A third strophe of this proclamation of punishment is opened here with nnjn, on the ground of the conduct censured. Vers. 8-11. " And now hear this, thou voluptuous one, she who sitteth so securely, who sayeth in her heart, I am it, and none else: I shall not sit a widow, nor experience bereavement of children. And these two will come upon thee suddenly in one day: bereavement of children and widowhood; they come upon thee in fullest measure, in spite of the multitude of thy sorceries, in spite of the great abundance of thy witchcrafts. Thou trustedst in thy ivickedness, saidst, No one seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, they led thee astray; so that thou saidst in thy heart, I am it, and none else. And misfortune cometh upon thee, which thou dost not understand how to charm away: and destruction will fall upon thee, which thou canst not atone for; there will come suddenly upon thee ruin which thou suspectest not." In the surnames given to Babylon here, a new reason is assigned for the judgment, — namely, extravagance, security, and self-exaltation. PI? is an intensive form of ft? (LXX. rpvfcpa). The i of ♦DDK is regarded by Hahn as the same as we meet with in *JW = nx; but this is impossible here with the first person. Kosenmiiller, Ewald, Gesenius, and others, take it as chirek
OOmpaginUy and equivalent to 1W pN, which would only occur in this particular formula. Hitzig supposes it to be the suffix of the word, which is meant as a preposition in the sense of et prater me ultra (nemo); but this nemo would be omitted, which is improbable. The more probable explanation is, that DSX signifies absolute non-existence, and when used as an adverb, " exclusively, nothing but," e.g. *«T?iJ D^N, nothing, the utmost extremity thereof, i.e. only the utmost extremity of it (Num. xxiii. 13; cf. xxii. 35). But it is mostly used with a verbal force, like pN (P.*?), (utique) non est (see ch. xlv. 14); hence *?2K, like *3*K, (utique) non sum. The form in which the presumption of Babylon expresses itself, viz. " I (am it), and I am absolutely nothing further," sounds like self-deification, by the side of similar self-assertion on the part of Jehovah (ch. xlv. 5, 6, xviii. 22; cf. vers. xxi. 14 and ch. xlvi. 9). Nineveh speaks in just the same way in Zeph. ii. 15 (on the secondary character of this passage, see p. 67); compare Martial: " Terrarum Dea gentiumque Roma cui par est nihil et nihil secundum" Babylon also says still further (like the Babylon of the last days in Rev. xviii. 7): "I shall not sit as a widow (viz. mourning thus in solitude, Lam. i. 1, iii. 28; and secluded from the world, Gen. xxxviii. 11), nor experience the loss of children" (orbitatem). She wrould become a widow, if she should lose the different nations, and u the kings of the earth who committed fornication with her " (Rev. xviii. 9); for her relation to her own king cannot possibly be thought of, inasmuch as the relation in wrhich a nation stands to its temporal king is never thought of as marriage, like that of Jehovah to Israel. She would also be a mother bereaved of her children, if war and captivity robbed her of her population. But both of these would happen to her suddenly in one day, so that she would succumb to the weight of the double sorrow. Both of them would come upon her kethummdm (secxmdum integritatem eorum), i.e. so that she would come to learn what the loss of men and the loss of children signified in all its extent and in all its depth, and that in spite of (2, with, equivalent to " notwithstanding," as in ch. v. 25; not " through = on account of," since this tone is adopted for the first time in ver. 10) the multitude of its incantations, and the very great mass (dtsmdh, an inf. noun, as in ch. xxx. 19, lv. 2, used here, not as In ch. xl. 29, in an intensive sense, but, like 'dtsum, as a parallel word to rabh in a numerical sense) of its witchcrafts (chebher, binding by means of incantations, KaTaSecr/jLos). Babylonia was the birth-place of astrology, from which sprang the twelve-fold division of the day, the horoscope and sun-dial (Herod, ii. 109); but it was also the home of magic, which pretended to bind the course of events, and even the power of the gods, and to direct them in whatever way it pleased (Diodorus, ii. 29). Thus had Babylon trusted in her wickedness (ch. xiii. 11)) viz. in the tyranny and cunning by which she hoped to ensure perpetual duration, with the notion that she was exalted above the reach of any earthly calamity. She thought, " None seeth me" (non est videns me), thus suppressing the voice of conscience, and practically denying the omnipotence and omnipresence of God. *3$p (with a verbal suffix, videns me, whereas *N"i in Gen. xvi. 3 signifies videns mei = meus), also written ^N~i, is a pausal form in half pause for *j)*jh (ch. xxix. 15). Tzere passes in pause both into pathach (e.g. ch. xlii. 22), and also, apart from such hithpael forms as ch. xli. 16, into kametz, as in WO*£ (Job xxii. 20, which see). By the " wisdom and knowledge" of Babylon, which had turned her aside from the right way, we are to understand her policy, strategy, and more especially her magical arts, i.e. the mysteries of the Chaldeans, their eV^co/cuot (pcXoaocfyoL (Strabo, xxi. 1, 6). On hovdh (used here and in Ezek. vii. 26, written havvdh elsewhere), according to its primary meaning, " yawning," yaivov, then a yawning depth, yavpa, utter destruction, see at Job xxxvii. 6. n^p signifies primarily a desert, or desolate place, here destruction; and hence the derivative meaning, waste noise, a dull groan. The perfect consec. of the first clause precedes its predicate nyj in the radical form N*3 (Ges, § 147, a). With the parallelism of ^33, it is not probable that Fnn?*, which rhymes with it, is a substantive, in the sense of " from which thou wilt experience no morning dawn" (i.e. after the night of calamity), as Umbreit supposes. The suffix also causes some difficulty (hence the Vulgate rendering, ortum ejus, sc. mali); and instead of Tin, we should expect wn. In any case, shachrdh is a verb, and Hitzig renders it, " which thou wilt not know how to unblacken;" but this privative use of yfilrJier as a word of colour would be without example. It would be better to translate it, " which thou wilt not know how to spy out" (as in ch. xxvi. 9), but better still, u which thou wilt incantitare, and here incantando averruncare). The last relative clause affirms what shachrdh would state, if understood accordins to ch. xxvi. 9: destruction which thou wilt not know, i.e. which will come suddenly and unexpectedly.
Then follows the concluding strophe, which, like the first, announces to the imperial city in a triumphantly sarcastic tone its inevitable fate; whereas the intermediate strophes refer rather to the sins by which this fate has been brought upon it. Vers. 12-15. " Come near, then, with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy witchcrafts, wherein thou hast laboured, from thy youth: perhaps thou canst profit, perhaps thou wilt inspire terror. Thou art viearied through the multitude of thy consultations; let the dissectors of the heavens come near, then, and save thee, the star-gazers, they who with every new moon bring things to light that will come upon thee. Behold, they have become like stubble: fire has consumed them: there is not a red-hot coal to warm themselves, a hearth-fire to sit before. So is it with thy people, for whom thou hast laboured: thy partners in trade from thy youth, they wander away every one in his own direction; no one who brings salvation to thee." Hitzig and others adopt the simple rendering, *" Persevere, then, with thine enchantments." It is indeed true, that in Lev. xiii. 5 3 ipj? signifies " to remain standing by anything," i.e. to persevere with it, just as in Ezek. xiii. 5 it signifies to keep one's standing in anything; in 2 Kings xxiii. 3, to enter upon anything; and in Eccles. viii. 3, to engage in anything; but there is no reason for taking it here in any other sense than in ver. 13. Babylon is to draw near with all the processes of the black art, wherein (12^3^ according to our western mode of expression, equivalent to Bnn *i£;N, Ges. 123, 2*) it had been addicted to abundance of routine from its youth upwards (W* with an auxiliary pathach for *??£); possibly it may be of some use, possibly it will terrify, i.e. make itself so terrible to the approaching calamity, as to cause it to keep off. The prophet now sees in spirit how Babylon draws near, and how it also harasses itself to no purpose; he therefore follows up the ^""Hoy, addressed in pleno to Babylon, with a second challenge commencing with NJTJpJP.
Their astrologers are to draw near, and try that power over the future to which they lay claim, by bringing it to bear at once upon the approaching destruction for the benefit of Babylon. ^W is a singular form connected with a feminine plural suffix, such as we find in Ps. ix. 15, Ezek. xxxv. 11, Ezra ix. 15, connected, with a masculine plural suffix. Assuming the correctness ot the vowel-pointing, the singular appears in such cases as these to have a collective meaning, like the Arabic pi. fractus; for there is no ground to suppose that the Aramaean plural form 'etsdth is used here in the place of the Hebrew. Instead of DW von (which would be equivalent to Y\2T\ "itJW), the keri reads B?P^ T3fy cutters up of the heavens, i.e. planners or dissectors of them, from JidbJiar, dissecare, resecare (compare the rabbinical hdbhdrdh, a syllable, i.e. segmentum vocabuli, and possibly also the talmudic 'ebhdrlm, limbs of a body). The correction proposed by Knobel, viz. clwblfre, from chdbhdr, to know, or be versed in, is unnecessary. Chdzdh V signifies here, as it generally does, to look with pleasure or with interest at anything; hence Luther has rendered it correctly, die Sternkucker (Eng. ver. star-gazers). They are described still further as those who make known with every new moon (lechdddshim, like labb'qdrim, every morning, ch. xxxiii. 2, etc.), things which, etc. 1£WD is used in a partitive sense: out of the great mass of events they select the most important, and prepare a calendar or almanack (aK^viyiaKa in Plutarch) for the state every month. But these very wise men cannot save themselves, to say nothing of others, out of the power of that flame, which is no comforting coal-fire to warm one's self by, no hearth-fin (ch. xliv. 16) to sit in front of, but a devouring, eternal, i.e. peremptory flame (ch. xxxiii. 14). The rendering adopted by Grotius, Vitringa, Lowth, Gesenius, and others, " non supererit pruna ad calendum" is a false one, if only because it is not in harmony with the figure. " Thus shall they be unto thee," he continues in ver. 15, i.e. such things shall be endured to thy disgrace by those about whom thou hast wearied thyself (Trtj = DPia yx). The learned orders of the Chaldeans' had their own quarter, and enjoyed all the distinction and privileges of a priestly caste. What follows cannot possibly be understood as relating to these masters of astrology and witchcraft, as Ewald supposes; for, according to the expression fnntf in ver. 11, they would be called T."!QE\ Moreover, if they became a prey of the flames, and therefore were unable to flee, we should have to assume that they were burned while taking flight (Umbreit). 1T£jb are those who carried on commercial intercourse with the great "trading city" (Ezek. xvii. 4), as Berossos says, " In Babylon there was a great multitude of men of other nations who had settled in Chaldea, and they lived in disorder, like the wild beasts;" compare ^Eschylus, Pers. 52-3, Bapvkcov 8 rj TTo\v-^pvao<; ttcl^iiiktov o%\ov irefiirei. All of these are scattered in the wildest flight, i"i?V"?x E*K, every one on his own side, viz. in the direction of his own home, and do not trouble themselves about Babylon.
