Ver. 4. " And lie icill judge betiveen the nations, and deliver justice to many peoples; and they forge their swords into coulters, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation lifts not up the sivord against nation, neither do they exercjse themselves in ivar any mover Since the nations betake themselves in this manner as pupils to the God of revelation and the word of His revelation, He becomes the supreme judge and umpire among them. If any dispute arise, it is no longer settled by the compulsory force of war, but by the word of God, to which all bow with willing submission. With such power as this in the peace-sustaining word of God (Zech. ix. 10), there is no more need for weapons of iron: they are turned into the instruments of peaceful employment, into ittim (probably a synonym for ethim in 1 Sam. xiii. 21), plough- knives or coulters, which cut the furrows for the ploughshare to turn up; and mazmeroth, bills or pruning-hooks, with which vines are pruned to increase their fruit-bearing power. There is also no more need for military practice, for there is no use in exercising one's self in what cannot be applied. It is useless, and men dislike it. There is peace, not an armed peace, but a full, true, God-given and blessed peace. What even a Kant regarded as possible is now realized, and that not by the so-called Christian powers, but by the power of God, who favours the object for which an Elihu Burritt enthusiastically longs, rather than the politics of the Christian powers. It is in war that the power of the beast culminates in the history of the world. This beast will then be destroyed. The true humanity which sin has choked up will gain the mastery, and the world's history will keep Sabbath. And may we not indulge the hope, on the ground of such prophetic words as these, that the history of the world will not terminate without having kept a Sabbath? Shall we correct Isaiah, according to Quenstedt, lest we should become chiliasts? "The humanitarian ideas of Christendom," says a thoughtful Jewish scholar, a have their roots in the Pentateuch, and more especially in Deuteronomy. But in the prophets, particularly in Isaiah, they reach a height which will probably not be attained and fully realized by the modern world for centuries to come." Yet they will be realized. Vvrhat the prophetic words appropriated by Isaiah here affirm, is a moral postulate, the goal of sacred history, the predicted counsel of God.
Isaiah presents himself to his contemporaries with this older prophecy of the exalted and world-wide calling of the people of Jehovah, holds it up before them as a mirror, and exclaims in ver. 5, " 0 house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of Jehovah" This exhortation is formed under the influence of the context, from which vers. 2-4 are taken, as we may see from Mic. iv. 5, and also of the quotation itself. The use of the term Jacob instead of Israel is not indeed altogether strange to Isaiah (ch. viii. 17, x. 20, 21, xxix. 23), but he prefers the use of Israel (compare ch. i. 24 with Gen. xlix. 24). With the words " O house of Jacob " he now turns to his people, whom so glorious a future awaits, because Jehovah has made it the scene of His manifested presence and grace, and summons it to walk in the light of such a God, to whom all nations will press at the end of the days. The summons, u Come, let us walk," is the echo of ver. 3, " Come, let us go; " and as Hitzig observes, " Isaiah endeavours, like Paul in Rom. xi. 14, to stir up his countrymen to a noble jealousy, by setting before them the example of the heathen." The " light of Jehovah " (or Jehovah, in which the echo of vyorenu in ver. 3 is hardly accidental; cf. Prov. vi. 23) is the knowledge of Jehovah Himself, as furnished by means of positive revelation, His manifested love. It was now high time to walk in the light of Jehovah, i.e. to turn this knowledge into life, and reciprocate this love; and it was especially necessary to exhort Israel to this, now that Jehovah had given up His people, just because in their perverseness they had done the very opposite. This mournful declaration, which the prophet was obliged to make ir> order to explain his warning cry, he changes into the form of a prayerful sigh. Ver. 6. u For Thou hast rejected Thy people, the house of Jacob; for they are filled with tilings from the east, and are conjurors like the Philistines; and with the children of foreigners they go hand in hand" Here again we have "for" (chi) twice in succession; the first giving the reason for the warning cry, the second vindicating the reason assigned. The words are addressed to Jehovah, not to the people. Saad., Gecatilia, and Rashi adopt the rendering, "Thou hast given up thy nationality;" and this rendering is supported by J. D. Michaelis, Hitzig, and Luzzatto. But the word means "people," not "nationality;" and the rendering is inadmissible, and would never have been thought of were it not that there was apparently something strange in so sudden an introduction of an address to God. But in ch. ii. 9, ix. 2, and other passages, the prophecy takes the form of a prayer. And ndtash, (cast off) with dm (people) for its object recals such passages as Ps. xciv. 14 and 1 Sam. xii. 22. Jehovah had put away His people, i.e. rejected them, and left them to themselves, for the following reasons: (1.) Because they were " full from the east" (inikkedem: win denotes the source from which a person draws and fills himself, Jer. Ii. 34, Ezek. xxxii. 6), i.e. full of eastern manners and customs, more especially of idolatrous practices. By " the east " (kedem) we are to understand Arabia as far as the peninsula of Sinai, and also the Aramaean lands of the Euphrates. Under Uzziah and Jotham, whose sway extended to Elath, the seaport town of the Elanitic Gulf, the influence of the south-east predominated; but under Ahaz and Hezekiah, on account of their relations to Asshur, Aram, and Babylon, that of the north-east. The conjecture of Gesenius, that we should read mikkesemy i.e. of soothsaying, is a very natural one; but it obliterates without any necessity the name of the region from which Judah's imitative propensities received their impulse and materials. (2.) They were onenim (= meonenim,Mic. v. 11, from the poel onen: 2 Kings xxi. G), probably "cloud-gatherers" or "storm-raisers"1 like the Philis-
1 There is no force in the explanation " concealing," i.e. practising secret arts; for the meaning " cover" or " conceal" is arbitrarily transferred to the verb onen, from rjanan and ctinan, which are supposed to bo cognate roots. As a denominative of Cinihi, the cloud, however (on this name for tiues (the people conquered by Uzziah, and then again by 1 Lezekiah), among whom witchcraft was carried on in guilds, whilst a celebrated oracle of Baal-Zebub existed at Ekron. (3.) And they make common cause with children of foreigners. This is the explanation adopted by Gesenius, Knobel, and others. Sdphak with cappaim signifies to clap hands (Job xxvii. 23). The hiphil followed by Beth is only used here in the sense of striking hands with a person. Luzzatto explains it as meaning, " They find satisfaction in the children of foreigners; it is only through them that they are contented;" but this is contrary to the usage of the language, according to which hispik in post-biblical Hebrew signifies either suppeditare or (like saphak in 1 Kings xx. 10) sufficere. Jerome renders it pueris alienis adho?serunt; but yalde ndcrim does not mean pueri alieniy boys hired for licentious purposes, but the u sons of strangers" generally (ch. Ix. 10, lxi. 5), with a strong emphasis upon their unsanctified birth, the heathenism inherited from their mother's womb. With heathen by birth, the prophet would say, the people of Jehovah made common cause.
In* vers. 7, 8 he describes still further how the land of the people of Jehovah, in consequence of all this (on the future consec. see Ges. § 129, 2, a), wras crammed full of objects of luxury, of self-confidence, of estrangement from God: "And their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end of their treasures; and their land is filled with horses, and there is no end of their chariots. And their land is filled with — idols; the u-ork of their own hands they icorship, that which their the clouds, see at ch. iv. 5), onen might mean " he gathered auguries from the clouds.1' Or if we take onen as a synonym of inncn in Gen. ix. 14, it would mean " to raise storms," which would give the rendering ui(po6iZ)x,Tct,t, tempestarii, storm-raisers. The derivation of onen from py, in the sense of the Arabic 'ana (impf. ya 'inu)^ as it were to ogle, oculo maligno petere et fascinare, founders on amien, the word used in the Targums, which cannot possibly be traced to fiy. From a purely philological standpoint, however, there is still another explanation possible. From the idea of coming to meet we get the transitive meaning to hold back, shut in, or hinder, particularly to hold back a horse by the reins (inan), or when applied to sexual relations, 'unna (unnina, u inna)' an el-mar' ati, "he is prevented (by magic) from approaching his wife." Beside the Arabic 'innin and ma'nun (to render sexually impotent by witchcraft), we find the Syriac 'anono used iu the same sense.
own fingers have made," The glory of Solomon, which revived under Uzziah's fifty-two years' reign, and was sustained through Jotham's reign of sixteen years, carried with it the curse of the law; for the law of the king, in Deut. xvii. 14 sqq., prohibited the multiplying of horses, and also the accumulation of gold and silver. Standing armies, and stores of national treasures, like everything else which ministers to carnal ^elf-reliance, were opposed to the spirit of the theocracy. Nevertheless Judaea was immeasurably full of such seductions to apostasy; and not of those alone, but also of things which plainly revealed it, viz. of elilim, idols (the same word is used in Lev. xix. 4, xxvi. 1, from elil, vain or worthless; it is therefore equivalent to " notgods"). They worshipped the work of "their own" hands, what " their own " fingers had made: two distributive singulars, as in ch. v. 23, the hands and fingers of every individual (yid. Mic. v. 12, 13, where the idols are classified). The condition of the land, therefore, was not only opposed to the law of the king, but at variance with the decalogue also. The existing glory was the most offensive caricature of the glory promised to the nation; for the people, whose God was one day to become the desire and salvation of all nations, had exchanged Him for the idols of the nations, and was vying with them in the appropriation of heathen religion and customs.
It was a state ripe for judgment, from which, therefore, the prophet could at once proceed, without any further preparation, to the proclamation of judgment itself. Ver. 9. " Thus, then, men are bowed down, and lords are brought low; and forgive them — no, that Thou wilt not" The consecutive futures depict the judgment, as one which would follow by inward necessity from the worldly and ungodly "glory of the existing state of things. The future is frequently used in this way (for example, in ch. ix. 7 sqq.). It was a judgment by which small and great, i.e. the people in all its classes, were brought down from their false eminence. " Men " and " lords " (dddm and ish, as in ch. v. 15, Ps. xlix. 3, and Prov. viii. 4, and like avOpwiros and dvrjp in the Attic dialect), i.e. men who were lost in the crowd, and men who rose above it, — all of them the judgment would throw down to the ground, and that without mercy (Rev. vi. 15). The prophet expresses the conviction (al as in 2 Kings vi. 27), that on this occasion God neither could nor would take away the sin by forgiving it. There was nothing left for them, therefore, but to carry out the command of the prophet in ver. 10: " Creep into the rock, and bury thyself in the dust, before the terrible look of Jehovah, and before the glory of His majesty." The glorious nation would hide itself most ignominiously, when the only true glory of Jehovah, which had been rejected by it, was manifested in judgment. They would conceal themselves in holes of the rocks, as if before a hostile army (Judg. vi. 2; 1 Sam. xiii. 6, xiv. 11), and bury themselves with their faces in the sand, as if before the fatal simoom of the desert, that they might not have to bear this intolerable sight. And when Jehovah manifested Himself in this way in the fiery glance of judgment, the result summed up in ver. 11 must follow: " The people s eyes of haughtiness are humbled, and the pride of their lords is bowed down; and Jehovah, He only, stands exalted in that day." The result of the process of judgment is expressed in perfects: nisgab is the third pers. prcet., not the participle: Jehovah u is exalted," i.e. shows Himself as exalted, whilst the haughty conduct of the people is brought down (shdphel is a verb, not an adjective; it is construed in the singular by attraction, and either refers to dddm, man or people: Ges. § 148, 1; or what is more probable, to the logical unity of the compound notion which is taken as subject, the constr. ad synesin s. sensum: Thiersch, § 118), and the pride of the lords is bowed down (shach = shdehach, Job ix. 13). The first strophe of the proclamation of judgment appended to the prophetic saying in vers. 2-4 is here brought to a close. The second strophe reaches to ver. 17, where ver. 11 is repeated as a concluding verse.
