HEBREW    POLITICS 
 
 IN    THE   TIMES   OF 
 
 SARGON    AND    SENNACHERIB: 
 
 AN     INQUIRY 
 
 INTO 
 
 THE  HISTORICAL  MEANING  AND  PURPOSE  OF  THE  PROPHECIES 
 
 OF  ISAIAH, 
 
 WITH   SOME  NOTICE   OF 
 
 THEIR   BEARINGS   ON    THE   SOCIAL   AND   POLITICAL 
 LIFE   OF  ENGLAND. 
 
 BY   EDWARD   STRACHEY. 
 
 LONDON: 
 LONGMAN.     BROWN,    GREEN,    AND    LONGMANS. 
 
 1853. 
 
Their  orators  thou  then  extoll'st,  as  those 
 The  top  of  eloquence ;  statists  indeed, 
 And  lovers  of  their  country,  as  may  seem ; 
 But  herein  to  our  Prophets  far  beneath, 
 As  men  divinely  taught,  and  better  teaching 
 The  solid  rules  of  civil  government 
 In  their  majestic,  unaffected  style, 
 Than  all  the  oratory  of  Greece  and  Eome. 
 In  them  is  plainest  taught,  and  easiest  learnt, 
 What  makes  a  nation  happy,  and  keeps  it  so, 
 What  ruins  kingdoms,  and  lays  cities  flat ; 
 These  only  with  our  Law  best  form  a  king. 
 
 Paradise  Regained,  iv.  553. 
 
 London : 
 
 Spottiswoodes  and  Shaw, 
 
 Ncfr-street-Square. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The  winged  bulls  and  alabaster  bas-reliefs  now  brought 
 from  the  palaces  of  Sargon  and  Sennacherib,  and  their 
 Annals  now  in  course  of  decipherment,  have  already 
 thrown  a  new  light  on  the  Hebrew  historians  and  pro- 
 phets of  the  same  period.  Although  the  interpretation 
 of  the  inscriptions  must  be  farther  confirmed,  as  well  as 
 carried  out,  before  we  can  estimate  our  gain  as  to  new 
 facts,  we  already  find  that  the  old  facts  have  begun  to 
 seem  more  real.  For  if  the  additional  rays  of  light  are 
 still  few,  and  the  field  of  vision  not  much  extended,  yet 
 there  is  just  that  extension  which  gives  the  roundness 
 and  solidity  of  actual  life  to  what  had  hitherto  some- 
 what of  the  flatness  of  a  mere  picture,  unless  we  could 
 fill  out  the  unaided  Jewish  accounts  by  an  effort  of 
 the  imagination.  Who  does  not  know  the  sense  of  defect, 
 when  he  has  only  one  account  of  great  historical  events? 
 Who  has  not  felt  it,  in  particular,  as  to  the  Hebrew  his- 
 tory, hitherto  left  —  except  for  a  few  fragments  —  with- 
 out that  kind  of  confirmation  which  even  very  opposite 
 accounts  give  to  each  other  ?  However  sure  we  might 
 have  been,  that  there  was  no  essential  misrepresentation 
 in  the  Philippics  of  the  Hebrew  Demosthenes,  when  he 
 denounced  the  imperial   conquerors  who    '  trod  down 
 
 A  2 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 men  as  the  mire  of  the  streets,  removed  the  bounds  of 
 the  nations,  found  as  a  nest  their  riches,  and  gathered 
 all  the  earth  as  one  gathers  eggs:'  —  yet  we  are  not 
 the  less  glad  to  read  the  Assyrians'  own  accounts  of  the 
 way  in  which  father  and  son  did,  year  by  year,  and  from 
 country  to  country,  receive  tribute  from  the  kings  who 
 submitted,  and  conquer  and  punish  by  captivity  or 
 death  those  who  resisted ;  carrying  off  their  gods,  their 
 chief  men,  their  treasures  of  gold  and  silver,  their 
 horses  and  cattle,  nay,  the  whole  inhabitants,  men  and 
 women ;  and  giving  up  the  cities  to  pillage,  and  then 
 restoring  them  under  new  vassals :  so  that  of  each  em- 
 peror, and  of  each  year  of  his  reign,  we  may  say  in 
 Colonel  Rawlinson's  words,  '  his  annals  contain  the 
 usual  amount  of  burning  and  plundering,  sweeping  off 
 the  old  population,  and  planting  fresh  colonies  in  their 
 place.'  We  knew  from  Isaiah  that  all  this  must  have 
 been  so ;  but  the  mind  is  not  the  less  pleased  to  have 
 independent  evidence  that  it  was  so  :  —  to  find  its  infer- 
 ences realised  in  facts. 
 
 The  antiquarian  is  not,  however,  the  chief  interest  of 
 these  times  of  Sargon  and  Sennacherib.  Our  latest 
 historians  of  Greece  and  Rome  are  showing  us,  as  in  a 
 mirror,  the  very  lineaments  of  our  own  age.  They  tell 
 us  of  soldiers  who  followed  their  leaders  to  certain  death, 
 in  obedience  to  the  orders  of  those  who  sent  them,  ex- 
 pecting every  man  to  do  his  duty  :  and  of  citizens  whose 
 political  vices  and  even  passions,  as  well  as  virtues,  and 
 the  causes  of  their  national  decay,  no  less  than  their 
 national  growth,  are  all  found  within  the  circle  of  con- 
 stitutional government,  with  its  juries  and  its  parlia- 
 ments, its  administrations  headed  by  the  highborn,  the 
 
PREFACE.  V 
 
 rich,  and  the  respectable,  and  its  opposition  led  by 
 speakers  who  used  the  most  unlicensed  violence  of 
 words,  without  a  thought  of  overstepping  the  forms  of 
 the  constitution  by  act,  and  whom  the  people  half  de- 
 spised as  plebeian,  while  they  supported  them  as  the 
 necessary  check  on  the  aristocratic  men  whom  they  pre- 
 ferred to  have  in  office.  Again  they  show  us,  how  con- 
 stitutional freedom  of  thought  and  action  in  politics 
 degenerated  into  individual  selfishness  or  self-will,  so 
 that  each  man  held  it  his  right,  or,  if  he  was  a  fanatic, 
 his  duty,  to  enforce  his  own  private  view  or  interest, 
 without  regard  to  the  good  of  the  commonwealth :  and 
 how,  when  this  vice  had  become  incurable,  the  most 
 enlightened  patriots  agreed  with  the  most  timid  or 
 selfish  lovers  of  order,  that  nothing  was  left  for  the  state 
 but  simple  military  despotism  ;  nothing  in  religion,  but 
 an  organised  superstition  without  faith  : — which  despot- 
 ism and  superstition  would  do  nothing,  indeed,  towards 
 restoring  the  life  of  the  nation,  but  would  make  its  in- 
 evitable death  more  gradual,  and  less  convulsive,  than 
 if  they  continued  to  try  successive  forms  of  anarchy 
 under  the  pretence  of  regaining  liberty :  and  they  show 
 us  how  the  civil  skill  of  an  Augustus  built  up  this  ne- 
 cessary system  of  state-craft,  for  which  the  sword  of  his 
 predecessor  had  cleared  the  ground.  These  things,  and 
 much  more,  they  tell  us,  and  we  know  how  to  make  the 
 application.  But  when  it  is  made,  it  announces  an  in- 
 evitable law  of  national  decay  and  death,  which  is  to 
 take  effect  upon  us  too,  as  well  as  upon  Greece  or  Rome ; 
 rather  than  a  moral  warning,  with  direction  how  we  may 
 escape  our  threatened  destiny :  and  it  is  this  latter  that 
 we  feel  we  want,  and  of  which  we  will  not  abandon  the 
 
 A   3 
 
VI  PREFACE. 
 
 hope  that  it  may  be  still  found.  We  know  that  in  our 
 personal  experience  the  moral  laws  of  spirit  do  control 
 and  modify  the  laws  of  nature,  and  in  the  end  pro- 
 duce a  result  which,  though  apparently  in  accordance 
 with  the  latter,  is  really  the  complete  triumph  of  the  for- 
 mer :  —  that  the  body  grows  old  and  dies,  but  that  the 
 man  himself  may  all  the  while  have  been  growing  up 
 towards  the  maturity  of  an  imperishable  life.  And  we 
 apply  the  analogy  to  our  country.  We  observe  that  all 
 nations  that  have  hitherto  perished,  have  perished, 
 partly  at  least,  of  disease  originating  in  political  vices : 
 and  we  conclude,  that  if  immortality  is  no  more  pos- 
 sible to  a  nation  than  to  anything  else  on  earth,  it 
 must  be  possible  that  its  decay  should  be  that  of 
 simple  and  healthy  old  age ;  that  it  should  be  altogether 
 honourable  and  honoured,  in  that  old  age,  by  the  young 
 nations  that  spring  from  it ;  and  that  it  should  leave 
 to  them  the  inheritance  of  a  wholly  noble  character 
 and  spirit,  and  not  merely  that  mixture  of  vices  and 
 virtues,  of  wisdom  and  error,  which  has  come  down 
 to  it  from  its  great  predecessors. 
 
 This,  then,  is  the  important  matter  to  us :  whether  the 
 law  of  disease,  which,  as  distinguished  from  that  of  age, 
 is  so  plainly  at  work  in  England,  as  well  as  in  every 
 other  nation  of  Europe,  can  be  still  arrested ;  and  in 
 particular,  whether  there  is  truth  in  that  half-forgotten 
 faith  of  our  statesmen  in  former  days,  that  the  political 
 history  of  the  Hebrews  does  contain  indications  of  the 
 remedy,  as  well  as  the  disease,  though  the  latter  only  is 
 described  in  the  books  of  Greece  and  Rome :  whether, 
 for  instance,  Milton,  who  was  no  mean  statesman  in  a 
 day  when  men  had  to  show  what  was  really  in  them, 
 
PREFACE.  Vll 
 
 and  who  had  no  lack  of  knowledge   as  to   what  the 
 
 ancients  could  teach  us  of  politics,  was  right  when  he 
 
 asserted  of  the  Jewish  books,  that 
 
 In  them  is  plainest,  taught,  and  easiest  learnt, 
 What  makes  a  nation  happy,  and  keeps  it  so. 
 
 To  get  an  answer  to  this  question  for  myself;  to  as- 
 certain whether  an  English  squire  could  find  in  the 
 Bible  any  political  instruction  which  might  avail  him  at 
 union  boards  and  county  elections,  and  in  his  relations 
 with  the  parson  and  the  magistrate,  the  farmer  and  the 
 peasant ;  was  my  purpose  when  I  began  the  study  of  the 
 writings  of  Isaiah  many  years  since :  and  the  hope  of 
 serving  some  one  desirous  of  such  information,  might 
 have  seemed  to  me  excuse  enough  for  thus  attempting 
 to  show  what  I  had  learnt  of  the  internal  politics  of 
 Judea,  and  of  their  relation  to  those  of  modern  England. 
 But,  meanwhile,  there  are  gathering  signs,  that  the 
 times  of  Isaiah,  and  the  principles  which  he  enunciated, 
 are  finding,  and  may  find  more  and  more,  their  counter- 
 part, and  their  application,  in  our  foreign  relations  too. 
 It  may  not  be  only  Hebrew  politics,  but  Hebrew  poli- 
 tics in  their  connection  with  Sargon  and  Sennacherib, 
 that  we  want  to  study.  We  may  know  already  what 
 the  prophet  meant  by  his  protests  against  'the  new 
 moons  and  sabbaths,  and  the  making  many  prayers ; ' 
 and  against  the  '  land  full  of  silver  and  gold,  where  men 
 join  house  to  house,  and  field  to  field,  and  grind  the 
 faces  of  the  poor,  and  right  not  the  fatherless,  and  jus- 
 tify the  wicked  for  reward,  and  are  prudent  in  their 
 own  sight,  but  regard  not  the  work  of  the  Lord,  nor 
 the  operation  of  His  hands.'  We  may  know,  too,  or 
 hope  to  know,  something  of  the  contrary  state  of  things, 
 
 A    4 
 
VU1  PREFACE. 
 
 when  righteous  and  just  rulers  and  princes  show  how 
 1  a  man  can  be  a  covert  from  the  tempest ; '  and  how 
 he  can  '  devise  liberal  things  for  the  poor  and  needy, 
 and  fill  the  land  with  knowledge  and  understanding, 
 and  break  every  yoke.'  But  our  country  has,  within 
 the  last  four  years,  become  almost  as  isolated,  though  not 
 as  weak,  as  Judea,  in  the  midst  of  military  despotisms. 
 Our  old  notions  of  law  and  liberty,  in  religion  and  in 
 government,  are  shocked  by  acts  and  maxims  which  re- 
 mind us  of  the  Assyrian's  boast,  that  '  By  the  grace  of 
 my  god  Assarac  I  have  done  it,'  or,  '  By  the  strength  of 
 my  hand,  and  by  my  wisdom,  for  I  am  prudent.'  And 
 while  the  political  moralist  now,  as  in  Isaiah's  day, 
 recognises  a  needful  discipline  for  each  nation  in  these 
 things,  and  asks  himself  what  cause  his  own  country 
 can  show  why  she  should  wholly  escape  it,  he  thinks  — 
 we  all  think  at  times  —  of  the  possibility  of  a  contest 
 in  which  not  our  mere  lives,  or  even  the  life  of  our 
 nation,  but  the  life  —  all  that  deserves  the  name  of 
 life  —  of  the  world  itself,  will  be  at  stake :  nor  is  the 
 faith  wanting  among  us  that,  in  such  a  contest,  God 
 will  have  work  for  '  his  Englishmen,'  as  Milton  calls  us. 
 Men's  various  tempers,  and  the  changeable  events  of  the 
 day,  may  variously  incline,  or  disincline,  them  to  be- 
 lieve that  the  contest  will  be  one  with  fleets  and  armies : 
 but  no  one  doubts  that — in  the  one  sense  or  the  other — 
 a  war  of  principles  is  at  hand,  or  rather  begun  already. 
 And,  if  so,  it  is  worth  our  while  to  inquire  what  we 
 may  learn  of  those  principles  in  a  book  which  professes 
 to  set  them  forth  in  direct  form,  and  with  a  practical, 
 and  for  us  illustrative,  application  to  the  political  events 
 of  the  writer's  own  time.     If  the  principles  of  Isaiah 
 
PREFACE.  IX 
 
 are  the  true  ones,  his  demonstration  of  them  will  not  be 
 the  less  clear  and  instructive,  because  his  diagram  is 
 the  simple  constitution,  and  the  little  state,  of  Judea, 
 and  we  are  interested  in  the  commonwealth  of  Eng- 
 land, with  its  complicated  organisation  and  mighty 
 power. 
 
 The  reader  must  not,  however,  suppose  that  I  have 
 employed  the  writings  of  Isaiah  to  set  forth  and  en- 
 force some  system  of  dogmas,  political  or  theological,  of 
 my  own.  I  have  applied  myself  to  the  prophet,  simply 
 to  learn  from  him  whatever  I  might  find  he  had  to 
 teach  an  English  citizen :  I  have  taken  the  book  as  it 
 stands:  and,  while  availing  myself  of  the  stores  of 
 thought  and  learning  which  the  commentators  of  vari- 
 ous  schools  have  provided,  I  have,  to  the  best  of  my 
 ability,  handled  the  book  itself  by  the  method  of  the 
 Niebuhrs  and  the  Grotes,  and  treated  it  as  they  —  with 
 thorough  freedom  and  thorough  reverence  —  treat  the 
 classical  books.  Wherever  the  method  led,  I  have 
 followed :  and  I  now  offer  the  sketch-map  of  my  route 
 to  any  one  who  may  intend  to  take  the  same  road  for 
 himself,  and  be  willing  to  accept  such  help  as  it  can 
 give.  If  he  finds  its  use  real,  he  will,  I  trust,  pardon 
 some  repetitions  of  statement  which,  if  not  inevitable 
 to  my  plan,  I  have  not  had  the  skill  to  avoid. 
 
 The  special,  but  important,  question,  as  to  the  genuine- 
 ness of  parts  of  the  book  ;  which  has  been  debated  on 
 theological  and  speculative  grounds  during  the  last 
 sixty  years,  but  on  which  each  school  still  refuses  to 
 accept  the  conclusion  of  the  other ;  I  have  ventured  to 
 examine  by  the  same  —  the  positive  —  method.  With 
 what  result,  the  reader  will  judge. 
 
X  PREFACE. 
 
 I  have  given,  in  their  proper  places,  the  latest 
 readings  of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions  according  to 
 Colonel  Itawlinson  and  Dr.  Hincks  ;  and  have  shown 
 their  bearings  upon  the  Jewish  accounts,  as  well 
 as  upon  the  notices  in  the  classical  writers,  and  in 
 Berosus  and  the  other  Oriental  annalists  of  whom 
 a  few  fragments  have  come  down  to  us :  —  so  far 
 as  relates  to  the  times  I  have  treated  of.  But  I  have 
 been  careful  to  distinguish  our  main  standing-ground ; 
 which  is  independent  of  the  Inscriptions,  and  will  hold 
 firm  though  the  present  interpretations  of  these  should 
 hereafter  be  set  aside  in  part,  or  altogether.  Of  this, 
 however,  the  best  authorities  have  the  least  expectation  ; 
 and,  in  addition  to  what  others  have  published  on  the 
 subject,  Mr.  Norris,  of  the  Asiatic  Society,  permits  me 
 to  give,  with  the  weight  of  his  name,  the  following 
 note,  in  which  he  states  the  case  more  lucidly,  I  think, 
 than  has  yet  been  done :  — 
 
 "  I  believe  the  general  tenour  of  the  reading  of  As- 
 syrian monuments  is  quite  correct,  about  as  correct  as 
 would  be  the  reading  of  a  Latin  historical  document  by 
 an  intelligent  Italian,  who  knew  no  more  of  Latin  than 
 what  he  might  have  learned  through  a  general  study  of 
 antiquities,  and  a  comparison  with  the  roots  and  forms 
 of  his  own  tongue :  and  it  must  be  remembered  that 
 the  monuments  we  have  from  Assyria  are  couched  in 
 the  very  plainest  and  simplest  language.  The  reading 
 of  foreign  names  too  is,  I  believe,  accurate :  of  native 
 names  we  have  less  certainty,  as  it  appears  to  have  been 
 the  practice  of  the  writers  rather  to  indicate  a  name  than 
 to  spell  it :  —  to  designate  their  monarchs  rather  as  the 
 favourites  of  this  or  that  particular  god  or  goddess,  than 
 
PREFACE.  XI 
 
 as  having  vulgar  names,  to  be  written  with  common 
 letters.  Hezekiah,  Menahem,  Jehu,  &c.  I  believe  to  be 
 quite  sure,  and  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  other 
 foreign  names  are  equally  ascertained :  but  monograms 
 of  gods  are  much  less  manageable,  though  even  here 
 we  have  now  and  then  collateral  aids  which  render  pro- 
 babilities all  but  certainties." 
 
 Such  collateral  aids  are  found  in  the  coincidence  of 
 the  Hebrew,  and  fragmentary  Greek,  accounts  —  con- 
 firmed in  one  case  by  a  local  name  —  with  those  state- 
 ments of  the  Inscriptions  which,  being  written  in  the 
 ordinary  manner,  have  been  deciphered  by  the  ordinary 
 methods.  Thus,  within  the  pile  of  ruins  which  bore  the 
 name  of  Sarghun  as  late  as  the  Arab  conquest,  were 
 found  inscriptions  which  state,  among  other  things,  that 
 the  builder  was  king  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  and  swept 
 away  Samaria,  and  reduced  Tyre  and  Ashdod  ;  and  the 
 annals  of  his  successor  relate,  that  he  invaded  Judea  in 
 order  to  compel  Hezekiah  to  pay  his  accustomed  tribute, 
 and  defeated  the  kings  of  Egypt  and  Meroe,  who  came 
 to  help  their  Jewish  ally  : — with  various  details  of  names 
 and  facts,  corresponding  with  those  of  the  Hebrew  his- 
 tory. And,  if  it  be  admitted  that  these  names  and 
 facts  can  be  so  far  deciphered,  the  conclusion  is  inevit- 
 able, that  these  two  Assyrian  kings,  under  whatever 
 monograms  their  own  names  are  concealed,  were  the 
 Sargon  and  Sennacherib  of  Isaiah. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER  I. 
 
 The  Greek  Orator.  —  The  Hebrew  Prophet.  —  The  modern  Preacher.  — 
 
 —  Schools  of  the  Prophets. — The  Book  of  Isaiah  —  its  Arrange- 
 ment —  its  Unity.  —  Hypothetical  and  positive  Criticism.  —  Niebuhr's 
 Canons  -_..-_     Page  1 
 
 CHAP.  II. 
 
 The  Book  of  Isaiah  —  its  Title.  —  Date  of  Chapter  i.  —  Prophetic  Ima- 
 gination. —  Hebrew  Oratory  rhythmical.  —  Parallels  in  other  Nations. 
 
 —  Contents  of  Chapter  i.  —  Times  of  Uzziah   and  Jotham Forms 
 
 and  Spirit.  —  National  Brotherhood.  —  Political  Ideals   -  -      14 
 
 CHAP.   III. 
 
 Isaiah  ii.,  hi.,  iv.      Hebrew    Genius  imaginative   rather    than    logical. 
 
 Preterite  and  Future  Tenses  in  Hebrew.  —  The  last  Days.  —  Contrast 
 
 of  the  ideal  and  actual  State  of  the  Nation.  —  Foreign   Influences. 
 
 Private  Idolatry.  —  Political  Materialism.  —  National  Decay.  —  Laws 
 of  God's  Government  of  the  World.  —  Good  and  evil  of  Commerce. — 
 Hebrew  Matrons.  —  Female  Luxury  —  its  Punishment.  —  The  Branch 
 of  the  Lord.  —  The  restored  though  humbled  Nation        -  -     32 
 
 CHAP.   IV. 
 
 Isaiah  v.  Coming  Woes.  —  Fusing  Power  of  Imagination.  —  Hebrew 
 Idyll. — Ancient  Fertility  of  Judea —  present  Barrenness.  —  The 
 Vineyard  of  the  Lord  of  hosts.  —  Selfishness  in  an  Aristocracy.  — 
 Rights  and  Duties  of  Landowners.  —  Property  a  Trust — Hebrew 
 and  English  Laws  of  Entail.  —  Word  and  Work  of  the  Lord.  —  God 
 a  Constitutional  Ruler.  —  Abuse  of  Words  by  worldly  Men.  —  Thu- 
 cydides.  —  Fulfilment  of  Isaiah's  Threats  to  his  Cotemporaries  —  and 
 to  all  Ages  since.  —  Grotius  on  Prophecy  -  -  -      49 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP.  V. 
 
 Isaiah  vi.  The  Prophet's  Commission.  —  The  Temple  —  its  Scenes.  — 
 The  Vision.  —  Insight  into  the  Life  of  Things.  —  Prophecy  rational 
 and  intelligible.  —  God  the  real  and  actual  King.  —  Plural  of  Majesty. 
 
 —  Holiness  of  God  —  His  Justice.  —  Calvinism      -  -     Page  67 
 
 CHAP.  VI. 
 
 Isaiah  vii.    The  Accession  of  Ahaz.  —  Political  State  of  King  and  People. 
 
 —  '  The  Lord  said.'  —  Topography  of  Jerusalem.  —  The  Virgin  con- 
 ceiving.—  The  Incarnation  an  universal  Idea — how  realised.  —  Loss 
 of  Hebrew  Independence.  —  Isaiah  not  a  Magician  -  84 
 
 CHAP.  VII. 
 
 Isaiah  viii. — ix.  7.  The  Symbolical  Family.  —  Ancient  and  modern  Habits 
 of  Public  Men.  —  Siloah  and  Euphrates.  —  The  Panic  of  Judah,  and 
 its  Remedy.  —  Galilee  of  the  Gentiles.  —  The  National  Gloom.  —  The 
 Great  Light.  —  The  Messiah.  —  Gradual  Development  of  the  Prophet's 
 Anticipations  -  -  -  -  -  -100 
 
 CHAP.  VIII. 
 
 Isaiah  ix.  8. — xii.  Epic  Unity.  —  Obstinate  Energy  of  the  Hebrew  Race. 
 Lawlessness  of  the  Ten  Tribes.  —  Legalism  of  Judah.  —  The  King  of 
 Assyria.  —  Gods  in  the  Image  of  Men.  —  The  Scourge  of  Nations,  and 
 its  Wielder. — Ancient  Roads.  —  The  King  of  the  Stock  of  Jesse.  — 
 The  Golden  Age.  —  Fusion  of  Conflicting  Elements  in  a  Nation.  — 
 Consequences  of  the  Revolt  of  Ephraim.  —  Deportation  of  Jews  in 
 Isaiah's  Time.  —  The  Universal  Church  —  its  Relation  to  the  World. 
 
 —  The  Water  of  Salvation      -  -  -  -  -     111 
 
 CHAP.  IX. 
 
 Isaiah  xiii.,  xiv.  Genuineness  of  the  Prophecies  on  Babylon.  —  Scep- 
 tical Criticism  —  its  Origin  and  Progress  —  not  Positive  or  Construc- 
 tive. —  Orthodox  Criticism.  —  Results  of  the  Controversy.  —  Tra- 
 ditional Comments  confounded  with  the  Text.  —  Hebrew  Historical 
 Notices  of  Babylon  —  Assyrian  Notices.  —  Babylon  sacked  in  Isaiah's 
 Time  by  Persians,  and  perhaps  by  Medes.  — Babylon  a  Diagram  or 
 Ideograph.  —  Arguments  from  Style.  —  Suspense  better  than  hasty 
 Decision.  —  Final  Overthrow  of  the  Empire  of  Force    -  -      140 
 
 CHAP.   X. 
 
 Isaiah  xiv.  28.  Philistia.  —  Origin  of  the  Philistines  —  their  Extermi- 
 nation commanded  by  Moses Law  of  Conquests  and  Exterminations. 
 
CONTENTS.  XV 
 
 —  British  Conquest  of  India.  —  Evil  not  Eternal.  —  Philistia's  Re- 
 lations with  Judah  —  with  Assyria.  —  Sargon  and  Sennacherib  in 
 Philistia        -.._-.  page  163 
 
 CHAP.  XI. 
 
 Isaiah  xv.,  xvi.  Moab  —  probably  reduced  by  Shalmaneser.  —  History 
 of  Moab  —  Picture  of  its  Overthrow.  —  Tribute  of  Lambs  due  to  Judah. 
 
 —  Friendship  with  Judah  advised.  —  Modern  Distinction  between  the 
 animal  and  spiritual  Life.  —  Corporate  Unity  of  a  State  -      174 
 
 CHAP.  XII. 
 
 Isaiah  xvii.,  xviii.  Damascus,  Ephraim,  and  Ethiopia.  —  Probable  Date 
 and  Unity  of  this  Prophecy.  —  The  Rush  of  Nations.  —  The  general 
 Panic.  —  Worldly  Alliances.  —  God's  Deliverance.  —  Notion  of  this 
 Prophecy  being  a  Myth  —  not  well  founded      -  -  -      183 
 
 CHAP.  XIII. 
 
 Isaiah  xix.  Egyptian  Dynasties  in  the  Time  of  Isaiah  —  Cotemporary  or 
 Successive.  —  Historical  Notices  from  various  Sources.  —  Anarchy. — 
 Invasion  of  Sargon.  —  Sack  of  Thebes.  —  Treaty  between  Egypt  and 
 Assyria.  —  Multitude  of  Gods  and  of  Castes  unfavourable  to  Political 
 Unity.  —  Exclusive  Wisdom  Qf  Priesthood.  —  The  City  of  Destruction. 
 
 —  Alexander  and  Ptolemy.  —  Temple  of  Onias.  —  Septuagint.  — 
 Philo. — Church  of  Alexandria. — Bacon  on  Prophecy  -  -     189 
 
 CHAP.  XIV. 
 
 Isaiah  xx.  Sargon,  Shalmaneser,  Tartan.  —  The  Siege  of  Ashdod.  — 
 Shebna's  Policy  of  Alliances.  —  Isaiah's  Symbolical  Protest  against  it  — 
 he  walks  naked  and  barefoot.  —  Isaiah's  Policy  probably  more  Ex- 
 pedient—  certainly  more  befitting  Israel's  Place  in  Universal  History 
 
 196 
 
 CHAP.  XV. 
 
 Isaiah  xxi.  A  Vision  in  a  Dream  or  Trance.  —  Bible  Meaning  of  In- 
 spiration. —  Divination.  —  Ancient  Oracles.  —  Special  Powers  of  Na- 
 tions and  Individuals.  —  One  Greece,  one  Shakspeare.  —  Discernment 
 of  Political  Effects  in  their  Causes  less  possible  now  than  formerly.  — 
 
 —  '  The  Desert  of  the  Sea.'  —  The  Prophet  a  Watchman.  —  The  Tribes 
 of  Arabia  —  subjected  by  Assyria  -  202 
 
 CHAP.  XVI. 
 
 Isaiah  xxii.     Political  Parties  at  Jerusalem.  —  Shebna  and  the  Majority. 
 
 —  Eliakim  and  the  Minority.  —  Isaiah's  Attack   on  Shebna.  —  Prepara- 
 
XVI  CONTENTS. 
 
 tions  for  the  Siege.  —  Topography  of  Jerusalem.  —  Site  of  Sion.  — 
 Spirit  of  the  People  and  King.  —  Fall  of  Shebna.  —  Sufferings  of 
 Modern  Nations  from  Invasion.  —  Moral  and  Religious  Results.  — 
 Prussia. — Switzerland.  ...  -  Page  211 
 
 CHAP.  XVII. 
 
 Isaiah  xxiii.  The  Phenicians — Historical  Notices  —  Their  Trade  — 
 —  Carriers  of  Philosophy  and  Politics — Relations  with  Israel. — 
 The  Tyrian  Hercules  —  their  Religion  Political,  not  Natural.  —  Siege 
 of  the  Island-Tyre  by  Shalmaneser  —  by  Nebuchadnezzar  —  by  Alex- 
 ander —  present  State.  —  Authorship  of  the  Prophecy.  —  The  Dis- 
 penser of  Crowns.  —  The  Queen  of  Cities  dishonoured.  —  Tyre  for- 
 gotten Seventy  Years  —  shall  sing  as  an  Harlot  -  -     227 
 
 CHAP.  XVIII. 
 
 Isaiah  xxiv.  —  xxvii.  Utter  Desolation  of  Judah  —  actually  caused  by 
 the  Assyrian  Armies.  —  National  Covenant,  broken  by  Ahaz  —  he  shuts 
 the  Temple.  —  God's  Counsels  of  Old.  —  Moab  put  for  Assyria.  —  Pa- 
 tience in  National  Calamities.  —  The  Wife  divorced,  and  taken  back. — 
 The  Silver  Trumpet  sounded.  —  Expansion  of  Isaiah's  Views       -     239 
 
 CHAP.  XIX. 
 
 Isaiah  xxviii. — xxxv.  The  Political,  Moral,  and  Religious  State  and 
 Prospects  of  Judah.  —  Ariel,  the  Lion  of  God.  —  Worldly  State-Craft. 
 True  Insight.  —  The  Embassy  to  Egypt.  —  Persecution  of  the  Pro- 
 phets  Dumb  Idols  and  the  Unseen  Teacher.  —  The  Holy  Solemnities. 
 
 Talmudical  Account  of  Festal  Processions.  —  The  Stroke  of  Doom 
 
 on  Sennacherib. — The  Real  Deliverer.  —  Social  Influence  of  Women. 
 The  Siege  raised.  —  Edom  put  for  Assyria.  —  Return  of  the  ran- 
 somed Captives  --------     248 
 
 CHAP.  XX. 
 
 Isaiah  xxxvi.,  xxxvii.  Historical  Events  of  Sennacherib's  Invasion  and 
 Retreat  —  his  Letter  —  how  answered.  —  Unconscious  Genius  in  the 
 Narrative.  —  Rab-Shakeh's  Theology.  —  Isaiah's  Inspiration.  —  '  The 
 Incarnate  Wrath  of  God.'  —  Zion's  Defiance.  —  The  'Sign'  of  the 
 Spontaneous  Crops.  —  The  Destroying  Angel.  —  Sethos  delivered  by 
 Vulcan.  —  Value  of  Sennacherib's  Annals,  if  established —  their  Altered 
 Tone  after  this  Year.  —  German  War  of  Freedom.  —  History  teaches 
 a  Belief  in  Providence.  —  Niebuhr.  —  Grote     -  -  -     271 
 
 CHAP.  XXI. 
 
 Isaiah  xxxviii.  The  Sickness  of  Hezekiah.  —  Importance  of  his  Life  to 
 his    Nation.  —  his  Desire  of  Recovery  not  purely  Selfish.  —  Fear  of 
 
CONTENTS.  Xvii 
 
 Death  in  Old  Times.  —  Christ's  Resurrection.  —  The  Sign  of  the  Sha- 
 dow on  the  Sun-Dial. — Two  Accounts  —  the  Cotemporary  One  not 
 Miraculous.  — Bible  to  be  treated  like  other  Books.  —  Not  so  treated  by 
 Sceptics.  —  The  Hymn  of  Hezekiah  -  Page  285 
 
 CHAP.  XXII. 
 
 Isaiah  xxix. :  The  Embassy  from  Babylon.  —  Chronicle  of  Eusebius.  — 
 Berosus.  —  Sennacherib's  Annals.  —  Books  of  Kings  and  Chronicles.  — 
 Value  of  the  Latter.  —  The  Sin  of  Hezekiah.  —  Trusting  God  in  Po- 
 litics. —  Modern  History.  —  Niebuhr  and  Naples.  —  Colletta.  —  Reve- 
 rence for  Great  Men.  — Nations  and  Rulers  re-act  on  each  other.  — 
 Hezekiah's  Reception  of  the  Embassy.  —  Isaiah's  Denunciation.  — 
 c  Apres  moi  le  Deluge.'  —  Prosperity  of  England.  —  Religious  Temper 
 of  our  Statesmen.  —  Mr.  Gladstone      -  2.95 
 
 CHAP.  XXIII. 
 
 Isaiah  xl  —  lxvi.:  Question  of  the  Genuineness  of  the  last  Chapters 
 of  Isaiah.  —  Pseudo-Isaian  Hypothesis.  —  The  Name  of  Cyrus.  — 
 Coresh,  and  the  Lord's  Servant.  —  Modern  Explanations.  —  Moller's 
 Interpretation.  —  Doubts  and  Certainties.  — The  Positive  Method.  — 
 Coherence  of  earlier  and  later  Prophecies.  —  The  earlier  not  fulfilled  as 
 Isaiah  had  expected.  —  Enlargement  of  his  Views.  —  Finite  and  In- 
 finite Ideals.  — ■  Facts  for  Induction  as  to  the  Nature  of  Prophecy.  — 
 Note  on  Strauss,  and  the  Application  of  Positive  Criticism  to  Chris- 
 tianity ._--..-     sio 
 
 CHAP.  XXIV. 
 
 The  Vision  of  the  Captivity  and  Deliverance.  —  The  Transitory  and  the 
 Permanent.  —  God  in  Nature,  and  in  Human  Society.  —  The  Power- 
 less Gods  of  the  Nations.  —  The  Jewish  Institution  of  the  Redeemer. 
 —  Its  Effect  on  the  more  enlightened  Jews.  —  The  Deliverer,  King,  and 
 Teacher.  —  The  Work  of  Isaiah  and  Hezekiah.  —  Its  Success  and  its 
 Failure.  —  Jewish  Idea  of  the  Messiah.  —  Its  Relation  to  their  Poli- 
 tical Life.  — Atonement  a  Human  Fact.  —  A  rational  Idea.  —  Union 
 of  Half-Truths.  —  The  Messiah  of  the  Gospel.  —  The  Prophets  and 
 the  Apostles.  —  Isaiah's  Science  of  Politics  —  His  Death  —  His 
 Triumph       -  -  -  -  -  -  -332 
 
 Appendix  _„__--_     253 
 
HEBREW    POLITICS, 
 
 CHAPTER  I. 
 
 THE    GREEK    ORATOR.  — THE    HEBREW    PROPHET. THE    MODERN    PREACHER. 
 
 SCHOOLS    OF    THE    PROPHETS.  THE    BOOK    OF    ISAIAH.  ITS    ARRANGE- 
 MENT—  ITS     UNITY. HYPOTHETICAL     AND      POSITIVE      CRITICISM. NIE- 
 
 BUHR's    CANONS. 
 
 The  Spartan  king  told  Xerxes  that  he  was  no  match  for  the 
 Greeks,  '  because  they,  though  free,  had  a  master  —  the  law 
 —  over  them,  which  they  feared  more  than  the  Persians  did  his 
 despotic  will.'  And  the  Athenian  orator,  looking  back  on  the 
 great  struggle  after  a  generation  or  two  had  passed,  gave  his 
 countrymen  the  same  explanation  of  their  fathers'  success 
 *  against  the  barbarian  myriads  of  the  king  of  Asia : '  he  pointed 
 out  how  '  they  had  done  such  noble  and  wonderful  deeds, 
 because  they  were  already  organised  into  a  free  commonwealth 
 in  which  the  good  were  honoured,  and  the  bad  restrained,  by 
 law ;  because  they  knew  *and  held  that  it  should  be  left  to 
 brute  beasts  to  control  each  other  by  mutual  violence,  such  as 
 oriental  kings  and  subjects  lived  by,  but  that  it  became  men  to 
 define  rights  by  law,  to  persuade  to  its  maintenance  or  expan- 
 sion by  rational  and  instructive  speech,  and  in  their  conduct  to 
 follow  the  guidance  of  both  these,  —  the  law  their  king,  and 
 speech  their  teacher.' 
 
 The  orator  enunciated  an  eternal  truth.  Had  it  been  less 
 than  eternal,  it  could  not  be  still  keeping  its  ground,  and 
 still  sustaining  the  life  of  every  nation  which  holds  to  it,   or 
 
 B 
 
2  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 indeed,  although  we  (not  to  judge  of  others)  hold  never  so  im- 
 perfectly to  it:  for  though  we  are  ready  enough  to  thank  God 
 that  we  English  are  not  as  other  men,  we  might  more  reason- 
 ably reflect  how  often  we  are  all  on  the  verge  of  doing  what 
 lies  in  us  to  disturb  the  perfect  play  of  those  two  forces,  of 
 entire  obedience  to  tlie  law  and  absolute  right  of  discussion, 
 according  as  either  may  check  some  private  opinion  or  class 
 interest ;  and  how  seldom  we  remember  that  one  step  beyond 
 that  verge  lies  the  region  of  mutual  violence  with  the  cor- 
 relates of  despotism  and  insurrection  in  which  its  vitality 
 consists.  But  this  truth,  this  universal  law  of  human  society, 
 has  not  only  outlasted  the  polities  of  Greece,  but  was  not  first 
 discovered  there,  as  the  Athenians  supposed  ;  nor  was  the  ex- 
 ercise of  this  master  right  and  power  of  words  '  so  originally 
 and  peculiarly  the  possession  of  Greeks  alone  among  all  living 
 creatures,  that'  (as  their  panegyrist  goes  on  to  say)  'if  any 
 other  people  did  acquire  it  from  them,  this  only  extended  the 
 name  of  Grecian  to  distinctions  of  mind  as  well  as  race,  so  that 
 they  were  called  by  it  who  shared  their  education  rather  than 
 those  who  had  their  blood.'  Another  people  had  been  set, 
 many  centuries  earlier,  to  work  out  some  of  the  same,  with 
 some  very  different,  problems  of  human  society,  and  under  not 
 wholly  dissimilar  conditions,  internal  and  external :  and  while 
 the  Hebrew  as  well  as  the  Greek  could  have  pointed  to  various 
 other  proofs  that  his  was  a  commonwealth,  or  constitutionally 
 organised  body-politic,  as  distinguished  from  the  inorganic 
 despotisms  of  Assyria  or  Persia,  the  one  fixed  on  the  same 
 marks  as  the  other  did,  as  the  characteristic  ones:  the  'Nomos 
 and  Logos '  of  the  Greek  were  anticipated  by  their  true 
 counterparts  the  '  Law  and  the  Prophets  '  of  the  Hebrew. 
 
 Isaiah,  no  less  than  Demosthenes,  might  have  said  that  it  was 
 the  office  of  the  political  speaker  and  adviser,  l  to  see  events  in 
 their  beginnings,  to  discern  their  purport  and  tendencies  from 
 the  first,  and  to  forewarn  his  countrymen  accordingly  ;  to  con- 
 fine within  the  narrowest  bounds  those  political  vices  of  habitual 
 procrastination,  supineness,  ignorance,  and  love  of  strife,  which 
 are  inevitable  in  all  states ;  and  to  dispose  men's  minds  instead 
 to  enlightened  concord  and  unanimity,  and  to  the  zealous  dis- 
 charge  of  their  social  duties  : '  and  he  too  might  have  added, 
 
INSTITUTIONS    FOR    NATIONAL    CULTURE.  3 
 
 '  All  these  things  have  I  done,  and  no  creature  can  say  that  I 
 have  ever  left  any  of  them  undone ;  I  do  not  shrink  from  your 
 scrutiny,  be  it  never  so  strict.'  *  But  there  were  differences  as 
 well  as  resemblances  between  the  orator  and  the  prophet,  and 
 we  must  look  for  further  illustrations  elsewhere. 
 
 If  we  were  to  describe  a  nation,  in  the  political  constitution  of 
 which  was  found  an  incorporated  and  endowed  body  of  men, 
 with  the  business  of  caring  for  all  those  interests  of  the  nation 
 which  did  not  fall  under  the  heads  of  trade,  agriculture,  war, 
 or  domestic  and  feudal  (that  is,  patriarchal)  government ; 
 who  practised  the  more  difficult  branches  of  medicine,  law,  and 
 statesmanship ;  who  bestowed  a  religious  consecration  on  all 
 states  of  national,  family,  and  personal  life  —  delivering  the 
 crown  and  sceptre  to  the  sovereign  in  trust  from  the  King  of 
 kings,  joining  the  hands  of  man  and  wife  in  the  name  of  God, 
 and  enrolling,  as  a  citizen,  the  babe  who  has  just  before  been 
 received  into  the  congregation ;  who  claimed  the  right,  and 
 acknowledged  the  duty,  of  educating  every  member  of  the  na- 
 tion to  apprehend  his  privileges  and  obligations,  not  only  as 
 a  citizen,  but  as  a  man,  and  of  teaching  him  that  his  greatest 
 dignity  and  happiness,  and  his  truest  and  deepest  communion 
 with  his  fellow-men  and  with  God,  belong  to  him  as  a  man, 
 and  will  be  his  in  proportion  as  this,  his  proper  humanity,  is 
 renewed  in  him ;  and  who  rescued  one  day  in  each  week 
 from  worldly  employments,  devoting  it  to  public  worship  and 
 holy  rest,  and  thus  providing  the  opportunity  and  means  for 
 keeping  up  that  consecration  of  the  nation,  and  for  carrying  on 
 that  education  of  the  people  :  —  if  we  were  to  draw  such  a  pic- 
 ture, it  would  suit  equally  the  old  constitutions  of  England 
 and  the  other  nations  of  Christendom,  and  that  of  the  Jewish 
 nation,  whence  their  model  was,  no  doubt,  derived.  And  though 
 decay  and  growth  have  conspired  to  efface  many  of  the  original 
 characteristics  of  the  'Church  of  England,'  and  to  provide 
 other  means  for  the  execution  of  many  of  its  old  functions,  it  is 
 
 *  Demosthenes,  de  Corona,  c.  73.  This,  and  the  preceding  passages  from 
 Herodotus  (vii.  104.),  Lysias  (ii.  17 — 20.),  and  Isocrates  (iv.  53 — 56.),  are 
 pointed  out  as  characteristic  of  the  political  life  of  Greece,  by  Mr.  Grote: 
 History,  vii.  498.,  ix.  11G. 
 
 B  2 
 
4  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 still  not  only  the  best,  but  a  thoroughly  effective  illustration 
 of  the  analogous  '  estate  of  the  realm'  of  Israel. 
 
 It  is  an  obscure,  though  interesting,  inquiry  what  was 
 the  rightful  (we  know  what  was  the  corrupt)  practice  of  the 
 Hebrew  people,  and  their  ministers  the  Levites,  as  to  the 
 local  worship  of  the  Lord  God.  The  practice  among  the 
 patriarchs,  and  in  the  early  commonwealth,  of  setting  up  an 
 altar  on  every  spot  which  had  been  hallowed  by  some  mani- 
 festation of  God's  power  or  favour  ;  the  organisation  of  the 
 synagogues,  all  over  the  country,  in  later  times  ;  the  character 
 of  the  nation  so  religious  in  spirit  and  not  merely  in  forms  ;  the 
 story  of  Elijah  building  the  altar  on  Mount  Carmel ;  are  among 
 the  indications  of  what  in  itself  seems  so  probable,  that  during 
 the  middle  ages  of  the  nation  there  may  have  been  modes  of 
 local  worship  of  the  true  God  in  accordance  with  the  design 
 with  which  Moses  had  scattered  the  Levites  among  the  people, 
 and  which  were  not  comprehended  in  those  repeated  denuncia- 
 tions of  the  worship  of  '  the  High  Places '  which  occur  through- 
 out the  histories  of  the  kings.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  ecclesi- 
 astical law  of  the  Israelites  at  least  appointed  the  Levites  to 
 perform  the  sacrifices  and  other  services  of  the  tabernacle  or 
 temple  ;  to  assist  in,  and  give  a  religious  sanction  to,  all  the 
 main  proceedings  of  the  nation  and  its  kings;  to  instruct  the 
 people  in  the  law, —  for  which  end  they  had  the  tithes  allotted  to 
 them,  that  they  might  reside  in  every  part  of  the  country  when 
 their  turn  was  past  for  attending  at  the  temple;  to  keep  the 
 genealogies  and  other  records  of  the  state ;  and  to  administer 
 what  we  should  now  call  its  sanitary  code.  And  out  of  this 
 spiritualty,  or  order  of  clergy,  grew  the  institution  and  order  of 
 Prophets,  or  preachers,  educated  in  colleges  or  schools  of  the 
 Prophets.  Such  colleges  existed  at  Eamah,  Bethel,  Jericho,  Gil- 
 gal,  and  Jerusalem;  there  was  a  president  or  'father,' in  which 
 office  we  find  Samuel  and  Elisha  :  and  his  disciples  and  asso- 
 ciates, who  bore  the  names  of  '  sons  of  the  prophets,'  lived  with 
 him  in  a  common  habitation,  and  shared  a  common  table.  We 
 arc  told  that  they  c  prophesied  with  the  psaltery,  tabret,  pipe} 
 and  harp :  '  their  writings  show  them  to  have  been  students, 
 nay  masters,  of  poetry,  rhetoric,  and  philosophy,  as  well  as  of 
 music  ;  and  they   were  historians,    though  only  brief  abstracts 
 
NATIONAL    EDUCATION    OF    THE    HEBREWS.  5 
 
 of  their  historical  works  survive  :  practical,  no  less  than  specu- 
 lative and  literary,  politicians,  they  habitually  show  themselves 
 educated  to  the  use  of  the  mental  and  moral  powers  which 
 were  required  for  advising  their  kings,  at  home  and  in  foreign 
 affairs  ;  and  — ■  what  belonged  to  a  still  higher  training  —  for 
 advising  and  directing  the  people  how  to  resist  those  kings 
 when  the  latter  set  the  constitution  deliberately  at  nought,  and 
 yet  not  fall  into  the  same  guilt  themselves.  There  seems  no 
 reason  for  supposing  that  kings  and  princes  were  not,  when 
 they  pleased,  educated  in  these  schools,  as  well  as  the  prophets. 
 It  was  eminently  a  national  education  ;  in  the  Psalms,  Pro- 
 phets, and  other  Scriptures  of  the  Old  (nay,  of  the  New)  Tes- 
 tament, we  see  its  results,  extending  through  the  whole  life  of 
 the  nation  for  1500  years  :  in  the  Pentateuch  we  see  how  its 
 foundations  were  laid  by  the  great  Hebrew  legislator,  in  further- 
 ance of  his  design,  that  all  nations  should  have  cause  to  say, 
 f  Surely  this  great  nation  is  a  wise  and  understanding  people  ; ' 
 and  in  the  historical  notices,  brief  as  they  are,  of  these  schools 
 of  the  prophets,  we  have  just  the  fact  of  an  adequate  working 
 instrument,  to  connect  the  design  and  the  results.  But  though 
 regular  education  was  not  less,  neither  was  it  more,  important 
 in  the  Hebrew  than  in  other  nations.  The  prophet  Amos  says, 
 '  I  was  no  prophet,  neither  was  I  a  prophet's  son  ;  but  I  was  an 
 herdman,  and  a  gatherer  of  sycamore  fruit :  and  the  Lord  took 
 me  as  I  followed  the  flock,  and  the  Lord  said  unto  me,  Go, 
 prophesy  unto  my  people  Israel.'  And  no  doubt  this  was  not 
 the  only  instance  in  a  body,  of  whom  one  of  the  characteristic 
 features  was  that  they  should  not  belong  exclusively  to  any  one 
 tribe,  or  rank,  or  profession,  and  that  each  should  « speak  as  he 
 was  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost.'  Yet  here  as  elsewhere  the 
 settled  institutions  of  the  country  will  have  exercised  their  due 
 influence  in  forming  the  character  even  of  those  individuals  who 
 did  not  come  into  immediate  contact  with  them. 
 
 The  prophets  were  the  preachers,  not  the  predicters,  the  forth- 
 speakers  of  God's  eternal  plan  and  methods  of  governing  man,  not 
 foretellers  of  particular  events,  of  and  to  their  nation :  this  was 
 what  our  Lord  and  his  apostles  understood  by  the  name,  and 
 so  has  it  always  been  understood  in  modern  times  of  earnest- 
 ness and  zeal,  such  as  our  Reformation  or  Civil  War,  when  men 
 
 u  3 
 
G  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 interpreted  the  Bible  by  experience  gained  in  the  council- 
 chamber,  the  battle-field,  or  the  prison,  rather  than  by  collation 
 of  commentators.*  And  while  we  may  pursue  our  illustration 
 by  comparing  the  schools  of  the  prophets  with  the  monasteries 
 and  colleges  which  have  hitherto  sent  out  most,  if  not  all,  the 
 great  prophets  of  Christendom,  as  well  as  the  multitude  of 
 ordinary  teachers,  we  shall  find  a  real  and  instructive  resem- 
 blance between  these  and  the  Hebrew  prophets.  The  sermons 
 and  other  discourses,  of  a  Latimer  at  Paul's  Cross,  of  a  Luther 
 at  the  Diet  of  Worins,  or  a  Knox  before  the  Popish  queen  and 
 nobles ;  the  field-preachings  of  a  Wesley  or  Whitfield,  and, 
 within  narrower  limits,  the  orations  of  a  Burke  in  defence  of 
 justice,  laws,  institutions ;  —  these,  taken  with  the  lives  and 
 acts,  and,  where  need  was,  the  deaths  of  the  men,  are  the  true 
 counterparts  of  what  Isaiah  and  the  rest  of  the  Hebrew  pro- 
 phets said,  did,  or  suffered. 
 
 But  facts  —  facts  in  their  detail,  and  in  their  original  and 
 living  coherence,  are  our  best  teachers.  We  shall  best  learn 
 what  the  prophets  were  to  the  Jews,  and  what  they  are  to  us, 
 by  a  methodical  examination  of  what  the  greatest  of  them  said 
 and  did,  during  a  chief  crisis  of  his  country's  history.  The 
 meaning  of  facts  came  to  light  in  the  collision  of  the  Assyrian 
 empire  with  the  Hebrew  commonwealth,  as  they  did  when 
 Xerxes  invaded  Greece,  or  Napoleon  overran  Europe :  and  if 
 we  will  take  the  book  of  Isaiah,  and  follow  its  guidance,  Ave  may 
 expect  to  see  its  facts  in  their  own  proper  light.  This,  there- 
 fore, I  propose  to  do.  The  reader  will  find  the  English  text,  for 
 reference,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
 
 As  our  familiarity  with  this  Book  of  Isaiah  increases,  we 
 find  that  the  careful  literary  composition  and  elaborate  finish 
 of  the  single  prophecies,  noticeable  as  it  is,  is  less  so  than 
 that  with  which  these  are  again  fused  into  larger,  but 
 not    less    organic  members,    and  these  again  into    one    perfect 
 
 *  Matt.  iii.  1—12.,  xi.  9—14.;  Luke,  i.  17.  76,  77.;  Rom.  xii.  6.; 
 1  Cor.  xi.  4.;  xiv.  6.,  &c.  Milton  hopes  (in  his  Speech  for  the  Liberty  of 
 Unlicensed  Printing),  that  England  is  on  the  eve  of  becoming  'a  nation  of 
 prophets  :'  and  Jeremy  Taylor  entitles  his  book  on  the  like  subject,  A  Dis- 
 course of  the  Liberty  of  Prophesying,  without  any  intimation  that  he  is  using 
 the  word  in  an  unusual  sense. 
 
GERMAN    AND    ENGLISH    CRITICAL    METHODS.  7 
 
 ■whole.  And  the  most  simple  and  probable  explanation  of  this 
 arrangement,  if  there  be  no  insurmountable  obstacle  to  its 
 acceptance,  is  plainly  to  attribute  it  to  Isaiah  himself.  If  it 
 can  be  shown  that  this  explanation,  of  the  prophet's  own 
 arrangement  of  the  book  in  its  present  form,  is  absolutely  incom- 
 patible with  the  undoubted  nature  of  its  contents,  we  must  give 
 it  up,  and  refer  the  compilation  to  such  later  date  as  the  exigen- 
 cies of  the  case  require  ;  but  we  must  not  overlook  that  the 
 latter  is  on  the  face  of  it  the  hypothetical  and  speculative,  and 
 the  former  the  historical  and  positive  criticism.  For  the 
 arrangement  of  t lie  book,  with  its  general  and  particular  titles 
 and  its  historical  notices,  together  with  all  that  these  assert 
 (till  contradicted)  as  to  the  authorship,  have  come  down  to  us 
 from  time  immemorial  by  exactly  the  same  means  as  the  text 
 itself,  of  which  they  must  therefore  be  taken  to  be  an  integral 
 and  original  part,  until  the  contrary  is  proved  ;  and  the  one  no 
 less  than  the  other  must  be  protected  by  that  canon  of  criticism, 
 that  no  conjecture,  however  ingenious,  must  disturb  the  in- 
 tegrity of  the  text  however  obscure,  until  the  actual  reading 
 has  been  shown  to  be  hopelessly  corrupt.  We  cannot  altogether 
 dispense  with  supposition  and  conjecture  as  helps  to  the  eluci- 
 dation of  such  parts  of  this  book  as,  by  reason  of  their  antiquity, 
 must  now  remain  without  any  more  certain  explanation;  nor 
 need  we  doubt  that  conjectural  criticism  often  throws  a  real, 
 though  a  flickering,  light  on  objects  which  are  but  dimly  dis- 
 cernible in  the  distance  of  ages,  if  only  the  torch  be  kindled  by 
 a  mind  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  writer  com- 
 mented on,  and  held  in  steady,  that  is  judicious,  hands.  The 
 studious  and  meditative  genius  of  the  German  eminently  quali- 
 fies him  for  these  speculative  inquiries  and  explanations ;  but 
 while  the  Englishman  avails  himself  of  them,  with  the  frank 
 acknowledgment  that  he  could  never  have  originated  them 
 himself,  he  must  not  scruple  to  test  and  modify  them  by  the 
 practical  common  sense  which  is  his  birthright,  and  which,  if  a 
 more  modest,  is  not  a  less  useful  gift  than  the  other.  Nor  must 
 we  forget  that  Niebuhr,  the  greatest  of  the  German  critics  of 
 this  kind,  himself  pointed  out  the  true  method  of  testing  his 
 own  and  all  other  such  conclusions.  He  constantly  endea- 
 vours to   verify  his    hardy   conjectures   by  reference  to  corre- 
 
 B  4 
 
8  FIEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 sponding  facts  of  other  times  and  countries,  and  thus  to  ascer- 
 tain that  he  is  not  dreaming,  but  discovering  and  applying  the 
 real  laws  of  history ;  and  his  method  is  not  the  less  the  true 
 one,  though  grave  English  scholars  may  sometimes  think  his 
 particular  conclusions  those  of  the  advocate  rather  than  the 
 judge.  To  exhaust  the  evidence  and  the  arguments  on  every 
 side  of  a  question  is  the  German's  proper  calling:  and  I  believe 
 that  the  help  of  the  German  commentators  is  indispensable  to 
 our  thorough  understanding  of  the  Prophecies  of  Isaiah ;  yet 
 that  they  will  be  most  serviceable  to  him  who  can  best  check 
 speculation  with  not  literal  but  matter-of-fact  criticism;  who 
 can  abstain  from  doubting  historical  facts  because  cotemporary 
 records  relate  them  in  ways  not  easy  of  verbal  reconciliation,  or 
 in  phrases  not  the  most  obvious  or  likely  if  tried  by  the  standard 
 of  his  own  mind ;  and  who  is  content  to  account  for  all  such 
 minor  difficulties  and  discrepancies  in  the  same  way  as  he  must 
 the  like  ones  which  he  finds  in  the  books  of  his  own  day,  and 
 which  the  still  living  authors  cannot,  or  do  not,  explain.  Com- 
 mentators often  darken  the  text  with  the  mists  of  their  own 
 undue  speculativeness ;  and  by  returning  to  a  more  practical 
 method  of  investigation,  by  studying  the  book  as  it  is,  and  not 
 as  ingenious  theorists  say  it  must  have  been,  we  shall  often 
 secure  a  firm  pathway  through  difficulties  that  conjecture  has 
 hopelessly  perplexed. 
 
 The  arrangement  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah's  Prophecies,  as  it 
 has  come  down  to  us,  is  mainly  chronological,  yet  sometimes 
 with  reference  to  the  subjects  rather  than  to  the  dates  of  the 
 several  pieces  which  form  it.  A  like  method  is  observable  in 
 St.  Matthew's  Gospel,  in  which  the  miracles,  parables,  and 
 discourses  of  our  Lord  are  collected  into  groups  without  strict 
 regard  to  the  order  of  time ;  and  the  Pentateuch,  the  Book  of 
 Psalms,  and  the  Bible  itself  as  a  whole,  show  that  the  appro- 
 priateness of  such  composite  arrangement  has  been  recognised 
 by  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  Church.  And  we  have  a 
 modern  instance  of  the  kind,  with  an  exposition  of  its  import- 
 ance, in  Mr.  Wordsworth's  avowedly  deliberate  arrangement  of 
 his  poems  into  a  whole. 
 
 The  particular  arguments  will  be  found  in  their  several 
 places :    the  general    conclusion   I   deduce   from   them   is,  that 
 
THE    BOOK    OF    ISAIAH.  9 
 
 chapter  vi.  is  the  account  of  Isaiah's  consecration  to  the  pro- 
 phetic office,  and  its  date  the  earliest  in  the  book;  that  the 
 three  preceding  discourses  (chapters  i.,  ii. — iv.,  v.)  are  placed 
 first,  in  order  to  set  forth  the  state  of  the  nation  at  the  time 
 Isaiah  began  to  prophesy,  and  the  consequent  fitness  of  the 
 severe  terms  of  the  commission  given  him  ;  and  that  the  rest  of 
 the  book  preserves  the  chronological  order,  with  possibly  such 
 modifications  as  might  serve  to  bring  together  similar  prophecies, 
 such  as  the  series  of  'burdens'  on  the  neighbouring  nations;  and 
 probably  also  in  certain  cases  (chapters  vii. — xii.,  xvii.  xviii., 
 xxviii. — xxxv.,  xl. — Ixvi.)  with  some  revision  and  fusion  of  dis- 
 courses originally  distinct,  so  that  they  are  now  successive 
 paragraphs  in  a  continuous  writing.  The  supposed  insurmount- 
 able obstacles  to  the  acceptance  of  the  historical  assertion 
 involved  in  the  book  itself,  that  it  owes  its  present  form  to 
 Isaiah's  own  hand,  are  the  account  of  the  '  Sign'  of  the  shadow 
 going  back  on  the  dial,  and  the  doubt — which,  indeed,  the  most 
 eminent  German  critics  say  is  not  a  doubt,  but  a  final  decision 
 in  the  negative, —  whether  certain  portions  of  the  book  were 
 written  by  Isaiah  at  all.  These  will  be  best  considered  as  they 
 occur ;  only  I  will  here  observe,  that  in  examining  the  latter 
 question,  the  student  must  be  on  his  guard  against  the  fallacy 
 contained  in  an  argument  sometimes  employed  as  to  the  arrange- 
 ment of  the  book,  and  which  supposes  it  to  be  a  collection  like 
 those  which  are  popularly  called  the  '  Psalms  of  David,'  and 
 the  '  Proverbs  of  Solomon,'  though  it  is  admitted  that  only  a 
 portion  of  each  can  be  ascribed  to  its  nominal  author.  The 
 fallacy  is  in  assuming  that  there  is  no  difference  between  a  real 
 title,  and  a  popular  name,  of  a  book.  In  the  Hebrew  the 
 respective  titles  are,  '  Isaiah,'  '  Psalms,'  '  Proverbs,'  with  no 
 names  attached  to  the  two  last ;  and  both  of  these  contain 
 special  titles  expressly  attributing  various  portions  to  other 
 authoi*s,  while  the  whole  book  of  Isaiah  is  almost  as  expressly 
 attributed  to  him.  Let  the  reader  test  the  reality  of  this 
 historical  evidence  (without  prejudice  to  the  internal  counter- 
 evidence  we  may  come  to  by-and-by)  by  asking  himself  how  we 
 could  strengthen  it,  even  now  we  know  the  attack  it  has  to 
 stand.  On  the  other  hand,  let  me  entreat  him  to  keep  his  eyes 
 open  to  the  actual  arrangement  of  the  book,,   as  we  follow 
 
10  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 its  detail.  If  we  find  indications  that  tlie  whole,  looked 
 at  as  a  whole,  is  more  like  the  growth  of  an  individual  mind 
 than  a  collection  of  writings  of  men  who  lived  in  times  far 
 apart  from  each  other;  if  we  can,  as  we  proceed,  trace  the 
 manner  and  method  in  which  the  prophet's  views  opened  out, 
 as  he  came  in  contact  with,  and  sought  for  the  deepest  springs 
 of,  the  circumstances  and  events  of  his  own  times;  then  the 
 proportion  and  relation  of  particular  parts  to  each  other  and  to 
 the  whole  will  become  an  important  element  of  the  question, 
 and  those  of  which  the  genuineness  is  disputed  will  be  seen  in  a 
 light,  and  with  advantages,  not  available  to  us  if  we  merely  analyse 
 each  separately.  The  fact  of  such  a  vital  coherence  and  inter- 
 dependence will,  I  believe,  become  more  and  more  apparent  as  we 
 go  on  ;  we  shall  find  a  harmony  resulting  not  from  mere  me- 
 chanical compilation,  but  from  the  presence  of  a  one  informing 
 and  enlivening  spirit,  and  our  reason  no  less  than  our  religious 
 feeling  will  resist  the  dismemberment  of  any  part  of  the  per- 
 fectly organised  whole.  And  if  so,  we  shall  (as  can  hardly  be 
 too  often  repeated)  escape  from  the  hypothetical  to  the  positive 
 and  the  historical. 
 
 But  the  hypothetical  criticism  has  its  own  rebound ;  and  the 
 very  commentators  who  are  least  sensitive  to  the  weight  of  evi- 
 dence in  favour  of  the  facts  we  have,  are  most  ingenious  in  making 
 out  more  and  more  historical  dates  and  details  of  what  they 
 say  must  have  been  the  events  of  Isaiah's  time,  and  alluded  to 
 by  him  in  his  prophecies.  Such  criticism  is  valuable,  in  as  far 
 as  it  is  a  real  induction ;  and  an  unhoped  for,  and  most  inte- 
 resting verification  of  it  is  now  in  progress  by  the  help  of  the 
 Cuneiform  Inscriptions,  which  are  already  found  to  mention 
 several  facts  which  the  Bible  historians  had  passed  in  silence, 
 but  which  are  precisely  those  which  the  student  of  the  pro- 
 phets knew  to  be  wanted,  and  which  he  had  to  assume  in  any 
 attempt  to  form  a  distinct  picture  of  the  times.  But  the  limit 
 of  real  induction  is  soon  reached  ;  and  it  has  grown  the  fashion 
 to  expatiate  beyond  it  till  the  commentator  becomes  unable  to 
 distinguish  between  facts  and  fancy.  Each  sees  the  error  in 
 his  neighbour ;  but  we  shall  perhaps  best  guard  against  it  in 
 ourselves  if  we  consider  that  we  possess  no  such  power  of  dis- 
 covering more  than  a  mere  outline  of  the  facts  on  which  anv 
 
ALLUSIONS    TO    LOST    FACTS.  11 
 
 such  book,  even  written  by  a  still  living  author,  is  founded :  no 
 two  men,  even  though  fellow-countrymen  and  cotemporaries, 
 look  at  the  same  facts  in  exactly  the  same  light,  nor  does  either 
 draw  exactly  the  same  inferences  as  the  other  would ;  and  espe- 
 cially, perhaps,  is  this  the  case  in  writings  in  which  the  imagina- 
 tion of  the  poet  or  orator  has  a  large  part,  because  it  is  one  of 
 the  prerogatives  of  the  imagination  not  to  be  tied  down  to 
 literal  facts,  but  to  modify,  while  it  employs,  these  instruments 
 of  illustrating  universal  ideas  or  laws.  It  might  have,  seemed 
 the  easiest  thing  possible  to  supply  the  facts  assumed  in  most 
 of  Wordsworth's  poems,  by  a  simple  enough  use  of  the  '  higher 
 criticism  ; '  but  the  actual  statement  of  those  facts  in  his  lately 
 published  Life  shows  that  they  were  quite  different  from  what 
 any  criticism  could  have  suspected.*  We  must  admit  of  the 
 Hebrew,  what  Niebuhr  asserts  of  the  Greek  and  Latin,  litera- 
 ture, —  that  though  we  may  be  able  to  see  that  some  facts  were 
 present  to  the  writer's  mind,  it  is  often  no  more  possible  to  re- 
 piece  them  into  an  historical  statement  than  it  is  to  restore  the 
 statues  or  columns  to  which  we  know  must  have  once  belonged 
 those  marble  fragments  which  we  see  everywhere  built  into  the 
 walls  in  modern  Rome.  We  must  be  content  with  him  to  define 
 the  true  interpretation  of  an  ancient  book  as  '  an  expression 
 of  its  meaning  as  it  was  understood,  if  not  by  its  cotempo- 
 raries, yet  by  those  who  lived  shortly  after,  when  the  passing  al- 
 lusions of  the  moment  were   lost.']     Nor  is  it  merely   lapse  of 
 
 *  He  presents,  as  though  he  had  himself  witnessed,  various  occurrences 
 related  to  him  by  his  sister ;  he  also  says  of  the  Evening  Walk,  —  "  The 
 plan  of  it  has  not  been  confined  to  a  particular  walk,  or  an  individual  place ; 
 a  proof  (of  which  T  was  unconscious  at  the  time)  of  my  unwillingness  to 
 submit  the  poetic  spirit  to  the  chains  of  fact  and  real  circumstance.  The 
 country  is  idealised  rather  than  described  in  any  one  of  its  local  aspects."  — 
 Memoirs,  vol.  i.  p.  68.  Southey  supplies  us  with  another  illustration :  — 
 "  In  one  point  I  thought  him  (Sir  George  Beaumont)  too  much  of  an 
 artist ;  none  of  his  pictures  represented  the  scene  from  which  he  took  them  ; 
 he  took  the  features,  and  disposed  them  in  the  way  which  pleased  him  best. 
 
 You  shall  see  a  little  piece  of  his  ....  which  perfectly  illustrates 
 
 this  :  the  subject,  is  this  very  house,  and  scarcely  any  one  object  in  the  pic- 
 ture resembles  the  reality.  His  wish  was  to  give  the  character,  the  spirit  of 
 the  scene  " — Life  and  Correspondence,  vol.  vi.  p.  216. 
 
 f  Letter  to  a  Student  of  Philology,  translated  in  the  Educational  Magazine 
 for  January,  1840,  and  since  then  in  his  Life  and  Letters. 
 
]2  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 time  which  prevents  our  now  recovering  all  the  detail  of  the  facts 
 present  to  the  eyes  or  minds  of  Isaiah,  or  the  other  prophets. 
 Jeremiah's  statement  (chap,  xxxvi.  2.  4.),  that  in  the  fourth 
 year  of  Jehoiakim  he  wrote  in  a  book  all  the  words  that  he 
 had  spoken  during  a  period  of  about  twenty  years :  the 
 fact  that  the  short  book  of  Micah  is  a  summary  of  his  dis- 
 courses delivered  during  three  reigns,  as  we  learn  from  its  title  : 
 the  existence  of  like  titles  and  inscriptions  throughout  the  Pro- 
 phetical Books :  the  explanatory  narratives  in  some  of  them,  and 
 the  manner  in  which  these  are  introduced :  the  exact  rhythmical 
 structure,  and  elaborate  finish  of  the  composition,  both  of 
 thoughts  and  language :  all  show  that  the  writings  of  the  pro- 
 phets, as  wre  now  have  them,  are  not  verbal  reports  of  their  dis- 
 courses set  down  before,  or  at  the  moment  of,  delivery,  but 
 careful  literary  compositions,  in  which  these  national  preachers, 
 at  their  leisure,  and  with  the  deliberate  judgment  and  ability 
 which  the  books  themselves  exhibit,  put  on  record  what  was  of 
 permanent  interest  to  their  countrymen,  and  to  ail  coming  ages 
 and  peoples.  And  in  doing  this  they  would  certainly  (like  men 
 in  the  same  circumstances  now)  obliterate,  or  suffer  to  become 
 indistinct,  references  to  events  which  were  of  absorbing  interest 
 at  the  moment  of  speaking,  but  which  had  given  place  to  others 
 at  the  time  of  writing,  perhaps  many  years  afterwards,  though 
 the  eternal  and  universal  truths  which  those  particular  events 
 had  best  illustrated  then,  continued  as  important,  and  as  worthy 
 of  proclamation  as  ever.*  Nor  need  we  lament  that  we  cannot 
 restore  these  marks  which  the  prophets  have  not  themselves 
 thought  it  necessary  to  retain.  They  are  not  only  not  neces- 
 sary for  a  right  understanding  of  our  authors,  but  would  have 
 been  a  real  hindrance  :  for  they  would  have  inevitably  over- 
 laid those  universal  truths,  those  clear  enunciations  of  the  laws 
 of  God's  government  of  the  world,  which  they  teach  us  to  see  in 
 all  history,  and  especially  in  our  own,  and  in  which  —  and  not  in 
 picking  out  stray  historical  facts  —  the  real  interest  of  the  He- 
 brew prophets  for  us  consists.     But  if  some  commentators  are 
 
 *  See  Ewald,  Die  Propheten,  i.  42.  There  is  a  translation  of  the  first  two 
 Bcctiona  of  the  Introduction  (to  which  I  thus  refer)  in  Kitto's  Journal  of 
 Sacred  Literature,  for  January,  1853.  Let  me  here  acknowledge  my  many 
 and  great  obligations  to  this  profound  religious  philosopher. 
 
IMPORTANCE    OF    SUCH    ALLUSION'S.  13 
 
 tluis  mistaken  in  their  anxiety  to  invent  what  they  cannot  find, 
 others  go  into  the  other  extreme  of  indifference  to  those  links 
 between  the  prophet  and  his  own  times  which  do  actually  re- 
 main, and  are  so  important  in  enabling  ns  to  feel  that  he  was 
 a  real  flesh  and  blood  man :  the  middle,  matter-of-fact  course 
 of  taking  just  what  we  really  have  given  us,  is  the  best,  alike 
 for  historical  and  for  philosophical  and  theological  purposes. 
 
14  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  II. 
 
 THE    BOOK    OF     ISAIAH.  —  ITS     TITLE.  —  DATE    OF     CHAPTER    I.  —  PROPHETIC 
 
 IMAGINATION.  HEBREW  ORATORY  RHYTHMICAL. PARALLELS    IN    OTHER 
 
 NATIONS.  CONTENTS    OF  CHAPTER  I. TIMES  OF  CZZIAH  AND  JOTHAM.  
 
 FORMS    AND    SPIRIT.  NATIONAL     BROTHERHOOD.  —  POLITICAL    IDEALS. 
 
 The  book  begins  with  its  title  :  — «  The  vision  of  Isaiah,  which 
 he  saw  concerning  Judah  and  Jerusalem  in  the  days  of  Uzziah, 
 Jotham,  Ahaz,  and  Hezekiah,  kings  of  Judah.' 
 
 This  is  at  once  the  title  of  the  whole  book,  and  the  title  of 
 the  chapter  of  which  it  forms  the  first  verse  :  so  as  to  indi- 
 cate that  the  chapter  is  an  introduction  to  the  book,  and  a 
 summary  of  its  contents.  If  we  compare  it  with  the  similar 
 titles  to  the  books  of  Amos  and  Micah,  we  may  see  from  that 
 comparison  that  there  is  no  need  for  the  conjecture  of  Vitringa, 
 adopted  by  so  many  of  his  successors,  that  it,  at  first,  ended 
 with  the  word  'Jerusalem,'  and  belonged  only  to  the  single 
 prophecy  contained  in  the  first  chapter,  and  that  some  compiler 
 of  the  book  added  the  rest  of  the  sentence  to  make  a  title  for 
 the  whole.  That  the  expression,  '  concerning  Judah  and  Jeru- 
 salem,' should  be  thus  prefixed  to  prophecies  which  relate  to 
 Ephraim,  Egypt,  Assyria,  and  other  neighbouring  nations,  will 
 not  appear  a  difficulty  (if  it  ever  did  so),  when  we  bear  in 
 mind  that  the  language  of  the  Hebrew,  and  above  all,  of  the 
 Hebrew  prophet,  regards  the  life  and  force  rather  than  the 
 formal  accuracy  of  its  expressions.  The  highest  kind  of  ac- 
 curacy indeed,  that  which  distinguishes  and  asserts  the  real 
 diiferences  and  relations  of  things,  it  has;  but  it  is  careless 
 of,  or  rather  unacquainted  with,  that  classical  precision  of 
 word  and  inference  which  all  European  discourse  is  more  or 
 less  imbued  with.  For  the  destiny  of  all  these  nations  did  in 
 truth  '  concern'  Judah  and  Jerusalem,  and  only  for  this  reason 
 became  the    object    of  Isaiah's    consideration.     'Whatever  he 
 
ISAIAH  I.    1.  :    DATE    OF    FIRST    CHAPTER.  15 
 
 utters  against  the  heathen  nations,  he  says  it  all  fur  the  sake 
 of  Judah.'  * 
 
 But  while  this  first  prophecy,  or  discourse,  forms  a  suitable 
 summary  and  introduction  to  the  whole  book,  and  its  actual 
 place  is  thus  sufficiently  accounted  foi",  there  seems  no  reason 
 for  doubting  that  it  was  delivered  on  some  special  occasion. 
 Its  date  therefore  comes  in  question,  and  this  must  be  decided 
 according  as  we  take  verses  7,  8.  to  describe  the  actual  state  of  the 
 country  when  the  words  were  uttered,  or  as  prophetic  of  what  it 
 would  shortly  become.  If  the  latter,  we  could  not  hesitate  to 
 refer  it  to  the  earliest  period  of  Isaiah's  ministry  —  the  reign  of 
 Jotham, — which  every  other  part  of  the  discourse  suits  perfectly. 
 If  the  former,  it  must  have  been  delivered  in  the  reign  of  Ahaz, 
 before  he  shut  up  the  temple  ;  or  during  the  Assyrian  invasion 
 in  the  time  of  Hezckiah  :  and  the  earlier  date  would  be  prefer- 
 able, as  less  opposed  to  the  position  in  which  we  find  the  pro- 
 phecy, though  it  is  not,  as  some  commentators  suppose,  fixed  by 
 the  mention  of  idolatry  in  verses  29,  30,  31.,  for  we  see  from 
 chapters  xxx.  22.,  xxxi.  7.,  that  this  still  co-existed  with  the 
 worship  of  the  true  God,  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah,  as  it  had  in 
 those  of  his  predecessors.  The  doubt  cannot  be  decided  by 
 the  mere  grammatical  construction  of  the  sentence  as  it  could 
 be  in  English,  since  the  Hebrew  prophets  habitually  use  the 
 liberty  which  their  language  permits,  of  speaking  of  future 
 events  in  the  present  or  even  past  tense.  Thus  the  description 
 of  the  invading  army  in  chap.  v.  26.,  is  in  the  -past  tense  in  the 
 Hebrew;  'but  this,'  says  Roscnmuller,  'is  no  reason  for  doubt- 
 ing that  Isaiah  is  speaking  of  the  future  ;  for  in  prophecy  the 
 past  or  present  tense  is  used  instead  of  the  future,  in  order  that 
 future  events  may  be  contemplated  as  if  present,  and  may  the 
 more  strongly  stir  the  mind  of  the  hearer,  when  they  arc  set  be- 
 fore his  eyes  by  the  very  form  of  the  discourse.'  But  the  question 
 is,  whether,  in  this  particular  place,  the  expressions  are  those  of 
 the  poet  and  prophet  picturing  the  scene  as  it  rises  in  vision 
 before  his  imagination,  or  whether  there  be  something  so  matter- 
 of-fact  in  them  that  they  must  be  taken  to  describe  the  horrors 
 of  actual  invasion,  visible  at  the  very  time  to  the  bodily  eyes 
 of  Isaiah  and  his  hearers.  There  are  learned  authorities  on  each 
 side,  and  they  have  been  marshalled  in  a  special  treatise  by 
 *  Kiinclii  in  Gesenius. 
 
]6  HEBEEW    POLITICS. 
 
 Caspar?,  who  decides  in  favour  of  the  earlier  date.  If  I  could 
 perceive  the  supposed  difference  between  this  and  the  ordinary 
 prophetic  style,  I  should  (unless  that  difference  made  it  impossi- 
 ble) still  be  decided  by  the  external  fact  — the  actual  position  of 
 the  discourse  —  to  adopt  the  same  conclusion.  But  while  1 
 recognise  the  thoroughly  life-like  character  of  the  picture,  I 
 cannot  see  that  it  is  more  life-like  than  many  which  no  one 
 denies  Isaiah  to  have  drawn  in  imagination ;  nor  (if  I  must 
 argue  the  a  priori  point  too)  can  I  admit  that  Isaiah  could  have 
 been  a  master  of  his  art,  if  his  imaginative  creations  could  be 
 thus  positively  distinguished  from  statements  of  fact.  I  shall 
 have  occasion  to  return  to  this  subject  of  prophecy,  considered 
 as  a  real  and  intelligible  product  of  the  intellectual  faculties : 
 here  I  will  observe  that  I  believe  the  present  is  only  the  first 
 instance  —  and  we  shall  reach  the  last,  but  in  the  last  chapter  — 
 of  that  want  of  thorough  apprehension  of  the  phenomenon  of 
 prophecy,  which  is  at  the  bottom  of  many  serious  critical  errors 
 of  the  most  opposite  kinds.  The  subject  is  indeed  becoming 
 clearer  every  day ;  and  the  most  sceptical  commentators  have 
 abandoned  the  notion  that  no  prophecy  can  be  rationally  ex- 
 plained except  as  a  description  after  the  event.  And  if  I  sit  in 
 judgment  on  much  more  learned  men  than  myself,  when  I  thus 
 say  that  the  present  difficulty  exists  only  in  their  own  minds, 
 it  is  not  without  being  well  aware  that  but  for  them  I  could 
 never  have  acquired  any  insight  into  the  subject  which  I  may 
 now  be  turning  against  them. 
 
 Though  we  do  not  adopt  Vitringa's  date  (in  the  reign  of 
 Ahaz),  we  must  still  agree  with  him  that  this  discourse  is 
 fitly  placed  here  as  being  the  most  general  in  its  argument 
 and  application,  as  well  as  remarkable  for  its  finished  and  elegant 
 structure,  apparently  modelled  after  that  great  vision  of  the 
 nation's  destinies,  the  Song  of  Moses.  And,  perhaps,  this 
 finished  and  elegant  structure  may  be  taken  with  some  pro- 
 priety as  itself  an  indication  of  the  early  date  of  the  compo- 
 sition. It  is  the  attribute  of  youth,  and  especially  of  youthful 
 genius,  to  embody  its  newly-budding  thoughts  and  feelings  in 
 ideals  of  microcosmic  beauty  and  completeness  :  but  by-and-bye 
 the  growing  and  expanding  mind  finds  these  ideals  of  its  own 
 creation  too  narrow  to  express   the  whole  truth  of  things,  and 
 
YOUTHFUL    IDEALS:    HEBREW    VERSE.  17 
 
 abandons  them  for  the  larger,  though  severally  less  complete, 
 forms,  which  the  various  realities  of  the  actual  world  supply, 
 and  then  seeks  to  find  in  these  a  new  and  better  ideal,  large  as 
 the  world  itself;  —  an  ideal  which  is  revealed  to,  rather  than 
 created  by,  the  human  mind  ;  and  the  source  of  which,  if  we 
 will  go  so  far  back,  we  must  look  for  in  that  which  the  Athe- 
 nian philosophers  called  the  eternal  truth  and  beauty  of  the 
 divine  mind,  and  Hebrew  sages  the  things  of  the  kingdom  of 
 God.  That  the  marks  of  such  a  first  youthful  ideal  are  here 
 conclusively  present  I  do  not  venture  to  assert  positively,  but 
 rather  leave  the  point  to  the  feeling  and  judgment  of  the  reader; 
 but  certainly  this  short  chapter  may  be  taken  as  a  very  com- 
 plete summary  and  specimen  of  the  chief  characteristics  — moral, 
 political,  religious,  poetical  —  of  the  whole  book ;  and  we  may 
 find  in  it  the  germs  of  almost  all  the  great  principles  which 
 Isaiah  announced  and  applied  to  practice  during  the  whole 
 period  that  he  exercised  the  prophetic  office. 
 
 Bishop  Lowth  has  the  honour  of  discovering  that  the  pro- 
 phets wrote  in  the  same  e  verse,  measure,  or  rhythm,'  as  the 
 Hebrew  poets  properly  so  called ;  and  we  could  hardly  have  a 
 better  illustration  of  the  fact  than  in  the  chapter  before  us. 
 The  rhythm  of  thoughts  and  images  which  in  Hebrew  poetry 
 takes  the  place  of  the  rhythm  of  syllables  and  sounds,  and 
 enables  it  alone  to  be  translated  into  other  languages,  may  here 
 be  studied  in  its  several  forms: — line  answering  to  line,  and 
 word  to  word  ;  each  bringing  out  the  depth  and  force  of  the 
 other,  sometimes  by  variation,  sometimes  by  opposition,  some- 
 times by  accumulation,  of  the  corresponding  or  contrasted 
 thoughts ;  no  thought  so  like  the  other  as  to  occasion  same- 
 ness, nor  so  unlike  as  to  make  a  discord ;  no  formal  adherence 
 to  any  one  rule  of  parallelism,  but  a  free  movement  in  which 
 the  poet's  inward  sense  of  beauty  and  order  supersedes  all  formal 
 rules  ;  and  a  blending  and  fusing  of  the  several  parts  into  a 
 harmony  which,  with  its  variety  in  unity,  produces  a  fulness 
 not  attainable  in  any  other  way. 
 
 Thus  in  the  first  paragraph :  — 
 
 Hear,  O  heavens,  and  give  ear,  0  earth  ; 
 For  the  Lord  hath  spoken. 
 
 C 
 
18  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 I  have  nourished  and  brought  up  children, 
 And  they  have  rebelled  against  me. 
 The  ox  knoweth  his  owner, 
 And  the  ass  his  master's  crib  : 
 But  Israel  doth  not  know, 
 My  people  doth  not  consider. 
 
 In  the  first  line  'heavens'  is  set  against  'earth,'  and  both 
 united  in  rhythmical  opposition  to  « the  Lord,'  the  inanimate 
 creation  to  the  living  God;  while  'hear'  and  'give  ear'  in 
 like  manner  correspond  with  each  other  and  with  'spoken.' 
 Then  the  next  six  lines  are  intertwined  in  a  noticeable  manner ; 
 for  not  only  is  there  the  double  correspondence  and  double  con- 
 trast of  the  four  last  lines  among  themselves,  but  the  two  pre- 
 ceding ones  (which  also  balance  each  other)  indirectly  involve 
 and  anticipate  the  images  of  the  four  that  follow  :  — '  I '  and 
 '  me' corresponding  and  contrasting  with  'owner'  and  'mas- 
 ter,' 'nourisher'  with  'crib,'  and  'brought  up'  again  with 
 'owner,'  and  'children'  with  'ox'  and  'ass;'  and  the  rebel- 
 lion of  the  former  with  the  obedience  of  the  latter :  and  the 
 thoughts  are  again  repeated  with  a  variation  and  summed  up 
 in  the  two  last  lines.  And,  finally,  those  two  lines,  with  that 
 taste  and  judgment  with  -which  every  true  poet  (and  none  more 
 than  Isaiah)  keeps  down  his  imagination,  and  subordinates  the 
 parts  of  his  diction  to  the  whole,  turn  back  the  mind  from 
 images  to  realities,  bringing  before  it  the  very  people  of  Israel 
 and  their  sin. 
 
 Verses  18,  19,  20.  supply  us  with  another  instance  of  very 
 beautiful  rhythmical  construction:  — 
 
 Come,  now,  and  let  us  reason  together,  saith  the  Lord  : 
 
 Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  white  as  snow  ; 
 Though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool : 
 If  ye  be  willing  and  obedient, 
 
 Ye  shall  feed  on  the  good  of  the  land  ; 
 But  if  ye  refuse  and  rebel, 
 The  sword  shall  feed  on  you : 
 For  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it. 
 
 First  the  single  introductory  line ;  then  two,  corresponding  as 
 to  the  lines  (yet  with  the  artistic  variation  in  the  relative  posi- 
 
RYTHMICAL  ORATORY  OF  THE  HEBREWS.        19 
 
 tions  of 'white' and  the  answering 'red'),  but  with  the  parts 
 of  each  line  contrasting  between  themselves ;  then  four  lines, 
 in  which  the  balance  is  between  the  alternate  lines,  with  a  con- 
 trast of  word  for  word  in  the  first  and  third,  and  a  play  and 
 contrast  of  words  and  images  (which  call  up,  as  in  a  back 
 ground,  the  whole  picture  both  of  rural  plenty  and  foreign  in- 
 vasion) in  the  second  and  fourth  lines ;  and  then  the  single  line 
 brings  the  period  to  a  full  close,  while  it  answers  to  its  first 
 line.  How  elaborately  these  lines  must  have  been  constructed  ! 
 What  a  delicately  cultivated  and  refined  sense  of  beauty  in  the 
 least  as  well  as  the  greatest  matters  of  the  poet's  art  do  they 
 evince  !  And  in  this,  as  in  every  part  of  the  rhythmic  art  dis- 
 played by  Isaiah,  there  is  a  soul  of  poetry  inhabiting  and  ex- 
 pressing itself  through  this  beautiful  form. 
 
 Yet  we  must  repeat,  that  the  prophet  —  that  Isaiah  —  is 
 not  a  poet,  but  a  preacher  or  orator ;  his  aim  is  not  to  de- 
 light, but  to  teach  and  persuade  men  :  he  is  not  content  that 
 his  hearers  should  unconsciously  receive  into  their  hearts  the 
 seeds  of  truth  and  goodness  in  the  form  of  beauty,  there  to  take 
 root  and  grow  up,  night  and  day,  one  knows  not  how ;  but  he 
 labours  to  impart  these  by  direct  indoctrination  in  all  its 
 moral  methods  of  reproof,  warning,  consolation,  and  instruc- 
 tion. There  may  be  no  exaggeration  in  the  assertion  that 
 Isaiah  possessed  poetic  genius  of  the  highest  order,  and  had 
 cultivated  it  with  the  utmost  care ;  but  it  is  his  servant  not  his 
 master,  and  he,  the  patriot  and  the  man  of  God,  habitually 
 employs  it  for  the  purposes  of  his  own  proper  vocation.  Ewald 
 carries  out  this  distinction  by  printing  his  translation  as  prose, 
 observing  that,  though  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  form  of  the 
 original  is  as  strictly  rhythmical  as  in  the  poetical  books,  there 
 are  traces  in  the  Hebrew  text  of  these,  and  none  in  that  of  the 
 prophets,  that  they  were  originally  written  verse-wise ;  and 
 that  the  half-poetical  style  of  the  Arabs  is  always  written 
 as  prose.  There  is,  however,  a  composite  style  in  Arabic,  as  in 
 Persian  and  Sanskrit,  in  which  prose  and  verse  are  interchanged 
 at  the  writer's  discretion,  in  the  form  in  which  Lowth  prints 
 Chapter  vi.,  and  which  seems  to  me  to  supply  a  nearer  parallel. 
 But  if  we  consider  that  the  Hebrew  language  retained  to  the 
 last  its  primitive  simplicity  of  construction,  and  never  acquired 
 
 c  2 
 
20  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 those  complex  developments  of  grammar  which  have  fitted  the 
 classical  and  modern  tongues  for  elaborate  prose  composition ; 
 and  that  for  this  reason,  as  well  as  because  Hebrew  verse  was  a 
 rhythm  of  sense  rather  than  of  sound,  the  main  distinction  be- 
 tween it  and  prose  must  always  have  been  in  the  tone  of  thought; 
 —  we  shall  find  a  truer  illustration  in  the  rhythmical  oratory  of 
 the  Greeks  at  a  period  when  their  political  culture,  indeed,  was 
 at  a  much  less  advanced  stage  than  that  of  the  Jews  in  the  time 
 of  Isaiah,  but  that  of  the  two  languages,  as  instruments  of 
 thought,  apparently  not  so  unequal.  '  We  must  recollect,'  says 
 Mr.  Grote,  of  this  early  rhythmical  discourse,  '  that  this  was  not 
 only  the  whole  poetry,  but  the  whole  literature  of  the  age :  .  .  .  . 
 and  writing,  if  beginning  to  be  employed  as  an  aid  to  a  few 
 superior  men,  was  at  any  rate  generally  unused,  and  found  no 
 reading  public.  The  voice  was  the  only  communicant,  and  the  ear 
 the  only  recipient,  of  all  those  ideas  and  feelings  which  produc- 
 tive minds  in  the  community  found  themselves  impelled  to  pour 
 out ;  both  voice  and  ear  being  accustomed  to  a  musical  recitation 
 or  chant,  apparently  something  between  song  and  speech,  with 
 simple  rhythm,  and  a  still  simpler  occasional  accompaniment  from 
 the  primitive  four-stringed  harp.'  And  again,  — (  Kallinus 
 ....  employed  the  elegiac  metre  for  exhortations  of  warlike 
 patriotism  ;  and  the  more  ample  remains  which  we  possess  of 
 Tyrtteus  are  sermons  in  the  same  strain,  preaching  to  the  Spar- 
 tans bravery  against  the  foe,  and  unanimity  as  well  as  obedience 
 to  the  law  at  home.  They  are  patriotic  effusions,  called  forth 
 by  the  circumstances  of  the  time,  and  sung  by  single  voice,  with 
 accompaniment  of  the  flute,  to  those  in  whose  bosoms  the  flame  of 
 courage  was  to  be  kindled.  For  though  what  we  peruse  is 
 verse,  we  are  still  in  the  tide  of  real  and  present  life,  and  we 
 must  suppose  ourselves  rather  listening  to  an  orator  addressing 
 the  citizens,  when  danger  or  dissension  is  actually  impending.'  * 
 The  modern  Italian  improvisatore,  too,  can  utter  verse  extempore ; 
 and  such  was  the  rhythm  ofGrattan's  first  speech  in  the  English 
 House  of  Commons,  that  we  are  told  (in  Lord  Holland's  Me- 
 moirs) that  '  Mr.  Pitt  beat  time  to  the  artificial  but  harmonious 
 cadence  of  his  periods.'    Even  in  the  actual  utterance  of  their 
 
 *  History  of  Greece,  vol.  iv.  pp.  100.  110. 
 
PARALLELS    IN   OTHER    NATIONS.  21 
 
 discourses  the  Hebrew  prophets  must  have  come  very  near  the 
 rhythmical  form  of  their  written  works  :  and  with  whatever  mix- 
 ture of  simple  or  even  rude  prose  we  suppose  them  to  have 
 spoken,  we  see  that  they  afterwards  recorded  the  substance  of 
 their  discourses  in  literary  compositions,  which  for  their  careful 
 editing  may  be  better  compared  with  Burke's  pamphlets,  than 
 with  his  merely  reported  speeches;  while  their  eminently 
 poetical  thoughts  and  imagery,  as  well  as  diction,  may  remind 
 us  of  the  free  blank  verse  in  which  Shakspeare  idealises 
 spoken  discourse,  as  contrasted  with  the  more  restricted  move- 
 ment of  Milton  or  Spenser.  And,  therefore,  as  in  all  trans- 
 lations something  of  the  original  must  be  given  up  for  the  sake 
 of  what  we  keep,  I  incline  to  think  that  the  rhythmical  printing 
 of  Lowth  and  the  Paragraph  Bible  may  better  represent  the 
 original  to  an  English  reader  than  that  adopted  by  Ewald.* 
 
 Let  us  turn  to  the  matter  of  the  prophecy. 
 
 The  heavens  and  earth  are  constant  to  the  constitution  and 
 laws  imposed  on  them  by  their  Creator,  and  to  them  does  God 
 appeal  against  a  nation  who  have  ceased  to  believe  in  any  moral 
 
 *  The  following  passage  is  to  the  purpose,  whether  it  supports  me  or  no : 
 "  My  pamphlet  ....  was  composed  as  for  an  oration  before  an  assembly,  and 
 flowed  straight  from  my  heart,  and  hence  it  must  be  read  like  a  speech. 
 Any  one  who  should  read  it  to  himself,  or  aloud,  without  modulating  his 
 voice,  in  a  uniform  tone,  like  a  treatise  that  is  merely  concerned  with  ideas, 
 would  probably  be  as  much  puzzled  with  it  as  the  ordinary  reader  is 
 with  Greek  orations  ....  particularly  those  in  Thucydides,  before  he  has 
 
 learnt  to  read  with  the  ear Most  of  our  authors   do   not  in   the 
 
 least  know  and  consider,  that  the  old  prose  writers  wrote  as  if  they  were 
 speaking  to  an  audience ;  whilst  among  us,  prose  is  invariably  written 
 for  the  eye  alone,  at  least  only  for  the  ear  in  the  case  of  an  easy  nar- 
 rative. This  is  why  my  style  is  found  so  strange  and  unusual,  and  hence 
 punctuation  is  so  difficult  to  me,  for  I  ought  to  have  many  more  signs  in 
 order  to  indicate  my  exact  intentions.  In  fact,  with  all  that  the  writer  com- 
 poses as  if  he  were  speaking,  the  character  of  the  movement,  and  the  time, 
 ought  to  be  marked,  as  in  music,  for  the  ordinary  reader."  —  Niebuhrs  Life 
 and  Letters,  vol.  i.  I  suspect  this  is  the  key  to  the  music  of  our  authorised 
 English  Bible  and  Prayer  Book.  It  also  throws  light  on  the  elaborate  Ma- 
 soretic  accentuation,  which  has  undertaken  to  mark  the  tone  not  only  of 
 words,  but  of  propositions,  and  so  to  preserve  'the  sense  of  the  thought,  the 
 internal  life  of  the  sentence,'  in  a  dead  language.  See  Ewalds  Hebrew 
 Grammar,  trans,  by  Nicholson,  §  180.  fF. 
 
 c  3 
 
22  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 order  or  government  of  the  world*  :  the  dullest  animals  show  an 
 attachment  to  their  owner's  person,  and  a  recognition  of  his 
 manner  of  caring  for  them,  though  he  keeps  them  only  for  his 
 own  profit ;  but  this  people  disregard  and  set  at  nought  their 
 filial  relation  to  the  Lord,  though  he  has  chosen  them  out 
 from  all  mankind  to  be  his  own  children,  bestowed  on  them 
 the  peculiar  care  and  love  of  a  father,  and  by  a  long  education 
 qualified  them  to  understand  as  well  as  to  enjoy  the  blessings 
 of  this  adoption.  They  have  made  themselves  like  those  beasts 
 of  burden,  loading  themselves  with  their  iniquities ;  so  degene- 
 rated are  they  from  their  true  birthright,  that  they  seem  to  be 
 evil  in  their  very  stock  and  breed,  like  the  Canaanites  and  other 
 accursed  races  f ;  — 
 
 They  have  forsaken  the  Lord, 
 They  have  despised  the  Holy  One  of  Israel, 
 They  are  gone  away  backward. 
 
 *  Lowth  here  quotes  Psalm  I.  3,  4.,  Micah,  vi.  1,  2.,  Deut.  xxxii.  1.,  and 
 
 Deut  xxx   19.;  and  Gesenius  Virgil's 
 
 'Esto  nunc  sol  testis,  et  haec  mihi  Terra  vocanti,1  &c.  —  2En.  xii.  176. 
 
 To  which  may  be  added  the  appeal  of  Prometheus,  — 
 
 'il  S?os  alOrjp,  Kol  TaxvTTepoi  wool, 
 
 iroTan&v  re  Tr?J7cu,  irovTicjov  re  Kv/xdraiv 
 
 avripiQfiov  ye\acr/u.a,  Tra/.tfj.rjTop  re  yrj, 
 
 Ka\  rhv  irav6irTr]y  kvk.\ov  tj'Aiou  KaAcS. 
 
 JEsch.  Prom.  Vinct.  88. 
 And  Hamlet's  — 
 
 '  O  all  ye  host  of  heaven,  O  earth ! ' 
 All  are  founded  on  the  same  intuitive  feeling  of  the  mind,  that  the  works 
 and  powers  of  outward  nature  are  an  abiding  witness  for  a  settled  constitution 
 and  order  in  the  universe,  however  overlooked  or  defied.     So  Wordsworth, 
 in  his  Ode  to  Duty, — 
 
 '  Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong, 
 And  the  most  ancient  heavens  through  thee  are  fresh  and  strong.' 
 Contrast,  too,   the  pantheistic   confusion  in  the   language  of  the   classical 
 parallels,  with  the  clear  distinction  between  the  world  and  its  Maker,  which 
 is  so  clear  to  the  Jew,  that  he  does  not  so  much  assert  as  assume  it  as  an 
 axiom  impossible  to  doubt. 
 
 f  Ethnology,  while  it  adds  daily  to  its  proofs  of  the  descent  of  mankind 
 from  a  single  stock,  also  shows  clearly  the  existence  of  degenerate  races 
 which  have  long  lost  even  the  capacity  for  the  nobler  human  qualities,  re- 
 ligious, political,  and  intellectual.  Whether  it  be  lost  beyond  redemption  is 
 a  problem  which,  in  each  case,  has  to  be  solved  by  Christianity.  No  other 
 power  even  attempts  the  task.     See  further,  on  chapter  xiv.  28. 
 
ISAIAH   I.    2 — 8.  :    POLICY   OF   UZZIAH.  23 
 
 Therefore    punishment   comes    upon    the    sinful    nation,    and 
 punishment  severe  and  repeated  enough  to  rouse  it  from  its  ob- 
 stinate rebellion  :  as  it  is  become  thoroughly  diseased  at  heart, 
 it  shall  suffer  outwardly  in  proportion   to  its  inward  insensi- 
 bility ;  as  there  is  no  soundness,  and  no  desire  for   soundness 
 within,  so  shall  it  sink  under  the  repeated  strokes  of  a  foreign 
 invasion  which  adds  fresh  wounds  to  sores  already  festering, 
 while  it  longs  in  vain  for  a  deliverer  and  a  healer.     The  vision 
 of  that  woe  rises  before  the  prophet's  eyes,  and  he  sees  all  the 
 national  fruits  of  the  long  and  vigorous  reigns  of  Uzziah  and 
 Jotham  swept  away.     Uzziah  had  effectually  humbled  that  old 
 and  troublesome  enemy  of  Judah,  the  Philistines,  dismantling 
 their  fortified  cities,  and  establishing  his  own  garrisons  in  their 
 territory  :  on  the  opposite  side  he  had  reduced  the  Ammonites 
 to  their  proper  condition  of  tributaries,  from  which  they  had 
 never  lost  any  oj^portunity  of  revolting  since  David  conquered 
 them :  he   had  recovered  the  port  of  Elath  on  the  Red  Sea, 
 rebuilt  it,   and  thus,  after  an  interval  of  about  eighty  years, 
 restored  to  Judah  an  important  share  in  the  commerce  of  the 
 world :  and  he  had  strongly  fortified  Jerusalem,  and  organised 
 a  well  armed  and  disciplined  militia,  '  that  went  out  to  war  by 
 bands,'  that  so  the  people  might  not  be  taken  from  the  cultiva- 
 tion of  the  land,  and  other  peaceful  occupations,  except  in  re- 
 gular turns.     And  while    by  these  means    'his   name    spread 
 abroad,  even  to  the  entering  in  of  Egypt,  for  he  strengthened 
 himself  exceedingly,'  he  was  no  less  active  in  availing  himself  of 
 the  profound  peace  he  had  secured  abroad  to  encourage  com- 
 merce and  agriculture  at  home ;  he  himself  setting  an  example 
 in  the  latter  which  his  nobles  were  not  slow  to  follow :    '  he 
 built  towers '  for  the  protection  of  his  flocks  '  in  the  desert '  or 
 commons  where  they  pastured,  'and  digged  many  wells;    for 
 he  had  much  cattle,  both  in  the  low  country  and  in  the  plains ; 
 husbandmen  also,   and   vinedressers   in  the  mountains    and  in 
 Carmel ;  for  he  loved  husbandry  : '  the  reopening  of  the  port  of 
 Elath   would  not  merely  have  enabled  his  merchant-ships   to 
 supply  Judah  and  Jerusalem  with  the  luxuries  of  Africa  and 
 India,  but  would  have  made  Judaea  the  direct  natural  highway 
 of  much  of  the  traffic  between  those  countries   and  Europe, 
 which  the  Phoenicians  carried  on  by  help   of  trade-caravans, 
 
 c  4 
 
24  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 and  which  would  previously  have  taken  a  different  route;  and 
 while  trade  and  agriculture  thus  filled  the  land  with  wealth, 
 Egypt  supplied  them  with  horses  and  chariots :  and  what  the 
 reign  of  Uzziah  had  begun,  that  of  Jotham,  at  the  end  of  half 
 a  century,  was  still  carrying  on.  And  now  the  prophet  be- 
 holds all  overthrown,  the  cities  burned,  the  cultivated  fields 
 and  the  pastures  laid  waste,  and  the  whole  land  devoured, 
 plundered,  and  '  turned  upside  down,  as  is  the  way  in 
 foreign  invasions'*,  while  the  inhabitants  look  on,  unable 
 to  resist,  and  Jerusalem  itself,  the  only  remaining  hope,  is 
 threatened  with  siege.  Then,  by  one  of  those  transitions 
 and  combinations  with  which  the  imagination  can  throw  a 
 gleam  of  light  and  beauty  over  the  darkest  and  most  terrific 
 picture,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  even  heighten  its  truth  and 
 force,  the  wasted  fields  seem  to  the  prophet  like  the  vineyards 
 and  cucumber  gardens  at  the  end  of  the  fruit  season,  when 
 they  are  indeed  stripped  and  trampled,  and  desolate-looking, 
 yet  only  because  the  crops  have  been  gathered  in  for  the  benefit 
 of  the  husbandman  :  and  the  sole  surviving  capital  stands  there 
 apparently  abandoned  by  its  divine  watcher  and  keeper,  like 
 the  temporary  shed  which  sheltered  the  keeper  of  the  vineyard 
 or  garden  as  long  as  its  fruits  could  tempt  the  jackal  and  the 
 fox,  and  was  then  left  as  useless, —  yet,  inasmuch  as  it  is  '  like  a 
 besieged  city,'  it  is  garrisoned  as  well  as  beleagured,  and  hope 
 remains  within,  though  desolation  is  without.  And  then  the 
 thoughts  and  images  of  selfish  prosperity  and  general  calamity, 
 of  national  sins  and  divine  judgments,  but  of  a  small  remnant 
 saved  through  and  out  of  all,  assume  another  form,  and  recall 
 the  ancient  fate  of  those  cities  which  were  destroyed  because 
 the  Lord  could  not  find  ten  righteous  men  therein  :  — 
 
 Except  the  Lord  of  hosts  had  left  unto  us  a  small  remnant 
 We  should  have  been  as  Sodom,  we  should  have  been  like  unto 
 Gomorrah. 
 
 *  Grotius  quotes  — 
 
 "  Impius  haec  tarn  culta  novalia  miles  habebit? 
 Barbaras  lias  segetes  ?" — Virg.  Ec.  i.  71,  72. 
 "  England  is  become  the  residence  of  foreigners  and  the  property  of 
 strangers  :  at  the  present  time  there  is  no  Englishman  either  earl,  bishop,  or 
 abbot:  strangers  all,  they  prey  upon  the  riches  and  vitals  of  England;  nor 
 is  there  any  hope  of  a  termination  of  this  misery."—  William  of  Malmsbury, 
 ii.  13. 
 
ISAIAH   I.    9.  :    THE  LORD    OP    HOSTS.  25 
 
 The  Lord  of  hosts,  or  of  armies,  is  a  favourite  expression  of 
 the  Hebrew  writers,  and  especially  of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ze- 
 chariah,  and  Malachi,  by  which  they  recognise  Him  as  the 
 universal  governor  of  heaven  and  earth,  '  who  has  ordained 
 and  constituted  the  services  of  men  and  angels  in  a  wonderful 
 order : '  — 
 
 '  His  state 
 Is  kingly  ;  thousands  at  his  bidding  speed 
 And  post  o'er  land  and  ocean  without  rest ; 
 They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait : '  — 
 
 and  who  employs  His  kingly  and  almighty  power  to  rule  the 
 nations  in  righteousness,  and,  as  now,  both  to  punish  and  to 
 save  His  chosen  people.  Nor  need  we  be  deterred  by  gram- 
 marians from  discovering  a  like  depth  and  beauty  of  meaning  in 
 the  phrase  just  before  —  e  the  Daughter  of  Zion,'  or  doubt  that 
 to  the  mind  of  the  prophet  and  his  thoughtful  hearers  it  called 
 up  the  idea  of  the  nation  having  been  brought  up  by,  set  apart 
 for,  and  by  formal  covenant  united  to,  the  Lord  ;  called  His 
 bride  ;  and  appointed  to  show  forth,  in  the  constitution,  and 
 order,  and  duties,  of  national  society  and  political  life,  a  new 
 and  wider  manifestation  of  those  laws  of  God's  relation  with, 
 and  government  of,  man,  of  which  marriage  was  the  first  type: 
 while  the  name  of  Zion  would  remind  them  of  a  city  founded 
 upon  a  rock,  and  that  could  not  be  moved  —  set  upon  a  hill, 
 and  that  could  not  be  hid. 
 
 The  sin  of  Sodom  is  said  (Ezekiel,  xvi.  49.)  to  have  been 
 pride,  fulness  of  bread,  abundance  of  idleness,  and  contempt  of 
 the  poor  and  needy ;  their  land  was  one  of  peculiar  fertility, 
 and  they  had  given  themselves  up  to  a  mere  life  of  nature,  till 
 they  wallowed  in  all  the  worst  sins  that  break  out  from  such  a 
 life.  National  institutions  are  the  proper  jneans  of  preserving 
 a  people  from,  or  raising  them  out  of  naturalism ;  but  the 
 prophet  protests  that  his  countx-ymen  were  sunk  in  it,  notwith- 
 standing their  national  polity,  and  their  strict  maintenance  of 
 its  forms.  Though  the  blasted  and  submerged  site  of  the  cities 
 of  old  was  a  perpetual  witness  to  the  Jews  of  God's  wrath 
 against  this  sensualism  —  a  witness  abiding  from  generation  to 
 o-eneration  in  the  very  midst  of  them  —  yet  they  were  as  reck- 
 less of  God's  meaning  in  this  thing  as  the  Italians  always  seem 
 
26  HEBREW   TOLITICS. 
 
 to  have  been  regarding  the  like  destruction  of  Herculaneura 
 and  Pompeii. 
 
 The  prophet  kindling  at  the  thought  of  his  own  comparison, 
 and  feeling  how  just  a  one  it  is,  calls  on  those  men  —  rulers  and 
 people  —  who,  though  professing  to  administer  and  obey  the 
 law  of  the  Lord,  were  in  heart  no  better  than  the  men  of 
 Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  to  hear  what  the  law  of  the  Lord  is  in 
 spirit  and  in  truth.  They  still  maintain  all  the  external  forms 
 of  religion  according  to  the  established  ecclesiastical  ritual,  but 
 no  inward  faith  quickens  them.  This  has  ever  been  the  great 
 abuse  of  religious  forms  in  all  nations  and  times.  Forms  there 
 must  be ;  they  are  a  real,  vital,  part  of  religion,  as  the  body  is 
 a  real  part  of  the  man :  but  when  they  lose  their  life  they 
 become  as  worthless  and  corrupt  as  a  dead  body.  To  preserve 
 this  life  is  the  difficult  task :  it  must  be  fed  direct  from  heaven 
 through  a  channel  which  can  only  be  kept  open  as  long,  and 
 as  far,  as  man  consents  that  his  spirit  should  be  raised  above 
 the  routine  of  nature  and  the  world.  And  this  elevation  is  so 
 irksome  to  our  nature,  it  is  so  much  pleasanter  that  morality 
 and  religion  should  go  on,  like  digestion,  by  the  unconscious 
 working  of  a  mechanical  organisation,  that  men  are  alwaj's 
 yielding  to  the  delusion  that  the  thing  can  be  accomplished, — 
 from  the  African  or  the  Buddhist,  who  multiply  their  prayers  by 
 help  of  a  rotary  calibash  or  drum,  to  the  priest  of  Rome,  who 
 'makes  God'  with  robings,  and  genuflexions,  and  unintelligible 
 utterances,  and  the  elevation  of  a  wafer,  or  the  Protestant 
 divine  with  his  '  Letter  of  Scripture,'  and  his  Articles  which 
 are  to  fasten  truth,  like  an  idol,  '  with  nails  so  that  it  shall 
 not  be  moved,'  and  to  establish  a  '  doctrine  and  discipline 
 from  which  he  will  not  endure  any  varying  or  departing  in 
 the  least  degree.'  Therefore  Isaiah  protests  in  God's  name 
 that  the  Law  is  not  in  the  forms  but  in  the  meaning  of 
 them :  sacrifices  of  bullocks  and  goats  are  worthless  if  they 
 arc  not  the  symbols  of  an  actual  though  inward  sacrifice  of  that 
 fleshly  will  which  is  separating  the  worshipper  from  God's 
 spiritual  presence :  the  multitudes  who  throng  the  courts  of  the 
 temple,  and  think  they  are  keeping  the  command  to  'appear 
 before  the  Lord,'  though  their  hearts  are  far  away,  are  but 
 treading  that  command  under  their  feet  (as  the  Hebrew  word 
 
ISAIAH  I.  10—27.  :  NATIONAL  BROTHERHOOD.     27 
 
 implies) :  oblations  which  express  no  sincere  thankfulness  are 
 vain :  incense  with  which  no  prayer  of  the  heart  ascends  is  an 
 abomination :  sabbaths  and  feasts  do  but  mock  God  when  they 
 are  kept  by  men  who  are  grinding  the  faces  of  the  poor  Avith 
 unremitted  and  unrewarded  work :  the  great  yearly  assemblies 
 are  worse  than  idle  types  of  national  brotherhood  in  the  midst 
 of  universal  and  habitual  oppression  and  misery.  And  such  a 
 national  worship  and  obedience  to  the  law  as  this,  will  obtain 
 nothing  from  the  Lord  in  the  day  of  calamity  :  men  may  lift 
 up  their  hands  in  prayer,  but  in  vain,  while  those  hands  have 
 been  so  long  and  deeply  stained  with  blood ;  they  must  wash 
 them  thoroughly  (still  alluding  to  the  ecclesiastical  ritual),  by 
 ceasing  to  do  evil,  and  learning  to  do  well;  they  must 
 
 Seek  justice,  relieve  the  oppressed, 
 Right  the  fatherless,  plead  for  the  widow. 
 
 If  they  will  so  reform,  and  return  to  true  obedience  to  their 
 King  and  their  God,  He  will  himself  wash  them  thoroughly 
 from  all  their  iniquity,  though  it  be  more  deeply  ingrained  than 
 the  power  of  man  can  reach.  The  word  which  our  Bible 
 translates  reason,  means  also  ylead  or  argue  in  a  court  of 
 justice,  as  it  does  in  Job,  xxiii.  7.,  and  Micah,  vi.  2.  The  con- 
 text shows  that  both  ideas  must  be  included;  for  while  the 
 whole  tone  of  this  prophecy  is  judicial,  arraigning  the  unjust 
 and  iniquitous  rulei's  of  the  Jewish  nation  before  the  judgment- 
 seat  of  their  invisible  King,  the  reformation,  which  is  the  end 
 of  judgment,  is  never  lost  sight  of,  the  fatherly  character  of  the 
 Judge  is  always  present,  and  He  reasons  with  the  culprit,  and 
 is  willing  to  be  reasoned  with.  For  He  remembers  His  covenant, 
 and  is  not  a  God  of  mere  power  and  wrath,  nay,  not  even  of 
 mere  unbending  law,  but  a  living  Lord  of  righteousness  and 
 love,  resolved  indeed  to  maintain  absolutely  and  without  in- 
 fringement His  own  holiness,  and  justice,  and  truth,  yet  desiring 
 that  the  most  disobedient  should  still  depart  from  his  sin,  and 
 return  and  live  again  under  His  holy  constitution  and  govern- 
 ment, and  enjoy  the  blessings  of  so  doing,  loving  God,  and 
 knowing  that  God  loves  him :  therefore,  in  the  midst  of  all 
 these  threatenings,  God  appeals  to  the  people  themselves  whe- 
 ther He  is  not  reasonable  in  His  conduct  towards  them.     Thus 
 
28  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 the  word  is  at  once  expressive  of  the  deepest  truth  and  meaning, 
 and  in  accordance  with  the  actual  practice  of  the  Hebrew  in- 
 stitutions, which  preserved  much  of  their  patriarchal  character, 
 as  all  Eastern  nations  do  to  this  day,  even  when  most  corrupt. 
 
 '  The  faithful  city  is  become  a  harlot' :  —  Jerusalem,  the 
 daughter  of  Zion,  the  wife  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  has 
 broken  the  bond  of  her  covenant  with  Him,  has  set  at  nought 
 the  divine  constitution  and  order  in  which  He  originally 
 placed,  and  has  continued  to  sustain,  her :  and,  as  the  outward 
 consequence  and  sign  of  this  spiritual  defection,  has  actually 
 fallen  to  the  worship  of  other  Gods.  Throughout  this  prophecy 
 Isaiah  dwells  chiefly  on  the  sins  of  the  princes  and  rulers  of  the 
 nation,  and  only  incidentally  on  those  of  the  people ;  and  ac- 
 cordingly, he  now  dilates  on  the  characteristic  vices  of  the 
 former,  which  are  the  fruits  of  their  national  unfaithfulness. 
 Social  and  political  morality  have  vanished  along  with  religious 
 faith ;  thieves  and  murderers  are  found  instead  of  virtuous 
 citizens* ;  the  nobles  and  men  in  authority  are  the  first  to  break 
 the  laws  they  should  enforce;  the  administration  of  justice  is  so 
 corrupt  that  the  judges  take  bribes,  connive  at  the  robbers 
 whose  booty  they  share,  and  permit  the  rich  man  to  pervert 
 the  law  for  the  oppression  of  the  fatherless  and  the  widow,  who 
 have  no  patrons  to  demand,  and  no  money  to  buy,  justice: 
 and  thus  the  aristocracy,  setting  aside  all  belief  that  they  hold 
 their  wealth  and  power  in  trust  from  God,  for  the  benefit  of  the 
 people  under  them,  do  but  employ  these  as  irresistible  engines 
 for  breaking  down  all  rights  that  can  oppose  them  in  their 
 pursuit  of  luxmy  and  vice.  Therefore  will  the  mighty  Lord 
 of  the  nation  put  forth  his  strength,  and  purge  out  these  iniqui- 
 ties, destroying  those  who  have  defied  and  renounced  Him,  and 
 by  means  of  this  severe  discipline  restoring  the  nation  to  its 
 former  and  true  character  of  a  people  faithful  to  God,  and 
 dealing  uprightly  with  each  other.  '  Zion  shall  be  redeemed,' 
 through  this  execution  of  judgment,  and  her  restored  and  re- 
 formed children  shall  dwell  within  her  walls  in  righteousness. 
 '  Converts'  is  a  cognate  word  to  that  in  chapter  x.  21. 
 
 It  may  be  asked,  At  what  former  period  of  Jewish  history 
 
 *  The  word  'lodging'  is  suggested  by  the  image  of  a  populous  city; 
 '  silver'  by  its  wealth  ;  '  wine'  by  its  luxury. 
 
POLITICAL    IDEALS.  29 
 
 did  the  nation  deserve  that  character  for  faith  and  righteous- 
 ness which  Isaiah  ascribes  to  it  '  at  the  beginning  ?  '  and  at  what 
 subsequent  time  was  it  restored  to  the  condition  which  he  pro- 
 mises 'afterwards?'  I  must  reply, — not  by  pointing  back  to  the 
 days  of  Moses  or  Samuel,  or  David,  or  Solomon,  nor  forward 
 to  those  of  Hezekiah,  Josiah,  or  the  Maccabees ;  for  it  could  be 
 shown  that  the  men  who  lived  at  each  of  those  times  were 
 ready  to  cry  out  against  their  special  corruption, — but  by  refer- 
 ence to  that  universal  habit  of  men's  minds  to  suppose  a  past 
 and  hope  for  a  future,  realisation  in  actual  life,  of  their  ideals 
 of  human  perfection.  Few  men,  in  any  time  or  country,  have 
 that  power  of  metaphysical  abstraction  which  can  enable  them 
 to  contemplate  ideals  as  such  ;  and  even  they,  when  they  de- 
 scend to  practical  life,  and  the  practical  instruction  of  the  men 
 around  them,  find  it  necessary  to  translate  their  ideas  into  the 
 popular  language.  The  oppressed  Saxon  prayed  for  the  re- 
 storation, by  his  Norman  tyrant,  of  the  laws  of  Edward,  though 
 it  would  have  been  difficult  for  him  to  prove  the  personal 
 merits  of  that  king  as  a  legislator  or  ruler ;  the  Long  Par- 
 liament based  all  its  demands  on  the  ancient  rights  of  the 
 Commons ;  the  French  and  English  Republicans  of  the  last 
 century  referred  to  an  original  social  contract ;  and  in  our  own 
 day  the  Church  of  the  first  centuries  and  the  chivalry  of  the 
 middle  ages,  supply  to  considerable  classes  a  local  habitation  and 
 name  for  their  ideals  of  life,  though  it  would  not  be  easily  shown 
 that  there  ever  was  an  adequate  historical  realisation  of  any 
 one  of  them.  We  all  feel  indeed  that  there  is  a  fact  no  less 
 than  a  truth  recognised  in  such  language,  both  as  to  the  past 
 and  the  future.  There  is  a  continual  progress  in  the  world, 
 and  every  step  of  it  is  gained  by  the  triumph  of  some  good  over 
 some  evil,  and  consequently  by  some  realisation  in  fact  of  what, 
 till  it  had  so  triumphed,  could  only  assert  itself  in  idea.  Thus 
 the  new  is  always  the  restoration  of  the  old,  and  the  old  the 
 promise  of  the  new,  and  the  whole  ideal  of  time  is  in  light, 
 though  the  particular  moment  as  it  passes  is  marked  by  shadow. 
 It  will  become  increasingly  apparent  as  we  go  on,  how  important 
 an  element  of  the  prophetic  character  and  office  this  belief  and 
 promise  of  the  realisation  of  a  perfect  commonwealth  was,  and 
 in  what  relation  it  stands  to  the  search  or  longing  for  such  a 
 
30  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 society  by  the  philosophers  and  philanthropists  of  other  nations 
 and  times. 
 
 But  to  return  to  the  detail  of  the  text  before  us.  In  the 
 judgments  and  the  restoration  which  the  prophet  foretells,  he 
 declares  that  the  people  shall  learn  the  worthlessness  of  the 
 idols  which  they  have  been  worshipping  under  the  oak  trees, 
 and  in  the  sacred  groves.  The  worship  of  the  '  high  places  ' 
 seems  to  have  been  partly  an  adoption  of  the  actual  idolatry  of 
 the  neighbouring  nations,  and  partly  (2  Chron.  xxxiii.  17.)  a 
 remains  of  that  local  worship  of  the  true  God,  which  in  some  of 
 its  forms  at  least  (for  the  obscurity  of  the  subject  has  been 
 already  noticed)  seems  to  have  become  irregular  and  blameable 
 when  one  central  sanctuary  had  been  established  for  the  whole 
 people :  experience  proved  that  neither  pure  faith  and  wor- 
 ship, nor  national  unity,  could  be  preserved  but  by  the  para- 
 mount—  perhaps  the  sole  —  recognition  of  that  sanctuary  as  the 
 one  house  and  altar  of  God ;  and  when  they  fell  away  from  this, 
 their  religion  became  a  religion  of  nature  and  not  of  faith,  of 
 isolated  individuals  and  not  of  a  church.  That  this  false  worship 
 was  going  on  in  Judrea  during  the  reigns  of  Uzziah  and  Jotham> 
 at  the  same  time  with  the  temple  services,  appears  from  2  Kings, 
 xv.  3,  4.,  compared  with  2  Chron.  xxvii.  2.*  In  that  day 
 the  prophet  foretells  that  these  men  who  have  been  flourishing 
 in  their  sin,  like  the  oaks,  and  living  in  pleasures  like  those  of  a 
 well- watered  garden,  shall  find  that  their  idols  have  no  power 
 to  save  them  from  a  destruction  which  shall  make  them  '  as  an 
 oak  whose  leaf  fadeth,  and  as  a  garden  that  hath  no  water,' — 
 images  which  will  be  the  more  forcible  if  we  remember  that  in 
 a  southern  climate,  trees  fade  rather  from  excessive  heat  than 
 from  seasonable  cold,  and  a  garden  without  water  is  a  mere  de- 
 sert of  sand.  Then  shall  the  strong,  the  mighty,  and  the  unjust 
 ruler  become  tow,  and  his  idols,  the  work  of  his  hands,  a  spark; 
 they  shall  both  burn  together,  and  no  man  shall  quench  them. 
 
 In  verse  29,  is  an  instance  of  what  seemed  to  Lowth's  classical 
 taste  a  corrupt  reading :  '  They  shall  be  ashamed  of  the  oaks 
 which  ye  have  desired.'     But  this  variation  of  the  persons  of 
 
 *  For  allusions  to  the  subject  at  other  times,  see  Deut.  xvi.  21.,  1  Kings, 
 xiv.  23.,  2  Kings,  xvi.  4.,  2  Chron.  xxviii.  4.,  Ezekiel,  vi.  13. 
 
LANGUAGE    A    KEY    TO    NATIONAL    CHARACTER.  31 
 
 the  verb  is  not  unusual  in  Hebrew,  and  certainly  no  cor- 
 ruption. Nay  if  we  look  at  Psalm  xci.,  which  is  very  artisti- 
 cally constructed,  we  shall  see  reason  to  think  that  what  jars  so 
 harshly  on  a  classically  trained  ear  was  a  beauty  to  the  Hebrew 
 poets.  I  dwell  the  more  upon  these  peculiarities  of  idiom  and 
 composition,  because  I  believe  that  we  cannot  understand  the 
 higher  and  deeper  meaning  of  Isaiah,  any  more  than  we  can  of 
 Shakspeare,  iinless  our  minds  are  emancipated  from  servile  ad- 
 herence to  classical  rules.  Each  language  and  literature  has  its 
 own  laws,  and  these  are  derived  from  and  connected  with  a  dis- 
 tinctive national  mind,  which  expresses  itself  in  its  own  way 
 through  the  great  writers  of  each  nation  :  and  thus  language  be- 
 comes a  key  to  national  character. 
 
32  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  III. 
 
 ISAIAH,  II.  III.  IV. HEBREW  GENIUS  IMAGINATIVE  RATHER    THAN    LOGICAL. 
 
 PRETERITE  AND  FUTURE  TENSES  IN  HEBREW. THE  LAST  DATS. CON- 
 TRAST   OF    THE     IDEAL    AND    ACTUAL     STATE     OF    THE    NATION. FOREIGN 
 
 INFLUENCES. PRIVATE    IDOLATRY. POLITICAL    MATERIALISM. — NATIONAL 
 
 DECAY. —  LAWS  OF  GOd's  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  WORLD. — GOOD  AND  EVIL 
 OF  COMMERCE. HEBREW  MATRONS. FEMALE  LUXURY ITS  PUNISH- 
 MENT.  THE    BRANCH    OF    THE    LORD. THE    RESTORED    THOUGH    HUMBLED 
 
 NATION. 
 
 The  next  discourse,  consisting  of  chapters  ii.  iii.  iv.,  is  en- 
 titled, '  The  Word  that  Isaiah  the  son  of  Amos  saw  concerning 
 Judah  and  Jerusalem.'  The  propriety  of  applying  the  phrase 
 *  saw'*  to  *  the  Word''  is  apparent,  if  we  refer  ourselves  to 
 the  mental  process  which  takes  place  in  meditating  upon  any 
 important  truth,  especially  while  the  vividness  of  the  first  dis- 
 covery lasts ;  and  still  more  is  it  obvious,  as  we  read  the  dis- 
 course itself,  and  look  for  ourselves  at  its  various  pictures  of 
 military  power,  maritime  commerce,  wealth,  luxury,  pride,  sel- 
 fishness, and  irreligion. 
 
 No  arguments  need  be  added  to  prove  that  the  prophecy  de- 
 picts the  state  of  society  in  the  period  between  the  latter  end  of 
 the  reign  of  Uzziah,  and  the  beginning  of  that  of  Ahaz. 
 
 The  opening  paragraph  —  a  passage  of  aphoristic  complete- 
 ness and  beauty,  and  here  serving  as  a  text  to  the  subsequent 
 discourse — is  found  also,  with  a  few  verbal  alterations,  in  Isaiah's 
 cotemporary,  Micah  (chap.  iv.  1 — 3.).  Conjecture  has  variously 
 attributed  it  to  each  of  these  prophets,  and  to  some  older  one, 
 copied  by  both :  the  last  seems  the  most  probable  supposition. 
 
 If  we  keep  the  verbs  in  the  tenses  which  they  have  in  the 
 Hebrew,  the  passage  will  stand  thus  :  — 
 
 And  it  hath  come  to  pass  in  the  last  days, 
 
 That  the  mountain  of  the  Loud's  house  shall  be  established  at  the 
 head  of  the  mountains, 
 
ISAIAH    II.    1 — 4.:    HEBREW    PAST    AND    FUTURE  33 
 
 And  exalted  above  the  hills  ; 
 
 And  all  nations  have  flowed  unto  it. 
 
 And  many  peoples  have  gone  and  said, 
 
 Come  ye,  and  we  will  go  up  to  the  mountain  of  the  Lord, 
 
 To  the  house  of  the  God  of  Jacob; 
 
 And  He  will  teach  us  of  his  ways,  and  we  will  walk  in  his  paths  : 
 
 For  out  of  Zion  shall  go  forth  the  law, 
 
 And  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem. 
 
 And  he  hath  judged  between  the  nations, 
 
 And  hath  arbitrated  for  many  peoples : 
 
 And  they  have  beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares, 
 
 And  their  spears  into  pruninghooks  : 
 
 Nation  shall  not  lift  up  sword  against  nation, 
 
 Neither  shall  they  learn  war  any  more. 
 
 This — at  first  sight  and  to  our  notions — singular  use  of  the 
 tenses  is  thoroughly  discussed  by  the  grammarians  ;  yet  in  their 
 translations  even  Gesenius  and  Ewald  obliterate  all  traces  of  it, 
 usually  substituting  the  present  for  both  past  and  future.  If 
 the  German  idiom  peremptorily  requires  this,  Professor  Alexan- 
 der has  shown,  in  his  notes  on  the  latter  chapters  of  Isaiah,  that 
 no  such  entire  sacrifice  is  demanded  by  the  English  ;  but  that 
 very  frequently  an  adherence  to  the  original  distinction  of 
 tenses  gives  a  beauty  as  well  as  force  to  the  passage,  which 
 leaves  little  doubt  that  we  shall  one  day  see  it  naturalized  to  a 
 great  extent  in  our  English  Bibles.  The  explanation  of  the 
 Hebrew  usage,  in  as  far  as  this  is  the  place  for  considering  it,  is 
 clearly  that  the  structure  of  such  a  passage  as  that  before  us  is 
 imaginative,  not  logical  —  a  picture,  not  a  statement.  The  speaker 
 completely  projects  himself  into  '  the  last  days  ; '  he  is  there,  he 
 finds  them  come  ;  he  looks  about  him  to  see  what  is  actually  in 
 process,  and  sees  that  the  mountain  of  the  Lord's  house  is  about 
 to  be  —  still  in  process  of  being —  established  at  the  head  of  the 
 mountains  ;  he  looks  again,  and  the  nations  have  already  arrived 
 at  the  place  prepared  for  them,  yet  so  freshly  that  they  are  still 
 calling  one  another  on  ;  and  as  they  come  up  they  find  that  the 
 King  they  seek  is  already  there,  and  has  effected  some  of  his 
 arbitrations  and  decisions  before  they  arrive  for  their  turn. 
 
 So  thoroughly  does  this  imaginativeness  pervade  the  language 
 not  only  of  the  prophets  but  of  the  historians,  so  habitually  has 
 
 D 
 
34  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 the  imaginative  and  not  (as  with  us)  the  logical  faculty  dictated 
 the  laws  of  Hebrew  grammar,  that  the  form  •  and  it  hath  come 
 to  pass' in  the  first  line,  'refers  always  to  a  future  event;' 
 while  that  of  *  shall  be'  in  the  second,  is  usually  equivalent  to 
 the  iysvsro  of  historical  narration.*  There  seems  indeed  a  spe- 
 cial idiom  as  to  this  verb:  and  the  subject  is  still  more  clearly 
 explained  in  the  general  rule  '  that  in  continued  narrations  of 
 the  past,  only  the  first  verb  stands  in  the  preterite,  the  others 
 being  in  the  future  form ;  and  on  the  contrary,  in  continued 
 descriptions  of  the  future,  the  first  verb  is  in  the  future,  while 
 the  rest  are  in  the  preterite  form.  Thus  in  Genesis  i.  1.:  — 
 In  the  beginning  God  created  (pret)  the  heavens  and  the  earth: 
 And  God  will  sag  (fut.)  'Let  there  he  light,  and  there  will  be  (fut.) 
 light :  And  God  trill  see,  8fc.  And  just  the  reverse  in  Isaiah 
 vii.  17.  ff.  :  —  Jehovah  trill  bring  (fut.)  upon  thee  a?id  upon  thy 
 people,  dags  such  as  have  not  come  since,  §c.  And  it  hath  (pret.) 
 happened  on  that  dag  .  .  .  And  they  have  (pret.)  corned 'f  In  both 
 these  examples  the  speaker  evidently  places  himself  in  the 
 midst  of  the  events  themselves,  describing  the  past  creation  as  it 
 would  have  been  seen  by  that  eye  that  '  was  there  or  ever 
 the  earth  was,  while  as  yet  He  had  not  made  the  land  nor  the 
 fields 't,  and  picturing  the  future  as  Ahaz  would  realise  it  after 
 it  had  become  the  past. 
 
 Nor  is  it  only  in  the  Hebrew  language  and  its  grammar,  that 
 this  characteristic  appeal's  :  it  pervades  the  whole  genius  of  the 
 nation,  the  structure  and  growth  of  their  laws  and  institutions, 
 and  the  acts  and  habits  of  their  legislators  and  statesmen,  as 
 well  as  the  writings  of  their  poets  and  historians :  they  are  '  of 
 imagination  all  compact;'  a  very  'nation  of  prophets;'  the 
 future  is  their  goal,  and  their  appointed  rest,  to  which  they 
 press  forward  as  travellers  through  the  mere  actual  and  present. 
 It  may  be  difficult  for  an  Englishman,  or  German,  in  our  nine- 
 teenth century,  to  realise  this  state  and  habit  of  mind  ;  but  it 
 is  a  difficulty  somewhat  analogous  to  that  which  we  find  in 
 realising  the  state  of  mind  which  produced  the  Greek  mytho- 
 
 *  Gesenius,  Lexicon,  word  H*Pt. 
 
 ■j"  Gesenius,  Grammar,  §  48  b.  English  edition  of  Bagster,  1852. 
 }  Proverbs,  viii.  22—30.     The  whole  passage  bears  on  this  point  in  a 
 noticeable  manner. 
 
ANCIENT    AND    MODERN    HABITS    OF    MIND.  35 
 
 logy  *,  and  which  also,  in  another  way,  was  so  highly  imaginative, 
 that  in  the  present  stage  of  the  human  race,  and  the  now  pre- 
 dominating development  of  the  reasoning  faculties,  we  have  no 
 corresponding  inward  experience.  Yet  the  faculty  of  imagina- 
 tion still  exists  in  us ;  and  if  we  carefully  study  its  character 
 and  workings  in  our  own  minds,  and  in  the  writings  of  the 
 poets  of  our  own,  and  of  other  times ;  if  we  meditate  upon 
 the  distinctive  features  of  the  Hebrew  mind,  literature,  language, 
 and  institutions,  in  their  action  and  reaction  upon  each  other, 
 and  as  they  correspond  with,  or  differ  from  those  of  other  na- 
 tions ;  if  we  consider  that  there  is  a  growth  (with  its  consequent 
 losses  as  well  as  gains)  of  the  human  race,  no  less  than  of  its 
 several  families  and  individual  men  f  ;  if,  lastly,  we  believe  that 
 
 *  "  But  how  can  we  arrive  at  an  idea  of  its  (the  Mythus)  real  nature  and 
 import  ?  Such  an  idea  cannot  be  attained  a  priori,  as  we  have  it  only  from 
 experience;  neither  is  it  immediately,  and  of  itself,  intelligible,  being  utterly 
 unknown  as  a  product  of  our  times.  It  is  a  purely  historical  idea  ;  an  idea, 
 moreover,  by  which  a  creation  of  very  remote  times  is  to  be  conceived.  It 
 cannot  possibly  be  arrived  at  otherwise  than  historically.  But  how  is  its 
 historical  perception  possible,  the  mythus  itself  being  the  only  source  of  the 
 idea  of  the  mythus,  and  appearing,  too,  in  a  form  different  from  its  contents  ? 
 In  the  statement  of  an  historical  fact  the  form  and  the  contents  correspond ; 
 an  acquaintance  with  the  language  forms  the  bridge  which  leads  from  one  to 
 the  other.  But  here  they  lie  further  apart,  and  the  path  must  first  be 
 sought,  is  itself  a  problem.  In  other  words,  mythi  must  be  interpreted, 
 must  be  explained,  ere  we  can  attain  a  knowledge  of  their  contents.  This 
 must  be  done  in  a  thousand  individual  instances  ere  we  shall  be  able  to 
 seize  the  essence  of  the  mythus  as  a  generic  idea.  And  then  the  question 
 still  remains,  whether  we  can  express  the  knowledge  thus  attained  by  an 
 idea  such  as  passes  current  amongst  us,  or  by  a  simple  combination  of  such 
 ideas  ;  whether  we  do  not  find  something  compounded,  according  to  our 
 notions,  of  multifarious,  widely  separated,  and  heterogeneous  materials,  the 
 union  of  which  is  based  on  a  mode  of  thinking  entirely  different  from  ours." 
 Miillers  Scientific  Mythology,  translated  by  Leitch,  p.  6. 
 
 •f"  Mythology  has  supplied  us  with  one  instance,  Language  furnishes  another. 
 "It  may  be  observed  as  a  general  fact,"  says  Dr.  Pritchard,  "that  Lan- 
 guages appear  to  have  become  more  permanent  as  we  come  down  towards 
 later  times.  During  the  last  ten,  or  perhaps  the  last  fifteen  centuries,  they 
 have  undergone  few  alterations  except  through  the  effect  of  conquest,  or  the 
 intermixture  of  nations.  The  Bretons  ....  are  still  easily  intelligible  to 
 the  natives  of  Wales.  .  .  .  The  Scots  who  emigrated  from  the  north  of  Ire- 
 land to  Argvleshire  can  still  converse  with  the  natives  of  Ireland. 
 
 Languages,  by  intermixture  of  nations,  become  disintegrated;  they  lose  part 
 
 D  2 
 
36  HEBKEW   POLITICS. 
 
 these  characteristics  of  the  Hebrew  mind  were  providentially  so 
 heightened,  adapted,  and  directed  by  the  influence  of  political 
 institutions,  and  local  and  historical  circumstances,  as  that  men 
 chosen  out  of  this  nation  might,  without  any  violent,  arbitrary, 
 or  in  any  way  monstrous,  subversion  of  their  human  nature  and 
 faculties,  be  made  the  fit  instruments  of  God's  revelation  of 
 Himself  to  men  : — then  we  shall  perhaps  find  that  there  is  a 
 rational  and  intelligible  idea  of  prophecy  attainable  by  us;  and 
 that  in  proportion  as  we  realise  it,  it  will  make  clear  the  dark 
 and  difficult  places  in  the  prophetical  Scriptures,  and  deliver 
 us  from  the  fear  of  having  to  choose  between  interpretations 
 fairly  obnoxious  to  the  charge  of  introducing  the  doctrines  of 
 superstition,  and  even  magic,  into  religion,  and  those  of  a  sceptical 
 criticism,  which  is  often  as  regardless  of  historical  and  literal  fact 
 as  of  true  philosophy  and  Christian  faith. 
 
 Isaiah  then,  '  rapt  into  future  times,'  sees  the  throne  of  the 
 Lord  of  Israel  established  in  sovereignty  over  all  the  nations  of 
 the  earth,  and  they  becoming  willing  subjects  to  Him,  and 
 friendly  fellow  citizens  to  each  other.  The  nations  attain  to 
 true  liberty,  for  they  come  to  submit  themselves  to  the  righteous 
 laws  and  institutions,  and  to  the  wise  and  gracious  word  and 
 direction,  of  that  King  whose  service  is  perfect  freedom  ;  and  to 
 true  brotherhood,  for  they  leave  their  old  enmities  and  conflicts, 
 and  make  the  same  Lord  is  their  judge,  and  umpire,  and  reconciler. 
 And  all  this,  not  by  some  newly  invented  device  of  the  nations, 
 
 of  their  grammatical  modifications.  ...  In  the  mean  time  no  new  forms  of 
 human  speech  are  produced  :  no  new  varieties  of  inflection  expressive  of  the 
 modification  of  ideas  by  changes  in  the  endings  or  the  initial  syllables  of 
 words  are  ever  attempted ;  particles  and  auxiliaries  are  inserted  to  supply 
 the  want  of  obsolete  inflections.  Formations  of  language  and  the  develop- 
 ment of  grammatical  systems  have  long  ceased.  As  in  geology,  we  now  only 
 witness  the  disintegration  of  what  the  first  ages  produced.  How  different 
 was  the  habit  of  the  human  mind  with  regard  to  language  in  the  age  when 
 the  Sanskrit,  the  Greek,  the  Latin,  and  the  Msso- Gothic,  idioms  were  de- 
 veloped from  one  common  original!"  —  Researches  into  the  Physical  Hist,  of 
 Mankind,  ii.  221,  222.  The  whole  paragraph  is  most  interesting,  as  show- 
 ing man's  original  powers  of  language-making,  and  their  gradual  cessation. 
 
 The  practice  of  sacrifice  by  all  the  nations  of  antiquity,  with  its  aban- 
 donment by  those  of  Christendom,  as  also  by  the  Mahometans,  is  another  of 
 the  changes  in  hind,  and  not  merely  in  degree,  of  a  large  part  of  the  human 
 race.     In  such  facts  as  these,  the  student  of  a  constructive  historical  phi- 
 
isaiah  ir.  5 — 9.:  true  and  false  philanthropy.    37 
 
 some  new  result  of  their  own  civilisation,  but  by  the  carrying 
 out  of  the  old  original  purpose  and  plan  of  God,  that  His 
 chosen  people  of  the  Jews  should  be  the  ministers  of  these  good 
 things,  and  that  in  them  should  all  nations  of  the  earth  be 
 blessed,  —  that  'out  of  Zion  should  go  forth  the  law,  and  the 
 word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem.'  This  is  the  vocation  of  the 
 Hebrew  people.  This,  says  the  prophet,  is  the  key  to  all  our 
 duties  as  a  nation,  this  is  the  master-light  to  guide  us  to  right 
 action :  — '  O  house  of  Israel,  come  ye,  and  let  us  walk  in  the 
 light  of  the  Lord.' 
 
 The  appeal  is  in  vain.  The  house  of  Israel  is,  indeed,  willing 
 enough  for,  and  is  already  practising,  a  universal  brotherhood  of 
 nations,  but  quite  of  another  fashion  from  this.  They  have 
 filled  themselves  to  repletion  with  the  idolatries  and  divinations 
 of  the  Syrians,  Chaldasans,  and  Philistines ;  and  on  every  side 
 have  joined  themselves  to  the  heathens  by  marriages,  political 
 alliances,  commercial  intercourse,  and  adoption  of  religious  rites. 
 Juventutem  studiis  externis  degenerare,  was  the  complaint  of 
 the  Romans  who  were  still  faithful  to  the  ancient  discipline,  in 
 the  time  of  Nero  * ;  and  even  in  our  own  Christian  times, 
 and  among  Christian  nations,  these  are  great  causes  of  na- 
 tional deterioration  :  and  Moses  and  the  prophets  are  proved 
 by  the  result  to  have  judged  rightly,  that  nothing  but  the  strict 
 exclusion  of  such  foreign  influences  could  preserve  the  moral, 
 political,  and  religious  nationality  of  their  country.  I  would 
 urge  the  thoughtful  consideration  of  these  verses  (2 — 9.)  on  any 
 one  who  is  perplexed  by  the  confident  assertion  of  writers  who 
 prefer  vague  declamation  to  close  investigation  and  reasoning, 
 that  the  Hebrew  prophets  were  actuated  by  a  bitter  hatred  of 
 foreigners.  He  will,  I  think,  discover  (from  this  and  such  like 
 study)  that  they  were  possessed  by  views  and  hopes  of  a  phi- 
 lanthropy which  even  our  own  times  have  not  been  able  to  ex- 
 tend :  they  yearned  for  fellowship  with  all  men,  under  the  only 
 conditions  in  which  fellowship  is  possible  :  they  longed  for  an 
 universal   communion  of  virtue,  humanity,  and  goodness,  and 
 
 losophy  patiently  seeks  the   key  to  many  a  difficulty  in  Jewish  as  well  as 
 other  ancient  history,  which  the  merely  destructive  critic  gets  rid  of  by  a  re- 
 ference to  the  standard  of  his  own  times  and  country. 
 *   Tacit.  Ann.  xiv.  20.  quoted  by  Vitringa. 
 
 d  3 
 
38  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 could  not  be  content  to  have  a  general  licence  of  vice,  brutality, 
 and  wickedness  instead;  and  they  advocated  what  they  saw, 
 and  what  all  history  has  proved,  to  be  the  only  way  of  avoiding 
 the  one  and  securing  the  other. 
 
 For  the  like  reasons  Moses  had  forbidden,  and  Isaiah  here 
 proceeds  (no  doubt  with  a  reference  to  the  law  of  Moses)  to 
 censure,  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  and  the  multiplying  horses 
 and  chariots.  The  nation  had  come  to  the  state  from  which 
 Moses  would  have  kept  it  back  if  possible :  it  was  rich,  luxu- 
 rious, and  put  its  trust  in  the  physical  force  of  its  standing 
 army,  and  meanwhile  had  forgotten  its  divine  King,  and  the 
 covenant  between  them.  And  therefore  the  land  had  become 
 (  full  of  idols.'  It  has  been  noticed  that  these  were  doubtless 
 worshipped  in  many  groves  and  high  places  during  the  reigns  of 
 Uzziah  and  Jotham,  though  these  kings  formally  upheld  the 
 national  worship  of  the  true  God  ;  but  we  may  (with  Vitringa) 
 especially  refer  this  passage  to  the  Teraphim,  the  Penates  or 
 Lares  'which  they  made  each  one  for  himself  to  worship,'  and 
 to  divine  with,  in  their  own  houses ; — a  species  of  idolatry  which 
 from  the  earliest  times  is  found  among  those  who  yet  professed 
 the  worship  of  the  Lord.  The  whole  ecclesiastical  scheme  of 
 the  Hebrew  polity  tended  to  elevate  the  members  of  the  nation 
 out  of  a  selfish  state,  and  bring  them  to  a  consciousness  of  the 
 dignity  and  virtue  of  being  ' members  one  of  another;'  Avhile 
 the  effect  of  this  private  superstition,  which  had  filled  the  land 
 with  idols,  must  have  been  the  exact  contrary.  So  many  gods, 
 so  many  centres  of  social  attraction  and  repulsion.  A  state  of 
 things  in  which  every  man  has  his  own  god  in  his  own  house,  is 
 mere  naturalism,  Shammanism,  or  Fetish-worship,  and  engenders 
 the  horde-life,  into  which  family  or  patriarchal  life  sinks,  if  not 
 comprehended  in  and  upheld  by  national  institutions,  and  espe- 
 cially a  national  worship.  The  bond  of  political  society  in 
 Greece,  or  in  Home,  was  the  national  recognition  of  Apollo  or 
 Pallas,  Jupiter  or  Mars.  And  if  faith  was  thus  potent  as  long 
 as  it  remained  sincere,  though  its  objects  were  imaginary,  not 
 less  was  it  necessary  to  the  people  whose  God  was  the  Lord. 
 But  since  they  have  forsaken  Him,  in  the  office  to  which  He 
 had  appointed  them  among  the  nations,  the  prophet  declares 
 that  the  Loud  too  hath  forsaken  them,  and  will  not  forgive  them. 
 
ISAIAH  II.    10—22.:    DAYS    OF    JUDGMENT  39 
 
 The  Lord  hath  forsaken  them  as  their  father  and  friend, 
 but  He  comes  to  call  them  to  account  as  their  judge.  Men  of 
 every  rank,  high  and  low,  have  been  humbling  themselves  every- 
 where before  their  idols ;  they  shall  now  be  compelled  to  bow 
 down  before  the  Lord,  for  all  their  haughtiness.  The  day  of 
 the  Lord  of  Hosts  is  at  hand;  — that  crisis  or  '  day  of  judg- 
 ment,' in  which  He  who  upholds  and  directs  the  universe  and 
 its  inhabitants  by  righteous  laws  and  administration,  executes  on 
 the  impenitent  breakers  of  those  laws  the  sentence  which  He 
 has  pronounced  against  them.  The  Flood,  the  destruction  of 
 Sodom,  the  invasion  of  Judaea  in  the  reigns  of  Ahaz  and  Heze- 
 kiah,  the  taking  of  Jerusalem  by  Nebuchadnezzar  or  by  Titus, 
 and  the  like  national  crises  in  ancient  and  in  modern  history, 
 are  all  '  Days  of  the  Lord,'  in  which  He  comes  to  judge  the 
 earth;  and  partial  anticipations  of  the  last  judgment  of  the 
 world.  Their  wealth  and  rank  shall  not  save  them:  though 
 they  tower  above  their  fellows,  as  the  cedars  of  Lebanon  and 
 the  oaks  of  Basan  (of  which  they  build  their  palaces)  tower 
 above  the  common  shrubs ;  though  they  stand  like  their  native 
 mountains,  and  like  the  fortifications  which  they  have  added  to 
 those  mountains  in  defiance  of  all  invaders ;  though  they  are 
 prepared  to  resist  the  storms  of  fortune  like  the  great  merchant 
 ships  by  which  they  have  amassed  their  wealth,  and  though 
 their  dissolute  idol- worship  sanctions  all  the  sensual  luxury  of 
 their  life  *  ;  yet  all  shall  be  brought  down  to  the  dust.  They 
 shall  vainly  seek  to  escape,  as  unarmed  peasants  or  women  fly 
 into  the  nearest  cave  or  hole  when  they  hear  the  hoofs  of  some 
 plundering  tribe  of  Edom  or  Ishmael  from  the  desert :  but  the 
 judgment  of  the  Lord  shall  reach  them,  as  the  earthquake 
 (then,  as  now,  not  uncommon  in  Judaea)  would  bring  down  the 
 rock  on  him  who  sought  refuge  in  it.  And  as  such  fugitives 
 carry  in  their  hands  their  most  precious  goods,  but  are  glad  in 
 their  extremity  to  abandon  these  to  the  moles  and  bats  of  the 
 caves,  that  they  may  more  freely  use  their  hands  in  clambering 
 
 *  This  seems  the  best  explanation  of  '  images  of  desire.'  Compare  chap- 
 ters i.  29.,  xliv.  9.  with  Genesis,  iii.  6. ;  Levit.  xxvi.  1.;  Numb,  xxxiii.  52. 
 The  phrase  '  ships  of  Tarshish'  (Tartessus  in  Spain),  applied  to  merchant- 
 ships  which  could  only  have  traded  in  the  south,  is  exactly  like  our  usage  of 
 '  China  cups,'  '  Japan  trays,'  &c. 
 
 d  4 
 
40  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 into  the  safest  recesses,  so  the  idolatrous  nation  shall  be  obliged 
 to  abandon  its  false  gods.  Such  is  man,  when  his  trust  is  in 
 idols,  and  when  the  Lord  is  not  upholding,  but  opposing,  him. 
 The  prophet  now  proceeds  to  tell,  in  literal  and  detailed  lan- 
 guage, of  the  national  calamities  he  has  just  before  described 
 metaphorically  ;  and  to  declare  the  worthlessness  of  man's  po- 
 litical devices  to  stay  the  ruin.  At  the  time  Isaiah  spoke, 
 the  nation,  and  its  capital  city  and  seat  of  government,  might 
 seem  to  the  worldly-wise  too  firmly  established  to  fear  the 
 wrath,  or  need  the  help,  of  a  God,  whom  they  had  forgotten  as  a 
 dream  among  the  realities  of  life.  The  fortified  frontiers  and 
 the  standing  army  might  not  have  been  tested  for  some  time, 
 but  doubtless  they  were  as  invincible  as  in  the  days  of  the 
 great  Uzziah ;  and  Judah's  power  was  not  merely  in  its  army, 
 but  still  more  in  its  civilisation,  in  its  system  of  laws,  its  reli- 
 gious and  political  culture,  its  statesmen  versed  in  affairs,  its 
 feudal  aristocracy,  its  ranks  and  dignities,  its  manufacturing 
 skill  and  industry,  and  its  eloquent  oratory.  How  could  such  a 
 state  be  in  any  danger?  So  argued  the  shrewd  man  of  the 
 world  in  Isaiah's  day,  just  as  he  still  does  in  our  own.  He  could 
 not  see  that  the  soldiers  were  a  set  of  machines  incapable  of 
 standing  against  an  invasion  of  men  full  of  fierce  life;  that  the 
 law  was  so  administered  as  to  be  an  engine  of  oppression  instead 
 of  justice;  that  the  prophets,  the  teachers  of  the  people,  em- 
 ployed their  gifts  and  opportunities  of  teaching  —  just  as  the 
 orators  and  advocates  did  theirs  —  to  prove  good  to  be  evil  and 
 evil  good,  to  justify  prosperous  wickedness,  and  to  undermine  all 
 faith  in  moral  and  political  righteousness.  But  Isaiah  foresees 
 that  a  slight  irregularity  in  the  working  of  this  vast  machinery 
 of  imposture  will  throw  the  whole  into  confusion.  It  may  hold 
 together  for  the  life  of  the  present  king  (though  even  his  ma- 
 tured state-craft  had  no  doubt  done  more  than  it  could  hope  to 
 do  again),  but  the  life  and  death  of  rulers  are  among  the  events 
 which  God  retains  in  His  own  power ;  and  when  the  weak  and 
 worthless  boy  Ahaz  sits  on  the  throne  of  his  fathers  —  when 
 God  gives  a  child  to  be  their  prince  and  a  babe  to  rule  over 
 them,  it  will  be  seen  what  their  boasted  order  of  society  is 
 worth.*     The  sovereign  authority  having  fallen  into  powerless 
 
 *  "Fire  and  slaughter  raged  on  all  sides.    The  country  [Normandy  during 
 
ISAIAH  III.   1 — 15.:    ETERNAL    LAWS    OF    JUSTICE.  41 
 
 hands,  there  will  be  nothing  to  restrain  the  strong  man  from 
 exercising  his  pleasure  against  his  weaker  neighbour,  and  espe- 
 cially nothing  to  restrain  the  refuse  of  society  from  rising  against 
 the  refined  classes.  Foreign  invasion  shall  take  advantage  of 
 this  internal  disorder,  and  the  heads  of  tribes  and  families,  the 
 centres  of  Jewish  political  life,  being  killed,  or  carried  into  cap- 
 tivity, there  will  be  a  general  dissolution  of  society ;  and  when, 
 under  the  sense  of  this  calamity  a  man  shall  try  and  restore 
 order  and  unity  by  calling  on  his  elder  brother  —  on  whom  de- 
 volve the  rights  and  duties  of  the  absent  father  —  to  take  up  his 
 position  as  that  father's  l'epresentative,  and  to  become  a  '  healer  ' 
 of  the  '  ruin,'  then  will  he  refuse  with  the  selfishness  of  despair, 
 declaring  that  the  ruin  is  too  great  to  be  repaired,  and  that  he 
 himself  is  too  much  sunk  under  it  even  to  make  the  attempt.* 
 How  the  men  who  heard  these  words  of  Isaiah  experienced  their 
 truth  a  few  years  after,  we  learn  from  2  Chron.  xxviii.,  xxix. 
 6 — 9.  Again  were  these  judgments  executed  on  arepetition  of  the 
 offences  in  the  reign  of  Manasseh ;  and  again  far  more  heavily 
 in  the  days  of  Jeremiah,  whose  Prophecy  and  Lamentations  de- 
 scribe the  famine  ;  the  loss  of  all  who  could  have  given  aid  by 
 vision,  counsel,  or  the  sword  ;  the  imbecility  of  the  king,  who 
 dared  not  rule  according  to  the  dictates  of  his  own  conscience 
 or  judgment,  but  himself  avowed  that  'the  king  was  not  he  who 
 could  do  anything  against '  the  people  about  him ;  the  tyranny 
 of  the  great  men  during  these  calamities  ;  and  the  general  de- 
 pravity and  dissolution  of  all  moral  and  political  order.  If  we 
 compare  the  prophecy  and  history  of  the  one  period  with  those 
 of  the  other,  and  both  with  like  periods  in  the  history  of  other 
 nations  (as,  for  instance,  before  the  French  or  English  Revolu- 
 tions), we  shall  see  clearly  how  the  prophets  announced  the 
 eternal  and  immutable  laws  of  God's  government  of  the  world, 
 to  be  again  and  again  brought  into  operation,  and  accomplished, 
 In  the  events  of  successive  ages. 
 
 the  minority  of  William  the  Conqueror],  formerly  most  flourishing,  was  now- 
 torn  with  intestine  broils,  and  divided  at  the  pleasure  of  the  plunderers  ;  so 
 that  it  was  justly  entitled  to  proclaim,  '  Woe  to  the  land  whose  sovereign  is 
 a  child.'" — William  of  Malmsbur i/,  iii. 
 
 *  Compare  the  corresponding  state  of  the  kingdom  of  Samaria,  at  the 
 period  ;  Isaiah,  ix.  17 — 20. ;  Hosea,  vii.  1 — 7. 
 
42  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 The  prophet  will  not  for  a  moment  lose  sight  of  the  moral 
 character  of  these  national  calamities ;  each  fresh  prediction  of 
 them  is  followed  by  the  declaration  that  they  are  '  the  fruit  of 
 their  doings,'  '  the  reward  of  their  hands : ' — 
 
 Jerusalem  is  ruined,  and  Judah  is  fallen, 
 
 Because  their  tongue  and  their  doings  are  against  the  Lord, 
 
 To  provoke  the  eyes  of  His  glory  ; 
 
 The  show  of  their  countenance  is  against  them  ; 
 
 And  they  declare  their  sin  as  Sodom,  they  hide  it  not. 
 
 The  selfish  aristocracy  have  abandoned  all  their  proper  — 
 patriarchal  and  paternal  —  duties  to  their  people,  for  the  one 
 business  of  wringing  from  them  the  means  of  unbounded  luxury. 
 This  was  a  consequence  of  the  commercial  spirit  entirely  ab- 
 sorbing the  aristocratic  or  patriarchal  element  which  ought  to 
 have  limited  and  purified  it.  Commerce  is  perhaps  one  of  the 
 most  dangerous,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  important,  of  na- 
 tional developments.  Its  good  is  as  real  as  its  evil;  it  is,  in 
 many  obvious  respects,  a  far  better  source  and  occasion  for 
 national  and  international  activity  than  its  only  substitute, 
 war :  but  the  thoughtful  student  of  history  and  politics  does  not 
 need  to  be  told  that  even  war  has  sometimes  proved  more 
 humanising  than  commerce;  and  still  less,  that  the  latter  as 
 certainly  as  the  former  turns  to  mere  corruption  and  political 
 degeneracy,  if  it  be  not  duly  balanced  by  other  elements  of 
 national  life.*  And  if  modern  philosophy  is  right  in  considering 
 that  each  of  the  nations  of  antiquity  was  fitted  to  exhibit  the 
 separate  working  of  one  or  two  of  the  more  elementary  laws  of 
 politics,  but  not  to  afford  a  field  for  those  vast  and  complicated 
 
 *  "The  philosophical  thinkers  on  politics,"  says  Mr.  Grote,  "conceived  (and 
 to  a  great  degree  justly,  as  I  shall  show  hereafter),  that  the  conditions  of 
 security  in  the  ancient  world  imposed  upon  the  citizens  generally  the  abso- 
 lute necessity  of  keeping  up  a  military  spirit  and  willingness  to  brave  at  all 
 times  personal  hardship  and  discomfort;  so  that  increase  of  wealth,  on  ac- 
 count of  the  habits  of  self-indulgence  which  it  commonly  introduces,  was 
 regarded  by  them  with  more  or  less  of  disfavour."  —  History  of  Greece,  iii. 
 151.  And  again  :  —  "  There  was  a  considerable  body  of  ancient  sentiment, 
 and  that,  toe,  among  high-minded  and  intelligent  men,  which  regarded  gold 
 and  silver  as  a  cause  of  mischief  and  corruption,  and  of  which  the  stanza  of 
 Horace  (Od.  in.  iii.  49.)  is  an  echo — '  Aurum  irrepcrtum,'  &c." — Ibid.  ix.  320. 
 
ISAIAH  III.   16 — 26.:    LUXURY    OF    THE    HEBREW    LADIES.    43 
 
 problems  which  modern  societies  have  to  solve,  then  was  Moses 
 right  in  making  laws  to  discourage  the  money-making  spirit 
 and  practice  of  which  the  results  would  be  such  as  Isaiah  here 
 denounces ;  results  quite  preclusive  of  the  effectual  development 
 of  that  idea  which  it  was  the  very  end  of  the  existence  of  the 
 Hebrew  polity  to  develope. 
 
 Connected  with  the  grasping,  money-loving  spirit  of  the 
 great  and  rich  men,  is  that  of  pampered  luxury  in  the  women. 
 The  nobleman  has  substituted  mere  greedy  blood-sucking  with 
 the  forms  of  law  for  a  kind  paternal  care  and  guidance  of  his 
 dependants ;  and  the  lady  has  turned  that  feminine  delicacy 
 and  gentleness  which  she  should  have  employed  in  refining  and 
 humanising  the  relations  of  domestic  life,  and  thence  spreading 
 its  influence  throughout  society,  into  haughty  exclusiveness  and 
 a  love  of  dress  and  luxury,  gradually  degenerating  to  sensuality 
 and  licentiousness. 
 
 It  always  seems  to  me  that  Isaiah  marks  the  fact  of  the 
 social  importance  of  the  Hebrew  Avomen  (which  we  otherwise 
 know  to  have  been  so  much  more  like  that  of  the  Roman  than 
 the  Greek  matron),  and  his  own  mournful  though  indignant 
 sense  of  what  high  dignity  and  duty  they  had  abandoned,  in  the 
 prominence  which  he  gives  to  the  subject,  by  the  elaborate  de- 
 scription of  the  luxury  of  the  daughters  of  Zion.  How  graphic 
 he  is  !  We  see  before  us  the  Jewish  ladies,  '  walking  and 
 mincing  as  they  go,'  with  haughtily  tossed  head,  and  wanton 
 eyes,  and  hear  the  tinkling  of  the  mimic  fetters  of  gold  with 
 which  their  ankles  are  encircled :  they  wear  the  fine  white  linen 
 of  Egypt,  and  their  long  robes  are  rich  with  embroidery ;  the 
 turban  shows  its  wearer's  taste,  or  the  open  network  the  beauty 
 of  her  hair;  the  large  veil,  the  ancient  dress  of  the  modest 
 Hebrew  woman  of  every  rank,  is  now  adjusted  in  the  bold 
 fashion  of  the  day,  or  superseded  by  the  lighter  mantilla  of  lace 
 or  gauze  thrown  so  gracefully  over  the  head  and  shoulders; 
 each  fair  face  glistens  with  ear-drops  and  nose-jewels ;  from  the 
 chains  about  each  slender  neck  hang  the  ornamental  crescent, 
 the  amulet  with  its  magical  characters  graven  on  the  gem,  the 
 little  mirror,  or  the  scent-box ;  or  we  notice  another  capricious 
 fashion,  where  a  purse  is  fastened  to  the  broad  girdle  of  silk 
 embroidered   with  gold,  and   the  mirror  is    carried  in  a  hand 
 
44  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 loaded  with  bracelets  and  rings.  We  turn  to  look  again,  and 
 the  squalid  filth  and  disease  of  poverty  and  the  prison  are 
 before  us :  — 
 
 Instead  of  perfume  there  is  stench  ; 
 
 And  instead  of  a  girdle,  a  rent ; 
 
 And  instead  of  well-set  hair,  baldness  ; 
 
 And  instead  of  a  stomacher,  a  girding  of  sackcloth  ; 
 
 And  branding  instead  of  beauty. 
 
 The  prophet  seems  to  answer  (in  verse  25.)  the  incredulous 
 question,  How  can  this  ever  be ;  what  danger  is  there  of  its 
 befalling  us  ?  As  though  he  had  said,  You  are  living  in  utter 
 wordliness  and  selfishness,  in  the  neglect  of  all  relationships, 
 and  you  shall  feel  what  it  is  to  be  stripped  of  them  all,  by  your 
 husbands,  fathers,  sons,  and  brothers  falling  in  battle; — that  you 
 may  know  what  you  are  out  of  the  order  in  which  God  has 
 placed  you,  and  which  you  have  renounced.  When  your  fore- 
 heads are  scarred  by  the  slave-master's  brand,  when  your  rich 
 apparel  has  but  insured  its  stripping  by  your  ruthless  captors, 
 and  when  the  sun  beats  on  your  heads,  and  you  sink  with 
 hunger,  thirst,  weariness,  and  degradation,  while  driven  naked 
 and  like  herds  of  cattle  in  the  train  of  the  conquerors  who  have 
 laid  waste  your  homes,  —  then  you  shall  know  that  it  is  the 
 Lord  who  '  hath  smitten  the  crown  of  the  head  of  the  daughters 
 of  Zion,  and  discovered  their  shame.' 
 
 Then  he  turns  abruptly  from  the  daughters,  to  the  Daughter, 
 of  Zion,  gathering  them  together  in  their  proper  representative, 
 the  licentious  and  rebellious  nation,  the  faithless  bride  of  the 
 Holy  One  of  Israel.  He  employs  no  arguments  to  prove  the 
 connection  between  the  selfish  luxury  of  the  women  and  the 
 decay  of  public  virtue  :  their  consciences  cannot  deny  that  their 
 sin  is  both  a  cause  and  an  effect  of  the  national  unrighteousness, 
 and  to  their  conscience  he  appeals  direct,  by  simply  announcing 
 the  impending  judgment :  — 
 
 Thy  men  shall  fall  by  the  sword, 
 And  thy  mighty  in  the  war  : — * 
 
 and  the   gates  of  Jerusalem,  the  places  of  resort  for  business 
 
 *  See  further  as  to  the  treatment  of  captives  in  war,  on  Isaiah,  xx. 
 
ISAIAH    IV.    1.  :    THE    WIDOWED    MATRON.  45 
 
 or  for  pleasure,  which  now  resound  with  the  cheerful  hum  of 
 prosperous  throngs,  shall  echo  with  the  voice  of  the  bereaved, 
 the  destitute,  or  the  captive,  filling  the  air  (as  the  manner  of 
 eastern  nations  was  and  is)  with  their  wailings  ;  and  She,  the 
 widowed  and  childless  City,  shall  sit  upon  the  ground,  as 
 mourners  used  to  sit,  and  as  she  was  represented  800  years 
 afterwards  (and  may  still  be  seen),  on  the  medals  of  her  con- 
 querors, Vespasian  and  Titus. 
 
 And  in  that  day,  when  the  youth  of  the  land  are  everywhere 
 
 cut  off, 
 Seven  women  shall  take  hold  of  one  man,  saying, 
 We  will  eat  our  own  bread, 
 And  wear  our  own  apparel ; 
 Only  let  us  be  called  by  thy  name, — 
 Take  thou  away  our  reproach.* 
 
 The  Jewess,  like  the  ancient  Roman,  or  modern  English, 
 woman,  was  called  by  her  husband's  name  ;  and  she  prized  the 
 honour  of  wedlock,  and  dreaded  the  reproach  of  childlessness,  at 
 least  as  much  as  either  of  these ;  but  we  must  contrast  the 
 dignified  expression  of  these  feelings  by  Sarah,  Hannah,  and 
 Elizabeth,  nay,  even  that  of  the  jealous  and  petulant  Rachel, 
 with  the  exhibition  which  the  Prophet  now  contemplates  in  his 
 mind's  eye,  in  order  to  see  the  picture  of  social  disorganisation 
 which  he  sees.  If  a  harem  of  wives  and  concubines  was  still  a 
 part  of  the  king's  state  in  Isaiah's  time,  though  I  know  no  rea- 
 son for  thinking  it  was,  it  is  quite  improbable  that  polygamy 
 was  the  common  custom  of  the  nation,  or  that  they  had  not  long 
 passed  out  of  the  half-civilised  condition  and  habits  for  which 
 Moses  had  jn'ovided,  in  his  laws  for  the  protection  of  the  female 
 slaves  whom  a  man  might  take  at  the  same  time  for  his  wives : 
 but  now  Isaiah  says  that  these  women,  whose  luxury  and  pride 
 he  has  just  described,  will  abandon  even  the  natural  reserve  of 
 their  sex,  and  not  only  force  themselves  several  upon  one  man, 
 but  declare  that  they  will  be  content  to  share  with  each  other 
 a  legalised  concubinage,  in  which  they  will  not  claim  the  con- 
 
 *  Grotius  quotes  Lucan  (Pharsal.  ii.  342.)  :  — 
 
 '         ...     da  tantuni  uomen  inane 
 Connubii ;  liceat  tuniulo  scripsisse,  Catonls 
 Marcia.' 
 
46  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 cubine's  ancient  right  of  bread  and  apparel,  which  the  old  law 
 (Exod,  xxi.  10.)  had,  in  express  terms,  secured  to  her.  It  need 
 not  be  supposed  that  Isaiah  anticipated  the  literal  fulfilment  of  his 
 words  ;  we  shall  probably  understand  him  better  by  taking  this 
 as  an  instance  of  that  poetic  or  rhetorical  hyperbole,  which  he 
 so  delights  to  use  for  the  more  forcible  expression  of  his  moral 
 and  political  teaching.  The  mystery  which  some  commentators 
 have  seen  in  the  numbers  seven  and  one  in  this  passage,  and 
 which  is  even  said  to  have  occasioned  the  separation  of  this 
 portion  of  the  prophecy  into  a  distinct  chapter,  perhaps  makes 
 worth  while  the  obvious  remark,  that  it  is  nothing  more  than 
 the  wide-spread  idiom  of  modern  as  well  as  ancient  languages, 
 by  which  a  definite  or  round  number  is  put  for  an  indefinite. 
 Seven  is  thus  generally  used  by  the  Hebrews  for  any  consider- 
 able number,  as  it  was  among  the  Egyptians  and  Persians,  and 
 is  still  said  to  be  in  the  East.  The  Moguls  are  said  to  employ 
 nine  in  like  manner.  So  in  English  we  put  five,  or  ten,  for  any 
 small,  and  a  hundred  for  a  large,  number,  in  conversation ; 
 though  the  genius  of  our  language  forbids  such  idioms  in  graver 
 discourse. 
 
 In  that  day  shall  the  brancli  of  the  Lord  be  beautiful  and  glorious, 
 And  the  fruit  of  the  earth  shall  be  excellent  and  comely, 
 For  them  that  are  escaped  of  Israel. 
 
 Some  commentators  refer  these  Avords  '  branch  of  the 
 Lord,'  and  'fruit  of  the  earth,'  merely  to  the  restored  and 
 reformed  nation,  but  there  seems  greater  propriety  in  the  ex- 
 planation of  those  who  see  in  '  the  branch  of  the  Lord'  an 
 allusion  to  more  than  this.  I  think  that  if  we  only  contrasted 
 the  passage  with  such  declarations  as,  — 
 
 'I  will  restore  thy  judges  as  at  the  first, 
 And  thy  counsellors  as  at  the  beginning  : 
 Afterwards  thou  shalt  be  called, 
 The  city  of  righteousness,  the  faithful  city  : 
 Zion  shall  be  redeemed  with  judgment, 
 And  her  converts  with  righteousness'  (chap,  i.,  26.,  27.)  ; 
 
 or, 
 
 '  The  remnant  that  is  escaped  of  the  house  of  Judah, 
 Shall  again  take  root  downward, 
 And  bear  fruit  upward'  (chap,  xxxvii.  31.)  ;  — 
 
ISAIAH  IV.  2 — 6.  :  MASTER-THOUGHT  OF  ALL  PROPHECY.     47 
 
 we  might  perhaps  suspect  some  allusion  to  a  personal  deliverer 
 and  ruler  in  the  one,  which  is  wanting  in  the  others :  and  we 
 might  find  a  probable  explanation  of  this  image  of  the  branch, 
 by  comparing  it  with  Isaiah's  subsequent, — 
 
 '  There  shall  come  forth  a  Rod  out  of  the  stem  of  Jesse, 
 And  a  Branch  shall  grow  out  of  his  roots,'  &c.  (chap.  xi.  1.)  ;  — 
 
 with  Jeremiah's — 
 
 '  Behold  the  days  come,  saith  the  Lord, 
 That  I  will  raise  unto  David  a  righteous  Branch, 
 And  a  king  shall  reign  and  prosper, 
 And  shall  execute  justice  and  judgment,  &c.'  (chap,  xxiii.  5.); — 
 
 and  with  Zechariah's- — 
 
 '  Behold  the  man  whose  name  is  the  Branch  : 
 And  he  shall  grow  up  out  of  his  place, 
 And  he  shall  huild  the  temple  of  the  Lord, 
 And  he  shall  bear  the  glory,'  &c.  (chap.  vi.  12.) 
 
 But  we  have  a  fuller,  more  philosophical  light,  to  aid  this 
 verbal  criticism.  We  find  traces  in  all  the  earlier  records  of 
 the  Hebrew  faith  and  history,  of  the  expectation  of  an  incarnate 
 representative  of  the  invisible  Lord  God  of  Israel;  we  see 
 how  it  gradually  becomes  to  Isaiah  (as  I  hope  the  following 
 pages  will  help  to  show  at  large),  and  to  his  cotemporaries  and 
 successors,  the  master-thought  and  light  of  their  faith  and 
 teaching,  to  which  they  hold  fast,  though  their  individual  anti- 
 cipations of  the  manner  of  its  fulfilment  are  again  and  again 
 baffled,  when  the  event  shows  that  a  Hezekiah,  or  Zerubbabel, 
 or  son  of  Josedech,  is  not  the  Branch  ;  and,  lastly,  we  know 
 when  and  how  this  expectation  of  Israel  for  themselves  and 
 mankind  has  been  fulfilled  in  God's  manner.  And  thus  (if  I 
 may  use  the  correct,  though  perhaps  pedantic,  phrase),  we  can 
 explain  the  particular  fact  by  the  universal  law,  and  recognise 
 in  the  words  before  us  an  early  dawning,  in  or  to  the  mind  of 
 Isaiah  himself,  of  the  great  idea  of  all  prophecy. 
 
 Then  follows  the  description  of  the  restored  and  the  reformed, 
 though  humbled  and  diminished,  nation.  It  is  a  common  ob- 
 servation, verified  alike  in  great  national  calamities  and  in 
 ordinary  pauperism,  that  misery  of  itself  tends  to  make  men 
 
48  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 more  vicious ;  and  accordingly  it  is  not  a  mere  judgment  and 
 execution  on  the  bloody  men  and  sensual  women  of  Jerusalem 
 that  Isaiah  foretells,  but  a  moral  purification  of  the  nation, 
 wrought  by  the  Lord,  and  by  his  spirit,  through  these  means. 
 Their  sin  had  alike  infected  their  family  and  their  political  life  ; 
 but  now  a  new  and  holy  spirit  shall  be  revived  in  every  house- 
 hold, and  in  the  'assemblies'  of  the  citizens  whether  meeting  at 
 the  temple  worship  or  the  preaching  of  a  prophet*,  at  the  eccle- 
 siastical feasts  or  national  fairs,  at  the  tribunals  of  the  king  or 
 the  judges  sitting  in  the  gate,  or  on  other  occasions  when  they 
 seem  to  have  had  a  real  (though  according  to  modern  European 
 notions,  irregular)  voice  in  the  legislation  and  government. 
 God  himself  will  bring  about  this  restoration,  showing  Himself 
 to  be  the  present  Lord  of  the  nation,  as  He  was  when  He  led 
 their  fathers, — the  'tribes  of  Israel'  and  the  'congregation  of 
 the  Lord,' — by  the  pillar  of  cloud  and  of  fire  ;  and  He  will  pro- 
 tect and  defend  '  the  glory, 'f — this  glorious  restoration  of  his 
 Name  which  He  has  effected — as  a  tent  shelters  the  traveller 
 from  the  sun  or  the  storm,  or  as  the  same  pillar  of  cloud  or  fire 
 defended  the  hosts  of  Israel  from  the  pursuing  enemy  or  the 
 burning  noonday  heat :  — 
 
 And  the  Lord  will  create  upon  every  dwelling-place  of  Mount 
 
 Zion, 
 And  upon  her  assemblies, 
 A  cloud  and  smoke  by  day, 
 And  the  shining  of  a  flaming  fire  by  night : 
 For  upon  all  the  glory  shall  be  a  defence. 
 And  there  shall  be  a  tabernacle  for  a  shadow  in  the  day-time 
 
 from  the  heat, 
 And  for  a  place  of  refuge,  and  for  a  covert  from  storm  and  from 
 
 rain. 
 
 *  They  seem  to  have  preached  regularly  on  Sabbaths  and  New-moons  :  — 
 2  Kings,  iv.  23. 
 
 f  '  For  I,  saith  the  Lord,  will  be  unto  her  a  wall  of  fire  round  about,  and 
 will  be  the  glory  in  the  midst  of  her.'— Zechariah  ii.  5. 
 
ISAIAH  V.  :    HEBREW    IDYLL,  49 
 
 CHAPTER  IV. 
 
