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THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL AND THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY TO THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY, B.C.

LECTURE 7: ISAIAH AND MICAH IN THE REIGN OF HEZEKIAH

The reign of Ahaz was not a very long one; lie did not live to see the revolt of Hoshea and the fall of Samaria. The last rebellion of Northern Israel was not an isolated rising; it was accompanied or followed by a general revolt of all the Syrian principalities from Philistia in the south to Hamath and Arpad in the north. Hoshea, as we know, was encouraged by the hope of support from So (Sewe), king of Egypt (2 Kings xvii. 4), and this monarch, the Sebech of the Assyrian monuments, was in fact concerned with the whole movement that threatened the Assyrian supremacy in the districts west of the Euphrates. The interference of Egypt at this juncture is explained by the fact that, for some time before, that country had been much divided and weakened by contests between an Ethiopian dynasty in the upper country and the princes of the Delta. But the Ethiopians at last prevailed, and under Sebech Egypt and Ethiopia formed a single power, able to devote itself to foreign affairs. After taking Samaria, Sargon in B.C. 720 reduced the Philistine cities, and, advancing to Raphia (now Rafah) on the border of the desert on the short caravan road from Egypt to Gaza, encountered and defeated Sebech. [2] The victory was not pursued into Egypt itself, but it secured the subjection of Syria, and for some years the only operations of Sargon in the west of which we hear were directed against Arab tribes. But in B.C. 711, nine years after the battle of Raphia, Ashdod was once more in revolt under a king named Yaman. The Egyptians of course were again pulling the strings, and the affair must have been regarded as serious, for Sargon speaks of it at length in several of his inscriptions. He acted with great promptitude, crossing the Tigris and Euphrates while the waters were still in flood, and advancing with the characteristic rapidity which forms a chief feature in Isaiah's description of the Assyrian armies (Isa. v.) "In the anger of my heart," says Sargon, according to Oppert's translation (R.P. vii. 40; ix. 11), "I marched against Ashdod with my warriors, who did not leave the trace of my feet." The Egyptians were far from exhibiting equal energy. All through the history of this period their policy was made up of large promises and small performance; they were always stirring up plots against their Eastern rivals, but never ready when the moment for action came; and Isaiah fitly sums up their conduct in the two words "turbulence and inactivity" (xxx. 7). In the present instance, they left Ashdod to its fate, and Pharaoh was glad to make his peace with Sargon by surrendering Yaman, who had taken refuge in Egypt.

This campaign has a special interest for ns, because it is referred to in the first prophecy of Isaiah after the Syro-Ephraitic war, the date of which is altogether undisputed. In the year of the siege and capture of Ashdod, so we are told in chap, xx., Isaiah, under Divine command, put off the sackcloth from his loins and the shoe from his foot, and continued for three years to walk naked and barefoot, as a sign and token upon Egypt and Ethiopia. Even so, he explained, Egypt and Ethiopia shall be led captive by the king of Assyria, naked and barefoot, to the shame of all who looked to them for help. "Then the inhabitants of this coast shall say, So have they fared to whom we looked and to whom we fled for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria; and how can we escape? " The only point in this chapter that demands explanation is the three years' continuance of the prophet's symbolic action, which plainly implies that for three years the lesson still required to be enforced. Here the annals of Sargon come to our help. The siege of Ashdod, as we have seen, fell in 711, and for the next two years Sargon was wholly engrossed by a revolt of the Babylonians under Merodach Baladan. It was this, perhaps, that prevented him from pressing forward against Egypt as Isaiah had expected him to do on the fall of Ashdod. At all events, the revolt of Babylon gave hopes of independence to Assyria's western vassals, for we are told in the Annals that the kings of Cyprus, who had previously refused tribute, voluntarily submitted themselves when they heard of the humiliation of Merodach Baladan. Cyprus, the Phoenicians, and the Philistines were closely connected in trade and politics; so it appears that in the third year of Isaiah's symbolical conduct the Palestinian nations gave up all further hope of escape from the Assyrian yoke. It is true that this result had not come about in the way that Isaiah anticipated; but his assurance that their efforts after independence were hopeless had none the less justified itself, and there was no further motive for continuing the sign by which he had confirmed it.

