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ISAIAH AND HIS CHILDREN

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among my disciples. And I will wait for the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for omens in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwelleth on mount Zion.

The Hand grasped me.' 'A figurative description of a prophetic ecstasy. The Divine Hand is specialized to indicate the compulsion of which the inspired prophet is conscious. It was perhaps only at great national crises that Isaiah passed through these ecstatic experiences in their most exalted form; the strain of existence at such times may have made him more liable to these abnormal states. There is a trace of his having had another ecstasy at the beginning of the crises of the invasion of Sennacherib; of course it was not his only one' (Cheyne).

'Stone of stumbling.' We have met the thought before. The methods of God's rule, the very nature of the divine laws, are a source of life and hope to the righteous, but prove to the wicked, so long as they persist in their wickedness, a source of danger and of ruin.

'The children.' Isaiah's own name means 'The Lord delivers,' while his two children's names 'embody leading ideas of his teaching.' 'Swift of spoil, Hasty of prey' symbolizes the ruin that shall befall the unrepentant and unbelieving majority; 'a remnant shall return' (Shear-jashub) symbolizes the doctrine that a select few shall believe and 'return' and be delivered.

The next section is very fragmentary and dreadfully obscure. The first paragraph contains a warning against necromancy. In the second the subject is apparently either the people or any individual Judaean, and the circumstance is the invasion of the Assyrians.

And when they say unto you, 'Consult the familiar spirits and the necromancers that chirp and mutter,' (then reply): 'Should not a people consult their God? For the living should they consult the dead?' 'To the law and to the testimony! Surely thus shall they speak for whom there is no dawn. (??)..

And he shall pass through it, hardly bestead and hungry: and it shall be when he is hungry, he shall break out in anger, and curse his king and his God. And he shall look upward and look down upon the earth; and behold distress

and gloom and a veil of trouble, and he is driven into the darkness (??).

§ 17. The great deliverance.-Connected with the foregoing fragment by a misleading editorial link, there follows, concluding this smaller collection, another famous Messianic prophecy relating to Judah and her future king. As to the date of the prophecy opinions differ. Professor Duhm thinks it belongs to Isaiah's latest period; Professor Cheyne thinks that, if written by Isaiah, it had best be also reckoned among the prophecies under Ahaz, but that it is more probably the work of a post-exilic poet and seer. The perfect tense in which the verbs are put is known in Hebrew grammar as the 'prophetic perfect.' The prophet in his luminous vision sees his aspiration accomplished before him. Doubtless he anticipated (if the passage be indeed Isaiah's) that the coming of the hero, who should usher in the Messianic age, would not be long delayed; for the prophets, as we have often seen, did not realize that the mills of God grind so very slowly. They were always anticipating the end, when, in truth, of the higher human history there had as yet come only the preface and beginning. The booted foe is the Assyrian, but who is the royal child? That we know not; some have thought of Ahaz' son, Hezekiah, but this interpretation is by no means probable. The hero is to be a warrior, but the aim of his wars is peace. The phrase 'divine hero' contains no mysterious thought. The hero is divine' because he is supremely heroic; he is also 'divine' because his great deeds are prompted and fulfilled by the Spirit of God that impels him.

[In the former time he brought disgrace upon the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will bring honour on the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan and on the circuit of the nations.]

The people that walked in darkness behold a great light;

They that dwell in the land of gloom, over them light hath shined.

Thou hast multiplied the exulting; thou hast increased the joy :

They joy before thee according to the joy of harvest, and as men exult when they divide the spoil.

For his burdensome yoke and the staff for his back,

The rod of his task-master, thou hast broken as in the day of Midian.

'UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN'

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For every boot of him that trampeth noisily and every

garment drenched in blood,

Shall be for burning and fuel of fire.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given;
And the government shall be upon his shoulder;
And his name shall be called Wonder-Counsellor,
Divine Hero, Father of Glory, Prince of Peace.
For the increase of dominion and for peace without end,
Upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom,
To establish and to support it by justice and by righteousness,
From henceforth even for ever: the fervour of the Lord of
hosts will perform this.

