I. ARISE, SHINE (ch. lx.)

The Sixtieth chapter of Isaiah is the spiritual counterpart of a

typical Eastern day, with the dust laid and the darts taken out of

the sunbeams,--a typical Eastern day in the sudden splendour of its

dawn, the completeness and apparent permanence of its noon, the

spaciousness it reveals on sea and land, and the barbaric profusion

of life, which its strong light is sufficient to flood with glory.

Under such a day we see Jerusalem. In the first five verses of the

chapter, she is addressed, as in ch. liv., as a crushed and desolate

woman. But her lonely night is over, and from some prophet at the

head of her returning children the cry peals, _Arise, shine, for

come hath thy light, and the glory of Jehovah hath risen upon thee_.

In the East the sun does not rise; the word is weak for an arrival

almost too sudden for twilight. In the East the sun leaps above the

horizon. You do not feel that he is coming, but that he is come. This

first verse is suggested by the swiftness with which he bursts upon

an Eastern city, and the shrouded form does not, as in our twilight,

slowly unwrap itself, but _shines_ at once, all plates and points

of glory. Then the figure yields: for Jerusalem is not merely one

radiant point in a world equally lighted by the sun, but is herself

Jehovah's unique luminary. _For behold the darkness shall cover the

earth, and gross darkness the peoples, but upon thee shall Jehovah

arise, and His glory upon thee shall be seen. And nations shall come

to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising._ In the next

two verses it is again a woman who is addressed. _Lift up_ thine

eyes _round about and see, all of them have gathered, have come to

thee: thy sons from afar are coming, and thy daughters are carried

in the arms._[276] Then follows the fairest verse in the chapter.

_Then thou shalt see and be radiant, and thy heart shall throb and

grow large; for there shall be turned upon thee the sea's flood-tide,

and the wealth of the nations shall come to thee._ The word which

the Authorised English version translated _shall flow together_, and

our Revised Version _lightened_, means both of these. It is liquid

light,--light that ripples and sparkles and runs across the face;

as it best appears in that beautiful passage of the thirty-fourth

Psalm, _they looked to Him and their faces were lightened_. Here it

suggests the light which a face catches from sparkling water. The

prophet's figure has changed. The stately mother of her people stands

not among the ruins of her city, but upon some great beach, with the

sea in front,--the sea that casts up all heaven's light upon her face

and drifts all earth's wealth to her feet, and her eyes are upon the

horizon with the hope of her who watches for the return of children.

The next verses are simply the expansion of these two clauses,--about

the sea's flood and the wealth of the Nations. Vv. 6-9 look first

landward and then seaward, as from Jerusalem's own wonderful

position on the high ridge between Asia and the sea: between the

gates of the East and the gates of the West. On the one side, the

city's horizon is the range of Moab and Edom, that barrier, in

Jewish imagination, of the hidden and golden East across which pour

the caravans here pictured. _Profusion of camels shall cover thee,

young camels of Midian and Ephah; all of them from Sheba shall come:

gold and frankincense shall they bring, and the praises of Jehovah

shall they publish. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to

thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to thee: they shall come

up with acceptance on Mine altar, and the house of My glory will

I glorify._ These were just what surged over Jordan from the far

countries beyond, of which the Jews knew little more than the names

here given,--tawny droves of camels upon the greenness of Palestine

like a spate of the desert from which they poured; rivers of sheep

brimming up the narrow drove-roads to Jerusalem:--conceive it all

under that blazing Eastern sun. But then turning to Judah's other

horizon, marked by the yellow fringe of sand and the blue haze of

the sea beyond, the prophet cries for Jehovah: _Who are these like a

cloud that fly, and like doves to their windows? Surely towards Me

the Isles_[277] _are stretching, and ships of Tarshish in the van,

to bring thy sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them,

to the Name of Jehovah of Hosts and to the Holy of Israel, for He

hath glorified thee._ The poetry of the Old Testament has been said

to be deficient in its treatment of the sea; and certainly it dwells

more frequently, as was natural for the imagination of an inland and

a highland people to do, upon the hills. But in what literature will

you find passages of equal length more suggestive of the sea than

those short pieces in which the Hebrew prophet sought to render the

futile rage of the world, as it dashed on the steadfast will of God,

by the roar and crash of the ocean on the beach;[278] or painted a

nation's prosperity as the waves of a summer sea;[279] or described

the long coastlands as stretching out to God, and the white-sailed

ships coming up the horizon like doves to their windows!

The rest of the chapter, from ver. 10 onwards, is occupied with the

rebuilding and adornment of Jerusalem, and with the establishment of

the people in righteousness and peace. There is a very obvious mingling

of the material and the moral. The Gentiles are to become subject to

the Jew, but it is to be a voluntary submission before the evidence

of Jerusalem's spiritual superiority. Nothing is said of a Messiah or

a King. Jerusalem is to be a commonwealth; and, while her _magistracy

shall be Peace and her overseers Righteousness_, God Himself, in

evident presence, is to be her light and glory. Thus the chapter ends

with God and the People, and nothing else. God for an everlasting light

around, and the people in their land, righteous, secure and growing

very large. _The least shall become a thousand, and the smallest a

strong nation: I Jehovah will hasten it in its time._

This chapter has been put through many interpretations to many

practical uses:--to describe the ingathering of the Gentiles to the

Church (in the Christian year it is the Lesson for Epiphany), to

prove the doctrine that the Church should live by the endowment of

the kingdoms of this world, and to enforce the duty of costliness

and magnificence in the public worship of God. _The glory of the

Lebanon shall come unto thee, fir-tree, plane-tree and sherbin

together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary, and I will make the

place of My feet glorious._

The last of these duties we may extend and qualify. If the coming in

of the Gentiles is here represented as bringing wealth to the Church,

we cannot help remembering that the going out to the Gentiles, in

order to bring them in, means for us the spending of our wealth on

things other than the adornment of temples; and that, besides the

heathen, there are poor and suffering ones for whom God asks men's

gold, as He asked it in olden days for the temple, that He may be

glorified. Take that last phrase:--_And_--with all that material

wealth which has flowed in from Lebanon, from Midian, from Sheba--_I

will make the place of My feet glorious_. When this singular name

was first uttered it was limited to the dwelling-place of the Ark

and Presence of God, visible only on Mount Zion. But when God became

man, and did indeed tread with human feet this world of ours, what

were then the _places of His feet_? Sometimes, it is true, the

Temple, but only sometimes; far more often where the sick lay, and

the bereaved were weeping,--the pool of Bethesda, the death-room of

Jairus' daughter, the way to the centurion's sick servant, the city

gateways where the beggars stood, the lanes where the village folk

had gathered, against His coming, their deaf and dumb, their palsied

and lunatic. These were _the places of His feet, who Himself bare

our sicknesses and carried our infirmities_; and these are what He

would seek our wealth to make glorious. They say that the reverence

of men builds now no cathedrals as of old; nay, but the love of man,

that Christ taught, builds far more of those refuges and houses of

healing, scatters far more widely those medicines for the body, those

instruments of teaching, those means of grace, in which God is as

much glorified as in Jewish Temple or Christian Cathedral.

Nevertheless He, who set _the place of His feet_, which He would have

us to glorify, among the poor and the sick, was He, who also did not

for Himself refuse that alabaster box and that precious ointment,

which might have been sold for much and given to the poor. The

worship of God, if we read Scripture aright, ought to be more than

merely grave and comely. There should be heartiness and lavishness

about it,--profusion and brilliance. Not of material gifts alone or

chiefly, gold incense or rare wood, but of human faculties, graces

and feeling; of joy and music and the sense of beauty. Take this

chapter. It is wonderful, not so much for the material wealth which

it devotes to the service of God's house, and which is all that many

eyes ever see in it, as for the glorious imagination and heart for

the beautiful, the joy in light and space and splendour, the poetry

and the music, which use those material things simply as the light

uses the wick, or as music uses the lyre, to express and reveal

itself. What a call this chapter is to let out the natural wonder

and poetry of the heart, its feeling and music and exultation,--_all

that is within us_, as the Psalmist says,--in the Service of God.

Why do we not do so? The answer is very simple. Because, unlike this

prophet, we do not realise how present and full our salvation is;

because, unlike him, we do not realise that _our light has come_, and

so we will not _arise and shine_.

II. THE GOSPEL (chs. lxi.-lxii.)

The speaker in ch. lxi. is not introduced by name. Therefore he

may be the Prophet himself, or he may be the Servant. The present

expositor, while feeling that the evidence is not conclusive against

either of these, and that the uncertainty is as great as in ch.

xlviii. 16,[280] inclines to think that there is, on the whole, less

objection to its being the prophet who speaks than to its being

the Servant. See the appended note. But it is not a very important

question, which is intended, for the Servant was representative of

prophecy; and if it be the prophet who speaks here, he also speaks

with the conscience of the whole function and aim of the prophetic

order. That Jesus Christ fulfilled this programme does not decide

the question one way or the other; for a prophet so representative

was as much the antetype and foreshadowing of Christ as the Servant

himself was. On the whole, then, we must be content to feel about

this passage, what we must have already felt about many others in

our prophecy, that the writer is more anxious to place before us the

whole range and ideal of the prophetic gift than to make clear in

whom this ideal is realised; and for the rest Jesus of Nazareth so

plainly fulfilled it, that it becomes, indeed, a very minor question

to ask whom the writer may have intended as its first application.

If ch. lx. showed us the external glory of God's people, ch. lxi. opens

with the programme of their inner mission. There we had the building

and adornment of the Temple, that _Jehovah might glorify His people_:

here we have the binding of broken hearts and the beautifying of soiled

lives, that _Jehovah may be glorified_. But this inner mission also

issues in external splendour, in a righteousness, which is like the

adornment of a bride and like the beauty of spring.