 ISAIAH  V.      COMING    WOES.  —  FUSING     POWER     OF     IMAGINATION.  —  HEBREW 
 
 IDYLL.  ANCIENT    FERTILITY    OF    JUD^A PRESENT   BARRENNESS. THE 
 
 VINEYARD  OF    THE  LORD  OF    HOSTS. SELFISHNESS  IN  AN    ARISTOCRACY. 
 
 RIGHTS    AND  DUTIES    OF    LANDOWNERS.  PROPERTY    A     TRUST. HEBREW 
 
 AND  ENGLISH    LAWS  OF    ENTAIL. WORD    AND  WORK  OF    THE    LORD. GOD 
 
 A    CONSTITUTIONAL    RULER.  —  ABUSE  OF  WORDS  BY  WORLDLY    MEN. THU- 
 
 CYDIDES. FULFILMENT    OF    ISAIAH's    THREATS  TO    HIS    COTEMPORARIES 
 
 AND   TO   ALL   AGES    SINCE.  —  GROTIUS    ON   PROPHECY. 
 
 The  contents  of  this  discourse  show  it  to  belong  to  the  same 
 period  as  the  two  preceding  ones ;  but  perhaps  we  may  see 
 some  indications  that  it  properly  follows  them,  as  being  of  rather 
 a  later  date.  The  gloom  of  the  approaching  calamities  is  deeper, 
 and  in  addition  to  the  previous  pictures  of  the  effects  of  foreign 
 invasion,  we  have  now  a  description  of  the  invaders  themselves, 
 and  of  their  coming,  hardly  less  explicit  than  when  the  prophet 
 speaks  of  them  by  name  to  king  Ahaz,  in  chapter  vii.  verse  18. 
 
 The  last  prophecy  began  with  an  apologue  of  '  the  Last  Days  ;' 
 this  opens  with  a  like  poetical  picture  of  the  former  and  the 
 present  times  of  Israel.  Isaiah  seems  for  a  moment  to  think 
 of  Zion  as  in  the  days  of  her  first  love,  when  she  still  called  the 
 Lord  'her  Beloved;'  and  in  her  name  he  begins  to  speak: — 
 and  then,  in  the  rapid  transitions  which  succeed,  we  have  one  of 
 the  instances,  almost  as  frequent  in  Isaiah  as  in  Shakspeare  or 
 Milton,  of  that  true  poet's  imagination,  which  does  not  merely 
 collect  and  arrange  a  succession  of  beautiful  thoughts,  but  fuses 
 them  into  one  homogeneous  whole,  though  they  may  be  so 
 diverse  that  less  skilful  hands  could  hardly  bring  them  together. 
 The  Hebrew  Pastoral  or  Idyll,  as  we  see  in  the  Canticles, 
 chooses  the  imagery  of  the  vineyard  rather  than  that  of  the 
 sheepfold.  The  Jewish  poets  embody  their  ideal  of  a  happy 
 life,  in  the  sitting  under  their  own  vine  and  under  their  own  fig- 
 
 E 
 
50  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 tree ;  and  this  '  Song  of  the  Beloved  touching  his  vineyard,' 
 gives  a  lively  picture  of  what  a  vineyard  was.*  *  Apertos 
 Bacchus  amat  colles  ;'  and  this  vineyard  is  on  (literally  in,  i.  c. 
 on  the  side  of ),  a  hill,  of  which  the  Hebrew  expresses  the 
 fertility  by  calling  it  'a  horn  the  son  of  oil.'  Oil  may  here  be 
 used  metaphorically  for  fertility,  or  the  vineyards  of  Palestine 
 may  have  been  planted  with  olive  trees,  which  would  at  once 
 support  the  vines  and  supply  a  fruit  of  their  own ;  and  if  there 
 were  any  other  trace  in  the  Scriptures  of  the  belief  that  the 
 olive  increased  the  fruitfulness  of  the  vine  when  they  grew  to- 
 gether, we  might  suppose  an  allusion  to  it  here.  Lowth  and 
 other  commentators  illustrate  the  word  horn  by  instances  of  the 
 same  and  like  metaphors  in  other  languages.  We  call  a  pro- 
 montory a  cape  or  head,  and  the  Turks  a  nose  ;  a  ridge  in  Latin 
 is  dorsum  ;  Brundusium,  which,  according  to  Strabo,  signifies  a 
 stag's  head  in  the  ancient  language  of  the  country,  is  described 
 by  Lucan  as  stretching  out  a  tongue  and  horns  into  the  Adriatic, 
 Solinus  says  that  the  south  of  Italy  divides  into  two  horns,  and 
 Cambden  that  '  Cornwall  is  called  by  the  inhabitants,  in  the 
 British  tongue,  Kernaxv,  as  lessening  by  degrees  like  a  horn, 
 running  out  into  promontories  like  so  many  horns.'  So  Statius 
 has  Cornu  Parnassi,  and  the  Swiss  have  such  names  as  Buchhorn, 
 Sckrechkorn,  for  mountains.  And  so  Demetrius  told  Philip, 
 that  'the  hill  Ithome  (with  its  citadel  of  Messene)  and  the  Acro- 
 corinthus,  were  the  two  horns  of  the  Peloponnesus,  which  he 
 who  held  was  master  of  the  bull.'f  Lowth  farther  observes,  with 
 his  wonted  taste,  that  '  Whoever  has  considered  the  descriptions 
 given  of  Mount  Tabor,  and  the  views  of  it  which  are  to  be  seen 
 in  books  of  travels ;  its  regular  conic  form  rising  singly  in  a 
 plain  to  a  great  height  from  a  base  small  in  proportion;  its 
 beauty  and  fertility  to  the  very  top,  will  have  a  good  idea  of  "a 
 horn  the  son  of  oil." '  The  land  of  Israel  was  once  a  fertile  as 
 well  as  a  mountainous  country  :  Moses  calls  it  '  the  mountain  of 
 thine  (God's)  inheritance'!   and  '  that  goodly  mountain';  §  and 
 
 *  "  Schulz  states  that  lie  supped  under  n,  vine  whose  stem  was  about  a 
 (not  and  a  half  in  diameter,  iis  height  about  thirty  feet,  while  its  branches 
 ami  branchlets,  which  had  to  be  supported,  formed  a  tent  of  upwards  of 
 thirty  feet  square."  —  Kitto's  Bill.  Cyclop.,  art.  Vine. 
 
 f  Polyb.  vii.  11.  ((noted  in  (1  rote's  History  of  Greece^  x.  309. 
 
 I  Exod.xv.  17.  §  Deul.  iii.  25. 
 
FERTILITY    OF    JODJSA.  51 
 
 afterwards  describes  it  as  *  a  good  land,  a  land  of  brooks  of  water, 
 of  fountains  and  depths  that  spring  out  of  valleys  and  hills  ;  a 
 land  of  wheat,  and  barley,  and  vines,  and  fig  trees,  and  pome- 
 granates ;  a  land  of  oil  olive,  and  honey ;  a  land  wherein  thou  slialt 
 eat  bread  without  scarceness,  thou  shalt  not  lack  any  thing  in  it ; 
 aland  whose  stones  are  iron,  and  out  of  whose  hills  thou  may  est 
 dig  brass  :  . . .  a  land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  careth  for  :  the 
 eyes  of  the  Lord  thy  God  are  always  upon  it,  from  the  be- 
 ginning of  the  year  even  unto  the  end  of  the  year.'  *  The  eyes 
 of  the  Lord  have  ceased  to  be  upon  it ;  the  curse  has  been  as 
 truly  fulfilled  as  once  the  blessing ;  and  the  traveller  now  finds 
 the  mountains  returned  to  their  natural  barrenness,  though 
 still  bearing  traces  of  long  -  abandoned  cultivation.  The 
 way  in  which  the  change  has  been  effected,  is  thus  lucidly 
 explained :  —  '  Judaea,  the  southern  part  of  Palestine,  is  a 
 country  full  of  hills  and  valleys,  conformably  to  the  Scriptural 
 intimations.  The  hills  are  generally  separated  from  one  another 
 by  valleys  and  torrents,  and  are  for  the  most  part  of  moderate 
 height,  uneven,  and  seldom  of  any  regular  figure.  The  rock  of 
 which  they  are  composed  is  easily  converted  into  soil ;  which, 
 being  arrested  by  terraces  when  washed  down  by  the  rains, 
 renders  the  hills  cultivable  in  a  series  of  long  narrow  gardens, 
 formed  by  these  terraces,  from  the  base  upwards.  Thus,  the 
 hills  were  cultivated  in  former  times  most  abundantly ;  and  were 
 enriched  and  beautified  with  the  olive,  the  fig-tree,  and  the 
 vine ;  and  thus  the  limited  cultivation  which  now  subsists  is  still 
 carried  on.  But  when  the  inhabitants  were  rooted  out  and  cul- 
 tivation abandoned,  the  terraces  fell  to  decay,  and  the  soil  which 
 had  collected  on  them  was  washed  down  into  the  valleys,  leav- 
 ing only  the  arid  rock,  naked  and  desolate.  This  is  the  general 
 character :  but  in  some  parts  the  hills  are  beautifully  wooded ; 
 and  in  others,  the  application  of  the  ancient  mode  of  cultivation 
 —  under  which  the  valleys  are  covered  with  corn,  while  the  ter- 
 raced hills  are  clothed  with  fig-trees,  olive-trees,  or  vines  —  sug- 
 gests to  the  traveller  how  rich  this  country  once  was  and  still 
 might  be,  and  how  beautiful  was  the  aspect  which  it  offered. 
 All  these  characteristics  of  desolation  apply  with  peculiar  force 
 
 *  Deut.viii.  7—9.,  xi.  12. 
 e  2 
 
52  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 to  that  portion  of  Judaea  which  formed  the  inheritance  of  Ben- 
 jamin. Its  most  favourably  situated  mountains  are  wholly  un- 
 cultivated ;  and  perhaps  in  no  other  country  is  such  a  mass  of 
 rock  exhibited,  without  an  atom  of  soil.'* 
 
 I  believe  that,  in  a  poetical  allegory  there  is  always  more  or 
 less  of  allusion  to  the  details  of  that  which  is  allegorised;  but 
 it  is  only  allusion,  —  to  be  realised  by  the  imagination,  rather 
 than  by  the  understanding,  of  the  reader,  as  well  as  of  the  poet. 
 The  several  images  are  parts  of  a  picture,  which  must  be  con- 
 templated as  a  picture,  and  its  meaning  is  to  enter  into  the  mind 
 through  the  imagination.  Still,  a  matter-of-fact  commentator, 
 like  Vitringa,  deeply  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  his  author,  will 
 sometimes  greatly  help  his  reader's  imagination,  even  by  his  un- 
 imaginative remarks  :  and  I  think  this  is  the  case  in  his  explana- 
 tion of  the  details  of  this  description  of  the  vineyard. — A  vine- 
 yard consists  of  vines  planted  for  the  sake  of  their  fruit :  the 
 Hebrew  nation  with  its  tribes,  its  families,  and  its  persons,  was 
 such  a  vineyard,  appointed  to  bring  forth  the  fruits  of  personal 
 and  social  religion  and  virtue, —  holiness,  righteousness,  and  love 
 to  God  and  man :  this  nation  was  established  in  a  land  flowing 
 with  milk  and  honey,  endowed  with  all  natural  advantages,  all 
 circumstances  which  could  favour  inward  life  by  outward  pros- 
 perity;  and  the  grace  and  favour  of  the  Loud,  and  the  influences 
 of  His  Spirit,  always  symbolised  by  oil,  were  continually  caus- 
 ing it  to  be  fruitful :  '  And  he  fenced  it,'  —  the  arm  of  the 
 Lord  of  hosts,  employing  kings  and  heroes,  was  its  defence 
 against  all  enemies;  its  institutions  were  fitted  to  preserve  in- 
 ternal order,  and  to  prevent  the  admixture  of  evil  from  without, 
 with  the  chosen  and  separated  nation  ;  and  its  territory  was 
 marked  out  and  protected  by  natural  boundaries  in  a  noticeable 
 manner  :  '  And  gathered  out  the  stones,'  —  the  heathen  nations, 
 and  the  stocks  and  stones  they  worshipped  :  '  And  planted  it 
 with  the  choicest  vine,'  — a  nation  of  the  noble  stock  of  the  patri- 
 archs, and  chosen  and  cultivated  by  the  Lord  of  the  vineyard, 
 with  especial  care,  for  his  own  use :  '  And  built  a  tower  in  it,' — 
 namely,  Jerusalem  —  for  the  protection  and  superintendence  of 
 the  vineyard,  as  well  as  to  be  its  farm-house,  so  to  speak:  '  And 
 also  made  a  wine-press  therein,' — where  the  wine-press  seems  to 
 *  Kitto's  Physical  Geography  of  I  lie  Holy  Land,  pp.  32,  33. 
 
ISAIAH  V.   1 7.  :    THE    VINEYARD.  53 
 
 point  to  the  same  idea  as  the  sending  the  servants  to  receive  the 
 fruit  in  our  Lord's  modification  of  this  parable  :  lawgivers,  kings, 
 and  judges,  the  temple  with  its  priesthood  and  ordinances,  and 
 the  schools  of  the  prophets,  were  the  appointed  means  for  press- 
 ing out  and  receiving  the  wine  —  the  spiritual  virtues  and  graces 
 of  the  vineyard.*     And  the  end  is,  that 
 
 He  looked  that  it  should  bring  forth  grapes, 
 And  it  brought  forth  wild  grapes. 
 
 The  master  of  the  vineyard  appeals  to  the  inhabitant  of  Jeru- 
 salem, as  to  an  impartial  stranger,  to  judge  what  more  could 
 have  been  done  for  the  vineyard ;  and  to  approve  his  decision  as 
 to  what  shall  be  done,  when  the  stock  of  the  choicest  vinef  has 
 turned  out  to  produce  nothing  but  wild,  or  crab-grapes,  after  all 
 the  culture  bestowed  on  it:  it  is  worthy  of  nothing  but  to  be 
 laid  waste,  and  this  is  what  he  will  do  to  it.  And  then  (by 
 one  of  those  transitions  and  fusions  of  the  parts  of  the 
 imagery  into  a  perfect  whole),  after  the  utterance  of  what  an 
 earthly  master  of  a  vineyard  might  do,  follows,  *  I  will  also 
 command  the  clouds  that  they  rain  no  rain  upon  it ;'  —  which 
 reminds  us  that  it  is  the  Lord  of  hosts  who  is  speaking,  and  that 
 His  vineyard  is  the  House  of  Israel.  The  men  of  Judah,  who 
 were  the  plants  of  His  choice  and  delight,  have  brought  Him  the 
 fruits  of  their  mere  sinful  nature,  instead  of  those  of  His  election 
 and  grace :  'He  looked  for  judgment,  but  behold  oppression  ;  for 
 righteousness,  but  behold  aery : '  and  the  inhabitant  of  Jerusalem, 
 who  had  been  appealed  to,  as  an  impartial  judge  between  the 
 vineyard  and  its  master,  hears  the  still  voice  of  his  own  ieason 
 
 *  Grotius,  following  Jerome,  explains  the  wine-press  by  the  altar  with  its 
 blood  of  sacrifices. 
 
 f  "  Yet  I  had  planted  thee  a  noble  vine,  wholly  a  right  seed  :  how  then  art 
 thou  turned  into  the  degenerate  plant  of  a  strange  vine  unto  me  ?  "  Jere- 
 miah ii.  21.  Lysias,  in  the  place  quoted  above  (page  2.),  attributes  the  '  noTcle 
 and  wonderful  deeds '  of  the  Athenians  to  their  noble  stock  as  well  as  to 
 their  political  wisdom  :  —  Kcd  yap  toikoI  (pifres  Ka\t2s  /coi  yvovres  of^oia.  «•.  t.  a. 
 He  just  before  explains  this  noble  birth  to  be  their  autochthony,  which  had 
 enabled  their  political  existence  to  be  a  just  one  from  the  very  firsi:,  instead 
 of  being  founded,  in  the  ordinary  way,  on  the  violent  expulsion  of  a  previous 
 race.  The  same  idea  is  recognised  by  the  Hebrews  in  their  habitunl  claim 
 to  their  land  as  the  land  of  their  father  Abraham.  How  far  this  was,  or 
 was  not,  the  ground  of  their  right,  I  shall  notice  hereafter. 
 
 e  3 
 
51  HEBEEW   POLITICS. 
 
 and  conscience  pronouncing  to  him,  as  it  did  to  the  pharisee 
 
 who  listened  to  the  same  parable  800  years  afterwards,  '  Thou 
 art  the  man.' 
 
 Selfishness,  or  the  making  self  the  centre  to  which  all  things 
 are  to  tend,  is  the  great  sin  in  all  ages  and  peoples.  As  soon 
 as  national  institutions  have  awakened  the  sense  of  personality 
 and  the  feeling  of  self-respect,  the  evil  desire  of  accumulating 
 wealth  for  that  self  begins  to  arise.  And  in  no  form  is  it  more 
 hateful  than  in  connection  with  the  possession  of  land.  Men 
 desire,  by  an  almost  universal  instinct,  to  possesss  property 
 in  land,  with  its  healthy  occupations  and  interests,  so  varied 
 and  multiplied  by  the  living  powers  of  nature  ;  and  this  kind 
 of  property,  while  it  offers  more  enjoyment  than  any  other, 
 brings  a  claim  for  more,  and  more  obvious,  duties  than  any 
 other,  by  bringing  a  man  into  more  complete  personal  relation- 
 ships with  his  neighbours  than  is  possible  in  the  crowd  of  cities, 
 and  the  whirl  of  city  trades.  And  therefore  the  prophet  pro- 
 nounces his  first,  and,  as  it  were,  a  special  woe,  on  the  selfish 
 landowner.  lie  who  can  join  house  to  house,  and  lay  field  to 
 field,  when  he  knows,  and  long  has  known,  face  to  face,  the  very 
 man,  wife,  and  child  whom  he  has  dispossessed,  and  can  drive 
 out  by  his  own  simple  act  his  fellow-men  to  be  desolate  in  their 
 poverty,  in  order  that  he  may  be  alone  in  his  riches,  may  expect 
 a  punishment  proportioned  to  his  crime.  Such  men  were  the 
 nobles  of  Judah  and  Israel  throughout  the  land ;  and  the  pro- 
 phet heard,  ringing  in  his  ears,  the  declaration  of  the  Lord 
 and  King  of  the  land,  that  the  great  and  fair  palaces  should 
 become  as  desolate  as  the  peasants'  and  yeomen's  cottages  which 
 had  made  place  for  them  :  —  the  lordly  vineyard  of  ten  acres 
 shall  yield  but  eight  gallons  of  wine,  and  the  corn-field  shall 
 give  back  but  a  tenth  part  of  the  seed  sown  in  it. 
 
 "We  have  all  seen,  in  the  present  day,  how  this  eternal  law  of 
 politics  has  been  executed  in  Ireland  by  the  famine,  with  its 
 inevitable  accompaniments  the  Poor  Law  and  the  Encumbered 
 Estates  Act :  and  though  the  course  of  social  changes  is  so  noise- 
 less in  England  that  it  attracts  less  attention;  yet  those  who  do 
 look  into  the  reasons  why  this  or  that  estate  passes  from  an  old 
 to  a  new  owner,  can  usually  Bee  plainly  enough  that  those  reasons 
 are  moral  ones  —  that  when  a  man  ha;?  to  sell  the  home  of  his 
 
Isaiah  v.  8 — 10. :  duties  of  landowners.  55 
 
 fathers,  it  is  almost  invariably  because  he  and  they  had  ceased 
 to  acknowledge  that  they  held  it  on  the  tenure  of  social  duties. 
 All  property  whatever  is,  doubtless,  a  trust ;  but  the  principle 
 always  has  been,  and  always  must  be,  more  clearly  illustrated  in 
 landed,  than  in  any  other  property ;  and  this,  not  less  by  the 
 efforts  of  selfish  men  to  deny,  than  of  good  men  to  assert  it.  If 
 we  suppose  the  history  of  England  to  be  the  gazette  of  its  battles, 
 we  may  be  content  to  explain  our  feudal  institutions  in  the 
 middle  ages  as  arrangements  for  providing  the  kings  with 
 soldiers :  but,  looking  a  little  deeper,  we  see  that  they  were  a 
 complex  organisation  of  patriarchal  government ;  in  which,  if 
 the  tenure  of  the  landowner's  occasional  military  service  to  the 
 king  was  the  more  palpable,  it  was  not  more  real,  nor  more  im- 
 portant as  an  element  of  national  life  and  progress,  than  the 
 daily  and  hourly  performance  of  his,  and  his  wife's,  and  chil- 
 dren's, personal  and  social  duties  to  their  vassals.  In  as  far  as 
 the  feudal  spirit  was  true  to  itself,  it  taught  the  English  lord  to 
 hold  that  it  was  the  mark,  not  of  the  Christian  gentleman  but 
 of  the  usurer  and  the  alien,  to  have  a  merely  selfish  right  in 
 property  which  he  could  call  his  own  :  and  when,  in  a  later  age, 
 the  gentleman  borrowed  the  usurer's  money,  and  then  pleaded 
 his  family's  inalienable  right  to  its  land  in  bar  of  repayment,  we 
 were  happily  drawing  towards  a  stage  of  our  history  in  which 
 the  law  was  strong  enough  to  assert  its  majesty  against  even  the 
 statute-makers  of  the  time  being,  and  to  teach  them  that  they 
 had  duties  to,jLisurers  and  aliens,  as  well  as  to  a  vassal  yeomanry.* 
 Then  the  judge  upon  the  bench  showed  himself  more  than  a 
 
 *  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  subtle  legal  construction  by  which  the  judges, 
 in  Edward  I V.'s  reign,  gave  the  first  deadly  blow  to  the  famous  statute 
 De  Donis,  13  Edw.  1.  c  1.  This  was  a  law  by  which  the  barons  thought 
 effectually  to  prevent  any  future  alieuation  of  their  estates  from  their 
 respective  families.  But  after  throwing  out  hints  in  the  long  interval,  as  to 
 what  could  be  done,  the  judges  under  Edward  IV.  decided  that  an  'estate- 
 tail  '  could  be  effectually  converted  into  a  '  fee-simple,'  by  the  fiction  of 
 '  common  recovery.'  The  king  may  have  sanctioned  or  connived  at  this 
 decision,  with  a  view  to  break  the  power  of  traitor-barons  the  easier ;  but 
 when  we  remember  the  growing  spirit  of  independence  in  the  educated 
 elass,  and  the  increased  importance  of  trade,  there  seems  little  doubt  that 
 the  judges  were  conscious  of  the  higher  motive  of  compelling  even  nobles 
 to  pay  their  debts  and  leave  oil'  trampling  on  the  middle  classes. 
 
 £  4 
 
56  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 match,  in  the  cause  of  justice,  for  the  baron  in  parliament:  and 
 now,  when  our  ways  of  effecting  our  ends  are  become  very  dif- 
 ferent, though  the  ends  themselves  —  of  truth  or  of  selfishness  — 
 are  still  the  same,  the  latest  developments  of  the  science  of 
 political  economy  are  bringing  out  the  same  results  in  the  form 
 suited  to  this  age.  For  they  are  proving,  beyond  refutation, 
 that  while  an  old  and  civilised  State  like  ours,  has  the  deepest 
 interest  —  probably  that  of  its  very  existence  —  in  the  mainte- 
 nance of  each  individual's  absolute  legal  property  in  his  estate, 
 it  has  an  equally  deep  interest  in  his  using  his  property  in  the 
 way  most  beneficial  to  the  community ;  and  a  public  and  inde- 
 feasible right,  limited  only  by  considerations  of  practical  expe- 
 diency, to  enforce  that  user  by  any  necessary  means.*  It  may 
 be  thought  strange  to  doubt  the  existence  of  a  '  natural  right '  of 
 property  ;  but  I  believe  that,  if  we  look  quietly  to  the  bottom 
 of  the  matter,  we  shall  see  that  the  ordinary  assertion  of  such  a 
 rio-ht  is  partly  a  misapplication  of  abstract  reason  to  a  subject 
 which  lies  altogether  within  the  region  of  positive  institutions, 
 historical  experience,  and  the  calculations  of  expediency ;  and 
 partly  a  selfish  animal  instinct,  which  reveals  its  true  nature  by 
 its  rage  and  fear  at  any  alarm  of  losing  its  material  possessions, 
 and  by  the  resolution  which  it  then  shows  to  defend  these  by  all 
 that  physical  force  of  police  and  soldiers,  for  the  organisation  of 
 which  alone  society  seems  to  it  to  exist.  '  Right,  in  its  most 
 proper  sense,  is  the  creature  of  law  and  statute,  and  only  in 
 the  technical  language  of  the  courts  has  it  any  substantial  and 
 independent  sense.  In  morals,  right  is  a  word  without  meaning, 
 except  as  the  correlative  of  duty.'  f 
 
 It  is  hard  to  say  how  a  nation,  which  is  to  preserve  its  own 
 orderly  existence,  can  remain  without  some  laws  or  institutions 
 
 *  See  especially  the  chapters  on  landed  property  in  Mr.  J.  Stuart  Mill's 
 Principles  of  Political  Economy. 
 
 f  Coleridge's  Lay  Sermons,  p.  66.  edit.  1 852. — I  have  purposely  adopted,  as 
 to  the  'natural  right'  of  property,  Coleridge's  argument,  and  almost  his 
 words,  as  to  Jacobinism,  which  all  agree  is  the  assertion  of  man's  '  natural 
 right'  to  power.  It  is  instructive  to  be  reminded  how  ultra-conservatism 
 and  ultra-liberalism  agree  in  appealing  to  '  natural  rights '  instead  of  to  the 
 positive  laws  of  an  historical  constitution,  —  to  the  petty  individual  reason, 
 instead  of  to  the  universal  reason,  which,  because  it  is  universal,  can  only 
 manifest  itself  in  successive  historical  developments. 
 
LAWS    OF    ENTAIL.  57 
 
 for  encouraging,  or  at  least  permitting,  the  disposition  of  its 
 members  to  found  families,  to  be  maintained  by  hereditary  posses- 
 sions in  land.  Yet,  if  this  disposition  be  not  kept  within  bounds, 
 those  who  are  influenced  by  it  will  *  join  house  to  house,  and  field 
 to  field,  till  there  be  no  place ;  '  till  the  race  of  small  landholders, 
 yeomen,  and  partly  independent  tenants,  is  swallowed  up  by 
 a  few  rich  despots.  To  prevent  this  evil  among  the  Jews,  Moses 
 directed  as  equal  a  division  of  the  land  as  possible  in  the  first 
 instance,  among  the  whole  600,000  families  who  originally  formed 
 the  nation ;  and  provided  against  the  permanent  alienation  of 
 any  estate,  by  giving  a  right  of  repurchase  to  the  seller  and  his 
 relations,  and  of  repossession  without  purchase  at  the  Jubilee.* 
 The  story  of  Naboth  f  illustrates  the  effect  of  these  laws  in 
 forming  an  order  of  sturdy  independent  yeomen  ;  but  it  must 
 also  be  taken  as  an  instance  of  the  habitual  breach  of  the 
 same  laws  by  the  rich  and  powerful  J  as  they  in  like  manner 
 disobeyed  that  respecting  the  liberation  of  slaves  at  the  Jubilee.§ 
 In  England,  Avhere  the  Norman  conquest  had  accumulated  all 
 the  land  in  the  hands  of  a  few  nobles,  the  like  result  of  check- 
 ing this  accumulation  has  been  effected  by  laws,  in  their  form 
 exactly  opposite  to  those  of  Moses ;  —  by  the  permission  to 
 cut  off  old  entails,  and  the  prohibition  to  make  new  ones,  ex- 
 cept for  one  generation ;  and  by  allowing  land  to  be  bought 
 and  sold  like  other  commodities.  The  Hebrew  constitution 
 provided  by  law  for  the  preservation  of  the  old  families,  while 
 our  constitution  at  the  same  time  that  it  gives  them  the  means 
 of  sustaining  themselves  with  even  the  most  ordinary  internal 
 virtue  and  energy,  permits  them,  if  they  become  effete  and 
 worthless,  to  give  way  to  new  and  more  vigorous  houses,  which 
 have  raised  themselves  out  of  the  ranks  below ;  and  thus  new 
 blood  is  continually  infused  into  the  old  organisation  of  the 
 state.  I  do  not  indeed  say,  nor  think,  that  our  existing  means 
 are  as  effectual  as  they  might  be  for  the  latter  purpose ;  but  the 
 law  has  very  much  less,  and  the  private  arrangements  of  fathers 
 and  sons  very  much  more,  to  do  with  the  alienation  or  retention 
 of  family  estates  than  is  supposed  by  most  of  the  common  argu- 
 
 *  Levit.  xxv.  8  —  11.,  23—28.  f  ]  Kings,  xxi.  1—24. 
 
 J  Compare  Micah,  ii.  2. ;  Nehcm.  v.  1 — 13.  ;   2  Cbron.  xxxvi.  21. 
 §  Jcr.  xxxiv.  8 — 16. 
 
58  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 ments  for  or  against '  laws  of  primogeniture  '  in  England.  Some 
 remedies,  too,  are  as  bad  as  the  disease ;  and  we  must  be  cau- 
 tious how  we  try  to  direct  English  free-will  by  Continental  re- 
 strictions. But  how  imperfectly  we  realise  the  ideal  of  the  con- 
 stitution; how  deeply  liable  we  are  to  the  denunciations  of 
 the  Hebrew  prophet ;  and  in  what  degree  this  national  sin, 
 with  its  practical  bad  consequences,  might  be  checked  by 
 legislation,  as  well  as  preached  against  by  the  Church  ;  these 
 points  must  be  left  for  the  reader's  consideration.  I  would 
 also  direct  his  attention  to  the  progress  of  the  world  as  shown 
 in  the  comparison  of  these  opposite  means,  in  ancient  Israel 
 and  modern  England,  for  effecting  the  same  end,  and  for 
 providing  that  clement  of  the  political  constitution  of  each 
 which  the  Jews  marked  by  the  name  of  '  tribe,'  and  we  usually 
 call  '  feudal,'  or  '  aristocratic,'  but  which  is  properly  the  ele- 
 ment of  family  life  as  distinguished  from  the  several  other 
 elements  —  industrious,  intellectual,  moral,  religious,  which 
 have  all  their  appropriate  political  forms  of  expression,  and 
 which  together  unite  in  one  constitution  or  body-politic.  Be- 
 fore the  times  of  the  Christian  Church,  with  its  assertion 
 of  a  spiritual  constitution  and  order,  which  at  once  demanded 
 the  highest  personal  responsibility  and  permitted  the  fullest 
 personal  liberty,  to  its  members,  it  was  not  possible  for  a  State 
 to  allow  its  existence  to  depend  so  greatly  on  the  free-will 
 of  its  citizens  as  it  now  can ;  nor  to  leave  the  provisions 
 for  such  a  main  element  of  its  organisation  as  (for  instance)  the 
 breaking  up  of  old  families  and  the  formation  of  new  ones,  with 
 all  the  hazards  consequent  on  both,  to  be  regulated  by  the  will, 
 and  according  to  the  personal  character,  of  the  individual 
 agents. 
 
 Men  grasp  wealth  that  they  may  expend  it  in  luxury  ;  and 
 at  last  in  the  most  sensual  forms  of  luxury,  —  drinking  and 
 revelling.  Such  is  the  state  of  the  rich  men  Isaiah  sees  around 
 him.  As  in  another  age,  the  old  Roman,  who  touched  nothing, 
 least  of  all  ardent  drinks,  till  the  ninth  hour  of  the  day  *,  was 
 succeeded  by  the  race  who  could  boast  with  Horace,  — 
 
 *  "  They  always  ate  but  once  a  day, and  that  was  In  die  evening."  —  De- 
 Bcription  of  the  Golden  Age  in  King  Alfred's  Boethius,  S.  Turner's  Hist,  of 
 England,  ii.  86. 
 
ISAIAH  V.   11,  12.:    WORD    AND    WORK    OF    COD.  59 
 
 '  Est  qui  nec  veteris  pocula  Massiei, 
 Nee  partem  solido  demere  de  die 
 Spernit ;' 
 
 so  the  land  of  Israel  has  fallen  from  the  blest  state  in  which  its 
 princes  '  ate  not  in  the  morning,  but  in  clue  season,  for  strength 
 and  not  for  drunkenness ; '  *  and  we  see  men 
 
 '  That  put  far  away  the  evil  day, 
 And  cause  the  seat  of  violence  to  come  near ; 
 That  lie  upon  beds  of  ivory,  • 
 
 And  stretch  themselves  upon  their  couches, 
 And  eat  the  lambs  out  of  the  flock, 
 And  the  calves  out  of  the  midst  of  the  stall ; 
 That  chant  to  the  sound  of  the  viol, 
 
 And  invent  to  themselves  instruments  of  music,  like  David  ; 
 That  drink  wine  in  bowls, 
 
 And  anoint  themselves  with  the  choicest  ointments : 
 But  are  not  grieved  with  the  affliction  of  Joseph.'  f 
 
 And  thus  embruted,  they  have  lost  all  sense  of  there  being  any 
 divine  order  and  government  of  the  world,  for  have  they  not 
 even  obliterated  the  natural  distinctions  of  healthy  appetite, 
 and  of  night  and  day  ?  They  cannot  retain  any  glimmering  of 
 that  which  God  had  revealed  to  their  nation,  above  all  other 
 nations,  and  was  still  telling  them  by  the  mouth  of  His  pro- 
 phets,— that  the  whole  world,  social  no  less  than  natural,  the 
 heavens  as  well  as  the  earth,  had  been  created  according  to  the 
 designs  conceived  in  the  eternal  mind  of  God  himself,  of  which 
 mind  the  declaration  and  explanation  is  called  his  ( Word,' 
 the  actual  realisation  of  the  design  his  '  Work,'  and  the 
 various  processes  by  which  He  is  effecting  that  realisation  the 
 '  Operation  of  his  hands,'  while  the  ultimate  end  of  the  whole 
 is  named  the  '  Glory  of  God.'  J 
 
 They  have  no  knowledge  either  of  the  Word  or  -the  Work  of 
 the  Lord:  they  lack  that  which  alone  could  save  them,  which 
 alone  has  upheld  any  nation,  in  any  age  or  clime,  and  which 
 alone  can  uphold  us  now  here  in  England.      Their  feasting  and 
 
 *  Eccles.  x.  17. 
 
 f  Amos,  vi.  3 — 6.  where  the  prophet  is  speaking  of  the  same  Jewish 
 nobles. 
 
 j  Compare  Psalms,  xxxiii.  4.,  xcii.  4,  5.,  cxi.  2 — 8.,  lxiv.  i),  10.,  xxviii. 
 5.,  Ixxvii.  12,  13,  14. 
 
60  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 drunkenness  is  about  to  be  succeeded  by  thirst  and  famine ;  by 
 an  indefinite,  hopeless,  desolation  of  the  whole  land,  dark  and 
 deep  as  death  and  the  grave ;  so  that  hell,  with  its  insatiable 
 maw,  shall  be  the  only  banqueter,  and  its  food  the  hopes  and 
 life  as  well  as  the  bodies  of  men. 
 
 The  nation  has  forgotten  God,  the  Lord  living  and  reigning 
 among  them ;  they  are  sunk  into  selfish,  carnal  ease,  trusting 
 in  their  riches  and  glory,  and  in  the  apparent  stability  of  their 
 civil  and  ecclesiastical  institutions.  Therefore  the  Lord  sum- 
 mons this  carnal  glory,  and  the  men  who  trust  in  it,  to  judg- 
 ment, to  try  what  there  is  in  it,  whether  it  has  anything  by 
 which  it  can  stand  without  His  help ;  and  then  they  will  see  by 
 the  judgment  and  its  execution  (which  will  be  according  to 
 truth  and  righteousness),  that  all  their  glorious  endowments 
 were  given  them  by  God  as  witnesses  of  Himself,  and  means 
 whereby  to  attain  to  the  knowledge  of  Him,  but  that  apart 
 from  Him  they  have  no  worth.  This  judgment  came  upon  the 
 men  whom  Isaiah  addressed,  in  the  reign  of  Ahaz,  soon  after 
 the  delivery  of  the  warning ;  but  in  order  fully  to  understand 
 it,  we  must  (as  in  the  case  of  all  the  other  prophecies)  look  at 
 it  in  the  light  of  the  Gospel.  Then  was  the  selfish  and  carnal 
 nation  brought  to  its  final  and  most  awful  trial,  righteously 
 condemned,  and  its  sentence  carried  into  execution  by  that  Man 
 whom  God  had  appointed.  And  then,  while  all  flesh,  not  except- 
 ing those  institutions  which  God  had  himself  ordained,  but  which 
 men  had  turned  into  a  lie,  was  utterly  humbled,  did  God  exalt 
 Himself  and  His  Son,  and  sanctify  His  holy  Name,  setting  it  up 
 in  the  world,  and  causing  it  to  triumph  over  all  opposition.  In 
 the  present  day  our  consciences  are  so  insensible,  that  we  can 
 hardly  realise  any  practical  belief  in  the  reality  of  judgments 
 from  God  upon  our  nation.  One  reason  of  this  seems  to  be, 
 that  such  vague  recognition  as  remains  to  us  of  a  Divine  King 
 invisibly  reigning  over  the  nation,  is  rather  the  acknowledgment 
 of  a  despotic  than  a  constitutional  lord ;  one  who  from  time  to 
 time  puts  forth  his  power  to  prevent  or  punish  flagrant  crimes, 
 but  not  one  who  is  steadily  governing  us  by  fixed  laws,  and 
 administering  settled  institutions.  For  though  we  may  slavishly 
 dread  an  arbitrary  will,  we  can  never  feel  for  it  that  salutary 
 fear  which  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom ;  and  unless  we  believe 
 
ISAIAH  V.  16,   17.:    GOD   A   CONSTITUTIONAL    RULER.       61 
 
 that  God's  judgments  are  righteous  —  that  they  are  a  part 
 of  the  steady  administration  of  a  polity  —  as  well  as  good  in 
 their  effects,  it  will  be  impossible  for  us  to  keep  long  from 
 superstition,  or  its  opposite,  scepticism.  And,  therefore,  we 
 should  take  heed  to  this  repeated  assertion,  that  God  is  ex- 
 alted in  executing  justice,  and  sanctified  in  righteousness.  The 
 sanctifying  God  is  the  recognising  and  worshipping  Him  as  holy 
 and  separate  from  all  other  gods,  and  the  renouncing  and 
 denying  all  others  as  false  gods.  This  shall  be  the  end  of  the 
 Lord's  judgments  :  and  the  prophet  contemplates  the  judgment 
 and  the  reformation  with  a  chastened  contentment,  while  he 
 pictures  the  once  richly  cultivated  fields  as  become  a  pasture  for 
 lambs ;  and  the  lands  of  the  selfish  nobles,  after  being  desolated 
 by  the  Assyrian  invader,  as  now  restored  to  a  humble  peace  by 
 the  presence  of  the  wandering  shepherds,  those  friendly  strangers, 
 Rechabites  or  Kenites,  who  still  appeared  from  time  to  time  in 
 the  plains  of  Palestine  with  their  flocks,  as  Abraham,  Isaac,  and 
 Jacob  had  themselves  done  in  old  times,  when  they  too  were 
 strangers  (the  same  word)  in  the  land  of  the  Canaanites. 
 
 There  is  no  need  to  decide  whether  we  are  to  give  a  literal  or 
 an  allegorical  meaning  to  this  verse,  for  the  one  image  into  which 
 the  two  are  fused  is  the  only  adecpaate  counterpart  to  the  event : 
 the  lands  wasted  by  the  inroads  and  invasions  which  followed 
 the  delivery  of  this  prophecy  were  no  doubt  pastured  by  flocks 
 that  were  owned  by  others  than  the  former  landlords ;  and  the 
 rule  of  Uzziah,  Jotham,  Ahaz,  and  their  rich  and  selfish  nobles, 
 was  succeeded  by  that  of  the  lamblike  Hezekiah.  *  He  in  the 
 first  year  of  his  reign,  in  the  first  month,  opened  the  doors  of  the 
 house  of  the  Lord,  and  repaired  them.  And  he  brought  in  the 
 priests  and  the  Levites,  and  gathered  them  together  into  the  east 
 street,  and  said  unto  them,  Hear  me,  ye  Levites,  sanctify  now 
 yourselves,  and  sanctify  the  house  of  the  Lord  God  of  your 
 fathers,  and  carry  forth  the  filthiness  out  of  the  holy  place.  For 
 our  fathers  have  trespassed,  and  done  that  which  was  evil  in  the 
 eyes  of  the  Lord  our  God,  and  have  forsaken  him,  and  have 
 turned  away  their  faces  from  the  habitation  of  the  Loud,  and 
 turned  their  backs.  Also  they  have  shut  up  the  doors  of 
 the  porch,  and  put  out  the  lamps,  and  have  not  burned  in- 
 cense nor  offered  burnt  offerings  in  the  holy  place  unto  the  God 
 
62  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 of  Israel.  Wherefore  the  wrath  of  the  Lord  was  upon  Judah  and 
 Jerusalem,  and  he  hath  delivered  them  to  trouble,  to  astonish- 
 ment, and  to  hissing,  as  ye  sec  with  your  eyes.  For,  lo,  our  fathers 
 have  fallen  by  the  sword,  and  our  sons  and  daughters  and  our 
 wives  are  in  captivity  for  this.  Now  it  is  in  mine  heart  to  make 
 a  covenant  with  the  Lord  God  of  Israel,  that  his  fierce  wrath 
 may  turn  away  from  us.'  *  Nor  must  we  forget  that  other 
 and  greater  fulfilment  of  the  words  when  Paul,  the  apostle 
 of  Jesus  Christ,  said,  '  The  foolishness  of  God  is  wiser  than 
 men;  and  the  weakness  of  God  is  stronger  than  men.  For 
 ye  see  your  calling,  brethren,  how  that  not  many  wise  men 
 after  the  flesh,  not  many  mighty,  not  many  noble,  are 
 called :  but  God  hath  chosen  the  foolish  things  of  the  world  to 
 confound  the  wise  ;  and  God  hath  chosen  the  weak  things  of  the 
 world  to  confound  the  things  which  are  mighty  ;  and  base 
 things  of  the  world,  and  things  which  are  despised,  hath  God 
 chosen,  yea,  and  things  which  are  not,  to  bring  to  nought  things 
 that  are :  that  no  flesh  should  glory  in  his  presence.  But  of 
 him  are  ye  in  Christ  Jesus,  who  of  God  is  made  unto  us  wis- 
 dom, and  righteousness,  and  sanctification,  and  redemption  : 
 that,  according  as  it  is  written,  he  that  glorieth,  let  him  glory 
 in  the  Lord.'f 
 
 The  sensual  reveller  simply  disregards  God's  constitution 
 and  government  of  society ;  but  the  shrewd  man  of  the  world, 
 and  the  intellectual  sceptic,  sneeringly  deny  its  reality.  '  Wise 
 in  their  own  eyes,  and  prudent  in  their  own  sight,'  do  they 
 not  see  clearly  that  selfishness  is  at  bottom  the  one  real 
 motive-power  of  society  ?  priests  or  prophets  may  preach 
 about  good  and  evil,  light  and  darkness,  right  and  wrong,  as 
 though  these  words  represented  realities  essentially  contrary ; 
 but  do  not  they  know  that  these  are  but  words,  useful  instru- 
 ments by  which  wise  men  govern  fools,  but  to  which  they  arc 
 themselves  no  slaves?  shall  the  astute  and  able  men  who  have 
 been  transreting  public  affairs,  or  their  own  business,  with  such 
 perfect  success  for  so  long  past,  who  have  carried  on  the  whole 
 social  and  political  mechanism  during  the  prosperous  reigns  of 
 Uzziah  and  Jotham,  be   threatened   with   this    'counsel    and 
 
 *  2  Cbron.  xxix.  3—10.  f  1  Corinthians,  i.  25 — 31. 
 
ISAIAn  V.  18 — 23.  :    ABUSE    OF    WORDS.  63 
 
 work  of  the  Lord?'  Strong  at  once  in  their  religions  for- 
 malism, and  their  pride  of  worldly  craft,  they  reply,  '  Let  Him 
 make  speed,  and  hasten  His  work,  that  we  may  see  it;  and  let 
 the  counsel  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  draw  nigh  and  come,  that, 
 we  may  know  it ! ' — In  the  act  and  habit  of  thus  rejecting  the 
 guidance  of  the  Lord,  they  have  harnessed  themselves  to  their 
 sin  as  to  a  waggon,  and  they  shall  draw  the  load  of  their  choice 
 till  they  find  whether  it  be  the  woe  that  the  prophet  declares 
 it  to  be. 
 
 Vitringa  quotes  the  famous  description  by  Thucydides,  of  the 
 like  confusion  between  virtues  and  vices,  and  their  very  names, 
 the  consequence  of  the  Greek  civil  wars :  Kal  rrjv  slcoOvlav  d%Lw- 
 uiv  t6>v  ovo/Jbdruiv  sis  to,  epya  dvTijWa^av  rfj  hi/carncrst,'  roXfxa 
 pusv  ydp  uXoytaros,  dvSpla  (piXsracpos  svopbiaOrj'  p.sWrjais  Ss 
 7rpop,t]$7Js,  8si\ia  evirpsiri'is'  ic.  t.  X.*  And  he  then  goes  on  to 
 observe,  that  there  are  principles  of  truth  in  man's  heart 
 which  are  the  foundations  of  all  right,  justice,  and  virtue  — 
 principles  not  only  true  in  themselves,  but  i  good '  and  e  sweet ' 
 in  their  effects :  that  the  revelation  of  Jehovah,  His  cove- 
 nant with  Abraham  and  his  descendants,  His  laws  and  promises 
 of  temporal  and  eternal  life  to  all  who  should  obey  them,  were 
 especially  the  'light'  of  the  Jews;  and  were  'good'  and  '  sweet,' 
 because  the  source  of  all  consolations  in  every  struggle  with  evil, 
 and  the  bond  by  which  their  political  society  was  held  together: 
 that  the  wicked  were  not  satisfied  with  practically  renouncing 
 this  light,  with  its  excellent  fruits,  but  denied  them  by  argu- 
 ments, and  perversion  of  the  proper  meaning  of  words  :  and  that 
 while  this  was  a  national  sin  in  the  days  of  Isaiah,  the  Jews 
 filled  up  the  measure  of  their  iniquity  in  the  time  of  Christ, 
 when  they  rejected  the  Light  of  life  as  darkness,  and  evil,  and 
 bitter,  making  the  light  that  was  in  them  to  be  darkness. 
 
 Lastly,  among  the  men  whom  Isaiah  denounces  as  the  cor- 
 rupters and  destroyers  of  the  society  of  which  they  are  the 
 
 *  "The  received  value  of  names  imposed  for  significationof  things,  was 
 changed  into  arbitrary  :  for  inconsiderate  boldness  was  counted  true-hearted 
 manliness;  provident  deliberation,  a  handsome  fear:  modesty,  the  cloak  ol 
 cowardice ;  to  be  wise  in  everything,  to  be  lazy  in  everything,"  &c.  — 
 Ilohhcss  Translation,  iii.  82. 
 
64  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 leaders,  are  the  unjust  lawyers  and  judges :  he  mentions  as 
 characteristic  of  them,  that  they  are  heroes  at  drinking,  by  which, 
 perhaps,  we  are  to  understand,  not  that  their  heads  and  senses 
 were  overcome  with  wine  like  the  drunkards  spoken  of  above; 
 but  that  the  effect  on  their  hearts  and  consciences  was  such  as 
 to  harden  them  in  their  criminal  perversion  of  the  law.  Perhaps 
 the  passage  might  be  illustrated  by  instances  of  the  professional 
 character  of  hard-drinking  but  strong-headed  judges  of  other 
 times. 
 
 The  prophet  then  goes  on, 
 
 Therefore,  as  the  fire  devoureth  the  stubble, 
 
 And  the  flame  consumeth  the  chaif, 
 
 So  their  root  shall  be  as  rottenness, 
 
 And  their  blossom  shall  go  up  as  dust : 
 
 Because  they  have  cast  away  the  law  of  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 
 And  despised  the  word  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 
 
 The  '  law '  of  the  Lord  was  given  by  Moses,  and  embodied 
 in  institutions  and  a  code;  the  'word'  was  that  exposition  of 
 the  meaning  and  life  of  these  which  the  prophets  were  from 
 time  to  time  declaring  in  the  ears  of  the  people.  The  nation 
 had  cast  away  this  law,  and  despised  this  word.  And  when  all 
 heart  and  morality  are  thus  gone  from  a  nation,  its  roots  below 
 ground  are  rotten  ;  and  its  flourishing  appearance  is  ready  to 
 turn  to  dust,  like  the  apples  which  the  traveller  still  gathers  on 
 the  shore  of  the  sea  of  Sodom.  There  is  no  substance  in  such 
 a  people,  nothing  which  can  stand  calamity  of  any  kind. 
 
 Already,  when  the  prophet  speaks,  the  Lord  has  smitten 
 them  in  his  anger.  Whether  the  earthquake  which  happened  in 
 the  reign  of  Uzziah  had  actually  filled  the  streets  of  Jerusalem 
 with  dead  bodies,  or  whether  Isaiah  only  makes  it  the  image  or 
 instance  of  wider-spread  national  judgments,  we  cannot  pro- 
 nounce historically  ;  but  in  either  case,  the  past  and  present  is 
 but  a  foretaste  of  heavier  woes  impending :  the  Lord  has 
 made  the  hills  of  their  national  prosperity  to  tremble,  and  per- 
 sonal suffering  has  begun :  but  '  for  all  this  His  anger  is  not 
 turned  away,  but  His  hand  is  stretched  out  still.'  He  is  about 
 to  bring  foreign  armies  as  the  instruments  of  His  judgment : 
 the  vision  of  the  worst  of  human  calamities  —  the  invasion  of  a 
 rich,   civilised,   luxurious   nation  by  overwhelming  hordes  of 
 
ISAIAH  V.   26 —  30.       GROTIUS    ON    PROPHECY.  65 
 
 barbarians — rises  before  the  prophet ;  he  speaks  of  thern  as  pre- 
 sent, and  his  words  strike  a  kind  of  terror  into  the  heart  of  him 
 who  reads  them  now,  while  he  thinks  of  their  fearful  import 
 then.  The  men  and  women  who  heard  Isaiah  speak  these 
 words  in  the  court  of  the  temple,  in  the  highway  of  the  Ful- 
 ler's Field,  or  in  some  other  crowded  thoroughfare  ;  who  lived 
 to  see  fathers  and  husbands,  and  sons  and  brothers,  killed  in 
 the  several  invasions  which  soon  followed,  or  mothers,  wives, 
 and  daughters  driven  like  herds  of  cattle  to  a  sale  and  slavery- 
 worse  than  death ;  and  whose  wealth  and  sources  of  wealth  were 
 utterly  wasted  by  these  and  like  inroads  into  their  populous 
 and  highly  cultivated  little  country  ;  could  not  have  thought  the 
 prophet's  language  too  strong  for  the  events,  though  it  seems  so 
 to  many  commentators  of  the  last,  or  even  the  present  century. 
 Yet  we  must  not  forget  that  in  an  imaginative  and  unphilo- 
 sophic  age,  more  of  the  idea  of  prophecy  has  been  preserved  by 
 several  such  commentators  seeking  its  fulfilment  in  several 
 distant  events,  than  could  have  been  the  case  if  they  had  agreed 
 to  restrict  it  (as  Grotius*  and  others  have  too  dryly  done)  to  the 
 mere  contemporaneous  history.  It  is  such  a  picture  of  '  the 
 life  of  things,'  that  it  is  equally  the  description  of  the  same 
 judgment  of  God,  in  whatever  age  or  to  whatever  nation 
 occurring.  In  successive  ages  it  told  the  Jew  of  the  Assyrian, 
 the  Babylonian,  the  Greek,  and  the  Roman  ;  to  the  subject  of 
 the  Roman  empire  it  spoke  no  less  clearly  of  the  Goth  and  the 
 Vandal ;  the  British  monk  must  have  recalled  it  in  the  days 
 when  Gildas  recorded  the  invasion  of  the  Saxon ;  the  degene- 
 
 *  Nothing,  indeed,  can  be  sounder  than  the  principle  which  Grotius  lays 
 down  on  this  subject.  He  says,  "  In  the  prophecies,  I  have  made  it  a  main 
 object  to  refer  the  particulars  to  the  corresponding  historical  events  :  the 
 reader  will  judge  with  what  success.  In  this  way  certain  passages  which  the 
 old  commentators  refer  to  Christ  and  the  times  of  the  Gospel,  I  have  re- 
 ferred to  events  nearer  the  prophet's  own  times,  yet  as  involving  a  type  of 
 those  other  Gospel  times.  I  have  done  this  because  I  saw  it  to  be  the  only 
 way  of  preserving  that  coherence  of  words  and  things  which  in  the  rest  of 
 the  prophetical  books  is  so  admirable  ;  and,  indeed,  these  passages  do  reveal 
 to  us  Christians  the  counsel  of  God,  who  has  shadoAved  forth  to  us  the 
 Messiah,  and  the  benefits  given  us  through  Him,  not  by  lvords  only,  but 
 also  by  events."  —  Prcefat.  ad  Annotut.  ad  Vet.  Tcstamentum. 
 
 F 
 
66  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 rate  Saxon  learnt  its  truth  from  the  Dane  and  the  Norman  ; 
 and  the  Spaniard  from  the  Mahometan ;  the  Byzantine  from 
 Timour  '  the  incarnate  wrath  of  God;'  the  Continental  peoples 
 from  the  revolutionary  armies  and  Napoleon.'  There  is  no  land 
 or  nation  where  this  terrible  prophecy  has  not  been  fulfilled  :  may 
 God  give  us  Englishmen  grace  to  take  heed  betimes,  lest  we 
 need  to  be  roused  from  our  too  thoughtless  and  selfish  indiffer- 
 ence, and  find  that  these  words,  read,  but  scarcely  listened  to 
 in  our  churches,  have  an  awful  practical  meaning  to  us  ! 
 
 And  He  hath  lifted  up  an  ensign  to  the  nations  from  far, 
 
 And  hath  hissed  unto  tliem  from  the  end  of  the  earth  : 
 
 And,  behold,  they  will  come  right  speedily. 
 
 None  hath  fainted  nor  stumbled  among  tliem ; 
 
 None  shall  slumber  nor  sleep  ; 
 
 Neither  is  the  girdle  of  their  loins  loosed, 
 
 Nor  the  latchet  of  their  shoes  broken  : 
 
 Whose  arrows  are  sharpened, 
 
 And  all  their  bows  bent; 
 
 Their  horses'  hoofs  are  counted  like  flint 
 
 And  their  wheels  like  a  whirlwind  : 
 
 Their  roar  is  like  that  of  a  lioness, 
 
 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  they  shall  roar  against  them  like  the  roaring  of 
 
 the  sea  : 
 And  if  one  look  unto  the  land,  behold  darkness  and  sorrow, 
 And  the  light  is  darkened  in  the  heavens  thereof. 
 
 From  the  days  of  Isaiah  this  prophecy  was  fulfilled  to  the 
 Jews  again  and  again,  till  their  cup  was  full,  in  the  time  of  the 
 Romans.  Such  are  the  judgments  with  which  God  visits  a 
 nation  which  forsakes  Him,  and  obstinately  refuses  to  return, 
 'Bead,' says  Vitringa,  *  Psalm,  lxix.  22— 28.  and  cix.  5— 20. 
 and  tremble.' 
 
the  prophet's  commission.  67 
 
 CHAPTER  V. 
 
 ISAIAH  VI.    THE  PROPHET'S  COMMISSION. — THE    TEMPLE ITS    SCENES. THE 
 
 VISION. INSIGHT    INTO   THE    LIFE    OF    THINGS. PROPHECY    RATIONAL    AND 
 
 INTELLIGIBLE. GOD  THE  REAL  AND  ACTUAL    KING. PLURAL    OF    MAJESTY. 
 
 HOLINESS    OF    GOD HIS  JUSTICE.  —  CALVINISM. 
 
 The  expression  '  In  the  year  that  King  Uzziah  died  I  saw,' 
 implies  that  Isaiah  wrote  this  account  of  his  vision  some  time 
 after  it  occurred  ;  and  both  this  and  the  like  phrase  in  chapter 
 xiv.  28.  suggest  the  thought  that  the  prophet  himself  revised 
 and  arranged  the  book  of  his  prophecies.  Whether  these  ex- 
 pressions refer  to  dates  before  or  after  the  death  of  the  kings 
 mentioned  in  them,  has  been  much  disputed :  in  chapter  xiv. 
 the  context  will  allow  of  either  interpretation,  nor  in  that  of  the 
 passage  before  us  can  Ave  assert  that  either  is  incongruous. 
 Yet  it  seems  reasonable  to  think  with  Gesenius,  that  if  the 
 meaning  were  after,  the  phrase  would  rather  have  been  *  In  the 
 first  year  of  Jotham  (or  Hezekiah) ;  '  and  if  we  suppose  with 
 him  and  other  commentators,  among  whom  Jarchi  rests  on  the 
 authority  of  the  Gemara,  that  the  chapter  before  us  is  the 
 record  of  Isaiah's  original  calling  and  consecration  to  the  pro- 
 phetic office,  then  it  must  be  referred  to  Uzziah's  lifetime,  as  the 
 only  prophecy  which  can  correspond  with  the  words  of  the 
 inscription  ( which  he  saw  in  the  days  of  Uzziah.'*  There 
 is  certainly  a  great  resemblance  to  the  parallel  accounts  of 
 the  calling  of  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  at  the  beginning  of  their 
 prophecies  -f :  and  though  this  cannot  be  said  to  be  conclu- 
 sive against  the  supposition  that  Isaiah  may  have  begun  to 
 to  preach,  before  this  vision  gave  the  formal  ratification  of 
 his  appointment  to  the  office  for  which  the  whole  style  of 
 this  as  of  his  other  writings  shows  him  to  have  been  lonq; 
 educating ;  and  though  it  would  be  no  disparagement  of  the 
 authority   of  that  ratification    to    consider   that   it    recognised 
 
 *  Ch.  i.  1.  t  Jer-  i-  5  Ezek.  i.  ii. 
 
 f  2 
 
68  HEBREW    TOLITICS. 
 
 views  of  God's  character,  and  of  the  state  and  prospects  of  the 
 Jewish  nation,  which  had  already  become  familiar  to  the  in- 
 spired seer,  while  it  confirmed  and  sanctioned  them  in  a  solemn 
 and  formal  decree  ;  yet,  perhaps,  the  actual  manner  and  words 
 of  the  commission  which  Isaiah  now  receives,  rather  indicate 
 that  it  was  the  root  and  source  of  those  prophecies  which  stand 
 before  it  in  the  book,  and  in  which  there  is  an  expansion,  in 
 various  forms,  of  its  fundamental  ideas,  than  that  it  was  a  con- 
 densed summary  of  truths  already  fully  developed  in  his 
 mind  and  in  these  discourses.  '  Once  for  all,'  says  Ewald, '  must 
 he  who  was  to  be  a  prophet,  have  become  absolutely  certain  of 
 the  true  relation  of  the  world  and  Jehovah,  —  must  have  beheld, 
 as  in  a  distinct  form,  the  sublime  and  holy  character  of  Jehovah, 
 and  felt  that  he  Avas  directed  by  Him  alone :  once  for  all  must 
 he  have  recognised  the  divine  power  of  truth  against  the  whole 
 world,  and  himself  as  living  and  moving  in  it  alone  :  once  for  all 
 must  he  have  entered,  with  the  effectual  energy  and  act  of  his 
 whole  inner  being,  into  the  counsels  of  God,  and  found  himself 
 for  ever  bound  by  them,  and  endowed  by  these  bonds  with  true 
 power  and  freedom :  —  this  was  the  first  condition,  and  the  true 
 beginning  of  all  the  work  of  the  prophet,  the  holy  consecration 
 and  the  inner  call,  without  which  none  became  a  true  prophet ; 
 and  only  he  who  had  thus  first  turned  his  eyes  within,  and  there 
 found  clearness  and  strength  of  sight,  could  afterwards  look 
 clearly  and  firmly  into  the  world  without,  and  there  do  his  work 
 as  a  prophet.  Therefore,  on  the  nature  and  strength  of  this  be- 
 ginning depended  the  whole  subsequent  life  and  work  of  a  pro- 
 phet :  where  the  true  and  vigorous  beginning  of 
 the  work  was  wanting,  all  subsequent  endeavours  were  weak 
 and  defective,  empty,  and  unfruitful ;  while  in  the  true  prophets 
 that  beginning  never  ceased  to  be  operative,  and  the  memory  of 
 it  bloomed  without  fading  in  later  years.  If  such  a  prophet 
 undertook  to  record  his  more  important  prophecies  in  writing,  he 
 put  at  the  head  of  them,  and  with  a  just  consciousness  of  its  sig- 
 nificance, a  description  of  that  holy  moment  —  often  of  a  time 
 long  gone  by  —  when  he  had  first  known  Jehovah  in  His  true 
 majesty,  and  felt  that  he  was  called,  sanctified,  and  endowed  with 
 strength  by  Him.'  * 
 
 *  Ewald,  Die  Prophctcv,  i.  20. 
 
Isaiah  vi.  1. :  Solomon's  temple.  09 
 
 We  shall  then  account,  as  has  been  already  said,  for  the  posi- 
 tion of  the  earlier  prophecies,  by  considering  that  they  give  a  com- 
 plete picture  of  the  state  of  the  nation  at  the  time  that  Isaiah 
 received  his  commission  and  entered  on  his  office,  and  so  supply 
 us  with  the  preliminary  information  necessary  to  the  adequate 
 comprehension  of  these.  For  the  times  of  Jotham  were  but 
 the  continuation  and  counterpart  of  those  of  Uzziah,  as  to  their 
 selfishness,  luxury,  and  worldliness,  only  that  these  were  more 
 and  more  rapidly  preparing  their  own  punishment  by  eating 
 away  the  military  and  otherwise  energetic  spirit  which  had 
 animated  the  people  under  Uzziah. 
 
 The  scene  of  this  Vision  is  the  Temple ;  and  its  features  will 
 have  been  the  same,  whether  we  suppose  them  to  have  risen 
 before  Isaiah's  imagination  while  he  was  absent  from  the  spot, 
 in  the  solitude  of  his  chamber,  or  his  house-top,  or  assume  (as  I 
 myself  prefer  to  do)  that  he  was  actually  praying  in  the  temple 
 at  the  time. 
 
 Though  it  is  unlikely  that  any  of  the  successors  to  what  was 
 but  a  small  remnant,  of  Solomon's  kingdom,  perfectly  restored 
 the  temple  after  it  was  deprived  of  its  original  splendour  by 
 Shishak  in  the  reign  of  llehoboam,  yet  we  see  the  worthier 
 princes  from  time  to  time  repairing  the  structure  where  it  had 
 been  suffered  to  fall  into  decay,  and  replacing,  as  far  as  they 
 could,  the  treasures  and  the  costly  decorations  of  which  it  was 
 repeatedly  despoiled  to  buy  off  foreign  invaders  ;  and  probably 
 there  was  no  period  in  which  the  restoration  would  be  more 
 complete  than  in  the  reign  of  Uzziah,  who,  in  his  power,  wealth, 
 and  magnificence,  came  nearer  than  any  other  to  Solomon.  And 
 there  will  be  much  more  of  fact  than  of  fancy  in  the  picture, 
 if,  for  the  clearer  understanding  of  the  scene  of  this  vision,  wo 
 figure  to  ourselves  the  youthful  prophet  in  his  rough  hair  or 
 woollen  garment  (possibly  not  unlike  that  of  the  Capuchin 
 friar  as  we  now  see  him  in  the  streets  or  churches  of  Home) 
 going  up  to  the  temple  to  worship ;  —  and  if  we  look  with  him 
 at  the  temple,  as,  at  the  end  of  300  years  from  its  building, 
 it  must  have  presented  itself  to  his  eyes,  with  its  ample 
 courts  and  colonnades,  its  porch  with  high  spire-like  front,  and 
 its  Holy  House,  and  Holy  of  Holies,  well-proportioned,  and  of 
 the  most   elaborate  workmanship,  though  rather  massive  than 
 
 f  3 
 
70  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 large,  according  to  our  notions.  As  he  crossed  the  variegated 
 pavement  of  the  ' great  court  of  the  congregation,'  and  stopped — 
 for  we  have  no  reason  to  suppose  him  a  Levite — at  the  entrance 
 to  the  inner  or  '  priests'  court,'  on  each  hand  would  rise  one  of 
 the  tall  pillars  which  Solomon  set  up,  in  token  that  the  king- 
 dom was  constituted  by  the  Lord,  and  would  be  upheld  by  His 
 might*,  and  which,  once  of'  bright  brass,'  but  now  mellowed  into 
 bronze,  had  their  scpuare  capitals  richly  wreathed  with  molten  lilies, 
 chain-work,  and  pomegranates ;  before  him,  resting  on  the  back 
 of  the  twelve  oxen,  and  cast,  like  them,  in  brass,  would  appear  the 
 '  molten  sea,'  a  basin  of  thirty  cubits  in  circumference,  and 
 containing  two  or  three  thousand  baths  of  water,  its  brim 
 wrought  'like  the  brim  of  a  cup,  with  flowers  of  lilies,'  and 
 under  these  a  double  row  of  ornamental  knobs;  while  on  each 
 side  stood  five  smaller  lavers,  the  bases  of  which  rested  on 
 wheels,  and  were  most  elaborately  ornamented  with  oxen,  lions, 
 cherubims,  and  palm-trees,  engraved  upon  them ;  and  beyond 
 these  again  he  would  see  the  great  brazen  altar  of  burnt  offer- 
 ing, with  its  never-extinguished  fire  ;  and  overhead  the  roof 
 of  thick  cedar  beams  resting  on  rows  of  columns.  These  were 
 the  courts  of  the  palace  of  the  divine  King  of  Israel  f,  for  the 
 reception  of  his  subjects  and  his  ministers.  The  house  itself 
 again  consisted  of  two  parts,  the  outer  of  which,  the  holy 
 place,  was  accessible  to  those  priests  who  were  in  immediate 
 attendance  on  their  unseen  Sovereign,  while  the  inner,  or  holiest 
 place,  was  the  very  presence-chamber  of  the  Monarch  who 
 '  dwelt  between  the  cherubims,'  which  spread  their  golden 
 wings  over  the  ark  containing  the  covenant  He  had  vouchsafed 
 to  enter  into  with  His  people,  and  itself  forming  '  the  mercy- 
 seat,'  where  was  '  the  place  of  His  throne  and  the  place  of  the 
 soles  of  His  feet.'  In  the  position  which  I  have,  following  the 
 requirements  of  the  narrative  in  the  chapter  before  us,  supposed 
 
 *  Can  there  be  much  doubt  tliat  tins  was  the  meaning  of  Jachin  and  Boaz 
 (2  Chron.  iii.  17.)?  As  Solomon  had  the  belp  of  Tyrian  architects,  it  is  in- 
 teresting to  compare  the  mention  o^the  two  pillars  which  Herodotus  saw  in 
 the  temple  of  Hercules,  at  'Lyre. — Herodotus,  ii.  44. 
 
 f  Compare  the  description  of  Solomon's  own  house,  which,  besides  its 
 inner  porch,  had  another,  where  he  sat  to  judge  the  people,  1  Kings,  vii.  7. 
 The  arrangement  of  the  Temple  is  plainly  that  of  a  palace. 
 
THE    UNSEEN    KING    OF    ISRAEL.  71 
 
 Isaiah  to  be  placed,  he  would  see  through  the  open  folding -doors 
 of  cypress,  carved  '  with  cherubims,  and  palm-trees,  and  open 
 flowers,'  and  '  covered  with  gold  upon  the  carved  work,'  into 
 the  holy  place,  which  he  could  not  enter;  and  the  light  of 
 the  golden  lamps  on  either  side  would  show  him  the  cedar 
 panelling  of  the  walls,  carved  with  knobs  and  open  flowers, 
 with  cherubims  and  palm-trees,  festooned  with  chain-work,  and 
 richly  gilt ;  the  mosaics  of  precious  stones ;  the  cypress  floor ; 
 the  altar  of  incense ;  the  table  with  the  shewbread  ;  the  cen- 
 sers, tongs,  and  other  furniture  of  '  pure  and  perfect  gold ;'  and 
 before  the  doorway  at  the  further  end,  and  not  concealed  by  the 
 open  leaves  of  the  olive-wood  doors  (carved  and  gilded  like  the 
 others),  would  be  distinguishable  the  folds  of  the  vail  '  of  blue, 
 and  purple,  and  crimson,  and  fine  linen,'  embroidered  with 
 cherubims.  In  the  East  the  closed  vail,  or  purdah,  declares  the 
 presence  and  secures  the  privacy  of  the  monarch,  into  which 
 no  man  may  intrude  and  live ;  and  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem 
 it  was  the  symbol  of  the  awful  presence  and  unapproachable 
 majesty  of  the  King,  the  Lord  of  hosts.  The  pious  and 
 thoughtful  Jew,  taught  to  connect  the  presence  of  his  God  with 
 this  actual  dwelling-place  in  the  midst  of  His  own  chosen  nation, 
 was  thereby  educated  to  realise  the  unity  and  the  personality  of 
 God  in  a  way  that  could  not  then  have  been  otherwise  possible. 
 And  thus  he  was  not  the  less,  but  the  better,  enabled  to  feel 
 and  know  that  '  heaven  and  the  heaven  of  heavens  could  not 
 contain'  the  Lord,  how  much  less  then  this  house!  That  the 
 fact  was  so,  we  see  from  the  whole  tenor  of  Solomon's  prayer  at 
 the  dedication  of  the  temple,  when,  in  the  midst  of  the  pomp  and 
 splendour  of  the  assembled  nation,  the  king,  raised  on  a  brazen 
 scaffold  near  the  altar,  '  kneeled  down  upon  his  knees  before  all 
 the  congregation  of  Israel,  and  spread  forth  his  hands  to 
 heaven,'  and  in  the  name  of  his  people  renewed  the  national 
 covenant  with  the  Lord  God  of  Israel,  and  received  His  ratifi- 
 cation of  it  in  the  '  cloud  that  filled  the  house  of  the  Lord.' 
 Other  recognitions  of  that  covenant  occur  to  the  mind  as  it 
 transports  itself  into  the  past :  we  may  picture  to  ourselves  the 
 triumphal  return  of  the  Jewish  army  from  the  field  of 
 Berachah,  when  '  they  returned,  every  man  of  Judah  and 
 Jerusalem,  and  Jchosaphat  in  the  forefront  of  them,  to  go  again 
 
 r  4 
 
72  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 to  Jerusalem  with  joy  ; '  '  and  they  came  to  Jerusalem  with 
 psalteries,  and  harps,  and  trumpets,  into  the  house  of  the 
 Lord,'  to  celebrate  with  praise  and  thanksgiving  their  victory 
 over  the  far  stronger  forces  of  a  general  gathering  of  the 
 Moabites,  Ammonites,  and  other  shepherd  nations,  whose  in- 
 vasions have  been  in  all  ages  so  terrible  to  a  civilised  country  — 
 a  victory  which  even  the  neighbouring  kings  recognised  as  the 
 work  of  the  Lord,  whose  covenant  with  Israel  both  king  and 
 people  had  so  earnestly  pleaded  before  the  battle  :  or  we  may 
 see  before  us  another  time  when  the  temple  courts  were  again 
 filled  with  armed  men,  not  the  splendid  retinue  of  a  peaceful 
 monarch,  nor  the  troops  of  one  just  returned  from  the  war,  but 
 veteran  soldiers,  loyal  nobles,  and  patriotic  Levitcs,  secretly 
 assembled  from  distant  parts  of  the  country,  and  resolved  at  all 
 hazards  to  restore  the  constitution  subverted  by  the  usurping 
 murdress  Athaliah,  and  to  maintain  the  rights  of  the  little  child 
 of  seven  years  old  who (  stood  in  the  midst  of  them  at  his  pillar, 
 as  the  manner  was,'  while  '  they  put  upon  him  the  crown  and 
 gave  him  the  testimony,  and  made  him  king,  and  Jehoiada  and 
 his  sons  anointed  him,  and  said,  God  save  the  king,'  and  then 
 renewed  for  themselves,  the  people,  and  the  king,  the  covenant 
 which  had  thus  once  more  been  upheld  in  the  person  of  the  only 
 remaining,  only  unmurdered,  son  of  the  line  of  David.  And 
 then,  recalled  by  our  text  to  '  the  year  in  which  king  Uzziah 
 died,'  we  think  of  the  scene  which  these  same  courts  had  wit- 
 nessed shortly  before,  not  of  the  ratification,  but  of  the  breach 
 of  the  national  covenant,  when  Uzziah,  the  man  of  his  age,  the 
 very  representative  of  the  worldly  spirit,  the  religious  formalism, 
 and  the  material  energy  and  prosperity  of  the  nation,  had  ('be- 
 cause he  was  strong,  and  his  heart  was  lifted  up  to  his  destruc- 
 tion') intruded  himself  into  the  sanctuary  to  burn  incense,  and 
 the  bold  remonstrance  and  resistance  of  the  priests  had  been 
 supported  and  enforced  by  his  being  suddenly  '  smitten  of  the 
 Lord'  with  leprosy.  For  the  meaning  of  Uzziah's  act  is 
 plain :  the  co-ordinate  offices  of  priest  and  king,  and  their 
 exercise  by  separate  persons,  is  a  standing  witness  for  the 
 majesty  of  a  present,  though  invisible,  Lord,  greater  than  both, 
 and  actually  directing  both,  according  to  one  divine  law. 
 Wherefore  this  spiritual  independence  is  felt  and  understood  to 
 
COLLISIONS    OF    CHURCH    AND    STATE.  73 
 
 be  according  to  reason  by  every  nation  which  realises  its  rela- 
 tion to  its  divine  Head  ;  but  owing  to  the  fallibility  of  all  human 
 agents,  it  produces  so  many  apparent  anomalies  and  real  incon- 
 veniences in  practice,  and  often  interferes  so  greatly  with  the 
 smooth  working  of  the  state-machine,  that  it  seems  a  thing 
 which  it  would  be  well  to  get  rid  of,  whenever  that  relation 
 is  forgotten  in  the  absorbing  care  for  the  material  prosperity  of 
 the  people.  Nor  can  we  doubt  what  Isaiah  himself  thought  of 
 all  these  things,  for  the  depths  of  his  more  than  poet's  and 
 patriot's  aspirations  are  still  open  for  every  one  that  will  to 
 read. 
 
 Perhaps  on  this  occasion,  as  certainly  on  many  others,  Isaiah 
 had  been  joining  in  the  public  daily  sacrifice  and  worship,  and 
 had  afterwards  brought  his  own  free-willing  offering  —  a  bullock 
 or  a  lamb  without  blemish.  Such  an  offering,  the  symbol  of  his 
 dedication  of  himself  to  God's  service,  would  be  the  natural  ex- 
 pression of  his  earnest  desire  for  some  token  that  it  was  at  last 
 permitted  him  to  enter  on  the  actual  functions  of  that  prophetic 
 office  for  which  he  had  been  so  long  preparing ;  and  that  this 
 vision  was  the  answer  to  such  heartfelt  prayerful  desire  — 
 itself  an  inspiration  from  on  high  —  we  may  well  believe. 
 
 The  notion  that  it  is  a  poetic  fiction  by  which  Isaiah  re- 
 presents, as  in  an  allegory,  the  commencement  of  his  career  as 
 a  prophet,  is  plainly  a  mere  expedient  of  writers  who  cannot 
 conceive,  or  believe  in,  any  fact  which  transcends  their  indi- 
 vidual experience.  Thus  the  critics  of  the  last  century  supposed 
 the  gods  and  goddesses  in  Homer  to  be  an  ingenious  'ma- 
 chinery for  the  conduct  of  the  piece,'  exactly  like  that  of  the 
 sylphs  and  gnomes  in  the  '  Rape  of  the  Lock,'  and  with  no 
 more  reality  to  the  poet's  own  mind  ;  and  the  rational  philo- 
 sophers and  serious  Christians  fancied  themselves  required  to 
 quibble  away  the  admonitions  of  Socrates  to  his  disciples,  to 
 adhere  to  the  actual  worship  of  Apollo,  or  Eros,  or  Esculapius, 
 before  either  the  wisdom  or  the  virtue  of  the  sage  could  be  safely 
 or  consistently  approved:  but  in  the  present  day,  we  are  beginning 
 again  to  understand  the  force  of  St.  Paul's  words  when  he  told 
 the  Athenians  that  their  poets  and  philosophers  had,  in  their 
 ignorant  way,  been  trying  to  feel  after  and  to  find  a  divine 
 Lord,  of  whose  presence  they  were  daily  conscious,  and  whose 
 
74  HEBEEW    TOLITICS. 
 
 offspring  they  believed  themselves  to  he.  Isaiah  might  pro- 
 bably have  said,  as  St.  Paul  did  on  a  like  occasion,  '  Whether  I 
 was  in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body,  I  cannot  tell,'  but  he  would 
 undoubtedly  have  confirmed  the  plain  meaning  of  his  words, 
 that  the  vision  was  a  reality  and  a  fact ;  nor  does  he,  in  using 
 those  words,  adopt  a  language  essentially  different  from  that 
 which  has  been  employed  by  wise  and  good  men  —  neither 
 fanatics  nor  impostors  —  in  all  countries  and  ages  down  to  this 
 we  live  in,  to  describe  like  inward  experiences.  Thus  Words- 
 worth, who,  like  every  other  great  teacher,  is  at  once  the  ex- 
 pounder of  truths  for  all  times,  and  the  thorough  man  of  his 
 own,  after  describing  his  other  endowments  as  a  poet,  speaks  of 
 
 '  Another  gift, 
 Of  aspect  more  sublime  ;  that  blessed  mood 
 In  which  the  burden  and  the  mystery, 
 In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
 Of  all  this  unintelligible  world, 
 Is  lightened  :  —  that  serene  and  blessed  mood, 
 In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on, 
 Until  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame, 
 And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood 
 Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
 In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul : 
 While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
 Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 
 We  see  into  the  life  of  things.' 
 
 Let  us  thoughtfully  bring  before  ourselves  the  youthful 
 Hebrew  seer,  with  his  vigorous  and  cultivated  imagination,  his 
 piety  and  faith  towards  God,  and  his  longing  to  enter  on  the 
 service  of  his  country  in  that  ministry  to  which  he  had  de- 
 dicated himself:  let  us  consider  the  long  mental  discipline,  the 
 conflicts  of  soul,  the  hope  and  despair,  the  watching,  the  fasting, 
 and  the  prayer,  which  alone  could  have  formed  such  a  man  as 
 the  prophet  Isaiah  actually  comes  before  us  in  each  page  of  his 
 writings:  let  us  think  of  the  'burden  and  the  mystery'  which 
 must  have  oppressed  his  spirit  when  he  looked  on  the  wealth 
 nnd  prosperity  around  him,  and  thought  how  glorious  his 
 country  might  be,  yet  how  plainly  it  was  going  forward  to  the 
 ruin  which  his  study  of  past  history  and  of  the  Avnrnings  by 
 
INSIGHT    INTO    THE    LIFE    OF    THINGS.  75 
 
 Moses,  and  his  successors  the  prophets,  told  him  was  now  ready- 
 to  fall  on  this  corrupt  and  sense-bound  generation :  let  us  enter 
 into  his  heart's  desire  to  save  them,  if  it  were  yet  possible,  by 
 recalling  them  to  the  knowledge  of  their  invisible  Lord  and 
 King,  Avhose  holy  covenant  and  service  they  had  forsaken ;  and 
 then  into  the  sickness  and  despair  which  would  replace  that 
 hope,  when  he  thought  of  the  men  whom  he  had  just  seen 
 assisting  at  the  sacrifices  with  *  hands  full  of  blood,'  '  the  show 
 of  their  countenances  witnessing  against  them,'  while  the  very 
 stones  of  the  pavement  seemed  ready  to  cry  out,  in  God's  name, 
 '  Tread  my  courts  no  more : '  let  us  remember  how  he  felt  and 
 knew  that  he  too  was  bound  by  the  same  evil  nature  and 
 circumstances  as  these  his  countrymen ;  how  he  must  have  been 
 overwhelmed  with  the  sense  of  what  a  work  he  was  proposing 
 to  engage  in,  and  how  utterly  beyond  his  or  any  human  strength 
 it  was;  and  how  sustained,  while  overwhelmed,  by  the  still 
 deeper  sense  that  there  Avas  a  Power  sufficient  even  for  these 
 things: — and  then  we  shall  find  in  the  above- quoted  calm  and 
 rational  description  of  the  experience  of  an  Englishman  of  the 
 nineteenth  century,  an  explanation  and  illustration  of  the  greater 
 part  at  least  of  what  not  only  may,  but  must,  have  been  the 
 mental  and  bodily  state  of  the  Hebrew  prophet,  when  he  'saw 
 the  Lord  sitting  on  a  throne.'  The  partly  psychical,  partly 
 physical  phenomena  involved  in  this  class  of  questions,  may 
 have  to  wait  another  generation  before  their  turn  arrives  for 
 that  scientific  investigation  and  solution  which  in  every  depart- 
 ment of  fact  and  thought  is  superseding  the  inaccurate  theo- 
 retical scepticism  of  the  last  century  :  we  need  an  exact  analysis 
 of  that  intensified  and  exalted  condition  of  the  human  mind 
 which  has  given  us  language  in  one  age,  mythology  in  another, 
 prophecy  in  another,  and  which  still  yields  philosophy  and 
 poetry  at  least  to  us  moderns ;  and  of  that  life  of  the  body 
 which  must  be  the  seat  of  hearing,  sight,  and  our  other  senses ; 
 which  seems  to  assert  an  independent  existence  for  itself  and  for 
 the  soul  in  dreams*;  and  which  may  be  able  in  other  modes  to 
 
 *  "  Reasoning  operations  may  be  conducted  in  sleep.  Mathematicians  have, 
 in  their  slumbers,  solved  problems  which  posed  them  when  awake.  The 
 great  mathematician,  Condillac,  was  sometimes  enabled  in  his  sleep  to  bring 
 to  a  satisfactory  conclusion  speculations  which,  in  the  day,  were  incomplete. 
 
76  IIEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 act  without  the  help  of  those  material  organs  which  remain  to 
 the  corpse  on  the  dissecting-table,  but  give  it  no  sensations. 
 Yet  if  we  must  be  content  with  the  faith  that  our  children  will 
 have  a  light  not  given  to  us  in  these  things,  we  shall,  I  think, 
 find  that  here,  as  in  so  much  else,  we  may  —  if  we  will  only 
 clearly  state  to  our  own  minds  the  question  which  we  know  we 
 cannot  completely  answer — get  a  kind  and  degree  of  knowledge 
 well  worth  having.  For  we  shall  perceive  that  we  are  under 
 no  necessity  to  resort  to  rabbinical  or  curasi-rabbinical  figments 
 in  support  of  the  reality  of  Isaiah's  vision,  nor  to  neological 
 devices  for  getting  rid  of  it :  wTe  shall  be  at  least  in  a  position 
 to  see  that  there  is  nothing  monstrous  in  the  fact,  nor  irrational 
 in  the  belief,  of  a  vision  such  as  the  prophet  here  describes ; 
 and  that  we  have  not  here  one  of  those  prodigies  which  super- 
 stition delights  in,  and  true  no  less  than  false  philosophy  recoils 
 from,  but  an  event  solemn  and  wonderful  indeed,  yet  having  a 
 more  matter  of  fact  reality,  and  a  higher  interest,  to  him  who 
 seeks  to  have  a  reason  for  his  faith  than  to  any  other  man. 
 
 But  while  we  thus  recognise  the  prophet's  mental  state  to 
 have  been  a  calm,  rational,  orderly,  human  state,  we  must 
 remember  that  our  Christian  faith — nay,  our  reason,  when 
 illumined  by  faith  —  forbids  us  to  conceive  of  this  vision  as  a 
 mere  projection  of  that  mental  state,  and  of  the  seer  as  be- 
 holding only  what  his  own  imagination  had  first  created.  Every- 
 thing shows  how  thoroughly  Isaiah  was  prepared  to  become  the 
 recipient  of  a  communication  from  on  high,  but  we  are  not 
 therefore  to  be  content  to  think  that  after  all  there  was  no 
 actual  communication,  but  only  the  supposition  of  it,  which 
 would  do  as  well.  Get  a  real  personal  knowledge  of  the  mes- 
 senger (and  you   must  get  this,  not  from   commentators  and 
 
 Cabanis  tells  us  that  Franklin  so  often  formed  correct  and  highly  important 
 conceptions  of  persons  and  political  events  in  his  sleep,  as  to  have  been 
 inclined  to  view  his  dreams  with  superstitious  reverence,  while  the  real  fact 
 was,  says  Cabanis,  that  the  philosopher's  acute  and  sagacious  intellect  was 
 operating  even  in  his  sleep.  .  .  .  Cases  arc  on  record  of  judges  who,  in  their 
 sleep,  have  delivered  decisions  of  the  weightiest  kind  ;  and  of  poets  who,  in 
 that  state,  have  composed  verses  of  great  power  and  beauty,  though  they 
 were  by  no  means  exempt  from  a  certain  degree  of  mystical  indistinctness." 
 —  Sleep  and  Dreams,  by  J.  A.  Symonds,  ftl.D.  pp.  54.  G2  ,  where  the  reader 
 will  find  much  more,  illustrative  of  the  point  we  are  considering. 
 
OBJECTIVE    REALITY    OF    REVELATION.  77 
 
 critics,  but  from  hearty  study  of  his  own  words),  and  then  you 
 will  be  better  able  to  understand  the  message  —  the  revelation  — 
 which  God  has  employed  that  man  to  take  to  his  brethren  :  for 
 though  God  can  and  does  speak  through  instruments  uncon- 
 scious of  his  designs,  —  a  Caesar  or  a  Napoleon,  a  whirlwind  or 
 an  earthquake,  —  yet  when  He  would  lead  us  into  the  know- 
 ledge of  Himself,  and  of  His  wisdom  and  love  towards  us,  He 
 speaks  only  through  men  whom  He  has  first  qualified  them- 
 selves to  understand  and  appreciate  the  good  tidings  they  bear. 
 But  our  reason  will  indeed  have  become  folly,  if  we  deduce 
 from  the  complete  qualifications  of  the  messenger,  that  he  has 
 no  message ;  from  the  perfect  adaptation  of  the  means  to  the 
 end,  that  there  is  no  end.  If  we  will  be  rational,  no  less  than 
 if  we  will  be  Christian,  we  must  steadily  recognise  the  reality 
 —  the  objective,  independent  reality  —  of  that  communication 
 which  Isaiah  was  thus  qualified  to  become  the  recipient  of. 
 How  this  could  be,  hoio  God  reveals  his  mind  and  will  to  men, 
 how  the  poetic  or  other  human  faculty  gives  form  and  expres- 
 sion to  truths  not  imagined  nor  discovered,  but  communicated 
 from  on  high,  —  this  can  never  be  explained:  an  explanation  is 
 a  contradiction  in  terms,  an  assertion  that  the  Infinite  is  de- 
 finable, that  the  Superhuman  is  subject  to  the  laws,  and  ex- 
 pressible in  terms,  of  the  human.  Let  the  understanding  attempt 
 to  comprehend  the  Divine,  and  that  which  it  has  in  its  grasp 
 inevitably  proves  not  to  be  the  thing  inquired  for.  We  must, 
 and  well  may,  be  content  to  know  that  God  has  revealed 
 Himself  to  man,  and  thankful  that  man  is  capable  of  receiving 
 and  benefiting  by,  though  not  of  defining,  that  revelation. 
 
 The  throng  of  formal  worshippers  would  have  left  the  temple ; 
 the  voices  of  the  choirs  of  singers  '  clothed  in  white  linen,'  and 
 chanting  in  alternate  parts 
 
 '  O  give  thanks  unto  the  Loim,  for  He  is  good, 
 For  His  mercy  endureth  for  ever,' 
 
 or  some  other  appointed  psalm,  would  have  died  into  silence  ; 
 and  if  other  devout  Israelites  were  praying  apart,  if  the  white- 
 robed  priest  wras  silently  presenting  their  prayers  in  the  fragrant 
 cloud  of  incense  which  rose  from  the  golden  altar  in  the  holy 
 place,  the  stillness  and  solemnity  of  the  scene  would  be  thereby 
 
78  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 heightened  rather  than  disturbed.  Then  the  vail  of  the  temple 
 was  withdrawn,  and  the  holy  of  holies  discovered  to  the  pro- 
 phet's eyes ;  and  he  saw  the  Lord  sitting  as  a  king  upon  his 
 throne,  actually  governing  and  judging.  His  train,  the  symbol 
 of  dignity  and  glory,  filled  the  holy  place  ;  while  around  Him 
 hovered  the  attendant  seraphim,  spirits  of  purity,  zeal,  and  love, 
 chanting  in  alternate  choirs  the  holiness  of  their  Lord:  the 
 threshold  vibrated  with  the  sound,  and  the  '  white  cloud '  of 
 the  divine  presence,  as  if  descending  to  mingle  itself  with  the 
 ascending  incense  of  prayer,  filled  the  house.  The  eternal 
 archetypes  of  the  Hebrew's  symbolic  worship  were  revealed  to 
 Isaiah;  and  as  the  centre  of  them  all  his  eyes  saw  the  King,  the 
 Lord  of  Hosts,  of  whom  the  actual  rulers  from  David  to  Uzziah 
 had  been  but  the  temporary  and  subordinate  viceroys.  In  that 
 presence,  even  the  spirits  of  fire,  which  consumes  all  impurities 
 Avhile  none  can  mix  with  it,  cover  their  faces  and  their  feet, 
 conscious  that  they  are  not  pure  in  God's  sight,  but  justly 
 chargeable  with  imperfection :  and  much  more  does  Isaiah 
 shrink  from  the  aspiring  thoughts  he  had  hitherto  entertained 
 of  his  fitness  to  be  the  preacher  of  that  God  to  his  countrymen, 
 —  he  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  sharing  the  uncleanness  of  the 
 people  among  whom  he  dwells.  In  utter  self-abasement  he 
 realises  the  exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin,  and  the  utter  separation 
 it  makes  between  man  and  the  holy  God. 
 
 Whether  we  take  this  chapter  to  be  the  first  in  actual  date  or 
 no,  it  is  the  key  to  the  whole  Book ;  and  the  announcement 
 which  it  makes  of  the  Holiness  of  the  Lord  is  the  key  to  the 
 chapter.  This  vision  in  the  temple  was  to  Isaiah  what  that  of 
 the  burning  bush  was  to  Moses.  That  God  has  made  a  cove- 
 nant with  the  nation,  a  true  'original  social  contract'  between 
 king  and  people,  and  of  the  people  among  themselves  ;  that  each 
 member  of  the  nation  is  personally  responsible  for  the  breach 
 of  that  covenant ;  that  the  holiness  and  righteousness  of  God 
 make  it  absolutely  certain  that  He  will  enforce  it,  at  whatever 
 cost  to  the  guilty  parties ;  yet  that  the  same  righteousness 
 causes  Him  to  hold  the  contract  binding  on  Himself  as  well  as 
 them ;  and  that  therefore  He  has  provided  a  way  of  reconcilia- 
 tion between  them  and  Himself  through  the  sacrifice  of  that 
 which  separates  them ; — this  was  what  was  revealed  to  Moses,  and 
 
ISAIAH  VI.   1- — 7.  :    HOLINESS    OF    GOD.  79 
 
 became  the  ground-work  of  the  whole  Hebrew  polity.  And  now 
 that  a  long  course  of  worldly  growth  and  progress  had  almost  ob- 
 literated this,  the  old  fundamental  faith  of  the  nation,  the  same 
 revelation  is  renewed  to  Isaiah  when  he  is  to  be  sent  forth  as 
 the  restorer  of  what  Moses  originally  established.  Every  nation 
 arrives  from  time  to  time  at  some  crisis,  when  it  must  either  lose 
 all  that  it  has  hitherto  gained,  and  so  depart  from  its  place  among 
 the  nations,  or  else  must  shake  off  the  evil,  and  with  renewed 
 strength  go  forward  in  its  appointed  course.  And  such  a  crisis 
 had  the  Jewish  nation  come  to  in  the  time  of  Isaiah.  He  was 
 to  be  God's  main  though  not  only  instrument  for  carrying  her 
 through  the  struggle  ;  he  is,  therefore,  first  made  to  know  his 
 own  utter  insufficiency,  and  then  to  realise  the  sufficiency  which 
 comes  from  God  alone.  He  was  a  circumcised  Jew,  a  member 
 of  the  holy,  separated,  covenanted  nation,  accustomed  to  seek 
 purification  from  the  stains  of  conduct  in  the  rites  of  the  law, 
 and  able  to  understand  how  those  rites  were  morally  efficacious 
 when  God  accepted  the  sacrifice  of  the  selfish  will  by  the  man 
 of  contrite  heart.  But  now  the  exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin  it- 
 self, of  his  nature  not  of  his  acts,  was  discovered  to  him  ;  and 
 he  needed  the  fire  from  the  altar  to  be  applied  to  his  own  lips, 
 and  not  to  the  bullock  or  the  goat  he  might  have  brought 
 for  sacrifice,  and  by  God's  own  ministry,  and  not  by  the 
 earthly  priest :  and  this  was  done  as  a  sacramental  and  effi- 
 cacious pledge  that  he  had  now  received  that  inmost  purification 
 which  is  the  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  fire.*  'Fire,' 
 says  Vitringa,  '  is  something  pure,  burning,  purifying ;  it  lays 
 hold  of,  penetrates,  and,  as  it  were,  converts  into  its  own  sub- 
 stance whatever  is  susceptible  of  its  action,  thus  hallowing  the 
 gifts  laid  on  the  altar.  All  these  are  the  attributes  of  the  Holy 
 Ghost,  whose  office  it  is  to  purge  and  illuminate  man,  to  excite 
 him  to  the  love  of  God,  to  affect  him  with  zeal  for  His  glory,  to 
 arouse  him  from  sloth  to  fervour,  to  inflame  him  with  courage 
 and  constancy,  with  energy  and  devotion  of  all  his  powers  to  the 
 cause  of  God,  and  to  enable  him  to  make  supplications  to  God 
 according  to  His  will.  And  in  this  place  fire  signifies  the  spirit 
 of  prophecy,  which  spirit,  like  fire,  sanctifies  men  in  a  peculiar 
 
 *  Compare  St.  Paul's  conversion,  Acts,  ix. 
 
80  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 manner  to  this  great  work,  kindles,  inflames,  makes  them  glow 
 with  zeal ;  and,  what  is  true  in  itself  and  specially  applicable 
 here,  converts  them  into  seraphs.'-  God  desired  a  willing  mes- 
 senger; therefore  Pie  does  not  command  Isaiah  to  take  on 
 him  the  office,  but  gives  him  opportunity  to  do  so  if  he  be 
 willing.  And  the  prophet,  now  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
 feeling  that  in  that  power  he  is  made  holy,  immediately  pro- 
 poses himself  as  ready  to  accept  the  commission. 
 
 It  has  been,   and  is    still    discussed,  whether,  in  the  words 
 '  Who  will  go  for  us  ? '  as  in  the  like  use  of  the  plural  pronoun 
 in  other  places  in  the  Old  Testament,  there  is  a  reference  to  the 
 Trinity  ;  or  wdiether  the  phrase  is  '  merely  the  plural  of  majesty,' 
 or  some  other  idiom.      There  is  something  opposed  to  all  our 
 present  habits  of  thought  and  criticism  in  the  notion  that  a  word 
 of  this  kind  can  be  made  to  prove  a  dogma ;  yet  to  the  mind 
 which  recognises  a  deeper  meaning  in  words  than   the  merely 
 grammatical,  the  latter  explanation  will  seem  a  very  poor  sub- 
 stitute for  the  old  dogmatic  interpretation.     It  would  be  better 
 to  ask  what  is  the  origin  of  the  '  plural  of  majesty.'     Majesty, 
 or  grcatemess,  is  the  attribute  of  the  personal  head  of  a  body,  not 
 that  of  a  solitary  individual.     /is  the  word  of  mere  will,  good 
 or  evil ;  ice,  that  of  counsel,  fellowship,  and  co-operation  ;  and 
 the  plural  of  the  latter  expresses  a  higher  unity  than  the  singu- 
 lar of  the  former.     There  is  a  higher  unity  in  the  marriage  of 
 man   and  wife  than  in  the  single  half-existence  of  either  sepa- 
 rately, and  in  the  Godhead  which  is  the  object  of  the  Christian's 
 faith  than  in  the  solitary  Being  whom  the  Mahometan  or  the 
 Unitarian  worships.     '  The  first  cause,'  &nys  Aristotle,  '  is  the 
 last  in  discovery.'     When  it  is  at  last  revealed,  we  can  look 
 back  and  trace  its  workings  in  forms  where  it  could  not  have 
 been  recognised  at  the  time.     And  thus  we,  by  the  fulness  of 
 the  light  of  the  Gospel,  can  see  in  the  language  which  combines 
 the  plural  Elohim  with  the  singular  Jehovah,  the  preludings  of 
 that  revelation  of  the  Trinity  in  Unity,  which  the  spirit  of  man 
 was  not  yet  educated  to  receive  in  its  spiritual  meaning,  and  the 
 formal  announcement  of  which  could,  therefore,  have  only  con- 
 firmed and  perpetuated  his  natural  pronencss  to  polytheism. 
 
 The  prophet  is  '  sent,'  has  a  commission.     This  seems  to  be 
 primarily  and  properly  implied  in  the  Hebrew  words  which  we 
 
ISAIAH,    VI.    8  — 10.:    CALVINISM.  81 
 
 translate  '  prophet '  and  'prophesy.'  The  Jew  understood  him 
 to  be  *  one  who  spoke  not  his  own  words,  but  those  of  another,' 
 as  Philo  says ;  one  who  was  sent  from  God  as  His  ambassador 
 and  interpreter : — as  is  evident  from  the  (on  this  point)  classical 
 passage,  Exodus,  vii.  1.,  where  God  says  to  Moses,  I  make  thee 
 a  god  to  Pharaoh :  and  Aaron  thy  brother  shall  he  thy  prophet. 
 The  verb,  too,  is  always  used  in  the  passive  voice,  in  the  Hebrew, 
 to  imply  the  same  idea.* 
 
 *  To  hear  and  not  understand,  to  see  and  not  perceive,'  is 
 used  by  Demosthenes  as  a  proverb.  It  is  here  the  expression 
 of  the  sternest  irony ;  first  as  addressed  to  the  people  themselves, 
 and  then  to  the  prophet,  in  reference  to  the  effect  of  his 
 preaching.  As  though  the  Lord  had  said,  '  You  are  warned ; 
 disobey  the  warning,  and  take  the  consequences.'  It  is  the 
 will  in  men  which  believes  and  obeys,  or  hardens  itself  and 
 rebels.  Believing  and  obeying,  Gud  blesses  it  with  ever- 
 increasing  light  and  power ;  but  if  it  refuses  this  light  and 
 power  to  walk  in  God's  way,  God  does  not  permit  it  to  retain 
 these  for  its  merely  worldly  and  selfish  purposes.!  We  not  only 
 may,  but  must,  reject  all  those  notions  of  God's  character  (some- 
 times called  Calvinistic,  and  with  which  it  cannot  be  denied 
 that  Calvin  did  at  times  discolour  his  noble  Christian  faith)  which 
 make  Him  out  to  be  a  Being  of  mere  arbitrary  power,  or  with  His 
 attributes  of  wisdom,  righteousness,  and  love,  all  limited  by  a 
 lower  than  human  caprice.  But  while  we  refuse  to  hear  such 
 a  doctrine  of  devils,  though  an  angel  from  heaven  should  preach 
 it  to  us,  let  us  also  beware  not  to  fall  into  the  error,  equally 
 false,  and  equally    pernicious,   of  bringing  God's  justice   and 
 
 *  Gesenius,  Lexicon,  words  N33  and  N'OJ,  under  the  former  of  which 
 he  mentions  the  like  usage  of  the  Latin  deponent  verbs,  to  express  the  same 
 class  of  notions  :  as,  loqui,  fart,  vaticinari,  &c.  See,  too,  Ewald,  Die 
 Propheten,  i,  6.,  to  the  like  effect. 
 
 f  ".But  when  we  in  our  viciousness  grow  hard, 
 
 O  misery  on't !  the  wise  gods  seel  our  eyes ; 
 In  our  own  filth  drop  our  clear  judgments  ;  make  us 
 Adore  our  errors ;  laugh  at  us  while  we  strut 
 To  our  confusion." 
 
 Antony  and  Cleopatra,  iii.  11. 
 
 Quoted  by  Mr.  Trench,  Notes  on  the  Parables,  p.  12.,  where  the  reader 
 will  find  some  instructive  observations  on  this  subject. 
 
 G 
 
82  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 goodness  down  to  the  debased  standard  of  worldly  and  sensual 
 men,  and  of  allowing  ourselves  to  assume  that  it  would  be 
 either  just  or  merciful  in  God  to  permit  men  to  go  on  inde- 
 finitely in  sin.  There  is  nothing  but  the  irreconcilable  con- 
 trariety between  good  and  evil,  holiness  and  sin,  and  the 
 triumph  of  the  former  at  any  cost,  to  prevent  our  eventually 
 arriving  at  that  reign  of  power  without  justice,  will  without 
 love,  intellect  without  heart,  which  we  may  condemn  in  the  form 
 of  '  Calvinism,'  but  to  which  we  are  continually  tending,  when 
 we  suspect  it  not,  and  are  only  brought  back  by  God's  judg- 
 ment upon  sinners ;  —  that  reign  in  which  the  only  God  would 
 be  the  devil.* 
 
 And  if  it  were  anywhere  necessary  thus  to  assert  God's 
 righteousness  against  sin,  most  especially  was  it  so  in  this  the 
 chosen  nation  of  Israel.  Israel  had  been  set  apart,  that  in  him 
 all  the  nations  of  the  earth  should  be  blessed  ;  and  if  he  became 
 reprobate,  where  were  this  promise  to  the  world?  —  'If  gold 
 rusteth,  what  should  iron  do?'  Therefore  the  cities  were  to 
 be  wasted  without  inhabitant,  and  the  land  utterly  desolate; 
 and  even  after  a  partial  recovery  from  this  punishment,  and  a 
 humble  restoration  of  a  small  part  of  their  ancient  glory,  the 
 stern  process  should  be  repeated  again  and  again :  the  invasion 
 of  Pekah  and  Rezin  would  be  repaired  only  to  be  followed  by 
 that  of  Sennacherib ;  the  captivity  of  Manasseh  would  succeed 
 the  peaceful  reign  of  Hezekiah ;  Josiah  would  restore  the  king- 
 dom only  to  be  laid  waste  by  the  Egyptian  and  the  Assyrian ; 
 the  Roman  would  come  after  the  Greek,  and  even  Hadrian 
 after  Titus.  All  thought  of  an  earthly  glory  of  the  nation 
 must  give  way  before  such  a  prospect.  If  the  prophet  looked 
 forward  with  a  patriot's  hopes  alone,  there  was  nothing  but 
 humiliation  and  despair  before  him ;  he  could  at  most  expect 
 but  such  temporary  alleviation  and  restoration  as  might  enable 
 him  to  do  his  work  while  he  was  there.  No  doubt — we  shall 
 come  upon  the  proofs  immediately — the  prophet  did  not  in  the 
 earlier  years  of  his  ministry  take  this  view  of  the  meaning  of 
 the  promise  with  which  the  divine  commission  concludes ;  but 
 still  trusted  that  the  holy  seed,  the  substance  of  the  nation, 
 
 *  I  need  hardly  remind  the  reader  of  Southcy's  picture  of  what  such  a 
 reign  would  be  ; — the  Curse  of  Kehmmi. 
 
ISAIAH  VI.   11  — 13.:  DESTRUCTION  AND  RESTORATION.     83 
 
 would  spring  up  again,  even  in  his  own  day,  and  Israel  be  re- 
 stored to  more  than  its  pristine  prosperity  and  power  among 
 the  nations,  as  well  as  to  its  first  and  pure  faith  in  its  Lord. 
 And  when  the  terrible  truth  did  at  last  become  clear  to  him,  he 
 had  been  prepared  to  understand,  and  to  declare  to  his  own 
 people,  and  to  mankind,  what  more  than  adequate  compensation 
 was  still  behind. 
 
 I  have  followed  what  seems  the  more  probable  meaning 
 of  verse  13.,  yet  venture  to  observe  that  our  Version  makes 
 a  satisfactory  sense,  if  we  understand  an  allusion  (by  one  of 
 those  poetical  transitions  which  characterise  Isaiah's  strong 
 imagination)  to  the  tithes,  the  sacred  portion  of  the  produce 
 of  the  land,  and  to  their  being  duly  gathered  in  and  eaten  by 
 those  to  whom  they  pertained,  and  not  to  any  wasteful  con- 
 sumption of  them.  Whether  the  concluding  image  of  the  teil 
 (or  terebinth)  and  the  oak  trees,  is  that  of  their  casting  their 
 leaves,  or  of  their  being  cut  down,  like  the  tree  in  Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's dream,  is  uncertain.  In  either  case  the  idea  of  the  life 
 subsisting  under  the  apparent  death  is  the  same. 
 
 G  2 
 
84  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  VI. 
 
 ISAIAH,  VII. — THE  ACCESSION  OF  AHAZ. — POLITICAL  STATE  OF  KING  AND 
 PEOPLE. 'THE  LORD  SAID.' TOPOGRAPHY  OF  JERUSALEM. THE  VIR- 
 GIN     CONCEIVING.  THE       INCARNATION       AN      UNIVERSAL       IDEA  HOW 
 
 REALISED.  LOSS  OF  HEBREW  INDEPENDENCE. ISAIAH  NOT  A  MAGICIAN. 
 
 The  next,  and  following  prophecies,  to  the  end  of  chapter  xvl., 
 belong,  with  more  or  less  clearness,  to  the  reign  of  Ahaz.  The 
 '  And'  with  which  the  narrative  opens  here,  and  in  chapter  viii., 
 seems  among  the  indications  that  the  book  has  been  arranged  as 
 a  continuous  whole;  perhaps  we  might  say  the  same  of  the 
 beginning  of  chapter  ii. 
 
 The  reign  of  Jotham  was  characterised  (as  I  have  already- 
 observed)  by  the  same  material  prosperity  and  order,  internal 
 and  external,  political  and  religious,  as  that  of  his  father  Uzziah  : 
 the  difference  (not  easily  perceptible  at  the  time)  will  have 
 been  that  a  new  generation  was  grown  up,  enervated  by  peace 
 and  luxury,  and  trusting  as  a  matter  of  course  to  old  traditional 
 routine,  when  they  were  on  the  eve  of  events  to  which  it  would 
 be  as  inapplicable  as  that  of  the  Austrians  and  Prussians,  in  the 
 generation  after  that  of  Frederic  the  Great,  was  to  meet  the 
 young  enthusiasm  of  the  French  under  Napoleon. 
 
 The  three  narratives  of  these  events  —  that  before  us,  and 
 those  in  the  books  of  Kings  and  Chronicles  — present  those 
 discrepancies  which,  however  troublesome  to  reconcile,  are  just 
 such  as  men  accustomed  to  jostle  with  facts  in  police-courts  or 
 jury-boxes  consider  among  the  proofs  that  they  are  hearing  a 
 true  story,  and  not  a  forgery  ;  but  which  some  book-students 
 (whose  critical  canons  are  quite  other  than  those  of  the 
 Niebuhrs,  Grotes,  or  Arnolds)  take  for  indications  of  ignorance 
 or  fraud,  and  throw  aside  accordingly.  But  there  is  little  real 
 difficulty,  if  we  follow  those  commentators  who  combine  the 
 various  accounts  thus  :  — 
 
 In  the  last  years  of  Jotham's  reign,  Pekah  king  of  Israel,  and 
 
EVENTS    ON    THE    ACCESSION    OF    AHAZ.  85 
 
 Rezin,  king  of  Syria,  made  an  alliance  against  Judah  ;  and  the 
 accession  of  the  weak  youth  Ahaz  gave  them  a  favourable  op- 
 portunity for  their  purpose.  A  great  battle  annihilated  the  old 
 army  of  Uzziah  (as  that  of  Jena  did  the  army  of  Frederic) ; 
 the  invaders  plundered  and  wasted  the  whole  country,  and  car- 
 ried off  a  great  multitude  of  men,  women,  and  children,  of 
 whom  the  share  of  the  Syrians  was  sold  into  slavery  at  Da- 
 mascus, while  that  of  the  Ephraimites  was  sent  back  by  the 
 intervention  of  the  prophet  Obed,  who  recognised,  and  induced 
 his  countrymen  to  recognise,  a  bond  and  claim  of  brotherhood 
 in  the  common  blood  and  faith  which  their  national  enmities 
 had  lost  sight  of.  Up  to  the  falling  of  this  unexpected  blow, 
 Ahaz,  and  his  princes  and  people,  no  doubt  retained  the  insolent 
 self-confidence  denounced  by  Isaiah  in  the  previous  chapters: 
 but  now  their  scoffing  demand,  that  *  the  Lord  would  hasten 
 His  work  that  they  might  see  it,'  had  been  granted  ;  and  when 
 they  heard  that  the  allies  were  preparing  for  a  second  invasion, 
 of  which  the  object  was,  not  merely  the  reaping  another  year's 
 harvest  of  plunder,  but  also  the  taking  of  Jerusalem,  the  depo- 
 sition of  the  house  of  David,  and  the  permanent  subjection  of  the 
 kingdom  under  a  viceroy  or  tributary  king,  like  those  whom 
 Sennacherib,  in  his  lately  deciphered  annals,  says  he  set  up  in 
 Chald&a,  Phoenicia,  and  Philistia,  after  conquering  those  coun- 
 tries*; — then  the  people  and  their  rulers  were  panic-struck  ;  '  and 
 their  hearts  were  moved,  as  the  trees  of  the  wood  are  moved  by 
 the  wind.'  We  may  then  understand  by  '  Syria  resteth  upon 
 Ephraim,'  either  'has  renewed  the  old  alliance,'  which,  con- 
 sidering the  disorganised  and  half-barbarised  state  of  these 
 petty  governments,  was  likely  enough  to  have  been  only  made 
 for  single  campaigns ;  or  else  '  has  encamped  on  the  territory 
 of  Ephraim,'  as  if  preparing  for  a  fresh  march  into  Judaea. 
 The  scornful  phrase,    '  the  two  smoking  tails  of   firebrands,' 
 
 *  One  of  these,  Tubaal,  is  conjectured  by  Colonel  Rawlinson  {Outline  of 
 the  Histoi'y  of  Assyria,  p.  22.)  to  have  been  the  son  of  the  man  here  men- 
 tioned. This  may  seem  fanciful ;  but  if  the  name  stands  good,  we  have  a 
 somewhat  parallel  case  in  the  way  in  which  Merodach  Baladan  appears,  in 
 the  same  annals,  to  have  been  king  and  fugitive  alternately.  There  were  no 
 doubt  particular  chieftains  and  clans  more  powerful  and  aspiring  than  others, 
 in  the  series  of  barbarous  irruptions  which  now  broke  from  the  North. 
 
 g  3 
 
86  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 seems  to  imply  that  they  had  already  been  wasting  the  country, 
 and  that  the  prophet  foresaw  that  their  power  was  just  extinct : 
 and  if  the  main  calamities  of  Pekah  and  Rezin's  invasion  had 
 occurred  after  this  prophecy  was  delivered,  the  discrepancy 
 between  its  promises  and  their  fulfilment  would  have  been  so 
 great,  that  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  it  should  have  been 
 preserved  as  authentic,  for  Isaiah  himself  would  have  doubted 
 its  entirely  genuine  inspiration.  The  improbability  of  Ahaz 
 having  any  fears  till  after  the  destruction  of  his  army  has  been 
 already  mentioned. 
 
 Let  the  reader  form  a  distinct  image,  from  the  narratives,  of 
 the  position  of  Jerusalem  and  its  people  at  this  juncture,  and 
 he  will  see  its  exact  correspondence  with  that  described  in 
 chapter  i. 
 
 There  is  a  singular  pathos,  as  well  as  force,  in  the  phrase 
 '  the  house  of  David,'  in  this  place.  David  had  succeeded  in 
 uniting  the  ancient  factions  of  Israel  and  Judah  into  one 
 strong  monarchy  *  :  when  it  was  told  him  that  the  kings  of 
 the  earth  were  gathering  themselves  together  against  him, 
 he  felt  no  fear,  but  went  forth  at  the  head  of  his  armies, 
 and  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  destroyed  them  ;  and  among 
 other  nations  whom  he  thus  reduced,  were  the  Syrians  of 
 Damascus,  whose  capital  he  garrisoned,  and  made  themselves 
 tributary.  And  now,  the  house  of  David  had  not  only  long 
 lost  the  tribes  of  Israel,  but  was  trembling  for  its  own  existence, 
 threatened  by  those  tribes,  who  had  already  almost  annihilated 
 Judah  *  in  a  rage  that  reached  up  to  heaven,'  and  were  now 
 returning  in  confederacy  with  this  very  Syria  to  a  new  attack. 
 And  the  faith  no  less  than  the  might  of  David  had  departed 
 from  him  who  sat  in  David's  throne :  Ahaz  had  no  trust  in  the 
 Lord  of  the  nation,  and  therefore  his  heart  was  moved,  and  he 
 called  on  Assyria  and  Assyria's  gods  to  help  him. 
 
 *  Then  said  the  Lord  unto  Isaiah '  —  not  by  some  mira- 
 culous communication,  alien  from  all  human  experience,  and 
 of  which  neither  the  reality  nor  the  worth  is  proved  by  say- 
 ing that  Isaiah's  writings  are  a  part  of  the  Bible ;  but  by 
 that  inward  and  spiritual  command  which  is  daily  and  hourly 
 telling  each  of  us  what  is  our   work,  and  how  we  are  to  do 
 
 *    2  Sam.  v.  1 — 5. 
 
ISAIAH  VII.    1 — 3.:    TOPOGRAPHY    OF   JERUSALEM.        87 
 
 it.  Luther,  in  his  Commentary  on  Genesis,  in  the  midst 
 of  statements  which  show  that  he  had  no  doubts  of  the  oc- 
 currence of  miracles  either  in  his  own  or  any  other  age, 
 makes  singular  efforts  to  give  a  non-miraculous  character  to 
 the  expression  *  the  Lord  said ; '  explaining  that  it  was  Adam 
 who  spoke  to  Eve,  Shem  to  Abraham,  and  so  on.  The 
 great  preacher  of  the  Word  felt  and  knew  that  the  mightiest, 
 divinest,  presence  and  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  manifested 
 itself  through  properly  human  discourse,  and  not  by  some  voice 
 in  the  air.  When  it  is  taught  and  received  for  orthodox  that 
 God  only  revealed  Himself  to  men  in  former  times  by  certain 
 occasional  and  external  miracles,  and  that  our  knowledge  of 
 Him  is  limited  to  what  has  been  written  down  of  such  communi- 
 cations, we  have  reason  to  fear  that  we  have  too  little  sense  that 
 God  is  always  actively  present  with  us  now,  and  to  suspect  that 
 our  belief  is  mechanical,  and  sceptical  and  superstitious  at  once.  A 
 Luther,  or  even  a  Cromwell,  would  have  shrunk  from  dishonour- 
 ing the  Spirit  of  God  within  lum,  by  supposing  that  it  was  not 
 by  the  same  wisdom  and  the  same  power  as  inspired  Isaiah,  that 
 he  spoke  and  acted  in  the  Diet  of  Worms,  or  on  the  field  of 
 Dunbar. 
 
 Ancient  topography  is  so  often  obscure,  even  when  learned 
 men  get  to  the  spot  with  their  books  in  their  hands,  that  perhaps 
 it  ought  not  to  seem  strange  that  it  is  yet  disputed  whether  the 
 '  highway  of  the  Fuller's  Field '  was  on  the  west  or  the  north  of 
 the  city.  For  the  former,  Dr.  Robinson  quotes  an  authority  of 
 the  middle  ages,  who  speaks  of  a  '  gate  of  the  Fuller's  Field '  in 
 the  west  wall ;  while  he  thinks,  also,  that  no  where  else  can  the 
 *  upper  pool  of  Gihon '  be  well  placed :  for  the  latter,  Mr.  Wil- 
 liams (also  an  investigator  of  the  actual  localities),  observes  that 
 Josephus  says,  the  '  Fuller's  monument '  was  on  the  north  side 
 of  the  city,  where  also  was  the  traditional  site  of  the  e  camp  of 
 the  Assyrians,'  which  seems  to  point  to  Rab-shakeh's  army;  and 
 he  gives  his  own  explanation  of  the  water.  I  am  not  com- 
 petent to  judge  between  these  learned  writers,  and  those  who 
 have  sided  with  each.  But  for  reasons  which  I  shall  give  when 
 we  come  to  Hezekiah's  preparations  for  the  expected  siege 
 of  Sennacherib,  the  latter  supposition  enables  me  to  form  and 
 to  present  to  the  reader  a  more  coherent  notion  of  what  must 
 
 g  4 
 
88  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 have  taken  place  on  the  various  occasions  in  which  we  require  a 
 picture  —  if  only  a  fancy  one  —  of  the  Jerusalem  of  that  day  ; 
 and  I,  therefore,  assume  the  highway  of  the  *  Fuller's  Field  '  to 
 have  been  outside  the  northern  gate  which  opened  into  the  road 
 to  Samaria,  and  by  which  (as  we  see  from  chapter  x.  28  —  32.), 
 an  army  marching  on  Jerusalem  might  be  expected. 
 
 Isaiah,  like  the  other  prophets,  taught  not  only  by  verbal 
 discourse,  but  also  by  symbolical  acts,  which,  especially  in  those 
 times,  gave  a  life  and  force  to  the  former  which  it  would  not 
 have  had  by  itself.  Accordingly  he  now  takes  with  him  his  son 
 Shear-jashub  (<  a  remnant  shall  return '),  who  was  not  impro- 
 bably born  during  the  grief  and  terror  of  the  late  invasion  (in 
 which  Isaiah  may  himself  have  lost  other  children  or  relations), 
 and  was  thus  named  as  a  sign  to  the  people.*  He  finds  Ahaz, 
 no  doubt  accompanied,  in  oriental  fashion,  by  a  throng  of  people, 
 just  outside  the  wall  of  the  city,  examining  the  state  of  the 
 fortifications,  and  of  the  reservoirs  which,  fed  by  the  brook  Gihon, 
 were  situated  in  that  quarter,  and  which  it  was  now  necessary  to 
 provide  for  the  defence  of,  that  they  might  neither  be  available 
 to  the  expected  besiegers,  nor  cut  off  by  them  from  supplying 
 the  city.  The  fullers  had  their  works  there,  for  the  convenience 
 of  the  water,  and  the  causeway  which  led  to  their  fulling  ground 
 was  a  convenient  place  for  the  purposes  of  both  Ahaz  and 
 Isaiah,  just  as  it  suited  Eab-shakehf  when  it  was  his  object 
 both  to  reconnoitre  the  ground  for  a  siege,  and  also  to  harangue 
 the  people  on  the  walls. 
 
 Hitherto  we  have  known  the  prophet  as  a  writer,  and  through 
 his  writings ;  now  he  comes  before  us  as  a  speaker.  The  pre- 
 sent and  following  chapters  are  much  more  like  a  report  of 
 actual  speeches  than  the  first  five  chapters ;  and  the  narrative 
 and  oration  together  give  us  a  lively  picture  of  how  Isaiah  did 
 speak,  or  preach,  there  in  Jerusalem. 
 
 Isaiah  tells  Ahaz  not  to  fear  any  further  mischief  from  these 
 two  firebrands,  now  all  but  burnt  out :  each  prides  himself  in 
 his  nation  and  city,  and  in  himself  as  the  head  of  these,  but  the 
 Lord  God  laughs  them  to  scorn,  and  decrees  that  their  policy 
 shall  not  stand  nor  come  to  pass,  but  that  they  themselves  shall  be 
 
 *  Compare  chap.  viii.  18.  t  Chap,  xxxvi.  2. 
 
ISAJAII   VII.    7 — 14.  :    THE    VIRGIN    CONCEIVING.  89 
 
 broken  instead,  and  be  no  more  nations.  Yet  to  this  prediction 
 of  the  overthrow  of  the  invaders  of  Judah,  he  adds,  that  Judah, 
 too,  shall  likewise  perish  if  it  repents  not :  *  If  ye  will  not 
 believe,  surely  ye  shall  not  be  established.'  The  reader  will  find 
 in  Dr.  Alexander,  and  other  commentators,  the  various  attempts 
 which  have  been  made  to  clear  up  the  obscure  parallelism  of 
 verses  8  and  9.,  and  the  still  greater  obscurity  of  the  date 
 I  sixty-five.'  The  latter  cannot  be  proved  either  to  agree  or  to 
 disagree  with  history,  unless  we  could  first  fix  the  exact  year  of 
 this  prediction,  and  also  of  the  event  to  which  it  refers ;  and 
 as  this  has  not  yet  been  done,  it  will  be  more  convenient  to  take 
 another  opportunity  of  considering  these  specific  dates  in  He- 
 brew prophecy. 
 
 Ahaz  heard  in  sullen  and  incredulous  silence ;  and  the  prophet 
 resumes, — 
 
 Ask  thee  a  sign  of  the  Lord  thy  God  ; 
 
 Ask  it  either  in  the  depth,  or  in  the  height  above. 
 
 But  Ahaz,  who  looked  on  the  Lord  not  as  his  God,  but  only 
 (like  any  of  his  heathen  neighbours)  as  the  god  of  Judaea,  and 
 as  such  inferior  to  the  god  of  Assyria;  and  who  had  determined 
 to  apply  to  the  king  of  Assyria,  or  perhaps  had  already  applied 
 to  him,  as  a  more  trustworthy  helper  than  the  Lord,  in  the 
 present  strait ;  declines  to  ask  a  sign,  excusing  himself  by  a 
 canting  use  of  the  words  of  Moses,  *  Thou  shall  not  tempt  the 
 Lord.'  He  refused  the  sign,  because  he  knew  it  would  con- 
 firm the  still  struggling  voice  of  his  conscience ;  and  that  voice 
 he  had  resolved  not  to  obey,  since  it  bid  him  give  up  the  As- 
 syrian, and  trust  in  the  Lord  henceforth. 
 
 The  question  whether  Isaiah  could  have  performed  a  miracle 
 if  Ahaz  had  taken  him  at  his  word,  the  reader  will  find  dis- 
 cussed hereafter :  only  I  would  here  observe  that  if  Isaiah,  or 
 those  who  recorded  for  him  the  present  prophecy,  had  been 
 influenced  by  that  notion  of  the  value  of  miracles  of  which  I 
 have  spoken  above,  and  which,  however  orthodox  it  may  call 
 itself,  is  repudiated  by  Christ  and  his  Apostles,  the  narrative 
 before  us  would  hardly  have  been  given  in  its  present  shape,  in 
 which  the  promise  of  'the  virgin  conceiving'  is  treated  as 
 a  far  higher  sign  than  any  which  could  be  exhibited  in  the 
 
90  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 depths  of  earth  or  height  of  heaven.  A  comparison  with 
 Exod.  iii.  12.,  and  Isaiah,  xxxvii.  30.,  throws  some  light  upon 
 the  use  of  the  word  'sign'  in  the  present  instance,  and  upon 
 the  mental  state  of  the  speaker  and  hearers  which  could  recog- 
 nise a  propriety  in  a  sign  of  which  the  force  was  only  to  be 
 seen  after  the  event.  There  may  seem  little  difficulty  in  the 
 whole  passage  to  those  who  are  content  to  '  take  for  granted ' 
 that  it  has  some  good  meaning,  and  to  express  this  feeling  in 
 the  accustomed  formula  that  '  the  words  are  a  prophecy  of 
 Christ ; '  but  he  who  tries  to  discover  what  the  meaning  really 
 is — what  '  a  prophecy  of  Christ '  means — will  find  need  for  fur- 
 ther examination.  To  believe  in  a  person,  is  to  trust  him  because 
 we  know  and  love  him ;  but  to  believe  a  narrative,  an  argument, 
 or  a  prophecy,  about  him,  is  to  understand  it.  And  to  under- 
 stand the  passage  before  us,  we  must  understand  what  manner 
 of  man  the  speaker  was ;  what  he  was  actually  saying,  and 
 meaning ;  what  import  his  words  had  to  those  who  heard  him ; 
 what  import  they  have  to  us.  We  must,  if  possible,  bridge 
 over  the  gulf  of  apparently  unknown  depth  and  width  which 
 separates  us  from  Isaiah,  as  he  stood  that  day  (  at  the  end  of  the 
 conduit  of  the  upper  pool  in  the  highway  of  the  fuller's  field.' 
 
 The  help  which  I  pretend  to  offer  the  reader  is  slight  and  im- 
 perfect enough ;  nothing  more  than  some  hints  of  a  method 
 which  I  can  follow  out  but  a  little  way,  though  I  believe  it  to 
 be  the  true  method,  which  in  abler  hands  will  lead  to  more  im- 
 portant results.  But  if  we  cannot  solve  our  difficulties  it  is 
 something  to  know  precisely  what  they  are,  and  to  state  them  to 
 ourselves  clearly. 
 
 The  original  shows,  I  think,  what  indeed  is  sufficiently  ap- 
 parent in  the  most  modern  and  accurate  versions,  that,  on  the 
 refusal  of  Ahaz  to  ask  a  sign  of  the  Lord's  faithfulness  to 
 His  people,  Isaiah  breaks  into  an  apostrophe  —  the  utter- 
 ance at  once  of  an  orator  and  a  poet  —  in  which  the  speaker 
 is  carried  forward  by  the  power  of  a  mental  impulse,  which 
 for  the  time  controls  him,  rather  than  he  it.  No  one  who 
 has  listened  to  a  great  orator,  or  even  read  the  words  of  an 
 impassioned  writer  like  Burke  or  Carlyle,  can  be  wholly  un- 
 aware that  the  one  and  the  other  is,  for  the  time,  possessed 
 and  mastered  by   such    a    power ;  —  a  power   which    heathens 
 
ECSTASY   OF    ORATORS.  91 
 
 have  continually  recognised  as  spiritual  and  divine,  and  which 
 we  have  been  too  much  deterred  from  so  acknowledging,  because 
 we  see  it  employed  for  bad  as  well  as  for  good  ends,  and  forget 
 that  no  where  in  the  world  of  nature  is  this  mysterious  mixture 
 of  good  and  evil  absent.  And  this  elevated,  ecstatic  frame  of 
 the  orator,  as  of  the  poet,  is  still  more  marked  among  southern 
 and  eastern  nations.  I  am  told  that  Mazzini's  denunciations  of 
 the  oppressor,  and  predictions  of  his  country's  future  social  and 
 political  regeneration,  are  at  times  uttered  by  him  with  an  in- 
 conceivable fervour,  rising  into  the  tone  of  song  rather  than  of 
 mere  eloquence.  The  reader's  own  observation  and  experience 
 will  supply  him  with  other  illustrations,  sufficient  to  enable  him 
 to  realise  this  characteristic  of  the  prophet  —  that  he  was  an 
 orator,  whose  oratory  was  of  the  noblest  kind,  for  manner  no 
 less  than  matter ;  and  that,  consequently,  as  often  as  his  love  of 
 his  country  and  his  zeal  for  his  God  raised  him  to  the  height  of 
 some  great  argument,  his  words  necessarily  became,  and  in  the 
 present  instance  manifestly  are,  the  expression  of  thoughts 
 and  feelings  which  pass  beyond  the  limits  which,  in  a  cooler  mo- 
 ment, perhaps  only  the  moment  before  or  after,  his  senses  and 
 logical  faculty  would  have  imposed  upon  them.  The  thoughts 
 and  feelings  were  really  his,  and  such  as  the  whole  culture  of 
 his  soul,  intellectual,  moral,  religious,  had  made  it  possible  for 
 them  to  be,  yet  such  as  nothing  but  an  occasion  like  the  present 
 —  and  we  have  not  yet  considered  the  whole  spiritual  import  of 
 that  occasion  —  could  have  called  into  expression.  Isaiah  had 
 gone  down  to  the  Fuller's  Field  intending  in  his  own  mind  to 
 address  the  king  in  the  words  which  we  have  in  verses  4 — 9, 
 and  to  support  this  address  by  such  symbolic  emphasis  as  an 
 oriental  people  would  feel  at  the  sight  of  the  child  Shear-jashub. 
 And  it  may  already  have  occurred  to  him  —  or,  if  not,  he  took 
 it  as  the  fitting  course  immediately  afterwards  —  to  resolve,  and 
 publicly  announce  his  resolution,  to  call  his  next  child  by  a 
 name  which  should  tell  all  who  heard  it  that  the  riches  of  Da- 
 mascus and  the  spoil  of  Samaria  should  be  shortly  taken  away 
 by  the  king  of  Assyria ;  and  thus  to  offer  this  second,  and  yet 
 unborn  son,  as  a  new  sign  to  the  king  and  people,  like  that 
 already  given  them  in  Shear-jashub.  But  his  spirit  was  stirred 
 by  the  behaviour  of  Ahaz,  first  to  offer  any  other  sign  the  un- 
 
92  ,  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 believing  king  chose,  and  next,  still  indeed  to  couple  his  warnings 
 and  promises  with  a  reference  to  the  unborn  child,  but  now  in 
 language  not  for  that  age  but  for  all  times :  the  vision  rises 
 before  him,  the  bounds  of  time  and  place  fade  away,  and  he 
 says, 
 
 Hear  ye  now,  O  house  of  David, 
 
 Is  it  a  small  thing  for  you  to  weary  men, 
 
 But  will  ye  weary  my  God  also  ? 
 
 Therefore  the  Lord  Himself  shall  give  you  a  sign  : 
 
 See  !  the  Virgin,  with  child  and  bearing    a  Son, 
 
 And  she  calls  his  name  Immanuel. 
 
 These  are  the  words  of  passion  and  ecstasy,  and  as  such  must 
 be  read,  in  order  to  take  the  first  step  towards  understanding 
 them.  The  discourse  then  sinks  to  a  lower  level,  though  with 
 a  partially  renewed  vehemence  in  verse  17.;  and  the  rest  of  it 
 is  in  the  same  tone  as  that  with  which  Isaiah  began  at  first,  and 
 with  the  same  immediate  reference  to  passing  events. 
 
 If  the  words  just  quoted  stood  alone  —  that  is,  recorded  as 
 having  been  actually  spoken,  but  existing  in  no  real  relation 
 with  any  facts  of  other  times  and  men, — we  must  either  pro- 
 nounce them  simply  miraculous,  or  else  be  content  with  what- 
 ever was  most  probable  of  the  several  explanations  by  which  the 
 so-called  rationalist  critics  try  and  reduce  them  to  ordinary 
 dimensions,  even  though  it  were  merely  that  of  calling  them  the 
 words  of  eastern  hyperbole  and  exaggeration.  But  the  case  is 
 otherwise :  history  tells  us  that  a  belief  in,  or  expectation  of,  an 
 Immanuel  —  or  incarnate  God  —  has  prevailed  in  all  times,  and 
 among  all  nations  ;  and  so  strong  was  the  vitality  of  this  be- 
 lief among  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  that  when  the  progress  of 
 intellect  had  made  it  impossible  for  them  to  retain  it  any 
 longer  in  its  old  mythological  forms,  they  revived  it  in  the  far 
 more  monstrous  assertion  of  the  divinity  of  the  emperors ;  and 
 Tacitus,  Suetonius,  and  Virgil  tell  us  of  various  other  shapes  in 
 which  it  was  presenting  itself  in  their  own  times  of  scepticism 
 and  civilisation.  Brahminism  and  Buddhism  are  witnesses  of 
 the  same  pervading  instinct  of  mankind  ;  and  not  less  so  is  the 
 reception  of  Christianity  by  every  tribe  of  the  human  race,  as 
 something  not  foreign,  but  most  congenial,  to  their  religious  — 
 
PACTS,    NOT   DOCTRINES,    TIIE    CHRISTIAN   CREED.         93 
 
 that  is,  their  deepest  —  wants  and  sympathies.  This  class  of 
 historical  facts  then  are  another  set  of  materials,  not  less  neces- 
 sary to  the  understanding  of  our  subject  than  those  by  which 
 we  endeavour  to  realise  a  prophet  as  an  actual  flesh  and  blood 
 man,  who  took  part  in  the  politics  and  social  interests  of  his 
 time,  just  as  we  do  now.  A  third  class  still  remains,  though 
 even  that  will  not  exhaust  the  enquiry. 
 
 We  are  not  Jews  in  the  time  of  Isaiah,  Greeks  or  Romans  in 
 the  times  of  Virgil  or  Tacitus,  nor  is  our  knowledge  of  life  and 
 truth  derived  from  India  or  Tibet.  We  are  Englishmen  and 
 Christians,  here  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  we  stand  on  a  van- 
 tage-ground which  enables  us  to  see  the  relations  of  things,  and, 
 consequently,  their  meaning,  in  a  way  not  otherwise  possible. 
 Reader,  do  you  believe  in  Jesus  Christ,  who  was  born  of  the 
 Virgin  Mary  ?  Is  that  old  creed  the  expression  to  and  for  you 
 of  a  series  of  facts  (not  doctrines)  at  once  historical,  and  in  the 
 inmost  relation  to  your  own  spiritual  and  personal  life  and  expe- 
 rience ?  If  not,  how  can  I  continue  to  discuss  our  subject  with 
 you  by  that  rational,  scientific  method,  which  to  depart  from  is 
 to  write  mere  words  without  meaning  ?  For  non-acquaintance 
 with  these  facts  in  a  student  of  the  Bible  is  what  non-acquaint- 
 ance with  the  existence  of  the  stars  and  planets  would  be  in  as- 
 tronomy, or  that  of  mountains  and  rivers  in  geology.  But  let 
 us  take  our  stand  on  the  facts  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ ; 
 let  us  look  for  the  law  in  the  facts ;  and  then  we  shall  be  able  to 
 examine  all  past  history,  and  especially  the  history  of  the  He- 
 brew nation,  in  the  light  of  that  law.  It  then  appears  that  it 
 was  no  fancy,  but  the  assertion  of  a  —  or  rather  the  —  law  of 
 universal  ethnology,  which  foretold  that  in  the  race  of  Abraham 
 '  all  nations  of  the  earth  should  be  blessed.'  The  Romans  were 
 called  to  embody  and  develope  in  their  institutions  the  ideas  of 
 law,  and  of  municipal  and  imperial  government ;  the  Greeks  to 
 instruct  mankind  in  free  inquiry,  philosophy,  and  art ;  and  every 
 other  tribe  and  people,  which  has  not  abandoned  its  duty  by 
 sinking  into  mere  brute  life,  has  contributed  its  larger  or  smaller 
 waters  to  the  great  stream  of  human  life  and  progress :  the  He- 
 brews were  appointed  to  set  forth  and  realise  in  their  polity  and 
 literature  the  true  relation  of  man  to  God,  and  —  what  the  so- 
 called  rationalist  with  his  recognition  of  the  'religious  senti- 
 
94  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 ment '  overlooks  —  the  relation  of  God  to  man.  He  who  has 
 looked  into  his  own  heart,  and  there  learnt  that  his  religion,  his 
 faith,  consists  not  in  this  religious  sentiment,  but  in  God's  reve- 
 lation and  communication  of  Himself  to  him  in  His  Son  Jesus 
 Christ,  can  then  look  around  and  behind  him,  and  see  that  the 
 same  God  did  in  past  times  reveal  Himself  in  several  and  suc- 
 cessive manifestations  to  and  through  this  Hebrew  nation. 
 Their  whole  polity  is  seen  to  be  a  preparation  for  an  universal 
 society  which  is  to  spring  out  of  it :  their  whole  literature  shapes 
 itself  to  become  a  manual  for  that  society :  that  fundamental 
 idea  which  philosophers  say  lies  at  the  root  of  every  nation,  and 
 by  which  its  multitude  unconsciously,  and  its  rulers  and  teachers 
 with  more  or  less  perception  of  its  presence,  are  age  after  age 
 urged  forward  to  their  appointed  goal,  as  by  force  of  irresist- 
 ible law,  was  in  the  Hebrews  the  idea  of  the  coming  of  a  Lord 
 and  King  of  mankind  no  less  than  of  their  own  people.  They 
 could  not  have  been  fit  for  any  of  these  ends  if  they  had  been 
 less  human,  and  if  their  polity  had  been  less  in  harmony  with 
 the  laws  of  man  and  the  universe  than  the  polities  of  the  Greeks 
 and  Romans :  it  needed  to  be  more  in  harmony,  and  it  must  have 
 been  more  so  in  fact,  for  more  has  been  able  to  survive,  and  pass 
 into  new  and  very  diverse  forms  of  society.  But  being  fit  for 
 these,  because  the  original  laws  and  subsequent  developments 
 of  their  polity  and  literature  lay  in  such  near  relation  with  the 
 ultimate  laws  of  human  nature  and  society,  they  were  thus  also 
 fitted  —  fitted  by  God  who  has  created  and  governs  the  universe 
 according  to  the  counsel  of  His  own  will — to  become  the  chan- 
 nel of  God's  revelation  of  Himself  to  all  mankind.  The  question 
 whether  there  actually  is  such  a  revelation  in  the  Bible  is  a 
 question  of  fact,  and  must  be  settled  by  each  of  us  for  himself, 
 just  as  each  settles  for  himself  on  the  evidence  of  fact,  and  not 
 of  argument,  whether  there  the  sun  gives  light  and  heat  to  his 
 body ;  but  to  those  who  have  found  such  a  revelation  there,  or 
 who  choose  to  assume  it  even  for  the  pleasure  of  reasoning,  it  is 
 plain  that  —  Christ  being  the  centre  of  the  revelation  —  all  that 
 comes  before  Him  will  have  a  prophetic  character.  All  nature, 
 all  humanity,  must  be  prophetic,  if  it  is  progressive,  and  its 
 progress  the  unfolding  of  the  powers  of  a  law  inherent  in  it 
 from  the  first :  the  philosophy  of  the  Greeks,  the  municipalities 
 
CAUSES    ANTICIPATE    THEIR    FINAL    EFFECTS.  95 
 
 of  the  Romans,  could  be  nothing  to  us  now  if  they  —  that  is, 
 the  law  in  them,  and  cause  of  their  existing  effects  —  had  not 
 anticipated  all  their  present  fruits ;  and  even  the  warlike  am- 
 bition, which  brought  the  seeds  of  these,  and  many  such  things, 
 into  Britain  or  elsewhere,  was  a  part  of  the  same  anticipatory 
 working  of  the  same  law.  And,  therefore,  much  more  is  it 
 evident,  that  reason  and  historical  science  require  us  to  recog- 
 nise the  like  workings  in  the  growth  of  the  Hebrew  common- 
 wealth and  people,  and  in  their  relations  to  their  Creator  and 
 their  fellow-men.  The  evidence  of  the  anticipation  of  a  personal 
 Messiah  by  the  Hebrews  from  very  early  times,  and  of  its  con- 
 tinually acquiring  a  more  distinct  and  positive  character,  is  well 
 known  to  the  student  of  the  Old  Testament.  But  the  prophecy 
 of  Micah,  Isaiah's  contemporary,  has  a  special  bearing  on  the 
 subject ;  he  says,  — 
 
 '  But  thou,  Bethlehem  Ephratah, 
 
 Though  thou  be  little  among  the  thousands  of  Judah, 
 
 Yet  out  of  thee  shall  he  come  forth  unto  me  that  is  to  be  ruler 
 
 in  Israel ; 
 Whose  goings  forth  have  been  from  of  old,  from  everlasting. 
 Therefore  will  he  give  them  up 
 
 Until  the  time  that  she  which  travaileth  hath  brought  forth : 
 Then  the  remnant  of  his  brethren  shall  return  unto  the  children 
 
 of  Israel, 
 And  he  shall  stand  and  feed  in  the  strength  of  the  Lord, 
 In  the  majesty  of  the  name  of  the  Lord  his  God  ; 
 And  they  shall  abide  : 
 For  now  shall  he  be  great  unto  the  ends  of  the  earth.'* 
 
 Even  if  we  should  assume  that  one  of  these  predictions  was 
 suggested  by  the  other  (though  the  differences  indicate  at  least 
 a  partial  independence),  or  suppose  both  to  refer  to  some  earlier 
 prophecy,  they  are  not  the  less  indications  of  a  national  belief 
 and  expectation  of  a  mysterious  birth  of  the  Messiah.  Nor  can 
 we  avoid  connecting  them  with  that  most  ancient  tradition  of 
 '  the  seed  of  the  woman '  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  that  state 
 of  the  national  Jewish  mind  on  the  other,  which  is  implied  in 
 the  narratives  of  Matthew  and  Luke,  who  relate  the  incarnation 
 
 *  Micah,  v.  2,  3,  4. 
 
96  HEBREW   TOLITICS. 
 
 of  Jesus  Christ  as  an  event  miraculous  indeed,  yet  not  contrary 
 or  alien  from  the  ancient  faith,  but  as  the  fulfilment  of  its 
 deepest  anticipations. 
 
 If,  then,  we  comprehend  these  two  sides  of  the  case  together : 
 if  we  see  on  the  one  hand  that  Isaiah  was  an  actual  practical 
 politician  of  the  day  in  which  he  lived ;  and  on  the  other  that  it 
 is  not  the  dogma  of  a  worn-out  superstition,  but  the  assertion  of 
 the  newest  and  most  accurate  philosophy,  —  the  philosophy  of 
 positive  science,  —  to  say  and  believe  with  St.  Peter,  that  '  no 
 prophecy  of  the  Scripture  is  of  any  private  interpretation ;  for 
 the  prophecy  came  not  in  old  time  by  the  will  of  man;  but 
 holy  men  of  God  spake  as  they  were  moved  by  the  Holy 
 Ghost;'* — if  we  grasp  these  ideas  at  once,  we  shall,  I  think, 
 have  no  insurmountable  difficulty  in  the  words  of  Isaiah  which 
 immediately  follow,  and  in  which  he  fuses  into  one  image  the 
 birth  of  the  Immanuel  and  that  of  his  own  child,  and  declares, 
 in  direct  reference  to  the  latter,  that  before  he  has  learnt  to 
 distinguish  good  from  evil  (come  to  years  of  discretion,  as  we  say), 
 he  shall  be  sharing  the  general  prosperity  —  the  old  proverbial 
 blessing  f  —  of  his  native  land,  which  before  then  shall  have 
 seen  the  land  of  her  present  invaders  —  spoken  of  as  one,  be- 
 cause its  kings  were  confederate  —  itself  laid  waste,  after  having 
 first  lost  both  those  kings.  In  about  three  years  from  this  time, 
 Tiglath-Pileser  overthrew  the  kingdom  of  Syria,  killed  Rezin, 
 carried  away  the  Damascenes  and  Syrians  into  Assyria  and 
 Media  J :    it  is  one    of  the  newly  opened  questions  whether 
 
 *  2  Peter,  i.  20,  21.  This  passage  (of  which  the  Petrine  spirit  at 
 least  is  not  questioned);  that  in  chapter  i.  10, 11,  12.  of  the  1st  Epistle;  and 
 Peter's  argument  in  Acts,  ii.  22—36. ;  offer  to  him  who  will  reflect  on  them, 
 an  important,  perhaps  I  might  say  a  complete  light,  on  prophecy,  both 
 as  it  appeared  to  the  genuine  Hebrew  mind,  and  as  it  is  in  itself,  accord- 
 ing to  its  philosophic  idea.  The  simple,  lowly-wise,  fisherman,  argues  that 
 the  meaning  of  these  words  of  David  was  not  exhausted  in  their  application 
 to  himself,  they  were  not  fulfilled  in  him  ;  yet  that  they  are  not  the  words 
 of  hyperbole  and  bombast,  but  the  utterances  of  a  prophet,  of  one  of  those 
 wise  and  good  men  whom  God  chooses  from  time  to  time  to  reveal  his  uni- 
 versal laws  and  plans  by  ;  and  that  therefore  we  must  seek  in  history  for  the 
 adequate  fulfilment  of  them. 
 
 t  Deut.  xxvi.  9.;  Josh.  v.  6. 
 
 \  2  Kings,  xvi.  i). 
 
ISA.  VII.  17 — 25.:  FINAL  LOSS  OF  NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE.  97 
 
 Samaria  was  not  taken  at  the  same  time*  ;  but  at  least  we 
 know  that  he  took  several  cities  in  the  north  of  Israel,  and  car- 
 ried away  the  people  of  all  the  northern  half  of  that  kingdom; 
 and  that  Pekah's  own  assassination  by  Hoshea,  followed  this 
 devastation   of  his  country. f 
 
 Isaiah  has  hardly  uttered  the  promise  of  deliverance  and 
 restored  prosperity,  when  he  retracts  it.  The  abrupt  beginning 
 of  verse  17.  seems  to  mark  a  pause,  in  which  the  national  sin  of 
 Ahaz  and  his  people,  and  the  fact  that  they  had  already  called 
 in,  or  at  least  resolved  to  call  in,  the  aid  of  Assyria,  come  back 
 upon  the  prophet ;  and  he  goes  on  to  foretel  the  beginning  of 
 calamities  such  as  the  nation  had  never  yet  known.  With  the 
 exception  of  the  temporary  subjection  of  Rehoboam  to  Egypt, 
 Judah  had  hitherto  preserved  its  national  independence :  but 
 from  this  application  of  Ahaz  to  Tiglath-Pileser  was  to  date 
 *  its  transition  to  a  servile  state,  from  which,'  observes  Dr.  Alex- 
 ander, 'it  was  never  permanently  freed,  the  domination  of 
 Assyria  being  soon  succeeded  by  that  of  Egypt,  and  this  by 
 that  of  Babylon,  Persia,  Syria,  and  Rome,  the  last  ending  only 
 in  the  downfal  of  the  state,  and  that  general  dispersion  which 
 continues  to  this  day.  The  revolt  of  Hezekiah,  and  even  longer 
 intervals  of  liberty  in  later  times,  are  mere  interruptions  of  the 
 customary  and  prevailing  bondage.'  Ahaz  intended  to  'hire' 
 the  Assyrian  razor  for  his  own  purposes ;  but  the  Lord  would 
 employ  the  same  instrument  to  execute  His  judgments ;  and  in 
 the  consequent  desolations  of  the  land,  that  prophecy  of  the 
 child  eating  milk  and  honey  would  indeed  be  fulfilled,  but  after 
 another  manner  than  its  terms  seemed  at  first  to  imply.  If 
 they  had  believed  and  trusted  in  the  Lord  for  deliverance*  they 
 should  have  continued  to  eat  the  fat  of  the  land ;  but  now  the 
 cultivated  fields  should  be  laid  waste,  and  their  cultivators  scat- 
 tered by  the  sword  or  famine.  Here  and  there  a  surviving  in- 
 habitant, who  has  saved  a  young  cow  and  two  sheep  from  the 
 wreck  of  his  property,  shall  feed  upon  the  butter  and  milk  they 
 yield  him,  in  an  abundance  which  but  mocks  the  general  de- 
 
 *  Raw  Vinson's  Outline  of  the  History  of  Assy?-ia,  p.  15.  By  the  last  ac- 
 counts Colonel  Rawlinson  still  suspends  his  judgment  as  to  the  identity  or 
 otherwise  of  Tiglath-Pileser,  Shalmanes^r,  and  Sargon. 
 
 f  2  Kings,  xv.  29,  30. 
 
 H 
 
98  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 solation :  for  their  pastures  are  the  hill-sides,  heretofore  so  care- 
 fully terraced  and  worked  by  man's  hand,  while  the  well-stocked 
 vineyards  which  once  bore  such  a  high  price*,  are  turned  into 
 mere  briers  and  thorns,  where  men  go  with  arrows  and  with 
 bows,  to  seek  wild  game,  or  to  protect  themselves  from  savage 
 beasts  or  more  savage  men. 
 
 Bees  may,  or  may  not,  abound  as  much  in  Assyria  as  flies  in 
 Egypt ;  but  it  does  not  seem  a  mere  fancy  of  the  commentators, 
 who  see  a  propriety  in  the  fierceness  and  stings  of  the  one,  and 
 the  filth,  buzzing,  and  comparative  feebleness  of  the  other. f  The 
 books  of  Kings  and  Chronicles  say  nothing  of  any  intercourse, 
 friendly  or  hostile,  with  Egypt  in  the  reign  of  Ahaz ;  but  as  an 
 alliance  with  this  kingdom  was  a  part  of  the  policy  of  the  states- 
 men of  Hezekiah  a  few  years  later,  it  may  have  been  under 
 discussion  now,  or  an  application  even  may  have  been  made  to 
 them  as  well  as  to  Tiglath-Pileser.  That  the  land  of  Judah 
 was  harassed,  plundered,  and  overrun  by  the  Assyrian  armies, 
 and  the  collectors  of  his  tribute,  in  this  and  the  next  reigns,  and 
 not  by  the  Egyptians,  will  not  appear  to  detract  from  the  sub- 
 stantial accuracy  of  Isaiah's  words,  if  we  have  once  cleared  our 
 minds  of  the  superstitious  and  profane  notion  that  he  was  a 
 sort  of  magician  and  soothsayer,  and  employed  by  God  as  such ; 
 and  can  realize  that  he  was  a  man  of  like  heart  and  mind  with 
 
 *  The  German  vineyards  are  valued  at  so  much  a  vine,  and  among  them 
 the  vines  of  Johannisburg  at  a  ducat  each,  according  to  J.  D.  Michaelis : 
 those  of  Lebanon  were  rated  at  a  piastre  each  in  1811,  according  to  Burck- 
 hardt ;  and  this  latter  sum  Henderson  calculates  to  be  a  half  less  than  the 
 price  in  the  text,  which  was  probably  high  in  proportion  to  the  value  of 
 money.  A  comparison,  however,  with  Canticles,  viii.  11,  12.  might  lead  us 
 to  suppose  the  reference  here  also  to  the  rent  rather  than  the  price.  See 
 Gesenius  and  Alexander  on  the  verse. 
 
 j  'HwT€  eBvea  ei<n  fxeAicraduv  aSwdccv, 
 
 nerpr^  iic  yAatpvpris  cilel  vlov  ipxofxevdoov' 
 fiorpvSbv  Se  irerovrai  eV  dvQecnv  elapivolaiv, 
 al  fj.iv  r    tvda  aAis  Treirorj]arcu,  of  5e  re  evda' 
 £>s  rwv  edvea.  ttoAAo  veuiv  diro  Ka)  (cAitnaW,  K.r.A. 
 
 Hum.  II.  0,  87. 
 'Hi/re  fiviauv  bSivaoov  edvea  TroAAct, 
 a'lre  Kara  <rra6/j.bv  VfHIWtfiov  7]\dcn<ov(Tiv, 
 S>(»1  b>  elapivij,  ore  re  yAuyos  &y^ea  Sevc-i'  k.  r.  A. 
 
 lb.  461). 
 
MEN    SENT    FROM    GOD.  99 
 
 ourselves,  —  truly  sent  from  God,  yet  not  more  truly  than  each 
 of  us  must  be,  if  he  is  to  do  any  work,  not  worse  than  useless, 
 in  the  world.  We  may  hold  this  belief  all  the  more  consistently 
 for  believing  also  that  the  work  of  the  prophets,  and  of  the 
 other  Scripture  writers,  was  different  from  that  of  any  men 
 before  or  since :  —  'If  the  whole  body  were  an  eye,  where  were 
 the  hearing?' 
 
 h  2 
 
100  IIEBREAV    POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  VII. 
 
 ISAIAn    vnr. IX.    7.     THE    symbolical    family. ANCIENT    and   modern 
 
 HABITS     OF     PUBLIC    MEN.   SILOAH     AND     EUPHRATES.  THE    PANIC     OF 
 
 JUDAH,  AND    ITS    REMEDY.  GALILEE  OF  THE  GENTILES.  THE    NATIONAL 
 
 GLOOM.  THE    GREAT   LIGHT. THE    MESSIAH.  —  GRADUAL  DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF    THE    PROPHET'S    ANTICIPATIONS. 
 
 We  have  seen  how  Isaiah,  during  his  late  interview  with  Ahaz, 
 was  possessed  by  the  idea  of  a  child  of  his  being  a  sign  to  the 
 people  of  their  deliverance  from  present  invasion.  In  the  first 
 chapter  of  Hosea  occurs  a  like  instance  of  symbolic  names  given 
 by  a  prophet  to  his  children,  and  in  Habakkuk,  ii.  2.  we  have 
 mention  of  the  practice  of  writing  a  prophecy  on  a  tablet  in 
 easily  legible  characters,  and  hanging  it  up  in  the  temple, 
 market-place,  or  other  public  resort ;  from  a  comparison  with 
 which  the  most  modern  commentators  prefer  to  think  that  Isaiah 
 now  merely  inscribed  '  To  Maher-shalal-hash-baz,'  on  a 
 metal  or  waxed  tablet ;  —  though  it  must  not  be  overlooked 
 that  the  direction  to  '  tie  up  and  seal  the  testimony,'  in  verse  16., 
 is  in  favour  of  the  older  version,  which  understands  him  to  have 
 made  a  record  of  his  expectation  of  the  birth  of  the  child,  and 
 of  the  significance  of  that  birth,  at  some  length.  He  wrote 
 e  with  a  man's  pen,'  or  '  style,'  —  a  phrase  not  unlike  our 
 '  common  hand,'  or  '  popular  style ; '  and  he  took  as  credible 
 witnesses  that  the  record  had  preceded  the  event,  Uriah,  the 
 high  priest  at  the  time*,  and  Zcchariah,  who  was  not  impro- 
 bably the  father-in-law  of  Ahaz,  and  a  Levite.f  He  calls  his 
 wife  '  the  prophetess,'  as  the  wife  of  a  king  is  called  a  queen 
 (says  Vitringa),  though  she  does  not  reign,  and,  in  some  old 
 ecclesiastical  canons,  the  wife  of  a  bishop  a  bishopess,  and  of  a 
 presbyter,  a  presbytress  ;  and  thus  claims  for  her  a  place  with 
 her  husband   and  children  \  in   the  holy  and  symbolic  family, 
 
 *  2  Kings,  xvi.  10.  f  2  Kings,  xviii.  2.,  2  Chron.  xxix.  1.  13. 
 
 \  See  verse  18.  of  this  chapter. 
 
ISAIAH,  VIII.  1  —  6.:     HABITS  OF  PUBLIC    MEN.  101 
 
 who  are  for  '  a  sign  in  Israel.'  She  gave  birth  to  a  child,  and 
 his  name  was  called,  in  accordance  with  the  writing,  '  Haste- 
 plunder,  Speed-spoil,'  that  the  people  might  understand  that 
 before  he  Avas  old  enough  to  utter  the  words  '  father '  and 
 *■  mother,' —  that  is,  within  a  short  but  somewhat  indefinite 
 period,  such  as  we  should  express  by  '  in  a  year  or  two  from 
 his  birth,'  —  the  spoils  of  the  plundered  cities  of  Samaria  and 
 Damascus,  the  capitals  of  the  nations  now  invading  Judah,  shall 
 have  been  carried  before  the  Assyrian  conqueror  in  triumph. 
 That  the  same  child  was  also  called  '  Immanuel,'  seems  more 
 in  accordance  with  the  text  than  the  supposition  that  Immanuel 
 was  a  third  son,  though  the  sense  is  intelligible  either  way. 
 
 In  order  to  realize  the  practical  impressiveness  of  such  sym- 
 bolic acts  and  names  upon  Isaiah's  contemporaries,  we  must  re- 
 member that  Jerusalem  was  a  very  small  town  for  size  and 
 population,  compared  with  the  notion  we  insensibly  get  of  a 
 capital,  from  our  own  vast  London ;  and  also,  that  there  was  as 
 little  in  the  ways  of  thinking  and  living  of  that  age  and  country 
 as  in  the  extent  of  the  city,  to  effect  such  a  separation  between 
 a  public  man's  political  and  personal  life  as  exists  in  England. 
 We  respect  the  domestic  reserve  of  our  neighbours,  and  we 
 fortify  ourselves  in  the  like  reserve,  by  our  habit  of  learning 
 what  they  are  doing  that  concerns  us,  through  the  newspaper 
 which  we  read  by  our  own  fireside.  Where  there  were  no 
 newspapers,  and  where  the  climate  encouraged  an  out-of-door 
 life,  the  people  of  Jerusalem  would  become  as  familiar  with  that 
 personal  demeanour  of  Isaiah  in  the  market-place,  or  elsewhere, 
 which  he  made  a  part  of  his  public  ministry,  as  we  are  with 
 the  mental  habits  and  political  conduct  of  Lord  John  Russell  or 
 Mr.  Gladstone,  though  the  greater  part  of  us  would  recognise 
 neither  of  them  by  sight,  and  still  fewer  know  anything  of 
 their  personal  and  private  life. 
 
 After  having  uttered  this  prediction,  and  perhaps  after  an 
 interval  of  time  in  which  the  political  relations  of  the  several 
 states  had  become  further  developed,  Isaiah  proceeds  to  take  a 
 view  of  the  whole  Hebrew  people,  whom  he  looks  on  as  one, 
 notwithstanding  the  actual  division  and  enmity  of  the  two  king- 
 doms. He  sees  Ephraim  rejoicing,  and  Judah  trembling,  at  the 
 alliance  of  Rezin  and  Pekah ;  the  one  expecting  that  it  will  lead 
 
 H    3 
 
102  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 to  the  overthrow  of  the  feeble  house  of  David,  the  other  look- 
 ing to  Assyria  as  the  only  protection  against  that  overthrow  ; 
 but  both  agreeing  in  this,  that  their  politics  are  wholly  worldly, 
 and  have  no  reference  to  the  government  and  help  of  the  Lord 
 of  hosts,  the  true  King  of  the  whole  Hebrew  people,  as  indeed 
 of  the  other  nations  from  whom  they  hope  or  fear  so  much. 
 The  visible  power  of  armies  was  to  them  far  more  real  than  the 
 unseen  help  of  the  Lord  which  the  prophet  believed  and  as- 
 serted to  be  sufficient  for  those  who  would  put  their  trust  in 
 Him  and  His  covenant  with  the  nation.  The  little  brook  of 
 Siloah  *  might  '  make  glad  the  city  of  God '  with  its  living  and 
 never-failing  stream  ;  but  what  was  it  in  their  eyes  compared 
 with  the  mighty  river  Euphrates,  which,  when  it  was  swollen 
 with  the  melted  snows  of  Armenia  —  resembling  the  great  king 
 who  recruited  his  countless  armies  in  the  like  mountainous 
 regions  —  yearly  overflowed  its   banks,  and  covered  the  whole 
 
 *  A  rock-hewn  reservoir  under  the  south-west  brow  of  Ophel,  which  is 
 itself  the  south-eastern  of  the  hills  which  form  the  site  of  Jerusalem, 
 still  bears  the  name  of  Siloah,  and  waters  the  gardens  which  still  occupy 
 the  place  of  those  'king's  gardens'  for  the  irrigation  of  which  it  may  have 
 been  first  made.  This  reservoir  is  supplied  by  a  conduit  tunnelled  through 
 Ophel,  from  a  larger  reservoir  now  called  the  'Fountain  of  the  Virgin;' 
 and  thence  the  tunnelling  penetrates  under  the  site  of  Solomon's  temple, 
 as  was  proved  when  the  Arabs  in  an  insurrection  got  into  the  city  by  this 
 channel.  The  water,  which  is  distinguishable  by  its  peculiar  taste  and 
 look,  as  well  as  by  its  intermittent  flow  (which  Jerome  mentions),  has  been 
 again  identified  in  a  bath  on  the  north-west  of  the  temple-site  ;  and  although 
 more  complete  investigations  have  hitherto  been  prevented  by  Tuikish 
 jealousy,  these  facts  would  be  enough  to  make  it  more  than  probable  that 
 there  is  hidden  somewhere  a  living  spring  which  supplies  these  existing 
 uses.  Among  the  military  advantages  of  Jerusalem,  Strabo  states  that  it 
 was  well  supplied  with  water,  while  there  was  utter  drought  beyond  the 
 walls;  and  Tacitus,  more  precisely,  that  it  possessed  a  perennial  fountain 
 with  subterranean  channels.  And  from  all  these  things  we  may  conclude, 
 with  Mr.  Fergusson,  that  this  was  the  living  fountain,  the  'softly  flowing' 
 waters  of  which  'made  glad  the  city  of  God;'  and  that  the  complicated 
 channels  through  which  it  still  passes  under  ground,  were  probably  among 
 those  works  of  military  engineering  which  llezekiah  executed  (2  Chron. 
 xxxii.  3,  4.;  Eccles.  xlviii.  17.).  The  saying  ascribed  to  Mahomet,  that 
 '  Zemzem  (in  Mecca)  and  Siloah  are  the  two  fountains  of  Paradise,'  is 
 worth  quoting  here.  See  Robinson's  Biblical  licscurchcs,  i.  493,  fl". ;  Ge- 
 senius,  Commentary  i.  276.;  Kitto's  Physical  Geography,  p.  411,  fl". ;  Fer- 
 gusson's  Topography  of  Jerusalem,  p.  69.  fl'.  ;  and  on  Isaiah,  xxii.  below. 
 
ISAIAH,  VIII.  7 — 16.  :    THE  PANIC,  AND  ITS  REMEDY.       103 
 
 plain  with  its  waters !     Therefore,  says  Isaiah,  this  great  river 
 
 —  this  king  of  Assyria  with  all  his  hosts  —  shall  the  Lord 
 bring  upon  this  people  and  land.  After  breaking  over  Syria 
 and  Samaria,  as  successive  dikes  which  hardly  for  a  moment 
 delay  its  course,  it  shall  pass  on  to  Judaea,  filling  the  land 
 with  its  floods,  till  the  monarchy,  and  the  nation  it  represents, 
 shall  be  reduced  to  the  near  peril  of  a  drowning  man,  whose 
 neck  the  waters  have  reached :  — 
 
 And  the  stretching  out  of  his  wings  shall  fill 
 The  breadth  of  thy  land,  O  Immanuel! 
 
 —  '  thy  land  shall  be  thus  overflowed,  O  child,  whom,  notwith- 
 standing, the  Lord  has  set  as  a  sign  that  He  is  present  with  us: 
 therefore,  however  the  deep  waters  may  go  over  us,  we  will 
 still  trust  in  that  Lord,  and  in  the  promise  of  which  thou  art 
 the  standing  witness.'  * 
 
 Trusting  in  this  Name,  Isaiah  defies  the  confederacy  of 
 Ephraitn  and  Syria,  and  the  power  of  Assyria  :  their  alliances, 
 their  warlike  array,  shall  be  broken  ;  their  counsels  shall  prove 
 foolish  ;  their  resolutious  and  orders  shall  fail  of  execution  ;  — 
 '  for  God  is  with  us.'  The  exact  force  of  the  original  can  be 
 apprehended  by  the  English  reader,  though  it  can  only  be  ex- 
 pressed —  and  that  somewhat  imperfectly  —  by  the  translation 
 of  the  word  '  Immanuel '  here,  and  its  retention  above. 
 
 There  was  a  general  panic  among  the  people ;  '  their  heart 
 was  moved  as  the  trees  of  the  wood  are  moved  by  the  wind,' 
 when  they  heard  that  Syria  was  confederate  with  Ephraim ; 
 their  cry  was  every  where,  '  a  confederacy!  has  been  made 
 against  us,  and  we  must  meet  it  by  a  counter  alliance  with  As- 
 syria ; '  and  the  prophet  says,  '  I  too  should  have  fallen  under  the 
 influence  of  this  panic,  if  the  Lord  had  not  laid  hold  of  me  with 
 a  strong  hand,  to  keep  me  in  the  way  of  dependence  on  Himself, 
 and  if  He  had  not  taught  me  to  escape  the  fear  which  possessed 
 
 *  "  Ac  si  dixisset,  terra  nihilominus  erit  tua,  O  Immanuel." — Calvin  in 
 Alexander. 
 
 f  There  is  no  difficulty  from  the  original  usually  meaning  a  treasonable 
 plot.  Judah  might  reasonably  apply  such  a  term  to  an  alliance  of  Israel 
 with  heathens  against  her,  even  if  the  feeling  with  which  a  nation  must  look 
 on  any  alliance  for  its  destruction,  would  not  justify  such  an  expression. 
 
 H  4 
 
104  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 my  countrymen,  by  making  the  Lord  of  hosts  my  fear,  and 
 my  dread,  by  sanctifying  Him  Himself,  as  I  now  in  His  name 
 call  on  you  to  do.'  To  sanctify*  the  Lord  of  hosts  is  in  mind 
 and  in  practice  to  recognise  Him  as  the  hohj  God,  the  Lord  who 
 is  absolute  (absolutus),  free  from  limitations  which  hinder  every 
 other  being  from  carrying  his  will  into  full  operation :  it  is  to 
 believe  with  the  whole  heart  that  God  can  and  does  govern  all 
 things  according  to  the  counsel  of  His  own  will,  that  what  He 
 determines  does  certainly  come  to  pass,  however  probabilities 
 and  appearances  may  be  against  the  belief.  He  who  thus  sanc- 
 tifies the  Lord  cannot  fear  any  other  power.  Therefore  Isaiah 
 goes  on,  — '  Sanctify  the  Lord,  and  He  shall  be  your  sanc- 
 tuary : '  recognise  Him  as  your  holy  King,  and  He  shall  be  a  holy 
 King  to  you,  raising  you  to  share  in  His  own  absolute  dominion 
 over  all  the  powers  of  the  world.  He  is  your  King,  and  you 
 are  entitled  to  claim  this  relationship ;  but  if  you  deny  it,  He 
 will  not  deny  it  also.  If  you  renounce  your  rights,  He  will 
 nevertheless  require  you  to  fulfil  your  duties.  If  you  put  your 
 trust  in  Him,  He  will  preserve  you  against  all  the  power  of  these 
 foreign  invaders,  but  He  will  as  certainly  cause  you  to  fall  under 
 their  yoke,  if  you  do  not  trust  in  Him.  Your  worldly  statesmen 
 dream  of  remedying  present  mischief,  and  securing  future  pros- 
 perity, by  craftily  playing  off  against  one  another  the  barbarian, 
 or  other,  nations  whom  they  cannot  hope  to  match  by  force ;  but 
 God  will  not  allow  this  to  you,  as  He  perchance  allows  it  to 
 other  peoples:  He  and  His  covenant  will  be  a  stumbling-block 
 in  your  way.  He  has  called  both  Ephraim  and  Judah  to  be  His 
 children,  and  to  do  His  work ;  and  if  you  refuse,  He  will  as 
 really  curse  jou  with  blindness  and  weakness,  as  He  would  still 
 bless  you  with  strength  and  wisdom  if  you  would  walk  in  His 
 way.  The  greater  part  of  'both  the  houses  of  Israel'  will  re- 
 fuse to  listen  ;  but  I  call  on  you,  the  small  remnant  of  my  faith- 
 ful hearers  and  followers,  to  wait  patiently  during  the  present 
 calamities,  and  to  believe  that  the  Lord  docs  but  hide  His  face  for 
 a  time,  that  the  covenant  and  promise  are  but  closed  and  scaled  f 
 with  a  more  formal  ratification  by  the  delay  in  their  fulfilment, 
 
 *  Compare  Numbers,  xx.  12.;  Deut.  xxxii.  51.;  Isaiah,  xxix.  23. 
 f  Compare  Isaiah,  xxix.  11.;  Daniel,  xii.  4.  9.     Also  Deut.  vi.  8.,  xi.  18.; 
 Trov.  vi.  20,21.,  vii.  2,  3. 
 
ISAIAH,  VIII.   17. — IX.   1. :    THE  NATIONAL  GLOOM.  105 
 
 and  that  my  words  and  acts,  and  my  name  (Salvation  of  the 
 Lord),  and  the  children  (Shear-jashub,  Immanuel,  Maher- 
 shalal-hash-baz),whomGod  has  given  me,  are  meanwhile  His  signs 
 and  pledges  to  yon  of  the  reality  of  that  ratification.  This  people 
 will  continue  their  habit  (from  the  days  of  Saul  and  earlier)  of 
 going  to  wizards  and  sorcerers,  that  they  may  raise  spirits  from 
 the  dead  to  tell  them  what  to  do  in  times  of  political  difficulty 
 like  the  present ;  but  do  you  reply,  when  they  call  on  you  to  join 
 with  them,  that  it  is  not  of  the  dead,  nor  of  the  sorcerers,  who 
 with  their  ventriloquism*  seem  to  receive  directions  from  the 
 shrill  voices  of  familiar  spirits,  that  men  should  inquire,  but  of 
 the  living  God,  and  of  the  prophets  who  declare  His  will  in 
 words  of  reason  and  righteousness.  Let  the  people,  let  Ahaz 
 and  his  counsellors,  refer  to  God's  law  and  covenant,  and  to  the 
 promises  based  thereon,  which  1  have  even  now  been  commis- 
 sioned to  deliver :  if  they  refuse  to  do  so,  there  is  no  dawn  of 
 light  in  the  darkness  of  their  souls,  nor  shall  they  find  any  dawn 
 to  the  night  of  gathering  calamities. 
 
 And  they  shall  pass  thi'ough  the  land  hardly  bestead  and  hungry: 
 And  it  shall  be  that  when  they  are  hungry  they  shall  fret  them- 
 selves, 
 And  shall  curse  their  king  and  their  God  ; 
 
 And  they  shall  look  upward,  and  they  shall  look  unto  the  earth  ; 
 And  behold  trouble  and  darkness,  dimness  of  anguish  ; 
 And  they  shall  be  driven  into  darkness. 
 
 So  completely  does  Isaiah  identify  the  two  kingdoms  of  Israel 
 as  one  people,  on  the  present  occasion,  that  as  the  image  of  this 
 darkness  gathers  itself  around  him,  he  contemplates  it,  not  as  in 
 the  land  of  Judah,  but  in  the  north  of  Israel,  in  that  border-land 
 and  debatable  ground  of  Galilee,  which  Avas  politically  and 
 religiously  debased  by  the  intermixture  of  Canaanitish  tribes 
 with  the  Hebrews  f ;  the  chief  cities  of  which  neither  Solo- 
 mon cared  to  retain,  nor  Hiram  to  accept  J;  which  lay  open 
 to  the  first  brunt  of  every  northern  invasion  ;  and  which  was 
 actually  wasted,  and  its  inhabitants  carried  away,  by  Tiglath- 
 
 *  The  Septuagint    translates  '  them  that  have  familiar  spirits'  by  677a- 
 (TTpijxvdoi.     '  Peep'  is  pipiunt,  the  '  squeak  and  gibber'  of  Shakspeare. 
 f   Judges,  i.  30—35.  J  1  Kings,  ix.  11—13. 
 
106  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 Pileser,  shortly  after  the  date  of  this  prophecy,  if  indeed  the 
 work  had  not  been  already  begun  by  his  predecessor  Pul  *,  as 
 seems  probable  from  a  comparison  of  2  Kings,  xv.  19.  29.  with 
 1  Chron.  v.  26.  v.  26,: — the  reading  of  the  Authorised  Ver- 
 sion of  our  text  may  also  seem  to  allude  to  two  successive 
 invasions ;  but  it  is  a  reading  rejected  by  all  the  modern 
 translators.  And  some  of  these  very  people  '  of  Asher,  and 
 Manasseh,  and  Zebulon,'  f  attended  the  summons  of  Heze- 
 kiah a  few  years  after,  and  gave  a  practical  recognition  of 
 the  unity  of  Israel  by  coming  up  to  Jerusalem  to  the  passover : 
 
 —  a  fact  interesting  in  itself,  and  in  its  reference  to  the  passage 
 before  us,  and  also  as  raising  the  question  whether  Isaiah,  or 
 his  disciples,  may  have  taken  any  steps  for  the  actual  promul- 
 gation of  this  prophecy  in  those  districts,  and  thus  by  their 
 preaching  have  prepared  the  way  for  its  fulfilment.  Considering 
 how  important,  wide-spread,  and  active  a  body  the  prophets  were, 
 and  how  much  evidence  there  is  both  in  Hebrew  history,  and  in 
 their  writings,  of  their  extensive  personal  acquaintance  with 
 every  neighbouring  country  and  people,  the  supposition  is  not 
 improbable:  and  so  we  pass  easily  from  this  partial  fulfilment 
 of  the  prophecy  then,  to  that  day  when,  on  that  same  sea-coast 
 of  Tiberias,  and  in  the  city  of  Capernaum,  was  heard  the  voice 
 of  a  greater  prophet  than  Isaiah,  preaching  and  saying  '  Repent, 
 for  the  kingdom  of  heaven'  —  a  greater  kingdom  than  that  of 
 Hezekiah  —  '  is  at  hand.'  J 
 
 Those  commentators,  who  protest  against  our  seeing  any 
 reference  in  this  glorious  vision  to  the  times  of  Isaiah,  lest 
 we  should  disparage  its  fulfilment   by   the   coming  of    Christ, 
 
 —  and  their  opponents,  who  forbid  us  to  view  it  in  the  light  of 
 the  gospel,  lest  we  should  overlook  the  fact  that  Isaiah  and 
 Hezekiah  were  men  of  flesh  and  blood,  like  ourselves, — both  scern 
 to  err  by  a  too  exclusive  literalncss,  and  preference  of  inferior 
 logic  for  philosophic  insight.  Why  should  Hebrew  history 
 alone  depart  from  the  law  of  all  other  histories,  that  the  earlier 
 events  must  be  read  in  the  light  of  the  later,  which  arc  their 
 
 *  Wc  have  still  to  wait  for  the  translation  of  the  annals  of  these  kin^s: 
 in  which,  however,  the  name  of  Men  ahem,  king  of  Israel,  has  been  read  by 
 Dr.  Ilincks. 
 
 |  2  Chron.  xxx.  1—11.  J  Matt.  iv.  12—25. 
 
ISAIAH,  IX.  2— 5.:    THE    GREAT    LIGHT.  107 
 
 necessary  developments'?  >Vhy  should  prophecy  be  honoured 
 by  making  it  out  to  be  a  mere  verbal  soothsaying  ?  Let  me 
 entreat  the  reader,  —  the  Christian  reader, — and  student  of  the 
 Hebrew  prophets,  to  dread  neither  of  these  bugbears,  but  to 
 see  and  to  reflect  for  himself,  in  the  firm  belief  that  reason  and 
 faith  are  ever  in  harmony,  and  that  neither  can  ever  be  rightly 
 possessed  to  the  exclusion  or  neglect  of  the  other.  If  the 
 English  poet  of  the  nineteenth  century,  whom  I  have  already 
 quoted,  claims  'a  vision  and  a  faculty  divine'  for  his  readers  as 
 well  as  himself,  Ave  need  not  hesitate  to  recognise  a  like  power 
 in  ourselves  for  the  better  understanding  Isaiah,  in  these  parts 
 of  his  discourses,  where,  as  here,  he  is  so  markedly  carried  out 
 of  himself.  He  sees,  as  we  may  see  too,  if  we  will  only  look, 
 the  thick  darkness,  spiritual  and  temporal,  which  was  gathering 
 over  the  land,  and  which  reached  its  height  when  the  nation 
 had  generally  lapsed  into  heathenism,  and  Ahaz  their  king  had 
 shut  up  the  temple,  and  substituted  the  worship  of  false  gods 
 even  to  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  son  to  Moloch  ;  and  when 
 Ephraim  had  called  in  a  heathen  power  to  enable  it  to  effect  its 
 fratricidal  designs  against  Judah,  and  Juclah  had  retaliated  by 
 summoning  another  still  stronger  heathen  nation,  and  the  whole 
 land,  over  which  David  and  Solomon  had  once  reigned  glo- 
 riously, lay  wasted  by  the  sword  and  tributary  to  the  Assyrian, 
 because  abandoned  by  the  Lord,  whom  they  had  first  aban- 
 doned. The  people  walk  in  darkness,  nay,  dwell  in  the  shadow 
 of  death  !  But,  see,  a  great  light  breaks  upon  the  gloom  :  mul- 
 titudes, full  of  joy  and  gladness,  throng  the  cities  and  the  fields 
 which  just  now  were  deserted ;  we  hear  the  shouts  of  the  harvest- 
 home,  while  they  present  the  first-fruits  to  the  Lord*;  we  see 
 the  triumphal  procession  going  up  to  the  temple  with  the  spoils  of 
 victory  f;  we  see  the  armour,  the  blood-stained  cloak,  and  the  war- 
 chariot,  gathered  to  be  burnt,  since  permanent  peace  is  established 
 in  the  land  :  we  know  that  they  who  sowed  in  tears  have  reaped 
 in  joy,  and  that  the  King  has  come  to  the  rescue  of  His  people; 
 that  the  yoke  of  the  despot,  and  the  rod  of  the  slave-master  are 
 broken  ;  and  that  a  deliverance  is  effected  greater  even  than  that 
 
 *  Deut.  xii.  11,  12.,  xvi.  11  —  15.;  Psalm  iv.  7. 
 
 f  Compare  1  Chron.  xviii.  11.;  2  Chron.  xx.  27,  28. 
 
