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Introduction
to Isaiah
Summary of the Book of Isaiah
This summary of
the book of Isaiah provides information about the title, author(s), date of
writing, chronology, theme, theology, outline, a brief overview, and the
chapters of the Book of Isaiah.
In the Hebrew
Bible the book of Isaiah initiates a division called the Latter Prophets (for
the Former Prophets see Introduction to Joshua: Title and Theological Theme),
including also Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets (so called
because of their small size by comparison with the major prophetic books of
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and not at all suggesting that they are of minor
importance; see essay, p. 1341). Thus Isaiah occupies pride of place among the
Latter Prophets. This is fitting since he is sometimes referred to as the
prince of the prophets.
Isaiah son of
Amoz is often thought of as the greatest of the writing prophets. His name
means "The Lord saves." He was a contemporary of Amos, Hosea and
Micah, beginning his ministry in 740 b.c., the year King Uzziah died (see note
on 6:1).
According to an unsubstantiated Jewish tradition (The Ascension of Isaiah), he
was sawed in half during the reign of Manasseh (cf. Heb 11:37).
Isaiah was married and had at least two sons, Shear-Jashub (7:3) and
Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (8:3).
He probably spent most of his life in Jerusalem, enjoying his greatest
influence under King Hezekiah (see 37:1-2).
Isaiah is also credited with writing a history of the reign of King Uzziah (2Ch 26:22).
Many scholars
today challenge the claim that Isaiah wrote the entire book that bears his
name. Yet his is the only name attached to it (see 1:1; 2:1; 13:1). The strongest
argument for the unity of Isaiah is the expression "the Holy One of
Israel," a title for God that occurs 12 times in chs. 1 - 39 and 14 times in chs. 40 - 66. Outside Isaiah it
appears in the OT only 6 times. There are other striking verbal parallels
between chs. 1 - 39 and chs. 40 - 66. Compare the following
verses:
Altogether,
there are at least 25 Hebrew words or forms found in Isaiah (i.e., in both
major divisions of the book) that occur in no other prophetic writing.
Isaiah's use of
fire as a figure of punishment (see 1:31; 10:17; 26:11; 33:11-14;
34:9-10;
66:24),
his references to the "holy mountain" of Jerusalem (see note on
2:2-4) and his mention of the highway to Jerusalem (see note on 11:16) are themes
that recur throughout the book.
The structure
of Isaiah also argues for its unity. Chs. 36-39 constitute a historical
interlude, which concludes chs. 1 - 35 and introduces chs. 40 - 66 (see note on 36:1).
Several NT
verses refer to the prophet Isaiah in connection with various parts of the
book: Mt 12:17-21
(Isa 42:1-4);
Mt 3:3
and Lk 3:4
(Isa 40:3);
Ro 10:16,20
(Isa 53:1;
65:1);
see especially Jn 12:38-41
(Isa 53:1;
6:10).
Most of the
events referred to in chs. 1 - 39 occurred during
Isaiah's ministry (see 6:1; 14:28; 36:1), so these chapters
may have been completed not long after 701 b.c., the year the Assyrian army was
destroyed (see note on 10:16). The prophet
lived until at least 681 (see note on 37:38) and may have
written chs. 40 - 66 during his later years.
In his message to the exiles of the sixth century b.c., Isaiah was projected
into the future, just as Ezekiel was in Eze 40-48.
Isaiah wrote
during the stormy period marking the expansion of the Assyrian empire and the
decline of Israel. Under King Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 b.c.) the Assyrians
swept westward into Aram (Syria) and Canaan. About 733 the kings of Aram and
Israel tried to pressure Ahaz king of Judah into joining a coalition against
Assyria. Ahaz chose instead to ask Tiglath-Pileser for help, a decision
condemned by Isaiah (see note on 7:1). Assyria did assist
Judah and conquered the northern kingdom in 722-721. This made Judah even more
vulnerable, and in 701 King Sennacherib of Assyria threatened Jerusalem itself
(see 36:1
and note). The godly King Hezekiah prayed earnestly, and Isaiah predicted that
God would force the Assyrians to withdraw from the city (37:6-7).
Nevertheless
Isaiah warned Judah that her sin would bring captivity at the hands of Babylon.
The visit of the Babylonian king's envoys to Hezekiah set the stage for this
prediction (see 39:1,6
and notes). Although the fall of Jerusalem would not take place until 586 b.c.,
Isaiah assumes the destruction of Judah and proceeds to predict the restoration
of the people from captivity (see 40:2-3
and notes). God would redeem his people from Babylon just as he rescued them
from Egypt (see notes on 35:9; 41:14). Isaiah
predicts the rise of Cyrus the Persian, who would unite the Medes and Persians
and conquer Babylon in 539 (see 41:2 and note). The decree
of Cyrus would allow the Jews to return home in 538/537, a deliverance that
prefigured the greater salvation from sin through Christ (see 52:7 and note).
Isaiah is a
book that unveils the full dimensions of God's judgment and salvation. God is
"the Holy One of Israel" (see 1:4; 6:1 and notes) who must punish his
rebellious people (1:2)
but will afterward redeem them (41:14,16).
Israel is a nation blind and deaf (6:9-10;
42:7),
a vineyard that will be trampled (5:1-7),
a people devoid of justice or righteousness (5:7; 10:1-2).
The awful judgment that will be unleashed upon Israel and all the nations that
defy God is called "the day of the Lord." Although Israel has a foretaste
of that day (5:30; 42:25), the nations
bear its full power (see 2:11,17,20
and note). It is a day associated in the NT with Christ's second coming and the
accompanying judgment (see 24:1,21;
34:1-2
and notes). Throughout the book, God's judgment is referred to as
"fire" (see 1:31; 30:33 and notes). He
is the "Sovereign Lord" (see note on 25:8), far above all nations and
rulers (40:15-24).
Yet God will
have compassion on his people (14:1-2)
and will rescue them from both political and spiritual oppression. Their
restoration is like a new exodus (43:2,16-19;
52:10-12)
as God redeems them (see 35:9; 41:14 and notes) and
saves them (see 43:3; 49:8 and notes). Israel's
mighty Creator (40:21-22;
48:13)
will make streams spring up in the desert (32:2) as he graciously
leads them home. The theme of a highway for the return of exiles is a prominent
one (see 11:16; 40:3 and notes) in both
major parts of the book. The Lord raises a banner to summon the nations to
bring Israel home (see 5:26
and note).
Peace and
safety mark this new Messianic age (11:6-9).
A king descended from David will reign in righteousness (9:7; 32:1), and all nations
will stream to the holy mountain of Jerusalem (see 2:2-4
and note). God's people will no longer be oppressed by wicked rulers (11:14; 45:14), and
Jerusalem will truly be the "City of the Lord" (60:14).
The Lord calls
the Messianic King "my servant" in chs. 42-53, a term also applied to
Israel as a nation (see 41:8-9;
42:1
and notes). It is through the suffering of the servant that salvation in its
fullest sense is achieved. Cyrus was God's instrument to deliver Israel from
Babylon (41:2),
but Christ delivered humankind from the prison of sin (52:13 -- 53:12). He became a
"light for the Gentiles" (42:6), so that those
nations that faced judgment (chs. 13 - 23) could find salvation (55:4-5).
These Gentiles also became "servants of the Lord" (see 54:17 and note).
The Lord's
kingdom on earth, with its righteous Ruler and his righteous subjects, is the
goal toward which the book of Isaiah steadily moves. The restored earth and the
restored people will then conform to the divine ideal, and all will result in
the praise and glory of the Holy One of Israel for what he has accomplished.
Isaiah contains
both prose and poetry; the beauty of its poetry is unsurpassed in the OT. The
main prose material is found in chs. 36-39, the historical interlude that
unites the two parts of the book (see Author). The poetic material includes a
series of oracles in chs. 13 - 23. A taunting song
against the king of Babylon is found in 14:4-23.
Chs. 24-27 comprise an apocalyptic section stressing the last days (see note on
24:1 --
27:13).
A wisdom poem is found in 28:23-29
(also cf. 32:5-8).
The song of the vineyard (5:1-7)
begins as a love song as Isaiah describes God's relationship with Israel. Hymns
of praise are given in 12:1-6
and 38:10-20,
and a national lament occurs in 63:7 -- 64:12. The poetry is
indeed rich and varied, as is the prophet's vocabulary (he uses a larger
vocabulary of Hebrew words than any other OT writer).
One of Isaiah's
favorite techniques is personification. The sun and moon are ashamed (24:23), while the
desert and parched land rejoice (see 35:1 and note) and the
mountains and forests burst into song (44:23). The trees
"clap their hands" (55:12). A favorite
figure is the vineyard, which represents Israel (5:7). Treading the
winepress is a picture of judgment (see 63:3 and note), and to
drink God's "cup of wrath" is to stagger under his punishment (see 51:17 and note).
Isaiah uses the name "Rock" to describe God (17:10), and animals
such as Leviathan and Rahab represent nations (see 27:1; 30:7; 51:9).
The power of
Isaiah's imagery is seen in 30:27-33,
and he makes full use of sarcasm in his denunciation of idols in 44:9-20.
A forceful example of wordplay appears in 5:7 (see note there), and
one finds inversion in 6:10
(see note there; see also note on 16:7) and alliteration and
assonance in 24:16-17
(see note there). The "overwhelming scourge" of 28:15,18
is an illustration of mixed metaphor.
Isaiah often
alludes to earlier events in Israel's history, especially the exodus from
Egypt. The crossing of the Red Sea forms the background for 11:15 and 43:2,16-17,
and other allusions occur in 4:5-6; 31:5; 37:36 (see notes on
these verses). The overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah is referred to in 1:9, and Gideon's victory
over Midian is mentioned in 9:4; 10:26 (see also 28:21). Several
times Isaiah draws upon the song of Moses in Dt 32
(compare 1:2
with Dt 32:1;
30:17
with Dt 32:30;
and 43:11,13
with Dt 32:39).
Isaiah, like Moses, called the nation to repentance and to faith in a holy,
all-powerful God. See also note on 49:8.
The refrain in 48:22 and 57:21 divides the
last 27 chapters into three sections of nine chapters each (40-48; 49-57; 58-66; see Outline).
Part 1: The Book of Judgment (chs. 1
- 39)
I.
Messages of Rebuke and Promise (chs. 1-6)
A.
Introduction: Charges against Judah for Breaking the Covenant (ch.
1)
C.
The Nation's Judgment and Exile (ch.
5)
II.
Prophecies Occasioned by the Aramean and Israelite Threat against
Judah (chs. 7-12)
III. Judgment
against the Nations (chs. 13-23)
IV.
Judgment and Promise (the Lord's Kingdom) (chs. 24-27)
V.
Six Woes: Five on the Unfaithful in Israel and One on Assyria
(chs. 28-33)
VI.
More Prophecies of Judgment and Promise (chs. 34-35)
VII.
A Historical Transition from the Assyrian Threat to the Babylonian
Exile (chs. 36-39)
Part 2: The
Book of Comfort (chs. 40-66)
VIII.
The Deliverance and Restoration of Israel (chs. 40-48)
IX.
The Servant's Ministry and Israel's Restoration (chs. 49-57)
X.
Everlasting Deliverance and Everlasting Judgment (chs. 58-66)
──《New
International Version》
Introduction to Isaiah
Isaiah prophesied in the reigns of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He has been well called the evangelical prophet, on
account of his numerous and full prophesies concerning the coming and character,
the ministry and preaching, the sufferings and death of the Messiah, and the
extent and continuance of his kingdom. Under the veil of the deliverance from
Babylon, Isaiah points to a much greater deliverance, which was to be effected
by the Messiah; and seldom does he mention the one, without alluding at the
same time to the other; nay, he is often so much enraptured with the prospect
of the more distant deliverance, as to lose sight of that which was nearer, and
to dwell on the Messiah's person, office, character, and kingdom.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Isaiah》
00 Overview
ISAIAH
INTRODUCTION
THE PROPHET ISAIAH
I. HIS NAME
Isaiah
The English name Isaiah is an approximate transliteration of the
abbreviated form Yesha’yah, which appears as the title of the
prophet’s book in the Hebrew canon, and occurs besides as the name of several
individuals in post-exilic writings (Ezra 8:7; Ezra 8:19; Nehemiah 11:7; 1 Chronicles 3:21). The full and
older form is Yeshaʼyahu (Gr., ησαιας; Lat., Esaias
and Isaias), by which the prophet himself is always called in the text
of his book, and in the historical writings of the Old Testament (2 Kings 19:2, etc.; 2 Chronicles 26:22; 2 Chronicles 32:20; 2 Chronicles 32:32); also other Jews
(1 Chronicles 25:3; 1 Chronicles 25:15; 1 Chronicles 26:25). It means
“Jehovah is salvation,” and is therefore synonymous with the frequent Joshua
or Jeshua (Jesus), and Hosea (cf the Hebrews Elisha, “God
is,” or “God of salvation”; Elishua, Ishi, etc.)
(Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
His original name may have
been Meshullam
(See Prof. Margoliouth’s view, p. 22.)
II. HIS PERSONAL HISTORY.--The exact
limits which we are led to assign to Isaiah’s career depend on the conclusions
we reach with regard to several disputed portions of his book. Generally
speaking, however, we may say that he prophesied from the year in which King
Uzziah died (740 or 736 B.C.) to the year of the sudden deliverance of
Jerusalem from Sennacherib (701), and possibly some years after this. Isaiah
was, therefore, born about 760, was a child when Amos appeared at Bethel (c.