Prom this date to the death of Sargon (B.C. 705) things appear to have remained quiet in Palestine; but before we pass on to the reign of Sennacherib, we are called to examine more closely the attitude and fortunes of Judah and the activity of the prophets during the events already described. In the wars of 722-720 against Samaria and the Philistines, the Judaeans seem to have had no direct part; they still adhered to Assyria, as was natural enough, since Philistia and Ephraim had been dangerous enemies but a few years before. To this date Isa. xxviii. can most naturally be assigned. The prophet looks forward to the fall of Samaria, when the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden under foot, and the glory of Samaria pass as a fading flower; and still he sees in the near catastrophe but a fresh pledge of the approach of the day when Jehovah shall be the crown and pride of the remnant of His people, giving "the spirit of justice to him who sitteth for justice, and of valour to them that turn back battle from the gate." He at least has not lost faith or changed his hope during the ten years that have elapsed since he withdrew from public life with his disciples, to wait for better days; the purpose of Jehovah has been deferred, but not abandoned, and in the new crisis Isaiah sees Him rising up to accomplish it in His ancient might, as that was displayed at Baal-Perazim and Gibeon (2 Sam. v. 20 seq.; Josh. X.). Thus, in spite of the threatening aspect of the present, Jehovah's purpose appears to Isaiah as a purpose of grace to Israel — but of grace that can only be realised by those who are willing to yield obedience to the Divine precepts. The condition of deliverance is still national repentance, and from this the rulers of Judah and the official heads of Judah's religion (ver. 7) are far removed. The chiefs of the people are like men in the last stage of a drunken debauch (vers. 7, 8), incapable of listening to sane counsel, deaf to Jehovah's words when He declares to them by His prophet where rest for the weary and refreshing for the exhausted nation are to be found (ver. 12). In this prophecy Isaiah does not again detail, what he had explained at length before, the course in which these blessings are to be found. But throughout life he pointed steadily to the establishment of civil justice and the abolition of the idols as the things most necessary, and we may safely conclude that in these respects there was as yet no real amendment. The "scornful men" who guided the helm of the state were absorbed in schemes which left no room for the thought that the fate of kingdoms is governed by Jehovah's providence and by the supremacy of His holy will. They had made lies their refuge, and hid themselves under falsehood. They had made their covenant with death and Sheol — that is, with the fatal power of the Assyrian — and trusted that when the ''overflowing scourge," the all-destroying invasion, passed through it should not reach them. Isaiah had no share in this illusion. He saw that the present state of things was intolerable and could not last; " the bed was too short for a man to stretch himself on it, the coverlet too narrow for a man to wrap himself in it " (ver. 20). The Assyrian alliance must soon be dissolved, "Your covenant with death shall be annulled, your agreement with Sheol shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge passeth through, ye shall be trodden down by it." Once and again the invading host shall pass through the land and smite its inhabitants (ver. 19). So long as the policy of irreligion lasts, it can only serve to prolong the bondage of the nation (ver. 22). Jehovah's purpose is now decisive and final (ver. 22); the measure of strict justice shall be applied to those who have mocked at judgment and righteousness (ver. 17). In the universal overthrow there is but one thing fixed and immutable: " Jehovah hath laid in Zion a stone, a stone of proof, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste" (ver. 16). Those who have faith in the sovereign providence that rules in Israel, and is surely working out Jehovah's counsel, can await the future with patience; they, and they alone, for " hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place." It is still the old faith in the inviolability of Zion, the prophetic confidence in the continuity of Jehovah's purpose, that forms the root of Isaiah's hope; but now more clearly than before the prophet lays the basis of this faith in the doctrine of an all-embracing divine ordinance, the same ordinance that rules the actions of every-day industry. The wisdom that tells the husbandman how to plough and sow, which directs the daily labours of agricultural life, is also a part of Jehovah's teaching (vers. 24-29). And the same God, "wonderful in counsel and excellent in practical wisdom," who prescribes the order of common toil, rules in the affairs of the state and lays down the inviolable laws of Israel's happiness.

The argument from the operations of husbandry with which Isaiah closes this prophecy is too characteristic to be passed over without further remark. To recognise its full force we must remember that all such operations were guided by traditional rules which no one dreamed of violating. These rules were the law of the husbandman, and like all traditional laws among ancient nations they had a sacred character. Every one understood that it was part of religion to observe them, and that it would be in the highest degree unlucky to set them aside. The modern mind is disposed to laugh at such ideas, but Isaiah takes them in all seriousness. In the sedulous observance of the traditional lore which expressed the whole wisdom of the peasant, and was reverently accepted as a divine teaching, the husbandman brought his religion into the daily duties of his humble toil, and every operation became an act of obedience to God. And thus his life appears to the prophet as a pattern for the scornful rulers of Judah. They too in their seat of judgment and government have a divine law set before them, in the observance of which the felicity of the nation lies. But they refuse to learn. The incessant prophetic inculcation of "command upon command, rule upon rule, here a little and there a little" — in brief, the attempt to make the word of God the practical guide of every action — seems to them only fit for babes (ver. 9). But Jehovah will not suffer His lessons to remain unlearned. What they refuse to hear at the mouth of the prophet they must learn from the harsher accents of the Assyrian tyrant. "With barbarous lips and in a strange tongue will He speak to this people" (ver. 11). Thus the doctrines of divine chastisement and divine grace are gathered up into one larger doctrine of Jehovah's teaching to Israel. The word of the prophet and the rod of the Assyrian are conjoint agencies, working together for the in-bringing of a time when, as the prophet elsewhere expresses it, the land shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, when the practical rules of conduct which He dictates shall be as supreme in the administration of the state as in the ordering of the daily tasks of the husbandman.

The way in which the rulers of Judah are addressed in this prophecy appears to show that, in spite of the increasing sufferings which the Assyrian exactions imposed on the poorer classes — for these in the East are the taxpayers — the princes still found their account in the maintenance of the settlement effected by Ahaz. Isaiah does not blame them for their acquiescence in a position of political nonentity; he certainly would not have encouraged them to cast in their lot with Samaria; but he urges that the sins which have proved the ruin of Samaria will be their ruin too. The accession of Hezekiah, it is plain, had done nothing for the cure of the internal wounds of the state; all social disorders were as rampant as at the outbreak of the Syro-Ephraitic war; the Assyrian suzerainty was tolerated for no other reason than that it maintained the governing classes in their positions, and enabled them to continue their course of riot and oppression. This picture of the state of Judah receives independent confirmation from the earlier part of the book of Micah, [3] which also dates from the days of the last struggle of Samaria, as we learn from a comparison of Micah i. with Jer. xxvi. 18. Micah was a man of Moresheth Gath, a small place, as Jerome tells us, near Eleutheropolis on the Philistine frontier, and the proximity of his home to one part of the field of war helps to explain his keen interest in the progress of the Assyrian arms. At all events, the crisis which drew Isaiah from his retirement to proclaim to Judah the lesson preached by the impending ruin of Ephraim, called forth the countryman Micah to give a like warning. In the storm that was ready to burst upon Samaria he beheld Jehovah going forth from His heavenly palace, and marching over the mountains of Palestine in righteous indignation to visit the sins of Jacob. Samaria shall become a heap of the field; the stones of her fortifications shall be rolled down into the valley, her graven images dashed to pieces. But Judah too has shared the sin of Samaria, and the same judgment menaces Zion (i. 1-9). It is the cities of his own district that are in immediate danger (i. 10-15) — a natural thought, since they lay next to the scene of war in Philistia; but the centre of Judah's sin is the capital; and the evil that has come down from Jehovah already stands at the gate of Jerusalem (i. 5, 9, 12). The sins which Micah has in view are the same as those signalised by Isaiah: on the one hand, a religion full of idolatry and heathenish sorceries (iii. 7; v. 12 seq.), a spurious confidence in Jehovah, which has no regard to His moral attributes, and is bolstered up by lying oracles (ii. 11; iii. 5, 11, comp. Isa. xxviii. 7), while it refuses to hear the warnings of true prophecy (ii. 6; iii. 8, comp. Isa. xxviii. 9 seq.); on the other hand, the gross corruption and oppressions of the ruling classes, who "build up Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with iniquity" (iii. 10). But Micah depicts the sufferings of the peasantry at the hands of their lords from much closer personal observation than was possible to Isaiah as a resident in the capital. He speaks as a man of the people, and reveals to ns, as no other prophet does, the feelings of the commonalty towards their oppressors. To the peasantry the nobles seem to have no object but plunder (ii. 1 seq.). The poorer agriculturists are daily stripped of their houses and holdings by violence or false judgment. The true enemies of the people are their own rulers (ii. 8), [4] and the prophet contemplates with a stern satisfaction, which doubtless found an echo in many breasts, the approach of the destroyer who shall carry into exile "the luxurious sons" (i. 16) of this race of petty tyrants, and leave them none " to stretch the measuring line on a lot in the congregation of Jehovah " (ii. 5). " Arise," he cries, " and depart, for this is not your place of rest."

