It is to this ecclesiola in ecclesia that the prophet's admonition is addressed. Ver. 19. " And when they shall say to you. Inquire of the necromancers, and of the soothsayers that chirp and whisper: — Should not a people inquire of its God? for the living to the dead V The appeal is supposed to be made by Juclseans of the existing stamp; for we know from ch. ii. 6, iii. 2, 3, that all kinds of heathen superstitions had found their way into Jerusalem, and were practised there as a trade. The persons into whose mouths the answer is put by the prophet (we may supply before ver. 1%, " Thus shall ye say to them;" cf. Jer. x. 11), are his own children and disciples. The circumstances of the times were very critical; and the people were applying to wizards to throw light upon the dark future. ' Ob signified primarily the spirit of witchcraft, then the possessor of such a spirit (equivalent to Baal ob), more especially the necromancer. Yidd'oni, on the other hand, signified primarily the possessor of a prophesying or soothsaying spirit (ttvOcov or irvevfia rod irvdcovo^), Syr. yodua (after the intensive form paul with immutable vowels), and then the soothsaying spirit itself (Lev. xx. 27), which was properly called yidda on (the much knowing), like Sal/jicov, which, according to Plato, is equivalent to Barj/jicov. These people, who are designated by the LXX., both here and elsewhere, as iyyaarpo/jLvOot, i.e. ventriloquists, imitated the chirping of bats, which was supposed to proceed from the shades of Hades, and uttered their magical formulas in a whispering tone.1 What an unnatural thing, for the people of Jehovah to go and inquire, not of their own God, but of such heathenish and demoniacal deceivers and victims as these (ddrasli *el, to go and inquire of a person, ch. xi. 10, synonymous with slmal b\ 1 Sam. xxviii. 6)! What blindness, to consult the dead in the interests of the living! By " the dead" (Jiammethim) we are not to understand "the idols" in this passage, as in Ps. cvi. 28, but the departed, as Deut. xviii. 11 (cf. 1 Sam xxviii.) clearly proves; and "W3 is not to be taken, either here or elsewhere, as equivalent to tachath (" instead of"), as Knobel supposes, but, as in Jer. xxi. 2 and other passages, as signifying " for the benefit of." Necromancy, which makes the dead the instructors of the livingj is a most gloomy deception.
In opposition to such a falling away to wretched superstition, the watchword of the prophet and his supporters is this. Ver. 20. " To the teaching of God (thorah, Gotteslehre), and to the
1 The Mishnah Sanhedrin 65a gives this definition: " Baal 'ob is a python, i.e. a soothsayer (' with a spirit of divination'), -who speaks from his arm-pit; yidd'oni, a man who speaks with his mouth." The baal ob, so far as he had to do with the bones of the dead, is called in the Talmud 'obiV temayya\ e.g. the witch of Endor (b. Sabbath 1526). On the history of the etymological explanation of the word, see Bottcher, de infer is, § 205-217. If 'ofc, a skin or leather bottle, is a word from the same root (rendered;t bellows" by the LXX. at Job xxxii. 19), as it apparently is, it may be applied to a bottle as a thing which swells or can be blown out, and to a wizard or spirit of incantation on account of his puffing and gasping. The explanation " le revenant" from ^N = Arab, aba, to return, has only a very weak support in the proper name 3VN = avvab (the penitent, returning again and again to God: sec again at ch. xxix. 4).
trstimojiy I If they do not accord with this word, they are a people for whom no morning dawns." The summons, " to the teaching and to the testimony" (namely, to those which Jehovah gave through His prophet, ver. 17), takes the form of a watchword in time of battle (Judg. vii. 18). With this construction the following K?"DX (which Knobel understands interrogatively, " Should not they speak so, who, etc.? " and Luzzatto as an oath, as in Ps. cxxxi. 2, " Surely they say such words as have no dawn in them") has, at any rate, all the presumption of a conditional signification. Whoever had not this watchword would be regarded as the enemy of Jehovah, and suffer the fate of such a man. This is, to all appearance, the meaning of the apodosis "in£> vTg "Wfc. Luther has given the meaning correctly, " If they do not say this, they will not have the morning dawn;" or, according to his earlier and equally good rendering, "They shall never overtake the morning light," literally, " They are those to whom no dawn arises." The use of the plural in the hypothetical protasis, and the singular in the apodosis, is an intentional and significant change. All the several individuals who did not adhere to the revelation made by Jehovah through. His prophet, formed one corrupt mass, which would remain in hopeless darkness. "IPK is used in the same sense as in ch. v. 28 and 2 Sam. ii. 4, and possibly also as in 1 Sam. xv. 20, instead of the more usual *3, when used in the affirmative sense which springs in both particles out of the confirmative (namque and quoniam): Truly they have no morning dawn* to expect.1
The night of despair to which the unbelieving nation would be brought, is described in vers. 21, 22: "And it goes about therein hard pressed and hungry: and it comes to pass, when hunger befals it, it frets itself, and curses by its king and by its God, and turns its face upward, and looks to the earth, and behold distress and darkness, benighting with anguish, and thrust out into darkness." The singulars attach themselves to the \b in ver. 19, which embraces all the unbelievers in one mass; " therein" {bah) refers to the self-evident land (eretz). The people would be brought to such a plight in the approaching Assyrian oppressions, that they would wander about in the
1 Strangely enough, vers. 19 and 20 are described in Lev. Rabba, ch. xv., as words of the prophet Hosea incorporated in the book of Isaiah. VOL. I. Q land pressed down by their hard fate (niksheli) and hungry (raeb\ because all provisions would be gone and the fields and vineyards would be laid waste. As often as it experienced hunger afresh, it would work itself into a rage (yhithkazzaph with Vav apod, and pathacfi, according to Ges. § 54, Anm.), and curse by its king and God, i.e. by its idol. This is the way in which we must explain the passage, in accordance with 1 Sam. xiv. 43, where killel belohim is equivalent to killel Vshem elohim, and with Zeph. i. 5, where a distinction is made between an oath layehovdh, and an oath Vmalcdm; if we would adhere to the usage of the language, in which we never find a 3??P corresponding to the Latin execrari in aliquem (Ges.), but on the contrary the object cursed is always expressed in the accusative. We must therefore give up Ps. v. 3 and lxviii. 25 as parallels to Vmalco and belohdiv: they curse by the idol, which passes with them for both king and God, curse their wretched fate with this as they suppose the most effectual curse of all, without discerning in it the just punishment of their own apostasy, and humbling themselves penitentially under the almighty hand of Jehovah. Consequently all this reaction of their wrath would avail them nothing: whether they turned upwards, to see if the black sky were not clearing, or looked down to the earth, everywhere there would meet them nothing but distress and darkness, nothing but a night of anguish all around (meupli zukdh is a kind of summary; mauph a complete veiling, or eclipse, written with u instead of the more usual 6 of this substantive form: Ewald, § 160, a). The judgment of God does not convert them, but only heightens their wickedness; just as in Rev. xvi. 11, 21, after the pouring out of the fifth and seventh vials of wrath, men only utter blasphemies, and do not desist from their works. After stating what the people see, whether they turn their eyes upwards or downwards, the closing participial clause of ver. 22 describes how they see themselves " thrust out into darkness " (in caliginem propulsum). There is no necessity to supply Kin; but out of the previous hinneh it is easy to repeat hinno or hinnennu (en ipsum). " Into darkness:" 'apheldh (ace. loci) is placed emphatically at the head, as in Jer. xxiii. 12.
After the prophet has thus depicted the people as without morning dawn, he gives the reason for the assumption that a restoration of light is to bo expected, although not for the existing generation. Ch. ix. 1. " For it does not remain dark where there is now digress: in the first time He brought into disgrace the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and in the last He brings to honour the road by the sea, the other side of Jordan, the circle of the Gentiles" *S is neither to be taken as equivalent to the untranslatable 6tl recitativum (Knobel), nor is there any necessity to translate it "but" or "nevertheless," and supply the clause, " it will not remain so." The reason assigned for the fact that the unbelieving people of Judah had fallen into a night without morning, is, that there was a morning coming, whose light, however, would not rise upon the land of Judah first, but upon other parts of the land. Miidph and muzdk are hophal nouns: a state of darkness and distress. The meaning is, There is not, i.e. there will not remain', a state of darkness over the land (lah, like bah in viii. 21, refers to 'eretz), which is now in a state of distress; but those very districts which God has hitherto caused to suffer deep humiliation He will bring to honour by and by (Jiekal = hekel, according to Ges. § 67, Anm. 3, opp. hicbld, as in ch. xxiii. 9). The height of the glorification would correspond to the depth of the disgrace. We cannot adopt KnobePs rendering, " as at a former time," etc., taking r\V as an accusative of time and 3 as equivalent to ""^3, for 3 is never used conjunctionally in this way (see Psalter, i. 301, and ii. 514); and in the examples adduced by Knobel (viz. ch. lxi. 11 and Job vii. 2), the verbal clauses after Capk are elliptical relative clauses. The rendering adopted by Rosenmiiller and others (sicut tempus prius vilem reddidit, etc., " as a former time brought it into contempt") is equally wrong. And Ewald, again, is not correct in taking the Vav in vhd-acharon as the Vav of sequence used in the place of the cen of comparison. JiG^on nya and pinsn are both definitions of time. The prophet intentionally indicates the time of disgrace with 3, because this would extend over a lengthened period, in which the same fate would occur again and again. The time of glorification, on the other hand, is indicated by the accus. temporis, because it would occur but once, and then continue in perpetuity and without change. It is certainly possible that the prophet may have regarded hd-achardn as the subject; but this would destroy the harmony of the antithesis. By the land or territory of Naphtali (artzdh, poet, for 'eretz, as in Job xxxiv. 13, xxxvii. 12, with a toneless ah) we are to understand the upper Galilee of later times, and by the land of Zebulun lower Galilee. In the antithetical parallel clause, what is meant by the two lands is distinctly specified: (1) " the road by the sea," derek liayydm, the tract of land on the western shore of the sea of Chinnereth; (2) " the other side of Jordan," 'eber hayyarden, the country to the east of the Jordan; (3) " the circle of the Gentiles," gelll haggdyim, the northernmost border-land of Palestine, only a portion of the so-called Galilcea of after times. Ever since the times of the judges, all these lands had been exposed, on account of the countries that joined them, to corruption from Gentile influence and subjugation by heathen foes. The northern tribes on this side, as well as those on the other side, suffered the most in the almost incessant war between Israel and the Syrians, and afterwards between Israel and the Assyrians; and the transportation of their inhabitants, which continued under Pul, Tiglath-pileser, and Shalmanassar, amounted at last to utter depopulation (Caspari, Beitr. 116-118). But these countries would be the very first that would be remembered when that morning dawn of glory should break. Matthew informs us (ch. iv. 13 sqq.) in what way this was fulfilled at the commencement of the Christian times. On the ground of this prophecy of Isaiah, and not of a a somewhat mistaken exposition of it," as Renan maintains in his Vie de Jesus (ch. xiii.), the Messianic hopes of the Jewish nation were really directed towards Galilee.1 It is true that, according to Jerome, in loc, the Nazarenes supposed ch. ix. lb to refer to the light of the gospel spread by the preaching of Paul in terminos gentium et viam universi maris. But " the sea" (Jiayydm) cannot possibly be understood as referring to the Mediterranean, as Meier and Hofmann suppose, for " the way of the sea" {derek hayydm) would in that case have been inhabited by the Philistines and Phoenicians; whereas the prophet's intention was evidently to mention such Israelitish provinces as had suffered the greatest affliction and degradation.
