_THE PROLOGUE: THE FOUR HERALD VOICES._
ISAIAH xl. 1-11.
It is only Voices which we hear in this Prologue. No forms can be
discerned, whether of men or angels, and it is even difficult to
make out the direction from which the Voices come. Only one thing is
certain--that they break the night, that they proclaim the end of a
long but fixed period, during which God has punished and forsaken
His people. At first, the persons addressed are the prophets, that
they may speak to the people (vv. 1, 2); but afterwards Jerusalem
as a whole is summoned to publish the good tidings (ver. 9). This
interchange between a part of the people and the whole--this
commission to prophesy, made with one breath to some of the nation
for the sake of the rest, and with the next breath to the entire
nation--is a habit of our prophet to which we shall soon get
accustomed. How natural and characteristic it is, is proved by its
appearance in these very first verses.
The beginning of the good tidings is Israel's pardon; yet it seems
not to be the people's return to Palestine which is announced in
consequence of this, so much as their God's return to them. _Prepare
ye the way of Jehovah, make straight a highway for our God. Behold the
Lord Jehovah will come._ We may, however, take _the way of Jehovah in
the wilderness_ to mean what it means in the sixty-eighth Psalm,--His
going forth before His people and leading of them back; while the
promise that He will come to _shepherd His flock_ (ver. 11) is, of
course, the promise that He will resume the government of Israel upon
their own land. There can be no doubt, therefore, that this chapter
was meant for the people at the close of their captivity in Babylon.
But do not let us miss the pathetic fact, that Israel is addressed not
in her actual shape of a captive people in a foreign land, but under
the name and aspect of her far-away, desolate country. In these verses
Israel is _Jerusalem_, _Zion_, _the cities of Judah_. Such designations
do not prove, as a few critics have rather pedantically supposed, that
the writer of the verses lived in Judah and addressed himself to what
was under his eyes. It is not the vision of a Jew at home that has
determined the choice of these names, but the desire and the dream of
a Jew abroad: that extraordinary passion, which, however distant might
be the land of his exile, ever filled the Jew's eyes with Zion, caused
him to feel the ruin and forsakenness of his Mother more than his own
servitude, and swept his patriotic hopes, across his own deliverance
and return, to the greater glory of her restoration.[36] There is
nothing, therefore, to prevent us taking for granted, as we did in the
previous chapter, that the speaker or speakers of these verses stood
among the exiles themselves; but who they were--men or angels, prophets
or scribes--is lost in the darkness out of which their music breaks.[37]
Nevertheless the prophecy is not anonymous. By these impersonal
voices a personal revelation is made. The prophets may be nameless,
but the Deity who speaks through them speaks as already known and
acknowledged: _My people, saith your God._
This is a point, which, though it takes for its expression no more
than these two little pronouns, we must not hurriedly pass over.
All the prophecy we are about to study may be said to hang from
these pronouns. They are the hinges, on which the door of this new
temple of revelation swings open before the long-expectant people.
And, in fact, such a conscience and sympathy as these little words
express form the necessary premise of all revelation. Revelation
implies a previous knowledge of God, and cannot work upon men, except
there already exist in them the sense that they and God somehow
belong to each other. This sense need be neither pure, nor strong,
nor articulate. It may be the most selfish and cowardly of guilty
fears,--Jacob's dread as he drew near Esau, whom he had treacherously
supplanted,--the vaguest of ignorant desires, the Athenians' worship
of the Unknown God. But, whatever it is, the angel comes to wrestle
with it, the apostle is sent to declare it; revelation in some form
takes it as its premise and starting-point. This previous sense of
God may also be fuller than in the cases just cited. Take our Lord's
own illustration. Upon the prodigal in the strange country there
surged again the far-ebbed memory of his home and childhood, of
his years of familiarity with a Father; and it was this tide which
carried back his penitent heart within the hearing of his Father's
voice, and the revelation of the love that became his new life. Now
Israel, also in a far-off land, were borne upon the recollection of
home and of life in the favour of their God. We have seen with what
knowledge of Him and from what relations with Him they were banished.
To the men of the Exile God was already a Name and an Experience, and
because that Name was _The Righteous_, and that Experience was all
grace and promise, these men waited for His Word more than they that
wait for the morning; and when at length the Word broke from the long
darkness and silence, they received it, though its bearers might be
unseen and unaccredited, because they recognised and acknowledged in
it Himself. He who spoke was _their God_, and they were _His people_.