The commission of the prophet is mainly to duties we have already

studied in preceding passages, both on himself and on the Servant.

It will be enough to point out its special characteristics. _The

Spirit of my Lord Jehovah is upon me, for that Jehovah hath anointed

me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; He hath sent me to bind

up the broken-hearted, to proclaim to the captive liberty, and to

the prisoners open ways;_[281] _to proclaim an acceptable year for

Jehovah, and a day of vengeance for our God; to comfort all that mourn;

to offer to the mourners of Zion, to give unto them a crest_[282] _for

ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the mantle of praise for the spirit

of dimness;_[283] _so that men may call them Oaks-of-Righteousness, the

planting of Jehovah, that He may break into glory._

There are heard here all the keynotes of our prophet, and clear,

too, is that usual and favourite direction of his thoughts from the

inner and spiritual influences to the outward splendour and evidence,

the passage from the comfort and healing of the heart to the rich

garment, the renown, and his own dearest vision of great forest

trees,--in short, Jehovah Himself breaking into glory. But one point

needs special attention.

The prophet begins his commission by these words, _to bring good

tidings to the afflicted_, and again says, _to proclaim to the

captive_. _The afflicted_, or _the poor_, as it is mostly rendered,

is the classical name for God's people in Exile. We have sufficiently

moved among this people to know for what reason the _bringing

of good tidings_ should here be reckoned as the first and most

indispensable service that prophecy could render them. Why, in the

life of every nation, there are hours, when the factors of destiny,

that loom largest at other times, are dwarfed and dwindle before

the momentousness of a piece of news,--hours, when the nation's

attitude in a great moral issue, or her whole freedom and destiny,

are determined by telegrams from the seat of war. The simultaneous

news of Grant's capture of Vicksburg and Meade's defeat of Lee, news

that finally turned English opinion, so long shamefully debating and

wavering, to the side of God and the slave; the telegrams from the

army, for which silent crowds waited in the Berlin squares through

the autumn nights of 1870, conscious that the unity and birthright

of Germany hung upon the tidings,--are instances of the vital and

paramount influence in a nation's history of a piece of news. The

force of a great debate in Parliament, the expression of public

opinion through all its organs, the voice of a people in a general

election, things in their time as ominous as the Fates, all yield

at certain supreme moments to the meaning of a simple message from

Providence. Now it was for _news_ from God that Israel waited in

Exile; for good tidings and the proclamation of fact. They had with

them a Divine Law, but no mere exposition of it could satisfy men who

were captives and waited for the command of their freedom. They had

with them Psalms, but no beauty of music could console them: _How

should we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?_ They had Prophecy,

with its assurance of the love and the power of their God; and much

as there was in it to help them to patience and to hope, general

statements were not enough for them. They needed the testimony of a

fact. Freedom and Restoration had been promised them: they waited

for the proclamation that it was coming, for the good news that it

had arrived. Now our prophecy is mainly this proclamation and good

news of fact. The prophet uses before all other words two,--to call

or proclaim, kara, and to tell good tidings, bisser. We found them

in his opening chapter: we find them again here when he sums up his

mission. A third goes along with them, _to comfort_, naham, but it is

the accompaniment, and they are the burden, of his prophecy.

But _good tidings_ and the _proclamation_ meant so much more than

the mere political deliverance of Israel--meant the fact of their

pardon, the tale of their God's love, of His provision for them,

and of His wonderful passion and triumph of salvation on their

behalf--that it is no wonder that these two words came to be ever

afterwards the classical terms for all speech and prophecy from God

to man. We actually owe the Greek words of the New Testament for

_gospel_ and _preaching_ to this time of Israel's history. The Greek

term, from which we have _evangel_, _evangelist_ and _evangelise_,

originally meant good news, but was first employed in a religious

sense in the Greek translation of our prophecy. And our word "preach"

is the heir, though not the lineal descendant, through the Latin

_prædicare_ and the Greek κηρυσσειν, of the word, which is translated

in ch. lx. of our prophet to _proclaim_, but in ch. xl. to _call_

or _cry_. It is to the Exile that we trace the establishment among

God's people of regular preaching side by side with sacramental and

liturgical worship; for it was in the Exile that the Synagogue arose,

whose pulpit was to become as much the centre of Israel's life as was

the altar of the Temple. And it was from the pulpit of a synagogue

centuries after, when the preaching had become dry exposition or hard

lawgiving, that Jesus re-read our prophecy and affirmed again the

_good news_ of God.

What is true of nations is true of individuals. We indeed support

our life by principles; we develop it by argument;--we cannot lay

too heavy stress upon philosophy and law. But there is something of

far greater concern than either argument or the abstract principles

from which it is developed; something that our reason cannot find of

itself, that our conscience but increases our longing for. It is,

whether certain things are facts or not; whether, for instance,

the Supreme Power of the Universe is on the side of the individual

combatant for righteousness; whether God is love; whether Sin has

been forgiven; whether Sin and Death have ever been conquered;

whether the summer has come in which humanity may put forth their

shoots conscious that all the influence of heaven is on their

side, or whether, there being no heavenly favours, man must train

his virtue and coax his happiness to ripen behind shelters and in

conservatories of his own construction. Now Christ comes to us with

the good news of God that it is so. The supreme force in the Universe

is on man's side, and for man has won victory and achieved freedom.

God has proclaimed pardon. A Saviour has overcome sin and death. We

are free to break from evil. The struggle after holiness is not the

struggle of a weakly plant in an alien soil and beneath a wintry

sky, counting only upon the precarious aids of human cultivation;

but summer has come, the acceptable year of the Lord has begun, and

all the favour of the Almighty is on His people's side. These are

the _good tidings_ and _proclamation_ of God, and to every man who

believes them they must make an incalculable difference in life.

As we have said, the prophet passes in the rest of this prophecy from

the spiritual influences of his mission to its outward effects. The

people's righteousness is described in the external fashion, which we

have already studied in Chapter Fourteen; Zion's espousals to Jehovah

are celebrated, but into that we have also gone thoroughly (pp. 398

ff.); the restoration of prophecy in Jerusalem is described (lxii.

6-9), as in ch. lii. 8; and another call is given to depart from

Babylon and every foreign city and come to Zion. This call coming

now, so long after the last, and when we might think that the prophet

had wholly left Babylon behind, need not surprise us. For even though

some Jews had actually arrived at Zion, which is not certain, others

were hanging back in Babylon; and, indeed, such a call as this might

fitly be renewed for the next century or two: so many of God's people

continued to forget that their citizenship was in Zion.

III. THE DIVINE SAVIOUR (ch. lxiii. 1-7).

Once again the prophet turns to hail, in his periodic transport, the

Solitary Divine Hero and Saviour of His people.

That the writer of this piece is the main author of "Second Isaiah"

is probable, both because it is the custom of the latter to describe

at intervals the passion and effort of Israel's Mighty One, and

because several of his well-known phrases meet us in this piece. The

_speaker in righteousness mighty to save_ recalls ch. xlv. 19-24;

and _the day of vengeance and year of my redeemed_ recalls ch. lxi.

2; and _I looked, and there was no helper, and I gazed, and there

was none to uphold_, recalls lix. 16. The prophet is looking out

from Jerusalem towards Edom,--a direction in which the watchmen upon

Zion had often in her history looked for the return of her armies

from the punishment of Israel's congenital and perpetual foe. The

prophet, however, sees the prospect filled up, not by the flashing

van of a great army, but by a solitary figure, without ally, without

chariot, without weapons, _swaying on in the wealth of his strength_.

The keynote of the piece is the loneliness of this Hero. A figure

is used, which, where battle would only have suggested complexity,

enthrals us with the spectacle of solitary effort,--the figure of

trampling through some vast winefat alone. The Avenging Saviour of

Israel has a fierce joy in being alone: it is his new nerve to effort

and victory,--_therefore mine own right arm, it brought salvation to

me_. We see One great form in the strength of one great emotion. _My

fury, it upheld me._

The interpretation of this chapter by Christians has been very

varied, and often very perverse. To use the words of Calvin,

"Violenter torserunt hoc caput Christiani." But, as he sees very

rightly, it is not the Messiah nor the Servant of Jehovah, who is

here pictured, but Jehovah Himself. This Solitary is the Divine

Saviour of Israel, as in ch. xlii. 7 f. and in ch. lix. 16 f. In

Chapter Eight of this volume we spoke so fully of the Passion of God,

that we may now refer to that chapter for the essential truth which

underlies our prophet's anthropomorphism, and claims our worship

where a short sight might only turn the heart away in scorn at the

savage and blood-stained surface. One or two other points, however,

demand our attention before we give the translation.

Why does the prophet look in the direction of Edom for the return of

his God? Partly, it is to be presumed, because Edom was as good a

representative as he could choose of the enemies of Israel other than

Babylon.[284] But also partly, perhaps, because of the names which

match the red colours of his piece,--the wine and the blood. Edom

means _red_, and Bossrah is assonant to Bôsser, a _vinedresser_.[285]

Fitter background and scenery the prophet, therefore, could not have

for his drama of Divine Vengeance. But we must take care, as Dillmann

properly remarks, not to imagine that any definite, historical invasion

of Edom by Israel, or other chastening instrument of Jehovah, is here

intended. It is a vision which the prophet sees of Jehovah Himself: it

illustrates the passion, the agony, the unshared and unaided effort

which the Divine Saviour passes through for His people.

