This POVERTY of PEACE is not so fully expressed in the following
chapters, and indeed seems crowded out by the sense of the _iniquity of
the inhabitants of the earth_ and the desire for their judgement (xxvi.
21).
2. The feeling of the POVERTY of JUSTICE is very strong in this
prophecy. But it is to be satisfied; in part it has been satisfied (xxv.
1-4). _A strong city_, probably Babylon, has fallen. _Moab shall be
trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in the water of
the dunghill._ The complete judgement is to come when the Lord shall
destroy the two _Leviathans_ and the great _Dragon of the west_ (xxvii.
1). It is followed by the restoration of Israel to the state in which
Isaiah (chap. v. 1) sang so sweetly of her. _A pleasant vineyard, sing
ye of her. I, Jehovah, her Keeper, moment by moment do I water her;
lest any make a raid upon her, night and day will I keep her._ The
Hebrew text then reads, _Fury is not in Me_; but probably the Septuagint
version has preserved the original meaning: _I have no walls_. If this
be correct, then Jehovah is describing the present state of Jerusalem,
the fulfilment of Isaiah's threat, chap. v. 6: _Walls I have not; let
there but be briers and thorns before me! With war will I stride against
them; I will burn them together._ But then there breaks the softer
alternative of the reconciliation of Judah's enemies: _Or else let him
seize hold of My strength; let him make peace with Me--peace let him
make with Me_. In such a peace Israel shall spread, and his fulness
become the riches of the Gentiles. _In that by-and-bye Jacob shall take
root, Israel blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with
fruit._
Perhaps the wildest cries that rose from Israel's famine of justice were
those which found expression in chap. xxxiv. This chapter is so largely
a repetition of feelings we have already met with elsewhere in the Book
of Isaiah, that it is necessary now only to mention its original
features. The subject is, as in chap. xiii., the Lord's judgement upon
all the nations; and as chap. xiii. singled out Babylon for special
doom, so chap. xxxiv. singles out Edom. The reason of this distinction
will be very plain to the reader of the Old Testament. From the day the
twins struggled in their mother Rebekah's womb, Israel and Edom were
either at open war or burned towards each other with a hate, which was
the more intense for wanting opportunities of gratification. It is an
Eastern edition of the worst chapters in the history of England and
Ireland. No bloodier massacres stained Jewish hands than those which
attended their invasions of Edom, and Jewish psalms of vengeance are
never more flagrant than when they touch the name of the children of
Esau. The only gentle utterance of the Old Testament upon Israel's
hereditary foe is a comfortless enigma. Isaiah's _Oracle for Dumah_
(xxii. 11 f.), shows that even that large-hearted prophet, in face of
his people's age-long resentment at Edom's total want of appreciation of
Israel's spiritual superiority, could offer Edom, though for the moment
submissive and inquiring, nothing but a sad, ambiguous answer. Edom and
Israel, each after his fashion, exulted in the other's misfortunes:
Israel by bitter satire when Edom's impregnable mountain-range was
treacherously seized and overrun by his allies (Obadiah 4-9); Edom, with
the harassing, pillaging habits of a highland tribe, hanging on to the
skirts of Judah's great enemies, and cutting off Jewish fugitives, or
selling them into slavery, or malignantly completing the ruin of
Jerusalem's walls after her overthrow by the Chaldeans (Obadiah 10-14;
Ezek. xxxv. 10-15; Ps. cxxxi. 7). In _the quarrel of Zion_ with the
nations of the world Edom had taken the wrong side,--his profane, earthy
nature incapable of understanding his brother's spiritual claims, and
therefore envious of him, with the brutal malice of ignorance, and
spitefully glad to assist in disappointing such claims. This is what we
must remember when we read the indignant verses of chap. xxxiv. Israel,
conscious of his spiritual calling in the world, felt bitter resentment
that his own brother should be so vulgarly hostile to his attempts to
carry it out. It is not our wish to defend the temper of Israel towards
Edom. The silence of Christ before the Edomite Herod and his men of war
has taught the spiritual servants of God what is their proper attitude
towards the malignant and obscene treatment of their claims by vulgar
men. But at least let us remember that chap. xxxiv., for all its
fierceness, is inspired by Israel's conviction of a spiritual destiny
and service for God, and by the natural resentment that his own kith and
kin should be doing their best to render these futile. That a famine of
bread makes its victims delirious does not tempt us to doubt the
genuineness of their need and suffering. As little ought we to doubt or
to ignore the reality or the purity of those spiritual convictions, the
prolonged starvation of which bred in Israel such feverish hate against
his twin-brother Esau. Chap. xxxiv., with all its proud prophecy of
judgement, is, therefore, also a symptom of that aspect of Israel's
poverty of heart, which we have called a hunger for the Divine justice.
