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THE LARGENESS OF THE
IMAGERY IN THE DEU-
TERO-ISAIAH.

BY
BENJAMIN WILLARD ROBINSON

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE
FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

CHK
IPrese of ©eo. W. Danfortb
1906

PREFACE,
It would be a manifest impertinence for the writer of
this brief book to name the professors in Union Theological
Seminary to whom he is under a sense of grateful obligation.
For he is still a student in that institution and is working in
regular course for its diploma. But he is unwilling to let
these pages be printed without saying how greatly he is in
debted to Professors Gottheil and Prince of Columbia Uni
versity, Both have shown him, to his frequent despair, what
it is to be a Semitic scholar. Without the suggestion and
stimulus of the former, chapter IV of this thesis would not
have been written at all. Without the wonderfully helpful
encouragement of the latter, the writer, much as he enjoys
the oriental languages, might sometimes have lost heart in
studying them.
BENJ. W. ROBINSON.
New York, May 29, 1906.

CONTENTS

The Largeness of the Imagery in the Deutero-Isaiah.

INTRODUCTION.

PAGE

The numerousness of the lesser images and the fewness of
the great images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
General survey of the large images . . . . . . . . 10

CHAPTER I.
SOURCES OR CAUSES OF THE LARGENESS.
(a) Separation from the national ritual
(b) Influence of travel
(c) Contact with the material greatness of Babylon
(d) Effect of historic review
(e) Influence of leisure
( f ) Effect of the campaigns of Cyrus . .
(g) National suffering
(h) The greatness of our Prophet's own personality

1313
1414 1415
15
16

CHAPTER II.

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS.

1 . Large geographic features
(a) Babylonian items
^* (b) The great highway to Jerusalem
"(c) The mountains
* (d) The sea 
(e) The heavens and earth
2, Historic largeness . .
Ma) Creation
(b) Eden, the Deluge, and Abraham

20 20
2121
222324
2425

CONTENTS PAGE
v ( c) The Exodus, the Monarchy, and Cyrus  25
3. Great personifications . . . . • • • • • • • • 26
Preliminary . . . . . . . . • ¦ • • • • • • 26
(a) Israel as a whole .. •• •• •• ¦• •• 27
(b) Babylon  28
(c) Zion  28
( d ) Israel as the Servant . . . . • • • • • • 30
4. The anthropomorphic figure of Jehovah . . • . . . 35
( a 1 Its general vastness . . . . • ¦ • • • ¦ • • 35
"*• (b) Jehovah's hand  35
( c) Jehovah's arm . . . . • . . . • . • • ¦ • 37
x (b) Jehovah as military hero, shepherd and husband .. 37
5. Elaborative largeness . . • . . . • • • • • • 38
(a) Explanatory .. .. .. .. ¦. •• •¦ 38
(b) The herald-voices  40
(c) The manufacture of idols  •• •• 40
(d) Idol worship ..  .. •¦ •• 41
(e) After-echoes  ¦¦ •• ¦• 42
6. Largeness of dramatic action . . . . . . • • • • 43
Our prophecy dramatic, though not a drama • • . . . . 43
(a) The stage-setting  44
(b) The actors  : ..45
( d) The movements . . .... . . . . . . . . 46

CHAPTER III.
EFFECTS OF THE LARGENESS.
1. Absence of local coloring .. .. .. .. .. 47
(a) Usual reasons not sufficent -. .. .. .. 47
(b) Largeness of the imagery the main one .. . . 48
2. A peculiar quality of vagueness and spirituality . . . . 50
(a) Cautiousness necessary in spiritualizing .. .. 50
(b) Comparisons with Ezekiel, Dante, and Milton .. 51
3. Frequent New Testament use of our prophet . . . . 52
( a) Use of his universalism . . . . . . . . . . 52
(b) Use of the eternal . . .. .. .. .. .. 53
(c) The salient New Testament references .. .. .. 53
CHAPTER IV.
NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES STUDIED IN DETAIL.
Preliminary . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
1. Those relating to Christ's Person and Work . . . . 59
(a) His person and character .. .. .. .. .. 59
(b) His dealing with Masses of People .. .. .. 59

CONTENTS

PAGE
(c) His Sacrifice of Himself .. .. .. .. .. 61
(d) His Second Coming as Judge and Redeemer .. .. 62
2. The Spread of the Gospel under the Apostles . . . . 63
(a) Foreigners reached . . . .  63
(b) Paul's Commission . . , .  64
(c) Great Gatherings of People . . .. ..64
(d) Gentiles as well as Jews to be saved .. .. 66
3. The Great Consummation . . . .  67
(a) Submission and Destruction of Enemies . . . . 68
(b) Triumph and Glory of God's People  69
(c) The Great Invitation  71
4. Large Philosophic Aspects of the Gospel's Career . . 71
(a) Preparation  71
(b) Visions of Universality  72
ic) General Historic Surveys .. .. .. .. .. 73
(d) Great Movements and Enterprises  75
(e) Incredulity and Criticism of God's ways .. .. 76
(f) Greatness of the Individual Christian  77

THE IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH.

INTRODUCTION.
The poetry of the Deutero-Isaiah exhibits a small number
of great images and a great number of small ones. The large
figures, moreover, are fewer and the lesser more numerous
than at first sight appears. For, on the one hand, in many
verses study reveals in almost every word a picture previously
unseen, and, on the other hand, what look to the casual reader
like independent metaphors loosely succeeding one another
often prove to be parts of one extended or compound piece of
imagery, constituting a single tableau.
The numerousness of the lesser images is illustrated by the
opening verses. "Comfort ye" (40:1) is literally "cause to
breathe again." "Speak to the heart" (40:2) is the regular
phrase for wooing (cf. Hosea 2:14) and carries the figure of
courtship. "Jerusalem" (40:2) represents Israel not in her
actual shape of a captive people in a foreign land, but as a
community and city in her far-away and desolate country, a
city really in ruins and without population. "Pardoned"
(40:2) is literally "paid off," and "warfare" is "time of mili
tary service." Random yet striking instances of the ubiquity

IO IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
of metaphor in the Deutero-Isaiah are: "vanish" (51:6), a
Niphal from the same root as "rotten rags" (Jer. 38:11) and
"maketh ready" (51 113), a word used technically of an archer
directing his bow. Conjectural emendations of the text also,
for the most part, tend to increase the bulk of the metaphors
as when the abstract "in like manner" (51 :6) is changed to
"like gnats."
Nevertheless the main outstanding characteristic of the
Deutero-Isaiah (Is. 40-55) is not its multitude of brief
metaphors, but rather certain large and extended images,
which include most of the smaller ones as metaphors within
metaphors and constitute the bulk of the prophecy. These
are the subject of the present paper. They appear in every
chapter. A brief survey of the entire prophecy makes their
constant presence clear. Chapter 40 shows a vast engineering
enterprise which lifts every valley and lowers every mountain
into one long, level highway from Babylon to Jerusalem (vs.
4). Here, too, is a colossal creator measuring the soil of the
earth and weighing its mountains, and including between the
finger and thumb of his hand the distance from horizon to
horizon (vs. 12). Chapter 41 calls together a kind of
ecumenical council of the nations (vs. 1), draws the career of
Cyrus in large lines (vss. 2, 3, 25), and compares Israel to a
threshing instrument huge enough to thresh and winnow
mountains as chaff (vss. 15, 16). In chapter 42 the servants'
work reaches to the utmost bounds of the earth (vs. 4), and
the paean to Jehovah makes sailor and landsman, city and
wilderness, valley and mountain-top join in one chorus of
praise (vss. 10-12). In Chapter 43 Israel's ransom is all the
nations of Africa taken together (vss. 3, 4), and with the
great Exodus journey and its water from the rock, is com
pared the new pathway to Babylon, where jackals and
ostriches give mute thanks as they drink at miraculous rivers
(vss. 17-20). Chapter 44 gives a remarkably complete pic
ture of idol manufacture and worship (vss. 9-20), and again
makes the universe vocal from the highest heavens to the
lower parts of earth (vs. 23). In chapter 45 we have the same
broad and graphic sweep of Cyrus' career (vss. 1-3) and the

INTRODUCTION 1 1
colossal ransom of African nations advances into the figure of
a colossal procession falling down in chains before Jerusalem
(vs. 14). Chapter 46 likens Jehovah's carrying of Israel, not
only as one vast nation, but from its earliest origins, to the
Babylonians carrying their gods (vss. 3, 4), and again sum
marizes the swiftness and swoop of Cyrus' conquests under
the figure of a ravenous bird (vs. 11). Chapter 47 is able
by the largeness of its grasp to compress the ruin of the whole
Chaldean world-power into the figure of one disgraced female
slave (vss. 1-7), and to see the vision of her merchants,
gathered from every quarter of the world, scattered to the
lands from which they came (vs. 15). Chapter 48 again
strikes the note of a great world creator (vs. 13) and has the
great river Euphrates flowing through it (vs. 18). Chapter
49 commands the dim coastlands of the farthest horizon to
listen (vs. 1), and will not draw the limits of Israel's mis
sion short of the ends of the earth (vs. 6) . Here, also, is the
companion figure to the daughter of Babylon. Zion dresses
herself with great populations as if she were putting them on
as clothes (vs. 18), and the world-reaching signal of com
mand is given to the nations to return all the dispersed of
Israel (vs. 22). Chapter 50 has the image of a great divorce
of the whole nation from Jehovah and of a great sale of all
the population as children to a creditor (vs. 1) and once more
the great image of the Nile-miracle appears (vs. 2). Chapter
51 sees nothing less than the solid vault of heaven passing
away like smoke and the earth like a worn-out garment (vs.
5), after which come new heavens and a new earth (vs. 16).
It depicts Jehovah as stirring up and quieting the ocean (vss.
10, 15) and closes with likening the afflicted nation to an in
toxicated woman fallen in the street and her back made as
the ground for men to walk over (vss. 17-23). Chapter 52
describes a company of heralds on the Judean hills pro
claiming salvation to Zion (vs. 7), and it is in the eyes of all
the nations that the holy arm of Jehovah is made bare while
the ends of the earth see his salvation (vs. 10). Even the
highly subjective and individualized picture of the suffering
servant in chapter 53, including the last verses of 52, is not

12 INTRODUCTION
without features of largeness. The servant startles many na
tions, and kings are dumb with astonishment before him
(52:I5)- Jehovah divides him a portion with the great and
he divides the spoil with the strong (vs. 12). Chapter 54 re
curs to the primeval deluge of Noah with its vanishing moun
tains (vss. 9, 10) and reconstructs Jerusalem with precious
stones big enough to serve for building stones (vss. 11, 12).
Chapter 55 compares the new kingdom to the old one in its
great extent and power under David (vss. 3-5), declares Je
hovah's ways to be as much higher than men's ways as the
heavens are above the earth, and closes with another choral
song in which mountains and hills and all the trees of the
wilderness join in a great concert of joy.
The rapid survey just made incidentally serves to indicate
the definition of metaphorical largeness which this paper in
tends. It is simply that the main images in which the poet-
prophet sees and sets forth the truths he utters are large. It
may be the largeness of physical size, or the largeness of his
torical range, or the largeness of broad or complete mental
survey. But the general fact of largeness having been made
evident, the main body of the paper inquires: I. What are
the causes or the sources of the largeness? II. In what ways
does the largeness exhibit itself? III. What are the results
of the largeness? IV. What use is made of it in the New
Testament ?

CHAPTER I.
THE SOURCES OF THE LARGENESS.
(a) The exile freed Israel from its narrow national round
of ritual observance. It reduced the people to, or emancipated
them into, the larger meanings of their religion. Larger
meanings seek expression in larger images, and the forced
geographical migration of Israel to a point outside her orig
inal habitat was calculated to produce an effect analogous to
the inward migration of thought which set Jesus and Paul on
high mountain tops of vision apart, where they could see the
faith of the old covenant as an historic whole, and in the light
of its great spiritual principles. Forced away from the ex
ternal, Israel in exile could mine into the inner and spiritual.
The geographic emancipation set the imagination of Israel
free to live in larger mental landscapes.
(b) The nation has traveled. It has had a long tramp
of seven hundred miles. Upon the journey's experiences the
annals are nearly silent. But Ezra required four full months
to accomplish the same distance (Ezra 7:9). It was equal
to journeying around the world to-day. Successive daily
landscapes dissolving one into another lay in long panorama
upon the canvas of the exile's soul. Imagination paints its
pictures with the pigments of actual experiences and known
facts. If not with his own feet, yet in thought, our prophet
had trodden out the long itinerary. The way of the sea, the
fords of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the circuit of Hermon,
the neighborhood of Damascus, the two Lebanons, Hamath,
Arpad, the rolling greatness of the Euphrates, the journey
southward, the prospect from His (certified to us as one of the
great view-points of the world), — all these with their moun-

14 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
tains, valleys, bare heights, rivers, and long stages of wilder
ness-marching constituted a huge bulk of material for the
powerful, constructive imagination of our prophet. If he
should wish to make the return of his people to Jerusalem a
great and glorified Exodus he would have the poetic material
for the enlargement and the irradiation.
(c) Contact with the physical immensity and enduring-
ness of Babylon and her empire made a further contribution
of largeness. There were the huge buildings with the huge
areas between, the vast squares and the high portals guarded
by giant bulls. There were the broad wharves, the wide
flights of stairs, and the terraces, the hanging gardens, the
pyramids, and the towers. They might make the broken
hearted Jew feel that he was a mere worm crawling in the
presence of striding monsters (41 :i4). But to the great soul
of our prophet they would merely make large the outlines of
his vision of the complete destruction of it all, as his taunt-
song in Chapter 47 shows us. The "mistress of kingdoms"
(vs. 5), the "mistress forever" (vs. 7), "the astrologers, star-
gazers, and monthly prognosticators" (vs. 13), the "traffick
ers" from every quarter (vs. 15), reveal at the same time the
prophet's sense of Babylon's hugeness and his superiority
to it. (d) The power of historic review to enlarge mental con
ceptions must be added. The book of Kings concludes with
the thirty-seventh year of the captivity (II Kings 25:27). It
is to the exile that we owe a large part of the historical books
of the Old Testament; our prophet could write with the ex
panded vision of one who had just risen from their perusal.
We do not understand our history while we are living it. We
cannot see the true shape of the woods while we are in among
the trees. But the exile was a kind of closure for Israel's
history, and our prophet could see from a favorable distance
the sharp, strange outline its forest made upon the Judean
hills. (e) A certain largeness of view and vision was helped on
by the leisure of the captivity. "An air of large leisure" in
vests the writings of Ezekiel. He "broods, gazes, and builds

CAUSES OF THE LARGENESS 15
his visions up." The Deutero-Isaiah by contrast writes with
a hot and rapid pen; nevertheless the fire burns in his
prophecies because he too has been musing. His pictures are
not slow aggregations, but sudden inspirations; nevertheless
he is not didactic and does not preach directly to his country
men. His writing rushes on fast enough ; but the greatness
of his imagery betrays long, slow brooding over his vast prob
lem until at last its greatness has been mastered by his greater
greatness. (f) There is evidence also that the far-reaching conquests
of Cyrus powerfully affected the imagination of our prophet
by the great distances they covered and the immensity of the
circuit they made. He sees the conqueror start from his na
tive Anshan immediately east of Babylonia (41 -.2) and with
quick curving from east to north immediately menace the op
pressor of his people from that point of the compass (41 :25).
He sees victory meet him at every step (41:2). "Sieg fallt
ihm zu auf Schritt und Tritt" (Marti). Whole nations with
their kings are as dust and stubble before his sword and bow
(41 :2). His swiftness scarcely seems to touch the earth with
its feet (41:3), albeit the tread was heavy enough to crush
rulers as mortar and as a potter treadeth clay (41:25). He
is Jehovah's world shepherd (44:28), and has many another
honorable appellation (45:4). He disarms kings and bursts
through the gates of walled cities (45:1). The whole habit
able world is afraid and the ends of the earth tremble before
him (41:5). The distant treasures of the Lydian Croesus are
his booty (45:3). And when the swiftness and swoop of this
ravenous bird from the east have finished their far-reaching
flight (46:11), those among all the heathen nations that have
escaped Jehovah's world-wide judgment at the hands of the
conqueror, if there be any such, are asked to put in an ap
pearance (45:20). Each and all of these details show how
our prophet grasped and was grasped by the greatness of
Cyrus' career.
(g) Some account must be taken, too, of the enlarging and
emancipating power of suffering, unless we are to neglect what
emerges from the study of the suffering servant (50:5-7;