The strong personal feeling which Micah displays towards the governing classes gives a peculiar turn to his whole prophecy. Isaiah speaks as severely of the sins of the nobles, but never, as Micah does, from the standpoint of a man of the people. Isaiah's own circle belonged to the upper classes; the chief priest of the temple was his friend; and an aristocratic habit of thought appears in more than one of his prophecies. His doctrine of the indestructibility of Zion as the condition of the continuity of the national existence of Judah seems to indicate that the capital and the Court appeared to him as the natural centre of the true remnant. There is nothing democratic in his picture of Israel's restoration; he looks for the amendment of the ruling classes (i. 26), who retain their old place in the reconstruction of the state (chap, xxxii.). Micah, on the contrary, conceives the work of judgment essentially as a destruction of the government and the nobles. The race of the unjust aristocrats shall be rooted out of the land (ii. 5); the proud and guilty capital shall be ploughed as a field; Jerusalem shall become as heaps and the mountain of the temple as the heights of the forest (iii. 12); the judge or king of Israel shall suffer the last indignities at the hand of the enemy (v. 1; Heb., iv. 14). It has often been supposed from these predictions that Micah, unlike Isaiah, looked forward to a total captivity; and that his words were referred by the Jews themselves to the Babylonian exile, appears from the fact that at an early date the gloss, " and shalt come even to Babylon," was inserted in iv. 10. [5] But a closer examination does not bear out this view. When the aristocrats are carried captive " the congregation of Jehovah" remains in the land (ii. 5). The glory of Israel is not banished from Canaan, but takes refuge in Adullam, as in the old days, when a band of freebooters and broken men contained the true hope of the nation (i. 15). The days of David, when the ruler of Israel came forth from Bethlehem, a town too small to be reckoned as a canton in Judah (v. 2), the times of "the first kingdom," when Jerusalem itself was but a hill fort, "a tower of the flock " (iv. 8), appear to Micah as the true model of national well-being; the acquisitions of later civilisation and political development, horses and chariots and fenced cities — always associated with tyranny in the minds of the common people — are stamped by him as sins, and shall be utterly abolished in the days of restoration (i. 13; v. 10, 11). [6] Hence, though Micah no less than Isaiah recognises Zion as the centre of Jehovah's sovereignty, from which divine instruction and decisions shall go forth in the days to come to all the surrounding nations, who shall lay aside their weapons of war and make Jehovah the arbiter of their strifes (iv. 1 seq.), the fall of the Zion of the present, the city built up by bloodshed and guilt, the strong fortress of Israel's oppressors, appears to our prophet as a necessary step in the redemption of the nation. The daughter (or population) of Zion must pass through the pangs of labour before her true king is born; she must come forth from the city and dwell in the open field; there, and not within her proud ramparts, Jehovah will grant her deliverance from her enemies. For a time the land shall be given up to the foe, but only for a time. Once more, as in the days of David, guerilla bands gather together to avenge the wrongs of their nation (v. 1). A new David comes forth from little Bethlehem, and the rest of his brethren return to the children of Israel — that is, the kindred Hebrew nations again accept the sway of the new king, who stands and feeds his flock in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God. Then Assyria shall no longer insult Jehovah's land with impunity. The national militia, again numerous and warlike as of old, has no lack of captains to meet the invader, and the tide of battle shall be rolled back into the land of Nimrod, which the sword of Israel shall lay waste. The remnant of Judah shall flourish in the midst of the surrounding peoples, like grass fertilised by the waters of heaven, that tarry not for man nor wait for the sons of men. Judah shall be among the nations irresistible as a lion among flocks of sheep; for its strength comes down from Jehovah, like dew from the skies, and all false helpers, strongholds and chariots, enchantments and graven images, asherim and macceboth, are swept away. And Jehovah will execute judgment in wrath and fury on the nations that refuse obedience (v. 2-15).

