successor Elisha, had caused the extermination of the worship of Baal.
But the golden calves still remained; and there was no improvement in
the political affairs of the kingdom. It was steadily declining as a
political power, whether on account of the degeneracy which succeeded
prosperity, or the warlike enterprises of the empires and states which
were hostile equally to Judah and Israel. Jehu was forced to pay tribute
to Assyria to secure protection against Syria; and after his death
Israel was reduced to the lowest depression by Hazael, and had not the
power of Syria soon after been broken by Assyria, the northern kingdom
would have been utterly destroyed.
It was not given to Elijah to foresee the future calamities of the Jews,
or to declare them, as Isaiah and Jeremiah did. It was his mission, and
also Elisha's, to destroy the worship of Baal and punish the apostate
kings who had introduced it. He was the messenger and instrument of
Jehovah to remove idolatry, not to predict the future destiny of his
nation. He is to be viewed, like Elisha, as a reformer, as a man of
action, armed with supernatural gifts to awe kings and influence the
people, rather than as a seer or a poet, or even as a writer to instruct
future generations. His mission seems to have ended shortly after he had
thrown his mantle on a man more accomplished than himself in knowledge
of the world. But his last days are associated with unspeakable grandeur
as well as pathetic interest.
Elijah seems to have known that the day of his departure was at hand.
So, departing from Gilgal in company with his beloved companion, he
proceeded toward Bethel. As he approached the city he besought Elisha to
leave him alone; but Elisha refused to part with the master whom he both
loved and revered. Onward they proceeded from Bethel to Jericho, and
from Jericho to the Jordan. It was a mournful journey to Elisha, for he
knew as well as the sons of the prophets at Jericho that he and his
master, and friend more than master, were to part for the last time on
earth. The waters of the Jordan happened to be swollen, and the two
prophets, and the fifty sons of the prophets--their pupils, who came to
say farewell--could not pass over. But the sacred narrative tells us
that Elijah, wrapping his mantle together like a staff, smote the
waters, so that they were divided, and the two passed over to the
eastern bank, in view of the disciples. In loving intercourse Elijah
promises to give to his companion as token of his love whatever Elisha
may choose. Elisha asks simply for a double portion of his master's
spirit, which Elijah grants in case Elisha shall see him distinctly when
taken away.
"And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that behold
there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, which parted them
both asunder. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha
saw it, and he cried, 'My father, my father! the chariot of Israel, and
the horsemen thereof !'"--Thou art the chariot of Israel; thou hast been
its horsemen! And then there fell from Elijah, as he vanished from human
sight, the mantle by which he had been so well known; and it became the
sign of that fulness of divine favor which was given to his successor in
his arduous labors to restore the worship of Jehovah, "and to prepare
the way for Him in whom all prophecy is fulfilled."
ISAIAH.
PROPHESIED 740-701 B.C.
NATIONAL DEGENERACY.
To understand the mission of Isaiah, one should be familiar with the
history of the kingdom of Judah from the time of Jeroboam, founder of
the separate kingdom of Israel, to that of Uzziah, in whose reign Isaiah
was born, 760 B.C.
Judah had doubtless degenerated in virtue and spiritual life, but this
degeneracy was not so marked as that of the northern kingdom,--called
Israel. Judah had been favored by a succession of kings, most of whom
were able and good men. Out of nine kings, five of them "did right in
the sight of the Lord;" and during the two hundred and sixteen years
when these monarchs reigned, one hundred and eighty-seven were years
when the worship of Jehovah was maintained by virtuous princes, all of
whom were of the house of David. The reigns of those kings who did evil
in the sight of the Lord were short.
During this period there were nineteen kings of Israel, most of whom did
evil. They introduced idolatry; many of them were usurpers, and died
violent deaths. If the northern kingdom was larger and more fertile than
the southern, it was more afflicted with disastrous wars and divine
judgments for the sins into which it had fallen. It was to the wicked
kings of Israel, throned in the Samarian Shechem, that Elijah and Elisha
were sent; and the interest we feel in their reigns is chiefly directed
to the acts and sayings of those two great prophets.