108  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 ancient  deliverance  of  Israel  from  their  seven  years'  bondage,  on 
 the  night  when  '  the  Midianites  and  the  Amalekites,  and  all 
 the  children  of  the  east,  lay  along  in  the  valley '  (of  Jezreel,  in 
 this  same  Galilee  of  the  Gentiles),  '  like  grasshoppers,  and  their 
 camels  without  number,  as  the  sand  of  the  sea-side  for  multi- 
 tude,' but  '  ran,  and  cried,  and  fled,'  when  the  three  hundred 
 raised  their  battle-shout,  '  The  sword  of  the  Lord  and  of 
 Gideon  :'*  and  then  we  recall  the  actual  debasement,  under  Ahaz, 
 and  ask,  as  his  disciples  must  have  asked  Isaiah,  and  he  must 
 have  asked  himself,  and  his  God  —  how  this  vision  and  its 
 promises  can  be  true?  I  do  not  quote  the  mighty  words 
 of  the  prophetic  reply ;  but  its  sense  in  modern  prose,  when 
 we  have  somewhat  unravelled  the  many  thoughts  and  images 
 which  are  gathered  up  into  each  word,  seems  to  be  this, — 
 that  the  believing  Israelites  are  to  know  that  Isaiah's  children, 
 and  especially  the  second,  with  whom,  in  more  than  one  moment 
 of  special  inspiration,  he  has  connected  the  name  of  Immanuel, 
 though  he  had  formerly  called  him  Malier-shalal-hash-baz,  are 
 signs  and  pledges  that  God  has  not  forgotten  His  covenant,  nor 
 His  ancient  promises  of  a  Saviour — the  seed  of  the  woman,  and 
 the  seed  of  Abraham  and  David — in  whom  all  nations  should  be 
 blessed  ;  that  this  child  is  a  witness  that  the  Lord,  the  invisible 
 King,  is  now  actually  among  them,  notwithstanding  the  iniquity 
 of  both  prince  and  people  ;  and  that  He  will  ere  long  manifest 
 His  presence  and  power,  by  restoring  the  kingdom  from  its 
 ruinous  condition,  in  the  person  of  a  royal  deliverer,  a  Mes- 
 siah, of  the  line  of  David,  f 
 
 And,  as  Jacob  conferred  the  birthright  and  blessing  of  his 
 race  upon  the  sons  of  Joseph  by  saying,  '  Let  my  name  be 
 named  on  them,  and  the  name  of  my  fathers  Abraham  and 
 Isaac'  (Genesis,  xlviii.  16.);  or  as  the  children  of  Israel  in  the 
 wilderness  were  warned  to  obey  the  angel  who  went  before 
 them,  because  the  'name  of  the  Lord  was  in  him;'  so  the 
 Name  of  God,  wonderful  in  counsel,  mighty  in  work,  the  Father 
 of  their  fathers  and  of  their  children  for  a  thousand  generations, 
 
 *  Judges,  vii. 
 
 -j-  To  those  for  whom  music  not  only  '  charms  the  sense,'  but  also  embodies 
 thoughts  and  feelings  too  deep  for  words,  Handel's  '  Messiah'  is  no  mean 
 comment  on  these  prophecies. 
 
ISAIAH,  IX.    6,  7.:    e  UNTO    US    A    CHILD    IS    BORN.'  109 
 
 the  eternal  Upholder  of  their  race  and  their  nation,  and  of  its 
 prosperity  and  peace,  shall  be  named  upon,  shall  be  in,  this 
 anointed  saviour.  The  eternal  kingdom  already  lies  about 
 them,  though  they  deny  and  reject  it ;  it  has  its  foundations  in 
 the  unchangeable  purpose  of  God,  and  not  in  the  good  or  evil 
 dispositions  of  this  or  that  king  and  his  subjects;  and  there- 
 fore, with  no  material  hiuderance  from  the  one,  nor  help  from 
 the  other,  of  these,  the  zeal  of  God  Himself  will  effectually 
 carry  forward  the  work,  and  spread  this  kingdom  of  righteous- 
 ness and  peace,  without  limit  of  time  or  place.  Some  com- 
 mentators think  '  mighty  hero  '  a  more  accurate  translation  than 
 '  mighty  God,'  as  the  word  (?x)  is  used  in  such  a  sense  in  Eze- 
 kiel,  xxxi.  11.,  and  xxxii.  21.,  in  the  former  of  which  places  it  is 
 applied  to  Nebuchadnezzar :  but  we  know  that  the  Old  Testa- 
 ment does  not  scruple  to  l  call  them  gods  to  whom  the  word  of 
 God  came  ; '  and  I  prefer  our  Authorised  Translation,  explaining 
 it  as  I  have  here  done. 
 
 It  requires  a  deeper  insight  into  the  relative  activity  of  the 
 imagination  and  the  logical  faculties  in  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
 and  into  the  degree  of  definiteness  with  which  —  in  actual  his- 
 torical fact  —  the  expectation  of  a  Messiah  presented  itself  to 
 Isaiah  and  his  contemporaries,  than  I  possess,  to  authorise  a  po- 
 sitive opinion  how  far  the  prophet,  in  uttering  the  words  before 
 us,  was  thinking  of  his  own  times  and  circumstances.  Yet  I 
 am  unable  to  form  any  distinct  notion  of  Isaiah  as  a  man  and 
 Israelite,  and  as  a  prophet  of  the  Lord  in  contrast  with  those 
 muttering  wizards  he  denounces,  without  supposing  that,  at 
 this  period  of  his  life  and  ministry,  he  must  have  connected 
 the  thought  of  '  the  Child '  with  Hezekiah,  on  whom  the 
 name  of  the  mighty  God  had  been  actually  named*,  and  who 
 (being  now  a  boy  nine  or  ten  years  old),  may  already  have  given 
 promise  of  the  piety  which  afterwards  distinguished  him:  —  and 
 that  he  would  not,  at  this  time,  have  considered  that  his  prediction 
 would  be  quite  inadequately  realized,  if  the  youthful  prince 
 should,  on  his  accession  to  the  throne  of  David  and  Solomon, 
 renew  the  glories  of  their  reigns,  in  which  peace  and  justice 
 were  established  at  home  and  abroad,  through  trust  in  the  Lord 
 
 *  Hezekiah  means  'the  Lord  will  strengthen.' 
 
110  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 and  His  covenant:  — reigns  of  which  the  historical  facts  must 
 be  studied  in  the  light  which  the  Book  of  Psalms,  and  such 
 passages  as  2  Chronicles,  ix.  1 — 8.,  throw  on  them.  I  say,  at 
 this  time,  because  we  shall  have  occasion  to  inquire,  what  was 
 the  effect  on  Isaiah's  mind  when  he  did  see  a  restoration,  under 
 Hezekiah,  of  such  a  reign  of  righteousness  and  prosperity  ;  and 
 whether  his  expectation  of  the  Messiah  did  not  eventually  as 
 sume  a  very  different  form  from  what  could  have  been  possible 
 to  him  at  the  time  we  now  speak  of.  There  is  a  method,  through 
 this  whole  book  of  Isaiah's  prophecies,  which  reflects  a  corre- 
 sponding progress  in  the  prophet's  own  mind;  and  this  method 
 offers  us  a  clue  through  difficulties  which  are  otherwise  impas- 
 sable, if  we  will  only  hold  it  fast,  and  follow  its  guidance  fairly. 
 
EPIC    UNITY    OF    ISAIAH,  VII. — XII.  Ill 
 
 CHAPTER  VIII. 
 
 ISAIAH    VII. — XII. EPIC     UNITY. OBSTINATE      ENERGY     OF     THE     HERBEW 
 
 RACE.  LAWLESSNESS      OF     THE      TEN    TRIBES. LEGALISM     OF     JUDAH.  
 
 THE    KING    OF    ASSYRIA.  GODS  IN  THE    IMAGE  OF  MEN. THE  SCOURGE  OF 
 
 NATIONS,      AND     ITS     WIELDER.  ANCIENT     ROADS.    THE     KING     OF    THE 
 
 STOCK  OF  JESSE. THE    GOLDEN  AGE.  FUSION    OF  CONFLICTING  ELEMENTS 
 
 IN     A     NATION. CONSEQUENCES     OF     THE     REVOLT     OF      EPHRAIM.  DE- 
 PORTATION   OF    JEWS    IN    ISAIAH'S    TIME. THE    UNIVERSAL    CHURCH ITS 
 
 RELATION    TO    THE    WORLD.  THE    WATER    OF    SALVATION. 
 
 The  strophical  arrangement  of  Isaiah,  ix.  8.  to  x.  4,,  is  sup- 
 posed by  many  commentators  to  mark  it  for  a  distinct  prophecy, 
 delivered  soon  after  the  last ;  while  they  see  in  the  allusion  to 
 Samaria,  as  actually  taken  by  the  Assyrians  (chap.  x.  10.),  proof 
 that  the  following  prophecy  from  x.  5.  to  the  end  of  chapter  xii. 
 cannot  date  earlier  than  the  sixth  year  of  Hezekiah.  But  these 
 arguments  are  not  conclusive.  There  is  no  reason  why  a  style 
 of  discourse  in  which  historical  narrative,  political  oratory,  and 
 poetical  rhythm  as  well  as  imagery,  are  equally  in  place,  should 
 not  embody  in  itself  a  refrain  several  times  repeated  and  then 
 dropped,  just  as  in  other  instances  we  find  it  containing  a  song 
 or  psalm.*  Nor  shall  we  find  any  difficulty  in  explaining, 
 by  the  ordinary  prophetic  usage  of  the  past  for  the  future, 
 a  reference  to  the  taking  of  Samaria,  not  more,  though  not 
 less,  definite  than  those  which  were  undoubtedly  made  before 
 the  event,  even  if  it  be  premature  to  rely  on  the  reading  of 
 the  Khorsabad  inscription,  referred  to  above,  as  recording  a 
 capture  of  Samaria  just  after  that  of  Damascus,  and  ten 
 years  before  that  which  was  previously  known  to  us.  On 
 the  other  hand,  we  have  the  probability  of  a  general  ad- 
 herence to  chronological  order  in  the  actual  arrangement  of 
 the  book  :  the  indications  of  an  unbroken  current  of  thought  f : 
 the   unity    of  subject  of  the  whole  portion,    chapters  vii.    to 
 
 *  Chap.  xxvi.  1.,  xxvii.  2.;  and  compare  the  repetition  in  Amos,  i.  and  ii. 
 
 f  As  is  verses  24,  25,  26,  of  chapter  x.,  compared  with  chapter  viii.  8,  9, 
 10.;  x.  6.,  with  viii.  1.  4.;  x.  27.,  with  ix.  3.;  x.  21.,  with  vii.  3.  (Shear- 
 jashnb);  xi.  1—5.,  with  ix.  6,  7.;  and  xi.  13,  14.,  with  ix.  12.  20,  21. 
 
112  IIEBREW   POLITICS, 
 
 xii.  Inclusive :  and,  lastly,  the  probability,  of  which  I  believe 
 the  reader  will  see  more  evidence  the  longer  he  considers  the 
 subject,  that  here,  as  throughout  the  book,  the  author's  own 
 hand  may  have  been  at  work,  arranging,  retouching,  and  fusing 
 together  the  records  of  discourses  originally  distinct.  These 
 chapters  form  a  kind  of  epic  whole  (itself  a  part  of  a  still  larger 
 whole),  in  which  the  internecine  enmities  of  the  Ten  Tribes 
 among  themselves,  and  with  Judah,  and  the  alliances  with  the 
 heathen  nations,  by  which  they  support  these  enmities,  only  to 
 involve  themselves  in  the  common  ruin,  are  traced  to  their  first 
 causes,  and  the  loss  of  national  unity  and  freedom  shown  to  be 
 the  consequence  of  the  loss  of  that  spiritual  unity  and  liberty 
 which  can  only  spring  from,  and  be  sustained  by,  a  living  faith 
 —  in  king  and  people  —  in  the  unseen  but  present  Lord  of  the 
 nation  and  of  each  member  of  it :  subjection  to  the  heathenish, 
 godless,  Assyrian  power,  is  shown  to  be  the  proper  and  effectual 
 punishment  of  the  national  sin  ;  and  a  restoration,  in  and  through 
 the  reign  of  a  righteous  prince  of  the  line  of  David,  is  declared 
 to  be  certain,  because  God  Himself  is  pledged  to  it  by  a  cove- 
 nant which  men's  evil  doings  cannot  cancel.  The  prophet 
 stands  as  on  a  hill  or  tower,  and  sees  the  past  and  the  future, 
 the  distant  and  the  near,  in  one  completed  whole,  in  which  all 
 events  and  all  wills  have  but  subserved  the  almighty  Master- 
 will  ;  and,  therefore,  Ave  find  here  an  instance  of  the  propriety 
 of  the  word  epic,  which  has  with  so  much  force  been  applied  to 
 the  writings  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  generally  by  Mr.  Maurice.* 
 In  the  second  edition  of  the  work  referred  to,  this  author 
 has,  indeed,  omitted  this  and  much  more  of  formal  comparison 
 between  the  Hebrew  and  classical  types  of  literature,  ap- 
 parently lest  his  readers  should  mistake  a  vital  relation  for  a 
 technical  correspondence,  and  fall  into  the  bondage  to  names 
 which  that  mistake  always  brings  us.  But  if  we  take  care  how 
 we  call  the  prophets  '  epic  poets,'  and  then  fancy  we  understand 
 them,  we  shall  find  a  real  light  thrown  on  the  subject  by  this 
 word,  which  is  farther  explained  by  Coleridge's  observation, 
 that  epic  and  dramatic  poetry  are  alike  founded  on  the  relation 
 
 *  Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philosophy,  1st  edition.     See  also  Educational 
 Magazine,  vol.  ii.  p.  22G. 
 
ISAIAH  IX.  8  — 17.:  OBSTINATE  ENERGY  OF  HEBREW  RACE.    113 
 
 of  Providence  to  the  human  will ;  but  that  while,  in  the  latter, 
 the  will  is  exhibited  as  struggling  with  fate,  in  the  former  a 
 pre-announced  fate  (or  Providence)  gradually  adjusts  and  em- 
 ploys the  will  and  the  events  as  the  instruments  for  accomplish- 
 ing its  designs  :  —  Aios  Be  reXslsro  /SouX^.* 
 
 The  Jewish  historian,  in  relating  the  fall  of  Samaria  (2  Kings, 
 xvii.)  as  the  punishment  of  national  sin,  says,  '  Yet  the  Lord 
 testified  against  Israel,  and  against  Judah,  by  all  the  prophets 
 and  all  the  seers,  saying,  Turn  ye  from  your  evil  ways,  and 
 keep  my  commandments  and  statutes,  according  to  the  law  which 
 I  commanded  your  fathers,  and  which  I  sent  to  you  by  my  ser- 
 vants the  prophets.'  And  here  we  have  one  of  these  repeated 
 warnings,  in  this  '  word  which  the  Lord  sent  unto  Jacob,'  by 
 Isaiah.  The  Ten  Tribes  had  already  suffered  many  an  infliction  ; 
 their  political  organisation  had  often  been  broken  up  by  civil 
 wars  and  foreign  invasions,  as  the  house  of  unburnt  brick  dis- 
 solves into  mud  before  the  rain ;  and  the  flower  of  the  people  had 
 been  cut  down  as  lavishly  as  men  cut  down  the  cheap  syca- 
 mores :  but  with  that  stoutness  of  heart,  that  obstinate  tough- 
 ness, which,  in  all  ages  to  the  present,  has  marked  this  race,  the 
 men  of  Ephraim  and  Samaria  seem  to  rise  superior  to  every  ca- 
 limity;  like  Solomon  (1  Kings,  x.  27.)  they  will  change  the 
 sycamores  for  cedars,  and  they  will  replace  the  bricks  with 
 hewn  stones.  The  conversion  of  Damascus  from  an  ancient 
 enemy  to  an  ally  encourages  them  in  their  hopes  ;  but  the  Lord 
 will  confound  their  policy  by  bringing  the  conquerors  of  Damas- 
 cus upon  them. 
 
 The  histories  mention  inroads  of  the  Philistines  into  Judah, 
 though  not  into  Israel,  at  this  period  ;  but  we  can  believe  the 
 latter  did  not  escape,  as  these  marauders  were  not  likely  to  miss 
 an  opportunity,  especially  when  once  in  movement.  The 
 *  Syrians '  are  either  the  same  allies  whose  arms,  on  their 
 becoming  tributary  to  Tiglath-Pileser,  would  at  once  be  turned 
 against  Ephraim ;  or  the  word  (Aram)  may  be  used  in  a  sense 
 wide  enough  to  include  the  Assyrians  themselves.  Tiglath- 
 Pileser  took  Damascus,  killed  Rezin,  and  carried  the  people 
 away  captive  ;  and  we  find  Ahaz  going  there  to  meet  the  Assy- 
 
 *  Literary  Remains,  vol.  ii.  pp.  159.  164. 
 
 I 
 
114  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 rian.  when  it  is  related  that  he  took  the  pattern  of  an  altar  at 
 Damascus,  and  adopted  the  gods  of  Syria,  '  because  they  helped 
 them,'  an  account  which  can  only  be  applicable  to  the  gods  of 
 Tiglath-Pileser.* 
 
 '  The  people  turneth  not  unto  Him  that  smiteth  them, '  and 
 therefore  they  shall  be  smitten  again  and  again.  It  will  not  be 
 a  mere  political  change  of  an  Assyrian  satrap  for  an  Israelite 
 king,  but  every  rank,  every  household,  from  the  highest  to  the 
 lowest,  shall  suffer: — though  youth  is  the  season  of  joy,  the 
 young  men  shall  find  that  it  is  not  so,  when  the  Lord,  the  source 
 of  joy,  has  no  joy  in  them ;  though  mercy  and  pity  are  the  natural 
 right  of  the  fatherless  and  widow,  they  shall  find  that  God 
 himself  refuses  them  these  :  and  the  reason  is,  that  all  of  them, 
 man,  woman,  and  child,  are  demoralised  and  corrupted;  one 
 may  be  a  hypocrite,  and  another  an  open  sinner,  but  all  speak, 
 because  their  heart  believes,  the  language  of  that  folly  which  is 
 contrary  to,  and  which  denies  and  excludes,  the  knowledge  of 
 God.  That  in  the  middle  of  this  threatening  of  universal 
 calamity  upon  head  and  tail,  palm-tree  and  rush,  we  should  find 
 an  explanation  that  the  'tail'  is  the  prophet  that  teacheth  lies, 
 and  not  the  common  people,  as  the  context  demands,  does  not 
 require  the  supposition  of  an  interpolation  by  a  later  hand,  as 
 some  say.  We  have  constant  occasion  to  notice  the  Hebrew 
 disregard  of  that  mere  logical  balance  of  sentences  which 
 indeed  soon  becomes  an  intolerable  pedantry  in  any  other  lan- 
 guage :  and  here  Isaiah's  knowledge  of  what  the  teachers  of  a 
 people  ought  to  be,  and  might  be,  and  of  how  great  is  their 
 personal  responsibility,  stops  him,  before  he  can  complete  the 
 explanation  of  the  tail  and  the  rush,  and  he  turns  it  as  though 
 he  had  said,  '  No,  the  common  people  are  brutal  and  degraded 
 enough,  but  the  men  who  have  been  the  cause  of  this  debase- 
 ment are  more  guilty,  and  more  contemptible  than  they :  they 
 are  the  dregs  of  all.' 
 
 The  wickedness  of  the  land  becomes  its  own  punishment,  and 
 burns  with  a  fury  which  is  indeed  the  wrath  of  God,  while  its 
 fuel  is  the  people  themselves.  The  images  of  slaughter  and 
 fjrc — at  once  fact  and  symbol — suggest  that  of  famine  so  despc- 
 
 *  2  Kings,  xvi.,  2  Chron.  xxviii. 
 
ISAIAH  IX.  18 — 21.:    ANARCHY  OF  THE   TEN  TRIBES.        115 
 
 rate  that  e  no  man  shall  spare  his  brother,'  nay  '  they  shall  eat 
 every  one  the  flesh  of  his  own  arm.'  Ephraim  and  Manasseh 
 were  brethren  of  each  other,  and  of  Judah :  and  the  history  of 
 the  kingdom  of  the  former  is  a  history  of  tyrannies,  rebellions, 
 anarchies  at  home ;  of  wars  with  Judah ;  and  of  invasions  and 
 subjugations  by  foreigners;  and  even  at  this  time,  the  assassina- 
 tion of  Pekah  seems  to  have  been  followed  by  a  nine  years' 
 interregnum  and  anarchy,  as  far  as  we  can  trace  and  make  out 
 the  lines  of  a  picture  of  which  the  indistinctness  is  a  token 
 of  its  accurate  representation  of  the  reality.*  '  The  allusions 
 of  the  verse,'  says  Dr.  Alexander,  care  not  to  one  exclusive 
 period,  but  to  a  protracted  series  of  events.  The  intestine 
 strifes  of  Ephraim  and  Manasseh,  although  not  recorded  in 
 detail,  may  be  inferred  from  various  incidental  statements.  Of 
 their  ancient  rivalry  we  have  examples  in  the  history  of  Gideon 
 (Judges,  viii.  1 — 3.)  and  Jephthah  (Judges,  xii.  1 — 6.);  and  as 
 to  later  times,  it  is  observed  by  Vitringa  that  of  all  who  suc- 
 ceeded Jeroboam,  the  second  on  the  throne  of  Israel,  Pekahiah 
 alone  appears  to  have  attained  it  without  treachery  or  blood- 
 shed. That  Manasseh  and  Ephraim  were  both  against  Judah, 
 may  refer  either  to  their  constant  enmity  or  to  particular 
 attacks.  No  sooner  did  one  party  gain  the  upper  hand  in  the 
 kingdom  of  the  Ten  Tribes,  than  it  seems  to  have  addressed 
 itself  to  the  favourite  work  of  harassing  or  conquering  Judah, 
 as  in  the  case  of  Pekah,  who  invaded  it  almost  as  soon  as 
 he  had  waded  to  the  throne  through  the  blood  of  Pekahiah. 'f 
 
 The  strophical  form  connects  the  following  verses  (x.  1 — 4.) 
 with  the  preceding,  as  the  exclamation  with  which  they  begin 
 does  with  those  that  come  after ;  and  in  both  are  corresponding 
 links  of  the  subject  itself.  The  prophet  has  described  the  sins 
 of  Ephraim  in  a  general  manner ;  but  on  the  mention  of  Judah, 
 he  proceeds  to  denounce  what  we  know  from  the  whole  tenour 
 of  his  discourses  he  felt  to  be  the  worst  form  of  the  guilt  of 
 his  own  people,  with  a  particularity  which  it  is  perhaps  not 
 
 *  Compare  the  historical  accounts  and  dates,  in  2  Kings,  xv.,  with  Hosea, 
 vii.  7. 
 
 f  Alexander's  Prophecies  of  Isaiah,  chap.  ix.  20.  It  is  worth  mentioning, 
 that  for  critical  purposes  the  reader  must  consult  the  unabridged  American 
 edition  of  this  learned  work,  or  its  Glasgow  reprint. 
 
 i  2 
 
116  HEBKEW    POLITICS. 
 
 fanciful  to  attribute  to  his  thoughts  being  now  directed  home- 
 wards. The  Ten  Tribes  were  far  more  ferocious  and  anarchical 
 than  the  men  of  Judah  :  there  are  many  indications  in  the 
 latter  of  that  national  respect  for  law  which  so  characterises  the 
 English,  that  it  has  been  observed  *,  that  though  history  attri- 
 butes to  us  our  share  in  national  wickedness,  our  crimes  have 
 almost  always  been  committed  under  colour  of  law,  and  not  by 
 open  violence,  —  as  in  the  series  of  judicial  murders  in  the 
 reigns  of  Henry  VIII.,  Charles  II.,  and  James  II.  And 
 therefore,  Isaiah's  mind  is,  perhaps,  recurring  to  Judah,  when 
 he  denounces  the  utmost  severity  of  God's  wrath  in  the  day  in 
 which  He,  the  righteous  Judge,  shall  come  to  visit  '  an  hypo- 
 critical nation,'  whose  nobles  and  magistrates  decree,  and  execute, 
 unrighteous  decrees. 
 
 To  turn  aside  the  needy  from  judgment, 
 
 And  to  take  away  the  right  from  the  poor  of  my  people, 
 
 That  widows  may  be  their  prey, 
 
 And  that  they  may  rob  the  fatherless  ! 
 
 They  are  satisfied  that  they  are  safe  in  their  heartless  selfish- 
 ness, with  peace  at  home  and  protection  abroad  restored  by  their 
 statecraft  and  their  alliance  with  Assyria.  But  while  they  thus 
 rejoice  at  home,  '  desolation  cometh  from  far.'  To  whom  will 
 they  fly  for  help  when  God  has  abandoned  them?  Under 
 whose  protection  will  they  leave  their  wealth,  their  dignities, 
 their  glory,  which  they  have  been  heaping  up  for  themselves  ? 
 Captivity  or  death  are  the  only  prospects  before  them.  And 
 yet,  as  though  no  judgments  could  sufficiently  condemn  and 
 punish  their  utter  wickedness,  the  prophet  repeats, 
 
 For  all  this  His  anger  is  not  turned  away, 
 But  His  hand  is  stretched  out  still. 
 
 Where  the  arguments  of  the  learned  commentators  seem  so 
 nearly  balanced,  and  no  one  shows  such  an  insight  into  the  spirit 
 of  the  whole  text  as  to  claim  submission  to  his  authority,  I  do 
 not  presume  to  dogmatise  :  but  in  such  a  case  we  must  assume 
 something;  and  on  the  assumption  which  I  have  already  pre- 
 ferred, that  these  chapters  (vii.  to  xii.)  form  one  prophecy,  the 
 
 *  By  Lord  Campbell. 
 
ISAIAH  X.  5—12.:    THE    STOUT    KING    OF    ASSYRIA.         117 
 
 scope  of  the  portion  before  us  will  be  this: — Isaiah  turns  from 
 Ephraim  and  Judah  to  Assyria  with  an  apparent  abruptness 
 which  does  but  half  conceal  the  real  connection,  or  rather 
 unity,  of  all  the  parts  of  his  subject :  quite  ignoring  the  petty 
 statecraft  by  which  Ahaz  and  his  counsellors  were  bringing 
 Assyria  upon  themselves  as  well  as  on  their  enemies,  the  pro- 
 phet goes  at  once  to  the  heart  of  the  matter,  and  shows  us  the 
 Lord  come  to  execute  justice  upon  the  nations,  and  the 
 Assyrians  as  the  rod  and  instrument  of  that  justice  ;  and  he 
 employs  the  whole  force  of  his  imagination  to  do  justice  to  '  the 
 stout  heart  of  the  king  of  Assyria,  and  the  glory  of  his  high 
 looks,'  in  order  that  he  may  give  more  emphasis  to  the  scorn 
 with  which  the  Lord,  and  the  servants  of  the  Lord,  look  on 
 his  pretensions  and  power,  and  that  he  may  bring  into  fuller 
 contrast  with  this  kingdom  of  the  world,  which  Ahaz  and  his 
 people  make  the  sole  object  of  their  hopes  and  fears,  that  other 
 kingdom  which  stands,  and  ever  shall  stand,  in  the  will  not  of 
 man  but  of  God.  The  old  Babel  monarchy,  which  carried  its 
 traditions  back  to  the  days  of  Nimrod,  that  mighty  hunter 
 before  the  Lord,  and  was  in  all  ages  the  very  type  of  sheer, 
 godless,  arbitrary  power,  had,  in  the  time  of  Isaiah  and  the 
 generation  before  him,  renewed  its  strength,  and  become  the 
 terror  and  the  scourge  of  all  the  neighbouring  countries ;  for  the 
 Lord  of  hosts,  the  Lord  of  the  whole  earth,  had  sent  this 
 northern  conqueror  forth,  and  *  given  him  a  charge  to  take  the 
 spoil  and  to  take  the  prey.'  One  nation  after  another  had  fallen 
 before  him ;  his  satraps  sat  in  the  thrones  of  their  once  inde- 
 pendent kings ;  the  national  gods  of  ancient  kingdoms  could  not 
 preserve  their  shrines  nor  their  votaries  from  his  hand  ;  Samaria 
 might  trust  to  her  golden  calves,  but  they  were  within  his 
 grasp ;  and  the  cherubims  of  Jerusalem,  or  what  other  unseen 
 images  might  be  hidden  and  worshipped  in  her  holy  of  holies, 
 would  soon  prove  equally  powerless :  —  thus  he  boasted,  little 
 thinking  that  he  was  the  merest  tool  in  the  hands  of  an  un- 
 known Master,  who  was  exactly  limiting  his  actions  by  the  pur- 
 poses for  which  he  was  being  used. 
 
 'I  took  the  cities,  I  gave  them  up  to  pillage,  I  slew  the 
 inhabitants ; '  or,  '  I  devastated  the  country,  I  took  away  the 
 king,  with  his  priests  and  his  gods,  his  warriors  and  his  wives, 
 
 i  3 
 
118  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 his  gold,  silver,  and  cattle,  I  carried  all  the  men  and  women 
 into  slavery,  I  brought  there  the  people  of  other  cities;'  —  such 
 are  the  records  which  meet  us  every  where  in  the  newly-de- 
 ciphered annals  of  these  Assyrian  kings,  and  such  the  subjects 
 of  the  sculptures  which  ornamented  their  palaces.  But  the 
 reference  is  also  constant  to  the  god  in  whose  strength  they 
 have  done  these  things,  and  whose  worship  they  have  thereby 
 established  every  where  :  and  it  is  interesting  to  notice  the 
 apparent  one-sidedness  with  which  Isaiah,  here  and  elsewhere, 
 omits  all  reference  to  this  religious  spirit  of  the  conquerors, 
 while  his  words  are  otherwise  (except  for  the  poetry)  so  exact  a 
 counterpart  of  the  Assyrian  phraseology.  It  is  the  one-sided- 
 ness of  the  practical  man,  who  goes  straight  to  the  single  point 
 on  which  all  the  rest  really  depends.  The  prophet  who,  without 
 phrase  of  qualification,  told  the  strictly  religious  Jews  that  the 
 Avhole  ritual  which  they  were  practising  in  exact  conformity 
 with  the  law,  was  an  unbearable  abomination  *,  would  have 
 asserted,  iu  equally  plain  terms,  that  the  religion  of  Assyria 
 was  no  religion.  God,  the  living  and  true  God,  had  revealed 
 Himself  to  Isaiah,  and  to  Isaiah's  nation,  as  the  Being  in  whose 
 image  man  was  created ;  and  in  whom  therefore  justice,  honesty, 
 truth,  kindness,  and  every  other  properly  human  virtue,  which 
 in  man  feebly  struggled  for  existence,  had  its  own  perfect, 
 absolute  reality,  without  the  limits  or  the  defects  of  the  finite. 
 This  Lord  of  man,  the  Jehovah,  or  I  AMf,  had  made  Himself 
 known  to  Isaiah  as  He  had  to  Moses,  and  as  He  does  still  to 
 each  of  us :  and  when  the  prophet  turned  to  look  at  the  c  gods 
 of  the  nations '  he  saw  at  once  that  they  were  something  different 
 —  nay,  exactly  reverse, — in  kind.  On  the  one  hand,  God  was 
 the  prototype  of  man ;  on  the  other,  man  of  God.  The  god  of 
 the  Assyrian  was  made  in  the  image  of  the  Assyrian,  was  the 
 projected  form  of  his  own  character.  The  spirit  which  was 
 embodied  in  that  dignified  human  figure  with  its  eagle's  head 
 and  wings,  was  but  the  spirit  of  the  actual  Sargon  or  Sen- 
 nacherib, with  his  wide  and  resistless  swoop,  his  ravenous  maw, 
 his  royal  cruelty 4     And  when  he  led  out  that  terrible  cavalry, 
 
 *  Isaiah,  i.  11—14. 
 
 T  Exodus,  iii.  14. 
 
 \  See  the  majestic  figures  who  have  captives  Hayed,  or  their  eyes  put  out, 
 
ISATAII  X.   13.:    GODS    IN    THE    IMAGE    OF    MEN.  119 
 
 in  the  ranks  of  which  there  was  no  ungirt  warrior,  no  unbent 
 bow,  no  horse's  hoof  not  hard  as  flint,  and  whose  shout  struck 
 panic  into  all  who  heard  it  *,  when  he  went  forth  to  conquest 
 at  their  head,  from  that  palace  and  city  of  which  we  have  not 
 altogether  to  imagine  the  magnificence,  —  we  know  that  the 
 winged  lions,  and  the  human-headed  bulls,  whom  he  took  with 
 him,  full  of  fierce  life,  were  but  imperfectly  represented  by 
 those  which  he  left  behind,  carved  in  stone,  at  the  portals  of  his 
 own  house,  or  the  house  of  his  god.  We  may  see  from  the 
 vision  in  chapter  vi.,  that  the  distinction  between  the  two  kinds 
 of  religion  —  that  which  God  reveals  to  man,  and  that  which 
 man  makes  for  himself — is  not  obliterated  or  enfeebled,  but 
 brought  out  more  plainly,  by  the  fact  that  the  cherubims  at 
 Jerusalem  were,  in  other  respects,  the  counterparts  of  these 
 sphinx-like  creatures  of  the  neighbouring  nations :  we  see  the 
 same  human  element,  the  same  religious  sentiment,  the  same 
 capacity  for  worship,  the  same  human  methods  of  expressing 
 this  sentiment  and  capacity :  the  difference  is  between  the  na- 
 tion, or  the  man,  in  whom  this  human  element  is  met  by  a  real 
 unveiling  and  communication  of  God  Himself,  from  above,  and 
 those  in  whom  it  is  not  so  met,  and  who  therefore  substitute  a 
 projection  of  themselves  for  its  independent  existence.  At  the 
 same  time  we  must  not,  in  our  objective  study  of  the  heathen 
 world,  overlook  that  we  Christians  (like  the  Jews  of  old)  do 
 habitually  combine  much  of  this  heathenish  temper  with  the 
 true  faith  which  has  been  given  us.  If  we  look  in  any  direction 
 where  the  particular  religious  prejudice  no  longer  blinds  us,  we 
 can  see,  for  instance,  how  much  of  the  harsh  notions  which 
 Calvin  and  the  Puritans  mixed  up  (as  we  now  perceive  so  un- 
 worthily) with  their  true  worship  of  God,  was  the  reflex  of 
 men's  ordinary  notions  of  justice,  and  of  magisterial  duty  as  well 
 as  right,  in  those  dajrs,  and  which  did  not  shock  them  when 
 attributed  to  God,  because  they  held  them,  as  of  course,  in  all 
 their  worldly  dealings.  So,  the  new  form  which  the  f  doctrine 
 of  election  and  reprobation'  took,  in  the  religious  revival  of  the 
 last  century,  did  but  reflect  the  narrow  class  notions  which  took 
 
 in   their  presence ;  as,   for  instance,  Sennacherib  at  Lachish,  in  Layard's 
 Nineveh  and  Babylon  (1S53),  p.  150.     Truly  eagle-like  men. 
 *  See  page  65. ,  above. 
 
 l  4 
 
120  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 for  granted  that  a  gentleman  was,  and  would  be  to  the  end  of 
 time,  a  finer  species  of  creature  than  a  working  man.  And  in 
 our  own  day,  are  not  the  notions  of  a  God  who  is  pleased  with 
 lighted  candles,  or  whose  character  is  one  of  mawkish  good- 
 nature, in  which  the  desire  to  spare  bodily  pain  has  superseded 
 all  regard  for  the  distinction  between  crime  and  virtue,  but 
 varieties  of  the  same  vice  ?  It  is  instructive  to  see  these  things 
 behind  and  around  us,  if  we  take  heed  that  they  teach  us  to 
 look  within  also, — to  remember  that  each  of  us  has  his  own  idol, 
 made  in  his  own  image,  which  he  is  ever  substituting  for  the 
 true  God,  and  that  from  God  must  be  obtained  the  help  for 
 discovering  and  deposing  that  idol. 
 
 To  return  to  the  Assyrian  conqueror  : — He  does  not  suspect 
 that  he  is  the  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  Lord,  much  less 
 desire  the  Lord's  help  or  guidance ;  and  therefore,  according 
 to  the  prophet's  view  of  things,  he  does  not  rely  on  any  god,  but 
 simply  on  his  own  military  power  and  political  sagacity.  He  first 
 boasts  that  he  does  all  things  by  his  own  prudence  and  strength, 
 and  then  dwells  exultingly  on  the  nature  of  his  doings:  valiant 
 man  that  he  is,  he  puts  down  one  nation  after  another,  taking  pos- 
 session of  their  treasuries,  transplanting  the  inhabitants  to  other 
 cities  and  lands,  and  obliterating  the  ancient  limits  of  what  from 
 independent  kingdoms  are  now  but  provinces  in  his  great  mili- 
 tary empire.  He  has  come  upon  nation  after  nation,  as  it  dwelt 
 in  peace  with  all  the  fruits  of  peace,  and  has  '  found  their  riches 
 as  a  nest*  :'  he  has  gathered  all  the  earth  as  one  gathers  the 
 eggs  from  which  he  has  first  driven  off  the  terrified  hen-bird. 
 But  she  would  hover  round  her  rifled  nest,  and  its  plunderer, 
 with  a  trepidating  flight  and  piercing  cry,  than  which  no  move- 
 ments and  sounds  in  the  brute  creation  express  more  anguish  ; 
 while  these  spoiled  nations  dare  not  show  even  such  instinc- 
 tive signs  of  a  broken  heart,  but  know  a  depth  beyond  that 
 depth :  — 
 
 *  Xcnophon  says  of  the  attempt  of  Epaminondas  to  surprise  Sparta,  — 
 
 (\a/3ev  at*  rrjv  ttuKiu  uxnrep  veuTTLau,  TTavrairamu  epTj/uoj'  twv  afivfofxeuccv. — Hellcn.  vii. 
 5.  10.,  quoted  in  Grote's  History  of  Greece,  x.  4a4.  This  alarm  must  have 
 been  as  thrilling  to  a  Greek  as  the  danger  of  Jerusalem  to  a  Jew  :  and  it  is 
 interesting  to  notice  the  universal  language  of  passion  in  remote  times  and 
 peoples.     It  is  one  of  the  minuter  evidences  of  our  common  race. 
 
ISAIAH  X.  14—27.:    THE    SCOURGE    AND    ITS   WIELDEB.     121 
 
 For  he  saith, 
 By  the  strength  of  my  hand  I  have  clone  it, 
 And  by  my  wisdom  ;  for  I  am  prudent : 
 And  I  have  removed  the  bounds  of  the  nations, 
 And  have  robbed  their  treasures, 
 
 And  I  have  put  down  the  inhabitants  like  a  valiant  man  : 
 And  my  hand  hath  found  as  a  nest  the  riches  of  the  peoples  : 
 And  as  one  gathereth  eggs  that  are  left, 
 Have  I  gathered  all  the  earth ; 
 And  there  was  none  that  moved  the  wing, 
 Or  that  opened  the  mouth,  or  that  chirped. 
 
 Shall  the  axe  boast  itself  against  him  that  heweth  therewith  ? 
 Shall  the  saw  magnify  itself  against  him  that  handled)  it  ? 
 As  if  the  rod  should  wield  him  that  lifteth  it, 
 As  if  the  staff  should  lift  up  the  man ! 
 
 This  passage,  itself  a  specimen  of  the  whole  context,  is 
 quite  a  study,  political  and  artistic :  political  for  him  who  seeks 
 the  law  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  military  despotisms ;  artistic,  as 
 an  illustration  of  the  working  of  the  imagination,  the  '  power 
 by  which  one  image  or  feeling  is  made  to  modify  many  others, 
 and  by  a  sort  of  fusion  to  force  many  into  one,  ....  and 
 which,  combining  many  circumstances  into  one  moment  of 
 consciousness,  tends  to  produce  that  ultimate  end  of  all  human 
 thought  and  human  feelings,  unity,  and  thereby  the  reduction 
 of  the  spirit  to  its  Principle  and  Fountain,  who  is  alone  truly 
 One.'*  And  the  prophet  and  poet  goes  on  with  the  same 
 luxuriance  of  imagination,  and  the  same  severity  of  righteous 
 faith.  '  The  Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts,  shall  send  among  his 
 fat  ones  leanness :'  the  allusion  seems  to  be  to  fat  herds,  '  fat 
 bulls  of  Bashan  ;'  and  these,  one  would  almost  say,  suggested 
 the  thought  of  the  oaks  of  Bashan,  if  the  previous  mention  of 
 the  axe  and  the  saw  did  not  seem  to  reverse  the  succession  of 
 the  images  which  crowd  in  on  every  side.  The  'glory,'  the 
 whole  equipments  and  ammunitions,  the  pomp  and  the  splendour 
 of  the  warrior  king,  shall  be  burnt  up,  and  the  Light  of  Israel 
 shall  be  the  consuming  fire.  If  the  Assyrians  are  to  be  thus 
 destroyed  it  is  because  they  are  mere  noxious  thorns  and  briers, 
 only  fit  for  burning.    If  their  power  entitles  them  to  be  rather 
 
 *  Coleridge's  Literary  Remains,  vol.  ii.  pp.  55,  56.     These  lectures  on  the 
 genius  of  Shakspeare  throw  much  light  on  that  of  Isaiah. 
 
122  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 compared  with  lofty  forest  trees,  and  their  wealth  and  extended 
 dominion  to  the  '  fruitful  field,'  with  its  vineyards,  and  olive- 
 grounds,  and  gardens,  still  they  shall  be  consumed,  even  as  they 
 have  often  wasted  such  scenes  with  fire  in  their  marches  :  they 
 shall  be  destroyed  utterly,  fsoul  and  body,'  for  they  are  no 
 trees  but  men,  and  like  men  wasted  by  sickness  they  shall 
 perish.  And  then,  to  gather  up  the  whole  once  more  in  the 
 picture  of  the  heaven-kindled  conflagration  of  the  forest  with 
 its  lofty  trees  and  its  jungles,  and  the  fruitful  fields  lying  all 
 about  it,— we  see  of  all  these  trees,  which  it  would  have  once 
 required  many  and  skilful  enumerators  to  reckon,  so  few  that  a 
 child  can  count  and  write  them  down,  while  the  child  himself, 
 in  the  midst  of  the  desolation,  suggests  new  trains  of  thought, 
 not  foreign  to  the  subject. 
 
 If  Assyria  is  to  be  reduced  to  such  a  remnant,  so  is  the  people, 
 the  two  houses,  of  Israel.  The  Lord  of  hosts  has  decreed  a  righte- 
 ous execution  of  judgment  upon  his  guilty  people  through  the  land, 
 and  though  they  were  as  the  sand  of  the  sea  in  numbers,  only  a 
 remnant  of  them  shall  be  left.  But  that  remnant  shall  return  * 
 unto  their  God  and  King :  they  will  have  learnt  the  lesson  sent 
 through  so  much  suffering ;  and  instead  of  continuing  to  trust 
 in  Assyria,  and  their  alliance  with  that  worldly  and  faithless 
 power,  they  '  shall  stay  upon  the  Lord,  the  Holy  One  of 
 Israel,  in  truth.'  And  then  Isaiah,  with  that  feminine  tender- 
 ness which  so  frequently  shows  itself  in  his  sternest  denuncia- 
 tions, hastens  to  exclaim,  f  Therefore,  thus  saith  the  Lord  God 
 of  hosts,  O  my  people  that  dwellest  in  Zion,  be  not  afraid  of 
 the  Assyrian  ;'  it  is  true  that  he  shall  for  a  time  oppress  you 
 with  a  bondage  like  that  which  in  old  times  you  endured  when 
 you  were  the  serfs  of  Pharaoh,  or  the  tributaries  of  Midian  ; 
 but  as  the  slaughter  at  the  rock  of  Oreb  was  an  effectual  scourge 
 to  that  scourge  of  Israel,  and  as  the  rods  of  the  Egyptian  task- 
 masters were  broken  in  the  hour  in  which  Moses  stretched  out 
 his  rod  upon  the  sea,  so  shall  it  be  now  ;  for  yet  a  little 
 while,  and  the  Lord  will  stir  up  a  scourge,  and  lift  up  His  rod, 
 and  His  indignation  against  His  people  shall  cease  in  the  destruc- 
 tion of  their,  and  His,  enemies.     The  words  in  verse  27.,  which 
 
 *  Shear  jashub  are  the  words  of  the  original,  where  there  is  also  a  piny 
 <»n  .J;islml)  mid  Jacob,  such  as  Isaiah  is  fond  of. 
 
ISAIAH  X.  28 — 32.  :    ANCIENT    ROADS.  123 
 
 our  version  renders  by    *  because  of  the  anointing,'  are,  lite- 
 rally, in  the  face  of  (i.  e.  because  of)  oil,  or  fatness,  or  anointing : 
 and  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  meaning  be  that  the  Lord  will 
 not  suffer  the  anointed  Israel  —  the  race  of  kings  and  priests  — 
 to  continue  in  bondage  to  the  great  worldly,  godless,  power ; 
 or  that  the  metaphor  of  the  yoke  suggests  that  of  the  bullock 
 bursting  it  by  the  fatness  of  his  neck,  or  rejecting  it  in  the  lusti- 
 hood  of  his  strength,  asinDeut.  xxxii.  15.;  Hosea,  iv.  16.  x.  11. 
 From  historical  parallel  and  poetic  metaphor,  Isaiah  passes  to 
 a  vivid  description  of  the  march  of  the  Assyrians  upon  Jerusa- 
 lem, as  it  (  flashed  upon   his  inward  eye,'   with   all  the  distinct- 
 ness of  sense.      The  rival  literalists  who  explain  this  passage  as 
 a  miraculous  prediction,  or  a  narrative  after  the  event,  are  alike 
 refuted  by  the  historical  accounts,  from  which  it  appears  that 
 Sennacherib  did  not  invade  Judah  from  the  north,  but  from  the 
 south  or  south-west.     For  though  both  the  traditional  name  of 
 the  '  camp  of  the  Assyrians '  which  still  existed  in  the  time  of 
 Josephus,  and  the  nature  of  the  ground  which  lays  Jerusalem 
 most  open  to  an  attack  on  the  north,  make  it  probable  that  this 
 was  the  quarter  in  wThich  Rabshakeh  did  actually,  a  few  years 
 later, '  shake  his  hand  against  the  mount  of  the  daughter  of  Zion,' 
 he  would  not  have  brought  his  army  round  by  the  defile  of  Mich- 
 mash.     The  places  here  mentioned,  and  several  of  which  were 
 found,   still    retaining    their  names,    by  Messrs.  Robinson    and 
 Smith*,  lay  in  succession  between  the  northern  frontier  of  Judah 
 and  Jerusalem :  and  the  remains  of  a  square  tower  and  large 
 hewn  stones  which  they  found  at  Jeba,  opposite  to  Mukhmas 
 (i.  e.  Michmash),  and  supposed  to  be  Gibeah  of  Saul,  and  the  like 
 marks  of  Mukhmas  itself  having  been  once  a  place  of  strength, 
 taken  in  connection  with  the  accounts  in  1  Sam.  xiii.,  xiv.,  and 
 1  Mac.  ix.  73.,  make  it  more   than  probable  that  this  was  the 
 route  which  Isaiah  might  reasonably  expect  the  invaders  to  take. 
 The  high  road  indeed  no  longer  runs  that  way,  and  Dr.  Robin- 
 son says  that  the  common  approach  to  Jerusalem  can  never  have 
 lain  through  these  deep  and  difficult  ravines  :  but  it  has  been 
 pointed  out  to  mef  that  while  it  would  sufficiently  vindicate  the 
 
 *  Biblical  Researches,  vol.  ii.  p.  110.  ff. 
 
 f  By  my  brother,  Captain  R.  Strachey.     I  have  since  read  the  following 
 like  solution  of  the  like  difficulty  :  —  "I  do  not  share  the  doubts  which  have 
 
124  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 propriety  of  the  picture  to  observe,  that  an  Assyrian  army 
 would  direct  its  course  not  by  what  might  be  the  high  road, 
 but  by  what  was  the  line  of  still  unplundered  towns  and  villages, 
 the  geographical  probability  is  all  in  favour  of  the  route  de- 
 scribed having  been  the  actual  northern  highway.  For  the 
 present  road,  which  is  so  much  more  practicable,  lies  along  the 
 water-shed,  where  the  ground,  although  better  for  engineering 
 purposes,  is  worse  for  houses  or  cultivation  from  the  want  of 
 water :  and  such  roads,  in  which  the  convenient  junction  of 
 extreme  points  is  the  main  object,  are  a  comparatively  modern 
 invention,  though  the  most  in  accordance  with  our  notions  of  a 
 highway.  But  in  Isaiah's  time,  even  the  main  roads  would 
 be  those  which  had  been  formed,  stage  by  stage,  for  the 
 communication  of  each  town  or  village  with  the  ones  imme- 
 diately before  and  behind  it ;  and  these  towns  would,  in  the 
 present  case,  have  lain  thickest  in  the  very  line  in  question : 
 for  while  the  water- shed  is  just  to  the  west,  and  '  lower  down 
 the  slope,  towards  the  Jordan  valley,  all  is  a  frightful  desert,' 
 the  steep  hill-sides,  in  which  these  towns  were  clustered,  from 
 Anathoth  to  Michmash,  still  show  signs  of  that  '  strong  and 
 fertile  soil '  which  (as  has  been  explained  before)  only  needs 
 terracing  to  make  the  rock  a  garden,  and  which,  even  as  it  is, 
 Dr.  Robinson  here  found  producing  e  fields  of  grain  occasionally, 
 and  fig  trees  and  olive  trees  every  where.' 
 
 Let  us  now  return,  to  stand  with  the  prophet  on  some 
 watch-tower  of  Jerusalem,  in  vision,  and  see  the  enemy's 
 troops    as  they   enter  the   frontier  city  Aiath,   or  Ai,  which 
 
 been  raised  about  Xenophon's  accuracy,  in  his  description  of  the  route 
 from  Sardis  to  Ikonium  ;  though  the  names  of  several  of  the  places  which 
 he  mentions  are  not  known  to  us,  and  their  sites  cannot  be  exactly  identified. 
 There  is  a  great  departure  from  the  straight  line  of  bearing.  But  we  at 
 the  present  day  assign  more  weight  to  that  circumstance  than  is  suited  to 
 the  days  of  Xenophon.  Straight  roads,  stretching  systematically  over  a 
 large  region  of  country,  are  not  of  that  age :  the  communications  were 
 probably  all  originally  made  between  one  neighbouring  town  and  another, 
 without  much  reference  to  saving  of  distance,  and  with  no  reference  to  any 
 promotion  of  traffic  between  distant  places.  "It  was  just  about  this  time 
 that  King  Archelaus  began  to  'cut  straight  roads'  in  Macedonia,  —  which 
 Thucydides  seems  to  note  as  a  remarkable  thing  (ii.  100.)."  Grote's  Hist. 
 of  Greece,  ix.  23.,  note. 
 
ISAIAH  XI.   1 — 5.  :    THE    KING    OF    THE    STOCK    OF    JESSE.    125 
 
 Joshua  had  once  taken  from  the  Canaanitish  king :  they  pass 
 through  Migron;  and,  meeting  no  resistance  at  Michmash,  the 
 northern  key  to  the  defile,  they  there  leave  their  baggage,  lest 
 it  should  impede  the  rapid  advance  with  which  '  they  pass 
 the  Pass,'  and  establish  their  quarters  at  Geba,  which  com- 
 mands the  southern  exit.  The  inaction  and  stupor  which  had 
 allowed  this  position  to  be  mastered,  is  now  succeeded  by  open 
 panic :  Raman  trembles ;  Gibeah  of  Saul  —  the  birth-place  of 
 the  king  of  whose  feats,  and  the  feats  of  his  son  Jonathan,  in 
 discomfiting  countless  hosts  of  Philistines  in  these  very  defiles, 
 the  old  national  stories  told  —  Gibeah  is  fled  ;  Laish  hears  the 
 shrieks  of  Gallim  ;  and  wretched  Anathoth  *  answers  not  with 
 her  echoes  alone,  but  with  a  too  real  cry  of  despair,  for  an 
 enemy,  whom  neither  human  pity  nor  fear  of  religion  moves,  is 
 upon  the  city  of  Levites ;  Madmenah  is  gone,  and  Gebim 
 fled ;  every  hill-top  within  sight  of  Jerusalem  is  covered  with 
 those  terrible  horsemen  from  the  north ;  at  Nob  the  Assyrian 
 is  seen  to  halt,  preparatory  to  the  assault,  and  '  he  shakes  his 
 hand  against  the  Mount  of  the  daughter  of  Zion.'  At  once 
 the  vision  gives  place  to  another;  the  prophet  recals  the 
 previous  promise,  with  the  previous  image  it  was  expressed 
 under :  — 
 
 Behold,  the  Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 Doth  lop  the  chief  bough  with  terror ; 
 And  the  high  of  stature  are  hewn  down, 
 And  the  haughty  are  humbled. 
 And  he  shall  cut  down  the  thickets  with  iron, 
 And  Lebanon  shall  fall  by  a  mighty  hand. 
 
 The  root  of  the  word  translated  '  bough '  means  *  adorn,'  so 
 that  it  is  the  chief  or  top  bough,  forming  the  ornamental  head 
 of  the  tree,  which  is  alluded  to.  The  image  is  now  trans- 
 ferred to  the  state  and  king  of  Israel,  which  is  also  to  be  cut 
 down  to  the  stump,  bike  the  tree  in  Nebuchadnezzar's  dream. 
 But  out  of  that  stump,  and  from  its  living  roots,  shall  grow  up 
 a  scion  —  one  of  those  slender  shoots  which  we  see  springing 
 
 *  "  The  prophet  plainly  alludes  to  the  name  of  the  place  (lit.  the  Answers)  ; 
 and  with  a  peculiar  propriety,  if  it  had  its  name  from  its  remarkable  echo." 
 —  Lowth,  on  the  verse. 
 
126  IIEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 up  from,  and  immediately  round,  the  stock  of  a  truncated 
 tree.*  A  king  of  the  race  of  Jesse  shall  sit  on  the  throne 
 of  his  fathers,  in  accordance  with  the  covenant  made  with 
 David :  — ■ 
 
 '  I  have  made  a  covenant  with  my  chosen, 
 I  have  sworn  unto  David  ray  servant, 
 Thy  seed  will  I  establish  for  ever, 
 And  build  up  thy  throne  unto  all  generations.'  f 
 
 The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  shall  not  merely  direct  this  son  of 
 David  by  occasional  and  transient  impulses,  but  shall  abide 
 continually  with  him,  habitually  filling  him  with  the  spirit,  the 
 very  life,  of  insight  into  the  principles  and  laws  of  God's  go- 
 vernment of  the  world,  and  of  discernment  how  to  apply  those 
 principles  to  actual  circumstances,  so  as  to  bring  the  latter  into 
 harmony  with  the  former ;  he  shall  receive  the  spirit  of  true 
 statesmanship,  enabling  him  to  understand  and  to  rule,  not 
 ideas  and  things,  but  men  ;  he  shall  have  that  personal  know- 
 ledge of  God  which  is  the  living  source  of  love  and  reverence 
 for  Him  ;  his  delight  in  this  knowledge  and  fear  of  God  shall 
 enable  him  accurately  to  discern  the  like  disposition  in  others, 
 so  that,  with  an  eye  purged  from  the  film  of  sense,  he  shall  not 
 fail  to  recognise  the  cause  of  truth  and  righteousness  in  his 
 kingdom ;  and  when  he  has  declared  his  righteous  sentence,  he 
 will  ever  stand  ready  to  execute  it  with  prompt  and  strict 
 justice. 
 
 And  the  wolf  shall  make  his  home  with  the  lamb, 
 
 And  the  leopard  shall  lie  down  with  the  kid ; 
 
 And  the  calf,  and  the  young  lion,  and  the  falling  together  ; 
 
 And  a  little  child  shall  lead  them. 
 
 And  the  cow  and  the  she-bear  shall  feed  together  ; 
 
 Together  shall  their  young  ones  lie  down  ; 
 
 And  the  lion  shall  eat  straw  like  the  ox. 
 
 And  the  sucking  child  shall  play  on  the  hole  of  the  asp, 
 
 And  the  weaned  child  shall  put  his  hand  on  the  crested  adder's  den. 
 
 They  shall  not  hurt  nor  destroy  in  all  ray  holy  mountain  : 
 
 *  "  Vos  modo,  milites,  favete  nomini  Scipionum,  soboli  impcratorum  ves- 
 trorum,  vclut  accisis  rccrcscenti  stirj>ibus."  Liv.  lib.  xxvi.  c.  41.  Quoted 
 by  Vitringa. 
 
 f  Psalin  lxxxix.  3,  4. 
 
ISAIAH  XI.  6  — 10.  :    THE    GOLDEN   AGE.  127 
 
 For  the  earth  is  full  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord, 
 
 As  the  waters  cover  the  sea. 
 
 And  in  that  day  shall  a  root  of  Jesse  stand  for  an  ensign  to  the 
 
 peoples ; 
 To  it  shall  the  nations  seek  : 
 And  his  dwelling-place  shall  be  glorious. 
 
 The  latter  lines  give  the  reason  why  this  golden  age,  de- 
 scribed in  language  which  Lowth  says  is  not  equalled  by  the 
 classical  or  the  Arabic  and  Persian  poets,  shall  come  in  the 
 days  of  the  righteous  king.  It  is  because  his  kingdom,  which 
 is  the  kingdom  of  the  Lord,  shall  extend  its  influence  over,  and 
 be  recognised  by,  the  whole  earth.  From  the  history  of  the 
 reigns  of  David,  Solomon,  and  Hezekiah,  we  see  that  when 
 there  was  a  righteous  king  in  Israel,  he  not  only  governed  his 
 own  people  in  wisdom  and  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  promoting 
 education  and  civilisation  in  that  spirit  of  the  ancient  law  and 
 constitution  which  is  embodied  in  the  book  of  Deuteronomy, 
 and  thus  establishing  truth  and  justice,  peace  and  happiness, 
 religion  and  piety,  throughout  the  land,  but  that  he  at  the  same 
 time  (as  we  might  have  expected)  exercised  a  humanising  in- 
 fluence over  the  neighbouring  nations,  gave  them  glimpses  at 
 least  of  the  superiority  of  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  over  their 
 own  idols,  and  disseminated  among  them  principles  of  moral 
 and  political  order  which  continued  to  germinate  more  or  less 
 effectually,  notwithstanding  the  resistance  of  national  vice, 
 ignorance,  and  superstition.  But  these,  and  such  as  these,  were 
 but  the  shadow  of  good  things  to  come :  the  acts  of  Jewish 
 kings,  like  the  words  of  Jewish  prophets,  were  but  various  and 
 partial  ways  of  repeating,  rather  than  of  realising,  the  great  car- 
 dinal promise  made  to  Abraham,  or  the  great  prophetic  ideal  of 
 the  Righteous  King  which  was  revealed  to  Isaiah  and  the  rest  of 
 the  prophets.  But  that  better  thing  which  God  had  provided  for 
 us,  that  they  without  us  should  not  be  perfect,  is  actually  come 
 in  the  coming  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  David.  By  the  mani- 
 festation of  the  Righteous  King  in  His  own  person,  the  golden 
 age  has  been  made  far  more  actual,  and  we  brought  into  a  far 
 closer  connection  with  it,  than  was  possible  or  even  conceivable 
 in  the  days  of  Solomon  or  Hezekiah.  Then  the  chosen  race 
 itself  had  but  a  dim  knowledge  of  God,  and  the  nations  of  the 
 
128  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 earth  could  but  hear  of  Him  through  the  testimony  of  the 
 Jewish  people  and  its  kings  ;  but  now  a  greater  than  Solomon, 
 even  the  Lord  himself,  is  come  into  each  nation  which  re- 
 ceives His  gospel  and  His  church,  and  abides  in  it  as  its  ever- 
 present  though  invisible  King.  True  it  is,  that  even  in  those 
 kingdoms  of  the  world  which  have  become  the  kingdoms  of  our 
 Lord  Christ,  we  do  not  yet  see  all  things  put  under  His  feet ; 
 the  ideal  is  still  far  from  completely  one  with,  and  transcendent 
 through  and  over,  the  actual,  the  heavenly  over  the  earthly ;  but 
 by  him  who  has  an  eye  to  see,  the  one  may  be  plainly  discerned 
 every  where  hid  under  the  other,  capable  of  being  developed, 
 nay,  waiting  and  ready  to  be  revealed  in  ever  new  and  more 
 glorious  forms.  Our  part  is  to  believe  this  heartily,  heartily 
 to  take  our  appointed  share  in  the  work  of  realisation ;  and  not 
 the  less  so,  because  we  learn  more  and  more  every  day  that  we 
 do  work,  how  small  our  share,  how  large  God's  share,  in  the 
 work  must  be ;  that  man's  chief  business  is  to 
 
 '  Leave  to  Heaven 
 The  work  of  Heaven,  and  with  a  silent  spirit 
 Sympathise  with  the  powers  that  work  in  silence.' 
 
 I  have  followed  our  version  in  the  use  of  the  word  ( earth ' 
 in  verse  9.,  though  the  original  might  equally  be  translated 
 1  laud,''  which  would  limit  the  promise  of  this  kingdom  of 
 righteousness  to  Israel,  as  the  reference  to  the  f  peoples '  and 
 the  '  nations '  in  the  next  verse,  compared  with  such  passages 
 as  chapter  ii.  2 — 4.,  xix.  18 — 25.,  is  in  favour  of  the  wider 
 sense.  But  the  idea  of  the  universal  kingdom  is  certainly  not 
 so  prominent  here  as  in  those  and  many  other  places,  being 
 subordinated  to  that  of  the  bringing  back  '  the  outcasts  of 
 Israel '  and  the  (  dispersed  of  Judah  from  the  four  corners  of 
 the  earth '  to  their  own  land  and  Lord,  and  of  their  reunion 
 into  one  people  as  at  first. 
 
 "  Jacob,  in  his  prophetic  statement  of  the  fortunes  of  his 
 sons,  disregards  the  rights  of  primogeniture,  and  gives  the  pre- 
 eminence to  Judah  and  Joseph  (Gen.  xlix.  8 — 12.,  22 — 26.), 
 and  in  the  family  of  the  latter  to  the  younger  son  Ephraim 
 (Gen.  xlviii.  19.).  Hence,  from  the  time  of  the  exodus,  these 
 two  were  regarded  as  the  leading  tribes  of  Israel.     Judah  was 
 
ISAIAH,  XI.  11 — 16.:    NATIONAL  REPULSIONS  AND  FUSIONS.  129 
 
 much  more  numerous  than  Ephralm  (Numb.  i.  27.  33.),  took 
 precedence  during  the  journey  in  the  wilderness  (Numb.  ii.  3., 
 x.  14.),  and  received  the  largest  portion  in  the  promised  land. 
 But  Joshua  was  an  Ephraimite  (Numb.  xiii.  8.) ;  and  Shiloh, 
 where  the  tabernacle  long  stood  (Josh,  xviii.  1.,  1  Sam.  iv.  3.), 
 was  probably  within  the  limits  of  the  same  tribe.  The  am- 
 bitious jealousy  of  the  Ephraimites  towards  other  tribes  appears 
 in  their  conduct  to  Gideon  and  Jephthah  (Judges,  viii.  1.,  xii.  1.). 
 Their  special  jealousy  of  Judah  showed  itself  in  their  temporary 
 refusal  to  submit  to  David  after  the  death  of  Saul,  in  their 
 adherence  to  Absalom  against  his  father,  and  in  the  readiness 
 with  which  they  joined  in  the  revolt  of  Jeroboam,  who  was 
 himself  of  the  tribe  of  Ephraim  (1  Kings,  xi.  26.)  This  schism 
 was,  therefore,  not  a  sudden  or  fortuitous  occurrence,  but  the 
 natural  result  of  causes  which  had  long  been  working.  The 
 mutual  relation  of  the  two  kingdoms  is  expressed  in  the  re- 
 corded fact  that  '  there  was  war  between  Rehoboam  and  Je- 
 roboam, and  between  Asa  and  Baasha,  all  their  days'  (1  Kings, 
 xiv.  30.,  xv.  16.).  Exceptions  to  the  general  rule,  as  in  the 
 case  of  Ahab  and  Jehoshaphat,  were  rare,  and  a  departure  from 
 the  principles  and  ordinary  feelings  of  the  parties.  The  ten 
 tribes,  which  assumed  the  name  of  Israel  after  the  division,  and 
 perhaps  before  it,  regarded  the  smaller  and  less  warlike  state 
 with  a  contempt  which  is  well  expressed  by  Jehoash  in  his 
 parable  of  the  cedar  and  the  thistle  (2  Kings,  xiv.  9.),  unless  the 
 feeling  there  displayed  be  rather  personal  than  national.  On 
 the  other  hand,  Judah  justly  regarded  Israel  as  guilty  not  only 
 of  political  revolt,  but  of  religious  apostacy  (Psalm  Ixxviii. 
 9 — 11.),  and  the  jealousy  of  Ephraim  towards  Judah  would  of 
 course  be  increased  by  the  fact  that  Jehovah  had  '  forsaken  the 
 tabernacle  of  Shiloh  '  (Psalm  Ixxviii.  60.),  that  he  '  refused  the 
 tabernacle  of  Joseph,  and  chose  not  the  tribe  of  Ephraim,  but 
 chose  the  tribe  of  Judah,  the  Mount  Zion  which  he  loved '  (Psalm 
 Ixxviii.  67,  68.)"*  If  Solomon  had,  like  his  father  David,  re- 
 tained to  the  last  his  faith  in  the  one  God  of  Israel,  and  in  that 
 maxim  of  government  which  David  laid  down  in  his  'last 
 words,'  that  ( he  that  ruleth  over  men  must  be  just,  ruling  in 
 
 *  Alexander's  note  on  verse  13. 
 K 
 
130  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 the  fear  of  God/  and  if  Rehoboam,  Solomon's  son,  had  followed 
 in  the  same  path,  it  is  probable  that  they  might  have  solved  this 
 difficult  political  problem  of  fusing  into  one  nation  various  con- 
 flicting parties  and  interests,  of  which  I  believe  the  solution  has 
 always  failed  or  succeeded  according  as  unity  of  national  worship, 
 and  equal  rights  and  justice,  have  or  have  not  been  established :  — 
 the  centralisation  of  military  force,  whether  domestic  or  foreign, 
 is  not  a  fusion,  but  a  suppression,  and  (if  it  lasts)  a  destruction 
 of  the  elements  of  national  life.  But  Solomon  forgot  David's 
 dying  counsel  that  he  should  'keep  the  charge  of  the  Lord  his 
 God,  to  walk  in  his  Avays,  to  keep  his  statutes,  and  his  com- 
 mandments, and  his  judgments,  and  his  testimonies,  as  it  was 
 written  in  the  law  of  Moses;'  and  his  own  prayer  when  he 
 came  to  the  throne,  that  the  Lord  would  give  him  '  an  under- 
 standing heart  to  judge  His  people,  to  discern  between  good 
 and  evil,'  and  to  follow  the  footsteps  of  '  the  truth,  righteous- 
 ness, and  uprightness  of  heart  before  God,'  with  which,  and  not 
 with  the  arbitrary  hand  of  the  military  chieftain,  or  the  selfish- 
 ness of  the  oriental  despot,  David  had  made  it  his  aim  to  govern 
 '  this  God's  so  great  people.'  *     The  men  were  not  equal  to  the 
 
 *  2  Sara,  xxiii.  3. ;  1  Kings,  ii.  2,  3,  4.,  iii.  6 — 9.  In  referring  the  reader  to 
 these  passages,  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  notice  an  opinion  that  David's  sub- 
 sequent directions  to  Solomon  '  to  bring  down  the  hoar  heads  of  Joab  and 
 Shimei  to  the  grave  with  blood,'  are  expressions  of  a  revengeful  malice  in- 
 consistent with  a  character  of  piety  and  justice.  A  moderately  thoughtful  ex- 
 amination and  comparison  of  the  various  notices  of  these  men,  and  the  trans- 
 actions in  which  they  figured,  including  their  deaths,  will  make  it  plain  that 
 Joab,  though  a  faithful  supporter  of  David's  throne,  was  a  brutal  soldier,  with 
 an  influence  over  the  army  which  made  him  independent,  not  only  of  the  king, 
 but  of  the  laws  ;  while  Shimei  was  a  powerful  chieftain  of  the  house  of  Saul, 
 and  ready  to  proceed  to  any  opposition  to  the  reigning  dynasty.  David  was 
 unable  to  dismiss  Joab,  and,  in  a  temper  as  humane  as  politic,  he  included 
 the  rebel  Shimei  in  the  general  amnesty  when  he  recovered  his  crown,  and 
 declared,  '  There  shall  no  man  be  put  to  death  this  day  in  Israel.'  But  he 
 warned  Solomon  —  and  Solomon's  mode  of  acting  on  the  warning  gives  the 
 fair,  historical,  interpretation  of  its  precise  meaning  —  that  these  two  men 
 would  be  his  most  dangerous  enemies,  the  one  of  his  person  and  house,  and  the 
 other  (who  '  shed  the  blood  of  war  in  peace,  and  put  the  blood  of  war  upon 
 his  girdle  that  was  about  his  loins,  and  in  his  shoes  that  were  on  his  feet ') 
 of  his  endeavour  to  govern  the  nation  by  civil  law  and  justice,  and  not  by 
 force  ;  and  that  therefore  he  must  watch  them  narrowly,  and  if  they  did 
 again  break  out,  he  must  not  be  deterred  by  a  misplaced  reverence  of  pity 
 for  their  age,  or  the  hope  they  could  not  do  much  harm  in  their  few  remain- 
 
CONSEQUENCES    OF    THE    REVOLT    OF    EPHRAIM.  131 
 
 occasion,  though,  by  God's  providence,  their  failure  was  made 
 to  illustrate  the  political  law  as  clearly  as  their  success  would 
 have  done.  And  though  the  student  of  history  feels  the  same 
 regret  at  this  permanent  disruption  of  what  should  have  been 
 organic,  and  mutually  supporting,  members  of  a  one  Hebrew 
 commonwealth,  as  he  does  at  the  always  frustrated  hopes  of  a 
 national  unity  in  ancient  Greece ;  yet,  in  the  one  case  or  the 
 other,  a  deeper  insight  into  what  was  possible  in  the  then  stage 
 of  the  political  growth  and  education  of  the  human  race, 
 teaches  us  that  the  evil  was  the  only  condition  on  which  it  was 
 practicable  to  secure  the  far  greater  good  which  was  secured, 
 and  has  become  a  part  of  the  imperishable  heritage  of  mankind. 
 The  experiments  of  Sparta,  and  even  of  Athens,  and  still  more 
 those  of  Macedon,  and,  above  all,  of  Rome,  show  us  that  the 
 problem  of  how  to  unite  liberty  with  centralisation,  could  not 
 be  solved  in  that  age.  And  so  no  doubt  it  was  with  the 
 Hebrews ;  though  their  worship  of  One  God  at  Jerusalem  gave 
 them  facilities  for  true  national  unity,  known  nowhere  else 
 before  the  times  of  the  Gospel.  It  has  been  observed  that  the 
 scriptural  account  of  the  power  of  Solomon  resembles,  almost 
 word  for  word,  some  of  the  paragraphs  in  the  great  inscriptions 
 at  Nimroud.  '  Solomon  reigned  over  the  kingdoms  from  the 
 river  [Euphrates]  unto  the  land  of  the  Philistines,  and  unto 
 the  border  of  Egypt :  they  brought  him  presents  ...  a  rate 
 year  by  year    ....    and  served   Solomon  all  the  days  of  his 
 
 life He  had  dominion  over  all  the  region  on  this  side 
 
 the  river,  from  Tiphsah  even  unto  Azzah,  over  all  the  kings  on 
 this  side  the  river.'  *    And  when  we  thus  see  on  what  a  pre- 
 
 ing  years,  from  executing  strict  justice  on  them.  Joab  joined  a  conspiracy 
 for  deposing  Solomon,  and  Shimei's  reason  for  quitting  the  surveillance 
 imposed  on  him,  was  believed  by  Solomon  to  be,  and  probably  was,  a  pretext  for 
 a  like  course.  Burke,  who  cultivated  his  love  of  justice,  and  hatred  of  all 
 oppression,  by  the  study  of  the  Bible,  and  of  real  life  and  history,  shows 
 incidentally  that  he  thus  read  this  story  of  David,  when  (in  one  of  his 
 speeches  on  financial  reform,  I  think)  he  warns  his  hearers  that  '  they  must 
 not  spare  the  hoary  head  of  inveterate  abuse.'  David  did  several  very  cruel 
 as  well  as  arbitrary  acts  :  but  we  need  not  resign  the  use  of  our  reason  in 
 reading  the  Bible,  for  fear  men  should  call  us  superstitious. 
 
 *   1  Kings,  iv.  21  and  24. ;  2  Chron.  ix.  24.  26.    Quoted,  with  the  above 
 observation,  by  Mr.  Layard,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p  635. 
 
 k  2 
 
132  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 cipice  Solomon  stood,  and  what  his  descendants  and  their  people 
 might  have  become  ;  when  we  reflect  what  not  only  Israel,  but 
 the  world  would  have  been,  if  instead  of  a  Bible  we  had  had  the 
 annals  of  a  race  of  Hebrew  Sargons  and  Sennacheribs,  and  in 
 the  fulness  of  time  aKehama — an  incarnation  of  evil — instead  of 
 a  Son  of  God ;  we  shall  perceive  that,  if  ever  man  spoke  by  the 
 Spirit  of  God,  or  did  a  deed  for  which  all  posterity  should  call 
 him  blessed,  it  was  that  flagrant  radical  and  revolutionist  the 
 prophet  Ahijah  the  Shilonite,  who  stirred  up  the  young  sol- 
 dier Jeroboam  to  plot  against  his  master  Solomon,  and  openly 
 and  successfully  to  rebel  against  Rehoboam.  At  the  same  time, 
 we  must  not  overlook  that  this,  like  the  other  instances  of  pro- 
 phets instigating  rebellion,  belongs  to  the  earlier  history  of  the 
 nation :  the  later  prophets  habitually  recognise  that  highest  dis- 
 covery of  constitutional  politics,  that,  in  the  maturer  age  of  a 
 commonwealth,  all  reforms  can,  and  must,  be  effected  by  a  dis- 
 cussion which,  though  absolutely  refusing  all  restraint  to  its 
 words,  keeps  steadily  within  the  limits  of  the  existing  laws,  till 
 it  can  change  them  by  the  power  of  words  alone.  Of  the  in- 
 creased clearness  with  which  this  momentous  distinction  is 
 apprehended  by  our  non-beneficed  classes  in  England,  we  owe 
 more  than  is  usually  acknowledged  to  Mr.  Cobden,  and  his  col- 
 leagues in  the  Anti-Corn  Law  Agitation.  By  precept,  prac- 
 tice, and  success,  they  have  made  the  truth  so  popularly  intelli- 
 gible, that  we  may  hope  that  it  is  as  firmly  established  among 
 us  as  the  case  admits  of.  For,  in  politics,  as  in  every  other 
 region  of  human  thought  and  action,  it  is  not  the  mere  establish- 
 ment of  maxims  and  traditions,  however  rational,  but  the  pre- 
 sence of  a  moral  and  religious  life  in  the  honest  and  earnest  ap- 
 plication of  these,  which  upholds  a  constitution. 
 
 The  hope  and  promise  of  a  reunion  of  the  two  houses  of 
 Israel,  which  Isaiah  utters,  are  repeated  by  Ezekiel*:  we  cannot 
 doubt  that  such  a  prospect  must  have  animated  the  pious  and 
 the  wise  of  the  nation  in  each  age :  and  the  historians,  in  terms 
 which  show  their  own  appreciation  of  events  such  as  had  not 
 been  'from  the  days  of  the  judges  that  judged  Israel,  nor  in 
 all  the  days  of  the  kings  of  Israel,  nor  of  the  kings  of  Judah,' 
 
 *  Chapter  xxxvii.  15 — 28. 
 
GREAT    DEPORTATIONS    OF    JEWS    IN    ISAIAH'S    TIME.         133 
 
 describe  a  resort  of  persons  from  all  parts  of  the  northern  king- 
 dom to  keep  the  passover  at  Jerusalem  in  the  reigns  of  both 
 Hezekiah  and  Josiah,  followed  by  a  general  visitation  of  the 
 cities  not  only  of  Judah  and  Benjamin,  but  also  of  e  Ephraim 
 and  Manasseh,'  and  s  Simeon  even  unto  Naphthali,'  for  the  pur- 
 pose of  purging  the  land  of  the  altars,  images,  and  groves  of  the 
 false  gods.*  And  from  these  statements  of  almost  exclusively 
 ecclesiastical  historians  we  may  infer,  with  little  clanger  of  being 
 carried  away  by  fancy,  that  there  were  corresponding  facts  in 
 the  civil  condition  of. society;  and  that  in  the  transient  gleams 
 of  peace  and  prosperity  which  Judah  experienced  after  the  fall  of 
 Samai'ia  and  the  Ephraimite  monarchy,  Jerusalem,  and  the  throne, 
 as  well  as  the  temple  there,  became  the  recognised  seat  of  autho- 
 rity for  such  of  the  people  of  the  Ten  Tribes  as  had  not  been  car- 
 ried away  by  the  Assyrians,  and  as  preferred  dwelling  in  towns 
 or  villages,  with  the  habits  of  civilisation  and  of  civil  order,  to 
 those  of  mere  pastoral  families  or  tribes  wandering  in  the 
 desert  at  their  own  will.  It  was  indeed  but  a  feeble  restora- 
 tion of  the  times  of  David  and  Solomon,  or  even  of  the  earlier 
 commonwealth ;  yet  perhaps  a  better  state  of  things  than  seems 
 to  have  prevailed  from  the  days  of  Ezra  to  those  of  Christ,  who 
 proclaimed  the  fact  of  a  deeper  ground  of  unity  than  that  of 
 descent  from  Jacob,  and  of  whose  meeting  with  the  woman  of 
 Samaria  we  may  apply,  in  reference  to  this  point,  His  saying, 
 that  a  Greater  fnan  Solomon  was  there. 
 
 Ephraim  and  Judah  shall  be  at  one  ;  the  Philistines  and  the 
 Syrians,  Edom,  Moab,  and  Amnion,  shall  again  become  tribu- 
 taries as  they  were  in  the  best  times  of  the  monarchy  :  even  the 
 great  nations  of  Egypt  and  Assyria  shall  give  up  their  captives, 
 —  for  in  that  day  the  Lord  will  not  only  dry  up  the  Red  Sea, 
 as  of  old,  but  will  extend  the  same  power  to  the  Euphrates, 
 striking  its  deep  streams  into  many  shallow  ones,  and  thus 
 making  a  way  for  his  people  to  return  out  of  both  these  lands. 
 Pathros  is  Thebais,  or  Upper  Egypt ;  Cusli  is  Ethiopia,  and  also 
 Arabia  Deserta,  along  the  east  coast  of  the  Red  Sea ;  Elam  is 
 Elymais,  adjoining  —  and   often  used  to    include  —  Persia,  as 
 
 *  2  Chron.  xxx.  1.  to  xxxi.  1.;  2  Kings,  xxiii.  1 — 23.;  2  Chron.  xxxiv, 
 29.  to  xxxv.  18. 
 
 k  3 
 
134  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 well  as  Susiana,  and  Media;  Shinar,  Babylonia;  Hamath,  a 
 chief  city  of  Syria ;  and  the  Islands  of  the  Sea  are  the  isles  and 
 coasts  of  the  Mediterranean. 
 
 The  Chronicles  mention  as  a  great  national  calamity  the  num- 
 bers of  captives  taken  by  the  Syrians,  Ephraimites,  Edomites, 
 and  Philistines,  during  the  reign  of  Ahaz.*  Joel  speaks  of 
 the  Tyrians,  Zidonians,  and  Philistines,  selling  the  Jews  to  the 
 Greciansf,  and  Amos  seems  to  allude  to  a  similar  sale  to  the 
 Edomites. :}:  Isaiah  refers  elsewhere  (chap.  xvi.  4.)  to  Jews  who 
 had  fled  their  own  country  to  escape  domestic  or  foreign  oppres- 
 sion ;  and  in  the  times  of  Jeremiah  we  have  like  instances.  §  And 
 comparing  these  and  similar  ||  proofs  of  the  practice  of  the  Jews 
 and  their  enemies  with  that  of  all  the  other  nations  of  antiquity, 
 we  have  abundant  evidence  —  even  if  we  are  too  cautious  to 
 adopt  till  after  farther  investigation  the  reading^  of  the  Nineveh 
 inscription,  with  Sennacherib's  account  of  his  having  carried  off 
 the  whole  population  which  dwelled  around  Jerusalem  —  that 
 during  the  reigns  of  Ahaz  and  his  successor  there  was  such  a 
 dispersion  and  captivity  of  the  people  as  that  from  which  Isaiah 
 here  promises  the  restoration.  That  the  fulfilment  of  this  pro- 
 mise in  the  succeeding  reign  of  Hezekiah  was  most  inadequate, 
 must  be  evident  to  him  who  sets  the  outward  possibilities  of 
 the  occasion  against  the  unbounded  magnificence  of  the  pro- 
 phetic ideal :  yet  it  need  not  be  doubted  that  such  a  fulfilment 
 as  the  case  did  admit,  would  have  been  brought  about  by 
 the  king,  and  the  relations  of  those  of  his  subjects,  Avho  were 
 in  exile  or  slavery :  for  in  the  latter  years  his  reign,  when 
 '  many  brought  gifts  unto  the  Lord  to  Jerusalem,  and  pre- 
 sents to  Hezekiah  king  of  Judah,  so  that  he  was  magnified 
 in  the  sight  of  all  nations  from  thenceforth,'  he  would  have 
 been  well  able  to  demand  the  restoration  of  his  people  Avith 
 effect.  The  reference  to  the  Philistines  may  be  compared  with 
 Sennacherib's  statement  that  (  the  nobles  and  the  people  of 
 Ekron  having  expelled  their  king  Iladdiya,  and  the  Assyrian 
 troops  who  garrisoned  the  town,  attached  themselves  to  Heze- 
 
 *  2  Chron.  xxviii.  5.  8.  17,  18.,  xxix.  9. 
 
 "f  Joel,  iii.  6.  J  Amos,  i.  9.  §  Jeremiah,  xli.  xlii. 
 
 ||  As  2  Kings,  xv.  29.,  xvii.  6.  18. 
 
 T[  Rawlinson's  Outline,  p.  23.     The  translation  of  Dr.  Ilincks,  as  given 
 by  Mr.  Layard  (Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  143.),  is  less  distinct  on  this  point. 
 
ISAIAH  XII.:    THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    NATIONS.  135 
 
 kiah  of  Judrca,  and  paid  their  adorations  to  his  God.'*  The 
 smiting  the  Euphrates  into  seven  streams,  Grotius,  with  his 
 wonted  clear  and  practical  appreciation  of  fact  and  history, 
 refers  to  the  partial  dismemberment  of  Assyria  by  the  defection 
 of  the  Medes  and  Chaldees,  which,  according  to  Herodotus, 
 took  place  about  the  same  time  with  Sennacherib's  retreat  from 
 the  invasion  of  Judrea  and  Egypt :  for  the  reconciliation  of  the 
 Greek  historian  with  the  native  records,  we  must  wait  till  they 
 are  more  thoroughly  deciphered  and  translated. 
 
 The  prophet  finally  concludes  this  prophecy,,  the  structure  of 
 which  we  have  so  often  paused  to  admire  in  its  various  parts, 
 with  a  hymn,  after  the  manner  of  those  which,  in  the  Book  of 
 Psalms,  have  these  two  thousand  years  been  reckoned  among  the 
 most  precious  treasures  of  men,  women,  and  children,  all  over 
 the  world.  It  is  a  hymn  of  the  restored  church,  which  Isaiah 
 puts  into  her  mouth  *  in  that  day.'  I  say  the  restored  church, 
 rather  than  the  nation,  because  the  whole  matter  as  well  as  tone 
 of  the  hymn  —  as  indeed  the  name  hymn  would  signify  —  marks 
 that  Church  is  the  proper  word  here.  It  is  as  impossible  to  un- 
 derstand the  history  and  literature  of  ancient  Israel,  as  it  is 
 those  of  modern  France,  Germany,  or  England,  if  we  are  ignorant 
 of,  or  do  not  duly  appreciate,  the  presence  and  influence  of  the 
 church  in  each.  And  by  the  church  of  the  Hebrews  I  do  not 
 here  mean  their  national  and  endowed  priesthood,  with  its  pre- 
 scribed laws  and  rituals  for  national  worship  and  education,  and 
 which  are  analogous  to  the  like  institution  among  ourselves ;  I 
 speak  of  that  spiritual  brotherhood  of  which  the  ecclesiastical 
 '  estate  of  the  realm'  in  any  nation  is  the  proper  symbol,  and 
 which  embodies  and  expresses  itself  in  and  by  that  symbol  in  as 
 far  as  it  can ;  but  which  cannot  limit  itself  to  that  or  any  other 
 earthly  form,  because  it  is  itself  heavenly,  and  transcends  all 
 the  partial  and  imperfect  forms  of  earth,  even  when  they  are  at 
 their  best,  and  still  more  so  when  (as  often  happens)  they  have 
 become  deeply,  or  even  hopelessly,  corrupted  and  decayed.  This 
 brotherhood  has  God  for  its  father,  and  for  its  elder  brother  and 
 head  the  Son  of  God,  whom  the  beloved  Apostle  beheld  in 
 vision,  while  '  ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand,  and  thousands 
 
 *  Rawlinson's  Outline,  p.  23. 
 k  4 
 
136  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 of  thousands,'  sang  —  '  Thou  wast  slain,  and  hast  redeemed  us 
 to  God  by  thy  blood  out  of  every  kindred,  and  tongue,  and 
 people,  and  nation  ;  and  hast  made  us  unto  our  God  kings  and 
 priests ;  and  we  shall  reign  on  the  earth.'  And  what  St.  John 
 contemplated  and  declared  with  the  eye  and  tongue  of  the  old 
 Hebrew  seers,  St.  Paul  has  set  forth  in  the  language  and  by  the 
 methods  of  European  philosophy  ;  while  the  life  and  substance 
 of  the  teaching  of  both  is  contained  in  the  last  discourses  of 
 their  Master  and  ours,  who  said,  '  Neither  pray  I  for  these 
 alone,  but  for  them  also  which  shall  believe  on  me  through  their 
 word ;  that  they  all  may  be  one ;  as  thou,  Father,  art  in  me, 
 and  I  in  thee,  that  they  also  may  be  one  in  us :  that  the  world 
 may  believe  that  thou  hast  sent  me.'  The  world  and  the  church 
 are  the  two  universal  opposites :  not  the  world  merely  in  some 
 particularly  bad  sense,  but  in  all  senses,  good  and  bad ;  —  the 
 world  which  hates  and  resists  the  church  with  active  enmity  ; 
 the  world  which  hinders  the  church  by  its  indifference,  selfish- 
 ness, corruption,  and  decay ;  and  also  the  world  into  which  the 
 church  is  in  all  ages  infusing  its  own,  or  rather  its  Lord's,  un- 
 worldly, heavenly  spirit ;  Avhich  shall  be  at  last  entirely  renewed 
 by  that  spirit,  and  shall  '  believe '  that  the  church,  and  the 
 Lord  of  the  church,  were  indeed  sent  by  the  Father  of  all,  that 
 his  Name  may  be  glorified  in  and  through  all.  This  church, 
 which  Socrates  and  Plato  hoped  to  find,  and  dwell  in,  after 
 death*,  but  which  Jesus  Christ  and  his  Apostles  tell  us,  and 
 we  know — unless  we  shut  our  eyes  to  the  truth  —  is  actually 
 
 *  "  This  law  of  degeneracy  [according  to  Plato]  exists  in  the  com- 
 monwealths of  the  earth,  just  because  they  have  not  understood  and 
 steadfastly  contemplated  that  original  model,  that  perfect  idea  of  a  common- 
 wealth, which  is  also  the  original  model  and  perfect  idea  of  a  human  cha- 
 racter. It  is  a  contradiction  and  absurdity  then  to  allege  the  fact  of  this 
 degeneracy  as  a  proof  that  no  such  model  is  to  be  found.  But  after  all 
 these  inquiries  does  the  thought  still  linger  about  the  mind,  where  is  it  to  be 
 found  ?  Plato  answers  (book  ix.  p.  fin.),  'AAA1  b>  oupai<<p  tcrws  irapdStty/xa  ava- 
 iceirai  t<£  /3oi'/Vo;uefa>  bpav  km  bpwvri  taurbv  KaroiKi'^eiv.  Is  it  wonderful  that  such 
 words  should  have  suggested  to  some  of  the  Christian  fathers  the  recollection 
 of  those  words  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  which  describe  the  hopes  of  the 
 head  of  the  covenanted  people,  'E|e5exei-o  y&p  tV  robs  OepeKlovs  ixov<rav  *"<^»/ 
 ?)s  Tex'/'T7?s  K<d  Srifxiovpybs  &  &e6s  ;  or  those  which  describe  this  hope  as  accom- 
 plished, 'HfiSip  rb  TroAn-ev/uu  iv  ovpavols  vnapxa?" — Maurice's  Moral  and  Meta- 
 physical Philosophy,  pp.  153,  154.  (2nd  Edition.) 
 
DIFFERENT    ANTICIPATIONS    OF    ISAIAH    AND    JEREMIAH.    137 
 
 set  up  and  open,  upon  earth,  was  to  the  Hebrew  nation  neither 
 a  mere  future  hope,  nor  a  complete  present  possession.  It  was 
 present,  but  present  in  the  germ,  and  not  in  the  fruit  or  flower. 
 It  deepened,  sanctified,  spiritualised  their  family  relations,  and 
 their  national  life,  literature,  and  worship ;  we  see  it  pervading 
 their  traditions,  history,  laws,  and  the  writings  of  their  psalmists 
 and  prophets,  and  forming  the  channel  through  which  God 
 *  spake  to  them  at  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners ; '  but 
 we  see  also  that  the  prophets  themselves,  when  most  conscious 
 of  the  reality  of  the  divine  Word  and  Spirit  imparted  to  them, 
 felt  that  they  wanted  something  more,  namely,  a  universal 
 instead  of  a  partial,  occasional,  measured,  gift  of  the  Spirit. 
 '  The  Holy  Ghost  was  not  yet  given'  (that  is,  not  e  without 
 measure,'  as  it  is  elsewhere  expressed)  '  because  that  Jesus  was 
 not  yet  glorified ; '  and  therefore,  though  the  prophets  knew  that 
 their  nation  had  really  been  based  from  the  first  upon  God's 
 covenant,  and  upheld  by  his  presence  as  their  Lord,  still  they 
 felt  that  they  needed  '  a  new  covenant,'  and  looked  forward  to 
 a  day  when  the  Lord  should  put  his  law  in  their  hearts,  and 
 when  they  should  no  more  have  occasion  to  teach  each  other 
 how  to  know  the  Lord,  because  not  merely  lawgivers,  kings, 
 and  prophets,  but  the  humblest  peasant  and  child,  should  know 
 Him  for  himself.*  It  may  be  said  that  we  are  even  now  no 
 better  off  than  they  were,  for  it  is  the  world  and  not  the  church 
 which  still  predominates  everywhere ;  and  that  we  think  our- 
 selves happy  if  we  can  infuse  some  little  spiritual  life  into  cor- 
 rupt and  decayed  family  and  national  institutions,  while  the 
 expectation  of  their  perfect  renewal  by  the  presence  and  power 
 of  a  universal  and  heavenly  brotherhood  set  up  among  us  here 
 on  earth,  is  but  a  hope  for  the  remotest  future,  if  even  that. 
 True ;  our  Christian  faith  has  sunk  not  merely  to  the  level  of 
 the  Jewish  prophet,  but  to  that  of  the  Greek  philosopher: 
 we  hope  that  perhaps  wTe  may  find  what  we  want  in  some  other 
 world  after  death.  But  the  difference  between  them  and  us  is 
 that  both  of  them  believed  and  accepted  all  that  it  was  given 
 them  to  know,  but  we  do  not.  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  mani- 
 fested among  us,  but  we  deny  its   presence.     We  deny  it  so- 
 
 *  Jeremiah,  xxxi.  31 — 34. 
 
138  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 cially  even  when  we  seem  to  acknowledge  it  individually ;  and 
 the  consequent  taint  and  curse  of  worldliness  which  pervades 
 every  thing,  even  our  religion,  can  only  be  got  rid  of  in  pro- 
 portion as  our  social  as  well  as  our  individual  life  is  renewed 
 by  faith  in  Christ,  who,  being  the  Head,  is  the  source  of  life  in 
 all  the  relations  which  the  members  of  the  body  have  with  one 
 another.* 
 
 But  while  we  recognise  this  distinction  of  the  Jew  from  the 
 Christian  as  well  as  from  the  Gentile,  —  that  the  first  had  the 
 church,  though  yet  in  its  germ  and  promise, — it  does  not  follow 
 that  we  are  to  disregard  the  various  and  successive  stages  of  its 
 development  among  the  Jews  themselves.  And  in  this  and  the 
 other  earlier  prophecies  of  Isaiah,  we  should  go  much  against 
 their  actual  language  and  tone,  as  well  as  against  probability, 
 if  we  supposed  that  the  youthful  patriot  grown  up  in  the  pros- 
 perous reigns  of  Uzziah  and  Jotham,  and  having  seen  only  two 
 or  three  years  of  national  calamity,  was  looking  at  things  as 
 Jeremiah  looks  at  them  in  the  passage  quoted  above,  when  a 
 moral  and  material  decay  of  many  generations  had  brought  the 
 commonwealth  to  the  lowest  depression,  and  spiritual  hope  was 
 stimulated  by  the  utter  despair  of  earth.  It  is  more  in  ac- 
 cordance with  all  the  facts  to  believe  that  Isaiah,  when  he  puts 
 this  hymn  in  the  mouth  of  the  remnant  of  the  Lord's  people, 
 recovered  from  the  four  corners  of  the  earth,  was  anticipating 
 such  a  restoration  of  the  national  church  as  he  did  witness  a  few 
 years  after,  in  the  reign  of  the  pious  Hczekiah,  —  a  restoration 
 which  consisted  not  merely  in  the  re-opening  the  temple,  and 
 re-establishing  the  daily  worship  and  the  yearly  festivals,  but 
 much  more  in  the  humble,  holy,  devout  spirit  of  repentance, 
 hope,  and  faith,  in  which  the  king  and  people  confessed  before 
 God  that  it  was  for  their  sins  that  '  their  fathers  had  fallen  by 
 the  sword,  and  their  sons,  and  their  daughters,  and  their  wives, 
 were  in  captivity ; '  and  that  they  now  '  turned  again  to  Him, 
 the  Lord  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Israel,  believing  that 
 He  would  return  to  the  remnant  of  them  who  were  escaped  out 
 of  the  hand  of  the  kings  of  Assyria,  and  that  their  brethren  and 
 
 *  The  reader  will  see  that  I  have  followed  Coleridge's  exposition  of  the 
 relation  of  the  universal  to  a  national  church,  in  his  essay  on  Church  and 
 State. 
 
ISAIAH  XII.  3.:    THE    WATER    OF    SALVATION.  139 
 
 their  children  would  find  compassion  before  them  that  led  them 
 captive,  so  that  they  should  come  again  into  their  own  land, 
 because  the  Lord  their  God  was  gracious  and  merciful,  and 
 would  not  turn  away  his  face  from  them,  if  they  returned 
 to  Him.'  *  The  historical  narrative  is  indeed  a  striking  counter- 
 part of  the  prophecy ;  the  influence  of  the  man  who  uttered  the 
 latter  is  manifest  in  the  proceedings  chronicled  by  the  former ; 
 and  each  makes  the  other  a  thoroughly  intelligible  and  co- 
 herent portion  of  one  history. 
 
 The  Talmudists  refer  the  words,  '  With  joy  shall  ye  draw 
 water  out  of  the  wells  of  salvation,'  to  the  custom  of  making  an 
 oblation  of  water  on  the  last  day  of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles, 
 when  a  priest  fetched  water  in  a  golden  pitcher  from  the  foun- 
 tain of  Siloah,  and  poured  it  mixed  with  wine  on  the  morning 
 sacrifice  as  it  lay  on  the  altar  :  while  at  the  evening  offering  the 
 same  was  done  amidst  shouts  of  joy  from  the  assembled  people. 
 It  was  in  obvious  allusion  to  this  rite  that,  '  in  the  last  day, 
 that  great  day  of  the  feast,  Jesus  stood  and  cried,  saying,  If  any 
 man  thirst  let  him  come  unto  me  and  drink ;  '  but  as  it  is  not 
 prescribed  in  the  law  of  Moses,  it  has  been  doubted  whether  it 
 dates  back  earlier  than  the  times  of  the  Maccabees.  It  is,  how- 
 ever, at  least  as  probable  that  the  Asmonean  princes  should  have 
 restored  an  ancient,  as  ordained  a  new  rite  :  such  a  rite,  to 
 acknowledge  God's  gift  of  the  water  without  which  harvest  and 
 vintage  must  have  failed,  would  always  have  been  a  likely  ac- 
 companiment of  the  feast  in  which  these  were  celebrated ;  and 
 the  like  acts  of  Samuel  and  Elijah,  though  for  different  pur- 
 poses, perhaps  go  in  confirmation  of  the  ancient  existence  of 
 such  a  practice.!  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  idea  conveyed  by 
 the  image  of  the  living  water  will  be  the  same :  — '  Such  as  is 
 the  refreshment  of  water  from  the  spring,  and  from  the  clouds 
 of  heaven,  to  the  parched  lips  and  the  thirsty  land,  in  this  our 
 sultry  climate,  such  shall  be  the  refreshment  to  your  spirit  in 
 that  day  from  the  salvation  of  the  Lord.  He  shall  dwell  among 
 you,  and  His  Spirit  shall  be  a  well  of  life  to  the  whole  nation.' 
 
 *  2  Chronicles,  xxix.  xxx.  xxxi. 
 
 f  1  Samuel,  vii.  6. ;  1  Kings,  xix.  33—35. 
 
140  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  IX. 
 
 Isaiah  xni.,  xiv. — genuineness  of  the  prophecies  on  babylon.  —  scep- 
 tical CRITICISM ITS  ORIGIN  AND  PROGRESS NOT  POSITIVE  OR  CON- 
 structive.   orthodox  criticism. results  of  the  controversy. 
 
 traditional    comments  confounded  with  the  text. hebrew  his- 
 torical notices  of  babtlon assyrian  notices.  babylon  sacked 
 
 in  isaiah's  time   by  Persians,  and  perhaps  by  medes.  —  babylon  a 
 
 diagram  or  ideograph. arguments  from  style. suspense  better 
 
 than  hasty  decision.  final  overthrow  of  the  empire    of  force. 
 
 «  The  burden  of  Babylon,  which  Isaiah  the  son  of  Amos  did 
 see.'  A  number  of  learned  modern  commentators  of  Germany 
 maintain  that  the  <  higher  criticism,'  as  they  name  it,  has 
 ascertained  this  title  to  be  spurious,  and  the  prophecy  at  the 
 head  of  which  it  stands,  as  well  as  several  others  in  the  book, 
 and  especially  chapters  xl.  to  lxvi.,  to  have  been  written  towards 
 the  end  of  the  great  Babylonish  Captivity.  But  this  '  higher 
 criticism '  is  not  the  constructive  criticism  by  which  a  Niebuhr 
 and  a  Grote  have  restored  the  political  histories  of  Rome  and 
 Greece ;  but  that  negative,  eighteenth-century  criticism,  that 
 *  victorious  analysis,'  which  Niebuhr  taught  us  how  to  escape 
 from,  or  rather  to  make  our  servant  instead  of  our  master.  And  if 
 it  still  asserts  its  power  in  the  region  of  biblical  literature,  and 
 especially  in  the  question  of  the  genuineness  of  the  writings  of 
 Isaiah,  it  is  not  the  less  on  the  eve  of  becoming  obsolete  here  as 
 elsewhere,  in  that  respect  in  which  it  most  prides  itself.  For 
 antiquarian  research,  sceptical  questioning,  skilful  anatomy,  refu- 
 tation of  the  credulous  or  fraudulent  figments  of  writers  or 
 commentators,  and  for  sweeping  away  by  these  means  every 
 kind  of  accumulated  rubbish,  the  negative  criticism  is,  and 
 will  continue  to  be,  invaluable,  not  only  to  other  students,  but 
 to  the  student  of  the  Bible,  in  as  far  as  it  is  applicable  to  his 
 subject-matter.  But  the  mechanical  and  logical  arrangements 
 by  which  it  proposes  to  frame  a  substitute  for  what  it  has,  or 
 supposes  it  has,  destroyed,  are  now  understood  not  to  be  really 
 constructive  in  the  sense  which  science  demands,  and  declares 
 possible.     It  does  not  discover  the  law  in  the  simpler  facts,  and 
 
RISE   OF    THE    SPECULATIVE   CRITICISM   ON    ISAIAH.  141 
 
 then  explain  the  more  complicated  facts  by  that  law  :  but  it 
 starts  with  a  theory,  and  makes  the  facts  fit  this  theory  by 
 learned  and  ingenious  adaptations,  or  if  they  are  quite  intract- 
 able, rejects  them,  declaring  that  it  has  a  '  critical  feeling'  that 
 they  are  not  genuine.  It  is  no  jest  to  say  that  t  Tant  pis  pour 
 les  faits '  is  one  of  its  main  arguments.  But  we  want  facts,  and 
 laws,  not  speculations ;  and  therefore  this  speculative  criticism, 
 though  it  may  dress  itself  in  the  newest  fashion  of  philosophy, 
 cannot  maintain  its  ground,  except  because  there  is  nothing 
 better  to  take  its  place.  It  bears  the  same  relation  to  the  really 
 scientific  criticism  which  a  thoughtful  student  of  the  Bible  so 
 greatly  longs  for,  as  the  speculations  of  the  '  Vestiges  of  Crea- 
 tion'do  to  the  positive  sciences  of  which  the  foundations  are 
 slowly  but  surely  laid  in  the  observations  and  inductions  of  a 
 Herschel,  a  Lyell,  a  Pritchard,  or  a  Latham.  The  difference 
 between  science  and  theory  is  finally  established,  and  hence- 
 forth the  latter  has  only  to  give  way  before  the  former,  and 
 that  in  moral  and  religious  no  less  than  in  physical  inquiry. 
 Into  the  general  question  of  the  relation  of  the  so-called  ortho- 
 dox and  rationalist*  systems  of  biblical  criticism  to  each  other, 
 and  to  that  scientific  method  which  we  have  still  to  wait  for, 
 this  is  not  the  place  to  enter ;  but  as  to  the  point  immediately 
 under  consideration,  the  state  of  the  case  seems  to  be  this :  — 
 
 In  1786  Bishop  Lowth  published  his  work  on  Isaiah,  in  which, 
 while  he  recognised  the  ordinary  orthodox  views  of  prophecy, 
 it  was  his  main  object  to  exhibit  Isaiah  as  a  poet  not  inferior  to 
 the  great  classical  models,  and  to  remove  the  obstacles  to  his 
 being  duly  appreciated  as  such,  partly  by  literary  illustrations, 
 and  partly  by  a  new  translation  in  which  many  real  errors  or 
 obscurities  of  the  authorised  version  were  avoided,  while  the 
 whole  was  made  to  assume  a  form  more  in  accordance  with  clas- 
 sical, or  supposed  classical,  canons.  The  last  point  he  endea- 
 voured to  attain  by  a  free  use  of  conjectural  emendations  —  his 
 own,  and  those  of  ancient  versions  or  modern  scholars  —  of  the 
 
 *  Convenient  as  these  terms  are  for  making  a  general  statement,  I  should 
 have  feared  to  countenance,  by  the  use  of  them,  the  base  practice  of  pointing 
 arguments  with  nicknames ;  but  I  find  them  employed  as  honourable  titles, 
 —  the  one  by  Dr.  Alexander,  in  the  Introduction  to  his  Commentary, 
 p.  xxxi. ;  and  the  other  by  M.  Bunsen,  in  Hippolytus  and  his  Age,  i.  164. 
 
142  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 text,  in  places  of  which  it  was  not  then  seen  that  they  were 
 already  in  harmony  with  the  canons  of  Hebrew,  and  often  even 
 of  English  taste,  and  could  only  be  injured  by  being  altered.  And 
 though  these  particular  conjectures  were  soon  set  aside  by  He- 
 brew scholars,  as  wanting  alike  in  authority  and  probability, 
 yet  the  spirit  of  them  would  not  so  easily  die,  for  it  was  that 
 which  animated  the  whole  criticism  of  the  age.  Lowth  had 
 employed  himself  in  making  it  clear  that  Isaiah  was  a  real  poet : 
 certain  of  his  German  cotemporaries  and  successors  proposed  to 
 prove  that  he  was  a  real  patriot,  politician,  and  man  of  flesh  and 
 blood,  like  Socrates,  or  Cicero,  or  the  men  of  the  eighteenth 
 century  itself.  Not  that  the  orthodox  commentators  denied,  or 
 did  not  recognise,  these  characteristics  of  the  Hebrew  prophet. 
 But  these  commentators  were  men,  many  of  whom,  if  not  all,  had 
 learnt  by  personal  experience  that  they  had  a  nearer  and  deeper 
 interest  in  the  words  of  Isaiah  than  in  those  of  any  patriot  or 
 politician,  ancient  or  modern ;  and  they  had  accepted  the  com- 
 mon explanation  of  this  experience  of  the  whole  Church,  as  well 
 as  themselves, — '  that  Isaiah  was  inspired,  and  his  prophecies  a 
 part  of  the  revelation  of  God  to  man  : '  and,  moreover,  they  had 
 adopted,  and  were  employing  all  their  learning  and  ingenuity  to 
 maintain,  the  notion  —  in  former  times  floating  vaguely  on  the 
 surface  of  a  deeper  and  truer  belief,  but  now  reduced  to  a  co- 
 herent system  —  that  not  only  was  '  all  Scripture  given  by  in- 
 spiration,' but  that  (contrary  to  the  constant  declaration  of 
 Scripture  itself)  inspiration  was  confined  to  the  writers  of 
 Scripture,  and  consisted  not  in  the  perpetual  presence  and  in- 
 dwelling of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  church,  and  in  each  member 
 of  the  church,  but  mainly  and  eminently,  though  not  entirely, 
 in  special  miraculous  (by  which  they  meant  arbitrary)  commu- 
 nications from  God  through  the  prophet  or  apostle,  who  was 
 himself  little  more  than  a  mechanical  instrument  for  the  purpose. 
 And,  therefore,  while  such  commentators  as  the  great  Vitringa 
 gave  a  predominance  to  the  religious  and  Christian  interest  of 
 Isaiah's  prophecies,  to  which  it  can  only  be  objected  that  it  is 
 shown  apart  from  their  national  and  human  interest,  instead  of 
 in  the  entire  union  in  which  the  two  stand  together  in  the  pro- 
 phecies themselves,  we  find  them  maintaining  that  these  pro- 
 phecies are  full  of  miraculous  predictions  of  future  events,  which 
 
GENUINENESS   OF    ISAIAIl'S   WRITINGS.  143 
 
 could  only  have  been  made  known  to  the  prophet  because 
 God  had  seen  fit  to  suspend  or  supersede  the  laws  of  nature  and 
 the  human  mind  for  the  occasion.  Here,  then,  came  in  the  neo- 
 logical  or  rationalist  critics,  who  replied, —  that  a  more  extensive 
 and  accurate,  as  well  as  a  less  prejudiced,  examination  and  com- 
 parison of  the  literature,  antiquities,  history,  philosophy  of  the 
 Hebrews  and  of  other  nations,  would  show  that  a  great  part  of 
 the  phenomena  in  question,  including  those  of  the  writer's  own 
 belief  in  spiritual  and  divine  influences  and  interpositions,  were 
 merely  human  and  ordinary,  and  such  as  were  habitually  recog- 
 nised to  be  so  by  these  very  orthodox  commentators  if  found  in 
 classical  or  modern  history  :  —  that  they  admitted  that  there  still 
 remained  a  large  number  of  predictions  of  future  events  in 
 the  book  of  Isaiah,  which  could  not  be  thus  disposed  of,  but 
 that  here  the  art  of  the  '  higher  criticism,'  by  which  the  com- 
 mentator trained  to  its  exercise  could  decide  what  were  and  what 
 were  not  the  genuine  works  of  an  author,  however  ancient, 
 was  available :  —  that  this  criticism  did  in  fact  set  aside  all 
 the  positive,  matter-of-fact,  evidence  which  the  document  itself 
 offers,  and  decide  that  all  the  supposed  miraculous  predictions  of 
 Isaiah  were  written  either  after  the  event,  or  when  it  was  so  close 
 at  hand  as  to  be  cognisable  by  an  acute  observer,  and  might 
 therefore,  be  confidently  ascribed,  not  to  Isaiah,  but  to  a  writer  or 
 writers  living  in  Babylon  towards  the  end  of  the  captivity,  who 
 imitated  his  style  more  or  less  successfully,  and  whose  works  were 
 presently  assumed  and  maintained  to  be  his,  either  in  order  to  give 
 greater  weight  to  his  promises  and  warnings  by  a  venial,  or 
 perhaps  commendable  fraud,  or  else  through  the  ignorance  or 
 carelessness  of  copyists,  their  deficiency  of  separate  parchments, 
 or  other  accidents  which  the  critical  tact  of  the  several  commen- 
 tators and  readers  might  prefer  to  suppose :  —  while,  lastly,  the 
 assertion  that  the  words  of  the  prophet  do  actually  reveal  to  the 
 Christian  a  knowledge  of  God  and  of  His  will,  not  otherwise 
 discoverable,  the  rationalist,  except  in  as  far  as  he  explained  or 
 got  rid  of  it  by  the  foregoing  arguments,  passed  in  silence,  like 
 the  German  translation,  or  abridgment,  of  Vitringa,  '  aus  wel- 
 cher  alle  die  ungeniessbaren  mystichen  Erklarungen  weggefallen 
 sind.'  But  this  practice  of  ignoring  facts,  whether  historical, 
 or  those  facts  of  consciousness  which  supply  so  large  a  part  of 
 
144  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 the  materials  of  any  tolerable  philosophy  of  human  life,  cannot, 
 as  the  sceptic  always  fancies,  stop  just  where  he  pleases.  His 
 whole  mind  is  influenced  by  it,  and  accordingly  his  views  of 
 Hebrew  and  other  national  politics  and  literature  not  only  re- 
 quire the  support  of  innumerable  theories  and  conjectures,  but 
 they  are  after  all  unsatisfactory  from  their  narrowness.  Vi- 
 tringa,  with  all  his  '  unpalatable  mystical  interpretations,'  is 
 less  of  a  mere  book-student  than  Gesenius,  and  knows  more 
 what  a  flesh  and  blood  man  is  like. 
 
 No  one,  indeed,  can  bring  a  charge  of  narrowness  or  super- 
 ficiality against  Ewald,  who  has  thrown  more  light  upon  the 
 real  nature  of  prophecy  than  any  one,  except  our  own  country- 
 man Maurice;  yet  this  makes  it  the  more  instructive  to  see 
 how,  in  all  these  questions  of  criticism,  his  '  shaping  spirit  of 
 imagination '  is  so  strong,  that  its  creations  have  to  him  all  the 
 reality  of  historical  facts.  Thus,  on  the  subject  before  us,  he 
 says  *,  that  though  we  cannot  trace  the  history  of  the  existing 
 collections  of  the  prophecies,  by  external  evidence,  yet  we  may, 
 by  help  of  that  which  is  internal  or  derived  from  analogy,  ar- 
 rive at  some  extremely  weighty  truths,  which  present  themselves 
 to  us  as  scattered  marks  and  vestiges  of  that  history.  And  then 
 he  proceeds  to  give,  not  some  of  those  general  and  philosophical 
 views  in  which  he  is  such  a  master,  but  a  series  of  historical,  or 
 quasi-historical,  statements  as  to  the  period  at  the  end  of  the 
 exile  of  which  we  have  no  *  external '  accounts.  He  says,  that '  at 
 that  time  a  multitude  of  new  prophecies,  often  of  great  poetical 
 beauty,  and  written,  as  it  were,  on  thousands  of  flying  sheets, 
 were  published  and  collected  ;  and  that  it  is  easy  to  understand 
 how  this  flood  of  new  writings  soon  made  it  seem  expedient  to 
 make  and  circulate  new  selections  of  the  most  important  of  the 
 old  works  on  prophecy.'  And  he  then  gives,  in  great  detail,  a 
 narrative  of  the  steps  by  which  one  of  these  selectors  arranged 
 the  Book  of  Isaiah  as  we  now  have  it,  even  pointing  out  two 
 little  passnges  which  the  said  selector  ('whom  one  may  easily 
 o-ive  credit  for  being  something  of  an  author  himself),  added  to 
 o-ivc  a  finish  to  certain  sections  of  the  work.  Parts  of  this  nar- 
 rative  are  qualified  with  such  words  as  '  probably,'  '  easily  con- 
 ceived,' &c,  but  others  are  not  less  supported   by  the  counter- 
 
 *  Die  Prophetcn,  i.  55-60. 
 
IMPORTANT  RESULTS  OF  THE  CONTROVERSY.     145 
 
 vailing  'manifestly,'  or  'undeniably;'  and  the  whole  is  such  a 
 statement  of  events  which  happened,  without  being  recorded, 
 2200  years  ago,  as  no  Englishman  would  venture  to  make,  with 
 all  the  documents  before  him,  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
 works  of  any  author  of  his  own  generation  were  composed  and 
 arranged.  Ewald  has  (as  his  readers  know)  farther  employed 
 this  supposed  power  of  recovering  the  past,  in  re-arranging  the 
 whole  of  the  Prophets  as  well  as  the  Psalms,  as  they  'must '  have 
 been,  and  has  printed  his  versions  accordingly.  I  point  out 
 these  things,  not  from  any  disposition  to  carp  at  this  wise 
 and  good  man,  nor  even  for  their  interest  to  the  student  of 
 the  national  distinctions  of  the  human  mind,  but  because  I  be- 
 lieve that  we  must  understand  them,  in  order  to  understand 
 this  question  of  the  Isaian,  or  non-Isaian,  authorship  of  these 
 chapters.  For  he  must  be  very  ignorant  and  conceited  who  is 
 not  often  ready  to  think  that  these  Germans  are  so  wise,  and 
 their  insight  so  deep,  that  we  ought  to  take  their  authority  on 
 this  point,  though  their  arguments  seem  so  inconclusive.  And 
 such  instances  as  that  above,  explain  clearly  what  are  the  proper 
 limits  of  the  Germans'  authority,  and  where  we  must  begin  to 
 judge  for  ourselves.  They  offer  us  diamonds  and  glass  beads  as 
 of  equal  value :  we  may  know  the  difference,  though  they  alone 
 know  where  to  find  the  former.* 
 
 The  controversy,  however,  has  not  been  without  fruit,  and 
 it  promises  more  hereafter.  The  opposite  and  equally  arbitrary 
 modes  of  appealing  on  every  difficulty  either  to  a  miracle,  or  to 
 a  supposition  that  the  text  ought  to  be  what  it  is  not,  will  be 
 seen  to  be  alike  unnecessary  in  order  to  explain  the  facts  of  the 
 case,  when  we  have  learnt  how  to  look  at  those  facts  in  a 
 stronger  and  clearer  light,  derived  from  a  deeper  knowledge  of 
 
 *  M.  Bunsen  says,  "  Modern  criticism  has  been  left  to  the  Germans,  for 
 whom  reality  has  no  charm."  And  of  "  the  Protestant  critical  school  in 
 Germany,"  he  adds  —  "  what  they  know  how  to  handle  best  is  thought,  the 
 ideal  part  of  history  ;  what  is  furthest  from  their  grasp  is  reality."  —  Hippo~ 
 lytus  and  his  Age,  ii.  228.  239.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  M.  Bunsen  would 
 make  my  application  of  his  maxims. 
 
 If  it  is  said  that  even  the  Germans  think  Ewald  fanciful,  I  would  reply 
 that,  in  this  question  of  the  genuineness  of  Isaiah's  writings,  Gesenius  and 
 Hitzig  are  quite  as  regardless  of  fact  and  evidence,  and  quite  as  hypotheti- 
 cal, as  Ewald. 
 
 L 
 
146  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 the  laws  according  to  which  God  has  both  created  men,  and  is 
 still  ruling  and  guiding  them,  both  as  to  their  inward  and  their 
 outward  life.  It  is  impossible  to  glance  at  the  progress  of  this 
 controversy  during  the  last  sixty  or  seventy  years,  without 
 seeing  the  marked  approaches  that  have  been  made  on  both 
 sides  towards  a  union  on  the  common  ground  of  a  positive 
 theology  and  criticism.  On  the  one  hand  we  are  learning  that 
 in  proportion  as  we  can  discover  the  law  of  God's  working  in 
 events  where  our  predecessors  only  saw  His  power,  and  can, 
 consequently,  perceive  the  resemblances  between  God's  former 
 and  present  manner  of  governing  the  world  where  they  saw 
 chiefly  the  differences,  this  does  not  dishonour  but  honour  God, 
 and  instead  of  weakening  our  recognition  of  the  reality  of  God's 
 presence  and  power  in  our  own  souls,  does  in  truth  add  a  new 
 and  stronger  evidence  of  it  to  ourselves  and  to  others.  And, 
 meanwhile,  we  have  been  discovering  on  the  other  side,  that, 
 in  order  to  sustain  the  assertion  that  the  Hebrew  prophet  was 
 a  real  poet,  orator,  patriot,  and  man,  we  must  get  some  higher 
 and  more  catholic  standard  of  what  poetry,  oratory,  patriotism, 
 and  manhood  are,  than  the  stunted  specimens  of  student  or 
 town  life  in  the  eighteenth  century,  or  indeed  any  other  cen- 
 tury, could  supply  us  with ;  and  it  is  now  becoming  plain  that 
 these  efforts  to  realise  the  human  character  of  prophecy  will  not 
 stop  in  their  ever-increasing  demands  for  a  higher  standard, 
 till  they  have  found  how  to  apply  that  ideal  of  perfect  manhood 
 which  St.  Paul  calls  'the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ.' 
 
 The  traditional  and  orthodox  interpretation  of  the  chapters 
 before  us  is,  that  they  are  a  specific  prediction  of  the  taking  of 
 Babylon  by  the  Medes  and  Persians  about  two  hundred  years 
 after  the  words  were  uttered  by  Isaiah ;  and  it  is  confidently  added 
 that  the  historical  events  are  anticipated  with  such  accuracy  of 
 detail  as  can  only  be  explained  by  miracle.  The  rationalists  admit 
 the  fact  of  these  precise  historical  details,  but  maintain  that  they 
 prove  not  a  miracle,  but  that  the  real  date  of  the  prophecy  is 
 contemporary  with  the  events.  "Whereas  the  thoughtful  reader, 
 who  examines  the  text  as  it  is  in  itself,  and  not  through  the 
 medium  of  traditions  and  conjectures,  will,  I  am  bold  to  say, 
 find  no  such  specific  predictions  and  historical  details. 
 
 There  is  just  the  same  profound  insight  into  political  princi- 
 
COMMENTS  CONFOUNDED    WITH    TIIE    TEXT.  147 
 
 pies,  the  same  acquaintance  with  the  general  political  relations 
 of  the  foreign  nations,  and  the  same  foresight  of  their  conse- 
 quences, which  Isaiah  exhibits  in  the  prophecies  admitted  to  be 
 his ;  and  there  is  the  same  absence  of  literal  detail,  or  the  same 
 evidence  that  the  detail  is  not  historical  but  ideal,  from  its  not 
 corresponding  precisely  with  actual  events.  The  proofs  of  miracu- 
 lous prediction  exist  only  in  the  mind  of  the  commentators,  who 
 have  endeavoured  to  confirm  the  great  truth  that  Isaiah  is  a 
 prophet,  and  filled  with  that  '  spirit  of  wisdom  and  under- 
 standing '  which  he  prized  as  being  the  e  Spirit  of  the  Lord,' 
 by  trivial  fancies  of  their  own,  which  lower  him  towards  the 
 level  of  the  muttering  wizards  whom  he  denounced.  Grotius, 
 indeed,  saw  better,  and  connected  this,  like  the  rest  of  Isaiah's 
 prophecies,  with  cotemporary  events.  And  it  would  be  hard  to 
 understand  why  the  rationalists  were  not  content  to  do  the 
 same,  if  we  did  not  remember  that,  when  they  first  entered  on 
 the  subject,  their  conception  of  the  human  side  of  prophecy 
 was  so  limited  that  they  could  only  explain  such  passages  as 
 the  vision  in  the  sixth  chapter,  and  the  march  of  the  Assyrian 
 army  in  the  tenth,  by  supposing  them  to  be  the  one  an  apologue, 
 and  the  other  an  historical  statement ;  and  that,  though  their 
 views  have  been  gradually  enlarging,  they  have  still,  like  other 
 commentators,  what  may  be  called  a  professional  and  uncon- 
 scious prejudice  in  favour  of  the  traditions  handed  down  to 
 them.  This  habit  of  accepting  traditional  comments  as  if 
 they  were  a  part  of  the  text,  is  common  with  rationalist 
 no  less  than  orthodox  writers,  on  every  part  of  the  Bible,  and 
 has,  if  I  mistake  not,  on  this  occasion,  led  to  the  taking  for 
 granted,  first,  the  orthodox  assumption,  and  then  the  rationalist 
 explanation  of  it ;  though  each  is  contrary  to  the  plain  facts  of 
 the  text.  If  there  are  obscurities  and  difficulties,  this  is  only 
 what  might  be  expected  in  a  book  of  such  antiquity,  and  with 
 such  small  remains  of  cotemporary  history  to  throw  light  on 
 its  allusions ;  and  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  it  may 
 be  necessary  to  leave  some  of  them  unexplained,  or  to  explain 
 them  conjecturally.  But  that  they  need  such  slashing  criticism, 
 or  that  its  employment  does  not  involve  us  in  greater  difficulties 
 than  it  helps  us  out  of,  I  am  unable  to  see.  If  the  text  is 
 corrupt,  let  it  be  emended ;  but  let  us  see  what  it  is,  and  what 
 
 r,  2 
 
148  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 it  ought  to  be,  each  distinctly,  and  not  blended  together  in  a 
 luminous  mist  of  the  higher  criticism.  And  let  us  remember 
 that  what  it  ought  to  be  is  not  to  be  ascertained  by  deciding  how 
 we,  here  in  England,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  should  have 
 written  it,  or  in  what  form  it  would  be  most  easily  intelligible 
 to  us ;  for  the  probability  is  rather  that  such  would  not  have 
 been  the  precise  form  in  which  a  Hebrew  prophet  would  have 
 written  between  two  and  three  thousand  years  ago. 
 
 Whatever  difficulty  appears  in  verses  1,  2,  3,  4.  of  chapter 
 xiv.,  has,  I  think,  been  solved  by  anticipation,  in  accepting 
 verses  10,  11,  12.  of  chapter  xi.,  as  the  genuine  and  intelligible 
 words  of  Isaiah:  only,  that  in  the  passage  now  before  us,  the 
 captivity  from  which  the  people  of  Israel  are  to  be  brought 
 back  is  said  to  be  endured  in  Babylon,  and  at  the  hands  of  the 
 king  of  Babylon  ;  whereas,  in  the  times  of  Isaiah,  the  head  of  the 
 Assyrian  empire  was  usually  called  king  of  Assyria,  and  lived  at 
 Nineveh,  and  Babylon  was  a  dependency,  under  his  viceroy  or 
 vassal-king.  Here,  as  the  student  of  the  question  knows,  lies 
 the  real  difficulty,  to  which  all  the  others  are  but  make-weights ; 
 unless,  indeed,  he  suspects  that  the  spuriousness  of  these  chap- 
 ters is  itself  desired  as  a  make-weight  to  that  of  the  latter  half 
 of  the  book.  To  this  then  let  us  address  ourselves,  by  ex- 
 amining the  text  as  it  is,  and  not  as  it  ought  to  be. 
 
 The  prophecy,  as  it  is,  then,  consists  of  chap.  xiii.  and  the  first 
 twenty-  seven  verses  of  chap,  xiv.,  its  termination  being  marked 
 by  the  title  of  the  next  prophecy,  as  its  commencement  is  by  its 
 own  title,  which  states  that  it  is  by  Isaiah  the  son  of  Amos;  while 
 its  position  in  the  book  indicates  its  date  to  be  towards  the  end 
 of  the  reign  of  Ahaz.  In  the  last  words  (verse  25.)  of  the  pro- 
 phecy, the  impending  destruction  of  the  great  Assyrian  power 
 is  foretold  in  language  corresponding  with  that  in  which  Isaiah 
 had  constantly  on  previous  occasions  denounced  the  same  heathen 
 oppressor ;  while  the  rest  of  the  denunciation,  though  perfectly 
 congruous  with  this  its  own  close,  differs  from  those  previous 
 prophecies  in  calling  the  oppressor  '  king  of  Babylon,'  and  fore- 
 telling the  overthrow  of  that  his  capital,  whereas,  they  call 
 him  '  king  of  Assyria,'  and  speak  only  of  his  army  being  de- 
 stroyed. Isaiah's  authority  for  a  cotcmporary  historical  fact,  is 
 as  good  as  that   of  any  other   record  of  his   times.     If  the 
 
HEBREW    HISTORICAL    NOTICES    OF    BABYLON.  149 
 
 latter  contradict  and  disprove  a  statement  purporting  to  be 
 from  him,  we  must  balance  the  evidence  and  decide  accordingly: 
 but  the  mere  absence  of  confirmatory  statements  would  not 
 throw  doubt  on  the  genuineness  of  an  allusion  by  Isaiah  to  a 
 fact,  probable  in  itself,  and  uncontradicted,  even  though  our 
 resources  for  confirmation  or  contradiction  were  not  so  frag- 
 mentary as  they  are.  And,  therefore,  in  the  absence  of  con- 
 tradiction, sound  criticism  will  decide,  that  if  Isaiah  in  one 
 place  calls  the  oppressor  of  Israel  '  king  of  Assyria,'  and  in 
 another  '  king  of  Babylon,'  it  was  because  he  either  called 
 himself  by  both  these  titles,  or  at  least  was  significantly  pointed 
 out  to  the  prophet's  own  countrymen  by  the  latter  name ;  and 
 that  if  Isaiah  sometimes  describes  the  Jews  as  carried  captives 
 into  various  lands,  and  sometimes  as  living  in  slavery  at 
 Babylon,  it  was  because  a  large  proportion  of  the  captives 
 taken  in  the  time  of  Ahaz  or  of  Hezekiah,  had  fallen  into  the 
 hands  of  the  luxurious  and  cruel  inhabitants  of  that  city.  The 
 only  known  fact  in  opposition  to  those  necessarily  involved  in 
 these  expressions  of  Isaiah  is,  that  Nineveh  was  the  capital  of 
 Tiglath-Pileser  and  his  successors  :  but  there  is  no  absolute  con- 
 tradiction or  incompatibility  between  the  two  ;  it  would  be 
 more  correct  to  say  that  we  have  two  statements  which  stand 
 apart  from  each  other,  and  in  apparent  opposition,  and  to  which 
 our  meagre  and  fragmentary  historical  records  supply  no  third 
 statement  which  might  reconcile  the  others,  in  the  way  in 
 which  a  third  statement  so  often  does  in  all  histories.  Probable 
 and  approximate  evidence,  indeed,  we  have.  Micah,  the  contem- 
 porary of  Isaiah,  makes  Babylon,  and  not  Nineveh,  the  city  to 
 which  the  daughter  of  Zion  shall  be  led  captive.*  Babylon 
 was  one  of  the  cities  from  which  inhabitants  were  supplied  to 
 the  cities  of  Israel,  and  to  which  therefore  the  Israelites  were 
 deported,  in  the  sixth  year  of  Hezekiah.f  Babylon,  though  at 
 this  time  inferior  to  Nineveh,  inasmuch  as  the  latter  was  the 
 seat  of  the  government,  seems  to  have  been  the  right  arm  of 
 the  Assyrian  king,  its  palaces  inhabited  by  his  chief  princes,  and 
 its  vast  population  recruiting  his  armies,  and  consequently  shar- 
 
 *  Micah,  iv.  10.,  which  Gesenius  refers  to  in  his  chronological  table  as 
 proof  that  the  Assyrian  kings  sent  their  prisoners  to  Babylon  at  this  time, 
 f  2  Kings,  xvii.  23,  24. 
 
 i.  3 
 
150  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 ing  largely  in  the  treasures  and  the  captives  of  the  countries 
 they  helped  to  conquer.  It  had  apparently  an  importance  some- 
 thing like  that  of  Delhi  during  the  reigns  of  those  Mogul  em- 
 perors who  lived  at  Agra,  or  of  Edinburgh  and  Dublin  in  our 
 own  time  *  ;  and  it  was,  in  truth,  as  its  earlier  and  later  history 
 shows,  the  more  permanent  of  the  two  centres  of  the  great 
 Mesopotamian  empires.  The  traditions  of  its  origin,  of  the 
 nations  that  had  sprung  from  it,  and  of  the  meaning  of  its  name, 
 gave  it  a  special  importance  in  the  eyes  of  Isaiah  and  the  people 
 he  addressed,  as  the  type  and  embodiment  of  worldly  arbitrary 
 power,  in  contrast  with  the  spiritual  and  law-governed  kingdom 
 of  the  Lord  :  and,  therefore,  he  might  well  name  it  (in  a  fashion  of 
 which  we  shall  have  other  instances)  f,  instead  of  Nineveh,  which 
 he  never  mentions,  and  of  which  his  non-mention,  when  he  de- 
 nounces so  many  other  cities,  would  be  a  great  puzzle,  but  for 
 this  explanation  of  it;  for  he  must  have  known  that  the  great 
 king  of  Assyria  had  a  city  as  well  as  an  army.  To  use  an  illus- 
 tration now  become  familiar  to  us,  '  Babylon  '  is  a  monogram  or 
 ideograph,  employed  by  Isaiah  to  represent  the  capital  of  the 
 Assyrian  empire.  And  so  the  Euphrates,  not  the  Tigris,  is  the 
 river  which  is  to  overflow  the  land  of  ImmanuelJ:  it  was  to 
 Babylon,  not  to  Nineveh,  that  Isaiah  warned  Hezekiah  that  his 
 sons  and  wealth  would  be  carried ;  Babylon,  not  Nineveh,  sup- 
 plies the  forces  which  besiege  Tyre  § ;  and  to  those  who  are 
 content  to  take  the  text  as  it  is,  I  may  further  quote  the  de- 
 nunciations of  Babylon,  in  chapter  xxi.,  and  the  latter  half  of 
 the  book.  So  adduced,  they  are  facts  supporting  the  fact  before 
 us :  in  the  other  mode  of  employing  them,  they  are  parts  of 
 an  argument  in    a    circle,   in  which  the  hypothesis  as  to  the 
 
 *  Compare,  too,  the  following  :  —  "  The  preponderance  of  the  Persians 
 was  at  last  complete  ;  though  the  Medes  always  continued  to  be  the  second 
 nation  in  the  empire,  after  the  Persians,  properly  so  called;  and  by  early 
 Greek  writers  the  great  enemy  in  the  East  is  often  called  •  the  Mede,'  as 
 well  as  '  the  Persian.'  Ekbatana  always  continued  to  be  one  of  the  capital 
 cities,  and  the  usual  summer  residence  of  the  kings  of  Persia ;  Susa  on  the 
 Choaspes,  on  the  Kissian  plain  farther  southward,  and  east  of  the  Tigris, 
 being  their  winter  abode."  —  Grote's  History  of  Greece,  iv.  251.  "  Me- 
 dimig,  i.  e.  embracing  the  cause  of  the  Persians." —  Ibid.  v.  77. 
 
 f  Chapters  xxv.  10,  and  xxxiv.  5,  G,  where  see  farther. 
 
 |  Isaiah,  vii.  20.  viii.  7,  8.  §  Isaiah,  xxiii.  13. 
 
ASSYRIAN    NOTICES    OF    BABYLON.  151 
 
 meaning  or  origin  of  those  chapters  sustains  the  like  hypothesis 
 as  to  this  one  ;  and  the  former  in  its  turn  does  the  like  service 
 for  the  latter. 
 
 And  though  the  decipherment  of  the  Assyrian  annals  them- 
 selves is  still  in  its  infancy,  and  it  would  therefore  be  rash  to 
 draw  final  conclusions  from  them,  yet  the  (partly  independent) 
 versions  or  summaries,  of  Colonel  Rawlinson  and  Dr.  Hincks,  do 
 present  so  many  statements  in  corroboration  of  this  which  I  call 
 Isaiah's  own  account  (and  this  without  any  suspicion  on  the  part 
 of  these  learned  men  that  they  were  supplying  such  corrobo- 
 ration, and  therefore  with  the  probable  omission  of  details  which 
 might  be  of  much  importance  for  our  purpose)  that  it  is 
 difficult  to  conceive  that  the  correspondences  are  illusory, 
 and  not  historical.  They  are  to  this  effect :  —  The  king  who 
 built  the  north-west  palace  at  Nimroud  records  that,  on  taking 
 a  city  which  '  is  particularly  described  as  one  of  considerable 
 importance/  he  imprisoned  its  king  '  in  Babylon.'  Sargon  styles 
 himself  '  the  great  king,  the  king  of  Assyria,  and  the  lord  pa- 
 ramount (or  the  high-priest)  of  Babylon,'  as  kings  both  before 
 and  after  him  seem  to  have  done :  yet  he  did  not  take  this 
 addition  till  the  twelfth  year  of  his  reign,  when  he  turned  up- 
 side down  the  pavement  slabs  of  his  palace,  and  inscribed  the 
 name  of  Babylon  among  his  own  titles,  and  that  of  the  Bab}^- 
 lonian  Nebo  in  a  conspicuous  place  in  the  series  of  gods  to 
 whom  the  palace  was  newly  dedicated,  both  having  been  pre- 
 viously wanting.  And  at  this  date  his  annals  say  that  he 
 conquered  and  expelled  Merodach-Baladan,  who  had  been  twelve 
 years  de  facto  king  of  Babylon,  where  Sargon  thenceforth  reigned 
 in  his  own  or  his  son's  name,  till  near  his  death.  Sargon's 
 most  important  campaigns  '  were  against  Susiana  and  Ely- 
 mais,  and  against  Babylonia  and  Chaldasa,  which  countries 
 were  evidently  very  closely  connected  ; '  and  in  his  last  year 
 he  mentions  that  he  carried  off  the  gold,  silver,  and  valuable 
 property  of  the  seven  kings  in  Yetnan  (which  Rawlinson  sup- 
 poses to  be  the  region  between  Egypt  and  Phoenicia)  to  Baby- 
 lon, because  they  refused  to  pay  their  accustomed  tribute.  On, 
 or  just  before,  the  death  of  Sargon,  Merodach-Baladan,  with 
 the  help  of  allies  from  Susiana  or  Elam,  recovered  Baby- 
 lon ;  but  was  speedily  driven  out  again  by  Sennacherib,  who 
 
 L  4 
 
152  HEBREW   FOLITICS. 
 
 plundered  Babylon,  as  well  as  all  '  the  fortresses  of  the  Chal- 
 daeans,'  carrying  away  gold,  silver,  and  precious  stones,  gods, 
 men,  and  women,  chariots,  horses,  camels,  and  mules,  '  altogether 
 a  vast  booty.'  Sennacherib  then  appointed  a  viceroy  (his  bro- 
 ther according  to  Berosus),  at  Babylon  :  he  had  to  reconquer 
 it  a  second  time  from  Merodach-Baladan,  in  his  fourth  year; 
 when  he  appointed  his  son  Assur-Nadin  (Asordanius  in  Berosus) 
 as  his  viceroy.*  Berosus  relates  a  conquest  of  Babylon  by  the 
 Medes,  and  a  subsequent  dynasty  of  Chaldrean  kings,  long  before 
 these  times  :  he  also  calls  Pul  and  Merodach-Baladan, .  Chal- 
 dasans  f  :  and  the  constant  appearance  of  the  '  Chaldasans'  in  all 
 the  Cuneiform  inscriptions  will,  I  presume,  end  the  doubts  (the 
 nature  of  which  I  do  not  understand)  as  to  the  historical  exist- 
 ence of  this  race  in  the  days  of  Isaiah,  and  will  allow  us  to 
 adopt  the  simple  and  straightforward  conclusions  on  the  sub- 
 ject, of  Gesenius  on  chapter  xxiii.  13.  And  we  shall  then 
 be  able  to  say  in  elucidation  of  the  mention  of  the  Chal- 
 dees  in  the  prophecy  before  us,  that  if,  at  no  distant  period 
 —  shortly  followed,  or  perhaps  marked,  by  the  commence- 
 ment of  the  era  of  Nabonassar,  B.C.  747  —  the  Chaldaean 
 mountaineers  had  been  transplanted  from  Armenia  into  Baby- 
 lon, where  they  would  adopt  its  civilisation  and  share  its 
 wealth,  while  they  supplied  new  vigour  and  military  import- 
 ance to  the  old  city,  that  city  might,  without  impropriety,  have 
 been  called  '  the  beauty  of  the  Chaldees'  excellency,'  by  Isaiah, 
 though  we  doubt  how  far  he  was  conscious  that  his  impassioned 
 words  would  be  still  more  applicable  to  a  great  Chaldsean 
 dynasty  afterwards  to  arise  at  Babylon,  than  to  the  events  he 
 saw  or  anticipated  in  his  own  day. 
 
 So  too  of  the  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy  :  —  Grotius  said, 
 that  if  the  Assyrian  annals  of  Abydenus,  and  the  Baby- 
 lonian of  Berosus  were  extant,  we  should  find  that  between 
 
 *  Hincks,  in  Transactions  of  the  Irish  Academy,  xxii.  pt.  2.,  p.  40  :  pt.  4. 
 p.  364.  ff. :  and  in  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  pp.  140.  353.  620.  Raw- 
 linson's  Outline,  pp.  19.  25,  26.;  Rawlinson's  Commentary  (1850),  p.  67 
 A  comparison  of  the  places  quoted  will  show  that  I  have  merely  put  the 
 translators'  own  last  conclusions  into  juxta- position  with  their  earlier  ones, 
 without  mixing  any  theory  of  my  own. 
 
 "f"  Bunsen's  Vet.  Script.  Fragmenta,  appended  to  Aegyptens  Stelle,  iii. 
 
BABYLON    SACKED    IN    ISAIAH'S    TIME.  153 
 
 the  times  of  Sennacherib  and  Nebuchadnezzar,  the  woes  here 
 denounced  against  Babylon  did  in  effect  come  to  pass,  through 
 some  invasion  or  invasions  of  the  Medes,  who  about  this 
 date  became  independent  of  Assyria,  and  very  powerful,  under 
 Deioces  and  his  successor.  And  now  the  originals  of  those  annals 
 tell  us,  that  Merodach-Baladan  wrested  Babylon,  once  at  least, 
 from  each  of  the  kings  Sargon  and  Sennacherib ;  and  that  in  both 
 instances  he  did  it  by  help  of  an  army  from  Elam  (or  Susa), 
 which  nation  is  joined  by  Isaiah,  in  chapter  xxi.,  with  the  Mede, 
 as  the  destined  conquerors  of  Babylon,  while  Media  appears  in 
 juxta-position  with  Elam  among  the  conquests  of  both  Sargon  and 
 Sennacherib,  the  latter  going  to  invade  the  Medes  immediately 
 after  his  second  defeat  of  Merodach-Baladan,  and  indicating 
 their  power  by  the  notice  that  none  of  his  ancestors  had  received 
 tribute  from  them  as  he  had  done.*  Let  us  put  these  things 
 together,  and  remember  what  a  great  and  rich  city  Babylon 
 was,  and  in  what  fashion  it  would  be  sacked  by  Merodach- 
 Baladan,  and  his  '  Susianian  allies : '  let  us  consider  that  a  great 
 part  of  the  same  inhabitants  who  suffered  on  these  occasions 
 because  they  were  the  subjects  of  the  great  king,  would  be 
 treated  but  little  better  when  he  found  them  with  their  allegi- 
 ance transferred  to  his  rival :  and  then  we  shall  be  able  to  judge 
 what  farther  information  we  require,  in  order  to  decide  whether 
 it  is  impossible  that  Isaiah  could  have  written  the  words  before 
 us.  If  Colonel  Bawlinson's  belief  that  Sargon  was  a  usurper, 
 who  expelled  the  dynasty  of  Tiglath-Pileser  by  a  military  re- 
 volution, should  be  substantiated  when  the  evidence  is  complete, 
 this  would  have  been  of  itself  a  striking  fulfilment  of  Isaiah's 
 denunciations,  whether  the  literal  Babylon  or  only  the  empire 
 which  it  symbolised  to  the  Jew,  were  subverted  on  the  occasion  : 
 the  position  of  the  prophecy  in  the  book  would  indicate  its  date 
 to  be  in  Tiglath-Pileser's  reign.  In  any  case,  we  need  not 
 limit  ourselves  so  much  as  Grotius  does:  it  is  not  necessary 
 to  assume  that  this  prophecy  Avas  fulfilled  more  literally  and 
 definitely  than  many  others  of  which,  we  have  the  historical 
 counterpart,  and  see  that  they  were  far  from  having  such  a 
 literal  fulfilment.     It  is  improbable  that  Babylon  was  utterly 
 
 *  Rawlinson's  Outline,  pp.  18,  19,  20. 25. ;  and  Commentary,  p.  61.:  Hincks, 
 in  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  pp.  140.  142.  145. 
 
154  HEBREAV   POLITICS. 
 
 destroyed  between  Sennacherib's  overthrow  and  the  restora- 
 tion of  the  empire  by  his  son  Esarhaddon ;  but  it  is  a  fact 
 that  it  was  not  so  destroyed  by  Cyrus,  but  perished  by  a 
 decay  extending  through  centuries.  In  order  to  enter  into 
 the  spirit  of  Hebrew  prophecy,  and  understand  its  meaning, 
 we  must  consider  that  the  prophet  is  enunciating  universal 
 propositions,  but  that  instead  of  employing  generalisations 
 and  abstractions,  as  we  moderns  would  do,  he  takes  Baby- 
 lon, or  Moab,  or  Edom,  or  Israel,  in  the  concrete,  and  uses  this 
 concrete  image  as  the  diagram  by  which  to  illustrate  his  propo- 
 sition. The  diagram  is  sometimes  more,  sometimes  less,  accu- 
 rately drawn,  according  to  the  knowledge  or  skill  of  the 
 individual  prophet ;  but  he  who  looks  for  the  meaning  and 
 truth  of  the  prophecy  in  the  literal  correspondence  of  some 
 historical  event,  falls  into  the  same  kind  of  error  as  the  school- 
 boy who  tries  to  prove  a  proposition  of  Euclid  by  measuring  the 
 parts  of  the  diagram,  and  cannot  apprehend  how  the  proposition 
 itself  is  equally  true,  and  equally  important,  whether  the 
 circles  and  lines  are  drawn  with  ruler  and  compasses,  or  by  the 
 most  awkward  hand. 
 
 Isaiah  looked  on  the  main  fortress  of  that  kingdom  of 
 Force,  which  it  was  the  mission  of  his  life  to  denounce,  as 
 the  really  impotent  rival  of  the  kingdom  of  Righteousness, 
 though  the  instrument  for  punishing  the  nations,  and  especially 
 the  Lord's  chosen  nation,  for  their  rebellions  against  His 
 laws.  He  knew  that  numbers  of  his  countrymen  (of  Israel 
 and  of  Judah)  were  at  that  moment  the  slaves  of  the  cruel 
 and  luxurious  Babylonians,  and  he  may  have  anticipated  that 
 still  more  of  the  like  punishment  would  be  inflicted  on  those 
 who  yet  remained  in  their  own  land.  But  he  was  appointed  to 
 preach  not  only  judgment,  but  pardon  and  release,  to  his  people: 
 and  while  he  meditated  upon  the  events  of  his  times,  and  of  the 
 times  before  him,  and  studied  them  in  the  light  of  that  vision 
 which  had  revealed  to  him  the  Lord  of  hosts,  and  the  reality 
 of  His  dominion,  he  saw,  —  not  by  miracle,  but  by  that  insight 
 into  the  principles  governing  the  rise  and  fall  of  empires,  which 
 was  a  higher  and  more  spiritual  gift  of  God  to  him  than  any  such 
 miraculous  power  could  have  been, — that  the  Assyrian  dominion 
 would  be  overthrown  by  the  less  degenerate  and  more  warlike 
 
ARGUMENTS    FROM    STYLE    AND    DICTION.  155 
 
 nations  from  the  north,  who  neither  cared  for  gold,  nor  spared 
 children,  and  whom,  with  his  wonted  concreteness  of  style,  he  here 
 specifies  as  the  Medes,  and  in  chapter  xxi.  as  the  Medes  and  Per- 
 sians: he  saw  that  this  Babylon,  with  all  it  symbolised,  would  be 
 utterly  destroyed,  and  the  Jewish  nation  completely  freed  from 
 its  bondage.  He  saw  all  this  in  its  idea,  and  accordingly  set  it 
 forth  in  all  the  greatness  and  absoluteness  of  the  idea ;  while  he 
 believed  that  he  himself  should  see  such  an  accomplishment  of 
 it  as  was  suited  to  his  own  times,  that  the  successor  of  Ahaz 
 would  reign  in  righteousness  over  a  people  delivered  from  the 
 thraldom  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  and  that  Babylon  would 
 meanwhile  be  humbled  to  the  dust.  But  only  a  small  part  this 
 idea  could  be  possibly  embodied  in  any  single  set  of  historical 
 facts.  Only  in  the  course  of  ages  could  the  whole  idea  be 
 evolved :  there  was  much  more  of  it  brought  out  in  the  days  of 
 Cyrus  than  in  the  time  of  Hezekiah ;  but  still  the  discovery  was 
 but  partial,  and  the  accomplishment  had  —  nay  has  —  still  to  go 
 on.  It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  add  to  the  above  notices  of  the 
 Assyrian  annals,  an  abstract  and  reconciliation  of  what  remains 
 to  us  of  the  history  of  Assyria  and  Babylon.  In  Vitringa, 
 Prideaux,  Gesenius,  Winer,  and  Kitto,  or  in  their  original  autho- 
 rities, the  student  must  necessarily  examine  the  subject  at  large, 
 and  for  himself:  my  ambition  is  only  to  help  him  to  remove 
 some  obstacles  which,  if  I  mistake  not,  stand  in  his  way.  And 
 I  would  ask  him  to  judge  for  himself,  and  without  waiting 
 for  leave  from  any  commentators,  whether,  taking  the  text  as  it 
 is,  and  interpreting  its  historical  allusions  by  the  ordinary  me- 
 thods and  rules  of  criticism,  and  availing  himself  of  such  in- 
 formation as  the  remaining  historical  records  supply,  the  state 
 of  things,  internal  and  external  —  ideas  and  facts  —  supposed  in 
 the  present  prophecy  is,  or  is  not,  something  to  the  effect  above 
 stated. 
 
 As  to  the  arguments  against  the  genuineness  of  these  chap- 
 ters, which  are  drawn  from  their  style  and  diction,  I  would 
 observe  that  it  does  not  require  a  knowledge  of  Hebrew  to 
 enable  the  reader  to  put  the  case,  and  to  judge  what  would  be 
 the  possible  results;  just  as  a  lawyer  can  form  a  reasonable  con- 
 clusion in  an  ecclesiastical  or  commercial  inquiry,  though  he  is 
 neither  a  clergyman  nor  a  merchant.     It  will  stand  thus :  — 
 
156  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 We  have  before  us  the  small  remains  of  the  literature  of  a 
 nation  whose  habits  of  thought,  and  therefore  of  writing,  are 
 removed  from  ours  by  the  distance  of  2500  years,  and  of  Asia 
 from  Europe,  and  of  all  the  differences  therein  implied  ;  the  lan- 
 guage in  which  this  literature  was  produced,  and  in  which  it  still 
 exists,  became  a  dead  language  about  2300  years  ago  :  and  the 
 books  themselves  have  been  preserved  in  their  present  form,  and 
 with  the  usual  discrepancies  of  ancient  manuscripts,  through  times 
 in  which  the  nation  had  so  little  life  that  it  lost  all  its  original 
 histories,  and  appears  to  have  saved  the  books  it  has,  because 
 they  were  habitually  used  in  religious  worship,  and  therefore 
 must  have  been  at  the  same  time  liable  to  such  modernisations 
 as  books  in  popular  use  do  not  escape,  even  in  our  days  of 
 printing.  And  the  question  is  whether,  with  the  very  limited 
 means  of  comparison  which  such,  and  such  small,  remains  of  the 
 literature  afford,  it  is  possible  for  certain  very  learned  Hebraists 
 to  pronounce  that  the  short  prophecy  before  us  was  written  not 
 2500,  but  2300  years  ago ;  because,  as  they  assert — while  other 
 eminent,  if  not  equal,  scholars  deny  —  they  find  five  or  six 
 words  *  or  phrases  belonging  to  the  later  period,  and  the  style 
 more  flowing  than  that  of  the  prophecies  which  they  (with 
 much  disagreement  among  themselves  on  this  point,  however,) 
 admit  to  be  those  of  Isaiah  ?  Could  any  of  us,  at  the  interval 
 of  little  more  than  200  years,  decide  such  a  question  on  such 
 grounds,  even  as  to  a  passage  in  the  works  of  our  own  country- 
 man, Shakspeare  ?  Should  we  not  think  a  *  By  W.  S.'  in  an 
 old  title-page,  of  far  more  help  than  all  our  higher  criticism  ? 
 If  we  had  nothing  but  a  priori  reasoning  to  guide  us  as  to  the 
 genuineness  of  these  chapters  of  Isaiah,  we  should  have  to  say 
 
 *  Gesenius  specifies  Jive,  besides  some  grammatical  usages ;  and  Ilitzig 
 four  others,  adopting  only  one  of  those  of  Gesenius,  from  which  I  conclude 
 that  he  gives  the  rest  up.  Some  of  his  own  are  plainly  of  no  weight:  and 
 there  is  ample  counter-criticism,  of  which  the  reader  will  find  accounts  in 
 Dr.  Alexander's  work.  Let  me  mention  loo,  the  authority  of  Vitringa,  who, 
 without  suspecting  that  a  doubt  on  the  subject  would  ever  be  raised,  says 
 that  he  can  recognise  the  style  of  his  author  in  every  line  of  his  writings. 
 lie  may  be  credulous,  but  credulity  is  in  itself  no  more  superficial  and  in- 
 accurate than  scepticism ;  and  Vitringa's  deep  religious  spirit  gives  him  a 
 sympathy  with  the  prophet,  and  a  consequent  power  of  judging  on  the  point 
 in  question  (that  of  Isaiah's  genuine  style),  which  the  sceptical  critics  cannot 
 pretend  to. 
 
SUSPENSE    BETTER   THAN    HASTY   DECISION.  157 
 
 with  a  great  authority  on  a  like  subject :  '  The  lesson  must  be 
 learnt,  hard  and  painful  though  it  be,  that  no  imaginable  reach 
 of  critical  acumen  will,  of  itself,  enable  us  to  discriminate  fancy 
 from  reality,  in  the  absence  of  a  tolerable  stock  of  evidence:'* 
 butlsaiah's  historical  reality  is  not  lost  like  Homer's,  in  the  mist 
 of  ages  ;  he  stands  as  completely  within  the  historical  period  as 
 Demosthenes  or  Cicero ;  his  name  is  on  all  the  old,  genuine, 
 title-pages,  and  only  omitted  in  the  modern,  spurious,  ones ; 
 and  criticism  has  merely  to  decide  the  negative  point,  whether 
 it  is  impossible  that  these  passages  in  a  book  thus  his- 
 torically ascribed  to  Isaiah,  can  have  been  written  by  him.  On 
 the  other  hand,  let  me  direct  the  reader's  attention  to  the 
 various  passages  in  the  books  of  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah,  in  which 
 the  resemblances  are  such  as  can  only  arise  from  one  having 
 quoted  or  imitated  the  other ;  and  ask  him  to  consider  whe- 
 ther the  relation  of  original  and  copyist,  which  exists  in  the 
 case  of  the  prophecies  in  which  it  is  admitted  that  Jeremiah 
 holds  the  latter  place,  does  appear  to  be  reversed  in  the  case  of 
 those  in  which,  on  the  neological  theory,  he  is  assumed  to  be  the 
 original.  For  while  I  believe  that  no  positive  conclusion  from 
 such  exercises  of  the  '  higher  criticism '  are  to  be  set  against 
 the  external  evidence  of  existing  texts,  it  seems  to  me  not  un- 
 fair to  ask  what  is  the  negative  result  of  such  an  inquiry  : 
 namely,  whether  Jeremiah's  prophecy  against  Moab  has  the  ap- 
 pearance of  a  mere  composition  of  thoughts  and  images,  without 
 the  complete  unity  of  the  other  prophecy,  which  is  admitted  to 
 be  the  older,  even  by  those  who  deny  it  to  be  by  Isaiah ;  and 
 whether,  on  the  contrary,  Jeremiah's  denunciation  of  Babylon  f 
 indicates  the  unity  of  an  original  work,  while  the  various  pro- 
 phecies attributed  to  Isaiah  on  the  same  subject  show  signs  of 
 being  derived  from  that  source. 
 
 *  Mr.  Grote,  on  the  Unity  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  — History  of  Greece, 
 ii.  p.  171.  And  farther  on  (p.  217.),  he  says,  "The  point"  [Homeric  unity] 
 "  is  thus  still  under  controversy  among  able  scholars,  and  is  probably  destined 
 to  remain  so  :  for,  in  truth,  our  means  of  knowledge  are  so  limited,  that  no 
 man  can  produce  arguments  sufficiently  cogent  to  contend  against  op- 
 posing preconceptions  ;  and  it  creates  a  painful  sentiment  of  diffidence,  when 
 we  read  the  expi-essions  of  equal  and  absolute  persuasion  with  which  the 
 two  opposite  conclusions  have  both  been  advanced." 
 
 f  Chapters  1.  Ii.  Ewald's  hypothetical  date  and  authorship  of  these  chap- 
 ters is,  of  course,  a  reply  to  my  argument  so  far. 
 
158  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 But  while  I  ask  the  reader  to  weigh  these  arguments  against 
 the  conclusion  that  Isaiah  could  not  have  written  these  chapters, 
 and  that  the  text  must  be  emended  as  corrupt,  I  would  advise 
 him  not  to  be  too  impatient  to  have  the  question  settled  in  the 
 present  stage  of  our  knowledge  and  critical  skill :  nor  when  he 
 has  once  acquainted  himself  with  the  doubts  raised  on  the  sub- 
 ject, to  hope  forthwith  for  'the  sweet  sleep  that  he  had  yesterday.' 
 He  may,  indeed,  be  sure  that  he  will  one  day  find  that  true 
 wisdom  and  understanding,  in  this  as  in  all  things,  will  keep  their 
 promise,  and  be  '  life  to  his  soul,'  so  that  his  ■  foot  shall  not 
 stumble,'  and  his  '  sleep  shall  be  sweet :  '  but  the  passage  from 
 child-like  credence  to  manly  insight  is  ever  hard,  and  requires 
 patience.  I  believe  that  he  who,  in  his  natural  desire  for  cer- 
 tainty, overpersuades  himself  that  the  arguments  of  a  Hengsten- 
 berg  or  other  evangelical  commentators  are  conclusive,  will 
 presently  find  a  reaction  in  his  mind,  which  will  make  him 
 more  at  a  loss  than  before.  He  must,  after  he  has  heard  the 
 debate  on  both  sides,  retire  to  quiet  and  long  meditation  on 
 it  before  he  can  hope  to  get  at  auy  permanent  result ;  and  he 
 may  be  content  meanwhile,  if  he  can  honestly  believe  that  the 
 genuineness  of  the  prophecy  has  not  been  disproved,  though 
 brought  into  doubt.     Let  him  take  Chaucer's  advice:  — 
 
 '  Fly  from  the  press,  and  dwell  with  sothfastness  [truth]  :  — 
 The  wrestling  of  the  world  asketh  a  fall :  — 
 But  truth  thee  shall  deliver,  'tis  no  drecle.' 
 
 The  Assyrian  Inscriptions  will  ere  long  take  their  settled  place 
 among  historical  documents :  and  we  are  making  daily  progress 
 in  the  scientific  investigation  of  what  Hebrew  prophecy  actually 
 was,  by  the  repeated  examination  of  the  subject  in  all  direc- 
 tions, and  by  many  workmen :  and  the  answer  to  this  question 
 will  finally  become  clear. 
 
 Let  us  now  return  to  the  text  of  this  first  of  the  series  of 
 1  Burdens,'  —  weighty  and  sustained  denunciations  against  the 
 various  nations. 
 
 In  the  mountains  to  the  north  of  Babylon  is  heard  the  hum 
 of  a  great  multitude,  which  proves  to  be  the  northern  nations 
 gathering  to  battle,  mustered  by  the  Lord  of  hosts  Himself, 
 and  the  weapons  of  His  indignation,  for  laying  waste  the  whole 
 
ISAI.  XIII.   1. — XIV.  12.:    FATES  OF  BABYLON  AND  ISRAEL.    159 
 
 land.  In  Babylon  terror  seizes  every  heart,  every  face  is  flushed 
 or  pallid  with  alarm  and  amazement :  the  day  of  the  Lord's 
 judgment  is  come  upon  the  world-wide  empire,  like  a  tempest 
 which  shakes  the  heavens  and  earth,  and,  while  it  lasts,  brings 
 the  established  order  of  nature  to  chaos.  In  that  populous  and 
 wealthy  abode  of  luxurious  and  selfish  civilisation,  the  life  of  a 
 man,  his  own,  or  that  of  the  soldier  whom  at  any  price  he 
 would  employ,  shall  become  more  precious  than  gold,  because 
 gold  can  no  longer  buy  it:  the  Medes  care  not  for  gold*,  but 
 for  blood,  though  it  be  the  blood  of  boys  and  infants :  and  if 
 they  want  gold,  they  need  not  take  it  as  ransom,  for  it  is  already 
 theirs  as  plunder :  for  Babylon  is  defenceless,  all  her  foreign 
 auxiliaries  are  fled,  or  if  any  where  they  have  made  a  stand 
 against  the  enemy,  they  have  been  put  to  the  sword.  The  deso- 
 lation shall  be  complete.  The  Lord  had  once  declared  of  his 
 own  vineyard  that  He  would  break  down  its  wall,  and  lay  it 
 waste,  and  that  strange  sheep  should  feed  there ;  but  Babylon 
 shall  not  be  even  a  pasture-ground  ;  the  Arab  wandering  through 
 Mesopotamia  (as  he  has  done  ever  since),  and  seeking  pasture  for 
 his  flocks  and  plunder  for  himself,  shall  not  stay  nor  let  them 
 stay  here,  but  shall  leave  the  palaces  and  the  pavilions  to  the 
 owls  and  the  wolves  who  make  them  resound  with  their  cries.f 
 It  is  said  that  at  this  very  day  the  Bedouin,  or  wandering  Arab, 
 has  a  superstitious  fear  of  passing  a  single  night  on  the  site  of 
 Babylon,  and  that  the  natives  of  the  country  believe  it  to  be 
 inhabited  by  demons  in  the  form  of  goats.  There  seems,  in- 
 deed, to  have  been  an  ancient  belief  among  the  Jews  them- 
 selves that  demons  took  the  form  of  goats  — appeared  as  satyrs 
 in  fact :  and  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  either  our  Authorised 
 Version,  or  for  the  more  literary  rendering  of  '  shaggy  beasts,' 
 or  still  more  simply  '  goats.' 
 
 Out  of  the  destruction  of  Babylon  shall  come  the  deliverance 
 of  Israel :  the  whole  captive  people  shall  be  called,  as  by  a  new 
 election  and  choice  of  the  Lord,   and  restored  to  their  own 
 
 *  "  Ye  Medes  and  others  who  now  hear  me,  1  well  know  that  you  have 
 not  accompanied  me  in  this  expedition  with  a  view  of  acepdring  wealth." — 
 Speech  of  Cyrus  to  his  Army,  Xenoph.  Cyrop.  v. 
 
 f  "  And  in  their  palaces, 
 
 Where  luxury  late  reign'd,  sea-monsters  whelp'd, 
 
 And  stabled."  Paradise  Lost,  ix.  750. 
 
160  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 land,  from  their  hard  bondage ;  and  they  shall  bring  their  former 
 masters  back  with  them,  to  be  in  turn  their  servants.  The 
 prophet  then  puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  restored  nation  a  song 
 of  which  Lowth  is  generally  thought  not  to  speak  with  ex- 
 aggeration, when  he  calls  it  the  finest  of  its  kind  extant  in  any 
 language ;  and  as  to  which,  those  who  profess  to  be  able  to  dis- 
 tinguish the  styles  of  different  ages  of  Hebrew  literature  should 
 explain,  upon  what  known  principles  the  strongly  marked  and 
 gradual  decline  of  literary  power  and  taste  between  the  times 
 of  Isaiah  and  Ezra  could  have  exhibited  such  a  revival  as  this 
 ode  shows.  It  is  a  song  of  triumph  in  the  form  of  a  dirge, 
 and  therefore  involves  an  under-current  of  sarcasm  or  irony. 
 The  oppressor,  and  his  golden  city — so  called  for  its  wealth, 
 or  for  its  exaction  of  tribute  —  are  fallen,  and  the  whole  earth, 
 even  to  the  very  fir  trees,  is  at  rest,  and  breaks  into  singing:  — 
 
 '  All  the  earth  is  gay  : 
 Land  and  sea 
 Give  themselves  up  to  jollity.'  * 
 
 Hell  —  the  unseen  world  of  gloom  to  which  the  grave  is  the 
 gate  —  is  stirred  to  receive  the  new-comer  :  the  shadowy  and 
 giant  forms  of  once  famous  kings  rise  from  their  thrones  below, 
 to  meet  their  brother,  now  become  weak  as  they.  Israel  then 
 resumes  the  speech  (at  verse  11.),  and  contrasts  the  ambition  of 
 him  who  would  have  ascended  into  heaven,  and  to  the  heights 
 of  the  heavenly  hill,  with  his  actual  fate,  brought  down  to  hell, 
 and  to  the  depths  of  its  pit.  The  word  which  our  version  in 
 both  cases  translates  '  sides,'  may  be  better  rendered  '  uttermost 
 heio-hts  '  or  '  depths,'  the  Hebrew  having  the  double  force. 
 The  old  explanation  of  '  the  mount  of  the  congregation,  in  the 
 sides  of  the  north,'  was,  that  it  referred  to  Mount  Sion  and  the 
 Temple,  and  that  the  cloud  (the  original  is  in  the  singular) 
 was  the  white  cloud  of  God's  presence  ;  the  impious  boast  being 
 thus  analogous  to  that  in  chapter  x.  11.,  '  Shall  I  not,  as  I 
 have  done  to  Samaria  and  her  idols,  so  do  to  Jerusalem  and 
 her  images  ? '     And  I  see  no  anti-climax  in  such    a  reading ; 
 
 *  "  Ipsi  laetitia  voces  ad  sidera  jactant 
 
 Intonsi  niontes;  ipsa;  jam  carmina  nipes, 
 
 Ipsa  sonant  arbusta."  Virg.  EcL  v.  62. 
 
IS.  XIV.  13—  27. :  OVERTHROW  OF  THE  EMPIRE  OF  FORCE.   1G1 
 
 nor  that  there  is  any  impropriety  in  the  blending  of  the 
 heathenish  and  the  Jewish  belief  on  the  subject  into  one  image. 
 The  modern  interpretation,  that  the  reference  is  to  the  assembly 
 of  the  gods  in  some  Mem-mountain,  in  the  northern,  and  there- 
 fore highest,  realms  of  an  eastern  mythology,  is  founded  on  the 
 supposition  that  the  local  traditions  which  place  Sion  on  the  south 
 of  Jerusalem,  must  be  preferred  to  those  of  the  Talmud,  which 
 declare  it  to  have  been  on  the  north  :  —  as  to  which  question,  see-, 
 below,  on  Isaiah  xxii.  One  poetical  image  suggests,  or  thrusts 
 out,  another,  in  rapid  succession.  The  king  of  Babylon  shall 
 not  share  what  just  now  seemed  the  low  condition  of  the  other 
 monarchs  but  now  presents  itself  as  a  glorious  repose,  when  con- 
 trasted with  his  lot — fallen  by  the  sword,  his  body  not  em- 
 balmed, but  the  food  of  worms,  refused  a  royal  sepulchre,  and 
 fortunate  if  he  can  get  so  much  burial  as  to  be  thrown  into  a 
 pit  with  the  common  slain.  The  general  meaning  of  verse  1 9. 
 is  plain,  but  the  exact  sense  of  the  details  is  questioned.  Per- 
 haps the  most  probable  explanation  of  the  strong  phrase  '  abo- 
 minable branch'  is,  that  'branch'  is  used  here  as  elsewhere  in  a 
 genealogical  sense,  and  that  the  words  are  a  vehement  antici- 
 pation of  the  thought  below,  '  the  seed  of  evildoers  shall  not 
 be  named  for  ever ; '  where  the  word  *  named '  or  '  renowned  ' 
 is  the  same  as  in  the  passage,  e  in  Isaac  shall  thy  name  be  called, 
 and  as  in  Ruth,  iv.  14.,  which  latter  compare  with  its  context. 
 The  Lord  himself  will  take  care  to  cut  off  the  '  name  and  the 
 remnant,'  the  direct  heir  and  the  collateral  remainder-man,  and 
 the  city,  like  its  royal  family,  shall  be  exterminated.  The  ap- 
 propriateness of  the  image  of  pools  of  water  is  evident,  when 
 we  remember  that  Babylon  lay  in  a  low  situation,  where  the 
 land  was  only  kept  from  the  periodical  inundations  of  the 
 Euphrates  by  constant  attention  to  the  canals  and  ditches.  If 
 it  were  deserted  by  its  inhabitants,  it  would  inevitably  become 
 *  pools  of  water'  in  a  short  time  :  —  as  is  now  the  case.  The 
 expression,  '  besom  of  destruction,'  finds  a  counterpart  in  the 
 annals  of  Sargon,  where  he  calls  himself  '  the  sweeper  away  of 
 Samaria,  and  of  the  whole  of  Beth-Omri.' 
 
 But  the  invasion  of  Judrea,  not  the  subsequent  deportation 
 of  its  inhabitants  (like  that  which  had  already  begun  in  the 
 northern  tribes  of  the  kingdom  of  Samaria),  might  seem  the 
 
 M 
 
162  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 more  pressing  clanger  to  Isaiah's  own  countrymen  at  the  time  he 
 wrote;  therefore  he  winds  up  this  far  seeing  denunciation  of 
 the  ultimate  fates  of  Babylon  and  Israel,  with  a  declaration  of 
 the  Lord's  purpose,  —  confirmed  with  an  oath,  and  not  to  be 
 disannulled, — to  break  the  power  of  the  Assyrians  when  they 
 had  entered  His  land,  on  the  confines  of  which  they  were  now 
 hovering,  and  to  free  His  people  from  the  yoke  of  tribute  and 
 oppression,  which  they  were  already  feeling  the  weight  of. 
 
THE    rillLISTlNES.  1G3 
 
 CHAPTER  X. 
 
 ISAIAH  XIV.  28.:  PUILISTIA ORIGIN  OF  THE  PHILISTINES  THEIR  EX- 
 TERMINATION COMMANDED  BY  MOSES. LAW  OF  CONQUESTS  AND  EXTER- 
 MINATIONS.   BRITISH     CONQUEST      OF      INDIA. EVIL     NOT      ETERNAL.  
 
 PHILISTIA's     RELATIONS     WITH      JUDAH  WITH     ASSYRIA. SARGON     AND 
 
 SENNACHERIB    IN    PHILISTIA. 
 
 *  In  the  year  that  king  Ahaz  died  was  this  burden : '  —  namely, 
 on  Philistia.  There  is  a  turn  of  expression  in  this  title,  which 
 is  noticeable,  both  as  being  such  as  an  author  himself  would 
 be  likely  to  give,  when  arranging  and  editing  his  writings  in  a 
 collected  form ;  and  also  such  as  a  patriot  would  use  to  vent 
 his  feeling  at  the  thought  of  the  relief  from  national  shame  and 
 suffering  which  the  change  from  an  Ahaz  to  a  Hezekiah  had 
 effected.  Like  the  opening  of  chapter  vi.,  it  is  better  referred  to 
 the  time  before,  than  after,  the  king's  death,  as  the  context 
 shows. 
 
 Philistia  was  the  south-west  coast  of  the  land  of  Canaan,  to 
 the  whole  of  which  it  afterwards  gave  its  name  in  the  Greek 
 form  of  Palestine,  and  was  nominally  included  in  the  tribe  of 
 Judah.  It  was  originally  inhabited  by  the  Avites,  who  were 
 expelled  by  the  Caphtorim,  a  race  of  Egyptian  origin,  but 
 supposed  to  have  come  immediately  from  Crete  or  Cyprus,  and 
 who,  under  the  name  of  Philistines,  continued  as  a  distinct,  and 
 for  the  most  part  independent,  nation,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of 
 Israel  to  subdue  them.  These  Caphtorim  are  also  called 
 Cherethim,  which  latter  would  be  the  Hebrew  mode  of  writing 
 Cretans,  and  which  is  twice  translated  Kprjrss  by  the  LXX.; 
 whence  it  has  been  inferred  that  there  is  ground  for  a  tradition 
 which  says  that  the  Cretans  took  possession  of  this  coast  under 
 Minos,  who  built  Gaza,  and  called  it  Minoa.  Caphtor  will 
 then  be  Crete.  We  may  infer  from  Amos,  ix.  7.  and  Deut.  ii. 
 23.  (in  which  latter  verse  translate  Hazerim  '  villages,'  in- 
 stead of  leaving  it  a  proper  name),  that  this  immigration  of  the 
 
 m  2 
 
164  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 Caphtorim  must  have  taken  place  within  the  historical  memory 
 of  the  Jews,  though  at  such  a  period  that  Abraham  found 
 them  already  settled,  as  Philistines.  The  supposition  of  Vi- 
 tringa  that  the  the  '  Cherethites  and  Pelethites,'  were  Cretan 
 and  Philistine  bowmen,  the  body-guards  of  David,  has  been 
 adopted  by  two  of  the  most  recent  authorities  on  this  subject : 
 and  it  derives  increased  probability  from  David's  long  sojourn 
 in  Philistia,  and  the  attachment  which  Ittai  the  Gittite  (of 
 Gath)  showed  to  his  fortunes.* 
 
 The  Philistines  were  among  the  nations  whom  Moses  com- 
 manded the  children  of  Israel  to  exterminate.  This  command 
 can  be  better  appreciated  with  our  now  reviving  belief  that 
 there  is  a  morality  and  a  criminal  justice  for  nations  as  well  as 
 for  individuals ;  but  it  would  perhaps  never  have  been  so  com- 
 monly impugned  as  it  has  been,  but  for  the  no  less  common 
 and  far  less  moral  defence,  that  the  act  commanded  would  have 
 been  mere  wickedness  in  any  other  people,  but  that  being  com- 
 manded by  God  it  was  thus  made  lawful  for  the  Jews.  But 
 as  to  the  command  itself,  apart  from  such  defences  of  it,  I 
 say  that  it  was  both  righteous  and  merciful,  and  that  it  is  not 
 an  exception  to  the  universal  law  by  which  men  are  to  go- 
 vern themselves,  but  the  announcement  —  the  revelation  —  once 
 for  all  of  the  law  which  always  has  been,  and  always  will  be, 
 applicable  to  all  like  cases, — whether  a  return  of  the  Heracleids, 
 a  Spanish  conquest  of  Mexico,  a  Saxon  or  a  Norman  inva- 
 sion of  England,  or  a  Sir  James  Brooke's  destruction  of  Borneo 
 pirates.  If  the  spread  of  civilisation,  knowledge,  justice,  vir- 
 tue, religion,  and  whatever  else  distinguishes  men  from  beasts, 
 is  a  o-ood  and  not  an  evil,  then  it  is  good  for  men  to  use  all  the 
 means  which  are  really  necessary  to  effect  that  end,  even  though 
 some  of  them  be  never  so  rough  and  unpleasing ;  and  it  is  not 
 less  base  in  public  than  in  private  morals,  to  shrink  from  the 
 responsibility  of  ourselves  doing  that  which  we  know  it  is  good 
 to  have  done.  If  a  weak,  effeminate,  degenerate  nation  can  be 
 improved  by  subjection  to  a  stronger,  manlier,  more  virtuous 
 
 *  2  Sam.  viii.  18.,  xv.  18-22.,  xx.7.;  1  Kings,  i.  38.  44.  TJie  last  edition 
 of  Winer's  Realwarterbuch  contains  much  valuable  matter  under  the  seve- 
 ral names  above. 
 
NATIONAL    EXTERMINATIONS  :    WHEN    LAWFUL.  105 
 
 nation,  then  it  is  not  only  the  right,  but  the  duty,  of  the  latter 
 to  bring  it  into  subjection,  whenever  the  indications  of  God's 
 providence,  be  they  of  peace  or  war,  show  that  the  time  has 
 come.  And  if  the  nation  is  not  merely  degenerate,  but  hope- 
 lessly corrupt,  then  it  is  not  only  the  right,  but  the  duty,  of 
 some  worthier  nation  to  destroy  it,  and  rid  the  world  of  its 
 abominations.  The  Gospel  has  given  to  us,  in  modern  Chris- 
 tendom, means  of  reclaiming  nations  who  would  have  been  irre- 
 claimable by  any  measures  which  Greeks  or  Romans,  or  even 
 Jews,  could  apply ;  and  we  are  bound  to  act  with  corresponding 
 gentleness  and  forbearance.  But  if  we  look  at  the  actual  con- 
 dition and  relations  of  the  Israelites  and  the  nations  of  Canaan 
 in  the  time  of  Moses,  we  see  that  the  Canaanites  had  reached 
 the  last  stage  of  degeneracy  when  they  made  their  very  re- 
 ligio«  to  consist  in  the  practice  of  their  characteristic  crimes  of 
 unnatural  cruelty  or  lust,  and  that  wherever  they  were  tolerated 
 instead  of  exterminated  by  the  Israelites,  the  purer  morals  as 
 well  as  faith  of  the  Israelites  soon  fell  under  the  pestilent  con- 
 tagion, and  they  not  only  followed  their  gods,  but  e  did  after 
 their  abominations  :'  so  that  the  event  proved  what  Moses  fore- 
 saw, that  if  the  future  nation  of  Israel  was  to  fill  that  place  in 
 the  world  and  the  world's  history  which  its  'its  right  noble 
 6tock,'its  stirps generosa  ethistorica,  already  indicated  it  to  be  in- 
 tended to  fill,  room  must  be  made  for  it  not  merely  in  territory  but 
 in  moral  atmosphere,  by  a  national  execution  such  as  we  Christians 
 still  inflict  on  individual  criminals  of  like  magnitude.  If  Moses 
 had  counted  the  slow  moral  death  of  Israel  a  less  evil  than  the 
 physical  extinction  of  races  who  had  already  destroyed  their 
 own  human  being,  what  would  have  been  the  condition  of  the 
 world  now,  and  what  the  state  of  the  world-wide  contest  be- 
 tween good  and  evil?  If  we  examine  the  whole  case  in  that 
 impartial  and  thoughtful  temper  which  alone  becomes  the 
 student  of  history,  we  must,  I  think,  come  to  the  conclusion 
 that  these  injunctions  of  Moses  are  really  righteous;  and 
 worthy  —  if  the  creation  of  man  at  all  was  worthy  —  of  the  God 
 of  righteousness:  and  that  their  provisions  for  confining  the 
 destruction  of  life  within  the  narrowest  limits  possible  *,  are  in 
 
 *  Deut.  xx.  10—18. 
 m  3 
 
166  HEBREW    TOLITICS. 
 
 accordance  with  the  recognised  rules  of  warfare  in  the  humanest 
 ancient  nations,  and  with  much  of  the  practice  of  even  those 
 of  Christian  Europe.  In  a  word,  I  believe  that  if  we  can  read 
 them  in  the  light  of  universal  history,  and  history  in  their  light, 
 we  shall  see  them  to  be  what  they  claim  to  be,  —  a  part  of  the 
 revelation  of  God. 
 