It is interesting to observe that according to Jer. xxvi. 19 the prophecy of Micah produced a great impression on his contemporaries. And this is not strange; for he spoke to the masses of the people as one of themselves, and his whole picture of judgment and deliverance was constructed of familiar elements, and appealed to the most cherished traditions of the past. David, as it is easy to recognise from the narrative of the books of Samuel, was the hero of the common people; and no more effective method of popular teaching could have been devised than the presentation of the antique simplicity of his kingdom in contrast to the corruptions of the present. Thus Micah's teaching went straighter to the hearts of the masses than the doctrine of Isaiah, which at this time was still working only as a leaven in a small circle. Isaiah's work, in truth, was the higher as it was the more difficult; it was a greater task to consolidate the party of spiritual faith, and by slow degrees to establish its influence in the governing circle, than to arouse the masses to a sense of the incongruity of the present state of things with the old ideal of Jehovah's nation. But both prophets had their share in the great transformation of Israel's religion which began in the reign of Hezekiah and found definite expression in the reformation of Josiah. It is Micah's conception of the Davidic king which is reproduced in the Deuteronomic law of the kingdom (Deut. xvii. 14 seq.), and his prophecy of the destruction of the high places (v. 13), more directly than anything in Isaiah's book, underlies the principle of the one sanctuary, the establishment of which, in Deuteronomy, and by Josiah, was the chief visible mark of the religious revolution which the teaching of the prophets had effected.

These remarks, however, threaten to carry us too far out of the course of the history which we are pursuing. Let us return to Judah and its rulers as they were on the eve of Samaria's calamity, when Micah was preaching the fall of the corrupt nobles, and Isaiah was appealing to the grandees of the capital to be warned by the fate of their compeers in Samaria. At the time, we may well suppose, the words of Micah found no audience beyond his own district, and the prophecy of Isaiah xxviii. was little heeded, so that, if we may judge from the present arrangement of his book, he deemed it fitting to republish it many years later as a seasonable introduction to a collection of prophecies of the time of Sennacherib. But the events that followed proved that Isaiah's foresight was sound. The sum of his warning had been, "Be ye not mockers, lest your fetters be made strong." Judah refused his admonition, and the Assyrian bondage became every year more grievous. The tone of chap. xx. makes it hardly questionable that ten years later, in 711 B.C., the Judaeans took a lively and favourable interest in the uprising of Philistia, which, by its close connection with Egypt on the one hand and Phoenicia on the other, as well as by the physical advantages of its position in the rich Mediterranean coast-land, was marked out as the natural focus of Palestinian revolt. The pressure of the foreign yoke caused ancestral enmities to be forgotten, and Judah leaned more and more to the scheme of an Egyptian alliance embracing all the Syrian states. Sargon himself, on a cylinder which repeats the main facts of the war of 711, already described from his Annals, tells us that the tributary states of Judah, Edom, and Moab, were speaking treason and beseeching the alliance of Egypt, and many recent inquirers have supposed that at this time Hezekiah and his people broke out into open revolt, and shared the miseries of the war that ensued. This conjecture has considerable interest for the interpretation of Isaiah's prophecies. The prophet was not an ordinary preacher; his voice was mainly heard in great political crises, and in uneventful times he might well be silent for years. But in the day of danger, when Jehovah was pre-eminently at work, the fundamental law of prophecy came into play: " The Lord Jehovah doeth nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets." If Judah was actively engaged in the war of 711, and was reduced by force, it is scarcely doubtful that the book of Isaiah must preserve some record of the fact; and so the latest English commentator, Mr. Cheyne, developing the suggestions of Professor Sayce and other Assyriologists, proposes to ascribe to this period, not only chaps, x. 5 to xi. 16, but chaps, i., xiv. 29-32, xxii., xxix.-xxxii. If we accept this view we must conclude that Judah had a very large share in the campaign of 711, that the whole land was overrun by the enemy and the provincial cities taken and burned (i. 7), that Jerusalem itself was besieged (xxii.) — in short, that Judah suffered precisely in the same way and to the same extent as under the invasion of Sennacherib ten years later. But, more than this, we must conclude that Isaiah held precisely similar language in the two cases, — that under Sargon, as under Sennacherib, he taught that the Assyrian might indeed approach and lay siege to Jerusalem, but Jehovah in the last extremity would Himself protect His holy mountain and strike down the invader, and that he did this in the second invasion without making any reference back to the events of the siege which had called forth similar predictions ten years before.

The mere statement of this hypothesis is, I think, sufficient to show its extreme improbability. History does not repeat itself exactly, and even if the two invasions of the hypothesis ran a similar course, as up to a certain point they might well do, they must have had very different issues. If Jerusalem was besieged in 711 the issue certainly was the submission of Hezekiah and his return to obedience. And if this were so, it is highly improbable that he would have been allowed to restore the Judaean fortresses, and regain so large a measure of military strength as is implied in the fact that ten years later he was the most important member of the rebel confederation. On the contrary, the fact that the campaign of 711 was essentially a campaign against Ashdod, Judaea not being so much as named in the account of it in the Annals, while that of 701 was as essentially a campaign against Judaea, in which the Philistines played quite a subordinate part, seems to be clear evidence that, though Hezekiah may for a moment have thought of revolt on the earlier occasion, he did not take an active part in the war. The extraordinary rapidity of Sargon's movements, specially emphasised on the monuments, enabled him to crush Ashdod before the Egyptians could send aid to their allies, and no doubt nipped in the bud all schemes of revolt on the part of the neighbouring states. That this was the actual course of events is further clear from Isa. xx. The language of the prophet must have been very different if at this time Judah had been actively engaged on the side of Ashdod. And finally, it can hardly be supposed that the book of Kings would have been altogether silent on the subject, if Sargon as well as Sennacherib had besieged Jerusalem and captured the cities of Judah. But the attempt of the Assyriologists to find in 2 Kings xviii. 13 seq. some trace of an earlier invasion which has got mixed up with that of Sennacherib is altogether chimerical. Everything in the narrative of Kings is either borne out by the monuments of Sennacherib, or is altogether inapplicable to the expedition of Sargon. Sennacherib tells only of his successes, not of his ultimate retreat and the escape of Hezekiah, and so his account corresponds only with 2 Kings xviii. 13-l7a. But everything spoken of in these verses agrees exactly with the Assyrian record. [7]

