ISAIAH 
 
 XL-LXVI. 
 
 WITH THE 
 
 SHORTER PROPHECIES ALLIED TO IT 
 
 ARRANGED AND EDITED 
 WITH NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1875 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
OXFORD : 
 
 BY E. PICKARD HALL AND J. H. STACY, 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE GREAT PROPHECY OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION . 35 
 NOTES ni 
 
 APPENDIX i 59 
 
 THE FIRST VISION . . .160 
 
 NOTES 162 
 
 THE KING OF BABYLON . . . . . ... .164 
 
 NOTES .170 
 
 EDOM AND ISRAEL . -174 
 
 NOTES . . 179 
 
 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN . .181 
 
 NOTES .'..... 191 
 
 101675 
 
: 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 AT the very outset, the humbleness of what is 
 professed in the present work cannot be set forth 
 too strongly. With the aim of enabling English 
 people to read as a connected whole the last twenty- 
 seven chapters of Isaiah, without being frequently 
 stopped by passages of which the meaning is 
 almost or quite unintelligible, I have sought to 
 choose, among the better meanings which have 
 been offered for each of these passages, that which 
 seemed the best, and to weave it into the autho- 
 rised text in such a manner as not to produce any 
 sense of strangeness or interruption. This is all that 
 I have attempted ; not to translate or to correct 
 independently, for which my knowledge of Hebrew, 
 not more than sufficient to enable me in some 
 degree to follow and weigh the reasons offered by 
 others in support of their judgments, and, indeed, 
 my resources of all kinds, would be totally inade- 
 quate ; but to use the work of more competent 
 translators and correctors, to use it so as to remove 
 difficulties in our authorised version which admit, 
 many of them, of quite certain correction ; and yet 
 to leave the physiognomy and movement of the 
 
 B 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 authorised version quite unchanged. Such a work 
 of emendation may be, I hope, of a useful cha- 
 racter, but it is certainly of a humble one ; and the 
 reader is especially begged to note that to this, 
 and no more, does the present work aspire. 
 
 With like prominency must be set in view its 
 provisional character. It makes no pretensions 
 to be permanent. Personsof weight and of proved 
 qualifications are now engaged in revising the 
 Bible, and their revision must undoubtedly be 
 looked to as that which, it is to be hoped, may 
 obtain general currency. To have one version 
 universally received is of the greatest advantage. 
 And their corrections will, probably, be much 
 more extensive than those attempted here, and 
 will extend far more to small points of detail ; 
 thus aiming at absolute correctness, at perfection. 
 A version thus perfectly correct will most justly, 
 if successful in other respects, supersede any private 
 and partial attempts. Such a partial attempt is 
 mine ; an attempt, not to present an absolutely 
 correct version of the series of chapters treated, 
 but merely to remove such cause of disturbance 
 as now, in the authorised version, prevents their 
 being read connectedly, with understanding of what 
 they mean, and with the profit and enjoyment that 
 might else be drawn from them. 
 
 The present attempt was originally planned for 
 the benefit of school-children. It appears in this 
 larger form, because it has been found useful by 
 many who are not school-children, and who find 
 the small print of a school-book irksome. But it 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 was intended in the first instance for the young and 
 for the unlearned, and this its original design must 
 not be forgotten. 
 
 The Hebrew language and genius, it is admitted ^ 
 by common consent, are seen in the Book of Isaiah 
 at their perfection ; this has naturally had its effect 
 on the English translators of the Bible, whose ver- 
 sion nowhere perhaps rises to such beauty as ini/ 
 this Book. Whatever may be thought of the \s 
 authorship of the last twenty-seven charjters^every 
 one will allow that there comes a break between 
 them and what goes immediately before them, and 
 that they Jorm ajvhole by themselves. And the 
 whole which they form is large enotigh to exhibit 
 a prolonged development and connexion, and yet 
 is of manageable length, and comes within fixed 
 limits. Add to which, it is a whole of surpassing 
 interest ; so that, while Isaiah is styled the greatest \, 
 of the prophets, the evangelical prophet, and St. 
 Jerome calls him not so much a prophet as an 
 evangelist, and Ambrose told Augustine to read * 
 his prophecies the first thing after his conversion, 
 and this prophet is of all Old Testament writers^ 
 the one far most quoted in the New, while all 
 this is so, it is, moreover, in, the last twenty-seven 
 chapters that the grentet intfirent iff renrheH ; inso- 
 much that out of thirty-four passages from him 
 which Gesenius brings together as quoted in the 
 New Testament, there are twenty-one from theseV 
 last chapters against only thirteen from the rest, 
 of the Book. Finally, not only have the last 
 twenty-seven chapters this poetical and this reli- 
 B 2 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 gious interest, but they have also an historical 
 interest of the highest order ; for they mark the 
 very point where Jewish history, caught in the 
 current of Cyrus's wars and policy, is carried into 
 the great open stream of the world's history, never 
 again to be separated from it. 
 
 The reader, therefore, may well be glad to have 
 these chapters put by themselves, and made in- 
 telligible to him. I have also detached from their 
 received place, and printed as an appendix to the 
 last twenty-seven chapters, certain earlier chapters 
 of the Book of Isaiah: the I3th with the I4th down - 
 to the end of the 23rd verse, the 2ist down to the j 
 end of the loth verse, the chapters from the be- \ 
 ginning of the 24th to the end of the 27th, and 
 the 34th and 35th chapters. These chapters are 
 undoubtedly connected by their subject with the 
 concluding series, and should be read in connexion 
 with them by every student who wishes to appre- ; 
 .hend the concluding series fully. Evidently, as / 
 both they and this series now stand in his Bible, 
 they are baffling to him ; and this is due partly to 
 their arrangement, partly to obscurities in the trans- 
 lation. To shew how this is so, let us take the 2ist 
 chapter of Isaiah down to the end of verse 10. 
 Thus it stands in our Bibles : 
 
 THE burden of the desert of the sea. As whirl- 
 winds in the south pass through ; so it cometh 
 from the desert, from a terrible land. 
 
 2. A grievous vision is declared unto me ; the 
 treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam : besiege, O 
 Media : all the sighing thereof have I made to 
 cease. 
 
 3. Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs 
 have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman 
 that travaileth : I was bowed down at the hearing 
 of it ; I was dismayed at the seeing of it. 
 
 4. My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me : 
 the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear 
 unto me. 
 
 5. Prepare the table, watch in the watch-tower, 
 eat, drink : arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield. 
 
 6. For thus hath the LORD said unto me, Go 
 set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. 
 
 7. And he saw a chariot with a couple of horse- 
 men, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels ; 
 and he hearkened diligently with much heed : 
 
 8. And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand con- 
 tinually upon the watch-tower in the daytime, and 
 I am set in my ward whole nights : 
 
 9. And behold, here cometh a chariot of men, 
 with a couple of horsemen. And he answered 
 and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen ; and all the 
 graven images of her gods he hath broken unto 
 the ground. 
 
 10. O my threshing, and the corn of my floor: 
 that which I have heard of the LORD of hosts, 
 the God of Israel, have I declared unto you. 
 
 And then the chapter goes on without any in- 
 terruption, in verses of just the same look, to a 
 wholly different matter. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Now the general reader, who has the bare text 
 of a common Bible and nothing more, may per- 
 ceive that there is something grand in this passage,*/ 
 but he cannot possibly understand it ; and this is 
 due partly to the want of explanations, partly to 
 the arrangement, partly to obscurity in the trans- 
 lation. He requires to be told first, as a reader 
 would be told before reading an ode of Pindar, v 
 what it is all about ; he requires to have the 
 passage separated for him from that with which 
 it has no connexion ; and he requires to have the 
 text made much clearer, both in its words and 
 in its punctuation. 
 
 To supply explanations, it may be thought, is 
 a matter which need not embarrass us much ; but 
 the same cannot be said of re-arranging and cor- 
 recting. For it must always be remembered, that, 
 in dealing with the English Bible, we are dealing 
 with a work consecrated in the highest degree by^ 
 long use and deep veneration. 
 
 With respect to the novel way of dividing, ar- 
 ranging, and presenting their single Psalms or 
 single Chapters, which recent translators, following 
 Ewalc^ have adopted : in him and them, and for 
 his and their purpose, we may acquiesce in it ; but 
 for an ordinary reader it changes the face of the 
 Bible too startlingly and entirely. The divisions 
 in our common Bibles, however, do mark too little 
 the connexion of the sense, do often break it too 
 arbitrarily, and of themselves create difficulties for 
 the reader. This will not be denied ; but the 
 question is, how to apply a remedy without inno- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 vating overmuch. Now, it so happened that I had 
 for many years been in the habit of using a Bible l 
 where the numbers of the chapters are marked at 
 the side and do not interpose a break between 
 chapter and chapter ; and where the divisions of 
 the verses, being numbered in like manner at the 
 side of the page, not in the body of the verse, and 
 being numbered in very small type, do not thrust 
 themselves forcibly on the attention. Breaks be- 
 tween the chapters, too, this Bible admits, but only 
 when the sense seems urgently to call for them ; 
 and sometimes, from the same motive, it even 
 breaks a verse in the middle. It had always struck 
 me how much more connected and comprehensible 
 the sense of the Bible, and particularly of certain 
 parts of the Bible, such as the Prophetical Books 
 and the Epistles, appeared in this arrangement 
 than in that of our common Bibles ; insomuch 
 that here things would often look comparatively 
 lucid and hanging together, which in our common 
 Bibles looked fragmentary and obscure. Well, 
 then, it suggested itself to me to try, for convey- 
 ing to the general reader our series of chapters, 
 this mode of arrangement, extending it a little 
 and simplifying it a little ; extending it by using 
 breaks, if this seemed required by the sense, a 
 little more frequently ; and simplifying it by 
 getting rid of italics, signs, references, and all 
 apparatus of this sort, which readers such as I 
 
 1 Perhaps I may be allowed here to mention, what to me at least 
 will always be very interesting, that this Bible was given to me by 
 the late Mr. Keble, my godfather. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 have in view hardly ever understand, and are more 
 distracted than helped by. So one might hope to 
 exhibit this series of chapters in a way to give 
 a clue to their connexion and sense, yet without 
 making them look too odd and novel. 
 
 So far for the arrangement : but even a more 
 important matter was correction, since an unin- 
 telligible passage, baffling the reader and throwing 
 him out, will often, as I have said, spoil a whole 
 chapter for him ; and there are many such passages 
 in the authorised version. To avoid this check in 
 reading the grand series of chapters at the end/ 
 of Isaiah, I had gradually made for my own use the 
 corrections which seemed indispensable ; these cor- 
 rections, after having been carefully revised, are 
 adopted in the text now offered. And by indis- 
 pensable corrections I mean this : corrections which 
 enable us to read the authorised version without 
 being baffled and thrown out. The urgent matter, 
 of course, is to get rid of the stoppage and em- 
 barrassment created by such things as : ' He made 
 his grave with the wicked . . . because he had done 
 no violence \ or as : ' That prepare a table for 
 that troop) and that furnish the drink-offering for 
 that number 1 : A clear sense is the indispensable 
 thing. Even where the authorised version seems 
 wrong, I have not always, if its words give a clear 
 sense, thought it necessary to change them. When, 
 however, the right correction seems to give a sense, 
 either clearer, or higher in poetic propriety and 
 
 1 Isaiah liii. 9, and Ixv. u. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 beauty, than the authorised version, I have cor- 
 rected. 
 
 For example. I think it certain that at verse 1 5 
 of the 65th chapter the right rendering is : ' And 
 ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my 
 chosen, So may the Lord God slay thee /' the 
 words in italics being the words of the curse, as 
 in Jeremiah xxix : ' Of them (Zedekiah and Ahab) 
 shall be taken up a curse by all the captivity of 
 Judah which are in Babylon, saying, The Lord 
 make thee like Zedekiah and Ahab T But the 
 authorised version gives a perfectly clear sense : 
 'And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto 
 my chosen ; for the LORD God shall slay thee ;' 
 and I have therefore left this as it stands. Again, 
 at verse 18 of the 66th chapter, I think the right 
 
 rendering almost certainly is : ' But I their 
 
 works and their thoughts ! it shall come, that I 
 will gather all nations,' &c. : the expression being, 
 as Ewald explains it, a broken, indignant one, with 
 this sense : Utterly to confound and shame the 
 expectations and practices of the faithless, idol- 
 seeking Jews (who have been the subject of the 
 preceding verse), idolatrous nations themselves shall 
 come and worship me. But the authorised ver- 
 sion : ' For I know their works and their thoughts ' 
 (referring to the idolatrous Jews of the preceding 
 verse) ; and then, after a pause, passing to another 
 subject: 'It shall come, that I will gather all na- 
 tions,' gives, perhaps, a yet clearer sense, though, I 
 am inclined to believe, not the right sense ; but the 
 sense given being good and clear, I think it better to 
 
10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 abstain from change. It may seem at variance with 
 this, that, for instance, in the last clause of the 46th 
 chapter : ' I will place salvation in Zion for Israel 
 my glory,' which is quite clear, I have yet allowed 
 myself to make a change, and to substitute : ' I will 
 give salvation to Zion ; to Israel my glory.' But 
 this is because, while the change appears, from the 
 law of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, perfectly cer- 
 tain, the observance, here of this law gives, at the 
 same time, a decided gain in poetic propriety and 
 beauty. So, too, in verse 14 of the 43rd chapter : ' I 
 have sent to Babylon and have brought down all 
 their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in 
 the ships.' This cannot be right, but it gives a 
 sense which may be made out. We may refer to 
 what Heeren says of the maritime trade of Babylon 
 in the Persian Gulf, and explain the last clause of the 
 Chaldean fleets there, and of the joyful hailing and 
 shouting of the sailors. But we so little associate 
 . Babylon with a maritime_ trade and fleets, that this 
 sense for the passage is a strained and unaccept- 
 able one. Whereas the more correct rendering, 
 ' I have sent to Babylon, and do make them all 
 to flee away, and the Chaldeans upon the ships of 
 their pleasure,' associates Babylon with her great 
 feature, the river and the use of the river; and 
 so gives a sense, if not absolutely plainer, yet 
 poetically much more natural and more pleasing. 
 Here therefore is a case where our rules justify 
 a change. 
 
 But when a change, however pleasing and in- 
 genious, depends on taking license to alter by 
 
I NT ROD UCTION. 1 1 
 
 guess the original text, I have regarded it as quite 
 forbidden. There is a difficult expression in verse 
 17 of the 66th chapter, 'behind one tree in the, 
 midst,' where the word tree is supplied by our 
 English translators, and the original has only ' be- 
 hind one in the midst.' Now, the Hebrew word 
 for behind nearly resembles the Hebrew word for 
 one, and Ewald proposes to read, in place of the 
 word for one, the word for behind repeated ; so 
 that the meaning will be : ' Back, back in the 
 innermost sanctuary!' a cry of recoil of the idol- 
 serving and superstitious renegade Jews at the 
 approach of their uninitiated, and, as they thought, 
 profane countrymen. This suits well with the ' I 
 am holier than thou ! ' attributed to the same rene- 
 gades, and as a conjectural emendation it is highly 
 plausible and attractive ; still, a conjectural emen- 
 dation it is, and therefore, as I consider, not per- 
 missible for our purpose here. All we may do 
 is to supply a word giving a better sense than the 
 word tree, and such a word is chief, the ringleader 
 or chief in the idolatrous processions and cere- 
 monies held in the sacred gardens. 
 
 So it will be evident that our range for altera- 
 tion is limited ; indeed, it may almost be said, in 
 general, to be restricted to those cases where in the 
 authorised version there is unintelligibility or am- 
 biguity baffling the reader and throwing him out. 
 A translator whose aim is purely scientific, to 
 render his original with perfect accuracy, will have 
 much more latitude, and no one can blame him for 
 taking it ; but then the public he must propose 
 
a 
 
 5 
 
 12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to himself is different. And a body of Bible-re- 
 visers, probably, acting by public authority, ought, 
 as I have already said, to take much more latitude, 
 and to correct the old version not only where it is 
 unintelligible, but also wherever they think it in 
 error. But my object is such that to retain as far 
 as possible the old text of the English Bible is very 
 desirable, nay, almost indispensable. I want to 
 enable the reader to apprehend, as a whole, a 
 literary work of the highest order. And the Book 
 of Isaiah, as it stands in our Bibles, is this in a 
 double way. By virtue of the original it is a monu- 
 ment of the Hebrew genius at its best, and by 
 virtue of the translation it is a monument of th 
 English language at its best. Some change mus 
 be made for clearness' sake, without which the 
 work cannot be apprehended as a whole ; but the 
 power of the English version must not be sacri- 
 ficed, must, if possible, be preserved intact. And 
 though every corrector says this, and pays his 
 compliment to the English version, yet few pro- 
 ceed to act upon the rule, or seem to know how 
 hard it is to act upon it when we alter at all, and 
 why it is hard. Let us try and make clear to 
 ourselves exactly what the difficulty is. 
 
 The English version has created certain senti- 
 ments in the reader's mind, and these sentiments 
 must not be disturbed, if the new version is to 
 have the power of the old. Surely this considera- 
 tion should rule the corrector in determining 
 whether or not he should put Jehovah where the 
 old version puts Lord. Mr. Cheyne, the recent 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 translator of Isaiah, one of that new band of 
 Oxford scholars who so well deserve to attract 
 our interest, because they have the idea, which the 
 older Oxford has had so far too little, of separated 
 and systematised studies, Mr. Cheyne's object is 
 simply scientific, to render the original with exact- 
 ness. But how the Four Friends, who evidently, 
 by their style of comment, mean their very in- 
 teresting and useful book, The Psalms Chronolo- 
 gically Arranged, for religious use, for habitual 
 readers of trie Psalms, and who even take, because 
 of this design, the Prayer-Book version as their 
 basis, how they can have permitted themselves 
 to substitute Jehovah for Lord passes one's com- 
 prehension. Probably because they were following 
 Ewald ; but his object is scientific. To obtain 
 general acceptance by English Christians, who, 
 that considers what the name in question repre- 
 sents to these, what the Psalms are to them, what 
 a place the expression The Lord fills in the 
 Psalms and in the English Bible generally, what 
 feelings and memories are entwined with it, and 
 what the force of sentiment is, who, that con- 
 siders all this, would allow himself, in a version 
 of the Psalms meant for popular use, to abandon 
 the established expression The Lord in order to 
 substitute for it Jehovah ? Jehovah is in any case 
 a bad substitute for it, because to the English 
 reader it does not carry its own meaning with it, 
 and has even, which is fatal, a mythological sound J 
 The Eternal, which one of the French versions uses, 
 is far preferable. The Eternal is in itself, no doubt, 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a better rendering of Jehovah than The Lord. In 
 disquisition and criticism, where it is important 
 to keep as near as we can to the exact sense of 
 words, The Eternal may be introduced with ad- 
 vantage ; and whoever has heard Jewish school- 
 children use it, as they do, in repeating the Com- 
 mandments in English, cannot but have been 
 struck and satisfied with the effect of the render- 
 ing. In his own private use of the Bible, any one 
 may, if he will, change The Lord into The Eternal.* 
 But at present, for the general reader of the Bible 
 or of extracts from it, The Lord is surely an ex- 
 pression consecrated. The meaning which it in 
 itself carries is a meaning not at variance with the 
 original name, even though it may be possible to 
 render this original name more adequately. But, 
 besides the contents which a term carries in itself, 
 we must consider the contents with which men, in 
 long and reverential use, have filled it ; and there- 
 fore we say that The Lord any literary corrector of 
 the English Bible does well at present to retain, 
 because of the sentiments this expression has 
 created in the English reader's mind, and has left 
 firmly fixed there. 
 
 It is in deference to these pre-established senti- 
 ments in the reader that we prefer, so long as the 
 sense is well preserved, foiVany famous passage of 
 our chapters which is cited in the New Testament, 
 the New Testament rendering, because this ren- 
 dering will be to the English reader the morej 
 familiar, and touches more chords. For instance, 
 in the 2nd verse of the 43rd chapter, He shall not 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 cry nor lift up is the Old Testament rendering. 
 He shall not clamour nor cry might in itself be 
 better ; but He shall not strive nor cry seems best 
 of all, because the New Testament has made it so 
 familiar. For the same reason, the change in the 
 first clause of the 53rd chapter * was originally made 
 with the utmost reluctance, and it has been now, 
 after re-consideration, abandoned. This is mentioned 
 to shew what deference I really feel to be due to 
 the pre-established sentiments above spoken of. 
 
 But perhaps there would not be much difficulty 
 if we had only to avoid rash change in these 
 marked cases. There is a far subtler difficulty 
 to be contended with. The English Bible is a j 
 tissue, a fabric woven in a certain style, and a style i 
 which is admirable. When the version was made, 
 this_style was in the air. Get a body of learned 
 divines, and set them down to translate, the right 
 meaning they might often have difficulty with, but 
 the right style was pretty well sure to come of 
 itself. This style is in the air no longer; thatv 
 makes the real difficulty of the learned divines 
 now at work in Westminster. And exactly in 
 what the style consists, and what will impair it, 
 and what sort of change can be brought into it, 
 and to what amount, without destroying it, no 
 learning can tell them ; they must trust to a kind v 
 of tact. Every one agrees that in correcting the 
 English Bible (we do not now speak of re-transla- 
 tion in an aim of scientific exactness) you must 
 
 1 In the first editions, ' Who believed what we heard ' was substi- 
 tuted for ' Who believed our report.' 
 
1 6 INTRO D UCTION. 
 
 not change its style. The question is, what kinds 
 of alteration do change its style? By two kinds 
 of alteration, it may be affirmed, you change its 
 style ; you- change it if you destroy the character y 
 of the diction, and you change it if you destroy 
 the balance of the rhythm. Either is enough ; and 
 one has only to state these two conditions to make 
 it clear how entirely the observance of them must 
 be a matter of tact, and cannot be ensured by any 
 external rules. It is often said that no word ought 
 to be used in correcting the English Bible which is 
 not there already. This is pedantry ; no word 
 must be used which does not suit the Bible-diction, 
 but plenty of words may suit it which do not 
 happen to be there already. And after all, what 
 have you gained, if you get a word which is ever 
 so much a Bible-word, and put it in so as to spoil 
 the rhythm? The style of the Bible is equally 
 changed, whether it is the character of its diction 
 that you destroy, or the balance of its rhythm. 
 
 Thus quite petty changes may have a great and 
 fatal effect ; the mass of a passage may be left 
 (and this is what a corrector generally understands 
 by shewing ' affectionate reverence for the Author- 
 ised Version '), and yet by altering a word or two 
 the Bible-style may be more changed than if the 
 passage had been half re-written. I name Bishop 
 Lowth with the highest respect. He, Vitringa, and 
 the Jewish commentator Aben-Ezra, are perhaps 
 the three men who, before the labours of the Ger- 
 mans in our own century, did most to help the study 
 of Isaiah. And what Lowth did was due mainly to 
 
INTRODUCTION. I/ 
 
 fine tact and judgment in things of poetry and ' 
 literature ; this enabled him to make his just and 
 fruitful remarks on the structure of the composition 
 of the Hebrew prophets, and on the literary cha- 
 racter of the whole Hebrew Scriptures. And he 
 could point out, in Sebastian Castellio's Latin 
 version, the fault of ; the loss of Hebrew simplicity, v 
 the affectation of Latin elegance,' and observe that 
 ' to this even the barbarism of the Vulgate is pre- 
 ferable.' And he saw the merit, both in diction 
 and in rhythm, of our authorised English version : 
 ' As to the style and language/ he says, * it admits 
 but of little improvement ;' all he proposed to 
 himself was to ' correct and perfect it/ But in 
 good truth style, such as the beginning of the 1 7th 
 century knew it, was at the end of the 1 8th century 
 no longer in the air. Else how could a man of 
 Lowth's sound critical principles and fine natural 
 tact have thought that he perfected 'Speak ye 
 comfortably to Jerusalem/ by making it ' Speak ye 
 animating words to Jerusalem ; ' or ' Taught him 
 knowledge] by substituting ' Impart to him science ; ' 
 or l Hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, 
 that dwellest carelessly, by ' Hear now this, O thou 
 voluptuous, that sittest in security ; ' or ' Yet did we 
 esteem him stricken? by ' Yet we thought him judi- 
 cially stricken ;' or ' When thou shalt make his 
 soul an offering for sin] by ' If his soul shall make 
 a propitiatory sacrifice ; ' or ' My salvation is near 
 to cornel by ' My salvation is near, just ready to 
 cornel Surely this is not to be called perfecting 
 but marring. 
 
 e 
 
1 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 So, too, Mr. Cheyne, who, scientific though his 
 object be, nevertheless talks of governing himself in 
 making changes, by 'the affectionate reverence 
 with which the Authorised Version is so justly re- 
 garded/ may be rendering his original with more 
 accuracy when he writes : ' He shall not fail nor be 
 discouraged till he have set religion in the earth, 
 and the sea-coasts wait for his doctrine.' But he 
 must not imagine that he is making a slight 
 change in the rhythm of ' He shall not fail nor 
 be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the 
 earth ; and the isles shall wait for his law ; ' for he 
 destroys the balance of the rhythm altogether. 
 He may or may not be expressing the prophet's 
 meaning in appropriate English, which he says 
 is his design, when he puts ' Who hath believed our 
 revelation' for 'Who hath believed our report,' or 
 ' He was tormented, but he suffered freely, and 
 opened not his mouth,' for ' He was oppressed, and 
 he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth ; ' but 
 he is not governing himself by 'the affectionate 
 reverence with which the Authorised Version is so 
 justly regarded,' for he is changing its effect totally. 
 And this, though there may be only a word or two 
 altered, or though the new and imported words 
 may be honest Bible-words like the old. 
 
 Hence we see how delicate is the matter we are 
 touching, when we take in hand the authorised 
 version to correct it. And as there is so much risk, 
 it seems the safest way, first indeed to be very 
 shy of correcting needlessly ; but then, if there is 
 need to correct, to keep if possible the cast of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 phraseology and the fall of sentence already given 
 by the old version, and to correct within the limits 
 of these, transgressing the limits of neither. For 
 instance : ' He was taken from prison and from 
 judgment, and who shall declare his generation ? 
 for he was cut off out of the land of the living ; for 
 the transgression of my people was he stricken.' 
 This needs correction, for it gives no clear sense ; 
 but it possesses a 'cast of phraseology and a fall of 
 sentence whicji^ are marked, which we all know 
 well and should be loatrTto lose. Mr. Cheyne 
 substitutes : ' From oppression and from judgment 
 was he taken, and as for his generation, who con- 
 sidered that he was cut off out of the land of the 
 living, for the transgression of my people he was 
 stricken.' This is hardly clearer, indeed, than the 
 old version ; still, the old version's cast of phrase- 
 ology is on the whole maintained, but what has 
 become of its fall *of sentence ? Surely it is better 
 to try and keep this too ; and if we say : ' He was 
 taken from prison and from judgment ; and who of 
 his generation regarded it, why he was cut off out 
 of the land of the living ? for the transgression of 
 my people was he stricken ! ' we do at least try to 
 keep it. It would be easy to translate the verse 
 more literally by changing its words and rhythm 
 more radically ; but what we should thus gain 
 in one way is less than what we should lose in 
 another. 
 
 However, the safest way, of course, is to abstain 
 from change ; and the trial of the corrector is in 
 deciding where to make change and where not. 
 c 2 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 For the public and authorised corrector the latitude 
 is greater, as I have said, than for an attempt like 
 mine. / will destroy and devour at once, in verse 14 
 of chapter 42, is clear and gives a tolerable sense, 
 so I have kept it ; but it can hardly be the sense 
 of the original (although this sense is not quite 
 certain), and public and authorised correctors 
 might do well to change it. But I doubt whether 
 any corrector should, merely for the sake of being 
 more exactly literal, change good words which 
 give the general sense of the original. For example, 
 in the second verse of the first chapter of our series, 
 * Her iniquity is pardoned* sufficiently conveys the 
 general sense; 'Her sin-offering is accepted' is more 
 exact, but there is no adequate reason for change. 
 But the next clause, ' She hath received at the Lord s 
 hand double for all her sins! is ambiguous. It may 
 mean, her punishments are twice as much as her 
 sins, or it may mean, her blessings are twice as 
 much as her punishments. It does mean the latter, 
 but the words would lend themselves to the former 
 meaning more readily. Lowth substitutes, ' She 
 shall receive at the hand of Jehovah blessings double 
 to the punishment of all her sins ; ' the right sense 
 is given, but the rhythm of the old version is gone. 
 Whereas the changing only one word would have 
 left the rhythm as it was, and yet have made the 
 meaning quite clear : ' She shall receive at the Loras 
 hand double for all her rue.' 
 