Further, it is only necessary to point out, that the term in ver. 1

given as _splendid_ by the Authorised Version, which I have rendered

_sweeping_, is literally _swelling_, and is, perhaps, best rendered

by _sailing on_ or _swinging on_. The other verb which the Revised

Version renders _marching_ means _swaying_, or moving the head or

body from one side to another, in the pride and fulness of strength.

In ver. 2 _like a wine-treader_ is literally _like him that treadeth

in the pressing-house_--Geth (the first syllable of Gethsemane, the

oil-press). But ה ור in ver. 3 is the _pressing-trough_.

_Who is this coming from Edom,_

_Raw-red_ his _garments from Bossrah!_

_This sweeping on in his raiment,_

_Swaying in the wealth of his strength?_

_I that do speak in righteousness,_

_Mighty to save!_

_Wherefore is red on thy raiment,_

_And thy garments like to a wine-treader's?_

_A trough I have trodden alone,_

_Of the peoples no man was with me.

So I trod them down in my wrath,_

_And trampled them down in my fury;_

_Their life-blood sprinkled my garments,_

_And all my raiment I stained._

_For the day of revenge in my heart,_

_And the year of my redeemed has come._

_And I looked, and no helper;_

_I gazed, and none to uphold!_

_So my righteousness won me salvation;_

_And my fury, it hath upheld me._

_So I stamp on the peoples in my wrath,_

_And make them drunk with my fury,_

_And bring down to earth their life-blood._

FOOTNOTES:

[276] Literally, _on the side_ or _hip_, the Eastern method of

carrying children.

[277] Or _coasts_. See pp. 109 ff.

[278] Isa. xiv.; _Isaiah i.-xxxix._, pp. 281 ff.

[279] Isa. xlviii. 18.

[280] See p. 210, note. Some points of the speaker's description of

himself--for example, the gift of the Spirit and the anointing--suit

equally well any prophet, or the unique Servant. The lofty mission

and its great results are not too lofty or great for our prophet, for

Jeremiah received his office in terms as large. That the prophet has

not yet spoken at such length in his own person is no reason why he

should not do so now, especially as this is an occasion on which he

sums up and enforces the whole range of prophecy. It can, therefore,

very well be the prophet who speaks. On the other hand, to say with

Diestel that it cannot be the Servant because the personification of

the Servant ceases with ch. liii. is to beg the question. A stronger

argument against the case for the Servant is that the speaker does

not call himself by that name, as he does in other passages when he

is introduced; but this is not conclusive, for in l. 4-9 the Servant,

though he speaks, does not name himself. To these may be added this

(from Krüger), that the Servant's discourse never passes without

transition into that of God, as this speaker's in ver. 8, but the

prophet's discourse often so passes; and this, that בשׂר, קרא and

נחם are often used of the prophet, and not at all of the Servant.

These are all the points in the question, and it will be seen how

inconclusive they are. If any further proof of this were required,

it would be found in the fact that authorities are equally divided.

There hold for the Servant Calvin, Delitzsch, Cheyne (who previously

took the other view), Driver, Briggs, Nägelsbach and Orelli. But the

Targums, Ewald, Hitzig, Diestel, Dillmann, Bredenkamp and Krüger hold

by the prophet. Krüger's reasons, _Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe

xl.-lxvi._, p. 76, are specially worthy of attention.

[281] Literally, _opening_; but the word is always used of opening of

the eyes. Ewald renders _open air_, Dillmann _hellen Blick_.

[282] Any insignia or ornament for the head.

[283] The same word as in xlii. 3, _fading wick_.

[284] See _Isaiah i.-xxxix._, pp. 438-40.

[285] _Cf._ Krüger, _Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi._, pp.

154-55. Lagarde has proposed to read אָדָּםמְ, past participle, for

מֵאֱדֹם and מִבּצֵר for מִבָּצְרָה. _Who is this that cometh dyed

red, redder in his garments than a vinedresser?_

CHAPTER XXV.

_A LAST INTERCESSION AND THE JUDGEMENT._

ISAIAH lxiii. 7-lxvi.

We might well have thought, that with the section we have been

considering the prophecy of Israel's Redemption had reached its

summit and its end. The glory of Zion in sight, the full programme

of prophecy owned, the arrival of the Divine Saviour hailed in the

urgency of His feeling for His people, in the sufficiency of His

might to save them,--what more, we ask, can the prophecy have to give

us? Why does it not end upon these high notes? The answer is, the

salvation is indeed consummate, but the people are not ready for it.

On an earlier occasion, let us remember, when our prophet called the

nation to their Service of God, he called at first the whole nation,

but had then immediately to make a distinction. Seen in the light of

their destiny, the mass of Israel proved to be unworthy; tried by

its strain, part immediately fell away. But what happened upon that

call to Service happens again upon this disclosure of Salvation. The

prophet realises that it is only a part of Israel who are worthy of

it. He feels again the weight, which has been the hindrance of his

hope all through,--the weight of the mass of the nation, sunk in

idolatry and wickedness, incapable of appreciating the promises. He

will make one more effort to save them--to save them all. He does

this in an intercessory prayer, ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv., in which he

states the most hopeless aspects of his people's case, identifies

himself with their sin, and yet pleads by the ancient power of God

that _we all_ may be saved. He gets his answer in ch. lxv., in which

God sharply divides Israel into two classes, the faithful and the

idolaters, and affirms that, while the nation shall be saved for the

sake of the faithful remnant, Jehovah's faithful servants and the

unfaithful can never share the same experience or the same fate.

And then the book closes with a discourse in ch. lxvi., in which

this division between the two classes in Israel is pursued to a last

terrible emphasis and contrast upon the narrow stage of Jerusalem

itself. We are left, not with the realisation of the prophet's prayer

for the salvation of all the nations, but with a last judgement

separating its godly and ungodly portions.

Thus there are three connected divisions in lxiii. 7-lxvi. _First_,

the prophet's Intercessory Prayer, ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv.; _second_, the

Answer of Jehovah, ch. lxv.; and _third_, the Final Discourse and

Judgement, ch. lxvi.

I. THE PRAYER FOR THE WHOLE PEOPLE (ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv.).

There is a good deal of discussion as to both the date and the

authorship of this piece,--as to whether it comes from the early

or the late Exile, and as to whether it comes from our prophet or

from another. It must have been written after the destruction and

before the rebuilding of the Temple; this is put past all doubt by

these verses: _Thy holy people possessed it but a little while:

our adversaries have trodden down Thy sanctuary. Thy holy cities

are become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a

desolation. The house of our holiness and of our ornament, wherein

our fathers praised Thee, is become for a burning of fire, and all

our delights are for ruin._[286]

This language has been held to imply that the disaster to Jerusalem

was recent, as if the city's conflagration still flared on the

national imagination, which in later years of the Exile was impressed

rather by the long, cold ruins of the Holy Place, the haunt of wild

beasts. But not only is this point inconclusive, but the impression

that it leaves is entirely dispelled by other verses, which speak of

the Divine anger as having been of long continuance, and as if it

had only hardened the people in sin; compare ch. lxiii. 17 and lxiv.

6, 7. There is nothing in the prayer to show that the author lived

in exile, and accordingly the proposal has been made to date the

piece from among the first attempts at rebuilding after the Return.

To the present expositor this seems to be certainly wrong. The man

who wrote vv. 11-15 of ch. lxiii. had surely the Return still before

him; he would not have written in the way he has done of the Exodus

from Egypt unless he had been feeling the need of another exhibition

of Divine Power of the same kind. The prayer, therefore, must come

from pretty much the same date as the rest of our prophecy,--after

the Exile had long continued, but while the Return had not yet taken

place. Nor is there any reason against attributing it to the same

writer. It is true the style differs from the rest of his work, but

this may be accounted for, as in the case of ch. liii., by the

change of subject. Most critics, who hold that we still follow the

same author, take for granted that some time has elapsed since the

prophet's triumphant strains in chs. lx.-lxii. This is probable; but

there is nothing to make it certain. What is certain is the change of

mood and conscience. The prophet, who in ch. lx. had been caught away

into the glorious future of the people, is here as utterly absorbed

in their barren and doubtful present. Although the salvation is

certain, as he has seen it, the people are not ready. The fact he has

already felt so keenly about them,--see ch. xlii., vv. 24, 25,--that

their long discipline in exile has done the mass of them no good,

but evil, comes forcibly back upon him (ch. lxiv. 5_b_ ff.). _Thou

wast angry, and we sinned_ only the more: _in such a state we have

been long, and shall we be saved_! The banished people are thoroughly

unclean and rotten, fading as a leaf, the sport of the wind. But

the prophet identifies himself with them. He speaks of their sin as

_ours_, of their misery as _ours_. He takes of them the very saddest

view possible, he feels them all as sheer dead weight: _there is

none that calleth on Thy name, that stirreth himself up to take hold

on Thee: for Thou hast hid Thy face from us, and delivered us into

the power of our iniquities_. But the prophet thus loads himself

with the people in order to secure, if he can, their redemption as

a whole. Twice he says in the name of them all, _Doubtless Thou art

our Father_. His great heart will not have one of them left out; _we

all_, he says, _are the work of Thy hand, we all are Thy people_.

But this intention of the prayer will amply account for any change

of style we may perceive in the language. No one will deny that it

is quite possible for the same man now to fling himself forward

into the glorious vision of his people's future salvation, and

again to identify himself with the most hopeless aspects of their

present distress and sin; and no one will deny that the same man will

certainly write in two different styles with regard to each of these

different feelings. Besides which, we have seen in the passage the

recurrence of some of our prophecy's most characteristic thoughts. We

feel, therefore, no reason for counting the passage to be by another

hand than that which has mainly written "Second Isaiah." It may be

at once admitted that he has incorporated in it earlier phrases,

reminiscences and echoes of language about the fall of Jerusalem in

use when the Lamentations were written. But this was a natural thing

for him to do in a prayer, in which he represented the whole people

and took upon himself the full burden of their woes.