The expression " that day " suggests the inquiry, What day is referred to? The prophet answers this question in the second strophe. Ver. 12. "For Jehovah of hosts hath a day over everything towering and lofty, and over everything exalted; and it becomes low" "Jehovah hath a day" (yom layehovah), lit. there is to Jehovah a day, which already exists as a finished divine thought in that wisdom by which the course of history is guided (ch. xxxvii. 26, cf. xxii. 11), the secret of which He revealed to the prophets, who from the time of Obadiah and Joel downwards proclaimed that day with one uniform watchword. But when the time appointed for that day should arrive, it would pass out of the secret of eternity into the history of time, — a day of world-wide judgment, which would pass, through the omnipotence with which Jehovah rules over the higher as well as lower spheres of the whole creation, upon all worldly glory, and it would be brought low (shaphel). The current accentuation of ver. 126 is wrong; correct mss. have by with mercha, Kbr^O with iifcha. The word v shaphel (third pers. prget. with the root-vowel e) acquires the force of a future, although no grammatical future precedes it, from the future character of the day itself: " and it will sink down " (Ges. § 126, 4).
The prophet then proceeds to enumerate all the high things upon which that day would fall, arranging them two and two, and binding them in pairs by a double correlative Vav. The day of Jehovah comes, as the first two pairs affirm, upon everything lofty in nature. Vers. 13, 14. " As upon all the cedars of Lebanon, the lofty and exalted, so upon all the oaks of Baslian. As upon all mountains, the lofty ones, so upon all hills the exalted ones.'' But wherefore upon all this majestic beauty of nature? Is all this merely figurative? Knobel regards it as merely a figurative description of the grand buildings of the time of Uzziah and Jotham, in the erection of which wood had been used from Lebanon as well as from Bashan, on the western slopes of which the old shady oaks (sindidn and ballut) are flourishing still.1 But the idea that trees can be used to signify the houses built with the wood obtained from them, is one that cannot be sustained from ch. ix. 9 (10), where the reference is not to houses built of sycamore and cedar wood, but to trunks of trees of the kind mentioned; nor even from Nahum ii. 4 (3), where habberoshim refers to the fir lances which are brandished about in haughty thirst for battle. So again mountains and hills cannot denote the castles and fortifications built upon them, more especially as these are expressly mentioned in ver. 15 in the most literal terms. In order to understand the prophet, we must bear in mind what the Scriptures invariably assume, from their first chapter to the very close, namely, that the totality of nature is bound up with man in one common history; that man and the totality of nature are inseparably connected together as
1 On the meaning of the name of this region, Baslian (Basanitis), see Job, vol. ii. pp. 398-400, Eng. Tr.
centra ami circumference; that this circumference is affected by the Bin which proceeds from man, as well as by the anger or the mercy which proceeds from God toman; that the judgments of God, as the history of the nations proves, involve in fellowsuffering even that part of the creation which is not free; and that this participation in the " corruption " (phthora) and " glory" (doxa) of humanity will come out with peculiar distinctness and force at the close of the world's history, in a manner corresponding to the commencement; and lastly, that the world in its present condition needs a palingenesia, or regeneration, quite as much as the corporeal nature of man, before it can become an object, of good pleasure on the part of God. We cannot be surprised, therefore, that, in accordance with this fundamental view of the Scriptures, when the judgment of God fell upon Israel, it should also be described as going down to the land of Israel, and as overthrowing not only the false glory of the nation itself, but everything glorious in the surrounding nature, which had been made to minister to its national pride and love of show, and to which its sin adhered in many different ways. What the prophet foretold began to be fulfilled even in the Assyrian wars. The cedar woods of Lebanon were unsparingly destroyed; the heights and valleys of the land were trodden down and laid waste; and, in the period of the great empires which commenced with Tiglath-pileser, the Holy Land was reduced to a shadow of its former promised beauty.
The glory of nature is followed by what is lofty and glorious in the world of men, such as magnificent fortifications, i^rand commercial buildings, and treasures which minister to the lust of the eye. Vers. 15, 16. "As upon every high tower, so upon every fortified ivall. As upon all ships of Tarshish, so upon all works of curiosity." It was by erecting fortifications for offence and defence, both lofty and steep {bazur, praruptus, from bazar, abrumpere, secernere), that Uzziah and Jotham. especially endeavoured to serve Jerusalem and the land at large. The chronicler relates, with reference to Uzziah, in 2 Chron. xxvi., that he built strong towers above " the cornergate, the valley-gate, and the southern point of the cheesemakers' hollow," and fortified these places, which had probably been till that time the weakest points in Jerusalem; also that lie built towers in the desert (probably in the desert between
Beersheba and Gaza, to increase the safety of the land, and the numerous flocks which were pastured in the sheplielah, i.e the western portion of southern Palestine). With regard to Jotham, it is related in both the book of Kings (2 Kings xv. 32 sqq.) and the Chronicles, that he built the upper gate of the temple; and in the Chronicles (2 Chron. xxvii.) that he fortified the 'Ofel, i.e. the southern spur of the temple hill, still more strongly, and built cities on the mountains of Judah, and erected castles and towers in the forests (to watch for hostile attacks and ward them off). Hezekiah also distinguished himself by building enterprises of this kind (2 Chron. xxxii. 27-30). But the allusion to the ships of Tarshish takes us to the times of Uzziah and Jotham, and not to those of Hezekiah (as Ps. xlviii. 7 does to the time of Jehoshaphat); for the seaport town of Elath, which was recovered by Uzziah, was lost again to the kingdom of Judah during the reign of Ahaz. Jewish ships sailed from this Elath (Ailath) through the Red Sea and round the coast of Africa to the harbour of Tartessus, the ancient Phoenician emporium of the maritime region watered by the Bsetis (Guadalquivir), which abounded in silver, and then returned through the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar: vid. Duncker, Gesch. i. 312-315). It was to these Tartessus vessels that the expression " ships of Tarshish" primarily referred, though it was afterwards probably applied to mercantile ships in general. The following expression, " works of curiosity " (secliiyyoih hachemdah), is taken in far too restricted a sense by those who limit it, as the LXX. have done, to the ships already spoken of, or understand it, as Gesenius does, as referring to beautiful flags. Jerome's rendering is correct: u et super omne quod visu pulcrum est" (and upon everything beautiful to look at); seciyydh, from sdcdh, to look (see Job, p. 468), is sight generally. The reference therefore is to all kinds of works of art, whether in sculpture or paintings (mascith is used of both), which delighted the observer by their imposing, tasteful appearance. Possibly, however, there is a more especial reference to curiosities of art and nature, which were brought by the trading vessels from foreign lands.
Ver. 17 closes the second strophe of the proclamation of judgment appended to the earlier prophetic word: "And the haugktiniSB of the peopU is bowed down, and the pride of the lords brought low; and Jehovah, He alone, stands exalted on that day." The closing refrain only varies a little from ver. 11. The subjects of the verbs are transposed. With a feminine noun denoting a tiling, it is almost a rule that the predicate shall be placed before it in masculine (Ges. § 147, a).
The closing refrain of the next two strophes is based upon the concluding clause of ver. 10. The proclamation of judgment turns now to the elilim, which, as being at the root of all the evil, occupied the lowest place in the things of which the land was full (vers. 7, 8). In a short verse of one clause consisting of only three words, their future is declared as it were with a lightning-flash. Ver. 18. " And the idols utterly pass away." The translation shows the shortness of the verse, but not the significant synallagc nnmeri. The idols are one and all a mass of nothingness, which will be reduced to absolute annihilation: they will vanish cdlil, i.e. either " they will utterly perish" (funditus peribunt), or, as cdlil is not used adverbially in any other passage, " they will all perish" (tota peribunt, Judg. xx. 40) — their images, their worship, even their names and their memory (Zech. xiii. 2).
What the idolaters themselves will do when Jehovah has so completely deprived their idols of all their divinity, is then described in ver. 19: "And they will creep into caves in the rocks, and cellars in the earth, before the terrible look of Jehovah, and before the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to put the earth in terror." Medrdh is a natural cave, and mechillah a subterraneous excavation: this is apparently the distinction between the two synonyms. u To put the earth in terror:" laarotz hd-aretz, a significant paronomasia, which can be reproduced in Latin, thus: ut terreat terram. Thus the judgment would fall upon the earth without any limitation, upon men universally (compare the word hd-dddm in ver. 20, which is scarcely ever applied to a single individual (Josh. xiv. 15), excepting, of course, the first man, but generally to men, or to the human race) and upon the totality of nature as interwoven in the history of man — one complete whole, in which sin, and therefore wrath, had gained the upper hand. When Jehovah rose up, i.e. stood up from His heavenly throne, to reveal the glory manifested in heaven, and turn its judicial fiery side towards the sinful earth, the earth would receive such a shock as would throw it into a state resembling the chaos of the beginning. We may see very clearly from Rev. vi. 15, where this description is borrowed, that the prophet is here describing the last judgment, although from a national point of view and bounded by a national horizon.