3. POVERTY OF THE EXILE. But as fair flowers bloom upon rough stalks, so
from Israel's stern challenges of justice there break sweet prayers for
home. Chap. xxxiv., the effusion of vengeance on Edom, is followed by
chap. xxxv., the going forth of hope to the return from exile and the
establishment of the ransomed of the Lord in Zion.[83] Chap. xxxv. opens
with a prospect beyond the return, but after the first two verses
addresses itself to the people still in a foreign captivity, speaking of
their salvation (vv. 3, 4), of the miracles that will take place in
themselves (vv. 5, 6) and in the desert between them and their home (vv.
6, 7), of the highway which God shall build, evident and secure (vv. 8,
9), and of the final arrival in Zion (ver. 10). In that march the usual
disappointments and illusions of desert life shall disappear. _The
mirage shall become a pool_; and the clump of vegetation which afar off
the hasty traveller hails for a sign of water, but which on his approach
he discovers to be the withered grass of a _jackal's lair_, shall indeed
be _reeds and rushes_, standing green in fresh water. Out of this
exuberant fertility there emerges in the prophet's thoughts a great
highway, on which the poetry of the chapter gathers and reaches its
climax. Have we of this nineteenth century, with our more rapid means of
passage, not forgotten the poetry of the road? Are we able to appreciate
either the intrinsic usefulness or the gracious symbolism of the king's
highway? How can we know it as the Bible-writers or our forefathers knew
it when they made the road the main line of their allegories and
parables of life? Let us listen to these verses as they strike the three
great notes in the music of the road: _And an highway shall be there,
and a way; yea, The Way of Holiness shall it be called, for the unclean
shall not pass over it_--that is what is to distinguish this road from
all other roads. But here is what it is as being a road. First, it shall
be unmistakably plain: _The wayfaring man, yea fools, shall not err
therein_. Second, it shall be perfectly secure: _No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon; they shall not be met with
there_. Third, it shall bring to a safe arrival and ensure a complete
overtaking: _And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come with
singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they
shall overtake gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee
away_.
[83] Even at the risk of incurring Canon Cheyne's charge of
"ineradicable error," I feel I must keep to the older view of chap.
xxxv. which makes it refer to the return from exile. No doubt the
chapter covers more than the mere return, and includes "the glorious
condition of Israel after the return;" but vv. 4 and 10 are undoubtedly
addressed to Jews still in exile and undelivered.
4. So Israel was to come home. But to Israel home meant the Temple, and
the Temple meant God. The poverty of the Exile was, in the essence of
it, POVERTY OF GOD, POVERTY OF LOVE. The prayers which express this are
very beautiful,--that trail like wounded animals to the feet of their
master, and look up in His face with large eyes of pain. _And they shall
say in that day, Lo, this is our God: we have waited for Him, that He
should save us; this is the LORD: we have waited for Him; we will
rejoice and be glad in His salvation.... Yea, in the way of Thy
ordinances, O LORD, have we waited for Thee; to Thy name and to Thy
Memorial was the desire of our soul. With my soul have I desired Thee in
the night; yea, by my spirit within me do I seek Thee with dawn_ (chaps.
xxv. 9; xxvi. 8).
An Arctic explorer was once asked, whether during eight months of slow
starvation which he and his comrades endured they suffered much from the
pangs of hunger. No, he answered, we lost them in the sense of
abandonment, in the feeling that our countrymen had forgotten us and
were not coming to the rescue. It was not till we were rescued and
looked in human faces that we felt how hungry we were. So is it ever
with God's poor. They forget all other need, as Israel did, in their
need of God. Their outward poverty is only the weeds of their heart's
widowhood. _But Jehovah of hosts shall make to all the peoples in this
mountain a banquet of fat things, a banquet of wines on the lees, fat
things bemarrowed, wines on the lees refined._
We need only note here--for it will come up for detailed treatment in
connection with the second half of Isaiah--that the centre of Israel's
restored life is to be the Temple, not, as in Isaiah's day, the king;
that her dispersed are to gather from all parts of the world at the
sound of the Temple _trumpet_; and that her national life is to consist
in worship (cf. xxvii. 13).