This conscience and sympathy was all the title or credential which
the revelation required. It is, therefore, not too much to say, as
we have said, that the two pronouns in ch. xl., ver. 1, are the
necessary premise of the whole prophecy which that verse introduces.
* * * * *
With this introduction we may now take up the four herald voices of
the Prologue. Whatever may have been their original relation to one
another, whether or not they came to Israel by different messengers,
they are arranged (as we saw at the close of the previous chapter) in
manifest order and progress of thought, and they meet in due succession
the experiences of Israel at the close of the Exile. For the first
of them (vv. 1 and 2) gives the _subjective assurance_ of the coming
redemption: it is the Voice of Grace. The second (vv. 3-5) proclaims
the _objective reality_ of that redemption: it may be called the
Voice of Providence, or--to use the name by which our prophecy loves
to entitle the just and victorious providence of God--the Voice of
Righteousness. The third (vv. 6-8) uncovers the pledge and earnest
of the redemption: in the weakness of men this shall be the Word of
God. While the fourth (vv. 9-11) is the Proclamation of Jehovah's
restored kingdom, when He cometh as a shepherd to shepherd His people.
To this progress and climax the music of the passage forms a perfect
accompaniment. It would be difficult to find in any language lips that
first more softly woo the heart, and then take to themselves so brave
a trumpet of challenge and assurance. The opening is upon a few short
pulses of music, which steal from heaven as gently as the first ripples
of light in a cloudless dawn--
Năhămu, năhămu ammi:
_Comfort ye, comfort ye my people_:
Dabbĕru `al-lev Yerushālaîm.
_Speak upon the heart of Jerusalem._[38]
But then the trumpet-tone breaks forth, _Call unto her_; and on that
high key the music stays, sweeping with the second voice across hill
and dale like a company of swift horsemen, stooping with the third
for a while to the elegy upon the withered grass, but then recovering
itself, braced by all the strength of the Word of God, to peal from
tower to tower with the fourth, upon the cry, _Behold, the Lord
cometh_, till it sinks almost from sound to sight, and yields us,
as from the surface of still waters, that sweet reflection of the
twenty-third Psalm with which the Prologue concludes.
1. _Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.
Speak ye home to the heart of Jerusalem, and call unto her,_
_That accomplished is her warfare, that absolved is her iniquity;
That she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins._
This first voice, with the music of which our hearts have been
thrilled ever since we can remember, speaks twice: first in a
whisper, then in a call--the whisper of the Lover and the call of the
Lord. _Speak ye home to the heart of Jerusalem, and call unto her._
Now Jerusalem lay in ruins, a city through whose breached walls all
the winds of heaven blew mournfully across her forsaken floors. And
the _heart of Jerusalem_, which was with her people in exile, was
like the city--broken and defenceless. In that far-off, unsympathetic
land it lay open to the alien; tyrants forced their idols upon it,
the peoples tortured it with their jests.
_For they that led us captive required of us songs,_
_And they that wasted us required of us mirth._
But observe how gently the Divine Beleaguerer approaches, how softly
He bids His heralds plead by the gaps, through which the oppressor
has forced his idols and his insults. Of all human language they
might use, God bids His messengers take and plead with the words
with which a man will plead at a maiden's heart, knowing that he
has nothing but love to offer as right of entrance, and waiting
until love and trust come out to welcome him. _Speak ye_, says the
original literally, _on to_, or _up against_, or _up round the heart
of Jerusalem_,--a forcible expression, like the German "An das Herz,"
or the sweet Scottish, "It cam' up roond my heart," and perhaps best
rendered into English by the phrase, _Speak home to the heart_.
It is the ordinary Hebrew expression for wooing. As from man to
woman when he wins her, the Old Testament uses it several times. To
_speak home to the heart_ is to use language in which authority and
argument are both ignored, and love works her own inspiration. While
the haughty Babylonian planted by force his idols, while the folly
and temptations of heathendom surged recklessly in, God Himself, the
Creator of this broken heart, its Husband and Inhabitant of old,[39]
stood lowly by its breaches, pleading in love the right to enter. But
when entrance has been granted, see how He bids His heralds change
their voice and disposition. The suppliant lover, being received,
assumes possession and defence, and they, who were first bid whisper
as beggars by each unguarded breach, now leap upon the walls to
call from the accepted Lord of the city: _Fulfilled is thy time of
service, absolved thine iniquity, received hast thou of Jehovah's
hand double for all thy sins._
Now this is no mere rhetorical figure. This is the abiding attitude
and aim of the Almighty towards men. God's target is our heart. His
revelation, whatever of law or threat it send before, is, in its own
superlative clearness and urgency, Grace. It comes to man by way of
the heart; not at first by argument addressed to the intellect, nor by
appeal to experience, but by the sheer strength of a love laid _on to
the heart_. It is, to begin with, a subjective thing. Is revelation,
then, entirely a subjective assurance? Do the pardon and peace which
it proclaims remain only feelings of the heart, without anything to
correspond to them in real fact? By no means; for these Jews the
revelation now whispered to their heart will actually take shape in
providences of the most concrete kind. A voice will immediately call,
_Prepare ye the way of the Lord_, and the way will be prepared. Babylon
will fall; Cyrus will let Israel go; their release will appear--most
concrete of things!--in "black and white" on a Persian state-parchment.