1 The Zohar was not the first to teach that the Messiah would appear in Galilee, and that redemption would break forth from Tiberias; but this is found in the Talmud and Midrash (see Litter atur -Matt des Orients, 1843, Col. 776).
The range of vision is first widened in ver. 2: " The people that walk abend in darkness see a great light; they who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light shines" The range of vision is here extended; not to the Gentiles, however, but to all Israel. Salvation would not break forth till it had become utterly dark along the horizon of Israel, according to the description in ch. v. 30, i.e. till the land of Jehovah had become a land of the shadow of death on account of the apostasy of its inhabitants from Jehovah (zalmdveth is modified, after the manner of a composite noun, from zalmuth, according to the form kadruth, and is derived from tbv9 JEth. salema, Arab. zalima, to be dark).1 The apostate mass of the nation is to be regarded as already swept away; for if death has cast its shadow over the land, it must be utterly desolate. In this state of things the remnant left in the land beholds a great light, which breaks through the sky that has been hitherto covered with blackness. The people, who turned their eyes upwards to no purpose, because they did so with cursing (ch. viii. 21), are now no more. It is the remnant of Israel which sees this light of spiritual and material redemption arise above its head. In what this light would consist the prophet states afterwards, when describing first the blessings and then the star of the new time.
In ver. 3 he says, in words of thanksgiving and praise: " Thou multipliest the nation, preparest it great joy; they rejoice before Thee like the joy in harvest, as men rejoice when they share the spoil" "The nation" (haggoi) is undoubtedly Israel, reduced to a small remnant. That God would make this again into a numerous people, was a leading feature in the pictures drawn of the time of glory (ch. xxvi. 15, lxvi. 8; Zech. xiv. 10, 11), which would be in this respect the counterpart of that of Solomon (1 Kings iv. 20). If our explanation is the correct one so far, the only way to give an intelligible meaning
1 The shadow or shade, zel, Arab, zill (radically related to tall = fa, dew), derived its name ab obtegendo, and according to the idea attached to it as the opposite of heat or of light, was used as a figure of a beneficent shelter (ch. xvi. 3), or of what was dark and horrible (cf. Targ. talldni, a nightdemon). The verb zdlam, in the sense of the Arabic zalima, bears the same relation to zdlal as bdham to bdhdh (Gen. p. 93), 'dram, to be naked, to 'drdh (Jeshurun, p. 159). The noun zelem, however, is either formed from this zdlam, or else directly from zel, with the substantive termination em.
to the chethib &6, taking it in a negative sense, is to render it, as Hengstenberg, Hitzig, and others have done, " Thou multipliest the nation to which Thou hadst formerly not given great joy," which must signify, per litoten, " the nation which Thou hadst plunged into deep sorrow." But it is unnatural to take any one of the prophetic preterites, commencing with hicbid in ver. 1, in any other than a future sense. We must therefore give the preference to the keri S1?,1 and render it, " Thou makest of the nation a great multitude, and preparest it great joy." The pronoun Id is written first, as in Lev. vii. 7-9, Job xli. 4 (keri), probably with the emphasis assumed by Drechsler: " to it, in which there was not the smallest indication of such an issue as this." The verbs " multiplied " (Jiigdaltd) and " increased" (hirbithd) are intentionally written together, to put the intensity of the joy on a level with the extensiveness of the multitude. This joy would be a holy joy, as the expression " before Thee " implies: the expression itself recals the sacrificial meals in the courts of the temple (Deut. xii. 7, xiv. 26). It would be a joy over blessings received, as the figure of the harvest indicates; and joy over evil averted, as the figure of dividing the spoil presupposes: for the division of booty is the business of conquerors. This second figure is not merely a figure: the people that are so joyous are really victorious and triumphant. Ver. 4. " For the yoke of its burden and the stick of its neck, the stick of its oppressor, Thou hast broken to splinters, as in the day of -Midian" The suffixes refer to the people (fiadni). Instead of soblo, from sobel, we have intentionally the more musical form feD (with dagesh dirimens and chateph kametz under the influence of the previous u instead of the simple sheva). The rhythm of the verse is anapaestic. "Its burden" (subbdlo) and uits oppressor" (iioges bo) both recal to mind the Egyptian bondage (Ex. ii. 11, v. 6). The future deliverance, which the prophet here celebrates, would be the counterpart of the Egyptian. But as the whole of the great nation of Israel was then redeemed, whereas only a small remnant would participate in the final redemption, he compares it to the day of Midian, when Gideon broke the seven years' dominion of Midian, not with a great army, but with a
1 On the passages in which $b chethib is \p keri, see at Ps. c. 3 and Job xiii. 15.
handful of resolute warriors, strong in the Lord (Judg. vii.). The question suggests itself here, Who is the hero, Gideon's antitype, through whom all this is to occur? The prophet.Iocs not say; but building up one clause upon another with '3, he gives first of all the reason for the cessation of the oppressive dominion of the imperial power, — namely, the destruction of all the military stores of the enemy. — Ver. 5. " For every boot of those who tramp with boots in the tumult of battle, and cloak rolled in blood, shall be for burning, a food of fire." That which is the food of fire becomes at the same time a scirphdh, inasmuch as the devouring fire reduces it to ashes, and destroys its previous existence. This closing statement requires for pSD the concrete sense of a combustible thing; and this precludes such meanings as business (Ilandel imd Wandel), noise, or din (= tfMP, Jerome, Syriac, Kashi, and others). On the other hand, the meaning " military equipment," adopted by Knobcl and others, — a meaning derived from a comparison of the derivatives of the Aramaean zun, azan, and the Arabic zdna, fut. yezin (to dress or equip), — would be quite admissible; at the same time, the interchange of Samech and Zain in this word cannot be dialectically established. Jos. Kimchi has very properly referred to the Targum sen, mesdn (Syr. also sdun with an essentially long a), which signifies shoe (see Bynaeus, de calceo Hebraiorum), — a wrord which is more Aramaean than Hebrew, and the use of which in the present connection might be explained on the ground that the prophet had in his mind the annihilation of the Assyrian forces. We should no doubt expect soVun {sandaloumenos) instead of so en; but the denom. verb sa'an might be applied to a soldier's coming up in military boots, and so signify caligatum venire, although the primary meaning is certainly calceare se (e.g. Eph. vi. 15, Syr.). Accordingly we should render it, " every boot of him who comes booted (des Einherstiefelnden) into the tumult of battle," taking the word mash, not as Drechsler does, in the sense of the noise made by a warrior coming up proudly in his war-boots, nor with Luzzatto in the sense of the war-boot itself, for which the word is too strong, but as referring to the noise or tumult of battle (as in Jer. x. 22), in the midst of which the man comes up equipped or shod for military service. The prophet names the boot and garment with an obvious purpose. The destruction of the hostile weapons follows as a matter cf course, if even the military shoes, worn by the soldiers in the enemies' ranks, and the military cloaks that were lying in ddmim, i.e. in blood violently shed upon the battle-field, were all given up to the fire.
Upon the two sentences with ci the prophet now builds a third. The reason for the triumph is the deliverance effected; and the reason for the deliverance, the destruction of the foe; and the reason for all the joy, all the freedom, all the peace, is the new great King. — Ver. 6. "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government rests upon His shoulder: and they call His name, Wonder, Counsellor, mighty God, Eternal-Father, Prince of Peace? The same person whom the prophet foretold in ch. vii. as the son of the virgin who would come to maturity in troublous times, he here sees as born, and as having already taken possession of the government. There he appeared as a sign, here as a gift of grace. The prophet does not expressly say that he is a son of David in this instance any more than in ch. vii. (for the remark that has been recently made, that yeled is used here for " infant-prince," is absurd); but this followed as a matter of course, from the fact that he was to bear the government, with all its official rights (ch. xxii. 22) and godlike majesty (Ps. xxi. 6), upon his shoulder; for the inviolable promise of eternal sovereignty, of which the new-born infant was to be the glorious fulfilment, had been bound up with the seed of David in the course of Israel's history ever since the declaration in 2 Sam. vii. In ch. vii. it is the mother who names the child; here it is the people, or indeed any one who rejoices in him: &y?% "one calls, they call, he is called," as Luther has correctly rendered it, though, under the mistaken idea that the Jews had altered the original K^iJ?} into K*}i??3, for the purpose of eliminating the Messianic sense of the passage. But the active verb itself has really been twisted by Jewish commentators in this way; so that Rashi, Kimchi, Malbim, and others follow the Targum, and explain the passage as meaning, u the God, who is called and is Wonder, Counsellor, the mighty God, the eternal Father, calls his name the Prince of Peace; " but this rendering evidently tears asunder things that are closely connected. And Luzzatto has justly observed, that you do not expect to find attributes of God here, but such as would be characteristic of the child. lie therefore renders the passage,
"God the mighty, tin- eternal Father, the Prince of Peace, ivsolves upon wonderful things," and persuades himself that this Long clause is meant for the proper name of the child, just as in other cases declaratory clauses are made into proper names, e.g. the names of the prophet's two sons. But even granting that such a sesquipedalian name were possible, in what an unskilful manner would the name be formed, since the longwinded clause, which would necessarily have to be uttered in one breath, would resolve itself again into separate clauses, which are not only names themselves, but, contrary to all expectation, names of God! The motive which prompted Luzzatto to adopt this original interpretation is worthy of notice. He had formerly endeavoured, like other commentators, to explain the passage by taking the words from " Wonderful " to " Prince of Peace " as the name of the child; and in doing this he rendered pyv vbs " one counselling wonderful things," thus inverting the object, and regarded "mighty God" as well as u eternal Father " as hyperbolical expressions, like the words applied to the King in Ps. xlv. la. But now he cannot help regarding it as absolutely impossible for a human child to be called el gibbor, like God Himself in ch. x. 21. So far as the relation between his novel attempt at exposition and the accentuation is concerned, it certainly does violence to this, though not to such an extent as the other specimen of exegetical legerdemain, which makes the clause from N^D to Ijr'ax the subject to iriftt. Nevertheless, in the face of the existing accentuation, we must admit that the latter is, comparatively speaking, the better of the two; for if 1D*^ Klpl were intended to be the introduction to the list of names which follows, l»6? would not be pointed with geresh, but with zakeph. The accentuators seem also to have shrunk from taking el gibbor as the name of a man. They insert intermediate points, as though u eternal Father, Prince of Peace," were the name of the child, and all that precedes, from " Wonder " onwards, the name of God, who would call him by these two honourable names. But, at the very outset, it is improbable that there should be two names instead of one or more; and it is impossible to conceive for what precise reason such a periphrastic description of God should be employed in connection with the naming of this child, as is not only altogether different from Isaiah's usual custom, but altogether unparalleled in itself, especially without the definite article. The names of God should at least have beer defined thus, "riaan?NH &OS) }'Visn so as to distinguish them from the two names of the child. Even assuming, therefore, that the accentuation is meant to convey this sense, u And the wonderful Counsellor, the mighty God, calls his name Eternal-Father, Prince of Peace," as appears to be the case; we must necessarily reject it, as resting upon a misunderstanding and misinterpretation.1 We regard the whole, from $b% onwards, — as the connection, the expression, and the syntax require, — as a dependent accusative predicate to 1E£> Kipl (they call his name), which stands at the head (compare sop, they call, it is called, in Gen. xi. 9, xvi. 14, Josh. vii. 26, and above ch. viii. 4, tffe^, they will carry: Ges. § 137, 3). If it be urged, as an objection to the Messianic interpretation of ch. vii. 14, 15, that the Christ who appeared was not named Immanuel, but Jesus, this objec-
1 The telisha in fc^Q is the smallest of all disjunctive accents; the geresli in yoy) separates rather more strongly than this; the pashta in pyv separates somewhat more than the other two, but less than the zakeph in TQJ; and this zakeph is the greatest divider in the sentence. The whole sentence, therefore, distributes itself in the following manner: \\ yc>V? SOp^ uhvTW I TjraK llll "\)2i 5>K HI YVV I K^B- All the words from fcOpv) onwards are subordinate to the zakeph attached to TD3, which is, to all appearance, intended to have the force of an introductory colon: as, for example, in 2 Sam. xviii. 5 (in the case of "1D&6 in the clause ""B^K-nxi 3KP "MDvb TlfcrnKl)- In smaller subdivisions, again, joq (telisha) is connected with YW (pashta), and both together with TQJ ^ (munach zakeph). If only sar shalom (Prince of Peace) were intended as the name of the child, it would necessarily be accentuated in the following manner: yciw fcOp^ kadma geresh, pj;y» tfSs telisha gershayim, "iini b$ mercha tebir, -jy 13&5 tifchah, D'fe-liy silluk; and the principal disjunctive would stand at iy instead of 1U3- But if the name of the child were intended to form a declaratory clause, commencing with pyv &6s, "determines wonderful things," as Luzzatto assumes, we should expect to find a stronger disjunctive than telisha at tf^S, the watchword of the whole; and above all, we should expect a zakeph at 1Dt>>, and not at -ftM. This also applies to our (the ordinary) explanation. It does not correspond to the accentuation. The introductory words 1D£> fcOp^ ought to have a stronger distinctive accent, in order that all which follows might stand as the name which they introduce. Francke (see Psalter, ii. 521) perceived this, and in his Abyssus mysteriorum Esa (ix. 6) he lays great stress upon the fact, that God who gives the name has Himself a threefold name.
