state in conformity with the holy character of Jehovah, and to trust the issue to His sovereignty. In very truth the task of internal reform was more than sufficient for one generation. The whole order of the state was glaringly at variance with right conceptions of Jehovah; or, in the language now familiar to us, the actual life of the nation was not holy but unclean. A strong sense of this uncleanness was the feeling which sprang to the prophet's lips when he first saw the vision of Jehovah's holiness — "Woe is me! for I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts.'' On the old ritual view of holiness there was fatal danger in contact with holy things to any one ceremonially unclean. But the impurity of which Isaiah speaks is impurity of lips — that is, of utterance. In Hebrew idiom, a man's words (debarim) include his purposes on the one hand, his actions on the other, and thus impurity of lips means inconsistency of purpose and action with the standard of divine holiness. The prophet himself supplies the translation of his metaphor at iii. 8 — "Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is fallen, for their tongue and their doings are against Jehovah of hosts, to provoke the eyes of His glory," and the expansion of this sentence forms the main burden of his first great discourse to the house of Israel (chap. ii. seq.). There is, however, a special reason why, in this vision, the uncleanness of the people is particularised as uncleanness of lip. The vision is Isaiah's consecration as Jehovah's messenger, and for the discharge of such a function "pure lips" (Zeph. iii. 9) are necessary. But Isaiah feels himself to be personally involved in the impurity or unholiness of his people; his own lips are impure and unfit for personal converse with Jehovah. And so the act of consecration is symbolically represented as the purging of his lips by contact with a glowing stone taken from Jehovah's sacred hearth. "Lo, this hath touched thy lips," says the ministering seraph, "and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." The form of this visionary transaction is suggested by the old familiar symbolism of ceremonial holiness. In primitive religious thought, the idea of godhead is specially connected with that of fresh unfading life, and the impurity or unholiness which must be kept aloof from the sanctuary is associated with physical corruption and death. Fire and water, the pure and life-like elements, man's chief aids in combating physical corruption, are the main agents in ceremonies of ritual sanctification (Num. xxxi. 23; this passage belongs to the later legislation, but the antiquity of the principle appears from Josh. vi. 19, 24). But fire is a more searching principle than water. Fiery brightness is of old the highest symbol of Jehovah's holiness, and purification by fire the most perfect image of the total destruction of impurity. To Isaiah, of course, the fire of Jehovah's holiness is a mere symbol. That which cannot endure the fire, which is burned up and consumed before it, is moral impurity. "Who among us shall dwell with devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh in righteousness and speaketh uprightly, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood [consenting to bloodshed], and shutteth his eyes from beholding [delighting in] evil; he shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks, his bread shall be given him, his water shall be sure" (xxxiii. 14 seq.). That which can endure the fire is that which is fit to enter into communion with Jehovah's holiness, and nothing which cannot stand this test can abide in His sanctuary of Israel. Thus the fire which touches Isaiah's lips and consecrates him to prophetic communion with God has its counterpart in the fiery judgment through which impure Israel must pass till only the holy seed, the vital and indestructible elements of right national Life, remain. As silver is purified by repeated smeltings, so the land of Judah must pass, not once, but again and again through the fire. "Though but a tenth remain in it, it must pass again through the fire" (vi. 13), till all that remain in Zion are holy, "even every one that is ordained to life in Jerusalem, when Jehovah shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and purged the bloodshed of Jerusalem by the blast of judgment, and the blast of burning" (iv. 4 seq.). That this is the law of Jehovah's holiness towards Israel is revealed to the prophet as soon as his own lips are purged. For the prophetic insight into Jehovah's purpose is the insight of spiritual sympathy, and thus, as soon as his sin is taken away and his own life penetrated by the power of the divine holiness, he who had before heard only the awful voice of the seraphim shaking the very threshold at which he stood, and filling his heart with terror at the unendurable majesty of the Most High, hears the voice of Jehovah Himself asking, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" and replies without fear, "Here am I; send me." But from the first he is made to know that his mission cannot bear sudden fruit, that no swift and superficial repentance can correspond to Jehovah's plan. He is sent to men who shall be ever hearing, but never understand; ever seeing Jehovah's work, but never recognising its true import; whose heart (or intelligence) becomes more gross, their ears more dull, their eyes veiled with thicker clouds of spiritual blindness under the prophetic teaching, who refuse to turn and receive healing from Jehovah till cities lie waste without inhabitants, and houses without inmates, and the land is changed to a desert by invading foes. And yet Isaiah knows from the first that this consuming judgment at the hand of the Assyrians moves in the right line of Jehovah's purpose of holiness. The axe is laid at the root of the tree, and the present state, corrupt beyond the reach of partial remedies, must be hewn to the ground. But the true life of Israel cannot perish. "Like the terebinth and the oak, whose stock remains when they are hewn down," and sends forth new saplings, so "the holy seed" remains as a living stock, and a new and better Israel shall spring from the ruin of the ancient state. Such are the first principles of Isaiah's teaching as he presents them in describing his vision of consecration. Their development and application in his public ministry must be reserved for another Lecture.
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