_GOD: AN ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY._
ISAIAH xli.
Having revealed Himself to His own people in ch. xl., Jehovah now
turns in ch. xli. to the heathen, but, naturally, with a very
different kind of address. Displaying His power to His people in
certain sacraments, both of nature and history, He had urged them to
_wait upon Him_ alone for the salvation, of which there were as yet
no signs in the times. But with the heathen it is evidently to these
signs of the times, that He can best appeal. Contemporary history,
facts open to every man's memory and reason, is the common ground on
which Jehovah and the other gods can meet. Ch. xli. is, therefore,
the natural complement to ch. xl. In ch. xl. we have the element in
revelation that precedes history: in ch. xli. we have history itself
explained as a part of revelation.
Ch. xli. is loosely cast in the same form of a Trial-at-Law, which
we found in ch. i. To use a Scotticism, which exactly translates
the Hebrew of ver. 1, Jehovah goes _to the law_ with the idols. His
summons to the Trial is given in ver. 1; the ground of the Trial is
advanced in vv. 2-7. Then comes a digression, vv. 8-20, in which the
Lord turns from controversy with the heathen to comfort His people.
In vv. 21-29 Jehovah's plea is resumed, and in the silence of the
defendants--a silence, which, as we shall presently see by calling in
the witness of a Greek historian, was actual fact--the argument is
summed up and the verdict given for the sole divinity of Israel's God.
The main interest of the Trial lies, of course, in its appeal to
contemporary history, and to the central figure Cyrus, although it is
to be noted that the prophet as yet refrains from mentioning the hero
by name. This appeal to contemporary history lays upon us the duty
of briefly indicating, how the course of that history was tending
outside Babylon,--outside Babylon, as yet, but fraught with fate both
to Babylon and to her captives.
* * * * *
Nebuchadrezzar, although he had virtually succeeded to the throne of
the Assyrian, had not been able to repeat from Babylon that almost
universal empire, which his predecessors had swayed from Nineveh.
Egypt, it is true, was again as thoroughly driven from Asia as
in the time of Sargon: to the south the Babylonian supremacy was
as unquestioned as ever the Assyrian had been. But to the north
Nebuchadrezzar met with an almost equal rival, who had helped him
in the overthrow of Nineveh, and had fallen heir to the Assyrian
supremacy in that quarter. This was Kastarit or Kyaxares, an Aryan,
one of the pioneers of that Aryan invasion from the East, which,
though still tardy and sparse, was to be the leading force in
Western Asia for the next century. This Kyaxares had united under
his control a number of Median tribes,[49] a people of Turanian
stock. With these, when Nineveh fell, he established to the north of
Nebuchadrezzar's power the empire of Media, with its western boundary
at the river Halys, in Asia Minor, and its capital at Ecbatana under
Mount Elwand. It is said that the river Indus formed his frontier
to the east. West of the Halys, the Mede's progress was stopped by
the Lydian Empire, under King Alyattis, whose capital was Sardis,
and whose other border was practically the coast of the Ægean. In
585, or two years after the destruction of Jerusalem, Alyattis and
Kyaxares met in battle on the Halys. But the terrors of an eclipse
took the heart to fight out of both their armies, and, Nebuchadrezzar
intervening, the three monarchs struck a treaty among themselves,
and strengthened it by intermarriage. Western Asia now virtually
consisted of the confederate powers, Babylonia, Media and Lydia.[50]
Let us realise how far this has brought us. When we stood with Isaiah
in Jerusalem, our western horizon lay across the middle of Asia Minor
in the longitude of Cyprus.[51] It now rests upon the Ægean; we are
almost within sight of Europe. Straight from Babylon to Sardis runs a
road, with a regular service of couriers. The court of Sardis holds
domestic and political intercourse with the courts of Babylon and
Ecbatana; but the court of Sardis also lords it over the Asiatic
Greeks, worships at Greek shrines, will shortly be visited by Solon
and strike an alliance with Sparta. In the time of the Jewish exile
there were without doubt many Greeks in Babylon; men may have spoken
there with Daniel, who had spoken at Sardis with Solon.
This extended horizon makes clear to us what our prophet has in
his view, when in this forty-first chapter he summons _Isles_ to
the bar of Jehovah: _Be silent before me, O Isles, and let Peoples
renew their strength_,--a vision and appeal which frequently recur
in our prophecy. _Listen, O Isles, and hearken, O Peoples from afar_
(xlix. 1); _Isles shall wait for His law_ (xlii. 4); _Let them give
glory to Jehovah, and publish His praise in the Isles_ (xlii. 12);
_Unto me Isles shall hope_ (li. 5); _Surely Isles shall wait for
me, ships of Tarshish first_.[52] The name is generally taken by
scholars--according to the derivation in the note below--to have
originally meant _habitable land_, and so _land_ as opposed to water.
In some passages of the Old Testament it is undoubtedly used to
describe a land either washed, or surrounded, by the sea.[53]
But by our prophet's use of the word it is not necessarily
_maritime provinces_ that are meant. He makes _isles_ parallel
to the well-known terms _nations_, _peoples_, _Gentiles_, and in
one passage he opposes it, as dry soil, to water.[54] Hence many
translators take it in its original sense of _countries_ or _lands_.