Yet, before these events happen and become part of His people's
experience, God desires first to convince His people by the sheer
urgency of His love. Before He displays His Providence, He will speak
in the power and evidence of His Grace. Afterwards, His prophets shall
appeal to outward facts; we shall find them in succeeding chapters
arguing both with Israel and the heathen on grounds of reason and the
facts of history. But, in the meantime, let them only feel that in His
Grace they have something for the heart of men, which, striking home,
shall be its own evidence and force.
Thus God adventures His Word forth by nameless and unaccredited men
upon no other authority than the Grace, with which it is fraught for
the heart of His people. The illustration, which this affords of
the method and evidence of Divine revelation, is obvious. Let us,
with all the strength of which we are capable, emphasize the fact
that our prophecy--which is full of the materials for an elaborate
theology, which contains the most detailed apologetic in the whole
Bible, and displays the most glorious prospect of man's service and
destiny--takes its source and origin from a simple revelation of
Grace and the subjective assurance of this in the heart of those to
whom it is addressed. This proclamation of Grace is as characteristic
and dominant in Second Isaiah, as we saw the proclamation of
conscience in ch. i. to be characteristic of the First Isaiah.
Before we pass on, let us look for a moment at the contents of this
Grace, in the three clauses of the prophet's cry: _Fulfilled is her
warfare, absolved her guilt, received hath she of Jehovah's hand
double for all her sins._ The very grammar here is eloquent of grace.
The emphasis lies on the three predicates, which ought to stand in
translation, as they do in the original, at the beginning of each
clause. Prominence is given, not to the warfare, nor to the guilt,
nor to the sins, but to this, that _accomplished_ is the warfare,
_absolved_ the guilt, _sufficiently expiated_ the sins. It is a great
AT LAST which these clauses peal forth; but an At Last whose tone is
not so much inevitableness as undeserved grace. The term translated
warfare means _period of military service_, _appointed term of
conscription_; and the application is apparent when we remember that
the Exile had been fixed, by the Word of God through Jeremiah, to a
definite number of years. _Absolved_ is the passive of a verb meaning
to _pay off what is due_.[40] But the third clause is especially
gracious. It declares that Israel has suffered of punishment more
than double enough to atone for her sins. This is not a way of
regarding either sin or atonement, which, theologically speaking, is
accurate. What of its relation to our Articles, that man cannot give
satisfaction for his sins by the work of his hands or the pains of
his flesh? No: it would scarcely pass some of our creeds to-day. But
all the more, that it thus bursts forth from strict terms of dealing,
does it reveal the generosity of Him who utters it. How full of
pity God is, to take so much account of the sufferings sinners have
brought upon themselves! How full of grace to reckon those sufferings
_double the sins_ that had earned them! It is, as when we have seen
gracious men make us a free gift, and in their courtesy insist that
we have worked for it. It is grace masked by grace. As the height of
art is to conceal art, so the height of grace is to conceal grace,
which it does in this verse.
Such is the Voice of Grace. But,
2. _Hark, One calling!
In the wilderness prepare the way of Jehovah!
Make straight in the desert an highway for our God!