This third portion of the trilogy (ch. xlvi. xlvii. xlviii.) stands in the same relation to ch. xlvii., as ch. xlvi. 3 sqq. to ch. xlvi. 1, 2. The prophecy is addressed to the great body of the captives. Vers. 1, 2. "Hear ye this, 0 house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and have flowed out of the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of Jehovah, and extol the God of Israel, not in truth and not in righteousness! For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel, Jehovah of hosts His name" The summons to hear is based upon the Israelitish nationality of those who are summoned, to which they still cling, and upon the relation in which they place themselves to the God of Israel. This gives to Jehovah the right to turn to them, and imposes upon them the duty to hearken to Him. The blame, inserted by the way, points at the same time to the reason for the address which follows, and to the form which it necessarily assumes. " The house of Jacob" is not all Israel, as the following words clearly show, but, as in ch. xlvi. 3, the house of Judah, which shared in the honourable name of Israel, but have flowed out of the waters, i.e. the source of Judah. The summons, therefore, is addressed to the Judaean exiles in Babylon, and that inasmuch as they swear by the name of Jehovah, and remember the God of Israel with praise (Jiizklr V as in Ps. xx. 8), though not in truth and not in righteousness (1 Kings iii. 6; Zech. viii. 8), i.e. without their state of mind (cf. ch. xxxviii. 3, Jer. xxxii, 41) or mode of action corresponding to their confession, so as to prove that it was sincerely and seriously meant. The praise bestowed upon the persons summoned, which is somewhat spoiled by this, is explained in ver. 2; they call themselves after the holy city (this title is applied to Jerusalem both here and in ch. Iii. 1, as well as in the books of Daniel and Nehemiah). We may easily supply here, that the holiness of the city laid an obligation upon its citizens to be holy in their character and conduct. They also relied upon the God of Israel, whose name is Jehovah Zebaoth; and therefore He could require of them the fullest confidence and deepest reverence.
After this summons, and description of those who are summoned, the address of Jehovah begins. Vers. 3-5. " The first I have long ago proclaimed, and it has gone forth out of my mouthy and I caused it to be heard. I carried it out suddenly, and it came to pass. Because I knew that thou art hard, and thy neck an iron clasp, and thy brow of brass; I proclaimed it to thee long ago; before it came to pass, I caused thee to hear it, that thou mighiest not say, My idol has done it, and my graven image and molten image commanded itP The word nijb'ion in itself signifies simply priora; and then, according to the context, it signifies prius facta (ch. xlvi. 9), or prius pro?dicta (ch. xliii, 9), or prius eventura (ch. xli. 22, xlii. 9). In the present passage it refers to earlier occurrences, which Jehovah had foretold, and, when the time fixed for their accomplishment arrived, which He had immediately brought to pass. With a retrospective glance at this, we find plural masc. suffixes (cf. ch. xli. 27) used interchangeably with plural fern. (cf. ver. 7 and ch. xxxviii. 16); the prophet more frequently uses the sing. fern. in this neuter sense (ch. xli, 20, xlii- 23, etc.), and also, though very rarely, the sing. masc. (ch. xlv. 8). On gid, a band, a sinew, but here a clasp (cf. Arab, kaid, a fetter), see Psychology, p. 233. N'chushdh is a poetical equivalent for n'chdsheth, as in ch. xlv. 2. The heathen cravings of Israel, which reached into the captivity, are here presupposed. Hengstenberg is mistaken in his supposition, that the prophet's standpoint is always anterior to the captivity when he speaks in condemnation of idolatry. "We cannot draw any conclusion from the character of the community that returned, with regard to that of the people of the captivity generally. The great mass even of Judali, and still more of Israel, remained behind, and became absorbed into the heathen, to whom they became more and more assimilated. And does not Ezekiel expressly state in ch. xx. 30 sqq., that the golah by the Chaboras defiled themselves with the same abominations of idolatry as their fathers, and that the prevailing disposition was to combine the worship of Jehovah with heathenism, or else to exchange the former altogether for the latter? And we know that it was just the same with the exiles in Egypt, among whom the life and labours of Jeremiah terminated. Wherever the prophet speaks of DWD and DW"i, these names invariably include a tendency or falling away to Babylonian idolatry, to wrhich he describes the exiles as having been addicted, both in ch. lxvi. 17 and elsewhere.
But in order to determine exactly what " the former things" were, which Jehovah had foretold in order that Israel might not ascribe them to this idol or the other, we must add vers. 6-8: a Thou hast heard it, look then at it all; and ye, must ye not confess it? I give thee new things to hear from this time forth, and hidden things, and what thou didst not know. It is created noiv, and not long ago; and thou hast not heard it before, that thou mightest not say, Behold, I knew it. Thou hast neither heard it, nor known it, nor did thine ear open itself to it long ago: for I knew thou art altogether faithless, and thou art called rebellious from the womb? The meaning of the question in ver. 6a is very obvious: they must acknowledge and attest, even though against their will (ch. xliii. 10, xliv. 8), that Jehovah has foretold all that is now confirmed by the evident fulfilment. Consequently the u former things " are the events experienced by the people from the very earliest times (ch. xlvi. 9) down to the present times of Cyrus, and more especially the first half or epoch of this period itself, which expired at the time that formed the prophet's standpoint. And as the object of the prediction was to guard Israel against ascribing to its idols that which had taken place (which can only be understood of events that had occurred in favour of Israel), the " former things" must include the preparation for the redemption of Israel from the Babylonian captivity through the revolution brought to pass by Cyrus. Hence the "new things" will embrace the redemption of Israel with its attendant circumstances, and that not merely on its outward side, but on its spiritual side as well; also the glorification of the redeemed people in the midst of a world of nations converted to the God of Israel, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth; in short, the New Testament aeon (compare DV n*¥J?j LXX. ek hiadrjicr]v yevovs, ch. xlii. 6), with the facts which contribute to its ultimate completion (cf. ch. xlii. 9). The announcement and realization of these absolutely new and hitherto secret things (cf. Rom. xvi. 25) take place from this time forward; Israel has not heard of them "before to-day" (compare DTO, "from this day forward," ch. xliii. 13), that it may not lay claim to the knowledge conveyed to it by prophecy, as something drawn from itself. This thought is carried to a climax in ver. 8 in three correlated sentences commencing with "yea" (gam). nriB signifies patescere here, as in ch. lx. 11 (Ewald, § 120, a). Jehovah had said nothing to them of this before, because it was to be feared that, with their faithlessness and tendency to idolatry, which had run through their entire history, they would only abuse it. This is strange! On the one hand, the rise of Cyrus is spoken of here as predicted from of old, because it belonged to the " former things," and as knowable through prophecy, — a statement which favours the opinion that these addresses were written before the captivity; and, on the other hand, a distinction is drawn between these " former things " and certain " new things " that were intentionally not predicted before the expiration of these " former things," which certainly seems to preclude the possibility of their having been composed before the captivity; since, as Ruetschi observes, if " the older Isaiah had predicted this, he would have acted in direct opposition to Jehovah's design." But in actual fact, the dilemma in which the opponents of the authenticity of these prophecies find themselves, is comparatively worse than this. For the principal objection — namely, that a prophet before the captivity could not possibly have known or predicted anything concerning Cyrus — cannot be satisfactorily removed by attributing these prophecies to a prophet of the time of the captivity, since they expressly and repeatedly affirm that the rise of Cyrus was an event fore-
Known and predicted by the God of prophecy. Now, if it is Isaiah who thus takes his stand directly in the midst of the captivity, we can understand both of these: viz. the retrospective glance at previous prophecies, which issued in the rise of Cyrus that prepared the way for the redemption from Babylon, since, so far as the prophet was concerned, such prophecies as ch. xiii.-xiv. 23, xxi. 1-10, and also ch. xi. 10-12 (Mic. iv. 10), are fused into one with his present predictions; and also the prospective glance at prophecies which are now first to be uttered, and events which are now for the first time about to be accomplished; inasmuch as the revelations contained in these prophecies concerning Israel's pathway through suffering to glory, more especially so far as they grew out of the idea of the " servant of Jehovah," might really be set down as absolutely new to the prophet himself, and never heard of before. Meanwhile our exposition is not affected by the critical question; for even we most firmly maintain, that the prophet who is speaking here has his standpoint in the midst of the captivity, on the boundary line of the condition of suffering and punishment and its approaching termination.
The people now expiating its offences in exile has been from time immemorial faithless and inclined to apostasy; nevertheless Jehovah will save it, and its salvation is therefore an unmerited work of His compassion. Vers. 9-11. " For my name s sake I lengthen out my wrath, and for my praise I hold back towards thee, that I may not cut thee off. Behold, I have refined thee, and not in the manner of silver: I have proved thee in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, for mine own sake 1 accomplish it {for how is it profaned!), and my glory I give not to another." The futures in ver. 9 affirm what Jehovah continually does. He lengthens out His wrath, i.e. He retards its outbreak, and thus shows Himself long-suffering.
root Sanscr. dam, possibly also to dam or damp) for the sake of Israel, that He may not exterminate it utterly by letting it loose, and that for the sake of His name and His praise, which require the carrying out of His plan of salvation, on which the existence of Israel depends. What Israel has hitherto experienced has been a melting, the object of which was not destruction, but testing and refinement. The Beth of t]p33 vb\ is not Beth pretii in the sense of " not to gain silver," or " not so that I should have gained silver as operce pretium" as Umbreit and Ewald maintain (and even Knobel, who explains it however as meaning " in the accompaniment of silver," though in the same sense). Such a thought would be out of place and purposeless here. Nor is Kosenmuller's explanation admissible, viz. " not with silver, i.e. with that force of fire which is necessary for the smelting out of silver." This is altogether unsuitable, because the sufferings inflicted upon Israel did resemble the smelting out of the precious metal (see ch. i. 25). The Beth is rather the Beth essentia, which may be rendered by tanquam, and introduces the accusative predicate in this instance, just as it introduces the nominative predicate in the substantive clause of Job xxiii. 13, and the verbal clause of Ps. xxxix. 7. Jehovah melted Israel, but not like silver (not as men melt silver); the meaning of which is, not that He melted it more severely, i.e. even more thoroughly, than silver, as Stier explains it, but, as the thought is positively expressed in ver. 106, that the afflictions which fell upon Israel served as a smelting furnace (kur as in Deut. iv. 20), It was, however, a smelting of a superior kind, a spiritual refining and testing (bdchar is Aramaic in form, and equivalent to bdclian). The manifestation of wrath, therefore, as these expressions affirm, had a salutary object; and in this very object the intention was involved from the very first, that it should only last for a time. He therefore puts an end to it now for His own sake, i.e. not because He is induced to do so by the merits of Israel, but purely as an act of grace, to satisfy a demand made upon Him by His own holiness, inasmuch as, if it continued any longer, it would encourage the heathen to blaspheme His name, and would make it appear as though He cared nothing for His own honour, which was inseparably bound up with the existence of Israel. The expression here is curt and harsh throughout. In ver. 96, ]yzb and *£N are to be supplied in thought from ver. 9a; and in the parenthetical exclamation, >(T Tpg (iiiphal of tt>n, as in Ezek. xxii. 26), the distant word W (my name), also from ver. 9a. " I will do it" refers to the carrying out of their redemption (cf. ch. xliv. 23).