This bare rendering, however, does not do justice to the sense of
_remoteness_, which the prophet generally attaches to the word,
nor to his occasional association of it with visions of the sea.
Indeed, as one reads most of his uses of it, one is quite sure that
the island-meaning of the word lingers on in his imagination; and
that the feeling possesses him, which has haunted the poetry of all
ages, to describe as _coasts_ or _isles_ any land or lighting-place
of thought which is far and dim and vague; which floats across the
horizon, or emerges from the distance, as strips and promontories
of land rise from the sea to him who has reached some new point of
view. I have therefore decided to keep the rendering familiar to the
English reader, _isles_, though, perhaps, _coasts_ would be better.
If, as is probable, our prophet's thoughts are always towards the new
lands of the west as he uses the word, it is doubly suitable; those
countries were both maritime and remote; they rose both from the
distance and from the sea.
"The sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea
And laugh their pride, where the light wave lisps, 'Greece.'"
But if Babylonia lay thus open to Lydia, and through Lydia to
the _isles_ and _coasts_ of Greece, it was different with her
northern frontier. What strikes us here is the immense series of
fortifications, which Nebuchadrezzar, in spite of his alliance with
Astyages, cast up between his country and Media. Where the Tigris and
Euphrates most nearly approach one another, about seventy miles to
the north of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar connected their waters by four
canals, above which he built a strong bulwark, called by the Greeks
the Median wall. This may have been over sixty miles long; Xenophon
tells us it was twenty feet broad by one hundred high.[55] At Sippara
this line of defence was completed by the creation of a great bason
of water to flood the rivers and canals on the approach of an enemy,
and of a large fortress to protect the bason. Alas for the vanity of
human purposes! It is said to have been this very bason which caused
the easy fall of Babylon. By turning the Euphrates into it, the enemy
entered the capital through the emptied river-bed.
The triple alliance--Lydia, Media, Babylonia--stood firm after its
founders passed away. In 555, Crœsus and Astyages, who had succeeded
their fathers at Sardis and Ecbatana respectively, and Nabunahid, who
had usurped the throne at Babylon, were still at peace, and contented
with the partition of 585. But outside them and to the east, in a
narrow nook of land at the head of the Persian Gulf, the man was
already crowned, who was destined to bring Western Asia again under
one sceptre. This was Kurush or Cyrus II. of Anzan, but known to
history as Cyrus the Great or Cyrus the Persian. Cyrus was a prince
of the Akhæmenian house of Persia, and therefore, like the Mede, an
Aryan, but independent of his Persian cousins, and ruling in his own
right the little kingdom of Anzan or Anshan, which, with its capital
of Susan, lay on the rivers Choaspes and Eulæus, between the head of
the Persian Gulf and the Zagros Mountains.[56]
Cyrus the Great is one of those mortals whom the muse of history,
as if despairing to do justice to him by herself, has called in her
sisters to aid her in describing to posterity. Early legend and later
and more elaborate romance; the schoolmaster, the historian, the
tragedian and the prophet, all vie in presenting to us this hero "le
plus sympathique de l'antiquité"[57]--this king on whom we see so
deeply stamped the double signature of God, character and success. We
shall afterwards have a better opportunity to speak of his character.
Here we are only concerned to trace his rapid path of conquest.
He sprang, then, from Anshan, the immediate neighbour of Babylonia to
the east. This is the direction indicated in the second verse of this
forty-first chapter: _Who hath raised up one from the east?_ But the
twenty-fifth verse veers round with him to the north: _I have raised
up one from the north, and he is come._ This was actually the curve,
from east to north, which his career almost immediately took.
For in 549 Astyages, king of Media, attacked Cyrus,[58] king of
Anshan; which means that Cyrus was already a considerable and an
aggressive prince. Probably he had united by this time the two
domains of his house, Persia and Anshan, under his own sceptre, and
secured as his lieutenant Hystaspes, his cousin, the lineal king of
Persia. The Mede, looking south and east from Ecbatana, saw a solid
front opposed to him, and resolved to crush it before it grew more
formidable. But the Aryans among the Medes, dissatisfied with so
indolent a leader as Astyages, revolted to Cyrus, and so the latter,
with characteristic good fortune, easily became lord of Media. A
lenient lord he made. He spared Astyages, and ranked the Aryan Medes
second only to the Persians. But it took him till 546 to complete his
conquest. When he had done so he stood master of Asia from the Halys
to perhaps as far east as the Indus. He replaced the Medes in the
threefold power of Western Asia, and thus looked down on Babylon, as
v. 25 says, _from the north_ (xli. 25).
In 545, Cyrus advanced upon Babylonia, and struck at the northern
line of fortifications at Sippara. He was opposed by an army under
Belshazzar, Bel-shar-uzzur, the son of Nabunahid, and probably by
his mother's side grandson of Nebuchadrezzar. Army or fortifications
seem to have been too much for Cyrus, and there is no further mention
of his name in the Babylonian annals till the year 538. It has been
suggested that Cyrus was aware of the discontent of the people with
their ruler Nabunahid, and, with that genius which distinguished
his whole career for availing himself of the internal politics of
his foes, he may have been content to wait till the Babylonian
dissatisfaction had grown riper, perhaps in the meantime fostering it
by his own emissaries.
