Li id waste, destroyed.'' The ci (for) is explanatory in both instances, and not simply affirmative, or, as Knobel maintains, recitative, and therefore unmeaning. The prophet justifies the peculiar heading to his prophecy from the horrible vision given him to see, and takes us at once into the very heart of the vision, as in ch. xvii. 1, xxiii. 1. 'Ar Moab (in which 'Ar is Moabitish for 'Ir; cf. Jer. xlix. 3, where we find ' Ai written instead of 'Ar, which we should naturally expect) is the name of the capital of Moab (Grecized, Arcopolis), which was situated to the south of the Arnon, at present a large field of ruins, with a village of the name of Babba. Kir Moab (in which Kir is the Moabitish for Kir yah) was the chief fortress of Moab, which was situated to the south-east of Ar, the present Kerek, where there is still a town with a fortification upon a rock, which can be seen from Jerusalem with a telescope on a clear day, and forms so thoroughly one mass with the rock, that in 1834, when Ibrahim Pasha resolved to pull it down, he was obliged to relinquish the project. The identity of Kir and Kereh is unquestionable, but that of Ar and Rabba has been disputed; and on the ground of Num. xxii. 36, where it seems to be placed nearer the Arnon, it has been transposed to the ruins on the pasture land at the confluence of the Lejum and Mujih (= " the city that is by the river " in Deut. ii. 36 and Josh. xiii. 9, 16: see Com. on Num. xxi. 15), — a conjecture which has this against it, that the name Areopolis, which has been formed from Ar, is attached to the " metropolis civitas Ar" which was called Rabba as the metropolis, and of which Jerome relates (on the passage before us), as an event associated with his own childhood, that it was then destroyed by an earthquake (probably in 342). The two names of the cities are ased as masculine here, like Dammese/c in ch. xvii. 1, and Tzor in ch. xxiii. 1, though it cannot therefore be said, as at Mic. v. 1, that the city stands for the inhabitants (Ges. Lehrgcbaude, p. 469). "In a night" (W? absolute, as in ch. xxi. 11, not construct, which would give an illogical assertion, as shuddad and nidmdh are almost coincident, so far as the sense is concerned) the two pillars of the strength of Moab are overthrown. In the space of a night, and therefore very suddenly (ch. xvii. 14), Moab is destroyed. The prophet repeats twice what it would have been quite sufficient to say once, just as if he had been condemned to keep his eye fixed upon the awful spectacle (on the asyndeton, see at ch. xxxiii. 9; and on the anadiplosis, ver. 8, ch. viii. 9, xxi. 11, xvii. 12, 13). His first sensation is that of horror.
But just as horror, when once it begins to reflect, is dissolved in tears, the thunder-claps in ver. 1 are followed by universal weeping and lamentation. Vers. 2-4. " They go up to the temple-house and Dibon, up to the heights to iceep: upon Nebo and upon Medebah of Moab there is weeping: on all heads baldness, every beard is mutilated. In the markets of Moab they gird themselves with sackcloth; on the roofs of the land, and in its streets, everything wails, melting into tears. Heshbon cries, and 'Eldle; even to Jahaz they hear their howling; even the armed men of Moab break out into mourning thereat; its soul trembles ivithin it." The people (the subject to n?y) ascend the mountain with the temple of Chemosh, the central sanctuary of the land. This temple is called hab-baith, though not that there was a Moabitish town or village with some such name as Beth-Diblathaim (Jer. xlviii. 22), as Knobel supposes. Dibon, which lay above the Arnon (Wady Mujib), like all the places mentioned in vers. 2-4, at present a heap of ruins, a short hour to the north of the central Arnon, in the splendid plain of el- Chura, had consecrated heights in the neighbourhood (cf. Josh, xiii. 17; Num. xxii. 41), and therefore would turn to them. Moab mourns upon Nebo and Medebah;?yV., for which we find W*5i in ch. lii. 5, is written intentionally for a double preformative, instead of Py1* (compare the similar forms in Job xxiv. 21, Ps. cxxxviii. 6, and Ges. § 70, Anm.).?V is to be taken in a local sense, as Hendewerk, Drechsler, and Knobel have rendered it. For Nebo was probably a place situated upon a height on the mountain of that name, towards the southeast of Heshbon (the ruins of Nabo, Nabau, mentioned in the Onom.); and Medebah (still a heap of ruins bearing the same name) stood upon a round hill about two hours to the southeast of Heshbon. According to Jerome, there was an image of Chemosh in Nebo; and among the ruins of Madeba, Seetzen discovered the foundations of a strange temple. There follows here a description of the expressions of pain. Instead of the usual V&&)9 we read V^Ni here. And instead of gedudh (abscissce), Jeremiah (xlviii. 37) has, according to his usual style, gerudh (decurtata*), with the simple alteration of a single letter.1 All runs down with weeping (culloh, written as in ch. \vi. 7; in ch. ix. 8, 16, we have cullo instead). In other cases it is the eyes that are said to run down in tears, streams, or water-brooks; but here, by a still bolder metonymy, the whole man is said to flow down to the ground, as if melting in a stream of tears. ITeshbon and Elale are still visible in their ruins, which lie only half an hour apart upon their separate hills, and are still called by the names Husban and el-AL They were both situated upon hills which commanded an extensive prospect. And there the cry of woe created an echo which was audible as far as Jaliaz (Jahza), the city where the king of lleshbon offered battle to Israel in the time of Moses (Deut. ii. 32). The general mourning was so great, that even the armed men, i.e. the heroes (Jer. xlviii. 41) of Moab, were seized with despair, and cried out in their anguish (the same figure as in ch. xxxiii. 7). i? 'P, thereat, namely on account of this universal lamentation. Thus the lamentation was universal, without exception. Naphsho (his soul) refers to Moab as a whole nation. The soul of Moab trembles in all the limbs of the national body; HJTJJ (forming a play upon the sound with W"!)), an Arabic word, and in Wy a Hebrew word also, signifies tremere, hue illuc agitari, — an explanation which Ave prefer, with Rosenmuller and Gesenius, to the idea that JH* is a secondary verb to Wn, fut. jn\ v is an ethical dative (as in Ps. cxx. 6 and exxiii. 4), throwing the action or the pathos inwardly (see Psychology, p. 152). The heart of the prophet participates in this pain with which Moab is agitated throughout; for, as Rashi observes, it is just in this that the prophets of Israel were distinguished from heathen prophets, such as Balaam for example, viz. that the calamities which they announced to the nations went to their own heart (compare ch. xxi. 3, 4, with ch. xxii. 4).
The difficult words in which the prophet expresses this sympathy we render as follows: Ver 5a. " My heart, toivards Moab it crieth out; its bolts reached to Zoar, the three-year-old
1 At the same time, the Masora on this passage before us is for geruah with Resh, and we also find this reading in Nissel, Clodius, Jablonsky, and in earlier editions; whilst Sonc. 1486, Ven. 1521, and others, have gedudk, with Daleth.
heifer" The Lamed in TMoab is the same both here and in ch. xvi. 11 as in ch. xiv. 8, 9, viz. u turned toward Moab." Moab, which was masculine in ver. 4, is feminine here. We may infer from this that "WVHJJ ^fT"!? is a statement which concerns Moab as a land. Now, berichim signifies the bolts in every other passage in which it occurs; and it is possible to speak of the bolts of a land with just as much propriety as in Lam. ii. 9 and Jer. li. 30 (cf. Jonah ii. 7) of the bolts of a city. And the statement that the bolts of this land went to Zoar is also a very appropriate one, for Kir Moab and Zoar formed the southern fortified girdle of the land; and Zoar, on the south-western tongue of land which runs into the Dead Sea, was the uttermost fortress of Moab, looking over towards Judah; and in its depressed situation below the level of the sea it formed, as it were, the opposite pole of Kir Moab, the highest point in the high land itself. Hence we agree with Jerome, who adopts the rendering vectes ejus usque ad Segor, whereas all the modern translators have taken the word in the sense of fugitives, 'Eglath sliHishiyydh, which Rosenmuller, Knobel, Drechsler, Meier, and others have taken quite unnecessarily as a proper name, is either in apposition to Zoar or to Moab. In the former case it is a distinguishing epithet. An ox of the three years, or more literally of the third year (cf. mfshidlesheth, Gen. xv. 9), i.e. a three-year-old ox, is one that is still in all the freshness and fulness of its strength, and that has not yet been exhausted by the length of time that it has worn the yoke. The application of the term to the Moabitish nation is favoured by Jer. xlvi. 20, where Egypt is called u a very fair heifer " (egldh yepheh-phiyydh), whilst Babylon is called the same in Jer. 1. 11 (cf. Hos. iv. 16, x. 11). And in the sa<me way, according to the LXX., Vulg., Targum, and Gesenius, Moab is called juvenca tertii anni, h. e. indomita jugoqae non assueta, as a nation that was still in the vigour of youth, and if it had hitherto borne the yoke, had always shaken it off again. Bi\t the application of it to Zoar is favoured (1) by Jer. xlviii. 34, where this epithet is applied to another Moabitish city; (2) by the accentuation; and (3) by the fact that in the other case we should expect berlchdh (the three-year-old heifer, i.e. Moab, is a fugitive to Zoar: vid. Luzzatto). Thus Zoar, the fine, strong, and hitherto unconquered city, is now the destination of the wildest flight before the foe that is coming from the north. A blow has fallen upon Moab, that is more terrible than any that has preceded it.
In a few co-ordinate clauses the prophet now sets before us the several scenes of mourning and desolation. Vers. 5b, 6. "For the mountain slope of Luhith they ascend with weeping; for on the road to Horonayim they lift up a cry of despair. For the waters of Nimrim are waste places from this time forth: for the grass is dried up, the vegetation wasteth away, the green is goner The road to Luhith (according to the Onom. between Ar-Moab and Zoar, and therefore in the centre of Moabitis proper) led up a height, and the road to Horonayim (according to Jer. xlviii. 5) down a slope. "Weeping, they ran up to the mountain city to hide themselves there (bo, as in Ps. xxiv. 3; in Jer. xlviii. 5 it is written incorrectly *33). Raising loud cries of despair, they stand in front of Horonayim, which lay below, and was more exposed to the enemy. W$) is softened from vijnir (possibly to increase the resemblance to an echo), like 33i3 from 3333. The Septuagint renders it very well, /epavyrjv avvTpLfifjLov i^avayepovcriv, — an unaccustomed expression of intense and ever renewed cries at the threatening danger of utter destruction, and with the hope of procuring relief and assistance (sheber, as in ch. i. 28, xxx. 26). From the farthest south the scene would suddenly be transferred to the extreme north of the territory of Moab,. if Nimrim were the Nimra (Beth-Nimra, Talm. nimrin) which was situated near to the Jordan in Gilead, and therefore farther north than any of the places previously mentioned, and the ruins of which lie a little to the south of Salt, and are still called Nimrin. But the name itself, which is derived from the vicinity of fresh water (Arab. nemiry nemir, clear, pure, sound), is one of frequent occurrence; and even to the south of Moabitis proper there is a Wadi Numere, and a brook called Moyet Numere (two diminutives: " dear little stream of Nimra "), which flows through stony tracks, and which formerly watered the country (Burckhardt, Seetzen, and De Saulcy). In all probability the ruins of Numere by the side of this wady are the Nimrim referred to here, and the waters of the brook the " waters of Nimrim" {me Nimrim). The waters that flowed fresh from the spring had been filled up with rubbish by the enemy, and would now probably lie waste for ever (a similar expression to that in ch. xvii. 2). He had gone through the land scorching and burning, so that all the vegetation had vanished. On the miniature-like short sentences, see ch. xxix. 20, xxxiii. 8, 9, xxxii. 10; and on FPn K? (" it is not in existence," or " it has become not" i,e. annihilated), vid. Ezek. xxi. 32.