D is sufficiently met by the fact that He did n6t receive as a proper name any one of the five names by which, according to this second prophecy, He was to be called. Moreover, this objection would apply quite as strongly to the notion, which has been a very favourite one with Jewish commentators (e.g. Rathi, A. E. Kimchi, Abravanel, Malbim, Luzzatto, and others), and even with certain Christian commentators (such as Grotius, Gesenius, etc.), that the prophecy refers to Hezekiah, — a notion which is a disgrace to those who thereby lead both themselves and others astray. For even if the hopes held out in the prophecy were attached for a long time to Hezekiah, the mistake was but too quickly discovered; whereas the commentators in question perpetuate the mistake, by forcing it upon the prophecy itself, although the prophet, even after the deception had been outlived, not only did not suppress the prophecy, but handed it down to succeeding ages as awaiting a future and infallible fulfilment. For the words in their strict meaning point to the Messiah, whom men may for a time, with pardonable error, have hoped to find in Hezekiah, but whom, with unpardonable error, men refused to acknowledge, even when He actually appeared in Jesus. The name Jesus is the combination of all the Old Testament titles used to designate the Coming One according to His nature and His works. The names contained in ch. vii. 14 and ix. 6 are not thereby suppressed; but they have continued, from the time of Mary downwards, in the mouths of all believers. There is not one of these names under which worship and homage have not been paid to Him. But we never find them crowded together anywhere else, as we do here in Isaiah; and in this respect also our prophet proves himself the greatest of the Old Testament evangelists. The first name is &OS, or perhaps more correctly fc&S, which is not to be taken in connection with the next word, Y$\ though this construction might seem to commend itself in accordance with •TO Kvan, in ch. xxviii. 29. This is the way in which it has been taken by the Seventy and others (thus LXX., Oavfiaaro^ avfifiovXos; Theodore t, OavfiaaTm jSov\ev(ov). If we adopted this explanation, we might regard YW t6a as an inverted form for *6b YW: counselling wonderful things. The possibility of such an inversion is apparent from ch. xxii. 2, n&OD roXBTl, i.e. full of tumult. Or, following the analogy of fere ddam (a wild man) in Gen. xvi. 12, we might regard it as a genitive construction: a wonder of a counsellor; in which case the disjunctive telishdh gedoldh in pele would have to be exchanged for a connecting mahpach. Both combinations have their doubtful points, and, so far as the sense is concerned, would lead us rather to expect TO NvSE; whereas there is nothing at all to prevent our taking *6a and y^y as two separate names (not even the accentuation, which is without parallel elsewhere, so far as the combination of pashta with telishah is concerned, and therefore altogether unique). Just as the angel of Jehovah, when asked by Manoah what was his name (Judg. xiii. 18), replied *pa (W3), and indicated thereby his divine nature — a nature incomprehensible to mortal men; so here the God-given ruler is also peti, a phenomenon lying altogether beyond human conception or natural occurrence. Not only is this or that wonderful in Him; but He Himself is throughout a wonder — TrapaSo^acr/jLos, as Symmachus renders it. The second name is i/oetz, counsellor, because, by virtue of the spirit of counsel which He possesses (ch. xi. 2), He can always discern and give counsel for the good of His nation. There is no need for Him to surround Himself with counsellors; but without receiving counsel at all, He counsels those that are without counsel, and is thus the end of all want of counsel to His nation as a whole. The third name, El gibbor, attributes divinity to Him. Not, indeed, if we render the words " Strength, Hero," as Luther does; or " Hero of Strength," as Meier has done; or " a God of a hero," as Hof mann proposes; or " Hero-God," i.e. one who fights and conquers like an invincible god, as Ewald does. But all these renderings, and others of a similar kind, founder, without needing any further refutation, on ch. x. 21, where He, to whom the remnant of Israel will turn with penitence, is called El gibbor (the mighty God). There is no reason why we should take El in this name of the Messiah in any other sense than in Immanu-El; not to mention the fact that El in Isaiah is always a name of God, and that the prophet was ever strongly conscious of the antithesis between El and dddm, as ch. xxxi. 3 (cf. Hos. xi. 9) clearly shows. And finally, El gibbor was a traditional name of God, which occurs as early as Deut. x. 17, cf. Jer. xxxii. 18, Neh. ix. 32, Ps. xxiv. 8, etc. The name qibbor is used here as an adjective, like iKaddcd in A7 shaddai. The Messiah, then, is here designated u mighty God.'1 Undoubtedly this appears to go beyond the limits of the Old Testament horizon; but what if it should go beyond them? It stands written once for all, just as in Jer, xxiii. 6 Jehovah Zidkenu (Jehovah our Righteousness) ia also used as a name of the Messiah, — a Messianic name, which even the synagogue cannot set aside (vid, Midrash Mishle 57a, where this is adduced as one of the eight names of the Messiah). Still we must not go too far. If we look at the spirit of the prophecy, the mystery of the incarnation of God is unquestionably indicated in such statements as these. But if we look at the consciousness of the prophet himself, nothing further was involved than this, that the Messiah would be the image of God as no other man ever had been (cf. Ely Ps. lxxxii. 1), and that He/ would have God dwelling within Him (cf. Jer. xxxiii. 16). Who else should lead Israel to victory over the hostile world, than God the mighty? The Messiah is the corporeal presence of this mighty God; for He is with Him, He is in Him, and in Him He is with Israel. The expression did not preclude the fact that the Messiah would be God and man in one person; but it did not penetrate to this depth, so far as the Old Testament consciousness was concerned. The fourth name springs out of the third: ^""^j eternal Father (not Booty Father, with which Hitzig and Knobel content themselves); for what is divine must be eternal. The title Eternal Father designates Him, however, not only as the possessor of eternity (Hengstenberg), but as the tender, faithful, and wise trainer, guardian, and provider for His people even in eternity (ch. xxii. 21). He is eternal Father, as the eternal, loving King, according to the description in Ps. lxxii. Now, if He is mighty God, and uses His divine might in eternity for the good of His people, He is also, as the fifth name affirms, sar-shdlom, a Prince who removes all peace-disturbing powers, and secures peace among the nations (Zech. ix. 10), — who is, as it were, the embodiment of peace come down into the world of nations (Mic. v. 4). To exalt the government of David into an eternal rule of peace, is the end for which He is born; and moreover He proves Himself to be what He is not only called, but actually is. Ver. 7. " To the increase of government and to peace without end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to strengthen it, and to support it through judgment and righteousness from henceforth even for ever. The jealousy of Jehovah of hosts will fulfil this" n?"!?? (written with Mem clausum in the middle of the one word, and, according to Elias Levita, properly to be read nsn D/, its magnijicando, in accordance with this way of writing the word 2) is not a participle here, but a substantive after the forms »~ifcO»7 nfero, and that not from H2nn but from »"m an infinitive noun expressing, according to its formation, the practical result of an action, rather than the abstract idea.2 Ever extending dominion and endless peace will be brought in by the sublime and lofty King's Son, when He sits upon the throne of David and rules over David's kingdom. He is a semper Augustus, i.e. a perpetual increaser of the kingdom; not by war, however, but with the spiritual weapons of peace. And within He gives to the kingdom "judgment" (mishpdt) and "righteousness" {zedahdli), as the foundations and pillars of its durability: mishpdt, judgment or right, which He pronounces and ordains; and righteousness, which He not only exercises Himself, but transfers to the members of His kingdom. This new epoch of Davidic sovereignty was still only a matter of faith and hope. But the zeal of Jehovah was the guarantee of its realization. The accentuation is likely to mislead here, inasmuch as it makes it appear as though the words " from henceforth even for ever" (meattdh vad roldm) belonged to the closing sentence, whereas the eternal perspective which they open applies directly to the reign of the great Son of David, and only
1 When Bar-Kappara says (b. Sanliedrin 94a) that God designed to make Hezekiah the Messiah and Sennacherib Gog and Magog, but that Hezekiah was not found worthy of this, and therefore the Mem of VmarheJi was closed, there is so far some sense in this, that the Messianic hopes really could centre for a certain time in Hezekiah; whereas the assertion of a certain Hillel (ib. 986), that Hezekiah was actually the Messiah of Israel, and no other was to be expected, is nothing but the perverted fancy of an empty brain. For an instance of the opposite, see Neh. ii. 13, CTfllB DH, on which passage the Midrash observes, " The broken walls of Jerusalem will be closed in the day of salvation, and the government which has been closed up to the time of the King Messiah will be opened then."