If such be the intention of chs. lxiii. 7-lxiv., then in them we have

one of the noblest passages of our prophet's great work. How like he

is to the Servant he pictured for us! How his great heart fulfils the

loftiest ideal of Service: not only to be the prophet and the judge

of his people, but to make himself one with them in all their sin and

sorrow, to carry them all in his heart. Truly, as his last words said

of the Servant, he himself _bears the sin of many, and interposes for

the transgressors_. Before we see the answer he gets, let us make clear

some obscure things and appreciate some beautiful ones in his prayer.

It opens with a recital of Jehovah's ancient lovingkindness and

mercies to Israel. This is what perhaps gives it connection with

the previous section. In ch. lxii. the prophet, though sure of the

coming glory, wrote before it had come, and _urged_ upon _the Lord's

remembrancers to keep no silence, and give Him no silence till He

establish and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth_. This

work of remembrancing, the prophet himself takes up in lxiii. 7:

_The lovingkindnesses of Jehovah I will record_, literally, _cause

to be remembered, the praises of Jehovah, according to all that

Jehovah hath bestowed upon us_. And then he beautifully puts all

the beginnings of God's dealings with His people in His trusting of

them: _For He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not

deal falsely; so He became their Saviour. In all their affliction

He was afflicted, the Angel of His Face saved them._ This must be

understood, not as an angel of the Presence, who went out from the

Presence to save the people, but, as it is in other Scriptures, God's

own Presence, God Himself; and so interpreted, the phrase falls into

line with the rest of the verse, which is one of the most vivid

expressions that the Bible contains of the personality of God.[287]

_In His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and bare them,

and carried them all the days of old._ Then he tells us how they

disappointed and betrayed this trust, ever since the Exodus, the days

of old. _But they rebelled and grieved the Spirit of His holiness:

therefore He was turned to be their enemy, He Himself fought against

them._ This refers to their history down to, and especially during,

the Exile: compare ch. xlii., vv. 24, 25. Then in their affliction

they _remembered the days of old_--the English version obscures the

sequence here by translating _he remembered_--and then follows the

glorious account of the Exodus. In ver. 13 the _wilderness_ is, of

course, _prairie_, flat _pasture-land_; they were led as smoothly

as _a horse in a meadow, that they stumbled not. As cattle that

come down into the valley_--cattle coming down from the hill sides

to pasture and rest on the green, watered plains--_the Spirit of

Jehovah caused them to rest: so didst Thou lead Thy people to make

Thyself a glorious name_. And then having offered such precedents,

the prophet's prayer breaks forth to a God, whom His people feel no

longer at their head, but far withdrawn into heaven: _Look down from

heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and Thy glory:

where is Thy zeal and Thy mighty deeds? the surge of Thy bowels and

thy compassions are restrained towards me._ Then he pleads God's

fatherhood to the nation, and the rest of the prayer alternates

between the hopeless misery and undeserving sin of the people, and,

notwithstanding, the power of God to save as He did in times of

old; the willingness of God to meet with those who wait for Him and

remember Him; and, once more, His fatherhood, and His power over

them, as the power of the potter over the clay.

Two points stand out from the rest. The Divine Trust, from which all

God's dealing with His people is said to have started, and the Divine

Fatherhood, which the prophet pleads.

_He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not deal

falsely: so He was their Saviour._ The "surely" is not the fiat of

sovereignty or foreknowledge: it is the hope and confidence of love.

It did not prevail; it was disappointed.

This is, of course, a profound acknowledgment of man's free will.

It is implied that men's conduct must remain an uncertain thing,

and that in calling men God cannot adventure upon greater certainty

than is implied in the trust of affection. If one asks, What, then,

about God's foreknowledge, who alone knoweth the end of a thing from

the beginning, and His sovereign grace, who chooseth whom He will?

are you not logically bound to these?--then it can only be asked in

return, Is it not better to be without logic for a little, if at

the expense of it we obtain so true, so deep a glimpse into God's

heart as this simple verse affords us? Which is better for us to

know--that God is Wisdom which knows all, or Love that dares and

ventures all? Surely, that God is Love which dares and ventures all

with the worst, with the most hopeless of us. This is what makes this

single verse of Scripture more powerful to move the heart than all

creeds and catechisms. For where these speak of sovereign will, and

often mock our affections with the bare and heavy (if legitimate)

sceptre they sway, this calls forth our love, honour and obedience

by the heart it betrays in God. Of what unsuspicious trust, of what

chivalrous adventure of love, of what fatherly confidence, does it

speak! What a religion is this of ours in the power of which a man

may every morning rise and feel himself thrilled by the thought that

God trusts him enough to work with His will for the day; in the power

of which a man may look round and see the sordid, hopeless human life

about him glorified by the truth, that for the salvation of such

God did adventure Himself in a love that laid itself down in death.

The attraction and power of such a religion can never die. Requiring

no painful thought to argue it into reality, it leaps to light

before the natural affection of man's heart; it takes his instincts

immediately captive; it gives him a conscience, an honour and an

obligation. No wonder that our prophet, having such a belief, should

once more identify himself with the people, and adventure himself

with the weight of their sin before God.

The other point of the prayer is the Fatherhood of God, concerning

which all that is needful to say here is that the prophet, true to

the rest of Old Testament teaching on the subject, applies it only to

God's relation to the nation as a whole. In the Old Testament no one

is called the son of God except Israel as a people, or some individual

representative and head of Israel. And even of such the term was seldom

employed. This was not because the Hebrew was without temptation to

imagine his physical descent from the gods, for neighbouring nations

indulged in such dreams for themselves and their heroes; nor because

he was without appreciation of the intellectual kinship between the

human and the Divine, for he knew that in the beginning God had said,

_Let us make man in our own image._ But the same feeling prevailed with

him in regard to this idea, as we have seen prevailed in regard to the

kindred idea of God as the husband of His people.[288] The prophets

were anxious to emphasize that it was a moral relation,--a moral

relation, and one initiated from God's side by certain historical acts

of His free, selecting, redeeming and adopting love. Israel was not

God's son till God had evidently called and redeemed him. Look at how

our prophet uses the word Father, and to what he makes it equivalent.

The first time it is equivalent to Redeemer: _Thou, O Lord, art our

Father; our Redeemer from old is Thy name_ (lxiii. 16_b_). The second

time it is illustrated by the work of the potter: _But now, O Lord,

Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we are

all the work of Thy hand_ (lxiv. 8). Could it be made plainer in what

sense the Bible defines this relation between God and man? It is not

a physical, nor is it an intellectual relation. The assurance and the

virtue of it do not come to men with their blood or with the birth of

their intellect, but in the course of moral experience, with the sense

that God claims them from sin and from the world for Himself; with the

gift of a calling and a destiny; with the formation of character, the

perfecting of obedience, the growth in His knowledge and His grace. And

because it is a moral relation time is needed to realise it, and only

after long patience and effort may it be unhesitatingly claimed. And

that is why Israel was so long in claiming it, and why the clearest,

most undoubting cries to God the Father, which rise from the Greek in

the earliest period of his history, reach our ears from Jewish lips

only near the end of their long progress, only (as we see from our

prayer) in a time of trial and affliction.

We have a New Testament echo of this Old Testament belief in the

Fatherhood of God, as a moral and not a national relation, in Paul's

writings, who in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (vi. 17, 18)

urges thus: _Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate,

saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive

you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and

daughters, saith the Lord Almighty_.

On these grounds, then,--that God in His great love had already

adventured Himself with this whole people, and already by historical

acts of election and redemption proved Himself the Father of the

nation as a whole,--does our prophet plead with Him to save them all

again. The answer to this pleading he gets in ch. lxv.

II. GOD'S ANSWER TO THE PROPHET'S INTERCESSION (ch. lxv.).

God's answer to his prophet's intercession is twofold. _First_, He

says that He has already all this time been trying them with love,

meeting them with salvation; but they have not turned to Him. The

prophet has asked, _Where is Thy zeal? the yearning of Thy bowels and

Thy compassions are restrained towards me. Thou hast hid Thy face

far from us. Wilt Thou refrain Thyself for these things, O Jehovah?

wilt Thou hold Thy peace and afflict us very sore._ And now, in the

beginning of ch. lxv., Jehovah answers, not with that confusion of

tenses and irrelevancy of words with which the English version makes

Him speak; but suitably, relevantly and convincingly. _I have been to

be inquired of those who asked not_ for _Me. I have been to be found

of them that sought Me not. I have been saying, I am here, I am here,

to a nation that did not call on My name. I have stretched out My

hands all the day to a people turning away, who walk in a way that is

not good, after their own thoughts; a people that have been provoking

Me to My face continually_,--and then He details their idolatry.

This, then, is the answer of the Lord to the prophet's appeal. "In

this I have not all power. It is wrong to talk of Me as the potter

and of man as the clay, as if all the active share in salvation

lay with Me. Man is free,--free to withhold himself from My urgent

affection; free to turn from My outstretched hands; free to choose

before Me the abomination of idolatry. And this the mass of Israel

have done, clinging, fanatical and self-satisfied, to their unclean

and morbid imaginations of the Divine, all the time that My great

prophecy by you has been appealing to them." This is a sufficient

answer to the prophet's prayer. Love is not omnipotent; if men

disregard so open an appeal of the Love of God, they are hopeless;

nothing else can save them. The sin against such love is like the sin

against the Holy Ghost, of which our Lord speaks so hopelessly. Even

God cannot help the despisers and abusers of Grace.