1 6 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
52 :i3-53 :i2). The exiles, roughly speaking, were made up of
two generations. One was guilty and banished into exile while
the other was born in captivity, and innocent of the sins for
which it was the punishment. Suffering raises the question
"Why?"; and the innocent suffering mixed with the guilty
suffering enlarged the thought of the prophet who was great
enough to receive the enlargement and to include it all under
Jehovah's one plan and purpose, till he felt that his people not
only suffered under God's wrath but for the sake of a great
work among the nations. Under this tuition his nation came
to seem to him not simply a felon but also a martyr.
(h) Yet all this was but environment, and had it not been
for the greatness of the prophet's genius, would have gone for
nought, — as indeed it did go with most of his generation, and
these great chapters would have been left unwritten. Not
every traveled exile in a great foreign city and at leisure to
review and crystallize his nation's history is stimulated by news
of the broad conquests of a Persian king into being a Deutero-
Isaiah. He is, indeed, a Great Unknown, but our entire study
is a testimony to the creative largeness of his genius. Ex
perience and environment set him with many others upon a
lofty and commanding elevation. He alone had eyes to see the
greatness of the landscape and he alone had the artistic scope
and the religious genius to throw it all upon one large canvass.
Outside his prophecies there is no material for his biography.
But they alone are a monument to his personal greatness. To
recite its elements here would of course be hardly more than
to anticipate the analysis of the following pages. This is his
difference from Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Isaiah heads his
prophecies with names of kings in whose reigns he spoke.
He begets children and gives them symbolic names. He gets
his mission in the abasement and exaltation recorded in his
sixth chapter and has his heroic personal encounters with the
royalty of his day. Jeremiah names his father, expresses his
own feeling of childish incapacity and recites his relations with
the men against whom he prophesies. When the first edition
of his prophecies has been burned he issues a second with ad
ditions, suffers in his dungeon, and goes with his people into

CAUSES OF THE LARGENESS 1 7
Egyptian exile. Ezekiel, also, writes beside a river whose name
he gives and at a date whose year and month and day he
notes. Using the pronoun of the first person, he gives not a
little material toward his biography. But our prophet remains
the Great Unknown. We may express the fact by saying that
he stands at such an elevation above his subject that he cannot
be a figure in its development ; or by saying that he has sunk
himself so deeply in it that he has lost his personality and be
come merely a voice ; or yet again, by saying that he has made
Jehovah's redemption so great that he is completely hidden be
hind it. All three statements are true and perhaps we may
acid that like Shakespeare, and like Shakespeare alone, he so
absorbs himself in the living movement of his dramatis per-
sonae that nothing but the physical, mental, and spiritual action
of his characters is visible upon his stage. To him must be
assigned the greatness of a universalism which portrays crea
tion and new creation, and covers the entire world movement
of his day so far as it was visible and yet does it all with abso
lute self-effacement.
But the distinguishing characteristic ever remains the large
ness of the prophet's visions, his special capacity to grasp with
utmost ease that which is great and universal whether in physi
cal size or in intellectual range, and his creative imagination in
setting it forth. And the emphasis of his ministry corresponds
to the greatness of his vision. He gives his strength to rebuk
ing the uncomprehensiveness and the limited vision of his
countrymen. He cannot understand why men cannot go back
to the beginning (40:21; 41:26; 46:10; 48:16). He rebukes
lack of intellectual range as if it were a deficiency in moral
quality. The sin of the idolater is not in thinking that a spir
itual being can be represented by man's manufactures but in
thinking that so large a being can be likened to anything so
small (40:12-26) ; not in the essential coarseness of image wor
ship but in not having a wide enough understanding to gather
into one conception the whole history of the material of which
the idol is only a part. The idolater ought to include the heat
ing, cooking, and other uses of the same substance (44:19).
He ought to consider the whole history of an idol from the

1 8 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
planting of the tree it came from (44:14) to the ashes left after
the fuel portion was burned (44:20). It is a resume reproach
(compare the complete sweep of description from vs. 12). So
pervasive is this rebuke of smallness of vision that we some
times mistake it for a rebuke of wrong vision. When our
prophet says that Jehovah's ways and thoughts are as much
higher than the ways and thoughts of Israel as the heavens are
higher than the earth (55:9), the point of the contrast is not
the moral elevation of the divine thoughts as opposed to the
degradation of those of the wicked. But by Jehovah's
thoughts and ways the prophet means his purposes of redemp
tion which are too vast and sublime to be measured by the
narrow conception of despondent captives (Cf. Marti, Skinner
et al, in loc). The perpetual appeal is not to the purity and
holiness of the divine character, but rather to the creator of the
ends of the earth, the everlasting duration of his being, and the
depth and power of his understanding (cf. 40:28). And the
prophet himself always rises with easy courage from the self-
deification and self-eternalizing of Babylon (47:8, 7) to the
everlastingness of Jehovah and the sure ruin of the oppressor.
Without a tremor of hesitation he declares that the despised
and abhorred shall be worshipped and honored and that poor
little Israel is to be the salvation of nothing less than the
whole world (49:6, 7).
And as our prophet can fuse the elements of a process or
the incidents of a history into one living picture, so also he
finds no self-contradiction in the union of antithetical concep
tions which lesser minds separate and only one of which thej
develop. In his anthropomorphic figuring of Jehovah the Deu
tero-Isaiah is able to combine transcendent elevation above the
world with the most passionate and intimate mingling in its
affairs. The transcendence was at a later period carried out to
the extreme of placing a hierarchy of angels between the peo
ple and Jehovah who himself was too exalted to touch human
affairs. On the other hand the mixing in human affairs was
carried so far as to make the Messiah hardly more than a mili
tary and political hero. It is part of that greatness of the
Deutero-Isaiah, shown in the greatness of his imagery, that he

CAUSES OF THE LARGENESS 1 9
unites the two elements in his portraiture of the one God. As
it was part of the greatness of Kant that he combined the two
directions of philosophic thinking which his successors have
separated and followed in opposite directions and with the
most opposite results ; and as it was the greatness of Paul that
he could in the same sentence tell men to work out their own
salvation for it was God who worked in them the willing and
the doing: so the Deutero-Isaiah feels no contradiction be
tween his portraiture of Jehovah as on the one hand the omni
potent creator of the earth and the infallible ruler of men, and
his portraiture, on the other hand, of a suffering, struggling
deity fighting for his people down in the valleys and up on the
mountains of the earth (42:13, 14 cf. 63:1-6).

CHAPTER II.

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS

The largeness of imagery in the Deutero-Isaiah is not only
salient but thoroughgoing. Even the shorter metaphors
which are included within the few great and extended ones,
as well as those that lie outside, often show features of large
ness. If we study each instance in detail, and then gather
them all together with a view to classification, we find them
dividing into six groups, which may be termed ( I ) geographic,
(2) historic, (3) national, (4) anthropomorphic, (5) elabo-
rative, (6) dramatic.
1. The geographic features which our prophet's imagi
nation uses are of great physical size. His one great message
was that the people of God were to be led from Babylon
through the wilderness to Jerusalem, and were there to be
renewed into a glorious commonwealth with a universal mis
sion. It it is along the itinerary of that material and spiritual
career that we follow the physical features of the prophet's
imagery. (a) Our prophet was with his people in Babylon, though
his heart was far away. While he seems sometimes to have
thought of their various wretched restrictions and limitations
there as so many separate holes and prison-houses (42:22),
his preferred image for Babylon is that of one great "dun
geon" or dark "prison-house" in which his blind nation was
immured (42:7). The mighty river that rolled through the
city, however, was, if we may accept the text as genuine, in
its rolling greatness, an emblem, as a Judean summer-dried
wady could not have been, of the full flowing prosperity re
warding an obedient people (48:18).

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 21
(b) Nor is the highway of return thought of in small
sections of roadway, but as one colossal thoroughfare for whose
construction the divine engineer elevated or depressed at will
the great mountain and valley features of the landscape
(40:4), while the whole population of the earth looked on in
wonder (40:5). And as looking out from Babylon one great
highway to Jerusalem was seen, so the final stretches running
into Jerusalem itself are, as if for completeness' sake, espe
cially mentioned. "I will make all my mountains a way"
(49:11). We raise no question of the proportion of literal
and spiritual meaning to be assigned to this highway. Such
enquiries are outside our present limits. It is the stupen-
dousness of the physical image that we remark. Nor ever
did our western states witness such a colossal acreage of plant
ing and irrigation as was traversed by the prophet's highway.
A later pen might deal in beautiful words with domestic
watered gardens (58:11; 61:11), but our prophet must have
rivers on bare heights and fountains in the midst of the val
leys ; the wilderness must be a pool of water and the dry
land springs of water (41 :i8) ; the whole desert journey must
be shaded with all the great wild trees of the forest (41 :i9) ;
and lest we should miss the vastness of the landscape he has
in mind, he dots his wilderness with cities and takes us out into
the villages of Edomitish Kedar and Sela (42:11).
(c) When we arrive at Jerusalem itself we find the city
rebuilt on a surpassing scale. There are no exact dimensions,
like those of the apocalyptic vision (Rev. 21 :i6), but nothing
small is to be endured in the specifications. Sapphires, rubies,
and carbuncles must be furnished of sufficient size for the
foundations and the structural work (54:11, 12). The moun
tains round about Jerusalem, too, • made doubly dear by the
contrast of the flat Babylonian lands, as well as because of
their being the greatest feature of any landscape, frequently
emerge in our prophecy. We have seen how they are re
moved from the pathway of the return. They break forth
into singing also before the advancing host (55:12). It is
upon them that the feet of the heralds of deliverance are
beautiful (52:7), and from them that the tidings are shouted

22 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO ISAIAH
to Jerusalem (40:9). It is from the tops of the mountains
also that the inhabitants of Sela join in the universal shout
and song of praise (42:11). The vast threshing instrument
to which the servant-people is likened shows its size and effi
ciency by threshing mountains (41 :i5). The loving kindness
of Jehovah has such large and abiding solidity that the im
movable mountains, but not it, may take their departure
(54:10). And if Jehovah is really the great creator, the
scales he uses for weighing his material must be large enough
to hold mountains in their pans (40:12). The great Lebanon
and anti-Lebanon ranges afford an allied image. The entire
area of the forests that cover their slopes would furnish a
colossal pile of fuel, and the animals, wild and domestic, that
live there would furnish a tremendous hecatomb. But even
so, the burnt offering would be utterly insufficient for Jehovah
(40:16). (d) Another set of great images is furnished by the sea.
The mariners upon it join in the great choral song to Jehovah
(42:10). Its broad and rolling surface represents the uni
versal sweep of Israel's victorious redemption (48:18; cf.
11:9). Familiar to our prophet is also the vast primeval
ocean from whose devouring dragon- jaws the habitable world
was delivered (51 :g, 10) (cf. the Babylonian Tiamat myth
of the creation). A similar comparison of the sea to a rest
less, unruly creature waging impotent war with heaven and
seeking to devour the land, but a creature whom Jehovah holds
completely in his power, now stirring it to fury and again
stilling the mighty monster into quietness, recurs a few verses
farther on (51:15), although it is the present ocean, rather
than the mythological, that is now in view. And out of the
sea on the far western horizon arise the "isles"; for whether
by this term is meant nations, dry soil, or coast-lands, the
poetic figure seems to be that of some great territory or pro
montory rising from the distant sea or from a sea of mist
which covers the horizon. It is the image of populous lands,
remote, huge, and in some sense maritime (40:15; 41 :5 ; 42:4,
10; 49:1 ; 51 :5). But none of our prophet's references are to

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 23
the sea as whispering, laughing, or resounding; with him it
always connotes some form of hugeness.
(e) The earth and the heavens, in fact the entire visible
frame of things, is also viewed by our prophet not so much
as created in successive details (cf. Gen. I) as by one or two
great strokes. Jehovah comprehends the soil of all the earth
in one measure (40:12). Jehovah spreadeth abroad the earth
(44:24). He stretcheth forth the heavens (44:24) as a cur
tain or as a tent (40:22), and brings out the whole host of
the stars by number (40:26). Finally, our prophet conceives
the astounding image, which has become commonplace to us,
but can never be surpassed in its audacious immensity, of the
earth waxing old like a garment and its inhabitants dying like
gnats, of the heavens vanishing away like smoke (51:6), and
of the foundations of the earth being laid anew and the
heavens being replanted with fresh constellations (51:16).
The features, then, in the landscape of our prophet's vision
are large, — large either in their own nature, like the moun
tains, the sea, the heavens, and the earth, or large because of
the size in which he sees them, like his forests, rivers, and
wilderness. In either case they are in sharp contrast with the
neat and frequently effective little metaphors in which small,
fine minds delight.
Akin to this largeness of individual objects is the wide
horizon covered by the prophet's view. The scope includes
not only the mountains of Judea already referred to, but
Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sabea (43:3; 45:14), the islands of the
west (41:1 et al), and the ends of the earth (40:28; 41:5;
41:9; 43:6; 45:22; 52:10). The frequency of these allusions,
as indicated by the references just given shows how constantly
the prophet's eye was fixed upon the utmost margin of things,
as if he would have nothing, however distant, escape the total
ity of his view. He looks to every point of the compass.
He sees Cyrus corning from the east (41:2), and from the
north (41:25). The north must give up its exiles, and the
south must not keep them back. Some shall come from the
north and some from the west (49:12).

24 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
2. From the geographic largeness in our prophecy we
pass to the historic, and we are quite in line with the genius
of the Deutero-Isaiah if we begin history at creation. His
love of origins and consummations is disclosed in the great
images, lately cited, of cosmic dissolution and palingenesis
(51:6,16). In his frequent figurative uses of tohu our
prophet has in mind the chaos on which creation supervened.
It is just after his great picture of Jehovah's creative power
(40:12) that he says the nations are as vanity (tohu 40:17) ;
and it is just after the other great picture of the stretching
out of the heavens as a curtain and spreading them out with
the same ease as one pitches an ordinary dwelling tent (40:22),
that he says that the judges of the earth are made like con
fusion (tohu 40:23). The great genesis of the cosmos and
the vast formless chaos out of which it came bulk large in
his imagery. Molten images are wind and tohu (41:29).
They that fashion a graven image are all of them tohu (44:9).
Jehovah is introduced as he that created the heavens and
formed the earth (45:18; 42:5; 44:24). It is because of
the same prerogative that he has raised up Cyrus (45:12).
In one interesting instance (40:21) the vividness with which
the great image of creation lay in our prophet's mind is espe
cially evident. In the sentence, "Have ye not understood
(from) the foundations of the earth?" we should neither omit
"from," as the Hebrew text, apparently by accident, has done,
nor take "foundations" in the sense of "founding," for the
parallelism requires the temporal sense, and the concrete
fundamenta in no other case has the abstract meaning fundatio.
It is simply a case of vivid imagery running away with syntax.
The prophet started with the temporal preposition "from,"
but by the time he reached its object the vivid picture of the
foundations of the earth overcame the abstract idea of found
ing, and he wrote the word in its concrete form. And, again,
as the destruction of nations, judges, and princes is conceived
of as a kind of reduction of them to primeval chaos, so it is
in verbs that belong to Jehovah's creative activity that his
special work with Israel is described. "Create" is used, among
other passages, in 43:1, 7, 15; "form" in 43:1, 21; 44:2, 21.