As Moabitis has thus become a great scene of conflagration, the Moabites cross the border and fly to Idumaea. The reason for this is given in sentences which the prophet again links on to one another with the particle ci (for). Vers. 7-9. " Therefore what has been spared, what has been gained, and their provision, they carry it over the willow-brook. For the scream has gone the round in the territory of Moab; the wailing of Moab resounds to Eglayim, and his wailing to Beer-Elim. For the waters of Dimon are full of blood: for I suspend over Dimon a new calamity, over the escaped of Moab a lion, and over the remnant of the land" Yithrdh is what is superfluous or exceeds the present need, and pekudddh (lit. a laying up, depositio) that which has been carefully stored; whilst rdsdh, as the derivative passage, Jer. xlviii. 36, clearly shows (although the accusative in the whole of ver. 7 is founded upon a different view: see Rashi), is an attributive clause (what has been made, worked out, or gained). All these things they carry across nachal ha ardbim, i.e. not the desert-stream, as Hitzig, Maurer, Evvald, and Knobel suppose, since the plural of 'ardbdh is 'ardboth, but either the Arab stream (LXX., Saad.), or the willow-stream, torrens salicum (Vulg.). The latter is more suitable to the connection; and among the rivers which flow to the south of the Arnon from the mountains of the Moabitish highlands down to the Dead Sea, there is one which is called Wadi Sufsaf, i.e. willow-brook (Tzaphtzdphdh is the name of a brook in Hebrew also), viz. the northern arm of the Seil el-Kerek. This is what we suppose to be intended here, and not the Wadi el-Ahsa, although the latter (probably the biblical Zered1) is the boundary river on the extreme south, and separates Moab from Edom (Kerek from Gebal: see Hitter, Erdk. xv. 1223-4). Wading through the willow-brook, they carry their possessions across, and hurry off to the land of Edom, for their own land
1 Hence the Targ. n. renders nachal zered M the brook of the willows." See Buxtorf, Lex. chald. s.v. Zerad.
has become the prey of the foe throughout its whole extent ami within its boundaries the cry of wailing passes from rfaytm, on the south-west of Ar, and therefore not far from the southern extremity of the Dead Sea (Ezek. xlvii. 10), as far as Beer-Elim, in the north-east of the land towards the desert (Num. xxi. 16-18; 1? must be supplied: Ewald, § 351, a), that is to say, if we draw a diagonal through the land, from one end to the other. Even the waters of Dibon, which are called Ditnon here to produce a greater resemblance in sound to dam, blood, and by which we are probably to understand the Arnon, as this was only a short distance off (just as in Judo-, v. 19 the " waters of Megiddo " are the Kishon), are full of blood,1 so that the enemy must have penetrated into the very heart of the land in his course of devastation and slaughter. But what drives them across the willow-brook is not this alone; it is as if they forebode that what has hitherto occurred is not the worst or the last. Jehovah suspends (shith, as in Hos. vi. 11) over Dibon, whose waters are already reddened with blood, nusdphoth, something to be added, i.e. a still further judgment, namely a lion. The measure of Moab's misfortunes is not yet full: after the northern enemy, a lion will come upon those that have escaped by flight or have been spared at home (on the expression itself, compare eh. x. 20, xxxvii. 32, and other passages). This lion is no other than the basilisk of the prophecy against Philistia, but with this difference, that the basilisk represents one particular Davidic king, whilst the lion is Judah generally, whose emblem was the lion from the time of Jacob's blessing, in Gen. xlix. 9.
But just because this lion is Judah and its government, the summons goes forth to the Moabites, who have fled to Edom, and even to Sela, i.e. Petra ( Wady Musa), near Mount Hor in Arabia Petraea, to which it gave its name, to turn for protection to Jerusalem. Ch. xvi. 1. " Send a land-ruler s tribute of lambs from Sela desert-wards to the mountain of the daughter of Zion? This verse is like a long-drawn trumpet-blast. The prophecy against Moab takes the same turn here as in ch. xiv.
syllable of the verb (compare ver. 4, ^ iiJTV, with mercha), according to Vened. 1521, and other good editions. This is also grammatically correct.
32, xviii. 7, xix. 16 sqq., xxiii. 18. The judgment first of all produces slavish fear; and this is afterwards refined into loving attachment. Submission to the house of David is Moab's only deliverance. This is what the prophet, weeping with those that weep, calls out to them in such long-drawn, vehement, and urgent tones, even into the farthest hiding-place in which they have concealed themselves, viz. the rocky city of the Edomites. The tribute of lambs which was due to the ruling prince is called briefly car moshel- eretz. This tribute, which the holders of the pasture-land so rich in flocks have hitherto sent to Samaria (2 Kings iii. 4), they are now to send to Jerusalem, the "mountain of the daughter of Zion" (as in ch. x. 32, compared wjth ch. xviii. 7), the way to which lay through "the desert," i.e. first of all in a diagonal direction through the Arabah, which stretched downwards to.^Elath.
The advice does not remain without effect, but they embrace it eagerly. Ver. 2. "And the daughters of Moab will be like birds fluttering about, a scared nest, at the fords of the Arnon." "The daughters of Moab," like "the daughters of Judah," for example, in Ps. xlviii. 12, are the inhabitants of the cities and villages of the land of Moab. They were already like birds soaring about (Prov. xxvii. 8), because of their flight from "their own land; but here, as we may see from the expression fi^Yin... iTiTi, the simile is intended to depict the condition into which they would be thrown by the prophet's advice. The figure (cf. en. x. 14) as well as the expression (cf. ch. xvii. 2) is thoroughly Isaiah's. It is a state of anxious and timid indecision, resembling the fluttering to and fro of birds, that have been driven away from their nest, and wheel anxiously round and round, without daring to return to their old home. In this way the daughters of Moab, coming out of their hidingplaces, whether nearer or more remote, show themselves at the fords of the Arnon, that is to say, on the very soil of their old home, which was situated between the Arnon and Wadv el-Ahsa, and which was now devastated by the hand of a foe. |iJ")b6 nnayp we should regard as in apposition to benoth Moab (the daughters of Moab), if md betroth signified the coast-lands (like 'ebre in ch. vii. 20), and not, as it invariably does, the fords. It is locative in its meaning, and is so accentuated.
once readied before it passed into the possession of Israel,— there, on its farthest boundary in the direction towards Judah, which was seated above; and taking heart, address the following petitions to Zion, or to the Davidic court, on the other side. Vers. 3, 4rt. " Give counsel, form a decision, make thy shadoio like night in the midst of noon; hide the outcasts, do not betray the ivanderers. Let mine outcasts tarry in thee, Moab; he a covert to it from before the spoiler." In their extremity they appeal to Zion for counsel, and the once proud but now thoroughly humbled Moabites place the decision of their fate in the hands of the men of Judah (so according to the keri), and stand before Zion praying most earnestly for shelter and protection. Their fear of the enemy is so great, that in the light of the noon-day sun they desire to be covered with the protecting shade of Zion as with the blackness of night, that they may not be seen by the foe. The short sentences correspond to the anxious urgency of the prayer (cf. ch. xxxiii. 8). Pelildh (cf. peliliyydh, ch. xxviii. 7) is the decision of a judge (pdlil); just as in ch. xv. 5 shelishiyydh is the age and standing of three years. The figure of the shadow is the same as in ch. xxx. 2, 3, xxxii. 2, etc.; noded is the same as in ch. xxi. 14; nidddchai as in ch. xi. 12; sether as in ch. xxxii. 2, and other passages; shoded as in ch. xxxiii. 1; mippene as in ch. xxi. 15. The whole is word for word Isaiah's. There is no necessity to read nidche instead of nidddchai Mddb in ver. 4; still less is ay a collective termination, as in ch. xx. 4. Nor are the words to be rendered " my outcasts... of Moab," and the expression to be taken as a syntaxis ornata (cf. ch. xvii. 6). On the contrary, such an expression is absolutely impossible here, where the speaker is alluding to himself. It is better to abide by the punctuation as we have it, with nidddchai (zakeph) closing the first clause of ver. 4a, and Moab (tebir, which is subordinate to the following tiphchah, and with this to athnach) opening the second as an absolute noun. This is the way in which we have rendered it above: " Moab... be a shield to it,.." (though without taking Idmo as equivalent to Id).
The question then arises, By what means has Zion awakened such reverence and confidence on the part of Moab? This question is answered in vers. 4b, 5: "For the extortioner is at an end, desolation has disappeared, treaders down are away from the land. And a throne is established by grace, and there sits thereon in truth in the tent of David one judging, and zealous for right, and practised in righteousness.''9 The imperial worldpower, which pressed out both marrow and blood (met,?, a noun of the same form as letz, like mltz in Prov. xxx. 33, pressure), and devastated and trod down everything (ch. xxix. 20,, x. 6, xxxiii. 1, cf. 8), is swept away from the land on this side of the Jordan; Jerusalem is not subject to it now, but has come forth more gloriously out of all her oppressions than ever she did before. And the throne of the kingdom of, Judah has not fallen down, but by the manifestation of Jehovah's grace has been newly established. There no longer sits thereon a king who dishonours Him, and endangers His kingdom; but the tent-roof of the fallen and now re-erected hut of David (Amos ix. 11) is spread over a King in whom the truth of the promise of Jehovah is verified, inasmuch as justice and righteousness are realized through all that He does. The Messianic times must therefore have dawned (so the Targum understands it), since grace and truth (chesed viemetli) and " justice and righteousness^ (mishpdt utzeddkdh) are the divino-human signs of those tinfes, and as it were their kindred genii; and who can here fail to recal to mind the words of ch. ix. 6 (cf. xxxiii. 5, 6)? The king depicted here is the same as " the lion out of Judah," threatened against Moab in ch. xv. 9. Only by thus submitting to Him and imploring His grace will it escape the judgment.
But if Moab does this, and the law of the history of Israel, which is that " a remnant shall return," is thus reflected in the history of Moab; ver. 6 cannot possibly contain the answer which Moab receives from Zion, as the more modern commentators assume according to an error that has almost become traditional. On the contrary, the prophecy enters here upon a new stage, commencing with Moab's sin, and depicting the fate of Moab in still more elegiac strains. Yer. 6. " We have heard of the pride of Moab, the very haughty (pride), his haughtiness, and his ponde, and his wrath, the falsehood of his speech.19 The future self-humiliation of Moab, which would be the fruit of its sufferings, is here contrasted with the previous self-exaltation, of which these sufferings were the fruit. a We have heard," says the prophet, identifying himself with his people. Boasting pompousness had hitherto been the distinguishing characteristic of Moab in relation to the latter (see ch. xxv. 11). The heaping up of words of the same verbal stem (cf. ch. iii. 1) is here intended to indicate how thoroughly haughty was their haughtiness (cf. Rom. vii. 13, "that sin might become exceeding sinful"), and how completely it had taken possession of Moab. It boasted and was full of rage towards Israel, to which, so far as it retained its consciousness of the truth of Jehovah, the talk of Moab 0*13 from T?3 = ana, N132, to talk at random) must necessarily appear as |?"Nv, not-right, i.e. at variance with fact. These expressions of opinion had been heard by the people of God, and, as Jeremiah adds in ch. xlviii. 29, 30, by Israel's God as well.