756 or 750), and a youth when Hosea began to prophesy in N. Israel. Micah was
his younger contemporary. The chief political events of his life were the
ascent of the great soldier Tiglath-pileser III to the throne of Assyria in
745, with a new policy of conquest; the league of Aram and N. Israel in 735,
and their invasion of Judah, which moved Ahaz to call Assyria to his help;
Tiglath-pileser’s capture of Damascus, and the captivity of Gilead and Galilee
in 734; the invasion of N. Palestine by Salmanassar IV in 725, with the long
siege of Samaria which fell to his successor Sargon in or about 721; Sargon’s
defeat of Egypt on her border at Raphia in 719; Sargon’s invasion of Palestine
in 711, with the reduction of Ashdod, and his defeat of Merodach-baladan and
capture of Babylon in 709; Sennacherib’s succession in 705, and invasion of
Palestine in 701; his encounter with Egypt at Eltekeh on the borders of Philistia
and Judah; his capture of Ekron and siege of Jerusalem, with the pestilence
that overtook him between Palestine and Egypt; and his retreat from Palestine,
with the consequent relief of Jerusalem--all in 701. About 695 (some say about
690 or even 685) Hezekiah was succeeded by Manasseh. Whether Isaiah lived into
the reign of the latter is very doubtful. We have no prophecies from him later
than Hezekiah’s reign, perhaps none after 701. The Mishna says that he was
slain by Manasseh. The apocryphal work “The Ascension of Isaiah,” which was
written in the beginning of the second Christian century, affirms that Isaiah’s
martyrdom consisted in being sawn asunder, which Justin Martyr repeats. Whether
this be true, and whether it is alluded Hebrews 11:37, we cannot tell. Isaiah is
called the son of Amos Isaiah 1:1; Isaiah 2:1), who must not be confounded,
as he has been by various Christian fathers, with the prophet Amos. A Jewish
tradition makes Isaiah nephew of King Amaziah; and his royal descent has been
inferred from his familiarity with successive monarchs of Judah, and his
general political influence. A stronger reason than these might be drawn from
the presence in his name of Jehovah, which appears to have been confined at the
earlier periods of Israel’s history to proper names of the royal houses. But
even this is not conclusive, and one really knows nothing of either Isaiah’s
forefathers or his upbringing. He was married, his wife is called “the
prophetess” (Isaiah 8:3), and he had two sons to whom
he gave names symbolic of those aspects of the nation’s history which he
enforced in his prophecies: Sheʼar-yashub, “A remnant shall return,” who
was old enough in 736-735 to be taken by his father when he went to face King Isaiah 7:3), and Maher-shalal-hash-baz,
“Spoil-speeds-booty-hastes,” who was born about a year later (Isaiah 8:1-4). The legend that Isaiah was
twice married has been deduced from the false inference that “the young woman
of marriageable age” (Isaiah 7:14) was his wife. By this
expression the prophet probably did not mean a definite individual. The most
certain and significant fact about Isaiah is that he was a citizen, if not a
native, of Jerusalem, and had constant access to the court and presence of the
king. Jerusalem is Isaiah’s immediate and ultimate regard, the centre and
return of all his thoughts, the hinge of the history of his time, the summit of
those brilliant hopes with which he fills the future. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D.
D.)
III. HIS VOCATION
A prophet
The work of a prophet was the vocation of his life, to which every
energy was devoted; even his wife is called the prophetess (Isaiah 8:3); his sons bore prophetic
names, not enigmatic like those given by Hosea to Gomer’s children, but
expressing in plain language two fundamental themes of his doctrine The truths
which he proclaimed he sought to make immediately practical in the circle of
disciples whom he gathered round him (Isaiah 8:16), and through them to prepare
the way for national reformation. And in this work he was aided by personal
relations within the highest circles of the capital. Uriah, the chief priest of
the temple, was his friend, and appears associated with him as witness to a
solemn act by which he attested a weighty prophecy at a time when king and
people had not yet learned to give credence to his word’s (Isaiah 8:2). His own life seems to have
been constantly spent in the capital; but he was not without support in the
provinces. (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
Relation to the unseen and
the seen
Never, perhaps, has there been another prophet like Isaiah, who
stood with his head in the clouds and his feet on the solid earth, with his
heart in the things of eternity and with mouth and hand in the things of time,
with his spirit in the eternal counsel of God and his body in a very definite
moment of history. (Valeton.)
IV. HIS COMMANDING
INFLUENCE
The whole subsequent
history of the Hebrew people bears the impress of Isaiah’s activity
It was through him that the word of prophecy, despised and
rejected when it was spoken by Amos and Hosea, became a practical power not
only in the State, but in the whole life of the nation. We can readily
understand that so great a work could not have been affected by an isolated
mission like that of Amos, or by a man like Hosea, who stood apart from all the
leaders of his nation, and had neither friend nor disciple to espouse his
cause. Isaiah won his commanding position, not by a single stroke, but by
long-sustained and patient effort . . . The countryman Micah, who prophesied in
the low country on the Philistine border near the beginning of Hezekiah’s
reign, was unquestionably influenced by his great contemporary, and, though his
conceptions are shaped with the individual freedom characteristic of the true
prophet, and by no means fit mechanically into the details of Isaiah’s picture
of Jehovah’s approaching dealings, the essence of his teaching went all to
further Isaiah’s aims. Thus Isaiah ultimately became the acknowledged head of a
great religious movement. It is too little to say that in his later years he
was the first man in Judah, practically guiding the helm of the State, and
encouraging Jerusalem to hold out against the Assyrian when all besides had
lost courage. Even to the political historian, Isaiah is the most notable
figure after David in the whole history of Israel. He was the man of a supreme
crisis, and he proved himself worthy by guiding his nation through the crisis
with no other strength than the prophetic word. (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
A comparison with Elisha
His commanding influence on the history of his nation naturally
suggests comparison with Elisha, the author of the revolution of Jehu, and the
soul of the great struggle with Syria. The comparison illustrates the
extraordinary change which little more than a century had wrought in the
character and aims of prophecy. Elisha effected his first object--the downfall
of the house of Ahab--by entering into the sphere of ordinary political
intrigue; Isaiah stood aloof from all political combinations, and his influence
was simply that of his commanding character, and of the imperial word of
Jehovah preached in season and out of season with unwavering constancy. Elisha
in his later years was the inspiring spirit of a heroic conflict, encouraging
his people to fight for freedom, and resist the invader by armed force. Isaiah
well knew that Judah had no martial strength that could avail for a moment
against the power of Assyria. He did not aim at national independence; and,
rising above the dreams of vulgar patriotism, he was content to accept the
inevitable, and mark out for Judah a course of patient submission to the
foreign yoke, in order that the nation might concentrate itself on the task of
internal reformation, till Jehovah Himself should remove the scourge appointed
for His people’s sin. In this conception he seized and united in one practical
aim ideas which had appeared separately in the teaching of his predecessors,
Amos and Hosea . . . In the supreme crisis of the Assyrian wars, Isaiah was not
less truly the bulwark of his nation than Elisha had been during the Syrian
wars. But his heroism was that of patience and faith, and the deliverance came
as he had foretold, not by political wisdom or warlike prowess, but by the
direct intervention of Jehovah. (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
V. THE PERIOD OF HIS MINISTRY.--The period of
Isaiah’s ministry falls into three parts:--
VII. GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS
Foremost book in
prophetical literature
The book that bears [Isaiah’s] name, in the variety, beauty, and
force of its style, and in the sublimity of its contents, takes the foremost
place in the prophetical literature. (Prof. James Robertson, D. D.)
The greatest classic of
Israel
With Isaiah sank into the grave the greatest classic of Israel. (Carl
Heinrich Cornill.)
Isaiah a poet
If poetry is “the eloquence of excited emotion, whose chief end is
to unite beauty with truth,” then there can be no doubt of the justice of
Isaiah’s claim to be classed among poets. (F. Sessions.)
Isaiah a psalmist
It has been said of Burke that he would have been a great poet if
he had not been a great orator. It might be said of Isaiah that, if he had not
been the chief of the prophets of Israel, he would have been the chief of its
psalmists. (E. H. Plumptre, D. D.)
Chaps. 28-38 are unexampled for grandeur, music, and the softness
of idyllic peace. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Literary characteristics
of the acknowledged prophecies of Isaiah
The thing of chief importance is, that we are wholly unable to
name a special peculiarity and favourite manner of style in the case of Isaiah.
He is not the specially lyric, or the specially elegiac, or the specially
rhetorical and monitory prophet, as, e.g., Joel, Hosea, Micah, in whose
writings a special manner is predominant; but every kind of style and every
variation of exposition is at his command to meet the requirements of his
subject; and this it is which in respect of style constitutes his greatness, as
well as generally one of his most prominent excellences. His fundamental
peculiarity is only the exalted majestic repose of style, proceeding from the
full and sure command of his subject. This response by no means requires that
the language should never be more violently agitated, and not blaze up where
the subject demands it; but even the most extreme agitation is bridled by this
repose in the background, and does not pass beyond Its proper limits, and soon
returns with higher self-mastery to it’s regular flow, not again to leave it (Isaiah 2:9-22; Isaiah 3:1; Isaiah 28:11-23; Isaiah 29:9-14). (H. Ewald, D. D.)
Isaiah’s style
It would hardly be possible to characterise the style of Isaiah
better than by the four notes under which Matthew Arnold has summed up the
distinctive qualities of Homer’s genius: Plainness of thought, plainness of
style, nobleness, and rapidity. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
II. PHASES OF ISAIAH’S
MINISTRY
Reformer, statesman,
theologian
In the parts [of the book] which are indubitably his, we can watch
him, and, as it were, walk by his side, through all the varied and eventful
phases of his forty years’ ministry. We can observe him as a reformer,
denouncing social abuses, sparing neither high nor low in his fearless and
incisive censure. We can follow him u a statesman, devoted patriotically to his
country’s interests, and advising her political leaders in times of difficulty
and danger. We can see him as a theologian, emphasising old truths, developing
new ones, bringing fresh ideas to light Which were destined to exercise an
important influence in the generations which followed. Throughout the reigns of
Ahaz and Hezekiah he is the central figure in Jerusalem, and the position which
he there took--his motives, principles, policy, the character of his teaching,
the natureand extent of his influence--are all reflected in the collection of his
prophecies which we possess. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
The evangelical prophet
Isaiah has received from the Christian Church the title of the
evangelical prophet. This was given mainly in the belief that chaps. 40-46,
were also by him. But even in the prophecies which criticism has left to him,
we find the elements of the doctrines of grace. God forgives sin, the most
heinous and defiling (Isaiah 1:18). Though He has passed sentence
of death upon His people (Isaiah 22:14), their penitence procures
for them His pardon and deliverance (Isaiah 36:1-22; Isaiah 37:1-38). Necessarily severe as
His judgment is, cruelly as His providence bears upon sin and folly, His love
and pity towards His own never fail (Isaiah 14:32). He is their well-beloved,
and has constantly cared for them Isaiah 5:1, etc.). He longs to be
gracious, and to have mercy even when His people are mint given to their own
destructive courses; and He waits eagerly for their prayers to Him (Isaiah 30:18, etc.). (Prof. G. A.
Smith, D. D.)
III. THE PLACE OF THE BOOK
AMONGST THE PROPHETIC SCRIPTURES.--The canonicity of
Isaiah was never questioned by the Jewish Church in later times. There is,
however, a curious divergence of tradition with regard to its place amongst the
prophetic Scriptures. The order of the E.V., where the book stands first among
the “Later Prophets” (the strictly prophetic writings)
, is that of all printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, as well as of the Masora
and the best MSS. in the LXX it stands first amongst the Major Prophets, but is
preceded by the so called Minor Prophets. A still more peculiar arrangement is
given by the Talmudic treatise Baba bathra (fol. 14 b), where the
order is: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the Twelve (Minor) Prophets. It has been
thought by some that this arrangement betrays a dim consciousness of the late
authorship of the second part of the book, which is possible, although the
Jewish authorities know nothing of it, and explain the traditional order by
reasoning of a somewhat nebulous kind. (See. Ryle, “Canon of the Old
Testament,” pp. 273 ff., 281 f.) (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
IV. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE
BOOK
The view of Hengstenberg
That the prophecies of Isaiah are arranged chronologically, though
not without justification, fails to satisfy the requirements of historical
interpretation. (Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
The chronological
arrangement in 1-39
Has been disturbed by throwing the prophecies against foreign
nations (Isaiah 15-23) together, as in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, with which an
oracle against Babylon (Isaiah 13:1-22; Isaiah 14:1-32; cf. Isaiah 21:1-10) and a great prophecy of
the general judgment on the world (Isaiah 24-57) have been connected, though
probably due to later prophets. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Suggested explanations of
the uncertain chronology
It is plain that the book, as it stands, is in a somewhat
disordered state. Presumably Isaiah himself issued no collected edition of all
his prophecies, but only put forth from time to time individual oracles or
minor collections, which were gathered together at a later date, and on no plan
which we can follow. Some of the prophecies bear a date, or even have brief
notes of historical explanation; others begin without any such preface, and
their date and occasion can only be inferred from the allusions they contain.
We cannot even tell when or by whom the collection was made. The collection of
all remains of ancient prophecy, digested into the four books named from
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, was not formed till
after the time of Ezra, two hundred and fifty years, at least, after the death
of Isaiah. In one of these four books every known fragment of ancient prophecy
had to take its place, and no one who knows anything of the collection and
transmission of ancient books will think it reasonable to expect that the
writings of each separate prophet were carefully gathered out and arranged
together in such a way as to preclude all ambiguity as to their authorship. If
every prophecy had had a title from the first, the task of the editor would
have been simple; or, if he did not aim at an exact arrangement, we could
easily have rearranged the series for ourselves. But there are some prophecies,
such as those which occupy the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, which have
no title at all and in some other cases there is conclusive evidence that the
titles are not original, because, in point of fact, they are incorrect. In the
absence of precise titles giving names and dates to each separate prophecy, an
editor labouring after the time of Ezra would he quite as much at a less as a
modern critic, if he made it his task to give what is now called a critical
edition of the remains that lay before him. But ancient editors did not feel
the need of an edition digested according to the rules of modern literary
workmanship. Their main object was to get together everything that they could
find, and arrange their material in volumes convenient for private study or use
in the synagogue. In those days one could not plan the number of volumes, the
number of letters in a page, and the size and form of the pages, with the
freedom to which the printing press has accustomed us; the cumbrous and costly
materials of ancient books limited all schemes of editorial disposition. In
ancient books the moot various treatises are often comprised in one volume; the
scribe had a certain number of skins, and he wished to fill them. Thus, even in
the minor collections that fell into the hands of the editor of the prophets, a
prophecy of Isaiah and one from another source might easily occupy the same
roll; copies were not so numerous that it was always possible to tell by
comparison of many MSS. what pieces had always stood together, and what had
only come together by accident; and so, taking all in all, we need not he
surprised that the arrangement is imperfect according to our literary lights,
but will rather expect to find much more serious faults of order than the lack
of a just chronological disposition. If the present Book of Isaiah has itself
been made up from several MSS., a conclusion which the lack of chronological
order renders almost inevitable, we must deem it probable that at the end of
some of these MSS. prophecies not by Isaiah at all may have been written in to
save waste of the costly material; and so, when the several small books came to
he joined together, prophecies by other hands would get to be embedded in the
text of Isaiah, no longer to he distinguished except by internal evidence. That
what thus appears as possible or even probable actually took place is the
common opinion of modern critics (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
V. DIVISION OF THE BOOK--The division
of the Book of Isaiah into two parts at the end of chap. 39, although indicated
by no superscription, is at once suggested by the intervention of the narrative
section, chaps. 36-39, and is fully justified by the character of the last
twenty-seven chapters. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
VI. WAS ISAIAH THE AUTHOR
OF THE ENTIRE BOOK?--
A rule of criticism
The rules of ordinary criticism require us to accept
Isaiah as the author until it be shown that he cannot have been
so. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)
The critical treatment of
Isaiah
The critical treatment of Isaiah began in the following manner.