The prophecy opened with " Hear ye;" and now the second half commences with " Hear." Three times is the appeal made to Israel: Hear ye; Jehovah alone is God, Creator, shaper of history, God of prophecy and of fulfilment. Vers. 12-16. 11 Hearken to me, 0 Jacob, and Israel my called! I am it, 1 first, also I last. My hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: I call to them, and they stand there together. All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear: Who among them hath proclaimed this? He whom Jehovah loveth will accomplish his will upon Babel, and his arm upon the Clialdeans. I, I have spoken, have also called him, have brought him here, and his way prospers. Come ye near to me! Hear ye this! I have not spoken in secret, from the beginning: from the time that it takes place, there am I: and now the Lord Jehovah hath sent me and His Spirit" Israel is to hearken to the call of Jehovah. The obligation to this exists, on the one hand, in the fact that it is the nation called to be the servant of Jehovah (ch. xli. 9), the people of sacred history; and on the other hand, in the fact that Jehovah is Kin (ever since Deut. xxxii. 39, the fundamental clause of the Old Testament credo), i.e. the absolute and eternally unchangeable One, the Alpha and Omega of all history, more especially of that of Israel, the Creator of the earth and heavens (tippach, like natdh elsewhere, equivalent to the Syriac fphach, to spread out), at whose almighty call they stand ready to obey, with all the beings they contain. ^K *Op is virtually a conditional sentence (Ewald, § 357, b). So far everything has explained the reason for the exhortation to listen to Jehovah. A further reason is now given, by His summoning the members of His nation to assemble together, to hear His own self-attestation, and to confirm it: Who among them (the gods of the heathen) has proclaimed this, or anything of the kind? That which no one but Jehovah has ever predicted follows immediately, in the form of an independent sentence, the subject of which is tan« nirp (cf. ch. xli. 24): He whom Jehovah loveth will accomplish his will upon Babylon, and his arm (accomplish it) upon the Chaldeans. ijnn is not an accusative (as Hitzig, Ewald, Stier, and others maintain); for the expression " accomplish his arm" (? Jehovah's or his own) is a phrase that is quite unintelligible, even if taken as zeugmatic; it is rather the nominative of the subject, whilst D^b? = B^f??, like -r^nn = vbnn ]Vth in ver. 9. Jehovah, He alone, is He who has proclaimed such things; He also has raised up in Cyrus the predicted conqueror of Babylon. The prosperity of his career is Jehovah's work. As certainly now as W^ig) in ver. 14 is the word of Jehovah, so certain is it that vN unp is the same. He summons to Himself the members of His nation, that they may hear still further His own testimony concerning Himself. From the beginning He has not spoken in secret (see ch. xlv. 19); but from the time that all which now lies before their eyes — namely, the victorious career of Cyrus — has unfolded itself, He has been there, or has been by (sham, there, as in Prov. viii. 27), to regulate what was coming to pass, and to cause it to result in the redemption of Israel. Hofmann gives a different explanation, viz.: " I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; not from the time when it came to pass (not then for the first time, but long before); I was then (when it occurred)." But the arrangement of the words is opposed to this continued force of the vb, and the accents are opposed to this breaking off of the ^S Dt?, which affirms that, at the time when the revolution caused by Cyrus was preparing in the distance, He caused it to be publicly foretold, and thereby proclaimed Himself the present Author and Lord of what was then occurring. Up to this point Jehovah is speaking; but who is it that now proceeds to say, " And now — namely, now that the redemption of Israel is about to appear (HTI5) being here, as in many other instances, e.g. ch. xxxiii. 10, the turning-point of salvation) — now hath the Lord Jehovah sent me and His Spirit?" The majority of the commentators assume that the prophet comes forward here in his own person, behind Him whom he lias introduced, and interrupts Him. But although it is perfectly true, that in all prophecy, from Deuteronomy onwards, words of Jehovah through the prophet and words of the prophet of Jehovah alternate in constant, and often harsh transitions, and that our prophet has this mark of divine inspiration in common with all the other prophets (cf. ch. L\ii. 5, 6), it must also be borne in mind, that hitherto he has not spoken once objectively of himself, except quite indirectly (rid. ch. xl. 6, xliv. 2Q), to say nothing of actually coming forward in his own person. Whether this takes place further on, more especially in ch. lxi., we will leave for the present; but here, since the prophet has not spoken in his own person before, whereas, on the other hand, these words are followed in ch. xlix. 1 sqq. by an address concerning himself from that servant of Jehovah who announces himself as the restorer of Israel and light of the Gentiles, and who cannot therefore be either Israel as a nation or the author of these prophecies, nothing is more natural than to suppose that the words, u And now hath the Lord," etc., form a prelude to the words of the One unequalled servant of Jehovah concerning Himself which occur in ch. xlix. The surprisingly mysterious way in which the words of Jehovah suddenly pass into those of His messenger, which is only comparable to Zech. ii. 12 sqq., iv. 9 (where the speaker is also not the prophet, but a divine messenger exalted above him), can only be explained in this manner. And in no other way can we explain the ""Wl, which means that, after Jehovah has prepared the way for the redemption of Israel by the raising up of Cyrus, in accordance with prophecy, and by his success in arms, He has sent him, the speaker in this case, to carry out, in a mediatorial capacity, the redemption thus prepared, and that not by force of arms, but in the power of the Spirit of God (ch. xlii. 1; cf. Zech. iv. 6). Consequently the Spirit is not spoken of here as joining in the sending (as Umbreit and Stier suppose, after Jerome and the Targum: the Septuagint is indefinite, /ecu to irvevfia avrov); nor do we ever find the Spirit mentioned in such co-ordination as this (see, on the other hand, Zech. vii. 12, per spiritum suum). The meaning is, that it is also sent, i.e. sent in and with the servant of Jehovah, who is speaking here. To convey this meaning, there was no necessity to write either foWfl *nfc iw or inwn&tt 'onfe, since the expression is just the same as that in ch. xxix. 7, nnY^DI rpa'y; and the Vav may be regarded as the Vav of companionship (Mitschaft, lit. with-ship, as the Arabs call it; see at cK. xlii. 5).
The exhortation is now continued. Israel is to learn the incomparable nature of Jehovah from the work of redemption thus prepared in word and deed. The whole future depends upon the attitude which it henceforth assumes to His commandments. Vers. 17-19. u Thus saith Jehovah, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I, Jehovah thy God, am Be that teacheth thee to do that which profiteth, and leadelh thee by the way that thou shouldst go. 0 that thou hearkenedst to my commandments! then thy peace becomes like the river, and thy righteousness like ivaves of the sea; and thy seed becomes like the sand, and the children of thy body like the grains thereof: its name will not be cut off nor destroyed away from my countenance" Jehovah is Israel's rightful and right teacher and leader. TySro is used in the same sense as in ch. xxx. 5 and xliv. 10, to furnish what is useful, to produce what is beneficial or profitable. The optative $6 is followed, as in ch. lxiii. 19, by the preterite utinam attenderis, the idea of reality being mixed up with the wish. Instead of W in the apodosis, we should expect WJ (so would), as in Deut. xxxii. 29. The former points out the consequence of the wish regarded as already realized. Shalom, prosperity or health, will thereby come upon Israel in such abundance, that it will, as it were, bathe therein; and tseddqdh, rectitude acceptable to God, so abundantly, that it, the sinful one, will be covered by it over and over again. Both of these, shdlom and tseddqdh, are introduced here as a divine gift, not merited by Israel, but only conditional upon that faith which gives heed to the word of God, especially to the word which promises redemption, and appropriates it to itself. Another consequence of the obedience of faith is, that Israel thereby becomes a numerous and eternally enduring nation. The play upon the words in vrriypa ^pi?p is very conspicuous. Many expositors (e.g. Rashi, Gesenius, Hitzig, and Knobel) regard J")iyp as synonymous with BW, and therefore as signifying the viscera, i.e. the beings that fill the heart of the sea; but it is much more natural to suppose that the suffix points back to chol. Moreover, no such metaphorical use of viscera can be pointed out; and since in other instances the feminine plural (such as kendphdth, q'rdnoth) denotes that which is artificial as distinguished from what is natural, it is impossible to see why the interior of the sea, which is elsewhere called lebh (lebhabh, the heart), and indirectly also beten, should be called TOD instead of DTO. To all appearance VTliyp signifies the grains of sand (LXX., Jerome, Targ.); and this is confirmed by the fact that Ni"p (Neo-Heb. nyo numulus) is the Targum word for rnj, and the Semitic root JJD, related to jo 5 po> melted, dissolved, signifies to be soft or tender. The conditional character of the concluding promise has its truth in the word ^2?D. Israel remains a nation even in its apostasy, but fallen under the punishment of kareth (of cutting off), under which individuals perish when they wickedly transgress the commandment of circumcision, and others of a similar kind. It is still a people, but rooted out and swept away from the gracious countenance of God, who no more acknowledges it as His own people.
So far the address is hortatory. In the face of the approaching redemption, it demands fidelity and faith. But in the certainty that such a faithful and believing people will not be wanting within the outer Israel, the prophecy of redemption clothes itself in the form of a summons. Vers. 20-22. " Go out of Babel, flee from Chaldcea with voice of shouting: declare ye, preach ye this, carry it out to the end of the earth! Say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob His servant. And they thirsted not: He led them through dry places; lie caused water to trickle out of rocks for them; He split rocks, and waters gushed out. There is no peace, saith Jehovah, for the wicked," They are to go out of Babylon, and with speed and joy to leave the land of slavery and idolatry far behind. Bdrach does not mean literally to flee in this instance, but to depart with all the rapidity of flight (compare Ex. xiv. 5). And what Jehovah has done to them, is to be published by them over the whole earth; the redemption experienced by Israel is to become a gospel to all mankind. The tidings which are to be sent forth (Nsyin as in ch. xlii. 1), extend from?KJ to the second D*8, which is repeated palindromically. Jehovah has redeemed the nation that He chose to be the bearer of His salvation, amidst displays of love, in which the miracles of the Egyptian redemption have been renewed. This is what Israel has to experience, and to preach, so far as it has remained true to its God. But there is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the reshaim: this is the name given to loose men (for the primary meaning of the verbal root is laxity and looseness), i.e. to those whose inward moral nature is loosened, without firm hold, and therefore in a state of chaotic confusion, because they are without God. The reference is to the godless in Israel. The wrords express the same thought negatively which is expressed positively in Gal. vi. 16, "Peace upon the Israel of God." Shalom is the significant and comprehensive name given to the coming salvation. From this the godless exclude themselves; they have no part in the future inheritance; the sabbatical rest reserved for the people of God does not belong to them. With this divine utterance, which pierces the conscience like the point of an arrow, this ninth prophecy is brought to a close; and not that only, but also the trilogy concerning " Babel " in ch. xlvi.-xlix., and the whole of the first third of these 3x9 addresses to the exiles. From this time forth the name Koresli (Cyrus), and also the name Babel, never occur again; the relation of the people of Jehovah to heathenism, and the redemption from Babylon, so far as it was foretold and accomplished by Jehovah, not only proving His sole deity, but leading to the overthrow of the idols and the destruction of their worshippers. This theme is now exhausted, and comes into the foreground no more. The expression D^K TO^, in its connection with V?V ^H?-? points at once to the diversity in character of the second section, which commences here.