Therefore the delightful land is miserably laid waste. Vers. 7, 8. u Therefore will Moab wail for Moab, everything will wail: for the grape-cakes of Kir-Hareseth will ye whine, utterly crushed. For the fruit-fields of Heshbon have faded away: the vine of Sibmah, lords of the nations its branches smote down; they readied to Jdzer, trailed through the desert: its branches spread themselves out wide, crossed over the sea." The Lamed in VMoab is the same as in ch. xv. 5, and in laashishe, which follows here. Kir-Hareseth (written Kir- Heres in ver. 11, and by Jeremiah; compare 2 Kings iii. 25, where the vowel-pointing is apparently false): Heres or Hareseth may possibly refer to the glazed tiles or grooved stones. As this was the principal fortress of Moab, and according to ch. xv. 1 it had already been destroyed, 'ashishe appears to mean the u strong foundations," — namely, as laid bare; in other words, the " ruins" (cf. Jer. 1. 15, and mosede in ch. lviii. 12). But in every other passage in which the word occurs it signifies a kind of cake; and as the devastation of the vines of Moab is made the subject of mourning afterwards, it has the same meaning here as in Hos. iii. 1, namely raisin-cakes, or raisins pressed into the form of cakes. Such cakes as these may have been a special article of the export trade of Kir. Jeremiah has altered 'dshishe into 'anshe (ch. xlviii. 31), and thus made men out of the grapes. Hdgdh is to be understood in accordance with ch. xxxviii. 14, lix. 11 (viz. of the cooing of the dove); 'ac (in good texts it is written with mercha, not with makkeph) according to Deut. xvi. 15. On the construction of the pluralet. shadmoth, compare Hab. iii. 17. We have rendered the clause commencing with baale goyim (lords of the nations) with the same amphibolism as we find in the Hebrew. It might mean either " lords of the nations (domini gentium) smote down its branches" (viz. those of the vine of Sibmah;1 hdlam being used as in ch. xli. 7), or " its branches smote down (i.e. intoxicated) lords of the nations" (dominos gentium; hdlam having the same meaning as in the undisputed prophecy 'of Isaiah in ch. xxviii. 1). As the prophet enlarges here upon the excellence of the Moabitish wine, the latter is probably intended. The wine of Sibmah was so good, that it was placed upon the tables of monarchs, and so strong that it smote dowTn, i.e. inevitably intoxicated, even those who wTere accustomed to good wines. This Sibmah wine was cultivated, as the prophet says, far and wide in Moab, — northwards as far as Jdzer (between Ramoth, ue. Salt, and Heshbon, now a heap of ruins), eastwards into the desert, and southwards across the Dead Sea, — a hyperbolical expression for close up to its shores. Jeremiah defines yam (the sea) more closely as yam Jd zer (the sea of Jazer; vid. Jer. xlviii. 32), so that the hyperbole vanishes. But what sea can the sea of Jazer be? Probably some celebrated large pool, like the pools of Heshbon, in which the waters of the Wady (Nalir) Sir, which takes its rise close by, were collected. Seetzen found some pools still there. The " sea" (ydni) in Solomon's temple shows clearly enough that the term sea was also commonly applied to artificial basins of a large size; and in Damascus the marble basins of flowing water in the halls of houses are still called baliardt; and the same term is applied to the public reservoirs in all the streets of the city, which are fed by a network of aqueducts from the river Barada. The expression " break through the desert " (tau midbdr) is also a bold one, probably pointing to the fact that, like the red wines of Hungary at the present time, they were trailing vines, which did not require to be staked, but ran along the ground.
The beauties of nature and fruitfulness of the land, which come into the possession of any nation, are gifts from the riches of divine goodness, remnants of the paradisaical commencement of the history of man, and types of its paradisaical close; and for this very reason they are not matters of in-
1 In mss. Shibmah is written with gaya, in order that the two labials may be distinctly expressed.
difference- to the spirit of prophecy. And for the same reason, it is not unworthy of a prophet, who predicts the renovation of nature and the perfecting of it into the beauty of paradise, to weep over such a devastation as that of the Moabitish vineyards which was now passing before his rnind (cf. ch. \xxii. 12, 18). Ver. 9. " Therefore I bemoan the vines of Sibmah with the weeping of Jazer; I flood thee witli, my tears, 0 Heshbon and Elealeh, that Iledad hath fallen upon thy fruitharvest and upon thy vintage." A tetrastich, the Hebrew equivalent, in measure and movement, of a sapphic strophe. The circumstantiality of the vision is here swallowed up again by the sympathy of the prophet; and the prophecy, which is throughout as truly human as it is divine, becomes soft and flowing like an elegy. The prophet mingles his tears with the tears of Jazer. Just as the latter weeps for the devastated vines of Sibmah, so does he also weep. The form ^)^\% transposed from?EnK=,5JVNj (cf. Ewald, § 253, a, where it is explained as being a rare " voluntative" formation), corresponds to the elegiac tone of the whole strophe. Heshbon and Elealeh, those closely connected cities, with their luxuriant fields (shedemoth, ver. 8), are now lying in ruins; and the prophet waters them with tears, because hedad has fallen upon the fruit-harvest and vintage of both the sister cities. In other instances the term kdtzir is applied to the wheat-harvest; but here it is used in the same sense as bdtzir, to which it is preferred on account of Isaiah's favourite alliteration, viz. with kaytz (compare, for example, the alliteration of mistor with sether in ch. iv. 6). That it does not refer to the wheat-harvest here, but to the vintage, which was nearly coincident with the fruit-harvest (which is called katjtz, as in ch. xxviii. 4), is evident from the figure suggested in the word hedad, which was the shout raised by the pressers' of the grapes, to give the time for moving their feet when treading out the wine (ver. 10; Jer. xxv. 30). A hedad of this kind had fallen upon the rich floors of Heshbon- Elealeh, inasmuch as they had been trodden down by enemies, — a Hedad, and yet no Hedad, as Jeremiah gives it in a beautiful oxymoron (ch. xlviii. 33), i.e. no joyous shout of actual grapetreaders.
The prophet, to whose favourite words and favourite figures Carmel belongs, both as the name of a place and as the name of a thing, now proceeds with his picture, and is plunged still more deeply into mourning. Vers. 10, 11. " And joy is taken away, and the rejoicing of the garden-land; and there is no exulting, no shouting in the vineyards: the treader treads out no wine in the presses; I put an end to the Hedad. Therefore my bowels sound for Moab like a harp, and my inside for Kir-Heres." It is Jehovah who says " I put an end; " and consequently the words, " My bowels sound like a harp," or, as Jeremiah expresses it (Jer. xlviii. 36), like flutes, might appear to be expressive of the feelings of Jehovah. And the Scriptures do not hesitate to attribute meayim (viscera) to God (e.g. ch. lxiii. 15, Jer. xxxi. 20). But as the prophet is the sympathizing subject throughout the whole of the prophecy, it is better, for the sake of unity, to take the words in this instance also as expressing the prophet's feelings. Just as the hand or plectrum touches the strings of the harp, so that they vibrate with sound; so did the terrible things that he had heard Jehovah say concerning Moab touch the strings of his inward parts, and cause them to resound with notes of pain. By the bowels, or rather entrails (viscera), the heart, liver, and kidneys are intended, — the highest organs of the Psyche, and the sounding-board, as it were, of those " hidden sounds " which exist in every man. God conversed with the prophet iC in the spirit; " but what passed there took the form of individual impressions in the domain of the soul, in which impressions the bodily organs of the psychical life sympathetically shared. Thus the prophet saw in the spirit the purpose of God concerning Moab, in which he could not and would not make any -change; but it threw his soul into all the restlessness of pain.
The ultimate reason for this restlessness is, that Moab does not know the living God. Ver. 12. " And it will come to pass, when it is seen that Moab is weary with weeping upon the mountain height, and enters into its sanctuary to pray, it will not gain anything." nra ntjH3, a pictorial assonance, such as Isaiah delights in. HNH3 is transferred from the Israelitish worship (appearance before God in His temple) to the heathen; syntactically, si apparuerit, etc., with Vav before the apodosis. It would be with the Moabites as with the priests of Baal in the time of Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 26 sqq.).
The massa is now brought to a close, and there follows an epilogue which fixes the term of the fulfilment of what is not predicted now for the first time, from the standpoint of the anticipated history. Ver. 13. " This is the word which Jehovah spake long ago concerning Moab. And now Jehovah speaheth thus: In three years, like years of a hireling, the glory of Moab is disgraced, together with all the multitude of the great; a remnant is left, contemptibly small, not great at all." The time fixed is the same as in ch. xx. 3. Of working time the hirer remits nothing, and the labourer gives nothing in. The statement as to the time, therefore, is intended to be taken exactly: three years, not more, rather under than over. Then will the old saying of God concerning Moab be fulfilled. Only a remnant, a contemptible remnant, will be left ("INE% cf. b>itoi? ch. viii. 6, in sense equivalent to "W^); for every history of the nations is but the shadow of the history of Israel.
