BS1515.S894 1874 Strachey, Edward, Sir, bail., 1812-1910. Jewish history and politics in the times of Sargon and Sennacherib; an inquiiy into i .. J -r »i. . JEWISH HISTORY AND POLITICS In t\)t ^imes of jargon nnti Sennacherib. JEWISH HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE TIMES OF SARGON AND SENNACHERIB 0n Infiuirg INTO THE HISTORICAL MEANING AND PURPOSE OF THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH By SIR EDWARD STRACHEY, Bart. SECO.VD EDITION, REVISED, WITH ADDITIONS W. ISBISTER h CO. 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 1874 Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those The toj) of eloquence ; statists indeed, And lovers of their countrj', as may seem ; But herein to our Prophets far beneath, As men divinely taught, and belter teaching The solid rules of civil government In their majestic, unaffected style. Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. In them is jdainest taught and easiest learnt, What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, "What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities Hat ; Tbcae only with our Law beat form a king. Paraditt Regained, iv. 353. PREFACE. It is now many years ago that, by the advice of ray friend Mr. Maurice, I proposed to myself to make the science of Politics my study. In order to give Jewish History and Politics their proper place in that study I chose the period of which this Volume treats ; and the reader is here offered the results of my inquiry. The present edition has been revised throughout, and considerable additions have been made to it. This period — the last half of the eighth century B.C. — is of characteristic importance in the history of the Jewish nation, which had now reached its highest point of civiliza- tion, and was come into contact with the Assyrian Power, which was overwhelming the Eastern world. Its social and religious condition, and its politics, home and foreign, are known to us through the contemporary discourses of the Prophets, the political and religious advisers of the kings and people. A new and interesting light is thrown upon it by the Assyrian Inscriptions, which show us, as facts, many events and. circumstances of which, without them, we could only infer the existence. And the genius of Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets of that or any time, has called out a series of learned and thoughtful commen- taries on his writings, such as are hardly available for the student of any other book. vi PREFACE. Taking then each of Isaiali's prophecies in succession, I liave brought it into connection with all that we know, from itself, or from other sources, of the events to which it refei*s, as well as of the internal state of the nation, and of its relations with other countries. And thus I have endeavoured, in a manner which should not be the less complete because it is gradual and somewhat informal, to take in the whole subject proposed in my title-page. In thus reading the Book of Isaiah I have, to the best of my ability, handled it by the method of our modem liistorians of Greece and Rome, and treated it as they — with thorough freedom and thorough reverence — treat the classical books. Wherever the method led I have fol- lowed ; and if I have found difterences as well as resem- blances between the Jewish and the classical literatures, this is not the consequence of a difference of method, but of fivcts, Tlius, I have recognized, for I should think it unscientific criticism not to recognize, the fact that, while no one now worships the national gods of Greece or Rome, a large part of the most educated and most thoughtful men in modern Europe still believe in, and worship the national (lod of the Jews. And again : — the Jewish, the (Jreek, and the Roman histories all tell us of national growth and national decay. The jmt riots and the philo- sophers of (Jreece and Rome could find no remedy for the decay : they admitted at livst that there was nothing left for tlio stiUe but military de.spotism, and nothing in religion but an organized superstition without faith — whieh iiuleed would do nothing towards restoring the life of tho nation, but might make its inevitable death more gradual, or less convulsive, than if tlwy continued to try successive forms of anarcliy in tho hope of regaining freedom. But tho Jewish teachers maintained that there was a law of national life powerful enough to control and PREFACE. VI 1 reverse the action of the law of death ; and that it would eventually assert and establish itself, if not in the Jewish nation yet in future times and other n,ations. And this belief of the ancient Jew is still held by many a modem political philosopher and practical statesman : which fact, and what it involves, I have also recognized. The Text of Isaiah — the Authorized Version revised — is given at the end of the Volume. The question of the Authorship of the Book I have treated at some lenirth. I consider it to be still far from settled, and that it needs more and other discussion than it. has yet received. Of the Assyrian Inscriptions of the period under con- sideration I have given, in the proper places, all that is yet translated, and that is of importance to my subject. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I, TAO* The Greek Orator. — The Hebrew Prophet. — The modern Preacher. — Schools of the Prophets. — The Book of Isaiah. — Its arrangement. — Its unity. — Hypothetical and positive criticism .... 1 CHAPTER II. The Book of Isaiah. — Its title. — Date of Chapter i. — Prophetic imagi- nation.— Hebrew oratory rhjthmical. — Parallels in other nations. — Contents of Chapter i. — Times of Uzziah and Jotham. — Forms and spirit. — National brotherhood. — Political ideals . . . .22 CHAPTER III. Isaiah ii., iii., iv. — Hebrew genius imaginative rather than logical. — Perfect and imperfect tenses in Hebrew. — The last days. — Contrast of the ideal and actual state of the nation. — Foreign influences. — Private idolatry. — Political materiali.sm. — National decay. — Laws of God's government of the world. — Good and evil of commerce. — • Hebrew matrons. — Female luxury. — Its punishment. — The Branch of Jehovah. — The restored though humbled nation . . . .42 CHAPTER IV. [ IsP'^ v^Coming woes. — Fusing power of imagination. — Hebrew " idy IT— Ancient fertility of Judii-a. — Present barrenness. — The vine- yard of the LoiiD of Hosts. — Selfishness in an aristocracy. — Rights and duties of landowners. — Property a trust. — Hebrew and English laws of entail. — AVord and work of Jehovah. — God a constitutional ruler. — Abuse of words by worldly men. — Thucydides. — Fulfilment of Isaiah's threats — to his contemporaries — and to all ages since. — Grotius on prophecy 59 CHAPTER V. Isaiah vi. — The Prophet's commission. — The Temple. — Its scenes. — The Vision. — Insight into the life of things. — Prophecy rational and intelligible. — God the real and actual King. — His holiness. — His justice. — Patriotic hopes of Isaiah 77 CHAPTER VI. Isaiah vii. — The accession of Ahaz. — Political state of king and people. — ' Jehovah said.' — Topography of Jerusalem. — The Virgin con- ceiving.— The Incarnation an universal idea — how realized. — Loss of Hebrew independence. — Isaiah not a magician . . . .95 X CONTEXTS. CHAPTER VII. TkQ% Isaiah \\\'\. — ix. 7. — Tho symbolioal family. — Ancient and modern habits of public men. — Siloah and Kuj)hrate8. — The panic of Juduh, and iU rt-mt-dy. — Galileo of tho (ientilos. — The national ploimi. — The great lif^ht. — Tho Mesaiah. — Gradual development of the Prophet's anticiputiuus . . . . • • • • • • .113 CHAPTER VIII. Isaiah_ix. 8 — xii. — Epic unity. — Obstinate enerpy of tho Hebrew race. "^ '■ — TJiwTe.ssTiein ofTho Ten Tribes. — Legalism of Judah. — Tn« king of Assyria. — Gods in the image of men. — The scourge of nutiuns, and its wielder. — Ancient roads.— The king of the Stock of Jes-se. — The golden age. — Fusion of connicting elements in a n:itron. — Consecjuenccs of the revolt of Ejihraim. — Deportation of Jews in Ljajah'a time. — The universal Church — its relation to tlie world.^ The water ot'^ salvation 124 CHAPTER IX. . Isaiah xiii., xiv. — Genuineness of the prophecies on Babylon. — Sceptical critiei.sm — its origin and progress — not positive or con.struttive. — Orthodox criticism. — Ilesulla of the control vers)-. — Trndition;il com- ments conf'unded with the text. — Hebrew historical notices of Babylon — Assyrian notices. — IJabylon sacked in Isaiiih's time by Persians, and perhaps by Medes. — Babylon a diagram or ideograph. — Arguments from style. — Suspense better than hasty decision. — Final overthrow of the empire of force ...... Ii34 CHAPTER X. Isaiah xiv. 28 — 32. — Philistia. — Origin of the Philistines — their extermi- nation commanded by Moses. — IjUW of conquests and extermina- tions.— British conquest of India. — Evil not eternal. — Philislia's relations with Judah — with Assyria. — Sargon and Sennacherib in Philistia " 184 CHAPTER XI. Isaiah xv., xvi. — Moab. — Probably reduced by Shalmanesor. — History of Moab picture of its overthrow. — Tribute of iiinibs due to Judah. — Fri' ndsliip with Juilah advised. — Modern distinction between the animal and .spiritual lift.'. — Corporate unity of a stat*.' . . . 197 CHAPTEli XII. Isaiuh xvii., xviii. — Damascus, Ephraim, and Ethiopia. — Probable date and unity of tliis j)rophecy. — Tho rush of nations. — Tho gonoral panic. — Worldly alliiinoes. — God's deliverance. — Notion that tho destruction of fSennachcrib's anny ia a myth — not well founded . 206 CHA1>TER XIII. Isaiah xix. — Egyptian dynasties in tho time of Isaiah — contemporary or successive.— Histoiiciil notices ivom various sources. — Anarchy. — Invasion of Sargon. — Sack of Thebes. — Treaty between lygypt and Assyria. — &IultitU'lo of gods snd of cisti-s iinlavourablo t*) political unity. — Exclusive wisdom of priesthood.— Tho city of destruction. — Alexander and l*t<>h>my. — Temple of Onias. — Septuagint. — Philo. — Church of AUxaodriu. — Bacon on prophecy 212 r CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XIV. PAOK Isaiah xt.— Sargon, Shalmaneser, Tartan.— The siege of Ashdod. — Shebna's policy. — Isaiah's symbolical protest as;ainst it.--He walks nakcrl and barefoot. — Isaiah's policy probably more expedient — cer- tainly more befitting Israel's place in universal history . . . 218 CHAPTER XY. Isaiah xxi. — A vision in a dream or trance. — Bible meaning of inspira- tion.— Divination. — Ancient oracles. — Special powers of nations and individuals.— One Greece, one Shakspoare.— Discernment of political ' eft'ects in their causes less possible now than formerly. — ' The Desert of the Sea.' — The Prophet a watchman. — The tribes of Arabia. — Subjected by Assyria 225 CHAPTER XVI. Isaiah xxii. — Political parties at Jerusalem. — Shebna and the majority. — Eliakim and the minority. — Isaiah's attack on Shebna. — Prepa- rations for the siege. — Topography of Jerusalem. — Site of Zion. — Spirit of the people and king.— Fall of Shebna. — Sufferings of modern nations from invasion. — Moral and religious results. — Prussia. — Switzerland 235 CHAPTER XVTI. Isaiah xxiii. — The Phnonicians— historical notices— their trade— carriers of philosophy and politics — relations with Israel. — The Tyrian Hercules — their religion political, not natural. — Siege of the Island- Tyre by Shalmaneser— by Nebuchadnezzar— by Alexander — presert state.— ^Authorship of the prophecy.— The dispenser of crowns. — The Queen of cities dishonoured. — Tyre forgotten seventy years- shall sing as an harlot 233 CHAPTER XYIII. Isaiah xxiv. — xxvii. — Utter desolation of Judah — actually caused by the Assyrian armies. — National covenant broken by Ahaz — he shuts the Temple. — God's counsels of old. — Moab put for Assyria. — Patience in national calamities. — The wife divorced, and taken back. — The silver trumpet sounded. — Expansion of Isaiah's views . . . 266 CHAPTER XIX. Isaiah xxviii. — xxxv. — Political and religious prospects of Judah. — Ariel, the Lion of Ciod.— Worldly state-craft.— True insight.— The em- bassy to Eiiypt. — Persecution of ihe prophets. — Dumb idols and the unseen teacher. — The holy solemnities. — Talmudical account of festive processions.— The stroke of doom on Sennacherib. — The^ real Deliverer.— Social influence of women. — The siege raised.— Edom put for Assyria. — Return of the ransomed captives .... 276 CHAPTER XX. Isaiah xxxvi., xxxvii.— Historical events of Sennacherib's invasion and retreat — his letter — how answered — unconscious genius in the nar ritivo.— Kab-shakeh's theology.- Isaiah's inspiration.— ' The incar n ate wrath of God.'— Zion's dehance.— The 'sign' of the sponta neons crops.— The destroying angel.— Sethos delivered by Vulcan -German war of freedom.— History teaches a belief in Providence — Niebuhr. — Grote ....•••••• "02 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXI. FAOI Isaiah xxxriii. — Tho Bickness of Hczckiah — importance of hiB life to hia nation — hia desire of recoverj' not purely selfish. — Fear of death in old times.— Christ's rt-surrection. — The sign of the shadow on tho sun-dial. — Two arcounts — the contomporary one not miraculous. — The Bible to bo treated like other books. — Not so treated by sceptics. —Tho hj-mn of llezekiah . . . , 320 CUAPTER XXII. Isaiah xxxix. — The embassy from Babylon. — Chronicle of Eusebius, and Berosus. — Sennacherib's annals. — Books of Kings and Chronicles. — Value of the latter. — The sin of Hczckiah. — Trusting CJod in politics. — Slodem history. — Niebuhr and Naples. — Colletta. — Nations and rulers re-act on each other. — Hezekiah's reception of tho embassy. — Isaiah's denunciation. — 'Apr6s moi lo Deluge.' — ProHixrity of England. — Religious temper of our statesmen. — Mr. Gladstone 330 CHAPTER XXIII. Isaiah xl. — Ixvi. — Question of the genuineness of the last chapters of Isaiah. — Arguments on each side. — A third bj'pothesis. — 'I'he name of Cyrus. — Coresh, and Jehovah's servant. — Modern explanations. — Doubts and certainties. — The positive method. — Coherence of earlier and later prophecies. — Tho earlier not fulfilled as Isaiah had expected. — Enlargement of his views. — Finite and infinite ideals. — Facts for induction as to tho nature of prophecy .... 345 CHAPTER XXIV. Isaiah xl. — Ixvi. — The vision of tho exile and return. — The transitory and tho permanent. — The God of nature, and of man. — Tho power- less gods of tho nations. — The Jewish institution of the Redeemer. — Iti effect on the more enlightened Jews. — The Deliverer, King. and Teacher. — The work of Isaiah and llezekiah. — Its success and its failure. — Jewish idea of tho Messiah. — Its relation to their jKtlitical life. — Atonement a human fact. — A nitional idea. — Union of half-truths. — Tho Messiah of the Gospel. — Tho Prophets and tho Apostles. — Isaiah's science of politics. — His death. — His triumph . 370 Appenuix— TiiK EN(a.isii Text of the Book of Isaiah . . . 391 Imubx 477 JEWISH HISTORY AND POLITICS. CHAPTER I. THE GREEK ORATOR. THE HEBREW PROIMIET. THE MODERV PREACHER. SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS. — THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. — ITS ARU^LXGEMENT — ITS UXITY. — HYPOTHETICAL AND POSITIVE CRITICISM. THE Spartan king told Xerxes that he was no match for the Greeks, ' because they, though free, had a master — the law — over them, which they feared more than the Persians did his despotic will.' And the Athenian orator, looking back on the great struggle after a generation or two had passed, gave his countrymen a farther explana- tion of their fathers' success ' against the barbarian myriads of the king of Asia :' he pointed out how ' they had done such noble and wonderful deeds, because they were already organized into a free conmionwealth in Avhich the good were honoured, and the bad restrained, by law ; because they knew and held that it should be left to brute beasts to control each other by mutual violence, su^h as oriental kings and subjects lived by, but that it became men to define rights by law, to persuade to its mainte- nance or expansion by rational and instructive sj^eech, and in their conduct to follow the guidance of both these, — the law their king, and speech their teacher.' The orator enunciated an eternal truth. Had it been less than eternal, it could not be still keeping its ground, and still sustaininsTf the life of everv nation which holds to it, or indeed, although we (not to judge of others) hold never B 2 LA ir AXn FREE SPEECH. so imperfectly to it : for tlioii<,'h we are ready enough to thank God that we English are not as other men, we might more reasonably reflect how often we are all on the verge of doing what lies in us to disturb the perfect i)lay of those two forces, of entire obedience to the law and absolute right of discussion, according as either may check some private opinion or class interest ; and how seldom we renu'mber that one step beyond that verge lies the region of mutual violence with the correlates of despotism and insurrection in which lU vitality consists. But this truth, this universal law of human society, has not only outhisted the polities of Greece, but was not first dis- covered there, as the Athenians supposed ; nor was the exercise of this master right and power of words ' so originally and peculiarly the possession of Greeks alone among all living creatures, that ' (as their panegyrist goes on to say) ' if any other people did acquire it from them, this only extended the name of Grecian to distinctions of mind as well as race, so that they were called by it who shared their education rather than those who had their blood.' Another people had been set, many centuries earlier, to work out some of the same, with some very ditVtrent, problems of human society, and under not whf tlu« iwHilion of tho Ilelirew rrophetti by Mr. ^lill. He nays : — ''Hio l'.>ryptijiti nierurchy, tin' piit4nuil dcHputisin of (.'hinii, wore verv fit inHlniniPiit« fur cHiTyinK those niiiinni up to tho point of civilizutiou which Ihcy iitlainiHl. llul tiitviii)^ rcurhiHl lh:it imint tlu-y were Ijrou^lit to « pcnnancnt hull fur wiint "il niciitiil lilx-rty ami itiili\ iduality, — ntjiiitiitoa of improv»ini'0[)hets of Christendom, as well as the multitude of ordinary teachers, avc shall find a real and instructive resemblance between tliese and the Hebrew prophets. The sermons and other discourses of a Latimer at Paul's Cross, of a Luther at the Diet of Worms, of a Knox before the Popish queen and nobles, or of aSavonarola in Florence ; the field- l)reachings of a Wesley or Whitfield ; and, Avithin narrower limits, the orations of a Burke in defence of justice, laws, institutions ; — these, taken Avith the lives and acts, and, Avhere need Avas, the deaths of the men, are the true counterjjarts of Avhat Isaiah and the rest of the HebrcAV prophets said, did, or suffered. The prophets AA^arned, threatened, and denounced, as Avell as advised and encouraged, the king or the people, as the occasion required : and the student of their Avritings has no more difficulty in connecting their discourses Avith the events of their OAvn times than is reasonably explained by the imperfection of the historical records Avliich remain to us of those cA'^ents. WhateA'er else the prophets Avere, they Avere the political advisers and guides of their nation, in the maintenance and devckfpment, through constant struggles, of constitutional government — government by laAV, and not by arbitrary A\'ill. Samuel was the last of the judges, as Avell as the first of the prophets, and it may not be possible to distinguish completely betAveen the tAvo functions in considering his acts. Still it AA'Ould seem that it Avas in his capacity of projihet that he first tried to induce the people over AA'hom he exercised so deservedly great an influence, to abandon their desire for a king, and to continue in the old paths of the commonwealth : Avhen 8 THE PROPHETS POLITICAL ADVISERS. they insisted, ho cliosc and anointed a king ; and when that king treated the constitution and laws with a dis- regard whieli was not tlie less serious Ijtruuse the instances recordfil may seem of no gi-eat imi»ortance to us, Samuel took steps — treasonable steps the pedant miglit call them — for saving the nation and its future life, by advising and sanctioning a change of dynasty. Let us ask our- selves whether the Jewish nation would have jjlayed any part as a 'main propelling agency of modern cultivation,' if its monarchy had been allowed to take the form which Saul would have given it, if he had made religion a creature of the kingly power, and war an instrument of rapine, and not of justice ; and we shall sec that Samuel's view of the matter was the true one, and in accordance with the prop(M' voeati\f J'roj)fitlrn, I. fi, t » Ui»> liko cffi-ct. NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. ii so tho Apostles and Evangelists use the term ;* and so it has always heen understood in modern times of most earnestness and zeal, such as our Eeformation or Civil War, when men interpri^ted the Bible by experience gained in the council -chamber, the battle-field, or the prison, rather than by collation of commentaries. Thus Milton hoj)es, in his ' Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Print- ing,' that England is on the eve of becoming a nation of prophets ; and Jeremy Taylor entitles his book on the like suly'ect, a ' Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying,' without a hint that he is using the word in any unusual sense. \\\ thus claiming to be, not only a teacher, but a teacher sent from God, the Hebrew prophet asserted for himself a position in harmony with that which he asserted for his nation also. The great men, and especially the great teachers, of any nation, j^re-eminently exhibit the charac- teristics of their nation, while they carry them to an excellence and a height not attainable by inferior persons. Now we may say that the characteristic of the Hebrew nation, Avhich distinguishes it from other nations, and marks the place which it holds in the history' of the world, is its witness that the God who made heaven and earth is the moral and political Ruler of men and nations, and that men and nations stand in abiding personal relations with (iod, and (Jod with them. If jjoetry and philosophy and political equality, if laws and constitutions and powers of self-government, be, in one sense, the birthright of all men, it is not the less true that these blessiuL^s were first acquired, matured, and reduced into possession for us, by the special agencies of the Greeks and the Roman. And if, as St. Paul told the Athenians and the Romans, the knowledge of God, and of the relations of God and man, was the birthright of all men, it is not less the fact (as St. Paul also points out), that this knowledge was made clear and coherent and vital in the hearts and lives of men, and matured and consolidated into an abiding inheritance for them, by the agency of the Hebrew nation. It is not • Matt. iii. 1—12; xi 9—14. Luke i. 17, 76, 77. Rom. xii. G. 1 Cor. xi. 4; xiv. 6, A:c. II GREEKS, ROMAXS, Ai\D HEBREWS. without an effort of reflectiou, tliat we nineteenth century Englishmen realize the fact, that the belief in one living God, at once the Creator and the Moral (lovernor of the world, is not the natural bilicf of mankind. Yet tire study of history not only shows us this, but also that though the early religion of the (Jreeks and of the Romans, and the successive elVorts of the wisest and best among them, in developing and purifying that religion, might have been expected to lead to some sueh culmination in a true and pure faith, it was not so in fact. The piety of • Homer and Jischylus and Socrates, of Numa and Scipio and Cict'ro, did not hel]) the world to the attainment of a true faith, as well as to the attainment of true knowledire Hi art, in philosophy, and in civil government. But while the religion of the Cireeks and the Romans decayed, and pa.ssed through superstition into sceptici.sm and atheism, in spite of individual etibrts to arrest the process, to the Hebrews it was given to advance, through national and personal struggles and sutierings, extending over many centuries, and even, at last, through national decay and death, to an ever higher and jnirer knowledge of CJod, and faith in God. We nmst look at the facts of the Hebrew history with a steady and j)rolonged investigation, to see, what we then do see, by how painful a process it was alone possible for men to learn that they are governed by one living and righteous God, at once their King and their Father and Friend, llien we see in that history, how erroneous, partial, and otherwise defective and unworthy beliefs were subjected to successive puritications and elimi- nations, as the Hebrew race pa.ssed through its course. The worship of idols, of many god.s, even of the one (.iod in phices of supjxised special sanctity, finally ends in tlie worsiiip of (Jod who is a Spirit, in sjurit and in truth; human,* and then animal sjicritices, arc sui)crseded by • Though the hiHkiry of Abrahnm had tniiKht tho Jtws from the earliost tim«'H Ihnl IJud rt«juir<->i inoii to nacrilico their own wills by ulKvlieiico and fuith, iind not thtir chiidri-n with actual knifi", and wood, and hro ; ami thoii^'h the law of yUmm tauKht tho wiino trutli hy dirtttinij the ny that canon of criticism, that no conjecture, however ingenious, must disturb tlie integrity of the text, however obscure, until the actual reading has been shown to be hopelessly corrupt. AVe cannot alto- gether dispense with supposition an»l conjecture as helps to the elucidation of such parts of this book as, by reason of their imti([uity, must now remain without any more certain ex}ilanati()n ; nor need we doubt that conjectural criticism often throws a real, though a flickering, light on objects whieh are but dimly discernible in the disUuice of a*^os, if only the torch be kindled by a mind thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the writer commented on, and held in steady, that is judicious, hands. The studious and meditative genius of the German eminently qualiries him for these speculative inquiries and explanations ; but while the Englishman avails himself of them, with the frank acknowledgmient that he could never have originated them himself, he must not scruple to test and modify them bv the practical connnon sense which is his birth- right, and which, if a more modest, is not a less useful gift than the other. To exhaust the evndence and the arguments on every side of a question is the German's proper calling ; and I believe that the help of the German commentators is indispensable to our thorough understand- mrt of the Prophecies of Isaiah : yet that they will be most serviceable to him who can best clu'ck sjieculation with not literal but matter-of-fact criticism ; who can abstain from doubting historical facts because contempo- rary records relate them in ways not ea.sy of verbal recon- ciliation, or in jthrasos not the most obvious or likely if tried bv the standard of his own mind ; and who is content to account for all such minor ditliculties and discrepancies in the same way as he must the like ones whieh ho finds in the books of his own day, and whieh the still living authors caimot, or do not, explain. C'om- mentAtors often darken the text with the mists of their own undue speculativeness ; and by returning to a more pmctical method of investigation, by studying the book as it is, and not as ingenious theorists say it must have been, ITS ARRANGEMENT. 17 Avc shall often secure a firm pathway throiigli difficulties that conjecture has hopelessly jierplexed. The arranf(ement of the Book of Isaiah's Prophecies, as it has come down to us, is mainly chronological, yet some- times with reference to the subjects rather than to the dates of the several pieces which form it. A like method is observable in St. ^Matthew's Gospel, in Avhich the mira- cles, parables, and discourses are collected into groups without strict regard to the order of time ; the Pentateuch, the Book of Psalms, and the Bible itself as a whole, are examjjles of the like composite arrangement, and we have a modern instance of the kind, with an exposition of its importance, in ^Mr. Wordsworth's avowedly deliberate arrangement of his poems into a whole. The particular arguments will be found in their several places ; the general conclusion T deduce from them is, that chapter vi. is the account of Isaiah's consecration to the prophetic office, and its date the earliest in tlie book ; that the three preceding discourses (chapters i., ii. — iv., v.) are placed first, in order to set forth the state of the nation at the time Isaiah began to prophesy, and the consequent fit- ness of the severe terms of the commission given him ; and that the rest of the book preserves the chronological order, with possibly such modifications as might serve to bring together similar pro})hecies, such as the series of * burdens ' on the neighbouring nations ; and probably also in certain cases (chapters vii. — xii., xvii. xviii., xxviii. — XXXV., xl. — Ixvi.) Avith some revision and fusion of dis- courses originally distinct, so that they are now successive paragrnphs in a continuous writing. The supposed insur- mountable obstacles to the acceptance of the conclusion that the book owes its present form to Isaiah's own hand, are the account of the ' Sign ' of the shadow Sfoinar back on the dial, and the doubt — which, indeed, the most eminent German critics say is not a doubt, but a final decision in the negative, — whether certain portions of the book were written by Isaiah at all. These will be best considered as they occur : I will here only notice, in con- nection with the latter question, the fallacy contained in an argument sometimes employed as to the arrangement c iS CRITICISM, HVPOTHEriCAL AXD POSITIVE. i)f the book, and which supposes it to be a collection like those which are popularly called the ' Psiilins of David,' and the ' Proverbs of Solomon,' though it is admitted tlmt only a i)ortion of ench can be ascribed to its nominal author. The fallacy lies in assuming that there is no I difference between a real title, and a popular name, of a ^ book. In the Hebrew the respective titles are, ' Isiiiah,' ' Psidms,' ' Provirbs,' with no names attached to the two last ; and both of these contain special titles expressly attributing various portions to other authors, while the whole book of Isaiah is almost as expressly attributed to him. And if we find indications that the whole, looked at as a whole, is more like the gi'owth of an individual mind than a collection of writings of men who lived in times f:ir apart from each other ; if we can, as we proceed, trace the manner and method in which the prophet's views opened out, as he came in contact with, and sought for the deepest springs of, the circumstances and events of his own times ; then the proportion and relation of particular parts to each other and to the whole will become an important element of the question, and those of which the genuine- ness is disputed will be seen in a light, and with advantages, not available to us if we merely analyze each separately. The fact of such a vital coherence and interdependence will, 1 believe, become more and more apparent as we go on ; we shall find a hanuony resulting not from mere me- chanical compilation, but from the presence of a one in- forming and enlivening spirit, and our reiuson no less than our religious feeling will resist the dismemberment of any }»art of the organized whole. And if so, we .shall (as can liardly be too often repeated) e.scape from the negative and the hypothetical to the positive and the historical. For the negjitive easily passes into the hypothetical criticism. The ctnnmentatoi-s who are too little sensitive to the weight of evidence in favour of the facts we have, are ingenious in making out histctrical dates and details of what they say Vixixi have been the events of Isaiah's time, and alluded to by him in his prophecies. Such criticism is valuable in as far as it is a real induction ; and an unhoped fur, and interesting, vt riticafion of it has of late LIMITS OF REAL IXDUCTIOX. ig years presented itself in the Cuneiform Inscriptions, "which are already found to mention several facts which the Hebrew historians had passed in silence, but which are precisely those which the student of the prophets knew to be wanted, and which he had to assume in any attempt to fonn a distinct picture of the times. But the limit of real induction is soon reached ; and the commentator who expatiates beyond it becomes unable to distinguish between facts and fancy. Each sees the eiTor in his neighbour ; but we shall perhaps best guard against it in ourselves if we consider that we possess no such power of discovering more than a mere outline of the facts on which any such book, even written by a still li^dng author, is founded : no two men, even though fellow-countrymen and con- temporaries, look at the same facts in exactly the same light, nor does either draw exactly the same inferences as the other would ; and especially is this the case in "WTitings in which the imagination of the poet or orator has a large part, because it is one of the prerogatives of the imagina- tion not to be tied down to literal facts, but to modify, while it employs, these instruments of illustrating universal ideas or laws. It might have seemed the easiest thintr possible to supply the focts assumed in most of Words- worth's poems, by a simple enough use of the ' higher criticism ;' but the actual statement of those facts in his ilemoirs shows that they were quite ditferent from what any criticism could have suspected.""' We must admit of the Hebrew, what Niebuhr asserts of the Greek and Latin, literature, — that though we may be able to see that 8ome facts were present to the writer's mind, it is often no more * He presents, as thoiis^h he had himself ■witnessed, various occurrences related to him by his sister ; he also s;iys of the Evening Walk, — 'The plan of it has not been confined to a particular walk, or an individual place ; a proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of my unwillinffnt-ss to sulnnit the poetic spirit to the chains ot fact and real circumstance. The country is idealised rather than described in any one of its local aspects.' — Memoirs, vol. i. p. 68. Southey supplies us with another iilu.stration : — ' In one point I thoui^ht him (Sir George Beaumont) too much of an artist ; none of his pictures represented the scene from which he took them ; he took the features, and disposed them in the way which pleased him best You shall see a little piece of his which perfectly illustrates this. The subject is this verj' house, and scarcely any one object in the picture resembles tlie reality. His wish was to give the character, the spirit of the scene." — Life and Correspoudetice, vol. vi. p. 216. c 2 20 ALLUSIONS TO LOST FACTS. possible to re-piece them into an historical statement than it is to restore the statues or columns to which we know must have once beloncfod those marble fraji^ents which we see everywhere built into the walls in modern Home. We must be content with him to define the true interpretation of an ancient book as ' an expression of its meaninc^ as it was un(lerstO(jd, if not by its contemporaries, yet by those who lived shortly after, when the passing allusions of the moment were lost.'* Nor is it merely lapse of time which prevents our now recovering all the detail of the facts present to the eyes or mind of Isaiah, or of the other prophets. Jeremiah's statement (chap, xxxvi. 2, 4), that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim he wrote in a book all the words that he had spoken during a period of about twenty years : the fact that the short book of Micah is a summary of his discourses delivered during three reigns, as we learn from its title : the existence of like titles and inscriptions throughout the Prophetical Books : the explanatory narra- tives in some of them, and the manner in which these are introduced : the exact rhythmical structure, and elaborate finish of the composition, both of thoughts and language : all show that the writings of the prophets, as we now have them, are not verbal reports of their discourses set down before, or at the moment of, delivery, but careful literary compositions, in which these national preachei-s, at their leisure, and with the deliberate judgment and ability whieh the books themselves exhibit, put on record what wivs of permanent interest to their countrymen, and to all coming ages and peoples. And in doing this they would certainly (like men in the same circumstances now) obliterate, or suffer to become indistinct, references to events which were of absorbing interest at the moment of speaking, but whieh had given place to others at the time «f writing, perha})s many years afterwards, though the eternal and universal truths whieh those particular events had best illustrated then, continued as important, and as worthy of proclamation a.s ever.t Nor need we lament • letter to n Student of I'hilolotfi/, transliitod in tho Educational Magazine (or •lamiary, 1H40, and nitice thon in Iuh I. tic and l.rtlrr.i. t Soo Kwiild, Jhe J 'top lie tat, i. \'l : or uiy transliition of tho first tvo HOW FAR IMPORTANT. 21 that we cannot restore these marks which the prophets have not themselves thought it necessary to retain. They are not only not necessary for a right understanding of our authors, but would have been a real hindrance : for they would have overlaid those universal truths, those enuncia- tions of the laws of God's government of the world, which they teach us to see in all history, and not only in their own, and in which the highest interest of the Hebrew prophets for us consists. But if some commentators are thus mistaken in their anxiety to invent what they cannot find, others go into the other extreme of indifterence to those links between the prophet and his own times which do actually remain, and are so important in enabling us to feel that he was a real flesh and blood man : the middle, matter-of-fact course of taking just what we really have given us, is the best, alike for historical and for philo- sojjhical and theological jiurposes. sections of the Introduction (to which I thus refer) of this work of Ewald, iu Kitto'a Journal of Sacred Literature, for January, 1853, p. 47. CHAPTER 11. THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. ITS TITLE. DATE OF CHAPTER I. PROPHETIC IMAGI- NATION. HEBREW ORATORY RHYTHMICAL. — PARALLELS IN OTHER NATIONS. CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I. — TIMES OF UZZIAH AND JOTHAM. FORMS AND SPIRIT. — NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD. — POLITICAL IDEALS. THE book begins with its title : — ' The vision of Isaiah, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.' This is at once the title of the whole book, and the title of the chapter of Avhich it forms the first verse ; so as to indicate that the chapter is an introduction to the book, and a summary of its contents. If w^e compare it with the similar titles to the books of Amos and Micah, we may see from that comparison that there is no need for the conjecture of Vitringa, adopted by so many of his successors, that it, at first, ended with the word ' Jerusa- lem,' and belonged only to the single prophecy contained in the first chapter, and that some compiler of the book added the rest of the sentence to make a title for the whole. That the expression, ' concerning Judah and Jerusalem,' should be thus prefixed to prophecies which relate to Ephraim, Egypt, Assyria, and other neighbouring nations, will not appear a difficulty (if it ever did so), when we bear in mind that the language of the Hebrew, and above all of the Hebrew prophet, regards the life and force rather than the formal accuracy of its expressions. The highest kind of accuracy indeed, that which distinguishes and asserts the real difterences and relations of things, it has ; but it is careless of, or rather unacquainted with, that classical ISAIAH I. I. DATE OF FIRST PROPHECY. 23 precision of word and inference wliich all European dis- course is more or less imbued with. For the destiny of all these nations did in truth ' concern ' Judah and Jeru- salem, and only for this reason became the object of Isaiah's consideration. ' Whatever he utters against the heathen nations, he says it all for the sake of Judah.' '"' But while this first pro23hecy, or discourse, forms a suitable summary and introduction to the whole book, and its actual place is thus sufficiently accounted for, there seems no reason for doubting that it was delivered on some special occasion. Its date therefore comes in ques- tion, and this must be decided according as we take verses 7, 8, to describe the actual state of the country when the words were uttered, or as prophetic of what it would shortly become. If the latter, we could not hesitate to refer it to the earliest period of Isaiah's ministry — the reign of Jotham, — which every other part of the discourse suits perfectly. If the former, it must have been delivered in the reign of Ahaz, before he shut up the temple ; or during the Assyrian invasion in the time of Hezekiah : and the earlier date would be preferable, as less opposed to the position in which we find the prophecy, though it is not, as some commentators suppose, fixed by the men- tion of idolatry in verses 29, 30, 31, for we see from chapters xxx. 22, xxxi. 7, that this still co-existed with the worship of Jehovah, in the reign of Hezekiah, as it had in those of his predecessors. The doubt cannot be decided by the mere grammatical construction of the sentence as it could be in English, since the Hebrew prophets habitually use the liberty which their language permits, or even requires, of speaking of future events in the perfect tense. Thus the description of the invading army in chap. v. 26, is in the perfect tense in the Hebrew. But the question is, whether, in this particular place, the expressions are those of the poet and prophet picturing the scene as it rises in vision before his imasfination, or whether there be something so matter-of-fact in them that they must be taken to describe the hoiTors of actual invasion, visible at the very time to the bodily eyes of * Kimchi in Gesenius. 24 PROPHETICAL IMAGINATION. Isaiah and liis hearers. There are learned authorities on each side, and they have been marshalled in a special treatise by Casj)ari, Avho decides in favour of the earlier date. If I could perceive the suj)posed difference between this and the ordinary prophetic style, I should (unless that difference made it impossible) still be decided by the external fact — the actual position of the discourse — to adopt the same conclusion. But while I recognise the thoroughly life-like character of the picture, I am not sure that it is more life-like than many which no one denies Isaiah to have drawn in imagination ; nor (if I must argue the a priori point too) that the imaginative creations of such a master of his art as Isaiah can be thus positively distinguished from statements of fact. We must be guided by the context, the usual style of the writer, and the history of the times. The student of Isaiah's worlds knows that he does (like the other prophets) constantly fuse the present and the future into one life-like picture in which it is not always possible to separate imagination (or vision, as the Hebrews called it) from fact. If, then, Ave conceive such a fusion in the present case, and understand that the inroads and devastations of foreim armies were beginning when Isaiah delivered this discourse, but that he heightened his description of what had already occurred with a picture of what was certainly to follow, we shall find no date more suitable for the discourse than that of the latter days of the reign of Jotham, when ' Jehovah began to send against Judah Rezin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah.''^'*' The prosperity of the last sixty years was still existing, though beginning to break up under blows of which the prophet saw from the first that there Avcre to be thenceforth a long succession. And, perhaps, the finished and elegant structure of this prophecy may be taken with some propriety as itself an indication of the early date of its composition. It is the attribute of youth, and especially of youthful genius, to embody its newly-budding thoughts and feelings in ideals of microcosmic beauty and completeness : but by-and-bye the growing and expanding mind finds these ideals of its * 2 Kings, XV. 37. HEBREW VERSE AND RHYTHM. 25 own creation too narrow to express tlie whole truth of things, and abandons them for the larger, though severally less complete, forms which the various realities of the actual world sujoply, and then seeks to find in these a new and better ideal, large as the world itself; — an ideal which is revealed to, rather than created by, the human mind ; and the source of which, if we will go so far back, we must look for in that which the Athenian philosoj^hers called the eternal truth and beauty of the divine mind, and Hebrew sages the things of the kingdom of God. That the marks of such a first youthful ideal are here conclusively jDresent I do not venture to assert positively, but rather leave the j)oint to the feeling and judgment of the reader ; but certainly this short chapter may be taken as a very complete summary and specimen of the chief characteristics — moral, j^olitical, religious, poetical — of the whole book ; and we may find in it the germs of almost all the great principles which Isaiah announced and applied to practice during the whole period that he exercised the prophetic office. To Bishop Lowth we owe the first complete and con- clusive analysis and explanation of the structure of HebrcAv poetry, and the proof that the prophets wrote in the same measure or rhythm as the poets properly so called ; and we could hardly have a better illustration of the latter fact than in the chapter before us. The rhythm of thoughts and images which in Hebrew poetry* takes the place of the rhythm of syllables and sounds, and enables it to be adequately translated into other languages, may here be studied in its several forms : — line answering to line, and word to word ; each bringing out the depth and force of the other, sometimes by variation, sometimes by opposition, sometimes by accumulation, of the corresponding or con- trasted thoughts ; no thought so like the other as to occasion sameness, nor so unlike as to make a discord ; no formal adherence to any one rule of parallelism, but a free movement in which the poet's inward sense of beauty and * The primitive poetry of Transylvania and of some other nations is said to be characterized b}^ a rhythm of thoughts instead of sounds ; but the Hebrew alone has carried this rhythm into the period of mature civilization and literary culture. 2 6 STRUCTURE OF HEBREW RHYTHM. order supersedes all formal rules ; and a blending and fusing of the several parts into a harmony which, with its variety in unity, jiroduces a fulness not attainable in any other way. Let us take the first paragraph : — Hear O heavens, and give ear 0 earth ; For Jehovah hath spoken. 1 have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against me. "i he ox knoweth his owner, And the ass hia master's cril) : 15ut Israel doth not know, ]\Iy people doth not consider. Here, in the first line, ' heavens ' is set against ' earth,' and both united in rhythmical opposition to ' Jehovah,' the inanimate creation to the living God ; Avhile ' hear' and ' give ear ' in like manner correspond with each other and with ' s2)oken.' Then the next six lines have a double correspondence and double contrast of the four last lines among themselves, while the two preceding ones (which also balance each other) indirectly involve and anticipate the images of the four that follow : — ' I ' and ' me' corresponding and contrasting with ' owner' and 'master,' 'nourished' with crib,' and 'brought up' again with 'owner,' and 'children ' with 'ox' and 'ass;' and the rebellion of the former with the obedience of the latter : and the thoughts are again repeated with a variation and summed up in the two last lines. And, finally, those two lines, with that taste and judgment with which every true poet (and none more than Isaiah) keejjs down his imagination, and subordinates the parts of his diction to the Avhole, turn back the mind from images to realities, bringing before it the very people of Israel and their sin. Verses 18, 19, 20, supply us with another instance of very beautiful rhytlimical construction : — Come, now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah : Though your sins he as scarlet, they sliall he white as snow ; Though they bo red like crimson, they shall he as wool. If ye be willing and fibodient : "S'e sliall feed on the good of the land. L\it if ye refuse and rebel : The sword shall feed on you. For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. First the single introductory liiK^ ; then two, corresj)onding RHYTHMICAL ORATORY OF THE HEBREWS. 27 as to the lines (yet with the artistic variation in the relative positions of ' white' and the answering ' red'), but with the parts of each line contrasting between them- selves ; then four lines, in which the balance is between the alternate lines, with a contrast of word for Avord in the first and third, and a play and contrast of words and images (which call up, as in a back ground, the whole jjicture both of rural plenty and foreign invasion) in the second and fourth lines ; and then the single line brings the period to a full close, while it answers to its first line. These lines must have been elaborately constructed ; and they evince a delicately cultivated and refined sense of beauty in the least as well as the greatest matters of the poet's art. And in this, as in every part of the rhythmic art disj)layed by Isaiah, there is a soul of poetry inhabiting and expressing itself through this beautiful form. Yet we must rejDeat, that the prophet — that Isaiah— is not a poet, but a preacher or orator ; his aim is not to de- light, but to teach and persuade men : he is not content that his hearers should unconsciously receive into their hearts the seeds of truth and goodness in the form of beauty, there to take root and grow up, night and day, one knows not how : but he labours to impart these by direct indoctrination in all its moral methods of reproof, warning, consolation, and instruction. There may be no exaggeration in the assertion that Isaiah possessed poetic genius of the highest order, and had cultivated it with the utmost care ; but it is his servant not his master, and he, the patriot and the man of God, habitually employs it for the purposes of his own proper vocation. The elaborate Masoretic punctuation, which has undertaken to mark the tone not only of words but of projjositions, and so to pre- serve the sense of the thought, the internal life of the sentence,* in a dead language, recognises this distinction ])etween the properly poetical books — Job, Psalms, and Proverbs — and those of the prophets. And while there are traces in the Hebrew text of the former, there are none in that of the latter, that they w^ere once written verse- wise. On ground of form, then, no less than of substance, * Ewald's Sebrew Grammar, translated bv Dr. Nicholson, § 180. 28 RHYTHMICAL DISCOURSE I have thought it more correct — iu the Version which the reader will find at the end of the volume — to represent the original by a translation printed as prose. At the same time I have — with a few exceptions, more or less required by the sense — marked the principal Masoretic pauses by the colon, full stop, and paragraph, much as is done in the Authorized Version.* And if we consider that the Hebrew language retained to the last its 2)rimitive simplicity of construction, and never acquired those complex developments of gram- mar which have fitted the classical and modern tongues for elaborate prose composition ; and that for this reason, as well as because Hebrew verse was a rhythm of sense rather than of sound, the main distinction between it and prose must always have been in the tone of thought ; — we shall find an imjDortant illustration in the rhythmical oratory of the Greeks at a period when their political culture, indeed, Avas at a much less advanced stage than that of the Jews in the time of Isaiah, but that of the two languages, as instruments of thought, apjjarently not so unequal. ' We must recollect,' says Mr. Grote, of this early rhythmical discourse, ' that this was not only the whole poetry, but the whole literature of the ago : . . . . and writing, if beginning to be employed as an aid to a few superior men, was at any rate generally unused, and found no reading public. The voice was the only connnunicant, and the ear the only recipient, of all those ideas and feelings which productive minds in the community found themselves impelled to pour out ; both voice and ear being accustomed to a musical recitation or chant, ajjparently something between song and speech, with simple rhythm, and a still simpler occasional accomj^animent from the primitive four-stringed harp.' And again, — ' Kallinus .... employed the elegiac metre for exhortations of Mar- like patriotism ; and the more ample remains which we possess of Tyrticus are sermons in the same strain, preach- ing to the Spartans bravery against the foe, and unanimity * The Koran, and other rhythmical but not metrical books of the Arabs are always written as jjroso. The reader will find an interestinu; account of this jirose, and of the resemblances and ditl'orcncos l)otwoen it and the corre- ej)')nding Hebrew lileraturo, iu Mr. Chciinery's truuslation of the Assemblies of Hariri, vol. i. pp. 41 If. OF OTHER NATIONS. 29 as well as obedience to the law at home. They are patriotic effusions, called forth by the circumstances of the time, and sung by single voice, with accompaniment of the flute, to those in whose bosoms the flame of courage was to be kindled. For though what we peruse is verse, we are still in the tide of real and present life, and we must suppose ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing the citizens, when danger or dissension is actually impend- ing.''"' The modern Italian improvisatore, too, can utter verse extempore ; and such was the rhythm of Grattan's first speech in the English House of Commons, that we are told (in Lord Holland's Memoirs) that ' Mr. Pitt beat time to the artificial but harmonious cadence of his periods.' And Mr. Lecky says of Shiel's speeches that ' they seem exactly to fulfil Burke's description of perfect oratory, half poetry and half prose. 'f Even in the actual utterance of their discourses the Hebrew prophets must have come very near the rhythmical form of their written works : and with whatever mixture of simple or even rude prose we suppose them to have spoken, we see that they afterwards recorded the substance of their discourses in literary compositions, which for their careful editing may be better compared with Burke's pamphlets than with his merely reported speeches ; while their eminently poetical thoughts and imagery, as well as diction, may remind us of the free blank t-erse in which Shakspeare idealises spoken discourse, as contrasted with the more restricted movement of Milton or Spenser. The following passage, too, may throw some light on the sub- ject. ' My pamphlet .... was composed as for an oration before an assembly, and flowed straight from my heart, and hence it must be read like a speech. Any one who should read it to himself, or aloud, without modu- lating his voice, in a uniform tone, like a treatise that is merely concerned with ideas, would probably be as much puzzled with it as the ordinary reader is with Greek ora- tions .... particularly those in Thucydides, before he has learnt to read with the ear .... Most of our authors do not in the least know and consider, that the old prose * History of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 100, 110. t The Leaders of Fublic Opinion in Ireland, p. 257. 30 ISAIAH I. 2 — 9. STATE OF THE NATION. writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience ; whilst among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone, at least only for the ear in the case of an easy narrative. This is why my style is found so strange antl unusual, and hence punctuation is so difficult to me, for I ought to have many more signs in order to indicate my exact intentions. In fact, with all that the writer com- poses as if he were speaking, the character of the move- ment, and the time, ought to be marked, as in music, for the ordinary reader.''" I suspect this is the key to the music of our English Bible and Prayer Book. It also illustrates the Masoretic accentuation, of which I have s^Joken above. Let us turn to the matter of the prophecy. The heavens and earth are constant to the constitution and laws imj^osed on them by their Creator, and to them does Jehovah ajipeal against a nation who have ceased to believe in any moral order or government of the world : t the dullest animals show an attachment to their owner's person, and a recognition of his manner of caring for them, though he keeps them only for his own profit ; but this people disregard and set at nought their filial relation to Jehovah, though he has chosen them out from all man- kind to be his own children, bestowed on them the peculiar care and love of a ftither, reared them to man's estate by making them a nation, and by a long education qualified them to understand as well as to enjoy the bless- ings of this adoption. They have made themselves like those beasts of burden, loading themselves with their * Niebuhr's Life and Letters, vol. i. t Lowth here quotes Psalm 1. 3, 4, Micah vi. I, 2, Dout. xxxii. 1, iiiid Deut. XXX. 19 ; and Gcsunius Virgil's 'Esto nunc Sol testis, et hiuc mihi Terra vocanti,' &c. — ^-En. xii. 176. To wLicli may lie added the appeal of Prometheus, — ' 'i2 c'loc ai9))p, Kal ra\virr(poi wna', TroTajxiuv rt 7rr/yai, irttpnuji' rt KVfiuTuiv iiviiniBfiov ytXadfjia, iTa)ji^?)Tof) t( yi), Kai TOP navoTTTijv kvkXiov //Xiou koKui.' iEsch. I'rom. J'iiicf. 88. And Hamlet's — ' 0 all ye host of heaven, O earth I ' All are founded on the same intuitive feeling of the mind, that the works and POLICY OF UZZIAH AND JOTHAM. 31 iniquities ; so degenerated are tliey from their true birth- right, that they seem to be evil in their very stock and breed, Hke the Canaanites and other accursed races ;'"" — ' They have forsaken Jehovah, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are gone away backward.' Therefore punishment is coming upon the sinful nation, and punishment severe and repeated enough to rouse it from its obstinate rebellion, till, while it is adding new acts of revolt and apostacy, there seems no place left on which to strike again ; as it is become thoroughly diseased at heart, it shall suffer outwardly in j^roportion to its inward insensibility ; as there is no soundness, and no desire for soundness within, so shall it sink under the repeated strokes of a foreign invasion wdiich adds fresh wounds to sores already festering, while it longs in vain for a deliverer and a healer. The vision of that woe rises before the prophet's eyes, and he sees all the national fruits of the long and vigorous reigns of Uzziah and Jotham swept away. Uzziah had effectually humbled that old and troublesome enemy of Judah, the Philistines, dis- mantling their fortified cities, and establishing his own garrisons in their territory : on the opposite side he had reduced the Ammonites to their proper condition of tribu- taries, from which they had never lost any opportunity of revolting since David conquered them : he had recovered the port of Elath on the Red Sea, rebuilt it, and thus, after an interval of about eighty years, restored to Judah an important share in the commerce of the world : and he had strongly fortified Jerusalem, and organised a well- armed and disciplined militia, ' that went out to war by bands,' that so the people might not be taken from the cultivation of the land and other peaceful occupations powers of outward nature are an abiding witness for a settled constitution and order in the universe, however overlooked or defied. So Wordsworth in his Ode to Duty, — ' Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong. And the most ancient heavers through thee are fresh and strong.' Nor should we overlook the contrast of the pantheistic language of the classical parallels, with the distinction between the world and its Maker which is so clear to the Jew that he does not so much assert as assume it as an axiom im- possible to doubt. * See below, on chapter xiv. 28. 