 Lowth .in this passage changes the tense of the 
 verb, and here too is a point where, it should be 
 noticed, great heed is requisite. Very often, in the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 Hebrew prophets and poets, the time is a kind 
 of indeterminate one, neither strictly present, past, 
 nor future. They speak of God's action; and the 
 time of God's action is the time of a general law, 
 which we can without impropriety make present, 
 past, or future, as we, will. So in Horace's famous 
 lines declaring how regularly punishment overtakes 
 the wicked : ' Raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit 
 pede pcena clando ; ' the verb here might almost 
 equally well, as far as the sense is concerned, be 
 deseruit, or deseret^ or deserit, hath abandoned, 
 shall abandon, or doth abandon. Very often, 
 where the time is of this kind, the form of the 
 Hebrew verb does not make it certain for us, as 
 in Latin, how we shall render. The authorised ver- 
 sion, having in view the nature, as popularly con- 
 ceived, of prophetical speech, always leans to the 
 future. Some modern translators uniformly lean 
 the other way ; but in all cases where the sense is 
 not certainly brought out better by one tense than 
 another, the corrector of the English Bible had 
 better, in my opinion, hold his hand ; for to change 
 the tense is, very often, to change the rhythm. In 
 the particular text of our prophet which we have 
 just been discussing, the authorised version has the 
 verb in the past tense : ' She hath received at the 
 Lord's hand double for all her sins.' Lowth 
 changes it to the future : ' She shall receive? The 
 present, however, is more vivid : 'She receiveth ;' for 
 this represents the compensation as actually taking 
 place and begun. But it is the future tense in the 
 authorised version which nine times out of ten raises 
 
22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the question of change. Take as an example : ' The 
 isles shall wait for his law ;' where I have rendered, 
 ' Far lands wait for his law.' For, surely, waiting 
 is already prospective enough without weakening it 
 by making it more prospective still ; so that here, 
 it seems to me, the meaning gains decidedly if we 
 change the tense to the present. But except where 
 there is a decided gain of this sort, I have let the 
 futures of the old version stand. 
 
 So, too, as to that often recurring expression, the 
 isles, the islands. This rendering is consecrated by 
 its long and universal use ; not only our Bibles 
 have it, but the Septuagint and the Vulgate have 
 it also, and Luther has it. And it is noble and 
 poetical. Coasts, strands, is more literal, and is the 
 rendering preferred by the modern German trans- 
 lators, and by Mr. Cheyne following them. But 
 where the coasts and isles of the Mediterranean 
 are alone intended, and no stress is meant to be 
 specially laid on their remoteness, isles, which is 
 more distinct and beautiful than coasts, seems pre- 
 ferable. Sometimes, however, remoteness is an im- 
 portant part of the idea, and then neither isles nor 
 coasts quite satisfies. This is so in the passage 
 quoted a little way back : * The isles shall wait for 
 his law.' The full meaning is not here brought out ; 
 nor does Mr. Cheyne bring it out any more by ' The 
 sea-coasts wait for his doctrine.' Lowth has : ' The 
 distant nations shall earnestly wait for his law ; ' 
 and this is undoubtedly the meaning, only distant 
 nations is prosaic, and breaks the character of the 
 Bible-style. Therefore, where remoteness seems a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 prominent part of the idea, I have used the ren- 
 dering far lands ; as here : ' Far lands wait for 
 his law.' But in general I have retained the well- 
 known isles. 
 
 And the same with those noble and conse- 
 crated expressions, judgment, righteousness ; I have 
 hardly ever meddled with them. To talk, indeed, 
 like Mr. Cheyne, of setting religion in the earth, 
 instead of setting judgment in the earth, seems to 
 me wanton ; but in our series of chapters there are 
 several places where saving health, salvation, un- 
 doubtedly renders the original more truly than the 
 righteousness of the English Bible. Here I have 
 hesitated, and there was considerable inducement 
 to change ; still, the notions of righteousness and of 
 the salvation belonging to righteousness do in our 
 prophet so run into one another, and the word 
 righteousness in the English Bible is so noble a 
 word in itself, and so weighty an element of 
 rhythm, that again and again, even after changing, 
 I have gone back to it. 
 
 In short, I have had a mpstUively sense qf-tije 
 risk one runs in touching a great national monu- 
 ment like the English Bible ; and how one is apt, 
 by changes which seem small, to mar and destroy 
 utterly. If I am asked why I could not wait for 
 the revision promised by Convocation, I answer 
 that several years, probably, will have yet to go 
 by before the revision comes, and even then it 
 will not give us what is wanted, this admirable 
 and self-contained portion of the Bible, detached 
 to stand as a great literary whole. But I will 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 add, too, that I think there is a danger with any 
 body of modern correctors of changing too much, 
 and of thinking that little things, especially, may 
 be freely changed without harm. And I am 
 conscious of an ' affectionate reverence ' for the 
 diction and rhythm of the English Bible, greater 
 even, perhaps, than that of many of the official 
 revisers, a reverence which, while for our purpose 
 some change in the text is needed, makes me eager, 
 notwithstanding, to preserve its total effect unim- 
 paired, and binds me, in this aim, to a moderation 
 in altering much more than commonly scrupulous. 
 After all, the total number of changes made is consi- 
 derable, for clearness required it ; but nothing would 
 be so gratifying to me as to find that a reader had 
 gone from the beginning of the chapters to the end 
 without noticing anything different from what he 
 was accustomed to, except that he was not per- 
 plexed and thrown out as formerly. No corrector 
 should wish to claim any property in the English 
 Bible. That work, and the glory of it, belongs 
 to the old translators, and theirs, even if their 
 work is amended, it should remain. Even their 
 punctuation one would gladly retain ; but this 
 one finds oneself more and more, the more one 
 deals with it, obliged in the interest of clearness 
 and effect to alter. 
 
 I must still add a word about the notes and 
 explanations. I have no design in the present 
 work to discuss, or even to raise, questions which 
 are in dispute between different schools of Biblical 
 interpreters. There ought to be nothing in the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 2$ 
 
 book which should hinder the adherent of any 
 school of Biblical interpretation or of religious 
 belief from using it. The authorship of ourC-" 
 series of chapters is a vexed question ; and un- 
 doubtedly I believe that the author of the earlier +s 
 part of the Book of Isaiah was not the author of 
 these last chapters. There is nothing to forbid a 
 member of the Church of England, or, for that 
 matter, a member of the Church of Rome either, or 
 a member of the Jewish Synagogue, from holding 
 such a belief; but it is not a belief which a work 
 like the present has to concern itself with. Our 
 work ought simply to place itself, in presenting the 
 last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, at the momentV 
 of history where the contents of them become 
 simplest, most actual, most striking. Now, this V >( 
 moment evidently is the moment of Cyrus's attack 
 on Babylon and contemplated restoration of the 
 Jews. This is the moment when to the Jewish nation 
 itself these chapters must undoubtedly have come 
 out with far more clearness and fulness than could 
 have been possible a hundred and fifty years earlier, 
 when the matters handled must have been mere pre-^ 
 dictions of unknown future events. The greatness 
 of Hebrew prophecy, or even its special character, 
 are not concerned here. In my belief the unique 
 grandeur of the Hebrew prophets consists, indeed, 
 not in the curious foretelling of details, but in the 
 unerring vision with which they saw, the unflinch- 
 ing boldness and sublime force with which they 
 said, that the great unrighteous kingdoms of the 
 heathen could not stand, and that the world's 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 salvation lay in a recourse to the God of Israel. 
 But, anyhow, the general prophecy that the great 
 unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen could not 
 stand was all that could in the time of Ahaz 
 fully effective : the full effect of a.11 the partirTifcra 
 in our twenty-seven chapters must have been re- 
 served for the time when these particulars began 
 visibly to explain themselves by being profited 
 and fulfilled. This every one must admit. Even 
 those who believe that the prophecy existed in 
 the reign of Ahaz, a century and a half before the 
 conquests of Cyrus, will allow that at the moment 
 of the conquests of Cyrus its significance would 
 brought out much more fully. And therefore we 
 desire to place the reader in the position of a Jew 
 reading the chapters at that critical moment, when 
 the wars and revolutions with which they deal had 
 a nearness, grandeur, and reality they could not 
 have before or afterwards. But any one is free to 
 suppose, if he likes, that these chapters, so apposite 
 and actual at that moment, were an old prediction 
 which had been in the possession of the Jews long 
 before. Whether this was so or not, whether it is 
 consistent with the true nature of Hebrew prophecy 
 that this should have been so, are questions into 
 which the present work does not enter, and ought 
 not to enter. 
 
 Some persons will say, probably, that the notes 
 and explanations confine themselves too much to 
 the local and temporary side of these prophecies ; 
 that the prophecies have two sides, a side towards 
 their nation and its history at the moment, and a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 2 7 
 
 side towards the future and all mankind ; and that 
 this second side is by much the more important. 
 I admit unreservedly that these prophecies have a " 
 scope far beyond their primary historical scope, 
 that they have a secondary, eternal scope, and that - 
 this scope is the more important. The__seco_ndary xi 
 
 /- 
 
 d chapter nf Tsaiah to Jesus 
 
 Christ, is much more important than its now 
 obscure primary historical application. To deny 
 this would, in my judgment, shew a very bad critic ; 
 but it would shew a very bad critic, also, to believe 
 that the historical and literary substratum in the 
 Bible is unimportant. Yet this belief is wide- 
 spread and genuine ; but I answer, and here is 
 the justification of works like the present, that 
 it is of very high importance ; that without this iX 
 historical and literary substructure the full religious 
 significance of the Bible can never build itself up 
 for our minds, and that those who most value the 
 Bible's religious significance ought most to regard 
 this substructure. Admirably true are these words 
 of Goethe, so constant a reader of the Bible that 
 his free-thinking friends reproached him for wast- 
 ing his time over it : 'I am convinced that the 
 Bible becomes even more beautiful the more one 
 understands it ; that is, the more one gets insight 
 to see that every word, which we 'take generally, 
 and make special application of to our own wants, 
 has had, in connexion with certain circumstances, 
 with certain relations of time and place, a parti- 
 cular, directly individual reference of its own.' 
 So that though our series of chapters, like the 
 
28 . INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Bible in general, contains more, much more, than 
 what our notes chiefly deal with, yet this too, 
 nevertheless, is of very high importance and leads 
 up to that more. Moreover, it has the advantage 
 of not offering ground for those religious disputes 
 to which a more extended interpretation of the 
 Bible often gives rise. What disputes it offers 
 ground for are of the sort which may arise out of 
 any historical and literary enquiry, and they are 
 the fewer the more the enquiry is conducted in an 
 unassuming and truly scientific manner ; when that 
 only is called certain which is really certain, and 
 that which is conjecture, however plausible, is 
 allowed to be but conjecture. It sets Bible-readers 
 against all historical and literary investigation of 
 the Bible, when novelties are violently and arro- 
 gantly imposed upon them without sufficient 
 grounds. No one who has been studying the 
 Book of Isaiah should close his studies without 
 paying homage to the German critics who in this 
 century have accomplished so much for that Book ; 
 and to two great names, perhaps, above all, 
 Gesenius and Ewald. Ewald, that ardent spirit, 
 whose death, the other day, may probably almost 
 stand as marking a date in the history of German 
 learning, and as closing a period, Ew^Jd exhibited 
 in a signal degree, over and above all his learning, 
 two natural gifts : the historical sense and the 
 .poetical sense ; the poetical sense, in my opinion, 
 in a yet higher degree than the historical. But for 
 both the literary and the historical investigation of \/ 
 the Bible he has done wonders ; yet perhaps no one 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 has done more to offend plain readers with such 
 investigation, by a harsh and splenetic dogmatism, 
 as unphilosophical as it is unpleasing. His great 
 fa.ultJs that he will insist on our taking as certainty-" 
 what is and must be but conjecture. He knows 
 just when .each chapter and portion of a chapter 
 was written, just where another prophet comes in 
 and where he leaves off; he knows it the more 
 confidently the more another critic has known 
 differently. But know in these cases he cannot, he tx 
 can but guess plausibly ; and sometimes his guess, 
 which he gives as certain, has much to discredit 
 even its plausibility. / Our series of chapters, for 
 instance, he insists we shall believe was written 
 in Egypt, not Babylon, because Persia is called 
 In it the north* and Persia is north to Egypt, not 
 to Babylon. How strange that it never occurred 
 to him, before thus making a certainty where there 
 can be none, that Persia is north to Zion ; and 
 that for the Jewish exile in Babylon, Zion, the, 
 centre of his thoughts, may well also have been the 
 centre of his geography ! / 
 
 "The more we are content to let our text speak 
 for itself, to try and follow its intentions and 
 elucidate them without imposing on it ours, the 
 better critics we shall be certainly, but also the 
 less risk we shall run of indisposing ordinary 
 readers to sane Biblical criticism, by rash changes, 
 or by assertions pressed too f^r There can hardly 
 be a more interesting enquiry than who the servant 
 of God, so often mentioned in our series of chapters, 
 really was. We all know the secondary application 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to Jesus Christ, often so striking ; but certainly 
 this was not the primary application. Who was 
 originally meant ? the purged idealised Israel ? or 
 a single prophet, the writer of the book? or the 
 whole body of prophets ? or the pious and persist- 
 ing part of the Jewish nation ? or the whole mass 
 of the Jewish nation ? It may safely be said that 
 all these are meant, sometimes the one of them, 
 sometimes the other ; and the best critic is he who 
 dpes not insist on being more precise than his text, 
 who follows his text with docility, allows it to have 
 its way in meaning sometimes one and sometimes 
 the other, and is intelligent to discern when it 
 means one and when the other. But a German 
 critic elects one out of these several meanings, and 
 will have the text decidedly mean that one and ho 
 other. He does not reflect, that in his author's owri-V 
 being all these characters were certainly blended : 
 the ideal Israel, his own personal individuality, the 
 character of representative of his order, the cha- 
 racter of representative of the pious and faithful 
 part of the nation, the character (who that knows 
 human nature can doubt it ?) of representative of 
 the sinful mass of the nation. How then, when the 
 prophet came to speak, could Gocfs servant fail to '-* 
 be all these by turns ? No doubt, the most im- 
 portant and beautiful of these characters is the 
 character of the ideal Israel, and Ewald has shewn 
 poetical feeling in seizing on it, and in eloquently 
 developing its significance. Gesenius, Ewald's 
 inferior in genius, but how superior in good temper 
 and freedom from jealousy and acrimony ! seizes in 
 
I NT ROD UCTION. 3 1 
 
 like manner on the character of representative of 
 the order of prophets. But both of them make the 
 object of their selection a hobby, and ride it too 
 hard ; and when they come to the perilous opening 
 of the 49th chapter, both of them permit them- 
 selves, in order to save their hobby, to tamper with 
 the text. These are the proceedings which give 
 rise to disputes, cause offence, make historical and 
 literary criticism of the Bible to be regarded with 
 suspicion. A faithful, simple, yet discriminative 
 following of one's author and his text might avoid 
 them all.x*' 
 
 I have been too long ; but the present attempt 
 is new, and needed explanation. One word of yet 
 more special explanation has still to be added. A 
 variety of interpretations of any passage is hardly 
 ever given ; one interpretation is adopted, and the 
 rest are left without notice. This is not because 
 I consider the interpretation to be in all cases 
 certain, but because the notes are written for those 
 who want not to occupy themselves with weighing 
 rival interpretations, but to get a clear view of the 
 whole. I make no apologetic phrases about the 
 faults of my own editing and annotating. It is not 
 that I am unconscious of their defectiveness ; but I 
 know that the work for which they in some sort 
 open a way is so important as far more than to 
 make up for it. 
 
 To_jnake a great work of soul pass into the, 
 general mind is not easy ; but our series of chapters 
 have one quality which facilitates this passage for 
 them, their boundless exhilaration. Much good 
 
32 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 poetry is profoundly melancholy; now, the life of 
 the generality of people is such that in literature 
 they require joy. And if ever that ' good time com- 
 ing,' for which we all of us long, was presented with 
 energy and magnificence, it is in these chapters ; it 
 is impossible to read them without catching its 
 glow. And they present it truly and with the true 
 conditions. It is easy to misconceive it on a first 
 view, easy to misconceive its apparent conditions ; 
 but the more these chapters sink into the mind and 
 are apprehended, the more manifest is their con- 
 nexion with universal history, the key they offer tov 
 it, the truth of the ideal they propose for it./ Many 
 of us have a kind of centre-point in the far past to 
 which we make things converge, from which our 
 thoughts of history instinctively start and to which 
 they return ; it may be the Persian War, or the 
 Peloponnesian War, or Alexander, or the Licinian 
 Laws, or Caesar. Our education is such that we 
 are strongly led to take this centre-point in the 
 history of Greece or Rome ; but it may be doubted 
 whether one who took the conquest of Babylon anoV 
 the restoration of the Jewish exiles would not have 
 a better. Whoever began with laying hold on this 
 series of chapters as a whole, would have a starting- 
 point and lights of unsurpassed value for getting aV 
 conception of the course of man's history and 
 development as a whole. If but for a certain 
 number of readers this could happen, what access 
 would they thus gain to a new life, unknown to 
 them hitherto ! what an extending of their horizons, 
 what a lifting them out of the present, what a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 suggestion of hope and courage ! * It is a stingy 
 selfishness,' says Barrow, ' which maketh us so 
 sensible of crosses and so uncapable of comfort.' 
 There are numbers whose crosses are so many and 
 comforts so few that to the misery of narrow 
 thoughts they seem almost driven and bound ; 
 what a blessing is whatever extricates them and 
 makes them live with the life of the race jx / Uur acts 
 are, it is most true, infinitely more important than 
 our thoughts and studies ; but the bearing which 
 thoughts and^studies may have upori~our^acjEFis_ 
 not enough considered. And the power of anima- 
 tion and consolation in those thoughts and studies, 
 which, beginning by giving us a hold upon a single 
 great work, end with giving us a hold upon the 
 history of the human spirit, and the course, drift, and 
 scope, of the career of our race as a whole, cannot 
 be over-estimated. Not pathetic only, but profound 
 also, and of the most solid substance, was that 
 reply made by an old Carthusian monk to the 
 trifler who asked him how he had managed to 
 get through his life : ' Cogitavi dies antiques, et 
 annos ceternos in mente habui^? / 
 
 1 Psalm Ixxvii. 5 (in the Vulgate, Ixxvi, 6). 
 
 I) 
 
'HE 
 
 THE GREAT PROPHECY OF 
 ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 
 
 [IN the year 722 B.C. the kingdom of Israel fell; its 
 capital, Samaria, was taken by Shalmaneser, king of 
 Assyria, and its ten tribes were carried away into Assyria. 
 Of the chosen people in the Holy Land, therefore, ' there 
 was none left but the tribe of Judah only/ The great 
 eastern empire of Assyria was then at its height of power ; 
 Media, Persia, and Babylon were subject to it, and it was 
 hoping to conquer Egypt, with which Hoshea, the last 
 king of Israel, had made an alliance. The kingdom of 
 'Judah, also, leaned towards Egypt; for Judah, though it 
 survived, was tributary to Assyria, and hoped by help of 
 Egypt to break the Assyrian power. Eight years after 
 the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, Hezekiah, the 
 king of Judah, refused to pay his tribute "any longer : 
 the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, invaded Egypt and 
 Palestine, but without success, and his army which ap- 
 peared before Jerusalem was, according to the Jewish 
 accounts, destroyed. At this time Babylon threw off the 
 yoke of Assyria and sent an embassy to gain the friend- 
 ship of Hezekiah; Media also made itself independent. 
 Sennacherib regained his hold upon Babylon, but the 
 D 2 
 
36" THE GREAT PROPHECY. 
 
 end of Assyria's greatness was drawing nigh. She again 
 lost Babylon; and in the year 625 B.C. the king of Baby- 
 lon, in conjunction with the king of Media, took Nineveh 
 and destroyed for ever the Assyrian empire. The king- 
 dom of Media with Persia, on the one hand, and the 
 kingdom of Babylon, on the other, were Assyria's heirs 
 and successors. Judah, after the death of Hezekiah, had 
 no returning gleam of political "prosperity. In 588 B.C., 
 thirty-seven years after the fall of the kingdom of Assyria, 
 arid a hundred and thirty-four years after the fall of the 
 kingdom of Israel, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon 
 made a final invasion"!)? Jud~al^_took_ Jerusalem, and 
 carried away the king and the chief part of the people to 
 Babylon. But Nebuchadnezzar's brilliant reign founded 
 no enduring power for Babylon. His successors became 
 engaged in war with the Medo-Persian kingdom; and 
 it was this kingdom which was to grow and succeed. 
 Under Cyrus the Persian its fortunes prevailed. In 
 548 B.C., forty years after the fall of Jerusalem, Cyrus con- 
 ~que?ed the wealthy Lydian monarchy of Croesus, and 
 the Greek cities on the western coast of Asia Minor; 
 then, in ,the year 41 B.C., he turned upon Babylon,' 
 defended by its walls and waters. Against their enslaver 
 and oppressor the Jewish exiles in Babylon saw uplifted 
 the irresistible sword of God's instrument, this Persian 
 prince, to whose religion the Babylonian idolatry was 
 hateful ; a victorious warrior, a wise and just statesman, 
 favourable to Babylon's prisoners and victims, and dis- 
 posed to restore the exiles of Judah to their own land. 
 Assyria had fallen, Babylon was now falling ; and in this 
 supreme hour is heard the voice of God's prophets, com- 
 manded to comfort God's people, as follows : ] 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 37 
 
 (Isaiah 40-66.) 
 
 40 COMFORT ye, comfort ye my people, saith your 
 God. 
 
 2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry 
 unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that 
 her iniquity is pardoned ; that she receiveth of 
 the LORD'S hand double for all her rue. 
 
 3 A VOICE of one that crieth ! In the wilderness 
 prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight 
 in the desert a highway for our God. 
 
 4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every moun- 
 tain and hill shall be made low ; and the crooked 
 shall be made straight, and the rough places plain ; 
 
 5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, 
 and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth 
 of the LORD hath spoken it. 
 
 6 A voice said, Cry! And he said, What shall 
 I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness 
 thereof is as the flower of the field: 
 
 7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because 
 the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it : surely the 
 people is grass. 
 
 8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth ; but the 
 word of our God shall stand for ever. 
 
38 THE GRE'AT PROPHECY 
 
 9 O THOU that bringest good tidings to Zion, get 
 thee up into the high mountain ; O thou that 
 bringest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy 
 voice with strength ; lift it up, be not afraid ; say 
 unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God ! 
 
 10 Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong 
 hand, and his arm shall rule for him : behold, his 
 reward is with him, and his recompence before him. 
 
 1 1 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd : he shall 
 gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in 
 his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are 
 with young. * 
 
 12 Who hath measured the waters in the hollow 
 of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, 
 and comprehended the dust of the earth in a mea- 
 sure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the 
 hills in a balance ? 
 
 13 Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or 
 being his counsellor hath taught him ? 
 
 14 With whom took he counsel, and who instructed 
 him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and 
 taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way 
 of understanding ? 
 
 15 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, 
 and are counted as the small dust of the balance : 
 behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little 
 thing ! 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 39 
 
 1 6 And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the 
 beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. 
 
 17 All nations before him are as nothing ; and they 
 are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. 
 
 1 8 To whom then will ye liken God ? or what like- 
 ness will ye compare unto him ? 
 
 19 The workman melteth an image, and the gold- 
 smith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth 
 silver chains. 
 
 20 He that is too poor for oblation chooseth a tree 
 that will not rot ; he seeketh unto him a cunning 
 workman to prepare an image, that shall not be 
 moved. 
 
 21 Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath 
 it not been told you from the beginning ? have ye 
 not understood from the foundations of the earth ? 
 
 22 He that sitteth above the circle of the earth, 
 and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers? 
 that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and 
 spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in ? 
 
 23 That bringeth the princes to nothing? he maketh 
 the judges of the earth as vanity. 
 
 24 Yea, scarce shall they be planted, yea, scarce 
 shall they be sown, yea, scarce shall their stock 
 take root in the earth ; and he shall blow upon 
 them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind 
 shall take them away as stubble. 
 
40 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 25 To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be 
 equal? saith the Holy One. 
 
 26 Lift up your eyes unto the heavens, and behold ! 
 who hath created these things? he bringeth out 
 their host by number, he calleth them all by 
 names ; by the greatness of his might, for that 
 he is strong in power, not one faileth. 
 
 27 Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speak est, O 
 Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my 
 judgment is passed over from my God ? 
 
 28 Hast thou not known ? hast thou not heard, 
 that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator 
 of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is 
 weary ? there is no searching of his understanding. 
 
 29 He giveth power to the faint, and to them that 
 have no might he increaseth strength. 
 
 30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and 
 the young men shall utterly stumble ; 
 
 31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew 
 their strength ; they shall mount up with wings 
 as eagles ; they shall run, and not be weary ; and 
 they shall walk, and not faint. 
 
 41 KEEP silence before me, O islands, and let the 
 nations renew their strength ! let them come near, 
 then let them speak ; let us come near together 
 to judgment. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 41 
 
 2 Who raised up from the east the man with 
 whom goeth victory, gave the nations before him, 
 and made him rule over kings? he gave them as 
 the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to 
 his bow. 
 
 3 He pursued them, and passed safely, even by the 
 way that he had not gone with his feet. 
 
 4 Who hath wrought and done it? even he that 
 called forth the generations from the beginning : 
 I the LORD, the first, and to the last I am he. 
 
 5 Far lands saw it, and feared ; the ends of the 
 earth were afraid, draw near, and come. 
 
 6 They help every one his neighbour, and every 
 one saith to his brother, Be of good courage. 
 
 7 So the carpenter encourageth the goldsmith, and 
 he that smootheth with the hammer him that 
 smiteth the anvil, saying of the solder, It is good : 
 and he fasteneth it with nails, that it should not 
 be moved. 
 
 8 But thou, Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have 
 chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend ; 
 
 9 Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the 
 earth, and called thee from the extreme borders 
 thereof, and said unto thee : Thou art my servant, 
 I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away ; 
 
 10 Fear thou not, for I am with thee ! be not dis- 
 mayed, for I am thy God ! I will strengthen thee, 
 
42 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with 
 the right v hand of my righteousness. 
 
 11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee 
 shall be ashamed and confounded ! they shall be 
 as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall 
 perish. 
 
 12 Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, 
 even them that contended with thee; they that 
 war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a 
 thing of nought. 
 
 13 For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right 
 hand, saying unto thee, Fear not ; I help thee ! 
 
 14 Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and thou handful 
 Israel! I help thee, saith the LORD, and thy 
 redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. 
 
 15 Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing 
 instrument having teeth : thou shalt thresh the 
 mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make 
 the hills as chaff. 
 
 1 6 Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry 
 them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them ; 
 but thou shalt rejoice in the LORD, and shalt glory 
 in the Holy One of Israel. 
 
 17 When the poor and needy seek water, and there 
 is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the 
 LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not 
 forsake them. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 43 
 
 1 8 I will open rivers on high places, and fountains 
 in the midst of the valleys : I will make the wil- 
 derness a pool of water, and the dry land springs 
 of water. 
 
 19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the 
 acacia tree, and the myrtle, and the olive tree; 
 I will set in the desert the cypress tree, and the 
 pine, and the box tree together : 
 
 20 That they may see, and know, and consider, and 
 understand together, that the hand of the LORD 
 hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath 
 created it. 
 
 21 PRODUCE your cause, saith the LORD; bring 
 forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 
 
 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what 
 shall happen : let them shew the former things, 
 what they be, that we may consider them, and 
 know the latter end of them ; or declare us things 
 for to come. 
 
 23 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that 
 we may know that ye are gods ! yea, do good, or 
 do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it 
 together ! 
 
 24 Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of 
 nought : an abomination is he that chooseth 
 you. 
 
44 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 25 I have raised up one from the north, and he 
 shall come : from the rising of the sun, that he 
 should call upon my name : and he shall come 
 upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter 
 treadeth clay. 
 
 26 Who hath declared from the beginning, that we 
 may know? and beforetime, that we may say, It 
 is right ! yea, there is none that sheweth, yea, there 
 is none that declareth, yea, there is none that hath 
 heard your words. 
 
 27 I the first said to Zion, Behold, behold it ! and 
 I gave to Jerusalem one that bringeth good 
 tidings. 
 
 28 I look, and there is no one ; even among them, 
 and there is no counsellor, that, when I should ask 
 of them, could answer a word. 
 
 29 Behold, they are all vanity! their works are 
 nothing: their molten images are wind and con- 
 fusion. 
 
 42 BEHOLD my servant, whom I uphold, mine 
 elect, in whom my soul delighteth ! I have put 
 my spirit upon him : he shall declare judgment to 
 the Gentiles. 
 
 2 He shall not strive, nor cry, nor cause his voice 
 to be heard in the street. 
 
 3 A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 45 
 
 flax shall he not quench : he shall declare judg- 
 ment with truth. 
 
 4 He shall not fail nor be discouraged, until he set 
 judgment in the earth : far lands wait for his law. 
 
 5 Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the 
 heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread 
 forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it ; 
 he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and 
 spirit to them that walk therein : 
 
 6 I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, 
 and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and 
 give thee for a mediator of the people, for a 
 light of the Gentiles ; 
 
 7 To open the blind eyes, to bring out the 
 prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in 
 darkness out of the prison house ; 
 
 8 I the LORD : that is my name ! and my glory 
 will I not give to another, neither my praise to 
 graven images. 
 
 9 Behold, the former things are come to pass, and 
 new things do I declare : before they spring forth 
 I tell you of them. 
 