2 We have already observed at p. 156, that this substantive formation had not a purely abstract meaning even at the first. Furst has given the correct explanation in his Lchrr/ehiiude rler Aram. Idiome, § 130.
indirectly to the work of the divine jealousy. "Zeal" or jwhusy, kin'dhj lit. glowing fire, from *0|J, Arab, kanaa, to be deep red (Deut. iv. 24), is one of the deepest of the Old Testament ideas, and one of the most fruitful in relation to the work of reconciliation. It is two-sided. The fire of love has for its obverse the fire of wrath. For jealousy contends for the object of its love against everything that touches either the object or the love itself.1 Jehovah loves His nation. That He should leave it in the hands of such bad Davidic kings as Ahaz, and give it up to the imperial power of the world, would be altogether irreconcilable with this love, if continued long. But His love flares up, consumes all that is adverse, and gives to His people the true King, in whom that which was only foreshadowed in David and Solomon reaches its highest antitypical fulfilment. With the very same words, " the zeal of Jehovah of hosts," etc., Isaiah seals the promise in ch. xxxvii. 32.
The great Tight would not arise till the darkness had reached its deepest point. The gradual increase of this darkness is predicted in this second section of the esoteric addresses. Many difficult questions suggest themselves in connection with this section. 1. Is it directed against the northern kingdom only, or against all Israel? 2. What was the historical standpoint of the prophet himself? The majority of commentators reply
1 Cf. Weber, On the Wrath of God (p. xxxv.). It is evident that by khi'a.h, £»j?voj, we are to understand the energy of love following up its violated claims upon the creature, from the comparison so common in the Scriptures between the love of God to His church and connubial affection. It is the jealousy of absolute love, which seeks to be loved in return, and indeed demands undivided love, and asserts its claim to reciprocity of love wherever this claim is refused. In a word, it is the self-vindication of scornful love. But this idea includes not only jealousy seeking the recovery of what it has lost, but also jealousy that consumes what cannot be saved (Nahum i. 2; Heb. x. 27); and the Scriptures therefore deduce the wrath, by which the love resisted affirms itself, and the wrath which meets those who have resisted love in the form of absolute hostility, — in other words, the jealousy of love as well as the jealousy of hatred,— not from love and holiness as two entirely distinct sources, but from the single source of absolute holy love, which, just because it is absolute and holy, repels and excludes whatever will not suffer itself to be embraced (Josh. xxiv. 19).
that the prophet is only prophesying against Ephraim here, and that Syria and Ephraim have already been chastised by Tiglathpileser. The former is incorrect. The prophet does indeed commence with Ephraim, but he does not stop there. The fates of both kingdoms flow into one another here, as well as in ch. viii. 5 sqq., just as they were causally connected in actual fact. And it cannot be maintained, that when the prophet uttered his predictions Ephraim had already felt the scourging of Tiglathpileser. The prophet takes his stand at a time when judgment after judgment had fallen upon all Israel without improving it. And one of these past judgments was the scourging of Ephraim by Tiglath-pileser. How much or how little of the events which the prophet looks back upon from this ideal standpoint had already taken place, it is impossible to determine; but this is a matter of indifference so far as the prophecy is concerned. The prophet, from his ideal standing-place, had not only this or that behind him, but all that is expressed in this section by perfects and aorists (Ges. § 129, 2, b). And we already know from ch. ii. 9, v. 25, that he used the future conversive as the preterite of the ideal past. We therefore translate the whole in the present tense. In outward arrangement there is no section of Isaiah so symmetrical as this. In ch. v. we found one partial approach to the strophe in similarity of commencement, and another in ch. ii. in similarity of conclusion. But here ch. v. 25b is adapted as the refrain of four symmetrical strophes. We will take each strophe by itself. Strophe 1. Vers. 8-12. "The Lord sends out a word against Jacob, and it descends into Israel, And all the people must make atonement, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, saying in pride and haughtiness of heart, ( Bricks are fallen down, and we build with square stones; sycamores are hewn down, and toe put cedars in their place! Jehovah raises Rezins oppressors high above him, and pricks up his enemies: Aram from the east, and Philistines from the west; they devour Israel with full mouth. For all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still" The word (ddbdr) is both in nature and history the messenger of the Lord: it runs quickly through the earth (Ps. cxlvii. 15, 18), and when sent by the Lord, comes to men to destroy or to heal (Ps. cvii. 20), and never returns to its sender void (ch. lv. 10, 11). Thus does the Lord now send a word against Jacob {Jacob, as in ch. ii. 5); and this heavenly messenger descends into Israel {ndphal, as in Dan. iv. 28, and like the Arabic nazala, which is the word usually employed to denote the communication of divine revelation), taking shelter, as it were, in the soul of the prophet. Its immediate commission is directed against Ephraim, which has been so little humbled by the calamities that have fallen upon it since the time of Jehu, that the people are boasting that they will replace bricks and sycamores (or sycamines, from shikmin), that wide-spread tree (1 Kings x. 27), with works of art and cedars. 11 We put in their place:" nachaliph is not used here as in Job xiv. 7, where it signifies to sprout again {nova germina emittere), but as in ch. xl. 31, xli. 1, where it is construed with nb (strength), and signifies to renew {novas vires assumere). In this instance, when the object is one external to the subject, the meaning is to substitute {substituere), like the Arabic achlafa, to restore. The poorest style of building in the land is contrasted with the best; for " the sycamore is a tree which only flourishes in the plain, and there the most wretched houses are still built of bricks dried in the sun, and of knotty beams of sycamore." l These might have been destroyed by the war, but more durable and stately buildings would rise up in their place. Ephraim, however, would be made to feel this defiance of the judgments of God (to " know," as in Hos. ix. 7, Ezek. xxv. 14). Jehovah would give the adversaries of Rezin authority over Ephraim, and instigate his foes: sicsec, as in ch. xix. 2, from sdcac, in its primary sense of " prick," figere, which has nothing to do with the meanings to plait and cover, but from which we have the wTords?\W} t\Q, a thorn, nail, or plug, and which is probably related to njK>, to view, lit. to fix; hence pilpel, to prick up, incite, which is the rendering adopted by the Targum here and in ch. xix. 2, and by the LXX. at ch. xix. 2. There is no necessity to quote the talmudic sicsec, to kindle (by friction), which is never met with in the metaphorical sense of exciting. It would be even better to take our sicsec as an intensive form of sdcac, used in the same sense as the Arabic, viz. to provide one's self with weapons, to arm; but this is probably a denominative from deca, signifying offensive armour, with the idea of pricking and spearing, — a radical notion, from 1 Rosen, Topograplnsches aus Jerusalem. VOL. I. B which it would be easy to get at the satisfactory meaning, to spur on or instigate. " The oppressors of Rezin" (tzdre Retzln, a simple play upon the words, like hoi goi in ch. i. 4, and many others in Isaiah) are the Assyrians, whose help had been sought by Ahaz against Rezin; though perhaps not these exclusively, but possibly also the Trachonites, for example, against whom the mountain fortress Rezin appears to have been erected, to protect the rich lands of eastern Hauran. In ver. 12 the range of vision stretches over all Israel. It cannot be otherwise, for the northern kingdom never suffered anything from the Philistines; whereas an invasion of Judah by the Philistines was really one of the judgments belonging to the time of Ahaz (2 Chron. xxviii. 16-19). Consequently by Israel here we are to understand all Israel, the two halves of which would become a rich prize to the enemy. Ephraim would be swallowed up by Aram, — namely, by those who had been subjugated by Asshur, and were now tributary to it, — and Judah would be swallowed up by the Philistines. But this strait would be very far from being the end of the punishments of God. Because Israel would not turn, the wrath of God would not turn away.
Strophe 2. Vers. 13-17. " But the people turneth not unto Him that smiteth it, and they seek not Jehovah of hosts. Therefore Jehovah rooteth out of Israel head and tail, palm-branch and rush, in one day. Elders and highly distinguished men, this is the head; and prophets, lying teachers, this is the tail. The leaders of this people have become leaders astray, and their followers swallowed up. Therefore the Lord will not rejoice in their young men, and will have no compassion on their orphans and widows: for all together are profligate and evil-doers, and every mouth speaketh blasphemy. With all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still." As the first stage of the judgments has been followed by no true conversion to Jehovah the almighty judge, there comes a second. *W 3*8? (to turn unto) denotes a thorough conversion, not stopping half-way. " The smiter of it" (hammaccehu), or " he who smiteth it," is Jehovah (compare, on the other hand, ch. x. 20, where Asshur is intended). The article and suffix are used together, as in ch. xxiv. 2, Prov. xvi. 4 (via1. Ges. § 110, 2; Caspari, Arab. Gram. § 472). But there was coming now a great day of punishment (in the view of the prophet, it was already past), such as Israel experienced more than once in the Assyrian oppressions, and Judah in the Chaldean, when bead and tail, or, according to another proverbial expression, palm-branch and rush, would be rooted out. We might suppose that the persons referred to were the high and low; but ver. 15 makes a different application of the first double figure, by giving it a different turn from its popular sense (compare the Arabic er-ru 'us w-aledlindb = lofty and low, in Dietrich Abhandlwig, p. 209). The opinion which has very widelv prevailed since the time of Koppe, that this verse is a gloss, is no doubt a very natural one (see Hitzig, Begriff der Kritik; Ewald, Pi'opheten, i. 57). But Isaiah's custom of supplying his own gloss is opposed to such a view; also Isaiah's composition in ch. iii. 3 and xxx. 20, and the relation in which this verse stands to ver. 16; and lastly, the singular character of the gloss itself, which is one of the strongest proofs that it contains the prophet's exposition of his own words. The chiefs of the nation were the head of the national body; and behind, like a wagging dog's tail, sat the false prophets with their flatteries of the people, loving, as Persius says, blando caudam jactare popello. The prophet drops the figure of cippah, the palmbranch which forms the crown of the palm, and which derives its name from the fact that it resembles the palm of the hand (instar palmce maims), and agmon, the rush which grows in the marsh.1 The allusion here is to the rulers of the nation and the dregs of the people. The basest extremity were the demagogues in the shape of prophets. For it had come to
1 The noun agam is used in the Old Testament as well as in the Talmud to signify both a marshy place (see Baba mesi'a 36&, and more especially Aboda zara 38a, where giloi agmah signifies the laying bare of the marshy soil by the burning up of the reeds), arid also the marsh grass (Sabbath 11a, " if all the agmim were kalams, i.e. writing reeds, or pens;" and Kiddusin 62&, where agam signifies a stalk of marsh-grass or reed, a rush or bulrush, and is explained, with a reference to Isa. lviii. 5, as signifying a tender, weak stalk). The noun agmon, on the other hand, signifies only the stalk of the marsh-grass, or the marsh-grass itself; and in this sense it is not found in the Talmud (see Job, ii. 374). The verbal meaning upon which these names are founded is evident from the Arabic ma agim (magum), " bad water" (see at ch. xix. 10). There is no connection between this and maugil, literally a depression of the soil, in which water lodges for a long time, and which is only dried up in summer weather.
this, as ver. 16 affirms, that those who promised to lead by a straight road led astray, and those who suffered themselves to be led by them were as good as already swallowed up by hell (cf. ch. v. 14, hi, 12). Therefore the Sovereign Ruler would not rejoice over the young men of this nation; that is to say, He would suffer them to be smitten by their enemies, without going with them to battle, and would refuse His customary compassion even towards widows and orphans, for they were all thoroughly corrupt on every side. The alienation, obliquity, and dishonesty of their heart, are indicated by the word chdneph (from chdnaph, which has in itself the indifferent radical idea of inclination; so that in Arabic, chanif, as a synonym of 'ddil,1 has the very opposite meaning of decision in favour of what is right); the badness of their actions by i™ (in half pause for JTO 2 = jn.9> maleficus); the vicious infatuation of their words by nebdldh. This they are, and this they continue; and consequently the wrathful hand of God is stretched out over them for the infliction of fresh strokes.