The commencement was made with the second part. Koppe first of all expressed
doubt regarding the genuineness of chap. 1; then Doderlein expressed his
decided suspicion as to the genuineness of the whole; and Justi, followed by
Eichhorn, Paulus, and Bertholdt, raised the suspicion into confident assurance
of spuriousness. The result thus attained could not possibly remain without
reaction on the first part. Rosenmuller, who was always very dependent upon
predecessors, was the first to deny the Isaiah origin of the prophecy against
Babylon, in chaps. 13-14:23, though this is attested by the heading; Justi and
Paulus undertook to find further reasons for the opinion. Greater advance was
now made. Along with the prophecy against Babylon in chaps. 13-14:23, the
other, in Isaiah 21:1-10, was likewise condemned,
and Rosenmuller could not but be astonished when Gesenius let the former fall,
but left the latter standing. There still remained the prophecy against Tyre,
in chap. 23, which, according as the announced destruction of Tyre was regarded
as accomplished by the Assyrians or the Chaldeans, might either be left to
Isaiah or attributed to a later prophet unknown. Eichhorn, followed by
Rosenmuller, decided that it was spurious; but Gesenius understood the Assyrians
as the destroyers, and as the prediction consequently did not extend beyond the
horizon of Isaiah, he defended its genuineness. Thus was the Babylonian series
of prophecies set aside. The keen eyes of the critics, however, made still
further discoveries. In chaps. 24-27, Eichhorn found plays on words that were
unworthy of Isaiah, and Gesenius an allegorical announcement of the fall of
Babylon: both accordingly condemned these three chapters, and Ewald transposed
them to the time of Cambyses. With chaps. 34, 35, on account of their relation
to the second part, the procedure was shorter. Rosenmuller at once pronounced
them to be “a poem composed during the Babylonian Exile, near its close.” Such
is the history of the origin of the criticism of Isaiah, Its first attempts
were very juvenile. It was Gesenius, but especially Hitzig and Ewald, who first
raised it to the eminence of a science. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Advocates of an exilian
date for chaps. 40-66
Doderlein, in 1775, was the first modern scholar who took up this
position. Before then the traditional view does not seem to have been
questioned, except by the Jewish commentator, Aben Ezra ( 1167 A.D.),
who, in very obscure language, appears to hint that the title of the book does
not guarantee the authorship of every part of it, any more than in the case of
the books of Samuel, of which Samuel himself could only have written the first
twenty-four chapters (his death being recorded in 1 Samuel 25:1). Doderlein has been
followed, among others, by Gesenius, Ewald, Hitzig, Knobel, Umbreit, de Wette,
Bleek, Bunsen, Cheyne, Kuenen, Reuss, Duhm, Oehler, A.B. Davidson, Orelli,
Konig, Driver, G.A. Smith, Kirkpatrick, Delitzsch (in the 4 th edition of his
Commentary, 1890), etc. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Defenders of the Isaianic
authorship
Amongst these the best-known names are those of Hengstenberg,
Havernick, Drechsler, Delitzsch (down to about 1880), Stier, Rutgers, Kay,
Nagelsbach, Douglas, etc. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
General view of the
question of authorship
Part Second (Isaiah 11-66)
is broadly distinguished from Part First both in literary form and in subject
matter. It has the appearance of being one sustained composition, rather than a
number of spoken addresses; and whereas the situation in the First Part was the
Assyrian period in which Isaiah lived, the stand, point here is the time of the
Exile, and the tone is mainly that of consolation in the near prospect of
deliverance,--the name of Cyrus, who gave the edict permitting the return (536
B.C.), being expressly mentioned (Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1). We cannot doubt that the
deportation of the Ten Tribes, and the ominous threatening of a similar fate
for Judah, had accustomed Isaiah to the thought of the Captivity and its
ultimate issues. So that, if these chapters are from his hand, we must assume
that, in spirit, he placed himself in the Exile, and from that, as a prophetic
standpoint, depicted the restoration and the final glory. Moot modem critics,
however, think that these chapters are an anonymous production of the Exile, which
was united to the prophecies of Isaiah. (Prof. J. Robertson, D. D.)
The doubtful portions
The question relates to Isaiah 13:2-22; Isa_14:1-23; Isaiah
24-27; Isaiah 34; Isaiah 35; Isaiah 40-66 (Isaiah 21:1-10 must henceforth be
excluded, on objective, historical grounds, from the list of doubtful
prophecies). (Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
Isaiah of Jerusalem
capable of producing the entire book
Such a man as Isaiah of Jerusalem is universally acknowledged to
have been, with such an unique call as he claims to have received, was at least
capable of seeing in open vision the glories of the coming Messianic kingdom,
as clearly, as he saw the impending ruin of nations laden with iniquity. That
he should have written both portions of the great series of prophecies bearing
his name is prima facie as probable as that John Milton wrote “Paradise
Lost” and “Paradise Regained” long after having given to the politicians of the
Republic his dry polemic “In Defence of the People”; or that “Sartor Resartus,”
pantheistic and expressed in Carlylese, was the offspring of the same genius
that penned the chaste and simple English of the “Life of Sterling”; or that
Dr. Johnson was both the compiler of a dictionary and the author of such a
romance as “Rasselas.” (F. Sessions.)
The language of Isaiah
If Prof. Margoliouth is working on a right line, and if the
results which he anticipates are established, the conclusion, so far as
language is concerned, will be that the whole of Isaiah being written in
classical Hebrew, not in what he calls the Middle-Hebrew of the Prophets of the
Exile, still less in the New Hebrew, which was the classical language of
Jerusalem in the days of Ben-Sira, 200 B.C., belongs to the age of the historic
Isaiah of the days of Hezekiah. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
If a composite work
collected the several parts?
It is becoming more and more certain that the present form,
especially of the prophetic Scriptures, is due to a literary class [the
Sopherim, Scribes or Scripturists], whom principal function was collecting and
supplementing the scattered records of prophetic revelation. (Prof. T. K.
Cheyne, D. D.)
Prof. Cheyne’s idea of the work done by the Sopherim editors is
utterly baseless. The known writings of respired prophets were guarded as by a
wall of fire. And all classes, whatever their practical unfaithfulness, stood
in awe of them then, as they do until this day. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
The later authors Isaian
Isaiah had left his sublime deliverances to fructify in the minds
of his disciples. One disciple, separated by three or four generations from the
master, but living constantly with his prophecies and nourished upon his
spirit, produced at the crisis of Babylon’s fall a prophecy of Israel’s
restoration as immortal as Isaiah’s own. This disciple named not himself.
Whether he intended the work to become joined with Isaiah’s, and to pass among
men with the authority of that great name, we cannot know. But his
contemporaries joined the disciple’s work with the master’s, and by Ezra’s time
the conjunction was established. (Matthew Arnold.)
These later prophets so closely resemble Isaiah in prophetic vision,
that posterity might on that account well identify them with him. They belong,
more or less nearly, to those pupils of his to whom he refers (chap. 8:16). We
know of no other prophet belonging to the kingdom of Judah like Isaiah, who was
surrounded by a band of younger prophets, and, so to speak, formed a school.
Viewed in this light, the Book of Isaiah is the work of his creative spirit and
the band of followers. These later prophets are Isaian,--they are Isaiah’s
disciples; it is his spirit that continues to operate in them, like the spirit
of Elijah in Elisha,--nay, we may say, like the spirit of Jesus in the
apostles; for the words of Isaiah (8:18), “Behold, I and the children whom God
hath given me,” are employed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2:13) as typical of Jesus Christ.
In view of this fact, the whole book rightly bears the name of Isaiah, inasmuch
as he is, directly and indirectly, the author of all these prophetic
discourses; his name is the correct common denominator for this collection of
prophecies, which, with all their diversity, yet form a unity; and the second
half particularly (chaps. 40-66) is the work of a pupil who surpasses the
master, though he owes the master everything. Such may possibly be the ease. It
seems to me even probable, and almost certain, that this may be so; but
indubitably certain it is not, in my opinion, and I shall die without getting
over this hesitancy. For very many difficulties arise. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Why should important
portions of the book be anonymous?
It will always remain a mystery how the name of the great prophet
of the Exile, who stood far nearer to the return from Exile than Ezekiel, has
fallen into oblivion, and it is a question among how ninny prophets the
Deutero-Isaianic passages should be divided. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Orelli
(“Commentary on Isaiah”) thinks there are reasons for ascribing
the book (chaps. 40-66) to an exilian author, but says: “Its incorporation with
the Book of Isaiah remains a riddle.” “One thing remains utterly
unexplained--the anonymity of so glorious a book carefully arranged by the
author himself. It has been said that he could not mention his name from regard
to the Chaldeans; but what prevented him from coming forward after the victory
of Cyprus over Babylon? In a time when Haggai and Zechariah so carefully dated
their prophecies, how could the name be lost of the seer who had unquestionably
done most towards the revival of the theocratic spirit and the home coming of
the faithful ones? The question might be answered if the author appeared
pseudonymously under Isaiah’s name; but no trace of such intention is found
anywhere. Whereas in Isaiah I, the person of the prophet comes out in different
ways, here in Isaiah II, all name, even all heading, is wanting. Criticism
should honestly confess that the special reason of this anonymity remains in
utter obscurity.”
Explanation of the
supposed plural authorship
How came the works of five unknown prophets in Babylon to be
ascribed to Isaiah, or at any rate inserted in the Book of Isaiah?. . .These
chapters were evidently added at a later period, and most probably, as Eichhorn
suggested, with the object of producing a conveniently large volume, nearly
equal in size to those of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. In
taking this course the editor might invoke a precedent already familiar to his
contemporaries, the Twelve Minor Prophets having been combined into a single
“volume” at some unknown period previous to the composition of Ecclesiasticus.
(See Sirach 49:10.) (Prof. T. K.
Cheyne, D. D.)
The explanation regarded
as inadequate
We can easily see a reason why these minor prophets--minor in
bulk--should be engrossed on one roll for convenience sake. But they are still
twelve, not one. More than this. To each of them is carefully prefixed the name
of its author, even when, as in the ease of Obadiah, his prophecy consists of
but a single chapter. Had this “precedent” been followed by the hypothetic
editor who added chaps. 40-66, to chaps. 1-39, he would have inscribed on each
part the name of its author. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Providential guidance in
the form and contents of the book
The boldest advocates of even the most “advanced” critical
hypothesis will be still obliged to confess that it must have been a wise
instinct, to say nothing of Divine inspiration and guidance, that induced the
“compilers” of the Book of Isaiah to present it to the world in its existing
form. The denunciations of sin by the prophets held to be responsible for the
earlier chapters are incomplete and gloomy, with “a darkness that may be felt,”
without the addition of the glorious Evangel proclaimed by those who wrote the
later ones. The overthrow of the kingdom of Satan is not good enough for the
world without the simultaneous establishment of the kingdom of God. A sinner
without hope is a sinner lost,--a nation with its golden age behind it, and
none before it, is a nation God-forsaken and outcast, given over to despair and
reckless of the end. The preaching of the law and its terrors, apart from the
proclamation of the Gospel with its regenerative force, never has been, and
never can be, accordant with the mind of the All-just and All-merciful Creator.
(F. Sessions.)
The Book of Isaiah comes to us from poet-exilic times; on this
point there can be no doubt among educated students. It was brought into its
present form, not by a committee of lovers of ancient literature, but by men
whose great preoccupation was the building up of a righteous, God fearing
people. (Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
VII. CHAPTERS 40-66. -
Critical difficulties no
barrier to an understanding of the prophecy
Many persons who would wish to study the second half of Isaiah are
discouraged from making the attempt by a feeling that an insurmountable barrier
of critical difficulties lies between them and any comprehension of the
prophecy. That is, in great measure, a delusion. In spite of the fact that
large critical questions rise in connection with these prophecies, there is,
perhaps, no part of Scripture to the understanding of which criticism
contributes so little. Like the Book of Job, the piece is almost purely
theological, and occupied with ideas. It is a structure based upon and built
out of the Monotheistic conception, the idea that Jehovah, God of Israel, is
the true and only God. It need not be supposed that the author consciously
started from this principle and logically deduced his other conclusions from
it. This is not the method of Old Testament writers. Nevertheless, to us who
read his work now, the effect is the same as if he had done so; and obviously
the question at what time or in what circumstances such a theological structure
was reared is only of secondary importance; so far as understanding the work
itself is concerned. It may be that many of the details of the structure point
to a definite historical period; to many minds, indeed, the theological character
of the work will be conclusive evidence that it cannot belong to a time
anterior to the Exile; but such methods of reasoning show that the meaning of
the passage may he learned from itself independently of external aids, and that
this meaning may be found to lead to critical conclusions rather than to
receive light from them. (A. B.Davidson, D. D.)
The primary critical
question--what is it?
The great critical question agitated in regard to these
twenty-seven chapters is, whether the author was a contemporary of the Exile,
or was an older prophet, enabled by an extraordinary gift of foresight to
transport himself into its circumstances and realise its conditions. The way in
which such a question has to be put indicates how far scholars of all opinions
are in agreement. It is admitted on all hands that, at whatever time the
prophet actually lived and wrote, the Exile is the stage on which his
personages move, and on which the great drama which he exhibits is transacted.
(A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
A secondary question
Another critical question of less magnitude is, How far the
prophet of these twenty-seven chapters has adopted fragments from other
prophecies, or omer writers, into his own work! It is admitted that the bulk of
the chapters forms a unity, and is from the hand of one author. But certain
passages are thought to betray a different hand; while others, unlike the bulk
of the prophecy, seem written from a point of view anterior to the time of the
Exile. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
A third question
Another question lees strictly critical, but partly exegetical and
of a more internal kind, is the inquiry whether these twenty-seven chapters,
admittedly in the main a unity and the work of one hand, have been composed all
at one gush, or whether there are not distinct divisions in the composition,
points at which the author paused, having rounded off his previous work, and
from which he again started in order to give his conceptions a more perfect
development. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
A three-fold division
The great prophecy of Israel’s restoration falls naturally into
three divisions.
1. Chapters 40-46 deal mainly with the deliverance of the Jews by
Cyrus.
2. Chapters 49-57 with the future of Israel, and the work of
Jehovah’s ideal Servant.
3. Chapters 58-66, with the glories of the restored Zion, and the
difficulties caused by the nation’s sin. (Edward Grubb, M. A.)
The prophecy may be conveniently divided into three nearly equal
sections.
I. Chaps. 40-48.
The Restoration of Israel through the instrumentality of Cyrus.
II. Chaps. 49-55.
The work of Jehovah’s Servant, and the glorification of Zion.