The massa in ch. xv. 1-xvi. 12 was a word that had already gone forth from Jehovah " long ago." This statement may be understood in three different senses. In the first place, Isaiah may mean that older prophecies had already foretold essentially the same concerning Moab. But what prophecies? We may get an answer to this question from the prophecies of Jeremiah concerning Moab in Jer. xlviii. Jeremiah there reproduces the massa Moab of the book of Isaiah, but interweaves with it reminiscences (1) out of the mdshal on Moab in Num. xxi. 27—30; (2) out of Balaam's prophecy concerning Moab in Num. xxiv. 17; (3) out of the prophecy of Amos concerning Moab (Amos ii. 1-3). And it might be to these earlier words of prophecy that Isaiah here refers (Havernick, Drechsler, and others). But this is very improbable, as there is no ring of these earlier passages in the massa, such as we should expect if Isaiah had had them in his mind. Secondly, Isaiah might mean that ch. xv. 1 sqq. contained the prophecy of an older prophet, which he merely brought to remembrance in order to connect therewith the precise tenor of its fulfilment which had been revealed to him. This is at present the prevailing view. Hitzig, in a special work on the subject (1831), as well as in his Commentary, has endeavoured to prove, on the ground of 2 Kings xiv. 2^, that in all probability Jonah was the author of the oracle which Isaiah here resumes. And Knobel, Maurer, Gustav Baur, and Thenius agree with him in this; whilst De VOL. i. y
Wette, Ewald, and Umbreit regard it as, at any rate, decidedly non-Messianic. If the conjecture that Jonah was the author could but be better sustained, we should heartily rejoice in this addition to the history of the literature of the Old Testament. But all that we know of Jonah is at variance with such a conjecture. He was a prophet of the type of Elijah and Elisha, in whom the eloquence of a prophet's words was thrown altogether into the shade by the energy of a prophet's deeds. His prophecy concerning the restoration of the kingdom of Israel to its old boundaries, which was fulfilled by the victories of Jeroboam II., we cannot therefore imagine to have been so pictorial or highly poetical as the massa Moab (which would only be one part of that prophecy) really is; and the fact that he was angry at the sparing of Nineveh harmonizes very badly with its elegiac softness and its flood of tears. Moreover, it is never intimated that the conquerors to whom Moab was to succumb would belong to the kingdom of Israel; and the hypothesis is completely overthrown by the summons addressed to Moab to send tribute to Jerusalem. But the conclusion itself, that the oracle must have originated with any older prophet whatever, is drawn from very insufficient premises. No doubt it is a thing altogether unparalleled even in Isaiah, that a prophecy should assume so thoroughly the form of a kinah, or lamentation; still there are tendencies to this in ch. xxii. 4 (cf. ch. xxi. 3, 4), and Isaiah was an inexhaustible master of language of every character and colour. It is true we do light upon many expressions which cannot be pointed out anywhere else ill the book of Isaiah, such as baale goyim, heddd, y'ldldh, ydra, yitlivdli^ mdhir, metz, nosdphoth, pekudddh (provision, possession); and there is something peculiar in the circular movement of the prophecy, which is carried out to such an extent in the indication of reason and consequence, as well as in the perpetually returning, monotonous connection of the sentences by ci (for) and 'al-cen (Idcen, therefore), the former of which is repeated twice in ch. xv. 1, three times in ch. xv. 8, 9, and four times in succession in ch. xv. 5, 6. But there is probably no prophecy, especially in ch. xiii.-xxiii., which does not contain expressions that the prophet uses nowhere else; and so far as the » conjunctions ci and ral-cen (Idcen) are concerned, Isaiah crowds them together in other passages as well, and here almost to monotony, as a natural consequence of the prevailing elegiac tone. Besides, even Ewald can detect the characteristics of Isaiah in ch. xvi. 1-6; and you have only to dissect the whole rhetorically, syntactically, and philologically, with the carefulness of a Caspari, to hear throughout the ring of Isaiah's style. And whoever has retained the impression which he brought with him from the oracle against Philistia, will be constrained to say, that not only the stamp and outward form, but also the spirit and ideas, are thoroughly Isaiah's. Hence the third possible conjecture must be the correct one. Thirdly, then, Isaiah may mean that the fate of Moab, which he has just proclaimed, was revealed to him long ago; and the addition made now is, that it will be fulfilled in exactly three years. TNO does not necessarily point to a time antecedent to that of Isaiah himself (compare ch. xliv. 8, xlviii. 3, 5, 7, with 2 Sam. xv. 34). If we assume that what Isaiah predicts down to ch. xvi. 12 was revealed to him in the year that Ahaz died, and that the epilogue reckons from the third or tenth year of Hezekiah, in either case the interval is long enough for the me dz (from of old). And we decide in favour of this. Unfortunately, we know nothing certain as to the time at which the three years commence. The question whether it was Shalmanassar, Sargon, or Sennacherib who treated the Moabites so harshly, is one that we cannot answer. In Herodotus (ii. 141), Sennacherib is called "king of the Arabians and Assyrians;" and Moab might be included in the Arabians. In any case, after the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy in the Assyrian times, there was still a portion left, the fulfilment of which, according to Jer. xlviii., was reserved for the Chaldeans.
From the Philistines on the west, and the Moabites on the east, the prophecy relating to the neighbouring nations now turns, without any chronological order, to the people of Damascene Syria on the north. Tho curse pronounced on them, however, falls upon the kingdom of Israel also, because it has allied itself with heathen Damascus, in opposition to its own brother tribe to the south, as well as to the Davidic government; and by this unnatural alliance with a zdr, or stranger, had become a zdr itself. From the period of Hezekiah's reign, to which the massa Moab belongs, at least so far as its epilogue is concerned, we are here carried back to the reign of Ahaz, and indeed far beyond " the year that Ahaz died" (ch. xiv. 28), to the very border of the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, — namely, to the time when the league for the destruction of Judah had only just been concluded. At the time when Isaiah incorporated this oracle in his collection, the threats against the kingdoms of Damascus and Israel had long been fulfilled. Assyria had punished both of them. And Assyria itself had also been punished, as the fourth turn in the oracle indicates. Consequently the oracle stands here as a memorial of the truthfulness of the prophecy; and it answers a further purpose still, viz. to furnish a rich prophetic consolation for the church of all times, when persecuted by the world, and sighing under the oppression of the kingdom of the world.
The first turn: vers. 1-3. " Behold, Damascus must (be taken) away out of the number of the cities, and will be a heap of fallen ruins. The cities of Aroer are forsaken, they are given up to flocks, they lie there without any one scaring them away. And the fortress of Ephraim is abolished, and the kingdom of Damascus; and it happens to those that are left of Aram as to the glory of the sons of Israel, saith Jehovah of hosts." " Behold," etc.: hinneh followed by a participle indicates here, as it does everywhere else, something very near at hand. Damascus is removed Tyo (= Tjp nvnD, cf. 1 Kings xv. 13), i.e. out of the sphere of existence as a city. It becomes ^Vp, sl heap of ruins. The word is used intentionally instead of ''V, to sound as much as possible like ">\W?: a mutilated city, so to speak. It is just the same with Israel, which has made itself an appendage of Damascus. The "cities of Aroer" (gen. appos. Ges. § 114, 3) represent the land to the east of the Jordan: there the judgment upon Israel (executed by Tiglath-pileser) first began. There were two Aroer s: an old Amoritish city allotted to the tribe of Reuben, viz. " Aroer on the Am on" (Deut. ii. 36, iii. 12, etc.); and an old Ammonitish one, allotted to the tribe of Gad, viz. " Aroer before Rabbah" (Rabbath Ammon, Josh, xiii. 25). The ruins of the former are Arair, on the lofty northern bank of the Mugib; but the situation of the latter lias not yet been determined with certainty (see Com. on Josh, xiii. 25). The "cities of Aroer" are these two Aroers, and the rest of the cities similar to it on the east of the Jordan; just as s< the Orions" in ch. xiii. 10 are Orion and other similar stars. We meet here again with a significant play upon the sound in the expression 'are 'Aroer (cities of Aroer): the name of Aroer was ominous, and what its name indicated would happen to the cities in its circuit. ITO means " to lay bare," to pull down (Jer. li. 58); and "ijny, ^V: signifies a stark-naked condition, a state of desolation and solitude. After ver. 1 has threatened Damascus in particular, and ver. 2 has done the same to Israel, ver. 3 comprehends them both. Ephraim loses the fortified cities which once served it as defences, and Damascus loses its rank as a kingdom. Those that are left of Aram, who do not fall in the war, become like the proud citizens of the kingdom of Israel, i.e. they are carried away into captivity. All this was fulfilled under Tiglath.- pileser. The accentuation connects D"JX INK* (the remnant of Aram) with the first half of the verse; but the meaning remains the same, as the subject to W is in any case the Aramaeans.
Second turn: vers. 4-8. u And it comes to pass in that day, the glory of Jacob wastes aicay, and the fat of his flesh grows thin. And it will be as when a reaper grasps the stalks of wheat, and his arm mows off the ears; and it will be as with one who gathers together ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet a gleaning remains from it, as at the olive-beating: two, three berries high up at the top; four, five in its, the fruit tree's, branches, saith Jehovah the God of Israel. At that day wilt man look up to his Creator, and his eyes will look to tlie Holy One of Israel. And he will not look to the altars, the work of his hands; and what his fingers have made he will not regard, neither the Astartes nor the sun-gods." This second turn does not speak of Damascus, but simply of Israel, and in fact of all Israel, the range of vision widening out from Israel in the more restricted sense, so as to embrace the whole. It will all disappear, with the exception of a small remnant; but the latter will return. Thus " a remnant will return," the law of Israel's history, which is here shown first of all in its threatening aspect, and then in its more promising one. The reputation and prosperity to which the two kingdoms were raised by Jeroboam it. and Uzziah would pass away. Israel was ripe for judgment, like a field of corn for the harvest; and it would be as when a reaper grasps the stalks that have shot up, and cuts off the ears. l^VIJ is not used elliptically for TOjJ t^tf (Gesenius), nor is it a definition of time (Luzzatto), nor an accusative of the object (Knobel), but a noun formed like K^J, 7^3, P"]3, and used in the sense of reaper (kotzer in other cases).1 The figure suggested here is more fully expanded in John iv. and Rev. xiv. Hardly a single one will escape the judgment: just as in the broad plain of Rephaim, which slopes off to the south-west of Jerusalem as far as Bethlehem, where it is covered with rich fields of wheat, the collectors of ears leave only one or two ears lying scattered here and there. Nevertheless a gleaning of Israel (" in it," viz. in Jacob, ver. 4, ch. x. 22) will be left, just as wdien the branches of the olive tree, which have been already cleared with the hand, are still further shaken with a stick, there still remain a few olives upon the highest branch (two, three; cf. 2 Kings ix. 32), or concealed under the foliage of the branches. " Its, the fruit trees, branches:" this is an elegant expression, as, for example, in Prov. xiv. 13; the carrying over of the n to the second word is very natural in both passages (see Ges. § 121, b). This small remnant will turn with stedfast gaze to the living God, as is becoming in man as such (hadddm), and not regard the idols as worthy of any look at all, at least of any reverential look. As hammdnim are here images of the sun-god pn hyi, which is well known from the Phoenician monuments,2 'asherim (for which we find, though more rarely, 'ashcroth) apparently signifies images of the moongoddess. And the combination of " Baal, Asherah, and all the host of heaven" in 2 Kings xxiii. 4, as well as the surname "queen of heaven" in Jcr. vii. 18, xliv. 18, 19, appears to require this (Knobel). But the latest researches have proved that 'Asherah is rather the Semitic Aphrodite, and therefore the planet Venus, which was called the " little luck" (es-sad
1 Instead of kdtzar (to cut off, or shorten), they now say karatz in the whole of the land to the east of the Jordan, which gives the idea of sawing off, — a much more suitable one where the Syrian sickle is used.
cl-asgai>) l by the Arabs, in distinction from Musteri (Jupiter),2 or "the great hick." And with this the name 'Asherah the " lucky" (i.e. the source of luck or prosperity) and the similar surname given to the Assyrian Istar agreed for 'Asherah is the very same goddess as 'Ashtoreth, whose name is thoroughly Arian, and apparently signifies the star (Ved. stri = star; Zend. stare; Neo-Pers. sitdre, used chiefly for the morning star), although Rawlinson (without being able to suggest any more acceptable interpretation) speaks of this view as " not worthy of much attention." 4 Thus Asherim is used to signify the bosquets (shrubberies) or trees dedicated to the Semitic Aphrodite (Deut. xvi. 21; compare the verbs used to signify their removal, ITU, rro, btu); but here it probably refers to her statues or images 5 (2 Kings xxi. 7; compare the miphletzeth in 1 Kings xv. 13, which is used to denote an obscene exhibition). For these images of the sun-god and of the goddess of the morning star, the remnant of Israel, that has been purified by the smelting furnace of judgment, has no longer any eye. Its looks are exclusively directed to the one true God of man. The promise, which here begins to dawn at the close of the second turn, is hidden again in the third, though only to break forth again in the fourth with double or triple intensity.
Third turn: vers. 9-11. " In that day will his fortified cities be like the ruins of the forest and of the mountain top, which they cleared before the sons of Israel: and there arises a waste place. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not thought of the Hock of thy stronghold, therefore thou p>lantedst charming plantations, and didst set them ivith strange
3 " Ishtar" says Rawlinson in his Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, — a work which challenges criticism through its dazzling results, — " Ishtar is the goddess who rejoices mankind, and her most common epithet is Amra, ' the fortunate' or ' the happy.' But otherwise her epithets are vague and general, insomuch that she is often scarcely distinguishable from Beltis (the wife of Bel-Nimrod)." Vid. vol. i. p. 175 (1862).