Strophe 3. Vers. 18-21. a For the wickedness burnetii up like fire: it devours thorns and thistles, and burns in the thickets of the wood; and they smoke upwards in a lofty volume of smoke. Through ilie wrath of Jehovah of hosts the land is turned into coal, and the nation has become like the food of fire: not one spares his brother. They hew on the right, and are hungry; and devour on the left, and are not satisfied: they devour the flesh of their own arm: Manasseli, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: these together over Judah. With all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still" The standpoint of the prophet is at the extreme end of the course of judgment, and from that he looks back. Consequently this link of the chain is also past in his view, and hence the future conversives. The curse, which the apostasy of Israel carries within itself, now breaks fully out. Wickedness, i.e. the constant thirst of evil, is a fire which a man kindles in himself. And when the grace
1 This is the way in which it should be written in Job, i. 216; 'adala has also the indifferent meaning of return or decision.
2 Nevertheless this reading is also met with, and according to Masora jinalis, p. 52, col. 8, this is the correct reading (as in Prov. xvii. 4, where it is doubtful whether the meaning is a friend or a malevolent person). The question is not an unimportant one, as we may see from Olshausen, § 258, p. 581.
of God, which damps and restrains this fire, is all over, it is sore to bnrst forth: the wickedness bursts forth like fire (the verb is used here, as in ch. xxx. 27, with reference to the wrath of God). And this is the case with the wickedness of Israel, which now consumes first of all thorns and thistles, i.e. individual sinners who arc the most ripe for judgment, upon whom the judgment commences, and then the thicket of the wood (sib-che,1 as in ch. x. 34, from sebac, Gen. xxii. 13 = sober), that is to say, the great mass of the people, which is woven together by bands of iniquity (yattizzath is not a reflective niphal, as in 2 Kings xxii. 13, but kal, to kindle into anything, i.e. to set it on fire). The contrast intended in the two figures is consequently not the high and low (Ewald), nor the useless and useful (Drechsler), but individuals and the whole (Vitringa). The fire, into which the wickedness bursts out, seizes individuals first of all; and then, like a forest fire, it seizes upon the nation at large in all its ranks and members, who " whirl up (roll up) ascending of smoke" i.e. who roll up in the form of ascending smoke (MtJtabbek, a synonym of hithhappek, Judg. vii. 13, to curl or roll). This fire of wickedness was no other than the wrath (ebrcih) of God: it is God's own wrath, for all sin carries this within itself as its own self-punishment. By this fire of wrath the soil of the land is gradually but thoroughly burnt out, and the people of the land utterly consumed: Dny air. \ey. to be red-hot (LXX. (TwyKeKavTcUy also the Targum), and to be dark or black (Arabic 'atame, late at night), for what is burnt out becomes black. Fire and darkness are therefore correlative terms throughout the whole of the Scriptures. So far do the figures extend, in which the prophet presents the inmost essence of this stage of judgment. In its historical manifestation it consisted in the most inhuman self-destruction during an anarchical civil war. Destitute of any tender emotions, they devoured one another without being satisfied: gdzar, to cut, to hew (hence the Arabic for a butcher): zero'o, 7ds arm, according to Jer. xix. 9, euphonic effect of securing a distinct enunciation to the sibilant letter (in other instances to the guttural, vid. 'arboth, Num. xxxi. 12), in cases where *he second syllable of the word commences with a guttural or labial letter, or with an aspirate.
equivalent to the member of his own family and tribe, who was figuratively called his arm (Arabic 'adud: see Ges. Thes. p. 433), as being the natural protector and support. This interminable self-immolation, and the regicide associated with the jealousy of the different tribes, shook the northern kingdom again and again to its utter destruction. And the readiness with which the unbrotherly feelings of the northern tribes towards one another could turn into combined hostility towards Judah, was evident enough from the Syro-Ephraimitish war, the consequences of which had not passed away at the time when these prophecies were uttered. This hostility on the part of the brother kingdoms would still further, increase. And the end of the judgments of wrath had not come yet.
Strophe 4. Ch. x. 1-4. " Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers who prepare trouble; to force away the needy from demanding justice, and to rob the suffering of my people of their rightful claims, that tcidoivs may become their prey, and they plunder orphans! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the storm that cometh from afar? To whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye deposit your glory f There is nothing left but to bow down under prisoners, and they fall under the slain. With all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still." This last strophe is directed against the unjust authorities and judges. The woe pronounced upon them is, as we have already frequently seen, Isaiah's ceterum censeo. Chdkak is their decisive decree (not, however, in a denominative sense, but in the primary sense of hewing in, recording in official documents, ch. xxx. 8, Job xix. 23); and citteb (piel only occurring here, and a perfect, according to Gesenius, § 126, 3) their official signing and writing. Their decrees are chikeke 'aven (an open plural, as in Judg. v. 15, for chukke, after the analogy of v?J, ^^V, with an absolute chdkdkim underlying it: Ewald, § 186-7), inasmuch as their contents were worthlessness, i.e. the direct opposite of morality; and what they wrote out was 'dmdl, trouble, i.e. an unjust oppression of the people (compare 7roVo? and Trovnpos)} Poor persons who wanted to commence legal pro- dings were not even allowed to do so, and possessions to which widows and orphans had a well-founded claim were a welcome booty to them (for the diversion into the finite verb, see ch. v. - I. viii. 11, xlix. 5, lviii. 5). For all this they could not escape the judgment of God. This is announced to them in ver. 3, in the form of three distinct questions (commencing with umdh, quid igitur). The noun pekuddaJi in the first question always signifies simply a visitation of punishment; sho 'ah is a confused, dull, desolate rumbling, hence confusion (turba), desolation: here it is described as " coming from afar," because a distant nation (Asshur) was the instrument of God's wrath. Second question: " Upon whom will ye throw yourselves in your search for help then " (nfis 'al, a constr. prccgnans, only met with here)? Third question: " Where, i.e. in whose hand, will ye deposit your wealth in money and possessions " {cdbod, what is weighty in value and imposing in appearance); rdzab with Vyad (Gen. xxxix. G), or with Lamed (Job xxxix. 14), to leave anything with a person as property in trust. No one would relieve them of their wealth, and hold it as a deposit; it was irrecoverably lost. To this negative answer there is appended the following bilti, which, when used as a preposition after a previous negation, signifies prater; when used as a conjunction, nisi {bilti 9im, Judg. vii. 14); and where it governs the whole sentence, as in this case, nisi quod (cf. Num. xi. 6; Dan. xi. 18). In the present instance, where the previous negation is to be supplied in thought, it has the force of nil reliquum est nisi quod (there is nothing left but). The singular verb {card) is used contemptuously, embracing all the high persons as one condensed mass; and tachaih does not mean deque ac or loco (like, or in the place of), as Ewald (§ 217, k) maintains, but is used in the primary and local sense of infra (below). Some crouch down to find room at the feet of the prisoners, who are crowded closely together in the prison; or if wTe suppose the prophet to latter with merclia; iov'dmCil ciltebu is an attributive (an elliptical relative) clause. According to its etymon, 'dmdl seems to stand by the side of ftco'Xos, moles, molestus (see Pott in Kukri's Zeitschrift, ix. 202); but within the Semitic itself it. stands by the side of ^DK to fade, marcescere, which coincides with the Sanscrit root mid and its cognates (see Leo Meyer, Vergleichende Grammatilc, i. 353), so that 'dmdl is, strictly speaking, to wear out or tire out (vulg. to worry).
have a scene of transportation in his mind, they sink down under the feet of the other prisoners, in their inability to bear such hardships, whilst the rest fall in war; and as the slaughter is of long duration, not only become corpses themselves, but are covered with the corpses of the slain (cf. ch. xiv. 19). And even with this the wrath of God is not satisfied. The prophet, however, does not follow out the terrible gradation any further. Moreover, the captivity, to which this fourth strophe points, actually formed the conclusion of a distinct period.
C» Destruction of the imperial kingdom of the world, and rise of the kingdom of Jehovah in His Anointed. — Chap. x. 5.— xii.
The law of contrast prevails in prophecy, as it does also in the history of salvation. When distress is at its height, it is suddenly brought to an end, and changed into relief; and when prophecy has become as black with darkness as in the previous section, it suddenly becomes as bright and cloudless as in that which is opening now. The hoi (woe) pronounced upon Israel becomes a hoi upon Asshur. Proud Asshur, with its confidence in its own strength, after having served for a time as the goad of Jehovah's wrath, now falls a victim to that wrath itself. Its attack upon Jerusalem leads to its own overthrow; and on the rains of the kingdom of the world there rises up the kingdom of the great and righteous Son of David, who rules in peace over His redeemed people, and the nations that rejoice in Him: — the counterpart of the redemption from Egypt, and one as rich in materials for songs of praise as the passage through the Red Sea. The Messianic prophecy, which turns its darker side towards unbelief in ch. vii.,- and whose promising aspect burst like a great light through the darkness in ch. viii. 5-ix. 6, is standing now upon its third and highest stage. In ch. vii. it is like a star in the night; in ch. viii. 5-ix. 6, like the morning dawn; and now the sky is perfectly cloudless, and it appears like the noonday sun. The prophet has nowT penetrated to the light fringe of ch. vi. The name Shear-yashub, having emptied itself of all the curse that it contained, is now transformed into a pure promise. And it becomes perfectly clear what the name Immanuel and the name given to Immanuel, El gibbor (mighty God), declared.
The remnant of Israel turns to God the mighty One; and God the mighty is henceforth with His people in the Sprout of Jesse, who has the seven Spirits of God dwelling within Himself. So far as the date of composition is concerned, the majority of the more recent commentators agree in assigning it to the time of Ilezekiah, because ch. x. 9-11 presupposes the destruction of Samaria by Shalmanassar, which took place in the sixth year of Ilezekiah. But it was only from the prophet's point of view that this event was already past; it had not actually taken place. The prophet had already predicted that Samaria, and with Samaria the kingdom of Israel, would succumb to the Assyrians, and had even fixed the year (ch. vii. 8 and viii. 4, 7). Why, then, should he not be able to presuppose it here as an event already past? The stamp on this section does not tally at all with that of Isaiah's prophecy in the times of Ilezekiah; whereas, on the other hand, it forms so integral a link in the prophetic cycle in ch. vii.-xii., and is interwoven in so many ways with that which precedes, and of which it forms both the continuation and crown, that we have no hesitation in assigning it, with Vitringa, Caspari, and Drechsler, to the first three years of the reign of xVhaz, though without deciding whether it preceded or followed the destruction of the two allies by Tiglath-pileser. It is by no means impossible that it may have preceded it.