The kingdom of Judah, blessed on the whole with virtuous rulers, and
comparatively free from idolatry, continually increased in wealth and
political power. Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, after the rebellion of
the ten tribes, seems to have changed somewhat his course of life,
although the high places and graven images were not removed; but his
grandson Asa destroyed the idols, and made fortunate alliances. Asa's
son Jehoshaphat terminated the civil wars that had raged between Judah
and Israel from the accession of Rehoboam, and almost rivalled Solomon
in his outward prosperity. Jerusalem became the strongest fortress in
western Asia; the Temple service was continued in its former splendor;
all that was vital in the strength of nations pertained to the smaller
kingdom. The dark spot in the history of Judah for nearly two hundred
years was the ascendency gained by Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel,
over her husband Jehoram, who introduced the gods of Phoenicia. She
seems to have exercised the same malign influence in Jerusalem that
Jezebel did in Samaria, and was as unscrupulous as her pagan mother. She
even succeeded in usurping the throne, and in destroying the whole race
of David, with the exception of Joash, an infant, whom Jehoiada the
high-priest contrived to hide until the unscrupulous Athaliah was slain,
having reigned as queen six years,--the first instance in Jewish history
of a female sovereign.
Both Judah and Israel in these years had the danger of a Syrian war
constantly threatening them. Under Hazael, who reigned at Damascus,
great conquests were made by the Syrians of Jewish territory, and the
capture of Jerusalem was averted only by buying off the enemy, to whom
were surrendered the gifts to the Temple accumulating since the days of
Jehoshaphat. The whole land was overrun and pillaged. Nor were
calamities confined to the miseries of war. A long drouth burned the
fields; seed rotted under the clods; the cattle moaned in the barren and
dried-up pastures; while locusts devoured what the drouth had spared.
Says Stanley: "The purple vine, the green fig-tree, the gray olive, the
scarlet pomegranate, the golden corn, the waving palm, the fragrant
citron, vanished before them, and the trunks and branches were left
bare and white by their devouring teeth,"--a brilliant sentence, by the
way, which Geikie quotes without acknowledgment, as well as many others,
which lays him open to the charge of plagiarism. Both Stanley and
Geikie, however, seem to be indebted to Ewald for all that is striking
and original in their histories,--so true is Solomon's saying that there
is nothing new under the sun. The rarest thing in literature is a truly
original history.
In this mournful crisis the prophet Joel, who was a priest at Jerusalem,
demanded a solemn fast, which the entire kingdom devoutly celebrated,
the whole body of the priests crying aloud before the gates of the
Temple, "Spare Thy people, O Lord! give not Thine heritage to reproach,
lest the heathen make us a by-word, and ask, Where is now thy God?" But
Joel, the oldest, and in many respects the most eloquent, Hebrew prophet
whose utterances have come down to us, did not speak in vain, and a
great religious revival followed, attended naturally by renewed
prosperity,--for among the Jews a "revival of religion" meant a
practical return from vice to virtue, personal holiness, and the just
and wholesome requirements of their law; so that "under Amaziah, Uzziah,
and Jotham, Judah rose once more to a pitch of honor and glory which
almost recalled the golden age of David."
A greater power than that of Syria threatened the peace and welfare of
the kingdom of Judah, as it also did that of Israel; and this was the
empire of Assyria. During the reigns of David and Solomon this empire
was passing through so many disasters that it was not regarded as
dangerous, and both of the Jewish kingdoms were left free to avail
themselves of every facility afforded for national development. Ewald
notices emphatically this outward prosperity, which introduced luxury
and pride throughout the kingdom. It was the golden age of merchants,
usurers, and money-mongers. Then appeared that extraordinary greed for
riches which never afterward left the nation, even in seasons of
calamity, and which is the most striking peculiarity of the modern
Hebrew. This was a period not only of prosperity and luxury, but of
vanity and ostentation, especially among women. The insidious influences
of wealth more than balanced the good effected by a long succession of
virtuous and gifted princes. I read of no country that, on the whole,
was ever favored by a more remarkable constellation of absolute kings
than that of Judah. Most of them had long reigns, took prophets and wise
men for their counsellors, developed the resources of their kingdoms,
strengthened Jerusalem, avoided entangling wars, and enjoyed the love
and veneration of the people. Most of them, unlike the kings of Israel,
were true to their exalted mission, were loyal to Jehovah, and
discouraged idolatry, if they did not root out the scandal by
persecuting violence. Some of these kings were poets, and others were
saints, like their great ancestor David; and yet, in spite of all their
efforts, corruption, and infidelity gained ground, and ultimately
undermined the state and prepared the way for Babylonian conquests.
