The prophetic period.--The fourteenth verse of the seventh
chapter of Isaiah explained.
The claims of Christ to be the Logos or Son of God, in the Alexandrian
sense, are made manifest by prophecy and miracles. The Jews, influenced
by the prophets of their nation, believed that a deliverer would
some day appear, who would deliver them out of the hands of all their
enemies, and establish a temporal kingdom on the earth. But up to the
time when Christ appeared, and even to the present day, no one had shown
himself who realized their idea of this divine mission. The Christians
at the time of Christ believed that he was the one spoken of by the old
prophets, and that a spiritual deliverer, one who was to deliver men
from the power of Satan, had been mistaken for one who with temporal
power would rescue the Jewish people from the hands of their foes.
Barnabas, the companion of Paul, firmly believed this to be so, and took
pains to cite many texts from the Old Testament to prove it. He cites
numerous passages from Daniel, and all the prophets, and especially
searched the pages of Isaiah, where he claims to have found at least
sixteen different references made to Christ as the coming Saviour. But
in all his references to the prophecies he makes none to the celebrated
passage in the seventh chapter of Isaiah, on which is founded the
doctrine of the divine conception of Christ from a Virgin. He makes no
allusion to the fourteenth verse of the chapter at all, so that he was
ignorant of the very foundation on which the Christianity of the second
century was reared. Nor does Polycarp or Ignatius, except where their
writings have been clearly defaced by the forgeries of men, who wished
to establish the new ideas of the day by the authority of the fathers.
But when we come down to the second century, as far as the times of
Justin Martyr, we find pages in the writings of the day filled with a
new class of citations from the Old Testament, all of which foreshadow
the appearance of Christ, his birth from a virgin, and point him out as
the one foretold by the prophets. In his Apology to the emperor, Justin
Martyr quotes numerous passages from the Old and New Testaments to prove
the divine mission of Christ, and speaks of his miraculous conception
from the Virgin. (_Apology_, sec. 43)
We now enter a new era, filled with new ideas, and passages of Scripture
which before had been overlooked, but which all at once were discovered
to contain a meaning which concerned the eternal interests of mankind.
The Synoptics are now spread out before the world, and Christianity,
armed by the voice of the prophets of God, is prepared to make a
new start. One fact will appear clear as we approach the end of this
subject, that all the men who undertook to strengthen the cause of
Christianity by the application of prophecy to the person of Christ
were ignorant of Jewish history, and either wofully misunderstood the
language of the prophets, or foolishly attempted to pervert it.
There are four prophecies cited in the Gospel of Matthew from the Old
Testament, which it is claimed point out Christ as the one foretold by
the old Jewish prophets. 1st. "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and
shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which
being interpreted is, God with us." (Matt. i. 23.) It must be borne in
mind, as has been before stated, that when the new idea of the Logos
was started, it was found necessary in some way to make Christ more than
mortal. To be the Son of God in the Alexandrian sense he must have God
for his father, and this could be only brought about through a virgin
overshadowed by his divine presence. In the zeal of these men, who
undertook to prove it, they selected a passage from Isaiah which had no
application to anything outside of the Jewish history of the day.
Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, united and made war on
Ahaz, king of Ju-dah, and marched upon Jerusalem. Ahaz became alarmed
at the combination, and feared the capture of the holy city and the
destruction of his kingdom. The Lord took compassion on him and his
people, and sent Isaiah to him with an order to meet him at the end of
the conduit of the upper pool, where he would inform him what would be
the fate of Judah and her enemies.
"Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and
Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in
the highway of the fuller's field; and say unto him, Take heed, and be
quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted for the two tails of these
smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the
son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have
taken evil counsel against thee, saying, Let us go up against Judah, and
vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the
midst of it, even the son of Tabeal. Thus saith the Lord God, It shall
not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is
Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin: and within threescore and
five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people. And the
head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son.
If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. Moreover,
the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy
God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said,
I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said, Hear ye now,
O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will
ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign:
behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name
Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the
evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse
the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be
forsaken of both her kings. The Lord shall bring upon thee, and upon thy
people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from
the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria."
(_Isaiah_ vii. 3-17.)