If we are compelled to reject the theory of an invasion of Judaea under Sargon, the only prophecy in Mr. Cheyne's list which can be held to be earlier than the reign of Sennacherib appears to be that extending from X. 5 to xi. 16, which sets forth with greater completeness than any other single discourse preserved to us the whole views of Isaiah concerning the mission of Assyria as an instrument of Jehovah's anger, the ultimate fate of the robber empire, and the future glory of Jehovah's people. The destruction of Samaria, the final captivity of Northern Israel — which the prophet does not seem to have contemplated in the discourses of the reign of Ahaz — and the thorough subjugation of all Syria and Northern Palestine, which were stripped by Sargon of the last shadow of independence, were events that could not fail to produce a deep impression in Judah; and, while others stood aghast at the terrible portent which had changed the whole face of the Hebrew world, Isaiah — who had not lost confidence in the ultimate victory of Jehovah's cause, or ceased to associate that victory with the preservation through all trouble of the visible kingdom of Jehovah in Israel, which had its centre on Mount Zion — could hardly fail to feel it necessary to restate his view of the future of Judah in a form that took account of recent events. The great prophecy of chaps, x. and xi. corresponds to this description. The cardinal thoughts are the same as in chap, xxviii.; [8] but the date is after the fall of Samaria, the destruction of the principalities of Syria, such as Hamath and Arpad, which we know to have taken place at the same time with the final subjugation of Ephraim, is alluded to as a recent event (x. 9), and the immediate historical background of the prophecy is the total revolution which the successes of Assyria and the policy of captivities en masse (x. 13) had worked in all the countries between Judaea and the Euphrates. It is difficult for us to conceive the terror which these events must have inspired among the petty nations of Palestine, who for centuries past had gone on their way, each walking in the name of its god (Micah iv. 5), and fancying itself secure in his help from any greater danger than was involved in the usual feuds with its neighbours. To Isaiah, however, the progress of the Assyrian had no terrors and brought no surprise. There was neither strength nor permanency in the idolatrous kingdoms, which one after another had fallen before the all-conquering power. So far as they were concerned, Assyria was irresistible; its mission upon earth, confided to it by Jehovah Himself, was to prove that there was no God but the Holy One of Israel. But Jehovah's kingdom and Jehovah's citadel of Zion stood in a very different position. The Assyrian in his greatest might is but the rod of Jehovah's anger; and though he knows not this, but deems that the strength of his own hand has gotten him the victory, and that he can deal with Jerusalem and her idols at his will as he has done with Samaria and her idols, it is as impossible for him to lift himself up against Jehovah as for the axe to boast itself against him that heweth therewith, or for the rod to shake the hand that wields it. It is indeed plain that the pride of the Assyrian will not acknowledge this limitation of his might, and that his all-devouring greed will soon carry him onwards to open assault on Judah, which as yet is itself unconscious of its high destiny, still "leaning on him who smites it" — that is, as appeared in chap, xxviii., still depending on that treaty of tributary alliance which, Isaiah saw, could not be long observed. But when the crisis comes, when Jehovah has accomplished His whole work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will punish the proud heart and stout looks of the king of Assyria, and it shall be seen that the conqueror who has removed the bounds of nations and gathered all the earth as a man gathers eggs from a deserted nest, where there is none that moves a wing or opens the mouth or peeps, is powerless before the walls of Jehovah's citadel. Thus, as King Sargon continued his career of universal conquest, the history of the world appeared to Isaiah to converge towards one great decision, when all other nations should have disappeared from the struggle, and the supreme world- power should come face to face with the God who has founded Zion as His inexpugnable sanctuary. This thought shaped itself to the prophet's mind in the picture of a great invasion, in which the Assyrian advances through the pass of Michmash, in the fulness of his arrogancy and might, sweeping the helpless inhabitants before him till he stands upon the broad ridge of Scopus looking down upon Jerusalem from the north, and shakes his hand in contemptuous menace at the mount of the daughter of Zion. Then Jehovah arises in His might and prostrates the proud host, as a mighty forest falls before the axe of the woodman. Compare xiv. 24-27.

The fall of the Assyrian closes the first act of the divine drama as it unfolds itself before the spiritual eyes of the prophet, and this great deliverance seals the repentance of Jehovah's people. "In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon Jehovah the Holy One of Israel in truth" (x. 20). The judgment is past, and days of blessing begin. The Davidic kingdom starts into new life, or, as the prophet expresses it, a new sapling springs from the old stock of Jesse, on whom the spirit of Jehovah rests in full measure, as a spirit of wisdom, heroism, and true religion, who rules in the fear of Jehovah, his loins girt about with righteousness and faithfulness, doing justice to the poor without respect of persons, and consuming the evildoers out of the land by the sovereign sentence of his lips, till crime and violence are no longer known in Jehovah's holy mountain, and the land of Israel is full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea. No figure is too strong to paint this reign of peace and order. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp. It would be puerile to take these expressions literally, and the prophet himself interprets his figure when he represents the abolition of all hurt and harm as the fruit of just judgment and pure government.

The blessings of this Messianic time belong, in the first instance, to Israel alone; the other nations share. in them only in so far as they seek arbitration and guidance from the kingly house of Jesse, which stands forth as a beacon to the surrounding peoples. But the restoration of Israel is complete. Jehovah will gather back the remnant of His people, scattered in Egypt and Assyria and all the four corners of the earth, opening a way before the returning exiles by drying up seas and rivers, as in the day when Israel came up out of Egypt. Judah and Ephraim shall no more be foes, and their united armies shall restore the ancient conquests of David. On the west they shall swoop down victoriously on Philistia; to the east they shall spoil the children of the desert; and Edom, Ammon, and Moab shall return to their old obedience.