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 25
24; 49:5; "make" in 44:2; 51 :13 s 54:5. It is with this same
love of origins that the servant of Jehovah is spoken of as
formed from the womb (44:2, 24; 49:5). So, too, the nations
are called from the beginning (41 4). And both the forgers
and users of weapons are declared to be Jehovah's creation
(S4:i6). If now we pass on to the history proper, we find our
prophet using none of its small incidents, such as Adam's
eating the forbidden fruit or the dove bringing back the olive
branch to the ark, or David eating the shewbread ; but always
the large, general, or total aspect of great events, situations,
ages, or eras is the object of reference. Zion's wilderness is
to be made like Eden and her desert like the garden of Je
hovah (51:3). Jehovah's wrath is to cease, as the waters
of Noah are no more to go over the earth (54:9). Even
Abraham and Sarah cannot be seen as a simple pair of pro
genitors, but as a great quarry out of which the nation has
been dug (51 :i, 2).
A prophet in love with largeness could not fail to use
imagery from the great national exodus out of Egypt with
its attendant wonders. Yet even here there is no recalling
of such details as the plagues of flies and vermin, or even
the giving of the manna. The thick darkness over the land
(Ex. 10:2, 22) is remembered (50:3). The foulness of the
dead fish when the Nile was turned to blood (Ex. 7:18) is
referred to (50:2). The people are not to go out of Babylon
in haste or by flight as in Ex. I3:2if; 14:19 (52:12). The
Euphrates is to be dry for Cyrus (44:27). The recently dis
covered inscriptions, however, seem to show that Herodotus'
story of Cyrus' changing the river channel is legendary as
far as Cyrus is concerned, and our last reference, therefore,
hardly permissible. Whatever waters of trouble Israel passes
through shall not overflow her (42:3). She may rely upon
Jehovah, who made the depths of the sea a way for the re
deemed to pass over (51:10), and who quenched the life of
Pharaoh's horses and horsemen as one quenches a wick, and
sunk his chariots beneath the returning sea (43:I7)- The

26 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
wonder of the water from the smitten rock shall be eclipsed
in this new exodus by making of rivers in the wilderness, at
which the very jackals and ostriches drinking shall by their
animal joy unconsciously give honor to Jehovah (43:19, 20).
And yet the final reference to the cleft rock and gushing-
water is in its way equally beautiful by its rich simplicity of
almost unadorned quotations (48:21). And as only Eden,
Abraham, and the Exodus are referred to in the history of
the people before they reached their own land, so the entire
annals of the kingdom are touched only at the one point of
its greatness under David as a leader and commander to the
peoples (55:4, 5). In considering the external sources of the
greatness of our prophet's imagery we have already (pp. 8, 9)
traversed his comprehensive references to the great and crush
ing sweep and swiftness of Cyrus' conquests. But if anyone
will compare the romantic and beautiful details of Cyrus' char
acter and achievements in Herodotus and Xenophon with the
references made by our prophet, the latter's disregard of de
tails and his powerful grasp and use of the great features
only will be freshly apparent. If, moreover, we review the
multitude of relatively small attractive incidents in which the
history of our prophet's own nation also abounded, — incidents
of family life, of military heroism, and of miraculous inter
position, — the more remarkable it seems that he has used
none of them, but only the great features to which we have
referred. 3. In passing to the Deutero-Isaiah's personfications, it
may be necessary to make a prefatory distinction. The object
or collectivity, such as a nation or people, which is viewed
as a person has its own material size, while the person which
represents it has also its size as seen by the imagination.
The figurative or imaginative person has, of course, no very
definite dimensions. Statues, however, representing countries
or nationalities, such as Columbia or Italia, are usually made of
heroic or even colossal proportions. Their greatness, how
ever, is the greatness of content, rather than of extent. It is
what they stand for that makes them great. Now the great-

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 27
ness of the Deutero-Isaiah's personfications lies in the double
fact that he is able, on the one hand, to conceive in a most
effective way of a whole people as a single person, and, on
the other hand, is able, as we shall see later on, to conceive
of a spiritual being like Jehovah under the most tremendous
anthropomorphic proportions. Speaking in a general way, he
can begin with a great object and reduce it to a small rep
resentative figure or metaphor and immediately, if he de
sires, expand its proportions over the hugest mental areas.
He can call his entire people Jacob (cf. 44:1) and call Jacob
a mere worm, and then in the next breath leap to the utmost
conceivable opposite of a worm, converting the worm into a
threshing instrument that pulverizes mountains and reduces
hills to chaff fine enough for the wind to winnow and the
whirlwind to scatter (41:14,15). The capacity to reduce
immense bodies of people to a minute figurative representation
is frequently in evidence. The nations are as drops of water
falling off the edge of a bucket carried by Jehovah (40:15).
They are as a grain of sand (ibid). An island — that is, a
great distant nation — is like an atom of dust that rises in the
air (ibid). In similar fashion, peoples and kings are as wind-
driven dust and stubble before the sword and bow of Cyrus
(41 :2). The whole nation of Israel is like the spoil which a
band of robbers seizes and carries away (42:24), or like the
booty which a single hero has captured (49:24), while a
stunted shrub struggling for existence in an arid soil may,
if we rightly understand the text, represent the whole body of
exiles, with their political disabilities and religious deprivations
(53--2). (a) But coming to the personifications themselves, we
note that the isles are seen under the figure of a trembling
human body (41:5). The captive nation is addressed as
though it were one person who had made Jehovah to serve
with its sins (43:24). It is viewed as an individual enemy
upon whom a fiery warrior pours out the flame of his anger in
battle and, as it were, sets him on fire (42:25). Compare,
for the figure, Deut. 32:22. Again, it is called by name, as
if it were a single friend who is familiar and dear (43:1),

28 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
or one woman being wooed (40:2). Yet again, the nation
is spoken of in words which remind us of Jeremiah in his
dungeon (Jer. 38:9, 10), as a single prisoner in danger of
death through starvation (51:14). It appears to be the per
sonified nation, also, into whose one mouth Jehovah puts his
words and whom he covers with the shadow of his hand
(51:16). (b) And as the oppressed nation as a whole is personified,
so are the Babylonians who oppress her. They are he that
contendeth with Israel (49:25). They are a bowman just
discharging his arrow (51:13). The finest personification
of the Babylonian power, however, is the taunt-song in chap
ter 47. Babylon has been a delicate and luxurious lady of
the harem. She is now reduced to the shameful condition
of a slave. She must leave her throne and sit on the ground.
She must grind with the millstones like the meanest house
hold slave. She must strip off her train and do the drudgery.
She must leave the sunlight of publicity and retire into dark
ness and obscurity. She must be childless and widowed.
And all the kingdoms and their resources which have been
at her call are of no avail to rescue her. Nay, they are con
sumed as stubble is by fire, while every former helper flees
in dismay (47:1-15).
(c) Before noting the personification of Babylon, we
mentioned that of Israel as a nation. But there are two
more personifications of the exiled people. One of them is
seen under the figure of Zion as a bride, the other under that
of the servant of Jehovah. Zion stands for Israel as deserted
and humbled, but at the same time about to receive the richest
and fullest blessings. The servant represents Israel, or a
part of Israel, or the ideal Israel, as Jehovah's instrument in
restoring unity, prosperity, and holiness to the nation, and in
carrying the knowledge of Him to all other nations. The
servant is Israel active and comforting, while Zion is Israel
passive, comforted, and served by her own children and by
the kings of outside nations.
Zion, then, is the idealized city, the wife of Jehovah, and
the mother of her inhabitants, but in utter dejection she com-

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 29
plains of her desolation and oblivion (49:14). With this
figure as a basis, our prophet goes on to say that she is less
likely to be forgotten by Jehovah than a nursing infant by
its mother (49:15). Jehovah keeps pictures of her walls
imprinted upon the palms of his hands (49:16). Her per
secutors are hurrying away from her, and her exiled children
are hurrying to her (49:17). She looks up and sees them all
gathering together and coming (49:18). In place of the
weeds of her widowhood, she, as it were, clothes herself with
her children as with bridal attire and girds herself with them
as with a bridal girdle (49:18). So numerous are they that
her land is too small for them and more territory must be
had. She has been a bereaved and barren wanderer, and
wonders what unknown concubines can have borne her all
this multitude (49:19-21). Still larger and richer the image
grows till the prophet sees the nations, at Jehovah's signal,
bringing her sons in their bosom and her daughters upon
their shoulders (49:22), and as a climax, the very kings of
the earth become her nursing fathers and the queens her
nursing mothers, all of them bowing in abject submission at
her feet (49:22, 23).
Another form of this personification, and of a rougher cast,
views the people as an intoxicated woman drunk with the
wrath of Jehovah, the cup of which she has drained to the
dregs (51 :i7). There is none of her sons to take her home,
for they, too, lie in the same condition at the head of all
the streets (51:18, 20). But the cup is to be taken from
her hand and put to the lips of her oppressors (51:22, 23).
She is summoned to awake, shake herself from the dust, put
on her beautiful robes, and seat herself on her throne (52:1,
2), for the daughter of Babylon is now off her throne and
down in the dust (47:1).
Still a third aspect of this personification makes the woman
burst into a song of exultation. Her previous astonished in
quiry as to where so many children could have come from,
gives place to the definite statement that her children, while
she has been barren and desolate, are greater in number than

30 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
she previously had as the married wife of Jehovah (54:1).
In place of the general requirement for more land, a larger
dwelling tent is required (54:2). In place of the reference
to a mother's attachment for her infant as less than Jehovah's
attachment for his people (49:15), we have a more extended
portrayal. The shame the young wife felt when abandoned
and the reproach of her "widowhood" are to be done away
and forgotten (54:4). She has a husband with a definite
name, Jehovah her Maker (54:5). He forsook her in an
outburst of anger, but it was only for a little while, and
that transient wrath was as nothing to the everlasting loving-
kindness with which he now endows her (54:7, 8). This
final mercy will endure though the mountains pass away
(54:10). Her city shall be built with great jewels set in
mortar of antimony, which will add to the largeness of their
luster, as it does to that of a woman's beautiful eyes (54:11,
12), and great shall be the peace of her children there (54:13).
(d) In addition to the personifications of Israel as a
whole, of Babylon, and of Zion, there remains that of Israel
as the Servant of Jehovah. This is the most important of
all, not only because of its total bulk in our prophecy, but
because in sustained power and vividness it exceeds the others ;
even the figures of Zion and Babylon rank for the most part
beneath it, both in variety of detail and in symmetry of
arrangement. The figure, however, does not always connote
the same part or the same mission of the people. In its first
appearance it seems to stand for the nation as a whole. The
prophet's imaginative standpoint is in Palestine, and, so
located, Mesopotamia, his actual present position, appears as
the ends of the earth from which Abraham was called (41 :8,
9). Here the servant has a right hand (41 :i3) and is upheld
by Jehovah's right hand (41:10). This is the first appear
ance of the personification. Later on it increases greatly in
boldness. The servant is repeatedly traced to his ante-natal
state in the womb (44 :2, 24 ; 46 13 ; cf. 48 :8) . Again, in 42 :i8,
20, where Meshullam (the devoted one) seems to be a proper
name (cf. Neh. 3:4, 6, 30), he is the whole nation, deaf and
blind to its true calling.

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 3 1
In direct contrast to this sharp figurative arraignment, is
the ideal portrait in which the servant is Jehovah's delight
and possesses His spirit (42:1). His temper is not hysterical,
noisy, or demagogic (42:2). If there be in any nation any
in whom virtue is expiring but not dead, he will not quench
but, rather, cherish the dying flame, or if there be any in
whom tyranny has not quite crushed out right doing, he will
give them all gentle encouragement (42:3). Jehovah holds
his hand and he restores sight to the blind and releases prison
ers from their dungeons (42:7). But here the servant has
ceased to be an image of the whole people, or at least of
the actual people, and stands, rather, for that part of them
which is to be a covenant for the rest, as well as an illumina
tion of outside nations (42:6).
Further figurative elements are used to indicate the special
nature of the servant's work. Israel's great genius was for
prophetic utterance, and this fact gives form to a special ref
erence to the servant's mouth, which is likened to a sharp
sword and a polished shaft (49:2). To this prophetic work
he is conscious of having been called before his birth (49:1,5).
But the present low estate of his nation makes him feel the
futility of his prophetic toil (49:4) and his discouragement
draws from Jehovah an assurance of the greatness of his
mission (49:5^) which has been concealed from the world
and the nation (49:2) only in waiting for the fullness of
time (49:8). Now at last Israel shall go forth from Babylon
(49:9a). But if the servant is to raise up the land and bring back
the heirs to the desolate heritages (49:8), and is to rouse
unwilling Israel to go forth from her captivity and obscurity
(49:9) ; if he is to sustain the weary (50:4) and comfort the
perplexed exiles on their returning journey (50:10), it is be
cause of a special training; it is because he has been daily
wakeful to the lessons of experience, — his own and that of
his own people, and to the tuition of common life (50:4).
He has also had the discipline of suffering. He has learned
not to rebel against Jehovah's commission, but to speak the

32 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
divine message, though his back be smitten, his beard be torn,
and his face he spit upon. He has acquired an adamantine
faith that Jehovah will soon triumphantly acquit him before
the bar of events. Therefore, he can set his face like a flint
(50:5-9) to the continuance of his work.
We come finally to the great poetic portraiture of the
suffering servant (52:13-53:12). This highly wrought and
intense personification of Israel, or of the better part of Israel,
howsoever small that part may be, is by general consent
divided into five strophes. The first strophe presents a dis
figured face and body, shunned at first by all, but ultimately
startling the nations of the world and their rulers, and com
manding a silent astonishment of submission parallel to the
previous astonishment at his suffering (52:13-15). The sec
ond strophe (53:1-3) shows his mission discredited and his
person avoided, perhaps as a leper; for leprosy is suggested
by several particulars described in the first three strophes,
such as his marred and disfigured person (52:14), his isola
tion from society (53:3), and the general conviction of his
fellow-men that he was suffering under a direct visitation from
Jehovah (53:4). The portraiture seems strongly parallel with
that of Job suffering from elephantiasis. The third strophe
depicts his sufferings as vicarious and redemptive ( 53 4-6) .
The fourth strophe emphasizes his temper of silent, lamb-like
submission and subjection to death and shameful interment,
though guiltless (53:7-9). The fifth strophe shows Jehovah's
victorious purpose in all the career of the servant, whom he
raises from the dead and, because of his faithfulness in suffer
ing even unto death, rev/ards with the greatest material, moral
and spiritual power and influence (53:10-12). The three
middle strophes of the poem are retrospective. The writer
surveys the tragic career of the servant as a whole. It is all
over, and the wrong estimate the people formed of it while it
was in progress is a thing of the past. But his triumph and
elevation are always spoken of as belonging to the future
(52:i3-I5)- This is because the exile history of the nation
whom the servant represents was, up to the time of our
prophet's writing, a history of degradation, suffering, and

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 33
shame, at least so far as national ideals and attainments were
concerned. But now the deliverance through Cyrus is at hand
and in harmony with the large outlines of his other imagery
the prophet can draw the picture of the servant's future on
the magnificent scale of the first and fifth strophes. The kings
and nations submissive and astonished before him and his
division of the spoil with the great ones of the earth, together
with his righteous vindication of the many, are quite in har
mony with the colossal glorifications of Zion the bride, with
the colossal downfall of the daughter of Babylon, and with the
largeness of our prophet's imagery in general.
It is not within the province of this paper to argue for
or against the position that in the great passage just reviewed
the servant stands for an individual rather than a people. But
it does lie within our limits, and it is not inconsistent with
our previous expressions, to say that from the viewpoint of
our prophet's imagination the servant may sometimes have
been seen by him as an individual person. Ideal characters
are rare, and the higher their perfection the rarer they are.
A poet rarely has more than one blameless Arthur in any
of his Idylls, and moral and spiritual eliminations, acting
through the imagination of the Deutero-Isaiah, may have led
him to reduce the number for whom the servant stood until
at last it was one individual. The deaf and blind servant
who sees without observing and with open ears hears nothing
(42:19, 20) is, of course, the whole people. It is equally clear
that in 42:6 the servant is distinguished from the people of
Israel in general, to whom he is to be a covenant and whom
he is to bring out from the prison of exile. Here the servant
may be the better part of the people. Who composed that
better part it is hard to say. The gifts of eloquence and
effective action attributed to the servant might identify him
with the prophetic order, but according to 40:9 Zion as a
whole is the evangelistess ; nor can the servant be the Deutero-
Isaiah himself, for he would not call himself Israel (49:3).
The servant is here a personification of some group of indefi
nite size, yet I see no objection to supposing that the prophet .
in his despair over the deafness and blindness of Israel as a

34 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
whole, not only made a mental distinction between Israel after
the flesh and the Israel of God, but may even have seen the
figure of the servant representing a still further reduced group,
and in some of his visions he may even have seen the servant-
party reduced to one man. The personification would thus
be identical with that person. In such an hour of highest
and deepest vision the prophet might say of himself and all
Israel, except the solitary figure upon whom the eye of his
mind was fixed, "All we, like sheep, have gone astray, we have
turned away every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid
on him the iniquity of us all." In this way the extraordinary
boldness of the language in 53 :8, which speaks of his genera
tion and says he was cut off from the land of the living, would
be accounted for. For this reason, also, it may be that no
single expression in the whole passage (52:13-53:12) betrays
any sense of a body of men or of an ideal people. When the
number of people personified was reduced to but one person,
the person and the personification would coincide. All this,
of course, is not conclusive, but to reach an individuality for
the servant along this line of poetic and fluid reduction of the
group for which he stands, is to arrive there by a very differ
ent road from that uncritical one which starts with the verbal
expressions themselves and seeks to show that they can be
predicated of a single person only. For it is of the essence
of personification to use just such expressions, and failure to
betray any sense of reference to a body or group of people
may simply indicate the boldness and power of the prophet's
imagination and thus be a tribute to his transcendent genius.
On the other hand, no man who grasps the poetic possibility
of seeing the servant as representative of a group, now small
and now large, according to its characteristics and the poet's
mood, can dogmatically declare that a great seer who delivers
his ideas in dramatic groups, tableaus, and dialogues, inter
rupted by choruses, cannot in any one case, where the lan-
gauge itself does not prevent the supposition, have seen the
personification as standing for a single person (cf. Delitzsch's
figure of a pyramid, which is especially apt in representing the
varying scope of the term "servant").

