Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are
those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in
which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a
statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who
read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary
Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his
long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he
bore testimony, as unremitting as it was brilliant, to the
indefeasible supremacy of the unseen forces that shape history, and
to the quiet strength that comes from confidence in God.
During this period three events stand out as of unique importance:
the coalition--due to fear of Assyria--formed by Aram and Israel
against Judah in 735 B.C. (vii. 1-ix. 6), the capture of Samaria by
the Assyrians in 721 B.C., and the deliverance of Jerusalem in 701
B.C. from the menace of Sennacherib. In these and in all crises,
Isaiah's message was a religious one, but instinct, as the sequel
showed, with political wisdom. It rested ultimately upon the vision
with which his ministry had been inaugurated--the vision of the
King, the Lord of hosts, upon a throne high and lifted up, whose
glory filled the whole earth.
The King was "holy," partly, no doubt, in the ethical sense--for the
man of unclean lips is afraid in His presence--but also partly in
the older sense of being separated, elevated, lifted above the
chances and changes of humanity. Holiness here is almost equivalent
to majesty, it is the other side of the divine glory; and it is this
thought that inspires the message of Isaiah with such serene
confidence. His God is on the throne of the universe: He is the Lord
of hosts. His purposes concern not only Judah, but the whole world,
xiv. 26, and His kingdom must eventually come. Therefore it is that
when, at the news of the confederacy of Aram and Israel against
Judah, "the heart of Ahaz and his people shook as shake the forest
trees before the wind," vii. 2, Isaiah remains firm as a rock; for,
to paraphrase his own great alliterative words, "Faith brings
fixity," vii. 9b. This word of his early ministry is also one of his
latest (701): "he who believeth shall not give way," xxviii. 16.
That is the precious foundation stone that abides unshaken amid the
shock of circumstance, and can bear any weight that may be thrown
upon it. This, then, is Isaiah's great contribution to religion: he
is before all things, the prophet of faith. "In quietness and
confidence your strength shall be," xxx. 15.
It is easy from this point of view to understand the scorn which
Isaiah heaps upon the common objects of men's trust, whether ships,
walls or towers (ii.), lip-worship, xxix. 13f., or the gorgeous
services of the sanctuary, cunning diplomacy or the projected
alliance with Egypt or Assyria (xxx.). Isaiah is the sworn foe of
materialism: the contrast between human and divine resource is to
him nothing less than infinite. "The Egyptians are men, and not God;
and their horses flesh, and not spirit," (xxxi. 3). It is in harmony
with this insistence upon the supremacy of the spiritual that Isaiah
regarded religion as separable not only from political form, but
even from ecclesiastical organization; for (if the text of viii.
16_b_ can be trusted) he committed his message not to the
contemporary church, but to a few disciples, transforming thereby
the existing conception of the church, and taking a step of
immeasurable significance for the development of true religion.
The majesty and originality of Isaiah's thought have their
counterpart in his language. Very powerful, e.g., is his description
of the Assyrian army--
See! hastily, swiftly he comes,
None weary, none stumbling among them,
The band of his loins never loosed,
The thong of his shoes never torn.
His arrows are sharpened,
His bows are all bent.
The hoofs of his horses are counted as flint,
And his wheels as the whirlwind.
His roar is like that of the lioness.
And like the young lions he roars,
Thundering, seizing the prey,
And bearing it off to a place of security.
v. 26-29.
The book is full of poetry as fine as this. Whether describing the
mighty roar of the sea, xvii. 12-14, or Jehovah's power to defend
Israel, xxxi. 4, or singing a tender vineyard song (v.); Isaiah is
equally at home. He effects his transitions with consummate skill:
note, e.g., the swift application he makes of the parable of the
vineyard, v. 5-7, or the scathing retort he makes to those who
complain of the monotony and repetition of his message (xxviii.
11).[1]
[Footnote 1: The real irony of this passage, xxviii. 10-13, can only
be appreciated in the Hebrew.]
The prophecies that fall within the first thirty-nine chapters are
practically all on a very high religious and literary level; yet it
is all but universally conceded that they are not entirely from the
hand of Isaiah. Some prophecies, e.g. xiii., xiv., may be nearly two
centuries later than his time, others, e.g. xxiv.-xxvii, four or six;
indeed large sections or fragments of the book are relegated by the
more radical critics to the second century B.C. and connected with the
Maccabean times. But even the more conservative scholars admit that
several oracles of Isaiah have been worked over by later hands,
possibly by pupils, and that isolated sections, e.g. xxiv.-xxvii.,
have to be relegated to the post-exilic age, and even to a comparatively
late period within that age. These questions can only be settled, if at
all, by exegetical, theological and historical considerations, for which
this is not the place; but in sketching the contents of the various
prophecies, the more probable alternatives will be indicated, where a
solution is important.
