FOOTNOTES:[1]Chs. i., ii., etc. The only title that could be offered as covering the whole book is that in ch. i., ver. 1:The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.But this manifestly cannot apply to any but the earlier chapters, of which Judah and Jerusalem are indeed the subjects.[2]There are, it will be remembered, certain narratives in the Book of Isaiah, which are not by the prophet. They speak of him in the third person (chs. vii., xxxvi.-xxxix.), while in other narratives (chs. vi. and viii.) he speaks of himself in the first person. Their presence is sufficient proof that the Book of Isaiah, in its extant shape, did not come from Isaiah's hands, but was compiled by others.[3]Matt. iii. 3, viii. 17, xii. 17; Luke iii. 4, iv. 17; John i. 23, xii. 38; Acts viii. 28; Rom. x. 16-20.[4]Driver'sIsaiah, pp. 137, 139.[5]Psalm cxxi.[6]Driver'sIsaiah: His Life and Times, p. 191.[7]Calvin on Isa. lv. 3.[8]So quoted by Driver (Isaiah, etc., p. 200), from theBritish and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1879, p. 339.[9]See p.223.[10]Professor Briggs'Messianic Prophecy, 339 ff.[11]Ewald is very strong on this.[12]Including Professor Cheyne,Encyc. Britann., article "Isaiah."[13]According to the arrangement given in the Talmud (Baba bathra, f. 14, col. 2): "Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the Twelve." Cf. Bleek,Introduction to Old Testament, on Isaiah; Orelli'sIsaiah, Eng. ed., p. 214.[14]Robertson Smith,The Old Testament in Jewish Church, 109.[15]It is the theory of some, that although Isa. xl.-lxvi. dates as a whole from the Exile, there are passages in it by Isaiah himself, or in his style by pupils of his (Klostermann in Herzog'sEncyclopædiaand Bredenkamp in hisCommentary). But this, while possible, is beyond proof.[16]The figure actually mentioned in 2 Kings xxiv. 14, but, as Stade points out (Geschichte, p. 680), vv. 14, 15 interrupt the narrative, and may have been intruded here from the account of the later captivity.[17]See vol. i., p. 100 f.[18]Jer. xlv.[19]This is especially clear from ch. xxxi.[20]Having read through the Book of Jeremiah once again since I wrote the above paragraph, I am more than ever impressed with the influence of his life upon Isa. xl.-lxvi.[21]Psalm cii. 14.[22]Isa. xlix. 16.[23]If we would construct for ourselves some more definite idea of that long march from Judah to Babylon, we might assist our imagination by the details of the only other instance on so great a scale of "exile by administrative process"—the transportation to Siberia which the Russian Government effects (it is said, on good authority) to the extent of eighteen thousand persons a year. Every week throughout the year marching parties, three to four hundred strong, leave Tomsk for Irkutsk, doing twelve to twenty miles daily in fetters, with twenty-four hours' rest every third day, or three hundred and thirty miles in a month (Century Magazine, Nov. 1888).[24]For the above details, see Rawlinson'sFive Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, vol. i.[25]Herodotus, Bk. I.; "Memoirs by Commander James Felix Jones, I. N.," inSelections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No. XLIII., New Series, 1857; Ainsworth'sEuphrates Valley Expedition; Layard'sNineveh.[26]Perrot and Chipiez,Histoire de l'Art d'Antiquité, vol. ii.; Assyrie p. 9.[27]The Book of Daniel.[28]Isa. xlii. 22, xlvii. 6.[29]Records of the Past, second series, vol. i., M. Oppert's Translations.[30]Mr. St. Chad Boscawen's recent lectures, of which I have been able to see only the reports in theManchester Guardian.[31]Ch. lviii. 2.[32]Ch. lviii. 13, 14.[33]See vol. i., p. 292 ff.[34]Jer. xxix.[35]Records of the Past, first series, ix., 95seq.[36]See p.47.[37]From the sequence of the voices, it would seem that we had in ch. xl. not a mere collection of anonymous prophecies arranged by an editor, but one complete prophecy by the author of most of Isa. xl.-lxvi., set in the dramatic form which obtains through the other chapters.[38]Every one who appreciates the music of the original will agree how incomparably Handel has interpreted it in those pulses of music with which hisMessiahopens.[39]See ch. liv., where this figure is developed with great beauty.[40]Lev. xxvii.[41]The technical word to preach or proclaim.[42]See xl. 21,Have ye not known?[43]That is in the sense, in which our prophet uses the word, of salvation. See Ch.XIV. of this volume.[44]Some intention of division undoubtedly appears. Notice the double refrain,To whom will ye liken, etc., of vv. 18 and 25; and then at equal distance from either occurrence of this challenge the appeal,Dost thou not know, etc., vv. 21 and 28. But though these signs of a strict division appear, the rest is submerged by the strong flood of feeling which rushes too deep and rapid for any hard-and-fast embankments.[45]See p.109.[46]If an idol leant over or fell that was the very worst of omens;cf.the case of Dagon.[47]When John Knox was a prisoner in France, "the officers brought to him a painted board, which they called Our Lady, and commanded him to kiss it. They violently thrust it into his face, and put it betwixt his hands, who, seeing the extremity, took the idol, and advisedly looking about, he cast it into the river, and said, 'Let Our Lady now save herself; she is light enough; let her learn to swim!' After that was no Scotsman urged with that idolatry."—Knox,History of the Reformation.[48]Psalm cxlvii.[49]Media simply means "the country." It is supposed, that of the six Median tribes only one was Aryan, holding the rest, which were Turanian, under its influence.[50]There were, besides, a few small independent powers in Asia Minor, such as Cilicia, whose prince also intervened at the Battle of the Eclipse; and the Ionian cities in the west. But all these, with perhaps the exception of Lycia, were brought into subjection to Lydia by Crœsus, son of Alyattis.[51]Vol. i., p. 92.[52]Other passages are: xli. 5,Isles saw and feared, the ends of the earth trembled; xlii. 10,The sea and its fulness, Isles and their dwellers; lix. 18,He will repay, fury to His adversaries, recompence to His enemies: to the Isles He will repay recompence; lxvi. 19,The nations, Tarshish, Pul, Lud, drawers of the bow, Tubal, Javan, the Isles afar off that have not heard my fame. The Hebrew is אי 'î, and is supposed to be from a root אוה awah,to inhabit, which sense, however, never attaches to the verb in Hebrew, but is borrowed from the cognate Arabic word.[53]Of the Philistine coast, Isa. xx. 6; of the Tyrian coast, Isa. xxiii. 2, 6; of Greece, Ezek. xxvii. 7; of Crete, Jer. xlvii. 4; of the islands of the sea, Isa. xi. 11 and Esther x. 1.[54]xlii. 15: Eng. version,I will turn rivers into islands.[55]Anabasis2, 4.[56]There were two branches of the Persian royal family after Teispes, the son of Akhæmenes, the founder. Teispes annexed Anshan on the level land between the north-east corner of the Persian Gulf and the mountains of Persia. Teispes' eldest son, Cyrus I., became king of Anshan; his other, Ariaramnes, king of Persia. These were succeeded by their sons, Kambyses I. and Arsames. Kambyses I. was the father of Cyrus II., the great Cyrus, who rejoined Persia to Anshan, to the exclusion of his second cousin, Hystaspes. Cyrus the Great was succeeded by his son, Kambyses II., with whom the Anshan line closed, and the power was transferred to Darius, son of Hystaspes.Cf.Ragozin'sMedia, in the "Story of the Nations" series.[57]Halévy, "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil,"Études Juives, I.[58]Inscription of Nabunahid.[59]Herodotus, Book I.[60]Herodotus explains this by his legend of Cyrus' birth, according to which Cyrus was a hybrid—half Persian, half Mede.[61]Herodotus, Book I.[62]Sir Edward Strachey.[63]Lit.from the head, "da capo." I am not sure, however, that it does not rather meanbeforehand, like our on ahead.[64]See p.121.[65]This seems to me to be more likely to be the meaning of the prophet, than the absolutefrom the beginning. It suits its parallelbeforehand, and it is more in line with the general demand of the chapter for anticipation of events. It is literally from the head, "da capo,"cf.p.117.