Ver. 20 forms the commencement to the fourth strophe: " In that day will a man cast away his idols of gold and his idoh of silver* which they made for him to worship, to the moles and to the bats? The traditional text separates lachpor peroth into two words,1 though without its being possible to discover what they are supposed to mean. The reason for the separation was simply the fact that plurilitera were at one time altogether misunderstood and regarded as comjjosita: for other plurilitera, written as two words, compare ch. lxi. 1, Hos. iv. 18, Jer. xlvi. 20. The prophet certainly pronounced the word lachparpdroth (Ewald, § 157, c); and chapharpdrdh is apparently a mole (lit. thrower up of the soil), talpa, as it is rendered by Jerome and interpreted by Rashi. Gesenius and Knobel, however, have raised this objection, that the mole is never found in houses. But are we necessarily to assume that they would throw their idols into lumber-rooms, and not hide them in holes and crevices out of doors? The mole, the shrewmouse, and the bat, whose name (atalleph) is regarded by Schultens as a compound word (atal-eph, night-bird), are generically related, according to both ancient and modern naturalists. Bats are to birds what moles are to the smaller beasts of prey (vid. Levysohn, Zoologie des Talmud, p. 102). The LXX. combine with these two words Ihishtachavoth (to worship). Malbim and Luzzatto adopt this rendering, and understand the words to mean that they would sink down to the most absurd descriptions of animal worship. But the
1 Abulwalid Parchon and others regard the double word as the singular of a substantive, applied to a particular bird (possibly a woodpecker), as a pecker of fruit (peroth). Kimchi would rather take lachpor as an infinitive (as in Josh. ii. 2), to dig pits; and compares with it the talinudic word per, a pit or grave. No one adopts the rendering " into mouse-holes," simply because perah, a mouse (from an Arabic word fcCara, to dig, or root up), was not a Hebrew word at all, but was adopted at a later period from the Arabic (hence the Hebneo-Arabic purah, a mousetrap).
accentuation, which docs not divide the verse at \TWyf as we should expect if this were the meaning, is based upon the correct interpretation. The idolaters, convinced of the worthlessness of their idols through the judicial interposition of God, and enraged at the disastrous manner in which they had been deceived, would throw away with curses the images of gold and silver which artists' hands had made according to their instructions, and hide them in the holes of bats and. in molehills, to conceal them from the eyes of the Judge, and then take refuge there themselves after ridding themselves of this useless and damnable burden.
Ver. 21. " To creep into the cavities of the stone-blocks, and into the clefts of the rocks, before the terrible look of Jehovah, and before the glory of His majesty, when He arises to put the earth in terror." Thus ends the fourth strophe of this " dies irce, dies ilia," which is appended to the earlier prophetic word. But there follows, as an epiphonem, this nota bene in ver. 22: Oh, then, let man go, in ivhose nose is a breath; for what is he estimated at? The Septuagint leaves this verse out altogether. But was it so utterly unintelligible then? Jerome adopted a false pointing, and has therefore given this marvellous rendering: excelsus (bdmdh!) reputatus est ipse, by which Luther was apparently misled. But if we look backwards and forwards, it is impossible to mistake the meaning of the verse, which must be regarded not only as the resultant of what precedes it, but also as the transition to what follows. It is preceded by the prediction of the utter demolition of everything which ministers to the pride and vain confidence of men; and in ch. iii. 1 sqq. the same prediction is resumed, with a more special reference to the Jewish state, from which Jehovah is about to take away every prop, so that it shall utterly collapse. Accordingly the prophet exhorts, in ver. 22, to a renunciation of trust in man, and everything belonging to him, just as in Ps. cxviii. 8, 0, cxlvi. 3, and Jer. xvii. 5. The construction is as general as that of a gnome. The dat. commodi M? (Ges. § 154, 3, e) renders the exhortation both friendly and urgent: from regard to yourselves, for your own good, for your own salvation, desist from man, i.e. from your confidence in him, in whose nose (in cujus?iaso, the singular, as in Job xxvii. 3; whereas the plural is used in Gen. ii. 7 in the same sense, in nares ejus, " into his nostrils ") is a breath, a breath of life, which God gave to him, and can take back as soon as He will (Job xxxiv. 14; Ps. civ. 29). Upon the breath, which passes out and in through his nose, his whole earthly existence is suspended; and this, when once lost, is gone for ever (Job vii. 7). It is upon this breath, therefore, that all the confidence placed in man must rest, — a bad soil and foundation! Under these conditions, and with this liability to perish in a moment, the worth of man as a ground of confidence is really nothing. This thought is expressed here in the form of a question: At (for) what is he estimated, or to be estimated? The passive participle nechshdb combines with the idea of the actual (cestimatus) that of the necessary (cestimandus), and also of the possible or suitable (cestimabilis); and that all the more because the Semitic languages have no special forms for the latter notions. The Beth is Beth pretii, corresponding to the Latin genitive (quanti) or ablative (quanto), — a modification of the Beth inst?'itmenti, the price being regarded as the medium of exchange or purchase: u at what is he estimated," not with what is he compared, which would be expressed by 9eth (ch. liii. 12; compare fierd, Luke xxii. 37) or rim (Ps. lxxxviii. 5). The word is HB3, not HD3, because this looser form is only found in cases where a relative clause follows (eo quvd, Eccles. iii. 22), and not bammdh, because this termination with a is used exclusively where the next word begins with Aleph, or where it is a pausal word (as in 1 Kings xxii. 21); in every other case we have bammeh. The question introduced with this quanto (quanti), " at what," cannot be answered by any positive definition of value. The worth of man, regarded in himself, and altogether apart from God, is really nothing.
The proclamation of judgment pauses at this porisma, but only for the purpose of gathering fresh strength. The prophet has foretold in four strophes the judgment of God upon every exalted thing in the kosmos that has fallen away from communion, with God, just as Amos commences his book with a round of judgments, which are uttered in seven strophes of uniform scope, bursting like seven thunder-claps upon the nations of the existing stage of history. The seventh stroke falls upon Judah, over which the thunderstorm rests after finding such abundant booty. And in the same manner Isaiah, in the instance before us, reduces the universal proclamation of judgment to one more especially affecting Judah and Jerusalem. The current of the address breaks through the bounds of the strophe; and the exhortation in ch. ii. 22 not to trust in man, the reason for which is assigned in what precedes, also forms a transition from the universal proclamation of judgment to the more special one in ch. iii. 1, where the prophet assigns a fresh ground for the exhortation: —
Ch. iii. 1. "For, behold, the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah supporter and means of support, every support of bread and every support of water? The divine name given here, " The Lord, Jehovah of hosts/' with which Isaiah everywhere introduces the judicial acts of God (cf. ch. i. 24, x. 16, 33, xix. 4), is a proof that the proclamation of judgment commences afresh here. Trusting in man was the crying sin, more especially of the times of Uzziah-Jotham. The glory of the kingdom at that time carried the wrath of Jehovah within it. The outbreak of that wrath commenced in the time of Ahaz; and even under Hezekiah it was merely suspended, not changed. Isaiah foretells this outbreak of wrath. He describes how Jehovah will lay the Jewish state in ruins, by taking away the main supports of its existence and growth. " Supporter and means of support " (mastien and maslienaK) express, first of all, the general idea. The two nouns, which are only the masculine and feminine forms of one and the same word (compare Mic. ii. 4, Nahum ii. 11, and the examples from the Syriac and Arabic in Ewald, § 172, c), serve to complete the generalization: fulcra omne genus (props of every kind, omnigena). They are both technical terms, denoting the prop which a person uses to support anything, whilst misJian signifies that which yields support; so that the three correspond somewhat to the Latin fulcrum, fultura, fulcimen. Of the various means of support, bread and wine are mentioned first, not in a figurative sense, but as the two indispensable conditions and the lowest basis of human life. Life is supported by bread and water: it walks, as it were, upon the crutch of bread, so that " breaking the staff of bread" (Lev. xxvi. 26; Ezek. iv. 16, v. 16, xiv. 13; Ps. cv. 16) is equivalent to physical destruction. The destruction of the Jewish state would accordingly be commenced by a removal on VOL. i. i the part of Jehovah of all the support afforded by bread and water, i.e. all the stores of both. And this was literally fulfilled, for both in the Chaldean and Roman times Jerusalem perished in the midst of just such terrible famines as are threatened in the curses in Lev. xxvi., and more especially in Deut. xxviii.; and in both cases the inhabitants were reduced to such extremities, that women devoured their own children (Lam. ii. 20; Josephus, Wars of Jews, vi. 3, 3, 4). It is very unjust, therefore, on the part of modern critics, such as Hitzig, Knobel, and Meier, to pronounce ver. 16 a gloss, and, in fact, a false one. Gesenius and Umbreit retracted this suspicion. The construction of the verse is just the same as that of ch. xxv. 6; and it is Isaiah's custom to explain his own figures, as we have already observed when comparing ch. i. 7 sqq. and i. 23 with what preceded them. " Every support of bread and every support of water " are not to be regarded in this case as an explanation of the general idea introduced before, u supporters and means of support," but simply as the commencement of the detailed expansion of the idea. For the enumeration of the supports which Jehovah would take away is continued in the next two verses.
Vers. 2, 3. "Hero and man of war, judge and prophet, and soothsayer and elder; captains of fifty, and the highly distinguished, and counsellors, and masters in art, and those slcilled in muttering." As the state had grown into a military state under Uzziah-Jotham, the prophet commences in both verses with military officers, viz. the gibbor, i.e. commanders whose bravery had been already tried; the " man of war" (ish milchdmdh), i.e. private soldiers who had been equipped and well trained (see Ezek. xxxix. 20); and the " captain of fifty" (sar chamisshirn), leaders of the smallest divisions of the army, consisting of only fifty men (pentekontarchos, 2 Kings i. 9, etc.). The prominent members of the state are all mixed up together: " the judge" (shophet), i.e. the officers appointed by the government to administer justice; " the elder" (zdken), i.e. the heads of families and the senators appointed by the town corporations; the " counsellor" (ydetz), those nearest to the king; the " highly distinguished" (nesu panim), lit. those whose personal appearance (panim) was accepted, i.e. welcome and regarded with honour (Saad.: wagih, from xvdgh, the face or appearance), that is to say, persons of influence, not only on account of their office, but also en account of wealth, age, goodness, etc.; " masters in art" (chacam cJiardshim: LXX. aocpos dpyireKrcov), or, as Jerome has very well rendered it, in artibus mechanicis reitotus casque collide tractans (persons well versed in mechanical arts, and carrying them out with skill). In the Chaldean captivities skilled artisans are particularly mentioned as having been carried away (2 Kings xxiv. 14 sqq.; Jer. xxiv. 1, xxix. 2); so that there can be no doubt whatever that cJiardshim (from cheresh) is to be understood as signifying mechanical and not magical arts, as Gesenius, Hitzig, and Meier suppose, and therefore that chacam cJiardshim does not mean " wizards," as Ewald renders it (cJidrdsliim is a different word from clidrdsJiim, fabrij from cJidrdsJi, although in 1 Chron. iv. 14, cf. Neh. xi. 35, the word is regularly pointed D^n even in this personal sense). Moreover, the rendering u wizards" produces tautology, inasmuch as masters of the black art are cited as nehon lacJiasJi, u skilled in muttering." LacJiasJi is the whispering or muttering of magical formulas; it is related both radically and in meaning to nacJiasJi, enchantment (Arabic nacJis, misfortune); it is derived from IdcJiasJi, sibilare, to hiss (a kindred word to ndcJiasJi; hence ndcJidsJi, a serpent). Beside this, the masters of the black art are also represented as Jcosem, which, in accordance with the radical idea of making fast, swearing, conjuring, denoted a soothsayer following heathen superstitions, as distinguished from the nabi, or false Jehovah prophet (we find this as early as Deut. xviii. 10, 14).1 These came next to bread
1 According to the primary meaning of the whole thema, which is one of hardness, rigidity, firmness, aksama (hi. of kdsam) signifies, strictly speaking, to make sure, i.e. to swear, either by swearing to the truth and certainty of a thing, or by making a person swear that he will do or not do a certain thing, by laying as it were a kasam upon him. The kal, on the other hand (kasama), gets its meaning to divide from the turn given to the radical idea in the substantive kism, which signifies, according to the original lexicographers, something fixed (= nasib), definite, i.e. a definite portion. There is just the same association of ideas in 'azama as in aksama, namely, literally to be firm or make firm, i.e. to direct one's will firmly towards an object or place; also to direct one's will firmly towards a person, to adjure him to do a thing or not to do it; sometimes with a softer meaning, to urge or invite a person to anything, at other times to recite conjuring formulas (azaim).
and water, and were in a higher grade the props of the state. They are mixed together in this manner without regular order, because the powerful and splendid state was really a guodlibet of things Jewish and heathen; and when the wrath of Jehovah broke out, the godless glory would soon become a mass of confusion.