In any case, the attention of Cyrus was now urgently demanded on the
western boundary of his empire, where Lydia was preparing to invade
him. Crœsus, king of Lydia, fresh from the subjection of the Ionian
Greeks, and possessing an army and a treasure second to none in
the world, had lately asked of Solon, whether he was not the most
fortunate of men; and Solon had answered, to count no man happy till
his death. The applicability of this advice to himself Crœsus must
have felt with a start, when, almost immediately after it, the news
came that his brother-in-law Astyages had fallen before an unknown
power, which was moving up rapidly from the east, and already touched
the Lydian frontier at the Halys. Crœsus was thrown into alarm. He
eagerly desired to know Heaven's will about this Persian and himself,
who now stood face to face. But, in that heathen world, with its
thousand shrines to different gods, who knew the will of Heaven?
In a fashion only possible to the richest man in the world, Crœsus
resolved to discover, by sending a test-question, on a matter of fact
within his own knowledge, to every oracle of repute: to the oracles
of the Greeks at Miletus, Delphi, Abæ; to that of Trophonius; to the
sanctuary of Amphiaraus at Thebes; to Dodona; and even to the far-off
temple of Ammon in Libya. The oracles of Delphi and Amphiaraus
alone sent an answer, which in the least suggested the truth. "To
the gods of Delphi and Amphiaraus, Crœsus, therefore, offered great
sacrifices,--three thousand victims of every kind; and on a great
pile of wood he burned couches plated with gold and silver, golden
goblets, purple robes and garments, in the hope that he would thereby
gain the favour of the god yet more.... And as the sacrifice left
behind an enormous mass of molten gold, Crœsus caused bricks to be
made, six palms in length, three in breadth and one in depth; in
all there were 117 bricks.... In addition there was a golden lion
which weighed ten talents. When these were finished, Crœsus sent
them to Delphi; and he added two very large mixing bowls, one of
gold, weighing eight talents and a half and twelve minæ, and one of
silver (the work of Theodorus of Samos, as the Delphians say, and
I believe it, for it is the work of no ordinary artificer), four
silver jars, and two vessels for holy water, one of gold, the other
of silver, circular casts of silver, a golden statue of a woman three
cubits high, and the necklace and girdles of his queen."[59] We can
understand, that for all this Crœsus got the best advice consistent
with the ignorance and caution of the priests whom he consulted. The
oracles told him that if he went against Cyrus he would destroy a
great empire; but he forgot to ask, whether it was his own or his
rival's. When he inquired a second time, if his reign should be long,
they replied: "When a mule became king of the Medes," then he might
fly from his throne; but again he forgot to consider that there might
be mules among men as among beasts.[60] At the same time, the oracles
tempered their ambiguous prophecies with some advice of undoubted
sense, for when he asked them who were the most powerful among the
Greeks, they replied the Spartans, and to Sparta he sent messengers
with presents to conclude an alliance. "The Lacedæmonians were
filled with joy; they knew the oracle which had been given Crœsus,
and made him a friend and ally, as they had previously received many
kindnesses at his hands."[61]
This glimpse into the preparations of Crœsus, whose embassies compassed
the whole civilised world, and whose wealth got him all that politics
or religion could, enables us to realise the political and religious
excitement into which Cyrus' advent threw that generation. The oracles
in doubt and ambiguous; the priests, the idol-manufacturers, and
the crowd of artisans, who worked in every city at the furniture of
the temple, in a state of unexampled activity, with bustle perhaps
most like the bustle of our government dockyards on the eve of war;
hammering new idols together, preparing costly oblations, overhauling
the whole religious "ordnance," that the gods might be propitiated and
the stars secured to fight in their courses against the Persian; rival
politicians practising conciliation, and bolstering up one another with
costly presents to stand against this strange and fatal force, which
indifferently threatened them all. What a commentary Herodotus' story
furnishes upon the verses of this chapter, in which Jehovah contrasts
the idols with Himself. It may actually have been Crœsus and the Greeks
whom the prophet had in his mind when he wrote vv. 5-7: _The isles have
seen, and they fear; the ends of the earth tremble: they draw near
and they come. They help every man his neighbour, and to his brother
each sayeth, Be strong. So carver encourageth smelter, smoother with
hammer, smiter on anvil; one saith of the soldering, It is good: and
he fasteneth it with nails lest it totter._ The irony is severe, but
true to the facts as Herodotus relates them. The statesmen hoped to
keep back Cyrus by sending sobbing messages to one another, Be of good
courage; the priests "by making a particularly good and strong set of
gods."[62]
While the imbecility of the idolatries was thus manifest, and the
great religious centres of heathendom were reduced to utter doubt
that veiled itself in ambiguity and waited to see how things would
issue, there was one religion in the world, whose oracles gave no
uncertain sound, whose God stepped boldly forth to claim Cyrus for
His own. In the dust of Babylonia lay the scattered members of a
nation captive and exiled, a people civilly dead and religiously
degraded; yet it was the faith of this worm of a people, which
welcomed and understood Cyrus, it was the God of this people who
claimed to be his author. The forty-first chapter looks dreary and
ancient to the uninstructed eye, but let our imagination realise all
these things: the ambiguous priests, oracles that would not speak
out, religions that had no articulate counsel nor comfort in face
of the conqueror who was crushing up the world before him, but only
sobs, solder and nails; and our heart will leap as we hear how God
forces them all into judgement before Him, and makes His plea as loud
and clear as mortal ear may hear. Clatter of idols, and murmur of
muffled oracles, filling all the world; and then, hark how the voice
of JEHOVAH crashes His oracle across it all!