The rest of God's answer to His prophet's intercession emphasizes

that the nation shall be saved for the sake of a faithful remnant

in it (vv. 8-10). But the idolaters shall perish (vv. 11, 12). They

cannot possibly expect the same fare, the same experience, the same

fate, as God's faithful servants (vv. 13-15). But those who are true

and faithful Israelites, surviving and experiencing the promised

salvation, shall find that God is true, and shall acknowledge Him as

_the God of Amen, because the former troubles are forgotten_--those

felt so keenly in the prophet's prayer in ch. lxiv.--_and because

they are hid from Mine eyes_. The rest of the answer describes a

state of serenity and happiness wherein there shall be no premature

death, nor loss of property, nor vain labour, nor miscarriage, nor

disappointment of prayer nor delay in its answer, nor strife between

man and the beasts, nor any hurt or harm in Jehovah's Holy Mountain.

Truly a prospect worthy of being named as the prophet names it, _a

new heaven and a new earth_!

Ch. lxv. is thus closely connected, both by circumstance and logic,

with the long prayer which precedes it. The tendency of recent

criticism has been to deny this connection, especially on the line of

circumstance. Ch. lxv. does not, it is argued, reflect the Babylonish

captivity as ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv. so clearly does; but, on the

contrary, "while some passages presuppose the Exile as past, others

refer to circumstances characteristic of Jewish life in Canaan."[289]

But this view is only possible through straining some features of the

chapter adaptable either to Palestine or Babylon, and overlooking

others which are obviously Babylonian. _Sacrificing in gardens and

burning incense on tiles_ were practices pursued in Jerusalem before

the Exile, but the latter was introduced there from Babylon, and

the former was universal in heathendom. The practices in ver. 5 are

never attributed to the people before the Exile, were all possible in

Babylonia, and some we know to have been actual there.[290] The other

charge of idolatry in ver. 11 "suits Babylonia," Cheyne admits, "as

well as (probably) Palestine."[291] But what seems decisive for the

exilic origin of ch. lxv. is that the possession of Judah and Zion

by the seed of Jacob is still implied as future (ver. 9). Moreover

the holy land is alluded to by the name common among the exiles in

flat Mesopotamia, _My mountains_, and in contrast with the idolatry

of which the present generation is guilty the idolatry of their

fathers is characterised as having been _upon the mountains and upon

the hills_, and again the people is charged with _forgetting My holy

mountain_, a phrase reminiscent of Psalm cxxxvii., ver. 4, and more

appropriate to a time of exile, than when the people were gathered

about Zion. All these resemblances in circumstance corroborate the

strong logical connection which we have found between ch. lxiv. and

ch. lxv., and leave us no reason for taking the latter away from the

main author of "Second Isaiah," though he may have worked up into it

recollections and remains of an older time.

III. THE LAST JUDGEMENT (ch. lxvi.).

Whether with the final chapter of our prophecy we at last get

footing in the Holy Land is doubtful.[292] It was said on p. 20

that, "in vv. 1 to 4 of this chapter the Temple is still unbuilt,

but the building would seem to be already begun." This latter clause

should be modified to, "the building would seem to be in immediate

prospect." The rest of the chapter, vv. 6-24, has features that speak

more definitely for the period after the Return; but even they are

not conclusive, and their effect is counterbalanced by some other

verses. Ver. 6 may imply that the Temple is rebuilt, and ver. 20 that

the sacrifices are resumed; but, on the other hand, these verses may

be, like parts of ch. lx., statements of the prophet's vivid vision

of the future.[293] Vv. 7 and 8 seem to describe a repeopling of

Jerusalem that has already taken place; but ver. 9 says, that while

the _bringing to the birth_ has already happened, which is, as we

must suppose, the deliverance from Babylon,--or is it the actual

arrival at Jerusalem?--the _bringing forth from the womb_, that is,

the complete restoration of the people, has still to take place. Ver.

13 is certainly addressed to those who are not yet in Jerusalem.

These few points reveal how difficult, nay, how impossible, it is to

decide the question of date, as between the days immediately before

the Return and the days immediately after. To the present expositor

the balance of evidence seems to be with the later date. But the

difference is very small. We are at least sure--and it is really

all that we require to know--that the rebuilding of Jerusalem is

very near, nearer than it has been felt in any previous chapter. The

Temple is, so to speak, within sight, and the prophet is able to talk

of the regular round of sacrifices and sacred festivals almost as if

they had been resumed.

To the people, then, either in the near prospect of Return, or

immediately after some of them had arrived in Jerusalem, the prophet

addresses a number of oracles, in which he pursues the division,

that ch. lxv. had emphasized, between the two parties in Israel.

These oracles are so intricate, that we are compelled to take up

the chapter verse by verse. The first of them begins by correcting

certain false feelings in Israel, excited by former promises of the

rebuilding and the glory of the Temple. _Thus saith Jehovah, The

heavens are My throne, and earth is My footstool: what is this for a

house that ye will build_--or, _are building--Me, and what is this

for a place for My rest? Yea, all these things_--that is, all the

visible works of God in heaven and earth--_My hand hath made_, and

so _came to pass all these things, saith Jehovah. But unto this will

I look, unto the humble and contrite in spirit, and that trembleth

at My word._ These verses do not run counter to, or even go beyond,

anything that our prophet has already said. They do not condemn the

building of the Temple: this was not possible for a prophecy which

contains ch. lx. They condemn only the kind of temple which those

whom they address had in view,--a shrine to which the presence of

Jehovah was limited, and on the raising and maintenance of which

the religion and righteousness of the people should depend. While

the former Temple was standing, the mass of the people had thus

misconceived it, imagining that it was enough for national religion

to have such a structure standing and honoured in their midst. And

now, before it is built again, the exiles are cherishing about it the

same formal and materialistic thoughts. Therefore the prophet rebukes

them, as his predecessors had rebuked their fathers, and reminds them

of a truth he has already uttered, that though the Temple is raised,

according to God's own promise and direction, it will not be to its

structure, as they conceive of it, that He will have respect, but

to the existence among them of humble and sincere personal piety.

The Temple is to be raised: _the place of His feet God will make

glorious_, and men shall gather round it from the whole earth, for

instruction, for comfort and for rejoicing. But let them not think

it to be indispensable either to God or to man,--not to God, who

has heaven for His throne and earth for His footstool; nor to man,

for God looks direct to man, if only man be humble, penitent and

sensitive to His word. These verses, then, do not go beyond the Old

Testament limit; they leave the Temple standing, but they say so much

about God's other sanctuary man, that when His use for the Temple

shall be past, His servant Stephen[294] shall be able to employ these

words to prove why it should disappear.

The next verse is extremely difficult. Here it is literally: _A

slaughterer of the ox, a slayer of a man; a sacrificer of the lamb, a

breaker of a dog's neck; an offerer of meat-offering, swine's blood;

the maker of a memorial offering of incense, one that blesseth an

idol_, or _vanity_. Four legal sacrificial acts are here coupled

with four unlawful sacrifices to idols. Does this mean that in the

eye of God, impatient even of the ritual He has consecrated, when

performed by men who do not tremble at His word, each of these lawful

sacrifices is as worthless and odious as the idolatrous practice

associated with it,--the slaughter of the ox as the offering of a

human sacrifice, and so forth? Or does the verse mean that there

are persons in Israel who combine, like the Corinthians blamed by

Paul,[295] both the true and the idolatrous ritual, both the table of

the Lord and the table of devils? Our answer will depend on whether

we take the four parallels with ver. 2, which precedes them, or with

the rest of ver. 3, to which they belong, and ver. 4. If we take them

with ver. 2, then we must adopt the first, the alternative meaning;

if with ver. 4, then the second of these meanings is the right one.

Now there is no grammatical connection, nor any transparent logical

one, between vv. 2 and 3, but there is a grammatical connection

with the rest of ver. 3. Immediately after the pairs of lawful and

unlawful sacrificial acts, ver. 3 continues, _yea, they have chosen

their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations_.

That surely signifies that the unlawful sacrifices in ver. 3 are

things already committed and delighted in, and the meaning of

putting them in parallel to the lawful sacrifices of Jehovah's

religion is either that Israelites have committed them instead of

the lawful sacrifices, or along with these. In this case, vv. 3, 4

form a separate discourse by themselves, with no relation to the

equally distinct oracle in vv. 1 and 2. The subject of vv. 3 to 4

is, therefore, the idolatrous Israelites. They are delivered unto

Satan, their choice; they shall have no part in the coming Salvation.

In ver. 5 the faithful in Israel, who have obeyed God's word by the

prophet, are comforted under the mocking of their brethren, who shall

certainly be put to shame. Already the prophet hears the preparation

of the judgement against them (ver. 6). It comes forth from the city

where they had mockingly cried for God's glory to appear. The mocked

city avenges itself on them. _Hark, a roar from the City! Hark, from

the Temple! Hark, Jehovah accomplishing vengeance on His enemies!_

A new section begins with ver. 7, and celebrates to ver. 9 the

sudden re-population of the City by her children, either as already

a fact, or, more probably, as a near certainty. Then comes a call

to the children, restored, or about to be restored, to congratulate

their mother and to enjoy her. The prophet rewakens the figure,

that is ever nearest his heart, of motherhood,--children suckled,

borne and cradled in the lap of their mother fill all his view; nay,

finer still, the grown man coming back with wounds and weariness

upon him to be comforted of his mother. _As a man whom his mother

comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in

Jerusalem. And ye shall see, and rejoice shall your heart, and your

bones shall flourish like the tender grass._ But this great light

shines not to flood all Israel in one, but to cleave the nation

in two, like a sword of judgement. _The hand of Jehovah shall be

known towards His servants, but He will have indignation against

His enemies,_--enemies, that is, within Israel. Then comes the

fiery judgement, _For by fire will Jehovah plead, and by His sword

with all flesh; and the slain of Jehovah shall be many_. Why there

should be slain of Jehovah within Israel is then explained. Within

Israel there are idolaters: _they that consecrate themselves and

practise purification for the gardens, after one in the middle;_[296]

_eaters of swine's flesh, and the Abomination, and the Mouse. They

shall come to an end together, saith Jehovah, for I_ know, or will

punish,[297] _their works and their thoughts_. In this eighteenth

verse the punctuation is uncertain, and probably the text is corrupt.