* * * * *
These then were four aspects of Israel's poverty of heart: a hunger for
pardon, a hunger for justice, a hunger for home, and a hunger for God.
For the returning Jews these wants were satisfied only to reveal a
deeper poverty still, the complaint and comfort of which we must reserve
to another chapter.
CHAPTER XXX.
_THE RESURRECTION._
ISAIAH xxvi. 14-19; xxv. 6-9.
Granted the pardon, the justice, the Temple and the God, which the
returning exiles now enjoyed, the possession of these only makes more
painful the shortness of life itself. This life is too shallow and too
frail a vessel to hold peace and righteousness and worship and the love
of God. St. Paul has said, _If in this life only we have hope in Christ,
we are of all men most miserable_. What avails it to have been pardoned,
to have regained the Holy Land and the face of God, if the dear dead are
left behind in graves of exile, and all the living must soon pass into
that captivity,[84] from which there is no return?
[84] Hezekiah's expression for death, xxxviii. 12.
It must have been thoughts like these, which led to the expression of
one of the most abrupt and powerful of the few hopes of the resurrection
which the Old Testament contains. This hope, which lightens chap. xxv.
7, 8, bursts through again--without logical connection with the
context--in vv. 14-19 of chap. xxvi.
The English version makes ver. 14 to continue the reference to the
lords, whom in ver. 13 Israel confesses to have served instead of
Jehovah. "They are _dead; they shall not live_: they are _deceased; they
shall not rise_." Our translators have thus intruded into their version
the verb "they are," of which the original is without a trace. In the
original, _dead_ and _deceased_ (literally _shades_) are themselves the
subject of the sentence--a new subject and without logical connection
with what has gone before. The literal translation of ver. 14 therefore
runs: _Dead men do not live; shades do not rise: wherefore Thou visitest
them and destroyest them, and perisheth all memory of them_. The prophet
states a fact, and draws an inference. The fact is, that no one has ever
returned from the dead; the inference, that it is God's own _visitation_
or _sentence_ which has gone forth upon them, and they have really
ceased to exist. But how intolerable a thought is this in presence of
the other fact that God has here on earth above gloriously enlarged and
established His people (ver. 15). _Thou hast increased the nation,
Jehovah; Thou hast increased the nation. Thou hast covered Thyself with
glory; Thou hast expanded all the boundaries of the land._ To this
follows a verse (16), the sense of which is obscure, but palpable. It
"feels" to mean that the contrast which the prophet has just painted
between the absolute perishing of the dead and the glory of the Church
above ground is the cause of great despair and groaning: _O Jehovah, in
The Trouble they supplicate Thee; they pour out incantations when Thy
discipline is upon them_.[85] In face of _The_ Trouble and _The_
Discipline _par excellence_ of God, what else can man do but betake
himself to God? God sent death; in death He is the only resource.
Israel's feelings in presence of The Trouble are now expressed in ver.
17: _Like as a woman with child that draweth near the time of her
delivery writheth and crieth out in her pangs, so have we been before
Thee, O Jehovah_. Thy Church on earth is pregnant with a life, which
death does not allow to come to the birth. _We have been with child; we
have been in the pangs, as it were; we have brought forth wind; we make
not the earth_, in spite of all we have really accomplished upon it in
our return, our restoration and our enjoyment of Thy presence--_we make
not the earth salvation, neither are the inhabitants of the world
born_.[86]
[85] I think this must be the meaning of ver. 16, if we are to allow
that it has any sympathy with vv. 14 and 15. Bredenkamp suggests that
the persons meant are themselves the dead. Jehovah has glorified the
Church on earth; but the dead below are still in trouble, and _pour out
prayers_ (Virgil's "preces fundunt," _Æneid_, vi., 55), beneath this
punishment which God causes to pass on all men (ver. 14). Bredenkamp
bases this exegesis chiefly on the word for "prayer," which means
_chirping_ or _whispering_, a kind of voice imputed to the shades by the
Hebrews and other ancient peoples. But while this word does originally
mean _whispering_, it is never in Scripture applied to the dead, but, on
the other hand, is a frequent name for _divining_ or _incantation_. I
therefore have felt compelled to understand it as used in this passage
of the living, whose only resource in face of death--_Goa's discipline
par excellence_--is to pour out incantations. If it be objected that the
prophet would scarcely parallel the ordinary incantations on behalf of
the dead with supplications to Jehovah, the answer is that he is talking
poetically or popularly.
