1 The cloud derived its name, 'anan, not from the idea of covering, but from that of coming to meet one. The clouds come towards the man who gazes at them, inserting themselves between him and the sky, and thus forcing themselves upon his notice instead of the sky; hence the visible outer side of the vault of heaven is also called 'anan (plur. a' nan), just as the same word is used to denote the outermost portion of the branches or foliage of a tree which is the first to strike the eye (in contradistinction to the inner portions, which are not so easily seen, even if visible at all).
2 Such codices and ancient editions as Soncino (1488), Brescia (1494), and many others, have the word with the yod of the plural.
glory (comes) a canopy" admits of several interpretations. Dr Schegg and others take it in the general sense: " for defence and covering are coming for all that is glorious." Now, even if this thought were not so jejune as it is, the word chuppdh would not be the word used to denote covering for the sake of protection; it signifies rather covering for the sake of beautifying and honouring that which is covered. Chuppdh is the name still given by the Jews to the wedding canopy, i.e. a canopy supported on four poles and carried by four boys, under which the bride and bridegroom receive the nuptial blessing, — a meaning which is apparently more appropriate, even in Ps. xix. 6 and Joel ii. 16, than the ordinary explanation thalamus or torus. Such a canopy" would float above Mount Zion in the form of a cloud of smoke and blaze of fire. (There is no necessity to take chuppdh as a third pers. pual, since 'T^n, which follows immediately afterwards in ver. 6, may easily be supplied in thought.) The only question is whether ctil-cdbod signifies u every kind of glory," or according to Ps. xxxix. 6, xlv.14, " pure glory" (Hofmann, Stud.u. Krit. 1847, pp. 936-38). The thought that Jerusalem would now be " all glory," as its inhabitants were all holiness, and therefore that this shield would be spread out over pure glory, is one that thoroughly commends itself. But we nevertheless prefer the former, as more in accordance with the substantive clause. The glory which Zion would now possess would be exposed to no further injury: Jehovah would acknowledge it by signs of His gracious presence; for henceforth there would be nothing glorious in Zion, over which there would not be a canopy spread in the manner described, shading and yet enlightening, hiding, defending, and adorning it.
Thus would Zion be a secure retreat from all adversities and disasters. Ver. 6. " And it will be a booth for shade by day from the heat of the sun, and for a refuge and covert from storm and from rain." The subject to " will be" is not the miraculous roofing; for dndn (cloud) is masculine, and the verb feminine, and there would be no sense in saying that a chuppdh or canopy would be a succdh or booth. Either, therefore, the actionis Jcal (Ges. § 84, 14). Its meaning seems rather to be always concrete, even in Arabic, where menam signifies a sleeping-place, sleeping-time, or a dream, but never sleep, or sleeping (like sine, Heb. shenah, or naam, Heb. num).
verb contains the subject in itself, and the meaning is, u There will be a booth" (the verb hay ah being used in a pregnant sense, as in ch. xv. 6, xxiii. 13); or else Zion (ver. 5) is the subject. We prefer the latter. Zion or Jerusalem would be a booth, that is to say, as the parallel clause affirms, a place of security and concealment (mistor, which only occurs here, is used on account of the alliteration with machseh in the place of sether, which the prophet more usually employs, viz. in ch. xxviii. 17, xxxii. 2). " By day" (yOmdm, which is construed with W in the construct state, cf. Ezek. xxx. 16) is left intentionally without any " by night" to answer to it in the parallel clause, because reference is made to a place of safety and concealment for all times, whether by day or night. Heat, storm, and rain are mentioned as examples to denote the most manifold dangers; but it is a singular fact that rain, which is a blessing so earnestly desired in the time of chdreb, i.e. of drought and burning heat, should also be included. At the present day, when rain falls in Jerusalem, the whole city dances with delight. Nevertheless rain, i.e. the rain which falls from the clouds, is not paradisaical; and its effects are by no means unfrequently destructive. According to the archives of Genesis, rain from the clouds took the place of dew for the first time at the flood, when it fell in a continuous and destructive form. The Jerusalem of the last time will be paradise restored; and there men will be no longer exposed to destructive changes of weather. In this prediction the close of the prophetic discourse is linked on to the commencement. This mountain of Zion, roofed over with a cloud of smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night, is no other than the mountain of the house of Jehovah, which was to be exalted above all the mountains, and to which the nations would make their pilgrimage; and this Jerusalem, so holy within, and all glorious without, is no other than the place from which the word of Jehovah was one day to go forth into all the world. But what Jerusalem is this? Is it the Jerusalem of the time of final glory awaiting the people of God in this life, as described in Rev. xi. (for, notwithstanding all that a spiritualistic and rationalistic anti-chiliasm may say, the prophetic words of both Old and New Testament warrant us in expecting such a time of glory in this life); or is it the Jerusalem of the new heaven and new earth described in Rev.
w. 21! The true answer is, "Both in one." The prophet's real intention was to depict the holy city in its final and imperishable state after the last judgment. But to his view the state beyond and the closing state here were blended together, so that the glorified Jerusalem of earth and the glorified Jerusalem of heaven appeared as if fused into one. It was a distinguishing characteristic of the Old Testament, to represent the closing scene on this side the grave, and the eternal state beyond, as a continuous line, having its commencement here. The New Testament first drew the cross line which divides time from eternity. It is true, indeed, as the closing chapters of the Apocalypse show, that even the New Testament prophecies continue to some extent to depict the state beyond in figures drawn from the present world; with this difference, however, that when the line had once been drawn, the demand was made, of which there was no consciousness in the Old Testament, that the figures taken from this life should be understood as relating to the life beyond, and that eternal realities should be separated from their temporal forms.
The foregoing prophecy has run through all the different phases of prophetic exhortation by the time that we reach the close of ch. iv.; and its leading thought, viz. the overthrow of the false glory of Israel, and the perfect establishment of true glory through the medium of judgment, has been so fully worked out, that ch. v. cannot possibly be regarded either as a continuation or as an appendix to that address. Unquestionably there are many points in which ch. v. refers back to ch. ii.-iv. The parable of the vineyard in ch. v. 1-7 grows, as it were, out of ch. iii. 14; and in ch. v. 15 we have a repetition of the refrain in ch. ii. 9, varied in a similar manner to ch. ii. 17. But these and other points of contact with ch. ii.-iv., whilst they indicate a tolerable similarity in date, by no means prove the absence of independence in ch. v. The historical circumstances of the two addresses are the same; and the range of thought is therefore closely related. But the leading idea which is carried out in ch. v. is a totally different one. The basis of the address is a parable representing Israel as the vineyard of Jehovah, which, contrary to all expectation, had produced bad fruit, and therefore was given up to devastation. What kind of bad fruit it produced is described in a six-fold "woe;" and what kind of devastation was to follow is indicated in the dark nocturnal conclusion to the whole address, which is entirely without a promise.
The prophet commenced his first address in ch. i. like another Moses; the second, which covered no less ground, he opened with the text of an earlier prophecy; and now he commences the third like a musician, addressing both himself and his hearers with enticing words. Ver. la. " Arise, I will sing of my beloved, a song of my dearest touching Ms vineyard" The fugitive rhythm, the musical euphony, the charming assonances in this appeal, it is impossible to reproduce. They are perfectly inimitable. The Lamed in lidldi is the Lamed objecti. The person to whom the song referred, to whom it applied, of whom it treated, was the singer's own beloved. It was a song of his dearest one (not his cousin, patruelis, as Luther renders it in imitation of the Vulgate, for the meaning of dod is determined by yddid, beloved) touching his vineyard. The Lamed in Vcarmo is also Lamed objecti. The song of the beloved is really a song concerning the vineyard of the beloved; and this song is a song of the beloved himself, not a song written about him, or attributed to him, but such a song as he himself had sung, and still had to sing. The prophet, by beginning.in this manner, was surrounded (either in spirit or in outward reality) by a crowd of people from Jerusalem and Judah. The song is a short one, and runs thus in vers, lb, 2: "My beloved had a vineyard on a fatly nourished mountain-horn, and dug it up and cleared it of stones, and planted it with noble vines, and built a tower in it, and cdso hewed out a wine-press therein; and Jioped iliat it would bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes" The vineyard was situated upon a keren, i.e. upon a prominent mountain peak projecting like a horn, and therefore open to the sun on all sides; for, as Virgil says in the Georgics, " apertos Bacchus amat colles." This mountain horn was ben-shemen, a child of fatness: the fatness was innate, it belonged to it by nature (themen is used, as in cli. xxviii. 1, to denote the fertility of a nutritive loamy soil). And the owner of the vineyard spared no attention or trouble. The plough could not be used, from the steepness of the mountain slope: he therefore dug it up, that is to say, he turned up the soil which was to be made into a vineyard with a hoe (izzck, to hoe; Arab, mizak, mizaha); and as he found it choked up with stones and boulders, he got rid of this rubbish by throwing it out (sikkel, a privative piel, lapidibus purgare, then operant consumere in lapides, sc. ejiciendos, to stone, or clear of stones: Ges. § 52, 2). After the soil had been prepared he planted it with sorek, i.e. the finest kind of eastern vine, bearing small grapes of a bluish-red, with pips hardly perceptible to the tongue. The name is derived from its colour (compare the Arabic zerha, red wine). To protect and adorn the vineyard which had been so richly planted, he built a tower in the midst of it. The expression " and also" calls especial attention to the fact that he hewed out a wine-trough therein (yelceb, the trough into which the must or juice pressed from the grapes in the wine-press flows, lacus as distinguished from torciilar); that is to say, in order that the trough might be all the more fixed and durable, he constructed it in a rocky portion of the ground (chdtseb bo instead of chdtsab bo, with a and the accent drawn back, because a Beth was thereby easily rendered inaudible, so that chdtseb is not a participial adjective, as Bottcher supposes). This was a difficult task, as the expression u and also" indicates; and for that very reason it was an evidence of the most confident expectation. But how bitterly was this deceived! The vineyard produced no such fruit, as might have been expected from a sorek plantation; it brought forth no 'andbim whatever, i.e. no such grapes as a cultivated vine should bear, but only Uushim, or wild grapes. Luther first of all adopted the rendering wild grapes, and then altered it to harsh or sour grapes. But it comes to the same thing. The difference between a wild vine and a good vine is only qualitative. The vitis vinifera, like all cultivated plants, is assigned to the care of man, under which it improves; whereas in its wild state it remains behind its true intention (see Genesis, § 622). Consequently the word Vushim (from baash, to be bad, or smell bad) denotes not only the grapes of the wild vine, which are naturally small and harsh (Kashi, lambruches, i.e. grapes of VOL. I. l the labrusca, which is used now, however, as the botanical name of a vine that is American in its origin), but also grapes of a good stock, which have either been spoiled or have failed to ripen.1 These were the grapes which the vineyard produced, such as you might indeed have expected from a wild vine, but not from carefully cultivated vines of the very choicest kind.