The first part of the verse should evidently go, as above, with ver.

17. Then begins a new subject.

_It is coming to gather all the nations and the tongues, and they

shall come and shall see My glory; and I will set among them a

sign_,--a marvellous and mighty act, probably of judgement, for he

immediately speaks of their survivors,--_and I will send the escaped

of them to the nations Tarshish, Put_[298] _and Lud, drawers of the

bow, to Tubal and Javan_,--that is, to far Spain, and the distances

of Africa, towards the Black Sea and to Greece, a full round of

the compass,--_the isles far off that have not heard report of Me,

nor have seen My glory; and they shall recount My glory among the

nations. And they shall bring all your brethren from among all the

nations an offering to Jehovah, on horses and in chariots and in

litters, and on mules and on dromedaries, up on the Mount of My

Holiness, Jerusalem, saith Jehovah, just as when the children of

Israel bring the offering in a clean vessel to the house of Jehovah.

And also from them will I take to be priests, to be Levites, saith

Jehovah. For like as the new heavens and the new earth which I am

making shall be standing before Me, saith Jehovah, so shall stand

your seed and your name._ But again the prophecy swerves from

the universal hope into which we expect it to break, and gives us

instead a division and a judgement: the servants of Jehovah on

one side occupied in what the prophet regards as the ideal life,

regular worship--so little did he mean ver. 1 to be a condemnation

of the Temple and its ritual!--and on the other the rebels' unburied

carcases gnawed by the worm and by fire, an abomination to all. _And

it shall come to pass from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to

sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before Me, saith Jehovah:

and they shall go out and look on the carcases of the men who have

rebelled against Me; for their worm dieth not, and their fire is not

quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh._

We have thus gone step by step through the chapter, because its

intricacies and sudden changes were not otherwise to be mastered.

What exactly it is composed of must, we fear, still remain a problem.

Who can tell whether its short, broken pieces are all originally from

our prophet's hand, or were gathered by him from others, or were the

fragments of his teaching which the reverent hands of disciples picked

carefully up that nothing might be lost? Sometimes we think it must

be this last alternative that happened; for it seems impossible that

pieces so strange to each other, so loosely connected, could have

flowed from one mind at one time. But then again we think otherwise,

when we see how the chapter as a whole continues the separation made

evident in ch. lxv., and runs it on to a last emphatic contrast.

* * * * *

So we are left by the prophecy,--not with the new heavens and the new

earth which it promised: not with the holy mountain on which none

shall hurt nor destroy, saith the Lord; not with a Jerusalem full of

glory and a people all holy, the centre of a gathered humanity,--but

with the city like to a judgement floor, and upon its narrow surface

a people divided between worship and a horrible woe.

O Jerusalem, City of the Lord, Mother eagerly desired of her

children, radiant light to them that sit in darkness and are far off,

home after exile, haven after storm,--expected as the Lord's garner,

thou art still to be only His threshing-floor, and heaven and hell

as of old shall, from new moon to new moon, through the revolving

years, lie side by side within thy narrow walls! For from the day

that Araunah the Jebusite threshed out his sheaves upon thy high

windswept rock, to the day when the Son of Man standing over against

thee divided in His last discourse the sheep from the goats, the wise

from the foolish, and the loving from the selfish, thou hast been

appointed of God for trial and separation and judgement.

It is a terrible ending to such a prophecy as ours. But is any

other possible? We ask how can this contiguity of heaven and hell

be within the Lord's own city, after all His yearning and jealousy

for her, after His fierce agony and strife with her enemies, after

so clear a revelation of Himself, so long a providence, so glorious

a deliverance? Yet, it is plain that nothing else can result, if

the men on whose ears the great prophecy had fallen, with all its

music and all its gospel, and who had been partakers of the Lord's

Deliverance, did yet continue to prefer their idols, their swine's

flesh, their mouse, their broth of abominable things, their sitting

in graves, to so evident a God and to so great a grace.

It is a terrible ending, but it is the same as upon the same floor

Christ set to His teaching,--the gospel net cast wide, but only to

draw in both good and bad upon a beach of judgement; the wedding

feast thrown open and men compelled to come in, but among them a

heart whom grace so great could not awe even to decency; Christ's

Gospel preached, His Example evident, and Himself owned as Lord, and

nevertheless some whom neither the hearing nor the seeing nor the

owning with their lips did lift to unselfishness or stir to pity.

Therefore He who had cried, _Come all unto Me_, was compelled to

close by saying to many, _Depart_.

It is a terrible ending, but one only too conceivable. For though

God is love, man is free,--free to turn from that love; free to be

as though he had never felt it; free to put away from himself the

highest, clearest, most urgent grace that God can show. But to do

this is the judgement.

_Lord, are there few that be saved?_ The Lord did not answer the

question but by bidding the questioner take heed to himself: _Strive

to enter in at the strait gate_.

* * * * *

Almighty and most merciful God, who hast sent this book to be the

revelation of Thy great love to man, and of Thy power and will to

save him, grant that our study of it may not have been in vain by the

callousness or carelessness of our hearts, but that by it we may be

confirmed in penitence, lifted to hope, made strong for service, and

above all filled with the true knowledge of Thee and of Thy Son Jesus

Christ. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[286] Ch. lxiii. 18 and lxiv. 10, 11. In the Hebrew ch. lxiv. begins

a verse later than it does in the English version.

[287] Semites had a horror of painting the Deity in any form. But

when God had to be imagined or described, they chose the form of a

man and attributed to Him human features. Chiefly they thought of His

face. To see His face, to come into the light of His countenance,

was the way their hearts expressed longing for the living God. Exod.

xxiii. 14; Psalm xxxi. 16, xxxiv. 16, lxxx. 7. But among the heathen

Semites God's face was separated from God Himself, and worshipped as

a separate god. In _heathen_ Semitic religions there are a number of

deities who are the faces of others. But the Hebrew writers, with

every temptation to do the same, maintained their monotheism, and

went no farther than to speak of the _angel of God's Face_. And in

all the beautiful narratives of Genesis, Exodus and Judges about the

glorious Presence that led Israel against their enemies, the angel

of God's face is an equivalent of God Himself. Jacob said, the _God

which hath fed me, and the angel which hath redeemed me, bless the

lads_. In Judges this angel's word is God's Word.

[288] See pp. 398 ff.

[289] Cheyne. Similarly Bredenkamp, who contends that the prophecy is

Isaianic, and to be dated from the time of Manasseh.

[290] _Cf._ Dillmann, _in loco_.

[291] Among Orientals the planets Jupiter and Venus were worshipped

as the Larger and the Lesser Luck. They were worshipped as Merodach

and Istar among the Babylonians. Merodach was worshipped for

prosperity (_cf._ Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 460, 476, 488). It

may be Merodach and Istar, to whom are here given the name Gad, or

Luck (_cf._ Genesis xxii. 11, and the name Baal Gad in the Lebanon

valley) and Meni, or Fate, Fortune (_cf._ Arabic al-manijjat,

fate; Wellhausen, _Skizzen_, iii., 22 ff., 189). There was in the

Babylonian Pantheon a "Manu the Great who presided over fate"

(Lenormant, _Chaldean Magic_, etc., p. 120). Instances of idolatrous

feasts will be found in Sayce, _op. cit._, p. 539; _cf._ 1 Cor. x.

21, _Ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table

of devils_. See what is said in p. 62 of this volume about the

connection of idolatry and commerce.

[292] Bleek (5th ed., pp. 287, 288) holds ch. lxvi. to be by a prophet

who lived in Palestine after the resumption of sacrificial worship (vv.

3, 6, 30), that is, upon the altar of burnt-offering which the Returned

had erected there, and at a time when the temple-building had begun.

Vatke also holds to a post-exilic date, _Einleitung in das A.T._, pp.

625, 630. Kuenen, too, makes the chapter post-exilic. Bredenkamp takes

vv. 1-6 for Palestinian, but pre-exilic, and ascribes them to Isaiah.

With ver. 1 he compares 1 Kings viii. 27; and as to ver. 6 he asks, How

could the unbelieving exiles be in the neighbourhood of the Temple and

hear Jehovah's voice in thunder from it? Vv. 7-14 he takes as exilic,

based on an Isaianic model.

[293] So Dillmann and Driver; Cheyne is doubtful.

[294] Acts vii. 49.

[295] 1 Cor. x.

[296] So, in literal translation of the text, _the One_ being a

master of ceremonies, who, standing in the middle, was imitated

by the worshippers (_cf._ Baudissin, _Studien zur Semitischen

Religions-geschichte_, i., p. 315, who combats Lagarde's and Selden's

view, that אהד, _one_, stands for the God Hadad). The Massoretes read

the feminine form of one, which might mean some goddess.

[297] _Know_, Pesh. and some editions of the LXX.; _punish_,

Delitzsch and Cheyne.

[298] The Hebrew text has Pul, the LXX. Put. Put and Lud occur

together, Ezek. xxvii. 10-xxx. 5. Put is Punt, the Egyptian name for

East Africa. Lud is not Lydia, but a North African nation. Jeremiah,

xlvi. 9, mentions, along with Cush, Put and the Ludim in the service

of Egypt, and the Ludim as famous with the bow.