III. Chaps. 56-66.
The future blessedness of the true Israel contrasted with the doom of the
apostates. The third section of the book is less homogeneous in its composition
than the two others. In passing from chap. 55 to chap. 56, the reader is at
once sensible of a change of manner and circumstance, which becomes still more
manifest as he proceeds. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
The contents
It begins with a prophecy putting into the mouth of John the
Baptist the theme of his preaching; it concludes with the prophecy of the
creation of a new heaven and new earth, beyond which even the last page of the
New Testament Apocalypse cannot soar; and in the middle Isaiah 52:13 -chap. 53), the suffering
and exaltation of the Servant of
God are announced as plainly as if the prophet had stood beneath
the Cross and seen the Risen One. Placing himself at the beginning of New
Testament days, he begins like the New Testament Gospels; he
describes further the death and new life of God’s Servant as completed facts
with the clearness of Pauline teaching; he cleaves at last to the higher,
heavenly world, like the Johannine apocalpyse;--and all this without exceeding
the
Old Testament limits; but within these he is evangelist, apostle,
and apocalyptist in one person. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The author’s wide range
The standpoint of the prophet may be the
Exile, but his vision ranges from Abraham to Christ. (Prof. G.
A. Smith, D. D.)
Problem before the writer
two fold
In order to effect some general arrangement and division of Isaiah
40-66, it is necessary to keep in view that the immediate problem which the
prophet had before him was two fold. It was political, and it was spiritual.
There was, first of all, the deliverance of Israel from Babylon, according to
the ancient promises of
Jehovah; to this were attached such questions as Jehovah’s
omnipotence, faithfulness, and grace; the meaning of Cyrus; the condition of
the
Babylonian Empire. But after their political deliverance from
Babylon was assured, there remained the really larger problem of Israel’s
spiritual readiness for the freedom and the destiny to which God was to lead
them, through the opened gates of their prison house: to this were attached
such questions as the original calling and mission of Israel; the mixed and
paradoxical character of the people; their need of a Servant from the Lord,
since they themselves had failed to be His servant; the coming of this Servant,
His methods and results. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
Our Lord’s favourite book
If it can be said of any prophetic book that it was certainly the
favourite book of our Lord, it is this book of the second Isaiah, in which what
God’s Elect One was to be and do was outlined with studied ideality. Here the
ideal stood before Him, the realising of which was His life task. When He read
in this book, the person of the Coming One and the Manifested One met together,
the former found its body and the latter its soul. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The author’s theological
conceptions
He is the first prophet who discerns in the signs of the times a
Divine purpose which is from the first a purpose of grace towards Israel. His predecessors
had all looked on the world power as the instrument of Jehovah’s chastisement
of His people, and had anticipated a happy issue only as a second step, after
the earthly instrument had been broken and thrown away. But the writer of these
chapters has the word “comfort” constantly on his lips; the whole burden of his
message is one of consolation and good tidings; and he views Cyrus as the
chosen agent of Jehovah, not merely in crushing obstacles to the execution of
His purpose, but as lending active support in the establishment of His kingdom.
Like other prophets, too, he sees in the events of the time the immediate
precursors of Jehovah’s everlasting kingdom of righteousness. The final
consummation of God’s purposes with humanity lies in germ in the appearance of
Cyrus; in the writer’s own graphic phrase, it already “sprouts” before men’s
eyes (Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:19). The prophet is aware,
however, that his hearers are not in a mood to be easily cheered. References to
their state of mind are numerous, and nowhere do we find any indication of an
enthusiastic response to the prophet’s joyful proclamation. The prevalent mood
was one of utter weariness and despondency (Isaiah 40:27; Isaiah 49:14). To counteract this
despairing mood, something more was needed than a bare announcement of
deliverance. The first requisite was to revive their consciousness of God, to
impress them with a sense of His infinite power and resources, and the
immutability of His Word; and also to impart to them a new and inspiring view
of their own mission and destiny as a nation.
1. The prophet’s doctrine of God is, accordingly, the fundamental
element of his teaching.
2. Remarkable as is the prophet’s contribution to the Biblical doctrine
of God, it is surpassed in importance and originality by his teaching with
regard to the mission of Israel. The very grandeur and universality of his
conception of Jehovah appears to necessitate a profounder interpretation of
Israel’s place in history than any previous prophet had explicitly taught. This
view of Israel’s position among the nations is expressed in the title “Servant
of Jehovah,” which is applied to the People in passages too numerous to quote.
In most, there is no room for doubt as to the subject which the writer has in
his mind. It is the historic nation of Israel, represented in the present
chiefly by the community of the exiles, but conceived throughout as a moral
individual whose life and consciousness are those of the nation. But there is
another class of passages where this application of the title “Servant of
Jehovah” to the actual Israel does not suffice (Isaiah 42:1-4; Isaiah 49:1-6; Isaiah 50:4-9; Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:1-12). What makes it impossible
to suppose that the Servant means Israel simply is not so much the intense
personification of the ideal (although that is very remarkable, and weighs with
many minds); it is rather the character attributed to the Servant, and the fact
that he is distinguished from Israel by having a work to do on behalf of the
nation.
The author as an evangelist
The author has been called the evangelist of the Old Testament. All
the prophets are evangelists, in the sense that they teach that salvation
belongeth unto the Lord, that by grace are we saved through faith, not of
ourselves,--it is the gift of God. And in this the prophet of these chapters
agrees with his brethren. But while other prophets content themselves with this
general doctrine of grace, moving exclusively in the region of Divine
efficiency and operation, and suggesting no solution or principle of this
operation beyond this, that God pardons sin of His mercy, having by the severe
dispensations of His providence brought the sense of sin home to the people’s
heart, and thus fitted them to receive His mercy, this prophet, in his profound
doctrine of the suffering Servant of the Lord, makes an extraordinary movement
towards a solution, teaching that the sins of the people as a whole were laid
by God upon the innocent Servant, and were atoned by His sufferings, and that
thus the people were redeemed. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
The Messiah and His
kingdom
It is only when chaps. 40-66, are viewed in the light of a great
Messianic development--a series of predictions respecting the Person, the work,
and the kingdom of Christ--that the earnestness, the protracted length, the
fulness, the deep feeling, the holy enthusiasm, the glowing metaphors and
similes, and the rich and varied exhibitions of peace and prosperity, can well
be accounted for. The writer, in taking such a standpoint, uses the Exile and
the return from it as the basis of his comparisons and analogies. It was a rich
and deeply interesting source from which to draw them. Any other solution of
the whole phenomena is, to my mind, at least, meagre and unsatisfactory; on no
other ground can I account for it that Isaiah, so long beforehand, should have
dwelt on an Exile and a return from it which were more than a century distant
from him and his contemporaries. (Moses Stuart.)
“Two Isaiahs”
That the Isaiah who composed chaps. 40-66, in comparison with the
Isaiah of the time of Uzziah till Hezekiah, is one raised far above that time
and at a higher stage of insight into God’s work in the future, is certain,
whether the two Isaiahs are one person or two persons. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Were there two Isaiahs?
The author of chaps. 40-66 is in any case a prophet of the Isaianic
type, but of an Isaianic type peculiarly developed. It is scarcely conceivable,
although not quite inconceivable, that in a final stage of Isaiah’s life
reaching into the days of Manasseh, his style of thought and speech may have
undergone a modification in breadth and depth which carried it beyond itself.
And yet we ask for this ultro citoque the credit of a pure love of
truth, conscious of freedom from apologetic prepossession--yet the distinction
between an Assyrian and a Babylonian Isaiah involves us in all sorts of
difficulties, when we take into view the reciprocal relations of the Isaianic
collection of prophecies with the other Old Testament literature known to us. (F.
Delitzsch, D. D.)
The traditional view of the authorship
The existence of a tradition in the last three centuries B.C. as
to the authorship of any book is (to those acquainted with the habits of
thought of that age)
of but little critical moment;--the Sopherim, or students of Scripture in those
times, were simply anxious for the authority of the Scriptures, not for the
ascertainment of their precise historical, origin.. It was of the utmost
importance to declare that (especially) Isaiah 40-66, was a prophetic work of
the highest order; this was reason sufficient (the Sopherim may have had other
reasons, such as phraseological affinities in 40-66, but this was sufficient)
for ascribing them to the royal prophet Isaiah. When the view had once obtained
currency, it would naturally become a tradition The question of the Isaianic or
non-Isaianic origin of the disputed prophecies (especially 40-66) must be
decided on grounds of exegesis alone. There are indications among critics, bred
in different schools, of a growing perception of this truth. (Prof. T. K.
Cheyne, D. D.)
VIII. REASONS FOR BELIEVING
THAT CHAPS. 40-66 ARE NOT THE WORK OF ISAIAH
The evidence internal
Critical writers generally assign them to an anonymous prophet
living in the latter part of the Babylonian Exile. The grounds on which this
conclusion rests will be found to be all of the nature of what is called
internal evidence, being drawn from indications furnished by the book itself of
the circumstances in which it was composed. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
The true method of
procedure in investigating the evidence
The proper course obviously is, first of all, to gain as clear an
idea as possible of the prophecy itself, and then to consider what light is
thereby thrown on its origin. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Summary of evidence
1. The historical background.
2. The phraseology and style.
3. The character of the theology. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
Spoken appeals, not
“chamber prophecy”
If any prophet in the Old Testament gives evidence that he speaks
in public, and that his desire is to stir and move those whom he addresses, it
is the author of these chapters. What meaning have appeals and protestations,
each as those in Isaiah 40:21; Isaiah 40:26; Isaiah 40:28; Isaiah 43:10; Isaiah 48:8; Isaiah 50:10 f., Isaiah 51:6; Isaiah 51:12 f., Isaiah 58:3 ff., except as spoken in the
very presence of those whose assent the prophet seeks to win! The author’s warm
and impassioned rhetoric, the personal appeals with which his prophecies
abound, show conclusively that he is not writing a literary essay in the
retirement of his chamber, but, like a true prophet of his nation, is exerting
himself in all earnestness to produce an impression by the force of own
personality upon the hearts of those who hear him. The very first words of the
prophecy, “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people,” mark a rhetorical peculiarity of
the author. The emphatic duplication of a word, significant of the passion and
fervour of the speaker, is a characteristic feature of the entire prophecy; in
the prophets generally it is rare; in Isaiah the only examples--and those but
partly parallel--are Isaiah 8:9 b, 21:9, 29:1. (Prof.
S. R. Driver, D. D.)
The historical background
1. The allusions to Cyrus in the prophecy make it perfectly certain
that the time to which it refers lies between 549 and 538. Cyrus is mentioned
as one already well known as a conqueror, and one whose brilliant victories
have sent a thrill of excitement through the world. On the other hand, the
capture of Babylon is still in the future. The standpoint of the prophecy,
therefore, is certainly intermediate between 549 and 538, and most probably
about 540 B.C.
2. In perfect harmony with these references to Cyrus are those to the
circumstances of Israel. The nation is in exile, but on the eve of deliverance.
The oppressing power is Babylon, the imperial city, still called “the mistress
of kingdoms” (Isaiah 47:5)
. It is from Babylon that the exiles are summoned to make good their escape (Isaiah 48:20; cf. Isaiah 52:11, etc.). Meanwhile, Palestine
is a waste and ruined land (Isaiah 49:8; Isaiah 49:19; Isaiah 51:3; Isaiah 52:9). No such calamity as these
accumulated allusions imply had ever befallen Israel except in the half-century
that followed the destruction of the State by the Chaldeans (586 B.C.).
3. One other fact may be noticed as showing how completely the
prophet’s point of view is identified with the age of the Exile. Amongst the
arguments most frequently adduced for the deity of Jehovah and against idolatry
is the appeal to prophecies fulfilled by the appearance of Cyrus Isaiah 41:26; Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:8-10; Isaiah 45:21; Isaiah 46:10). What prophecies are
referred to is a question of some difficulty. Whatever they are, the argument
has no force except as addressed to persons for whom the fulfilment was a
matter of experience. To the men of an earlier age such an appeal could only
appear as confusing and fallacious, being an attempt to illustrate ignotum
per ignotius; hence, we must conclude that the prophecy was directly
intended for the generation of the Exile, and could produce its full effect
only on them. It must be observed that neither the appearance of Cyrus nor the
captivity of Israel is ever predicted in this prophecy; they are everywhere
assumed as facts known to the readers. Predictions do occur of the most
definite kind, but they are of events subsequent to those mentioned and lying
in advance of the standpoint which the prophet occupies. A distinction is often
made by the writer between “former things,” which have already come to pass,
and “new things” or “coming things” (Isaiah 41:22; Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:9; Isaiah 43:18, etc., Isaiah 44:7; Isaiah 14:11; Isaiah 46:9; Isaiah 48:3-8), and in some cases it
seems clear that by “former things” he means the fulfilment of earlier
prophecies concerning Cyrus, while the “new things,” now first announced, are
such events as the triumph of Cyrus, the salvation of Israel, and the conversion
of the world to the worship of Jehovah. Even on the supposition that the
chapters were written by Isaiah, 150 years before any of these occurrences, it
still remains true that he does not formally predict the rise of Cyrus, but
addresses himself to those who have witnessed it and only require to be told
what developments will result from it in the unfolding of Jehovah’s purpose. (Prof.
J. Skinner, D. D.)
The evidence of language and style
When the biblical writings are examined care, fully, individualities
of style appear as one of their most prominent features . . . Now, when the
prophecies in the Book of Isaiah possessing an evident reference to the events
of Isaiah’s lifetime are compared with those relating to the restoration of
Israel from Babylon, and especially with chaps. 40-66, many remarkable
differences, both of phraseology and conception, disclose themselves The terms
and expressions which, in the former series of prophecies Isaiah uses, and uses
repeatedly, are absent in chaps. 40-66; conversely, new terms and expressions
appear in chaps. 40-66, which are without parallel in the first part of the
book. Sometimes the expressions used in one part of the book occur never in the
other; in other cases, they occur once or twice only in one part of the book,
while in the other part they occur frequently, and often with a peculiar nuance
or shade of meaning. No doubt, if the subject matter of the two parts varied
greatly, it would be natural that to a certain extent different terms should be
employed, even though both were by the same author; but, as will be seen, the
variations between the two parts of the Book of Isaiah are not to be explained
by the difference of subject matter; they extend, in many instances, to points,
such as the form and construction of sentences, which stand in no appreciable
relation to the subject treated. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
Theology and thought
Of course, the fundamental principles of the Israelitish religion
are common to both parts of the Book of Isaiah, as they are to the prophets
generally; when we look for features that are distinctive, we at once find that
they are different. Isaiah depicts the majesty of Jehovah; the author of
chaps. 40-66, His infinity. This is a real difference. It would be
difficult to establish from Isaiah--not the greatness merely, but--the infinitude
of the Divine attributes; the author of chaps. 40-66, exhausts the Hebrew
language in the endeavour, if possible, to represent it. Jehovah is the
Creator, the Sustainer of the universe, the Lifegiver, the Author of history,
the First and the Last, the Incomparable One. Where does Isaiah teach such
truths as these? Yet it cannot be maintained that opportunities for such
assertions of Jehovah’s power and Godhead would not have naturally presented
themselves to Isaiah whilst he was engaged in defying the armies of Assyria.