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 35
4. In passing from our prophet's personification of peoples
and groups to his figure of Jehovah, we discover, as intimated
above, an antithetical imaginative procedure. The unlimited
creative and administrative might of the deity seeks charac
teristic exhibition in our prophet's mind under the image of
a human being of gigantic dimensions. The greatness of the
imagery is now in the main the greatness of bigness. It is
characteristic of the religion of Israel that the face of Jeho
vah is not described (cf. Gen. 32:30; Judges 6:22, 23; 13:22,
and esp. Ex. 33:17-23). The breath of Jehovah does indeed
blow upon the generations of his people and wither them as
the hot wind withers the grass (40:7), and with a fiercer blast
it blows upon the rulers of the nations, withering them and
whirling them away as stubble before a hurricane (40 :24) ;
but the breath of Jehovah is so invisible and spiritual an ema
nation as barely to suggest the mouth from which it comes.
Only the less noble parts of the body, notably the hand and
arm, are actually described. Before passing to these, we may
note the- huge though vague image, perhaps derived from
Babylonian cosmology, of Jehovah as the first god to emerge
from the primeval chaos (43:10); that of a great person
seated somewhere in the zenith above the horizon circle of
earth, to whom its inhabitants are as grasshoppers, not be
cause the distance makes them seem small to Him, but be
cause His size is so great compared with theirs (40:22; cf.
Num. 13:33); and that of a god whose imagined size is so
great that the entire acreage of the Lebanon forests and the
animals in them would form a sacrifice disproportionately small
in bulk (40:16). That the size, not the character, of the
deity is in the prophet's mind, is evident from vss. 12 and 15.
The hand is the symbol of efficient, active power. Cleaving
to that which will falsify one's hopes is having a lie in his
right hand (44:20). The clay denies the potter power, by
saying of him : "He hath no hands" (45 :9) . Now, the hand
of Jehovah, between its thumb and little finger, stretches from
horizon to horizon (40:12). If held level, the greatest seas
and rivers can be measured in the depression of its palm. And
as for the dry land or soil of the earth, this hand carries a

36 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
scoop or measure that will contain it all. Thus, it is great
enough to assign the proper diameter to the earth-disc, as
well as give proper proportions to land and sea. As for the
protuberant mountains, this hand holds the beam of a scale
into which the other puts and weighs them (ibid). It is this
hand in reality which stretches out the heavens as a curtain
or a tent (40:22; 44:24). And we may mention in passing
that as land and sea were carefully measured, so the stars are
accurately counted, carefully named, and without the neglect
of a single one brought out into their proper positions (40:26).
This hand reaches to the ends of the earth, moreover, to take
hold of the distant servant (41:9; cf. 42:6), and upholds
him in his successful career (41:10), and gives him an en
couraging grasp in his times of apprehension (41:13). It is
set down, as it were, vertically in the desert of his life, to make
a shadow for him from the smiting heat and allow him to
thrive and flourish despite his enemies (51:16). Perhaps
there is also a thought of preparatory secrecy in his early
career; for the hand hides him (49:2). But when the critical
hour has sounded, this colossal hand is openly lifted up with
a great summoning gesture, as a far-seen signal to the nations
to bring the scattered exiles home (49:22). Singularly beau
tiful also is another use which our prophet makes of the
figure of Jehovah's hand (49:16), by connecting it with the
religious custom of tattooing sacred marks on one's person
and even of writing the name of his god upon his hand
(44:5). It was, indeed, a forbidden practice (Lev. 19:28;
cf., however, Ezek. 9:4). But our prophet in his distant exile
has long ago emancipated himself from many small restric
tions, and now upon those great hands of Jehovah he sees
not only the name of Jerusalem but a picture of the whole
city, including even its walls; perhaps it is a picture of the
ruined city making its mute appeal for restoration and re-
population, or perhaps a representation of the new buildings
and the new fortifications of the glorious mother-city that; is
to be. It would no doubt be fanciful to say that the ruins
were engraved on one hand and the restoration on the other,
though the plural (palms) may be noted; but it is quite cer-

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 37
tain that the hands were large enough to contain two pictures
larger than any canvas known to man, and not half out of
sight on the backs of the hands, but upon the palms, which
are "continually before" the eyes.
The arms of Jehovah are the emblems of his active exertion
of power. They judge the nations and on them the isles trust
fully lean (51:5), but this quiet reference is succeeded a few
verses later by a magnificent apostrophe. The arm is sum
moned to awake, as if it were a sleeping being. This is the
arm that smote asunder the elements of primeval chaos and
separated sea from land. This is the arm that was stretched
out over the Red Sea and made a path through it for the ran
somed (51:9, 10). And, because of the power of this arm,
the ransomed of Jehovah are to return with singing unto Zion
(51:11). The whole returning journey of the exiles to Jeru
salem is Jehovah's throwing back of His sleeveless upper gar
ment from the right shoulder and making bare his holy arm in
the eyes of all the nations (52:10). Not always, however,
does He thus exhibit its omnipotent movements. The motions
of its operation in history have often been muffled in heavy
folds, and the nature of its working has remained undisclosed
and unrevealed. at least to those without eyes to see it (53:1).
There are three great anthropomorphic characters assigned
to Jehovah by our prophet which call for separate mention.
These exhibit him as a military hero, a shepherd, and a hus
band. As a great leader in battle, he stirs up zeal, shouts
aloud, and does mightily (42:13). This activity of his, possi
bly by a change of figure, but more probably as a figure within
a figure, is also compared to the sudden outcry after long
silence of a woman in labor (42:14). The image of the war
rior, however, is resumed in vs. 25, except that by one of
those sudden reversals of which our prophet is capable, the
strength of the hero's battle is now poured out upon Jacob
himself like a rushing flame and sets him on fire. Jehovah
is also the good shepherd. An ideal picture of His homeward
conduct of the exiles shows Hirn giving them pasture, carry
ing the lambs, and keeping a slow pace for the sheep that
have their young with them ; for the marching speed of the re-

38 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
turning captives is to be fixed by the youngest and weakest
(40:11). In all the ways in which they go, and even on all
bare heights, pasture shall be provided. Jehovah's mercy will
keep them from hunger, thirst, and smiting heat, and their
steps will be directed where the springs of water are (49:9b,
10). A third part assigned to Jehovah is that of a husband.
This figure was more natural in ancient times than now, be
cause the wife was not on equality with her husband, but was
her lawgiver and almost her owner, and had full authority
over the beginning and over the continuance of the bond be
tween them. The usual coarseness of the figure of the deity
as the husband of the nation and source of all its fruitfulness
as it was vised by pagan nations, did not make our prophet
abandon it. On the contrary, he purified and used it. The
sons and daughters (43:6), as individual Israelites, are viewed
as the children of a great marriage between Jehovah and the
nation, and with a father's authority He demands that these
children created and named by Him be returned from the
north and the south and the ends of the earth (43 :6, 7). This
divine husband, to, show that His abandonment was only tem
porary, appeals to the children to produce the written divorce
which would indicate an absolute and final putting away.
Such a document, He implies, does not exist (50:1), what
ever reason there might have been for writing it (cf. Jer. 3 13).
Therefore she can and will be taken back. Nor has He sold
his people as a bankrupt father sells his children, for He has
been reduced to no such straits and no such creditor can be
produced (50:1). The creator-husband is now to restore the
broken bond and all Zion's multitude of children are to be
returned; for the extended and beautiful personification of
Zion the bride to which we have already referred has every
where for its basis and motif the unfailing power and ever
lasting love of her husband Jehovah (54:4-10).
5. The outline of treatment already proposed (p. 20) calls
at this point for a consideration of the elaborative largeness of
our prophet's imagery. The italicized word is not wholly ap
propriate, for it carries an undeserved suggestion of redun
dancy or of- studied and deliberate accretion of details. It

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 39
would be better, were it not for the fact that we do have
details in mind, to speak of the largeness of completeness or
fullness of view. The characteristic intended is not, however,
at all indefinite. To speak psychologically, the Deutero-Isaiah
dwells intensely upon his images. His general intensity often
betrays itself in verbal repetitions. These are sometimes in
immediate juxtaposition. Examples are: "Comfort ye, com
fort ye" (40:1); "I, even I" (43:11, 25:48:15; 51:12); "for
mine own sake, for mine own sake" (48:11) ; "awake, awake"
(51:9, 17; 52:1); "depart ye, depart ye" (52:11). Even in
these passages the felt intensity makes the difference between
earnest reiteration and vain repetition. The repetition or
even aggregation of participle or relative clauses in connection
with Jehovah (40:22^ 28f; 42:5; 43:i6f; 45:7, 18); with
Israel (41 :8f, 17) ; with Cyrus (46:iof) ; or with the servant
(42:2), is not tedious but effective and, sometimes, as in the
last instance, impressive and beautiful.
Our present concern, however, is with the prophet's imag
ery. Here the mental dwelling upon an image, the unwilling
ness to let it go out of the field of view, takes effect in
extended or compound figures made up of numerous features
or items. Hence the great personifications often reach, as
we have seen, through many consecutive verses. Neverthe
less, our prophet's wonderful capacity for largeness and total
ity of view enables him with absolute ease to fuse all the
details of any one image in a living whole. This is his special
greatness. He sees the totality while he is looking at the
details, and the details while he is viewing the totality. A
contrast will make his special genius evident. Ezekiel, in
34:11-31, includes many items of shepherd life, such as moun
tains, watercourses, inhabited places, pastures, forests, broken-
limbed sheep, the fat, the lean, those that butt, and those that
foul the water. Yet in literature and in devotion the passage
is seldom quoted or even remembered, while our prophet's
image of the Good Shepherd (40:11), with only four items,
cannot be forgotten, and the similar figure (49:9b> I0)> wilh
only five or six details, gets itself repeated centuries later
in the apocalypse (Rev. 7:16, 17).

40 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
This largeness in the sense of completeness or fullness of
detail, then, is self-evident in the personifications. One sees
it as soon as he reads them. But the case is somewhat dif
ferent in certain other instances. Our prophecy opens with
a double cry of command, "Comfort ye, comfort ye." Once
having the figure of a herald making proclamation before him
(40:2), our prophet cannot let it vanish. His next thought no
longer concerns forgiving grace, but providential guidance.
Still, he brings it under the same figure of one crying (vss. 3ft)
and so again with the voice of trust in God's word. By this
time the air has become full of voices proclaiming, question
ing, and replying (vss. 6-8). The still different turn of
thought that now follows retains the same repeated image of
one that tells good tidings (vss. 9-11). Thus the whole pas
sage to vs. 11 is really one sustained, compound metaphor
or image of an announcing voice. Its unity is not in one
herald or in one message, for each of these are more than one.
It is in the mere sounding on and on of proclaiming voices,
but it illustrates admirably our prophet's unwillingness to lose
sight of an image when once he has vividly seen it. And the
total effect of the passage is an impressive sense of a large
area all about us filled with voices sounding forth their con
solation and good cheer.
Another instance of this completeness of view is found in
44:12-20. Critics like Marti omit the "axe" from vs. 12 as
a marginal gloss, or would substitute a different translation.
I would be glad to have it retained. The word is there; it
must mean "axe" in its only other occurrence (Jer. 10:3),
and the retention enhances the completeness, remarkable as it
already is, of the prophet's survey of idol making. First, an
axe must be forged by hard work (vs. 12). Then, while the
carpenter is making the design (vs. 13), the idol maker goes
out with the axe and fells a selected tree, which itself had to
be planted long ago (vs. 14). Thus, the image would go
back to the beginning of the tree and to the origin of the
implement for cutting it down. The tree being secured, part
of it is used for heating, part for cooking, and part for a god
(vs. 15-17). Again, the enumeration of the uses of the wood

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 4 1
is remarkably complete. Finally, I would see in the feeding
on ashes (vs. 20) a direct, though, of course, figurative, ref
erence to what is left after the wood of the tree is burned.
The text of the passage may be more or less corrupt; but,
knowing the almost invariable practice of our prophet to think
back to the beginning of things and to carry them forward
to their final result, I believe we should look in these verses
for one image wrought out in a succession of details, begin
ning with the planting of the tree and its growth, going on
to the making of the axe, the cutting down of the tree, the
designing, fashioning and carving of the idol portion, the use
of the remainder to produce warmth and to cook food, and
finally the inevitable residuum of ashes. In any case, we must at
once concede that there is no other exposure of idolatry so
withering as this of our prophet, because no other gives so
simple and at the same time so full a history of what happens
to the material out of which the idol is made. It far sur
passes in destructive effect any abstract statement of the folly
of thinking that the great creative spirit of the universe can
be likened to anything graven by art and man's device. Duhm
and Cheyne, it may here be noted, would insert 41 :6, 7, after
40:19. If this were done, we should have another elabora-
tively complete account of idol making: First, a metal idol,
cast into shape, plated with gold hammered smoothly on
(41 :y), hung with silver chains (40:19), and fastened securely
to its pedestal, so that it cannot totter (41 7) ; then, secondly,
we should have the description of a wooden idol, skillfully
carved, and also securely fastened to its pedestal (40:20). But
even with this textual rearrangement, the fullness, though
characteristic, is far less telling than that of the portraiture
(ch. 44) just mentioned.
Another and a more spiritual elaboration connected with
idol worship is found in 46:1-7. The prophet sees Bel and
Nebo, which had formerly been carried in religious processions
and sacred barques through the streets of Babylon and held
aloft and worshipped, now prone and prostrate and carried
lengthwise upon their captor's beasts of burden as so much
dead weight, — mere avoirdupois gods (vs. 1). But as the

42 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
image of bearing or carrying in procession is purposely re
tained by the prophet as he passes from the religious worship
to the removal of the images as booty, so he still keeps his
hold upon it, or, rather, it seems to keep its hold upon him,
and gives rise to the splendid conception of Israel's God, not
as a thing carried by them, but as one by whom they have
been carried from before their birth as a people, and by whom
they are to be carried to the end of their history and to be
delivered (vss. 3, 4). With still further enrichment of detail,
and lest the contrast should not be deeply enough impressed,
an idol is again manufactured before our eyes, carried upon
men's shoulders, and set in its place, there to stand in metallic
impotence, unsaving and unsaved (vss. 5-7). No doubt the
whole passage may well be cited as showing a profound in
sight into the nature of true religion, which does not fashion
its gods and carry them, but, rather, makes men be reverently
moulded and omnipotently carried by their deity from their
earliest childhood to their grayest old age. But our present
study makes us specially note that all this profound teaching
is expressed by means of a single extended metaphor of carry
ing and being carried, and that such an extension is highly
characteristic of our prophet.
The recurrence just mentioned, of the image of carrying
(46:7), after it had been apparently abandoned, suggests the
mention, in closing this point, of another feature of our
prophet's extended metaphors, which is that echoes of them
are often heard after we actually think that we have finished
with them. Cyrus is to ungird the loins of kings (45:1), but
the image reappears unexpectedly in the figure of Jehovah
girding him (vs. 5). The extended and beautiful figure of
Zion the bride (49:14-23) seems to disappear in vss. 24 and
25 before the figure of a mighty captor, but just at the end
of the latter verse, a single clause, "I will save thy children,"
makes us see that the prophet has not really forgotten it.
Again, in chapter 54, the figure of the reinstated wife seems
to finish its details in vs. 8, and in vs. 11 we are fairly at
work rebuilding the city; but suddenly the jewel-stones are
said to be set in antimony as a kind of costly mortar used to set