Ver. 4. Thus robbed of its support, and torn out of its proper groove, the kingdom of Judah would fall a prey to the most shameless despotism: u And I give them boys for princes, and caprices shall rule over them" The revived " Solomonian" glory is followed, as before, by the times of Rehoboam. The king is not expressly named. This was intentional. He had sunk into the mere shadow of a king: it was not he who ruled, but the aristocratic party that surrounded him, who led him about in leading strings as unum inter pares. Now, if it is a misfortune in most cases for a king to be a child (na!ar, Eccles. x. 16), the misfortune is twice as great when the princes or magnates who surround and advise him are youngsters (nearim, i.e, young lords) in a bad sense. It produces a government of taalulim. None of the nouns in this form have a personal signification. According to the primary meaning of the verbal stem, the word might signify childishnesses, equivalent to little children (the abstract for the concrete, like ra iracBcKa, amasius), as Ewald supposes; or puppets, fantocci, poltroons, or men without heart or brain, as Luzzatto maintains. But the latter has no support in the general usage of the language, and the verb yimshelu (shall rule) does not necessarily require a personal subject (cf. Ps. xix. 14, ciii. 19). The word taalulim is formed from the reflective verb hithallel, which means to meddle, to gratify one's self, to indulge one's caprice. Accordingly taalulim itself might be rendered vexationes (ch. lxvi. 4). Jerome, who translates the word effeminati, appears to have thought of *5?^? m an erotic sense. The Sept. rendering, e^iralicTai, is better, though ifnraLy/jLaTa, would be more exact. When used, as the word is here, along with nearim, it signifies outbursts of youthful caprice, which do injury to others, whether in joke or earnest. Neither law nor justice would rule, but the very opposite of justice: a course of conduct which would make subjects, like slaves, the helpless victims at one time of their lust (Judg. xix. 25), and at another of their cruelty.
They would be governed by lawless and bloodstained caprice, of the most despotic character and varied forms. And the people would resemble their rulers: their passions would be let loose, and all restraints of modesty and decorum be snapt asunder.
Ver. 5. "And the people oppress one another, one this and another that; the boy breaks out violently upon the old man, and the despised upon the honoured." Niggas is a reciprocal niphal, as the clause depicting the reciprocity clearly shows (cf. nilcham, ch. xix. 2); nagas followed by Beth means to treat as a tyrant or taskmaster (ch. ix. 3). The commonest selfishness would then stifle every nobler motive; one wrould become the tyrant of another, and ill-mannered insolence would take the place of that reverence, which is due to the old and esteemed from boys and those who are below them in position, whether we regard the law of nature, the Mosaic law (Lev. xix. 32), or the common custom of society. Nikleh (from kdldh, the synonym of?£5, ch. viii. 23, xxiii. 9; cf. ch. xvi. 14, kal, to be light or insignificant) was a term used to denote whoever belonged to the lowest stratum of society (1 Sam. xviii. 23). It was the opposite of nicbdd (from cabed, to be heavy or of great importance). The Septuagint rendering, 6 aTt/109 777)0? rov evrtfiov is a very good one (as the Semitic languages have no such antithetical formations with a <TTepr}TLie6v). With such contempt of the distinctions arising from age and position, the state would very soon become a scene of the wildest confusion.
At length there would be no authorities left; even the desire to rule would die out: for despotism is sure to be followed by mob-rule, and mob-rule by anarchy in the most literal sense. The distress would become so great, that whoever had a coat (cloak), so as to be able to clothe himself at all decently, would be asked to undertake the government. Vers. 6, 7. " When a man shall take hold of his brother in his father s house, Thou hast a coat, thou shalt be our ruler, and take this ndn under thy hand; he will cry oid in that day, I do not want to be a surgeon; there is neither bread nor coat in my house: ye cannot make me the ruler of the people? " His father's house" — this is not an unmeaning trait in the picture of misery. The population would have become so thin and dispirited through hunger, that with a little energy it would be possible to decide within the narrow circle of a family who should be ruler, and to give effect to the decision. u In his father's house: " Beth dbiv is an ace. loci. The father's house is the place where brother meets with brother; and one breaks out with the urgent petition contained in the words, which follow without the introductory "saying" (cf. ch. xiv. 8, 16, and xxii. 16, xxxiii. 14). HDp for v with He otians, a form rarely met with (yid. Gen. xxvii. 37). fT™, which would be written *nn before the predicate, is jussive in meaning, though not in 'form. a This ruin:" macshelah is used in Zeph. i. 3 for that which occasions a person's fall; here it signifies what has been overthrown; and as cdshal itself, which means not only to stumble, trip, or slide, but also to fall in consequence of some force applied from without, is not used in connection with falling buildings, it must be introduced here with an allusion to the prosopopeia which follows in ver. 8. The man who was distinguished above all others, or at any rate above many others, by the fact that he could still dress himself decently (even if it were only in a blouse), should be made supreme ruler or dictator (cf. kdtzin, Judg. xi. 6); and the state which lay so miserably in ruins should be under his hand, i.e. his direction, protection, and care (2 Kings viii. 20; Gen. xli. 35, cf. ch. xvi. 9, where the plural is used instead of the ordinary singular ydd). The apodosis to the protasis introduced with chi as a particle of time (when) commences in ver. 7. The answer given by the brother to the earnest petition is introduced with " he will raise (viz. his voice, ch. xxiv. 14) in that day, saying." It is given in this circumstantial manner because it is a solemn protest. He does not want to be a chobesh, %.e. a binder, namely of the broken arms, and bones, and ribs of the ruined state (ch. xxx. 26, i. 6, lxi. 1). The expression ehyeh implies that he does not like it, because he is conscious of his inability. He has not confidence enough in himself, and the assumption that he has a coat is a false one: he not only has no coat at home (we must remember that the conversation is supposed to take place in his father's house), but he has not any bread; so that it is utterly impossible for a naked, starving man like him to do what is suggested (" in my house," ubebethi with a Vav of causal connection: Ges. 155, 1, c). The prophet then proceeds, in vers. 8-12, to describe this deep, tragical misery as a just retribution. Ver. 8. u For Jerusalem ii mined and Judith fallen; because their tongue and their doings (are) against Jehovah, to defy the eyes of His glory." Jerusalem M a city is feminine, according to the usual personification; Judah afl a people is regarded as masculine.1 The two preterites flildh and ndphal express the general fact, which occasioned such scenes of misery as the one just described. The second clause, beginning with " because" (chi), is a substantative clause, and attributes the coming judgment not to future sin, but to sin already existing. "Against Jehovah:"?K is used to denote a hostile attitude, as in ch. ii. 4, Gen. iv. 8, Num. xxxii. 14, Josh, x. 6. The capital and the land are against Jehovah both in word and deed, " to defy the eyes of His glory" (lamroth rene chebodo). V.V is equivalent to *yj; and lamroth is a syncopated hiphil, as in ch. xxiii. 11, and like the niphal in ch. i. 12: we find the same form of the same word in Ps. Ixxviii. 17. The kal mdrahy which is also frequently construed with the accusative, signifies to thrust away in a refractory manner; the hiphil himrdh, to treat refractorily, literally to set one's self rigidly in opposition, obniti; mar, string ere, to draw tightly, with which unquestionably the meaning bitter as an astringent is connected, though it does not follow that mdrdh, himrdk, and Jiemar (Ex. xxiii. 21) can be rendered irapairiKpaiveiv, as they have been in the Septuagint, since the idea of opposing, resisting, fighting in opposition, is implied in all these roots, with distinct reference to the primary meaning. The Lamed is a shorter expression instead of \V_u?, which is the term generally employed in such circumstances (Amos ii. 7; Jer. vii. 18, xxxii. 29). But what does the prophet mean by " the eyes of His glory?" Knobel's assertion, that chdbod is used here for the religious glory, i.e. the holiness of God, is a very strange one, since the chdbod of God is invariably the fiery, bright doxa which reveals Him as the Holy One. But his remark does not meet the question, inasmuch as it does not settle the point in dispute, whether the expression " the eyes of His glory" implies that the glory itself has eyes, or the glory is a quality of the eyes. The construction is certainly not a different one from "the arm of His glory" in ch. lii. 10, so
1 As a rule, the name of a people (apart from the personification of the people as beth, a house) is only used as a feminine, when the name of the land stands for the nation itself (see Gesenius, Lelirbegr. p. 469).
that it is to be taken as an attribute. But this suggests the further question, what does the prophet mean by the gloryeyes or glorious eyes of Jehovah? If we were to say the eyes of Jehovah are His knowledge of the world, it would be impossible to understand how they could be called holy, still less how they could be called glorious. This abstract explanation of the anthropomorphisms cannot be sustained. The state of the case is rather the following. The glory (chabod) of God is that eternal and glorious morplie which His holy nature assumes, and which men must picture to themselves anthropomorphically, because they cannot imagine anything superior to the human form. In this glorious form Jehovah looks upon His people with eyes of glory. His pure but yet jealous love, His holy love which breaks out in wrath against all who meet it with hatred instead of with love, is reflected therein.