[66]ראשנות r'ishonôth is a relative term, meaninghead things,things ahead,first things,prior things, whether in rank or time. Here of course the time meaning is undoubted. Butahead ofwhat?priorto what?—this is the difficulty. Ewald, Hitzig, A. B. Davidson, Driver, etc., take it as prior to the standpoint of the speaker; things that happened or were uttered previous to him,—a sense in which the word is used in subsequent chapters. But Delitzsch, Hahn, Cheyne, etc., take it to be things prior to other things that will happen in the later future, early events, as opposed to הבאות of the next clause, which they take to mean subsequent things,things that are to comeafterwards. I think Dr. Davidson's reasons (seeExpositor, second series, vol. vii., p. 256) are quite conclusive against this view of Delitzsch, that in this clause the idols are being asked to predict events in the near future. It is difficult, as he says, to see why the idols should be given a choice between the earlier and the later future: nor does the הבאות of the contrasted clause at all suggest a later future; it simply meansthings coming, a term which is as applicable to the near as to the far future. Nevertheless, I am not persuaded that Dr. Davidson's own view ofr'ishonôthis the correct one. The rest of the context (see above) is occupied with predictions of the future only. Andr'ishonôthdoes not necessarily mean previous predictions, although used in this sense in the subsequent chapters. It simply means, as we have seen,head things,things ahead,things beforehand, orfountain-things,origins,causes. That we are to understand it here in some such general and absolute sense is suggested, I think, by the word אחריתן which follows it,their resultorissue, and is confirmed by ראשן, r'ishôn (masc. singular) of ver. 27, which is undoubtedly used in a general sense, meaningsomethingorsomebody on ahead, an anticipator, predicter,forerunner(as Cheyne gives it), or as I have rendered it above, neuter, aprediction. Ifr'ishônin ver. 27 means a thing or a man given beforehand, then r'ishonôth in ver. 22 may also mean things given beforehand, predictions made now, or at least things selected and announced as causes now, whose issue, אחריתן, may be recognised in the future. In a word, r'ishonôth would mean things not necessarilypreviousto the speech in which they were allowed, but simply thingspreviousto certain results, or anticipating certain events, either as their prediction or as their cause.[67]Ueberweg,History of Philosophy, English translation, i., 51.[68]Quoted by Clement of Alexandria,Stromata, Bk. V., ch. iv., and by Eusebius,Præp. Evang.xiii., 13.[69]Ibid.[70]Quoted by Ueberweg, as above.[71]Pfleiderer,Philosophy of Religion: Contents of the Religious Consciousness, ch. i. (Eng. trans., vol. iii., p. 291).[72]See further on the subject the chapter on the Righteousness of Israel and of God, ChapterXIV. of this volume.[73]And that which runs:... he is come, from the rising of the sun he calleth upon My name(Bredenkamp) is wrong.[74]The former of these in ch. lxiv. 7; the latter in xliv. 5.[75]Translation of the Cyrus-cylinder in "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil," by Halévy,Revue des Études Juives, No. 1, 1880.[76]Ezra i. 2; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23.[77]אקרא בשמו for יקֹרא בשמי.[78]SeeIntroduction.[79]So the grammar of the original.[80]Vol. i., pp. 144, 334.[81]Isa. xxxi.[82]Hosea xi. 9.[83]Ch. lv. 8, 9.[84]Ibid.ver. 11.[85]From to-day on, Ez. xlviii. 35; but others take itAlso to-day I am He.[86]Renan's theory of the "natural monotheism" of the Semites was first published in hisHistoire des Langues Semitiquessome forty years ago. Nearly every Semitic scholar of repute found some occasion or other to refute it. But with Renan's charming genius for neglecting all facts that disturb an artistic arrangement of his subject, the overwhelming evidence against the natural monotheism of the Semite has been ignored by him, and he repeats his theory unmodified in hisHistoire du Peuple d'Israel, i., 31, published 1888.[87]Literallywitnesses—i.e., of the idols.[88]This word is wanting in the text, which is corrupt here. Some supply the word sharpeneth, imagining that חדד has fallen away from the beginning of the verse, through confusion with the יחד which ends the previous verse; or they bring יחד itself, changing it to חדד. But evidently חרשׁ ברזל begins the verse;cf.the parallel חרשׁ עצים which begins ver. 13.[89]Here, again, the text is uncertain. With some critics I have borrowed for this verse the first three words of the following verse.[90]Perhapsfeeder on ashes.[91]Chs. xliii. 25; xliv. 21, 22; xlv. 17.[92]See ch.xiv. of this volume.[93]Identified by Delitzsch as East, Halévy as West, and Winckler as North, Elam. Cyrus, though reigning here, was a pure Persian, an Akhæmenid or son of the royal house of Persia.[94]The parallel which Professor Sayce (Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, p. 147) draws between the statement of the Cyrus-cylinder, that Cyrus "governed in justice and righteousness, and was righteous in hand and heart," and Isa. xlv. 13, "Jehovah raised him up in righteousness," is therefore utterly unreal. It is very difficult to see how the Deputy-Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford could have been reminded of the one passage by the other, for in Isa. xlv. 13righteousnessneither is used of Cyrus, nor signifies the moral virtue which it does on the cylinder.[95]Seenoteto ch. vii.[96]The following are extracts from the Cylinder of Cyrus (see Sayce'sFresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, pp. 138-140):—"Cyrus, king of Elam, he (Merodach) proclaimed by name for the sovereignty.... Whom he had conquered with his hand, he governed in justice and righteousness. Merodach, the great lord, the restorer of his people, beheld with joy the deeds of his vicegerent, who was righteous in hand and heart. To Babylon he summoned his march, and he bade him take the road to Babylon; like a friend and a comrade he went at his side. Without fighting or battle he caused him to enter into Babylon, his city of Babylon feared. The god ... has in goodness drawn nigh to him, has made strong his name. I Cyrus ... I entered Babylon in peace.... Merodach the great lord (cheered) the heart of his servant.... My vast armies he marshalled peacefully in the midst of Babylon; throughout Sumer and Accad I had no revilers.... Accad, Marad, etc., I restored the gods who dwelt within them to their places ... all their peoples I assembled and I restored their lands. And the gods of Sumer and Accad whom Nabonidos, to the anger of the lord of gods (Merodach), had brought into Babylon, I settled in peace in their sanctuaries by command of Merodach, the great lord. In the goodness of their hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should grant me length of days; may they bless my projects with prosperity, and may they say to Merodach my lord, that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and Kambyses his son (deserve his favour)."[97]Why so sovereign a God should be in such peculiar relations with one people, we will try to see in ch.xv. of this volume.[98]Earth here without the article, but plainlythe earth, and notthe landof Judah.[99]Cf.with this Hebrew word צלח the Greek προκοπτειν, to beat or cut a way through like pioneers; then to forward a work, advance, prosper (Luke ii. 52; Gal. i. 14; 2 Tim. ii. 16).[100]Cyropædia, Book VIII., ch. vii., 6.[101]Crouches, Kara`;cowers, Kores.[102]Bredenkamp.[103]Sayce,Fresh Light, etc., p. 140.[104]See p.39f.[105]There is a play on the words 'anî `asîthî, wa'anî, 'essā'—I have made, and I will aid.[106]Lam. v. 7.[107]Ver. 4, second clause, and vii.[108]Cf.Doughty,Arabia Deserta.[109]The Turanians, who occupied Mesopotamia before the Semitic invasion, were the first builders of cities.[110]Babylon, as far as we can learn, first rose to power about the time of that Amraphel who fought in the Mesopotamian league against the neighbours and friends of Abraham. Amraphel is supposed to have been the father of Hammurabis, who first made Babylon the capital of Chaldea. It scarcely ever again ceased to be such; but it was not till the fall of Assyria, about 625b.c., and the rebuilding of Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar (604-561), that the city's second and greatest glory began.