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 43
off the brilliancy of the precious stones as oriental women use
it to darken the edge of their eyelids and thus enhance the
lustre of their eyes (54:11). The figure of the bride has not
been forgotten after all and even as late as vs. 13 the chil
dren are mentioned again. It would almost seem to be a wise
mental attitude in reading our prophet to be on the lookout
for suggestive echoes of any great image which he has just
been using even after its completeness seems to have been
rounded out.
6. We come, lastly, to the largeness of dramatic action
shown in our prophecy. This is the fine and final fruit of
our prophet's great and powerful intellectual grasp. To
cover so wide a territory of earth and history was much. To
have an eye for their great features as well as their details
was also much. But the dramatic quality in our prophecy
shows that all this was not laboriously done. The many ele
ments of largeness already inventoried were not a burden to
the prophet. The greatness of the stage scenery does not be
wilder him. He does not lose his way among the entrances
and exits. He is perfectly and easily master of both stage
and actors. Rightly to realize his dramatic power we may
consider the stage setting, the actors and the actions.
But first let us say that these chapters are not, of course, a
drama. There is, indeed, a general forward movement.
The beginning of chapter 49, in fact, marks a distinct ad
vance. References to Jehovah's lawsuit with the idols and
allusions to Cyrus cease. From now on, the prophet con
centrates his energies upon the glorious future of Israel. But
there is no systematic division into acts and scenes. The
dramatis personae are told to act and told to speak, or are rep
resented not as speaking, but as having spoken, and what they
had said is recorded (49:14)- There is, indeed, very little
pure dialogue. In chapter 40, verse 8 is doubtless a direct
reply to vs. 7. One voice cries that the "grass withereth,"
and another answers, "Yes, but the word of God stands for
ever." In 51 :9 "awake, awake," should probably be put into
the mouths of those whom Jehovah has just been encouraging
in 51 :i-8. It might, indeed, be a considerable gain to have

44 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
an edition of our prophet printed in dramatic form and in
dicating at the proper places in such passages as these the
change of speaker. Executed by a competent hand not a few
passages which are now read merely as outbursts of the
prophet's own soul would be seen to proceed, as in the cases
just mentioned, directly from the mouths of his dramatis per-
sonae. But no such edition could make it into a real drama,
for such passages are relatively very few.
On the other hand, the positive dramatic quality of the
prophecy is everywhere evident. Everything and everybody
is made to speak or shout or sing what they have to say.
There is very little narrative telling in indirect quotation what
they said. A striking instance is found in 44 ^4-45 :y, where
in order to maintain the image of Jehovah speaking directly
"that saith" or "thus saith" is repeated five times, though the
indirect form of quoting would have been easier. Again, the
actions of the dramatis personae are not related in narrative
form so much as graphically pictured in the actual doing.
(a) Our prophet's stage-setting or scene of action is the
entire world. It suggests Shakespeare's Antony and Cleo
patra, where kingdoms are concerned and the fate of the world
is constantly represented as at stake. One is especially re
minded of Act II, scene 7, where Menas tells Pompey that
the three world-sharers are in his galley and repeatedly asks
him the question, "Wilt thou be lord of the whole world?"
The differences are great enough; for our prophet's important
persons are personifications and the moving passion is not
love, but religion. Still it is a world-stage in both cases.
Reaching to the east and west and north and south (43:5, 6),
it includes the ends of the earth (41 15, 9 ; 43 :6 ; 45 :22 ; 52 :io)
and all its nations (40:17). The setting of the scenery in
cludes the stretching forth of the heavens and spreading
abroad the earth (44:24 et al), and indeed the resetting for
a new state of things with a new heaven and new earth (51 :
16). The single scenes, too, on this world-stage are great
enough. There is the oft-mentioned highway from Babylon
to Jerusalem, the return along which is the staple of our
prophecy. There are the isles of the sea and indeed the most

FEATURES OF THE LARGENESS 45
distant nations of the world to which the summons goes out
for attendance at Jehovah's great trial-at-law with the idols
(41:1; 43:8f). And there is the area over which Cyrus is
seen moving in passages already cited. Over how vast a
space is the chorus distributed that sings from the sea and
the isles, from Kedar and Sela. And finally from how great
a distance Jehovah secures Egypt, Ethiopia, and Seba to give
to Cyrus or Cambyses as a ransom for Israel (43:3). How
far the peoples of these places travel to come in chains and in
confession to Jehovah and Jerusalem (45:14, 15).
(b) Nor are the actors too small for their stage, for they
are the national personifications upon which we have already
dwelt, Jerusalem, Zion, Israel, the daughter of Babylon,^-
there is no need of reference to them. To see the stage is
to see them also; but we may add the dense throng of Zion's
watchmen packed so closely together that they see into each
other's eyes (52:8), the numerous nations that the suffering
servant shall startle, the kings that are dumb with amaze
ment before him (52:15), and the throng that makes its great
new exodus from Babylon (52:11, 12) and arrives at Jerus
alem (52:9, 10). Nor should we omit the great evangelist,
whether we think of the conception as an individual, (Me-
basser) (41 :27 ; 52 :y) or as an ideal band of messengers,
(Mebassereth) (40:9), for in either case the image is of noble
proportions. Thus always the actors are great, even the seem
ing exception proving the rule. For the carpenter who en
courages the goldsmith and the man with the hammer (41 :y)
are not so much individuals as representatives. The "every
one" who helps his "neighbor" and the "neighbor" whom he
helps (41 :6) is a nation, he is an "isle" or an "end of the
earth" (41 :5) and even if we transpose the text, inserting vss.
6 and 7 after 50:19, the reference would be to the two great
classes of workmen and the two classes include all the
idolaters of the world, thus making the characters ecumenical
rather than individual.
And when the chorus breaks out into singing, the singers
are neither few nor diminutive. For it is scarcely a solo
when Zion, no longer barren, breaks forth into melody (54:1).

46 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
The voices may, indeed, be as many as when the ransomed
of Jehovah return with singing unto Him (51:11), though
the new choral unto Jehovah, being universal over land and
sea, wilderness and city, mountain and vale, must have a still
greater fullness (42:10-12). Yet to the universalism of hu
man song must sometimes be added the vocal outbursts of the
mountains and hills (55:12), and even of the waste places of
Jerusalem (52:19); and sometimes even the heavens them
selves join in the song of Jehovah's comfort for His peoples
and compassion upon His afflicted (49:13).
(c) As with the stage and the actors, so with the actions.
The trembling of the isles (41:5), the threshing of the
mountains (41:15), the opening of rivers on bare heights and
fountains in the valleys, the planting of trees in the wilderness
(41:18, 19), are great operations in nature. The discharge
of a nation at the close of its time of military service (40:2)
and its movement from the great world city along seven hun
dred miles of roadway to the great sacred city means a long
migration. The movements of Cyrus are far-reaching. The
first call of the servant is from the ends of the earth (41 :g).
Great is the transaction of paying over the nations as a ransom
for Israel (43:3, 4). The journey they made to come from
Africa to Jerusalem was a long itinerary (45:14). It is a
far cry from the four points of the compass to the glorified
center of the stage (43:5, 6; 49:12). From untold distances
the nations draw near to the great trial-at-law (41 :i).
Viewed as a dramatic composition, then, the proportions of
the stage, of the actors, and of the scenic changes and acting
are so large as not to be easily exceeded. And the audience
when there is any is upon the stage and includes "all flesh"
(40:5).

CHAPTER III.

EFFECTS OF THE LARGENESS.

III. Three results of the largeness of our prophet's field
of vision and of the largeness of its constituent images may
now be noticed : first, the absence of local coloring ; secondly,
a peculiar vagueness and spirituality; thirdly, consciousness
of a great, or rather of a universal mission.
i. The abscence of local coloring has been urged against
the exilic authorship of our chapters. They cannot have been
written in Babylon or Mesopotamia, it is said, because the
vast and varied displays of vegetation of every hue, the inter
lacing canals, the flat table-land, the violent floods of the
Tigris and Euphrates, the sudden whirlwinds, the great
sculptured gateways and towers, in a word, the multitude of
details recited by the ancient Herodotus and the modern Raw-
linson, Ainsworth, or Layard are so conspicuous by their ab
sence. It would be more true, though not wholly true as we
shall see, to say that our prophecy might have been written
anywhere. A composition really devoid of local color can
not because of that absence be proved not to have been writ
ten in Babylon or in any other country or city. So great a
critic as Ewald has in fact maintained that while this one
was indeed written during the exile, the place of the writing
was Egypt. His contention has, doubtless, been effectively
refuted, but the possibility of his making it shows how great
the lack of local reference really is.
The main reason usually assigned for the fact in question
is that the Jew in exile had no eye for the colors of Babylon.
His heart was far away. He lived in Judea and in Zion as
the Swiss immigrant on our western prairies lives in the Alps.

48 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
The Jewish exiles' real life glowed hot and molten far be
low its Babylonian surface; and when it broke up through
and hardened into language, there was nothing of Babylon in
the upheaval. There are no fossils in igneous rocks.
But this is only a part of the truth; for intense dwelling
upon a foreign or distant object of passion by no means al
ways detaches a poet's observation from even the minute de
tails of his immediate surroundings. The reverse is often the
fact. The very intensity of one's feelings about a distant
object often makes him keenly alive to surroundings that have
nothing to do with that object, but are visually associated with
it simply because they are under his physical eye at the same
time that the far-off matter is filling the eye of his mind Tt
is in the hottest part of his passion that the lover in Tennyson's
Maud notes and examines the little lovely shell with its "deli
cate spire and whorl" that is lying just at his feet*, and at
the crisis time of the life of Jesus and his disciples one of them
called his attention to the size of the stones used to build the
temple (Mark 13:1).
A similar remark applies to the attempt to account for the
lack of local coloring by saying that the Deutero-Isaiah does
not, like the old prophets, speak directly to the events and
situations of his day, but is expressing in a more lyric form
his deep personal conviction and lively hope of the redemption
of Israel, and that hence there are no special indications as to
the particular classes of people to whom he was speaking and
no references to contemporary events. Hence also the diffi
culty of assigning the separate sections to definite dates. Yet
a lyric effusion also might easily be watermarked with many
details evidencing its time and place of composition.
Much depends upon the nature of the subject matter and
the scale of the imagery used to depict it. If a man's whole
thought is upon his individual fortune or misfortune or if his
theme is some relatively small local difficulty, local coloring
will probably be present. But if he is dealing with a large
or universal scheme far above which his imagination is poised,

?Tennvson. Maud XXIV .i.

EFFECTS OF THE LARGENESS 49
he cannot see the local tints, the local hues and features. To
make another use of the old illustration, he can see the outlines
of the different forests far beneath him, but he cannot see the
shapes of the single trees. The distance is too great and the
forests too large. A vision of the cyclic storms of the nebular
hypothesis would necessarily lack local coloring. There is
no local coloring in the first chapter of Genesis. The vision
is too cosmic and its integral objects are too stupendous for
that. Now all this suggests the main reason for our prophet's
want of local details. He is dealing, as we have seen, with
the whole creation. He is brooding ovet its chaos and its
consummation. His field of vision is the entire world. The
single objects in it are nations and kingdoms. They are per
sonified, to be sure, but that does not blind us to their colossal
character. Our prophet is handling these great objects as a
chess player handles his men. The chess-board may be sur
passingly broad and elegantly inlaid. The kings and queens
may be so large and so exquisitely carved in features and in
drapery as to be of absorbing interest under other circum
stances and worthy of a volume of description ; but he is play
ing the game of his life. Nay, he sees an invisible hand play
ing it for him. How should he notice, then, a trick of gilding
or a cunning fold in the carven drapery? The board is the
world, the pieces are nations, the game is the one last, great
crisis of universal history.
If there should be any exception to this lofty scorn of de
tails it would be in the case of that one royal piece which rep
resented the city and kingdom in which the player himself
lived. There might be some local coloring on that. And
there is. Our prophet does not quite forget to weave into
the robe of the daughter of Babylon a procession of images
(46:1), an idol manufactory (46:5; cf. 44:12-20; 41:7), some
astrologers (47:13), a commercial mart (47:15), and perhaps
the "lurid red haze intolerable to the eyes" (49:10). But
that would be all. No further details could be expected, —
and even these have a certain largeness of their own — from
one who was rearranging the few huge integral sections of
the universe in the interest and to the glory of one of them.

50 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
2. A second result of the largeness of our prophet's images
is a peculiar vagueness and spirituality in their quality. The
messages of comfort and exultation in chapter 40 are assigned
to no definite person. They are only voices. The message
seems too great for merely human lips and appears to come
from some unseen spiritual being who cannot be known (40:
3-6). The promise to the bride that the foundation stones of
her city shall be great jewels (54:11) carries too great an
image to be taken literally. It must be symbolic, perhaps of
great material prosperity, perhaps of spiritual glory, perhaps
of both; but the literal meaning being once made impossible,
the mind of the reader feels free to rise into spiritual as well
as material imagination. The insufficiency of Lebanon and
its beasts for a burnt offering (40:16), though it refers pri
marily, as we have said, to the size of the anthropomorphic
figure of Jehovah, nevertheless carries a suggestion of spir
itual quality. So> great a God must be great in something
besides size. The distance between heaven and earth does
not in the first instance represent a difference of moral or
spiritual quality between Israel's thoughts and Jehovah's
(55:9), but a difference in vastness of scale. Nevertheless
the very greatness of their elevation does somehow second
arily and strongly suggest, as the average popular interpreta
tion shows, a difference in spiritual and ethical quality.
Yet, on the other hand, this very immensity of our poet's
conceptions requires us to be cautious in spiritualizing his
language. In ordinary religious writing the contrast between
the literal and the figurative is for the most part tantamount
to the contrast between the literal and the spiritual. But in
interpreting the Deutero-Isaiah, instead of two adjectives, we
need three: "literal," "figurative" and "spiritual," for there
was in our prophet's mind an ideal and magnificent material
and physical future for Israel. And his images are often
metaphors for that. Hence no other prophet is in so much
danger of being over-spiritualized or of being spiritualized at
the wrong time. His allusions to the desert-journey are too
continuous a feature of his prophecy (4o:iof; 4i:i8f; 42:16;
43:i9f; 48:21; 49:9-11; 55:i2f) to allow us to take them as

EFFECTS OF THE LARGENESS 5 1
figurative only. He was looking for a triumphal march of
his people, with Jehovah at their head, through the desert be
tween Babylon and Jerusalem, a march as literal as the old
Exodus under Moses. Yet the colossal scale of this very
imagery will not allow us to take it with entire literalness (cf.
e. g. 41:18-20). It includes an element of figurative repre
sentation of the removal of political barriers and a restoration
to political power. Even beyond this, there is still a third
element representing spiritual endowments to be given to the
people. And in such a passage as 44:3, 4, the spiritual ele
ment clearly predominates, "I will pour my spirit upon thy
seed and my blessing upon thine offspring." But the three
elements are so blended by our prophet that it is for the most
part impossible to tell where he means to end the literal and
begin the materially symbolic, or where he means to end the
materially symbolic and begin the spiritual, or to what extent
the three overlap each other.
The large spiritual vagueness of our prophet may perhaps
be better understood by comparing him with Ezekiel. The
description of the cherubs is precise and almost mathematical.
Each one has four faces, four wings, and straight feet (Eze
kiel 1 :6, 7). His Assyrian tree with its branches and nesting
birds is so carefully described that an accurate pencil outline
could be made of it (31:1-18). One is tempted likewise to
make a sketch on an exact scale of the temple and the healing
stream that issues from under the threshhold eastward. The
measurements are in hand for the varying depth of the water
at fixed points and for the length and course of the river
(47:1-12). There is absolutely nothing of the kind in the
Deutero-Isaiah; no measuring line, no plans or specifications,
no geographic distance from any Engedi to any En-eglaim.
It is like the difference between Dante and Milton which Mac-
aulay has so forcibly outlined in his essay on the latter.*
There is the same definiteness contrasted with remote spiritual
suggestion. "Dante gives the shape, the color, the sound,
the smell, the taste ; he counts the numbers, he measures the

*Macau1ay, Es. I, 220-223.