32 FOREIGN INVASION. except in regular turns. And wliilc by these means ' his name spread abroad, even to the entering in of Eg}-pt, for he strengthened himself exceedingly,' he was no less active in availing himself of the peace he had secured abroad to encourage commerce and agriculture at home, he himself setting an example in the latter which his nobles were not slow to follow : ' he built towers ' for the protection of his flocks ' in the desert ' or commons where they pastured, ' and digged many wells, for he had much cattle both in the low country and in the plains, husband- men also and vinedressers in the mountains and in Carmel, for he loved husbandry :' the re-opening of the port of Elath would not merely have enabled his mer- chant-ships to supply Judah and Jerusalem with the luxuries of Africa and India, but would have made Judoea the direct natural highway of much of the traffic between those countries and Europe which the Phoenicians can-ied on by help of trade-caravans, and which would previously have taken a different route ; and while trade and agricul- ture thus filled the land with wealth, Egjqot supplied them with horses and chariots : and what the reign of Uzziah had begun, that of Jotham, at the end of half a century, was still carrying on.'" And now the proj^liet beholds all overthroAvn, the cities burned, the cultivated fields and the pastures laid waste, and the whole land devoured, plun- dered, and devastated, as is the way when foreign and barbarian enemies invade a country,t while the inhabi- tants look on, unable to resist, and Jerusalem itself, the * 2 Chron. xxvi., xxvii. t " England is hecomo tho rcsiuoiice of foreignorg and the property of strangers; at the present time there is no Pjnglishman, cither earl, bishop, or abbot: strangers ail, Ihey prey upon the riches and vitals of England ; nor is there any hope of a termination of this misery." — William of Mulnisbury, ii. 13. ' Look on thy country-, look on fertile France, And see the cities and the towns defaced liy wasting ruin of the cruel foe. See, see, the ]>iniTig malady of France, Boliold the wounds, the most unruitural wounds, \\'hich thou thyself hast given hvx woeful heart.' First I'art of King llotnj VI. iii. 3. Grotius quotes — • Tmpins hrrc tarn culta novalia miles hahehit ? liarbarua has segolcsi'' — I'irij. Ec. i. 71, 72. JEHOVAH OF HOSTS. 33 only remaining hope, is threatened with siege. Then, by- one of those transitions and combinations with which the imagination can throw a gleam of light and beauty over the darkest and most terrific picture, and yet at the same time even heighten its truth and force, the wasted fields seem to the prophet like the vineyards and cucumber gar- dens at the end of the fruit season, when they are indeed stripped and trampled, and desolate-looking, yet only because the crops have been gathered in for the benefit of the husbandman : and the sole surviving capital stands there apparently abandoned by its divine watcher and keeper, like the cottage or lodge — sometimes a temporary booth of branches, or a hammock, but sometimes, no doubt, a stone cottage, such as we see in the like vineyards and gardens in Provence — which sheltered the keeper of the vineyard or garden as long as its fruits could temjjt the jackal and the fox, and was then shut up for the season, or left as useless : yet, inasmuch as it is ' like a besieged city,' it is garrisoned as well as beleaguered, and hope remains within, though desolation is without.'" And then the thoughts and images of selfish prosperity and general calamity, of national sins and divine judgments, but of a small remnant saved through and out of all, assume another form, and recall the ancient fate of those cities which were destroyed because Jehovah could not find ten righteous men therein : — ' Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah.' Jehovah of hosts, or of armies, is a favourite expression of the Hebrew writers, and especially of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Malachi, by Avhich they recognize him as the universal governor of heaven and earth, ' who has ordained and constituted the services of men and angels in a wonderful order : ' — ' His state Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed * Knobel would translate ' like a watch tower,' understanding either a military post or a tower like those which Uzziah built in ' the wilderness,' and which at once protected and sheltered the flocks which pastured in the open plains round it. D 34 THE DAUGHTER OF ZION. And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; They also serve who only stand and wait : ' — and who employs his kingly and almighty power to rule the nations in righteousness, and, as now, both to punish and to save his chosen people. Nor need we be deterred by grammarians from discovering a like depth and beauty of meaning in the phrase just before — ' the daughter of Zion,' or doubt that to the mind of the prophet and his thoughtful hearers it called up the idea of the nation having been brought up by, set apart for, and by formal covenant united to, Jehovah ; called his bride ; and appointed to show forth, in the constitution, and order, and duties, of national society and j^olitical life, a new and wider manifestation of those laws of God's relation with, and government of, man, of which marriage was the first type : while the name of Zion Avould remind them of a city founded upon a rock, and that could not be moved — set upon a hill, and that could not be hid. The sin of Sodom is said (Ezekiel xvi. 49) to have been pride, fulness of bread, abundance of idleness, and contempt of the poor and needy ; their land Avas one of peculiar fertility, and they had given themselves \v^ to a mere life of nature, till they wallowed in all the Avorst sins that break out from such a life. National institutions are the proper means of preserving a peof)le from, or raising them out of, naturalism ; but the prophet protests that his countrymen were sunk in it, notwithstanding their national polity, and their strict maintenance of its forms. He seems to say that the blasted site of the cities of old was a perpetual witness to the Jews of God's wrath against this sensualism — a Avitness abiding from generation to generation in the very midst of them — yet they AA^ere reckless of the AA'arning : just as the Neapolitans seemed to Arnold to be when he was contemplating the destruc- tion of Herculancum and Pompeii, and draAving the like moral from it. This belief that there is a more than accidental relation between moral and physical evils, though apparently supported by many focts in the history of nations and individuals in all ages, is opposed by the ISAIAH I 10 — 2 0. FORMS AND SPIRIT. 35 logical conclusions from wider and more exact observation, as it is by our Lord's declaration that the men on whom the tower of Siloam fell were not sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem. But such a belief was held by- Isaiah and all the prophets as a part of their faith in God's moral government of the world ; nor can it be doubted that physical calamities have, in fact, in all ages exercised a moral influence on men's consciences, though the action may have been through the imagination and not through the reason. The prophet kindling at the thought of his own com- parison, and feeling how just a one it is, calls on those men— rulers and people — who, though professing to ad- minister and obey the law of Jehovah, were in heart no better than the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, to hear what the law of Jehovah is in spirit and in truth. They still maintain all the external forms of religion according to the established ecclesiastical ritual, but no inward faith quickens them. This has ever been the great abuse of religious forms in all nations and times. Forms there must be ; they are a real, vital part of religion, as the body is a real part of the man : but when they lose their life they become as worthless and corrupt as a dead body. To preserve this life is the difficult task : it must be fed direct from heaven through a channel that can only be kept open as long, and as far, as man consents that his spirit should be raised above the routine of nature and the world. And this elevation is so irksome to our nature, it is so much pleasanter that morality and religion should go on, like digestion, by the unconscious working of a me- chanical organization, that men are always yielding to the delusion that the thing can be accomplished, — from the African or the Buddhist, who multiplies his prayers by help of a rotary calabash or drum, to the Komish or Anglican priest, who ' makes God ' with robings, and genuflexions, and unintelligible utterances, and the eleva- tion of a wafer, or the Protestant divine with his ' Letter of Scripture,' and his Articles which are to fasten truth, like an idol, ' with nails so that it shall not be moved,' and to establish a ' doctrine and discipline from which he D 2 36 LOSS OF NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD. will not endure any varying or departing in the least degree.' Therefore Isaiah protests in Jehoyah's name that the Law is not in the forms but in the meaning of them : sacrifices of bullocks and Croats are worthless if they are not the symbols of an actual though inward sacrifice of that flieshly will which is separating the worshipper from Jehovah's spiritual presence ; the multitudes who throng the courts of the temple, and think they are keeping the command to ' appear before Jehovah,' though their hearts are fixr away, are but treading that command under their feet (as the Hebrew word implies) : oblations which ex- press no sincere thankfulness are vain : incense with which no prayer of the heart ascends is an abomination : new moons""' and sabbaths do but mock God when they are kept by men Avho are grinding the faces of the poor with unremitted and unrewarded work : the great yearly as- semblies are worse than idle types of national brotherhood in the midst of universal and habitual oppression and misery. And such a national worship and obedience to the law as this will obtain nothing from Jehovah in the day of calamity : men may lift up their hands in prayer, but in vain, while those hands have been so long and deeply stained with blood ; they must wash them thoroughly (still alluding to the ecclesiastical ritual), by ceasing to do evil, and learning to do well ;t they must ' seek justice, restrain the opin'essor, right the fatherless, maintain the widow's cause,' If they will so reform, and return to true obedience to their King and their God, he will himself wash them thoroughly from all their iniquity, though it be more deeply ingrained than the power of man can reach. The word translated reason, means also iilead or argue in a court of justice, as it does in Job xxiii. 7, and ^licah vi. 2. The context shows that both ideas must be in- cluded here ; for while the whole tone of this projjliecy is • Tho first of the month was kcjit by special pu1)h'c worship, when the trumpets were blown (Numbers xxiii. 11 — 15 ; x. 13 ; P.^alm Ixxxi. 3) ; by rest from trade (Amf)8 viii. o); by religious instiuction (2 Kings iv. 23j ; and perluiyis by feasting (1 Sam. xx. 9). t 'I'hc Masoretic punctuation hero breaks through tho parallelism, but ])erhajis rightly ; junt as Shakespeare and Hilton occasionally introduce rugged or halting lines to give I'reodom and vigour instead of a too monotonous rogolarily of rhythm. ISAIAH I. 2 1 — 27. THE FAITHLESS CITY. 37 judicial, arraigning the unjust and iniquitous rulers of the Jewish nation before the judgment-seat of their invisible King, the reformation, which is the end of judgment, is never lost sight of, the fatherly character of the Judge is always present, and he reasons with the culj)rit, and is willing to be reasoned with. He offers them the like justice and mercy which he calls on them to show to others. They are to come into court not merely to receive condemnation but to argue out their own cause, and to hear the reasons of their sentence, nay, to obtain its reversal if they will. For he remem- bers his covenant, and is not a God of mere power and .wrath, nay, not even of mere unbending law, but a living Lord of righteousness and love, resolved indeed to maintain absolutely and without infringement his own holiness, and justice, and truth, yet desiring that the most disobedient should still depart from his sin, and return and live again under his holy constitution and government, and enjoy the blessings of so doing, loving God, and knowing that God loves him : therefore, in the midst of all these threatenings, God aj)j)eals to the people themselves whether he is not veasonahle in his conduct towards them. Thus the word is at once expres- sive of the deepest truth and meaning, and in accor- dance with the actual practice of the Hebrew institutions, which preserved much of their patriarchal character, as those of all Eastern nations do to this day, even when most corrupt. ' The faithful city is become a harlot ' : — Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion, the wife of the Holy One of Israel, has broken the bond of her covenant with him, has set at nought the divine constitution and order in which he originally placed, and has continued to sustain, her : and, as the outward consequence and sign of this spiritual de- fection, has actually fallen to the worship of other gods. Throughout this prophecy Isaiah dwells chiefly on the sins of the princes and rulers of the nation, and only inciden- tally on those of the people ; and accordingly, he now dilates on the characteristic vices of the former, which are the fruits of their national unfaithfulness. Social and 38 THE TRUE REFORMATION. political morality have vanished along with religious foith ; thieves and murderers are found instead of vktuous citizens ;* the nobles and men in authority are the first to break the laws they should enforce ; the administration of justice is so corrupt that the judges take bribes, con- nive at the robbers Avhose booty they share, and permit the rich man to pervert the law for the oppression of the fatherless and the widow, who have no patrons to demand, and no money to buy, justice : and thus the aristocracy, setting aside all belief that they hold their wealth and power in trust from God for the benefit of the people under them, do but employ these as irresistible engines for breaking down all rights that can oppose them in their pursuit of luxury and vice. Therefore will the mighty Lord of the nation put forth his strength, and purge out these iniquities as the metal smelter separates the dross with alkali (the literal sense of 'i:)urely'), destroying those who have defied and renounced him, and by means of this severe discipline restoring the nation to its former and true character of a people faithful to God, and dealing uprightly with each other. ' Ziou sliall be redeemed ' through this execution of judgment, and her restored and reformed children shall dwell within her walls in righteous- ness. ' Converts ' implies restoration alike from captivit}'' and from moral l)ondage : it is a cognate word to that translated 'return' in chapter x. 21. It may be asked. At what former period of Jewish history did the nation deserve that character for faith and righteousness which Isaiah ascribes to it ' at the begin- ning ? ' and at what subsequent time was it restored to the condition which he promises ' afterwards ? ' I must reply, — not by pointing back to the days of ^Eoses or Samuel, or David, or Solomon, nor forward to those of Hezekiah, Josiah, or the Maccabees ; for it could be shown that the men who liv(^d at .each of those times Avere ready to cry out against their special corruption, but — by reference to that universal habit of men's minds to suppose a past and hope for a future, realization in actual life, of their ideals * The word ' lodfi^inf!; ' is smigosti'd by the imago of a popul 'silver' by its wetillli ; ' wiue ' by its lu.\uiy. ous city ; POLITICAL IDEALS. 39 of human i^erfection. Few men, in any time or country, have that power of metaphysical abstraction which can enable them to contemj^late ideals as such ; and even they, when they descend to practical life, and the practical instruction of the men around them, find it necessary to translate their ideas into the popular language. The oppressed Saxon prayed for the restoration, by his Norman tyrant, of the laws of Edward, though it would have been difficult for him to prove the personal merits of that king as a legislator or ruler ; the Long Parliament based all its demands on the ancient rights of the Commons ; the French and English Republicans of the last century referred to an original social contract ; and in our own day the Church of the first centuries and the chivalry of the middle ages, supply to considerable classes a local habitation and name for their ideals of life, though it would not be easily shown that there ever was an adequate historical realization of any one of them. We all feel indeed that there is a fiict no less than a truth recogf- nized in such language, both as to the past and the future. There is a continual progress in the world, and every step of it is gained by the triumph of some good over some evil, and consequently by some realization in fact of what, till it had so triumphed, could only assert itself in idea. Thus the new is always the restoration of the old, and the old the promise of the new, and the whole ideal of time is in light, though the particular moment as it passes is marked by shadow. It will become increasingly ap- parent as we go on, how important an element of the prophetic character and office this belief and promise of the realization of a perfect commonw^ealth was, and in Avhat relation it stands to the search or lonofino- for such a society by the philosophers and philanthropists of other nations and times. But to return to the detail of the text before us. In the judgments and the restoration which the prophet fore- tells, he declares that the people shall learn the worthless- ness of the idols which they have been worshipping under the oak trees, and in the sacred groves and gardens. The worship of the High Places, as I have shown above (page 5), 40 ISAIAH I. 2^ — 31. DESTRUCTION OF IDOLS. Avas partly a local worship of Jehovah, "which only became irregular and blameable in later times ; but there was also a widespread worship of Baal, Astarte, and Moloch, the old gods of the Canaanites and other nations, in sacred groves and gardens as Avell as on the hill-tops — a worship of impersonated and deified sensuality and cruelty — which sometimes even established itself within the precincts of tlie temple itself, and was still more readily blended with, or substituted for, the worship of Jehovah in the High Places. And this idolatrous worship Avas going on in Juda3a during the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, at the same time with the temple services, as ajipears from 2 Kings XV. 3, 4, compared with 2 Chron. xxvii. 2.* In the day of judgment and restoration, says the prophet, these men who have been flourishing in their sin like their oaks, and living in pleasures like those of their well-Avatered gardens, shall find that the idols to which those oaks and gardens are dedicated, have no power to save them from a destruc- tion which shall make them ' as an oak Avhose leaf fiideth, and as a garden that hath no Avater,' — images Avhicli Avill be the more forcible if Ave remember that in a southern climate, trees fade rather from excessive heat than from seasonable cold, and a garden Avithout water is a mere desert of sand. Then shall the strong, the mighty, and the unjust ruler become toAA', and his idols, the Avork of his hands, a spark ; they shall both burn together, and no man shall quench them. In verse 29, is an instance of AAdiat seemed to LoAA^th's classical taste a corrupt reading : — ' They shall be ashamed of the oaks Avhich t/c have desired.' But this variation of the persons of the verb is not unusual in HebrcAV, and cer- tainly no corruption. Indeed, if aa'c look at Psalm xci., Avhich is very artistically constructed, Ave shall see reason to think that what jars so harshly on a classically trained ear AA-as a beauty to the HcbrcAV poets. I dwell the more upon these peculiarities of idiom and composition, because I believe that we cannot understand the meaning of Isaiah, any more than we can of Shakspearo, unless our minds are • For allusions to tho Huly'ort nt other tirnos. goc Dout. xvi. 21, 1 Kings xvi. 23, 2 Kings xvi. 4, 2 Chron. xxviii 1, Ezukiul vi. 13. LANGUAGE AND NATIONAL CHARACTER. 41 emancipated from servile adherence to classical rules. Each lanoruaii'e and literature has its own laws, and these are derived from and connected with a distinctive national mind, which expresses itself in its own way through the great writers of each nation : and thus language becomes a key to national character. CHAPTER III. ISAIAH II., III., IV. HEBREW GENIUS IMAGINATIVE RATHER THAN LOGICAL. PERFECT AND I.MPERFECT TENSES IN HERREW. — THE LAST DAYS. CONTRAST OF THE IDEAL AND ACTUAL STATE OF THE NATION. — FOREIGN INFLUENCES. PRIVATE IDOLATRY. — POLITICAL MATERIALISM. NATIONAL DECAY. LAWS OF god's GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD. GOOD AND EVIL OF COM- MERCE. HEBREW MATRONS. FEMALE LUXURY. — ITS PUNISHMENT. — THE BRANCH OF JEHOVAH. — THE RESTORED THOUGH HUMBLED NATION. THE next discourse, consisting of chapters ii., iii., iv., is entitled, ' The Word that Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.' The 2:)ropriety of applying the phrase ' saw ' to ' the Word ' is ai)2)arent, if we refer ourselves to the mental process which takes place in meditating upon any important truth, esj^ecially while the vividness of the first discovery lasts ; and still more is it obvious, as we read the discourse itself, and look at its various pictures of military power, maritime commerce, wealth, luxury, pride, selfishness, and irreligion ; of political misgovernment, anarchy, and decay ; and of ultimate reform and restoration. No arguments need be added to prove that the pro- phecy depicts the state of society in the period between the latter end of the reign of Uzziah and the beginning of that of Ahaz, and that we may properly fix the date of its delivery within those limits, and when the pro- spects of the reign of Ahaz were coming into view. The initial ' And ' here, as in chapters vi. 1 ; vii. 1 ; viii. 1 ; and elsewhere, may be among the indications that the book has been revised and edited b}- the author as a whole. The opening paragraph — a passage of aphoristic com- pleteness and beauty, and here serving as a text to the ISAIAH II. 2. HEBREW PAST AND FUTURE. 43 subsequent discourse — is found also, with a few verbal alterations, in Isaiah's contemporary, Mieah (chap. iv. 1 — 3). Conjecture has variously attributed it to each of these prophets, and to some older one, copied by both : the last is, perhaps, the more probable supposition, though the evidence is not sufficient for certainty. This description of ' the Last Days ' — which in the Hebrew begins, ' And it hath come to pass {n'T} 2')erf.) . . the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be {T^^T^'^ imperf. or fut), established,' &c. — is an instance of the use which I have already referred to of the perfect tense to express the certain future. Its explanation, in as fjir as this is the place for considering it, seems to be that the structure of such a passage as that before us is imaginative, not logical — a picture, not a statement. The sjDeaker completely projects himself into " the last days ;" he is there, he finds them come ; he looks about him to see what is actually going on, and sees that the mountain of Jehovah's house is about to be — still in process of being — established at the head of the mountains ; he looks again, and the nations have already arrived at the place prepared for them, yet so freshly that they are still calling one another on ; and as they come up they find that the King they seek is already there, and has effected some of his judgments and decisions before they arrive for their turn. So thoroughly does this imaginativeness j)ervade the language not only of the prophets but of the historians, so habitually has the imaginative and not (as with us) the logical faculty dictated the laws of Hebrew grammar, that the form ' and it hath come to j^ass ' in the first line, * refers always to a future event ;' while that of ' shall be ' in the second, is usually equivalent to the e^yeVero of historical narration.'" And the subject is still more clearly explained in the general rule that in continued narrations of the past, only the first verb stands in the perfect tense, the others being in the imperfect or future ; and on the contrary-, in continued descri23tions of the future, the first verb is in the future or imperfect, while the rest are in the perfect. Thus in Genesis i. 1 : — ' In the beginning God * Gesenius, Lexicon, word HTI- 44 THE HEBREW MIND created {perf.) the heavens and the earth : And God said {impevf. or fut.) Let there be light, and there was (imperf.) Hght : And God saw,' &c. And just the reverse in Isaiah vii. 17, ff. : — ' Jehovah will bring (fut. or imperf.) upon thee and upon thy people, days such as have not come since ' &c. ' And it hath (perf.) happened on that day . . . And they have (perf.) come.''"" In both these ex- amjiles the speaker evidently places himself in the midst of the events themselves, describing the past creation as it would have been seen by that eye that ' was there or ever the earth was, while as yet he had not made the land nor the fields,' t or picturing the future as Ahaz Avould realize it after it had become the past. Nor is it only in the Hebrew language and its grammar, that this characteristic appears : it pervades the whole genius of the nation, the structure and growth of their laws and institutions, and the acts and habits of their legislators and statesmen, as well as the writings of their poets and historians : they are * of imagination all compact ;' a very ' nation of prophets ; ' the vision of a perfect, and therefore future still more than past or present, kingdom of Jehovah, is always before them, and to its realization as their goal, and their appointed rest, they j)ress forward through the mere actual and present. It may be difficult for an Englishman, in our nineteenth century, to enter into this state and habit of mind, and so into that creative faculty or power of prophecy which we no longer possess in its ancient form. But it is a difficulty somewhat analogous to that Avhich we find in realizing the state of mind which created languages and mythologies, and which in those ways also was so highly imaginative, that in the present stage of the human race, and the now i)redomi- nating development of the reasoning faculties, we have no corresponding inward experience, t Yet the faculty of * See the Grammars of Ewald and Gesenius on these tenses. t ProverTis, viii. 22 — 30. The whole passage bears on this point in a noticeable manner. J ' It may bo observed as a general fact,' says Dr. Prichard, ' that Lan- quagos appear to have become more pcrmancMit as wo come down towards later times. During the last ten or perhaps the last fifteen centuries, they have undergone few alterations oxct-pt through the effect of conquest, or the iutermixtui'e of nations. The Uretons .... are still easily iulelligiblo to IMAGINATIVE RATHER THAN LOGICAL. 45 imagination still exists in us ; and if we study its character and workings in our own minds, and in the writings of the 23oets of our own, and of other times ; if we meditate upon the distinctive features of the Hebrew mind, litera- ture, language, and institutions, in their action and re- action upon each other, and as they correspond with, or differ from those of other nations ; if we consider that there is a growth (with its consequent losses as well as gains) of the human race, no less than of its several families and individual men ; if, lastly, we believe that these charac- teristics of the Hebrew mind were so heightened, adapted, and directed by the influence of political institutions, and local and historical circumstances, as that men chosen out the natives of "Wales. . . , The Scots who emigrated from the north of Ireland to Argyleshire can still converse with the natives of Ireland. Languages, by intermixture of nations, become disintegrated ; they lose part of their grammatical modifications. ... In the mean time no new forms of human speech are produced : no new varieties of inflection expressive of the modification of ideas by changes in the endings or the initial sylhibles of words are ever attempted : particles and auxiliaries are inserted to supply the want of obsolete inflections. Formations of language and the development of grammatical systems have long ceased. As in geology, we now only witness the disintegration of what the first ages produced. How diS"erent was the habit of the human mind with regard to language in the age when the San- skrit, the Greek, the Latin, and the Ma^so-Gothic, idioms were developed from one common original ! ' — Researches info the Physical Hist, of Mankind, ii. 221, 222. The whole paragraph is most interesting, as showing man's original powers of language-making, and their gradual cessation. And K. 0. Miiller thus speaks of Mythology : — ' But how can we arrive at an idea of its (the Mythus) real nature and import ? Such an idea cannot be attained a priori, as we have it only from experience ; neither is it immediately, and of itself, intelligible, being utterly unknown as a product of our times. It is a purely historical idea ; an idea, moreover, by which a creation of very remote times is to he conceived. It cannot possibly be arrived at otherwise than historically. But how is its historical perceyition possible, the mythus itself being the only source of the idea of tlie mythus, and apjiearing, too, in a form difierent from its contents ? In the statement of an historical fact the form and the contents correspond ; an acquaintance with the language forms the bridge which leads from one to the other. But here they lie further apart, and the path must first be sought, is itself a problem. In other words, mythi must be interpreted, must be explained, ere we can attain a knowledge of their contents. This must be done in a thousand indi\ddual instances ere we shall be able to seize the essence of the mythus as a general idea. And then the question still remains, whether we can express the knowledge thus attained by an idea such as passes current amongst us, or by a simple combi- nation of such ideas ; whether we do not find something compounded, accord- ing to our notions, of multifarious, widely separated, and heterogeneous materials, the union of which is based on a mode of thinking entirely difl'ereut from ours.' — Scientific Mythology, translated by Leitch, p. 6. The practice of sacrifice by all the nations of antiquity, with its abandon- ment by those of Christendom, as also by the Mahometans, is another of the changes in kind, and not merely in degree, of the mental habits of a large part of the human race. 46 ISAIAH II. 2 — 9. THE I AST DAYS. of this nation might, without any violent, arbitrary, or in any way monstrous, subversion of their human nature and faculties, be made the fit instruments of God's revelation of himself to men : — then we shall perhaps find that there is a rational and intelligible idea of prophecy attainable by us ; and that in proportion as we realize it, it will make clear the dark and difticult places in the writings of the l)rophets, and deliver us from the fear of having to choose between interpretations fairly obnoxious to the charge of introducing the doctrines of superstition, and even magic, into r(4igion, and those of a sceptical criticism which is often as resfardless of historical and literal fact as of true philosophy and Christian faith. Historical criticism, like comparative physiology, obtains its results by ascertaining the resemblances and the differences of very various forms of life under various conditions of time and place. And it is by this method that we must seek the key to many difii- culties in Jewish, as well as other ancient history, which the destructive critic gets rid of by a mere reference to the standard of his own age and country. Isaiah then, ' rapt into future times,' sees the throne of the Lord of Israel established in sovereignty over all the nations of the earth, and they becoming willing subjects to him, and friendly fellow citizens to each other. The nations attain to true liberty, for they come to submit themselves to the righteous laws and institutions, and to the Avise and gracious word and direction, of that King Avhoso service is perfect freedom ; and to true brotherhood, for they leave their old enmities and conflicts, and make the same Lord their judge, and umpire, and reconciler. And all this, not by some newly invented device of the nations, some new result of their own civilization, but by the carrying out of the old original purpose and plan of God, that his chosen people of the Jews should be the ministers of these good things, and that in them should all nations of the earth be blessed, — that ' out of Zion should go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.' This is the vocation of the Hebrew people. This, says the prophet, is the key to all our duties as a nation, this is the master-light to guide us to right action. TRUE AND FALSE PHILANTHROPY. 47 Then, in Avords wliicli are half-appeal, half-declaration that the appeal is in vain, he exclaims : — ' 0 house of Israel, come ye, and let us Avalk in the light of Jehovah.' The house of Israel is, indeed, willing enough for, and is already practising, a universal brotherhood of nations, but quite of another fashion from this. They have filled them- selves to repletion with the idolatries and divinations of the Syrians, Chaldseans, and Philistines ; and on every side have joined themselves to the heathens by marriages, political alliances, commercial intercourse, and adoption of religious rites. Juventiitein studiis externis degenerare, was the complaint of the Romans who were still faithful to the ancient discipline, in the time of Nero* ; and even in our own Christian times, and among Christian nations, these are great causes of national deterioration ; and Moses-j- and the prophets are proved by the result to have judged rightly, for their own times, that nothing but the strict exclusion of such foreign influences could preserve the moral, political, and religious nationality of their country. I would urge the thoughtful consideration of these verses (2 — 9) on any one who is perj)lexed by the confident assertion of writers who prefer vague declama- tion to close investigation and reasoning, that the Hebrew j)rophets were actuated by a bitter hatred of foreigners. He will, I think, discover (from this and such like study) that they were possessed by views and hopes of a j)hilan- thropy which even our own times have not been able to extend : they longed for fellowship with all men, under the only conditions in which fellowship is possible ; they desired an universal communion of virtue, humanity, and goodness, and could not be content to have a general licence of vice, brutality, and wickedness instead ; and they advocated what they saw, and wdiat all history has proved, to be the only way of avoiding the one and securing the other. For the like reasons Moses had forbidden, and Isaiah * Tacit. Ann. xiv. 20. quoted by Vitringa. t I do not mean to pronounce on the date or authorship of the Pentateuch in its present form, though I have no doubt of the antiquity of its substance : but in any case Moses is as truly the representative of Hebrew, as Lycurgus is of Spartan, legislation. 48 WEALTH, LUXURY, AND LDOLS. here proceeds (no doubt Avith a reference to the law of Moses) to censure, the accumulation of wealth, and the multii^lying horses and chariots. The nation had come to the state from which Moses would have kept it back if j)0ssible : it was rich, luxurious, and put its trust in the l)hysical force of its standing army, and meanwhile had forgotten its divine King, and the covenant between them. And therefore the land had become ' full of idols.' It has been noticed that these were doubtless worshipped in many gi'oves and high places during the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, though these kings formally upheld the national worship of the true God ; but Ave may (AA'ith Yitriuga) especially refer this passage to the Teraphim, the Penates or Lares ' which they made each one for himself to worship,' and to divine Avith, in their OAvn house ; — a species of idolatry Avhich from the earliest times is found among those aa'Iio yet professed the AA'orship of Jehovah. The whole ecclesiastical scheme of the Hebrew polity tended to elevate the members of the nation out of a selfish state, and bring them to a consciousness of the dignity and virtue of being ' members one of another ; ' Avhile the effect of this private superstition, AA'hich had filled the land Avith idols, must have been the exact contrary. So many gods, so many centres of social attrac- tion and repulsion. A state of things in Avhich every man has his OAvn god in his OAvn house, is mere naturalism, Shammanism, or Fetish-AA'orship, and cannot rise above the horde-life, into Avhich liimily or patriarchal life sinks, if not comprehended in and upheld by national institutions, and especially a national Avorsliip. The bond of political society in Greece, or in' Rome, was the national recognition of Apollo or Pallas, Jupiter or Mars. Anih:ai(i)(Tei' ToXfxa fxev yap a\oyi(TTO(;, avcpta (piXeraipo^ Ivo- jjLtaQ)]' fi€XK)]aL^ ce 'Kpofxi]0)]'i, ceiKia evTrpeTT))^' k. t. X* And he then goes on to observe that ' there are principles of truth in man's heart which are the foundations of all right, justice, and virtue — principles not only true in themselves, hut ' sfood ' and ' sweet ' in their effects : that the reve- lation of Jehovah, his covenant with Abraham and his descendants, his laws and promises of temporal and eternal life to all who should obey them, were especially the ' light ' of the Jews ; and were ' good ' and ' sweet,' l)ecause the source of all consolations in every struggle with evil, and the bond by which their political society was held together : that the wicked were not satisfied with practically renouncing this light with its excellent fruits, ]3ut denied them by arguments, and perversion of the proj^er meaning of words : and that while this was a national sin in the days of Isaiah the Jews filled up the measure of their iniquity in the time of Christ, when they rejected the Light of life as darkness, and evil, and bitter, makinsf the lisfht that was in them to be darloiess.' Lastly, among the men whom Isaiah denounces as the corrupters and destroyers of the society of wdiich they are the leaders, are the unjust lawyers and judges : he men- tions as characteristic of them, that they are heroes at drinking, and spice their wine to make it stronger :t by which, perhaj^s, we are to understand, not that their heads and senses Avere overcome wdth wine like the drunkards s]3oken of above ; but that the effect on their hearts and consciences was such as to harden them in their criminal perversion of the law. Perhaps the jDassage might be illustrated by instances of the professional character of hard-drinking but strong-headed judges of other times. The ' law ' of Jehovah was given by Moses, and em- bodied in institutions and a code; the 'word' was that exposition of the meaning and life of these which the * 'The received value of names imposed for signification of things, was changed into arbitrary ; for inconsiderate boldness was counted true-hearted manliness ; provident deliberation, a handsome fear ; modestj-, the cloak of cowardice ; to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything,' &c. — Hobbes's Translation, iii. 82. f Compare Psalm Ixxv. 8 ; Prov. xxiii. 30 ; Cant. viii. 2. The Romans called this spiced wine JLromatitos. 7+ ISAIAH V. 2+ — 30. THE ASSYRIAN INVASION. prophets were from time to time declaring in the ears of the people. The nation had cast away this law, and de- spised this word. And when all heart and morality are thus gone from a nation, its roots below ground are rotten, and its flourishing appearance is ready to turn to dust.* There is no substance in such a people, nothing which can stand calamity of any kind. It Avill sweej) them away as the tire licks u}) the stubble which men burn wlicn the crop of corn or hay has been n-athered in. Already, when the prophet speaks, Jehovah has smitten them in his anger. Whether the earthquake which hap- 2)encd in the reign of Uzziahf had actually filled the streets of Jerusalem with dead bodies, or whether Isaiah only makes it the image or instance of wider-spread national calamities, we cannot jironounce historically ; but in either case, the past and present is but a foretaste of heavier woes impending : Jehovah has made the hills of their national prosperity to tremble, and personal suffering has begun : but ' for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.' He is about to bring foreign armies as the instruments of his iudsrment : the vision of the worst of human calamities — the invasion of a rich, civilized, luxurious nation by over- whelming hordes of barbarians — rises before the prophet : he speaks of them as present, and his words have a terrible force to him who reads them now, while he thinks of their fearful import then. Jehovah has set up a standard to which he is gathering the nations under the Assyrian rule, and the prophet sees them steadily though swiftly coming on in warlike array — bowmen, horses, and chariots : they rush to battle with the roar of lions, they seize and hold down their prisoners and their booty with the growl which marks the lion's refusal to give up his prey ; they come on like the sea in its rag(i ; and when the lu.'lploss inhabitant of Judah turns from this rising tide to the land — his own * Possibly alluding to tho so-called Apples of Sodom, which the traveller fitill pitliors on the shore of the Dead Swi. See article ' Vino of Sodom' in Smith's Dictionnrii of the liible. t Amos i. 1 ; Zech. xiv. 6. GROTIUS ON PROPHECY. 75 land — he sees only the darkness of woe ; and when he turns again from the earth to look upward he sees only the thick clouds gathering over the heavens above him. I have endeavoured, in my Version, to represent the distinction of the tenses in the original, so as to preserve the form of a picture or vision which presents itself to the prophet, and is by him put before his hearers. The inde- terminate singular of the verbs and pronouns in the Hebrew is best rendered by the English 'they' and 'one' in the Authorized Version. The men and women who heard Isaiah speak these words in the court of the temple, in the higliway of the Fuller's Field, or in some other crowded thoroughfare ; who lived to see fathers and husbands, and sons and brothers, killed in the several invasions which soon fol- lowed, or mothers, wives, and daughters driven like herds of cattle to a sale and slavery worse than death ; and whose wealth and sources of wealth were utterly wasted by these and like inroads into their populous and highly cultivated country ; could not have thought the prophet's language too strong for the events, though it seems so to many commentators of the last, or even the present century. Yet we must not forget that in an unimaginative and un- philosophic age, more of the idea of prophecy has been pre- served by several such commentators seeldng its fulfilment in several distant events, than could have been the case if they had agreed to restrict it to the mere contemporaneous history, as Grotius and others have too dryly done.* And this is such a picture of ' the life of things,' that it is equally the description of the same judgment of God, in whatever age or to whatever nation occurring. In successive ages it * Nothing, indeed, can be sounder than the principle which Grotius lays do\\Ti on the suhject. He says :— ' In the prophecies, I have made it a main object to refer the particulars to the corresponding historical events : the ^^u^^^T^j^'^^ j^i'lge with what success. In this way certain passages which the old commentators refer to Christ and the times of the Gospel, I have referred to events nearer the prophet's own times, yet as involving a type of those other Gospel times. I have done this because I saw it to be the only way of preserving that coherence of words and things which in the rest of the prophetical books is so admirable: and, iTideed, these passages do reveal to us Christians the counsel of God, who has shadowed forth to us the Messiah, and the benefits given us through him, not by words only, but also by events.'— Z'/vr/rt^ ad Annotat. ad Vet. I'etstavientttm. 76 PROPHECY PERPETUALLY FULFILLED. told the Jew of the Assja-ian, the Babylonian, the Greek, and the Roman ; to the subject of the Roman empire it spoke 110 less clearly of the Goth and the Vandal ; the British monk must have recalled it in the days "when Gildas recorded the invasion of the Saxon ; the degenerate Saxon learnt its truth from the Dane and the Norman ; and the Spaniard from the ^fahometan ; the Byzantine from Timour 'the incarnate wrath of God;' the Continental nations from the revolutionary armies and Napoleon ; and, in our own day, the peojile of France from the Germans. There is no land or nation "where this terrible prophec}- has not been fulfilled ; may God gi'ant that we Englishmen may not need to be roused from our too thoughtless and selfish iuditference, and to find that these words, read, but scarcely listened to in our churches, have an awful practical meaning to us ! CHAPTER V. ISAIAH VI. THE PROPHET* S COMMISSION. — THE TEMPLE. — ITS SCENES. THE TISION. — INSIGHT INTO THE LIFE OF THINGS. PROPHECY RATIONAL AND INTELLIGIBLE. — GOD THE REAL AND ACTUAL KING. — HIS HOLINESS. HIS JUSTICE. — PATRIOTIC HOPES OF ISAIAH. THE expression ' In the year tliat King Uzziali died, then I saw,' implies that Isaiah wrote this account of his vision some time after it occurred ; and both this and the Hke phrase in chapter xiv. 28 suggest the thought that the prophet himself revised and arranged the book of his prophecies. Whether these expressions refer to dates before or after the death of the kings mentioned in them, has been much disputed : in chapter xiv. the context will allow of either interpretation, nor in that of the passage before us can we assert that either is incongruous. Yet it seems reasonable to think with Gesenius, that if the mean- ing were after, the phrase — which is, literally, ' In the death-year of King Uzziah' — would rather have been ' In the first year of Jotham (or Hezekiah) ;' and if we sup^jose with him and other commentators, among whom Jarchi rests on the authority of the Gemara, that the chapter before us is the record of Isaiah's original calling and consecration to the prophetic office, then it must be re- ferred to Uzziah' s lifetime, as the only prophecy which can correspond with the words of the title of the whole Book — ' which he saw in the days of Uzziah.'* There is cer- tainly a great resemblance to the parallel accounts of the calling of Jeremiah and Ezekiel at the beginning of their prophecies,! but on the other hand no such formal call is recorded of the other prophets, so that it cannot be looked for as essential to their office. And therefore there is no conclusive evidence from these cases, either for or against * Ch. i. 1. t Jer. i. ; Ezek. i. ii. 78 EWALD ON THE PROPHETS' CALL. the supposition that Isaiah may have begun to preach before this vision gave the formal ratification of his appointment to the office for which the whole style of this as of his other writings shows him to have been long edu- cating ; nor would it be any disj)aragcment of the authority of that ratification to consider that it recognized views of God's character and of the state and prospects of the Jewish nation which had already become familiar to the inspired seer, while it confirmed and sanctioned them in a solemn and formal decree. Yet, j-jcrhaps, the actual manner and Avords of the commission which Isaiah now receives, rather indicate that it was the root and source of those proi)hecies which stand before it in the book, and in which there is an expansion, in various forms, of its fundamental ideas, than that it was a condensed summary of truths already fully developed in his mind and in these dis- courses. ' Once for all,' says Ewald, * must he who was to Ije a prophet, have become absolutely certain of the true relation of the world and Jehovah, — must have beheld, as in a distinct form, the sublime' and holy character of Jehovah, and felt that he was directed by him alone : once for all must he have recognized the divine power of truth acrainst the Avhole world, and himself as livinsc and moving in it alone : once for all must he have entered, with the effectual energy and act of his Avhole inner being, into the counsels of God, and found liiniself for ever bound by them, and endowed by these bonds with true power and freedom : — this was the first condition, and the true beginning of all the work of the prophet, the holy consecration and the inner call, Avithout which none became a true prophet ; and only he Avho had thus first turned his eyes within, and there found clearness and strength of sight, could afterwards look clearly and firmly into the world without, and there do his work as a prophet. Therefore, on the nature and strength of this bi^ginning dei)ended the whole subsequent life and work of a prophet : . . . . where the true and vigorous beginning of the work Avas Avanting, all subsequent endeavours were Aveak and defective, emj)ty, and unfruit- ful ; Avhile in the true i)roi)hets that beginning never ISAIAH'S VISION. jg ceased to be operative, and the memory of it bloomed Avitliout fading in later years. If such a prophet under- took to record his more important prophecies in Avritino-, he put at the head of them, and with a just consciousness of its significance, a description of that holy moment often of a time long gone by— Mdien he had first known Jehovah in his true majesty, and felt that he was called, sanctified, and endowed with strength by him.'* We shall then account, as has been already said, for the position of the earlier prophecies by considering that they give a complete picture of the state of the nation at the time that Isaiah received his commission and entered on his office, and so supply us with the preliminary informa- tion necessary to the adequate comprehension of these. For the times of Jotham were but the continuation and counterpart of those of Uzziah as to their selfishness, luxury, and worldliness, only that these were more and more rapidly preparing their own punishment by eating away the mihtary and otherwise energetic spirit which had animated the people under Uzziah. ^ The scene of this Vision is the Temple ; and its features will have been the same whether we suiDpose them to have risen before Isaiah's imagination Avhile he was absent from the spot, in the solitude of his chamber or his house-top, or assume (as I myself prefer to do) that he was actually praying in the temple at the time. Though it is unlikely that any of the successors to what was but a small remnant of Solomon's kingdom perfectly restored the temple after it was deprived of its original splendour by Shishak in the reign of Eehoboam, ye't we see the worthier princes from time to time repairino- the structure where it had been suffered to fall into decay, and replacing, as far as they could, the treasures and the costly decorations of which it was repeatedly despoiled to buy off foreign invaders; and probably there was no period in which the restoration Avould be more complete than in the roign of Uzziah, who in his power, wealth, and magnificence, came nearer than any other to Solomon. And there will be much more of fact than of fancy in the picture if, for * Ewald, Die Troplictcn, i. 20. 8o THE TEMPLE. the clearer understanding of the scene of this vision, we figure to ourselves the youthful prophet in his rough hair or woollen garment (possibly not unlike that of the Capuchin friar as we now see him in the streets or churches of Rome) going up to the temple to worship ; — and if we look with him at the temple as, at the end of 300 years from its building, it must have presented itself to his eyes, with its ample courts, and colonnades, and porch, and its holy house, and holy of holies, well-propor- tioned, and of the most elaborate workmanship, though rather massive than large according to our notions. As he crossed the variegated pavement of the ' great court of the congregation,' and stopped — for we have no reason to suppose him a Levite — at the entrance to the inner or ' priests' court,' on each hand would rise one of the tall pillars which Solomon set up, in token that the kingdom was constituted by Jehovah, and would be upheld by his might,* and which, once of 'bright brass,' but now mellowed into bronze, had their square capitals richly wreathed with molten lilies, chain- work, and pomegranates ; before him, resting on the back of the twelve oxen, and cast like them in brass, would appear the " molten sea," a basin of thirty cubits in circumference and containing two or three thousand hatlis of water, its brim wrought ' like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies,' and under these a double row of ornamental knobs ; while on each side stood five smaller lavers, the bases of which rested on wheels, and were most elaborately ornamented with oxen, lions, cherubims, and palm-trees, engraved upon them ; and beyond these again he would see the great brazen altar of burnt offering, with its never-extinguished fire ; and overhead the voof of thick cedar beams resting on rows of columns. These were the courts of the palace of the divine King of Israel,t for the reception of his subjects and his ministers. The house itself again consisted of two * Can there be much doubf that this was the meaning of Jachin and Boaz (1 Kings vii. 21 ; 2 Chron. iii. 17) ? As they were the work of a Tyrian architect it is interestinj? to compare the mention of the two pillars which Herodotus saw in the temple of Hercules at 'Tyrc.—Hcrodofus, ii. 44. _ t Compare the description of Solomon's own house, which, besides its inner porch, had another, where he sat to judge the people, 1 Kings vii. 7. The arrangement of the Temple is plainly that of a palace. THE UNSEEN KING OF ISRAEL. 8i parts, the outer of which, the holy place, was accessible to those priests who were in immediate attendance on their unseen Sovereign, while the inner, or holiest place, was the very presence-chamber of the Monarch who ' dwelt between the cherubims,' which spread their golden wings over the ark containing the covenant he had vouchsafed to enter into with his people, and itself forming ' the mercy- seat,' where was ' the place of his throne and the place of the soles of his feet.' In the position which I have, fol- lowing the requirements of the narrative in the chapter before us, supposed Isaiah to be placed, he would see through the open folding-doors of cypress, carved ' with cherubims, and palm-trees, and open flowers,' and ' covered with gold upon the carved work,' into the holy place, which he could not enter ; and the light of the golden lamps on either side would show him the cedar panelling of the walls, carved with knobs and open flowers, with cherubims and palm-trees, festooned with chain-work, and richly gilt ; the mosaics* of precious stones; the cypress floor ; the altar of incense ; the table with the shrewbread ; the censers, tongs, and other furniture of ' pure and perfect gold ; ' and before the doorway at the further end, and not concealed by the open leaves of the olive-wood doors (carved and gilded like the others), would be distinguish- able the folds of the vail ' of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen,' embroidered with cherubims. In the East the closed vail, or 'purdah, declares the presence and secures the privacy of the monarch, into which no man may intrude and live ; and in the temple at Jerusalem it was the symbol of the awful presence and unapproachable' majesty of the King, Jehovah, Lord of hosts. The pious and thoughtful Jew, taught to connect the presence of his God with this actual dwelling-place in the midst of his own chosen nation, was thereby educated to realize the unit}^ and the personality of God in a way that could not then have been otherAvise possible. And thus he was not the less, but the better, enabled to feel and know that ' heaven and the heaven of heavens could not contain' Jehovah, * The word 'mosaic' is said to have had its oiigin from the variegated pavement of the temple. 82 SCENES OF THE TEMPLE. how much less then this house. That the fact was so, we see from the Avhole tenor of Solomon's prayer at the dedi- cation of the temple, when, in the midst of the pomp and splendour of the assembled nation, the king, raised on a brazen scaffold near the altar, 'kneeled down upon his knees before all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands to heaven,' and in the name of his people renewed the national covenant with Jehovah, the God of Israel. Other recognitions of that covenant occur to the mind as it transports itself into the past : we may picture to ourselves the triumphal return of the Jewish army from the field of Berachah, when ' they returned, every man of Judah and Jerusalem, and Jehoshaphat in the forefront of them, to go again to Jerusalem with joy;' 'and they came to Jerusalem Avith psalteries, and harps, and trumpets, into the house of Jehovah,' to celebrate with praise and thanksgiving their victory over the far stronger forces of a general gathering of the Moabites, Ammonites, and other shepherd nations, whose invasions have been in all ages so terrible to a civilized country- — a victory wliich even the neighbouring kings recognized as the work of Jehovah, whose covenant with Israel both king and people had so earnestly pleaded before the battle : or we may see before us another time when the temple courts were again filled -with armed men, not the splendid retinue of a peaceful monarch, nor the troops of one just returned from the war, but veteran soldiers, loyal nobles, and patriotic Levites, secretly assembled from distant parts of the country, and resolved at all hazards to restore the constitution subverted by the usurping murderess Athaliah, and to maintain the rights of the little child of seven years old who ' stood in the midst of them at his pillar, as the manner was,' while ' they put upon him the crown and gave him the testimon}^ and made him king, and Jehoiada and his sons anointed him, and said, God save the king,' and then renewed for themselves, the peoj^le, and the king, the covenant which had thus once more been upheld in the person of the only remaining, only unmurdered, son of the line of David. And then, recalled by our text to ' the year in which king Uzziah died,' we think of the scene which these same COLLISIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE. 83 courts had witnessed shortly before, not of the ratification, but of the breach of the national covenant, when Uzziah, the man of his age, the representative of the worldly spirit, the religious formalism, and the material energy and prosperity of the nation, had (' because he was strong, and his heart was lifted up to his destruction') intruded him- self into the sanctuary to burn incense, and the bold remonstrance and resistance of the priests had been sup- ported and enforced by his being suddenly ' smitten of Jehovah ' with leprosy. Though this act of Uzziah is only mentioned in the Chronicles, there is nothing impro- bable in the narrative. It is said that leprosy is a disease often brought out by sudden excitement, and the intrusion of Uzziah and the resistance of the priests are easily con- ceived and understood. The burning incense was one of the ecclesiastical functions restricted to the high priest by the law,* and the separation, and in some respects co- ordination of the offices of the king and the high priest — of the State and the Church — ^Avere a standing witness for the majesty of the present though invisible Jehovah, greater than both, and actually directing both according to one constitution and law. This independence of the priesthood would have presented anomalies and incon- veniences in the working of the state machine which we can believe Uzziah may have thought it well to be rid of by asserting his supremacy ; while not only the priests, but those w^ho, priests or not, entered into the spirit of the constitution, might deprecate the remedy as worse than the evil to be cured. A great part of the history of Christen- dom has been the history of the like conflict of rights on a wider and more complicated scale, from the days when the first Christians refused to acknowledge the divinity of the Roman emperors, to our own times, and our experi- ments, still making, whether for the separation, or the more harmonious relations, of Church and State. Perhaps on this occasion, as certainly on many others, Isaiah had been joining in the public daily sacrifice and w^orship, and had afterwards brought his own free-willing offering — a bullock or a lamb without blemish. Such an * Exod. XXX. 7, 8 ; Numb. xvi. 40, xviii. 