[111]See ch. iv., pp.53-56.[112]Vol. i., pp. 409-315.[113]Vol. i., pp. 275, 286, 294.[114]See especiallySatires III.andVI., andcf.Bagehot'sPhysics and Politics.[115]Rev. xvii., xviii.[116]Ch. xlv.[117]Bredenkamp will have it, that the prophet here mentions first Northern Israel and then Judah:O House of Jacob, the general term, boththose that are called by the name of Israel, and that have come forth from the waters of Judah. But this is entirely opposed to the syntax, and I note the opinion simply to show how precarious the arguments are for the existence of pre-exilic elements in Isa. xl.-xlviii. The point, which Bredenkamp makes by his rendering of this verse, is that it could only be a pre-exilic prophet, who would distinguish between Judah and Northern Israel; and that, therefore, it might be Isaiah himself who wrote the verse![118]Former things(ri'shonôth). It is impossible to determine whether these meanpredictionswhich Jehovah published long ago, and which have already come to pass, orformer eventswhich He foretold long ago, and which have happened as He said they would. The distinction, however, is immaterial.[119]Literally,also. But נם, a cumulative conjunction, when it is introduced to repeat the same thought as preceded it, meansyea, truly, profecto, imo.[120]Ch. xxv., which is undoubtedly an authentic prophecy of Jeremiah.[121]The Hebrew has not the wordsMy Name. The LXX. has them.[122]A second time without article though applied to the whole world.[123]Giesebrecht takes this as an actual quotation from some former prophet: a specimen of the ancient prophecies which Jehovah sent to Israel, and which were now being fulfilled. At least it is the sum of what Jehovah's prophets had often predicted.[124]This very difficult verse has been attributed either to Jehovah in the first three clauses and to the Servant in the fourth (Delitzsch); or in the same proportion to Jehovah and the prophet (Cheyne and Bredenkamp); or to the Servant all through (Orelli); or to the prophet all through (Hitzig, Knobel, Giesebrecht. See the latter'sBeiträge zur Kritik Jesaia's, p. 136). It is a subtle matter. The present expositor thinks it clear that all four clauses must be understood as the voice of one speaker, but sees nothing in them to decide finally whether that speaker is the Servant, the people Israel, in which caseI am therewould have reference to Israel's consciousness of every deed done by God since the beginning of their history (cf.ver. 6a); or whether the speaker is the prophet, in which caseI am therewould mean that he had watched the rise of Cyrus from the first. Butcf.Zech. ii. 10-11, Eng. Ver., and iv. 9.[125]Orlike its bowels, referring to the sea.[126]It is only by confining his review of the word to its applications to God, and overlooking the passages which attribute it to the people, that Krüger,Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi., can affirm that the prophet holds throughout to a single idea of righteousness (p. 36). On this, as on many other points, it is Calvin's treatment, that is most sympathetic to the variations of the original.[127]In Arabic the cognate word is applied to a lance, but this may mean a sound or fit lance as well as a straight one. "Originem Schult. de defect. hodiernis § 214-224 ponit inrigore,duritia, coll.arabiclancea dura, al. aequabilis" (GeseniiThesaurus, art. צדק).[128]It is not certain whether righteousness is here used in a physical sense; and in all other cases in which the root is applied in the Old Testament to material objects, it is plainly employed in some reflection of its moral sense,e.g.,justweights,justbalance, Lev. xix. 36.[129]"Der Zustand welcher der Norm entspricht." Schultz,Alt. Test. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 540, n. 1.[130]Cf.Robertson Smith,Prophets of Israel, p. 388, and Kautzsch's paper, which is there quoted.[131]"Die Begriffe צדקה und צדק ... bedeuten nun wirklich bei Amos mehr als die juristische Gerechtigkeit. Indirect gehen die Forderungen des Amos über die blos rechtliche Sphäre hinaus" (Duhm,Theologie der Propheten, p. 115).[132]Gen. xxxviii. 26.Cf.2 Sam. xv. 4.[133]The first chapter of Isaiah is a perfect summary of these two.[134]But the verb tomake righteousorjustifyis used in a sense akin to the New Testament sense in liii. 11. See our chapter on that prophecy.[135]At first sight this is remarkably like the cognate Arabic root, which is continually used for truthful. But the Hebrew word never meant truthful in the moral sense of truth, and here isrightorcorrect.[136]Earthagain without article, though obviously referring to the world.[137]Sense doubtful here. Bredenkamp translates by a slight change of reading:Only speaking by Jehovah: Fulness of righteousness and might come to Him, and ashamed, etc.[138]צדק, the masculine, is used sixteen times; צדקה, twenty-four. Both are used of Jehovah: xlii. 21 צדקו, and lix. 16 צדקתו. Both of His speech: masc. in xlv. 19, fem. in xlv. 23 and lxiii. 1. Perhaps the passage in which their identity is most plain is li. 5, 6, where they are both parallel to salvation: ver. 5, My righteousness (m.) is near; ver. 6, My righteousness (f.) shall not be abolished. Both are used of the people's duty: lix. 4, None sueth in righteousness (m.); xlviii. 1, But not in truth nor in righteousness (f.); lvi. 1, Keep justice and do righteousness (f.) And both are used of the people's saved and glorious condition: lviii. 8, Thy righteousness (m.) shall go before thee; lxii. 1, Until her righteousness (m.) go forth as brightness; xlviii. 18, Thy righteousness (f.) as the waves of the sea; liv. 17, Their righteousness (f.) which is of Me. Both are used with prepositions (cf.xlii. 6 with xlviii. 1), and both with possessive pronouns. In fact, there is absolutely no difference made between the two.[139]Wellhausen.[140]"Revelation is never revolutionary.... As a rule, revelation accepts the fragments of truth and adopts the methods of religion already existing, uniting the former into a whole, and purifying the latter for its own purposes."... For instance, "in the East each people had its particular god. The god and the people were correlative ideas, that which gave the individuals of a nation unity and made them a people was the unity of its god; as, on the other hand, that which gave a god prestige was the strength and victorious career of his people. The self-consciousness of the nation and its religion re-acted on one another, and rose and fell simultaneously. This conception was not repudiated, but adopted by revelation; and, as occasion demanded, purified from its natural abuses."—Professor A. B. Davidson,Expositor, Second Series, vol. viii., pp. 257-8.[141]Mr. Doughty, in his most interesting account of the nomads of Central Arabia, the unsophisticated Semites on their native soil, furnishes ample material for accounting for the strange mixture of passion and resignation in these prophet-peoples of the world.[142]Ch. xlix. 2.[143]Jer. xxx. 10, cf. xlvi. 27; also Ezek. xxxvii. 25:And they shall dwell in the land that I have given My servant Jacob. Cf. xxviii. 25.[144]xliv. 1, 21; xlviii. 20, etc.[145]Ch. li. 9, 10.[146]Ch. xliii. 14.[147]Ib.3, 4.[148]Robertson Smith, Burnett Lectures in Aberdeen, 1889-90.[149]A king's courtiers, soldiers, or subjects are calledhis servants. In this sense Israel was often styled theservants of Jehovah, as in Deut. xxxii. 36; Neh. i. 10, where the phrase is parallel toHis people. ButJehovah's servantsis a phrase also parallel to His worshippers (Psalm cxxxiv. 1, etc.); to those who trust Him (Psalm xxxiv. 22); and to those who love His name (Psalm lxix. 36). The term is also applied in the plural to the prophets (Amos iii. 7); and in the singular, to eminent individuals—such as Abraham, Joshua, David and Job; also by Jeremiah to the alien Nebuchadrezzar, while engaged on his mission from God against Jerusalem.[150]See p.244.