 Here,  as  always,  the  Bible  reveals  to  us  the  universal  law  of 
 political  society,  in  the  special  instance  of  the  Hebrew  nation. 
 The  claim  of  Abraham's  descendants  to  the  land  of  Canaan,  be- 
 cause God  had  given  it  to  him,  is  a  claim  essentially  of  the  same 
 kind  as  that  of  the  Dorians  to  Sparta,  or  of  the  Normans  to 
 England.  There  was  no  more  technical  force  in  the  first  than 
 in  the  others :  they  no  less  than  it  were  divinely  inspired  and 
 sanctioned  :  but  the  Hebrew  grant  and  conquest,  taken  in  con- 
 nection with  the  whole  previous  and  subsequent  history  of  which 
 they  are  a  part,  reveal  God  as  the  righteous  Author  and  Up- 
 holder of  political  society,  anticipating,  preparing,  and  directing 
 all  the  successive  arrangements  by  which  the  end  is  to  be  ef- 
 fected ;  and  thus  they  throw  a  direct  light  (for  him  who  cares 
 to  have  it)  on  all  other  national  conquests  and  settlements, 
 which  these  only  reflect  back  on  it.  The  Jews  were,  no 
 doubt,  as  bloody  and  rapacious  in  their  manner  of  effecting 
 their  settlement  in  Palestine,  as  many  other  nations  in  like  cir- 
 cumstances ;  but  this  does  but  make  it  clearer,  that  we  have  to 
 distinguish  between  the  thing  that  had  to  be  done  because  it 
 was  right  and  good  to  do  it,  and  the  imperfect  human  instru- 
 ments who  did  it  in  a  very  imperfect  manner.  As  soon  as  we 
 once  get  this  distinction  between  the  eternal,  wise,  and  good 
 law  of  national  settlements,  and  the  partial  and  defective  realisa- 
 tions of  it  in  time  by  men,  we  recover  the  old  faith  in  the  Bible 
 as  the  revelation  of  God's  mind ;  and  yet  are  freer  than  the 
 freest  sceptic  from  the  strange,  yet  common,  perversion  of 
 reverence  into  superstition  which  has  made  men,  in  the  last  and 
 present  generation,  fall  back  on  that  (in  truth,  though  not  in 
 intention)  immoral  and  blasphemous  defence  of  the  Hebrew  con- 
 quest, which  pleads  that  it  '  is  but  a  wrong  in  God's  own  world, 
 and  He  may  quickly  make  it  right.'  This  doctrine  has  made 
 many  a  man  reject  the  Bible,  when  he  has  too  hastily  supposed 
 that  it  did  to  contain  what  he  had  been  taught  from  childhood  to 
 be  there,  but  what  his  own  conscience  told  him  was  contrary  to 
 
BRITISn   CONQUEST   OF   INDIA.  167 
 
 the  immutable  distinction  of  right  and  wrong.  And  it  has  de- 
 veloped that  unhealthy  and  dishonest  way  of  looking  at  history 
 and  politics  by  religious  men,  that  atheistic  separation  between 
 worldly  and  religious  grounds  of  political  action  (as  though  the 
 former,  no  less  than  the  latter,  were  good  in  its  place)  which 
 we  are  all  familiar  with.  Thus,  every  real  student  of  the  his- 
 tory of  the  establishment  of  the  British  power  in  India  knows, 
 that  our  merchants  there  were  originally  actuated  by  no  am- 
 bitious designs,  but  by  singularly  limited  desires  for  mere  peace- 
 ful traffic;  and  that  they  allowed  the  conquests  of  Clive  in 
 Bengal,  as  well  as  the  earlier  wars  at  Madras,  with  the  greatest 
 reluctance,  and  purely  in  order  to  defend  themselves  in  the 
 midst  of  the  general  anarchy  into  which  the  Mogul  empire 
 was  dissolved  :  and  yet  religious  writers  of  no  small  know- 
 ledge of  history,  have  actually  preferred  to  ignore  the  real  cur- 
 rent of  events,  and  to  assert  that  our  possession  of  India  cannot 
 be  justified  on  Christian  grounds,  and  is  no  place  for  a  Christian 
 governor,  like  Sir  John  Shore ;  but  that  we  have  of  course  a 
 right,  on  worldly  grounds,  to  hold  and  govern  what  a  worldly 
 disregard  of  the  principles  of  the  Bible  alone  enabled  us  to  get. 
 Let  us  take  the  facts  of  the  conquest  as  they  really  occurred  ; 
 and  let  us  say,  that  though  the  English  traders  had  as  little  be- 
 lief that  God  was  calling  on  them  to  'go  up  and  possess  the 
 land,'  as  they  had  ambitious  inclination  to  do  so ;  yet  that  be- 
 cause it  was  God's  will  to  re-organise  India  under  Christian 
 laws  and  institutions,  after  those  of  Menu  and  of  the  Koran 
 had  done  their  work,  He,  by  His  providence,  made  the  first 
 steps  of  the  conquest  unavoidable,  and  so  led  us  on  to  the 
 subsequent  position,  in  which  an  ambitious  Hastings  or  Wel- 
 lesley,  no  less  than  a  justice-loving  Cornwallis,  or  a  pious  and 
 philanthropic  Shore,  were  made  to  do  their  successive  tasks :  — 
 and  then  we  shall  falsify  neither  the  Bible  nor  history. 
 
 The  barren  question  of  the  origin  of  evil  may,  of  course,  be 
 raised  here  as  anywhere  else,  and  with  as  little  result.  Yet 
 the  workings  of  evil  in  political  society,  and  this  harsh  remedy 
 of  the  extinction  of  races,  do  present  difficulties  for  which  every 
 reasonable  man  desires  a  solution,  and  of  which  the  one  sufficient 
 solution  is,  that  the  end  is  not  in  this  world ;  that  men  are  but 
 at  school  on  earth  ;  and  that  our  earthly  existence  will  one  day 
 
 m  4 
 
168  IIEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 prove  to  bear  some  such  relation  to  our  higher  life,  —  as  trivial 
 and  transient  in  its  details,  though  as  important  in  its  results  — 
 as  the  mature  man  now  sees  his  school-boy  life  to  have  been. 
 And,  therefore,  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  notice  here  a  still 
 more  important  instance  of  that  habit  of  conceiving  God  in  our 
 own  image,  which  I  have  already  spoken  of,  and  to  which  all 
 these  notions  of  a  right  to  do  wrong  pertain.  It  was  but 
 another  reflex  of  the  narrow,  fine-gentleman,  slave-trading, 
 eighteenth-century,  spirit  which  exhibited,  in  the  light  of 
 its  logical  systems,  the  doctrine  that  God's  punishments  are 
 eternal^  that  is,  ends  and  not  means ;  and  which  could  believe, 
 with  complacency,  that  God  had  made  hell  a  permanent  and 
 important  part  of  heaven,  and  consigned  a  large  portion  of  the 
 human  race  to  it,  with  the  same  kind  of  justice  as  our  legislature 
 and  judges  executed  day  by  day  without  misgiving  —  as  an  end 
 and  not  as  a  means  —  upon  classes,  criminal  for  the  most  part 
 through  an  ignorance  and  misery  for  which  their  rulers  were  re- 
 sponsible. Such  notions  —  very  different  when  deliberately 
 pystematised,  to  what  they  are  as  held  by  a  Luther,  who  ex- 
 claims, '  Nature  says  it  is  unjust,  Grace  says  it  is  unjust,  but 
 Glory  will  prove  it  just,'  and  there  leaves  it  in  reverent  hu- 
 mility—  still  hang  about  us,  and  we  are  afraid  of  rooting 
 them  up,  lest  we  root  up  wheat  with  the  tares.  But  they  are 
 ready  to  vanish.  The  growing  faith  that  reformation,  not  de- 
 struction, is  the  end  in  man's  dealings  with  the  rebel  against 
 human  law,  is  but  the  refracted  light  which  tells  that  a  clearer, 
 brighter,  more  Christian  apprehension  of  God's  character  is 
 about  to  dawn  upon  us.  And  instead  of  our  continuing  to 
 fancy  that  we  are  bound  to  read  the  New  Testament,  by  the 
 dimmer  light  of  the  Old,  and  to  limit  the  divine  inspiration  of 
 the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  in  his  amplest  utterances,  by  the 
 letter  of  a  few  of  his  sentences,  interpreted  (or  rather  misinter- 
 preted) so  literally  as  to  be  no  more  logical  than  moral,  wc  shall 
 find  ourselves  made  free  by  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Christ ;  and  then 
 the  Church  will  no  longer  pass  by,  but  will  give  the  importance 
 and  the  meaning  which  St.  Paul  himself  gives,  to  that  '  revela- 
 tion of  the  mystery  of  the  grace  of  God  in  Christ,  which  in 
 other  ages  was  not  made  known  unto  the  sons  of  men,'  and 
 which  Christians  have  so  strangely  refused  for  the  most  part  to 
 leceive,  since  it  has  been  revealed  to  them.     Then  wc  shall  un- 
 
ISATAH,  XIV.  28.  :    rillLISTIA  UNDER  UZZIATI  AND  AnAZ.    169 
 
 derstand  that  'the  ichole  family  in  heaven  and  earth'  is 
 named  of  God  and  of  Christ;  that  the  very  meaning  of  the 
 Gospel,  the  good  news  itself,  is  that,  where  sin  has  abounded  grace 
 shall  much  more  abound,  and  reign  (not  unto  death,  but)  unto 
 eternal  life.  '  As  in  Adam  all  die,  even  so  in  Christ  shall  all 
 be  made  alive  ;  but  every  man  in  his  own  order.  .  .  .  And 
 when  all  things  shall  be  subdued  unto  Him,  then  shall  the  Son 
 also  himself  be  subject  unto  Him  that  put  all  things  under  Him, 
 that  God  may  be  all  in  all.' 
 
 The  author  of  the  Book  of  Judges,  with  the  political  insight 
 of  this  nation  of  prophets,  points  out  how  the  inability  of  the 
 Israelites  to  drive  out  the  Philistines  (among  other  nations) 
 was  the  consequence  of  their  losing  their  faith  in  their  Lord 
 and  King,  and  with  it  their  military  as  well  as  moral  supe- 
 riority ;  and  how  this  evil  was  yet,  by  God's  providence,  made 
 to  promote  its  own  cure,  the  oppressions  of  the  heathens 
 stimulating  them  both  '  to  learn  war,'  and  to  return  from  their 
 idolatrous  associations  to  the  true  faith.*  The  Philistines  were 
 very  formidable  enemies  to  Israel  in  the  days  of  Samuel  and  of 
 Saul.  The  strong  kings,  David,  Solomon,  and  Jehoshaphat, 
 kept  them  in  subjection,  but  in  the  days  of  Jehoram  they  in- 
 vaded Judah.f  Uzziah  again  repressed  them,  and  crippled  their 
 power,  dismantling  their  walled  cities,  and  building  fortresses 
 of  his  own  to  command  them  \  ;  and  no  doubt  they  continued 
 tributary  during  the  still  vigorous  government  of  his  successor 
 Jotham.  But  during  the  weak  reign  of  Ahaz,  they  '  invaded 
 the  cities  of  the  low  country,  and  of  the  south  of  Judah  ;'  and 
 not  only  invaded,  but  settled  themselves  in  them,  and  their 
 neighbouring  villages  § :  and  to  this  state  of  things  Isaiah  addresses 
 himself  in  this  prophecy.  And  here  as  elsewhere  we  may  notice 
 the  appropriateness  of  his  language,  indicating  accurate  know- 
 ledge and  lively  imagination  :  the  words  '  gate'  and  *  city,'  and 
 the  threat  that '  famine '  shall  be  the  chief,  and  the  sword  only  the 
 subordinate,  instrument  of  their  destruction,  point  to  the  strong- 
 holds which  characterised  the  Philistian  power ;  and  the  '  feed- 
 ing' and  'lying  down'  of  the  defenceless  Israelite  alludes  to 
 the  'low  country'  which  lay  so  open  to  its  inroads.     The  rod 
 
 *  Judges,  ii.  20.  to  iii.  4.,  which  may  be  called  the  text  to  the  whole  Look, 
 f  2  Sam.  v.  17—25.,  xxi.  15. ;  2  Chron.  xvii.  11.,  xxi.  1G,  17. 
 I  2  Chron.  xsvi.  G,  7.  §  2  Chron.  xxviii.  18. 
 
170  HEBREW   TOL1TICS. 
 
 of  the  taskmaster  is  Isaiah's  frequent  image  for  the  control  of 
 a  dependent  and  tributary  nation  :  all  Philistia  had  rejoiced 
 when  the  rod  of  David  and  of  Uzziah  fell  broken  from  the  hands 
 of  Ahaz,  and  expressed  their  joy  by  wasting  or  taking  posses- 
 sion of  their  former  master's  lands  ;  but  Isaiah  warns  them  that 
 the  old  root  of  Israel,  which,  from  the  days  of  Samson,  had 
 sent  forth  many  a  rod  with  a  serpent's  life,  like  the  rod  of  Moses, 
 would  soon  again  produce  a  basilisk  with  its  royal  crest,  its  in- 
 evitable spring,  and  its  mortal  bite,  to  take  vengeance  on  his 
 enemies.  The  'first-born  of  the  poor'  seems  to  be  a  Hebrew 
 idiom  for  the  'really,  eminently,  poor,'  like  that  of ' Son  of  Man'  to 
 to  express  the  man.  So  Job  uses  the  'first-born  of  death'  (xviii. 
 13.)  for  death  itself,  or  a  violent  death;  and  the  '  sons  of  thunder' 
 are  persons  of  a  thundering  disposition  —  a  striking  phraseo- 
 logy, apparently  springing  from  the  strong  family  feeling  of 
 the  Hebrew.  The  Philistines  had  latterly  so  overrun  and  plun- 
 dered the  country,  that  there  was  neither  food  for  the  poor 
 peasant  and  his  family,  nor  safety  for  any  who  were  too  weak 
 to  protect  themselves :  but  things  shall  soon  be  reversed ;  those 
 roots  of  Philistia,  the  five  cities  with  their  five  lords,  shall  be 
 reduced  by  famine  though  their  walls  hold  out,  and  then  the 
 sword  shall  smite  those  who  would  escape. 
 
 Thus  far  the  prophet  would  seem  to  be  predicting  the  recovery 
 by  Judah  of  its  supremacy,  in  the  expected  event  of  the  death 
 of  Ahaz,  pointed  to  by  the  title:  but  then  (ver.  31.),  either  as 
 though  he  doubted  whether  Judah  itself  would  effect  the  con- 
 quest, or  more  probably  with  an  abrupt  turn  to  the  thought  of 
 the  Assyrian  power  which  he  could  see  was  preparing  to  sweep 
 over  all  the  southern  nations,  and  Philistia  among  them,  with  a 
 violence  far  greater  than  any  a  Judrean  army  could  exert,  he 
 proceeds  to  say  that  they  shall  not  only  return  to  that  subordi- 
 nation which  Judah  enforced  when  it  could;  but  that  their 
 whole  polity  should  be  dissolved :  —  for  why  ?  '  For  there 
 cometh  from  the  north  a  smoke  ; '  and  when  that  smoke  *,  that 
 
 *  "Ac  simul iEneas fumantcs  pulvere  campos 
 
 Prospexit  longe,  Laurentiaque  agmina  vidit." — Virg.  2En.  xi.  908. 
 "  First  was  seen  dust,  like  a  white  cloud,"  as  the  army  of  the  Great  King 
 came  on  against  the  younger  Cyrus.  —  Grote's  Greece,  ix.  58. 
 
 When  the  peril  from  Attila  and  his  Huns  was  imminent,  Amianus  bishop 
 
ASSYRIANS   IN   THILISTIA.  171 
 
 too  intelligible  cloud  of  dust,  draws  nearer,  it  will  reveal  that 
 army  of  which  the  fame  is  already  striking  terror  into  all  the 
 nations  of  the  earth,  the  army  which  '  has  no  straggler  in  its 
 levies,'  *  and  at  the  approach  of  which  the  strongest  city  may 
 despair,  and  the  councillors  who  sit  in  its  gate  change  their 
 wisest  plans  into  lamentations.  Then  the  Philistines  will  send 
 ambassadors  to  propose  to  Judah  some  scheme  of  alliance  and 
 combined  defence  against  the  common  foe ;  but  the  Lord's 
 chosen  people  will  reply  —  as  it  was  the  one,  unvarying  prin- 
 ciple of  Isaiah's  policy  that  they  ought  to  reply  to  all  such  pro- 
 positions—  that  they  will  make  no  such  alliance  with  heathens, 
 but  will  put  their  trust  in  the  Lord  ;  and  when  the  flood  of 
 invasion  spreads  over  the  land,  the  defenceless  inhabitants  of  the 
 open  country  will  take  refuge  in  Zion,  and  there  look  to  the 
 Lord  to  keep  his  own  city.  *  We  tell  our  Lord  God,'  said 
 Luther,  *  that  if  He  will  have  His  Church,  He  must  keep  it 
 Himself,  for  we  cannot  do  it ;  and  it  is  well  for  us  that  we 
 cannot,  else  we  should  be  the  proudest  asses  under  heaven.' 
 
 Putting  the  few  facts  in  the  Hebrew  records  with  the  ampler 
 statements  in  the  Assyrian  annals,  the  subsequent  history  of 
 Philistia,  and  in  which  this  prophecy  of  Isaiah  was  fulfilled, 
 stands  thus:  —  Hezekiah  made  the  Philistines  once  more  tribu- 
 tary to  Judah  |,  and  not  improbably  entered  into  some  arrange- 
 ments with  the  Egyptians  for  opposing  the  southward  progress 
 of  the  Assyrians,  by  means  of  garrisons  in  the  strong  fortresses 
 of  Philistia.  Sargon,  on  the  other  hand,  after  the  conquest  of 
 Damascus  and  Samaria,  advanced  to  the  west  and  south,  and 
 we  presently  find  his  general,  Tartan,  laying  siege  to  Ashdod  J, 
 the  ruler  of  which  flies  to  Egypt,  and  the  fortress  falls,  as  do 
 
 of  Orleans  sent  "  a  messenger  to  observe  from  the  ramparts  the  face  of  the 
 distant  country.  .  .  In  bis  third  report  be  mentioned  a  small  cloud  ...  at  tbe 
 extremity  of  the  horizon.  ...  It  is  the  aid  of  God,  exclaimed  the  bishop, 
 .  .  .  and  the  whole  multitude  repeated  after  him,  It  is  the  aid  of  God.  The 
 remote  object  became  each  moment  larger  .  .  .  the  Roman  and  Gothic  ban- 
 ners were  gradually  perceived ;  and  a  favourable  wind  blowing  aside  the 
 dust,  discovered  in  deep  array,  the  impatient  squadrons  of  iEtius  and  Theo- 
 doric,  who  pressed  forward  to  the  relief  of  Orleans."  —  Gibbon,  Decline  and 
 Fall,  ch.  xxxv. 
 
 *  Compare  the  description  in  chapter  v.  ver.  26 — 30. 
 
 f  2  Kings,  xviii.  8.  j  Isaiah,  xx.  1 
 
172  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 those  of  Gaza  raid  Askelon,  where  also  Sargon  found  Egyptian 
 commandants.*  Sennacherib,  on  coming  to  the  throne,  found 
 that  the  Philistian  lords,  like  Hezekiah,  were  refusing  to  pay 
 the  tribute  imposed  on  them  by  his  predecessors:  so,  after 
 visiting  Tyre  and  Sidon  with  the  like  purpose,  he  proceeded  to 
 Philistia,  and  of  what  he  did  there  he  gives  the  following 
 account :  —  "  Sitka  of  Ascalon,  who  did  not  come  to  pay  me 
 homage,  the  gods  of  his  house,  and  his  treasures,  his  sons  and 
 his  daughters,  and  his  brothers  of  the  house  of  his  father,  I 
 seized  and  sent  off  to  Nineveh.  I  placed  another  chief  [name 
 illegible]  on  the  throne  of  Ascalon,  and  I  imposed  on  him  the 
 regulated  amount  of  tribute.  In  the  autumn  of  the  year  certain 
 other  cities,  which  had  refused  to  submit  to  my  authority,  I 
 took  and  plundered.  The  nobles  and  the  people  of  Ekron 
 having  expelled  their  king,  Haddiya,  and  the  Assyrian  troops 
 who  garrisoned  the  town,  attached  themselves  to  Hezekiah  of 
 Judaea,  and  paid  their  adoration  to  his  god  [the  name  is  lost]. 
 The  kings  of  Egypt  also  sent  horsemen  and  footmen,  belonging 
 to  the  army  of  the  king  of  Miruhka  [Meroe,  or  ./Ethiopia],  of 
 which  the  numbers  could  not  be  counted.  In  the  neighbour- 
 hood of  the  city  of  Allakhis  [Lachish]  I  joined  battle  with 
 them.  The  captains  of  the  cohorts,  and  the  young  men  of  the 
 kings  of  Egypt,  and  the  captains  of  the  cohorts  of  the  king  of 
 '  Meroe,'  I  put  to  the  sword  in  the  country  of  Lubana  [Libnah]. 
 Afterwards  I  moved  to  the  city  of  Ekron,  and  the  chiefs  of  the 
 people  having  humbled  themselves,  I  admitted  them  into  my 
 service ;  but  the  young  men  I  carried  into  captivity,  to  inhabit 
 the  cities  of  Assyria.  Their  goods  and  wealth  I  also  plundered 
 to  an  untold  amount.  Their  king,  Haddiya,  I  then  brought 
 back  from  the  city  of  Jerusalem,  and  again  placed  in  authority 
 over  them,  imposing  on  him  the  regulated  tribute  of  the  empire; 
 and  because  Hezekiah,  king  of  Judaea,  did  not  submit  to  my 
 yoke,  forty-six  of  his  strong  fenced  cities,  and  innumerable 
 smaller  towns  which  depended  on  them,  I  took  and  plundered; 
 but  I  left  to  him  Jerusalem,  his  capital  city,  and  some  of  the 
 inferior  towns  around  it.  The  cities  which  I  had  taken  and 
 plundered  I  detained  from  the  government  of  Hezekiah,  and 
 distributed  between  the  kings  of  Ashdod,  and  Ascalon,   and 
 
 *  Rawlinson's  Commentary,  pp.  62,  63.  G6. 
 
ALLIANCES    AGAINST    ASSYRIA.  173 
 
 Ekron,  and  Gazah;  and  having  thus  enlarged  the  territory  of 
 these  chiefs,  I  imposed  on  them  a  corresponding  increase  of 
 tribute  over  that  to  which  they  had  formerly  been  subjected."'* 
 The  learned  translators  of  these  annals  admit  many  of  these 
 details  to  be  still  doubtful :  but  the  general  purport  of  their 
 two  versions  is  the  same  ;  and  if  it  be  in  the  main  correct,  we 
 see  that  the  Egyptian  alliance  which  Isaiah  more  specifically 
 denounces  hereafter,  was  a  part  of  a  great  political  system  of 
 combined  defence  against  Assyria;  and  then  the  similarity  of 
 the  prophet's  '  burdens '  of  Tyre  and  Moab  to  this  of  Philistia, 
 suggests  the  probability  that  they  too  were  members  of  the 
 system,  and  throws  a  new  light  on  Isaiah's  purpose  in  making 
 them  the  subjects  of  his  discourse.  We  shall  have  to  return  to 
 this  alliance :  here  we  may  observe,  that  on  this,  as  on  so  many 
 other  occasions,  Isaiah  foretells  what  ought  to  have  been,  and 
 would  have  been,  if  it  had  not  been  prevented  by  want  of  faith 
 in  the  Jewish  government  and  people  :  he  gives  the  answer 
 which  Hezekiah  ought  to  have  returned  to  the  proposals  of  the 
 Philistines :  Sennacherib's  annals  tell  us  what  answer  the  Jewish 
 king  did  return,  and  how  he  was  punished  for  it.  Yet,  in  the 
 end,  God's  plan  and  purpose,  and  His  prophet's  declaration  of 
 it,  were  fulfilled :  after  they  had  tried  to  save  themselves  by 
 their  own  policy,  they  did  in  the  end,  and  in  their  extremity, 
 turn  to  their  Lord  to  save  them.  Such  is  the  usual  history, 
 not  of  the  Jews  only,  but  of  Christian  nations  and  Christian 
 individuals  now.  We  have  premonitions  of  God's  plan;  we 
 try  and  substitute  a  self-willed  caricature  of  it;  and  when  that 
 fails,  we  turn  and  accept  His  Will. 
 
 *  Rawlinson's  Outline,  p.  23.    Compare  Dr.  Hincks's  version  in  Layard's 
 Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  143. 
 
174  ITEEREW    POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  XI. 
 
 ISAIAH    XV.,     XVI.:    MOAB — -PROBABLY     REDUCED    BY    SHALMANESER. —   HIS- 
 TORY    OF     MOAB  —  PICTURE    OF     ITS     OVERTHROW.  TRIBUTE     OF     LAMBS 
 
 DUE      TO      JUDAII.  FRIENDSHIP    WITH    JUDAH     ADVISED.  MODERN    DIS- 
 TINCTION     BETWEEN     THE      ANIMAL     AND     SPIRITUAL      LIFE.  CORTORATE 
 
 UNITY    OF    A    STATE. 
 
 The  c  Burden  of  Moab.'  —  The  place  and  the  contents  of  this 
 prophecy  agree  to  indicate  that  it  was  delivered  about  the  same 
 time  with  the  preceding;  that  is,  in  the  last  year  of  Ahaz, 
 or  the  first  of  Hezekiah.  The  only  historical  reference  to  its 
 fulfilment,  which  it  threatens  shall  certainly  be  within  three 
 years  from  its  delivery,  is  what  we  may  consider  to  lie  in 
 Sennacherib's  mention  of  Budastor,  king  of  Betk-Ammon,  as 
 one  of  the  kings  who  '  repaired  to  his  presence  in  the  neigh- 
 bourhood of  the  city  of  Tyre,  with  their  accustomed  tribute,' 
 in  the  third  year  of  his  annals.*  But  Moab  can  hardly  have 
 escaped  the  lot  of  all  the  neighbouring  nations  at  this  period 
 of  Assyrian  conquest :  and  at  no  time  was  it  more  likely  to  be 
 invaded  than  when  Shalmaneser  came  up  to  besiege  Samaria, 
 in  the  third  year  of  Hezekiah.  The  adoption  of  this  prophecy 
 by  Jeremiah,  shows  that  Moab,  like  other  nations  threatened  by 
 Isaiah,  was  again  a  flourishing  people,  and  destined  to  suffer  a  re- 
 newed and  severer  fulfilment  of  the  judgment  originally  pro- 
 nounced. 
 
 The  Moabites,  a  collateral  tribe  of  the  Hebrew  race,  had 
 (before  the  departure  of  the  latter  from  Egypt)  established 
 themselves  in  a  territory  from  which  they  had  driven  out  the 
 Emims,  and  which  extended  from  Zoar  at  the  southern  extremity 
 of  the  Dead  Sen,  to  the  river  Jabbok  on  the  north,  and  was 
 bounded  on  the  west  by  that  sea  and  the  Jordan,  and  on  the 
 
 *  Rawlinson's  Outline,  p.  22. 
 
HISTORY   OF   MOAB.  175 
 
 east  by  the  desert.  But  not  many  years  before  the  children  of 
 Israel  took  possession  of  the  land  of  Canaan,  Sihon  king  of 
 the  Amoi'ites,  who  then  dwelt  in  Canaan,  passed  the  Jordan, 
 conquered  all  that  part  of  Moab  which  lies  between  the  rivers 
 Jabbok  and  Arnon,  left  the  Moabites  only  the  tract  south  of 
 the  latter  river,  and  made  Heshbon  his  capital. 
 
 Moses  had  commanded  the  Israelites  to  respect  the  territory 
 and  the  rights  of  Moab,  as  he  had  those  of  Edom  and  Amnion, 
 and  he  would  have  passed  peaceably  through  the  kingdom  of 
 Sihon,  but  the  latter  refused  to  permit  him,  and  gave  him 
 battle ;  and,  on  his  defeat,  Moses  took  possession  of  his  newly 
 acquired  territory,  and  divided  it  between  Reuben  and  Gad. 
 Balak,  king  of  Moab,  took  alarm,  though  unmolested  ;  but  after 
 an  alliance  with  the  Midianites,  and  taking  the  prophet  Balaam 
 to  their  counsels,  they  thought  it  more  politic  to  conciliate  than 
 to  attack  the  strangers.  And  from  this  time  the  relations  of 
 the  two  peoples  were  sometimes  hostile,  sometimes  friendly. 
 In  the  days  of  the  Judges,  Eglon,  king  of  Moab,  made  Israel 
 tributary  for  eighteen  years,  but  he  was  killed  by  Ehud,  and 
 the  yoke  broken.  A  time  of  peace  then  appears  to  have 
 succeeded,  in  which  we  see,  from  the  story  of  Ruth,  that  not 
 merely  friendly  intercourse,  but  even  intermarriage  took  place. 
 Saul  made  war  on  the  Moabites,  and  David  reduced  them  to  be 
 tributaries.  After  the  separation  of  theTen  Tribes  from  Judah, 
 Moab  continued  a  province  of  the  former  kingdom,  and  the 
 tribute  paid  to  Ahab  was  '  a  hundred  thousand  lambs,  and  a 
 hundred  thousand  rams,  with  the  wool,'  for  '  Moab  was  a  sheep- 
 master.'  At  the  death  of  Ahab  the  Moabites  rebelled  against 
 his  son  Joram,  who,  with  the  aid  of  Judah  and  Edom,  defeated 
 the  rebels  in  a  great  battle,  and  laid  waste  their  land ;  but  it 
 has  been  inferred  that  they  were  not  effectually  conquered,  and 
 were  shortly  able  to  make  war  on  Jehoshaphat  in  revenge  for 
 his  late  alliance  against  them.  About  fifty  years  after,  we  find 
 marauding  '  bands  of  the  Moabites '  entering  the  territory  of 
 Ephraim,  as  though  they  were  either  independent  or  in  revolt. 
 And  after  a  further  silence  of  history  for  more  than  a  century, 
 we  here  find  Moab  not  only  a  flourishing  and  independent 
 kingdom,  but  in  unquestioned  possession  of  the  ancient  lands 
 and  cities  of  Reuben  and  Gad.     Moab  had,  as  Jeremiah  com- 
 
176  HE B HEW   POLITICS.' 
 
 plains  of  Amnion,  become  'the  heir  of  Israel*,' and  the  ab- 
 sence of  even  so  much  of  protest  from  this  prophecy  of  Isaiah, 
 seems  to  indicate  that  the  possession  was,  partly  at  least,  held 
 by  old  prescriptive  right.  Some  of  the  cities,  though  granted  by 
 Moses  to  Reuben  and  Gad,  may  have  continued  in  the  hands 
 of  their  former  possessors,  as  those  of  Philistia  did  ;  and  the 
 Moabite  power  and  territory  would  probably  extend  itself  as 
 the  strength  and  population  of  the  kingdom  of  Ephraim  decayed, 
 till  the  Assyrian  deportations  of  the  latter,  of  which  more  than 
 one  had  already  occurred,  ended  any  remaining  disputes. 
 
 The  god  of  Moab  is  called  Chemosh  and  Baal-Peor  :  the 
 the  latter  name  is  explained  to  mean  Baal  of  Mount  Peor,  the 
 mount  to  which  Balak  took  Balaam  to  curse  Israel,  and  which 
 was,  perhaps,  the  chief  place  of  their  worship.  The  national 
 character  and  national  worship  were,  no  doubt,  as  intimately 
 related  as  they  are  found  to  be  in  all  nations  which  have  left 
 sufficient  means  of  information  on  the  subject.  Whether  such 
 means  exist  in  the  present  case  must  be  decided  by  a  pro- 
 founder  insight  than  I  possess. 
 
 The  vision  of  the  overthrow  of  Moab  rises  before  the  prophet. 
 Ar-Moab,  or  Rabbath-Moab,  —  «  Moab's  City,'  —  of  which  the 
 ruins,  under  the  name  of  Mab,  or  Erabba,  may  still  be  seen  on 
 the  south  of  the  Arnon,  is  cut  off  by  an  attack  unexpected  as 
 the  thief  in  the  night :  so  is  Kir  —  'Moab's  Wall,'  or  '  fortress,' 
 —  which,  a  castle  on  a  rocky  hill,  a  few  miles  south-east  of  Ar, 
 still  tells  the  traveller  of  its  importance,  by  the  remains  of  its 
 church  and  mosque,  and  by  the  name  of  Karrak-Moba,  which 
 it  o-ives  to  its  no  longer  resident  bishop,  and  to  the  whole 
 tract  which  was  once  Moab.  He  sees  the  people  with  heads 
 and  beards  shaven  in  token  of  grief,  girt  with  sackcloth, 
 dissolved  in  tears,  and  uttering  loud  lamentations ;  going  up  to 
 the  high  places  of  their  gods  at  Bajith  and  at  Dibon,  to  entreat 
 for  aid ;  wandering  through  the  streets  ;  collecting  in  the  market- 
 places, or  open  squares  near  the  gate,  where  the  last  news  of 
 the  enemy,  or  of  the  plans  of  the  government,  might  be  heard; 
 or  retiring  to  their  house-tops   to  supplicate  their  household 
 
 *  Jcr.  xlix.  1. 
 
ISAIAH  XV.L  — 9.:    DESTRUCTION  OP    THE    STATE.  177 
 
 gods,  or  mourn  in  private  over  the  fate  of  their  families  and 
 themselves.*  Heshbon,  the  royal  city  of  the  Amorites  ;  be- 
 stowed on  Reuben  and  on  Gad  and  his  Levites  at  different 
 times ;  famous  for  its  fish-pools ;  and,  like  the  neighbouring 
 Elealeh,  still  to  be  found  by  name  in  the  highlands  of  Gilead 
 opposite  Jericho;  makes  its  cry  of  despair — a  cry  which  even 
 the  warriors  of  Moab  raise  instead  of  their  battle- shout — heard 
 afar,  for  men's  very  life  is  a  burden  to  them.  The  prophet  may 
 have  little  love  for  Moab,  but  his  heart  cannot  but  be  touched 
 by  such  utter  woe  ;  for  he  sees  the  whole  people  flying  from 
 their  houses,  towards  Zoar,  on  their  southern  frontiei*,  as  their 
 father  Lot  had  once  fled  to  the  same  city,  in  his  extremity. 
 They  fly  as  the  heifer  in  her  prime,  and  when  her  voice  is 
 deepest,  flies  from  the  first  attempt  to  bring  her  under  the  yoke : 
 he  sees  them  weeping  as  they  go  up  the  hill  of  Luhith,  on  their 
 way  to  Zoar,  and  he  hears  their  broken  cries  as  they  descend 
 again  by  the  road  of  Horonaim.  Then  half-retaining,  half- 
 changing  the  image  of  the  heifer,  the  prophet  explains  the 
 cause  of  their  flight  to  be,  that  the  waters,  and  consequently 
 the  green  fields,  of  Nimrim,  or  Nimra,  near  Heshbon,  which, 
 because  it  had  the  rare  blessing  of  water,  was  a  fertile  valley, 
 and  a  coveted  pasture  for  cattle |,  ' are  desolations'  —  struck  by 
 drought,  whether  conceived  as  a  poetical  image,  or  as  the  actual 
 result  of  the  cutting  of  water-courses  in  war.  The  invader  is 
 upon  them,  and  their  only  remaining   chance  is  to  cross  the 
 
 *  Vitringa  quotes  Justin's  description  of  Athens  (lib.  v.  c.  7.),  when  news 
 had  arrived  of  the  loss  of  Conon  and  his  army  :  "  Quae  cuncta  cum  Athenis 
 nunciata  essent,  omnes  relictis  domibus  per  urbem  discurrere  pavidi ;  alius 
 alium  sciscitari ;  auctorem  nuncii  requirere  ;  non  pueros  iinprtidentia  ;  non 
 senes  debilitas  ;  non  mulieres  sexus  imbecillitas  domi  tenet :  adeo  ad  omnem 
 ajtatem  tanti  mali  sensus  penetraverat.  In  foro  deinde  coeunt,  atque  ibi 
 perpeti  nocte  fortunam  publicam  questibus  iterant.  Alii  fratres,  filios,  aut 
 patres,  deflent,"  &c.  &c.  And  of  Carthage  (lib.  xix.  c.  2.),  after  the  de- 
 struction of  Imilco's  army  in  Sicily  :  "  Quae  res  cum  nunciata  Carthagini  esset, 
 moesta  civitas  fuit ;  omnia  ulueatibus,  non  secus  ac  si  urbs  ipsa  capta  esset, 
 fkrsonabant Cuncti  deinde  ad  fortum  congregantur,"  &c.  Com- 
 pare, too,  the  descriptions  of  Syracuse  expecting  the  Carthaginians  ;  and  of 
 the  population  of  Ilimera,  Agrigentum,  and  Gela,  flying  from  thorn. — 
 Grote's  History  of  Greece,  x.  599. 
 
 f  Numbers,  xxxii.  3.  36.  ;  Josh.  xiii.  27. 
 
 N 
 
178  HEBREW    POLITICS, 
 
 '  Brook  of  Willows'  (now  called  Wady-el-Ahsa,  and  forming 
 now,  as  then,  the  boundary  of  the  land),  carrying  with  them 
 what  they  can  of  the  wealth  which  long  peace  had  enabled 
 them  to  accumulate.  The  cry  and  the  howling  spread  even 
 beyond  the  frontiers  of  Moab,  and  shall  be  heard  at  the  '  Well 
 of  Princes,'  where  Israel  once  found  water  in  the  desert,  and 
 in  their  joy  sang  that  song,  '  Spring,  O  Well,'  destined  to 
 endure  with  their  own  name  for  ever.  The  channel  of  Dimon 
 shall  run  blood  instead  of  water :  and  if  any  escape  the  sword, 
 upon  them  the  Lord  will  bring  lions  :  —  a  threat  which  may  be 
 understood  literally,  as  we  have  accounts  of  the  actual  appear- 
 ance of  these  beasts  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Jordan,  the 
 thickets  of  which  they  seem  to  have  frequented.  As  long  as 
 national  order  and  prosperity  continued,  the  wild  beasts  would 
 be  kept  under,  and  driven  back  to  their  woods  and  mountains ; 
 but  in  times  of  anarchy,  when  the  population  was  diminished, 
 the  fields  not  fenced  in,  the  cattle  not  watched,  and  the  roads 
 not  kept  in  constant  use  by  traffic,  they  would  prowl  in  quest 
 of  prey  through  the  land. 
 
 The  expression  of  '  sending  the  lamb '  is  clearly  explained 
 by  the  account  already  referred  to,  of  the  mode  in  which  the 
 tribute  of  Moab  was  paid  during  its  dependence  on  Israel.  A 
 more  difficult  question  arises  from  the  mention  of  Sela  —  '  the 
 Rock'  —  which  it  seems  most  straightforward  to  take  here,  as  in 
 2  Kings,  xiv.  7.,  to  be  Petra,  the  chief  city  of  Edom :  and  we 
 must  then  suppose  that  it  had  fallen  into  the  power  of  Moab, 
 perhaps  at  the  time  when  this  nation  made  itself  obnoxious  to 
 the  denunciation  of  Amos,  Isaiah's  elder  contemporary,  for  some 
 savage  outrage  on  Edom  *  ;  or  that  Sela  is  here  mentioned, 
 not  as  in  possession  of  Moab,  but  to  indicate  that  the  required 
 flocks  would  be  collected  most  conveniently  in  the  pasture 
 grounds  near  that  city,  whether  they  already  belonged  to  the 
 Moabites,  or  were  to  be  purchased  from  Edom.  The  '  wilder- 
 nesses' and  *  deserts'  of  the  Bible  answer  (with  due  allowance 
 for  the  difference  of  climate  and  consequent  vegetation)  to 
 what  we  call  moors  or  commons,  uninhabited,  but  fit  for 
 pasture.    The  wilderness  here  referred  to  was  probably  the  tract 
 
 *  Amos,  ii.  1.  ' 
 
ISAIAH  XVI.   1  — 10.  :    FRIENDSHIP  WITH  JUDAII  ADVISED.    170 
 
 between  Petra  and  Judsea,  which  Strabo  calls  sprj/^os,  and 
 Jerome  desertum ;  and  Sela  may  have  been  the  head-station  of 
 the  shepherds  who  frequented  these  plains  with  their  vast 
 flocks,  and  where  they  found  such  protection  and  Avater  as 
 Uzziah  is  said  to  have  provided  for  his  flocks  by  making 
 f  towers  and  wells  in  the  desert.' 
 
 Isaiah,  after  declaring  the  woes  that  are  coming  on  the  people 
 of  Moab,  calls  them  to  submit  themselves  again  to  their  right- 
 ful lord-paramount,  by  sending  the  tribute  as  in  former  times. 
 The  image  of  the  Daughter  of  Zion  sitting  in  royal  dignity  sug- 
 gests that  of  the  daughters  of  Moab  in  flight ;  and  this  the  two 
 images  of  the  undignified  peasant  or  female  slave  wading 
 through  a  river,  and  that  of  young  birds  losing  their  nest  and 
 struggling  at  the  risk  of  their  lives.*  And  then  the  abrupt  turn 
 of  expression  seems  to  indicate  that  he  is  suddenly  conscious  of 
 the  apparent  impropriety  of  a  Jew  in  the  unhappy  reign  of 
 Ahaz,  when  his  own  country  was  in  the  depths  of  humiliation 
 and  distress,  thus  addressing  the  haughty  Moab,  which  was  still 
 in  all  its  prosperity  and  pride,  and  at  the  very  moment  a  place 
 of  refuge  for  the  Israelites,  who  were  flying  from  their  own  land 
 to  avoid  military  inroads  on  every  side,  and  also  the  extortion  of 
 tribute,  which,  from  the  way  in  which  Isaiah  constantly  speaks 
 of  it,  would  seem  to  have  been  collected  by  the  Assyrians 
 themselves :  and  therefore,  while  repeating  the  prediction  which 
 he  had  lately  made  to  the  Philistines,  that  the  throne  of  David 
 would  shortly  be  established  in  its  former  power,  and  giving 
 this  as  the  reason  why  Moab  had  better  return  to  his  allegiance, 
 he  makes  it  also  a  reason  why  meanwhile  the  Hebrew  fugitives 
 should  be  treated  with  less  pride  and  wrath. 
 
 The  old  way  of  understanding  this  as  the  address  of  Isaiah  to 
 Moab,  seems  to  me  to  give  a  more  coherent  sense  than  the 
 modern  supposition,  that  it  is  the  petition  of  Moab  which  ac- 
 companies the  lambs. 
 
 But,  the  prophet  adds,  such  arguments  will  be  in  vain ; 
 we  know  his  proud  and  cruel  character  too  well.  This  in- 
 solence is  spoken  of  as  the  national  character  of  Moab  and 
 Amnion  by  Jeremiah  (xlviii.  27 — 30.)  and  Zephaniah  (ii.  8 — 
 
 *  Compare  chap,  xlvii.  1 — 9. 
 
 n  2 
 
180  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 10.),  and  we  find  Sanballat  of  Horonaim  (in  Moab),  and 
 Tobiah  the  Ammonite,  mocking,  in  the  old  spirit  of  their 
 people,  the  builders  of  Jerusalem  under  Nehemiah.  But  his 
 pride  shall  not  prevail ;  his  boasting  will  prove  a  lie  in  the 
 end.  The  land  of  Moab  was  famous  then,  as  it  is  still,  for 
 its  pastui'es  and  its  vineyards  ;  and  in  renewing  his  warning 
 of  the  destruction  at  hand,  Isaiah  now  takes  his  images 
 from  the  latter,  as  before  from  the  former,  feature  of  the 
 country.  He  sees  '  Heshbon  and  Elealeh,  and  the  flowery  dale 
 of  Sibmah  clad  with  vines,'  wasted  by  the  ruthless  invaders,  who 
 break  down  those  plants  so  famous  for  their  choice  fruit,  and 
 so  luxuriant  in  their  growth,  that  nature  and  man  combined  to 
 carry  them  beyond  the  limits  of  the  desert  and  over  the  sea. 
 This  '  sea'  may  either  be  the  Dead  Sea,  or,  as  Jeremiah  under- 
 stands it,  a  lake  at  Jazer,  though  none  has  been  found  there 
 now.  The  prophet's  sympathy  is  so  excited  that  he  weeps  for 
 Sibmah,  as  Jazer  and  its  people  themselves  may  weep ;  and  if 
 their  watercourses  are  cut  off,  he  will  supply  the  loss  with  his 
 tears.  The  wheat  and  barley  were  the  spring-harvest ;  but  the 
 joy  of  the  summer-harvest,  when  the  fruits,  the  olives  and  the 
 grapes,  were  gathered  in  to  repay  the  toils  of  the  year,  would  be 
 the  greater :  but  the  singing  and  the  shouting  in  the  vineyard 
 and  at  the  wine-press  are  not  now  heard ;  their  vintage-shout 
 has  ceased,  for  other  gatherers  and  treaders  are  come,  and  the 
 battle-shout  is  heard  in  its  stead. 
 
 Kir-hareseth  and  Kir-haresh  are  understood  to  be  other 
 names  for  Kir-Moab,  mentioned  above.  Sibmah  was  in  the 
 neighbourhood  of  Heshbon.  The  expression  '  my  bowels  shall 
 sound  like  a  harp  for  Moab,'  employs  a  favourite  image  of  the 
 Hebrew  poets.  The  ancients  would  not  have  understood  the 
 feeling  which  makes  such  allusions  repulsive  to  modern  taste, 
 while  we  acknowledge  their  appropriateness  and  force.  We 
 shrink  from  such  undisguised  mention,  in  words,  of  the  more 
 grossly  animal  functions,  just  as  we  do  from  the  unrestrained 
 utterance  of  such  '  bowlings '  as  are  attributed  to  Moab  in 
 the  chapters  before  us,  and  which  would  not  have  seemed  de- 
 grading to  a  Greek  or  Roman  any  more  than  to  a  Hebrew. 
 And  the  best  explanation  is  that  which  has  been  given  of  the 
 latter  fact  by  the  author  of  '  Guesses  at   Truth ; '  namely,  that 
 
isaiaii  xvi.  11 — 14.:  corporate  unity  of  a  state.    181 
 
 Christianity  has  so  clearly  established  the  distinction  between 
 flesh  and  spirit,  that  every  man,  woman,  and  child  can  feel  it  to 
 be  disgraceful  that  our  animal  nature  should,  even  under  the 
 most  trying  circumstances,  have  its  own  way,  and  cease  to  be 
 under  the  authority  of  our  human  will.  Self-possession  and 
 self-control  are  no  longer  virtues  to  be  exhibited  only  by  great 
 men  on  great  occasions,  but  to  be  the  ordinary  habit  of  all  of  us 
 at  all  times. 
 
 When  Moab  finds  that  he  is  wearying  himself  to  no  purpose 
 by  his  sacrifices  on  the  high  places,  he  shall  try  whether  prayers 
 in  his  temples  will  be  more  effectual ;  but  both  shall  be  in  vain. 
 These  judgments  have  been  hanging  over  the  head  of  Moab 
 from  of  old :  but  now  the  time  of  their  accomplishment  is  near ; 
 it  shall  be  within  three  years,  to  be  understood  literally  and 
 precisely  as  they  would  be  in  the  hiring  a  servant  for  such  a 
 term.  There  is  no  occasion,  though  no  objection  (except  what 
 lies  against  all  unnecessary  conjectures),  to  suppose  that  verses 
 13.  and  14.  are  a  postscript  added  to  the  prophecy,  itself  of 
 earlier  date :  it  is  just  as  easy  to  understand  them  as  parts  of 
 one  whole. 
 
 We  may  notice  here,  though  the  observation  applies  equally 
 to  all  like  occasions,  that  Moab  is  a  Person  in  the  eyes  of  the 
 prophet ;  for  this  much  better  expresses  the  case  than  to  speak 
 of  a  personification.  This  sense  of  the  corporate  unity  of  a 
 nation  was  much  stronger  among  the  ancients,  as  it  was  in  the 
 middle  ages,  than  anything  we  feel  now  in  our  political  com- 
 munities, which  are  so  much  larger,  and  with  such  much  more 
 complicated  interests  than  those  of  former  times.  Our  old 
 legal  forms,  by  which  an  association  of  men  is  '  incorporated,' 
 with  perpetual  succession,  power  to  sue  and  be  sued,  and  to 
 use  a  common  seal,  as  though  a  single  person ;  as  well  as  those 
 which  erect  individual  personages,  such  as  the  sovereign,  the 
 bishop,  the  parson,  and  so  on,  into  'corporations  sole,'  with 
 the  legal  powers  of  a  corporate  body  ;  are  illustrations  of  the 
 mediaeval  feeling.  If  we  have  lost  something,  we  have  also 
 gained  something  by  the  change ;  for  it  has  been  effected  in  a 
 great  degree  by  a  healthy  growth  and  expansion  of  patriotism 
 towards  philanthropy,  if  it  must  also  in  some  respects  be  re- 
 ferred to  a  depression  of  the  patriotic  by  the  selfish  temper. 
 
 n  3 
 
182  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 The  Romish,  and  I  must  add  the  Anglican,  Churches  arc 
 warnings  of  the  evil  of  endeavouring  to  restrict  the  catholic 
 spirit  within  the  limits  of  a  formal  and  finite  personality  of  this 
 kind,  in  opposition  to  the  indications  of  God's  providence,  no 
 less  than  His  express  declarations,  that  the  highest  unity  is 
 that  of  the  spirit  and  not  of  the  letter.* 
 
 It  seems  to  me  unnecessary  to  notice  the  reasons  which  are 
 advanced  for  attributing  this  prophecy  to  some  other  writer 
 than  Isaiah. 
 
 Jeremiah  has  recast  its  component  parts  in  a  new  form ;  as 
 he  has  the  prophecies  against  Babylon ;  and  in  each  case  with 
 the  same  indications  that  he  is  not  the  original  author. 
 
 *  M.  Bunsen  gives  a  very  clear  statement  of  the  philosophic  grounds  —  of 
 the  essentially  real  and  rational  basis  —  of  the  personality  of  societies  as 
 well  as  individuals  ;  and  of  its  adequate  realisation  in  the  Christian  Church, 
 as  the  finite  manifestation  of  the  Third  Person  of  the  Holy  Trinity. — Hip- 
 polytus  and  his  Age,  ii.  32—52.  I  strongly  commend  the  passage  to  all 
 students. 
 
isaiaii  xvii.,  xviii.  :  Damascus  and  ErmiAiM.         183 
 
 CHAPTER  XII. 
 
 ISAIAH,  XVII.,  XVIII.:    DAMASCUS,  EPHRAIM,  AND  ETHIOPIA. PROBABLE  DATE 
 
 AND  UNITY  OF  THIS  PROPHECY.  THE  RUSH  OF    NATIONS.  THE    GENERAL 
 
 PANIC. WORLDLY  ALLIANCES.  GOd's    DELIVERANCE. NOTION    OF    THIS 
 
 PROPHECY  BEING  A  MYTH NOT  WELL  FOUNDED. 
 
 The  old  division  between  chapters  xvii.  and  xviii.  (as  in  the 
 Authorised  Version)  indicates  the  old  opinion,  that  a  distinct 
 prophecy  begins  with  the  latter  chapter,  though  it  might  be  a 
 question  whether  verses  12,  13,  and  14.  of  the  former  one  were  a 
 fragment  detached  from  both,  or  the  conclusion  of  that  entitled 
 s  The  Burden  of  Damascus,'  but  which  relates  still  more  to  Eph- 
 raim,  the  ally  of  Damascus  at  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Ahaz. 
 The  modern  opinion  is  in  favour  of  considering  that  the  former 
 prophecy  ends  with  verse  11.  of  chapter  xvii. ;  and  that  its  date  is 
 the  same  as  that  of  chapter  viii. — ix.  7.,  namely,  the  year  in 
 which  the  northern  tribes  of  Israel  were  carried  away  by  As- 
 syria, and  which  deportation  is  supposed  to  have  taken  place 
 the  year  before  that  of  the  inhabitants  of  Damascus.  And  the 
 remaining  verses  of  chapter  xvii.  are  taken  as  the  beginning  of  a 
 new  prophecy,  ending  with  the  end  of  chapter  xviii.,  from  which 
 they  should  never  have  been  divided ;  while  its  date  is  referred 
 to  the  same  period  as  that  of  chapter  xx.,  when  the  Assyrians 
 were  actually  beginning  to  overflow  the  borders  of  Judah,  and 
 the  ministers  and  people  of  Hezekiah  were  looking  to  Tirhakeh, 
 king  of  Ethiopia  and  Egypt,  for  help. 
 
 Yet  there  is  some  force  in  the  argument  that  in  this  part  of 
 the  book,  where  a  series  of  titles  seems  to  define  the  beginning 
 and  end  of  each  portion,  we  should  take  the  two  chapters  as  one 
 whole;  that  the  under-current  of  thought  common  to  verses  11. 
 and  14.  of  chapter  xvii.,  with  verse  5.  of  chapter  xviii.,  is  in 
 favour  of  the  continuity  of  the  text ;  and  that  there  is  also  a 
 unity  of  idea  pervading  this  whole,  and  corresponding  with  that 
 
 N    4 
 
184  HEBREW    POLITICS 
 
 which  we  have  noticed  running  through  chapters  vii.,  viii.,  ix.,  x., 
 xi.,  xii.,  and  giving  them  greatly  the  character  of  a  continuous 
 whole,  though  that  whole  may  be  made  up  of  portions  originally 
 separate.  The  train  of  ideas  which  unites  those  chapters  is, 
 that  Judah  need  not  fear  the  hostile  alliance  of  Syria  and 
 Ephraim  against  her,  nor  yet  seek  for  help  from  Assyria  or 
 Egypt,  if  only  she  will  trust  in  her  own  Lord,  and  true  Pro- 
 tector ;  that  since  she  will  not  trust  in  Him,  she  shall  be  herself 
 overwhelmed  by  the  heathen  powers  she  calls  in,  and  thus  pu- 
 nished for  her  own  loss  of  faith,  and  propensity  to  idols,  even 
 though  these  powers  deliver  her  from  her  immediate  alarm ;  but 
 that  at  the  last  a  righteous  kino;  shall  reign  in  Sion  over  the  re- 
 stored  remnant  of  both  Judah  and  Ephraim,  and  all  the  nations 
 of  the  earth  shall  acknowledge  his  dominion.  And  a  similar 
 thread  of  thought  may  be  found  running  through  the  two  chap- 
 ters now  before  us, — which  open  with  the  destruction  of  Da- 
 mascus and  Israel;  refer  the  calamities  of  the  latter  to  his 
 abandonment  of  his  true  Lord,  who  shall  yet  preserve  a  remnant 
 of  His  people ;  and  predict  the  destruction  of  the  Assyrian  as 
 soon  as  he  has  fulfilled  his  office  of  the  scourge  of  God,  and  the 
 actual  recognition  of  the  Name  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  by  Egypt 
 and  Ethiopia.  There  is  an  essential  resemblance  between  the 
 two,  with  a  difference  in  the  proportions  of  their  parts :  Damascus 
 and  Ephraim  become  less  prominent  in  the  latter  than  the  for- 
 mer, while  the  slight  mention  of  Egypt  in  verse  18.  of  chapter 
 vii.,  apparently  indicating  that  the  politicians  of  the  day  were 
 just  thinking  of  the  possibility  of  an  alliance  with  that  power, 
 is  replaced  by  a  reference  to  the  altered  state  of  things  when 
 that  alliance  was  actively  promoted  by  the  government  of  Heze- 
 kiah,  as  their  only  support  against  Assyria.  But  no  date  can 
 easily  be  fixed  for  a  composition  of  which  the  beginning  seems 
 closely  connected  with  the  first  year  of  Ahaz,  while  the  end 
 points  towards  the  fourteenth  of  Ilezekiah, — unless,  indeed,  we 
 suppose  with  Grotius  that  the  prophet  here  refers  to  a  second 
 destruction  of  Damascus  just  before  that  of  Samaria,  which  was 
 completed  in  the  sixth  year  of  Ilezekiah ;  but  of  this  we  have 
 no  account  in  history,  though  there  is  nothing  improbable  in 
 it.  It  will  only  remain,  then,  in  support  of  the  unity  of  these 
 two  chapters,  to  suppose  that,  though  originally  written  at  dif- 
 
ISAIAH  XVII.  :    THE  TROBABLE  DATE.  185 
 
 fercnt  times,  they  were  blended  into  one  by  Isaiah  himself, 
 with  such  obliterations  of  the  original  dates,  or  evidence  of  dates, 
 as  the  fusion  might  seem  to  him  to  require.  Such  revisions, 
 and  consequent  obliterations,  by  the  author  himself  are  common 
 in  modern  books,  where  we  can  trace  the  process.  Biographical 
 puzzles  may  one  day  arise  from  the  fact  that  there  exists  a  ma- 
 nuscript of  some  of  Coleridge's  poems,  in  his  own  hand,  where 
 'Mary'  is  found  instead  of  the  c  Sara'  of  the  published  edi- 
 tions :  and  the  higher  criticism  may  expend  its  powers  in  ex- 
 plaining how  the  reprint  of  Sir  J.  Stephen's  article  in  No.  136. 
 of  the  e  Edinburgh  Review,'  notices  a  book  published  ten  years 
 after  the  date  of  that  number.  It  is  not  material  in  which  way 
 we  decide  the  present  doubt,  or  whether  we  leave  it  undecided. 
 
 '  Damascus,'  says  Alexander,  '  is  still  the  most  flourishing 
 city  in  western  Asia.  It  is  also  one  of  the  most  ancient.  It  is 
 here  mentioned  as  the  capital  of  a  kingdom,  called  Syria  of 
 Damascus,  to  distinguish  it  from  other  Syrian  principalities,  and 
 founded  in  the  reign  of  David  by  Rezon.  (1  Kings,  xi.  23,  24.) 
 It  was  commonly  at  war  with  Israel,  particularly  during  the 
 reigns  of  Benhadad  and  Hazael,  so  that  a  three  years'  peace 
 is  recorded  as  a  long  one.  (1  Kings,  xxii.  1.)'  With  the  alli- 
 ance of  its  last  king  Rezin  with  Pekah,  king  of  Israel,  and  its 
 results,  we  are  already  familiar. 
 
 There  are  two  Aroers  mentioned  on  the  east  of  Jordan,  one 
 near  the  Anion,  and  the  other  to  the  north,  and  near  the 
 Ammonite  city  of  Rabbah  * ;  and  the  cities  of  Aroer  here  spoken 
 of  may  be  the  cities  and  villages  of  Gad  and  Reuben  in  the  dis- 
 trict between  the  two  Aroers,  or  more  immediately  about  the 
 northern  one,  which  will  connect  them  with  the  deportation  of 
 Tiglath-Pileser,  referred  to  on  former  occasions. 
 
 The  prophet  threatens  the  two  nations  with  a  common  de- 
 struction ;  the  glory  of  Damascus  shall  be  as  the  glory  of  Israel 
 in  the  day  in  which  the  strength  of  the  latter  is  wasted  away 
 with  the  emaciation  of  mortal  disease,  and  his  wealth  is  carried 
 away  as  the  whole  crop  of  corn  is  carried  away  in  harvest  time. 
 But  then  Isaiah  substitutes  an  image  not  so  strong :  the 
 gleaner  follows  the  reaper  of  corn,  and  leaves  nothing  behind ; 
 
 *  Josh.  xii.  2.,  xiii.  16.  25.  ;  Numb,  xxxii.  34. 
 
186  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 but  the  most  active  shaking  and  beating  of  the  olive-tree  leaves 
 a  few  berries  on  the  uppermost  boughs ;  and  such  a  remnant 
 will  be  left  of  Israel,  though  the  once  strong  cities,  which 
 are  left  for  its  sake,  will  be  left  in  the  humblest,  most  de- 
 fenceless condition.  Such  a  remnant  we  know  did,  after  the 
 general  deportation  of  the  ten  tribes,  accept  Hezekiah's  in- 
 vitation, and  return  to  the  right  worship  of  the  Lord  at  Jeru- 
 salem, as  they  did  again  in  the  time  of  Josiah.*  In  that  day 
 the  judgment  on  the  nation,  and  the  mercy  shown  to  the 
 penitent  few,  will  alike  bear  witness  against  their  past  idola- 
 tries and  forgetfulness  of  the  God  of  their  salvation.  And 
 then  Isaiah,  in  his  usual  manner,  blends  with  the  previous 
 image  of  the  Assyrians  reaping  a  harvest  of  cities  and  their 
 inhabitants,  the  new  one  of  the  Israelites  transplanting  hea- 
 then gods  into  their  worship,  and  reaping  God's  abandon- 
 ment of  their  nation  as  the  fruit;  while  both  images  connect 
 themselves  in  the  mind  with  the  thought  of  the  actual  wasting  of 
 fields  and  vineyards  through  the  country,  by  the  ruthless  invaders. 
 On  a  former  occasion  Isaiah  had  said,  '  The  Lord  spake  unto 
 me,  saying,  Forasmuch  as  this  people  refuseth  the  waters  of 
 Siloah  that  go  softly,  and  rejoice  in  Rezin  and  Remaliah's  son ; 
 now  therefore  behold,  the  Lord  bringeth  up  upon  them  the  waters 
 of  the  river,  strong  and  many,  the  king  of  Assyria,  and  all  his 
 glory :  and  he  shall  come  up  over  all  his  channels,  and  go  over 
 all  his  banks  ;  and  he  shall  pass  through  Judah ;  he  shall 
 overflow  and  go  over,  he  shall  reach  even  to  the  neck ;  and  the 
 stretching  out  of  his  wings  shall  fill  the  breadth  of  thy  land, 
 O  Immanuel.'  And  now  he  hears  the  sound  of  these  mighty 
 and  many  waters,  while  '  the  nations  rush  like  the  rushing  of 
 many  waters,'  and  (  make  a  noise  like  the  noise  of  the  seas.'f 
 But  he  is  calm  and  self-possessed  as  ever ;  he  holds  to  his  old 
 faith  and  doctrine  :  '  God  shall  rebuke  them,  and  they  shall 
 flee  afar  off,  like  chaflP,  Avhen  the  wind  whirls  it  from  the 
 threshing-floor  on  the  hill-side.' 
 
 *  2  Cbron.  xxx.  11.,  xxxiv.  6,  9. 
 
 j-  "  Qualia  fluctus 
 
 JEquorei  faciunt,  si  quia  proeid  audiat  ipsos, 
 Tale  sonat  populus." 
 
 Ovid.  Met.  xv.  G04.  (Alexander  from  Clericus.) 
 
ISAIAH  XVIII.  :    EGYPT  AND  ETHIOPIA.  187 
 
 Though  the  general  sense  of  the  eighteenth  chapter  is  clear, 
 there  is  great  doubt  as  to  the  translation  and  meaning  of  parti- 
 cular phrases.  It  is  not  agreed  whether  *  shadowing,'  or 
 *  rustling  wings,'  or  *  winged  cymbal '  be  the  proper  render- 
 ing ;  nor  whether  (to  leave  less  likely  explanations)  it  refers  to 
 the  mountain  ridges,  or  the  armies  (as  in  chapter  viii.  8.),  or  the 
 boats  with  sails  or  shaped  like  the  cymbal.  It  is  questioned 
 whether  the  s sea'  in  verse  2.  is  the  Nile,  or  the  Red  Sea,  or 
 the  Mediterranean ;  and  also  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  epithets 
 applied  to  the  *  people'  and  *  nation'  in  verses  2.  and  7.,  and 
 whether  these  are  to  be  taken  to  indicate  Egypt  and  Ethiopia 
 respectively,  or  both  together  as  one  power  under  Sabaco,  or 
 Tirhakeh.  But  the  general  sense  is  that  Egypt  and  Ethiopia, 
 like  Philistia  and  Moab,  share  the  general  panic  at  the  approach 
 of  the  great  northern  conqueror;  and,  as  in  the  former  case, 
 Isaiah  supposes  ambassadors  coming  to  Jerusalem,  to  propose  an 
 alliance  against  the  common  foe,  and  replies,  as  before,  that  the 
 Lord  will  defend  His  own  without  the  help  of  man. 
 
 Alexander,  with  his  wonted  clearness  of  judgment  on  such 
 points,  observes  that  there  is  no  need  to  depart  from  the  literal, 
 which  is,  indeed,  the  better,  sense  of  verse  3.,  and  that  we 
 should  read  thus :  —  '  All  ye  inhabitants  of  the  world,  and 
 dwellers  on  the  earth,  shall  see  as  it  were  the  lifting  up 
 of  an  ensign  on  the  mountains,  and  shall  hear  as  it  were  the 
 blowing  of  a  trumpet.'  That  is,  the  prophet  calls  on  all  the 
 earth  to  expect  the  signal  of  a  great  deliverance,  which  shall 
 come  with  a  sudden  blow  from  the  Lord,  who  is  at  present 
 waiting  for  the  fulness  of  time,  keeping  the  world  in  a  suspense 
 like  the  stillness  of  a  noonday  heat,  yet  giving  those  who  trust 
 in  Him  a  quiet  confidence,  like  that  dewy  cloud  which  supplies  a 
 certain  freshness  even  in  the  midst  of  such  heat. 
 
 We  may  notice  again  Isaiah's  usual  accuracy  and  appropriate- 
 ness of  thought,  in  the  reference  to  the  Egyptian  traffic  by 
 water,  and  especially  to  the  light  papyrus  boats  —  '  Conseritur 
 bibula  Memphitis  cymba  papyro,'*  —  and  to  the  nation  'whose 
 land  the  rivers  divide ;'  also  the  change,  of  the  word  '  nation ' 
 
 *  Lucan,  iv.  136.     So  Pliny  says   (xiii ,  11.),    'Ex  ipso  quidam  papyro 
 navigia  texunt.'     Both  quoted  by  Lowth. 
 
188  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 in  verse  2.   into  '  people'  in  verse  7., —  the  former   properly 
 designating  a  heathen,  and  the  latter  a  believing,  people. 
 
 The  remarkable  correspondence  between  the  predictions  in 
 verses  13,  14.  of  chapter  xvii.  and  verses  3 — 7.  of  chap,  xviii., 
 with  the  historical  account  of  the  sudden  overthrow  of  Senna- 
 cherib, has  induced  some  of  the  Germans  to  pronounce  that  the 
 latter  is  a  myth  framed  to  agree  with  the  prophecy.  As  the 
 reaction  against  the  contrary  assertion  that  it  is  a  miraculous  pre- 
 diction, such  a  notion  is  perhaps  not  to  be  wondered  at ;  but 
 the  really  rational,  as  well  as  really  Christian  student,  may  come 
 to  the  conclusion  that  if  we  simply  and  honestly  take  the  facts  of 
 the  case,  the  prophecy  and  the  history  as  they  actually  are,  it 
 is  possible  to  discover  something  more  of  the  meaning,  the  law, 
 of  prophecy  and  the  prophetic  faculty,  than  has  been  discovered, 
 or  than  will  be  discovered,  by  combining  either  scepticism  or 
 superstition  with  grammatical  and  antiquarian  knowledge. 
 
ISAIAH  XIX.  :    'THE    BURDEN    OF    EGYPT.'  189 
 
 CHAPTER  XIII. 
 
 EGYPTIAN  DYNASTIES  IN  THE  TIME  OF  ISAIAH  COTEMPORARY  OR  SUCCES- 
 SIVE.  HISTORICAL  NOTICES  FROM  VARIOUS  SOURCES. ANARCHY. INVA- 
 SION    OF     SARGON. SACK     OF     THEBES.  —  TREATY    BETWEEN     EGYPT    AND 
 
 ASSYRIA. MULTITUDE  OF  GODS  AND  OF  CASTES  UNFAVOURABLE  TO  POLITI- 
 CAL UNITY.  EXCLUSIVE  WISDOM  OF  PRIESTHOOD. THE  CITY  OF  DESTRUC- 
 TION.  ALEXANDER  AND  PTOLEMY.—  TEMPLE  OF  ONIAS. SEPTUAGINT. 
 
 PHILO. CHURCH  OF  ALEXANDRIA.  BACON  ON  PROPHECY. 
 
 e  The  Burden  of  Egypt.'     Within  the  limits  of  Isaiah's  life- 
 time, we  find  kings  of  the  Tanitic,  Saitic,  and  Ethiopian  dynas- 
 ties reigning  in  Egypt.     Gesenius  adopts  the  view  which  takes 
 these  dynasties  to  have  been  cotemporary,  with  their  respective 
 seats  of  government  at  Sais  in  the  west,  Tanis  in  the  east,  and 
 Thebes  in  the  south.     In  Zet,  the  last  of  the  Tanitic  (or  23rd) 
 dynasty,  he  recognises  the  Sethos  whom  Herodotus  mentions  in 
 connection  with    Sennacherib's   overthrow :    in   the   conquests, 
 expulsions,  or  murders  of  Saitic  by  Ethiopian  kings  ;  and  in  the 
 civil  wars  or  anarchy  which  began  and  ended  the  fifteen  years  of 
 the  Dodecarchy,  when  the  country  was  subdivided  into  twelve 
 independent  governments,  he  finds  the  counterpart  of  the  political 
 confusions  which  Isaiah  depicts :   and  in  the  re-union  of  these 
 governments  into  one  monarchy  by  Psammeticus,  he  sees,  with 
 Grotius,  the  fulfilment  of  the  prophet's  threat  that  Egypt  should 
 be  '  given  into  the  hand  of  a  cruel  lord.'     He  then  endeavours 
 to  show  that  the  Dodecarchy  was  drawing  to  a  close  at  the 
 beginning  of  the  reign  of  Manasseh,  into  which  it  is  not  impos- 
 sible that  Isaiah  may  have   lived,  and  before  which  time  he 
 thinks  that  he  could  not  have  uttered  this  prophecy.     But  nei- 
 ther in  Egypt,  nor  in  any  other  country,  can  a  general  dissolu- 
 tion of  government  be  other  than  the  result  of  causes  long  at 
 work,  and  long  discernible  to  the  enlightened  statesman ;  and 
 here,  in  particular,  would  it  be  the  less  necessary  to  account  for 
 the  insight  which  could  anticipate  both  anarchy  and  its  tcrmina- 
 
190  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 tion  in  despotism,  a  few  years  before  the  occurrence  of  either, 
 when  we  see  that  Isaiah  exercised  a  prescience  which  discerned 
 the  general  tendency  of  Egyptian  history  for  ages  after ;  and 
 therefore  the  date  given  to  this  prophecy  by  its  place  in  the 
 book,  would  be  at  least  as  suitable  as  that  of  Gesenius,  even  if 
 we  accepted  his  interpretation  of  its  contents. 
 
 But  Hitzig  has  pointed  out  that  it  not  only  requires  much 
 straining  of  the  chronology  to  bring  Psammeticus  to  the  date  at 
 which  Gesenius  fixes  the  beginning  of  his  reign,  but  that  the 
 '  cruel  lord '  is  a  more  fitting  description  of  a  foreign  conqueror 
 than  a  native  prince,  and  that  it  is  in  all  respects  suitable  to 
 Sargon.  M.  Bunsen  makes  an  interval  of  forty-one,  instead  of 
 eighteen,  years  between  the  overthrow  of  Sennacherib  and  the 
 re-union  of  the  Egyptian  states  under  Psammeticus;  and  he 
 says,  that  all  Egyptologists  are  agreed  that  Manetho's  dynasties 
 between  the  18th  and  30th  are  not  synchronous,  though  he 
 elsewhere  explains  that  the  regular  succession  of  kings'  names 
 in  these  lists  does  not  necessarily  indicate  that  each  was  the 
 actual  ruler  of  the  country  during  the  period  thus  assigned  to 
 him,  since  their  position  may  have  been  something  like  that  of 
 Louis  XVII.  and  Louis  XVIII.  during  the  first  French  Re- 
 public and  Empire.*  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  the  trans- 
 lation of  Sennacherib's  Annals  f ,  in  which  he  distinguishes 
 between  '  the  kings  of  Egypt'  and  the  (  king  of  Meroe'  under 
 whose  command  they  appear,  will  be  established  ;  and  how  far  it 
 must,  in  that  case,  restore  the  opinion  (thus  set  aside  by  M. 
 Bunsen)  of  the  existence  of  cotemporary  dynasties  at  the  period 
 in  question  —  an  opinion  which  is  favoured  by  the  language  of 
 Isaiah  in  the  chapter  before  us,  where  he  speaks  of  '  Egypt  (not 
 '  the  Egyptians '  in  the  original)  set  against  Egypt,  city  against 
 city,  and  kingdom  against  kingdom,'  and  mentions  the  e  princes 
 of  Zoan'  or  Tanis,  and  the  '  princes  of  Xoph,'  or  Memphis.  I 
 have  given  these  specimens  of  the  many  perplexed  and  contra- 
 dictory materials  with  which  we  have  to  deal,  the  rather  because 
 they  may  perhaps  be  taken  as  themselves  among  the  indications 
 that  the  political  state  of  Egypt  did  at  this  time  exhibit  more  or 
 
 *  Aegyptcns  Stelle,  i.  121.,  iii.  128  —  146. 
 f  Sec  page  172.  above. 
 
HISTORICAL    NOTICES    OF    EGYPT.  191 
 
 less  of  the  anarchy  here  described  by  the  prophet ;  and  that  the 
 reason  why  Herodotus  and  the  other  historians  received  and 
 transmitted  such  confused  accounts,  may  have  been  that  the 
 events  were  confused.  I  now  add  such  a  reconciliation  of  the 
 various  facts  and  conclusions  as  I  am  able,  and  as  seems  to  me 
 most  in  accordance  with  the  rest  of  the  history  of  the  period  ; 
 premising  that  the  general  condition  of  the  country  and  its 
 politics  must  have  been  that  of  anarchy,  revolution,  and  foreign 
 invasion,  whatever  were  the  acts  of  particular  kings  and  armies. 
 The  wise  king  Bocchoris,  of  Sais,  who  laboured  to  define  and 
 enforce  the  rights  of  his  people  by  just  and  liberal  laws,  was 
 conquered,  and  burnt  alive  by  Sabacon,  or  Sabak  I.,  the  king  of 
 Ethiopia,  and  thus  the  founder  of  an  Ethiopian  dynasty  in 
 Egypt.  His  successor,  Sabak  II.,  whom  Manetho  calls  Sebi- 
 chos,  and  the  Jews  So  (Seve),  made  an  alliance  with  Hoshea, 
 king  of  Samaria,  to  support  him  in  his  refusal  of  continued 
 vassalage  to  Shalmaneser,  or  Sargon.  The  first  result  of  this 
 was  the  capture  of  Samaria  by  the  Assyrians,  with  the  final  de- 
 portation of  the  people,  and  the  substitution  of  a  colony  from 
 some  other  part  of  the  Assyrian  empire.  The  next  (whether 
 as  motive  or  pretext)  appears  to  have  been  Sargon's  invasion 
 of  Egypt.  In  Isaiah  xx.  we  find  Sargon's  general  laying  siege 
 to  Ashdod,  the  most  southern  of  the  Philistian  fortresses,  and 
 the  key  of  Egypt  (or  Assyria,  as  the  case  might  be) ;  as  Gaza 
 and  El-Arish,  respectively,  were  in  later  times  :  and  in  this 
 king's  own  Annals  it  is  said  that  Ashdod  was  (as  well  as  Gaza 
 and  Askelon)  at  this  time  subject  to  Meroe  or  Ethiopia,  and  that 
 its  commandant,  named  Haleri,  fled  to  Egypt  when  the  fortress 
 could  no  longer  hold  out.  Sargon  then  probably  advanced  with 
 his  main  army  into  Egypt.  It  was  perhaps  now  *  that  he  de- 
 feated the  Egyptians  in  a  pitched  battle  at  Rabek,  which  Colonel 
 Rawlinson  identifies  with  On  or  Heliopolis ;  and  to  the  same 
 period  we  may  best  refer  the  destruction  mentioned  by  Isaiah's 
 cotemporary,  Nahum,  of  the  '  populous  No- Amnion,'  or  Thebes, 
 <  that  was  situate  among  the  rivers,  that  had  the  waters  round 
 about  it,  whose  rampart  was  the  sea,  and  her  wall  was  from  the 
 
 *  Col.  Rawlinson  seems,  indeed,  to  put  this  battle  before  the  siege  of 
 Ashdod,  though  in  connection  with  one  of  Khazita  or  Gaza.  See  his  Com- 
 mentary and  Outline,  already  quoted. 
 
192  HEBEEW    T0L1TICS. 
 
 sea  :  Ethiopia  and  Egypt  were  her  strength,  and  it  was  infinite  ; 
 Put  and  Lubim  were  her  helpers.  Yet  she  was  carried  away, 
 she  went  into  captivity :  her  young  children  also  were  dashed  in 
 pieces  at  the  top  of  all  the  streets :  and  they  cast  lots  for  her 
 honourable  men,  and  all  her  great  men  were  bound  in  chains.'  * 
 
 Sargon  says  that  he  received  tribute  from  Pharaoh,  king  of 
 Egypt;  and  that  most  interesting  discovery f  in  Sennacherib's 
 palace,  of  what  can  hardly  be  other  than  the  seal  of  a  treaty 
 between  Sabak  and  the  Assyrian  king,  gives  a  literal  (though 
 by  no  means  the  highest)  fulfilment  of  Isaiah's  prediction  of  fu- 
 ture amity  between  Egypt  and  Assyria  :  while  the  invasion  of 
 Sargon  accomplished  his  threat  of  the  '  cruel  lord,'  in  the  chap- 
 ter before  us,  and  his  warning,  in  the  chapter  immediately  suc- 
 ceeding, of  the  fate  which  would  befall  Egypt  and  Ethiopia  both, 
 within  a  short  period  of  the  siege  of  Ashdod,  then  in  progress. 
 
 The  name  Mizraim,  like  Asshur,  or  Moab,  is  both  that  of  the 
 country  and  of  the  traditional  founder :  and  here  again  we 
 have  Egypt  as  a  person,  the  distinction  being  kept  up  in  the 
 original  by  the  use  of  the  masculine  suffixes  where  our  Ver- 
 sion gives  the  neuter  it.  The  opening  words  of  this  prophecy 
 represent  the  Lord,  '  who  maketh  the  clouds  his  chariot ' 
 (probably  here  and  elsewhere  not  without  allusion  to  the  cloud 
 which  led  the  Israelites,  and  hovered  over  the  Mercy-seat), 
 coming  into  Egypt  to  stir  up  civil  war  throughout  the  land. 
 Egypt  was  famous  for  its  multitude  of  gods,  its  minute  po- 
 litical and  social  organisation  of  castes  or  tribes  (verse  13.), 
 and  the  wisdom  of  its  sages  and  counsellors.  Perhaps  Isaiah, 
 in  his  contemptuous  mention  of  all  these,  and  their  inability  to 
 help  the  country  in  its  anarchy,  recognises  in  them  the  very 
 causes  of  that  anarchy.  The  multitude  of  idols,  and  of  here- 
 ditary castes,  evidently  must  have  been  main  hinderances  to 
 national  unity,  since  they  supplied  an  indefinite  number  of 
 separate  foci,  or  ganglions,  of  social  life,  instead  of  the  central 
 heart  and  brain  of  the  higher  organisation:  and  the  wisdom  of 
 the  priests  and  the  initiated  kings  would  have  the  same  ten- 
 dency, since  they  had  made  it  their  exclusive  possession,  and 
 employed  it,  not  for   the  enlightenment  and  education  of  the 
 
 *  Nahum,  iii.  8  —  10.  f  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  156. 
 
ISAIAH  XIX.   1 — 25.:    ANARCHY    AND    ITS    CURE.  193 
 
 people,  but  as  the  most  effective  instrument  of  the  priest- 
 craft and  statecraft  which  controlled  a  population  numerous  and 
 aggregated  like  herds  of  cattle,  but  debased,  and  therefore 
 isolated,  as  men. 
 
 The  realities  of  anarchy  and  civil  war  will  confound  the 
 statesmen  and  their  craft ;  they  will  be  utterly  at  a  loss  to  pro- 
 pose means  to  remedy  the  evil,  or  to  see  what  the  end  will  be 
 if  things  are  left  to  themselves ;  they  will  seek  equally  in  vain 
 for  guidance  from  their  idols  and  their  soothsayers ;  and  at  last 
 another  reality,  the  despotic  rule  of  a  cruel  conqueror  and  ruler, 
 will  supersede  both  them  and  the  anarchy  they  could  not  face 
 with  all  their  shams. 
 
 The  Nile  (the  sea  as  it  is  here  and  elsewhere  called)  was  the 
 source  of  fertility  and  life  to  Egypt,  and  its  failure  the  certain 
 occasion  of  general  drought  and  famine ;  and  Isaiah  employs  its 
 failure  as  the  symbol,  a  real  part  of  the  whole  which  it  repre- 
 sents, to  describe  the  universality  of  the  national  distress. 
 
 In  the  height  of  their  calamity,  they  will  think,  first  with 
 fear,  and  then  with  hope,  of  the  Lord  who  is  thus  executing 
 His  counsels  to  the  confounding  of  their  own;  and  they  will 
 turn  their  anxious  looks  to  that  people  with  whom  their  own 
 nation  has  from  ancient  times  been  made  to  feel  its  relation,  in 
 blessings  as  well  as  in  judgments,  through  a  Joseph  no  less 
 than  a  Moses.  And  then  Isaiah  describes  the  deliverance  of 
 Egypt  from  its  oppressors,  and  its  participation  in  the  faith, 
 and  consequently  in  the  blessing  of  Israel,  in  terms  which  were 
 remarkably  fulfilled  in  after  times,  again  and  again,  with  an 
 amplitude  which  is  at  once  an  answer  to  the  notion  that  he 
 wrote  after  some  one  of  the  events,  or  that  certain  verses  were 
 interpolated  to  agree  with  some  other.  There  is  much  doubt 
 as  to  the  verbal  meaning  of  verse  18.  '  The  city  of  destruction'' 
 is  the  true  translation  of  the  original,  but  its  obscurity  has  led 
 to  various  conjectural  emendations,  for  an  account  of  which, 
 with  the  arguments  for  or  against  each,  I  may  refer  the  reader 
 to  Alexander  or  his  authorities.  He  quotes  with  approbation 
 Calvin's  explanation,  that  five-sixths  of  Egypt  shall  be  saved, 
 but  the  sixth  part  destroyed :  an  explanation  characteristic  of 
 the  stern  reformer,  who  liked  to  contemplate  judgment  as  an 
 end,  and  not  merely  as  a  means,  but  which  is  far  less  suitable 
 
 o 
 
194  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 to  the  context  than  that  which  changes  '  destruction  '  for  '  sal- 
 vation,' and  considers  five  to  be  a  round  number  *  to  express 
 *  many.'  The  interpretation  of  it  as  a  proper  name,  Leontopolis, 
 or  Heliopolis,  is  contrary,  says  Gesenius,  to  the  use  of  the 
 word  '  called,'  which  Isaiah  always  appropriates  to  symbolic 
 appellations.!  It  was  not  this,  but  the  next  verse,  which 
 Onias  referred  to  in  favour  of  his  temple  at  Leontopolis,  and 
 therefore  the  argument  for  its  having  been  interpolated  by  him 
 seems  sufficiently  refuted,  even  if  it  could  be  explained  how 
 the  Jews  of  Palestine  accepted  such  an  interpolation  from  the 
 so  hated  sectarian.  The  literal  coincidences,  however,  between 
 these  details  and  the  events,  and  among  others  between  the 
 promise  of  a  *  saviour '  and  a  '  great  one,'  and  the  titles  of 
 Alexander  the  Great  and  Ptolemy  the  Saviour,  are  noticeable 
 and  interesting ;  though  he  must  be  unobservant  of  like  coin- 
 cidences in  all  history  and  daily  life  who  is  driven  by  them  to 
 choose  between  miracle  and  forgery.  The  general  idea  of 
 Isaiah,  however  we  may  explain  details,  is  that  the  true  faith  of 
 Israel  will  be  widely  spread  through  Egypt:  the  altar  and 
 the  pillar  may  be  rather  poetical  images,  taken  from  the  history 
 of  the  patriarchs  },  than  attempts  to  predict  or  prescribe  actual 
 mode  of  worship,  though  it  is  not  impossible  that  the  prophet 
 may  have  conceived  of  such  helps  to  their  faith  being  lawful  in 
 that  distant  land,  though  forbidden  to  the  Jews,  who  were  to 
 sacrifice  on  no  altar  but  at  Jerusalem.  In  the  main,  however, 
 he  apparently  contemplates  Jerusalem  itself  as  the  actual 
 place  of  worship,  when  he  speaks  of  Egypt  'serving,'  that 
 is,  worshipping  the  Lord,  with  Assyria  and  Israel :  yet  we 
 must  not  overlook  the  freedom  from  formal  restrictions  in  his 
 language,  which  thus  anticipates  the  time  when  the  true  wor- 
 shippers should  worship  the  Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  and 
 neither  in  this  or  that  mountain,  nor  in  Jerusalem  ;  and  still 
 less  the  Catholic  spirit  which  could  comprehend  not  only  the 
 comparatively  friendly  Egypt,  but  also  Assyria,  the  cruellest  of 
 enemies,  in  Israel's  own  covenant  of  peace  and  blessing  from 
 the  Lord. 
 
 *  As  it  is  in  Genesis,  xliii.  34.,  xlv.  22.,  xlvii.  2. 
 
 t  Chap.  iv.  3.,  lxi.  6.,  lxii.  4. 
 
 \  Grotius  refers  to  Joshua,  xxii.  10 — 34. 
 
BACON   ON   PROPHECY.  195 
 
 The  fulfilment  of  these  promises  to  Egypt  was  ample  ;  first  be- 
 ginning with  the  overthrow  of  Sargon's  successor,  Sennacherib, 
 and  the  friendly  intercourse  with  Hezekiah  in  the  latter  years  of 
 his  reign ;  and  then  extending  through  successive  generations, 
 beyond  the  troubles  of  the  Dodecarchy,  the  conquest  of  Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, and  the  mad  cruelty  of  Cambyses.  Alexander  the 
 Great  delivered  them  from  the  grievous  Persian  yoke,  and  he 
 and  his  successors  greatly  favoured  the  people  and  improved  the 
 country.  He  settled  a  great  many  Jews  in  Alexandria,  giving 
 them  equal  privileges  with  the  Macedonians  ;  and  this  Hebrew 
 immigration  was  still  farther  promoted  by  Ptolemy  Soter,  so 
 that  Philo  reckoned  that  in  his  time  there  were  a  million  Jews 
 in  the  country.  The  temple  of  Onias,  the  Septuagint  version 
 of  the  Bible,  the  books  of  the  Apocrypha,  the  philosophy  and 
 theology  of  Philo,  indicate  not  only  what  these  Jews  were  in 
 themselves,  but  enable  us  to  infer  with  certainty  how  great  must 
 have  been  their  example  and  influence  in  humanising  the  Egyp- 
 tians, and  bringing  them  to  the  knowledge  and  worship  of  the 
 true  God.  And  still  more  were  these  results  apparent,  still 
 more  amply  was  this  prophecy  fulfilled,  when  Alexandria  became 
 one  of  the  great  centres  of  the  Christian  Church.  There  are 
 other  instances  as  real,  but  there  is  hardly  one  more  obvious,  of 
 the  correctness  of  Lord  Bacon's  rule  that,  in  these  interpreta- 
 tions, we  must  '  allow  that  latitude  which  is  agreeable  and  fami- 
 liar unto  divine  prophecies ;  being  of  the  nature  of  their  Author, 
 with  whom  a  thousand  years  are  but  as  one  day ;  and  therefore 
 are  not  fulfilled  punctually  at  once,  but  have  springing  and 
 germinant  accomplishment  throughout  many  ages ;  though  the 
 height  or  fulness  of  them  may  refer  to  some  one  age.'  * 
 
 *  Advancement  of  Learning,  book  ii.  3. 
 
 o  2 
 
196  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  XIV. 
 
 SARGON,     SHALMANESER,     TARTAN.    THE     SIEGE     OF     ASHDOD.   SHEBNA  S 
 
 POLICY  OF  ALLIANCES.  ISAIAHS  SYMBOLICAL    PROTEST    AGAINST  IT  HE 
 
 WALKS  NAKED  AND  BAREFOOT. ISAIAh's    POLICY    PROBABLY    MORE  EXPE- 
 DIENT      CERTAINLY     MORE      BEFITTING     ISRAEL'S     PLACE     IN      UNIVERSAL 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 Vitringa  maintained  the  conclusion  of  Sanctius  and  Jung- 
 mann,  that  Sargon  was  another  name  for  Shahnaneser.  Colonel 
 Rawlinson  treats  this  as  now  proved,  while  Dr.  Hincks  considers 
 it  to  be  still  doubtful,  at  least :  but  they  both  hold  it  quite  as- 
 certained that  he  is  the  Sargina  of  the  inscriptions  at  Khors- 
 abad,  as  well  as  the  builder  of  that  city,  the  site  of  which 
 retained  the  name  of  Sarghun  as  late  as  the  Arab  conquest : 
 and  the  latter  interpreter  promises  us  hereafter  a  detailed  ac- 
 count from  these  inscriptions,  of  the  reduction  of  Ashdod 
 on  the  occasion  of  which  Isaiah  here  treats  in  the  chapter 
 now  before  us,  and  of  which  I  have  just  spoken  by  antici- 
 pation. Tartan  is  said  to  be,  not  a  proper  name,  but  the  com- 
 mon title  of  the  Assyrian  commanders  in  chief.*  After  he  had 
 taken  Ashdod,  it  possibly  continued  in  the  power  of  the  As- 
 syrians till  it  was  besieged,  as  Herodotus  relates  (ii.  157.),  for 
 twenty-nine  years  by  Psammeticus.  It  is  now  a  little  village, 
 retaining  its  old  name. 
 
 In  the  third  year  of  Hezekiah,  Hoshea,  king  of  Samaria, 
 had  brought  Shalmaneser's  overwhelming  power  upon  him  by 
 refusing  his  accustomed  tribute,  and  calling  in  So,  king  of 
 Egypt,  to  support  him  in  his  rebellion.  Yet  this  was  now  the 
 policy  contemplated  by  the  government  and  people  of  Hezekiah. 
 The    vassalage  into  which  Ahaz   had   brought   Judah  was   no 
 
 *  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  148,  note. 
 
ISAIAH  XX.  :    THE    SIEGE    OF    ASHDOD.  197 
 
 doubt  intolerable :  Isaiah's  repeated  references  to  the  '  op- 
 pressors/ 'the  spoilers/  and  the  'robbers,'  indicate  what  we 
 might  expect  from  the  character  of  the  Assyrians,  —  that  the 
 tribute  was  almost  the  whole  produce  of  the  country,  such  as 
 has  been  requisite  to  buy  off  the  hordes  of  Huns,  Tartars,  or 
 Mahrattas,  of  other  times :  and  since  the  Assyrian  armies  were 
 constantly  on  the  borders  of  the  little  kingdom  of  Judah  — 
 during  the  sieges  of  Samaria,  Tyre,  Ashdod,  and  elsewhere  — 
 probably  all  payments  were  occasionally  insufficient  to  protect 
 the  Jews  from  the  rapacious  licence  of  a  soldiery  whose  royal 
 leader  could  fix  'three  hundred  talents  of  silver,  and  thirty 
 talents  of  gold,'  as  the  price  of  amity  with  Hezekiah,  and  then 
 immediately  on  receiving  payment,  march  on  Jerusalem  with 
 the  avowed  determination  to  '  destroy  it  utterly,'  after  deport- 
 ing the  inhabitants.  Any  prospect  might  seem  better  than  the 
 existing  misery  :  and  if  Hoshea's  alliance  with  Sebichos  had 
 only  hastened  the  ruin  of  the  kingdom  of  Ephraim,  Judah  hoped 
 for  a  more  successful  result  from  the  like  policy.  We  have, 
 perhaps,  in  chapter  xviii.  2.,  an  indication  that  the  Ethiopico- 
 Egyptian  king  had  himself  proposed  such  an  alliance  ;  and  it  is 
 plain  from  chapters  xxxi.  xxxii.,  that  the  Jewish  government 
 made  advances  on  their  side ;  while,  in  the  chapter  before  us, 
 Isaiah  seems  to  describe  the  general  feeling  of  his  countrymen, 
 when  he  speaks  of  '  Ethiopia  their  expectation,  and  Egypt 
 their  glory.'  A  policy  of  expediency,  in  which  one  state  is  to 
 be  played  off  against  another,  and  perhaps  by  one  weaker  than 
 either,  always  seems  the  height  of  wisdom  to  the  crafty  diplo- 
 matists who  play  the  game,  and  worse  than  folly  to  the  looker 
 on  :  and  such  was  the  policy  of  Shebna,  Hezekiah's  minister, — 
 in  his  own  eyes  no  doubt '  a  politician  who  could  circumvent 
 God,'  *  —  and  such  the  opinion  of  it  entertained  by  Isaiah,  one  of 
 whose  energetic  protests  against  it  we  have  before  us.  He,  as 
 well  as  his  children,  was  'a  sign  to  the  people,'  and  not  only 
 like  them  by  his  name  and  presence,  but  he  now  appeared  — ■ 
 probnbly  while  the  result  of  the  siege  of  Ashdod  was  still  doubt- 
 ful, and  the  public  expectation  in  Jerusalem  at  its  height  — 
 naked  and  barefoot,  that  is,  without  the  hair  garment  which, 
 
 *  Hamlet,  act  5.  scene  1 . 
 o  3 
 
198  HEBREAV    POLITICS. 
 
 girt  with  a  leathern  girdle,  was  the  prophet's  dress,  as  it  was 
 of  the  Christian  ascetics  in  after  times.*  He  appeared,  in 
 fact,  as  the  writers  of  the  middle  ages  would,  unconscious  of 
 homeliness,  have  expressed  it,  '  in  his  shirt : '  for  this  is  a  usual 
 meaning  of  the  phrase,  '  naked,'  in  Hebrew,  as  in  all  languages, 
 and  one  which  is  moreover  indicated  here  by  the  *  barefoot,' 
 which  would  be  otherwise  superfluous,  as  well  as  by  the  ad- 
 ditional description  of  the  captives  he  figured.  The  Masoretic 
 punctuation  joins  the  '  three  years  '  with  the  words  that  follow, 
 in  which  case  the  sentence  may  be  rendered  'a  three  years' 
 sign,'  and  understood  not  that  Isaiah  walked  for  three  years, 
 but  that  the  event  was  to  occur  in  three  years :  and  the 
 prediction  would  thus  somewhat  correspond  in  form  with  that 
 in  chapter  xvi.  14.  Vitringa  and  Lowth  suppose  that,  in  fact, 
 Isaiah  walked  three  days,  '  a  day  for  a  year  ; '  f  others  consider 
 the  symbolical  act  to  have  been  occasional,  though  repeated 
 throughout  the  three  years.  There  is  nothing  improbable  in 
 this  last  view,  it  is  that  most  in  agreement  with  the  letter  of 
 the  text,  and  there  is  an  appearance  of  the  chapter  being  a  brief 
 account  of  the  three  years'  preaching  (perhaps  the  time  the  siege 
 was  going  on),  during  which  Isaiah  used  to  appear  as  described, 
 and  speaking  to  this  effect.  Even  taken  thus  literally,  this 
 symbolic  act  is  far  less  difficult  to  comprehend  than  some  of 
 those  of  other  prophets.  But  in  all  cases  a  part  of  the  difficulty 
 arises,  no  doubt,  from  our  inability  to  realise  adequately  the 
 habits  and  feelings  of  an  ancient  and  eastern  people.  To  those 
 of  Isaiah's  countrymen  who  were  not  hardened  against  all  such 
 impressions,  the  sight  of  the  prophet,  and  the  sound  of  his 
 warning  voice,  in  the  streets  and  market-places  of  Jerusalem, 
 while  he  showed  forth  the  impending  fate  of  their  expected 
 deliverers,  and  thus  led  them  to  infer  their  own,  would  have 
 been  full  of  significance.  I  have  noticed  before  the  practice  of 
 driving  the  prisoners  of  war  naked  and  like  herds  of  cattle  : 
 the  word  here  translated  '  lead  away  '  is  that  usually  applied  to 
 leading  or  driving  cattle  ;  and  the  monuments  of  Egypt,  as 
 well  as  Assyria,  still  depict  such  strings  of  captives,  quite  naked, 
 
 *  See  2  Kings,  i.  8.  ;    Zech.  xiii.  4. ;  Matt.  iii.  4.     Winer  compares    the 
 pallium  of  the  Greek  philosophers  with  the  prophet's  mantle, 
 f  Compare  Numbers,  xiv.  34. ;  Ezekiel,  iv.  6. 
 
shebna's  scheme  of  alliances.  199 
 
 or  with  merely  an  apron,  and  frequently  with  their  hands  bound 
 with  their  own  hair.  One  of  Belzoni's  drawings  of  tombs  at 
 Thebes,  says  Gesenius,  exhibits  both  Ethiopian  and  Egyptian 
 prisoners  in  this  way. 
 
 We  see  from  Isaiah's  subsequent  denunciations  of  the  Egyp- 
 tian alliance,  that  the  ground  of  them  was,  that  the  people  of 
 Israel  should  trust  in  their  own  Lord  and  King  for  deliverance, 
 and  in  no  other  power  whatever.  Though  he  encouraged  He- 
 zekiah  to  the  boldest  defiance  and  most  resolute  resistance  of 
 Sennacherib  at  the  last,  there  is  no  indication  that  he  advised 
 or  approved  his  first  refusal  of  the  tribute  which  Ahaz  had  con- 
 sented to  pay  :  on  the  contrary,  the  whole  tenour  of  the  pro- 
 phet's discourses  is,  that  the  subjection  to  the  Assyrian  yoke 
 was  a  needful  though  harsh  discipline  for  the  nation;  that  the 
 Lord  would  himself  effect  their  deliverance  in  due  time ;  and 
 that  they  were  to  wait  patiently  till  then.*  This  simple  and 
 entire  trust  in  the  Lord,  as  the  Head  of  the  nation,  and  of  each 
 member  of  it  in  particular,  —  as  their  actual  Ruler,  and  ever- 
 present  Friend,  watching  over  them  every  moment  with  the 
 care  of  a  Husband  and  a  Father,  —  this  is  the  master-light  of  all 
 Isaiah's  philosophy,  moral  and  political,  and  the  one  lesson  which 
 in  a  hundred  forms  he  is  continually  teaching  the  people.  Whe- 
 ther he  was  right,  whether  this  is  indeed  the  one  thing  *  which 
 
 *  As  a  modern  writer  has  charged  Jeremiah  with  treachery  worthy  of 
 death,  in  preaching  submission  to  Nebuchadnezzar,  it  is  worth  while  to  see 
 how  his  conduct  looked  to  one  who  had  opportunity,  and  was  competent,  to 
 interpret  it  by  the  political  experience  of  his  own  day.  Niebuhr,  writing 
 Jan.  10.  1809,  of  the  abortive  desires  of  Stein  and  others  to  throw  off  the 
 yoke  of  Napoleon,  says,  "  I  told  you,  as  I  told  every  one,  how  indignant  I 
 felt  at  the  senseless  prating  of  those  who  talked  of  desperate  resolves  as  of  a 
 tragedy.  Ever  since  the  peace  of  Tilsit,  my  maxims  have  been  those  which 
 Phocion  preached  to  the  Athenians  of  his  age  ;  and  nowhere  have  I  seen, 
 among  the  declaimers  on  the  other  side,  a  Demosthenes,  or  even  a  Hy- 
 perides,  but  many  a  Diaaus.  To  bear  our  fate  with  dignity  and  wisdom, 
 that  the  yoke  might  be  lightened,  was  my  doctrine,  and  I  supported  it  with 
 the  advice  of  the  prophet  Jeremiah,  who  spoke  and  acted  very  wisely,  living 
 as  he  did  under  King  Zedekiah,  in  the  times  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  though  he 
 would  have  given  different  counsel  had  he  lived  under  Judas  Maccabams,  in 
 the  times  of  Antiochus  Epiphancs  :  '  Seek  the  peace  of  the  city  whither  I 
 have  caused  you  to  be  carried  away  captives ;  for  in  the  peace  thereof  shall 
 ye  have  peace.'  "  —  Niebuhr's  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  261. 
 
 o  4 
 
200  HEBEEW    POLITICS. 
 
 makes  a  nation  happy  and  keeps  it  so,'  the  reader  must  decide 
 for  himself:  I  will  only  point  out  that  to  us,  judging  after  the 
 event,  the  good  sense  and  sound  practical  statesmanship  of 
 Isaiah's  policy,  and  the  folly  of  that  of  Shebna  and  the  public 
 opinion  which  supported  his  government,  are  alike  obvious.  It 
 was  no  doubt  an  admirable  policy  for  the  interests  of  Egypt, 
 that  Palestine,  with  its  mountain-defiles  and  strong  fortresses, 
 should  consent  to  be  her  northern  military  frontier,  and  that 
 Hebrew  blood  and  treasure  should  be  expended  in  maintaining 
 the  fortified  cities  of  Samaria  and  Jerusalem,  Lachish  and  Lib- 
 nah,  against  the  advance  of  Assyria.  If  the  invaders  overcame 
 these  obstacles  at  last,  Egypt  would  meanwhile  have  gained 
 some  years  of  security  at  no  cost  to  herself,  and  would  be  then 
 better  able  to  meet  a  half- exhausted  foe ;  while,  if  the  resistance 
 of  the  Hebrews  was  successful,  they  themselves  would  have  been 
 so  weakened  as  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  ally  they  had  been 
 serving  too  well.  In  no  case  could  Israel  be  other  than  a  suf- 
 ferer :  if  the  contest  of  the  great  belligerents  could  have  been 
 fought  out  in  some  other  country  than  Palestine,  there  might 
 have  been  a  little  more  plausibility  in  Shebna's  scheme  for  a 
 balance  of  power,  though  even  then  the  day  of  retribution  might 
 have  been  expected  at  last,  from  friend,  if  not  from  foe  :  but  when 
 Palestine  itself  must,  in  such  a  case,  be  '  the  cockpit '  of  Asia  and 
 Africa,  the  one  thing  which  sound  policy  indicated  was,  that  it 
 should,  if  possible,  remain  neutral.  There  was  a  moment  of 
 Israel's  history  (Ewald  has  finely  remarked),  when  it  seemed  pos- 
 sible that  David  might  have  laid  the  foundations  of  an  empire  like 
 that  of  Home,  as  there  was  that  Solomon  might  have  led  the  way 
 to  the  reign  of  a  philosophy  as  sovereign  as  that  of  Greece]:  but 
 the  innate  energy,  the  proper  life  of  the  nation,  rejected  these 
 temptations  to  quit  its  appointed  place  in  universal  history; 
 and  like  Home  and  Greece,  in  their  appointed  spheres,  and  like 
 every  other  nation  worthy  the  name,  it  went  resolutely  for- 
 ward, at  whatever  sacrifice  of  all  its  other  and  conflicting  in- 
 terests. Now,  this  appointed  place  and  course  was  that  of  wit- 
 nessing in  its  institutions,  history,  and  literature,  for  what  is 
 sometimes  called  '  the  religious  idea,'  but  which  a  plain  man 
 may  better  name  the  fact  that  men  stand  in  a  real  and  actual 
 relation  to  God,  and  that  God  is  really  and   actually  present 
 
isaiah's  policy  the  sounder.  201 
 
 with  men  to  uphold  that  relation  at  all  times,  and  to  educate 
 them  through  it  to  know  Him,  and  to  show  forth  His  image 
 more  and  more.  If,  then,  the  Jews  in  the  time  of  Isaiah  could 
 not  secure  the  independence  and  other  political  interests  of  their 
 country,  without  abandoning  their  right  place  in  the  world,  they 
 would  have  been  bound  in  duty  and  reason  to  sacrifice  these,  and, 
 as  Isaiah  taught,  to  cleave  to  the  Lord  at  all  hazards,  and  leave 
 the  event  to  Him.  But,  in  fact,  not  only  was  a  political  neu- 
 trality their  only  sound  policy,  but  they  really  were  very  likely 
 to  have  succeeded  in  maintaining  it,  if  it  had  been  based  on  a 
 national  faith  and  practical  piety.  It  does  not  need  a  special 
 miracle,  a  suspension  of  the  ordinary  laws  of  the  universe,  to 
 make  true  religion,  with  its  fruits  of  virtue  and  honesty,  the  best 
 policy,  whether  for  a  nation  or  an  individual.  The  very  case  is 
 already  provided  for  in  those  laws  as  originally  laid  down.  His- 
 tory and  biography  attest  the  fact  sufficiently ;  though  they  show 
 that  the  end  is  constantly  effected  through  so  many  difficulties, 
 or,  as  St.  Paul  would  say,  through  so  much  weakness  of  the 
 flesh,  that  nothing  but  the  reality  of  the  faith  within  could  have 
 supplied  the  necessary  courage  for  enduring  till  the  end. 
 
202  EBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  XV. 
 
 ISAIAU,  XXI.  :     A  VISION    IN    A   DREAM  OR  TRANCE. BIBLE   MEANING    OF   IN- 
 SPIRATION.   DIVINATION. ANCIENT    ORACLES.  SPECIAL    POWERS     OF 
 
 NATIONS  AND  INDIVIDUALS. ONE  GREECE,    ONE  SHAKSPEARE.  DISCERN- 
 MENT OF  POLITICAL  EFFECTS  IN    THEIR    CAUSES    LESS    POSSIBLE    NOW    THAN 
 
 FORMERLY. '  THE  DESERT  OF  THE  SEA.'  THE  PROPHET  A  WATCHMAN. 
 
 THE  TRIBES  OF  ARABIA SUBJECTED  BY  ASSYRIA. 
 
 The  school  of  commentators  represented  by  Professor  Alex- 
 ander, find,  in  that  part  of  Isaiah  xxi.  which  relates  to  Babylon, 
 1  wonderful  coincidences  with  history,  both  sacred  and  profane, 
 which  could  not  be  ascribed  to  Isaiah,  or  to  any  contemporary 
 writer,  without  conceding  the  reality  of  prophetic  inspiration.' 
 These  coincidences  are  the  mention  of  the  Medes  and  Persians, 
 as  the  conquerors  of  Babylon  ;  the  night  of  festivity  changed 
 into  a  night  of  terror,  corresponding  with  the  statements  of 
 Herodotus,  Xenophon,  and  Daniel,  that  the  court  was  revel- 
 ling when  Cyrus  took  the  city  ;  the  vivid  picture  of  the  equally 
 historical  surprise  of  the  revellers  by  the  enemy  ;  the  asses  and 
 camels  which  Herodotus  and  Xenophon  describe  as  used  for  riding 
 in  the  Persian  armies,  while  the  latter  also  represents  their  ad- 
 vancing two  by  two  ;  and  the  breaking  of  all  the  idols  by  a  na- 
 tion who,  Herodotus  says,  not  only  thought  it  unlawful  to  use 
 images,  but  imputed  folly  to  those  who  did  it.  The  rationalists 
 at  first  accepted  the  premises  of  this  argument  as  unquestion- 
 able, but  drew  the  conclusion  that  the  prophecy  was,  in  fact, 
 written  after  the  event ;  but  they  now  admit  that  a  politician 
 or  a  poet  writing  shortly  before  the  time  could  have  foreseen 
 such  of  these  historical  details  as  they  allow  to  be  fairly  dis- 
 coverable in  the  text,  — just  as  Gescnius  says  is  the  case  with 
 the  coincidences  in  Jeremiah's  prophecies,  the  genuineness  of 
 
INSPIRATION:    ANCIENT    ORACLES.  203 
 
 which  he  speaks  of  as  undoubted.  I  have  already  pointed 
 out  how  far  these  opponents  appear  to  me  to  be  advocating 
 different  sides  of  the  same  truth,  and  helping  us  towards  a 
 higher  view  which  shall  comprehend  and  reconcile  all  that  is 
 really  true  in  both.  And  I  have  said  all  that  I  have  to  say  on 
 the  historical  and  literary  facts  and  arguments  of  the  case. 
 But  there  is  one  point  to  which,  often  as  I  have  adverted  to  it, 
 these  words  of  Dr.  Alexander's  warn  me  that  I  must  return,  if 
 I  would  sift  the  whole  question  of  prophecy  to  the  bottom. 
 
 The  word  '  inspiration,'  in  the  passage  just  quoted  from  this 
 learned  commentator,  is  there  lowered  to  a  sense  in  which 
 neither  the  Bible  nor  the  Christian  Church  employs  it* ;  and  is 
 used  to  designate  a  power  of  predicting  events,  such  as  the 
 heathen  oracles  and  the  mediasval  astrologers  claimed,  and  by 
 their  cotemporaries  were  believed  to  exercise.  It  is  commonly 
 said  that  in  the  latter  cases  there  was  fraud  or  delusion,  while 
 the  Hebrew  prophets  really  possessed  the  gift :  and  there  can  be 
 no  doubt  that  the  Jews  generally,  and  very  little  doubt  that 
 Isaiah  and  the  other  prophets  themselves,  would  have  maintained 
 that  they  were  enabled,  on  particular  occasions,  to  exercise  such 
 a  gift  of  prediction ;  though  the  wise  and  religious  among  them, 
 whether  people  or  teachers,  would  not  have  allowed  that  it  was 
 in  this  gift  that  the  reality  of  prophetic  inspiration  consisted. 
 But  conscience,  no  less  than  reason,  forbids  me  to  deny  that  the 
 Greek  and  Roman  oracles,  and  the  astrologers  of  the  middle 
 ages,  did  utter  numerous  predictions  which  were  fulfilled  with 
 no  greater  mixture  of  failures  than  those  of  the  Hebrews,  and 
 which  were  of  no  less  social  and  political  importance  to  those  to 
 whom  they  were  addressed.  Cicero  held  that  the  reality  of  the 
 power  of  divination  was  proved  alike  by  the  universal  belief  of 
 the  greatest  sages,  and  the  manifest  correspondence  between  the 
 
 *  The  Prayer-Book  (that  authoritative  manual  of  a  large  portion  of  the 
 Christian  Church  in  England)  uses  the  word  '  inspiration'  in  the  true  sense, 
 in  the  first  Collect  of  the  Communion  Service,  '  Cleanse  the  thoughts  of  our 
 hearts  by  the  inspiration  of  Thy  Holy  Spirit;'  and  in  the  Collect  for  the  fifth 
 Sunday  after  Easter,  '  That  by  Thy  holy  inspiration  we  may  think  those 
 things  that  be  good:'  while  the  fact  that  such  inspiration  is  the  ordinary, 
 habitual  state  of  every  member  of  Christ's  Church,  is  asserted  or  im- 
 plied in  every  sentence  of  the  Book. 
 
204  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 predictions  and  events  of  the  oracle  of  Delphi  in  particular.* 
 And  Niebuhr  denies  that  the  merely  sceptical  arguments  solve 
 the  question  f :  and  his  observations  suggest  the  thought  whether 
 the  power  did  exist,  not  as  a  miraculous  witness  of  the  true 
 faith,  but  as  a  human  endowment  of  the  earlier  ages,  like  the 
 powers  of  language -making  and  myth-making,  which  have  been 
 already  noticed. 
 
 If  the  reader  still  thinks  that  such  an  insight  into  the  future,  and 
 such  an  instinct  beyond  the  limits  of  that  insight,  as  I  here  claim 
 for  Isaiah,  are  beyond  any  known  powers,  intellectual  or  ima- 
 ginative, of  the  human  mind,  I  would  beg  him  to  consider 
 that  there  are  many  instances  in  the  history  of  the  world  of  a 
 single  man  appearing  with  powers  unparalleled  by  those  of  any 
 other ;  and  in  like  manner  each  nation,  ancient  and  modern, 
 that  deserves  the  name,  had  or  has  a  special  vocation  for  which 
 it  has  exhibited  powers  which  no  other  has  shown.  There  has 
 been  but  one  Homer,  one  Socrates,  one  Raphael,  one  Shakspeare : 
 the  greater  part  even  of  intellectual  and  educated  men  live  and 
 die  without  any  perceptible  trace  of  the  gift  which  enabled 
 Newton  to  grasp  very  complicated  theorems  with  intuitive  ap- 
 prehension ;  and  Mozart  in  infancy  could  compose  music  with  a 
 knowledge  of  the  laws  of  harmony  which  few  grown  men  could 
 
 *  See  Coleridge's  Lay  Sermons,  p.  91.  (3rd  edit.)  ;  and  G rote's  History 
 of  Greece,  ii.  339.     Bacon's  Advancement  of  Learning,  ii.  (Divination.) 
 
 f  "  These  oracles  of  the  ancients  were  a  strange  thing.  It  is  easy  to  say 
 it  was  all  an  artifice  of  the  priests ;  but  these  priests  themselves  were  a  part 
 of  the  people.  Besides,  such  explanations  did  well  enough  for  the  time  of 
 the  French  philosophers  as  they  were  called ;  but  we  want  deeper  inquiries 
 at  this  day.  Why  is  it  they  were  so  long  respected  by  the  people  ?  How 
 does  it  happen  that  we  find  them  in  some  shape  or  other,  elsewhere  ?  Did 
 man,  in  those  early  periods,  stand  nearer  to  nature  ?  Lieber's  Reminiscences 
 of  Niebnhr,  p.  225.  The  following  passage  is  in  the  like  tone  : — "It  seems 
 that  civilization  must  have  started  by  some  immediate  inspiration  ;  for  whence 
 comes  it,  that  no  tribe,  though  discovered  centuries  ago  in  a  savage  state,  has 
 advanced  since  then,  except  by  some  impulse  from  foreign  nations  already 
 civilized  ?  The  mythology,  too,  of  almost  every  nation,  whose  civilization 
 dates  from  remote  periods,  teaches  that  a  god  or  goddess  descended  to 
 instruct  man  in  agriculture,  the  use  of  iron,  and  other  elementary  arts.  I 
 hardly  can  conceive  how  man  could  have  invented  by  himself  the  compli- 
 cated process  of  baking  bread,  at  so  early  a  period  as  that  in  which  we  find 
 him  already  provided  with  this  indispensable  article."     Ibid.  p.  227. 
 
ISAIAH  XXI.   1,2.:    A   VISION    IN    A   DREAM.  205 
 
 acquire  by  any  study.  There  has  been  one  Greece,  from  which 
 the  world  derives  its  philosophy  and  art ;  one  Rome,  to  which 
 it  owes  its  laws  and  politics;  and  what  would  the  world  be  now, 
 and  to  the  end  of  time,  if  there  were  no  England  ?  And  we 
 neither  deny  these  facts,  nor  call  them  miracles.  And  before  we 
 hurry  to  a  conclusion,  let  us  ask  ourselves  whether  the  Hebrew 
 nation  may  not  have  had  a  vocation  of  its  own,  and  whether 
 Isaiah  may  not  have  been  a  great  and  typical  man  in  that  nation, 
 and  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  be  the  less  real  or  the  less 
 human  for  all  that.  It  may  be  added  that  one  characteristic 
 difference  between  ancient  and  modern  nations  is  that  our  social 
 relations  are  far  more  complicated,  —  the  intricate  results  of  so 
 many  more  causes  than  were  at  work  in  the  ancient  world.  Con- 
 sequently an  intuitive  discernment  of  causes  and  effects  was 
 more  possible  then  than  now,  for  philosophers  tell  us  that  every 
 event  could  be  certainly  predicted  if  we  knew  all  the  causes 
 that  are  at  work  to  produce  it,  seeing  that  like  effects  always 
 come  of  like  causes. 
 
 1  The  burden  of  the  desert  of  the  sea.'  This  enigmatical  name 
 for  Babylon,  was  no  doubt  suggested  by  the  actual  character  of 
 the  country  in  which  the  city  stood.  It  was  an  endless  breadth 
 or  succession  of  undulations  '  like  the  sea,'  without  any  culti- 
 tivation  or  even  any  tree :  low,  level,  and  full  of  great 
 marshes ;  and  which  used  to  be  overflowed  by  the  Euphrates, 
 till  the  whole  plain  became  a  sea,  before  the  river  was  banked 
 in  by  Semiramis,  as  Herodotus  says.*  But  it  is  not  improbable 
 that  the  prophet  alludes  also  to  the  social  and  spiritual  desert 
 which  Babylon  was  to  the  nations  over  which  its  authority  ex- 
 tended, and  especially  to  the  captive  Israelite :  and  perhaps  to 
 the  multitude  of  the  armies  which  it  poured  forth  like  the 
 waters  of  the  sea.  So  Ezekiel  tells  the  Jews  that  they  shall  be 
 led  by  God  into  i  the  wilderness  of  the  people,'  as  their  fathers 
 were  into  the  wilderness  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  contrasting  the 
 human  with  the  natural  wilderness  —  alike  devoid  of  true  life 
 and  order.  And  St.  John,  in  the  Apocalypse,  adopts  the  same 
 imagery  in  describing  Babylon,  the  dramatic  representative  of 
 Rome :    *  I  will  show  thee  the  judgment  of  the  great  whore 
 
 *  Herod,  i.  184.;  Grote's  Hist,  of  Greece,  ix.  43. 
 
206  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 that  sitteth  upon  many  waters So  he  carried  me  away  in 
 
 the  spirit  into  the  wilderness And  he  saith  unto  me,  The 
 
 waters  which  thou  saw  est  are  peoples,  and  multitudes,  and  na- 
 tions, and  tongues After  these   things  I  saw  another 
 
 angel,  and  he  cried  mightily  with  a  strong  voice,  saying,  Baby- 
 lon is  fallen,  is  fallen.' 
 
 This  prophecy  has  more  the  character  of  a  vision  than  any 
 other  in  the  book,  excepting  that  in  the  sixth  chapter.  It  seems 
 to  indicate  that  the  writer  had  been  in  a  state  of  trance,  perhaps 
 somewhat  like  that  which  Coleridge  describes  in  the  introduction 
 to  his  Kubla  Khan,  or  a  Vision  in  a  Dream,  where  he  says 
 he  '  continued  for  about  three  hours  in  a  profound  sleep,  at  least 
 of  the  external  senses,  during  which  time  he  has  the  most  vivid 
 confidence  that  he  could  not  have  composed  less  than  from  two 
 to  three  hundred  lines ;  if  that,  indeed,  can  be  called  composition 
 in  which  all  the  images  rose  up  before  him  as  things,  with  a 
 parallel  production  of  the  correspondent  expressions,  without 
 any  sensation  or  consciousness  of  effort.  On  awaking  he  ap- 
 peared to  himself  to  have  a  distinct  recollection  of  the  whole, 
 and  taking  his  pen,  paper,  and  ink,  instantly  and  eagerly  wrote 
 doAvn  the  lines,'  which  he  there  gives,  but  of  which  the  current 
 was  abruptly  cut  off.  We  may  get  some  light  too  from  our 
 ordinaiy  experience  in  dreams,  here  as  on  chapter  vi. 
 
 The  unity  of  the  whole  is  not  less  striking  than  the  vividness 
 of  its  parts ;  but  it  is  a  unity  derived  from  the  imagination,  and 
 not  from  the  logical  faculty ;  and  it  overleaps  the  bonds  of  time 
 and  space,  and  brings  remote  objects  together,  just  as  the  ima- 
 gination of  the  dreamer  does,  without  any  sense  of  incongruity. 
 
 1  It  cometh  : '  —  a  man  in  a  dream  would  not  ask  what ;  — 
 he  simply  feels  that  something  terrible,  and  from  a  terrible  land, 
 is  sweeping  over  the  scene,  like  one  of  the  whirlwinds  which 
 still,  as  then,  drive  furiously  up  from  the  southern  deserts.* 
 Then  he  sees  that  there  is  reason  enough  for  this  terror,  for  the 
 land  — his  own  land  —  is  filled  with  spoilers,  robbing  by  fraud 
 or  violence  :  just  what,  in  fact,  Isaiah  and  his  countrymen  ex- 
 perienced as  the  condition  of  their  daily  existence  during  many 
 years  of  his  life. 
 
 *  See  Layard's  account  of  the  these  '  shergis,  or  burning  winds  from  the 
 south  ;'  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  364.  where  he  quotes  this  verse  of  Isaiah. 
 
ISAIAH  XXI.  3  — 10.  :    THE    POLITICAL    WATCHMAN.       207 
 
 He  recognises  at  once  the  *  terrible  land,'  '  the  desert  of  the 
 sea,'  from  which  the  evil  has  come :  he  calls  Elam  and  Media 
 to  '  go  up  and  besiege,'  and  in  a  moment  all  the  sighing  of  the 
 oppressed  has  ceased. 
 
 By  a  new  act  of  the  imagination,  he  identifies  himself  with 
 the  besieged  city;  and  experiences  all  the  sensations  of  extreme 
 terror,  as  he  sees,  in  an  instant  of  time,  the  preparations  for  a 
 feast,  and  the  setting  the  watch,  the  actual  feasting,  and  the 
 call  to  arms  without  and  within  the  walls  ;  and  knows  at  once, 
 as  an  inhabitant  of  the  city,  what  his  doom  is. 
 
 Then  he  half  returns  to  the  consciousness  that  he  is  Isaiah,  a 
 prophet  in  Jerusalem,  and  no  Babylonian,  and  explains  how 
 this  catastrophe  had  been  revealed  to  him.  He  is  still  over- 
 mastered by  his  imagination,  but  it  takes  a  new  direction.  He 
 was  accustomed  to  wait  whole  days  and  nights  in  fasting,  medi- 
 tation, and  prayer,  when  seeking  to  know  the  mind  of  the  Lord  ; 
 and  these  special  acts  were  but  the  outward  and  occasional  ex- 
 pressions of  a  life  of  spiritual  waiting  and  watching, — of  patient 
 meditation  upon  God's  word  and  works,  and  no  less  patient  wait- 
 ing to  see  the  political  events  of  his  own  day,  however  dark 
 and  unpromising,  open  out  into  results  according  with  that  word 
 and  those  works  in  the  old  times.  The  politics  of  his  nation 
 were  involved  in  all  the  prophet's  hopes  and  prayers ;  and  as  the 
 watchman  looks  from  the  watchtower  in  time  of  war,  so  he  stood 
 on  the  watchtower  of  divinely  illuminated  reason,  and  looked 
 out  into  the  world,  —  taking  a  comprehensive  view  of  all  that 
 was  passing  or  coming  there ;  discerning  the  significance  and 
 importance  of  each  event ;  and  accordingly  either  warning  the 
 nation,  for  whom  he  kept  guard,  of  approaching  evil,  or  comfort- 
 ing them  with  the  announcement  of  deliverance.*  And  thus  his 
 prophetic  office  and  faculty  now  represent  themselves  to  him, 
 and  he  describes  them,  as  his  setting  a  watchman,  by  command 
 of  the  Lord,  to  watch  and  report  what  he  sees.  This  watch- 
 man —  no  other  than  the  projected  form  of  the  prophet  himself 
 —  stands  on  an  ideal  watchtower,  and  sees  a  host  of  chariots, 
 horses,  asses,  camels,  approaching  ;  and,  after  listening  for  a  mo- 
 
 *  Compare  Isaiah,  lii.  8.,  lvi.  10. ;    Jeremiah,  vi.  17.;   Ezekiel,  xxxiii.  2.; 
 Ilabak.  ii.  1. 
 
208  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 ment  with  the  eagerness  of  a  watchful  sentry,  he  gives  the  alarm 
 in  the  phrase  familiar  to  the  Hebrew  shepherd  —  *  A  lion  ! ' 
 And  he  then  reports  in  detail  that  he  had  watched  continually 
 night  and  day,  for  many  days,  when  at  last  he  saw  the  invading 
 army,  which  the  prophet,  in  the  co-instantaneousness  of  all  the 
 parts  of  a  vision,  was  already  become  aware  of,  before  he 
 —  the  other  self —  could  report  it.  '  Lord '  is  the  title  ap- 
 propriated to  God,  and  not  equivalent  to  '  Sir'  as  our  ver- 
 sion implies ;  which  heightens,  without  at  all  confusing,  the 
 visionary  character  of  the  whole,  by  making  the  prophet  recog- 
 nise his  own  individuality,  and  the  fact  that  he  himself  is  the 
 watchman,  and  set  there  by  the  Lord.  The  watchman  speaks 
 again  after  an  interval,  and  reports  that  all  is  over,  —  Babylon 
 and  her  gods  are  fallen.  The  watchman  may  be  conceived  as  at 
 first  standing  on  the  walls  of  Babylon,  and  then  transferred  in 
 a  moment  of  time  to  Jerusalem ;  but  it  is  simpler  to  leave  the 
 ideal  indefiniteness  of  the  text. 
 
 The  prophet  utters  a  half  ironical,  half  compassionate  excla- 
 mation, on  the  fate  of  his  country's  enemy ;  and  concludes  by 
 declaring,  both  to  that  enemy  and  to  his  own  countrymen,  that 
 what  he  has  thus  declared  he  has  heard  from  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 the  God  of  Israel. 
 
 There  are  different  opinions  as  to  the  true  rendering  of  details. 
 Some  suppose  verses  1.  and  2.  to  describe  the  sufferings  of  Ba- 
 bylon on  the  invasion  of  the  Medes  and  Persians ;  Ewald  and 
 Alexander  say  it  is  more  correct  to  read,  in  verses  7.  and  8.,  '  And 
 should  he  see  ...  let  him  hearken ; '  some  understand,  '  he 
 cried  like  a  lion  for  loudness ; '  and  some  refer  the  f  threshing  ' 
 to  Israel.  On  the  last  two  renderings  I  would  notice  that  I  have 
 followed  Jeremiah's  apparent  mode  of  understanding  them*, 
 which  also  seems  to  me  the  more  graphic. 
 
 The  genuineness  of  the  rest  of  the  chapter  is  not  disputed ; 
 but  modern  criticism  has  not  decided  whether  the  two  '  Bur- 
 dens' of  'Dumah'  and  'Arabia'  are  separate  prophecies,  or 
 parts  of  one  prophecy,  in  the  margin  of  which  the  two  titles 
 would  then  stand:  nor  whether  Dumah  is  the  Arab  tribe  of 
 Dumah  (descended  from  Ishmaelf,  and  having  perhaps  given 
 
 *  Chapter  1.  44.,  li.  33.     With  the  latter  compare  Micah,  iv.  12,  13. 
 f  Genesis,  xxv.  14. ;   1  Chron.  i.  30. 
 
ISAIAII  XXI.   11  — 17:    THE    TRIBES    OF    ARABIA.  209 
 
 its  name  to  tho  Dumah  Eljandel  still  found  on  the  confines  of 
 Arabia  and  Syria),  or  an  enigmatical  name  for  Edom,  as  the 
 Septuagint  supposes,  and  as  the  mention  of  Seir  just  after  seems 
 to  indicate,  though  the  latter  may  be  taken  as  referring  only  to 
 the  tract  of  desert  and  mountain  in  that  quarter.  To  which 
 we,  who  accept  the  prophecy  against  Babylon  as  also  written  by 
 Isaiah,  have  to  add  the  question  whether  both,  or  the  former  of 
 these,  should  be  taken  as  its  continuation.  And,  lastly,  what  is 
 the  purport  of  these  seven  verses  ? 
 
 The  image  of  the  watchman  suggests  a  connection  between 
 the  first  and  second  portions ;  and  the  names  Dumah,  Seir, 
 Arabia,  Dedanim,  Tenia,  and  Kedar,  between  the  second  and 
 third.  And  if  we  take  the  text  as  it  stands,  the  general  sense 
 will  apparently  be,  that  at  the  time  when  Judah  was  actually 
 suffering  the  oppressions  of  the  '  treacherous  dealer,'  and  the 
 '  spoiler,'  but  was  promised  deliverance  by  Isaiah,  he  is  applied 
 to  by  the  Arab  tribes,  whose  caravans  conducted  through  Arabia 
 the  course  of  a  commerce  which  even  then  might  exchange  the 
 tin  of  Britain  with  the  ivory  of  India :  they  inquire  whether 
 they  may  hope  to  escape  the  great  robber,  and  the  prophet 
 replies,  after  a  hesitation  which  seems  half  contemptuous,  half 
 indicative  of  the  obscurity  in  which  the  future  was  involved  to 
 him,  that  they  will  not  escape.  Gesenius  observes  that,  though 
 the  voice  calling  to  the  watchman  out  of  Seir  may  without  im- 
 probability be  taken  merely  as  a  poetic  image,  it  is  also  quite 
 probable  that  it  refers  to  an  actual  inquiry.  It  was  not  less 
 likely  that  the  neighbouring  nations  should  consult  a  prophet  of 
 the  Lord,  than  that  Balak  should  apply  to  Balaam,  Ahaziah 
 consult  Baal-zebub  the  god  of  Ekron,  or  Croesus  the  oracle  of 
 Delphi. 
 
 The  tribes  who  traversed,  as  they  still  traverse,  the  deserts  of 
 Arabia  and  Syria,  with  their  flocks  and  herds,  with  trade-cara- 
 vans, or  on  plundering  forays,  are  chiefly  traced,  in  the  records 
 of  Genesis,  to  Abraham,  through  Hagar  and  Keturah,  —  Ne- 
 baioth,  Dedan,  and  Tema  as  sons  of  Ishmael,  and  Kedar  as 
 the  grandson  of  Keturah ;  but  some  also  to  Joktan  and  to  Cush. 
 AVe  find  these  Arabs  —  Midianites,  Amalekites,  and  children  of 
 the  east  —  invading  Israel,  in  the  time  of  the  Judges ;  paying 
 tribute   to  Jehoshaphat  and  Uzziah  ;  and  having  one  of  their 
 
 r 
 
210  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 settlements  taken  possession  of  by  the  Simeonites  in  the  reign  of 
 Hezekiah,  after  they  had  exterminated  the  tribe,  —  an  event 
 which  may  possibly  be  connected  with  the  present  prophecy.* 
 Dedan  and  Tenia  are  elsewhere  f  connected  with  each  other, 
 and  with  Edom  and  other  northern  tribes  of  Arabia :  Tenia  is 
 mentioned  by  Ptolemy ;  and  Kedar  by  Pliny,  by  Stephanus  of 
 Byzantium,  and  by  Theodoret,  who  says  that  in  his  time  the 
 Kedranites  pastured  their  flocks  in  the  province  of  Babylon : 
 and  Bochart  traces  to  Dedan,  the  traders  in  the  ivory  and  ebony 
 of  India,  the  name  of  Daden,  an  island  in  the  Persian  Gulf; 
 while  Seetzen  found  Tenia  in  the  caravan-route  between  Mecca 
 and  Damascus.  In  Genesis,  xxxvii.,  and  Job,  vi.  19.,  we  have 
 the  caravans  mentioned,  and  in  Ezekiel,  xxvii.,  an  ample  account 
 of  the  trade  which  they  carried  on ;  while  Kedar,  known  by  its 
 tents  of  black  hair- cloth,  and  rich  in  the  flocks  which  formed  its 
 staple  commerce,  seems  to  have  been  distinguished  from  these 
 purely  trading  tribes,  by  greater  estrangement  from  civilised 
 intercourse  and  courtesy,  as  might  have  been  expected  from 
 their  different  habits.  J  Colonel  Rawlinson  finds  the  names  of 
 Tehaman  (Teman),  Damun,  Kidar  (Kedar),  Khagarin  (Ha- 
 garenes),  and  Nabaut  (Nebaioth),  in  a  list  of  e  the  Aramaean 
 tribes  who  lined  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,'  subjugated  by  Sar- 
 gina,  and  from  whom  he  carried  off  '  an  enormous  booty  '  of 
 men,  women,  and  cattle,  of  which  the  kinds  and  numbers  are 
 specified.  And  among  the  countries  whose  kings  brought  '  their 
 accustomed  tribute '  to  Sennacherib,  the  same  learned  inves- 
 tigator reads  that  of  Huduma,  or  Edom.  § 
 
 *  Judges,  vi.  3.;  2  Chron.  xvii.  11.,  xxvi.  7.;  1  Chron.  iv.  39.  43. 
 "j"  Jeremiah,  xxv.  23.,  xlix.  7,  8. ;  Ezek.  xxv.  13. 
 
 \  Song  of  Solomon,   i.   5.;    Isaiah,   xlii.   11.,   lx.  7.;   Ezek.    xxvii.   21.; 
 Fsalm  cxx.  5. ;  Jeremiah,  ii.  10. 
 §  Outline,  pp.  19.  22. 
 
POLITICAL   PARTIES   IN   HEZEETAH'S   REIGN.  211 
 
 CHAPTER  XVI. 
 
 ISAIAH    XXII.:      POLITICAL      PARTIES      AT     JERUSALEM. SHEBNA     AND     THE 
 
 MAJORITY. ELIAKIM  AND  THE  MINORITY. ISAIAIl's    ATTACK    ON    SHEBNA. 
 
 PREPARATIONS      FOR      THE      SIEGE.  TOPOGRAPHY      OF      JERUSALEM.  
 
 SITE    OF    SION.  SPIRIT    OF    THE    PEOPLE    AND      KING.  FALL    OF    SHEBNA. 
 
 SUFFERINGS    OF    MODERN    NATIONS     FROM     INVASION.  MORAL    AND    RE- 
 LIGIOUS   RESULTS.  PRUSSIA. SWITZERLAND. 
 
 To  an  ordinary  Englishman,  accustomed  all  his  life  to  hear 
 denunciations  of  the  policy  of  the  government  followed  by  an- 
 ticipations of  the  downfal  of  its  author,  and  of  the  benefits 
 which  the  country  must  expect  from  the  new  policy  of  his 
 successor  in  the  ministry,  it  may  seem  superfluous  to  examine 
 seriously  the  notion  that  the  twenty-second  chapter  of  Isaiah 
 consists  of  two  separate  prophecies,  or  that  its  unity  needs 
 proving  by  such  arguments  as  he  will  find  in  the  commentators. 
 The  date  of  the  prophecy  is  evidently  the  fourteenth  year  of 
 Hezekiah;  and  a  comparison  of  the  accounts  in  the  books  of 
 Kings  and  Chronicles  with  the  discourse  before  us,  enables  us, 
 at  the  end  of  twenty-five  centuries,  to  see  the  very  form  and 
 pressure  of  those  ancient  times.  There  is  indeed  a  difficulty 
 from  that  peculiarity  of  Hebrew  grammar  noticed  before,  which 
 permits  an  interchange  of  the  past  and  future  tenses  of  the 
 verb  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  a  matter  of  discussion  with 
 translators  which  of  the  two,  or  whether  the  present  tense  in- 
 stead of  either,  will  best  express  the  force  of  the  original.  The 
 verbs  in  the  description  of  the  preparation  for  the  siege,  with 
 all  its  circumstances,  are  translated  by  Gesenius  and  others 
 as  presents, —  they  understanding  them  to  describe  the  facts  as 
 Isaiah  sees  them  in  his  mind's  eye,  and  just  before  their  actual 
 occurrence.  No  doubt  this  is  the  true  view  in  the  main,  and 
 we  may  be  well  content  with  it,  if  the  slight  haze  which  it 
 leaves  over  certain  details  of  the  picture  cannot  be  dispelled  by 
 
212  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 any  modern  insight :  but  it  is  obvious  that  there  is  a  haze.  The 
 alarm  of  the  city  and  its  reckless  jollity,  the  repairs  of  the  forti- 
 fications and  the  array  of  the  enemy  in  the  neighbouring  valleys, 
 imply  some  lapse  of  time  during  their  course ;  and  as  the  whole 
 conditions  of  ancient  and  Eastern  life  require  us  to  believe  that 
 this  prophecy  was  spoken,  and  not  first  published  in  writing  as 
 it  might  be  now,  the  question  presents  itself  whether  any  Hebrew 
 scholarship  can  fix  the  exact  point  of  time  at  which  it  was  spoken, 
 and  so  distinguish  the  facts  which  the  prophet  saw  with  his 
 bodily  eye  from  those  present  to  him  in  vision.  No  such  dis- 
 tinction may  be  possible  now;  the  master-artist  himself  may 
 have  obliterated  any  original  differences  between  the  actual  and 
 the  ideal  objects  of  his  discourse ;  but  thus  much  at  least  we 
 may  see,  —  that  the  actual  facts,  to  which  Isaiah  could  at  the 
 moment  point  with  his  hand,  were  such  as  to  enable  his  hearers 
 to  follow  him  in  filling  up  the  blank  portions  of  the  canvas.  If 
 when  he  spoke  they  could  see  people  on  the  housetops  looking 
 wistfully  in  the  direction  of  Lachish,  at  the  siege  of  which  the 
 Assyrian  army  was  at  the  moment  lying,  it  would  seem  hardly 
 a  figure  of  speech  to  tell  them  that  the  valleys  of  Ilinnom  and 
 Rephaim,  beyond  whk;h  their  eyesight  might  not  carry  them, 
 were  full  of  Persian  cavalry,  though  in  fact  they  saw  nothing 
 but  green  corn  waving,  nor  recognised  as  yet  any  sign  of  an 
 enemy  along  the  mile  or  two  of  the  western  highway  which 
 might  be  visible  from  Jerusalem :  —  for  they  well  knew  that 
 less  than  twenty-five  miles  of  that  road  would  take  them 
 into  the  heart  of  Sennacherib's  camp.  And  so  of  the  rest. 
 And  if  the  present  and  the  future  of  that  day  have  long  become 
 one  ideal  past  to  us,  the  whole  harmonious  picture  is  not  the 
 less  true  to  the  life,  —  true  to  the  old  Hebrew  life  which  ac- 
 tually was  then  and  there,  and  which  is  still  here  for  us  to  see ; 
 and  true  no  less  to  the  human  life  of  our  own  and  every  other 
 day. 
 
 Let  us  then  look  at  the  picture  as  it  is,  after  noticing  its 
 significant  and  somewhat  enigmatical  title,  analogous  to  that  of 
 the  previous  prophecy  against  Babylon.  It  is  apparently  taken 
 — -we  need  not  doubt  by  Isaiah  himself — from  the  expression 
 in  verse  5.,  which  seems  to  be  itself  suggested  by  the  fact  that 
 it  is  in  vision  that  the  prophet  sees  the  trouble  and  spoiling  of 
 
SHEBNA   AND   THE    MAJORITY.  213 
 
 the  city  which  to  his  outward  eye  was  at  the  moment  showing 
 signs  of  self-confidence.  Titles  stand  first,  but  then,  as  now, 
 were  written  last,  to  designate  the  subject  written  of;  and  this 
 prophecy  is  a  vision  of  the  political  state  and  prospects  of 
 the  city  which  stood  in  the  midst  of  the  valleys  of  Judah,  and 
 of  the  political  party  and  minister  who  ruled  the  city  at  that 
 time.  Perhaps  the  thought  that  this  city  was  the  centre  and 
 source  of  all  prophetic  vision, — that  'out  of  Zion  should  go 
 forth  the  law,  and  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem,'  at  all 
 times  and  for  all  peoples, — may  have  added  to  Isaiah's  sense 
 of  the  propriety  of  the  present  title;  but  the  other  is  more  likely 
 to  have  first  suggested  it. 
 
 Hezekiah  had  from  the  beginning  of  his  reign  given  proof  of 
 his  faith  in  the  Lord,  as  the  King  whose  viceroy  he  was ;  but 
 we  can  see  that  he  had  inherited  something  of  the  weakness  of 
 his  father's  character,  along  with  an  authority  greatly  controlled 
 by  the  nobles,  and  by  what  we  now  call  a  bureaucracy,  or  go- 
 vernment by  narrow  and  worldly-minded  officials,  who,  though 
 unable  to  take  any  far-seeing  or  comprehensive  views  of  the 
 interests  of  the  country,  were  too  firmly  seated  in  power  to  be 
 dislodged.  At  the  head  of  these  was  Shebna,  of  whom  it  has 
 been  conjectured,  from  his  father's  name  never  being  mentioned 
 (as  was  usual,  and  as  we  find  done  in  the  case  of  his  fellow- 
 ministers*),  and  from  his  being  engaged  in  making  a  family 
 sepulchre,  that  he  was  a  man  of  obscure  origin ;  while  his  name, 
 which  does  not  seem  to  be  Hebrew,  and  by  which  no  one  else 
 is  called  in  the  Bible,  has  been  supposed  to  indicate  that  he  was 
 a  foreigner.  It  was  by  the  advice  of  Shebna,  or  of  the  party  of 
 which  he  was  now  the  head,  that  Hezekiah  took  the  false  step 
 of  refusing  the  tribute  to  Assyria,  which  Ahaz  had  pledged  his 
 kingdom  to,  and  of  looking  to  Egypt  for  support  in  this  revolt. 
 The  kingdom  of  Israel  had  done  the  like,  and  was  annihilated ; 
 Ashdod  had  since  fallen ;  the  fortified  cities  of  Judah  were 
 meeting  the  same  fate,  one  after  another;  while  the  Assyrian 
 armies  were  encamped  in  the  south-west  of  Judah,  apparently 
 on  the  road  to  Egypt,  but  expecting  and  expected  to  swallow 
 up  the  little  Jewish  kingdom  easily  by  the  way  :  and  Hezekiah 
 
 *  2  Kings,  xviii.  18. 
 p  3 
 
214  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 now  endeavoured  to  deprecate  Sennacherib's  vengeance  by 
 sending  to  him  all  the  gold  and  silver  he  could  collect,  stripping 
 the  Temple  of  the  treasures  and  ornaments  with  which,  during 
 the  previous  years  of  his  reign,  it  had  been  his  glory  to  have 
 made  good  the  like  act  of  his  father  Ahaz.  Whether  out  of 
 sheer  treachery,  or  because  he  had  reason  to  question  the  sin- 
 cerity of  Hezekiah's  submission  (for  the  communications  between 
 Judah  and  Egypt  may  have  been  continued  notwithstanding), 
 Sennacherib  took  the  money,  and  immediately  sent  Tartan, 
 liabsaris,  and  Rab-shakeh  to  Jerusalem,  with  a  powerful  detach- 
 ment from  the  main  army  with  Avhich  he  was  himself  besieging 
 Lachish,  an  important  fortress  about  twenty-five  miles  south- 
 west of  the  capital.  The  Assyrian  generals,  however,  found  the 
 city  prepared  against  a  surprise,  and  the  courage  of  the  king 
 and  people  too  high  to  yield  to  their  persuasions  or  threats;  and 
 the  enterprise  failed,  only  to  be  followed  by  the  overthrow  of 
 the  main  army  itself. 
 
 When  Rab-shakeh  and  the  enemy's  force  actually  arrived 
 under  the  walls,  the  political  power  had  passed  from  the  hands 
 of  Shebna  to  Eliakim,  as  Isaiah  had  foretold :  not,  however,  by 
 a  literal  fulfilment  of  the  prophet's  vehement  denunciations ;  but 
 by  the  former  minister  being  reduced  from  the  first  office  of 
 lord  high  treasurer,  or  lord  steward,  to  that  of  secretary.  *  He 
 may  have  had  business  talents  too  useful,  or  his  influence  may 
 have  been  still  too  great,  to  permit  that  complete  dismissal  which 
 the  single-minded  prophet,  who  did  not  consider  it  his  duty  to 
 balance  and  reconcile  conflicting  interests  and  expediencies, 
 thought,  and  no  doubt  rightly,  was  the  moral  desert  of  his 
 character  and  acts.  Probably  this  very  attack  on  the  minister, 
 which  reminds  one  of  the  words  by  which  Cicero  drove  out 
 Catiline  when  too  strong  to  be  attacked  by  more  material 
 weapons,  may  have  given  the  last  blow  to  Shebna's  power :  he 
 had  been  hitherto  supported  by  that  selfish  and  time-serving 
 majority  of  nobles,  priests,  and  people,  whom  Isaiah  (like  his 
 cotemporaries)  is  always  denouncing,  and  which  was  too  strong 
 for  Ilezekiah  and  the  minority  of  God-fearing  men  to  over- 
 throw, till  the  present  time,  when  indications  that  their  policy 
 
 •J  Kings,  .wiii.  18. 
 
ELIAKIM   AND    THE    MINORITY.  215 
 
 was  about  to  bring  utter  ruin  on  the  state,  will  have  made  it 
 suddenly  and  universally  unpopular,  The  political  power  of 
 the  nobles,  the  influence  of  the  priesthood  and  the  prophets 
 both  with  kings  and  people,  and  the  extent  to  which  these 
 balanced  each  other  and  limited  the  regal  authority,  are  dis- 
 cernible throughout  the  Hebrew  history.  David  was  for  many 
 years  unable  to  dismiss  Joab  his  commander  in  chief,  though 
 his  character  and  acts  were  most  repugnant  to  him ;  '  the  sons 
 of  Zeruiah  were  too  strong  for  him ; '  and  on  his  death-bed  he 
 advised  Solomon  not  to  lose,  through  any  scruple,  an  oppor- 
 tunity for  breaking  the  bondage,  if  such  were  offered  him  by 
 any  new  delinquency.  Eehoboam's  insolence  to  his  nobles  cost 
 him  the  greater  part  of  his  kingdom.  The  whole  policy,  eccle- 
 siastical and  civil,  of  Joash  was  changed  by  the  influence  of  the 
 nobles  on  the  death  of  Jehoiada,  the  high  priest.  Isaiah  and 
 his  cotemporaries  *  describe  the  wealth  and  the  rapacity,  which 
 imply  political  power,  of  the  aristocracy  :  and  in  Jeremiah's 
 narrative  f  we  see  that  Zedekiah  might  well  complain  that  '  the 
 king  was  not  he  who  could  do  anything  against  them.'  And 
 the  independence  and  courage  of  the  prophets,  and  the  manner 
 in  which  they  awakened  a  public  opinion  in  favour  of  truth, 
 and  justice,  and  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  in  the  face  of  a 
 persecution  which  often  ended  in  their  death,  is  not  less  no- 
 ticeable. We  cannot  decide  how  far  Hezekiah  might  have  pro- 
 tected Isaiah  at  this  time  from  direct  violence  ;  but  the  prophet, 
 who  not  only  openly  denounced  the  policy  of  Shebna  and  the 
 other  '  scornful  men  who  ruled  this  people  in  Jerusalem,'  but 
 traced  its  origin  to  their  irreligion,  selfishness,  luxury,  and  op- 
 pression of  the  poor,  and  declared  that  God  was  about  to  brin^ 
 them  to  speedy  judgment  for  these  things,  must  have  been  a 
 brave  man ;  for  he  would  know  it  to  be  too  probable  that,  if 
 matters  came  to  issue  between  him  and  his  opponents,  '  the  king- 
 was  not  he  who  could  do  anything  against  them.' 
 
 Eliakim,  the  son  of  Hilkiah,  was  no  doubt  already  designated 
 by  Hezekiah  and  the  God-fearing  minority,  as  the  proper  suc- 
 cessor of  Shebna :  and  Isaiah's  prediction   that  he  would  be  a 
 
 *  Amos,  vi.  1 — 7.  ;  Micah,  iii.  1 — 3. 
 
 f  Jeremiah,  xxxvii.  15.,  xxxviii.  5. 
 
 v  4 
 
216  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 father  to  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  and  to  the  house  of 
 Judah,  implies  that  Shebna's  character  and  acts  were  of  the  im- 
 paternal  kind  which  we  might  infer  from  the  previous  censure 
 on  his  pride  and  luxury,  coupled  with  the  like  censures  on  his 
 cotemporarics :  —  those  senators  and  princes  Avho  joined  house 
 to  house  and  field  to  field,  while  they  ground  the  faces  of  the 
 poor,  and  justified  the  wicked  for  reward  ;  who  called  evil  good, 
 and  put  bitter  for  sweet ;  and  were  prudent  in  their  own  sight, 
 but  regarded  not  the  work  of  the  Lord,  nor  considered  the 
 operation  of  his  hands.* 
 
 This  prophecy,  then,  was  delivered  just  before  the  fall  of 
 Shebna,  and  when  the  open  country  of  Judah,  and  some  of  its 
 fortified  cities,  were  in  possession  of  the  Assyrians,  and  they 
 daily  expected  under  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  which  was  crowded 
 with  fugitives  from  the  country  round. 
 
 If  the  latter  half  of  verse  2.  is  to  be  taken  with  the  former, 
 -which  speaks  of  the  city  as  still  full  of  the  bustle  of  peaceful 
 life,  it  may  imply  that  as  yet  they  have  seen  no  deaths,  but  of 
 those  who  have  died  in  their  beds  :  if  it  is  to  be  taken  with 
 verse  3.,  as  a  part  of  the  picture  of  impending  calamity,  it  may 
 refer  to  deaths  by  famine,  and  by  the  pestilence  which  attacked 
 the  city  crowded  with  fugitives  from  the  open  country,  and  of 
 which  Hezekiah  himself  had  nearly  died.  Verse  3.  describes 
 the  captivity  of  both  princes  and  people,  in  the  day  in  which  the 
 enemy  would  break  down  the  walls,  and  the  cries  of  the  in- 
 habitants reach  to  the  mountains.  There  would  have  been  some 
 anticipation  of  these  calamities,  in  the  case  of  the  cities  of  Judah 
 already  taken  by  the  Assyrians,  and  the  reports  of  which  would 
 have  been  known  in  Jersalem:  nay,  Sennacherib's  own  account 
 says,  —  '  Because  Hezekiah  still  continued  to  refuse  to  pay  me 
 homage,  I  attacked  and  carried  off  the  whole  population,  fixed 
 and  nomade,  which  dwelled  around  Jerusalem,  with  30  talents 
 of  gold  and  800  talents  of  silver,  the  accumulated  wealth  of  the 
 nobles  of  Ilezekiah's  court,  and  of  their  daughters,  with  the 
 officers  of  his  palace,  men  slaves  and  women  slaves.  I  returned 
 to  Nineveh,  and  I  accounted  this  spoil  for  the  tribute  he  refused 
 to  pay  me.f' 
 
 *   See  their  description  at  length  in  Chap,  v.  and  elsewhere. 
 
 t  Rawlinson's    Outline,  p.  23.     The  passage  is  in  continuation  of  that 
 
To  face  page  217. 
 
 SKETCH-MAP    OF    JERUSALEM. 
 
ISAIAH,  XXII.  1— -11.:    PREPARATIONS    FOR   THE    SIEGE.  217 
 
 Elam,  as  I  have  already  said,  includes  the  provinces  of  Media 
 and  Persia,  at  this  time  dependent  on  Assyria,  and  supplying 
 Sennacherib  with  their  famous  bowmen.  Kir  *,  as  is  now  gene- 
 rally agreed,  is  the  region  between  the  Caucasus  and  the  Cas- 
 pian, which  is  marked  by  the  names  of  the  river  Cyrus  and  the 
 province  Georgia  :  though  it  has  been  suggested  that  it  may 
 have  been  that  tract  of  Southern  Media  where  Ptolemy  men- 
 tions Curene  and  Carina. 
 
 Verse  8.  describes  the  alarm  and  indignation  of  Judah  when, 
 by  the  taking  of  her  fortresses,  and  the  appearance  of  an  army 
 under  the  walls  of  her  capital,  she  is,  both  in  the  military  and 
 the  moral  sense  of  the  word,  dismantled.  It  was  the  grossest 
 insult  to  tear  the  veil  from  the  daughter  of  Zion  ;  but  now  it  was 
 more  than  an  insult,  for  it  revealed  to  her  the  presence  and  the 
 power  of  her  oppressor. 
 
 Their  eyes  open  to  their  danger,  and  they  look  to  the  arms 
 in  the  arsenal,  Avhich  took  its  name  from  having  been  built  by 
 Solomon  of  timber  from  Lebanon  :  they  survey  the  walls  of  the 
 citadel,  commonly  called  the  e  city  of  David,'  and  select  houses 
 to  be  pulled  down  for  materials  to  repair  the  walls  with :  and 
 they  secure  water  for  the  inhabitants,  and  cut  it  off  from  the 
 enemy,  by  stopping  or  concealing  the  sources  of  the  springs 
 which  they  have  first  conducted  into  reservoirs  within  the  city. 
 
 In  order  to  make  these  details  clearer,  let  us  examine  them, 
 with  the  help  of  the  accompanying  sketch-map.  Towards  the 
 south-east  part  of  that  ridge  of  rugged,  limestone,  table-land, 
 which,  with  a  breadth  of  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  geogra- 
 phical miles,  forms  the  back-bone  of  southern  Palestine,  there 
 juts  out  a  broad  and  elevated  promontory,  enclosed  on  the  east, 
 south,  and  south-west  by  deep  ravines ;  while  on  the  north  and 
 north-west  it  slopes  more  gently  back  into  the  main  table-land. 
 These  ravines  are  the  Valleys  of  Kidron  and  Ben-Hinnom,  and 
 the  promontory  is  the  site  of  Jerusalem. f  The  promontory 
 itself  consists  of  several  lesser  hills  and  undulations,  of  which  the 
 original,  and  even  successive,  levels  must  have  been  indefinitely 
 
 quoted  above,  p.  1 72.      The  version  of  Dr.  Ilincks  reads   '  Lis  sons  and 
 daughters'  instead  of  '  the  officers  of  his  palace.' 
 
 *  2  Kings,  xvi.  9. ;  Amos,  i.  5. 
 
 "j"  Robinson's  Uiblical  Researches,  vol.  i.  p.  otiO  ff. 
 
218  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 altered  by  the  quarryings  and  abrasions,  and  the  accumulations 
 of  earth  and  rubbish,  of  ages  ;  just  as  has  been  the  case  with  the 
 hills  of  Rome,  or  of  London.  And  these  hills  in  Jerusalem  are 
 still  marked  out  by  a  main  ravine,  or  depression,  which  crosses 
 the  whole  city  from  north  to  south,  and  divides  it  into  two  un- 
 equal portions:  and  then  by  other  lesser  depressions,  which  run 
 in  the  transverse  direction,  and  again  divide  the  western,  which 
 is  the  broader  portion  of  the  ground,  into  two  hills  commonly 
 called  Acra  and  Zion ;  and  the  eastern  into  others  named  Be- 
 zetha,  Moriah,  and  Ophel.  I  say  commonly  called  Zion  ;  for  all 
 Christian  and  local  traditions,  from  the  time  of  Constantine  to 
 the  present  day,  give  this  name  to  the  south-western  hill.  But 
 as  no  biblical  or  local  knowledge  has  made  it  possible  to  recon- 
 cile this  position  of  Zion  with  the  various  scriptural  notices, 
 Mr.  Fergusson  has  returned  to  the  uniform  declaration  of  the 
 Talmudical  writers,  that  Zion  was  on  the  north  side  of  the 
 Temple  ;  and  has  shown  that,  by  assigning  this  position  to  it,  he 
 can  clear  up  all,  or  almost  all,  the  hitherto  inexplicable  diffi- 
 culties, and  give  us  a  thoroughly  coherent  topography  of  the 
 Jerusalem  of  the  Old  (and  also  of  the  New)  Testament.* 
 Further  local  investigations,  in  the  light  of  this  view,  and  for 
 the  purpose  of  testing  it,  will  no  doubt  ere  long  set  the  point  at 
 rest;  and  such  investigations  are  now  actually  in  progress.  I 
 here  assume  Mr.  Fergusson's  to  be  the  true,  as  it  is  the  only 
 intelligible,  topography ;  and  with  the  help  of  his  map  (sub- 
 stantially followed  in  my  sketch)  point  out  the  localities  which 
 would  then  correspond  with  the  narrative  before  us.  The  city 
 of  Jerusalem,  properly  so  called,  was  distinct  from  the  city  of 
 Zion,  or  of  David.  The  former  was  the  old  city  of  the  Jebu- 
 sites,  and  its  site  the  western  portion  of  ground  which  contains 
 the  hills  of  Acra  and  the  falsely  named  Zion  :  the  latter  was  a 
 new  city  which  David  and  Solomon  built  on  the  eastern  side  of 
 the  ravine,  and  which,  when  complete,  included  the  citadel  of 
 David,  on  the  northern  brow  of  the  true  Zion,  the  Temple  im- 
 mediately to  the  south,  and  the  Castle  of  Ophel  to  the  south  of 
 that  again.  The  citadel  of  David,  or  '  Strong-hold  of  Zion,' 
 will  thus  have  been  in  the  same  [dace  in  which,  in  successive 
 
 *  An  Essay  on  the  Ancient  Topography  a/  Jerusalem.,  by  James  Fergusson, 
 F.R.A.S.  1847. 
 
TOPOGRAPHY  OF  JERUSALEM.  219 
 
 periods,  we  find  the  citadel  of  the  Maccabees  and  of  the  Romans, 
 under  the  names  of  Bethzur  and  Antonia.  It  is  to  be  supposed 
 that  the  military  considerations  which  approved  the  site  in  the 
 last  cases,  would  have  done  so  in  the  first;  and,  if  a  civilian 
 may  hazard  an  opinion,  it  was  on  the  north,  and  not  on  the 
 south,  that  the  main  fortress  was  required,  in  order  to  protect  the 
 north- Avestern  side  of  the  city,  which  was  weak  from  the  nature 
 of  the  ground.  Each  of  these  cities,  of  Jerusalem  and  of  Zion, 
 would  have  its  own  wall ;  and  their  means  of  communication 
 across  the  ravine  which  separated  them,  was  apparently  by  '  the 
 stairs  that  went  down  from  the  city  of  David,'  as  in  after  times  by 
 a  bridge,  of  which  there  are  still  remains.  These,  then,  are  '  the 
 Two  Walls,'  between  which  Hezekiah  made  a  ditch  or  aqueduct ; 
 and  by  a  gate  between  which  Zedekiah  fled,  through  the  'king's 
 garden,'  which  was  at  the  south  end  of  the  ravine.  Before 
 Hezekiah's  preparations  for  the  siege,  the  waters  of  '  the  upper 
 water-course  of  Gihon '  (which  is  the  water-head  of  Kidron,  and 
 not  the  Gihon  of  modern  maps),  and  'all  the  fountains  without 
 the  city,'  among  which  was  perhaps  that  of  Siloah,  overflowed 
 into  and  formed  '  the  brook  which  ran  through  the  midst  of  the 
 land,'  down  its  natural  channel  of  the  Valley  of  Kidron ;  but 
 now  they  were  conducted,  by  extensive  engineering  operations, 
 for  which  the  Jewish  nobles  helped  to  provide  the  great  number 
 of  workmen  required,  and  the  fame  of  which  was  known  to 
 later  times*,  'straight  down  to  the  west  side  of  the  city  of 
 David,'  that  is,  between  the  '  Two  Walls.'  There  they  seem 
 to  have  been  collected  in  a  reservoir  (made  the  easier  in  a 
 ravine)  which  thus  became  a  substitute  for  '  the  old  pool,'  which 
 lay  without  the  fortifications  ;  and  then  the  king  stopped,  that  is, 
 buried  in  such  a  way  as  effectually  to  conceal,  the  fountains  or 
 sources  themselves.  The  subterraneous  channels  of  Siloah, 
 already  noticed,  were  probably  among  these  works  ;  probably 
 too,  before  this  diversion  of  its  perennial  sources,  the  '  brook 
 Kidron'  was  itself  perennial,  instead  of  the  mere  winter  torrent 
 it  is  now.  Hezekiah,  lastly,  seems  to  have  built  a  wall  across 
 the  northern  opening  of  the  ravine,  where  it  widens  into  less 
 
 *  "  lie  [Hezekiah]  fortified  his  city,  and  brought  in  water  into  the  midst 
 thereof:  he  digged  the  hard  rock  with  iron,  and  made  wells  for  waters." — 
 jEcclus.  xlviii.  17. 
 
220  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 defencible  ground ;  and  which  was  perhaps  rebuilt  by  Manasseh, 
 and  then  described  as  '  a  wall  without  the  city  of  David,  on  th 
 west  side  of  Gihon,  in  the  valley.'  This  was  the  weakest  part 
 of  the  whole  ground,  as  I  have  before  observed;  and  the  name  of 
 the  *  camp  of  the  Assyrians,'  still  surviving  in  the  time  of  Jose- 
 phus,  probably  indicates  that  Rab-shakeh  posted  himself  here  : 
 a  tradition  from  Nebuchadnezzar's  siege  would  have  been  more 
 likely  to  give  the  name  of  '  Chaldeans  ;'  but  the  fact  that  Titus 
 encamped  on  the  same  spot,  shows  it  was  the  proper  place  for 
 besiegers  in  any  age. 
 
 In  the  account  which  the  Book  of  Chronicles  gives  of  these 
 same  preparations  for  standing  a  siege,  it  is  related  that  Heze- 
 kiah  e  gathered  the  people  together  to  him  in  the  street  of  the 
 gate  of  the  city,  and  spake  comfortably  to  them,  saying,  Be 
 strong  and  courageous,  be  not  afraid  nor  dismayed  for  the  king 
 of  Assyria,  nor  for  all  the  multitude  that  is  with  him  ;  for  there 
 be  more  with  us  than  with  him ;  with  him  is  an  arm  of  flesh, 
 but  with  us  is  the  Lord  our  God  to  help  us,  and  to  fight  our 
 battles.  And  the  people  rested  themselves  upon  the  words  of 
 Hezekiah  king  of  Judah.'  This  was  the  right  language  for  the 
 king  to  use ;  and  the  response  of  the  people  Avas  no  doubt  as 
 sincere  as  loyal  and  enthusiastic :  and  their  earnestness  was 
 deep  enough  to  carry  them  through  the  impending  crisis.  But 
 deeper  than  that  it  was  not.  Isaiah  was  at  the  very  same  time 
 declaring  that  the  people  were  looking  to  the  approach  of  the 
 enemy,  and  to  the  efficiency  of  their  preparations  for  defence  ; 
 but  not  to  Him  who  had  designed  and  done  all  this,  both  bring- 
 ing the  Assyrian  on  them  to  punish  their  sins,  and  protecting 
 them  from  being  quite  destroyed  by  him :  and  though  the  pro- 
 phet's preaching  might  seem  not  only  more  gloomy,  but  less 
 true  than  the  king's  cheerful  harangue,  yet  the  event — the  out- 
 ward progress  of  national  corruption  and  degeneracy  without 
 any  real  reformation  — justified  the  former.  He  did  not  forget 
 nor  omit  to  assert,  at  the  proper  time,  that  the  Lord  had  re- 
 served to  Himself  a  *  remnant : '  it  was  his  unceasing  aim  to 
 confirm  and  increase  that  remnant  by  his  exhortations  and  warn- 
 ings :  but  he  knew  that  the  faith  which  his  Lord  required  was 
 not  that  facile  enthusiasm  which,  alternating  with  panic,  swayed 
 for  the  time  the  assemblies  in  the  'street  of  the  gate  of  the  city. 
 
isaiaii,  xxn.  12 — 22.:  spirit  of  the  teotle.      221 
 
 Those  critics  who,  for  whatever  reasons,  see  no  necessity  for 
 assuming  a  literal  accomplishment  of  the  threats  against  Shebna, 
 have  hitherto  been  well  content  to  accept,  as  its  sufficient  fulfil- 
 ment, the  change  of  offices  found  (as  we  have  just  noticed)  in 
 the  Bible  history  of  the  time :  but  the  mention  in  Sennacherib's 
 Annals  —  quoted  above  —  of  '  officers  of  Hezekiah's  palace ' 
 having  been  then  carried  to  Nineveh,  suggests  the  curious  and 
 interesting  question,  whether,  after  all,  there  may  not  have  been 
 some  correspondence  between  the  facts,  and  the  rabbinical  tra- 
 ditions that  Shebna  was  carried  off  by  Sennacherib.  One  of 
 these  traditions  says  that  he  was  seized  by  Sennacherib  when 
 sent  on  an  embassy  by  Hezekiah  ;  and  another,  that  he  fled  to 
 the  Assyrians  after  an  unsuccessful  conspiracy  to  deliver  the 
 city  to  them. 
 
 The  vehement  hyperbole  of  these  threatenings  against  the 
 people,  if  we  now  hesitate  to  add  those  against  Shebna,  re- 
 minds one  of  the  language  of  Luther  or  of  Burke  :  and  when 
 contrasted  with  the  actual  events,  throws  much  light  on  the  ex- 
 ternal and  accidental  characteristics  of  Hebrew  prophecy.  It  is 
 quite  probable  that  the  '  What  hast  thou  here,  and  whom  hast 
 thou  here,'  was  actually  addressed  to  Shebna,  face  to  face,  and 
 within  sight  of  his  new  sepulchre :  and  if  wTe  follow  the  topo- 
 grapher quoted  above,  we  shall  believe  that  the  Jewish  forum, 
 in  which  Isaiah  was  likely  enough  to  have  delivered  the  earlier 
 part  of  this  harangue,  was  in  the  city  of  Sion,  and,  therefore, 
 close  upon  the  city  burying-grounds,  which  were  just  without 
 the  wall,  and  the  more  honourable  sepulchres  in  which  were  ac- 
 tually hewn  out  in  the  north  and  east  faces  of  Sion  itself.  The 
 mention  of  the  height  of  Shebna's  new  tomb,  is  supposed  to  in- 
 dicate his  extreme  pretension  to  pomp  and  dignity,  as  the  reader 
 will  see  more  at  large  in  Lowth's  note.  The  ancients,  not  ex- 
 cepting the  Jews,  attached  much  more  importance  than  we  do  to 
 every  thing  connected  with  the  burial  of  the  dead,  because  they 
 were  so  much  less  able  to  distinguish  the  human  person  from 
 the  earthly  body,  or  to  apprehend  the  substantial  reality  of  the 
 former  apart  from  the  latter.  Our  burials  symbolise,  and  ex- 
 press our  faith  in,  immortality  and  a  resurrection  ;  but  the  Jews 
 shared  more  or  less  the  common  feeling  of  antiquity,  that  there 
 was  some  real  connection  between  a  man's  due  obsequies  and 
 
222  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 his  state  after  death.  Still  their  faith,  though  obscure,  was  in 
 the  main  spiritual  and  elevating,  when  held  as  it  was  by  David, 
 Hezekiah,  or  Job.  But  the  worldly  and  sense-bound  man  then, 
 as,  indeed,  he  does  now,  contemplated  the  costly  preparations 
 for  his  burial,  and  for  the  preservation  of  his  embalmed  and  en- 
 tombed body,  as  the  last  possible  act  of  regard  for  that  sensual 
 existence  which  he  alone  cared  for.  It  was  but  the  consistent 
 maintenance  to  the  last  of  his  sensual  creed  — e  Let  us  eat  and 
 drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die.' 
 
 On  verse  23.  I  would  suggest  that  it  will  be  better  English, 
 if  we  read  '  glorious  support  '  instead  of  '  glorious  throne  '  or 
 '  seat.'  It  is  a  less  liberty  than  that  of  rendering  '  a  horn,  the 
 son  of  oil,'  by  '  a  very  fruitful  hill ; '  *and,  as  in  that  case,  it  gives 
 the  real  meaning  without  introducing  a  mixture  of  metaphors 
 which  our  language  cannot  bear  as  the  Hebrew  can. 
 
 Some  of  the  comments  on  verses  24.  and  25.  provoke  our 
 wonder  how  any  one  can  have  read  through  twenty-two 
 chapters  of  Isaiah,  and  yet  be  puzzled  by  the  transfer  of  the  image 
 of  the  nail  from  Eliakim  in  the  former,  to  Shebna  in  the  latter, 
 verse  ;  or  can  think  that  the  difficulty  is  cleared  up  by  taking  the 
 poetical  picture  of  the  honour  which  would  redound  to  Eliakim's 
 whole  family  from  his  just  and  able  administration,  for  a  de- 
 scription of  excessive  nepotism,  which  should  be  at  last 
 punished  by  a  fate  like  his  predecessor's. 
 
 Here,  if  not  before,  we  shall  get  much  light  on  Isaiah's  times, 
 and  the  meaning  of  his  discourses,  by  a  comparison  with  the 
 accounts  of  like  national  conditions  in  modern  times,  and  espe- 
 cially those  which  thoughtful  sufferers  and  actors  during  the  last 
 European  war  have  given  us.  Niebuhr's  Letters,  for  instance  : 
 he  illustrates  Isaiah  (while  Isaiah  interprets  him,  by  revealing 
 the  law  of  the  new,  as  well  as  of  the  old  events)  in  his  account 
 of  '  that  dull  comfortable  existence  which  was  described  as  the 
 golden  age  of  thirty  years  ago ;'  of  '  the  aimless  striving  after 
 something  beyond '  which  then  arose,  and  '  which,  combined  with 
 the  universal  effeminacy,  led  to  the  miserable  results'  which 
 they  all  experienced  as  their  subsequent  condition  :  —  of  '  the 
 dissolution  of  all  civil  bonds  and  institutions  being  completed: ' 
 
 *  Isaiah,  v.  1. 
 
NATIONAL    INVASIONS    IN   MODERN    TIMES.  223 
 
 of  '  nine-tenths  of  the  landowners  '  (which  in  Germany  includes 
 the  cultivators)  '  both  in  town  and  country  ruined,  yet  who 
 must  still  go  on  paying  contributions  —  it  cannot  be  otherwise 
 till  they  are  cut  down  to  the  bone ;'  while  *  many,  many  thou- 
 sands of  our  youths,  of  our  men,  are  shedding  their  blood,  are 
 pining  away  their  lives  in  hospitals,  or  in  want  and  wretched- 
 ness :' —  of  'an  innocent  country'  (Holstein)  'abandoned  to 
 pillage,  reduced  to  misery,'  apparently  to  be  l  deliberately  turned 
 into  a  desert  by  an  unprincipled  policy  and  rapacity,'  and  its 
 prosperity  '  fruitlessly  destroyed,  like  some  unhappy  victim, 
 whose  fate  it  has  been  to  experience  only  those  sorrows  which 
 humiliate  and  enfeeble,  and  has  no  opportunity  to  make  those 
 sacrifices,  by  which  individuals  and  nations  are  purified  and 
 exalted  : '  —  of  ( life  dragged  along  as  a  weary  burden  : '  —  of 
 '  armies  entrusted  to  boys,  because  they  are  the  sons  of  princes  ; 
 divisions  to  generals  who  have  outlived  captivity,' —  while  the 
 statesman' '  who  feels  in  himself  that  he  could  counsel  and  lead, 
 remains  in  the  back  ground,  not  only  because  of  a  thousand 
 miserable  considerations,  but  because  the  hour  of  dissolution  is 
 not  yet  come,  in  which  he  would  press  forward  : '  —  of  the  error 
 of  fancying  that  '  the  general  misfortunes  and  the  approaching 
 danger  have  produced  a  grave  and  solemn  tone  at  the  Court  and 
 scat  of  government ; '  where  '  all  amusements  go  on  just  as  usual : 
 people  look  on  the  war  as  a  subject  of  conversation,  find  fault 
 with  the  English,  abuse  the  Russians,  comfort  themselves  with 
 saying  that  the  French  are  not  so  bad,'  &c.  &c.  and  '  there  is 
 an  everlasting  talk,  mostly  without  the  slightest  comprehension 
 of  the  matter,'  among  these  courtiers  and  rulers,  while  men  like 
 Niebuhr  must '  listen  and  not  speak  out  their  whole  mind,'  how- 
 ever '  their  blood  may  boil  with  indignation  : '  —  of  '  the  sense- 
 less prating  of  those  who  talked  of  desperate  resolves  as  of  a 
 tragedy  : '  —  of  the  *  untiring  malice  and  inexhaustible  wicked- 
 ness '  of  the  political  intriguers,  {  who  have  plunged  this  un- 
 happy country  into  ruin,'  while  '  all  true  help  is  shamefully  cast 
 aside ;'  the  utter  '  blindness  of  the  king  which  allowed  the  pro- 
 gress of  political  disunion '  to  proceed  to  such  extremity ;  the 
 '  lasting  hindrance  to  all  comprehensive  undertakings  arising 
 from  the  mediocrity  and  baseness  that  can  scarcely  even  now  be 
 dislodged  from  their  present  position  of  power;'  and  '  the  vanity 
 
224  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 of  the  idea  that  a  better  clay  must  follow  the  night  of  incapacity 
 and  little-mindedness :  '  —  of  the  '  bitter  grief  and  comfortless 
 affliction '  which  prompts  him  '  constantly  to  ask  himself  whether 
 we  are  really  living  in  the  same  age  of  the  world  that  we  did 
 formerly,  or  whether  all  before  us  is  not,  as  it  seems  to  our 
 eyes,  chaos  and  night,  a  universal  destruction  of  all  that  now 
 exists.'  He  feels,  too  deeply  to  be  inclined  to  say  much  about  it, 
 that  '  the  dreadful  decision  of  a  great  judgment-day  of  the  world 
 is  at  hand :  '  — '  Now  must  begin  either  universal  death  and 
 putrefaction,  or  the  heavings  of  a  new  life  :  but  where  are  its 
 germs  : '  —  *  this  is  the  time  when  the  elect  are  proved  ;  he  who 
 has  endured  to  the  end,  will  have  a  bright  evening  to  his  life,  but 
 for  the  present,  happy  .  .  .  are  they  who  have  learnt  in  other 
 ways  and  former  times  to  bear  the  cross : '  —  he  '  begins  to 
 cherish  the  encouraging  belief  that  many  hearts  have  grown 
 stronger  and  purer  through  danger  and  suffering,  and  that  on 
 all  sides  there  lives  a  spirit,  though  straitened  and  repressed, 
 whose  power  must  increase : '  though  it  is  so  much  '  the  most 
 probable  that  they  will  have  to  endure  the  double  sorrow  of 
 seeing  this  flame  which  has  been  secretly  growing  more  intense, 
 extinguished  by  oppression,'  that  he  can  only  '  almost  believe 
 that  if  God  would  take  pity  on  them,  they  might  though  with 
 bitter  grief  and  pain,  attain  to  something  much  better  than 
 their  former  state,'  yet  he  urges  his  friend  to  '  become  the  ad- 
 vocate among  others  of  that  which  as  yet  scarcely  begins  to  stir 
 in  the  bosom  of  night,  but  of  which  the  existence  is  certain : 
 let  them  not  regard  what  still  exists  on  the  surface  of  things, 
 and  is  the  tottering  wreck  of  an  age  gone  by  : '  the  patriot  may 
 see  '  the  many  elements  of  good  striving  for  life,  —  of  a  better 
 spirit  than  existed  in  happier  time ; '  the  Christian  may  <  trust 
 that  a  Comforter  will  come,  a  new  Light  when  he  least  expects 
 it,'  and  that  '  all  the  sorrow  of  this  era  will  lead  on  towards 
 truth  if  we  are  only  willing.'  And  when  '  deliverance  is  offered 
 to  them  by  the  manifest  and  wonderful  providence  of  God,'  who 
 has  e  smitten  '  the  oppressor  '  with  blindness ;'  there  is  first  the 
 recognition  that  this  deliverance  has  come  '  after  God  has 
 chastened  us  sufficiently  for  our  deep-rooted  sins,'  and  that  un- 
 less it  finds  each  of  us  ready  to  devote  his  life  to  its  attainment, 
 we  cannot  be  saved;'  and  then  wc  have  the  picture  of  this  re- 
 
NIEBUIIR'S   ACCOUNT   OF    PRUSSIA.  225 
 
 quislte  moral  and  religious  acceptance  of  their  salvation,  'the 
 ground  cleared  and  ready  to  bear  fruit,'  '  love  dwelling  in  every 
 heart,  and  all  ready  to  welcome  whatever  was  noble  and  good,' 
 and  e  good  will  and  good  ideas  ripening  universally  with  good 
 deeds : '  and  if  the  '  morality,'  '  patience,'  '  discipline,'  t  huma- 
 nity,' which  makes  us  as  well  as  Niebuhr  '  feel  a  true  reverence' 
 for  *  an  army  so  pure,'  were  once  and  for  the  first  time,  '  during 
 the  whole  war,'  broken  down  by  '  the  great  privations  they  had 
 to  suffer '  after  the  battle  of  Laons,  —  the  young  officer  who 
 reports  it  '  could  not  sleep  for  grief ; '  the  field-preachers  took 
 for  their  text,  What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  shall  gain  the 
 whole  world,  and  lose  his  own  soul,  and  exhorted  the  men  to 
 return  to  the  patience  and  honesty  they  had  shown  till  lately ; 
 the  brave  fellows  wept  bitterly,  and  promised  with  a  loud  voice 
 to  do  so ;  while  General  York  reminded  them  of  the  sacredness 
 of  their  vow  ....  that  they  ought  to  be  as  good  as  they  were 
 brave  ....  ordered  one  man  to  step  forward  from  each  com- 
 pany ....  and  took  their  hand  upon  it  that  they  would  suffer 
 anything  rather  than  be  guilty  '  of  any  excesses.'  We  may 
 make  such  abatements  as  we  think  cool  judgment  demands  from 
 the  glowing  colours  of  the  patriotic  picture ;  its  value  as  an 
 illustration  of  Isaiah  will  not  be  diminished. 
 