7, G 2 84 VISION NOT ALLEGORY. offerinof, the symbol of his dedication of himself to Je- hovah's service, would be the natural expression of his earnest desire for some token that it was at last permitted him to enter on the actual functions of that prophetic office for which he had been so long preparing ; and that this vision was the answer to such heartfelt prayerful desire — itself an inspiration from on high — we may well believe. The notion that it is a poetic fiction by which Isaiah represents, as in an allegory, the commencement of his career as a prophet, is plainly a mere expedient of writers who cannot conceive or believe in any fact which tran- scends their individual experience. Thus the critics of the last century supposed the gods and goddesses in Homer to be an ingenious ' machinery for the conduct of the piece,' exactly like that of the sylphs and gnomes in the ' Rape of the Lock,' and with no more reality to the poet's own mind ; and the rational philosojohers and serious Christians fancied themselves required to quibble away the admonitions of Socrates to his disciples, to adhere to the actual worship of Apollo, or Eros, or Esculapius, before either the wisdom or the virtue of the sage could be safely or consistently approved : but in the present day, we are beginning again to understand the force of St. Paul's words when he told the Athenians that tlieir poets and philosophers had in their own way been trying to feel after and to find a divine Lord, of whose presence they were daily conscious and whose offspring they believed themselves to be. Isaiah might probably have said, as St. Paul did on a like occasion, ' Whether I was in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell,' but he would undoubtedly have confirmed the plain meaning of his words that the vision was a reality and a fact ; nor does he in using these Avords adopt a language essentially different from that which has been employed by wise and good men — neither fanatics nor impostors — in all countries and ages doAvn to this we live in, to describe like inward experiences. Thus Wordsworth, who, like every other great teacher, is at once the expounder of truths for all times, and tlie thorough man of his oAvn, after describing his other endowments as a poet, speaks of — INSIGHT INTO THE IIFE OF THINGS. 85 ' Another gift, Of aspect more sublime ; that blessKtl mood In which the burden and the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened : — that serene and blessed mood. In which the affections gently lead us on, Until the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul : While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmonjr, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.' Let us thouglitfully" bring before ourselves the youthful Hebrew seer, with his vigorous and cultivated imagination, his piety and faith towards God, and his longing to enter on the service of his country in that ministry to which he had dedicated himself: let us consider the long mental discipline, the conflicts of soul, the hoj^e and despair, the watching, the fasting, and the prayer, which alone could have formed such a man as the prophet Isaiah actually comes before us in each page of his writings : let us think of the ' burden and the mystery ' which must have op- pressed his spirit when he looked on the wealth and pros- j^erity around him, and thought how glorious his country might be, yet how plainly it was going forward to the ruin Avhich his study of past history, and of the warnings by Moses and his successors the prophets, told him was now ready to fall on this corrupt and sense-bound generation : let us enter into his heart's desire to save them, if it were yet possible, by recalling them to the knowledge of their invisible Lord and King whose holy covenant and service they had forsaken ; and then into the sickness and despair which would replace that hope when he thought of the men whom he had just seen assisting at the sacrifices with * hands full of blood,' ' the show of their countenances witnessing against them,' while the very stones of the pavement seemed ready to cry out in God's name ' Tread my courts no more : ' let us remember how he felt and knew that he too was bound by the same evil nature and circumstances as these his countrymen ; how he must have been overwhelmed with the sense of what a work he was proposing to engage in, and how utterly beyond his or any 86 ILLUSTRATION FROM DREAMS. human strength it was ; and how sustained, while over- wlielmed, by the still deeper sense that there Avas a Power sufficient even for these things : — and then we shall find in the above-quoted calm and rational description of the experience of an Englishman of the nineteenth century an explanation and illustration of the greater part at least of what not only may but must have been the mental and bodily state of the Hebrew prophet, when he ' saw the Lord sitting on a throne.' The partly psychical partly physical phenomena involved in this class of questions, may have to wait another generation before their turn arrives for that scientific investigation and solution which in every department of fact and thought is superseding the inaccurate theoretical scepticism of the last century : we need an exact analysis of that intensified and exalted condition of the human mind which has given us language in one age, mythology in another, prophecy in another, and which still yields philosophy and poetry at least to us moderns ; and of that life of the body which must be the seat of hearing, sight, and our other senses ; which seems to assert an independent existence for itself and for the soul in dreams ;* and which may be able in other modes to act without the help of those material organs which remain to the cor2:)se on the dissecting-table but give it no sensations. Yet if we must be content with the faith that our children will have a light not given to us in these things, we shall I think find that here as in so much else, we may — if we will only clearly state to our own minds the question Mdiich we know we cannot completely answer — get a kind and degree of knowledge well worth * ' Reasoning operations may be conducted in sleep. Mathematicians have, in their shimbers, solvcfl problems which posed them when awake. Thecfreat mathematician, Condillac, w^as sometimes enabled in his sleep to bring to a satisfactorj' conclusion spta noWd viwv dico Kai KXiaidutv, k. t. \. 'uf , ' ' V ' ,.„ Horn. //. B, 87. tiyrt fiviawv aCivawv iOvta -rroWd, aiTi icaTa ttapivy, brt re yXdyoc; dyyta Ctver /c.r.X. Idid. 4G9. 1L2 THE ASSYRIAN RAZOR. Ahaz intended to ' hire ' the Assyrian razor"^^' for his own purposes ; but Jehovah would employ the same instrument to execute his judgments ; and in the conse- quent desolations of the land, that prophecy of the child eating milk and honey would indeed be fulfilled, but after another manner than its terms seemed at first to imply. If they had believed and trusted in Jehovah for deliverance, they should have continued to eat the fat of the land ; but now the cultivated fields shall be laid waste, and their cul- tivators scattered by the sAvord or famine. Here and there a surviving inhabitant, who has saved a young cow and two sheep from the wreck of his property shall feed uj)on the butter and milk they yield him, in an abundance which but mocks the general desolation : for the hill-sides, heretofore so carefully terraced and worked by man's hand, and in which the well-stocked vineyards once bore such a high price, are turned into mere briers and thorns, where men go with arrows and with bows, to seek wild game or to protect themselves from savage beasts or more savage men, or at best turn them into pasture-grounds for their cattle, since they are so overgrown with briers and thorns that it is useless to go there for the purpose of cultivating them again. The shekel of silver was probably equal to about two shillings of English money. The German vine- yards are valued at so much a vine, and among them the vines of Johannisburg at a ducat each, according to J. D. Michaelis : those of Lebanon were rated at a piastre each in 1811, according to Burckhardt. If therefore it is meant in the text that each vine was worth a shekel, this high price must imply that they were of the choicest kinds. But a comparison with Canticles viii. 11, 12, might lead us to suppose the reference here also to the rent rather than the price. * Knobel quotes ' Kunaeh-Dogh, the hill without a beard ;' 'opoc KiKO\ii]\iivov vXy,' Callim. Diau. 41. ' Humus conians,' Stat. Thib. 5, 202. ' Viriduutibus comis cajsariata terra," Apulci. de mundo, p. 268. CHAPTER VII. ISAIAH \^II. IX. 7. THE SYMBOLICAL FAMILY. ANCIENT AND MODERN HABITS OF PUBLIC MEN. — SILOAH AND EUPHRATES. THE PANIC OF JUDAH, AND ITS REMEDY. — GALILEE OF THE GENTILES. THE NATIONAL GLOOM. — THE GREAT LIGHT. THE MESSIAH. — GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROPHEt's ANTICIPATIONS. TyE have seen how Isaiah, during his late interview with *' Ahaz, was possessed by the idea of a child of his being a sign to the people of their deliverance from present invasion. In the first chapter of Hosea occurs a like instance of symbolic names given by a prophet to his children, and in Habakkuk ii. 2, we have mention of the practice of writing a prophecy on a tablet in easily legible characters, and hanging it up in the temple, market-place, or other public resort. And most modern commentators prefer to think that Isaiah now merely inscribed ' Haste Plunder, Speed Spoil' in large letters on a metal or waxed tablet, the ^ which the Authorized Version trans- lates 'concerning,' being the Lamed inscriptionis, as in Jerem. xlix. 1, 7, 23, 28; Ezek. xxxvii. 16; — though it may be observed that the direction to ' tie up and seal the testimony,' in verse 16, is in favour of the older version, which understands him to have made a record of his expectation of the birth of the child, and of the signifi- cance of that birth, at some length. He Avrote ' with a man's pen,' or ' style,' — a phrase not unlike our ' common hand,' or ' popular style;' and he took as credible witnesses that the record had preceded the event, Uriah the high priest at the time,* and Zechariah, who was not improbably the father-in-law of Ahaz and a Levite.f He calls his wife 'the prophetess,' as the wife of a king is called a * 2 Kings xvi. 10. t 2 Kings xviii. 2 ; 2 Chron. xxix. 1, 13. I 114 ISAIAH VIII . I — 6. SYMBOIIC ACTS. queen (says Yitringa) though she does not reigii, and in some old ecclesiastical canons the wife of a bishojt ' episcopa,' and of a presbyter ' presbytera ; ' and he thus claims for her a place with her husband and children^'' in the holy and symbolic family who are for 'a sign in Israel.' She gave birth to a child, and his name was called, in accordance with the writing, ' Haste-plunder, Speed-spoil,' that the people might understand that before he was old enough to utter the words ' father ' and ' mother,' — that is, within a short but somewhat indefinite period such as we should express by 'in a year or two from his birth,' — the spoils of the j^lundered cities of Samaria and Damascus, the capitals of the nations now invading Judah, shall have been carried before the Assyrian conqueror in triumph. In order to realize the practical impressiveness of such symbolic acts and names upon Isaiah's contemporaries, we must remember that Jerusalem was a very small town for size and population compared with the notion we insensibly get of a capital from our own vast London ; and also that there was as little in the ways of thinking and living of that age and country as in the extent of the city to effect such a separation between a public man's j^olitical and personal life as exists in England. We respect the domestic reserve of our neighbours, and we fortify ourselves in the like reserve, by our habit of learning what they are doing that concerns us through the newspaper which we read by our OAvn fireside. With no newspapers, and a climate which encouraged an out-of-door life, the people of Jerusalem would become as familiar with that personal demeanour of Isaiah in the market-place or elsewhere which he made a part of his public ministry, as we are with the mental habits and political conduct of Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Dis- raeli, though the greater part of us would recognize neither of them by sight, and still fewer know anything of their personal and private life. After having uttered this prediction, and perhaps after an interval of time in which the political relations of the several states liad become further developed, Isaiah pro- • See verse 18 of this chapter. SIL 0 AH AND EUPHRA TES. 1 1 5 ceeds to take a view of the whole Hebrew people, whom he looks on as one, notwithstanding the actual division and enmity of the two kingdoms. He sees Ephraim re- joicing, and Judah trembling, at the alliance of Rezin and Pekah ; the one expecting that it will lead to the over- throw of the feeble house of David, the other admitting that their own monarchy was contemptible in comparison with the power of their enemies, and looking to Assyria as the only protection against that overthrow ; but both agreeing in this, that their politics are wholly worldly, and have no reference to the government and help of the Lord of hosts, the true King of the whole Hebrew people, as indeed of the other nations from whom they hope or fear so much. The visible power of armies was to them far more real than the unseen help of Jehovah which the prophet believed and asserted to be sufficient for those who would put their trust in him and his covenant with the nation. The little brook of Siloah* might ' make glad the city of God ' with its living and never-failing stream ; but what was it in their eyes compared with the mighty river Euphrates, which, when it was swollen with the melted snows of Armenia — resembling the great king who recruited his countless armies in the like mountainous regions — yearly overflowed its banks, and covered the whole plain with its waters ! Therefore, says Isaiah, this great river — this king of Assyria with all his hosts^ — shall Jehovah bring upon this people and land. After breaking * Under the south-west brow of Ophel, which is itself the south-eastern of the hills which form the site of Jerusalem, there are two pools of Silottni, or Siloah (now Silwan), the larger of which, now nearlj' filled up, Captain Wilson supposes to be the pool dug by Hezekiah. These pools are supplied by a conduit tunnelled through Ophel, from an intermitting spring in the Kedron valley now called the ' Fountain of the Virgin ; ' and from the name, as well as because the extensive artificial provisions of cisterns, pools, and aqueducts, and the formation of the ground makes it doublful whether there existed any other natural spring in or near Jerusalem, we may con- clude that this was the living fountain, the ' softly flowing ' waters of which 'made glad the citj'- of God;' while the complicated channels through which it still passes under ground were probably among those works of military engineering which Hezekiah executed (2 Chron. xxxii. 3, 4; Eccles. xlviii. 17). The saying ascribed to Mahomet, that ' Zemzem (iu Mecca) and Siloah are the two fountains of Paradise,' is worth quoting here. Sec Robinson's Biblical Researches, i. 493, if ; Gesenius, Commentar. i. 276 ; Kitto's Phi/sical Geography, p. 411, ff. ; Fergusson's Topography of Jerusalem, p. 69, ff. ; Wil.son and Warren's Becovery of Jerusalem, pp. 19, 233, fl". ; and on Isaiah xxii. below. I 2 1 1 6 ISAIAH VII 7 — 1 6 . THE PA NIC, over Syria and Samaria, as successive dikes wliicli hardly for a raomeiit delay its course, it shall pass on to Jud«a, filling the land with its floods, till the monarchy and the nation it represents shall be reduced to the near peril of a drowning man, whose neck the waters have reached : — ' And the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Immanuel ! '— ' thy land shall be thus overflowed, 0 child, whom, notwithstanding Jehovah has set as a sign that he is present with us : therefore, however the deep waters may go over us, we will still trust in that Lord, and in the promise of which thou art the standing witness.'* The name Immanuel here evidently refers back to the promise in chapter vii. v. 1 4 ; but whether it is, both there and here, altogether an ideal name for the Messiah, or whether it was given to a child of Isaiah born the year before Maher-shalal-hash-baz, or whether it was another name for this last (all which explanations have been proposed) we have no sufficient evidence to determine. The word ' wings ' either refers, by a change of metaphor, to the wings of an army, or it may mean the extreme sides of the overflowing river. Trusting in this Name, Isaiah defies the confederacy of Ei)hraim and Syria, and the power of Assyria : their alliances, their v>'arlike array, shall be broken ; their counsels shall prove foolish ; their resolutions and orders shall fail of execution ; — ' for God is with us.' The exact force of the original can be apprehended by the English reader, though it can only be expressed — and that somewhat im- perfectly— by the translation of the word ' Immanuel ' here, and its retention above. There was a general panic among the people ; ' their heart was moved as the trees of the wood are moved by the wind,' when they heard that Syria was confederate with E2)hraim ; their cry was every where, ' a confederacyt * 'Ac si dixisapt, terra nihilominua crit tua, O Immanuel.' — Calvin, qiiotod hy Alexander. t There is no diffirnlty from Ihe orifjinal usually moanins: a treasonable plot. Juiiah mit^ht reasonably apply siuli a lirm to an alliance of Israel with hcaiheuH agaitist her, even if the fei linu: witli whicli a mition must look on any alliance for its destruction would not justify such an expression. 'I'ho word, expressive of alaim, ia that translated. ' Treason ' in 2 Chron. xxiii. 13. AND ITS REMEDY. 117 has been made against us, and we must meet it by a counter alliance with Assyria ; ' and the prophet says that •he too should have fallen under the influence of this panic, if Jehovah had not laid hold of him with a strong hand, to keep him in the way of dependence on himself, and if he had not taught him to escape the fear which possessed his countrymen, by making the Lord of hosts his fear, and his dread, by sanctifying him himself, as he now in his name calls on them to do. To sanctify Jehovah* is in mind and in practice to recognize him as the holy God, the Lord who is absolide (absolutus), free from the limitations which hinder all other beings from carrying their wills into full operation ; and to believe with the Avhole heart that God can and does govern all things according to the counsel of his own will, and that what he determines does certainly come to pass, however proba- bilities and appearances may be against the belief. To the nation which thus sanctifies Jehovah, he fsays Isaiah) will be their sanctuary — their protection against all their enemies. Such was his original covenant with both the Houses of Israel, and it still holds good. If, therefore, they will break and renounce it, it becomes a stumbling- block to them. When their statesmen endeavour to remedy present mischief and secure future prosperity by craftily playing off against one another the nations whom they cannot hope to match by force, they are attempting to go counter to the whole plan of Jehovah's government, and they will do it only to their own confusion. The greater part of ' both the houses of Israel' will refuse to listen ; but Isaiah calls on the small remnant of his faithful hearers and followers to wait with him patiently during the present calamities, and to believe that Jehovah does but hide his face for a time. Referring to the declaration — the ' testimony,' or deposition — which he had lately put on record in the presence of witnesses whom he noAv indicates by the word ' disciples,' he reminds them that the covenant and promise are but closed and sealedt with * Compare Numbers xx. 12; Deut. xxxii. 51 ; Isaiah xxix. 23. t Compare Isaiah xxix. 11 ; Daniel xii. 4, 9. Also Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18 ; Prov. vi. 20, 21, vii. 2, 3. ii8 ISAIAH VIII. i-i.—IX. I. THE SOOTHSAYERS. a more formal ratification by the delay in their fulfilment ; and that his words and acts and name,'"' and the children, — Shear-jashub (Immanuel), — Maher-shalal-hash- baz, — whom God has given him, are meanwhile his signs and pledges to them of the reality of that ratifica- tion. This people will continue their habit (from the days of Saul and earlier) of going to Avizards and sorcerers, that they may raise spirits from the dead to tell them what to do in times of political difficulty like the present ; but the faithful must reply, when called on to join with them, that it is not of the dead, nor of the sorcerers, who with their ventriloquism! seem to receive dii'ec- tions from the shrill voices of familiar spirits, that men should inquire, but of the living God, and of the prophets who declare his M'ill in words of reason and righteousness. Let the peoj)le, let Ahaz and his counsellors, refer to God's law and covenant, and to the promises, based thereon, which the prophet has even now been commissioned to deliver ; if they refuse to do so, there is no dawn of light in the darkness of their souls. They have chosen darkness, and shall suffer the consequences till in despair they curse their king and their God, as they lift their eyes to him in vain, and are driven back again into the night of gathering calamities. So completely does Isaiah identify the two kingdoms of Israel as one people on the present occasion, that as the image of this darkness gathers itself around him he con- templates it not as in the land of Judah but in the north of Israel, in that border-land and debatable ground of Galilee which Avas politically and religiously debased by the intermixture of Canaanitish tribes with the Hebrews ; J the chief cities of which neither Solomon cared to retain nor Hiram to accept ; § Avhich lay open to the first brunt of every northern invasion ; and which was actually wasted and its inhabitants carried away by Tiglath-Pileser shortly after the date of this prophecy. II And some of these very * Isaiah means 'Salvation of Johovah.' t The; Soptnagiiit translates 'them thitt have familiar spirits' hy lyya- (Trpifi)'i6oi. ' Poep ' is pipiu>it, tho 'squeak and gibber' of iShakspeare. — JIanilet, i. 1. X Judges i. 30—35. § 1 Kings ix. 11—13. |1 2 Kings xv. 29. LITERAL COMMENTATORS. 119 people ' of Asher, and Manasseh, and Zebulon,' ''• attended the summons of Hezekiah a few years after, and gave a practical recognition of tlie unity of Israel by coming up to Jerusalem to the passover. This fact is interesting in itself and in its reference to the passage before us, and also as raising the question whether Isaiah or his disciples may have taken any steps for the actual promulgation of this prophecy in those districts, and thus by their preaching have prej^ared the way for its fulfilment : — a supposition which is not improbable, considering how important, wide- spread, and active a body the prophets were, and how much evidence there is both in Hebrew history, and in their Avritings, of their extensive personal acquaintance with every neighbouring country and people. A nd then we may pass to another fulfilment of this prophecy, in that day Avhen, on that same sea-coast of Tiberias, and in the city of Capernaum, was heard the voice of a greater prophet than Isaiah, preaching and saying ' Repent, for the kingdom of heaven' — a greater kingdom than that of Hezekiah — ' is at hand.' t Those commentators who protest against our seeing any reference in this glorious vision to the times of Isaiah lest we should disparage its fulfilment by the coming of Christ, — and their opponents who forbid us to view it in the light of the gospel lest we should overlook the fact that Isaiah and Hezekiah were men of flesh and blood, like ourselves, — both err by a too exclusive literalness, and preference of inferior logic for philosophic insight. Why should Hebrew history alone depart from the law of all other histories, that the earlier events must be read in the light of the later, which are their necessary developments ? Why should prophecy be honoured by making it out to be a mere verbal soothsaying ? The student of the Hebrew prophets who dreads neither of these bugbears, but sees and reflects for himself, will find that reason and faith are in harmony, and that neither can be rightly possessed to the exclusion or neglect of the other. If the English poet of the nineteenth century, whom I have already quoted, claims ' a vision and a faculty divine ' for his readers as * 2 Chron. xxx. 1—11. t Matt. iv. 12—25. 120 ISAIAH IX. 2—7. GLOOM, AND LIGHT. well as himself, we need not hesitate to recognize a like power in ourselves for the better understanding Isaiah in those parts of his discourses where, as here, he is so markedly carried out of himself. He sees the thick darkness, spiritual and temporal, which was gathering over the land, and which reached its height when the nation had generally lapsed into heathenism, and Ahaz their king had shut uj) the temj^le and substituted the worship of false gods even to the sacrifice of his own son to Moloch ; and when Ephraim had called in a heathen power to enable it to effect its fratricidal designs against Judah, and Judah had retaliated by summoning another still stronger heathen nation ; and the whole land, over which David and Solomon had once reigned gloriously, lay wasted by the sword, and tributary to the Assyrian, because abandoned by Jehovah, whom they had first abandoned. The people walk in darkness, nay dwell in the shadow of death ! But a great light breaks upon the gloom : multitudes, full of joy and gladness, throng the cities and the fields which just now were deserted ; he hears the shouts of the harvest-home, while they present the first-fruits to Jehovah ;* he sees the triumphal procession going up to the temjDle with the spoils of victory,! and the armour and the blood-stained cloaks of the warriors gathered to be burnt, since perma- nent peace is established in the land : he knows that they who sowed in tears have reaped in joy, and that the King has come to the rescue of his people ; that the yoke of the despot, and the rod of the slave-master are broken ; and that a deliverance is effected greater even than that ancient deliverance of Israel from their seven years' bondage, on the night when ' the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the children of the east lay along in the valley' (of Jezreel, in this same Galilee of the Gentiles), ' like grass- hoppers, and their camels without number, as the sand of the sea-side for nuiltitude,' but ' ran, and cried, and fled,' when the three hundred raised their battle-shout, ' The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon :"+ and then he recalls * Deut. xii. 11, 12 ; xvi. 11 — 1.^) ; Psalm iv. 7- t Compare 1 Cbrou. xviii. 11 ; 2 Chrou. xx. 27, 28. 1 Juiiies \ii. ' UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN: 121 the actual debasement under Aliaz, and answers the ques- tion which his disciples must have asked him, and he must have asked himself, and his God — how this vision and its promises can be true ? And the sense, in modern prose, of the mighty words of the prophetic reply, when we have somewhat unravelled the many thoughts and images which are gathered up into each word, seems to be this, — that the believing Israelites are to know that Isaiah's children, and especially the one with whom, in a moment of special inspiration he has connected the name of Immanuel, are signs and pledges that God has not forgotten his covenant nor his ancient promises of a Saviour — the seed of the woman, and the seed of Abra- ham and David — in whom all nations should be blessed ; that this child is a witness that Jehovah the invisible King is now actually among them, notwithstanding the iniquity of both prince and p)eople ; and that he will ere long manifest his presence and power by restoring the kingdom from its ruinous condition, in the person of a royal deliverer, a Messiah, of the line of David.'"" And, as Jacob conferred the birthright and blessing of his race upon the sons of Joseph by saying, ' Let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac ;' t or as the children of Israel in the wilderness were warned to obey the angel who went before them, because the ' name of Jehovah was in him ;' so the Name of God, wonderful in counsel, mighty in work, the Father of their fathers and of their children for a thousand o-ene- rations, the eternal Up»holder of their race and their nation and of its prosperity and peace, shall be named upon, shall be in, this anointed saviour, on whose shoulder the govern- ment shall rest4 The eternal kingdom already lies about them, though they deny and reject it ; it has its founda- tions in the unchangeable purpose of God, and not in the good or evil dispositions of this or that king and his * To those for wlioin music not only ' charms the sense,' but also embodies thoughts and feelings too deep for words, Handel's 'Messiah' is no mean comment on these prophecies. t Genesis xlviii. 16. X Knobel quotes 'Bene humeris tuis sedet imperium:' Plin. Payieg. 10. ' Rempublicam universam vestris humeris sustinetis : ' Cic. pr. Flacc. 30. 122 IS THE 'CHILD' subjects ; and therefore, with no material liinJrance from the one, nor help from the other, of these, the zeal of God himself will effectually carry forward the work, and spread this kingdom of righteousness and peace, without limit of time or place. Some commentators think ' mighty hero' a more accurate translation than ' mighty God,' as the word (bw) is used in such a sense in Ezekiel xxxi. 11, and xxxii. 21, in the former of which places it is applied to Nebuchadnezzar : but we know that the Old Testament does not scruple to ' call them gods to whom the word of God came ;' and the other meaning seems the better, explaining it as I have here done. I need not repeat what I have already said as to the difficulty of such a complete insight into the relative activity of the imagination and the logical faculties in the Hebrew prophets, and into the degree of definiteness wuth which the expectation of a Messiah presented itself to Isaiah and his contemporaries, as would authorize a posi- tive opinion how far the prophet, in uttering the words before us, was thinking of his own times and circum- stances, or looking beyond them. Yet I am unable to form any distinct notion of Isaiah as a man and a Hebrew, and as a prophet of Jehovah in contrast w-ith those mutter- ing wizards he denounces, without supposing that, at this period of his life and ministry, he must have connected the thought of ' the Child ' with Hezekiah, on Avhom the name of the mighty God had been actually named,"" and who (b'ing now a boy nine or ten years old) may already have given promise of the piety which afterwards distin- guished him : — and that he would not, at this time, have considered that his prediction would be quite inadequately realized if the youthful jirince should, on his accession to the tlu-one of David and Solomon, renew the glories of their reigns, in which peace and justice were established at home and abroad, through trust in Jehovah and his cove- nant : — reigns of which the historical facts must be studied in the light which the Book of Psalms, and such passages as 2 Chronicles ix. 1 — roi)hetic usage of the past for the future, a reference to the taking of Samaria not more, though not less, definite than many other pro})hetic descriptions which were undoubtedly made before the event. On the other hand, we have the probability of a general adlierenee to chronological order in the actual arrangement of the l)0(jk, the indications of an unbroken ♦ Chap. xxvi. 1, xxvii. 2 ; and compare the repetition in Anios i. and ii. The recurrence of thia refrain in verse '2.5 of chapter v. seems to me no suffi- cient reason for supposinf^ that this pussagro has been severed from the earlier prophecy. I cannot think that it is necessary even to alter the Masoretic diviuioub in order to make the rufruiu Onish each period. EPIC UNITY OF ISAIAH. 125 current of thought,* the unity of subject of the whole portion, chapters vii. to xii. inclusive, and, lastly, the pro- bability of which I believe the reader will see more evidence the longer he considers the subject, that here as through- out the book the author's own hand may have been at work, arranging, retouching, and fusing together the records of discourses originally distinct. These chapters form a kind of epic wdiole (itself a part of a still larger whole), in which the internecine enmities of the Ten Tribes among themselves and with Judah, and the alliances with the heathen nations by which they support these enmities, only to involve themselves in the common ruin, are traced to their first causes, and the loss of national unity and free- dom shown to be the consequence of the loss of that spiritual unity and liberty which can only spring from and be sus- tained by the living faith of king and people in the unseen but present Lord of the nation and of each member of it : subjection to the heathenish, godless Assyrian power, is shown to be the proper and effectual punishment of the national sin : and a restoration in and through the reism of a righteous prince of the line of David is declared to be certain, because God himself is pledged to it by a covenant Avhich men's evil doings cannot cancel. The prophet stands as on a hill or tower, and sees the past and the future, the distant and the near, in one completed whole in which all events and all wills have but subserved the almighty Master-will ; and, therefore, we find here an instance of the propriety of the Avord epic, which has with so much force been applied to the writings of the Hebrew prophets generally by Mr. Maurice.t In the second edition of the work referred to, this author has indeed omitted this and much more of formal comparison between the Hebrew and classical types of literature, apparently lest his readers should mistake a vital relation for a technical correspondence, and fall into the bondage to names into which that mistake always brings us. But if Ave take * As in verses 24 — 26, of chapter x., compared with chapter viii. 8 — 10; X. 6 with viii. 1, 4 ; x. 27 wiih ix. 3 ; x. 21 with vii. 3 (Shear-jashub) ; xi. 1—5 with ix. 6, 7 ; and xi. 13, 14 with ix. 12, 20, 21. t Moral and Metaphyisical Philosophy, 1st edition. See also Educational Magazine, vol. ii. p. 226. 126 ISAIAH IX. 8 — 1 6. DESTRUCTION care how we call the proi^hets ' epic poets,' and then fancy we understand them, we shall find a real light thrown on the subject by this word, which is farther explained by Coleridge's observation that epic and dramatic poetry are alike founded on the relation of Providence to the human will ; but that while in the latter the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, in the former a pre-announced fate (or Providence) gradually adjusts and employs the will and the events as the instruments for accomplishing its designs : — Ato? le TeXeUro j3oi'\//.* The] Jewish historian, in relating the Ml of Samaria, as the punishment of national sin, says, ' Yet Jehovah testified against Israel and against Judah, by all the pro- phets and all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and statutes, according to the law which I commanded your fathers and which 1 sent to you by my servants the prophets.'! And here we have one of these repeated warnings, in this ' word which Jehovah sent unto Jacob,' by Isaiah. The Ten Tribes had already suffered many an infliction ; their political organization had often been broken up by civil wars and foreign invasions, as the house of unburnt brick dis- solves into mud before the rain ; and the flower of the people had been cut down as lavishly as men cut down the cheap sycamores : but with that stoutness of heart, that obstinate toughness which in all ages to the present has marked this race, the men of Ephraim and Samaria seem to rise superior to every calamity ; like Solomon, i they will change the sycamores for cedars, and they will replace the bricks with hewn stones. The conversion of Damascus from an ancient enemy to an ally encourages them in thtir hopes ; but Jehovah will confound their policy l)y bringing the conquerors of Damascus ujxju them. The histories mention inroads of the Philistines into Judah, though not into Israel, at this period ; but we can believe the latter did not escape, as these marauders were not likely to miss an opportunity, especially when once in movement. The 'Syrians' are either the same allies whose * Li/irari/ Iiitnai>is, vol. ii. pp. l.')9, 164. t 2 Kinjjs xvii. 13. * 1 Kings x. 27. OF THE TEN TRIBES. ,27 arms, on their Lecoming tributary to Tiglath-Pileser, would at once be turned against Epbraim ; or the word (Aram) may be used in a sense Avide enougli to inckide the As- syrians themselves. Tiglath-Pileser took Damascus, killed Rezin, and carried the people away captive ; and we iind Ahaz going there to meet the Assyrian, when it is related that he took the pattern of an altar at Damascus, and adopted the gods of Syria, 'because they helped them,' an account which can only be applicable to the gods of Tiglath-Pileser. * ' The people turneth not unto him that smiteth them,' and therefore they shall be smitten again and again. It will not be a mere political change of an Assyrian satraj> for an Israelite king, but every rank, every household from the highest to the lowest, shall suffer : — though youth is the season of joy, the young men shall find that it is not so when Jehovah, the source of joy, has no joy in them ; though mercy and pity are the natural right of the fatherless and widow, they shall find that God himself refuses them these ; and the reason is, that all of them, man, woman, and child, are demoralized and corrupted ; one may be a hypocrite, and another an open sinner, but all speak, because their hearts believe, the language of that folly which is contrary to, and which denies and excludes, the knowledge of God. That in the middle of this threaten- ing of universal calamity upon head and tail, j^alm-tree and rush, we should find an explanation that the ' tail ' is the prophet that teacheth lies, and not the common people, as the context demands, does not require the supposition of an interpolation by a later hand, as some say. We have constant occasion to notice the Hebrew disregard of that mere logical balance of sentences which indeed soon be- comes an intolerable pedantry in any other language: and here Isaiah's knowledge of what the teachers of a people ought to be and might be, and of how great is their personal responsibility, stops him before he can complete the explanation of the tail and the rush, and he turns it as though he had said, ' No, the common people are brutal * 2 Kings xvi. ; 2 Chron. xxviii. See too the use of 'Aram' in Isaiah XXX vii. 11, 128 ISAIAH IX. \']. — A'. 4. ANARCHY. and degraded enough, but the men who have been the cause of this debasement are more guilty, and more con- temptible than they : they are the dregs of all.' Civil war and foreign invasion shall rage through this reprobate people like the fire with which the husbandman clears the ground of briers and thorns. The wickedness of the land becomes its own punishment, and burns with a fury which is indeed the wrath of God, while its fuel is the people themselves. The images of slaughter and fire — at once fiict and symbol — suggest that of famine so desperate that ' no man shall spare his brother,' nay ' they shall eat every one the flesh of his own arm.' Ephraim and Manasseh were brethren, and sons of the same mother, but they appear as rivals in the earliest records ;* and their names seem to be here put to represent the factions which made the history of the kingdom of Israel in great part a history of tyrannies, rebellions, and anarchies, which were gather- ing to their climax at this time, when the assassination of Pekah seems to have been followed by a nine j^ears' inter- regnum and anarchy, as far as we can trace and make out the lines of a picture which is perhaps indistinct from the very confusion of the times.t And the projihet comi)letes the description of this miserable war of brethren among them- selves by saying that they shall be together against Judah. The strophical form connects the following verses (x. 1 — 4) with the preceding, as the exclamation with which they begin does with those that come after ; and in both are corresponding links of the subject itself. The prophet has described the sins of Ephraim in a general manner ; but on the mention of Judah he proceeds to denounce what we know from the whole tenour of his discourses he felt to be the worst form of the guilt of his own people, with a particularity Avhich it is perhaps not fanciful to attribute to his thouffhts being now directed homewards. The Ton Tribes wore far more ferocious and anarchical than the iiKMi of Judah : there are many indications in the latter of that national respect for law which so characterizes the • Genesis xlviii. l.T— 20; .Tiidpos viii. 1 — 3, xii. 1 — 6. t Compare the historical accounts and dates, in 2 Kings xv. with Ilosca vii. 7. ISAIA H X. 5 — 12. THE A SSFRIANS. 1 2 g Eiiglisli, tliat it has been ol3served,* that though liistoiy attributes to us our share in national wickedness, our crimes have ahnost always been committed under colour of law, and not by open violence, — as in the series of judicial murders in the reigns of Henry VIII,, Charles II., and James II. And thus Isaiah, recurrino" to Judah, denounces the utmost severity of God's Avrath in the day in which he, the righteous Judge, shall come to visit ' an hypocritical nation,' whose nobles and magistrates decree, and execute, unrighteous decrees, — 'To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may lie their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless ! ' t They are satisfied that they are safe in their heartless selfishness, with peace at home and protection abroad restored by their statecraft and their alliance with Assyria. But while they thus rejoice at home, ' desolation cometh from far.' To whom Vv'ill they fly for help when God has abandoned them ? Under whose protection will they leave their wealth, their dignities, their glory, which they have been heaping up for themselves ? Captivity or death are the only prospects before them. And yet, as though no judgments could sufficiently condemn and punish their utter wickedness, the prophet repeats, — ' For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still' Where the evidence is so incomjilete, and the arguments of learned commentators so nearly balanced, I do not dogmatize on the date of chapters x. xi. xii. ; but on the assumption which I have already j)referred, that these chapters may be taken with the three preceding ones to form one prophecy, the scope of the portion before us will be this : — Isaiah turns from Ephraim and Judah to Assyria with an apparent abruptness which does but half conceal the real connection or rather unity of all the parts of his subject : ignoring the petty stateci-aft by Avhich Ahaz and his counsellors were bringing Assyria upon themselves as * By Lord Campbell. t ' To reave the orphan of his patrimonj', To wring the widow from her cust'im'd right.' Second Tnrt >f King Henry TI., v., 2. K 130 THE KIXG OF ASSl'RIA. Avell as on tlieir enemies, tlie propliet goes at once to the heart of the matter, and shows us Jehovah come to execute justice upon the nations, and the Assyrians as the rod and instrument of that justice ; and he employs the whole force of his imagination to do justice to ' the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks,' in order that he may give more emphasis to the scorn with which Jehovah, and the servants of Jehovah, look on his pretensions and power, and that he may bring into fuller c(mtrast with this kingdom of the world, Avhich Ahaz and his people make the sole object of their ho23es and fears, that other kingdom which stands, and ever shall stand, in the will not of man but of God. The old Babel monarchy, which carried its traditions back to the days of Nimrod that mighty hunter before Jehovah, and was in all ages the very type of sheer, godless, arbitrary power, had, in the time of Isaiah and the generation before him, renewed its strength under the Assyrian kings, and become the terror and the scourge of all the neighbouring countries ; for the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the whole earth, had sent this northern conqueror forth, and ' given him [i charge to take the spoil and to take the prey.' One nation after another had fallen before him ; his satraps sat in the thrones of their once independent kings ; the national gods of ancient kingdoms could not preserve their shrines nor their votai'ies from his hands ; Samaria miyht trust to her golden calves, but they Avere within his grasji ; and the cherubims of Jerusalem, or what other unseen images might be hidden and worshij^ped in her holy of holies, would soon prove equally' powerless : — thus he boasted, little thinking that he was the merest tool in the liands of an unknown blaster, who was exactly limiting his actions by the purposes for which lie was being used. Calno, or Calneh, is probably llic modern Neffer about sixty miles south-east of Baltylon. Carehemish was on the Eujihrates, and is supposed to have connnanded its passage there. ''^ It appears from the Assyrian Inscrip- tions to liave been a chief city of the Hittites. Hamath, still existing as Hamah, on the Orontes, was the capital of ♦ 2 Chron. xxxv. 20 : Jerem. xlvi. 2. A SSFRIAN RELIGION. 1 3 1 Upper Syria, and is mentioned frequently in Hebrew history as a place of importance. It also occurs in tlie Inscriptions. Arpad must liave been in Syria, but its place is not known. ' I took the cities, I gave them up to pillage, I slow the inhabitants ; ' or, 'I devastated the country, I took away the king, with his priests and his gods, his warriors and his wives, his gold, silver, and cattle, I carried all the men and women into slavery, I brought there the people of other cities ;' — such are the records which meet us every where in the newly-deciphered annals of these Assyrian kings, and such the subjects of the sculptures which ornamented their palaces. But the reference is also constant to the god in whose strength they have done these things, and whose worship they have thereby established every where : and it is interesting to notice the apparent one-sidedness with which Isaiah here and elsjewhere omits all reference to this religious spirit of the conquerors, while his words are otherwise (except for the poetry) so exact a counterpart of the Assyrian phraseology. It is the one-sidedness of the practical man who goes straight to the single point on which all the rest really dej)ends. The prophet who, without phrase of qualifica- tion, told the strictly religious Jews that the whole ritual which they were practising in exact conformity with the law, was an unbearable abomination,* would have asserted in equally plain terms that the religion of Assyria was no religion. God, the living and true God, had revealed him- self to Isaiah, and to Isaiah's nation, as the Being in whose image man was created, and in whom therefore justice, honesty, truth, kindness, and every other properly human A'irtue which in man feebly struggled for existence, had its own perfect, absolute reality, without the limits or the defects of the finite. The Lord of man, the Jehovah, or I AM,t had made himself known to Isaiah as he had to Moses, and as he does still to each of us : and when the prophet turned to look at the ' gods of the nations ' he saw at once that they were something different — nay, exactlv reverse, — in kind. On the one hand, God was the * Isaiah i. 11 — 14. t l^xodus iii. 1-i. K 2 132 GOD IN MAN'S IMAGE. prototype of man ; on the other, man of God. The God of the Assyrian Avas made in the image of the Assyrian, was the projected form of his own character. The spirit which was embodied in that dignified human figure with its eagle's head and wings, was but the spirit of the actual Tiglath Pileser or Sennacherib, with his wide and resistless swoop, his ravenous maw, his royal cruelty.* And when he led out that terrible cavalry, in the ranks of which there was no ungirt warrior, no unbent bow, no horse's hoof not hard as flint, and* whose shout struck jianic into all who heard it,t when he went forth to conquest at their head, from that palace and city of Avhich we have not altosrether to imajjine the mac^nificence, we know that the winsred lions and the human-headed bulls whom he took with him, full of fierce life, were but imperfectly repre- sented by those which he left behind, carved in stone, at the portals of his own house, or the house of his god. We may see from the vision in chapter vi., that the distinctipn between the two kinds of religion — that which God reveals to man, and that which man makes for himself — is not obliterated or enfeebled, but brought out more plainly, by the fact that the cherubims at Jerusalem were, in other respects, the counterparts of these sphinx-like creatures of the neiL^hbourinjx nations : we see the same human ele- ment, the same religious sentiment, the same capacity for Avorship, the same human methods of expressing this senti- ment and capacity : the difference is between the nation, or the man, in Avhom this human element is met by a real unveiling and communication of God himself, from above, and those in whom it is not so met, and Avho therefore substitute a projection of themselves for its indejiendent existence. At the same time Ave must not, in our ol)jec- tive study of the heathen Avorld, overlook that Ave Chris- tians (like the Jcavs of old) do habitually combine much of this heathenish tompor Avith the true i^iith Avhich has been given us. This is plain if Ave look in any direction Avhere the particular religious prejudice no longer blinds us. We * Seo the majestic figures who have captives flayed, or their eyes put out, in their presence; as, for instance, Soiinaclieril) at T^achish, in Layard's X^'hiereh aud Babylon (1853), p. loO. Truly eai^h-liko men. t Isaiah v. 26—29. ISAIAH X. 13 — 27. THE GREAT KING. 133 can see, for instance, liow mucli of the harsh notions which Calvin and the Puritans mixed up (as we now perceive so unworthily) with their apprehensions of God, was the reflex of men's ordinary notions of justice, and of magisterial duty as well as right, in those days, and which did not shock them when attributed to God, because they held them, as of course, in all their worldly dealings. So, the new form which the ' doctrine of election and reprobation ' took, in the religious revival of the last century, did but reflect the narrow class notions which took for granted that a gentleman was, and would be to the end of time, a finer species of creature than a Avorking man. And in our own day, are not the notions of a God who is pleased with lighted candles, or in whose character mere good- nature or 'unconditioned wisdom' has superseded all regard for the distinction between crime and virtue, but varieties of the same vice ? It may indeed be rejoined that all higher conceptions of God's character are but the reflex of the higher human sentiments, as the other of the lower ones. And then we come to the question of fact which, as I have said before, each man must decide for himself. To return to the Assyrian conqueror : — He does not suspect that he is the instrument in the hands of Jehovah, much less desire Jehovah's help or guidance ; and there- fore, according to the prophet's view of things, he does not rely on any god, but simply on his own military power and political sagacity. He first boasts that he does all things by his own prudence and strength, and then dw^ells exultingly on the nature of his doings : valiant man that he is, he puts down one nation after another, taking pos- session of their treasuries, transplanting the inhabitants to other cities and lands, and obliterating the ancient limits of what from independent kingdoms are now but provinces in his great military empire. He has come upon nation after nation as it dwelt in peace with all the fruits of peace, and has ' found their riches as a nest ;'* he has gathered all the * Sennacherib says, ' They had set their dwellings, like birds' nests, in fortresses on the tops of the mountains.' — Oppert, Inscriptions dcs Sargonidcs, p. 46 ; Sfhrador, Die KcilinschrifUn, u. d. A. T. Xon(ii)lion says of the attempt of Epaminondas to surprise Sparta,— t\n0f.ii av T)]p TToXiv oiffTrfp vfom'nv, 7ravTa7ra(nv tptjuov rwv diivi'Ofiii'iov. — Uelhn. vii. 5, 10, quoted in Grote's History of Gree e, x. 454. This 134 THE WIELDER OF THE SCOURGE. earth as one gathers the eggs from which he has first driven off the terrified hen-bird. But she would hover round her rifled nest and its pkmderer with a trepidating flight and piercing cry, than which no movements and sounds in the brute creation express more anguish ; while these spoiled nations dare not show even such instinctive signs of a broken heart, but know a depth beyond that depth : — ' there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or chirped.' But such boasting is as if the axe or the saw should l)oast itsslf against him Avho uses it ; — as if the staff of dead wood should lift him who is not wood but the living man who holds it. This passage (verses 13 — 15), itself a specimen of the whole context, is quite a study, political and artistic : political for him who seeks the law of the rise and fall of military despotisms ; artistic, as an illustration of the working of the imagination, the ' power by Avhich one image or feeling is made to modify many others, and by a sort of fusion to force many into one, .... and which, combining many circumstances into one moment of con- sciousness, tends to produce that ultimate end of all human thought and human feelings, unity, and thereby the reduc- tion of the spirit to its Principle and Fountain, who is alone truly One.'* And the prophet and poet goes on with the same luxuriance of imagination, and the same severity of righteous faith. ' The Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall send amonof his fat ones leanness :' the allusion seems to be to fat herds, ' fat bulls of Bashan ;' and these one would almost say suggested the thought of the oaks of Bashan, if the previous mention of the axe and the saw did not seem to reverse the succession of the images which crowd in on ever}'- side. The ' glory,' the whole equipments and ammunitions, the pomp and the splendour of the warrior king, shall be burnt uj), and the Light of Israel shall be the consuming fire. If the Assyrians are to be thus destroyed it is because the}'- are mere noxious thorns and alarm must hiivc boon as tluilliiig to a tTreek as the danger of Jerusalem to a Jew : and it is interesting to notice the universal language of passion in remote times and peoples. • Coleritlge's Litvrnry Henuiiym, vol. ii. pp. .55, 50. These lectures on the genius of Sliakspearo throw much liyht on that of Isaiah. THE DELIVERANCE. 135 l)riers, only fit for burning. If their power entitles tliein to be rather compared with lofty forest trees, and their wealth and extended dominion to the ' fruitful field ' with its vineyards, and olive-grounds, and gardens, still they shall be consumed, even as they have often wasted such scenes Avith fire in their marches : they shall be destroyed utterly, ' soul and body,' for they are no trees but men, and like men wasted by sickness they shall perish. And then, to gather up the whole once more in the picture of the lieaven-kindled conflagration of the forest with its lofty trees and its jungles and the fruitful fields lying all about it,- — Ave see of all these trees, which it Avould have once required many and skilful enumerators to reckon, so few that a child can count and write them doAvn, Avhile the child himself, in the midst of the desolation, suggests ncAV trains of thought not foreign to the subject. If Assyria is to be reduced to such a remnant, so is the people, the two houses, of Israel. The Lord of hosts has decreed a righteous execution of judgment upon his guilty people through the land, and though they were as the sand of the sea in numbers, only a remnant of them shall be left. But that remnant shall return* unto their God and King : they Avdll have learnt the lesson sent through so much suffer- ing; and instead of continuing to trust in Assyria, and their alliance with that worldly and faithless power, they ' shall stay upon Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.' And then Isaiah, with that feminine tenderness which so fre- quently shoAvs itself in his sternest denunciations, hastens to exclaim, ' ^lerefore, thus saith, the Lord G_^^^ my^eople that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian ;' it is true that he shall for a time oppress you Avith a bondage like that Avhich in old times you endured Avhen you Avere the serfs of Pharaoh or the tributaries of Midian ; but as the slaughter at the rock of Oreb Avas an effectual scourge to that scourge of Israel, and as the rods of the Egyptian taskmasters AA'ere broken in the hour in Avhich Moses stretched out his rod upon the sea, so shall it be noAV ; for yet a little Avhile, and JehoA^ah Avill raise * Shear jm^huh are the words of the original, where there is also a play on Jashuh and Jacob, such as Isaiah is fond of. 136 THE MARCH ON JERUSALEM. up his scourge, and lift up his rod, and his indignation against his people shall cease in the destruction of their, and his, enemies. In that day they shall be freed from the galling yoke and the heavy taxes of Assyrian suzerainty ; and Judidi shall not merely be freed from her oppressor, but shall be freed by restored life and vigour : — the meta- phor of the yoke suggests that of the bullock bursting it by the fatness of his neck, or rejecting it in the luslihood of his strength, as in Deut. xxxii. 