 IQ SING unto the LORD a new song, and his praise 
 from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the 
 sea and all that is therein ; the isles, and the in- 
 habitants thereof! 
 
4<5 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 1 1 Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up 
 their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit : 
 let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout 
 from the top of the mountains. 
 
 12 Let them give glory unto the LORD, and declare 
 his praise in the islands. 
 
 13 The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he 
 shall stir up his zeal like a man of war : he shall 
 cry, yea, roar: he shall behave himself mightily 
 against his enemies. 
 
 14 I have long time holden my peace ; I have been 
 still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like 
 a travailing woman ; I will destroy and devour at 
 once. 
 
 15 I will make waste mountains and hills, and 
 parch up all their herbs ; and I will make the 
 rivers dry land, and I will dry up the pools. 
 
 1 6 And I will bring the blind by a way that they 
 knew not, I will lead them in paths that they 
 have not known : I will make darkness light 
 before them, and crooked things straight. These 
 things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. 
 
 17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly 
 ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to 
 the molten images, Ye are our gods. 
 
 18 Hear, ye deaf! and look, ye blind, that ye may 
 see! 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 47 
 
 j 
 
 19 Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my 
 messenger that I would send? who is blind as 
 God's liegeman, and blind as the LORD'S servant ? 
 
 20 Seeing many things, but thou observest not ; 
 having the ears open, but he heareth not. 
 
 2 1 The LORD was pleased to do it for his righteous- 
 ness' sake ; to magnify the law, and to make it 
 honourable. 
 
 22 But this is a people robbed and spoiled ; they 
 are all of them snared in dungeons, and they are 
 hid in prison houses : they are for a prey, and 
 none delivereth ; for a spoil, and none saith, Re- 
 store. 
 
 23 Who among you will give ear to this? who will 
 hearken and hear concerning the fore time ? 
 
 24 Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the 
 robbers? did not the LORD, he against whom we 
 have sinned ? for they would not walk in his ways, 
 neither were they obedient unto his law. 
 
 25 Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of 
 his anger, and the strength of battle ; and it hath 
 set him on fire round about, yet he knew not, and 
 it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart. 
 
 43 But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, 
 O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel ! Fear 
 not, for I have redeemed thee ; I have called thee 
 by thy name, thou art mine ! 
 
48 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 2 When thou passest through the waters, I will be 
 with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not 
 overflow thee : when thou walkest through the fire, 
 thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame 
 kindle upon thee. 
 
 3 For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of 
 Israel, thy Saviour : I give Egypt for thy ransom, 
 Ethiopia and Saba for thee. 
 
 4 Because thou art precious in my sight, honour- 
 able, and I have loved thee, therefore will I give 
 men for thee, and people for thy life. 
 
 5 Fear not, for I am with thee ! I will bring thy 
 seed from the east, and gather thee from the west ; 
 
 6 I will say to the north, Give up ! and to the 
 south, Keep not back! bring my sons from far, 
 and my daughters from the ends of the earth ; 
 
 7 Even every one that is called by my name : for 
 I have created him for my glory, I have formed 
 him, yea, I have made him. 
 
 8 Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and 
 the deaf that have ears ! 
 
 9 Let all the nations be gathered together, and let 
 the Gentiles be assembled : who among them can 
 declare this ? Or let them shew us former things ! 
 let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may 
 be justified ! let one hear, and say, It is truth ! 
 
 10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 49 
 
 servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know 
 and believe me, and understand that I am he : 
 before me there was no God formed, neither shall 
 there be after me. 
 
 1 1 I, even I, am the LORD, and beside me there is 
 no saviour. 
 
 12 I have declared, and have saved, and I have 
 shewed, and it was no strange god that was among 
 you : therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the 
 LORD, that I am God. 
 
 1 3 Yea, before the day was, I am he, and there is 
 none that can take away out of my hand : I will 
 work, and who shall let it ? 
 
 14 Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy 
 One of Israel : For your sake I have sent to 
 Babylon, and do make them all to flee away, and 
 the Chaldeans upon the ships of their pleasure ; 
 
 15 I the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of 
 Israel, your King. 
 
 1 6 Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in 
 the sea, and a path in the mighty waters ; 
 
 17 Which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the 
 army and the power : (they shall lie down together, 
 they shall not rise ; they are extinct, they are 
 quenched as tow.) 
 
 1 8 Remember not the former things, neither con- 
 sider the things of old ! 
 
50 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 19 Behold, I do a new thing! now it shall spring 
 forth ! shall ye not know it ? I will even make a 
 way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. 
 
 20 The beast of the field shall honour me, the 
 jackals and the ostriches : because I give waters in 
 the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give 
 drink to my people, my chosen, 
 
 21 This people that I formed for myself; they shall 
 shew forth my praise. 
 
 22 BUT THOU hast not called upon me, O Jacob ! 
 but thou hast been careless of me, O Israel ! 
 
 23 Thou hast not brought me the lambs of thy 
 burnt offering, neither hast thou honoured me with 
 thy sacrifices : I have not burdened thee with an 
 offering, nor wearied thee with incense. 
 
 24 Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, 
 neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy 
 sacrifices : but thou hast burdened me with thy 
 sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities. 
 
 25 I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy trans- 
 gressions for mine own sake, and will not remember 
 thy sins. 
 
 26 Put me in remembrance, let us plead together ! 
 declare thou, that thou mayest be justified ! 
 
 27 Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers 
 have transgressed against me. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 51 
 
 28 Therefore I have profaned the princes of the 
 sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse, and 
 Israel to reproaches. 
 
 44 Yet now hear, O Jacob, my servant, and Israel, 
 whom I have chosen ! 
 
 2 Thus saith the LORD that made thee, and formed 
 thee from the womb, which will help thee : Fear 
 not, O Jacob, my servant ; and thou, Jeshurun, 
 whom I have chosen ! 
 
 3 For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, 
 and floods upon the dry ground : I will pour my 
 spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine 
 offspring : 
 
 4 And they shall spring up as the grass amidst 
 water, as willows by the water courses. 
 
 5 One shall say, I am the LORD'S, and another 
 shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and 
 another shall subscribe with his hand unto the 
 LORD, and surname himself by the name of Israel. 
 
 6 THUS saith the LORD the king of Israel, and his 
 redeemer the LORD of hosts : I am the first, and I 
 am the last ; and beside me there is no God. 
 
 7 And who, as I, hath foretold, (let him declare it, 
 and set it in order for me !) since I appointed the 
 ancient people? and the things that are coming, 
 and shall come, let them shew ! 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 8 Fear ye not, neither be afraid! have not I 
 told thee from aforetime, and have de'clared it? 
 ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God 
 beside me ? yea, there is no God ; I know not 
 any. 
 
 9 They that make a graven image are all of them 
 vanity, and their delectable things shall not profit ; 
 and they are their own witnesses ; they see not, nor 
 know, that they may be ashamed. 
 
 10 Who hath formed a god, or molten an image 
 that is profitable for nothing ? 
 
 1 1 Behold, all his fellows shall be ashamed, and the 
 workmen, that are but men. Let them all be 
 gathered together, let them stand up ; they shall 
 fear, they shall be ashamed together. 
 
 12 The smith with the tongs both worketh in the 
 coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh 
 it with the strength of his arms : yea, he is hungry, 
 and his strength faileth : he drinketh no water, and 
 is faint. 
 
 1 3 The carpenter stretcheth out his rule ; he 
 marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with 
 planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, 
 and maketh it after the figure of a man, according 
 to the beauty of a man ; that it may remain in the 
 house. 
 
 14 He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 53 
 
 cypress and the oak : he chooseth for himself 
 among the trees of the forest: he planteth an 
 ash, and the rain doth nourish it. 
 
 1 5 Then shall it be for a man to burn, for he will 
 take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth 
 it, and baketh bread ; yea, he maketh a god, and 
 worshippeth it ; he maketh it a graven image, and 
 falleth down thereto. 
 
 1 6 He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part 
 thereof he eateth flesh ; he roasteth roast, and is 
 satisfied : yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, 
 I am warm, I have seen the fire ! 
 
 17 And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even 
 his graven image : he falleth down unto it, and 
 worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith : 
 Deliver me, for thou art my god ! 
 
 1 8 They have not known nor understood ; for he 
 hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see, and 
 their hearts, that they cannot understand. 
 
 19 And none considereth in his heart, neither is 
 there knowledge nor understanding to say : I have 
 burned part of it in the fire, yea, also I have baked 
 bread upon the coals thereof, I have roasted flesh, 
 and eaten it ; and shall I make the residue thereof 
 an abomination ? shall I fall down to the stock of 
 a tree?- 
 
 20 He feedeth on ashes : a deceived heart hath 
 
54 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, 
 nor say : Is there not a lie in my right hand ? 
 
 21 Remember this, O Jacob and Israel, for thou art 
 my servant ! I have formed thee, thou art my 
 servant : O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten 
 of me! 
 
 22 I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy trans- 
 gressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins : return unto 
 me, for I have redeemed thee. 
 
 23 SING, O ye heavens, for the LORD hath done 
 it : shout, ye foundations of the earth : break forth 
 into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every 
 tree therein ! for the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, 
 and glorified himself in Israel. 
 
 24 Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that 
 formed thee from the womb, I the LORD that 
 maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens 
 alone, that spread^th abroad the earth by myself ; 
 
 25 That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and 
 maketh diviners mad ; that turneth wise men 
 backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish ; 
 
 26 That confirmeth his word to his servant, and 
 performeth his counsel toward his messengers ; 
 that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited ! 
 and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and 
 I will raise up the decayed places thereof! 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 55 
 
 27 That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry 
 up thy rivers! 
 
 28 That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and 
 shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to 
 Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, 
 Thy foundation shall be laid ! 
 
 45 Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, 
 whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations 
 before him ; and I will ungird the loins of kings, to 
 open before him the two leaved gates, and the 
 gates shall not be shut ; 
 
 2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked 
 places straight : I will break in pieces the gates 
 of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron : 
 
 3 And I will give thee the treasures hid in dark- 
 ness, and concealed riches of secret places, that 
 thou mayest know that I am the LORD which call 
 thee by thy name, the God of Israel. 
 
 4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine 
 elect, I have even called thee by thy name : I have 
 surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. 
 
 5 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is 
 no God beside me : I girded thee, though thou 
 hast not known me : 
 
 6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, 
 and from the west, that there is none beside me : I 
 am the LORD, and there is none else. 
 
56 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 7 I form the light, and create darkness : I make 
 peace, and create evil : I the LORD do all these 
 things. 
 
 8 Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the 
 skies pour down righteousness ! let the earth open, 
 and bring forth salvation, and let righteousness 
 spring up together ! I the LORD have created it. 
 
 9 Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! 
 Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the 
 earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth 
 it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no 
 hands ? 
 
 10 Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What 
 begettest thou ? or to his mother, What hast thou 
 brought forth ? 
 
 n Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel 
 and his Maker: Ask ye me of things to come 
 concerning my sons? and concerning the work of 
 my hands command ye me ? 
 
 1 2 I have made the earth, and created man upon it : 
 I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, 
 and all their host have I commanded. 
 
 13 I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will 
 direct all his ways : he shall build my city, and he 
 shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, 
 saith the LORD of hosts. 
 
 14 Thus saith the LORD : The labour of Egypt, and 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 57 
 
 merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men 
 of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they 
 shall be thine : they shall come after thee ; in 
 chains they shall come over, and they shall fall 
 down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto 
 thee, saying : Surely God is in thee, and there is 
 none else, there is no God ! 
 
 15 Verily thou art a God whose way is hidden, 
 O God of Israel, the Saviour! 
 
 1 6 They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, 
 all of them ; they shall go to confusion together, 
 that are makers of idols. 
 
 17 But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with 
 an everlasting salvation ; ye shall not be ashamed 
 nor confounded, world without end. 
 
 1 8 For thus saith the LORD that created the 
 heavens, God himself that formed the earth and 
 made it ; he hath established it, he created it 
 not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited ; I the 
 LORD, and there is none else : 
 
 19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place 
 of the earth : I said not unto the seed of Jacob, 
 Seek ye me in vain ! I the LORD speak up- 
 rightly, I declare things that are right. 
 
 20 Assemble yourselves and come, draw near to- 
 gether, ye that are escaped of the nations! they 
 have no knowledge that set up the wood of 
 
58 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 their graven image, and pray unto a god that 
 cannot save. 
 
 21 Tell ye, and bring them near, yea, let them 
 take counsel together! who hath declared this 
 from ancient time? who hath told it from that 
 time? have not I the LORD? and there is no 
 God else beside me ; a just God and a Saviour ; 
 there is none beside me. 
 
 22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends 
 of the earth! for I am God, and there is none 
 else. 
 
 23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out 
 of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not 
 return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every 
 tongue shall swear. 
 
 24 Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I 
 righteousness and strength ! Even to him shall 
 men come, and all that are incensed against him 
 shall be ashamed. 
 
 25 In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be 
 justified, and shall glory. 
 
 46 BEL boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols 
 
 are upon the beasts, and upon the cattle : they 
 
 are borne that ye carried ; they are a burden to 
 
 the weary beast. 
 
 2 They stoop, they bow down together ; they 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 59 
 
 cannot deliver the burden, but themselves are 
 gone into captivity. 
 
 3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all 
 the remnant of the house of Israel, which are 
 borne by me from the birth, which are carried 
 from the womb! 
 
 4 And even to your old age I am he, and even 
 to hoar hairs will I carry you : I have made, and 
 I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver 
 you. 
 
 5 To whom will ye liken me, and make me 
 equal, and compare me, that we may be 
 like? 
 
 6 They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh 
 silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith, and 
 he maketh it a god : they fall down, yea, they 
 worship. 
 
 7 They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry 
 him, and set him in his place, and he standeth ; 
 from his place shall he not remove : yea, one 
 shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor 
 save him out of his trouble. 
 
 8 Remember this, and shew yourselves men! 
 bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors ! 
 
 9 Remember the former things of old : for I am 
 God, and there is none else ; I am God, and 
 there is none like me ; 
 
60 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and 
 from ancient times the things that are not yet 
 done, saying : My counsel shall stand, and I will 
 do all my pleasure. 
 
 11 Calling the eagle from the east, the man that 
 executeth my counsel from a far country : yea, 
 I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass ; I 
 have purposed it, I will also do it. 
 
 12 Hearken unto me, ye obdurate, that are far 
 from righteousness! 
 
 13 I bring near my righteousness : it shall not be 
 far off, and my salvation shall not tarry : and 
 I will give salvation to Zion ; to Israel, my 
 glory. 
 
 47 COME down, and sit in the dust, O virgin 
 daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground ! there 
 is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! for 
 thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. 
 
 2 Take the millstones, and grind meal! uncover 
 thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, 
 pass over the rivers ! 
 
 3 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy 
 shame shall be seen : I will take vengeance, and 
 I will be entreated of for thee by no man. 
 
 4 As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his 
 name, the Holy One of Israel. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 61 
 
 / 
 
 5 Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O 
 daughter of the Chaldeans ! for thou shalt no 
 more be called, The lady of kingdoms. 
 
 6 I was wroth with my people, I polluted mine 
 inheritance, and gave them into thine hand : thou 
 didst shew them no mercy ; upon the ancient 
 hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke. 
 
 7 And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever ! 
 so that thou didst not lay these things to thy 
 heart, neither didst remember the latter end 
 of it. 
 
 8 Therefore hear now this, thou that art given 
 to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest 
 in thine heart : I am, and none else beside me ; 
 I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know 
 the loss of children. 
 
 9 But these two things shall come to thee in a 
 moment in one day, the loss of children, and 
 widowhood : they shall come upon thee in their 
 perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, 
 and for the great abundance of thine enchant- 
 ments. 
 
 10 For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, thou 
 hast said, None seeth me ! Thy wisdom and 
 thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee ; and thou 
 hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else be- 
 side me. 
 
62 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 1 1 Therefore shall evil come upon thee, thou shalt 
 not know from whence it riseth ; and mischief 
 shall fall upon thee, thou shalt not be able to 
 put it off; and desolation shall come upon thee 
 suddenly, which thou shalt not know. 
 
 12 Stand now with thine enchantments, and with 
 the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast 
 laboured from thy youth! if so be thou shalt 
 be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. 
 
 13 Thou art weaned in the multitude of thy coun- 
 sels ! Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, 
 the prognosticators by the new moon, stand up, 
 and save thee from these things that shall come 
 upon thee. 
 
 14 Behold, they shall be as stubble! the fire shall 
 burn them, they shall not deliver themselves 
 from the power of the flame ! it shall not be a 
 coal to warm at, nor a fire for a man to sit be- 
 fore it. 
 
 15 Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou 
 hast laboured, even they with whom thou hast 
 dealt from thy youth : they shall wander every 
 one to his quarter ; none shall save thee. 
 
 48 HEAR ye this, O house of Jacob, which are 
 called by the name of Israel, and are come forth 
 out of the fountain of Judah ! which swear by 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 63 
 
 the name of the LORD, and make mention of 
 the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in right- 
 eousness ! 
 
 2 For they call themselves of the holy city, and 
 stay themselves upon the God of Israel ; the 
 LORD of hosts is his name. 
 
 3 I have declared the former things from the 
 beginning, and they went forth out of my mouth, 
 and I shewed them ; I did them suddenly, and 
 they came to pass. 
 
 4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and 
 thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass, 
 
 5 I have even from the beginning declared it to 
 thee : before it came to pass I shewed it thee : 
 lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, 
 and my graven image, and my molten image, 
 hath commanded them. 
 
 6 Thou hast heard see all this ! and will not 
 ye declare it? I shew thee new things from this 
 time, even hidden things, and thou didst not 
 know them. 
 
 7 They are created now, and not in the former 
 time; even before this day thou heardest them 
 not ; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew 
 them. 
 
 8 Yea, thou heardest not, yea, thou knewest not, 
 yea, beforehand thine ear was not opened ; for I 
 
64 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, 
 and wast called a transgressor from the womb. 
 9 For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, 
 and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I 
 cut thee not off. 
 
 10 Behold, I have refined thee, but not gotten 
 therefrom silver ; I have tried thee in the furnace 
 of affliction. 
 
 11 For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, 
 will I do it : for how should my name be pol- 
 luted? and I will not give my glory unto an- 
 other. 
 
 12 Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my 
 called ! I am he ; I am the first, I also am the 
 last. 
 
 13 Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of 
 the earth, and my right hand hath spread out 
 the heavens : when I call unto them, they stand 
 forth together. 
 
 14 All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear : which 
 among them hath declared these things? The 
 man whom the LORD loveth will do his pleasure 
 on Babylon, and his chastisement on the Chal- 
 deans. 
 
 15 I, even I, have spoken ; yea, I have called 
 him : I have brought him, and he shall make 
 his way prosperous. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. . 65 
 
 1 6 Come ye near unto me, hear ye this : I have 
 not spoken in secret from the beginning; from 
 the time that it was, there am I. (And now the 
 Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.) 
 
 17 Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy 
 One of Israel : I am the LORD thy God which 
 teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by 
 the way that thou shouldest go. 
 
 1 8 O that thou hadst hearkened to my command- 
 ments ! then had thy peace been as a river, and 
 thy righteousness as the waves of the sea : 
 
 19 Thy seed also had been as the sand, and the 
 offspring of thy bowels like the grains thereof; 
 his name should not have been cut off nor de- 
 stroyed from before me. 
 
 20 Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the 
 Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, 
 tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth ! 
 say ye : The LORD hath redeemed his servant 
 Jacob, 
 
 21 And they thirsted not when he led them 
 through the deserts ; he caused the waters to flow 
 out of the rock for them ; he clave the rock also, 
 and the waters gushed out. 
 
 22 No peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked ! 
 
 49 LISTEN, O isles, unto me ; and hearken, ye 
 
 F 
 
66 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 people, from far! The LORD hath called me 
 from the womb : from the bowels of my mother 
 hath he made mention of my name. 
 
 2 And he hath made my mouth like a sharp 
 sword ; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid 
 me, and made me a polished shaft ; in his quiver 
 hath he hid me ; 
 
 3 And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O 
 Israel, in whom I will be glorified. 
 
 4 Then I said : I have laboured in vain, I have 
 spent my strength for nought, and in vain ; yet 
 surely my righteousness is with the LORD, and 
 my recompence with my God. 
 
 5 And now, saith the LORD that formed me from 
 the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again 
 to him, and that Israel may be gathered ; (for I 
 
 . have honour in the eyes of the LORD, and my 
 God is my strength ;) 
 
 6 And he said : It is a small thing that thou 
 shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes 
 of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel ; 
 I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that 
 my salvation may be unto the ends of the earth ! 
 
 7 Thus saith the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel, 
 his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to 
 him whom the people abhorreth, to a servant of 
 tyrants : Kings shall see and arise, princes also 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 67 
 
 shall worship, because of the LORD that is faith- 
 ful, the Holy One of Israel, and he chose thee. 
 
 8 Thus saith the LORD : In an acceptable time 
 have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation 
 have I helped thee ; and I will preserve thee, 
 and give thee for a mediator of the people, to 
 establish the land, to cause to inherit the desolate 
 heritages ; 
 
 9 That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go 
 forth! to them that are in darkness, Shew your- 
 selves ! They shall feed in the ways, and their 
 pastures shall be in all high places ; 
 
 10 They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall 
 the heat nor sun smite them ; for he that hath 
 mercy on them shall lead them, even by the 
 springs of water shall he guide them. 
 
 1 1 And I will make all my mountains a way, and 
 my highways shall be cast up. 
 
 12 Behold, these shall come from far; and, lo, 
 these from the north and from the west ; and 
 these from the land of Sinim. 
 
 13 Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and 
 break forth into singing, O mountains ! for the 
 LORD hath comforted his people, and doth have 
 mercy upon his afflicted. 
 
 14 But Zion said : The LORD hath forsaken me, 
 and my Lord hath forgotten me ! 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 1 5 Can a woman forget her sucking child, . that 
 she should not have compassion on the son of 
 her womb ? yea, they may forget, yet will I not 
 forget thee! 
 
 1 6 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of 
 my hands ! thy walls are continually before me ! 
 
 17 Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers 
 and they that made thee waste shall go forth of 
 thee. 
 
 1 8 Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold! all 
 these gather themselves together, and come to 
 thee. As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely 
 clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, 
 and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth. 
 
 19 For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the 
 land of thy destruction, shall now be too narrow 
 by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swal- 
 lowed thee up shall be far away. 
 
 20 The children which thou shalt have, after thou 
 hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears : 
 The place is too strait for me ; give place to me 
 that I may dwell. 
 
 2 1 Then shalt thou say in thine heart : Who hath 
 begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, 
 and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and 
 fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, 
 I was left alone ; these, where had they been ? 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 69 
 
 22 Thus saith the Lord GOD : Behold, I will lift 
 up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my 
 standard to the nations ; and they shall bring thy 
 sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be 
 carried upon their shoulders. 
 
 23 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and 
 their queens thy nursing mothers : they shall bow 
 down to thee with their face toward the earth, 
 and lick up the dust of thy feet ; and thou shalt 
 know that I am the LORD ; for they shall not be 
 ashamed that wait for me. 
 
 24 Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the 
 captivity of the righteous be loosed ? 
 
 25 But thus saith the LORD : Even the captives of 
 the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey 
 of the terrible shall be loosed : for I will contend 
 with him that contendeth with thee, and I will 
 save thy children. 
 
 26 And I will feed them that oppress thee with 
 their own flesh, and they shall be drunken with 
 their own blood, as with new wine ; and all flesh 
 shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour, and 
 thy Redeemer the mighty One of Jacob. 
 
 50 Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your 
 mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? 
 or which of my creditors is it to whom I have 
 sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye 
 
70 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is 
 your mother put away. 
 
 2 Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? 
 when I called, was there none to answer? Is 
 my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem ? 
 or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my 
 rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wil- 
 derness ; their fish stinketh, because there is no 
 water, and dieth for thirst. 
 
 3 I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make 
 sackcloth their covering. 
 
 4 THE Lord GOD hath given me the tongue 
 of the learned, that I should know how to speak a 
 word in season to him that is weary : he wakeneth 
 morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to 
 hear as the learned. 
 
 5 The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I 
 was not rebellious, neither turned away back. 
 
 6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks 
 to them that plucked off the hair : I hid not my 
 face from shame and spitting. 
 
 7 For the Lord GOD will help me, therefore 
 shall I not be confounded ; therefore have I set 
 my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not 
 be ashamed. 
 
 8 He is near that justifieth me. Who will contend 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 71 
 
 with me? let us stand together! who is mine ad- 
 versary ? let him come near to me ! 
 9 Behold, the Lord GOD will help me ; who 
 is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all 
 shall wax old as a garment, the moth shall eat 
 them up. 
 
 10 Who is among you that feareth the LORD? let 
 him obey the voice of his servant! that walketh 
 in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust 
 in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his 
 God! 
 
 11 Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass 
 yourselves about with burning darts : get ye into 
 the flame of your fire, and among the darts that 
 ye have kindled! This shall ye have of mine 
 hand : ye shall lie down in sorrow ! 
 
 51 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteous- 
 ness, ye that seek the LORD ! look unto the rock 
 whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit 
 whence ye are digged. 
 
 2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto 
 Sarah that bare you ; for I called him when he 
 was alone, and blessed him, and increased him. 
 
 3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion, he will com- 
 fort all her waste places, and he will make her 
 wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the 
 garden of the LORD ; joy and gladness shall be 
 
72 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of 
 melody. 
 
 4 Hearken unto me, my people, and give ear 
 unto me, O my nation! for a law shall proceed 
 from me, and I will make my judgment to rest 
 for a light of the Gentiles. 
 
 5 My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone 
 forth, and mine arms shall judge the people ; far 
 lands shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall 
 they trust. 
 
 6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon 
 the earth beneath ! for the heavens shall vanish 
 away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old 
 like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall 
 die in like manner; but my salvation shall be 
 for ever, and my righteousness shall not be 
 abolished. 
 
 7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, 
 the people in whose heart is my law ! fear ye not 
 the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their 
 revilings. 
 
 8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, 
 and the worm shall eat them like wool ; but my 
 righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation 
 from generation to generation. 
 
 9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the 
 LORD ! awake, as in the ancient days, in the 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 73 
 
 generations of old. Art thou not it that hath 
 cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon ? 
 
 10 Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the 
 waters of the great deep? that hath made the 
 depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass 
 over ? 
 
 1 1 Even so the redeemed of the LORD shall return, 
 and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting 
 joy shall be upon their head : they shall obtain 
 gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall 
 flee away. 
 
 1 2 I, even I, am he that comforteth you ! who art 
 thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that 
 shall die, and of the son of man which shall be 
 made as grass? 
 
 13 And forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath 
 stretched forth the heavens, and laid the founda- 
 tions of the earth? and hast feared continually 
 every day because of the fury of the oppressor, 
 as if he were ready to destroy ? and where is the 
 fury of the oppressor ? 
 
 14 The captive exile shall very soon be loosed ; he 
 shall not die in the pit, neither shall his bread 
 fail. 
 
 15 For I am the LORD thy God, that divided the 
 sea, whose waves roared : The LORD of hosts is his 
 name. 
 
74 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 1 6 And I have put my words in thy mouth, and 
 I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, 
 that I may plant the heavens, and lay the founda- 
 tions of the earth, and say unto Zion : Thou art 
 my people! 
 
 17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which 
 hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of 
 his fury ! thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup 
 of trembling, and wrung them out. 
 
 1 8 None to guide her among all the sons whom 
 she hath brought forth ! neither any to take her 
 by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought 
 up! 
 
 19 These two things are come unto thee: who 
 shall be sorry for thee? desolation with destruc- 
 tion, and famine with the sword : by whom shall 
 I comfort thee ? 
 
 20 Thy sons have fainted, they lie at all corners of 
 the streets, as a wild bull in a net : they are full 
 of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God. 
 
 21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and 
 drunken, but not with wine! 
 
 22 Thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God 
 that pleadeth the cause of his people : Behold, 
 I have taken out of thine hand the cup of 
 trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury ; 
 thou shalt no more drink it again : 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 75 
 
 23 But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict 
 thee, which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that 
 we may go over ! and thou hast laid thy body as the 
 ground, and as the street to them that went over. 
 
 52 Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion ! 
 put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the 
 holy city ! for henceforth there shall no more come 
 into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. 
 
 2 Shake thyself from the dust, arise, and sit up, 
 O Jerusalem ! loose thyself from the bands of thy 
 neck, O captive daughter of Zion ! 
 
 3 For thus saith the LORD : Ye have sold your- 
 selves for nought, and ye shall be redeemed with- 
 out money. 
 
 4 For thus saith the Lord GOD : My people went 
 down aforetime into Egypt to sojourn there, and 
 the Assyrian oppressed them for nought. 
 
 5 Now therefore what have I here, saith the LORD, 
 that my people is taken away for nought? they 
 that rule over them make them to howl, saith the 
 LORD, and my name continually every day is 
 blasphemed. 
 
 6 Therefore my people shall know my name : 
 therefore they shall know in that day that I am 
 he that doth speak : behold, it is I ! 
 