 Zschokke  thus  moralizes  on  the  French  occupation  of  Swit- 
 zerland:—  'There  are  times  —  the  Divine  Providence  has  so 
 ordained  it  —  there  are  times  when  it  is  needful  that  the  iron 
 rod  of  doom  should  be  stretched  forth  to  arouse  the  nations  of 
 the  earth  from  their  senseless  brooding  over  material  interests 
 and  sensual  wants;  and  to  save  them  from  the  gradual  brutaliza- 
 tion  into  which  they  are  frozen  by  the  influence  of  forms  no 
 longer  vital ;  or  from  the  degradation  to  mere  mechanical  motion 
 and  existence.  National  wanderings,  crusades,  and  civil  wars9 
 have  ultimately  left  behind  them  greater  blessings  than  those 
 which  they  destroyed.  There  must  be  times  of  death  and  de- 
 struction, to  make  room  for  new  life.  The  devouring  selfishness 
 of  the  powerful  would  crush  the  weaker  part  of  the  human 
 family,  and  cripple  with  its  impious  weapons  the  free  wings  of 
 the  soul,  if  from  time  to  time  the  thunder-voice  of  a  higher 
 Will  than  man's  did  not  proclaim,  as  of  old,  through  the  storm- 
 
 Q 
 
226  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 clouds  of  Sinai,  the  voice  of  Jehovah ;  "  Thou  shalt  have  none 
 other  gods  than  me!"  Such  were  the  thoughts  that  chiefly 
 occupied  me  as  I  travelled  with  Tscharner  towards  Aarau.'* 
 
 *  Zsckokke's  'Autobiography,  p.  71.  English  Translation.  In  Tholuck's 
 preface  to  his  Commentary  on  the  Romans,  (if  I  remember  rightly)  and  in  a 
 paper  of  Krummacher's  in  the  Reports  of  the  Evangelical  Alliance,  there  are 
 like  descriptions  of  the  moral  and  religious  effects  of  the  war  of  freedom  on 
 the  people  and  the  king  of  Prussia. 
 
ISAIAH   XXIII.  :    THE    PIIENICIANS.  227 
 
 CHAPTER  XVII. 
 
 ISAIAH    XXIII.  :     THE     PHENICIANS  HISTORICAL      NOTICES  THEIR     TRADE 
 
 — CARRIERS    OF    PHILOSOPHY   AND    POLITICS  —  RELATIONS    WITH    ISRAEL. 
 
 THE    TYRIAN    HERCULES    THEIR     RELIGION    POLITICAL,    NOT    NATURAL.  
 
 SIEGE     OF  THE    ISLAND-TYRE    BY    SHALMANESER BY    NEBUCHADNEZZAR  — 
 
 BY    ALEXANDER PRESENT    STATE. AUTHORSHIP   OF    THE    PROPHECY. 
 
 THE  DISPENSER  OF  CROWNS. THE  QUEEN  OF  CITIES  DISHONOURED. TYRE 
 
 FORGOTTEN  SEVENTY  YEARS SHALL  SING  AS  AN  HARLOT. 
 
 The  fertile  and  well  watered  plain  which  undulates  from  the 
 foot  of  Lebanon  to  the  sea,  along  the  north-west  coast  of  Pales- 
 tine, was  the  land  of  the  people  called  Sidonians  by  the 
 Hebrews  and  by  Homer,  but  Phenicians  by  the  later  Greeks 
 and  the  Romans.  Sidon  (the  Fishery)  was  the  most  ancient  of 
 their  cities :  the  Book  of  Joshua  calls  it  '  the  great,'  while  it 
 gives  the  epithet  of  <  strong '  to  Tyre,  of  which  the  tradition 
 was,  that  it  was  founded  240  years  before  the  building  of 
 Solomon's  Temple,  by  fugitives  from  Sidon,  then  besieged  by 
 the  king  of  Ascalon.  Successive  colonies  filled  the  plain 
 *  with  great  and  fair  cities/  from  Tyre  to  Aradus,  each  of 
 which  seems  to  have  had  its  own  king,  or  judge,  though  in  the 
 time  of  David  and  thenceforward  we  find  Tyre,  and  the  king 
 of  Tyre,  in  apparent  superiority  over  the  whole  people.  Thev 
 were  a  Canaanitish  race;  and  their  land  —  first  promised  to 
 Zebulun  —  was  allotted  to  Asher  *,  to  whom,  however,  it  re- 
 mained (as  Gesenius  elsewhere  says)  an  inheritance  in  partibus 
 infidelium  :  for  in  the  days  of  the  Judges,  the  Sidonians  not 
 only  continued  to  dwell  «  careless,  quiet,  and  secure,'  but  be- 
 came the  oppressors  of  the  Israelites,  f  Lebanon  supplied  tim- 
 ber for  the  Sidonian  ships,  near  Sarepta  were  iron  and  copper 
 mines,  the  sea  yielded  them  the  shells  and  the  sand  with  which 
 
 *  Genesis,  xlix.  13.  f  Judges,  xviii.  7  ,  x.  12. 
 
 q  2 
 
228  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 to  make  their  purple  dye  and  their  glass,  and  their  women  wove 
 the  variegated  robes  of  which  Homer  speaks :  and  thus  they 
 began  that  trade  which  in  after  times  exchanged  the  tin  of  Bri- 
 tain, and  the  amber  of  Prussia,  with  the  gold,  the  apes,  the 
 ebony,  and  the  ivory  of  India,  and  of  which  Ezekiel  has  so 
 gorgeously  described  all  the  details,  as  well  as  the  wealth,  luxury, 
 and  power  of  which  it  was  the  source.  *  By  land  their  trade 
 was  conducted  to  a  great  extent  (as  we  have  before  seen)  by  the 
 Arab  caravans  ;  by  sea,  their  own  ships  carried  them  to  Egypt, 
 Greece,  Italy,  Sicily,  Malta,  Carthage,  Spain,  and  perhaps 
 even  to  America  ;  while  the  navy  created  by  Solomon,  with  the 
 help  of  their  shipwrights  and  sailors,  gave  them  a  water  com- 
 munication with  Arabia,  and  India,  from  the  port  of  Elath  at  the 
 head  of  the  north-east  gulf  of  the  Red  Sea. 
 
 The  creation  of  this  Hebrew  navy  was  one  of  the  fruits  of 
 the  alliance  and  friendship  of  David  and  Solomon  with  Hiram, 
 king  of  Tyre  :  he  also  supplied  them  with  materials  and  arti- 
 ficers for  building  the  Temple,  palaces,  and  other  public  works ; 
 and  the  rapid  growth  of  the  national  wealth  and  luxury  of  Israel 
 from  this  period,  shows  that  their  commercial  intercourse  with 
 Tyre  must  have  been  considerable,  f  Probably  then,  as  in  the 
 times  of  Ezekiel,  they  supplied  the  Tyrian  markets  with  wheat, 
 honey,  oil,  and  balm;  and  we  may  believe  that  a  considerable 
 part  of  the  caravan  traffic  from  Arabia  would  pass  through  their 
 country,  for  the  sake  of  the  security  afforded  by  a  settled  and 
 civilised  government.  And  thus,  while  Israel  remained  an 
 agricultural  country,  as  the  whole  scope  of  its  constitution  and 
 policy  required,  it  enjoyed  as  large  a  share  of  the  benefits  of 
 commerce,  as  was  compatible  with  the  main  historical  ends  for 
 which  the  nation  existed  :  —  or,  as  Isaiah  expresses  it  in  the 
 chapter  before  us,  '  The  merchandise  of  Tyre  was  for  them  that 
 dwelt  before  the  Lord,  to  cat  sufficiently,  and  for  durable 
 clothing.'  Nor  was  Phenicia's  debt  to  Israel  less,  or  less  cha- 
 racteristic: when  a  positive  recognition  of  facts  shall  have 
 superseded  alike  the  opposite  theories  which  —  with  superstitious 
 reverence,  or  with  scoffing  sciolism  —  have  conspired  to  exclude 
 the  Hebrew  nation  from  its  place  in  universal  history,  it  will  be 
 
 *  Ezekiel,  xxvii. 
 
 |  2  Samuel,  v.  11. ;  1  Kings,  ix.  10—14.  2G— 28. ;  x.  11-29. 
 
RELATIONS    OF    PHENICIA    AND    ISRAEL.  229 
 
 plain  that  it  was  not  for  nothing  that  Phenicia  came  in  contact 
 with  a  people  whose  institutions  were  based  on  a  faith  in  family 
 life,  and  in  laws  upheld  by  a  righteous  Lord  ;  and  that  at  the 
 time  when  Jewish  life  was  embodied  by  David  and  Solomon  in 
 the  forms  in  which  it  would  be  most  easily  intelligible  to 
 foreigners,  there  should  have  been  a  Hiram  capable  of  appre- 
 ciating their  personal  and  political  character.  It  was  after  this 
 that  Phenicia  became  the  carrier  of  the  germs  and  maxims  of 
 politics  and  philosophy  to  Europe :  and  her  people  knew  their 
 calling  too  well  not  to  get  these,  like  other  things,  from  the  best 
 market ;  though,  like  traders,  they  were  content  to  hand  them 
 over  to  their  customers,  keeping  little  of  them  for  themselves.* 
 
 We  notice  in  Ezekiel's  list,  '  the  persons  of  men,'  brought 
 from  Javan  (or  Ionia),  to  the  Tyrian  market :  and  Isaiah's  co- 
 temporaries,  Amos  and  Joel,  complain  that  the  Tyrians  sold 
 Hebrew  slaves,  '  the  sons  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem,'  to  the 
 Edomites  and  the  Greeks,  notwithstanding  the  alliance  and 
 friendship  which  should  have  subsisted  between  the  two  na- 
 tions f;  of  which  slaves,  as  well  as  of  the  'gold  and  silver,  and 
 precious  goodly  things'  of  the  Israelites,  they  had  possessed 
 themselves  by  purchase  from  the  Assyrian,  or  other  licentious 
 soldiery,  who  found  in  the  Tyrians  the  shrewd  and  unprincipled 
 traders  who  are  always  at  hand  to  buy  such  plunder.  To  these 
 complaints  of  the  breaches  of  the  '  brotherly  covenant '  and 
 friendly  alliance  between  the  two  nations,  the  prophets  had  in  all 
 ages  to  add  their  resistance  to  the  opposite  abuse  of  that  friend- 
 ship, which  introduced  the  worship  of  the  Sidonian  Astarte  and 
 Baal  into  Israel,  and  of  which  Solomon's  apostasy,  and  the 
 establishment  of  the  priesthood  of  Baal  by  Jezebel  the  wife  of 
 Ahab,  and  daughter  of  Ethbaal  king  of  Tyre,  were  but  in- 
 stances, though  the  most  important  ones. 
 
 Melicartha,  or  Hercules  —  the  Phenician  and  Greek  equi- 
 valents, according  to  an  inscription  from  Malta  —  was  the  god 
 whose  temple  Herodotus  went  to  Tyre  to  see,  and  found  with 
 its  '  two  pillars,  one  of  gold  and  the  other  of  emerald,  both 
 
 *  See  Maurice's  Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philosophy,  §  '  Phoenicians]  1st 
 and  2nd  editions. 
 
 t  Amos,  i.  9,  10. ;  Joel,  iii.  4,  5,  6. 
 
 Q  3 
 
230  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 shining  exceedingly  at  night/  and  its  rich  offerings,  which  in- 
 cluded (as  we  know  from  other  accounts)  those  of  the  Phenician 
 colonies,  in  all  of  which  the  same  god  was  worshippped.  Meli- 
 cartha  means  '  king  of  the  city,'  and  even  Hercules  is  by  some 
 derived  from  a  Hebrew  word  for  '  the  Trader ; '  and  it  is  pro-*- 
 bable  that  he  is  the  same  as  Baal,  which  was  the  general  Pheni- 
 cian name  for  God. 
 
 Baal  is  constantly  coupled  with  Astarte ;  and  the  more  phi- 
 losophical opinion  *  is  that  this  national  god  and  goddess  were 
 the  Lord  and  Lady  of  Phenicia,  rather  than  the  sun  and  moon : 
 —  for  to  a  people  full  of  political  life  the  sun  and  moon  would 
 have  been  themselves  representatives,  while  a  divine  king  and 
 queen  were  the  realities.  And  if  so,  the  habitual  inclination  of 
 the  Israelites,  an  essentially  political  people,  for  this  worship 
 becomes  the  more  easily  understood.  A  worship  of  nature  — 
 of  cats  and  dogs  —  like  that  of  Egypt,  could  have  had  little 
 attraction  for  them ;  but  this  of  the  Sidonians  offered  to  sup- 
 ply their  craving  for  a  national  and  political  creed,  yet  without 
 the  holiness  and  righteousness  of  heart  and  life,  which  the  wor- 
 ship of  the  Lord  of  Abraham  and  of  David  required  them  to 
 maintain  by  an  habitual  sacrifice  of  their  sensual  and  worldly 
 nature. 
 
 Of  the  colonies  or  commercial  settlements  of  the  Phenicians, 
 the  prophecy  before  us  mentions  two  —  Tarshish  and  Chittim. 
 Tarshish,  or  Tartessus,  was  a  city  and  port  between  the  two 
 mouths  of  the  Boetis,  or  Guadalquiver,  in  Spain,  and  the  oldest 
 of  the  Tyrian  factories  :  and  in  this  name,  according  to  Gese- 
 nius,  the  later  Phenician  settlements  of  Gades  and  Carthage 
 were  afterwards  included,  both  by  the  Hebrew  and  the  classical 
 writers.  Chittim,  as  the  same  authority  shows,  is  Cyprus,  in 
 the  south  of  Avhich  island  was  the  Phenician  settlement  of 
 Citium,  in  the  ruins  of  which,  still  called  Chiti,  Pococke  found 
 Phenician  inscriptions ;  —  but,  as  in  the  case  of  Tarshish,  the 
 name  was  extended,  and  in  later  times  includes  the  other  islands 
 and  coasts  of  the  Mediterranean. 
 
 Sidon  (for  a  full  topography  and  history  of  which,  as  well  as 
 of  Tyre,  I  must  refer   the  reader  to  Dr.  Iiobinson's  Biblical 
 
 *  Maurice's  Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philosophy,  1st  edition. 
 
HISTORICAL   NOTICES    OF    TYRE    AND   SIDON.  231 
 
 Researches  in  Palestine)  is  still  a  city  of  five  or  six  thousand 
 inhabitants,  in  the  midst  of  well  watered  gardens  and  orchards 
 —  *  the  flowery  Sidon  dwelling  by  the  streams  of  the  graceful 
 Bostrenus'* —  with  some  trade  in  silk,  cotton,  and  nutgalls. 
 Of  '  Old  Tyre,'  the  site  is  uncertain,  as  there  are  no  remains  to 
 mark  it:  the  Island-Tyre  seems  to  have  been  originally  a 
 ledge  of  rocks,  which  the  gathering  sand  formed  into  a  narrow 
 island  less  than  a  mile  long,  and  not  half  a  mile  from  the  main 
 land :  according  to  Josephus,  it  was  already  occupied  by  the 
 Tyrians  in  the  time  of  Hiram,  the  friend  of  Solomon.  In  the 
 reign  of  Elulseus  king  of  Tyre  (cotemporary  with  Hezekiah) 
 Cyprus  rebelled  ;  and  Shalmaneser  king  of  Assyria,  who  is  said 
 to  have  been  called  in  by  the  city  of  Gath  to  protect  it  against 
 Elulams,  invaded  Phenicia ;  and  on  the  submission  of  Sidon, 
 Arce,  Old  Tyre,  and  other  towns,  obtained  from  them  a  fleet 
 with  which  to  attack  the  Island-Tyre.  But  the  Tyrians  made 
 peace  with  Cyprus,  defeated  the  Assyrians  at  sea,  and  success- 
 fully withstood  a  blockade  of  five  years,  in  which,  however, 
 they  suffered  much  from  the  cutting  off  of  the  aqueducts  —  of 
 which  the  traveller  still  finds,  if  not  the  remains,  which  may  be 
 all  later,  yet  the  large  and  fine  rushing  streams,  at  the  village 
 named  c  Well-head.'  Colonel  Rawlinson  reports  f  the  discovery 
 of  a  notice  of  the  capture  of  Tyre  (I  suppose  Old  Tyre)  by 
 Sargon:  and  a  statue  of  the  same  king,  with  an  inscription 
 *  suitable '  to  the  fact  of  his  expedition  to  Cyprus,  has  been 
 found  in  Cyprus,  and  is  now  in  the  Berlin  museum.  And  Sen- 
 nacherib, according  to  his  annals,  proceeded  to  Phenicia  in  his 
 third  year ;  when  Luliya  (Elulasus)  king  of  Sidon,  who  '  had 
 thrown  off  the  yoke  of  allegiance,'  fled  at  his  approach,  and  was 
 replaced  by  Tubaal,  on  whom  was  *  imposed  the  regulated 
 amount  of  tribute,'  after  the  Avhole  country,  including  Tyre,  had 
 been  reduced  to  submission.  He  then  goes  on  to  give  a  list  of 
 the  kino-s  who  '  repaired  to  his  presence  in  the  neighbourhood 
 of  the  city  of  Husuva  or  Tyre,  and  brought  him  their  accus- 
 tomed tribute. $      To  this  period,   says  Gesenius,  is  to  be  re- 
 
 *  Dionysius  Periegetes,  0.  T.  D.  905.  quoted  by  Robinson, 
 f  AthenEeum  of  Dec.  11.  1852. 
 
 +   Outline,  pp.  20.  23.    Among  the  names  are  '  Mittintiof  Ashdod,'  '  Bud- 
 
 q4 
 
232  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 ferred  the  founding  of  most  of  the  colonics  of  Tyre,  which 
 consequently  must  now  have  been  near  its  full  vigour,  notwith- 
 standing these  reverses.  Under  Ithobal  II.  Tyre  was  again 
 besieged  for  thirteen  years  by  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  apparently 
 again  proved  impregnable.*  The  nation,  however,  seems  to 
 have  been  under  the  Babylonian,  as  afterwards  under  the  Per- 
 sian, yoke ;  and  '  they  of  Tyre  and  Sidon '  brought  cedar  from 
 Lebanon  to  the  port  of  Joppa,  for  rebuilding  the  Temple  at 
 Jerusalem,  in  obedience  to  the  grant  of  Cyrus,  f  A  third  siege 
 of  Tyre  by  Alexander  the  Great  (about  332  B.C.),  ended  with 
 the  reduction  of  the  Island- Tyre,  after  seven  months  of  despe- 
 rate struggle  on  both  sides,  during  which  Alexander  built  a 
 mound  or  causeway  from  the  main-land  to  the  island.  To  supply 
 materials  for  this,  and  the  other  works  of  the  besiegers,  Old  Tyre 
 was  razed,  never  to  be  rebuilt ;  but  '  the  fortress  of  the  sea,' 
 and  its  trade,  recovered  both  from  this  blow,  and  from  that  which 
 the  same  conqueror  gave  them  by  building  Alexandria.  After 
 Alexander's  death  it  fell  to  the  Seleucidae,  many  of  whose 
 Tyrian  coins,  with  Greek  and  Phenician  inscriptions,  are  ex- 
 tant. In  the  time  of  Strabo,  and  under  the  Roman  dominion,  it 
 was  rich  and  flourishing,  with  its  commerce  and  purple-dyeing 
 trade  ;  with  two  harbours  (formed  by  Alexander's  mole  which 
 had  made  the  island  a  peninsula),  of  which  however  only  one, 
 called  the  Egyptian,  was  open ;  and  with  remarkably  lofty 
 houses,  such  as  could  not  be  seen  in  Home  itself.  Tyre  became 
 Christian  early  J,  and  in  the  days  of  Jerome  was  still  '  a  very 
 fair  and  noble  city,'  and  traded  *  with  almost  all  the  world.' 
 It  was  an  archbishopric  under  the  patriarchate  of  Jerusalem, 
 with  fourteen  bishoprics  under  it.  Taken  by  the  Saracens  in 
 G39 ;  recovered  by  the  Christians  in  1124;  in  1280,  conquered 
 
 astor  of  Beth- Amnion,  and'.  ...  of  Iliuluma,  orEdom.'  Then  follows 
 the  passage  I  have  already  quoted  above,  p.  171. 
 
 *  I  certainly  think  with  Gcsenius,  that  this  is  the  fair  conclusion  to  draw 
 from  Ezekiel,  xxix.  18,  19.  as  well  as  from  Jerome's  admission  that  no  Greek 
 or  Phenician  history  mentioned  the  capture.  I  have  not,  however,  read 
 Ilengstenberg's  Treatise  ;  and  Mr.  Grote  speaks  of  the  insular  Tyre  being 
 '  taken,  or  reduced  to  capitulate,1  by  Nebuchadnezzar,  as  an  ascertained 
 fact. 
 
 |  Ezra,  iii.  7.  \  Acts,  xxi.  4. 
 
ISAIAH   XXIII.  :    DISPUTES   AS   TO   THE    AUTHORSHIP.       233 
 
 by  the  Mamelukes ;  and  taken  from  them  by  the  Turks,  in  1516  ; 
 it  then  sunk  into  a  decay  which  corresponded  literally  with  Eze- 
 kiel's  denunciations,  when,  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
 Maundrell  found  not  one  entire  house,  but  only  a  few  fishermen 
 harbouring  themselves  in  the  vaults.  Since  then  it  has  some- 
 what rallied,  and  Dr.  Robinson  found  it  a  town  of  about 
 3000  inhabitants,  with  some  poor  trade  in  tobacco,  cotton, 
 and  wood.  Alexander's  causeway  has  become  a  sand-bank  half 
 a  mile  wide  ;  the  ruins  of  the  large  cathedral  are  filled  with 
 mean  hovels ;  and  if  anything  remains  of  the  Tyre  of  Isaiah, 
 it  is  the  columns  of  red  and  gray  granite  which  strew  the  ragged 
 western  shore  of  the  rock,  '  from  one  end  to  the  other,  along 
 the  edge  of  the  water  and  in  the  water.' 
 
 The  dispute  as  to  the  genuineness  of  this  prophecy  offers  a 
 new  feature,  which  is  thus  stated  by  Professor  Alexander :  — 
 "  The  German  writers  of  the  new  school  are  divided  on  this 
 question.  Eichhorn,  Rosenmuller,  Hitzig,  and  others,  admit 
 the  reference  to  Nebuchadnezzar,  but  ascribe  the  prophecy  of 
 course  to  a  contemporary  writer.  Gesenius,  Maurer,  Umbreit, 
 and  Knobel,  admit  its  genuineness  ;  but  refer  it  to  the  siege-  by 
 Shahnaneser.  Hendewerk  also  admits  the  genuineness  of  the 
 passage,  but  denies  its  having  reference  to  any  particular  his 
 torical  event.  Ewald  refers  it  to  the  siege  by  Shahnaneser ;  but 
 infers  from  the  inferiority  of  the  style,  that  it  may  be  the  pro- 
 duction of  a  younger  cotemporary  and  disciple  of  Isaiah.  The 
 discussion  of  the  subject  by  these  writers  is,  in  one  respect,  in- 
 teresting and  instructive.  In  most  other  cases  they  occupy 
 common  ground  against  the  truth.  But  here  they  are  reduced 
 to  a  dilemma;  and  by  choosing  different  horns  of  it,  are  placed 
 in  opposition  to  each  other,  clearly  betraying  in  the  conflict  that 
 ensues,  the  real  value  of  their  favourite  style  of  criticism.  Thus, 
 while  Ewald  thinks  the  style  unlike  that  of  Isaiah,  and  Eichhorn 
 and  Hitzig  see  the  clearest  indications  of  a  later  age,  Gesenius 
 and  Hendewerk  are  struck  with  the  tokens  of  antiquity  and 
 with  the  characteristics  of  Isaiah.  So,  too,  with  respect  to  the 
 literary  merit  of  the  passage :  Hitzig  treats  it  almost  with  con- 
 tempt, while  Hendewerk  extols  it  as  a  masterpiece  of  eloquence. 
 There  could  not  be  a  stronger  illustration  of  the  fact  already 
 evident,  that  the  boasted  diagnosis  of  this   school  of  critics  is 
 
234  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 always  dependent  on  a  foregone  conclusion.  Had  there  been 
 no  siege  of  Tyre  in  the  days  of  Isaiah,  Gesenius  would  easily 
 have  found  abundant  proofs  that  the  chapter  was  of  later  date. 
 But  this  not  being  necessary  for  his  purpose  here,  he  treats  as 
 inconclusive  even  stronger  proofs  than  those  which  he  himself 
 employs  in  other  cases." 
 
 This  commentator  then  proceeds  to  argue  in  favour  of  the  old 
 orthodox  explanation  of  the  prophecy,  as  a  prediction  of  the 
 taking  of  Tyre  by  Nebuchadnezzar.  But  I  persuade  myself 
 that  the  reader  has  accompanied  me  thus  far,  with  the  under- 
 standing that  we  were  not,  anymore  than  the  rationalists  just 
 described,  to  adopt  '  a  foregone  conclusion,'  an  a-priori  theory, 
 as  to  the  nature  of  prophecy  and  its  fulfilment,  and  cut  our 
 facts  to  fit  it ;  but  that  Ave  were  to  let  the  facts  tell  their  own 
 story,  and  be  sure  that  whatever  we  could  read  of  this  would 
 be  God's  truth,  all  commentators  and  critics  notwithstanding. 
 And  if  we  have,  on  the  one  hand,  found  the  book  so  replete  with 
 political,  social,  and  personal  wisdom,  as  to  throw  a  clear  light, 
 not  only  on  the  history  of  Isaiah's  own  time,  but  on  that  of  all 
 other  times  and  nations  including  our  own  —  so  that  when  we 
 read  of  Babylon  or  Jerusalem,  of  Ahaz  or  Sennacherib,  we 
 perceive  ourselves  studying  the  universal  propositions  of  a  science 
 by  the  help  of  a  diagram :  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
 found,  mixed  up  with  minute  and  interesting  correspondences 
 between  details  in  the  prophecies  and  in  history,  discrepancies 
 and  non-fulfilments  of  predictions  at  least  as  marked.  Thus, 
 in  the  last  prophecy  —  the  denunciation  of  Shebna  and  the 
 worldly  men  of  Jerusalem  — Isaiah  predicts  that  the  city  shall 
 be  taken  by  assault*,  and  both  princes  and  people  carried  into 
 captivity ;  and  that  in  particular  this  shall  be  the  fate  of  Shebna, 
 in  order  to  make  way  for  his  successor  Eliakim :  and  if  the 
 accuracy  of  the  reading  of  the  Assyrian  Inscription  (quoted  in 
 the  last  chapter)  is  finally  established,  and  we  then  claim  aright 
 to  apply  its  terms  to  the  fulfilment  of  the  prediction  as  to  Shebna 
 and  the  nobles,  it  remains  certain  that,  instead  of  the  city  being 
 taken,  Isaiah  himself  soon  after  promised,  with  a  confidence  which 
 the  event  justified,  that  the  Assyrian  should  not  even  attempt 
 the  sieo-e.  f    In  like  manner  Isaiah  had  predicted  the  approach  of 
 
 *  Isaiah,  xxii.  3,  4,  5.  t  Isaiah,  xxxvii.  33,  34,  35. 
 
THE    DOUBTS   NOT    REASONABLE.  235 
 
 the  invaders  from  the  north,  when  they  should  appear  under  the 
 walls  of  Jerusalem*,  whereas,  in  fact,  they  came  from  the  south- 
 west ;  though  the  other  part  of  the  prophecy,  that  they  should 
 then  be  cut  off  with  a  terrible  crash,  was  fulfilled  with  striking 
 accuracy.  So  the  details  as  to  the  fate  of  Babylon,  —  the  city 
 taken  during  a  feast  by  the  Medes,  cruel,  regardless  of  gold, 
 and  riding  two  and  two,  with  a  cavalry  of  asses  and  camels  as 
 well  as  horses ;  and  the  Arab  in  our  own  clay,  still  fearing  the 
 satyrs  if  he  pitches  his  tent  in  its  ruins  for  a  single  night,  — 
 appear  by  the  side  of  the  threat  that  '  her  time  was  near  to 
 come,'  and  the  fact  that  centuries  intervened  before  its  accom- 
 plishment even  began. 
 
 What  then  ?  If  we  cannot  prove  that  Isaiah  was  inspired,  by 
 showing  that  he  could  predict  future  events  more  infallibly  than 
 the  ancient  oracles,  or  the  modern  astrologers  or  mesmerists, 
 was  he  not  inspired  ?  and  are  his  writings  not  a  part  of  God's 
 Revelation  ?  Let  the  reader  turn  to  the  book  itself ;  and  though 
 he  may  not  find  these  infallible  predictions  —  which  he  may  be 
 sure  he  would  have  found,  if  they  had  been  essential  to  God's 
 communication  of  Himself  to  man  —  yet,  he  will  find,  reflected 
 in  each  page,  the  light  of  that  Holy  Spirit,  which  in  all  ages 
 has  taught,  and  now  teaches,  the  hearts  of  His  faithful  people, 
 and  so  grants  them  to  have  a  right  judgment  in  all  things,  and 
 to  rejoice  evermore  in  His  holy  comfort  |;  and  he  will  find  that, 
 as  the  same  light  in  his  own  heart  brings  him  into  sympathy  and 
 intelligence  with  the  meaning  of  what  is  recorded  in  those  pages, 
 they  do  reveal  to  him  something  of  God's  character  and  mind, 
 and  of  His  designs  and  dealings  with  man,  which  neither  he, 
 nor  any  one  else,  has  known,  except  by  their  means.  If  the 
 miraculous  prediction  were  there,  it  would  be  but  the  sign :  but 
 we  have  the  Inspiration  and  the  Revelation  themselves,  super- 
 seding all  signs. 
 
 If,  then,  we  take  the  prophecy  before  us  to  be  of  the  same 
 kind  as  those  which  have  preceded  it,  our  historical  remains  are 
 quite  sufficient  to  bring  Tyre  into  cotemporary  connection  with 
 Isaiah,  and  quite  sufficient  to  preserve  that  connection  onward 
 through  successive  ages,  without  our  demanding  any  proof  that 
 
 *  Isaiah,  x.  28  —  34.  |  Collect  for  Whitsundny. 
 
236  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 cither  Shalnianeser,  or  Nebuchadnezzar,  did,  or  did  not,  take  the 
 city,  and  without  being  anxious  for  the  confirmation  of  the 
 reading  of  Sennacherib's  account,  much  as  it  is  to  the  purpose. 
 
 Isaiah  sees  the  city  and  country  of  Tyre  in  the  power  of  the 
 enemy,  and  tells  the  fleets  home-bound  from  the  western  colo- 
 nies, that  they  will  learn,  when  they  are  off  Cyprus,  that  their 
 own  harbours  and  hearths  are  desolate.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
 Island-Hock  are  silenced,  by  the  ruin  of  its  merchants  who 
 made  Egypt  its  never  failing  granary  —  barren  rock  as  it  was  — 
 by  making  it  a  mart  of  nations.  c  The  Black'  (Sihor)  was  the 
 Greek  and  Latin,  as  well  as  the  Hebrew,  name  for  the  Nile, 
 with  its  fertilising  black  mud ;  and  we  notice  Isaiah's  wonted 
 poetic  taste  in  minute  points,  in  calling  the  Egyptian  harvest 
 f  the  harvest  of  the  river,'  and  not  of  the  earth.  His  next 
 image  is  bold  and  grand  enough :  he  calls  the  nation  of  sailors 
 whose  dwellings  were  their  ships,  and  their  chief  city  an  island, 
 '  the  sea;'  explaining  (lest  it  should  be  too  bold)  that  he  means 
 the  'stronghold  of  the  sea.'  It  is  doubted  whether  verse  5. 
 means  that  when  the  tidings  reach  Egypt,  the  Egyptians  will  be 
 grieved  at  the  ruin  of  their  great  market ;  or,  that  the  alarm  in 
 Phcnicia,  or  among  the  nations  generally,  Avill  be  as  great  as 
 when  on  some  former  occasion  —  whether  the  fall  of  No- Amnion 
 lately,  or  even  the  destruction  of  Pharaoh  at  the  lied  Sea  — 
 the  like  news  was  heard  of  Egypt,  famous  to  the  world,  and  of 
 which  the  prosperity  was  so  important  to  the  Tyrian  commerce. 
 
 Herodotus  and  Strabo  speak  of  kings  in  the  smaller  Pheni- 
 cian  cities,  as  well  as  in  the  colonies  of  Tartessus,  Citium,  and 
 Carthage;  and  we  Englishmen  need  not  go  to  Genoa  or  Venice, 
 with  their  doges  and  senates,  their  kings  of  Corsica  and  Greek 
 dependencies,  for  examples  of  a  nation  of  merchants  who  are 
 princes  and  dispensers  of  crowns :  —  we  need  only  look  at  the 
 '  Company  of  Merchants  trading  to  the  East  Indies,'  extending 
 their  rule  over  a  great  continent,  and  there  setting  up  and  pull- 
 ing down  kings  and  emperors  at  their  will.  Tyre  (like  other 
 nations)  was  noted  for  the  severity  with  which  she  ruled  her 
 dependencies ;  but  now  their  bonds  are  loosed,  and  the  prophet 
 tells  Tarshish,  which,  with  its  natives  working  as  slaves  in  the 
 Spanish  silver  mines,  may  have  been  the  hardest  treated  of  all, 
 that  she   is   free   as   the   Nile,  the  river  that  least  regards  any 
 
ISAIAH    XXIII.:    THE    LADY    OF    KINGDOMS.  237 
 
 bounds,  to  wander  at  her  own  sweet  will.*  And  the  proud 
 queen  of  cities  herself,  she  who  so  long  sat  in  glory,  rejoicing 
 in  her  wealth  and  power,  and  in  that  antiquity  of  which  the 
 Phenicians  were  so  proud,  shall  fly,  a  dishonoured  woman,  and 
 on  foot,  for  refuge  to  her  colonies  —  to  Tarshiah  or  to  Chittim 
 —  but  even  there  shall  find  no  rest.  For  the  enemy  may  pursue 
 her,  and  the  colony  may  retaliate  for  its  past  wrongs,  of  which, 
 in  fact,  we  see  an  instance  at  the  date  of  this  prophecy,  when 
 Cyprus  and  the  cities  of  Phenicia  assisted  Shalmaneser  in  the 
 siege  of  Tyre,  as  has  been  mentioned  above. 
 
 The  word  translated  f  merchant'  in  verses  8  and  11,  is  «  Ca- 
 naan '  in  the  Hebrew,  which  Gesenius  illustrates  by  the  like  use 
 of  Chaldean  for  Astrologer  ;  and  of  Jew,  Swiss,  Savoyard,  and 
 Italian,  to  indicate  various  modern  callings :  at  the.  same  time 
 he  observes  that  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  name  Canaan  may, 
 according  to  its  etymology,  mean  the  land,  or  people,  of  traders. 
 
 It  is  the  Lord  of  hosts,  whose  counsels  bring  this  ruin  upon 
 Tyre  ;  and  His  instruments  are  the  Chaldeans,  at  this  time 
 vassals  and  auxiliaries  of  the  Assyrians,  and  whose  modern 
 establishment  at  Babylon  is  contrasted  with  the  antiquity  of  the 
 nation  they  destroy.  The  Chaldeans  may,  or  may  not  have 
 been  specially  employed  by  Shalmaneser  or  Sennacherib  in  the 
 siege  of  Tyre  ;  they  no  doubt  served  in  his  armies,  as  the  tribes 
 of  Elam  and  Media  did.  As  I  have  already  noticed  this  mention 
 of  the  Chaldeans,  when  considering  chapter  xiii.,  I  will  here 
 only  point  out,  that  it  is  exactly  analogous  to  that  of  Elam  and 
 Kir  in  the  last  chapter;  and  that  there  is  no  more  necessity  in 
 the  one  case,  than  in  the  other,  for  supposing  that  the  prophet's 
 phraseology  must,  if  taken  without  prejudice,  indicate  the  nation 
 chiefly  interested  in  the  war,  and  not  a  dependent  people  who 
 were  serving  as  auxiliaries. 
 
 Tyre  shall  be  forgotten  '  seventy  years,  according  to  the  days 
 of  a  king ; '  —  a  Hebrew  idiom,  obscure  to  us,  though  probably 
 plain  enough  to  Isaiah's  hearers ;  but  of  which  the  most  pro- 
 bable sense  is,  that  the  round  number  here,  as  elsewhere,  indicates 
 an  indefinite,  though  considerable  time,  and  that  the  prophet 
 farther  limits  this  by  a  phrase  equivalent  to   '  for  about  a  whole 
 
 *    "The  river  wandering  at  its  own  sweet  will."  — Wordsworth. 
 
233  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 generation.'  *  The  days  of  a  king,'  the  representative  of  a  na- 
 tion, seems  fitter  to  express  '  for  a  generation '  than  *  the  days 
 of  a  man '  would  have  been :  and  we  may  compare  the  phrase 
 with  *  the  days  of  a  hireling,'  in  chapters  xvi.  14.,  xxi.  16.; 
 
 *  as  the  years  of  a  hireling  mean  years  computed  strictly,  so 
 the  days  of  a  king  may  mean  days  computed  freely.'  At 
 the  end  of  this  time,  the  Lord  will  visit  Tyre :  the  old  alliance, 
 
 *  the  brotherly  covenant,'  shall  be  renewed  with  Israel,  and 
 Tyre  shall  share  with  the  other  nations  of  the  earth  the  bless- 
 ings which  Isaiah  promises  to  them  all  in  turn,  when  they  shall 
 have  come,  through  sufferings,  to  the  knowledge  of  the  God  of 
 Israel.  Then  Israel  will  have  a  part  in  the  worldly  prosperity 
 of  Tyre,  as  Tyre  in  her  spiritual.  This  restoration  of  Tyre 
 is  foretold  by  a  strange  though  expressive  image :  —  at  the 
 end  of  seventy  years  Tyre  shall  again  play  the  harlot  with  all 
 the  nations  of  the  earth :  and  her  gains  shall  be  holiness  to  the 
 Lord.  The  harlot  *  converts  into  a  matter  of  traffic  what  should 
 be  a  sacred  relationship :  so  trade  brings  men  together  merely  as 
 buyer  and  seller,  not  as  brethren  ;  and  consequently  rapidly  de- 
 generates from  self-interest  into  selfishness,  unless  it  be  perpe- 
 tually counter-balanced  by  other  and  nobler  aims  in  the  man. 
 The  Hebrew  lawgivers  and  prophets  saw  that,  in  their  times, 
 and  for  their  nation,  such  counterpoises  could  not  be  made 
 effectual,  and  therefore  discouraged  commerce  itself:  and  the 
 contemptuous  image  of  the  harlot  implies  this  feeling  here, 
 though  we  have  at  the  same  time  the  recognition  that  trade  is 
 not  essentially  evil  in  the  declaration  that  its  gains  shall  be  de- 
 dicated to  the  Lord.  The  Mosaic  law  which  expressly  forbid 
 the  offering  to  the  Lord  the  gains  of  a  harlot,  may  tell  us  that 
 Isaiah  has  here  laid  aside  his  illustration,  as  poets  and  orators 
 do,  as  soon  as  the  momentary  purpose  is  served,  though  to  the 
 perplexity  of  their  prosaic  commentators.  The  explanation  that 
 verse  16.  is  not  Isaiah's  address  to  Tyre,  but  an  extract  from 
 some  popular  song  of  the  day  called  '  the  harlot's  song,'  is  pre- 
 ferred by  the  modern  translators. 
 
 *  Harlot  is 'hire-lot,' and  originally  synonymous  with  'hireling.'  Chaucer 
 says  of  the  '  Sompnour,'  or  servant  of  the  ecclesiastical  court, 
 "  He  was  a  gentle  harlot,  and  a  kind." 
 
ISAIAH   XXIV— XXVII. :    DESOLATION   OF   JUDAH.        239 
 
 CHAPTER  XVIII. 
 
 UTTER  DESOLATION  OF  JUDAH — ACTUALLY  CAUSED  BY  TOE  ASSYRIAN  ARMIES. 
 
 NATIONAL     COVENANT.    BROKEN    BY    AHAZ HE     SHUTS    THE    TEMPLE. 
 
 GOD'S  COUNSELS  OF  OLD. MOAB  PUT  FOR  ASSYRIA. — PATIENCE  IN  NATIONAL 
 
 CALAMITIES.  —  THE     WIFE    DIVORCED,    AND     TAKEN     BACK. THE     SILVER 
 
 TRUMPET  SOUNDED.  —  EXPANSION  OF  ISAIAHS  VIEWS. 
 
 Isaiah  xxiv.  to  xxvii. :  —  It  is  agreed  that  these  chapters  form 
 a  continuous  discourse.  The  older  controversy  as  to  its  subject, 
 has  naturally  produced  the  modern  one  —  in  which  the  rationa- 
 lists differ  among  themselves  as  well  as  from  the  orthodox  —  as 
 to  its  date  and  author.  A  clear  summary  of  these,  with  refer- 
 ences to  the  writers  in  whom  they  can  be  studied  at  large,  is 
 given  by  Professor  Alexander :  to  this,  and  to  his  admirable 
 and  conclusive  judgment,  that  the  higher  criticism,  as  to  the  style 
 and  authorship,  has  here  proved  itself  to  be  arbitrary  and  worth- 
 less; while  the  endless  diversity  of  opinions,  as  to  the  subject  of 
 the  prophecy,  show  that  it  is  generic,  and  not  to  be  restricted  to 
 one  particular  event ;  I  refer  the  reader. 
 
 Let  us,  then,  return  to  the  simple  method,  which  has  hitherto 
 reconciled  the  essential  parts  of  all  the  various  views,  instead  of 
 compelling  us  to  choose  one  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest;  and 
 here,  as  before,  take  the  text  as  it  stands,  and  consider  that 
 Isaiah  is,  as  usual,  setting  forth  —  forth-telling  rather  than 
 foretelling — universal  laws,  with  a  special  (and  to  us  chiefly 
 illustrative)  application  to  his  own  times. 
 
 The  contents  agree  well  with  the  date,  which  is  indicated  by 
 the  place  of  the  prophecy  in  the  book :  —  namely,  about  the 
 time  that  Sennacherib  was  besieging  Lachish  or  Libnah,  and 
 after  the  fall  of  Ashdod.  Ashdod  was  about  thirty  miles  from 
 Jerusalem ;  and  Samaria,  which  fell  into  the  power  of  the  As- 
 syrians, and  became  available  as  one  of  their  military  posts  and 
 bases  of  operation,  in  the  sixth  year  of  Ilezekiah,  was  nearly 
 
240  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 the  same  distance.  And  as  Lachish  and  Libnali  were  nearer 
 than  either,  Ave  have  only  to  remember  the  extent  of  ground 
 that  a  large  army  covers,  and  the  way  in  which  even  modern 
 Christian  armies,  and  much  more  those  of  ancient  barbarians, 
 sweep,  and  always  used  to  sweep,  whole  countries  with  '  the 
 besom  of  destruction,'  to  understand  that  Isaiah's  picture  of 
 what  he  and  his  fellow  citizens  were  seeing  around  them,  and 
 daily  expecting,  is  no  exaggeration  of  reality.  Facts,  at  such 
 times,  go  beyond  the  strongest  imagination.  And  we  shall  have 
 a  more  accurate  conception  of  the  state  of  things,  if  we  re- 
 member that  this  last  invasion  of  Sennacherib  came  upon  a 
 people  already  exhausted  by  the  repeated  calamities  which,  from 
 the  end  of  the  reign  of  Jotham,  had  fallen  on  them  from  every 
 quarter.  We  may  here  look  back  with  advantage  to  chapter  i., 
 which,  whatever  its  date,  describes  precisely  the  condition  of 
 Judea  and  Jerusalem,  about  the  fourteenth  year  of  Hezekiah's 
 reign. 
 
 The  Hebrew  employs  the  same  word  for  '  earth '  and  '  land,' 
 and  our  own  translators,  like  others,  approach  this  poetic  inde- 
 finiteness,  by  giving  sometimes  one,  and  sometimes  the  other.  I 
 might  repeat  a  like  remark  as  to  the  interchange  of  the  future 
 and  preterite  tenses;  but  hope  the  reader,  even  if  unacquainted 
 with  the  original,  has  already  sufficiently  realised  this  charac- 
 teristic, to  find  it  a  help  rather  than  a  hindrance  to  his  enjoyment 
 and  appreciation  of  the  Hebrew  seers. 
 
 The  Lord  is  come  to  judge  his  people.  Ahaz  shut  up  the 
 Temple,  and  altogether  changed  the  national  worship  for  ido- 
 latry :  and  though  this  public  and  open  '  transgression  of  the 
 laws,  change  of  the  ordinance,  and  breach  of  the  covenant' 
 with  the  Lord  of  the  nation,  was  publicly  atoned  for  by  He- 
 zekiah,  yet  there  was  but  too  much  evidence  that  the  greater 
 part  of  the  people  were  still,  as  to  heart  and  faith,  better  repre- 
 sented by  Ahaz  than  by  his  pious  son  and  successor  :  and  there- 
 fore the  Lord  was  *  turning  upside  down  '  the  whole  country — 
 man  and  beast,  cultivated  fields  and  walled  cities,  political  order 
 and  social  relations  —  emptying  out  and  scattering  its  contents, 
 as  if  it  were  a  bottle,  or  other  vessel.  The  prophet  sees  Jeru- 
 salem in  confusion,  taken  by  assault,  and  the  people  in  voluntary 
 exile  or  captivity. 
 
ISAIAII    XXV.  :    GOD'S    COUNSELS    OF    OLD.  241 
 
 But  from  the  beginning  it  was  a  part  of  his  office  to  preach  that 
 s  a  remnant  should  return/  and  (whether  alluding  or  not  to  any- 
 passing  event  we  cannot  now  say)  he  sees  this  remnant,  brought 
 through  suffering  to  the  knowledge  of  their  Lord,  and  raising 
 songs  of  praise  to  Him  in  the  various  lands  in  which  they  are 
 scattered.  Their  lot  seems  to  him  even  better  than  his  own  and 
 that  of  his  countrymen  at  home  ;  for  at  home  the  spoiler  and  the 
 '  treacherous  dealer '  are  upon  them,  they  are  hunted  from  one 
 refuge  to  another,  and  the  windows  of  heaven  are  opened  as  in 
 the  days  of  Noah,  and  the  foundations  of  the  earth  shaken  as 
 with  a  universal  earthquake  :  — 
 
 Broken,  all  broken  is  the  earth  ; 
 
 Shattered,  all  shattered  is  the  earth  ; 
 
 The  earth  doth  quake,  doth  quake  exceedingly ; 
 
 The  earth  doth  reel,  doth  reel,  like  a  drunken  man, 
 
 And  swayeth  to  and  fro  like  a  hammock. 
 
 Such  is  the  more  literal  rendering ;  the  verbs  (as  in  verse  3.)  are 
 repeated  in  the  intensive  form,  in  the  Hebrew  ;  and  I  do  not 
 see  that  its  wild  force  is  not  admissible  into  an  English  version. 
 The  hammock  (the  same  word  as  in  chap.  i.  8.)  is  still  used 
 thoughout  the  East  by  the  night-watchers  of  vineyards. 
 
 In  that  day  the  Lord  will  come  to  judge  both  the  haughty 
 and  worldly  nobles  of  Judah,  and  also  the  still  more  haughty 
 and  worldly  kings  of  the  earth,  who  have  been  the  instruments 
 of  His  righteous  judgments  :  they  shall  be  visited  first  with 
 punishment,  and  afterwards  with  pardon,  while  the  Lord  of 
 hosts  shall  establish  His  kingdom  in  Zion,  and  call  His  servants 
 —  the  Hezekiahs,  Eliakims,  Isaiahs,  and  the  body  of  faithful 
 and  holy  men,  in  that  as  in  every  other  age  —  to  be  His  se- 
 nators,  His  council  and  fellow-workers  in  His  glorious  reign. 
 
 The  prophet  speaks,  or  writes,  in  the  actual,  and  apparently 
 increasing,  desolation  of  his  own  country  :  but  he  has  such  clear 
 and  bright  views  of  God's  counsels  and  plans  from  the  beginning, 
 and  of  the  wonderful  way  in  which  He  works  them  out  in  faith- 
 ful conformity  to  His  original  design,  that  they  present  them- 
 selves to  his  illumined  eye  as  already  accomplished  :  and  while 
 he  sees  the  Lord  reigning  gloriously  in  Jerusalem  on  the  one 
 hand,  on  the  other  he   contemplates  the  defenced  cities  of  the 
 
 R 
 
242  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 terrible  nations  —  Babylon  or  Nineveh,  and  the  whole  polity  of 
 arbitrary  godless  power,  which  they  represent  —  reduced  to  a 
 heap  of  ruins ;  and  the  furious  rage  of  those  nations  which  was 
 now  breaking  upon  Judea  like  a  hurricane,  he  sees  brought 
 down  as  quietly  and  as  completely  as  the  burning  heat  of  an 
 Eastern  sun  is  subdued  by  the  shadow  of  a  cloud.  And  thus 
 passing  from  images  of  violence  to  those  of  gentleness,  he  con- 
 templates the  day  when  all  the  nations  and  peoples  over  whom 
 the  dark  covering  of  that  heathen  tyranny  is  now  spread,  shall 
 come  up  to  keep  the  feast  at  Jerusalem,  in  fellowship  with  Israel, 
 and  shall  there  rejoice  with  them  in  worshipping  the  Lord  and 
 receiving  His  laws.  The  Assyrians  themselves  do  not  seem  to 
 be  included  here,  or  in  any  part  of  these  chapters,  among  the  na- 
 tions to  be  thus  blessed;  unless  it  be  in  verse  22.  of  chapter  xxiv., 
 and  there  it  is  doubtful  if  such  be  the  meaning.  The  faith 
 that  even  Assyria  was  eventually  to  become  a  part  with  Israel 
 of  the  inheritance  of  the  Lord,  is  unequivocally  expressed  in 
 chapter  xix.  :  but  we  cannot  wonder  that  Isaiah  should  have 
 ordinarily  spoken  of  this  cruel  tyranny  as  merely  evil  and  ob- 
 noxious to  entire  destruction :  nay,  we  may  say,  that — consi- 
 dering the  unavoidable  limitations  which  control  human  thought 
 and  language — less  extreme  denunciations  would  not  have  de- 
 clared,  in  the  way  which  the  circumstances  of  Isaiah  and  his 
 countrymen  needed,  that  the  Lord  was  the  righteous  and  un- 
 sparing judge  of  all  selfish,  godless,  tyranny  and  rapacity. 
 
 I  have  already  noticed  the  idiom  by  which,  in  all  probability, 
 Moab,  in  xxv.  10.,  is  put  for  Assyria,  as  Babylon  in  the  Book 
 of  Revelation  means  Rome.  Isaiah's  exuberance  of  imagi- 
 nation, and  love  of  concreteness  —  elsewhere  exhibited  by  such 
 names  as  e  The  desert  of  the  sea,'  '  The  valley  of  vision,'  '  Ariel 
 the  city  where  David  dwelt,'  —  may  sufficiently  account  for  the 
 usage  :  but  it  is  worth  while  to  consider  that  in  times  of  strong 
 and  deep  religious  enthusiasm,  such  as  our  Civil  War,  or  the 
 days  of  Wesley  and  Whitfield,  when  men  would  be  more  than 
 usually  apt  to  choose  the  most  expressive,  instead  of  merely  tra- 
 ditional phrases,  these  concrete  symbols  become  especial  fa- 
 vourites. The  '  fortress  '  in  verse  12.,  and  the  '  lofty  city  '  of 
 verse  5.  in  the  next  chapter,  arc  plainly  the  same  as  the  '  palace 
 of  strangers,'  and  '  city  of  the  terrible  nations,'  above.     With 
 
ISAIAH   XXVI.:    PATIENCE    IN    NATIONAL    WOES.  243 
 
 these,  and  their  fall,  Isaiah  now  contrasts  the  strong  city  in  the 
 land  of  Judah,  which  has  the  salvation  of  Jehovah  for  its  walls 
 and   bulwarks.     And  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  people  of 
 Judah,  a  song,  such  as  they  were  accustomed  to  sing,  as  they 
 went  up  from  their  houses  to  the  temple,  in  festive  procession, 
 to  worship.     It  was  not  very  long  since  Hezekiah  had  opened  the 
 gates  of  the  temple,  shut  by  the  profane  Ahaz,  and  had  renewed 
 the  public  worship  of  the  Lord  with  burnt  offerings  accompa- 
 nied by  '  the  song   of  the  Lord,'  and  with  trumpets   and  the 
 instruments  of  David  *  :   but  on  less  grave  occasions  than  their 
 return  from  national  apostasy,   the  opening  of  the  gates  of  the 
 temple  to  receive  the  procession  of  worshippers  seems  to  have 
 been  a  solemn  ceremonial f  ;  and  here  Isaiah  represents  the  tem- 
 ple  receiving  the  redeemed  and    righteous   nation,    which   by 
 keeping  to  its  faith  and  trust  in  the  Lord,  has  obtained  peace  of 
 heart  instead  of  the  miserable  state  of  anxiety,  and  national 
 deliverance  instead  of  the  foreign  oppression,  described  in  chap- 
 ter xxiv.     The  Temple,  and  Jerusalem  itself,  stand  on  a  rock ; 
 but  their  true  foundation  is  the  Rock  of  Ages,  Jehovah  Him- 
 self.     The  image  of  the  tyrant  city  brought  to  the  dust,  and 
 trodden  by  the  feet  of  the  poor,  suggests  the  thought  of  the 
 path  in  which  those  feet  had  previously  been  walking.     It  led 
 through  the   midst  of  God's  judgments,  through  a  land  'de- 
 voured by  the  curse ;'  but  they  waited  patiently,  and  found  that 
 God  was  leading  them  all  the  way,  and  making  the  path  level 
 and  straight  before  them  as  they  went.     The   '  waiting  '  sug- 
 gests a  new  image  :  during  the  long  night  of  Assyrian  oppression, 
 their  soul  had  longed  for  rest,  or  for  the  morning  to  close  a  night 
 in  which  no  rest  was  possible ;  and  with  the  first  dawn  of  de- 
 liverance,   their    spirit   would    spring   forth    to    new    activity, 
 desirous  to   practise  the   righteousness  it  had  learnt  through 
 affliction.     But   there  are  some  so  reprobate  that  neither  cor- 
 rection nor  mercy  will  teach  them  righteousness :  even  in  the 
 restored  and  holy  nation  they  will  continue  their  evil  doings, 
 their  selfishness  and  their  oppression  of  the  poor,  and  will  refuse 
 to  recognise  the  invisible  King  and  His  laws  :  and  therefore  the 
 zeal   of  the  Lord  in  the  restoration  of  His  true  people  shall 
 
 *  Chron.  xxix.  3.  27—30.  t  Psalm,  xxiv.  G,  7.  9.,  cxviii.  19. 
 
 R  2 
 
244  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 prove  a  consuming  fire  to  destroy  these  His  enemies.  Verse  12. 
 corresponds  with  our  prayer, '  Give  peace  in  our  time,  O  Lord, 
 for  there  is  none  other  that  fighteth  for  us,  but  only  Thou,  O 
 God  : '  other  lords  have  had  dominion  over  the  nation,  because 
 it  has  chosen  other  gods ;  but  henceforth  Judah  will  worship  no 
 God  but  the  Loud,  and  He  will  again  be  both  God  and  King 
 to  her,  while  those  other  kings  and  gods  are  become  dead  men 
 and  spectres,  never  to  rise  to  life  and  power  again.  The  word 
 translated  '  deceased '  in  verse  14,  and  '  dead '  at  the  end  of 
 verse  19*,  is  '  rephaim,'  and  means  both  'giants'  and  'silent 
 ones  ; '  so  that  it  expresses  a  notion  something  like  that  of  our 
 word  '  spectres : '  this  word,  and  other  parts  of  the  imagery, 
 indicate  a  connection  between  these  verses,  and  the  21st;  and 
 there  will  not  be  much  difficulty  in  following  this  connection,  if 
 Ave  remember  that  it  is  an  under-current  of  poetical  imagination, 
 and  not  a  series  of  dry  syllogisms ;  and  that,  as  is  usual  with 
 Isaiah,  there  is  a  certain  alternation  of  ideas,  which  makes  the 
 light  and  dark,  the  present  and  the  future,  of  the  vision,  rise 
 and  fall  like  the  waves  of  the  sea.  Thus,  no  sooner  has  the 
 thought  of  the  destroyed  heathens  suggested  that  of  the  in- 
 creased numbers  and  prosperity  of  Israel,  than  the  prophet  is 
 reminded  that,  instead  of  their  being  able  to  rejoice  in  any  such 
 increase,  they  are  like  women  who  have  not  brought  forth  chil- 
 dren, and  whose  prayers  f  and  pains  are  without  result :  but  im- 
 mediately his  confidence  revives  :  —  Judah's  dead,  and  shades  of 
 the  dead,  the  dwellers  in  the  grave  and  the  unseen  world,  are 
 not  like  Assyria's  dead ;  for  a  dew,  such  as  makes  the  grass 
 grow,  is  fallen  upon  them,  and  they  shall  '  awake  and  sing,'  — 
 Judah  shall  not  merely  bring  forth  more  children  in  the  place  of 
 those  she  has  lost,  but  the  very  earth  shall  give  birth  to  those 
 already  dead.     Yet   the  present  is  a  time  of  affliction  :  —  Yes, 
 
 *  As  in  chap.  xiv.  9. 
 
 f  A  whispered  prayer :  "  beautifully  expi'cssivc,"  says  Alexander,  "  of 
 submissive,  humble  prayer,  like  that  of  Hannah  when  '  she  spake  in  her 
 heart  and  only  her  lips  moved  but  her  voice  was  not  heard,'  although,  as  she 
 said  herself,  '  she  poured  out  her  soul  before  God,'  which  is  the  exact  sense 
 of  J-lpV  in  this  place.  A  like  expression  is  applied  to  prayer  in  the  title 
 of  Psalm  cii."  The  whole  description  of  Hannah,  1  Samuel  i.,  is  most 
 apposite. 
 
ISAIAH  XXVII.  :    THE  WIFE  DIVORCED,  AND  TAKEN  BACK.    245 
 
 but  only  for  e  a  little  moment ; '  and  the  Lord's  people  have 
 only  to  wait  patiently,  and  they  will  see  Him  come  to  deliver 
 them,  and  to  punish  all  evil-doers ;  and  then  the  earth  will 
 disclose  and  give  up  her  slain  for  another  purpose  —  that  they 
 may  rise  in  the  judgment  against  the  tyrants  of  whose  guilt 
 there  seemed  no  evidence.  The  '  song  '  which  began  in  verse  1. 
 is  usually  considered  to  end  with  verse  19.,  while  verse  20.  de- 
 clares, in  the  Lord's  name,  that  it  is  only  necessary  to  wait  a 
 short  time  for  '  that  day '  in  which  the  song  may  be  fitly  sung  : 
 but  I  have  some  doubt  whether  these  precise,  classic-like,  de- 
 marcations, are  not  as  foreign  to  the  Hebrew  and  prophetic 
 genius  as  they  are  difficult  to  determine  without  arbitrary  changes 
 of  the  literal  sense  of  the  text.  The  '  entering  into  the  cham- 
 bers' may,  not  improbably,  allude  to  the  command  that  the 
 children  of  Israel  should  not  go  out  during  the  night  of  the 
 destruction  of  the  first-born  of  Egypt :  and  if  we  do  not,  with 
 Grotius,  suppose  another  allusion  to  Hezekiah's  shutting  him- 
 self within  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  till  Sennacherib's  army  was 
 cut  off,  the  correspondence  of  the  two  may  perhaps  be  attributed 
 to  the  influence  which  a  poet's  imagination  must  always  feel 
 from  the  important  events  about  him  at  the  time.  The  idea  of 
 the  Lord,  the  king,  leaving  His  royal  residence,  visiting  the 
 places  where  crime  has  been  committed,  and  judging  and  exe- 
 cuting sentence  on  the  criminal,  we  have  had  before. 
 
 Leviathan,  which  in  Job  means  the  crocodile,  here  stands  for 
 a  great  sea-serpent  or  dragon,  and  thus  represents  the  Assyrian 
 power.  As  regards  the  various  controversies  on  verses  3,  4,  5. 
 of  this  (27th)  chapter,  it  is  enough  for  me  to  refer  to  what  I 
 have  said  above  and  elsewhere,  as  to  the  attempts  at  classical 
 demarcations ;  and  to  observe  that  the  briars  and  thorns  seem 
 to  be  the  evil  part  of  the  Jewish  nation,  which  needed  to  be 
 cleared  out  of  the  vineyard,  rather  than  the  foreign  power 
 which  was  made  the  instrument  of  that  clearance.  The  '  taking 
 hold  of  my  strength  '  is  best  explained  by  the  double  image  of 
 taking  refuge  in  a  fortress,  and  at  the  horns  of  the  altar.  The 
 idea  in  verse  8.  is  by  Ewald  and  Alexander  explained  to  be  that 
 of  the  Lord  inflicting  on  His  faithless  bride  the  moderate  punish- 
 ment of  a  divorce,  for  which  '  contending '  and  e  sending  away ' 
 are  the  legal  phrases :  —  the  latter  commentator  adds  that  the 
 
 R  3 
 
24.6  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 temporariness  of  the  punishment  Is  indicated  by  'the  day  of 
 the  east  wind,'  as  though  (I  suppose)  the  duration  was  limited 
 by  the  time  of  the  storm.  The  result  of  this  punishment  shall 
 be  that  the  images,  or  the  groves,  of  Baal  and  Astarte  shall  be 
 thrown  down,  and  their  altars  broken  up,  and  the  fragments 
 scattered  about  like  the  chalkstones  which  (as  Strabo  mentions) 
 were  familiar  objects  on  the  ground  near  Jerusalem.  But  the 
 heathen  enemies  of  Israel  are  incapable  of  reformation,  because 
 they  are  '  a  people  of  no  understanding  :'  and  therefore  the  pro- 
 phet foretells  their  utter  destruction  :  he  transfers  to  them  the 
 image  of  the  vineyard,  and  pictures  it  as  the  prey  of  the 
 weakest  destroyers  (compare  s  feet  of  the  needy  '  above):  — the 
 calf  shall  browse  on  the  green  vines,  and  when  they  are  withered, 
 the  women  shall  gather  them  for  firewood.  In  that  day  the 
 Lord  will  gather  (literally  f  beat,'  or  '  thresh,'  as  the  manner 
 was)  the  fruit  of  His  oliveyards,  and  gather  the  remnant  of 
 His  own  people  from  the  north  to  the  south,  collecting  them 
 with  such  care  —  literally  '  one  to  one,'  —  that  not  one  shall  be 
 lost.  The  great  silver  trumpet,  the  blast  of  which,  from  the 
 days  of  Moses  in  the  wilderness,  had  gathered  the  princes  to 
 council,  mustered  the  hosts  in  the  camp,  or  called  the  Loud 
 and  His  people  to  remember  the  national  covenant  '  in  the  day 
 of  their  gladness,  in  their  solemn  days,  and  over  the  sacrifices 
 of  their  burnt  offerings  and  their  peace  offerings,'  *  shall  be 
 heard  in  that  day  of  the  Lord,  — 
 
 And  they  shall  come  which  were  ready  to  perish  in  the  land  of 
 
 Assyria, 
 And  the  outcasts  in  the  land  of  Egypt, 
 And  shall  worship  the  Lord  in  the  holy  mount  at  Jerusalem. 
 
 It  would  be  no  less  silly  than  dishonest  to  pretend  that  these 
 chapters  are  by  Isaiah,  if  there  were  evidence  to  the  contrary : 
 and  if  their  genuineness  were  merely  doubtful,  avc  must  ab- 
 stain from  drawing  from  them  any  of  those  historical  or  biogra- 
 phical conclusions  which  authentic  documents  might  supply  as 
 to  the  times  and  character  of  the  writer.  But  in  as  far  as  I 
 may  venture  to   form  an  opinion,  I  must  say,  that  the  sceptical 
 
 *  Numbers,  x.  1  —  10. ;  Jeremiah  iv.  5. ;  Joel,  ii.  1, 15. 
 
EXPANSION   OP    ISAIAH'S   VIEWS.  247 
 
 criticism  has  not,  as  to  these  chapters,  even  an  appearance  of 
 more  than  ingenious  trifling ;  the  arguments  founded  on  asserted 
 peculiarities  of  style  and  diction  in  the  original,  are,  as  usual,  met 
 by  counter-arguments,  or  positive  denials  of  the  facts,  on  the 
 part  of  the  orthodox  scholars,  as  well  as  of  the  non-orthodox  Ro- 
 senmuller :  my  own  views  on  the  possibility  of  proving  anything 
 by  such  argumen  ts  I  have  already  stated.  And  therefore,  since 
 Isaiah's  name  is  on  all  the  old,  genuine  title-pages,  and  only 
 omitted  in  the  modern,  spurious  ones,  let  the  reader  keep,  like 
 me,  within  the  limits  of  ordinary,  matter-of-fact,  common-sense, 
 English  criticism,  and  then  he  will  see  something  better  worth 
 his  notice  than  whole  continents  of  cloud-land.  This  is,  the  fact, 
 that  while  we  recognise,  throughout  these  chapters,  the  old 
 familiar  features  —  the  accustomed  political  faith  and  poetic 
 genius  —  of  Isaiah,  we  see  how  '  the  years  that  bring  the  philo- 
 sophic mind,'  and  still  more  the  sufferings,  personal  and  national, 
 which  are  God's  opportunity  for  developing  the  spiritual  life, 
 were  now  telling  upon  the  prophet.  The  tone  is  more  subdued, 
 and  gentler ;  the  evangelical  temper  shows  itself  increasingly 
 through  the  patriotic ;  political  events  are  more  subordinate  to 
 the  universal  life  of  things ;  and  the  national  faith  in  the  Lord 
 of  Judah  and  the  Jew,  is  brought  into  more  intimate  dependence 
 on  the  deeper  trust  in  Him  as  the  LoPvD  of  the  Church  and  of 
 the  spirit  of  man. 
 
 That  a  like  religious  temper  of  mind  might  be  properly  attri- 
 buted to  an  imaginary  prophet,  living  in  Babylon  during  the 
 exile,  or  in  Jerusalem  in  the  time  of  Cambyses,  I  allow :  but 
 historical  fact,  and  coherent  romance,  are  not  the  same  thing. 
 
 e  4 
 
248  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  XIX. 
 
 THE  POLITICAL,  MORAL,  AND  RELIGIOUS    STATE    AND    PROSPECTS    OF   JUDAII. 
 
 ARIEL,   THE    LION    OF    GOD. WORLDLY    STATE-CRAFT. TRUE     INSIGHT. 
 
 THE  EMBASSY  TO  EGYPT. PERSECUTION  OF  THE  PROPHETS. DUMB  IDOLS 
 
 AND  THE  UNSEEN  TEACHER.  THE  HOLY   SOLEMNITIES TALMUDICAL  AC- 
 COUNT OF  FESTIVE  PROCESSIONS. THE  STROKE  OF  DOOM  ON  SENNACHERIB. 
 
 THE  REAL    DELIVERER.  —  SOCIAL    INFLUENCE     OF    WOMEN.  THE     SIEGE 
 
 RAISED. EDOM  PUT  FOR  ASSYRIA. RETURN  OF  THE  RANSOMED  CAPTIVES. 
 
 Isaiah  xxviii.  to  xxxv.  —  The  correspondence  of  thoughts 
 and  images,  and  the  unity  of  subject  and  sentiment,  mark  these 
 eight  chapters  as  successive  paragraphs  or  sections  of  one  pro- 
 phecy ;  and  the  whole  contents  accord  with  the  date  indicated 
 by  their  place  in  the  book.  The  reader  will  give  the  advocates 
 of  other  views  such  a  hearing  as  he  thinks  fittino;. 
 
 Chapter  xxviii.  The  travellers'  descriptions  of  the  beauty 
 of  the  hill  and  valley  of  Samaria,  have  probably  strengthened 
 the  temptation  of  modern  commentators  to  adhere  to  the  literal 
 explanation  of  the  phrase  «  drunkards  of  Ephraim,'  in  spite  of 
 the  difficulty  it  involves  as  to  the  date  of  the  prophecy.  This 
 difficulty  is  then  best  got  over  in  the  way  I  have  pointed  out  as 
 to  chapter  xvii. ;  but  the  phrase  is  exactly  analogous  to  '  men  of 
 Sodom,'  in  chapter  i.,  as  well  as  to  the  ordinary  language  of  all 
 the  Hebrew  writers,  and  may  be  taken  without  any  violence  to 
 mean  the  leading  men  of  Jerusalem,  to  whom  all  the  rest  of  the 
 chapter  relates.  Isaiah  fuses  into  one  image,  the  heads  of  the 
 nation,  crowned  with  flowers  at  their  habitual  debauches,  and 
 the  capital  cities  —  Samaria  and  Jerusalem  —  each  reposin"  in 
 its  fertile  valley,  and  crowned  with  a  chaplet  of  towers  inter- 
 twined with  vines  and  olives :  the  flowers  arc  of  themselves 
 fading,  and  the  Loud  will  follow  up  on  Judah  the  punishment 
 He  has  already  inflicted  upon  Ephraim,  by  casting  their  revellers' 
 crowns  to  the  ground  with  a  strong  hand,  and  trampling  them 
 under  foot : —  employing  as  his  instrument  the  overwhelming 
 
ISAIAH   XXVIII.  :    THE   DRUNKARDS   OF    EPIIRAIM.        249 
 
 flood  of  Assyrian  invasion.  Yet  this  wrath  is  but  the  means  of 
 love :  its  purpose  is  that  the  Lord  Himself  may  become  the 
 crown  of  glory  and  the  diadem  of  beauty  to  all  those  who  — 
 not  being  utteiTy  corrupt  —  shall  remain  from  this  purification 
 of  the  land.  In  that  day  He  will  be  wisdom  to  the  judge,  and 
 in  His  strength  the  soldier  shall  turn  back  the  tide  of  battle  to 
 the  enemy's  gate.* 
 
 But  at  present  not  only  are  these  —  the  hereditary  nobles  and 
 heads  of  tribes,  and  the  elected  or  appointed  judges  —  wanting 
 alike  in  military  ability,  and  in  judicial  uprightness,  but  the 
 priests  (including  the  Levites)  and  the  prophets  —  the  ministers 
 of  national  worship,  and  the  teachers  and  controllers  of  educa- 
 tion of  the  whole  people  —  are  ecpaally  e  gone  out  of  the  way 
 through  strong  drink.'  Drunkenness  was  no  doubt  literally  the 
 habitual  vice  of  the  higher  orders  in  Isaiah's  time  ;  and  then,  as 
 in  all  times,  it  was  the  symbol  of  every  kind  of  debased  subjec- 
 tion of  the  human,  to  the  animal,  nature.  Such  nobles  could  not 
 govern ;  such  judges  could  not  administer,  nor  such  priests  ex- 
 pound, the  law ;  nor  was  any  '  vision '  possible  to  prophets  in 
 whom  the  eye  of  reason  and  of  faith  was  thus  obscured.  Lowth's 
 explanation,  that  verses  9.  and  1 0.  are  a  scoffing  speech  of  the 
 drunken  prophets,  is  usually  preferred  :  but  I  have  some  doubt, 
 as  I  have  before  said,  whether  these  dramatic  speeches  are  not 
 often  inventions  of  the  commentators ;  and  the  sense  is  as  clear, 
 if  we  understand  Isaiah  to  ask  how  it  is  possible  in  this  general 
 debasement  to  find  any  one  capable  of  learning  true  widom,  and 
 then  to  add  (in  the  tone  of  remonstrance  adopted  in  the  epistle 
 to  the  Hebrews),  that  though  the  nation  wras  no  longer  in  its 
 infancy,  and  ought  to  be  capable  of  manly  knowledge,  yet  it  did 
 in  fact  require  to  be  instructed  again  in  the  very  rudiments, 
 and  to  have  these  impressed  on  it  by  perpetual  repetition.  And 
 then  —  whether  the  thought  is  suggested  by  that  of  drunken  and 
 scoffing  stutterers,  or  of  children  unapt  to  learn  —  he  tells  them 
 that  the  Lord  will  send  them  a  teacher  who  shall  speak  to  them 
 with  the  barbarous  Assyrian  tongue :  they  will  then  hear  words 
 very  different  from  those  which  they  now  despise,  because  they 
 proclaim,  '  This  is  the  rest ;    cause    the    weary  to  rest ; '    and 
 
 *  2  Sam.  xi.  23.;  2  Kings,  xviii.  8. 
 
250  IIEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 they  will  then  find  these  repeated  warnings  become  their  con- 
 demnation, because  they  will  have  deprived  them  of  all  ex- 
 cuse. 
 
 He  anticipates  the  answer   of  *  the  scornful  men  that  rule 
 this  people  in  Jerusalem  ; '  for  has  he  not  heard  it  often  enough, 
 year  after  year  ?    It  was  their  policy  which  in  the  time  of  Ahaz 
 had  delivered  Judah  from   her  imminent  danger  by  bringing 
 Tio-lath-Pileser  upon  Syria  and  Ephraim  :  and  if  it  was  at  the 
 sacrifice  of  Judah's  independence,  and  at  the  price  of  much  tri- 
 bute, to  say  nothing  of  the  destruction  of  the  sister-people  of 
 their  own  race,  yet  these  evils  were  nothing  in  comparison  of 
 the  advantages  ;  for  they  touched  them  —  the  rich  nobles  in 
 Jerusalem  —  but  little,  seeing  they  had  the  land  and  the  remain- 
 ing wealth  of  the  country  accumulated  in  their  hands,  and  could, 
 by   suitable  perversion   of  the  law,   wring  out  from   the  poor 
 enough  means  of  luxury  to  last  their  time,  whatever  might  hap- 
 pen afterwards.     Besides,  they  had  not  only  secured  themselves 
 by  a  treaty   with  that  personification  of   death  and  hell,  the 
 Assyrian,  but  they  had  outwitted  him,  —  for  what  chance  could 
 a  mere  barbarian  soldier  have  against  the  deep-laid  policy  of  an 
 old,  long-civilised    state?    they  were    in    communication  with 
 Egypt  and  Ethiopia,  and  at  the  proper  time,  they  would  bring 
 the  armies  of  Tirhakeh  to  free  them  from  the  power  of  Senna- 
 cherib.    And  to  this   the  prophet  replies,  that  when  the  storm 
 does  sweep  over  the  land,  as  it  assuredly  will,  these  '  refuges  of 
 lies '  will  prove  no  shelter  to  their  builders ;  they  have  been 
 tried  by  the  plummet  of  honesty  and  righteousness,  and  found 
 to  be  so  out  of  line  that  they  must  come  down  :  but  meanwhile, 
 nay  from  of  old,  the  Lord  has  Himself  founded  a  really  service- 
 able house  for   His  people — namely,  the  ancient  constitution 
 and  polity  of  which  He  himself  is  the  chief  corner-stone;  and 
 the  man  who  trusts   in  that  foundation,  believing  that  it  really 
 is  there,  will  not  be  urged  to  any  impatient  acts  of  panic,  what- 
 ever may  be  the  apparent  danger.     The  reader  will  remember 
 the  descriptions  of  the  enormous  corner-stones  in  ancient  Jew- 
 ish buildings:    and  will  compare  our  Lord's  parable  of  the 
 house  founded  on  the  rock.     There  is  a  doubt  whether  the  last 
 clause  in  verse  1 9.  can  be  fairly  translated  *  Only  to  hear  the 
 report  shall  be  a  distress;'  and  whether  it  is  not  better  to  read, 
 
ISAIAn   XXIX.  :    ARIEL,    THE    LION    OF    GOD.  251 
 
 '  And  affliction  alone  will  make  you  understand  doctrine,'  allud- 
 ing to  verse  9.,  where  the  last  two  words  of  the  original  are  the 
 same. 
 
 The  Lord  will  break  forth  upon  his  own  people,  as  he  did  in 
 old  times  upon  the  heathen  Philistines*  :  it  is  a  '  strange  work  ' 
 thus  to  afflict  and  destroy  the  people  of  His  love,  as  though  they 
 were  heathens  :  but  He  has  determined  to  do  it,  —  to  execute 
 justice  to  the  uttermost ;  therefore  let  the  mockers  take  heed 
 that  they  do  not  make  this  determination  more  stringent  upon 
 themselves,  by  persevering  in  their  evil  way.  Then  the  prophet 
 propounds  a  parable  :  the  husbandman  has  a  place,  and  a  time, 
 for  each  successive  operation  of  his  husbandry  ;  he  now  ploughs, 
 now  harrows,  sowing  one  seed  broad-cast,  and  another  in  rows ; 
 beats  out  the  corn  with  the  heavy  threshing-wain,  and  the 
 light  aniseed  (perhaps  used  then,  as  now  in  Italy,  to  flavour  the 
 bread  as  well  as  to  make  spirit)  with  a  rod  ;  and,  finally,  ceases 
 from  all  these  operations  when  all  are  completed,  and  the  corn 
 is  ready  to  be  ground  (or  actually  ground)  for  bread.  All  these 
 processes  —  in  which  we  notice  that  the  harsh  ones  of  breaking 
 up  both  the  land  and  the  grain  predominate  —  are  taught  the 
 husbandman  by  God;  and  their  order  and  skilful  arrangement 
 are  the  reflection  of  His  wisdom  and  plans.  Isaiah  leaves  it  to 
 his  hearers  to  apply  the  parable  to  their  own  case,  and  so  to 
 understand  how  the  Lord  is  regulating  all  His  dealings  with 
 the  nation,  to  the  end  that  He  too  may  gather  the  wheat  into 
 His  garner  at  last. 
 
 Chapter  xxix.  The  simplest  meaning  of  '  Ariel '  is  e  lion  of 
 God  ; '  but  it  also  signifies  '  hearth  of  God  '  when  derived  from 
 another  root.  In  the  former  sense  it  comes  to  mean  '  a  hero,' 
 as  in  2  Sam.  xxiii.  20.;  Isaiah  xxxiii.  7.;  and  in  the  latter  it 
 occurs  inEzekiel  xliii.  15,  16.,  for  the  brazen  hearth  of  the  great 
 altar  of  burnt  offerings,  thence  commonly  called  e  the  brazen,' 
 though  the  rest  of  it  was  of  stone.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Jeru- 
 salem is  pointed  out  by  this  enigmatical  name  ;  and  the  imme- 
 diate context,  as  well  as  the  expression  in  chapter  xxxi.  9.  — 
 *  the  Lord  whose  fire  is  in  Zion,  and  His  furnace  in  Jerusalem,' — 
 make  it  probable  that  Isaiah  intended  to  involve  both  meanings 
 
 *  2  Sam  v.  18—25.;   1  Chron.  xiv.  9—16. 
 
252  TIEBREAV   TOLITICS. 
 
 in  the  word,  as  though  he  had  said,  '  Woe  to  the  city  of  heroes, 
 woe  to  the  city  of  sacrifices :  it  shall  now  be  put  to  the  test 
 what  God  and  what  man  think  as  to  both.' 
 
 David,  that  lion  of  God,  had  first  encamped  against  Jerusa- 
 lem, and  then  made  it  the  abode  of  his  royal  house,  and  the 
 capital  of  his  kingdom  ;  so  that  it  became  itself  an  Ariel,  a  lion 
 of  God,  in  the  land  :  — 
 
 Judah  is  a  lion's  whelp  : 
 
 From  the  prey,  my  son,  thou  art  gone  up  : 
 
 He  stooped  down,  he  couched  as  a  lion, 
 
 And  as  an  old  lion  :  who  shall  rouse  him  up  ? 
 
 The  sceptre  shall  not  depart  from  Judah, 
 
 Nor  a  lawgiver  from  between  his  feet, 
 
 Until  Shiloh  come ; 
 
 And  unto  him  shall  the  gathering  of  the  people  be. 
 
 And  after  the  vicissitudes  of  300  years,  and  in  the  midst 
 of  present  dangers,  the  people  of  Jerusalem  were  still  con- 
 fident in  the  strength  of  their  '  lion  of  God,'  and  year  by 
 year  came  up  to  the  public  festivals  to  lay  their  accustomed 
 offerings  on  the  '  altar  of  God ; '  though  with  little  remembrance 
 that  it  was  not  in  the  altar  and  the  city,  but  in  the  Loud  Him- 
 self, that  David  put  trust,  and  found  his  strength.  Therefore 
 the  Lord  will  bring  Ariel  low ;  the  proud  roar  of  the  lion  shall 
 be  changed  for  the  weak,  stridulous  voice,  which  the  art  of  the 
 ventriloquising  necromancer  brings  out  of  the  ground ;  and  the 
 enemies  of  the  Lord  shall  be  sacrificed  and  consumed  on  the 
 hearth  of  His  altar.  First,  His  spiritual  enemies  among  the 
 Jews  themselves,  but  afterwards  the  heathen  oppressors  of  His 
 people ;  and  the  lion  shall  recover  his  God-derived  strength ; 
 and  thus  both  in  adversity  and  in  success,  e  it  shall  be  unto  me 
 as  Ariel.'  —  "  He  who  threatens  your  destruction  shall  vanish 
 like  a  dream,  'par  levibus  ventis  volucriquc  simillima  somno: ' 
 he  who  threatens  your  destruction  shall  awake  as  from  a  dream, 
 and  find  himself  cheated  of  his  expectations;  for — as  Grotius 
 beautifully  says — spes  sunt  vigil  an  tiu  in  somnia."* 
 
 *  Alexander  on  the  verse :  he  also  quotes  from  Barnes  a  passage  in  one 
 ofMungo  Park's  Journals: — "  No  sooner  had  I  shut  my  eyes  than  fancy 
 would  convey  me  to  the  streams  and  rivers  of  my  native  land.     There  as  I 
 
WORLDLY    CRAFT,    AND    TRUE    INSIGITT.  253 
 
 The  inhabitants  of  the  now  self-satisfied  city  draw  themselves 
 back  in  incredulous  and  contemptuous  -wonder  on  hearing 
 Isaiah's  warnings :  and  therefore  he  tells  them,  that  they,  their 
 rulers,  and  their  teachers,  are  so  besotted  —  not  with  the  tran- 
 sient effects  of  wine,  but  with  the  abiding  pressure  of  sin,  — 
 that  they  can  comprehend  nothing  of  God's  methods  and  pur- 
 poses. Where  no  vision  —  no  insight  into  the  divine  govern- 
 ment of  the  world  —  is,  the  people  perisheth  ;  and  such  is  the 
 present  condition  of  Jerusalem  and  Judah,  of  the  learned  and 
 the  unlearned  alike.  And  the  reason  is,  that  though  they  con- 
 tinue in  the  routine  observance  of  all  such  maxims  and  rules  of 
 morality  and  religion  as  the  existing  standards  of  social  respec- 
 tability demand  ;  yet  they  have  no  inward  love  and  fear  of  God 
 in  their  hearts.  They  wonder  how  Isaiah  can  pretend  to  teach 
 them,  the  wise  and  prudent ;  but  they  will  wonder  in  another 
 fashion  when  they  see  what  the  Lord  actually  does :  they  are 
 satisfied  that  their  astute  counsels,  though  hidden  as  it  seems 
 from  the  Lord,  are  quite  competent  to  meet  the  dangers  with 
 which  His  prophet  threatens  them  ;  but  they  will  find  that  it 
 is  not  from  the  Lord,  but  from  its  own  confusion  and  disgrace, 
 that  this  policy  will  have  to  hide  itself.  They  have  been  turning 
 things  upside  down  at  their  own  will :  they  put  bitter  for  sweet, 
 and  call  good,  evil :  they  rest  the  home  government,  and  the 
 social  prosperity  of  the  country,  upon  a  basis  of  oppression 
 of  the  poor  and  aggrandisement  of  the  rich  by  abuse  of  the 
 powers  of  law  and  order;  and  the  foreign  relations  of  the 
 state,  on  treaties  degrading  in  themselves,  and  never  intended  to 
 be  kept  faithfully,  with  Assyria  and  Egypt :  and  with  all  these 
 schemes  and  practices  they  mean  to  restore,  or  prop  up,  the 
 falling  condition  of  a  nation  which  has  never  yet  prospered,  ex- 
 cept by  adherence  to  the  old  fundamental  principle  of  its  con- 
 stitution,— faith  in  the  Lord,  and  in  the  covenant  by  which  He 
 became  their  King,  and  they  His  people,  with  mutual  rights 
 and  duties.  Isaiah  can  be  as  contemptuous  as  these  '  scornful 
 men '  themselves ;  and  he  tells  them  that  all  this  scheming,  all 
 
 wandered  along  the  verdant  bank,  I  surveyed  the  clear  stream  with  tran- 
 sport, and  hastened  to  swallow  the  delightful  draught ;  but,  alas !  disap- 
 pointment awaked  me,  and  I  found  myself  a  lonely  captive,  perishing  ot 
 thirst,  amid  the  wilds  of  Africa." 
 
254  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 this  turning  of  things  upside  down,  is  but  so  much  clay  in  the 
 hands  of  the  Potter,  who  will  do  just  what  He  originally  in- 
 tended, carrying  out  exactly  the  designs  laid  down  by  Him  from 
 the  first:  —  all  the  turning  upside  down  in  the  world  will  not 
 alter  the  relation  between  the  thing  made  and  its  maker.  In  a 
 very  little  while  there  shall,  indeed,  be  a  complete  reversion  of 
 the  present  state  of  things.  The  land  was  now  ruled  by  men 
 who  were  always  on  the  watch  for  iniquity  ;  who  made  a  man  ob- 
 noxious to  the  forms  of  law  for  trifles  which  had  no  criminal 
 intent,  in  order  to  bring  him  under  their  extortions  if  they 
 wanted  his  property,  or  under  their  crushing  power  if  they 
 Avished  to  silence  him,  because  he  dared  to  plead  for  justice,  or 
 rebuke  the  unjust  ruler  as  he  sat  in  the  gate  ;  and  this  force  was 
 constantly  used  in  the  one  case  and  the  other  (as  the  whole  his- 
 tory of  the  Jews  shows  us),  with  no  check  but  the  victim's 
 death.  But  these  men  shall  be  cut  off,  and  cease ;  the  Holy 
 One  of  Israel  will  re-establish  his  authority  ;  His  word  and  His 
 works  shall  be  heard  and  seen  of  all  men  ;  and  the  poor  and  the 
 meek  will  rejoice  in  His  protection  and  strength.  The  house  of 
 Jacob  might,  and  must,  be  brought  low  for  a  time,  for  its  sins ; 
 he  might  be  ashamed  at  his  humiliation,  and  his  face  might  wax 
 pale  at  the  prospect  of  his  name  being  put  out  from  among  the 
 nations,  through  the  slaughter  and  captivity  of  his  children  : 
 but  the  Lord  who  redeemed  Abraham  out  of  the  naturalism  in 
 which  he  was  living  with  the  rest  of  his  race,  who  gave  him  a 
 spiritual  position,  and  a  promise  to  him  and  to  his  children, 
 founded  on  that  spiritual  position, —  He  will  remember  His  pro- 
 mise, and  bring  back  to  Jacob  his  children ;  and  they  too,  like 
 their  first  fathers,  shall  be  seen  to  be  not  a  race  of  merely  natural, 
 earthly  creatures,  but  '  the  work  of  their  Lord's  hands,'  a 
 chosen,  spiritually  organised  people,  capable  of  true  wisdom  and 
 true  obedience,  and  of  actual  fellowship  and  communion  with 
 the  Holy  God. 
 
 Chapter  xxx.  begins  with  a  new  and  more  direct  denun- 
 ciation of  the  Egyptian  alliance,  devised  by  the  men  who 
 '  wove  a  wreb '  of  plots,  or  sought  to  '  cover  themselves  with  a 
 covering,'  which  Isaiah  called  '  a  refuge  of  lies,'  in  chap,  xxviii. 
 Zoan,  the  Tanis  of  the  Greeks,  was  a  royal  city,  and  one  of  the 
 most  ancient  of  Lower  Egypt.     Ilanes  is,  probably,  lines   or 
 
ISAIAH   XXX.    1—21.:    THE   EMBASSY   TO    EGYPT.         255 
 
 Ehnes,  the  Anysis  of  Herodotus,  and  the  Heracleopolis  which 
 was  the  capital  of  a  nome  of  Middle  Egypt,  and  a  royal 
 city,  as  may  be  inferred  from  Manetho's  mention  of  two  He- 
 racleote  dynasties.  And  if  there  were  two  or  more  cotem- 
 porary  kings  in  Egypt  at  this  period  (on  which  point  the  oppo- 
 sing facts  have  been  already  stated),  it  would  seem  not  unlikely 
 that  the  Jewish  ambassadors  may  have  sought  Tirhakeh  at  the 
 latter  city  ;  and,  at  the  former,  Sethos,  the  Tanitic  king  of 
 whose  invasion  by  Sennacherib  Herodotus  relates  the  well- 
 known  story. 
 
 The  beginning  of  verse  6.  may  be  rendered  either  '  Oh  the 
 burden  of  the  beasts,'  or  '  As  to  the  burden  of  the  beasts,'  the 
 word  burden  being  taken  literally,  to  describe  the  heavy  load  of 
 presents  which  they  were  carrying  through  the  difficulties  and 
 dangers  of  the  desert  between  Judea  and  Egypt.  If,  however, 
 there  were  any  reason  (which  there  is  not)  for  preferring  the 
 metaphorical  sense  of  *  prophecy,'  in  which  ' burden '  is  used 
 elsewhere,  there  is  still  no  occasion  to  suppose  a  marginal  gloss, 
 or  anything  more  than  a  phrase  of  a  form  somewhat  quaint  to 
 our  notions;  as  though  Isaiah  had  said,  —  'That  caravan  of 
 asses  and  camels  struggling  through  the  sandy  desert,  anion  o- 
 the  lions  and  serpents,  rises  before  me  like  a  distinct  vision, 
 and  deserves  an  episodic  paragraph  of  its  own. 
 
 'Rahab'  is  used  here,  as  elsewhere,  to  signify  Egypt;  but  it 
 is  uncertain  whether  it  is  an  Egyptian  word  and  name  of  the 
 country,  or  only  an  enigmatical  Hebrew  name,  like  '  Ariel.' 
 The  Hebrew  means  '  rage,'  or  '  insolence,'  and  thence,  in  the 
 opinion  of  some  of  the  most  eminent  authorities,  a  '  sea  monster.' 
 But  the  point  is  not  settled ;  and  it  remains  doubtful  whether 
 we  should  here  read,  '  Therefore  I  call  her  Rahab  the  inactive,' 
 or  '  the  blusterer  that  sitteth  still ; '  or  whether,  only  substi- 
 tuting e  Rahab '  for  '  strength  '  in  our  Authorised  Version,  we 
 should  understand  the  passage  to  mean,  '  Therefore  I  have  con- 
 stantly warned  the  Jews  that  their  true  Egypt,  their  true 
 security,  is  quiet  faith  in  the  Loed.' 
 
 Isaiah  then  goes  on  to  show  that  he  does  not  consider  this 
 alliance  with  Egypt  as  a  matter  of  mere  temporal  and  temporary 
 interest ;  great  principles,  laws  of  universal  application,  are  at 
 stake,  and  their  enunciation  is  worthy  to  be  recorded  in  the 
 
256  HEBREW    TOLITICS. 
 
 most  public  and  the  most  permanent  ways;  — on  the  wooden  or 
 brass  table,  where  he  that  runs  may  read,  and  in  the  parchment- 
 roll  for  future  and  quiet  study,  '  that  it  may  be  for  the  time  to 
 come  for  ever  and  ever.'  He  remarks  the  state  of  heart  which 
 was  dictating  their  whole  policy ;  their  trust  in  Egypt  abroad, 
 and  in  'oppression  and  perverseness'  at  home:  he  tells  them 
 their  whole  life  is  a  rebellion  and  a  lie;  and  that  they  are 
 carrying  this  lie  to  its  height,  when  they  call  on  their  seers  and 
 prophets,  the  national  teachers  and  preachers,  to  help  them  in 
 their  work, — to  tell  them  no  more  of  the  right,  but  only  of  the 
 smooth,  path :  nay,  call  on  them  to  leave  the  narrow,  irksome 
 way  themselves,  and  to  employ  their  office  and  powers  in 
 guiding  them  in  that  pleasant  road  by  which  they  will  escape 
 from  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  and  His  wearisome  claims  upon 
 their  consciences.  To  themselves  their  condition  seems  that  of 
 a  strong  and  high  wall,  which  can  resist  any  violence  from 
 without ;  but  the  prophet  discerns,  what  they  in  their  blindness 
 cannot,  that  there  is  a  crack  beginning  within,  and  that  this 
 internal  pressure  of  their  moral  and  social  iniquity  will,  ere 
 long,  make  their  wall  bulge  out,  and  come  down  in  over- 
 whelming ruin  in  an  instant,  and  when  least  expected. 
 
 The  expressions  in  verses  20  and  21.  are  among  the  indica- 
 tions I  have  already  noticed,  that,  in  the  time  at  which  Isaiah 
 spoke,  such  prophets  as  remained  faithful  in  the  general  corrup- 
 tion were  repressed  and  silenced  by  persecution.  These  allu- 
 sions might  at  first  sight  appear  a  reason  for  referring  this 
 prophecy  to  the  reign  of  Ahaz,  when  the  Temple  was  shut  up, 
 and  the  high  priest  himself  assisted  in  new  and  unlawful  rites ; 
 but  if  we  remember  that  the  power  of  the  worldly  irreligious 
 nobles  of  that  period  was  still  unbroken,  we  shall  (as  I  have 
 also  noticed)  find  no  difficulty  in  understanding  how  much 
 persecution  of  the  spiritual  teachers  would  be  still  carried  on  in 
 spite  of  Ilezekiah ;  and  Isaiah's  encouraging  tone  as  to  the 
 spiritual  aspect  of  things,  in  contrast  with  the  temporal  afflic- 
 tions he  foretells,  shows  that  he  saw  signs  (and  if  he  saw  them, 
 they  were  there)  that  the  tide  was  about  to  turn,  just  as  he 
 must  have  done  when  he  denounced  Shebna.  For  we  shall 
 have  a  very  unreal  notion  of  the  Jewish  kings  and  people,  if 
 we  suppose  that   their  national   character,    even   in   its   most 
 
isai.  xxx.  22—26. :  idols,  and  the  unseen  teacher.  257 
 
 spiritual  features,  changed  about  instantly  with  a  change  of 
 the  occupant  of  the  throne.  It  takes  a  generation  to  make  any- 
 such  important  change,  and  especially  in  so  tough  and  inde- 
 pendent a  race  as  the  Jews  always  were.  And,  lastly,  it  must 
 be  noticed  that  the  teachers  were  as  much  'removed  into  a 
 corner'  by  their  own  corruptness  as  by  persecution. 
 
 Jeremiah  describes  the  idols  as  plated,  or  ornamented,  with 
 plates  of  gold  and  silver,  and  dressed  in  garments  of  blue  and 
 purple.  When  Josiah  was  purging  the  land  from  idolatry,  he 
 is  said  to  have  '  defiled '  the  altars  and  high  places  by  burning 
 men's  bones  on  them,  by  which  act  he  at  once  expressed  con- 
 tempt, and  prevented  their  being  again  employed  for  the  same 
 purpose.  But  these  idols  of  which  Isaiah  now  speaks,  are  the 
 private  household  gods,  which  a  merely  national  and  public 
 reform,  like  that  of  Hezekiah  or  Josiah,  could  never  touch. 
 
 Contrasted  with  these  dumb  idols  on  the  one  hand,  and  on 
 the  other  with  the  faithful  teachers  of  the  restored  and  con- 
 verted people,  is  the  still  small  voice  of  God  himself:  the  word 
 which  each  man  shall  hear  for  himself  in  the  inmost  recesses  of 
 his  heart,  as  of  an  invisible  guide  continually  directing  him  at 
 every  step,  that  he  diverge  not  the  least  from  the  straight 
 path. 
 
 The  promise  in  verse  23.  probably  alludes,  as  so  many  other 
 passages  do,  to  the  way  in  which  the  land  actually  lay  waste  in 
 those  days,  whether  ravaged  by  the  enemy,  or  not  cultivated, 
 because  men  had  no  heart  to  sow  where  they  could  not  hope 
 to  reap :  and  this  picture  of  peaceful  husbandry  becomes  a 
 symbol  of  the  political  prosperity  which  should  follow  the  over- 
 throw of  the  Assyrians;  while  both  —  as  the  connection  with 
 verses  20  and  21.  shows  —  are  types  of  the  spiritual  blessings 
 which  the  prophet  knew  to  be  more  worthy  than  either.  As 
 the  prison- fare,  the  'bread  of  adversity  and  the  water  of  afflic- 
 tion,' were  the  tokens  of  God's  wrath,  so  this  succeeding  plenty 
 is  of  His  favour,  and  of  His  actually  feeding  their  souls  with 
 the  bread  of  life.  Then  shall  the  Spirit,  the  divine  life  of 
 which  the  Indwelling  Word  is  the  source,  be  poured  out  like 
 rivers  and  streams  of  water,  and  fertilise  the  soul  as  they  do 
 the  hills.  To  realise  the  full  force  of  this  favourite  image  of 
 the  sudden  pouring  out  of  rivers,  we  must  remember  that  in 
 
 s 
 
258  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 southern  countries,  ravines  which  have  been  dry  for  the  whole 
 summer,  are  suddenly  turned  into  deep  rivers.  The  flood  comes 
 clown  all  at  once. 
 
 It  is  the  Name,  the  power,  and  presence  of  the  Lord,  coming 
 from  far,  because  there  was  no  man  at  hand  to  help,  which  shall 
 work  the  hoped  for,  and  promised,  deliverance.  By  a  fusion  of 
 one  image  with  another,  the  judgments  of  the  Lord  upon  the 
 devastators  of  Israel,  are  described  as  a  fierce  fire  with  its 
 mingled  flame  and  smoke  heavily  ascending ;  as  the  sentence 
 of  a  king  whose  word  is  death  to  the  criminal ;  as  an  over- 
 whelming torrent,  like  that  to  which  the  Assyrian  himself  was 
 formerly  compared*;  as  a  sieve  in  which  the  corn  shall  not  be 
 sifted  from  the  chaff,  but  a  sheer  riddance  made  of  both,  while 
 both  (as  the  ancient  manner  was)  are  exposed  to  the  wind — the 
 blast  of  '  His  breath  ; '  and  as  a  bridle,  not  to  guide  them  aright, 
 but  to  lead  them  to  their  own  destruction. 
 
 In  contrast  with  this  punishment  of  the  great  oppressor, 
 stands  the  joy  of  the  delivered  nation  :  — 
 
 Ye  shall  have  a  song,  as  in  the  night  when  a  holy  solemnity  is 
 
 kept; 
 And  gladness  of  heart,  as  when  one  goeth  with  a  pipe, 
 To  come  into  the  mountain  of  the  Lord,  to  the  Rock  of  Israel. 
 
 All  the  festivals  were  kept  '  from  even  to  even,'  this  being  the 
 Jewish  method  of  reckoning  the  day,  as  we  see  in  the  first 
 chapter  of  Genesis,  where  the  day  is  always  said  to  begin  with 
 the  evening.  Thus  the  Sabbath  began  on  Friday  evening, 
 and  lasted  till  Saturday  evening.  But  the  passover  was  in  a 
 special  manner  the  '  holy  solemnity  kept  in  the  night,'  and  from 
 Matthew  xxvi.  30.,  as  well  as  from  the  still  existing  practice  of 
 the  Jews,  we  know  that  a  hymn  was  sung  at  the  end  of  the 
 supper.  These  are  but  the  more  literal  signs  that  Isaiah 
 throughout  this  passage  (verses  27  to  33)  is  connecting  the  now 
 near  prospect  of  their  deliverance  from  the  Assyrian,  with  the 
 old  deliverance  which  the  Lord  wrought  for  them  in  the  days 
 of  Moses  and  Pharaoh.  This  connection  was  subsequently 
 recognised  in  the  preservation  (or  it  may  be  origination)  of  the 
 tradition  that  Sennacherib's  army  was  destroyed  on  the  night  of 
 
 *  Chap.  viii.  8. 
 
isaiah  xxx.  27 — 33.:  the  holy  solemnities.    259 
 
 the  passover  :  and  if  we  enter  into  the  spirit  of  those  awfully 
 magnificent  11th  and  12th  chapters  of  Exodus,  and  into  the 
 thoughts  and  hopes  which  were  kept  alive  in  the  soul  of  every 
 earnest  Hebrew  by  the  sacramental  institution  in  which  that 
 national  deliverance  was  perennially  recorded,  we  shall  be  able 
 to  realise  something  of  the  depth  of  meaning  conveyed  by 
 Isaiah  to  those  who  heard  him,  in  the  words,  i  Ye  shall  have  a 
 song,  as  in  the  night  when  a  holy  solemnity  is  kept.'  But  there 
 were  other  festivals  which,  though  not  less  religious,  called  for 
 more  '  lightness  of  heart '  than  the  passover.  A  tradition*, 
 which  is  so  exact  a  counterpart  of  the  various  passages  in  the 
 Old  Testament  referring  to  the  same  and  like  subjects,  that  its 
 accuracy  can  hardly  be  questioned,  enables  us  to  picture  to  the 
 life  the  scene  which,  in  Isaiah's  times,  might  have  been  witnessed 
 all  over  the  country,  on  the  eve  of  the  yearly  feasts.  When 
 the  season  for  presenting  the  first-fruits  to  the  Lord  and  King 
 of  the  nation  arrived,  the  country-people  assembled  themselves 
 in  some  chief  village  or  town  of  their  tribe.  The  men  were 
 required  by  the  strict  law  of  Moses  to  appear  three  times 
 yearly  before  the  Lord,  and  they  would  be  accompanied  by 
 many  of  their  wives  and  daughters,  whether  actuated,  like 
 Hannah,  by  the  desire  to  offer  some  vow,  or  dedicate  a  first-born 
 son  in  person,  or  only  by  the  wish  to  see  the  great  City  on  an 
 occasion  when  the  traders  thronged  its  fairs,  and  the  holiday- 
 makers  its  feasts,  as  well  as  the  worshippers  its  Temple.  The 
 party  thus  assembled  passed  the  night  before  they  went  up  to 
 Jerusalem,  in  the  streets,  not  to  contract  any  ceremonial  de- 
 filement :  at  daybreak  the  head  man  of  the  company, — perhaps 
 the  village  Levite — awakened  them  with  the  words,  'Rise,  let 
 us  go  up  to  Zion,  to  the  Lord  our  God ; '  and  they  set  forward 
 in  a  choral  procession.  A  bull  with  gilded  horns,  crowned  with 
 olive  leaves,  went  first ;  a  piper  playing  on  the  pipe,  the  damsels 
 with  their  timbrels,  and  the  bearers  of  the  baskets  of  wheat  and 
 grapes  and  the  jars  of  honey  or  oil,  followed  after  ;  and  the 
 sacred  dance  kept  time  with  the  voices  of  the  alternate  choirs 
 as  they  sang,  '  I  was  glad  when  they  said  unto  me,  Let  us  go  up 
 into  the  house  of  the  Lord.'    The  simultaneous  and  silent  halt, 
 
 *  Quoted  by  Vitringa,  from  the  Talmudical  Tract  Biccurim. 
 
260  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 the  prostration  in  prayer,  the  burst  of  weeping,  which  in  the 
 present  day  mark  the  arrival  of  a  party  of  Jewish  pilgrims  on 
 the  first  rising  ground  which  commands  a  view  of  Jerusalem,  is 
 the  melancholy  shadow  of  the  exultation  with  which  their 
 forefathers  lifted  up  their  eyes  to  the  hills  of  Zion  from  the 
 same  spots,  and  saw  the  '  city  compact  together,'  with  "  peace 
 within  her  walls  and  prosperity  in  her  palaces.'  The  song  was 
 frequently  repeated  as  they  drew  near  the  city  ;  and  as  '  their 
 feet  stood  within  its  gates '  the  people  of  Jerusalem  welcomed 
 them  with  shouts  and  the  priests  with  honour,  and  they  pro- 
 ceeded to  present  their  offerings  before  the  Lord,  '  at  the  same 
 time  reciting  the  confession  in  the  form  prescribed  by  Moses.' 
 The  Psalms  called  in  our  version  '  Songs  of  Degrees,'  that  is, 
 'of  steps,'  or  c marches,'  are  all  illustrated  by  this  traditional 
 account  of  the  use  of  the  one  *  here  quoted ;  for  all  are  suitable 
 for  various  occasions  of  solemn  processions  to  the  Temple :  and 
 other  Psalms  such  as  lxviii.  are  easiest  understood  in  like  manner; 
 while  the  subject  has  farther  light  thrown  on  it  by  the  historical 
 description  of  the  processions  composed,  not  of  a  few  villagers, 
 but  of  the  army  or  of  the  nation,  under  its  nobles,  and  headed 
 by  a  David,  a  Solomon,  or  a  Jehoshaphat.f 
 
 And  then  Isaiah  unites  these  images  with  those  of  the  de- 
 struction of  the  Assyrian  by  the  glorious  might  of  the  Lord  ; 
 each  stroke  of  the  '  rod  of  doom '  which  now  falls  on  him  who 
 '  smote  the  nations  with  a  perpetual  stroke,'  is  accompanied  by 
 a  burst  of  triumphal  music  \ ;  and  he  sees  the  chariots  and 
 armies,  and  the  bodies  of  their  owners,  consumed  in  the  fire  of 
 God's  wrath,  as  the  filth  of  the  city  was  consumed  in  fires  kept 
 constantly  burning  for  that  purpose  in  the  valley  of  Hinnom, 
 on  the  spot  which  had  formerly  been  polluted  by  the  sacrifice  of 
 children  to  Moloch. 
 
 Chapter  xxxi.  If  the  whole  land  between  Memphis  and 
 Thebes  was  filled  with  the  king's  stables,  and  if  Thebes  itself 
 
 *  Psalm  cxxii.  I  do  not  mean  to  pronounce  peremptorily  on  the  ques- 
 tions as  to  the  meaning  of  this  title. 
 
 f  1  Chron.  xv.  xvi. ;  2  Chron.  v.  vi.  vii. ;  xx.  27,  28. 
 
 |  "  The  Boeotians  and  other  neighbours  .  .  .  danced  to  the  sound  of  joyful 
 music  when  the  walls  [of  Peineus]  were  demolished."  —  Grote's  Hist,  of 
 Greece,  ix.  449. 
 
ISAIA.H  XXXI.,  XXXII.  :    SOCIAL    INFLUENCE    OF    WOMEN.      261 
 
 could  (as  Homer  says)  send  two  hundred  warriors  with  chariots 
 and  horses,  out  of  each  of  its  hundred  gates,  and  if  the  astute 
 politicians  at  Jerusalem  were  combining  with  the  wise  coun- 
 cillors of  Egypt  to  make  these  forces  available  against  the 
 common  enemy,  yet  all  this  would  be  of  no  use.  The  Lord 
 too  has  His  policy  and  plans  from  which  He  swerves  not,  and 
 which  He  does  not  carry  out  under  the  direction  of  worldly 
 men,  nor  by  their  help.  He  will  first  let  the  nation  learn  the 
 vanity  of  trusting  in  an  arm  of  flesh,  and  then,  when  they  begin 
 to  turn  to  Him  from  whom  they  have  so  deeply  revolted,  He 
 will  come  to  save  them,  as  of  old.  The  commentators  have  so 
 repeatedly  analysed  the  various  parts  of  the  group  of  poetic 
 images  of  which  this  chapter  consists,  that  I  shall  perhaps 
 hardly  be  excused  for  adverting  to  the  renewed  allusion  to  the 
 passover,  when  the  prophet,  in  describing  the  action  of  the 
 mother-bird  which  hovers  over  her  nest,  uses  the  word  which 
 gave  the  name  to  that  institution. 
 
 Chapter  xxxii.  The  deliverance  of  Judah  is  to  be  effected, 
 not  by  Shebna  and  his  supporters  at  home  and  abroad,  but  by 
 the  right  hand  of  the  Lord  of  the  nation  :  its  condition,  on  the 
 side  of  the  nation,  is  not  the  diplomacy  of  those  rulers  and 
 councillors,  but  a  national  and  personal  turning  from  idols  to 
 the  true  God;  and  its  result  will  be,  not  the  confirmation  of 
 the  wealth  and  power  of  the  selfish  worldly  men  as  they  hoped, 
 nor  the  removal  of  the  still  existing  restraints  on  their  habits  of 
 aggrandising  and  enjoying  themselves  without  regard  to  God 
 or  man,  while  they  defied  the  one  and  oppressed  the  other ; — 
 but  the  establishment  of  righteousness  throughout  the  land,  the 
 king  and  his  princes  ruling  in  justice  and  humanity,  the  priests 
 and  prophets  teaching  even  the  most  ignorant  to  '  understand 
 knowledge ;'  and  the  whole  of  society  showing  that  moral  re- 
 formation which  is  never  more  certainly  indicated  than  by  the 
 right  use  of  those  words  which  denote  men's  moral  qualities. 
 We  have  seen  what  Thucydides  says  on  this  point;  but  we  have 
 only  to  look  at  home  to  see  how  our  neighbours  and  ourselves 
 give  all  such  words  as  conscience,  morality,  honour,  virtue, 
 charity,  justice,  religion,  a  meaning  base  or  noble,  in  exact 
 correspondence  with  the  speaker's  own  moral  state. 
 
 Men  have,  more  than  women,  to  do  with  specific  movements 
 
 s  3 
 
262  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 and  changes  in  a  nation's  social  life  ;  but  the  regular,  ordinary, 
 ceaseless  current  of  that  life  is  carried  forward  by  women :  the 
 women  whom  Isaiah  now  addresses,  were  at  ease  in  the  midst  of 
 the  imminent  invasion  and  siege,  because  the  calamity  had  not 
 yet  touched  them. :  their  vintage  had  not  yet  failed  ;  the  *  careless 
 daughters '  of  Jerusalem  still  found  their  wonted  luxuries  and 
 enjoyments  in  the  palaces  of  the  crowded  and  joyous  city  ;  and 
 by  this  carelessness  of  the  future  while  the  present  was  so  to 
 their  taste,  they  did  but  reflect,  as  in  a  mirror,  the  like  worldly 
 condition  of  their  fathers,  husbands,  brothers.  Therefore  the 
 prophet  warns  them  that  a  day  of  trouble  is  coming,  which  will 
 touch  them  nearly  enough  ;  —  a  day  of  social  and  domestic,  as 
 well  as  of  political  affliction,  when  those  rich  and  luxurious 
 ladies  will  be  seen  clad  in  sackcloth,  alike  indicating  the  po- 
 verty into  which  they  have  fallen,  and  the  grief  with  which 
 they  mourn  the  various  other  calamities  which  war,  and  its 
 attendant  famine,  have  brought  into  their  once  prosperous 
 homes.  But,  again,  the  promise  follows  close  on  the  threatening: 
 these  woes  may  last  for  a  long  and  indefinite  time  (as  the  word 
 rendered  '  for  ever '  properly  implies)  ;  but  at  last  '  the  spirit 
 will  be  poured  on  the  nations  from  on  high ; '  the  whole  land 
 shall  be  fruitful  with  righteousness,  and  with  peace  the  effect  of 
 righteousness ;  and  the  wife  and  the  mother,  no  longer  *  care  • 
 less,'  but  having  found  the  blessedness  of  trusting  in  the  true 
 source  of  peace,  shall  again  know,  after  a  better  manner  than 
 before,  what  it  is  to  '  dwell  in  a  peaceable  habitation,  and  in 
 quiet  resting-places.'  Yet  they  must  expect  this  blessing  in 
 the  midst  of  humiliations,  and  on  condition  of  much  patient 
 labour ;  they  must  be  ready  to  sow  —  nay,  if  need  be,  to  reap 
 —  the  seed  of  repentance,  and  faith,  and  of  a  new  life,  -while 
 the  storm  is  still  beating  down  all  their  former  worldly  pro- 
 sperity. 
 
 The  fact,  that  this  prediction  of  the  impending  destruction  of 
 Jerusalem,  has  been  handed  down  to  us  by  Isaiah,  or  his  dis- 
 ciples, though  they  knew  that  it  was  not  fulfilled ;  and  that  they 
 have  themselves  taken  care  to  assure  us  that  it  was  not  fulfilled 
 by  any  event  of  their  oWn  day ;  shows  clearly  that  they  had 
 little  notion  that  prophecy  was  the  literal  prediction  of  such 
 events,  and  still  less  that  such  literal  coincidence  between  pre- 
 
ISAIAH    XXXIII.:    TDE    GREAT    SPOILER    SPOILED.        263 
 
 diction  and  event,  was  the  test  ot  the  speakers  words  being 
 a  true  message  from  God. 
 
 Chapter  xxxiii.  As  the  conclusion  to  this  series  of  woes 
 against  the  various  classes  whose  sins  had  brought  the  Assyrian 
 invasion  upon  the  country  as  God's  appropriate  instrument  of 
 punishment,  succeeds  the  prophet's  triumphant  denunciation 
 of  still  fuller  woe  upon  the  great  spoiler  himself.  He  has 
 reached  the  very  climax  of  his  power,  and  no  longer  conceals  his 
 ultimate  designs  against  Judah :  and  the  baffled  ambassadors  of 
 Hezekiah  return  to  their  master  to  report  with  weeping,  that 
 Sennacherib  indeed  had  taken  the  tribute  and  presents  with 
 which  they  hoped  to  purchase  his  departure,  but  was  not  the 
 less  actively  pressing  the  siege  of  the  fortresses  in  the  south  of 
 Judah,  which  were  foiling  one  after  another  into  his  hands ; 
 that  his  hordes  of  barbarian  cavalry  were  sweeping  the  whole 
 country,  so  that  it  was  no  longer  possible  for  the  peasant  to 
 work  in  the  fields,  nor  for  the  traveller  to  pass  along  the  high 
 roads  * ;  and  that  it  was  now  his  avowed  intention  to  carry  out 
 the  complete  policy  of  Assyrian  conquest,  by  transporting  the 
 native  inhabitants  to  some  other  country,  which  had  suffered 
 the  like  subjugation,  and  of  which  its  natives  would  in  turn 
 supply  their  place. 
 
 This,  says  the  prophet,  is  the  very  crisis  for  which  we  had  to 
 wait,  morning  after  morning :  the  Egyptian  alliance,  the  dip- 
 lomacy of  Shebna,  the  humiliation  and  submission  of  Hezekiah, 
 have  alike  proved  in  vain :  all  hope  of  help  from  man  is  past, 
 and  therefore  God's  time  is  come ;  the  Lord  of  the  nation 
 must,  and  will,  keep  His  covenant  now,  which  He  made  with 
 Abraham  and  his  seed  for  for  a  thousand  generations :  — 
 
 Now  will  I  rise,  saith  the  Lord  ; 
 
 Now  will  I  be  exalted  ;  now  will  I  lift  up  myself. 
 
 *  "  The  villages  and  the  Arab  tribes  had  not  suffered  less  than  the  towns- 
 people. The  pasha  was  accustomed  to  give  instructions  to  those  who  were 
 sent  to  collect  money,  in  three  words,  "  Go,  destroy,  eat"  (pillage)  ;  and  his 
 agents  were  not  generally  backward  in  entering  into  the  spirit  of  them. 
 The  tribes  who  had  been  attacked  and  plundered,  were  retaliating  upon 
 caravans  and  travellers,  or  laying  waste  the  cultivated  parts  of  the  pashalic. 
 The  villages  were  deserted,  and  the  roads  were  little  frerpiented  and  very 
 insecure."  —  Layard's  Nineveh  and  its  Remains,  vol.  i.  ch.  2. 
 
 s  4 
 
264  HEBBEW   POLITICS. 
 
 And  so  signal  will  be  the  manifestation  of  God's  power  ami 
 presence  in  the  destruction  of  this  enemy,  that  even  the  sinners 
 and  the  hypocrites  in  Zion  will  be  conscience-stricken  by  it, 
 and  be  made  to  know  in  their  hearts,  that  to  fell  into  the  hands 
 of  the  living  and  holy  Loed  is  more  to  be  dreaded  than  to 
 come  under  the  power  of  Sennacherib ;  but  the  righteous,  on 
 the  other  hand,  will  feel  and  know  that  he  can  dwell  with  the 
 devouring  fire,  for  it  is  a  fire  of  love,  and  not  of  wrath,  to  him  ; 
 and  to  him,  relying  wholly  on  that  love,  and  living  according  to 
 its  law,  the  deliverance  from  Sennacherib  will  be  the  symbol  of 
 his  spiritual  security.  In  the  day  of  trouble  he  has  a  high  and 
 strong  fortress,  which  no  enemy  can  scale,  and  where  neither 
 bread  nor  water  will  fail ;  and  the  day  of  deliverance  will  soon 
 follow,  to  restore  him  to  the  light  of  God's  countenance,  and 
 the  blessings  of  His  kingdom, — just  as  the  inhabitants  of  Jeru- 
 salem would,  when  the  siege  was  raised,  see  their  king  Heze- 
 kiah  again  in  the  robes  of  state  which  he  had  now  laid  aside  for 
 sackcloth  or  armour,  or  recovered  from  the  sickness  which  had 
 perhaps  already  attacked  him ;  and  would  be  able  to  go  abroad 
 at  will  into  the  country,  from  which  they  were  now  shut  up 
 within  the  walls  and  closed  gates  of  Jerusalem.*  Then  they 
 will  look  back  on  the  past  terror,  when  they  were  called  on  to 
 pay  the  tribute-money,  which  Avas,  if  possible,  to  buy  off  the 
 foreigners  whose  harsh  and  unintelligible  tongue  was  heard 
 reckoning  its  amount,  or  counting  the  towers  which  still  stood 
 between  them  and  their  booty ; — as  when  Rab-shakeh  appeared 
 under  the  walls,  and  summoned  them  to  surrender.  To  the 
 present  confusion  in  which  the  land  is  involved,  shall  succeed, 
 not  only  peace,  but  a  restoration  of  their  national  unity.  Of 
 this  the  national  festivals  were  the  symbols,  because  they 
 brought  the  several  tribes  together  from  all  parts  of  the  king- 
 dom, and  based  these  occasions  of  meeting  for  pleasure  or  busi- 
 ness, upon  a  united  national  worship,  which  recognised  the 
 Loud  of  each  man  and  tribe  as  the  Founder  and  Head  of  the 
 
 *  "  Ergo  omnis  longo  solvit  se  Teucria  luctu  ; 
 Panduntur  porta; ;  juvat  ire,  et  Dorica  castra 
 Desertosque  videre  locos,  littusque  relictum. 
 Hie  Dolopum  uianus,  hie  sievus  teudebat  Aebilles." 
 
 Vir".  /En.  ii.  2G. 
 
ISAIAn  XXXIV.,   XXXV.  :    THEIR   SUBJECT    not   edom.     26.5 
 
 Commonwealth ;  as  the  Lawgiver  and  the  Judge  ;  and  as  the 
 King,  in  the  Majesty  of  whose  person  the  legislative  and  execu- 
 tive, the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  functions  met,  as  in  something 
 greater  than  any.  Only  in  the  Divine  King,  and  not  in  any 
 one  of  His  earthly  and  finite  representatives,  could  this  union  of 
 all  characters  in  a  single  person  be  fitly  made. 
 
 Among  the  images  which  crowd  the  concluding  verses  of 
 this  chapter,  we  may  perhaps,  without  fancifulness,  distinguish 
 an  under-current  of  thoughts  suggested  by  the  circumstances 
 of  the  times  at  which  this  prophecy  was  delivered  :  the  promised 
 '  quiet '  seems  to  point  to  the  existing  commotion  ;  the  '  taber- 
 nacle which  shall  not  be  taken  down,'  reminds  us,  not  only  of 
 the  fast-founded  temple  which  had  replaced  the  tabernacle,  and 
 become  the  fixed  centre  of  their  '  solemnities,'  but  also  of  the 
 tents  of  Sennacherib's  hosts  now  blackening  *  the  valleys  round 
 Jerusalem,  but  soon  to  be  swept  away  '  like  the  thistle-down 
 before  the  whirlwind;'  the  'broad  rivers  and  streams'  suggest 
 the  thought  that  though  Hezekiah's  precautions  would  have 
 secured  the  absolutely  necessary  supply  of  water  for  the  be- 
 leagured  city,  they  felt  the  want  of  that  abundance  of  it  which 
 is  still  more  grateful  in  an  Eastern  climate  than  in  our  own : 
 while  the  promise  that  '  the  inhabitant  should  no  longer  say, 
 T  am  sick,'  favours  the  conjecture  that  the  illness  of  Hezekiah 
 may  have  been  one  instance  of  the  disease  which  usually  attends 
 on  the  confinement  and  discomforts  of  a  city  shut  up  against  an 
 enemy  in  the  field.  Numerous  other  points  of  poetical  and 
 philosophical  interest  will  occur  to  the  reader,  with  or  without 
 the  help  of  the  commentators  :  not  the  least  of  which  is  the 
 evangelical  prophet's  anticipation  of  Him  who  saith  to  the 
 sick  man,  '  Son,  be  of  good  cheer,  thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee.' 
 
 Chapters  xxxiv.  xxxv.  In  2  Chronicles,  xxviii.  16,  17.  we 
 read  that  in  the  reign  of  Ahaz,  '  the  Edomites  smote  Judah  and 
 carried  away  captives,'  and  that  this  was  one  of  the  motives  for 
 the  fatal  application  to  Assyria  for  protection.  This  inroad  was, 
 no  doubt,  like  that  of  the  Philistines,  a  revolt  against  the  au- 
 thority which  in  the  reigns  of  Uzziah  and  Jotham,  as  of  the 
 
 *  Then,  as  now,  made  of  black  camels'  or  goats'  hair.  See  the  accounts 
 of  Modern  Travellers ;  and  Canticles,  i.  5. 
 
266  IIEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 other  stronger  kings,  kept  this  half-civilised  race  in  a  tributary- 
 state;  and  we  hardly  needed  to  find  'Huduma,'  like  Ashdod  and 
 Beth- Amnion,  among  the  list  of  the  countries  whose  kings,  ac- 
 cording to  Sennacherib's  annals  (already  referred  to)  brought 
 him  e  their  accustomed  tribute,'  after  his  conquest  of  Phenicia, 
 to  authorize  our  extending  to  Edom  the  supposition  that  it,  as 
 well  as  Philistia  and  Moab,  suffered  more  or  less  at  this  period 
 from  the  Assyrians,  and  submitted  again  to  dependence  on 
 Judah,  when  Hezekiah's  power  was  re-established  after  the 
 overthrow  of  Sennacherib.  Still  I  think  most  readers  will  feel 
 that  to  refer  this  prophecy  (as  Grotius  and  some  others  do)  to 
 such  a  series  of  events,  is  not  satisfactory  :  and  that  it  was  a 
 just  consciousness  of  the  inadequacy  of  this  interpretation  which 
 led  Cyril  and  Theodoret  to  explain  it  of  the  destruction  of  Jeru- 
 salem and  the  Jewish  commonwealth ;  the  rabbis  to  believe 
 that  it  predicted  the  downfall  of  Christian,  the  protestants,  that 
 of  Papal,  Rome ;  and  other  commentators  to  find  in  it  threat- 
 enings  of  the  general  destruction  of  the  enemies  of  the  Church, 
 of  the  overthrow  of  anti- Christ,  or  even  of  some  anti-Christian 
 power  hereafter  to  rise  up  in  ancient  Idumea.*  All  indicate  a 
 sense  of  the  gravity  of  the  prophecy,  beyond  what  the  name  of 
 Edom  can  sustain :  and  —  while  the  greater  part  of  what  is  true  in 
 the  feeling  is  brought  into  its  proper  light,  by  the  recognition 
 that  the  prophet  is  the  enunciator  of  universal  laws,  which  his 
 cotemporaries  were  to  apply  to  the  events  of  their  own  day,  and 
 the  following  generations  to  read  more  clearly  by  help  of  the 
 illustration  which  those  events  had  afforded,  —  I  believe  the 
 question,  What,  then,  was  the  specific  event  to  which  the 
 chapters  before  us  allude  ?  is  most  simply  and  most  satifactorily 
 answered  by  saying,  that  it  is  the  overthrow  of  the  power  of 
 Sennacherib.  The  use  of  Edom  as  a  mystical  name  for  the 
 Assyrian  domination,  is  in  accordance  with  the  other  instances 
 of  the  kind  which  I  have  referred  to  on  chapter  xxv.  10.  and 
 throws  light  on  them,  as  they  do  on  it ;  the  general  resemblance 
 of  this  prophecy  to  that  of  chapters  xiii.  xiv. ;  its  promises  ex- 
 pressed under  the  image  of  ransomed  captives  returning  through 
 the  deserts   which   separate   Judca  from    Babylonia;  and   not 
 
 *  Alexander,  on  the  passage. 
 
THE  OVERTHROW  OF  SENNACHERIB.         267 
 
 least  its  place  in  the  book  ;  all  point  to  this,  as  Isaiah's  own 
 meaning.  If  it  were  necessary  to  find  a  reason  for  his  selection 
 of  this  particular  type,  we  might  do  so  in  the  connection  between 
 the  image  of  the  great  sacrifice  and  the  thought  of  the  countless 
 flocks  of  Edom. 
 
 The  Day  of  Judgement,  in  which  the  Lord  gives  His  decision 
 in  the  long-pending  controversy  between  Zion,  the  Kingdom  of 
 Righteousness,  and  Assyria,  the  Kingdom  of  Force,  is  come : 
 and  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  summons  the  nations  to  hear  His 
 sentence.  It  is  against  the  king  of  mere  power,  and  against 
 the  nations  themselves,  in  as  far  as  they  have  taken  mere  power 
 to  be  their  law  and  their  god,  and  are  serving  in  its  armies.  It 
 is  a  sentence  of  death,  of  extermination  of  the  enemies  of  God 
 and  man,  who  are  to  be  made  a  sin-offering  to  God's  justice, 
 that  so  righteousness  may  be  re-established  in  the  world.  Their 
 land  shall  be  soaked  with  blood :  the  fire  and  smoke  of  that 
 altar  shall  be  like  the  fire  and  smoke  of  Sodom  and  Go- 
 morrah: the  walls  of  its  cities  shall  be  levelled  by  the  'line 
 of  confusion  and  the  plummet  of  emptiness :  '  to  its  heredi- 
 tary nobles  shall  succeed  families  of  wild  beasts  and  birds,  which 
 shall  enter  into  regular  possession,  generation  after  generation, 
 and  hold  their  courts  in  the  desolate  palaces :  the  Lord  Him- 
 self parcels  out  the  land  among  these  invaders,  and  registers  the 
 inheritance  of  each  family  (as  Joshua  did  for  the  children  of 
 Israel*),  in  order  that  each  may  be  secured  in  it  for  ever.  And, 
 then  follows  the  '  recompense '  of  Judah,  whose  condition  the 
 prophet  implies,  though  he  beautifully  abstains  from  asserting 
 in  detail,  to  have  been  much  that  which  is  now  coming  on  her 
 enemies.  The  contrast  between  Edom  wholly  possessed  by 
 wild  animals,  and  Judah  with  its  human  inhabitants  restored  to 
 their  national  and  religious  privileges,  is  very  poetical.  In  the  last 
 chapter  every  thing  was  ferine — patriarchs,  inheritances,  palaces, 
 genealogies :  in  this  (xxxv.),  even  the  earth  is  human — breaks 
 into  shouts  of  joy,  while  the  forests  and  fields  assist  in  the  trium- 
 phal return  of  the  Divine  King  at  the  head  of  His  people.  The 
 reader  will  judge,  according  to  his  own  taste  and  feeling  of  the 
 laws  of  poetic  imagination,  whether  these  images  only  present  a 
 picture  of  the  general  and  complete  change  from  desolation  to 
 
 *  Johsua,  xviii.  8,  9,  10. 
 
268  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 prosperity :  or  whether  he  will  say,  with  Vitringa,  that  '  the 
 glory  of  Lebanon,'  which  consisted  in  its  cedars  and  other  great 
 trees,  points  to  faithful  teachers,  pastors,  and  princes  ;  while 
 '  the  excellency  of  Carmel '  with  its  fruit-bearing  slopes,  and  of 
 Sharon  with  the  numerous  flocks  and  herds  which  fed  in  its 
 pleasant  pastures  of  grass  and  flowers,  represent  the  people  of 
 the  Church  and  nation.  In  the  prospect  of  this  deliverance, 
 the  hands  now  falling  from  the  attitude  of  prayer  or  of  action, 
 the  knees  now  tottering  for  lack  of  firm  faith  and  hope,  and  the 
 hearts  now  flurried  and  impatient  from  fear,  may  regain 
 strength ;  the  Lord  Himself  is  coming  to  save,  and  in  that  day 
 the  blind  and  deaf  will  see  and  hear,  and  the  lame  and  dumb 
 will,  not  only  recover  their  powers,  but  use  them  with  delight. 
 The  mirage — the  Hebrew  word  is  that  still  used  by  the  Arabs^ — 
 shall  become  a  real  lake  ;  and  springs  shall  break  out  in  the  dry, 
 sandy  desert, —  yet  not  merely  to  serve  the  purpose  of  providing 
 the  jackals  with  marshy  haunts,  but  in  order  to  supply  men  and 
 women — the  returning  captives  —  with  Avater  on  their  road.* 
 
 The  desert  is  naturally  pathless  as  well  as  barren;  but  in 
 the  day  of  this  universal  regeneration,  the  faint  track  through 
 the  sands  shall  be  replaced  by  a  solid,  embanked  causeway, 
 which  shall  not  only  be  there,  but  be  actually  used ;  as  seems 
 to  be  meant  by  the  words,  '  A  highway  shall  be  there,  and  a 
 way.'  Highways  are  among  the  characteristic  features  of 
 civilisation  in  a  country,  since  they  are  the  means  of  regular 
 and  easy  communication  between  the  opposite  parts,  and  espe- 
 cially of  all  with  the  capital :  but  in  times  of  foreign  invasion 
 they  fall  first  into  the  power  of  the  enemy,  and  are  most 
 completely  deserted  by  the  inhabitants — '  the  highways  are  un- 
 occupied, and  the  travellers  walk  through  by-ways : '  f  and  in 
 Judea,  or  any  other  country  where  wild  beasts  still  exist,  these 
 keep  aloof  from  the  roads,  as  long  as  they  are  kept  open  by 
 traffic;  but  re-appear  in  them  if  unfrecpiiented,  as  in  the  story  of 
 the  old  prophet  who  met  the  lion  on  the  way  from  Bethel. 
 And  this  high  road  shall  not  only  be  so  well  marked  and  made, 
 that  the  most  ignorant  and  inexperienced  shall  keep  his  way 
 
 *  See  Mr.  Layard's  curious  account  of  the  Mesopotamian  marshes.  — 
 Nineveh  and  Babylon,  chap.  xxiv. 
 
 f  Judges,  v.  6.     Compare  the  note  at  page  203.  above. 
 
RETURN   OF    TIIE    RANSOMED    CAPTIVES.  2G9 
 
 there  without  difficulty,  but  neither  shall  it  be  appropriated  by 
 the  unclean  heathens,  nor  stopped  by  any  roaring  lion,  —  any 
 Sennacherib,  or  spiritual  archetype  of  Sennacherib.  It  shall 
 be  called,  for  it  shall  really  be,  '  the  way  of  holiness,'  the  road 
 set  apart  for  the  use  of  the  Lord's  own  chosen  and  consecrated 
 people,  whom  He  has  redeemed  and  brought  back  from  bondage: 
 it  shall  be  entirely  for  those.  And  here  again  the  reader  may 
 choose  whether  he  will,  with  Vitringa  and  others,  explain  this 
 way  — (  the  old  path,  the  good  way  in  which  ye  shall  find  rest 
 for  your  souls,'  *  —  to  be  the  '  canon  of  faith  and  practice,'  em- 
 bodied in  the  creeds,  sacraments,  and  other  formularies  and 
 symbols,  as  the  ways,  the  methods,  by  which  we  go  forward  to 
 perfection,  going  up  to  the  city  and  presence  of  God,  and  to 
 communion  with  Him  ;  or  whether  He  will  say,  less  definitely, 
 but  not  less  forcibly,  with  Gill  f,  that  it  is  'a  way  cast  up  by 
 sovereign  grace,  which  is  raised  above  the  mire  and  dirt  of  sin, 
 and  carries  over  it  and  from  it.' 
 
 And  the  ransomed  of  the  Lord  shall  return, 
 And  shall  come  to  Zion  with  songs, 
 And  everlasting  joy  upon  their  heads  :  — 
 
 Of  the  wonted  processions  in  which  kings,  village  communities, 
 and  private  persons,  went  up  to  the  temple  at  the  great  feasts, 
 or  on  other  occasions  of  national  or  personal  thanksgiving  after 
 a  harvest  or  a  victory,  a  sickness  or  a  return  from  captivity, 
 I  have  lately  spoken.  So  I  have  of  that  habit  of  poets,  and 
 of  none  more  than  Isaiah,  of  preferring  manifold  to  single 
 images,  which  may  here  authorise  us  to  take  all  \,  rather  than 
 any  one,  of  the  commentators'  explanations  of  the  phrase  '  ever- 
 lasting joy  upon  their  heads.'  Allusions  to  the  crowns  of  the 
 king,  the  priest,  and  the  bridegroom  §,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
 the  practice  of  anointing  their  heads,  and  the  heads  of  persons 
 on  other  festive  occasions,  with  oil||,  are  quite  compatible  with 
 the  thought  that  the  joy  expresses  itself  in  the  countenance,  or 
 even  that  it  is  figured  as  a  radiance  of  glory  about  the  heads  of 
 
 *  Jeremiah,  vi.  16.  f  Quoted  by  Alexander. 
 
 \  Except,  indeed,  that  of  Forerius  given  by  Alexander. 
 
 §  Canticles,  iii.  11. 
 
 ||  Compare  Psalm  xlv.  7. ;  Eccl.  ix.  8.;  Isaiah,  lxi.  3. 
 
270  nEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 the  redeemed  ones.  We  may,  however,  notice,  with  Vitringa, 
 the  clear  reference,  in  the  passages  just  quoted,  to  oil  as  the 
 symbol  of  gladness:  oil,  he  goes  on  to  say,  represents  the  Holy 
 Spirit ;  and  it  is  the  pouring  out  of  this  upon  the  redeemed, 
 who  are  returning  to  enter  into  communion  with  the  Lord  in 
 His  Church,  that  the  prophet  speaks.  Here,  as  so  constantly, 
 Vitringa's  comments  want  nothing,  but  a  more  distinct  recog- 
 nition that  Isaiah's  words  were  full  of  spiritual  meaning  to  the 
 pious  Jews  of  his  own  day,  and  in  relation  to  the  then  Zion 
 and  Church,  and  were  felt  by  them  to  be  so. 
 
 The  more  than  usually  trivial  arguments  against  the  genuine- 
 ness of  these  two  chapters,  would  hardly  deserve  even  the  pass- 
 ing notice  which  I  here  give  them,  if  there  had  been  no  un- 
 avowed  motive  for  the  criticism,  and  no  subsequent  use  to  be 
 made  of  its  conclusions.  But  the  reader  must  keep  his  eyes 
 open  to  the  fact,  that  if  he  here  consents  to  abandon  positive  for 
 conjectural  criticism,  he  will  inevitably  prejudge,  and  without 
 the  evidence,  the  coming  question  of  the  authorship  of  the  last 
 twenty-six  chapters  of  this  Book.  Positive  criticism,  such  as  he 
 would  be  ashamed  not  to  apply  to  any  other  book  but  the  Bible, 
 will  tell  him  that  the  prophecy  before  us  is  by  Isaiah,  and  in 
 his  best  manner,  whether  we  look  at  the  poetic  unity,  vigour, 
 sublimity,  beauty  of  the  composition  ;  at  the  high  moral,  poli- 
 tical, and  religious  tone  of  thought  and  feeling ;  or  at  the  special 
 direction  which  these  take  :  while  the  speculative  criticism  offers 
 him  an  array  of  such  hypotheses  as  that  these  two  chapters  do 
 not  make  one  whole ;  that  their  style  is  diffuse  and  verbose ; 
 that  they  are  full  of  extravagant  expressions  of  revengeful  ma- 
 lice ;  the  work  of  a  writer  long  after  the  times  of  Isaiah ;  and 
 composed  by  him  as  a  sort  of  summary  of  chapters  xl.  to  lxvi., 
 which  are  to  be  ascribed  to  another  unknown  author.  Let  the 
 true  student  examine  the  case  thoroughly  for  himself. 
 
ISAIAH   XXXVI.,   XXXVII.:    HISTOltlCAL   NARRATIVE.    271 
 
 CHAPTER  XX. 
 
 ISAIAH   XXXVI.,    XXXVII.  :     HISTORICAL   EVENTS     OF    SENNACHERIB' S   INVASION 
 
 AND     RETREAT HIS     LETTER HOW    ANSWERED.  —  UNCONSCIOUS     GENIUS 
 
 IN    THE    NARRATIVE. RAB-SHAKEh's   THEOLOGY. ISAIAH'S   INSPIRATION. 
 
 '  THE     INCARNATE    WRATH    OF    GOD.'  ZION's     DEFIANCE. THE    '  SIGN  ' 
 
 OF  THE  SPONTANEOUS  CROPS. THE  DESTROYING  ANGEL. SETHOS  DE- 
 LIVERED BY  VULCAN. VALUE  OF  SENNACHERIB'S  ANNALS,  IF  ESTA- 
 BLISHED  THEIR    ALTERED     TONE    AFTER    THIS    YEAR. GERMAN    WAR    OF 
 
 FREEDOM. HISTORY    TEACHES    A    BELIEF    IN    PROVIDENCE.  —  NIEBUHR. 
 
 GROTE. 
 
 There  has  been  much  discussion  as  to  whether  the  historical 
 narrative  in  the  following  chapters,  or  its  slightly  varying  coun- 
 terpart in  the  2nd  Book  of  Kings,  is  the  original ;  or  whether 
 both  are  taken  from  some  third  work  now  lost,  and  which  may 
 also  have  supplied  the  materials  for  the  different  account  of  the 
 same  events  in  the  2nd  Book  of  Chronicles  ;  and  what  was 
 the  share  of  Isaiah  himself  in  the  actual  or  supposed  narratives. 
 We  are  told  *  that  he  wrote  a  complete  history  of  the  reign  of 
 Uzziah  ;  and  if  he  wrote  that  of  Hezekiah  also,  it  would  be 
 quite  intelligible  that  the  main  part  of  this  should,  on  the  one 
 hand,  be  incorporated  into  the  Book  of  Kings,  and  on  the  other, 
 into  this  book  of  his  own  prophecies,  with  such  omissions  and 
 amplifications  as  the  purposes  of  each  required.  The  opinion 
 that  this  was  done  in  the  latter  case  by  some  compiler  and  editor 
 of  the  prophet's  writings,  has  its  advocates :  but  I  persuade  my- 
 self that,  in  proportion  to  the  reader's  study  of  the  book  as  a 
 whole,  and  as  we  have  it,  he  has  seen  indications  of  a  unity  of 
 design  in  the  arrangement  of  the  several  prophecies,  and  of  the 
 various  pieces  of  narrative  connecting  them ;  and  has  con- 
 sequently found  that  arrangement  so  interesting  and  important, 
 for  the  light  it  throws  on  each  part,  and  for  the  epic  character 
 it  gives  to  the  whole,  as   to  be  worthy  of  Isaiah  himself,  and 
 
 *  2  Cbron.  xxvi.  22. 
 
272  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 perhaps  above  the  reach  of  any  of  his  successors  of  whom  we 
 know  anything. 
 
 We  have  also  here  again  some  obscurity  as  to  certain  details 
 of  the  events  now  taking  place ;  and  of  which  these  narratives, 
 with  the  yet  imperfectly  read  inscriptions,  are  the  remaining 
 records.  We  may  not  be  able  to  pronounce  positively  whether 
 Sennacherib  was  now  on  his  way  to  Egypt ;  whether  he  had 
 actually  taken,  or  was  still  baffled  by  the  walls  of  Lachish  and 
 Libnah ;  whether  Rab-shakeh  withdrew  the  troops  which  had 
 accompanied  him  to  Jerusalem,  when  he  himself  returned  to 
 Sennacherib's  head-quarters ;  or  whether  —  because  he  was  only 
 an  ambassador,  and  Tartan  and  Rabsaris  the  generals,  or  for 
 any  other  reason  —  they  were  left  behind  to  begin  the  siege ; 
 whether  it  was  the  destruction  of  this  detached  army,  by  plague 
 already  begun  within  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  or  by  some  more 
 sudden  catastrophe,  that  compelled  Sennacherib  to  fly  to  his 
 own  land  ;  nor  decide  other  like  questions,  for  and  against  which 
 much  has  been,  and  may  be,  said.  But  the  careful  examination 
 of  the  alternatives  (for  which  I  refer  the  reader  to  the  commen- 
 tators themselves)  enables  us  to  get  all  the  general  light  we 
 require  for  a  distinct  view  of  the  great  political  features  of  the 
 period  :  though  this  examination  will  show  us  that  there  are 
 dark  patches  of  shadow,  or  undefined  marks,  where  we  had 
 hoped  to  make  out  specific  forms  on  a  nearer  approach,  still  we 
 find  that,  on  again  retiring  to  the  right  point  of  distance  for 
 seeing  the  whole  as  the  picture  it  is,  and  is  meant  to  be,  it  tells 
 its  story  quite  well;  and  that  we  may  learn  from  it  all  we  need 
 to  know.  We  see  that  in  the  regular  advance  of  the  Assyrian 
 power,  it  had  reached  the  point  at  which  Sennacherib  could 
 cease  to  temporise  with  Judah,  and  might  proceed  completely 
 to  absorb  the  tributary  state  into  the  empire.  The  kingdom 
 of  Samaria  had  already  followed  the  fate  of  Damascus  in  this 
 respect :  the  taking  of  Ashdod  had  not  only  opened  the  road  to 
 Egypt,  but  also  turned  the  position  of  Judah :  the  plunder  of 
 No- Amnion  had  sharpened  the  appetites  of  the  northern  in- 
 vaders for  new  campaigns  and  conquests  :  and  if  Sennacherib 
 thought  it  well  to  try  and  intimidate  Ilezekiah  and  his  people 
 into  surrendering  cities,  which  even  Tartan  himself  would  have 
 had  difficulty  in  taking  until  they  were  starved  out,  we  may 
 
Sennacherib's  letter:  how  answered.  273 
 
 infer  from  the  insolent  way  in  winch  he  still  avows  his  ultimate 
 intentions  if  they  did  surrender,  that  he  really  had  no  fear  for 
 the  result,  even  though  he  should  be  obliged  to  fight  Tirhakeh, 
 with  Judah  unconquered  and  assisting  the  Egyptians.  The 
 justness  of  the  belief  which  (as  we  learn  from  Herodotus)  was 
 held  by  the  Egyptians,  as  well  as  by  the  Hebrews,  that  nothing 
 but  an  interposition  of  God's  hand  could  at  this  moment  have 
 broken  the  great  Assyrian  power,  is  confirmed  by  this  conduct 
 of  Sennacherib  and  his  messenger,  no  less  than  by  the  despair 
 of  help  from  human  counsels,  or  arms,  which  Hezekiah  manifests 
 on  receiving  the  report  of  the  message,  and  the  letter  by  which 
 it  was  afterwards  followed.  There  is  some  truth  in  the  obser- 
 vation, though  it  may  have  been  made  scoffingly,  that  Heze- 
 kiah 's  character  on  the  present  occasion  resembles  that  of  David 
 in  its  devotion  more  than  in  its  energy  ;  for  the  powers  of  the 
 Hebrew  monarchy,  and  its  reigning  king,  were  too  feeble  to 
 resist  that  incarnation  of  universal  despotism,  if  they  could  not 
 obtain  a  form  and  degree  of  su]">port  which  David  did  not  need 
 for  the  assertion  of  the  independence  and  superiority  of  his 
 kingdom,  among  the  surrounding  nations.  It  was  true,  as 
 Sennacherib  boasted,  that  a  power  had  arisen  against  which 
 nation  after  nation  had  found  its  faith,  and  institutions,  and 
 arms,  unable  to  make  any  head  :  and  if  the  utter  destruction 
 which  had  come  upon  Ephraim,  no  less  than  upon  the  peoples 
 and  kings  whose  names  the  Assyrian  recites  in  his  letter,  exactly 
 in  the  fashion  in  which  he  recited,  and  we  now  read,  them  on 
 the  obelisks  or  bulls  at  Nineveh,  wras  not  to  fall  now  on  Judah 
 also,  it  must  be  by  the  help  of  a  stronger  hand  than  had  inter- 
 fered for  any  of  them.  The  conviction  that  the  Lord  of  Israel 
 was  strong  enough,  and  no  less  willing,  to  keep  His  covenant  by 
 defending  the  nation  against  all  its  enemies,  had  no  doubt  sup- 
 ported Hezekiah  hitherto  :  but  it  would  have  been  insufficient, 
 in  this  moment,  to  meet  the  terrible  feeling  that  he  was  now  in 
 the  actual  presence  and  power  of  the  representative  of  irresisti- 
 ble arbitrary  force,  unless  a  higher  truth  had  come  to  sustain 
 this  lower  one,  and  he  had  realised  (as  men  only  do  realise  in 
 some  extremity  of  their  own  helplessness)  that  there  was  an  Ab- 
 solute Will  retaining  the  mastery  over  that  irresistible  force, 
 however  crushing  it  might  seem ;  and  that  the  Lord  of  Israel 
 
 T 
 
274  IIEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 who  '  dwelt  between  the  cherubims,'  was  Himself  the  God,  the 
 only  God,  of  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth,  and  so  of  this 
 Assyrian  kingdom  among  the  rest.  And  then  we  see  how  this 
 truth,  which  the  pious  Hezekiah  had  known  and  acknowledged 
 before,  but  which  now  came  to  him  with  all  the  reality  of  life 
 and  death,  begets  a  likeness  to  itself  in  the  mind  which  it  in- 
 forms ;  for  just  as  the  idea  of,  and  faith  in,  the  Lord  of  the 
 notion,  expands  into,  yet  remains  a  living  part  of,  the  higher 
 consciousness  that  He  is  the  Lord  who  made  and  still  rules  the 
 heavens  and  earth,  so  Hezekiah's  patriotic  interest  in,  and  prayer 
 for,  the  preservation  of  his  own  people,  expands  itself  into  a 
 desire  for  the  honour  of  God,  as  its  ultimate  object :  *  Now, 
 therefore,  O  Lord  our  God,  save  us  from  his  hand,  that  all  the 
 kingdoms  of  the  earth  may  know  that  thou  art  the  Lord,  even 
 Thou  only.' 
 
 We  are  so  familiar  from  childhood  with  these  Scripture  nar- 
 ratives, and  they  are  so  unpretending  in  their  form,  that  it  is 
 usually  only  after  some  distinct  effort  of  examination  by  help  of 
 commentaries  or  lexicons,  that  we  notice  (as  we  do  then  notice) 
 the  marks  which  they  abound  with,  of  unconscious  genius  in 
 the  selection  of  the  really  characteristic  points  of  the  story.* 
 The  short  peremptory  letter  of  Sennacherib,  not  only  brings 
 out  the  acts  of  Hezekiah  which  we  have  just  been  considering, 
 but  also  the  more  vulgar  insolence  of  Rab-shakeh,  who  will  not 
 give  Hezekiah  the  title  of  king  at  all,  while  he  rings  the  changes 
 upon  (  my  master,  the  great  king,  the  king  of  Assyria.'  And 
 again  the  address  of  Rab-shakeh  to  Eliakim  and  his  fellow- 
 ministers,  is  artfully  differenced  from  that  in  which,  in  defiance 
 of  their  request,  he  appeals  to  the  men  on  the  wall:  with  the 
 latter  he  makes  the  surrender  a  question  of  mere  selfish  con- 
 sideration, how  to  escape  the  famine  which  is  likely  to  accompany 
 the  siege,  and  to  have  plenty  to  eat  and  drink  thereafter;  while 
 to  the  ministers  of  state  he  urges  their  utter  want  of  power  to 
 resist,  and,  moreover,  condescends  to  argue  (on  their  own 
 ground  as  he  supposes)  the  theological  question,  whether  Heze- 
 
 *  The  official  report  by  the  centurion  of  his  irregular  proceedings,  the 
 
 politic  speeches  and  conduct  of  Paul,  and   the  oration   of  Tertullian,  are 
 
 among  the  instances,  of  which  the  Book  of  Acts  is  perhaps  fuller  than  any 
 other. 
 
RAB-SHAKEIl'S    THEOLOGY.  275 
 
 kiah  can  hope  for  the  support  of  a  God  whose  altars  he  has 
 taken  away,  with  a  patronising  scepticism  which  singularly  re- 
 sembles the  style  in  which  the  sceptic  in  our  own  day  often  un- 
 dertakes to  enlighten  some  one  who  has  spent  years  in  the  study 
 and  practice  of  the  Christian  creed  and  life,  as  to  the  conse- 
 quences of  his  own  belief,  —  wholly  unconscious  that  his  talk  is 
 as  much  beside  the  mark  as  if  he  were  to  set  right  a  Newton  or 
 a  Laplace,  though  himself  unacquainted  with  the  first  elements 
 of  physical  science.  The  theology  and  the  politics  of  both 
 Rab-shakeh's  speeches,  and  his  inability  to  understand  that  his 
 hearers  were  actuated  by  a  sentiment  of  patriotism,  as  well  as 
 by  those  other  interests  or  superstitions  which  he  thinks  he 
 meets  so  cleverly,  may  be  compared  and  contrasted  with  Heze- 
 kiah's  address  to  his  people,  and  their  reception  of  it  *,  as  well 
 as  with  his  prayer  to  God,  and  his  message  to  Isaiah. 
 
 I  am  as  unable  as  those  before  me,  to  suggest  any  reason  why 
 the  communications  between  Hezekiah  and  Isaiah  were  carried 
 on  by  message,  upon  the  occasions  specified  in  the  text.  The 
 dispute  whether  verse  7.  of  chapter  xxxvii.  is  a  miraculous  pre- 
 diction, or  an  interpolation  after  the  event,  may  be  superseded 
 by  the  consideration  that  men  would  not  differ  from  the  brutes 
 that  perish,  if  they  had  no  power  of  anticipating  the  future 
 from  their  knowledge  of  the  past  and  present.  The  most 
 foolish  man  has  something  of  this  power,  as  to  those  events  in 
 which  he  is  vitally  interested,  though  he  may  exercise  it  rather 
 as  an  instinct  than  as  a  deliberate  act  of  reason ;  and  much  more 
 the  wise  man.  A  man  with  such  large  '  discom*se  of  reason,' 
 with  such  original  and  such  cultivated  genius  as  Isaiah,  is,  in- 
 deed, God's  most  wonderful  creation ;  but  I  cannot  think  it 
 does  honour  to  the  Creator  to  suppose  that  the  Hebrew  prophet 
 —  being  such  as  he  was,  and  acquainted  not  only  with  the 
 general  laws  which  govern  the  rise  and  fall  of  despotisms,  and 
 prescribe  small  interval  between  a  tyrant's  failure  in  the  field 
 and  violent  death  at  home,  but  also  with  many  details  of  Sen- 
 nacherib's position  and  circumstances  unknown  to  us  —  could 
 not  have  predicted  the  fate  of  the  Assyrian  in  the  terms  he  does, 
 without  some  special  suspension  of  the  ordinary,  regular,  work- 
 
 *  Quoted  in  page  220.  above. 
 
276  Hebrew  Politics. 
 
 ing  of  the  prophet's  inspired  mind.  That  Isaiah  was  inspired, 
 that  these  utterances  of  his  human  wisdom  and  knowledge  were 
 all  originated,  sustained,  and  directed  by  the  actually  present, 
 indwelling,  Holy  Ghost,  and  that  the  daily,  hourly,  habitual, 
 prayer  of  faith  was  the  means  of  keeping  up  this  communion  of 
 the  prophet  with  his  God,  I  am  anxious  to  assert  in  the  most 
 explicit  words  I  can  find ;  and  this,  not  to  prove  my  own  ortho- 
 doxy to  myself  or  others,  but  as  a  point  of  positive  (as  distin- 
 guished from  hypothetical)  criticism,  which  must  be  recognised 
 to  be  a  fact,  before  any  effective  literary  and  philosophical  exa- 
 mination of  Isaiah's  writings  is  possible  :  and  whether  such  a 
 recognition  of  Isaiah's  inspiration  is  most  hindered  by  the  hypo- 
 thesis of  a  miracle,  or  that  of  an  interpolation,  it  would  be  dif- 
 ficult to  decide.  And  that  each  hypothesis  is  opposed  to  the 
 facts,  no  less  than  to  the  spirit,  of  the  narrative,  will  appear  if 
 we  compare  the  historical  detail  of  Sennacherib's  overthrow  and 
 death  as  given,  after  the  event,  in  verses  36,  37,  38.  of  chapter 
 xxxvii.,  with  the  general  expressions  of  Isaiah  both  in  his  first 
 short  answer  to  Hezekiah,  and  in  the  longer  rhythmical  one  :  for 
 a  miraculous  communication,  whether  real  or  forged,  should 
 surely  have  contained  those  details,  in  order  effectually  to  answer 
 its  purpose  ;  and  if  Isaiah  had  supposed  that  his  first  words  did 
 convey  such  an  oracular  prediction,  he  would  hardly  have 
 omitted  to  repeat  and  dwell  upon  them  in  his  subsequent  pro- 
 phecy, which  he  expressly  calls  *  the  word  which  the  Lord  hath 
 spoken  concerning  Sennacherib,  king  of  Assyria : ' —  unless,  in- 
 deed, we  suppose  that  on  both  occasions  the  prophet  was  a  mere 
 automaton  emitting  articulate  sounds. 
 
 When  Rab-shakeh  asserts,  in  his  master's  name,  '  the  Lord 
 said  unto  me,  Go  up  against  this  land  and  destroy  it,'  we  are  re- 
 minded both  of  Timour's  declaration  that  he  was  the  incarnate 
 wrath  of  God,  and  also  of  the  less  religious  belief  of  Napoleon, 
 and  other  military  despots,  in  their  destiny.  Yet  Sennacherib's 
 self-confidence  is  essentially  atheistic ;  and  is  in  this  respect  in 
 accordance  with  all  we  know  of  military  despotisms,  modern  no 
 less  than  ancient,  when  they  are  at  their  climax  :  the  old  forms 
 of  worship  will  be  retained,  like  the  old  forms  of  government, 
 where  they  do  not  interfere  with,  or  are  even  useful  instruments 
 of,  the  despot ;  but  when  the  physical  force  he  wields  is  become 
 
isaiah  xxxvii.  22 — 29. :  zion's  defiance.         277 
 
 the  only  real  law,  and  no  appeal  remains  from  it  to  duties  and 
 rights,  nor  to  an  Absolute  Justice  the  source  of  these,  he  him- 
 self becomes  —  for  is  he  not  ?  —  the  god,  or  rather  anti-god  of 
 those  he  rules.  But  the  confidence  of  the  virgin  daughter  of 
 Zion  in  the  strength  of  her  Lord,  and  her  consequent  scornful 
 defiance,  are  not  less  bold  and  peremptory  than  the  Assyrian's : 
 and  the  fact  that  her  Lord  makes  her  cause  His  own,  and  that 
 He  has  been  insulted  in  her  person,  makes  it  the  more  certain 
 that  He  will  answer  Hezekiah's  prayer,  and  avenge  His  own 
 honour. 
 
 It  is  probable  that  the  word  c  virgin '  here,  as  in  the  usage  of 
 other  languages  and  times,  implies  that  the  city  is  impregnable  : 
 and  that  Lebanon  here,  as  elsewhere  *,  stands  for  the  land  of 
 Israel,  having  been  possibly  suggested  by  the  thought  of  the 
 success  with  which  the  Assyrians  employed  their  cavalry  in  a 
 country  where  it  might  have  been  expected  to  prove  only  an 
 encumbrance,  so  that  they  seemed  as  if  they  could  literally  take 
 the  precipitous  and  wooded  heights  of  Lebanon  itself  with  their 
 multitude  of  chariots  and  horses :  the  tall  cedars  and  choice  fir- 
 trees,  the  border-heights,  and  the  garden-like,  or  fruit-bearing, 
 forests,  are  images,  with  more  or  less  special  allusion,  of  the 
 princes  and  people,  the  temple,  the  cities,  and  the  cultivated 
 country  of  Judea.  Dr.  Alexander  well  observes,  that  the  force 
 of  the  words  of  this  and  the  next  (24th  and  25th)  verses  is  much 
 greater,  if  we  preserve  the  distinction  of  tenses  in  the  original : 
 the  Assyrian  has  scaled  the  impregnable  mountains  and  forests, 
 he  will  take  actual  possession  of  all  that  he  finds  therein  ;  he 
 has  led  his  vast  armies  through  the  great  deserts  between  Baby- 
 lonia and  Egypt,  digging  and  drinking  water,  and  he  tcill  tread 
 the  streams  of  Egypt  dry,  like  so  many  puddles,  —  the  drought 
 and  the   flood    being    erpially  under    his    control. f     There    is 
 
 *  Jerem.  xxii.  23. ;  Ezek.  xvii.  3.  12.  ;~Habak.  ii.  17.  ;   Zechar.  xi.  1. 
 t  "  Cum  cesserit  omnis 
 
 Obsequiis  natura  meis  ?     Subsidere  nostris 
 Sub  pedibus  montes  ;  arescere  vidimus  amnes  :  — 
 Fregi  Alpes,  galeisque  Padum  victricibus  hausi." 
 
 Claudian's  Speech  of  Alaric  :  Be  Bello  Getic.  526. 
 "  Credimus  altos 
 Defecisse  amnes,  epotaque  flumina  Medo." 
 
 Juv.  Sat.  x.  176.    Quoted  by  Lowth  and  Gescnius. 
 t  3 
 
278  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 a  like  mixture  of  symbol   and  fact  in  the  one  verse  and  the 
 other. 
 
 Such  is  the  boast  which  Sennacherib  has  ventured  to  utter 
 against  the  Holy  One  of  Israel.     Observe  the  emphasis  of  the 
 expression:  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  is  a  Being  whose  Majesty  no 
 one  violates  with  impunity,  and  who,  if  He   be   not  sanctified 
 by  men,  sanctifies  Himself  in  judgments.*     Isaiah  had,  at   an 
 earlier  stage  of  the  Assyrian  conquests  f,  referred  to  these,  we 
 know  habitual,  boasts,  and  had  replied  to  them  that  the  con- 
 querors were  merely  the  instruments  for  carrying  out  God's 
 predetermined  and  pre-arranged  plan  :  and  he  makes  the  same 
 reply  again  now,  only  that  there  he  dwelt  on  the  corrective  dis- 
 cipline to  which  Zion  was  to  be   submitted  according  to  that 
 plan,  while  here  he  assumes  that  the  discipline  has  wrought  its 
 work,  and  that  the  scourge  is  done  with.     On  comparing  the 
 images  in  verse  27.  with  those   in  verses  30,  31.  we  see  that 
 the  actual  devastation  of  the  cultivated  country  suggests  that 
 under-current  of  thought,  which  is  more  or  less  traceable  in  all 
 poetry ;  though  the  images  themselves,  in  the  first  verse,  are 
 those  of  grass  and  green  crops,  which  are  so  feeble  as  to  fall  at 
 once  before  the  scythe,  or  even  to  die  of  themselves  in  a  few 
 weeks ;  —  nay,  to  heighten   the    emphasis,  of  the  still    feebler 
 weeds  which  grow  up  in  the  chance  dust  and  moisture  on  the 
 housetops,   and  the  corn  which  is  sickly  from  its  root.     The 
 following  threat,  of  curbing  and  leading  Sennacherib  like  a  brute 
 beast,  is  singularly  illustrated  by  the  bas-reliefs  of  Holwan  and 
 Khorsabad,  which  represent  prisoners   actually  led  in  triumph 
 by  a  hook  through  the  nose  and  lips. 
 
 The  '  sign  '  which  Isaiah  goes  on  to  promise,  in  terms  appa- 
 rently made  obscure  in  order  to  excite  consideration,  seems  best 
 explained  to  mean,  that  the  Assyrian  devastations  of  the  open 
 country  of  the  Jews  had  prevented  the  regular  cropping  of  the 
 land,  and  consequently  the  regular  harvest,  for  the  current  year : 
 and  as  the  enemy  was  still  in  occupation  of  the  country,  there 
 was  no  possibility  of  ploughing  and  sowing  in  preparation  for 
 the  next  year  either;  but  the  season  after  that,  the  prophet  con- 
 
 *  Compare  chapters  v.  1G.,  x.  17.,  xxix.  23. 
 f  Chapter  x. 
 
isaiah  xxxvii.  30 — 32.:  spontaneous  cuors.  279 
 
 fidently  asserts  that  they  would  be  able  to  sow  and  reap,  and 
 plant  vineyards,  and  eat  the  fruit  thereof.*  The  promise  is 
 thus  brought  into  strict  harmony  with  the  previous  threat  f* 
 that  *  the  vintage  should  fail,  and  the  gathering  not  come,'  for 
 a  time  which  we  must  understand  Isaiah  there  to  say  would  be 
 considerable,  —  whether  we  understand  the  'days  above  a  year' 
 of  the  original  to  mean  '  more  than  a  full  year,'  or  look  only  at 
 the  general  expressions  in  the  following  verses  of  the  passage 
 referred  to.  That  what  Isaiah  meant  there,  he  may  have  meant 
 now,  might  seem  answer  enough  to  the  objection,  that  those 
 who  give  this  explanation  of  the  prediction  of  the  loss  of  two 
 harvests,  must  suppose  the  prophet  to  have  expected  the  Assy- 
 rian occupation  to  last  much  longer  than  the  history  shows 
 that  it  did :  but  the  objection  itself  vanishes,  if  we  recollect 
 that  the  movements  of  great  armies  against,  and  over,  a 
 country  defended  by  deserts,  and  mountains,  and  fortified 
 cities ;  the  political  negotiations  which  preceded  and  followed 
 these  movements ;  and  the  recovery  of  depopulated  villages,  and 
 wasted  cornfields  and  vineyards ;  were  not  events  which  could 
 begin  and  end  within  any  such  short  space  as  it  takes  to  write 
 or  read  of  them.  Instances  of  two,  and  even  three  crops  from 
 one  sowing  are  mentioned  by  Strabo,  and  are  also  said  to  occur 
 in  California  at  the  present  time. 
 
 This  sign  is  analogous  in  character  to  those  of  e  Immanuel ' 
 and  '  Maher-shalal-hash-baz,'  as  well  as  to  that  given  to  Moses 
 at  the  Burning  Bush  \ ;  and,  we  may  add,  to  those  of  the  rain- 
 bow ;  and  of  the  water,  and  the  bread  and  wine,  of  the  Chris- 
 tian sacraments ;  and  of  all  other  symbols,  of  which  the  purpose 
 is,  not  to  establish  faith  in  a  future   miracle   because  a  present 
 
 *  Thus  the  Spartan  envoys  express  their  sympathy  with  the  Athenians 
 who,  in  bearing  the  brunt  of  the  Persian  invasion,  '  had  already  been  de- 
 prived of  two  harvests  : '  where  Mr.  Grote  observes  that  as  this  was  spoken 
 before  the  invasion  of  Mardonius,  the  loss  of  tico  crops  must  mean  the  loss 
 of  the  harvest  of  the  past  summer,  together  with  the  seed  of  the  autumn 
 immediately  following  ;  and  that  the  advice  of  Themistocles  to  his  country- 
 men, that  '  every  one  should  repair  his  house  and  attend  to  sowing  his 
 ground,'  must  have  been  found  impracticable  in  most  cases  to  carry  into 
 eifect  during  that  autumn.  —  Herod,  viii.  142. :  Grote's  History  of  Greece 
 v.  202. 
 
 f   Isaiah,  xxxii.  10.  %  Exodus,  iii.  12. 
 
 t  4 
 
280  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 one  has  been  wrought,  but  to  supply  such  an  outward  and 
 visible  sign  of  the  accompanying  inward  spiritual  grace,  as  will, 
 from  the  very  constitution  of  man's  being  (of  soul  and  body 
 united),  help  him  to  realise  the  latter,  as  he  could  not  do  by  any 
 naked  mental  effort.  And  the  thins;  here  signified  has  itself  an 
 inward  and  an  outward  part :  for,  as  the  spontaneously  sowed 
 and  multiplied  corn  and  fruit  will  be  the  foundation  and  mate- 
 rials of  the  regular  cultivation  of  the  third  year,  so  will  the 
 deserted  villages  and  farms  be  replenished  with  the  survivors  of 
 those  who  have  for  the  present  found  refuge  within  the  walls  of 
 Jerusalem  ;  and  both  the  one  and  the  other  will  be  the  types  of 
 that  '  holy  seed,'  the  existence  of  which  in  the  corrupt  nation 
 was  made  known  to  Isaiah  at  his  first  calling  to  the  prophetic 
 office,  when  he  was  told  that  he  was  to  watch  and  wait,  with 
 the  long  patience  of  the  husbandman,  for  the  growing  up  of  that 
 seed,  after  the  hard  ground  had  been  broken  up,  and  the  rampant 
 weeds  rooted  out,  by  the  ploughshare  of  repeated  national  cala- 
 mity.    '  The  zeal  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  shall  do  this 
 
 For  I  will  defend  this  city  to  save  it,  saith  the  Lord,  for  mine 
 own  sake,  and  my  servant  David's  sake.'  David  was  the  per- 
 sonal representative  of  the  faith  and  righteousness  of  the  nation, 
 in  the  day  that  God  renewed  with  him  His  covenant  to  continue 
 the  name  and  the  kingdom  of  Israel  for  ever*;  and  that  cove- 
 nant God  would  keep,  as  long  as  there  were  any  who  in  heart 
 were  of  David's  race,  for  their  and  David's  sake :  —  for  their 
 faith  and  righteousness  were  not  the  less  to  be  rewarded,  because 
 these  were  the  free  gift  of  God,  and  the  result  of  His  choosing 
 them,  and  not  of  their  choosing  Him. 
 
 I  do  not  attempt  to  add  to  the  discussion  of  the  questions, 
 whether  '  the  angel  of  the  Lord,'  that  minister  of  His,  which 
 did  His  pleasure  on  the  Assyrians,  was  a  tempest,  a  hot  wind, 
 a  pestilence,  or  some  other  of  those  powers  of  nature  which, 
 when  employed  by  God's  providence,  are  usually  called  His 
 angels  by  the  Hebrews  ;  whether  there  is  any  such  improba- 
 bility in  the  more  explicit  statement  in  the  Book  of  Kings,  — 
 that  this  great  multitude  were  destroyed  in  a  single  night  —  as 
 demands  that  it  should  be  restricted  by  the  terms  of  the  ac- 
 
 *  2  Samuel,  vii.  12,  13. 
 
isa.  xxxviii.  33 — 38. :  setiios  delivered  by  vulcan.  281 
 
 count  before  us,  and  of  that  in  the  Chronicles ;  and  whether  the 
 Egyptian  record  of  the  same  catastrophe,  as  preserved  by  He- 
 rodotus, throws  any  further  light  upon  it.  A  positive  deter- 
 mination of  them  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  our  substantial 
 understanding  of  the  case  ;  though,  of  course,  every  fact  of  his- 
 tory, however  minute,  may  have  its  value,  when  ascertained  to 
 be  a  fact ;  and  it  is  unfortunate  that  the  modern  commentators 
 on  this  passage  should  show  so  much  disposition  to  bend  their 
 criticism  to  a  foregone  conclusion,  orthodox  or  rationalist.  The 
 story  of  Herodotus  seems  to  me  erroneously  called  a  transfer  of 
 the  scene  of  the  event  to  Egypt,  and  a  substitution  of  the  names 
 of  Sethos  and  Vulcan  for  Hezekiah  and  Jehovah  :  Sennacherib's 
 army  was  menacing  Egypt  as  well  as  Judea  at  the  time,  if  he 
 had  not  already  beaten  '  the  kings  of  Egypt  with  the  horsemen 
 and  footmen  belonging  to  the  King  of  Ethiopia,  of  which  the 
 numbers  could  not  be  counted  ;'  and  a  detachment,  like  that 
 sent  to  Jerusalem,  may  have  appeared  at  Pelusium :  and  cer- 
 tainly the  matter  of  interest  and  thankfulness  to  Sethos  was  that 
 he  and  his  country,  not  that  Hezekiah  and  the  Jews,  were 
 delivered  by  the  providential  destruction  of  their  common  ene- 
 my. And  though  we  admit  as  probable,  nay  certain,  that  all  the 
 coatings  of  the  superstition  which  represented  the  Egyptian  god 
 Vulcan  as  the  deliverer,  were  not  the  additions  of  a  later  priest- 
 craft; though  we  allow  that  this  was  more  or  less  the  belief  of 
 Sethos  himself,  and  that  he  could  not  '  speak  the  language  of 
 Canaan,  and  swear  to  the  Lord  of  hosts,'  with  that  clearness 
 of  heart  and  mind  with  which  Isaiah  had  foretold  that  the 
 Egyptians  should  *  know  the  Lord  in  the  day  that  He  sent  a 
 Saviour  to  deliver  them; '  still  the  student  who  has  an  eye  for 
 the  good,  as  well  as  for  the  evil,  of  the  religions  of  the  world,  will 
 not  fail  to  distinguish  in  the  narrative  of  Herodotus,  the  record 
 of  a  true  though  imperfect  recognition  by  the  Egyptians  that 
 neither  Sennacherib,  nor  Tirhakeh,  but  an  invisible  and  divine 
 Lord,  was  the  real  master  of  Egypt  and  its  destinies,  and  that 
 this  providential  deliverance  was  so  clear  an  instance  of  Plis  rule, 
 that  it  should  awaken  a  sentiment  of  piety  in  every  one  who 
 learnt  the  story :  —  is  ifie  tls  opecov,  evcr£/3i]s  s<jt<o* 
 
 *  This  mention  of  Sethos,  or  Zet,  by  Herodotus,  as  the  cotemporary  of 
 Sennacherib,  and  therefore  of  Tirhakeh,  is  in  favour  of  those  who  hold  the 
 
282  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 If  the  reading  of  Sennacherib's  annals,  as  to  this  war,  be  esta- 
 blished, it  will  relieve  the  student  of  Isaiah's  prophecies  and 
 policy,  of  a  certain  difficulty.  We  have  hitherto  had  to  make 
 out  a  history  of  this  Assyrian  campaign  from  fragmentary  facts 
 and  allusions ;  and  the  notices  in  these  and  the  corresponding 
 chapters,  taken  with  the  account  of  Herodotus,  and  the  in- 
 scription on  a  temple  at  Thebes  which,  according  to  Wilkin- 
 son, records  Tirhakeh's  successful  opposition  to  Sennacherib, 
 indicated  the  most  probable  supposition  to  be  that  the  Assyrian 
 king  retreated  from  the  Ethiopian,  either  after  sustaining,  or 
 without  waiting  for,  a  battle  in  the  south-west  of  Judea.  And 
 then  to  bring  this  into  harmony  with  Isaiah's  steady  denun- 
 ciation of  the  alliance  of  Israel  with  Egypt,  which  might  thus 
 seem  to  have  succeeded,  instead  of  failing  as  he  predicted,  we 
 must  consider  that  Sennacherib's  boast,  that  Tirhakeh  would 
 not  be  able  to  help  Hezekiah,  was  well  founded  when  uttered ; 
 and  that  the  Ethiopian  army  would  not  have  ventured  to  attack 
 that  of  Sennacherib,  unless  the  latter  had  first  been  weakened 
 by  the  great  and  sudden  destruction  effected  in  it  by  the 
 immediate  hand  of  God.  This  would  indeed  be  a  sufficient 
 fulfilment  of  the  spirit  of  the  prophet's  language,  rightly  under- 
 stood ;  and  we  may  be  quite  content  if  we  have  no  better. 
 But  it  cannot  be  denied  that  Sennacherib's  own  account,  that 
 he  not  only  fought,  but  thoroughly  beat,  the  countless  hosts  of 
 Egypt  and  Ethiopia  at  Lachish,  and  executed  all  the  chief 
 men  among  his  prisoners  at  Libnah,  suits  the  prophet's  express 
 anticipations  much  better ;  while  the  after  abandonment  of  his 
 advantage  by  Sennacherib  meets  the  recpuirements  of  the  narra- 
 tive of  Herodotus,  at  least  as  well  as  the  other  supposition. 
 
 The  revolt  of  Babylon  and  of  the  Medes,  and  perhaps  of 
 other  dependencies  not  mentioned  in  history  as  these  arc,  con- 
 curred to  weaken  the  Assyrian  empire  of  the  sword  at  this 
 period ;  and  Sennacherib  '  decamped,  departed,  returned,  re- 
 mained at  Nineveh,' — a  description  which  has  been  compared 
 to  Catiline's  abiit,  excessit,  evasit,  erupit, —  without  troubling 
 Judea  again. 
 
 Tanitic  and  Ethiopian  dynasties  to  Have  been  synchronous  :  M.  Bnnsen  sup- 
 poses Sethos  to  have  been  put  instead  of  Tirhakeh,  by  some  inadvertence  of 
 the  Greek  historian. 
 