15 ; Hosea iv. IG, x. 11. Isaiah then gives a vivid description of the march of the Assyrians upon Jerusalem, as it ' flashed upon his inward eye,' with all the distinctness of sense, or perhaps as it was actually occurring at the time. Sargon may have thus threatened Jerusalem from the north, in the campaign in which he claims to have subdued Judah* — either immediately after he had taken Samaria, or in one of his subsequent invasions of Philistia. Whether as vision or as fact, this march is better connected with Sargon than with Sennacherib, For though both the traditional name of the ' camp of the Assyrians ' Avhich still existed in the time of Josephus, and the nature of the ground Avhich lays Jerusalem most open to an attack on the north, make it probable that this was the quarter in Avhieh Rabshaketh did actually, a few years later, ' shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion,' the main army Avas before Lachish, and he would not have brought his force round by the defile of Michmash.t The places here mentioned, and several of which were found, still retaining their names, by Messrs. Robinson and Smith, I lay in succession between the northern frontier of Judah and Jerusalem : and the remains of a square tower and large hewn stones which they found at Jeba, opposite to ]\[ukhmas {\.c., Michmash), and supposed to be Gibeah of Saul, and the like marks of Mukhm^s itself having been • *I1 reduisit la Judce (lahouda), dont le site est lointain.' — Oppert, Ln Inscriptions dcs Sargouidcs, p. 34. Compare 5Ir. Sayce on Isaiah xxxvi. — xxxix., in Ihc Thitihti/iral Jicrinr for Jan., 1873. t Schiader suppusfs Stiiiiachfrili to have .sent a detachment of his arr y from some point noithwest of Jonisulem.^ — Kdlinschrifttn it. d. A. T., p. 2.J1. But as Sargon made a onmpaifj^n through the same couutiios, this prophecy may refer tfi the antieipiition of a like nttaek from him. + liiblkal licsearct.es, vol. ii. p. 110, If. A NCIENT ROA DS. 137 once a place of strength, taken in connection with the accounts in 1 Sam. xiii., xiv., and 1 Mac. ix. 73, make it intelhgible that this may have been a route which Isaiali might reasonably expect the invaders to take. The hic-h road indeed no longer runs that way, and Dr. Robinson says that the common approach to Jerusalem can never have lain through these deep and difficult ravines : but it has been pointed out to me""" that while it would sufficiently vindicate the propriety of the picture to observe, that an Assyrian army would direct its course not by what might be the high road, but by what was the line of still un- plundered towns and villages, the geographical probability is all in fovour of the route described having been the actual northern highway. For the present road, which is so much more practicable, lies along the water-shed, where the ground, although better for engineering purposes, is worse for houses or cultivation from the want of water: and such roads, in which the convenient junction of ex- treme points is the main object, are a comparatively modern invention, though the most in accordance with our notions of a highwa}^ In Isaiah's time, even the maiii roads would be those which had been formed, stage by stage, for the communication of each town or village with the ones immediately before and behind it ; and these towns would, in the present state, have lain thickest in the very line in question : for while the water-shed is just to the west, and ' lower down the slope, towards the Jordan valley, all is a frightful desert,' the steep hill-sides, in which these towns were clustered, from Anathoth to ]\Iichmash, still show signs of that ' strong and fertile soil ' which (as has been explained before) only needs terracing to make the rock a garden, and which, even as it is, Dr. Robinson here found producing ' fields of grain occasionally, and fig- trees and olive-trees everywhere.' * By my brother, General R. Strachey. And this explanation hy a militarr engineer is confirmed l.y Mr. Grote's soliiiion of the like difficulty:—'! do not share the doubts which have been raised about Xenophon's accuracy, in his description of the route from Sardis to Ikonium ; though the names of several of the places which he mentions are not known to usj' and their sit( s cannot be exactly identified. There is a great departure from the straight hue of blaring. But we at the present day assign more weight to that cir- cumstance than is suited to the days of Xenophim. Straight roads, slretcli- ing systematically over a large region of country, are not of that age : the 138 ISAIAH X. 33, 3+. TII£ ASSYRIAN BRANCH. The prophet sees the enemy's troops as they enter the frontier city Aiath, or Ai, which Joshua had once taken from the Canaanitish king : they pass through Migron ; and, meetinof no resistance at Michmash, the northern kev to the defile, they there leave their baggage lest it should impede the rapid advance with which ' they pass the Pass,' and establish their quarters at Geba, which commands the southern approach to Jerusalem. The inaction and stupor which had allowed this position to be mastered, is now succeeded by open panic : Ramali trembles ; Gibeah of Saul — the birth-j)lace of the king of whose feats, and the feats of his son Jonathan, in discomfiting countless hosts of Philistines in these very defiles, the old national stories told — Gibeah is fled ; Laish hears the shrieks of Gallim ; and wretched Anathoth'" answers not with her echoes alone, but with a too real cr}'- of despair, for an enemy, whom neither human pity nor fear of religion moves, is upon the city of Levites ; Madmenah is flown like a bird, and the inhabitants of Gebim have carried aw^ay their goods for safety ; every hill-top within sight of Jerusalem is covered with those terrible horsemen from the north ; at Nob the Assyrian is seen to halt for the day, prei)aratory to the assault, and ' he shakes his hand ajrainst the Mount of the dau<>-hter of Zion.' Then the vision gives place to another ; the prophet recals the previous promise, with the previous image it was expressed under : — Jehovah cuts off the top branch, the ornamental head of the tree, and the Avhole forest of trees and of underwood falls under his stroke.t The root of the word Avhich I have oommiinicationH were probably all originally made between one neighbouring town and another, wilhout much reference to saving of distance, and with no reference to any promotion of traffic between distant places. ' It was just about this time that King ^Vrchelaus began to ' cut straight roads ' in Mace- donin, — which Thiicydides seems to note as a remarkable thing (ii. 100).' llist. of (1 recce, ix. 23, note. * ' The prophet plainly alludes to the name of the place (lit. the Answers) ; and witli a i)cculiar propriety, if it had its name from its remarkable echo.' — Lowtb, on the vor.se. t ' Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge, Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle, Under wliowe shade the ramping lion slept. Whose top-branch ovei peered Jove's spreading tree, And kept low shrubs from winter's jjowerful wind.' Third I'art of Kiiiy Ileurij VI., v., 2. ISAIAH XI. I— 12. THE BRANCH OF JESSE. 139 translated ' top branch ' means ' adorn,' so that it is the chief or top bough, forming the ornamental head of the tree, which is alluded to. The image is now transferred to the state and king of Israel, which is also to be cut down to the stump, like the tree in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. But out of that stump, and from its living roots, shall grow \\^ a scion — one of those slender shoots which we see springing up from, and inmiediately round, the stock of a truncated tree.'"' A kintr of the race of Jesse shall sit on the throne of his fathers, in accordance with the covenant made with David : — ' I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, Thy seed will I establish for ever, And build up thy throne unto all generations. 'f The Spirit of Jehovah shall not merely direct this son of David by occasional and transient impulses but shall abide continually with him, habitually filling him with the spirit, the very life, of insight into the principles and laws of God's government of the Avorld, and of discernment how to apply those principles to actual circumstances, so as to bring the latter into harmony with the former ; he shall receive the spirit of true statesmanship, enabling him to imderstand and to rule, not ideas and things, but men ; he shall have that personal knowledge of God which is the livinsf source of love and reverence for him ; his delight in this knowledge and fear of God shall enable him accurately to discern the like disposition in others, so that, with an eye purged from the film of sense he shall not fail to recognise the cause of truth and righteousness in his king- dom ; and when he has declared his righteous sentence, he will ever stand ready to execute it wdth prompt and strict justice. Then the wolf and the leojiard shall make their homes with the lamb and the kid, while a little child leads the calf and the young lion together. For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah : — this is the * ' V08 modo, milites, favete nomini Scipionnin, sohoh' imperatorum ves- trornni, velut acciiii recrescenti stirpil/Ui-.' Li v. lib. xx^•i. c. 41. Quoted by Vitringa. t Psalm Ixxxix. 3, 4. 14-0 THE GOLDEN AGE. reason why this golden age (described in language which Lowth says is not equalled by the classical or the Arabic and Persian poets) shall come in the days of the righteous king. It is because his kingdom, which is the kingdom of Jehovah, shall extend its influence over, and be re- cognized by, the whole earth. From the history of the reigns of David, Solomon, and Hezekiah, we see that when there was a righteous king in Israel, he not only governed his own people in wisdom and the fear of Jehovah, promoting education and civilization in that spirit of the ancient law and constitution which is embodied in the book of Deuteronomy, and thus establishing truth and justice, peace and happiness, religion and piety, through- out the land, but that he at the same time (as we might have expected) exercised a humanizing influence over the neighbouring nations, gave them glimpses at least of the superiority of the God of Israel over their own gods, and disseminated among them principles of moral and political order which continued to germinate more or less effectually, notwithstanding the resistance of national vice, ignorance, and superstition. But these, and such as these, were but the shadow of good things to come : the acts of Jewish kings, like the words of Jewish prophets, Avere but various ami partial ways of repeating, rather than of realizing, the great cardinal promise made to Abraham, or the great prophet ir. ideal of the Righteous King which was revealed to Isaiah and the rest of the prophets. But that better thing Avhicli God had provided for us, that they without us should not be perfect, is actually come in the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of David. By the manifestation of the Righteous King in his own person, the golden age has been made far more actual, and we brought into a far closer connection with it, than was possible or even conceivable in the days of Solomon or Hezekiah. Then the chosen race itself had but a dim knowledge of God, and the nations of the earth could but hear of him through tho testimony of the Jewish people and its kings ; but now a greater than Solomon, even the Lord himself, is come into each nation which re- ceives his gospel and his church, and abides in it as its ever-present though invisible King. True it is, that even ISA I A H XL 1 3 . EPHRA IM A ND Ji 'BA H. 141 in those kingdoms of tlie -world wliicli have become the kingdoms of our Lord Christ, we do not yet see all things ])Ut under his feet ; the ideal is still far from completely one with, and transcendent through and over, the actual, the heavenly over the earthly ; but by him who has an eye to see, the one may be plainly discerned everywhere hid under the other, capable of being developed, nay, A\aiting and ready to be revealed in ever new and more glorious forms. Our part is to believe this heartily, heartily to take our appointed share in the work of realization ; and not the less so, because we learn more r>nd more every day that we do work, how small our share, liow large God's share, in the work must be ; that man's chief business is to * Leave to Heaven The work of Heaven, and with a silent spirit Sympathize with the powers that work in silence.' I have followed our version in the use of the word ' earfh ' in verse 9, though the original might equally be translated ' land ;' for 'land' would limit the promise of this kingdom of righteousness to Israel, and the reference to the ' i)eoples ' and the ' nations ' in the next verse, compared Avith such passages as chapter ii. 2 — 4, xix. 18 — 25, is in favour of the wider sense. But the idea of the universal kingdom is certainly not so 2^rominent here as in those and many other places, being subordinated to that of the 1 (ringing back ' the outcasts of Israel ' and the ' dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth ' to their own land and Lord, and of their reunion into one people as at first. Jacob, in his prophetic statement of the fortunes of his sons, disregards the rights of primogeniture, and gives the pre-eminence to Judah^and_JosepIi}, and in the family of the latter to the younger son Sphraiip. Hence, from the time of the exodus, these two were regarded as the leading tribes of Israel. Judah was much more numerous Than Ephraim, took precedence during the journey in the wilderness, and received the largest portion in the pro- mised land. But Joshua was an Ephraimite ; and Shiloh, A\here the tabernacle long stood, was probably within the 142 INTERXATIONAL JEALOUSIES limits of the same tribe. The ambitious jealousy of the Ephraimites towards other tribes ajjpears iu their conduct to Gicledn and Jephtliali. Their special jealousy of Judah". sliowed itself iu their temj^orary refusal to submit to David after the death jof_Saul^ in tjieir adherence to Absalom agamst Hs father, and in the readiness with which they joined in the revolt of Jeroboam, Avho was himself of the tribe of Ephraim. This schism was, therefore, not a sudden or fortuitous occurrence, but the natural result of causes which had long been working. The mutual relatidii of the two kingdoms is expressed in the recorded fact that ' there ^vas war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and between Asa and Baasha, all their days.' Exceptions to the general rule, as in the case of Ahab and Jehoshai)hat, were rare, and a departure from the jirinciples and ordinary feelings of the parties. The ten tribes, which assumed the name of Israel after the division, and perhaps before it, regarded the smaller and less warlike state with a con- tempt which is well expressed by Jehoash in his parable of the cedar and the thistle, unless the feeling there dis- played be rather personal than national. On the other hand, Judah justly regarded Israel as guilty not only of l)olitical revolt, but of religious apostacy, and the jealousy of Ephraim towards Judah would of course be increased by the feet that Jehovah had 'forsaken the tabernacle of Shiloh,' that he ' refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose tlie tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which he loved."* If Solomon had, like his father David, retained to the last his faith in the one God of Israel, and in that maxim of government which David laid down in his ' last words,' that ' he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God,' and if Rehoboam, Solomon's son, had followed in the same path, it is probable that they might have solved this ditfi- cult political problem of fusing into one nation various conflicting parties and interests, of which I believe the solution lias always failed or succeeded according as unity • Alexander's Prophecies of Isaiah, note on verse 13 ; bis authorities arc : — Gen. xlix. 8—12,22—26, xlViii. 19; Numb. i. 27, 33. ii. 3, x. 14, xiii. 8; Josli. xviii. 1 ; 1 Sim. iv. 3: Jiidi,'e8 viii. 1, xii. 1 ; 1 Kings xi. 26, xiv. 30, XV. 16; 2 Kiugb xiv. 'J ; Psalm Ixxviii. 9-11, GO, 67, 68. OF THE HEBREW NATION. 143 of national faith, and equality of civil rights and justice, have or have not been established : for the centralization of military force, whether domestic or foreign, is not a fusion, but a suj^pression and (if it lasts) a destruction, of the elements of national life. But Solomon forgot David's dying counsel that he should ' keep the charge of Jehovali his God, to walk in his ways, to keej) his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it was written in the law of Moses;' and his own prayer Avheu he came to the throne, that Jehovah would give him ' an understanding heart to judge his peoj)le, to discern between good and evil,' and to follow the footsteps of David ' in truth, righteousness, and uprightness of heart before God,' and thus, and not with the arbitrary hand of the military chieftain, or the selfishness of the oriental despot, to make it his aim to govern ' this God's so great people.'* The men were not equal to the occasion, though by God's providence their failure was made to illustrate * 2 Sam. xxiii. 3; 1 Kings ii. 2—4; iii. 6—9. In referring the reader to these passages, it may not be out of phice to notice an opinion "that David's subsequent directions to Solomon ' to bring down the hoar heads of Joab and Shiniei to tlie grave with blood,' are expressions of a revengeful malice in- consistent with a character of piety and justice. A moderately thoughtful examination and comparison of the various notices of these men and the Iransaclions in which they figured, including tlieir deaths, will make it plain ihal Joab, though a faithful supporter of David's throne, was a brutal soldinr with an influence over the army which made him independent not only of the king but of the laws ; while Shimei was a powerful chieftain of the house of Saul, and ready to proceed to any opposition to the reigning dynast}-. David was unabl(! to dismiss Joab, and, in a temper as humane as politic, he included the rebel Shimei in the general amnesty when he recovered his crown, and declared, ' There shall no man be put to death this day in Israel.' But lie warned Solomon — and Solomon's mode of acting on the warning gives the fair historical interpretation of its precise meaning — that these two men would be his most dangerous enemies, the one of his person and house, and the other (who 'shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of w;ir upon his girdle that was about his loins, and in his shoes that were on his ieet ') of his endeavour to govern the nation by civil law and justice, and not bv force ; and that therefore he must watch them narrowly, and il they did ao-ain break out, he mus't not be deterred by a misplaced reverence of pity for their age, or the hope they could not do much harm in their few remaining years, from executing strict justice on them. Joab joined a conspiracy for deposing Solomon, and Shimei's reason for quitting the surveillance imposed on hini^ was believed by Solomon to be, and probably was, a pretext for a like course! Burke, who cultivated his love of justice and hatnd of all oppression by the study of the Hihleand of real life and hi.story, shows incidentally that he thus read this story of David, when (in one of his speeches on financial reform, I ihink) he warns his hearers that 'they must not spare the hoary head of inveterate abuse.' David did several very cruel as well as arbitrary acts : but we need not rcsij^n the use of our reason in reading the Bible for fear men should call us superstitious. 144 DISRUPTION OF THE KINGDOM. the political law as clearly as tlieir success -would have (lone. And though the student of histoiy feels the same regret at this jDermanent disruption of what should have heen organic and mutually supporting members of a one Hebrew commonwealth, as he does at the always frustrated hopes of a national unity in ancient Greece ; yet in the one case or the other a deeper insight into what was possible in the then stage of the political growth and education of the human race, teaches us that the evil was the only con- dition on which it was practicable to secure the far greater good Avhich was secured, and has become a part of the imperishable heritage of mankind. The experiments of Sparta and of Athens, and still more those of Macedon, and, above all, of Rome, show us that the problem of how to unite liberty with centralization, could not be solved ill that afje. And so no doubt it was with the Hebrews ; tliough their worship of One God at Jerusalem gave them facilities for true national unity known nowhere else before the times of the Gospel. It has been observed that the scriptural account of the power of Solomon resembles, almost word for word, some of the paragraphs in the great inscriptions at Nimroud. 'Solomon reigned over the kingdoms from the- river [Euphrates] unto the land of the riiilistines, and unto the border of Egypt : they brought hi 111 presents ... a rate year by year .... and served Solomon all the days of his life He had dominion over all the region on this side the river, from Tiplisah even unto Azzah, over all the kings on this side the river.'* And when we thus see on what a precipice Solomon stood, and what his descendants and their people might have become ; when we reflect what not only Israel, but the world would have been, if instead of a Bible we had had the annals of a race of Hebrew Sargons and Sennacheribs, and in the fulness of time a Kehama — an incarnation of evil — instead of a Son of God, we shall perceive that if ever man spoke by the spirit of God, or did a deed for Avhich all posterity should call him blessed, it was that radical and revolutionist the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite, who • 1 Kint?8 iv. 21, 24 ; 2 Chmn. ix. 24, 26. QuotoJ, with tho iiLove observa- tion, by llr. Layaid, Xi/uich ami Jlab^/un, p. 035. REVOLUTION AND REFORM. ■ 1-7 stirred up the young soldier Jeroboam to plot against his master Solomon, and openly and successfully to rebel against Rehoboam. At the same time, as I have already observed, we must not overlook that this, like the other instances of prophets instigating rebellion, belongs to the earlier history of the nation : the later prophets habitually recognize that highest discovery of constitutional politics, that in the maturer age of a commonwealth all reforms can and must be effected by a discussion which, though absolutely refusing all restraint to its words, keeps steadily within the limits of the existing laws, till it can change them by the power of words alone. Of the increased clearness with which this momentous distinction is apprehended by our non-beneficed classes in England, we owe more than is usually acknowledged to Mr. Cobden, and his colleagues in the Anti-Corn Law Agitation.* By precept, practice, and success, they have made the truth so popularly intelligible that we may hope that it is as firmly established among us as the ease admits of For in politics as in every other region of human thought and action, it is not the mere establishment of maxims and traditions, however rational but the presence of a moral and religious life in the honest and earnest application of these, which upholds a con- stitution. The hope and promise of a reunion of the two houses of Israel, which Isaiah utters, are repeated by Ezekiel :t we cannot doubt that such a prospect must have animated the pious and the wise of the nation in each age : and the historians, in terms which show their own appreciation of events such as had not been ' from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kino-g^'of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah,' describe a resort of" per- sons from all parts of the northern kingdom to keep the ^ssover at Jerusalem in the reigns of both Hezekiah and 1, followed by a general visitation of the cities not Tudah and Benjamin, but also of ' Ephraim and toLS^"^ ' ^^^^Gon even unto Naphthali,' for the pur- ^g the land of the altars, images, and groves 'SSI- t Chapter xxxvii. 15-28. ^^>"^^P- T. "^ , p. 176. ij, ISAIAH XI. 14—16. EPHRAIM AND JUDAH. of the false gods.* And from these statements of almost exclusively ecclesiastical historians we may infer, •with little danger of being carried away by fancy, that there Avere corresponding facts in the civil condition of society, and that in the transient gleams of peace and prosperity which Judah experienced after tlie fall of Samaria and the E})hraimite monarchy, Jerusalem, and the throne, as well as the temple there, became the recognized seat of authority for such of the people of the Ten Tribes as had not been carried away by the Assyrians, and as preferred dwellincf in towns or villao^es with the habits of civilization and of civil order, to those of mere pastoral families or tribes wandering in the desert at their own will. It was indeed but a feeble restoration of the times of David and Solomon, or even of the earlier commonwealth ; nor was that a better state of things which prevailed from the days of Ezra to those of Christ, who proclaimed the fact of a deeper ground of unity than that of descent from Jacob, and of whose meeting wdth the woman of Samaria we may aj^ply, in reference to this point, his saying, that a greater than Solomon was there. Ephraim and Judah shall be at one ; together they shall sweep down like eagles upon the hill-country of Palestine, and on the Arab tribes that wander through the eastern deserts ; Edom, Moab, and Ammon, shall again become tributaries as they were in the best times of the monarchy : even the great nations of Egypt and Assyria shall give up their cai)tives, — for in that day Jehovah will not only dry up the Red Sea, as of old, but will extend the same power to the Euphrates, striking its deep streams into many shallow ones, and thus making a way for his ])eople to return out of both of these lands. Pathros is Thebais, or Upper Egypt ; Cush is Ethio})ia, and also Arabia Deserta, along the east coast of the Red Sea ; Elam is Elymais, adjoining — and often used to include — I'ersia, as well as Susiana, and Media ; Shinar, Babylonia ; Hamath, a chief city of Syria ; and the Islands of the Sea a^ai'o the isles and the coasts of the Mediterranean. ♦ 1 ^2 Chron. xx.\. 1 to xxxi. 1 ; 2 Kiugs xxiii. 1 — 23 ; 2 Gluon. xxxiv. 29 tion, Ly-y- 18- DEPORTATIONS OF THE JEWS. 14^ The Chronicles mention as a great national calamity the numbers of captives taken by the Syrians, Ephraimites, Edomites and Philistines, during the reign of Ahaz.* Joel speaks of the Tyrians, Zidonians, and Philistines, selling the Jews to the Grecians,t and Amos seems to allude to a similar sale to the Edomites. + Isaiah refers elsewhere (chap. xvi. 4) to Jews who had fled their own country to escape domestic or foreign oppression ; and in the times of Jeremiah we have like instances. § And Hezekiah, when Rabshakeh was before Jerusalem, and Sennacherib in pos- session of the country and cities round, desires the proj^het to 'lift up his prayer for the remnant that is left.')| And comparing these and similar If proofs of the practice of the Jews, and of their enemies with that of all the other nations of antiquity, we have abundant evidence — even without referring to Sennacherib's account of his having carried off TEe whole population which dwelled around Jerusalem** — that during the r.-igns of Ahaz and his successor there was such a dispersion and captivity of the people as that" from which Isaiah here promises the restoration. That tlie fulfilment of this promise in the succeeding reign of Hezekiah was most inadequate, must be evident to him who sets the outward possibilities of the occasion against the unbounded magnificence of the prophetic ideal : yet it need not be doubted that such a fulfilment as the case did admit would have been brought about by the king, and the relations of those of his subjects who were in exile or slavery : for in the latter years of his reign, when ' many brought gifts unto Jehovah to Jerusalem, and presents to Hezekiah king of Judah so that he was magnified in the sight of all nations from thenceforth,' he would have been well able to demand the restoration of his peojDle with effect. The reference to the Philistines may be compared ■with Sennacherib's statement that 'the nobles and the people of Ekron put their king Padi, his ally, and the vassal of Assyria, in irons and delivered him to Hezekiah * 2 Chron. xxviii. 5, 8, 17 ; xxix. 9. f Joel iii. 6. J Amos 1. J. § Jeremiah xli. xlii. || Isaiah xxxviii. 4. K As 2 Kmgs xv. 29 ; xvii. 6, 18. ** RawUnson, Outline of the History of Assyria, p. 23. Oppert, Li^crip- tions des Sargonides, p. 45 ; Schrader, Die keilimchriftoi, u. d. A. T., p. 176 L 2 X48 ISAIAH XI I. — A HYMN OF THE CHURCH of Judfea, with hostile intentions, under cover of night.'* The smiting the Euphrates into seven streams, Grotius, with his wonted clear and practical appreciation of fact and history, refers to the partial dismemberment of Assyria by the defection of the Medes and Chaldees, which, according to Herodotus, took place about the same time with Sen- nacherib's retreat from the invasion of Judaea and Egypt : for the reconciliation of the Greek historian with the native records, we must wait till they are more thoroughly deci- phered and translated. The prophet finally concludes this prophecy, the struc- ture of which we have so often paused to admire in its various parts, with a hymn, after the manner of those which in the Book of Psalms have these two thousand years been reckoned among the most precious treasures of men, women, and children, all over the w^orld. It is a hymn of the restored church, which Isaiah puts into her mouth ' in that day,' I say the restored church, rather than the nation, because the whole matter as Avell as tone of the hymn — as indeed the name hymn would signify — marks that church is the proj)er word here. It is as impos- sible to understand the history and literature of ancient Israel as it is those of modern France, Germany, or England, if we do not duly appreciate the presence and influence of the church in each. And by the church of the Hebrews I do not here mean their national and endowed priesthood with its prescribed laws and rituals for national worship and education, and which are analogous to the like institution among ourselves ; I speak of that spiritual brotherhood of which the eccle- siastical ' estate of the realm ' in any nation is the proper symbol, and whicli embodies and expresses itself in and by that symbol in as far as it can ; but which cannot limit itself to that or any other earthly form, because it is itself* heavenly, and transcends all the partial and imperfect forms of earth, even when they are at their best, and still more so when (as often happens) they have become deejily, or * See the roferonocs in the lubt note. Sir Henry Rawlineon, M. Oppert, and Dr. Schrader give difl'crent versions of the last words. 1 follow I)r. ISchrader. THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH. 149 even hopelessly, corrupted and decayed. This brotherhood has God for its father, and for its elder brother and head the Son of God, whom the Apostle beheld in vision, while * ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,' sang — ' Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation : and hast made us unto our God kings and priests ; and we shall reign on the earth.' And what St. John contemplated and declared with the eye and tongue of the old Hebrew seers, St. Paul has set forth in the language and by the methods of European philosophy ; while the life and substance of the teaching of both is contained in the last discourses of their Master and ours, who said, ' Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word ; that they all may be one ; as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they aflso may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.' The world and the church are the two universal opposites : not the world merely in some j^articularly bad sense, but in all senses, good and bad ; — the world which hates and resists the church with active enmity ; the world which hinders the church by its indifference, selfishness, corrugation, and decay ; and also the world into which the church is in all ages infusing its own, or rather its Lord's, unworldly, heavenly spirit ; which shall be at last entirely renewed by that spirit, and shall ' believe ' that the church and the Lord of the church were indeed sent by the Father of all, that his Name may be glorified in and through all. This church, which Socrates and Plato hoped to find, and dwell in, after death,* but which Jesus Christ and his Apostles tell us, and we know is actually set up and open, upon earth, was to the Hebrew nation neither a mere future hope, nor * ' This law of degeneracy [according to Plato] exists in the common- ■wealths of the earth, just because they have not understood and steadfastly contemplated that original model, that perfect idea of a commonwealth, which is also the original model and perfect idea of a human character. It is a contradiction and absurdity then to allege the fact of this degeneracy aa a proof that no such model is to be found. But after all these inquiries does the thought still linger about the mind, where is it to be found ? Plato answers (book ix. p. fin.), 'AW tv ovpavtjj 'itruig napdliiy^a dioKurai rid Mitnphi/sical I'hiloiiop/nj, pp. 153, 151 (2nd Edition). ♦ Jeremiah xxxi. 31 — 34. AND UNIVERSAL. 151 the difference between them and us is that both of them believed and accepted all that it was given them to know, but we do not. The Kingdom of God is manifested among us, but we deny its presence. We deny it socially even when we seem to acknowledge it individually ; and the consequent taint and curse of worldliness which pervade everything, even our religion, can only be got rid of in proportion as our social as well as our individual life is renewed by faith in Christ, who, being the Head, is the source of life in all the relations which the members of the body have with one another.* But while we recognize this distinction of the Jew from the Christian as well as from the Gentile, — that the first had the church, though yet in its germ and promise, — it does not follow that we are to disregard the various and successive stages of its development among the Jews themselves. And in this and the other earlier prophecies of Isaiah, we should go much against their actual lan- guage and tone, as well as against probability, if we sup- posed that the youthful patriot grown up in the prosperous reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, and having seen only two or three years of national calamity, was looking at things as Jeremiah looks at them in the passage quoted above, when a moral and material decay of many generations had brought the commonwealth to the lowest depresvsion, and spiritual hope was stimulated by the utter despair of earth. It is more in accordance with all the facts to believe that Isaiah, when he puts this hymn in the mouth of the remnant of Jehovah's people, recovered from the four corners of the earth, was anticipating such a restom- tion of the national church as he did witness a few years after, in the reign of the pious Hezekiah, — a restoration which consisted not merely in the re-opening the temple^ and re-establishing the daily worship and the yearly festivals, but much more in the humble, holy, devout spirit of repentance, hope, and fixith, in which the king and people confessed before God that it was for their sins * The reader will eeo that I have followed Coleridge's exposition of the relation of the universal to a national church, in his essay on Church and State. 152 THE OBLATION OF WATER that * tlieir fathers had fallen by the sword, and their sons, and their daughters, and their Avives, were in captivity ;' and that they now ' turned again to him, the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, believing that he would return to the remnant of them who were escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria, and that their brethren and their children would find compassion before them that led them cai)tive, so that they should come again into their own land, because Jehovah their God was gracious and merciful, and Avould not turn aAvay his face from them if they returned to him.'* The historical narrative is indeed a striking counterpart of the proj^hccy ; the influence of the man who uttered the latter is majiifest in the pro- ceedings chronicled by the former ; and each makes the other an intelligible and coherent portion of one history. The Talmudists refer the words, 'With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation,' to the custom of making an oblation of water on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, when a priest fetched water in a golden pitcher from the fountain of Siloah, and poured it mixed with wine on the morning sacrifice as it lay on the altar : while at the evening offering the same was done amidst shouts of joy from the assembled people. It was in obvious allusion to this rite that, ' in the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying. If any man thirst let him. come unto me and drink ;' but as it is not prescribed in the law of Moses, it has been doubted whether it dates back earlier than the times of the Maccabees. It is however at least as probable that the Asmonean princes should have restored an ancient as ordained a new rite : such a rite, to acknowledge God's gift of the water without which harvest and vintage must have failed, would always have been a likely accompaniment of the feast in which these were cek-brated ; and the like acts of Samuel and Elijah, though for ditirrent purposes, perhaps go in con- firmation of th expcn-ience of their own Christian faith had convinced them that they had another and deeper interest in the words of Isaiah than in those of any patriot or politician, ancient or modern ; they accepted the common explana- tion of this experience — ' that Isaiah was inspired, and his [)rophecies a part of the revelation of God to man ;' and then they adopted, and employed all their learning and ingenuity to maintain, the notion — in former times floating vaguely on the surface of a deeper and truer belief, but now reduced to a coherent system — that not only was 'all Scripture given by inspiration,' but that (contrary to \hQ constant declaration of Scripture itself) inspiration was confined to the writers of Scripture, and consisted not iu 1S6 THE NEW CRITICISM, the perpetual presence and indwelling of God's spirit in men, but mainly and eminently, though not entirely, in special arbitrary and miraculous communications from God through the 2>''ophet or apostle, who was himself little more than a mechanical instrument for the purpose. And, therefore, while they give a predominance to the religious and Christian interest of Isaiah's prophecies, to which it can only be objected that it is shown apart from their national and human interest, instead of in the entire union in which the two stand together in the prophecies them- selves, we find them maintaining that these prophecies are full of miraculous predictions of future events, which could only have been made known to the prophet because God had seen fit to suspend or supersede the laws of nature and the human mind for the occasion. The publication of Bishop Lowth's work on Isaiah in 1786, gave a new interest and a new direction to the study of the subject. While Lowth accepted the ordinary orthodox views of prophecy, it was his main object to exhibit Isaiah as a poet not inferior to the great classical models, and to remove the obstacles to his being duly appreciated as such, partly by literary illustrations, and partly by a new translation in which many real eiTors or obscurities of the authorized version were avoided, while the whole was made to assume a form more in accordance with classical, or supposed classical, canons. The last point he endeavoured to attain by a free use of conjectural emendations — his own, and those of ancient versions or modern scholars — of the text, in places of which it was not then seen that they were already in harmony with the canons of Hebrew, and often even of English, taste, and could only be injured by being altered. And though these particular conjectures were soon set aside by Hebrew scholars, as wanting alike in authority and probability, yet the spirit of them, as well as of the criticism they were intended to support, appeared in new forms. Lowth had employed himself in making it clear that Isaiah was a real poet : certain of his German contemporaries and suc- cessors proposed to prove by Lowth's methods that he was a real patriot, politician, and man of Hesh and blood, like ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. 157 Socrates, or Cicero, or the men of the eighteenth century itself. Destructive analysis and hypothetical reconstruction were the critical methods of the age, and the commentators on Isaiah employed them as their contemporaries were employing them upon the classical authors. The destruc- tive criticism did much service by the sceptical questioning and skilful anatomy with which it refuted many figments of the commentators and swept away much accumulated rubbish ; but when the combined efforts of this criticism during forty years had reduced the unquestioned portions of the writings of Isaiah to five chapters and six verses of a sixth,* it had plainly gone too far, and its results were * * Si enim ea perlegcris quae Koppius, Doederlinius, Eichornins, Paulus, Rosenmiillerus, Bertholdus, Gesenius, alii, de authentia oraculorum Esaiae doceant, invenies perpauca oracula intacta restaie : scilicet ea quae legentur c. i. 3 — 9, xvii. xx. xxviii. xxxi. xxxiii.' J. U. MoUer, I)e Authentia Oraculorum Esaice. Havniag, 18'25. Dr. Alexander, in the introduction to his Commentary, gives the following account of some of the differei)t conten- tions as to what should he received as the genuine writings of Isaiah : — ' Chapter vii. 1 — 16 is regarded by Gesenius as probably not the composition of Isaiah, who is mentioned in the third person. This opinion is refuted by Hitzig, and repudiated by the later writers. Koppe's idea that the twelfth chapter is a hymn of later date, after being rejected, by Ge.senius and revived by Ewald has again been set aside by Umbreit. The genuineness of chapters xiii. xiv. 1 — 23 is more unanimously called in question on account of its re- semblance to chapters xl. — Ixvi. which this whole class of critics set aside as spurious. Chapters xv. and xvi. are ascribed by Koppe and Bertholdt to Jeremiah ; by Ewald andUmbreit to an unknown prophet older than Isaiah ; by Hitzig, Maurer, and Knobel to Jonah ; by Hendewerk to Isaiah himself. Eichorn rejects the nineteenth chapter ; Gesenius calls in question the genuineness of vv. 18 — 20 ; Koppe denies that of vv. 18 — 25 ; Hitzig regards vv. 16 — 25 as a fabrication of the Jewish priest Onias ; while Roseumiiller, Hendewerk, Ewald, and Umbreit, vindicate the whole as a genuine production of Isaiah. The first ten verses of the twenty-first chapter are rejected on the ground of their resemblance to the thirteenth and fourteenth. Ewald ascribes both to a single author ; Hitzig denies that they can be from the same hand. Ewald makes the prophecj' in chapter xxi. the earlier ; Hitzig proves it to be later. Koppe, Paulus, Eichorn, and KoseDmiiller, look upon it as a vaticin'wm ex ercntu ; Gesenius , Ewald, and the other later writers as a real prophecy. The twenty-third chapter is ascribed by Movers to Jeremiah; by Eichorn and Rosenmiiller to an unknown -wTiter later than Isaiah ; by Gesenius and De Wetteto Isaiah himself ; by Ewald to a younger contemporary and disciple of the prophet. The continuous prophecy contained in chapters xxiv. — xxvii. Knobel shows to have been written in Palestine about the beginning of the Babylonish exile ; Gesenius in Babylon, towards the end of the captivity, and by the author of chapters xl. — Ixvi. ; Umbreit at the same time but by a different author ; Gramberg after the return from exile ; Ewald just before the invasion of Egypt by Cambyses ; Vatke in the period of the Maccabees ; Hitzig in Assyria just before the fall of Nineveh ; while Kosenmiiller, in the last edition of his Scholia, ascribes it' to Isaiah himself. Chapters xxvii. — xxxiii. are supposed by Koppe to contain many distinct prophecies of different authors, and by Hitzig several successive compositions of one and the same author; while most other writers consider them as forming a continuous whole. 'J'his is regarded by Gesenius and Hitzig, 158 THE NEW AND THE OLD METHODS, like those astronomical investigations in which it was at last found that the observers had been measuring only the errors of their instruments.* Nor were the earlier attempts at reconstruction of the text more satisfactory, -while the critic's conception of prophecy as a j)henomenon of the human mind was limited by analogies and illustra- tions from the intellectual experiences of the eighteentli century, which we now know to have been quite inadequate, and to have excluded from observation other experiences, deeper but not less real or less human than those were. These new critics of the eighteenth century \\'ere, in spite of their desire to be positive, too frequently carried away by theories to which they required the facts to conform, or else — if they Avere quite intractable — they rejected them even though with no better reason than that they had a ' critical feeling ' that they were not genuine. Their ortho- dox opponents — though in many respects not less addicted to narrow theories — had this great advantage, that they were impelled by their religious feeling to maintain the authenticity of the book, and therefore to insist upon taking all the facts, and not merely such a selection from them as would fit a pre-conceived theory; while they were obliged to employ all their resources of learning and argu- ment to meet the reasoning by which those facts were l)rought into question. As the controversy went on, which it did with great activity, the results became apparent in a gradual and important modification and enlargement of view on both sides : and the investigations and arguments of such writers as Gesenius, Hitzig, and Ewald, on the one hand, and MoUer, Hengstenberg, Havernick, and Alexander, on the other, seemed — when I published the first edition of this book in 1853 — to justify my expectation that we were approaching the final settlement of the question. But since then there has been a pause, if not a re- notwithstanding the objections of previous critics, as a genuine production of Isaiah ; but Ewald doubts whether it may not be the work of a disciiih". Most of the writers of this sehool join chajiters xxxiv. and xxxv. together, as an unbroken ttxt, Jaut Hitzig no less eonlidenlly puts them asunder. Kosen- niiiller, I)e W'ette, and others, eel these chapters down as evidently written by the author of chapters xl. — Ixvi. ; while Kwald on the other hand main- tained that their identity is disi)roved by a difierenco of style and diction.' * Ilersehera Discourse on the SStudy of Natural I'hilosophy, p. 278, cd. 1830. BOTH DEFECTIVE. 159 action, instead of a farther progress to such a settlement. Professor Delitzsch has thrown his great learning into the scale of an extreme recognition of miraculous prediction throughout the writings of Isaiah, and Mr. Cheyne adopts, with scarcely any modification, Ewald's treatment of the text, while we hardly hear that there are still critics who do not accept the methods or conclusions of either school. Yet there are those who believe that each of these schools has adopted a faulty and defective method of criti- cism, and they cannot wonder that each has finally refused to be convinced by the other, nor doubt that more satis- factory results may still be expected from a thorough appli- cation of a better method. There are some minds which are so content with the logical argument that the Almighty Lawgiver can suspend his own laws, and may be expected to do so for adequate reasons, as to overlook the necessity for the farther inquiry as to the grounds on which ecclesiastical tradition assumes — instead of proving — the fact that such miraculous interferences have occurred ; while there are others to whom the charm of a speculative hypothesis is such that they do not inquire very narrowly into the in- ductions and verifications on which its worth must depend. But neither of these is the true method, at once scientific and historical, by Avhich the question will eventually be solved, in as far as a solution is possible. The oj^posite, but equally arbitrary, modes of appeahng in any difiiculty either to a miracle or a reconstruction of the text, to explain the obscurer facts of the case, have again and again been found unnecessary as we have learnt how to look at those facts in a stronger and clearer light. On the one hand we are perceiving that in proportion as we can discover the law of God's working in events where our predecessors only saw his power, and can consequently perceive the resemblances between God's former and present manner of governing the world where they saw chiefly the differences, and there- fore supposed a miracle where we recognize a law, this does not dishonour but honour God, and instead of weakening our recognition of the reality of God's presence and power among us, does in truth add a new and stronger evidence of it to ourselves and to others. And at the same time i6o GERMAN AND ENGLISH METHODS : we have been learning that in order to sustain the assertion that the Hebrew prophet was a real poet, orator, and man, we must make a complete induction of the facts of Hebrew literature and history, instead of contenting ourselves with analogies from our own or any other age and nation. But to do this we must begin by taking the text as it is, as the basis of our investigations, and not first reconstruct it in accordance with such analogies. We can perhaps hardly expect the Germans, to whom the work has hitherto been mostly left, to carry this con- troversy much further than they have already done. But here, as in the classical literatures, English criticism has still something to do, if we will understand and judge of the German investigations for ourselves, instead of merely reproducing them. No Englishman approaches Ewald in his knowledge of the facts of the Hebrew language, litera- ture, and genius ; and perhaps no Englishman except the late Professor Maurice has entered more deeply than Ewald into the spirit of Hebrew prophecy ; yet this makes it the more instructive to see how, in all questions of criticism, Ewald' s ' shaping spirit of imagination ' is so strong that its creations have to him all the reality of historical facts. Thus on the subject before us he says* that though we cannot trace the history of the existing collections of the prophecies by external evidence, yet we may by help of that which is internal, or derived from analogy, arrive at some extremely weighty truths, which present themselves to us as scattered marks and vestiges of that history. And then he proceeds to give — not some of those general and philosophical views in which he is such a master but — a series of historical or (juasi-historical statements as to the period at the end of the exile of which we have no ' external ' accounts. He says that ' at that time a multitude of new prophecies, often of great poetical beauty, and written as it were on thousands of flying sheets, were published and collected ; and that it is easy to understand how this flood of new writings soon made it seem expedient to make and circulate new selections of the most important of the old works on pro- phecy.' And ho thru gives in great detiiil a narrativi' • Die I'rop/ietiU, i. 55 — CO. BOTH REALLY WANTED. i6i of the steps by which one of these selectors arranged the Book of Isaiah as we now liave it, even j^ointing out two little passages Avhich the said selector (' whom one may easily give credit for being something of an author himself), added to give a finish to certain sections of the work. Parts of this narrative are qualified with such words as ' probably,' ' easily conceived,' &c., but others are not less supported by the countervailing ' manifestly,' or ' undeni- ably;' and the whole is such a statement of events which happened, without being recorded, 2,300 years ago, as no Englishman would venture to make, Avith all the documents before him, of the manner in which the works of any author of his own generation were composed and arranged. Ewald has (as his readers know) farther applied this sup- l)osed power of recovering the past to a reconstruction of the whole Hebrew literature upon which he has based his History of Israel and his versions of the Prophets and the Psalms, the whole of which he has re-arranged as they ' must ' have been. And though even the Germans think Ewald fanciful, yet in the main question of the genuineness of Isaiah's writings Gesenius, Hitzig, and Knobel are quite as hypothetical as Ewald, though their ditierences as to minor points (as on that of the authorship of chapter xii.) indicate an element of individual fancy in their conclusions. These things are interesting to the student of the national distinctions of the human mind, but I point them out here because I believe that we must understand them, in order to understand this question of the Isaian, or non-Isaian, authorship of these chapters. The Germans are so learned, and their insight is often so deep, that we might be tempted to take their authority on this point, though their argu- ments seem so inconclusive. But such instances as that from Ewald may serve to warn us what are the proper limits of their authority, and where we must begin to judge for ourselves. They offer us diamonds and glass beads as of equal value : we may know the difference, though they alone know where to find the former.* In the case before * M. de Bunsen says, 'Modern criticism has been left to the Gernmns, for M-hom reality has no charm.' And of ' the Protestant critical school in Germany,' he adds—' what they know how to handle best is thousiht, the ideal part of histoiy ; what is iarthest from their grasp is reality.'— i/i>ivo- M 1 62 THE QUESTION OF GENUINENESS. us I believe that in order to investigate this question of the authorshiii of the book of Isaiah we must throw aside one half of the German criticism, and heartily avail our- selves of the other half. We must take Ewald's profound and comprehensive view of Hebrew prophecy and of Avhat, therefore, a prophet could say and do ; and Gesenius's and Knobel's lucid expositions of the history and poHtics of Isaiah's times ; and then we must study the facts with our own eyes, though by help of the light these critics shed on them. The grounds on Avhich it is held that the disputed chapters have been erroneously attnbuted to Isaiah are, that the wTiters were manifestly living in the time of the Great Captivity, the events and circumstances of w^hich they describe or allude to — not as ideally conceived but — as actually existing around them, and (as might be expected if that were so) that the language, style, and ideas, of these prophecies is difterent from that of the unquestioned writings of Isaiah. There are cases in w^hich we may decide on the authorship of a book upon such internal evidence, but where there is external evidence also we must start from that, and not from the other. The practical diifercnce is very great. The book before us is not an anonymous manuscript recently found in a Syrian monastery, the author of which has to be discovered by conjecture resting upon the merely internal evidence of the volume itself: it has come down to us by tradition from a remote, yet jjroperly historical, period as the work of Isaiah; and though in one sense it may be said that the evidence supplied by such a tradition is very inconclusive, still it must be remembered that it is the only kind of evidence which we have of the authorship of almost any other ancient, or even modern, book ; and that in all such cases we justly hold that the declared author is the real one until the contrary is proved, and that the burden of proof lies with him who questions this received authorshi]). If we proceeded on the contrary assumption we should be involved in a hopeless scepticism which bjtm ari'l /lis Jt/r, ii. 228, 239. il. dc Biinscn did not, however, make my application of hifl maxiuis. SUPPOSED HISTORICAL ALLUSIONS. 