The very same person who was introduced by Jehovah in ch. xlii. 1 sqq. here speaks for himself, commencing thus in vers. 1-3: "Listen, 0 isles, unto me; and hearken, ye nations afar off: Jehovah hath called me from the womb; from my mother s lap hath Fie remembered my name. And He made my month like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me, and made me into a polished shaft; in His quiver hath He concealed me. And He said to me, Thou art my servant, 0 Israel, thou in whom I glorify myself." Although the speaker is called Israel in ver. 2>b, he must not be regarded as either a collective person representing all Israel, or as the collective personality of the kernel of Israel, which answered to its true idea. It is not the former, because in ver. 5 he is expressly distinguished from the nation itself, which is the immediate object of his special work as restorer and (according to ver. 8 and ch. xlii. 6) covenant-mediator also; not the latter, because the nation, whose restoration he effects, according to ver. 5, was not something distinct from the collective personality of the " servant of Jehovah " in a national sense, but rather the entire body of the " servants of Jehovah " or remnant of Israel (see, for example, ch. lxv. 8-16). Moreover, it cannot be either of these, because what he affirms of himself is expressed in such terms of individuality, that they cannot be understood as employed in a collective sense at all, more especially where he speaks of his mother's womb. In every other case in which Israel is spoken of in this way, we find only u from the womb " (jnibbeteti, ch. xliv. 2, 24; xlvi. 3, along with minnl-racham; also ch. xlviii. 8), without the addition of DK (mother), which is quite unsuitable to the collective body of the nation (except in such allegorical connections as ch. li. 1, 2, and Ezek. xvi. 3). Is it then possibly the prophet, who is here speaking of himself and refers in ver. lb to his own mother (compare Ht3K in Jer. xv. 10, xx. 14, 17)? This is very improbable, if only because the prophet, who is the medium of the wrord of God in these prophecies, has never placed himself in the foreground before. In ch. xl. 6 he merely speaks of himself indirectly; in ch. xliv. 26, even if he refer to himself at all (which we greatly doubt), it is only objectively; and in ch. xlviii. 16, the other person, into whose words the wTords of Jehovah pass, cannot be the prophet, for the simple reason that the transition of the words of Jehovah into those of His messenger is essentially different in this instance from the otherwise frequent interchange of the words of Jehovah and those of His prophet, and also because the messenger of Jehovah speaks of himself there, after the " former things" have come to pass, as the mediator (either in word or deed) of the " new things " which wrere never heard of before, but are to be expected now; whereas the author of these addresses was also the prophet of the " former things," and therefore the messenger referred to rises up within the course of sacred history predicted by the author of these prophecies. Moreover, what the speaker in this case (ch. xlix. 1, 2) says of himself is so unique, so glorious, that it reaches far beyond the vocation and performance of any single prophet, or, in fact, of any individual man subject to the limitations of human life and human strength. There is nothing else left, therefore, than to suppose that the idea implied in the expression " servant of Jehovah " is condensed in this instance, as in ch. xlii. 1 sqq., into that of a single person. When it is expanded to its widest circumference, the "servant of Jehovah" is all Israel; when it only covers its smaller and inner circle, it is the true people of Jehovah contained within the entire nation, like the kernel in the shell (see the definition of this at ch. li. 7, lxv. 10; Ps. xxiv. 6, lxxiii. 15); but here it goes back to its very centre. The " servant of Jehovah," in this central sense, is the heart of Israel. From this heart of Israel the stream of salvation flows out, first of all through the veins of the people of God, and thence through the veins of the nations generally. Just as Cyrus is the world-power in person, as made subservient to the people of God, so the servant of Jehovah, who is speaking here, is Israel in person, as promoting the glorification of Jehovah in all Israel, and in all the world of nations: in other words, it is He in whom the true nature of Israel is concentrated like a sun, in whom the history of Israel is coiled up as into a knot for a further and final development, in whom Israel's world-wide calling to be the Saviour of mankind,, including Israel itself, is fully carried out; the very same who took up the word of Jehovah in ch. xlviii. 166, in the full consciousness of His fellowship with Him, declaring Himself to be His messenger who had now appeared. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that throughout these prophecies the breaking forth of salvation, not for Israel only, but for all mankind, is regarded as bound up with the termination of the captivity; and from this its basis, the restoration of the people who were then in exile, it is never separated. This fact is of great importance in relation to the question of authorship, and favours the conclusion that they emanated from a prophet who lived before the captivity, and not in the midst of it. Just as in ch. vii. Isaiah sees the son of the virgin grow up in the time of the Assyrian oppressions, and then sees his kingdom rising up on the ruins of the Assyrian (cf. vol. i. p. 227); so does he here behold the servant of Jehovah rising up in the second half of the captivity, as if born in exile, in the midst of the punishment borne by his people, to effect the restoration of Israel. At the present time, when he begins to speak, coming forward without any further introduction, and speaking in his own name (a unique instance of dramatic style, which goes beyond even Ps. ii.), he has already left behind him the commencement of his work, which was directed towards the salvation of mankind. His appeal is addressed to the " isles," which had been frequently mentioned already when the evangelization of the heathen was spoken of (ch. xlii. 4, 10, 12; cf. ch. xxiv. 15), and to the " nations from afar," i.e. the distant nations (as in ch. v. 26; compare, on the other hand, Jer. xxiii. 23). They are to hear what he says, not merely what he says in the words that follow, but what he says generally. What follows is rather a vindication of his right to demand a hearing and obedience, than the discourse itself, which is to be received with the obedience of faith; at the same time, the two are most intimately connected. Jehovah has called him ab utero, has thought of his name from the bowels of his mother (W as in Ps. lxxi. 6), i.e. even before he was born; ever since his conception has Jehovah assigned to him his calling, viz. his saving calling, and solemnly announced his name in relation to this calling. We call to mind here Jer. i. 5, Luke i. 41, Gal. i. 15, but above all the name Immanuel, which is given by anticipation to the Coming One in ch. vii. 14, and the name Jesus, which God appointed through the mouth of angels, when the human life of Him who was to bear that name was still ripening in the womb of the Virgin (Matt. i. 20-23). It is worthy of notice, however, that the great Coming One, though he is described in the Old Testament as one who is to be looked for " from the seed of David," is also spoken of as " born of a woman," whenever his entrance into the world is directly referred to. In the Protevangelium he is called, though not in an individual sense, " the seed of the woman;" Isaiah, in the time of Ahaz, mentions u the virgin " as his mother; Micah (v. 2) speaks of his JT17P; even the typical psalms, as in Ps. xxii. 10, 11, give prominence to the mother. And is not this a sign that prophecy is a work of the Spirit, who searches out the deep things of the counsel of God? In ver. 2 the speaker says still further, that Jehovah has made his mouth k'cherebh chadddh (like a sharp sword), namely, that he may overcome everything that resists him as if with a sharp sword, and sever asunder things that are bound up together in a pernicious bond (ch. xi. 4; Rev. i. 16; Heb. iv. 12); also that He has made him into diets bdrur (not /3e\o9 i/cXeKTov, LXX., but, as in Jer. li. 11, cleaned,1 polished, sharpened, pointed), namely, to pierce the hearts (Ps. xlv. 6), and inflict upon them the most wholesome wounds; and again, that Jehovah has hidden him under the shadow of His almighty hand, and kept him concealed in the quiver of His loving counsel, just girt as men keep their swords and arrows in sheaths and quivers ready for the time when they want to use them, in order that in the fulness of time He might draw out this His sword, and put this His arrow to the bow. The question whether the allusion here is to the time preceding the foreknown period of his coming, or whether it is to eternity that the words refer, does not present any great dilemma; at the same time, the prophecy in this instance only traces back the being of the person, who now appears, to the remotest point of his historical coming. Ver. 3 describes, without any figure, what Jehovah has made him. He has said to him (cf. Ps. ii. 76): Thou art my servant; thou art Israel, in whom (in qno, as in ch. xliv. 23) I glorify myself. Schenkel's exposition is grammatically impossible: u (It is) in Israel that I will glorify myself through thee." The servant himself is called Israel. We call to mind here the expression in Matt, xvi. 18, "Thou art Peter;" and the use of the name "Israel," as the individuation of a generic name, reminds us of the fact that the kings of a nation are sometimes called by the name of the nation itself (e.g. Asshur, ch. x. 5 sqq.). But Israel was from the very first the God-given name of an individual. Just as the name Israel was first of all given to a man, and then after that to a nation, so the name which sprang from a personal root has also a personal crown. The servant of Jehovah is Israel in person, inasmuch as the purpose of mercy, upon the basis of which and for the accomplishment of which Jehovah made Jacob the father of the twelve-tribed nation, is brought by him into full and final realization. AVe have already seen that Israel, as an entire nation, formed the basis of the idea
1 The comparison to purus is one that naturally suggests itself; but this, likejnttu*, is derived from a root^«2.
contained in the term " servant of Jehovah;" Israel, regarded as a people faithful to its calling, the centre; and the personal Bervant of Jehovah its apex. In the present instance, where he is called distinctly "Israel," the fact is clearly expressed, that the servant of Jehovah in these prophecies is regarded as the kernel of the kernel of Israel, as Israel's inmost centre, as Israel's highest head. He it is in whom (i.e. on whom and through whom) Jehovah glorifies Himself, inasmuch as He carries out through him the counsels of His love, which are the self-glorification of His holy love, its glory and its triumph.
In the next verse the speaker meets the words of divine calling and promise with a complaint, which immediately silences itself, however. Ver. 4. " And I, I said, I have wearied myself in vain, and thrown away my strength for nothing and to no purpose; yet my right is with Jehovah, and my reward with my God" The Vav with which the verse opens introduces the apparent discrepancy between the calling he had received, and the apparent failure of his work. |3*J, however, denies the conclusion which might be drawn from this, that there was neither reality nor truth in his call. The relation between the clauses is exactly the same as that in Ps. xxxi. 23 and Jonah ii. 5 (where we find ^N, which is more rarely used in this adversative sense); compare also Ps. xxx. 7 (but I said), and the psalm of Hezekiah in ch. xxxviii. 10 with the antithesis in Ps. xxxviii. 15. In the midst of his activity no fruit was to be seen, and the thought came upon him, that it was a failure; but this disturbance of his rejoicing in his calling was soon quieted in the confident assurance that his mishpdt (i.e. his good right in opposition to all contradiction and resistance) and his u work " (i.e. the result and fruit of the work, wrhich is apparently in vain) are with Jehovah, and laid up with Him until the time when He will vindicate His servant's right, and crown his labour with success. We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by such parallels as ch. xl. 10, lxii. 11. The words are not spoken in a collective capacity any more than in the former part of the verse; the lamentation of Israel as a people, in ch. xl. 27, is expressed very differently.