ALTERED   TONE   OP    SENNACHERIB'S   ANNALS.  283 
 
 '  Sennacherib's  annals  do  not,'  says  Colonel  Rawlinson,  ( of 
 course  allude  to  a  discomfiture  produced  by  pestilence  and 
 panic;  but  the  summary  way  in  which  he  closes  his  account  of 
 the  campaign,  merely  stating  that  he  returned  to  Nineveh  with 
 his  spoil,  would  be  alone  sufficient  to  indicate  some  disaster  to 
 his  army.  It  is  also  important  to  add  that  he  was  unable 
 during  the  following  year,  owing  apparently  to  the  severe 
 check  he  had  sustained,  to  undertake  any  operations  of  magni- 
 tude, and  that,  so  far  as  has  been  yet  ascertained,  he  does  not 
 appear  at  any  subsequent  period  of  his  reign  to  have  ventured 
 to  lead  his  armies  across  the  Euphrates  into  Syria.  The  suppo- 
 sition that  the  murder  of  Sennacherib  by  his  sons  took  place 
 immediately  on  his  return  to  Nineveh,  merely  rests  on  a  passage 
 in  the  apocryphal  book  of  Tobit.  The  statement  in  Kings, 
 that  he  returned  to  Nineveh  '  and  dwelled  there,'  indicates  a 
 prolonged  reign,  and  the  question  is  now  set  definitively  at  rest 
 by  our  possession  of  his  annals  for  at  least  five  years  subsequent 
 to  the  Jerusalem  catastrophe.  The  events  of  the  fourth  year 
 of  Sennacherib  present  a  marked  contrast  to  the  detailed  and 
 magniloquent  descriptions  of  the  preceding  periods ;  they  are 
 confined  to  a  few  meagre  lines,  and  refer  exclusively  to  an 
 expedition  against  the  Chaldees,  undertaken  perhaps  in  order 
 to  punish  Merodach  Baladan  for  sending  ambassadors  to  Heze- 
 kiah,  which  Sennacherib  does  not  seem  even  to  have  conducted 
 in  person.'* 
 
 I  have  already  shown,  at  so  great  length,  how  the  successive 
 events  of  the  War  of  Freedom  affected  the  minds  of  the  more 
 thoughtful  and  religious  Germans,  that  I  must  here  content 
 myself  with  referring  the  reader  to  the  terms  in  which  Niebuhr 
 maintains  that  there  had  never,  in  any  age,  been  a  more  signal 
 manifestation  of  God's  hand,  than  in  their  final  deliverance 
 'when  the  need  was  the  sorest,  when  all  human  wisdom  and 
 strength  had  failed. f  The  same  writer  observes,  in  his  Lectures 
 on  Roman  History  \,  that  there  are  occasional  points  of  time  at 
 which  the  whole  course  of  history,  and  of  the  fates  of  nations,  is 
 
 *   Outline,  p.  25. 
 
 f  "  The  hand  of  God  in  Prussia's  deliverance  from  a  foreign  yoke,"  in 
 Niebuhr's  Life  and  Letters,  iii.  115. 
 j  Vol.  ii.  p.  p.  14G. 
 
284  IIEBEEW    POLITICS. 
 
 decided  by  some  event  which  docs  not  grow  necessarily  out  of 
 previous  events,  and  which  a  reasonable  man  can  only  explain 
 by  referring  to  the  providence  of  God.  Mr.  Grote,  on  the 
 other  hand,  recognises,  but  leaves  unexplained,  such  master- 
 events  of  history.  He  points  out,  that  if  Darius  had  not  — 
 contrary  to  probable  expectation  —  delayed  the  first  Persian 
 invasion  till  the  Greeks  had  had  twenty  years  for  efficient  pre- 
 parations, they  must  have  been  overwhelmed,  and  Greece,  such 
 as  it  has  been  to  the  world,  would  never  have  existed ;  and  he 
 draws  the  general  inference,  '  that  the  history  of  any  nation, 
 considered  as  a  sequence  of  causes  and  effects  affording  applicable 
 knowledge,  requires  us  to  study  not  merely  real  events,  but 
 also  imminent  contingencies:'*  but  there  he  stops.  And  when 
 Niebuhr  takes  me  a  step  further,  and  shows  me  a  '  cause  afford- 
 ing applicable  knowledge,'  where  Mr.  Grote  only  indicated  an 
 unexplained  '  effect,'  I  must  think  that  Niebuhr'a  is  the  more 
 completely  positive  criticism — criticism  which  takes  scientific 
 cognisance  of  all  the  facts.  I  could  not  hear  an  explanation 
 of  the  complicated  workings  of  a  steam-engine,  with  its  arrange- 
 ments for  supplying  its  own  water,  oiling  its  own  wheels,  chang- 
 ing vertical  to  horizontal  movements,  and  so  on,  and  at  last 
 admit,  that  when  the  hand  of  the  ever-watchful  engineer  did 
 occasionally  intervene  to  give  the  machine  some  new  application, 
 or  to  prevent  some  hideous  crash,  this  was  an  inexplicable  oc- 
 currence —  much  less  pass  it  in  silence,  as  though  its  explana- 
 tion had  no  interest  to  a  rational  man. 
 
 *  History  of  Greece,  iv.  353. 
 
ISAIAH  XXXVIIL,  :    THE    SICKNESS    OF    I1EZEKIAII.       285 
 
 CHAPTER  XXI. 
 
 IsAIAH  XXXVIII.  I    THE    SICKNESS  OF  HEZEKIAH IMPORTANCE  OF  HIS  LIFE  TO 
 
 HIS  NATION HIS  DESIRE  OF    RECOVERY  NOT    PURELY    SELFISH.  —  FEAR  OF 
 
 HEATH  IN  OLD  TIMES. CHRIST^  RESURRECTION. THE    SIGN    OF    THE    SHA- 
 DOW ON    THE    SUN-DIAL. —  TWO    ACCOUNTS THE    COTEMPORARY    ONE    NOt 
 
 MIRACULOUS. BIBLE    TO    BE    TREATED      LIKE     OTHER      BOOKS.  NOT    SO 
 
 TREATED  BY  SCEPTICS. THE  HLMN  OF  HEZEKIAH. 
 
 '  In  those  days  was  Hezekiah  sick  unto  death.' —  It  is  said 
 that  the  treatment  of  plague-boils  in  the  East  still  cor- 
 responds with  that  prescribed  by  Isaiah  on  this  occasion; 
 and  from  this,  as  well  as  from  the  other  possible  allusions 
 (already  noticed)  to  the  existence  of  pestilence  in  Jerusalem 
 and  in  Sennacherib's  army,  it  has  been  suggested  that  this 
 deadly  sickness  was  the  plague ;  and  that  it  occurred  before 
 the  country  was  freed  from  the  enemy  is  the  natural  inference 
 from  the  words  in  verse  6.,  though  some  commentators  maintain 
 the  other  hypothesis.  Either  way,  the  absence  of  any  allusion 
 to  the  deliverance  in  Hezekiah's  song,  is  one  of  those  facts 
 which,  in  historical  documents,  are  so  perpetually  contradicting 
 our  notions  of  what  was  likely  to  have  been  said  or  done,  and 
 which  teach  us  within  what  narrow  limits  all  deductive  criti- 
 cisms must  be  kept,  if  they  are  not  to  become  mere  speculations 
 of  the  fancy. 
 
 This  sickness  and  recovery  of  Hezekiah  from  the  gates  of 
 death,  was  an  event  of  such  national  importance  as  made  it 
 properly  find  a  place  here,  as  well  as  in  the  historical  books.  For 
 the  throne  of  David,  as  far  as  we  know,  was  without  an  heir 
 at  this  moment ;  and  Hezekiah's  death  might  have  been  followed 
 by  some  such  interregnum,  anarchy,  and  seizure  of  the  crown 
 by  a  soldier,  as  hastened  the  downfal  of  the  kingdom  of 
 Ephraim.      Such  a  failure  in  the  succession,  in  times  of  national 
 
286  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 depression  and  disorganisation,  would  be  pregnant  with  evil 
 even  in  England  now ;  and  we  must  remember  that  in  Judea 
 then,  as  in  all  Eastern  and  patriarchal  governments  still,  the 
 jiersonal  character  of  the  hereditary  sovereign  was  of  an  im- 
 portance to  the  people  which  it  has  to  a  great  degree,  though 
 not  utterly,  lost  in  every  country  of  Europe  except  Russia. 
 Let  us  contrast  the  character  and  acts  of  Hezekiah  with  those 
 of  his  immediate  jiredecessor  and  successor,  and  we  shall  see  of 
 what  moment  it  was  that  the  interval  by  which  his  reign  sepa- 
 rated theirs,  should  be  prolonged  fifteen  years ;  and  especially 
 when  the  country  needed  a  hand  disciplined  by  experience,  and 
 guided  by  faith,  to  recover  it  from  the  moral  and  material  dis- 
 organisation into  which  (as  we  know  from  Isaiah's  discourses) 
 it  had  fallen  during  the  Assyrian  supremacy.  And  thus  this 
 crisis  in  the  personal  life  of  Hezekiah  —  the  fact  cannot  be 
 denied,  though  here,  as  in  so  many  like  cases,  our  philosophy 
 cannot  trace  out  the  connection  of  cause  and  effect  —  became 
 the  type  and  symbol  of  the  like  crisis  in  the  life  of  the  nation : 
 it,  too,  was  sick  unto  death,  and  was  granted  a  new  period  of 
 life  by  God,  after  it  was  past  the  help  of  man. 
 
 And  therefore  it  will  rather  argue  our  own  low  moral  stan- 
 dard than  our  understanding  of  Hezekiah's  state  of  mind,  if  we 
 see  nothing  but  selfishness  and  weakness  in  his  lamentations  at 
 the  prospect  of  death  : — selfishness  and  weakness  we  may  find 
 there,  for  in  whom  are  they  not  found  in  the  hour  of  extreme 
 suffering  ?  Ever  since  his  accession  to  the  throne,  and  no 
 doubt  long  before,  Hezekiah  had  been  possessed  by  the  idea 
 that  he  was  called  by  the  Lord  to  reform  and  restore  the 
 nation :  he  had  been  labouring  in  the  work  for  fourteen  years, 
 amidst  the  greatest  difficulties ;  and  now  all  was  to  be  broken 
 off  prematurely  ;  he  was  neither  to  be  permitted  to  go  on  work- 
 ing for  the  natural  '  residue  of  his  years,'  nor  to  hand  over  a 
 finished  task  to  his  children,  and  thus  make  known  to  them  the 
 Lord's  truth  by  his  life,  as  well  as  by  words.*  These  feelings 
 on  Hezekiah's  part,  seem  to  be  recognised  in  Isaiah's  subse- 
 quent promise  that  he  should  recover :  for  the  promise  is  from 
 '  the  Lord,   the   God  of  David  his  father.'  aud  involves   an 
 
 *  Verse  19. 
 
ISAIAH  XXXVIII.    1 — 8.  :    THE    SHADOW    ON    THE    DIAL.     287 
 
 assurance,  not  only  of  his  own  escape  from  death,  but  also  that 
 the  city  as  well  as  himself  should  be  delivered  out  of  the  hand 
 of  the  King  of  Assyria ;  and  thus  reminds  him  that  his  life  is 
 prolonged,  not  for  his  individual  merits,  not  for  his  individual 
 advantage,  but  because  of  God's  covenant  with  the  house  of 
 David,  and  that  he  may  fulfil  the  duties  to  which  that  house 
 has  been  called.  If  a  man  has  a  real  work  to  do  in  the  world, 
 he  must  lament  if  it  is  not  permitted  him  to  accomplish  it :  he 
 will  lament,  even  though  he  acquiesces  in  the  absolute  will  of 
 God,  and  believes  that  God  will  accomplish  His  own  good 
 design,  even  more  perfectly,  through  this  apparent  frustration  of 
 it  by  the  power  of  nature  and  circumstances.  Moreover,  to  the 
 saints  before  the  death  and  resurrection  of  the  Lord,  there  was 
 also  a  far  greater  —  nay  almost  entire  —  obscurity  and  gloom 
 over  the  future.  It  is  difficult,  —  perhaps,  except  for  a  mo- 
 ment, impossible  —  for  us  now  to  realise  all  they  then  felt:  for 
 in  our  times  a  man  has  either  made  himself  too  much  a  creature 
 of  this  world  to  have  very  deep  thoughts  on  death,  or  the  dis- 
 covery of  their  depth  and  darkness  has  driven  him  to  find  light 
 and  life  in  the  clear  hope  of  the  Resurrection  which  the  Gospel 
 has  made  known  to  us:  but  we  can  see  from  the  lanEruace  of 
 Hezekiah,  and  from  the  like  expressions  in  some  of  the  Psalms, 
 that  the  holiest  men  of  old  could  not  but  look  on  death  as  a 
 descent  into  hell ;  and  therefore,  though  they  believed  that 
 God  Avas  there  also,  they  shrunk  instinctively  from  it,  and 
 desired  rather  to  serve  Him  in  the  land  of  the  living.  TVe 
 may  contrast  Hezekiah's  language  on  this  occasion  with 
 that  of  St.  Paul  in  his  Epistles  to  the  Philippians,  and  to 
 Timothy. 
 
 The  corresponding  narrative  in  the  Second  Book  of  Kings 
 relates  the  going  back  of  the  shadow  on  the  degrees  or  steps 
 of  Ahaz  as  a  miracle ;  but  the  account  before  us  falls  within 
 the  ordinary  laws  of  Providence  and  nature,  unless  we  are 
 bound  to  interpret  it  by  the  former.  For  reasons  such  as  I 
 have  urged  on  other  like  points  throughout  this  volume,  I  think 
 we  are  not  so  bound  :  and  that  on  comparing  the  two  docu- 
 ments (that  in  the  Chronicles  is  so  brief  as  to  throw  no  farther 
 light  on  the  question)  by  the  ordinary  methods  of  historical 
 criticism,  we  may  sec  that  though  both  the  writers  believed  in 
 
288  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 the  possibility  of  miracles,  which  in  their  minds  were  not  sepa- 
 rated by  any  marked  division  from  what  we  now  call  provi- 
 dential events,  yet  the  cotemporary  historian  does  not  describe 
 the  occurrence  in  terms  that  exclude  any  explanation  but  that 
 of  miracle,  because  he  described  simply  and  honestly  what  he 
 or  his  informant  saw,  and  which  in  fact  was  not  a  miracle  : 
 whereas  the  other,  living  200  years  or  more  after  the  event, 
 introduces  the  miraculous  element  into  the  account  by  a  few 
 transpositions  and  variations  which  to  him  — to  whom  the 
 miracle  is  the  most  obvious,  nay  the  only  conceivable,  means  of 
 understanding  the  orioinal  documents  —  seem  a  mere  matter 
 of  literary  compilation  and  explanation.  He  is  just  as  simple 
 and  honest  here,  as  when  he  is  abstracting  the  most  ordinary 
 fact  from  the  mass  of  Chronicles  before  him ;  and  as  uncon- 
 scious of  the  change  he  has  wrought,  as  are  the  various  com- 
 mentators who,  down  to  the  present  day,  take  for  granted  that 
 the  statements  in  the  Kings  are  a  mere  supplement  to  those  in 
 Isaiah,  without  any  difference  in  kind.  If  we  prefer  to  believe 
 that  verses  21.  and  22.  of  the  chapter  (xxxviii.)  before  us  are  a 
 part  of  the  original  document  added  by  the  author  at  the  end, 
 when  he  saw  that  he  had  omitted  the  facts  they  mention,  in  the 
 proper  part  of  the  narrative,  the  whole  occurrence  will  appear  to 
 have  been  this  :  —  that  Hezekiah  being  dangerously  ill,  Isaiah, 
 under  an  impulse  which  he,  like  Socrates,  recognised  to  be  from 
 God,  but  which  directed  the  Hebrew  prophet  what  to  do,  while 
 it  only  admonished  the  Greek  philosopher  what  to  abstain  from, 
 went  to  warn  the  king  that  he  must  prepare  for  inevitable 
 death;  and  then  left  him  in  great  trouble  at  the  declaration, 
 and  in  earnest  prayer  that  his  life  might  be  spared.  In  this 
 grief  and  prayer,  Isaiah  both  as  a  patriot  and  as  a  personal 
 friend,  fully  sympathised  :  and  being  soon  convinced  that  the 
 Lord  had  heard  their  prayers,  and  that  he  was  empowered 
 to  promise  Hezekiah  recovery  instead  of  death,  he  returned  to 
 announce  this  new  '  word  of  the  Lord  ; '  and  to  prescribe  the 
 medical  means  which  were  to  be  employed  in  faith  of  the  result. 
 Hezekiah's  grief,  as  we  see  in  the  accompanying  record  of  it, 
 had  expressed  itself  in  lamentations  that  he  was  cut  off  from 
 '  seeing  the  Lord,'  that  is,  worshipping  Him  in  His  temple  at 
 Jerusalem  ;  and  Isaiah's  promise  was  couched  in  the  form  of  an 
 
THE    SIGN    NOT    A   MIRACLE.  289 
 
 assurance  that  he  should  go  up  to  the  temple  again  in  two  or 
 three  days,  as  we  should  say.*    Hezekiah  asked  for  e  a  sign  'that 
 the  promise  would  be  fulfilled  ;  and  then  Isaiah  referred  to  a 
 phenomenon  which,  by  a  providential  coincidence,  occurred  at 
 the  time,  but  which  we  know,  though  they  could  not,  to  involve 
 no  suspension  of  the  laws  of  nature. f     Dr.  Alexander's  literal 
 translation  of  the  text  (which  I  give,  not  only  because  of  his 
 accurate  scholarship,  but  also  because  he  is  entirely  in  favour 
 of  the  miraculous  explanation,)  removes  all  the  difficulty  which 
 appears  from  the  use  of  the  future  verbs  in  our  authorised  ver- 
 sion.    He  reads  :  —  K  And  this  to  thee  the  sign  from  Jehovah, 
 that   Jehovah  will  perform  this  word  which  He  hath  spoken: 
 Behold  I  (am)  causing  the  shadow  to  go  back,  the  degrees  which 
 it  has  gone  down  (or  which  have  gone  down)  on  the  degrees  of 
 Ahaz,  with  the  sun  ten  degrees  backward ;    and  the   sun  re- 
 turned ten  degrees,  on  the  degrees  which  it  had  gone  down  :  " 
 and  not  only  is  the  statement  of  the  Book  of  Kings,  that  the 
 terms  of  the  sign  were  deliberately  chosen  by  Hezekiah,  wholly 
 wanting  here,  but  neither  is  there  anything  that  requires  us  to 
 suppose  that  the  sign  occurred  at  the  very  moment  in  which 
 Isaiah  first  directed  the  remedy  of  the  figs,  and  promised  the 
 king's  recovery  :  the  analogy  of  Isaiah's  method  of  employino- 
 and  appealing  to  '  signs '  on  all  other  occasions,  rather  favours  the 
 conclusion  that  neither  he  nor  Hezekiah  would  have  been  in 
 such  haste ;  and  that  they  would  have  thought  the  phenomenon 
 of  the  shadow  equally  a  sign  and  pledge  that  the  promise  should 
 hold  good,  though  it  did  not  occur  till  Hezekiah  was  already  in 
 the  way  of  recovery.     And  this  is  the  answer  which  I  deferred 
 giving  to  the  question  raised  by  Isaiah's  offer  to  give  Ahaz  a 
 sign  'either  in  the  depth,  or  in  the  height   above:' — that   I 
 see  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Isaiah  would  have  been  able  to 
 work  a  miracle.     But  I  am  not  equally  certain  that  in  his  en- 
 thusiasm for  the  cause  of  the  Lord,  and  his  indignation  at  the 
 heartlessness  of  Ahaz,  he  may  not  have  expected  that  the  power 
 would  have  been  given  him  ;  though  the  sign  that  he  chose  for 
 himself  was  not  even  an  extraordinary  natural  phenomenon,  like 
 
 *  Compare  Hosea,  vi.  2. 
 
 f  Vitringa  and  Gesenius   refer  to   instances  of  like   effects,  in  modern 
 times,  of  a  refraction  caused  by  some  vapour  or  cloud. 
 
 U 
 
290  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 that  of  the  retreating  shadow,  or  the  spontaneous  crops  of  wheat. 
 Sciolism,  religious  or  sceptical,  may  sneer  at  such  conclusions ; 
 but  I  believe  they  will  not  be  deemed  either  uncritical  or  pro- 
 fane, by  him  who  has  familiarised  his  mind  with  the  habits  of 
 thought  and  action  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  people,  and 
 with  the  meaning  of  Revelation,  as  understood  by  Paul  or 
 Luther. 
 
 If  we  prefer  to  consider,  with  some  commentators,  that  verses 
 21.  and  22.  are  a  later  addition,  we  may  suppose  that  Isaiah 
 witnessed  the  going  back  of  the  shadow  on  the  steps  of  Ahaz, 
 as  he  went  through  c  the  middle  court,'  and  that  he  saw  in  it  the 
 sign  that  their  prayers  were  heard,  and  thereupon  returned  to 
 Hezekiah.  Whether  those  verses  are  a  part  of  the  original  text 
 or  not,  it  may  be  possible  for  Hebrew  scholars  to  decide,  when 
 they  can  divest  their  minds  of  certain  prejudices,  which  are 
 hitherto  so  strongly  shown  in  their  conclusions  on  either  side. 
 There  still  remains  the  prediction,  that  Hezekiah  should  live 
 fifteen  years ;  and  which,  it  is  said,  compels  us  still  to  choose 
 between  a  miracle  and  a  narrative  after  the  event.  I  think  not: 
 I  believe  all  histories  contain  coincidences  as  important  and 
 striking,  which  we  never  suppose  to  be  miraculous :  and  it  may 
 also  be  doubted  whether  '  fifteen '  is  not  a  round  and  definite, 
 put  for  an  indefinite,  number ;  and  whether  the  compilers  of  the 
 habitually  imperfect,  and  often  inaccurate,  Hebrew  chronologies, 
 may  not  have  calculated  the  length  of  Hezekiah's  reign  from 
 this  very  statement,  assumed  to  have  been  literally  fulfilled. 
 But  even  if  a  slight  change  in,  or  addition  to,  the  text,  be  here 
 the  alternative  to  a  miracle,  I  see  less  difficulty  in  the  former 
 than  in  the  latter;  though  I  cannot  give  all  the  arguments, 
 without  writing  a  complete  essay  on  the  miracles  of  the  Old 
 Testament,  —  which,  indeed,  is  a  work  much  wanted. 
 
 Let  me,  however,  notice  one  probable  objection  :  namely,  that 
 in  thus  unscrupulously  applying  the  ordinary  methods  of  criti- 
 cism to  the  scriptural  documents  before  us,  we  are  forgetful  of 
 the  reverence  due  to  the  Bible  as  God's  revelation.  It  is  not 
 reasonable  to  reply  to  such  objections,  that  truth  is  truth,  and 
 that  an  honest  inquirer  will  disregard  the  consequences  to  which 
 the  pursuit  of  truth  leads  him.  He  is  not  a  rational,  if  he  is 
 an  honest,  inquirer  after  truth,  who  fancies  it  is  to  be  attained 
 
THE  BIBLE  TREATED  LIKE  OTHER  BOOKS.        291 
 
 without  that  careful  verification  of  his  first  notions,  which  can 
 only  be  effected  by  bringing  these  to  the  test  of  all  facts  which 
 properly  bear  on  the  subject ;  and  the  man  who  by  independent 
 observations  and  experiences  has  ascertained  the  fact  that  the 
 Bible  is  the  Book  of  Life  and  Light,  and  has  a  real  unity  in 
 itself,  is  not  only  not  unphilosophical  if  he  insists  on  employing 
 this  fact  to  verify  a  critical  conclusion,  as  to  such  a  point  as  we 
 here  speak  of,  but  he  would  be  unphilosophical  if  he  were  to  take 
 any  other  course.  But  I  appeal  confidently  to  the  result,  if  he, 
 being  a  reflecting  as  well  as  a  religious  man,  does  apply  this 
 very  test.  Just  as  the  critical  investigation  of  the  works  of 
 Herodotus,  or  Livy,  has  heightened  the  respect  of  real  scholars 
 for  authors  whom  the  half-informed  alone  think  objects  of 
 patronising  self-conceit ;  so  a  man's  reverence  for  the  Bible  is 
 helped,  and  not  hindered,  when  he  frankly  and  clearly  recog- 
 nises the  fact,  that  its  documents  are  not  objects  of  superstitious 
 idolatry,  but  of  manly  investigation,  and  thereby  of  a  respect 
 and  reverence  such  as  can  never  be  felt  for  an  idol,  by  whatever 
 name  we  may  adjure  its  worshippers.  And,  as  it  is  often  in- 
 structive to  see  ourselves  reflected  back  in  those  most  opposite 
 to  us,  let  us  consider  that  there  is  a  school  of  thinkers,  at  the 
 head  of  whom  were  Hume  and  Gibbon  in  the  last  age,  and 
 who  have  not  less  able  and  learned  representatives  in  our  own, 
 who  quite  accept  the  dogma  that  the  Bible  is  not  to  be  treated 
 like  other  books  ;  and  that  neither  for  them,  nor  for  those  whom 
 their  opinions  any  way  influence,  is  the  result  reverential  for 
 the  Bible.  And,  lastly,  I  ask  the  reader  who  has  accompanied 
 me  thus  far,  in  my  deliberate  and  avowed  plan  of  treating  this 
 book  of  Isaiah  like  any  other  book,  what  he  actually  finds  to  be 
 the  result  ?  Does  he  feel  less  reverence  for  it,  or  for  the  Book 
 of  which  it  is  a  part  ?  Does  he  find  that  he  holds  the  old 
 Christian  faith  of  his  fathers,  that  this  Book  is  indeed  the  Word 
 of  God,  less  heartily  than  he  did  before  ? 
 
 The  questions,  of  some  archaeological  interest,  whether  the 
 'degrees  of  Ahaz '  were  a  sun-dial  introduced  by  that  king  with 
 other  Assyrian  fashions  ;  or  only  a  flight  of  steps  on  which 
 a  column  or  other  body  cast  a  shadow  ;  or  whether  it  was 
 the  latter,  expressly  devised  for  a  sun-dial;  have  been  dis- 
 cussed with  much  learning  :   but  as  no  one  conclusion  can  be 
 
 v  2 
 
292  HEBREW   TOLITICS. 
 
 positively  preferred,  the  reader  will  find  it  best  to  examine  them 
 at  length  for  himself.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  observe,  that, 
 in  any  case,  there  is  no  reason  for  assuming  that  the  degrees 
 were  at  least  half  an  hour  each,  and  so  marked  such  large  divi- 
 sions of  time  as  would  require  a  refraction  of  the  sun's  rays  far 
 beyond  any  that  has  been  witnessed  on  any  other  occasion  on 
 record. 
 
 '  The  writing  of  Hezekiah  king  of  Judah,  when  he  was  sick, 
 and  recovered  from  his  sickness,'  is  a  description  (as  this  title 
 seems  exactly  to  express)  of  his  feelings  and  thoughts,  during 
 the  very  progress  of  his  illness  and  cure;  verses  10.  to  14.  de- 
 scribing the  former,  and  verses  15.  to  20.  the  latter.  Mortal 
 disease  threatened  to  cut  off  his  days,  when  their  natural  course 
 was  only  at  the  middle ;  he  found  himself  suddenly  deprived, 
 as  by  a  sentence  of  punishment,  of  the  rest  of  his  years  *;  sum- 
 moned to  leave  for  ever  the  bright  world  of  life, — which  was  so 
 pleasant  with  its  human  fellowships,  and  with  the  presence  of 
 the  Lord  in  nature,  in  providence,  in  the  nation,  in  the  temple- 
 services,  and  in  his  own  heart, — and  to  enter  the  dark  gates  of 
 the  grave,  alone,  and  without  the  sustaining  thought  that  the 
 Lord  had  passed  them  before  him.  J  Like  a  shepherd's  tent, 
 which  never  remains  long  in  one  place,  but  has  its  pins  hastily 
 pulled  up  and  its  covering  taken  away  (the  words,  says  Dathe, 
 implying  violent  and  hasty  removal),  and  leaves  the  lately  busy 
 encampment  a  silent  desert  again ; — so,  says  Hezekiah,  my  gene- 
 ration, the  generation  of  those  inhabitants  of  the  world  whom  I 
 shall  behold  no  more,  is  departed,  or  plucked  up  from  me. 
 There  seems  to  be  no  reason  for  departing  from  the  proper 
 meaning  of  the  Hebrew  word,  which  is  certainly  '  generation/ 
 
 "  Nel  mezzo  del  cammin  di  nostra  vita 
 Mi  ritrovai  per  una  selva  oscura, 
 Che  la  diritta  via  era  smarrita. 
 Alii  quanto  a  dir  qual  era  e  cosa  dura 
 Questa  selva  selvaggia  ed  aspra  e  forte, 
 Che  nel  pensier  rinnuova  la  paura! 
 Tanto  e  amara,  die  poco  c  piii  niorte." 
 -I-  "  Grant,  O  Lord  ....  that  through  the  grave  and  gate   of  death,  we 
 may  pass  to  our  joyful  resurrection  ;  for   His  merits  who   died,   and  was 
 buried,  and  rose  again  for  us,  Thy  Son,  Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord." — Culled  for 
 Easter  Even. 
 
ISAIAH   XXXVIII.  9 — 20.  :    THE    HYMN   OF    IIEZEKIAH.        293 
 
 but  rather  the  contrary ;  for  the  substitution  of  the  image  of 
 his  generation  leaving  him,  for  the  thought  of  his  leaving  them, 
 is  at  least  as  agreeable  to  the  genius  of  Hebrew  poetry,  as  it 
 evidently  would  be  to  that  of  our  own.     The  tent  suggests  the 
 weaver's  web,  and  the  speaker  becomes  himself  the  weaver, 
 cutting  off  his  life  from  the  loom,  or,  more  exactly,  the  thrum  — 
 or  threads  which  join  the  web  to  the  loom.     Perhaps  continuing 
 the  image  of  the  weaver,  he  says  that  during  the  day  he  ex- 
 pected that  with  the  arrival  of  night  God  would  make  an  end  of 
 his  life :  during  the  night  the  fever  raged  in  his  bones  as  though 
 a  lion  were  gnawing  at  them,  and  he  reckoned  it  impossible  for 
 him  to  survive  beyond  the  morning ;  but  then  again  followed 
 the  day,  with  its  dull  monotonous  suffering,  so  well  expressed  by 
 the  repetition  of  the  words  in  which  it  was  first  described,  — 
 'from  day  even  to  night  thou  wilt  make  an  end  of  me.'     Some- 
 times his  pains  made  him  cry  out  aloud  :    at  other  times,  his 
 strength  was  so  low  that  he  could  only  '  inwardly  groan  and 
 bemoan  himself  (as  the  elder  Lowth  explains  it)  :  — '  Mine  eyes 
 fail  with  looking  upward  ;   O  Lord,  I  am  oppressed  ;  undertake 
 for  me.'     In  contrast  with  the  'I  said,'  of  verses  10.  and  11. 
 stands  the  'What  shall  I  say  ?'  with  which  the  psalm  passes  from 
 the  description  of  his  sickness  to  that  of  his  returning  health. 
 The  suddenness  of  his  delivery  surprises  him,  so  that  he  wants 
 words  to  express  his  thankfulness,  and  can  only  say  that  the 
 Lord  hath  both  spoken  to  him,  and  Himself  done  what  He 
 promised.     His  soul  has  passed  through  great  bitterness,  and  he 
 shall  remember  it,  and  his  deliverance  from  it,  with  awe,  all  the 
 days  of  his  life  ;  —  or  else,  he  will  go  up  with  reverent  joy  and 
 thankfulness  to  the  temple  ever  after ;  the  word  being  the  same 
 as  in  Psalm  xlii.  4.     In  this  time  of  danger  in  which  God  alone 
 could  have  saved  him,  he  has  learnt  to  understand  that  men  do 
 not  live  by  mere  course  of  nature,  but  by  the  word  and  power 
 of  God,  and  to  this  Divine  care  he  recognises  that  his  own  life 
 is  now  due.     His  great  and  bitter  suffering  of  spirit  as  well  as 
 body  is  turned  into  peace  ;  he  realises  that  his  sins,  of  which  lie 
 had  been  brought  into  such  fearful  consciousness  by  the  approach 
 of  death,  and  of  which  he  felt,  as  men  ever  have  felt,  that  death 
 is  the  consequence  and  punishment,  are  forgiven  him ;   and  that 
 his  Loud  has  delivered  him  with  the  arms  of  love  from  the  pit 
 
 u  3 
 
204  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 of  destruction: — 'Thou  hast  loved  my  soul  from  the  pit  of 
 destruction,'  as  the  Hebrew  beautifully  expresses  it.  Then 
 with  a  renewed  expression  of  that  strong  feeling  of  the  evil  of 
 death,  and  the  blessing  of  life,  and  with  an  allusion  to  his  hope 
 of  children  now  that  his  life  is  spared  — both  which  we  have 
 already  noticed — he  rises  more  and  more  into  the  language  of 
 joy  and  triumph.  e  The  Lord  to  save  me  ! '  seems  to  be  in  the 
 form  of  a  battle-shout ;  and  the  '  songs  for  stringed  instruments,' 
 to  be  sung  in  perpetual  service,  in  the  House  of  the  Lord, 
 may  be  best  illustrated  by  those  psalms  which  are  evidently  pro- 
 cessional and  choral,  and  in  some  instances,  as  Psalms  cxvi.  and 
 cxviii.,  public  thanksgivings  after  sickness,  on  occasions  like 
 the  present.  We  might,  perhaps,  attribute  the  cxviiith,  in  par- 
 ticular, to  Hezekiah  himself,  and  in  reference  to  this  sickness. 
 
ISAIAH    XXXIX.  :    THE    EMBASSY    FROM    BABYLON.  295 
 
 CHAPTER  XXII. 
 
 isaiah  xxxix.  :  the  embassy  from  babylon.  chronicle    of  eusebius. 
 
 —  berosus.  —  Sennacherib's  annals.  —  books    of    kings    and  chro- 
 nicles  VALUE    OF    THE    LATTER.  THE    SIN    OF    HEZEK1AU. TRUSTING 
 
 GOD    IN    POLITICS. MODERN     HISTORY.  NIEBUHR    AND     NAPLES.  COL- 
 
 LETTA. REVERENCE    FOR    GREAT    MEN. NATIONS    AND     RULERS    REACT 
 
 ON    EACH    OTHER.  HEZEKIAH's    RECEPTION    OF    THE  EMBASSY.  ISAIAh's 
 
 DENUNCIATION. ' APRKS    MOI    LE    DELUGE.'  PROSPERITY     OF    ENGLAND. 
 
 RELIGIOUS    TEMPER    OF    OUR    STATESMEN.  MR.  GLADSTONE. 
 
 I  have  already  given  the  substance  of  the  notices  of  Mero- 
 dach-Baladan and  his  times,  which,  having  been  quoted  from 
 Berosus  by  Alexander  Polybistor,  came  to  light  a  few  years 
 ago,  in  the  Armenian  version  of  Eusebius's  Chronicle  ;  and  also 
 that  of  the  Assyrian  Annals  themselves,  in  as  far  as  they  are 
 yet  deciphered.  The  former  account  stands  thus: — "After 
 the  reign  of  Sennacherib's  brother,  Hagisa  (or  Acises)  had  pos- 
 session of  the  Babylonian  government,  but  was  killed  by 
 Merodach-Baladan  befwe  thirty  days  had  elapsed :  and  he  too, 
 after  a  reign  of  six  months,  was  killed,  and  succeeded  by  a  man 
 named  Elibus,  in  the  third  year  of  whose  reign  Sennacherib, 
 king  of  the  Assyrians,  marched  an  army  against  the  Baby- 
 lonians, defeated  them  in  a  pitched  battle,  sent  Elibus  and  his 
 friends  prisoners  to  Assyria,  and  made  his  own  son  Asordan 
 king  of  Babylon."  The  other  account  is,  according  to  Colonel 
 liawlinson,  that  Sennacherib,  in  the  first  year  of  his  reign, 
 fought  and  defeated  Merodach-Baladan,  whom  he  seems  to  have 
 found  in  independent  possession  of  Babylonia,  but  who  now 
 fled,  leaving  his  country  to  be  subjugated,  and  put  under  an 
 Assyrian  vice-king  (  a  man  of  the  name  of  Bel-adon  (Dr. 
 Hincks  reads  *  Belib'),  the  son  of  one  of  Sennacherib's  con- 
 fidential officers,  who  had  been  bred  up  in  his  palace ' :  and  in 
 the  fourth  year  of  Sennacherib's  annals  —  that  is,  in  the  year 
 after  his  campaign  in  Judca  —  he  relates  an  expedition  against 
 
 u  4 
 
296  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 the  Chaldeans,  and  says,  "  Merodach-Baladan,  Avhom  I  had 
 defeated  in  the  course  of  my  first  year,  fled  before  my  chief 
 officers,  and  concealed  himself  in  the  country  of  [name  lost], 
 which  was  beyond  the  sea.  His  brothers,  the  offspring  of  his 
 father's  house,  whom  he  had  left  on  this  side  the  sea,  together 
 with  the  men  of  the  country,  I  ordered  to  be  removed  from 
 Beth  Yakina  [at  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates]  ;  the  rest  of  the 
 cities  of  Merodach-Baladan  I  destroyed  and  burned  ;  at  the 
 same  time  I  appointed  my  son  Assur  Nadin  to  the  government 
 of  the  country,  placing  him  in  a  position  of  independence."  The 
 list  of  Babylonian  kings  in  Ptolemy's  canon  does  but  add  a  third 
 set  of  discordant  notices.  The  '  son  of  Sennacherib's  confiden- 
 tial officer,  bred  up  in  his  palace,'  may  have  been  his  foster- 
 brother,  and  the  same  person  whom  Berosus  calls  '  his  brother  : ' 
 but  I  do  not  pretend  to  reconcile  the  accounts.  They  will  not, 
 however,  appear  more  different  from  each  other  than  we  should 
 expect,  if  we  remember  that  the  deciphering  of  one  is  as  yet 
 more  or  less  tentative,  and  that  we  have  another  at  fourth  or 
 fifth  hand,  and  with  strong  evidence  of  extreme  carelessness  in 
 the  compiler,  Eusebius,  himself.* 
 
 Babylonia,  therefore,  was  at  this  period  alternately  a  pro- 
 vince of  Assyria,  of  such  importance  that  royal  princes  of  the 
 imperial  dynasty  were  appointed  its  viceroys ;  and  independent 
 of,  and  in  arms  against,  that  power.  And  the  latter  was  now 
 the  case.  Merodach-Baladan  may  have  seized  the  moment  of 
 Sennacherib's  discomfiture  in  Judea,  to  raise  his  standard  again  ; 
 or  at  least  have  seen  in  that  discomfiture  an  opening  for  an  alli- 
 ance with  the  first  king  whom,  as  far  as  we  know,  Sennacherib 
 had  not  succeeded  in  finally  reducing  to  submission.  We  can 
 hardly  doubt  that  the  embassy,  whether  sent  immediately  before 
 or  after  the  revolt,  was  political ;  and  that  the  congratulations 
 on  Hezekiah's  recovery,  and  the  inquiry  —  of  particular  in- 
 terest to  the  Babylonian  astronomers  —  as  to  the  going  back  of 
 
 Berosi  Fragmenta.  Kawlinson's  Outline,  p.  25.  The  former  is  the  Ar- 
 menian version  of  Eusebius's  account  of  what  Polyhistor  relates  of  the  Baby- 
 lonian history  which  Berosus  wrote  from  the  original  records. 
 
 For  a  proposed  reconciliation  of  Ptolemy's  Canon  with  Berosus,  and  of 
 both  with  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions,  see  Dr.  llincks  in  the  Irish  Trans- 
 actions, xxii.  4.  3G4  if. 
 
BOOKS   OP    CHRONICLES    AND   OF    KINGS.  297 
 
 the  shadow,  were  subordinate  objects  to  that  of  forming  an  alli- 
 ance between  Babylon  and  Judah.  This,  indeed,  may  be  the 
 meaning  intended  by  the  mention  of  the  '  letters  and  present,' 
 which  were  sent  to  Hezekiah  by  Merodach-Baladan.  If,  how- 
 ever, there  were  no  such  specific  advances  on  his  part,  the 
 spirit  of  the  whole  transaction  is  not  the  less  clear,  espe- 
 cially on  comparison  of  the  parallel  account  in  the  Book  of 
 Chronicles.  The  author  of  the  Chronicles  gives  predominance 
 to  the  ecclesiastical,  as  the  author  of  the  Kings  does  to  the 
 civil,  side  of  their  national  history  :  he  is  extravagantly  censured 
 and  depreciated  by  some  modern  critics,  not  only  for  want  of 
 precision,  but  for  prejudice  and  partiality  — as  in  omitting  such 
 unfavourable  facts  as  the  idolatries  of  Solomon  ;  but  even  if  it 
 be  not  enough  to  say  in  reply,  that  he  refers  his  leaders  to  then 
 existing  records  for  '  all  the  rest '  of  the  events  which  he  thus 
 warns  them  he  does  not  give,  and  if  we  must  admit  him  to  have 
 had  the  commonest  failing  of  all  historians,  we  shall  lose  not 
 only  many  important  facts,  but  also  much  indispensable  light 
 upon  those  of  the  other  historical  books,  if  we  reject  his  help. 
 Events  which  the  original  chroniclers  would  have  narrated  with- 
 out explanation,  because  they  were  sufficiently  intelligible  of 
 themselves  to  cotemporaries,  he  amplifies  with  explanations  of 
 their  causes  ;  and  he  thus  illustrates  things  which  a  different 
 state  of  mental  development,  as  well  as  of  outward  circum- 
 stances, had  made  obscure  to  his  own  readers,  and  would,  but 
 for  his  aid,  be  obscure  to  us  who,  if  we  have  more  pretensions 
 to  philology  and  philosophy  than  he,  have  no  longer  all  his 
 sources  of  information.  Thus  he  here  throws  light  on  the  brief 
 statements  of  Isaiah  and  the  Book  of  Kings,  by  his  account  of 
 the  great  prosperity  of  Judah  after  the  overthrow  of  Senna- 
 cherib, and  the  way  in  which  the  friendship  of  her  king  was 
 consequently  courted  by  the  neighbouring  states ;  by  his  point- 
 ing out  that  in  the  king's  manner  of  receiving  those  overtures 
 he  represented  the  general  feeling  of  his  people,  so  that  his  act 
 was  properly  national  and  productive  of  national  consequences ; 
 and  by  his  calling  our  attention  to  the  pregnant  truth,  that  this 
 act  was  but  a  first  manifestation  of  what  was  already  their 
 settled  state  of  mind  and  heart,  and  which  would  therefore  as- 
 suredly exhibit  itself,  not  merely  in  this  isolated  expression,  but 
 
298  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 in  the  whole  subsequent  career  of  the  nation,  until  the  state  of 
 mind  itself  was  changed.  And  he  explains  what  this  state  of 
 mind  was,  in  the  words  —  '  Hezekiah  rendered  not  again  accord- 
 ing to  the  benefit  done  unto  him ;  for  his  heart  was  lifted  up  ; 
 therefore  there  was  wrath  upon  him,  and  upon  Judah  and  Jeru- 
 salem :  notwithstanding  Hezekiah  humbled  himself  for  the  pride 
 of  his  heart,  both  he  and  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem,  so  that 
 the  wrath  of  the  Lord  came  not  upon  them  in  the  days  of 
 Hezekiah.'  Here  was  the  old,  deep-seated,  vice  re -appearing 
 in  a  form  adapted  to  the  new  circumstances  of  the  time.  The 
 Hebrew  nation  —  as  indeed  every  other,  now  not  less  than  then 
 —  could  only  stand  by  faith  in  its  unseen  yet  ever-present  King, 
 and  conscientious  obedience  to  His  laws  :  they  had  quite  for- 
 gotten this,  not  for  the  first  time,  during  the  prosperous 
 reign  of  Uzziah,  and  had  ceased  to  trust  in  anything  but 
 their  own  power  and  wealth,  and  the  settledness  of  their  insti- 
 tutions :  when  these  failed  them,  during  the  long  years  of 
 Assyrian  supremacy  and  invasion,  they  tried  with  no  better 
 success  their  systems  of  political  alliances,  intrigues,  and  coun- 
 terpoises, in  which  Hebrew  craft  was  to  outwit  bai'barian  force: 
 and  now  when  it  might  have  been  hoped  that  all  this  severe 
 discipline  had  taught  them  how  vain  was  their  trust  in  either 
 the  one  or  the  other,  it  needed  but  an  opportunity  — e  God's 
 leaving  them  to  try  them,  that  they  might  know  all  that  was  in 
 their  heart '  —  to  prove  that  both  king  and  people  were  ready  to 
 fall  back  on  the  old  courses,  so  superficially  had  the  lesson  been 
 learnt,  and  so  immediately  forgotten.  Instead  of  keeping 
 steadily  in  view  the  fact,  that  their  deliverance  from  Assyria  was 
 wrought  by  God,  after  all  their  own  schemes  had  completely 
 failed,  and  adhering  to  the  simple,  straightforward,  conduct 
 which  that  fact  pointed  to,  they  were  taking  credit  to  themselves 
 for  the  deliverance,  and  proposing,  or  accepting  the  proposal  of, 
 a  new  system  of  heathen  alliances.  In  these,  Judah  was  pro- 
 bably to  be  the  patroness,  and  not  the  patronised  :  and  the  fo- 
 reign policy  which  had  been  so  ruinous  in  the  hands  of  Ahaz, 
 Shebna,  and  the  kings  of  Samaria,  was  to  be  made  successful 
 by  a  combination  with  that  of  the  powerful  Uzziah,  and  such  as 
 he  might  have  adopted,  had  he  not  lived  before  the  rise  of  the 
 late   Assyrian  domination.     The  fear  which  characterised  the 
 
TRUSTING   GOD    IN    POLITICS.  209 
 
 previous  policy,  was  now  somewhat  modified  with  pride ;  but 
 the  spirit  was  the  same :  for  it  was  the  spirit  which  has  no  faith 
 that,  when  a  man  or  a  nation  keeps  the  plain  road  of  duty  and 
 honesty,  the  consequences  may  be  expected  without  anxiety  ; 
 and  which,  therefore,  substitutes  for  such  adherence  to  duty,  some 
 of  those  schemes  by  which  mere  worldly,  godless,  politicians  are 
 still,  as  in  old  times,  ever  striving  to  compass  their  ends,  whe- 
 ther the  subversion,  or  the  restoration,  of  a  dynasty  or  a  party, 
 or  the  acquisition,  or  the  preventing  of  others  from  acquiring,  a 
 territory  or  an  office  ;  but  which  at  last  brings  them  to  the  in- 
 evitable condition  which  Shakspeare  describes  as  their  fate,  in 
 words  so  significant  as  to  be  worth  quoting  a  second  time  :  — 
 c  A  politician,  a  man  that  would  circumvent  God,  o'er-officed  by 
 an  ass.' 
 
 The  spirit  of  such  policy  is  worldly  and  godless ;  but  if  we 
 will  study  it,  and  what  the  Bible  reveals  concerning  it,  for  our 
 own  profit,  we  must  look  how  it  works  still,  as  of  old,  in  the 
 religious  and  patriotic,  and  not  in  the  merely  selfish  : — in  the 
 Hezekiahs  rather  than  in  the  Shebnas.  And  though  the  quiet, 
 legal,  course  of  modern  English  politics,  does  not  supply  the 
 most  obvious  illustrations  of  the  eternal  laws  which  govern 
 it ;  yet  these  are  as  steadily  at  work  with  us  as  with  other 
 nations  —  only  a  little  closer  observation  is  necessary.  A 
 greater  difficulty  lies  in  the  fire  which  still  smoulders  under  the 
 dead-looking  ashes,  on  which  he  must  tread  who  meddles  with 
 cotemporary  history :  and,  therefore,  it  is  with  hesitation  that 
 I  suggest,  that  we  may  find  a  counterpart  of  Hezekiah's  want 
 of  faith  in  the  future  guidance  of  the  God  who  had  led  him 
 through  the  past,  in  the  repressive  policy  which  our  statesmen 
 adopted,  and  so  many  of  our  patriots  approved,  after  the  peace 
 of  1815.  A  large  part  of  the  best  men  of  that  day,  seem 
 to  have  lost  all  clear  belief  that  the  God  who  had  just  delivered 
 Europe  from  a  mightier  incarnation  of  sheer,  arbitrary,  force 
 than  Sennacherib's,  had  any  farther  work  for  His  Englishmen  *, 
 
 *  "  Now  once  again  by  all  concurrence  of  signs,  and  by  the  general  in- 
 stinct of  holy  and  devout  men,  as  they  daily  and  solemnly  express  their 
 thoughts,  God  is  decreeing  to  begin  some  new  and  great  period  in  his 
 Church,  even  to  the  reforming  of  reformation  itself.  What  does  he  then,  but 
 reveal  himself  to  his  servants,  and,  as  his  manner  is,  first  to  his  English- 
 
300  IIEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 and  that  He  only  required  them  still  to  mark  and  follow  the 
 method  of  His  counsels.  They  retained  their  faith  in  the  ideal 
 beauty  of  freedom  and  progress,  — just  as  Hezekiah  no  doubt 
 retained  his  faith  :  but  in  a  temper  essentially  analogous,  though 
 different  in  form,  to  that  which  prompted  the  alliance  of  Judah 
 with  Merodach-Baladan,  they  renounced,  for  all  practical  pur- 
 poses, both  their  youthful  love  of  freedom,  and  their  maturer 
 reverence  for  constitutional  rights :  and  they  avowed  that, 
 while  their  hopes  for  the  future  were  utterly  dim,  their  pre- 
 sent trust  was  in  the  vulgarest  expedients  of  police-craft ; 
 and  in  resistance  to  the  reforms  which  in  the  abstract  they 
 admitted  to  be  desirable,  but  in  the  demand  for  which  they 
 would  see  nothing  but  man's  sedition,  instead  of  the  signs  by 
 which  God  was  pointing  to  the  forward  road.  And  to  come 
 down  lower,  and  still  nearer  home :  —  Which  of  us  does  not 
 know,  has  not  felt,  how  in  the  eagerness  of  political  parti- 
 sanship religious  men  will  practise,  and  even  justify,  the  un- 
 principled support  of  bad  ministers,  or  adherents  of  ministers 
 in  parliament,  or  at  elections  ?  Who  has  not  heard  men,  whose 
 private  morality,  and  even  piety,  is  above  all  suspicion,  defend 
 bribery  and  corruption  at  the  last  elections,  and  the  voting  for 
 a  fool,  or  a  knave,  in  pi'eference  to  a  wise  and  honest  man, 
 because  it  was  in  the  cause  of  his  party  ?  Who  has  not  felt 
 the  temptation  to  do  the  like  ? 
 
 Though  I  share  the  ordinary  belief  of  my  countrymen,  as  to 
 the  causes  of  the  late  European  revolutions,  and  also  as  to  the 
 conduct  of  the  several  kings  and  governments  since  the  recovery 
 of  their  power,  I  think  it  so  impossible  to  speak  of  the  internal 
 politics  of  a  foreign  nation  without  misapprehensions  and 
 blunders,  that  I  refrain  from  making  the  obvious  applications 
 which  would  otherwise  be  here  at  hand :  yet,  as  I  have  illus- 
 trated a  former  part  of  my  text  at  so  great  length  from 
 Niebuhr's  pictures  of  his  own,  and  his  countrymen's,  condition 
 and  temper  during  the  War  of  Freedom,  I  must  point  to  the 
 last  —  only  too  faithful  —  resemblance  between  the  two  stories. 
 
 men  ?  —  I  say,  as  his  manner  is,  first  to  us,  though  we  mark  not  the  method 
 of  his  counsels,  and  are  unworthy." — Milton's  Speech  for  the  Liberty  of  Un- 
 licensed Printing. 
 
NIEBUHE   AND   THE   NEAPOLITAN    CONSTITUTION".  301 
 
 Already,  in  1815,  Niebuhr  had  begun  to  lament  that  e  the  first 
 Avar  did  them  no  harm,  but  that  was  conducted  in  a  different 
 spirit  from  the  present  one:'  and  in  1819,  after  the  description 
 already  quoted,  of  what  might  have  been,  when  *  the  ground  was 
 cleared,'  &c,  he  says,  —  'No  seed  was  sown,  and  so  of  course 
 weeds  shot  up  in  rank  luxuriance :  nothing  can  exonerate  those 
 who  neglected  their  duty  at  that  time,  from  the  blame  of  these 
 results :  .  .  .  the  tone  of  public  feeling  has  degenerated, 
 and  God  knows  how  it  is  to  be  raised.'  And,  sadder  still,  we 
 find  the  religious  and  philosophic  statesman  himself,  fallen  under 
 the  same  unbelief  in  God's  methods.  He  still  loved  law  and 
 liberty  as  they  appeared  in  past  history,  or  as  he  conceived  of 
 their  restoration  out  of  mediaeval  institutions :  but  the  actual 
 process  by  which  alone  God  will  have  law,  and  liberty,  and  the 
 various  forms  of  human  progress,  developed,  was  too  rough,  and 
 too  soiled  with  hard  and  unskilful  struggles,  to  be  tolerable  to 
 him  :  he  not  only  disliked  it,  as  he  did  the  organisation  of 
 armies  and  police  for  the  ends  of  despotism,  but  he  was  glad  to 
 employ  these  to  put  it  down.  Few  things  are  more  painful, 
 few  more  instructive,  to  him  who  has  studied  the  laws  of  po- 
 litical society  by  help  of  this  great  man's  works,  than  that  story 
 of  the  course  Niebuhr  took  when  the  Austrian  army  was  at 
 Rome,  on  its  way  to  Naples.  He  might  urge  that  the  Nea- 
 politans had  not  developed  a  constitution  out  of  their  old  muni- 
 cipalities, which  were  most  probably  too  effete  for  any  such 
 purpose ;  that,  with  that  fatal  habit  of  Italy,  whether  con- 
 queress  or  conquered,  they  had  gone  for  their  new  polity  to 
 Spain,  which,  indeed,  had  given  them  the  one  good  ruler  whom 
 they  had  known  for  centuries ;  and  that  though  their  parliament 
 did  represent  the  majority,  at  least,  of  the  possessors  of  property 
 and  intelligence  throughout  the  country,  it  worked  but  indiffer- 
 ently: but  a  Frenchman  in  Napoleon's  time  would  have  produced 
 as  plausible  arguments  for  assisting  Prussia  by  external  inter- 
 ference, as  could  be  adduced  for  meddling  now  with  Naples. 
 Yet  Niebuhr,  who,  some  five  or  six  years  before,  could  feel  and 
 write  as  we  have  seen,  when  the  question  was  between  France 
 and  Prussia,  was  now  so  eager  to  tread  out  the  first  poor  spark 
 of  Italian  liberty,  that  when  the  Austrian  army  was  detained 
 for  want  of  funds,  he  (being  Prussian  minister  at  Rome),  with- 
 
302  IIEBKEW   POLITICS. 
 
 out  waiting  for  the  directions  of  his  government,  pledged  its 
 credit  with  the  Roman  bankers,  and  so  enabled  the  invading 
 army  to  march  on  Naples  without  a  moment's  delay.*  *  There 
 and  thus/  as  the  Neapolitan  historian  says,  '  was  a  great  deed  of 
 that  policy  of  power  which  modern  kings  and  governments  trust 
 in,  consummated  against  a  people  too  feeble  and  too  little  wise  to 
 resist.'  He  adds,  'that  this,  as  every  other  like  event,  bears  wit- 
 ness of  the  truth,  which  he  will  lose  no  opportunity  of  proclaim- 
 ing, that  neither  revolutions  nor  despotisms  will  in  the  end 
 avail  anything  ;  but  that  the  social  culture  and  elevation  of  the 
 whole  people  is  the  only  effective  instrument  of  worthy  and 
 durable  political  reforms,  the  only  real  governing  power,  and 
 that  to  it  must  the  nations  direct  their  hopes  and  their  acts.' 
 
 *  There  is  apparently  an  expression  of  surprise,  as  well  as  of  disapproval, 
 at  the  natural  consequences  of  the  foreign  interposition  which  Niebuhr  had 
 thus  aided,  in  the  following  extract  from  a  letter  of  his  to  Chevalier  Bunsen, 
 dated  from  Naples  two  years  after  that  event :  —  "It  appears  that  new  pro- 
 scriptions are  beginning,  and  that  lettres  cFexil  have  come  from  Vienna.  An 
 officer  has  been  ordered  to  leave  the  country,  without  even  having  been 
 brought  to  any  trial."  —  Niebuhr  s  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  in.  p.  lv. 
 
 In  Chevalier  Bunsen's  defence  of  the  political  opinions  and  character  of 
 Niebuhr,  which  is  prefixed  to  this  volume,  and  in  reference  to  the  point  on 
 which  I  have  here  ventured  (not  unbecomingly,  I  trust)  to  avow  my  dis- 
 sent from  the  writer,  he  says — after  stating  the  fact  of  Niebuhr' s  anticipation 
 of  his  government's  instructions  to  assist  the  Austrians —  that  their  army, 
 "  in  spite  of  the  rapidity  of  its  movements,  never  could  get  in  sight  of  an 
 enemy,  not  even  in  the  impregnable  pass  of  Androdoco."  But  high  as  this 
 statesman's  authority  is  in  any  matter  of  history,  ancient  or  modern,  it  is 
 perhaps  scarcely  higher,  on  a  point  of  cotemporary  Neapolitan  history,  than 
 that  of  Colletta  ;  and  Colletta  states,  in  substance,  that  the  Neapolitan  army 
 and  general,  carried  away  by  the  undisciplined  enthusiasm  of  raw  levies,  not 
 only  attacked  the  Austrians,  instead  of  remaining  on  the  defensive  as  pru- 
 dence dictated,  but  attacked  without  ordinary  caution.  They  advanced  from 
 the  heights  of  Antrodoco  in  two  columns,  and  attempted  to  take  Itieti, 
 where  the  Austrians  were  posted,  with  the  first  of  these  columns,  before  the 
 other  could  arrive  to  its  support.  They  were  met  by  no  such  ill-directed 
 measures  ;  and  the  Neapolitan  army  of  '  civilians,  unacquainted  with  war,' 
 was  soon  thrown  into  confusion  :  a  charge  of  Hungarian  cavalry  completely 
 broke  them:  and  with  a  panic  as  universal  as  their  previous  courage,  they 
 fled  and  utterly  dispersed  :  so  that  the  Austrians,  who  advanced  cautiously 
 on  the  third  day  after,  found  the  heights  of  Antrodoco,  and  the  whole  fron- 
 tier, open  to  them,  and  without  further  resistance  reached  Naples,  and 
 restored  the  absolute  power  of  Ferdinand  I.  \Storia  del  lieame  di  Na- 
 poli,  ix.  10.  32. 
 
NIEBUHlt    AND    COLLETTA.  203 
 
 And  when  I  read  these  words  of  the  man   who   was  carried 
 prisoner  to  Austria,  and  died  in  exile,  for  the  part  he  had  taken 
 in    the   constitutional    government    of  this    his    own   country ; 
 when  I  consider  that,  whatever  the  defect,  or  positive  evil,  of 
 some  other  elements  of  that  government,  it  also  contained,  in 
 the  germ   at  least,   these  doctrines   of  Colletta,  and   that  the 
 wisdom  and  influence    of  himself,    and  of  those  who  thought 
 and  acted  with  him,  were  there,  to  develope  these  germs,  if 
 time    and  opportunity  had  been  allowed ;    when  I  remember 
 that,  bad  or  good,  it  was  the  government  of  the  nation's  own 
 choice ;  when  I  look  at  these  things,  and  then  think  that  it  was 
 Niebuhr  who  urged  and  aided  the  Austrian  troopers,  in  crushing 
 Naples  under  their  hoofs,  and  so  leaving  it  at  the  mercy  of  a 
 power  worse  than  that  from  which  his  own  country  had  been 
 delivered ;  I  cannot  but  conclude,  in  the  words  of  the  Bible, 
 '  He  rendered  not  again  according  to  the  benefit  done  unto  him.' 
 It  may  be  said,  that  in  thus  laying  bare  the  faults  of  men 
 who  are  not  only  wise  and  good,  but  among  the  teachers  from 
 whom  we  must  ourselves  learn  wisdom  and  goodness,  if  at  all, 
 I  disturb  the  reverence  of  others,  while  I  contradict  my  own 
 professions  of  it : — but  I  think  not  justly.    The  characters  of  the 
 wise  and  good  who  have  departed  from  us,  are  our  own  most 
 precious  heritage ;  and  we  are  bound  by  all  considerations  of 
 duty,  as  well  as  interest,  not  only  to  prize  them   at  the  true 
 value  of  all  the  good  that  they  contain,  and  offer  us,  for  our  use, 
 but  also  to  free  them  from  those  stains  which  nothing  human 
 is,  or  can  be,  free  from  :   and  this  we  must  do,  not  by  justifying 
 or  even  excusing  the  fault,  but  by  frank  —  I  might  fitly  say, 
 penitent  —  avowal  of  it.     This    is    what    each    of  us,    in    his 
 humbler  sphere,  would  desire  to  have  done  for  him :  it  is  thus 
 that  the  Bible,  as  we  see  in  the  very  case  before  us,  treats  its 
 heroes   and  examples :    it  does  not  sanction  idol-worship,   nor 
 admit  that    there  is,  or  can  be,  any  real  reverence  in  super- 
 stition. 
 
 The  state  of  nations  and  their  rulers  act  and  re-act  upon 
 each  other.  Hezekiah  sank  under  the  influence  of  the  gene- 
 ral demoralisation,  and  really  shared  in  it ;  and  then,  by  ex- 
 pressing it  thus  publicly  in  act,  he  confirmed  it  in  the  people. 
 If  he  could  have  risen  entirely  above  that  influence,  he  would 
 
304  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 have  done  much  more  towards  delivering  the  nation  from  it 
 but  we  must  not  forget  how  very  much  he  actually  did,  even 
 though  we  suspect  from  his  conduct  on  the  present    occasion, 
 that  he  may  not  have  been  always  so  opposed  to  the  policy    of 
 Shebna,  as  Isaiah  was. 
 
 Hezekiah's  reception  of  the  illustrious  strangers  has  been  com- 
 pared with  that  of  Solon  by  Croesus,  —  rbv  HoXiava  dspdirovrss 
 Trspiyyov  Kxra  roiis  Orjaavpovs  /ecu  STTihsiKwcrav  iravra  iovra 
 fisyaka  ts  /cat  okfita.  — '  He  was  glad  of  them,'  and  showed 
 them  his  arsenals,  palaces,  treasures,  and  curious  and  rare 
 things,  among  which  last  may  have  been  included  '  the  spices 
 and  the  precious  ointment : '  or  else  these  may  have  been  spe- 
 cimens of  the  valuable  products  of  '  his  dominion  '  or  realm,  as 
 we  know  Jericho  and  Gilead  were  famous  for  their  balsam,  and 
 that  Hoshea  sent  oil,  as  a  present  or  tribute,  to  Egypt.  It  can 
 hardly  be  thought  improbable  that  Isaiah  was  purposely  left  in 
 ignorance  of  all  these  things ;  and  that  the  king's  uneasy  con- 
 sciousness of  what  the  prophet's  judgment  would  be,  is  indicated 
 in  his  reply  that  the  ambassadors  came  from  a  far  country,  as 
 though  he  would  make  his  hospitality  seem  a  duty  ;  and  in  the 
 reluctance  with  which  he  confesses  that  country  to  be  Babylon. 
 Isaiah  saw  at  once  into  the  heart  of  the  matter.  It  was  not 
 long  before  that  he  had  spoken  thus  to  Hezekiah :  —  '  Thus 
 saith  the  Lord,  the  God  of  David  thy  father,  I  have  heard  thy 
 prayer,  I  have  seen  thy  tears :  behold,  I  will  add  unto  thy  days 
 fifteen  years:  and  I  will  deliver  thee  and  this  city  out  of  the 
 hand  of  the  king  of  Assyria:  and  I  will  defend  this  city:'  — 
 and  in  this  reference  to  the  covenant  with  David  and  his  line, 
 and  to  the  city,  or  nation,  of  which  he  was  the  head  in  right  of 
 David,  Hezekiah  had  seen  a  promise  that  the  line  should  not  fail 
 with  himself.  And  now,  this  is  Isaiah's  message :  —  '  Hear  the 
 word  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  :  Behold,  the  days  come,  that  all  that 
 is  in  thine  house,  and  that  which  thy  fathers  have  laid  up  in 
 store  until  this  day,  shall  be  carried  to  Babylon :  nothing  shall 
 be  left,  saith  the  Lord  :  and  of  thy  sons  that  shall  issue  from 
 thee,  which  thou  shalt  beget,  shall  they  take  away ;  and  they 
 shall  be  eunuchs  in  the  palace  of  the  king  of  Babylon.'  Heze- 
 kiah's reply  expressed  neither  the  highest  magnanimity,  nor  the 
 mere  selfish  egotism  which  some  commentators  have  seen  in  it : 
 
APRES    MOI    LE    DELUGE.  305 
 
 but  a  mixture  of  feelings  in  accordance  with  all  that  we  know 
 of  his  character.  His  appreciation  of  his  position  and  duties  as 
 a  king,  is  shown  in  his  restoration  of  the  national  worship,  and 
 his  final  resistance  to  Sennacherib,  as  well  as  in  his  general  and 
 successful  care  for  the  prosperity  of  his  country.  But  though  a 
 religious  sense  of  duty,  or  the  pressure  of  necessity,  could  occa- 
 sionally stir  him  to  master  circumstances  by  a  great  effort,  we 
 may  infer  from  the  domination  of  Shebna,  and  from  his  own 
 demeanour  and  language  when  supplicating  Sennacherib's  par- 
 don; after  the  receipt  of  Rab-shakeh's  message,  and  of  Sennache- 
 rib's letter;  in  the  time  of  his  own  sickness;  and  on  the  present 
 occasion  ;  that  his  natural  and  habitual  disposition  was  rather  to 
 submit  to  the  guidance  of  circumstances,  with  a  gentle  and  pious 
 confession  that  this  weakness  of  his  character  was  beyond  cure, 
 and  to  accept  the  consequences  with  pious  and  affectionate  re- 
 signation to  God's  will,  and  thankful  acknowledgment  of  any 
 mitigation  of  them.  He  could  enter  into  the  meaning  of  the 
 Psalmist's  words,  *  Thou  wast  a  God  that  forgavest  them,  though 
 Thou  tookest  vengeance  on  their  inventions:'  and  though  he 
 had  not,  like  Moses  or  Paul,  the  stern  courage  which  could  ask 
 that  the  punishment  might  be  to  himself,  and  the  forgiveness  to 
 his  people  ;  but  on  the  contrary  was  thankful  to  learn  that  there 
 should  'be  peace  and  truth  in  his  days;'  it  must  not  be  over- 
 looked that  it  was  peace  and  truth  to  his  country  as  well  as 
 himself,  and  not  merely  selfish  security,  that  he  was  thankful 
 for.  For  this  distinguishes  his  case,  and  the  case  of  those  who  in 
 times  of  personal  or  public  calamity  feel  and  act,  because  they 
 are,  like  Hezekiah,  from  that  expressed  in  the  sentiment  —  de- 
 void alike  of  religious  thankfulness  and  patriotic  sympathy  — 
 that  '  things  will  last  my  time.'  The  sentiment  is,  indeed,  in 
 one  respect  the  same  in  each  case  ;  it  expresses  the  natural,  and 
 therefore  as  far  as  nature  is  concerned,  the  inevitable,  selfishness 
 consequent  on  the  expectation  of  calamities  beyond  resistance ; 
 and  the  opportunity  which  the  late  European  revolutions  have 
 given  us  of  studying  it  close  at  hand,  though  happily  not  in  our 
 own  country,  enables  us,  not  only  to  understand  its  character 
 better,  but  to  think  more  charitably  of  those  who  succumb  un- 
 der it,  than  we  otherwise  could  have  done.  But  though  nature 
 is  always  alike  under  like  circumstances,  it  may,  or  it  may  not 
 
 x 
 
306  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 be  raised  above  itself  by  a  spirit  and  a  power  higher  than  its 
 own.  Grace  can  inspire  and  transfigure,  without  destroying, 
 nature,  and  reflect  itself  even  in  the  infirmities  and  defects  of 
 nature :  and  then,  instead  of  the  worldly  '  Apres  moi  le  de- 
 luge,' we  have  the  pious  '  Good  is  the  word  of  the  Lord  ;  for 
 there  shall  be  peace  and  truth  in  my  days.'  The  corresponding 
 Greek  and  Latin  phrases  —  s/xov  Savovros,  <yala  fii^^rw  irvpl, 
 and  mild  mortuo  omnes  mortui  sunt,  —  are  quoted  by  Alexander 
 from  Calvin.  Another  phase  of  the  temper  they  express,  has 
 been  already  considered,  where  we  had  it  described  by  Isaiah  as 
 that  of  the  worldly  men  of  Jerusalem. 
 
 We  too,  like  Hezekiah  and  his  people,  have  '  exceeding  much 
 riches  and  honour,  cities  and  treasures,  and  storehouses ;  corn, 
 and  wine,  and  oil,  and  possessions  of  flocks  and  herds  in  abund- 
 ance ;  for  God  has  given  us  substance  very  much : '  and  we  too 
 are  exposed  to  the  same  temptations  as  they  ;  and  our  nation, 
 like  theirs,  may  at  any  time  fall  under  its  power,  and  become 
 obnoxious  to  its  consequences  and  punishment.  The  warning 
 example  should  never  be  absent  from  our  thoughts ;  for  there  is 
 no  one,  even  the  humblest  of  us,  who  is  not  taking  a  real  part 
 in  the  workings  of  our  commonwealth,  and  influencing  its  des- 
 tiny for  good  or  evil ;  and  that  whether  he  will  or  not.  There 
 is  much  to  fear  for  England  ;  yet  much  to  hope  also  :  much  to 
 be  hopeful  in,  as  well  as  thankful  for,  in  the  manifest  and  in- 
 creasing spirit  of  wisdom  and  understanding,  of  counsel  and 
 might,  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  which  God  is  giving  to  our 
 public  men.  The  religious  temper  of  so  large  a  proportion  of 
 our  statesmen,  and  their  ever-rising  moral  standard  of  conduct 
 in  affairs,  show  so  great  a  contrast  with  the  low,  vulgar,  world- 
 liness  of  more  than  one  preceding  generation,  that  it  is  already 
 almost  as  if  the  sun  were  rising  upon  us  through  the  thick  dark- 
 ness. And  not  the  least  promising  among  the  signs  of  our  happy 
 times,  is  the  personal  character  of  him  whom  the  many  recog- 
 nise now,  as  the  few  have  long  done,  as  marked  out  to  be  our 
 First  Minister  within  the  next  ten  years :  who,  while  he  pos- 
 sesses all  the  working  powers  of  an  English  statesman,  unites 
 a  more  than  ordinary  readiness  to  look  out  for,  and  discern,  the 
 indications  of  God's  plans  and  purposes,  with  a  more  than  ordi- 
 nary bravery  in  following  these  at  the  sacrifice  of  that  temporary 
 
MR.  GLADSTONE    ON    AUTHORITY    AND    FREEDOM.        307 
 
 applause,  at  the  cost  of  that  temporary  blame,  which  the  un- 
 thinking and  the  prejudiced  multitude  for  the  time  attach  to 
 what  they  call  inconsistency,  but  which  the  wise  hail  as  en- 
 lightened progress.  It  may  be  suspected,  that  many  of  the  eccle- 
 siastical, or  even  civil,  opinions  of  this  statesman,  are  not  held 
 by  the  author  of  these  pages :  but  my  aim  has  been,  not  to 
 advocate  opinions,  but  to  elucidate  a  method,  —  the  method, 
 namely,  which  recognises  the  government  of  a  nation  to  be  a 
 problem  too  vast  and  complicated  to  be  brought  within  the  grasp 
 of  any  one  finite  intellect;  yet  a  problem  which  is  in  itself  ra- 
 tional, a  deliberate  design  in  God's  counsels,  and  of  which  the 
 statesman  for  the  time  being  may  always  understand  so  much  as 
 the  practical  needs  of  the  time  require,  and  so  much  as  will  pro- 
 perly prepare  the  way  for  the  next,  as  yet  unindicated,  step,  pro- 
 vided that  his  judgment  is  enlivened  by  a  God-fearing  conscience, 
 as  well  as  enlightened  by  a  cultivated  intellect,  and  that  he 
 walks  in  the  humility  of  wisdom,  and  not  in  the  pride  of  self- 
 sufficiency.  The  men  who  repealed  the  corn-laws,  could  not 
 foresee  the  revolutions  of  1848,  which  we  might  not  have  es- 
 caped so  easily  if  those  laws  had  been  then  in  existence :  the 
 men,  who,  during  the  previous  ten  or  twelve  years,  have  been 
 laying  deep  and  broad  foundations  for  the  moral  and  mental 
 elevation  of  the  working  classes,  could  not  foresee  that  the  same 
 revolutions,  and  the  discovery  of  the  gold  regions  with  all  its 
 consequences,  would  open  to  those  classes  the  road  to  so  increas- 
 ing a  share  of  political  power,  as  must  end  in  the  overthrow  of 
 our  constitution,  if  they  were  to  continue  in  their  uneducated 
 condition :  but  in  the  one  case  and  the  other  there  were  sufficient 
 indications  to  him  who  looked  at  the  moral,  as  well  as  to  the 
 merely  calculable,  signs,  and  asked  his  conscience  what  was 
 right,  as  well  as  his  understanding  what  was  wise.  I  will  con- 
 clude this  chapter  with  a  passage  from  Mr.  Gladstone,  which, 
 though  little  known,  is  worthy  of  Milton,  or  of  Burke,  for  elo- 
 quence and  constitutional  philosophy,  and  not  unconnected  with 
 the  subjects  we  have  been  considering. 
 
 "  Miserable  indeed  would  be  the  prospect  of  the  coming- 
 times,  if  we  believed  that  authority  and  freedom  were  simply 
 conflicting  and  contradictory  elements  in  the  constitution  of  a 
 community,  so  that  whatever  is  given  to  the  one  must  be  de- 
 
308  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 ducted  from  the  other.  But  no  Briton,  who  has  devoted  any 
 portion  of  his  thoughts  to  the  history  of  his  country,  or  the 
 character  of  its  inhabitants,  can  for  a  moment  be  ensnared  into 
 that,  for  him,  false  and  degrading  belief.  It  has  been  provi- 
 dentially allotted  to  this  favoured  isle  that  it  should  show  to  all 
 the  world,  how  freedom  and  authority,  in  their  due  and  wise 
 developements,  not  only  may  co-exist  in  the  same  body,  but 
 may,  enstead  of  impairing,  sustain  and  strengthen  one  another. 
 Among  Britons,  it  is  the  extent  and  security  of  freedom  which 
 renders  it  safe  to  entrust  large  powers  to  Government,  and  it  is 
 the  very  largeness  of  those  powers  and  the  vigour  of  their 
 exercise,  which  constitute,  to  each  individual  of  the  community, 
 the  great  practical  safeguard  of  his  liberties  in  return.  The 
 free  expression  of  opinion,  as  our  experience  has  taught  us,  is 
 the  safety-valve  of  passion.  That  noise,  when  the  steam  escapes, 
 alarms  the  timid ;  but  it  is  the  sign  that  we  are  safe.  The 
 concession  of  reasonable  privilege  anticipates  the  growth  of 
 furious  appetite.  Regularity,  combination,  and  order,  especially 
 when  joined  with  publicity,  have  of  themselves  a  marvellous 
 virtue;  they  tend  to  subordinate  the  individual  to  the  mass, 
 they  enlarge  by  healthy  exercise  the  better  and  nobler  parts  of 
 our  nature,  and  depress  the  poorer  and  meaner ;  they  make  man 
 more  a  creature  of  habits,  and  less  of  mere  impulse ;  they 
 weaken  the  relative  influence  of  the  present,  by  strengthening 
 his  hold  upon  the  future  and  the  past,  and  their  hold  upon  him. 
 By  gathering,  too,  into  organised  forms  the  various  influences 
 that  bear  sway  in  a  mixed  community,  and  leaving  them  to 
 work  within  prescribed  channels,  those  which  are  good  acquire 
 the  multiplied  strength  of  union,  while  the  bad  neutralise  one 
 another  by  reciprocal  elimination.  It  is  a  great  and  noble 
 secret,  that  of  constitutional  freedom,  which  has  given  to  us  the 
 largest  liberties,  with  the  steadiest  throne,  and  the  most  vigorous 
 executive,  in  Christendom.  I  confess  to  my  strong  faith  in  the 
 virtue  of  this  principle.  I  have  lived  now  for  many  years  in 
 the  midst  of  the  hottest  and  noisiest  of  its  workshops,  and  have 
 seen  that  amidst  the  clatter  and  the  din  a  ceaseless  labour  is 
 going  on ;  stubborn  matter  is  reduced  to  obedience,  and  the 
 brute  powers  of  society,  like  the  fire,  air,  water,  and  mineral  of 
 nature,  are  with  clamour  indeed,  but  also  with  might,  educated 
 
SECRET   OF    CONSTITUTIONAL    LIBERTY.  309 
 
 and  shaped  into  the  most  refined  and  regular  forms  of  usefulness 
 for  man.  I  am  deeply  convinced,  that  among  us  all  systems, 
 "whether  religious  or  political,  which  rest  on  a  principle  of 
 absolutism,  must  of  necessity  be,  not  indeed  tyrannical,  but 
 feeble  and  ineffective  systems ;  and  that  methodically  to  enlist 
 the  members  of  a  community,  with  due  regard  to  their  several 
 capacities,  in  the  performance  of  its  public  duties,  is  the  way  to 
 make  that  community  powerful  and  healthful,  to  give  a  firm 
 seat  to  its  rulers,  and  to  engender  a  warm  and  intelligent  devo- 
 tion in  those  beneath  their  sway."  * 
 
 *  Letter  to  the  Right  Rev.  W.  Sltinner,  D.D.,  on  the  Functions  of  Laymen 
 in  the  Church,  pp.  15,  16. 
 
 The  reader  may  compare  Mr.  Roebuck's  description  of  the  operation  of 
 the  "immense  safety-valve  of  parliamentary  debate"  in  November,  1830; 
 and  his  contrast  between  the  French  and  English  methods  of  enforcing  opi- 
 nions ;  in  his  History  of  the  Whig  Ministry,  vol.  i.  p.  34-5.  356, 
 
 x  3 
 
310  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  XXIII. 
 
 ISAIAH  XL LXVI. :    QUESTION    OF    THE  GENUINENESS    OF    THE    LAST    CHAPTERS 
 
 OF     ISAIAH.  PSEUDO-ISAIAN     HYPOTHESIS. THE     NAME      OF     CYRUS. 
 
 CORESH,     AND   THE    LORd's    SERVANT. MODERN  EXPLANATIONS. MOLLEfi's 
 
 INTERPRETATION. DOUBTS  AND  CERTAINTIES. THE  POSITIVE  METHOD. 
 
 COHERENCE  OF  EARLIER  AND  LATER  PROPHECIES. THE  EARLIER  NOT  FUL- 
 FILLED AS  ISAIAH  HAD  EXPECTED. ENLARGEMENT    OF  HIS  VIEWS. FINITE 
 
 AND    INFINITE    IDEALS.  FACTS     FOR    INDUCTION    AS     TO    THE    NATURE    OF 
 
 PROPHECY.  NOTE    ON    STRAUSS,  AND    THE    APPLICATION  OF  POSITIVE  CRI- 
 TICISM TO  CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 We  are  now  arrived  at  the  question,  whether  the  last  twenty- 
 six  chapters  of  the  Book  which  bears  the  name  of  Isaiah,  on  a 
 title-page  which  has  come  down  to  us  as  a  part  of  the  text  itself, 
 were  really  written  by  him,  or  by  an  otherwise  unknown  pro- 
 phet, living  towards  the  end  of  the  Captivity.  And  let  us,  at 
 the  outset,  make  it  quite  clear  to  our  minds,  that  the  point  at 
 issue  is,  whether  the  actual  text  is  hopelessly  corrupt,  spurious 
 beyond  doubt ;  and  not  whether  a  very  ingenious,  elaborate,  and 
 plausible  substitute  for  that  text,  may  not  be  conveniently 
 adopted  by  us,  even  though  no  such  spuriousness  has  been  made 
 
 out. 
 
 The  argument  then — I  state  it  as  strongly  as  I  can — for 
 believino-  the  text  to  be  spurious,  is  this :  That  while  the  writer 
 prophesies  the  restoration  of  the  Jews  as  a  future  event,  he 
 seems,  as  of  course,  and  in  the  manner  not  of  a  prophet,  but  of 
 a  cotemporary,  to  recognise  the  captivity,  and  the  events  which 
 Ave  know  from  history  to  have  then  occurred,  as  the  state  of 
 things  in  which  he  was  actually  living.  Micah,  in  the  days  of 
 Hezekiah,  foretold  that '  Zion  should  be  ploughed  like  a  field,  and 
 Jerusalem  become  heaps,  and  the  mountain  of  the  house  as  the 
 high  places  of  the  forest ;  that  the  daughter  of  Zion  should  go  to 
 l>abylon,  and  that  there  the  Loud  should  redeem  her  from  the 
 hand  of  her  enemies:  '*— but  let  us  fairly  compare  the  tone  of 
 
 *  Micah,  iii.  12.  iv.  lo. 
 
THE   LAST   CHAPTERS   OF    ISAIAH.  311 
 
 these  words  with  the  following  :  '  That  saith  to  Jerusalem,  thou 
 shalt  be  inhabited,  and  to  the  cities  of  Judah,  ye  shall  be  built, 
 and  I  will  raise  up  the  decayed  places  thereof;  that  saith  to  the 
 deep  be  dry,  and  I  will  dry  up  thy  rivers ;  that  saith  of  Cyrus, 
 he  is  ray  shepherd,  and  shall  perform  all  my  pleasure,  even  say- 
 ing to  Jerusalem,  thou  shalt  be  built,  and  to  the  temple,  thy 
 foundation  shall  be  laid:'*  —  and  by  the  side  of  both  these 
 passages  let  us  put  the  opening  words  of  Ezra's  narrative : 
 1  Now  in  the  first  year  of  Cyrus,  king  of  Persia,  that  the  word 
 of  the  Lord  by  the  mouth  of  Jeremiah  might  be  fulfilled,  the 
 Lord  stirred  up  the  spirit  of  Cyrus,  king  of  Persia,  that  he 
 made  a  proclamation  throughout  all  his  kingdom,  and  put  it  also 
 in  writing,  saying,  Thus  saith  Cyrus,  king  of  Persia,  the  Lord 
 God  of  Heaven  hath  given  me  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth, 
 and  he  hath  charged  me  to  build  Him  an  house  at  Jerusalem, 
 which  is  in  Judah  :  who  is  there  among  you  of  all  his  people  ? 
 his  God  be  with  him,  and  let  him  go  up  to  Jerusalem,  which  is 
 in  Judah,  and  build  the  house  of  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  (He 
 is  the  God),  which  is  in  Jerusalem : ' — And  then  do  we  not  see 
 how  different  the  tone  of  the  first  passage  is  from  that  of  the 
 second,  and  how  like  that  of  the  second  to  the  third  ?  The  name 
 of  Cyrus  is  repeated  in  the  xlvth  chapter  of  Isaiah :  and  in  the 
 lxivth  we  have  the  words,  *  Thy  holy  cities  are  a  wilderness,  Zion 
 is  a  wilderness,  Jerusalem  a  desolation,  our  holy  and  beautiful 
 house,  where  our  fathers  praised  thee,  is  burned  up  with  fire, 
 and  all  our  pleasant  things  are  laid  waste ;'  while  the  rest  of  the 
 chapter  is  an  appeal  to  the  Lord  to  put  an  end  to  this  miserable 
 condition  of  His  people,  and  is  thus  one  of  several  instances  in 
 which  that  condition — the  actual  and  now  long  existing  captivity 
 — is  assumed  in  a  way  which  unprejudiced  criticism,  it  is  urged, 
 must  admit  to  be  historical,  not  prophetic. 
 
 The  subsidiary  arguments,  drawn  from  the  style  of  writing, 
 and  especially  from  the  presence  of  certain  words  or  idioms, 
 have  been  considered  in  Chapter  IX. :  only  I  may  remark,  that 
 Gesenius  now  unintentionally  supports  the  view  there  taken. 
 For  though  he  gives  a  list  of  fifteen  supposed  modern  words  and 
 usages,  he  throws  great  doubt  on  the  possibility  of  distinguishing 
 
 *  Isaiah,  xliv.  26. 
 x  4 
 
312  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 between  fancy  and  fact  in  the  matter,  when  he  says  that  the 
 Hebrew  literature  of  the  date  of  the  exile  is  so  free  from  any 
 strong  Chaldaic  colouring,  as  to  account  for  tbe  reluctant  ad- 
 mission of  Eichorn  and  Bertholdt  that  they  could  find  none  in 
 these  latter  chapters ;  and  when  he  allows  that  the  resemblances 
 of  style  between  these  and  the  unquestioned  works  of  Isaiah  are 
 such  as  he  can  best  explain  by  supposing  that  the  two  were 
 harmonised  by  an  editor,  he  inevitably  suggests  that  they  might 
 have  been  modernised  in  the  same  way.  I  believe  the  matter- 
 of-fact  investigator  will  come  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  first 
 argument  is  that  in  which  the  real  strength  of  the  case  lies ; 
 and  that  its  main  source  and  support  is  the  word  *  Cyrus,'  just 
 as  the  word  *  Babylon '  was  on  another  occasion.  Whatever 
 is  the  difficulty  from  the  historical  tone  of  those  passages  I 
 have  quoted  or  referred  to,  its  vitality  is  in  this  name  ;  for  as 
 long  as  we  have  no  really  satisfactory  explanation  of  its  pre- 
 sence in  a  prophecy  by  Isaiah,  we  must  allow  it  to  give  its  own 
 historical  character  to  the  context ;  but  if  such  an  explanation 
 were  found,  that  context,  and  all  its  difficulties,  would  at  once 
 become  so  many  facts  from  which  to  draw  a  more  complete 
 induction  as  to  the  nature  of  Hebrew  prophecy. 
 
 But  whatever  may  be  the  adequate  explanation  which  we 
 need,  I  am  unable  to  admit  that  it  is  afforded  by  the  hypothesis 
 of  the  late  date  of  these  chapters.  An  examination  of  par- 
 ticulars shows  that,  whatever  we  must  grant  of  detached  pas- 
 sages, the  general  matter  of  the  discourse  is  not  that  of  a  Jew 
 living  in  Babylon  in  the  time  of  the  Captivity,  but  of  a  prophet 
 in  Jerusalem,  depicting  the  scene  in  vision;  and  depicting  it  in 
 the  very  manner  of  Isaiah,  whose  habits  of  thought,  as  well  as 
 language,  we  recognise  perpetually,  and  to  whose  times  and  posi- 
 tion some  passages  are  most  suitable,  and  some  directly  allude. 
 Such  are  the  comparison  of  Zion  to  a  bride  whose  name  shall  be 
 Hephzibah,  which  was  the  name  of  Hezekiah's  wife,  and  the 
 mother  of  his  heir  * ;  the  words  of  comfort  to  the  eunuchs  f,  com- 
 pared with  the  prediction  of  the  lot  of  the  royal  family  J ;  the  argu- 
 ment from  the  ritual  sacrifices,  which  has  no  meaning  if  addressed 
 to  those  to  whom  it  was  no  longer  possible  to  perform  the  templc- 
 
 *  lxii.  4.  f  lvi-  ;i  +  xxxix.  7- 
 
THE    PSEUDO-ISAIAN   HYPOTHESIS.  313 
 
 service  because  there  was  no  temple  *  ;  and  the  description  f  of 
 Zion,  whose  watchmen  are  dumb  and  drunken,  and  her  rio-hte- 
 ous  men  taken  away  by  death,  while  she,  the  sorceress  and  har- 
 lot, sends  her  messengers  and  presents  to  the  king  afar  oif,  and 
 debases  herself  to  hell :— words  which  make  us  think,  on  the  one 
 hand,  of  Isaiah's  former  denunciations  of  the  national  idolatries, 
 the  worldly  princes  and  prophets,  their  persecutions,  their '  cove- 
 nants with  death  and  hell,'   the   embassy  to  Egypt,  and  the 
 alliance  with  Merodach-Baladan ;  and  on  the  other,  of  the  his- 
 torian's description  of  the  reign  of  Manasseh,  when  these  na- 
 tional  crimes   were    reproduced   in   their   wonted   forms,   and 
 would  have  been  already  foreseen  by  the  prophet.     The  argu- 
 ment  of  the   whole  passage,  of  which   that  very  description 
 of  CoreshJ,  as  the   rebuilder  of  the  destroyed   temple,    is   a 
 part,  loses  all  effective  sense  unless  it  be  taken  as  the  utter- 
 ance   of  a    prophet    in  some  previous   age,    and  not  of  a  co- 
 temporary  of  Cyrus.     For  it  maintains  that  the  Lord's  God- 
 head is  proved  by  his  ability   to  govern  the   world  according 
 to  a  previous  plan,  and  that  the   fact   of  this   previous  plan 
 is  shown   by    its   announcement    beforehand,    '  declaring    the 
 end  from  the   beginning   and  from  ancient   times  the  things 
 that  are  not  yet  done:'  and  if  this  declaration  was  not  really 
 made   from    ancient   times,   but  only  when   the   events   were 
 so  near  that  ordinary  intelligence  would  expect  them,  the  pass- 
 age before  us  either  has  a  meaning  too  vapid  for  us  readily  to 
 accept  it  as  the  only  conclusion  from  premises  of  so  much  in- 
 tellectual power,  or  else  the  writer  intended  to  pass  it  off  on  his 
 cotemporaries  as  an  ancient  prophecy,  by  a  pious  fraud  not  less 
 
 *  xliii.  22-  28.,  in  the  last  verse  of  which  the  verbs  are  future  in  the 
 original. 
 
 j  lvi.  9. — lvii.  11.  Ewald  admits  that  this  passage  must  have  been 
 written  while  the  kingdom  of  David  still  existed,  and  is  exactly  suited  to 
 the  times  of  Manasseh;  from  which,  he  says,  there  is  no  doubt  ('  es  leidet 
 bei  naherer  Ansicht  keinen  Zweifel')  that  the  '  unnamed'  prophet,  writing 
 in  the  days  of  the  exile,  has  quoted  from  an  older  prophet,  because  he  could 
 hardly  have  said  any  thing  better  of  his  own  : —  an  instructive  specimen  of 
 the  way  in  which  the  speculative  criticism  makes  facts  to  supply  the  place 
 of  the  historical  ones  it  has  thrown  aside. 
 
 J  The  same  Hebrew  word  as  stands  for  Cyrus  in  Ezra,  Chronicles,  and 
 Daniel. 
 
314 
 
 HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 irreconcilable  with  his  high  moral  tone.  Moreover,  the  resem- 
 blance, which  is  thought  to  be  so  striking  between  the  descrip- 
 tion of  Coresh  in  the  words  before  us,  and  the  historical  accounts 
 of  the  Persian  king,  is  not  the  whole  case.  For  plausible  as 
 it  seems  to  understand  one  '  called,  and  named,  by  ^the  God  of 
 Israel,  though  he  has  not  known  Him,'  to  be  a  heathen,  though 
 providential,  instrument  of  Israel's  deliverance :  yet  these  expres- 
 sions, and  still  more  their  context,  are  so  like,  or  even  identical 
 with,  those  of  a  number  of  other  passages  which  it  requires 
 the  utmost  forcing  to  apply  to  Cyrus,  that  if  the  former  are 
 decided  to  indicate  a  contemporary  Persian  king  —  or  indeed 
 any  other  than  a  national  Personage  —  the  latter  become  an  in- 
 extricable puzzle :  and  the  commentators  are  never  able  to  agree 
 whether  they  refer  to  Cyrus,  to  Israel,  or  to  the  Messiah. 
 This  will  be  shown  more  clearly  by  some  instances  :  — 
 
 Coresh. 
 That  saith  to  Coresh,  he  is  my 
 shepherd,  and  shall  perform  all 
 my  pleasure :  even  saying  to  Je- 
 rusalem, thou  shalt  be  built,  and  to 
 the  temple,  thou  shalt  be  founded  : 
 
 Thus  saith  the  Lord  to  his 
 Anointed,  to  Coresh,  whose  right 
 hand  I  have  holden  : 
 
 To  tread  down  nations  before 
 him,  and  I  will  loose  the  loins  of 
 
 Israel  :  the  Lord's  Servant. 
 
 He  shall  feed  his  flock  like  a 
 shepherd,  xl.  11.  Thou  shouldest 
 be  my  servant  to  raise  up  the 
 tribes  of  Jacob.  ...  I  will  give 
 thee  for  a  covenant  to  the  people, 
 to  establish  the  earth,  to  cause  to 
 inherit  the  desolate  heritages  .  .  . 
 their  pastures  shall  be  in  all  high 
 places,  xlix,  6 — 9.  I  have  cre- 
 ated him  for  my  glory.  Thou 
 art  my  servant,  O  Israel,  in 
 whom  I  will  be  glorified,  xlix.  3. 
 
 Behold  my  servant  whom  I 
 uphold,  I  have  put  my  spirit  upon 
 him.  xlii.  1.  The  spirit  of  the 
 Lord  God  is  upon  me  because 
 the  Lord  hath  anointed  me. 
 lx.  1.  I  will  uphold  thee  with 
 the  right  hand  of  my  righteous- 
 ness, xli.  10.  I  the  Lord  have 
 called  thee  ....  and  will  hold 
 thine  hand.  xlii.  6. 
 
 I  have  made  of  thee  a  sharp 
 threshing  instrument,  xli.  15. 
 Kings  shall  see  and  arise,  princes 
 also  shall  worship,  xlix.  7. 
 
THE    NAME    OF    CYRUS. 
 
 315 
 
 I  will  go  before  thee,  and  make 
 the  crooked  places  straight :  I 
 will  give  thee  the  treasures  of 
 darkness,  and  hidden  riches  of 
 secret  places  : 
 
 That  thou  mayest  know  that  I, 
 the  Lord  which  call  thee  by  thy 
 name,  am  the  God  of  Israel  : 
 
 For  Jacob  my  servant's  sake, 
 and  Israel  mine  elect,  I  have  even 
 called  thee  by  thy  name  ;  I  have 
 surnamed  thee,  though  thou  hast 
 not  known  me  : 
 
 I  will  lead  them  in  paths  that 
 they  have  not  known:  I \  will 
 make  darkness  light  before  them, 
 and  crooked  things  straight, 
 xlii.  16.  Ye  shall  eat  the  riches 
 of  the  Gentiles,  lxi.  6. 
 
 I  have  called  thee  by  thy 
 name  ....  I  am  the  Lord  thy 
 God,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel, 
 xliii.  1.  3. 
 
 Thou  Israel  art  my  servant 
 ....  thou  whom  I  have  taken 
 from  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and 
 called  thee  from  the  chief  men 
 thereof,  xli.  9.  Who  is  blind, 
 but  my  servant,  or  deaf,  as  my 
 messenger  that  I  sent  ?  xlii.  19. 
 I  said,  behold,  behold  me,  to  a 
 nation  that  was  not  called  by  my 
 name.  lxv.  1.  I  will  bring  the 
 blind  by  a  way  that  they  knew 
 not.  xlii.  16. 
 
 That  they  might  be  called,  Trees 
 of  righteousness,  the  planting  of 
 the  Lord  ....  they  shall  build 
 the  old  wastes  ....  the  former 
 desolations  ....  the  waste  cities 
 ....  I  will  direct  their  work  in 
 truth,  and  I  will  make  an  ever- 
 
 m 
 
 lasting  covenant  with  them  .... 
 Behold  his  reward  is  with  him, 
 and  his  recompense  before  him. 
 lxi.  3,  4.  8.,  Ixii.  11. 
 
 If  the  reader  considers  not  only  these  instances,  but  the  whole 
 tone  and  spirit  of  their  context ;  and  not  least,  the  use  of  the 
 phrase  'His  Anointed,'  which,  with  one  very  doubtful  exception, 
 is  appropriated  to  the  kings,  prophets,  priests,  and  patriarchs  of 
 the  chosen  nation  of  Israel ;  I  think  he  will  agree  with  me,  that 
 all  this  interchange  and  fusion  of  thoughts  and  images  are  utterly 
 inexplicable  in  the  mouth  of  a  Jewish  prophet  of  any  age. 
 No  one  could  have  attributed  to  a  heathen  king  the  character 
 of  the  Messiah,  and  even  of  the  Lord  of  Israel  Himself. 
 
 Again,  Ave  need  an  explanation  of  the  anomaly  that  a  ge- 
 
 I  have  raised  him  up  in  righte- 
 ousness, and  I  will  direct  all  his 
 ways :  he  shall  build  my  city, 
 and  he  shall  let  go  my  captives, 
 not  for  price  nor  for  reward. 
 
316  HEBKEW   POLITICS. 
 
 nius  not  inferior  to  that  of  Isaiah  should  appear  in  a  period 
 when  Hebrew  literature  had  nearly  arrived  at  its  extinction, 
 through  a  gradual  decay,  the  stages  of  which  are  as  easily 
 traceable  as  those  of  any  other  nation ;  and  that  having  appeared, 
 his  name  and  personality  should  have  been  lost,  when  those  of 
 Ezra,  Haggai,  and  Zechariah  were  preserved.  And,  lastly,  it 
 must  be  objected  to  the  hypothesis  of  the  non-genuineness  of 
 these  chapters,  that  they  leave  Isaiah's  character  an  inexplicable 
 puzzle.  Such  a  man  as  his  unquestioned  works  show  him  to 
 have  been,  would  not  have  been  content  with  the  desponding 
 though  pious  resignation  of  Hezekiah:  nature  would  indeed 
 have  '  told  her  first  lie  in  her  noblest  creature,'  if  Isaiah  could 
 thus  terminate  his  fifty  years'  ministry.  But  though  we  might 
 expect  that  a  system  of  criticism  which  professes  to  follow  the 
 guidance  of  the  known  laws  of  nature  and  the  human  mind, 
 instead  of  the  arbitrary  dogmas  of  theology,  would  at  least 
 have  suggested  that  death  might  have  prematurely  closed  the 
 prophet's  career,  at  the  moment  when  he  had  been  compelled 
 to  destroy  with  his  own  hands  the  work  of  his  life ;  its  ad- 
 vocates on  the  contrary  tell  us  that  he  has  left  us  one  piece 
 of  a  later  date  than  his  denunciation  of  Hezekiah's  sin,  — 
 namely,  the  prophecy  against  Egypt,  in  which  he  repeats  his 
 old  promises,  just  as  if  they  had  never  been  proved  nugatory. 
 They  do  indeed  say  that  he  was  a  very  old  man  when  he 
 wrote  it. 
 
 Now,  though  objections  of  this  sort  (with  the  exception  of 
 one  to  which  we  must  return),  are  worth  nothing  against  the 
 genuineness  of  a  text  which  has  the  fact  of  historical  existence 
 in  its  favour,  they  are  not  unimportant  when  they  stand  in  the 
 way  of  our  accepting  a  conjectural  emendation  of  that  text. 
 For  the  first  essential  of  such  an  emendation  is,  that  it  shall  be 
 itself  free  from  all  internal  difficulty,  and  so  far  thoroughly 
 suitable  for  taking  the  place  of  what  is  not  capable  of  explan- 
 ation, as  it  stands.  And  therefore,  after  applying  these  and 
 the  like  tests  to  the  extent  of  my  ability,  I  am  compelled 
 (though  not  without  a  painful  sense  of  presumption,  and  a  wish 
 that  some  more  competent  man  had  been  put  on  the  service)  to 
 conclude,  and  pronounce,  that  this  theory  of  the  non-genuine- 
 ness of  these  chapters,  and  of  their  date  being  that  of  the  cap- 
 
MODERN    EXPLANATIONS.  317 
 
 tivity,  is  untenable  :  that,  in  the  language  of  Bacon*,  the  '  ori- 
 ginal notions '  (as  to  the  nature  of  prophecy)  on  which  it  rests, 
 are  '  vitiated,  confused,  hastily  abstracted  from  things,  vague, 
 not  clearly  defined  and  limited  ;  and  the  secondary  notions '  (as 
 to  the  style,  late  date,  &c.)  '  formed  no  less  rashly  ;'  so  that 
 the  result  itself  *  is  not  well  put  together,  nor  justly  formed, 
 but  resembles  a  magnificent  structure  that  has  no  foundation.' 
 Magnificent  I  will  not  deny  it  to  be  :  in  this  respect  it  probably 
 ranks  next  after  the  great  master-piece  of  our  age,  in  this  kind — 
 '  The  Life  of  Jesus,'  by  Strauss  f :  and  the  one,  like  the  other, 
 is  so  elaborate  for  its  learning  and  rhetoric,  and  so  coherent  for 
 its  logic,  that  it  requires  a  rather  stringent  application  of  the 
 Baconian  torture,  or  Socratic  cross-examination,  before  a  man 
 can  drive  home  the  question,  What  meaning,  what  realities,  lie 
 under  these  grand  concatenations  of  words  ?  and  so  elicit  the 
 answer  —  None.  But  if  we  do  contrive  to  *  renounce  our  no- 
 tions, and  begin  to  form  an  acquaintance  with  things,'  we  shall, 
 I  believe,  find  that  we  are  here  dealing  with  one  of  those  idols 
 —  idols  at  once  for  their  illusive  non-reality,  and  for  the  super- 
 stitious devotion  they  receive  —  which,  Bacon  warns  us,  '  beset 
 the  human  mind,'  and  can  only  be  '  expelled '  by  *  true  indue-1 
 tion.'  And  while  we  might  trace,  in  the  scheme  before  us, 
 some  features  of  each  of  his  four  kinds  of  idols,  it  may  perhaps 
 be  especially  designated  as  an  '  idol  of  the  theatre,'  a  '  play 
 brought  out  and  performed,  creating  a  fictitious  and  theatrical 
 world.' 
 
 But  this  disposes,  not  of  our  difficulty,  but  of  one  unsatis- 
 factory solution  of  it.  Let  us  then  examine  the  arguments  of 
 those  who  maintain  the  genuineness  of  the  text.  The  old,  or- 
 thodox, explanation  which  we  find,  as  the  received  one,  in 
 Josephus,  is  that  the  mention  of  Cyrus  is  a  miraculous  predic- 
 tion :  but  though  this  is  still  asserted  to  be  the  true  solution  by 
 many  of  the  most  recent  commentators  ;  and  though  they  urge, 
 with  some  force,  that  if  a  miracle  were  ever  possible,  this  was 
 no  unworthy  occasion  for  one,  and  that  the  prophet's  own  words 
 declare  as  much ;  yet  they  show  that  they  feel  the  difficulty 
 which  their  opponents  avow  ;  and  they  do,  in  fact,  abandon  the 
 
 *  Instaurutio  Magna,  pp.  1.  12.  386.  ff.    Aph.  xiv.  xvi.  xxiii.  xxxix.  (Bohn.) 
 ■j"  See  note  at  the  end  of  the  Chapter. 
 
318  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 old  position,  when  they  suppose  themselves  to  be  only  for- 
 tifying it  with  another,  collateral,  explanation.  This  is,  that 
 the  name  of  Cyrus,  which  most  modern  philologists,  like  the 
 Greek  historians,  derive  from  the  Persian  word  for  '  Sun,'  was  a 
 Persian  title,  analogous  to  those  of  the  Egyptian  Pharoah  and 
 Ptolemy,  the  Philistian  Abimelech,  the  Amalekitish  Agag, 
 and  the  Roman  Caesar  ;  and  that  it  was  known  as  such  to  Isaiah, 
 either  from  Persian  travellers  or  the  Medes  in  Sennacherib's 
 army,  so  that  he  would  have  meant  no  more  than  Jeremiah 
 expresses  by  '  The  Lord  hath  raised  up  the  spirit  of  the  kings 
 of  the  Medes  : ' — that  this  explanation  is  confirmed  by  the  state- 
 ment of  Herodotus  and  Strabo,  that  Cyrus  had  another  name 
 before  he  ascended  the  throne ;  and  by  the  fact  that  a  much 
 later  Persian  king,  Bahrain,  was  surnamed  Kur :  —  and  that 
 it  is  possible  that  the  royal  author  of  the  proclamation  given  by 
 Ezra  may  have  adopted  the  title  the  more  readily  from  the  men- 
 tion of  it  in  these  prophecies  of  Isaiah,  which,  according  to 
 Josephus,  were  shown  him  by  the  Jews.*  This  conjecture  that 
 Cyrus  was  a  royal  title,  and  not  an  individual  name,  is,  more- 
 over, supported  by  the  evidence  (quoted  from  Burnouf  by  Ha- 
 vernickf)  that  some  such  title  as  Coresh,  taken  to  mean  the  sun, 
 was  very  widely  extended  among  the  Arian  races,  and  adopted 
 both  by  Persian  and  Indian  dynasties :  and  Colonel  Rawlin- 
 son's  opinion  may  be  adduced  on  the  same  side;  for  while 
 he  doubts  the  connection  between  Coresh,  or  Kurush,  and  Khur 
 (the  Persian  for  '  sun  '),  he  '  compares  the  former  with  the  Sans- 
 krit Kuruh  or  Kuriis,  which  was  probably  a  popular  title 
 among  the  Arian  race  before  the  separation  of  the  Median  and 
 Persian  branches,'  and  adds,  that  '  the  Kuru  race  of  ancient 
 India,  descended  from  the  famous  Kuriih,  the  son  of  Samavarana, 
 is  too  well  known  to  require  notice.'  %  And  then  this  explana- 
 tion is  combined  with  the  old  view,  by  the  argument,  that 
 although  we  have  no  right  to  suppose  that  Isaiah  did  or  could 
 blindly  predict  a  mere  unmeaning  proper  name  of  an  individual 
 two  hundred  years  before  his  appearance,  yet  it  is  in  accordance 
 
 *  Hengstenberg's  Christology,  translated  by  Keith.     I  believe  Hensler 
 was  the  originator  of  this  explanation. 
 
 y  Havernick,  Einleitung  in  d.  A.  T.  II.  ii.  1 64.  ff. 
 %  Journal  of  the  Asiutic  Society,  vol.  xi.  p.  112. 
 
holler's  interpretation.  319 
 
 with  the  Christian  idea  of  prophetic  inspiration  to  believe  that 
 he  could  —  miraculously  indeed,  but  intelligibly  to  those  who 
 admit  any  miracles  —  utter  such  a  prediction  of  a  name  thus 
 significant  of  the  nation  and  the  office  of  him  who  was  to  bear 
 it.  This  view  has  been  worked  out  in  an  interesting  manner 
 by  H'avernick ;  but  it  seems  to  me  to  be  open  to  the  main 
 objections  against  that  which  we  have  already  considered,  — 
 namely,  that  it  offers  us  an  hypothesis  where  we  need  a  fact, 
 historical  or  critical ;  that  it  starts  from  an  unverified  theory  of 
 prophecy,  instead  of  ascertaining  the  nature  of  prophecy  by  a 
 complete  induction  from  facts ;  and  that  it  forcibly,  though  in- 
 geniously, adapts  the  facts  to  the  theory.  The  difference  be- 
 tween the  two  schools  is  here,  as  before,  that  the  one  is  ready 
 to  sacrifice  facts  in  order  to  get  rid  of  figments,  and  the  other 
 to  justify  the  figments  for  the  sake  of  the  facts,  of  which  they 
 are  assumed,  on  both  sides,  to  be  an  inseparable  part.  Yet 
 here,  as  always,  —  we  might  be  sure,  though  we  could  not  see 
 it, — earnestness  and  honesty  are  continually  getting  the  better 
 of  passion  and  prejudice  on  both  sides,  and  a  middle  path  of 
 truth  is  gradually  clearing  out. 
 
 Of  this,  I  think,  we  find  something  in  the  explanation  pro- 
 posed by  Moller,  the  Danish  critic  *,  —  that  is,  as  to  the  word 
 Coresh ;  for  his  Grotius-like  supposition  that  these  latter  chap- 
 ters were  written  by  Isaiah  during  the  captivity  of  Manasseh, 
 and  in  historical  reference  to  that  event,  seems  less  tenable. 
 After  urging  the  improbability  that  Isaiah  should  have  ex- 
 ercised a  power  of  prediction  which  Jesus  Himself  never  showed, 
 and  that  the  name  of  a  Persian  king,  though  not  that  of  the 
 Saviour  of  the  world,  should  have  been  thus  predicted;  and 
 after  showing  the  want  of  probability  and  coherence  in  the 
 sense  which  it  is  now  necessary  to  give  to  various  passages  in 
 which  Cyrus  is  supposed  to  be  named  or  referred  to ;  he  con- 
 cludes that  the  word  is  no  proper  name  at  all,  and  that  it  is  as 
 much  by  accident  that  Isaiah  here  uses  a  word  consisting  of  the 
 same  letters  with  which  the  Jews  afterwards  wrote  the  name 
 of  Cyrus,  as  it  is  that  he  calls  the  mother  of  Immanuel  r\tihv 
 f  Alma,'  in  chap.  vii.  14.,  where  no  one  finds  a  prediction  of  the 
 'alma  mater'  of  the  Church  of  Rome.     He  then  proceeds  to 
 
 *  De  Authentic!  Oraculorum  Esaice.     Havnice,  1825. 
 
320  HEBREW   POLITICS. 
 
 inquire  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  word,  in  the  same  way  as 
 scholars  have  to  determine  the  meaning  of  so  many  other 
 words,  not  only  in  Hebrew  but  in  other  languages,  by  reference 
 to  kindred  roots,  analogous  forms,  and  by  the  sense  of  the 
 context.  This  sense,  he  says,  requires  the  word  to  indicate  the 
 people  of  Israel:  and  he  explains  it  —  Bhl? —  to  be,  by  meta- 
 thesis for  "ffifis,  the  participle  Benoni  of  the  root  1^3,  to  be 
 right,  and  so  to  mean,  like  the  same  participle  of  the  cognate 
 "IB*,  upright  or  righteous.  He  thus  brings  the  word  into  con- 
 nection with  J-ntJfc  (Jeshurun,  as  the  diminutive  of  endearment 
 for  Jashur,  the  Upright)  in  verse  2.  of  the  same  xlivth  chapter 
 in  which  we  have  Coresh ;  and  with  the  same  word  "V\  ('  make 
 straight,'  or  *  direct,'  in  our  Version),  in  verses  2.  and  13.  of  the 
 next  chapter,  as  well  as  in  xl.  3,  4.  The  metathesis  he  justifies 
 by  the  constant  usage  of  the  Hebrew,  and  suggests  that  it  may 
 have  been  here  adopted  in  order  to  avoid  the  inconvenience 
 of  one  word  ending,  and  the  next  beginning,  with  "). 
 
 I  have  hitherto  met  with  none  but  the  slightest  and  most 
 contemptuous  notice  of  this  explanation  of  Moller's  ;  but  as  far 
 as  it  is  possible  to  judge  on  a  point  which  has  not  been  argued 
 out  by  scholars  on  both  sides,  I  venture  to  think  that  it  solves 
 all  the  requirements  of  the  case.  If  there  be  philological 
 objections  which  I  do  not  perceive,  I  should  fall  back  on  what 
 the  most  cautious  and  positive  critics  admit  to  be  an  allowable 
 mode  of  solving  a  difficulty,  where  all  others  are  hopeless :  — 
 the  change  of  the  single  word,  as  a  simple  corruption  of  the 
 MSS.,  for  some  other  which  will  properly  supply  its  place.  In 
 any  case  I  think  the  prophet  is  speaking  of  the  '  Servant  of  the 
 Lord,'  and  not  of  a  Persian  king.  Let  the  reader  try  the 
 effect  of  taking  '  Coresh '  in  this  sense,  and  I  think  he  will  find 
 —  not  that  nothing  can  be  said  against  it,  but — that  it  offers 
 him  the  only  really  coherent  text,  and  interpretation,  that  have 
 been  yet  proposed ;  and  that  it  presents  nothing  that  we  should 
 have  thought  a  difficulty,  if  we  had  not  been  so  long  accus- 
 tomed to  the  rabbinical  explanation. 
 
 '  If  a  man  will  begin  with  certainties,  he  shall  end  in  doubts ; 
 but  if  he  will  be  content  to  begin  with  doubts,  he  shall  end  in 
 certainties,'  says  Bacon.  And  the  one  guide  through  these  doubts 
 
RETURN    TO    THE    POSITIVE    METHOD.  321 
 
 to  certainties,  is  an  honest,  truthful  temper :  and  this  will  be  the 
 easier  to  preserve,  if  we  are  on  our  guard  against  the  ambition 
 of  acqu'u*ing  complete  knowledge  while  partial  alone  is  possible 
 for  us.  And  I  would  remind  the  reader  that  in  the  case  before 
 us,  it  is  better  —  wTill  give  more  of  the  satisfaction  which  comes 
 of  real  knowledge  and  nothing  else  —  if  he  suspends  his  judg- 
 ment till  he  can  really  see  to  the  bottom  of  the  difficulty  with 
 his  own  eyes,  and  does  not  attempt  to  persuade  himself  by  par- 
 tial statements  and  arguments,  that  he  has  found  a  complete  solu- 
 tion, which  his  cooler  judgment  will  disavow. 
 
 Yet  the  positive,  matter-of-fact,  method  has  served  us  hitherto : 
 taking  this  book  as  we  found  it,  and  for  what  it  professed  to  be, 
 and  the  arrangement  of  its  contents  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
 text,  no  less  needful  to  be  studied  than  the  grammar  and  logic 
 of  the  sentences,  yet  fearlessly  and  honestly  ascertaining  at  every 
 step  whether  we  were  on  firm  ground,  we  have  hitherto  found 
 the  road  plain  enough :  and  while  the  critics  do  point  out  some 
 apparent  indications  that  our  path  now  ends  in  what  the  haze 
 of  their  speculations  cannot  make  me  call  other  than  a  sheer 
 precipice,  there  is  still  a  good  hope  that  this  seeming  precipice 
 is  only  the  arrival  of  the  road  at  the  brow  of  a  hill,  from  which, 
 when  we  get  to  it,  the  view  will  be  clearer  and  more  extensive, 
 and  the  forward  road  more  plain  than  ever.  Let  us  then  re- 
 turn to  the  book  as  it  is,  and  hear  its  own  story,  as  far  as  we 
 can  make  it  out. 
 
 We  have  found,  on  examination,  that  there  is  no  valid  rea- 
 son for  doubting,  that  there  is  satisfactory  reason  for  deciding, 
 that  all  the  prophecies  hitherto  under  our  consideration,  are  the 
 genuine  writings  of  Isaiah  ;  and  that  each  of  them  -  -  that  on 
 Egypt  among  the  rest  —  stands  in  its  proper  place ;  and  from 
 their  contents  we  have  gradually  obtained  a  distinct  acquaintance 
 with  the  prophet's  times,  with  his  personal  character,  and  with 
 the  nature  and  course  of  his  political  career.  Uzziah's  able  ad- 
 ministration, both  foreign  and  domestic,  with  enough  of  militarv 
 discipline,  and  actual  warfare,  to  give  manly  energy  to  the  peo- 
 ple, yet  with  a  still  greater  care  for  agriculture,  trade,  and  com- 
 merce by  land  and  sea,  had  raised  Judah  to  a  high  point  of 
 material  prosperity  ;  and  the  impulse  thus  imparted  to  it,  con- 
 tinued during  the  reign  of  his  successor  Jotham,  whose  nobles 
 
 Y 
 
322  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 and  statesmen,  like  himself,  not  only  inherited  their  fathers' 
 political  maxims  and  habits  along  with  their  wealth  and  honours, 
 but  had  also  been  trained  in  their  practical  school.  But  their 
 prosperity  had  long  become  merely  material.  For  their  morality 
 was  no  more  than  an  employment  of  the  forms  and  the  ministers 
 of  the  law  to  effect  iniquitous  and  criminal  objects ;  and  their 
 religion  a  performance  of  the  mosaic  ritual,,  by  men  who  did  not 
 conceal  the  sceptical  opinions,  or  the  superstitious  idolatries, 
 which  had  taken  the  place  of  a  living  faith  in  their  minds, 
 accordingly  as  these  happened  to  be  intellectual  or  formal.  Con- 
 sequently, when  the  third  generation  —  that  of  Ahaz  —  suc- 
 ceeded, it  was  too  completely  enervated  by  luxury  and  vice  to 
 maintain  the  traditional  policy  even  against  such  feeble  enemies 
 as  Ephraim,  Syria,  or  Philistia,  and  still  less  to  make  head  against 
 the  truly  formidable  power  which  had  begun  again  to  threaten 
 the  world  from  Assyria.  A  crisis,  or  judgment  day,  had  ar- 
 rived, in  which  the  general  corruption  and  depravity  must  be 
 punished,  or  else  truth  and  righteousness  would  be  permanently 
 superseded  by  iniquity,  and  selfishness,  and  a  mere  kingdom  of 
 the  devil.  And  the  sentence  then,  as  always,  was  executed 
 through  the  providential  coincidence  of  this  attack  from  the 
 scourge  of  God,  with  the  moment  when  long-continued  vice  had 
 produced  that  internal  weakness  and  imbecility  which  are  its 
 proper  fruits  ;  according  to  the  law  which  has  united  sin  and  its 
 punishment  in  inevitable  sequence,  and  provided  that  the  loss  of 
 ordinary  intelligence  and  ability  to  avoid  the  latter  shall  be  one 
 of  the  links  of  the  chain.  The  accumulated  wealth  of  the  coun- 
 try was  exhausted  in  buying,  or  rather  trying  to  buy,  the  pro- 
 tection, or  the  forbearance,  of  the  Assyrian  hordes,  who  not  only 
 wasted  the  land  year  after  year,  when  it  was  cultivated,  but  pre- 
 vented its  cultivation  by  carrying  the  inhabitants  into  slavery, 
 and  especially  to  Babylon,  the  people  of  which  seem,  according  to 
 Micah,  Isaiah's  cotemporary,  as  well  as  to  himself,  to  have  taken 
 a  chief  part  in  the  oppression  of  Israel.  But  reformation  was 
 the  end,  and  punishment  only  the  means,  —  the  anger  of  a 
 Father  not  only  ready,  but  longing,  to  forgive  his  children,  and 
 to  receive  them  again  to  his  heart:  and  while  the  old  vicious  gene- 
 ration was  thus  gradually  rooted  out,  a  new  one,  of  which  Isaiah, 
 Ilezekiah,  and    Eliakim,   were  the   leaders,  grew  up  under  the 
 
COHERENCE    OF    EARLIER    AND    LATER    PROPHECIES.     323 
 
 salutary  though  trying  discipline  of  national  humiliation  and 
 suffering.  And  when  this  discipline  had  done  all  that  it  could 
 do  for  that  time ;  when  God  had  by  it  taught  his  people  all  that 
 they  were  capable  of  learning  from  it,  without  being  wholly 
 consumed  in  the  process ;  and  when  He  had  at  least  secured  a 
 permanent  result  for  the  world,  if  not  for  a  people  too  perverse 
 to  partake  therein ;  He  delivered  Judah  from  its  great  oppres- 
 sors, and  restored  it  to  peace  and  prosperity  under  its  king. 
 
 Men  ai*e  the  agents,  God  Himself  being  present  to  direct 
 them,  in  the  accomplishment  of  the  laws  of  His  moral  govern- 
 ment of  the  world :  and  it  was  a  main  part  of  Isaiah's  mission 
 to  e  make  the  heart  of  this  people  fat,  and  their  ears  heavy, 
 and  to  shut  their  eyes,  lest  they  should  see  and  understand,  and 
 convert  and  be  healed.'  I  lis  deprecatory  question  (  Lord,  how 
 long,'  is  illustrated  by  his  habitual  practice  of  immediately 
 following  up  his  warnings  and  denunciations  with  consolatory 
 promises :  and  if  it  ever  seemed  to  him,  as  it  seems  to  many 
 of  us  now,  that  the  melancholy  task  was  imposed  by  an  un- 
 pitying  sternness,  he  would  have  learnt,  and  we  may  learn,  that 
 it  wras  not  so,  when  it  was  adequately  explained  by  the  events  of 
 after  years.  These  showed  that,  whatever  worth  the  national  re- 
 formation under  Hezekiah  possessed,  it  did  owe  to  the  long  con- 
 tinuance of  the  previous  punishment ;  and  that,  even  as  it  was, 
 this  had  not  been  enough  to  make  any  permanent  impression, 
 but  that  in  simple  fact  the  people  had  been  allowed  to  '  convert 
 and  be  healed'  too  soon,  and  that  the  whole  process  had  to  be 
 gone  through  again,  wTith  redoubled  severity.  And  while  the 
 short  narrative  we  have  lately  been  considering  in  the  thirty- 
 ninth  chapter,  tells  us  how  unflinchingly  Isaiah  threw  down,  with 
 his  own  hands,  the  structure  of  national  prospects  which  he  had 
 been  building  up  during  a  ministry  of  near  fifty  years,  the  sub- 
 sequent chapters,  to  the  end  of  the  book,  show  him  deliberately 
 raising  it  again,  in  a  manner  exactly  consistent  with  his  whole 
 previous  character  and  teaching.  And  consistent  alike  in  its 
 resemblances  and  its  differences:  for  while  the  man  and  the 
 prophet  with  whom  we  have  become  so  familiar  in  the  past 
 prophecies,  meets  us  throughout  the  new,  in  his  old  individual 
 shape,  we  recognise  and  identify  him,  not  more  by  his  faith  and 
 hopes,  his  philosophy  and  imagination,  and  his  whole  method  of 
 
 Y  2 
 
324  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 looking  at  men  and  things,  and  God's  government  of  both, 
 than  by  his  wonted  exercise  of  that  prerogative  of  a  man  of 
 genius,  and  a  prophet  of  God,  by  which  he  adapts  himself,  and 
 his  teaching,  to  the  new  necessities  which  this  new  experience 
 had  revealed.  And  though  I  do  not  forget  that  there  is  no 
 more  perfect  unity  than  that  which  results  from  the  work  of 
 successive  labourers  actuated  by  the  same  idea,  of  which  the 
 Book  of  Psalms,  the  Bible  itself,  and,  in  another  kind,  the  build- 
 ing of  York  cathedral,  are  instances ;  and  though  it  would  be 
 possible  to  make  out  a  very  good  case  in  favour  of  such  being 
 the  unity  of  the  book  before  us,  if  we  only  had  a  foundation 
 of  fact  to  begin  with;  still  I  appeal  with  confidence  to  the 
 judgment  of  every  thorough  and  matter-of-fact  student  of  our 
 text,  whether  there  is  not  complete  consistency  and  coherency 
 in  the  mind  and  writings  of  the  one  man  Isaiah ;  and  whether 
 the  theory  which  divides  him  into  an  Isaiah  and  a  '  Pseudo- 
 Isaiah/  or  *  Great  Unnamed,'  does  not  deprive  the  former,  if 
 not  also  the  latter,  half,  of  much  more  than  half  its  meaning. 
 To  myself  it  often  seems  that,  if  these  latter  prophecies  of 
 Isaiah  had  been  lost,  some  Cuvier  or  Owen  of  human  science 
 might  be  conceived  restoring  them  in  their  actual  shape,  from 
 the  indications  of  their  law  and  germ  in  his  earlier  writings. 
 And,  on  the  other  hand,  I  am  irresistibly  reminded  of  the 
 Jewish  tradition,  that  Isaiah  was  sawn  asunder  by  those  who 
 misunderstood,  and  denied,  his  real  office  and  powers  :  —  and 
 think  how  that  tradition  has  been,  by  a  reversal  of  the  ordinary 
 process,  provided  with  its  philosophical  idea,  and  transformed 
 into  a  regular  myth,  after  2000  years  of  mere  historical  existence. 
 The  '  years  that  bring  the  philosophic  mind'*  had  come  to 
 Isaiah,  with  the  last  qualification  needed  to  enable  him  to  com- 
 plete one  of  the  few  works  which  are  '  not  for  an  age,  but  for  all 
 
 *  I  have  already  quoted  this  line  from  Wordsworth's  Ode,  in  connection 
 with  this  subject :  but  let  me  advisf  the  reader  to  study  the  whole  Ode, 
 including  the  Title  and  the  Motto,  as  a  most  instructive  comment  upon 
 the  whole  spirit  of  prophecy,  as  exhibited  by  Isaiah  ;  and  especially  as  to 
 the  relation  between  these  latter  chapters  and  the  earlier  ones.  Our  seer, 
 like  the  Hebrew  one,  teaches  us  how  to  connect  'the  pansy  at  our  feet'  with 
 '  truths  that  wake  to  perish  never;'  and  to  understand  how  'our  noisy 
 years'  may  'seem  moments  in  the  being  of  the  eternal  Silence.' 
 
THE    FINITE    AND    THE    INFINITE    IDEALS.  325 
 
 time.'  He  had,  indeed,  shown  himself,  by  what  he  had  done, 
 well  prepared  for  what  yet  remained.  If  he  had  reason,  after 
 delivering  the  Lord's  last  message  to  Hezekiah,  to  exclaim  with 
 the  Psalmist,  '  My  spirit  is  overwhelmed  within  me ;  my  heart 
 within  me  is  desolate;'  he  knew  how  to  add,  f  I  remember  the 
 days  of  old  :  I  meditate  on  all  Thy  works ;  I  muse  on  the  work 
 of  Thy  hands.'*  And  now  that  he  had  understood,  and  une- 
 quivocally declared  in  the  Lord's  name,  and  as  His  prophet, 
 that  his  early  warnings  that  the  cities  of  Judah  should  be  with- 
 out inhabitant,  and  the  houses  without  man,  and  that  the  Lord 
 should  remove  men  far  away,  and  there  should  be  a  great  for- 
 saking in  the  land,  had  not  been  fulfilled  in  the  late  years  of 
 calamity ;  that  there  was  still  to  come  a  captivity,  not  of  many 
 inhabitants,  but  of  the  nation  and  its  king ;  and  a  destruction, 
 not  of  villages  and  towns,  but  of  Jerusalem  and  the  temple, 
 when,  in  the  words  of  his  cotemporary,  '  Zion  should  be  ploughed 
 as  a  field,  and  Jerusalem  become  heaps,  and  the  mountain  of 
 the  temple  a  forest,  and  the  Daughter  of  Zion,  the  nation  itself, 
 should  go  forth  out  of  the  city,  even  to  Babylon  f ; '  he  would  be 
 no  less  earnest  to  discover  and  to  declare  when,  and  how,  were 
 to  be  realised  his  own  corresponding  promises  that  '  Zion  should 
 be  redeemed  with  judgment,  and  her  converts  with  righteous- 
 ness ;  that  she  should  be  called  the  city  of  righteousness,  the 
 faithful  city;  that  in  her  should  reign  a  king  of  the  house  of 
 David,  of  the  increase  of  whose  government  and  peace  there 
 should  be  no  end,  and  of  which  the  blessings,  spiritual  no  less 
 than  temporal,  should  not  be  limited  to  Israel,  but  extended  to 
 all  nations,  who  should  go  up  to  the  mountain  of  the  Lord  and 
 to  the  house  of  the  God  of  Jacob  to  be  taught  of  His  ways,  and 
 to  walk  in  His  paths,  and  whom  the  Lord  of  hosts  should  bless, 
 saying,  Blessed  be  Egypt,  my  people,  and  Assyria,  the  work  of 
 my  hands,  and  Israel,  mine  inheritance.'  And  the  latter  half  of 
 the  book  tells  us  the  result :  — that  the  human  and  finite  ideals 
 of  his  youth,  which  he  had  expected  to  see  realised  in  the  fruits 
 of  his  own  ministry  and  Hezekiah's  reign,  had  faded  (as  all  such 
 ideals  do)  like  the  the  flower  of  the  field,  though  not  till  they 
 
 *  Psalm  cxliii.  4,  5. 
 
 f  The  passage  has  been  already  quoted  on  the   other   side :  the  reader 
 should  consider  its  bearing  both  ways. 
 
 y  3 
 
326  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 had  served  their  purpose  both  for  his  countrymen  and  himself; 
 but  that  to  replace  them  there  had  been  meanwhile  maturing, 
 and  now  was  revealed  to  his  purged  and  illumined  eye,  God's 
 divine  and  infinite  ideal  of  the  destinies  of  Israel  and  mankind. 
 His  faith  and  hopes,  and  the  whole  tenour  of  his  teaching,  had 
 from  the  first  been  based,  not  upon  the  merits  of  his  nation,  but 
 upon  God's  original  choice  of  them  without  any  previous  merit 
 on  their  part,  upon  His  good-will  towards  them,  and  upon  His 
 faithfulness  in  keeping  the  covenant  He  had  made  with  them, 
 however  they  might  break  it :  and  this  purpose  of  goodness,  of 
 free  grace,  must  remain  still,  and  could  as  little  be  overcome  by 
 new  sins  as  by  the  old  ones.     And  yet  what  could  kings  and 
 any  prophets  do  more,  nay,  what  could  God  Himself  do,  that  He 
 had  not  done,  to  effect  it  in  the  face  of  such  inveterate  resist- 
 ance, and  even  incapacity  ?     The  answer,  we  may  be  sure,  came 
 to  Isaiah  through  that  diligent  inquiry  with  which   St.  Peter, 
 who  entered  so  heartily  into  the  spirit  of  the  great  and  good  of 
 his  own  people,  tells  us  it  Avas  the  habit  of  the   prophets  to 
 '  search  what,  or    what  manner  of  time  the   Spirit  of  Christ 
 which  was  in  them  did  signify,  when  it  testified  beforehand  the 
 sufferings  of  Christ,  and  the  glory  that  should  follow.'*   He  would 
 ask  himself  what,  more  than  he  had  hitherto  supposed,  was  con- 
 tained in  those  predictions  which  he  had  been  moved  to  utter  f 
 when  he  and  his  disciples  were,  not  only  sharing  the  calamities 
 which  overwhelmed  the  nation  at  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of 
 Ahaz,  but  also  bearing  the  contempt  and  persecutions  of  their 
 unbelieving  countrymen  —  to   the  effect  that  they  were  to  look 
 for  relief  and  triumph,  to  the  birth  of  a  Child  of  the  house  of 
 David,  whose  name  should  be  called  « Wonderful,  Counsellor, 
 the  Mighty  God:'  and  thus  meditating  upon  these,  and  all  the 
 rest  of  his  past  prophecies,  he  would  have  been  —  we  see  that 
 he  actually   was  —  at  last  prepared  to    receive,   and  to  make 
 known,  a  still  more  glorious  revelation  of  God's  counsels  than 
 had  yet  been  made  to  him.      This  declared  that  the  invisible 
 Lord  and  Guide  of  the  nation  would  come  in  His  own  person 
 and  effect  that  deliverance  which  His  most  pious  representatives 
 were  unequal  to  accomplish,  by  bearing  the  sins  of  the  nation 
 as  they  could  not  be  borne  by  any  other  king  or  prophet,  how- 
 ever devoted  to  suffer,  and  to  do  all  things  for  the  nation's  sake: 
 
 *  1  Peter,  i.  10,  ]1.  f  Chapters  viii.  be. 
 
IDEA   AND    METHOD    OF    THE    WHOLE    BOOK.  327 
 
 and  that  out  of  this  deliverance  should  spring,  not  a  mere  resto- 
 ration and  re-establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  Israel  under  the 
 Branch  of  the  Stem  of  Jesse,  but  a  universal  kingdom,  and  one 
 which  in  order  to  be  univei-sal  would  be  spiritual,  established  in 
 the  hearts  and  lives  of  its  lubjects;  and,  therefore,  no  longer 
 dependent  on  outward  circumstances  of  national  peace  and  pro- 
 sperity for  its  development ;  but  able,  if  need  were,  to  found, 
 and  continually  expand,  itself,  in  spite,  nay  by  help,  of  the  ab- 
 sence of  these  things. 
 
 The  idea  of  the  whole  Book  of  Isaiah  is  the  same  —  God's 
 government  of  Israel  and  mankind  according  to  the  laws  which 
 He  has  given  for  all  their  relations  to  Himself  and  to  each  other : 
 but  in  the  first  part  he  is  always  seeking  for,  and  setting  forth, 
 this  idea  in  the  events  of  Jiis  own  times  ;  and  in  the  second  half 
 he  contemplates  the  idea  in  itself,  and  only  embodies  it  in  such 
 shadowy  anticipations  as  to  the  outward  form  of  the  glorious 
 but  indefinite  future,  as  his  poetic  imagination  can  project  from 
 the  facts  and  probabilities  of  his  own  time  ;  though  into  these 
 shadowy  forms  he  throws  himself  so  completely,  that  it  is  often 
 very  hard  for  us  not  to  think  that  they  are  the  realities,  and  he 
 — Isaiah — imaginary.  This,  I  believe,  is  the  real  clue  to  that 
 mixture  of  visionary  indistinctness  and  historical  literalness, 
 which  enables  the  advocates  of  the  Pseudo-Isaian  theory,  and 
 their  opponents,  each  to  make  out  so  good  a  case  :  and,  if  so, 
 what  the  reader  wants  is,  not  to  decide  between  two  rival  sets 
 of  arguments,  either  of  which  may  any  day  be  replaced  by 
 another  which  the  old  victor  cannot  resist,  but  by  frequent  and 
 prolonged  meditation  on  the  book  itself,  to  acquire,  if  possible, 
 the  power  of  putting  himself  in  the  prophet's  position,  and  look- 
 ing at  things  as  he  looked  at  them.  He  must  try  and  realise 
 what  Pope  meant  when,  with  a  poet's  feeling,  he  described 
 Isaiah  as  'the  bard  rapt  into  future  times;'  and  what  St.  Peter, 
 who  gives  us  the  true  theological,  as  the  other  does  the  true 
 human  side,  meant  by  saying,  that  '  it  was  revealed  to  the  pro- 
 phets, that  not  unto  themselves,  but  unto  us  they  did  minister 
 the  things  which  are  now  preached  to  us  in  the  gospel,  with  the 
 Holy  Ghost  sent  down  from  heaven?'*     This  realisation  is  dif- 
 
 *   1  Tetur,  i.  12. 
 t  4 
 
328  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 fieult,  and  can  only  be  hoped  for  by  help  of  that  same  guidance 
 which  led  the  Apostle  thither,  and  which  always  supplies — even 
 to  the  most  prosaic  —  so  much  of  the  poetic  faculty  as  the  end 
 demands.  No  mere  logical  or  literary  criticism  will  bring  a  man 
 far  on  this  road,  still  less  do  as  a  substitute  for  his  actually  taking 
 the  journey  himself;  but,  perhaps,  some  of  the  obstacles  at  first 
 setting  off  may  be  cleared  away  by  such  considerations  as  I 
 have  already  suggested  on  the  present,  and  previous  occasions, 
 and  to  which  I  now  venture  to  make  one  or  two  additions. 
 
 The  progress  of  the  universe  under  God's  plan  has  brought 
 us  to  a  very  different  position,  and  point  of  view,  from  that  where 
 the  ancient  world  stood  :  we  too  have  a  future  before  us  (and  in 
 these  very  days  a  wider  and  more  glorious  future  is  opening 
 than  mankind  has  yet  seen),  but  much  of  their  future  has  be- 
 come our  past ;  and  we  look  back  on  great  accomplished  facts, 
 and  fixed  starting  points  for  our  progress,  which  to  them  were 
 still  unrealised  ideals, — buildings  of  which  they  were  to  announce 
 the  plans,  but  not  themselves  to  lay  the  foundations,  much  less 
 to  begin  our  task,  which  is  to  raise  the  superstructure,  now  that 
 their  children  and  our  fathers  have  done  that  intermediate  work. 
 This  is  more  or  less  the  case  with  all  ancient  history  ;  but  especi- 
 ally so  with  that  of  the  Hebrews,  which  is  a  perpetual  prophecy, 
 and  looking  forward  to  what  should  come  afterwards  from  all  that 
 the  nation  was  doing  then  in  a  corner.  It  is  easy  enough  to  get 
 rid  of  any  amount,  more  or  less  according  to  individual  taste, 
 of  the  meaning  either  of  particular  parts,  or  of  the  whole  tenour 
 of  Hebrew  thought  and  feeling,  laws  and  institutions ;  but  such 
 criticism  is  childish  as  well  as  dishonest.  We  do  not  Avant  to 
 get  rid  of,  but  to  enter  into,  the  meaning  of  the  ancient  oracles 
 of  '  the  seed  of  the  woman,'  and  '  the  seed  of  Abraham ;'  and 
 to  read  and  think  ourselves  into  the  prophetic  spirit  of  the  books 
 of  Deuteronomy  and  Isaiah,  and  not  to  trifle  with  those  modern 
 falsifications  of  the  text  which  so  ingeniously  prove  the  text  to  be 
 itself  the  falsification.  And  as  I  have  already  noticed,  the  way  in 
 which  Isaiah  here  projects  himself  into  the  future,  is  not  to  be  set 
 aside  as  fictitious,  because  it  somewhat  varies  from  that  which 
 he,  and  other  prophets,  adopt  on  other  occasions.  These  critics 
 select  their  facts  by  the  test  of  a  merely  nineteenth-century, 
 
PACTS    FOli    INDUCTIONS    ON    PROPHECY.  329 
 
 European,  notion  of  the  human  mind  and  its  capacities,  and 
 that  not  derived  from  the  best  philosophy ;  and  having  thus 
 excluded  all  such  specimens  of  Hebrew  prophecy  as  the  50th 
 and  51st  chapters  of  Jeremiah*,  as  well  as  the  chapters  of 
 Isaiah  now  before  us,  and  those  earlier  ones  which  have  been 
 pointed  out  as  they  occurred,  they  frame,  by  induction  from  the 
 remaining  materials,  a  theory  by  which  to  test  the  others.  But 
 while  I  agree  that  some  previous  examination  and  selection  of 
 facts  is  necessary  on  such  occasions,  I  must  repeat  that  this  is  no 
 fair  or  scientific  performance  of  the  duty.  The  difficulty  of  the 
 word  Cyrus,  and  of  the  historical  tone  of  parts  of  these  chapters, 
 is  not  cleared  up,  but  only  put  in  a  new,  if  not  aggravated 
 shape,  by  the  supposition  of  the  late  origin  of  the  text :  and 
 though  modern  experience  affords  us  no  instance  of  such  a  pro- 
 jection not  merely  of  the  mind,  but  (so  to  speak)  of  the  person, 
 of  a  writer  into  the  future,  as  is  supposed  in  those  chapters  of 
 Jeremiah,  the  others  of  Isaiah,  and  above  all,  these  before  us, — 
 yet  the  analogous  power  which  Shakspeare  habitually  exercises, 
 of  so  identifying  himself  with  an  indefinite  variety  of  times  and 
 persons,  that  no  criticism  has  ever  been  able  to  distinguish  him 
 from  them,  is  proof  enough  that  there  is  nothing  incredible,  no- 
 thing non-human,  in  such  a  representation  of  the  prophetic  fa- 
 culty, as  they  exhibit,  if  we  accept  them  as  genuine,  with  the 
 single  emendation,  or  explanation,  given  above.  And  therefore 
 we  have  a  right  to  take  the  one  as  well  as  the  other  set  of  facts 
 
 —  the  one  as  well  as  the  other  phenomena  of  prophecy  —  as  the 
 basis  of  our  induction :  and  if  the  old  orthodox  view  is  then 
 shown  to  have  been  too  limited,  and  to  require  modification  as 
 wTell  as  expansion,  we  may  yet  be  sure,  that  in  proportion  as  it 
 is  the  more  positive  and  matter-of-fact,  so  it  is  the  truer  and  more 
 scientific;  and  that  we  shall  find  that  the  new  will  harmonise 
 with  the  old,  in  proportion  as  we  enlarge  — not  our  theories  but 
 
 —  our  basis  of  facts,  and  inductions  from  facts. 
 
 *  Gesenius  admits  the  genuineness  of  these ;  Ewald  denies  it,  more  con- 
 sistently with  their  common  theory. 
 
330  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 Note  to  Fa^e  317. 
 
 The  question  is  not,  as  Strauss  puts  it,  one  of  '  pre-suppositions,'  but 
 of  facts.  Strauss  says,  that  bis  mind  being  free  from  all  pre-suppositions 
 except  that  of  the  amenability  of  all  events  to  law,  -which  is  no  pre-supposi- 
 tion.  polios  >'(•  ??«  i3e  denied,  he  has  a  right  to  regard  the  believing  pre- 
 suppositions of  theologians  as  unscientific.  (Engl,  trans,  i.  x.  73,  74.)  But 
 the  theologian  will  be  unsound,  as  well  as  weak,  who  replies,  as  Strauss 
 expects,  that  '  this  absence  of  pre-supposition  is  unchristian : '  the  one 
 question  between  him  and  Strauss  is,  whether  the  latter  reasoner's  mode  of 
 applying  that  general  law,  of  the  amenability  of  all  events  to  law,  does 
 explain  all  the  facts  it  meets  with.  If  it  does  not ;  if  it  is  obliged  to  ignore 
 many  facts,  and  leave  others  without  real  explanation,  in  order  to  preserve 
 an  apparent  truth  and  coherence  for  itself;  then  we  have  a  right  to  say 
 that,  while  quite  ready  to  grant  the  universality  of  the  law,  we  demur  to 
 this  mode  of  applying  it,  because  it  is  unscientific.  For  pre-suppositions, 
 instead  of  being  nothing,  are  every  thing,  in  this  New  Theology.  Thus,  when 
 Strauss  (p.  71.)  admits  that  the  old  sceptical  way  of  putting  the  law  of  the 
 invariable  succession  of  finite  causes  and  effects,  '  although  it  does  not 
 exactly  deny  the  existence  of  a  God,  yet  puts  aside  the  idea  of  him'  ....  so 
 that  he  is  '  no  longer  a  God  and  Creator,  but  a  mere  finite  Artist,  who  acts 
 immediately  upon  his  work  only  during  its  first  production,  and  then  leaves 
 it  to  itself;'  and  when  he  proposss  to  supersede  both  this,  and  the  ancient 
 and  modern  '  views  of  supernaturalism,'  by  enouncing  the  hypothesis  that 
 '  God  acts  upon  the  world  as  a  Whole  immediately,  but  on  each  part  only 
 by  means  of  his  action  on  every  other  part,  that  is  to  say,  by  the  laws  of 
 nature  ; '  we  are  struck  with  a  kind  of  imposing  grandeur,  which  promises 
 to  fill  and  satisfy  the  mind.  But  bring  the  words  to  the  test,  by  asking  them 
 what  they  mean,  and  you  soon  find  that  '  though'  (in  Bacon's  words)  '  they 
 have  a  show  of  strength,  in  that  each  part  seemeth  to  support  and  sustain 
 the  others,  yet  this  is  more  satisfactory  than  substantial.'  Who  can  dis- 
 cover any  fact  of  which  the  phrase,  '  God  acts  upon  the  world  as  a  Whole, 
 immediately,'  is  the  expression  ;  who  can  deny  that  the  rest  of  the  sentence 
 ignores —  '  pre-supposes'  the  non-existence  of — those  facts  of  conscious- 
 ness, the  sense  of  sin,  the  sense  of  pardon,  the  gift  of  God's  Spirit,  His 
 answers  to  prayer,  His  creation  and  building  up  of  a  new  life  in  the  soul  ? 
 While  the  supporters  of  the  applicability  of  positive  investigation  to  moral 
 and  intellectual,  as  well  as  physical,  subjects,  agree  with  Strauss  that  all 
 theological  or  theoretical  dogmas  must  be  eliminated  from  the  province  of 
 true  philosophy,  they  add,  that  all  metaphysical  theories  must  follow  ;  and 
 that  a  science  of  facts,  and  laws  discoverable  in  facts,  must  and  will  super- 
 sede both.  And  the  Christian,  who  holds  the  faith  of  Paul  and  Luther, 
 says  the  same;  and  stands  only  on  facts,  —  facts  of  history  and  facts  of  con- 
 sciousness. It  is  not  denied  (by  the  highest  English  authorities)  that  the 
 latter,  the  facts  of  consciousness,  arc  no  less  real  and   cognisable  than  those 
 
NOTE    ON    STRAUSS.  331 
 
 of  sense  ;  provided  only  that  they  are  facts  :  and  the  Christian  can  appeal  to 
 such  a  series  of  experiments,  in  his  own  heart,  and  in  the  Church  for  two, 
 nay  four,  thousand  years, — to  such  examinations  into  the  reality  of  these 
 facts, — as  nothing  else  has  ever  been  subjected  to,  in  any  department  of  that 
 nature  which  Bacon  has  taught  us  must  be  '  bound,  and  tortured,  pressed, 
 formed,  and  turned  out  of  her  course  by  art  and  industry,'  if  we  will 
 thoroughly  sift  facts  from  notions.  If  the  doctrine  of  the  amenability  of  all 
 facts  to  law,  will  not  take  in  these  facts,  the  fault  must  be  in  it,  not  in  the  facts  : 
 but  the  remedy  is,  not  to  get  rid  of  the  doctrine  altogether,  but  to  re-state 
 it  in  a  less  narrow  and  one-sided  manner,  so  that  it  may  comprehend  the 
 one  as  well  as  the  other  —  the  spiritual  as  well  as  the  natural  —  set  of  facts. 
 And  this  the  Bible,  and  only  the  Bible,  teaches  us  the  way  of  doing  effectu- 
 ally, by  its  distinctions  between  man  and  the  world,  and  between  the  laws  of 
 nature  and  the  laws  of  spirit. 
 
 Again  :  Strauss  (after  assuming,  as  undeniable,  Hume's  doctrine  of  the 
 absolute  incompatibility  of  a  single  miracle  with  a  scientific  theory  of  the 
 world,  which  English  thinkers  consider  quite  superseded  by  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's 
 argument  on  the  subject)  states  —  with  certain,  no  doubt  unintentional, 
 mistakes  —  the  view  of  those  who  maintain  the  old  Christian  faith  in  the 
 language  of  modern  philosophy  ;  and  replies  to  their  assertion  that  the  object 
 of  that  faith  is  at  once  the  historical  Jesus,  and  Christ  dwelling  in  the  heart, 
 that  on  the  one  hand  '  it  cannot  be  proved  that  that  inward  experience  is 
 not  to  be  explained  without  the  actual  existence  of  such  a  Christ,'  and  that 
 on  the  other  an  historical  individual  cannot  present  the  perfect  and  arche- 
 tyjjal  ideal :  and  he  offers  us,  instead  of  what  he  thus  takes  away,  his 
 grand  theory  of  the  '  idea  of  humanity,'  which  is  '  alone  the  absolute  sense 
 of  Christology.'  But  we  are  no  more  concerned  to  answer  him,  than  we 
 should  be  to  prove  the  reality  of  the  sun  to  some  one  who  offered  to  explain 
 the  phenomena  of  our  experience  by  an  '  idea '  of  warmth  or  light :  we  have 
 only  to  state  the  fact,  and  say  with  St.  John,  We  know  that  the  Son  of  God 
 is  come,  and  hath  given  us  an  understanding,  that  we  may  know  Him  that  is 
 true ;  and  we  are  in  Him  that  is  true,  even  in  His  Son  Jesus  Christ. 
 
 I  am  unacquainted  with  M.  Comte's  work  on  the  application  of  'Positi- 
 visme'  to  Christianity:  but  no  thoughtful  Christian  can  read  Mr.  Grote's 
 chapters  on  the  religious  faith  of  the  ancient  Greeks,  as  seen  in  the  light  of 
 positive  science,  without  hearing  the  '  mutato  nomine  de  te  fabula  nar- 
 ratur'  ring  in  his  ears  at  every  step,  and  recognising  an  attack  upon  his 
 Christian  faith,  by  the  side  of  which  those  of  Strauss  and  his  speculative 
 school  shrink  into  insignificance.  But  positive  science  is  not  the  less  the 
 Christian's  one  trustworthy  weapon  of  controversy,  for  all  that.  He  must 
 meet  Mr.  Grote's  '  pre-supposition'  that  the  Lord  of  Abraham,  and  of  us 
 men,  women,  and  children  throughout  Christendom,  is  a  creation  of  man's 
 imagination,  like  Jupiter  or  Apollo,  —  by  the  fact  that  He  is  the  Living 
 God. 
 
332  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER  XXIV. 
 
 THE  VISION  OP  THE  CAPTIVITY  AND  DELIVERANCE. THE  TRANSITORY  AND  THE 
 
 PERMANENT. GOD  IN  NATURE,  AND  IN  HUMAN    SOCIETY. THE    POWERLESS 
 
 GODS  OF  THE  NATIONS. THE  JEWISH  INSTITUTION  OF  THE  REDEEMER. ITS 
 
 EFFECT  ON    THE    MORE    ENLIGHTENED  JEWS.  THE    DELIVERER,  KING,  AND 
 
 TEACHER. THE  WORK  OF  ISAIAH  AND  HEZEKIAH.  —  ITS  SUCCESS    AND    ITS 
 
 FAILURE. JEWISH  IDEA  OF  THE  MESSIAH. ITS    RELATION  TO  THEIR  POLI- 
 TICAL LIFE. ATONEMENT  A  HUMAN    FACT. A    RATIONAL    IDEA. — UNION  OF 
 
 HALF-TRUTHS. THE  MESSIAH  OF  THE  GOSPEL. THE  PROPHETS    AND  THE 
 
 APOSTLES. ISAIAH'S    SCIENCE  OF    POLITICS HIS  DEATH HIS  TRIUMPH. 
 
 Of  the  manifest  continuity  of  these  twenty-six  chapters,  it 
 has  been  well  said  that  '  the  whole  flows  on  like  a  river,  poured 
 forth  at  one  time  from  a  breast  entirely  possessed  and  filled  by 
 the  Holy  Spirit :'  and  we  might  add,  that  the  frequent  repeti- 
 tion of  the  same  thoughts,  resembling  the  rise  and  fall  of  the 
 waves,  while  the  stream  holds  its  steady,  onward,  course,  is  among 
 the  indications  that  the  inspired  seer  speaks  as  the  vision  rises 
 before  his  illumined  eye,  and  as  the  Word  of  the  Lord  impels 
 him  to  describe  it ;  and  that  he  did  not  sit  down  to  write  with 
 any  systematic  and  deliberate  arrangement  of  all  that  he  had  to 
 say.  If  this  repetition  seems  excessive  on  one  point  —  the  ab- 
 surdity of  idolatry  —  we  may  remember  that  reason  and  history 
 unite  to  teach  us  the  great  practical  importance  of  the  eradi- 
 cation of  this  vice  from  the  heart  of  the  Jewish  people.  If  to 
 effect  this  was,  as  is  probable,  the  main  object  of  the  Babylonish 
 captivity,  and  an  object  worth  attaining  even  by  such  severity, 
 it  was  worth  also  the  prophet's  pertinacity,  at  the  cost  of  a  little 
 literary  elegance. 
 
 The  first  two  verses  of  chapter  xl.  form  an  introduction,  in 
 which  the  prophet  throws  himself  into  the  future,  beyond  the 
 end  of  the  great  national  judgment  foretold  in  the  last  chapter  : 
 and  whether  our  idiom  will  or  will  not  bear  the  literal  transla- 
 tion of  the  future  form  of  the  original,  which  is  not  *  saithyour 
 
VISION    OF    THE    CAPTIVITY    AND    DELIVERANCE.       333 
 
 God,'  but  *  your  God  shall  say,'  Calvin  must  be  right  in  noticing 
 that  it  has  an  appropriate  emphasis. 
 
 The  great  desert  between  Babylon  and  Judea  suggests  the 
 like  imagery  with  that  which  Isaiah  had  already  employed  to 
 express  the  like  idea  in  chapter  xxxv.  :  and  probably  both  here, 
 and  there,  may  be  traced  an  under-thought  of  the  passage  of 
 Israel  through  the  wilderness  when  he  came  out  of  Egypt.  But 
 the  prophet's  language  now  is  more  ideal  then  before ;  and  we 
 shall  exclude  a  main  part,  if  not  the  whole,  of  his  meaning,  if 
 we  introduce  arbitrary  limitations  to  define  what  he  leaves  inde- 
 finite, and.  pronounce,  more  positively  than  his  own  words  do, 
 that  he  supposes  himself  in  Babylon,  or  Jerusalem,  or  the  De- 
 sert ;  or  that  he  does,  or  does  not,  represent  the  Lord  as  bring- 
 ing back  the  captive  nation  from  the  former  city.  The  period 
 is  no  doubt  that  of  the  Captivity,  and  not  of  the  reign  of  Heze- 
 kiah ;  but  the  words  and  images  of  the  prophet  show  that  his 
 eye  glances  from  heaven  to  earth,  and  from  earth  to  heaven, 
 with  little  restraint  of  time  and  place :  with  the  ubiquity  of 
 genius  and  of  inspiration,  he  sees  the  appointed  term  of  Israel's 
 hard  warfare  arrived ;  he  hears  the  herald  of  their  approaching 
 Lord  ;  he  calls  on  Jerusalem  and  Zion,  themselves  free  and 
 rejoicing  in  a  moment,  to  spread  the  good  tidings  among  the 
 other  cities  of  Judah,  and  to  declare  that  this  Lord  is  their 
 own  King,  and  their  God.  What  enemies  He  has  been  triumph- 
 ing over,  what  deliverance  He  has  been  effecting,  whether  He 
 comes  alone  to  a  people  already  waiting  to  receive  Him,  or  is 
 bringing  them  with  Him,  redeemed  or  recovered  from  captivity, 
 the  vision  defines  not :  but  it  sees  that  the  triumph  will  be  com- 
 plete, and  the  glory  manifest ;  that  the  Lokd  God  will  do  the 
 whole  work  that  has  to  be  done ;  and  earn  the  effectual  deliver- 
 ance of  His  people ;  and  that,  with  a  love  no  less  tender  than 
 His  power  is  strong, 
 
 He  shall  feed  His  flock  like  a  shepherd  : 
 He  shall  gather  the  lambs  with  His  arm, 
 And  carry  them  in  His  bosom  ; 
 And  shall  gently  lead  the  nursing  ewes. 
 
 The  prophet  sees  into  the  dark  night  of  the  future  only  by 
 momentary  flashes  of  light;  but  his  vision  is  still  farther  inter- 
 
334  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 rupted  by  the  doubt  expressed  in  verses  6  and  7.,  where  he  seems 
 to  ask,  How  can  these  promises  of  God  be  more  effectual  now 
 than  before,  when,  after  they  had  been  made  in  a  manner  appa- 
 rently so  ample,  we  saw  them  all  nullified  by  that  act  of  Heze- 
 kiah  ?  And  the  other  voice  within  him,  —  '  voices  of  two  dif- 
 ferent natures,'  —  replies,  that  it  is  true  that  man  is  at  best  so 
 weak  and  sinful,  that  if  God  leaves  him  for  a  moment,  to  try 
 him,  and  to  know  all  that  is  in  his  heart,  he  falls  away  as  cer- 
 tainly as  the  grass  withers  when  the  wind  of  heaven  blows  on 
 it :  but  what  then  ?  '  The  grass  withereth,  the  flower  fadeth ; 
 but  the  Word  of  our  God  shall  stand  for  ever : '  that  Word 
 which  in  nature  has  been  so  efficacious,  that  every  created  thing 
 still  keeps  the  whole  law  and  course  which  was  imposed  on  it 
 when,  in  the  first  day  of  its  creation,  God  said,  Let  it  be  so, 
 can  and  will  be  no  less  informative  and  quickening  in  the 
 spirit  of  man.  Isaiah  looks  on  the  whole  Jewish  polity,  which 
 had  in  his  days  attained  to  the  highest  development  of  which  it 
 was  capable  ;  he  sees  and  feels  that  not  in  this  is  there  any  con- 
 tinuance, anything  which  can  be  really  trusted  in  for  strength, 
 and  righteousness,  and  eternal  life  ;  and  thus  he  is  able  to  hear 
 and  understand  the  voice  which  declares  that  those  things 
 may  and  will  fade  like  grass,  yet  that  men  may  rise  out  of  this 
 transitory  state,  by  laying  hold  on  the  permanence  of  God. 
 And  what  the  prophet  thus  implies,  the  apostle,  in  the  fulness  of 
 time,  could  actually  assert,  when  he  quotes  these  words,  and 
 explains,  that  while  man's  corruptible  nature  is  like  the  fading 
 grass,  the  gospel  preaches  to  us  that  we  may  be  born  again  to  a 
 new  and  incorruptible  life,  by  the  Word  of  God  ;  and  that  thus 
 being  made  partakers  of  the  divine  nature,  we  may  each  per- 
 sonally escape  the  corruption  which  is  in  the  world,  and  purify 
 our  souls  in  obeying  the  truth  through  the  spirit ;  and  at  the 
 same  time  become  members  of  a  chosen  generation,  a  royal 
 priesthood,  an  holy  nation,  a  peculiar  people.* 
 
 Cicero  could  ask,  '  When  we  look  at  the  heavens,  first  in  all 
 
 *  1  Peter,  i.  22.  to  ii.  10.  ;  2  Peter,  i.  4.  All  the  epistles  indeed,  from 
 first  to  last,  are  nothing  but  expositions  of  the  practical  substitution,  wrought 
 by  Christ,  of  the  power  of  an  endless  life  for  the  law  of  a  carnal  com- 
 mandment. 
 
THE    TRANSITORY    AND    THE    PERMANENT.  335 
 
 their  unclouded  beauty,  and  then  with  such  rapid  changes  pass- 
 ing over  their  face;  when  we  consider  the  alternations  of  day 
 and  night,  and  the  succession  of  the  four  several  seasons ;  when 
 we  behold  the  sun  which  regulates  all  these,  and  the  moon  and 
 and  stars  all  keeping  their  courses  with  unfailing  constancy  ; 
 can  Ave  doubt  that  some  present  and  efficient  Ruler  is  over 
 them?'*  And  Seneca  says, '  They  all  continue,  not  because  they 
 are  eternal,  but  because  the  watchfulness  of  their  Governor 
 protects  them :  imperishable  things  need  no  guardian ;  but 
 these  are  preserved  by  their  Maker,  who,  by  his  power,  con- 
 trols their  natural  tendency  to  decay.'  f  And  Hume,  though  his 
 philosophy  was  perhaps  less  profound  than  that  of  either  Roman, 
 could  raise  his  hands  to  the  starry  sky,  and  show  that  he  too 
 had  a  human  heart,  by  exclaiming  to  Fergusson,  'O  Adam, 
 how  can  a  man  look  at  that,  and  not  believe  in  a  God!'  But 
 Isaiah,  while  he  here  handles  this  argument  with  an  eloquence 
 sublimer  and  moi*e  earnest  than  any  of  theirs,  does  not  stop  in 
 this  '  Court  of  the  Gentiles,'  but  makes  that  assertion  of  the 
 reality  and  power  of  the  Creator  which  is  their  end,  a  step  to 
 his  higher  conclusion,  that  He  is  also  the  God  of  the  spirits  of 
 men  ;  and  that  the  wisdom  and  power  which  He  exhibits  in 
 nature  are  but  the  symbols  that  '  He  fainteth  not,  neither  is 
 weary, — there  is  no  searching  of  His  understanding,'  in  a  region 
 in  which  natural  order  and  life  are  of  no  avail.  It  may  seem  at 
 first  as  though  this  were  to  prove  a  higher  by  a  lower  attribute 
 of  God  :  but  the  works  of  creation  have  this  special  effect,  that 
 they  bear  witness  that  God  is  in  Himself,  and  not  mei'ely  in 
 relation  with  us  ;  and  then  through  this  revelation,  of  an  Abso- 
 lute Being,  in  creation,  we  are  the  easier  led  on  to  apprehend 
 the  higher  truth  and  fact  of  an  Absolute  God  of  our  spirits,  in 
 whom  we  are  to  trust,  even  though  this  or  that  accustomed  re- 
 lation between  Him  and  us  seems  to  have  failed.  The  pious 
 Israelite,  the  Nation,  the  Church,  must  not  suppose  that,  because 
 their  way  is  hid  from  themselves,  and  nothing  appears  but  the 
 oppression  of  utter  desolation  of  spirit  and  circumstances,  there- 
 fore God  does  not  see  the  way,  and  is  not  actually  work- 
 ing it  out,  and  preparing  to  do  His  people  right  and  justice,  by 
 
 *   Tunc.  Qucest.  i.  t   Epist.  lviii. 
 
336  IIEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 methods  not  the  less  wise  because  they  are  for  the  time  in- 
 scrutable.    Let  man  wait  for  God  :  — 
 
 They  that  wait  on  the  Lord  shall  renew  their  strength  ; 
 They  shall  raise  the  wing,  like  eagles  ; 
 They  shall  run,  and  not  be  weary  ; 
 They  shall  walk,  and  not  faint. 
 
 In  reply  to  Israel's  complaint  (xl.  27.)  that  his  cause  against 
 the  heathen  oppressors  is  neglected  or  dismissed  by  the  Great 
 Judo-e,  God  now  (chap.  xli.  1.)  summons  the  nations  to  His  court 
 of  justice  ;  and  as  Israel  had  just  been  assured  that,  if  they 
 would  wait  upon  the  Lord,  they  would  renew  their  strength, 
 and  discern  His  wisdom,  an  interval  is  granted  to  the  heathens 
 and  their  gods,  in  which  they  too  may  renew  their  strength, 
 and  have  time  to  produce  evidence  of  the  powers  of  design  and 
 action  possessed  by  their  gods,  and  in  virtue  of  which  they  claim 
 the  right  to  keep  Israel  in  subjection.  The  solemn  pause  thus 
 allowed  — '  Keep  silence  .  .  .  :  then  let  them  speak' — is  filled 
 (how  bitter  the  irony  !)  by  the  nations  employing  their  carpen- 
 ters and  goldsmiths  to  make  a  particularly  good  and  strong  set 
 gods,  because  there  is  a  general  alarm  that  the  emergency  is 
 great.  For  it  is  already  seen  that  the  judgment  goes  against 
 them  by  default :  that  these  gods  can  show  no  plans,  can  do 
 nothing  good  or  bad ;  and  that  they,  and  their  worshippers,  have 
 neither  right  nor  power  to  break  up  the  designs  of  Almighty 
 Wisdom.  They  have  been  trying  to  do  this,  by  those  oppres- 
 sions of  Israel  which  were  only  permitted  for  a  time,  because 
 they  fell  into  and  formed  a  part  of  God's  own  plan.  But  Israel 
 had  from  the  first  an  appointed  and  chief  place  in  that  plan : 
 He  who  is  at  once  King  of  Israel  and  God  of  all  the  earth,  has 
 been  maintaining  His  chosen  people  in  their  place,  generation 
 after  generation,  when  He  made  Abraham  His  friend,  and  gave 
 the  blessing  to  his  seed,  and  when  He  made  the  rock  yield 
 springs  of  water  under  the  rod  of  Moses :  and  now,  though  they 
 are  reduced  to  extremity  of  weakness  and  dismay,  the  Holy 
 One  of  Israel  bids  them  fear  not,  for  He  has  taken  upon  Himself 
 to  be  their  Redeemer. 
 
 In  order  to  understand  and  realise  the  meaning  and   force  of 
 
JEWISH    INSTITUTION    OF    REDEEMER.  337 
 
 this  word — Redeemer — throughout  Isaiah's  prophecies,  as  indeed 
 wherever  it  occurs  in  the  Hebrew  books,  we  must  consider  what 
 the  institution  and  office  of  the  'Goel'  or  Redeemer,  in  the 
 Hebrew  commonwealth,  actually  was.  It  was  a  properly  pa- 
 triarchal office :  yet,  with  a  provision  for  the  progressive  as  well 
 as  the  conservative  element,  such  as  is  not  usually  found  in 
 patriarchal  institutions,  it  was  an  office  which  devolved  rather 
 on  the  elder  brother  than  on  the  father;  on  the  near  and 
 powerful  kinsman  of  the  rising  generation,  rather  than  on  the 
 head  of  the  family.  It  was  his  duty,  when  any  branch  of  the 
 family  fell  into  decay,  to  ransom  both  the  patrimonial  land  and 
 the  enslaved  owner ;  to  avenge  theii'  blood  when  shed  in  feud ; 
 and  to  marry  the  childless  widow,  and  so  keep  alive  in  Israel 
 the  name  and  line  of  her  first  husband.  The  Book  of  Ruth 
 supplies  living  lineaments  to  the  legal  enactments  of  Moses  * : 
 and  when  we  once  accustom  ourselves  to  the  Jewish  point  of 
 view,  and  see  the  actual  institution,  and  its  workings,  as  they 
 saw  it,  we  shall  perceive  that  these  must  have  given  the  charac- 
 teristics of  a  '  Goel,'  or  Redeemer,  to  many  a  national  hero,  — 
 to  a  Moses,  a  Joshua,  or  a  Samson,  as  well  as  to  a  Joseph  whom 
 '  God  sent  before '  his  father's  house,  '  to  preserve  them  a  pos- 
 terity in  the  earth,  and  to  save  them  with  a  great  deliverance.' 
 Thus  there  grew  up  a  distinct  and  well  understood,  faith,  in  the 
 minds  of  the  more  experienced  and  enlightened  Jews,  of  an 
 invisible  Redeemer,  of  whom  these  were  but  the  earthly  and 
 partial  representatives.  This  faith  we  recognise  in  Jacob,  when 
 he  invoked  for  Joseph's  sons  the  guardianship  of  the  '  God  who 
 had  fed  him  all  his  life  long,  and  the  Angel  which  had  redeemed 
 him  from  all  evilf ; '  by  Job,  when  he  met  the  worst  evils  of  the 
 present  time  with  the  assertion,  '  I  know  that  my  Redeemer 
 liveth  $  ; '  and  by  Isaiah,  throughout  the  prophecies  before  us. 
 Vitringa,  after  quoting  these  words  of  Jacob,  and  of  Job,  adds, 
 '  That  under  the  Old  Economy  that  Angel — the  assertor  and 
 avenger — did  not  discharge  the  whole  office  to  which  He  was 
 
 *  Leviticus,  xxv.' 24.  ff. ;  Numbers,  xxxv.  19.  ff.  The  word  translated 
 'Avenger'  in  the  latter  passage  is  the  same  (Goel)  as  'Redeemer'  in  the 
 former. 
 
 f  Genesis,  xlviii.  16.  J  Job,  xix.  25. 
 
 Z 
 
338  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 destined  :  yet  in  every  liberation  of  the  people  of  God,  and 
 every  vindication  of  their  rights  which  He  did  effect,  the  Church 
 might  discern,  as  in  a  type,  the  preludings  *  of  that  office  of 
 Redeemer,  which,  by  the  will  of  the  Father,  He  was  to  fulfil  in 
 the  last  times.' 
 
 A  Redeemer,  or  Deliverer,  is  appointed  (chapter  xlii.)  to 
 carry  out  the  judgment  pronounced  upon  the  islands  and  nations 
 just  called  to  trial.  And  this  judgment  is  farther  explained  to 
 be,  on  the  one  hand,  a  moral  conversion  of  the  Gentiles  by  means 
 capable  of  addressing  their  mind  and  spirit ;  and  on  the  other,  a 
 triumph  over  all  irreclaimable  rebels,  by  the  Lord  going  forth  as 
 a  man  of  war,  and  Himself  making  waste  the  mountains  and 
 hills,  and  giving  occasion  to  the  righteous,  not  only  of  Israel 
 but  also  of  the  Gentiles,  to  give  glory  to  Him,  and  to  rejoice  in 
 the  accomplishment  of  the  great  design  of  the  universe  which 
 He  alone,  and  none  of  the  graven  images,  had  framed  from  the 
 beginning.  But  in  the  previous  chapter  (xli.  2.)  there  is  an- 
 other description  of  the  same,  or  another,  deliverer,  variously 
 interpreted  to  refer  to  Cyrus,  to  Abraham  and  his  posterity,  to 
 Christ,  or  to  the  Gospel  under  the  name  of  *  righteousness : ' 
 and —  with  reservation  of  the  final  decision  as  to  '  Coresh  '—I  am 
 unable  to  exclude  any  of  these  meanings,  here  and  in  the  like 
 passages,  or  to  explain  their  concurrence  or  interchange,  ex- 
 cept by  recognising  the  whole  as  a  vision  or  discourse  in  which 
 the  speaker  has  taken  up  an  ideal  position  far  removed  from  his 
 actual  one,  and  allows  his  imagination  to  carry  him  where  it 
 will,  uncurbed  by  logical  forms.  It  is  generally  true,  that  the 
 more  we  can  bring  together  the  partial  and  divergent  lights  of 
 the  commentators  of  different  periods  and  modes  of  thinking, 
 and  the  more  careful  we  are  that  it  is  on  the  simple  text  itself, 
 and  not  on  their  statement  of  it,  that  we  concentrate  their  rays, 
 the  more  likely  are  we  to  get  at  least  a  glimpse  of  its  real, 
 adequate,  meaning.  And  no  where  is  this  more  the  case  than 
 in  these  descriptions  of  the  '  servant  of  God,'  which  fill  so  large 
 a  part  of  the  rest  of  the  book.  The  everlasting  God,  the  Lord, 
 the  Creator  of  the  ends  of  the  earth,  has  from  the  beginning 
 
 *  Pi-celudebat  huic  officio.    So  an  English  divine  speaks  of  "  the  preludings 
 of  the  incarnation." 
 
THE    DELIVERER,    KING,    AND    TEACHER.  339 
 
 planned,  and  brought  into  operation,  a  moral,  political,  spiritual 
 constitution  and  order,  as  well  as  a  physical  world ;  and  He  has 
 chosen  one  nation  for  the  first  and  normal  embodiment  and  illus- 
 tration of  the  design,  and  to  be  the  main  instrument  for  carrying 
 it  out  in  all  other  nations,  and  for  uniting  them  in  an  universal 
 brotherhood  :  and  now  that  this  nation  has  itself  sunk  under  the 
 evils  out  of  which  it  was  to  lead  the  others,  the  original  plan 
 provides  an  adequate  Redeemer  and  Guide  for  it  and  them. 
 That  the  work  extends  over  ages  of  time,  employs  races  as  well 
 as  individuals,  and  is  in  the  main  spiritual,  and  the  work  of 
 God  himself,  is  plainly  declared  by  the  prophet.  If  we  choose 
 to  think  that  at  one  or  two  points  of  his  vision  he  sees  that  one 
 external  portion  of  the  work  is  to  be  effected  by  a  Persian  con- 
 queror (though  the  other  way  of  explaining  the  word  gives  the 
 more  coherent  sense),  yet  in  many  more  places  he  plainly  looks 
 either  for  a  direct  interposition  of  divine  power,  as  in  the  over- 
 throw of  Sennacherib  ;  or  else  for  the  appearance  of  a  hero 
 like  David,  who  will  lead  his  people  to  fight  their  own  battle. 
 And  side  by  side  with  this  idea  of  the  Redeemer,  appear, 
 throughout  the  book,  those  of  the  King,  and  the  Prophet  or 
 Teacher :  while  each  of  these  finds  its  counterpart  in  the  an- 
 swering images  of  Israel  and  the  Church.  The  nation  is  re- 
 deemed from  Babylon,  and  from  Edom,  which  is  the  symbol  of 
 Babylon,  as  Babylon  is  of  all  godless  tyranny :  it  is  established 
 in  a  prosperity  never  known  by  Hezekiah  or  Solomon ;  it  is 
 secured  in  possession  of  these  blessings  by  a  covenant  that  they 
 shall  have  a  more  spiritual  guidance  than  heretofore*:  and  all 
 this  is  but  the  inmost  circle  of  the  ever-widening,  universal, 
 Church,  which  is  indeed  for  the  most  part  depicted  as  a  political 
 and  social  subordination  of  the  Gentiles  to  Israel,  but  in  more 
 than  one  place  as  a  real  illumination  and  spiritual  organisation 
 of  the  Gentiles  themselves,  by  the  Lord  of  Israel,  who  employs 
 His  chosen  people  as  instruments  for  that,  the  original  end  for 
 which  they  were  chosen.  Thus,  in  chapter  xlii.  6.,  '  I,  the 
 Lord  will  give  thee  for  a  covenant  of  the  people,  for  a  light 
 of  the  Gentiles;'  and  again,  in  chapter  xlix.  6., 
 
 *  Chapter  lix.  21. 
 z  2 
 
340  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 And  He  said, 
 
 It  is  a  light  thing  that  thou  shouldest  be  my  servant 
 
 To  raise  up  the  tribes  of  Jacob, 
 
 And  to  restore  the  preserved  of  Israel : 
 
 I  will  also  give  thee  for  a  light  to  the  Gentiles, 
 
 That  thou  mayest  be  my  salvation  unto  the  end  of  the  earth  :  — 
 
 And,  in  chapter  li.,  verses-4,  5,  6.,  the  correspondence  of  which 
 with  the  opening  verses  of  chapter  ii.,  is  so  marked, 
 
 Hearken  unto  me,  my  people, 
 
 And  give  ear  unto  me,  O  my  nation  : 
 
 For  a  law  shall  proceed  from  me, 
 
 And  I  will  establish  my  judgment  for  a  light  of  the  peoples. 
 
 My  righteousness  is  near,  my  salvation  is  gone  forth, 
 
 And  mine  arms  shall  judge  the  peoples  : 
 
 The  isles  shall  wait  upon  me ;  and  on  mine  arm  shall  they  trust. 
 
 Lift  up  your  eyes  to  the  heavens, 
 
 And  look  upon  the  earth  beneath  : 
 
 For  the  heavens  shall  vanish  away  like  smoke, 
 
 And  the  earth  shall  wax  old  like  a  garment, 
 
 And  they  that  dwell  therein  shall  die  in  like  manner  : 
 
 But  my  salvation  shall  be  for  ever, 
 
 And  my  righteousness  shall  not  be  abolished. 
 
 If  the  reader  will  forgive  some  unavoidable  repetition,  he  may 
 perhaps  find  our  subject  still  clearer,  if  we  follow  into  farther 
 detail  that  method  —  which,  though  as  old  as  St.  Peter,  is  as 
 new  as  the  most  modern  critical  science, —  of  considering  the 
 prophet's  meaning  in  the  light  in  which  he  must  have  himself 
 contemplated  it,  and  also  in  that  in  which  it  presents  itself  to  us 
 who  live  after  the  coming  of  Christ.  Isaiah,  meditating  upon 
 the  experience  of  his  past  life,  would  find  that  the  various  qua- 
 lifications of  an  adequate  Redeemer,  King,  and  Teacher,  un- 
 folded themselves  before  him,  at  the  same  time  with  his  vision 
 of  the  depressed  and  destitute  state  of  Israel  and  the  world,  and 
 of  the  divine  and  universal  polity  which  was  to  be  brought  out 
 of  these.  He  had  been  called  to  the  office  of  prophet,  in  the 
 days  of  Uzziah,  by  the  Lord,  who  had  elected  him  to  be 
 His  servant,  and  upheld  him  in  his  duty  by  continually  (  putting 
 
JEWISH    IDEA    OF    THE    MESSIAH.  341 
 
 His  spirit  upon  him.'*  He  was  endowed  with  *  the  tongue  of  the 
 learned '  in  no  ordinary  measure,  and  might  have  '  made  his 
 voice  to  be  heard  in  the  streets,'  while  a  sympathising  audience 
 approved  his  haughtiest  eloquence,  if  he  had  only  used  it  to 
 enforce  the  maxims  of  worldly  wisdom  ;  but  he  had  not  turned 
 back  from  the  harder  task,  of  preaching  and  teaching  in  all  hu- 
 mility and  patience  the  unpalatable  doctrine  of  a  holy,  God- 
 trusting  life.  He  had  taken  care,  neither  to  '  break  the  bruised 
 reed,  nor  quench  the  smoking  flax/  when  his  ministry  produced 
 some  weak  result ;  nor  to  suffer  his  own  spirit  to  be  broken  and 
 quenched,  when  all  result  seemed  wanting,  and  when  he  had  to 
 submit  to  be  e  despised  by  man  and  abhorred  by  the  nation  f ,'  or 
 even  (like  so  many  prophets  before  and  after  him  J,  and  as  was 
 most  probably  his  lot  in  the  reign  of  Ahaz)  to  '  give  his  back  to 
 the  smiters,  and  his  cheeks  to  them  that  plucked  off  the  hair.'  § 
 And  like  other  '  preachers  of  righteousness  in  the  great  congre- 
 gation ||,'  he  had  protested  continually  against  that  abuse  of  the 
 Levitical  sacrifices  which  turned  them  into  an  opus  operation.^  ; 
 and  like  them,  he  had  learnt  that  the  meaning  of  these  sacrifices 
 must  be  realised  by  a  man  sacrificing  himself,  '  pouring  out  his 
 soul,'**  and  that  not  for  himself  only,  but  for  his  brethren  also. 
 And  Hezekiah  —  the  king  co-operating  with  the  prophet  in  the 
 work  of  national  reformation  —  had,  by  a  like  life  of  toil  and 
 self-sacrifice,  contended  with  the  same,  or  corresponding,  obstacles 
 in  his  efforts  to  '  bring  forth  justice  in,  and  by,  the  force  of 
 truth,'  and  to  c  establish  it  in  the  land,'  and  e  extend  it  to  the 
 nations'  around.  And  lastly,  the  *  Angel  of  the  Lord'  had 
 destroyed  the  power  of  Sennacherib,  and  compelled  him  to  let 
 his  captives  return  to  their  own  land,  there  to  enjoy  peace  and 
 prosperity  under  their  own  king  and  laws,  and  to  worship  their 
 own  God  in  Zion.  These  '  former  things  had  come  to  pass,'  and 
 Isaiah  could  distinguish  the  design  and  the  hand  of  God  in  them, 
 
 *  Chapter  xlii.  1.  ff. 
 f  Chap.  xlix.  7. 
 