_Keep silence towards Me, O Isles, and let the peoples renew their
strength: let them approach; then let them speak: to the Law let us
come._
_Who hath stirred up from the sunrise Righteousness, calleth it to
his foot? He giveth to his face peoples, and kings He makes him to
trample; giveth_ them _as dust to his sword, as driven stubble to
his bow. He pursues them, and passes to peace a road that he comes
not with his feet. Who has wrought_ it _and done_ it? _Summoner of
generations from the source,_[63] _I Jehovah the First, and with the
Last; I am He._
Crœsus would have got a clear answer here, but it is probable that he
had never heard of the Hebrews or of their God.
After this follows the satiric picture of the heathen world, which has
already been quoted. And then, after an interval during which Jehovah
turns to His own people (vv. 8-20),--for whatever be His business or
His controversy, the Lord is mindful of His own,--He directs His speech
specially against the third class of the leaders of heathendom. He has
laughed the foolish statesmen and imagemakers out of court (vv. 5-7);
He now challenges, in ver. 21, the oracles and their priests.
We have seen what these were, which this vast heathen world--heathen
but human, convinced as we are that at the back of the world's life
there is a secret, a counsel and a governor, and anxious as we are
to find them--had to resort to. Timid waiters upon time, whom not
even the lavish wealth of a Crœsus could tempt from their ambiguity;
prophets speechless in face of history; oracles of meaning as dark
and shifty as their steamy caves at Delphi, of tune as variable
as the whispering oak of Dodona; wily-tongued Greeks, masters of
ambiguous phrase, at Miletus, Abæ, and Thebes; Egyptian mystics in
the far off temple of "Lybic Hammon,"--these are what the prophet
sees standing at the bar of history, where God is Challenger.
_Bring here your case, saith Jehovah; apply your strong grounds, saith
the King of Jacob. Let them bring out and declare unto us what things
are going to happen; the first things_[64] _announce what they are,
that we may set our heart on them, and know the issue of them; or the
things that are coming, let us hear them. Announce the things that are
to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods. Yea, do good or
do evil, that we may stare and see it together. Lo! ye are nothing, and
your work is of nought; an abomination is he who chooseth you._
Which great challenge just means, Come and be tested by facts. Here
is history needing an explanation, and running no one knows whither.
Prove your divinity by interpreting or guiding it. Cease your
ambiguities, and give us something we can set our minds to work upon.
Or do something, effect something in history, be it good or be it
evil,--only let it be patent to our senses. For the test of godhead
is not ingenuity or mysteriousness, but plain deeds, which the senses
can perceive, and plain words, which the reason and conscience can
judge. The insistance upon the senses and mental faculties of man
is remarkable: _Make us hear them, that we may know, stare, see all
together, set our mind to them._
But as we have learned from Herodotus, there was nobody in the world
to answer such a challenge. Therefore Jehovah Himself answers it. He
gives His explanation of history, and claims its events for His doing.
_I have stirred up from the north, and he hath come; from the rising
of the sun one who calleth upon My Name: and he shall trample satraps
like mortar, and as the potter treadeth out clay._
_Who hath announced on-ahead_[65] _that we may know, and beforehand
that we may say, "Right!" Yea, there is none that announced, yea,
there is none that published, yea, there is none that heareth your
words._ But _a prediction_--or _predicter_, literally a _thing_ or
_man on-ahead_ (r'ishôn corresponding to the me-r'osh of ver. 26)--_a
prediction to Zion, "Behold, behold them," and to Jerusalem a herald
of good news--I am giving_. The language here comes forth in jerks,
and is very difficult to render. _But I look and there is no man even
among these, and no counsellor, that I might ask them and they return
word. Lo, all of them vanity! and nothingness their works; wind and
waste their molten images._
* * * * *
Let us look a little more closely at the power of PREDICTION, on which
Jehovah maintains His unique and sovereign Deity against the idols.
Jehovah challenges the idols to face present events, and to give
a clear, unambiguous forecast of their issue. It is a debatable
question, whether He does not also ask them to produce previous
predictions of events happening at the time at which He speaks.
This latter demand is one that He makes in subsequent chapters; it
is part of His prophet's argument in chs. xlv.-xlvi., that Jehovah
intimated the advent of Cyrus by His servants in Israel long before
the present time. Whether He makes this same demand for previous
predictions in ch. xli. depends on how we render a clause of ver. 22,
_declare ye the former things_. Some scholars take _former things_
in the sense, in which it is used later on in this prophecy, of
_previous predictions_. This is very doubtful. I have explained in
a note, why I think them wrong; but even if they are right, and
Jehovah be really asking the idols to produce former predictions of
Cyrus' career, the demand is so cursory, it proves so small an item
in His plea, and we shall afterwards find so many clearer statements
of it, that we do better to ignore it now and confine ourselves to
emphasizing the other challenge, about which there is no doubt,--the
challenge to take present events and predict their issue.[66] Crœsus
had asked the oracles for a forecast of the future. This is exactly
what Jehovah demands in ver. 22, _declare unto us what things are
going to happen_; in ver. 23, _declare the things that are to come
hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods_; in ver. 26 (spoken
from the standpoint of the subsequent fulfilment of the prediction),
_who declared it on-ahead that we may know, and beforehand that we
may now say, "Right!" Yea, there is none that declared, yea, there
is none that published, yea, there is none that heareth your words_.