 7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet 
 of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth 
 
J6 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 peace! that bringeth good tidings of good, that 
 publisheth salvation ! that saith unto Zion, Thy 
 God reigneth! 
 
 8 Thy watchmen lift up the voice, with the voice 
 together do they sing ; for eye to eye they do 
 behold, how that the LORD doth bring again Zion. 
 
 9 Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste 
 places of Jerusalem ! for the LORD hath comforted 
 his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. 
 
 10 The LORD hath made bare his holy arm in the 
 eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the 
 earth shall see the salvation of our God. 
 
 n Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, 
 touch no unclean thing! go ye out of the midst 
 of her ! be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the 
 LORD! 
 
 12 For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by 
 flight ; for the LORD will go before you, and the 
 God of Israel will be your rereward. 
 
 13 Behold, my servant shall prosper, he shall be 
 exalted and extolled, and be very high. 
 
 14 As many were astonied at thee his visage was 
 so marred more than any man, and his form more 
 than the sons of men 
 
 1 5 So shall many nations exult in him : kings shall 
 shut their mouths before him : for that which had 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 77 
 
 not been told them shall they see, and that which 
 they had not heard shall they consider. 
 53 Who believed our report, and to whom was the 
 arm of the LORD revealed ? 
 
 2 For he grew up before him as a slender plant, 
 and as a root out of a dry ground : he had no 
 form nor comeliness, and when we saw him, there 
 was no beauty that we should desire him. 
 
 3 He was despised and rejected of men, a man of 
 sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid 
 as it were our faces from him ; he was despised, 
 and we esteemed him not. 
 
 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our 
 sorrows ! yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten 
 of God, and afflicted. 
 
 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he 
 was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement 
 of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes 
 we are healed. 
 
 6 All we like sheep were gone astray, we were 
 turned every one to his own way ; and the LORD 
 hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 
 
 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he 
 opened not his mouth : as a lamb is brought to 
 the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers 
 is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. 
 
 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment ; 
 
7 8 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 and who of his generation regarded it, why he was 
 cut off out of the land of the living ? for the trans- 
 gression of my people was he stricken ! 
 9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and 
 with sinners in his death ; although he had done 
 no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. 
 
 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him ; he hath 
 put him to grief! When he hath made his soul 
 an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall 
 prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD 
 shall prosper in his hand : 
 
 1 1 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall 
 be satisfied ; by his knowledge shall my righteous 
 servant justify many ; for he shall bear their ini- 
 quities. 
 
 12 Therefore will I divide him his portion with the 
 .great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong! 
 because he hath poured out his soul unto death : 
 and he was numbered with the transgressors ; and 
 he bare the sin of many, and made intercession 
 for the transgressors. 
 
 54 SlNG, O barren, thou that didst not bear ! break 
 forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst 
 not travail with child! for more are the children 
 of the desolate than the children of the married 
 wife, saith the LORD. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 79 
 
 2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them 
 stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations ! 
 spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy 
 stakes ! 
 
 3 For thou shalt break forth on the right hand 
 and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the 
 Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be in- 
 habited. 
 
 4 Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed ! neither 
 be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put 
 to shame ! for thou shalt forget the shame of thy 
 youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of 
 thy widowhood any more. 
 
 5 For thy Maker is thine husband, the LORD of 
 hosts is his name : and thy Redeemer the Holy 
 One of Israel, the God of the whole earth shall 
 he be called. 
 
 6 For the LORD hath called thee as a woman 
 forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, 
 when thou wast refused, saith thy God. 
 
 7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but 
 with great mercies will I gather thee. 
 
 8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for 
 a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I 
 have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Re- 
 deemer. 
 
 9 For this is as the waters of Noah unto me ; for 
 
80 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should 
 no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that 
 I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. 
 
 10 For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be 
 removed ; but my kindness shall not depart from 
 thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be 
 removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on 
 thee. 
 
 11 O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not 
 comforted! behold, I will lay thy stones with fair 
 colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires ; 
 
 12 And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy 
 gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant 
 stones. 
 
 13 And all thy children shall be taught of the 
 LORD ; and great shall be the peace of thy 
 children. 
 
 14 In righteousness shalt thou be established : be 
 thou far from anguish, for thou shalt not fear! 
 and from terror, for it shall not come near thee! 
 
 15 Behold, if any gather together against thee, it 
 is not by me : whosoever shall gather together 
 against thee shall come over unto thy part. 
 
 1 6 Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth 
 the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth a 
 weapon by his work ; and I have created the 
 waster to destroy. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 8 1 
 
 17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall 
 prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against 
 thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is 
 the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and 
 their righteousness of me, saith the LORD. 
 
 55 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
 waters, and he that hath no money! come ye, 
 buy, and eat ! yea, come, buy wine and milk 
 without money and without price ! 
 
 2 Wherefore do ye spend money for that which 
 is not bread, and your labour for that which 
 satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and 
 eat ye that which is good, and let your soul 
 delight itself in fatness. 
 
 3 Incline your ear, and come unto me ! hear, and 
 your soul shall live! and I will make an everlast- 
 ing covenant with you, even the sure mercies of 
 David. 
 
 4 Behold, I appointed him for a lawgiver to the 
 nations, a prince and commander to the nations. 
 
 5 Behold, thou shalt call nations that thou know- 
 est not, and nations that knew not thee shall run 
 unto thee, because of the LORD thy God, and for 
 the Holy One of Israel ; for he hath glorified thee. 
 
 6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found ! 
 call ye upon him while he is near! 
 
 G 
 
82 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the un- 
 righteous man his thoughts ; and let him return 
 unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon 
 him, and to our God, for he will abundantly 
 pardon ! 
 
 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
 are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 
 
 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, 
 so are my ways higher than your ways, and my 
 thoughts than your thoughts. 
 
 [O For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from 
 heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the 
 earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it 
 may give seed to the sower, and bread to the 
 eater : 
 
 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my 
 mouth ; it shall not return unto me void, but it 
 shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall 
 prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. 
 
 12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth 
 with peace : the mountains and the hills shall 
 break forth before you into singing, and all the 
 trees of the field shall clap their hands. 
 
 13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, 
 and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle 
 tree ; and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for 
 an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 83 
 
 56 Thus saith the LORD : Keep ye judgment, and 
 do justice ! for my salvation is near to come, and 
 my righteousness to be revealed. 
 
 2 Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son 
 of man that layeth hold on it ! that keepeth the 
 sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand 
 from doing any evil. 
 
 3 Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath 
 joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The 
 LORD hath utterly separated me from his people ! 
 neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry 
 tree! 
 
 4 For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that 
 keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that 
 please me, and take hold of my covenant : 
 
 5 Even unto them will I give in mine house and 
 within my walls a place and a name better than of 
 sons and of daughters ; I will give them an ever- 
 lasting name, that shall not be cut off. 
 
 6 Also the sons of the stranger, that join them- 
 selves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the 
 name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one 
 that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and 
 taketh hold of my covenant ; 
 
 7 Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and 
 make them joyful in my house of prayer: their 
 burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted 
 
 G2 
 
84 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 upon mine altar ; for mine house shall be called an 
 house of prayer for all people. 
 
 8 The Lord GOD, which gathereth the outcasts of 
 Israel, saith : Yet will I gather others to him, 
 beside those that are gathered unto him. 
 
 9 ALL ye beasts of the field, come to devour, yea, 
 all ye beasts of the forest ! 
 
 10 His watchmen are blind, they are all ignorant ; 
 they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark ; sleep- 
 ing, lying down, loving to slumber. 
 
 1 1 Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have 
 enough, and they are shepherds that cannot under- 
 stand : they all look to their own way, every one 
 for his gain, one and all of them. 
 
 12 Come, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will 
 fill ourselves with strong drink ; and to morrow 
 shall be as this day, and much more abundant. 
 
 57 The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it 
 to heart ; and merciful men are taken away, none 
 considering that the righteous is taken away 
 because of the evil. 
 
 2 He shall enter into peace! they shall rest in 
 their beds, whoso walked in his uprightness. 
 
 3 But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, 
 the seed of the adulterer and the whore ! 
 
 4 Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 85 
 
 whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the 
 tongue ? are ye not children of transgression, a seed 
 of falsehood ; 
 
 5 Enflaming yourselves with idols under every 
 green tree, slaying the children in the valleys 
 under the clifts of the rocks? 
 
 6 Among the smooth stones of the valley is thy 
 portion ; they, they are thy lot ! even to them hast 
 thou poured a drink offering, thou hast offered a 
 meat offering. Should I receive comfort in these ? 
 
 7 Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set 
 thy bed : even thither wentest thou up to offer 
 sacrifice. 
 
 8 Behind the doors also and the posts hast thou 
 set up thy remembrance : thou hast discovered 
 thyself to another than me, and art gone up ; thou 
 hast enlarged thy bed, and made thee a covenant 
 with them ; thou lovedst their bed where thou 
 sawest it. 
 
 9 And thou wentest unto Moloch with ointment, 
 and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send 
 thy messengers far off, and didst go down even 
 deep into hell. 
 
 10 Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way, 
 . yet saidst thou not, There is no hope ! thou hast 
 yet found strength in thine hand, therefore thou 
 wast not discouraged. 
 
86 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 11 And of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, 
 that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me, 
 nor laid it to thy heart ? have not I held my peace 
 even of old ? and thou fearest me not. 
 
 12 I declare thy salvation ! and thy handiwork, it 
 shall not profit thee . 
 
 13 When thou criest, let thy companies of idols 
 deliver thee! but the wind shall carry them all 
 away, vanity shall take them. But he that putteth 
 his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall 
 inherit my holy mountain. 
 
 14 Thus shall it be said : Cast ye up, cast ye up, 
 prepare the way, take the stumblingblock out of 
 the way of my people ! 
 
 15 For thus saith the high and lofty One that 
 inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy : I dwell 
 in the high and holy place, with him also that is of 
 a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of 
 the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite 
 ones. 
 
 1 6 For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be 
 always wroth ; for the spirit should fail before me, 
 and the souls which I have made. 
 
 17 For the iniquity of his covetousness was I 
 wroth, and smote him : I hid me, and was wroth, 
 and he went on frowardly in the way of his 
 heart. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 87 
 
 1 8 I have seen his ways, and will heal him! I will 
 lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and 
 to his mourners. 
 
 19 I create the fruit of the lips! Peace, peace to 
 him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith 
 the LORD, and I will heal him ! 
 
 20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when 
 it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. 
 
 21 No peace, saith my God, to the wicked ! 
 
 58 CRY aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a 
 trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, 
 and the house of Jacob their sins ! 
 
 2 Yet they seek me daily, and desire to know my 
 ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and for- 
 sook not the ordinance of their God : they ask of 
 me the ordinances of judgment, they desire that 
 God should draw nigh to them. 
 
 3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou 
 seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, 
 and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the 
 day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all 
 your labours! 
 
 4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to 
 smite with the fist of wickedness! your fast this 
 day is not a fast, to make your voice to be heard 
 on high. 
 
88 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen ? such a day 
 that a man doth afflict his soul ? is it to bow down 
 his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and 
 ashes under him ? wilt thou call this a fast, and an 
 acceptable day to the LORD ? 
 
 6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose 
 the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy bur- 
 dens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye 
 break every yoke ? 
 
 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and 
 that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy 
 house ? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover 
 him ; and that thou hide not thyself from thine 
 own flesh? 
 
 8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, 
 and thine health shall spring forth speedily, and 
 thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of 
 the LORD shall be thy rereward. 
 
 9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall 
 answer ; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here 
 I am ! If thou take away from the midst of thee 
 the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and 
 speaking vanity ; 
 
 10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, 
 and satisfy the afflicted soul ; then shall thy light 
 rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the 
 noon day. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 89 
 
 1 1 And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and 
 satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy 
 bones; and thou shalt be like -a watered garden, 
 and like a spring of water, whose waters fail 
 not. 
 
 12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the 
 old waste places : thou shalt raise up the ruins 
 of many generations ; and thou shalt be called, 
 The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths 
 to dwell in. 
 
 13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, 
 from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call 
 the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, 
 honourable ; and shalt honour him, not doing 
 thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, 
 nor speaking thine own words ; 
 
 14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD, 
 and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places 
 of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of 
 Jacob thy father ; for the mouth of the LORD hath 
 spoken it. 
 
 59 Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that 
 it cannot save, neither his ear heavy, that it 
 cannot hear ; 
 
 2 But your iniquities have separated between you 
 and your God, and your sins have hid his face from 
 you, that he will not hear. 
 
 
 
 OF T 
 
 UNIVERSITY ) 
 
90 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your 
 fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, 
 your tongue hath muttered perverseness. 
 
 4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for 
 truth : they trust in vanity, and speak lies ; they 
 conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. 
 
 5 They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the 
 spider's web : he that eateth of their eggs dieth, 
 and that which is crushed breaketh out into a 
 viper. 
 
 6 Their webs shall not become garments, neither 
 shall they cover themselves with their works : their 
 works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence 
 is in their hands. 
 
 7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to 
 shed innocent blood : their thoughts are thoughts 
 of iniquity ; wasting and destruction are in their 
 paths. 
 
 8 The way of peace they know not, and there is 
 no right in their goings : they have made them 
 crooked paths ; whosoever goeth therein shall not 
 know peace. 
 
 9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth 
 justice overtake us : we wait for light, but behold 
 obscurity ; for brightness, but we walk in dark- 
 ness. 
 
 10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 91 
 
 grope as if we had no eyes : we stumble at noon 
 day as in the night ; we are in desolate places as 
 dead men. 
 
 11 We roar all like bears, and moan sore like 
 doves : we look for judgment, but there is none ; 
 for salvation, but it is far off from us. 
 
 12 For our transgressions are multiplied before 
 thee, and our sins testify against us ; for our trans- 
 gressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we 
 know them ; 
 
 13 In transgressing and lying against the LORD, 
 and departing away from our God, speaking op- 
 pression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from 
 the heart words of falsehood. 
 
 14 And justice is turned away backward, and right- 
 eousness standeth afar off ; for truth is fallen in the 
 street, and equity cannot enter. 
 
 1 5 Yea, truth faileth ! and he that departeth from 
 evil maketh himself a prey. 
 
 And the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that 
 there was no judgment. 
 
 1 6 And he saw that there was no man, and won- 
 dered that there was no intercessor : therefore his 
 arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteous- 
 ness, it sustained him. 
 
 1 7 For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and 
 an helmet of salvation upon his head ; and he put 
 
92 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was 
 clad with zeal as a cloke. 
 
 1 8 * According to their deeds, accordingly he will 
 repay ; fury to his adversaries, recompence to his 
 enemies ; to the far lands he will repay recom- 
 pence. 
 
 19 So shall they fear the name of the LORD from 
 the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun, 
 when the enemy shall come in like a flood, whom 
 the Spirit of the LORD shall drive. 
 
 20 And a redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto 
 them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith 
 the LORD. 
 
 2 1 As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith 
 the LORD : My spirit that is upon thee, and my 
 words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not 
 depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth 
 of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's 
 seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for 
 ever. 
 
 60 ARISE, shine, for thy light is come, and the 
 
 glory of the LORD is risen upon thee ! 
 2 For, behold, darkness doth cover the earth, and 
 gross darkness the nations ! but the LORD shall 
 arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon 
 thee. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 93 
 
 3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and 
 kings to the brightness of thy rising. 
 
 4 Lift up thine eyes round about, and see! all 
 they gather themselves together, they come' to 
 thee ! thy sons shall come from far, and thy 
 daughters shall be carried upon the arm. 
 
 5 Then thou shalt see and rejoice, and thine heart 
 shall flutter and be enlarged ; because the abund- 
 ance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the 
 treasures of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. 
 
 6 The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the 
 dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from 
 Sheba shall come, they shall bring gold and 
 incense, and they shall shew forth the praises of 
 the LORD. 
 
 7 All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered 
 together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall 
 minister unto thee : they shall come up with ac- 
 ceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house 
 of my glory. 
 
 8 Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the 
 doves to their windows ? 
 
 9 Surely the isles do wait upon me, and the ships 
 of Tarshish in front, to bring thy sons from far, 
 their silver and their gold with them, for the name 
 of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of 
 Israel, because he hath glorified thee ! 
 
94 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 10 And the sons of strangers shall build up thy 
 walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee ; 
 for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour 
 have I had mercy on thee. 
 
 11 Therefore thy gates shall be open continually, 
 they shall not be shut day nor night; that men 
 may bring unto thee the treasures of the Gentiles, 
 and that their kings may be brought. 
 
 1 2 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve 
 thee shall perish ; yea, those nations shall be 
 utterly wasted. 
 
 1 3 The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the 
 cypress tree,. the pine tree, and the box together, to 
 beautify the place of my sanctuary ; and I will 
 make the place of my feet glorious. 
 
 14 The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall 
 . come bending unto thee ; and all they that de- 
 spised thee shall bow themselves down at the 
 soles of thy feet, and they shall call thee, The 
 city of the LORD, the Zion of the Holy One of 
 Israel. 
 
 15 Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, 
 so that no man went through thee, I will make 
 thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many genera- 
 tions. 
 
 1 6 Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, 
 and shalt suck the breast of kings ; and thou shalt 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 95 
 
 know that I the LORD am thy Saviour, and thy 
 Redeemer the mighty One of Jacob. 
 
 1 7 For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will 
 bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones 
 iron : I will also make thy officers peace, and thine 
 exactors righteousness. 
 
 1 8 Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, 
 wasting nor destruction within thy borders ; but 
 thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates 
 Praise. 
 
 19 The sun shall be no more thy light by day, 
 neither for brightness shall the moon give light 
 unto thee ; but the LORD shall be unto thee an 
 everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. 
 
 20 Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall 
 thy moon withdraw itself ; for the LORD shall be 
 thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourn- 
 ing shall be ended. 
 
 2 1 Thy people also shall be all righteous ; they 
 shall inherit the land for ever : the branch of my 
 planting, the work of my hands, that I may be 
 glorified. 
 
 22 A little one shall become a thousand, and a small 
 one a strong nation : I the LORD will hasten it in 
 his time. 
 
 61 THE Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me ; 
 
THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 because the LORD hath anointed me to preach 
 good tidings unto the afflicted ; he hath sent me 
 to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty 
 to the captives, and the opening of the prison to 
 them that are bound ; 
 
 2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, 
 and the day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort 
 all that mourn ; 
 
 3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to 
 give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for 
 mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness ; that they might be called trees of 
 righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he 
 might be glorified. 
 
 4 And they shall build the old wastes, they shall 
 raise up the former desolations, and they shall 
 repair the waste cities, the desolations of many 
 generations. 
 
 5 And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, 
 and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen 
 and your vinedressers. 
 
 6 But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD : 
 men shall call you the Ministers of our God : ye 
 shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their 
 glory shall ye boast yourselves. 
 
 7 For your shame ye shall have double ; and for 
 confusion shall my people rejoice in their portion : 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 97 
 
 therefore in their land they shall possess the 
 double ; everlasting joy shall be unto them. 
 
 8 For I the LORD love judgment, I hate robbery 
 and wrong ; and I will give them their reward 
 in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant 
 with them. 
 
 9 And their seed shall be known among the Gen- 
 tiles, and their offspring among the people : all 
 that see them shall acknowledge them, that they 
 are the seed which the LORD hath blessed. 
 
 10 I WILL greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall 
 be joyful in my God ; for he hath clothed me witfy 
 the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with 
 the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh 
 himself with ornaments, and as a. bride adorneth 
 herself with her jewels. 
 
 1 1 For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as 
 the garden causeth the things that are sown in it 
 to spring forth ; so the Lord GOD will cause 
 righteousness and praise to spring forth before all 
 the nations. 
 
 62 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and 
 
 for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the 
 
 righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and 
 
 the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. 
 
 2 And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, 
 
 H 
 
98 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 and all kings thy glory; and thou shalt be called 
 by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD 
 shall name. 
 
 3 Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand 
 of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of 
 thy God. 
 
 4 Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither 
 shall thy land any more be termed Desolate ; but 
 thou shalt be called My delight is in her, and thy 
 land Married ; for the LORD delighteth in thee, 
 and thy land shall be married. 
 
 5 For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall 
 thy sons marry thee ; and as the bridegroom re- 
 joiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice 
 over thee. 
 
 6 ' I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jeru- 
 salem, which shall never hold their peace day nor 
 night/ Ye that are the LORD'S remembrancers, 
 keep not silence, 
 
 7 And give him no rest, till he establish, and till 
 he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth ! 
 
 8 The LORD hath sworn by his right hand, and by 
 the arm of his strength : Surely I will no more 
 give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies, and the 
 sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine for 
 the which thou hast laboured ! 
 
 9 But they that have harvested it shall eat it, and 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 99 
 
 praise the LORD ; and they that have gathered thy 
 wine shall drink it, in the courts of my holiness. 
 
 10 Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye 
 the way of the people ! cast up, cast up the high- 
 way ! gather out the stones ! lift up a standard for 
 the nations ! 
 
 1 1 Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end 
 of the world : Say ye to the daughter of Zion, 
 Behold, thy salvation cometh ! behold, his reward 
 is with him, and his recompence before him ! 
 
 1 2 And they shall call them, The holy people, The 
 redeemed of the LORD ; and thou shalt be called, 
 Sought out, A city not forsaken. 
 
 63 WHO is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed 
 garments from Bozrah ? this that is glorious in his 
 apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength ? 
 ( I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.' 
 
 2 Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy 
 garments like him that treadeth in the winefat ? 
 
 3 ' I have trodden the winepress alone, and of 
 the nations there was none with me ; then trod I 
 them in mine anger, and trampled them in my 
 fury, and their blood was sprinkled upon my gar- 
 ments, and I have stained all my raiment. 
 
 4 ' For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and 
 the year of my redeemed is come. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 5 ' And I looked, and there was none to help, and 
 I wondered that there was none to uphold ; there- 
 fore mine own arm brought salvation unto me, and 
 my fury, it upheld me. 
 
 6 'And I tread down the people in mine anger, 
 and make them drunk in my fury, and I bring 
 down their strength to the earth.' 
 
 7 I WILL mention the lovingkindnesses of the LORD, 
 and the praises of the LORD, according to all that 
 the LORD hath bestowed on us ; and the great 
 goodness toward the house of Israel, which he hath 
 bestowed on them according to his mercies, and ac- 
 cording to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. 
 
 8 For he said, Surely they are my people, children 
 that will not lie ! so he was their Saviour. 
 
 9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the 
 angel of his presence saved them: in his love and 
 in his pity he redeemed them ; and he bare them 
 and carried them all the days of old. 
 
 10 But they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit ; 
 therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he 
 fought against them. 
 
 1 1 Then remembered his people the days of old and 
 Moses, saying : Where is he that brought them up 
 out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock ? where 
 is he that put his holy Spirit within them ? 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 101 
 
 1 2 That led them by the right hand of Moses with 
 his glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to 
 make himself an everlasting name ? 
 
 1 3 That led them through the deep, as an horse in 
 the desert, and they did not stumble ? 
 
 14 As a beast goeth down into the valley, the Spirit 
 of the LORD caused them to rest : so didst thou 
 lead thy people, to make thyself a glorious name. 
 
 15 Look down from heaven, and behold from the 
 habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory ! where 
 is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy 
 bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they 
 restrained ? 
 
 1 6 Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham 
 be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not ! 
 thou, O LORD, art our Father! our Redeemer is 
 thy name from everlasting ! 
 
 17 O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from 
 thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear ? 
 Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine 
 inheritance I 
 
 1 8 The people of thy holiness have had possession 
 but a little while : our adversaries have trodden 
 down thy sanctuary. 
 
 19 We are thine! thou never barest rule over them ; 
 they were not called by thy name. 
 
 64 Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that 
 
102 THE GREA T PROPHEC Y 
 
 thou wouldest come down ! that the mountains 
 
 might flow down at thy presence, 
 2 As the fire burneth the stubble, the fire causeth 
 
 the water to boil ! to make thy name known to 
 
 thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at 
 
 thy presence ! 
 3 When thou didst terrible things which we looked 
 
 not for, thou earnest down, the mountains flowed 
 
 down at thy presence. 
 
 4 For since the beginning of the world men have 
 not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath 
 the eye seen, O God, beside thee, who hath pre- 
 pared such things for. him that waiteth for him. 
 
 5 Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh 
 righteousness, those that remember thee in thy 
 ways. 
 
 Behold, thou art wroth (for we have sinned) with 
 thy people continually ! and shall we be saved ? 
 
 6 We are all even as the unclean, and all our 
 righteousnesses are as filthy rags ; and we all are 
 faded as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, do 
 take us away. 
 
 7 And there is none that calleth upon thy name, 
 that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee ; for 
 thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed 
 us, because of our iniquities. 
 
 8 But now, O LORD, thou art our father ! we are 
 
0F ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 103 
 
 the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the 
 work of thy hand. 
 
 9 Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither re- 
 member iniquity for ever ! behold, see, we beseech 
 thee, we are all thy people ! 
 
 10 Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wil- 
 derness, Jerusalem a desolation. 
 
 11 Our holy and our beautiful house, where our 
 fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire ; and 
 all our pleasant things are laid waste. 
 
 12 Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O 
 LORD? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us 
 very sore? 
 
 65 I GAVE ear to them that asked not for me, I 
 am found of them that sought me not. I said, 
 Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that called 
 not upon my name. 
 
 2 I have spread out my hands all the day unto 
 a rebellious people, which walketh in a way not 
 good, after their own thoughts ; 
 
 3 A people that provoketh me to anger con- 
 tinually to my face ; that sacrificeth in the 
 gardens, and burneth incense upon the tiles ; 
 
 4. Which remain among the graves, and lodge 
 in the monuments ; which eat swine's flesh, and 
 broth of abominable things is in their vessels ; 
 
104 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 5 Which say : Stand by thyself, come not near 
 to me, for I am holier than thou! These are a 
 smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day. 
 
 6 Behold, it is written before me ; I will not 
 keep silence, but will recompense, even recom- 
 pense into their bosom, 
 
 7 Your iniquities, and the iniquities of your 
 fathers together, saith the LORD, which have 
 burned incense upon the mountains, and blas- 
 phemed me upon the hills ; therefore will I 
 measure the reward of their former work into 
 their bosom. 
 
 8 Thus saith the LORD : As the new wine is 
 found in the grape-cluster, and one saith, Destroy 
 it not, for a blessing is in it ! so will I do for my 
 servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all. 
 
 9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, 
 and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains ; 
 and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants 
 shall dwell there. 
 
 10 And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the 
 valley of Achor a place for the herds to lie down 
 in, for my people that have sought me. 
 
 11 But ye are they that forsake the LORD, that 
 forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for 
 Fortune, and that furnish the drink-offering unto 
 that which destineth. 
 

 OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 105 
 
 12 Therefore will I destine you to the sword, and 
 ye shall all bow down to the slaughter; because 
 when I called, ye did not answer, when I spake, 
 ye did not hear, but did evil before mine eyes, 
 and did choose that wherein I delighted not. 
 
 13 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD : Behold, 
 my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; 
 behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be 
 thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye 
 shall be ashamed ; 
 
 14 Behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, 
 but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall 
 howl for vexation of spirit. 
 
 15 And ye shall leave your name for a curse 
 unto my chosen ; for the Lord GOD shall slay 
 you, and call his servants by another name ; 
 
 1 6 That he who blesseth himself in the earth 
 shall bless himself in the God of truth, and he 
 that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the 
 God of truth ; because the former troubles are for- 
 gotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes. 
 
 17 For, behold, I create new heavens and a new 
 earth ; and the former shall not be remembered, 
 nor come into mind. 
 
 1 8 But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that 
 which I create ; for, behold, I create Jerusalem 
 a rejoicing, and her people a joy ! 
 
106 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 19 And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in 
 my people ; and the voice of weeping shall be 
 no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. 
 
 20 There shall be no more thence an infant of 
 days, nor an old man that hath not filled his 
 days ; for the child shall die an hundred years 
 old, and the sinner being an hundred years old 
 shall be accursed. 
 
 2 1 And they shall build houses, and inhabit them ; 
 and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit 
 of them. 
 
 22 They shall not build, and another inhabit ; 
 they shall not plant, and another eat ; for as 
 the days of a tree are the days of my people, 
 and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their 
 hands. 
 
 23 They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth 
 for trouble ; for they are the seed of the blessed 
 of the LORD, and their offspring with them. 
 
 24 And it shall come to pass, that before they 
 call, I will answer ; and while they are yet 
 speaking, I will hear. 
 
 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, 
 and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock, and 
 dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not 
 hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith 
 the LORD. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RES TOR A TION. l o 7 
 
 66 THUS saith the LORD : The heaven is my 
 throne, and the earth is my footstool ; where is 
 the house that ye build unto me, and where is 
 the place of my rest ? 
 
 2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and 
 all those things were, saith the LORD ; but to 
 this man will I look, even to him that is meek 
 and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my 
 word. 
 