The song of the beloved who was so sorely deceived terminates here. The prophet recited it, not his beloved himself; but as they were both of one heart and one soul, the prophet proceeds thus in vers. 3 and 4: " And now, 0 inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and my vineyard! What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore did I hope that it would bring forth grapes, and it brought forth ivild grapes?" The fact that the prophet speaks as if he were the beloved himself, shows at once who the beloved must be. The beloved of the prophet and the lover of the prophet (yddid and dod) were Jehovah, with whom he was so united by a nnio mystica exalted above all earthly love, that, like the angel of Jehovah in the early histories, he could speak as if he were Jehovah Himself (see especially Zech. ii. 12-15). To any one with spiritual intuition, therefore, the parabolical meaning and object of the song would be at once apparent; and even the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah (yosheb and ish are used collectively, as in ch. viii. 14, ix. 8, xxii. 21, cf. xx. 6) were not so stupefied by sin, that they could not perceive to what the prophet was leading. It was for them to decide where the guilt of this unnatural issue lay — that is to say, of this thorough contradiction between the u doing" of the vineyard and the " doing" of the Lord; that instead of the grapes he hoped for, it brought forth wild grapes. (On the expression u what could have been done," quid faciendum est, mah-ld asoth,
1 In the Jerusalem Talmud such grapes are called ubshin, the letters being transposed; and in the Mishnah (Maaseroth i. 2, ZebVith iv. 8) t^feOn is the standing word applied to grapes that are only half ripe (see Lbwy's Leslion Chachamim, or Worterbuch des talmudisclien HebriiiscJi, Prag 1845). With reference to the wild grape (to oiyptoK^ny.cc), a writer, describing the useful plants of Greece, says, '• Its fruit (roc dypioarot^vxet) consists of Very small berries, not much larger than bilberries, with a harsh flavour."
at llat). i. 17, Ges. § L32, Anm. 1.) Instead of T\th (flfifc) we have the more suitable term OTO, the latter being used in relation to the actual cause (causa efficiem), the former in relation to the object (causa fmalis). The parallel to the second part, viz. ch. 1. 2, resembles the passage before us, not only in the use of this particular word, but also in the fact that there, as well as here, it relates to both clauses, and more especially to the latter of the two. We- find the same paratactic construction in connection with other conjunctions (cf. ch. xii. 1, lxv. 12). They were called upon to decide and answer as to this what and ivherefore; but they were silent, just because they could clearly see that they would have to condemn themselves (as David condemned himself in connection with Nathan's parable, 2 Sam. xii. 5). The Lord of the vineyard, therefore, begins to speak. He, its accuser, will now also be its judge. — Ver. 5. " Now then, I ivill tell you what I will do at once to my vineyard: take away its hedge, and it shall be for grazing; pull down its wall, and it shall be for treading down." Before " now then" (v'atldli) wTe must imagine a pause, as in ch. iii. 14. The Lord of the vineyard breaks the silence of the umpires, which indicates their consciousness of guilt. They shall hear from Him what He will do at once to His vineyard (Lamed in Vcarmi, as, for example, in Deut. xi. 6). alwill do:" ani 'oseh, fut, instans, equivalent to facturus sum (Ges. § 134, 2, b). In the inf. abs> which follow He opens up what He will do. On this explanatory use of the inf. abs., see ch. xx. 2, lviii. 6, 7. In such cases as these it takes the place of the object, as in other cases of the subject, but always in an abrupt manner (Ges. § 131, 1). He wTould take away the mesucah, i.e. the green thorny hedge (Prov. xv. 19; Hos. ii. 8) with which the vineyard was enclosed, and would pull down the gdred, i.e. the low stone wall (Num. xxii. 24; Prov. xxiv. 31), which had been surrounded by the hedge of thorn-bushes to make a better defence, as well as for the protection of the wall itself, more especially against being undermined; so that the vineyard would be given up to grazing and treading down (LXX. KaTairaT^d), i.e. would become an open way and gathering-place for man and beast.
This puts an end to the unthankful vineyard, and indeed a hopeless one. Ver. 6. " A nd I will put an end to it: it shall not be pruned nor digged, and it shall break out in thorns and thistles; and I will command the clouds to vain no rain over it." u Put an end:" bdthdh (== battdh: Ges. § 67, Anm. 11) signifies, according to the primary meaning of bdthath (rvs, JTO, see at ch. i. 29), viz. abscindere, either abscissum = locus abscissus or prceruptus (ch. vii. 19), or abscissio = deletio. The latter is the meaning here, where shlth bdthdh is a refined expression for the more usual iTO HKW, both being construed with the accusative of the thing which is brought to an end. Further pruning and hoeing would do it no good, but only lead to further disappointment: it was the will of the Lord, therefore, that the deceitful vineyard should shoot up in thorns and thistles i^dldh is applied to the soil, as in ch. xxxiv. 13 andProv. xxiv. 31; shdmir vdshaith, thorns and thistles, are in the accusative, according to Ges. § 138, 1, Anm. 2; and both the words themselves, and also their combination, are exclusively and peculiarly Isaiah's).1 In order that it might remain a wilderness, the clouds would also receive commandment from the Lord not to rain upon it. There can be no longer any doubt who the Lord of the vineyard is. He is Lord of the clouds, and therefore the Lord of heaven and earth. It is He who is the prophet's beloved and dearest one. The song which opened in so minstrel-like and harmless a tone, has now become painfully severe and terribly repulsive. The husk of the parable, which has already been broken through, now falls completely off (cf. Matt. xxii. 13, xxv. 30). What it sets forth in symbol is really true. This truth the prophet establishes by an open declaration. — Yer. 7. " For the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the plantation of His delight: He waited for justice, and behold grasping; for righteousness, and behold a shriek? The meaning is not that the Lord of the vineyard would not let any more rain fall upon it, because this Lord was Jehovah (which is not affirmed in fact in the words commencing with " for," ci), but
1 Cassel associates shdmir as the name of a plant (saxifragd) with vf&vptc, and shaith with sentis, uKctvOct; but the name shdmir is not at all applicable to those small delicate plants, which are called saxifraga (stone-breakers) on account of their growing out of clefts in the rock, and so appearing to have split the rock itself. Both shdmir vdshaith and Jcuts v'dardar, in Gen. iii. 18, seem rather to point to certain kinds of rhamnus, together with different kinds of thistles. The more arid and waste the ground is, the more does it abound, where not altogether without vegetation, in thorny, prickly, stunted productions.
a more general one. This avus how the case stood with the vineyard; for all Israel, and especially the people of Judah, were this vineyard, which had so bitterly deceived the expectations of its Lord, and indeed " the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts," and therefore of the omnipotent God, whom even the clouds would serve when He came forth to punish. The expression " for " (d) is not only intended to vindicate the truth of the last statement, but the truth of the whole simile, including this: it is an explanatory " for " (ci explic.), which opens the epimythion. u The vineyard of the Lord of hosts " (cerem Jehovah Zebaoth) is the predicate. " The house of Israel " (heth Yisrdel) was the whole nation, which is also represented in other passages under the same figure of a vineyard (ch. xxvii. 2 sqq.; Ps. Ixxx., etc.). But as Isaiah was prophet in Judah, he applies the figure more particularly to Judah, which wras called Jehovah's favourite plantation, inasmuch as it was the seat of the divine sanctuary and of the Davidic kingdom. This makes it easy enough to interpret the different parts of the simile employed. The fat mountain-horn was Canaan, flowing with milk and honey (Ex. xv. 17); the digging of the vineyard, and clearing it of stones, was the clearing of Canaan from its former heathen inhabitants (Ps. xliv. 3); the sorek-vines were the holy priests and prophets and kings of Israel of the earlier and better times (Jer. ii. 21); the defensive and ornamental tower in the midst of the vineyard was Jerusalem as the royal city, with Zion the royal fortress (Mic. iv. 8); the winepress-trough was the temple, where, according to Ps. xxxvi. 9 (8), the wine of heavenly pleasures flowed in streams, and from which, according to Ps. xlii. and many other passages, the thirst of the soul might all be quenched. The grazing and treading down are explained in Jer. v. 10 and xii. 10. The bitter deception experienced by Jehovah is expressed in a play upon two words, indicating the surprising change of the desired result into the very opposite. The explanation which Gesenius, Caspari, Knobel, and others give of mispdeh, viz. bloodshed, does not commend itself; for even if it must be admitted that sdphach occurs once or twice in the " Arabizing" book of Job (ch. xxx. 7, xiv. 19) in the sense of pouring out, this verbal root is strange to the Hebrew (and the Aramaean). Moreover, mispdeh in any case would only mean pouring or shedding, and not bloodshed; and although the latter would certainly be possible by the side of the Arabic saffdch, saffdh (shedder of blood), yet it would be such an ellipsis as cannot be shown anywhere else in Hebrew usage. On the other hand, the rendering " leprosy " does not yield any appropriate sense, as mispachat7i (sappachath) is never generalized anywhere else into the single idea of "dirt" (Luzzatto: sozzurd), nor does it appear as an ethical notion. We therefore prefer to connect it with a meaning unquestionably belonging to the verb riSD (see kal, 1 Sam. iii. 36; niphal, xiv. 1; hithpael, 1 Sam. xxvi. 19), which is derived in *1D), *1DK, *pD, from the primary notion " to sweep," spec, to sweep towards, sweep in, or sweep away. Hence we regard mispach as denoting the forcible appropriation of another man's property; certainly a suitable antithesis to mishpdt. The prophet describes, in fulltoned figures, how the expected noble grapes had turned into wrild grapes, with nothing more than an outward resemblance. The introduction to the prophecy closes here.