INDEX TO CHAPS. XL.-LXVI.

_The Arabic numerals on the right-hand column refer to the pages, the

Roman to the chapters of the volume._

xl. 1-11 67, V.

xl. 12-31 VI.

xli.-xlv. 9

xli. VII.

xli. 2 164 f.

xli. 8-20 244 f., 256

xli. 25 12, 113, 130 f., 145

xli. 26 225

xlii. 1-7 261 f., XVIII.

xlii. 8-17 VIII.

xlii. 18 ff. 262 f.

xlii. 22 59

xlii.-xliii. XV.

xliii.-xlviii. IX.

xliii. 1-7 257

xliii. 3, 4 246

xliii. 8, 10 158 f., 263 f.

xliii. 14 147, 246

xliii. 16-19 158

xliii. 22-24 156

xliii. 25 157

xliv. 1 ff. 256

xliv. 7, 8 158

xliv. 9-20 153 f.

xliv. 21 256

xliv. 21, 22 157

xliv. 24-28 160, X.

xlv. 1-13 X.

xlv. 8 228

xlv. 13 224

xlv. 18 227

xlv. 19 159, 224

xlv. 19-25 225 f.

xlvi. XI.

xlvi. 11 168

xlvi. 13 228

xlvii. XII.

xlvii. 6 59

xlviii. XIII.

xlviii. 18 221

xlviii. 22 17

xlix. 1-9 240 f., 264 f., XIX., 381.

xlix. 9-26 XXI.

l. 1-3 XXI.

l. 4-11 XIX.

li.-lii. 12 XXI.

li. 5 228

lii. 7 50

lii. 13-liii. 18, 267, XX.

liv.-lvi. 8 XXII.

liv. 397

lv. 402

lvi. 1-8 406

lvi. 1 222, 229

lvi. 9-lix. 18 f., XXIII.

lvi. 9-lvii. 409

lviii. 61, 414

lviii. 2 222

lix. 423

lix. 4 222

lx.-lxiii. 7 19, XXIV.

lx. 429

lxi., lxii. 435

lxi. 10, 228

lxi. 11 220

lxiii. 2 220

lxiii. 1-6 441

lxiii. 7-lxvi. 19 f., XXV.

lxiii. 7-lxiv. 446

lxiv. 5 222

lxv. 455

lxvi. 458

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

(_The Arabic numerals refer to pages, the Roman to chapters._)

Anshan or Anzan, 112 f.

Babylon, 55 ff.;

capture of, 146 f., xii.;

compared with Rome,189, 199 f.;

meaning of its name, 191;

its pride, 191;

early history, 192 n.;

cruelty, 201;

yielding to Cyrus, 193;

religion, 193;

in the modern world, 200 ff.;

ruin, 199, 204;

call to leave, 211, 396.

Babylonia, described, 53;

history of, 107 ff., 146 f.

Baudissin, 463.

Belshazzar, 113.

Bredenkamp argues for "Isaianic" elements in Isa. xl.-lxvi., 24, 205,

211.

Briggs, Prof., theory of two different writings in Isa. xl.-lxvi., 18,

315, 336, cf. 234.

Calvin, testimony to exilic authorship of Isa. xl.-lxvi., 14 f.;

fair exegesis, 215;

Commentary, _Introduction_.

Captivity. _See_ Exile.

Chaldea. _See_ Babylon.

Astrology, 193, 198.

Cheyne, Prof., 19, 121, 211, 435.

Crœsus, 113;

and the oracles, 114;

defeated by Cyrus, 144 f.

Cyropædia, 164, 170.

Cyrus, alleged mention of his name by Isaiah, 7;

not monotheist, 40, 165, 179;

not a prediction but a fulfilment, 9, 11, 66, 111 ff.;

Jehovah's claim on, 130, 166, 144, 162 ff.;

capture of Babylon, 146, 178;

Greek presentation of, compared with Hebrew, 164 f., 169 ff.;

As Messiah: Hebrew objection to, 167 f., 175;

a fulfilment of prediction, 207 f.;

an elect instrument, not the Servant, 253.

Davidson, Prof. A. B., quoted, 15, 17, 306, 317.

_See also_ Introduction, 121.

Delitzsch, 121, 211, etc.

Dillmann, 435, etc.

Driver, Prof., _Isaiah: His Life and Times_, 14, 18, 121, 435, etc.

Ewald, 121, 269, 336, etc.

Exile, the Babylonian, reason of, 28 ff.;

What Israel took into Exile, iii.;

Israel in Exile, iv.;

the first deportation, number, and quality of exiles, 32 ff.;

second deportation, 35;

march to Babylon, 48 f.;

condition of the exiles, 55 ff.;

social condition of exiles, 57 ff.;

literary efforts, 59 f.;

religious life, 61;

commerce, 62;

spiritual experience, 63;

traces of exile in Jewish literature, 63;

condition of Israel at end of exile, 66.

Ezekiel, compared with Jeremiah, 34, 46;

picture of captivity, 59;

sin-bearer, 352;

and the Messiah, 404.

Face of God, 450 n.

Fasts in the exile, 61, 415.

Fatherhood of God, 453 ff.

Giesebrecht, 210.

God and history, 87 f., 100, 106 ff., 157 ff.

God and the idols, vi., ix. (especially 153).

God, His Omnipotence and Faithfulness, 121 ff., 390.

God the Saviour, 136;

Personality of, 148 f.;

Passion of God, viii.;

spirituality of Jewish conception, 137.

Gospel, or Good News. Meaning in the Exile, 437 f.;

development from then, 439 f.

Grace, proclamation of, characteristic of "Second Isaiah," 78 f.;

to fulfil service, 290.

Herodotus, quotation from, 114 f.

Hahn, 121.

Idolatry, 91, 94 ff., 116, 152 ff., 177 ff.

Incarnation, true O. T. prophecies of, 135 ff., 141.

Individualism, 41 ff.

Isaiah, the Prophet: his prophecies of exile, 23, 29 f.;

his connection with chs. xl.-lxvi., 23, 24;

are there fragments by him in ch. xl.-lxvi.? 24;

his use of the word Righteousness, 216, 218.

Isaiah, Book of: plurality of authors in, 4;

on its own testimony composite book, 4 f.

Isaiah xl.-lxvi.: their date, i.;

do not claim to be by Isaiah, 5;

New Testament quotations from, 6;

speak of exile and Cyrus as actual facts, 8, 9;

use Cyrus as a fulfilment of previous prophecies, 11, 12;

local colour, 13;

language and style, 15;

characteristic doctrine, 16;

unity, 18 f., 21,212, 222, 234, 314 f., 336 ff., 409, 441, 446;

Palestinian and pre-exilic elements, 18-20, 409 ff.;

post-exilic elements, 18, 414, 458, 465.

Isaiah xl.-lxvi.: the double problem of the prophecy, _Introduction_,

377, 378.

"Isles," or coast-lands, 109 ff.

Israel: sketch of history from Isaiah to exile, ii., iii., iv.;

uniqueness; reason of election by God, xv.;

missionary career, 44 f.;

prominence given to, 236;

elected for service, 237;

qualities of nation, 240 ff.;

Jesus a Jew, 249 f.

Jeremiah, his prediction of exile, 8, 27, 66, 79;

teaching on this contrasted with Isaiah's, 27;

Jeremiah's significance for "Second Isaiah," and foreshadowing of

the Servant of the Lord, as suffering for the people, 42, 275,

277;

and for God's Word, 330;

and as sin-bearer, 352, 358;

cf. also 326, 435 n.

Jerusalem or Zion, fall of, 30 ff.;

religious significance of its destruction, 43 ff.;

the exiles take the city's name to themselves, 47, 72;

personification of Israel under name of Zion, 382 ff.;

her restoration, 395, xxiv.;

the Bride of God, 397 ff.;

City of Judgement, 466.

Jesus Christ, and the Passion of God, viii.;

a Jew, 249;

His testimony as to His uniqueness, 283, 369 f.;

His example of service, 284, 285, 305 ff.;

called the Servant of the Lord in the _Acts_, 286;

so recognised by Peter and Paul, 287;

God's will first with Him, 298;

martyrs for the Word of God, 285, 331;

and the Fifty-third of Isaiah, 366 ff.;

as bringer of good news, 439.

John the Baptist and the Book of Isaiah, 282 f.

Josiah, King, 30.

Krüger, 435, 442.

Love of God, 76 f., viii., 399 f., 451 f.;

sin against it, 467.

Marriage, figure of religious marriage use among the Semites, 398 ff.;

purified and exalted in the Old Testament, 400;

a test of the uniqueness of Hebrew prophecy, 398 f., cf. 76 f.

Media, 107.

Mesopotamia, 51 ff.

Monotheism, 88;

and the imagination, 95 ff.;

of Israel defined, 36 ff., 129, 149 ff.

Nabunahid or Nabonidos, King of Babylon, 65, 113, 193.

Nebuchadrezzar, 32, 34, 54, 107.

New Testament quotations from Isaiah xl.-lxvi., p. 6 and references,

282, 284 f., xvii.

Persia, 111.

Pfleiderer, quoted, 127.

Positivism and the service of man, 294.

Prediction, Jehovah's claim to, 120 ff., 208;

the ri'shonoth, 206;

new things, 206.

Prophecy, in the Exile, its anonymousness, 61;

and appeal to former scriptures, 62;

precedes history as well as interprets it, 100;

uniqueness of Hebrew prophecy, 248, ff., xix., 321 ff.;

and martyrdom, 328.