But Israel, instead of walking in the consciousness of being a constant and favourite object of these majestic, earnestly admonishing eyes, was diligently engaged in bidding them defiance both in word and deed, not even hiding its sin from fear of them, but exposing them to view in the most shameless manner. — Ver. 9. " The look of their faces testifies against them, and their sin they make known like Sodom, without concealing it: xooe to their soul! for they do themselves harm" In any case, the prophet refers to the impudence with which their enmity against God was shamelessly stamped upon their faces, without even the self-condemnation which leads in other cases to a diligent concealment of the sin. But we cannot follow Luzzatto and Jos. Kimchi, who take haccdrath as used directly for azzuth (impudence), inasmuch as the Arabic hakara (Jiakira), to which Kimchi appeals, signifies to be astonished and to stare (see at Job xix. 3). And in this case there would be nothing strange in the substantive form, which would be a piel formation like nrbz HKEn. But it may be a hiphil formation (Ewald, § 156, a); and this is incomparably the more probable of the two, as hiccir panim is a very common phrase. It signifies to look earnestly, keenly, or inquiringly in the face of a person, to ^x the eye upon him; and, when used of a judge, to take the part of a person, by favouring him unjustly (Deut. i. 17, xvi. 19). But this latter idea, viz. " their acceptance of the person, or partiality" (according to Prov. xxiv. 23, xxviii. 21), is inadmissible here, for the simple reason that the passage refen to the whole nation, and not particularly to the judges. " The look of their faces" (haccdrath pnthem) is to be understood in an objective sense, viz. the appearance (to e78o?, Luke ix. 29), like the agnitio of Jerome, id quo se agnoscendum dat vultus eorum. This was probably the expression commonly employed in Hebrew for what we designate by a very inappropriate foreign word, viz. physiognomy, i.e. the expression of the face which reveals the state of the mind. This expression of their countenance testified against them (anah b\ as in ch. lix. 12), for it was the disturbed and distorted image of their sin, which not only could not be hidden, but did not even wish to be; in a word, of their azzutli (Eccles. viii. 1). And it did not even rest with this open though silent display: they spoke openly of their sin (liiggid in its simplest meaning, palam facerCj from nugad, nagdda, to be open, evident) without making any secret of it, like the Sodomites, who publicly proclaimed their fleshly lusts (Gen. xix.). Jerusalem was spiritually Sodom, as the prophet called it in ch. i. 10. By such barefaced sinning they did themselves harm (gdmal, lit, to finish, then to carry out, to show practically1).
The prophet's meaning is evident enough. But inasmuch as it is the curse of sin to distort the knowledge of what is most obvious and self-evident, and even to take it entirely away, the prophet dwells still longer upon the fact that all sinning is self-destruction and self-murder, placing this general truth against its opposite in a palillogical Johannic way, and calling out to his contemporaries in vers. 10, 11: " Say of the righteous, that it is well with him; for they will enjoy the fruit of their doings. Woe to the wicked! it is ill; for what his hands have wrought will be done to him." We cannot adopt the rendering " Praise the righteous," proposed by Vitringa and other modern commentators; for although dmar is sometimes construed with the accusative of the object (Ps. xl. 11, cxlv. 6, 11), it never means to praise, but to declare (even in Ps. xl. 11). We have here what was noticed from Gen. i. 4 onwards, — namely, the
1 It may now be accepted as an established fact, that the verb gdmal is connected with the Arabic 'gamala, to collect together, 'gamida, to be perfect, hamala, kamula id., and gamar, to finish (see Hupfeld on Ps. vii. 5, and Furst, Heb. Lex.).
obvious antiptosis or antiphonesis in the verbs njo (cf. ch. xxii. 9, Ex. ii. 2), JTP (1 Kings v. 17), and TOK (like \eyetv, John ix. 9): dicite justum quod bonus = dicite justum esse bonum (Ewald, § 336, b). The object of sight, knowledge, or speech, is first of all mentioned in the most general manner; then follows the qualification, or more precise definition. ato, and in ver. 11 JH (SH without the pause), might both of them be the third pers. pret. of the verbs, employed in a neuter sense: the former signifying, it is well, viz. with him (as in Deut. v. 30, Jer. xxii. 15, 16); the latter, it is bad (as in Ps. cvi. 32). But it is evident from Jer. xliv. 17 that KVl nto and wn jn may be used in the sense of /ca\w? (/ca/cco?) e^et, and that the two expressions are here thought of in this way, so that there is no)b to be supplied in either case. The form of the first favours this; and in the second the accentuation fluctuates between '•IK tiphchah yvhh munach, and the former with merka, the latter tiphchah. At the same time, the latter mode of accentuation, which is favourable to the personal rendering of jn, is supported by editions of some worth, such as Brescia 1494, Pesaro 1516, Venice 1515, 1521, and is justly preferred by Luzzatto and Bar. The summary assertions, The righteous is well, the wicked ill, are both sustained by their eventual fate, in the light of which the previous misfortune of the righteous appears as good fortune, and the previous good fortune of the wicked as misfortune. With an allusion to this great difference in their eventual fate, the word " say," which belongs to both clauses, summons to an acknowledgment of the good fortune of the one and the misfortune of the other. O that Judah and Jerusalem would acknowledge this to their own salvation before it was too late! For the state of the poor nation was already miserable enough, and very near to destruction.
Ver. 12. " My people, its oppressors are boys, and women rule over it; my people, thy leaders are misleaders, who swallow up the way of thy paths." It is not probable that meolel signifies maltreaters or trifters, by the side of the parallel ndshim; moreover, the idea of despotic treatment is already contained in nogesaiv. We expect to find children where there are women. And this is one meaning of meolel. It does not mean a suckling, however, as Ewald supposes (§ 160, a), more especially as it occurs in connection with yonek (Jer. xliv. 7; Lam. ii. 11), and therefore cannot have precisely the same meaning; but, like P?to and toy (the former of which may be contracted from meotel), it refers to the boy as playful and wanton (lascivum, protervum). Bottcher renders it correctly, pueri, lusores, though meolel is not in itself a collective form, as he supposes; but the singular is used collectively, or perhaps better still, the predicate is intended to apply to every individual included in the plural notion of the subject (compare ch. xvi. 8, xx. 4, and Ges. § 146, 4): the oppressors of the people, every one without exception, were (even though advanced in years) mere boys or youths in their mode of thinking and acting, and made all subject to them the football of their capricious humour. Here again the person of the king is allowed to fall into the background. But the female rule, referred to afterwards, points us to the court. And this must really have been the case when Ahaz, a young rake, came to the throne at the age of twenty (according to the LXX. twenty-five), possibly towards the close of the*reign of Jotham. With the deepest anguish the prophet repeats the expression u my people," as he passes in his address to his people from the rulers to the preachers: for the measslierim or leaders are prophets (Mic. iii. 5); but what prophets! Instead of leading the people in a straight path, they lead them astray (ch. ix. 15, cf. 2 Kings xxi. 9). This they did, as we may gather from the history of this crowd of prophets, either by acting in subservience to the ungodly interests of the court with dynastic or demagogical servility, or by flattering the worst desires of the people. Thus the way of the path of the people, i.e. the highway or road by whose ramifying paths the people were to reach the appointed goal, had been swallowed up by them, i.e. taken away from the sight and feet of the people, so that they could not find it and walk therein (cf. ch. xxv. 7, 8, where the verb is used in another connection). What is swallowed up is invisible, has disappeared, without a trace being left behind. The same idea is applied in Job xxxix. 27 to a galloping horse, which is said to swallow the road, inasmuch as it leaves piece after piece behind it in its rapid course. It is stated here with regard to the prophets, that they swallow up the road appointed by Jehovah, as the one in which His people were to walk, just as a criminal swallows a piece of paper which bears witness against him, and so hides it in his own stomach.
Thus the way of salvation pointed out by the law was no longer to be either heard of or seen. The prophets, who ought to have preached it, said mum, mum, and kept it swallowed. It had completely perished, as it were, in the erroneous preaching of the false prophets.
This was how it stood. There was but little to be expected from the exhortations of the prophet; so that he had to come back again and again to the proclamation of judgment. The judgment of the world comes again before his mind. — Ver. 13. " Jehovah has appeared to plead, and stands up to judge the nations." When Jehovah, weary with His long-suffering, rises up from His heavenly throne, this is described as " standing up" (hum, ch. ii. 19, 21, xxxiii. 10); and when He assumes the judgment-seat in the sight of all the world, this is called " sitting down" (yashab, Ps. ix. 5, Joel iv. 12); when, having come down from heaven (Mic. i. 2 sqq.), He comes forward as accuser, this is called " standing " (itizzab or amad, Ps. lxxxii. 1: amad is coming forward and standing, as the opposite of sitting; nizzab, standing, with the subordinate idea of being firm, resolute, ready). This pleading (ribh, Jer. xxv. 31) is also judging (din), because His accusation, which is incontrovertible, contains the sentence in itself; and His sentence, which executes itself irresistibly, is of itself the infliction of punishment. Thus does he stand in the midst of the nations at once accuser, judge, and executioner (Ps. vii. 8). But among the nations it is more especially against Israel that He contends; and in Israel it is more especially against the leaders of the poor misguided and neglected people that He sets Himself.
Vers. 14, 15. "Jehovah will proceed to judgment with the elders of His people, and its princes. And ye, ye have eaten up the vineyard; prey of the suffering is in your houses. What mean ye that ye crush my people, and grind the face of the suffering? Thus saith the Lord Jehovah of hosts." The words of God Himself commence with " and ye" {pattern). The sentence to which this (et vos = at vos) is the antithesis is wanting, just as in Ps. ii. 6, where the words of God commence with " and I" (vdani, et ego = ast ego). The tacit clause may easily be supplied, viz. I have set you over my vineyard, but ye have consumed the vineyard. The only question is, whether the sentence is to be regarded as suppressed by Jehovah Himself, or by the prophet. Most certainly by Jehovah Himself. The majesty with which He appeared before the rulers of His people was, even without words, a practical and undeniable proof that their majesty was only a shadow of His, and their office His trust. But their office consisted in the fact that Jehovah had committed His people to their care. The vineyard of Jehovah was His people — a self-evident figure, which the prophet dresses up in the form of a parable in ch. v. Jehovah had appointed them as gardeners and keepers of this vineyard, but they themselves have become the very beasts that they ought to have warded off. "1V2 is applied to the beasts which completely devour the blades of a corn-field or the grapes of a vineyard (Ex. xxii. 4). This change was perfectly obvious. The possessions stolen from their unhappy countrymen, which were still in their houses, were the tangible proof of their plundering of the vineyard. " The suffering:" rani (depressusy the crushed) is introduced as explanatory of haccerem, the prey, because depression and misery were the ordinary fate of the congregation which God called His vineyard. It was ecclesia pressay but woe to the oppressors! In the question "what mean ye?" (malldcem) the madness and wickedness of their deeds are implied. HD and D3^ are fused into one word here, as if it were a prefix (as in Ex. iv. 2, Ezek. viii. 6, Mai. i. 13; vid. Ges. § 20, 2). The keri helps to make it clear by resolving the chethibh. The word malldcem ought, strictly speaking, to be followed by chi: " What is there to you that ye crush my people?" as in ch. xxii. 1, 16; but the words rush forwards (as in Jonah i. 6), because they are an explosion of wrath. For this reason the expressions relating to the behaviour of the rulers are the strongest that can possibly be employed. K3"n (crush) is also to be met with in Prov. xxii. 22; but "grind the face" (tdchan p'ne) is a strong metaphor without a parallel. The former signifies " to pound," the latter " to grind," as the millstone grinds the corn. They grind the faces of those who are already bowed down, thrusting them back with such unmerciful severity, that they stand as it were annihilated, and their faces become as white as flour, or as the Germans would say, cheese-white, chalk-white, as pale as death, from oppression and despair. Thus the language supplied to a certain extent appropriate figures, with which to describe the conduct of the rulers of Israel; but it contained no words that could exhaust the immeasurable wickedness of their conduct: hence the magnitude of their sin is set before them in the form of a question, " What is to you?" i.e. What indescribable wickedness is this which you are committing? The prophet hears this said by Jehovah, the majestic Judge, whom he here describes as Adonai Elohim Zebaoth (according to the Masoretic pointing). This triplex name of God, which we find in the prophetic books, viz. frequently in Amos and also in Jer. ii. 19, occurs for -the first time in the Elohistic Psalm, Ps. lxix. 7. This scene of judgment is indeed depicted throughout in the colours of the Psalms, and more especially recals the (Elohistic) Psalm of Asaph (Ps. lxxxii.).