The prophecy itself follows next, a seven-fold discourse composed of the six-fold woe contained in vers. 8—23, and the announcement of punishment in which it terminates. In this six-fold woe the prophet describes the bad fruits one by one. In confirmation of our rendering of mispdch, the first woe relates to covetousness and avarice as the root of all evil. — Ver. 8. " Woe unto them that join house to house, who lay field to field, till there is no more room, and ye alone are dwelling in the midst of the land." The participle is continued in the finite verb, as in ver. 23, ch. x. 1; the regular syntactic construction in cases of this kind (Ges. § 134, Anm. 2). The preterites after " till" (there are two such preterites, for 'ephes is an intensified PK enclosing the verbal idea) correspond to future perfects: " They, the insatiable, would not rest till, after every smaller piece of landed property had been swallowed by them, the whole land had come into their possession, and no one beside themselves was settled in the land " (Job xxii. 8). Such covetousness was all the more reprehensible, because the law of Israel had provided so very stringently and carefully, that as far as possible there should be an equal distribution of the soil, and that hereditary family property should be inalienable. All landed property that had been alienated reverted to the family every fiftieth year, or year of jubilee; so that alienation simply had reference to the usufruct of the laud till that time. It was only in the case of houses in towns that the right of redemption was restricted to one year, at least according to a later statute. How badly the law of the year of jubilee had been observed, may be gathered from Jer. xxxiv., where we learn that the law as to the manumission of Hebrew slaves in the sabbatical year had fallen entirely into neglect. Isaiah's contemporary. Micah, makes just the same complaint as Isaiah himself (yid. Mic. ii. 2). And the denunciation of punishment is made by him in very similar terms to those which we find here in vers. 9, 10: " Into mine ears Jehovah of hosts: Of a truth many houses shall become a wilderness, great and beautiful ones deserted. For ten yokes of vineyard will yield one pailful, and a quarter of seed-corn will produce a bushel.'" We may see from ch. xxii. 14 in what sense the prophet wrote the substantive clause, " Into mine ears," or more literally, " In mine ears [is] Jehovah Zebaoth," viz. He is here revealing Himself to me. In the pointing, *JTN3 is written with tiphchah as a pausal form, to indicate to the reader that the boldness of the expression is to be softened down by the assumption of an ellipsis. In Hebrew, u to say into the ears " did not mean to "speak softly and secretly," as Gen. xxiii. 10, 16, Job xxxiii. 8, and other passages, clearly show; but to speak in a distinct -and intelligible manner, which precludes the possibility of any misunderstanding. The prophet, indeed, had not Jehovah standing locally beside him; nevertheless, he had Him objectively over against his own personality, and was well able to distinguish very clearly the thoughts and words of his own personality, from the words of Jehovah which arose audibly within him. These words informed him what would be the fate of the rich and insatiable landowners. " Of a truth:" ifr'DN (if not) introduces an oath of an affirmative character (the complete formula is chai ani Hm-lo% " as I live if not "), just as 'im (if) alone introduces a negative oath (e.g. Num. xiv. 23). The force of the expression Hm-ld extends not only to rabbim, as the false accentuation with gershayim (doublegeresh) would make it appear, but to the whole of the following sentence, as it is correctly accentuated with rebia in the Venetian (1521) and other early editions. A universal desolation would ensue: rabbitn (many) does not mean less than all; but the houses (battim, as the word should be pronounced, notwithstanding
Ewald's objection to Kohlers remarks on Zech. xiv. 2; cf. Job, ii. 31) constituted altogether a very large number (compare the use of the word " many" in ch. ii. 3, Matt. xx. 28, etc.). r$? is a double, and therefore an absolute, negation (so that there is not, no inhabitant, i.e. not any inhabitant at all). Ver. 10, which commences with ci, explains how such a desolation of the houses would be brought about: failure of crops produces famine, and this is followed by depopulation. u Ten zimde (with dagesh lene, Ewald) of vineyard" are either ten pieces of the size that a man could plough in one day with a yoke of oxen, or possibly ten portions of yoke-like espaliers of vines, i.e. of vines trained on cross laths (the vinajugata of Varro), which is the explanation adopted by Biesenthal. But if we compare 1 Sam. xiv. 14, the former is to be preferred, although the links are wanting which would enable us to prove that the early Israelites had one and the same system of land measure as the Romans;1 nevertheless
^S^j (in Hauran) is precisely similar, and this word signifies primarily a yoke of oxen, and then a yoke (jugerum) regarded as a measure of land. Ten days' work would only yield a single bath. This liquid measure, which was first introduced in the time of the kings, corresponded to the ephah in dry measure (Ezek. xiv. 11). According to Josephus {Ant. viii. 2, 9), it was equal to seventy-two Roman sextarii, i.e. a little more than thirty-three Berlin quarts; but in the time of Isaiah it was probably smaller. The homer, a dry measure, generally
1 On the jugeru??i, see Hultsch, Griecliisclie und rumische J\fetrologie,18G2. The Greek plethron, which was smaller by two and a half, corresponded to some extent to this; also the Homeric tetraguon, which cannot be more precisely defined (according to Eustathius, it was a piece of land which a skilful labourer could plough in one day). According to Herod, ii. 168, in the Egyptian square-measure an dpavpcc was equal to 150 cubits square. The Palestinian, according to the tables of Julian the Ashkalonite, was the plethron. " The plethron," he says, " was ten perches, or fifteen fathoms, or thirty paces, sixty cubits, ninety feet" (for the entire text, see L. F. v. Fennersberg's (Jntersuchungen iiber altc Langen-, Feld-, und Wcgcmaasse, 1859). Fennersberg's conclusion is, that the tzemed was a plethron, equal in length to ten perches of nine feet each. But the meaning of the word tzemed is of more importance in helping to determine the measure referred to, than the tables of long measure cf the architect of Ashkalon, which have been preserved in the imperial collection of laws of Constantine Harmcnopulos, and which probably belong to a much later period.
called ■ tor after the time of the kings, was equal to ten Attic ■medimnoi;l a mcdhnnos being (according to Josephus, Ant. xv. 9, 2) about 15-16ths of a Berlin bushel, and therefore a little more than fifteen pecks. Even if this quantity of corn should be sown, they would not reap more than an ephah. The harvest, therefore, would only yield the tenth part of the sowing, since an epliali was the tenth part of a homer, or three seahs, the usual minimum for one baking (vid. Matt. xiii. 33). It is, of course, impossible to give the relative measures exactly in our translation.
The second woe, for which the curse about to fall upon vinedressing (ver. 10a) prepared the way by the simple association of ideas, is directed against the debauchees, who in their carnal security carried on their excesses even in the daylight. Ver. 11. u Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning to run after strong drink; who continue till late at night with wine inflaming them! " Boker (from bdkar, bakara, to slit, to tear up, or split) is the break of day; and nesheph (from ndshaph, to blow) the cool of the evening, including the night (ch. xxi. 4, lix. 10); 'icher, to continue till late, as in Pro v. xxiii. 30: the construct state before words with a preposition, as in ch. ix. 2, xxviii. 9, and many other passages (Ges. § 116, 1). Shecdr, in connection with yayin, is the general name for every other kind of strong drink, more especially for wines made artificially from fruit, honey, raisins, dates, etc., including barley-wine (olvos KpiQivos) or beer (i/c KpiOwv pedv in.ZEschylus, also called /3pvrov fipvrov, fD#o? £v0os, and by many other names), a beverage known in Egypt, which was half a wine country and half a beer country, from as far back as the time of the Pharaohs, The form shecdr is composed, like 2iy (with the fore-tone tsere), from shdcar, to intoxicate; according to the Arabic, literally to close by stopping up, i.e. to stupefy.2 The clauses after the two participles are circum-
2 It is a question, therefore, whether the name of sugar is related to it or not. The Arabic salcar corresponds to the Hebrew shecdr; but sugar is called sukkar, Pers. 'sakkar, 'sakar, no doubt equivalent to (jooc-^ce.pt (Arrian in Periplus, pihi to kuT^cc^ivov to Myo/xsuov axx.)cccpi), saccharum, an Indian word, which is pronounced qarkard in Sanscrit and sakkara in Prakrit, and signifies " forming broken pieces," i.e. sugar in grains or small lumps stantial clauses (Ewald, § 341, b), indicating the circumstances under which they ran out so early, and sat till long after dark: they hunted after mead, they heated themselves with wine, namely, to drown the consciousness of their deeds of darkness. Ver. 12 describes how they go on in their blindness with music and carousing: " And guitar and harp, kettle-drum, and flute, and ivine, is their feast; but they regard not the work of Jehovah, and see not the purpose of His hands" u Their feast" is so and so (DiWHPD is only a plural in appearance; it is really a singular, as in Dan. i. 10, 16, and many other passages, with the Yod of the primary form, *WP == *V&?j softened: see the remarks on r6jj at ch. i. 30, and rPfefy at ch. xxii. 11); that is to say, their feast consisted or was composed of exciting music and wine. Knobel construes it, " and there are guitar, etc., and wine is their drink; " but a divided sentence of this kind is very tame; and the other expression, based upon the general principle, u The whole is its parts," is thoroughly Semitic (see Fleischer's Abhandlungen fiber einige Arten der Nominalapposition in den Sitzungsberichten der scichs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft, 1862). Cinnor (guitar) is a general name for such instruments as have their strings drawn (upon a bridge) over a sounding board; and neb el (the harp and lyre) a general name for instruments with their strings hung freely, so as to be played with both hands at the same time. Toph (Arab, duff) is a general name for the tambourin, the drum, and the kettledrum; chalil (lit. that which is bored through) a general name for the flute and double flute. In this tumult and riot they had no thought or eye for the work of Jehovah and the purpose of His hands. This is the phrase used to express the idea of the eternal counsel of God (ch. xxxvii. 26), which leads to salvation by the circuitous paths of judgment (ch. x. 12, xxviii. 21, xxix. 23), so far as that counsel is embodied in
(brown sugar). The art of boiling sugar from the cane was an Indian invention (see Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 269 sqq.). The early Egyptian name for beer is hek (Brugsch, Recueil, p. 118); the demotic and hieratic name henk, the Coptic henke. The word gvOog (&dog) is also old Egyptian. In the Book of the Dead (79, 8) the deceased says, " I have taken sacrificial cakes from the table, I have drunk seth-t in the evening." Moses Stuart wrote an Essay upon the Wines and Strong Drinks of the Ancient Hebrews, which was published in London (1831), with a preface by J. Pye Smith.
history, as moulded by the invisible interposition of God. In their joy and glory they had no sense for what was the most glorious of all, viz. the moving and working of God in history; so that they could not even discern the judgment which was in course of preparation at that very time.