163 Avould make all history impossible. And liere therefore the question we have to ask ourselves is not whether we can discover, or imagine, an author of these prophecies against Babylon, but Avhether we can understand and realize them as intelligible writings of the man Isaiah. First, then, as to the supj^osed historical allusions to the times of the Captivity : — The traditional and orthodox""* interpretation of the chapters before us — and to these I here confine myself — is, that they are a specific prediction of the taking of Babylon by the Modes and Persians about two hundred years after the words were uttered by Isaiah ; and it is confidently added that the historical events are anticipated with such accuracy of detail as can only be explained by miracle. The rationalists admit the facts of these precise historical details, but maintain that they prove, not a miracle but that the real date of the proj^hecy is contemporary with the events. Whereas the thoughtful reader who examines the text as it is in itself, and not through the medium of traditions and conjectures, will, I am bold to say, find no such specific predictions and his- torical details. And this is the real issue he has to try : whether the title of Isaiah to this prophecy can be maintained by the method of ordinary historical criticism, and without claiming for him a miraculous power of pre- diction. There is just the same 2:)rofound insight into political principles, the same acquaintance with the general political relations of the foreign nations, and the same foresight of their consequences, which Isaiah exhibits in the proj)hecies admitted to be his ; and there is the same absence of literal detail, or. the same evidence that the detail is not historical but ideal, from its not corresponding precisely with actual events. The proofs of miraculous prediction exist only in the mind of the commentators, who have endeavoured to confirm the oreat truth that Isaiah is a * Convenient as the terms, ' orthodox' and 'rationalist,' are for making a general statement, I should have feared to countenance, by the use of them, the base practice of pointing arguments with nicknames ; but I find them employed as honourable titles — the one by Dr. Alexander, in the Introduction to his Coiiiiiioitari/, p. xxxi. ; and the other by M. de Bunsen, iu Hippo/i/tiis and his uigc, i. 16-1. M 2 1 64 COMMEXTS TAKEN FOR THE TEXT. prophet, and filled with that ' spirit of wisdom and under- standing ' which he prized as being the ' spirit of Jehovali,' by trivial fancies of their owti, which lower him towards the level of the muttering wizards whom he denounced. Grotius, indeed, saw better, and connected this, like the rest of Isaiah's prophecies, with contemporary events. And it would be hard to understand Avhy the rationalists were not content to do the same, if we did not remember that when they first entered on the subject their conception of the human side of prophecy was so limited that they could only explain such passages as the vision in the sixth chapter, and the march of the Assyrian army in the tenth, by supposing them to be the one an apologue, and the other an historical statement ; and that though their views have been gi-adually enlarging, they have still, like other commentators, wdiat may be called a professional and un- conscious prejudice in favour of the traditions handed down to them. This habit of accepting traditional com- ments as if they were a part of the text, is common with rationalist no less than orthodox waiters, on every part of the ]3ible, and the uncritical conclusions of Jewish and ecclesiastical tradition have in the course of ages become so inveterate that they still retain their hold on minds which have abandoned the belief out of which they have grown. They form a large element of popular scepticism, no less than of popular orthodoxy as to what is assumed to be found in the ]>ible ; and the rationalist connuentator, no less than the orthodox, is but too often content with the position which the natural ithilosojjher accepted before the days of Bacon, in which facts are assumed on popular report without actual observation, and then ingenious and elaborate explanations of them developed by the logic of the philosopher. And this habit has, if I mistake not, on this occasion, led to the taking for granted, first, the orthodox assumption, and then the rationalist explanation of it ; though each is contrary to the facts of the text. If there are obscurities and difficulties, this is only what might be expected in a book of such antiquity, and with such small remains of contemporary history to throw light on its allusions ; and in the present state of our knowledge, it THE TEXT AS IT IS. 165 maj'- be necessary to leave some of tliem unexplained, or to explain them conjecturally. But that they need such slash- ing criticism, or that its employment does not involve us in greater difficulties than it helps us out of, I am unable to see. If the text is corrupt, let it be emended ; but let us see what it is, and what it ought to be, each distinctly, and not blended together in a luminous mist of the higher criticism. And let us remember that what it ought to be is not to be ascertained by deciding how we, here in England in the nineteenth century, should have written it, or in what form it would be most easily iutelligible to us ; for the probability is rather that such would not have been the j^recise form in which a Hebrew i)rophet would have written between two and three thousand years ago. Whatever difficulty appears In verses 1, 2, 3, 4, of chapter xiv. would, I think, have been solved by anticipation, in accepting verses 10, 11, 12, of chapter xi., as the genuine and intelligible words of Isaiah ; only, that in the passage now before us, the captivity from which the people of Israel are to be brought back is said to be endured in Babylon, and at the hands of the king of Babylon ; whereas in the times of Isaiah the head of the Assyrian empire was usually called king of Assyria, and lived at Nineveh, and Babylon was a dependency, under his viceroy or vassal-king. Here, in fact, lies the real difficulty, to which all the others are but make-weights. To this then let us address ourselves, by examining the text as it is, and not as it ought to be. The prophecy, as it is, then, consists of chap. xiii. and the first twenty-seven verses of chap, xiv., its termination being marked by the title of the next prophecy, as its com- mencement is by its own title, which states that it is by Isaiah the son of Amos ; while its position in the book indicates its date to be towards the end of the reign of Ahaz. In the last words (verse 25) of the prophecy, the impending destruction of the great Assyrian power is fore- told in language corresponding with that in wliicli Isaiah had constantly on previous occasions denounced the same heathen oppressor ; Avhile the rest of the denunciation, though perfectly congruous with this its own close, differs 1 66 THE KING OF BABYLON. from those previous prophecies in calling the oppressor ' king of Babylon,' and foretelling the overthrow of that his capital, whereas, they call him ' king of Assyria,' and s[)eak only of his army being destroyed. But Isaiah's authority for a contemporar\' liistorical fact, is as good as that of any other record of his times. If the latter contradict and disprove a statement purporting to be from him, we must l)alance the evidence and decide accordingly : but the mere absence of directly confirmatory statements would not throw doubt on the genuineness of an allusion by Isaiah to a fact probable in itself and uncontradicted, even though our resources for confirmation or contradiction were not so fragmentary as they are. And therefore the simplest and yet the most critical conclusion Avill be, that if Isaiah in one place calls the oj^jpressor of Israel 'king of Assyria,''"' and in another ' king of Babylon,' it was because he either called himself by both these titles, or at least was signifi- cantly pointed out to the prophet's own countrymen by the latter name ;t and that if Isaiah sometimes describes the Jews as carried captives into various lands, and some- times as living in slavery at Babylon, it was because a large jiroportion of the captives taken in the time of Ahaz or of Hezekiah, had fallen into the hands of the luxurious and cruel inhabitants of that city. The only known fact in opposition to those necessarily involved in these expres- sions of Isaiah is, that Nineveh was the capital of Tiglath- Pileser and his successors. It has, indeed, been suggested \ that about this time Pul, Avhom Berosus calls ' King of the Chaldieans,' was proj^erly king of Ikbylon, and had, for * The Into Professor Maurice, writing to mo in ISol, says — ' The fact I am chiefly confident alxmt in Tsaiah is that the description in the 14th chapter exactly answers to Sennacherib, and not the least to Nebuchadnezzar or Uolshazzar.' The Dean of Westminster observes — Lcctunx on the Jtuixh Church, ii. 480, note-that my ar^fument here 'sicms to be very strong for supposing that by the ' Kiin^ ' in Jsaiah xiv. 4, is meant the Iving of Assyria.' t 'King of Delhi' is the name usually given by Indian historians and jiolitical writers in the last century — men living in the country and familiar with their subject — to the sovereign who still sat on the throne ol Timour, thouch I believe he was never so called by the natives, but only ' the King.' + liy Professor Finzi, though with some reserve of his own judgment: — Riirrrhe per lo xtudio dill' ^ttitichitu Assira di Felice Fiiizi, p. 35. Pul is men- tioned in 2 Kings xv. 19, and 1 Cliron. v. 20 : but none of bis Iiiscrijitions have been f(jund, and some Assyriologists identify him with Tiglath-Pikser. HEBREW NOTICES OF BABYLON. 167 the time, reduced Assyria to a province subject to himself as king of Babylon. But, in any case, there is no abso- kite contradiction or incomj^atibility of facts ; it would be more correct to say that we have two statements which stand apart from each other, and in apparent opposition, and to which our meagre and fragmentary historical records supply no third statement which might reconcile the others, in the way in which a third statement so often does in all histories. Probable and approximate evidence, indeed, we have. Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah, makes Babylon, and not Nineveh, the city to which the daughter of Zion shall be led captive.'" Shinar, or Babylonia, is one of the lands from which Isaiah foretells a redemption of the remnant of Israel and Judah.t Babylon was one of the cities from which inhabitants were supplied to the cities of Israel, and to which therefore the Israelites were deported, in the sixth year of Hezekiah.J Babylon, though at this time inferior to Nineveh inasmuch as the latter was the seat of the government, seems to have been the right arm of the Assyrian king, its palaces inhabited by his chief princes, and its vast population recruiting his armies, and consequently sharing largely in the treasures and the captives of the countries they helped to conquer. It had apparently an importance something like that of Pasargadie after Cyrus had made Ekbatana his capital, or Ecbatana Avhen Darius resided at Susa ; of Delhi during the reigns of those Mogul emperors who lived at Agra, or of York in the days of our forefathers, and of Edinburgh and Dublin in our o^vn time ; § and it was, in truth, as its * Micah iv. 10, which Gesenius refers to in his chronological table as proof tliat the Assyrian kings sent their prisoners to Babylon at this time. t Chap. xi. 11, where the LXX. render the word by Baj3wXabylon t indicates the unity of an original w^ork, while the various prophecies attributed to Isaiah on the same subject show signs of being derived from that source. There may be some weight too, in an argument from style in favour of unity of authorship — as when Yitringa, with- out suspecting that a doubt would ever be raised on the subject, says that he can recognize the style of Isaiah in * Jlr. Grofo, on W\f Unity of the lli:ul nnd Odyssey — TTiMnry of Greece, ii. p. 171. And further on (p. 217), he Siiys, 'The point' [Homeric unity] ' is thus still under controversy among ahlc scholars, and is prohaldy destined to remain so: for, in truth, our means of knowledj^^o are so limited, tliat no man can prouuco arguments suHiciently c >.i;ent to contend ai^ainst oppo.thetical jam caiiiiina rnpes, ipsa sonant arlmsta.' Virg. Ed. v. G2. THE MO UNT OF A SSEMBL Y. 1 8 1 to which the grave is the gate — is stirred to receive the new-comer Avith his pomp and the noise of his viols (comp. V. 12, 14), and the shadowy and giant forms of once famous kings rise from their thrones below to meet their brother, now become weak as they. Israel then seems to resume the speech, though the transition is indistinctly marked, and contrasts the ambition of him who would have ascended into heaven and to the heights of the heavenly hill, with his actual fate, brought down to hell and to the depths of its pit. The old expla- nation of ' the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north,' was, that it referred to Mount Sion and the Temple, and that the cloud (the original is in the singu- lar) was the white cloud of God's presence ; the impious boast thus corresponding to that in chapter x. 11, 'Shall I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her images?' The Hebrew word is that used habitually for the ' assembly ' or ' congregation ' of Israel, while the phrase ' sides of the north ' is that which is employed in reference to Mount Sion in Psalm xlviii. 2 ; and though I am aware of another explanation of the latter passage, I cannot but think it more probably a known expression descriptive of Sion, and so used, both there and here. I see no anti-climax in such a reading ; nor that there is any impropriety in the blending of the heathenish and the Jewish belief on the subject into one image. The modern interpretation, that the reference is to the assembly of the gods in some Meru-mountain in the northern, and therefore highest, realms of an eastern mythology, seems to me far-fetched and foreign to the Hebrew habits of thought : and I conclude that it must have been adopted by great authorities on the su23position that the local traditions which place Sion on the south of Jerusalem, must be preferred to those of the Talmud, which declare it to have been on the north :* — as to which ques- tion, see below, on Isaiah xxii. One poetical image sug- gests or thrusts out another in rapid succession. The king of Babylon — who made the earth to tremble (comp. * * Upon Mount Zion ... for Zion was in the north of Jerusalem.' — Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Inaiah, xiv. 13, English Translation, p. 71. 1 82 THE DESTROYER DESTROYED. ii. 21) who destroyed kingdoms and cities, and carried the inhabitants away (compare the description of the king of Assyria and his fall in chapter v. 5 — 27) — shall "iiot share what just now seemed the low condition of the other nionarchs but now presents itself as a glorious repose, when contrasted Avith his lot — falling by the sword, his body not embalmed but the food of Avorms, refused a royal sepulchre, and fortunate if he can get so much burial as to be thrown into a jiit with the common slain, (comp. X. 4), which shall cover his carcase trodden under foot (comp. V. 25), and be his only grave-clothes. He shall be cut oft' from the main stem of his family and race like a worthless, nay, abominable branch (comp. X. 33). The word 'branch' is used here as elsewhere in a genealogical sense, and the words are a vehement anticipation of the thought below, ' the seed of evildoers (comp. i. 4) shall not l)e named for ever ;' where the word ' named ' or ' renowned ' is the same as in the passage, ' in Isaac shall thy name be called,' and as in Ruth iv. 1 4, which latter compare Avith its context. Jehovah himself Avill take care to cut oft" the ' name and the remnant,' the direct heir and the collateral remainder-man, and the city, like its royal family, shall be exterminated. The thought is the converse of that in chapter iv. 2 — G, and the cor- respondence may be noticed in the argument for authorship from style. The appropriateness of the image of pools of water is evident Avhen Ave remember that Babylon lay in a loAv situation, Avhere the land Avas only kept from the periodical inundations of the Euphrates by constant atten- tion to the canals and ditches. If it were deserted by its inhabitants, it Avould inevitably become ' pools of water ' in a short time : — as is now the case. The expression, ' besom of destruction,* finds a counterpart in the annals of Sargon, Avhere he calls himstslf ' the sweeper aAvay of Samaria and of the Avhole of Beth-Omri.' But the invasion of Judaea, not the subsequent d(']K)rta- tion of its inhabitants (like that Avhicli had aln-ady begun in the northern tribes of the kingdom of Samaria), might seem the more pressing danger to Isaiah's own oountrv- raen at the time he wrote ; therefore he winds uj) this far- THE PURPOSE OF JEHOVAH. 183 seeing denunciation of the ultimate fates of Babylon and Israel, with a declaration of Jehovah's purpose, — confirmed with an oath, and not to be disannulled, — to break the power of the Assyrians while they were still in his land, on the confines of which they were now hovering, if they had not already entered it ; and to free his people fi'om the yoke of tribute and oppression, which they were already feeling the weight of This is the purpose which Jehovah has purposed upon the whole earth, and which he will execute with a hand that none shall turn back. As these last four verses are held to be from the hand of Isaiah by those who deny to him the authorship of the previous part of the prophecy, it is worth while to notice their connection both Avith those passages (xiii. 1—13) which describe the destruction of the whole earth in this day of Jehovah, and with those (xiv. 3 — 6) which predict the deliverance of Israel from their hard bondage in which they work under the continual stroke of the oppressor. CHAPTER X. ISAIAH XIV. 28 — 32. — I'HILISTIA. — ORIOrN OF THE PHILISTIXES — THEIR EXTERMI- NATIOX COMMAXDEU IIY MOSES. LAW OF CONQUESTS AND EXTERMINATIONS. BRITISH CONQUEST OF INDIA. EVIL NOT ETERNAL. PHILISTLA's RELA- TIONS WITH JUDAH WITH ASSYRIA. SAUOON AND SENNACHERIB IN nilLISTIA. ' TX the year that king Aliaz died was this burden :' — J- namely, on Philistia. There is a turn of expression in this title such as an author himself would be likely to give, when arranging and editing his writings in a collected form ; and such as a jjatriot might use to express his feeling at the thought of the relief from national shame and suffering which the change from an Ahaz to a Hezekiah had effected. Like the oi)ening of chapter vi., it is better referred to the time before, than after, the king's death, as the context shows. Philistia was the south-west coast of the land of Canaan, to the whole of which it afterwards gave its name in the Greek form of Palestine, and was nominally included in the tribe of Judah. It was originally inhabited by the Avites, who were expelled by the Caphtorim, a race of Egj^ptian origin, but supposed to have come immediately from Crete or Cyi)rus, and who, under the name of Philistines, continued as a distinct, and for the most part independent, nation, in s[)ite of the efforts of Israel to subdue them. These Caphtorim are also called Cherethim, which latter would be the Hebrew mode of writing Cretans, and which is twice translated Kpi/re^ by the LXX. ; whence it lias been inferred that there is ground for a tradition which says that the Cretans took possession of tliis coast under Minos, who built Gaza, and called it Minoa. Wc may infer from Amos ix. 7 and Deut. ii. 23 (in which ISAIAH XIV. zS. — 32. PHILISTIA. 185 latter verse translate Hazerim ' villages,' instead of leaving it a proper name), that this immigration of the Caphtorim must have taken i3lace within the historical memory of the Jews, though at such a period that Abraham found them already settled, as Philistines. The supposition of Yitrinsfa that the ' Cherethites and Pelethites,' were Cretan and Philistine bo^aneu, the body-guards of David, has been adopted by some of the most recent authorities on this subject : it derives 2^1'obability from David's long sojourn in Philistia, and the attachment which Ittai the Gittite (of CJath) showed to his fortunes ; and from the discovery from the Egyptian monuments that the kings of the xixth and xxth dynasties had in their service mercenaries of a mari- time nation cognate with the Philistines, and of which the name — Shayretana — is said to be almost identical with the Hebrew Cherethim.'" The Philistines were among the nations whom Moses commanded the children of Israel to exterminate. We shall judge of this command according to our belief or disbelief that there is a morality and a criminal justice for nations as well as for individuals ; but it would perhaps never have been so commonly impugned as it has been but for the no less common and far less moral defence, that the act commanded would have been mere wickedness in any other people, but that being commanded by God it was thus made lawful for the Jews. But as to the com- mand itself, considered in relation to the historical time and circumstances in which it Avas given, and apart from such defences of it, I say that it was neither unrighteous nor unmerciful, and that it is not an exception to the universal law by which men are to govern themselves, but the announcement of the law which always has been and always will be applicable to all like cases, — whether a return of the Heracleids, a Spanish conquest of Mexico, a Saxon or a Norman invasion of Enijiand, or a Sir James Brooke's destruction of Borneo pirates. If the spread of civilization, knowledge, justice, virtue, religion, and what- * 2 Sam. viii. 18; xv. 18—22; xx. 7; 1 Kings i. 38—44. And Winer's Realwctrterbuch, and Smith's Dictionarij f>f the Bible, under the several names above. i86 LAW OF CONQUESTS ever else distinguishes men from beasts, is a good and not an evil, then it is good for men to use all the means which are really necessary to effect that end, even though some of them be never so rough and unpleasing ; and it is not less base in jjublic than in private morals to shrink from the responsibility of ourselves doing that which we know it is good to have done. If a weak, effeminate, degenerate nation can be improved by subjection to a stronger, man- lier, more virtuous nation, then it is not only the right but the duty of the latter to bring it into subjection, whenever the indications of God's providence, be they of peace or war, show that the time has come. And if the nation is not merely degenerate but hopelessly corrupt, then it is not only the right, but the duty of some worthier nation to destroy it, and rid the Avorld of its abominations. The Gospel has given to us, in modern Christendom, means of reclaiming nations who would have been irreclaimable by any measures which Greeks or Romans, or even Jcavs could apply ; and we are bound to act with corresponding gentleness and forbearance. But if Ave look at the actual condition and relations of the Israelites and the nations of Canaan in the time of Moses, we see that the Canaanites had reached the last stage of degeneracy when they made their very religion to consist in the practice of their characteristic crimes of unnatural cruelty or lust, and that wherever they were tolerated instead of exterminated by the Israelites the purer morals as well as faith of the Israelites soon fell under the pestilent contagion, and they not only followed their gods, but ' did after their abomina- tions :' so that the event proved what Moses foresaw, that if the future nation of Israel was to fill that place in the world and the world's history which its ' right noble stock,' its fttirps generosa et historica, already indicated it to be intended to fill, room must be made for it not merely in territory but in moral atmosphere, by a national execution such as we Christians still inflict on individual criminals of like magnitude. If Moses had counted the slow moral death of Israel a less evil than the physical extinction of races who had already destroyed their own human being, what would have been the condition of the world now, and AND EXTERMINATIONS. 187 what the state of the Avorld-wide contest between good and evil ? If we examine the whole case in that impartial and thoughtful temper which alone becomes the student of history, we must, I think, come to the conclusion that these injunctions of Moses are really righteous ; and w^orthy — if the creation of man at all was worthy — of the God of righteousness : and that their provisions for con- fining the destruction of life within the narrowest limits possible,'"' are in accordance W'ith the recognized rules of warfare in the humanest ancient nations, and with much of the practice of even those of Christian Europe. In a Avord, I believe that if we can read them in the light of universal history, and history in their light, we shall see them to be what they claim to be, — a part of the revelation of God. Here, as always, the Bible reveals to us the universal law of political society, in the special instance of the Hebrew nation. The claim of Abraham's descendants to the land of Canaan, because God had given it to him, is a claim essentially of the same kind as that of the Dorians to Sparta, or of the Normans to England. There was no more technical force in the first than in the others : they no less than it were divinely inspired and sanctioned : but the Hebrew grant and conquest, taken in connection with the whole previous and subsequent history of which tliey are a part, reveal God as the righteous Author and Upholder of political society, anticipating, prejjaring, and directing all the successive arrangements by which the end is to be effected ; and thus they throw a direct light (for hnn who cares to have it) on all other national conquests and settlements, Avhich these reflect back on it. The Jews were no doubt as bloody and rapacious in their manner of effecting their settlement in Palestine, as many other nations in like circumstances ; but this does but make it clearer that we have to distinguish between the thing that had to be done because it Avas riofht and o-ood to do it, and the imperfect human instruments who did it in a very imperfect manner. As soon as we once get this distinction between the eternal, wise, and good law of * Deut. XX. IC— 18. 1 8 8 CONQ VEST OF INDIA . national settlements, and the partial and defective realiza- tions of it in time by men, M'e recover the old faith in the Bible as the revelation of God's mind ; and yet are freer than the freest sceptic from the strange, yet common, per- version of reverence into superstition Avhicli has made men so continually fall back on that (in truth, though not in intention) immoral and blasphemous defence of the Hebrew conquest, which pleads that it ' is but a wrong in God's own world, and he may quickly make it right.'* This doctrine has made many a man reject the Bible, when he has too hastily supposed that it did contaui what he had been taught from childhood to be there, but what his own conscience told him was contrary to the immutable distinction of right and wrong. And it has developed that unhealthy and dishonest way of looking at history and politics by religious men, that atheistic separa- tion between worldly and religious grounds of political action (as though the former, no less than the latter, were not good in its place) which we are all familiar with. Thus, every student of the history of the establishment of the British power in India knows that our mercliants there were originally actuated by no ambitious designs, but by singularly limited desires for mere peaceful traffic ; and that they allowed the conquests of Clive in Bengal, as well as the earlier wars at ]\Iadras, with the greatest reluctance, and merely in order to defend themselves in the midst of the general anarchy into which the Mogul empire was dissolved : and yet religious writers really well acquainted with history have preferred to ignore the real current of events, and to assert that our possession of India cannot be justified on Christian grounds, and is no place for a Christian governor like Sir John Shore ; l)ut that we have of course a right, on worldly grounds, to hold and govern what a worldly disregard of the principles of the Bible alone enabled us to g(;t. Let us take the facts of the con- quest as they really occurred ; and let us say that though the English traders had as little belief that God was * * AVhy tho wrong is but a wrong i' the world ; and having thfi world for your labour, 'tia a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right." — Othello, iv. 3. EVIL NOT ETERNAL. 189 calling on them ' to go uj3 and possess the land,' as they had ambitious inclination to do so ; yet that because it was God's will to re-organize India under Christian laws and institutions, after those of Menu and of the Koran had done their work, he by his providence made the first steps of the conquest unavoidable, and so led us on to the subsequent position, in which an ambitious Hastings or Wellesley, no less than a justice-loving Cornwallis or a pious and philanthropic Shore were made to do their suc- cessive tasks : — and then we shall falsify neither the Bible nor history. I leave the question of the origin of evil as insoluble as ever. I only assert that the harsh subjugation or extinction of degenerate and corrupt races has often been the only practical remedy known to men for the still greater evil of their continued existence, and may there- fore be rightly accepted as God's command in the matter : yet that God would not have commanded it unless it had been essentially righteous, and that the explanation that God has a right to do wrong, though reproduced with all the pomp of the newest phrases of philosophy, is alike immoral and irrational. If the infliction of suffering is often an end — a hopeless end — where even the best men are the agents, it cannot be so with God. The doctrine that God's punishments are eternal, that is, ends and not means ; and which can believe, with complacency^, that God has made hell a permanent and important part of heaven, and consigned a large portion of the human race to' it, with no higher kind of justice than imperfect men can devise, is an assertion that God is made in our image, is to ' change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man.' Such notions — very different Avhen deliberately systematized, to what they are as held by a Luther who exclaims ' Nature says it is un- just, Grace says it is unjust, but Glory will prove it just,' and there leaves it in reverent humility — still hang about us, and we are afraid of rooting them up, lest we root up wheat with the tares. But they are ready to vanish. The growing faith that reformation, not destruction, is the end in man's dealings with the rebel against human law, 1 90 THE PHILISriXES: is but the refracted liglit Nvhich tells that a clearer, brighter, more Christian a])[treheiision of God's character is dawning upon us. And instead of our continuing to fancy that we are bound to read tlie New Testament, by the dimmer light of the Old, and to limit the inspiration of the Apostle of the Gentiles in his am])lest utterances, by the letter of a few of his sentences, interpreted (or rather misinterpreted) so literally as to be no more logical than moral, we shall find ourselves made free by the truth as it is in Christ ; and then we shall no longer pass by, but shall give the importance and the meaning which St. Paul himself gives to, that ' revelation of the mystery of the grace of God in Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men,' and which Christians have so strangely refused for the most part to receive since it has been revealed to them. Then we shall understand that ' the v:}cole family in heaven and earth ' is named of God and of Christ ; that the very meaning of the Gospel, the good news itself, is that, where sin has abounded grace shall much more abound, and reign (not unto death, but) unto eternal life. ' As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive ; but every man in his own order. . . . And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.' The author of the Book of Judges, with the political insight of this nation of prophets, points out how the inability of the Israelites to drive out the Philistinbs (among other nations) was the consequence of their losing their faith in Jehovah their King, and with it their mili- tary as well as moral sui)eriority ; and how this evil was yet, by God's providence, made to promote its own cure, the oppresions of the heathens stimulating them both ' to learn war,' and to return from their idolatrous associations to the true faith. ^'' The I'hilistines were very formidable enemies to Israel in tlie days of Samuel and of Saul. Tlie strong kings, Davi«l, Solomon, and Jehoshaphat, ke]»t them in subjection, but in the days of Jehoram they invaded • Judges ii. 20, to iii. 4, which may be called the text to the whole book. THEIR WARS WITH ISRAEL. 191 Judali.'"' Uzziah again repressed them, and crippled their power, dismantling their walled cities, and building for- tresses of his own to command them ; t and no doubt thev continued tributary during the still vigorous government of his successor Jotham. But during the weak reign of Ahaz, they ' invaded the cities of the low country, and of the south of Judah ;' and not only invaded, but settled them- selves in them, and their neighbouring villages -.X and to this state of things Isaiah addresses himself in this pro- phecy. And here as elsewhere we may notice the appro- priateness of his language, indicating accurate knowledge and lively imagination: the words 'gate' and 'city,' and the threat that ' famine ' shall be the chief, and the sword only the subordinate, instrument of their destruction, point to the strongholds which characterized the Philistian power ; and the 'feeding' and 'lying doAvn ' of the defenceless Israelite alludes to the ' low country ' which lay so open to its inroads. The rod of the taskmaster is Isaiah's frequent image for the control of a dependent and tributary nation : all Philistia had rejoiced when the rod of David and of Uzziah fell broken from the hands of Ahaz, and expressed their joy by wasting or taking possession of their former master's lands ; but Isaiah warns them that the old root of Israel, wliieh from the days of Samson§ had sent forth many a rod with a serpent's life like the rod of Moses, would soon again produce a basilisk with its royal crest' its inevitable spring, and its mortal bite, to take vengeance on his enemies. The ' first-born of the poor ' seems'^to be a Hebrew idiom for the ' really, eminently, poor,' like that of ' Son of Man ' to express the man : so Job uses the ' first-born of death ' for death itself, or a violent death ; and the ' sons of thunder ' are persons of a thundering disposition : — a phraseology apparently springing from the strong family feeling of the Hebrew. Or the prophet may mean that the first of the next generation, the children of the present depressed Israelites, shall be dehvered from the * 2 Sam. V. 17—25, xxi. 15; 2 Chron. xvii. 11, xxi. 16 17 t 2 Chron. xxvi 6 7- +2 Chron. xxviii. 18. h bamson WU8 of the tnhe of Dan : and this image of a eerj.ont mav have been suggested by the saying of Jacob-' Dan shall be a serpent by the way. Genesis xlix. 1/. ^ ^ 192 THE SMOKE FROM THE NORTH miseries which the Philistines are now inflicting on their fathers. The PhiHstines had latterly so overrun and plundered the country that there was neither food for the poor peasant and his family, nor safety for any who were too weak to protect themselves : but things shall soon be reversed ; those roots of Philistia, the five cities with their five lords, shall be reduced b}^ famine though their walls hold out, and then the sword shall smite those who would escape. Thus far the prophet would seem to be predicting the recovery by Judah of its supremacy, in the expected event of the death of Ahaz, pointed to by the title : but then, either as though he doubted whether Judah itself would effect the conquest, or more probably with an abrupt turn to the thought of the Assyrian power which he could see was preparing to sweep over all the southern nations, and Philistia among them, Avith a violence for greater than any Judsean army could exert, he proceeds to say that they shall not only return to that subordination Avliieh Judah en- forced when it could ; but that their whole polity should be dissolved : — for why ? ' For there cometh from the north a smoke ;' and Avhcn that smoke,'"' that too intelligible cloud of dust, draws nearer, it will reveal that army of which the fame is already striking terror into all the nations of the earth, the army which ' has no straggler in its ranks,'t and at the approach of which the strongest city may despair, and the councillors who sit in its gate change their wisest plans into lamentations. Then the Philistines * 'Ac simul JEneas fumantea pulvere campos Prospexit longe, Laurentiaque agmina vidit.' Virg. uEn. xi. 908. 'First was Been dust, like a white cloud,' as tlie army of the Great King came on ngainst tlio younger Cyru.s. — (Jmle's Greece, ix. 58. When the poiil from Attihv and his Iluns was imminent, Amianus hiahop of Orleans sent ' a inessenger to ohserve from the^rainjiarts the face of the distant country ... In his third report he mcntifmed a small cloud ... at the extremity of the horizon It is the aid of God, exclaimed the bishop, . . . and tlic wliolc multitude repeated after him, It is the aid of (Jod. The remote ohject became each moment larger . . . the Homan and Gothic ban- ners were gradually perceived ; and a favourable wind, blowing asidisolved in tears, and uttering loud lamentations ; going up to the high places of their gods at Bajith and at Dibon, to entreat for aid ; wandering through the streets ; collecting in the market-places, or open squares near the gate, where the last news of the enemy, or of the plans, of the governrnent, might be heard; or retiring to their house-tops to suppli- cate their household gods, or mourn in private over the fate of their families and themselves.* Heshbon, the royal city of the Amorites ; bestowed on Reuben and on Gad and his Levites at different times ; famous for its fish-pools, and, like the neighbouring Elealeh, still to be found by name in the highlands of Gilead opposite Jericho ; makes its cry of despair — a cry which even the warriors of Moab raise instead of their battle-shout — heard afor, for men's very souls are terror-stricken. The prophet may have little love for Moab, but his heart cannot but be touched by such utter woe ; for he sees the whole people flying from their houses, towards Zoar on their southern frontier, as their father Lot had once lied to the same city in his extremity. They fly as the heifer in her prime and when her voice is deepest flies from the first attempt to bring • Vifrins^a quotes Justin's doscriplion of" Athens (lib. v. c. 7), when news had arrived of the less of Conon iiiid his army : ' Qu.-e cuncta cum Atheiiis nunciiita essmt, omnes reliitis doniibus per urbcm disnirrero pnvidi ; alius aliwm sciscitari ; auctotem nuncii requirere ; non pueros imjirudenlia ; noii senes debilitas ; non muliop s soxus imbecillitaa domi tenet: ;ita civitas fuit ; omnia ilvlaiiiivs, non seeus ac si urbs ipsa eapta essit. I'F.usoNAitANT Cun( 'i deiiide ad poutim congrey:iintur,' &c. Com- jiare, too, the deseriptioiis of Syracuse exjiectinu; the C"artlm,<:;iiii.Hn8 ; and • f the pojjulation of Himera, Agri;^entum, and (.•ila, flying from them. — Groles Hislonj of O'iriic, x. i>99. ISAIAH XVI. I — 14. THE TRIBUTE OF LAMBS. 201 lier under the yoke : he sees tliem weeping as they go up the hill of Luhith, on their way to Zoar, and he hears their cries of despair as they descend again by the road of Horonaim. Then half-retaining, half-changing the image of the heifer, the prophet explains the cause of their flight to be, that the waters and consequently the green fields of Nimrim, or Nimra, near Heshbon which, because it had the rare blessing of water, was a fertile valley, and a coveted pasture for cattle,* 'are desolate,' — struck by drought, whether conceived as a poetical image or as the actual result of the cutting of water-courses in war. The invader is upon them, and their only remaining chance is to cross the ' Brook of Willows ' (now called Wady-el-Ahsa, and forming now, as then, the boundary of the land), carrying with them what they can of the wealth which long peace had enabled them to accumulate. The cry and the wailing spread even beyond the frontiers of Moab, and shall be heard at the ' Well of Princes,' where Israel once found water in the desert, and in their joy sang that song, ' Spring, O Well,' destined to endure with their own name for ever. The channel of Dimon shall run blood instead of water : and if any escape the sword, upon them Jehovah will bring the lion : — a threat which may indicate still repeated devasta- tions by the invaders, or it may — in better harmony with the context — be understood literally, as it seems to point to some calamity to follow after these invaders have done their worst. We have accounts of the actual appearance of lions on the west bank of the Jordan, the thickets of which they seem to have frequented. As long as national order and prosperity continued, the wild beasts would be kept under, and driven back to their woods and moun- tains ; but in times of anarchy, when the population was diminished, the fields not fenced in, the cattle not watched, and the roads not kept in constant use by traffic, they would prowl in quest of prey through the land. The expression of ' sending the lamb ' is clearly ex- plained by the account already referred to, of the mode in which the tribute of Moab was paid during its dependence on Israel. A more difficult question arises from the ♦ Niiiiibi r.s XN.xii. 3, 3G ; Josli. xiii. 27. 2 02 SELA, AXn THE WILDERXESS. mention of Sela — ' the Rock' — which it seems most straightforward to take here, as in 2 Kings xiv. 7, to be Petra, the chief city of Edom : and we must then sujipose that it had fallen into the power of Moab, perhaps at the time when this nation made itself obnoxious to the denun- ciation of Amos, Isaiah's elder contemporary, for some savage outrage on Edom ;* or that Sela is here mentioned, not as in 2)Ossession of Moab, but to indicate that the required flocks would be collected most conveniently in the i)asture grounds near that city, whether they already belonged to the Moabites, or Avere to be purchased from Edom. The ' Avildernesses' and 'deserts' of the Bible answer (with due allowance for the difference of climate and consequent vegetation) to Avhat we call moors or commons, uninhabited, but fit for pasture. The wilder- ness here referred to was probably the tract between Petra and Judaea, which Strabo calls cpijfxo^, and Jerome deser- iani; and Sela may have been the head-station of the shepherds who frequented these j^lains with their vast flocks, and where they found protection and water such as IJzziah is said to have provided for his flocks by making ' towers and wells in the desert.' Isaiah, after declaring the woes that are coming on the people of Moab, calls them to submit themselves again to their rightful lord-paramount, by sending the tribute as in former times. The image of the Daughter of Zion sitting in royal dignity suggests that of the daughters of ^loab in flight ; and this the two images, of the undignified peasant or female slave wading through a river, and of young birds losing their nest and struggling at the risk of their lives.t And then the abru^jt turn of expression seems to indicate a sudden consciousness of the ajiparent im- ]ir()priety of a Jew in the unhappy reign of Ahaz — when bis own country was in the depths of humiliation and rs as one whole ; that the under-current of thought cijmmon to verses 11 and 14 of chapter xvii., anil DAMASCUS AND EPHRAIM. 207 verse 5 of chapter xviii., and the >'*in with which verse 12 of chapter xvii., and verse 1 of chapter xviii. begins, are in favour of the continuity of the text ; and that there is also a unity of idea pervading this whole, and correspond- ing Avith that which we have noticed running through chapters vii., viii., ix., x., xi., xii., and giving them greatly the character of a continuous whole, though that whole may be made up of portions originally separate. The train of ideas which unites those chapters is, that Judah need not fear the hostile alliance of Syria and E^jhraim against her, nor yet seek for help from Assyria or Egypt, if only she will trust in her own Lord, and true Protector ; that since she will not trust in him, she shall be herself over- whelmed by the heathen powers she calls in, and thus punished for her own loss of faith, and propensity to idols, even though these powers deliver her from her immediate alarm ; but that at the last a righteous king shall reio-n in Sion over the restored remnant of both Judah and Ephraim, and all the nations of the earth shall acknowledge his do- minion. And a similar thread of thought may be found running through the two chapters now before us, — which open with the destruction of Damascus and Israel ; refer the calamities of the latter to his abandonment of his true Lord, who shall yet preserve a remnant of his people ; and predict the destruction of the Assyrian as soon as he has fulfilled his office of the scourge of God, and the recog- nition of the Name of the Lord of hosts by Egypt and Ethiopia. There is an essential resemblance between the two, with a difference in the proportions of their parts : Damascus and Ephraim become less prominent in the latter than the former, Avhile the slight mention of Egypt ni yer.se 18 of chapter vii., apparently indicating that the politicians of the day were just thinking of the possibility of an alliance with that power, is replaced by a reference to the altered state of things when that alliance was actively promoted by the government of Hezekiah, as their only support against Assyria. It appears from Sargon's Inscription at Khorsabad— from which I have ahx'ady given the detailed account"" — that after taking Samaria * Pa>>e 193. 2o8 DATE OF THIS PROPHECY. lie M'cut to riiilistia, and there gained a victory over Sevechus, king of Eg}'i)t, on his advancing to the siijv port of the PliiHstine tributaries of Assyria, who were in rebellion, and had allied themselves with Egypt ; and though we shall see that the events to which chapter xx, relates may belong to a later date and another campaign than this, there is no reason why the Ethiopians should not have now sent an embassy to Judaea in anticipation of an advance of Sargon to the south : and then there will be no chronological difficulty in taking these two chapters (xvii. and xviii.) as one projJiecy delivered about the time of Sargon' s capture of Samaria. Damascus, which is mentioned in the history of Abraham, and is still a flourishing city in Avestern Asia, was the capital of one of the five principal states of Syria, and was therefore called Syria of Damascus. It was subju- gated by David,* but successfully revolted against Solomon. Thenceforth it was commonly at war with Israel, so that a three years' j^eace in the reign of Ahab is recorded as a long one. With the alliance of its last king llozin with Pekah, king of Israel, and its results, we are already ftimiliar. There are two Aroers mentioned on the east of Jordan, one near the Anion, and the other to the north, and near the Ammonite city of Kabbah ;t and the cities of Aroer here spoken of may be the cities and villages of Gad and Reuben in the district between the two Aroers, or more immediately about the northern one, Avhicli Avill connect them with the deportation of Tiglath-rileser, referred to on former occasions. The ]»rophct threatens the two nations with a common destruction : the glory of Damascus shall be as the glory of Isi-ael in the day in which the strength of the latter is wasted away with the emaciation of mortal disease, and his wealth is carried away as the whole crop of corn is car- ried away in harvest time. But then Isaiah substitutes an imaf^e not so strong : the gleaner follows the reajier of corn, and leaves nothing behind ; but the most active « 1 Kings xi. 23, 24, xxii. 1. f Jobb. xii. 2, xiii. 16 — 25; Numb, xxxii. 34. THE RUSH OF NATIONS. 209 iilialdug and beating of the olive-tree leaves a few berries on the uppermost boughs ; and such a remnant will be left of Israel, though the once strong cities of the nation Avill be reduced to the humblest, most defenceless condition. Such a remnant we know did, after the general deportation of the ten tribes, acce2:)t Hezckiah's invitation, and return to the right worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem, as they did again in the time of Josiah.* In that day the judgment on the nation, and the mercy shown to the penitent few, will alike bear witness against their past idolatries and forget- fulness of the God of their salvation. And then Isaiah, in his usual manner, blends with the previous image of the Assyrians reaping a harvest of cities and their inhabitants, the new one of the Israelites transplanting heathen gods into their worship, and reajiing God's abandonment of their nation as the fruit ; Avhile both images connect them- selves in the mind with the thous^ht of the actual wastinar of fields and vineyards through the country, by the ruth- less invaders. On a former occasion Isaiah had said, ' Jehovah spake unto me, saying. Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Siloah that go softl}^, and rtyoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son ; now therefore behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, the king of Assyria, and all his glory : and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks ; and he shall pass through Judah ; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck ; and the stretchinsf out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Im- manuel.' And now he hears the sound of these mighty and many waters, while ' the nations rush like the rushing of many waters,' and ' make a noise like the noise of the * seas.'t But he is calm and self-possessed as ever ; he holds to his old faith and doctrine : ' God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee afar off, like chaff when the wind whirls it from the threshing-floor on the hill-side.' * 2 CJiron. XXX. 11 ; xxxiv. 6, 9. t ' Qiialia fluctus .Equorei faciunt, si quia procul audiat ipsos, Tale sunat populus.' Ovid. Met. xv. 604. (Alexander from Clericu.s.) P 2 1 0 EGVPT AXD ETHIOPIA . Though the gencrjil sense of the eigliteenth chapter is clear, tliere is gi\'at doul)t as to the translation and meaning of particular phrases. It is not agi-eed whether ' shadowing with wings,' or ' rustling with wings,' or ' of the winged cymbal ' be the proj)er rendering ; nor whether (to leave less likely explanations) it refers to the mountain ridges, or the armies (as in chapter viii. 8), or the boats with sails or shaped like the cymbal. It is questioned whether the * sea ' in verse 2 is the Nile, or the Red Sea, or the Medi- terranean ; and also what is the meaning of the epithets applied to the ' people ' and ' nation ' in verses 2 and 7, and whether these are to be taken to indicate Egypt and Ethiopia respectively, or both together as one power under Sabaco, or Tirhakeh. But the general sense is that Egypt and Ethioi)ia, like Philistia and Moab, share the general alarm at the approach of the great northern conqueror ; and, as in the case of Philistia, they send ambassadors to Jerusalem, to propose an alliance against the common foe ; and the jH'ophet in reply tells them to go back and tell their countrymen — of whom he speaks in terms of unusual respect — that Jehovah will defend his own without the help of man. He calls on them, and on all the earth to expect the signal of a great deliverance, which shall come \\ith a sudden blow from Jehovah, who is at present wait- ing for the fulness of time, keejiing the world in a suspense like the stillness of a noonday heat, yet giving those who trust in him a quiet confidence, like that dewy cloud which sujjplies a certain freshness even in the njidst of such heat. We may notice again Isaiah's usual accuracy and ajipro- priateness of thought, in reference to the Egyptian traffic by water, and especially to the light papyrus boats'^" — to the tallness and beauty of the Ethic)])ianst — and to their land which 'the rivers divide ;' also the change of • * CoiiBeritur bibula Memphitis cymha pnpjTO ;' Lncaniv. 136. So Pliny says (xiii. 11), 'Ex ipso quiduin papvro uavigia tixuut.' Both quoted by Lwth. t ' fiiy'tarot Kal KoXiaroi ai0{)wiriuv iravruv,' Herodotus iii. 29, 114 : quoted I>y Kiiobcl, who also gives references to otlior >»riters, modem as well as iiTicient, as to these charai teristics of the Ethiopians. The Hebrew woids, which I have rendered ' tall ' and 'comely,' are properly ' stretched out' and ' MHOoth,' hut jirohahly with the souse I huvo given. In chapter xlv. 14,tliey aro called ' uiou of sluture.' * A SUPPOSED MYTH. 211 the "word ' nation ' in verse 2 into ' people ' in verse 7, — tlie formerly properly designating a heathen, and the latter a believing people. The remarkable correspondence between the predictions in verses 13, 14 of chapter xvii. and verses 3 — 7 of chapter xviii., with the historical account of the sudden overthrow of Sennacherib, has induced some of the Germans to pronounce that the latter is a myth framed to agree with the prophecy. As the reaction against the contrary assertion that the prediction is miraculous, such a notion is perhaps not to be wondered at ; but the really rational, as well as really Christian student, may come to the conclusion that if we take the facts of the case, the pro2)liecy and the history as they actually are, it is possible to discover something more of the meaning, and law, of prophecy and the prophetic faculty, than has been dis- covered, or than will be discovered, by combining either scepticism or superstition with grammatical and antiquarian knowledge. P 2 CHAPTER XIII. ISAIAH XIX. — EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES IN THE TIME OF ISAIAH CONTEMPOKAHY OK Sl'CCESSIVE. HISTORICAL NOTICES FllOM VAEIOUS SOURCES. ANARCHY. INVASION OF 8ARGON. SACK OF THEBES. TREATY BETWEEN EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. MULTITUDE OF GODS AND OF CASTES UNFAVOURABLE TO POLITICAL UNITY. — EXCLUSIVE AVISDOM OF PRIESTHOOD. — THE CITY OF DESTRUCTION. ALEXANDER AND PTOLEMY. TEMl-LE OF ONIAS. SEPTUA- GINT. PHILO. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA. BACON ON PROPHECY. ' rpHE Burden of Egypt.' Withiu the limits of Isaiah's -*- lifetime, we find kings of the Bubastite, Tanitic, Saitic, and Ethiopian dynasties reigning in Egypt, with their respective seats of government at Sais in the west, Tanis in the east, and Thebes in the south. The wise king Bocchoris, of Sais, who laboured to define and enforce the rights of his people by just and liberal laws, was conquered, and burnt alive by Sabacon, or Sabak I., the king of Ethiopia, who thus founded an Ethio})iau dynasty in Egypt. His successor, Sabak II., whom Manetho calls Sebichos and the Jews So (Seve), made an alliance with Hoshea, king of Samaria, to su})2)ort him in his refusal of continued vassalage to Shalmaneser. The first result of this alliance was the capture of Samaria b}" the Assyrians, with the final deportation of the people, and the substitu- tion of a colony from some other j)art of the Assyrian empire. The next (whether as motive or pretext) apjjcars to have been Sargon's invasion of Egy2)t. In Isaiah xx. we find Sargon's general laying siege to Ashdod, the most southern of the Philistian fortresses, which Avas su2)i>c)rted by the Egyptian and Ethiopian kings of whose country it was the key, as Gaza and El-Arish resj)ectively were in later times : and in Sargon's own account, which I have already quoted,* lie says that after reducing botli Gaza and • Page 193. CONDITION OF EGYPT. 213 Ashdod (whether in the same or different campaigns) he took vengeance on their Egyptian and Ethiopian alHes. And though the mutilation of that part of the Inscription makes it doubtful whether he described an actual invasion of the kingdom of Meroe, or Ethiopia, it is not improbable that to this period we may refer the destruction mentioned by Isaiah's cotemporary, J^^ahum, of the 'populous No- Ammon,' or Thebes, 'that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea : Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite ; Put and Lubim were her helpers. Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity : her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets : and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.'* The invasion of Sargon accomplished Isaiah's threat of the ' cruel lord,' in the chapter before us, and his warn- ing, in the chapter immediately succeeding, of the fate which would befill Egypt and Ethiopia both, within a short period of the siege of Ashdod, then in progress. And that most interesting discovery t in Sennacherib's palace, of what can hardly be other than the seal of a treaty between Sabak and the Assyrian king, gives a literal (though by no means the highest) fulfilment of Isaiah's prediction of future amity between Egypt and Assyria. The general condition of Egypt was at this time one of civil war, anarchy, revolution, and foreign invasion. The several accounts are confused, and apparently incapable of complete reconciliation. M. Bunsen says that all Egyptologers are agreed that Manetho's dynasties between the eighteenth and thirtieth are not synchronous, though he elsewhere ex- plains that the regular succession of kings' names in these lists does not necessarily indicate that each was the actual ruler of the country during the period thus assigned to him, since their position may have been something like * Nahum iii. 8—10. t Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 156. The seal itself is in the British Museum. 214 ISAIAH XIX. I — 25. ANARCHY: that of Louis XVII. and Louis XYIII. under the first French liepublic and Empire.'"' Yet Sennacherib speaks of conquering the kings of Egypt as well as the king of Meroe, in his second campaign ; Herodotus connects the overthrow of the Assyrian army with Scthos (apparently the Tanitic Zet of Manetho) and not with Tirhakeh ; and the language of Isaiah in the chapter before us favours the supposition of contemporary kingdoms in Egypt at this time. He speaks of ' Egyj^t ' (not ' the Egyptians ' in the original) set against Egypt, ' city against city, and kingdom against kingdom,' and mentions ' the princes of Zoar,' or Tanis, and ' the princes of Noph,' or Memphis.! But however this may have been, those causes of political disentegration must have been already at work and discernible by Isaiah, which soon after broke up Egypt into the petty indepen- dent governments Avhich the Greek historians called the Dodecarchy — an interregnum of fifteen years of civil wars between Sethos and Psammetichus. The name Mizraim, like Asshur, or Moab, is both that of the country and of the traditional founder : and here again we have Egypt as a person, the distinction being kept up in the original by the use of the masculine sufiixes where our Version gives the neuter it. The opening words of this projihecy represent Jehovah, 'who maketh the clouds his chariot ' (probably here and elsewhere not with- out allusion to the cloud which led the Israelites, and hovered over the Mercy-seat), coming into Egypt to stir up civil war throughout the land. Egypt was famous for its multitude of gods, its minute political and social or- ganization of castes or tribes (vc^rse 13), and the Avisdom of its sages and counsellors. Perhaps Isaiah, in his con- temptuous mention of all these, and their inability to help the country in its anarchy, recognizes in them the very causes of that anarch3^ The multitude of idols, and of hereditary castes, evidently must have been main hin- drances to national unity, since they sujiplied an in- definite number of separate foci, or ganglions, of social life, instead of the central heart and brain of the higher or- • Acgypten* Stelle, i. 121 ; iii. 128—146. f See, too. Canon Cook's Inscription of I'ianchi Mcr-Amou, pp. 13, 14. CIVIL WAR AND CONQUEST. 215 cranization : and the wisdom of the priests and the initiated kino-s would have the same tendency, since they had made it their exckisive possession, and employed it, not for the enlightenment and education of the people, but as the most effective instrument of the priestcraft and statecraft which controlled a population numerous and aggregated like herds of cattle, but debased, and therefore isolated, as The reahties of anarchy and civil war will confound the statesmen and their craft ; they will be utterly at a loss to propose means to remedy the evil, or to see what the end will be if things are left to themselves ; they will seek equally in vain for guidance from their idols and then- soothsayers ; andat last another reality, the despotic rule of a cruel conqueror, will supersede both them and the anarchy they could not face with all their shams. Tlie' Nile (the sea as it is here and elsewhere called) was the source of fertility and life to Egypt, and its failure the certain occasion of general drought and famine ; and Isaiah employs its failure as the symbol, a real part of the whole which it represents, to describe the universality of the national distress. mi 1 • i a ^ In the height of their calamity, they will think, hrst with fear, and then with hope, of Jehovah Avho is thus executing his counsels to the confounding of their own ; and they will turn their anxious looks to that people with whom tiieir own nation has from ancient times been made to feel its relationship, in blessings as well as in judgments, through a Joseph no less than a Moses. And then Isaiah describes the deliverance of Egypt from its oppressors, and its participation in the faith and consequently m the blessing of Israel, in terms which were remarkably ful- filled iS after times, again and again, with an amplitude which is at once an answer to the notion that he wrote after some one of the events, or that certain verses were interpolated to agree with some other. There is much doubt as to the verbal meaning of verse 18. ' The city of destruction' is the true translation of the original, but its obscurity has led to various conjectural emendations, for an account of which, with the arguments for or against each, 2i6 EGYPT UNDER THE GREEKS. I must refer the reader to the commentators. Calvin's explanation is that five-sixths of Egypt shall be saved, but the sixth part destroyed : an explanation characteristic of the stern reformer, who liked to contemplate jiidq-ment as an end, and not merely as a means, but which is far less suitable to the context tl an that which changes ' destruc- tion ' to ' salvation ' (onrjn to Dnqn), and considers five to be a round number* to express 'many.' The interpreta- tion of it as a proper name, Leontopolis, or Heliopolis, is contrary, says Gesenius, to the use of the word 'called,' which Isaiah always appropriates to symbolic appellations.! It was not this, but the next verse, which Onias referred to in favour of his temple at Leontopolis, and therefore the argument for its having been interpolated by him seems sufficiently refuted, even if it could be explained how the Jews of Palestine accepted such an interpolation from the hated sectarian. The literal coincidences, however, between these details and the events, and among others between the promise of a ' saviour ' and a ' great one,' and the titles of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy the Saviour, are noticeable and interesting ; though he must be unob- servant of like coincidences in all history and daily life who is driven by them to choose between miracle and forgery. The general idea of Isaiah, however we ma}' ex- plain details, is that the true faith of Israel will be widely spread through Egypt ; the altar and the pillar may be rather poetical images, taken from the history of the patriarchs:|:, than attempts to predict or prescribe actual mode of worship, though it is not impossible that the pro- phet may have conceived of such hel^JS to their faith being lawful in that distant land, though forbidden to the Jews at home, wlio were to sacrifice on no altar but at Jerusalem. In the main, however, he apparently contem[)latcs Jerusa- lem itself as the actual place of worship, when he speaks of Egyi)t ' serving,' that is, worshipping Jehcivah, with Assyria and Israel : yet we must not overlook the freedom from formal restrictions in his language, Avhieh thus anti- * As it i'b in Grnrsis xliii. 