The expression " and now " (nW), wThich follows, evidently indicates a fresh turn in the official life of the person speaking here. At the same time, it is evident that it is the failure of his labours within his own people, which has forced out the lamentation in ver. 4a. For his reason for addressing his summons in ch. xlix. 1 to the world of nations, is that Jehovah has not guaranteed to him, the undaunted one, success to his labours among his own people, but has assigned him a mission extending far beyond and reaching to all mankind. Vers. 5, 6. " And now, saith Jehovah, that formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring back Jacob to Him, and that Israel may be gathered together to Him; and I am honoured in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God has become my strength. He saith, It is only a small tiling that thou becomest my servant, to set up the tribes of Jacob, and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I have set thee for the light of the Gentiles, to become my salvation to the end of the earth." Both shobhebh and hdshlbh unite within themselves the meanings reducere (Jer. 1. 19) and restituere. On &6 = ^> generally, see at ch. ix. 2, lxiii. 9. Jerome is wrong in his rendering, et Israel qui non congregabitur (what could a prophecy of the rejection of the Jews do here?); so also is Hitzig's rendering, "since Israel is not swept away;" and Ilofmann's, " Israel, which is not swept away." In the present instance, where the restoration of Israel is the event referred to, fjdn must signify " the gathering together of Israel," as in ch. xi. 12. b (parallel IvK) points to Jehovah as the author of the gathering, and as the object of it also. The transition from the infinitive of design to the finite verb of desire, is the same as in ch. xiii. 9, xiv. 25. The attributive clause, added to the name Jehovah, expresses the lofty mission of the servant of God with regard to Israel. The parenthesis, " I have honour in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God has become my strength, i.e. has become mighty in me, the apparently weak one," looks beyond to the still loftier mission, by which the former lofty one is far surpassed. On account of this parenthetically inserted praise of Jehovah, the "IEN is resumed in notfn. Instead of into b?) (compare 1 Kings xvi. 31), i.e. it is a small thing that thou shouldst be, we have it here, as in Ezek. viii. 17, with a comparative min, which must not, however, be logically pressed: "It is smaller than that," i.e. it is too small a thing that thou shouldst be. The nHslre (Keri, nHsitrS) of Israel are those who have been preserved in exile (Ezek. vi. 12); in other cases, we find "*$$ ^1$$, or nt2^9. Not only is the restoration of the remnant of Israel the work of the servant of Jehovah; but Jehovah has appointed him for something higher than this. He has given or set him for the light of the heathen (" a light to lighten the Gentiles," Luke ii. 32), to become His salvation to the end of the earth (LXX.: rov elvau ae eU aa)TrjpLav ecu? ia^iiTov Ti}s 7V?). Those who regard Israel as a nation as speaking here (e.g. Hitzig, Ewald, Umbreit, etc.) go right away from this, which is the most natural sense of the words, and explain them as meaning, u that my salvation may be, reach, or penetrate to the end of the earth." But inasmuch as the servant of Jehovah is the light of the world, he is through that very fact the salvation of the world; and he is both of these through Jehovah, whose counsels of TOB^ are brought by him into historical realization and visible manifestation.
The words of the servant of God, in which he enforces his claim upon the nations, are now lost in words of Jehovah to him, which are no longer reported by him, but are appended as an independent address. His present condition is one of the deepest humiliation. Yer. 7. " Thus saith Jehovah, the Redeemer of Israel, His Holy One, to him of contemptible soul, to the abhorrence of the people, to the servant of tyrants: kings shall see and arise; princes, and prostrate themselves for the sake of Jehovah, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, that He hath chosen thee." As bdzoh with a changeable kametz (cf. chamois, ch. i. 17) has, if not exactly a passive force, yet something very like a passive circumstantial meaning, 6?M"Tlf3 must mean the man who is contemptible as regards his soul, i.e. held in contempt, or, as Hofmann explains it, whom men do not think worthy to live (though he follows Ewald, and takes bezoh as an infinitive treated as a substantive). Accordingly 3ynp is also to be taken personally. The meaning abhorring is unsuitable; but 2VR is also used in a causative sense, to cause to abhor, Le. to make a thing an abomination (Ezek. xvi. 25), or to excite abhorrence: hence, " to him who excites the people's abhorrence," which is the same, so far as the sense is concerned, as " to the object of their abhorrence." But even as a participial substantive W"1D would literally mean the thing exciting abhorrence, Le, the abhorrence, just as mfkhasseh in ch. xxiii. 18 signifies the thing covering, i.e. the covering. All these participial substantives of the pie! indicate the thing, place, or instrument accomplishing that which the piel affirms. We need not raise the question whether goi refers to Israel or to the heathen. It signifies the mass of men, the people, like fdm in Ps. lxii. 9, and in those passages in which it is used by our prophet for the human race generally. The mosh'lim, of whom the person here addressed is the servant or enslaved one, are obviously heathen tyrants. What is here affirmed of the "one servant of Jehovah" was no doubt also applicable to the nation generally, and more especially to that portion of the nation which was true to its calling and confession. He in whom Israel's relation of servant to Jehovah was fully realized, did indeed spring out of His own nation, when it was under the oppression of the powers of this world; and all the shame and persecution which those who remained faithful among His people had to endure from the heathen oppressors, and also from the ungodly among their own countrymen (see, for example, ch. lxvi. 5), discharge their force like a violent storm upon Him as an individual. When, therefore, we find the sufferings of the people and the glory of which they became partakers described in other passages in just the same terms, we must not infer from this that " servant of Jehovah " is a collective epithet in the passage before us. The person addressed here is the Restorer of Israel, the Light of the Gentiles, the Salvation of Jehovah for all mankind. When kings and princes shall behold Him who was once brought so low, delivered from His humiliation, and exalted to the glorious height of the work to which He has been called, they will rise up with reverence from their thrones, and prostrate themselves upon the ground in worship for the sake of Jehovah, as before Him who (">t?X emphatic, utpote qui) is faithful, showing Himself sincere in His promises, and for the sake of the Holy One of Israel, in that, as is now made manifest, " He hath chosen thee." The fut. consec. particularizes the general motive assigned, and carries it still further.
The next two verses describe (though only with reference to Israel, the immediate circle) what is the glory of the vocation to which Jehovah, in accordance with His promise, exalts His chosen One. Vers. 8, 9a. " Thus saith Jehovah, In a time of favour have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee: and I form thee, and set thee for a covenant of the people, to raise up the land, to apportion again desolate inheritances, saying to prisoners, Go ye out: to those who are in darkness, Come ye to the light." Jehovah heard His servant, and came to his help when he prayed to Him out of the condition of bondage to the world, which he shared with his people. He did it at the time for the active display of His good pleasure, and for the realizing of salvation, which had been foreseen by Him, and had now arrived. The futures which follow are to be taken as such. The fact that Jehovah makes His servant " a covenant of the people," i.e. the personal bond which unites Israel and its God in a new fellowship (see ch. xlii. 6), is the fruit of his being heard and helped. The infinitives with Lamed affirm in what way the new covenant relation will be made manifest. The land that has fallen into decay rises into prosperity again, and the desolate possessions return to their former owners. This manifestation of the covenant grace, that has been restored to the nation again, is effected through the medium of the servant of Jehovah. The rendering of the LXX. is quite correct: rov Karao-Trjaai, rrjv yrjv koX tc\r)povo/j,rjcrai KKrjpovopLias iprj/xov^ Xeyovra. "to&O is a dicendo governed by both infinitives. The prisoners in the darkness of the prison and of affliction are the exiles (ch. xlii. 22). The mighty word of the servant of Jehovah brings to them the light of liberty, in connection with which (as has been already more than once observed) the fact should be noticed, that the redemption is viewed in connection with the termination of the captivity, and, in accordance with the peculiar character of the Old Testament, is regarded as possessing a national character, and therefore is purely external.
The person of the servant of Jehovah now falls into the background again, and the prophecy proceeds with a description of the return of the redeemed. Vers. 96-12. " They shall feed by the ways, and there is pasture for them upon all fieldhills. They shall not hunger nor thirst, and the mirage and sun shall not blind "them: for He that hath mercy on them shall lead them, and guide them by bubbling water-springs. And I make all my mountains ways, and my roads are exalted. Behold these, they come from afar; and, behold, these from the north and from the sea; and these from the land of the Sinese." The people returning home are represented as a flock. By the roads that they take to their homes, they are able to obtain sufficient pasture, without being obliged to go a long way round in order to find a sufficient supply; and even upon bare sandy hills (ch. xli. 18) there is pasture found for them. Nothing is wanting; even the shdrdbh (see ch. xxxv. 7, p. 79) and the sun do not hurt them, the former by deceiving and leading astray, the latter by wearying them with its oppressive heat: for He whose compassion has been excited by their long pining misery (ch. xli. 17-20) is leading them, and bringing them along in comfort by bubbling springs of real and refreshing water pB* as Petrarch once says of shepherds, Move la schiera sua soavemente). Jehovah also makes all the mountains into roads for those who are returning home, and the paths of the desert are lifted up, as it were, into well-made roads (yerumun, Ges. § 47, Anm. 4). They are called my mountains and my highways (differently from ch. xiv. 25), because they are His creation; and therefore He is also able to change them, and now really does change them for the good of His people, who are returning to the land of their forefathers out of every quarter of the globe. Although in Ps. cvii. 3 yam (the sea) appears to stand for the south, as referring to the southern part of the Mediterranean, wThich washes the coast of Egypt, there is no ground at all in the present instance for regarding it as employed in any other than its usual sense, namely the west; merdchoq (from far) is therefore either the south (cf. ch. xliii. 6) or the east, according to the interpretation that we give to 'erets Sinim, as signifying a land to the east or to the south. The Phoenician Sinim (Gen. x. 17), the inhabitants of a fortified town in the neighbourhood of Area, which has now disappeared, but wThich was seen not only by Jerome, but also by Marino Sanuto (de castro Arachas ad dimidiam leucam est oppidum Sin), cannot be thought of, for the simple reason that this Sin was too near, and was situated to the west of Babylon and to the north of Jerusalem; whilst Sin (=Pelusium) in Egypt, to which Ewald refers, did not give its name to either a tribe or a land. Arias Montanus was among the first to suggest that the Sinim are the Sinese (Chinese); and since the question has been so thoroughly discussed by Gesenius (in his Commentary and Thesaurus), most of the commentators, and also such Orientalists as Langles (in his Recherches asiatiques), Movers (in his Phoenicians), Lassen
(in liis LiJiscfie Altathumshinde, i. 856-7), have decided in favour of this opinion. The objection brought against the supposition, that the name of the Chinese was known to the nations of the west at so early a period as this, viz. that this could not have been the case till after the reign of the emperor Shi-hoang-ti, of the dynasty of Thsin, who restored the empire that had been broken up into seven smaller kingdoms (in the year 247 B.C.), and through whose celebrated reign the name of his dynasty came to be employed in the western nations as the name of China generally, is met by Lassen with the simple fact that the name occurs at a much earlier period than this, and in many different forms, as the name of smaller states into which the empire was broken up after the reign of Wu-wang (1122-1115 B.C.). "The name Given. (Strabo), Tivai (Ptol.), T^iviT^a (Kosmas), says the Sinologist Neumann, did not obtain currency for the first time from the founder of the great dynasty of Tsin; but long before this, Tsin was the name of a feudal kingdom of some importance in Shen-si, one of the western provinces of the Sinese land, and Fei-tse, the first feudal king of Tsin, began to reign as early as 897 B.C." It is quite possible, therefore, that the prophet, whether he were Isaiah or any other, may have heard of the land of the Sinese in the far east, and this is all that we need assume; not that Sinese merchants visited the market of the world on the Euphrates (Movers and Lassen), but only that information concerning the strange people who were so wealthy in rare productions, had reached the remote parts of the East through the medium of commerce, possibly from Ophir, and through the Phoenicians. But Egli replies: u The seer on the streams of Babel certainly could not have described any exiles as returning home from China, if he had not known that some of his countrymen were pining there in misery, and I most positively affirm that this was not the case." What is here assumed — namely, that there must have been a Chinese diaspora in the prophet's own time — is overthrown by what has been already observed in ch. xi. 11; and we may also see that it is not purely by accident that the land of the Sinese is given as the farthest point to the east, from my communications concerning the Jews of China in the History of the Post-biblical Poetry of the Jews (1836, pp. 58-62, cf. p. 21). I have not yet seen Sionnet's work, which has appeared since, viz. Essai sur les Juifs de la Chine et sur r influence, quils ont eue sur la literature de ce vaste empire, circuit Vere chrStienne; but I have read the Mission of Enquiry to Hie Jews in China in the Jewish Intelligence, May 1851, where a fac-simile of their thorah is given. The immigration took place from Persia (cf. 'Eldm, ch. xi. 11), at the latest, under the Han dynasty (205 B.C.-220 A.D.), and certainly before the Christian era.
