ISAIAH ON DEATH
I took up the epistle to the Romans, but I did not read it long. Another
subject stepped in to claim immediate attention in the first words on
which I lighted. They were these, “Isaiah cries aloud on behalf of
Israel, _Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the
sea, the remnant [alone] shall be saved_,” and then, “Even as Isaiah has
foretold, _If the Lord of Sabaoth had not left seed to us, we should
have become as Sodom and should have been made like unto Gomorrah_.”
Previously when I had read these words I could neither understand them
nor see the way to understand them, not knowing the meaning of “Sodom”
and “Gomorrah,” nor even “Isaiah.” But now, knowing that Isaiah was
one of the principal Hebrew prophets, I began to see that many obscure
passages of Paul might become clearer to me if I first studied this
prophet. This view was confirmed when I found Paul, later on, quoting
him again, “But Isaiah is very bold and says, _I was found by them that
sought me not, I became manifest to them that consulted me not_; but
with reference to Israel he says, _All the day long, I stretched out my
hands to a people disobedient and gainsaying_.” The name also occurred
toward the close of the epistle thus, “Isaiah says, _There shall be the
root of Jesse, and he that is raised up to rule over the nations; on him
shall the nations set their hope_.” These last words reminded me of the
doctrine of Epictetus about Diogenes “to whom are entrusted the peoples
of the earth and countless cares in their behalf.”
But I did not know what “root of Jesse” meant. The name, “Jesse,” I
faintly remembered reading in the poems of David; but where it was I
could not recall. Hence the phrase was obscure. I determined to put off
the further study of Paul for the present, and to glance through the
book of Isaiah in the hope of meeting this and other passages quoted
above. Accordingly I unrolled the prophecy and began to read it from the
beginning.
At first, the language was clear—though the Greek was as bad as in the
poems of David. The “children” of God, said the prophet (meaning the
ancient Jews or Hebrews, whom he often spoke of as “Israel”) had rebelled
against their Father and were being punished with fire and sword by
hostile nations executing God’s vengeance on their impiety. Then came
the sentence I quoted above, from Paul, about the “remnant.” After this,
the prophet introduced “the Lord”—that is the God of the Jews—as saying
that He cared no longer for their incense or their offerings because they
came from hands stained with blood. This was somewhat like the saying
of Horace about Phidyle mentioned above. But what followed was not like
anything in Horace: “Wash you, make you clean; cease to do evil, learn
to do good; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow.” If they would act thus, then, said God, “though
your sins be red as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” As though
the nation were molten metal in a crucible, and He Himself were refining
them with fire, the Lord said to the whole people of Israel, “I will
purge away thy dross … afterwards thou shalt be called the city of
righteousness.”
I had begun to hope that I should be able to understand this author as
easily as Euripides and much more easily than Æschylus. But now came
obscurities. First I read of a golden age. People were to “beat their
swords into ploughshares,” and not to “learn war any more.” Then I found
a mention of general destruction as by a universal earthquake. Then came,
without any chronological or other order apparent to me, the following
pictures, or predictions:—a land without a ruler governed by children and
women; a picture of luxurious ladies of rank, a list of their dresses,
ornaments, jewels and cosmetics; a “branch of the Lord, beautiful and
glorious”; a purifying with a “spirit of burning”; “a song of my beloved
touching his vineyard”—all confused together (so it seemed to me at the
time) like the prophecies of the Sibyl.
As far as I could see, most of these prophecies dealt with the internal
corruption of the nation. The “vineyard” of the Lord was the people
of Israel. When He visited the vineyard, looking for fruit, said the
prophet, “He looked for judgment but behold oppression.” After this,
came a vision of the Lord’s glory, and then predictions of external
calamities, and invasions of foreign nations. But yet there was a promise
of the birth of a Deliverer, a Prince of Peace, to sit “upon the throne
of David.” Following this, at some interval, were the words for which
I was searching, about “the root of Jesse.” And now I could understand
them, for they were preceded by this prediction, “There shall come
forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots
shall bear fruit.” Just before that, there had been a description of an
invading army, coming as the instrument of the Lord’s wrath and “lopping
the boughs with terror” and hewing down “the high ones of stature.”