34 ; xlv. 22 ; xlvii. 2. + Chap. iv. 3 ; Ixi. 6 ; Ixii. 4. X (irotius refere to J( sl.ua, xxii. 10—31. BACON ON PROPHECY 217 cipates the time when the true worshippers shoukl worship the Father in spirit and in truth, and neither in this or that mountain, nor in Jerusalem ; and still more note- worthy is the catholic spirit which could comprehend not only the comparatively friendly Egypt, but also Assyria, the cruellest of enemies, in Israel's own covenant of peace and blessing from Jehovah. The fulfilment of these promises to Egypt was ample ; first beginning with the overthrow of Sargon's successor, Sennacherib, and the friendly intercourse with Hezekiah in the latter years of his reign ; and then extending through successive generations, beyond the troubles of the Dodecarchy, the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar, and the mad cruelty of Cambyses. Alexander the Great delivered them from the grievous Persian yoke, and he and his successors greatly favoured the j)eople and improved the country. He settled a great many Jews in Alexandria, giving them equal privileges with the Macedonians ; and this Hebrew- immigration was still farther promoted by Ptolemy Soter, so that Philo reckoned that in his time there were a million Jews in the country. The temple of Onias, the Septuagint version of the Bible, the books of the Apocrypha, the philosophy and theology of Philo, indicate not only what these Jews were in themselves, but enable us to infer with certainty how great must have been their example and influence in humanizing the Egyptians, and bringing them to the knowledge and worship of the true God. And still more were these results apparent, still more amply w-as this prophecy fulfilled, when Alexandria became one of the great centres of the Christian Church. There are other instances as real, but there is hardly one more strik- ing, of the correctness of Lord Bacon's rule that, in these interpretations, we must ' allow the latitude which is agreeable and familiar unto divine prophecies ; being of the nature of their Author, with whom a thousand years are but as one day ; and therefore are not fulfilled punctually at once, but have springing and germinant accomplish- ment throughout many ages ; though the height or fulness of them may refer to some one age.'* * Advancement of Lenr>'i>ig, book ii. 3. CHAPTER XIV. ISAIAH XX. — 8AROON, 8HALMANESER, TARTAN. — THE SIEOE OF ASimOD. SHEMVa'-! POLICY. — ISAIAIl's SY.MBOLICAL PROTEST AGAINST IT. — HE WALKS NAKF.H AND BAREFOOT. ISAIAh's POLICY PROHABLY MORE EXPEDIENT — CERTAINLY MORE BEFITTING ISRAEL'S PLACE IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY. THE name of Sargon occurs nowhere in the Bible except in the chapter before us : but tlic Inscriptions of this king — ^Sargina, or Sarrukin — from wliich I have aheady given some extracts, show him to have been not inferior in war or peace to his son Sennacherib. From the time of Sanctius and Jungmann (quoted by Yitringa) to the present day, there has been much learned discussion as to whether the Shalmaneser of the Bible and of Josephus Avas the same with Sargon, or his immediate predecessor : but the recejit discovery* of the annals of Shalmaneser, in their proper place between those of Tiglath-Pileser and Sargon, must — unless their interpretation is disputed — decide the question, as it had indeed already been decided on the ground of comparative probal)ility, by the greater number of the Assyriologists. I shall therefore not here re-open the discussion, nor that, which has been connected with it, whether Sargon was the hereditary king, or a suc- cessful rebel. But there can be no doubt that the Sargon of Isaiah is the Sargina who built the city of which the • ' Among tho other treasures brought back from Assyria by "Mr. George Smith is a small fragment which fits on to the fusti tablet published in W. A. I. ii. 52, 1. It definitely settles the question as to the reign of a Shal- maneser between Tii^lath Pileser and Sargon. Tiglath-Pileser, we find, in his last year, ' took tho lands of Bel' a .second time. Then comes the dividing line, and the stiitemerit of Shalmaneser's accession to the throne. According to the next line, tho king remained at home during the eponym of tho Prefect of Amida, but the three following years w(>re occupied in campaigns against a country or countries the names of which are unfortunately lost. After this, we have the dividing line again, and a nolice of Sargon's accession.' — T/ie Academy, Oct. 15, 1«73, p. 400. ISAIAffXX.i—6. SARGO.Y. 219 site is now called Kliorsabad, but wliicli retained the name of Sargluin as late as tlie Arab conquest. Tbe remains of Sargoi^s palace were discovered by M. Botta ; and M. Oppert has published the chief Inscription found there, with Latin and French translations, as well as translations of two other Inscriptions of the same king.* His con- quests through fifteen campaigns extended from Babylonia and Susiana in the south to Armenia and Cappadocia in the north, and from Media in the east (where he built cities to which he transplanted the conquered populations of other lands in the usual way), to Syria, Arabia and Eo-ypt in the west : he claims to have taken Tyre, and to h^ve received tribute from the king of 'Yatnan' (Cyprust) who dwelt at seven days' distance in the midst of the sea, and whose names had been unknown to the kings his Others from the remotest times. A monument of Sargon, now in the Berlin museum, was found in Cyprus ; and Josephus J states on the authority of Menander that Cyprus was about this time subject to Tyre, and that the king of Assyria besieged Tyre for five years, having previously reduced all the east of Phoenicia to submission. Tartan is said to be not a proper name but the common title of the Assyrian commanders in chief. § After he had taken Ashdod, it possibly continued in the power of the As- syrians ' till it was besieged, as Herodotus relates,]] for twenty-nine years by Psammetichus. It is now a little village, retaining its old name. From the words of the Khorsabad Inscription which I have already quoted, it would seem that Ashdod Avas twice taken by Sargon ; and this sieo-e is apparently the second of the two. In the third year of Hezekiah, Hoshea, king of Samaria, had brought Shalmaneser's overwhelming power upon him by refusing his accustomed tribute, and calling in So, king * Les Inscriptions Assyriennes dcs Sargonides, par Jules Oppert, 1862. Grande Inscription du Talais de Khorsabad, 1863. Sir Henry Rawlinson lias given a detailed account of these Inscriptions in his Commentarij, from which (as well as from those of M. Oppert) I have alreadv quoted ^ t ' Itanus sur Vile de Crete, et puis nom de I'lle de Chypre. —Oppert, In- scriptions des Sargonides, p. 21. + Ant. ix. 14, 2. § Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 148, note. II ii. 157. 220 POLICY OF SHEBNA. of Egypt, to support liini in his robollion. Yet this was now tlie policy conttnnpktod by the government and people of Hezekiah, The vassalage into which Ahaz had brought Judah was no doubt intolerable : Isaiah's repeated references to the ' oppressors,' ' the spoilers,' and the ' robbers,' indicate what we might expect from the character of the Assyrians, — that the tribute was almost the whole produce of the country, such as has been requisite to buy off the hordes of Huns, Tartars, or ^lahrattas, of other times : and since the Assyrian armies were constantly on the bor- ders of the little kingdom of Judah — durin? the sieves of Samaria, Tyre, Ashdod, and elsewhere — probably all payments were insufficient to protect the Jews from the rapacious licence of a soldiery Avhose royal leader could fix ' three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold,' as the price of amity with Hezekiah, and then immediately on receiving payment march on Jerusalem with the avowed determination to ' destroy it utterl}',' after deporting the inhabitants. Any prospect might seem better than the existing misery : and if Hoshea's alliance with Sebichos had only hastened the ruin of the kingdom of Ephraim, Judah hoped for a more suc- cessful result from the like policy. We have, perhaps, in chapter xviii. 2, an indication that the Etliioi)ico-Egyptian king had himself proposed such an alliance ; and it is plain from chapters xxxi. xxxii. that the Jewish govern- ment made advances on their side ; while in the chapter before us Isaiah seems to describe the general feeling of his countrymen when he speaks of ' Ethiopia their expecta- tion, and Egypt their glory.' A policy in which one state is to be played off against another, and perhaps by one weaker than either, always secnns the height of wisdom to the crafty diplomatists who play the game, and worse than folly to the looker on : and such was the policy of Shebna, Hezekiah's minister, — in his own eyes no doubt ' a ])oliti- cian who could circumvent CJod,''"' — and such the opinion of it entertained by Isaiah, one of whose energetic protests against it we have before us. He, as well as his children, was ' a sign to the peo[>le,' and not only like thtMu by his • Hamlet, V. 1. ISAIAH'S SVMBOLICAI PROTEST. 221 name and presence, but he now appeared — proLably while the result of the siege of Ashdod was still doubtful, and the public expectation in Jerusalem at its height — naked and barefoot, that is, without the hair garment which, girt with a leathern girdle, was the prophet's dress, as it was of the Christian ascetics in after times.* He appeared, ni fact, as the writers of the middle ages would have ex- pressed it, 'iu his shirt:' for this is a usual meaning of the phrase, ' naked,' in Hebrew, as in all languages, and one which is moreover indicated here by the 'barefoot,' which would be otherwise superfluous, as well as by the additional description of the captives he figured. The Masoretic punctuation joins the ' three years' with the words that follow, in which case the sentence may be rendered ' a three years' sign' and understood not that Isaiah walked for three years, but that the event was to occur in three years : and the prediction would thus somewhat correspond in form with that in chapter xvi. 14. Vitringa and Lowth suppose that, in fact, Isaiah walked three days, 'a day for a year;'t others consider the symbolical act to have been occasional, though repeated throughout the three years. There is nothing improbable in this last view ; it is that most in agreement with the letter of the text; and there is an appearance of the chapter being a brief account of the three years' preaching (perhaps the time the siege was going on), during which Isaiah used to appear as described, and speaking to this effect. Even taken thus literally this symboHc act is far less difficult to comprehend than some of those of other prophets : but in all cases a part of the difficulty arises, no doubt, from our inability to realize adequately the habits and feelings of an ancient and eastern people. To those of Isaiah's countrymen who were not hardened against all such impressions, the sight of the prophet and the sound of his warning voice in the streets and market-places of Jerusalem, while he showed forth the impending IVite of their expected deliverers, and thus led them to infer their * See 2 Kiiisis i. 8 ; Zoch. xiii. i ; Matt. iii. 4. AViner compares the jialliuiu of the Greek jihiloso])hei8 with the prophet's uiaulle. t Compare Numbers xiv. 34 ; Ezekiel iv. 6. 22 2 POLICY OB ISAIAH: own, would have been full of si(,'-niHcance. I have noticed before the practice of driving the prisoners of war naked and like herds of cattle : the word here translated ' lead away' is that usually applied to leading or driving cattle ; and the monuments of Egypt, as Avell as Assyria, still depict such strings of captives, naked, or with merely an apron, and frequently with their hands bound with their own hair. One of Belzoni's drawings of tombs at Thebes, says Gesenius, exhibits both Ethiopian and EgyjJtian pri- soners in this way. We see from Isaiah's subsequent denunciations of the Egyptian alliance, that the ground of them was, that the people of Israel should trust in Jehovah their own King for deliverance, and in no other power whatever. Though he encouraged Hezekiah to the boldest defiance and most resolute resistance of Sennacherib at the last, there is no indication that he advised or approved his tirst refusal of the tribute which Ahaz had consented to pay : on the contrary, the whole tenour of the prophet's discourses is, that the subjection to the Assyrian yoke was a needful though harsh discipline for the nation ; that Jehovah would himself effect their deliverance in due time ; and that they were to wait patiently till then.* This simj)le and entire trust in Jehovah, as the Head of the nation, and of each member of it in particular, — as their actual Ruler, and ever-present Friend, watching over them every moment with the care of a Husband and a Father, • As a modem writer has charged Jeremiah with treachery worthy of (loath, in jircachinp t-uhmission to Nulmcliadnezzur, it is worth while to see liow his cimduct looked to one who had opportunity, find wms competent, to interpret it hy tho political experience of his own day. Nitbuhr, writing, Jan. 10, ISO I, of the abortive desires of Stein and others to tlirow otf the yi'ke of Kaj)oleon, says, 'I told you, as 1 told evt-ry one, how indignant I i'elt at the senseless prating of those who talked of desperate resolves as of a tragedy. Kver since the peace of Tilsit, my maxims have been those which I'hocion {)reachcd to the Athenians of his age ; and nowhere have I seen, among the declaimers on the other side, a Demosthenes, or even a Ily- j)eride8, but many a Din'us. To bear our fate with (ii^'tlity and wisdom, that the yoke might bo lightened, was my doctrine, and I sujiported it with the advice ol tho prophet Jercmiali, who spoke and acted very wisely, living as he did under King Zidekiah, in the times of Nebuchadnezziir, though he ■would have given ditlerent counsel had he lived under Judas l^Iaccabteus, in the times of Anliochus Epiplianes: 'Seek the peace of tho city whither I hiive caused you to be carried away captives ; tor in the peace thereof shall yo have peace.' ' — Hiebuhr* Lift, vol. i. p. 261. ITS PRACTICAL SOUNDNESS. 223 — this is the master-light of all Isaiah's philosophy, moral and political, and the one lesson which in a hundred forms he is continually teaching the people. Whether he was right, whether this is indeed the one thing ' which makes a nation happy and keei)S it so,' the reader must decide for himself : I will only point out that to us, judging after the event, the good sense and sound practical statesman- ship of Isaiah's policy, and the folly of that of Shebna and the public opinion Avhich supported his government, are alike obvious. It was no doubt an admirable policy for the interests of Egypt that Palestine, with its mountain- defiles and strong fortresses, should consent to be her northern military frontier, and that Hebrew blood and treasure should be expended in maintaining the fortified cities of Samaria and Jerusalem, Lachish and Libnah, against the advance of Assyria. If the invaders overcame these obstacles at last, Egypt would meanwhile have gained some years of security at no cost to herself, and would be then better able to meet a half-exhausted foe ; while, if the resistance of the Hebrews was successful, they themselves would have been so weakened as to be at the mercy of the ally they had been serving too well. In no case could Israel be other than a sufferer : if the contest of the srreat belligerents could have been fought out in some other country than Palestine there might have been a little more plausibility in Shebna' s scheme for a balance of power, though even then the day of retribution might have been expected at last, from friend, if not from foe : but when Palestine itself must inevitably be ' the cockjjit''" of Asia and Africa, the one thing which sound policy indicated was, that it should, if possible, remain neutral. There was a moment of Israel's history (Ewald has finely remarked), when it seemed possible that David might have laid the foundations of an empire like that of Kome, as there was that Solomon might have led the way to the reign of a philosophy as sovereign as that of Greece : but the innate energy, the proper life of the nation, rejected these temptations to quit its appointed * Belgium, or the Spanish Netherlands, has been called ' the cockpit of Europe.' 2 24 ISRAEL 'S PLA CE IM HISTORl '. place in universal history ; and like Rome and Greece, in their appointed spheres, and like every other nation worthy the name, it went resolutely forward, at whatever sacrifice of all its other and conflicting interests. Now, this appointed place and course was that of witnessing in its institutions, history, and literature, for what Ewald calls ' true religion,' but which I prefer to call the fact that men stand in a real and actual relation to God, and that God is really and actually present Avith men to u])hold that relation at all times, and to educate them through it to know him, and to show forth his image more and more. If, then, the Jews in the time of Isaiah could not seecure the inde- pendence and other political interests of their country without abandoning their right place in the world, they would have been bound in duty and reason to sacrifice these, and, as Isaiah taught, to cleave to Jehovah at all hazards, and leave the event to him. But, in fact, not only was a political neutrality tlieir only sound Jjolicy, but they really were very likely to have succeeded in maintaining it, if it had been based on a national faith and practical piety. It docs not need a special miracle, a suspension of the ordinary laws of the universe, to make true religion, with its fruits of virtue and honesty, the best policy, whether for a nation or an individual. The very case is already provided for in those laws as originally laid down. History and biography attest the fact suffi- ciently : though they show that the end is constantly efi'ected through so many difficulties, or, as St. Paul would sav, tlirouirh so mu(!h wc^aknt-ss of the flesh, that nothin!/ but the reality of the faith within could have sujtplied the necessary courage for enduring till the end. CHAPTER XV. ISAIAH XXI.— A VISIOX IN A DREAM OR TRANCE.— BIBLE MEANING OF INSPI- RATION.—DIVINATION.— ANCIENT ORACLES.— SPECIAL POWERS OF NATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS.- ONE GREECE, ONE SHAKSPEARE.— DISCERNMENT OF POLITICAL EFFECTS IN THEIR CAUSES LESS POSSIBLE NOW THAN FORMERLY. — ' THE DESERT OF THE SEA.'— THE PROPHET A WATCHMAN.— THE TRIBES OF ARABIA.— SUBJECTED BY ASSYRIA. ri^HE school of commentators represented by Professors J- Alexander and Delitzscli find, in that part of Isaiah xxi. which relates to Babylon, 'wonderful coincidences with history, both sacred and profane, Avhich could not be ascribed to Isaiah, or to any contemporary writer, without conceding the reality of prophetic inspiration.' These coincidences are the mention of the Medes and Per- sians, as the conquerors of Babylon ; the night of festivity changed into a night of terror, corresponding with the statements of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Daniel, that the court was revelling when Cyrus took the city ; the vivid picture of the equally historical surprise of the revellers by the enemy : the asses and camels which Herodotus and Xenophon describe as used for riding in the Persian armies, while the latter also represents their advancing two by two ; and the breaking of all the idols by a nation who, Herodotus says, not only thought it unlawful to use images, l>ut imputed folly to those who did it. The rationalists accept the premises of this argument as unquestionable, but draw the conclusion that the prophecy was, in fact, written in the time of Cyprus, either after the event, or so shortly before it that a politician could have foreseen these historical details which they consider to be discoverable in the text. I have already pointed out how far these Q 2 2 6 ISA I A H XXL JXSPIRA TIOX. opponents appear to mc to be advocating difterent sides of the same truth, and helping us towards a higher view which shall comprehend and reconcile all that is really true in both. And I have said all that I have to say on the historical and literary facts and arguments of the case. But there is one point to which, often as I have adverted to it, these words of Dr. Alexander's warn me that I must return, if I would sift the whole question of prophecy to the bottom. The word ' inspiration,' in the passage just quoted from this learned commentator, is there lowered to a sense which is neither proper to the Bible nor to the Christian Church ;* and is used to designate a power of predict- ing events, such as the heathen oracles and the medieval astrologers claimed, and by their contemporaries were believed to exercise. It is commonly said that in the latter cases there was fraud or delusion, while the Hebrew prophets really possessed the gift : and there can be no doubt that the Jews generally, and very little doubt that Isaiah and the other prophets themselves, would have maintained that these were enabled, on 2)articular occasions, to exercise such a gift of prediction ; though the wise and religious among them, whether people or teachers, Avould not have allowed that it was in this gift that the reality of pro2)lietic inspiration consisted. But conscience, no less than reason, forbids me to deny that the Greek and Roman oracles, and the astrologers of the middle ages, did utter numerous predictions which were fulfilled with no OTeater mixture of failures than those of the Hebrews, and which were of no less social and j^olitical importance to those to Avhom they were addressed. Cicero held that the reality of th(> jxjwcr of divination was ])roved alike by tlie universal buliuf of the greatest sagos, and the manifest cor- respondence between the j)redictions and events of the * The Pniyor-Book (the authoritative manual of a large portion of the Christian Church in Enpland) uses the word ' iiisj>iration ' in the true sense, in tlio first Collect of the Communi'Hi Service, — ' Cleanse the thouglits of onr hearts hy the inspiration of Thy Holy Sj'irit;' and in the Collect for tlio i<- Kiilinnchriften, u. d. A. 'J'., p. 'J13. A VISION IN A DREAM. 229 over which its authority extended, and especially to the captive Israelite : and perhaps, at the same time, to the midtitiide of the armies which it poured forth like the waters of the sea. So Ezekiel tells the Jews that they shall be led by God into ' the wilderness of the people,' as their fathers were into the wilderness of the land of Egypt ; contrasting the human with the natural wilderness — alike devoid of true life and order. And St. John, in the Apocalypse, adopts the same imagery in describing Baby- lon, the dramatic representative of Rome : ' I will show thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues After these things I saw another angel, and he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen.' This prophecy has more the character of a vision than any other in the book, excepting that in the sixth chapter. It seems to indicate that the writer had been in a state of trance, perhaps somewhat like that which Coleridge de- scribes in the introduction to his ' Kubla Khan, or a Msion in a Dream,' where he says he ' continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the ex- ternal senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines ; if that, indeed, can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent ex- pressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort : on awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recol- lection of the whole, and taking his pen, paper, and ink, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines,' — which he there gives, but of which the current was abruptly cut off. We may get some light too from our ordinary experience in dreams here, as on chapter vi. The unity of the whole is not less striking than the vividness of its parts ; but it is a unity derived from the imagination, and not from the logical faculty ; and it over- leaps the bonds of time and space, and brings remote 230 THE rOLITICAL WATCinfAX: objects together, just as the imagination of tlie dreamer does, without any sense of incongruity. ' It Cometh : ' — a man in a (h'oam would not ask what ; — he simply feels that something terrible, and from a ter- rible land, is sweeping over the scene, like one of the whirlwinds which still, as then, drive furiously up from the southern deserts.* Then he sees that there is reason enough for this terror, for the land — his own land — is tilled with spoilers, robbing by fraud or violence : just what, in fact, Isaiah and his countrymen experienced as the condition of their daily existence during many years of his life. He recognizes at once the ' terrible land,' ' the desert of the sea,' from which the evil has come : he calls Elam and Media to ' go up and besiege,' and in a moment all the sighing of the oppressed has ceased. Ry a new act of the imagination, he identifies himself with the besieged city ; and e.xperiences all the sensations of extreme terror, as he sees, in an instant of time, the preparations for a feast, and the setting the watch, the actual feasting, and the call to arms without and within the walls ; and knows at once, as an inhabitant of the city, what his doom is. Then he half returns to the consciousness that he is Isaiah, a prophet in Jerusalem, and no Babylonian, and explains how this catastrophe had been revealed to him. He is still overmastered by his imagination, but it takes a new direction. He was accustomed to wait whole days and nights in fasting, meditation, and ])rayer, when seeking to know the mind of Jehovah ; and the.se special acts were but the outward and occasional expressions of a life of sj)irifiiMl waiting and watehing, — of patient meditiition upon (itxl's word and works, and no less patit^nt waiting to see the poIiticiU events of his own day, however dark and unpromising, open out into results according with that word and those works in the old times. The politics of his nation were involved in all the prophet's liopes and prayers; and as the wiitiliiii;in looks from the watch-tower • Rop Ijiyard'i nccount of the ' shorpif, or bHminpf wintls fmin the »outh , Sineixh ami Bubylon, p. 3Ci, where he quotes ihU vvrftu of liuiuii. WHAT HE SEES. 231 in time of war, so he stood on the watch-tower of divinely illuininiitcd reason, and looked out into the world, — taking a comprehensive view of all that Avas passing or coming there ; discerning the significance and importance of each event ; and accordingly cither warning the nation, for whom he kept guard, of approaching evil, or comforting them with the announcement of deliverance.* And thus his pro[)hetic office and fiiculty now represent themselves to him, and he describes them, as his setting a watchman, hy command of Jehovah, to watch and report what he sees. This watchman — no other than the projected form of the prophet himself — stands on an ideal watch-tower, and sees a host of chariots, horses, asses, camels, approaching ; and, after listeninsr for a moment with the eas^erness of a watch- ful sentry, he gives the alarm in the phrase familiar to the Hebrew shepherd — ' A lion ! ' And he then re2>orts in detail that he had watched continually night and day for many days, Avhen at last he saw the invading army, which the prophet, in the co-instantaneousness of all the parts of a vision, was already become aAvare of, before he — the other self — could report it. ' Lord ' is the title appro- l)riated to God, and not equivalent to ' Sir ' as the Authorized Version implies ; — which heightens, without at all confusing, the visionary character of the Avhole, by making the prophet recognize his own individuality, and the fact that he himself is the watchman, and set there by Jehovah. The watchman speaks again after an interval, and reports that all is over, — Babylon and her gods are fallen. The watchman may be conceived as at first standing on the walls of Babylon, and then transferred in a moment of time to Jerusalem ; but it is simpler to leave the ideal indefiniteness of the text. The prophet utters a half ironical, half compassionate twclamation, on the fate of his country's enemy ; and con- cludes by declaring, both to that enemy and to his own (Countrymen, that what he has thus declared he has heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. There are different opinions as to the true rendering of * Compare Isaiah Hi. 8; Ivi. 10; Jeremiah vi. 17; Ezekiol xxxiii. 2; Habak. ii. 1. 2 3 2 ISA I A H XXI. II — 17. THE A RA B TRIBES : details. Some suppose verses 1 and 2 to describe tlie sufferings of Babylon on the invasion of the Medes and Persians ; some say it is more correct to read, in verses 7 and 8, ' And should he see ... let him hearken ; ' some understand, ' he cried like a lion for loudness ; ' and some refer the * threshing ' to Israel. On the last two render- ings I would notice that I have followed Jeremiali's ap- parent mode of understanding them,* which also seems to me the more graphic. The genuineness of the rest of the chapter is not dis- puted ; but modern criticism has not decided whether the two ' Burdens ' of ' Duraah ' and ' Arabia ' are separate prophecies, or parts of one prophecy, in the margin of which the two titles would then stand : nor whether Dumah is the Arab tribe of Dumah (descended from Ishmael,t and having perhaps given its name to the Dumah Eljandel still found on the confines of Arabia and Syria), or an enigmatical name for Edom,+ as the Sep- tuagint supposes, and as the mention of Seir just after seems to indicate, though the latter may be taken as re- ferring only to the tract of desert and mountain in that quarter. To which we, who accept the prophecy against Babylon as also Avritten by Isaiah, have to add the question whether both, or the former of these, should be taken as its continuation. And, lastly, what is the purport of these seven verses ? The image of the watchman suggests a connection be- tween the first and second portions ; and the names Dumah, Seir, Arabia, Dedanim, Tenia, and Kedar, between the second and third. And indeed there seems to me a re- markable unity of thought and imagery indicating that the whole is one prophecy. If we take the text as it stands, the general sense will ajjparently be, that at the time when Jiulah was actually suffering the ojipressions of the • Chapter ]. 14 ; li. 33. With the lattir compare Micuh iv. 12, 13. t CJoiiesiH XXV. 1 1 ; 1 Chron. i. 30. X ' htonah is deep and utler silcncr, and therefore the land of the deiid (Ph. xciv. 17; cxv. 17). The iiamn CTTS is lunitd into an emblem of lliu fiit»ii<' state of Edom bv the removal of the iound from the bfj^niiing of the word to the end.' Drljizsch, Vomiiuutanj on t/ul'rop/iecusojliiaiah, English triins- lation, vol. i. p. 354. THEY INQUIRE OF THE PROPHET. 233 ' treacherous dealer,' and the ' spoiler,' but was promised deliverance by Isaiah, he is applied to by the Arab tribes, whose caravans conducted through Arabia the course of a commerce which even then might exchange the tin of Britain with the ivory of India : they inquire whether they may hope to escape the great robber ; and the prophet replies, after a hesitation which seems half contemptuous, half indicative of the obscurity in which the future was involved to him, that they will not escape. Gesenius observes that, though the voice calling to the watchman out of Seir may without improbability be taken merely as a poetic image, it is also quite probable that it refers to an actual inquiry. It was not less likely that the neighbour- ing nations should consult a prophet of Jehovah, than that Balak should apply to Balaam, Ahaziah consult Baal-zebub the god of Ekrou, or Croesus the oracle of Delphi. The tribes who traversed, as they still traverse, the deserts of Arabia and Syria, with their flocks and herds, with trade-caravans, or on plundering forays, are chiefly traced, in the records of Genesis, to Abraham, through Hagar and Keturah, — Nebaioth, Dedan, and Tenia as sons of Ishmael, and Kedar as the grandson of Keturah ; but some also to Joktan and to Gush. We find these Arabs — Midianites, Amalekites, and children of the east — in- vading Israel, in the . time of the Judges ; paying tribute to Jehoshaphat and Uzziah ; and having one of their set- tlements taken possession of by the Simeonites in the reign of Hezekiah, after they had exterminated the tribe, — an event which may possibly be connected Avith the present prophecy.* Dedan and Tenia are elsewheret connected with each other, and with Edom and other northern tribes of Arabia : Tenia is mentioned by Ptolemy ; and Kedar by Pliny, by Stephanus of Byzantium, and by Theodoret, who says that in his time the Kedranites pastured their flocks in the province of Babylon : and Bochart traces to Dedan, the traders in the ivory and ebony of India, the name of Daden, an island in the Persian Gulf ; while Seetzen found Tema in the caravan-route between Mecca and Damascus. * Judges vi. .3 ; 2 Chron. xvii. 11 ; xxvi. 7 ; 1 Chron. iv. 39, 43. t Jeieuiiali xxv. 23; xlix. 7 — 8; Ezek. ,\xv. 13. 2 3+ SUB J EC TS OF SENNA CHERIB. In Genesis xxxvii., and Job vi. 19, Ave have the caravans mentioned, and in Ezekiel xxvii., an ample account of the trade which they carried on ; while Kedar, known by its tents of black hair-cloth, and rich in the flocks which formed its staple commerce, seems to have been dis- tinguished from these purely trading tribes, by greater estrangement from civilized intercourse and courtesy, as might have been expected from their different habits.* Sir Henry Rawlinson finds the names of Tehaman (Teman), Damun, Kidar (Kedar), Khagarin (Hagarenes), and Na- baut (Nebaioth), in a list of ' the Aramaean tribes who lined the Tigris and Euphrates,' subjugated by Sennacherib, and from whom he carried off ' an enormous booty ' of men, women, and cattle, of Avhich the kinds and numbers are specified : and among the countries whose kings brought ' their accustomed tribute ' to Sennacherib, he reads that of Huduma, or Edom.t * Sonp: of Solomon i. 5; Isaiah xlii. 11 ; Ix. 7 ; Ezek. xxvii. 21 : Psalm cxx. 5 ; Jeremiah ii. 10. t Outline, pp. 19, 22. Compare Oppert, Inscriptions des Sargonides, pp. 42, 44, where the same names are found. CHAPTER XVI. ISAIAH XXII. — POLITICAL PARTIES AT JERUSALEM. — SHEBNA AND THE MAJORITY. ELIAKIM AND THE MINORITY. ISAIAH's ATTACK ON SHEBNA. — PRE- PARATIONS FOR THE SIEGE. TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM. SITE OF ZION. — SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE AND KING. FALL OF SHEBNA. — SUFFERINGS OF MODERN NATIONS FROM INVASION. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS RESULTS. PRUSSIA. — SWITZERLAND. TO an ordinary Englishman, accustomed all his life to hear denunciations of the policy of the government followed b}'' anticipations of the downfall of its author, and of the benefits which the country must expect from the new policy of his successor in the ministry, it may seem superfluous to examine seriously the notion that the twenty-second chapter of Isaiah consists of two separate prophecies, or that its unity needs proving by such argu- ments as he will find in the commentators. The date of the prophecy is evidently that of the four- teenth year""" of Hezekiah's reign, and of the third cam- * This date, and the Hebrew chronology of this period must of course be changed, if the.' Assyrian Canon' should be established. If it is made certain that this lonir list of names has been accurately read and understood, and if it supplies a chronology which solves all difficulties without substi- tuting new ones, the Hebrew dates must be set aside. But while the question is only one of general probability, and such it seems to me to be as yet, I must think that the authority of contemporary documents, or extracts of documents, of a nation having at the time the political and literary culture exhibited in the writings of the Hebrew prophets and historians, is to be preferred to that of a list of names put together many years after the dates they are supposed to mark, and by a nation with the history and culture indicated by the Inscriptions of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. Professor Rawlinson thus describes the Canon : — ' The Assyrian Canon (discovered by Sir Henry Rawlinson, among the antiquities in the British Museum, and published by him in the Af/icncriim, Nos. 1812, and 2064), an account of Assyrian chronology from about B.C. 909 to B.C. C80, impressed on a number of clay tablets in the reign of Sardanapalus the son of Esar- haddon, all now more or less broken, but supplying each other's deficiencies and j-ielding by careful comparison a complete chronological scheme covering 2 36 ISAIAH XXII ' 7'II£ VAILEF OF VISION: 2)aigTi of Sennacherib ; and, more j)recisely, during the time that the Assyrian armies were overrunning Judsea, but before they had appeared under the walls of Jerusalem. And a comparison of the accounts in the Assyrian Inscrij)- tions and the books of Kings and Chronicles with the discourse before us, enables us, at the end of twenty-five centuries, to see the very form and pressure of those ancient times. There is indeed a difficulty from that peculiarity of Hebrew grammar noticed before, which permits an inter- change of the past and future tenses of the verb in such a way as to make it a matter of discussion with translators which of the two, or whether the present tense instead of either, will best express the force of the original. The verbs in the description of the preparation for the siege with all its circumstances, are translated by Gesenius and others as presents, — they understanding them to describe the facts as Isaiah sees them in his mind's eye, and just before their actual occurrence. No doubt this is the true view in the main, and we may be well content Avith it, if the slight haze which it leaves over certain details of the picture cannot be dispelled by any modern insiglit : but it is obvious that there is a haze. The alarm of the city and its reckless jollity, the repairs of the fortifications and the array of the enemy in the neighbouring valleys, imply some lapse of time during their course ; and as the whole conditions of ancient and Eastern life require us to believe that this prophecy was s2)oken, and not fii'st published in writing as it might be now, the question presents itself whether any Hebrew scholarship can fix the exact point of time at which it was spoken, and so distinguish the facts which the prophet saw with his bodily eye from those present to him in vision. No such distinction may be possible now ; the master-artist himself may have oblite- rated any original ditfcrences between the actual and the ideal objects of his discourse ; but thus much at least we may see, — that the actual facts, to which Isaiah could at the moment point with his hand, were such as to enable fi hpace of 230 yoarH. The chronolo^>y of Iho whole period is verified by a recorded solar eclipse, which la evidently that of June 15, n.c. 763.' — Manual of Ancient Hiisloiy, p. 7. A SIEGE EXPECTED. 237 his hearers to follow liim in filling up the blank portions of the canvas. If when he spoke they could see people on the housetops looking wistfully in the direction of Lachish, before which the Assyrian army was at the moment lynig, it would seem hardly a figure of speech to tell them that the valleys of Hinnom and Eephaim, beyond which their eyesight might not carry them, were full of Persian cavalry, though in fact they saw nothing but green corn waving, nor recognized as yet any sign of an enemy along the mile or two of the western highway which might be visible from Jerusalem : — for they well knew that a very few miles more of that road would take them into the heart of Sennacherib's camp. And so of the rest. And if the present and the future of that day have long become one ideal past to us, the whole harmonious picture is not the less true to the life, — true to the old Hebrew life which actually was then and there, and which is still here for us to see ; and true no less to the human life of our own and every other day. Let us then look at the picture as it is, after noticing its significant and somewhat enigmatical title, analogous to that of the previous prophecy against Babylon. It is apparently taken — we need not doubt by Isaiah himself — from the expression in verse 5, which seems to be itself suo-gested by the fact that it is in vision that the prophet sees the trouble and spoiling of the city which to his out- ward eye was at the moment showing signs of self-con- fidence. Titles stand first, but then, as now, Avere written last, to designate the subject written of; and this prophecy is a vision of the political state and prospects of the city which stood in the midst of the valleys of Judah, and of the political party and minister who ruled the city at that time. Perhaps the thought that this city was the centre and source of all prophetic vision,- — ^that ' out of Zion should go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem,' at all times and for all peoples, — may have added - to Isaiah's sense of the propriety of the present title ; but the other is more likely to have first suggested it. Hezekiah had from the beginning of his reign given proof of his faith in Jehovah, as the King whose viceroy 238 SHEBNA AND THE MAJORITY. he was ; but we can see that he had inherited something of the weakness of his father's character, along with an authority gi'eatly controlled by the nobles, and by what we now call a bureaucracy, or government by narrow and worldly-minded officials, who, though unable to take any far-seeing or comprehensive views of the interests of the country, were too firmly seated in power to be dislodged. At the head of these was Shebna, of Avhom it has been conjectured, from his father's name never being mentioned (as was usual, and as M^e find done in the case of his fellow- ministers'''''), and from his being engaged in making a family sepulchre, that he was a man of obscure origin ; while his name, which does not seem to be Hebrew, and by which no one else is called in the Bible, has been supposed to indicate that he was a foreigner. Hezekiah, a2:>parcntly at the beginning of his reign, 'rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not ;' t and while — as I have already observed — there is no indication that, in so doing, he acted by the advice or with the aj^proval of Isaiah, we know from Isaiah himself that he opposed an alliance with Egypt in support of this revolt, and may infer from his language that it was Shebna and his party who promoted it. J The kingdom of Israel had trusted to the like alliance, and was annihilated. And now the Assyrian armies were encamped in the south-west of Judah, apparently on the road to Egypt but expecting and expected to swallow up the little Jewish kingdom easily by the way ; its fortified cities had already fallen, one after another ; ' and Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have ofi'ended ; return from me ; that which thou puttest on me I will bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.' And this tribute Hezekiah sent to him, stripping his palace and the temple of the treasures and ornaments with which, during the previous years of his reign, it had been his glory to have made good the like act of his father Ahaz.§ Whether out of sheer treachery, || * 2 Kings xviii. 18. t 2 Kin-^s xviii. 7. X Isaiah xxix. 14 ff., xxx. 1 AT., compared with the pruphecy before us. ^ 2 Kintrs xviii. 14, 15. II Isaiuh xxxiii. 1, 7, B ; on wliich passage see my comiiieut. SENNACHERIB'S SUMMONS. 239 or because he liad reason to question the sincerity of Hezekiah's submission (for the communications between Judah and Eg}^pt may have still continued), Sennacherib took the money, and then sent against Jerusalem a detach- ment from the main army with which he was himself besieging Lachish, an important fortress about thirty-live miles south-west of the capital. The Assyrian generals, however, found the city j)repared against a surj)rise, and the courage of the king and people too high to yield to their persuasions or threats ; and the enterprise failed, only to be followed by the overthrow of the main army itself. Sennacherib's account of these events must be taken with considerable qualifications, as I shall show hereafter.* After his relation of his re-conquest of Philistia, and his battle with the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia, which I have already quoted,! he goes on : — ' But Hezekiah the Jew sub- mitted not. There were forty-four great cities, walled towns, and little villages without number, against which I fought, subduing their pride and oj^posing their wrath. By the aid of fire, slaughter, battles, and siege towers, I carried them, I took them : I brought out of them two hundred thou- sand one hundred and fifty persons, great and small, male and female, horses, asses, mules, camels, sheej) and oxen, without number, and I took them for booty. As to him, I shut him up in Jerusalem (Ursalim) the city of his power, like a bird in a cage. I invested and blockaded the sur- rounding forts : those who came out through the great gate of the city were taken and carried away. I separated from his dominion the cities which I had pillaged, and gave them to Mitinti king of Ashdod, to Padi king of Ekron, and to Ismibil king of Gaza. I diminished his territor3^ I added to the former tributes and to the payment of their tithes a new tribute in token of my suzerainty, and I im- posed it on them. Then the great fear of my majesty terrified this Hezekiah the Jew : the sentinels and the garrison which he had assembled for the defence of Jeru- salem, the city of his power, he dismissed. So he sub- mitted himself to pay tribute — thirty talents of gold and * In chapter xx., where the reader -will find a summary of the history of this time. f Page 195. 240 ELIAKIM AXD THE MINORITY. eight liundred talents of silver, metals, rubies, pearls, gi'eat diamonds (?), bundles of leather, thrones trimmed "v\dth leather, skins of sea-calves, sandal-wood, ebony, rich trea- sures ; and also sent me his daughters, the women of his 2)alace, his slaves, male and female, to Nineveh, the city of my sovereignty. He sent his ambassador to present this tribute and to make his submission.''"' When Rab-shakeh and the enemj^'s force actually arrived under the walls the political power had jiassed from the hands of Sliebna to Eliakim, as Isaiah had fore- told : not, however, by a literal fultilmeut of the 2)rophet's vehement denunciations ; but by the former minister being reduced from the first office of lord high treasurer, or lord steward, to that of secretary.! He may have had business talents too useful, or his influence may have been still too great, to j^ermit that complete dismissal which the single-minded prophet, who did not consider it his duty to balance and reconcile conflicting interests and expediencies, thought, and no doubt rightly, was the moral desert of his character and acts. Probably this very attack on the minister, which reminds one of the words by which Cicero drove out Catiline when too strong to be attacked by more material weapons, may have given the last blow to Shebna's power : he had been hitherto supported by that selfish and time-serving majority of nobles, priests, and people, w^hom Isaiah (like his contemporaries) is always denouncing, and which was too strong for Hezekiah and the minority of God-fearing men to overthrow, till the present time, when indications that their policy was about to bring utter ruin on the state will have made it suddenly and universally unpopular. The political power of the nobles, the influence of the priesthood and the prophets both with kings and people, and the extent to which these balanced each other and limited the regal authority, are discernible throughout the Hebrew history. David was for many years unal)le to dismiss Joab his com- mander-in-chief, though his character and acts were most repugnant to him ; ' the sons of Zeruiah were too strong * R:iwlinson, Outline, p. 23 ; Opiicrf, Inscriptions, pp. 44 fl". ; Schruder, Keiiuischriftcn, pp. 17'-'. t 2 Kings xviii. IS. POWER OF THE NOBLES. 241 for liiin ;' and on his deatli-becl he advised Solomon not to lose, through any scruple, an opportunity for breaking the bondage, if such were offered him by any new delin- quency. Eehoboam's insolence to his nobles cost him the greater part of his kingdom. The whole policy, ecclesias- tical and civil, of Joash was changed by the influence of the nobles on the death of Jehoiada, the high priest. Isaiah and his contemporaries* describe the wealth and the rapacity, which imply political power, of the aristocracy : and in Jeremiah's narrative t we see that Zedekiah mig-ht well complain that ' the king was not he who could do anything against them.' And the independence and courage of the prophets, and the manner in which they awakened a public opinion in favour of truth, and justice, and the fear of Jehovah, in the face of a persecution which often ended in their death, is not less noticeable. We cannot decide how far Hezekiah might have protected Isaiah at this time from direct violence ; but the prophet, who not only openly denounced the policy of Shebna and the other ' scornful men who ruled this people in Jeru- salem,' but traced its origin to their irreligion, selfishness, luxury, and oppression of the poor, and declared that God was about to bring them to speedy judgment for these things, must have been a brave man ; for he would know it to be too probable that, if matters came to issue between him and his opponents, ' the king was not he who could do anything against them.' Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, was no doubt already designated by Hezekiah and the God-fearing minority as the proper successor of Shebna : and Isaiah's prediction that he would be a fether to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah, implies that Shebna' s character and acts were of the uupaternal kind which we might infer from the previous censure on his pride and luxury, coupled with the like censures on his contemporaries : — those senators and princes who joined house to house and field to field, while they ground the faces of the poor, and justified the wicked for reward ; who called evil good, and * Amos vi. 1—7 ; Micah iii. 1 — 3. t Jeremiah xxxvii. 15; xxxviii. 5. B 242 ISAIAH XXII. I — 14. STATE OF THE CITY. put bitter for sweet, and were prudent in their own sight, but regarded not the work of Jehovah, nor considered the operation of his hands.* This prophecy, then, was delivered just before the fall of Shebna, and when the open country of Judah, and many of its fortified cities, were in possession of the Assyrians, and they daily expected under the walls of Jerusalem, which was crowded with fugitives from the country round. If the latter half of verse 2 is to be taken Avith the former, which speaks of the city as still full of the bustle of peaceful life, it may imply that as yet they have seen no deaths, but of those who died in their beds : if it is to be taken with verse 3, as a part of the picture of imj)end- ing calamity, it may refer to deaths by famine, and by the pestilence which attacked the city crowded with fugitives from the open country, and of which Hezekiah himself had nearly died. Verse 3 describes the captivity of both princes and people, in the day in which the enemy would break down the walls, and the cries of the inhabitants reach to the mountains. Of these calamities there would have been some anticipation in the case of the cities of Judah already taken by the Assyrians, and the reports of which would have been known in Jerusalem. Elam, as I have already said, includes the provinces of Media and Persia, at this time dependent on Assyria, and supjjlying Sennacherib with their famous bowmen. Kir,t as is now generally agreed, is the region between the Caucasus and the Caspian, which is marked by the names of the river Cyrus and the province Georgia : though it has been sug- gested that it may have been that tract of Southern Media where Ptolemy mentions Curene and Carina. Verse 8 describes the alarm and indignation of Judah when, by the taking of her fortresses, and the appearance of an army under the walls of her capital, she is, both in the military and the moral sense of the word, dismantled. • It was the grossest insult to tear the veil from the daughter of Zion ; but now it was more than an insult, for it revealed to her the * See their description at length in Tsiiiuli v. and elsewhere, t ii Kin{^8 xvi. 'J ; Amos i. 5. TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM. 243 presence and tlie power of her oppressor. Their eyes open to their danger, and they look to the arms in the arsenal, which took its name from having been built by Solomon of timber from Lebanon : they survey the walls of the citadel, commonly called the ' city of David,' and select houses to be pulled down for materials to repair and fortify the walls with : and they secure water for the inhabitants, and cut it off from the enemy, by stopping or concealing the sources of the springs which they have first conducted into reservoirs within the city. In order to make these details clearer, let us consider the topography of the city. Towards the south-east part of that ridge of rugged, limestone, table-land, which, with a breadth of from twenty to twenty-five geograjjhical miles, forms the back-bone of southern Palestine, there juts out a broad and elevated promontory, enclosed on the east, south, and south-west by deep ravines ; while on the north and north-west it slopes more gently back into the main table-land. These ravines are the Valleys of Kidron and Ben-Hinnom, and the promontory is the site of Jerusalem.* The promontory itself consists of several lesser hills and undulations, of which the original, and even successive, levels must have been indefinitely altered by the quarry- ings and abrasions, and the accumulations of earth and rubbish, of ages ; just as has been the case with the hills of Rome, or of London. But they are still more or less distinctly marked out, and especially by two main depres- sions which, beginning one from the north and the other from the north-west of this promontory, unite in a deep ravine called the Tyropsean Valley, which then runs south to join the Kidron and Ben-Hinnom ravines. Most authorities are agreed that the original city of Jebus was on some part of the western ridge, while there is no question that Ophel was at the south end of the eastern, and that of the Temple was to the north of Ophel on the same ridge. But it is still discussed whether the ancient Zion was on the north of this eastern ridge, or on the south-western hill to which all Christian and local tradi- tions, from the time of Constantino to the present day, give * Robinson's Biblical Eesearches, vol. i. ]). 380 ff. R 2 244 POSITION OF ZION. this name. No biblical or local knowledge, however, makes it possible to reconcile the latter position with the various scrij^tural notices, and therefore Mr. Fergusson has returned to the uniform declaration of the Talmudical writers, that Zion was on the north side of the Temple : and has shown that by assigning this position to it he can clear up all, or almost all, the previously inexplicable difficulties, and give us a coherent topography of the Jerusalem of the Old (and also of the New) Testament.* And the recent local explorations of Captains Wilson and Warren tend to sup- port this view in the main, if they have not finally decided it to be the true one, and though many details still remain obscure and doubtful. Assuming this then to be the true, as it is the only intelligible topography, the results, as far as we need them to illustrate the narrative before us, are as follows : — The city of Jerusalem, pro- perly so called, was distinct from the city of Zion, or of David. The former was the old city of the Jebusites, and its site the western ridge : the latter was a new city which David and Solomon built on the north eastern side of the ravine, and which, when complete, included the citadel of David on the northern brow of Zion, the Temple being to the south ; and the castle of Ojiliel to the south of that again. The citadel of David, or ' Strong-hold of Zion,' will thus have been in the same quarter in which, in successive periods, we find the citadel of the Maccabees and of the Romans, under the names of Acra, Bethzur, and Antonia. It is to be supposed that the military con- siderations which approved the site in the last cases, would have done so in the first ; and it was on the north, and not on the south, that the main fortress was required, in order to protect the north-western side of the city, which was weak from the nature of the ground. Each of these cities, of Jerusalem and of Zion, would have its own w\all ; and their means of communication across the ravine which separated them, Avas apparently by ' the stairs that went down from the city of David,' as in after times by a * An Exmy on the Ancient Topography of JcrumJem, by James Fergusson, F.R.A.S., 1847, and Smith's Dictionary of the liible, article Jerusalem. See too The Bible Atlas, by 8amu-J Clark, M.A., 1868, p. 55. THE SUPPLY OF WATER. 245 bridge, of wliicli there are still remains. These, then, are ' the Two Walls,' between which Hezekiah made a ditch or aqueduct ; and by a gate between which Zedekiah fled, through the ' king's garden,' which was at the south end of the ravine. Before Hezekiah' s preparations for the siege, the waters of 'the ujjper water-course' — or more correctly ' source of the waters '^ — •' of Gihon' (that is the water-head of Kidron) and ' all the fountains without the city,' among which was that of Siloah, overflowed into and formed ' the brook which ran through the midst of the land,' down its natural channel of the Valley of Kidron ; but now they were conducted, by extensive engineering operations, for which the Jewish nobles helped to provide the great number of workmen required, and the fame of which was known to later times,* ' straight doAvn to the west side of the city of David,' that is, between the 'Two Walls.' There they seem to have been collected in a new ' re- servoir' (made the easier in a ravine) which thus became a substitute for ' the old pool,' which lay without the northern wall ; and then the king stopped, that is, buried in such a way as effectually to conceal, the fountains or sources themselves. And a farther supply was obtained from the spring of Siloah, which, as I have already noticed, seems to have been now conducted through the still exist- ing subterraneous channel into the same reservoir. This ' reservoir' would then be the larger of the pools of Siloam described by Captain Wilson, and would have received the waters of both Gihon and Siloah : the ' old pool' would be the existing pool near the so-called Tombs of the Kings, and the same as the 'upj^er pool' of Isaiah vii. 3, xxxvi. 