But notwithstanding the dramatic vividness with which the prophet pictures to himself this scene of judgment, he is obliged to break off at the very beginning of his description, because another word of Jehovah comes upon him. This applies to the women of Jerusalem, whose authority, at the time when Isaiah prophesied, was no less influential than that of their husbands who had forgotten their calling. — Vers. 16, 17. u Jehovah hath spoken: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk about with extended throat, and blinking with the eyes, walk about with tripping gait, and tinkle with their foot-ornaments: the Lord of all makes the crown of the daughters of Zion scabbed, and Jehovah will uncover their shame? Their inward pride (gdbah, as in Ezek. xvi. 50; cf. Zeph. iii. 11) shows itself outwardly. They walk with exterided throat, i.e. bending the neck back, trying to make themselves taller than they are, because they think themselves so great. The keri substitutes the more usual form, rfttM; but Isaiah in all probability intentionally made use of the rarer and ruder form netuvoth, since such a form really existed (1 Sam. xxv. 18), as well as the singular ndtu for ndtui (Job xv. 22, xli. 25: Ges. § 75, Anm. 5). They also went Avinking the eyes (mesakkeroth, for which we frequently find the erratum meshakkeroth), i.e. casting voluptuous and amatory glances with affected innocence (yev/iara 6<j)0a\fjLwv, LXX). " Winking: " sdkar is not used in the sense of fucare (Targ. b. Sabbath 625, Joma 95, Luther), — which is all the more inappropriate, because blackening the eyelids with powder of antimony was regarded in the East of the Old Testament as indispensable to female beauty, — but in the sense of nictare (LXX., Vulg., Syr., syn. remaz, cf. sekar, Syr. to squint; Turg. = didzaph, Job xx. 9). Compare also the talmudic saying: God did not create woman out of Adam's ear, that she might be no eavesdropper (tsaithdnith), nor out of Adam's eye, that she might be no winker (sakrdnith).1 The third was, that they walked incedendo et trepidando. The second inf. abs. is in this case, as in most others, the one which gives the distinct tone, whilst the other serves to keep before the eye the occurrence indicated in its finite verb (Ges. § 131, 3). They walk about tripping (tdphophy a wide-spread onomato-poetic word), i.e. taking short steps, just putting the heel of one foot against the toe of the other (as the Talmud explains it). Luther renders it, " they walk along and waggle " (schwdnzen, i.e. clunibus agitatis). The rendering is suitable, but incorrect. They could only take short steps, because of the chains by which the costly foot-rings (achdsim) worn above their ankles were connected together. These chains, which were probably ornamented with bells, as is sometimes the case now in the East, they used to tinkle as they walked: they made an ankle-tinkling with their feet, setting their feet down in such a manner that these ankle-rings knocked against each other. The writing beraglehem (masc.) for beraglehen (fem.) is probably not an unintentional synallage gen.: they wrere not modest virgines, but cold, masculine viragines, so that they themselves were a synallage generis. Nevertheless they tripped along. Tripping is a child's step. Although well versed in sin and old in years, the women of Jerusalem tried to maintain a youthful, childlike appearance. They therefore tripped along with short, childish steps. The women of the Mohammedan East still take pleasure in such coquettish tinklings, although they are forbidden by the Koran, just as the women of Jerusalem did in the days of Isaiah. The attractive influence of natural charms, especially
1 Also b. Sota 47&: " Since women have multiplied with extended necks and winking eyes, the number of cases has also multiplied in which it has been necessary to resort to the curse water (Num. v. 18)." In fact, this increased to such an extent, that Johanan ben Zakkai, the pupil of Hillel, abolished the ordeal (divine-verdict) of the Sota (the woman suspected of adultery) altogether. The people of his time were altogether an adulterous generation.
when heightened by luxurious art, is very great; but the prophet is blind to all this splendour, and seeing nothing but the corruption within, foretells to these rich and distinguished women a foul and by no means aBsthetic fate. The Sovereign Ruler of all would smite the crown of their head, from which long hair was now flowing, with scab (vsippach, a progressive preterite with Vav apodosis, a denom. verb from sappachath, the scurf which adheres to the skin: see at Hab. ii. 15); and Jehovah would uncover their nakedness, by giving them up to violation and abuse at the hands of coarse and barbarous foes, — the greatest possible disgrace in the eyes of a woman, who covers herself as carefully as she can in the presence of any stranger (ch. xlvii. 3; Nahum iii. 5; Jer. xiii. 22; Ezek. xvi. 37).
The prophet then proceeds to describe still further how the Lord would take away the whole of their toilet as plunder. Vers. 18-23. " On that day the Lord will put away the show of the ankle-clasps, and of the head-bands, and of the crescents; the ear-rings, and the arm-chains, and the light veils; the diadems, and the stepping-chains, and the girdles, and the smelling-bottles, and the amulets; the finger-rings, and the nose-rings; the galadresses, and the sleeve-frocks, and the wrappers, and the pockets; the hand-mirrors, ana* the Sindu-cloths, and the turbans, and the gauze mantles" The fullest explanation of all these articles of female attire is to be found in N. W. Schroder's work, entitled Commentarius de vestitu mulierum Hebro?arum adJes. iii. 16-24, Lugd. Batav. 1745 (a quarto volume), and in that of Ant. Theod. Hartmann, consisting of three octavo volumes, and entitled Die Hebrderin am Putztische und als Braut (The Jewess at the Toilet-table, and as Bride, 1809-10); to which we may also add, Saalschiitz, Archceologie, ch. iii., where he treats of the dresses of men and women. It was not usually Isaiah's custom to enter into such minute particulars. Of all the prophets, Ezekiel wyas the one most addicted to this, as we may see, for example, from Ezek. xvi. And even in other prophecies against the women we find nothing of the kind again (ch. xxxii. 9 sqq.; Amos iv. 1 sqq.). But in this instance, the enumeration of the female ornaments is connected with that of the state props in ch. iii. 1-3, and that of the lofty and exalted in ch. ii. 13-16, so as to form a trilogy, and has its own special explanation in that boundless love of ornament which had become prevalent in the time of Uzziah-Jotham. It was the prophet's intention to produce a ludicrous, but yet serious impression, as to the immeasurable luxury which really existed; and in the prophetic address, his design throughout is to bring out the glaring contrast between the titanic, massive, worldly glory, in all its varied forms, and that true, spiritual, and majestically simple glory, whose reality is manifested from within outwards. In fact, the theme of the whole address is the way of universal judgment leading on from the false glory to the true. The general idea of tiphereth (show: rendered "bravery" in Eng. ver.) which stands at the head and includes the whole, points to the contrast presented by a totally different tiphereth which follows in ch. iv. 2. In explaining each particular word, we must be content with what is most necessary, and comparatively the most certain. " Ankle-clasps " (acdsim): these were rings of gold, silver, or ivory, worn round the ankles; hence the denom. verb (icces) in ver. 16, to make a tinkling sound with these rings. " Headrbands" or "frontlets" (shebisim, from shdbas = shdbatz: plectere), were plaited bands of gold or silver thread worn below the hair-net, and reaching from one ear to the other. There is some force, however, in the explanation which has been very commonly adopted since the time of Schroder, namely, that they were sun-like balls (= shemisim), which were worn as ornaments round the neck, from the Arabic 'sumeisa (subeisa), a little sun. The "crescents" (saharonim) were little pendants of this kind, fastened round the neck and hanging down upon the breast (in Judg. viii. 21 we meet with them as ornaments hung round the camels' necks). Such ornaments are still worn by Arabian girls, who generally have several different kinds of them; the hildl, or new moon, being a symbol of increasing good fortune, and as such the most approved charm against the evil eye. "Ear-rings" (netiphoth, ear-drops): we meet with these in Judg. viii. 26, as an ornament worn by Midianitish kings. Hence the Arabic munattafe, a woman adorned with ear-rings. "Arm-chains:" sheroth, from shdrar, to twist. According to the Targum, these were chains worn upon the arm, or spangles upon the wrist, answering to the spangles upon the ankles. "Fluttering veils" (redlothj from rd'al, to hang loose): these were more expensive than the ordinary veils worn by girls, which were called tzaiph. "Diadems" (pe'erim) are only mentioned in other parts of the Scriptures as being worn by men (e.g. by priests, bridegrooms, or persons of high rank). " Stepping-chains;" tze'ddoth, from tze'ddah, a step; hence the chain worn to shorten and give elegance to the step. "Girdles" kisshurim, from kdshar (cingere), dress girdles, such as were worn by brides upon their wedding-day (compare Jer. ii. 32 witli Isa. xlix. 18); the word is erroneously rendered hair-pins (kalmasmezayyalt) in the Targum. " Smellingbottles: " botte hannephesh, holders of scent (nephesh, the breath of an aroma). "Amulets:" lechashim (from Idchash, to work by incantations), gems or metal plates with an inscription upon them, which were worn as a protection as well as an ornament. "Finger-rings:" tabbaoth, from tdba, to impress or seal, signetrings worn upon the finger, corresponding to the cJwthdm worn by men upon the breast suspended by a cord. " Nose-rings " (rdzme hdapli) were fastened in the central division of the nose, and hung down over the mouth: they have been ornaments in common use in the East from the time of the patriarchs (Gen. xxiv. 22) down to the present day. " Gala-dresses " (machaldtsoth) are dresses not usually worn, but taken off when at home. " Sleeve-frocks" (ma atdphdh): the second tunic, worn above the ordinary one, the Roman stola. "Wrappers" (initpdchoth, from tdphach, expandere)) broad cloths wrapped round the body, such as Ruth wore when she crept in to Boaz in her best attire (Ruth iii. 15). "Pockets" (charitim) were for holding money (2 Kings v. 23), which was generally carried by men in the girdle, or in a purse (cis). " Hand-mirrors " (gilyonim): the Septuagint renders this Scacfravrj Xa/ccovt/ca, sc. Ifxdriaj Lacedsemonian gauze or transparent dresses, which showed the nakedness rather than concealed it (from gdldh, retegere); but the better rendering is mirrors with handles, polished metal plates (from gdldh, polire), as gilldyon is used elsewhere to signify a smooth table. " Sindu-chths" (sedinim), veils or coverings of the finest linen, viz. of Sindu or Hindu cloth (aivBoves), — Sindu, the land of Indus, being the earlier name of India.1 " Turbans" (tseniphoth, from tsunaph, convolver e), the head-dress composed
1 The Mishna (Kelim xxiv. 13) mentions three different sedinin: night dresses, curtains, and embroidery. The sindon is frequently referred to as a covering wrapped round the person; and in h. Menaclwth 41a, it is stated that the sindon is the summer dress, the sarbal (cloak) the winter dress, which may help to explain Mark xiv. 51, 52.