4 The planet Venus, according to a Midrash relating to Gen. vi. 1, 2, is 'Jstehar transferred to the sky; and this is the same as Zvhare (see Geiger, Was hat Muhammed, etc., 1833, pp. 107-109).
6 The plural Ashtaroth, Hathors, which occurs upon Assyrian and Egyptian monuments, has a different meaning.
vines. In the day that thou plantedst, thou didst make a fence; and with the morning dawn thou madest thy sowing to blossom: a harvest heap in the day of deep wounds and deadly sorroio of heart" The statement in ver. 3, " The fortress of Ephraim is abolished," is repeated in ver. 9 in a more descriptive manner. The fate of the strongly fortified cities of Ephraim would be the same as that of the old Canaanitish castles, which were still to be discerned in their antiquated remains, either in the depths of forests or high up on the mountains. The word 'azubdli, which the early translators quite misunderstood, signifies, both here and in ch. vi. 12, desolate places that have gone to ruin. They also misunderstood "W?!jrn Bhhn. The Septuagint renders it, by a bold conjecture, ol ^Afioppaloi teal ol Ei/aioc; but this is at once proved to be false by the inversion of the names of the two peoples, which was very properly thought to be necessary. "iVpsn undoubtedly signifies the top of a tree, which is quite unsuitable here. But as even this meaning points back to "IEK? extollere, efferre (see at Ps. xciv. 4), it may also mean the mountain-top. The name Imemori (the Amorites: those who dwell high up in the mountains) proves the possibility of this; and the prophet had this name in his mind, and was guided by it in his choice of a word. The subject of toTJJ is self-evident. And the reason why only the ruins in forests and on mountains are mentioned is, that other places, which were situated on the different lines of traffic, merely changed their inhabitants when the land was taken by Israel. The reason why the fate of Ephraim' s fortified castles was the same as that of the Amoritish castles, which were then lying in ruins, was that Ephraim, as stated in ver. 10, had turned away from its true rocky stronghold, namely from Jehovah. It was a consequence of this estrangement from God, that Ephraim planted tTO&gft *JD3j plantations of the nature of pleasant things, or pleasant plantations (compare on Ps. Ixxviii. 49, and Ewald, § 287, ab), i.e. cultivated all kinds of sensual accompaniments to its worship, in accordance with its heathen propensities; and sowed, or rather (as zemordh is the layer of a vine) " set," this gardenground, to which the suffix ennu refers, with strange grapes, by forming an alliance with a zdr (a stranger), namely the king of Damascus. On the very day of the planting, Ephraim fenced it carefully (this is the meaning of the pilpel, sigseg of these sensuous modes of worship as a state religion, with all the shrewdness of a Jeroboam (see Amos vii. 13). And the very next morning he had brought into blossom what he had the alliance had speedily grown into a hearty agreement, and had already produced one blossom at any rate, viz. the plan of so rapidly, and to all appearance so happily, was a harvest heap for the day of the judgment. Nearly all modern expositors
§ 12, Anm. 1), and render it "the harvest flees;" but the third person of iu would be *TJ, like the participle in Gen. iv. 12;
whereas the meaning cumulus (a heap), which it has elsewhere as a substantive, is quite appropriate, and the statement of the prophet resembles that of the apostle in Rom. ii. 5. The day of the judgment is called "the day of n?IT3" (or, according to stream (Luzzatto, in giorno di Jiumana), as in Ps. cxxiv. 4 (the tone upon the last syllable proves this), nor in the sense of " in the day of possession," as Rosenmuller and others suppose, since this necessarily gives, to 13 the former objectionable and (by the side of ~iNVi?) improbable verbal sense; but as the feminine of nachleh, written briefly for maccdh nachldli (Jen xiv. 17), i.e.
desperate and incurable heartfelt sorrow (Jer. xxx. 15). The organic connection between vers. 12-14, which follow, and the oracle concerning Damascus and Israel, has also been either entirely misunderstood, or not thoroughly appreciated. The connection is the following: As the prophet sets before himself the manner in which the sin of Ephraim is punished by Asshur, as the latter sweeps over the Holy Land, the promise which already began to dawn in the second turn bursts completely through: the world-power is the instrument of punishment' in the hands of Jehovah, but not for ever.
Fourth turn: vers. 12-14. u Woe to the roaring of many nations: like the roaring of seas they roar; and to the rumbling of nations, like the rumbling of mighty waters they rumble! Nations, like the rumbling of many icaters they rumble; and He threatens it: then it flies far away, and is chased like chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a cloud of dust before the gale. At eventide, behold consternation; and before the morning dawn it is destroyed: this is the portion of our plunderers, and the lot of our robbers" It is the destruction of Asshur that the prophet is predicting here (as in ch. xiv. 24-27, xxix. 5-8, etc.), though not pf Asshur as Asshur, but of Asshur as the imperial kingdom, which embraced a multitude of nations (ch. xxii. 6, viii. 9, 10, xiv. 26, xxix. 7, 8) all gathered together under the rule of one will, to make a common attack upon the church of God. The connection between this fourth turn and the third is precisely the same as between ch. viii. 9, 10, and ch. viii. 6-8. The exclamation of woe (hoi) is an expression of pain, as in ch. x. 1; and this is followed by a proclamation of the judgment of wrath. The description of the rolling wave of nations is as pictorial as the well-known Mi inter sese, etc., of the Cyclops in Virgil. " It spreads and stretches out, as if it would never cease to roll, and roar, and surge, and sweep onward in its course" (Drechsler). In the expression "it" (bo) in ver. 13a, the many surging nations are kneaded together, as it were, into one mass. It costs God simply a threatening word; and this mass all flies apart (mimmerchdk like merdcliok, ch. xxiii. 7), and falls into dust, and whirls about in all directions, like the chaff of threshing-floors in high situations, or like dust whirled up by tho storm. The judgment commences in the evening, and rages through the night; and before the morning dawns, the army of nations raised by the imperial power is all destroyed (compare ch. xxix. 7, 8, and the fulfilment in ch. xxxvii. 36). The fact that the oracle concerning Damascus in its fourth stage takes so comprehensive and, so far as Israel is concerned, so promising a form, may be explained on the ground that Syria was the forerunner of Asshur in the attack upon Israel, and that the alliance between Israel and Syria became the occasion of the complications with Asshur. If the substance of the massd Dammesek (the oracle concerning Damascus) had been restricted to the prophecy contained in the name Mahershalal, the element of promise so characteristic of the prophecies against the nations of the world would be entirely wanting. But the shout of triumph, " This is the portion," etc., supplied a terminal point, beyond which the massa could not go without the sacrifice of its unity. We are therefore warranted in regarding ch. xviii. as an independent prophecy, notwithstanding its commencement, which apparently forms a continuation of the fourth strophe of ch. xvii.
The notion that ch. xviii. 4-6 contains an account of the judgment of Jehovah upon Ethiopia is quite an untenable one. The prophet is here predicting the destruction of the army of Sennacherib in his usual way, and in accordance with the actual fulfilment (ch. xxxvii. 36). The view which Hofmann has adopted from the Jewish expositors — namely, that the people so strangely described at the commencement and close of the prophecy is the Israelitish nation — is equally untenable. It is Ethiopia. Taking both these facts together, then, the conclusion to which we are brought is, that the prophet is here foretelling the effect that will be produced upon Ethiopia by the judgment which Jehovah is about to inflict upon Asshur. But it is altogether improbable either that the prophecy falls later than the Assyrian expedition against Egypt (as Schegg supposes), or that the Ethiopian ambassadors mentioned here are despatched to Judah to seek for friendship and aid (as Ewald, Knobel, Meier, and Thenius maintain). The expedition was still impending, and that against Judah was the means to this further end. The ambassadors are not sent to Judah, but carry commands with the most stirring despatch to every province under Ethiopian rule. The Ethiopian kingdom is thrown into the greatest excitement in the face of the approaching Assyrian invasion, and the messengers are sent out to raise the militia. At that time both Egypts were governed by the Ethiopian (or twenty-fifth) dynasty, Sabako the Ethiopian having made himself master of the country on the Lower Nile.1 The king of Egypt who was contemporaneous with Sennacherib was the Tlrhaka of the Old Testament, the Tarakos of Manetho, 1 See Brugsch, Histoire (TEgypte, i. (1859) 244-246.
and the Tearkon of Strabo, — a great conqueror, according to Megasthenes, like Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar, who had carried his conquests as far as the Pillars of Hercules (Strabo, xv. 1, 6). This explains the strangely sounding description given in vers. 2 and 7 of the Ethiopian people, which had the universal reputation in antiquity of gigantic strength and invincibility. It is impossible to determine the length of time that intervened between the composition of the prophecy and the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, in which the Assyrian army commenced the expedition across Judah to Egypt. The event which the prophecy foretells — namely, that the judgment of Jehovah upon Asshur would be followed by the submission of Ethiopia to Jehovah — was only partially and provisionally fulfilled (2 Chron. xxxii. 23). And there is nothing to surprise us in this, inasmuch as in the prophecies delivered before the destruction of Assyria the latter always presented itself to the mind of the prophet as the kingdom of the world; and consequently the prophecy had also an eschatological feature, which still remained for a future and remote fulfilment.