2, and 2 Kings xviii. 17, the aqueduct or conduit of which has been recently found, t Hezekiah, lastly, seems to have built a wall across the northern opening of the ravine, where it widens into less defencible ground ; and * ' He [Hezekiah] fortified his city, and brought in water into the midst thereof: he digged the hard rock with iron, and made wells for waters.' — Eeclus. xlviii. 17. Strabo mentions the abundant supply of water among the military advantages of Jerusalem ; and Tacitus says that it possessed a peren- nial fountain with subterranean channels. The rock of which the east ridge consists is honeycombed with cisterns. t Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, article Gihon. Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 237 li. Quarterly Statement of Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1872, p. 50. 24-6 HEZEKIAH AND HIS PEOPLE. which Avas perhaps rebuilt by Manasseh, and then described as ' a wall without the city of David, on the west side of Gihon, in the valley.' This was the weakest part of the whole OTOund, as I have before observed : and the name of the ' camp of the Assyrians,' still surviving in the time of Josephus, probably indicates that Rab-shakeh posted him- self here : a tradition from Nebuchadnezzar's siege would have been more likely to give the name of ' Chaldeans ;' but the fact that Titus encamped on the same spot, shows it was the proper place for besiegers in any age. In the account which the Book of Chronicles gives of these same preparations for standing a siege, it is related that Hezekiah 'gathered the people together to him in the street of the gate of the city, and spake comfortably to them, saying, Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the mul- titude that is with him ; for there be more with us than with him ; with him is an arm of flesh, but with us is Jehovah our God to help us, and to fight our battles. And the people rested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.' * This was the right language for the king to use ; and the response of the people was no doubt as sincere as loyal and enthusiastic : and their earnestness was deej) enough to carry them through the impending crisis. But deeper than that it was not. Isaiah was at the very same time declaring that the people were looking to the approach of the enemy, and to the efficiency of their preparations for defence ; but not to Him who had designed and done all this, both bringing the Assyrian on them to punish their sins, and protecting them from being quite destroyed by him : and though the prophet's preaching might seem not only more gloomy, but less true than the king's cheerful harangue, yet the event — the outward progress of national corrui)tion and degeneracy without any real reformation — justified the former. He did not forgot nor omit to assert, at the proper time, that Jehovah had reserved to himself a ' rem- nant : ' it was his unceasing aim to confirm and increase that remnant by his exhortations antl warnings : but he * 2 Chron. xxxii. 7, 8. ISAIAH XXII 15 — 25. SHEBNA'S NEW TOMB. 247 knew tliat the faith which Jehovah required was not that facile enthusiasm which, alternating with panic-, swayed for the time the assemblies in the ' street of the gate of the city.' The vehement hyj^erbole of these threatenings against the people of Jerusalem, and against Shebna, re- minds one of the language of Luther or of Burke : and when contrasted with the actual events, throws much liofht on the external and accidental characteristics of Hebrew prophecy. Those critics who, like myself, see no necessity for as- suming a literal accomplishment of the threats against Shebna, have hitherto been well content to acce^^t as its sufficient fulfilment, the change of offices found (as we have just noticed) in the Hebrew history of the time : but the mention in Sennacherib's Annals, quoted above, of men ' great and small,' and ' those who came out through the great gate of the city,'* being carried to Nineveh suggests the curious and interesting question whether, after all, there may not have been some correspondence between the facts and the rabbinical traditions that Shebna was carried off by Sennacherib. One of these traditions says that he was seized by Sennacherib when sent on an embassy by Hezekiah ; and another that he fled to the Assyrians after an unsuccessful conspiracy to deliver the city to them. It is quite probable that the 'What hast thou here, and whom hast thou here,' was actually addressed to Shebna, face to face, and within sight of his new sepulchre : and if we follow the topographer quoted above, we shall believQ that the Jewish forum, in which Isaiah Avas likely enough to have delivered the earlier part of this harangue, was in the city of Zion, and, therefore, close upon the city burying- grounds, which were just without the wall, and the more honourable sepulchres in which were actually hewn out in the north and east faces of Zion itself The mention of the height of Shebna' s new tomb, is supposed to indicate his extreme pretension to pomp and dignity, as the reader will see more at large in Lowth's note. The ancients, not '& * Sir Henry Rawlinson reads ' officers of his [Hezekiah' s] palace,' where M. Oppert has ' women of his palace.' 248 ELIAKIM'S ADMINISTRATION. excepting the Jews, attached much more importance than we do to every thing connected with the burial of the dead, because they were so much less able to distinguish the human person from the earthly body, or to apprehend the substantial reality of the former apart from the latter. Our burials symbolize, and express our faith in, immortality and a resurrection ; but tlie Jews shared more or less the common feeling of antiquity that there was some real con- nection between a man's due obsequies and his state after death. Still their faith, though obscure, was in the main spiritual and elevating, when held as it was by David, Hezekiah, or Job. But the worldly and sense-bound man then, as, indeed, he does now, contemplated the costly preparations for his burial, and for the preservation of his embalmed and entombed body, as the last possible act of regard for that sensual existence Avhich he alone cared for. It was but the consistent maintenance to the last of his sensual creed — ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' The office of Shebna, who was ' over the house,' was that which we find held by Jotham when his father king Uzziah was incapacitated by disease,'"' and must have been that of the king's first minister. Of this office Shebna shall be deprived, and it shall be given — as in fact it was given shortly after — to Eliakim, who is recognized by Isaiah as the true servant of Jehovah. Some of the com- ments on verses 24 and 25 provoke our wonder how any one can have read through twenty-two chapters of Isaiah and yet be puzzled by the transfer of the image of the nail from Eliakim in the former, to Shebna in the latter, verse ; or can think that the ditticulty is cleared up by taking the poetical picture of the honour which would redound to Eliakim's whole family from his just and able administra- tion, for a description of excessive nepotism which should be at last punislied by a fate like his predecessor's. Here, as indeed often before, we get much light on Isaiah's times and the meaning of his discourses by a com- parison with the accounts of like national conditions in modern times, and especially those which thoughtful suf- * 2 Chrou. xsvi. 21. EFFECTS OF MODERN WARS. 249 ferers and actors during the European war of the last generation have given us. Thus Niebuhr* ihustrates Isaiah (while Isaiah illustrates him by announcing the laws which govern the new as well as the old events) in his account of ' that dull comfortable existence which was described as the golden age of thirty years ago ; ' of ' the aimless striving after something beyond ' which then arose, and ' which, combined with the universal etfeminacy, led to the miserable results ' which they all experienced as their subsequent condition : — of ' the dissolution of all civil bonds and institutions being completed :' of ' nine- tenths of the landowners ' (which in Germany includes the cultivators) ' both in town and country ruined, yet who must still go on paying contributions — it cannot be other- wise till they are cut down to the bone ;' while ' many, many thousands of our youths, of our men, are shedding their blood, are pining away their lives in hospitals, or in want and wretchedness :' — of ' an innocent country ' (Hol- stein) ' abandoned to j^iUnge, reduced to misery,' apparently to be ' deliberately turned into a desert by an unprincipled policy and rapacity,' and its prosperity ' fruitlessly de- stroyed, like some unhappy victim, whose fate it has been to experience only those sorrows which humiliate and en- feeble, and has no opportunity to make those sacrifices, by which individuals and nations are purified and exalted :' — of ' life dragged along as a weary burden :' — of ' armies entrusted to boys, because they are the sons of princes ; divisions to generals who have outlived captivity,' — while the statesman ' who feels in himself that he could counsel and lead, remains in the background, not only because of a thousand miserable considerations, but because the hour of dissolution is not yet come, in which he would press forward :' — of the error of fancying that ' the general misfortunes and the approaching danger have produced a grave and solemn tone at the Court and seat of govern- ment ;' where ' all amusements go on just as usual : people look on the war as a subject of conversation, find fault with the English, abuse the Russians, comfort themselves with saying that the French are not so bad,' &c., &c. and * Life and Letters, translated by Miaa Wiukworth. 250 NIEBUHR'S DESCRIPTION ' there is an everlasting talk, mostly without the slightest comprehension of the matter,' among these courtiers and rulers, while men like Niebuhr must ' listen and not speak out their whole mind,' however ' their blood may boil with indignation :' — of ' the senseless prating of those Avho talked of desperate resolves as of a tragedy :' — of the ' un- tiring malice and inexhaustible wickedness ' of the political intriguers, ' who have j)lunged this unhappy country into ruin,' while ' all true help is shamefully cast aside ;' the utter ' blindness of the king which allowed the progress of political disunion ' to proceed to such extremity ; the ' lasting hindrance to all comprehensive undertakings arisincf from the mediocritv and baseness that can scarcely even now be dislodged from their present position of power ;' and ' the vanity of the idea that a better day 'mu&t follow the night of incapacity and little-mindcdness :' — of the ' bitter grief and comfortless affliction ' which prompts him ' constantly to ask himself whether we are really living in the same age of the w^orld that we did formerly, or whether all before us is not, as it seems to our eyes, chaos and night, a universal destruction of all that now exists.' He feels, too deeply to be inclined to Hay much about it, that ' the dreadful decision of a great judgment-day of the world is at hand :' — ' Now must begin either universal death and putrefaction, or the heavings of a new life : but where are its germs :' — ' this is the time when the elect are proved ; he who has en- dured to the end, will have a bright evening to his life, but for the present, happy . . . are they who have learnt in other ways and former times to bear the cross :' — he ' begins to cherish the encouraging belief that many hearts have grown stronger and purer through danger and suf- fering, aud that on all sides there lives a spirit, though straitened and repressed, whose power must increase :' — though it is so much ' the most probable that they Avill have to endure the double sorrow of seeing this flame which has been secretly growing more intense, extinguished by oppression,' that he can only ' almost believe that if God would take i)ity on thom, they might, though with bitter grief and pain, attain to something much better OF THE STATE OF PRUSSIA. 251 than tlieir former state,' yet he urges his friend to ' become the advocate among others of that which as yet scarcely begins to stir in the bosom of niglit, but of which the existence is certain : let them not regard what still exists on the surface of things, and is the tottering wreck of an age gone by :' — -the patriot may see ' the many elements of good striving for life, — of a better spirit than existed in happier time ;' the Christian may ' trust that a Comforter will come, a new Light when he least expects it,' and that 'all the sorrow of this era will lead on towards truth if we are only willing.' And when ' deliverance is offered to them by the manifest and wonderful providence of God,' who has ' smitten ' the oppressor ' with blind- ness ;' there is first the recognition that this deliverance has come ' after God has chastened us sufficiently for our deep-rooted sins,' and that unless it finds each of us ready to devote his life to its attainment, we cannot be saved ;' — and then we have the picture of this requisite moral and religious acceptation of their salvation, ' the ground cleared and ready to bear fruit,' ' love dwelling in every heart, and all ready to welcome whatever was noble and good,' and 'good will and good ideas ripening universally with good deeds :'■ — and if the ' morality,' ' patience,' ' discipline,' ' humanity,' which makes us as well as Niebuhr ' feel a true reverence ' for ' an army so pure,' were once and for the first time, ' during the whole war,' broken down by ' the great privations they had to suffer ' after the battle of Laons, — the young officer who reports it ' could not sleep for grief ;' the field-preachers ' took for their text, What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul, and exhorted the men to return to the patience and honesty the}^ had shown till lately ; the brave fellows wept bitterly, and j)romised with a loud voice to do so ; while General York reminded them of the sacredness of their vow .... that they ought to be as good as they were brave .... ordered one man to step forward from each company .... and took their hand upon it that they would suffer anything rather than be guilty of any excesses.' We may make such abatements as we think cool judgment demands from the glowing colours of the 252 ZSCHOKKE ON SWITZERLAND. patriotic picture ; its value as an illustration of Isaiah will not be diiiiinished. Zschokke thus moralizes on the French occupation of Switzerland : — ' There are times — the Divine Providence has so ordained it — there are times Avhen it is needful that the iron rod of doom should be stretched forth to arouse the nations of the earth from their senseless brood- ing over material interests and sensual wants ; and to save them from the gradual brutalization into which they are frozen by the intluence of forms no longer vital ; or from the degradation to mere meclianical motion and existence. National wanderings, crusades, and civil wars, have ulti- matelv left behind them greater blessings than those which they destroyed. There must be times of death and destruction, to make room for new life. The devouring selfishness of the powerful would crush the weaker part of the human family, and cripple with its impious weapons the free wings of the soul, if from time to time the thunder- voice of a higher Will than man's did not pro- claim, as of old, through the storm-clouds of Sinai, the voice of Jehovah ; ' Thou shalt have none other gods than me ! ' Such were the thoughts that chiefly occupied me as I travelled with Tscharner towards Aarau.'* * Zschokke's Autobiography, English Translation, p. 71. In Tholuck's preface to his Commentary on the Romans (if 1 remember rishlly), and in a ])aper of Kriinimacher's in the Reports of the Evangelical Alliance, there are like descrij)ti()ii8 of the moral and religious efl'ects of the war of freedom ou ihe people and the king of Prussia. The aliove piiges were written in 1852. Since then there have been great wars in America and Europe lull of the like moral signiMcauco. 1873. CHAPTER XVII. ISAIAH XXIII.— THE PHCENICIANS — HISTORICAL NOTICES — THEIR TRADE — CARRIERS OF PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS— RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL.— THE TYRIAN HERCULES— THEIR RELIGION POLITICAL, NOT NATURAL.— SIEGE OF THE ISLAND-TYRE BY SHALMANESER BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR— BY ALEX- ANDER — PRESENT STATE. — AUTHORSHIP OF THE PROPHECY. — THE DISPENSER OF CROWNS.— THE QUEEN OF CITIES DISHONOURED.— TYRE FORGOTTEN SEVENTY YEARS SHALL SING AS AN HARLOT. THE fertile and well-watered plain which undulates from the foot of Lebanon to the sea, along the north-west coast of Palestine, was tlie land of the people called Sidonians by the Hebrews and by Homer, but Phoenicians by the later Greeks and the Romans. Sidon (the Fishery) was the most ancient of their cities : the Book of Joshua calls it ' the great,' while it gives the epithet of ' strong' to Tyre, of which the tradition was, that it was founded 240 years before the building of Solomon's Temple, by fugitives from Sidon, then besieged by the king of Ascalon. Suc- cessive colonies filled the plain ' with great and fair cities,' from Tyre to Aradus, each of which seems to have had its own king, or judge, though in the time of David and thenceforward we find Tyre, and the king of Tyre, in apparent superiority over the whole people. They were a Canaanitish race*^; and their land — first promised to Zebulun — was allotted to Asher,* to whom, however, it remained (as Gesenius elsewhere says) an inheritance in 2oartihus infidelium : for in the days of the Judges, the Sidonians not only continued to dwell 'careless, quiet, and secure,' but became the oppressors of the Israelites.! Lebanon supplied timber for the Sidonian ships, near Sarepta Avere iron and copper mines, the sea yielded them the shells and the sand with which to make their purple • Genesis xlix. 13 ; Joshua xis. 28, 29. t Judges xviii. 7 ; x. 12. 254 ISAIAH XXIII. PHCENICIA. dye and their glass, and their women wove the variegated robes of which Homer speaks : and thus they began that trade which in after times exchanged tlie tin of Britain, and the amber of Prussia, with the gold, the apes, the ebony, and the ivory of India, and of which Ezekiel has so gorgeously described all the details, as well as the weahh, luxury, and power of which it was the source."^' By land their trade was conducted to a gi-eat extent (as we have before seen) by the Arab caravans ; by sea, their own ships carried them to Egypt, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Malta, Carthage, Spain, and perhaps even to America ; while the navy created by Solomon with the help of their ship- wrights and sailors, gave them a water communication with Arabia and India, from the port of Elath at the head of the north-east gulf of the Red Sea. Tlie creation of this Hebrew navy was one of the fruits of the alliance and friendship of David and Solomon with Hiram, king of Tyre : he also supplied them with materials and artificers for building the Temple, palaces, and other public works ; and the rapid growth of the national wealth and hixury of Israel from this period, shows that their conmiercial intercourse with Tyre must have been con- siderable, t Probably then, as in the times of Ezekiel, they supplied the Tyrian markets with wheat, honey, oil, and balm ; and we may believe that a considerable part of the caravan traffic from Arabia would pass through their country, for the sake of the security afforded by a settled and civilized g(n'eriimont. And thus, while Israel re- mained an agricultural country, as the whole scope of its constitution and policy required, it enjoyed as large a share of the benefits of commerce' as was compatible with the main historical ends for which the nation existed : — or, as Isaiah expresses it in the chapter before us, ' The merchandise of Tyre was for them that dwelt before Jehovah, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.* Nor was Phoenicia's debt to Israel less, or less character- istic : when a positive recognition of facts shall have superseded alike the opposite theories which — with super- • Ezekiel xxvii. t 2 SHmuel V. 11: 1 Kings ix. 10-11,26—28; x. 11—29. COMMERCE OF PHCENICIA. 255 stitious reverence, or Avith scoffing sciolism — have con- spired to exclude the Hebrew nation from its place in universal history, it will be plain that it was not for nothing- that Phoenicia came in contact with a people Avhose institutions were based on a faith in family life, and in laws upheld by a righteous Lord ; and that, at the time when Jewish life was embodied by David and Solo- mon in the forms in which it would be most easily intel- ligible to foreigners, there should have been a Hiram capable of appreciating their personal and political cha- racter. It Avas after this that Phcjenicia became the carrier of the germs and maxims of politics and philosophy to Europe : and her people knew their calling too well not to get these, like other things, from the best market ; though, like traders, they were content to hand them over to their customers, keeping little of them for themselves.* We notice in Ezekiel's list, ' the persons of men,' brought from Javan (or Ionia), to the Tyrian market : and Isaiah's contemporaries, Amos and Joel, complain that the Tyrians sold Hebrew slaves, ' the sons of Jiidah and Jerusalem,' to the Edomites and the Greeks, notwithstand- ing the alliance and friendship which should have subsisted between the two nations ; t of Avhich slaves, as well as of the 'gold and silver, and precious goodly things' of the Israelites, they had possessed themselves by purchase from the Assyrian, or other licentious soldiery, who found in the Tyrians the shrcAvd and unprincipled traders who are always at hand to buy such plunder. To these com])laints of the breaches of the ' brotlicrly covenant' and friendly alliance between the two nations, the prophets had in all ages to add their resistance to the opposite abuse of that friendship, which introduced the Avorship of the Sidonian Astarte and Baal into Israel, and of which Solomon's apostasy, and the establishment of the priesthood of Baal by Jezebel the Avife of Ahab, and daughter of Ethbaal king of Tyre, Avere but instances, though the most important ones, ♦ See Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical P/tihsophi/, J ' riioeniciam,' 1st and 2n(l editions. t Amoa i. 9, 10 ; Joel iii. 4— G. 256 RELIGION OF PHCENICIA. Melicartha, or Hercules — the riia?nician and Greek equi- valents, according to an inscription from Malta — was the god whose temple Herodotus went to Tyre to see, and found with its ' tAvo pillars, one of gold and the other of emerald, both shining exceedingly at night,' and its rich offerings, which included (as we know from other accounts) those of the Phffinician colonics, in all of which the same god was worshipped. Melicartha means ' king of the city,' and even Hercules is by some derived from a Hebrew word for 'the Trader ;' and it is probable that he is the same as Baal, which was the general Phoenician name for God. Baal is constantly coupled with Astarte ; and the more philosophical opinion* is that this national god and god- dess were the Lord and Lady of Phoenicia, rather than the sun and moon : — for to a people full of political life the sun and moon would have been themselves representatives, while a divine king and queen were the realities. And if so, the habitual inclination of the Israelites, an essentially political people, for this worship becomes the more easily understood. A worship of nature — of cats and dogs — like that of Egyj)t, could have had little attraction for them ; but this of the Sidonians offered to supply their craving for a national and political creed, yet without the holiness and righteousness of heart and life, which the worship of the Lord of Abraham and of David required them to maintain by an habitual sacrifice of their sensual and worldly nature. Of the colonies or commercial settlements of the Phoeni- cians, the jirophecy before us mentions two — Tarshish and Chittim. Tarshish, or Tartessus, was a city and port between the two mouths of the Boetis, or Guadalquiver, in Sj^ain, and the oldest of the Tyrian factories : and in this name, according to Gesenius, the later Phoenician settle- ments of Gades and Carthage were afterwards included, both by the Hebrew and the classical writers. Chittim, as the same autliority shows, is Cyprus, in the south of Avhich island was the Phoenician settlement of Citium, in the ruins of which, still called Cliiti, Pocockc found Pliceni- cian inscriptions ; — but, as in the case of Tarshish, the * Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, u. s. TYRE IN ISAIAH'S TIME. 257 name was extended, and in later times includes tlie otlier islands and coasts of the Mediterranean. Sidon (for a full topography and history of which, as well as of Tyre, I may refer the reader to Dr. Robinson's Biblical Researches in Palestine) is still a city of five or six thousand inhabitants, in the midst of well-watered gardens and orchards — ' the flowery Sidon dwelling by the streams of the graceful Bostrenus '* — with some trade in silk, cotton, and nutgalls. Of ' Old Tyre,' the site is un- certain, as there are no remains to mark it : the Island- Xyre — where, in later times at least, was the chief city — seems to have been originally a ledge of rocks, which the g-atherinor sand formed into a narrow island less than a mile lonar, and not half a mile from the main land : according to Josephus, it was already occupied by the Tyrians in the time of Hiram, the friend of Solomon. In the reign of Elulseus king of Tyre (who reigned thirty-six years, and was contemporary with Hezekiah) Cyprus re- belled ; and at that time the king of Assyria, who is said to have been called in by the city of Gath to protect it agfainst Eluheus, invaded Phoenicia ; and on the submission of Sidon, Acre, Old Tyre, and other towns, he obtained from them a fleet with which to attack the Island-Tyre. But the Tyrians made peace with Cyprus, defeated the Assyrians at sea, and successfully withstood a blockade of five years, in which, however, they suffered much from the cutting off of the aqueducts — of which the traveller still finds, if not the remains, which may be all later, yet the large and tine rushing streams, at the village named ' Well- head.'t I have noticed before that Sargon claims to have taken Tyre (I suppose Old Tyre), and that a monument of the same king has been found in Cyprus, and is noAv in the Berlin museum. And Sennacherib, at the beginning of his third campaign, of which I have already quoted some of the later events, proceeded to Phcenicia when Luliya (Elula^us), ' king of Sidon,' fled at his approach, and he replaced him by Ithobal, on whom he imposed the * Dionysius Periegetes, 0. T. D. 905, quoted by Eobinson. t Josephus, Ant. ix. 14, 2. Josephus quotes from Menander's Greek translation of the Tyrian Archives ; and he adds that the Assyrian king was Salmanasar. 258 TYRE IN LATER TIMES. usual triljute, after the whole country, including Tyre, had been reduced to submission. There the kings of the west — among whom he names Mittinti of Ashdod, Puduil of Amnon, Kamosnadab of Moab, and Melikram of Edom — repaired to his presence, and brought him their accustomed tribute, and kissed his feet.* Asurhaddon gives the king of Tyre in a long list of his tributaries, among whom appears the name of Manasseh of Judah. Under Ithobal II. Tyre was again besieged for thirteen years by Nebuchad- nezzar, and the fortress apparently again proved impreg- nable,t though the nation seems nevertheless to have fallen under the Babylonian, as afterwards under the Persian, yoke : and * they of Tyre and Sidon ' brought cedar from Lebanon to the port of Joppa, for rebuilding the Temple at Jeru- salem, in obedience to the grant of Cyrus. + A third siege of Tyre by Alexander the Great (about 332 B.C.), ended with the reduction of the Island-Tyre, after seven months of desperate struggle on both sides, during which Alexander built a mound or causeway from the mainland to the island. To supply materials for this, and the other works of the be- siegers, Old Tyre was razed, never to be rebuilt ; but ' the fortress of the sea,' and its trade, recovered both from this blow, and from that which the same conqueror gave them by building AU^xandria. After Alexander's death it fell to the Seleucidce, many of whose Tyrian coins, with Greek and Phcenician inscriptions, are extant. In the time of Strabo, and under the Koman dominion, it was rich and flourishing, with its commerce and purple-dyeing trade; with two harbours (formed l)y Alexander's mole which had made the island a peninsula), of which however only one, called the Egyptian, was open ; and with remarkably lofty houses, such as could not be seen in Rome itself. Tyre became Christian early,^ and in the days of Jerome was still ' a very fair and noble city,' and traded ' with almost all the world.' It was an archbishoi)ric under the * Rawlinson, Oudiuv, pp. 20, 23; Oppirt, Inxcriptiotis, pp. 43, 14 ; Schra- der, Kciliimchrijlen, \>. 174. Then follows the passage I have already quoted above, p. 194. f I certainly think with Geseniiia, that this is the fair conclusion to draw from Ezcikiel xxix. 18, 19, as well as from Jirouie's admission that no Gieek or Pbd'iiioiuii liiht"''y meiitioiad the capture. ^ K/ra ill. 7. § Acta xxi. 4. DATE OF THE PROPHECY. 259 patriarchate of Jerusalem, with fourteen bishojirics under it. Taken by the Saracens in 639 ; recovered by the Christians in 1124; in 1280, conquered by the Mame- lukes ; and taken from them by the Turks, in 1516; it then sank into a decay which corresponded literally with Ezekiel's denunciations, when, at the end of the seven- teenth century, Maundrell found not one entire house, but only a few fisliermen harbouring themselves in the vaults. Since then it has somewhat rallied, and Dr. Robinson found it a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, with some poor trade in tobacco, cotton, and wood. Alexander's causeway has become a i-and-bank half a mile wide ; the ruins of the large cathedral are filled with mean hovels ; and if anything remains of the Tyre of Isaiah, it is the columns of red and gray granite which strew the ragged western shore of the rock, ' from one end to the other, alonof the edu^e of the water and in the water.' The discussions as to the genuineness of this prophecy again test the value of the argument from style and diction. Some critics of the new school are in favour of the old orthodox explanation of the prophecy as a prediction of the taking of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, ascribe it to a contemporary writer, and find clear indications of the late date in the style. Others, as Gesenius, Knobel, and Cheyne, connect the prophecy — as Grotius did — with the siege by Shalmaneser, and see nothing in the style to prevent their attributing it to Isaiah. And Ewald infers from the style that it may be the production of a younger contemporary and disciple of Isaiah. There is, in truth, no stronger evidence that Tyre was taken in the days of Nebuchadnezzar tlian in those of Isaiah. But I persuade myself that the reader agrees that we are not to adopt an a-'pviovi theory, as to the nature oi prophecy and its fulfilment, and cut our facts to fit it ; but that we are to let the facts tell their own story, and be sure that whatever we can read of this will be the truth, all commentators and critics notwithstanding. And if we have, on the one hand, found the book so replete with political, social, and personal wisdom as to throw a clear light not only on the history of Isaiah's own time but s 2 26o INSPIRATION AND REVELATION. on that of all other times and nations including our own — so that Avhen Ave read of Babylon or Jerusalem, of Ahaz or Sennacherib, we perceive ourselves studying the universal propositions of a science by the help of a diagram : yet, on the other hand, we have found, mixed up with minute and interesting correspondences between details in the prophecies and in history, discrepancies and non- fulfilments of })redictions at least as marked. Thus, in the last projDhecy — the denunciation of Shebna and the worldly men of Jerusalem — Isaiah predicts that the city shall be taken by assault,""' and both princes and people carried into captivity ; and that in particular this shall be the fate of Shebna, in order to make way for his successor Eliakim : and if the accuracy of the reading of the Assyrian Inscription (quoted in the last chapter) is finally established, and we then claim a right to apj^ly its terms to the fulfilment of the prediction as to Shebna and the nobles, it remains certain that, instead of the city being taken, Isaiah himself soon after promised, with a confidence which the event justified, that the Assyrian should not even attempt the siege.t In like manner Isaiah had pre- dicted the approach of the invaders from the north, when they should appear under the walls of Jerusalem,* whereas, as far as we know, they only came from the south-west ; though the other part of the prophecy, that they should then be cut. off' with a terrible crash, was fulfilled with striking accuracy. So the details as to the fate of Babylon, — the city taken during a feast by the Medes, cruel, regardless of gold, and riding two and two, with a cavalry of asses and camels as well as horses ; and the Arab in our own day, still fearing the satyrs if he pitches his tent in its ruins for a single night, — appear by the side of the threat that ' her time was near to come,' and the fact that centuries inter- vened before its accomplishment even began. What then ? If we caniiot jjrove that Isaiah was in- spired, by showing that he could predict future events more infallibly than the ancient oracles, or the mediaeval or modern astrologers or mesmerists, was he not inspired ? * Isaiah xxii. 3 — o. t Isaiah x. 28 — 34. \ Isaiah xxxvii. 33 — 35. ISAIAH XXI I I. I— 13. THE FALL OF TYRE. 261 and are liis writings not a part of God's Revelation ? Let the reader turn to tlie book itself ; and though he may not find these infallible predictions — which he may be sure he would have found, if they had been essential to God's communication of himself to man — yet he will find, re- flected in each page 'the light of that Holy Spirit, which in all ages has taught, and now teaches, the hearts of his faithful j)eoj)le, and so grants them to have a right judg- ment in all things, and to rejoice evermore in his holy comfort ;' "" and he will find that, as the same light in his own heart brings him into sympathy and intelligence with the meaning of what is recorded in those pages, they do reveal to him something of God's character and mind, and of his designs and dealings with man, which neither he, nor any one else, has known, except by their means. If the miraculous prediction were there, it would be but the sign : but we have the Inspiration and the Revelation themselves, superseding all signs. If, then, W'C take the prophecy before us to be of the same kind as those which have preceded it, our historical remains are quite sufficient to bring Tyre into contemporary connection with Isaiah, and quite sufficient to preserve that connection onward through successive ages, without our demanding any proof that either Shalmaneser, or Nebuchadnezzar, did, or did not, take the city, and without being anxious for the confirmation of the reading of Sen- nacherib's account of his campaign, much as it is to the purpose. Isaiah sees the city and country of Tyre in the powder of the enemy, and tells the fleets home-bound from the western colonies, that they wdll learn, when they are off Cyprus, that their own harbours and hearths are desolate. The inhabitants of the Island-Rock are silenced, by the ruin of its merchants who made Egypt its never-failing granary — barren rock as it was — by making it a mart of nations. ' The Black' (Sihor) was the Greek and Latin, as well as the Hebrew, name for the Nile, with its fertilizing black mud ; and we notice Isaiah's w^onted poetic taste in minute points, in calling the Egyptian harvest ' the harvest * Collect for Whitsunday. 262 TVRE'S MERCHANT PRINCES. of the river,' and not of the earth. His next image is bold and grand ; he calls the nation of sailors whose dwellings were their ships, and their chief city an island, ' the sea ; ' explaining (lest it should be too bold) that he means the ' stronghold of the sea.' It is doubted Avhether verse 5 means that when the tidings reach Egypt, the Egyptians will be grieved at the ruin of their great market, and terrified at the prospect of the advance of the Assyrians against themselves, after this, their northern ally, has fallen ; or, that the alarm in Phoenicia, or among the nations generally, will be as great as when on some former occasion — whether the fall of No-Ammon lately, or even the destruc- tion of Pharaoh at the Red Sea — the like news Avas heard of Egypt, famous to the world, and of which the prosperity was so important to the Tyrian commerce. Some modern commentators translate the last clause of verse 7 ' whose feet were ever carrying her far off to sojourn,' — imder- standing it to refer to the trading and colonizincf habits of the Tyrians ; but there is equal authority for retaining the Authorized Version, of which the meaning is that the inhabitants of the ancient and joyous city shall be carried into captivity. Herodotus and Strabo speak of kings in the smaller Phoenician cities, as well as in the colonies of Tartessus, Citium, and Carthage ; and we need not go from England to Genoa or Venice, with their doges and senates, their Kings of Corsica and Greek dependencies, for examples of a nation of merchants who were princes and dispensers of crowns : — we need only look at the ' Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies,' extending their rule over a great continent, and there setting up and pulling down kings and emperors at their will. Tyre (like other nations) was noted for the severity with which she ruled her de- pendencies ; but now their bonds are loosed, and the j)rophet tells Tarshish, which, with its natives working as slaves in the Spanish silver mines, may have been the hardest treated of all, that she is free as the Nile, the river that least regards any bounds, to wander at her own sweet will.* And the proud queen of cities herself, she * ' The river wandering at its own sweet will.' — Wokuswokth. ISAIAH XX III. 14—18. TYRE FORGOTTEN. 263 who so long sat in glory, rejoicing in her wealth and power, and in that antiquity of which the Phoenicians were so proud, shall fly, a dishonoured woman, and on foot, for refuge to her colonies — to Tarshish or to Chittim — but even there shall find no rest. For the enemy may pursue her, and the colony may retaliate for its past wrongs, of which, in fact, we see an instance at the date of this pro- phecy, when Cyprus and the cities of Phoenicia assisted Shalmaneser in the siege of Tyre, as has been mentioned above. The word translated ' merchant ' in verses 8 and 1 1 , is ' Canaan ' in the Hebrew ; Avhich Gesenius illustrates by the like use of Chaldean for Astrologer, and of Jew, Swiss, Savoyard, and Italian, to indicate various modern callings : at the same time he observes that it is not unlikely that the name Canaan may, according to its etymology, mean the land, or people, of traders. It is the Lord of hosts, whose counsels bring this ruin upon Tyre ; and his instruments are the Chaldeans, at this time vassals and auxiliaries of the Assyrians. The Chaldeans may, or may not have been specially employed by Shalmaneser or Sennacherib in the siege of T}Te ; thev no doubt served in his armies, as the tribes of Elam and Media did. This mention of the Chaldeans is analogous to that of Elam and Kir in the last chapter ; and there is no more necessity in the one case, than in the other, for sup- posing that the prophet's phraseology must, if taken with- out prejudice, indicate the nation chiefly interested in the war, and not a dependent people who were serving as auxili- firies. The vexed question whether the translation of this verse which I have followed is the true one, I can throw no new light upon. The student will find it fully discussed by Cheyne, Delitzsch, Knobel, and Gesenius, and will judge for himself of the value of Ewald's conjectural emendation of D''2^?3 for c-rrba. Tyre shall be forgotten ' seventy years, like the days of one king ;' — a Hebrew idiom, obscure to us, though pro- bably plain enough to Isaiah's hearers ; but of which the most probable sense is, that the round number here, as elsewhere, indicates an indefinite, though considerable 264 TYRE SHALL BE RESTORED. time, and that the prophet either farther limits this by a phrase equivalent to ' for about a whole generation,' or else implies that the seventy years — the long time of oblivion — shall be as monotonous, and perhaps as short to look back upon, as those of a single reign. ' The days of a king,' the representative of a nation, seems fitter to express ' for a generation ' than ' the days of a man ' would have been : and we may compare the phrase with 'the days of a hireling,' in chapters xvi. 14, xxi. 16. At the end of this time, Jehovah will visit Tyre : the old alliance, ' the brotherl}^ covenant,' shall be renewed with Israel, and Tyre shall share with the other nations of the earth the blessings which Isaiah promises to them all in turn, when they shall have come, through sufferings, to the knowledge of the God of Israel. Then Israel will have a part in the worldly prosperity of Tyre, as Tj're in her spiritual. This restoration of Tyre is foretold by a strange though expressive image : — at the end of seventy years Tyre shall again play the harlot with all the nations of the earth : and her gains shall be holiness to Jehovah. The harlot* converts into a matter of traffic what should be a sacred relationship : so trade brings men together merely as buyers and sellers, not as brethren ; and consequently rapidly degenerates from self-interest into selfishness, unless it be perpetually counter-balanced by other and nobler aims in the man. The Hebrew lawgivers and prophets saw that, in their times, and for their nation, such counterpoises could not be made eft'ectual, and there- fore discouraged commence itself : and the contemptuous image of the harlot im2:>lies this feeling here, though we have at the same time the recognition that trade is not essentially evil in the declaration that its gains shall be dedicated to Jehovah. The Mosaic law expressly forbids the offering to Jehovah the gains of a harlot, and this may tell us that Isaiah has here laid aside his illustration, as poets and orators do, as soon as the momentary purpose is served, though to the perplexity of their prosaic commen- * Harlot is ' hire-lot,* and originally synonymous with ' hireling.' Chaucer says of the ' Sompnour,' or servant of the eccle-'ifistical court, 'He was a gentle hurlot, and a kind.' THE SONG OF TYRE. 265 tators. The translation — ' it shall be to Tyre as the song of the harlot,' and the explanation that verse 16 is not Isaiah's address to Tyre, but an extract from some popular song of the day called ' the harlot's song,' is preferred by most modern translators. But such criticism seems to me somewhat fanciful. CHAPTER XVIII. ISAIAH XXIV. XXVII. — rXTEU DESOLATION OF JIDAH — ACTUALLY CAUSED «T THE ASSYRIAN ARMIES. — NATIONAL COVENANT BKOKEN BY AHAZ — HE SHUTS THE TEMPLE. — GOD's COUNSELS OF OLD. MOAB PUT FOR ASSYRIA. PATIENCE IN NATIONAL CALAMITIES. — THE WIFE DIVORCED, AND TAKEN HACK. THE SILVER TRUMPET SOUNDED. EXPANSION OF ISAIAh's VIEWS. ISAIAH xxiv. to xxvii. : — It is agreed that these chapters form a continuous discourse. The older controversy as to its subject, has naturally produced the modern one — in which the rationalists differ among themselves as well as from the orthodox — as to its date and author. I say naturally, because there is no more frequent, I might almost say constant, phenomena in Biblical criticism than this, that the reaction against the orthodox interpretations makes it impossible for the student who is under its in- Huence simply to examine the text as it is : he must find some explanation which shall not merely explain the text l)ut shall also be as strong and hostile a protest as possible against the orthodox interpretation. But I would ask the reader who has accompanied me thus far, still to adhere to the method which has served us hitherto, taking the text as it stands, and considering that Isaiah is, as usual, setting forth— forth-telling rather than foretelling — uni- versal laws, with a special (and to us chiefly illustrative) application to his own times. The contents agree well with the date which is indi- cated by the place of the prophecy in the book : — namely, about the time that Sennacherib was besieging Lachish or Libnah.* Samaria, which fell into the power of the Assyrians in the sixth year of Hczekiah, and from that time became available as one of their military posts and bases of operation, was about thirty miles from Jerusalem. * See below, chapter xx. ISAIAH XXIV. I — 23. THE JUDGMENT. 267 So were Lachish and Libnah ; and therefore we have only to remember the extent of ground that a large army covers, and the way in which even modern Christian armies, and much more those of ancient barbarians, sweep, and always used to sweep, Avhole countries with ' the besom of destruction,' to understand that Isaiah's picture of what he and his fellow citizens were seeing around them, and daily exj)ecting, is no exaggeration of reality. Facts, at such times, go beyond the strongest imagination. And we shall have a more accurate conception of the state of things, if we remember that this last invasion of Senna- cherib came upon a people already exhausted by the repeated calamities Avhich, from the end of the reign of Jotham, had fallen on them from every quarter. We may here look back Avith advantage to chapter i., which, what- ever its date, describes precisely the condition of Judea and Jerusalem, about the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign. The Hebrew employs the same word for ' earth ' and ' land,' and a translation will best approach this poetic indefiniteness, by giving sometimes one, and sometimes the other. I might make a like remark as to the inter- change of the perfect and imperfect tenses ; but I hope the reader has already sufficiently realized this character- istic, to find it a help rather than a hindrance to his enjoyment and appreciation of the Hebrew seers. Jehovah is come to judge his people. Ahaz shut up the temple, and altogether changed the national worship for idolatry : and though this public and open ' transgres- sion of the laws, change of the ordinance, and breach of the covenant ' with the Lord of the nation, was publicly atoned for by Hezekiah, yet there Avas but too much evidence that the greater part of the people were still, as to heart and faith, better represented by Ahaz than by his pious son and successor : and therefore Jehovah was ' turning upside down ' the whole country — ^man and beast, cultivated fields and walled cities, political order and social relations — emptying out and scattering its contents, as if it were a bottle, or other vessel. The prophet sees Jeru- salem in confusion, taken by assault, and the people in voluntary exile or in captivity. 268 THE LAND LAID WASTE. But from the beginning it was a part of liis office to preach that ' a remnant should return ;' and (whether aUuding or not to any passing event we cannot now say) he sees this remnant, brought through suffering to the knowledge of Jehovah, and raising songs of praise to him in the various lands in which they are scattered. Their lot seems to him even better than his own and that of his countrymen at home ; for at home the spoiler and the ' treacherous dealer' are upon them, they are hunted from one refuge to another, and the windows of heaven are opened as in the days of Noah, and the foundations of the earth shaken as with a universal earthquake : — ' Broken, all broken is the earth ; shattered, all shattered is the earth ; the earth doth quake, doth quake exceedingly ; the earth doth reel, doth reel, like a drunken man, and swayeth to and fro like a hammock.' — Such is the more literal rendering ; the verbs (as in verse 3) are repeated in the intensive form, in the Hebrew ; and I do not see that its wild force is not admissible into an English version. The hammock (the same word as in chap. i. 8) is still used throughout the East by the night- watchers of vineyards. Most commentators understand ' the host of the high ones on high' in verse 21 to be angels good or bad, or even those angelic princes represented in the book of Daniel as the lords of the several nations : but it seems simpler to take the words in their natural connection with the 'moon' and the ' sun' in the 23rd verse, and not to attempt to define and fix the image more than the prophet himself has done. Some thought of s})iritual powers sup- porting the kings of the earth, there j^robably is here as in the words of Jeremiah — 'Behold I will punish the multi- tude of No, and Pharaoh and Egj'pt with their gods and their kings ; '* or as when Isaiah himself says — ' The idols are moved at his presence ;'t — but I see no reason for finding here the later demonology of the Jews. In that day Jehovah will come to judge both the host of heaven and the kings of the earth who have been the instruments of his righteous judgments : they shall be • Chap. xlvi. 25. t Chap. xix. 1. ISAIAH XXV. I — 12. GOD'S COUNSELS. 269 visited first with piinisliment, and afterwards- with j)ardon, ^V'hile the Lord of hosts shall establish his kingdom in Zion, and call his servants — the Hezekiahs, Eliakims, Isaiahs, and the body of faithful and holy men, in that as in every other age — to be his senators, his council and fellow-workers in his glorious reign. The prophet sj)eaks, or writes, in the actual, and ap- parently increasing, desolation of his own country : but he has such clear and bright views of God's counsels and plans from the beginning, and of the wonderful way in which he works them out in faithful conformity to his original design, that they present themselves to his illu- mined eye as already accomplished : and while he sees Jehovah reigning gloriously in Jerusalem on the one hand, on the other he contemplates the defenced cities of the terrible nations — -Babylon or Nineveh, and the whole polity of arbitrary godless power, which they represent — reduced to a heap of ruins ; and the furious rage of those nations which was now breaking upon Judea like a hurri- cane, he sees brought down as quietly and as comjjletely as the burning heat of an Eastern sun is subdued by the shadow of a cloud. And thus passing from images of violence to those of gentleness, he contemplates the day when all the nations and peoples over whom the dark covering of that heathen tyranny is now spread, shall come up to keep the feast at Jerusalem, in fellowship with Israel, and shall there rejoice with them in worshipping Jehovah and receiving his laws. The Assyrians them- selves do not seem to be included here, or in any part of these chapters, among the nations to be thus blessed ; unless it be in verse 22 of chapter xxiv., and there it is doubtful if such be the meaning. The faith that even Assyria was eventually to become a part with Israel of the inheritance of Jehovah, is unequivocally expressed in chapter xix. : but we cannot wonder that Isaiah should have ordinarily spoken of this cruel tyranny as merely evil and obnoxious to entire destruction : nay, we may say, that — considering the unavoidable limitations which con- trol human thought and language — -less extreme denuncia- tions would not have declared, in the way which the 2 70 ISAIAH XXVI. I — 1+. THE SONG OF JOY. circumstances of Isaiah and his countrymen needed, that Jehovah Avas the righteous and unsparing judge of all saltish, godless, tyranny and rapacity. I have already noticed the idiom by which, in all pro- bability, Moab is here (xxv. 1 0) put for Assyria, as Babylon in the Book of Revelation means Rome. Isaiah's exube- rance of imagination, and love of concreteness — elsewhere exhibited by such names as ' The desert of the sea,' ' The valley of vision,' ' Ariel the city where David dwelt,' — may sufficiently account for the usage : but it is worth while to consider that in times of strong and deep re- ligious enthusiasm, such as our Civil War, or the days of Wesley and Whitfield, when men would be more than usually apt to choose the most expressive, instead of merely traditional phrases, these concrete symbols become especial favourites. The ' fortress ' in verse 12, and the 'lofty city' of verse 5 in the next chapter, are j^lainly the same as the ' jDalace of strangers,' and ' city of the terrible nations,' above. With these, and their fall, Isaiah now con- trasts the strong city in the land of Judali, which has the salvation of Jehovah for its walls and bulwarks. And he puts into the mouth of the people of Judah, a song, such as they were accustomed to sing, as they went up from their houses to the temple, in festive procession, to worship. It was not very long since Hezekiah had opened the gates of the temple, shut by the profane Ahaz, and had renewed the public worshiji of Jehovah with burnt offerings accompanied by ' the song of Jehovah, and with trumpets and the instruments of David:'* but on less grave occasions than their return from national ajjostasy, the opening of the gates of the temple to receive the pro- cession of worshippers seems to have been a solemn cere- monial ;f and Ihtc Isaiah rejjresents the temple receiving the redeemed and righteous nation which by keeping to its faith and trust in Jehovah, has obtained peace of heart instead of the miserable state of anxiety, and national deliverance instead of the foreign oppression described in chapter xxiv. The Temjili^ and Jerusalem itself stand on a rock ; but their true foundation is the Rock of Ages, * Chron. xxix. 3, 27—30. f IWlin xxiv. C, 7, 9 ; cxviii. 19. PA TIENT TR UST IN JEHO VAH. 271 Jehovah himself. The image of the tyrant city brought to the dust, and trodden by the feet of the poor, suggests the thought of the path in which those feet had previously been walking. It led though the midst of God's judg- ments, through a land ' devoured by the curse ;' but they waited patiently, and found that God was leading them all the way, and making the path level and straight before them as they went. The 'waiting' suggests a new image : during the long night of Assyrian oppression, their soul had longed for rest, or for the morning to close a night in which no rest was possible ; and with the first dawn of deliverance their sj^irit would spring forth to new activity, desirous to practise the righteousness it had learnt through affliction. But there are some so reprobate that neither correction nor mercy Avill teach them righteousness : even in the restored and holy nation they will continue their evil doings, their selfishness and their oppression of the poor, and will refuse to recognize the invisible King and his laws : and therefore the zeal of Jehovah in the restora- tion of his true 2^eo23le shall prove a consuming fire to destroy these his enemies. Verse 12 corresponds with our prayer, ' Give peace in our time, 0 Lord, for there is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, 0 God :' other lords have had dominion over the nation, because it has chosen other gods ; but henceforth Judali will wor- ship no God but Jehovah, and he will again be both God and King to her, while those other kings and gods are become dead men and si^ectres, never to rise to life and power again. The word translated ' shades ' in verse 14, and 'dead' at the end of verse 19,""' is 'rephaim' and means both ' giants ' and ' silent ones ;' so that it expresses a notion something like that of our word ' spectres :' this word, and other parts of the imagery, indicate a con- nection between these verses, and the 21st ; and there will not be much difficulty in following this connection if we remember that it is an under-current of poetical imagination, and not a series of dry syllogisms ; and that, as is usual with Isaiah, there is a certain alternation of ideas, which makes the light and dark, the present and the * As iu chap. xiv. 9. 2 72 ISAIAH XXVI 15—21. RESURRECTION. future, of tlie vision, rise and fall like tlie waves of the sea. Thus, no sooner has the thought of the destroyed heathens suggested that of the increased numhers and prosperity of Israel, than the proj)het is reminded that, instead of their being able to rejoice in any such increase, they are like women Avho have not brought forth children, and whose prayers* and pains are without result : but immediately his confidence revives : — Judah's dead, and shades of the dead, the dwellers in the grave and the un- seen Avorld, are not like Assyria's dead ; for a dew, such as makes the grass grow, is fallen upon them, and they shall ' awake and sing,' — Judah shall not merely bring forth more children in the place of those she has lost, but the very earth shall give birth to those already dead. Some commentators prefer to read ' Might thy dead live ! might ]ny dead bodies arise ! ' in the optative : and the question is discussed — not without reference to the disputed date of the prophecy — how far these w^ords, with either rendering, imply a belief in the resurrection of individuals from the dead. I should say Ihat they declare that the now de- populated land shall again be full of inhabitants, and that the image of a resurrection under which this declaration is made implies some belief, though it cannot be said how definite or indefinite, in the possibility if not the certainty of such a resurrection. The present is a time of aflliction : — Yes, but only for ' a little moment ;' and Jehovah's people have only to wait patiently, and they will see him come to deliver them, and to punish all evil-doers ; and then the earth will disclose and give up her slain for another purpose — that they may rise in the judgment against the tyrants of whose guilt there seemed no evidence. The ' song ' which began in verse 1 is considered to end with verse 19, while verse 20 declares, in Jehovah's name, that it is only necessary to wait a short time for 'that day' in which the song may be fitly sung : but I have some doubt * A whispered prayer : ' beautifully expressive,' says Alexander, ' of submissive, bumble prayer, like that of Hannah when '' she spake in her heart and only her lips moved but her voice was not heard," although, as she said herself, " she poured out her soul before God," which is the exact sense of l^p- in this place. A like expression is applied to prayer in the title of Psalm cii.' The whole description of Hannah, 1 Samuel i., is apposite. ISAIAH XXVII. I — 13. JEHOVAH'S VINEYARD. 