But the truth is, the prophet of the Exile moves in a different region of
thought from Isaiah. The doctrine of the preservation from judgment of a worthy
remnant is characteristic of Isaiah; it appears alike in his first prophecy Isaiah 6:13) and in his last (Isaiah 37:31 f.); in chaps. 40-66,
if it appears once or twice by implication (Isaiah 59:20; Isaiah 65:8 f.), it is not a
distinctive element in the author’s teaching; it is not expressed in Isaiah’s
phraseology, and is not more prominent than it is in the writings of many other
prophets. Where, in Isaiah, is the destiny of Israel, and the purpose of its
call, developed--or even noticed allusively--as it is developed in chaps.
40-66? In these chapters, again, the figure of the Messianic king is absent;
another figure, intimately connected with the view of Israel’s destiny that has
just been mentioned--a figure singularly striking and original in its
conception--holds a corresponding position. To say that the figure of Jehovah’s
ideal Servant is an advance upon that of the Messianic king is not
correct; it starts from a different origin altogether; it is parallel to
it, not a continuation of it. The mission of Israel to the nations is developed
in new directions; the Divine purposes in relation to them are exhibited upon a
wider and more comprehensive scale. The prophet moves along lines of thought
different from those followed by Isaiah; he apprehends and dwells upon
different aspects of truth . . . Thus, even where there is a point of contact
between the two parts of the book, or where the same terms are employed, the
ideas attached to them have, in chaps. 40-66, a wider and fuller import. But
this is exactly what would be expected from a later writer expanding and
developing, in virtue of the fuller measure of inspiration vouchsafed to him,
elements due, perhaps, originally to a predecessor. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D.
D.)
The idea of “righteousness” in the two parts of the book
This difference between the two parts of the book is summed up in
their respective uses of the word “righteousness.” In Isaiah 1-39, or at least
in such of these chapters as refer to Isaiah’s own day, righteousness is man’s
moral and religious duty, in its contents of piety, purity, justice, and social
service. In Isaiah 40-66, righteousness (except in a few cases)
is something which the people expect from God,--their historical vindication by
His restoral and reinstatement of them as His people. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D.
D.)
IX. ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT
OF THE UNITY OF THE AUTHORSHIP
1. The title of the whole book (Isaiah 1:1)
. In the general title of the book, as it has existed from a period centuries
before Christ, the claim is made by the book itself for the authorship of the
later as well as of the earlier chapters. And the anonymity of the part which
contains the later chapters, if not written by Isaiah, is unparalleled in the
prophetic writings of the Old Testament.
2. Historical evidence.
Ecclesiasticus says: “He (Esaias) saw by an excellent spirit what
should come to pass at the last, and he comforted them that mourn in Zion; he
showed what should come to pass forever, and secret things or ever they came.”
According to Prof. Margoliouth, the date of the book cannot be later than 200
B.C.
3. Similarity of religious idea and expression.
Scientific grounds for
believing in the unity of Isaiah
1. The external evidence, so far as it can be traced, is unanimously
in favour of it; and, since the second part of Isaiah has enjoyed exceptional
popularity, it is improbable that the name of the author would have been
forgotten within 200 years of the time when he wrote, and his work merged in
that of a writer of a few scraps of 150 years before.
2. The theory which bisects Isaiah leads, by a logical necessity, to
further and further dissection and so to results which are absurd.
3. The geography of chaps. 40-66, is earlier than the geography of
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, ann a geographical notice in the last chapter of Isaiah
was mistaken by Jeremiah.
4. The idolatrous practices rebuked by the “second Isaiah” are
pre-exilian rites, such as we cannot, without anachronism, attribute to the
Israelites either during or after.the Exile. They can only be explained as
relics of a very primitive fetish-worship connected with particular localities.
5. Other crimes rebuked by the “second Isaiah” are identical with
crimes rebuked by the “first Isaiah,” and are of a sort which imply the
existence of an independent community long established on the soil.
6. The “second Isaiah” gives us some personal details which enable us
to identify him with the prophet of chap. 6, and, what is most important, tells
us the, name borne by the prophet before he took the name Isaiah.
7. The “second Isaiah” employs words only known otherwise to the
“first Isaiah,” of which the meaning was lost by Jeremiah’s time.
8. The “second Isaiah” shows himself otherwise possessed of a
scientific and technical vocabulary which the “first Isaiah” only shares with
him. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
A touchstone
In the case of prophecy we have to deal with a class of literature
unrepresented anywhere but in Israel. Therefore, the only analogies that can
guide us must he got from Hebrew literature. And, happily, we have one that is
amply sufficient to serve as a touchstone for the twenty Isaiah theory. By the
side of the lengthy roll of Isaiah is the less lengthy roll of the Twelve Minor
Prophets. Few of these prophets figure in history; and the judgment of mankind
on their merits places none of them in the first class. They neither thrill as
Isaiah thrills, nor have they influenced mankind as Isaiah has influenced it.
How comes it, then, if it was really the fashion of the Israelites to lump the
oracles of different prophets together, that the works of the whole series are
not ascribed to the first? Why are not the prophecies of Haggai ascribed to
Hosea! Some of the Minor Prophets have produced one chapter or thereabouts; but
the tradition has not forgotten their names. How then comes it that the
brilliant authors of the Isaianic oracles are for the most part utterly
forgotten and neglected! (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The analogy of Ezra and Nehemiah
That two authors of stupendous merit might accidentally get bound
up together and so the works of the second get attributed to the first, is
exceedingly unlikely, but not so unlikely as to be impossible; in the case of
Isaiah, however, not only is the analogy of the Minor Prophets decidedly
against it, but that of Ezra and Nehemiah still more so. Owing to the
similarity of the subject of which these authors treat, they appear in several
canons under the single head of Ezra; but the Jews, though they probably often
bound them up together, never confused them. Still, if the division of Isaiah
between two authors gave satisfaction, and further dissection did not
immediately follow, this solution would not go so far outside the bounds of
experience as to be called uncritical But the fact that this first dissection
leads to innumerable others renders it useless. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M.
A.)
The Cyrus predictions
The mention by [the author] of the name of Isaiah 45:4-6) is declared to be a
tremendous miracle wrought in order that the whole world from East to West
might know that Jehovah was the only God. If the fact was that the prophet of
an unimportant and oppressed community mentioned, in the name of his god, a
conqueror whose fame was filling the world, what miracle was there in this? The
world might as well ring with the fact that Virgil mentioned Augustus. Yet the
“second Isaiah” claims foreknowledge so constantly and so emphatically that he
has left himself no loophole (Isaiah 41:23; Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:9-10; Isaiah 44:7-8; Isaiah 48:3; Isaiah 48:5). These are not all the
passages in which this writer insists on the fact that he, as God’s spokesman,
has foretold events with certainty, whereas the representatives of other gods
have been unable to predict. The author therefore speaks like a man of science,
who is aware that the truth can submit itself to tests . . . If we regard
Isaiah 40-66, as the continuation of the first half of Isaiah, the references
to the former events which had come about as the prophet had predicted are
intelligible; the failure of the invasion of Sennacherib, which his lying
annals conceal, is attested by the Greek historian; and we are justified in
ascribing that failure to providential interference. That was, doubtless, the
most striking of Isaiah’s predictions, but in other cases he took the wise
precaution of having his oracles properly attested (Isaiah 8:2; Isaiah 8:16; Isaiah 30:8). Either, then, we are to
suppose that the “second Isaiah” had foretold events successfully, but that his
predictions attracted so little attention as to be lost; or, we are to suppose
that this profession of his is a piece of imposture; or thirdly, there remains
the old and traditional theory that the oracles on the fulfilment of which the
“second Isaiah” bases his claim to credibility are the oracles of the “first
Isaiah.” Rejecting the first proposition as absurd, and the second on the
ground that a claim so forcibly put forward would certainly have been
challenged unless substantiated, we are driven to the third alternative; the
“former events” to which the passages quoted allude must be events predicted by
the “first Isaiah,” and duly realised Either, then, the first Isaiah wrote the
work ascribed to the second, or the second Isaiah” wrote the work ascribed to
the first; for the idea that the “second Isaiah” claimed falsely to have
produced the oracles which were really by the “first Isaiah” may be excluded.
Either the “first Isaiah” was gifted with astounding knowledge of the future,
or a false prophet of the time of Cyrus forged a whole series of oracles, some
of which corresponded well with past history, in order to attach to them an
appendix of oracles referring to events in the then future. This latter
supposition may be refuted when any serious writer maintains it. (Prof. D.
S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The author knew but little of Babylon
Out of the oracles of the “first Isaiah” it seems impossible to
banish certain leading ideas which perpetually recur. “A remnant shall return”
(Isaiah 1:9; Isaiah 10:21; Isaiah 11:11; Isaiah 27:12-13). If, then, the true and
genuine message of Isaiah is that a remnant shall return, and yet that remnant
is not to return from Assyria, whence is it to return? Chiefly from Babylon, as
the historically attested oracle in chap. 39, implies; and what is clear is,
that the “second Isaiah,” like the first, knows little of Babylon but the names
Babel and Chasdees; and that, except the name Cyrus, the second possesses no
detailed foreknowledge Of later events that is not also at the command of the
first. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Geographical considerations
There is some geography in these chapters, and there is also some
in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel. If the “second Isaiah” wrote in the time of Cyrus,
he must have had the works of these two prophets before him, and can scarcely
have been less familiar than Ezekiel with the geography of the countries that
entered into Babylonian politics. But it is the fact that the “second Isaiah”
is ignorant of what was commonplace to Ezekiel The races Meshech and Tubal, to
the Assyrians Muski and Tabali, to the Greeks Moschi and Tibareni, formed a
natural couple, like Holland and Belgium, or Norway and Sweden. Ezekiel mentions
them together five times (Isaiah 27:13; Isaiah 32:26; Isaiah 38:2-3; Isaiah 39:1), and they are named together
in the genealogical tables, which couple Javan (the Oriental name for Greece)
with them. To Ezekiel, therefore, it was well known that Moshech (as Meshech
should be corrected) was a proper name, belonging to a nation or country. But
Isaiah thought it a Hebrew word meaning “drawer,” and he interprets it drawers
of the bow. Thus the Isaiah 66:19 reads: “I will send refugees
of them to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, drawers of the bow, Tubal and Javan.” But
the Hebrew for drawers is Mosh’che. If we compare the lists in Ezekiel
and in the genealogical tables, it will seem clear that “drawers of the bow” is
not an epithet of Lud, but the name of a race, namely, Moshech. Jeremiah had
this passage of Isaiah before him, and stumbled over It curiously. In
enumerating some warlike tribes (Isaiah 46:9) he mentions Cush and Put,
bearers of shields, and “Ludim, bearers treaders of the bow.” This variation is
highly interesting. The verb mashach is so rarely used of “the bow” that
the prophet might well doubt whether Isaiah’s phrase meant “draggers” of the
bow or “pullers” of it; i.e., whether it referred to the carrying of the
bow, or to the employment of it in actual warfare. The alternate suggestions,
curiously enough, remain side by side in the text; but the reason of the
association of the bow with the Lydian lancers is lost. Jeremiah is, however,
one step further than Isaiah in that he has the correct form “Put” for the
incorrect “Pul.” The name Pul is probably due to a reminiscence of the name of
an Assyrian king. We see from this passage in the last chapter of the
second Isaiah” a proof of priority to Jeremiah and Ezekiel. (For further
develepments of the geographical argument, see “Expositor,” sixth series, vol.
1, pp. 254-261.) (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Argument from idolatrous practices
The abominations described in chapter 57 include (verse 5) the
worship of elim under green trees; the only other place in which this
technical term appears is Isaiah 1:29 (“Men shall be ashamed of the
elim which ye have desired”). The ceremonies rebuked in chapter 65 include
sacrifices in gannoth (Isaiah 65:3), and the same technical term
figures in chapter 66 (Isaiah 66:17); the only other place in
which it is found is also Isaiah 1:29 (“Ye shall be ashamed of the gannoth
which ye have chosen”). That gannoth here does not mean ordinary
gardens, but is a technical term, appears from the threat in Isaiah 1:30,where the votaries of these gannoth
are told that they shall become like a garden that has no water. For
this threat evidently derives its suitability from a play on words . . . If the
word gannoth were not technical, the play on the words would be
pointless; and we may observe that the threat of Isaiah 1:30 is matched by the promise of Isaiah 58:11 : “Thou shaltbe like a
well-watered garden,” where (owing to the absence of any other allusion) the
ordinary form of the word for “garden” is used. The worship with which these
terms gannoth, and elim are connected was exceedingly elaborate,
and therefore characteristic of a period. We learn, therefore, that the authors
of Isaiah 1:1-31 and of Isaiah 57:1-21; Isaiah 65:1-25; Isaiah 66:1-24 were contemporaries. That
the first chapter of a great classic could be attributed to anyone but its
right author is too wild a surmise to deserve consideration. We start, then,
with the remarkable fact that the “first Isaiah” uses two technical terms with
which the “second Isaiah” and no other Hebrew author is familiar. And the
“second Isaiah” acts as interpreter to the “first Isaiah,” by enabling us to
locate, and to some extent comprehend, the nature of the cults to which these
technical terms belonged. And from this observation a very easy step leads to
the identification of the two authors. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Ceremonies alluded to in chapters 57, 65, and 66
The source of these practices in Palestine must have been ancient
and undisturbed custom; they had been brought by the Canaanites with them from
Arabia, and the Israelites had learned them from the Canaanites. They were kept
alive by attachment to particular mountains and particular rivers, and in part
were based on the system which connected and even identified the gods with
particular localities. The cultivation of them involved an insult to the temple
(Isaiah 65:11)
, which, therefore, must have been standing at the time of the rebuke. These
passages are in consequence so clearly pre-exilian, that even some of those who
were in favour of the dissecting theory have been unable to place them any
later. While, then, the “first Isaiah” is supposed to be interpolated with
post-exilian matter, the “second Isaiah” is supposed to be interpolated with
pre-exilian matter. Naturally, a theory that involves so much complication can
make little claim to probablility. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Anachronisms involved in the supposition of a “second Isaiah”
The author of Isaiah 65:8-9 takes the same view of the
purpose of the Exile which is taken throughout the book, and, indeed,
throughout the Bible. Attachment to these savage and primitive rites could only
be dissolved by removing the worshippers from the soil on which they were
practised; hence, the Exile was not only a punishment but also a corrective.