Therefore judgment would overtake them in this blind dull, and stupid animal condition. Ver. 13. " Therefore my people go into banishment without knowing; and their glory will become starving men, and their tumult men dried up with thirsty As the word " therefore" {Idem, as in ch. i. 24) introduces the threat of punishment, gdldh (go into captivity) is a prophetic preterite. Israel would go into exile, and that "without knowing" (mibb'li-da'ath). The meaning of this expression cannot be " from want of knowledge," since the min which is fused into one word with Vli is not causal, but negative, and mibUli, as a preposition, always signifies "without" (absque). But are we to render it " without knowing it" (as inHos. iv. 6, where hadddath has the article), or " unawares? " There is no necessity for any dispute on this point, since the two renderings are fundamentally one and the same. The knowledge, of which ver. 12 pronounces them destitute, was more especially a knowledge of the judgment of God that was hanging over them; so that, as the captivity would come upon them without knowledge, it would necessarily come upon them unawares. u Their glory " (cebodo) and " their tumult " (Jiamono) are therefore to be understood, as the predicates show, as collective nouns used in a personal sense, the former signifying the more select portion of the nation (cf. Mic. i. 15), the latter the mass of the people, who were living in rioting and tumult. The former would become " men of famine" (mgthe rddb: ^p? like ^tWK in other places, viz. 2 Sam. xix. 29, or ^3, 1 Sam. xxvi. 16); the latter " men dried up with thirst " (tsicheh tsdmdh: the same number as the subject). There is no necessity to read ^10 (dead men) instead of VTO, as the LXX. and Vulgate do, or *?» (ntO) according to Deut. xxxii. 24, as Hitzig, Ewald, Bottcher, and others propose (compare, on the contrary, Gen. xxxiv. 30 and Job xL 11). The adjective tzicheh (hapax leg.) is formed like ehiresh, ceheh, and other adjectives which indicate defects: in such formations from verbs Lamed-IIe, instead of e we have an 03 that has grown out of ay (Olshausen, § 182, b). The rich
The threat of punishment commences again with u therefore;" it has not yet satisfied itself, and therefore grasps deeper still. Ver. 14. " Therefore the under-world opens its jaws wide, and stretches open its mouth immeasurably wide; and the glory of Jerusalem descends, and its tumult, and noise, and those who rejoice within it" The verbs which follow lacen (therefore) are prophetic preterites, as in ver. 13. The feminine suffixes attached to what the lower world swallows up do not refer to sheol (though this is construed more frequently, no doubt, as a feminine than as a masculine, as it is in Job xxvi. 6), but, as expressed in the translation, to Jerusalem itself, which is also necessarily required by the last clause, " those who rejoice within it." The withdrawal of the tone from T?V\ to the penultimate (cf. chdphetz in Ps. xviii. 20, xxii. 9) is intentionally omitted, to cause the rolling and swallowing up to be heard as it were. A mouth is ascribed to the under-world, also a nephesh, i.e. a greedy soul, in which sense nephesh is then applied metonymically sometimes to a thirst for blood (Ps. xxvii. 12), and sometimes to simple greediness (ch. lvi. 11), and even, as in the present passage and Hab. ii. 5, to the throat or swallow which the soul opens u without measure," when its craving knows no bounds (Psychol, p. 204). It has become a common thing now to drop entirely the notion which formerly prevailed, that the noun sheol was derived from the verb shdal in the sense in which it was generally employed, viz. to ask or demand; but Caspari, who has revived it again, is certainly so far correct, that the derivation of the word which the prophet had in his mind was this and no other. The word sheol (an infinitive form, like pekod) signified primarily the irresistible and inexorable demand made upon every earthly thing; and then secondarily, in a local sense, the place of the abode of shades, to which everything on the surface of the earth is summoned; or essentially the divinely appointed curse which demands and swallows up everything upon the earth. We simply maintain, however, that the word sheol, as generally used, was associated in thought with shdtd, to ask or demand. Originally, no doubt, it may have been derived from the primary and more material idea of the verb btiW, possibly from the meaning "to be hollow," which is also assumed to be the primary meaning of byv.1 At any rate, this derivation answers to the view that generally prevailed in ancient times. According to the prevalent idea, Hades was in the interior of the earth. And there was nothing really absurd in this, since it is quite within the power and freedom of the omnipresent God to manifest Himself wherever and however He may please. As He reveals Himself above the earth, i.e. in heaven, among blessed spirits in the light of His love; so did He reveal Himself underneath the earth, viz. in Sheol, in the darkness and fire of His wrath. And with the exception of Enoch and Elijah, with their marvellous departure from this life, the way of every mortal ended there, until the time when Jesus Christ, havinofirst paid the \vrpov, i.e. having shed His blood, which covers our guilt and turns the wrath of God into love, descended into Hades and ascended into heaven, and from that time forth has changed the death of all believers from a descent into Hades into an ascension to heaven. But even under the Old Testament the believer may have known, that whoever hid himself on this side the grave in Jehovah the living One, would retain his eternal germ of life even in Sheol in the midst of the shades, and would taste the love of God even in the midst of wrath. It was this postulate of faith which lay at the foundation of the fact, that even under the Old Testament the broader and more comprehensive idea of Sheol began to be contracted into
1 The meaning " to be hollow" is not very firmly established, however; as the primary meaning of 7}T^, and the analogy sometimes adduced of hell = hollow (Hdlle = Hohle), is a deceptive one, as Holle (hell), to which Luther always gives the more correct form Helle, does not mean a hollow, but a hidden place (or a place which renders invisible: from heln, to conceal), Lat. celans (see Jutting, Bill. Worterbueh, 1864, pp. 85, 86). It is much more probable that the meaning of sheol is not the hollow place, but the depression or depth, from *>£>, which corresponds precisely to the Greek •/.u'hcx.u so far as its primary meaning is concerned (compare the talmudic shilshel, to let down; shilshul, sinking or depression, Eriibin 83Z>; shul, the foundation, fundus): see Hupfeld on Ps. vi. 6. Luzzatto on this passage also explains sheol as signifying depth, and compares the talmudic hishchil=heshil, to let down (or, according to others, to draw up, — two meanings Which may easily be combined in the same word, starting from its radical idea, which indicates in general a loosening of the previous connection). Furst has also given up the meaning cavitas, a hollow, and endeavours to find a more correct explanation of the primary signification of shd'al (see at ch. xl. 12).
the more limited notion of hell (see Psycliol. p. 415). This is the case in the passage before us, where Isaiah predicts of everything of which Jerusalem was proud, and in which it revelled, including the persons who rejoiced in these things, a descent into Hades; just as the Korahite author of Ps. xlix. wrote (ver. 14) that the beauty of the wicked would be given up to Hades to be consumed, without having hereafter any place in the upper world, when the upright should have dominion over them in the morning. Hades even here is almost equivalent to the New Testament gehenna.
The prophet now repeats a thought which formed one of the refrains of the second prophetic address (ch. ii. 9, 11, cf. ver. 17). It acquires here a still deeper sense, from the context in which it stands. Vers. 15, 16. " Then are mean men bowed down, and lords humbled, and the eyes of lofty men are humbled. And Jehovah of hosts shows Himself exalted in judgment, and God the Holy One. sanctifies Himself in righteousness." That which had exalted itself from earth to heaven, would be cast down earthwards into hell. The consecutive futures depict the coming events, which are here represented as historically present, as the direct sequel of what is also represented as present in ver. 14: Hades opens, and then both low and lofty in Jerusalem sink down, and the soaring eyes now wander about in horrible depths. God, who is both exalted and holy in Himself, demanded that as the exalted One He should be exalted, and that as the Holy One He should be sanctified. But Jerusalem had not done that; He would therefore prove Himself the exalted One by the execution of justice, and sanctify Himself (nikdash is to be rendered as a reflective verb, according to Ezek. xxxvi. 23, xxxviii. 23) by the manifestation of righteousness, in consequence of which the people of Jerusalem would have to give Him glory against their will, as forming part of "the things under the earth" (Phil. ii. 10). Jerusalem has been swallowed up twice in this manner by Hades; once in the Chaldean war, and again in the Roman. But the invisible background of these outward events was the fact, that it had already fallen under the power of hell. And now, even in a more literal sense, ancient Jerusalem, like the company of Korah (Num. xvi. 30, 33), has gone underground. Just as Babylon and Nineveh, the ruins of which are dug out of the inexhaustible mine of their farstretching foundation and soil, have sunk beneath the "round; so do men walk about in modern Jerusalem over the ancient Jerusalem, which lies buried beneath; and many an enio-ma of topography will remain an enigma until ancient Jerusalem has been dug out of the earth again.
And when we consider that the Holy Land is at the present time an extensive pasture-ground for Arab shepherds, and that the modern Jerusalem which has arisen from the dust is a Mohammedan city, we may see in this also a literal fulfilment of ver. 17: "And lambs feed as upon their pasture, and nomad shepherds eat the waste places of the fat ones" There is no necessity to supply an object to the verb *JH1, as Knobel and others assume, viz. the wraste lands mentioned in the second clause; nor is ceddbrdm to be taken as the object, as Caspari supposes; but the place referred to is determined by the context: in the place where Jerusalem is sunken, there lambs feed after the manner of their own pasture-ground, i.e. just as if they wrere in their old accustomed pasture (dober, as in Mic. ii. 12, from ddbdr, to drive). The lambs intended are those of the gdrim mentioned in the second clause. The gdrim themselves are men leading an unsettled, nomad, or pilgrim life; as distinguished from gerim, strangers visiting, or even settled at a place. The LXX. have apves, so that they must have read either cdrim or geddim, which Ewald, Knobel, and others adopt. But one feature of the prophecy, which is sustained by the historical fulfilment, is thereby obliterated. Chdrboth mechim are the lands of those that were formerly marrowy, i.e. fat and strutting about in their fulness; which lands had now become wTaste places. Knobel's statement, that deal is out of place in connection with gdrim, is overthrown by ch. i. 7, to which he himself refers, though he makes he-goats the subject instead of men. The second woe closes with ver. 17. It is the longest of all. This also serves to confirm the fact that luxury was the leading vice of Judah in the time of Uzziah-Jotham, as it was that of Israel under Jeroboam II. (see Amos vi., where the same threat is held out).
The third woe is directed against the supposed strong-minded men, who called down the judgment of God by presumptuous sins and wicked words. Ver. 18. " Woe unto them that draw crime with cords of lying, and sin as with the rope of the waggon? Knobel and most other commentators take mdshak in the sense of attrahere (to draw towards one's self): " They draw towards them sinful deeds with cords of lying palliation, and the cartrope of.the most daring presumption;" and cite, as parallel examples, Job xl. 25 and Hos. xi. 4. But as mdshak is also used in Deut. xxi. 3 in the sense of drawing in a yoke, that is to say, drawing a plough or chariot; and as the waggon or cart (agdldh, the word commonly used for a transport-waggon, as distinguished from mercdbdh, the state carriage or war chariot: see Genesis, pp. 562-3) is expressly mentioned here, the figure employed is certainly the same as that which underlies the New Testament eTepo^wyetv ("unequally yoked," 2 Cor. vi. 14). Iniquity was the burden which they drew after them with cords of lying (shduh: see at Ps. xxvi. 4 and Job xv. 31), i.e. "want of character or religion;" and sin was the waggon to which they were harnessed as if with a thick cart-rope (Hof mann, Drechsler, and Caspari; see Ewald, § 221, a). Iniquity and sin are mentioned here as carrying with them their own punishment. The definite tyn (Crime or misdeed) is generic, and the indefinite nKttn qualitative and massive. There is a bitter sarcasm involved in the bold figure employed. They were proud of their unbelief; but this unbelief was like a halter with which, like beasts of burden, they were harnessed to sin, and therefore to the punishment of sin, which they went on drawing further and further, in utter ignorance of the waggon behind them.