The connection of ideas in this prophecy is so clear, and it sets forth with so much completeness Isaiah's whole view of Jehovah's purpose towards Judah, that we may regard it as a typical example of what is usually called Messianic prediction. The name Messiah is never used in the Old Testament in that special sense which we are accustomed to associate with it. The Messiah (with the article and no other word in apposition) is not an Old Testament phrase at all, and the word Messiah (Mashi^ah) or "anointed one" in the connection "Jehovah's anointed one" is no theological term, but an ordinary title of the human king whom Jehovah has set over Israel. Thus the usual way in which the time of Israel's redemption and final glory is called the Messianic time is incorrect and misleading. So long as the Hebrew kingdom lasted, every king was "Jehovah's anointed," and it was only after the Jews lost their independence that the future restoration could be spoken of in contrast to the present as the days of the Messiah. To Isaiah the restoration of Israel is not the commencement but the continuation of that personal sovereignty of Jehovah over His people of which the Davidic king was the recognised representative. As the holy seed which repeoples the land after the work of judgment is done is a fresh growth from the ancient stock of the nation (vi. 13), so too the new Davidic kingship is a fresh outgrowth of the old stem of Jesse. We are apt to think of the days of the Messiah as an altogether new and miraculous dispensation. That was not Isaiah's view. The restoration of Jerusalem is a return to an old state of things, interrupted by national sin. "I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy councillors as at the beginning; afterward thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city " (i. 26). And so when we examine the picture presented in chap. xi. with care, and make allowance for traits so plainly figurative as the lion which eats straw like the ox, the seas and rivers dried up to facilitate the return of the exiles of Judah, we find but one fundamental difference between the old and the new Israel: the land shall be full of the know- ledge of Jehovah, and shall enjoy the happiness which in all ages, past as well as future, has accompanied obedience to the laws of its Divine King. And this obedience again is not taken in a New Testament sense, as if it rested on a new birth in every heart. Obedience to Jehovah as a King is not the affair of the individual conscience, but of the nation in its national organisation; the righteousness of Israel which Isaiah contemplates is such righteousness as is secured by a perfectly wise and firm application of the laws of civil justice and equity. It is this which gives so much importance to the person of the future king. It is the exercise of his functions that abolishes crime and violence, and makes the land which he governs worthy to be called Jehovah's holy mountain. Thus the cardinal point in the prophecy is the equipment of the Davidic king for the perfect exercise of his task by the spirit of Jehovah which rests upon him. But even here the prophet does not bring in any absolutely novel element, marking off the future felicity of Israel as a new dispensation. That good and strong government was the fruit of Jehovah's spirit poured upon the king of Israel was the ancient faith of the Hebrews. So we read that a divine spirit, or the spirit of Jehovah, descended first on Saul and afterwards on David at their respective anointings (1 Sam. x. 6, 10; xvi. 13, 14), as in earlier times the same spirit came upon the judges of Israel and strengthened them for their deeds of heroism (Judges iii. 10; vi. 34; xi. 29). Isaiah himself does not confine this operation of the spirit to the king of the future. In the day of deliverance Jehovah shall be for a spirit of judgment to him that sits for judgment, and of might to them that turn back the battle in the gate (xxviii. 6). All power to do right and noble deeds is Jehovah's gift, and the operations of His spirit are everywhere seen where men do great things in the strength of true faith. And so the indwelling of this spirit in the Davidic king does not constitute an absolutely new departure in the kingship, or offer anything inconsistent with the conception that Jehovah will restore the judges of Jerusalem as they were in the beginning. The new thing is the completeness with which this divine equipment is bestowed, so that the king's whole delight is set on the fear of Jehovah, and his rule is wise and just, without error or defect of any kind.

But does not such an indwelling of the divine spirit, it may be asked, imply that the new king must be more than human? Does not Isaiah himself regard his rule as eternal, and bestow upon him in ix. 6 names that imply that he is God as well as man? In looking at this question, we must not allow ourselves to be influenced by the fuller light of the Christian dispensation which we possess, but which Isaiah had not. To us it is clear that the ideal of a kingdom of God upon earth could not be fully realised under the forms of the Old Testament. The dispensation of the New Testament is not a mere renewal of the days of David in more perfect form. The kingdom of God means now something very different from a restoration of the realm of Judah, and a resubjugation of Philistia and Edom, Ammon and Moab, under a sovereign reigning visibly on Zion; and its establishment on earth was not, and could not be, the fruit of any such outward event as the destruction of the Assyrian monarchy. The very fact that Isaiah did not foresee this, that it was still possible for him immediately to connect the glory of the latter days with the fall of Assyria, and to speak of it as a restoration of the peace, the independence, the political supremacy of the land of Judah, is enough to show that the lineaments of Ms future king are not yet identical with the image of the New Testament Christ. The question, then, which we have to consider is whether Isaiah looked forward to a time when an immortal God-man should sit on the earthly Zion and use his divine strength and wisdom to make the Hebrew race happy and victorious over their neighbours. And to this question I think the answer must be in the negative. We believe in a divine and eternal Saviour, because the work of salvation, as we understand it in the light of the New Testament, is essentially different from the work of the wisest and best earthly king. Isaiah's ideal is only the perfect performance of the ordinary duties of monarchy: for this end he sees a king to be required who reigns in Jehovah's name, and in the strength of His Spirit, but there is no proof and no likelihood that he thought of more than this. It is by no means clear that he looks for an everlasting reign of one king, or indeed that he ever put to himself the question whether the new offshoot from the root of Jesse is to be one person or a race of sovereigns. It is the function and equipment of the kingship, not the person of the king, that absorbs all his attention. And though the names of the child who is to be born to Israel wonderfully foreshadow New Testament ideas, there is no reason to think that they denote anything metaphysical. The king of Israel reigns in Jehovah's name. In him Jehovah's rule becomes visible in Israel, and his great fourfold name speaks rather of the divine attributes that shine forth in his sovereignty, than of the transcendency of a person that is God as well as man. The prophet does not say that the king is the mighty God and the everlasting Father, but that his name is divine and eternal, that is, that the divine might and everlasting fatherhood of Jehovah are displayed in his rule. [9] That the person of the Messiah has not that foremost place in Isaiah's theology which has often been supposed appears most clearly from the fact that in his later utterances he ceases to speak of the rise of a new king. In the prophecies of the time of the war with Sennacherib he says only that the king shall reign for righteousness and princes rule for justice, that the churl shall no more be called princely, and the man of guiles a gracious lord. The right men shall be at the head of the state, and their authority shall bring protection and refreshing to the distressed (xxxii. 1 seq.); Jerusalem's princes and judges shall be such as they were in the good old days (i. 26). So long as the throne was filled by a king like Ahaz, or while his successor was still in the hands of a corrupt nobility, the contrast of the present and future kingship was a point to be specially emphasised; but when there was promise of better days, when a vizier like Shebna had to give way to a man whom Isaiah esteemed so highly as Eliakim (xxii. 15 seq.), and the king himself began to rule on sounder principles, the sharpness of this contrast disappeared, and the prophet spoke rather of the glorious Jehovah Himself, who, above and through the earthly sovereign, was the true Judge, Lawgiver, King, and Saviour of Israel.