From it there returned those whose progenitors had not bowed the knee to Baal,
while those whose interests were far removed from the objects which Israel was
destined to accomplish lost their nationality. Those who came back were cured,
or rather purified, from this particular form of evil. That they were not
faultless we know from the prophets of the Return; but, to attribute to them
fetish worship of a primitive sort is a gross anachronism. One might as well
accuse the English of the nineteenth century of burning heretics or using
ordeals as evidence . . . Next after the idolatrous rites rebuked by the “second
Isaiah,” we may consider some other crimes which he condemns. One of the most
serious impeachments is to be found in Isaiah 59:2-9. The prophet there states
that the sins of his countrymenhave been a bar between them and God; they have
caused God to hide His face, and prevented Him from hearing. This is the same
message as that in Isaiah 1:14-15, with a slight difference
in the tense and the expression. He then proceeds: “for your hands are polluted
with blood.” This also is identical with the accusation in Isaiah 1:15, “your hands are full of
blood”; or, perhaps, “tainted with blood.” Now, this is as grave an accusation
as can be made; to what it precisely refers our slight knowledge of Israelitish
history does not enable us to say: the prophet may have in mind either judicial
murders (such as that in old times of Naboth), or recklessness of human life
among loose livers, or . . . infanticide . . . Whichever of these it
be--supposing it does not refer, as many have thought, to a judicial murder in
the distant future--the two “remonstrances” must clearly belong to the same
period. And that period can only be pre-exilic; the mere notion of such a
remonstrance being addressed to the returned exiles seems to involve
anachronism. Indeed, the prophet’s idea is clearly that the Exile was a sort of
sea in which these offences were to be washed out. The terrible impeachment of
his contemporaries which follows strongly resembles that contained in chaps. 1
and 5. It is illustrated by similes taken from natural history, in which words
otherwise only used by the “first Isaiah” are employed. Verses 9 and 11 contain
a free paraphrase Isaiah 5:7; but the play on the words in
the earlier chapter isintentionally altered. An imitator would probably have
reproduced it. In Isaiah 56:10-12 the impeachment is
confined to the rulers; they are accused of drunkenness, corruption, and
incompetence, just as they are in Isaiah 5:22-23; Isaiah 3:12, and Isaiah 9:15. That the same impeachment
could be made with justice at such different periods as the time of the “first
Isaiah” and the close of the Exile or commencement of the Return seems
unthinkable; but to deny the authenticity of the early chapters of the book is
uncritical How could such a forgery have remained undetected? In chap. 38, the
people are accused of lip service; they ask why their punctilious performance
of ceremonies is unproductive of results, and are told that it is owing to the
fact that their service is not accompanied by a correspending reform in their
conduct. The same is the burden of chap. 1 and of Isaiah 29:13. Surely the remonstrances
addressed to the Jews before and after the great crisis in their national
existence cannot have been so similar. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The “second Isaiah” identical with the prophet of chap. 6.
Let us see whether the second half of Isaiah tells us anything
about the prophet’s person. Ewald seems to have rightly interpreted Isaiah 8:18 : “Verily, Iand the children
which the Lord has given me are for signs and tokens in Israel,” of the names
Isaiah, Shear-yashub, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Clearly, the names, “A remnant
shall return,” and “Hasten the spoil, hurry the plunder,” were too full of
meaning to escape notice; therefore the prophet’s own name, “The salvation of
the Lord,” must also have been of notable significance; and, indeed, that
theme, “the salvation of the Lord,” pervades the whole book. But it follows
that the prophet must have taken this name himself. Thus only would its
significance be forced on the minds of his contemporaries . . . What, then, was
his original name? This appears to be given in Isaiah 42:18-21. The way to translate
these verses seems to me the following: “Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, so
as to see. Who was blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger whom I send?
Who was blind as Meshullam, and blind as the servant of the Lord! Seeing much
without noticing; open-eared without hearing. The Lord was pleased of His grace
to make a great and notable example.” The name Meshullam is by no means
uncommon it belongs to a root which gives a great number of proper names both
in Hebrew and Arabic; they all mean “safe and sound,” and are names of good
omen . . . The “great and notable example,” then, lay in the fact that he,
Meshullam, had been enabled to see; why, then, should not others? Let us
compare this with the most autobiographical chapter in Isaiah--chap. 6. In the
first place, the vision there justifies the description of himself in the above
passage as “My messenger whom I send” Isaiah 6:8-9). He was told to go and say
to the people, “Hear, but understand not; see, and know not”--the very
condition wherein, according to Isaiah 42:20, the messenger himself had
been. Then, we see that in Isaiah 42:5 he identifies his condition
with that of his countrymen until the live coal had touched his lips. The
immediate result of that was to be the removal of sin; but assuredly the image
is meant to suggest “the scholar’s tongue,” which in Isaiah 50:4, he says, was given him by
the Lord, to utter the words which (as Ben-Sira says) blaze like a fire, and,
indeed, however inadequately they are translated, thrill the reader and hearer
more, probably, than any other form of utterance. Hence it would seem that the
verses Isaiah 13:18-21 give us a very needful
supplement to the biographical notice of chap.6. But is the supposition that
Meshullam is a proper name a wild conjecture, or an observation that is likely
sooner or later to be generally accepted? I trust the latter, because modem
scholars see the necessity of correcting the text, owing to the fact that,
taken as a substantive, the word gives no satisfactory meaning. It is only in
rare cases that [the correction of the text] is dictated by the canons of
science. On the other hand, I can imagine no reason, grammatical or other,
which stands in the way of the interpretation given above. And seeing how
deeply this prophet is imbued with the feeling that a new condition calls for a
new name (cf. Isaiah 62:2), the conjecture of Ewald,
that the name Isaiah was meant to mark the prophet’s new condition, seems
highly probable . . . We learn, then, from chap. 6 that the mission undertaken
by the prophet was without hope of brilliant success; it was only when
Jerusalem was reduced to a ruin that it was to begin to be heard. In Isaiah 50:6-10 we hear the prophet
complain of its ineffectual character; the reception of his message was lust
what had been promised: it was greeted with contempt and ridicule, with blows
and buffets. The consolation that he had was the same as that which nerves all
those who are defending the cause of science against tremendous odds, namely,
that the truth is permanent, and must slowly approve itself, whereas the
opposite is transitory. Naturally, it might be said that this was too often the
fate of those who interpreted the purposes or work of God aright for the first
time to serve for scientific identification; but then, it must be observed that
we have no other justification save this passage for the oracle of chap. 6. The
valuable notice Isaiah 42:19 of the author’s former name,
Meshullam, seems intelligible only on the hypothesis stated above. Had it not
been known that the author of that chapter bore the name Isaiah, the chapter
(and the collection in which it occurred) would be, of course, attributed to
Meshullam. Anyone who has ever catalogued MSS. is aware that the first
expedient adopted for finding out the name of an author is to search through
his book for some proper name that may, from the context, be his. To those with
whom classical Hebrew was a living language, a proper name would be as easily
distinguishable as to us in reading English; in such a sentence as “who is so
pathetic as gray,” the absence of the capital would confuse no intelligent
reader; and hence, had not the readers of these oracles from the time they were
first issued in a roll been convinced that the author’s name was Isaiah, it would
never have occurred to them to render Meshullam as “perfect,” or “requited,” or
“devoted.” But since the fact of the prophet having changed his name was only
recorded in the allusion of Isaiah 8:18, his former name was
forgotten. That “who so blind as Meshullam?” meant “who so blind as Isaiah
before his mission?” was not perceived by those who only knew of Isaiah. Even
in this country where a change of name is usually preceded by the most
important work in a man’s life, the name by which a peer was known before his
elevation is constantly forgotten by the majority of the public. But where the
change is preceded by no important work, the original name is likely to be lost
altogether. How many educated persons could say offhand what was the original
name of Voltaire or Neander or Lagarde? (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Argument from words common to the “first” and “second Isaiah”
A scientific argument can be drawn from the use of words only when
they can be dated before or after. By the latter method of dating I mean the
case in which we can show that by a certain date the sense of a word had been
entirely forgotten in a community; for then, whoever is found using it in the
old sense will almost certainly he earlier than that data The discovery of this
scientific principle is the service rendered the world by the Greek critic
Aristarchus; let us see whether it will help us to determine the date of the
“second Isaiah.”
There is a word nashath, used by Isaiah once in the first
half of the book Isaiah 19:5), and once in the second (Isaiah 41:17). In both those passages it
clearly means “to be dry”; “the waters shall dry up from the Nile,” and “their
tongue is dry with thirst.” It is well to know me etymology of a word before we
base any argument upon it; and here the surest source of Hebrew etymology,
classical Arabic, does not fail us. The word nashifa has, from time
immemorial, been used by the Arabs precisely as Isaiah uses this . . . What,
therefore, appears is that the authors of both parts of Isaiah are acquainted
with a verb nashath or nasath, meaning “to be dry,” and in all
probability identical with a very familiar Arabic verb meaning the same Now let
us examine two passages of Jeremiah. The first Jeremiah 51:30. The champions of Babylon
nave ceased to fight; they sit in their fortresses; their manhood is nashath;
they have become women” (nashim). The second clause is
here evidently in explanation of the first; it tells us what nashath
means, namely, “to become effeminate.” The author regards it as a denominative
from nashim, “women,” probably through an abstract nashuth,
“womanhood.” Hence, between the time when Isaiah II wrote, and the time of the
composition of Jeremiah 51:30, the meaning of the word nashath
must have been forgotten. Therefore, the author of Isaiah 41:1-29 is earlier than the author
of Jeremiah 51:1-64 by some generations.
That this observation is correct is shown by Jeremiah 18:14 : “Can the cool flowing water
be destroyed” (nathash)? That men do not speak of water being
destroyed or plucked up is evident; the author must mean, “Can they dry up?”
The phrase, then, is modelled on Isaiah 19:5; but the later prophet, being
no longer familiar with the old verb nashath, “to dry up,” substitutes
by conjecture the more familiar nathash. By the time 51:30 is written he
has remembered that Isaiah used not nathash, but nashath, in
connection with waters drying; hence he gives it a special application, adding
an etymological explanation. The process is very similar to that which was
traced in reference to “the Lydians, drawers of the bow.” Just as Isaiah
utilised the lost Book of Wisdom, so Jeremiah utilises the language of the
existing classic, Isaiah. In the case of obsolete phrases, he makes guesses,
which, as philology is not the purpose of Holy Scripture, by the fact that they
are unfortunate, give us valuable clues of date. Isaiah 10:18 there occurs a difficult
phrase, rendered in ourAuthorised Version, “as when a standard bearer
fainteth.” The meaning of this expression is probably lost; but it must have
been known to the author Isaiah 59:19, “the Spirit of the Lord
shall lift up a standard against him.” For the same word (noses) is here
used, but in an entirely different context. There can, therefore, be no
question of imitation; the prophet must have known the meaning of the word,
though we do not know it; and the argument is unaffected by the question of the
meaning which should be assigned it. These words would appear to be of real
importance, because the argument drawn from them is of a sort that science
recognises. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The technical vocabulary of Isaiah 11:1-16 shared by Isaiah 1:1-31
Agriculture and natural history seem clearly to interest the
author (or authors) of these oracles very much; and allusions to these subjects
lead to the employment of a considerable number of technicalities. Whether a
member of the exiled community would have had the opportunity of becoming so
familiar with these subjects seems doubtful; but documents illustrating the
life of the exiles may some day be discovered, which will enable us to speak
positively on this matter. There are some facts about the use of these terms in
the two parts of the book which seem to me scarcely explicable on the
hypothesis of divided authorship. In the parable of the Vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-6) there occurs a word for “to
hoe” (ʽadar, Isaiah 1:6), and also a word for “to
stone,” meaning “to remove stones” (sikkel, Isaiah 1:2). Both these verbs have other
meanings, which are more familiar; but in the case of the vineyard there could
be no mistaking their import, whence they are used without any explanation.
However, in Isaiah 7:25 the prophet has occasion to
use the word for “to hoe” in a less technical context, so this time he adds
“with the hoe,” that there may be no error. The author of Isaiah 62:10 has occasion to use the word
for “to stone” of a road,where it would be ambiguous; for “to stone a road”
might mean to put stones on it or to remove them from it. Hence he adds “from
stones,” that there may be no error. Now, either there never was an Isaiah, or
the oracles of chaps. 5 and 7 are Isaianic. Therefore chap. 62 is also
Isaianic. For it must be remembered that these words, in their technical sense,
only occur in these two places. The theory that another author felt the same
scruple about the second as Isaiah had felt about the first scarcely commends
itself; a later imitator would have thought Isaiah’s authority sufficient to
justify him in using “to stone” for “to remove stones.” In Isaiah 34:15, and twice in Isaiah 59:5, a verb (meaning literally
“to split”) is used of hatching serpents’ eggs; it does not occur elsewhere in
this sense. In Isaiah 34:15 a special verb is used for
“to be delivered of,” “produce,”which only occurs in Isaiah 66:7 besides. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 17:11) is apparently acquainted
with part of this scientific vocabulary, but not with the word for “produce.”
Now, the author of Isaiah 34:1-17, seems on other grounds
identical with the “second Isaiah”; the reference to Edom and Bozrah in verse 6
cannot with any probability be separated from that in Isaiah 63:1,and the address to the
“nations and peoples” in Isaiah 34:1 is evidently in the style of
the author of Isaiah 12:1. The threat in Isaiah 34:3 closely resembles that with
which the Book of Isaiah closes. Chap. 35 also cannot, with any probability, be
separated from chaps. 40-66; both the thought and the language are closely akin
to, and in part identical with, those of the “second Isaiah.” On the other
hand, it is by no means easy to separate Isaiah 35:1-10 from what precedes; Isaiah 35:5 takes us back to Isaiah 29:18; Isaiah 35:4 to Isaiah 32:4. Now, this fact hits the
splitting theory veryhard. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Is the standpoint Babylonian?
The Babylonian standpoint must at least be doubtful, when so great
and free a critic as Ewald not only failed to see it, but, while maintaining
the exilic date of these chapters, found an entirely different standpoint or
historic background in them--an Egyptian. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Professor Cheyne not only admits that there is “a paucity of
allusions in these chapters to the special circumstances of Babylon,” but
admits likewise that there is not a little of Palestinian colouring in them.