Then all was clear to me. I perceived the connexion between the “child”
that was to sit on “the throne of David,” and the “shoot out of the stock
of Jesse.” The two together brought back to my mind that passage which I
could not before recall from the Psalms, “The prayers of David the son of
Jesse are ended.” The words of Isaiah were like those of Sophocles where
he is speaking of the destruction of the royal house of Laius. Sophocles
calls the surviving child the “root,” and laments because the axe of Fate
was destroying it just when a branch was on the point of “shooting up”
from the “stock” so as to produce fruit. So now, but in an opposite mood
of hope and joy, Isaiah said that the royal house of David the son of
Jesse would not be exterminated, though many of its scions would be cut
off. A “branch” would “shoot up” and the succession to the kingdom would
be maintained.
In the same way, I perceived, the great Julius, or the Emperor Augustus,
being descended from Iulus, the son of Æneas, might be called “the shoot
out of the stock of Anchises,” transported from Asia to Europe so as to
“shoot up” into a new kingdom more glorious than the old. This, too,
explained the word “remnant” used by Paul. As the Trojan followers of
Æneas were a “remnant,” so too must be the Jewish followers of this
“child,” a remnant left from defeat, disaster, and captivity, after a
great “lopping of the boughs with terror.” Virgil sang about the empire
of the house of Iulus not as a prophet, but as a poet, prophesying, so
to speak, after the event. Isaiah appeared merely to predict empire as a
prophet, and a false prophet, prophesying what had not been, and never
would be, an “event.” The tree of the empire of Rome was erect for all
the world to look on. The tree of the kingdom of Jesse appeared to me as
extinct as the house of Laius. So I thought then.
Yet I knew that Paul looked at the matter differently and regarded
these prophecies as having been, or as about to be, fulfilled. And
when I looked more closely into the sayings of Isaiah about the future
kingdom, I saw that many of them were capable of two meanings. Sometimes
the prophet appeared to be contemplating a kingdom established in the
ordinary way by force of arms—a conquest achieved, or at all events
preceded, by fire, sword, and desolation. But, for the most part, it
seemed to be an empire of peace to be brought about by some kind of
persuasion, or feeling. A sudden conviction was to take hold of all the
nations of the earth, so that they were to exclaim, with one consent, as
at the sound of a trumpet, “Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of
the Lord,” meaning the Temple in Jerusalem.
In this kingdom, however brought about, the Lord was to be King, and
there was to be a “covenant” between Him and all the citizens or
subjects, a covenant of righteousness. The subjects were to obey the
King and the King would give them a righteous spirit. In some respects
the covenant of obedience was to resemble that philosophic oath which
Epictetus had enjoined on us, namely, to consult our own interests, to
be true to ourselves (meaning, to the spirit of righteousness within
us). But the prophet regarded righteousness as loyalty, or truth, not to
ourselves, but to our King.
That seemed to me one great difference between the Greeks and the Hebrews
in their notions of worship. The Greeks, when they lifted their thoughts
above themselves, looked, in the first place, each man to his several
city, and in the next place, to the Gods. They did not think in the first
place of the Gods. For the Gods were many, while the City was one. But
the ancient Jews, the men of Israel, or at least their prophets, looked
to their Lord God as their King—the Father, or sometimes the Husband, of
Israel. Although they were many tribes, they had but one God, the Lord
God, who had delivered them from the land of Egypt. This Lord God was a
God of justice and truth, hating oppression, a defender of the widow and
the fatherless. To be loyal to Him was righteousness.