[151]The definite article is not used here with the word people, and hence the phrase has been taken by some in the vaguer sense ofa people's covenant, as a general expression, along with its parallel clause, of the kind of influence the Servant was to exert, not on Israel, but onanypeople in the world; he was to bea people's covenant, anda light for nations. So practically Schultz,A. T. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 284. But the Hebrew word for people עם is often used without the article to expressthepeople Israel, just as the Hebrew word for land ארץ is often used without the article to expresstheland of Judah. (הארץ with the article, is in Isa. xl.-lxvi.the Earth.) And in ch. xlix. the phrase acovenant of the peopleagain occurs, and in a context in which it can only meana covenantofthepeople, Israel. Some render ברית עם acovenant people. But in xlix. 8 this is plainly an impossible rendering.[152]Meshullam is found as a proper name in the historical books of the Old Testament, especially Nehemiah,e.g., iii. 4, 6, 30.[153]Hosea xi. 1; Matt. ii. 15[154]Of all the expressions used of him the only one which shows a real tendency to a plural reference isin his deaths(ver. 9), and even it (if it is the correct reading) is quite capable of application to an individual who suffered such manifold martyrdom as is set forth in the passage.[155]Not one word in them betrays any sense of a body of men or an ideal people standing behind them, which sense surely some expression would have betrayed, if it had been in the prophet's mind.[156]A. B. D., in a review of the last edition of Delitzsch'sIsaiah, in theTheol. Review, iv., p. 276.[157]Isaiah I.i.-xxxix., pp.134,135.[158]See p.42.[159]See ch.ii. of this volume.[160]Cf.The Jewish Interpreters on Isa. liii., Driver and Neubauer, Oxford, 1877. Abravanel, who himself takes ch. liii. in a national sense, admits, after giving the Christian interpretation, that "in fact Jonathan ben Uziel, 'the Targumist,' applied it to the Messiah, who was still to come, and this is likewise the opinion of the wise in many of their Midrashim." And R. Moscheh al Shech, of the sixteenth century, says: "See, our masters have with one voice held as established and handed down, that here it is King Messiah who is spoken of." (Both these passages quoted by Bredenkamp in his commentary, p. 307.)[161]Isa. lix. 5.[162]Id.vi. 13; ix. 18; x. 17, 34; xlvii. 14.[163]Id.xxi. 10; xxviii. 27; xl. 24; xli. 15 ff.[164]Id.i. 31; xlvii. 14.[165]Isa. lviii. 7.[166]Undoubtedly taken from Isa. liii.[167]Cf.with the Greek version of Isa. l. 4-7, Luke xviii. 31, 32; Matt. xxvi. 67.[168]In Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Septuagint translates the Hebrew for Servant by one or other of two words—παις and δουλος. Παις is used in xli. 8; xlii. 1; xliv. 1 ff.; xliv. 21; xlv. 4; xlix. 6; l. 10; lii. 13. But δουλος is used in xlviii. 20; xlix. 3 and 5. In the Acts it is παις that is used of Christ: "An apostle is never called παις (but only δουλος) Θεου" (Meyer). But David is called παις (Acts iv. 25).[169]Acts iii. 13, 26; iv. 27-30.[170]Acts iii. 14; vii. 52.[171]Acts viii. 30 ff.[172]1 Peter i. 19; ii. 22, 23; iii. 18.[173]Rom. xv. 20 f.; 2 Cor. v. 21.[174]Acts xiii. 47, after Isa. xlix. 6.[175]Isa. l. 8, and Rom. viii. 33, 34.[176]2 Tim. ii. 24. We may note, also, how Paul in Eph. vi. takes the armour with which God is clothed in Isa. lix. 17, breastplate and helmet, and equips the individual Christian with them; and how, in the same passage, he takes for the Christian from Isa. xl. the Messiah's girdle of truth and thesword of the Spirit,—he shall smite the land with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.[177]The English equivalent is,nor is loud.[178]This time with the article, so notthe landof Judah only, butthe Earth.[179]Bax,Religion of Socialism.[180]This time "arets" with the article. So not thelandof Judah only but the world.[181]The following are the four main meanings of "mishpat" in Isa. xl.-lxvi.: 1. In a general sense, a legal process, xli. 1,let us come together to the judgement, orthe law(with the article),cf.l. 8,man of my judgement,i.e., my fellow-at-law, my adversary; liii. 8, oppression andjudgement,i.e., a judgement which was oppressive, a legal injustice. 2. A person'scauseorright, xl. 27, xlix. 4. 3.Ordinanceinstituted by Jehovah for the life and worship of His people, lviii. 2,ordinancesof righteousness,i.e., either canonicallaws, or ordinances by observing which the people would make themselves righteous. 4. In general, the sum of the laws given by Jehovah to Israel,the Law, lviii. 2,Lawof their God; li. 4, Jehovah saysMy Law(Rev. Ver.judgement), parallel to "Torah" or Revelation (Rev. Ver.law). Then absolutely, without the article or Jehovah's name attached, xlii. 1, 3, 4. In lvi. 1 parallel to righteousness; lix. 14 parallel to righteousness, truth and uprightness. In fact, in this last use, while represented as equivalent to civic morality, it is this, not as viewed in its character,right,upright, but in its obligation as ordained by God:moralityasHis Law. The absence of the article may either mean what it means in the case ofpeopleandland,i.e., theLaw, too much of a proper name to need the article, or it may be an attempt to abstract the quality of the Law; and if so mishpat is equal tojustice.[182]Expositor, second series, vol. viii., p. 364.[183]This might, of course, only mean what the Servant had to do for his captive countrymen. But coming as it does after thelight of nations, it seems natural to take it in its wider and more spiritual sense.[184]See ch.xv. of this volume.[185]Expositor, second series, viii., pp. 364, 365, 366.[186]Ibid., p. 366.[187]This, of course, goes against Prof. Briggs's theory of the composition of Isa. xl.-lxvi. out of two poems (see p.18).[188]This line is full of the letter m.[189]This is as the text is written; but the Massoretic reading gives,that Israel to Him may be gathered.[190]So it seems best to give the sense of this difficult line, but most translators renderdespised of soul, orthoroughly despised,abhorred by peoples, orby a people, etc. The word fordespisedis used elsewhere only in ch. liii. 3.[191]Prof. A. B. Davidson,Expositor, Second Series, viii., 441.[192]Page 68.[193]So George Eliot wrote of her own writings shortly before her death. SeeLife, iii., 245.[194]Lady Ponsonby, to whom George Eliot wrote the letter quoted above, confessed that, with the disappearance of religious faith from her soul, there vanished also the power of interest in, and of pity for, her kind.[195]Jer. i. 5.[196]See vol. i., p. 70.[197]See p.240f.[198]How all their meanness, how all the sense of shame from which He suffered, breaks forth in these words:Are ye come out as against a robber?[199]Literally,lord of my cause; my adversary or opponent at law.[200]Epistle to the Romans, viii., 31 ff.[201]Though Cheyne takesHis Servantin ver. 10 to be, not the Servant, but the prophet.[202]Kindlers of fireis the literal rendering. But the word is not the common word to kindle, and is here used of wanton fireraising.[203]Thus Ewald supposed ch. lii. 13-liii. to be an elegy upon some martyr in the persecutions under Manasseh. Professor Briggs, as we have noticed before, claims to have discovered that all the passages in the Servant are parts of a trimeter poem, older than the rest of the prophecy, which he finds to be in hexameters. See p.315.[204]I may quote Dillmann's opinion on this last point: "Andererseits sind nicht blos die Grundgedanken und auch einzelne Wendungen wie 52, 13-15. 53, 7. 11. 12 durch 42, 1 ff. 49, 1 ff. 50, 3 ff. so wohl vorbereitet und so sehr in Übereinstimmung damit, dass an eine fast unveränderte Herübernahme des Abschnitts aus einer verlornen Schrift (Ew.) nicht gedacht werden kann, sondern derselbe doch wesentlich als Werk des Vrf. angesehen werden muss" (Commentary4th ed., 1890, p. 453).[205]This verb best gives the force of the Hebrew, which means bothto deal prudentlyand toprosperor succeed. See p.346.[206]Vulgate finely: "extolletur, sublimis erit et valde elatus."
[1]Chs. i., ii., etc. The only title that could be offered as covering the whole book is that in ch. i., ver. 1:The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.But this manifestly cannot apply to any but the earlier chapters, of which Judah and Jerusalem are indeed the subjects.