To realise what Isaiah looked to when he described a state of things in which the land of Israel should be full of true religion, or, as he expresses it, of practical knowledge of Jehovah, it is well to remember how in chap, xxviii. he presents the daily toil of the husbandman as itself regulated by divine revelation. The Hebrew state consisted essentially of two classes, the peasants and the governors or nobles. Husbandry on the one side, good government and justice on the other, are the twin pillars of the state, and for prince and peasant alike the knowledge of Jehovah means the knowledge of the duties of his vocation as sacred rules enforced by divine sanction and blessed by divine grace. Well-ordered and peaceful industry on the one hand, strict and impartial justice on the other, are the marks by which it is known that Jehovah's law is supreme in Israel; and He Himself crowns such obedience by blessing the fruits of the land, by giving unfailing direction in every time of need, and protecting the righteous nation from every enemy. Compare xxx. 18 seq.

Such is Isaiah's conception of the ideal of the internal order of the state, and his view of the foreign relations of Israel is not less plain and practical. It contains, as we have seen, two elements, the subjugation of the vassal nations which in old days did homage to David, and the establishment of a kind of informal headship over more distant tribes who seek arbitration and direction from Jerusalem. The first of these elements is easy to understand. The new kingdom cannot fall short of the glories of David's reign, and Amos had already predicted that, in the last days, the house of Israel should possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that in doing homage to Israel had acknowledged the sovereignty of Jehovah. Less than this, indeed, could not be regarded as sufficient to establish the peace and security of the Hebrews, who in every generation had been harassed by the enmity of Philistia and Edom, of Ammonites and Moabites. The other element in like manner contains no new thought. It is expressed in a passage which is now read in the books both of Isaiah and Micah (Isa. ii. 2 seq.; Micah iv. 2), and which, if it has a right to stand in both places, and has not rather been transferred from Micah to the text of Isaiah, must be a quotation from an older prophet. For Isaiah ii, was written long before Micah i -v.; and Micah, on the other hand, is certainly not quoting Isaiah. [10] But, in truth, the thought that when justice and mercy rule on the throne of David foreign nations shall willingly bring their feuds before it for arbitration is expressed in the old prophecy, Isa. xvi. {supra, p. 92). This is far from implying a world-wide sovereignty of Israel; the thought covers no more than that kind of influence which a just and strong government always obtains among Semitic populations in its neighbourhood, which we ourselves, for example, exercise at the present day among the Arabs in the vicinity of Aden. The interminable feuds of tribes, conducted on the theory of blood-revenge, which makes no conclusive peace possible while either side has an outstanding score against the other, can seldom be durably healed without the intervention of a third party who is called in as arbiter, and in this way an impartial and wise power acquires of necessity a great and beneficent influence over all around it. Such an influence Israel must obtain when the knowledge and fear of Jehovah are established in the midst of the land.

And now, in conclusion, the practical simplicity and apparently restricted scope of Isaiah's ideal must not cause us to undervalue the pure and lofty faith on which it rests. A too prevalent way of thinking, which is certainly not Biblical, but which leavens almost the whole life of modem times, has accustomed us to regard religion as a thing by itself, which ought indeed to influence daily life, but nevertheless occupies a separate place in our hearts and actions. To us the exercises of religion belong to a different region from the avocations of daily life; God seems to us to stand outside and above the world, which has laws and an order of its own, in which it costs us a distinct effort to recognise the evidence of a personal providence. When we are dealing with the world we seem to have turned our backs upon God, and when we look to Him in the proper exercises of religion we strive to leave the world behind us. Hence our whole thoughts of God are dominated by the contrast of the natural and the supernatural; the miracles by which God approves Himself as God seem to us to have evidential force only in so far as they break through the laws of nature. To us, therefore, the ideal of an existence in full converse with God is apt to present itself as that of a new world in which everything is supernatural, a heaven in which the tasks of common life have no more place, and the natural limitations of earthly being have disappeared. The time when faith shall have passed into sight seems to us to be necessarily a time in which everything is miraculous, in which life is a dream of the fruition of God. To such a habit of thought the ideal of Isaiah is necessarily disappointing, and that not so much on account of the unquestionable imperfection of the Old Testament standpoint which considers the Divine Kingship only in reference to the nation of Israel, as on account of the realism which represents the state of perfected religion as consistent with the continuance of earthly conditions and the common order of actual life. But in reality it is just this realism which is the greatest triumph of Isaiah's faith. For him that contrast of the natural and supernatural which narrows all the religion of the present has no existence. He knows nothing of laws of nature, of an order of the world which can be separated even in thought from the constant personal activity of Jehovah. The natural life of Israel is already, if I may use terms which the prophet would have refused to recognise, as thoroughly penetrated by the supernatural as any heavenly state can be. It is not in the future alone that the Holy One of Israel is to become a living member in the daily life of His people. To him who has eyes to see and ears to hear the presence and voice of Jehovah are already manifested with absolute and unmistakable clearness. It requires no argument to rise from nature to nature's God; the workings of Jehovah are as palpable as those of an ordinary man. In the time of future glory His presence cannot become more actual than it is now; it is only the eyes and ears of Israel that require to be opened to see and hear what to the prophet is even now a present reality.