of twisted cloths of different colours. "Gauze mantles1 (redidim, hom rddad, extendere, tenuem facere), delicate veil-like mantles thrown over the rest of the clothes. Stockings and handkerchiefs'are not mentioned: the former were first introduced into Hither Asia from Media long after Isaiah's time, and a Jerusalem lady no more thought of using the latter than a Grecian or Roman lac]y did. Even the veil (burko) now commonly worn, which conceals the whole of the face with the exception of the eyes, did not form part of the attire of an Israelitish woman in the olden time.1 The prophet enumerates twenty-one different ornaments: three sevens of a very bad kind, especially for the husbands of these state-dolls. There is no particular order observed in the enumeration, either from head to foot, or from the inner to the outer clothing; but they are arranged as much ad libitum as the dress itself.
When Jehovah took away all this glory, with which the women of Jerusalem were adorned, they would be turned into wretched-looking prisoners, disfigured by ill-treatment and dirt. — Ver. 24. " And instead of balmy scent there will be mouldiness, and instead of the sash a rope, and instead of artistic ringlets a baldness, and instead of the dress-cloak a frock of sackcloth, branding instead of beauty1' Mouldiness, or mother (rnak, as in ch. v. 24, the dust of things that have moulded away), with which they would be covered, and which they would be obliged to breathe, would take the place of the bosem, i.e. the scent of the balsam shrub (bdsdm), and of sweet-scented pomade in general; and nikpdh that of the beautifully embroidered girdle (Prov. xxxi. 24). The meaning of this word is neither u a wound," as the Targums and Talmud render it, nor "rags," as given by Knobel, ed. 1 (from ndkaph, percutere, perforare), but the rope thrown over them as prisoners (from kdphdh= kdvdh, contorquere: LXX., Vulg., Syr.).2 Baldness takes the place of
1 Rashi, however, makes a different statement (Sabbath 65a), viz. that. " Israelitish women in Arabia go out with veils which conceal the face, and those in Media with their mantles fastened about the mouth."
2 Credner {Joel, p. 147) renders the word " tatters," from ndkaph, to rub in pieces; but the word has no such meaning, whereas the meaning vulnus, lit. percussio, is admissible (see at Job xix. 26), but does not suit the antithesis. Luzzatto connects it with rikaph, to bind (from which the makkeph derives its name), and understands it as referring to the dressing applied to wounds, to lint into which the girdle was torn. The artistic ringlets (pwpn n&yn, not *W?W?9 so that it is in apposition: cf. ch. xxx. 20; Ges. § 113; Ewald, § 287, b). The reference is not to golden ornaments for the head, as the Sept. rendering gives it, although miksheh is used elsewhere to signify embossed or carved work in metal or wood; but here we are evidently to understand by the " artificial twists " either curls made with the curling-tongs, or the hair plaited and twisted up in knots, which they would be obliged to cut off in accordance with the mourning customs (ch. xv. 2, xxii. 12), or which would fall off in consequence of grief. A frock of sackcloth (jnachagoreth sak), i.e. a smock of coarse haircloth worn next to the skin, such as Layard found depicted upon a bas-relief at Kouyunjik, would take the place of the pethigil, i.e. the dress-cloak (either from pdthag, to be wide or full, with the substantive termination il, or else composed of pethi, breadth, and gil, festive rejoicing); and branding the place of beauty. Branding (ci = cevi9 from cdvdhy Kaiew), the mark burnt upon the forehead by their conquerors: ci is a substantive,1 not a particle, as the Targum and others render it, and as the makkeph might make it appear. There is something very effective in the inverted order of the words in the last clause of the five. In this five-fold reverse would shame and mourning take the place of proud, voluptuous rejoicing.
The prophet now passes over to a direct address to Jerusalem itself, since the " daughters of Zion " are the daughter of Zion in her present degenerate condition. The daughter of Zion most plausible derivation is from Jcaphdh, which is really employed in post-biblical usage to signify not only to congeal and wrinkle, but also to thicken {Sabbath 21a, Vhahpoth: " Make the wick thicker, that it may burn the brighter"). It is probably radically akin to the Arabic nuk.be (explained in Lamachzari as equivalent to the Persian mijan-bend, a girdle), which is apparently used to denote the coarse girdle worn by peasants or by Arab women of the wandering tribes, resembling a rope of goat's hair, as distinguished from the artistic and costly girdle worn by women of the upper classes in the towns.
1 It is so understood in b. Sabbath 62b, with an allusion to the proverb, " The end of beauty is burning" (viz. inflammation). In Arabia, the ap-
plication of the cey with a red-hot iron (niikwah) plays a very important part in the medical treatment of both man and beast. You meet with many men who have been burned not only on their legs and arms, but in their faces as well, and, as a rule, the finest horses are disfigured by the cey. — Wetzstein.
loses her sons, and consequently the daughters of Zion their husbands. — Ver. 25. " Thy men will fall by the sword, and thy might in war" The plural methim (the singular of which only occurs in the form methu, with the connecting vowel u as a component part of the proper names) is used as a prose word in the Pentateuch; but in the later literature it is a poetic archaism. " Thy might " is used interchangeably with " thy men/' the possessors of the might being really intended, like robur and robora in Latin (compare Jer. xlix. 35).
What the prophet here foretells to the daughter of Zion he sees in ver. 26 fulfilled upon her: " Then will her gates lament and mourn, and desolate is she, sits down vpon the ground." The gates, where the husbands of the daughters of Zion, who have now fallen in war, used at one time to gather together in such numbers, are turned into a state of desolation, in which they may, as it were, be heard complaining, and seen to mourn (ch. xiv. 31; Jer. xiv. 2; Lam. i. 4); and the daughter of Zion herself is utterly vacated, thoroughly emptied, completely deprived of all her former population; and in this state of the most mournful widowhood or orphanage, brought down from her lofty seat (ch. xlvii. 1) and princely glory (Jer. xiii. 18), she sits down upon the ground, just as Judaea is represented as doing upon Roman medals that were struck after the destruction of Jerusalem, where she is introduced as a woman thoroughly broken down, and sitting under a palm-tree in an attitude of despair, with a warrior standing in front of her, the inscription upon the medal being Judaa capta, or devicta. The Septuagint rendering is quite in accordance with the sense, viz. Kal KaTaXeityOrjar) ^lovrj /cal et<? tyjv yrjv iBa^LcrOncr'n (cf. Luke xix. 44), except that 2£Tj is not the second person, but the third, and nnj53 the third pers. pret. niph. for n£i^, — a pausal form which is frequently met with in connection with the smaller distinctive accents, such as silluk and athnach (here it occurs with tiphchah, as, for example, in Amos hi. 8). The clause " sits down upon the ground " is appended aavvSercos; — a frequent construction in cases where one of two verbs defines the other in a manner which is generally expressed adverbially (vid. 1 Chron. xiii. 2, and the inverted order of the words in Jer. iv. 5; cf. xii. 6): Zion sits upon the earth in a state of utter depopulation.
When war shall thus unsparingly have swept away the men of Zion, a most unnatural effect will ensue, namely, that women will go in search of husbands, and not men in search of wives. — Ch. iv. 1. "And seven women lay hold of one man in that day, saying, We ivill eat our own bread, and icear our oivn clothes; only let thy name be named upon us, take away our reproach." The division of the chapters is a wrong one here, as this verse is the closing verse of the prophecy against the women, and the closing portion of the whole address does not begin till ch. iv. 2. The present pride of the daughters of Zion, every one of whom now thought herself the greatest as the wife of such and such a man, and for whom many men were now the suitors, would end in this unnatural self-humiliation, that seven of them would offer themselves to the same man, the first man who presented himself, and even renounce the ordinary legal claim upon their husband for clothing and food (Ex. xxi. 10). It would be quite sufficient for them to be allowed to bear his name (" let thy name be named upon us: " the name is put upon the thing named, as giving it its distinctness and character), if he would only take away their reproach (namely, the reproach of being unmarried, ch. liv. 4, as in Gen. xxx. 23, of being childless) by letting them be called his wives. The number seven (seven women to one man) may be explained on the ground that there is a bad seven as well as a holy one {e.g. Matt. xii. 45).
In ch. iv. 1 the threat denounced against the women of Jerusalem is brought to a close. It is the side-piece to the threat denounced against the national rulers. And these two scenes of judgment were only parts of the general judgment about to fall upon Jerusalem and Judah, as a state or national community. And this again was merely a portion, viz. the central group of the picture of a far more comprehensive judgment, which was about to fall upon everything lofty and exalted on the earth. Jerusalem, therefore, stands here as the centre and focus of the great judgment-day. It was in Jerusalem that the ungodly glory which was ripe.for judgment was concentrated; and it was in Jerusalem also that the light of the true and final glory would concentrate itself. To this promise, with which the address returns to its starting-point, the prophet now passes on without any further introduction.