The prophet commences with hoi (woe!), which is always used as an expression of wrathful indignation to introduce the proclamation of judgment upon the person named; although, as in the present instance, this may not always follow immediately (cf. ch. i. 4, 5-9), but may be preceded by the announcement of the sin by which the judgment had been provoked. In the first place, Asshur is more particularly indicated as the chosen instrument of divine judgment upon all Israel. — Vers. 5, 6. "Woe to Asshur, the rod of mine anger, and it is a staff in their hand, mine indignation. Against a wicked nation will 1 send them, and against the people of my wrath give them a charge, to spoil spoil, and to prey prey, to make it trodden down like street-mire'9 "Mine indignation:" za'mi is either a permutation of the predicative mil, which is placed emphatically in the foreground (compare the wrmnijl in Jer. xiv. 22, which is also written with makkeph), as we have translated 'it, though without taking b?in as a copula ( = est), as Ewald does; or else D*J3 KSfl is written elliptically for tSVZ »H "\V% " the staff which they hold is mine indignation" (Ges., Rosenmiiller, sfnd others), in which case, however, we should rather expect Ktfl WT DT3 HLDDI. It is quite inadmissible, however, to take zcimi as a separate genitive to matteh, and to point the latter with zere, as Knobel has done; a thing altogether unparalleled in the Hebrew language.1 The futures in ver. 6 are to be taken literally; for what Asshur did to Israel in the sixth year of Hezekiah's reign, and to Judah in his fourteenth year, was still in the future at the time when Isaiah prophesied. Instead of iD^Ti the keri has \GwR} the form in which the infinitive is written in other passages when connected with suffixes (see, on the other hand, 2 Sam. xiv. 7). u Trodden down:" mirmas with short a is the older form, which was retained along with the other form with the a lengthened by the tone (Ewald § 160, c).
Asshur was to be an instrument of divine wrath upon all Israel; but it would exalt itself, and make itself the end instead of the means. Ver. 7. u Nevertheless he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; for it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few." Asshur did not think so (lo-cen), i.e. not as he ought to think, seeing that his power over Israel was determined by Jehovah Himself. For what filled his heart was the endeavour, peculiar to the imperial power, to destroy not a few nations, i.e. as many nations as possible, for the purpose of extending his own dominions, and with the determination to tolerate no other independent nation, and the desire to deal with Judah as with all the rest. For Jehovah was nothing more in his esteem than one of the idols of the nations. Vers. 8-11. a For he saith, Are not my generals all kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish, or Hamath as Arpad, or Samaria as Damascus f As my hand hath reached the kingdoms of the idols, and their graven images were more than those of Jerusalem and Samaria; shall I not, as 1 have done unto Samaria and her idols, do likewise to Jerusalem and her idols V The king of Asshur bore the title of the great king (ch. xxxvi. 4), and indeed, as we may infer from Ezek. xxvi. 7, that of the king of kings. The generals in his army he could call kings,1 because the satraps2 who led their several contingents were equal to kings in the extent and splendour of their government, and some of them were really conquered kings (cf. 2 Kings xxv. 28). He proudly asks whether every one of the cities named has not been as incapable as the rest, of offering a successful resistance to him. Carcliemish is the later Circesium (Cercusium), at the junction of the Chaboras with the Euphrates (see above); Galno, the later Ctesiphon, on the left bank of the Tigris; Arpad (according to Merdshid, i. p. 47, in the pashalic of Chaleb, i.e. Aleppo) and Hamuth {i.e. Epiphania) were Syrian cities, the latter on the river Orontes, still a large and wealthy place. The king of Asshur had also already conquered Samaria, at the time when the prophet introduced him as uttering these words. Jerusalem, therefore, would be unable to resist him. As he had obtained possession of idolatrous kingdoms (? KVD, to reach, as in Ps. xxi. 9; hd-elil with the article indicating the genus), which had more idols than Jerusalem or than Samaria; so would he also overcome Jerusalem, which had just as few and just as powerless idols as Samaria had. Observe here that ver. 11 is the apodosis to ver. 10, and that the comparative clause of ver. 10 is repeated in ver. 11, for the purpose of instituting a comparison, more especially with Samaria and Jerusalem. The king of Asshur calls the gods of the nations by the simple name of idols, though the prophet does not therefore make him speak from his own Israelitish standpoint. On the contrary, the great sin of the king of Asshur consisted in the manner in which he spoke. For since he recognised no other gods than his own Assyrian national deities, he placed Jehovah among the idols of the nations, and, what ought particularly to be observed, with the other idols, whose worship had been introduced into Samaria and Jerusalem. But in this very fact there was so far consolation for the worshippers of Jehovah,
1 The question is expressed in Hebrew phraseology, since sar in Assyrian was a superior title to' that of melek, as we may see from inscriptions and proper names.
2 Satrapes is the old Persian (arrow-headed) klishatra (Sanscr. xatra) pdvan, i.e. keeper of government. Pdvan (nom. pdvd), which occurs in the Zendik as an independent word pavan (nom. pavao) in the sense of sentry or watehman, is probably the original of the Hebrew pechdh (see Spiegel, in Kohler on Mai. i. 8).
that such blasphemy of the one living God could not remain unavenged; whilst for the worshippers of idols it contained a painful lesson, since their gods really deserved nothing better than that contempt should be heaped upon them. The prophet has now described the sin of Asshur. It was ambitious selfexaltation above Jehovah, amounting even to blasphemy. And yet he was only the staff of Jehovah, who could make use of him as He would.
And when He had made use of him as He would, He would throw him away. Ver. 12. " And it ivill come to pass, when, the Lord shall have brought to an end all His work upon Mount Zion and upon Jerusalem, I will come to punish over the fruit of the pride of heart of the king of Asshur, and over the haughty look of his eyes" The "fruit" (peri) of the heart's pride of Asshur is his vainglorious blasphemy of Jehovah, in which his whole nature is comprehended, as the inward nature of the tree is in the fruit which hangs above, in the midst of the branches: tipJiereth, as in Zech. xii. 7, the self-glorification which expresses itself in the lofty look of the eyes. Several constructives are here intentionally grouped together (Ges. § 114, 1), to express the great swelling of Asshur even to bursting. But Jehovah, before whom humility is the soul of all virtue, would visit this pride with punishment, when He should have completely cut off His work, i.e. when He should have thoroughly completed (bizza?, absolvere) His punitive work upon Jerusalem {ma'aseh, as in ch. xxviii. 21). The prep. Beth is used in the same sense as in Jer. xviii. 23, agere cum aliquo. It is evident that mdaseh is not used to indicate the work of punishment and grace together, so that yebazza could be taken as a literal future (as Schroring and Ewald suppose), but that it denotes the work of punishment especially; and consequently yebazza is to be taken as a futurum exactuni (cf. ch. iv. 4), as we may clearly see from the choice of this word in Lam. ii. 17 (cf. Zech. iv. 9).
When Jehovah had punished to such an extent that He could not go any further without destroying Israel, — a result which would be opposed to His mercy and truth, — His punishing would turn against the instrument of punishment, which would fall under the curse of all ungodly selfishness. Vers. 13, 14. a For he hath said, By the strength of my hand I have done and by my own wisdom; for I am prudent: and I removed the bound* of the nations, and 1 plundered their stores, and threw down rulers1 like a bull And my hand extracted the wealth of the nations like a neet: and as men.sweep up forsaken eggs, have I txoept the whole earth; there teas none that moved the wing, and opened the mouth, and chirped? The futures may be taken most safely as regulated by the preterites, and used, like German imperfects, to express that which occurs not once merely, but several times. The second of these preterites, Wfcfltf, is the only example of a poel of verbs rrt; possibly a mixed form from DpW (poel of DDK?) and T)BV (piel of flDB>). The object to this, viz. 'athidoth (chethib) or 'athudoth (keri), is sometimes used in the sense of ra /jLeXXovra; sometimes, as in this instance, in the sense of tcl vTrup-^ovra. According to the keri, the passage is to be rendered, " And I, a mighty one, threw down kings " (those sitting on thrones), cabbir being taken in the same sense as in Job xxxiv. 17, 24, xxxvi. 5. But the chethib cd'abbir is to be preferred as more significant, and not to be rendered " as ii hero" (to which the Caph similitudinis is so little suitable, that it would be necessary to take it, as in ch. xiii. 6, as Caph veritatis), but " as a bull," 'abblr as in Ps. lxviii. 31, xxii. 13, 1. 13. A bull, as the excavations show, was an emblem of royalty among the Assyrians. In ver. 14, the more stringent Vav conv. is introduced before the third pers. fern. The kingdoms of the nations are compared here to birds' nests, which the Assyrian took for himself ('dsaph, as in Hab. ii. 5); and their possessions to single eggs. The mother bird was away, so that there was not even a sign of resistance; and in the nest itself not one of the young birds moved a wing to defend itself, or opened its beak to scare the intruder away. Seb. Schmid has interpreted it correctly, " nulla alam movet ad defendendum aut os aperit ad terrendum." Thus proudly did Asshur look back upon its course of victory, and thus contemptuously did it look down upon the conquered kingdoms.
This self-exaltation was a foolish sin. Ver. 15. "Dare the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith, or the saw magnify itself against him that useth it? As if a staff were to swing those that lift it up, as if a stick should lift up, not-wood!" "Not-wood" is to be taken as one word, as in ch. xxxi. 8. A 1 Thronende, lit. those who sat (on thrones).
stick is wood, and nothing more; in itself it is an absolutely motionless thing. A man is u not-wood" an incomparably higher, living being. As there must be " not-wood " to lay hold of wood, so, wherever a man performs extraordinary deeds, there is always a superhuman cause behind, viz. God Himself, who bears the same relation to the man as the man to the wood. The boasting of the Assyrian was like the bragging of an instrument, such as an axe, a saw, or a stick, against the person using it. The verb heniph is applied both to saw and stick, indicating the oscillating movements of a measured and more or less obvious character. The plural, " those that lift it up," points to the fact that by Him who lifts up the stick, Jehovah, the cause of all causes, and power of all powers, is intended.