In this return of the exiles from every quarter of the globe to their fatherland, and for this mighty work of God on behalf of His church, which has been scattered in all directions, the whole creation is to praise Him. Ver. 13. " Sing, 0 heavens; and shout, 0 earth; and break out into singing, 0 mountains! for Jehovah hath comforted His people, and He hath compassion upon His afflicted ones" The phrase H3T nVQ, like grn nva (which occurs in Ps. xcviii. 4 as well as in Isaiah), is peculiarly Isaiah's (ch. xiv. 7, and several times in ch. xl.-lxvi.). " The afflicted ones" (dniyylm) is the usual Old Testament name for the ecclesia militans. The future alternates with the perfect: the act of consolation takes place once for all, but the compassion lasts for ever. Here again the glorious liberty of the children of God appears as the focus from which the whole world is glorified. The joy of the Israel of God becomes the joy of heaven and earth. With the summons to this joy the first half of the prophecy closes; for the word "iiDKn, which follows, shows clearly enough that the prophecy has merely reached a resting-point here, since this word is unsuitable for commencing a fresh prophecy.
The prophet, looking back at the period of suffering from the standpoint of the deliverance, exclaims from the midst of this train of thought: Ver. 14. " Zion said, Jehovah hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me." The period of suffering which forces out this lamentation still continues. What follows, therefore, applies to the church of the present, i.e. of the captivity. Vers. 15, 16. " Does a woman forget her sucking child, so as not to have compassion upon the child of her womb f Even though mothers should forget, I will not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls stand continually before me." In reply to the complaining church, which knows that her home is in Zion-
Jerusalem, and which has been kept so long away from her home, Jehovah sets forth His love, which is as inalienable as a mother's love, yea, far greater than even maternal love. On Tiy, see vol. i. p. 139; the min in merachem is equivalent to ware fn), as in eh. xxiii. 1, xxiv. 10, xxxiii. 15, etc. E3, so far as the actual sense is concerned, is equivalent to *2TD2 (Ewald, § 362, b): u granted that such (mothers) should forget, i.e. disown, their love." The picture of Zion (not merely the name, as ver. 16& clearly shows) is drawn in the inside of Jehovah's hands, just as men are accustomed to burn or puncture ornamental figures and mementoes upon the hand, the arm, and the forehead, and to colour the punctures with al henna or indigo (see Tafel, xii., in vol. ii. pp. 33-35 of Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modem Egyptians). There is the figure of Zion, unapproachable to every creature, as close to Him as He is to Himself, and facing Him amidst all the emotions of His divine life. There has He the walls of Zion constantly before Him (on neged, see at ch. i. 16, xxiv. 23); and even if for a time they are broken down here below, with Him they have an eternal ideal existence, which must be realized again and again in an increasingly glorious form.
It is this fact of a renewed glorification which presents itself afresh to the prophet's mind. Vers. 17, 18. " Thy children make haste, thy destroyers and masters draw out from thee. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all these assemble themselves together, and come to thee. As truly as I live, saith Jehovah, thou wilt put them all on like jewellery, and gird them round thee like a bride." The pointing adopted by the LXX., Targ., Jer., and Saad., is "^3. The antithesis favours this reading; but sj^n suits vers. 18, 19 better; and the thought that Zion's children come and restore her fallen wralls, follows of itself from the very antithesis: her children come; and those who destroyed their maternal home, and made it a desolate ruin, have to depart from both city and land. Zion is to lift up her eyes, that have been cast down till now, yea, to lift them up round about; for on all sides those whom she thought she had lost are coming in dense crowds T)p (cf. fc6 = ii? with tyK, ch. xlix. 5), to her, i.e. henceforth to belong to her again. Jehovah pledges His life (chai yanl, £cov iyco, Ewald, § 329, a) that a time of glory is coming for Zion and her children. *3 in the affirmative sense, springing out of the confirmative after an affirming oath, equivalent to NP'DK elsewhere (e.g. ch. v. 9). The population which Zion recovers once more, will be to her like the ornaments which a woman puts on, like the ornamental girdle (ch. iii. 20) which a bride fastens round her wedding dress.
Thus will Zion shine forth once more wTith the multitude of her children as with a festal adorning. Vers. 19, 20. "For thy ruins and thy waste places and thy land full of ruin, — yea, now thou wilt be too narrow for the inhabitants, and thy devourers are far away. Thy children, that were formerly taken from thee, shall say in thine ears, The space is too narrow for me; give way for me, that I may have room" The word " for" (ki) introduces the explanatory reason for the figures just employed of jewellery and a bridal girdle. Instead of the three subjects, u thy ruins," etc., the comprehensive u thou" is employed permutatively, and the sentence commenced afresh. ^ is repeated emphatically in nny ^2 (for now, or yea now); this has essentially the same meaning as in the apodosis of hypothetical protasis (e.g. Gen. xxxi. 42, xliii. 10), except that the sense is more decidedly affirmative than in the present instance, where one sees it spring out of the confirmative. Zion, that has been hitherto desolate, now becomes too small to hold her inhabitants; and her devourers are far away, i.e. those who took forcible possession of the land and cities, and made them untenable. *\Sy is to be understood in accordance with Ps. xlii. 6, and ^TK3 in accordance with Ps. xliv. 2 (see at ch. v. 9). It will even come to this, that the children of which Zion was formerly robbed will call to one another, so that she becomes a witness with her ears to that which they have so clearly seen: the space is too narrow, give way (geshdh, from ndgash, to advance, then to move generally, also to move in an opposite direction, i.e. to fall back, as in Gen. xix. 9) for me, that I may be able to settle down.
The words that sound in the ears of Zion are now followed by the thought of astonishment and surprise, that rises up in her heart. Ver. 21. " And thou wilt say in thy heart, Who hath home me these, seeing I was robbed of children, and barren, baidslicd, and thrust away; and these, who hath brought them upf Behold, I was left alone; these, where were they?" She sees herself suddenly surrounded by a great multitude of children) and yet she was robbed of children, and galmuddh (lit. hard, stony, Arab, 'galmad, 'gulmud, e.g. cs-sachr el 'gulmud, the hardest stone, mostly as a substantive, stone or rock, from gdlam, from which comes the Syriac gelomo, stony ground, related to chdlam, whence challdmlsh, gravel, root gal, gam, to press together, or heap up in a lump or mass), i.e. one who seemed utterly incapacitated for bearing children any more. She therefore asks, Who hath borne me these (not, who hath begotten, which is an absurd question)? She cannot believe that they are the children of her body, and her children's children. As a tree, whose foliage is all faded away, is called nobhehth itself in ch. i. 30, so she calls herself goldh vestirdh, extorris et remota (sur = musdr, like stig in Prov. xiv. 14 = ndsog or mussdg), because her children have been carried away into exile. In the second question, the thought has dawned upon her mind, that those by whom she finds herself surrounded are her own children; but as she was left alone, whilst they went forth, as she thought to die in a foreign land, she cannot comprehend where they have been hitherto concealed, or.where they have grown up into so numerous a people.
The prophecy now takes a step backward in the domain of the future, and describes the manner in which the children of Zion get back to their home. Ver. 22. " Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I lift up my hand to nations, and set up my standard to peoples: and they bring thy sons in their bosom; and thy daughters, upon shoulders are they carried." The setting up of a standard (ch. v. 26, xi. 12, xviii. 3, cf. lxii. 10) is a favourite figure with Isaiah, as well as swaying the hand. Jehovah gives a sign to the heathen nations with His hand, and points out to them the mark that they are to keep in view, with a signal pole which is set up. They understand it, and carry out His instructions, and bring Zion's sons and daughters thither, and that as a foster-father i^omen) carries an infant in the bosom of his dress (chotsen, as in Neh. v. 13; Arabic as in Ps. cxxix. 7, hidn, from hadana, to embrace, to press tenderly to one's self; vid. Num. xi. 12), or upon his arms, so that it reclines upon his shoulder (al-kdtheph; cf. ral-tsad, ch. lx. 4, Ixvi. 12).
Such affectionate treatment does the church receive, which is assembling once more upon its native soil, whilst kings and their consorts hasten to serve the re-assembled community.
Ver. 23. (t And kings become thy foster-fathers, and their princesses thy nurses: they bow down their face to thee to the earth, and they lick the dust of thy feet; and thou learnest that I am Jehovah, He ichose hoping ones are not put to shame" As foster-fathers devote all their strength and care to those entrusted to them, and nurses nourish children from the very marrow of their own life, so will kings become the shelterers of Zion, and princesses the sustainers of her growth. All that is true in the regal headship of the church will be realized, and all that is false in regal territorialism will condemn itself: uvultu in terrain demisso adorabunt te et pulver em pedum tuorum lingent" (Jerome). They do homage to the church, and kiss the ground upon which she stands and walks. According to ch. xlv. 14, this adoration belongs to the God who is present in the church, and points the church itself away from all thought of her own merits to Jehovah, the God of salvation, cui qui confidunt non pudefient (fiJHJ with an auxiliary pathach, like JjW in ch. xlvii. 15; Ges. § 65, 2: 1KW with the first person made into a relative as in ch. xli. 8; Ges. § 123, 1, Anm. 1). Observe, however, that the state will not be swallowed up by the church, — a thing which never will occur, and is never meant to occur; but by the state becoming serviceable to the church, there is realized a prelude of the perfected kingdom of God, in which the dualism of the state and the church is entirely abolished.