Every valley shall be exalted,
And every mountain and hill be made low:
And the crooked grow straight,
And rough places a plain:
And the glory of Jehovah be revealed,
And see it shall all flesh together;
For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken._
The relation of this Voice to the previous one has already been
indicated. This is the witness of Providence following upon the
witness of Grace. Religion is a matter in the first place between
God and the heart; but religion does not, as many mock, remain an
inward feeling. The secret relation between God and His people issues
into substantial fact, visible to all men. History vindicates faith;
Providence executes Promise; Righteousness follows Grace. So, as
the first Voice was spoken _to the heart_, this second is for the
hands and feet and active will. _Prepare ye the way of the Lord._ If
you, poor captives as you are, begin to act upon the grace whispered
in your trembling hearts, the world will show the result. All
things will come round to your side. A levelled empire, an altered
world--across those your way shall lie clear to Jerusalem. You shall
go forth in the sight of all men, and future generations looking back
shall praise this manifest wonder of your God. _The glory of Jehovah
shall be revealed, and see it shall all flesh together._
On which word, how can our hearts help rising from the comfort of
grace to the sense of mastery over this world, to the assurance of
heaven itself? History must come round to the side of faith--as it
has come round not in the case of Jewish exiles only, but wheresoever
such a faith as theirs has been repeated. History must come round
to the side of faith, if men will only obey the second as well as
the first of these herald voices. But we are too ready to listen to
the Word of the Lord, without seeking to prepare His way. We are
satisfied with the personal comfort of our God; we are contented to
be forgiven and--oh mockery!--left alone. But the word of God will
not leave us alone, and not for comfort only is it spoken. On the
back of the voice, which sets our heart right with God, comes the
voice to set the world right, and no man is godly who has not heard
both. Are we timid and afraid that facts will not correspond to
our faith? Nay, but as God reigneth they shall, if only we put to
our hands and make them; _all flesh shall see it_, if we will but
_prepare the way of the Lord_.
Have we only ancient proofs of this? On the contrary, God has done like
wonders within the lives of those of us who are yet young. During our
generation, a people has appealed from the convictions of her heart to
the arbitrament of history, and appealed not in vain. When the citizens
of the Northern States of the American Republic, not content as they
might have been with their protests against slavery, rose to vindicate
these by the sword, they faced, humanly speaking, a risk as great
as that to which Jew was ever called by the word of God. Their own
brethren were against them; the world stood aloof. But even so, unaided
by united patriotism and as much dismayed as encouraged by the opinions
of civilisation, they rose to the issue on the strength of conscience
and their hearts. They rose and they conquered. Slavery was abolished.
What had been but the conviction of a few men, became the surprise, the
admiration, the consent of the whole world. _The glory of the Lord was
revealed, and all flesh saw it together._
3. But the shadow of death falls on everything, even on the way of the
Lord. By 550 B.C.--that is, after thirty-eight years of exile--nearly
all the strong men of Israel's days of independence must have been
taken away. Death had been busy with the exiles for more than a
generation. There was no longer any human representative of Jehovah
to rally the people's trust; the monarchy, each possible Messiah who
in turn held it, the priesthood, and the prophethood--whose great
personalities so often took the place of Israel's official leaders--had
all alike disappeared. It was little wonder, then, that a nation
accustomed to be led, not by ideas like us Westerns, but by personages,
who were to it the embodiment of Jehovah's will and guidance, should
have been cast into despair by the call, _Prepare ye the way of the
Lord_. What sort of a call was this for a people, whose strong men were
like things uprooted and withered! How could one be, with any heart, a
herald of the Lord to such a people!
_Hark one saying "Call."_[41]
_And I said:_
"_What can I call?_
_All flesh is grass,_
_And all its beauty like a wild-flower!_
_Withers grass, fades flower,_
_When the breath of Jehovah blows on it._
_Surely grass is the people._"
Back comes a voice like the east wind's for pitilessness to the
flowers, but of the east wind's own strength and clearness, to
proclaim Israel's everlasting hope.
_Withers grass, fades flower,_
_But the word of our God endureth for ever._
Everything human may perish; the day may be past of the great
prophets, of the priests--of the King in his beauty, who was
vicegerent of God. But the people have God's word; when all their
leaders have fallen, and every visible authority for God is taken
away, this shall be their rally and their confidence.
All this is too like the actual experience of Israel in Exile not
to be the true interpretation of this third, stern Voice. Their
political and religious institutions, which had so often proved the
initiative of a new movement, or served as a bridge to carry the
nation across disaster to a larger future, were not in existence. Nor
does any Moses, as in Egypt of old, rise to visibleness from among
his obscure people, impose his authority upon them, marshal them, and
lead them out behind him to freedom. But what we see is a scattered
and a leaderless people, stirred in their shadow, as a ripe cornfield
is stirred by the breeze before dawn--stirred in their shadow by the
ancient promises of God, and everywhere breaking out at the touch
of these into psalms and prophecies of hope. We see them expectant
of redemption, we see them resolved to return, we see them carried
across the desert to Zion, and from first to last it is the word of
God that is their inspiration and assurance.
They, who formerly had rallied round the Ark or the Temple, or who had
risen to the hope of a glorious Messiah, do not now speak of all these,
but their _hope_, they tell us, _is in His word_; it is the instrument
of their salvation, and their destiny is to be its evangelists.