[86] English version, _fallen; i.e._, like our expression for the birth
of animals, _dropped_.
The figures are bold. Israel achieves, through God's grace, everything
but the recovery of her dead; this, which alone is worth calling
_salvation_, remains wanting to her great record of deliverances. The
living Israel is restored, but how meagre a proportion of the people it
is! The graves of home and of exile do not give up their dead. These are
not born again to be inhabitants of the upper world.
The figures are bold, but bolder is the hope that breaks from them. Like
as when the Trumpet shall sound, ver. 19 peals forth the promise of the
resurrection--peals the promise forth, in spite of all experience,
unsupported by any argument, and upon the strength of its own inherent
music. _Thy dead shall live! my dead bodies shall arise!_ The change of
the personal pronoun is singularly dramatic. Returned Israel is the
speaker, first speaking to herself: _thy dead_, as if upon the
depopulated land, in face of all its homes in ruin, and only the
sepulchres of ages standing grim and steadfast, she addressed some
despairing double of herself; and secondly speaking _of_ herself: _my
dead bodies_, as if all the inhabitants of these tombs, though dead,
were still her own, still part of her, the living Israel, and able to
arise and bless with their numbers their bereaved mother. These she now
addresses: _Awake and sing, ye dwellers in the dust, for a dew of lights
is Thy dew, and the land bringeth forth the dead_.[87]
[87] Technical Hebrew word for the inhabitants of the underworld--_the
shades_.
If one has seen a place of graves in the East, he will appreciate the
elements of this figure, which takes _dust_ for death and _dew_ for
life. With our damp graveyards mould has become the traditional
trappings of death; but where under the hot Eastern sun things do not
rot into lower forms of life, but crumble into sapless powder, that will
not keep a worm in life, _dust_ is the natural symbol of death. When
they die, men go not to feed fat the mould, but _down into the dust_;
and there the foot of the living falls silent, and his voice is choked,
and the light is thickened and in retreat, as if it were creeping away
to die. The only creatures the visitor starts are timid, unclean bats,
that flutter and whisper about him like the ghosts of the dead. There
are no flowers in an Eastern cemetery; and the withered branches and
other ornaments are thickly powdered with the same dust that chokes, and
silences and darkens all.
Hence the Semitic conception of the underworld was dominated by dust. It
was not water nor fire nor frost nor altogether darkness, which made the
infernal prison horrible, but that upon its floor and rafters, hewn from
the roots and ribs of the primeval mountains, dust lay deep and choking.
Amid all the horrors he imagined for the dead, Dante did not include one
more awful than the horror of dust. The picture which the northern
Semites had before them when they turned their faces to the wall was of
this kind.[88]
[88] Extracted from the Assyrian _Descent of Istar to Hades_ (Dr.
Jeremias' German translation, p. 11, and _Records of the Past_, i.,
145).
The house of darkness....
The house men enter, but cannot depart from.
The road men go, but cannot return.
The house from whose dwellers the light is withdrawn.
The place where dust is their food, their nourishment clay.
The light they behold not; in darkness they dwell.
They are clothed like birds, all fluttering wings.
On the door and the gateposts, the dust lieth deep.
Either, then, an Eastern sepulchre, or this its infernal double, was
gaping before the prophet's eyes. What more final and hopeless than the
dust and the dark of it?
But for dust there is dew, and even to graveyards the morning comes that
brings dew and light together. The wonder of dew is that it is given
from a clear heaven, and that it comes to sight with the dawn. If the
Oriental looks up when dew is falling, he sees nothing to thank for it
between him and the stars. If he sees dew in the morning, it is equal
liquid and lustre; it seems to distil from the beams of the sun--_the
sun, which riseth with healing under his wings_. The dew is thus doubly
"dew of light." But our prophet ascribes the dew of God, that is to
raise the dead, neither to stars nor dawn, but, because of its Divine
power, to that higher supernal glory which the Hebrews conceived to have
existed before the sun, and which they styled, as they styled their God,
by the plural of majesty: _A dew of lights is Thy dew_.[89] As, when the
dawn comes, the drooping flowers of yesterday are seen erect and
lustrous with the dew, every spike a crown of glory, so also shall be
the resurrection of the dead. There is no shadow of a reason for
limiting this promise to that to which some other passages of
resurrection in the Old Testament have to be limited: a corporate
restoration of the holy State or Church. This is the resurrection of its
individual members to a community which is already restored, the
recovery by Israel of her dead men and women from their separate graves,
each with his own freshness and beauty, in that glorious morning when
the Sun of righteousness shall arise, with healing under His wings--_Thy
dew_, O Jehovah!