 3 He that killeth an ox is the same that slayeth 
 a man ; he that sacrificed! a lamb, the same that 
 cutteth a dog's throat ; he that offereth an obla- 
 tion, offereth swine's blood ; he that burneth 
 incense, is he that blesseth an idol. Yea, they 
 have chosen their own ways, and their soul de- 
 lighteth in their abominations ! 
 
 4 I also will choose to mock them, and will bring 
 their fears upon them ; because when I called, 
 none did answer, when I spake, they did not 
 hear ; but they did evil before mine eyes, and 
 chose that in which I delighted not. 
 
 5 Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble 
 at his word : Your brethren that hated you, that 
 cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the 
 LORD be glorified, and let your joy appear! but 
 they shall be ashamed. 
 
 6 A voice of noise from the city, a voice from 
 
108 THE GREAT PROPHECY 
 
 the temple, a voice of the LORD that rendereth 
 recompence to his enemies! 
 
 7 Before she travailed, she brought forth : before 
 her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. 
 
 8 Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen 
 such things? Shall a land be brought forth in 
 one day, or shall a nation be born at once? for 
 as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her 
 children. 
 
 9 Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to 
 bring forth ? saith the LORD ; shall I cause to 
 bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God. 
 
 10 Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with 
 her, all ye that love her ! rejoice for joy with her, 
 all ye that mourn for her ! 
 
 1 1 That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the 
 breasts of her consolations ; that ye may milk 
 out, and be delighted with the abundance of her 
 glory. 
 
 12 For thus saith the LORD : Behold, I will extend 
 peace to her like a river, and the glory of the 
 Gentiles like a flowing stream : then shall ye 
 suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be 
 dandled upon her knees. 
 
 13 As one whom his mother comforteth, so will 
 I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in 
 Jerusalem. 
 
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 109 
 
 14 And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, 
 and your bones shall flourish like an herb ; and 
 the hand of the LORD shall be known toward his 
 servants, and his indignation toward his enemies. 
 
 15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, 
 and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render 
 his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames 
 of fire. 
 
 1 6 For by fire and by his sword will the LORD 
 plead with all flesh, and the slain of the LORD 
 shall be many. 
 
 17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify them- 
 selves in the gardens behind one chief in the 
 midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, 
 and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith 
 the LORD. 
 
 1 8 For I know their works and their thoughts. 
 
 IT shall come, that I will gather all nations and 
 tongues ; and they shall come, and see my glory. 
 
 19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will 
 send those that escape of them unto the nations, 
 to Tarshish, Phul and Lud that draw the bow, 
 to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that 
 have not heard my fame, neither have seen my 
 glory ; and they shall declare my glory among 
 the Gentiles. 
 
110 THE GREAT PROPHECY, ETC. 
 
 20 And they shall bring all your brethren for an 
 offering unto the LORD out of all nations upon 
 horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon 
 mules, and upon dromedaries, to my holy moun- 
 tain Jerusalem, saith the LORD, as the children 
 of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into 
 the house of the LORD. 
 
 2 1 And of them also will I take for priests and for 
 Levites, saith the LORD. 
 
 22 For as the new heavens and the new earth, 
 which I will make, shall remain before me, saith 
 the LORD, so shall your seed and your name re- 
 main. 
 
 23 And it shall come to pass, that from one new 
 moon to another, and from one sabbath to an- 
 other, sha'll all flesh come to worship before me, 
 saith the LORD, 
 
 24 And they shall go forth, and look upon the 
 carcases of the men that have transgressed against 
 me ; for their worm shall not die, neither shall 
 their fire be quenched, and they shall be an 
 abhorring unto all flesh. 
 
NOTES; 
 
 CHAPTER 40. 
 
 FOR the circumstances under which this Chapter opens 
 see the Note following the Introduction. 
 
 The Greek Version mentioned in these notes is that 
 of the Septuagint, or Seventy, begun at Alexandria in 
 the third century before Christ, but not completed till 
 the following century. It is the version which we find 
 generally used and quoted in the New Testament. The 
 Vulgate is the Latin Version of St. Jerome, made from 
 the Hebrew at the beginning of the fifth century after 
 Christ. It is the authorised version of the Church of 
 Rome, and up to the Reformation was the Bible of 
 Christendom; only for the Psalms a yet earlier Latin 
 version, made from the Greek, not the Hebrew, and 
 merely corrected by Jerome, maintained its ground; of 
 this version the Latin headings to the Psalms in the 
 Prayer-Book are relics. The Chaldaic Version and para- 
 phrase was formerly thought to be nearly contemporary 
 with the Christian era, or a little anterior to it; a con- 
 siderable weight of opinion now, however, seems to be 
 in favour of assigning this version to the third and fourth 
 centuries after Christ. In any case it possesses great 
 interest, having been made by learned Jews, in an idiom 
 akin to the Hebrew, and which was the idiom in common 
 
TI2 NOTES. 
 
 use in Palestine at the Christian era. In this idiom were 
 interpreted the Scriptures at those ' readings in the Syna- 
 gogue every Sabbath-day' which we find mentioned in 
 the New Testament; and much of these old interpre- 
 tations and explanations is probably incorporated in the 
 Chaldaic paraphrase. Other versions will be mentioned 
 in the following notes, but they do not require special 
 remark here. 
 
 i. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Sometimes my 
 people is erroneously taken for the nominative of address, 
 as' if the meaning were : Be comforted, my people. It 
 is not so : the prophets are commanded to comfort the 
 people. ' Prophets, prophesy consolations/ is the open- 
 ing in the Chaldaic version. And in the Greek the word 
 priests is supplied at the beginning of the second verse. 
 But the right word to supply is prophets. 
 
 6. And he said, What shall I cry? He is the pro- 
 phet to whom the command to cry came. The Greek 
 and the Vulgate have / said; the Arabic version sup- 
 plies, as a subject to said, the words He who was 
 commanded. But this is not necessary. The air is full of 
 inspiration, of divine calls and prophetic voices, and the 
 forms of expression are naturally rapid and elliptical. 
 After a pause, it is given to the prophet what he shall 
 cry. 
 
 9. thou. Here the opening ends, and the main 
 subject, Israel's restoration by the Almighty God of 
 Israel, is directly entered on. 
 
 15. The isles. See note on verse i of the following 
 chapter. 
 
 1 6. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn. The trees 
 of Lebanon are not enough for wood on the fire of 
 sacrifice. 
 
NOTES. 113 
 
 1 8. To whom then will ye liken God? How should 
 the image-deities of idolatrous Babylon be compared to 
 this almighty and unsearchable God of Israel ? 
 
 20. He thai is too poor for oblation. Probably a con- 
 trast is intended between the costly idol of metal and 
 the cheaper idol of wood, just as we find the two kinds 
 of idols put side by side again at c. 44, vv. 12-17. So 
 blinded are these heathens, the Prophet means, that every 
 man must have his idol ; he who is too poor for oblation, 
 who is still more, therefore, too poor to have his molten 
 image with work of silver and gold, will yet have his 
 image of wood. 
 
 23. That bringeth the princes to nothing. After these 
 words, in order to complete the sense, Have ye not known 
 him? should be repeated from v. 21. 
 
 26. Their host. The host of the stars. 
 
 27. Why sayest thou, Jacob. How then can Jacob 
 and Israel be faint-hearted, or despair of their restoration, 
 when this unmatchable, all-powerful, unwearying God is 
 their God ? Compare c. 49, v. 14. 
 
 ib. My judgment is passed over. Is neglected. My 
 God neglects (Israel is supposed to say) to judge my 
 cause and to give sentence for me. 
 
 CHAPTER 41, 
 
 To make still clearer the contrast between the power 
 and wisdom of the God of Israel and of the gods of the 
 heathen, these latter are challenged to show and compare 
 their performances beside His. 
 
 i. islands. Literally, coast-lands, with especial refer- 
 ence to the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, and, 
 as these were westerly to the Jews, to the west ; but used 
 also generally in the sense of far lands , distant regions. 
 
 I 
 
114 NOTES. 
 
 1. Renew their strength. Collect all their force to 
 answer me. 
 
 2. The man. The man called is Cyrus, from Persia, 
 which is easterly both to Babylonia and to Palestine. 
 Cyrus had the character of a mild and just prince ; 
 and Xenophon, the Greek historian, chose him for his 
 ideal of a virtuous ruler. The Persians themselves said, 
 according to Herodotus, that Darius was a hucksterer, 
 Cambyses a master, but Cyrus a father. But it specially 
 weighed, besides, with the Jews, that his religion, the 
 religion of Persia, rejected and forbade idols like the 
 religion of Israel. With this character to mark his reli- 
 gion, and pursuing, too, a policy favourable to the Jews, 
 Cyrus came to be spoken of by them almost as a servant 
 of the true God like themselves. See Ezra i. 2 : ' Thus 
 saith Cyrus King of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath 
 given me all the kingdoms of the earth.' 
 
 ib. Gave the nations before him. First the kingdom of 
 the Medes, then Lydia the kingdom of the rich Croesus, 
 and the Greek cities of Asia Minor; all conquered by 
 Cyrus before his enterprise against Babylon. 
 
 3. Even by the way that he had not gone. Even in his 
 marches through new and unknown countries Cyrus was 
 guided prosperously to his goal, as God's instrument. 
 
 8. But thou, Israel. Amid the conquest, panic, and 
 hurried recourse of the heathens to their idols, Israel has 
 a secure upholder and restorer in the Lord his God. 
 
 17. When the poor and needy seek water. On the march 
 of the suffering exiles through the desert between Baby- 
 lon and the Holy Land, in the promised and approaching 
 return of the Jews to their country. In these regions 
 water is almost the first object of a man's thoughts. The 
 Ghassanides ; one of the most powerful divisions of the 
 
NOTES. 115 
 
 Arabian race, took their name from a spring of water 
 they fell in with on their march across the desert from 
 Arabia into Syria. God promises his people to pro- 
 vide water in the wilderness and on the bare highlands 
 for them, and verdure in the desert, that their return may 
 be made easier. 
 
 21. Produce your cause. Israel having been exhorted 
 and encouraged, the discourse turns again to the heathen 
 and their false gods, who had been challenged to a com- 
 petition with the Lord. 
 
 22. Let them shew the former things. Let the gods of 
 the heathen show what counsel and warning they have 
 given to their dependents in former times, and let us see 
 whether it has been verified; or let them give some counsel 
 and warning to them now, and let us see whether it will 
 be verified. 
 
 25. One from the north, and . . .from the rising of the 
 sun. Cyrus from Persia, which is to the north and east 
 of Babylon. 
 
 26. Who hath declared. Who of the false gods can 
 point to warnings and prophecies fulfilled, as the God 
 of Israel can? What have they to produce like the 
 Lord's sentence passed two hundred years ago on Assyria 
 in its pride' of power : ' When the Lord hath performed 
 his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, 
 / will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of 
 Assyria, and the glory of his high looks' (Isaiah x. 12), 
 and since fulfilled in Assyria's fall ? What can they pro- 
 duce like the Lord's sentence passed sixty years ago 
 on Babylon in its pride of power : ' I will punish the 
 king of Babylon and that nation for their iniquity, and 
 the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it a perpetual 
 desolation' (Jeremiah xxv. 12), and now being fulfilled 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 NOTES. 
 
 in Babylon's danger and fast-approaching fall ? Nothing 
 of this kind can they produce, and they are all vanity. 
 
 27. I gave to Jerusalem. Israel had prophets and true 
 counsellors from his God, while the heathen from their 
 false gods had none. 
 
 CHAPTER 42. 
 
 Israel, the object of this divine favour and these divine 
 purposes, is now more closely considered, his true mode 
 of working is declared, his blindness and shortcomings 
 are reproved. 
 
 1. Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect. 
 The Greek supplies, l Jacob my servant, Israel mine 
 elect.' The whole passage, vv. 1-4, is applied to Christ 
 in the New Testament, St. Matth. xii. 17-21; but neither 
 the Greek version nor the Hebrew original are there 
 closely followed. The occasion of quoting the passage 
 is Jesus Christ's charge to those whom he healed that 
 they should not make him known, the point primarily 
 to be illustrated being Christ's mild, silent, and un- 
 contentious manner of working. 
 
 2. He shall not strive. More literally, shall not clamour : 
 shall not speak with the high, vehement voice of men who 
 contend. God's servant shall bring to men's hearts the 
 word of God's righteousness and salvation by a gentle, 
 inward, and spiritual method. 
 
 3. A bruised reed. Suffering and failing hearts he shall 
 treat tenderly, and restore them by mildness, not severity. 
 
 6. For a mediator oj the people, for the light of the Gen- 
 tiles. We are familiar with the application of this to 
 Christ; but it is said in the first instance of the ideal 
 Israel, immediately represented to the speaker by God's 
 faithful prophets bent on declaring his commandments 
 
NOTES. 117 
 
 and promises, and by the pious part of the nation, per- 
 sisting, in spite of their exile among an idolatrous people, 
 in their reliance on God and in their pure worship of 
 him. The ideal Israel, thus conceived, was to be God's 
 mediator with the more backward mass of the Jewish 
 nation, and the bringer of the saving light and health 
 of the God of Israel to the rest of mankind. 
 
 9. The former things are come to pass. Such as the 
 prophesied fall of Assyria. 
 
 ib. And new things do I declare. The approaching fall 
 of Babylon and the restoration of Israel. 
 
 10. Sing unto the Lord. In the convulsions of war 
 and change coming upon the earth God's arm was about 
 to be shown in the overthrow of idolatrous Babylon, and 
 in the restoration of his chosen people ; hence this song 
 of triumph. 
 
 ib. Ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein. 
 Compare Psalm xcvi. 1 1 : * Let the sea make a noise, and 
 all that therein is/ 
 
 11. The wilderness and the cities thereof. The great 
 expanse of desert country between Babylonia, Palestine, 
 and Arabia, with nomad tribes masters of it, and settle- 
 ments scattered through it where there is water. Kedar 
 is the name of an Arabian people, descended from 
 Ishmael, lying in the north of Arabia, next to their 
 brother race, Nebaioth, the Nabathaeans. See Gen. xxv. 1 3. 
 
 ib. The inhabitants of the rock. The country above 
 spoken of is by no means one great plain of sand, but 
 has stony regions (Arabia Petraea), hills, and rock-forts. 
 These are often contrasted with the undefended habita- 
 tions of the nomad Arabs. ' We Bedouins/ says one of 
 these Arabs, in the sixth century after Christ, to the poet 
 Imroulcays, who sought his protection, ' live in the plains, 
 
Il8 NOTES. 
 
 and have no castles where we can make our guests safe : 
 go to the Jew Samuel in his castle of El-Ablak/ The 
 fidelity of this Jewish lord of an Arabian rock-fort became 
 a proverb. 
 
 12. In the islands. See note to c. 41, v. i. 
 
 15. / will make the rivers dry land, &c. The great 
 rivers of Mesopotamia, from the nature of the country 
 through which they flow, have from the earliest times 
 offered scope for large engineering operations, both civil 
 and military. Mr. Layard speaks thus of the ruins of 
 a great stone-dam he found in the Tigris : ' It was one 
 of those monuments of a great people, to be found in 
 all the rivers of Mesopotamia, which were undertaken 
 to ensure a constant supply of water to the innumerable 
 canals spreading like network over the surrounding coun- 
 try, and which, even in the days of Alexander, were looked 
 upon as the works of an ancient nation.' Engineering 
 works for a military object, besides the operations on the 
 Gyndes and Euphrates attributed to Cyrus, are continu- 
 ally mentioned. For example, Arabian writers relate how 
 Zebba (probably the Zenobia of our histories) built two 
 fortresses, one on the right, the other on the left bank 
 of the Euphrates, and connected them by a tunnel, which 
 she made by damming and turning the Euphrates when 
 its waters were low, executing a deep cutting in its bed, 
 bricking the cutting over, and then turning the waters 
 back again. She hoped thus to have always a sure place 
 of refuge, but an enemy who was at war with her got the 
 secret of the tunnel, met her at its mouth in the second 
 fortress when she fled from the first, and slew her. 
 
 1 6. And I will bring the blind, &c. I will bring my 
 faint-hearted, incredulous, and undiscerning people safe 
 through the desert to their own land. 
 
NOTES, 119 
 
 19. Who is blind, but my servant. Israel, as a whole, 
 is faint-hearted, is slow to understand God's great pur- 
 poses for it, and incredulous of them, in spite of all the 
 experience it has had of God's guidance. 
 
 21. The Lord was pleased, &c. The Lord took Israel 
 for his chosen people, in order to exalt his law, the law of 
 righteousness, committed to Israel; Israel is conquered, 
 despoiled, and captive ; how can such things befall God's 
 chosen people ? Clearly, because of Israel's sins ; because, 
 though the chosen people, Israel would not walk in God's 
 ways. Let Israel now return to them and be saved. 
 
 CHAPTER 43. 
 
 And saved Israel shall be, the next chapter continues ; 
 his sons shall be gathered from all the regions where they 
 are dispersed, and shall be brought with safety and vic- 
 tory, as of old from the bondage of Egypt, to their own 
 land. 
 
 3. / give Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Sabafor 
 thee. In the crash now begun, the new conquering power, 
 Persia, was about to attack and overturn other powers 
 besides Babylon. Cambyses, the son of Cyras, con- 
 quered Egypt and invaded Ethiopia. Saba is Meroe on 
 the Upper Nile. The Persian king was to set free the 
 chosen people ; these other peoples, given into his hand, 
 were to be as a ransom and a substitute for the delivered 
 Israel. 
 
 8. Bring forth the blind people that have eyes. Set free 
 my people Israel, who have been blind to my ways but shall 
 see them, and deaf to my word but shall hearken to it. 
 
 9. Let all the nations. The heathen and their gods are 
 again challenged as in c. 4 1 . See note to v. 2 4 of that 
 chapter. 
 
120 NOTES. 
 
 i o. Ye are my witnesses, &c.-^- Israel is here addressed, 
 both the blind and faint-hearted mass of the nation, and 
 the faithful and believing few. 
 
 14. And the Chaldeans upon the ships of their pleasure. 
 ' I make the Chaldeans to flee upon the barks that had 
 before served for their pleasure.' The great feature of 
 Babylon was its river, the Euphrates, with its quays, 
 bridges, cuts, and artificial lakes; it served alike for use 
 and pleasure. 
 
 1 6. Which maketh a way in the sea.-^K remembrance 
 of the march out of Egypt and of Pharaoh's overthrow. 
 
 20. The beasts of the field shall honour me. I will pro- 
 vide water in the desert for my returning people on their 
 march through it ; and by this the wild creatures of the 
 desert, which usually suffer by the drought prevailing 
 there, shall profit. 
 
 23. Thou hast not brought me the lambs. Compare 
 Ps. 1. 8 : 'I will not reprove thee because of thy sacri- 
 fices or for thy burnt-offerings, because they were not 
 always before me.' The sacrificial service of the temple 
 
 . necessarily ceased during the exile at Babylon ; God has 
 no concern for this, neither does he plague his people 
 about it ; his concern is because his people plague him 
 with their sins. 
 
 24. No sweet cane. A spice reed, calamus aromaticus, 
 used for the holy anointing oil. See Exod. xxx. 23, where 
 it is called 'sweet calamus,' and mentioned along with 
 cinnamon. 
 
 26. Let us plead together. As the heathen and their 
 deities were challenged recently, so Israel is now chal- 
 lenged to try its cause with God. 
 
 2*7. Thy first father. Jacob, by whose representative 
 name the Jewish people is throughout addressed. See 
 
NOTES. 121 
 
 Hos. xih 2,3: ' The Lord will punish Jacob according 
 to his ways, according to his doings will he recompense 
 him ; he took his brother by the heel in the womb/ &c. 
 But probably a general sense is meant to be given to 
 the expression : ' thy forefathers/ ' thy race from its first 
 beginning/ 
 
 28. The princes of the sanctuary. The chief priests. 
 See Jer. Hi. 24. 
 
 CHAPTER 44. 
 
 Nevertheless, Israel shall be restored, and so evidently 
 blest that other nations shall attach themselves to him, 
 call themselves by his" name, and become servants of his 
 God. For his God is the only God, the idols are vanity. 
 Amidst the joy of the whole earth, God will perform his 
 promise and restore Israel by the hand of Cyrus. 
 
 2. Jeshurun. Probably, a diminutive of endearment, 
 coming originally from Jashar, upright, and with a force 
 something like that of Goodchild. The Greek has, my 
 beloved Israel, the Vulgate, rectissime^ Luther, Frommer, 
 1 pious one.' 
 
 3. The ancient people. More literally, the everlasting 
 people ; Israel, the chosen, eternal people of God. 
 
 7. Let them shew. A challenge as at c. 41, w. 21-24 ; 
 see the notes there. 
 
 8. They are their own witnesses. They themselves have 
 the plain evidence of the nullity of their gods ; but they 
 are blind to it, that they may come to sharrie and ruin. 
 
 11. That are but men. That are mere mortal men, 
 and yet make gods! 
 
 12. The smith. There is here mention, first, of the 
 molten image made by the smith, and then of the cheaper 
 
132 NOTES. 
 
 wooden image made by the carpenter. See c. 40, v. 20, 
 and the note there. 
 
 12. Yea, he is hungry. This god-maker is hungry 
 and faint, even at the very time he is at his god-making ! 
 
 27. That saith to the deep, &c. There is reference here 
 to the Israelites' passage of the Red Sea, arid probably 
 also to the operations of Cyrus in drying and turning the 
 rivers of Babylon. 
 
 CHAPTER 45. 
 
 Cyrus is God's instrument, and those Jews that have 
 difficulty in recognising him as such, are warned not to 
 be more wise than God. God has raised up Cyrus and 
 is directing his wars, that Israel may be saved, and that 
 the world may be saved with Israel in Israel's God, the 
 sole source of salvation. 
 
 i. To his anointed, to Cyrus. The Vulgate keeps the 
 Greek word for anointed, and has Christo meo Cyro. 
 
 ib. I will ungird the, loins. To gird the loins is to 
 make fit for action and to fill with strength ; so to wwgird 
 them is to make powerless for action and to leave de- 
 fenceless. 
 
 ib. To open before him the two-leaved gates, &c. The 
 gates of Babylon and the other cities besieged by Cyrus. 
 
 4. / have surnamed thee. ' My shepherd/ See the last 
 verse of the preceding chapter. 
 
 8. Drop down,ye heavens, &c. Compare Deut. xxxii. 2 : 
 ' My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil 
 as the dew,' &c. 
 
 ib. Have created him. Cyrus. 
 
 9. Woe unto him. God here turns to Israel, who was 
 looking for ' a rod out of the stem of Jesse ' to restore 
 
NOTES. 123 
 
 the Jews in triumph to Jerusalem, and was little pre- 
 pared to accept an alien deliverer like Cyrus. ' Will 
 Israel be more wise than God who made him and the 
 world and rules them in his own manner?' is the sub- 
 stance of this and the following verses. 
 
 9. Thy work. In common speech we should say, 
 one's work. Shall one's work say of him that fashioneth 
 it, &c. 
 
 ii. Ask ye me of things to come, &c. See note to v. 9. 
 Will ye take the disposition of things out of my hands, 
 and direct me how I am to deal with my own chosen 
 people ? 
 
 13. I have raised him, &c. Him is Cyrus, my city is 
 Jerusalem, my captives are the Jews. 
 
 14. The labour of Egypt, &c. See c. 43, v. 3, and the 
 note there. Saba, or Meroe, on the Upper Nile, was the 
 centre of a great caravan trade between Ethiopia, Egypt 
 and North Africa, Arabia and India. Herodotus speaks 
 (iii. 20) of the Ethiopians as ' the tallest of men.' 
 
 ib. Shall come over unto thee. Thee is Israel. The 
 conquest of strange nations by Cyrus shall acquaint these 
 nations with Israel and Israel's God, and make them see 
 that only in this God is salvation. 
 
 ib. In chains. After their conquest by Cyrus. 
 
 15. Thou art a God that hides t thyself. A God that is 
 unsearchable, whose ways, though excellent, are not as 
 man's ways, and whose footsteps are not known. 
 
 19. I have not spoken in secret. My oracles have not 
 been hidden and ambiguous, my promises and threaten- 
 ings have been distinct and clear. See note to c. 41, 
 v. 24. 
 
 20. Ye that are escaped of the nations. The great con- 
 vulsion of Cyrus's conquests is supposed to be over, and 
 
124 NOTES. 
 
 the remnants of the conquered nations are called upon to 
 leave their idols, and to know and acknowledge the God 
 of Israel. 
 
 CHAPTER 46. 
 
 The idols of Babylon fall, and their captive wor- 
 shippers, instead of being sustained by them, have to 
 put them on beasts of burden to be carried; the God 
 of Israel is no idol to be carried on beasts of burden 
 or on men's shoulders, he carries his people. He- has 
 called Cyrus and will save Israel in his own manner. 
 
 1. Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth. Babylonian idols. 
 In the star-worship of Babylon, Bel was the planet 
 Jupiter; it has been conjectured that Nebo was the 
 planet Mercury. The temple of Bel was one of the 
 wonders of Babylon. The gods of the conquered people 
 were carried off into captivity along with the people. So 
 Jeremiah says (xlviii. 7) of Chemosh the god of Moab : 
 ' Chemosh shall go into captivity with his priests and his 
 princes.' 
 
 ib. They are borne that ye carried. The Babylonians 
 are addressed. The idols that they used to carry with 
 honour in their religious processions, are now packed on 
 horses and bullocks and borne by the weary beasts 
 away. 
 
 2. They could not deliver the burden. The false gods 
 could not deliver their own images, borne into captivity. 
 
 8. Shew yourselves men. Not such children as to con- 
 found me with these dumb idols, who cannot counsel or 
 save. 
 
 11. Calling an eagle from the east. Cyrus from Persia. 
 
 12. Ye obdurate. Spoken to those Jews who were 
 slow to believe in their deliverance through Cyrus. 
 
NOTES. 125 
 
 CHAPTER 47. 
 
 An outburst of triumph on the approaching fall of 
 luxurious, tyrannous, superstitious Babylon. 
 
 1. Daughter of the Chaldeans. Chaldaea was the coun- 
 try, Babylon the capital. 
 
 2. Take the millstones, &c. Perform the offices of a 
 slave, thou who hast been so luxurious ! 
 
 ib. Uncover thy locks, &c. Struggle along on thy way 
 into captivity, squalid and half-clad, thou who hast been 
 so delicate 1 
 
 6. Upon the ancient. Israel Israel the ancient, Israel 
 in his old age, is used to heighten the picture of cruelty. 
 Ancient here must not be paralleled with ancient in 
 c. 44, v. 7, ' the ancient people ;' the word in the 
 original is not the same there as here, and means there 
 eternal, God's chosen and eternal people. 
 
 9. The loss of .children and widowhood, Babylon is 
 said to lose her children inasmuch as she loses her 
 citizens, and to be a widow inasmuch as she loses her 
 king. 
 
 ib. The multitude of thy sorceries. The 'magicians, 
 astrologers, and sorcerers ' of Babylon are familiar to us 
 from the book of Daniel. See Dan. ii. 2. 
 
 14. // shall not be a coal to warm at, &c. Not a 
 pleasant, warmth-giving fire, but a devouring, destruc- 
 tive one. 
 
 15. They with whom thou hast dealt. The magicians 
 and astrologers of Babylon, with whose arts she has so 
 busied herself, and on whom she has so relied, shall fail 
 her in her day of trouble ; they shall either be destroyed 
 or flee. 
 
126 NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER 48. 
 
 Israel is warned against his old hardness of heart, and 
 bidden to receive the declaration of that which is God's 
 present will, the deliverance of Israel through Cyrus. 
 But for the wicked, let Israel know, there is no de- 
 liverance. 
 
 3. 1 have declared the former things. Such as the fall 
 of Assyria and of Babylon. See c. 41, v. 24, and the 
 note there. 
 
 6. Thou hast heard; see all this /The Vulgate well 
 translates, Quce audisti, vide omnia ! All that was before 
 prophesied to thee, the fall of these mighty kingdoms, 
 behold it fulfilled ! 
 
 ib. I shew thee new things. What these ' new things ' 
 are, namely, the deliverance through Cyrus, will be dis- 
 tinctly declared at v. 14. 
 
 1 1 . Will I do it. Deliver thee. 
 
 14. Which among them. Among the false gods and 
 the false prophets of the heathen. 
 
 ib. The Lord hath loved him. Him is Cyrus. The 
 Lord hath loved Cyrus ; Cyrus will do the Lord's pleasure 
 on Babylon, and the Lord's arm shall be, by Cyrus, on 
 the Chaldeans. 
 
 1 6. Come ye near unto me, &c. In this verse the Pro- 
 phet, charged with these messages from God, speaks in 
 his own name, and testifies to his countrymen that he has 
 from the beginning pointed out to them God's hand and 
 beck in these great events now happening. 
 
 21. And they thirsted not, &c. This is what the de- 
 livered are to sing. On their return from Babylon, as in 
 old time on their return from Egypt, they have been led 
 safely through the desert and supplied with water. 
 
NOTES. 127 
 
 22. No peace. This is the note of warning, coming in 
 at the close of the strain of promise. 
 
 At the end of this chapter there is a kind of pause 
 in the discourse, which enters upon a second stage in 
 the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER 49. 
 