Though Jerusalem survived the fall of Samaria for nearly five
generations, divine judgment was delayed, but not withdrawn. The
chastisement was sent at last at the hands of warriors whom no nation
could successfully resist.
The old enemies who had in the early days overwhelmed the Hebrews with
calamities under the Judges had been conquered by Saul and David,--the
Moabites, the Edomites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the
Philistines,--and they never afterward seriously menaced the kingdom,
although there were occasional wars. But in the eighth century before
Christ the Assyrian empire, whose capital was Nineveh, had become very
formidable under warlike sovereigns, who aimed to extend their dominion
to the Mediterranean and to Egypt. In the reign of Jehoash, the son of
Athaliah, an Assyrian monarch had exacted tribute from Tyre and Sidon,
and Syria was overrun. When Pul, or Tiglath-pileser, seized the throne
of Nineveh, he pushed his conquests to the Caspian Sea on the north and
the Indus on the east, to the frontier of Egypt and the deserts of Sinai
on the west and south. In 739 B.C. he appeared in Syria to break up a
confederation which Uzziah of Judah had formed to resist him, and
succeeded in destroying the power of Syria, and carrying its people as
captives to Assyria. Menahem, king of Samaria, submitted to the enormous
tribute of one thousand talents of silver. In 733 B.C. this great
conqueror again invaded Syria, beheaded Rezin its king, took Damascus,
reduced five hundred and eighteen cities and towns to ashes, and carried
back to Nineveh an immense spoil. In 728 B.C. Shalmanezer IV. appeared
in Palestine, and invested Samaria. The city made an heroic defence; but
after a siege of three years it yielded to Sargon, who carried away into
captivity the ten tribes of Israel, from which they never returned.
Judah survived by reason of its greater military skill and its strong
fortresses, with which Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Uzziah had fortified the
country, especially Jerusalem. But the fate of western Asia was sealed
when Rezin of Damascus, Menahem of Samaria, Hiram of Tyre, and the king
of Hamath moodily consented to pay tribute to the king of Assyria; the
downfall of the sturdy Judah was in preparation.
Greater evils than those of war threatened the stability of the state.
In Judah as in Ephraim drunkenness was a national vice, and the nobles
abandoned themselves to disgraceful debauchery. There was a general
demoralization of the people more fearful in its consequences than even
idolatry. Judah was no exception to the ordinary fate of nations; the
everlasting sequence--pertaining to institutions as well as nations, to
religious as well as merely political communities--was here
seen,--"Inwardness, outwardness, worldliness, and rottenness."
It was in this state of political danger and a general decline in
morals, with a tendency to idolatry, that Isaiah--preacher, statesman,
historian, poet, and prophet--was born.
Less is said of the personal history of this great man than of Moses or
David, of Daniel or Elisha, and it is only in his writings that we see
the solemn grandeur of his character. We infer that he was allied with
the royal family of David; he certainly held a high position in the
courts of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He was a man of great dignity,
experience, and wisdom, but ascetic in his habits and dress. Although he
associated with the great in courts and palaces, a cell was his delight.