[89] Cf. James i. 17.
Attempts are so often made to trace the hopes of resurrection, which
break the prevailing silence of the Old Testament on a future life, to
foreign influences experienced in the Exile, that it is well to
emphasize the origin and occasion of the hopes that utter themselves so
abruptly in this passage. Surely nothing could be more inextricably
woven with the national fortunes of Israel, as nothing could be more
native and original to Israel's temper, than the verses just expounded.
We need not deny that their residence among a people, accustomed as the
Babylonians were to belief in the resurrection, may have thawed in the
Jews that reserve which the Old Testament clearly shows that they
exhibited towards a future life. The Babylonians themselves had received
most of their suggestions of the next world from a non-Semitic race; and
therefore it would not be to imagine anything alien to the ascertained
methods of Providence if we were to suppose that the Hebrews, who showed
what we have already called the Semitic want of interest in a future
life, were intellectually tempered by their foreign associations to a
readiness to receive any suggestions of immortality, which the Spirit of
God might offer them through their own religious experience. That it was
this last, which was the effective cause of Israel's hopes for the
resurrection of her dead, our passage puts beyond doubt. Chap. xxvi.
shows us that the occasion of these hopes was what is not often noticed:
the returned exiles' disappointment with the meagre repopulation of the
holy territory. A restoration of the State or community was not enough:
the heart of Israel wanted back in their numbers her dead sons and
daughters.
If the occasion of these hopes was thus an event in Israel's own
national history, and if the impulse to them was given by so natural an
instinct of her own heart, Israel was equally indebted to herself for
the convictions that the instinct was not in vain. Nothing is more clear
in our passage than that Israel's first ground of hope in a future life
was her simple, untaught reflection upon the power of her God. Death was
_His chastening_. Death came from Him, and remained in His power. Surely
He would deliver from it. This was a very old belief in Israel. _The
Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to Sheol and bringeth
up._ Such words, of course, might be only an extreme figure for recovery
from disease, and the silence of so great a saint as Hezekiah about any
other issue into life than by convalescence from mortal sickness
staggers us into doubt whether an Israelite ever did think of a
resurrection. But still there was Jehovah's almightiness; a man could
rest his future on that, even if he had not light to think out what sort
of a future it would be. So mark in our passage, how confidence is
chiefly derived from the simple utterance of the name of Jehovah, and
how He is hailed as _our God_. It seems enough to the prophet to connect
life with Him and to say merely, _Thy dew_. As death is God's own
discipline, so life, _Thy dew_, is with Him also.
Thus in its foundation the Old Testament doctrine of the resurrection is
but the conviction of the sufficiency of God Himself, a conviction which
Christ turned upon Himself when He said, _I am the Resurrection and the
Life. Because I live, ye shall live also._
If any object that in this picture of a resurrection we have no real
persuasion of immortality, but simply the natural, though impossible,
wish of a bereaved people that their dead should to-day rise from their
graves to share to-day's return and glory--a revival as special and
extraordinary as that appearing of the dead in the streets of Jerusalem
when the Atonement was accomplished, but by no means that general
resurrection at the last day which is an article of the Christian
faith--if any one should bring this objection, then let him be referred
to the previous promise of immortality in chap. xxv. The universal and
final character of the promise made there is as evident as of that for
which Paul borrowed its terms in order to utter the absolute
consequences of the resurrection of the Son of God: _Death is swallowed
up in victory_. For the prophet, having in ver. 6 described the
restoration of the people, whom exile had starved with a famine of
ordinances, to _a feast in Zion of fat things and wines on the lees well
refined_, intimates that as certainly as exile has been abolished, with
its dearth of spiritual intercourse, so certainly shall God Himself
destroy death: _And He shall swallow up in this mountain_--perhaps it is
imagined, as the sun devours the morning mist on the hills--_the mask of
the veil, the veil that is upon all the peoples, and the film spun upon
all the nations. He hath swallowed up death for ever, and the Lord
Jehovah shall wipe away tears from off all faces, and the reproach of
His people shall He remove from off all the earth, for Jehovah hath
spoken it. And they shall say in that day, Behold, this is our God: we
have waited for Him, and He shall save us; this is Jehovah: we have
waited for Him; we will rejoice and be glad in His salvation._ Thus over
all doubts, and in spite of universal human experience, the prophet
depends for immortality on God Himself. In chap. xxvi. 3 our version
beautifully renders, _Thou wilt keep_ him _in perfect peace_ whose
_mind_ is _stayed_ on Thee, _because he trusteth in Thee_. This is a
confidence valid for the next life as well as for this. _Therefore trust
ye in the LORD_ for ever. Amen.