And herein—as I soon began to perceive—was the great difference between
the view of righteousness or justice taken by Isaiah and that taken by
our Roman lawyers, or any lawyers bound to a written law. The lawyer’s
righteousness was legality; the prophet’s was loyalty. Epictetus and
Isaiah agreed together in aiming at loyalty, not legality. Both disliked
obedience paid to mere rules and commandments of men. But the former for
the most part inculcated loyalty that seemed like loyalty to oneself;
the latter, loyalty to God. This precept of Isaiah agreed with the
fundamental law prescribed in the code of Moses that the men of Israel
were to “love” the Lord their God.
After searching carefully to see what the prophet said concerning the
immortality of the soul (about which Moses seemed to be silent) I could
find little of a definite kind. In one passage I read “The dead shall
arise and they that are in the tombs shall be roused up.” But the
preceding lines said “The dead shall assuredly not see life”; so that it
was not clear whether the words meant that one nation should be destroyed
for ever and another nation should be raised up from destruction to
life. The prophet appeared to be thinking of the nation collectively,
more often than of separate citizens. The metaphor of the Vine of Israel
seemed to be almost always in his thoughts. And his hope seemed to be,
not concerning separate branches, that every branch should remain; but
that, in spite of being cruelly pruned and cut down almost to the ground,
the tree, as a whole, would yet grow up and bear fruit. I noticed also
that a certain king called Hezekiah, when praying to be delivered from a
disease likely to prove fatal, spoke as though there were no life after
death.
But there was one passage, of very mysterious import, which seemed to
point to a different conclusion. It spoke about a “servant of God,” of
mean aspect but destined to be a great Deliverer—such as Epictetus had
described—“bearing upon him the cares” of multitudes. He was to grow up
“as a root in the thirsty ground,” which suggested that he was to be “the
root of Jesse” above mentioned. But he was not to be like Æneas, “the
root” of Anchises. For Æneas divided the spoils in Italy as the prize of
his sword. But this Deliverer—so the prophet declared—was “despised and
reckoned as naught.” He was “delivered over” to the enemies of his nation
as a ransom to save his fellow-countrymen, and it was by their wickedness
that “he was led to death.” Yet in the end, said the prophet, “He will
inherit many men, and will divide the spoils of the strong, because his
soul was delivered over to death, and he was reckoned among criminals,
and he carried the sins of many and he was delivered over on account of
their crimes.”
This was altogether beyond my comprehension at the time. But I saw that
I should have to return to this prophecy hereafter; for I recognised
its last words as having been quoted by Paul in writing to the Romans.
I found afterwards that the passage in Paul spoke about “believing in
Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was _delivered over
for the sake of our transgressions_, and was raised up for the sake of
our being made righteous.” For the present, however, the passage in
Isaiah about the “servant” of God seemed to me important, for this reason
mainly, because it indicated a belief in a life after death. And so did
another difficult passage—if Paul had interpreted it rightly. My copy of
the prophecy said, “Death by its strength hath swallowed up”; but the
margin said “Death is swallowed up in victory,” and these latter words,
too, I recognised as being quoted by Paul; and this, or some similar,
sense appeared to be required by the context.
It was growing late and I was obliged to break off. But I resolved to
return to the book next morning before lecture. So far as I had read,
it appeared to me that the prophet did not formally recognise the
immortality of the soul in general. But in the case of the Suffering
Servant he did seem to recognise it. Having the Servant in my mind,
I unrolled the book of Isaiah to other passages using the same word,
such as, “for my _servant_ David’s sake,” “But thou, Israel, art my
_servant_,” “My _servant_ whom I have chosen.” At last I came to “the
seed of Abraham my _friend_.” In all these passages, God was supposed to
be speaking. Then it occurred to me, “Did the prophet make an exception
for the Suffering Servant only? Did he not also believe that Abraham’s
soul was immortal?” It seemed to me impossible that if the God of the
Jews were asked, “Where is Abraham thy friend?” He would reply—or
that the prophet would regard Him as replying—“Resolved into the four
elements.” On the whole, I was led to the conclusion that Isaiah implied,
though he did not express, some kind of doctrine of human immortality
dependent on the relation between man and God.