Ver. 19 shows very clearly that the prophet referred to the free-thinkers of his time, the persons who are called fools (nabal) and scorners (letz) in the Psalms and Proverbs. " Who say, Let Him hasten, accelerate His work, that ive may see; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come, that we may experience it? They doubted whether the day of Jehovah would ever come (Ezek. xii. 22; Jer. v. 12, 13), and went so far in their unbelief as to call out for what they could not and would not believe, and desired it to come that they might see it with their own eyes and experience it for themselves (Jer. xvii. 15; it is different in Amos v. 18 and Mai. ii. 17— iii. 1, where this desire does not arise from scorn and defiance, but from impatience and weakness of faith). As the two verbs denoting haste are used both transitively and intransitively
(vid. «J odg. x\. 37, to hasten or make haste), we might render the passage u let His work make haste," as Hitzig, Ewald, Umbreit and Drechaler do; but we prefer the rendering adopted by Gesenius, Caspari, and Knobel, on the basis of ch. lx. 22, and take the verb as transitive, and Jehovah as the subject. The forms ydchuhdh and tabodh are, with Ps. xx. 4 and Job xi. 17 probably the only examples of the expression of a wish in the third person, strengthened by the dh, which indicates a summons or appeal; for Ezek. xxiii. 20, which Gesenius cites (§ 48, 3), and Job xxii. 21, to which Knobel refers, have no connection with this, as in both passages the dh is the feminine termination, and not hortative (yid. Job, i. p. 187 note, and i. p. 441). The fact that the free-thinkers called God "the Holy One of Israel," whereas they scoffed at His intended final and practical attestation of Himself as the Holy One, may be explained from ch. xxx. 11: they took this name of God from the lips of the prophet himself, so that their scorn affected both God and His prophet at the same time.
Ver. 20. The fourth woe: " Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who give out darkness for light, and light for darkness; who give out bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." The previous woe had reference to those who made the facts of sacred history the butt of their naturalistic doubt and ridicule, especially so far as they were the subject of prophecy. This fourth woe relates to those who adopted a code of morals that completely overturned the first principles of ethics, and was utterly opposed to the law of God; for evil, darkness, and bitter, with their respective antitheses, represent moral principles that are essentially related (Matt. vi. 23; Jas. iii. 11). Evil, as hostile to God, is dark in its nature, and therefore loves darkness, and is exposed to the punitive power of darkness. And although it may be sweet to the material taste, it is nevertheless bitter, inasmuch as it produces abhorrence and disgust in the godlike nature of man, and, after a brief period of self-deception, is turned into the bitter woe of fatal results. Darkness and light, bitter and sweet, therefore, are not tautological metaphors for evil and good: but epithets, applied to evil and good according to their essential principles, and their necessary and internal effects.
Ver. 21. The fifth woe: " Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight" The third woe had reference to the unbelieving naturalists, the opponents of prophecy (nebudh); the fourth to the moralists, who threw all into confusion; and to this there is appended, by a very natural association of ideas, the woe denounced upon those whom want of humility rendered inaccessible to that wisdom which went hand in hand with prophecy, and the true foundation of which was the fear of Jehovah (Pro v. i. 7; Job xxviii. 28; Eccles. xii. 13). " Be not wise in thine own eyes," is a fundamental rule of this wisdom (Prov. iii. 7). It was upon this wisdom that that prophetic policy rested, whose warnings, as we read in ch. xxviii. 9, 10, they so scornfully rejected. The next woe, which has reference to the administration of justice in the state, shows very clearly that in this woe the prophet had more especially the want of theocratic wisdom in relation to the affairs of state in his mind.
Vers. 22, 23. The sixth woe: " Woe to those who are heroes to drink icine, and brave men to mix strong drink; ivho acquit criminals for a bribe, and take away from every one the righteousness of the righteous." We see from ver. 23 that the drinkers in ver. 22 are unjust judges. The threat denounced against these is Isaiah's universal ceterum censeo; and accordingly it forms, in this instance also, the substance of his sixth and last woe. They are heroes; not,, however, in avenging wrong, but in drinking wine; they are men o£ renown, though not for deciding between guilt and innocence, but for mixing up the ingredients of strong artistic wines. For the terms applied to such mixed wines, see Ps. Ixxv. 9, Prov. xxiii. 30, Song of Sol. vii. 3. It must be borne in mind, however, that what is here called shecdr was not, properly speaking, wine, but an artificial mixture, like date wine and cider. For such things as these they were noteworthy and strong; whereas they judged unjustly, and took bribes that they might consume the reward of their injustice in drink and debauchery (ch. xxviii. 7, 8; Prov. xxxi. 5). "For reward:" ekeb (Arab. \ikb; different from dkeb, a heel, = rakib) is an adverbial accusative, "in recompense," or " for pay." " From him " (mimmennu) is distributive, and refers back to tsaddikim (the righteous); as, for example, in Hos. iv. 8.
In the three exclamations in vers. 18-21, Jehovah rested contented with the simple undeveloped "woe" (hci). On the Other hand, the first two utterances respecting the covetous and the debauchees were expanded into an elaborate denunciation of punishment But now that the prophet has come to the unjust judges, the denunciation of punishment bursts out with such violence, that a return to the simple exclamation of " woe " is not to be thought of. To the two " therefores" in vers. 13, 14, a third is now added in ver. 24: " Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours stubble, and hay sinks together in the flame, their root will become like mould, and their blossom fly up like dust; for they have despised the law of Jehovah of hosts, and scornfully rejected the proclamation of the Holy One of Israel" The persons primarilv intended are those described in vers. 22, 23, but with a further extension of the range of vision to Judah and Jerusalem, the vineyard of which they are the bad fruit. The sinners are compared to a plant which moulders into dust both above and below, i.e. altogether (cf. Mai. iii. 19, and the expression, " Let there be to him neither root below nor branch above," in the inscription upon the sarcophagus of the Phoenician king Esmun- *azar). Their root moulders in the earth, and their blossom (perach, as in ch. xviii. 5) turns to fine dust, which the wind carries away. And this change in root and blossom takes place suddenly, as if through the force of fire. In the expression ce'ecolkash leshon 'esh ("as the tongue of fire devours stubble"), which consists of four short words with three sibilant letters, we hear, as it were, the hissing of the flame. When the infinitive construct is connected with both subject and object, the subject generally stands first, as in ch. lxiv. 1; but here the object is placed first, as in ch. xx. 1 (Ges. § 133, 3; Ewald, § 307). In the second clause, the infinitive construct passes over into the finite verb, just as in the similarly constructed passage in ch. lxiv. 1. As yirpeh has the intransitive meaning collabi, to sink together, or collapse; either lehdbdh must be an ace. loci, or chashash lehdbdh the construct state, signifying flame-hay, i.e. hay destined to the flame, or ascending in flame.1 As the reason
1 In Arabic also, chashish signifies bay; but in common usage (at least in Syriac) it is applied not to dried grass, but to green grass or barley: hence the expression yachush there is green fodder. Here, however, in Isaiah, chashash is equivalent to chasliish ytibis, and this is its true etymological meaning (see the Lexicons"). But hash is still used in Syro-Arabic, to for the sudden dissolution of the plantation of Judah, instead of certain definite sins being mentioned, the sin of all sins is given at once, namely, the rejection of the word of God with the heart (md'as), and in word and deed (inets). The double 9eth (with yetldb immediately before pashta, as in eleven passages in all; see Heidenheim's, MispeU hate amim, p. 20) and veth (with tebir) give prominence to the object; and the interchange of Jehovah of hosts with the Holy One of Israel makes the sin appear all the greater on account of the exaltation and holiness of God, who revealed Himself in this word, and indeed had manifested Himself to Israel as His own peculiar people. The prophet no sooner mentions the great sin of Judah, than the announcement of punishment receives, as it were, fresh fuel, and bursts out again. — Yer. 25. u Therefore is the wrath of Jehovah kindled against His people, and lie stretches His hand over them, and smites them; ' then the hills tremble, and their carcases become like sweepings in the midst of the streets. For all this His anger is not appeased, and His hand is stretched out stills We Iniay see from these last words, which are repeated as a refrain in the cycle of prophecies relating to the time of Ahaz (ch. ix. 11, 16, x. 4), that the prophet had before his mind a distinct and complete judgment upon Judah, belonging to the immediate future. It was certainly a coming judgment, not one already past; for the verbs after u therefore" (al-cen), like those after the three previous lacen, are all prophetic preterites. It is impossible, therefore, to take the words " and the hills tremble " as referring to the earthquake in the time of Uzziah (Amos i. 1; Zech. xiv..5). This judgment, which was closer at hand, would consist in the fact that Jehovah would stretch out His hand in His wrath over His people (or, as it is expressed elsewhere, would swing His hand: Luther, u wave His hand," i.e. move it to and fro; viol. ch. xi. 15, xix. 16, xxx. 30, 32), and bring it down upon Judah with one stroke, the violence of which would be felt not only by men, but by surrounding nature as well. What kind of stroke this would be, was to be inferred from the circumstance that the corpses would lie unburied signify not stubble, but wheat that has been cut and is not yet threshed; whereas the radical word itself signifies to be dry, and chdshash consequently is used for mown grass, and kash for the dry halm of wheat, whether as stubble left standing in the ground, or as straw (vid. Job, ii. 377).
in the streets, like common street-sweepings. The reading ntatn must be rejected. Early editors read the word much more correctly nivn; Buxtorf (1G18) even adopts the reading ntan, which has the Masoretic pointing in Num. xxii. 39 in its favour. It is very natural to connect cassuchdh with the Arabic kusdcha (sweepings; see at ch. xxxiii. 12): but kusdcha is the common form for waste or rubbish of this kind (e.g. kuldme, nail-cuttings), whereas cassuach is a form which, like the forms faol (e.g. chdmots) and fdul (compare the Arabic fdsus, a wind-maker, or wind-bag, i.e. a boaster), has always an intensive, active (e.g. channun), or circumstantial signification (like shaccul), but is never found in a passive sense. The Caph is consequently to be taken as a particle of comparison (followed, as is generally the case, with a definite article); and suchdh is to be derived from suach (= verrere, to sweep). The reference, therefore, is not to a pestilence (which is designated, as a stroke from God, not by hiccdh, but by ndgapli), but to the slaughter of battle; and if we look at the other terrible judgment threatened in vers. 26 sqq., which was to proceed from the imperial power, there can be no doubt that the spirit of prophecy here points to the massacre that took place in Judah in connection with the Syro-Ephraimitish war (see 2 Chron. xxviii. 5, 6). The mountains may then have trembled with the marching of troops, and the din of arms, and the felling of trees, and the shout of war. At any rate, nature had to participate in what men had brought upon themselves; for, according to the creative appointment of God, nature bears the same relation to man as the body to the soul. Every stroke of divine wrath which falls upon a nation equally affects the land which has grown up, as it were, with it; and in this sense the mountains of Judah trembled at the time referred to, even though the trembling was only discernible by initiated ears. But " for all this " (Beth, = " notwithstanding," " in spite of," as in Job i. 22) the wrath of Jehovah, as the prophet foresaw, would not turn away, as it was accustomed to do when He was satisfied; and His hand would still remain stretched out over Judah, ready to strike again.