It is plain that the present order of the book is not strictly
chronological; otherwise it would have begun with the inaugural
vision which now appears in ch. vi. Generally speaking, there are six
more or less sharply articulated divisions in the first thirty-nine
chapters, i.-xii., xiii.-xxiii., xxiv.-xxvii., xxviii.-xxxiii.,
xxxiv.-xxxv., xxxvi.-xxxix.
Chs, i.-xii. _Prophecies concerning Judah, Jerusalem (and
Israel_)
The first division, like the fourth, deals in the main with Judah
and Jerusalem. As the next division, xiii.-xxiii., deals with
foreign peoples, i.1 can serve as a preface only to the first
division and not to the whole book. The prophecy opens with an
arraignment of Judah, intensely ethical in spirit. It was placed
here, not because it was first in point of time, but as a sort of
frontispiece; for, though the different sections of the ch., e.g.
_vv_. 2-9, 10-20, may come from different times, the first at
any rate implies the ravaging of Judah, i. 7, and appears to point
to the invasion of Sennacherib in 701 B.C.: it would thus be one of
the latest in the book. The land is wasted, the body politic
diseased, i. 1-9; the people seek the favour of their God by
assiduous and costly ceremony, which the prophet answers by an
appeal for a moral instead of a ritual service, _vv_. 10-20.
But, as injustice and idolatry are rampant, they will be surely
punished, _vv_. 21-31.
As a foil to this picture of the depravity of Zion, a foil also to
the immediately succeeding description of her pride and idolatry, is
the beautiful vision of Zion in the issue of the days, ii. 2-5, as
the city to which all nations shall resort for religious
instruction, and their obedience to the expressed will of the God of
Zion will usher in a reign of universal peace. The passage appears,
with an additional verse, in Micah iv. 1-5, where it seems to be
preserved in a more original form; yet Isaiah can hardly have
borrowed it from Micah, who was younger than he. It used to be
supposed that both adopted it from an older poet. But the contents
of the oracle, assigning as it does a world-wide significance to
Zion, its temple, and its _torah_, while not absolutely
incompatible with Isaianic authorship, rather point to a post-exilic
date. We are the more at liberty to assume that the passage was
later inserted as a foil to the preceding description of Zion as
Sodom, as neither in Isaiah nor in Micah does it fit the context.
The general theme of ii.-iv. is the divine judgment which will fall
on all the foolish pride of Judah. How it will come, Isaiah does not
say--the prophecy is one of the earliest (735?)--but the storm that
will sweep across the land will reveal the impotence of superstition
and idolatry and material resources of every kind, ii. 6-22. All the
supports of Judah's political life will be taken away: indeed, the
leaders are either so weak or rapacious that the country is already
as good as ruined, iii. 1-15; and the women, who are as guilty as
the men, will also be involved in their doom, iii. 16-iv. 1.
Strangely enough, this eloquent threat of judgment ends in a vision
of comfort and peace, iv. 2-6. The land is one day to be wondrously
fruitful, her people to be cleansed and holy, and the glory of
Jehovah will be over Zion as a shelter and shade. The theological
implications of this last passage seem late, and it was probably
appended by another hand than Isaiah's as a contrast and
consolation.
Then follows a lament, in the form of a vineyard song, which
skilfully ends in a denunciation of Judah, the vineyard of Jehovah,
v. 1-7, merging thereafter into a sixfold woe, pronounced upon her
rapacious land-holders, drunkards, sceptics, enemies of the moral
order, worldly wise men, besotted and unjust judges, v. 8-24. This
is fittingly followed by the announcement that Jehovah will summon
against Judah the swift, unwearied and invincible hosts of Assyria,
v. 25-30.
In the noble vision (740 B.C.) which inaugurated his prophetic
ministry (vi.), Isaiah saw the glorious Jehovah attended by seraphim
and received from Him the call to go forth and deliver his message
to an unbelieving people. This vision appropriately introduces the
prophecies proper in vii.-xii.; but it is practically certain that
though the vision itself was early, the account of it is later. The
hopelessness of his prospective ministry looks rather like the
retrospect of a disappointing experience. Though Isaiah elsewhere
expresses his faith in the salvation of a remnant, this chapter
asserts the utter annihilation of the people, _vv_. 11-13_ab_.
An attempt has been made to relieve the gloom in the last clause of
the chapter, _v_. 13 _c_, by a comparison of the stump of
the tree that remained, after felling, to the holy seed; but this
clause, which is wanting in the Septuagint, and utterly blunts the
keen edge of the prophecy, is no part of the original chapter.
The next section, vii. i-ix. 6, plunges us into the war which the
allied arms of Aram and Israel waged against Judah in 735, doubtless
in the desire to force her to join a coalition against Assyria.