There follows in the next verse the punishment provoked by such self-deification (cf. Hab. i. 11). Ver. 16. u Therefore will the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send consumption against his fat men; and under Asshiws glory there burns a brand like a firebrand" Three epithets are here employed to designate God according to His unlimited, all-controlling omnipotence: viz. hd'ddon, which is always used by Isaiah in connection with judicial and penal manifestations of power; and adondi zebdoth, a combination never met with again, similar to the one used in the Elohistic Psalms, Elchim zebaoih (compare, on the other hand, ch. hi. 15, x. 23, 24). Even here a large number of codices and editions (Norzi's, for example) have the reading Jehovah Zebaoth, which is customary in other cases.1 Raton (ch. xvii. 4) is one of the diseases mentioned in the catalogue of curses in Lev. xxvi. 16 and Deut. xxviii. 22. Galloping consumption comes like a destroying angel upon the great masses of flesh seen in the well-fed Assyrian magnates: mishmannim is used in a personal sense, as in Ps. lxxviii. 31. And under the glory of Asshur, i.e. its richly equipped army (cdbod as in ch. viii. 7), He who makes His angels flames of fire places fire so as to cause it to pass away in flames. In accordance with Isaiah's masterly art of painting in tones, the whole passage is so expressed, that we can hear the crackling, and spluttering,
1 This passage is not included in the 134 vaddd'tn (i.e. " real") adonai, or passages in which adonai is written, and not merely to be read, that arc enumerated by the Masora (see Bar's Psalterium, p. 133).
and hissing of the fire, as it seizes upon everything within its reach. This fire, whatever it may be so far as its natural and phenomenal character is concerned, is in its true essence the wrath of Jehovah. — Ver. 17. u And the light of Israel becomes a fire, and J lis Holy One aflame; and it sets on fire and devours its thistles and thorns on one day." God is fire (Deut. ix. 3), and light (1 John i. 5); and in His own self-life the former is resolved into the latter. Kddosh (holy) is here parallel to 'or (light); for the fact that God is holy, and the fact that He is pure light, are essentially one and the same thing, whether feddash meant originally to be pure or to be separate. The nature of all creatures, and of the whole cosmos, is a mixture of light and darkness. The nature of God alone is absolute light. But light is love. In this holy light of love He has given Himself up to Israel, and taken Israel to Himself. But He has also within Him a basis of fire, which sin excites against itself, and which was about to burst forth as a flaming fire of wrath against Asshur, on account of its sins against Him and His people. Before this fire of wrath, this destructive might of His penal righteousness, the splendid forces of Asshur were nothing but a mass of thistles and a bed of thorns (written here in the reverse order peculiar to Isaiah, shdmlr vdshaith), equally inflammable, and equally deserving to be burned. To all appearance, it was a forest and a park, but it was irrecoverably lost. — Vers. 18, 19. u And the glory of his forest and his garden-ground ivill He destroy, even to soul and flesh, so that it is as when a sick man dieth. And the remnant of the trees of his forest can be numbered, and a boy could write them." The army of Asshur, composed as it was ©f many and various nations, was a forest (ydar); and, boasting as it did of the beauty of both men and armour, a garden ground (carmel), a human forest and park. Hence the idea of "utterly" is expressed in the proverbial " even to soul and flesh," which furnishes the occasion for a leap to the figure of the wasting away of a Dpb {hap. leg. the consumptive man, from ndsas, related to nush, 'dnash, Syr. nsiso, nshisho, a sick man, based upon the radical notion of melting away, cf. mdsas, or of reeling to and fro, cf. mid, nut, Arab, ndsa, ndta). Only a single vital spark would still glimmer in the gigantic and splendid colossus, and with this its life would threaten to become entirely extinct. Or, what is the same thing, only a few trees of the forest, such as could be easily numbered (mispdr as in Deut. xxxiii. 6, cf. Isa. xxi. 17), would still remain, yea, so few, that a boy would be able to count and enter them. And this really came to pass. Only a small remnant of the army that marched against Jerusalem ever escaped. With this small remnant of an all-destroying power the prophet now contrasts the remnant of Israel, which is the seed of a new power that is about to arise. — Yer. 20. 66 And it icill come to pass in that day, the remnant of Israel, and that which has escaped of the house of Jacob, will not continue to stay itself upon its cliastiser, and will stay itself upon Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, in truths Behind the judgment upon Asshur there lies the restoration of Israel. " The chastiser" was the Assyrian. While relying upon this, Israel received strokes, because Jehovah made Israel's staff into its rod. But henceforth it would sanctify the Holy One of Israel, putting its trust in Him and not in man, and that purely and truly (beemeth, "in truth"), not with fickleness and hypocrisy. Then would be fulfilled the promise contained in the name Shear-yashub, after the fulfilment of the threat that it contained.— Ver. 21. "The remnant will turn, the remnant of Jacob, to God the mighty" El gibbor is God as historically manifested in the heir of David (ch. ix. 6). Whilst Hosea (iii. 5) places side by side Jehovah and the second David, Isaiah sees them as one. In New Testament phraseology, it would be " to God in Christ.',
To Him the remnant of Israel would turn, but only the remnant. Vers. 22, 23. " For if thy people were even as the sea-sand, the remnant thereof will turn: destruction is firmly determined, flowing away righteousness. For the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, completes the finishing stroke and that which is firmly determined, within the whole land" As the words are not preceded by any negative clause, ci Hm are not combined in the sense of sed or nisi; but they belong to two sentences, and signify nam si (for if). If the number of the Israelites were the highest that had been promised, only the remnant among them, or of them (bo partitive, like the French en), would turn, or, as the nearer definition ad Deum is wanting here, come back to their right position. With regard to the great mass, destruction was irrevocably determined (ruchatz, rifxpecv, then to resolve upon anything, aTToroMO)?, 1 Kings xx. 40); and this destruction - overflowed with righteousness," or rather " flowed on {shoteph, in oh. xxviii. 18) righteousness," i.e. brought forth righteousness as it Mowed onwards, so that it was like a swell of the penal righteousness of God {shdtaph, with the accusative according to Ges. § 138, Anin. 2). That cilldyon is not used here in the sense of completion any more than in Deut. xxviii. 65, is evident from ver. 23, where cdldh (fem. of cdleh, that which vanishes, then the act of vanishing, the end) is used interchangeably with it, and necherdtzdh indicates judgment as a thing irrevocably decided (as in ch. xxviii. 22, and borrowed from these passages in Dan. ix. 27, xi. 36). Such a judgment of extermination the almighty Judge had determined to carry fully out (oseh in the sense of a.fid. instans) within all the land (Vkereb, within, not Uthok, in the midst of), that is to say, one that would embrace the whole land and all the people, and would destroy, if not every individual without exception, at any rate the great mass, except a very few.
In these esoteric addresses, however, it is not the prophet's intention to threaten and terrify, but to comfort and encourage. He therefore turns to that portion of the nation which needs and is susceptible of consolation, and draws this conclusion from the element of consolation contained in what has been already predicted, that they may be consoled. — Ver. 24. " Therefore thus saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, My people that dwellest on Zion, he not afraid of Asshur, if it shall smite thee with the rod, and lift its stick against thee, in the manner of Egypt." " Therefore:" lacen never occurs in Hebrew in the sense of attamen (Gesenius and Hitzig), and this is not the meaning here, but propterea. The elevating appeal is founded upon what has just before been threatened in such terrible words, but at the same time contains an element of promise in the midst of the peremptory judgment. The very words in which the people are addressed, " My people that dwelleth on Zion/' are indirectly encouraging. Zion was the site of the gracious presence of God, and of that sovereignty which had been declared imperishable. Those who dwelt there, and were the people of God (the servants of God), not only according to their calling, but also according to their internal character, were also heirs of the promise; and therefore, even if the Egyptian bond- age should be renewed in the Assyrian, they might be assured of this to their consolation, that the redemption of Egypt would also be renewed. u In the manner of Egypt:" Vderek Mitzraim, lit. in the way, i.e. the Egyptians' mode of acting; derek denotes the course of active procedure, and also, as in ver. 26 and Amos iv. 10, the course of passive endurance.
A still further reason is given for the elevating words, with a resumption of the grounds of consolation upon which they were founded. Vers. 25, 26. " For yet a very little the indignation is past} and my wrath turns to destroy them: and Jehovah of hosts moves the whip over it, as He smote Midian at the rock of Oreb; and His staff stretches out over the sea, and He lifts it up in the manner of Egypt? The expression " a very little " (as in ch. xvi. 14, xxix. 17) does not date from the actual present, when the Assyrian oppressions had not yet begun, but from the ideal present, when they were threatening Israel with destruction. The indignation of Jehovah would then suddenly come to an end (cdldh zdam, borrowed in Dan. xi. 36, and to be interpreted in accordance with ch. xxvi. 20); and the wrath of Jehovah would be, or go, ' al-tablithdm. Luzzatto recommends the following emendation of the text, Dfr?3£l vJJ *Bfitt, " and my wrath against the world will cease," tebel being used, as in ch. xiv. 17, with reference to the oikoumenon as enslaved by the imperial power. But the received text gives a better train of thought, if we connect it with ver. 26. We must not be led astray, however, by the preposition *al} and take the wrords as meaning, My wrath (burnetii) over the destruction inflicted by Asshur upon the people of God, or the destruction endured by the latter. It is to the destruction of the Assyrians that the wrath of Jehovah is now directed; *al being used, as it frequently is, to indicate the object upon which the eye is fixed, or to which the intention points (Ps. xxxii. 8, xviii. 42). With this explanation ver. 2ob leads on to ver. 26. The destruction of Asshur is predicted here in two figures drawn from occurrences in the olden time. The almighty Judge would swing the whip over Asshur Corer, agitare, as in 2 Sam. xxiii. 18), and smite it, as Midian was once smitten. The rock of Oreb is the place where the Ephraimites slew the Midianitish king 'Oreb (Judg. vii. 25). His staff would then be over the sea, i.e. would be stretched out, like the wonder-working staff of
Moses, over the sea of affliction, into which the Assyrians had driven [srael (yam, the sea, an emblem borrowed from the type; see Kohler on Zech. x. 11, ef. Ps. Ixvi. 6); and lie would lift it up, commanding the waves of the sea, so that they would swallow Asslmr. " In the manner of Egypt: " Vderek Mitzraim (according to Luzzatto in both instances, " on the way to Egypt," which restricts the Assyrian bondage in a most unhistorical manner to the time of the Egyptian campaign) signifies in ver. 24, as the Egyptians lifted it up; but here, as it was lifted up above the Egyptians. The expression is intentionally conformed to that in ver. 24: because Asshur had lifted up the rod over Israel in the Egyptian manner, Jehovah would lift it up over Asshur in the Egyptian manner also.