Almighty God, we praise Thee that, in the weakness of all our love and
the darkness of all our knowledge before death, Thou hast placed
assurance of eternal life in simple faith upon Thyself. Let this faith
be richly ours. By Thine omnipotence, by Thy righteousness, by the love
Thou hast vouchsafed, we lift ourselves and rest upon Thy word. _Because
I live, ye shall live also._ Oh keep us steadfast in union with Thyself,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
INDEX TO CHAPS. I.-XXXIX.
CHAPTERS OF DATE B.C. CHAPTERS OF THE
ISAIAH. EXPOSITION.
i. 701 I., XIX., p. 311 ff.
ii.-iv. 740-735 II.
v. 735 III.
vi. 740; IV., XXVI., 391 f.
written 735 or 727
vii.-ix. 7 734-732 VI.
vii. 14 ff. 734 VII. 133
viii. 734-733 VII. 135
ix. 1-7 732 VII. 136
ix. 8-x. 4 735 III. 47 ff.
x. 5-34 About 721 IX. 147
xi. [xii.] About 720? X.
xi. 1-6 VII. 138
xiii.-xiv. 23 ? XXVII.
xiv. 24-27 Towards 701 XVII. 272
xiv. 28-32 705 XVII. 272
xv.-xvi. 12 ? XVII. 273
xvi. 13, 14 711 or 704? XVII. 273
xvii. 1-11 Between 736 and 732 XVII. 274
xvii. 12-14 ? XVII. 274, 277, 281 f.
xviii. 711 or towards 701? XVII. 275
xix. 703 or after 700? XVII. 275, 278, 284 ff.
xx. 711-709 XI. 198-200, XVII. 276
xxi. 1-10 Probably 709 XI. 201, XVII. 276
xxi. 11, 12 Between 704 and 701 XVII. 276
xxi. 13, 17 XVII. 277
xxii. 701 XIX., XX.
xxiii. 703 or 702 XVII. 277, XVIII.
xxiv. ? XXVIII.
xxv.-xxvii. ? XXIX.-XXX.
xxviii. About 725 VIII. 149
xxix.-xxxii. p. 207
xxix. About 703 XII.
xxx. About 702 XIII.
xxxi. About 702 XIV.
xxxii. 1-8 About 702? XV.
xxxii. 9-20 Date uncertain XVI.
xxxiii. 701 XX., XXI., 207, 304
xxxiv. ? XXIX. 438 ff.
xxxv. ? XXIX. 440 f.
xxxvi. 1 701 303 f.
xxxvi. 2-xxxvii. 701 303 f.
xxxvi. 2-22 701 XXII. 303 f.
xxxvii. 701 XXIII.
xxxviii.-xxxix. Date uncertain XXV. 304
xxxviii. XXVI. 393
xxxix. XI. 201
SHORT INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
Ahaz, 98;
compared with Charles I., 99, 103 ff., 113;
Judas of Old Testament, 118.
Animals, the lower, 190 ff.;
our mediatorship to, 193.
Anthropomorphism, 144.
Arabia, 277.
Aram, 94, 103 ff.
Ashdod, 198.
Assyria and Assyrians, 53, 92 f., 95, 97, 103 f., 122, and _passim_.
Atheism, two kinds of, 172 ff.
Babylon, 93, 201, 405.
Babylonian captivity, 201, 402.
Bribery, 47.