Redemption of Israel. _Political_, fulfilled by Cyrus, 271;

_spiritual_, fulfilled by Servant, 271, 273.

Renan, "Natural Monotheism of the Semites," 149.

Return from exile, promise of, 46;

facts of, 57;

call to 211 ff., 396, 405, etc.

Revelation, conditions of, 73;

method of, 100 f., 148 f.

_See_ Prophecy.

Righteousness, 127 f., xiv.;

root and growth of word, 215 f.;

of Israel, 217;

of Jehovah, 224, cf. 365, 392, 410, 436 f.

Sabbath, 61, 422.

Sacramental character of prophecy, 89 f.

Sayce, 163, 165, 179, 457.

Sin, its effects, 387;

its punishment, 29, 465 ff.;

grounds of forgiveness, 79;

borne by God, viii., 183;

by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, 352;

by the Servant, xx.

Sinim, land of, 383.

Socialism and the service of man, xviii.

Suffering, vicarious, Jeremiah 422, 64;

of the Servant, 272 f., 331.

The Servant of Jehovah, God's commission of, 132 f.;

Christ's relation to, 142;

possibly speaker summing moral meaning of Exile, 210;

passages on, 233;

his character, 254;

as a nation, 236 ff., 256 f.;

as part of a nation, 257 ff.;

as realised by one man--prophet and martyr, 276;

a person, 276, etc.;

a personification, 266;

fulfilled by Christ, 267, 281 ff., 367;

an individual, objections answered to recognising this--

1st, 270,

2nd, 272,

3rd, 274;

cf. xx., 405.

The Servant's office, extended by Paul, 287 f.;

by Peter, 286 f.

The Servant's chief end, 317;

as prophet and martyr, 313 ff.;

as sin-bearer, xx.

Voice, the human, in Isaiah xl.-lxvi., 302, 416.

Wellhausen, 238, 269, 457 n.

Xenophanes, the Eleatic, contemporary of "Second Isaiah," 125.

Xenophon, portrait of Cyrus, 163 f.

HEBREW AND GREEK WORDS SPECIALLY TREATED.

אײם, 109

ארץ and הארץ, 262, 292, 298.

עם ריתב, 262.

בשר, 84, 85, 437 ff.

נם, 206.

על־לב דבר, 76.

משלם, 263.

משפט, 299.

ענו, 384.

נשא and מבל, 179 ff., 343, 352.

יהוה עבד, 255, xvi.

צדק and צדקה, xiv., 392.

צלח, 168.

קרא, 82.

בשם קרא, 130 f., 437 ff.

ראשנות and אחרית, 121, 206.

טראש, 117, 119.

δουλος and παις, 286 n.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. Vol. I.

CHAPS. I.--XXXIX.

=Spectator.=--"This is a very attractive book. Mr. George Adam Smith

has evidently such a mastery of the scholarship of his subject that it

would be a sheer impertinence for most scholars, even though tolerable

Hebraists, to criticise his translations; and certainly it is not the

intention of the present reviewer to attempt anything of the kind, to

do which he is absolutely incompetent. All we desire is to let English

readers know how very lucid, impressive, and, indeed, how vivid a study

of Isaiah is within their reach--the fault of the book, if it has a

fault, being rather that it finds too many points of connection between

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=Saturday Review.=--"He writes with great rhetorical power, and

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3. THE PARABOLIC TEACHING OF CHRIST: A Systematic and Critical

Study of the Parables of our Lord. Second Edition. Crown 8vo,

cloth, price 12_s._

"Professor Bruce brings to his task the learning, and the liberal

and finely sympathetic spirit, which are the best gifts of an

expositor of Scripture. His treatment of his subject is vigorous and

original."--_Spectator._

4. THE GALILEAN GOSPEL. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, price

3_s._ 6_d._

"We heartily commend this little volume as giving an outline ably

drawn of the teachings of Christ."--_Spectator._

"The product of a rich, imaginative mind, marked by scholarly

analysis, subtle insight and the suggestiveness of an original and

unconventional thinker."--_Glasgow Herald._

* * * * *

THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. Expository and Homiletic. By the Rev.

JOHN LAIDLAW, D.D., Professor of Theology, New College,

Edinburgh. Second Edition, with New Index. Crown 8vo, cloth,

7_s._ 6_d._

"Marked by the competent scholarship, the sound and cautious exegesis,

the homiletic tact, the mastery of lucid and, at times, beautiful style

which characterise his preaching."--_Theological Review._

UNTIL THE DAY BREAK, and Other Hymns and Poems Left Behind. By

HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. Crown 8vo, cloth, red edges, price 5_s._

"There is not one we could have spared; while there are several of

which it may safely be predicted that they will become universal

favourites."--_Christian Leader._

"All of them have merit as verses, and breathe a pure and sweet

spirit of Christian piety."--_Scotsman._

"A prettier gift book we could not recommend."--_Rock._

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.

_WORKS BY REV. PROF. MARCUS DODS, D.D._

1. THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. Second Edition. Crown

8vo, cloth, price 7_s._ 6_d._

"Full of earnest pleading for reality in religion, and of an

intelligent interest in modern social problems."--_Guardian._

2. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo,

cloth, price 2_s._ 6_d._

"Each book is the subject of a separate chapter, the volume being

really a series of introductions to the several Gospels and Epistles.

The authenticity, authorship, history, object, and general character

of each are discussed with admirable condensation and lucidity, and

with ample critical knowledge."--_Scotsman._

3. THE BOOK OF GENESIS. Fourth Edition. 8vo, cloth, price 7_s._ 6_d._

"The style of the book is so simple, the march of the thought so

strong and unencumbered, and there is in the ripe result such a

perfect assimilation of varied erudition, that none but fellow

craftsmen will realise the amount of study, industry, and many-sided

ability that was requisite to produce it."--_Professor Elmslie, D.D._

4. THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. First Series. The Parables recorded

by St. Matthew. New Edition. Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth,

price 3_s._ 6_d._

"There is certainly no better volume on the subject in our

language."--_Glasgow Mail._

5. THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. Second Series. The Parables recorded

by St. Luke. New Edition. Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth,

price 3_s._ 6_d._

"Expositions of marvellous clearness and insight."--_Glasgow Herald._

6. ISAAC, JACOB, AND JOSEPH. Fifth Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth,

price 3_s._ 6_d._

"The present volume is worthy of the writer's reputation. He

deals with the problems of human life and character, which these

biographies suggest, in a candid and manly fashion."--_Spectator._

7. THE PRAYER THAT TEACHES TO PRAY. Sixth Edition. Crown 8vo,

price 2_s._ 6_d._

"It is highly instructive, singularly lucid, and unmistakable for

quiet personal use."--_Clergyman's Magazine._

8. ISRAEL'S IRON AGE. Sketches from the Period of the Judges.

Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo, price 3_s._ 6_d._

"Powerful lectures. This is a noble volume, full of

strength."--_Nonconformist._

9. MOHAMMED, BUDDA, AND CHRIST. Fifth Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth,

price 3_s._ 6_d._

"To us this book is specially welcome, as an evidence, in addition

to many others, of a new outburst of earnest religious thought and

sentiment."--_Spectator._

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.

JOHN G. PATON, Missionary to the New Hebrides. An Autobiography.

FIRST PART. Edited by his Brother, Rev. JAMES PATON, B.A.

Fifteenth Thousand. With Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth, price 6_s._

JOHN G. PATON, Missionary to the New Hebrides. An Autobiography.

SECOND PART. Twelfth Thousand. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo,

cloth, price 6_s._

* * * * *

_WORKS BY THE REV. W. J. DAWSON._

I.

THE THRESHOLD OF MANHOOD: A Young Man's Words to Young Men. By the

Rev. W. J. DAWSON, Glasgow, Author of "The Makers of Modern

English," etc. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, price 3_s._ 6_d._

"His discourses are rich in thought, are lighted up with a vivid

imagination, and glow with the fire of imagination. Young men will be

charmed with the book."--_North British Daily Mail._

II.

THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. Crown 8vo, price 5_s._

"Mr. Dawson has evidently made a careful study of his subject, and

has read widely and with considerable range of sympathy. His work

contains a good deal of really useful and unpretending information,

likely to be of considerable service to the readers whose wellbeing

he has at heart; and with this is combined a sound and appreciative

judgment which ought not to be unnoticed."--_Guardian._

* * * * *

THE LIVING CHRIST AND THE FOUR GOSPELS. By R. W. DALE, LL.D. Crown

8vo, cloth, price 6_s._

"Characterised by Dr. Dale's usual breadth of view, strong common

sense, and clear, forcible style."--_Manchester Examiner._

"As a man of culture and eloquence he has put the case strongly

and well, and it will not be surprising if his book, which is not

written, he tells us, for Masters of Arts, but in the first instance

for members of his own congregation, and then for all ordinary

people who take an interest in such matters, should be the means of

convincing many that the assumptions sometimes made about late origin

of the Gospels, etc., are utterly unfounded."--_Scotsman._

"Dr. Dale has enriched theological literature with many volumes full

of the strenuous thinking of a man thoroughly alive with the life

of his time. He has given us one or two volumes which will be read

when the problems of this present time have been forgotten; but he

has given us nothing which is more likely to be helpful, both to his

own and to future generations, than 'The Living Christ and the Four

Gospels.'... Its publication is a most helpful sign of the times. It

will bring light to many who have been feeling their way. It will

encourage many to speak out. It will help to dissipate the mists

begotten by spurious Protestantism, and to show us where we are and

what the ground is that we stand upon. A more significant or a more

valuable book has not appeared for many a day."--_Professor Marcus

Dods, in the "British Weekly."_

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible, by George Adam Smith