The yoke of the imperial power would then burst asunder. Ver. 27. " And it ivill come to pass in that day, its burden will remove from thy shoulder, and its yoke from thy neck; and the yoke will be destroyed from the pressure of the fat.'" We have here two figures: in the first (cessabit onus ejus a cervice tua) Israel is represented as a beast of burden; in the second (et jugum ejus a collo tuo), as a beast of draught. And this second figure is divided again into two fields. For ydsur merely affirms that the yoke, like the burden, will be taken away from Israel; but chubbal, that the yoke itself will snap, from the pressure of his fat strong neck against it. Knobel, who alters the text, objects to this on the ground that the yoke was a cross piece of wood, and not a collar. And no doubt the simple yoke is a cross piece of wood, which is fastened to the forehead of the ox (generally of two oxen yoked together: jumenta = jugmenta, like jugum, from jungere); but the derivation of the name itself, 'ol, from 'dial, points to the connection of the cross piece of wrood with a collar, and here the yoke is expressly described as lying round the neck (and not merely fastened against the forehead). There is no necessity, therefore, to read chebel (chablo), as Knobel proposes; chubbal (Arabic chubbila) indicates here a corrumpi consequent upon a disrumpi. (On p'ne, vid. Job xli. 5; and for the application of the term mippene to energy manifesting itself in its effects, compare Ps. Ixviii. 3 as an example.) Moreover, as Kimchi has observed, in most instances the yoke creates a vround in the fat flesh of the ox by pressure and friction; but here the very opposite occurs, and the fatness of the ox leads to the destruction of the yoke (compare the figure of grafting employed in Rom. xi. 17, to which Paul gives a turn altogether contrary to nature). Salvation, as the double turn in the second figure affirms, comes no less from within (21b) than from without (27a). It is no less a consequence of the world-conquering grace at work in Isaiah, than a miracle wrought for Israel upon their foes.
The* prophet now proceeds to describe how the Assyrian army advances steadily towards Jerusalem, spreading terror on every hand, and how, when planted there like a towering forest. it falls to the ground before the irresistible might of Jehovah. Eichhorn and Hitzig pronounce this prophecy a vaticinium 'post eventum, because of its far too special character; but Knobel regards it as a prophecy, because no Assyrian king ever did take the course described; in other words, as a mere piece of imagination, as Ewald maintains. Now, no doubt the Assyrian army, when it marched against Jerusalem, came from the southwest, namely, from the road to Egypt, and not directly from the north. Sennacherib had conquered Lachish; he then encamped before Libnah, and it was thence that he advanced towards Jerusalem. But the prophet had no intention of giving a fragment out of the history of the war: all that he meant to do was to give a lively representation of the future fact, that after devastating the land of Judah, the Assyrian would attack Jerusalem. There is no necessity whatever to contend, as Drechsler does, against calling the description an ideal one. There is all the difference in the world between idea and imagination. Idea is the essential root of the real, and the reality is its historical form. This form, its essential manifestation, may be either this or that, so far as individual features are concerned, without any violation of its essential character. What the prophet here predicts has, when properly interpreted, been all literally fulfilled. The Assyrian did come from the north with the storm-steps of a conqueror, and the cities named were really exposed to the dangers and terrors of war. And this was what the prophet depicted, looking as he did from a divine eminence, and drawing from the heart of the divine counsels, and then painting the future with colours which were but the broken lights of those counsels as they existed in his own mind.
JEsthetically considered, the description is one of the most magnificent that human poetry has ever produced. Vers.
;;l\ u lie comes upon Ayyath, passes through Migron; in Michmash he leaves his luggage. They go through the pass: lei Geba he our quarters for the night! Ramah trembles; Gibeah of Saul flees. Scream aloud, 0 daughter of Gallim! Only listen, 0 Laysha! Poor Anathoth! Madmenah hurries away; the inliahitants of Gehim rescue. He still halts in Nob today; swings his hand over the mountain of the daughter of Zion, (he hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, lops down the branches witJi terrific force; and those of towering growth are hewn down, and the lofty are humbled. And He fells the thickets of the forest with iron; and Lebanon, it falls by a Majestic One." "When the Assyrian came upon Ayyath (=Ayyahy 1 Chron. vii. 28 (?), Neh. xi. 31, generally hd-ai, or 'Ai), about thirty miles to the north-east of Jerusalem, he trod for the first time upon Benjaminitish territory, which was under the sway of Judaea. The name of this 'ai, which signifies " stone-heap," tallies, as Knobel observes, with the name of the Tell el-hagar, which is situated about three-quarters of an hour to the southeast of Beitin, i.e. Bethel. But there are tombs, reservoirs, and ruins to be seen about an hour to the south-east of Beitin; and these Robinson associates with Ai. From Ai, however, the army will not proceed towards Jerusalem by the ordinary route, viz. the great north road (or " Nablus road"); but, in order to surprise Jerusalem, it takes a different route, in which it will have to cross three deep and difficult valleys. From Ai they pass to Migron, the name of which has apparently been preserved in the ruins of Burg Magrun, situated about eight minutes' walk from Beitin.1 Michmash is still to be found in the form of a deserted village with ruins, under the name of Muchmds, on the eastern side of the valley of Migron. Here they deposit their baggage (Jiiphkid, Jer. xxxvi. 20), so far as they are able to dispense with it, — either to leave it lying there, or to have it conveyed after them by an easier route. For they proceed thence through the pass of Michmash, a deep and precipitous ravine about forty-eight minutes in breadth,
1 I also find the name written Magrum (read Magrun), which is probably taken from a more correct hearsay than the Machrun of Robinson (ii. 127).
the present Wady Suweinit. " The pass" (mabdrdh) is the defile of Michmash, with two prominent rocky cliffs, where Jonathan had his adventure with the garrison of the Philistines. One of these cliffs was called Seneh (1 Sam. xiv. 4), a name which suggests es-'Suweinit. Through this defile they pass, encouraging one another, as they proceed along the difficult inarch, by the prospect of passing the night in Geba, which is close at hand. It is still disputed whether this Geba is the same place as the following Gibeah of Saul or not. There is at the present time a village called Gebaf below Muchmds, situated upon an eminence. The almost universal opinion now is, that this is not Gibeah of Saul, but that the latter is to be seen in the prominent Tell (Tuleil) el-Fid, which is situated farther south. This is possibly correct.1 For there can be no doubt that this mountain) the name of which signifies u Beanhill," would be a very strong position, and one very suitable for Gibeah of Saul; and the supposition that there were two places in Benjamin named Geba, Gibeah, or Gibeath, is favoured at any rate by Josh, xviii. 21-28, where Geba and Gibeath are distinguished from one another. And this mountain, which is situated to the south of er-Rdm — that is to say, between the ancient Kamah and Anathoth — tallies very well with the route of the Assyrian as here described; whilst it is very improbable that Isaiah has designated the very same place first of all Geba, and then (for what reason no one can tell) Gibeah of Saul. We therefore adopt the view, that the Assyrian army took up its quarters for the night at Geba, which still bears this name, spreading terror in all directions, both east and west, and still more towards the south. Starting in the morning from the deep valley between Michmash and Geba, they pass on one side of Rama (the present er-Rdm), situated half an hour to the west of Geba, which trembles as it sees them go by; and the inhabitants of Gibeath of Saul, upon the " Bean-hill," a height that commands the whole of the surrounding country, take to flight when they pass by. Every halting-place on their route brings them nearer to Jerusalem.
1 This is supported by Robinson in his Later Biblical Researches in Palestine (1857), by Valentiner (pastor at Jerusalem), and by Keil in the Commentary on Joshua, Judges, etc. (pp. 188-9), where all the more recent writings on this topographical question are giveu.
The prophet goes in spirit through it all. It is so objectively real to him, that it produces the utmost anxiety and pain. The i-ities and villages of the district are lost. He appeals to the daughter, i.e. the population, of Gallim, to raise a far-sounding veil of lamentation with their voice (Ges. § 138, 1, Anm. 3), and calls out in deep sympathy to Laysha, which was close by (on the two places, both of which have vanished now, see
I Sam. xxv. 44 and Judg. xviii. 29), " only listen," the enemy is coming nearer and nearer; and then for Anathoth (Andtd, still to be seen about an hour and a quarter to the north of ♦Jerusalem) he utters this lamentation (taking the name as an omen of its fate): O poor Anathoth! There is no necessity for any alteration of the text; 'aniyydh is an appeal, or rather an exclamation, as in ch. liv. 11; and 'anathoth follows, according to the same verbal order as in ch. xxiii. 12, unless indeed we take it at once as an adjective written before the noun, — an arrangement of the words which may possibly have been admissible in such interjectional sentences. The catastrophe so much to be dreaded by Jerusalem draws nearer and nearer. Madmenah (dung-hill, see Job, ii. 152) flees in anxious haste: the inhabitants of Gebim (water-pits) carry off their possessions (Pi?n, from ny, to flee, related to chush, hence to carry off in flight, to bring in haste to a place of security, Ex. ix. 19, cf. Jer. iv. 6, vi. 1; synonymous with herds, Ex. ix. 20, Judg. vi.
II; different from 'dzaz, to be firm, strong, defiant, from which md'oz, a fortress, is derived, — in distinction from the Arabic maddh, a place of refuge: comp. ch. xxx. 2, to flee to Pharaoh's shelter). There are no traces left of either place. The passage is generally understood as implying that the army rested another day in Nob. But this would be altogether at variance with the design — to take Jerusalem by surprise by the suddenness of the destructive blow. We therefore render it, " Even to-day he will halt in Nob." (in eo est ut subsistat, Ges. § 132, Anm. 1), — namely, to gather up fresh strength there in front of the city which was doomed to destruction, and to arrange the plan of attack. The supposition that Nob was the village of eUIsawiye, which is still inhabited, and lies to the south-west of Anata, fifty-five minutes to the north of Jerusalem, is at variance with the situation, as correctly described by Jerome, when he says: " Stans in oppidulo Nob et procul urbem conspiciens Jerusalem.11
A far more appropriate situation is to be found in the hill which rises to the north of Jerusalem, and which is called Sadr, from its breast-like projection or roundness, — a name which is related in meaning to nob, ndb, to rise (see Gen. p. 635). From this eminence the way leads down into the valley of Kidron; and as you descend, the city spreads out before you at a very little distance off. It may have been here, in the prophet's view, that the Assyrians halted.1 It was not long, however (as the yenophepli which follows aavvSercos implies), before his hand was drawn out to strike (ch. xi. 15, xix. 16), and swing over the mountain of the daughter of Zion (ch. xvi. 1), over the city of the holy hill. But what would Jehovah do, who was the only One who could save His threatened dwelling-place in the face of such an army? As far as ver. 32a, the prophets address moved on at a hurried, stormy pace; it then halted, and seemed, as it were, panting with anxiety; it now breaks forth in a dactylic movement, like a long rolling thunder. The hostile army stands in front of Jerusalem, like a broad dense forest. But it is soon manifest that Jerusalem has a God who cannot be defied with impunity, and who will not leave His city in the lurch at the decisive moment, like the gods of Carchemish and Calno. Jehovah is the Lord, the God of both spiritual and starry hosts. He smites down the branches of this forest of an army: se 'eph is a so-called piel privativum, to lop (lit. to take the brandies in hand; cf. sikkel, ch. v. 2); and puraii = peurah (in Ezekiel pd'rah) is used like the Latin from, to include both branches and foliage, — in other words, the leafy branches as the ornament of the tree, or the branches as adorned with leaves. The instrument He employs is md ' aratzah, his terrifying and crushing power (compare the verb in ch. ii. 19, 21). And even the lofty trunks of the forest thus cleared of branches and leaves do not remain; they lie hewn down, and the lofty ones must fall. It is just the same with the trunks, i.e. the leaders, as with the branches and the foliage, i.e. with