Jehovah finds the human instruments of His further strokes, not in Israel and the neighbouring nations, but in the people of distant lands. Ver. 26. " And lifts up a banner to the distant nations, and hisses to it from the end of the earth; and, behold, it comes witli haste swiftly." What the prophet here foretold began to be fulfilled in the time of Ahaz. But the prophecy, which commences with this verse, has every possible mark of the very opposite of a vaticinium post eventum. It is, strictly speaking, only what had already been threatened in Deut. xxviii. 49 sqq. (cf. ch. xxxii. 21 sqq.), though here it assumes a more plastic form, and is here presented for the first time to the view of the prophet as though coming out of a mist. Jehovah summons the nations afar off: haggoyim merdchok signifies, as we have rendered it, the " distant nations," for merdcliok is virtually an adjective both here and ch. xlix. 1, just as in Jer. xxiii. 23 it is virtually a substantive. The visible working of Jehovah presents itself to the prophet in two figures. Jehovah plants a banner or standard, which, like an optical telegraph, announces to the nations at a more remote distance than the horn of battle (shophdr) could possibly reach, that they are to gather together to war. A " banner " (nes): i.e. a lofty staff with flying colours (ch. xxxiii. 23) planted upon a bare mountain-top (ch. xiii. 2). NtjO alternates with D^H in this favourite figure of Isaiah. The nations through whom this was primarily fulfilled were the nations of the Assyrian empire. According to the Old Testament view, these nations were regarded as far off, and dwelling at the end of, the earth (ch. xxxix. 3), not only inasmuch as the Euphrates formed the boundary towards the north-east between what was geographically known and unknown to the Israelites (Ps. Ixxii. 8; Zech. ix. 10), but also inasmuch as the prophet had in his mind a complex body of nations stretching far away into further Asia. The second figure is taken from a bee-master, who entices the bees, by hissing or whistling, to come out of their hives and settle on the ground. Thus Virgil says to the beemaster who wants to make the bees settle, u Raise a ringing, and beat the cymbals of Cybele all around" (Georgics, iv. 54). Thus does Jehovah entice the hosts of nations like swarms of bees (vii. 18), and they swarm together with haste and swiftness. The plural changes into the singular, because those who are approaching have all the appearance at first of a compact and indivisible mass; it is also possible that the ruling nation among the many is singled out. The thought and expression are both misty, and this is perfectly characteristic. With the word u behold" (Itui)u'h) the prophet points to them; they are approaching meherdh kal, i.e. in the shortest time with swift
:, ami the nearer they come to his view the more clearly he can describe them. — Ver. 27. " There is none exhausted, and none stumbling among them: it gives itself no slumber, and no
■/>; and to none is the girdle of his hips loosed; and to none is the lace of his shoes broken.91 Notwithstanding the long march, there is no exhausted one, obliged to separate himself and remain behind (Dent. xxv. 18; Isa. xiv. 31); no stumbling one (cOshel), for they march on, pressing incessantly forwards, as if along a well-made road (Jer. xxxi. 9). They do not slumber (nam), to say nothing of sleeping (ydshen), so great is their eagerness for battle: i.e. they do not slumber to refresh themselves, and do not even allow themselves their ordinary night's rest. No one has the girdle of his armour-shirt or coat of mail, in which he stuck his sword (Neh. iv. 18), at all loosened; nor has a single one even the shoe-string, with which his sandals were fastened, broken (nittak, disrumpitur). The statement as to their want of rest forms a climax descendens; the other, as to the tightness and durability of their equipment, a climax ascendens: the two statements follow one another after the nature of a chiasmus.
The prophet then proceeds to describe their weapons and war-chariots. Ver. 28. lt*IIe whose arroivs are sharpened, and cdl his bows strung; the hoofs of his horses are counted like flint, and his wheels like the whirlwind" In the prophet's view they are coming nearer and nearer. For he sees that they have brought the sharpened arrows in their quivers (ch. xxii. 6); and the fact that all their bows are already trodden (namely, as their length was equal to a man's height, by treading upon the string with the left foot, as we may learn from Arrian's Indicd), proves that they are near to the goal. The correct reading in Jablonsky (according to Kimchi's Lex, cf. Michlal yofi) is
As the custom of shoeing horses was not practised in ancient times, firm hoofs (oifkai tcaprepai, according to Xenophon's Hippikos) were one of the most important points in a good horse. And the horses of the enemy that was now drawing near to Judah had hoofs that would be found like flint {tzar, only used here, equivalent to the Arabic zirr). Homer designates such horses chalkopodes, brazen-footed. And the two wheels of the war-chariots, to which they were harnessed, turned with such velocity, and overthrew everything before them with such violence, that it seemed not merely as if a whirlwind drove them forward, but as if they were the whirlwind itself (ch. Ixvi. 15; Jer. iv. 13). Nahum compares them to lightning (ch. ii. 5). Thus far the prophet's description has moved on, as if by forced marches, in clauses of from two to four words each. It now changes into a heavy, stealthy pace, and then in a few clauses springs like a wild beast upon its prey. — Ver. 29. " Roaring issues from it as from the lioness: it roars like lions, and utters a low murmur; seizes the prey, carries it off, and no one rescues" The futures, with the preceding ft riJ^ which is equivalent to a future, hold each feature in the description fast, as if for prolonged contemplation. The lion roars when eager for prey; and such is now the war-cry of the bloodthirsty enemy, which the prophet compares to the roaring of a lion or of young lions (cephirim) in the fulness of their strength. (The lion is described by its poetic name, -K w; this does not exactly apply to the lioness, which would rather be designated by the term HJD?.) The roar is succeeded by a low growl (ndham, fremere), when a lion is preparing to fall upon its prey.1 And so the prophet hears a low and ominous murmur in the army, which is now ready for battle. But he also sees immediately afterwards how the enemy seizes its booty and carries it irrecoverably away: literally, u how he causes it to escape," i.e. not " lets it slip in cruel sport," as Luzzatto interprets it, but carries it to a place of safety (Mic. vi. 14). The prey referred to is Judah. It also adds to the gloomy and mysterious character of the prophecy, that the prophet never mentions Judah. In the following verse also (ver. 30) the object is still suppressed, as if the prophet could not let it pass his lips. Ver.- 30. " And it utters a deep roar over it in that day like the roaring of the sea: and it looks to the earth, and behold darkness, tribulation, and light; it becomes night over it in the clouds of heaven." The subject to "roars" is the mass of the enemy; and in the expressions u over it" and " it looks" (nibbat; the niphal, which is only met with here, in the place of the Mpldl) the prophet has in his mind the nation of Judali, upon which the enemy falls with the roar of the ocean — that is to say, overwhelming it like a sea. And when the people of Judah look to the earth, i.e. to their own land, darkness alone presents itself, and darkness which has swallowed up all the smiling and joyous aspect which it had before. And what then? The following words, tzar vaor, have been variously rendered, viz. " moon (= sahar) and sun" by the Jewish expositors, " stone and flash," i.e. hail and thunder-storm, by Drechsler; but such renderings as these, and others of a similar kind, are too far removed from the ordinary usage of the language. And the separation of the two words, so that the one closes a sentence and the other commences a fresh one (e.g. " darkness of tribulation, and the sun becomes dark"), which is adopted by Hitzig, Gesenius, Ewald, and others, is opposed to the impression made by the two monosyllables, and sustained by the pointing, that they are connected together. The simplest explanation is one which takes the word tzar in its ordinary sense of tribulation or oppression, and 'or in its ordinary sense of light, and which connects the two words closely together. And this is the case with the rendering given above: tzar vaor are " tribulation and brightening up," one following the other and passing over into the other, like morning and night (ch. xxi. 12). This pair of words forms an interjectional clause, the meaning of which is, that when the predicted darkness had settled upon the land of Judah, this would not be the end; but there would still follow an alternation of anxiety and glimmerings of hope, until at last it had become altogether dark in the cloudy sky over all the land of Judah Cariphim, the cloudy sky, is only met with here; it is derived from 'draph, to drop or trickle, hence also 'ardphel: the suffix points back to ladretz, eretz denoting sometimes the earth as a whole, and at other times the land as being part of the earth). The prophet here predicts that, before utter ruin has overtaken Judah, sundry approaches will be made towards this, within which a divine deliverance will appear again and again. Grace tries and tries again and again, until at last the measure of iniquity is full, and the time of repentance past. The history of the nation of Judah proceeded according to this law until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Komans.
The Assyrian troubles, and the miraculous light of divine help which arose in the destruction of the military power of Sennacherib, were only the foreground of this mournful but yet ever and anon hopeful course of history, which terminated in utter darkness, that has continued now for nearly two thousand years.