He was a retiring, contemplative, rapt, austere man, severe on
passing follies, and not sparing in his rebukes of sin in high
places,--something like Savonarola at Florence, both as preacher and
prophet,--and exercising a commanding influence on political affairs
and on the people directly, especially during the reigns of Ahaz and
Hezekiah. He denounced woes and calamities, yet escaped persecution from
the grandeur of his character and the importance of his utterances. He
was a favorite of King Hezekiah, and was contemporary with the prophets
Hosea, Amos, and Jonah. He lived in Jerusalem, not far from the Temple,
and had a wife and two sons. He wrote the life of Uzziah, and died at
the age of eighty-four, in the reign of Manasseh. It is generally
supposed that although Isaiah had lived in honor during the reigns of
four kings, he suffered martyrdom at last. It is the fate of prophets to
be stoned when they are in antagonism with men in power, or with popular
sentiments. His prophetic ministry extended over a period of about fifty
years, and he was continually consulted by the reigning monarchs.
The great outward events that took place during Isaiah's public career
were the invasion of Judah by the combined forces of Israel and Syria in
the reign of Ahaz, and the great Assyrian invasion in the reign
of Hezekiah.
In regard to the first, it was disastrous to Judah. The weak king, the
twelfth from David, was inclined to the idolatries of the surrounding
nations, but was not signally bad like Ahab. Yet he was no match for
Pekah, who reigned at Samaria, or for Rezin, who reigned at Damascus.
Their combined armies slew in one day one hundred and twenty thousand of
the subjects of Ahaz, and carried away into captivity two hundred
thousand women and children, with immense spoil. The conqueror then
advanced to the siege of Jerusalem. In his distress Ahaz invoked the aid
of Pul, or Tiglath-pileser II., one of the most warlike of the Assyrian
kings, whose kingdom stretched from the Armenian mountains on the north
to Bagdad on the south, and from the Zagros chain on the east to the
Euphrates on the west. Earnestly did the prophet-statesman expostulate
with Ahaz, telling him that the king of Assyria would prove "a razor to
shave but too clean his desolate land." The inspired advice was
rejected; and the result of the alliance was that Judah, like Israel,
fell to the rank of a subject nation, and became tributary to Assyria,
and Ahaz, a mere vassal of Tiglath-pileser. The whole of Palestine
became the border-land of the Assyrian empire, easy to be invaded and
liable to be conquered.
The consequences which Isaiah feared, took place in the time of
Hezekiah, in the actual invasion of Judah by the Assyrian hosts under
Sennacherib. Not the splendid prosperity of Hezekiah, little short of
that enjoyed by Solomon,--not his allegiance to Jehovah, nor his grand
reforms and magnificent feasts averted the calamities which were the
legitimate result of the blindness of his father Ahaz. Sennacherib, the
most powerful of all the Assyrian kings, after suppressing a revolt in
Babylon and conquering various Eastern states, turned his eyes and steps
to Palestine, which had revolted. Hezekiah, in mortal fear, made humble
submission, and consented to a tribute of three hundred talents of
silver and thirty of gold, and the loss of two hundred thousand of his
people as captives, and a cession of a part of his territory,--as great
a calamity as France suffered in the war (1870-71) with Prussia.
Considering the prosperity of the kingdom of Judah under Hezekiah, it is
a difficult thing to be explained that the king could raise but three
hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, although David had
contributed out of his private fortune, for the future erection of the
Temple, three thousand talents of gold and seven thousand talents of
silver, besides the one million talents of silver and one hundred
thousand talents of gold which he collected as sovereign. It would seem
probable that an error has crept into the estimates of the wealth of the
kingdom under Solomon and under the subsequent kings; either that of
Solomon is exaggerated, or that of Hezekiah is underrated.
Notwithstanding his former defeat and losses, Hezekiah again revolted,
and again was Judah invaded by a still greater Assyrian force. The king
of Judah in this emergency showed extraordinary energy, stopped the
supply of water outside his capital, strengthened his defences, gathered
together his fighting men, and encouraged them with the assurance that
help would come from the Lord, in whom they trusted, and whom
Sennacherib boastfully defied. For the ringing words of Isaiah roused
and animated the hearts of both king and people to a noble courage,
announcing the aid of Jehovah and the overthrow of the heathen invader.