The prophecy commences with hoi, which never signifies heus, but always vce (woe). Here, however, it differs from ch. xvii. 12, and is an expression of compassion (cf. Isa. lv. 1, Zech. ii. 10) rather than of anger; for the fact that the mighty Ethiopia is oppressed by the still mightier Asshur, is a humiliation which Jehovah has prepared for the former. Vers. 1, 2a; u Woe to the land of the whirring of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Cush, that sends ambassadors into the sea and in boats of papyrus over the face of the waters? The land of Cush commences, according to Ezek. xxix. 10 (cf. xxx. 6), where Upper Egypt ends. The Seveneh {Aswan), mentioned by Ezekiel, is the boundary-point at which the Nile enters Mizraim proper, and which is still a depot for goods coming from the south down the Nile. The nahare-Cush (rivers of Cush) are chiefly those that surround the Cushite Seba (Gen. x. 7). This is the name given to the present Sennar, the Meroitic island which is enclosed between the White and Blue Nile (the Astapos of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el-Abyad, and the Astaboras of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el-Azrak). According to the latest researches, more especially those of Speke, the White Nile, which takes its rise in the Lake of Nyanza, is the chief source of the Nile. The latter, and the Blue Nile, whose confluence (makran) with it takes place in lat. 15° 25', are fed by many larger or smaller tributary streams (as well as mountain torrents); the Blue Nile even more than the Nile proper. And this abundance of water in the land to the south of Seveneli, and still farther south beyond Seba (or Meroe), mi^ht very well have been known to the prophet as a general fact. The land " beyond the rivers of Cush" is the land bounded by the sources of the Nile, i.e. (including Ethiopia itself in the stricter sense of the word) the south land under Ethiopian rule that lay still deeper in the heart of the country, the land of its African auxiliary tribes, whose names (which probably include the later Nubians and Abyssinians), as given in 2 Chron. xii. 3, Nahum iii. 9, Ezek. xxx. 5, Jer. xlvi. 9, suppose a minuteness of information which has not yet been attained by modern research. To this Ethiopia, which is designated by its farthest limits (compare Zeph. iii. 10, where Wolff, in his book of Judith, erroneously supposes Media to be intended as the Asiatic Cush), the prophets give the strange name of eretz tziltzal cendphaim. This has been interpreted as meaning " the land of the wings of an army with clashing arms" by Gesenius and others; but cendphaim does not occur in this sense, like 'agappim in Ezekiel. Others render it " the land of the noise of waves " (Umbreit); but cendphaim cannot be used of waters except in such a connection as ch. viii. 8. Moreover, tziltzal is not a fitting onomatopoetic word either for the clashing of arms or the noise of waves. Others, again, render it " the land of the double shadow " (Grotius, Vitringa, Knobel, and others); but, however appropriate this epithet might be to Ethiopia as a tropical land, it is very hazardous to take the word in a sense which is not sustained by the usage of the language; and the same objection may be brought against Luzzatto's " land of the far-shadowing defence." Shelling has also suggested another objection, — namely, that the shadow thrown even in tropical lands is not a double one, falling northwards and southwards at the same time, and therefore that it cannot be figuratively described as double-winged. Tziltzal cendphaim is the buzzing of the wings of insects, with which Egypt and Ethiopia swarmed on account of the climate and the abundance of water:?TO?, constr. W?Xf tinnitus, stridor, a primary meaning from which the other three meanings of the word — cymbal, harpoon (a whirring dart), and grasshopper1 — are derived. In ch. vii. 18 the forces of Egypt are called " the fly from the end of the rivers of Egypt." Here Egypt and Ethiopia are called the land of the whirring of wings, inasmuch as the prophet had in his mind, under the designation cf swarms of insects, the motley swarms of different people included in this great kingdom that were so fabulously strange to an Asiatic. Within this great kingdom messengers were now passing to and fro upon its great waters in boats of papyrus (on gome, Copt, 'gome, Talm. garni, see at Job viii. 11), Greek f3apl8e<; TrairvpLvcu (ftapk, from the Egyptian bari, ball, a barque). In such vessels as these, and with Egyptian tackle, they went as far as the remote island of Taprobane. The boats were made to clap together (plicatiles), so as to be carried past the cataracts (Parthey on Plutarch, de hide, pp. 198-9). And it is to these messengers in their paper boats that the appeal of the prophet is addressed.
He sends them home; and what they are to say to their own people is generalized into an announcement to the whole earth. Vers. 2b, 3. " Go, sioift messengers, to the people stretched out and polished, to the terrible people far away on the other side, to the nation of command upon command and treading down, whose land rivers cut through. All ye possessors of the globe and inhabitants of the earth, when a banner rises on the mountains, look ye; and when they blow the trumpets, hearken /" We learn from what follows to what it is that the attention of Ethiopia and all the nations of the earth is directed: it is the destruction of Asshur by Jehovah. They are to attend, when they observe the two signals, the banner and the trumpet-blast; these are decisive moments. Because Jehovah was about to deliver the world from the conquering might of Assyria, against which the Ethiopian kingdom was now summoning all the means of selfdefence, the prophet sends the messengers home. Their own
1 Schroring supposes tziltzal to be the scarabxus sacer (Linn.); but it would be much more natural, if any particular animal is intended, to think of the tzaltzalya, as it is called in the language of the Gallas, the tzetze in the Betschuana language, the most dreaded diptera of the interior of Africa, a species of glossina which attacks all the larger mammalia (though not men). Vid. Hartmann, NaturgescJiicJitlkh-medic. Skizze der Nillcinder, Ahtli. i. p. 205.
people, to which he sends them home, are elaborately described. They are memusshdk, stretched out, i.e. very tall (LXX. Wvos ftereaypov), just as the Sabaeans are said to have been in ch. xlv. 14. They are also mordt = m'mordt (Ges. § 52, Anm. 6), smoothed, politusy i.e. either not disfigured by an ugly growth of hair, or else, without any reference to depilation, but rather with reference to the bronze colour of their skin, smooth and shininowith healthy freshness. The description which Herodotus gives of the Ethiopians, fjueyio-Toi icai icdWicrToi dvOptoiroav ttclvtwv Cm. 20), quite answers to these first two predicates. They are still further described, with reference to the wide extent of their kingdom, which reached to the remotest south, as " the terrible nation fiKfjJ] SWIP," i.e. from this point, where the prophet meets with the messengers, farther and farther off (compare 1 Sam. xx. 21, 22, but not 1 Sam. xviii. 9, where the expression has a chronological meaning, which would be less suitable here, where everything is so pictorial, and which is also to be rejected, because fcttirjp cannot be equivalent to Kin "lBWO; cf. Nahum ii. 9). We may see from ch. xxviii. 10, 13, what kdv (kdv, with connecting accusatives and before makkeph), a measuring or levelling line, signifies, when used by the prophet with the reduplication which he employs here: it is a people of " command upon command," — that is to say, a commanding nation; (according to Ewald, Knobel, and others, kdv is equivalent to the Arabic kuwe, strength, a nation of double or gigantic strength.) UA people of treading down" (sc. of others; nfbiisah is a second genitive to goi), i.e. one which subdues and tramples down wherever it appears. These are all distinctive predicates — a nation of imposing grandeur, a ruling and conquering nation. The last predicate extols its fertile land. KT3 we take not in the sense of diripere, or as equivalent to bdzaz, like DKD, to melt, equivalent to mdsas, but in the sense of findere, i.e. as equivalent to VT3, like KB3, to sip = ypa. For it is no praise to say that a land is scoured out, or washed away, by rivers. Bottcher, who is wrong in describing this chapter as " perhaps the most difficult in the whole of the Old Testament," very aptly compares with it the expression used by Herodotus (ii. 108), icarer firjOrj rj Aiyv7rros. But why this strange elaboration instead of the simple name? There is a divine irony in the fact that a nation so great and glorious, and (though not without reason, considering its natural gifts) so full of self-consciousness, should be thrown into such violent agitation in the prospect of the danger that threatened it, and should be making such strenuous exertions to avert that danger, when Jehovah the God of Israel was about to destroy the threatening power itself in a night, and consequently all the care and trouble of Ethiopia were utterly needless.
The prophet knows for certain that the messengers may go home and announce this act of Jehovah to their own people and to all the world. Vers. 4-6. " For tints hath Jehovah spoken to me: I will be stilly and will observe upon my throne during clear weather in sunshine, during a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. For before the harvest, when the blossom falls off, and the fruit becomes the ripening grape: then ivill He cut off the branches with pruning-hooks; and the tendrils He removes, breaks off. They are left altogether to the birds of prey en the mountains, and to the cattle of the land; and the birds of prey summer thereon, and all the cattle of the land will winter thereon? The prophecy explains itself here, as is very frequently the case, especially with Isaiah; for the literal words of ver. 6 show us unquestionably what it is that Jehovah will allow to develop itself so prosperously under favourable circumstances, and without any interposition on His part, until He suddenly and violently puts an end to the whole, just as it is approaching perfect maturity. It is the might of Assyria. Jehovah quietly looks on from the heavenly seat of His glorious presence, without disturbing the course of the thing intended. This quietness, however, is not negligence, but, as the hortative expressions show, a wellconsidered resolution. The two Caphs in ver. 4 are not comparative, but indicate the time. He remains quiet whilst there is clear wreather with sunshine (y# indicating continuance, as in Jer. viii. 18, 1 Sam.;xiv. 32), and whilst there is a dew-cloud in the midst of that warmth, which is so favourable for the harvest, by causing the plants that have been thoroughly heated in the day and refreshed at night by the dew, to shoot up and ripen with rapidity and luxuriance. The plant thought of, as ver. 5 clearly shows, is the vine. By Upline kdtzir (before the harvest) we are either to understand the period just before the wheat-harvest, which coincides with the flowering of the grape; or, since Isaiah uses kdtzir for bdtzir in ch. xvi. 9, the time at the close of the summer, immediately preceding the vintage. Here again the Caph indicates the time. When the blossoming is over, so that the flower fades away, and the fruit that has set becomes a ripening grape (boser, as in Job xv. 33, not in the sense of labruscum, but of omphax; and gdmal, maturescere, as in Num. xvii. 23, maturare), He cuts off the branches (zalzallim, from zilzvl, to swing to and fro; compare the Arabic ddliye, a vine-branch, from dald, to hang long and loose) upon which the nearly ripened grapes are hanging, and removes or nips off1 the tendrils (netishoth, as in Jer. v. 10, from ndtash, to stretch far out; niphal, to twist about a long way, ch. xvi. 8, compare Jer. xlviii. 32); an intentional asyndeton with a pictorial sound. The words of Jehovah concerning Himself have here passed imperceptibly into words of the prophet concerning Jehovah. The ripening grapes, as ver. 6 now explains, are the Assyrians, who were not far from the summit of their power; the fruitbranches that are cut off and nipped in pieces are their corpses, which are now through both summer and winter the food of swarms of summer birds, as well as of beasts of prey that remain the whole winter through. This is the act of divine judgment, to which the approaching exaltation of the banner, and the approaching blast of trumpets, is to call the attention of the people of Ethiopia.
What effect this act of Jehovah would have upon the Ethiopian kingdom, if it should now take place, is described in ver. 7: " At that time will there be offered as a homage to Jehovah of hosts a nation stretched out and polished, and from a terrible people, far away on the other side; a nation of command upon command and treading down, whose land rivers cut through, at the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, the mountain of Zion." Dy (a people), at the commencement, cannot possibly be equivalent to EVp (from a people). If it were taken in this sense, it would be necessary to make the correction accordingly,
1 jnn = jnn with a pausal sharpening of the tzere, which is lengthened by the tone, from tdzaz or tlz in post-biblical JJebrew, to knock off, knock to pieces, or weaken (compare tdshash). On this change of vowels in pause, see at Gen. xvii. 14; and compare Olshausen, § 91, d. For an example of the post-biblical use of the word, vid. b. Sanhedrin 102a, 11 like two sticks hammattlzoth," i.e. one of which " hits the other in two" (hittiz, apparently from tuz or tiz, like hinnlach from nuacli).
as Knobel has done; but the important parallels in ch. Ixvi. 20 and Zeph. iii. 10 are against this. Consequently 'am and goi (people and nation) must be rendered as subjects; and the \o in B#p must be taken as partitive. Ethiopia is offered, i.e. offers itself, as a free-will offering to Jehovah, impelled irresistibly by the force of the impression made by the mighty act of Jehovah, or, as it is expressed in " the Titan among the Psalms " (Ps. lxviii. 32, probably a Davidic psalm of the time of Hezekiah), " there come kingdoms of splendour out of Egypt; Cush rapidly stretches out its hands to Elohim." In order that the greatness of this spiritual conquest might be fully appreciated, the description of this strangely glorious people is repeated here; and with this poetical rounding, the prophecy itself, which was placed as a kind of overture before the following massa Mitzraim when the prophet collected the whole of his prophecies together, is brought to a close.