 The Prophet, who had appeared in v. 16 of the pre- 
 ceding chapter, comes forth in this chapter more dis- 
 tinctly. Speaking in the name of Israel, the true Israel, 
 the pious and persisting part of his nation, he announces 
 God's calling and purposes for this Israel of whom he 
 is the representative. God will not only restore the 
 Jewish nation through this true Israel, full of faith and 
 of courage for the promised restoration ; he will also 
 bring the Gentiles to himself through its light and lead- 
 ing. It is true, many of the Jews are incredulous and 
 desponding; but vain are their fears; God will not for- 
 sake his people. 
 
 2. He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword. Com- 
 pare Heb. iv. 12: ' The word of God is quick, and 
 powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword/ &c. 
 
 6. // is a small thing, &c. See the introduction to this 
 chapter. 
 
 8. A mediator of the people. The same expression as 
 at c. 42, v. 6; see the note there. 'The people' is the 
 Jewish people as opposed to the Gentiles. 
 
 ib. To establish the land. The Holy Land, which was 
 to be restored and re-settled. 
 
 9. The prisoners. The exiled and captive Israelites. 
 ib. Their pastures shall be in all high places. See 
 
 c. 41, v. 17, and the note there. 
 
128 NOTES. 
 
 11. My highways shall be exalted. Built up so as to 
 form a high and clear causeway to travel on. 
 
 12. The land of Sinim. Probably China, which may 
 have been known to the dwellers in Babylon as the name 
 of a distant land, beyond India. It seems used here to 
 imply the farthest parts of the world. 
 
 1 4. But Zion said.. The great body of the Jews were 
 made despondent by their long adversity, and thought 
 God had left them and would never restore them. Com- 
 pare c. 40, v. 27 : 'Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and 
 speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my 
 judgment is passed over from my God ? ' 
 
 1 6. Graven thee upon the palms of my hands. As some- 
 thing to be ever remembered by me. See Deut. vi. 8 : 
 < And thou shalt bind them (God's words) for a sign 
 upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between 
 thine eyes.' Here the object for remembrance is con- 
 ceived as written on something like paper, and then 
 attached to the hands or face ; in the text it is conceived 
 as graven directly upon the hands. In Persia at this day 
 people wear talismans, called forms, representing a star 
 with five rays, each ray having written on it an im- 
 portant text of the Koran, and in the middle of the star 
 is written the name of God. These are now talismans, 
 but they were originally reminders, to keep God and 
 certain thoughts concerning him ever at hand. Their 
 use throws light on the expressions, 'to trust in God's 
 name', ' to fear the name,' ' to rejoice in the name,' 
 ' to believe in the name,' which so often occur in the 
 Bible. 
 
 1 8. All these. The scattered and exiled children of 
 Zion. 
 
 19. They that swallowed thee up. Zion's foreign con- 
 
NOTES. 129 
 
 querors and occupiers shall evacuate her, and leave her 
 to her own children. 
 
 20. The place is too strait for me. A picture of the 
 fulness and prosperity, after her restoration, of the deso- 
 late and empty Jerusalem of the time of the exile, 
 
 21. Then shall thou say, &c. The expressions in this 
 verse are to be closely noted, for the discourse returns to 
 them at the beginning of the next chapter. Zion com- 
 plains that she is (i) a mother who has lost her children, 
 and (2) a wife whom her husband (God) has abandoned. 
 
 24. Shall the prey. Shall Israel be really rescued from, 
 such a power as Babylon ? Yes, 
 
 CHAPTER 50. 
 
 In the first three verses the thread of the discourse is 
 directly continued from the last chapter. At v. 4 the 
 Prophet, as the true Israel (see the introduction to the 
 last chapter), speaks again of himself and his mission. 
 
 1. Thus saith the Lord, &c. See v. 21 of the pre- 
 ceding chapter. Zion complains that her children are 
 lost, and she is divorced. God answers : Can a writing 
 of divorcement (St. Matth. v. 3 1 ) be shown against me, as 
 in a man's case, to prove a formal divorce? or, have I 
 creditors to whom, as a human debtor, I sell my children ? 
 Zion is abandoned, and her children lost to her, but for 
 a time, because of her sins and while her sins last. 
 
 2. Wherefore, when I came, &c. The faint-heartedness 
 of the bulk of the Jewish people, despondent and inert 
 about the promised restoration, is rebuked, and God's 
 almighty power to effect his designs is set forth. 
 
 10. Who is among you. God speaks. 
 
 11. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire. This is said 
 to the Jews, who receive with incredulity, anger, and 
 
 K 
 
130 NOTES. 
 
 persecution, God's message and messenger. In this, as in 
 the preceding verse, it is God who speaks ; and he warns 
 these Jews that their anger and violence shall be turned 
 against themselves, and they shall ' lie down in sorrow/ 
 See c. 66, v. 24. 
 
 CHAPTER 51. 
 
 This chapter continues the encouragement given at 
 v. 10 of the preceding chapter. The faithful of Israel 
 shall be brought to the land of promise like their father 
 Abraham, and shall be blest and multiplied there; they 
 shall be the means of extending God's salvation to the 
 rest of the world. Let not man make them afraid; the 
 Lord is with them, who brought them out of Egypt ; who 
 afflicted them, but will now save them and afflict their 
 oppressors. 
 
 1. The rock, &c. Abraham and Sarah, the progenitors 
 of Israel. 
 
 2. / called him alone. When he was but one, God 
 called him, to make him a great nation. Compare Ezek. 
 xxxiii. 24: ' Abraham was one, and he inherited the 
 land.' 
 
 5. Mine arms shall judge. The common figure of the 
 actual arm or hand of God swaying human affairs. 
 
 9. Cut Rahab and wounded the dragon. Rahab, 'the 
 Proud/ is Egypt ; the dragon is probably the crocodile of 
 the Nile, the emblematic beast of Egypt. As God smote 
 Egypt of old, and delivered his people, so he will deliver 
 them now. 
 
 12. Afraid of a man. Such as thy oppressor, the king of 
 Babylon, whom thou fearedst so, and who is now falling. 
 
 1 6. That I may plant the heavens ; &c. The new 
 heavens and the new earth. Compare c. 65, v. 17. 
 
NOTES. 131 
 
 1 8. None to guide her. What follows is a picture of 
 the misery wrought by Nebuchadnezzar's siege and de- 
 struction of Jerusalem. 
 
 19. These two things. Desolation and destruction of 
 the land is one of the two things ; famine and slaughter 
 of the people the other. 
 
 21. Not with wine. Dizzy and staggering, not with 
 wine, but with affliction from God. 
 
 23. Laid thy body as the ground and as the street. A trait 
 of the humiliation of the conquered and the insolence of 
 the conqueror in Eastern kingdoms. So it is related that 
 when Sapor king of Persia got on horseback, his pri- 
 soner, the Roman emperor Valerian, had to kneel down 
 and make his back a step for him. 
 
 CHAPTER 52. 
 
 The strain of the previous chapter is continued. Israel 
 shall be restored, and the mountains of Judah and the 
 waste places of Jerusalem shall rejoice at the triumphal 
 return to Zion of the Lord with his people. This strain 
 ends with v. 12. 
 
 3. Ye have sold your selves for nought. This is the same 
 sort of argumentation as at c. 50, v. i ; see the note 
 there. Egypt and Assyria acquired no perpetual rights 
 over Israel, they never became his purchasers and legal 
 owners ; so it is now with Babylon ; Babylon has no 
 permanent property in Israel whom it so heavily op- 
 presses; therefore the Lord, who punished Israel by 
 giving him over for a time to his enemies, will now 
 restore him. 
 
 7. Thy watchmen. The prophets, who with joy an- 
 nounce God's return with his redeemed people to Zion. 
 K 2 
 
132 NOTES. 
 
 11. From thence. From Babylon, on their march home 
 to the Holy Land. 
 
 ib. The vessels of the Lord. The holy vessels of the 
 Temple, which had been carried off to Babylon, and 
 which Cyrus restored to the returning Jews. See Ezra 
 i. 7, 8 : ' Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels 
 of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had 
 brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put them ,in the 
 house of his gods ; even those did Cyrus king of Persia 
 bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and 
 numbered them unto Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.' 
 
 12. With haste. With haste and by flight, as ye did 
 from Egypt. The exodus from Babylon shall be not 
 like this, but public and triumphant. 
 
 13. Behold my servant, &c. This and the two follow- 
 ing verses belong to the next chapter. They declare the 
 future glory of God's persecuted servant. 
 
 14. His visage was so marred. See c. 50, v. 6. 
 
 15. So shall many nations exult in him. The Vulgate 
 has asperget gentes multas, ' he shall sprinkle many na- 
 tions ;' and so, too, has our Bible. The Greek has : 
 ' Many nations shall be in admiration at him/ The 
 Chaldaic has, ' he shall rout,' or ' scatter.' 
 
 ib. Kings shall shut their mouths before him. In sign 
 of reverence. 
 
 CHAPTER 53. 
 
 The application of this well-known chapter to Jesus 
 Christ will be in every one's mind. But it must be our 
 concern here to find out its primary historical import, and its 
 connexion with the discourse where it stands. On this the 
 50th chapter throws much light ; see particularly vv. 5-9. 
 There we find ill-usage and persecution of God's servant: 
 
NOTES. 133 
 
 ' I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them 
 that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face from shame 
 and spitting/ In Jeremiah (c. n, v. 19) we find this 
 persecution of God's servant, at the hands of those who 
 would not receive his word, threatening to proceed even 
 to killing : ' I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to 
 the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised 
 devices against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with 
 the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land 
 of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.' 
 From the same prophet we find that in the case of Urijah, 
 brought from Egypt and put to death under Jehoiakim, 
 the persecution did proceed even to killing' (Jer. xxvi. 23). 
 From the New Testament we learn the same thing: 'Ye 
 are witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of 
 them which killed the prophets ;' ' Jerusalem, that killest 
 the prophets' (St. Matth. xxiii. 31, 37). Leaving the Bible, 
 from Josephus we learn the same ; from the Jewish tradi- 
 tions, too, the same. According to these traditions, Isaiah 
 himself was put to death by Manasseh. Adding all this 
 to the data furnished by this 53rd chapter itself, we have 
 for the original subject of this chapter a martyred servant 
 of God, recognisable by the Jews of the exile under the 
 allusions here made to him, who eminently fulfilled the 
 ideal of the servant of God, the true Israel, the mediator 
 of the people and the light of the Gentiles, presented in 
 this series of chapters; and whose death, crowning his 
 life and reaching men's hearts, made an epoch of victory 
 for this ideal. 
 
 More, as to the first and historical meaning, cannot be 
 said with certainty. Many attempts have been made at 
 an identification of this ' man of sorrows ' with his primary 
 historical original, in addition to the identification of him 
 
134 NOTES. 
 
 with Christ; he has been said to be Hezekiah, Josiah, 
 Isaiah himself, Jeremiah; but there are no sufficient 
 grounds to establish his identity with any one of them. 
 
 The purport of the chapter is as follows. The Prophet, 
 speaking as one of the Jewish people (as in c. 42, v. 24 ; 
 ' The Lord, he against whom we have sinned') declares 
 how God's faithful servant, the bearer of his commands 
 and promises, despised, persecuted, and at last taken 
 away from prison and judgment to die, was stricken for 
 the iniquities of the people, bare their sins, healed them 
 by his sufferings, and would finally, in spite, nay, by 
 means of his death, prevail and triumph. 
 
 1. Who believed our report. Literally, 'our hearing', 
 which the Greek and the Vulgate have. The report we 
 gave of God's commands and promises and of the glori- 
 fication of his servant. See the last three verses of the 
 preceding chapter ; see also c. 49, vv. 1-8, and c. 50, 
 vv. 711. The Prophet speaks in the first verse as one 
 of God's messengers; immediately afterwards he begins 
 to speak as one of the sinful and undiscerning people. 
 
 2. Before him. Before the Lord. 
 
 ib. A slender plant. The word in the original means 
 merely a young shoot, a sapling. Not a tender plant, 
 which implies beauty, delicacy, and fostering care, but 
 a slender plant, ' as a root out of a dry ground,' thin and 
 insignificant. 
 
 3. We hid as it were our faces. In contempt and 
 disgust. 
 
 5. The chastisement of our peace. The chastisement by 
 which our peace is won. 
 
 7. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. The Vulgate, 
 which throughout this chapter translates so as to heighten 
 the identification with Christ, has here : Oblatus est quia 
 
NOTES. 135 
 
 ipse voluit, He was offered because he himself chose to 
 be. It is remarkable that in several places in this chapter 
 the old Latin version which the Vulgate superseded is 
 more faithful to the original than the Vulgate itself. 
 
 8. He was taken, &c. Taken away from prison and 
 from judgment to a violent death. This and the pre- 
 ceding verses are quoted in Acts viii. 32, 33, as the 
 passage of Scripture which the Ethiopian eunuch was 
 reading when Philip joined him. This verse is there 
 quoted according to the Greek version, which mistakes 
 the original : * In his humiliation his judgment was taken 
 away, and who shall declare his generation? for his life 
 is taken away from the earth.' 
 
 ib. Who of his generation. Who of his contempo- 
 raries recognised the true meaning of his death ? that 
 he died, not, as we thought, by his own fault, but for us 
 and because of our sins. 
 
 ib. My people. The Prophet speaks as in God's 
 name. The Vulgate here makes God himself speak, 
 and say : Propter scelus populi met percussi eum, Because 
 of the wickedness of my people I smote him. 
 
 9. He made his grave with the wicked. Compare 
 Jer. xxvi. 23, as to the burial of the prophet Urijah : 
 ' And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt and brought 
 him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the 
 sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the 
 common people/ 
 
 1 1. He shall see of the travail of his soul. He shall see 
 the fruits of his sufferings in the many whom his life and 
 death have turned to God and saved. 
 
 ib. By his knowledge. Compare c. 50, v. 4 : ' The 
 Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that 
 I should know how to speak a word in season to him 
 
1 36 NOTES. 
 
 that is weary,' &c. In this and the following verse God 
 himself speaks. 
 
 CHAPTER 54. 
 
 God's people thus purged and healed shall be eternally 
 established ; Israel shall extend his borders and multiply 
 his sons ; his enemies shall come over to him ; this is the 
 heritage of the servants of the Lord and their promised 
 justification through God's righteous servant. 
 
 1. Sing, O barren. Zion is addressed as at c. 49, 
 vv. 1 8-2 1, and with the same promises. See the notes 
 there. The captivity in Babylon is Zion's widowhood 
 without her husband, the Lord ; the slaughter and diminu- 
 tion of her people are her childlessness; this is to be 
 more than made good after her restoration. 
 
 2. Lengthen thy cords, &c. Images taken from the 
 pitching of tents. 
 
 6. A wife of youth. And therefore beloved. 
 
 9. This is as the waters of Noah unto me. I deal with 
 my people respecting this their captivity in Babylon, as 
 I dealt with them respecting Noah's flood. The words 
 which follow explain the particular dealing meant. 
 
 15. Whosoever shall gather together against thee, &c. It 
 had been already promised that the Gentiles should resort 
 to Israel for salvation ; here it is added that even those 
 who try to be his enemies shall come over to him. 
 
 1 6. Behold I have created, &c. Destroyers and destruc- 
 tion are God's work; they reach those only whom he 
 means them to reach, and he does not mean them to 
 reach Israel. 
 
 17. Their righteousness of me. This is what was pro- 
 mised at v. ii of the preceding chapter : ' By his know- 
 ledge shall my righteous servant justify many.' In the 
 
NOTES. 137 
 
 original, the same word stands both for justification and 
 for righteousness, and what is said here is : ' This is the 
 heritage of the servants of the Lord and their promised 
 justification by me through means of my righteous ser- 
 vant/ 
 
 CHAPTER 55. 
 
 The Jewish people are urged to take the freely offered 
 salvation now close at hand; but are warned that they 
 can have it only on condition of amending their lives. 
 
 i. Ho, every one that thirsteth. Compare St. John vii. 
 37 : 'Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst let 
 him come unto me and drink/ 
 
 3. The sure mercies of David. The same sure, unfail- 
 ing mercies which I showed to David. 
 
 4. Behold, 1 appointed him. I gave formerly the nations 
 into David's hand ; so will I now into yours. 
 
 5. Thou shalt call a nation, &c. See the preceding 
 chapter, v. 3. See also c. 52, v. 15; and c. 45, v. 14, 
 and the notes there. 
 
 12. For ye shall go out with joy. On the return to the 
 Holy Land. See c. 52, v. 12, and the note there* 
 
 CHAPTER 56. 
 
 The warning is continued. Righteousness is needed, 
 in order to lay hold on God's coming salvation ; but, 
 with righteousness, the stranger may lay hold on it as 
 well as Israel. At v. 8 the discourse turns abruptly, with 
 severe threatenings, to the slothful and sinful part of the 
 nation and their faithless guides. 
 
 i . Do justice / for my salvation is near. This is nearly 
 
138 NOTES. 
 
 the same as John the Baptist's preaching, St. Matth. 
 iii. 2 : * Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand/ 
 
 2. That keepeth the sabbath. This seems at variance 
 with Isaiah, c. i, v. 13: 'The new moons and sabbaths 
 I cannot away with.' But that related to a time when 
 the kingdom of Judah yet stood, when the service of the 
 Temple was in full course, the whole exterior part of 
 the Jews' religion splendid and prominent. At such a 
 time, a prophet might naturally undervalue the whole of 
 this exterior part in comparison with the inward part 
 But during the exile in Babylon all the services and 
 sacrifices of the Temple had ceased, and the one tes- 
 timony of faithfulness to their religion which the Jews 
 among an idolatrous people could give was the observance 
 of their Sabbath ; their Sabbath was the one outward thing 
 which brought their religion to their mind. Hence its 
 observance acquired quite a special value. 
 
 3. Neither let the son of the stranger, &c. By the law 
 of Moses, eunuchs and strangers were not to enter into 
 the congregation of the Lord. See Deut. xxiii. 1-8. 
 This exclusion was now to cease. A stricter and nar- 
 rower policy, however, prevailed under Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah after the return (Neh. xiii. 14), and in general the 
 views of the priesthood were, on a point like this, less 
 liberal than those of the prophet's. But our prophet's 
 whole conception of the Gentiles in relation to the reli- 
 gion of Israel is unexampled in the Old Testament for 
 its admirable width, depth, and grandeur. 
 
 ib. Eunuch. It must be remembered that, attached 
 to a great Eastern court like that of Babylon, were a 
 multitude of eunuchs, some of whom had perhaps adopted 
 the religion of Israel. It is probable, also, that some of 
 
NOTES. 139 
 
 the Jewish youths were taken J for the court- service as 
 eunuchs, and their countrymen would afterwards have 
 been likely to abhor them on that account. These con- 
 siderations will enable us the better to feel the exquisite 
 tenderness and mercifulness of this passage. 
 
 5. Better than of sons. A better and more enduring 
 name than he could have had through children born to 
 him to keep up his name and the name of his family. 
 
 7. Mine house shall be called an house of prayer. The 
 words quoted by Jesus Christ when he cleared the temple. 
 See St. Matth. xxi. 13. 
 
 9. All ye beasts of the field. There is here an abrupt 
 turn to the faithless part of the Jewish nation, under their 
 negligent rulers and guides. The barbarous idolatrous 
 nations are called, as beasts of the field and forest, to 
 devour this easy prey. 
 
 10. His watchmen. His chief men, princes, priests, 
 and prophets. 
 
 CHAPTER 57. 
 
 The insensibility and idolatry of the unfaithful part of 
 the Jewish nation are reproved. The restoration of Israel 
 is, indeed, willed by God, but it is for the righteous 
 only. 
 
 i. The righteous perisheth, &c. We are taken back to 
 the subject of c. 53 : ' Who of his generation regarded 
 it, why he was cut off out of the land of the living ?' The 
 wicked cannot understand the meaning of the life and 
 death of the righteous ; how his perishing is not his fault, 
 but the fault of the evil around him. 
 
 3. But draw near, &c. The righteous dies and is at 
 rest ; but ye, what will ye make at last of your derision 
 
140 NOTES. 
 
 of the righteous, and of the follies and idolatries wherein 
 ye trust ? Nothing. 
 
 3. Sons of the sorceress, &c. Ye who have mixed 
 yourselves up with the sorceries and idolatries of Babylon. 
 The figure of adultery, &c., has reference to this idolatrous 
 unfaithfulness. We find again in chapters 65 and 66 that 
 many of the Jews in Babylon gave themselves to this, 
 and thought it really religion and a way of safety out of 
 their troubles. 
 
 4. Against whom. The idolatrous Jews mocked and 
 despised the pious and persisting servant of God. 
 
 5. Under every green tree. The idolatrous worship in 
 the consecrated groves of the false gods, so often men- 
 tioned in Scripture. 
 
 ib. Slaying the children in the valleys. The most 
 famous sacrifices of this kind were those in the valley of 
 Hinnom. See Jeremiah vii. 31. They were made to 
 Moloch, the king of heaven, the god of the Ammonites. 
 But through all the kindreds of the Semitic race (to which 
 the Babylonians, too, belonged) sacrifices of this sort 
 seem to have been in use. 
 
 6. They, they are thy lot. To them thou attachest thy 
 luck, thy fortune. The worship of stones is a very early 
 form of idolatry, and originated, probably, in the venera- 
 tion paid to meteoric stones, stones which, as the people 
 said, ' fell down from heaven/ But the worship extended 
 to other stones also. Traces of this worship occur in 
 Genesis, in Jacob's consecration of the stones in his pas- 
 sage by Bethel. ' And Jacob rose up early in the morning, 
 and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set 
 it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it! Gen. 
 xxviii. 1 8. The Greeks, too, had this stone worship; ' In 
 the earlier times/ says the Greek traveller Pausanias, ' all 
 
NOTES. 141 
 
 the Greeks worshipped, in place of images of the gods, 
 undressed stones/ We find the name Bcetylia given to 
 these stones, and it has even been conjectured that this 
 name comes from Bethel. 
 
 7. Upon a lofty and high mountain. The worship 'in 
 high places' is well known. 
 
 ib. Thy bed. The idolatry of the Jews is throughout 
 spoken of under the figure of adultery, as unfaithfulness 
 to God. 
 
 8. Thy remembrance. Probably, small images like those 
 of the Roman Penates or household gods, which were in 
 every private family, and were the objects of prayers and 
 offerings. 
 
 ib. Thou hast enlarged thy bed, Still the figure of 
 adultery against God committed with the false gods of 
 Babylon. 
 
 9. And thou wentest, &c. See v. 5 and the second 
 note there. The idolatrous Jews offered precious oint- 
 ment and frankincense to Moloch. Moloch was the king 
 of heaven, but these Jews sought out all idolatrous wor- 
 ships and false gods, down to the gods of the under- 
 world. 
 
 10. Thou art wearied. Nothing could convince these 
 idolatrous Jews of the folly of their misplaced trust and 
 vain worship. 
 
 11. And of whom hast thou been afraid? How could 
 thy calamities, and the fear of thy Babylonian tyrant, 
 make thee so superstitious and forgetful? 
 
 14. Cast ye up. As before; make a clear and smooth 
 highway for my returning people. 
 
 15. Of a contrite and humble spirit. This should be 
 noted as, what may be called, the new test of religion, 
 brought in, or at any rate first set in clear light, by 
 
142 NOTES, 
 
 this Prophet. See also c. 66, v. 2, where this test is again 
 given. Compare, too, c. 42, v. 2. 
 
 19. I create the fruit of the lips. I create comfort and 
 joy of heart, and so give cause for the outpourings of 
 praise and thankfulness from those whom I save. 
 
 ib. Peace to him that is far off. Again this Prophet's 
 large conception of the extent, reaching to the Gentiles 
 as well as Jews, of God's salvation. St. Paul quotes 
 these words in Eph. iii. 17:' Christ came and preached 
 peace to you (the Gentiles) which were afar off, and to 
 them that were nigh.' 
 
 21. No peace. Again this warning as to the sole 
 condition upon which God's salvation can be had. See 
 the last verse of c. 48. 
 
 CHAPTER 58. 
 
 Reproof continues. External worship is insufficient ; a 
 change of heart, mildness and mercy, are requisite in 
 order that God's salvation offered to Israel may take 
 effect. 
 
 i. Cry aloud. God speaks to the prophet. 
 
 3. Wherefore have we fasted? Besides the regular fasts 
 of the Jewish religion, there were, during the captivity in 
 Babylon, special fasts appointed as days of repentance 
 and prayer for Israel. 
 
 ib. Exact all your labours. Make your dependents do 
 all the work you 'want done. Oppression, fault-finding, 
 and harshness go on during the fast just the same. 
 
 4. To be heard on high. If ye wish your voice and 
 your prayer to be heard by God in heaven, this is not the 
 sort of fast to induce him to listen. 
 
 9. The putting forth of the finger. Mockery and in- 
 
NOTES. 143 
 
 science towards the pious and persisting part of the 
 nation. 
 
 13. The sabbath. For the special importance of the 
 Sabbath during the captivity in Babylon see c. 58, v. 2, 
 and the note there. 
 
 14. The high places of the earth. In early times and in 
 the warfare of early times the high and rocky situations 
 were also the strong and defensible situations, and 
 therefore he who occupied them was formidable and 
 powerful. 
 
 CHAPTER 59. 
 
 Israel's sins are what make Israel's misery and defer 
 his salvation. But God, because Israel is his chosen 
 instrument, will himself interpose to break up the un- 
 righteous kingdoms of the world and to restore Israel. 
 
 3. Your hands are defiled. This and what follows is a 
 picture of the sins of the unfaithful part of the Jewish 
 nation during the captivity in Babylon, and in spite of the 
 lessons taught by that captivity. 
 
 5. They hatch cockatrice' eggs. They hatch mischief. 
 Cockatrice is compounded of the words cock and adder, 
 and is a fabled venomous serpent bred from an egg. 
 Serpents do not lay eggs, but bring forth their young 
 alive. 
 
 ib. Weave the spider s web. They spin vain, foolish 
 schemes, which can only come to nought. 
 
 7. Their feet run to evil. Quoted in the Epistle to the 
 Romans (iii. 15), to prove the guiltiness before God of 
 the Jews under their law. 
 
 9. Therefore is judgment gone from us. Here the person 
 changes, and the Prophet speaks as himself one of the 
 
144 NOTES. 
 
 sinful people, and offers up in his own name and theirs a 
 sort of confession of sins. 
 
 9. We wait for light, &c. See the preceding chapter, 
 v. 3 : ' Wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest not ? ' 
 Now the people know and confess the reason ; because 
 of their sins. 
 
 10. We grope for the wall A picture of the helpless- 
 ness and hopelessness of the Jewish exiles. 
 
 11. We roar all like bears, arid moan sore like doves. 
 We complain loudly and obstreperously, and we complain 
 with whining and moaning ; in vain, because our heart is 
 not right with God. 
 
 15. He that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. 
 Again a reference, probably, to the subject of the 53rd 
 chapter, the death of the patient and innocent servant of 
 God. 
 
 ib. And the Lord saw it, &c. Israel, God's chosen 
 instrument, failed to put down iniquity, nay, himself fell 
 into it. Therefore God, by the wars and convulsions which 
 shatter the world, will himself destroy the wicked, both 
 Jew and Gentile, and will bring about, through these wars 
 and convulsions, the restoration of Zion and of the rem- 
 nant of the true Israelites, and the salvation of the world 
 through the light that shall spring from them. 
 
 1 8. According to their deeds, &c. The enemies of the 
 Lord, whoever and wherever they are, Jew or Gentile, 
 near or far, shall be visited and smitten. 
 
 19. When the enemy. Cyrus. See c. 45, v. i. Cyrus 
 and his conquests are to be God's instruments of punish- 
 ment to an unrighteous world, of restoration to the true 
 Israelites. 
 
 20. And a redeemer shall come to Zion, &c. The 
 primary historical application of this is still to Cyrus, or, 
 
NOTES. 145 
 
 more strictly, to the salvation which was to arise for Zion, 
 and through Zion for the world, out of that great storm of 
 war and change in which Cyrus was the chief human 
 agent. St. Paul, in Rom. xi. 26, quotes the Greek ver- 
 sion, which differs from the original : ' There shall come 
 out of Sion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness 
 from Jacob/ The best Greek text has not ' out of Sion/ 
 as St. Paul quotes, but ' for Sion's sake/ 
 
 21. My spirit that is upon thee. The Prophet here 
 declares God's promise to Israel that the line of prophets 
 of God should not fail. 
 
 CHAPTER 60. 
 
 The Prophet, who has just announced 'A redeemer shall 
 come to Zion', now describes Zion as it shall be after its 
 restoration. 
 
 1. Arise, shine. Zion is addressed; the Greek, the 
 Vulgate, and the Chaldaic insert the explanatory word 
 ' Jerusalem/ 
 
 2. Darkness doth cover the earth. The kingdoms of the 
 earth are breaking up amid gloom and misery; with 
 Israel alone is light and joy in. the Lord. 
 
 3. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light. It shall be 
 seen that Israel alone has in the Lord the secret of light 
 and joy, and the heathen nations shall come to share it 
 with Israel. See c. 45, v. 14, and the notes there. 
 