There follows now a sceptical question prompted by weakness of faith; and the divine reply. The question, ver. 24: " Can the booty indeed be wrested from a giant, or will the captive host of the righteous escape?" The question is logically one, and only divided rhetorically into two (Ges. § 153, 2). The giant, or gigantically strong one, is the Chaldean. Knobel, in opposition to Hitzig, who supposes the Persian to be referred to, points very properly to ch. li. 12, 13, and lii. 5. He is mistaken, however, in thinking that we must read Y^V *30 in ver. 24b, as Ewald does after the Syriac and Jerome, on account of the parallelism. The exiles are called shebhl tsaddlq, not, however, as captives wrested from the righteous (the congregation of the righteous), as Meier thinks, taking tsaddlq as the gen. ohj.; still less as captives carried off by the righteous one, i.e. the Chaldean, for the Chaldean, even regarded as the accomplisher of the righteous judgment of God, is not tsaddlq, but u wicked" (Hub. I. 13); but merely as a host of captives consisting of righteous men (Hitzig). The divine answer, vers. 25, 26: u Yea, thus saith Jehovah, Even the captive hosts of a giant are wrestedfrom him, and the booty of a tyrant escapes; and I tvill make war upon him that warreth with thee, and I will bring salvation to thy children. And I feed them that pain thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as if with new wine; and all flesh sees that I Jehovah am thy Saviour, and that thy Redeemer is the Mighty One of Jacob? We might take the hi in ver. 25a as a simple affirmative, but it is really to be taken as preceded by a tacit intermediate thought. Rosenmiiller's explanation is the correct one: " that which is hardly credible shall take place, for thus hath Jehovah said." He has also given the true interpretation of gam: " although this really seems incredible, yet I will give it effect." Ewald, on the contrary, has quite missed the sense of vers. 24, 25, which he gives as follows: " The booty in men which a hero has taken in war, may indeed be taken from him again; but Jehovah will never let the booty that He takes from the Chaldean (viz. Israel) be wrested from Him again." This is inadmissible, for the simple reason that it presupposes the emendation pny W; and this 'drlts is quite unsuitable, partly because it would be Jehovah to whom the case supposed referred, and still more, because the correspondence in character between ver. 24 and ver. 14 is thereby destroyed. The gibbor and 'drits is called iff")) in ver. 25b, with direct reference to Zion. This is a noun formed from the future, like Jareb in Hos. v. 13 and x. 6, — a name chosen as the distinctive epithet of the Asiatic emperor (probably a name signifying "king Fighting-cock"). The self-laceration threatened against the Chaldean empire recals to mind ch. ix. 19, 20, and Zech. xi. 9, and has as revolting a sound as Num. xxiii. 24 and Zech. ix. 15, — passages which Daumer and Ghillany understand in the cannibal sense which they appear to have, whereas what they understand literally is merely a hyperbolical figure. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the Old Testament church was a nation, and that the spirit of revelation in the Old Testament assumed the national form, which it afterwards shattered to pieces. Knobel points to the revolt of the Hyrcanians and several satraps, who fought on the side of Cyrus vol. ii. a against their former rulers (Cyrop. iv. 2, 6, v. 1-3) All tins will be subservient to that salvation and redemption, which form the historical aim of Jehovah and the irresistible work of the Mighty One of Jacob. The name of God which we meet with here, viz. the Mighty One of Jacob, only occurs again in ch. i. 24, and shows who is the author of the prophecy which is concluded here. The first half set forth, in the servant of Jehovah, the mediator of Israel's restoration and of the conversion of the heathen, and closed with an appeal to the heaven and the earth to rejoice with the ransomed church. The second half (vers. 14—26) rebukes the despondency of Zion, which fancies itself forgotten of Jehovah, by pointing to Jehovah's more than maternal love, and the superabundant blessing to be expected from Him. It also rebukes the doubts of Zion as to the possibility of such a redemption, by pointing to the faithfulness and omnipotence of the God of Israel, who will cause the exiles to be wrested from the Chaldean, and their tormentors to devour one another. The following chapter commences a fresh train of ideas.
Israel's self-rejection; and the stedfastness of the servant of jehovah.
The words are no longer addressed to Zion, but to her children. Yer. 1. " Thus saith Jehovah, Wliere is your mothers hill of divorce, with which I put her away? Or where is one of my creditors, to whom I sold you? Behold, for your iniquities are ye sold, and for your transgressions is your mother put away." It was not He who had broken off the relation in which He stood to Zion; for the mother of Israel, whom Jehovah had betrothed to Himself, had no bill of divorce to show, with which Jehovah had put her away and thus renounced for ever the possibility of receiving her again (according to Deut. xxiv. 1-4), provided she should in the meantime have married another. Moreover, He had not yielded to outward constraint, and therefore given her up to a foreign power; for where was there one of His creditors (there is not any one) to whom He would have been obliged to relinquish His sons, because unable to pay His debts, and in this way to discharge them? — a harsh demand, which was frequently made by unfeeling creditors of insolvent debtors (Ex. xxi. 7; 2 Kings iv. 1; Matt, xviii. 25). On nosheh, a creditor, see at ch. xxiv. 2. Their present condition was indeed that of being sold and put away; but this was not the effect of despotic caprice, or the result of compulsion on the part of Jehovah. It was Israel itself that had broken off the relation in which it stood to Jehovah; they had been sold through their own faults, and " for your transgressions is your mother put away." Instead of ^yt'Q^ we have MW'M*. This may be because the church, although on the one hand standing higher and being older than her children (i.e. her members at any particular time), is yet, on the other hand, morally affected by those to whom she has given birth, who have been trained by her, and recognised by her as her own. The radical sin, however, which has lasted from the time of the captivity down to the present time, is disobedience to the word of God. This sin brought upon Zion and her children the judgment of banishment, and it was this which made it last so long. Vers. 2, 3. " Why did I come, and there was no one there? Why did I call, and there was no one who answered? Is my hand too short to redeem? or is there no strength in me to deliver? Behold, through my threatening I dry up the sea; turn streams into a plain: their fish rot, because there is no water, and die for thirst. I clothe the heavens in mourning, and make sackcloth their covering T Jehovah has come, and with what? It follows, from the fact of His bidding them consider, that His hand is not too short to set Israel loose and at liberty, that He is not so powerless as to be unable to draw it out; that He is the Almighty, who by His mere threatening word (Ps. cvi. 9, civ. 7) can dry up the sea, and turn streams into a hard and barren soil, so that the fishes putrefy for want of water (Ex. vii. 18, etc.), and die from thirst (thdmoth sl voluntative used as an indicative, as in ch. xii. 1, and very frequently in poetical composition); who can clothe the heavens in mourning, and make sackcloth their (dull, dark) covering (for the expression itself, compare ch. xxxvii. 1, 2); who therefore, fiat applicatio, can annihilate the girdle of waters behind which Babylon fancies herself concealed (see ch. xlii. 15, xliv. 27), and cover the empire, which is now enslaving and torturing Israel, with a sunless and starless night of destruction (ch. xiii. 10). It follows from all this, that He has come with a gospel of deliverance from sin and punishment; but Israel has given no answer, has not received this message of salvation with faith, since faith is assent to the word of God. And in whom did Jehovah come? Knobel and most of the commentators reply, " in His prophets." This answer is not wrong, but it does not suffice to show the connection between what follows and what goes before. For there it is one person who speaks; and who is that, but the servant of Jehovah, who is introduced in these prophecies with dramatic directness, as speaking in his own name? Jehovah has come to His people in His servant. We know who was the servant of Jehovah in the historical fulfilment. It was He whom even the New Testament Scriptures describe as rov iratha rov fcvptov, especially in the Acts (iii. 13, 26, iv. 27, 30). It was not indeed during the Babylonian captivity that the servant of Jehovah appeared in Israel with the gospel of redemption; but, as we shall never be tired of repeating, this is the human element in these prophecies, that they regard the appearance of the u servant of Jehovah," the Saviour of Israel and the heathen, as connected with the captivity: the punishment of Israel terminating, according to the law of the perspective foreshortening of prophetic vision, with the termination of the captivity; and the final glory of Israel and the final salvation of all mankind beginning to dawn on the border of the captivity, — a connection which we regard as one of the strongest confirmations of the composition of these addresses before the captivity, as well as of Isaiah's authorship. But this av0p(t)7rtvov does not destroy the Oelov in them, inasmuch as the time at which Jesus appeared was not only similar to that of the Babylonian captivity, but stood in a causal connection with it, since the Roman empire was the continuation of the Babylonian, and the moral state of the people under the iron arm of the Roman rule resembled that of the Babylonian exiles (Ezek. ii. 6, 7). At the same time, whatever our opinion on this point may be, it is perfectly certain that it is to the servant of Jehovah, who was seen by the prophet in connection with the Babylonian captivity, that the words " wherefore did I come" refer.
lie in whom Jehovah came to His nation, and proclaimed to it, in the midst of its self-induced misery, the way and work of salvation, is He who speaks in ver. 4: " The Lord Jehovah hath given me a disciple's tongue, that I may know how to set up the wearied with words: He wakeneth every morning; wakeneth mine ear to attend in disciple s manner" The word limmudim, which is used in the middle of the verse, and which is the older word for the later talmidim, fiaOnrai, as in ch. viii. 16, liv. 13, is repeated at the close of the verse, according to the figure of palindromy, which is such a favourite figure in both parts of the book of Isaiah; and the train of thought, " He wakene'h morning by morning, wakeneth mine ear," recals to mind the parallelism with reservation which is very common in the Psalms, and more especially the custom of a "triolet-like" spinning out of the thoughts, from which the songs of u degrees " (or ascending steps, shir hamma dloth) have obtained their name. The servant of Jehovah affords us a deep insight here into His hidden life. The prophets received special revelations from God, for the most part in the night, either in dreams or else in visions, which were shown them in a waking condition, but yet in the more susceptible state of nocturnal quiet and rest. Here, however, the servant of Jehovah receives the divine revelations neither in dreams nor visions of the night; but every morning (babboqer babboqer as in ch. xxviii. 19), i.e. when his sleep is over, Jehovah comes to him, awakens his ear, by making a sign to him to listen, and then takes him as it were into the school after the manner of a pupil, and teaches him what and how he is to preach. Nothing indicates a tongue befitting the disciples of God, so much as the gift of administering consolation; and such a gift is possessed by the speaker here. " To help with words him that is med. Vav, related to *j*iy, tihn, signifies to spring to a person with words to help, Aq. viroo~T7)picrai, Jer. sustentare. The
Arabic c^U med. Je, to rain upon or water (Ewald, Umbreit, etc.), cannot possibly be thought of, since this has no support in the Hebrew; still less, however, can we take my as a denom. from ny, upon which Luther has founded his rendering, " to speak to the weary in due season " (also Eng. ver.). w is an accusative of more precise definition, like "^'K in ver. 1 (cf. ch. xlii. 25, xliii. 23). Jerome has given the correct rendering: '.'that I may know how to sustain him that is weary with a word."