As we have seen, the men of Judah showed their faith in the divine help
by preparing to help themselves. But from an unexpected quarter the
assistance came, as Isaiah had predicted. A pestilence destroyed in a
single night one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrian
warriors,--the most signal overthrow of the enemies of Israel since
Pharaoh and his host were swallowed up by the waters of the Red Sea, and
also the most signal deliverance which Jerusalem ever had. The calamity
created such a fearful demoralization among the invaders that the
over-confident Assyrian monarch retired to his capital with utter loss
of prestige, and soon after was assassinated by his own sons. No
Assyrian king after this invaded Judah, and Nineveh itself in a few
years was conquered by Babylon.
The fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians was delayed one
hundred years. But such were the moral and social evils of the times
succeeding the Ninevite invasion that Isaiah saw that retribution would
come sooner or later, unless the nation repented and a radical reform
should take place. He saw the people stricken with judicial blindness;
so he clothed himself in sackcloth and cried aloud, with fervid
eloquence, upon the people to repent. He is now the popular preacher,
and his theme is repentance. In his earnest exhortations he foreshadows
John the Baptist: "Unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." It
would seem that Savonarola makes him the model of his own eloquence.
"Thy crimes, O Florence! thy crimes, O Rome! thy crimes, O Italy! are
the causes of these chastisements. O Rome! thou shalt be put to the
sword, since thou wilt not be converted! O harlot Church! I will stretch
forth mine hand upon thee, saith the Lord." The burden of the soul of
the Florentine monk is sin, especially sin in high places. He sees only
degeneracy in life, and alarms the people by threats of divine
vengeance. So Isaiah cries aloud upon the people to seek the Lord while
he may be found. He does not invoke divine wrath, as David did upon his
enemies; but he shows that this wrath will surely overtake the sinner.
In no respect does he glory in this retribution: he is sad; he is
oppressed; he is filled with grief, especially in view of the prevailing
infatuation. "My people," said he, "do not consider." He denounces all
classes alike, and spares not even women. In sarcastic language he
rebukes their love of dress, their abandonment to vanities, their
finery, their very gait and mincing attitude. Still more contemptuously
does the preacher speak of the men, over whom the women rule and
children oppress. He is severe on corrupt judges, on usurers; on all who
are conceited in their own eyes; on those who are mighty to drink wine;
on those who join house to house and field to field; on those whose
glorious beauty is a fading flower; on those who call good evil and evil
good, that put darkness for light, that take away the righteousness of
the righteous from him. His terrible denunciation and enumeration of
evil indicate a very lax morality in every quarter, added to hypocrisy
and pharisaism. He shows what a poor thing is sacrifice unaccompanied
with virtue. "To what purpose," said he, "is the multitude of
sacrifices? Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination to
me, saith the Lord. Therefore wash you, make you clean, put away the
evil of your doings; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment,
relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."
Isaiah does not preach dogmas, still less metaphysical distinctions; he
preaches against sin and demands repentance, and predicts calamity.
There are two points in his preaching which stand out with great
vividness,--the certain judgments of God in view of sin, retribution on
all offenders; and secondly, the mercy and forgiveness of God in case of
repentance. Retribution, however, is not in Isaiah usually presented as
the penalty of transgression according to natural law; not, as in the
Proverbs, as the inevitable sequence of sin,--"Whatsoever ye sow, that
shall ye also reap,"--but as direct punishment from God. Jehovah's awful
personality is everywhere recognized,--a being who rules the universe as
"the living God," who loves and abhors, who punishes and rewards, who
gives power to the faint, who judges among the nations, who takes away
from Judah and Jerusalem the stay and the staff of bread and water. "To
whom then will ye liken God? Have ye not known, have ye not heard, hath
it not been told you from the beginning? It is He that sitteth upon the
circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers;
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, that bringeth the princes
to nothing. Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the
everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,
fainteth not, neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint and weary,
so that they who wait upon Him shall renew their strength, mount up with
wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint." Can stronger
or more comforting language be made use of to assert the personality
and providence of God? And where in the whole circuit of Hebrew poetry
is there more sublimity of language, greater eloquence, or more profound
conviction of the evil and punishment of sin? Isaiah, the greatest of
all the prophets in his spiritual discernment, in his profound insight
of the future, is not behind the author of Job in majestic and sublime
description.