This closes the third prophetic address. It commences with a parable which contains the history of Israel in mice, and closes with an emblem which symbolizes the gradual but yet certain accomplishment of the judicial, penal termination of the parable. This third address, therefore, is as complete in itself as the second was. The kindred allusions are to be accounted for from the sameness of the historical basis and arena. During the course of the exposition, it has become more and more evident and certain that it relates to the time of Uzziah and Jotham, — a time of peace, of strength, and wealth, but also of pride and luxury. The terrible slaughter of the Syro-Ephraimitish war, which broke out at the end of Jotham' s reign, and the varied complications which king Ahaz introduced between Judah and the imperial worldly power, and which issued eventually in the destruction of the former kingd.om, — those five marked epochs in the history of the kingdoms of the world, or great empires, to which the Syro- Ephraimitish war was the prelude, — were still hidden from the prophet in the womb of the future. The description of the great mass of people that was about to roll over Judah from afar is couched in such general terms, so undefined and misty, that all we can say is, that everything that was to happen to the people of God on the part of the imperial power during the five great and extended periods of judgment that were now so soon to commence (viz. the Assyrian, the Chaldean, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman), was here unfolding itself out of the mist of futurity, and presenting itself to the prophet's eye. Even in the time of Ahaz the character of the prophecy changed in this respect. It was then that the eventful relation, in which Israel stood to the imperial power, generally assumed its first concrete shape in the form of a distinct relation to Asshur (Assyria). And from that time forth the imperial power in the mouth of the prophet is no longer a majestic thing without a name; but although the notion of the imperial power was nut yet embodied in Asshur, it was called Asshur, and Asshur stood as its representative. It also necessarily follows from this, that eh. ii.-iv. and v. belong to the times anterior to Aha/, i.e. to those of Uzziah and Jotham. But several different questions suggest themselves here. If ch. ii.-iv. and v. were uttered under Uzziah and Jotham, how could Isaiah benin with a promise (ch. ii. 1-4) which is repeated word for word in Mic. iv. 1 sqq., where it is the direct antithesis to ch. hi. 12, which was uttered by Micah, according to Jer. xxvi. 18, in the time of Hezekiah? Again, if we consider the advance apparent in the predictions of judgment from the general expressions with which they commence in ch. i. to the close of ch. v., in what relation does the address in ch. i. stand to ch. ii.-iv. and v., inasmuch as vers. 7-9 are not ideal (as we felt obliged to maintain, in opposition to Caspari), but have a distinct historical reference, and therefore at any rate presuppose the Syro-Ephraimitish war? And lastly, if ch. vi. does really relate, as it apparently does, to the call of Isaiah to the prophetic office, how are we to explain the singular fact, that three prophetic addresses precede the history of his call, which ought properly to stand at the commencement of the book? Drechsler and Caspari have answered this question lately, by maintaining that ch. vi. does not contain an account of the call of Isaiah to the prophetic office, but simply of the call of the prophet, who was already installed in that office, to one particular mission. The proper heading to be adopted for ch. vi. would therefore be, " The ordination of the prophet as the preacher of the judgment of hardening;" and ch. i.-v. would contain warning reproofs addressed by the prophet to the people, who were fast ripening for this judgment of hardening (reprobation), for the purpose of calling them to repentance. The final decision was still trembling in the balance. But the call to repentance was fruitless, and Israel hardened itself. And now that the goodness of God had tried in vain to lead the people to repentance, *and the long-suffering of God had been wantonly abused by the people, Jehovah Himself would harden them. Looked at in this light, ch. vi. stands in its true historical place. It contains the divine sequel to that portion of Isaiah's preaching, and of the prophetic preaching generally, by which it had been preceded. But true as it is that the whole of the central portion of Israel's history, which lay midway between the commencement and the close, was divided in half by the contents of ch. vi., and that the distinctive importance of Isaiah as a prophet arose especially from the fact that he stood upon the boundary between these two historic halves; there are serious objections which present themselves to such an explanation of ch. vi. It is possible, indeed, that this distinctive importance may have been given to Isaiah's official position at his very first call. And what Umbreit says — namely, that ch. vi. must make the impression upon every unprejudiced mind, that it relates to the prophet's inaugural vision — cannot really be denied. But the position in which ch. vi. stands in the book itself must necessarily produce a contrary impression, unless it can be accounted for in some other way. Nevertheless the impression still remains (just as at ch. i. 7-9), and recurs again and again. We will therefore proceed to ch. vi. without attempting to efface it. It is possible that we may discover some other satisfactory explanation of the enigmatical position of ch. vi. in relation to what precedes.
The time of the occurrence here described, viz. " the year that king Uzziah (Uziyahu) died" was of importance to the prophet. The statement itself, in the naked form in which it is here introduced, is much more emphatic than if it commenced with "it came to pass" (vaylii; cf. Ex. xvi. 6, Prov. xxiv. 17). It was the year of Uzziah' s death, not the first year of Jotham's reign; that is to say, Uzziah was still reifrninor, although his death was near at hand. If this is the sense in which the words are to be understood, then, even if the chapter before us contains an account of Isaiah's first call, the heading to ch. i., which dates the ministry of the prophet from the time of Uzziah, is quite correct, inasmuch as, although his public ministry under Uzziah was very short, this is properly to be included, not only on account of its own importance, but as inaugurating a new era (lit. " an epoch-making beginning"). But is it not stated in 2 Chron. xxvi. 22, that Isaiah wrote a historical work embracing the whole of Uzziah' a reign? Unquestionably; bu! it by no means follows from this, that he tnmenced his ministry long before the death of Uzziah. If liab received his call in the year that Uzziah died, this historical work contained a retrospective view of the life and times of Uzziah, the close of which coincided with the call of the prophetic author, which made a deep incision into the history of Israel. Uzziah reigned fifty-two years (809-758 B.C.). This lengthened period wras just the same to the kingdom of Judah as the shorter age of Solomon to that of all Israel, viz. a time of vigorous and prosperous peace, in which the nation was completely overwhelmed with manifestations of divine love. But the riches of divine goodness had no more influence upon it, than the troubles through which it had passed before. And now the eventful change took place in the relation between Israel and Jehovah, of which Isaiah was chosen to be the instrument before and above all other prophets. The year in which all this occurred was the year of Uzziah' s death. It was in this year that Israel as a people was given up to hardness of heart, and as a kingdom and country to devastation and annihilation by the imperial power of the world. Howsignificant a fact, as Jerome observes in connection with this passage, that the year of Uzziah' s death should be the year in which Romulus was born; and that it was only a short time after the death of Uzziah (viz. 754 B.C. according to Varro's chronology) that Rome itself was founded! The national glory of Israel died out with king Uzziah, and has never revived to this day.
In that year, says the prophet, " / saw the Lord of all sitting upon a high and exalted throne, and His borders filling the temple." Isaiah saiv, and that not when asleep and dreaming; but God gave him, when awake, an insight into the invisible world, by opening an inner sense for the supersensuous, whilst the action of the outer senses was suspended, and by condensing the supersensuous into a sensuous form, on account of the composite nature of man and the limits of his present state. This was the mode of revelation peculiar to an ecstatic vision (eV iKcrrdaei, Eng. ver. " in a trance," or iv TrvevjiarL, Ci in the spirit"). Isaiah is here carried up into heaven; for although in other instances it was undoubtedly the earthly temple wThich was presented to a prophet's view in an ecstatic vision (Amos ix. 1; Ezek. viii. 3, x. 4, 5; cf. Acts xxii. 17), yet here, as the description which follows clearly proves, the " high and exalted throne"1 is the heavenly antitype of the earthly throne which was formed by the ark of the covenant; and the "temple" (Jwcdl: lit. a spacious hall, the name given to the temple as the palace of God the King) is the temple in heaven, as in Ps. xi. 4, xviii. 7, xxix. 9, and many other passages. There the prophet sees the Sovereign Ruler, or, as we prefer to render the noun, which is formed from 'ddan = dun, " the Lord of all" (All-herrn, sovereign or absolute Lord), seated upon the throne, and in human form (Ezek. i. 2Q), as is proved by the robe with a train, whose flowing ends or borders (fimbria?: shulim, as in Ex. xxviii. 33, 34) filled the hall. The Sept., Targum, Vulgate, etc., have dropped the figure of the robe and train, as too anthropomorphic. But John, in his Gospel, is bold enough to say that it was Jesus whose glory Isaiah saw (John xii. 41). And truly so, for the incarnation of God is the truth embodied in all the scriptural anthropomorphisms, and the name of Jesus is the manifested mystery of the name Jehovah. The heavenly temple is that super-terrestrial place, which Jehovah transforms into heaven and a temple, by manifesting Himself there to angels and saints. But whilst He manifests His glory there, He is obliged also to veil it, because created beings are unable to bear it. But that which veils His glory is no less splendid, than that portion of it which is revealed. And this was the truth embodied for Isaiah in the lono- robe and train. He saw the Lord, and what more he saw was the all-filling robe of the indescribable One. As far as the eye of the seer could look at first, the ground was covered by this splendid robe. There was consequently no room for any one to stand. And the vision of the seraphim is in accordance with this. Ver. 2. "Above it stood seraphim: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly." We must not render v?Wpn " near him; " for although by or bv'O is applied to a person standing near or over against another who is sitting down (Ex. xviii. 13; Jer. xxx vi. 21; compare 2 Chron. xxvi. 19, where the latter is used
1 It is to this, and not to 'Adonai, as the Targum and apparently the accents imply, that the words '* high and exalted" refer.
to signify " <nor against" tlie altar of incense), and is used in this sense to denote the attitude of spirits (Job i. G; 1 Kings wii. 19; Zech. vi. 5), and even of men (Zech. iv. 14), in relation to God when seated on His throne, in which case it cannot possibly be employed in the sense of " towering above;" yet 6 'VS?, the strongest expression for supra, cannot be employed in any other than a literal sense here; for which reason Rashi and the Targums understand it as signifying "above in the attitude of service," and the accentuation apparently, though erroneously, implies this (Luzzatto). What Isaiah meant bv this standing above, may be inferred from the use which the seraphim are said to have made of their wings. The imperfects do not describe what they were accustomed to do (Bottcher and others), but what the seer saw them do: with two of their six wings he saw them fly. Thus they stood flying, i.e. they hovered or soared (cf. Num. xiv. 14), as both the earth and stars are said to stand, although suspended in space (Job xxvi. 7). The seraphim would not indeed tower above the head of Him that sat upon the throne, but they hovered above the robe belonging to Him with which the hall was filled, sustained by two extended wings, and covering their faces with two other wings in their awe at the divine glory (Targ. ne videant), and their feet with two others, in their consciousness of the depth at which the creature stands below the Holiest of all (Targ. ne videantur), just as the cherubim are described as veiling their bodies in Ezek. i. 11. This is the only passage in the Scriptures in which the seraphim are mentioned. According to the orthodox view, which originated with Dionysius the Areopagite, they stand at the head of the nine choirs of angels, the first rank consisting of seraphim, cherubim, and throni. And this is not without support, if we compare the cherubim mentioned in Ezekiel, which carried the chariot of the divine throne; whereas here the seraphim are said to surround the seat on which the Lord was enthroned. In any case, the seraphim and cherubim were heavenly beings of different kinds; and there is no weight in the attempts made by Hendewerk and Stickel to prove that they are one and the same. And certainly the name seraphim does not signify merely spirits as such, but even, if not the highest of all, yet a distinct order from the rest; for the Scriptures really teach that there are gradations in rank in the hierarchy of heaven. Nor were they mere symbols or fanciful images, as Hiivernick imagines, but real spiritual beings, who visibly appeared to the prophet, and that in a form corresponding to their own supersensuous being, and to the design of the whole transaction. Whilst these seraphim hovered above on both sides of Him that sat upon the throne, and therefore formed two opposite choirs, each ranged in a semicircle, they presented antiphonal worship to Him that sat upon the throne.