 4. Thy sons shall come from far. See c. 49, v. 22 : 
 ' The Gentiles . . . shall bring thy sons in their arms, and 
 thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders/ 
 The nations amongst which the Jews are scattered shall 
 bring them back to the Holy Land, with offerings and 
 treasures to restore the Temple service and rebuild Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 L 
 
146 NOTES. 
 
 5. The abundance of the sea. The riches of the coast- 
 lands of the West, the Mediterranean countries, 'the isles.' 
 More fully at v. 9. 
 
 6. The multitude of camels. In this and the following 
 verse are enumerated nations and contributions of the 
 inland country to the south and south-east of Palestine, 
 Arabian tribes and their respective products ; in verses 8 
 and 9, those of the Mediterranean sea-board and the 
 west. Midian and Ephah, with their caravan trade, 
 Kedar (see c. 42, v. n) and Nebaioth, with their flocks, 
 are tribes of Northern Arabia; Sheba, with its gold and 
 frankincense, is in Arabia Felix, to the south of them. 
 
 8. Who are these that fly as a cloud? The Prophet has 
 pictured the approach of the caravans of inland Arabia ; 
 now he pictures the approach of the fleets from the coast 
 lands of the Mediterranean. The fleets with their sails, as 
 seen afar off, are compared to a cloud, or to a flock of 
 white doves flying towards their dovecote. 
 
 9. Tarshish. The Greek Tartessus, a Phoenician 
 settlement at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, outside the 
 Straits of Gibraltar, and representing to the Hebrews the 
 farthest west. It was the port whence the rich mineral 
 produce of Spain was shipped by the Phoenicians. 
 
 1 1 . Therefore thy gates shall be open continually. This 
 trait, with many others in the present chapter, is repeated 
 in the picture of the new Jerusalem in the Book of Reve- 
 lation (xxi. 25). Here the open gates have their special 
 reason assigned : to admit the ever in-streaming world^ 
 with its offerings and homage. 
 
 12. For the nation and kingdom. Every nation shall 
 fall unless it serves the Lord, the righteous God, the God 
 of Israel, through whom alone is salvation. The figure 
 of serving Israel means serving the God of Israel. 
 
NOTES. 147 
 
 13. The glory of Lebanon. A reminiscence of the 
 building of Solomon's temple, and of the contributions to 
 it of cedar-wood out of Lebanon (i Kings v. i-n), 
 which are to be repeated now for the rebuilding of the 
 Temple. 
 
 1 6. Thou shall also suck. See v. 1 1. 
 
 17. For brass, &c. The more valuable, for the less 
 valuable thou hast lost. 
 
 ib. Thy officers peace. The restored Zion shall have 
 peace-loving and righteous rulers. 
 
 21. Thy people also shall be all righteous. The stress is 
 on all. See c. 54, v. 13; c. 57, v. 13; and the twice- 
 repeated warning : ' No peace, saith my God, to the 
 wicked!' 
 
 ib. The branch. This is in apposition with they. They, 
 the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, shall 
 inherit the land for ever. In this and the concluding 
 verse God himself speaks. 
 
 At the end of this chapter is a pause. 
 
 CHAPTER 61. 
 
 The prophet speaks in his own name, as at c. 50, v. 4, 
 which should be compared with the opening of this chap- 
 ter. See also the opening of c. 49. He declares for 
 whom his ministry and God's promises are intended, sums 
 up the blessings of the new era at hand, and professes his 
 joy and thankfulness for it. 
 
 i. Unto the afflicted. The Vulgate, which the English 
 Authorised Version follows, has mansuetis, * the meek ; ' 
 the Greek has ' the poor.' It will be remembered how (St. 
 Luke iv. 18) Jesus Christ reads out this passage in the 
 synagogue at Nazareth, and applies it to himself and his 
 L 2 
 
148 NOTES. 
 
 ministry. St. Luke uses the Greek, and makes Christ 
 say ' the poor.' 
 
 i. Liberty to the captives. The expressions, 'liberty to 
 the captives/ ' opening of the prison to the bound/ ' ac- 
 ceptable year of the Lord/ are all expressions with a 
 special meaning for the Jews from the year of jubilee, 
 when by the law of Moses the slave recovered his liberty. 
 Acceptable year is more properly gracious year, or, year of 
 grace of the Lord. 
 
 3. Beauty for ashes. Beauty means ornament here ; the 
 signs of joy instead of the signs of mourning. 
 
 5. And strangers. The Jews, a nation of God's ser- 
 vants appointed to initiate the rest of the world into his 
 service, are to give themselves to this sacred and priestly 
 labour, while the rest of the world do their secular labour 
 for them. 
 
 7. For your shame ye shall have double. See c. 40, 
 v. i : ' Jerusalem receiveth of the Lord's hand double for 
 all her rue.' 
 
 ib. My people. One of the sudden changes of person 
 so common with this Prophet. Ye and they both relate to 
 God's people, Israel. 
 
 10. / will greatly rejoice. The Prophet speaks as 
 already possessing by anticipation the blessings promised, 
 and as filled with gratitude for them. 
 
 CHAPTER 62. 
 
 For these blessings the Prophet will not cease to pray 
 and wrestle, until they arrive, and the glorious salvation of 
 the renewed Zion shines forth. 
 
 i. Righteousness. More properly here saving health. 
 The Vulgate, to make the application to Christ evident, 
 
NOTES. 149 
 
 translates : ' Until her Just One go forth as brightness, and 
 her Saviour be lighted as a lamp.' 
 
 2. New name. We have again, in the Book of Revela- 
 tion, this bestowal of a new name upon those whom God 
 has redeemed and renewed. 
 
 4. My delight is in her, and thy land Married. In the 
 Hebrew, Hephzibah and Beulah. 
 
 6. / have set watchmen. God declares that he has set 
 his watchmen, his angels, upon the walls of Jerusalem, to 
 remind him of her continually. Compare c. 49, v. 16. 
 The Prophet entreats these watchmen to ply their office 
 without ceasing, until Jerusalem is restored. 
 
 10. Go through, go through. Compare c. 40^ v. 3. 
 The immediate return of the Lord with his chosen people 
 to Jerusalem is announced, and preparations for the 
 triumphal march and entry are to be made. 
 
 ib. Lift up a standard for the nations. In order that 
 'the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the 
 brightness of thy rising.' See c. 60, v. 3. 
 
 CHAPTER 63. 
 
 So sure are God's purposes that even if mortal instru- 
 ments (such as Cyrus) fail, God himself will do the work 
 upon the enemies of Israel The Prophet selects Edom 
 as a kindred and neighbour people of Israel, and yet their 
 ancient and specially bitter enemy (compare c. 34 ; com- 
 pare also Obadiah, and Ezek. xxxv. 5, and Ps. cxxxvii. 7), 
 who had assisted Nebuchadnezzar in the destruction of 
 Jerusalem. In a kind of short drama, of sublime 
 grandeur, the Prophet exhibits God himself as returning 
 from executing vengeance upon Edom. 
 
 After the 6th verse the subject changes, and the Pro- 
 
150 NOTES. 
 
 phet, reverting to God's old mercies towards Israel, sup- 
 plicates for their renewal. 
 
 i. Who is this ? A conqueror with blood-stained gar- 
 ments is supposed to appear. The spectators ask, Who 
 is he ? He is the Lord. 
 
 ib. Bozrah. A place in Hauran, to the north of Edom 
 as marked in the maps, but the territory of the Edomites 
 reached there after the downfall of the Jewish kingdom. 
 Bozrah, or Bostra, afterwards became a place of import- 
 ance ; the fairs of Bozrah and Damascus are mentioned 
 as the two great Syrian fairs which Mahomet in his youth 
 visited. 
 
 ib. I that speak. God answers. In the next verse the 
 spectators again question; in the three following verses 
 God speaks. 
 
 4. / looked, and there was none to help. The year of 
 God's redeemed has come (see c. 61, v. i, and the note 
 there), the time for the restoration of Israel that the world 
 might be saved through Israel ; the kings of the earth 
 and the revolutions of states might fail or delay in bring- 
 ing about God's designs for Israel; then God himself 
 must interpose. 
 
 7. / will mention. Here the short drama, or vision, 
 of the Divine Conqueror of Edom ends; the Prophet 
 reverts to God's old loving-kindnesses and the de- 
 liverance from Egypt, and implores a return of the like 
 dealings. 
 
 13. As an horse in the desert. As the free, light- 
 stepping horse of the Arab in the desert. 
 
 14. As the beast. As the cattle go instinctively down 
 to sheltered places for their rest, so Israel was led to 
 places of rest and security. 
 
 15. The sounding of thy bowels. The metaphor is from 
 
NOTES. 151 
 
 strings tightly stretched, and giving, therefore, a louder 
 and deeper sound. 
 
 1 6. Though Abraham be ignorant of us. Though we 
 are in exile, strangers to the Holy Land and the polity 
 founded by our fathers. 
 
 1 8.' Our adversaries. Babylon and the heathen na- 
 tions. 
 
 CHAPTER 64. 
 
 The supplication goes on without interruption, but it 
 passes into a confession of sins in the name of the whole . 
 people, sins that had grown up amidst the despair and 
 misery of the exile, and ends with an appeal to God's 
 grace and mercy. 
 
 i. That thou wouldest rend the heavens. That .thou 
 wouldest appear once more in fire, as formerly on Sinai. 
 
 4. Who hath prepared. Before who supply, to com- 
 plete the sense, a God. 
 
 5. That rejoiceth. In the Lord. Compare Psalm 
 xcvii. 12 : ' Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous/ 
 
 ib. Wroth with them continually. With thy people 
 Israel. One of the changes of person already noticed as 
 frequent with this Prophet. 
 
 CHAPTER 65. 
 
 God makes answer to the foregoing supplication. He 
 has called his people, but in vain ; they have been obsti- 
 nately deaf to him, unfaithful and superstitious. The 
 unfaithful shall be punished ; but a faithful remnant shall 
 be saved and restored to Zion, and for them the promises 
 shall take effect. 
 
 i. / gave ear to them, &c. Quoted from the Greek 
 
152 NOTES. 
 
 version, but with a transposition of the two clauses, by St. 
 Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, x. 20 : 'I was found 
 of them that sought me not, I was made manifest unto 
 them that asked not after me.' St. Paul applies this verse 
 to the Gentiles, and the verse following to Israel. Here 
 both verses apply to Israel. 
 
 3. Gardens. The gardens and sacred groves of the 
 false gods. See c. i, v. 29 : 'Ye shall be confounded for 
 the gardens that ye have chosen.' 
 
 ib. The tiles. The roof-tiles of the flat-roofed Eastern 
 houses, where the Chaldeans practised their star-worship. 
 See Zephaniah i. 4, 5 : 'I will cut off them that worship 
 the host of heaven upon the housetops/ 
 
 4. Remain among the graves , &c. The Greek adds, in 
 explanation, ' for the sake of visions/ What is meant is 
 the heathen practice called incubatio, passing the night 
 on tombs or in sacred places for the sake of apparitions 
 and revelations expected there. 
 
 ib. Which eat swine's flesh, &c. Which use for their 
 sacrifices, and for their feasts after their sacrifices, things 
 unclean and forbidden to Israel. 
 
 5. Which say, Stand by thyself. Yet doing all this out 
 of superstition, and out of the vain notion that it will be 
 of religious avail to them, they insolently repel their 
 unsuperstitious and faithful brethren as less holy than 
 themselves. 
 
 6. These are a smoke in my nose, &c. Make my nostrils 
 to smoke with wrath, and my wrath to burn like fire. 
 
 7. Burned incense upon the mountains, &c. The so 
 often mentioned idolatrous worship upon the high places. 
 See c. Ivii. v. 7. 
 
 8. As the new wine, &c. The juice that shall one 
 day be wine is in the grape-cluster, and the grape- 
 
NOTES. 
 
 cluster is preserved for its sake; so Israel shall be 
 preserved, for the sake of the life and blessing to come 
 from it. 
 
 9. My mountains. The mountains of Judah in general, 
 and the hills of Zion and Moriah in particular. 
 
 lo. 1 Sharon. The strip of western coast from Joppa 
 northwards to Csesarea. The valley of Achor is op- 
 posed to it, as being in the east of the Holy Land, by 
 Jericho. 
 
 1 1 . Fortune. In the original, Fortune and that which 
 destineth are Gad and Meni. Gad means luck, Meni 
 means fate or destiny. They are Babylonian names of 
 two stars, or, star-deities ; probably of the two planets 
 held to be fortunate, Jupiter and Venus. Or, Meni may 
 be the planet Saturn, the unlucky star, opposed to Jupiter, 
 the star of good luck. 
 
 15. By another name. A name like, The blessed of the 
 Lord. See v. 23. 
 
 17. / create new heavens. With the break up of the 
 heathen kingdoms and the restoration of Israel begins a 
 new epoch* 
 
 20. There shall be no more, &c. Child and man shall 
 alike attain to a patriarchal age. The child shall grow up 
 and come to old age ; the sinner shall be an old man 
 when his curse overtakes him. 
 
 22. As the days of a tree. Mans life shall have, instead 
 of its present brief term, the. far longer term allotted to 
 the life of trees. 
 
 25. Dust shall be the serpents meat. The serpent shall 
 be harmful no more, but shall be content to feed on dust, 
 an innocent food. 
 
154 NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER 66. 
 
 The discourse is continued from the preceding chapter. 
 
 God declares his chief pleasure to be in piety ; the 
 sacrifices of the superstitious and unfaithful Jews shall 
 avail them nothing, while, on the other hand, the triumph 
 of their faithful brethren is immediately approaching. 
 Swiftly shall Zion rise again from her ruins ; then shall be 
 held a day of the Lord to sift the unfaithful from among 
 the righteous, and to punish them and all their like ; the 
 whole world shall afterwards flow to Zion and worship 
 before God. 
 
 1. The heaven is my throne, &c. Stephen quotes this 
 in his speech before the council. After saying, ' Howbeit 
 the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands, 
 he goes on, ' As saith the prophet/ and quotes this pas- 
 sage. See Acts vii. 48-50. 
 
 2. But to this man, &c. See c. 57, v. 15. The line of 
 thought seems to be as follows : The temple is going to 
 be rebuilt, and men's thoughts will be concentrated upon 
 this work made with hands; in Babylon the unfaithful 
 Jews have just shown, by even adopting the rites and 
 sacrifices of the heathen, how prone men are to rely upon 
 the outward parts of religion ; at this moment, therefore, 
 God will declare that what he regards is not these things, 
 but inward religion ; lowliness, contrition, and awe of his 
 word. 
 
 3. He that killeth an ox. These superstitious Jews in 
 Babylon, who thought to be more religious than their 
 brethren by multiplying ceremonies and sacrifices, even 
 those of the heathen, included in the jumble of obser- 
 vances to which they were thus led, human sacrifices 
 and rites the most repulsive and abominable, far more 
 
NOTES. 155 
 
 than enough to countervail the ' other sacrifices by which 
 they thought, perhaps, to replace the suspended worship 
 of the Temple. To this their superstitious unfaithfulness 
 and self-will brought them, and to a neglect or violation 
 of all that God really regards. 
 
 5. Ye that tremble at his word. This is addressed to 
 the faithful part of the nation. Their superstitious 
 brethren had scornfully repelled them, thinking that they 
 glorified God by doing so, and by multiplying the obser- 
 vances which constituted, they hoped, their own superior 
 holiness : God was indeed about to be glorified, but by 
 the restoration of Zion and the triumph of the faithful 
 few, to the discomfiture of the faint-hearted clingers to 
 Babylon. 
 
 6. A voice of noise, &c. The restoration is supposed to 
 be taking place. The three following verses describe its 
 incomparable suddenness and rapidity. 
 
 12. The glory of the Gentiles. See c. 60, v. 5. 
 
 14. The hand of the Lord, &c. When Zion is rebuilt 
 the Lord will hold a great day of judgment there, to sift 
 out and punish his enemies. 
 
 15. The gardens. As before, the consecrated groves 
 and gardens of the heathen deities. 
 
 ib. One chief in the midst. The choragus or ringleader 
 in the idolatrous processions and ceremonies. 
 
 16. All flesh. Not the Jews only, but all flesh ; and 
 the wicked of all flesh shall perish. 
 
 17. Swine 's flesh. Such uncleanness and abomination 
 for Israel as has already been mentioned at v. 3, and in 
 c. 65, v. 4, and in c. 57, vv. 5-9. 
 
 1 8. // shall a?W.- After this vengeance on the wicked 
 God will gather the world to Zion to see his glory and to 
 worship him. 
 
156 NOTES. 
 
 19. Those that escape of them. See c. 45, v. 20: 
 ' Assemble yourselves ... ye that are escaped of the 
 nations/ See also v. 14 of the same chapter. Those 
 who remain of the warring nations, after the wars and 
 destructions coming upon the earth, having been converted 
 themselves to the God of Israel, shall go to all parts of 
 the world spreading God's name, and setting at liberty 
 the widely dispersed Israelites, whom they shall bring back 
 to Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord. 
 
 ib. Tarshtsh, Phul, and Lud, &c. The prophet goes 
 from west to east in his enumeration. For Tarshish see 
 c. 60, v. 9, and the note there. Phul is the country 
 mentioned with Lud in Ezekiel, xxvii. 10, and by him 
 there called Phut, where the Greek and the Vulgate 
 translate Libyans. In the text now before us the Greek 
 has Phud or Phut after the Hebrew, but the Vulgate 
 translates Africa. An African people is meant, and an 
 African people famous in the use of the bow, which the 
 Ethiopians, for example, were. Lud is Lydia, the well- 
 known western kingdom of Asia Minor, conquered by 
 Cyrus before his march against Babylon. Tubal is a 
 people in the north-east of Asia Minor. Javan is Greece, 
 Ionia ; Homer has the word laones, which is very near 
 Javan; and a Greek note-writer to another poet says : 
 ' The barbarians call all the Greeks laones' The sign 
 mentioned at the beginning of this verse consists in the 
 converted Gentiles going to convert the more distant 
 heathen world, and to bring the scattered Israelites home. 
 
 20. And they shall bring, &c. Compare c. 43, v. 5 ; 
 and c. 49, v. 12 and v. 22. 
 
 ib. 'An offering. The restored Israelites shall be offered 
 by their Gentile liberators to the Lord in Zion, as gifts 
 are offered to the Temple. 
 
NOTES. 157 
 
 21. For priests and for Levites. Of the Gentiles also 
 shall priests and Levites for God's service be taken. 
 Originally priests and Levites had been taken from the 
 tribe of Levi only, but at c. 61, v. 6 it was said of the 
 Israelites generally: ' Ye shall be named the priests of the 
 Lord; men shall call you the ministers of our God.' 
 And now, finally, our Prophet's horizons widen yet more, 
 and he admits to the priesthood and ministry of God the 
 Gentiles also. 
 
 23. From one new moon, &c. Every new moon and 
 every sabbath shall all flesh, Gentile as well as Jew, 
 worship before the Lord. 
 
 24. The men that have transgressed. -The unfaithful 
 and unrighteous who in the day of God's judgment have 
 been separated and slain. See v. 16. 
 
 ib. Their worm shall not die, &c. This expression is 
 adopted in the New Testament : ' Where their worm dieth 
 not, and the fire is not quenched ' (St. Mark ix. 44). 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE following shorter prophecies, relating in 
 general to the same times and circumstances as 
 the preceding, but which became incorporated 
 with earlier prophecies, are here disengaged, and 
 are given in the connexion and order to which 
 they seem naturally to belong. 
 
THE FIRST VISION. 
 
 [The prophet is in Babylon, living amongst its people, 
 and partaking of its secure and magnificent life. Sud- 
 denly a vision reveals to him the conquest of Babylon by 
 the Median army under Cyrus. This vision is to be 
 conceived as a little anterior to the Great Prophecy.] 
 
 Isaiah 21, i-io. 
 21 THE burden of the desert of the sea. 
 
 As whirlwinds in the south pass through ; so it 
 cometh from the desert, from a terrible land. 
 
 2 A grievous vision is declared unto me ! the 
 robber robbeth, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, 
 O Elam ! besiege, O Media ! all the sighing thereof 
 have I made to cease. 
 
 3 Therefore are my loins filled with pain ; pangs 
 have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman 
 that travaileth : I was bowed down at the hearing of 
 it ; I was dismayed at the seeing of it. 
 
 4 My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me : the 
 night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear 
 unto me. 
 
THE FIRST VISION. 161 
 
 5 Prepare the table, watch the watch, eat, drink. 
 Rise,ye princes, anoint the shield ! 
 
 6 FOR thus hath the LORD said unto me : Go, set a 
 watchman, let him declare wha^t he seeth ; 
 
 7 And if he see a train of couples of horsemen, a 
 train of asses, a train of camels, let him hearken 
 diligently with much heed. 
 
 8 And he cried as a lion : My lord, I stand con- 
 tinually upon the watch-tower in the daytime, and 
 I am set in my ward whole nights. 
 
 9 AND, behold, there cometh a train of men, with 
 couples of horsemen ! 
 
 And he answered and said : Babylon is fallen, 
 is fallen ! and all the graven images of her gods 
 he hath broken unto, the ground. 
 
 10 O my threshing-ground and thou son of my 
 floor! that which I have heard of the LORD of 
 hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you. 
 
 M 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER 21. 
 
 1. The desert of 'the sea. -The sea is the Persian Gulf 
 to the south-east of Babylon. This heading was not 
 improbably prefixed to the prophecy by an ancient anno- 
 tator. 
 
 2. As ivhirlwinds in the south, &c. As the whirlwind 
 passes through the desert by the sea to the south of 
 Babylon, through that terrible land of storms and desola- 
 tion, so passes the invading host through that desert, 
 coming upon Bablyon. 
 
 ib. The robber. The Babylonian conqueror continues 
 to plunder and afflict the captive Jews. 
 
 ib. Elam. The Elymais of the Greeks, the country 
 below Susa, at the head of the Persian Gulf, and south- 
 east of Babylon. It joins Persia proper and belonged to 
 the Persian Empire after Cyrus had founded this. 
 
 ib. Thereof. Of the captive Israel, whom the Median 
 conquest of Babylon is to deliver. 
 
 3. Filled with pain. The prophet has lived in Babylon 
 and with its people until his lot seems bound up with 
 theirs, and the first hearing of their suddenly approaching 
 ruin fills him with dismay. 
 
 4. The night of my pleasure. The nightly feastings and 
 rejoicings of luxurious Babylon. 
 
NOTES. 163 
 
 5. Prepare the table, &c. Babylon is feasting securely. 
 
 ib. Rise, ye princes. On a sudden is heard the watch- 
 man's cry of alarm to the princes of Babylon to oil their 
 shields, to get ready against approaching danger. 
 
 6. Set a watchman. The watchman is here the spirit 
 of vision of the prophet himself. The Median and 
 Persian host is described, with its various composition. 
 Strabo mentions the use of asses by the mounted troops 
 of certain Asiatic nations. 
 
 8. As a lion. The watchman, impatient, cries in a 
 loud and angry voice, like that of a lion, to complain of 
 his long and vain watching. But, even while he cries, 
 the invading column appears ; and his next cry is to an- 
 nounce : Babylon is fallen. 
 
 9. He hath broken. Cyrus, an enemy to the Babylonian 
 idolatry. 
 
 10. O my threshing-ground, &c. Under the figure of a 
 threshing-ground and the son of a threshing-floor (i. e. the 
 corn threshed upon it) the prophet describes his own 
 beaten, crushed and pounded people. 
 
 M 2 
 
THE KING OF BABYLON. 
 
 (This prophecy may not improperly follow the pre- 
 ceding. It belongs to much the same date and circum- 
 stances ; but the Median invasion has come yet nearer, 
 and the overthrow of Babylon, the death and dishonour 
 of its king, stand before the prophet's mind certain and 
 clear, and fill him with exultation.) 
 
 Isaiah 13, 2-22 ; 14, 1-23. 
 
 13 LIFT ye up a banner upon the high mountain, 
 exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that 
 they may go in to the gates of the nobles ! 
 
 3 I have commanded my consecrated ones, I have 
 also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even 
 my proudly rejoicing ones. 
 
 4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like 
 as of a great people! a tumultuous noise of the 
 kingdoms of nations gathered together ! the LORD 
 of hosts mustereth the host of the battle. 
 
 5 They come from a far country, from the end 
 of heaven, even the LORD and the weapons of his 
 indignation, to destroy the whole land ! 
 
THE KING OF BABYLON. 165 
 
 6 Howl ye ! for the day of t-he LORD is at hand : 
 it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. 
 
 7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every 
 man's heart shall melt, 
 
 8 And they shall be afraid : pangs and sorrows 
 shall take hold of them ; they shall be in pain as 
 a woman that travaileth : they shall be amazed 
 one at another ; their faces shall be as flame-faces. 
 
 9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both 
 with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land 
 desolate ! and he shall destroy the sinners thereof 
 out of it. 
 
 10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations 
 thereof shall not give their light : the sun shall 
 be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall 
 not cause her light to shine. 
 
 1 1 And I will punish the world for their evil, and 
 the wicked for their iniquity ; and I will cause the 
 arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low 
 the haughtiness of the terrible. 
 
 12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold ; 
 even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. 
 
 13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the 
 earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath 
 of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce 
 anger. 
 
 14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as sheep 
 
166 THE KING OF BABYLON. 
 
 that no man gathereth : they shall every man turn 
 to his own people, and flee every one into his own 
 land. 
 
 1 5 Every one that is found shall be thrust through ; 
 and every one that is overtaken shall fall by the 
 sword. 
 
 1 6 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces 
 before their eyes ; their houses shall be spoiled, 
 and their wives ravished. 
 
 17 Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, 
 which shall not regard silver ; and as for gold, they 
 shall not delight in it. 
 
 1 8 Their bows also shall dash the young men to 
 pieces ; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of 
 the womb ; their eye shall not spare children. 
 
 19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty 
 of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when 
 God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 
 20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be 
 dwelt in from generation to generation : neither 
 shall the Arabian pitch tent there ; neither shall 
 the shepherds make their fold there. 
 
 2 1 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there ; 
 and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures ; 
 and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall 
 dance there. 
 
 22 And the wild beasts of the waste shall cry in 
 
THE KING OF BABYLON. 167 
 
 their lofty houses, and jackals in their pleasant 
 palaces : and her time is near to come, and. her 
 days shall not be prolonged. 
 
 14 For the LORD will have mercy on Jacob, and 
 will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own 
 land : and the strangers shall be joined with them, 
 and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. 
 
 2 And the heathen shall take them, and bring them 
 to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess 
 them in the land of the LORD for servants and 
 handmaids : and they shall take them captives, 
 whose captives they were ; and they shall rule 
 over their oppressors. 
 
 3 AND it shall come to pass in the day that the 
 LORD shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and 
 from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein 
 thou wast made to serve, 
 
 4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against 
 the king of Babylon, and say : 
 
 How hath the oppressor ceased! the stress of 
 the exactor ceased! 
 
 5 The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, 
 and the sceptre of the rulers. 
 
 6 He who smote the people in wrath with a 
 'continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in 
 
 anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth. 
 
l68 THE KING OF BABYLON. 
 
 7 The whole earth 1 is at rest, and is quiet : they 
 break forth into singing. 
 
 8 Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars 
 of Lebanon, saying : Since thou art laid down, no 
 feller is come up against us ! 
 
 9 Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet 
 thee at thy coming : it stirreth up the dead for 
 thee, even all the chief ones of the earth ; it hath 
 raised up from their thrones all the kings of the 
 nations. 
 
 10 All these shall speak and say unto thee: 'Art 
 thou also become weak as we? art thou become 
 like unto us?' 
 
 11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and 
 the noise of thy viols : the worm is spread under 
 thee, and the worms cover thee. 
 
 12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son 
 of the morning! how art thou cut down to the 
 ground, which didst weaken the nations ! 
 
 13 For thou saidst in thine heart : I will ascend into 
 heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of 
 God ; I will sit also upon the mount of assembly, 
 in the ends of the north : 
 
 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds ; 
 I will be like the most High. 
 
 15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the 
 sides of the pit ! 
 
THE KING OF BABYLON. 169 
 
 1 6 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, 
 and consider thee, saying : Is this the man that made 
 the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms ? 
 
 17 That made the world as a wilderness, and 
 destroyed the cities thereof? that loosed not his 
 prisoners to their homes? 
 
 1 8 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, 
 lie in glory, every one in his own house. 
 
 19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like a rejected 
 branch ! thou art clothed around with them that are 
 slain, that are thrust through with a sword, that go 
 down to the stones of the pit ! as a carcase trodden 
 under feet ! 
 
 20 Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, 
 because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain 
 thy people : the seed of evildoers shall no more 
 be named. 
 
 2 1 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity 
 of their fathers ! that they do not rise, nor possess 
 the land, nor fill the face of the world with foes. 
 
 22 FOR I will rise up against them, saith the LORD 
 of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and 
 remnant, and son, and grandson, saith the LORD. 
 
 23 I will also make it a possession for the hedgehog, 
 and pools of water ; and I will sweep it with the 
 besom of destruction, saith the LORD of hosts. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER 13. 
 