[2]There are, it will be remembered, certain narratives in the Book of Isaiah, which are not by the prophet. They speak of him in the third person (chs. vii., xxxvi.-xxxix.), while in other narratives (chs. vi. and viii.) he speaks of himself in the first person. Their presence is sufficient proof that the Book of Isaiah, in its extant shape, did not come from Isaiah's hands, but was compiled by others.
[3]Matt. iii. 3, viii. 17, xii. 17; Luke iii. 4, iv. 17; John i. 23, xii. 38; Acts viii. 28; Rom. x. 16-20.
[4]Driver'sIsaiah, pp. 137, 139.
[5]Psalm cxxi.
[6]Driver'sIsaiah: His Life and Times, p. 191.
[7]Calvin on Isa. lv. 3.
[8]So quoted by Driver (Isaiah, etc., p. 200), from theBritish and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1879, p. 339.
[9]See p.223.
[10]Professor Briggs'Messianic Prophecy, 339 ff.
[11]Ewald is very strong on this.
[12]Including Professor Cheyne,Encyc. Britann., article "Isaiah."
[13]According to the arrangement given in the Talmud (Baba bathra, f. 14, col. 2): "Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the Twelve." Cf. Bleek,Introduction to Old Testament, on Isaiah; Orelli'sIsaiah, Eng. ed., p. 214.
[14]Robertson Smith,The Old Testament in Jewish Church, 109.
[15]It is the theory of some, that although Isa. xl.-lxvi. dates as a whole from the Exile, there are passages in it by Isaiah himself, or in his style by pupils of his (Klostermann in Herzog'sEncyclopædiaand Bredenkamp in hisCommentary). But this, while possible, is beyond proof.
[16]The figure actually mentioned in 2 Kings xxiv. 14, but, as Stade points out (Geschichte, p. 680), vv. 14, 15 interrupt the narrative, and may have been intruded here from the account of the later captivity.
[17]See vol. i., p. 100 f.
[18]Jer. xlv.
[19]This is especially clear from ch. xxxi.
[20]Having read through the Book of Jeremiah once again since I wrote the above paragraph, I am more than ever impressed with the influence of his life upon Isa. xl.-lxvi.
[21]Psalm cii. 14.
[22]Isa. xlix. 16.
[23]If we would construct for ourselves some more definite idea of that long march from Judah to Babylon, we might assist our imagination by the details of the only other instance on so great a scale of "exile by administrative process"—the transportation to Siberia which the Russian Government effects (it is said, on good authority) to the extent of eighteen thousand persons a year. Every week throughout the year marching parties, three to four hundred strong, leave Tomsk for Irkutsk, doing twelve to twenty miles daily in fetters, with twenty-four hours' rest every third day, or three hundred and thirty miles in a month (Century Magazine, Nov. 1888).
[24]For the above details, see Rawlinson'sFive Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, vol. i.
[25]Herodotus, Bk. I.; "Memoirs by Commander James Felix Jones, I. N.," inSelections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No. XLIII., New Series, 1857; Ainsworth'sEuphrates Valley Expedition; Layard'sNineveh.
[26]Perrot and Chipiez,Histoire de l'Art d'Antiquité, vol. ii.; Assyrie p. 9.
[27]The Book of Daniel.
[28]Isa. xlii. 22, xlvii. 6.
[29]Records of the Past, second series, vol. i., M. Oppert's Translations.
[30]Mr. St. Chad Boscawen's recent lectures, of which I have been able to see only the reports in theManchester Guardian.
[31]Ch. lviii. 2.
[32]Ch. lviii. 13, 14.
[33]See vol. i., p. 292 ff.
[34]Jer. xxix.
[35]Records of the Past, first series, ix., 95seq.
[36]See p.47.
[37]From the sequence of the voices, it would seem that we had in ch. xl. not a mere collection of anonymous prophecies arranged by an editor, but one complete prophecy by the author of most of Isa. xl.-lxvi., set in the dramatic form which obtains through the other chapters.
[38]Every one who appreciates the music of the original will agree how incomparably Handel has interpreted it in those pulses of music with which hisMessiahopens.
[39]See ch. liv., where this figure is developed with great beauty.
[40]Lev. xxvii.
[41]The technical word to preach or proclaim.
[42]See xl. 21,Have ye not known?
[43]That is in the sense, in which our prophet uses the word, of salvation. See Ch.XIV. of this volume.
[44]Some intention of division undoubtedly appears. Notice the double refrain,To whom will ye liken, etc., of vv. 18 and 25; and then at equal distance from either occurrence of this challenge the appeal,Dost thou not know, etc., vv. 21 and 28. But though these signs of a strict division appear, the rest is submerged by the strong flood of feeling which rushes too deep and rapid for any hard-and-fast embankments.
[45]See p.109.
[46]If an idol leant over or fell that was the very worst of omens;cf.the case of Dagon.
[47]When John Knox was a prisoner in France, "the officers brought to him a painted board, which they called Our Lady, and commanded him to kiss it. They violently thrust it into his face, and put it betwixt his hands, who, seeing the extremity, took the idol, and advisedly looking about, he cast it into the river, and said, 'Let Our Lady now save herself; she is light enough; let her learn to swim!' After that was no Scotsman urged with that idolatry."—Knox,History of the Reformation.
[48]Psalm cxlvii.
[49]Media simply means "the country." It is supposed, that of the six Median tribes only one was Aryan, holding the rest, which were Turanian, under its influence.
[50]There were, besides, a few small independent powers in Asia Minor, such as Cilicia, whose prince also intervened at the Battle of the Eclipse; and the Ionian cities in the west. But all these, with perhaps the exception of Lycia, were brought into subjection to Lydia by Crœsus, son of Alyattis.
[51]Vol. i., p. 92.
[52]Other passages are: xli. 5,Isles saw and feared, the ends of the earth trembled; xlii. 10,The sea and its fulness, Isles and their dwellers; lix. 18,He will repay, fury to His adversaries, recompence to His enemies: to the Isles He will repay recompence; lxvi. 19,The nations, Tarshish, Pul, Lud, drawers of the bow, Tubal, Javan, the Isles afar off that have not heard my fame. The Hebrew is אי 'î, and is supposed to be from a root אוה awah,to inhabit, which sense, however, never attaches to the verb in Hebrew, but is borrowed from the cognate Arabic word.
[53]Of the Philistine coast, Isa. xx. 6; of the Tyrian coast, Isa. xxiii. 2, 6; of Greece, Ezek. xxvii. 7; of Crete, Jer. xlvii. 4; of the islands of the sea, Isa. xi. 11 and Esther x. 1.
[54]xlii. 15: Eng. version,I will turn rivers into islands.
[55]Anabasis2, 4.
[56]There were two branches of the Persian royal family after Teispes, the son of Akhæmenes, the founder. Teispes annexed Anshan on the level land between the north-east corner of the Persian Gulf and the mountains of Persia. Teispes' eldest son, Cyrus I., became king of Anshan; his other, Ariaramnes, king of Persia. These were succeeded by their sons, Kambyses I. and Arsames. Kambyses I. was the father of Cyrus II., the great Cyrus, who rejoined Persia to Anshan, to the exclusion of his second cousin, Hystaspes. Cyrus the Great was succeeded by his son, Kambyses II., with whom the Anshan line closed, and the power was transferred to Darius, son of Hystaspes.Cf.Ragozin'sMedia, in the "Story of the Nations" series.
[57]Halévy, "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil,"Études Juives, I.
[58]Inscription of Nabunahid.
[59]Herodotus, Book I.
[60]Herodotus explains this by his legend of Cyrus' birth, according to which Cyrus was a hybrid—half Persian, half Mede.
[61]Herodotus, Book I.
[62]Sir Edward Strachey.
[63]Lit.from the head, "da capo." I am not sure, however, that it does not rather meanbeforehand, like our on ahead.
[64]See p.121.
[65]This seems to me to be more likely to be the meaning of the prophet, than the absolutefrom the beginning. It suits its parallelbeforehand, and it is more in line with the general demand of the chapter for anticipation of events. It is literally from the head, "da capo,"cf.p.117.