4. To this high destiny the fourth Voice now summons them, by a vivid
figure.
_Up on a high mountain, get thee up,_
_Heraldess of good news, O Zion!_
_Lift up with strength thy voice,_
_Heraldess of good news, Jerusalem!_
_Lift up, fear not, say to the cities of Judah:--_
_Behold, your God._
_Behold, my Lord Jehovah, with power He cometh,_
_And His arm rules for Him._
_Behold, His reward with Him,_
_And His recompense before Him._
_As a shepherd His flock He shepherds;_
_With His right arm gathers the lambs,_
_And in His bosom bears them._
_Ewe-mothers He tenderly leads._
The title which I have somewhat awkwardly translated _heraldess_--but
in English there is really no better word for it--is the feminine
participle of a verb meaning to _thrill_, or _give joy, by means of
good news_. It is used generally to tell such happy news as the birth
of a child, but mostly in the special sense of carrying tidings of
victory or peace home from the field to the people. The feminine
participle would seem from Psalm lxviii., _the women who publish
victory to the great host_, to have been the usual term for the
members of those female choirs, who, like Miriam and her maidens,
celebrated a triumph in face of the army, or came forth from the city
to hail the returning conqueror, as the daughters of Jerusalem hailed
Saul and David. As such a chorister, Zion is now summoned to proclaim
Jehovah's arrival at the gates of the cities of Judah.
The verses from _Behold, your God_, to the end of the Prologue
are the song of the heraldess. Do not their mingled martial and
pastoral strains exactly suit the case of the Return? For this is
an expedition, on which the nation's champion has gone forth, not
to lead His enemies captive to His gates, but that He may gather
His people home. Not mailed men, in the pride of a victory they
have helped to win, march in behind Him,--_armour and tumult and
the garment rolled in blood_,--but a herd of mixed and feeble folk,
with babes and women, in need of carriage and gentle leading,
wander wearily back. And, therefore, in the mouth of the heraldess
the figure changes from a warrior-king to the Good Shepherd. _With
His right arm He gathers the lambs, and in His bosom bears them.
Ewe-mothers He gently leads._ How true a picture, and how much it
recalls! Fifty years before, the exiles left their home (as we
can see to this day upon Assyrian sculptures) in closely-driven
companies, fettered, and with the urgency upon them of grim soldiers,
who marched at intervals in their ranks to keep up the pace, and who
tossed the weaklings impatiently aside. But now, see the slow and
loosely-gathered bands wander back, just as quickly as the weakest
feel strength to travel, and without any force or any guidance save
that of their Almighty, Unseen Shepherd.
We are now able to appreciate the dramatic unity of this Prologue.
How perfectly it gathers into its four Voices the whole course of
Israel's redemption: the first assurance of Grace whispered to the
heart, co-operation with Providence, confidence in God's bare Word,
the full Return and the Restoration of the City.
But its climax is undoubtedly the honour it lays upon the whole
people to be publishers of the good news of God. Of this it speaks
with trumpet tones. All Jerusalem must be a herald-people. And how
could Israel help owning the constraint and inspiration to so high
an office, after so heartfelt an experience of grace, so evident a
redemption, so glorious a proof of the power of the Word of God? To
have the heart thus filled with grace, to have the will enlisted in
so Divine a work, to have known the almightiness of the Divine Word
when everything else failed--after such an experience, who would not
be able to preach the good news of God, to foretell, as our prophet
bids Israel foretell, the coming of the Kingdom and Presence of
God--the day when the Lord's flock shall be perfect and none wanting,
when society, though still weary and weak and mortal, shall have no
stragglers nor outcasts nor reprobates.
O God, so fill us with Thy grace and enlist us in Thy work, so manifest
the might of Thy word to us, that the ideal of Thy perfect kingdom may
shine as bright and near to us as to Thy prophet of old, and that we
may become its inspired preachers and ever labour in its hope. Amen.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See p. 47.
[37] From the sequence of the voices, it would seem that we had in
ch. xl. not a mere collection of anonymous prophecies arranged by
an editor, but one complete prophecy by the author of most of Isa.
xl.-lxvi., set in the dramatic form which obtains through the other
chapters.
[38] Every one who appreciates the music of the original will agree
how incomparably Handel has interpreted it in those pulses of music
with which his _Messiah_ opens.
[39] See ch. liv., where this figure is developed with great beauty.
[40] Lev. xxvii.
[41] The technical word to preach or proclaim.