 I  Matthew,  xxiii.  29—39. ;  Hebrews,  xi.  35 — 38.;  and  the  whole  Jewish 
 history  to  which  these  passages  refer. 
 §  Chap.  1.  4,  5,  6. 
 
 ||  Psalm  xl.  6 — 10.     See  the  whole  passage 
 H  Chap.  i.  11.,  xliii.  23.  24.  **  Chapter  liii.  12. 
 
 z  3 
 
342  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 no  less  than  in  His  creating  the  heavens,  spreading  out  the 
 earth,  and  giving  breath  to  the  people  upon  it :  but  he  had  also 
 seen  that  the  deliverance,  and  restoration,  and  reformation,  ef- 
 fected by  these  means  were  only  temporary  and  external ;  and 
 thus  he  would  be  led  by  the  Holy  Spirit  to  perceive  that  a 
 mightier  Prophet  than  himself,  a  greater  King  than  Hezekiah, 
 a  more  effectual  Redeemer  than  that  Angel,  was  needed,  and 
 might  be  looked  for ;  and  so  the  idea  would  dawn  upon  his  in- 
 ward eye,  of  the  coming  of  One  who  could  adequately  fill  all 
 these  offices,  and  really  accomplish  a  work  to  which  no  mere 
 man,  or  angel,  was  competent,  however  divinely  directed  and  up- 
 held. For  observe — since  in  this  we  have  the  clue  to  the 
 transition  from  the  expectation  of  a  human,  to  that  of"  a  Di- 
 vine, Redeemer  —  that  the  work  of  Isaiah  and  Hezekiah, 
 which  had  so  failed  of  any  but  an  external  and  temporary 
 result,  had  not  been  itself  external  and  temporary,  but  spiritual, 
 and  wrought  by  spiritual  men,  who  made  '  righteousness  the 
 girdle  of  their  loins,  and  faithfulness  the  girdle  of  their  reins ;' 
 and  who  had  sacrificed  themselves,  and  not  bulls  and  goats,  for 
 their  nation,  and  yet  with  no  more  efficacy  than  if  it  had  been 
 only  the  latter.  Nothing  better  in  degree,  could  supply  the 
 want :  what  man  could  do  had  been  done,  and  it  was  now  proved 
 that  something  different  in  kind  was  required,  something  which 
 could  raise  humanity  above  itself, 
 
 '  And  give  to  every  power  a  double  power, 
 Above  their  functions  and  their  offices.' 
 
 And  just  in  proportion  as  Isaiah,  and  those  who  heard  his  words, 
 could  enter  into  the  meaning  of  this  coming  of  the  Messiah,  the 
 God-man,  could  they  realise  that  they  had,  after  all,  a  firm  ground 
 of  faith  and  hope  to  stand  on.  The  idea  of  the  Messiah  is  the 
 keystone  of  the  arch  of  prophecy,  and  makes  a  living  temple  of 
 Jewish  history :  he  who  had  it,  found  it  again  possible  to  see  a 
 divine  life  and  meaning  in  the  office  and  acts  of  each  particular 
 king  and  prophet ;  in  the  nation  ;  and  in  each  of  its  constituted 
 and  corporate  orders ;  even  while  it  could  no  longer  be  ques- 
 tioned that  they  were  all  in  themselves  but  transitory  symbols. 
 And  thus,  for  us  too,  in  like  manner  —  if  this  prophecy  of  the 
 '  Servant  of  the  Lord,'  which  is  the  central  subject  of  these  last 
 
ATONEMENT    A    RATIONAL    IDEA.  343 
 
 twenty-six  chapters  of  Isaiah,  be  clearly  understood  to  speak 
 properly,  and  directly,  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God  and 
 the  Son  of  David,  it  throws  a  clear  light  upon  all  the  other 
 interpretations  which  have  been  offered  as  substitutes  for  this. 
 The  '  Servant  of  the  Lord  '  has  been  explained  to  be  Cyrus, 
 Isaiah  himself,  Hezekiah,  Josiah,  Jeremiah,  or  some  unknown 
 prophet :  the  House  of  David,  the  Maccabees,  the  Jewish  No- 
 bles in  the  times  of  the  Exile  :  the  Priesthood,  the  Order  of 
 Prophets,  the  Jewish  Nation,  and  the  spiritual  Israel,  or  Church 
 in  the  nation :  and  it  is  very  interesting  and  instructive  to  see 
 how  much  reason  may  be  adduced  in  favour  of  each  of  these 
 interpretations,  and  yet  how  each  is  unable  to  hold  its  place, 
 for  more  than  a  moment ;  because  each,  though  a  shadow,  is 
 only  a  shadow,  and  a  finite,  as  well  as  transient,  image  of  the 
 infinite  and  substantive  Original.  Let  the  words  of  the  prophet 
 be  applied,  in  as  far  as  they  are  applicable,  to  each  of  these,  and 
 to  all  other,  *  preludings  '  of  the  incarnation  :  it  will  not  be  the 
 less  true,  it  will  be  even  the  more  manifest,  that  only  in  the 
 coming  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  were  they  fulfilled. 
 
 It  is  not  denied  by  their  authors  or  advocates,  that  some  of 
 the  interpretations  of  the  53rd  chapter,  above  enumerated,  are 
 intended  to  supersede  the  belief  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  or  that 
 there  is  either  Christ,  or  Prophecy,  in  the  Christian  sense  ;  and 
 they  say  that  they  thus  offer  us  a  rational  explanation,  instead 
 of  an  unintelligible  dogma  of  theology.  But  we  must  not  mis- 
 take them,  because  they  mistake  us.  They  do  recognise  a 
 valuable  half-truth,  Avhich  theologians  have  too  much  over- 
 looked ;  and  the  neglect  of  which  has  made  the  Christian  idea  of 
 the  Atonement  seem  too  much  like  an  arbitrary  dogma,  when 
 it  might  have  been  shown  as  well  as  felt  (for  the  latter  it  always 
 has  been)  to  be  the  fullest  and  most  luminous  manifestation  of 
 an  universal  law,  and  one  with  which,  in  its  lower  operations, 
 we  are  all  more  or  less  acquainted.  The  passage  I  have  already 
 referred  to  in  the  40th  Psalm,  is  enough  for  mere  logical  proof 
 that  the  idea  of  self-sacrifice  for  others,  as  the  highest  and  most 
 effective  duty,  was  intelligible  to  the  more  enlightened  at  least 
 of  the  ancient  Hebrews ;  but  if  any  one  has  any  difficulty  in 
 realising  how  Isaiah  could,  nay  must,  have  given  the  words  of 
 this   53rd  chapter,  a  sound,  coherent  sense,  derived   from  his 
 
 z  4 
 
344  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 own  experience  and  observation,  I  would  pray  him  to  look  into 
 his  own  experience  and  observation  in  the  matter.  The  soft 
 answer  which  restores  good  humour  in  a  casual  conversation ; 
 the  forbearance  with  which  the  statesman  meets  the  ignorances 
 and  prejudices,  the  censures  and  the  slanders,  of  those  to  whom 
 he  only  sues  for  leave  to  do  them  good ;  the  work  of  the  mi- 
 nister of  the  Gospel,  of  which  St.  Paul,  among  other  hardly 
 less  strong  expressions,  asserts  that  '  he  fills  up  that  which  is 
 behind  of  the  afflictions  of  Christ ;'  *  are  but  instances  of  an 
 universal  law  of  man's  constitution,  discoverable  in  all  human 
 relationships,  and  which  enacts  that  men  can,  and  do,  endure 
 the  evil  doings  of  their  brethren,  in  such  sort  that,  through  that 
 endurance  on  the  part  of  the  innocent,  the  guilty  are  freed  from 
 the  power  —  from  both  the  guilt  and  the  punishment  —  of  their 
 ill  deeds.  And  if  these  instances  seem  insignificant  or  foreign, 
 there  is  one  which,  in  some  form  or  other,  must  have  come 
 home  to  the  heart  of  every  one  not  deficient  in  the  commonest 
 observation  and  sympathies.  There  is  hardly  any  one  but  has 
 known  some  household  in  which,  year  after  year,  selfishness  and 
 worldliness,  and  want  of  family  affection,  have  been  apparent 
 enough ;  and  yet,  instead  of  the  moral  break-up  which  might 
 have  been  expected,  and  the  final  moral  ruin  of  the  various 
 members,  the  original  bond  of  union  has  held  together :  there 
 has  plainly  been  some  counteracting,  redeeming,  power  at  work  ; 
 and  at  last  it  has  turned  out  that,  not  only  has  the  course  of  that 
 household  not  been  downward  to  ruin,  but  has  taken  a  new  and 
 upward  direction,  when  some  outward  event,  a  death,  or  a  mar- 
 riage, brought  to  a  crisis  the  elements  of  a  change  long  ma- 
 turing in  secret.  This,  I  say,  is  the  commonest  of  all  stories  ; 
 and  when  we  look  again  to  see  what  is  that  redeeming  power, 
 ever  at  work  for  those  who  know  and  care  nothing  about  it,  we 
 always  find  that  there  is  some  member  of  that  family  —  oftenest 
 the  wife  or  mother  —  who  is  silently  bearing  all  things,  believing 
 all  things,  hoping  all  things,  for  them,  but  for  her  or  himself 
 expecting  little  or  nothing  in  this  world,  but  the  rest  of  the 
 grave.  Such  a  one  is  really  bearing  the  sins  of  that  household, 
 and  thus  saving  them  from  the  guilt  as  well  as  punishment  of 
 sin :  it  is  no  dogma,  no  forensic  phrase  transferred  by  way  of 
 *  Colossians,  i.  24. 
 
ATONEMENT    A    HUMAN    FACT.  345 
 
 illustration  from  the  practice  of  the  law  courts ;  but  a  fact,  a 
 vital  formation,  actually  taking  place,  here,  under  our  very  eyes. 
 He  who  has  seen  and  understood  this  fact,  in  any  one  of  its 
 common,  daily,  shapes,  needs  no  commentary  on  such  words 
 as  — 
 
 His  visage  was  so  marred  more  than  any  man, 
 
 And  his  form  more  than  the  sons  of  men  :  — 
 
 He  hath  no  form,  nor  comeliness  ;  and  when  we  shall  see  him, 
 
 There  is  no  beauty  that  we  should  desire  him. 
 
 He  is  despised  and  rejected  of  men, 
 
 A  man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief: 
 
 And  we  hid  as  it  were  our  faces  from  him  ; 
 
 He  was  despised,  and  we  esteemed  him  not. 
 
 Surely  he  hath  borne  our  griefs,  and  carried  our  sorrows  ; 
 
 Yet  did  we  esteem  him  stricken,  smitten  of  God,  and  afflicted. 
 
 But  he  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions, 
 
 He  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities  : 
 
 The  chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon  him  ; 
 
 And  with  his  stripes  we  are  healed. 
 
 All  we  like  sheep  have  gone  astray ; 
 
 We  have  turned  every  one  to  his  own  way ; 
 
 And  the  Lord  hath  laid  on  him  the  iniquity  of  us  all. 
 
 He  was  oppressed,  and  he  was  afflicted, 
 
 Yet  he  opened  not  his  mouth : 
 
 As  a  lamb  is  brought  to  the  slaughter, 
 
 And  as  a  sheep  before  her  shearers  is  dumb, 
 
 So  he  opened  not  his  mouth. 
 
 He  was  taken  from  prison  and  from  judgment  : 
 
 And  who  among  his  generation  will  consider, 
 
 That  he  was  cut  off,  out  of  the  land  of  the  living, 
 
 For  the  transgression  of  my  people, — stricken  for  them. 
 
 And  he  made  his  grave  with  the  wicked, 
 
 And  with  the  rich  in  his  death  ; 
 
 Though  he  had  done  no  violence,  nor  was  any  deceit  in  his  mouth 
 
 Yet  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  bruise  him  ;   He  hath  put  him  to  grief: 
 
 When  thou  shalt  make  his  soul  an  offering  for  sin, 
 
 He  shall  see  his  seed,  he  shall  prolong  his  days, 
 
 And  the  pleasure  of  the  Lord  shall  prosper  in  his  hand. 
 
 He  shall  see  of  the  travail  of  his  soul,  and  shall  be  satisfied  : 
 
 By  his  knowledge  shall  my  righteous  servant  justify  many  ; 
 
346  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 And  their  iniquities  shall  he  bear. 
 
 Therefore  will  I  divide  him  a  portion  with  the  many, 
 
 And  he  shall  divide  the  spoil  with  the  strong ; 
 
 Because  he  hath  poured  out  his  soul  unto  death, 
 
 And  was  numbered  with  the  transgressors  ; 
 
 And  he  bare  the  sin  of  many, 
 
 And  for  the  transgressors  will  make  intei*cession. 
 
 We  may  notice  the  expression  'It  pleased  the  Lord'  to  bruise 
 him,  which,  according  to  the  usual  Hebrew  spirit,  and  way  of 
 looking  at  things,  is  equivalent  to  our  saying  that  it  is  an  ulti- 
 mate fact,  the  original  seat  of  a  law.  And  without  pretending 
 to  any  metaphysical  depth  or  accuracy,  I  may  help  to  make  my 
 meaning  intelligible,  by  saying,  that  this  law  is,  that  one  human 
 will  can  unite  itself  with  another,  and  raise  up  the  latter  out  of 
 a  state  of  sin  and  misery,  not  otherwise  to  be  escaped  from,  if  it 
 (the  former)  consents  and  submits  to  be  accounted  a  partaker  in 
 the  guilt,  and  therefore,  to  be  actually  made  a  sharer  in  the  misery 
 of  that  other.  But  it  is  a  part  of  the  same  law, — every  instance 
 that  can  be  produced  will  show  it — that  no  man  can  thus  bear 
 the  sins  of  another,  unless  he  be  himself  blameless  in  the  matter 
 then  in  hand.  In  the  minor  and  more  outward  relationships  and 
 duties  of  life,  this  qualification  of  blamelessness  is  to  be  found 
 of  the  kind  required ;  for  there  are  virtuous  as  well  as  vicious 
 men  in  the  world  :  but  when  Ave  go  a  little  deeper,  we  discover 
 a  difficulty  which  threatens  to  invalidate  all  our  philosophy, 
 if  we  attempt  to  reduce  it  to  practice.  Every  man,  the  most 
 virtuous,  the  meekest,  holiest,  most  loving,  no  less  than  the  most 
 selfish  and  vicious,  is  at  bottom  a  sinner;  has  that  inherent 
 defect  and  corruption  in  him  which  we  call  original  sin  ;  and  is 
 thereby  disqualified  from  this  which  —  as  we  have  said  —  is  the 
 only  way  in  which  man  can  be  saved  out  of  the  guilt  and  misery 
 in  which  he  has  involved  every  relationship  of  his  life.  What- 
 ever we  may  have  seen  the  minister  of  religion,  the  patriot,  the 
 wife,  or  the  mother,  doing,  and  doing  with  success,  we  have  in 
 the  back  ground  the  certainty  that  their  good  works  must  be  out- 
 flanked at  last,  because  the  evil  which  they  are  saving  others 
 from  is  still  there,  in  themselves  :  the  end  may  be  put  off,  but 
 must  come  at  last,  which  the  prophet  expresses,  when  he  sayy, 
 
THE    MESSIAH    OP    THE    GOSPEL,  347 
 
 '  I  looked,  and  there  was  none  to  help.'  And  thus  we  arrive 
 once  more,  as  Isaiah  arrived  before  us,  at  the  necessity  for  the 
 coming  of  One  who,  because  He  is  God  as  well  as  man,  is  free 
 from  this  defect ;  and,  therefore,  can  bear  the  sins  of  the  whole 
 world,  and  of  each  man  in  it,  without  failing  in  the  last  resort. 
 And  thus,  and  then,  each  Christian  minister,  each  Christian 
 ruler,  each  Christian  member  of  a  family,  will  and  does  receive 
 power  to  do  that  in  his  lower  sphere,  which  has  first  been  done 
 for  him  in  the  higher.  And  thus  man,  made  in  the  image  of 
 God  the  Creator,  is  renewed  in  the  image  of  God  the  Saviour ; 
 and  can  reflect  that  image  among  his  brethren,  having  the 
 mind  of  Christy  and  being  a  fellow- worker  with  Him.* 
 
 Thus  we  do  justice  to  the  half-truth,  the  finite,  human, 
 element,  in  the  Jewish  and  rationalist  interpretations,  and  at 
 the  same  time  bring  the  Christian  interpretation,  with  its  whole 
 truth,  human  and  divine  in  one,  into  fuller  light  than  if  we 
 overlooked  or  denied  the  former.  And  this  is  not  less  the  case 
 as  to  the  explanation  that  the  '  Servant  of  the  Lord  '  means  the 
 Jewish  Nation.  What  was  true  of  the  King  of  the  nation,  its 
 real  Head  and  Representative,  must  be  true  of  the  nation  itself, 
 in  as  far  as  it  acknowledged  Him,  walked  in  His  light,  was 
 clothed  with  His  righteousness,  and  actuated  by  His  Spirit.  The 
 history  of  the  foundation  of  the  Church  by  Jesus  Christ  and 
 His  Apostles,  all  Jews,  and  the  fact  that  the  Bible  is  wholly  a 
 Jewish  book,  show  how  truly  and  how  peculiarly  the  law  came 
 forth  from  Zion,  and  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem,  to 
 all  nations  ;  while  the  same  thing  was  partially  and  symbolically 
 effected  in  the  preceding  ages  of  the  people.  And  then,  when 
 they  '  would  not  have  this  man  to  rule  over  them,'  it  became 
 inevitable  that  they  should  bear  their  own  sins,  which  they  re- 
 fused to  let  Him  bear  for  them ;  and  it  may,  therefore,  well  be 
 possible  to  trace  a  close  resemblance  between  this  prophetic  de- 
 scription of  the  sufferings  of  the  Messiah,  with  those  which  the 
 pride  and  rebellion  of  the  nation  have  brought  upon  themselves. 
 And  it  is  interesting,  and  illustrative,  that  the  Jews  not  only  ex- 
 cluded the  Messiah  from  their  interpretation,  as  far  at  least  as 
 
 Philipp.  ii.  4—11. 
 
348  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 the  53rd  chapter  is  concerned,  in  order  to  hold  their  ground 
 better  against  their  Christian  opponents  who  urged  on  them 
 that  it  was  fulfilled  in  the  sufferings  of  Jesus  the  Son  of  Mary ; 
 but  that  the  periods  of  history  in  which  the  persecutions  of  the 
 Jews  have  been  most  cruel,  are  (it  is  said)  those  in  which  their 
 writers  are  found  to  dwell  most  earnestly,  and  with  a  view  to 
 the  practical  instruction  of  the  people  themselves,  upon  this  in- 
 terpretation. They  felt  how  terribly  real  its  application  to 
 themselves  was. 
 
 The  manner  in  which  the  New  Testament  writers  assume  this 
 prophecy  to  refer  to  Jesus  Christ  *,  seems  to  indicate  that,  as  the 
 Holy  Spirit  led  them  into  all  truth,  and  opened  their  eyes  to 
 understand  the  meaning  of  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  —  the 
 records  of  God's  counsels  and  works  —  they  perceived,  on  the 
 one  hand,  what  the  character  of  the  Messiah  must  be  in  order  to 
 His  filling  the  proper  place  in  those  counsels,  and,  on  the  other, 
 how  this  very  character  was  actually  exhibited,  in  all  its  parts, 
 in  the  life  and  conversation  of  their  Master.  And  thus  the  two, 
 the  idea  and  the  answering  fact,  united  so  simply  and  naturally 
 in  their  minds,  that  there  seemed  no  occasion  to  assert  —  it  was 
 enough  to  notice  —  the  reality  of  the  union. 
 
 There  is,  in  our  day,  a  growing  disinclination  to  attend  to 
 those  minute  correspondences  between  these  words  of  Isaiah, 
 and  the  details  of  our  Lord's  death  and  burial,  which  were 
 once  thought  (by  Paley  for  instance)  so  important  a  part  of  the 
 evidences  of  Christianity.  It  would  be  easy  to  suggest  grounds 
 for  thinking  that  our  philosophy  may  be  as  one-sided  as  that  of 
 our  fathers  in  this  respect.  The  course  of  the  universe,  the 
 working  out  by  God  of  His  original  design,  has  its  harmonies, 
 and  its  relations  of  the  parts  to  each  other  and  to  the  whole ; 
 and  the  time  is  coming  —  I  might  say,  come  —  when  each  of 
 these  partial  relations  must  be  seen  in  its  harmony  with  the 
 whole,  or  remain  uninstructive,  nay,  unintelligible,  to  us.  But, 
 meanwhile,  we  are  neither  to  fancy  the  higher  relations  where 
 we  cannot,  nor  deny  the  lower  to  exist  because  we  do  not,  see 
 them.     One  advantageous  effect  of  this  diminished  interest  in 
 
 *  Matthew,  viii.  17. ;  John,  xi.  51. ;  Acts,  viii.  32. ;  1  Peter,  ii.  23,  24,  25. 
 
isaiah's  science  of  politics.  349 
 
 the  literal  fulfilment  of  prophecy,  we  may  notice,  in  the  in- 
 creased importance  which  it  has  allowed  prophecy  itself  —  as 
 distinguished  from  that  literal  fulfilment  —  to  take.  >Ye  can 
 answer  better  than  our  fathers  could,  the  question,  what  Pro- 
 phecy was  given  for  :  whether  it  had  not  some  place  of  its  own, 
 some  specific  purpose  ?  For  if  God's  purpose  in  giving  it  to  us 
 had  been  to  supply  a  ground  for  such  arguments  as  Paley  builds 
 upon  it,  it  would  surely  have  been  much  more  explicit  and 
 literal  :  and  again,  if  the  spiritual  and  practical  light  to  be 
 gained  from  it  were  exactly  the  same  as  that  which  the  New 
 Testament  expositions  throw  on  the  death  of  Christ, —  and  this 
 would  be  so,  if  the  one,  like  the  other,  is  a  statement  and  expo- 
 sition of  facts  —  then  one  or  the  other  part  of  the  Bible  becomes 
 superfluous.  But  when  we  see  that  Prophecy  is  the  setting 
 forth  of  God's  Design,  as  a  Design,  we  can  recognise  the  method 
 of  the  Bible,  and  find  that  each  part  of  the  revelation  has  its 
 proper  meaning,  and  power  of  throwing  light  on  the  rest.  And 
 this  53rd  chapter  of  Isaiah,  in  particular,  exhibits  the  idea  of 
 the  Atonement,  as  an  Idea.  The  facts  are  recorded  in  the 
 Gospels  and  Acts.  The  Epistles  declare  and  expound  the 
 union  of  the  facts  with  the  idea.  And,  if  we  will  fully  under- 
 stand them  in  this  union,  we  must  also  understand,  and,  there- 
 fore, study  them,  separately;  for  which  this  provision  has  been 
 made  by  God. 
 
 Induction  of  the  law,  from  the  events  of  his  own  time  :  de- 
 duction therefrom  of  a  future  realisation  of  that  law  in  universal 
 society :  —  such  are  Isaiah's  contributions  to  the  science  of 
 politics ;  while  to  those  who  have  come  after  him  belongs  the 
 verification  required  to  complete  the  circle.  And  in  following 
 Isaiah  in  this  his  method,  and  then  doing  our  own  part,  we  find, 
 along  with  a  science  of  politics,  a  canon  of  positive  criticism, 
 which  enables  us  to  investigate  the  question  of  the  genuineness 
 of  the  book,  without  excluding  historical  evidence,  or  calling  in 
 hypothesis  to  supply  its  place.  I  have  shown  at  so  great  length 
 the  applicability  of  this  method  in  both  respects,  in  reference  to 
 the  central  subject  of  Isaiah's  whole  writings — the  Holy  One  of 
 Israel  —  that  I  may  best  leave  the  reader  to  follow  it  out  through 
 the  other  kindred  subjects  of  which  these  last  twenty-six  chap- 
 ters treat,  venturing  to  assure  him  that  he  will  find  it  hold  good 
 
350  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 in  these  no  less  than  in  that.  The  sinful  state  of  the  nation, 
 and  its  punishment  by  exile  to  Babylon ;  the  destruction  of  the 
 oppressor,  and  deliverance  of  the  captives  ;  the  restoration  of 
 the  nation  not  merely  to  outward  prosperity,  but  to,  and  by,  a 
 spiritual  life  sustained  by  the  constant  presence  of  their  Lord, 
 while  the  irreclaimable  are  cast  out  that  they  may  no  longer 
 pollute  the  renewed  people ;  and  the  extension  of  this  regene- 
 rated society,  till  it  grows  from  a  chosen  nation  into  an 
 universal  Church,  of  which  the  Lord,  the  King  of  Israel,  is  the 
 Head  :  —  all  these,  in  their  various  aspects,  and  with  the  means 
 by  which  they  are  to  be  brought  about,  the  diligent  student  will 
 find  set  forth  by  Isaiah  as  they  rose  before  him  in  vision ;  while 
 at  the  same  time  he  will  be  able  to  trace  into  its  details  the 
 evidence  that  this  vision,  in  all  its  parts,  had  its  counterpart  in 
 the  events  of  the  prophet's  own  times,  and  that  it  was  his  insight 
 into  the  meaning  of  that  actual  world,  which  made  possible  to 
 him,  and  makes  intelligible  to  us,  his  foresight  into  the  ideal :  — 
 ideal  to  him,  but  actual  to  us  who  are  e  no  more  strangers  and  fo- 
 reigners, but  fellow-citizens  with  the  saints,  and  of  the  house- 
 hold of  God  ;  and  are  built  upon  the  foundation  of  the  apostles 
 and  prophets,  Jesus  Christ  Himself  being  the  chief  corner-stone; 
 in  whom  all  the  building  fitly  framed  together  groweth  unto  an 
 holy  temple  in  the  Lord  :  in  whom  we  also  are  builded  together 
 for  an  habitation  of  God  through  the  Spirit.'* 
 
 Authentic  history  has  preserved  no  account  of  the  death  of 
 Isaiah  :  but  there  is  no  improbability  in  the  Jewish  tradition 
 that  he  was  one  of  the  martyrs  whose  '  innocent  blood  Ma- 
 nasseh  shed,  till  he  had  filled  Jerusalem  from  one  end  to  the 
 other'  f,  and  that  the  mode  of  his  death  was  by  being  sawn 
 asunder,  to  which  the  Christian  fathers  understood  reference  to 
 be  made  in  Hebrews  xi.  37.  If  Isaiah  was  twenty  years  old 
 Avhen  he  began  his  ministry,  in  the  last  year  of  the  reign  of 
 Uzziah,  he  would  have  been  eighty  at  the  death  of  Hezekiah. 
 Hengstenberg  supposes  these  latter  prophecies  to  have  been 
 written  in  the  days  of  Manasseh ;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that 
 there  is  one  passage  at  least  in  them,  which  supports  this  view, 
 
 *  Ephesians,  ii.  19 — 22.  f  2  Kings,  xxi.  16. 
 
HIS    DEATH,    AND    TRIUMPH.  351 
 
 —  chap.  lvi.  9.  to  Ivii.  12., — both  in  its  general  picture  of  the 
 state  of  society,  and  in  the  allusion  to  the  death  of  the  righteous, 
 as  taking  him  away  from  the  evil  to  come,  which  cannot  but 
 remind  us  of  Hezekiah,  and  his  melancholy  consolation  that 
 there  should  be  peace  and  truth  in  his  days.  But  political  and 
 social  changes  are  not  made  in  a  moment ;  and  coming  events 
 would  have  cast  their  shadows  on  the  last  days  of  Hezekiah  and 
 Isaiah,  and  have  made  this  language  suitable  in  the  mouth  of 
 the  prophet,  even  though  we  should  prefer  to  believe  that  he, 
 as  well  as  the  king,  was  spared  the  actual  sight  of  the  evil. 
 To  the  objection  that,  if  Isaiah  had  written  in  the  days  of 
 Manasseh,  that  king's  name  would  have  appeared  with  the 
 others  in  the  title  of  the  Book,  it  might  be  replied  that  death 
 must  always  prevent  an  author  from  putting  the  very  last  stroke 
 to  the  collection  of  his  works ;  and  it  might  even  be  argued 
 that  there  are  other  indications  that  such  last  finish  is  wanting 
 in  the  minor  arrangements  of  these  twenty-six  chapter's.  But 
 it  is  unnecessary  to  refine  so  much,  when  we  cannot  get  at 
 certainty  after  all.  The  last  days,  like  the  last  words,  of  the 
 prophet,  pass  from  the  actual  into  the  ideal ;  and  whether  the 
 final  act  of  his  life  was,  like  its  whole  previous  course,  a  surrender 
 of  himself  to  suffer  for  his  people,  or  whether  he  was  permitted 
 a  foretaste,  in  the  repose  of  an  honoured  death-bed,  of  the 
 eternal  rest  that  awaited  him  when  all  his  worldly  task  was 
 done,  he  was  secure  in  the  covenant,  and  promise,  which  he 
 had  habitually  realised  for  himself,  while  he  declared  them  to 
 others : — 
 
 Then  shall  thy  light  break  forth  as  the  morning, 
 And  thy  health  shall  spring  forth  speedily : 
 And  thy  righteousness  shall  go  before  thee  ; 
 The  glory  of  the  Lord  shall  be  thy  rereward. 
 Then  shalt  thou  call,  and  the  Lord  shall  answer, 
 Thou  shalt  cry,  and  He  shall  say,  Here  I  am. 
 
 And  thou  shalt  know  that  I  the  Lord  am  thy  Saviour, 
 And  thy  Redeemer  the  mighty  One  of  Jacob. 
 For  brass  I  will  bring  gold,  and  for  iron  I  will  bring  silver, 
 And  for  wood  brass,  and  for  stones  iron  : 
 And  I  will  make  thy  government  peace, 
 And  thy  riders  righteousness. 
 
352  HEBREW    POLITICS. 
 
 Violence  shall  no  more  be  heard  in  thy  land, 
 
 Wasting  nor  destruction  within  thy  borders ; 
 
 But  thou  shalt  call  thy  walls,  Salvation  ;  and  thy  gates,  Praise. 
 
 The  sun  shall  be  no  more  thy  light  by  day, 
 
 Neither  for  brightness  shall  the  moon  give  light  unto  thee. 
 
 But  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee  an  everlasting  light, 
 
 And  thy  God  thy  glory. 
 
 Thy  sun  shall  no  more  go  down, 
 
 Neither  shall  thy  moon  withdraw  itself, 
 
 For  the  Lord  shall  be  thine  everlasting  light, 
 
 And  the  days  of  thy  mourning  shall  be  ended. 
 
 In  the  interval  between  my  writing  and  printing  these  pages,  Mr. 
 Maurice  has  published  his  Sermons  on  the  Prophets  and  Kings  of  the  Old 
 Testament,  in  which  he  has  more  than  once  effected  by  a  few  broad  strokes 
 of  genius,  what  I  have  laboured  to  produce  by  careful  detail.  I  have  not 
 now  first  to  acknowledge  how  greatly  I  owe  to  Mr.  Maurice  my  principles 
 and  method  of  considering  Hebrew  prophecy  ;  but  their  application  is  my 
 own,  as  indeed  the  differences  in  the  midst  of  resemblances  might  show.  Of 
 this  the  reader  may,  if  he  pleases,  find  proof  in  the  Educational  Magazine 
 for  1840,  which  contains,  in  Letters  on  the  Bible,  my  first  sketch  of  the  views 
 which  I  have  now  worked  out,  as  to  the  historical  meaning  of  Isaiah's  pro- 
 phecies, and  the  relation  between  the  later  and  earlier  parts  of  the  book. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ENGLISH  TEXT 
 
 BOOK    OF     ISAIAH. 
 
 A  A 
 
[My  design  is  not,  nor  am  I  competent,  to  give  a  new  and 
 independent  Translation  of  the  Prophecies  of  Isaiah :  but  I  have 
 thought  it  convenient  for  the  reader  of  the  previous  pages  to 
 have  the  English  Text  for  reference,  within  the  same  volume ; 
 and  for  this  purpose  I  have  carefully  emended  our  Authorized 
 Version.  I  have  taken  this  Version,  as  it  stands  in  that  every 
 way  excellent  edition — the  small  Paragraph  Bible  of  the  Reli- 
 gious Tract  Society,  and  have  gone  through  it  with  Professor 
 Alexander's  literal  and  critical  translation,  adopting  one  or 
 other  of  the  emendations  there  given,  when  there  seemed  no 
 doubt :  but  when  not  satisfied  with  these,  I  have  consulted  the 
 chief  modern  versions  (many  of  which  I  had  previously  com- 
 pared throughout) :  and  occasionally  I  have  ventured  to  prefer 
 my  own  rendering  of  the  Hebrew  word.] 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Isaiah  I. 
 
 1  The  Vision  of  Isaiah  the  son  of  Amoz,  which  he  saw  con- 
 
 cerning Judah  and  Jerusalem  in  the  Days  of   Uzziah, 
 
 JOTHAM,  AhAZ,  AND  HezEKIAH,  KINGS  OF  JUDAH. 
 
 2  Hear,  O  heavens,  and  give  ear,  O  earth  : 
 For  the  Lord  hath  spoken, 
 
 I  have  nourished  and  brought  up  children, 
 And  they  have  rebelled  against  me. 
 
 3  The  ox  knoweth  his  owner,  and  the  ass  his  master's  crib : 
 But  Israel  doth  not  know,  my  people  doth  not  consider. 
 
 4  Ah  sinful  nation,  a  people  laden  with  iniquity, 
 A  seed  of  evildoers,  children  that  are  degenerate  : 
 They  have  forsaken  the  Lord, 
 
 They  have  provoked  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  unto  anger, 
 They  are  gone  away  backward. 
 
 5  Why  should  ye  be  stricken  any  more? 
 Ye  will  revolt  more  and  more  : 
 
 The  whole  head  is  sick,  and  the  whole  heart  faint. 
 
 6  From  the  sole  of  the  foot  even  unto  the  head  there  is  no  soundness 
 
 in  it  ; 
 But  wounds,  and  bruises,  and  putrifying  sores : 
 They  have  not  been  closed,  neither  bound  up, 
 Neither  mollified  with  ointment. 
 
 7  Your  country  a  waste  !  your  cities  burned  with  fire  ! 
 Your  land,  strangers  devour  it  before  your  faces, 
 And  it  is  wasted,  as  the  manner  of  foreign  invaders  is. 
 
 8  And  the  daughter  of  Zion  is  left  as  a  shed  in  a  vineyard, 
 As  a  lodge  in  a  garden  of  cucumbers,  as  a  besieged  city. 
 
 9  Except  the  Lord  of  hosts  had  left  unto  us  a  very  small  remnant, 
 We  should  have  been  as  Sodom ;  we  should  have  been  like  unto 
 
 Gomorrah. 
 
 10  Hear  the  word  of  the  Lord,  ye  rulers  of  Sodom  ; 
 Give  ear  unto  the  law  of  our  God,  ye  people  of  Gomorrah. 
 
 11  To    what  purpose  is  the  multitude  of  your  sacrifices  unto  me? 
 
 saith  the  Lord: 
 I  am  full  of  the  burnt  offerings  of  rams,  and  the  fat  of  fed  beasts ; 
 And  I  delight  not  in  the  blood  of  bullocks,  or  of  lambs,  or  of  he 
 
 goats. 
 
356  ISAIAH  I. 
 
 12  When  ye  come  to  appear  before  me,  who  hath  required  this  at 
 
 your  hand,  to  tread  my  courts  ? 
 
 13  Bring  no  more  vain  oblations  :  incense  is  an  abomination  unto  me  ; 
 The  new  moons  and  sabbaths,  the  calling  of  assemblies,  I  cannot 
 
 away  with  ; 
 It  is  iniquity,  even  the  solemn  meeting. 
 
 14  Your  new  moons  and  your  appointed  feasts  my  soul  hateth ; 
 They  are  become  a  burden  unto  me  ;  I  am  weary  to  bear  it. 
 
 15  And  when  ye  spread  forth  your  hands,  I  will  hide  mine  eyes  from 
 
 you: 
 Yea,  when  ye  make  many  prayers,  1  will  not  hear  : 
 Your  hands  are  full  of  blood. 
 
 16  Wash  you,  make  you  clean  ; 
 
 Put  away  the  evil  of  your  doings  from  before  mine  eyes  ; 
 
 17  Cease  to  do  evil  ;  learn  to  do  well ; 
 Seek  judgment,  relieve  the  oppressed, 
 Right  the  fatherless,  plead  for  the  widow. 
 
 18  Come  now,  and  let  us  reason  together,  saith  the  Lord  : 
 Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  as  white  as  snow ; 
 Though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool. 
 
 19  If  ye  be  willing  and  obedient,  ye  shall  feed  on  the  good  of  the  land  ; 
 
 20  But  if  ye  refuse  and  rebel,  the  sword  shall  feed  on  you  : 
 For  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it. 
 
 21  How  is  the  faithful  city  become  an  harlot ! 
 
 It  was  full  of  judgment ;  righteousness  lodged  in  it :  but  now  mur- 
 derers. 
 
 22  Thy  silver  is  become  dross,  thy  wine  mixed  with  water: 
 
 23  Thy  rulers  are  rebels,  and  companions  of  thieves  : 
 Every  one  loveth  gifts,  and  followeth  after  rewards  : 
 
 They  judge  not  the  fatherless,  neither  doth  the  cause  of  the  widow 
 come,  unto  them. 
 
 24  Therefore  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 The  Lord  of  hosts,  the  Mighty  One  of  Israel, 
 Ah,  I  will  ease  me  of  mine  adversaries,  and  avenge  me  of  mine 
 enemies  : 
 
 25  And  I  will  turn  my  hand  upon  thee, 
 
 And  purely  purge  away  thy  dross,  and  take  away  all  thy  tin  ; 
 25    And  I  will  restore  thy  judges  as  at  the  first, 
 And  thy  counsellors  as  at  the  beginning  : 
 
 Afterward  thou  shalt  be  called,  The  city  of  righteousness,  the 
 faithful  city. 
 
 27  Zion  shall  be  redeemed  with  judgment,  and  her  converts  with  right- 
 
 eousness. 
 
 28  And  the  destruction  of  the  rebels  and  sinners  shall  be  together, 
 And  they  that  forsake  the  Lord  shall  be  consumed. 
 
 29  For  they  shall  be  ashamed  of  the  oaks  which  ye  have  desired, 
 And  ye  shall  be  confounded  for  the  gardens  that  ye  have  chosen. 
 
 SO    For  ye  shall  be  as  an  oak  whose  leaf  fadeth, 
 And  as  a  garden  that  hath  no  water. 
 
ISAIAH  II.  357 
 
 si     And  the  strong  shall  become  tow,  and  his  work  a  spark, 
 
 And  they  shall  both  burn  together,  and  none  shall  quench  them. 
 
 II  The  word  that  Isaiah  the   son  of  Amoz  saw  concerning 
 
 JUDAH    AND    JERUSALEM. 
 
 2  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  the  last  days, 
 
 That  the  mountain  oi'  the  Lord's  house  shall  be  established  at  the 
 
 head  of  the  mountains, 
 And  shall  be  exalted  above  the  hills ; 
 And  all  nations  shall  flow  unto  it. 
 
 3  And  many  peoples  shall  go  and  say, 
 
 Come  ye,  and  let  us  go  up  to  the  mountain  of  the  Lord, 
 
 To  the  house  of  the  God  of  Jacob  ; 
 
 And  he  will  teach  us  of  his  ways,  and  we  will  walk  in  his  paths  : 
 
 For  out  of  Zion  shall  go  forth  the  law, 
 
 And  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem. 
 
 4  And  he  shall  judge  between  the  nations, 
 And  shall  arbitrate  for  many  peoples  : 
 
 And  they  shall  beat  their  swords  into  plowshares, 
 And  their  spears  into  pruninghooks  : 
 Nation  shall  not  lift  up  sword  against  nation, 
 Neither  shall  they  learn  war  any  more. 
 
 5  O  house  of  Jacob,  come  ye,  and  let  us  walk  in  the  light  of  the  Lord. 
 
 6  Therefore  thou  hast  forsaken  thy  people  the  house  of  Jacob, 
 Because  they  be  replenished  from  the  East, 
 
 And  are  soothsayers  like  the  Philistines, 
 
 And  they  please  themselves  in  the  children  of  strangers. 
 
 7  Their  land  also  is  full  of  silver  and  gold, 
 Neither  is  there  any  end  of  their  treasures  ; 
 
 Their  land  is  also  full  of  horses,  neither  is  there  any  end  of  their 
 chariots  : 
 
 8  Their  land  also  is  full  of  idols:  they  worship  the  work  of  their  own 
 
 hands, 
 That  which  their  own  fingers  have  made  : 
 
 9  And  the  mean  man  boweth  down,  and  the  great  man  humbleth 
 
 himself : 
 Therefore  forgive  them  not. 
 
 10  Enter  into  the  rock,  and  hide  thee  in  the  dust, 
 
 For  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  for  the  glory  of  his  majesty. 
 
 ii     The  lofty  looks  of  man  shall  be  humbled, 
 
 And  the  haughtiness  of  men  shall  be  bowed  down, 
 And  the  Lord  alone  shall  be  exalted  in  that  day. 
 
 12  For  the  day  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  shall  be  upon  every  thing  proud 
 
 and  lofty, 
 And  upon  every  thing'  lifted  up  ;  and  it  shall  be  brought  low  : 
 
 13  And  upon  all  the  cedars  of  Lebanon,  that  are  high  and  lifted  up, 
 And  upon  all  the  oaks  of  Bashan, 
 
 A    A.     3 
 
358  ISAIAH  III. 
 
 14  And  upon  all  the  high  mountains,  and  upon  all  the  hills  that  are 
 
 lifted  up, 
 
 15  And  upon  every  high  tower,  and  upon  every  fenced  wall, 
 
 16  And  upon  all  the  ships  of  Tarshish,  and  upon  all  images  of  desire. 
 
 17  And  the  loftiness  of  man  shall  be  bowed  down, 
 And  the  haughtiness  of  man  shall  be  made  low : 
 And  the  Lord  alone  shall  be  exalted  in  that  day. 
 
 18  And  the  idols  he  shall  utterly  abolish. 
 
 19  And  they  shall  go  into  the  holes  of  the  rocks,  and  into  the  caves 
 
 of  the  earth, 
 For  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  for  the  glory  of  his  majesty, 
 "When  he  ariseth  to  shake  terribly  the  earth. 
 
 20  In  that  day  a  man  shall  cast  his  idols  of  silver,  and  his  idols  of 
 
 gold, 
 Which  they  made  each  one  for  himself  to  worship,  to  the  moles 
 and  to  the  bats  ; 
 
 21  To  go  into  the  clefts  of  the  rocks,  and  into  the  tops  of  the  ragged 
 
 rocks, 
 For  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  for  the  glory  of  his  majesty, 
 When  he  ariseth  to  shake  terribly  the  earth. 
 
 22  Cease  ye  from  man,  whose  breath  is  in  his  nostrils : 
 For  wherein  is  he  to  be  accounted  of? 
 
 Ill    For,  behold,  the  Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 
 Doth  take  away  from  Jerusalem  and  from  Judah 
 The  stay  and  the  staff,  the  whole  stay  of  bread,  and  the  whole  stay 
 of  water, 
 
 2  The  mighty  man,  and  the  man  of  war, 
 
 The  judge,  and  the  prophet,  and  the  prudent,  and  the  elder, 
 
 3  The  captain  of  fifty,  and  the  honourable  man, 
 
 And  the  counsellor,  and  the  cunning  artificer,  and  the  eloquent 
 orator. 
 
 4  And  I  will  give  children  to  be  their  princes,  and  babes  shall  rule 
 
 over  them. 
 
 5  And  the  people  shall  rage,   man   against  man,  and  neighbour 
 
 against  neighbour : 
 The  child  shall  behave  himself  proudly  against  the  elder, 
 And  the  base  against  the  honourable. 
 
 6  When  a  man  shall  take  hold  of  his  brother  of  the  house  of  his 
 father,  saying, 
 
 Thou  hast  clothing,  be  thou  our  ruler,  and  let  this  ruin  be  under 
 thy  hand: 
 
 7  In  that  day  shall  he  swear,  saying,  I  will  not  be  an  healer; 
 For  in  my  house  is  neither  bread  nor  clothing  : 
 
 Make  me  not  a  ruler  of  the  people. 
 
 8  For  Jerusalem  is  ruined,  and  Judah  is  fallen  : 
 
 Because  their  tongue  and  their  doings  are  against  the  Lord, 
 To  provoke  the  eyes  of  his  glory, 
 p    The  show  of  their  countenance  doth  witness  against  them  ; 
 And  they  declare  their  sin  as  Sodom,  they  hide  it  not. 
 Woe  unto  their  soul  !  for  they  have  rewarded  evil  unto  themselves. 
 
ISAIAH  IV.  359 
 
 10  Say  ye  to  the  righteous,  that  it  shall  be  well  with  him  : 
 For  they  shall  eat  the  fruit  of  their  doings. 
 
 11  Woe  unto  the  wicked  I  it  shall  be  ill  with  him  : 
 For  the  reward  of  his  hands  shall  be  given  him. 
 
 12  As  for  my  people,  children  are  their  oppressors,  and  women  rule 
 
 over  them. 
 O  my  people,  thy  leaders  cause  thee  to  err,  and  destroy  the  way 
 of  thy  paths. 
 
 13  The  Lord  I'iseth  up  to  plead,  and  standeth  to  judge  the  people. 
 
 14  The  Lord  will  enter  into  judgment 
 
 With  the  ancients  of  his  people  and  the  princes  thereof: 
 For  ye  have  eaten  up  the  vineyard  ; 
 The  spoil  of  the  poor  is  in  your  houses. 
 
 15  What  mean  ye  that  ye  beat  my  people  to  pieces, 
 And  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor  ? 
 
 Saith  the  Lord  God  of  hosts. 
 
 16  Moreover  the  Lord  saith, 
 
 Because  the  daughters  of  Zion  are  haughty, 
 
 And  walk  with  stretched  forth  necks  and  wanton  eyes, 
 
 Walking  and  mincing  as  they  go, 
 
 And  making  a  tinkling  with  their  feet : 
 
 17  Therefore  the  Lord  will  make  bald  the  crown  of  the  head  of  the 
 
 daughters  of  Zion, 
 And  the  Lord  will  discover  their  shame. 
 
 18  In  that  day  the  Lord  will  take  away 
 The  bravery  of  their  feet-rings, 
 And  the  nets,  and  the  crescents, 
 
 19  The  ear-drops,  and  the  bracelets,  and  the  mufflers, 
 
 20  The  bonnets,  and  the  feet-chains,  and  the  headbands, 
 
 21  And  the  scent-boxes,  and  the  amulets,  the  rings,  and  nose  jewels, 
 
 22  The  holiday  suits  of  apparel,  and  the  mantles,  and  the  wimples, 
 
 and  the  purses, 
 
 23  The  mirrors,  and  the  fine  linen,  and  the  turbans,  and  the  veils. 
 
 24  And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  instead  of  perfume,  there  shall  be 
 
 stench; 
 And  instead  of  a  girdle,  a  rent ;  and  instead  of  well  curled  hair, 
 
 baldness  ; 
 And  instead  of  a  stomachei*,  a  girding  of  sackcloth  ; 
 And  burning  instead  of  beauty. 
 
 25  Thy  men  shall  fall  by  the  sword,  and  thy  mighty  in  the  war. 
 
 26  And  her  gates  shall  lament  and  mourn  : 
 
 And  she,  being  desolate,  shall  sit  on  the  ground. 
 IV    And  in  that  day  seven  women  shall  take  hold  of  one  man,  saying, 
 We  will  eat  our  own  bread,  and  wear  our  own  apparel : 
 Only  let  us  be  called  by  thy  name ;  take  thou  away  our  reproach. 
 
 2  In  that  day  shall  the  branch  of  the  Lord  be  beautiful  and  glo- 
 
 rious, 
 And  the  fruit  of  the  earth  shall  be  excellent  and  comely 
 For  them  that  are  escaped  of  Israel. 
 
 A    A      1 
 
360  ISAIAH  V. 
 
 3  And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  he  that  is  left  in  Zion, 
 And  he  that  remained)  in  Jerusalem,  shall  be  called  holy, 
 Even  every  one  that  is  written  among  the  living  in  Jerusalem  : 
 
 4  When  the  Lord  shall  have  washed  away  the  tilth  of  the  daughters 
 
 of  Zion, 
 And  shall  have  purged  the  blood  of  Jerusalem  from  the  midst 
 
 thereof 
 By  the  spirit  of  judgment,  and  by  the  spirit  of  burning. 
 
 5  And  the  Lord  will  create  upon  every  dwelling  place  of  mount 
 
 Zion, 
 And  upon  her  assemblies, 
 A  cloud  and  smoke  by  day, 
 And  the  shining  of  a  flaming  fire  by  night : 
 For  upon  all  the  glory  shall  be  a  defence. 
 
 6  And  there  shall  be  a  tabernacle  for  a  shadow  in  the  daytime  from 
 
 the  heat, 
 And  for  a  place  of  refuge,  and  for  a  covert  from  storm  and  from 
 rain. 
 
 Now  will  I  sing  to  my  Beloved, 
 
 A  song  of  my  Beloved  touching  his  vineyard. 
 
 My  Beloved  hath  a  vineyard  in  a  very  fruitful  hill : 
 
 And  he  fenced  it,  and  gathered  out  the  stones  thereof, 
 
 And  planted  it  with  the  choicest  vine, 
 
 And  built  a  tower  in  the  midst  of  it,  and  also  hewed  out  a  wine- 
 fat  therein  : 
 
 And  he  looked  that  it  should  bring  forth  grapes, 
 
 And  it  brought  forth  wild  grapes. 
 
 And  now,  O  inhabitant  of  Jerusalem,  and  man  of  Judah, 
 
 Judge,  I  pray  you,  betwixt  me  and  my  vineyard. 
 
 What  could  have  been  done  more  to  my  vineyard,  that  I  have  not 
 done  in  it  ? 
 
 Wherefore,  when  I  looked  that  it  should  bring  forth  grapes,  brought 
 it  forth  wild  grapes  ? 
 
 And  now  go  to  ;  I  will  tell  you  what  I  will  do  to  my  vineyard : 
 
 I  will  take  away  the  hedge  thereof,  and  it  shall  be  eaten  up ; 
 
 And  break  down  the  wall  thereof,  and  it  shall  be  trodden  down  : 
 
 And  I  will  lay  it  waste:  it  shall  not  be  pruned,  nor  digged ; 
 
 But  there  shall  come  up  briers  and  thorns: 
 
 I  will  also  command  the  clouds  that  they  rain  no  rain  upon  it. 
 
 For  the  vineyard  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  is  the  house  of  Israel, 
 
 And  the  men  of  Judah  his  pleasant  plant : 
 
 And  he  looked  for  judgment,  but  behold  oppression; 
 
 For  righteousness,  but  behold  a  cry. 
 
 Woe  unto  them  that  join  house  to  house, 
 That  lay  field  to  field,  till  there  be  no  place, 
 And  ye  are  left  to  dwell  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  earth  ! 
 
 In  mine  ears  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 
ISAIAH   V.  361 
 
 Of  a  truth  many  houses  shall  be  desolate, 
 Even  great  and  fair,  without  inhabitant. 
 
 10  Yea,  ten  acres  of  vineyard  shall  yield  one  bath, 
 And  an  homer  of  seed  shall  yield  an  ephah. 
 
 11  Woe  unto  them  that  rise  up  early  in  the  morning, 
 That  they  may  follow  strong  drink : 
 
 That  continue  until  night,  till  wine  inflame  them  ! 
 
 12  And  the  harp,  and  the  viol,  the  tabret,  and  pipe,  and  wine,  are  in 
 
 their  feasts  : 
 But  they  regard  not  the  work  of  the  Lord, 
 Neither  consider  the  operation  of  his  hands. 
 
 13  Therefore  my  people  are  gone  into  captivity, 
 Because  they  have  no  knowledge  : 
 
 And  their  honourable  men  are  famished, 
 And  their  multitude  dried  up  with  thirst. 
 
 14  Therefore  hell  hath  enlarged  herself,  and  opened  her  mouth  with- 
 
 out measure  : 
 And  down  go  their  glory,  and  their  multitude,  and  their  pomp, 
 And  he  that  rejoiceth  in  it. 
 
 15  And  the  mean  man  shall  be  brought  down, 
 And  the  mighty  man  shall  be  humbled, 
 And  the  eyes  of  the  lofty  shall  be  humbled  : 
 
 16  But  the  Lord  of  hosts  shall  be  exalted  in  judgment, 
 And  God  that  is  holy  shall  be  sanctified  in  righteousness. 
 
 17  Then  shall  the  lambs  feed. after  their  manner, 
 
 And  the  waste  places  of  the  fat  ones  shall  strangers  eat. 
 
 18  Woe  unto  them  that  draw  iniquity  with  cords  of  vanity, 
 And  sin  as  it  were  with  a  cart  rope : 
 
 19  That  say,  Let  him  make  speed, 
 
 And  hasten  his  work,  that  we  may  see  it : 
 And  let  the  counsel  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  draw  nigh, 
 And  come,  that  we  may  know  it ! 
 -.0    Woe  unto  them  that  call  evil  good,  and  good  evil ; 
 That  put  darkness  for  light,  and  light  for  darkness  ; 
 That  put  bitter  for  sweet,  and  sweet  for  bitter  ! 
 
 21  Woe  unto  them  that  are  wise  in  their  own  eyes, 
 And  prudent  in  their  own  sight ! 
 
 22  Woe  unto  them  that  are  mighty  to  drink  wine, 
 And  men  of  strength  to  mingle  strong  drink  : 
 
 23  Which  justify  the  wicked  for  reward, 
 
 And  take  away  the  righteousness  of  the  righteous  from  him  ! 
 
 24  Therefore  as  the  fire  devoureth  the  stubble, 
 And  the  flame  consumeth  the  chaff, 
 
 So  their  root  shall  be  as  rottenness,  and  their  blossom  shall  go  up 
 
 as  dust : 
 Because  they  have  cast  away  the  law  of  the  Loud  of  hosts, 
 And  despised  the  word  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 
 
 25  Therefore  is  the  anger  of  the  Lord  kindled  against  his  people, 
 
362  ISAIAH  VI. 
 
 And  he  hath  stretched  forth  his  hand  against  them, 
 And  hath  smitten  them  :  and  the  hills  did  tremble, 
 And  their  carcases  were  as  the  sweepings  in  the  midst  of  the  streets. 
 For  all  this  his  anger  is  not  turned  away,  but  his  hand  is  stretched 
 out  still. 
 
 26  And  he  hath  lifted  up  an  ensign  to  the  nations  from  far, 
 And  hath  hissed  unto  them  from  the  end  of  the  earth  : 
 And,  behold  they  will  come  right  speedily  : 
 
 27  None  hath  fainted  nor  stumbled  among  them ; 
 None  shall  slumber  nor  sleep  ; 
 
 Neither  is  the  girdle  of  their  loins  loosed, 
 Nor  the  latchet  of  their  shoes  broken  : 
 
 28  Whose  arrows  are  sharp,  and  all  their  bows  bent, 
 Their  horses'  hoofs  are  counted  like  flint, 
 
 And  their  wheels  like  a  whirlwind : 
 
 29  Their  roaring  is  like  that  of  a  lioness, 
 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. 
 
 30  And  in  that  day  they  shall  roar  against  them  like  the  roaring  of  the 
 
 sea: 
 And  if  one  look  unto  the  land,  behold  darkness  and  sorrow, 
 And  the  light  is  darkened  in  the  heavens  thereof. 
 
 VI  In  the  year  that  king  Uzziah  died, 
 
 I  saw  the  Lord  sitting  upon  a  throne, 
 High  and  lifted  up,  and  his  train  filled  the  temple. 
 ■2    About  him  stood  the  seraphim  :  each  one  had  six  wings  ; 
 
 With  twain  he  covered  his  face,  and  with  twain  he  covered  his 
 feet,  and  with  twain  he  did  fly. 
 
 3  And  one  cried  unto  another,  and  said, 
 
 Holy  !  holy  !  holy  !  is  the  Lord  of  hosts  : 
 The  whole  earth  is  full  of  his  glory. 
 
 4  And  the  posts  of  the  door  moved  at  the  voice  of  him  that  cried, 
 And  the  house  was  filled  with  smoke. 
 
 5  Then  said  I,  Woe  is  me  !  for  I  am  undone  ; 
 
 Because  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,  the  Lord  of  hosts. 
 
 6  Then  flew  one  of  the  seraphim  unto  me,  having  a  live  coal  in  his 
 
 hand, 
 Which  he  had  taken  with  the  tongs  from  off  the  altar: 
 
 7  And  he  laid  it  upon  my  mouth,  and  said, 
 Lo,  this  hath  touched  thy  lips ; 
 
 And  thine  iniquity  is  taken  away,  and  thy  sin  purged. 
 
 8  Also  I  heard  the  voice  of  the  Lord,  saying, 
 Whom  shall  I  send,  and  who  will  go  for  us? 
 Then  said  I,  Here  am  I  ;  send  me. 
 
ISAIAH  YII.  363 
 
 9  And  he  said,  Go,  and  tell  this  people, 
 Hear  ye  indeed,  but  understand  not ; 
 And  see  ye  indeed,  but  perceive  not. 
 
 10  Make  the  heart  of  this  people  fat, 
 
 And  make  their  ears  heavy,  and  shut  their  eyes  ; 
 
 Lest  they  see  with  their  eyes,  and  hear  with  their  ears, 
 
 And  understand  with  their  heart,  and  convert,  and  be  healed. 
 
 11  Then  said  I,  Lord,  how  long? 
 And  he  answered, 
 
 Until  the  cities  be  wasted  without  inhabitant,  and  the  houses  with- 
 out man, 
 And  the  land  be  utterly  desolate, 
 
 12  And  the  Lord  have  removed  men  far  away, 
 
 And  there  be  a  great  forsaking  in  the  midst  of  the  land. 
 
 13  And  though  a  tenth  part  shall  remain  in  it,  even  that  shall  be  again 
 
 consumed  : 
 Yet  as  a  teil  tree,  and  as  an  oak,  whose  substance  is  in  them,  when 
 
 they  cast  their  leaves  : 
 So  the  holy  seed  shall  be  the  substance  thereof. 
 
 VII  And  it  came  to  pass  in  the  days  of  Ahaz,  the  son  of  Jotham,  the 
 
 son  of  Uzziah,  king  of  Judah, 
 That  Rezin  the  king  of  Syria,  and  Pekah  the  son  of  Remaliah,  king 
 
 of  Israel, 
 Went  up  toward  Jerusalem  to  war  against  it,  but  could  not  prevail 
 
 against  it. 
 
 2  And  it  was  told  in  the  house  of  David,  saying, 
 Syria  is  confederate  with  Ephraim  : 
 
 And  his  heart  was  moved,  and  the  heart  of  his  people, 
 As  the  trees  of  the  wood  are  moved  with  the  wind. 
 Then  said  the  Lord  unto  Isaiah, 
 
 3  Go  forth  now  to  meet  Ahaz,  thou,  and  Shear-jashub  thy  son, 
 At  the  end  of  the  aqueduct  of  the  upper  pool, 
 
 In  the  highway  of  the  fuller's  field  ; 
 
 4  And  say  unto  him, 
 
 Take  heed,  and  be  quiet ;  fear  not,  neither  be  fainthearted, 
 For  these  two  tails  of  smoking  firebrands, 
 For  the  fierce  anger  of  Rezin  with  Syria,  and  of  thesonof  Remalieh. 
 
 5  Because  Syria,  Ephraim,  and  the  son  of  Remaliah, 
 Have  taken  evil  counsel  against  thee,  saying, 
 
 6  Let  us  go  up  against  Judah,  and  vex  it, 
 And  let  us  make  a  breach  therein  for  us, 
 
 And  set  a  king  in  the  midst  of  it,  even  the  son  of  Tabeal : 
 
 7  Thus  saith  the  Lord  God, 
 
 It  shall  not  standj  neither  shall  it  come  to  pass. 
 
 8  For  the  head  of  Syria  is  Damascus,  and  the  head  of  Damascus  is 
 
 Rezin  ; 
 And  within  threescore  and  five  years  shall  Ephraim  be  broken., 
 that  it  be  not  a  people. 
 
364  ISAIAH  VIII. 
 
 9    And  the  head  of  Ephraim  is  Samaria,  and  the  head  of  Samaria  is 
 Remaliah's  son. 
 If  ye  will  not  believe,  surely  ye  shall  not  be  established. 
 
 10  Moreover  the  Lord  spake  again  unto  Ahaz,  saying, 
 
 11  Ask  thee  a  sign  of  the  Lord  thy  God  ; 
 
 Ask  it  either  in  the  depth  or  in  the  height  above. 
 
 12  But  Ahaz  said,  I  will  not  ask,  neither  will  I  tempt  the  Lord. 
 
 13  And  he  said,  Hear  ye  now,  O  house  of  David  ; 
 Is  it  a  small  thing  for  you  to  weary  men, 
 
 But  will  ye  weary  my  God  also  ? 
 
 14  Therefore  the  Lord  himself  shall  give  you  a  sign  ; 
 See !   a  virgin,  with  child,  and  bearing  a  son, 
 And  she  calls  his  name  Immanuel. 
 
 15  Butter  and  honey  shall  he  eat,  till  he  knows  to  refuse  the  evil,  and 
 
 choose  the  good. 
 
 16  For  before  the  child  shall  know  to  refuse  the  evil  and  choose  the 
 
 good, 
 The  land  that  thou  abhorrest  shall  be  forsaken  of  both  her  kings. 
 
 17  The  Lord  shall  bring  upon  thee,  and  upon  thy  people,  and 
 upon  thy  father's  house, 
 
 Days  that  have  not  come,  from  the  day  that  Ephraim  departed 
 
 from  Judah  ; 
 Even  the  king  of  Assyria. 
 ]  8     And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  the  Lord  shall  hiss  for  the  fly  that  is  in  the  uttermost  part 
 
 of  the  rivers  of  Egypt, 
 And  for  the  bee  that  is  in  the  land  of  Assyria 
 
 19  And  they  shall  come,  and  shall  rest  all  of  them 
 
 In  the  desolate  valleys,  and  in  the  holes  of  the  rocks, 
 And  upon  all  hedges,  and  upon  all  bushes. 
 
 20  In  the  same  day  shall  the  Lord  shave  with  a  razor  that  is  hired, 
 Namely,  by  them  beyond  the  River,  by  the  king  of  Assyria, 
 The  head,  and  the  hair  of  the  feet :  and  it  shall  also  consume  the 
 
 beard. 
 
 21  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  a  man  shall  nourish  a  young  cow,  and  two  sheep  ; 
 
 22  And  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
 
 For  the  abundance  of  milk  that  they  shall  give  he  shall  eat  butter  : 
 For  butter  and  honey  shall  every  one  eat  that  is  left  in  the  land. 
 
 23  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day,  that  every  place, 
 Where  there  were  a  thousand  vines  at  a  thousand  silverlings, 
 Shall  be  for  briers  and  thorns. 
 
 24  With  arrows  and  with  bows  shall  men  come  thither; 
 Because  all  the  land  shall  become  briers  and  thorns. 
 
 25  And  on  all  hills  that  were  digged  with  the  hoe, 
 
 Thou  shalt  not  go  thither  for  fear  of  briers  and  thorns  : 
 But.  it  shall  be  for  the  sending  forth  of  oxen, 
 And  for  the  treading  of  sheep. 
 
 VIII       Moreover  the  Lord  said  unto  me, 
 
 Take  thee  a  great  roll,  and  write  in  it,  with  a  man's  pen, 
 
ISAIAH  VIII.  365 
 
 "  To  Haste-plunder  —  Speed-spoil." 
 
 2  And  I  took  unto  me  faithful  witnesses  to  record, 
 Uriah  the  priest,  and  Zechariah  the  son  of  Jeberechiah. 
 
 3  And  I  went  unto  the  prophetess  ;  and  she  conceived,  and  bare  a 
 
 son. 
 Then  said  the  Lord  to  me,  Call  his  name  Maher-shalal-hash-baz. 
 
 4  For  before  the  child  shall  have  knowledge  to  cry,  My  father,  and 
 
 my  mother, 
 The  riches  of  Damascus  and  the  spoil  of  Samaria  shall  be  taken 
 away  —  before  the  king  of  Assyria. 
 
 5  The  Lord  spake  also  unto  me  again,  saying, 
 
 6  Forasmuch  as  this  people  refuseth  the  waters  of  Shiloah  that  go 
 
 softly, 
 And  rejoice  in  Rezin  and  Remaliah's  son ; 
 
 7  Now  therefore,  behold,  the  Lord  bringeth  up  upon  them 
 The  waters  of  the  River,  strong  and  many, 
 
 Even  the  king  of  Assyria,  and  all  his  glory  : 
 
 And  he  shall  come  up  over  all  his  channels,  and  go  over  all  his 
 banks : 
 
 8  And  he  shall  pass  over  into  Judah  ;  he  shall  overflow  and  go  over, 
 He  shall  reach  to  the  neck ; 
 
 And  the  stretching  out  of  his  wings  shall  fill  the  breadth  of  thy 
 land,  O  Immanuel. 
 
 9  Associate  yourselves,  O  ye  people, 
 And  ye  shall  be  broken  in  pieces  ; 
 And  give  ear,  all  ye  of  far  countries  : 
 
 Gird  yourselves,  and  ye  shall  be  broken  in  pieces  ; 
 
 Gird  yourselves,  and  ye  shall  be  broken  in  pieces  ; 
 10    Take  counsel  together,  and  it  shall  come  to  nought ; 
 
 Speak  the  word,  and  it  shall  not  stand  :  for  God  is  with  us. 
 ]  l     For  the  Lord  spake  thus  to  me  with  a  strong  hand, 
 
 And  instructed  me  that  I  should  not  walk  in  the  way  of  this  people, 
 
 Saying, — 
 
 12  Say  ye  not,  A  confederacy, 
 
 To  all  them  to  whom  this  people  shall  say,  A  confederacy  ; 
 Neither  fear  ye  their  fear,  nor  be  afraid. 
 
 13  Sanctify  the  Lord  of  hosts  himself; 
 
 And  let  him  be  your  fear,  and  let  him  be  your  dread. 
 
 14  And  he  shall  be  for  a  sanctuary; 
 
 But  for  a  stone  of  stumbling  and  for  a  rock  of  offence 
 
 To  both  the  houses  of  Israel, 
 
 For  a  gin  and  for  a  snare  to  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem. 
 
 1 5  And  many  among  them  shall  stumble, 
 
 And  fall,  and  be  broken,  and  be  snared,  and  be  taken. 
 
 16  Bind  up  the  testimony,  seal  the  law  among  my  disciples. 
 
 17  And  I  will  wait  upon  the  Lord,  that  hideth  his  face  from  the 
 
 house  of  Jacob, 
 And  I  will  look  for  him. 
 
366  ISAIAH  IX. 
 
 18  Behold,  I  and  the  children  whom  the  Lord  hath  given  me 
 Are  for  signs  and  for  wonders  in  Israel 
 
 From  the  Lord  of  hosts,  which  dwelleth  in  mount  Zion. 
 
 19  And  when  they  shall  say  unto  you, 
 Seek  unto  them  that  have  familiar  spirits, 
 And  unto  wizards  that  peep,  and  that  mutter  : 
 Should  not  a  people  seek  unto  their  God  ? 
 Should  the  living  seek  to  the  dead  ? 
 
 20  To  the  law  and  to  the  testimony : 
 
 If  they  speak  not  according  to  this  word,  it  is  because  there  is  no 
 light  in  them. 
 
 21  And  they  shall  pass  through  the  land  hardly  bestead  and  hungry  : 
 And  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
 
 That  when  they  are  hungry,  they  shall  fret  themselves, 
 And  shall  curse  their  king  and  their  God ; 
 
 22  And  they  shall  look  upward,  and  they  shall  look  unto  the  earth  ; 
 And  behold  trouble  and  darkness,  dimness  of  anguish ; 
 
 And  they  shall  be  driven  into  the  darkness. 
 
 IX  Yet  her  dimness  and  anguish  shall  not  be  for  ever : 
 
 As  the  former  time  hath  brought  low  the  land  of  Zebulun  and  the 
 
 land  of  Napthali, 
 So  the  latter  time  shall  make  her  glorious, 
 By  the  way  of  the  sea,  along  Jordan,  Galilee  of  the  nations. 
 
 2  The  people  that  walked  in  darkness,  have  seen  a  great  light : 
 They  that  dwell  in  the  land  of  the  shadow  of  death, 
 
 Upon  them  hath  the  light  shined. 
 
 3  Thou  hast  multiplied  the  nation,  thou  hast  increased  their  joy: 
 They  joy  before  thee  as  with  the  joy  in  harvest, 
 
 As  men  rejoice  when  they  divide  the  spoil. 
 
 4  For  thou  hast  broken  the  yoke  of  his  burden,  and  the  staff  laid  on 
 
 his  shoulder, 
 The  rod  of  his  task-master,  as  in  the  day  of  Midian. 
 
 5  For  every  warrio\-'s  greaves  with  their  clang  in  battle,  and  his 
 
 garments  rolled  in  blood, 
 Shall  be  for  burning  and  food  for  fire. 
 
 6  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  Wonderful,  Counsellor, 
 
 The  mighty  God,  The  everlasting  Father,  The  Prince  of  Peace. 
 
 7  Of  the  increase  of  his  government  and  peace  there  shall  be  no  end, 
 Upon  the  throne  of  David,  and  upon  his  kingdom  ; 
 
 To  order  it,  and  to  establish  it  with  judgment  and  with  justice, 
 
 From  henceforth  even  for  ever. 
 
 The  zeal  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  will  perform  this. 
 
 8  The  Lord  sent  a  word  into  Jacob,  and  it  hath  lighted  upon 
 Israel. 
 
 9  And  all  the  people  shall  know,  even  Ephraim  and  the  inhabitant 
 
 of  Samaria, 
 That  say  in  the  pride  and  stoutness  of  heart, 
 10    The  bricks  are  fallen  down,  but  we  will  build  with  hewn  stones: 
 
ISAIAH  X.  367 
 
 The  sycamores  are  cut  down,  but  we  will  change  them  into  cedars. 
 
 11  And  the  Lord  shall  set  up  the  adversaries  of  Rezin  against  him, 
 And  join  his  enemies  together  ; 
 
 12  The  Syrians  before,  and  the  Philistines  behind; 
 And  they  shall  devour  Israel  with  open  mouth. 
 For  all  this  his  anger  is  not  turned  away, 
 
 But  his  hand  is  stretched  out  still. 
 
 13  For  the  people  turneth  not  unto  him  that  smiteth  them, 
 Neither  do  they  seek  the  Lord  of  hosts. 
 
 14  Therefore  the  Lord  will  cut  off  from  Israel  head  and  tail,  palm  tree 
 
 and  rush,  in  one  day. 
 
 15  The  ancient  and  honourable,  he  is  the  head ; 
 And  the  prophet  that  teacheth  lies,  he  is  the  tail. 
 
 16  For  the  leaders  of  this  people  cause  them  to  err ; 
 And  they  that  are  led  of  them  are  destroyed. 
 
 17  Therefore  the  Lord  shall  have  no  joy  in  their  young  men, 
 Neither  shall  have  mercy  on  their  fatherless  and  widows  : 
 For  every  one  is  an  hypocrite  and  an  evildoer, 
 
 And  every  mouth  speaketh  folly. 
 
 For  all  this  his  anger  is  not  turned  away, 
 
 But  his  hand  is  stretched  out  still. 
 
 18  For  wickedness  burneth  as  the  fire  : 
 It  shall  devour  the  briers  and  thorns, 
 
 And  shall  kindle  in  the  thickets  of  the  forest, 
 And  they  shall  go  up  in  volumes  of  smoke. 
 
 19  Through  the  wrath  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  is  the  land  darkened, 
 And  the  people  shall  be  as  the  fuel  of  the  fire  : 
 
 No  man  shall  spare  his  brother. 
 
 20  And  he  shall  snatch  on  the  right  hand,  and  be  hungry  ; 
 
 And  he  shall  eat  on  the  left  hand,  and  they  shall  not  be  satisfied  : 
 They  shall  eat  every  man  the  flesh  of  his  own  arm  : 
 
 21  Manasseh,  Ephraim  ;  and  Ephraim,  Manasseh  : 
 And  they  together  shall  be  against  Judah. 
 For  all  this  his  anger  is  not  turned  away, 
 
 But  his  hand  is  stretched  out  still. 
 
 X     Woe  unto  them  that  decree  unrighteous  decrees, 
 And  to  the  scribes  that  prescribe  oppression ; 
 
 2  To  turn  aside  the  needy  from  judgment, 
 
 And  to  take  away  the  right  from  the  poor  of  my  people, 
 That  widows  may  be  their  prey,  and  that  they  may  rob  the  father- 
 less I 
 
 3  And  what  will  ye  do  in  tlie  day  of  visitation, 
 And  in  the  desolation  which  shall  come  from  far  ? 
 
 To  whom  will  ye  flee  for  help  ?  and  where  will  ye  leave  your 
 glory  ? 
 
 4  Without  me,  they  shall  bow  down  among  the  prisoners,  and  they 
 
 shall  fall  under  the  slain. 
 For  all  this  his  anger  is  not  turned  away, 
 But  his  hand  is  stretched  out  still. 
 
368  ISAIAH  X. 
 
 5  Woe  to  the  Assyrian  !  the  rod  of  mine  anger, 
 And  the  staff  in  their  hand  is  mine  indignation. 
 
 6  I  will  send  him  against  an  hypocritical  nation, 
 
 And  against  the  people  of  my  wrath  will  I  give  him  a  charge, 
 
 To  take  the  spoil,  and  to  take  the  prey, 
 
 And  to  tread  them  down  like  the  mire  of  the  streets. 
 
 7  Howbeit  he  meaneth  not  so,  neither  doth  his  heart  think  so ; 
 But  it  is  in  his  heart  to  destroy  and  cut  off  nations  not  a  few. 
 
 8  For  he  saith,  Are  not  my  princes  altogether  kings? 
 
 9  Is  not  Calno  as  Carchemish  ?   Is  not  Hamath  as  Arpad  ? 
 Is  not  Samaria  as  Damascus  ? 
 
 10  As  my  hand  hath  found  the  kingdoms  of  the  idols, 
 
 And  whose  graven  images  did  excel  them  of  Jerusalem  and  of 
 Samaria ; 
 
 11  Shall  I  not,  as  I  have  done  unto  Samaria  and  her  idols,  so  do  to 
 
 Jerusalem  and  her  idols  ? 
 
 12  Wherefore  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
 
 That  when  the  Lord  hath  performed  his  whole  work 
 
 Upon  mount  Zion  and  on  Jerusalem, 
 
 I  will  punish  the  fruit  of  the  stout  heart  of  the  king  of  Assyria, 
 
 And  the  glory  of  his  high  looks. 
 
 13  For  he  saith,  By  the  strength  of  my  hand  I  have  done  it, 
 And  by  my  wisdom  ;  for  I  am  prudent: 
 
 And  I  have  removed  the  bounds  of  the  nations, 
 
 And  have  robbed  their  treasures, 
 
 And  I  have  put  down  the  inhabitants  like  a  valiant  man  : 
 
 14  And  my  hand  hath  found  as  a  nest  the  riches  of  the  nations : 
 And  as  one  gathereth  eggs  that  are  left,  have  I  gathered  all  the  earth  ; 
 And  there  was  none  that  moved  the  wing,  or  opened  the  mouth, 
 
 or  peeped. 
 
 15  Shall  the  ax  boast  itself  against  him  that  heweth  therewith  ? 
 Or  shall  the  saw  magnify  itself  against  him  that  handleth  it  ? 
 
 As  if  the  rod  should  wield  him  that  lifteth  it, 
 Or  as  if  the  staff  should  lift  up  the  man. 
 
 16  Therefore  shall  the  Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts,  send  among  his  fat 
 
 ones  leanness ; 
 And  under  his  glory  he  shall  kindle  a  burning, 
 Like  the  burning  of  a  fire. 
 
 17  And  the  light  of  Israel  shall  be  for  a  fire, 
 And  his  Holy  One  for  a  flame : 
 
 And  it  shall  burn  and  devour  his  thorns  and  his  briers  in  one  day  ; 
 
 18  And  shall  consume  the  glory  of  his  forest,  and  of  his  fruitful  field, 
 
 both  soul  and  body  : 
 And  they  shall  be  as  when  a  sick  man  fainteth. 
 
 19  And  the  rest  of  the  trees  of  his  forest  shall  be  few, 
 That  a  child  may  write  them  down. 
 
 20  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  the  remnant  of  Israel,  and  such  as  are  escaped  of  the  house 
 
 of  Jacob. 
 Shall  no  more  again  stay  upon  him  that  smote  them  ; 
 
ISAIAH  XI.  369 
 
 But  shall  stay  upon  the  Loud,  the  Holy  one  of  Israel,  in  truth. 
 
 21  The  remnant  shall  return,  even  the  remnant  of  Jacob,  unto  the 
 
 mighty  God. 
 
 22  For  though  thy  people,  O  Israel,  be  as  the  sand  of  the  sea, 
 Only  a  remnant  of  them  shall  return  : 
 
 The  consumption  is  decreed,  and  full  justice  shall  be  poured  out. 
 
 23  For  the  Lord  God  of  hosts  is  making  a  consumption,  even  as  he 
 
 hath  determined, 
 In  the  midst  of  all  the  land. 
 
 24  Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord  God  of  hosts, 
 
 O  my  people  that  dwellest  in  Zion,  be  not  afraid  of  the  Assyria  n 
 
 He  shall  smite  thee  with  a  rod, 
 
 And  shall  lift  up  his  staff  against  thee,  after  the  manner  of  Egypt ; 
 
 25  But  yet  a  very  little  while,  and  the  indignation  shall  have  ceased, 
 And  mine  anger  shall  have  destroyed  them. 
 
 26  And  the  Lord  of  hosts  shall  raise  up  a  scourge  for  him, 
 As  in  the  slaughter  of  Midian  at  the  rock  of  Oreb  : 
 
 And  his  rod  shall  be  again  upon  the  sea,  and  he  shall  lift  it  up 
 after  the  manner  of  Egypt. 
 
 27  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  his  burden  shall  be  taken  away  from  off  thy  shoulder, 
 
 And  his  yoke  from  off  thy  neck, 
 
 And  the  yoke  shall  be  destroyed  from  off  the  anointed  one. 
 
 28  He  is  come  to  Aiath,  he  is  passed  through  Migron  ; 
 At  Michmash  he  hath  laid  up  his  baggage  : 
 
 29  They  have  passed  the  Pass  :  they  have  taken  up  their  night-quarters 
 
 at  Geba ; 
 Ramah  is  afraid  ;  Gibeah  of  Saul  is  fled. 
 
 30  Lift  up  thy  voice,  O  daughter  of  Gallim: 
 Hear  O  Laish,  answer  her  Anathoth. 
 
 31  Madmenah  has  gone  away ;  the  inhabitants  of  Gebim  gather  them- 
 
 selves to  flee. 
 
 32  He  yet  halts  at  Nob  a  day  : 
 
 He  shakes  his  hand  against  the  mount  of  the  daughter  of  Zion,  the 
 hill  of  Jerusalem. 
 
 33  Behold  the  Lord,  the  Lord  of*  hosts,  doth  lop  the  bough 
 with  terror: 
 
 And  the  high  ones  of  stature  are  hewn  down,  and  the  haughty 
 humbled. 
 
 34  And  he  shall  cut  down  the  thickets  of  the  forest  with  iron, 
 And  Lebanon  shall  fall  by  a  mighty  hand. 
 
 XI    And  there  shall  come  forth  a  shoot  out  of  the  stem  of  Jesse, 
 And  a  branch  shall  grow  out  of  his  roots  : 
 
 2  And  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  shall  rest  upon  him, 
 The  spirit  of  wisdom  and  understanding, 
 
 The  spirit  of  counsel  and  might, 
 
 The  spirit  of  knowledge  and  of  the  fear  of  the  Lord  : 
 
 3  And  he  shall  be  of  quick  understanding  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord  : 
 And  he  shall  not  judge  after  the  sight  of  his  eyes, 
 
 B  B 
 
370  ISAIAH  XI. 
 
 Neither  reprove  after  the  hearing  of  his  ears  : 
 
 4  But  with  righteousness  shall  he  judge  the  poor, 
 And  reprove  with  equity  for  the  meek  of  the  earth  : 
 And  he  shall  smite  the  earth  with  the  rod  of  his  mouth, 
 And  with  the  breath  of  his  lips  shall  he  slay  the  wicked. 
 
 5  And  righteousness  shall  be  the  girdle  of  his  loins, 
 And  faithfulness  the  girdle  of  his  reins. 
 
 And  the  wolf  shall  make  his  home  with  the  lamb, 
 
 And  the  leopard  shall  lie  down  with  the  kid  : 
 
 And  the  calf  and  the  young  lion  and  the  fatling  together ; 
 
 And  a  little  child  shall  lead  them. 
 7     And  the  cow  and  the  she  bear  shall  feed  together; 
 
 Together  shall  their  young  ones  lie  down  : 
 
 And  the  lion  shall  eat  straw  like  the  ox. 
 9    And  the  sucking  child  shall  play  on  the  hole  of  the  asp, 
 
 And  the  weaned  child  shall  put  his  hand  on  the  den  of  the  crested 
 adder. 
 9    They  shall  not  hurt  nor  destroy  in  all  my  holy  mountain  : 
 
 For  the  earth  is  full  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord, 
 
 As  the  waters  cover  the  sea. 
 
 10  And  in  that  day  shall  the  root  of  Jesse  stand  for  an  ensign 
 to  the  peoples  ; 
 
 To  it  shall  the  nations  seek  :  and  his  dwelling-place  shall  be  glorious. 
 
 11  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  the  Lord  shall  set  his  hand  again  the  second  time 
 To  recover  the  remnant  of  his  people  which  shall  be  left, 
 From  Assyria,  and  from  Egypt, 
 And  from  Pathros,  and  from  Cush,  and  from  Elam, 
 And  from  Shinar,  and  from  Hamath,  and  from  the  islands  of  the 
 sea. 
 
 12  And  he  shall  set  up  an  ensign  for  the  nations, 
 And  shall  assemble  the  outcast  sons  of  Israel, 
 
 And  gather  together  the  dispersed  daughters  of  Judah, 
 From  the  four  corners  of  the  earth. 
 
 13  The  envy  also  of  Ephraim  shall  depart, 
 
 And  the  adversaries  of  Judah  shall  be  cut  off: 
 
 Ephraim  shall  not  envy  Judah,  and  Judah  shall  not  vex  Ephraim. 
 
 14  But  they  shall  sweep  down  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  Philistines 
 
 towards  the  sea ; 
 They  shall  spoil  the  children  of  the  east  together : 
 They  shall  lay  their  hand  upon  Edom  and  Moab, 
 And  the  children  of  Ammon  shall  obey  them. 
 
 15  And  the  Lord  shall  utterly  destroy  the  tongue  of  the  Egyptian  sea; 
 And  with  his  mighty  wind  shall  he  shake  his  hand  over  the  River, 
 And  shall  smite  it  into  seven  streams, 
 
 And  make  men  go  over  dryshod. 
 
 16  And  there  shall  be  an  highway  for  the  remnant  of  his  people,  which 
 
 shall  be  left,  from  Assyria; 
 Like  as  it  was  to  Israel  in  the  day  that  he  came  up  out  of  the  land 
 of  Egypt. 
 
ISAIAH  XII.    XIII.  371 
 
 XII  And, in  that  day  thou  shalt  say,  O  Lord,  I  will  praise  thee  ; 
 
 Though  thou  wast  angry  with  me,  thine  anger  is  turned  away, 
 And  thou  comfortest  me. 
 
 2  Behold,  God  is  my  salvation ;  I  will  trust  and  not  be  afraid  : 
 For  the  Lord  JEHOVAH  is  my  strength  and  my  song ; 
 He  also  is  become  my  salvation. 
 
 3  Therefore  with  joy  shall  ye  draw  water  out  of  the  wells  of  salvation. 
 
 4  And  in  that  day  shall  ye  say, 
 Praise  the  Lord,  call  upon  his  name, 
 Declare  his  doings  among  the  nations, 
 Make  mention  that  his  name  is  exalted. 
 
 5  Sing  unto  the  Lord  ;  for  he  hath  done  excellent  things  : 
 This  is  known  in  all  the  earth. 
 
 6  Cry  out  and  shout,  thou  inhabitress  of  Zion  : 
 
 For  great  is  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  in  the  midst  of  thee. 
 
 XIII  The  burden  of  Babylon  which  Isaiah  the  son  of  Amoz 
 
 DID  SEE. 
 
 2  Lift  ye  up  a  banner  upon  the  bare  mountain  1 
 Exalt  the  voice  unto  them,  shake  the  hand, 
 That  they  may  go  into  the  gates  of  the  nobles ! 
 
 3  I  have  commanded  my  consecrated  ones, 
 
 I  have  also  called  my  mighty  ones  for  mine  anger, 
 My  warriors  that  rejoiced  in  their  pride. 
 
 4  The  noise  of  a  multitude  in  the  mountains,  like  as  of  a  great 
 people ; 
 
 The  noise  of  a  tumult  of  kingdoms  of  nations  gathered  together  ! 
 The  Lord  of  hosts  mustering  the  host  of  battle  ! 
 
 5  They  come  from  a  far  country,  from  the  end  of  heaven, 
 The  Lord  and  the  weapons  of  his  indignation, 
 
 To  destroy  the  whole  land. 
 
 6  Howl  ye ;  for  the  day  of  the  Lord  is  at  hand  ; 
 It  shall  come  as  a  mighty  stroke  from  the  Almighty. 
 
 7  Therefore  shall  all  hands  fall  down,  and  every  man's  heart  shall 
 
 melt : 
 
 8  And  they  shall  be  afraid  :  pangs  and  sorrows  shall  take  hold  of 
 
 them: 
 They  shall  writhe  with  pain  as  a  woman  that  travaileth ; 
 They  shall  stand  aghast,  every  man  at  his  neighbour, 
 Their  faces  shall  be  as  flames. 
 
 9  Behold,  the  day  of  the  Lord  cometh, 
 
 Cruel  both  with  wrath  and  fierce  anger,  to  lay  the  land  desolate  : 
 And  he  shall  destroy  the  sinners  thereof  out  of  it. 
 l  o    For  the  stars  of  heaven,  and  the  constellations  thereof,  shall  not  give 
 their  light : 
 The  sun  is  darkened  in  his  going  forth, 
 And  the  moon  shall  not  cause  her  light  to  shine. 
 
 B  B   2 
 
372  ISAIAH  XIV. 
 
 11  And  I  will  visit  upon  the  world  its  evil,  and  upon  the  wicked  their 
 
 iniquity  ; 
 And  I  will  cause  the  arrogancy  of  the  proud  to  cease, 
 And  will  lay  low  the  haughtiness  of  the  terrible. 
 
 12  I  will  make  a  man  more  precious  than  fine  gold ; 
 Even  a  man  than  the  golden  wedge  of  Ophir. 
 
 13  Therefore  I  will  shake  the  heavens,  and  the  earth  shall  remove  out 
 
 of  her  place, 
 In  the  wrath  of  the  Lord  of  hosts,  and  in  the  day  of  his  fierce 
 anger. 
 
 14  And  it  shall  be  that  as  the  chased  roe,  and  as  sheep  with  none  to 
 
 gather  them, 
 They  shall  every  man  turn  to  his  own  people, 
 And  flee  every  one  into  his  own  land. 
 
 15  Every  one  that  is  overtaken  shall  be  thrust  through; 
 And  all  that  are  rallied  together  shall  fall  by  the  sword. 
 
 16  And  their  children  shall  be  dashed  to  pieces  before  their  eyes ; 
 Their  houses  shall  be  spoiled,  and  their  wives  ravished. 
 
 17  Behold  I  am  stirring  up  the  Medes  against  them, 
 
 Which  shall  not  regard  silver,  and  as  for  gold,  they  shall  not  delight 
 in  it. 
 
 18  Their  bows  also  shall  dash  the  young  men  to  pieces ; 
 And  they  shall  have  no  pity  on  the  fruit  of  the  womb  ; 
 Their  eye  shall  not  spare  children. 
 
 19  And  Babylon,  the  glory  of  kingdoms,  the  beauty  of  the  Chaldees' 
 
 excellency, 
 Shall  be  as  when  God  overthrew  Sodom  and  Gomorrah. 
 
 20  It  shall  never   be    inhabited,  neither  shall  it  be  dwelt  in   from 
 
 generation  to  generation  : 
 Neither  shall  the  Arab  pitch  tent  there ; 
 Neither  shall  the  shepherds  make  their  fold  there. 
 
 21  But  wild  beasts  of  the  desert  shall  lie  there  ; 
 And  their  houses  shall  be  full  of  yellings  ; 
 
 And  the  daughters  of  the  ostrich  shall  dwell  there, 
 And  wild  goats  shall  dance  there  ; 
 
 22  And  wolves  shall  howl  in  their  palaces, 
 And  jackals  in  their  pleasure  houses  : 
 
 And  her  time  is  near  to  come,  and  her  days  shall  not  be  prolonged. 
 
 XIV    For  the  Lord  will  have  mercy  on  Jacob, 
 And  will  yet  choose  Israel, 
 And  cause  them  to  rest  in  their  own  land : 
 
 And  the  strangers  shall  be  joined  with  them,  and  shall  cleave  to 
 the  house  of  Jacob. 
 
 2  And  the  nations  shall  take  them,  and  bring  them  to  their  place : 
 And  the  house  of  Israel  shall  possess  them  in  the  land  of  the  Lord 
 
 for  servants  and  handmaids : 
 And  they  shall  take  them  captives,  whose  captives  they  were  ; 
 And  they  shall  rule  over  their  oppressors. 
 
 3  And  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
 
ISAIAH  XIV.  373 
 
 In  the  day  that  the  Lord  shall  give  thee  rest 
 
 From  thy  sorrow,  and  from  thy  fear, 
 
 And  from  the  hard  bondage  wherein  thou  wast  made  to  serve, 
 
 4  That  thou  shalt  raise  this  song  over  the  king  of  Babylon,  and  say, 
 How  hath  the  oppressor  ceased  !  the  golden  city  ceased  ! 
 
 5  The  Lord  hath  broken  the  staff  of  the  wicked,  the  sceptre  of  the 
 
 rulers  ; 
 
 6  Which  struck  the  peoples  in  wrath  with  a  continual  stroke, 
 Which  ruled  the  nations  in  anger,  with  a  persecution  that  none 
 
 hindered. 
 
 7  The  whole  earth  is  at  rest,  is  quiet :  they  break  forth  into  singing. 
 
 8  Yea,  the  fir  trees  rejoice  at  thee,  and  the  cedars  of  Lebanon,  saying, 
 Now  that  thou  art  laid  down,  no  feller  shall  come  up  against  us. 
 
 9  Hell  from  beneath  is  moved  for  thee,  to  meet  thee  at  thy  coming  : 
 It  stirreth  up  the  giant-shades  for  thee,  all  the  chief  ones  of  the 
 
 earth  ; 
 It  hath  raised  up  from  their  thi'ones  all  the  kings  of  the  nations. 
 
 10  All  they  shall  speak  and  say  unto  thee, 
 
 Art  thou  also  become  weak  as  we  ?  art  thou  become  like  unto  us  ? 
 
 11  Thy  pomp  is  brought  down  to  the  grave,  and  the  noise  of  thy  viols  : 
 The  worm  is  spread  under  thee,  and  the  earth-worms  cover  thee. 
 
 12  How  art  thou  fallen  from  heaven,  O  Lucifer,  son  of  the  morning  I 
 How  art  thou  cut  down  to  the  ground,  which  didst  weaken  the 
 
 nations  1 
 
 13  For  thou  hast  said  in  thine  heart, 
 
 I  will  ascend  into  heaven,  I  will  exalt  my  throne  above  the  stars 
 
 of  God : 
 I  will  sit  also  upon  the  mount  of  assembly,  in  the  uttermost  north  : 
 
 14  I  will  ascend  above  the  heights  of  the  clouds;  I  will  be  like  the 
 
 Most  High. 
 
 15  But  thou  shalt  be  only  brought  down  to  hell,  to  the  uttermost  pit. 
 
 16  They  that  see  thee  shall  narrowly  look  upon  thee,  and  consider 
 
 thee,  saying, 
 Is  this  the  man  that  made  the  earth  to  tremble,  that  did  shake 
 kingdoms ; 
 
 17  That  made  the  world  as  a  wilderness,  and  destroyed  the  cities 
 
 thereof; 
 That  loosed  not  his  prisoners  homewards  ? 
 
 18  All  the  kings  of  the  nations,  all  of  them,  lie  in  state,  every  one  in 
 
 his  own  house : 
 
 19  But  thou  art  cast  out  of  thy  grave  like  an  abominable  branch, 
 And  as  the  raiment  of  those  that  are  slain,  thrust  through  with  a 
 
 sword, 
 That  go  down  to  the  stones  of  the  pit ;  as  a  carcase  trodden  under 
 feet. 
 
 20  Thou  shalt  not  be  joined  with  them  in  burial, 
 
 Because  thou  hast  destroyed  thy  land,  and  slain  thy  people : 
 The  seed  of  evil  doers  shall  be  named  no  more  for  ever. 
 
 21  Prepare  slaughter  for  his  children,  for  the  iniquity  of  their  fathers  ; 
 
 B   B    3 
 
374  ISAIAH  XV. 
 
 That  they  do  not  rise,  nor  possess  the  land,  nor  fill  the  face  of  the 
 world  with  cities. 
 
 22  For  I  will  rise  up  against  them,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 And  cut  off  from  Babylon  the  name,  and  remnant, 
 
 And  the  son,  and  the  son's  son,  saith  the  Lord. 
 
 23  I  will  also  make  it  a  possession  for  the  porcupine,  and  pools  of 
 
 water : 
 And  I  will  sweep  it  with  the  besom  of  destruction  : 
 The  Lord  of  hosts  hath  said  it. 
 
 24  The  Lord  of  hosts  hath  sworn,  saying, 
 
 Surely  as  I  have  thought,  so  hath  it  come  to  pass ; 
 And  as  1  have  purposed,  so  shall  it  stand  : 
 i>5    To  break  the  Assyrian  in  my  land,  and  upon  my  mountains  I  will 
 
 tread  him  under  foot : 
 Then  shall  his  yoke  depart  from  off  them,  and  his  burden  depart 
 
 from  off  their  shoulders. 
 
 26  This  is  the  purpose  that  is  purposed  upon  the  whole  earth  : 
 And  this  is  the  hand  that  is  stretched  out  upon  all  the  nations. 
 
 27  For  the  Lord  of  hosts  hath  purposed,  and  who  shall  disanmd  it  ? 
 And  it  is  his  hand  that  is  stretched  out,  and  who  shall  turn  it  back  ? 
 
 28  In  the  year  that  king  Ahaz  died  was  this  burden. 
 
 29  Rejoice  not  thou,  whole  Philistia, 
 
 Because  the  rod  of  him  that  smote  thee  is  broken  : 
 
 For  out  of  the  serpent's  root  shall  come  forth  a  cockatrice, 
 
 And  his  fruit  shall  be  a  fiery  dragon. 
 
 30  And  the  firstborn  of  the  poor  shall  feed,  and  the  needy  shall  lie 
 
 down  in  safety  : 
 And  I  will  kill  thy  root  with  famine,  and  he  shall  slay  thy  remnant. 
 
 31  Howl,  O  gate ;  Cry,  O  city  ;  thou,  whole  Philistia,  art  dissolved : 
 For  there  cometh  from  the  north  a  smoke, 
 
 And  there  is  no  straggler  in  his  hosts. 
 
 32  What  shall  one  then  answer  the  messengers  of  the  nations  ? 
 That  the  Lord  hath  founded  Zion, 
 
 And  the  poor  of  his  people  shall  take  refuge  in  it. 
 
 XV  The  burden  op  Moab. 
 
 Verily  in  the  night  Ar-Moab  is  laid  waste,  is  brought  to  silence! 
 Verily  in  the  night.  Kir-Moab  is  laid  waste,  is  brought  to  silence! 
 
 2  He  is  gone  up  to  Bajith,  and  to  Dibon,  the  high  places,  to  weep : 
 Moab  doth  howl  over  Nebo,  and  over  Medeba : 
 
 On  all  their  heads  baldness,  and  every  beard  cut  off! 
 
 3  In  their  streets  they  gird  themselves  with  sackcloth : 
 On  the  tops  of  their  houses,  and  in  their  squares, 
 Every  one  doth  howl,  weeping  abundantly. 
 
ISAIAH  XVI.  375 
 
 4  And  Heshbon  doth  cry,  and  Elealeh  :  their  voice  is  heard  even  unto 
 
 Jahaz  : 
 Therefore  the  armed  soldiers  of  Moab  cry  out ; 
 His  life  is  grievous  unto  him. 
 
 5  My  heart  crieth  out  for  Moab  ; 
 
 His  fugitives  flee  unto  Zoar,  like  an  heifer  of  three  years  old: 
 For  by  the  ascent  of  Luhith  they  go  up  with  weeping ; 
 For  in  the  way  of  Horonaim  they  raise  a  broken  cry. 
 
 6  For  the  waters  of  Ninirim  are  desolate  : 
 
 For  the  grass  is  withered,  the  young  herbage  faileth,  there  is  no 
 green  thing. 
 
 7  Therefore  the  abundance  they  have  gotten,  and  that  which  they 
 
 have  laid  up, 
 Do  they  carry  away  over  the  brook  of  the  willows. 
 
 8  For  the  cry  is  gone  round  about  the  borders  of  Moab ; 
 
 The  howling  thereof  unto  Eglaim,  and  the  howling  thereof  unto 
 Beer-elim. 
 
 9  For  the  waters  of  Dimon  shall  be  full  of  blood :  for  I  will  bring 
 
 more  upon  Dimon, 
 Lions  upon  him  that  escapeth  of  Moab,  and  upon  the  remnant  of 
 the  land. 
 
 XVI  Send  ye  the  lamb  to  the  ruler  of  the  land, 
 
 From  Selah  through  the  wilderness, 
 Unto  the  mount  of  the  daughter  of  Zion. 
 
 2  For  it  shall  be,  that,  as  a  wandering  bird  cast  out  of  the  nest, 
 So  the  daughters  of  Moab  shall  be  at  the  fords  of  Arnon. 
 
 3  Take  counsel,  execute  judgment; 
 
 Make  thy  shadow  as  the  night  in  the  midst  of  the  noonday ; 
 Hide  the  outcasts ;  betray  not  the  fugitive. 
 
 4  Let  mine  outcasts  dwell  with  thee,  Moab ; 
 
 Be  thou  a  covert  to  them  from  the  face  of  the  spoiler : 
 For  the  extortioner  is  at  an  end,  the  spoiler  ceaseth, 
 The  oppressors  are  consumed  out  of  the  land. 
 
 5  And  in  mercy  shall  the  throne  be  established : 
 
 And  one  shall  sit  upon  it  in  truth  in  the  tabernacle  of  David, 
 Judging,  and  seeking  justice,  and  hasting  righteousness. 
 
 6  We  have  heard  the  pride  of  Moab,  the  very  proud ; 
 
 His  haughtiness,  and  his  pride,  and  his  wrath, — his  lying  boasts. 
 
 7  Therefore  shall  Moab  howl  for  Moab,  all  of  it  shall  howl : 
 For  the  foundations  of  Kir-hareseth  shall  ye  mourn ; 
 Surely  they  are  stricken. 
 
 8  For  the  fields  of  Heshbon  languish,  and  the  vine  of  Sibmah : 
 The  lords  of  the  nations  break  down  the  principal  plants  thereof, 
 They  reached  unto  Jazer,  they  strayed  into  the  wilderness : 
 
 Her  branches  were  stretched  out,  they  went  over  the  sea. 
 
 9  Therefore  I  will  bewail  with  the  weeping  of  Jazer  the  vine  of 
 
 Sibmah  : 
 I  will  water  thee  with  my  tears,  O  Heshbon,  and  Elealeh : 
 For  the  battle-shout  is  fallen  on  thy  summer  fruits  and  thy  harvest. 
 
 B  B    4 
 
376  ISAIAH  XVII. 
 
 10  And  gladness  is  taken  away,  and  joy  from  the  plentiful  field  •; 
 And  in  the  vineyards  there  shall  be  no  singing,  neither  shall  there 
 
 be  shouting  : 
 The  treaders  shall  tread  out  no  wine  in  their  presses; 
 I  have  made  their  vintage  shouting  to  cease. 
 
 11  Wherefore  my  bowels  shall  sound  like  an  harp  for  Moab, 
 And  mine  inward  parts  for  Kir-haresh. 
 
 1 2  And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  when  it  is  seen  that  Moab  is  weary  on 
 
 the  high  place, 
 That  he  shall  come  to  his  sanctuary  to  pray ; 
 But  he  shall  not  prevail. 
 
 13  This  is  the  word  that  the  Lord  spake  concerning  Moab  of  old. 
 
 14  But  now  the  Lord  hath  spoken,  saying, 
 Within  three  years,  as  the  years  of  an  hireling, 
 And  the  glory  of  Moab  shall  be  put  to  shame, 
 With  all  that  great  multitude ; 
 
 And  the  remnant  shall  be  very  small  and  feeble. 
 
 XVII  The  burden  of  Damascus. 
 
 Behold  Damascus  is  taken  away  from  being  a  city, 
 And  it  shall  be  a  ruinous  heap. 
 
 2  The  cities  of  Aroer  are  forsaken  : 
 
 They  shall  be  for  flocks,  which  shall  lie  down,  and  none  shall 
 make  them  afraid. 
 
 3  The  fortress  also  shall  cease  from  Ephraim, 
 
 And  the  kingdom  from  Damascus,  and  the  remnant  of  Syria: 
 They  shall  be  as  the  glory  of  the  children  of  Israel, 
 Saith  the  Lord  of  hosts. 
 
 4  And  in  that  day  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
 That  the  glory  of  Jacob  shall  be  made  thin, 
 And  the  fatness  of  his  flesh  shall  wax  lean. 
 
 5  And  it  shall  be  as  when  the  harvestman  gathereth  the  corn, 
 And  reapeth  the  ears  with  his  arm ; 
 
 And  it  shall  be  as  he  that  gathereth  ears  in  the  valley  of  Rephaim. 
 
 6  Yet  gleanings  shall  be  left  in  it,  as  the  shaking  of  an  olive  tree ; 
 Two  or  three  berries  in  the  top  of  the  uppermost  bough, 
 
 Four  or  five  in  the  outmost  fruitful  branches  thereof, 
 Saith  the  Lord  God  of  Israel. 
 
 7  At  that  day  shall  a  man  look  to  his  Maker, 
 
 And  his  eyes  shall  have  respect  to  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 
 
 8  And  he  shall  not  look  to  the  altars,  the  work  of  his  hands, 
 Neither  shall  respect  that  which  his  fingers  have  made, 
 Either  the  images  of  Astarte,  or  the  pillars  of  the  Sun. 
 
 9  In  that  day  shall  his  strong  cities  be  as  a  forsaken  bough, 
 And  an  uppermost  branch, 
 
 Which  they  leave  because  of  the  children  of  Israel : 
 And  there  shall  be  desolation. 
 io    Because  thou  hast  forgotten  the  God  of  thv  salvation, 
 
ISAIAH  XVIII.  377 
 
 And  hast  not  been  mindful  of  the  rock  of  thy  strength, 
 Therefore  thou  mayest  plant  pleasant  plants, 
 And  mayest  set  slips  from  a  foreign  soil ; 
 
 11  In  the  day  mayest  thou  make  thy  plant  to  grow, 
 
 And  in  the  morning  mayest  thou  make  thy  seed  to  flourish ; 
 But  away  flies  the  crop  in  the  day  of  harvest, 
 And  thou  shalt  have  hopeless  sorrow. 
 
 12  O  the  noise  of  many  peoples,  they  make  a  noise  like  the  noise 
 of  the  seas ; 
 
 And  the  rush  of  nations,  they  rush  like  the  rushing  of  mighty 
 waters ! 
 
 13  The  nations  shall  rush  like  the  rushing  of  many  waters; 
 But  He  shall  rebuke  them,  and  they  shall  flee  far  off, 
 
 And  shall  be  chased  as  the  chaff  of  the  mountains  before  the  wind, 
 And  like  a  rolling  thing  before  the  whirlwind. 
 
 14  And  behold  at  eveningtide  trouble ; 
 And  before  the  morning  he  is  not. 
 This  is  the  portion  of  them  that  spoil  us, 
 And  the  lot  of  them  that  rob  us. 
 
 XVIII  O  land  rustling  with  wings,  which  borders  on  the  rivers  of 
 
 Ethiopia : 
 
 2  That  sendeth  ambassadors  by  the  sea,  even  in  bulrush  boats  upon 
 
 the  waters, 
 Saying,  Go,  ye  swift  messengers,  to  a  nation  outspread  and  fierce, 
 To  a  people  terrible  from  their  beginning  hitherto ; 
 A  nation   that  meteth  out  and   treadeth  down,  whose  land  the 
 
 rivers  divide ! 
 
 3  All  ye  inhabitants  of  the  world,  and  dwellers  on  the  earth, 
 Shall  see  as  it  were  the  lifting  up  of  an  ensign  on  the  mountains ; 
 And  shall  hear  as  it  were  the  blowing  of  a  trumpet. 
 
 4  For  so  the  Lord  said  unto  me,  I  will  take  my  rest, 
 And  I  will  look  on  in  my  dwelling-place, 
 
 Like  a  clear  heat  upon  herbage,  and  like  a  cloud  of  dew  in  the 
 heat  of  harvest. 
 
 5  For  afore  the  harvest,  when  the  bloom  is  finished, 
 And  the  flower  becomes  a  ripening  grape, 
 
 He  shall  cut  off  the  sprigs  with  pruning  hooks, 
 And  take  away  and  cut  down  the  branches. 
 
 6  They  shall  be  left  together  unto  the  fowls  of  the  mountains,  and 
 
 to  the  beasts  of  the  earth  : 
 And  the  fowls  shall  summer  upon  them,  and  all  the  beasts  of  the 
 earth  shall  winter  upon  them. 
 
 7  In  that  time  shall  the  present  be  brought  unto  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 Of  a  people  outspread  and  fierce, 
 
 And  from  a  people  terrible  from  their  beginning  hitherto ; 
 
 A  nation  that  meteth  out  and  treadeth  under  foot ; 
 
 Whose  land  the  rivers  divide  ; 
 
 To  the  place  of  the  name  of  the  Lord  of  hosts,  the  mount  Ziori. 
 
378  ISAIAH  XIX. 
 
 XIX  The  burden  of  Egypt. 
 
 Behold,  the  Lord  rideth  upon  a  swift  cloud, 
 And  cometh  into  Egypt : 
 
 And  the  idols  of  Egypt  are  moved  at  his  presence,    \  ! 
 And  the  heart  of  Egypt  doth  melt  within  him. 
 
 2  And  I  will  set  Egypt  against  Egypt : 
 
 And  they  shall  fight  every  one  against  his  brother, 
 
 And  every  one  against  his  neighbour; 
 
 City  against  city,  and  kingdom  against  kingdom. 
 
 3  And  the  spirit  of  Egypt  shall  fail  in  the  midst  thereof; 
 And  I  will  destroy  the  counsel  thereof: 
 
 And  they  shall  seek  to  the  idols,  and  to  the  charmers, 
 And  to  them  that  have  familiar  spirits,  and  to  the  wizards. 
 
 4  And  the  Egyptians  will  I  shut  up  in  the  hand  of  a  hard  lord ; 
 And  a  stern  king  shall  rule  over  them ; 
 
 Saith  the  Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts. 
 
 5  And  the  waters  shall  fail  from  the  sea, 
 And  the  river  shall  be  wasted  and  dried  up. 
 
 6  And  the  rivers  shall  become  putrid : 
 
 And  the  canals  of  Egypt  shall  be  emptied  and  dried  up  : 
 The  reeds  and  flags  shall  wither. 
 
 7  The  meadows  by  the  River,  by  the  border  of  the  River, 
 
 And  every  thing  sown  by  the  River,  shall  wither,  be  driven  away, 
 and  be  no  more. 
 
 8  The  fishers  also  shall  mourn, 
 
 And  all  they  that  cast  angle  into  the  River  shall  lament, 
 And  they  that  spread  nets  upon  the  waters  shall  languish. 
 
 9  And  the  workers  in  combed  flax,  and  the  weavers  of  white  linen, 
 
 shall  be  confounded. 
 
 10  And  the  pillars  of  the  land  are  broken  down, 
 And  all  her  labouring  men  are  grieved  in  heart. 
 
 11  The  princes  of  Zoan  are  utterly  foolish, 
 
 The  counsel  of  the  wise  counsellors  of  Pharaoh  is  become  brutish  : 
 
 How  say  ye  unto  Pharaoh, 
 
 I  am  the  son  of  the  wise,  the  son  of  ancient  kings  ? 
 
 12  Where  are  they?  where  are  thy  wise  men? 
 And  let  them  tell  thee  now,  and  let  them  know 
 What  the  Lord  of  hosts  hath  purposed  upon  Egypt. 
 
 13  The  princes  of  Zoan  are  become  fools, 
 The  princes  of  Noph  are  deceived  ; 
 
 They  have  also  misled  Egypt,  they  that  are  the  heads  of  her  tribes. 
 
 14  The  Lord  hath  mingled  a  spirit  of  reeling  in  the  midst  of  them : 
 And  they  have  caused  Egypt  to  err  in  every  work  thereof, 
 
 As  a  drunken  man  staggereth  in  his  vomit. 
 
 15  Neither  shall  there  be  any  work  for  Egypt, 
 Which  the  head  or  tail,  branch  or  rush,  may  do. 
 
 16  In  that  day  shall  Egypt  be  like  unto  women : 
 And  it  shall  be  afraid,  and  fear, 
 
 From  before  the  shaking  of  the  hand  of  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 Which  he  shaketh  over  it. 
 
ISAIAH  XX.  379 
 
 17  And  the  land  of  Judah  shall  be  a  terror  unto  Egypt, 
 
 Every  one  that  maketh  mention  thereof  shall  be  afraid  in  himself, 
 Because  of  the  counsel  of  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 Which  he  hath  determined  against  it. 
 
 18  In   that  day  shall   five   cities  in   the  land   of  Egypt  speak  the 
 
 language  of  Canaan, 
 And  swear  to  the  Lord  of  hosts ; 
 One  shall  be  called,  The  city  of  destruction. 
 
 19  In  that  day  shall  there  be  an  altar  to  the  Lord 
 In  the  midst  of  the  land  of  Egypt, 
 
 And  a  pillar  at  the  border  thereof  to  the  Lord. 
 
 20  And  it  shall  be  for  a  sign  and  for  a  witness  unto  the  Lord  of  hosts 
 
 in  the  land  of  Egypt : 
 For  they  shall  cry  unto  the  Lord  because  of  the  oppressors, 
 And  he  shall  send  them  a  saviour,  and  a  great  one, 
 And  he  shall  deliver  them. 
 
 21  And  the  Lord  shall  be  known  to  Egypt, 
 
 And  the  Egyptians  shall  know  the  Lord  in  that  day, 
 
 And  shall  do  sacrifice  and  oblation  ; 
 
 And  shall  vow  vows  unto  the  Lord,  and  perform  them. 
 
 22  And  the  Lord  shall  smite  Egypt :  he  shall  smite  and  heal  it: 
 And  they  shall  return  to  the  Lord, 
 
 And  he  shall  be  entreated  of  them,  and  shall  heal  them. 
 
 23  In  that  day  shall  there  be  a  highway  out  of  Egypt  to  Assyria, 
 And  the  Assyrian  shall  come  into  Egypt, 
 
 And  the  Egyptian  into  Assyria, 
 
 And  Egypt  shall  serve  the  Lord  with  Assyria. 
 
 24  In   that   day  shall   Israel   be   the   third   with   Egypt  and  with 
 
 Assyria, 
 
 25  A  blessing  in  the  midst  of  the  earth : 
 
 "Whom  the  Lord  of  hosts  hath  blessed,  saying, 
 
 Blessed  be  Egypt  my  people,  and  Assyria  the  work  of  my  hands, 
 
 And  Israel  mine  inheritance. 
 
 XX  In  the  year  that  Tartan  came  unto  Ashdod, 
 
 When  Sargon  the  king  of  Assyria  sent  him, 
 And  fought  against  Ashdod,  and  took  it; 
 
 2  At  the  same  time  spake  the  Lord  by  Isaiah  the  son  of  Amoz, 
 Saying,  Go,  and  loose  the  sackcloth  from  off  thy  loins, 
 
 And  put  off  thy  shoe  from  thy  foot. 
 
 And  he  did  so,  walking  naked  and  barefoot. 
 
 3  And  the  Lord  said, 
 
 Like  as  my  servant  Isaiah  hath  walked  naked  and  barefoot, 
 
 A  three  years  sign  and  wonder  upon  Egypt  and  upon  Ethiopia ; 
 
 4  So  shall  the  king  of  Assyria  lead  away  the  Egyptians  prisoners, 
 
 and  the  Ethiopians  captives, 
 Young  and  old,  naked  and  barefoot, 
 
380  ISAIAH  XXI. 
 
 Even  with  their  hind-parts  uncovered,  to  the  shame  of  Egypt. 
 
 5  And  they  shall  be  afraid  and  ashamed  of  Ethiopia  their  expectation, 
 
 and  of  Egypt  their  glory. 
 
 6  And  the  inhabitants  of  this  coast  shall  say  in  that  day, 
 Behold,  such  is  our  expectation,  whither  we  fled  for  help. 
 To  be  delivered  from  the  king  of  Assyria : 
 
 And  how  shall  we  escape  ? 
 
 XXI  The  burden  of  the  Desert  of  the  Sea. 
 
 As  whirlwinds  in  the  south  sweep  along ; 
 
 So  it  cometh  from  the  desert,  from  a  terrible  land! 
 
 2  A  grievous  vision  is  declared  unto  me  ; 
 
 The   treacherous   dealer  dealeth   treacherously,   and   the  spoiler 
 
 spoileth. 
 Go  up,  O  Elam :  besiege,  O  Media : 
 All  the  sighing  thereof  have  I  made  to  cease. 
 
 3  Therefore  are  my  loins  filled  with  pain  : 
 
 Pangs  have  taken  hold  upon  me,  as  the  pangs  of  a  woman  that 
 
 travaileth : 
 I  writhe  so  that  I  cannot  hear;  I  shudder  so  that  I  cannot  see. 
 
 4  My  heart  panteth,  fearfulness  affrighteth  me : 
 
 The  night  of  my  pleasure  hath  he  turned  into  fear  unto  me. 
 
 5  Prepare  the  table,  watch  in  the  watchtower,  eat,  drink : 
 Arise,  ye  princes,  anoint  the  shield! 
 
 6  For  thus  hath  the  Lord  said  unto  me, 
 
 Go,  set  a  watchman,  let  him  declare  what  he  seeth. 
 
 7  And  he  saw  cavalry,  horsemen  two  and  two, 
 Riders  on  asses,  riders  on  camels; 
 
 8  And  he  hearkened  diligently  with  much  heed  :  and  he  cried,  A  lion  ! 
 O  Lord,  I  stand  continually  upon  the  watchtower  in  the  daytime, 
 And  I  am  set  in  my  ward  whole  nights  : 
 
 9  And,  behold,  here  come  mounted  men,  horsemen  two  and  two. 
 And  he  spake  again,  and  said, 
 
 Babylon  is  fallen,  is  fallen ; 
 
 And  all  the  graven  images  of  her  gods  he  hath  broken  unto  the 
 ground. 
 
 10  O  my  threshing,  and  the  corn  of  my  floor  : 
 
 That  which  I  have  heard  of  the  Lord  of  hosts,  the  God  of  Israel, 
 
 _    „  have  I  declared  unto  vou. 
 The  Bur- 
 
 den  of  One  calleth  to  me  out  of  Seir, 
 
 Dumah.  Watchman,  what  of  the  night?  Watchman,  what  of  the  night? 
 
 12  The  watchman  said,  The  morning  cometh,  and  also  the  night : 
 If  ye  will  inquire,  inquire  ye  :  return,  come  again. 
 
 The  Bur-  _      .       ,  .   ,         ..,.,„ 
 
 den  upon  Li  the  thickets  in  Arabia  shall  ye  lodge, 
 
 Arabia.        O  ye  travelling  companies  of  Dedanim. 
 
 14    The  inhabitants  of  the  land  of  Tenia  bring  water  to  him  that  is 
 thirsty, 
 They  come  to  meet  the  fugitive  with  bread. 
 
ISAIAH  XXII.  381 
 
 15  For  they  flee  from  the  face  of  the  swords,  from  the  drawn  sword, 
 And  from  the  bent  bow,  and  from  the  grievousness  of  war. 
 
 16  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  unto  me, 
 
 Within  a  year,  according  to  the  years  of  an  hireling, 
 And  all  the  glory  of  Kedar  shall  fail : 
 
 17  And  the  residue  of  the  number  of  archers, 
 
 The  mighty  men  of  the  children  of  Kedar,  shall  become  few : 
 For  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  hath  spoken  it. 
 
 XXII  The  burden  of  the  Valley  of  Vision. 
 
 What  aileth  thee  now,  that  thou  art  wholly  gone  up  to  the 
 housetops, 
 
 2  Thou  City  full  of  stirs,  a  tumultuous,  joyous  city  ? 
 
 Thy  slain  men  are  not  slain  with  the  sword,  nor  dead  in  battle. 
 
 3  All  thy  princes  are  fled  together,  they  are  bound  by  the  archers : 
 All  that  are  found  in  thee  are  bound  together,  which  have  fled  afar. 
 
 4  Therefore  say  I,  Look  away  from  me ; 
 
 I  will  weep  bitterly,  labour  not  to  comfort  me, 
 Because  of  the  spoiling  of  the  daughter  of  my  people. 
 
 5  For  there  is  a  day  of  trouble,  and  of  treading  down,  and  of  per- 
 
 plexity, 
 From  the  Lord  God  of  hosts,  in  the  valley  of  vision, 
 Of  breaking  down  the  walls,  and  of  crying  to  the  mountains. 
 
 6  And  Elam  bears  the  quiver,  with  chariots,  infantry,  and  horsemen, 
 And  Kir  uncovereth  the  shield. 
 
 7  And  it  hath  come  to  pass,  that  thy  choicest  valleys  are  full  of 
 
 chariots, 
 And  the  horsemen  have  set  themselves  in  array  at  the  gate, 
 
 8  And  the  veil  of  Judah  is  torn  away. 
 
 And  thou  hast  looked  in  this  day  to  the  armour  of  the  house  of 
 the  forest : 
 
 9  And  ye  have  seen  to  the  breaches  of  the  city  of  David,  that  they 
 
 are  many : 
 And  ye  have  gathered  together  the  waters  of  the  lower  pool : 
 
 10  And  ye  have  numbered  the  houses  of  Jerusalem, 
 
 And  the  houses  have  ye  broken  down  to  repair  the  wall. 
 
 11  And  ye  have  made  a  reservoir  between  the  Two  Walls, 
 For  the  water  of  the  old  pool : 
 
 But  ye  have  not  looked  unto  Him  who  hath  done  this, 
 Neither  seen  Him  who  purposed  it  long  ago. 
 
 12  And  in  this  day  doth  the  Lord  God  of  hosts  call  to  weeping,  and 
 
 to  mourning, 
 And  to  baldness,  and  to  girding  with  sackcloth : 
 
 13  And  behold  mirth  and  jollity, 
 
 Slaying  oxen,  and  killing  sheep,  eating  flesh,  and  drinking  wine  : 
 Let  us  eat  and  drink ;  for  to-morrow  we  shall  die. 
 
 14  And  the  Lord  of  hosts  hath  revealed  himself  in  mine  ears, 
 
382  ISAIAH  XXIII. 
 
 Surely  this  iniquity  shall  not  be  expiated  by  you  till  ye  die, 
 Saith  the  Lord  God  of  hosts. 
 
 15  Thus  saith  the  Lord  God  of  hosts, 
 
 Go,  get  thee  unto  this  treasurer, 
 
 Unto  Shebna,  which  is  over  the  house,  and  say, 
 1G    What  hast  thou  here?  and  whom  hast  thou  here? 
 
 That  thou  hast  hewed  thee  out  a  sepulchre  here, — 
 
 Hewing  him  out  a  sepulchre  on  high  ! 
 
 Graving  an  habitation  for  himself  in  a  rock  ! 
 
 17  Behold  the  Lord  will  quickly  cast  thee  down,  O  man, 
 
 18  Seizing  thee,  and  rolling  thee  together  like  a  ball, 
 
 And  violently  tossing  thee  like  a  ball  into  a  wide  country; 
 There  shalt  thou  die,  and  there  shall  go  the  chariots  of  thy  glory, 
 Thou  shame  of  thy  lord's  house. 
 
 19  And  I  will  drive  thee  from  thy  station, 
 
 And  from  thy  state  thou  shalt  be  pulled  down. 
 
 20  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  I  will  call  my  servant  Eliakim  the  son  of  Hilkiah  : 
 
 21  And  I  will  clothe  him  with  thy  robe, 
 And  strengthen  him  with  thy  girdle, 
 
 And  I  will  commit  thy  government  into  his  hand: 
 And  he  shall  be  a  father  to  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem,  and  to 
 the  house  of  Judah. 
 
 22  And  the  key  of  the  house  of  David  will  I  lay  upon  his  shoulder ; 
 And  he  shall  open,  and  none  shall  shut ; 
 
 And  he  shall  shut,  and  none  shall  open. 
 
 23  And  I  will  fasten  him  as  a  nail  in  a  sure  place ; 
 
 And  he  shall  be  for  a  glorious  support  to  his  father's  house. 
 
 24  And  they  shall  hang  upon  him  all  the  glory  of  his  father's  house, 
 
 the  offspring  and  the  issue, 
 Every  small  vessel,  from  cups  to  flagons  of  every  kind. 
 
 25  In  that  day,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 
 Shall  the  nail  fastened  in  the  sure  place  be  removed, 
 And  be  cut  down,  and  fall ; 
 
 And  the  burden  that  was  upon  it  shall  be  cut  off: 
 For  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it. 
 
 XXIII  The  burden  op  Ttre. 
 
 Howl,  ye  ships  of  Tarshish  ;  for  it  is  laid  waste! 
 There  is  no  house,  no  entering  in : 
 From  the  land  of  Chittim  it  is  made  known  to  them. 
 
 2  Be  silent,  ye  inhabitants  of  the  Isle ; 
 
 Thou  whom  the  merchants  of  Sidon  have  replenished, 
 
 3  And  whose  revenue  is  by  great  waters, 
 
 The  seed  of  the  Nile,  the  harvest  of  the  river, 
 And  she  is  a  mart  of  nations. 
 
 4  Be  thou  ashamed,  O  Sidon  :  for  the  sea  hath  spoken, 
 Even  the  Stronghold  of  the  sea,  saying, 
 
ISAIAH  XXIV.  383 
 
 I  travail  not,  nor  bring  forth  children, 
 
 Neither  do  I  nourish  up  young  men,  nor  bring  up  virgins. 
 
 5  As  at  the  report  concerning  Egypt, 
 
 So  shall  they  be  sorely  pained  at  the  report  of  Tyre. 
 
 6  Pass  ye  over  to  Tarshish  ;  howl,  ye  inhabitants  of  the  Isle. 
 
 7  Is  this  your  joyous  city,  whose  antiquity  is  of  ancient  days? 
 Her  own  feet  shall  carry  her  afar  off  to  sojourn. 
 
 8  Who    hath    taken    this    counsel  against  Tyre,   the   dispenser   of 
 
 crowns, 
 Whose  merchants  are  princes,  whose  traffickers  are  the  honourable 
 of  the  earth  ? 
 
 9  The  Lord  of  hosts  hath  purposed  it: 
 To  stain  the  pride  of  all  glory, 
 
 And  to  bring  into  contempt  all  the  honourable  of  the  earth. 
 
 10  Pass  through  thy  land  as  a  river,  O  daughter  of  Tarshish  : 
 Thy  bounds  are  no  more. 
 
 11  He  hath  stretched  out  his  hand  over  the  sea,  he  hath  shaken  the 
 
 kingdoms  : 
 The  Lord  hath  given  a  commandment  against  Canaan, 
 To  destroy  the  strongholds  thereof. 
 
 12  And  he  said,  Thou  shalt  no  more  rejoice, 
 
 O  thou  dishonoured  virgin,  daughter  of  Sidon  : 
 
 Arise,  pass  over  to  Chittim ;  there  also  shalt  thou  have  no  rest. 
 
 13  Behold  the  land  of  the  Chaldeans;  this  people  was  not, 
 
 Till  the  Assyrian  founded  it  for  them  that  dwell  in  the  wilderness  : 
 They    set   up  the   towers   thereof,   they  raised   up  the   palaces 
 
 thereof ; 
 And  these  have  brought  her  to  ruin. 
 
 14  Howl,  ye  ships  of  Tarshish  :  for  your  stronghold  is  laid  waste. 
 
 15  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  Tyre  shall  be  forgotten  seventy  years,  according  to  the  days 
 
 of  one  king : 
 After  the  end  of  seventy  years  shall  Tyre  sing  as  an  harlot. 
 
 16  Take  an   harp,  go   about  the   city,  thou   harlot  that  hast  been 
 
 forgotten  ; 
 Make  sweet  melody,  sing  many  songs,  that  thou  mayest  be  re- 
 membered. 
 
 17  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  after  the  end  of  seventy  years, 
 That  the  Lord  will  visit  Tyre,  and  she  shall  turn  to  her  hire, 
 And  shall  play  the  harlot  with  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  Avorld  upon 
 
 the  face  of  the  earth. 
 
 18  And  her  merchandise  and  her  hire  shall  be  holiness  to  the  Lord  : 
 It  shall  not  be  treasured  nor  laid  up ; 
 
 For  her  merchandise  shall  be  for  them  that  dwell  before  the 
 
 Lord, 
 To  eat  sufficiently,  and  for  durable  clothing. 
 
 XXIV  Behold,  the  Lord  poureth  the   earth  out,  and  maketh  it 
 
 empty 
 
384  ISAIAH  XXIV. 
 
 And  turneth  it  upside  down,  and  scattereth  abroad  the  inhabitants 
 thereof. 
 
 2  And  it  shall  be,  as  with  the  people,  so  with  the  priest ; 
 As  with  the  servant,  so  with  his  master ; 
 
 As  with  the  maid,  so  with  her  mistress ; 
 As  with  the  buyer,  so  with  the  seller ; 
 As  with  the  lender,  so  with  the  borrower ; 
 As  with  the  creditor,  so  with  the  debtor. 
 
 3  The  land  is  utterly  emptied,  and  utterly  spoiled  :  for  the  Lord 
 
 hath  spoken  this  word. 
 
 4  The  earth  mourneth  and  fadeth  away,  the  world  languisheth  and 
 
 fadeth  away : 
 The  haughty  people  of  the  earth  do  languish. 
 
 5  The  land  also  is  defiled  under  its  inhabitants ; 
 
 Because  they  have  transgressed  the  laws,  changed  the  ordinance, 
 Broken  the  everlasting  covenant. 
 
 6  Therefore  hath  the  curse  devoured  the  earth, 
 And  they  that  dwell  therein  are  punished  : 
 
 Therefore  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  are  burned,  and  few  men 
 left. 
 
 7  The  new  wine  mourneth,  the  vine  languisheth,   all  the   merry- 
 
 hearted  do  sigh. 
 
 8  The  mirth  of  tabrets  ceaseth,  the  noise  of  them  that  rejoice  endeth, 
 The  joy  of  the  harp  ceaseth. 
 
 They  shall  not  drink  wine  with  a  song ; 
 
 Strong  drink  shall  be  bitter  to  them  that  drink  it. 
 
 10  The  city  of  confusion  is  broken  down  : 
 
 Every  house  is  shut  up,  that  no  man  may  come  in. 
 
 11  There  is  a  crying  for  wine  in  the  streets  ; 
 
 All  joy  is  darkened,  the  mirth  of  the  land  is  gone. 
 
 12  Desolation  is  left  in  the  city,  and  the  gate  is  smitten  with  ruin. 
 
 13  For  so  it  shall  be  in  the  midst  of  the  land,  among  the  peoples, 
 As  the  shaking  of  an  olive  tree, 
 
 As  the  gleaning  grapes  when  the  vintage  is  done. 
 
 14  They  shall  lift  up  their  voice, 
 
 They  shall  sing  for  the  majesty  of  the  Lord, 
 They  shall  cry  aloud  from  the  sea. 
 
 15  Wherefore  glorify  ye  the  Lord  in  the  land  of  the  sunrise, 
 The  name  of  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  in  the  isles  of  the  sea. 
 
 16  From  the  ends  of  the  earth  have  we  heard  songs,  even  glory 
 to  the  Righteous. 
 
 But  I  said,  My  leanness,  my  leanness,  woe  unto  me  1 
 The  treacherous  dealers  have  dealt  very  treacherously : 
 Yea  the  treacherous  dealers  have  dealt  very  treacherously. 
 
 17  Fear,  and  the  pit,  and  the  snare,  are  upon  thee,  O  inhabitant  of  the 
 
 earth. 
 
 18  And  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
 
 That  he  who  fleeeth  from  the  noise  of  the  fear  shall  fall  into  the 
 pit; 
 
ISAIAH  xxv.  385 
 
 And  he  that  cometh  up  out  of  the  midst  of  the  pit  shall  be  taken 
 
 in  the  snare : 
 For  the  windows  from  on  high  are    pened,  and  the  foundations  of 
 
 the  earth  do  shake. 
 
 19  The    earth   is   broken,    broken    up ;    the    earth    is    shattered,  all 
 
 shattered  ; 
 The  earth  doth  quake,  doth  quake  exceedingly ; 
 
 20  The  earth  doth  reel,  doth  reel  like  a  drunken  man, 
 And  swayeth  to  and  fro  like  a  hammock ; 
 
 And  her  transgression  is  heavy  upon  her ; 
 And  she  shall  fall,  and  not  rise  again. 
 
 21  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 
 That  the  Lord  shall  come  to  judge  the  host  of  the  high  ones  that 
 
 are  on  high, 
 And  the  kings  of  the  earth  upon  the  earth. 
 
 22  And  they  shall  be  gathered  together,  as  prisoners  are  gathered  in 
 
 the  dungeon, 
 And  shall  be  shut  up  in  the  prison,  and  after  many  days  shall  they 
 be  visited. 
 
 23  And  the  moon  shall  be  confounded,  and  the  sun  ashamed, 
 For  the  Lord  of  hosts  doth  reign  in  Mount  Zion, 
 
 And  in  Jerusalem,  and  before  his  ancients  gloriously. 
 
 lV     O  Lord,  thou  art  my  God;  I  will  exalt  thee, 
 I  will  praise  thy  name  ; 
 For  thou  hast  done  wonderful  things  ; 
 Thy  counsels  of  old  are  faithfulness  and  truth. 
 
 2  For  thou  hast  made  of  a  city  an  heap  ; 
 Of  a  defenced  city  a  ruin  : 
 
 A  palace  of  strangers  to  be  no  city ;  it  shall  never  be  built  again. 
 
 3  Therefore  shall  the  strong  people  glorify  thee, 
 The  city  of  the  terrible  nations  shall  fear  thee. 
 
 4  For  thou  hast  been  a  stronghold  to  the  poor, 
 A  stronghold  to  the  needy  in  his  distress ; 
 
 A  refuge  from  the  storm,  a  shadow  from  the  heat, 
 
 When  the  blast  of  the  terrible  ones  is  like  a  storm  against  the  wall. 
 
 Thou  shalt  bring  down  the  noise  of  strangers,  as  the  heat  in  a 
 
 drought ; 
 As  the  heat  with  the  shadow  of  a  cloud, 
 The  song  of  the  terrible  ones  shall  be  brought  low. 
 
 6  And   in   this  mountain   shall  the  Lord  of  hosts  make  unto  all 
 
 peoples 
 A  feast  of  fat  things,  a  feast  of  wines  on  the  lees, 
 Of  fat  things  full  of  marrow,  of  wines  on  the  lees  well  refined. 
 
 7  And  he  will  destroy  in  this  mountain  the  face  of  the  covering 
 
 cast  over  all  peoples, 
 And  the  veil  that  is  spread  over  all  nations. 
 
 8  He  will  swallow  up  death  in  victory; 
 
 And  the  Lord  God  will  wipe  away  tears  from  off  all  faces; 
 And  the  rebuke  of  his  people  shall  he  take  away  from  off'  all  the 
 earth  ; 
 
 •  C  C 
 
386  ISAIAH  XXVI. 
 
 For  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it. 
 
 9  And  it  shall  be  said  in  that  day, 
 
 Lo,  this  is  our  God  ;  we  have  waited  for  him,  and  he  will  save  us  : 
 This  is  the  Lord  ;  we  have  waited  for  him, 
 We  will  be  glad  and  rejoice  in  his  salvation. 
 
 10  For  in  this  mountain  shall  the  hand  of  the  Lord  rest, 
 And  Moab  shall  be  trodden  down  under  him, 
 
 As  straw  is  trodden  down  in  the  water  of  the  dunghill. 
 
 11  And  he  shall  spread  forth  his  hands  in  the  midst  of  it, 
 As  he  that  swimmeth  spreadeth  forth  his  hands  to  swim  : 
 And  He  shall  bring  down  their  pride, 
 
 Together  with  the  spoils  of  their  hands. 
 
 12  And  the  fortress  of  the  high   fort  of  thy  walls  shall   he  bring 
 
 down, 
 Lay  low,  and  bring  to  the  ground,  even  to  the  dust. 
 
 XXVI  In  that  day  shall  this  song  be  sung  in  the  land  of  Judah  ; 
 
 We  have  a  strong  city ;  salvation  will  God  appoint  for  walls  and 
 bulwarks. 
 
 2  Open  ye  the  gates,  that  the  righteous  nation  which  keepeth  the 
 
 truth  may  enter  in. 
 
 3  Thou  wilt  keep  him  in  perfect  peace,  whose  mind  is  stayed  on 
 
 thee  : 
 Because  he  trusteth  in  thee. 
 
 4  Trust  ye  in  the  Lord  for  ever  :  for  in  the  Lord  Jehovah  is  an 
 
 everlasting  rock  : 
 
 5  For  he  bringeth  down  them  that  dwell  on  high  ; 
 The  lofty  city,  he  layeth  it  low  ; 
 
 He  layeth  it  low,  even  to  the  ground ;  he  bringeth  it  even  to  the 
 dust. 
 G    The  foot  shall  tread  it  down,  the  feet  of  the  poor,  the  steps  of  the 
 needy. 
 
 7  The  way  of  the  just  is  straight :  thou,  Most  Upright,  dost  level  the 
 
 path  of  the  just. 
 
 8  Yea,  in  the  way  of  thy  judgments,  O  Lord,  have  we  waited  for 
 
 thee ; 
 The  desire  of  our  soul  is  to  thy  name,  and  to  the  remembrance  of 
 thee. 
 
 9  With  my  soul  have  I  desired  thee  in  the  night ; 
 Yea,  with  my  spirit  within  me  will  I  seek  thee  early : 
 For  when  thy  judgments  are  in  the  earth, 
 
 The  inhabitants  of  the  world  learn  righteousness. 
 
 10  Let  favour  be    showed   to   the  wicked,   yet   will    lie    not   learn 
 
 righteousness  : 
 In  the  land  of  uprightness  will  he  deal  unjustly, 
 And  will  not  behold  the  majesty  of  the  Lord. 
 
 11  Lord,  when  thy  hand  is  lifted  up,  they  will  not  see: 
 
 But  they  shall  see,  and  be  ashamed  at  thy  zeal  for  thy  people  ; 
 Yea,  the  fire  of  thine  enemies  shall  devour  them. 
 
 12  Lord,  thou  wilt  ordain  peace  for  us  : 
 
 For  thou  hast  wrought  even  all  our  works  for  us. 
 
ISAIAH  XXVII.  387 
 
 13  O  Loud  our  God,  other  lords  beside  thee  have  had  dominion 
 
 over  us  : 
 But  by  thee  only  will  we  make  mention  of  thy  name. 
 
 14  They  are  dead,  they  shall  not  live ;  they  are  shades,  they  shall 
 
 not  rise  : 
 Therefore  hast  thou  visited  and  destroyed  them, 
 And  made  all  their  memory  to  perish. 
 
 15  Thou  hast  increased  the  nation,  O  Lord, 
 
 Thou  hast  increased  the  nation  :  thou  hast  glorified  thyself: 
 Thou  hadst  enlarged  all  the  borders  of  the  land. 
 
 16  Lord,  in  trouble  have  they  visited  thee, 
 
 They  poured  out  a  whispered  prayer,  thy  chastening  was  upon 
 them. 
 
 17  As  a  woman  with  child,  when  she  draweth  near  the  time  of  her 
 
 delivery, 
 Is  in  pain,  and  crieth  out  in  her  pangs ;  so  have  we  been  in  thy 
 sight,  O  Lord. 
 
 18  We  have  been  with  child,  we  have  been  in  pain,  we  have  as  it 
 
 were  brought  forth  wind  ; 
 We  have  not  wrought  any  deliverance  in  the  earth ; 
 Neither  are  the  inhabitants  of  the  world  born. 
 
 19  Thy  dead  shall  live,  my  dead  bodies  shall  arise : 
 Awake  and  sing,  ye  that  dwell  in  dust: 
 
 For  thy  dew  is  as  the  dew  of  herbs, 
 And  the  earth  shall  bring  forth  the  dead. 
 
 20  Come,  my  people,  enter  thou  into  thy  chambers, 
 And  shut  thy  doors  about  thee  : 
 
 Hide  thyself  for  a  little  moment,  until  the  indignation  be  over- 
 past. 
 
 21  For,  behold,  the  Lord  cometh  out  of  his  place, 
 
 To  punish  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  for  their  iniquity  : 
 And  the  earth  shall  disclose  her  blood,  and  shall  no  more  cover 
 her  slain. 
 
 /FI  In  that  day  the  Lord,  with  his  sore  and  great  and  strong 
 
 sword, 
 Shall  punish  leviathan  the  fleet  serpent, 
 Even  leviathan  that  coiled  serpent ; 
 And  he  shall  slay  the  dragon  that  is  in  the  sea. 
 
 2  In  that  day  sing  ye  unto  her, 
 A  vineyard  of  wine  :  — ■ 
 
 3  I  the  Lord  do  keep  it :  I  will  water  it  every  moment: 
 Lest  any  hurt  it,  I  will  keep  it  night  and  day. 
 
 4  Fury  is  not  in  me :  who  would  set  the  briars  and  thorns  against 
 
 me  in  battle  ? 
 I  would  go  through  them,  I  would  burn  them  together. 
 
 5  Or  let  him  take  hold  of  my  strength, 
 
 Let  him  make  peace  with  me ;  let  him  make  peace  with  me. 
 
 6  In  the  coming  time  Jacob  shall  take  root : 
 
 Israel  shall  bud  and  blossom,  and  fill  the  face  of  the  world  with 
 fruit. 
 
 c  c  2 
 
388  ISAIAH  XXVIII. 
 
 7  Hath  He  smitten  him,  as  He  smote  those  that  smote  him  ? 
 Is  he  slain  with  the  slaughter  of  their  slain  ? 
 
 8  In  measure,  by  sending  her  away,  thou  dost  contend  with  her : 
 He  driveth  her  away  by  his  rough  wind  in  the  day  of  the  east 
 
 wind. 
 
 9  By  this  therefore  shall  the  iniquity  of  Jacob  be  purged  ; 
 And  this  is  all  its  fruit:  —  to  take  away  his  sin, 
 
 To  break  all  the  stones  of  the  altar  in  pieces  like  chalkstones, 
 And  to  raise  up  the  images  of  Astarte,  and  of  the  Sun,  no  more. 
 
 10  For  the  defenced  city  shall  be  desolate, 
 
 The  habitation  forsaken,  and  left  like  a  wilderness : 
 There  shall  the  calf  feed,  and  there  shall  he  lie  down, 
 And  consume  the  branches  thereof. 
 
 11  When  the  boughs  thereof  are  withered,  they  shall  be  broken  off: 
 The  women  come,  and  burn  them  up : 
 
 For  it  is  a  people  of  no  understanding : 
 
 Therefore  he  that  made  them  will  not  have  mercy  on  them, 
 
 And  he  that  formed  them  will  show  them  no  favour. 
 
 12  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 That  the  Lord  shall  gather  in  his  fruit 
 
 From  the  channel  of  the  River  unto  the  stream  of  Egypt, 
 And  ye  shall  be  gathered  one  by  one,  O  ye  children  of  Israel. 
 
 13  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day, 
 That  the  great  trumpet  shall  be  blown, 
 
 And  they  shall  come  which  were  ready  to  perish  in  the  land  of 
 
 Assyria, 
 And  the  outcasts  in  the  land  of  Egypt, 
 And  shall  worship  the  Lord  in  the  holy  mount  at  Jerusalem. 
 
 XXVIII  Woe  to  the  crown  of  pride,  the  drunkards  of  Ephraim, 
 
 And  to  the  fading  flower  of  his  glorious  beauty, 
 Which  are  on  the  head  of  the  Tat  valley  of  them  that  are  over- 
 come with  wine ! 
 
 2  Behold,  the  Lord  hath  a  mighty  and  strong  one, 
 Which  as  a  tempest  of  hail  and  a  destroying  storm, 
 
 As  a  flood  of  mighty  waters  overflowing,  hath  cast  it  down  to  the 
 earth  with  the  hand. 
 
 3  The  crown  of  pride  of  the  drunkards  of  Ephraim  shall  be  trodden 
 
 under  feet : 
 
 4  And  the  glorious  beauty,  which  is  on  the  head  of  the  fat  valley, 
 Shall  be  a  fading  flower,  and  as  the  early  fruit  before  the  summer; 
 Which  when  he  that  looketh  upon  it  seeth, 
 
 While  it  is  yet  in  his  hand  he  eateth  it  up. 
 
 5  In  that  day  shall  the  Lord  of  hosts  be  for  a  crown  of  glory, 
 And  for  a  diadem  of  beauty,  unto  the  residue  of  his  people, 
 
 6  And  for  a  spirit  of  judgment  to  him  that  sitteth  in  judgment, 
 And  for  strength  to  them  that  turn  the  battle  to  the  gate. 
 
 7  But  they  also  have  erred  through  wine, 
 
 And  through  strong  drink    are  out  of  the  way  ; 
 
ISAIAH  XXVIII.  389 
 
 The  priest  and  the  prophet  have  erred  through  strong  drink, 
 
 They  are  swallowed  up  of  wine, 
 
 They  are  out  of  the  way  through  strong  drink. ; 
 
 They  err  in  vision,  they  stumble  in  judgment. 
 
 8  For  all  tables  are  full  of  vomit  and  n'lthiness, 
 So  that  there  is  no  place  clean. 
 
 9  "Whom  will  he  teach  knowledge?  and  whom  will  he  make  to 
 
 understand  doctrine? 
 "Them  that  are  weaned  from  the  milk,  and  taken  from  the 
 breasts? 
 
 10  "  It  is  precept  upon  precept,  precept  upon  precept ; 
 
 "Line  upon  line,  line  upon  line  ;  here  a  little,  and  there  a  little." 
 
 11  Yea,  with  stammering  lips  and  another  tongue 
 Will  He  speak  to  this  people, 
 
 12  Who  said  to  them, 
 
 This  is  the  rest :  cause  the  weary  to  rest ;  and  this  is  the  refreshing  ; 
 But  they  would  not  hear. 
 
 13  And  the  word  of  the  Lord  is  unto  them 
 Precept  upon  precept,  precept  upon  precept ; 
 
 Line  upon  line,  line  upon  line  ;  here  a  little,  there  a  little  ; 
 That  they  might  go,  and  fall  backward,  and  be  broken,  and  snared, 
 and  taken. 
 
 14  Wherefore  hear  the  word  of  the  Lord,  ye  scornful  men, 
 That  rule  this  people  which  is  in  Jerusalem. 
 
 15  Because  ye  have  said, 
 
 We  have  made  a  covenant  with  death, 
 
 And  with  hell  are  we  at  agreement ; 
 
 When  the  overflowing  scourge  shall  pass  through,  it  shall  not  come 
 
 unto  us : 
 For  we  have  made  lies  our  refuge,  and  under  falsehood  have  we 
 
 hid  ourselves  : 
 
 16  Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord  God, 
 
 Behold,  I  have  laid  in  Zion  a  foundation  stone, 
 
 A  tried  stone,  a  precious  corner  stone,  a  sure  foundation  : 
 
 He  that  believeth  shall  not  make  haste. 
 
 17  And  I  will  set  judgment  for  the  line,  and  righteousness  for  the 
 
 plummet : 
 And  the  hail  shall  sweep  away  the  refuge  of  lies, 
 And  the  waters  shall  overflow  the  hiding  place. 
 
 18  And  your  covenant  with  death  shall  be  disannulled, 
 And  your  agreement  with  hell  shall  not  stand ; 
 When  the  overflowing  scourge  shall  pass  through, 
 Then  ye  shall  be  trodden  down  by  it. 
 
 19  And  as  often  as  it  passeth  through,  it  shall  take  you  : 
 
 For  morning  by  morning  shall  it  pass  through,  by  day  and  by 
 
 night  : 
 And  affliction  alone  will  make  you  understand  doctrine. 
 
 20  For  the  bed  is  too  short  to  stretch  oneself: 
 And  the  covering  too  narrow  to  wrap  oneself. 
 
 21  For  the  Lord  shall  rise  up  as  in  Mount  Perazim, 
 
 c  c  3 
 
390  ISAIAH  XXIX. 
 
 He  shall  be  wroth  as  in  the  valley  of  Gibeon, 
 That  he  may  do  his  work,  his  strange  work  ; 
 And  bring  to  pass  his  act,  his  strange  act. 
 
 22  Now   therefore   be  ye   not  mockers,   lest   your    bands   be   made 
 
 strong : 
 For  I  have  heard  from  the  Lord  God  of  hosts  a  consumption, 
 Even  determined  upon  the  whole  land. 
 
 23  Give  ye  ear,  and  hear  my  voice  ;  hearken,  and  hear  my  speech. 
 
 24  Is  the  ploughman  always  ploughing  in  order  to  sow? 
 Doth  he  open  and  break  the  clods  of  his  ground? 
 
 25  When  he  hath  made  plain  the  face  thereof, 
 
 Doth  he  not  cast  abroad  the  dill,  and  scatter  the  cummin, 
 
 And  sow  the  wheat  in  rows,  and  the  barley  in  the  appointed  place, 
 
 And  the  rye  in  his  border  ? 
 
 26  For  his  God  doth  instruct  him  to  discretion,  and  cloth  teach  him. 
 
 27  For  the  dill  is  not  threshed  with  the  corn-sledge, 
 Neither  is  the  cart  wheel  turned  about  upon  the  cummin  ; 
 
 But  the  dill  is  beaten  out  with  a  staff,  and  the  cummin  with  a  rod. 
 
 28  Bread  corn  is  bruised  ;  yet  he  is  not  always  threshing  it, 
 Nor  breaking  it  with  the  wheel  of  his  cart, 
 
 Nor  bruising  it  with  his  horses. 
 
 29  This  also  cometh  forth  from  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
 
 Who  is  wonderful  in  counsel,  and  excellent  in  working. 
 
 XXIX  Woe  to  Ariel,  to  Ariel,  the  city  where  David  dwelt ! 
 
 Add  ye  year  to  year;  let  the  festivals  go  round. 
 
 2  Yet  I  will  distress  Ariel,  and  there  shall  be  heaviness  and  sorrow  : 
 And  it  shall  be  unto  me  as  Ariel. 
 
 3  And  I  will  camp  against  thee  round  about, 
 And  will  lay  siege  against  thee  with  a  mount, 
 And  I  will  raise  forts  against  thee. 
 
 4  And  thou  shalt  be   brought  down,  and   shalt   speak  out  of  the 
 
 ground, 
 And  thy  speech  shall  be  low  out  of  the  dust, 
 And  thy  voice  shall  be  like  that  of  a  spirit  out  of  the  ground, 
 And  thy  speech  shall  whisper  out  of  the  dust. 
 
 5  And  the  multitude  of  thy  foreign  invaders  shall  be  like  small  dust, 
 And  the  multitude  of  the  terrible  ones  as  passing  chaff: 
 
 Yea,  it  shall  be  at  an  instant  suddenly. 
 G    Thou  shalt  be  visited  of  the  Lord  of  hosts 
 
 With  thunder,  and  with  earthquake,  and  great  noise, 
 With  storm  and  tempest,  and  the  flame  of  devouring  fire. 
 
 7  And  the  multitude  of  all  the  nations  that  fight  against  Ariel, 
 Even  all  that  fight  against  her  and  her  bulwarks,  and  that  distress 
 
 her, 
 Shall  be  as  a  dream  of  a  night  vision. 
 
 8  It  shall  even  be  as  when  an  hungry  man  dreameth,  and,  behold, 
 
 he  eateth  ; 
 But  he  awaketh,  and  his  soul  is  empty  : 
 Or  as  when  a  thirsty  man  dreameth,  and,  behold,  he  drinketh  ; 
 
ISAIAH  XXIX.  391 
 
 But  he  awaketh,  and,  behold,  he  is  faint,  and  his  soul  craveth  : 
 So  shall  the  multitude  of  all  the  nations  be,  that  fight  against 
 mount  Zion. 
 
 9  Waver,  and  wonder ;  be  merry,  and  blind  : 
 
 They  are  drunken,  but  not  with  wine ; 
 They  stagger,  but  not  with  strong  drink. 
 
 10  For  the  Lord  hath  poured  out  upon  you  the  spirit  of  deep  sleep, 
 And  hath  closed  your  eyes  : 
 
 The  prophets  and  your  rulers,  the  seers  hath  he  covered. 
 
 11  And  the  vision  of  all  is  become  unto  you  as  the  words  of  a  sealed 
 
 writing, 
 Which  men  deliver  to  one  that  knows  letters,  saying, 
 Read  this,  I  pray  thee  : 
 And  he  saith,  I  cannot ;  for  it  is  sealed  : 
 
 12  And  the  book  is  delivered  to  him  that  knows  not  letters,  saying, 
 Read  this,  I  pray  thee  : 
 
 And  he  saith,  I  know  not  letters. 
 
 13  Wherefore  the  Lord  hath  said, 
 
 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  toward  me  is  taught  by  the  precept  of  men  :' 
 
 14  Therefore,  behold,  I  will  proceed  to  do  a  marvellous  work  among 
 
 this  people, 
 Even  a  marvellous  work  and  a  wonder ; 
 For  the  wisdom  of  their  wise  men  shall  perish, 
 And  the  understanding  of  their  prudent  men  shall  hide  itself  for 
 
 shame. 
 
 15  Woe  unto  them  that  seek  deep  to  hide  their  counsel  from  the 
 Lord, 
 
 And  their  works  are  in  the  dark, 
 
 And  they  say,  Who  seeth  us?  and  who  knoweth  us? 
 
 16  Surely  your  turning  of  things  upside  down  shall  be  esteemed  as 
 
 the  potter's  clay  : 
 For  shall  the  work  say  of  him  that  made  it,  He  made  me  not  ? 
 Or  shall  the  thing  framed  say  of  him  that  framed  it, 
 He  had  no  understanding? 
 
 17  Is  it  not  yet  a  very  little  while,  and  Lebanon  shall  be  turned  into 
 
 a  fruitful  field, 
 And  the  fruitful  field  shall  be  reckoned  to  the  forest  ? 
 
 18  And  in  that  day  shall  the  deaf  hear  the  words  of  the  book, 
 
 And  the  eyes  of  the  blind  shall  see  out  of  obscurity,  and  out  of 
 darkness. 
 
 19  The  meek  also  shall  increase  their  joy  in  the  Lord, 
 
 And  the  poor  among  men  shall  rejoice  in  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 
 
 20  For  the  terrible  one  is  brought  to  nought,  and  the  scorner  ceaseth, 
 And  all  that  watch  for  iniquity  are  cut  off: 
 
 21  That  make  a  man  an  offender  for  a  word, 
 
 And  lay  a  snare  for  him  that  reproveth  in  the  gate, 
 
392  ISAIAH  XXX. 
 
 And  turn  aside  the  just  for  a  thing  of  nought. 
 
 22  Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord,  who  redeemed  Abraham, 
 Concerning  the  house  of  Jacob  :  — 
 
 Jacob  shall  no  more  be  ashamed,  neither  shall  his  face  any  more 
 wax  pale. 
 
 23  But  when  he  seeth  his  children,  the  work,  of  mine  hands,  in  the 
 
 midst  of  him, 
 They  shall  sanctify  my  name,  and  sanctify  the  Holy  One  of  Jacob, 
 And  shall  fear  the  God  of  Israel. 
 
 24  They  also  that  erred  in  spirit  shall  come  to  understanding, 
 And  the  murmurers  shall  learn  doctrine. 
 
 XXX  Woe  to  the  rebellious  children,  saith  the  Loud, 
 
 That  take  counsel,  but  not  of  me  ; 
 And  that  weave  a  web,  but  not  of  my  spirit, 
 That  they  may  add  sin  to  sin  : 
 
 2  That  walk  to  go  down  into  Egypt,  and  have  not  asked  at  my 
 
 mouth  ; 
 To  strengthen  themselves  in  the  strength  of  Pharaoh, 
 And  to  trust  in  the  shadow  of  Egypt! 
 
 3  Therefore  shall  the  strength  of  Pharaoh  be  your  shame, 
 And  the  trust  in  the  shadow  of  Egypt  your  confusion. 
 
 4  For  his  princes  are  at  Zoan,  and  his  ambassadors  come  to  Hanes. 
 
 5  They  are  all  ashamed  of  a  people  that  can  not  profit  them, 
 Nor  be  an  help  nor  profit,  but  a  shame,  and  also  a  reproaeh. 
 
 6  O  the  burden  of  the  beasts  travelling  southwards! 
 Through  a  land  of  trouble  and  anguish, 
 
 From  whence  come  the  lioness  and  the  fierce  lion, 
 
 The  viper  and  fiery  flying  serpent : 
 
 They  carry  their  riches  upon  the  shoulders  of  young  asses, 
 
 And  their  treasures  upon  the  bunches  of  camels, 
 
 To  a  people  that  shall  not  profit  them. 
 
 7  For  the  Egyptians  shall  help  in  vain,  and  to  no  purpose  : 
 Therefore  have  I  called  her  the  blusterer  that  sitteth  still. 
 
 8  Now  go,  write  it  before  them  on  a  table,  and  note  it  in  a  book, 
 That  it  may  be  for  the  time  to  come  for  ever  and  ever  : 
 
 9  For  this  is  a  rebellious  people,  lying  children, 
 Children  that  will  not  hear  the  law  of  the  Lord  : 
 
 10  Which  say  to  the  seers,  Ye  shall  not  see ; 
 
 And  to  the  prophets,  Ye  shall  not   not   prophesy  unto  us  right 
 
 things ; 
 Speak  unto  us  smooth  things,  prophesy  deceits : 
 
 11  Get  out  of  the  way,  turn  aside  out  of  the  path, 
 Cause  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  to  cease  from  before  us. 
 
 12  Wherefore  thus  saith  the  Holy  One  of  Israel, 
 Because  ye  despise  this  word, 
 
 And  trust  in  oppression  and  perverseness,  and  stay  thereon  : 
 
 13  Therefore  this  iniquity  shall  be  to  you  as  a  breach  ready  to  fall, 
 Swelling  out  in  a  high  wall,  whose  breaking  cometh  suddenly  at 
 
 an  instant. 
 
ISAIAH  XXX.  393 
 
 14  And  it  shall  be  broken  as  when  an  earthen  pitcher  is  broken  in 
 
 pieces,  —  broken  unsparingly, 
 So  that  there  is  not  to  be  found,  among  its  fragments, 
 A  sherd  to  take  fire  from  the  hearth, 
 Or  to  take  water  withal  out  of  the  well. 
 
 15  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  God,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel ; 
 In  returning  and  rest  shall  ye  be  saved  ; 
 
 In  quietness  and  in  confidence  shall  be  your  strength : 
 And  ye  would  not. 
 
 16  But  ye  said,  No  ;  for  we  will  flee  upon  horses  ; 
 Therefore  shall  ye  flee  : 
 
 And,  We  will  ride  upon  the  swift ; 
 Therefore  shall  they  that  pursue  you  be  swift. 
 
 17  One  thousand  shall  flee  at  the  rebuke  of  one  ; 
 At  the  rebuke  of  five  shall  ye  flee  : 
 
 Till  ye  be  left  as  a  flag-staff  upon  the  top  of  a  mountain, 
 And  as  a  signal  on  an  hill. 
 
 18  And  therefore  will  the  Lord  wait,  that  he  may  be  gracious 
 unto  you, 
 
 And  therefore  will  he  be  exalted,  that  he  may  have  mercy  upon 
 
 you  : 
 For  the  Lord  is  a  God  of  righteousness  : 
 Blessed  are  all  they  that  wait  for  him. 
 13  For  the  people  shall  dwell  in  Zion  at  Jerusalem  : 
 
 Thou  shalt  weep  no  more  : 
 
 He  will  be  very  gracious  unto  thee  at  the  voice  of  thy  cry  ; 
 When  he  shall  hear  it,  he  will  answer  thee. 
 
 20  And  though  the  Lord  give  you  the  bread  of  adversity,  and  the 
 
 water  of  affliction, 
 Yet  shall  not  thy  teachers  be  removed  into  a  corner  any  more, 
 But  thine  eyes  shall  see  thy  teachers  : 
 
 21  And  thine  ears  shall  hear  a  word  behind  thee,  saying, 
 This  is  the  way,  walk  ye  in  it, 
 
 When  ye  turn  to  the  right  hand,  and  when  ye  turn  to  the  left. 
 
 22  Ye  shall  defile  also  the  covering  of  thy  graven  images  of  silver, 
 And  the  ornament  of  thy  molten  images  of  gold  : 
 
 Thou  shalt  cast  them  away  as  a  loathsome  thing ; 
 Thou  shalt  say  unto  it,  Get  thee  hence. 
 
 23  Then  shall  he  give  rain  for  thy  seed,  that  thou  shalt  sow  the  ground 
 
 withal ; 
 And  bread  of  the  increase  of  the  earth,  and  it  shall  be  fat  and 
 
 plenteous : 
 In  that  day  shall  thy  cattle  feed  in  large  pastures. 
 
 24  The  oxen  and  the  young  asses  that  till  the  ground  shall  eat  well- 
 
 seasoned  provender, 
 Which  hath  been  winnowed  with  the  shovel  and  with  the  fan. 
 
 25  And  there  shall  be  upon  every  lofty  mountain,  and  upon  every  high 
 
 hill, 
 Rivers,  and  streams  of  waters, 
 
394  Isaiah  xxxi. 
 
 In  the  day  of  the  great  slaughter,  when  the  towers  fall. 
 
 26  And  the  light  of  the  moon  shall  be  as  the  light  of  the  sun, 
 
 And  the  light  of  the  sun  shall  be  sevenfold,  as  the  light  of  seven 
 
 days, 
 In  the  day  that  the  Lord  bindeth  up  the  breach  of  his  people, 
 And  healeth  tlffe  stroke  of  their  wound. 
 
 27  Behold,  the  name  of  the  Lord  cometh  from  far, 
 His  anger  burning,  and  its  flame  going  up  heavily  : 
 
 His  lips  are  full  of  indignation,  and  his  tongue  as  a  devouring 
 fire  : 
 
 28  And  his  breath  as  an  overflowing  stream,  shall  reach  to  the  midst 
 
 of  the  neck. 
 He  will  sift  the  nations  with  the  sieve  of  perdition  : 
 And  will  put  a  bridle  in  the  jaws  of  the  peoples,  to  lead  them 
 
 astray. 
 
 29  Ye  shall  have  a  song,  as  in  the  night  when  a  holy  solemnity  is  kept ; 
 And  gladness  of  heart,  as  when  one  goeth  with  a  pipe 
 
 To  come  into  the  mountain  of  the  Lord,  to  the  Rock  of  Israel. 
 
 30  And  the  Lord  shall  cause  the  majesty  of  his  voice  to  be  heard, 
 And  shall  show  the  lighting  down  of  his  arm, 
 
 With  the  indignation  of  anger  and  a  flame  of  devouring  fire, 
 With  scattering,  and  tempest,  and  stones  of  hail. 
 
 31  For  through  the  voice  of  the  Lord  shall  the  Assyrian  be  beaten 
 
 down. 
 He  shall  smite  him  with  a  rod. 
 
 32  And  every  stroke  of  the  staff  of  doom,  which  the  Lord  shall  lay 
 
 upon  him, 
 Shall  be  with  tabrets  and  harps :  and  with  fierce  battles  will  he 
 fight  against  them. 
 
 33  For  Tophet  is  ordained  of  old  ;  yea,  for  the  king  it  is  prepared; 
 He  hath  made  it  deep  and  large  :  the  pile  thereof  is  fire  and  much 
 
 wood  ; 
 The  breath  of  the  Lord,  like  a  stream  of  brimstone,  doth  kindle  it. 
 
 XXXI  Woe  to  them  that  go  down  to  Egypt   for  help ;    and    stay 
 
 on  horses, 
 And  trust  in  chariots,  because  they  are  many  ; 
 And  in  horsemen,  because  they  are  very  strong ; 
 But  that  look  not  unto  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  neither  seek  the 
 
 Lord  ! 
 
 2  Yet  He  also  is  wise,  and  bringeth  evil,  and  doth  not  call  back  his 
 
 words : 
 And  he  riseth  up  against  the  house  of  the  evildoers, 
 And  against  the  help  of  them  that  work  iniquity. 
 
 3  And  the  Egyptians  are  men,  and  not  God  ; 
 And  their  horses  flesh,  and  not  spirit. 
 
 And  the  Lord  shall  stretch  out  his  hand, 
 
 And  he  that  helpeth  shall  fall,  and   he  that  is  holpcn   shall   fall 
 
 down, 
 And  they  all  shall  perish  together. 
 
isaiaii  xxxii.  395 
 
 4  For  thus  hath  the  Lord  spoken  unto  me, 
 
 Like  as  the  lion  and  the  young  lion  growling  over  his  prey, 
 When  a  multitude  of  shepherds  is  called  forth  against  him, 
 He  is  not  afraid  of  their  voice,  nor  abaseth  himself  for  the  noise 
 
 of  them  : 
 So  shall  the  Lord  of  hosts  come  down  to  fight  for  mount  Zion, 
 
 and  for  the  hill  thereof. 
 
 5  As  the  mother  birds  hovering  over  their  young, 
 So  will  the  Lord  of  hosts  defend  Jerusalem ; 
 Defend  and  deliver,  pass  over  and  save. 
 
 6  Return  ye  unto  Him  from  whom  ye  have  so  deeply  revolted, 
 O  sons  of  Israel. 
 
 7  For  in  that  day  every  man  shall  cast  away  his  idols  of  silver,  and 
 
 his  idols  of  gold, 
 Which  your  own  hands  have  made  unto  you  for  a  sin. 
 
 8  Then  shall  the  Assyrian  fall  by  the  sword,  not  of  a  man  ; 
 And  the  sword,  not  of  a  mortal,  shall  devour  him : 
 
 And  he  shall  flee  from  the  sword,  and  his  young  warriors  shall  be 
 bondsmen. 
 
 9  And  he  shall  pass  over  to  his  strong  hold  for  fear, 
 And  his  princes  shall  be  afraid  of  every  standard, 
 
 Saith  the  Lord,  whose  fire  is  in  Zion,  and  his  furnace  in  Jerusalem, 
 
 II  Behold,  a  king  shall  reign  in  righteousness, 
 
 And  princes  shall  rule  in  judgment. 
 
 2  And  a  man  shall  be  as  an  hiding  place  from  the  wind, 
 And  a  covert  from  the  storm ; 
 
 As  rivers  of  water  in  a  dry  place, 
 
 As  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land. 
 
 3  And  the  eyes  of  them  that  see  shall  not  be  dim, 
 And  the  ears  of  them  that  hear  shall  hearken.' 
 
 4  And  the  heart  of  the  reckless  shall  understand  knowledge, 
 
 And  the  tongue  of  the  stammerer  shall  be  ready  to  speak  plainly. 
 
 5  The  vile  person  shall  be  no  more  called  honourable, 
 Nor  the  churl  said  to  be  bountiful. 
 
 6  For  the  vile  person  will  speak  villany,  and  his   heart  will  work 
 
 iniquity, 
 To  practise  hypocrisy,  and  to  utter  error  against  the  Lord, 
 To  make  empty  the  soul  of  the  hungry, 
 And  he  will  cause  the  drink  of  the  thirsty  to  fail. 
 
 7  The  instruments  also  of  the  churl  are  evil :  he  deviseth  wicked 
 
 devices 
 To  destroy  the  poor  with   lying  words,   even  when    the  needy 
 speaketh  right. 
 
 8  But  the  liberal  deviseth  liberal  things  ;  and  on  liberal  things  doth 
 
 he  take  his  stand. 
 
 9  Rise  up,  ye  women  that  are  at  ease  ; 
 
 Hear  my  voice,  ye  careless  daughters ;  give  ear  unto  my  speech. 
 
 10  In  a  year  and  day  shall  ye  be  troubled,  ye  careless  women: 
 For  the  vintage  faileth,  the  gathering  shall  not  come. 
 
396  isaiaii  xxxm. 
 
 11  Tremble,  ye  women  that  are  at  ease;  be  troubled,  ye  careless 
 
 ones  : 
 Strip  you,  and   make  you   bare,  and  gird  sackcloth  upon  your 
 loins : 
 
 12  Beating  on  the  breasts,  for  the  pleasant  fields,  for  the  fruitful  vine. 
 
 13  Upon  the  land  of  my  people  shall  come  up  thorns  and  briers  ; 
 Yea,  upon  all  the  houses  of  joy  in  the  joyous  city. 
 
 14  For  the  palace  is  forsaken  ;  the  crowd  of  the  city  left ; 
 
 Hill,  fort,  and  tower  are  dens  for  ever,  a  joy  of  wild  asses,  a  pas- 
 ture of  flocks  ; 
 
 15  Until  the  Spirit  be  poured  upon  us  from  on  high, 
 
 And  the  wilderness  become  a  fruitful  field,  and  the  fruitful  field 
 be  reckoned  to  the  forest. 
 
 16  And  judgment  shall  dwell   in  the  wilderness,  and  righteousness 
 
 abide  in  the  fruitful  field  ; 
 
 17  And  the  work  of  righteousness  shall  be  peace  ; 
 
 And  the  effect  of  righteousness  quietness  and  assurance  for  ever. 
 
 18  And  my  people  shall  dwell  in  a  home  of  peace, 
 And  in  sure  dwellings,  and  in  quiet  resting  places  ; 
 
 13    And  it  shall  hail,  to  the  downfall  of  the  forest ; 
 
 And  the  city  shall  be  low  in  a  low  place. 
 20    Blessed  are  ye  that  sow  beside  all  waters, 
 
 That  send  forth  the  feet  of  the  ox  and  the  ass. 
 
 XXXIII     Woe  to  thee  that  spoilest,  and  thou  wast  not  spoiled  ; 
 
 And  dealest  treacherously,  and  they  dealt  not  treacherously  with 
 
 thee ! 
 When  thou  shalt  cease  to  spoil,  thou  shalt  be  spoiled  ; 
 When  thou  hast  done  dealing  treacherously, 
 They  shall  deal  treacherously  with  thee. 
 
 2  O  Lord,  be  gracious  unto  us  ;  we  wait  for  thee  : 
 
 Be  thou  their  arm  every  morning,  our  salvation  also  in  the  time 
 of  trouble. 
 
 3  At  the  voice  of  thy  mouth  the  peoples  flee  ; 
 At  thy  rising  up  the  nations  are  scattered. 
 
 4  And  your  spoil  shall  be  gathered  like  the  gathering  of  the  cater- 
 
 pillar : 
 As  the  running  to  and  fro  of  locusts  shall  they  run  upon  it. 
 
 5  The  Lord  is  exalted  ;  for  he  dwelleth  on  high  : 
 
 He  hath  filled  Zion  with  judgment  and  righteousness. 
 
 6  And  He  shall  be  the  stability  of  thy  times. 
 
 Thy  strength  of  salvation,  wisdom  and  knowledge  : 
 The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  his  treasure. 
 
 7  Behold,  their  valiant  ones  cry  without : 
 The  ambassadors  of  peace  weep  bitterly. 
 
 8  The  highways  lie  waste,  the  wayfaring  man  ceaseth  : 
 
 He  hath  broken  the  covenant,  he  hath  despised   the  cities,  he 
 regardeth  no  man. 
 
 9  The  earth  mourneth  and  languisheth  : 
 Lebanon  is  ashamed  and  withereth  away  : 
 
ISAIAH  XXXIV.  397 
 
 Sharon  is  like  a  wilderness  ;  and   Bashan  and  Carmel  cast  their 
 leaves. 
 
 10  Now  will  I  rise,  shall  the  Lord  say ; 
 
 Now  will  I  be  exalted  ;  now  will  1  lift  up  myself. 
 
 11  Ye  shall  conceive  chaff,  ye  shall  bring  forth  stubble  : 
 Your  breath,  as  fire,  shall  devour  you. 
 
 12  And  the  people  shall  be  as  the  burnings  of  lime  : 
 As  thorns  cut  up  shall  they  be  burned  in  the  fire. 
 
 13  Hear,  ye  that  are  far  of!',  what  I  have  done  ; 
 And,  ye  that  are  near,  acknowledge  my  might. 
 
 14  The  sinners   in   Zion   are  afraid  ;  fearfulness  had  surprised   the 
 
 hypocrites. 
 Who  among  us  can  abide  the  devouring  fire  ? 
 Who  among  us  can  abide  perpetual  burnings  ? 
 
 15  He  that  walketh  righteously,  and  speaketh  uprightly; 
 He  that  despiseth  the  gain  of  oppressions, 
 
 That  shaketh  his  hands  from  holding  of  bribes, 
 That  stoppeth  his  ears  from  hearing  of  blood, 
 And  shutteth  his  eyes  from  looking  at  evil ; 
 1  >     He  shall  dwell  in  high  places : 
 
 His  place  of  defence  shall  be  the  strongholds  of  rocks  : 
 Bread  shall  be  given  him  ;  his  waters  shall  be  sure. 
 
 17  Thine  eyes  shall  see  the  king  in  his  beauty  : 
 They  shall  behold  the  distant  country. 
 
 18  Thine  heart  shall  meditate  on  the  past  terror. 
 Where  is  he  that  counted  ?  where  is  he  that  weighed  ? 
 Where  is  the  receiver?  where  is  he  that  counted  the  towers? 
 
 l )    Thou  shalt  not  see  a  fierce  people, 
 
 A  people  of  deep  speech  that  thou  canst  not  hear; 
 
 Of  a  barbarous  tongue,  that  thou  canst  not  understand. 
 
 20  Look  upon  Zion,  the  city  of  our  solemnities  : 
 Thine  eyes  shall  see  Jerusalem  a  quiet  home, 
 
 A  tent  that  shall  not.  be  taken  down  ; 
 
 Not  one  of  its  stakes  shall  ever  be  pulled  up, 
 
 Neither  shall  any  of  its  cords  be  broken. 
 
 21  But  there  shall  the  Lord  be  mighty  for  us,  a  place  of  broad  rivers 
 
 and  streams ; 
 Wherein  shall  go  no  oared  galley,  neither  shall  gallant  ship  pass 
 thereby. 
 
 22  For  the  Lord  is  our  judge,  the  Lord  is  our  lawgiver, 
 The  Lord  is  our  king ;  he  will  save  us. 
 
 23  Thy  tacklings  are  loosed  ; 
 
 They  cannot  hold  the  mast  upright,  they  cannot  spread  the  sail  : 
 Then  is  the  booty  of  a  great   spoil  divided  ;  the  lame  take  the 
 prey. 
 
 24  And  the  inhabitant  shall  not  say,  I  am  sick  : 
 
 The  people  that  dwell  therein  are  forgiven  their  iniquity. 
 
 IV  Come  near,  ye  nations,  to  hear;  and  hearken,  ye  peoples: 
 
 Let  the  earth  hear,  and  all  that  is  therein; 
 
398  ISAIAH  XXXIV. 
 
 The  world,  and  all  things  that  come  forth  of  it. 
 
 2  For  the  indignation  of  the  Lord  is  upon  all  nations,  and  his  wrath 
 
 upon  all  their  armies : 
 He  hath  utterly  doomed  them,  he  hath  delivered  them  to  the 
 slaughter. 
 
 3  And  their  slain  shall  be  cast  out, 
 
 And  the  stench  of  their  carcases  shall  go  up, 
 
 And  the  mountains  shall  be  melted  with  their  blood. 
 
 4  And  all  the  host  of  heaven  shall  be  dissolved, 
 
 And  the  heavens  shall  be  rolled  together  as  a  scroll  : 
 And  all  their  host  shall  fall  down, 
 As  the  withered  leaf  falleth  off  from  the  vine, 
 And  as  the  blighted  fruit  from  the  fig  tree. 
 
 5  For  my  sword  is  bathed  in  heaven  : 
 Behold,  it  shall  come  down  upon  Edom, 
 
 And  upon  the  people  of  my  doom,  for  judgment. 
 
 6  The  sword  of  the  Lord  is  glutted  with  blood,  it  is  gorged  with 
 
 fat, 
 With  the  blood  of  lambs  and  goats,  with  the  fat  of  the  kidneys  of 
 
 rams  : 
 For  the  Lord  hath  a  sacrifice  in  Bozrah,  and  a  great  slaughter  in 
 
 the  land  of  Edom. 
 
 7  And  the  buffaloes  fall  down  with  them, 
 And  the  bullocks  with  the  bulls  ; 
 
 And  their  land  shall  be  drunken  with  blood,  and  their  dust  made 
 rich  with  fat. 
 
 8  For  it  is  the  day  of  the  Lord's  vengeance, 
 
 And  the  year  of  recompences  for  the  controversy  of  Zion. 
 
 9  And  the  streams  thereof  shall  be  turned  into  pitch, 
 And  the  dust  thereof  into  brimstone, 
 
 And  the  land  thereof  shall  become  burning  pitch. 
 
 10  It  shall  not  be  quenched  night  nor  day  ; 
 The  smoke  thereof  shall  go  up  for  ever : 
 
 From  generation  to  generation  it  shall  lie  waste ; 
 None  shall  pass  through  it  for  ever  and  ever. 
 