52 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
size * * * The ruins of the precipice which led from the
sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the rock
which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. * * *
The English poet has never thought of taking the measure of
Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk." But
one should read the whole passage referred to in the footnote.
The sense of spirituality which arises out of this indefinite
largeness is especially felt in the description of the suffering
servant (52:13-53: 12). The servant is named only in 52:13
and 53:11. It is impossible to tell from the language itself
who he was or whether he stands for one individual or for
many. He comes from no definite place, lives without a name,
and has an indefinite burial. Yet the very indefiniteness is
so spiritually suggestive and so ideal a character shines
through the unlocalized and undated description that the pas
sage has become holy ground and even by critical scholars of
the highest attainments has been felt to stand for Jesus of
Nazareth and to be a description of the career of the Saviour
of the world, as in fact it is.
3. Finally, the largeness of our prophet's imagery results
in its frequent use in the New Testament. Of course there
are other causes. The forced exilic deprivation of ritual priv
ileges created, as has already been said, a situation having
analogies with the free mental emancipation brought by
Christianity and the analogy might and does produce some
analogous language. The subject-matter of our prophecy,
moreover, is a great redemption and restoration. The Chris
tian theme is the same. There was great good news in each
and the evangelist and evangelistess of the prophet with their
evangel might easily furnish the very title of the gospel.
But Christianity carries an essential note of largeness and
universalism that could not find so many ready made expres
sions of itself anywhere else as in our prophet. It is not nec
essary at this point to repeat our numerous references to "the
ends of the earth," "the whole earth," "all the nations," "all
flesh," "setting justice in the earth," the "isles waiting for Je
hovah's law." We may recall the mention of all four points
of the compass (43:5, 6), the universal call to those who have

EFFECTS OF THE LARGENESS 53
escaped the world judgment of the nations executed through
Cyrus to look to Jehovah for salvation (45:22), which
seems to indicate a purpose of grace toward the whole human
race. Especially striking is the express assurance given to
the servant that it is too light a commission for him to raise
up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel ;
for Jehovah has given him for a light to the Gentiles also and
a means of salvation to the end of the earth (49:6). Here,
too, should be recalled all that has been said in this paper as to
the world-wide stage of the dramatic action in our prophecy
and the unlimited tribute paid to restored Zion by processions
of nations coming even from the heart of Africa.
To the category of universality our prophet sometimes adds
that of eternity as when to the promise of possessing the na
tions is added the promise of everlasting lovingkindness which
shall never depart while the mountains and hills endure (54:
3, 8, 10). A similar but more powerful instance is that in
which Jehovah's justice is to be a light of the peoples, his arm
to judge them, and the isles to wait for him. Nor shall this
salvation be any temporary arrangement. Let the people lift
up their eyes to heaven and look about upon the earth. The
one shall vanish like smoke and the other wear out, but Je
hovah's salvation shall be forever, and His righteousness shall
not be abolished (51 -.4, 5, 6). Finally we have the conception
(partly anticipated in the verses just quoted where the transi-
toriness of the present world is asserted), of a new moral and
spiritual universe as the ultimate aim of Jehovah's dealing
with Israel (51:16). Surely if ever there were to be a uni
versal and eternal salvation established in a renovated earth,
the immense imagery of the Deutero-Isaiah is capable of
embodying it in worthy expressions.
If now we turn to the New Testament itself we find the
citations from our prophet and the unquestioned references to
him so numerous that our entire closing division will be given
to a systematic study of them. Some salient examples may,
however, be mentioned here. John the Baptist, questioned as
to his mission, replies in the words of our chapter 40 that he
is the voice of one crying in the wilderness (John 1 :23 ; Luke

54 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
3:4-6). Jesus also (if we may for a moment go outside our
limits and cite words which if not composed by our prophet
are an immediate echo of him) finds the opening keynote of
his ministry here. In Luke 4:18, in the synagogue at Naza
reth he opens the book of our prophet and reads the first verses
of chapter 61, "The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me
because He hath anointed me to preach good-tidings to the
meek," etc. It is from our prophet (42:1-4) that Matthew
12:18-21 quotes words to describe the character of Jesus,
"He shall not strive nor cry," etc. It is in our 53rd chapter
that descriptions of the sufferings of Jesus are found (Acts
8:32, 33). "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter," etc.,
and in the evangelist's narrative he was "numbered with trans
gressors" (Luke 22:37). Paul's thought of a great assize
(Romans 14:11), at which every soul must appear and at
which every knee shall bow to Jesus and every tongue confess
him draws upon our prophet's great scenes, in his 41st and
45th chapters, of Jehovah going to law with the idols (cf.
esp. 45:23). In his speech in the synagogue at Antioch of
Pisidia the apostle tells (Acts 13:32, 34) the good tidings of
the promise concerning the "holy and sure mercies of David"
promised by our prophet (55:3). It is striking also to note
that after his peculiar and fine-drawn use of Hagar and
Mount Sinai he finds relief for his great pent-up struggling
thought of Christian freedom in a quotation from our prophet,
"Rejoice thou barren," etc. (54:1) ; and finally the thought of
the new heaven and new earth which the Gospel is to bring,
as described in the Apocalypse, is painted in colors drawn
from our chapters.
Now it is the largeness, the ideal and spiritual greatness of
these images, that brings them in to describe all these im
portant facts and thoughts of the New Testament religion.
Small and local imagery could not have been used with much
naturalness. When Delitzsch in his introduction to our
prophet says "the sufferings and exaltation of Christ are pro
claimed [in chapter 52:13-53:12] as clearly as if the prophet
had stood beneath the cross itself and had seen the risen
Saviour," his words seem misleading. It is precisely because

EFFECTS OF THE LARGENESS 55
the prophecy of the suffering servant is large, ideal, and in
definite in its outlines, that it can be applied to Christ. It is
for the same reason that Plato's portrait of the just man may
be similarly used. "The portrait drawn by Plato in its minute
touches reproduces the likeness [of the Son of Man] with a
fidelity so striking, that the chronological impossibility alone
has rescued him from the charge of plagiarism. 'Though
doing no wrong,' Socrates is represented saying 'he will have
the greatest reputation for wrong doing,' 'he will go forward
immovable even to death, appearing to be unjust through life,
but being just,' 'he will be scourged,' 'last of all, after suf
fering every kind of evil he will be crucified. Not unnaturally
Clement of Alexandria, quoting this passage, describes
Plato as 'all but foretelling the dispensation of sal
vation'."* I make the quotation and do the italicizing in order
to show how the ancient father and the modern scholar regard
the passage from Plato. They are able so to regard it be
cause it is a purely imaginative and ideal picture drawn by
the great Athenian in large lines and expressly disclaiming
any existing counterpart in Athens or anywhere else. Our
prophet's portraiture of the suffering servant differs from
Plato's picture of the just man as Hebrew genius differs from
Greek. But the large lines of the ideal appear in both. A
similar remark applies in a general way to our other New
Testament citations. The "voice crying in the wilderness"
can describe any great religious and solitary forerunner,
though not so aptly any other as John. The picture of one
who "does not strive nor cry nor cause his voice to be heard
in the street" has been true to the life of others, though to
none so true as to Jesus. Even the description of the suffer
ing servant may conceivably have a large measure of applica
tion to other martyrs, but to none, of course, so full a meas
ure as to Jesus. Perhaps the point intended is sufficiently
clear without further references. It is then the undying pre
eminence of our prophet that his vision of salvation was as
lar°-e as the world ; that it covered the tracts of time and space

*Lightfoot, The Epistles of Si. Paul, Philippians, P. 291.

56 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
completely; that it included the utmost conceivable trans
formation of the universe — and that it did all this so grandly
and vividly that when the Saviour of the world really came
and set up His kingdom the prophet's ideal language and the
Saviour's work could practically coincide and be related as
prophecy and fulfillment.

CHAPTTR IV.
THE NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES.
Proceeding, then, in accordance with the plan of this
paper, to a complete inductive study of the New Testa
ment passages which quote from the Deutero-Isaiah, a mathe
matical note may be made at the outset. There are about
ninety-nine different verses in the New Testament which
quote from our prophet. The number of New Testament
passages which quote from the entire canonical Old Testa
ment is about nine hundred and ninety-five. Varying literary
instinct may alter these figures slightly, but it is clear that
almost exactly one-tenth of all the New Testament passages
which quote from the Old Testament cite our prophet. In a
Letteris bible there are 1,384 pages, of which the Deutero-
Isaiah occupies nineteen and a third, or about one-seventieth
of the total number. The ratio of one-tenth to one-seventieth
shows that in proportion to its bulk our prophet is quoted in
the New Testament seven times as often as is the Old Testa
ment as a whole. This fact is surely significant of the close
kinship between the Deutero-Isaiah and the New Testament
writers. Again: the New Testament gospel has certain dis
tinguishing categories, such as spirituality, eternity, univer
sality loving-sacrifice, and the regeneration of men into a
kingdom of God, and all these in connection with the per
sonality of Jesus Christ. Now, in proportion as these qualities
are increasingly evolved in the course of the gospel history
the quoting of the Deutero-Isaiah increases. This is because
of the double fact that his immense conceptions and images are
adapted to embody the large and spiritual qualities in question.
and that his great personifications are at the same time adapted

58 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
for application to an individual Christ. The four evangelists
might at first glance seem to be an exception, for the essential
qualities of Christianity would naturally be preeminent in the
life and words of its founder. Yet Matthew quotes our
prophet only three times, Mary only once, Luke six times, and
John three. This fewness, however, is owing to the latent or
implicit condition of the great characteristics, which after
ward became explicit and actively dynamic. For example,
Paul's universalism, according to so great a critic as Weiz-
sacker, was, notwithstanding its boldness in enterprise, nar
rower in reality than the universalism of Jesus. Yet Paul's
quotation of our prophet is vastly more frequent than that of
the four evangelists. The explanation, of course, is that a
ministry historically confined to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel, however world-wide its spirit and intent might be,
would need expression for that spirit and intent only as they
were carried out and manifested in subsequent historical facts.
Meanwhile it may be noted that against Matthew's three
quotations, Mark's one and John's three, Luke, so often called
by distinction the gospel of humanity at large, increases the
number to six. Acts, which marks the transition to the Gentile
world, raises it to eight, while an epistle like that to the Ro
mans contains eleven. The strong outstanding quotations in
Corinthians and Galatians are also from our prophet. The
Apocalypse, all compact of imagery as it is in general and
containing more than half as many citations from the Old
Testament as all the rest of the New Testament taken to
gether, contains no less than thirty-four citations from our
prophet. Finally, as showing the pervasive presence of the
Deutero-Isaiah in the New Testament, it may be remarked
that every book of the latter makes at least some citation from
the former with the trifling exception of First Thessalonians,
the brief pastoral epistles, Philemon, Jude, and the three
epistles of John, which last do not quote from the Old Testa
ment at all.
Taking up the quotations in detail, we study those that
concern (i) Christ's life and work, (2) the spread of the
gospel under the Apostles, (3) the expected great consum-

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 59
mation, and (4) the large, historic, and philosophic aspects
of the gospel's career.
1. Under Christ's life and work we may consider his per
son and character, his contact with masses of people in heal
ing and teaching, his sacrifice of himself, and his second
coming as judge and redeemer.
(a) The Apostolic sense of wisdom and knowledge which
abounded in perfect fulness in Christ is expressed by saying
that in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowl
edge (Col. 2:3). But this metaphor is taken from Jehovah's
promise to give to Cyrus the treasures of darkness and the
hidden riches of secret places. The inner intellectual wealth
of Christ is illustrated by the material wealth concealed in
the storehouses of the Lydian King (Is. 45:3). The calm
and humble spirit in which Jesus worked and his gentleness
and compassion towards those in whom worthy activity was
not wholly crushed and in whom the sense of God, though
expiring, was not extinct, irresistibly send the first evangelist
to the portraiture of the Servant so endowed with Jehovah's
spirit that he does not strive nor cry nor cause his voice to be
heard in the streets, does not break the bruised reed nor
quench the smoking flax (Matt. I2:i8ff ; Is. 42:1-4). In ad
dition to giving expression to these intellectual and active
qualities of Jesus our prophet also voices through Peter his
moral faultlessness. He did no sin, neither was guile found
in his mouth (I Pet. 2:22; Is. 53:9). The ascription of
eternity and divinity, also, to Jesus, the character of infinite
greatness ascribed to him in the Apocalypse, draws expres
sions from our source. It is striking to note that in the same
passage the descriptions of Jesus' external person come from
other prophets while the suggestions of deity and infinity
are from the Deutero-Isaiah. Ezekiel and Daniel furnish the
wool-white hair, the flaming eyes, the feet like burnished brass,
and the voice like the sound of many waters. But "first and
last" and "alive forevermore" as characteristics of him who
was dead and is alive again, come from our prophet (Rev.
1:17; 2:8; 22:13; Is. 44:6; 48:12).
(b) Jesus, it is true, cultivated the individual. For the

60 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
most part he healed and instructed men one by one. There
were some considerable exceptions, however, and in connec
tion with the instances of his dealing with masses of men
our prophet, because of his characteristic largeness, is apt to
be in evidence. On one occasion many followed Jesus and
he healed them all. Thereupon, Matthew quotes the passage
already cited as appropriate to Jesus' gentleness. But after
all it is also and perhaps mainly the sense of multitude that
secretly draws the evangelist's mind to our prophet, for he
does not stop quoting until he has twice included the reference
to the great Gentile world (Matt. I2:i8ff ; Is. 42:1-4). When,
too, at Capernaum evening brought freedom from the Sab
bath restraints, multitudes gathered about Jesus, bringing
many demoniacs and other sick people, all of whom Jesus
cured. There was a suggestiveness in this wholesale healing,
and hence again the congenial attractiveness of the chapters
we are studying. Matthew therefore cites "himself took our
infirmities and bare our diseases" (Matt. 8:17; cf Mark 1 :2i ;
Is. 53:4). Still, again: The feeding of the five thousand
suggested the manna given in the wilderness. In imagery
from both these miracles Jesus was striving to instill into the
multitude the thought of spiritual feeding. Hence it is pro
foundly interesting to see his mind turn to the gorgeous and
jewelled picture of rebuilt Zion and take out of its splendid
vagueness one simple spiritual sentence and quote it in naked
isolation. "And they shall all be taught of God." It is as if
the splendid externalisms which excited the imagination of
the Galilean people could find their only counterpart in the
kindred splendors of our prophet's sapphire city, and yet the
heart of it all, which they needed to learn, was the submis
sive spirit of willingness to be taught by Jehovah (John 6 145 ;
Is. 54:13)- One more citation may be added here. The
author of the epistle to the Hebrews, although he is thinking
of an eternal priesthood, yet, because of the very element of
eternalness which is in the conception, is drawn to our prophet
notwithstanding the latter's lack of priestly references.
Jesus having been made perfect through suffering becomes

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 6 1
unto all them that obey him the author of eternal salvation
(Heb. 5:9; Is. 45:17).
(c) That the New Testament writers repeatedly use the
fifty-third of Isaiah to describe Jesus' vicarious suffering
needs no restating here. Perhaps it is not so universally no
ticed, however, that the citations are nearly always made in
large general relations and connections. Even the eunuch
returning to Ethiopia, individual though he was, was no pri
vate untraveled person (Acts 8:32f; Is. 53:7!). Peter's
hortative description of Him who bare our sins is addressed
to a general body who were healed by his stripes and were
like sheep who had gone astray and returned (I Pet. 2:24f;
Is. 53:12, 5f). The largeness of application is more evident
when Jesus so emphatically says that our prophet's word,
"and he was reckoned with the transgressors," is about to be
fulfilled in him (Luke 22:37; Is. 53:12). The evident mean
ing is: In your previous trips within the narrow limits of
Galilee and in the cause of a still obscure teacher over whom
no formal public issue had yet been raised, you lacked noth
ing, although you took neither purse nor wallet. You could
depend upon ordinary hospitality. But now I am to be classed
with criminals and you are to find yourselves thrown out
upon a wider mission and utterly unfriended. Jesus knows
that he is just at the end of his restricted career. He sees
the great unlimited work beginning for his followers. He
turns to the story of the Servant whose sufferings had such
world-wide efficacy in the prophet's picture and sees in his
situation the prophetic parallel of his own. There is a sim
ilar situation outlined in John. The request of the Greeks
(John 12:20-32) opens to Jesus a vision of the whole Gen
tile world to win which he must die, as the grain of wheat
dies, into great fruition. His troubled soul sees the near
agony of the cross on which being lifted up, He will draw all
men unto Himself. Yet who of his contemporaries recog
nizes that the universal attraction is to come from the pains
and death. It is again the universal sweep of the vision that
makes the evangelist quote the incredulity of the exiles to ex-
oress the incredulity of the Jews, "Lord, who hath believed

62 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
our report" (Jno. 12:38; Is. 53:1). The point of special im
port for this paper is the extraordinary universalism of the
scene, unequalled elsewhere even in John, and its evident con
nection with the similar universalism of our prophet.
The final victory of the crucified Christ is strikingly il
lustrated from our prophet in the Apocalypse. The seer be
holds a lamb standing upon Mount Zion with his hundred
and forty-four thousand. When we recall that the one agony
and aspiration of the Babylonian exiles was to be restored to
Mount Zion and note that the Apocalyptic picture sees the
suffering servant actually standing there as a lamb, the sig
nificance of the scene is apparent. It is as if a verse had been
added to the fifty-third of Isaiah describing the suffering serv
ant as enthroned in power at Jerusalem, and as if that verse had
been used to describe the triumph of Jesus. That the "lamb"
of the seer is the "lamb" of our prophet is evident from the
description of his followers. "In their mouth was found
no lie, and they are without blemish" (Rev. 14:5; Is. 53:9).
Other Apocalyptic references to the lamb led to the slaughter
(Is. 53:7) are found in Rev. 5:6, 12. The great future writ
ten in the book sealed with seven seals rests with the lamb
standing as though it had been slain, to whom the universal
chorus of things in heaven, in earth, and under the earth
ascribe unending dominion. The lamb is in the midst of the
throne (Rev. 7:17) and there is a book of life of the lamb
that hath been slain (Rev. 13:8). The writer of the book of
Hebrews speaks of the blood of an eternal covenant (Hebrews
13:20; Is. 55:3). Finally, we note that the classic passage
on Jesus' self-emptying, obedience unto death, and resultant
exaltation, comes to its climax in the wording of Jehovah's
oath to the exiles, swearing by himself that to Him every
knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear (Philippians
2:iof; Is. 45:23)-
(d) But Christ is to come again in a great flaming reve
lation from heaven to be glorified in all his saints. Yet even
this contains an echo from our prophet (II Thess. 1:10; Is.
49:3)- Having been offered once to bear the sin of many,
He shall appear the second time unto salvation, as the Servant