The Lord told Ahaz not to fear or be fainthearted, and he undertook to
tell him how long it would be before Rezin and Pekah would be defeated
and driven away. In fixing the time, Isaiah indulges in a poetic
license, and purposely rendered it obscure. The language used expresses
this meaning: If a virgin should conceive from that time, the day when
the Lord spoke to Ahaz, the child would be born before his enemies would
be subdued or driven away; but not a great while before, for when they
were driven away, the child would still be so young as not to know how
to refuse the evil and choose the good. If the Lord did not tell Ahaz
in some way when his enemies would be subdued, then the object of the
interview entirely failed; for that was just what Ahaz wanted to know,
and which the Lord promised to disclose to him. Be not faint-hearted,
neither be afraid, for in such a time your deliverance shall come. If
the Lord wished to inform him that he would be delivered from Rezin and
Pekah, after the Messiah spoken of in the Scriptures should come, which
happened seven hundred years later, he would know no more after, than
he did before he conversed with the Lord. The Lord did not tell him the
precise day, but furnished Ahaz the data by which he might make his own
calculations.
A very simple answer is purposely obscured by connecting some things
with it which have a remote bearing on the subject, and others which
have no connection with it at all. "Butter and honey shall he eat,
that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good," is an obscure
allusion to the age of the child: and his name shall be called Immanuel,
is of no significance, for he might as well be called by any other name.
When we first read the passage, we see nothing distinct: all is in a
kind of penumbra; but after looking for a short time, as in a curiously
shaded picture, an image, an idea, shows or appears on the ground-work,
well marked and defined.
The explanation we have given of the passage from Isaiah is justified
and made apparent by the language used in the first, second, and third
verses of the eighth chapter of this prophet. It seems the Lord wished
to prove to Ahaz, by actual demonstration, that what he promised should
be fulfilled to the letter. The prophet says, he took with him two
faithful witnesses and went in to the prophetess (who was the virgin)
and she conceived and bare a son. Then when the son was born, the Lord
said to the prophet, that before the child could pronounce the name of
father or mother, "the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall
be taken away before the king of Assyria." Tiglath Pileser, king of
the Assyrians, did come to the aid of Ahaz, and made war on the
Syrians--laid their country waste--took Damascus, and slew Rezin. He
afflicted the land of Israel, and carried the people away captives.
(Josephus, _Antiq_., book ix. chap. 12, sec. 3.) All this too within the
time promised Ahaz, according to Isaiah.
The mystical language used by Isaiah in the fourteenth verse of the
seventh chapter, which has been the cause of so much speculation and
false interpretation, springs from the poetic element of the Hebrew
mind. Had Isaiah lived in our day, his sublime genius would have
produced a Paradise Lost; but in his own country, and in his own times,
his imagination dwelt upon ideas and thoughts which had their root in
the hearts of the Jewish people. The Hebrew poets found subjects within
the history of their own nation best suited to arouse their genius, and
move the hearts of the people. The sorrows and afflictions brought on
the nation by her enemies, and her final deliverance by the hand of the
Lord, are favorite themes, and inspire her poets with thoughts full of
tenderness, and with denunciations which are sublime and often terrific.
The harp of Zion in the hands of the daughters of Judah, as they weep
by the waters of Babylon, gives forth no sounds but those of sorrow; but
the genius of her prophets, inspired by a consciousness that a time
of deliverance will come, deals out thunderbolts on the heads of their
oppressors.
What are called the prophecies of Isaiah are nothing more, many of them,
than so many epic poems, like the Iliad of Homer, to celebrate scenes
and real occurrences in Jewish history. The war upon Ahaz, king of
Judah, by Rezin and Pekah, kings of Israel and Syria, took place during
the life of Isaiah: and the poet undertakes to commemorate the history
of the times, in the form of a Jewish epic. He speaks of the past, and
not of things to come. The Jews were taught to believe that their nation
was the favorite people of God, and from the time of Moses to the last
of her prophets, her poets did not hesitate to introduce the Lord, and
cause him to take part in a Jewish epic, any more than Homer hesitated
to introduce Jupiter and all the heathen gods into the story of the
Iliad. The meeting of the Lord and Ahaz at the "end of conduit of the
upper field," and what afterwards takes place, is the poetic license of
the poet, as he undertakes to narrate a portion of the history of his
own time.