Ver. 3. " And one cried to the other, and said, Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts: filling the whole earth is His glory" The meaning is not that they all lifted up their voice in concert at one and the same time (just as in Ps. xlii. 8 el is not used in this sense, viz. as equivalent to cneged), but that there was a continuous and unbroken antiphonal song. One set commenced, and the others responded, either repeating the " Holy, holy, holy," or following with u filling the whole earth is His glory" Isaiah heard this antiphonal or " hypophonal " song of the seraphim, not merely that he might know that the uninterrupted worship of God was their blessed employment, but because it was with this doxology as with the doxologies of the Apocalypse, it had a certain historical significance in common with the whole scene. God is in Himself the Holy One (kddosh), i.e. the separate One, beyond or above the world, true light, spotless purity, the perfect One. His glory (cdbod) is His manifested holiness, as Oetinger and Bengel express it, just as, on the other hand, His holiness is His veiled or hidden glory. The design of all the work of God is that His holiness should become universally manifest, or, what is the same thing, that His glory should become the fulness of the whole earth (ch. xi. 9; Num. xiv. 21; Hab. ii. 14). This design of the work of God stands before God as eternally present; and the seraphim also have it ever before them in its ultimate completion, as the theme of their song of praise. But Isaiah was a man living in the very midst of the history that was moving on towards this goal; and the cry of the seraphim, in the precise form in which it reached him, showed him to what it would eventually come on earth, whilst the heavenly shapes that were made visible to him helped him to understand the nature of that divine glory with which the earth was to be filled. The whole of the book of Isaiah contains traces of the impression made by this ecstatic vision. The favourite name of God in the mouth of the prophet, viz. " the Holy One of Israel" (kedo$h Yisrael), is the echo of this seraphic sanctus; and the fact that this name already occurs with such marked preference on the part of the prophet in the addresses contained in ch. i. 2-iv. 5, supports the view that Isaiah is here describing his own first call. All the prophecies of Isaiah carry this name of God as their stamp. It occurs twenty-nine times (including ch. x. 17, xliii. 15, xlix. 7), viz. twelve times in ch. i.-xxxix., and seventeen times in ch. xj.-lxvi. As Luzzatto has well observed, " the prophet, as if with a presentiment that the authenticity of the second part of his book would be disputed, has stamped both parts with this name of God, ' the Holy One of Israel,' as if with his own seal." The only other passages in which the word occurs, are three times in the Psalms (Ps. lxxi. 22, lxxviii. 41, lxxxix. 19), and twice in Jeremiah (Jer. 1. 29, li. 5), and that not without an allusion to Isaiah. It forms an essential part of Isaiah's distinctive prophetic signature. And here we are standing at the source from which it sprang. But did this thrice-holy refer to the triune God? Knobel contents himself with saying that the threefold repetition of the word " holy" serves to give it the greater emphasis. No doubt men are accustomed to say three times what they wish to say in an exhaustive and satisfying manner; for three is the number of expanded unity, of satisfied and satisfying development, of the key-note extended into the chord. But why is this? The Pythagoreans said that numbers were the first principle of all things; but the Scriptures, according to which God created the world in twice three days by ten mighty words, and completed it in seven days, teach us that God is the first principle of all numbers. The fact that three is the number of developed and yet self-contained unity, has its ultimate ground in the circumstance that it is the number of the trinitarian process; and consequently the trilogy (trisagion) of the seraphim (like that of the cherubim in Rev. iv. 8), whether Isaiah was aware of it or no, really pointed in the distinct consciousness of the spirits themselves to the triune God.
When Isaiah heard this, he stood entranced at the farthest possible distance from Him that sat upon the throne, namely, under the door of the heavenly palace or temple. What he VOL. i. n still further felt and saw, he proceeds to relate in ver. 4: u And the foundations of the thresholds shook with the voice of them that cried; and the house became full of smoke" By 'ammoth hassippim, the LXX., Vulgate, Syriac, and others understand the posts of the lintels, the supporting beams of the superliminaria, which closed the doorway at the top. But as saph is only used in other places to signify the threshold and porch (limen and vestibulum), 'ammoth hassippim must be understood here in the (perfectly appropriate) sense of " the foundations of the thresholds " i^ammdh, which bears the same relation to ON, mother, as matrix to mater, is used to denote the receptive basis into which the door-steps with their plugs were inserted, like the talmudic ammetdh derechayydh, the frame or box of the hand-mill (Berachoth 186), and ammoth megerah, the wood- work which runs along the back of the saw and keeps it firmly extended (Kelim 21, 3); compare the " Schraubenmutter" literally screw-mother, or female screw, which receives and holds the cylindrical screw). Every time that the choir of seraphim (K"?.ipn • 'compare such collective singulars as hd'oreb, the ambush, in Josh. viii. 19; hechdlutz, the men of war, in Josh, vi. 7, etc.) began their song, the support of the threshold of the porch in which Isaiah was standing trembled. The building was seized with reverential awe throughout its whole extent, and in its deepest foundations: for in the blessed state beyond, nothing stands immoveable or unsusceptible in relation to the spirits there; but all things form^ as it were, the accidentia of their free personality, yielding to their impressions, and voluntarily following them in all their emotions. The house was also "filled with smoke" Many compare this with the similar occurrence in connection with the dedication of Solomon's temple (1 Kings viii. 10); but Drechsler is correct in stating that the two cases are not parallel, for there God simply attested His own presence by the cloud of smoke behind which He concealed Himself, whereas here there was no need of any such self-attestation. Moreover, in this instance God does not dwell in the cloud and thick darkness, whilst the smoke is represented as the effect of the songs of praise in which the seraphim have joined, and not of the presence of God. The smoke arose from the altar of incense mentioned in ver. 6. But when Drechsler says that it was the prayers of saints (as in Rev. v. 8, viii. 3, 4), which ascended to the Lord in the smoke, this is a thought which is quite out of place here. The smoke was the immediate consequence of the seraphs' song of praise.
This begins to throw a light upon the name seraphim, which may help us to decipher it. The name cannot possibly be connected with sdraph, a snake (Sanscr. sarpa, Lat. serpens); and to trace the word to a verb sdraph in the sense of the Arabic 'sarafa (sarufa), to tower high, to be exalted, or highly honoured (as Gesenius, Hengstenberg, Hofmann, and others have done), yields a sense which does not very strongly commend itself. On the other hand, to follow Knobel, who reads shdrdthim (worshippers of God), and thus presents the Lexicon with a new word, and to pronounce the word seraphim a copyist's error, would be a rash concession to the heaven-storming omnipotence which is supposed to reside in the ink of a German scholar. It is hardly admissible, however, to interpret the name as signifying directly spirits of light or fire, since the true meaning of sdraph is not urere (to burn), but comburere (to set on fire or burn up). Umbreit endeavours to do justice to this transitive meaning by adopting the explanation " fiery beings," by which all earthly corruption is opposed and destroyed. The vision itself, however, appears to point to a much more distinctive and special meaning in the name, which only occurs in this passage of Isaiah. We shall have more to say upon this point presently.
The seer, who was at first overwhelmed and intoxicated by the majestic sight, now recovers his self-consciousness. Ver. 5. " Then said 7, Woe to me! for lam lost; for lam a man of unclean lips, and I am dwelling among a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts." That a man cannot see God without dying is true in itself, and was an Old Testament conviction throughout (Ex. xxxiii. 20, etc.). He must die, because the holiness of God is to the sinner a consuming fire (ch. xxxiii. 14); and the infinite distance between the creature and the Creator is sufficient of itself to produce a prostrating effect, which even the seraphim could not resist without veiling their faces. Isaiah therefore regarded himself as lost (nidmethiy like okooiXa, perii, a preterite denoting the fact which, although not outwardly completed, is yet effected so far as a man's own consciousness is concerned), and all the more because he himself was of unclean lips, and he was also a member of a nation of unclean lips. The unholiness of his own person was doubled, in consequence of the closeness of the natural connection, by the unholiness of the nation to which he belonged. He designates this unholiness as uncleanness of lips, because he found himself transported into the midst of choirs of beings who were praising the Lord with pure lips; and he calls the King Jehovah, because, although he had not seen Jehovah face to face, he had seen the throne, and the allfilling robe, and the seraphim who surrounded and did homage to Him that sat upon the throne; and therefore, as he had seen the heavenly King in His revealed majesty, he describes the scene according to the impression that he had received. But to stand here in front of Jehovah of hosts, the exalted King, to whom everything does homage, and to be obliged to remain mute in the consciousness of deep uncleanness, excited within him the annihilating anguish of self-condemnation. And this is expressed in the confession made by the contrite seer.
This confession was followed by the forgiveness of his sins, of which he received an attestation through a heavenly sacrament, and which was conveyed to him through the medium of a seraphic absolution. Vers. 6, 7. " And one of the seraphim flew to me with a red-hot coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said, Behold, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken avmy; and so thy sin is expiated" One of the beings hovering round the Lord (there were, therefore, a large and indefinite number) flew to the altar of incense, — the heavenly original of the altar of incense in the earthly temple, which was reckoned as belonging to the Most Holy Place, — and took from this altar a ritzpdh, i.e. either a red-hot stone (Vulg. calculum, Ar. radfe or radafe), or, according to the prevailing tradition, a red-hot coal (yid. rdtzeph = rdshaph, to scatter sparks, sparkle, or glow: syn. gacheleth), and that with a pair of tongs, because even a seraph's hand cannot touch the vessels consecrated to God, or the sacrifices that belong to Him. With this red-hot coal he flew to Isaiah, and having touched his mouth with it, i.e. that member of his body of whose uncleanness he had more especially complained (cf. Jer. i. 9, where the prophet's mouth is touched by Jehovah's hand, and made eloquent in consequence), he assured him of the forgiveness of his sins, which coincided with the application of this sacramental sign. The Vav connects together what is affirmed by ndga (hath touched) and sdr (a taker away) as being simultaneous; the zeli (this) points as a neuter to the red-hot coal. The future tecuppdr is a future consec, separated by Vav conversive for the purpose of bringing the subject into greater prominence; as it is practically impossible that the removal of guilt should be thought of as immediate and momentary, and the expiation as occurring gradually. The fact that the guilt was taken away was the very proof that the expiation was complete. Cipper, with the " sin " in the accusative, or governed by?JJ, signifies to cover it up, extinguish, or destroy it (for the primary meaning, vid. ch. xxviii. 18), so that it has no existence in relation to the penal justice of God. All sinful uncleanness was burned away from the prophet's mouth. The seraph, therefore, did here what his name denotes: he burned up or burned away (comburit). He did this, however, not by virtue of his own fiery nature, but by means of the divine fire which he had taken from the heavenly altar. As the smoke which filled the house came from the altar, and arose in consequence of the adoration offered to the Lord by the seraphim, not only must the incense-offering upon the altar and this adoration be closely connected; but the fire, which revealed itself in the smoke and consumed the incense-offering, and which must necessarily have been divine because of its expiatory power, was an effect of the love of God with wh'ich He reciprocated the offerings of the seraphim. A fiery look from God, and that a fiery look of pure love as the seraphim were sinless, had kindled the sacrifice. Now, if the fact that a seraph absolved the seer by means of this fire of love is to be taken as an illustrative example of the historical calling of the seraphim, they were the vehicles and media of the fire of divine love, just as the cherubim in Ezekiel are vehicles and media of the fire of divine wrath. For just as, in the case before us, a seraph takes the fire of love from the altar; so there, in Ezek. x. 6, 7, a cherub takes the fire of wrath from the thronechariot. Consequently the cherubim appear as the vehicles and media of the wrath which destroys sinners, or rather of the divine doxa, with its fiery side turned towards the world; and the seraphim as the vehicles and media of the love which