[66]ראשנות r'ishonôth is a relative term, meaninghead things,things ahead,first things,prior things, whether in rank or time. Here of course the time meaning is undoubted. Butahead ofwhat?priorto what?—this is the difficulty. Ewald, Hitzig, A. B. Davidson, Driver, etc., take it as prior to the standpoint of the speaker; things that happened or were uttered previous to him,—a sense in which the word is used in subsequent chapters. But Delitzsch, Hahn, Cheyne, etc., take it to be things prior to other things that will happen in the later future, early events, as opposed to הבאות of the next clause, which they take to mean subsequent things,things that are to comeafterwards. I think Dr. Davidson's reasons (seeExpositor, second series, vol. vii., p. 256) are quite conclusive against this view of Delitzsch, that in this clause the idols are being asked to predict events in the near future. It is difficult, as he says, to see why the idols should be given a choice between the earlier and the later future: nor does the הבאות of the contrasted clause at all suggest a later future; it simply meansthings coming, a term which is as applicable to the near as to the far future. Nevertheless, I am not persuaded that Dr. Davidson's own view ofr'ishonôthis the correct one. The rest of the context (see above) is occupied with predictions of the future only. Andr'ishonôthdoes not necessarily mean previous predictions, although used in this sense in the subsequent chapters. It simply means, as we have seen,head things,things ahead,things beforehand, orfountain-things,origins,causes. That we are to understand it here in some such general and absolute sense is suggested, I think, by the word אחריתן which follows it,their resultorissue, and is confirmed by ראשן, r'ishôn (masc. singular) of ver. 27, which is undoubtedly used in a general sense, meaningsomethingorsomebody on ahead, an anticipator, predicter,forerunner(as Cheyne gives it), or as I have rendered it above, neuter, aprediction. Ifr'ishônin ver. 27 means a thing or a man given beforehand, then r'ishonôth in ver. 22 may also mean things given beforehand, predictions made now, or at least things selected and announced as causes now, whose issue, אחריתן, may be recognised in the future. In a word, r'ishonôth would mean things not necessarilypreviousto the speech in which they were allowed, but simply thingspreviousto certain results, or anticipating certain events, either as their prediction or as their cause.
[67]Ueberweg,History of Philosophy, English translation, i., 51.
[68]Quoted by Clement of Alexandria,Stromata, Bk. V., ch. iv., and by Eusebius,Præp. Evang.xiii., 13.
[69]Ibid.
[70]Quoted by Ueberweg, as above.
[71]Pfleiderer,Philosophy of Religion: Contents of the Religious Consciousness, ch. i. (Eng. trans., vol. iii., p. 291).
[72]See further on the subject the chapter on the Righteousness of Israel and of God, ChapterXIV. of this volume.
[73]And that which runs:... he is come, from the rising of the sun he calleth upon My name(Bredenkamp) is wrong.
[74]The former of these in ch. lxiv. 7; the latter in xliv. 5.
[75]Translation of the Cyrus-cylinder in "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil," by Halévy,Revue des Études Juives, No. 1, 1880.
[76]Ezra i. 2; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23.
[77]אקרא בשמו for יקֹרא בשמי.
[78]SeeIntroduction.
[79]So the grammar of the original.
[80]Vol. i., pp. 144, 334.
[81]Isa. xxxi.
[82]Hosea xi. 9.
[83]Ch. lv. 8, 9.
[84]Ibid.ver. 11.
[85]From to-day on, Ez. xlviii. 35; but others take itAlso to-day I am He.
[86]Renan's theory of the "natural monotheism" of the Semites was first published in hisHistoire des Langues Semitiquessome forty years ago. Nearly every Semitic scholar of repute found some occasion or other to refute it. But with Renan's charming genius for neglecting all facts that disturb an artistic arrangement of his subject, the overwhelming evidence against the natural monotheism of the Semite has been ignored by him, and he repeats his theory unmodified in hisHistoire du Peuple d'Israel, i., 31, published 1888.
[87]Literallywitnesses—i.e., of the idols.
[88]This word is wanting in the text, which is corrupt here. Some supply the word sharpeneth, imagining that חדד has fallen away from the beginning of the verse, through confusion with the יחד which ends the previous verse; or they bring יחד itself, changing it to חדד. But evidently חרשׁ ברזל begins the verse;cf.the parallel חרשׁ עצים which begins ver. 13.
[89]Here, again, the text is uncertain. With some critics I have borrowed for this verse the first three words of the following verse.
[90]Perhapsfeeder on ashes.
[91]Chs. xliii. 25; xliv. 21, 22; xlv. 17.
[92]See ch.xiv. of this volume.
[93]Identified by Delitzsch as East, Halévy as West, and Winckler as North, Elam. Cyrus, though reigning here, was a pure Persian, an Akhæmenid or son of the royal house of Persia.
[94]The parallel which Professor Sayce (Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, p. 147) draws between the statement of the Cyrus-cylinder, that Cyrus "governed in justice and righteousness, and was righteous in hand and heart," and Isa. xlv. 13, "Jehovah raised him up in righteousness," is therefore utterly unreal. It is very difficult to see how the Deputy-Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford could have been reminded of the one passage by the other, for in Isa. xlv. 13righteousnessneither is used of Cyrus, nor signifies the moral virtue which it does on the cylinder.
[95]Seenoteto ch. vii.
[96]The following are extracts from the Cylinder of Cyrus (see Sayce'sFresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, pp. 138-140):—"Cyrus, king of Elam, he (Merodach) proclaimed by name for the sovereignty.... Whom he had conquered with his hand, he governed in justice and righteousness. Merodach, the great lord, the restorer of his people, beheld with joy the deeds of his vicegerent, who was righteous in hand and heart. To Babylon he summoned his march, and he bade him take the road to Babylon; like a friend and a comrade he went at his side. Without fighting or battle he caused him to enter into Babylon, his city of Babylon feared. The god ... has in goodness drawn nigh to him, has made strong his name. I Cyrus ... I entered Babylon in peace.... Merodach the great lord (cheered) the heart of his servant.... My vast armies he marshalled peacefully in the midst of Babylon; throughout Sumer and Accad I had no revilers.... Accad, Marad, etc., I restored the gods who dwelt within them to their places ... all their peoples I assembled and I restored their lands. And the gods of Sumer and Accad whom Nabonidos, to the anger of the lord of gods (Merodach), had brought into Babylon, I settled in peace in their sanctuaries by command of Merodach, the great lord. In the goodness of their hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should grant me length of days; may they bless my projects with prosperity, and may they say to Merodach my lord, that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and Kambyses his son (deserve his favour)."
[97]Why so sovereign a God should be in such peculiar relations with one people, we will try to see in ch.xv. of this volume.
[98]Earth here without the article, but plainlythe earth, and notthe landof Judah.
[99]Cf.with this Hebrew word צלח the Greek προκοπτειν, to beat or cut a way through like pioneers; then to forward a work, advance, prosper (Luke ii. 52; Gal. i. 14; 2 Tim. ii. 16).
[100]Cyropædia, Book VIII., ch. vii., 6.
[101]Crouches, Kara`;cowers, Kores.
[102]Bredenkamp.
[103]Sayce,Fresh Light, etc., p. 140.
[104]See p.39f.
[105]There is a play on the words 'anî `asîthî, wa'anî, 'essā'—I have made, and I will aid.
[106]Lam. v. 7.
[107]Ver. 4, second clause, and vii.
[108]Cf.Doughty,Arabia Deserta.
[109]The Turanians, who occupied Mesopotamia before the Semitic invasion, were the first builders of cities.
[110]Babylon, as far as we can learn, first rose to power about the time of that Amraphel who fought in the Mesopotamian league against the neighbours and friends of Abraham. Amraphel is supposed to have been the father of Hammurabis, who first made Babylon the capital of Chaldea. It scarcely ever again ceased to be such; but it was not till the fall of Assyria, about 625b.c., and the rebuilding of Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar (604-561), that the city's second and greatest glory began.
[111]See ch. iv., pp.53-56.