The three prophecies in ch. xviii. xix. and xx. really form a trilogy. The first (ch. xviii.), which, like ch. i., the introduction to the whole, is without any special heading, treats in language of the sublimest pathos of Ethiopia. The second (ch. xix.) treats in a calmer and more descriptive tone of Egypt. The third (ch. xx.) treats of both Egypt and Ethiopia in the style of historic prose. The kingdom to which all three prophecies refer is one and the same, viz. the Egypto-Ethiopian kingdom; but whilst ch. xviii. refers to the ruling nation, ch. xix. treats of the conquered one, and ch. xx. embraces both together. The reason why such particular attention is given to Egypt in the prophecy, is that no nation on earth was so mixed up with the history of the kingdom of God, from the patriarchal times downwards, as Egypt was. And because Israel, as the law plainly enjoined upon it, was never to forget that it had been sheltered for a long time in Egypt, and there had grown into a great nation, and had received many benefits; whenever prophecy has to speak concerning Egypt, it is quite as earnest in its promises as it is in its threats. And thus the massa of Isaiah falls into two distinct halves, viz. a threatening one (vers. 1-15), and a promising one (vers. 18-25); whilst between the judgment and the salvation (in vers. 16 and 17) there stands the alarm, forming as it were a connecting bridge between the two. And just in proportion as the coil of punishments is unfolded on the one hand by the prophet, the promise is also unfolded in just as many stages on the other; and moving on in ever new grooves, rises at length to such a height, that it breaks not only through the limits of contemporaneous history, but even through those of the Old Testament itself, and speaks in the spiritual language of the world-embracing love of the New Testament.
The oracle opens with a short introduction, condensing the whole of the substance of the first half into a few weighty words, — an art in which Isaiah peculiarly excelled. In this the name of Egypt, the land without an equal, occurs no less than three times. Ver. 1. " Behold, Jehovah rideth upon a light cloud, and cometh to Egypt; and the idols of Egypt shake before Him, and the heart of Egypt melt-eth within it" Jehovah rides upon clouds when He is about to reveal Himself in His judicial majesty (Ps* xviii. 11); and in this instance He rides upon a light cloud, because it will take place rapidly. The word hal signifies both light and swift, because what is light moves swiftly; and even a light cloud, which is light because it is thin, is comparatively 2y, i.e. literally dense, opaque, or obscure. The idols of Egypt shake Qpfi, as in ch. vi. 4, vii. 2), because Jehovah comes over them to judgment (cf. Ex. xii. 12; Jer. xlvi. 25; Ezek. xxx. 13): they must shake, for they are to be thrown down; and their shaking for fear is a shaking to their fall (JM, as in ch. xxiv. 20, xxix. 9). The Vav apodosis in WJV (prcet. cons, with the torre upon the last syllable) connects together the cause and effect, as in ch. vi. 7. — In what judgments the judgment will be fulfilled, is now declared by the majestic Judge Himself. Vers. 2-4. "And I spur Egypt against Egypt: and they go to- war, every one with his brother, and every one with his neighbour; city against city, kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt is emptied out within it: and I swallow up its ready counsel; and they go to the idols to inquire, and to the mutterers, and to the oracle-spirits, and to the soothsayers. And I slmt up Egypt in the hand of a hard rule; and a fierce king will reign over them, saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts" Civil war will rage in Egypt (on sicsec, see at ch. ix. 10).
The people once so shrewd are now at their wits' end; their spirit is quite poured out (ni?^, with the reduplication removed, for nf523, according to Ges. § 68, Anm. 11, — as, for example, in Gen. xi. 7, Ezek. xli. 7), so that there is nothing left of either intelligence or resolution. Then (and this is also part of the judgment) they turn for help, in counsel and action, where no help is to be found, viz. to their u nothings " of gods, and the manifold demoniacal arts, of which Egypt could boast of being the primary seat. On the names of the practisers of the black art, see ch. viii. 19; 'ittim, the mutterers, is from 'dtat, to squeak (used of a camel-saddle, especially when new), or to rumble (used of an empty stomach): see Lane's Lexicon. But all this is of no avail: Jehovah gives them up (">2p, syn. "i^pn, avyKXelew) to be ruled over by a hard-hearted and cruel king. The prophecy does not relate to a foreign conqueror, so as to lead us to think of Sargon (Knobel) or Cambyses (Luzzatto), but to a native despot. In comparing the prophecy with the fulfilment, we must bear in mind that ver. 2 relates to the national revolution which broke out in Sais, and resulted in the overthrow of the Ethiopian rule, and to the federal dodekarchy to which the rising of the nation led. tt Kingdom against kingdom:" this exactly suits those twelve small kingdoms into which Egypt was split up after the overthrow of the Ethiopian dynasty in the year 695, until Psammelichiis, the dodekarch of Sais, succeeded in the year 670 in comprehending these twelve states once more under a single monarchy. This very Psammetichus (and the royal house of Psammetichus generally) is the hard ruler, the reckless despot. He succeeded in gaining the battle at Momemphis, by which he established himself in the monarchy, through having first of all strengthened himself with mercenary troops from Ionia, Caria, and Greece. From his time downwards, the true Egyptian character was destroyed by the admixture of foreign elements;l and this occasioned the emigration of a large portion of the military caste to Meroe. The Egyptian nation very soon came to feel how oppressive this new dynasty was, when Necho (616-597), the son and successor of Psammetichus, renewed
1 See Leo, Universalgescli. i. 152, and what Brugsch says in his Histoirt (TEtfypte, i. 250, with regard to the brusques changements that Egypt endured under Psammetichus.
the project of Ramses-Miamun, to construct a Suez canal, and tore away 1*20,000 of the natives of the land from their homes, sending them to wear out their lives in forced labour of the most wearisome kind. A revolt on the part of the native troops, who had been sent against the rising Cyrene, and driven back into the desert, led to the overthrow of Hophra, the grandson of Necho (570), and put an end to the hateful government of the family of Psammetichus.
The prophet then proceeds to foretell another misfortune which was coming upon Egypt: the Nile dries up, and with this the fertility of the land disappears. Vers. 5-10. " And the waters will dry up from the sea, and the river is parched and dried. And the arms of the river spread a stench; the channels of Matzor become shallow and parched: reed and rush shrivel up. The meadows by the Nile, on the border of the Nile, and every corn-field of the Nile, dries up, is scattered, and disappears. And the fishermen groan, and all who throw draw-nets into the Nile lament, and they that spread out the net upon the face of the icaters languish away. And the workers of fine combed flax are confounded, and the weavers of cotton fabrics. And the pillars of the land are ground to powder; all that work for wages are troubled in mind." In ver. 5 the Nile is called yam (a sea), just as Homer calls it Oceanus, which, as Diodorus observes, was the name given by the natives to the river (Egypt, oham). The White Nile is called bahr el-abyad (the White Sea), the Blue Nile bahr eUazrak, and the combined waters bahr en-Nil, or, in the language of the Besharin, as here in Isaiah, yam. And in the account of the creation, in Gen. i., yammim is the collective name for great seas and rivers. But the Nile itself is more like an inland sea than a river, from the point at which the great bodies of water brought down by the Blue Nile and the White Nile, which rises a few weeks later, flow together; partly on account of its great breadth, and partly also because of its remaining stagnant throughout the dry season. It is not till the tropical rains commence that the swelling river begins to flow more rapidly, and the yam becomes a ndhdr. But when, as is here threatened, the Nile sea and Nile river in Upper Egypt sink together and dry up {nisshHhu, niphai either of shdthath = ndshattu, to set, to grow shallow; or more probably from ndshath, to dry up, since ch. xli. 17 and Jer. li. 30 warrant the assumption that there was such a verb), the mouths (or arms) of the Nile (nehdroth), which flow through the Delta, and the many canals (yeorim), by which the benefits of the overflow are conveyed to the Nile valley, are turned into stinking puddles (ttWTKiT, a hiphil, half substantive half verbal, unparalleled elsewhere,1 signifying to spread a stench; possibly it may have been used in the place of T^Tn? from njTK or njTN, stinking, to which a different application was given in ordinary use). In all probability it is not without intention that Isaiah uses the expression Mdtzor, inasmuch as he distinguishes Mdtzor from Pathros (ch. xi. 11), i.e. Lower from Upper Egypt (Egyp. sa-het, the low land, and sa-res, the higher land), the two together being Mitzrayim. And yeorim (by the side of nehdroth) we are warranted in regarding as the name given of the Nile canals. The canal system in Egypt and the system of irrigation are older than the invasion of the Hyksos (vid. Lepsius, in Herzog's Cyclopaedia). On the other hand, ye' or in ver. 7 (where it is written three times plene, as it is also in ver. 8) is the Egyptian name of the Nile generally (yaro).2 It is repeated emphatically three times, like Mitzrayim in ver. 1. Parallel to mizra, but yet different from it, is ^"W, from rny? to be naked or bare, which signifies, like many derivatives of the synonymous word in Arabic, either open spaces, or as here, grassy tracts by the water-side, i.e. meadows. Even the meadows, which lie close to the water-side {pi = ora, as in Ps. cxxxiii. 2, not ostium), and all the fields, become so parched, that they blow away like ashes. Then the three leading sources from which Egypt derived its maintenance all fail: — viz. the fishing; the linen manufacture, which supplied dresses for the priests and bandages for mummies; and the cotton manufacture, by which all who were not priests were supplied
1 It is not unparalleled as a hipTi. denom. (compare YrWI, on\ Wi to press, Job xxiv. 11, Talm. JJ^nn, to become worm-eaten, and many others of a similar kind); and as a mixed form (possibly a mixture of two readings, as Gesenius and Bbttcher suppose, though it is not necessarily so), the language admitted of much that was strange, more especially in the vulgar tongue, which found its way here and there into written composition.
2 From the fact that aur in old Egyptian means the Nile, we may explain the $>povopu> %toi Nsfoo;, with which the Later cuius of Eratosthenes closes.
With clothes. The Egyptian fishery was very important. In the Berlin Museum there is an Egyptian micmoreth with lead attached. The mode of working the flax by means of serikdh, pectinatio (compare pi"iD, wool-combs, Kelim, 12, 2), is shown on the monuments. In the Berlin Museum there are also Egyptian combs of this description with which the flax was carded. The productions of the Egyptian looms were celebrated in antiquity: chordy, lit. white cloth (singularet. with the old termination ay), is the general name for cotton fabrics, or the different kinds of byssus that were woven there (compare the ftuaaLvcDv oOoviwv of the Rosetta inscription). All the castes, from the highest to the lowest, are now thrown into agonies of despair. The shdthoth (an epithet that was probably suggested by the thought of shethi, a warp, Syr. 'ashti, to weave, through the natural association of ideas), i.e. the "pillars" of the land (with a suffix relating to Mitzrayim, see at ch. iii. 8, and construed as a masculine as at Ps. xi. 3), were the highest castes, who were the direct supporters of the state edifice; and "Dj? W cannot mean the citizens engaged in trade, i.e. the middle classes, but such of the people as hired themselves to the employers of labour, and therefore lived upon wages and not upon their own property ("Ot? is used here as in Prov. xi. 18, and not as equivalent to 13D, the dammers-up of the water for the purpose of catching the fish, like H«p?, Kelim, 23, 5).