His calling is to save, not to destroy; and for this calling he has Jehovah as a teacher, and to Him he has submitted himself in docile susceptibility and immoveable obedience. Ver. 5. " The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear; and I, I was not rebellious, and did not turn back" He put him into a position inwardly to discern His will, that he might become the mediator of divine revelation; and he did not set himself against this calling (mdrdh, according to its radical meaning stringere, to make one's self rigid against any one, avrirelveLv), and did not draw back from obeying the call, which, as he well knew, would not bring him earthly honour and gain, but rather shame and ill-treatment. Ever since he had taken the path of his calling, he had not drawn timidly back from the sufferings with which it was connected, but had rather cheerfully taken them upon him. Ver. 6. " / offered my back to smiters, and my cheeks to them that pluck off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting" He offered his back to such as smote it, his cheeks to such as plucked out the hair of his bc?.rd (mdrat as in Neh. xiii. 25). He did not hide his face, to cover it up from actual insults, or from being spit upon (on kHimmoth with roq, smiting on the cheek, Ko\a</)i£e«>, strokes with rods, pairL^eiv, blows upon the head, rvirrew eh tt]v K€(paXr]v with ifiiTTveiv, compare Matt. xxvi. 67, xxvii. 30, John xviii. 22). The way of his calling leads through a shameful condition of humiliation. What was typified in Job (see ch. xxx. 10, xvii. 6), and prefigured typically and prophetically in the Psalms of David (see Ps. xxii. 7, lxix. 8), finds in him its perfect antitypical fulfilment.
But no shame makes him faint-hearted; he trusts in Him who hath called him, and looks to the end. Ver. 7. " But the Lord Jehovah icill help me; therefore have I not suffered myself to be overcome by mockery: therefore did 1 make my face like the flint, and knew that I should not be put to shame" The \ introduces the thought with which his soul was filled amidst all his sufferings. In 'A&taa vb he affirms, that he did not suffer himself to be inwardly overcome and overpowered by kelimmdh. The consciousness of his high calling remained undisturbed;
he was never ashamed of that, nor did he turn away from it. The two |3 ~?y stand side by side upon the same line. He made his face kachalldmlsh (from chdlam, related to gdlam in ch. xlix. 21, with the substantative termination Ish: see Jeshurun, p. 229), i.e. he made it as unfeeling as a flint-stone to the attacks of his foes (cf. Ezek. iii. 8, 9). The LXX. renders this eOrjfca to irpoaojirov fiov &>? arepeav irejpav; but iarrjpi^a to Trpoa.j which is the rendering given to "OB D"1^ in Jer. xxi. 10, would have been just the proper rendering here (see Luke ix. 51). In " holy hardness of endurance," as Stier says, he turned his face to his antagonists, without being subdued or frightened away, and was well assured that He whose cause he represented would never leave him in the lurch.
In the midst of his continued sufferings he was still certain of victory, feeling himself exalted above every human accusation, and knowing that Jehovah would acknowledge him; whereas his opponents were on the way to that destruction, the germ of which they already carried within them. Vers. 8, 9. "He is near that justifieth me; who ivill contend with me?! We will draw near together! Who is my adversary in judgment?! Let him draw near to me! Behold, the Lord Jehovah will help me; who is he that could condemn me?! Behold, they all shall fall to pieces like a garment; the moth shall eat them upT P*WI and)T&y) are forensic antitheses: the former signifies to set one forth, both practically and judicially, as righteous (2 Sam. xv. 4; Ps. lxxxii. 3); the latter as guilty, JJS5n (Deut. xxv. 1; Ps. cix. 7). "TJBJM, which has lost the principal tone on account of the following in* pnj), has munach instead of metheg in the antepenultimate. Baal mishpdtl means, u he who has a judicial cause or lawsuit against me," just as in Roman law the dominus litis is distinguished from the procurator, i.e. from the person who represents him in court (syn. baal debhdrlm, Ex. xxiv. 14, and 'ish rlbhl in Job xxxi. 35; compare ch. xli. 11). fcflrr*» are connected, and form an emphatic t/?, Rom. viii. 34 (Ewald § 325, a). "All of them" (kulldm): this refers to all who are hostile to him. They fall to pieces like a worn-out garment, and fall a prey to the moth which they already carry within them: — a figure which we meet with again in ch. li. 8 (cf. Job xiii. 28, Hos. v. 12), and one which, although apparently insignificant, is yet really a terrible one, inasmuch as it points to a power of destruction working imperceptibly and slowly, but yet effecting the destruction of the object selected with all the greater certainty.
Thus far we have the words of the servant. The prophecy opened with words of Jehovah (vers. 1-3), and with such words it closes, as we may see from the expression, u this shall ye have at my hand," in ver. lib. The first word of Jehovah is addressed to those who fear Him, and hearken to the voice of His servant. Ver. 10. " Who among you is fearing Jehovah, hearkening to the voice of His servant? He that walketh in darkness, and without a ray of light, let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay himself upon his God." The question is asked for the purpose of showing to any one who could reply, " I am one, or wish to be such an one," what his duty and his privileges are. In the midst of the apparent hopelessness of his situation (chdshekhlm the accusative of the object, and plural to chdshekhdh, ch. viii. 22), and of his consequent despondency of mind, he is to trust in the name of Jehovah, that firmest and surest of all grounds of trust, and to stay himself upon his God, who cannot forsake or deceive him. He is to believe (ch. vii. 9, xxviii. 16; Hab. ii. 4) in God and the word of salvation, for n&3 and \yW2 are terms applied to that Jiducia fidei which is the essence of faith. The second word of Jehovah is addressed to the despisers of His word, of which His servant is the bearer. Ver. 11. u Behold, all ye that kindle fire, that equip yourselves with burning darts, away into the glow of your fire, and into the burning darts that ye have kindled! This comes to you from my hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow" The fire is not the fire of divine wrath (Jer. xvii. 4), but the fire of wickedness (rish'dh, ch. ix. 17), more especially that hellish fire with which an evil tongue is set on fire (Jas. iii. 6); for the zlqoth (equivalent to ziqqoth, from zeq = zing, from zdnaq, to spring, to let fly, Syr. to shoot or hurl), i.e. shots, and indeed burning arrows (Ps. vii. 14), are figurative, and stand for the blasphemies and anathemas which they cast at the servant of Jehovah. It is quite unnecessary to read ^T^p instead of Tf$9j as Hitzig, Ewald, and Knobel propose, or even, contrary to all usage of speech, ^NB. The former is the more pictorial: they gird burning darts, accingunt malleolos, i.e. they equip or arm themselves with them for the purpose of attack (ch. xlv. 5). But the destruction which they prepare for the servant of Jehovah becomes their own. They themselves have to go into the midst of the burning fire and the burning darts, that they have set on fire. The hand of Jehovah suddenly inverts the position; the fire of wrath becomes the fire of divine judgment, and this fire becomes their bed of torment. The LXX. has it correctly, ev \virrj KoifirjOrjcreaBe. The Lamed indicates the situation (Ewald, § 217, d), pi^fn with the tone upon the last syllable gives a dictatorial conclusion. It has a terrible sound, but still more terrible (apart from the future state) is the historical fulfilment that presents itself to the eye.
The prophetic address now turns again from the despisers of the word, whom it has threatened with the torment of fire, to those who long for salvation. Vers. 1-3. " Hearken to me, ye that are in pursuit of righteousness, ye that seek Jehovah, Look up to the rock whence ye are hewn, arid to the hollow of the pit whence ye are dug. Look up to Abraham your forefather, and to Sara who bare you, that he was one when I called him, and blessed him, and multiplied him. For Jehovah hath comforted Zion, comforted all her ruins, and turned her desert like Eden, and her steppe as into the garden of God; joy and gladness are found in her, thanksgiving and sounding music," The prophecy is addressed to those who are striving after the right kind of life and seeking Jehovah, and not turning from Him to make earthly things and themselves the object of their pursuit; for such only are in a condition by faith to regard that as possible, and in spirit to behold that as real, which seems impossible to human understanding, because the very opposite is lying before the eye of the senses. Abraham and Sarah they are mentally to set before them, for they are types of the salvation to be anticipated now. Abraham is the rock whence the stones were hewn, of which the house of Jacob is composed;
and Sarah with her maternal womb the hollow of the pit out of which Israel was brought to the light, just as peat is dug out of a pit, or copper out of a mine. The marriage of Abraham and Sarah was for a long time unfruitful; it was, as it were, out of hard stone that God raised up children to Himself in Abraham and Sarah. The rise of Israel was a miracle of divine power and grace. In antithesis to the masculine tsur, bor is made into a feminine through maqqebheth, which is chosen with reference to tfqebhdh. To EfiSSrn we must supply USD •.. ntrtf, and to DrnpJ, 7\mp... -\m. ' Ver. 2a informs them who the rock and the hollow of the pit are, viz. Abraham your forefather, and Sarah tec7wlelkhemy who bare you with all the pains of childbirth: " you" for the birth of Isaac, the son of promise, was the birth of the nation. The point to be specially looked at in relation to Abraham (in comparison with whom Sarah falls into the background) is given in the words quod unum vocavi eum (that he was one when I called him). The perfect iTnxnp relates the single call of divine grace, which removed Abraham from the midst of idolaters into the fellowship of Jehovah. The futures that follow (with Vav cop.) point out the blessing and multiplication that were connected with it (Gen. xii. 1, 2). He is called one (^ecJidd as in Ezek. xxxiii. 24, Mai. ii. 15), because he was one at the time of his call, and yet through the might of the divine blessing became the root of the whole genealogical tree of Israel, and of a great multitude of people that branched off from it. This is what those who are now longing for salvation are to rem embed*, strengthening themselves by means of the olden time in their faith in the future which so greatly resembles it. The corresponding blessing is expressed in preterites (nicham, vayydsem), inasmuch as to the eye of faith and in prophetic vision the future has the reality of a present and the certainty of a completed fact. Zion, the mother of Israel (ch. 1. 1), the counterpart of Sarah, the ancestress of the nation, — Zion, which is now mourning so bitterly, because she is lying waste and in ruins, — is comforted by Jehovah. The comforting word of promise (ch. xl. 1) becomes, in her case, the comforting fact of fulfilment (ch. xlix. 13). Jehovah makes her waste like Eden (LXX. a>? 7rapd8et,aov), like a garden, as glorious as if it had been directly planted by Himself (Gen. xiii. 10; Num. xxiv. 6). And this