Isaiah, vii. 1-17, seeks to reassure the faith of the trembling king
Ahaz; and when Ahaz refuses to put the prophetic word to the test,
Isaiah boldly declares that the land will be delivered from the
menace before two or three years are over; and many a child--or it
may be some particular child--soon to be born, will be given the
name Immanuel, and will thereby bear witness to the faith that,
despite the stress of invasion, God will not forget His people, but
that He "is with us."[1] To the same period, but probably not the
same occasion, belongs the prophecy of the devastation of Judah by
Assyria, vii. 18-25. But the blow is to fall first, and within two
or three years, on Aram and Israel, with their respective capitals.
It did not fall so quickly as Isaiah had expected: Damascus was
indeed taken in 732, but Samaria not till 721: in spirit, however,
if not in the letter, the prophecy was fulfilled, viii. 1-4. The
unbelief of Judah will also be punished by the hosts of Assyria, but
the ultimate purpose of Jehovah will not be frustrated, viii. 5-10.
He alone is to be feared, and no combination of confederate kings
need alarm, viii. 11-15. The prophet commits his message to his
disciples, and with patience and confidence looks for vindication to
the future, viii. 16-18. Desperate days would come, viii. 19-91, but
they would be followed by a brilliant day of redemption when Jehovah
would remove the yoke from the shoulder of His burdened people by
sending them a glorious prince with the fourfold name.
[Footnote 1: vii. 8_b_]
This latter prophecy, ix. 2-7, has been denied to Isaiah, but
apparently with insufficient reason. The passage falls very
naturally into its context. The northern districts of Israel (ix. 1)
had been ravaged by Assyria in 734 B.C. (2 Kings xv. 29), and upon
this darkness it is fitting that the great light should shine; and
the yoke to be broken might well be the heavy tribute Judah was now
obliged to pay. There are undoubted difficulties, e.g. the mention
of a Davidic king, ix. 7, after a specific reference to the fortunes
of Israel over which the Davidic king had no jurisdiction; and it is
probable that we do not possess the oracle in its original form or
completeness. But, in any case, the vision of the righteous and
prosperous king ruling over a delivered people fittingly closes this
series of somewhat loosely connected oracles.
The next section, ix. 8-x. 4, forms a very artistic whole,
consisting of four strophes, each of four verses,[1] concluding with
the refrain--
For all this His wrath is not turned,
And His hand is stretched out still.
The poem, which falls about 734, lashes the pride and ambition of
_Israel_ (not Judah) and threatens her people with loss of
territory and population, anarchy and civil war. The passage was
probably originally followed by v. 26-29, which has a similar
refrain, and which, with its vivid description of the terrible
Assyrian army, would form an admirable climax to this poem.
[Footnote 1: Ch. ix. 8 is an introduction and _v_. 13 an
interpolation.]
Chs. x. 5-xii. 6. Assyria, then, is the instrument with which
Jehovah chastises Israel. But because she executes her task in a
spirit of presumption and pride, she in her turn is doomed to
destruction; but the remnant of Jehovah's people will be saved, x.
5-27. The gradual approach of the Assyrians to Jerusalem is then
described in language full of word-play, _vv_, 28-32, which
forcibly reminds us of a very similar passage in Isaiah's
contemporary Micah, i. 10-15. This chapter is probably about twenty
years later than those that immediately precede it. There is an
obvious advance in the prophet's attitude to Assyria, and the boast
in _vv_. 9-11 carries the chapter later than the fall of
Samaria (721) and Carchemish (717). It is even possible that the
description of the Assyrian advance in vv. 28-32 implies
Sennacherib's campaign in Judah in 701.
After the destruction of the enemy before Jerusalem in x. 33, 34
follows an enthusiastic description of the Messianic king--of his
wisdom and justice, and of the universal peace which will extend
even to the animal world, xi. 1-9. It is the counterpart of ix. 2-7,
though here again, and perhaps with more reason, the Isaianic
authorship has been doubted. The peculiar emphasis upon the equipment
with the spirit is hardly, in these ethical relationships, demonstrably
pre-exilic, and the "stem" out of which the shoot is to grow suggests
that the monarchy had fallen, but the word may possibly be used to
indicate its decadent condition. In any case, there seems very little
doubt that the rest of the section, xi. 10-xii. 6, strikingly appropriate
as it is in this place, is post-exilic. It describes how in the Messianic
days just pictured, theexiles of Israel and Judah will be gathered from
the ends of the earth to their own land, where their near neighbours will
all be vanquished, xi. 10-16. Then follows a simple song of gratitude for
the redemption Jehovah has wrought, xii. The presuppositions of the
dispersion here described are not such as fit into Isaiah's time; they
would not even apply to the conditions after the fall of Jerusalem and
the exile of Judah in 586, still less to the fall of Samaria and the
exile of Israel in 72l--the passage must be post-exilic. But though much
later than Isaiah's time it forms a very skilful conclusion to the first
division of his book, and is an admirable counterpart to the gloomy
scenes of ch. i.