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 63
bears the sin of many and is to divide the spoil with the strong
(Heb. 9:28; Is. 53:12). And when He comes His reward
will be with Him, to render to each man according to his
work. The second coming of the Son of Man to judge and
to vindicate is thus seen and expressed in the image of Jeho
vah coming to the exiles. "Behold, the Lord Jehovah will
come * * * Behold, His reward is with Him and His
recompense before him" (Rev. 22:7, 12; Is. 40:10). Thus the
person and character, the healing and teaching, the sacrifice
and exaltation, and the second coming of Jesus are largely
depicted in words and phrases belonging to our prophet's
story of the Hebrew exiles. It seems extremely strange, until
we remember how extremely akin were our prophet's ideals
and the Ideal Prophet.
2. Passing on to consider the spread of the gospel under
the Apostles, we find our prophet is usually quoted on occa
sions where Christ's message comes in touch with foreigners,
where Paul's universal commission is referred to, where great
gatherings of people are dealt with, and on occasions when
Gentiles are considered in immediate connection with Jews
as recipients of the Gospel.
(a) The eunuch under the queen of Meroe, returning
from Jerusalem to Ethiopia by the Gaza road, was studying
our prophet. His scripture selection is significant. It was
good reading to him because it had been written in a land
foreign to Jerusalem, by a prophet who mentions the eunuch's
own country, Ethiopia, as furnishing part of the exiles' great
ransom (Is. 43 13) and its people as part of the suppliant pro
cession reaching restored Zion (Is. 45 :J4)- Tne eunuch had
come, to be sure, upon the puzzling problem of the person or
personification of the suffering servant; but the prophecy as
a whole was written in such large lines and suited his own
African situation so well that, as we have seen, Ewald was
able to locate the very composition of it just north of him,
in Egypt.* Another large relation appears in connection with
the coincident, though locally separated, visions which Peter

*See page 47.

64 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
had of the miscellaneous creatures in the sheet, and Cornelius
had of the man in bright apparel. The situation is ecumeni
cally suggestive. One man was at Joppa and the other at
Cesarea. Peter sees the Roman world opening and in the
house of Cornelius he uses universalistic language adapted
from Deuteronomy and elsewhere. "Of a truth, I perceive
that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he
that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to
Him" (Acts 10:34, 35). But when he comes to the heralding
of good news of peace to all men, he must resort, for the
expression of that unlimited grace, to the words of our prophet
(Acts 10:36; Is. 52:7).
(b) The words of the same great seer appear also in
the formal commission of Paul, to evangelize the Gentile
world. The aspostle, in making his defense before Agrippa,
describes the scene on the Damascus road in which the Lord
declared to him that he would send him to the Gentiles to
open their eyes, that they might turn from darkness to light.
The psychology of it all need not be considered here; but it
was a vision of a great and universal work, and to express
so broad a mission recourse was had to the corresponding
work of the Servant in opening the blind eyes, bringing them
that sat in darkness out of the prison-house, bringing
the blind by a way they knew not, and making darkness light
before them. The apostle to the Gentiles gets his very com
mission in the phraseology of the Great Unknown (Acts 26:18;
Is. 42:6, 7, 16). Nor had the servant's utterances faded from
the apostle's mind when he wrote to the Galatians of having
been separated even from his mother's womb to preach among
the Gentiles (Gal. 1:15; Is. 49:1). And when he was ex
horting the Philippians to a blameless life, that he might be
able in the great day of accounting to Christ to say that he
had not run in vain or labored in vain, he was not only
sharing the confident distrust of the Servant in the midst of his
colossal task, but was quoting from his words (Phil. 2;i6;
Is. 49:4). (c). The congenial largeness of our prophet is also finely
seen in connection with the great gatherings the apostles

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 65
addressed. The healing of the lame man at the door Beau
tiful drew a crowd to the temple, and Peter was stirred by
the suddenly great proportions of his work and the kindling
presence of the masses to make an extended historic sweep
of prophetic foreshadowings. But his opening and closing
sentences alike view Jesus under the character of the Servant
of Jehovah (Acts 3:13, 26; Is. 52:13). At the Pisidian An-
tioch, "almost the whole city" was gathered together, and the
sight of the "multitudes" filled the Jews with jealousy; but
in rising to the occasion the few resolute words spoken by
Paul and Barnabas are from our prophet (Acts 13:47; Is.
49:6). Paul's great discourse at Athens, when the crowd
made him talk to them from the Areopagus, planted itself at
the outset upon our prophet's powerful and repeated concep
tion of Jehovah as the creator of the heavens and the earth,
and the giver of breath and spirit to its inhabitants (Acts
17:24; Is. 42:5). At Corinth, at the house of Titus Justus,
in the night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision, hearten
ing him with good cheer from our prophet and with the assur
ance that many converts were to be made in the city. We
may reasonably think that the night vision received its material
from daylight reading or recollection, and the daylight turn
ing to our prophet and his great work would be most natural
to the Apostle, as he felt the pressure of a great work in
a great city. Writing afterwards to his converts there as a
body, and having in mind the iniquity and idolatry (2 Cor.
5:14, 15) of the great isthmian city, with its double harbor
and double influx of eastern and western evils, and also mind
ful of the great moral separation which his church there
should make from all the city's sins, the image rises in his
mind of the great summons to depart from Babylon and touch
none of its unclean things (2 Cor. 6:17; Is. 52:11). And
even when immediately thereafter the thought of Christian
sonship to God arises, the Apostle's thought so clings to the
prophet's imagery that he adds another feature from him to
complete the gospel picture of Christians as a company of
sons and daughters of God (2 Cor. 6:18; Is. 43:6)- When
the practical James, moreover, is taking a comprehensive sweep

66 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
of Christian society, from the poor all the way across to the
rich, he instinctively resorts to the comprehensive picture of
the leveling up and leveling down along the great highway
from Babylon, and calls upon the brother of low degree to
glory in his high estate, and upon him that is rich to rejoice
in that he is made low, because as the flower of the grass he
shall pass away (James i:iof; Is. 4o:6f). To complete the
list of instances of a crowd or company or society which
in one way or another remind the apostolic writers of the
body of exiles in Babylon, we may add Peter's characteriza
tion of Christians as an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for God's own possession and showing forth
His excellencies. This phraseology is but an enhanced echo
of the prophet's aggregation of similar phrases to describe a
great praising congregation, "My people, my chosen, the
people I have formed for myself, that they might set forth
my praise" (i Pet. 2:9; Is. 43:2of).
(d) A separate closing mention may now be made of
passages which concern the great blending of Jews and Gen
tiles in a common salvation. The aged Simeon at last beholds
Jehovah's Messiah. His eyes see the salvation prepared be
fore the face of all peoples ; a light for revelation to the Gen
tiles and the glory of His people, Israel. But it is all a mosaic
or a fusing together of things found in the Deutero-Isaiah
(Luke 2:3of; Is. 40:5; 52:10; 42:6; 49:6; 46:13). At the
Pisidian Antioch, on the first Sabbath, Paul's synagogue
speech used numerous quotations from the Old Testament,
including the Pentateuch, Psalms, Samuel, Isaiah, and Habak-
kuk. There was no citation from our prophet. It was not
yet time. But on the next Sabbath the occasion had become
cosmopolitan, as we have already noted. Our prophet was
needed. "I have set thee for a light to the Gentiles, that
thou shouldest be for salvation to the uttermost parts of the
earth" (Acts 13: 47; Is. 49:6). At the Jerusalem conference
on the question of circumcising Gentile converts, Peter, Bar
nabas, and Paul spoke in turn. Then James, in making his
wise closing survey of the situation, ended by seeing, like the
Deutero-Isaiah, the fulfillment of a great prediction. Again

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 67
the occasion is clearly one of widening vision, larger mean
ings, and a salvation comprehending the Gentile as well as
the Jew (Acts 15:18; Is. 45:2). The vision of Paul at Cor
inth, lately mentioned as using our prophet, also occurred
when Paul had been obliged to leave the Jews and turn to
the Gentiles (Acts i8:9f; Is. 43:5). And in vindicating
God's peculiar method in the selection of instruments for
saving, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles,
a spiritual and abiding Israel (Rom. 9:24), Paul finds his
conclusive illustration in our chapters: Woe unto the exile
that striveth with his Maker because He selects a pagan
Cyrus and declares an outside instrument shall restore His
people and build His city. Shall the clay say to him that
fashioneth it, What makest thou? And so, likewise, in the
process of forming a newer and later people of God and with
a glorious universality in view, hath not the potter a right
over the clay from the same lump to make one part a vessel
unto honor and another unto dishonor? (Rom. 9:20; Is. 45 :g).
3. Notwithstanding its inwardness, the idea of the King
dom of God in the gospel includes a great consummation of
destruction for the bad and of glorified triumph for the good.
Now, as Matthew Arnold says of our prophet's utterances,
"if ever that good time coming for which we all of us long,
was presented with energy and magnificence, it is in these
chapters; it is impossible to read them without catching its
glow."* It is not surprising, then, that New Testament pas
sages relating to the great near future as the Gospel writers
conceived it should embody many words and phrases from our
chapters. The introduction to the Apocalypse itself is in
point. The seer is to write the things which he beholds,
and the things which are, and the things which shall come
to pass hereafter. These words quote from the Septuagint
version of our prophet. Indeed, the flaming-eyed figure who
speaks them calls himself "the first and the last," thus
making a double reference to our chapters. It is most nat
ural; for the great prophetic tableaux seen on Patmos can
be compared in their immense and revolutionary significance
to nothing so well as to the great predictive pictures which

68 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
Jehovah showed to the exiles (Rev. i : 19; Is. 48:6; Rev. 1 :i7;
Is. 44:6; 48:12). We may, for convenience of presentation,
divide our citations into those which concern the negative
side — that is, the destruction or submission of the enemies of
the people of God ; and those which concern the positive side —
that is, the splendid and glorified conditions of the redeemed
themselves. (a) The enemies of the church of Philadelphia are to
come and worship before her feet and are to know that
Christ has loved her. This is, indeed, a local church, but
the seven epistles, with their sevenfold division, have a sym
bolic character, and there is immediately in view a trial hour
about to come upon the whole world and test the inhabitants
of the entire earth. Its greatness, at any rate, is made akin
to the greatness of the ransom to be paid for the deliverance
of the exiles (Rev. 3:9, 10; Is. 45:14; 49:23; 43:4). When
the sun-clothed, star-crowned woman's child is saved and the
devouring dragon and his angels are cast down to the earth,
the heavens are summoned to sing of the victory (Rev. 12:12;
Is. 44:23; 49:13). The cosmic chorus, moreover, of Rev.
5:9-13 is but a sublimely elaborated echo of the earlier chorus
of earth and sea in Is. 42:10-12. The Apocalyptic chapter,
also, which sees the hundred and forty-four thousand on
Mount Zion, in company with the Lamb, tells, besides, of the
fall of Babylonian Rome and of the wine of the wrath of
God which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger. The
writing is cryptic, and Rome is not mentioned by name, but
the key to the prophet's conception of the fall of the city of
the emperors is in our prophet's extended metaphor of the
"bowl of the cup of staggering" (Rev. 14:8, 10; Is. 51 :i7. cf.
22). The fierce application which the apocalyptic seer makes
of the lex talionis, outpoured blood for outpoured blood, cites
Jehovah's kindred denunciation (Rev. 16:6; Is. 49:26). A
few verses later the sixth angel pours out his bowl upon the
great river Euphrates and dries up its water to make way
for the kings that come from the sunrising. Whatever may

?Matthew Arnold, Isaiah XL-LXVI, p. 32.

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 69
be said of a reference to the swarms of orientals at the de
struction of Jerusalem, or to the widespread idea that Nero
would come again from the east, perhaps accompanied by
Parthian kings, the triple reference, first to the Euphrates,
second to the drying up of its water, and thirdly to the coming
from the sunrising (which last phrase directly quotes the
Septuagint), unmistakably points out the real source of the
seer's inspiration (Rev. 16:12; Is. 44:27; 41 :2, esp. 25). Still
again, when the idea of remembering Babylon the great to
give to her the cup of wine of the fierceness of God's wrath
reappears a little later in the same chapter, the reference is
equally clear (Rev. 16:19; Is. 51:17; cf. 22, 23) ; and when
it is said "every island fled away and the mountains were
not found," is there not an echo of that frightened mobility
which our prophet ascribes to the "isles" when he makes
them listen and tremble and draw near (Rev. 16:20, cf. 6:14;
Is. 41:1, 5). We may add that the entire eighteenth chapter
of the Apocalypse is full of echoes of the Deutero-Isaiah, such
as the falling of Babylon (vs. 2), the merchants (vs. 3), the
summons to come forth (vs. 4), the cup of wrath (vs. 6), the
proud personification and self-glorifying, "I sit as a queen and
am no widow" (vs. 7), the burning of Babylon (vs. 10), the
merchants again (vss. 11, 15), and the sorcery (vs. 23). Com
pare Isaiah 51:17; 47:8, 9, 10, 12, 15.
(b) In turning to the positive side of the great consum
mation, one is tempted to refer again to Jesus' quotation of
Isaiah (54:13) when in John 6:45 he refers to the people
being taught of God. For while he refers only to the inward
and spiritual element in the dazzling vision of Jerusalem, the
outward element must have been more or less strongly present
when he quoted what is so integral a part of the whole. But
passing to Paul's citations, we may note that when he is think
ing of the great security of the children of God, the image of
the Servant of Jehovah rises in his mind. As Jehovah was
on the side of the Servant and would help him and give him
speedy justification, so the Christian believer had God and
Christ upon his side and might apply to himself the confident
interrogations of him who gave his back to the smiters (Rom.