But _a prediction unto Zion, "Behold, behold them," and to Jerusalem
a herald of good news--I give. I give_ is emphatically placed at the
end,--"I Jehovah alone, through my prophets in Israel, give such a
prediction and publisher of good news."
We scarcely require to remind ourselves, that this great challenge and
plea are not mere rhetoric or idle boasting. Every word in them we
have seen to be true to fact. The heathen religions were, as they are
here represented, helpless before Cyrus, and dumb about the issue of
the great movements which the Persian had started. On the other hand,
Jehovah had uttered to His people all the meaning of the new stir and
turmoil in history. We have heard Him do so in ch. xl. There He _gives
a herald of good news to Jerusalem_,--tells them of their approaching
deliverance, explains His redemptive purposes, proclaims a gospel. In
addition, He has in this chapter accepted Cyrus for His own creation
and as part of His purpose, and has promised him victory.
The God of Israel, then, is God, because He alone by His prophets
claims facts as they stand for His own deeds, and announces what
shall become of them.
Do not let us, however, fall into the easy but vulgar error of
supposing, that Jehovah claims to be God simply because He can
predict. It is indeed prediction, which He demands from the
heathen; for prediction is a minimum of godhead, and in asking it
He condescends to the heathen's own ideas of what a god should be
able to do. When Crœsus, the heathen who of all that time spent most
upon religion, sought to decide which of the gods was worthiest to
be consulted about the future and propitiated in face of Cyrus, what
test did he apply to them? As we have seen, he tested them by their
ability to predict a matter of fact: the god who told him what he,
Crœsus, should be doing on a certain day was to be his god. It is
evident, that, to Crœsus, divinity meant to be able to divine. But
the God, who reveals Himself to Israel, is infinitely greater than
this. He is not merely a Being with a far sight into the future;
He is not only Omniscience. In the chapter preceding this one His
power of prediction is not once expressed; it is lost in the two
glories by which alone the prophet seeks to commend His Godhead to
Israel,--the glory of His power and the glory of His faithfulness.
Jehovah is Omnipotence, Creator of heaven and earth; He leads forth
the stars _by the greatness of His might_; Supreme Director of
history, it is He _who bringeth princes to nothing_. But Jehovah is
also unfailing character: _the word of the Lord standeth for ever_;
it is foolishness to say of Him that He has forgotten His people,
or that _their right has passed_ from Him; He disappoints none who
wait upon Him. Such is the God, who steps down from ch. xl. into the
controversy with the heathen in ch. xli. If in the latter He chiefly
makes His claim to godhead to rest upon specimens of prediction,
it is simply, as we have said, that He may meet the gods of the
heathen before a bar and upon a principle, which their worshippers
recognise as practical and decisive. What were single predictions,
here and there, upon the infinite volume of His working, who by
His power could gather all things to serve His own purpose, and in
His faithfulness remained true to that purpose from everlasting to
everlasting! The unity of history under One Will--this is a far more
adequate idea of godhead than the mere power to foretell single
events of history. And it is even to this truth that Jehovah seeks
to raise the unaccustomed thoughts of the heathen. Past the rude
wonder, which is all that fulfilled predictions of fact can excite,
He lifts their religious sense to Himself and His purpose, as the one
secret and motive of all history. He not only claims Cyrus and Cyrus'
career as His own work, but He speaks of Himself as _summoner of the
generations from aforehand; I Jehovah, the First, and with the Last;
I am He_. It is a consummate expression of godhead, which lifts us
far above the thought of Him as a mere divining power.
Now, it is well for us--were it only for the great historic interest
of the thing, though it will also further our argument--to take
record here that, although this conception of the unity of life under
One Purpose and Will was still utterly foreign, and perhaps even
unintelligible, to the heathen world, which the prophecy has in view,
the first serious attempt in that world to reach such a conception
was contemporary with the forty-first chapter of Isaiah. It is as
miners feel, when, tunnelling from opposite sides of a mountain, they
begin to hear the noise of each other's picks through the dwindling
rock. We, who have come down the history of Israel towards the great
consummation of religion in Christianity, may here cease for a moment
our labours, to listen to the faint sound from the other side of the
wall, still separating Israel from Greece, of a witness to God and an
argument against idolatry similar to those with which we have been
working. Who is not moved by learning, that, in the very years when
Jewish prophecy reached its most perfect statement of monotheism,
pouring its scorn upon the idols and their worshippers, and in the
very _Isles_ on which its hopes and influence were set, the first
Greek should be already singing, who used his song to satirize
the mythologies of his people, and to celebrate the unity of God?
Among the Ionians, whom Cyrus' invasion of Lydia and of the Ægean
coast in 544 drove across the seas, was Xenophanes of Colophon.[67]
After some wanderings he settled at Elea in South Italy, and became
the founder of the Eleatic school, the first philosophic attempt
of the Greek mind to grasp the unity of Being. How far Xenophanes
himself succeeded in this attempt is a matter of controversy. The
few fragments of his poetry which are extant do not reveal him as a
philosophical monotheist, so much as a prophet of "One greatest God."