With all its faults, the old popular religion of Israel had one great excellence: it made religion an inseparable part of common life. The Hebrew saw God's hand and acknowledged His presence in his sowing and his reaping, in his sorrows and his joys. The rules of husbandry were Jehovah's teaching, the harvest gladness was Jehovah's feast, the thunderstorm Jehovah's voice. It was the armies of Jehovah that went forth to battle, the spirit of Jehovah that inspired the king, the oracle of Jehovah that gave forth law and judgment. This simple faith was obscured and threatened with utter extinction by the intrusion into the life of the nation of new and heterogeneous elements, by the gradual dissolution of the ancient balance of society, and above all by the advent of the Assyrian, who swept away in the tide of conquest the whole traditional life of the conquered nations. Then it was that the prophets arose to preach a kingdom of Jehovah supreme even in the crash of nations and the dissolution of the whole fabric of society. But the very cardinal point of their faith, which alone gave it value and power, was the doctrine that the God who reigned in the storm that raged round Israel was no new deity, but the ancient God of Jacob; the kingdom of the future was one with the kingdom of the past, and the task of that divine grace in which they never ceased to trust was not to set a new religion in the place of the old, but to re-establish the ancient harmony of religion and daily experience, and make common life as full of Jehovah's presence as it had been in times gone by. To this end a work of judgment must sweep away all that comes between man and his Maker. The sins of Israel are the things that hide Jehovah from its eyes, and from this point of view idols and idolatrous sanctuaries stand on one line with wealth and luxury, fortresses and chariots, everything that can hold man's heart and prevent it from turning in every concern directly to the Holy One of Israel. To the prophet all these things are emptiness and vanity. The one thing real on earth is the work of Jehovah in relation to His people. To Isaiah, therefore, the supernatural is not something added to and differing from the common course of things. Everything real is supernatural, and supernatural in the same degree. Where we contrast the supernatural and the natural, Isaiah contrasts Jehovah and the things of nought. To him the fall of Assyria by the stroke of the Holy One of Israel is just as supernatural and just as natural as the previous conquests of the Great King; he sees the hand of Jehovah working alike in both, and both exemplify the same principle of the absolute sovereignty of the King who reigns in Zion. Prom our point of view the picture drawn in chaps, x. and xi. is apt to seem a strange mixture of the most surprising miracle and the most prosaic matter of fact. The Assyrian falls by no human sword, and presently the men of Judah are engaged in the petty conquest of Philistia or Edom. Or again, in chap. XXX., the light of the Holy One of Israel flashes forth from Zion, Jehovah causes His glorious voice to be heard and scatters His enemies with flame of a devouring fire, with crashing storm and hail; and when the tempest is past we see the cattle feeding in large, pastures, the oxen and the asses that plough the ground eating savoury provender winnowed with the shovel and the fork. But to Isaiah the miracles of history and the providences of common life bring Jehovah alike near to faith. His religion is the religion of the God without whose will not even a sparrow can fall upon the ground, the God whose greatness lies in His equal sovereignty in things small and vast.

The first requisite to a better understanding of the religion of the Bible is that we should learn to enter with simplicity into this point of view, and to this end we must remember above all things that the Bible knows nothing of that narrow definition of miracle which we have inherited from mediaeval metaphysics. When Isaiah draws a distinction between Jehovah's wonders and the things of daily life he thinks of something quite different from what we call miracle. " Forasmuch as this people draw near Me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour Me, but have removed their heart far from Me, and their fear towards Me is a precept of men learned by rote: therefore behold I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a miracle, and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid" (xxix. 13, 14). A marvel or miracle is a work of Jehovah directed to confound the religion of formalism, to teach men that Jehovah's rule is a real thing and not a traditional convention to be acknowledged in formulas learned by rote. And the mark of such a work is not that it breaks through laws of nature — a conception which had no existence for Isaiah — but that all man's wisdom and foresight stand abashed before it. The whole career of Assyria is part of the marvel that confounds the hypocrisy and formalism of Judah; even as the prophet speaks the work is already begun and proceeding to its completion. And therefore it was of no moment to Isaiah's faith whether his picture of the sudden downfall of the enemy before the gates of Jerusalem was fulfilled, as we say, literally. The point of his prophecy was not that the deliverance of Judah should take place in any one way, or with those dramatic circumstances of the so-called supernatural which a vulgar faith demands as the proof that God is at work. In truth the crisis came, as we shall see in next Lecture, in a form far less visibly startling than is pictured in chap. x.; but it was none the less true that Jehovah so worked His supreme will that man's wisdom was confounded before it, that it was made manifest to the eyes of Israel that Jehovah reigns supreme and that there is no help or salvation save in Him. And in this sense the age of miracle is not past. All history is full of like proofs of divine sovereignty and divine grace, when in ways incalculable, and through combinations that mocked the foresight and policy of human counsellors, God's cause has been proved indestructible, and the faith in a very present God and Saviour which Isaiah preached has come forth in new life from the wreck of societies in which religion had become a mere tradition of men.

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