la fact it needed no introduction, for the judgment in itself was the medium of salvation. When Jerusalem was judged, it would he sifted; and by being sifted, it would be rescued, pardoned, glorified. The prophet proceeds in this sense to speak of what would happen in that day, and describes the one great day of God at the end of time (not a day of fourand-twenty hours any more than the seven days of creation were), according to its general character, as opening with judgment, but issuing in salvation. — Ver. 2. " In that day will the sprout of Jehovah become an ornament and glory, and the fruit of the land pride and splendour for the redeemed of Israeli The four epithets of glory, which are here grouped in pairs, strengthen our expectation, that now that the mass of Israel has been swept away, together with the objects of its worthless pride, we shall find a description of what will become an object of well-grounded pride to the " escaped of Israel," i.e. to the remnant that has survived the judgment, and been saved from destruction. But with this interpretation of the promise it is impossible that it can be the church of the future itself, which is here called the "sprout of Jehovah" and " fruit of the land" as Luzzatto and Malbim suppose; and equally impossible, with such an antithesis between what is promised and what is abolished, that the " sprout of Jehovah" and " fruit of the earth" should signify the harvest blessings bestowed by Jehovah, or the rich produce of the land. For although the expression zemach Jehovah (sprout of Jehovah) may unquestionably be used to signify this, as in Gen. ii. 9 and Ps. civo 14 (cf. Isa. Ixi. 11), and fruitfulness of the land is a standing accompaniment of the eschatological promises {e.g. ch. xxx. 23 sqq., compare the conclusion of Joel and Amos), and it was also foretold that the fruitful fields of Israel would become a glory in the sight of the nations (Ezek. xxxiv. 29; Mai. hi. 12; cf. Joel ii. 17); yet this earthly, material good, of which, moreover, there was no lack in the time of Uzziah and Jotham, was altogether unsuitable to set forth such a contrast as would surpass and outshine the worldly glory existing before. But even granting what Hofmann adduces in support of this view, — namely, that the natural God-given blessings of the field do form a fitting antithesis to the studied works of art of which men had hitherto been proud,— there is still truth in the remark of Rosenmiiller, that "the magnificence of the whole passage is at variance with such an interpretation." Only compare ch. xxviii. 5, where Jehovah Himself is described in the same manner, as the glory and ornament of the remnant of Israel. But if the " sprout of Jehovah" is neither the redeemed remnant itself, nor the fruit of the field, it must be the name of the Messiah. And it is in this sense that it has been understood by the Targum, and by such modern commentators as Rosenmiiller, Hengstenberg, Steudel, Umbreit, Caspari, Drechsler, and others. The great King of the future is called zemach, avaroXrj in the sense of Heb. vii. 14, viz. as a shoot springing out of the human, Davidic, earthly soil, — a shoot which Jehovah had planted in the earth, and would cause to break through and spring forth as the pride of His congregation, which was waiting for this heavenly child. It is He again who is designated in the parallel clause as the " fruit of the land" (or lit. fruit of the earth), as being the fruit which the land of Israel, and consequently the earth itself, would produce, just as in Ezek. xvii. 5 Zedekiah is called a " seed of the earth." The reasons already adduced to show that "the sprout of Jehovah" cannot refer to the blessings of the field, apply with equal force to " the fruit of the earth." This also relates to the Messiah Himself, regarded as the fruit in which all the growth and bloom of this earthly history would eventually reach its promised and divinely appointed conclusion. The use of this double epithet to denote " the coming One" can only be accounted for, without anticipating the New Testament standpoint,1 from the desire to depict His double-sided origin. He would come, on the one hand, from Jehovah; but, on the other hand, from the earth, inasmuch as He would spring from Israel. We have here the passage, on the basis of which zemach (the sprout or " Branch")
1 From a New Testament point of view we might say that the " sprout of Jehovah" or " fruit of the earth" was the grain of wheat which redeeming love sowed in the earth on Good Friday; the grain of wheat which began to break through the ground and grow towards heaven on Easter Sunday; the grain of wheat whose golden blade ascended heavenwards on Ascension Day; the grain of wheat whose myriad-fold ear bent down to the earth on the day of Pentecost, and poured out the grains, from which the holy church not only was born, but still continues to be born. But such thoughts as these lie outside the historico -grammatical meaning.
was adopted by Jeremiah (ch. xxiii. 5 and xxxiii. 15) and Zechariah (eh. iii. 8, vi. 12) as a proper name for the Messiah, and upon which Matthew, by combining this proper name zemach (sprout) with nezer (ch. xi. 1, cf. liii. 2), rests his affirmation, that according to the Old Testament prophecies the future Messiah was to be called a Nazarene. It is undoubtedly strange that this epithet should be introduced so entirely without preparation even by Isaiah, who coined it first. In fact, the whole passage relating to the Messiah stands quite alone in this cycle of prophecies in ch. i.— vi. But the book of Isaiah is a complete and connected work. What the prophet indicates merely in outline here, he carries out more fully in the cycle of prophecies which follows in ch. vii.-xii.; and there the enigma, which he leaves as an enigma in the passage before us, receives the fullest solution. Without dwelling any further upon the mai\ of the future, described in this enigmatically symbolical way, the prophet hurries on to a more precise description of the church of the future. — Yer. 3. "And it ivill come to pass, whoever is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem, holy will he be called, all who are written down for life in Jerusalem." The leading emphasis of the whole verse rests upon kadosh (holy). Whereas formerly in Jerusalem persons had been distinguished according to their rank and condition, without any regard to their moral worth (ch. iii. 1-3, 10, 11; cf. ch. xxxii. 5); so the name kadosh (holy) would now be the one chief name of honour, and would be given to every individual, inasmuch as the national calling of Israel wTould now be realized in the persons of all (Ex. xix. 6, etc.). Consequently the expression " he shall be called" is not exactly equivalent to u he shall be," but rather presupposes the latter, as in ch. i. 26, lxi. 6, lxii. 4. The term kadosh denotes that which is withdrawn from the world, or separated from it. The church of the saints or holy ones, which now inhabits Jerusalem, is what has been left from the smelting; and their holiness is the result of washing, "tfrian is interchanged with IKB^n. The latter, as Papenheim has shown in his Hebrew synonyms, involves the idea of intention, viz. "that which has been left behind;" the former merely expresses the fact, viz. that which remains. The character of this " remnant of grace," and the number of members of wThich it would consist, are shown in the apposition contained in ver. 3b. This apposition means something more than those who are entered as living in Jerusalem, i.e. the population of Jerusalem as entered in the city register (Hofmann); for the verb with Lamed does not mean merely to enter as a certain thing, but (like the same verb with the accusative in Jer. xxii. 30) to enter as intended for a certain purpose. The expression B^np may either be taken as a noun, viz. " to life" (Dan. xii. 2), or as an adjective, " to the living" (a meaning which is quite as tenable; cf. Ps. Ixix. 29, 1 Sam. xxv. 29). In either case the notion of predestination is implied, and the assumption of the existence of a divine " book of life" (Ex. xxxii. 32, 33; Dan. xii. 1; cf. Ps. cxxxix. 16); so that the idea is the same as that of Acts xiii. 48: " As many as were ordained to eternal life." The reference here is to persons who were entered in the book of God, on account of the good kernel of faith within them, as those who should become partakers of the life in the new Jerusalem, and should therefore be spared in the midst of the judgment of sifting in accordance with this divine purpose of grace. For it was only through the judgment setting this kernel of faith at liberty, that such a holy community as is described in the protasis which comes afterwards, as in Ps. Ixiii. 6, 7, could possibly arise.
Yer. 4. " When the Lord shall have ivashed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged away the bloodguiltinesses of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of sifting." u When" followed by a preterite (equivalent to a fat. exact, as in ch. xxiv. 13; Ges. § 126, 5), introduces the circumstance, whose previous occurrence would be the condition of all the rest. The force of the future yddiach (" shall have purged") is regulated by that of the preterite rachatz, as in ch. vi. 11; for although, when regarded simply by itself, as in ch. x. 12, the future tense may suggest the idea of a future perfect, it cannot have the force of such a future. The double purification answers to the two scenes of judgment described in ch. iii. The filth of the daughters of Zion is the moral pollution hidden under their vain and coquettish finery; and the murderous deeds of Jerusalem are the acts of judicial murder committed by its rulers upon the poor and innocent. This filth and these spots of blood the Sovereign Ruler washes and purges away (see 2 Chron. iv. 6), by causing His spirit or His breath to burst in upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, both male and female. This breath is called " the spirit of judgment," because it punishes evil; and k- the spirit of sifting," inasmuch as it sweeps or cleans it away. "\ya is to be explained, as in ch. vi. 13, in accordance with Deut. xiii. 6 (5, Eng. Ver.; "put the evil away") and other passages, such especially as ch. xix. 1 3, xxi. 9. The rendering given in the Septuagint and Vulgate, viz. " in the spirit of burning," is founded upon the radical meaning of the verb, which signifies literally to burn up, and hence to clear away or destroy (see Job, vol. ii. p. 180, Eng. Tr.). Nevertheless, "burning" in connection with judgment is not definite enough, since every manifestation of divine judgment is a manifestation of fire; but it is not every judgment that has connected with it what is here implied, — namely, the salutary object of burning away, or, in other words, of winnowing. The " spirit" is in both instances the Spirit of God which pervades the world, not only generating and sustaining life, but also at times destroying and sifting (ch. xxx. 27, 28), as it does in the case before us, in which the imperishable glory described in ver. 5 is so prepared.
Yer. 5. " And Jehovah creates over every spot of Mount Zion, and over its festal assemblies, a cloud by day, and smoke, and the shining of flaming fire by night: for over all the glory conies a canopy?' Just as Jehovah guided and shielded Israel in the days of the redemption from Egypt in a smoke-cloud by day and a fire-cloud by night, which either moved in front like a pillar, or floated above them as a roof (Num. xiv. 14, etc.), the perpetuation of His presence at Sinai (Ex. xix. 9, 16 sqq.); so would Jehovah in like manner shield the Israel of the final redemption, which would no longer need the pillar of cloud since its wanderings would be over, but only the cloudy covering; and such a covering Jehovah would create, as the prcet. consec. N^Zfl (" and He creates") distinctly affirms. The verb bar ah always denotes a divine and miraculous production, having its commencement in time; for even the natural is also supernatural in its first institution by God. In the case before us, however, the reference is to a fresh manifestation of His gracious presence, exalted above the present course of nature. This manifestation would consist by day in u a cloud," and as the hendiadys " cloud and smoke" {i.e. cloud in form and smoke in substance) distinctly affirms, a smoke-cloud, not a watery cloud, like those which ordinarily cover the sky; and by night in a fiery splendour, not merely a lingering fiery splendour like that of the evening sky, but, as the words clearly indicate, a flaming brightness (lehdbdh), and therefore real and living fire. The purpose of the cloud would not only be to overshadow, but also to serve as a wall of defence against opposing influences;1 and the fire would not only give light, but by flaming and flashing would ward off jiostile powers. But, above all, the cloud and fire were intended as signs of the nearness of God, and His satisfaction. In the most glorious times of the temple a smoke-cloud of this kind filled the Holy of holies; and there was only one occasion — namely, at the dedication of Solomon's temple — on which it filled the whole building (1 Kings viii. 10); but now the cloud, the smoke of which, moreover, would be turned at night into flaming fire, would extend over every spot (mdcon, a more poetical word for mdkom) of Mount Zion, and over the festal assemblies thereon. The whole mountain would thus become a Holy of holies. It would be holy not only as being the dwelling-place of Jehovah, but as the gathering-place of a community of saints. " Her assemblies" (mikrdehd) points back to Zion, and is a plural written defectively (at least in our editions2), — as, for example, in Jer. xix. 8. There is no necessity to take this noun in the sense of "meeting halls" (a meaning which it never has anywhere else), as Gesenius, Ewald, Hitzig, and others have done, since it may also signify " the meetings," though not in an abstract, but in a concrete sense (ecclesice).3 The explanatory clause, "for over all the