His language (like that of the earlier Hebrew prophets in praising
Jehovah) apparently implies the real existence of lesser divinities:--
"One God, 'mongst both gods and men He is greatest,
Neither in shape is He like unto mortals, nor thought."[68]
Xenophanes scorns the anthropomorphism of his countrymen, and the
lawless deeds which their poets had attributed to the gods:--
"Mortals think the gods can be born, have their feelings, voice and
form; but, could horses or oxen draw like men, they too would make
their gods after their own image."[69]
"All things did Homer and Hesiod lay on the gods,
Such as with mortals are full of blame and disgrace,
To steal and debauch and outwit one another."[70]
Our prophet, to whose eyes Gentile religiousness was wholly of the
gross Crœsus kind, little suspected that he had an ally, with such
kindred tempers of faith and scorn, among the very peoples to whom he
yearns to convey his truth. But ages after, when Israel and Greece
had both issued into Christianity, the service of Xenophanes to the
common truth was recounted by two Church writers--by Clement of
Alexandria in his _Stromata_, and by Eusebius the historian in his
_Præparatio Evangelica_.
We find, then, that monotheism had reached its most absolute expression
in Israel in the same decade, in which the first efforts towards
the conception of the unity of Being were just starting in Greece.
But there is something more to be stated. In spite of the splendid
progress, which it pursued from such beginnings, Greek philosophy
never reached the height on which, with Second Isaiah, Hebrew prophecy
already rests; and the reason has to do with two points on which we
are now engaged,--the omnipotence and the righteousness of God.
Professor Pfleiderer remarks: "Even in the idealistic philosophy of
the Greeks ... matter remains, however sublimated, an irrational
something, with which the Divine power can never come to terms.
It was only in the consciousness, which the prophets of Israel
had of God, that the thought of the Divine omnipotence fully
prevailed."[71] We cannot overvalue such high and impartial testimony
to the uniqueness of the Hebrew doctrine of God, but it needs to be
supplemented. To the prophets' sense of the Divine omnipotence, we
must add their unrivalled consciousness of the Divine character. To
them Jehovah is not only the _Holy_, the incomparable God, almighty
and sublime; He is also the true, consistent God. He has a great
purpose, which He has revealed of old to His people, and to which
He remains for ever faithful. To express this the Hebrews had one
word,--the word we translate _righteous_. We should often miss our
prophet's meaning, if by _righteousness_ we understood some of
the qualities to which the term is often applied by us: if, for
instance, we used it in the general sense of morality, or if we gave
it the technical meaning, which it bears in Christian theology, of
justification from guilt. We shall afterwards devote a chapter to
the exposition of its meaning in Second Isaiah, but let us here look
at its use in ch. xli. In ver. 26, it is applied to the person whose
prediction turns out to be correct: men are to say of him "_right_"
or "_righteous_." Here it is evident that the Hebrew--ssaddîq--is
used in its simplest meaning, like the Latin rectus, and our "right,"
of what has been shown to be in accordance with truth or fact. In
ver. 2, again, though the syntax is obscure, it seems to have the
general sense of _good faith with the ability to ensure success_.
Righteousness is here associated with Cyrus, because he has not been
called for nothing, but in good faith for a purpose which will be
carried through. Jehovah's righteousness, then, will be His trueness,
His good faith, His consistency; and indeed this is the sense which
it must evidently bear in ver. 10. Take it with the context: _But
thou, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham
who loved Me, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and
its corners, I called thee and said unto thee, Thou art My servant.
I have chosen thee, and will not cast thee away. Fear not, for I
am with thee. Look not round in despair, for I am thy God. I will
strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with
the right hand of My righteousness_. Here _righteousness_ evidently
means that Jehovah will act _in good faith_ to the people He has
called, that He will act _consistently_ with His anciently revealed
purpose towards them. Hitherto Israel has had nothing but the memory
that God called them, and the conscience that He chose them. Now
Jehovah will vindicate this conscience in outward fact. He will carry
through His calling of His people, and perform His promise. How He
will do this, He proceeds to relate. Israel's enemies shall become as
nothing (vv. 11, 12). Israel himself, though a poor worm of a people,
shall be changed to the utmost conceivable opposite of a worm--even
_a sharp threshing instrument having teeth_--a people who shall leave
their mark on the world. They shall overcome all difficulties and
_rejoice in Jehovah_. Their redemption shall be accomplished in a
series of evident facts. _The poor and the needy are seeking water,
and there is none, their tongue faileth for thirst; I, Jehovah, will
answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them._ And this
shall be done on such a scale, that all the world will wonder and
be convinced, vv. 18-19: _I will open on the bare heights rivers,
and in the midst of the plains fountains. I will make the desert a
pool of water, and the dry ground water-springs. I will plant in the
wilderness cedars and acacias and myrtles and oil-trees; I will plant
in the desert pines, planes and sherbins together._ Do not let us
spoil the meaning of this passage by taking these verses literally,
or even as illustrative of the kind of restoration which Israel was
to enjoy. This vast figure of a well-watered and planted desert the
prophet uses rather to illustrate the scale on which the Restoration
will take place: its evident extent and splendour. _That they may
see and know and consider and understand together, that Jehovah hath
done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it._ The whole
passage, then, tells us what God means by His righteousness. It is
His fidelity to His calling of Israel, and to His purpose with His
people. It is the quality by which He cannot forsake His own, but
carries through and completes His promises to them; by which He
vindicates and justifies, in facts so large that they are evident to
all mankind, His ancient word by His prophets.[72]
This lengthened exposition will not have been in vain, if it has made
clear to us, that Hebrew monotheism owed its unique quality to the
emphasis, which the prophets laid upon the two truths of the Power
and the Character of God. There was One Supreme Being, infinite
in might, and with one purpose running down the ages, which He had
plainly revealed, and to which He remained constant. The people,
who knew this, did not need to wait for the fulfilment of certain
test-predictions before trusting Him as the One God. Test-predictions
and their fulfilment might be needful for the heathen, from whose
minds the idea of One Supreme Being with such a character had
vanished; the heathen might need to be convinced by instances of
Jehovah's omniscience, for omniscience was the most Divine attribute
of which they had conceived. But Israel's faith rested upon glories
in the Divine nature of which omniscience was the mere consequence.