70 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
8:33f ; Is. 5o:8f). When he is thinking of the final merciful
ingathering of all, he finds no better words for his expression
than our prophet affords: "For who hath known the mind
of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?" (Rom. n :34f ;
Is. 4o:i3f). And once more, even in his practical exhorta
tions to Christian believers not to pass critical judgments upon
one another, or to set one another at naught, because all will
be equally and impartially dealt with before the judgment
seat of God, Paul calls to mind the bar before which Jeho
vah summons the idolatrous nations, taking oath by himself
that unto him every knee shall bow and every tongue shall
swear (Rom. 14:11; Is. 45:23; 49:18).
Finally, when we return to the Apocalypse and examine
the rich poetic langauge in which the great future of the fol
lowers of the Lamb is depicted, we find our prophet's imagery
abundantly used and quoted. It is the blessing of those
whose robes have been washed and made white in the blood
of the Lamb, that God spreads his tabernacle over them while
they are resting, and when they are in blissful movement the
Lamb that is in the midst of the throne is their Shepherd and
guides them to fountains of water of life, and they hunger no
more, neither thirst any more, neither does the sun strike on
them nor any heat. The best words to describe the earthly
heaven of Christ's redeemed are quotations from the imagery
of the new and vernal exodus of the exiles from Babylon
(Rev. 7:i6f; Is. 49:10). And the song they sing is new,
because the song the exiles sang was new (Rev. 14:5; Is.
42:10). At last comes the Urbs beata Hirusalem which in
spired the monk of Clugny and the seer of Patmos. The seer
beheld a new heaven and a new earth, because our prophet
sketched them for him (Is. 51:16; cf. 65:17; Rev. 21:1).
He saw the Holy City as a bride, because our prophet's per
sonification had clothed her in beautiful garments. He built
precious stones into her walls and foundations, because our
prophet had cut and polished them and they were ready to
be set. And his city was holy, because our prophet had ex
cluded the uncircumcised and the unclean. The seer brought
it down from heaven, but he received it from the Deutero-

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 71
Isaiah, and the echoes of him, or possibly his own words, in
the Trito-Isaiah (Rev. 21:2, 5, 10, i8f, 27; Is. 52:1; 43:19;
54:nf; cf. 60:1, 11, 19, 20, et al.)
(c) One might be tempted to think that with all his
large and glorious descriptive imagery our prophet was scarce
ly practical enough to make any contribution to the great and
gracious invitations of the gospel era. Yet it is just his ex
pressions that enable the apostolic invitation to clothe itself in
the promise of absolute grace, "I will give unto him that is
athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely," and in the
universal invitation to partake without money and without
price. There is no more popular and beautiful wording of the
invitation to Christ than that which derives its form from
Jehovah's last call to the busy Jewish merchants of Babylon
to withdraw their commercialized hearts from the unsatisfying
wealth of the sorceress city and to consecrate themselves to
the activities and to receive the blessings of the return and
the restoration to Zion (Rev. 21:6; 22:17; Is. 55 :if, 6f).
4. Our closing section considers the connections which cer
tain large philosophic, historic, and theological aspects of the
gospel have with the Deutero-Isaiah. Not that our prophet
is a philosopher or a philosophic historian or a systematic
theologian. Nevertheless, he has his immense historic sweep.
Jehovah's omnipotent and omniscient conduct of events, as
our prophet sees it, gives him a kind of philosophy of history.
And his marvelous insight into the depth of religious realities
affords much material for constructing his theology. This
paper does not, of course, aim to give any regular outline
of the abstract system deducible either from our prophet
or from the New Testament documents. It simply indicates
some points at which the two systems or sets of systems, if
made, would touch each other. These contacts may be ar
ranged under (a) preparation, (b) visions of universality,
(c) general historic surveys, (d) great movements and enter
prises philosophically considered, (e) character of God and
incredulity and criticism of God's ways, (f) the greatness of
the individual Christian.
(a) The personality of Christ is so overshadowing that

72 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO ISAIAH
we commonly think of the forerunner's ministry as the prepa
ration by an individual for an individual. But John did not
at the outset preach repentance because the Messianic King,
but because the Kingdom of God was at hand. It was a
great political revolution, preceded by a great return to real
righteousness which the new Elijah had in mind. Viewed as
the introduction of a new era, the preparation for the gospel
through the ministry of John could have no grander or more
fitting description than the opening words of our prophecy.
Let one read through the Deutero-Isaiah and lose himself in
the vast yet concrete visions. Then let him recall the kindred
spiritual sweep of the gospel, and he will at once see how the
grandeur of the older scheme made Mark use our prophet's
voice crying in the wilderness. Once used, its peculiar fitness
insured its taking over and extension by the other three evan
gelists ( Mark i :3 ; Matthew 3 :3 ; Luke 3 :4ff ; John 1 123 ;
Is. 40:3ft)- (b) The relation of our prophet's universalism to that of
the gospel has necessarily been touched upon in speaking of
the spread of the latter to the Gentiles. But we may here
recur to those references in connection with others. Mary's
vocal outburst sings "of all generations," and cannot close
without referring to Israel the servant and to Abraham and hifi
seed forever (Luke 1 :54f ; Is. 41 :8f). Simeon's vision of the
gazing world seeing the salvation which he now sees to be
beginning with the infant Jesus is another instance of the old
and the new universalism in contact (Luke 2:3of; Is. 40:5;
52 :io). When Jesus himself, as his life-work is closing, opens
up its world-wide scope to his disciples in a fuller fashion than
before, telling them of wider missionary journeys, the parallel,
though farther beneath the surface, is unquestionably present
(Luke 22:37; Is. 53:12).* A similar reference to the uni
versalism of his work is clearly evident in John's selection of
a prophetic passage to characterize Jewish unbelief (John
12:38; Is. 53:1).* When the latent universalism of the
gospel began to take effect outwardly, it is interesting to find

*See page 61.

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 73
Peter quoting at the home of Cornelius from our prophet's
description of the far-traveled heralds as their feet upon the
Judean mountains are beautiful with the message of peace
(Acts 10:36; Is. 52:7). The practical universalism of Paul,
in its connection with our prophet, has already been more
than hinted in mentioning the second Sabbath at the Pisidian
Antioch (Acts 13:47; Is. 49:6). It is perhaps worthy of
note, also, that when he is drawn to the same general passage
(Is. 52:17) which attracted Peter, and is using it to indicate
that, without distinction between Jew and Greek, no one who
believes en Jesus shall be put to shame, he omits the phrase,
."upon the mountains," because it localizes too much, and
makes his quotation read simply, "how beautiful are the feet
of them that bring glad tidings of good things." The prophet's
language is scarcely universalistic here, but its general rich
ness and breadth seem to Paul to make it excel all other ex
pressions for the announcement of an inter-racial gospel (Rom.
10:15; Is. 52:7).
(c) The extended songs and speeches attributed to the
apostles in the book of Acts contain, about all of them, a
more or less clearly defined element of historic survey. It is
from some kind of resume of Hebrew history that the attempt
was usually made to prove that Jesus was the Christ and the
great Savior of the world. It is somewhat remarkable to find
an undoubted reference to our prophet closing nearly every
one of his discourses. It is as if the historic surveys and
the large conclusions to be drawn from them could scarcely
come to a proper climax without quoting or plainly referring
to our prophet's great utterances. Mary's outburst of song
reaches its close and climax not with any other of her numer
ous quotations, but with her reference to Abraham and his
seed forever (Luke 1:54; Is. 4i:8f). Peter's speech near
the door Beautiful runs through its line of references to
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Samuel; but its last and
strongest word refers to the Servant (Acts 3:26; Is. 52:13).
The long historic resume at the Pisidian Antioch, comes to its
climax on the second Sabbath, as we have already noted, with
our prophet's "utermost parts of the earth" (Acts 13:47; Is.

74 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
49:6). At the Jerusalem conference the survey of recent gos
pel progress which the speeches of Peter, Barnabas, and Paul
completed, was brought to its close by James' citation (Acts
15:18; Is. 45:21). It might not even be unfair to connect
the Lord's reference to our prophet, which he made to Paul
in the night at Corinth, with the close of an unspoken mental
survey which the Apostle had been making of the recent prog
ress of and hindrances to his work. Certainly it came at a
juncture when the Apostle had been presenting to the Jews
Jesus as the Christ, had left them and turned to the Gentiles,
and had his mind filled with the necessity of carrying his
message to a wider audience (Acts 18:5-10; Is. 43:5). It
is at the very close and climax of his account of Abraham's
faith and its being reckoned to him for righteousness, and
of his making it an illustration of faith in Christ, that he
refers to the last words of the Septuagint version of our
prophet's story of the suffering Servant (Rom. 4:25; Is.
53 :i2). And, finally, he closes his prophetic history of Jewish
rejection of the Gospel, followed by Gentile acceptance, and
that in turn by a final Jewish acceptance which itself should
vindicate the divine unchangeableness of God's primal plan for
saving Israel, with a reference to the unsearchable riches of
the divine wisdom, as suggested by our prophet (Rom. 11 :34f ;
Is. 40:13). The almost mathematical accuracy with which
our prophet's words are brought in at just about the close
of all these apostolic speeches and discussions, strikes the
writer as very remarkable. It may, indeed, be replied that
two of the greatest speeches in the Acts, Peter's at Pentecost
and Stephen's before the Sanhedrin, are exceptions. But these
exceptions are apparent, rather than real. If we had followed
those critics who extend the Deutero-Isaiah to the end of
chapter 66, the exceptions would not have existed; for the
very close of Peter's speech quotes Isaiah 57:19, and the very
close of Stephen's speech, his last sentences before he turns
to upbraid the Sanhedrin for being stiff-necked and uncircum
cised, quote 66:1, 2; and the two citations are not only at
the close of the two respective speeches, but are so closely
akin to the mind of our prophet that they are frequently

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 75
attributed to him, even by critics who withhold from his
authorship most of chapters 56-66.
(d) We may now group together certain apostolic en
terprises and movements which are explicitly connected with
passages in our prophet, while at the same time the appro
priateness of the connection seems to consist almost wholly in
mere general poetic largeness. Certainly the council of the
Apostles at Jerusalem was concerned with an important de
parture, the giving of the gospel to outside nations. The issue
was critical enough. Yet the passage referred to in Isaiah
speaks of idolaters, not religious leaders, taking council to
gether, and the things made known from of old are things de
structive, rather than constructive. The only connection that can
be made out seems to be merely that important enterprises and
historic results are in both cases known and declared before
hand by the Lord (Acts 15:18; Is. 45:21). Very remote,
also, seems the connection already mentioned between the
necessity of preachers being sent to proclaim the gospel, if
mankind are to hear it, and the outburst of delight in Zion
at the sight of the messengers bringing news of her deliver
ance, a deliverance for Jews only. However, it is a great and
important message in both cases, and a message implies a
messenger. That is all (Rom. 10:15; Is. 52:7). It seems a
far cry from saying that the Servant's work is to be so much
greater than was expected that it is to make even great rulers
dumb with astonishment at its success, to saying that it is an
apostle's fixed principle not to preach the gospel in spiritual
territory already preempted by the preaching of others.
Nevertheless, Paul's scheme of evangelizing the Roman em
pire had a largeness akin to the Servant's work, and both
were to reach the most distant and hitherto unevangelized
districts (Rom. 15 :2i ; Is. 52 115) . It was a great and critical
moment when the Apostle as an ambassador on behalf of
Christ, as though God were entreating through him, besought
men to be reconciled to God. It was an acceptable time and
a day of salvation. Yet it was vastly different from the great
crisis hour of Jehovah's offer to the exiles of a national resto
ration. Each, however, was a great crisis in its way, and the

76 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
two greatnesses could get in touch with each other in the
Apostle's mind. (II Cor. 6:2; Is. 49:8). The summons to
depart from Babylon involved a literal and physical movement
very different from the moral and spiritual departure which
the Apostle urged upon the Corinthians. Yet the moment
was really great and critical in both cases, and the first made
a good "saith the Lord" for the second. Jehovah's claim upon
the nations for the restoration of the Israelites as the children
of his marriage with Zion discovers a very different relation
from that of God's fatherhood revealed in the Gospel. Yet
the parental and filial are mentioned in the two instances, and
the greatness of the two redemptions can bring them together
(II Cor. 6:18; Is. 43:6). And, lastly, an appeal for a con
tribution to supply the need of distant believers, coupled with
the promise that He who gives seed and bread will supply
and multiply the giver's seed for sowing and increase the
fruits of his righteousness, does not lie very near to com
paring the certainty that rain will bring harvests with the
certainty that God's word of promise will be fulfilled. Never
theless, the great collection for the poor at Jerusalem was
gathered from many churches through a long period of time,
and was sent to a very distant point, and any great and beau
tiful promise made to the exiles about the time of their great
deliverance, especially if its rhetoric took the form of a send
ing forth upon a distant mission, might be connected with
the Apostle's great scheme for relieving the far off poor.
Both enterprises were good and great, and God was behind
them both (II Cor. 9:10; Is. 55:10),
(e) The eternal being and perpetual providence of God
are mentioned with frequent iteration by the seer of the Apo
calypse. For this purpose he makes much use of our prophet,
referring to Isaiah 41 -.4 again and again (Rev. 1 -.4, 1:8, 11 :i7,
16:5, et al.) To express God's spirituality and universally
creative power, Paul, at Athens, as we have seen, makes funda
mental use of our prophet's third chapter (Acts 17:24; Is.
42:5). The deep anxiety which his own people's incredulity
and criticism caused him expresses itself at one point in a
reference to the Suffering Servant. It was a great and wide-

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 77
spread national incredulity toward a great message, and the
Apostle's sorrow found its best expression by referring to the
large and fluid language of 53:1 cf. Rom. 10:16. Again,
when Paul wishes to draw in large lines the moral guilt of his
people as they live among other nations everywhere, the best
picture of it that he can make is a copy of that of the guilty
and helpless generation of exiles in Babylon, taunted with
their degradation and the powerlessness of their Jehovah,
whose name was continually all the day blasphemed (Rom.
2:24; Is. 52:5). He replies to the question whether God
has cast off Israel by his philosophy, already mentioned, of
Israel's final conversion to the gospel, and sees his great plan
lying in the eternal and secret counsels of Jehovah (Rom.
ii:34f; Is. 40:13!). Finally, he cuts the knot of Israel's
objection to the doing of Jehovah's work through an alien,
by his well-known reference to the clay criticising the potter
and the thing formed criticising him that formed it (Rom.
g:2oi; Is. 45:9). Jehovah, indeed, in His absolute power
and wisdom, has created those who do His temporary work
of destruction as well as His work of forming and upbuild
ing (Rom. 9:22; Is. 54:16).
(f) It would seem quite impracticable to express the
greatness of the individual Christian's conversion and privi
leged standing through the broad and wholesale imagery of
our prophet, but the Apostles, nevertheless, do this to a con
siderable extent. Paul pictures a visiting stranger entering a
meeting of Corinthian Christians. If he hears them talking
in a medley of foreign tongues, he is likely to think them
insane, but numerous and intelligible testimonies for the real
ity and power of the gospel will bring it home to his soul.
He will be led to unbosom the inmost secrets of his heart,
and will fall down and worship the God who is present with
such power in the lives of his worshippers. To what can
this great change in the man be compared? It is like the
procession of far African nations reaching Jerusalem in chains,
falling down as suppliants before restored Israel, and acknowl
edging the omnipotent redeeming power which Jehovah exer
cises over the nations for the benefit of his people (I Cor.

78 IMAGERY IN DEUTERO-ISAIAH
14:25; Is. 45:14). Regeneration itself is connected with our
chapters. Our prophet has told of all flesh passing away like
the withering grass and falling flower, while the word of
Jehovah, his promise, and his plan are forever unchanged.
The word of Jehovah is put for the word of good tidings
through Jesus Christ, and this latter, because of its equal
eternity and incorruptibility, begets an eternal life in those
that receive it (I Pet. i:24f; Is. 40:6-9). Peter speaks also
of the ransom through Christ's death as being no narrow
commercial transaction. The redemption money is not money.
It is spiritual. The price paid is the priceless blood of the
Lamb. In moving away from the pecuniary aspect toward
that of sovereign love, Peter finds his best expression for
the new ransom in our prophet's "redemption without money"
(I Pet. 1 :i8; Is. 52:3). The great new attitude in which the
Corinthian convert finds himself should change for him the
aspect of the whole world. It should be as if the old en
vironment had passed away and all things in it had been
made new. To what shall this great change in outward
relations be compared? It is like the great irrigation and
transformation of the wilderness into one vast garden where
the jackals and ostriches praise Jehovah's renewing power
as the exiles pass through, homeward bound. In Christ all
the illimitable reaches of the soul's landscape are irrigated
into a new vernal beauty (II Cor. 5:17; Is. 43:i8f). The
liberty of the Christian is also brought into an interesting con
nection. The personification of Zion as the bride or wife,
enables Paul to pass easily from Sarah as the type of a spiritual
mother to Jerusalem seen in the same relation. The citizens
of the great redeemed metropolis, the new children of Zion
the mother, free from Babylonian oppression and reinstated in
the family of the holy mistress of the world, enjoy a pure
and glorious freedom. The Christian as a citizen of the Jeru
salem which is from above has a freedom and a liberty from
every yoke of bondage which can best be compared to that
ancient freedom of triumphant reinstated Zion (Gal. 4:27;
Is. 54:1). We come, finally, to the ideally exalted position
of the Christian who is in such perfect mystic communion

NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES 79
with Christ that he has Christ's spiritual knowledge and dis
cernment. Such a person cannot properly be judged by any
one ; for whoever would assume that office must know Christ's
mind and be able to pass judgment upon Him, which is absurd.
And the absurdity is voiced by our prophet's exclamations
upon the impossibility of knowing Jehovah's thoughts or giving
Him advice. "Who hath known the mind of the Lord that
he should instruct Him" (I Cor. 2: 16; Is. 40:13).

VITA.
The writer of this thesis was born in Philadelphia, Penn
sylvania, May 29, 1883. He studied in the public schools in
Chicago, Illinois, and in the fall of 1898 was admitted to the
University of Chicago, receiving in December, 1901, the de
gree of A. B., and in June, 1904, the degree of Ph. D. (Major
subject: Biblical and Patristic Greek; minor subject: Semi-
tics.) He entered Union Theological Seminary, New York,,
in the fall of 1904, and attended the University of Chicago
during the Summer Quarter of 1905. In 1905-6 he studied
at Columbia University.
The author of the present thesis has published "Some Ele
ments of Forcefulncss in the Comparisons of Jesus" (Journal
of Biblical Literature, Part II, 1904).