The prophet now dwells upon the punishment which falls upon the pillars of the land, and describes it in vers. 11-13: " The princes of Zoan become mere fools, the wise counsellors of Pharaoh; readiness in counsel is stupified. How can ye say to Pharaoh, I am a son of wise men, a son of kings of the olden time? Where are they then, thy wise men? Let them announce to thee, and know what Jehovah of hosts hath determined concerning Egypt. The princes of Zoan have become fools, the princes of Memphis are deceived; and they have led Egypt astray who are the corner-stone of its castes." The two constructives ^ '•con do not stand in a subordinate relation, but in a co-ordinate one (see at Ps. lxxviii. 9 and Job xx. 17; compare also 2 Kings xvii. 13, Jceri), viz. "the wise men, counsellors of Pharaoh," 1 so that the second noun is the explanatory per-
1 Pharaoh does not mean " the king " (equivalent to the Coptic v-avpo), but according to Brugsch, "great house" (Upper Egyptian peraa, Lower mutative of the first. Zoan is the Tanis of primeval times (Num. xiii. 22), which was situated on one of the arms through which the Nile flows into the sea (viz. the ostium Taniticum), and was the home from which two dynasties sprang. Noph {per aphoer. = Menoph, contracted into Moph in Hos. ix. 6) is Memphis, probably the seat of the Pharaohs in the time of Joseph, and raised by Psammetichus into the metropolis of the whole kingdom. The village of Mitrahenni still stands upon its ruins, with the Serapeum to the north-west.1 Consequently princes of Zoan and Memphis are princes of the chief cities of the land, and of the supposed primeval pedigree; probably priest-princes, since the wisdom of the Egyptian priest was of world-wide renown (Herod, ii. 77, 260), and the oldest kings of Egypt sprang from the priestly caste. Even in the time of Hezekiah, when the military caste had long become the ruling one, the priests once more succeeded in raising one of their own number, namely Sethos, to the throne of Sais. These magnates of Egypt, with their wisdom, would be turned into fools by the history of Egypt of the immediate future; and (this is the meaning of the sarcastic " how can ye say") they would no longer trust themselves to boast of their hereditary priestly wisdom, or their royal descent, when giving counsel to
Egyptian plier-ao; vid. aus dem Orient, i. 36). Lauth refers in confirmation of this to Horapollo, i. 62, otpig x.oe.1 oiko; ftiyxg h psaa uvrov ar,^.otivit (S*ai"Kioi, and explains this Coptic name for a king from that of the Ovpoctog (fixatTitaKo;) upon the head of the kiDg, which was a specifically regal sign.
1 "What the lexicons say with reference to Zoan and Noph needs rectifying. Zoan (old Egyptian Zane, with the hieroglyphic of striding legs, Copt. 'Gane) points back to the radical idea of pelli or fugere; and according to the latest researches, to which the Turin papyrus No. 112 has led, it is the same as Kvctptg ("Aftupig), which is said to mean the house of flight (Ha-uai-e), and was the seat of government under the Hykshos. But Memphis is not equivalent to Ma-m-ptah, as Champollion assumed (although this city is unquestionably sometimes called Ha-ka-ptah, house of the essential being of Ptah); it is rather equivalent to Men-nefer (with the hieroglyphic of the pyramids), place of the good (see Brugsch, Histoire d'Egypte, i. 17). In the later language it is called pa-nuf or ma-nuf, which has the same meaning (Copt, nvji, good). Hence Moph is the contraction of the name commencing with ma, and Noph the abbreviation of the name commencing with ma or pa by the rejection of the local prefix; for we cannot for a moment think of Nup, which is the second district of Upper Egypt (Brugsch, Geogr. i. 66). Noph is undoubtedly Memphis.
Pharaoh. They were the corner-stone of the shebdtim, i.e. of the castes of Egypt (not of the districts or provinces, vo/iot); but instead of supporting and defending their people, it is nowvery evident that they only led them astray. Win? as the Masora on ver. 15 observes, has no Vav cop.
In vers. 14 and 15 this state of confusion is more minutely described: " Jehovah hath poured a spirit of giddiness into the heart of Egypt, so that they have led Egypt astray in all its doing, as a drunken man ivandereth about in his vomit. And there does not occur of Egypt any work, which worked, of head and tail, palm-branch and rush" The spirit which God pours out (as is also said elsewhere) is not only a spirit of salvation, but also a spirit of judgment. The judicial, penal result which lie produces is here called EW, which is formed from W (root ty, to curve), and is either contracted from D*W, or points back to a supposed singular nyw (vid. Ewald, § 158, £). The suffix in Vkirbdh points to Egypt. The divine spirit of judgment makes use of the imaginary wisdom of the priestly caste, and thereby plunges the people, as it were, into the giddiness of intoxication. The prophet employs the hiphil Win to denote the carefully considered actions of the leaders of the nation, and the niphal nyrti to denote the constrained actions of a drunken man, who has lost all self-control. The nation has been so perverted by false counsels and hopes, that it lies there like a drunken man in his own vomit, and gropes and rolls about, without being able to find any way of escape. " No work that worked," i.e. that averted trouble (n;^y is as emphatic as in Dan. viii. 24), was successfully carried out by any one, either by the leaders of the nation or by the common people and their flatterers, either by the upper classes or by the mob.
The result of all these plagues, which were coming upon Egypt, would be fear of Jehovah and of the people of Jehovah. Vers. 16, 17. " In that day will the Egyptians become like women, and tremble and be alarmed at the swinging of the hand of Jehovah of hosts, which He sets in motion against it. And the land of Judah becomes a shuddering for Egypt; as often as they mention this against Egypt, it is alarmed, because of the decree of Jehovah of hosts, that He suspendeth over it." The swinging (tenuphdh) of the hand (ch. xxx. 32) points back to the foregoing judgments, which have fallen upon Egypt blow after blow. These humiliations make the Egyptians as soft and timid as women (tert. compar., not as in ch. xiii. 7, 8, xxi. 3, 4). And the sacred soil of Judah (^addmdh, as in ch. xiv. 1, 2, xxxii. 13), which Egypt has so often made the scene of war, throws them into giddiness, into agitation at the sight of terrors, whenever it is mentioned ("i^N?3, cf. 1 Sam. ii. 13, lit. " whoever," equivalent to " as often as any one," Ewald, § 337, 3, /; Njn is written according to the Aramaean form, with Aleph for He, like *OT in Num. xi. 20, Krnjj in Ezek. xxxvii. 31, compare K?3, Ezek. xxxvi. 5, and similar in form to nan in ch. it. 5).
The author of the plagues is well known to them, their faith in the idols is shaken, and the desire arises in their heart to avert fresh plagues by presents to Jehovah.
At first there is only slavish fear; but there is the beginning of a turn to something better. Ver. 18. " In that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt speaking the language of Canaan, and swearing to Jehovah of hosts: 'Ir ha-Heres will one be called" Five cities are very few for Egypt, which was completely covered with cities; but this is simply a fragmentary commencement of Egypt's future and complete conversion. The description given of them, as beginning to speak the language of Canaan, i.e. the sacred language of the worship of Jehovah (comp. Zeph. iii. 9), and to give themselves up to Jehovah with vows made on oath, is simply a periphrastic announcement of the conversion of the five cities.? y?BO (different from 2 JJ3SW, ch. lxv. 16, as ch. xlv. 23 clearly shows) signifies to swear to a person, to promise him fidelity, to give one's self up to him. One of these five will be called <Ir ha-Heres. As this is evidently intended for a proper name, la'echdth does not mean unicuique, as in Judg. viii. 18 and Ezek. i. 6, but uni. It is a customary thing with Isaiah to express the nature of anything under the form of some future name (vid. ch. iv. 3, xxxii. 5, Ixi. 6, Ixii. 4). The name in this instance, therefore, must have a distinctive and promising meaning. But what does *lr ha-Heres mean I The Septuagint has changed it into irokis aaeBe/c, equivalent to eIr hazzedek (city of righteousness), possibly in honour of the temple in the Heliopolitan nomos, which was founded under Ptolemaeus Philometor about 160 B.C., during the Syrian reign of terror, by Onias iv., son of the high priest Onias in., who emigrated to Egypt.1 Maurer in his Lexicon imagines that lie lias found the true meaning, when he renders it "city of rescue;" but the progressive advance from the meaning "to pull off" to that of "setting free" cannot be established in the case of the verb haras; in fact, haras does not mean to pull off or pull out, but to pull down. JIt'res cannot have any other meaning in Hebrew than that of " destruction." But as this appears unsuitable, it is more natural to read 'Ir ha-cheres (which is found in some codices, though in opposition to the Masora2). This is now generally rendered "city of protection" (Rosenmuller, Ewald, Knobel, and Meier), as being equivalent to an Arabic word signifying diviiiitus protecta. But such an appeal to the Arabic is contrary to all Hebrew usage, and is always a very precarious loophole. 'Ir ha-cheres would mean " city of the sun" (cheres as in Job ix. 7 and Judg. xiv. 18), as the Talmud in the leading passage concerning the Onias temple (in b. Menahoth 110a) thinks that even the received reading may be understood in accordance with Job ix. 7, and says " it is a description of the sun." " Sun-city" was really the name of one of the most celebrated of the old Egyptian cities, viz. Heliopolis, the city of the sun-god Ra, which was situated to the north-east of Memphis, and is called On in other passages of the Old Testament. Ezekiel (xxx. 17) alters this into Avert, for the purpose of branding the idolatry of the city.3 But this alteration of the well-attested text is a mistake; and the true explanation is, that Ir-haheres is simply used with a play upon the name Ir-hacheres. This is the explanation given by the Targum: " Heliopolis, wdiose future fate will be destruction." But even if the name is intended to have a distinctive and promising meaning, it is impossible to adopt the explanation given by
1 See Frankel on this Egyptian auxiliary temple, in his Monatschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1852, p. 273 sqq.; Herzfeld, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, iii. 460 sqq., 557 sqq.; and Gratz, Geschichte der Juden, iii. 36 sqq.
2 But no Greek codex has the reading <7?oKts dxeptg (see Holmes-Parsons' V. T. Grsecum c. var. led. t. iv. on this passage), as the Complutensian has emended it after the Vulgate (see the Vocabularium Hebr. 37a, belonging to the Complutensian).
3 Heliopolis answers to the sacred name Pe-ra, house of the sun-god (like Pe-Ramesses, house of Kamses), which was a name borne by the city
Luzzatto, "a city restored from the ruins;" for the name points to destruction, not to restoration. Moreover, Heliopolis never has been restored since the time of its destruction, which Strabo dates as far back as the Persian invasion. There is nothing left standing now out of all its monuments but one granite obelisk: they are all either destroyed, or carried away, like the so-called " Cleopatra's Needle," or sunk in the soil of the Nile (Parthey on Plutarch, de Iside, p. 162). This destruction cannot be the one intended. But haras is the word commonly used to signify the throwing down of heathen altars (Judg. vi. 25; 1 Kings xviii. 30, xix. 10, 14); and the meaning of the prophecy may be, that the city which had hitherto been fIr ha-cheres, the chief city of the sun-worship, would become the city of the destruction of idolatry, as Jeremiah prophesies in ch. xliii. 13, " Jehovah will break in pieces the obelisks of the sun-temple in the land of Egypt." Hence Herzf eld's interpretation: " City of demolished Idols" (p. 561). It is true that in this case ha-heres merely announces the breaking up of the old, and does not say what new thing will rise upon the ruins of the old; but the context leaves no doubt as to this new thing, and the one-sided character of the description is to be accounted for from the intentional play upon the actual name of that one city out of the five to which the prophet gives especial prominence. With this interpretation — for which indeed we cannot pretend to find any special confirmation in the actual fulfilment in the history of the church, and, so to speak, the history of missions — the train of thought in the prophet's mind which led to the following groove of promises is a very obvious one. — The allusion to the sun-city, which had become the city of destruction, led to the mazzeboth