Israel knew God was Almighty and All-true, and that was enough.
NOTE UPON JEHOVAH'S CLAIM TO CYRUS.
In ver. 25 a phrase is used of Cyrus which is very obscure, and
to which, considering its vagueness even upon the most definite
construction, far too much importance has been attached. The
meaning of the words, the tenses, the syntax--perhaps even the
original text itself--of this verse are uncertain. The English
revisers give, _I have raised up one from the north, and he
is come; from the rising of the sun one that calleth upon My
Name_. This is probably the true syntax.[73] But in what tense
is the verb _to call_, and what does _calling upon My name_
mean? In the Old Testament the phrase is used in two senses,--to
_invoke or adore_, and to _proclaim_ or _celebrate the name_
of a person.[74] As long as scholars understood that Cyrus was
a monotheist, there was a temptation to choose the former of
these meanings, and to find in the verse Jehovah's claim upon
the Persian, as a worshipper of Himself, the One True God. But
this interpretation received a shock from the discovery of a
proclamation of Cyrus after his entry into Babylon, in which
he invokes the names of Babylonian deities, and calls himself
their "servant."[75] Of course his doing so in the year 538 does
not necessarily discredit a description of him as a monotheist
eight years before. Between 548 and 546--the probable date of
ch. xli.--a prophet might in all good faith have hailed as a
worshipper of Jehovah a Persian who still stood in the _rising
of the sun_,--who had not yet issued from the east and its
radiant repute of a religion purer than the Babylonian; although
eight years afterwards, from motives of policy, the same king
acknowledged the gods of his new subjects. This may be; but
there is a more natural way out of the difficulty. Is it fair
to lay upon the expression, _calleth on My name_, so precise a
meaning as that of a strict monotheism? Some have turned to the
other use of the verb, and, taking it in the future tense, have
translated, _who shall proclaim_ or _celebrate My name_,--which
Cyrus surely did, when, in the name of Jehovah, he drew up
the edict for the return of the Jews to Palestine.[76] But do
we need to put even this amount of meaning upon the phrase?
In itself it is vague, but it also stands parallel to another
vague phrase: _I have raised up one from the north, and he is
come; from the sunrising one who calleth on My name._ Taken
in apposition to the phrase _he is come, calleth on My name_
may mean no more than that, answering to the instigation of
Jehovah, and owning His impulse, Cyrus by his career proclaimed
or celebrated Jehovah's name. In any case, we have said enough
to show that, in our comparative ignorance of what Cyrus' faith
was, and in face of the elastic use of the phrase _to call on
the name of_, it is quite unwarrantable to maintain that the
prophet must have meant a strict monotheist, and therefore
absurd to draw the inference that the prophet was incorrect.
A way has been attempted out of the difficulty by slightly
altering the text, and so obtaining the version, _I have raised
up one from the north, and he is come; from the sunrise I call
him by name_.[77] This is a change which is in harmony with ch.
xlv. 3, 4, but has otherwise no evidence in its favour.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] Media simply means "the country." It is supposed, that of the
six Median tribes only one was Aryan, holding the rest, which were
Turanian, under its influence.
[50] There were, besides, a few small independent powers in Asia
Minor, such as Cilicia, whose prince also intervened at the Battle of
the Eclipse; and the Ionian cities in the west. But all these, with
perhaps the exception of Lycia, were brought into subjection to Lydia
by Crœsus, son of Alyattis.
[51] Vol. i., p. 92.
[52] Other passages are: xli. 5, _Isles saw and feared, the ends of
the earth trembled_; xlii. 10, _The sea and its fulness, Isles and
their dwellers_; lix. 18, _He will repay, fury to His adversaries,
recompence to His enemies: to the Isles He will repay recompence_;
lxvi. 19, _The nations, Tarshish, Pul, Lud, drawers of the bow,
Tubal, Javan, the Isles afar off that have not heard my fame_. The
Hebrew is יא 'î, and is supposed to be from a root אוה awah, _to
inhabit_, which sense, however, never attaches to the verb in Hebrew,
but is borrowed from the cognate Arabic word.