“Some passages,” he says, “of ‘second Isaiah’ are in variable degrees really
favourable to the theory of a Palestinian origin. Thus in Isaiah 57:6 thereferee nee to torrent
beds is altogether inapplicable to the alluvial plains of Babylonia; and
equally so is that to subterranean holes in Isaiah 13:22. And though, no doubt,
Babylonia was more wooded in ancient times than it is at present, it is certain
that the trees mentioned in Isaiah 41:19 were not, for the most part,
natives of that country; while the date palm, the commonest of all the
Babylonian trees, is not once referred to.” He admits, at the same time, that
there are allusions in the later chapters “which unmistakably point away from
the period of the Exile.” “They are most numerous,” he says, “and striking in
chaps. 56; 57; 65; 66. Let us read them by themselves, and I think we shall
hardly doubt that the descriptions refer to some period or periods other than
the Exile.” Isaiah, he further admits, might have learned in Palestine almost
as much about Babylon as is mentioned in the second portion of the book, either
from travelling merchants or from the ambassadors of Merodach Baladan. “The
only possible allusion of this kind (if we may press the letter of the
prophecy) distinctly in favour of an exilic date is that of Isaiah 46:1 tothe worship of Bel-Merodach
Nebo, which specially characterised the later Babylonian empire. This paucity
of Babylonian references would be less surprising (for prophets and apostles
were not curious observers) were it not for the very specific allusions to
Palestinian circumstances in some of the later chapters”: on which the remark
is obvious, that with “very specific allusions to Palestinian circumstances,”
and only “one possible allusion” to what is distinctly Babylonian, we
may assume that, so far as local environment is indicated, the standpoint of
the author is not Babylonian, but Palestinian. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Rev. G.A. Smith says: “While the bulk of chaps. 11-66 were
composed in Babylonia during the Exile of the Jews, there are considerable
portions which date from before the Exile and betray a Palestinian origin; and
one or two smaller pieces that seem--rather less evidently, however--to take
for granted the return after the Exile.” As to chaps. 11-48, Mr. Smith holds
very positively that they are to be dated in Babylonia, and that they form a
unity, being the work of one author. As to chaps. 49 to 66, the evidence he
regards as less conclusive. In chaps. 54; 55, he thinks we are still in exile.
“A number of short prophecies now follow till the end of chap. 59 is reached.”
These, he thinks, make it extremely difficult to believe in the original unity
of “second Isaiah.” Some of them are undoubtedly of earlier date. Such is Isaiah 56:9-12, which regards the Exile
as still to come; while others of these short prophecies are, he says, in the
opinion of some critics, post-exilic. Chap. 59, Mr. Smith says, is perhaps the
most difficult portion of all; chaps. 61 and 62 he holds to be certainly
exilic; Isaiah 63:7 to Isaiah 64:1-12 implies a ruined temple (Isaiah 64:11), but bears no traces of the
writer being in exile; chap. 65 has been assigned by some to the same date;
chap. 66 betrays more evidence of being written after the Return. Mr. Smith
considers himself “justified in coming to the provisional conclusion that
‘second Isaiah’ is not a unity, in so far as it consists of a number of pieces
by different men whom God raised up at various times before, during, and after
the Exile, to comfort and exhort amid the shifting circumstances and tempers of
the people; but that it is a unity in so far as these pieces have been gathered
together by an editor, very soon after the return from exile, in an order as
regular both in point of time and subject as the somewhat mixed material would
permit.” So that “it is rather an editorial than an original unity which is
apparent.” I submit that in the face of these differences as to what chapters
in “second Isaiah” do or do not manifest a Babylonian standpoint, it is
impossible to rely on the assumption of such a standpoint as an argument
against the authorship of the historic Isaiah. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
The value of the arguments from language and style
The assumption that we can locate disjointed fragments of Hebrew
is to be summarily rejected. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The diction of the second part of Isaiah is tolerably pure and
free from Chaldaisms. (Samuel Davidson, D. D.)
There cannot be a more false canon of criticism than that a man
who has written one work will, when writing a second, introduce no ideas and
make use of no modes of expression that are not to be found in the first. On
the contrary, a writer may be pronounced very barren indeed if he exhausts all
his ideas and expends all his vocabulary on one production. (G. Salmon, D.
D.)
My own opinion is that the peculiar expressions of the latter prophecies
are, on the whole, not such as to necessitate a different linguistic stage from
the historical Isaiah; and that, consequently, the decision of the critical
question will mainly depend on other than purely linguistic considerations. (Prof.
T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
On the authority of “great Hebraists,” with scarcely an exception,
there is no linguistic necessity for the theory of a dual or plural authorship.
(J. Kennedy, D. D.)
A supplementary
consideration
It is admitted that the man who wrote the second part of the Book
of Isaiah, or, at least, the greater part of it, was himself intellectually and
morally as great as, or greater than, the historic Isaiah. Our ideal of the
prophet Isaiah, on which so much eloquence has been expended, is the ideal rather
of the man who wrote the second part than of the man who wrote the first. It is
in chaps. 40 to 48, especially that we find the origin of our conception of
Isaiah as the greatest of the Hebrew poets. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
The prophecies respecting Cyrus
Josephus ascribes the decree of Cyrus Ezra 1:1-2)
to his having read the Book of Isaiah, or portions of it. Quoting part of the
passage in which Cyrus is named, Josephus says: “This was foretold by Isaiah
140 years before the temple was destroyed. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this,
and admired the Divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to
fulfil what was so written; so he called for the most eminent Jews that were in
Babylon, and said to them, that he gave them leave to go back to their own
country, and to rebuild their city Jerusalem and the temple of God” (Antiq. 11.1).
From which we gather, at the least, that Josephus had not discovered the grand
secret of the Higher Criticism, that the prophecy concerning Cyrus was only two
years old when he read it, if ever he did read it at all. (J. Kennedy, D.
D.)
The knowledge of the name by the historic Isaiah would, according
to Cheyne, “involve the necessity of assuming a suspension of the laws of
psychology.” But a priori objections of this sort must give way before
the evidence of facts. What, after all, is meant by a suspension of the laws of
psychology? In this ease it can only mean that the discovery of the name of Cyrus
was something above the operation of the natural laws of the human mind. And
this is only saying, in other words, that it was supernatural;--the very thing
we maintain concerning this and every other bona fide prediction.
Suppose we had the prophecy in all respects as it is, but without the name.
Instead of Cyrus, let it be only “a king” that shall arise to “perform
Jehovah’s pleasure.” Would all else in the prophecy be discoverable by the
human mind! Is there nothing supernatural in it but the name? Or, will it be
said that the other contents of the prophecy, though not discoverable by any
natural operation of the human mind, would be intelligible when made known?
Then we ask, What is there that is unintelligible in the addition of the name?
The prophet must have known that it was not of himself that he foresaw the
deliverance of his nation by the Persian monarch. The authoritative preface,
“Thus saith the Lord,” intimates the source of his knowledge. But how the Lord
said it to him he does not say,--probably could not say. And the revealing the
name of the deliverer to his mind would scarcely be a greater wonder to him
than the revealing of the deliverance itself, and of the circumstances in which
it should take place. The mention of the name of Cyrus is not without a
parallel in an older record (1 Kings 13:2). To suppose that
“Josiah by name” is an interpolation or gloss that has slipped into the text
from the record of its accomplishment (2 Kings 23:16; 2 Kings 23:16) is an arbitrary
assumption. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Did Isaiah form prophetic school?
As to this suggestion of a band of younger prophets who formed the
school of Isaiah, it is based on a very uncertain foundation, the words in Isaiah 8:16, “Bind up thetestimony,” etc.
Commentators differ in their interpretation of this text, some holding that the
words are the Lord’s, some that they are Isaiah’s. Even if we accept them as
Isaiah’s, there is no evidence that Isaiah was at the head of a school of the
prophets, such as we have in the case of Samuel, and in the story of Elijah and
Elisha. And if there were, it would be impossible to connect that school with
the origination of a book which was written during the Exile. We should have to
suppose that the school of Isaiah survived through the idolatrous and
disastrous reigns that followed, going into exile with other captives, and
still existing during the Exile period, and having a succession of heads or
masters all that time. Such a continuous existence would be a very remarkable
phenomenon. And very remarkable, too, is the absence of all historic reference
to it. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Did Isaiah lean his
prophecies in a fixed form?
In the Book of Jeremiah we are told that all the words of the
prophet were written in a roll, and that when the king cut the roll in pieces
the word of the Lord came to the prophet commanding him to have his prophecies
rewritten on a new roll or in a new book. And it was done (Isaiah 36:4; Isaiah 36:23; Isaiah 36:28; Isaiah 36:32). But as we find no
intimation of this sort in Isaiah, we are asked to suppose that his prophecies
were not left by him in a fixed form. If this be a correct inference, it
follows that no prophet but Jeremiah left his writings in a fixed form, i.e.,
on a roll or in a book! For in none of them are we told that he did. The true
inference from the incident in Jeremiah is, that all the prophets were
instructed of the Lord carefully to write in a book such communications as the
Divine Inspirer willed to be preserved for permanent use. It is not credible--
X. THE HISTORICAL
CHAPTERS, 36-39.--An historical section, differing (except by the addition of the
Song of Hezekiah, 38:9-20) only verbally 2 Kings 18:13; 2 Kings 18:17-37; 2 Kings 20:1-19, and narrating certain
important events in which Isaiah was concerned. The original place of these
narratives was not the Book of Isaiah, but the Book of Kings, whence they were
excerpted (with slight abridgments) by the compiler of the Book of Isaiah (as Jeremiah 52:1-34 was excerpted from 2 Kings 24:18 ff by the compiler of
the Book of Jeremiah), on account, no doubt, of the particulars contained in
them respecting Isaiah’s prophetical work, and the fulfilment of some of his
most remarkable prophecies, the Song of Hezekiah being added by him from an
independent source. (With Isaiah 37:36 f.compare not only Isaiah 37:7; Isaiah 37:22; Isaiah 37:29, but also Isaiah 10:33 f., Isaiah 14:26, Isaiah 17:13 f., Isaiah 18:5 f., Isaiah 29:6 f., Isaiah 30:27 ff., Isaiah 31:8 f., Isaiah 33:3; Isaiah 33:10-12). (Prof. S. R. Driver,
D. D.)
III. THE DEVOTIONAL
READING OF ISAIAH
First recall some of the general rules given by Thomas a Kempis
(Book 1, chap. 5). Speaking as one who accepts good many of the results of
modern criticism as most probably true, I should say that the Book of Isaiah
remains as helpful to devotion as it ever was. We are now concerned with the
contents of the book. These lay before our Lord in the form in which we read
them today; from these St. Philip preached Christ to the Ethiopian eunuch; in
these St. Paul found some of his most fruitful spiritual thoughts. In our
devotional reading we will put aside such questions as whether many authors or
one wrote the great prophetical book. I do not say that every passage of Isaiah
is suitable for devotional use, and when a verse is really obscure in meaning I
do not think it is right to give it a fanciful explanation, even if by so doing
a devotional use may be made of the verse. Such a proceeding is not quite
honest, and, be it remembered, devotion is nothing if it be not honest. Even a
cursory reading of Isaiah will bring to our knowledge many passages which are,
in the truest sense, helps to devotion. Let me take three such passages as
examples--
1. The first (Isaiah 11:1-9) may be called a vision of
the kingdom of God. Here we have an ideal picture of the future; how will such
a picture help us? By guiding and quickening our devotion. Devotion (in the
fullest sense of the word) means giving ourselves to God for one of God’s great
ends. Our own devotion, like St. Paul’s (Acts 22:10), needs to catch some glimpse
of God’s great ends, in order that it may not spend itself in aimless feeling.
We have been taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come”; but it is of no avail to use
that petition if we have no notion of that for which we pray. Here Isaiah’s
vision comes in to help us.
2. I would call the second passage (Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:1-12) a study of Christ’s
Passion. No one can gainsay the fact that we find here, in a passage written
centuries before Christ’s coming, the very principles laid down which governed
Christ’s atoning work on earth. The passage teaches us--
3. The third passage (Isaiah 63:7-19; Isaiah 64:1-12) may be called a model
prayer for one in trouble. It contains the pleading of one (the Israelite
nation is meant) who has had a rich experience of God’s goodness in the past,
and is now face to face with crushing affliction. It is a pattern of devotion
to us for four reasons--
The Sermons by Rev. C.H. Spurgeon in this volume are used by
permission of Messrs. Passmore & Alabaster..
ISAIAH
INTRODUCTION
THE PROPHET ISAIAH
I. HIS NAME
Isaiah
The English name Isaiah is an approximate transliteration of the
abbreviated form Yesha’yah, which appears as the title of the
prophet’s book in the Hebrew canon, and occurs besides as the name of several
individuals in post-exilic writings (Ezra 8:7; Ezra 8:19; Nehemiah 11:7; 1 Chronicles 3:21). The full and
older form is Yeshaʼyahu (Gr., ησαιας; Lat., Esaias
and Isaias), by which the prophet himself is always called in the text
of his book, and in the historical writings of the Old Testament (2 Kings 19:2, etc.; 2 Chronicles 26:22; 2 Chronicles 32:20; 2 Chronicles 32:32); also other Jews
(1 Chronicles 25:3; 1 Chronicles 25:15; 1 Chronicles 26:25). It means
“Jehovah is salvation,” and is therefore synonymous with the frequent Joshua
or Jeshua (Jesus), and Hosea (cf the Hebrews Elisha, “God
is,” or “God of salvation”; Elishua, Ishi, etc.)
(Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
His original name may have
been Meshullam
(See Prof. Margoliouth’s view, p. 22.)
II. HIS PERSONAL HISTORY.--The exact
limits which we are led to assign to Isaiah’s career depend on the conclusions
we reach with regard to several disputed portions of his book. Generally
speaking, however, we may say that he prophesied from the year in which King
Uzziah died (740 or 736 B.C.) to the year of the sudden deliverance of
Jerusalem from Sennacherib (701), and possibly some years after this. Isaiah
was, therefore, born about 760, was a child when Amos appeared at Bethel (c.