273 whether these precise, classic-like demarcations, are not as foreign to the Hebrew and prophetic genius as they are difficult to determine without arbitrary changes of the literal sense of the text. The ' entering into the cham- bers ' may, not improbably, allude to the command that the children of Israel should not go out during the night of the destruction of the first-born of Egypt : and if we do not, with Grotius, suppose another allusion to Hezekiah's shutting himself within the walls of Jerusalem till Sen- nacherib's army was cut off, the correspondence of the two may perhaps be attributed to the influence which a poet's imagination must always feel from the important events about him at the time. The idea of Jehovah, the king, leaving his royal residence, visiting the places where crime has been committed, and judging and executing sentence on the criminal, we have had before. ' Leviathan ' (which in Job means the crocodile), and ' the dragon ' or sea-serpent, may either be all names for the Assyrian opjjressor, or they may represent both Assyria and Egypt, and so correspond with the reference to those two nations in verses 12 and 18. As resrards the various endeavours to settle the rhythmical construc- tion of verses 3 — 5 of this (27th) chapter, it is enough for me to refer to what I have said above and elsewhere, as to the attempts at classical demarcations ; and to observe that the briars and thorns seem to be the evil part of the Jewish nation, which needed to be cleared out of the vineyard, rather than the foreign power which was made the instrument of that clearance. The ' taking hold of my strength ' is best explained by the double image of taking refuge in a fortress, and at the horns of the altar. The exact meaning of the words in verse 8 is obscure ; but it possibly involves the image of Jehovah inflicting on his faithless bride the moderate punishment of a divorce, for which ' contending ' and ' sending away ' are the legal phrases ; while the temporariness of the punishment is indicated by ' the day of the east wind,' as though the duration was limited by the time of the storm. The result of this punishment shall be that the images, or the groves, of Baal and Astarte shall be thrown down, and their altars 274 THE SILVER TRUMPET SOUNDED. broken up, and the fragments scattered about like the clialkstones which (as Strabo mentions) were familiar objects on the ground near Jerusaleni. But the heathen enemies of Israel are incapable of reformation, because they are ' a people of no understanding ;' and therefore the prophet foretells their utter destruction : he transfers to them the image of the vineyard, and jiictures it as the 2)rey of the weakest destroyers (compare ' feet of the needy ' above) : — the calf shall browse on the green vines, and when they are withered, the Avomen shall gather them for firewood. In that day Jehovah will gather (literally * beat,' or ' thresh,' as the manner was) the fruit of his oliveyards, and gather the remnant of his own peo})le from the north to the south, from the Euphrates to the torrent now called El-Arish,"^" collecting them with such care — literally ' one to one,' — that not one shall be lost. The great silver trumpet, the blast of which, from the days of Moses in the wilderness, had gathered the princes to council, mustered the hosts in the camp, or called Jehovah and his peo^jle to remember the national covenant ' in the day of their gladness, in their solemn days, and over the sacrifices of their burnt ofterings and their peace offerings,'! shall be heard in that day of Jehovah : — ' And they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship Jehovah in the holy mount at Jerusalem.' It would be no less silly than dishonest to pretend that these chapters are by Isaiah, if there were evidence to the contrary : and if their genuineness were merely doubtful, we must abstain from drawing from them any of those historical or biographical conclusions which authentic documents might supply as to the times and character of the writer. Jiiit in as far as I may venture to form an opinion, I must say that the sceptical criticism has not, as to these chapters, even an appearance of more than ingenious trilling ; the arguments founded on asserted peculiarities of style and diction in the original, are, as usual, met by counter-arguments, or positive denials of the • Genesis xv. 18 ; 1 Kinps viii. fi6. t Numbora x. 1 — 10 ; Jorcmiuh iv. o; Joel ii. 1, 15. EXPANSION OF ISAIAH'S VIEWS. 275 facts,* on the part of the orthodox scholars, as well as of the non-orthodox Rosenmiiller : my own views on the possibility of proving anything by such arguments I have already stated. And therefore, since Isaiah's name is on the old, genuine title-page, and only omitted in the modern, hypothetically-constructed one, let the reader keep, like me, Avithin the limits of ordinary, matter-of-fact, common-sense, English criticism, and then he will see something better worth his notice than whole continents of cloud-land. This is the fact that while we recoo-- nize, throughout these chapters, the old familiar features ■ — the accustomed political faith and poetic genius — of Isaiah, we see how ' the years that bring the philosophic mind,' and still more the sufferings, personal and national, which are God's opportunity for developing the spiritual life, were now telling upon the proj^het. The tone is more subdued, and gentler ; the evangelical temper shows itself increasingly through the patriotic ; political events are more subordinate to the universal life of things ; and the national fliith in the Lord of Judah and of the Jew, is brought into more intimate dependence on the deeper trust in him as the Lord of the Church and of the spirit of man. That a like religious temper of mind might be properly attributed to an imaginary prophet, living in Babylon during the exile, or in Jerusalem in the time of Cambyses, I allow : but historical fact, and coherent romance, are not the same thincf. * Delitzsch says ' It is just as certain that the cycle of prophecy in chapters ^^'"^- — xxvii. belongs to Isaidh, and not to any other propnet, as it is that there are not two men to be found in the world with faces exactly alike.' And he supports this couclusion by a detailed criticism of the style and diction ot these chapters. t2 CHArTER XIX. I8AIAH XXVni. XXXV. TOLITICAL AND RELIOIOU8 PB08PBCTS OF JUDAH. AUIEL, TUE LION OF GOD. — WORLDLY STATE-CRAFT. — TRUE INSIGHT. — THE EMIIASSY TO EGYPT. — PERSECVTION OF THE PROPHETS. — DV.MB IDOLS AND THE UN.SEEN TEACHER. THE HOLY SOLEMNITIES. — TALMUDICAL ACCOUNT OF FESTIVE PROCESSIONS. — THE STROKE OF DOOM ON SENNACHERIB. THE REAL DELIVERER. SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF -VTOMEN. THE 8IEGB RAISED. EDOM PUT FOR ASSYRIA. RETURN OF THE RANSOMED CAPTIVES. ISAIAH xxviii. to xxxv. — The correspondence of thoughts and images, and the unity of subject and sentiment, seem to mark these eight chapters as successive paragraphs or sections of one prophecy, representing an original series of discourses wliich may have been spread over several months at least, from the embassy to Egypt to the arrival of Rabshakeh before Jerusalem, or even till after the disaster which compelled Sennacherib's retreat : and with this qualification the whole contents accord with the date indicated by their place in the book. The only difficulty is that involved in the reference to Ephraim at the beginning of the first of these chapters. For if we take this to imply that Samaria had not yet fallen we must give the first four verses a date several years antecedent to that which is most suitable to the rest of this chapter as well as to those which follow. The descriptions by modern travellers of the beauty and richness of the hill of Samaria with terraced heights rising out of a fertile valley, certainly tempt us to adhere to the literal explanation of the phrase * drunkards of Ephraim;' and the difficulty is then best met in the way I have jjointed out as to chapter xvii. ; but the phrase is exactly analogous to 'men of Sodom,' in chapter i, as well as to the ordinary language of all the Hebrew writers, and may be takrn without any violence to mean the lead- ing men of Jerusalem, to whom all the rest of the chapter ISAIAH XXVIII. I— IS. THE DRUNKARDS. 277 relates. Isaiah fuses into one image, the heads of the nation, crowned with flowers at their habitual debauches, and the capital cities — Samaria and Jerusalem — each re- posing in its fertile valley, and crowned with a chaplet of towers intertwined with vines and olives : the floAvers are of themselves fading, and Jehovah will follow up on Judah the punishment he has already inflicted upon Ephraim, by casting their revellers' crowns to the ground with a strong hand, and trampling them under foot : — employing as his instrument the overwhelming flood of Assyrian invasion. Yet this wrath is but the means of love : its purpose is that Jehovah himself may become the crown of glory and the diadem of beauty to all those who — not being utterly cor- rupt— shall remain from this jJuritication of the land. In that day he will be wisdom to the judge, and in his strength the soldier shall turn back the tide of battle to the enemy's f^ate.* O But at present not only are these — the hereditary nobles and heads of tribes, and the elected or appointed judges — wanting alike in military ability, and in judicial upright- ness, but the priests (including the Levites) and the pro- phets— the ministers of national worship, and the teachers and controllers of education of the whole people — are equally ' gone out of the way through strong drink.' Drunken- ness M'as no doubt literally the habitual vice of the higher orders in Isaiah's time ; and then, as in all times, it was the symbol of every kind of debased subjection of the human, to the animal, nature. Such nobles could not govern; such judges could not administer, nor such priests expound, the law ; nor was any ' vision ' possible to jjro- phets in whom the eye of reason and of faith was thus obscured. Lowth's exj^lanation, that verses 9 and 10 are a scoffing speech of the drunken prophets, is usually pre- ferred,t and I have printed the English text in that form. Yet I have some doubt, as I have before said, whether these dramatic speeches may not be inventions of the commenta- • 2 Sam. xi. 23 ; 2 Kings xviii. 8. t Mr. Cheyne translates — ' Correct, correct, correct, correct ; direct, di- rect, direct, direct ' — and in a note says — ' Heb. sav lasav kav lakav, words evidently choseu for the sake of their assonance, to represent the stammer of a drunkard.' 278 POLITICS OF ' THE SCORNFUL RULERS: tors ; and the sense is as clear, if we understand Isaiah to ask how it is possible in this general debasement to find any one capable of learning true wisdom, and then to add (in the tone of remonstrance adopted in the epistle to the Hebrews), that though the nation was no longer in its infancy, and ought to be capable of manly knowledge, yet it did in fact require to be instructed again in the very rudiments, and to have these impressed on it by perpetual repetition. And then — whether the thought is suggested by that of drunken and scoffing stutterers, or of cliildren una})t to learn — he tells them that Jehovah will send them a teacher who shall speak to them with the barbarous Assyrian tongue : they will then hear Avords very different from those which they now despise because they jjroclaim, ' This is the rest ; cause the weary to rest ; ' and they will then find these repeated warnings become their condemna- tion, because they will have deprived them of all excuse. He anticipates the answer of ' the scornful men that rule this jieople in Jerusalem ;' for has he not heard it often enough, year after year ? It was their policy which in the time of Ahaz had delivered Judah from her im- minent danger by bringing Tiglath-Pileser upon Syria and Ephraim : and if it was at the sacrifice of Judah's inde- pendence, and at the price of much tribute, to say nothing of the destruction of the sister-people of their own race, yet these evils were nothing in comparison of the advan- tages; for they touched them — the rich nobles in Jerusalem — but little, seeing they had the land and the remaining wealth of the country accumulated in their hands, and could by suitable perversion of the law wring out from the poor enough means of luxury to last their time, whatever might happen afterwards. Besides, they had not only secured themselves by a treaty with that personification of death and hell, the Assyrian, but they had outwitted him, — for what chance could a mere barbarian soldier have against the deep-laid polii-y of an old, long-civilized state ? they Avere in communication with Egypt and Ethiopia, and at the proper time they would bring the armies of Tirhakeh to free them from the ])o\ver of Sennacherib. And to this the projdiet replies, that when the storm does sweep over ISAIAH XXVIII. 16—29. A PARABIE. 279 tlie land, as it assuredly will, those ' refuges of lies ' -will prove no shelter to their builders ; they have been tried by the plummet of honesty and righteousness, and found to be so out of line that they must come down : but mean- while, nay from of old, Jehovah has himself founded a really serviceable house for his people — namely, the ancient con- stitution and polity of which he himself is the chief corner- stone ; and the man who trusts in that foundation, believing that it really is there, will not be urged to any impatient acts of panic, whatever may be the apparent danger. The reader will remember the descriptions of the enormous corner-stones in ancient Jewish buildings : and will com- pare our Lord's parable of the house founded on the rock. There is a doubt whether the last clause in verse 19 can be fairly translated ' Only to hear the report shall be a distress ;' and whether it is not better to read, 'And afflic- tion alone will make you understand doctrine,' alluding to verse 9, where the last two words of the original are the same. Jehovah will break forth upon his own people, as he did in old times upon the heathen Philistines;* it is a ' strange work' thus to afflict and destroy the people of his love, as though they were heathens : but he has determined to do it, — to execute justice to the uttermost ; therefore let the mockers take heed that they do not make this determination more stringent upon themselves, by perse- vering in their evil way. Then the prophet propounds a parable : the husbandman has a place, and a time, for each successive operation of his husbandry ; he now ploughs, now harrows, sowing one seed broad-cast, and another in rows ; beats out the light aniseed (perhaps used then, as now in Italy, to flavour the bread as well as to make siDirit) with a rod, and the corn with the heavy threshing- wain ; while both the heavier and the lighter of these operations are carefully regulated so as to do no damage. All these processes — in which we notice that the harsh ones of break- ing up the land and threshing out the gi'ain predominate — are taught the husbandman by God ; and their order and skilful arrangement are the reflection of his wisdom and • 2 Sam. V. IS— 25 ; 1 Chron. xiv. 9—16. 2 So ISAIAH XXIX. 1—3. THE LION OF GOD. plans. Isaiah leaves it to his hearers to apply the parable to their own case, and so to understand how Jehovah is regulating all his dealings with the nation, to the end that he too may gather the wheat into his garner at last. Chapter xxix. The simplest meaning of 'Ariel' is ' lion of God ; ' but it also signifies ' hearth of God' when derived from another root. In the former sense it comes to mean ' a hero,' as in 2 Sam. xxiii. 20 ; Isaiah xxxiii. 7 ; and in the latter it occurs in Ezekiel xliii. 15, 16, for the brazen hearth of the great altar of burnt offerings, thence commonly called ' the brazen,' though the rest of it was of stone. There is no doubt that Jerusalem is pointed out by this enigmatical name ; and the immediate context, as well as the expression in chapter xxxi. 9 — ' Jehovah whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem,' — make it probable that Isaiah intended to involve both meanings in the word, as though he had said, ' Woe to the city of heroes, woe to the city of sacrifices : it shall now be put to the test what God and what man think as to both.' David, that lion of God, had first encamped against Jerusalem, and then made it the abode of his royal house, and the capital of his kingdom ; so that it became itself an Ariel, a lion of God, in the land : — ' Judah is a lion's whelp : From the prey, niy son, thou art gone up : He stooped down, he couched as a lion, And as an old lion : who shall rouse him up ? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, Kor a lawgiver from between hia feet, Until Shiloh come ; And unto him shall the gathering of the people be.' And after the vicissitudes of 300 years, and in the midst of present dangers, the people of Jerusalem were still con- fident in the strength of their ' lion of God,' and year by year came up to the 2)ublic festivals to lay their accustomed offerings on the 'altar of God ;' though with little remem- brance that it was not in .the altar and the city, but in Jehovah himself, that David put trust, and found his strength. Therefore Jeliovah will bring Ariel low ; the [)roud roar of the lion shall be changed for the weak, WORLDLY STATE-CRAFT. 281 stridulous voice, wliich tlie art of the ventriloquizing necromancer brings out of tlie ground ; and the enemies of Jehovah shall be sacrificed and consumed on the hearth of his altar. First, his spiritual enemies among the Jews themselves, but afterwards the heathen oppressors of his people ; and the lion shall recover his God-derived strength ; and thus both in adversity and in success, ' it shall be unto me as Ariel.' — ' He who threatens your destruction shall vanish like a dream, " par levibus ventis volucrique similUma somno :" he who threatens your de- struction shall awake as from a dream, and find himself cheated of his expectations; for — as Grotius beautifully says — " spes sunt vigilantium somnia." ' * Some commentators understand the words ' Add ye year to year' to mean that at the end of one or two years from that time Jerusalem should be besieged : but the other way of understanding it is at least as simple and as forcible. The inhabitants of the now self-satisfied city draw themselves back in incredulous and contemptuous wonder on hearing Isaiah's w^arnings : and therefore he tells them, that they, their rulers, and their teachers, are so besotted — not with the transient effects of wine, but with the abiding pressure of sin, — that they can comprehend nothing of God's methods and purposes. Where no vision — no insight into the divine government of the ^orld — is, the people perisheth ; and such is the present condition of Jerusalem and Judah, of the learned and the unlearned alike. And the reason is, that though they continue in the routine observance of all such maxims and rules of morality and religion as the existing standards of social respectability demand ; yet they have no inward * Alexander on the verse: he also quotes from Barnes a passage in one of Mungo Fark's Journals : — 'No sooner had I shut my eyes thun fancy would convey me to the streams and rivers of my native land. There as I wandered along the verdant bank, I surveyed the clear stream with transport, and hastened to swallow the delighltul draught; but, alas! disappointment awaked me, and. I found, myself a lonely captive, perishing of thirst, amid the wilds of Africa.' Lowth quotes from Lucretius — ' Ac vcluti in somnis sitiens quum qutcrit, et humor Non dalur, ardorem in membris qui stinguere possit, Sed. laticum simulacra petit, frustraque laboraL, In medioque sitit torrcnti flumine potans.' 282 TRUE INSIGHT AXD FORESIGHT. love and fear of God in their hearts. They wonder how Isaiali can pretend to teach them, the wise and prudent ; but they will wonder in another fashion when they see what Jehovah actually does : they are satisfied that their astute counsels, though hidden as it seems from Jehovah, are quite competent to meet the dangers with which his prophet threatens them ; but they will find that it is not from Jehovah, but from its own confusion and disgrace, that this policy will have to hide itself They have been turning thiugs upside down at their own will : they put bitter for sweet, and call good, evil : they rest the home government, and the social prosperity of the country, upon a basis of oppression of the poor and aggrandizement of the rich by abuse of the powers of law and order ; and the foreign relations of the state, on treaties degrading in themselves, and never intended to be kept faithfully, with Assyria and Eg^'pt : and with all these schemes and practices they mean to restore, or prop up, the falling con- dition of a nation which has never yet prospered, except by adherence to the old fundamental princii)le of its con- stitution,— foith in Jehovah, and in the covenant by whieh he became their King, and they his people, with mutual rights and duties. Isaiah can be as contemptuous as these ' scornful men ' themselves ; and he tells them that all this scheming, all this turning of things upside down, is but so much clay in the hands of the Potter, who will do just what he originally intended, carrying out exactly the designs laid down by him from the first : — all the turning upside down in the world will not alter the relation between the thing made and its m#iker. In a very little while there shall, indeed, be a complete reversion of the present state of things. The land was now ruled l)y men wlio were always on the watch for iniquity ; who made a man obnoxious to the forms of law for trifles which had no criminal intent, in order to bring him under their extor- tions if they wanted his property, or under their crushing power if they wished to silence him because he dared to plead for justice, or rebuke the unjust ruler as he sat in the gate ; and this force was constantly used in the one case and the other (as the whole history of tlie Jews shows ISATAH XXX. 1—26. THE EMBASSY TO EGYPT. 283 us), with no check but the victim's death. But tliese men shall be cut off, and cease ; the Holy One of Israel will re- establish his authority; his Avord and liis works shall be heard and seen of all men ; and the poor and the meek will rejoice in his protection and strength. The house of Jacob miffht, and must, be brought low for a time, for its sins ; he might be ashamed at his humiliation, and his fiice might wax pale at the prospect of his name being put out from among the nations, through the slaughter and captivity of his children : but Jehovah who redeemed Abraham out of the naturalism in which he was living with the rest of his race, who gave him a spiritual position, and a promise to him and to his children, founded on that spiritual position,- — He Avill remember his promise, and bring back to Jacob his children ; and they too, like their first fathers, shall be seen to be not a race of merely natural, earthly creatures, but ' the work of Jehovah's hands,' a chosen, spiritually organized people, capable of true wisdom and true obedience, and of actual fellowship and communion with the Holy God. Chapter xxx. begins with a new and more direct denun- ciation of the Egyptian alliance, devised by the men who * wove a web ' of plots, or sought to ' cover themselves with a covering,' which Isaiah called ' a refuge of lies,' in chap, xxviii. Zoan, the Tanis of the Greeks, was a royal city, and one of the most ancient of LoAver Egypt. Hanes is probably Hn^s or Ehnes, the Anysis of Herodotus, and the Heracleopolis Avhich was the capital of a nome of Middle Egypt, and a royal city, as ma}^ be inferred fi'om ^lanetho's mention of two Heraclcote dynasties. And if there were two or more contemporary kings in Egypt at this period (on Avhich point the opposing facts have been already stated), it would seem not unlikely that the Jewish ambassadors may have sought Tirhakeh at the latter city ; and, at the former, Sethos, the Tanitic king of whose in- vasion by Sennacherib Herodotus relates the well-known story. Tlio first words of verse 6 — ' The burden of the beasts of the south ' — have been much discussed. Some com- mentators take ' burden ' in the sense of ' prophecy ' or 284. THE EGYPTIAN ALLIANCE. * vision,' as in clia2)ter xxi. and elsewhere ; but are tlien again divided in opinion as to whether the words are a marginal gloss which has been erroneously brought into the text, or an episodical title introduced by Isaiah himself, as though he paused somewhat abruptly and said — ' That caravan of asses and camels struggling through the sandy desert among the lions and serpents, rises before me as a distinct vision, and deserves a paragraph of its own.' Others understand ' burden ' in its literal meaning, and explain it as referring to the heavy load of presents with which the asses and camels travelling southward are laden ; and then the sentence will be translated — ' Oh, the burden of the beasts ; ' ' what a burden to the beasts ; ' or ' as to the beasts.' ' Rahab ' is used here, as elsewhere, to signify Egypt ; but it is uncertain whether it is an Egyptian word and name of the country, or only an enigmatical Hebrew name, like ' Ariel.' The Hebrew means ' rage,' or ' insolence,' and thence, in the o^^inion of some authorities, a ' sea monster.' We may therefore either read, ' Therefore 1 call her Rahab the inactive,' or ' The blusterer that sitteth still' The Authorized Version seems to understand the 2)assage to mean, ' Therefore I have constantly Avarned the Jews that their true Egypt, their true security, is quiet faith in Jehovah.' Isaiah then goes on to show that he does not consider this alliance Avith Egypt as a matter of mere temporal and temporary interest ; great principles, laws of universal ap^jlication, are at stake, and their enunciation is worthy to be recorded in the most public and the most permanent ways ; — on the wooden or brass table, where he that runs may read, and in the parchment-roll for future and quiet study, ' that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.' He remarks the state of heart which Avas dic- tating their whole policy ; their trust in Egyj^t abroad, and in ' op^^ression and perverseness ' at home : he tells them their whole life is a rebellion and a lie ; and that they are carrying this lie to its height, when they call on their seers and j>rophets, the national teachers and preachers, to help them in their work, — to tell them no PERSECUTION OF THE PROPHETS. 285 more of the right, but only of the smooth, path : nay, call on them to leave the narrow, irksome way themselves, and to employ their office and powers in guiding them in that pleasant road by which they will escape from the Holy One of Israel, and his wearisome claims upon their con- sciences. To themselves their condition seems that of a strong and high wall, which can resist any violence from without ; but the prophet discerns, what they in their blindness cannot, that there is a crack beginning within, and that this internal pressure of their moral and social iniquity will ere long make their wall bulge out and come down in overwhelming ruin, in an instant, and when least expected. • The expressions in verses 20 and 21 are among the indications I have already noticed, that, in the time at which Tsaiah spoke, such prophets as remained faithful in the general corruption were repressed and silenced by persecution. These allusions might at first sight appear a reason for referring this prophecy to the reign of Ahaz, when the temple was shut up, and the high priest himself assisted in new and unlawful rites ; but if we remember that the power of the worldly irreligious nobles of that period was still unbroken, we shall (as I have also noticed) find no difficulty in understanding how much persecution of the spiritual teachers would be still carried on in spite of Hezekiah ; and Isaiah's encouraging tone as to the spiritual aspect of things, in contrast with the temporal afflictions he foretells, shows that he saw signs (and if he saw them, they were there) that the tide was about to turn, just as he must have done when he denounced Shebna. For we shall have a very unreal notion of the Jewish kings and people if we suppose that their national character, even in its most spiritual features, changed about instantly with a change of the occupant of the throne. It takes a generation at least to make any such important change, and especially in so tough and independent a race as the Jews always were. And, lastly, it must be noticed that the teachers were as much ' removed into a corner' by their own corruptness as by persecution. Jeremiah describes the idols as plated, or ornamented. 286 THE UNSEEN TEACHER. with plates of gold and silver, aud dressed in garments of blue and purple. AVheu Josiali was jiurging the land from idolatry he is said to have ' defiled ' the altars and hio-h places by burning men's bones on them, by which act he at once expressed contempt, and jn-evented their beino' again employed for the same purpose. But these idols of which Isaiah now speaks are the private household gods, which a merely national and 2>ublic reform, like that of Hezekiah or Josiah, could never touch. Contrasted with these dumb idols on the one hand, and on the other Avith the faithful teachers of the restored and converted people, is the still small voice of God himself: the word which each man shall hear for himsi-lf in the inmost recesses of his heart, as of an invisible guide con- tinually directing him at every step, that he diverge not the least from the straight path. The promise in verse 23 probably alludes, as so many other passages do, to the way in which the land actually lay waste in those days, whether ravaged by the enemy, or not cultivated because men had no heart to sow where they could not hope to reap : and this picture of peaceful husbandry becomes a symbol of the political prosperity which should follow the overthrow of the Assyrians ; while ]3Qt]i — as the connection with verses 20 and 21 shows — are types of the spiritual blessings which the projdiet knew to be more worthy than either. As the prison-liire, the ' bread of adversity and the water of affliction,' were the tokens of God's wrath, so this succeeding plenty is of his favour, and of his actually feeding their souls with the bread of life. Then shall the Spirit, the divine life of which the Indwelling Word is the source, be poured out like rivers and streams of water, and fertilize the soul as they do the hills. To realize the full force of this favourite image of the sudden pouring out of rivers, we must remember that in southern countries, ravines which have been dry for the whole sunniier are suddenly turned into deep rivers. The flood comes down all at once. It is the Name, the power, and presence, of Jehovah, comin" from far, because there was no man at hand to help, which shall work the hoped for, and promised. ISAIAH XXX. 2-j—2s.—IIOLr SOLEMMTIES. 287 deliverance. By a fusion of one image with another, the judgments of Jeliovah upon the devastators of Israel are described as a fierce fire, with its mingled flame and smoke heavil}« ascending ; as the sentence of a king whose word is death to the criminal ; as an overwhelming torrent, like that to which the Assyrian himself was formerly com- pared ;* as a sieve in which the corn shall not be sifted from the chaff, but a sheer riddance made of both, while both (as the ancient manner was) are exposed to the wind — the blast of ' his breath ;' and as a bridle, not to guide them aright, but to lead them to their own destruction. In contrast with this punishment of the great oppressor, stands the joy of the delivered nation : — ' Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept ; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe, to come into the mountain of Jehovah, to the Rock of Israel.' All the festivals were kept ' from even to even,' this being the Jewish method of reckoning the day, as we see in the first chapter of Genesis, where the day is always said to begin with the evening. Thus the Sabbath began on Friday evening, and lasted till Saturday evening. But the 2^assover was in a special manner the ' holy solemnity kept in the night,' and from Matthew xxvi. 30, as well as from the still existing practice of the Jews, we know that a hymn was sung at the end of the supper. Tliese are but the more literal signs that Isaiah throughout this passage (verses 27 — 33) is connecting the now near prospect of their deliverance from the Assyrian, with the old deliver- ance which Jehovah Avrought for them in the days of Moses and Pharaoh. This connection was subsequently recognized in the preservation (or it may be origination) of the tradition that Sennacherib's army was destroyed on the night of the passover : and if we enter into the spirit of those magnificent 11th and 12th chapters of Exodus, and into the thoughts and hopes which were kept alive in the soul of every earnest Hebrew by the sacramental insti- tution in which that national deliverance was perennially recorded, we shall be able to realize something of the depth of meaning conveyed by Isaiah to those who heai'd * Chap. viii. 8. 2 88 CHORAL PROCESSIONS. liim, in the words, ' Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept.' But there were other festivals which, though not less religious, called for more ' lightness of heart ' than the j)assover. A tradition,* which is so exact a counterpart of the various passages in the Old Testament referring to the same and like sub- jects, that its accuracy can hardly be questioned, enables us to picture to the life the scene which, in Isaiah's times, might have been witnessed all over the country, on the eve of the yearly feasts. When the season for presenting the first-fruits to Jehovah the King of the nation arrived, the country-people assembled themselves in some chief village or town of their tribe. The men were required by the strict law of Moses to appear three times yearly Ijefore Jehovah, and they would be accompanied by many of their wives and daughters, whether actuated, like Hannah, by the desire to offer some vow, or dedicate a first-born son in person, or only by the wish to see the great City on an occasion when the traders thronged its fairs, and the holi- day-makers its feasts, as well as the worship2:)ers its Temple. The party thus assembled passed the night before they went up to Jerusalem, in the streets, not to contract any ceremonial defilement : at daj^break the head man of the company, — perhaps the village Levite — awakened them with the words, ' Rise, let us go up to Zion, to Jehovah our God ;' and they set forward in a choral procession. A bull with gilded horns, crowned with olive-leaves, went first ; a piper playing on the pipe, the damsels Avith their timbrels, and the bearers of the baskets of wheat and grapes and the jars of honey or oil, followed after ; and the sacred dance kept time with the voices of the alter- nate choirs as they sang, ' I was glad when tliey said unto me. Let us go up into the house of Jehovah.' The simul- taneous and silent halt, the prostration in prayer, the burst of weeping, which in the present day mark the arrival of a party of Jewish pilgrims on the first rising ground which commands a view of Jerusalem, is the melancholy shadow of the exultation with which their forefathers lifted up their eyes to the hills of Zion from the same s])ots, and • Quoted by Vitringa, from the Talmudical Tract Jhccurim. ISAIAIIXXXLi—9. THE REAL DELIVERER. 289 saw tlie ' city compact together,' with 'peace within her walls and prosperity in her palaces.' The song was fre- (juently repeated as they drew near the city ; and as their ' feet stood within its gates ' the people of Jerusalem wel- comed them Avith shouts, and the priests with honour, and they proceeded to present their offerings before Jehovah, * at' the same time reciting the confession in the form pre- scribed by Moses.' The Psalms called in our version .' Songs of Degrees," that is, ' of steps,' or ' marches,' are all illustrated by this traditional account of the use of the one-' here quoted ; for all are suitable for various occasions of solemn processions to the temple : and other Psalms such as Ixviii. are easiest understood in like man- ner ; while the subject has farther light thrown on it by the historical description of the processions composed, not of a few villagers, but of the army or of the nation, under its nobles, and headed by a David, a Solomon, or a Jehoshaphat.t And then Isaiah unites these images with those of the destruction of the Assyrian by the glorious might of Jehovah ; each stroke of the ' rod of doom ' which now Mis on him who 'smote the nations with a perpetual stroke,' is accompanied by a burst of triumphal music ; + and he sees the chariots and armies, and the bodies of their owners, consumed in a lire kindled by the wrath of Jehovah. Tophet was a place in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, on the south-east of Jerusalem, where was the altar of Moloch, on which children were burnt. There seems an ironical allusion to Moloch — the king — in the words of Isaiah, ' for the king it is prepared,' and to the human sacrifices which should now be represented by a slaughter of the Assyrian army ; and also an anticipation that the king of Assyria and his army would be actually defeated and their bodies burned in these very valleys. § Chapter xxxi. If the whole land between Memphis and * Psalm cxxii. I do not mean to pronounce peremptorily on the questions as to the meaning ot this title. t 1 Chron. XV. xvi ; 2 Ohron. v. vi. vii. ; xx. 27, 28. t ' The Bters xl. to Ixvi., which are to be ascribed to another unknoAvn author. Let the true student examine the case thoroughly for himself. * Compare Psalm xlv. 7 ; Eccl. ix. 8; Isaiah Ixi. 3. CHAPTER XX. ISAIAH XXXVI., XXXVII. HISTOIUCAL EVKNTS OF SENNArHKRIU's INVASION AND HETUEAT — HIS LETTER — HOW ANSWERED. UNCONSCIOUS GENIUS IN THE NARRATIVE. RAB-RHAKEn's THEOLOGY. ISAIAh's INSPIRATION. 'THE INCARNATE WRATH OF GOD.' ZION's DEFIANCE. THE *8IGN ' OF THE SPONTANEOUS CROPS. — THE DESTROYING ANGEL. — SETHOS DELIVERED BY VULCAN. — GERMAN WAR OF FREEDOM. HISTORY TEACHES A BELIEF IN I'llOVIDENCE. NIEBUHR. — GROTE. ^ THERE has been much discussion as to whether the ^ historical narrative in the following chapters, or its slightly varying counterpart in the 2nd Book of Kings, is the original ; or whether hoth are taken from some third work now lost, and which may also have supplied the materials for the different account of the same events in the 2nd Book of Chronicles ; and Avhat Avas the share of Isaiah himself in the actual or supposed narratives. We are told ''' that he wrote a complete history of the reign of Uzziah ; and if he wrote that of Hez(kiah also, it would be quite intelligible that the main part of this should, on the one hand, be incorporated into the Book of Kings, and on the other, into this book of his own prophecies, "vnth such omissions and amplifications as the purposes of each required. The opinion that this was done in the latter case by some compiler and editor of the prophet's writings, has its advocates : but I persuade myself that, in 2)ro})or- tion to the reader's study of the book as a whole, and as we have it, he has seen indications of a unity of design in the arrangement of the several prophecies, and of the various pieces of narrative connecting them ; and has con- sequently found that arrangennnit so interesting and important, for the light it throws on each part, and for the epic character it gives to the whole, as to be worthy • 2 Cliron. xxvi. 22. ISATAH XXXVL, XXXVII. HISTORICAL EVEXTS. 303 of Isaiah himself, and perhaps above the reach of any of his successors of whom we know anytliing. It may here be convenient to bring together the succes- sive parts of the history of this period which I have already referred to in connection with the successive discourses of Isaiah, and to complete them with what still remains to be said of the events now taking place ; and of which the Hebrew narratives, that of Herodotus, and the Assja-ian inscriptions, are the remaining records.""' Sargon, like his predecessors Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser, had broken up the confederacy of the Western and Southern powers, and reduced them to submission. But his assassinationt would have given them the opportunity to revolt ; and after his son Sennacherib had reduced like revolts nearer home he proceeded, in his third campaign, to Syria, where Phoenicia, Philistia, and Judah, if not other neighlwuring nations, had thrown off the Assyrian yoke, and had entered again into alliance with Egypt and Ethiopia against the common foe. But the Egyptians and Ethiopians, as usual, were too slow for the rapid action of the Assyrians. Eluloeus, King of Tyre and Sidon, fled to Cyprus at the approach of Sennacherib, and all the cities of Phcpuicia submitted to him. He made Ithobal king in Eluloeus's stead, and there received homage and tribute from him as well as fi'om the kings of Arvad, Ashdod, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and others, who had apparently been too prudent to join in the revolt. The kings of Ascalon and Ekron, who were perhaps actually appointed by the As- syrian king,| would have remained faithful, as the king of Ashdod seems to have done ; but the nobles and people were not so disposed. At Ascalon they seem to have substituted Zidka for their former kins: Sar-ludari, and at Ekron they put their king Padi in irons and sent him prisoner to Hezekiah, who like them was in revolt, and relying on the Egyptian and Ethiopian alliance for sujiport. But these allies still delayed, while Sennacherib advanced. ♦ Korodotns ii. 141 ; 2 Kings xviii., xix. ; 2 Chron. xxxii. ; Isaiah xxxvi., xxxvii. The Inscriptions are given above, pp. 194, 239. t Schrader, Keilinschriflen u. d. A.T., pp. 2G8, 331. X Sar-ludari is an Assyrian name. Schrader, Eeilintchriften, p. 73. 3 04 SFXXA CIIERIB AT LA CHISH. Ho took all the cities of Zidka — Beth-Dagon, Joppa, Bene- Larak, and Azur — by stomi, sent him and all his house prisoners to Assyria, and put Sar-hulari again on the throne. He took Ekron, punished its rebellion with severity, and brought back king Padi, whom he had com- pelled Hezekiah to give up to him. And, when the fortified cities of Judah fell, one after another, and the open country was ravaged by the Assyrian armies, and still no help came from Egypt, and Sennacherib was lying before the great southern fortress of Lachish '''" which ought to have covered the allied armies, had they arrived in time, — then Hezekiah, too, found himself obliged to yield ; and he sent to the great king, ' saying, I have otiended, return from me, that which thou i)uttest upon me I will bear;' and he paid the tribute thereupon required by Sennacherib, strijjjung the temple and his palace of their treasures to do so. Sennacherili took the gold and silver, but immediately afterwards sent an army to Jerusalem to demand its surrender, with the avowed purpose of deport- ing the inhabitants as soon as possible. Isaiah reproaches him t with his treachery, and his breach of a treaty which must have promised a cessation of hostilities on Hezekiah's submission and payment of the tribute : but the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia were at last advancing, and Senna- cherib must have felt that he had strong motives for securing himself against the possibility of a flank attack * Lachish, and Libnah (which Sennachorib besieged after takine; Lachish) were Canaaiiite cities in the south of Judah, the kin^s of which were con- quered by Joshua. Lrichish was fortified by Rehoboam, and was one of the remaining fortresses of Judah in the time of Jeremiah. It has been con- jectured that the royal chariots and liorses were kejit Ihere. Libnah is mentioned as havina: revolted from Joram. (Joshua x. 3 ff. ; xii. 11, 15 ; xv. 39, 42; 2 Kings viii. 22; xiv. 11); xviii. 17; 2 ("hron. xi. 9; xxv. 27; xxxii 9 ; Neheniiab xi . 30 ; Jeromiah xxxiv. 7 ; 3Iicah i. 13.) Eusebius and Jerome place botli these cities n<>ar Hieuthero}>olis. The modem Um-Lakis preserves the name, if not the site of the ancii nt Lachish. Mr. (leortre Smith says, in his accoimt of this cainpaiirn of Sennacherib, ' lie capturiMl furty six ot the fenced cities of Judah, iiK-ludins; l-aclii^h, and there is a series of slabs Irom the wall of one of the halls of his pal;ice, on which is depicted the storming of this city, wliile Sennacherib is represented silting on a throne in the vicinity of Lachish, and receiving the ])risoiiers and spoil.' I^nlicex of I'alisliur, in I'uhst'mv Kxploratioti Finid (iiiarterlii Statcmnit, Octoher, 1872. J\Ir. Layard gives a woodcut of this representation, Xitirrih unit Jialn/loii (1853), p. 150. And Smith's l)ictintiarij of the liihic. Article Lachixh, gives copies of some other parts of these slabs, from Layaid's Momt- maits nj i< nil veil, 2nd series, ]>lale 21. t Chajter xxxiii. 1, 7, 8. J? A BSHA KEH A T JER USA LEM. 305 from Jerusalem wliile he was giving battle, or perhaps a series of battles, to the armies now coming ujj from the south : he would not trust Hezekiah's recent and reluctant submission, nor would he have much scruple about break- ing his own engagements with one whom he may have suspected to be still in communication with the late allies of Judah, and his own immediate enemies. A detachment from the main army appeared under the walls of Jerusalem, commanded by the Tartan, or Assyrian Cioneral, togrether with the Chief of the Eunuchs, and the (vhief Cuj)-bearer, who ma}^ have been civil officers of Sennacherib, and sent by him to conduct the negotiations.'''" If Shebna had been still in power, he might perhaps have yielded ; but Eliakim, whose policy was that of Isaiah — the policy of absolute reliance upon Jehovah — was now lirst in Hezekiah's councils ; and, by the advice of Isaiah, the reply was a defiance of the king and his army, in the name of Jehovah. Sennacherib, meanwhile, had taken Lachish, and was besieging the neighbouring city of Lib- nah, when Eabshakeh re-joined him there, to report the failure of his mission. Tirhakeh, king of Ethiopia, with his Egyptian allies or vassals, was now at hand ; and before the battle Sennacherib again sent a summons to Hezekiah, l)y a letter in which he again warned him of the conse- ([uences of trusting either in Egypt and Ethiopia, or in his (lod. He then took up his position at Altakeh, probably a few miles north of Lachish, and there gave battle to Tirhakeh and his great army, with its Egyptian chariots, cavalry, and bowmen. He was, according to his own account, victorious, taking many prisoners. But his army now met with a reverse to which he indeed — as might be expected — makes no allusion, but the fact of Avhich has been recorded both in the Egyptian account preserved by Herodotus, and in those of the Hebrew historians. We * Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rab-shakeh, are considered by the most recent authorities to be not proper names but official titles — the Commander-in- chipf, the Chief of the eunuchs, and tlie Chief cup-hearer. Tartan is Assyrian, tlie other two Hebrew. Dr. Schrader suggests that Rabsaris may be the Hebrew equivalent for the Assyrian Ivab-lub, Chief of the harem, a title found in the Official I-ists. and Kabshakeh a Hebrew substitute for Rab-sak, -which would mean not Chief cup-bearer, but, Chief of the military staff. — Kcilin- tehriften, ti. d. A. T. p. 198. X 3o6 BATTLE WITH THE EGYPTIANS. are left in doubt as to tlie exact nature of tlie disaster,'" or the place of its occurrence. Sennacherib may have threatened Pelusiuni, as well as Jerusalem, as his letter to Hezekiidi shows that it was his intention to invade Egypt: but, as he makes no reference in his annals to any such advance after the battle he records, it is |)erlia|)s more prol)able that the disaster occurred in the plains of riiilistia, and that there may be confusion on this point, as well as on that of the cause of the disaster itself, in the account preserved by Herodotus. Sennacherib, indeed, instead of recording any reverse, makes the conquest of Ela-on and the submission of Hezekiah as the consequences — and the triumphant and adequate consequences — of his victory over the Egyptians and Ethiopians, and Avinds up the account of this his tliird campaign with the detail of the spoils which Hezekiah had been compelled to surrender to him. As he took all the cities of Judali except Jerusalem, and overran the whole land, he may have obtained all the plunder he recites : but if so, it was probably jilunder, and not tribute. Tlie tribute is more likely to have been the specified amount of talents of gold and silver (whether the latter was three or eight hundred is not important), and to have been paid under the circumstances, and at the time, stated in the Hebrew accounts. If the events had occurred in the order given in Sennacherib's Inscriptions, and had been as successful as he desires to imply, he would not have left Hezekiah in jmssession of his kingdom, nor would he have failed to carry out his purpose of invading Egypt. Instead of this, he does not appear to have attempted any fartlier interference with Egypt or the Western nations during tlie rest of his reign. It is sinqiler and easier to reconcile the conflicting points of the Hebrew and Egyptian with the Assyrian accounts, by assuming some such designed exaggeration and distortion of the facts in Sennacherib's boastful inscrijition, than by the supposi- tion of two distinct camj)aigns, one of which is unrecorded by the Hebrew, ami the other l>y the Assyrian, liistorian. t • Sof Knohel on the pasBago, whi<'h ho diaciiRsos with his iiHiial procision. t Mr. (lenrgo Stnith (in thu Notirrs of J'ltlcxtiiie quoted in the note to piifje 304) Bays of ISennucherib — ' late iu his reigu, probably about h.c. 688, he made SUDDEN RETREAT. 307 In this, as in all histories, modern no less than ancient, details remain obscure and doubtful. We may not be able to say whether Rab-shakeh withdrew the troops which had accompanied him to Jerusalem, when he him- self returned to Sennacherib's head-quarters ; or whether — because he was only an ambassador, and Tartan the general, or for any other reason — they were left behind to besrin the sie^re : whether it was the destruction ot this detached army, by plague already begun within the walls of Jerusalem, or by some more sudden disaster ; or whether it was some more general catastrophe, that com- pelled Sennacherib to fly to his own land : nor decide other like questions, for and against which much has been, and may be, said. But the careful examination of the alternatives (for which I refer the reader to the commen- tators themselves) enables us to get all the general light we require for a distinct view of the great political features of the period : though this examination will show us that there are dark patches of shadow, or undefined marks, where we had hoped to make out specific forms on a nearer approach, still we find that, on again retiring to the right point of distance for seeing the whole as the picture it is, and is meant to be, it tells its story quite well ; and that we may learn from it all we need to know. We see that in the regular advance of the Assyrian power, it had reached the point at which Sennacherib could cease to temporize with Judah, and might proceed completely to absorb the tributary state into the empire. The kingdom of Samaria had already followed the fate of Damascus in this respect : the submission of Phoenicia and Philistia had not only opened the road to Egypt, but also turned the another' expedition to Palestine.' This is inferred from an Inscription of Ez ir-haddon, who says that his father Sennacherib formerly conquered the city of Adumu of the Arabs, of which Hazailu was king ; while Sennacherib himself names Melikram as the king of Edom who submitted to him in his third campaign. But this would be no proof of a later cauipaign, even if Adumu menus Edom, which Dr. Schrader di;ni(!S. Professor Finzi assumes that there was such a seccmd expedition, but adds, that hitherto the inscrip- tions have only borne testimony to the first war ; and Dr. Schrader says, with a direct reference to Mr. Smith's supposition, that nothing is found in the A- Atheniiin» who, in bearintr the linmt of the Persian invasion, ' had aln^jdy been de- prived of two harve.strt : ' where ilr. Giote observes lliat as this was spoken before the invasion of Mardonius, the loss of tico crops ninst moan the loss of tlie harvest of the past sinnmer, topetber with the seed of the aiitiinin immediately foUowinjf ; and that the advice of Themistocdes to his country- men, that 'every one sIkjuW re| air his house and attend to sowing his ground,' must have been found iinpnicticabje in most cases to carry into tflect during that autumn. — Hori.d. viii. 142: Giolo'a lliatury of Greece, V. 'lO-l. t Isaiah .\.\.\ii. 10. . OF THE SPONTANEOUS CROPS. 315 the movements of gi*eat armies against, and over, a country defended by deserts, and mountains, and fortified cities ; the poHtical negotiations which preceded and followed these movements ; and the recovery of dej)opulated villages, and wasted cornfields and vineyards ; were not events which could begin and end within any such short space as it takes to AV'rite or read of them. Instances of tAvo, and even three crops from one sowing are mentioned by Strabo, and are also said to occur in California at the present time. This sign is analogous in character to those of ' Im- manuel ' and ' Maher-shalal-hash-baz,' as well as to Noah's Rainbow, and to that given to Moses at the Burning Bush ;"' and, we may add, to those of the water and the bread and wine of the Christian sacraments, and of all other symbols, of which the j)urpose is, not to establish faith in a future miracle because a present one has been wrought, but to supply such an outward and visible sign of the accompanying inward spiritual grace, as will, from the very constitution of man's being (of soul and body united), help him to realize the latter, as he could not do by any naked mental effort. And the thing here signi- fied has itself an inward and an outward part : for, as the spontaneously sowed and multiplied corn and fruit will be the foundation and materials of the reijular culti- vation of the third year, so will the deserted villages and farms be replenished with the survivors of those who have for the present found refuge within the walls of Jerusalem ; and both the one and the other will be the types of that ' holy seed,' the existence of which in the corrupt nation was made known to Isaiah at his first calling to the pro- photic ofliee, when he was told that he was to Avatch and wait, witli the long patience of the husbandman, for the growing up of that seed, after the hard ground had been broken up, and the rampant weeds rooted out, by the ploughshare of repeated national calamity. ' The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. . . . For I will defend this city to save it, saith Jehovah, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.' David was the personal * Exodus iii. 12. 3i6 ISAIAH XXXVII. 39 — 37. THE DESTROYER. representative of the faith and riLjliteousness of the nation, in the day that God renewed with him his covenant to continue tlie name and the kint,'dom of Israel for ever ;■' and tliat covenant God would keej), as long as there wi-rc any who in heart were of David's race, for their antl David's sake :— for their faitli and rit,diteousness were not the less to be rewarded because thesu were the free gift of God, and the result of his choosing them, and not of their choosing him. I do not attempt to add to the discussion of the ques- tions, whether ' the angel of Jehovah,' that minister of his, which did his pleasure on the Assyrians, was a tempest, a liot wind, a pestilence, or some other of those powers of nature whicli, when employed by God's providence, ar»' usually called his angels by the Hebrews ; whether there is any such improbability in the more explicit statement in the Book of Kings, — that this great multitude wert* destroyed in a single night — as demands that it should be restricted by the terms of the account before us, and of that in the Chronicles ; and whether the Egyptian recortl of the same catastrophe, as preserved l)y Herodotus, throws any further light upon it. A positive determina- tion of them is not at .all necessfiry to our substantial understanding of the case ; though, of course, every fact of history, however minute, may have its value, when ascertained to be a fact ; and it is unfortunate that tlie modern commentators on this i)as.sage should show so mucli disposition to l)end their criticism to a fongone conclusion, orthodox or rationalist. Tlu^ story of Hero- dotus seems to me (M*roneously called a transfer of the scene of the event to Hgypt, and a substitution of the names of Setlios and Vulean for Hezrkiah and Jejiovali : Sennaclierib's army was menacing Kgypt as well as .hid< a at the timc^ ; and he did, sliortly afttjr, beat ' the kings of Kgypt witli the horsemen and f<»otnien belonging to the King of Kthioj)ia, of whicli the imnibers could not be counted ;' and a detachment, like that sent to Jeru- salem, may have appeared at I'l-lusium : and certainly the matter of inf«re-,t and tliaiikfiilness to Setlios wais • 2 Saiiiuil vi. Vi, 13. S ETHOS AND VULCAN. 317 tliiit lie and liis country, not tliat Hezekiali and the .Jews, were delivered by the jn'ovidential destruction of their common enemy. And though Ave admit as prohahle, nay certain, tliat all the coatings of the superstition -which represented the Egyptian god A'ulcan as tlie deliverer, were not tlie additions of a later })riestcraft ; though we allow that this was more or less the belief of Setlios himself, and tliat he could not ' speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts,' with that clearness of heart and mind with which Isaiah had foretold that the Egy2)tians should ' know Jehovah in the day that he sent a saviour to deliver them ;' still the student who has an e^^e for the good, as well as for the evil, of the religious of the world, will not fail to distinguish in the narrative of Herodotus, the record of a true though imperfect recognition by the Egyptians that neither Sennacherib, nor Tirhakeh, but an invisible and divine Lord, was the real master of Egypt and its destinies, and that this providential deliverance was so clear an instance of his rule, that it should awaken a sentiment of piety in every one who learnt the story : — 19 t/xe Tt9 opewv, €va€^}j^ earu).'"' Semiacherib's account of this war, if taken with the (jualifications proposed, relieves the student of Isaiah's prophecies and policy of a certain difficulty. The notices in these and the corresponding chapters, taken with the account of Herodotus, and the inscription on a temple at Thebes which, according to Wilkinson, records Tirhakeh's successful opposition to Sennacherib, indicated the most probable supposition to be that the Assyrian king retreated from the Ethiopian, either after sustaining, or without waiting for, a battle in the south-west of Judea. And then to bring this into harmony with Isaiah's steady denunciation of the alliance of Israel with Egypt, which might thus seem to have succeeded, instead of failing as he predicted, we had to suppose tliat Sennacherib's boast, that Tirhakeh would not be able to help Hezekiah, was * This montii'ii of Sclhos, or Zct, liy Horodotus, as the coiit'^Tnj)ornry of Senniirlu'iib, ;iii-ij)(io)is dcs Sarffonides, p. 40 ; Kiiliiischrifteii, v. eth Vakin in the marshes [of the Euphrates], and made them slaves : I destroyed uud burned his cities. On my return I appointed my first-born son Assur Nadin to the government of the country, and gave him the land of Accad and Sumir.' The list of liabylonian kings in Ptolemy's canon does but add a third set of discordant notices. The 'son of Sennacherib's confidential officer, bred up in his palace,'" may liave been his foster-brother, and the same person whom Berosus calls 'his lirother :' l)ut I do not pretend to reconcile the accounts. They will not, however, a})})ear more dift<;rent from each other than we might expect, if Ave remember that the deciphering of one is as yet more or less tenta- tive and that we have another at fourth or fifth hand, and with strong evidence of extreme carelessness in the comjjiler, Eusebius, himself. Babylonia, therefore, was at this period alternately a provinct; of Assyria of such iin]:»ortance that royal princes of the imperial dynasty wen^ appointed its viceroys ; and independent of, and in arms against, that power. And the latter was now the case. Mero