[1] In Isaiah we see prophetic authorship reaching its
culminating point. Everything conspired to raise him to an
elevation which no prophet before or after could as writer
attain. Among the other prophets, each of the more
important ones is distinguished by some one particular
excellence, and some one particular talent. In Isaiah all
kinds of talent, and all beauties of prophetic discourse,
meet together, so as mutually to temper and qualify each
other; it is not so much any single feature that
distinguished him as the symmetry and perfection of the
whole.
We cannot fail to assume, as the first condition of
Isaiah's particular historical greatness, a native power,
and a vivacity of spirit which, even among prophets, is
seldom to be met with. It is but rarely that we see
combined in one and the same spirit the three several
characteristics of--first, the most profound prophetic
excitement and the purest sentiment; next, the most
indefatigable and successful practical activity amidst all
perplexities and changes of outward life; and, thirdly,
that facility and beauty in representing thought which is
the characteristic of the genuine poet; but this threefold
combination we find realised in Isaiah as in no other
prophet; and form the traces which we can perceive of the
unceasing joint-working of these three powers, we must draw
our conclusions as to the original greatness of his genius.
But as prophet and as author, Isaiah stands upon that calm,
sunny height, which in each several branch of ancient
literature one eminently favoured spirit at the right time
takes possession of; which seems, as it were, to have been
waiting for _him;_ and which, when he has come and mounted
the ascent, seems to keep and guard him to the last as its
own right man. In the sentiments which he expresses, in the
topics of his discourses, and in the manner of expression,
Isaiah uniformly reveals himself as the kingly prophet.
In reference to the last-named point, it cannot be said
that his method of elaborating thought is elaborate and
artificial: it rather shows a lofty simplicity and an
unconcern about external attractiveness, abandoning itself
freely to the leading and requirement of each several
thought; but, nevertheless, it always rolls along in a full
stream which overpowers all resistance, and never fails at
the right place to accomplish at every turn its object
without toil or effort.
The progress and development of the discourse is always
majestic, achieving much with few words, which, though
short, are yet clear and transparent; an overflowing
fulness of thought, which might readily lose itself in the
vast and indefinite, but which always at the right time
with tight rein collects and tempers its exuberance; to the
bottom exhausting the thought and completing the utterance,
and yet never too diffuse. This severe self-control is the
most admirably seen in those shorter utterances which by
briefly-sketched images and thoughts give us the vague
apprehension of something infinite, whilst, nevertheless,
they stand before us complete in themselves and clearly
delineated; _e.g._, viii. 6--ix. 6, xiv. 23-32, xviii. 1-7,
xxi. 11, 12; while in the long piece, xxviii.-xxxii., if
the composition here and there for a moment languishes, it
is only to lift itself again afresh with all the greater
might. In this rich and thickly-crowded fulness of thought
and word it is but seldom that the simile which is employed
appears apart, to set forth and complete itself (xxxi. 4,
5); in general, it crowds into the delineation of the
object which it is meant to illustrate, and is swallowed up
in it,--ay, and frequently simile after simile; and yet the
many threads of the discourse, which for a moment appeared
ravelled together, soon disentangle themselves into perfect
clearness;--a characteristic which belongs to this prophet
alone, a freedom of language which with no one else so
easily succeeds.
The versification, in like manner, is always full, and yet
strongly marked: while, however, this prophet is so little
concerned about anxiously weighing out to each verse its
proper number of words, not unfrequently he repeats the
same word in two members (xxxi. 8, xxxii. 17, xi. 5,
xix. 13), as if, with so much power and beauty in the
matter within, he did not so much require a painstaking
finish in the outside. The structure of the strophe is
always easy and beautifully rounded.
Still the main point lies here,--that we cannot in the case
of Isaiah, as in that of other prophets, specify any
particular peculiarity, or any favourite colour as
attaching to his general style. _He is not the especially
lyrical prophet, or the especially elegiacal prophet, or
the especially oratorical and hortatory prophet, as we
should describe a Joel, a Hosea, a Micah, with whom there
is a greater prevalence of some particular colour; but,
just as the subject requires, he has readily at command
every several kind of style and every several change of
delineation; and it is precisely this that, in point of
language, establishes his greatness, as well as in general,
forms out of his most towering points of excellence._ His
only fundamental peculiarity is the lofty, majestic,
calmness of his style, proceeding out of the perfect
command which he feels he possesses over his subject
matter. This calmness, however, no way demands that the
strain shall not, when occasion required, be more
vehemently excited, and assail the hearer with mightier
blows; but even the extremest excitement, which does here
and there intervene, is in the main bridled still by the
same spirit of calmness, and, not overstepping the limits
which that spirit assigns, it soon with lofty self-control
returns to its wonted tone of equability (ii. 10--iii. 1,
xxviii. 11-23, xxix. 9-14). Neither does this calmness in
discourse require that the subject shall always be treated
only in a plain level way, without any variation of form;
rather, Isaiah shows himself master in just that variety of
manner which suits the relation in which his hearers stand
to the matter now in hand. If he wishes to bring home to
their minds a distant truth which they like not to hear,
and to judge them by a sentence pronounced by their own
mouth, he retreats into a popular statement of a case drawn
from ordinary life (v. 1-6, xxviii. 23-20). If he will draw
the attention of the over wise to some new truth, or to
some future prospect, he surprises them by a brief oracle
clothed in an enigmatical dress, leaving it to their
penetration to discover its solution (vii. 14-16,
xxix. 1-8). When the unhappy temper of the people's minds
which nothing can amend leads to loud lamentation, his
speech becomes for a while the strain of elegy and lament
(i. 21-23, xxii. 4, 5). Do the frivolous leaders of the
people mock? he outdoes them at their own weapons, and
crushes them under the fearful earnest of divine mockery
(xxviii. 10-13). Even a single ironical word in passing
will drop from the lofty prophet (xxvii. 3, _glory_). Thus
his discourse varies into every complexion: _it is tender
and stern, didactic and threatening, mourning and again
exulting in divine joy, mocking and earnest;_ but ever at
the right time it returns to its original elevation and
repose, and never loses the clear ground-colour of its
divine seriousness.--_Ewald, quoted in Smith's Dictionary
of the Bible,_ vol. i. pp. 888, 889, article ISAIAH.
[2] The title of the book is _"The_ VISION _of Isaiah,"_ which
suggests these remarks--
(1.) Being a _vision,_ it will frequently speak of events
that are yet future, as if they had already occurred. So in
iii. 8: "Jerusalem _is ruined;_ Judah _is fallen."_ In
v. 13: "Therefore my people _are gone into captivity._"
(2.) What is seen in vision must be subject to the laws of
_perspective._ One who views the snowy Alps from a distance
may see two mountain peaks, which really are many miles
apart, as one object. The illustration is imperfect; yet it
may serve to explain how, to the eye of a seer, a nearer
event may be blended with one that is _in the same
direction, but vastly more remote;_ the type, for instance,
melting into the antitype, or the interval between the
first and second advents of the Messiah being indiscernible.
(3.) It is, as a whole, _The Vision;_--_one_ vision. It
consists, indeed, of various parts; yet from the very
outset these represent the same _vision._ Judah _is
rebellious; is sentenced to exile; is redeemed; is
purified. These elements, on a large scale, compose the
book as a whole;_ and, on a smaller scale, they compose the
first chapter. The body is made up of portions similar in
quality to itself, and to each other. The visions are
greatly diversified in size, form, colouring, and other
detail; but in essential characteristics it is one
vision.--_Dr. Kay, in The Speaker's Commentary,_ vol. v. p.
19.