[112]Vol. i., pp. 409-315.
[113]Vol. i., pp. 275, 286, 294.
[114]See especiallySatires III.andVI., andcf.Bagehot'sPhysics and Politics.
[115]Rev. xvii., xviii.
[116]Ch. xlv.
[117]Bredenkamp will have it, that the prophet here mentions first Northern Israel and then Judah:O House of Jacob, the general term, boththose that are called by the name of Israel, and that have come forth from the waters of Judah. But this is entirely opposed to the syntax, and I note the opinion simply to show how precarious the arguments are for the existence of pre-exilic elements in Isa. xl.-xlviii. The point, which Bredenkamp makes by his rendering of this verse, is that it could only be a pre-exilic prophet, who would distinguish between Judah and Northern Israel; and that, therefore, it might be Isaiah himself who wrote the verse!
[118]Former things(ri'shonôth). It is impossible to determine whether these meanpredictionswhich Jehovah published long ago, and which have already come to pass, orformer eventswhich He foretold long ago, and which have happened as He said they would. The distinction, however, is immaterial.
[119]Literally,also. But נם, a cumulative conjunction, when it is introduced to repeat the same thought as preceded it, meansyea, truly, profecto, imo.
[120]Ch. xxv., which is undoubtedly an authentic prophecy of Jeremiah.
[121]The Hebrew has not the wordsMy Name. The LXX. has them.
[122]A second time without article though applied to the whole world.
[123]Giesebrecht takes this as an actual quotation from some former prophet: a specimen of the ancient prophecies which Jehovah sent to Israel, and which were now being fulfilled. At least it is the sum of what Jehovah's prophets had often predicted.
[124]This very difficult verse has been attributed either to Jehovah in the first three clauses and to the Servant in the fourth (Delitzsch); or in the same proportion to Jehovah and the prophet (Cheyne and Bredenkamp); or to the Servant all through (Orelli); or to the prophet all through (Hitzig, Knobel, Giesebrecht. See the latter'sBeiträge zur Kritik Jesaia's, p. 136). It is a subtle matter. The present expositor thinks it clear that all four clauses must be understood as the voice of one speaker, but sees nothing in them to decide finally whether that speaker is the Servant, the people Israel, in which caseI am therewould have reference to Israel's consciousness of every deed done by God since the beginning of their history (cf.ver. 6a); or whether the speaker is the prophet, in which caseI am therewould mean that he had watched the rise of Cyrus from the first. Butcf.Zech. ii. 10-11, Eng. Ver., and iv. 9.
[125]Orlike its bowels, referring to the sea.
[126]It is only by confining his review of the word to its applications to God, and overlooking the passages which attribute it to the people, that Krüger,Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi., can affirm that the prophet holds throughout to a single idea of righteousness (p. 36). On this, as on many other points, it is Calvin's treatment, that is most sympathetic to the variations of the original.
[127]In Arabic the cognate word is applied to a lance, but this may mean a sound or fit lance as well as a straight one. "Originem Schult. de defect. hodiernis § 214-224 ponit inrigore,duritia, coll.arabiclancea dura, al. aequabilis" (GeseniiThesaurus, art. צדק).
[128]It is not certain whether righteousness is here used in a physical sense; and in all other cases in which the root is applied in the Old Testament to material objects, it is plainly employed in some reflection of its moral sense,e.g.,justweights,justbalance, Lev. xix. 36.
[129]"Der Zustand welcher der Norm entspricht." Schultz,Alt. Test. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 540, n. 1.
[130]Cf.Robertson Smith,Prophets of Israel, p. 388, and Kautzsch's paper, which is there quoted.
[131]"Die Begriffe צדקה und צדק ... bedeuten nun wirklich bei Amos mehr als die juristische Gerechtigkeit. Indirect gehen die Forderungen des Amos über die blos rechtliche Sphäre hinaus" (Duhm,Theologie der Propheten, p. 115).
[132]Gen. xxxviii. 26.Cf.2 Sam. xv. 4.
[133]The first chapter of Isaiah is a perfect summary of these two.
[134]But the verb tomake righteousorjustifyis used in a sense akin to the New Testament sense in liii. 11. See our chapter on that prophecy.
[135]At first sight this is remarkably like the cognate Arabic root, which is continually used for truthful. But the Hebrew word never meant truthful in the moral sense of truth, and here isrightorcorrect.
[136]Earthagain without article, though obviously referring to the world.
[137]Sense doubtful here. Bredenkamp translates by a slight change of reading:Only speaking by Jehovah: Fulness of righteousness and might come to Him, and ashamed, etc.
[138]צדק, the masculine, is used sixteen times; צדקה, twenty-four. Both are used of Jehovah: xlii. 21 צדקו, and lix. 16 צדקתו. Both of His speech: masc. in xlv. 19, fem. in xlv. 23 and lxiii. 1. Perhaps the passage in which their identity is most plain is li. 5, 6, where they are both parallel to salvation: ver. 5, My righteousness (m.) is near; ver. 6, My righteousness (f.) shall not be abolished. Both are used of the people's duty: lix. 4, None sueth in righteousness (m.); xlviii. 1, But not in truth nor in righteousness (f.); lvi. 1, Keep justice and do righteousness (f.) And both are used of the people's saved and glorious condition: lviii. 8, Thy righteousness (m.) shall go before thee; lxii. 1, Until her righteousness (m.) go forth as brightness; xlviii. 18, Thy righteousness (f.) as the waves of the sea; liv. 17, Their righteousness (f.) which is of Me. Both are used with prepositions (cf.xlii. 6 with xlviii. 1), and both with possessive pronouns. In fact, there is absolutely no difference made between the two.
[139]Wellhausen.
[140]"Revelation is never revolutionary.... As a rule, revelation accepts the fragments of truth and adopts the methods of religion already existing, uniting the former into a whole, and purifying the latter for its own purposes."... For instance, "in the East each people had its particular god. The god and the people were correlative ideas, that which gave the individuals of a nation unity and made them a people was the unity of its god; as, on the other hand, that which gave a god prestige was the strength and victorious career of his people. The self-consciousness of the nation and its religion re-acted on one another, and rose and fell simultaneously. This conception was not repudiated, but adopted by revelation; and, as occasion demanded, purified from its natural abuses."—Professor A. B. Davidson,Expositor, Second Series, vol. viii., pp. 257-8.
[141]Mr. Doughty, in his most interesting account of the nomads of Central Arabia, the unsophisticated Semites on their native soil, furnishes ample material for accounting for the strange mixture of passion and resignation in these prophet-peoples of the world.
[142]Ch. xlix. 2.
[143]Jer. xxx. 10, cf. xlvi. 27; also Ezek. xxxvii. 25:And they shall dwell in the land that I have given My servant Jacob. Cf. xxviii. 25.
[144]xliv. 1, 21; xlviii. 20, etc.
[145]Ch. li. 9, 10.
[146]Ch. xliii. 14.
[147]Ib.3, 4.
[148]Robertson Smith, Burnett Lectures in Aberdeen, 1889-90.
[149]A king's courtiers, soldiers, or subjects are calledhis servants. In this sense Israel was often styled theservants of Jehovah, as in Deut. xxxii. 36; Neh. i. 10, where the phrase is parallel toHis people. ButJehovah's servantsis a phrase also parallel to His worshippers (Psalm cxxxiv. 1, etc.); to those who trust Him (Psalm xxxiv. 22); and to those who love His name (Psalm lxix. 36). The term is also applied in the plural to the prophets (Amos iii. 7); and in the singular, to eminent individuals—such as Abraham, Joshua, David and Job; also by Jeremiah to the alien Nebuchadrezzar, while engaged on his mission from God against Jerusalem.
[150]See p.244.