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§ 18. A prophecy of doom upon the kingdom of Israel.--The next minor collection extends from the middle of the ninth chapter to the end of the twelfth. Its first section is a fine prophecy arranged in strophes with a recurring refrain. If the fifth strophe is genuine, its opening is lost. The present conclusion of the sixth is editorial. It is apparently a verse of comfort, for the 'he' that roars' is seemingly not the Assyrian (who is 'roared over '), but God. On the other hand the refrain is rightly wanting in the last strophe, for the utmost calamity could have no further climax. The whole prophecy has given rise to much dispute into which by lack of space I cannot enter. Does it refer to the future or the past? Is it a pure prediction, or is at least part of it a survey of past or present calamities? Professor Cheyne dates it at 735 (the accession of Ahaz): the first three strophes undoubtedly refer to Israel, and, as Professor Cheyne thinks, are a retrospect of the ills of the past, while the sixth strophe contains the prophecy of the final ruin. Does the fourth strophe refer to Judah? It would be an interruption if it were so, and Professor Duhm thinks that it also refers to the northern kingdom.

The Lord hath sent a word unto Jacob,

And it shall light upon Israel,

And all the people shall know it,

Even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria.

They say in pride and stoutness of heart,

'Bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn

stones :

Sycomores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.'

Therefore the Lord exalted their adversary against them,
And stirred up their enemies;

The Syrians on the east, and the Philistines on the west,
And they devoured Israel with open mouth.
For all this his anger is not turned away,

But his hand is stretched out still.

For the people turned not unto him that smote them,
Neither did they seek the Lord of hosts.

Therefore the Lord cut off from Israel head and tail,
Palm-branch and rush, in one day.

[The ancient and honourable, he is the head;

And the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.] For the leaders of this people have caused them to err; And they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord doth not spare their young men, Neither hath he mercy on their fatherless and widows: For every one is impious and an evildoer,

And every mouth speaketh folly.

For all this his anger is not turned away,
But his hand is stretched out still.

For wickedness burneth as the fire:

It devoureth the briers and thorns, And kindleth the thickets of the forest,

And they roll upward in a pillar of smoke.

Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts was the land

burnt up,

And the people become as fuel of the fire.

And they snatched on the right hand, and were still hungry, And devoured on the left hand, and were not satisfied:

No man spared his brother,

Every one consumed the flesh of his neighbour (?): Manasseh against Ephraim, and Ephraim against Manasseh; And both together against Judah.

For all this his anger is not turned away,
But his hand is stretched out still.

Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees,

And inscribe ordinances of oppression continually; To turn aside the needy from judgement,

THE OUTSTRETCHED HAND

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And to take away the right from the afflicted of my people,

That widows may be their prey,

And that they may rob the fatherless.

But what will ye do in the day of visitation,

And in the ruin which cometh from far?

To whom will ye flee for help?

And where will ye deposit your glory? [Beltis boweth down, Osiris is broken; They fall among the slain.]

For all this his anger is not turned away,
But his hand is stretched out still.

...

Therefore was the anger of the Lord kindled against his people,

And he stretched forth his hand against them,

And hath smitten them, so that the hills trembled,

And their carcases were as offal in the midst of the

streets.

For all this his anger is not turned away,

But his hand is stretched out still.

And he will lift up an ensign to a far off nation,
And will hiss unto it from the end of the earth:
And, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly:
None shall be weary nor stumble among them;
Neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed,
Nor the latchet of their shoes be broken:
Their arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent,
Their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint,
And their wheels like a whirlwind :

Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young

lions:

Yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey,

And shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it. [And in that day he shall roar over him like the roaring of the sea and if one look unto the land, behold darkness of distress, and the light is darkened in its clouds (?).]

§ 19. Prophecies against Assyria.-The second section consists mainly of prophecies against Assyria. Professor Duhm assigns it to the reigns of Hezekiah and Sennacherib. Both he and Professor

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