[53] Of the Philistine coast, Isa. xx. 6; of the Tyrian coast, Isa.
xxiii. 2, 6; of Greece, Ezek. xxvii. 7; of Crete, Jer. xlvii. 4; of
the islands of the sea, Isa. xi. 11 and Esther x. 1.
[54] xlii. 15: Eng. version, _I will turn rivers into islands_.
[55] _Anabasis_ 2, 4.
[56] There were two branches of the Persian royal family after
Teispes, the son of Akhæmenes, the founder. Teispes annexed Anshan
on the level land between the north-east corner of the Persian Gulf
and the mountains of Persia. Teispes' eldest son, Cyrus I., became
king of Anshan; his other, Ariaramnes, king of Persia. These were
succeeded by their sons, Kambyses I. and Arsames. Kambyses I. was the
father of Cyrus II., the great Cyrus, who rejoined Persia to Anshan,
to the exclusion of his second cousin, Hystaspes. Cyrus the Great was
succeeded by his son, Kambyses II., with whom the Anshan line closed,
and the power was transferred to Darius, son of Hystaspes. _Cf._
Ragozin's _Media_, in the "Story of the Nations" series.
[57] Halévy, "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil," _Études Juives_, I.
[58] Inscription of Nabunahid.
[59] Herodotus, Book I.
[60] Herodotus explains this by his legend of Cyrus' birth, according
to which Cyrus was a hybrid--half Persian, half Mede.
[61] Herodotus, Book I.
[62] Sir Edward Strachey.
[63] Lit. _from the head_, "da capo." I am not sure, however, that it
does not rather mean _beforehand_, like our on ahead.
[64] See p. 121.
[65] This seems to me to be more likely to be the meaning of the
prophet, than the absolute _from the beginning_. It suits its
parallel _beforehand_, and it is more in line with the general demand
of the chapter for anticipation of events. It is literally from the
head, "da capo," _cf._ p. 117.
[66] ראשנות r'ishonôth is a relative term, meaning _head things_,
_things ahead_, _first things_, _prior things_, whether in rank
or time. Here of course the time meaning is undoubted. But _ahead
of_ what? _prior_ to what?--this is the difficulty. Ewald, Hitzig,
A. B. Davidson, Driver, etc., take it as prior to the standpoint
of the speaker; things that happened or were uttered previous to
him,--a sense in which the word is used in subsequent chapters. But
Delitzsch, Hahn, Cheyne, etc., take it to be things prior to other
things that will happen in the later future, early events, as opposed
to הבאות of the next clause, which they take to mean subsequent
things, _things that are to come_ afterwards. I think Dr. Davidson's
reasons (see _Expositor_, second series, vol. vii., p. 256) are quite
conclusive against this view of Delitzsch, that in this clause the
idols are being asked to predict events in the near future. It is
difficult, as he says, to see why the idols should be given a choice
between the earlier and the later future: nor does the הבאות of the
contrasted clause at all suggest a later future; it simply means
_things coming_, a term which is as applicable to the near as to the
far future. Nevertheless, I am not persuaded that Dr. Davidson's own
view of _r'ishonôth_ is the correct one. The rest of the context
(see above) is occupied with predictions of the future only. And
_r'ishonôth_ does not necessarily mean previous predictions, although
used in this sense in the subsequent chapters. It simply means, as
we have seen, _head things_, _things ahead_, _things beforehand_, or
_fountain-things_, _origins_, _causes_. That we are to understand it
here in some such general and absolute sense is suggested, I think,
by the word אחריתן which follows it, _their result_ or _issue_, and
is confirmed by ראשון, r'ishôn (masc. singular) of ver. 27, which is
undoubtedly used in a general sense, meaning _something_ or _somebody
on ahead_, an anticipator, predicter, _forerunner_ (as Cheyne
gives it), or as I have rendered it above, neuter, a _prediction_.
If _r'ishôn_ in ver. 27 means a thing or a man given beforehand,
then r'ishonôth in ver. 22 may also mean things given beforehand,
predictions made now, or at least things selected and announced as
causes now, whose issue, אחריתן, may be recognised in the future. In
a word, r'ishonôth would mean things not necessarily _previous_ to
the speech in which they were allowed, but simply things _previous_
to certain results, or anticipating certain events, either as their
prediction or as their cause.
[67] Ueberweg, _History of Philosophy_, English translation, i., 51.
[68] Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, _Stromata_, Bk. V., ch. iv.,
and by Eusebius, _Præp. Evang._ xiii., 13.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Quoted by Ueberweg, as above.
[71] Pfleiderer, _Philosophy of Religion: Contents of the Religious
Consciousness_, ch. i. (Eng. trans., vol. iii., p. 291).
[72] See further on the subject the chapter on the Righteousness of
Israel and of God, Chapter XIV. of this volume.
[73] And that which runs: _... he is come, from the rising of the sun
he calleth upon My name_ (Bredenkamp) is wrong.
[74] The former of these in ch. lxiv. 7; the latter in xliv. 5.
[75] Translation of the Cyrus-cylinder in "Cyrus et le Retour de
l'Exil," by Halévy, _Revue des Études Juives_, No. 1, 1880.
[76] Ezra i. 2; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23.
[77] בשמו קראא for בשמי יקֹרא.