 The invading host of Cyrus is at hand; the Jewish 
 exiles in Babylon are directed to signal to the invaders 
 to draw nigh, and to enter the proud city, which shall be 
 dismayed and destroyed. 
 
 2. Shake the hand. Beckon with the hand to the 
 invaders. 
 
 ib. The nobles. Of Babylon. 
 
 3. My consecrated ones. God calls Cyrus and his host 
 1 my consecrated ones ' because they are his appointed 
 instruments to work his vengeance on Babylon. 
 
 4. In the mountains. The mountains between Media 
 and the plain of the Euphrates, where the invading host, 
 drawn from many and far nations, is mustered. 
 
 6. Howl ye. Babylon and its people are addressed. 
 
 8. As flame-faces. Lurid with terror. 
 
 i o. The stars of heaven, &c. Hebrew prophecy habit- 
 ually applied to ' a day of the Lord/ such as the downfall 
 of a mighty city or empire, figures drawn from great con- 
 vulsions of nature. See c. 34, and the notes there. 
 
 14. // shall be as the chased roe. The mixed multitude 
 from all lands, who were brought together in great and 
 rich Babylon, shall be dismayed and dispersed at its fall, 
 
NOTES. 171 
 
 and shall wander back as they can to the countries from 
 whence they came. 
 
 17. The Medes. Cyrus was a Persian, and Persia 
 afterwards gave its name to the empire ; but at this time 
 the Persians were only known as a contingent of the 
 Median host, and the invading power is spoken of as the 
 Medes, Media. The same in Jeremiah li. n. 
 
 ib. Which shall not regard silver. The Medes are pre- 
 sented as a rude, raw, and fierce people, caring more for 
 bloodshed than for wealth and luxury. 
 
 19. The Chaldees. The people of Babylonia. 
 
 20. The Arabian. The wandering Arab from the 
 wastes of neighbouring Arabia. 
 
 21. Satyrs. Wild men with the hair and characters of 
 the goat. In the neighbourhood of the ruins of Babylon 
 the belief in such creatures as haunting the ruins still 
 subsists. 
 
 CHAPTER 14. 
 
 The Jews shall return home", and instead of being 
 bondsmen to the stranger, they shall rule the stranger ; 
 and then they shall sing a song of triumph over their 
 fallen tyrant, the king of Babylon. 
 
 i. The strangers. Those of the mixed multitude, 
 gathered in Babylon from all lands, who shall escort the 
 Jews on their return to Palestine, and serve them there. 
 
 4. Proverb. Proverb is used for a taunting speech or 
 song. What follows may with advantage be compared, 
 for weight and splendour of diction, with the great commas 
 a.t the beginning of the Chcephorae of ^Eschylus. 
 
 8. The fir-trees rejoice. The king of Babylon can in- 
 vade Syria and his other neighbouring countries, and 
 waste them, and cut down their forests, no more. 
 
172 NOTES. 
 
 10. All these shall speak, &c. The kings who are 
 already in Scheol, or Hades, shall rise up from their 
 thrones in curiosity when the great king of Babylon comes 
 down among them, fallen like themselves and extinguished. 
 Their address to him ends with the words like unto us ; 
 in the next verse the prophet speaks again. 
 
 12. Lucifer. The bright and glorious morning-star, 
 used as an image of the king of Babylon in his day of 
 splendour. From the occurrence of the name Lucifer in 
 this verse to denote a great enemy of God, it came to be 
 transferred by the Fathers, and in the popular use of the 
 Middle Age, to Satan himself. 
 
 13. The mount of assembly ', in the ends of the north. 
 The mount of assembly of the Gods of the heathen, placed 
 by the Asiatic nations in the sacred north. Compare the 
 Mount Meru of Indian religion, the sacred mountain of 
 the Gods, in the Himalayas, on the extreme north of 
 India. 
 
 1 8. In his own house. His grave, the house of the 
 grave. Other kings have honourable burial ; the king 
 of Babylon, slain in the massacre when Babylon was 
 taken, lies cast out like a false and dishonoured scion of 
 royalty, a trampled carcase, covered only by the bodies of 
 the slain. 
 
 22. For I will rise. With the preceding verse the 
 ' proverb ' against the king of Babylon ends ; in what 
 follows the prophet speaks in the Lord's name. 
 
 23. / will sweep it with the besom of destruction. After 
 the massacre on the night of the taking of Babylon, when 
 Belshazzar was slain, Cyrus spared the city, and proposed 
 to make it the third city of his empire (coming after Susa 
 and Ecbatana), and his winter-residence. He laid upon 
 it, however, a heavy tribute. Under Darius Hystaspes it 
 
NOTES. 173 
 
 rose in revolt, and when it was at last taken after a long 
 siege, it suffered very severely, and never recovered itself. 
 Alexander meant to restore it, but was prevented by 
 death. Under his successors its true desolation began, after 
 the foundation of Seleucia in its neighbourhood ; Babylon 
 was exhausta vicinitate SeleucicB, says the elder Pliny. Its 
 condition since that time, and at present, well answers in 
 general to the description by prophecy of its Butter deso- 
 lation and ruin. 
 
EDOM AND ISRAEL. 
 
 (See the introductory note to chapter 63 of the Great 
 Prophecy. In the crash and revolution of the epoch of 
 Babylon's fall, Edom, that old and bitter enemy of Israel, 
 shall be visited with God's vengeance and utterly wasted. 
 Edom's savage exultation at Nebuchadnezzar's conquest 
 of Jerusalem is familiar to us all from the i37th Psalm: 
 1 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of 
 Jerusalem, how they said : Down with it, down with it, 
 even to the ground !' Compare Jeremiah xlix. 7-22 ; and 
 Ezekiel xxv. 12-14, an d xxxv; and Obadiah. Israel, 
 on the other hand, shall return in safety and joy to Zion. 
 This prophecy supposes the same situation of things as 
 the Great Prophecy.) 
 
 Isaiah 34, 35. 
 
 34 COME near, ye nations, to hear! and hearken, 
 ye people ! let the earth hear, and all that is 
 therein ; the world, and all things that come forth 
 of it. 
 
 2 For the indignation of the LORD is upon all 
 nations, and his fury upon all their armies : he 
 
EDOM AND ISRAEL. 175 
 
 hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered 
 them to the slaughter. 
 
 3 Their slain also shall be cast out, and their 
 stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the 
 mountains shall be melted with their blood. 
 
 4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, 
 and the heavens shall be rolled together as a 
 scroll; and all their host shall fall down, as the 
 leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig 
 from the fig tree. 
 
 5 For my sword hath been bathed in heaven ! 
 behold, it shall come down upon Edom, arid upon 
 the people of my curse, to judgment ! 
 
 6 The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it 
 is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of 
 lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of 
 rams : for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and 
 a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 
 
 7 And the buffaloes shall fall down with them, and 
 the bullocks with the bulls ; and their land shall 
 be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with 
 fatness. 
 
 8 For it is the day of the LORD'S vengeance, and 
 the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. 
 
 9 And the streams thereof shall be turned into 
 pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the 
 land thereof shall become burning pitch. 
 
1/6 EDOM AND ISRAEL. 
 
 10 It shall not be quenched night nor day ; the 
 smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from gene- 
 ration to generation it shall lie waste ; none shall 
 pass through it for ever and ever. 
 
 11 But the pelican and the hedgehog shall possess 
 it ; the ostrich also and the raven shall dwell in it : 
 and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confu- 
 sion, and the weights of emptiness. 
 
 12 The nobles thereof shall no more call a king to 
 the kingdom, and all her princes shall be nothing. 
 
 13 And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles 
 and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall 
 be an habitation of jackals, and a court for the 
 ostrich. 
 
 14 The wild cat and the wolf shall meet there, and 
 the satyr shall cry to his fellow : the night-demon 
 also shall rest there, and find for herself a place 
 of rest. 
 
 1 5 There shall the arrow-snake make her nest, and 
 lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow : 
 there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one 
 with her mate. 
 
 1 6 Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read ! 
 no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate : 
 for his mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it 
 hath gathered them. 
 
 17 And he hath cast the lot for them there, and his 
 
EDOM AND ISRAEL. 177 
 
 hand hath divided it unto them by line : they shall 
 possess it for ever, from generation to generation 
 shall they dwell therein. 
 
 35 THE wilderness and the solitary place shall be 
 glad ; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as 
 the rose. 
 
 2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even 
 with joy and singing : the glory of Lebanon shall 
 be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and 
 Sharon ; they shall see the glory of the LORD, 
 and the excellency of our God. 
 
 3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the 
 feeble knees ! 
 
 4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart : Be 
 strong, fear not! behold, your God cometh with 
 vengeance, even God with a recompence ; he will 
 come and save you. 
 
 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and 
 the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 
 
 6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and 
 the tongue of the dumb sing : for in the wilderness 
 shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. 
 
 7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, 
 and the thirsty land springs of water : in the 
 habitation of jackals, where each lay, shall be grass 
 with reeds and rushes. 
 
 N 
 
178 EDOM AND ISRAEL. 
 
 8 And an highway shall be there, and a way ; and 
 it shall be called, The way of holiness ; the unclean 
 shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those : 
 the wayfarer, though a fool, shall not err therein. 
 
 9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast 
 shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there ; 
 but the redeemed shall walk there : 
 
 10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and 
 come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon 
 their heads : they shall obtain joy and gladness, 
 and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER 34. 
 
 This chapter announces the ruin of Edom and its 
 people. 
 
 4. The host of heaven shall be dissolved, &c. The usual 
 figures of prophecy for describing a ' day of the Lord.' 
 The figures of this verse are adopted almost word for 
 word in Revelations, vi. 13, 14. 
 
 5. My sword hath been bathed. God speaks. The 
 Vulgate has inebriatus est gladius. Bathed as in the 
 wine of God's fury and made drunken. 
 
 6. Blood of lambs and goats. Under the figure of 
 a great sacrifice of lambs, goats, rams, bullocks, &c., is 
 described the slaughter of the people and princes of 
 Edom. 
 
 ib. Bozrah. See note on Ixiii. i, of Great Prophecy. 
 
 9. Burning pitch. Figures drawn from the destruction 
 of Sodom and Gomorrah. Compare xiii. 19. 
 
 ii. The line of confusion, &c. The measuring-line and 
 measuring- weights of ruin and desolation. 
 
 14. The satyr. See note to xiii. 21. 
 
 ib. The night-demon. Lilith, corresponding to the 
 Lamia of Greek and Roman demonology, a she-demon 
 haunting waste places and supposed to be especially fatal 
 to children. 
 
 15. And lay, and hatch. See note to lix. 5. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 NOTES. 
 
 1 6. Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read. The 
 prophet means the book of his own prophecy. Read 
 and mark it well, he says ; everything which it announces 
 shall come to pass. Compare Isaiah xxx. 8 : ' Now go, 
 write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, 
 that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever/ 
 
 ib. Of these. Of these creatures of the wilderness 
 and desolation. 
 
 CHAPTER 35. 
 
 In contrast to the ruin of Edom the Prophet now 
 describes Israel's triumphant march home through the 
 blossoming wilderness. For similar pictures compare in the 
 Great Prophecy xli. 18, 19; xliii. 20; xlviii. 21; li. 3, n 
 (where the last verse of the present chapter occurs over 
 again); and Iv. 12, 13. 
 
 2. The excellency of Carmel and Sharon. See note to 
 Ixv. 10, in the Great Prophecy. 
 
 8. An highway shall be there. Compare Ixii. 10. 
 
 ib. For those. For the chosen people, who shall find 
 the way so plain and easy that the weakest can march 
 in it without difficulty. 
 
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 
 
 (Babylon had now fallen and Israel was restored. But 
 the wars, revolutions, and world-ruin, amidst which the 
 downfall of Babylon took place, still continued. Cyrus 
 perished miserably in an obscure war with a barbarous 
 foe (B.C. 529); then came the storm of Egypt's invasion 
 by his son, the furious Cambyses (B.C. 525). The air 
 was full of rumours, and the earth of agitations ; on the 
 other hand, Jerusalem found itself, by God's wonderful 
 leading and favour, restored. But the infant community 
 there, though replaced in its home, was short of numbers, 
 feeble, and fearful. The prophet animates and uplifts it 
 by the assurance of its divine destinies.) 
 
 Isaiah 24-27. 
 
 24 BEHOLD, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and 
 maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and 
 scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. 
 2 And it shall be, as with the people, so with the 
 priest ; as with the servant, so with his master ; 
 as with the maid, so with her mistress ; as with 
 the buyer, so with the seller ; as with the lender, 
 so with the borrower ; as with the taker of usury, 
 so with the giver of usury to him. 
 
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 
 
 3 The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly 
 spoiled : for the LORD hath spoken this word. 
 
 4 The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world 
 languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people 
 of the earth do languish. 
 
 5 The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants 
 thereof ; because they have transgressed the laws, 
 changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting 
 covenant. 
 
 6 Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, 
 and they that dwell therein are desolate : there- 
 fore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and 
 few men left. 
 
 7 The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, 
 all the merryhearted do sigh. 
 
 8 The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them 
 that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth. 
 
 9 They shall not drink wine with a song ; strong 
 drink shall be bitter to them that drink it. 
 
 10 The city is solitary and broken down : every 
 house is shut up, that no man may come in. 
 
 1 1 There is a crying for wine in the streets ; all joy 
 is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone. 
 
 12 In the city is left desolation, and the gate is 
 smitten with destruction. 
 
 1 3 THUS shall it be in the midst of the earth among 
 
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 183 
 
 the nations, as the shaking of an olive tree, and as 
 the gleaning of grapes when the vintage is done. 
 
 14 They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing 
 for the majesty of the LORD, they shall cry aloud 
 from the sea. 
 
 1 5 Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the east, even 
 the name of the LORD God of Israel in the coasts 
 of the sea ! 
 
 1 6 From the uttermost part of the earth have 
 we heard songs : Glory to the righteous ! But I 
 said, My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me ! 
 the robber robbeth ; yea, the robber robbeth very 
 sore. 
 
 17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, 
 O inhabitant of the earth ! 
 
 1 8 And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth 
 from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit ; 
 and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit 
 shall be taken in the snare : for the windows from 
 on high are open, and the foundations of the earth 
 do shake. 
 
 19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is 
 clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. 
 
 20 The earth doth reel to and fro like a drunkard, 
 and doth sway like a hammock ; the transgression 
 thereof is heavy upon it ; and it shall fall, and 
 not rise again. 
 
1 84 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 
 
 2 1 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the 
 LORD shall punish the host of heaven in the 
 height, and the kings of the earth upon the 
 earth. 
 
 22 And they shall be gathered together, as pri- 
 soners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut 
 up in the prison, and after many days shall they 
 be visited. 
 
 23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the 
 sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign 
 in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his 
 ancients gloriously.. 
 
 25 O LORD, thou art my God ! I will exalt thee, I 
 will praise thy name ; for thou hast done wonderful 
 things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and 
 truth. 
 
 2 For thou hast made of a city an heap ; of a 
 defenced city a ruin : a palace of strangers to be no 
 city ; it shall never be built. 
 
 3 Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, 
 the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee. 
 
 4 For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a 
 strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from 
 the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast 
 of the terrible ones was as a storm against 
 the wall. 
 
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 185 
 
 5 Thou dost bring down the noise of strangers, as 
 the heat in a dry place ; as the heat by the 
 shadow of a cloud, so the song of the terrible 
 ones is brought low. 
 
 6 And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts 
 make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast 
 of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, 
 of wines on the lees well refined. 
 
 7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of 
 the covering cast over all people, and the vail that 
 is spread over all nations. 
 
 8 He will swallow up death in victory ; and the 
 Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces ; 
 and the rebuke of his people shall he take away 
 from off all the earth : for the LORD hath 
 spoken it. 
 
 9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is 
 our God ! we have waited for him, and he will save 
 us : this is the LORD ! we have waited for him, we 
 will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. 
 
 10 For in this mountain shall the hand of the LORD 
 rest, and Moab shall be trodden down in his place, 
 even as straw is trodden down in the dung-pool. 
 
 1 1 And they shall spread forth their hands in the 
 midst thereof, as one that swimmeth spreadeth 
 forth his hands to swim : and he shall bring down 
 their pride together with the wiles of their hands. 
 
1 86 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 
 
 1 2 The fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he 
 bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even 
 to the dust. 
 
 26 IN that day shall this song be sung in the land 
 of Judah : 
 
 We have a strong city ; salvation will God ap- 
 point for walls and bulwarks. 
 
 2 Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation 
 which keepeth the truth may enter in ! 
 
 3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose 
 mind is stayed on thee ; because he trusteth in 
 thee. 
 
 4 Trust ye in the LORD for ever ! for in the LORD 
 JEHOVAH is everlasting strength : 
 
 5 For he bringeth down them that dwell on high ; 
 the lofty city, he layeth it low ; he layeth it low, 
 even to the ground ; he bringeth it even to the 
 dust. 
 
 6 The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the 
 poor, and the steps of the needy. 
 
 7 The way of the just is made smooth : thou, 
 most upright, dost make smooth the path of the 
 just ! 
 
 8 Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have 
 we waited for thee ! the desire of our soul was to 
 thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. 
 
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 187 
 
 9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night ; 
 yea, with my spirit within me do I seek thee early ! 
 for when thy judgments are in the earth, the in- 
 habitants of the world will learn righteousness. 
 
 10 Let favour be shewed to the wicked, so will he 
 not learn righteousness : in the land of uprightness 
 will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the 
 majesty of the LORD. 
 
 1 1 LORD, thy hand is very high, but they see it 
 not ; they will not see ! they shall see, and be 
 ashamed at thy jealousy for the people ; yea, the 
 fire of thine enemies shall devour them ! 
 
 1 2 LORD, thou wilt ordain peace for us : for thou 
 also hast wrought all our works for us. 
 
 1 3 O LORD our God, other lords beside thee have 
 had dominion over us ; but of thee only will we 
 make mention, of thy name ! 
 
 14 They are dead, they shall not live! they are 
 deceased, they shall not rise! because thou hast 
 visited and destroyed them, and made all their 
 memory to perish. 
 
 15 THOU dost increase the nation, O LORD, thou 
 dost increase the nation ! thou art glorified : thou 
 enlargest all the borders of the land. 
 
 1 6 LORD, in trouble they sought thee ; they poured 
 out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them. 
 
1 88 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 
 
 1 7 Like as a woman with child, that draweth near 
 the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out 
 in her pangs ; so have we been in thy sight, O 
 LORD! 
 
 1 8 We have been with child, we have been in pain, 
 we have as it were brought forth wind ; we have 
 not wrought any deliverance in the earth, neither 
 are inhabitants of the land born unto it. 
 
 19 Thy dead men shall live! my dead body, it 
 shall arise! Awake and sing, ye that dwell in 
 dust ; for a dew of life is thy dew, and the earth 
 shall bring forth the dead ! 
 
 20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, 
 and shut thy doors about thee : hide thyself as it 
 were for a little moment, until the indignation be 
 overpast. 
 
 21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place 
 to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their 
 iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, 
 and shall no more cover her slain. 
 
 27 IN that day the LORD with his sore and great 
 and strong sword shall punish leviathan the shoot- 
 ing serpent, even leviathan that coiling serpent ; 
 and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. 
 
 2 In that day sing ye thus of the fair vineyard : 
 
 3 'I the LORD do keep it; I water it every 
 
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 189 
 
 moment : lest any hurt it, I keep it night and 
 day. 
 
 4 ' Fury is not in me : let them set the briers and 
 thorns against me ! I will go through them in 
 battle, I will burn them together. 
 
 5 ' Or else let them take hold of my strength ! let 
 them make peace with me ; let them make peace 
 with me ! ' 
 
 6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take 
 root : Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the 
 face of the world with fruit. 
 
 7 Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that 
 smote him? or is he slain according to the 
 slaughter of them that slew him? 
 
 8 In measure, chasing her forth, thou punishedst 
 her ; driving her out with a rough wind in the day 
 of the east wind. 
 
 9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be 
 purged, and this is all the fruit of putting off his 
 sin : when he maketh all the stones of the altar 
 as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, that the 
 groves and images shall stand up no more. 
 
 10 For the defenced city shall be desolate, and the 
 habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness : 
 there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie 
 down, and consume the green boughs thereof. 
 
 11 When the branches thereof are withered, they 
 
190 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 
 
 shall be broken off: the women shall come, and 
 set them on fire : for it is a people of no under- 
 standing : therefore he that made them will not 
 have mercy on them, and he that formed them will 
 shew them no favour. 
 
 12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that 
 the LORD shall sift corn from the channel of the 
 River unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be 
 gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel ! 
 
 r 3 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the 
 great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come 
 which were forlorn in the land of Assyria, and the 
 outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship 
 the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER 24. 
 
 This chapter declares what trouble and dissolution 
 prevail on earth in this day of God's judgments. 
 
 5. Broken the everlasting covenant. Not the special 
 covenant with Israel, but God's everlasting covenant with 
 the whole human race. Compare Genesis ix. 16: 'And 
 the bow shall be in the cloud ; and I will look upon it, 
 that I may remember the everlasting covenant between 
 God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the 
 earth.' 
 
 10. The city is solitary. Dominating the picture of the 
 general distress, is always the image of Babylon in ruin, 
 great and luxurious Babylon, then recently fallen. 
 
 13. As the shaking of an olive-tree. Compare Isaiah 
 xvii. 6. Among the nations of the earth men shall be 
 scarce as the single olives left to be shaken down, or the 
 few grapes left to be gleaned, after the harvest is gathered. 
 Those who remain shall glorify God and his dealings. 
 
 14. The sea. The Mediterranean, around which sea 
 all this history is transacted. 
 
 15. The coasts of the sea. The western sea, the Medi- 
 terranean, and thus as the west contrasting with the east 
 in the parallel clause preceding. 
 
 1 6. But I said. The prophet, speaking as one of the 
 scanty and trembling remnant of Israel, newly re-esta- 
 
192 NOTES. 
 
 blished in Jerusalem, refuses to be glad and hopeful amid 
 the violence and confusion prevailing around him. 
 
 1 6. The robber robbeth. The same expression is used 
 in the First Vision. Here it is general, denoting the 
 world- wide confusion prevalent. See xxi. 2. 
 
 1 8. The windows from on high are open. A figure 
 taken from the deluge to signify the flood of ruin sub- 
 merging everything. 
 
 21. The host of heaven. The offending powers of 
 heaven and the offending kings of earth shall be punished 
 together. 
 
 22. Visited. For their final sentence and punishment. 
 
 23. His ancients. The elders in Jerusalem, destined 
 to rule with God in the reign of saints. 
 
 CHAPTER 25. 
 
 In the twenty-first verse of the preceding chapter the 
 prophet had turned to the great future of God's triumph 
 and glory which was to follow the present tribulation ; he 
 now goes on in the same strain. 
 
 2. Thou hast made of a city an heap. The Prophet 
 dwells on the impressive lesson of God's judgments con- 
 veyed by the recent fall of Babylon. 
 
 ib. A palace of strangers. Of strangers and enemies 
 to Israel. 
 
 3. The strong people. This is probably said generally, 
 and not with any special reference to the Medes who had 
 conquered Babylon. 
 
 4. A storm against the wall. The Chaldee paraphrase 
 has, a storm which overthrows a wall. And this is pro- 
 bably the right sense ; a storm so violent that it sweeps 
 down walls before it. 
 
NOTES. 193 
 
 5. As the heat in a dry place. The clause following 
 gives the mode in which the heat is brought down, 
 namely, by the shadow of clouds. As clouds quell heat, 
 so God quells the tumult of ' the strange children ' (Ps. 
 xviii. 46, Prayer-Book Version). 
 
 6. Unto all people a feast. The familiar figure of the 
 kingdom of God as a feast at which all nations come and 
 sit down. 'Many shall come from east and west, and 
 shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the 
 kingdom of heaven:' Matth. viii. n. 
 
 7. And he will destroy in this mountain. The mountain 
 is of course Zion. There is no sublimer text on the 
 sublime theme here treated than this and the following 
 verse. 
 
 8. He will swallow up death in "victory. St. Paul quotes 
 this text, i Cor. xv. 54. The Greek Bible of the Seventy 
 does not take the words thus, but the Greek versions of 
 Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion do, and Theodotion 
 has the same words as St. Paul. 
 
 ib. The rebuke of his people. The reproach of failure 
 cast on the people of righteousness. 
 
 10. Moab. Moab is, with Edom, the standing type of 
 the bitter and eternal enemy of God's people, and the 
 triumph of God's people involves always vengeance upon 
 Moab and Edom. Compare xxxiv. xxxv. Ezekiel puts 
 Moab and Edom together, as offenders against Israel. 
 See Ezek. xxv. 8-14. 
 
 11. They shall spread forth. The wily Moab tries to 
 save himself by swimming in the filthy pool where he is 
 trodden down ; but in vain. 
 
 12. Thy walls. Moab is addressed. He refers to God. 
 
194 NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER 26. 
 
 The strain of elation and of trust in God continues. 
 But the prophet, after celebrating the fall of those who 
 have lorded it over God's people, turns his eyes upon 
 the restored remnant and cannot but perceive how small 
 and ineffectual it is, how far its actual power falls short of 
 its high hopes and destinies. But the people of righteous- 
 ness shall re-live; the earth shall give up God's saints, 
 who are dead, to live with their re-animated nation, and 
 to do God's work and share his reign when the present 
 tyranny and tribulation are overpast. 
 
 2. Salvation will God appoint. God's salvation shall be 
 in place of walls and bulwarks to his Zion. Compare 
 the Great Prophecy, Ix. 18. 
 
 5. The lofty city. Again the prophet recurs to Babylon 
 and its recent fall. 
 
 10. So will he not learn. The prosperity of the wicked 
 misleads men ; unless unrighteousness is punished, man- 
 kind will not quit it. 
 
 13. Other lords. The former captors and oppressors 
 of Israel, with especial reference to Babylon. They are 
 now visited and destroyed. 
 
 15. Thou dost increase. God is now restoring and 
 exalting Israel again, and giving to him wide dominion. 
 
 1 6. Lord, in trouble we sought thee, &c. But Israel, 
 speaking by the prophet's voice, sees with disquietude and 
 discouragement how ineffectual are his actual means, how 
 little he has yet performed, how small are his present 
 numbers. 
 
 17. Thy dead men shall live. Sublimely recovering 
 himself, the prophet cries that God's saints (Thy dead 
 men), though they are dead, shall live, and, with the life- 
 
NOTES. 195 
 
 less but re-animated body of the restored exiles (my dead 
 body), shall found the kingdom of righteousness, after the 
 present distress. 
 
 19. A dew of life. Literally ' a dew of lights.' Light 
 and life are in the Bible, as is well known, interchange- 
 able ideas. 
 
 ib. Thy dew. God's dew. 
 
 ib. The earth shall bring forth the dead. It may easily 
 be conceived how this magnificent verse, taken literally, 
 became a signal text for the doctrine of the resurrection 
 of the dead which from this time onward began to prevail 
 among the Jews. Compare Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14, and Dan. 
 xii. 2. 
 
 20. Come, my people. God's voice exhorts Israel to 
 patience and quiet until the storms of the troubled pre- 
 sent shall have blown over. 
 
 21. The earth also shall disclose. Iniquity shall no 
 more remain hidden and unpunished. 
 
 CHAPTER 27. 
 
 The prophet continues to depict God's care for the 
 city and people of righteousness, and their assured 
 permanency. 
 
 1. Leviathan, &c. Probably the great Asiatic empires 
 in general are here meant, and not any two of them in 
 particular. ' The dragon ' is the Biblical name for Egypt. 
 
 2. The fair vineyard. A common Biblical figure for 
 Israel. Compare Psalm Ixxx. 8. 
 
 4. Fury is not in me, &c. God is a gracious God, full 
 of love and care for his vineyard ; but if he is provoked 
 by enemies of his vineyard (the briers and thorns) he will 
 scatter and consume them, if indeed they do not (as they 
 
196 NOTES. 
 
 had better) prevent his wrath by humbling themselves and 
 making peace with him. 
 
 5. Hath he smitten him, &c. Israel has been punished, 
 but not as his enemies and destroyers have been punished. 
 Exile was in God's eyes a sufficient punishment for Israel, 
 and his putting away idolatry is a sufficient title for re- 
 admission to God's favour. Not such is Babylon's punish- 
 ment and end, for Babylon is ' a people of no under- 
 standing.' 
 
 10. There shall the calf feed, &c. Babylon shall be 
 abandoned to desolation ; the leafage of its gardens shall 
 be browsed by animals or broken off for the oven. 
 
 12. The Lord shall sift corn. Under the figure of 
 sifting corn is announced the final collection and restora- 
 tion of all the true Israel, however outcast and scattered. 
 The river is Euphrates ; the stream of Egypt is the torrent- 
 bed of El Arisch, marking the boundary between Palestine 
 and Egypt. 
 
 13. Assyria . . . Egypt. The prophet reverts to old 
 scenes of Israel's captivity to figure the house of bondage 
 from which God's people shall be eternally delivered. 
 
 
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