Captivity of Israel, first, 128;
second, 148.
Christ, 80, 142 ff., 254 ff., 328, 426.
Church, origin of idea of, 126.
Commerce, 296.
Conscience, 6;
its threefold character, 12;
simplicity, 151.
Cromwell, 160 ff., 220.
Damascus, 95, 120, 122, 274.
Drunkenness, 44 f., 152 ff.
Earthquake, 50.
Edom, 94, 276, 438 ff.
Egypt, 92, 96, 197 ff., 222 ff., _passim_.
Ekron, 308 f.
Eliakim, 317.
Ethiopia, 93, 222, 275.
Faith, moral results of, 106 f., 163 f.;
power to shape history, 109, 352 ff.
Fatalism, 110.
Forgiveness of sin, 13, 71 ff., 326 ff., 361, 381.
Formalism, 216, 240.
Free-will, 82.
Glory, 68.
Hamath, 94.
Heine, 158, 242, 413.
Hezekiah, 352, 378 ff., _passim_.
Holiness, 63 ff.
Holy Spirit, 185-188.
Immanuel, 102, 115, 124 ff., 133 ff.
Immortality, 385 ff., 394 ff., 410, 444 ff.
Individual, the, and the community, 389 ff.
Inspiration, 23 ff., 213, 372.
Isaiah:
apprenticeship, 19;
youth, 21, 59;
a son of Jerusalem, 22;
threefold vision, 23-25;
idealist, 25;
realist, 27;
prophet, 30;
patriotism, a conscience of his country's sins, 30 f.;
call and consecration, 57 ff.;
personality, 75 f., 253;
comp. with Mazzini, 85-87;
with Moses, 88;
contribution to religious development of Israel, 101, 284, 288;
no fatalist, 110;
habit of appealing to the people, 119;
saved from the popular drift, 121;
scorn, 127;
sanity, 109, 154 f., 166, 300;
comp. with Cromwell, 160 ff., 220;
self-control, 166;
regard for animals, 190;
walks stripped for a sign, 199;
inspiration, 213, 372;
working of his imagination, 234;
style, 281;
humanity, 285, 294;
triumph, 323 ff.;
imagination and conscience, 335;
lesson for all time, 366;
contrasted with Crusaders, 367;
personal religion, 391;
ideal, 392;
satire, 29, 139, 156.
Israel, religious condition, 99;
and Greece, 365.
Jerusalem, 22, 25 ff., 169 f., 211 f., 231 f., 243, 267 f., 279,
Book IV., _passim_.
"King Lear," 49, 55.
Land question, 41 ff.
Language, abuse of, 260.
Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 120.
Mazzini, 84-86.
Merodach-baladan, 200, 376.
Messiah, 89, 90, 115 ff., 129, 131-144, 180 ff., 249.
Moab, 94, 273.
Monotheism, moral and political advantages, 108-110;
growth in Israel, 357, 363.
Name of the LORD, 233 ff.
Nature, fourfold use of by the prophets, 16 f.;
redemption of, 188;
destruction of, 417 ff.
Palestine, 92.
People, the, ultimately responsible, 119, 198, 224 ff.
Philistines, 94, 272.
Phoenicia, 94, 96, 288 ff.
Poetry, Hebrew, 411.
Polytheism, 99, 107.
Preaching the word, 82, 83.
Prophecy, its power of vision, 23-25;
its service to religion, 100 f.
Providence, 98.
Rabshakeh, the, 343 ff.
Remnant, the, 31, 87, 101, 126, 129, and _passim_.
Resurrection, 387, 444 ff.
Return from exile, 195, 401 ff., 429, 440 f., 450.
Righteousness, Isaiah's doctrine of, 334 ff.
Sacrament, an Old Testament, 74.
Samaria, 95, 147, 152 ff.
Sargon, 148, 169, 198 ff.
Scepticism, 15.
Sennacherib, 209, 302, 308 ff., 355 ff.
Serbonian bog, 361.
Shebna, 317.
Sheol, 385, 410, 447 ff.
Shiloah, 122.
Sin, 52, 69, _passim_;
effect on man's material circumstance, 416.
Sorrow, man's abuse of, 54.
Tiglath-pileser II., 96, 103 f.
Uzziah, 59 f., 98.
War, 51.
Women, Isaiah to, 262.
Wrath of God, 47 f., 55.
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