[151]The definite article is not used here with the word people, and hence the phrase has been taken by some in the vaguer sense ofa people's covenant, as a general expression, along with its parallel clause, of the kind of influence the Servant was to exert, not on Israel, but onanypeople in the world; he was to bea people's covenant, anda light for nations. So practically Schultz,A. T. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 284. But the Hebrew word for people עם is often used without the article to expressthepeople Israel, just as the Hebrew word for land ארץ is often used without the article to expresstheland of Judah. (הארץ with the article, is in Isa. xl.-lxvi.the Earth.) And in ch. xlix. the phrase acovenant of the peopleagain occurs, and in a context in which it can only meana covenantofthepeople, Israel. Some render ברית עם acovenant people. But in xlix. 8 this is plainly an impossible rendering.
[152]Meshullam is found as a proper name in the historical books of the Old Testament, especially Nehemiah,e.g., iii. 4, 6, 30.
[153]Hosea xi. 1; Matt. ii. 15
[154]Of all the expressions used of him the only one which shows a real tendency to a plural reference isin his deaths(ver. 9), and even it (if it is the correct reading) is quite capable of application to an individual who suffered such manifold martyrdom as is set forth in the passage.
[155]Not one word in them betrays any sense of a body of men or an ideal people standing behind them, which sense surely some expression would have betrayed, if it had been in the prophet's mind.
[156]A. B. D., in a review of the last edition of Delitzsch'sIsaiah, in theTheol. Review, iv., p. 276.
[157]Isaiah I.i.-xxxix., pp.134,135.
[158]See p.42.
[159]See ch.ii. of this volume.
[160]Cf.The Jewish Interpreters on Isa. liii., Driver and Neubauer, Oxford, 1877. Abravanel, who himself takes ch. liii. in a national sense, admits, after giving the Christian interpretation, that "in fact Jonathan ben Uziel, 'the Targumist,' applied it to the Messiah, who was still to come, and this is likewise the opinion of the wise in many of their Midrashim." And R. Moscheh al Shech, of the sixteenth century, says: "See, our masters have with one voice held as established and handed down, that here it is King Messiah who is spoken of." (Both these passages quoted by Bredenkamp in his commentary, p. 307.)
[161]Isa. lix. 5.
[162]Id.vi. 13; ix. 18; x. 17, 34; xlvii. 14.
[163]Id.xxi. 10; xxviii. 27; xl. 24; xli. 15 ff.
[164]Id.i. 31; xlvii. 14.
[165]Isa. lviii. 7.
[166]Undoubtedly taken from Isa. liii.
[167]Cf.with the Greek version of Isa. l. 4-7, Luke xviii. 31, 32; Matt. xxvi. 67.
[168]In Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Septuagint translates the Hebrew for Servant by one or other of two words—παις and δουλος. Παις is used in xli. 8; xlii. 1; xliv. 1 ff.; xliv. 21; xlv. 4; xlix. 6; l. 10; lii. 13. But δουλος is used in xlviii. 20; xlix. 3 and 5. In the Acts it is παις that is used of Christ: "An apostle is never called παις (but only δουλος) Θεου" (Meyer). But David is called παις (Acts iv. 25).
[169]Acts iii. 13, 26; iv. 27-30.
[170]Acts iii. 14; vii. 52.
[171]Acts viii. 30 ff.
[172]1 Peter i. 19; ii. 22, 23; iii. 18.
[173]Rom. xv. 20 f.; 2 Cor. v. 21.
[174]Acts xiii. 47, after Isa. xlix. 6.
[175]Isa. l. 8, and Rom. viii. 33, 34.
[176]2 Tim. ii. 24. We may note, also, how Paul in Eph. vi. takes the armour with which God is clothed in Isa. lix. 17, breastplate and helmet, and equips the individual Christian with them; and how, in the same passage, he takes for the Christian from Isa. xl. the Messiah's girdle of truth and thesword of the Spirit,—he shall smite the land with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.
[177]The English equivalent is,nor is loud.
[178]This time with the article, so notthe landof Judah only, butthe Earth.
[179]Bax,Religion of Socialism.
[180]This time "arets" with the article. So not thelandof Judah only but the world.
[181]The following are the four main meanings of "mishpat" in Isa. xl.-lxvi.: 1. In a general sense, a legal process, xli. 1,let us come together to the judgement, orthe law(with the article),cf.l. 8,man of my judgement,i.e., my fellow-at-law, my adversary; liii. 8, oppression andjudgement,i.e., a judgement which was oppressive, a legal injustice. 2. A person'scauseorright, xl. 27, xlix. 4. 3.Ordinanceinstituted by Jehovah for the life and worship of His people, lviii. 2,ordinancesof righteousness,i.e., either canonicallaws, or ordinances by observing which the people would make themselves righteous. 4. In general, the sum of the laws given by Jehovah to Israel,the Law, lviii. 2,Lawof their God; li. 4, Jehovah saysMy Law(Rev. Ver.judgement), parallel to "Torah" or Revelation (Rev. Ver.law). Then absolutely, without the article or Jehovah's name attached, xlii. 1, 3, 4. In lvi. 1 parallel to righteousness; lix. 14 parallel to righteousness, truth and uprightness. In fact, in this last use, while represented as equivalent to civic morality, it is this, not as viewed in its character,right,upright, but in its obligation as ordained by God:moralityasHis Law. The absence of the article may either mean what it means in the case ofpeopleandland,i.e., theLaw, too much of a proper name to need the article, or it may be an attempt to abstract the quality of the Law; and if so mishpat is equal tojustice.
[182]Expositor, second series, vol. viii., p. 364.
[183]This might, of course, only mean what the Servant had to do for his captive countrymen. But coming as it does after thelight of nations, it seems natural to take it in its wider and more spiritual sense.
[184]See ch.xv. of this volume.
[185]Expositor, second series, viii., pp. 364, 365, 366.
[186]Ibid., p. 366.
[187]This, of course, goes against Prof. Briggs's theory of the composition of Isa. xl.-lxvi. out of two poems (see p.18).
[188]This line is full of the letter m.
[189]This is as the text is written; but the Massoretic reading gives,that Israel to Him may be gathered.
[190]So it seems best to give the sense of this difficult line, but most translators renderdespised of soul, orthoroughly despised,abhorred by peoples, orby a people, etc. The word fordespisedis used elsewhere only in ch. liii. 3.
[191]Prof. A. B. Davidson,Expositor, Second Series, viii., 441.
[192]Page 68.
[193]So George Eliot wrote of her own writings shortly before her death. SeeLife, iii., 245.
[194]Lady Ponsonby, to whom George Eliot wrote the letter quoted above, confessed that, with the disappearance of religious faith from her soul, there vanished also the power of interest in, and of pity for, her kind.
[195]Jer. i. 5.
[196]See vol. i., p. 70.
[197]See p.240f.
[198]How all their meanness, how all the sense of shame from which He suffered, breaks forth in these words:Are ye come out as against a robber?
[199]Literally,lord of my cause; my adversary or opponent at law.
[200]Epistle to the Romans, viii., 31 ff.
[201]Though Cheyne takesHis Servantin ver. 10 to be, not the Servant, but the prophet.
[202]Kindlers of fireis the literal rendering. But the word is not the common word to kindle, and is here used of wanton fireraising.
[203]Thus Ewald supposed ch. lii. 13-liii. to be an elegy upon some martyr in the persecutions under Manasseh. Professor Briggs, as we have noticed before, claims to have discovered that all the passages in the Servant are parts of a trimeter poem, older than the rest of the prophecy, which he finds to be in hexameters. See p.315.
[204]I may quote Dillmann's opinion on this last point: "Andererseits sind nicht blos die Grundgedanken und auch einzelne Wendungen wie 52, 13-15. 53, 7. 11. 12 durch 42, 1 ff. 49, 1 ff. 50, 3 ff. so wohl vorbereitet und so sehr in Übereinstimmung damit, dass an eine fast unveränderte Herübernahme des Abschnitts aus einer verlornen Schrift (Ew.) nicht gedacht werden kann, sondern derselbe doch wesentlich als Werk des Vrf. angesehen werden muss" (Commentary4th ed., 1890, p. 453).
[205]This verb best gives the force of the Hebrew, which means bothto deal prudentlyand toprosperor succeed. See p.346.
[206]Vulgate finely: "extolletur, sublimis erit et valde elatus."