 11  And  it.  shall  be  an  heritage  for  the  pelican  and  the  porcupine; 
 The  bittern  also  and  the  raven  shall  dwell  in  it : 
 
 And  He  shall  stretch  out  upon  it  the  line  of  confusion,  and  the 
 plummet  of  emptiness. 
 
 12  They  shall  call  her  nobles  to  the  kingdom, 
 
 But  none  shall  be  there,  and  all  her  princes  shall  be  nothing. 
 
 13  And  thorns  shall  come  up  in  her  palaces,  nettles  and  brambles  in 
 
 her  fortresses ; 
 
 And  she  shall  be  the  home  of  wolves,  and  a  court  for  the  daughters 
 of  the  ostrich ; 
 
 14  And  the  wild  beasts  shall  meet  with  the  howling  beast, 
 And  the  he-goat  shall  cry  to  his  fellow ; 
 
 The  screech  owl  also  shall  pitch  there,  and  find  for  herself  a  place 
 of  rest. 
 1.5    There  shall  the  great  owl  make  her  nest,  and  lay,  and  hatch,  and 
 gather  under  her  shadow  : 
 
ISAIAH  XXXV.    XXXVI. 
 
 399 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 XXXV 
 
 10 
 
 There  shall  the  vultures  also  be  gathered,  every  one  with  her 
 
 mate. 
 Seek  ye  out  of  the  book  of  the  Lord,  and  read  : 
 No  one  of  these  shall  fail,  none  shall  want  her  male  : 
 For  my  mouth  it  hath  commanded,  and  His  spirit  it  hath  gathered 
 
 them. 
 And  He  hath  cast  the  lot  for  them,  and  His  hand  hath  divided  it 
 
 unto  them  by  line  : 
 They  shall  possess  it  as  an  heritage  for  ever, 
 From  generation  to  generation  shall  they  dwell  therein. 
 
 The    wilderness   and    the   parched  land    shall   be  glad    for 
 
 them ; 
 And  the  desert  shall  rejoice,  and  blossom  as  the  rose. 
 It  shall  blossom,  it  shall  blossom  and  rejoice, 
 Yea,  with  joy  and  singing: 
 The  glory  of  Lebanon  is  given  unto  it,  the  excellency  of  Carmel 
 
 and  Sharon  ; 
 They  shall  see  the  glory  of  the  Loud,  the  excellency  of  our  God. 
 Strengthen  ye  the  hands  now  dropping, 
 And  confirm  the  knees  now  tottering  : 
 Say  to  the  faint  heart,  Be  strong,  fear  not: 
 
 Behold,  your  God  !  Vengeance  cometh  :  the  recompence  of  God  : 
 He  will  come  and  save  you. 
 Then  the  eyes  of  the  blind  shall  be  opened, 
 And  the  ears  of  the  deaf  shall  be  unstopped. 
 Then   shall  the  lame  man  leap  as  an  hart,  and  the  tongue  of  the 
 
 dumb  shall  shout : 
 For  in  the  wilderness  have  waters  broken  out,  and  streams  in  the 
 
 desert. 
 And  the  mirage  shall  become  a  pool,  and  the  thirsty  ground  bub- 
 bling springs, 
 In  the  habitation  of  wolves,  in  their  lair,  in  the  place  of  reeds  and 
 
 rushes. 
 And  an  highway  shall  be  there,  and  a  way, 
 And  it  shall  be  called  The  way  of  holiness  ; 
 The  unclean  shall  not  pass  over  it ;  but  it  shall  be  for  those : 
 The  wayfaring  men,  though  fools,  shall  not  err  therein. 
 No  lion   shall    be  there,   nor  shall  any  ravenous   beasts  go  up 
 
 thereon  ; 
 It  shall  not  be  found  there ;  but  the  redeemed  shall  walk  there : 
 And  the  ransomed  of  the  Lord  shall  return, 
 And  come  to  Zion  with  shouts,  and  everlasting  joy  upon  their 
 
 heads  : 
 Joy  and  gladness  shall  overtake  them,  and  sorrow  and  sighing  shall 
 
 flee  away. 
 
 XXXVI  Now    it    came    to    pass    in    the    fourteenth    year    of   king 
 
 Hezekiah,  that  Sennacherib  king  of  Assyria  came  up  against  all 
 
 '2    the  fortified  cities  of  Judah,  and  took  them.     And  the  king  of 
 
400  ISAIAH  XXXVI. 
 
 Assyria  sent  Rabshakeh  from  Lachish  to  Jerusalem,  unto  king 
 Hezekiah  with  a  great  army.     And  he  stood  by  the  aqueduct  of 
 
 3  the  upper  pool,  in  the  highway  of  the  fuller's  field.  Then  came 
 forth  unto  him  Eliakim,  Hilkiah's  son,  which  was  over  the  house, 
 And  Shebna  the  secretary,  and  Joah,  Asaph's  son,  the  recorder. 
 
 4  And  Rabshakeh  said  unto  them,  Say  ye  now  to  Hezekiah,  Thus 
 saith  the  great  king,  the  king  of  Assyria,  What  confidence  is  this 
 
 5  wherein  thou  trustest  ?  I  say,  words,  mere  words,  are  thy  counsel 
 and  strength  for  war:  now  on  whom  dost  thou  trust,  that  thou 
 
 6  rebellest  against  me  ?  Lo,  thou  trustest  in  the  staff  of  this  broken 
 reed,  on  Egypt :  whereon  if  a  man  lean,  it  will  go  into  his  hand, 
 and  pierce  it :  so  is  Pharaoh  king  of  Egypt  to  all  that  trust  in 
 
 7  him.  But  if  thou  say  to  me,  We  trust  in  the  Lord  our  God  :  is 
 it   not  he,  whose  high    places  and  whose   altars  Hezekiah  hath 
 
 8  taken  away,  and  said  to  Judah  and  to  Jerusalem,  Ye  shall  worship 
 before  this  altar?  Now  therefore,  I  pray  thee-  engage  with  my 
 master  the  king  of  Assyria,  and   I  will  give  thee  two  thousand 
 
 9  horses,  if  thou  be  able  on  thy  part  to  set  riders  upon  them.  How 
 then  wilt  thou  turn  away  the  face  of  one  captain  of  the  least  of 
 my  master's  servants,  and  put  thy  trust  on  Egypt  for  chariots  and 
 
 10  for  horsemen?  And  am  I  now  come  up  without  the  Lord 
 against  this  land  to  destroy  it?  The  Lord  said  unto  me,  Go  up 
 against  this  land,  and  destroy  it. 
 
 1 1  Then  said  Eliakim  and  Shebna  and  Joah  unto  Rabshakeh, 
 Speak,  I  pray  thee,  unto  thy  servants  in  Syrian  ;  for  we  under- 
 stand it :  and  speak  not  to  us  in  Jewish,  in  the  ears  of  the  people 
 
 19  that  are  on  the  wall.  But  Rabshakeh  said,  Hath  my  master 
 sent  me  to  thy  master  and  to  thee  to  speak  these  words  ?  hath  he 
 not  sent  me  to  the  men  that  sit  upon  the  wall,  only  to  die  with 
 you  by  famine  and  thirst  ? 
 
 3  Then  Rabshakeh  stood,  and  cried  with  a  loud  voice  in  Jewish, 
 
 and  said,  Hear  ye  the  words  of  the  great  king,  the  king  of  Assyria. 
 
 14  Thus  saith  the  king,  Let  not  Hezekiah  deceive  you  :  for  he  shall 
 
 15  not  be  able  to  deliver  you.  Neither  let  Hezekiah  make  you  trust 
 in  the  Lord,  saying,  The  Lord  will  surely  deliver  us  :  this  city 
 shall   not   be   delivered   into  the  hand    of  the   king  of  Assyria. 
 
 16  Hearken  not  to  Hezekiah  ;  for  thus  saith  the  king  of  Assyria, 
 Make  peace  with  me,  and  come  out  to  me  :  and  eat  ye  every  one 
 of  his  vine,  and  every  one  of  his  fig  tree,  and  drink  ye  every  one 
 
 17  the  waters  of  his  own  cistern;  until  I  come  and  take  you  away 
 to  a  land  like  your  own  land,  a  land  of  corn  and  wine,  a  land  of 
 
 18  bread  and  vineyards.  Beware  lest  Hezekiah  persuade  you,  saying, 
 The  Lord  will  deliver  us.  Hath  any  of  the  gods  of  the  nations 
 delivered    his    land   out   of   the   hand   of  the   king   of  Assyria? 
 
 ID  Where  are  the  gods  of  Hamath  and  Arphad  ?  where  are  the  gods 
 of  Sepharvaim  ?    and  have  they   delivered   Samaria   out  of   my 
 
 20  hand  ?  Who  are  they  among  all  the  gods  of  these  lands,  that 
 have  delivered  their  land  out  of  my  hand,  that  the  Lord  should 
 deliver  Jerusalem  out  of  my  hand  ? 
 
 21  And  they  held  their  peace,  and  answered  him  not  a  word :  for 
 the  kind's  commandment  was.  saving,  Answer  him  not. 
 
ISATAIT  XXXVII.  401 
 
 22  Then  came  Eliakim,  the  son  of  Hilkiah,  that  was  over  the 
 household,  and  Shebna  the  secretary,  and  Joah,  the  son  of  Asaph, 
 the  recorder,  to  Hezekiah  with  their  clothes  rent,  and  told  him 
 the  words  of  Rabshakeh. 
 /ll  And  it  came  to  pass,  when  king  Hezekiah  heard  it,  that  he 
 rent  his  clothes,  and  covered  himself  with   sackcloth,   and  went 
 
 2  into  the  house  of  the  Lord.  And  he  sent  Eliakim,  who  was  over 
 the  household,  and  Shebna  the  secretary,  and  the  elders  of  the 
 priests  covered  with  sackcloth,  unto  Isaiah  the  prophet  the  son  of 
 
 3  Amoz.  And  they  said  unto  him,  Thus  saith  Hezekiah,  This  day 
 is  a  day  of  trouble,  and  of  rebuke,  and  of  blasphemy  :  for  the 
 children  are  come  to  the  birth,  and  there  is  not  strength  to  bring 
 
 4  forth.  It  may  be  the  Lord  thy  God  will  hear  the  words  of  Rab- 
 shakeh, whom  the  king  of  Assyria  his  master  hath  sent  to  reproach 
 the  living  God,  and  will  reprove  the  words  which  the  Lord  thy 
 God  hath  heard :  wherefore  lift  up  thy  prayer  for  the  remnant 
 that  is  left. 
 
 5  So  the  servants  of  king  Hezekiah  came  to  Isaiah.     And  Isaiah 
 
 6  said  unto  them,  Thus  shall  ye  say  unto  your  master,  Thus  saith 
 the  Lord,  Be  not  afraid  of  the  words  that  thou  hast  heard, 
 wherewith  the  servants  of  the  king  of  Assyria  have  blasphemed 
 
 7  me.  Behold,  I  send  a  blast  upon  him,  and  he  shall  hear  a 
 rumour,  and  return  to  his  own  land ;  and  I  will  cause  him  to  fall 
 by  the  sword  in  his  own  land. 
 
 8  So  Rabshakeh  returned,  and  found  the  king  of  Assyria  warring 
 against  Libnah  :  for  he  had  heard  that  he  had  broken  up  from 
 
 9  Lachish.  And  he  heard  say  concerning  Tirhakah  king  of  Ethiopia, 
 He  is  come  forth  to  make  war  with  thee.     And  when  he  heard  it, 
 
 10  he  sent  messengers  to  Hezekiah,  saying,  Thus  shall  ye  speak  to 
 Hezekiah,  king  of  Judah,  saying,  Let  not  thy  God,  in  whom  thou 
 trustest,  deceive  thee,  saying,  Jerusalem  shall  not  be  given  into 
 
 1 1  the  hand  of  the  king  of  Assyria.  Behold,  thou  hast  heard  what 
 the  kings  of  Assyria  have  done  to  all  lands  by  destroying  them 
 
 12  utterly;  and  shalt  thou  be  delivered?  Have  the  gods  of  the 
 nations  delivered  them  which  my  fathers  have  destroyed,  as  Gozan, 
 and  Haran,  and  Rezeph,  and  the  children   of  Eden  which  were 
 
 13  in  Telassar  ?  Where  is  the  king  of  Hamath,  and  the  king  of 
 Arphad,  and  the  king  of  the  city  of  Sepharvaim,  Hena,  and  Ivah  ? 
 
 14  And  Hezekiah  received  the  letter  from  the  hand  of  the  mes- 
 sengers, and  read  it  :  and  Hezekiah  went  up  unto  the  house  of 
 
 15  the  Lord,  and  spread  it  before  the  Lord.   And  Hezekiah  prayed 
 
 16  unto  the  Lord,  saying,  O  Lord  of  hosts,  God  of  Israel,  that 
 dwellest  between  the  cherubim,  thou  art  the  God,  even  thou 
 alone,  of  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  :  thou  hast  made  heaven 
 
 17  and  earth.  Incline  thine  ear,  O  Lord,  and  hear  ;  open  thine  eyes, 
 O  Lord,  and  see  :  and  hear  all  the  words  of  Sennacherib,  which 
 
 18  hath  sent  to  reproach  the  living  God.  Of  a  truth,  Lord,  the 
 kings    of   Assyria    have    laid    waste    all    the    nations,   and    their 
 
 19  countries,  and  have  cast  their  gods  into  the  fire:  for  Ihey  \  ere  no 
 gods,  but  the  work  of  men's  hands,  wood  and  stone:  therefore 
 
 I)  i) 
 
402  ISAIAH  XXXVII. 
 
 £0  they  have  destroyed  them.  Now  therefore,  O  Lord  our  God, 
 save  us  from  his  hand,  That  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  may 
 know  that  thou  art  the  Lord,  even  thou  only. 
 
 21  And  Isaiah  the  son  of  Amoz  sent  unto  Hezekiah,  saying,  Thus 
 saith  the  Lord  God  of  Israel,  Whereas  thou  hast  prayed  to  me 
 
 22  against  Sennacherib  king  of  Assyria ;  this  is  the  word  which  the 
 Lord  hath  spoken  concerning  him  ; 
 
 The  virgin,  the  daughter  of  Zion,  hath  despised  thee, 
 And  laughed  thee  to  scorn  ; 
 The  daughter  of  Jerusalem  hath  shaken  her  head  at  thee. 
 
 23  Whom  hast  thou  reproached  and  blasphemed  ? 
 And  against  whom  hast  thou  exalted  thy  voice, 
 And  lifted  up  thine  eyes  on  high  ? 
 
 Even  against  the  Holy  One  of  Israel, 
 
 24  By  thy  servants  hast  thou  reproached  the  Lord,  and  hast  said, 
 By  the  multitude  of  my  chariots  am  I  come  up 
 
 To  the  height  of  the  mountains,  to  the  sides  of  Lebanon  : 
 
 And  I  will  cut  down  the  tall  cedars  thereof,  and  the  choice  fir 
 
 trees  thereof: 
 And  I  will  enter  into  his  farthest  height,  and  into  his  garden- 
 forest. 
 
 25  I  have  digged,  and  drunk  water; 
 
 And  with  the  sole  of  my  feet  will  I   dry  up  all  the  rivers  of 
 Egypt. 
 
 26  Hast  thou  not  heard  ?  From  afar  have  I  done  it ; 
 From  the  days  of  old  have  I  prepared  it. 
 
 Now  have  I  brought  it  to  pass,  and  it  is:  — 
 Defenced  cities  are  laid  waste  into  ruinous  heaps  : 
 
 27  And  their  inhabitants  are  of  small  power, 
 They  are  dismayed  and  confounded : 
 
 They  are  grass  of  the  field,  and  green  herbage, 
 
 Grass  on  the  housetops,  and  corn  blasted  before  it  be  grown  up. 
 
 28  But  I  know  thy  abode,  and  thy  going  out, 
 And  thy  coming  in,  and  thy  rage  against  me. 
 
 29  Because  thy  rage  against  me,  and  thy  tumult,  is  come  up  into  mine 
 
 ears, 
 Therefore  will  I  put  my  hook  in  thy  nose,  and  my  bridle  in  thy  lips, 
 And  I  will  turn  thee  back  by  the  way  by  which  thou  earnest. 
 
 30  And  this  shall  be  the  sign  unto  thee ; 
 Eat  this  year  what  groweth  of  itself; 
 
 And  the  second  year  that  which  springeth  of  the  same  : 
 
 And  in  the  third  year  sow  ye,  and  reap, 
 
 And  plant  vineyards,  and  eat  the  fruit  thereof. 
 
 31  And  the  remnant  that  is  escaped  of  the  house  of  Judah 
 Shall  again  take  root  downward,  and  bear  fruit  upward  : 
 
 32  For  out  of  Jerusalem  shall  go  forth  a  remnant, 
 And  they  that  escape  out  of  mount  Zion  : 
 The  zeal  of  the  Lord  of  hosts  shall  do  this. 
 
 33  Therefore    thus   saith    the    Lord    concerning    the    king    of 
 Assyria, 
 
ISAIAH  XXXVIII.  403 
 
 He  shall  not  come  into  this  city,  nor  shoot  an  arrow  there, 
 Nor  come  before  it  with  shields,  nor  cast  up  a  mound  against  it. 
 
 34  By  the  way  that  he  came,  by  the  same  shall  he  return, 
 And  shall  not  come  into  this  city,  saith  the  Lord. 
 
 35  For  I  will  defend  this  city  to  save  it, 
 
 For  my  own  sake  and  for  my  servant  David's  sake. 
 
 36  And  the  angel  of  the  Lord  went  forth,  and  smote  in  the  camp 
 of  the  Assyrians  a  hundred  and  fourscore  and  five  thousand :  and 
 
 37  when  they  arose  early  in  the  morning,  behold  they  were  all  dead 
 corpses.    So  Sennacherib  king  of  Assyria  decamped,  and  departed, 
 
 38  and  returned,  and  remained  in  Nineveh.  And  it  came  to  pass,  as 
 he  was  worshipping  in  the  house  of  Nisroch  his  god,  that  Adram- 
 
 39  melech  and  Sharezer  his  sons  smote  him  with  the  sword;  and 
 they  escaped  into  the  land  of  Armenia;  and  Esar-haddon  his 
 son  reigned  in  his  stead. 
 
 Ill  In  those  days  was  Hezekiah  sick,  at  the  point  of  death. 
 And  Isaiah  the  prophet  the  son  of  Amoz  came  unto  him,  and 
 said  unto  him,  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  Set  thine  house  in  order : 
 
 2  for  thou  art  dying,  and  shalt  not  live.     Then  Hezekiah  turned  his 
 
 3  face  toward  the  wall,  and  prayed  unto  the  Lord,  and  said,  Re- 
 member now,  O  Lord,  I  beseech  thee,  how  I  have  walked  before 
 thee  in  truth  and  with  a  whole  heart,  and  have  done  that  which 
 is  good  in  thy  sight.     And  Hezekiah  wept  sore. 
 
 4  And  the  word  of  the  Lord  came  to  Isaiah,  saying,  Go,  and  say 
 
 5  to  Hezekiah,  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  the  God  of  David  thy  father, 
 I  have  heard  thy  prayer,  I  have  seen  thy  tears  :  behold,  I  will  add 
 
 6  unto  thy  days  fifteen  years.  And  I  will  deliver  thee  and  this  city 
 out  of  the  hand  of  the  king  of  Assyria  :  and  I  will  defend  this 
 
 7  city.  And  this  is  the  sign  unto  thee  from  the  Lord,  that  the 
 Lord  will  perform  this  word  that  he  hath  spoken ;  Behold,  I  am 
 causing  the  shadow  to  go  back  the  degrees  which  it  has  gone 
 
 8  down  on  the  sun-dial  of  Ahaz  ten  degrees  backward.  And  the  sun 
 returned  ten  degrees,  by  which  degrees  it  had  gone  down. 
 
 9  The  writing  of  Hezekiah    king  of  Judah,  when  he  had 
 
 been  sick,  and  was  recovered  of  his  sickness. 
 
 10  I  said,  I  shall  go  to  the  gates  of  the  grave  in  the  midst  of  my  days  : 
 I  am  deprived  of  the  residue  of  my  years. 
 
 11  I  said,  I  hall  not  see  the  Lord,  the  Lord  in  the  land  of  the  living  : 
 I  shall  behold  man  no  more  with  the  inhabitants  of  the  world. 
 
 12  My  generation  is  departed,  and  is  removed  from  me  as  a  shepherd's 
 
 tent : 
 I  have  cut  off  like  a  weaver  my  life  : 
 He  will  cut  me  off  from  the  loom  : 
 From  day  to  night  wilt  thou  make  an  end  of  me. 
 
 13  I  reckoned  till  morning,  that,  as  a  lion,  so  will  he  break  all  my 
 
 bones : 
 From  day  to  night  wilt  thou  make  an  end  of  me. 
 
 D  n  2 
 
404  ISAIAH  XXXIX. 
 
 14  Like  a  crane  or  a  swallow,  so  I  cry  :  I  do  mourn  as  a  dove  : 
 Mine  eyes  fail  with  looking  upward  : 
 
 0  Lord,  I  am  oppressed  :  undertake  for  me. 
 
 15  What  shall  I  say? 
 
 He  hath  both  spoken  unto  me,  and  Himself  hath  done  it : 
 
 1  shall  go  softly  all  my  years,  for  the  bitterness  of  my  soul. 
 
 16  O  Lord,  by  these  things  men  live, 
 
 And  in  all  these  things  is  the  life  of  my  spirit: 
 So  wilt  thou  recover  me,  and  make  me  to  live. 
 
 17  Behold,  my  great  bitterness  is  turned  to  peace. 
 
 And  thou  hast  loved  my  soul  from  the  pit  of  corruption : 
 For  thou  hast  cast  all  my  sins  behind  thy  back. 
 
 18  For  the  grave  cannot  praise  thee,  death  can  not  celebrate  thee: 
 They  that  go  down  into  the  pit  cannot  hope  for  thy  truth. 
 
 19  The  living,  the  living,  he  shall  praise  thee,  as  I  do  this  day  : 
 The  father  to  the  children  shall  make  known  thy  truth. 
 
 20  The  Lord  to  save  me  ! 
 
 And  we  will  sing  my  songs  to  the  stringed  instruments 
 All  the  days  of  our  life,  in  the  house  of  the  Lord. 
 
 21  For  Isaiah  had  said,  Let  them  take  a  lump  of  figs,  and  lay  it 
 
 22  for  a  plaister  upon  the  boil,  and  he  shall  recover.  Hezekiah  also 
 had  said,  What  is  the  sign  that  I  shall  go  up  to  the  house  of  the 
 Lord? 
 
 XXXIX  At  that  time  Merodach-Baladan,  the  son  of  Baladan,  King  of 
 Babylon,  sent  letters  and  a  present  to  Hezekiah  :  for  he  had  heard 
 2  that  he  had  been  sick,  and  was  recovered.  And  Hezekiah  was 
 glad  of  them,  and  showed  them  his  house  of  precious  things,  the 
 silver,  and  the  gold,  and  the  spices,  and  the  precious  ointment, 
 and  all  the  house  of  his  arras,  and  all  that  was  found  in  his 
 treasures :  there  was  nothing  in  his  house,  nor  in  all  his  dominion, 
 that  Hezekiah  showed  them  not. 
 S  Then  came  Isaiah  the  prophet  unto  king  Hezekiah,  and  said 
 unto  him,  What  said  these  men  ?  and  from  whence  came  they 
 unto   thee  ?     And  Hezekiah    said,   They   are   come  from    a  far 
 
 4  country  unto  me,  from  Babylon.  Then  said  he,  What  have  they 
 seen  in  thine  house  ?  And  Hezekiah  answered,  All  that  is  in 
 mine  house  have  they  seen :  there  is  nothing  among  my  treasures 
 that  I  have  not  showed  them. 
 
 5  And  Isaiah  said  to  Hezekiah,  Hear  the  word  of  the  Lord  of 
 
 6  hosts :  Behold,  the  days  come,  that  all  that  is  in  thine  house, 
 and  that  which  thy  fathers  have  laid  up  in  store  until  this  day, 
 shall  be  carried  to  Babylon  :  nothing  shall  be  left,  saith  the  Lord. 
 
 7  And  of  thy  sons  that  shall  issue  from  thee,  which  thou  shalt  beget, 
 shall  they  take  away  ;  and  they  shall  be  eunuchs  in  the  palace 
 of  the  king  of  Babylon. 
 
 8  And  Hezekiah  said  to  Isaiah,  Good  is  the  word  of  the  Lord 
 which  thou  hast  spoken.  And  he  said,  For  there  shall  be  peace 
 and  truth  in  my  days. 
 
iSAiAn  xl.  405 
 
 XL  Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye  my  people,  shall  your  God  say. 
 
 Speak  ye  comfortably  to  Jerusalem,  and  cry  unto  her, 
 That  her  warfare  is  accomplished, 
 That  her  iniquity  is  pardoned  : 
 For  she  hath  received  of  the  Lord's  hand  double  for  all  her  sins. 
 
 3  A  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness, 
 Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord, 
 
 Make  straight  in  the  desert  a  highway  for  our  God. 
 
 4  Every  valley  shall  be  raised,  and  every  mountain  and  hill  shall 
 
 be  made  low  : 
 And  the  crooked  shall  be  made  straight,  and  the  rough  places 
 plain  : 
 
 5  And  the  glory  of  the  Lord  shall  be  revealed,  and  all  flesh  shall 
 
 see  it  together : 
 For  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it. 
 
 6  A  voice  saying,  Cry.     And  he  said,  What  shall  I  cry  ? 
 
 All  flesh  is  grass,  and  all  the  goodliness  thereof  is  as  the  flower 
 of  the  field : 
 
 7  The  grass  withereth,  the  flower  fadeth, 
 Because  the  breath  of  the  Lord  bloweth  upon  it  : 
 Surely  the  people  is  grass. 
 
 8  The  grass  withereth,  the  flower  fadeth  : 
 
 But  the  word  of  our  God  shall  stand  for  ever. 
 
 9  O  thou  that  bringestgood  tidings  to  Zion, 
 Get  thee  up  into  a  high  mountain  ; 
 
 O  thou  that  bringest  good  tidings  to  Jerusalem, 
 
 Lift  up  thy  voice  with  strength;  lift  it  up,  be  not  afraid  ; 
 
 Say  unto  the  cities  of  Judah,  Behold,  your  God  I 
 
 10  Behold,  the  Lord  God  will  come  with  strong  hand, 
 And  his  arm  shall  rule  for  him  : 
 
 Behold,  his  reward  is  with  him,  and  his  wages  before  him. 
 
 11  He  shall  feed  his  flock  like  a  shepherd : 
 He  shall  gather  the  lambs  with  his  arm, 
 
 And  carry  them  in  his  bosom,  and  shall  gently  lead  the  nursing 
 ewes. 
 
 12  Who  hath  meted  out  the  waters  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand. 
 And  measured  heaven  with  the  span, 
 
 And  comprehended  the  dust  of  the  earth  in  a  measure, 
 And  weighed  the  mountains  in  scales, 
 And  the  hills  in  a  balance? 
 
 13  Who  hath  measured  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord, 
 
 Or  being  his  counsellor  will  make  Him  to  know  ? 
 
 14  With  whom  took  he  counsel,  and  who  instructed  him, 
 
 And  taught  him  in  the  path  of  judgment,  and  taught  him  know- 
 ledge, 
 And  will  make  him  to  know  the  way  of  understanding  ? 
 
 15  Behold,  the  nations  are  as  a  drop  from  a  bucket, 
 And  are  counted  as  dust  on  the  scales : 
 
 Behold,  he  taketh  up  the  isles  as  a  very  little  thing. 
 
 16  And  Lebanon  is  not  sufficient  to  burn, 
 
 D    D    3 
 
406  ISAIAH    XLI. 
 
 Nor  the  beasts  thereof  sufficient  for  a  burnt  offering. 
 
 17  All  nations  before  him  are  as  nothing  ; 
 
 And  they  are  counted  to  him  less  than  nothing,  and  vanity. 
 
 18  To  whom  then  will  ye  liken  God? 
 
 Or  what  likeness  will  ye  compare  unto  Him  ? 
 
 19  To  the  image  which  a  carver  hath  wrought, 
 
 And   the  goldsmith    will  spread  it  over  with  gold,  and   casteth 
 silver  chains ! 
 
 20  He  that  is  impoverished  by  oblations  chooseth  a  tree  that  will  not 
 
 rot ; 
 He  seeketh  unto  him  a  cunning  workman, 
 To  prepare  a  graven  image  that  shall  not  be  moved  ! 
 
 21  Will  ye  not  know  ?  will  ye  not  hear? 
 
 Hath  it  not  been  told  you  from  the  beginning  ? 
 
 Have  ye  not  understood  from  the  foundations  of  the  earth  ? 
 
 22  It  is  He  that  sitteth  upon  the  circle  of  the  earth, 
 And  the  inhabitants  thereof  are  as  grasshoppers  ; 
 That  stretcheth  out  the   heavens  as  a  curtain, 
 And  spreadeth  them  out  as  a  tent  to  dwell  in  : 
 
 23  That  bringeth  the  princes  to  nothing  ; 
 
 He  maketh  the  judges  of  the  earth  as  vanity. 
 
 24  Yea,  they  were  not  planted  ;  yea,  they  were  not  sown  : 
 Yea,  their  stock  hath  not  taken  root  in  the  earth  : 
 And  He  hath  breathed  upon  them,  and  they  withered, 
 And  the  whirlwind  shall  take  them  away  as  stubble. 
 
 25  To  whom  then  will  ye  liken  me, — or  shall  I  be  equal?  — 
 saith  the  Holy  One. 
 
 26  Lift  up  your  eyes  on  high,  and  see : 
 
 Who  hath  created  these  —  bringing  out  their  host  by  number? 
 He  calleth  them  all  by  name, 
 
 By  the  greatness  of  his  might,  for  that  He  is  strong  in  power ; 
 Not  one  faileth. 
 
 27  Why  wilt  thou  say,  O  Jacob,  and  why  thus  speak,  O  Israel, 
 My  way  is  hid  from  the  Lord, 
 
 And  my  cause  will  be  passed  over  by  my  God  ? 
 
 28  Hast  thou  not  known  ?  hast  thou  not  heard, 
 
 That  the  everlasting  God,  the  Lord,  the  Creator  of  the  ends  of 
 the  earth, 
 
 Will  not  faint,  neither  be  weary  ?  there  is  no  searching  of  his  un- 
 derstanding. 
 20    He  giveth  power  to  the  faint ;  and  to  them  that  have  no  might  he 
 increaseth  strength. 
 
 30  Even  the  youths  shall  faint  and  be  weary,  and  the  young  men  shall 
 
 utterly  fall : 
 
 31  But  they  that  wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew  their  strength  ; 
 They  shall  raise  the  wing  like  eagles  ; 
 
 They  shall  run,  and  not  be  weary,  they  shall  walk,  and  not  faint. 
 
 XLI        Keep  silence  before  me,  O  islands ;  and  let  the  people  renew 
 their  strength. 
 Let  them  come  near;  then  let  them  speak  : 
 
ISAIAH    XLI.  407 
 
 Let  us  come  near  to  the  judgment  seat  together. 
 
 2  Who  hath  raised  up  one  from  the  east  ? 
 Righteousness  shall  call  him  to  its  foot, 
 
 Shall  give  the  nations  before  him,  and  make  him  tread  upon  kings  : 
 Shall  give  them  as  the  dust  to  his  sword,  and  as  driven  stubble  to 
 his  bow. 
 
 3  He  shall  pursue  them,  he  shall  pass  safely  ;  he  shall  not  touch  the 
 
 ground  with  his  feet. 
 
 4  Who  hath  wrought  and  done  it,  calling  the  generations  from  the 
 
 beginning  ? 
 I  the  Lord,  the  first,  and  with  the  last :  I  am  He. 
 
 5  The  isles  have  seen  it,  and  feared  ; 
 
 The  ends  of  the  earth  tremble,  have  drawn  near,  and  come. 
 
 6  They  will  help  every  one  his  neighbour; 
 
 And  every  one  will  say  to  his  brother,  Be  of  good  courage. 
 And  the  carpenter  has  encouraged  the  goldsmith, 
 And  he  that  smootheth  with  the  hammer  him  that  smiteth  the 
 anvil, 
 
 7  Saying  of  the  soldering,  it  is  good  : 
 
 And  he  has  fastened  it  with  nails;  it  shall  not  be  moved. 
 
 8  But  thou,  Israel,  my  servant, 
 
 Jacob  whom  I  have  chosen  ;  the  seed  of  Abraham  my  friend  ; 
 
 9  Thou  whom  I  have  taken  from  the  ends  of  the  earth, 
 And  called  thee  from  the  sides  thereof, 
 
 And  said  unto  thee,  Thou  art  my  servant,  I  have  chosen  thee,  and 
 not  cast  thee  away  ; 
 
 10  Fear  thou  not ;  for  I  am  with  thee  :  be  not  dismayed ;  for  I  am 
 
 thy  God  : 
 I  have  strengthened  thee ;  yea,  I  have  helped  thee ; 
 Yea,  I  have  upheld  thee  with  the  right  hand  of  my  righteousness. 
 
 11  Behold,  all  they  that  were  incensed  against  thee  shall  be  ashamed 
 
 and  confounded  : 
 They  shall  be  as  nothing  ;  and  they  that  strive  with  thee  shall 
 perish. 
 
 12  Thou  shalt  seek  them,  and  shalt  not  find  them,  even  them  that  con- 
 
 tended with  thee : 
 They  that  war  against  thee  shall  be  as  nothing,  and  as  a  thing  of 
 nought. 
 
 13  For  I  the  Lord  thy  God  do  hold  thy  right  hand, 
 Saying  unto  thee,  Fear  not ;  I  have  helped  thee. 
 
 14  Fear  not,  thou  worm  Jacob,  and  ye  men  of  Israel ; 
 
 I   have  helped  thee,  saitli  the  Lord,  and  thy  redeemer,  the  Holy 
 One  of  Israel. 
 
 15  Behold,  I  have  made  of  thee  a  new  sharp  threshing  instrument 
 
 having  teeth  ; 
 Thou  shalt  thresh  the  mountains,  and  beat  them  small, 
 And  shalt  make  the  hills  as  chaff. 
 
 16  Thou  shalt  fan  them,  and  the  wind  shall  carry  them  away, 
 And  the  whirlwind  shall  scatter  them : 
 
408  ISAIAH    XLII. 
 
 And  thou  shalt  rejoice  in  the  Lord, 
 
 And  shalt  glory  in  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 
 
 17  The  poor  and  needy  seek  water,  and  there  is  none, 
 And  their  tongue  faileth  for  thirst : 
 
 1  the  Lord  will  hear  them,  I  the  God  of  Israel  will  not  forsake 
 them. 
 
 18  I  will  open  rivers  on  bare  hills,  and  fountains  in  the  midst  of  the 
 
 valleys : 
 ;  1  will  make  the  wilderness  a  pool  of  water,  and  the  dry  lands 
 springs  of  water. 
 
 19  I  will  plant  in  the  wilderness  the  cedar,  the  acacia,  and  the  myrtle, 
 
 and  the  oil  tree  ; 
 I  will  set  in  the  desert  the  fir  tree,  the  pine,  and  the  box  tree  to- 
 gether : 
 
 20  That  they  may  see,  and  know,  and  consider,  and  understand  toge- 
 
 ther, 
 That  the  hand  of  the  Lord  hath  done  this, 
 And  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  hath  created  it. 
 
 21  Produce  your  cause,  will  the  Lord  say ; 
 
 Bring  forth  your  strong  reasons,  will  the  King  of  Jacob  say. 
 
 22  Let  them  bring  forth,  and  show  us,  the  things  that  shall  happen  : 
 Let  them  show  the  former  things,  what  they  were, 
 
 That  we  may  consider  them,  and  know  the  latter  end  of  them  : 
 Or  declare  us  things  for  to  come. 
 
 23  Show  the  things  that  are  to  come  hereafter, 
 That  we  may  know  that  ye  are  gods : 
 
 Yea,  do  good,  or  do  evil,  that  we  may  be  dismayed,  and  behold  it 
 together. 
 
 24  Behold,  ye  are  of  nothing,  and  your  work  of  nought : 
 An  abomination  is  he  that  chooseth  you. 
 
 25  I  have  raised  up  one  from  the  north,  and  he  hath  come : 
 From  the  rising  of  the  sun  shall  he  call  upon  my  name  : 
 
 And  he  shall  come  upon  princes  as  upon  mortar,  and  as  the  potter 
 treadeth  clay. 
 
 26  Who  hath  declared  from  the  beginning,  that  we  may  know  ? 
 And  beforetime,  that  we  may  say,  It  is  right  ? 
 
 Yea,  there  is  none  that  showeth,  yea,  there  is  none  that  declareth, 
 Yea,  there  is  none  that  heareth  your  words. 
 
 27  I  am  the  first  to  say  to  Zion,  Behold,  behold  them: 
 And  to  give  to  Jerusalem  one  that  bringeth  good  tidings. 
 
 28  For  I  will  look,  but  there  is  no  one, 
 
 Even  among  these  idols,  but  there  is  no  counsellor, 
 That,  when  I  ask  of  them  can  answer  a  word. 
 
 29  Behold,  they  are  all  vanity  ;  their  works  are  nothing  : 
 Their  molten  images  are  wind  and  emptiness. 
 
 XLII  Behold  my  servant,  I  will  uphold  him ; 
 
 Mine  elect,  in  whom  my  soul  delighteth  ; 
 
 I  have  put  my  spirit  upon  him :  he  shall  bring  forth  judgment  to 
 the  nations. 
 2    He  shall  not  cry,  nor  lift  up,  nor  cause  his  voice  to  be  heard  in  the 
 street. 
 
ISAIAH    XLII.  409 
 
 3  A  bruised  reed  shall  he  not  break, 
 
 And  the  dimly  burning  flax  shall  he  not  quench  : 
 He  shall  bring  forth  judgment  unto  truth. 
 
 4  He  shall  not  be  dim,  nor  bruised, 
 
 Till  he  have  set  judgment  in  the  earth  : 
 And  the  isles  shall  wait  for  his  law. 
 
 5  Thus  saith  God  the  Lord, 
 
 He  that  createth  the  heavens,  and  stretcheth  them  out ; 
 
 He  that  spreadeth  forth  the  earth,  and  that  which  cometh  out  of 
 
 it; 
 He  that  giveth  breath  unto  the  people  upon  it, 
 And  spirit  to  them  that  walk  therein  : 
 e    I  the  Lord  have  called  thee  in  righteousness,  and  will  hold  thine 
 
 hand, 
 And  will  keep  thee,  and  give  thee  for  a  covenant  of  the  people, 
 For  a  light  of  the  Gentiles  ; 
 
 7  To  open  the  blind  eyes,  to  bring  out  the  prisoner  from  the  prison, 
 And  them  that  sit  in  darkness  out  of  the  prison  house. 
 
 8  I  am  the  Lord  :   that  is  my  name : 
 
 And  my  glory  will  I  not  give  to  another,  neither  my  praise  to 
 graven  images. 
 
 9  Behold,  the  former  things  are  come  to  pass,  and  new  things  do  I 
 declare : 
 
 Before  they  spring  forth  I  will  tell  you  of  them. 
 
 10  Sing  unto  the  Lord  a  new  song,  and  his  praise  from  the  end 
 of  the  earth, 
 
 Ye  that  go  down  to  the  sea,  and  all  that  is  therein ; 
 The  isles,  and  the  inhabitants  thereof. 
 
 11  The  wilderness  and  the  cities  thereof  shall  lift  up  their  voice, 
 The  villages  that  Kedar  doth  inhabit : 
 
 The  inhabitants  of  the  Rock  shall  sing, 
 
 They  shall  shout  from  the  top  of  the  mountain. 
 
 12  They  shall  give  glory  unto  the  Lord,  and  shall  declare  his  praise 
 
 in  the  islands. 
 
 13  The  Lord  shall  go  forth  as  a  mighty  man, 
 He  shall  stir  up  his  zeal  like  a  man  of  war : 
 
 He  shall  shout,  yea,  roar;  he  shall  behave  himself  mightily  against 
 his  enemies. 
 
 14  I  have  long  time  holden  my  peace;  I  have  been  still,  and  re- 
 frained myself: 
 
 Now  will  I  cry  like  a  travailing  woman  ;  I  will  destroy  and  devour 
 at  once. 
 
 15  I  will  make  waste  mountains  and  hills,  and  dry  up  all  their  herb- 
 
 age; 
 And  I  will  make  the  rivers  islands,  and  I  will  dry  up  the  pools. 
 
 16  And  I  will  bring  the  blind  by  a  way  that  they  knew  not ; 
 I  will  lead  them  in  paths  that  they  have  not  known  : 
 
 I  will  make  darkness  light  before  them,  and  crooked  things  straight. 
 These  are  my  words :  I  do  them,  and  forsake  them  not. 
 
 17  They  are  turned  back,  they  shall  be  utterly  ashamed, 
 
410  ISAIAH   XLIII. 
 
 That  trust  in  graven  images, 
 
 That  say  to  the  molten  images,  Ye  are  our  gods. 
 
 18  Hear,  ye  deaf;  and  look,  ye  blind,  that  ye  may  see. 
 
 19  Who  is  blind,  but  my  servant?  or  deaf,  as  my  messenger,  whom  I 
 
 will  send  ? 
 Who  is  blind  as  he  that  is  consecrated,  and  blind  as  the  Lord's 
 servant  ? 
 
 20  Thou  hast  seen  many  things,  but  not  observed  ; 
 Thou  openest  the  ears,  but  wilt  not  hear. 
 
 21  The  Lord  is  well  pleased,  for  his  righteousness  sake, 
 To  magnify  the  law,  and  make  it  honourable. 
 
 22  But  this  is  a  people  robbed  and  spoiled  ; 
 
 They  are  all  of  them  snared  in  holes,  and  they  are  hid  in  prison 
 
 houses : 
 They  are  for  a  prey,  and  none  delivereth  ; 
 For  a  spoil,  and  none  saith,  Restore. 
 
 23  Who  among  you  will  give  ear  to  this  ? 
 Who  will  hearken  and  hear  for  the  time  to  come  ? 
 
 24  Who  gave  Jacob  for  a  spoil,  and  Israel  to  the  robbers  ? 
 Did  not  the  Lord,  against  whom  we  have  sinned  ? 
 
 For  they  would  not  walk  in  his  ways,  neither  were  they  obedient 
 unto  his  law. 
 
 25  Therefore  He  hath  poured  upon  him  the  fury  of  his  anger,  and  the 
 
 strength  of  battle : 
 And  it  hath  set  him  on  fire  round  about,  yet  he  knew  not ; 
 And  it  burned  him,  yet  he  will  not  lay  it  to  heart. 
 
 XLIII  But  now  thus  saith  the  Lord  that  created  thee,  O  Jacob, 
 
 And  he  that  formed  thee,  O  Israel, 
 Fear  not :  for  I  have  redeemed  thee; 
 I  have  called  thee  by  thy  name ;  thou  art  mine. 
 
 2  When  thou  passest  through  the  waters,  I  will  be  with  thee ; 
 And  through  the  rivers,  they  shall  not  overflow  thee  : 
 
 When  thou  walkest  through  the  fire,  thou  shalt  not  be  burned ; 
 Neither  shall  the  flame  kindle  upon  thee. 
 
 3  For  I  the  Lord  thy  God,  the  Holy  one  of  Israel,  thy  Saviour, 
 Have  given  Egypt  for  thy  ransom,  Ethiopia  and  Seba  for  thee. 
 
 4  Since  thou  wast  precious  in  my  sight,  thou  hast  been  honourable, 
 And  I  have  loved  thee  : 
 
 And  I  will  give  men  for  thee,  and  nations  for  thy  life. 
 
 5  Fear  not :  for  I  am  with  thee  : 
 
 I. will  bring  thy  seed  from  the  east,  and  gather  thee  from  the 
 west ; 
 
 6  I  will  say  to  the  north,  Give  up;   and  to  the  south,  Keep  not 
 
 back : 
 Bring  my  sons  from  far,  and  my  daughters  from  the  ends  of  the 
 earth ; 
 
 7  Even  every  one  that  is  called  by  my  name : 
 For  I  have  created  him  for  my  glory : 
 
 I  have  formed  liim,  yea,  I  have  made  him. 
 
ISAIAH   XLIII.  411 
 
 8  He  hath  brought  forth  the  blind  people,  and  they  have  eyes, 
 And  the  deaf,  and  they  have  ears. 
 
 9  Let  all  the  nations  be  gathered  together,  and  let  the  peoples  be 
 
 assembled : 
 Who  among  them  can  declare  this,  and  show  us  former  things  ? 
 Let  them  produce  their  witnesses,  that  they  may  be  justified: 
 Or  let  them  hear  me,  and  say,  It  is  the  truth. 
 
 10  Ye  are  my  witnesses,  saith  the  Lord,  and  my  servant  whom  I 
 
 have  chosen : 
 That  ye  may  know  and  believe  me,  and  understand  that  I  am  he : 
 Before  me  there  was  no  God  formed,  neither  shall  there  be  after 
 
 me. 
 
 11  I,  even  I,  am  the  Lord  ;  and  beside  me  there  is  no  saviour. 
 
 12  I  have  declared,  and  have  saved,  and  have  showed, 
 And  there  is  no  strange  god  among  you  : 
 
 Therefore  ye  are  my  witnesses,  saith  the  Lord,  that  I  am  God. 
 
 13  Yea,  before  the  day  was  I  am  he ; 
 
 And  there  is  none  that  can  deliver  out  of  my  hand : 
 I  will  work,  and  who  shall  let  it  ? 
 
 u  Thus  saith  the   Lord,  your  Redeemer,  the  Holy  One  of 
 
 Israel ; 
 For  your  sake  I  have  sent  to  Babylon, 
 And  have  brought  down  all  their  nobles, 
 And  the  Chaldeans,  whose  cry  is  in  the  ships. 
 
 15  I  am  the  Lord,  your  Holy  One,  the  Creator  of  Israel,  your  King. 
 
 16  Thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 Which  maketh  a  way  in  the  sea,  and  a  path  in  the  mighty  waters ; 
 11    Which  bringeth  forth  the  chariot  and  horse,  the  army  and  the 
 power ; 
 They  shall  lie  down  together,  they  shall  not  rise  : 
 They  are  extinct,  they  are  quenched  as  tow. 
 
 18  Remember  ye  not  the  former  things,  neither  consider  the  things  of 
 
 old. 
 
 19  Behold,  I  do  a  new  thing ;  now  it  shall  spring  forth  ; 
 Shall  ye  not  know  it  ? 
 
 I  will  even  make  a  way  in  the  wilderness,  and  rivers  in  the  desert. 
 
 20  The  beast  of  the  field   shall  honour   me,    the    wolves  and  the 
 
 ostriches. 
 Because  I  have  given  waters  in  the  wilderness,  and  rivers  in  the 
 
 desert, 
 To  give  drink  to  my  people,  my  chosen. 
 
 21  This  people  have  I  formed  for  myself;  they  shall  show  forth  my 
 
 praise. 
 
 22  But  thou  hast  not  called  upon  me,  O  Jacob  ; 
 But  thou  hast  been  weary  of  me,  O  Israel. 
 
 23  Thou  hast  not  brought  me  the  sheep  of  thy  burnt  offerings  ; 
 Neither  hast  thou  honoured  me  with  thy  sacrifices. 
 
 I  have  not  caused  thee  to  serve  with  an  oblation, 
 Nor  wearied  thee  with  incense. 
 
 24  Thou  hast  bought  me  no  sweet  cane  with  money, 
 
412  ISAIAH   XLIV. 
 
 Neither  hast  thou  filled  me  with  the  fat  of  thy  sacrifices  : 
 But  thou  hast  made  me  to  serve  with  thy  sins, 
 Thou  hast  wearied  me  with  thine  iniquities. 
 
 25  I,  even  I,  am  he  that  blotteth  out  thy  transgressions  for  mine 
 
 own  sake, 
 And  will  not  remember  thy  sins. 
 
 26  Put  me  in  remembrance  :  let  us  plead  together  : 
 State  thy  case,  that  thou  mayest  be  justified. 
 
 27  Thy  first  father  hath  sinned,  and  thy  teachers  have  transgressed 
 
 against  me. 
 
 28  And  I  will  profane  the  holy  princes, 
 
 And  will  give  Jacob  to  the  curse,  and  Israel  to  reproaches. 
 
 XLIV  Yet  now  hear,  O  Jacob  my  servant ;  and  Israel,  whom  I  have 
 
 chosen  : 
 
 2  Thus  saith  the  Lord  thy  maker;  and  he  that  formed  thee  from  the 
 
 womb  will  help  thee  : 
 Fear  not,  O  Jacob,  my  servant ;  and  thou,  Jesurun,  whom  I  have 
 chosen. 
 
 3  For  I  will  pour  water  upon  him  that  is  thirsty,  and  floods  upon  the 
 
 dry  ground : 
 I  will  pour  my  spirit  upon  thy  seed,  and  my  blessing  upon  thine 
 offspring : 
 
 4  And  they  shall  spring  up  among  the  grass,  as  willows  by  the 
 
 water  courses. 
 
 5  This  one  shall  say,  I  am  the  Lord's  ;  and  this  one  shall  call  him- 
 
 self by  the  name  of  Jacob  ; 
 And  this  shall  subscribe  with  his  hand  unto  the  Lord, 
 And  surname  himself  by  the  name  of  Israel. 
 
 6  Thus  saith  the  Lord  the  King  of  Israel, 
 And  his  Redeemer  the  Lord  of  hosts  ; 
 
 I  am  the  first,  and  I  am  the  last ;  and  beside  me  there  is  no  God. 
 
 7  And  who,  as  I,  will  call,  and  declare  it,  and  state  it  to  me, 
 Since  I  founded  the  ancient  people  ? 
 
 And  the  things  that  are  coming,  and  shall  come,  let  them  show 
 unto  them. 
 
 8  Fear  ye  not,  neither  be  afraid  : 
 
 Have  not  I  told  thee  from  that  time,  and  declared  it  ? 
 And  ye  are  my  witnesses. 
 
 Is  there  a  God  beside  me  ?  yea,  there  is  no  Rock ;  I   know  not 
 any. 
 
 9  They  that  make  a  graven  image  are  all  of  them  vanity; 
 And  their  delectable  things  shall  not  profit ; 
 
 And  they  are  their  own  witnesses ; 
 
 10  They  see  not,  nor  know ;  that  they  may  be  ashamed. 
 
 Who  hath  formed  a  god,  or  molten  image  that  is  profitable  for 
 nothing? 
 
 11  Behold,  all  his  fellows  shall  be  ashamed : 
 And  the  workmen,  themselves  are  but  men  : 
 
 Let  them  all  be  gathered  together,  let  them  stand  up ; 
 Yet  they  shall  fear,  and  they  shall  be  ashamed  together. 
 
ISAIAH    XLIV.  413 
 
 12  The  smith  both  maketh  an  axe,  and  worketh  it  in  the  coals, 
 And  he  will  fashion  it  with  hammers,  and  work  it  with  the  strength 
 
 of  his  arms : 
 Yea,  he  is  hungry,  and  is  strength  faileth :  he  drinketh  no  water, 
 and  is  faint. 
 
 13  The  carpenter  hath  stretched  out  his  rule  ;  he  will  mark  it 
 out  with  an  awl ; 
 
 He  will  form  it  with  chisels,  and  he  will  mark  it  out  with  the 
 
 compass, 
 And  he  hath  made  it  after  the  figure  of  a  man, 
 According  to  the  beauty  of  the  human  form, 
 To  dwell  in  a  house. 
 
 14  He  heweth  him  down  cedars,  and  taketh  a  cypress  and  an  oak, 
 Which  he  strengthened  for  himself  among  the  trees  of  the  forest: 
 He  planteth  an  ash,  and  the  rain  will  nourish  it : 
 
 15  Then  shall  it  be  for  a  man  to  burn  :  for  he  will  take  thereof,  and 
 
 warm  himself; 
 Yea,  he  kindleth  it,  and  baketh  bread ; 
 Yea,  he  maketh  a  god,  and  worshippeth  it ; 
 He  maketh  it  a  graven  image,  and  faileth  down  thereto. 
 
 16  He  burneth  half  thereof  in  the  fire  ; 
 
 With  half  thereof  he  heateth  flesh  ;  he  roasteth  roast,  and  is  satis- 
 fied : 
 
 Yea  he  will  warm  himself,  and  saith,  Aha,  I  am  warm,  I  have  seen 
 the  fire : 
 
 17  And  the  residue  thereof  he  hath  made  a  god,  even  his  graven 
 
 image  : 
 He  will  fall  down  unto  it,  and  will  worship  it, 
 And  will  pray  unto  it,  and  say,  Deliver  me  ;  for  thou  art  my  god. 
 
 18  They  have  not  known,  and  they  will  not  understand : 
 For  he  hath  shut  their  eyes,  that  they  cannot  see  ; 
 
 And  their  hearts,  that  they  cannot  do  wisely. 
 
 19  And  none  considereth  in  his  heart, 
 
 Neither  is  there  knowledge  nor  understanding  to  say, 
 
 I  have  burned  half  of  it  in  the  fire  ; 
 
 Yea,  and  I  have  baked  bread  upon  the  coals  thereof; 
 
 I  have  roasted  flesh,  and  eaten  it : 
 
 And  I  will  make  the  residue  thereof  an  abomination, 
 
 I  will  fall  down  to  the  stock  of  a  tree. 
 
 20  He  feedeth  on  ashes  :  a  deceived  heart  hath  turned  him  aside, 
 That  he  cannot  deliver  his  soul,  nor  say, 
 
 Is  there  not  a  lie  in  my  right  hand  ? 
 
 21  Remember  these  things,  O  Jacob  and  Israel ; 
 
 For  thou  art  my  servant :  I  have  formed  thee ;  thou  art  my  ser- 
 vant: 
 O  Israel,  thou  shalt  not  be  forgotten  of  me. 
 
 22  I  have  blotted  out,  as  a  thick  cloud,  thy  transgressions, 
 And,  as  a  cloud,  thy  sins : 
 
 Return  unto  me  ;  for  I  have  redeemed  thee. 
 
 23  Sing,  O  ye  heavens  ;  for  the  Lord  hath  done  it :  shout,  ye 
 lower  parts  of  the  earth  : 
 
414  ISAIAH    XLV. 
 
 Break  forth  into  singing,  ye  mountains,  O  forest,  and  every  tree 
 
 therein : 
 For  the  Lord  hath  redeemed  Jacob,  and  will  glorify  himself  in 
 
 Israel. 
 
 24  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  thy  redeemer,  and  he  that  formed  thee 
 from  the  womb, 
 
 I  am  the  Lord  that  maketh  all  things  ; 
 
 That  stretcheth  forth  the  heavens  alone  ;  that  spreadeth  abroad 
 the  earth  by  myself; 
 
 25  That  frustrateth  the  tokens  of  the  liars,  and  will  make  diviners 
 
 mad  ; 
 That  turneth  wise  men  backward,  and  will  make  their  knowledge 
 foolish  ; 
 
 26  That  confirmeth  the  word  of  his  servant,  and  will  perform  the 
 
 counsel  of  his  messengers  ; 
 That  saith  to  Jerusalem,  Thou  shalt  be  inhabited ; 
 And  to  the  cities  of  Judah,  Ye  shall  be  built, 
 And  I  will  raise  up  the  ruins  thereof: 
 
 27  That  saith  to  the  deep,  Be  dry,  and  I  will  dry  up  thy  rivers  : 
 
 28  That  saith  to  Coresh,  He  is  my  shepherd,  and  shall  perform  all 
 
 my  pleasure : 
 Even  saying  to  Jerusalem,  Thou  shalt  be  built ; 
 And  to  the  temple,  Thy  foundation  shall  be  laid. 
 
 XLV  Thus  saith  the  Lord  to  his  anointed, 
 
 To  Coresh,  whose  right  hand  I  have  holden, 
 
 To  subdue  nations  before  him  ;  and  I  will  loose  the  loins  of  kings  ; 
 To  open  before  him  the  two  leaved  gates  ;  and  the  gates  shall  not 
 be  shut ; 
 
 2  I  will  go  before  thee,  and  make  the  crooked  places  straight : 
 
 I  will  break  in  pieces  the  gates  of  brass,  and  cut  in  sunder  the 
 bars  of  iron  : 
 
 3  And  I  will  give  thee  the  treasures  of  darkness,  and  hidden  riches 
 
 of  secret  places, 
 That  thou  mayest  know  that  I,  the  Lord,  which  call  thee  by  thy 
 
 name, 
 Am  the  God  of  Israel. 
 
 4  For  Jacob  my  servant's  sake,  and  Israel  mine  elect, 
 Therefore,  I  will  call  thee  by  thy  name : 
 
 I  will  surname  thee,  though  thou  hast  not  known  me. 
 
 5  I  am  the  Lord,  and  there  is  none  else,  there  is  no  God  beside 
 
 me  : 
 I  will  gird  thee,  though  thou  hast  not  known  me : 
 
 6  That  they  may  know,  from  the  rising  of  the  sun  to  his  going  down, 
 
 that  there  is  none  beside  me. 
 I  am  the  Lord,  and  there  is  none  else. 
 
 7  I  form  the  light,  and  create  darkness :  I  make  peace,  and  create 
 
 evil : 
 I  the  Lord  do  all  these  things. 
 
 8  Drop  down,  ye  heavens,  from  above,  and  let  the  skies  pour 
 down  righteousness: 
 
ISAIAH    XLV.  415 
 
 Let  the  earth  open,  and  let  salvation  and  righteousness  spring  up, 
 Let  her  bring  them  forth  together : 
 I  the  Lord  have  created  it. 
 
 9  Woe  unto  him  that  striveth  with  his  Maker  ! 
 
 A  potsherd  of  the  potsherds  of  the  earth  I 
 
 Shall  the  clay  say  to  him  that  fashioneth  it,  What  makest  thou  ? 
 Or  thy  work,  He  hath  no  hands? 
 
 10  Woe  unto  him  that  saith  unto  his  father,  What  wilt  thou  beget  ? 
 Or  to  the  woman,  What  wilt  thou  bring  forth  ? 
 
 11  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  and  his  Maker, 
 Ask  me  of  things  to  come  concerning  my  sons, 
 
 And  concerning  the  work  of  my  hands  command  ye  me. 
 
 12  I  have  made  the  earth,  and  created  man  upon  it : 
 I,  even  my  hands,  have  stretched  out  the  heavens, 
 And  all  their  hosts  have  I  commanded. 
 
 13  I  have  raised  him  up  in  righteousness,  and  I  will  direct  all  his 
 
 ways  : 
 He  shall  build  my  city,  and  he  shall  let  go  my  captives,  not  for 
 
 price  nor  reward, 
 Saith  the  Lord  of  hosts. 
 
 14  Thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 The  labour  of  Egypt,  and  merchandise  of  Ethiopia, 
 
 And  of  the  Sabeans,  men  of  stature, 
 
 Shall  come  over  unto  thee,  and  they  shall  be  thine : 
 
 They  shall  come  after  thee;  in  chains  they  shall  come  over. 
 
 And  they  shall  fall  down  unto  thee,  they  shall  make  supplication 
 
 unto  thee, 
 Saying,  Surely  God  is  in  thee ;  and  there  is  none  else,  there  is  no 
 
 God. 
 
 15  Verily  thou  art  a  God  that  hidest  thyself,  O  God  of  Israel, 
 the  Saviour. 
 
 16  They  are  ashamed,  and  also  confounded,  all  of  them  : 
 They  are  gone  into  confusion  together — makers  of  idols. 
 
 17  But  Israel  is  saved  in  the  Lord  with  an  everlasting  salvation : 
 Ye  shall  not  be  ashamed  nor  confounded  world  without  end. 
 
 18  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  that  created  the  heavens; 
 God  himself  that  formed  the  earth  and  made  it ; 
 
 He  hath  established  it, 
 
 He  created  it  not  in  vain,  he  formed  it  to  be  inhabited : 
 
 I  am  the  Lord  ;  and  there  is  none  else. 
 
 19  I  have  not  spoken  in  secret,  in  a  dark  place  of  the  earth  : 
 I  said  not  unto  the  seed  of  Jacob,  Seek  ye  me  in  vain. 
 
 I  the  Lord  speak  righteousness,  I  declare  things  that  are  right. 
 
 20  Assemble  yourselves  and  come  ; 
 
 Draw  near  together,  ye  that  are  escaped  of  the  nations : 
 
 They  have  no  knowledge  that  set  up  the  wood  of  their  graven 
 
 image, 
 And  pray  unto  a  god  that  cannot  save. 
 
 21  Tell  ye,  and  bring  them  near  :  yea,  let  them  take  counsel  together  : 
 Who  hath  declared  this  from  ancient  time  ?  who  hath  told  it  since 
 
 then  ? 
 
416  ISAIAH   XL VI. 
 
 Have'not  I  the  Lord  ?  and  there  is  no  God  else  beside  me  ; 
 A  just  God  and  a  Saviour;  there  is  none  beside  me. 
 
 22  Look  unto  me,  and  be  ye  saved,  all  the  ends  of  the  earth : 
 For  I  am  God,  and  there  is  none  else. 
 
 23  I  have  sworn  by  myself, 
 
 The  word  is  gone  out  of  my  mouth  in  righteousness,  and  shall  not 
 
 return, 
 That  unto  me  every  knee  shall  bow,  every  tongue  shall  swear. 
 
 24  Only  in  the  Lord  have  I  righteousness  and  strength,  shall  he  say  : 
 Unto  him  shall  he  come ;  and  all   that  are  incensed  against  him 
 
 shall  be  ashamed. 
 
 25  In  the  Lord  shall  all  the  seed  of  Israel  be  justified,  and  shall 
 
 glory. 
 
 XL VI  Bel  is  bowed  down,  Nebo  stooping, 
 
 Their  images  are  laid  upon  the  beasts,  and  upon  the  cattle : 
 These,  which  you  carried  in  processions, 
 Are  packed  up,  a  burden  to  the  weary  beast. 
 
 2  They  stoop,  they  bow  down  together;  they  cannot  deliver  the 
 
 burden, 
 But  themselves  are  gone  into  captivity. 
 
 3  Hearken  unto  me,  O  house  of  Jacob,  and  all  the  remnant  of  the 
 
 house  of  Israel, 
 Which  are  borne  by  me  from  the  womb,  which  are  carried  from 
 the  birth  : 
 
 4  And  to  your  old  age  I  am  he ;  and  to  hoar  hairs  will  I  carry  you  : 
 I  have  made,  and  I  will  bear;  and  I   will  carry,  and  will  deliver 
 
 you. 
 
 5  To  whom  will  ye  liken  me,  and  make  me  equal, 
 And  compare  me,  that  we  may  be  like  ? 
 
 6  They  will  lavish  gold  out  of  the   bag,  and   weigh   silver  in   the 
 
 balance. 
 They  will  hire  a  goldsmith ;  and  he  will  make  it  a  god  : 
 They  will  fall  down,  yea,  they  will  worship. 
 
 7  They  will  bear  him  upon  the  shoulder,  they  will  carry  him, 
 And  set  him  in  his  place,  and  he  will  stand  ; 
 
 From  his  place  will  he  not  remove  : 
 
 Yea,  one  shall  cry  unto  him,  yet  can  he  not  answer, 
 
 Nor  save  him  out  of  his  trouble. 
 
 8  Remember  this,  and  show  yourselves  men  : 
 Bring  it  again  to  mind,  O  ye  transgressors. 
 
 9  Remember  the  former  things  of  old  : 
 For  I  am  God,  and  there  is  none  else  ; 
 I  am  God,  and  there  is  none  like  me, 
 
 10  Declaring  the  end  from  the  beginning, 
 
 And  from  ancient  times  the  things  that  are  not  yet  done, 
 Saying,  My  counsel  shall  stand,  and  I  will  do  all  my  pleasure. 
 
 11  Calling  an  eagle  from  the  east, 
 
 The  man  of  my  counsel  from  a  far  country : 
 Yea,  I  have  spoken  it,  I  will  also  bring  it  to  pass ; 
 1  have  purposed  it,  I  will  also  do  it. 
 
ISAIAH   XLYII.  417 
 
 12  Hearken  unto  me,  ye  stouthearted,  that  are  far  from  righteousness  : 
 
 13  I  bring  near  my  righteousness ;  it  shall  not  be  far  off, 
 And  my  salvation  shall  not  tarry :' 
 
 And  I  will  place  salvation  in  Zion  for  Israel  my  glory. 
 
 VII  Come  down,  and  sit  in  the  dust,  O  virgin  daughter  of  Babylon, 
 
 sit  on  the  ground  : 
 There  is  no  throne,  O  daughter  of  the  Chaldeans: 
 For  thou  shalt  no  more  be  called  tender  and  delicate. 
 2    Take  the  millstones,  and  grind  meal : 
 [  Uncover  thy  locks,  lift  up  thy  skirt,  make  bare  the  leg,  pass  over 
 the  rivers. 
 2    Thy  nakedness  shall  be  uncovered,  yea,  thy  shame  shall  be  seen  : 
 I  will  take  vengeance,  and  no  man  shall  resist  me. 
 
 4  As  for  our  redeemer,  the  Lord  of  hosts  is  his  name,  the  Holy 
 One  of  Israel. 
 
 5  Sit  thou  silent,  and  get  thee  into  darkness,   O  daughter  of  the 
 
 Chaldeans : 
 For  thou  shalt  no  more  be  called,  The  lady  of  kingdoms. 
 
 6  I  was  wroth  with  my  people,  I  have  polluted  mine  inheritance, 
 And  given  them  into  thine  hand  :  thou  didst  show  them  no  mercy  ; 
 Upon  the  aged  hast  thou  very  heavily  laid  thy  yoke. 
 
 7  And  thou  saidst,  1  shall  be  a  lady  for  ever : 
 
 So  that  thou  didst  not  lay  these  things  to  thy  heart, 
 Neither  didst  remember  the  latter  end  of  it. 
 
 8  Therefore  hear  now  this,  thou  that  art  given  to  pleasures,  that 
 
 dwellest  carelessly, 
 That  sayest  in  thine  heart,  I  am,  and  none  else  beside  me  ; 
 I  shall  not  sit  as  a  widow,  neither  shall  I  know  the  loss  of  children  : 
 
 9  But  these  two  things  shall  come  to  thee  in  a  moment  in  one  day, 
 The  loss  of  children,  and  widowhood  : 
 
 They  have  come  upon  thee  in  their  perfection, 
 
 For  the  multitude  of  thy  sorceries, 
 
 And  for  the  great  abundance  of  thine  enchantments. 
 
 10  For  thou  hast  trusted  in  thy  wickedness :  thou  hast  said,  None 
 
 seeth  me. 
 Thy  wisdom  and  thy  knowledge,  it  hath  seduced  thee ; 
 And  thou  hast  said  in  thine  heart,  I  am,  and  none  else  beside  me. 
 
 11  Therefore  hath  evil  come  upon  thee ;  thou  shalt  not  know  from 
 
 whence  it  riseth : 
 And  mischief  shall  fall  upon  thee ;  thou  shalt  not  be  able  to  put 
 
 it  off: 
 And  a  crash  shall  come  upon  thee  suddenly,  which  thou  shalt  not 
 
 know. 
 
 12  Stand  now  with  thine  enchantments,  and  with  the  multitudes  of 
 
 thy  sorceries, 
 Wherein  thou  hast  laboured  from  thy  youth  ; 
 Perhaps  thou  shalt  be  able  to  profit,  perhaps  thou  mayest  prevail. 
 
 13  Thou  art  wearied  in  the  multitude  of  thy  counsels. 
 
 Let  now  the  astrologers,  the  stargazers,  the  monthly  prognos- 
 ticators, 
 
 E  E 
 
418  ISAIAH    XLVIII. 
 
 Stand  up,  and  save  thee  from  these  things  that  shall  come  upon 
 thee. 
 
 14  Behold,  they  are  as  stubble  ;  the  fire  has  burned  them ; 
 They  cannot  deliver  themselves  from  the  power  of  the  flame : 
 This  is  no  coal  to  bake  bread  with,  no  fire  to  sit  before. 
 
 15  Thus  are  they  unto  thee  with  whom  thou  hast  laboured ; 
 They  who  have  dealt  with  thee  from  thy  youth, 
 
 They  shall  wander  every  one  to  his  quarter  ;  none  shall  save  thee. 
 
 XLVIII  Hear  ye  this,  O  house  of  Jacob,  which  are  called  by  the 
 
 name  of  Israel, 
 And  are  come  forth  out  of  the  waters  of  Judah, 
 Which  swear  by  the  name  of  the  Lord, 
 And  make  mention  of  God  of  Israel, 
 But  not  in  truth,  nor  in  righteousness. 
 
 2  For  they  call  themselves  of  the  holy  city, 
 And  stay  themselves  upon  the  God  of  Israel ; 
 The  Lord  of  hosts  is  his  name. 
 
 3  I  have  declared  the  former  things  from  the  beginning ; 
 And  they  went  forth  out  of  my  mouth,  and  I  showed  them  ; 
 I  did  them  suddenly,  and  they  came  to  pass. 
 
 4  Because  I  knew  that  thou  art  obstinate, 
 
 And  thy  neck  is  an  iron  sinew,  and  thy  brow  brass ; 
 
 5  Therefore  I  have  declared  it  to  thee  from  the  beginning  ; 
 Before  it  come  to  pass  I  have  showed  it  thee : 
 
 Lest  thou  shouldest  say,  Mine  idol  hath  clone  them, 
 And  my  graven  image,  and  my  molten  image,  hath  commanded 
 them. 
 
 6  Thou  hast  heard,  see  all  this  ;  will  not  ye  too  declare  something  ? 
 I  have  showed  thee  new  things  from  this  time, 
 
 Even  hidden  things,  which  thou  didst  not  know. 
 
 7  They  are  created  now,  and  not  from  the  beginning ; 
 And  before  to-day  thou  heardest  them  not ; 
 
 Lest  thou  shouldest  say,  Behold,  I  knew  them. 
 
 8  Yea,  thou  heardest  not ;  yea,  thou  knewest  not ; 
 Yea,  of  old,  thine  ear  was  not  opened : 
 
 For  I  knew  that  thou  wouldest  deal  very  treacherously, 
 And  wast  called  a  rebel  from  the  womb. 
 
 9  For  my  name's  sake  will  I  defer  mine  anger, 
 
 And  for  my  praise  will  I  refrain  for  thee,  that  I  cut  thee  not  off". 
 
 10  Behold,  I  have  refined  thee,  but  not  with  silver; 
 I  have  chosen  thee  in  the  furnace  of  affliction. 
 
 11  For  mine  own  sake,  even  for  mine  own  sake,  will  I  do  it : 
 For  how  should  my  name  be  polluted  ? 
 
 And  I  will  not  give  my  glory  unto  another. 
 
 12  Hearken  unto  me,  O  Jacob,  and  Israel,  my  called; 
 I  am  he  ;  I  am  the  first,  I  also  am  the  last. 
 
 13  Mine  hand  also  hath  laid  the  foundation  of  the  earth, 
 And  my  right  hand  hath  spanned  the  heavens  : 
 
 1  call  unto  them,  and  they  stand  up  together. 
 
 14  All  ye,  assemble  yourselves,  and  hear; 
 
ISAIAH   XLIX.  419 
 
 Which  among  them  hath  declared  these  things  ? 
 
 The  Lord  hath  loved  him  :  He  will  do  his  pleasure  on  Babylon, 
 
 And  His  arm  shall  be  on  the  Chaldeans. 
 
 15  I,  even  I,  have  spoken  ;  yea,  I  have  called  him : 
 
 I  have  brought  him,  and  he  hath  prospered  in  his  way. 
 
 16  Come  ye  near  unto  me,  hear  ye  this; 
 
 I  have  not  spoken  in  secret  from  the  beginning  ; 
 
 From  the  time  that  it  was,  there  am  I : 
 
 And  now  the  Lord  God  hath  sent  me,  and  his  spirit. 
 
 17  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  thy  Redeemer,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel ; 
 I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  which  teacheth  thee  to  profit, 
 Which  leadeth  thee  by  the  way  that  thou  shouldest  go. 
 
 18  O  that  thou  hadst  hearkened  to  my  commandments ! 
 
 Then  had  thy  peace  been  as  a  river,  . 
 
 And  thy  righteousness  as  the  waves  of  the  sea ; 
 
 19  Thy  seed  also  had  been  as  the  sand, 
 
 And  the  offspring  of  thy  bowels  like  the  gravel  thereof: . 
 
 Yet  his  name  shall  not  be  cut  off,  nor  destroyed  from  before  me. 
 
 20  Go  ye  forth  of  Babylon,  flee  ye  from  the  Chaldeans, 
 With  a  voice  of  shouting  declare  ye,  tell  this, 
 
 Utter  it  even  to  the  end  of  the  earth  ; 
 
 Say  ye,  The  Lord  hath  redeemed  his  servant  Jacob. 
 
 21  And  they  thirsted  not  when  he  led  them  through  the  deserts  : 
 He  caused  the  waters  to  flow  out  of  the  rock  for  them  : 
 
 He  clave  the  rock  also,  and  the  waters  gushed  out. 
 
 22  There  is  no  peace,  saith  the  Lord,  unto  the  wicked. 
 
 IX  Listen,  O  isles,  unto  me;  and  hearken,  ye  nations,  from  far; 
 
 The  Lord  hath  called  me  from  the  womb  ; 
 From  the  bowels  of  my  mother  hath  he  made  mention  of  my  name. 
 
 2  And  he  hath  made  my  mouth  like  a  sharp  sword  ; 
 In  the  shadow  of  his  hand  hath  he  hid  me, 
 
 And  made  me  a  polished  shaft ;  in  his  quiver  hath  he  hid  me ; 
 
 3  And  he  will  say  unto  me,  Thou  art  my  servant,  O  Israel, 
 In  whom  I  will  be  glorified. 
 
 4  And  I  said,  I  have  laboured  in  vain, 
 
 I  have  spent  my  strength  for  nought,  and  in  vain  : 
 Yet  surely  my  right  is  with  the  Lord, 
 And  my  work  with  my  God. 
 
 5  And  now,  saith  the  Lord  that  formed  me  from  the  womb  to  be 
 
 his  servant, 
 To  bring  Jacob  again  to  him, 
 Though  Israel  be  not  gathered,  yet  shall  I  be  glorious  in  the  eyes 
 
 of  the  Lord, 
 And  my  God  shall  be  my  strength. 
 
 6  And  He  will  say,  It  is  a  light  thing  that  thou  shouldest  be  my 
 
 servant 
 To  raise  up  the  tribes  of  Jacob,  and  to  restore  the  preserved  of 
 Israel : 
 
 E   E    2 
 
420  ISAIAH   XLIX. 
 
 I  have  also  given  thee  for  a  light  to  the  Gentiles, 
 
 That  thou  mayest  be  my  salvation  unto  the  end  of  the  earth. 
 
 7  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  the  Redeemer  of  Israel,  and  his  Holy  One  ; 
 To  him  whom  man  despiseth,  to  him  whom  the  nation  abhorreth, 
 
 to  a  servant  of  rulers, 
 Kings  shall  see  and  arise,  and  princes  shall  bow  themselves, 
 Because  of  the  Lord  that  is  faithful, 
 The  Holy  One  of  Israel,  who  shall  choose  thee. 
 
 8  Thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 In  a  time  of  favour  have  I  heard  thee, 
 
 And  in  a  day  of  salvation  have  I  helped  thee  : 
 
 And  I  will  preserve  thee,  and  give  thee  for  a  covenant  of  the 
 
 people, 
 To  establish  the  earth,  to  cause  to  inherit  the  desolate  heritages  ; 
 
 9  To  say  to  the  prisoners,  Go  forth ; 
 
 To  them  that  are  in  darkness,  Show  yourselves. 
 They  shall  feed  in  the  ways,  and  their  pastures  shall  be  on  all  bare 
 hills. 
 
 10  They  shall  not  hunger  nor  thirst ;  neither  shall  the  mirage  nor  sun 
 
 smite  them  : 
 For  he  that  hath  mercy  on  them  shall  lead  them, 
 Even  by  the  springs  of  water  shall  he  guide  them. 
 
 11  And  I  will  make  all  my  mountains  a  way,  and  my  highways  shall 
 
 be  raised. 
 
 12  Behold,  these  shall  come  from  far : 
 
 And,  lo,  these  from  the  north  and  from  the  west ; 
 And  these  from  the  land  of  Sinim. 
 
 13  Shout,  O  heavens;  and  be  joyful,  O  earth  ; 
 Let  the  mountains  break  into  a  shout : 
 
 For  the  Lord  hath  comforted  his  people, 
 And  will  have  mercy  upon  his  afflicted. 
 
 14  But  Zion  will  say,  The  Lord  hath  forsaken  me, 
 And  my  Lord  hath  forgotten  me. 
 
 15  Can  a  woman  forget  her  sucking  child, 
 
 That  she  should  not  have  compassion  on  the  son  of  her  womb  ? 
 Yea,  they  may  forget,  yet  will  I  not  forget  thee. 
 
 16  Behold,  I  have  graven  thee  upon  the  palms  of  my  hands ; 
 Thy  walls  are  continually  before  me. 
 
 17  Thy  children  have  made  haste ; 
 
 fcThy  destroyers  and  they  that  made  thee  waste  shall  go  forth  of 
 thee. 
 
 18  Lift  up  thine  eyes  round  about,  and  behold  : 
 
 All  of  them  are  gathered  together,  they  are  come  to  thee. 
 
 As  I  live,  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 Thou  shalt  surely  clothe  thee  with  them  all,  as  with  an  ornament, 
 
 And  bind  them  on  thee,  as  a  bride  doeth. 
 
 19  For  thy  wastes,  and  thy  ruins,  and  thy  desolate  land, 
 Shall  even  now  be  too  narrow  for  the  inhabitants, 
 And  they  that  swallowed  thee  up  shall  be  far  away. 
 
 20  The  children  of  thee,  the  bereaved  one, 
 
ISAIAH    L.  421 
 
 Shall  say  again  in  tliine  ears,  The  place  is  too  strait  for  me  : 
 Make  room  for  me  that  I  may  dwell. 
 
 21  Then  shalt  thou  say  in  thine  heart,  Who  hath  borne  me  these, 
 For  I  was  bereaved  aud  barren  ; 
 
 A  captive,  and  an  exile,  and  who  hath  brought  up  these? 
 Behold,  I  was  left  alone  ;  these,  where  were  they  ? 
 
 22  Thus  saith  the  Lord  God, 
 
 Behold,  I  will  lift  up  my  hand  to  the  nations, 
 
 And  set  up  my  standard  to  the  peoples : 
 
 And  they  shall  bring  thy  sons  in  their  arms, 
 
 And  thy  daughters  shall  be  carried  upon  their  shoulders. 
 
 23  And  kings  shall  be  thy  nursing  fathers. 
 And  their  queens  thy  nursing  mothers  : 
 
 They  shall  bow  down  to  thee  with  their  face  to  the  earth, 
 
 And  lick  the  dust  of  thy  feet ; 
 
 And  thou  shalt  know  that  I  am  the  Lord, 
 
 Whom  they  that  wait  for  shall  not  be  ashamed. 
 
 24  Shall  the  prey  be  taken  from  the  mighty,  or  the  lawful  captive 
 delivered  ? 
 
 25  But  thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 Even  the  captives  of  the  mighty  shall  be  taken  away, 
 And  the  prey  of  the  terrible  shall  be  delivered  : 
 For  I  will  contend  with  him  that  contendeth  with  thee, 
 And  I  will  save  thy  children. 
 
 26  And  I  will  feed  them  that  oppress  thee  with  their  own  flesh ; 
 And  they  shall  be  drunken  with  their  own  blood,  as  with   new 
 
 wine : 
 And  all  flesh  shall  know  that  I  the  Lord  am  thy  Saviour, 
 And  thy  Redeemer  is  the  Mighty  One  of  Jacob. 
 
 L  Thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 Where  is  the  bill  of  your  mother's  divorcement,  whom  I  have 
 
 put  away  ? 
 Or  which  of  my  creditors  is  it  to  whom  I  have  sold  you  ? 
 Behold,  for  your  iniquities  have  ye  sold  yourselves, 
 And  for  your  transgressions  is  your  mother  put  away. 
 
 2  Wherefore,  when  I  came,  was  there  no  man  ? 
 When  I  called,  was  there  none  to  answer? 
 
 Is  my  hand  shortened  at  all,  that  it  cannot  redeem  ? 
 
 And  have  I  no  power  to  deliver  ? 
 
 Behold,  by  my  rebuke  I  will  dry  up  the  sea, 
 
 I  will  make  the  rivers  a  wilderness ; 
 
 Their  fish  shall  rot,  because  there  is  no  water,  and  die  for  thirst ; 
 
 3  I  will  clothe  the  heavens  with  blackness, 
 And  I  will  make  sackcloth  their  covering. 
 
 4  The  Lord  God  hath  given  me  the  tongue  of  the  scholar, 
 That  I  should  know  how  to  speak  a  word  in  season  to  him  that  is 
 
 weary : 
 He  will  waken  me  morning  by  morning, 
 He  will  waken  mine  ear  to  hear  as  the  scholar. 
 
 5  The  Lord  God  hath  opened  mine  ear, 
 
 E  E    3 
 
422  ISAIAH   LI. 
 
 And  I  did  not  resist,  neither  turned  away  back. 
 
 6  I  gave  my  back  to  the  smiters, 
 
 And  my  cheeks  to  them  that  plucked  off  the  hair  : 
 I  hid  not  my  face  from  shame  and  spitting. 
 
 7  For  the  Lord  God  will  help  me  ;  therefore  I  am  not  confounded  : 
 Therefore  have  I  set  my  face  like  a  flint, 
 
 And  1  know  that  I  shall  not  be  ashamed. 
 
 8  My  justifier  is  near ; 
 
 Who  will  contend  with  me  ?  let  us  stand  up  together : 
 Who  is  mine  adversary  ?  let  him  come  near  to  me. 
 y    Behold,  the  Lord  God  will  help  me  ;  who  is  he  that  shall  condemn 
 me  ? 
 Lo,  they  all  shall  wax  old  as  a  garment ;  the  moth  shall  eat  them  up. 
 
 10  Who  is  among  you  that  feareth  the  Lord, 
 That  obeyeth  the  voice  of  his  servant, 
 
 That  walketh  in  darkness,  and  hath  no  light? 
 
 Let  him  trust  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  and  stay  upon  his  God. 
 
 11  Behold,  all  ye  that  kindle  a  fire,  that  compass  yourselves  about 
 
 with  sparks : 
 Walk  in  the  light  of  your  fire,  and  in  the  sparks  that  ye   have 
 
 kindled. 
 This  shall  ye  have  of  mine  hand  ;  ye  shall  lie  down  in  sorrow. 
 
 LI  Hearken  to  me,  ye  that  follow  after  righteousness, 
 
 Ye  that  seek  the  Lord  : 
 Look  unto  the  rock  whence  ye  are  hewn, 
 And  to  the  hole  of  the  quarry  whence  ye  are  digged. 
 
 2  Look  unto  Abraham  your  father,  and  unto  Sarah  that  bare  you  : 
 For  I  called  him  alone,  and  I  will  bless  him,  and  cause  him  to  in- 
 crease. 
 
 3  For  the  Lord  hath  comforted  Zion :  he  hath   comforted  all  her 
 
 waste  places ; 
 And  he  hath  made  her  wilderness  like  Eden,  and  her  desert  like 
 
 the  garden  of  the  Lord  ; 
 Joy  and  gladness  shall  be  found  therein,   thanksgiving,  and  the 
 
 voice  of  melody. 
 
 4  Hearken  unto  me,  my  people ; 
 And  give  ear  unto  me,  O  my  nation  : 
 For  a  law  shall  go  forth  from  me, 
 
 And  I  will  establish  my  judgment  for  a  light  of  the  nations. 
 
 5  My  righteous  is  near  ;  my  salvation  is  gone  forth  ; 
 And  mine  arms  shall  judge  the  nations: 
 
 The  isles  shall  wait  upon  me,  and  in  mine  arm  shall  they  trust. 
 
 6  Lift  up  your  eyes  to  the  heavens,  and  look  upon  the  earth 
 beneath : 
 
 For  the  heavens  are  driven  away  like  smoke,  and  the  earth  shall 
 
 wax  old  like  a  garment, 
 And  they  that  dwell  therein  shall  die  in  like  manner: 
 But  my  salvation  shall  be  for  ever,  and  my  righteousness  shall  not 
 
 be  abolished. 
 
ISAIAH    LI.  423 
 
 Hearken  unto  me,  ye  that  know  righteousness, 
 The  people  in  whose  heart  is  my  law  ; 
 
 Fear  ye  not  the  reproach  of  men,  neither  be  ye  afraid  of  their 
 revilings. 
 
 8  For  the  moth  shall  eat  them  up  like  a  garment,  and  the  worm 
 
 shall  eat  them  like  wool : 
 But  my  righteousness  shall  be  for  ever,  and  my  salvation  from 
 generation  to  generation. 
 
 9  Awake  !  awake  !  put  on  strength,  O  arm  of  the  Lord  ; 
 Awake  !   as  in  the  ancient  days,  in  the  generations  of  old. 
 
 Art  thou  not  the  same  that  hewed  Ilahab  in  pieces,  that  wounded 
 the  dragon  ? 
 
 10  Art  thou  not  the  same  which  dried  the  sea,  the  waters  of  the  great 
 
 deep  ; 
 That  made  the  depths  of  the  sea  a  way  for  the  ransomed  to  pass 
 over  ? 
 
 11  Therefore  the  redeemed  of  the  Lord  shall  return, 
 And  come  with  shouting  unto  Zion; 
 
 And  everlasting  joy  shall  be  upon  their  head  : 
 Gladness  and  joy  shall  overtake  them  :  sorrow  and  mourning  have 
 fled  away. 
 
 12  I  am  He  that  comforteth  you  : 
 
 Who  art  thou,  that  thou  shouldest  be  afraid  of  a  man  that  shall 
 
 die, 
 And  of  the  son  of  man  which  shall  be  made  as  grass ; 
 
 13  And  hast  forgotten  the  Lord  thy  Maker, 
 
 That  stretcheth  forth  the  heavens,  and  layeth  the  foundations  of 
 
 the  earth  ; 
 And  hast  feared  continually  every  day,  because  of  the  fury  of  the 
 
 oppressor, 
 As  lie  made  ready  to  destroy  : 
 And  where  is  the  fury  of  the  oppressor  ? 
 
 14  The  captive  exile  hasteneth  that  he  may  be  loosed, 
 
 And  he  shall  not  die   in   the  dungeon,  and  his  bread  shall  not 
 fail. 
 
 15  For  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  that  rouseth  the  sea,  and  its  waves 
 
 roar  : 
 The  Lord  of  hosts  is  his  name. 
 
 16  And  I  have  put  my  words  in  thy  mouth, 
 
 And  I  have  covered  thee  in  the  shadow  of  mine  hand, 
 
 To  plant  the  heavens,  and  to  lay  the  foundations  of  the  earth, 
 
 And  to  say  unto  Zion,  Thou  art  my  people. 
 
 17  Awake !  awake  1  stand  up,  O  Jerusalem, 
 
 Which   has   drunk    at   the   hand    of  the   Lord   the   cup  of  his 
 
 wrath  : 
 Thou  hast  drunken  the  dregs  of  the  cup  of  trembling,  and  wrung 
 
 them  out. 
 1 }    There  is  none  to  guide  her  among  all   the  sons  whom  she  hath 
 
 brought  forth  ; 
 
 E    K      1 
 
424  ISAIAH   LII. 
 
 Neither  is  there  any  that  taketh  her  by  the  hand 
 Of  all  the  sons  that  she  hath  brought  up. 
 it)    These   two   things  are   befalling    thee;   who   shall  be    sorry   for 
 thee? 
 Desolation,  and  ruin,  and  the  famine,  and  the  sword : 
 By  whom  shall  I  comfort  thee  ? 
 iu    Thy  sons  have  fainted,  they  lie  at  the  head  of  all  the  streets,  as  a 
 wild  bull  in  a  net : 
 They  are  full  of  the  wrath  of  the  Lord,  the  rebuke  of  thy  God.' 
 
 21  Therefore  hear  now  this,  thou  afflicted,  and  drunken,  but  not 
 with  wine: 
 
 22  Thus  saith  thy  Lord  the  Lord,  and  thy  God  that  pleadeth  the 
 
 cause  of  his  people, 
 Behold,  I  have  taken  out  of  thine  hand  the  cup  of  trembling, 
 The  dregs  of  the  cup  of  my  wrath  ; 
 Thou  shalt  no  more  drink  it  again  : 
 
 23  But  I  will  put  it  into  the  hand  of  them  that  afflict  thee; 
 Which  have  said  to  thy  soul,  Bow  down,  that  we  may  go  over : 
 And  thou  hast  laid  thy  back  as  the  ground, 
 
 And  as  the  street,  to  them  that  went  over. 
 
 LII  Awake  !  awake  !  put  on  thy  strength,  O  Zion  ; 
 
 Put  on  thy  garments  of  beauty,  O  Jerusalem,  the  holy  city : 
 For  henceforth  there  shall  no  more  come  into  thee 
 The  uncircumcised  and  the  unclean. 
 
 2  Shake  thyself  from  the  dust ;  arise,  and  sit  down,  O  Jerusalem  : 
 Loose  thyself  from  the  bands  of  thy  neck,  O  captive  daughter  of 
 
 Zion  : 
 
 3  For  thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 Ye  have  sold  yourselves  for  nought :  and  ye  shall  be  redeemed 
 without  money. 
 
 4  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  God, 
 
 My  people  went  down  aforetime  into  Egypt  to  sojourn  there ; 
 And  the  Assyrian  oppressed  them  without  cause. 
 
 5  Now  therefore,  what  have  I  here,  saith  the  Lord, 
 That  my  people  is  taken  away  for  nought? 
 Their  oppressors  exult,  saith  the  Lord  ; 
 
 And  my  name  continually  every  day  is  blasphemed. 
 
 6  Therefore  my  people  shall  know  my  name : 
 Therefore  they  shall  know  in  that  day, 
 That  I  am  he  that  said,  Behold,  I  am  here. 
 
 7  How  timely  upon  the  mountains 
 
 Are  the  feet  of  him  that  bringeth  good  tidings,  publishing  peace, 
 Bringing  good  tidings  of  good,  publishing  salvation, 
 Saying  unto  Zion,  Thy  God  reigneth. 
 The  voice  of  thy  watchmen  !     They  have  lifted  up  the  voice ; 
 
 8  With  the  voice  together  shall  they  shout : 
 
 For  they  shall  see  eye  to  eye,  when  the  Lord  rcturncth  to  Zion. 
 Break  forth  into  joy,  shout  together,  ye  waste  places  of  Jerusalem: 
 o    For  the  Lord  hath  comforted  his  people, 
 He  hath  redeemed  Jerusalem. 
 
ISAIAH   LI  1 1.  425 
 
 10  The  Lord  hath  made  bare  his  holy  arm  in  the  eyes  of  all    the 
 
 nations ; 
 And  all  the  ends  of  the   earth  have  seen   the  salvation    of  our 
 God. 
 
 11  Depart  ye  !  depart  ye  !  go  ye  out  from  thence,  touch  no  un- 
 *  clean  thing ; 
 
 Go  ye  out  of  the  midst  of  her;  be  ye  clean,  ye  armour-bearers  of 
 the  Lord. 
 
 12  For  ye  shall  not  go  out  with  haste,  nor  depart  in  flight : 
 
 For  the  Lord  doth  go  before  you;  and  the  God  of  Israel  brings 
 up  your  rear. 
 
 13  Behold,  my  servant  shall  do  wisely, 
 
 He  shall  be  exalted  and  extolled,  and  be  very  high. 
 
 14  As  many  were  astonished  at  thee  ; 
 
 ;  (His  visage  was  so  marred  more  than  any  man, 
 And  his  form  more  than  the  sons  of  men  :) 
 
 15  So  shall  he  sprinkle  many  nations  ; 
 Kings  shall  shut  their  mouths  before  him  : 
 
 For  that  which  had  not  been  told  them  have  they  seen  ; 
 And  that  which  they  had  not  heard  have  they  perceived. 
 
 LIII  Who  hath  believed  our  report? 
 
 And  to  whom  is  the  arm  of  the  Lord  revealed  ? 
 
 2  For  he  shall  grow  up  before  him  like  a  tender  plant, 
 And  as  a  root  out  of  a  dry  ground : 
 
 He  hath  no  form  nor  comeliness  ;  and  when  we  shall  see  him, 
 There  is  no  beauty  that  we  should  desire  him. 
 
 3  He  is  despised  and  rejected  of  men  ; 
 
 A  man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief : 
 And  we  hid  as  it  were  our  faces  from  him  ; 
 He  was  despised,  and  we  esteemed  him  not. 
 
 4  Surely  he  hath  borne  our  griefs,  and  carried  our  sorrows  : 
 Yet  we  did  esteem  him  stricken,  smitten  of  God,  and  afflicted. 
 
 5  But  he  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions, 
 He  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities : 
 
 The  chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon  him ; 
 Aud  with  his  stripes  we  are  healed. 
 
 6  All  we  like  sheep  have  gone  astray ; 
 
 We  have  turned  every  one  to  his  own  way ; 
 
 And  the  Lord  hath  laid  on  him  the  iniquity  of  us  all. 
 
 7  He  was  oppressed,  and  he  was  afflicted, 
 Yet  he  opened  not  his  mouth  : 
 
 As  a  lamb  is  brought  to  the  slaughter, 
 And  as  a  sheep  before  her  shearers  is  dumb, 
 So  he  opened  not  his  mouth. 
 
 8  He  was  taken  from  prison  and  from  judgment : 
 And  who  among  his  generation  will  consider 
 That  he  was  cut  off,  out  of  the  land  of  the  living, 
 
 For  the  transgression  of  my  people  :  —  stricken  for  them. 
 
 9  And  he  made  his  grave  with  the  wicked, 
 
426  ISAIAH    LIV. 
 
 And  with  the  rich  in  his  death  ; 
 Although  he  had  done  no  violence, 
 Neither  was  any  deceit  in  his  mouth. 
 
 10  Yet  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  bruise  him ;  he  hath  put  him  to  grief: 
 When  thou  shalt  make  his  soul  an  offering  for  sin, 
 
 He  shall  see  his  seed,  he  shall  prolong  his  days, 
 
 And  the  pleasure  of  the  Lord  shall  prosper  in  his  hand. 
 
 11  He  shall  see  of  the  travail  of  his  soul,  and  shall  be  satisfied  : 
 By  his  knowledge  shall  my  righteous  servant  justify  many; 
 For  he  shall  bear  their  iniquities. 
 
 12  Therefore  will  I  divide  him  a  portion  with  the  many, 
 And  he  shall  divide  the  spoil  with  the  strong ; 
 Because  he  hath  poured  out  his  soul  unto  death  : 
 And  he  was  numbered  with  the  transgressors. 
 
 And  he  bare  the  sin  of  many ; 
 
 And  he  will  make  intercession  for  the  transgressors. 
 
 LIV  Sing,  O  barren,  thou  that  didst  not  bear; 
 
 Break  forth  into  singing,  and  cry  aloud, 
 Thou  that  didst  not  travail  with  child : 
 For  more  are  the  children  of  the  desolate 
 Than  the  children  of  the  married  wife,  saith  the  Lord. 
 
 2  Enlarge  the  place  of  thy  tent, 
 
 And  let  them  stretch  forth  the  curtains  of  thy  dwellings: 
 Spare  not,  lengthen  thy  cords,  and  strengthen  thy  stakes  ; 
 
 3  For  thou  shalt  break  forth  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left; 
 And  thy  seed  shall  inherit  the  nations,  and  repeople  the  desolate 
 
 cities. 
 
 4  Fear  not ;  for  thou  shalt  not  be  ashamed  : 
 Neither  be  thou  abashed  ;  for  thou  shalt  not  blush  : 
 For  thou  shalt  forget  the  shame  of  thy  youth, 
 
 And  shalt   not  remember   the  reproach  of  thy  widowhood  any 
 more. 
 
 5  For  thy  Maker   is   thine    husband ;    the   Lord   of   hosts   is    his 
 
 name  ; 
 And  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  thy  redeemer  ; 
 The  God  of  the  whole  earth  shall  he  be  called. 
 
 6  For  the  Lord  hath  recalled  thee,  as  a  wife  forsaken  and  grieved 
 
 in  spirit, 
 And  as  a  wife  of  youth,  of  whom  thy  God  said,  She  shall  be  put 
 away. 
 
 7  For  a  small  moment  I  forsook  thee  ; 
 
 But  with  great  mercies  will  I  draw  thee  back  again. 
 
 8  In  a  gush  of  wrath,  I  hid  my  face  from  thee  for  a  moment ; 
 But  with  everlasting  kindness  will  I  have  mercy  on  thee, 
 Saith  the  Lord  thy  Redeemer. 
 
 9  For  this  is  as  the  waters  of  Noah  unto  me  : 
 
 For  as  I  sware  that  the  waters  of  Noah  should  no  more  go  over 
 
 the  earth  ; 
 So  have  I  sworn  that  I  will  not  be  wroth  with  thee,  and  that  I  will 
 
 not  rebuke  thee. 
 
ISAIAH    LV.  427 
 
 10  For  the  mountains  shall  depart,  and  the  hills  be  overthrown, 
 But  my  kindness  shall  not  depart  from  thee, 
 
 Neither  shall  the  covenant  of  my  peace  be  overthrown, 
 Saith  the  Lord  that  pitieth  thee. 
 
 11  O  thou  afflicted,  tempest-tossed,  uncomforted  I 
 Behold  I  lay  thy  stones  in  cement  of  vermillion, 
 And  will  found  thee  upon  sapphires : 
 
 12  And  I  will  make  thy  battlements  of  rubies, 
 And  thy  gates  of  carbuncles, 
 
 And  all  thy  borders  of  precious  stones. 
 
 13  And  all  thy  children  shall  be  disciples  of  the  Lord  ; 
 And  great  shall  be  the  peace  of  thy  children. 
 
 14  In  righteousness  shalt  thou  be  established : 
 
 Thou  shalt  be  far  from  oppression,  for  thou  shalt  not  fear : 
 And  from  destruction,  for  it  shall  not  come  near  thee. 
 
 15  Behold,   they   shall   gather,   they   shall  gather,    but   not   at    my 
 
 signal : 
 Whoso  hath  gathered  against  thee  shall  fall  away  to  thy  side. 
 
 16  Behold,  I  have  created  the  smith  that  bloweth  the  fire  of  coal, 
 And  bringeth  forth  a  weapon  for  its  work  ; 
 
 And  I  have  created  the  waster  to  destroy. 
 
 17  No  weapon  that  is  formed  against  thee  shall  prosper; 
 
 And  against  every  tongue  that  shall  stand  with  thee  in  judgment, 
 
 thou  shalt  obtain  thy  cause. 
 This  is  the  heritage  of  the  servants  of  the  Lord, 
 And  their  justification  from  me:  — 
 The  Lord  hath  said  it. 
 
 LV  Ho,  every  one  that  thirsteth,  come  ye  to  the  waters, 
 
 And  he  that  hath  no  money ;  come  ye,  buy,  and  eat ; 
 Yea,  come,  buy  wine  and  milk,  without  money,  and  without  price. 
 
 2  Wherefore  will  ye  spend  money  for  that  which  is  not  bread  ? 
 And  your  labour  for  that  which  satisfieth  not? 
 
 Hearken,  hearken  unto  me,  and  eat  ye  that  which  is  good, 
 And  your  soul  shall  delight  itself  in  fatness. 
 
 3  Incline  your  ear,  and  come  unto  me :  hear,  and  your  soul  shall 
 
 live  ; 
 And  I  will  make  an  everlasting  covenant  with  you,  even  the  sure 
 mercies  of  David. 
 
 4  Behold,  I  have  given  him  for  a  witness  to  the  peoples, 
 A  leader  and  commander  to  the  peoples. 
 
 5  Behold,  thou  shalt  call  a  nation  that  thou  knowest  not ; 
 And  nations  that  knew  not  thee  shall  run  unto  thee, 
 Because  of  the  Lord  thy  God, 
 
 And  for  the  Holy  one  of  Israel ;  for  he  hath  glorified  thee. 
 
 6  Seek  ye  the  Lord  while  he  may  be  found, 
 Call  ye  upon  him  while  he  is  near: 
 
 7  Let  the  wicked  forsake  his  way, 
 And  the  evil  man  his  thoughts : 
 
 And  let  him  return  unto  the  Lord,  and  He  will  have  mercy  upon 
 him  ; 
 
428  iSAiAn  lvi. 
 
 And  to  our  God,  for  He  will  abundantly  pardon. 
 
 8  For  my  thoughts  are  not  your  thoughts, 
 Neither  are  your  ways  my  ways,  saith  the  Lord. 
 
 9  For  as  the  heavens  are  higher  than  the  earth, 
 So  are  my  ways  higher  than  your  ways, 
 And  my  thoughts  than  your  thoughts. 
 
 10    For  as  the  rain  cometh  down,  and  the  snow  from  heaven,  and 
 returneth  not  thither, 
 Till  it  hath  watered  the  earth,  and  made  it  bring  forth  and  bud, 
 And  hath  given  seed  to  the  sower,  and  bread  to  the  eater  : 
 So  shall  my  word  be  that  goeth  forth  out  of  my  mouth  : 
 It  shall  not  return  unto  me  void, 
 Nor  till  it  hath  done  that  which  I  desired, 
 And  hath  accomplished  that  whereto  I  sent  it. 
 
 12  For  ye  shall  go  out  with  joy,  and  be  led  forth  with  peace  : 
 
 The  mountains  and  the  hills  shall  break  forth  before   you  into 
 
 shouts, 
 And  all  the  trees  of  the  field  shall  clap  their  hands. 
 
 13  Instead  of  the  thorn  shall  come  up  the  cypress, 
 And  instead  of  the  briar  shall  come  up  the  myrtle  : 
 And  it  shall  be  to  the  Lord  for  a  name, 
 
 For  an  everlasting  sign  that  shall  not  be  cut  off. 
 
 LVI  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  keep  ye  justice,  and  do  righteousness: 
 
 For  my  salvation  is  near  to  come,  and  my  righteousness  to  be 
 revealed. 
 2    Blessed  is  the  man  that  shall  do  this,  and  the  son  of  man  that  shall 
 lay  hold  on  it ; 
 Keeping  the  sabbath  from  profaning  it, 
 And  keeping  his  hand  from  doing  any  evil. 
 
 3  And  let  not  the  foreigner  that  hath  joined  himself  to  the  Lord, 
 speak, 
 
 Saying,  The  Lord  will  utterly  separate  me  from  his  people : 
 Neither  let  the  eunuch  say,  Behold,  I  am  a  dry  tree. 
 
 4  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  unto  the  eunuchs  that  shall  keep  my 
 
 sabbaths, 
 And  choose  the  things  that  please  me,  and  take  hold  of  my 
 covenant ; 
 
 5  Even  unto  them  will  I  give  in  mine  house,  and  within  my  walls, 
 A  place  and  a  name  better  than  of  sons  and  of  daughters  : 
 
 I  will  give  them  an  everlasting  name,  that  shall  not  be  cut  oft'. 
 
 6  Also  the  foreigners,  that  join  themselves  to  the  Lord, 
 
 To  serve  him,  and  to  love  the  name  of  the  Lord,  to  be  his 
 
 servants, 
 Every  one  that  keepeth  the  sabbath  from  profaning  it,  and  taketh 
 
 hold  of  my  covenant: 
 
 7  Even  them  will  I  bring  to  my  holy  mountain, 
 And  make  them  joyful  in  my  house  of  prayer : 
 
 Their  burnt  offerings  and  their  sacrifices  shall  be  accepted  upon 
 
 mine  altar ; 
 For  mine  house  shall  be  called  an  house  of  prayer  for  all  peoples. 
 
iSAiAn  lvii.  429 
 
 8  This  is  the  word  of  the  Lord  God,  the  gatherer  of  the  outcasts 
 of  Israel : — 
 
 Yet  will  I  gather  others  to  him,  beside  those  that  are  gathered. 
 
 9  All  ye  beasts  of  the  field,  come  to  devour, 
 Yea,  all  ye  beasts  in  the  forest. 
 
 10  His  watchmen  are  all  blind,  they  know  not  the  danger; 
 They  are  all  dumb  dogs,  they  cannot  bark  — 
 Dreaming,  lying  down,  loving  to  slumber  : 
 
 11  And  the  dogs  are  greedy,  they  know  not  how  to  be  satisfied, 
 And  they,  the  shepherds,  know  not  how  to  discern  : 
 
 They  are  all  of  them  turned  to  their  own  way,  every  one  of  them 
 to  his  own  gain. 
 
 12  Come  ye,  say  they,  I  will  fetch  wine,  and  we  Mill  fill  ourselves 
 
 with  strong  drink  ; 
 And  to-morrow  shall  be  as  to-day,  and  much  more  abundant. 
 
 LVII  The  righteous  perisheth,  and  no  man  layeth  it  to  heart : 
 
 And  merciful  men  are  taken  away,  none  considering 
 That  the  righteous  is  taken  away  from  the  evil  to  come. 
 
 2  He  shall  enter  into  peace  :  — 
 
 They  shall  rest  in  their  beds  :  —  Each  one  that  walketh  in  his  up- 
 rightness. 
 
 3  But  yre  —  draw  near  hither,  ye  sons  of  the  sorceress, 
 The  seed  of  the  adulterer  and  the  harlot : 
 
 4  Against  whom  do  ye  sport  yourselves? 
 
 Against  whom  make  ye  a  wide  mouth,  and  put  out  the  tongue? 
 Are  ye  not  children  of  transgression,  a  seed  of  falsehood, 
 
 5  Burning  with  lust  for  idols  under  every  green  tree, 
 
 Slaying  the  children  in  the  valleys  under  the  cliffs  of  the  rocks? 
 
 6  Among  the  smooth  stones  of  the  stream  is  thy  portion  ;  they,  they 
 
 are  thy  lot : 
 Even  to  them  hast  thou  poured  a  drink  offering,  thou  hast  offered 
 
 a  meat  offering. 
 Should  I  rest  satisfied  with  these  things  ? 
 
 7  Upon  a  lofty  and  high  mountain  hast  thou  set  thy  bed: 
 Even  thither  wentest  thou  up  to  offer  sacrifice. 
 
 8  And   behind  the   door  and  the  door-post   hast  thou   placed  thy 
 
 memorial : 
 For  thou  hast  discovered   thyself  to  another  than  me,  and  art 
 
 gone  up ; 
 Thou  hast  enlarged  thy  bed,  and  made  thee  a  covenant  with  them  ; 
 Thou  hast  loved  their  bed,  thou  hast  provided  room. 
 
 9  And  thou  wentest  to  the  king  with  oil,  and  didst  multiply  thy 
 
 perfumes, 
 And  didst  send  thy  messengers  far  off,  and  didst  debase  thyself 
 even  unto  hell. 
 10    Thou  art  wearied  in  the  length  of  thy  way  ; 
 Yet  saidst  thou  not,  There  is  no  hope : 
 Thou  hast  yet  found  life  in  thine  hand  ; 
 Therefore  thou  art  not  disheartened. 
 
420  ISAIAH    LVIII. 
 
 11  And  of  whom  hast  thou  been  afraid  or  feared,  that  thou  hast  lied, 
 And  hast  not  remembered  me,  nor  laid  it  to  thy  heart? 
 
 Is  it  not  because  I  hold  my  peace,  and  that  of  old,  that  thou  wilt 
 not  fear  me  ? 
 
 12  I  will  declare  thy  righteousness,  and  thy  works ;  and  they  shall  not 
 
 avail  thee. 
 
 13  When  thou  criest,  let  thy  assemblage  of  idols  deliver  thee ; 
 
 But  the  wind  shall  carry  them  all  away ;  a  breath  shall  take  them 
 
 off: 
 But  he  that  putteth  his  trust  in  me  shall  possess  the  land, 
 And  shall  inherit  my  holy  mountain  :  — 
 
 14  And  He  shall  say,  Cast  ye  up,  cast  ye  up,  prepare  the  way, 
 Take  up  the  stumblingblock  out  of  the  way  of  my  people. 
 
 15  For  thus  saith  the  high  and  lofty  One  that  inhabiteth  eternity, 
 Whose  name  is  Holy ; 
 
 I  dwell  in  the  high  and  holy  place, 
 With  him  also  that  is  of  a  contrite  and  humble  spirit, 
 To  revive  the  spirit  of  the  humble,  and  to  revive  the  heart  of  the 
 contrite  ones. 
 
 16  For  I  will  not  contend  for  ever,  neither  will  I  be  always  wroth  : 
 For  the  spirit  should  fail  before  me,  and  the  souls  which  I  have 
 
 made. 
 
 17  For  the  iniquity  of  his  covetousness  am  I  wroth,  and  will  smite 
 
 him : 
 I  will  hide  me,  and  will  be  wroth, 
 For  he  has  gone  on  frowardly  in  the  way  of  his  heart. 
 
 18  I  have  seen  his  ways,  and  I  will  heal  him, 
 
 And  I  will  lead  him,  and  restore  comforts  unto  him  and  to  his 
 mourners : 
 
 19  I  create  the  fruit  of  the  lips  ;  Peace,  peace  to  him  that  is  far  off, 
 And  to  him  that  is  near, 
 
 And  I  will  heal  him ;  saith  the  Lord. 
 
 20  But  the  wicked  are  like  the  troubled  sea,  for  it  cannot  rest, 
 And  its  waters  cast  up  mire  and  dirt. 
 
 21  There  is  no  peace,  saith  my  God,  to  the  wicked. 
 
 LVIII  Cry  aloud,  spare  not,  lift  up  thy  voice  like  a  trumpet, 
 
 And  show  my  people  their  transgression,  and  the  house  of  Jacob 
 their  sins. 
 
 2  Yet  they  will  seek  me  daily,  and  delight  to  know  my  ways, 
 
 As  a  nation  that  has  done  righteousness,  and  has  not  forsaken  the 
 ordinance  of  their  God  : 
 
 They  will  ask  of  me  the  ordinances  of  justice  :  they  will  take  de- 
 light in  approaching  to  God. 
 
 3  Wherefore  have  we  fasted,  say  they,  and  thou  hast  not  seen  ? 
 Wherefore   have   we   afflicted   our  soul,   and   thou  wilt   take   no 
 
 knowledge? 
 Behold,  in  the  day  of  your  fast,  ye  find  pleasure, 
 And  exact  all  your  labours. 
 
 4  Behold,  ye  fast  for  strife  and  debate,  and  to  smite  with  the  fi<t  of 
 
 wickedness : 
 
ISAIAH    LIX.  431 
 
 Ye  shall  not  fast  as  ye  do  this  day,  to  make  your  voice  to  be  heard 
 on  high. 
 
 5  Shall  it  be  like  this,  the  fast  that  I  will  choose,  the  day  of  man's 
 
 humbling  himself? 
 Is  it  to  bow  down  his  head  as  a  bulrush,  and  to  spread  sackcloth 
 
 and  ashes  under  him? 
 Wilt  thou  call  this  a  fast,  and  an  acceptable  day  to  the  Lord  ? 
 
 6  Is  not  this  the  fast  that  I  will  choose  — 
 
 To  loose  the  tight  cords  of  wickedness,  to  undo  the  bonds  of  the 
 
 yoke, 
 And  to  let  the  oppressed  go  free,  and  that  ye  break  every  yoke? 
 
 7  Is  it  not  to  deal  thy  bread  to  the  hungry, 
 
 'And  that  thou  bring  the  wandering  poor  to  thy  house? 
 When  thou  seest  the  naked,  that  thou  cover  him  ; 
 And  that  thou  hide  not  thyself  from  thine  own  flesh  ? 
 
 8  Then  shall  thy  light  break  forth  as  the  morning, 
 And  thine  health  shall  spring  forth  speedily  : 
 
 And  thy  righteousness  shall  go  before  thee ; 
 The  glory  of  the  Lord  shall  be  thy  rereward. 
 
 9  Then  shalt  thou  call,  and  the  Lord  shall  answer; 
 Thou  shalt  cry,  and  He  shall  say,  Here  I  am. 
 
 If  thou  wilt  take  away  from  the  midst  of  thee  the  yoke, 
 The  putting  forth  of  the  finger,  and  speaking  vanity  ; 
 
 10  And  wilt  draw  out  thy  soul  to  the  hungry,  and  satisfy  the  afflicted 
 
 soul : 
 Then  shall  thy  light  rise  in  the  darkness,  and  thy  thick  darkness 
 be  as  the  noon  day : 
 
 11  And  the  Lord  shall  guide  thee  continually, 
 
 And  satisfy  thy  soul  in  drought,  and  make  strong  thy  bones : 
 And  thou  shalt  be  like  a  watered  garden,  and  like  a  spring  of 
 
 water, 
 Whose  waters  shall  not  fail. 
 
 12  And  they  that  come  of  thee  shall  build  the  old  waste  places: 
 Thou  shalt  raise  up  the  foundations  of  many  generations ; 
 And  thou  shalt  be  called,  The  repairer  of  the  breach, 
 
 The  restorer  of  paths,  that  men  may  dwell  there. 
 
 13  If  thou  wilt  turn  away  thy  foot  from  the  sabbath, 
 From  doing  thy  pleasure  on  my  holy  day  ; 
 
 And  wilt  call  the  sabbath  a  delight,  and  the  Lord's  holy  day 
 
 honourable ; 
 And  wilt  honour  him,  not  doing  thine  own  ways, 
 *  Nor  finding  thine  own  pleasure,  nor  speaking  thine  own  words : 
 
 14  Then  shalt  thou  delight  thyself  in  the  Lord; 
 
 And  I  will  make  thee  ride  upon  the  high  places  of  the  earth, 
 And  feed  thee  with  the  heritage  of  Jacob  thy  lather: 
 For  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it. 
 
 LIX  Behold,  the  Lord's  hand  is  not  shortened,  that  it  cannot  save  ; 
 
 Neither  his  car  heavy,  that  it  cannot  hear: 
 
 But  your  iniquities  have  been  separating  between  you  and  your 
 God, 
 
432  TSAIAH    LIX. 
 
 And  your  sins  have  hid  his  face  from  you,  that  He  doth  not  hear. 
 
 3  For   your  hands  are  defiled  with   blood,  and  your  fingers  with 
 
 iniquity ; 
 Your  lips  have  spoken  lies,  your  tongue  will  utter  perverseness. 
 
 4  None  calleth  for  justice,  nor  any  pleadeth  in  truth: 
 They  trust  in  vanity,  and  speak  lies ; 
 
 They  conceive  mischief,  and  bring  forth  iniquity. 
 
 5  They  have  hatched  cockatrice'  eggs,  and  will  weave  the  spider's 
 
 web : 
 He  that  eateth  of  their  eggs  shall  die,  and  the  crushed  egg  shall 
 hatch  into  a  viper; 
 
 6  Their  webs  shall  not  become  garments, 
 
 Neither  shall  they  cover  themselves  with  their  works : 
 Their  works  are  works  of  iniquity,  and  the  doing  of  violence  is  in 
 their  hands. 
 
 7  Their  feet  run  to  evil,  and  they  make  haste  to  shed  innocent  blood  : 
 Their  thoughts  are  thoughts  of  iniquity;  wasting  and  destruction 
 
 are  in  their  paths. 
 
 8  The  way  of  peace  they  know  not;  and  there  is  no  justice  in  their 
 
 goings : 
 They  have  made  them  crooked  paths :  whosoever  goeth  therein 
 shall  not  know  peace. 
 
 9  Therefore  is  justice  far  from  us,  neither  will  righteousness  over- 
 
 take us : 
 We  wait  for  light,  but  behold  darkness ;  for  brightness,  but  we 
 walk  in  thick  darkness. 
 
 10  We  grope  for  the  wall  like  the  blind,  and  like  the  eyeless  we  grope. 
 We  stumble  at  noon  day  as  in  the  night ;  we  are  in  desolate  places, 
 
 as  dead  men. 
 
 11  We  groan  all  like  bears,  and  mourn  sore  like  doves: 
 
 We  look  for  judgment,  but  there  is  none ;  for  salvation,  but  it  is 
 far  off  from  us. 
 
 12  For  our  transgressions  are  multiplied  before  thee,  and  our  sins 
 
 testify  against  us  : 
 For  our  transgressions  are  with  us ;  and  our  iniquities,  we  know 
 them :  — 
 
 13  In  transgressing  and  lying  against  the  Lord,  and  turning  away 
 
 backward  from  our  God, 
 Speaking  oppression  and  revolt,  conceiving  and  uttering  from  the 
 heart  words  of  falsehood. 
 
 14  And  judgment  is  turned  away  backward,  and  justice  will  stand 
 
 aloof: 
 For  truth  is  fallen  in  the  street,  and  equity  cannot  enter : 
 
 15  Yea,  truth  was  found  wanting  ;  and  he  that  departed  from  evil 
 
 made  himself  a  prey. 
 And  the  Lord  saw  it,  and  it  displeased  him  that  there  was  no 
 judgment : 
 
 16  And  He  saw  that  there  Mas  no  man,  and  wondered  that  there  was 
 
 none  to  interpose  : 
 Therefore  His  own  arm  brought  salvation  unto  him  ;  and  His  righ- 
 teousness, it  sustained  him. 
 
ISAIAH   LX.  433 
 
 17  And  He  put  on  righteousness  as  a  breastplate,  and  an  helmet  of 
 
 salvation  upon  his  head ; 
 And   He  put  on  the  garments  of  vengeance  for  clothing,  and 
 was  clad  with  zeal  as  a  cloak. 
 
 18  According  to  their  deeds,  accordingly  He  will  repay, 
 Wrath  to  his  adversaries,  to  his  enemies  their  deserts  : 
 To  the  islands  he  will  repay  their  deserts. 
 
 19  And  they  shall  fear  the  name  of  the  Lord  from  the  west, 
 And  his  glory  from  the  rising  of  the  sun. 
 
 For  it  shall  come  like  a  flood  of  war, 
 
 The  spirit  of  the  Lord  lifting  up  a  standard  therein. 
 
 20  Then  a  redeemer  shall  come  for  Zion, 
 
 And  for  them  that  turn  from  transgression  in  Jacob : 
 The  Lord  hath  said  it. 
 
 21  As  for  me,  this  is  my  covenant  with  them,  saith  the  Lord  ; 
 
 My  spirit  that  is  upon  thee,  and  my  words  which  I  have  put  in  thy 
 
 mouth, 
 Shall  not  depart  out  of  thy  mouth,  nor  out  of  the  mouth  of  thy 
 
 seed, 
 Nor  out  of  the  mouth  of  thy  seed's  seed,  saith  the  Lord,  from 
 
 henceforth,  and  for  ever. 
 
 LX  Arise  1  Be  light !  For  thy  light  is  come, 
 
 And  the  glory  of  the  Lord  is  risen  upon  thee. 
 For,  behold,  the  darkness  shall  cover  the  earth,  and  gross  darkness 
 
 the  peoples : 
 But  the  Lord  shall  rise  upon  thee,  and  his  glory  shall  be  seen 
 
 upon  thee. 
 
 3  And  nations  shall  walk  in  thy  light,  and  kings  in  the  brightness  of 
 
 thy  rising. 
 
 4  Lift  up  thine  eyes  round  about,  and  see ; 
 
 All  they  gather  themselves  together,  they  come  to  thee : 
 Thy  sons  shall  come  from  far,  and  thy  daughters  shall  be  nursed 
 at  thy  side. 
 
 5  Then  thou  shalt  see  and  brighten  up,  and  thine  heart  shall  throb 
 
 and  swell ; 
 Because  the  abundance  of  the  sea  shall  be  poured  in  upon  thee, 
 The  forces  of  the  nations  shall  come  unto  thee. 
 
 6  A  stream  of  camels  shall  cover  thee,  dromedaries  of  Midian  and 
 
 Ephah  : 
 All  they  from  Sheba  shall  come,  they  shall  bring  gold  and  incense  ; 
 And  they  shall  show  forth  the  praises  of  the  Lord  with  joy. 
 
 7  All  the  flocks  of  Kedar  shall  be  gathered  for  thee, 
 The  rams  of  Nebaioth  shall  minister  unto  thee  : 
 They  shall  come  up  with  acceptance  on  mine  altar, 
 And  I  will  glorify  my  house  of  glory. 
 
 8  Who  are  these  that  fly   as  a  cloud,  and  as  doves  to  their 
 windows  ? 
 
 9  Surely  the  isles  shall  wait  for  me,  and  the  ships  of  Tarshish  first, 
 To  bring  thy  sons  from  far,  their  silver  and  their  gold  with  them, 
 For  the  name  of  the  Lord  thy  God, 
 
 Y  F 
 
434  ISAIAH    LX. 
 
 And  for  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  because  he  hath  glorified  thee. 
 
 10  And  the  sons  of  the  stranger  shall  build  up  thy  walls, 
 And  their  kings  shall  minister  unto  thee  : 
 
 For  in  my  wrath  I  smote  thee,  but  in  my  favour  have  I  had  mercy 
 on  thee. 
 
 11  And  thy  gates  shall  be  open  continually  ;  they  shall  not  be  shut 
 
 day  nor  night ; 
 To  bring  unto  thee  the  forces  of  the  nations, 
 And  their  kings  led  in  triumph. 
 
 12  For  the  nation  and  kingdom  that  will  not  serve  thee  shall  perish  ; 
 Yea,  those  nations  shall  be  utterly  wasted. 
 
 13  The  glory  of  Lebanon  shall  come  unto  thee, 
 The  cypress,  the  pine  tree,  and  the  box  together, 
 To  beautify  the  place  of  my  sanctuary  ; 
 
 And  I  will  make  the  place  of  my  feet  glorious. 
 
 1 4  And  the  sons  of  the  oppressors  shall  come  bending  unto  thee  ; 
 And  all  they  that  despised  thee  shall  bow  down  to  the  soles  of  thy 
 
 feet; 
 And  they  shall  call  thee,  The  City  of  the  Lord,  The  Zion  of  the 
 Holy  One  of  Israel. 
 
 15  Whereas  thou  hast  been  forsaken  and  hated,  so  that  no  man  went 
 
 through  thee, 
 I  will  make  thee  an  eternal  excellency,  a  joy  of  many  generations. 
 
 16  And  thou  shalt  suck  the  milk  of  nations,  and  shalt  suck  the  breast 
 
 of  kings  : 
 And  thou  shalt  know  that  I  the  Lord  am  thy  saviour, 
 And  the  mighty  One  of  Jacob  thy  redeemer. 
 
 17  For  brass  I  will  bring  gold,  and  for  iron  I  will  bring  silver, 
 And  for  wood  brass,  and  for  stones  iron ; 
 
 And  I  will  make  thy  government  peace,  and  thy  rulers  righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 18  Violence  shall  no  more  be  heard  in  thy  land, 
 Wasting  nor  destruction  within  thy  borders ; 
 
 But  thou  shalt  call  thy  walls,  Salvation,  and  thy  gates,  Praise. 
 
 19  The  sun  shall  be  no  more  thy  light  by  day ; 
 Neither  for  brightness  shall  the  moon  give  light  unto  thee  : 
 
 But  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee  an  everlasting  light,  and  thy  God 
 thy  glory. 
 
 20  Thy  sun  shall  no  more  go  down ;  neither  shall  thy  moon  withdraw 
 
 itself: 
 For  the  Lord  shall  be  thine  everlasting  light,  and  the  days  of  thy 
 mourning  shall  be  ended. 
 
 21  And  the  people  shall  be  all  righteous  :  they  shall  inherit  the  land 
 
 for  ever, 
 The  branch  of  my  planting,  the  work  of  my  hands,  to  glorify 
 myself. 
 
 22  A  little  one  shall  become  a  thousand,  and  a  small  one  a  strong 
 
 nation : 
 I  the  Lord  will  hasten  it  in  its  time. 
 
ISAIAH    LXII.  435 
 
 LXI  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  God  is  upon  me  ; 
 
 Because  the  Lord  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  good  tidings  unto 
 
 the  meek  ; 
 He  hath  sent  me  to  bind  up  the  brokenhearted, 
 To  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captives,  and  the  opening  of  the  eyes 
 
 to  them  that  are  bound  ; 
 
 2  To  proclaim  a  year  of  grace  for  the  Lord,  and  day  of  vengeance 
 
 for  our  God ; 
 
 3  To  comfort  all  that  mourn  ;  to  appoint  unto  them  that  mourning 
 
 Zion, 
 To  give  them  a  diadem  for  ashes,  the  oil  of  joy  for  mourning, 
 The  garment  of  praise  for  the  spirit  of  heaviness  ; 
 And  they  shall  be  called,  Oaks  of  righteousness, 
 The  planting  of  the  Lord,  to  glorify  himself. 
 
 4  And  they  shall  build  the  old  wastes, 
 They  shall  raise  up  the  former  desolations, 
 And  they  shall  repair  the  waste  cities, 
 The  desolations  of  many  generations. 
 
 5  And  strangers  shall  stand  and  feed  your  flocks, 
 
 And  the  sons  of  the  alien  shall  be  your  ploughmen  and  your  vine- 
 dressers. 
 
 6  And  ye,  ye  shall  be  named,  The  priests  of  the  Lord  : 
 Men  shall  call  you,  The  ministers  of  our  God  : 
 
 Ye  shall  eat  the  riches  of  the  nations, 
 
 And  in  their  glory  shall  ye  boast  yourselves. 
 
 7  For  your  shame  ye  shall  have  double  ; 
 
 And  for  confusion  they  shall  rejoice  in  their  portion  : 
 Therefore  in  their  land  they  shall  possess  the  double : 
 Everlasting  joy  shall  be  unto  them. 
 
 8  For  I  am  the  Lord,  loving  justice,  hating  robbery, 
 
 And  I  will  give  their  hire  truly,  and  I  will  make  an  everlasting 
 covenant  with  them. 
 
 9  And  their  seed  shall  be  known  among  the  nations,  and  their  off- 
 
 spring among  the  peoples : 
 All  that  see  them  shall  acknowledge  them, 
 That  they  are  a  seed  which  the  Lord  hath  blessed. 
 
 10  I  will  greatly  rejoice  in  the  Lord, 
 My  soul  shall  be  joyful  in  my  God ; 
 
 For  he  hath  clothed  me  with  the  garments  of  salvation, 
 He  hath  covered  me  with  the  robe  of  righteousness, 
 As  a  bridegroom  adjusteth  his  priestly  turban, 
 And  as  a  bride  arrayeth  her  jewels. 
 
 11  For  as  the  earth  bringeth  forth  her  bud, 
 
 And  as  the  garden  causeth  its  plant  to  spring  forth ; 
 So  the  Lord  God  will  cause  righteousness  and  praise  to  spring 
 forth  before  all  the  nations. 
 
 LXII  For  Zion's  sake  will  I  not  hold  my  peace, 
 
 And  for  Jerusalem's  sake  I  will  not  rest, 
 Until  the  righteousness  thereof  go  forth  as  a  shining  light, 
 And  the  salvation  thereof  as  a  lamp  that  burnetii ; 
 
 n2 
 
436  ISAIAH    LXIII. 
 
 2  And  the  nations  shall  see  thy  righteousness,  and  all  kings  thy 
 
 glory  : 
 And  thou  shalt  be  called  by  a  new  name, 
 Which  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  shall  name. 
 
 3  And  thou  shalt  be  a  crown  of  glory  in  the  hand  of  the  Lord, 
 And  a  royal  diadem  in  the  hand  of  thy  God. 
 
 4  Thou  shalt  no  more  be  called,  Forsaken  ; 
 Neither  shall  thy  land  any  more  be  called,  Desolate  : 
 But  thou  shalt  be  named,  My  own  Delight ; 
 
 And  thy  land,  the  Married  One. 
 
 For  the  Lord  delighteth  in  thee,  and  thy  land  shall  be  married. 
 
 5  For  as  a  young  man  marrieth  a  virgin,  so  shall  thy  sons  marry 
 
 thee  : 
 And  as  the  bridegroom  rejoiceth  over  the  bride,  so  shall  thy  God 
 rejoice  over  thee. 
 
 6  I  have  set  watchmen  upon  thy  walls,  O  Jerusalem, 
 Which  shall  never  hold  their  peace  day  nor  night : 
 
 7  Ye  remembrancers  of  the  Lord,  keep  not  silence,  and  give  him 
 
 no  rest, 
 Till  he  establish,  and  till  he  make  Jerusalem  a  praise  in  the  earth. 
 
 8  The  Lord  hath  sworn  by  his  right  hand,  and  by  his  arm  of 
 strength, 
 
 Surely  I  will  no  more  give  thy  corn  to  be  meat  for  thine  enemies  ; 
 And  the  sons  of  the  stranger  shall  not  drink  thy  wine,  for  the  which 
 thou  hast  laboured  : 
 
 9  But  they  that  have  gathered  it  shall  eat  it,  and  praise  the  Lord  ; 
 And  they  that  have  brought  it  together  shall  drink  it  in  the  courts 
 
 of  my  holiness. 
 10  Go  through,  go  through  the  gates  ;  prepare  ye  the  way  of  the 
 
 people  ; 
 Cast  up,  cast  up  the  highway  ;  gather  out  the  stones ; 
 Lift  up  a  standard  for  the  peoples. 
 J 1  Behold  the  Lord  hath  proclaimed  unto  the  end  of  the  world, 
 
 Say  ye  to  the  daughter  of  Zion,  Behold,  thy  salvation  cometh ; 
 Behold,  his  reward  is  with  him,  and  his  hire  before  him. 
 12     And  they  shall  call  them,  The  holy  people,  The  redeemed  of  the 
 Lord  : 
 And  thou  shalt  be  called,  Sought  out,  A  city  not  forsaken. 
 
 LXIII  Who  is  this  that  cometh   from  Eclom?   with  bright  dyed 
 
 garments  from  Bozrah  ? 
 This  that  is  glorious  in  his  apparel,  advancing  in  the  greatness  of 
 
 his  strength  ? 
 
 I  that  speak  in  righteousness,  mighty  to  save. 
 
 2  Wherefore  art  thou  red  in  thine  apparel, 
 
 And  thy  garments  like  him  that  treadeth  in  the  winepress  ? 
 
 3  I  have  trodden  the  winepress  alone  ; 
 
 And  of  the  peoples  there  was  not  a  man  with  me  : 
 And  I  will  tread  them  in  mine  anger,  and  trample  them  in  my 
 fury  ; 
 
ISAIAH    LXIII.  437 
 
 And  their  blood  shall  be  sprinkled  upon  my  garments,  and  I  have 
 stained  all  my  raiment. 
 
 4  For  the  day  of  vengeance  is  in  mine  heart,  and  the  year  of  un- 
 
 redeemed is  come. 
 
 5  And  I  look,  but  there  is  none  to  help  ;  and  wonder,  but  there  is 
 
 none  to  uphold : 
 And  mine  own  arm  hath  brought  salvation  unto  me  ;  and  my  fury, 
 it  upholds  me. 
 
 6  And  I  will  tread  down  the  peoples  in  mine  anger,  and  make  them 
 
 drunk  in  my  fury, 
 And  I  will  bring  down  their  strength  to  the  earth. 
 
 7  I  will    mention   the  lovingkindness  of  the  Lord,  and    the 
 praises  of  the  Lord, 
 
 According  to  all  that  the  Lord  hath  bestowed  on  us, 
 And  the  great  goodness  toward  the  house  of  Israel, 
 Which  he  hath  bestowed  on  them  according  to  his  mercies, 
 And  according  to  the  multitude  of  his  lovingkindnesses. 
 
 8  For  he  said,  They  only  are  my  people,  children  that  will  not  lie : 
 And  he  became  their  Saviour. 
 
 9  In  all  their  affliction  he  was  afflicted,  and  the  angel  of  his  presence 
 
 saved  them : 
 In  his  love  and  in  his  pity  He  himself  redeemed  them  ; 
 And  he  bare  them,  and  carried  them  all  the  days  of  old. 
 
 10  But  they  rebelled,  and  vexed  his  holy  Spirit; 
 Therefore  he  was  turned  to  be  their  enemy, 
 
 He  himself  fought  against  them. 
 
 11  Then  he  remembered  the  days  of  old,  Moses,  and  his  people, 
 saying, 
 
 Where  is  he  that  brought  them  up  out  of  the  sea 
 
 With  the  shepherd  of  his  flock  ? 
 
 Where  is  he  that  put  his  holy  Spirit  within  him? 
 
 12  That  led  them  by  the  right  hand  of  Moses  with  his  glorious  arm, 
 Dividing  the  water  before  them,  to  make  him  an  everlasting  name  ? 
 
 13  Leading  them  through  the  deep,  —  as  an  horse  in  the  desert,  they 
 
 shall  not  stumble  : 
 
 14  As  cattle  go  down  into  the  valley,  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  shall  make 
 
 them  to  rest : 
 So  didst  thou  lead  thy  people,  to  make  thyself  a  glorious  name. 
 
 15  Look  down  from  heaven, 
 
 And  behold  from  the  habitation  of  thy  holiness  and  of  thy  glory : 
 
 Where  are  thy  zeal  and  thy  mighty  deeds, 
 
 The  yearning  of  thy  heart  and  of  thy  soul  toward  me  ? 
 
 Are  they  restrained  ? 
 
 16  For  Thou  art  our  father, 
 
 Though  Abraham  be  ignorant  of  us,  and  Israel  acknowledge  us 
 
 not : 
 Thou,  O  Lord,  art  our  father,  our  redeemer  ;  thy  Name  is  from 
 
 everlasting. 
 
 17  O  Lord,  why  wilt  thou  make  us  to  wander  from  thy  ways, 
 And  harden  our  hearts  from  thy  fear  ? 
 
438  ISAIAH    LXV. 
 
 Return  for  thy  servants'  sake,  the  tribes  of  thine  inheritance. 
 
 18  Our  enemies  have  possessed  the  people  of  thy  holiness  for  a  little 
 
 while  ; 
 They  have  trodden  down  thy  sanctuary. 
 
 19  We  are  thine  of  old  :  thou  wast  not  their  king,  they  were  not  called 
 
 by  thy  name. 
 
 LXIV  Oh  that  thou  wouldest  rend  the  heavens,  that  thou  wouldest 
 
 come  down, 
 That  the  mountains  might  quake  at  thy  presence, 
 
 2  As  fire  burneth  stubble,  as  fire  boileth  water, 
 To  make  thy  name  known  to  thine  enemies, 
 That  the  nations  may  tremble  at  thy  presence  ! 
 
 3  In  doing  terrible  things  which  we  look  not  for, 
 Oh  that  thou  wouldest  come  down, 
 
 That  the  mountains  might  quake  at  thy  presence. 
 
 4  For  since  the  beginning  of  the  world  men  have  not  heard, 
 Nor  perceived  by  the  ear, 
 
 Neither  hath  the  eye  seen,  a  God  beside  thee, 
 
 Who  will  do  such  things  for  him  that  waiteth  for  him. 
 
 5  Thou  meetest  him  that  rejoiceth  and  worketh  righteousness, 
 Those  that  remember  thee  in  thy  ways  : 
 
 Behold,  thou  art  wroth  ;  for  we  have  sinned  : 
 Thy  ways  are  everlasting,  and  we  shall  be  saved. 
 
 6  But  we  were  all  as  an  unclean  thing, 
 And  all  our  righteousnesses  as  filthy  rags  ; 
 
 And  we  all  did  fade  as  a  leaf;  and  our  iniquities  like  the  wind  will 
 
 take  us  away. 
 And  there  is  none  that  calleth  upon  thy  name, 
 That  stirreth  up  himself  to  take  hold  of  thee : 
 For  thou  hast  hid  thy  face  from  us,  and  hast  consumed  us,  because 
 
 of  our  iniquities. 
 
 8  But  now,  O  Lord,  thou  art  our  father ; 
 We  are  the  clay,  and  thou  our  potter  ; 
 And  we  all  are  the  work  of  thy  hand. 
 
 9  Be  not  wroth  very  sore,  O  Lord,  neither  remember  iniquity  for 
 
 ever : 
 Behold,  see,  we  beseech  thee,  we  are  all  thy  people. 
 
 10  Thy  holy  cities  are  a  wilderness,  Zion  is  a  wilderness,  Jerusalem 
 
 a  desolation. 
 
 11  Our  holy  and  our  beautiful  house,  where  our  fathers  praised  thee, 
 Is  burned  up  with  fire :  and  all  our  pleasant  things  are  laid  waste. 
 
 12  Wilt  thou  refrain  thyself  for  these  things,  O  Lord  ? 
 Wilt  thou  hold  thy  peace,  and  afflict  us  very  sore  ? 
 
 LXV  I  have  answered  them  that  asked  not  for  me  ; 
 
 I  am  found  of  them  that  sought  me  not : 
 
 I  said,  Behold  me,  behold  me,  unto  a  nation  that  was  not  called 
 by  my  name. 
 2    I  have  spread  out  my  hands  all  the  day  unto  a  rebellious  people, 
 Which  walk  in  a  way  that  was  not  good,  after  their  own  thoughts  ; 
 
ISAIAH   LXV.  439 
 
 3  A  people  that  provoketh  me  to  anger  continually  to  my  face ; 
 Which  sacrifice  in  gardens,  and  burn  incense  upon  altars  of  brick  ; 
 
 4  Which  sit  among  the  graves,  and  lodge  in  the  monuments  ; 
 Which  eat  swine's  flesh,  and  with  broth  of  abominable  things  in 
 
 their  vessels ; 
 
 5  Which  say  Keep  to  thyself,  come  not  near  to  me  ;  for  I  am  holier 
 
 than  thou. 
 These  are  a  smoke  in  my  nose,  a  fire  that  burneth  all  the  day. 
 
 6  Behold,  it  is  written  before  me  : 
 
 I  will  not  keep  silence,  till  I  have  recompensed,  even  recompensed 
 into  their  bosom, 
 
 7  Your  iniquities,  and  the  iniquities  of  your  fathers  together,  saith 
 
 the  Lord  : 
 For  they  have  burned  incense  upon  the  mountains,  and  blasphemed 
 
 me  upon  the  hills  : 
 And  I  will  measure  their  former  work  into  their  bosom. 
 
 8  Thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 As  the  new  wine  is  found  in  a  cluster,  and  one  saith, 
 
 Destroy  it  not ;  for  a  blessing  is  in  it : 
 
 So  will  I  do  for  my  servant's  sakes,  not  to  destroy  the  whole. 
 
 9  And  I  will  bring  forth  a  seed  out  of  Jacob, 
 And  out  of  Judah  an  inheritor  of  my  mountains  : 
 
 And  mine  elect  shall  inherit  it,  and  my  servants  shall  dwell  there. 
 
 10  And  Sharon  shall  be  a  fold  of  flocks, 
 
 And  the  valley  of  Achor  a  place  for  the  herds  to  lie  down  in, 
 For  my  people  that  have  sought  me. 
 
 11  But  ye  that  have  forsaken  the  Lord,  that  forget  my  holy 
 mountain, 
 
 That  prepare  a  table  for  Fortune, 
 
 And  that  fill  a  drink  offering  unto  Destiny, 
 
 12  I  have  destined  you  to  the  sword,  and  ye  shall  all  bow  down  to 
 
 the  slaughter : 
 Because  when"  I  called,  ye  did  not  answer ;  when  I  spake,  ye  did 
 
 not  hear ; 
 But  did  evil  before  mine  eyes,  and  did  choose  that  wherein  I 
 
 delighted  not. 
 
 13  Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord  God, 
 
 Behold,  my  servants  shall  eat,  but  ye  shall  be  hungry  : 
 Behold,  my  servants  shall  drink,  but  ye  shall  be  thirsty : 
 Behold,  my  servants  shall  rejoice,  but  ye  shall  be  ashamed  : 
 
 14  Behold,  my  servants  shall  sing  for  joy  of  heart, 
 But  ye  shall  cry  for  sorrow  of  heart, 
 
 And  shall  howl  for  anguish  of  spirit. 
 
 15  And  ye  shall  leave  your  name  for  a  curse  unto  my  chosen  : 
 And  the  Lord  God  shall  slay  thee,  and  call  his  servants  by  another 
 
 name : 
 
 16  By  which  he  who  blesseth  himself  in  the  earth,  shall  bless  himself 
 
 in  the  God  of  truth  ; 
 And  he  that  sweareth  in  the  earth  by  it,  shall  swear  by  the  God 
 of  truth ; 
 
440  ISAIAH   LXVI. 
 
 Because  the  former  troubles  are  forgotten, 
 And  because  they  are  hid  from  mine  eyes. 
 
 17  For,  behold,  I  create  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth : 
 And  the  former  shall  not  be  remembered,  nor  come  into  mind. 
 
 18  But  be  ye  glad,  and  rejoice  for  ever,  in  that  which  I  create  : 
 For,  behold,  I  create  Jerusalem  a  rejoicing,  and  her  people  a  joy. 
 
 19  And  I  will  rejoice  in  Jerusalem,  and  joy  in  my  people  : 
 
 And  the  voice  of  weeping  shall  be  no  more  heard  in  her,  nor  the 
 voice  of  crying. 
 
 20  No  more  shall  the  sucking  babe  be  carried  thence  to  burial, 
 Nor  an  old  man  that  hath  not  rilled  his  days  : 
 
 For  the  child  shall  die  an  hundred  years  old ; 
 And  the  sinner  dying  an  hundred  years  old   shall   be   deemed 
 accursed. 
 
 21  And  they  shall  build  houses,  and  inhabit  them  ; 
 
 And  they  shall  plant  vineyards,  and  eat  the  fruit  of  them. 
 
 22  They  shall  not  build,  and  another  inhabit ;  they  shall  not  plant,  and 
 
 another  eat : 
 For  as  the  days  of  a  tree  shall  be  the  days  of  my  people, 
 And  my  chosen  shall  wear  out  the  work  of  their  hands. 
 
 23  They  shall  not  labour  in  vain,  nor  bring  forth  trouble  : 
 
 For  they  are  the  seed  of  the  blessed  of  the  Lord,  and  their  offspring 
 with  them. 
 
 24  And  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
 
 That  before  they  call,  I  will  answer ;  and  while  they  are  yet  speak- 
 ing I  will  hear. 
 
 25  The  wolf  and  the  little  lamb  shall  feed  as  one,  and  the  lion  shall 
 
 eat  straw  like  the  bullock  : 
 And  dust  shall  be  the  serpent's  meat. 
 They  shall  not  hurt  nor  destroy  in  all  my  holy  mountain,  saith 
 
 the  Lord. 
 
 LXVI  Thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 The  heavens  are  my  throne,  and  the  earth  is  my  footstool : 
 "Where  is  the  house  that  ye  will  build  unto  me  ? 
 And  where  is  the  place  of  my  rest  ? 
 
 2  For  all  those  things  did  mine  hand  make, 
 And  they  all  were,  saith  the  Lord  : 
 But  to  this  man  will  I  have  regard, 
 
 To  the  poor  and  contrite  in  spirit, 
 
 And  who  tremblingly  reveres  my  word. 
 
 3  Slaying  an  ox,  killing  a  man ; 
 Sacrificing  a  lamb,  breaking  a  dog's  neck  ; 
 Offering  an  oblation,  offering  swine's  blood  ; 
 Burning  incense,  blessing  an  idol : 
 
 Yea,  they  have  chosen  their  own  ways, 
 
 And  their  soul  delighteth  in  their  abominations. 
 
 4  I  also  will  choose  their  vexations,  and  will  bring  their  fears  upon 
 
 them  ; 
 Because  when  I  called,  none  did  answer ;  when  I  spake,  they  did 
 not  hear : 
 
ISAIAH   LXVI.  441 
 
 But  they  did  evil  before  mine  eyes,  and  chose  that  in  which  I 
 delighted  not. 
 
 5  Hear  the  word  of  the  Lord,  ye  that  tremblingly  revere  his 
 word ; 
 
 Your  brethren  that  hate  you,  and  cast  you  out  for  my  name's  sake, 
 
 have  said, 
 The  Lord  shall  be  glorified,  and  we  shall  see  your  joy :  — 
 But  they  shall  be  ashamed. 
 
 6  A  voice  of  tumult  from  the  city,  a  voice  from  the  temple, 
 A  voice  of  the  Lord,  rendering  recompence  to  his  enemies. 
 
 7  Before  she  travailed,  she  brought  forth  ; 
 
 Before  her  pain  came,  she  was  delivered  of  a  man  child. 
 
 8  Who  hath  heard  such  a  thing  ?  who  hath  seen  such  things  ? 
 Shall  a  country  be  brought  forth  in  one  day  ?  or  shall  a  nation 
 
 be  born  at  once  ? 
 For  Zion  hath  travailed,  and  at  once  brought  forth  her  children. 
 
 9  Shall  I  bring  to  the  birth,  and  not  cause  to  bring  forth  ?  saith  the 
 
 Lord  : 
 Shall  I  beget  and  shut  up  the  womb  ?  saith  thy  God. 
 
 10  Rejoice  ye  with  Jerusalem,  and  be  glad  with  her,  all  ye  that 
 love  her : 
 
 Rejoice  for  joy  with  her,  all  ye  that  mourn  for  her : 
 
 11  That  ye  may  suck,  and  be  satisfied,  from  the  breasts  of  her  con- 
 
 solations : 
 That  ye  may  milk  out,  and  be  delighted,  from  the  abundance  of  her 
 glory. 
 
 12  For  thus  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 Behold,  I  extend  peace  to  her  like  a  river, 
 
 And  the  glory  of  the  Gentiles  like  an  over-flowing  stream  : 
 
 And  ye  shall  suck, 
 
 Ye  shall  be  borne  upon  the  side,  and  be  dandled  upon  the  knees. 
 
 13  As  a  man  whom  his  mother  comforteth,  so  will  I  comfort  you  ; 
 And  ye  shall  be  comforted  in  Jerusalem. 
 
 14  And  ye  shall  see  and  your  heart  shall  rejoice, 
 And  your  bones  shall  flourish  like  an  herb  : 
 
 And  the  hand  of  the  Lord  shall  be  known  toward  his  servants, 
 And  his  indignation  toward  his  enemies. 
 
 15  For,  behold,  the  Lord  will  come  with  fire, 
 And  his  chariots  like  a  whirlwind, 
 
 To  render  his  anger  with  fury,  and  his  rebuke  with  flames  of  fire. 
 
 16  For  by  fire  and  by  his  sword  doth  the  Lord  plead  with  all  flesh  : 
 And  the  slain  of  the  Lord  are  many. 
 
 17  They  that  sanctify  themselves,  and  purify  themselves,  for  the  gardens, 
 Following  one  in  the  midst, 
 
 Eating  swine's  flesh  and  the  abomination  and  the  mouse, 
 Shall  be  consumed  together :  the  Lord  hath  declared  it. 
 
 18  And  I  know  their  works  and  their  thoughts: 
 
 The  time  is  come  to  gather  all  nations  and  tongues; 
 And  they  are  come,  and  see  my  glory. 
 
 19  And  I  have  set  a  sign  among  them, 
 
442  ISAIAH   LXVI. 
 
 And  I  have  sent  the  escaped  of  them  unto  the  nations, 
 To  Tarshish,  Pul,  and  Lud,  that  draw  the  bow, 
 To  Tubal,  and  Javan,  to  the  isles  afar  off, 
 That  had  not  heard  my  fame,  neither  seen  my  glory  ; 
 And  they  have  declared  my  glory  among  the  Gentiles. 
 
 20  And  they  have  brought  all  your  brethren,  out  of  all  nations,  an 
 
 offering  unto  the  Lord, 
 With  horses,  and  with  chariots,  and  with  litters,  and  with  mules, 
 
 and  with  dromedaries, 
 To  my  holy  mountain  Jerusalem,  saith  the  Lord, 
 As  the  children  of  Israel  bring  an  offering  in  a  clean  vessel  into 
 
 the  house  of  the  Lord. 
 
 21  And  I  will  also  take  of  them  for  priests  and  for  Levites,  saith  the 
 
 Lord. 
 
 22  For  as  the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth,  which  I  make, 
 Remain  before  me,  saith  the  Lord, 
 
 So  shall  your  seed  and  your  name  remain. 
 
 23  And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  from  new  moon  to  new  moon, 
 And  from  sabbath  to  sabbath, 
 
 Shall  all  flesh  come  to  worship  before  me,  saith  the  Lord. 
 
 24  And  they  shall  go  forth, 
 
 And  look  upon  the  carcases  of  the  men  that  have  revolted  from 
 
 me  : 
 For  their  worm  shall  not  die,  neither  shall  their  fire  be  quenched  ; 
 And  they  shall  be  an  abhorrence  unto  all  flesh. 
 
 THE   END. 
 
By  the  same  Author, 
 
 AN  ATTEMPT  AT  METHODICAL  ANALYSIS  OF  SHAK- 
 
 SPEARE'S  HAMLET.     8vo. 
 
 THE  DUTIES  AND  DIGNITY  OF  MARRIAGE, 
 
 As  set  forth  by  the  English  Church,     32mo. 
 
London: 
 
 Spottiswoodes  and  Shaw, 
 
 New-street-Square. 
 
A   CATALOGUE 
 
 NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS 
 
 IN 
 
 feral  h&  llistcllancous  literature, 
 
 PUBLISHED  BY 
 
 LONGMAN,   BROWN,    GREEN,    AND    LONGMANS, 
 
 39,    TATERNOSTER   BOW,   LONDON. 
 
 CLASSIFIED   INDEX. 
 
 Agriculture  and  Rural 
 Affairs. 
 
 Pages. 
 
 Bayldon  On  valuing  Rents,  &c.    -  4 
 
 Caird's  Letters  on  Agriculture      -  6 
 
 Cecil's  Stud  Farm                             -  6 
 
 Loudon's  Agriculture      -        -        -  17 
 
 '*         Self-Instruction       -        -  17 
 
 "         Lady's  Country  Compan.  17 
 
 Low's  Elements  of  Agriculture       -  18 
 
 Arts,  Manufactures, 
 and  Architecture. 
 
 Ene 
 
 i  the  Screw  Propeller     -  5 
 
 Brande's  Dictionary  of  Science,&c.  5 
 
 Cresv's  Civil  Engineering  7 
 
 Eastlake  On  Oil  Painting      -        -  8 
 
 Gwilt's  Encyclop.  of  Architecture  10 
 Jameson's  Sacred  and  LegeudaryArt  13 
 
 Loudon's  Rural  Architecture         -  17 
 
 Mostdey's  Engineering   -        -        -  21 
 
 Steam  Engine,  hv  the  Artisan  Club  3 
 
 Tate  on  Strength  of  Materials        -  29 
 
 Ure's  Dictionary  of  Arts,  &c.          -  30 
 
 Biography. 
 
 Baines's  Life  of  Baines  * 
 Bunsen's  Hippolvtus               - 
 
 Foss's  English  Jiidses    -        -        -  9 
 
 Freeman's  Life  of  Kirby         .        _  9 
 
 Haydon's  Autobiography,by  Taylor  2^ 
 
 Holcroft's  Memoirs         -         -         -  31 
 
 Holland's  (Lord)  Memoirs     -        -  11 
 
 LardDer's  Cabinet  Cyclopaedia      -  15 
 
 Maunder's  Biographical  Treasury-  19 
 
 Memoir  of  the^Duke  of  Wellington  31 
 
 ,,           Lord  Peterborough        -  23 
 
 Russell's  Memoirs  of  Moore  -        -  21 
 
 Southey's  Life  of  Wesley        -        -  28 
 
 u           Life  and  Correspondence  27 
 
 Stephen's  Ecclesiastical  Biography  28 
 
 Taylor's  Lovola                                  -  29 
 
 "         Wesley                                -  29 
 
 Townsend's  Eminent  Judges          -  30 
 
 Waterton's  Autobiography  &  Essays  30 
 
 Books  of  General 
 Utility- 
 
 Acton's  Cookery  3 
 
 Black's  Treatise  on  Brewing  -        -  4 
 
 Cabinet  Gazetteer  -         -        -        -  6 
 
 *'         Lawyer  6 
 
 Hints  on  Etiquette                            -  11 
 
 Hudson'sExecutor's  Guide     -        -  12 
 
 "     On  Making  Wills        -        -  12 
 
 Lardner's  Cabinet  Cyclopaedia       -  15 
 
 Loudon's  Self-Instruction       -        -  17 
 
 '*         Lady's  Companion          -  17 
 
 "       Amateur  Gardener           •  16 
 
 Maunder's  Treasury  of  Knowledge  20 
 
 •'          Biographical  Treasury  19 
 
 "          Scientific  Treasury       -  20 
 
 "           Treasury  of  History      -  19 
 
 "           Natural' History   -         -  20 
 
 Pocket  and  the  Stud      -         -        -  11 
 
 Pycroft's  English  Reading     -        -  24 
 
 Reece's  Medical  Guide                     -  24 
 
 Rich's  Comp.  to  Latin  Dictionary  24 
 
 Riddle's  Latin  Dictionaries    -        -  24 
 
 Rogers's  Vegetable  Cultivator        -  25 
 
 Roget's  English  Thesauius  -        -  25 
 
 Pages. 
 Rowton'a  Debater  -  -  -  -  25 
 Short  Whist  -----  26 
 Thomson's  Interest  Tables  -  -  30 
 Traveller's  Library  -  31 
 Webster's  Domestic  Economy  -  32 
 Wilmot's  Abridgment  of  Black- 
 stone's  Commentaries          -        -  32 
 
 Botany  and  Gardening. 
 
 Conversations  on  Botany        *  -  6 
 
 Hooker's  British  Flora    -         -  -  12 
 
 "        Guide  to  Kew  Gardens  -  11 
 
 Lindley's  Introduction  to  Botany  16 
 
 Loudon's  Hortus  Britannicus  -  17 
 
 "           Amateur  Gardener  -  16 
 
 "          Self- Instruction      -  -  17 
 
 •*         Trees  and  Shrubs  -  -  17 
 
 '*          Gardening      -        -  -  17 
 
 "          Plants     -                 -  -  17 
 
 Rivera's  Rose  Amateur's  Guide  -  24 
 
 Rogers's  Vegetable  Cultivator  -  25 
 
 Chronology. 
 
 Blair's  Chronological  Tables          -  4 
 
 Bunsen's  Ancient  Egypt        -        -  5 
 
 Haydn's  Beatson's  Index        -        -  11 
 
 Nicolas's  Chronology  of  History  -  15 
 
 Commerce  and  Mercan- 
 tile Affairs . 
 
 Francis's  Bank  of  England            .  9 
 
 "          English  Railway    -        -  9 
 
 B          Stock  Exchange      -        -  9 
 Lorimer's    Letters    to    a    Young 
 
 Master  Mariner                              -  16 
 
 M*Culloch's  Commerce  &  Navigation  18 
 
 Steel's  Shipmaster's  Assistant        -  28 
 
 Symons'  Merchant  Seamen's  Law  28 
 
 Thomson's  Interest  Tables    -        -  30 
 
 Criticism,  History,  and 
 
 Memoirs. 
 
 Addison's  Knights  Templars         -  3 
 Anthony's  Footsteps  to  History     -  3 
 Balfour's  Sketches  of  Literature    -  4 
 Belfast's  English  Poets  4 
 Blair's  Chron.  and  Histor.  Tables  -  4 
 Bunsen's  Ancient  Egypt  5 
 "         Hippolytus     -        -        -  5 
 Burton's  History  of  Scotland          -  5 
 Conybeare  and  Howson's  St.  Paul  7 
 Dennistoun's  Dukes  of  Uil.inn      -  8 
 Eastlake's  History  of  Oil  Painting  8 
 Felice's  French  Protestants  -        -  9 
 Foss's  English  Judges  9 
 Francis's  Bank  of  England  -        -  9 
 "          English  Railway     -  9 
 "         Stock  Exchange      -        -  9 
 Gleig's  Leipsic  Campaign      -        -  31 
 Gurhey's  Historical  Sketches          -  10 
 Hamilton's  Essays  from  the  Edin- 
 burgh Review       -        -        -        -  10 
 Havdon's  Autobiography, bvTaylor  29 
 Holland's    (Lord)  Foreign  Remi- 
 niscences     -                                    -  11 
 "                 Whig  Party      -  11 
 Jeffrey's  (Lord)  Contributions        -  13 
 Kemb'le's  Anglo-Saxons         -         -  14 
 Lardner's  Cabinet  Cyclopaedia      -  15 
 Macaulay's  Crit.  and  Hist.  Essays  18 
 "          History  of  England      -  18 
 Mackintosh's  Miscellaneous  Works  18 
 
 Pages. 
 
 M'Culloch'sGeographicalDictionary  18 
 
 Mariotti's  Fra  Dolcino                      -  19 
 
 Martineau's  Church  History  -        -  19 
 
 Maunder's  Treasury  of  History       -  19 
 
 Memoir  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  31 
 
 Merivale's  History  of  Rome  -       -  20 
 
 "         Roman  Republic  -  20 
 
 Milner's  Church  History        -        -  20 
 
 Moore's  (Thomas)  Memoirs,  &c.    -  21 
 
 Mosheim's    Ecclesiastical   History  21 
 
 Mure's  Greek  Literature                  -  22 
 
 Ranke's  Ferdinand  &  Maximilian  31 
 
 Rich's  Comp.  to  Latin  Dictionary  24 
 
 Riddle's  Latin  Dictionaries  -        -  24 
 Rogers's  Essays  fromtheEdinburgh 
 
 Review         -----  25 
 
 Roget's  English  Thesaurus   -        -  26 
 
 St.  John's  Indian  Archipelago        -  25 
 
 I  Schmitz's  History  of  Greece  -       -  29 
 
 '   Sinclair's  Popish  Legends     -        -  26 
 
 !   Smith's  St.  Paul                                 -  27 
 
 I  Southey's  The  Doctor  &c.     -        -  27 
 
 I   Stephen's  Ecclesiastical  Biography  28 
 
 '*        Lectures  on  the  History 
 
 of  France                      -  28 
 Sydney  Smith's  Works  -       -        -  27 
 "             Lectures  on  Moral 
 Philosophy                    -        -        -  27 
 Taylor's  Loyola     -         ...  29 
 "        Wesley    .        ...  29 
 Thirlwall's  History  of  Greece        -  29 
 Townsend's  State  Trials         -        -  30 
 Turner's  Anglo  Saxons          -        -  30 
 "          England  during  the  Mid- 
 dle Ages       -        -         -        -  30 
 "        Sacred  Hist,  of  the  World  30 
 Zumpt's  Latin  Grammar        -        -  32 
 
 Geography  and 
 Atlases. 
 
 Butler's  Geography  and  Atlases    -  5 
 
 Cabinet  Gazetteer  6 
 
 Hall's  Large  Library  Atlas    -        -  10 
 Hughes's  (E.)  New  School  Physical 
 
 Atlas    ------  12 
 
 "        (W.)  Mathematical  Geog.  13 
 
 "                 Australian  Colonies  31 
 
 Johnston's  General  Gazetteer         -  14 
 M'Culloch's  Geographical  Dictionary  18 
 
 M'Leod  ar>d  Weller's  Script.  Atlas  18 
 
 Murray's  Encyclop.  of  Geography  -  22 
 
 Sharp's  British  Gazetteer       -        -  26 
 
 Juvenile  Books. 
 
 Amy  Herbert                                      -  25 
 
 Anthony's  footsteps  to  History    -  3 
 
 Calling," &c.  of  a  Governess  6 
 
 Corner's  Children's  Sunday  Book  6 
 
 Earl's  Daughter  (The)                      -  25 
 
 F.xperience  of  Life  8 
 
 Gertrude           -         -                   -         -  25 
 Graham's  Studies  from  the  English 
 
 Poets     -        -         -                   -         -  9 
 
 llowiti's  Boy's  Country  Book        -  12 
 
 "        (Mary)  Children's  Year    -  12 
 
 Laueton  Parsonage        -                  -  26 
 
 Mrs.  Marcet's  Conversations  -        -  19 
 
 Margaret  Percival   -        -        -        -  26 
 
 Pycroft's  English  Reading     -        -  24 
 
 Medicine. 
 
 Ancell  on  Tuberculosis  - 
 Bull's  Hints  to  Mothers  - 
 
 "      Management  of  Children 
 Copland's  Dictionary  of  Medicina 
 Holland's  Mental  Physiology 
 
CLASSIFIED  INDEX— continued. 
 
 Pages. 
 Latham  On  Diseases  of  the  Heart  -  16 
 Moore  On  Health,  Disease.&Remedy  20 
 Pereira  On  Food  and  Diet  -  -  23 
 Reeee's  Medical  Guide  -  -  -  24 
 Thomas's  practice  of  Physic  -    29 
 
 Miscellaneous  and  Ge- 
 neral Literature. 
 
 Calline,  &c.  of  a  Governess    -        -  6 
 
 Carlisle's  lectures  and  Addresses  31 
 
 Eclipse  of  Faith  8 
 
 Graham's  English                              -  10 
 Greg's    Essays    on    Political    and 
 
 Social  Science      -        -        -        -  10 
 
 Haydn's  Book  of  Dignities     -       -  11 
 
 Holland's  Mental  Physiology         -  11 
 
 Hooker's  Kew  Guide       -        -        -  11 
 
 Howitt's  Rural  Life  of  England     -  12 
 "        Visitsto  RemarkablePlaccs  12 
 
 Jeffrey's  (Lord)  Contributions       -  13 
 
 Lang  on  Freedom  for  the  Colonies  14 
 
 Lardner's  Cabinet  Cyclopaedia      -  15 
 
 Loudon's  Lady's  Country  Comp.    -  17 
 
 Macaulay'sCrit.and   Hist.  Essaje  18 
 
 Mackintosh's  Miscellaneous  Works  18 
 
 Memoirs  of  a  Maitre  d'Armes         -  31 
 Maitland's  Church  in  the  Catacombs  19 
 
 Pascal's  Works,  by  Pearce     -         -  22 
 
 Pvcroft's  English  Reading     -        -  24 
 
 R'ich's  Comp.  to  Latin  Dictionary  24 
 
 Riddle's  Latin  Dictionaries  -        -  24 
 
 Rowton's  Debater                   -        -  25 
 Seaward's  Narrative  of  his  9hipwreek25 
 
 Sir  Roger  de  Coverley    ...  26 
 
 Sketches  by  a  Sailor       -                 -  26 
 
 Smith's  (Rer.  Sydney)  Works        -  27 
 
 Southey's  Common-place  Books     -  27 
 
 "         The  Doctor  &c.       -       -  27 
 
 Stephen's  Essays    ...       -  28 
 
 Stow's  Training  System          -        -  28 
 
 Townsend's  StateTrials        -        -  30 
 
 Zumpt's  Latin  Grammar        -        -  32 
 
 Natural  History  in 
 General. 
 
 Catlow's  Popular  Conchologv        -  6 
 Doubleday,  Westwood,  &   Hewit- 
 
 son's  Butterflies            ...  8 
 Ephemeraand  Young  On  the  Salmon    8 
 
 Gosse's  Nat.  Hist,  of  Jamaica        -  9 
 
 Kemp's  Natural  Hist,  of  Creation  31 
 
 Kirby  and  Spence's  Entomology    -  14 
 
 Lee's  Elements  of  Natural  History  16 
 
 Maunder's  Natural  History    -        -  20 
 
 Turton'sShellsoftheBritis'hlslands  30 
 
 Waterton's  Essays  on  Natural  Hist.  30 
 
 Youatt's  The  Dog  -  32 
 
 "        The  Horse       ...  32 
 
 One-Volume 
 
 Encyclopaedias  and 
 
 Dictionaries. 
 
 Blame's  Rural  Sports  4 
 
 Brande's  Science,  Literature,  &  Art      5 
 
 Copland's  Dictionary  of  Medicine  -      7 
 
 Cresy's  Civil  Engineering  -      5 
 
 Gwilt's  Architecture  -     10 
 
 Johnston's  Geographical  Dictionary  14 
 
 Loudon's  Agriculture     -       -        -     17 
 
 "         Rural  Architecture         -    17 
 
 ••         Girdening       -        -        -     17 
 
 "         Plants  ...    17 
 
 "         Trees  and  Shiuhs    -        -     17 
 
 M'Cullorh'sGeographical  Dictionary  18 
 
 "  Dictionary  of  Commerce  18 
 
 Murray's  Encyclop.  of  Geography  -     22 
 
 Sharp's  British  Gazetteer        -         -     26 
 
 lire's  Dictionary  of  Arts,  &c.  -        -    32 
 
 Webster's  Domestic  Economy       -    30 
 
 Religious  and  Moral 
 Works. 
 
 Amy  Herbert           -        -        -       -  25 
 
 Bloomfield's  Greek  Testament        -  4 
 
 <•            Annotations  on  do.     -  4 
 
 "            College  and  School  do.  4 
 
 Calling  and  Responsibilities  of  B 
 
 Governess     -----  6 
 
 Conybenre  and  Howson's  St.  Paul  7 
 
 Comer's  Sunday  Book    -        -        -  6 
 
 Dale's  Domestic  Liturgy  7 
 
 Discipline        -----  8 
 
 Earl':.  Daughter  (The)                      -  25 
 
 Eclipse  of  Faith      -        -        -  8 
 
 F.nglishman's  Greek  Concnrdanre  fi 
 
 I'.nglishman'sHel)  &Chald.Con«ord.  8 
 
 Eiperienceof  Life  (The)                -  8 
 
 Felice's  French  Protestant*    -         -  9 
 
 Pages. 
 
 Gertrude                  ....  25 
 
 Harrison's  Lights- of  the  FoTge     -  10 
 
 Hook's  Lectures  on  Passion  Week  11 
 
 Home's  Introduction  to  Scriptures  12 
 
 "        Abridgment  of  ditto          -  12 
 
 Jameson's  Sacred  Legends     -        -  13 
 
 "          Monastic  Legends  -        -  13 
 
 "          Legends  of  theMadonma  13 
 
 Jeremy  Taylor's  Works                   -  14 
 
 Kippis's  Hymns                                 -  14 
 
 Laneton  Parsonage        -        -        -  26 
 
 Letters  to  My  Unknown  Friends    -  16 
 
 "      on  Happiness      -        -       -  16 
 
 Litton's  Church  of  Christ      -        -  16 
 
 M'Leod&Weller's  Scripture  Atlas  18 
 
 Maitland's  Church  in  theCatacombs  19 
 
 Margaret  Percival  -        -        -        -  26 
 
 Mariotti's  Fra  Dolcino                    -  19 
 
 Mattineau's  Church  History  -        -  19 
 
 Milner's  Clmr-'h  of  Christ      -        -  20 
 
 Montgomery's  Original  Hvmns      -  20 
 
 Moore  On  the  Use  of  the  Body       -  20 
 
 "          "       Soul  and  Body          -  20 
 
 "     -s  Man  and  his  Motives        -  20 
 
 Mosheim's  Ecclesiastical  History-  21 
 
 Neare's  Closing  Scene     -        -        -  22 
 
 "       Resting  Places  of  the  Just  22 
 
 "      Riches     that      Bring    no 
 
 Sorrow          -                           -        -  22 
 
 "      Risen  from  the  Ranks          -  22 
 
 Newman's  |J.  H.)  Discourses          -  22 
 
 Ranke's    Ferdinand  &  Maximilian  31 
 
 Readings  for  Lent           -         -        -  14 
 Robinson's  Lexicon  to  the  Greek 
 
 Testament  -----  25 
 
 Saints  our  Example       -        -        -  25 
 
 Self-Denial     -----  25 
 
 Sinclair's  Journey  of  Life       -        -  26 
 
 "          Popish  Legends      -        -  26 
 
 Sketches  by  a  Sailor        -        -        -  26 
 
 Smith's  (Sydney)  Moral  Philosophy  27 
 
 (J.')  St.  Paul      -        -       -  27 
 
 Southey's  Life  of  Wesley        -        -  28 
 
 Stephen's  EcclesHstical  Biography  28 
 
 Tayler's  Lady  Mary         -        -       -  28 
 
 "         Margaret ;  or,  the  Pearl    -  2S 
 
 Taylor's  Lovola      -        -        -        -  2S 
 
 "        Wesley      -        -       -        -  2S 
 
 Thumb  Bible  (The)                         -  SO 
 Tomline's  Introduction  to  the  Bible  3C 
 
 Turner's  Sacred  History  -                -  3( 
 
 Poetry  and  the  Drama. 
 
 Aikin's  (Dr.l  British  Poets      -        -  3 
 
 Baillie's  (Joanna)  Poetical  Works  3 
 Belfast's  Lectures   on  the  English 
 
 Poets    -  4 
 
 Dante,  by  Cayley    -        -        -        -  6 
 
 Flowers  and  their  kindred  Thoughts  22 
 
 Fruits  from  Garden  and  Field        -  22 
 
 Goethe's  Faust,  by  Falck   Lebahn  16 
 
 Goldsmith's  Poems,  illustrated      -  9 
 
 Kippis's  Hymns      -        -        -        -  14 
 
 L.  E.  L.'s  Poetical  Works       -        -  16 
 
 Linwood's  Anthologia  Oxoniensis  -  16 
 
 Macaulav's  Lavs  of  Ancient  Rome  18 
 
 Montgomery's  Poetical  Works      -  20 
 
 "                Original  Hymns       -  20 
 
 Moore's  Poetical  Works          -        -  21 
 
 "        Lalla  Rookh                         -  21 
 
 "        Irish  Melodies                     -  21 
 
 "        Songs  and  Ballads   -        -  21 
 
 Shakspeare,  Dy  Bowdler         -        -  26 
 
 "            Sentiments  &  Similes  13 
 
 "            Songs  and  Ballads      -  26 
 
 Southey's  Poetical  Works       -        -  27 
 
 "          British  Posts  -        -        -  28 
 
 Swain's  English  Melodies      -        -  29 
 
 Thomson's  Seasons,  illustrated      -  27 
 
 Watts's  Lyrics  of  the  Heart  -       -  32 
 
 Wiused  Thoughts                              -  22 
 
 Political  Economy  and 
 Statistics. 
 
 Banfield's  Statistical  Companion  -  4 
 
 Caird's  Letters  on  Agriculture      -  6 
 
 Francis's  Bank  of  England  9 
 
 "          English  Railway    -        -  9 
 
 "          Stock  Exchange     -        -  9 
 Greg's    Essays    on    Political    and 
 
 Social  Science                               -  10 
 
 Laing's  Notes  of  a  Traveller  -        -  14 
 
 "       Notes   on    Denmark   and 
 
 the  Duchies                                      -  14 
 
 M'Uulloch'sGeog.  Statist,  fee.  Diet.  IN 
 
 "  Dictionary  of  Commerce  18 
 
 "            London        -        -        -  31 
 
 "          Statistics  of  Gt.  Britain  19 
 
 "        On  Funding  &  Taxation  19 
 
 "        On  Waees      -                 -  18 
 
 Mnrcefs  Political  Kronomy  -        -  19 
 
 Fashley  On  Pauperism  -        -        -  23 
 
 The  Sciences 
 in  General  and  Mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 Pages. 
 
 3ourne's  Catechism  of  the  Steam 
 
 Engine         -----  5 
 
 "      on  the  Screw  Propeller       -  5 
 
 Brande's  Dictionary  of  Science,  &c.  5 
 
 Cresy's  Civil  Engineering       -        -  7 
 
 De  laBeche'sGeology  of Cornwall,&c.  7 
 
 "           Geological  Observer  -  7 
 
 De  la  Rive's  Electricity           -        -  7 
 
 Herschel's  Outlines  of  Astronomy  11 
 
 Holland's  Mental  Physiology         -  11 
 
 Humboldt's  Aspects  of  Nature      -  13 
 
 "           Cosmos       -        -        -  13 
 
 Lardner's  Cabinet  Cyclopaedia      -  15 
 
 "           Great  Exhibition  -        -  16 
 
 Lund's    Companion     to    Wood's 
 
 Algebra        -        -                           -  32 
 Marcet's  (Mrs.)  Conversations       -  1» 
 Moseley's  Practical  Mechanics       -  21 
 "        Engineering&Architecture  21 
 Owen's  Lectureson  Comp.  Anatomy  22 
 Peschel's  Elements  of  Physics        -  23 
 Phillips's  FossHs  of  Cornwall,  &c.  23 
 Mineralogy      -                  -  23 
 Portlock's  Geology  of  Londonderry  24 
 Smee's  Electro  Metallurgy    -        -  27 
 Steam  Engine  (The)       -        -        -  3 
 Tate  On  Strength  of  Material*      -  29 
 "     Exercises  on  Mechanics         -  28 
 "     Mechanical  Philosophy          -  29 
 Wilson's  Electricity  and  the  Elec- 
 tric Telegraph      ...        -  31 
 Wood's  Algebra,  by  Lund     -        -  32 
 
 Rural  Sports. 
 
 Blaine's  Dictionary  of  Sports         -  4 
 
 Cecil's  Stable  Practice  ...  6 
 
 "      Stud  Farm  -        -        -        -  6 
 
 The  Cricket  Field  -        -        -        -  7 
 
 Ephemera  on  Angling  8 
 
 "         Book  of  the  Salmon      -  8 
 
 Hawker's  Instructions  to  Sportsmen  11 
 
 The  Hunting-Field         ...  10 
 
 Loudon's  Lady's  Country  Comp.  -  15 
 
 Pocket  and  the  Stud       -        -        -  1 1 
 
 Practical  Horsemanship         -        -  10 
 
 Pulman's  Fly-Fishing                      -  24 
 
 Stable  Talk  and  Table  Talk  -        -  11 
 
 The  Stud,  for  practical  purposes   -  10 
 
 Wheatley's  Rod  and  Line       -       -  32 
 
 VeterinaryMedicine,&c. 
 
 Cecil's  Stable  Practice  -       -  6 
 
 "      Stud  Farm  -  6 
 
 Hunting  Field  (The)     -  -        -  10 
 
 Pocket  and  the  Stud        -  -        -  11 
 
 Practical  Horsemanship  -         -  10 
 
 Stable  Talk  and  Table  Talk  •        -  1 1 
 
 Stud  (The)  -  10 
 
 Youatt's  The  Dog  -  32 
 
 "        The  Horse  -  32 
 
 Voyages  and 
 Travels. 
 
 Adams's  Canterbury  Settlement    -  3 
 
 Davis's  China  7 
 
 Eothen 31 
 
 Forbes's  Dahomey          -        -        -  9 
 
 Forester  and  Biddulph's  Norway  -  9 
 
 Hope's  Brittany  and  the  Bible        -  31 
 
 Hue's  Tartary,  Thibet,  and  China  31 
 
 Hnghea'B  Australian  Colonies         -  31 
 
 Hurutwldt's  Aspects  of  Nature       -  13 
 
 Jameson's  Canada                           -  31 
 Jerrmann's      Pictures     from    St. 
 
 Petersburg                                  -  31 
 
 Lang's  New  South  Wales        -        -  14 
 
 Laing's  Norway                                    -  31 
 
 #<        Denmark   and  the  Duchies  14 
 
 "        Notes   of  a  Traveller        -  14 
 
 Lardner's  London           -        -  16 
 
 Osborn'a  Arctic  Journal         -        -  22 
 
 Peel's  Nubian  Desert      -        -        -  23 
 
 PIVifFer's  Voyage  round  the  World  31 
 
 Power's  New  Zealand  Sketches     -  M 
 
 Richardson's  Arctic  Boat  Voyage  24 
 
 Seaward's  Narrative       -        -        -  25 
 
 Snow's  Arctic  Voyage    -        -        -  27 
 
 St.  John's  (H.)  Indian  Archipelago  25 
 
 "          (J.  A.)  Isis       -        -        -  25 
 
 Sutherland's  Arctic  Vovage   -        -  28 
 
 Traveller's  Library          -        -        -  31 
 
 Werne's  African  Wanderings         -  31 
 
 Works  of  Fiction. 
 
 Ladv  Willoughhy's  Diary       -  -  32 
 
 Mac'.lonald's  Villa  Verocrhio  -  IS 
 
 Si,  Roger  de  Coverley  -  26 
 
 Southey's  The  Doctor  &c.      -  -  27 
 
3ta  $lpjjatotiral  Catalogue 
 
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DATE  DUE 
 
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 PRINTED  IN  U.S.A.