756 or 750), and a youth when Hosea began to prophesy in N. Israel. Micah was
his younger contemporary. The chief political events of his life were the
ascent of the great soldier Tiglath-pileser III to the throne of Assyria in
745, with a new policy of conquest; the league of Aram and N. Israel in 735,
and their invasion of Judah, which moved Ahaz to call Assyria to his help;
Tiglath-pileser’s capture of Damascus, and the captivity of Gilead and Galilee
in 734; the invasion of N. Palestine by Salmanassar IV in 725, with the long
siege of Samaria which fell to his successor Sargon in or about 721; Sargon’s
defeat of Egypt on her border at Raphia in 719; Sargon’s invasion of Palestine
in 711, with the reduction of Ashdod, and his defeat of Merodach-baladan and
capture of Babylon in 709; Sennacherib’s succession in 705, and invasion of
Palestine in 701; his encounter with Egypt at Eltekeh on the borders of Philistia
and Judah; his capture of Ekron and siege of Jerusalem, with the pestilence
that overtook him between Palestine and Egypt; and his retreat from Palestine,
with the consequent relief of Jerusalem--all in 701. About 695 (some say about
690 or even 685) Hezekiah was succeeded by Manasseh. Whether Isaiah lived into
the reign of the latter is very doubtful. We have no prophecies from him later
than Hezekiah’s reign, perhaps none after 701. The Mishna says that he was
slain by Manasseh. The apocryphal work “The Ascension of Isaiah,” which was
written in the beginning of the second Christian century, affirms that Isaiah’s
martyrdom consisted in being sawn asunder, which Justin Martyr repeats. Whether
this be true, and whether it is alluded Hebrews 11:37, we cannot tell. Isaiah is
called the son of Amos Isaiah 1:1; Isaiah 2:1), who must not be confounded,
as he has been by various Christian fathers, with the prophet Amos. A Jewish
tradition makes Isaiah nephew of King Amaziah; and his royal descent has been
inferred from his familiarity with successive monarchs of Judah, and his
general political influence. A stronger reason than these might be drawn from
the presence in his name of Jehovah, which appears to have been confined at the
earlier periods of Israel’s history to proper names of the royal houses. But
even this is not conclusive, and one really knows nothing of either Isaiah’s
forefathers or his upbringing. He was married, his wife is called “the
prophetess” (Isaiah 8:3), and he had two sons to whom
he gave names symbolic of those aspects of the nation’s history which he
enforced in his prophecies: Sheʼar-yashub, “A remnant shall return,” who
was old enough in 736-735 to be taken by his father when he went to face King Isaiah 7:3), and Maher-shalal-hash-baz,
“Spoil-speeds-booty-hastes,” who was born about a year later (Isaiah 8:1-4). The legend that Isaiah was
twice married has been deduced from the false inference that “the young woman
of marriageable age” (Isaiah 7:14) was his wife. By this
expression the prophet probably did not mean a definite individual. The most
certain and significant fact about Isaiah is that he was a citizen, if not a
native, of Jerusalem, and had constant access to the court and presence of the
king. Jerusalem is Isaiah’s immediate and ultimate regard, the centre and
return of all his thoughts, the hinge of the history of his time, the summit of
those brilliant hopes with which he fills the future. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D.
D.)
III. HIS VOCATION
A prophet
The work of a prophet was the vocation of his life, to which every
energy was devoted; even his wife is called the prophetess (Isaiah 8:3); his sons bore prophetic
names, not enigmatic like those given by Hosea to Gomer’s children, but
expressing in plain language two fundamental themes of his doctrine The truths
which he proclaimed he sought to make immediately practical in the circle of
disciples whom he gathered round him (Isaiah 8:16), and through them to prepare
the way for national reformation. And in this work he was aided by personal
relations within the highest circles of the capital. Uriah, the chief priest of
the temple, was his friend, and appears associated with him as witness to a
solemn act by which he attested a weighty prophecy at a time when king and
people had not yet learned to give credence to his word’s (Isaiah 8:2). His own life seems to have
been constantly spent in the capital; but he was not without support in the
provinces. (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
Relation to the unseen and
the seen
Never, perhaps, has there been another prophet like Isaiah, who
stood with his head in the clouds and his feet on the solid earth, with his
heart in the things of eternity and with mouth and hand in the things of time,
with his spirit in the eternal counsel of God and his body in a very definite
moment of history. (Valeton.)
IV. HIS COMMANDING
INFLUENCE
The whole subsequent
history of the Hebrew people bears the impress of Isaiah’s activity
It was through him that the word of prophecy, despised and
rejected when it was spoken by Amos and Hosea, became a practical power not
only in the State, but in the whole life of the nation. We can readily
understand that so great a work could not have been affected by an isolated
mission like that of Amos, or by a man like Hosea, who stood apart from all the
leaders of his nation, and had neither friend nor disciple to espouse his
cause. Isaiah won his commanding position, not by a single stroke, but by
long-sustained and patient effort . . . The countryman Micah, who prophesied in
the low country on the Philistine border near the beginning of Hezekiah’s
reign, was unquestionably influenced by his great contemporary, and, though his
conceptions are shaped with the individual freedom characteristic of the true
prophet, and by no means fit mechanically into the details of Isaiah’s picture
of Jehovah’s approaching dealings, the essence of his teaching went all to
further Isaiah’s aims. Thus Isaiah ultimately became the acknowledged head of a
great religious movement. It is too little to say that in his later years he
was the first man in Judah, practically guiding the helm of the State, and
encouraging Jerusalem to hold out against the Assyrian when all besides had
lost courage. Even to the political historian, Isaiah is the most notable
figure after David in the whole history of Israel. He was the man of a supreme
crisis, and he proved himself worthy by guiding his nation through the crisis
with no other strength than the prophetic word. (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
A comparison with Elisha
His commanding influence on the history of his nation naturally
suggests comparison with Elisha, the author of the revolution of Jehu, and the
soul of the great struggle with Syria. The comparison illustrates the
extraordinary change which little more than a century had wrought in the
character and aims of prophecy. Elisha effected his first object--the downfall
of the house of Ahab--by entering into the sphere of ordinary political
intrigue; Isaiah stood aloof from all political combinations, and his influence
was simply that of his commanding character, and of the imperial word of
Jehovah preached in season and out of season with unwavering constancy. Elisha
in his later years was the inspiring spirit of a heroic conflict, encouraging
his people to fight for freedom, and resist the invader by armed force. Isaiah
well knew that Judah had no martial strength that could avail for a moment
against the power of Assyria. He did not aim at national independence; and,
rising above the dreams of vulgar patriotism, he was content to accept the
inevitable, and mark out for Judah a course of patient submission to the
foreign yoke, in order that the nation might concentrate itself on the task of
internal reformation, till Jehovah Himself should remove the scourge appointed
for His people’s sin. In this conception he seized and united in one practical
aim ideas which had appeared separately in the teaching of his predecessors,
Amos and Hosea . . . In the supreme crisis of the Assyrian wars, Isaiah was not
less truly the bulwark of his nation than Elisha had been during the Syrian
wars. But his heroism was that of patience and faith, and the deliverance came
as he had foretold, not by political wisdom or warlike prowess, but by the
direct intervention of Jehovah. (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
V. THE PERIOD OF HIS MINISTRY.--The period of
Isaiah’s ministry falls into three parts:--
VII. GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS
Foremost book in
prophetical literature
The book that bears [Isaiah’s] name, in the variety, beauty, and
force of its style, and in the sublimity of its contents, takes the foremost
place in the prophetical literature. (Prof. James Robertson, D. D.)
The greatest classic of
Israel
With Isaiah sank into the grave the greatest classic of Israel. (Carl
Heinrich Cornill.)
Isaiah a poet
If poetry is “the eloquence of excited emotion, whose chief end is
to unite beauty with truth,” then there can be no doubt of the justice of
Isaiah’s claim to be classed among poets. (F. Sessions.)
Isaiah a psalmist
It has been said of Burke that he would have been a great poet if
he had not been a great orator. It might be said of Isaiah that, if he had not
been the chief of the prophets of Israel, he would have been the chief of its
psalmists. (E. H. Plumptre, D. D.)
Chaps. 28-38 are unexampled for grandeur, music, and the softness
of idyllic peace. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Literary characteristics
of the acknowledged prophecies of Isaiah
The thing of chief importance is, that we are wholly unable to
name a special peculiarity and favourite manner of style in the case of Isaiah.
He is not the specially lyric, or the specially elegiac, or the specially
rhetorical and monitory prophet, as, e.g., Joel, Hosea, Micah, in whose
writings a special manner is predominant; but every kind of style and every
variation of exposition is at his command to meet the requirements of his
subject; and this it is which in respect of style constitutes his greatness, as
well as generally one of his most prominent excellences. His fundamental
peculiarity is only the exalted majestic repose of style, proceeding from the
full and sure command of his subject. This response by no means requires that
the language should never be more violently agitated, and not blaze up where
the subject demands it; but even the most extreme agitation is bridled by this
repose in the background, and does not pass beyond Its proper limits, and soon
returns with higher self-mastery to it’s regular flow, not again to leave it (Isaiah 2:9-22; Isaiah 3:1; Isaiah 28:11-23; Isaiah 29:9-14). (H. Ewald, D. D.)
Isaiah’s style
It would hardly be possible to characterise the style of Isaiah
better than by the four notes under which Matthew Arnold has summed up the
distinctive qualities of Homer’s genius: Plainness of thought, plainness of
style, nobleness, and rapidity. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
II. PHASES OF ISAIAH’S
MINISTRY
Reformer, statesman,
theologian
In the parts [of the book] which are indubitably his, we can watch
him, and, as it were, walk by his side, through all the varied and eventful
phases of his forty years’ ministry. We can observe him as a reformer,
denouncing social abuses, sparing neither high nor low in his fearless and
incisive censure. We can follow him u a statesman, devoted patriotically to his
country’s interests, and advising her political leaders in times of difficulty
and danger. We can see him as a theologian, emphasising old truths, developing
new ones, bringing fresh ideas to light Which were destined to exercise an
important influence in the generations which followed. Throughout the reigns of
Ahaz and Hezekiah he is the central figure in Jerusalem, and the position which
he there took--his motives, principles, policy, the character of his teaching,
the natureand extent of his influence--are all reflected in the collection of his
prophecies which we possess. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
The evangelical prophet
Isaiah has received from the Christian Church the title of the
evangelical prophet. This was given mainly in the belief that chaps. 40-46,
were also by him. But even in the prophecies which criticism has left to him,
we find the elements of the doctrines of grace. God forgives sin, the most
heinous and defiling (Isaiah 1:18). Though He has passed sentence
of death upon His people (Isaiah 22:14), their penitence procures
for them His pardon and deliverance (Isaiah 36:1-22; Isaiah 37:1-38). Necessarily severe as
His judgment is, cruelly as His providence bears upon sin and folly, His love
and pity towards His own never fail (Isaiah 14:32). He is their well-beloved,
and has constantly cared for them Isaiah 5:1, etc.). He longs to be
gracious, and to have mercy even when His people are mint given to their own
destructive courses; and He waits eagerly for their prayers to Him (Isaiah 30:18, etc.). (Prof. G. A.
Smith, D. D.)
III. THE PLACE OF THE BOOK
AMONGST THE PROPHETIC SCRIPTURES.--The canonicity of
Isaiah was never questioned by the Jewish Church in later times. There is,
however, a curious divergence of tradition with regard to its place amongst the
prophetic Scriptures. The order of the E.V., where the book stands first among
the “Later Prophets” (the strictly prophetic writings)
, is that of all printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, as well as of the Masora
and the best MSS. in the LXX it stands first amongst the Major Prophets, but is
preceded by the so called Minor Prophets. A still more peculiar arrangement is
given by the Talmudic treatise Baba bathra (fol. 14 b), where the
order is: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the Twelve (Minor) Prophets. It has been
thought by some that this arrangement betrays a dim consciousness of the late
authorship of the second part of the book, which is possible, although the
Jewish authorities know nothing of it, and explain the traditional order by
reasoning of a somewhat nebulous kind. (See. Ryle, “Canon of the Old
Testament,” pp. 273 ff., 281 f.) (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
IV. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE
BOOK
The view of Hengstenberg
That the prophecies of Isaiah are arranged chronologically, though
not without justification, fails to satisfy the requirements of historical
interpretation. (Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
The chronological
arrangement in 1-39
Has been disturbed by throwing the prophecies against foreign
nations (Isaiah 15-23) together, as in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, with which an
oracle against Babylon (Isaiah 13:1-22; Isaiah 14:1-32; cf. Isaiah 21:1-10) and a great prophecy of
the general judgment on the world (Isaiah 24-57) have been connected, though
probably due to later prophets. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Suggested explanations of
the uncertain chronology
It is plain that the book, as it stands, is in a somewhat
disordered state. Presumably Isaiah himself issued no collected edition of all
his prophecies, but only put forth from time to time individual oracles or
minor collections, which were gathered together at a later date, and on no plan
which we can follow. Some of the prophecies bear a date, or even have brief
notes of historical explanation; others begin without any such preface, and
their date and occasion can only be inferred from the allusions they contain.
We cannot even tell when or by whom the collection was made. The collection of
all remains of ancient prophecy, digested into the four books named from
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, was not formed till
after the time of Ezra, two hundred and fifty years, at least, after the death
of Isaiah. In one of these four books every known fragment of ancient prophecy
had to take its place, and no one who knows anything of the collection and
transmission of ancient books will think it reasonable to expect that the
writings of each separate prophet were carefully gathered out and arranged
together in such a way as to preclude all ambiguity as to their authorship. If
every prophecy had had a title from the first, the task of the editor would
have been simple; or, if he did not aim at an exact arrangement, we could
easily have rearranged the series for ourselves. But there are some prophecies,
such as those which occupy the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, which have
no title at all and in some other cases there is conclusive evidence that the
titles are not original, because, in point of fact, they are incorrect. In the
absence of precise titles giving names and dates to each separate prophecy, an
editor labouring after the time of Ezra would he quite as much at a less as a
modern critic, if he made it his task to give what is now called a critical
edition of the remains that lay before him. But ancient editors did not feel
the need of an edition digested according to the rules of modern literary
workmanship. Their main object was to get together everything that they could
find, and arrange their material in volumes convenient for private study or use
in the synagogue. In those days one could not plan the number of volumes, the
number of letters in a page, and the size and form of the pages, with the
freedom to which the printing press has accustomed us; the cumbrous and costly
materials of ancient books limited all schemes of editorial disposition. In
ancient books the moot various treatises are often comprised in one volume; the
scribe had a certain number of skins, and he wished to fill them. Thus, even in
the minor collections that fell into the hands of the editor of the prophets, a
prophecy of Isaiah and one from another source might easily occupy the same
roll; copies were not so numerous that it was always possible to tell by
comparison of many MSS. what pieces had always stood together, and what had
only come together by accident; and so, taking all in all, we need not he
surprised that the arrangement is imperfect according to our literary lights,
but will rather expect to find much more serious faults of order than the lack
of a just chronological disposition. If the present Book of Isaiah has itself
been made up from several MSS., a conclusion which the lack of chronological
order renders almost inevitable, we must deem it probable that at the end of
some of these MSS. prophecies not by Isaiah at all may have been written in to
save waste of the costly material; and so, when the several small books came to
he joined together, prophecies by other hands would get to be embedded in the
text of Isaiah, no longer to he distinguished except by internal evidence. That
what thus appears as possible or even probable actually took place is the
common opinion of modern critics (W. Robertson Smith, LL. D.)
V. DIVISION OF THE BOOK--The division
of the Book of Isaiah into two parts at the end of chap. 39, although indicated
by no superscription, is at once suggested by the intervention of the narrative
section, chaps. 36-39, and is fully justified by the character of the last
twenty-seven chapters. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
VI. WAS ISAIAH THE AUTHOR
OF THE ENTIRE BOOK?--
A rule of criticism
The rules of ordinary criticism require us to accept
Isaiah as the author until it be shown that he cannot have been
so. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)
The critical treatment of
Isaiah
The critical treatment of Isaiah began in the following manner.
The commencement was made with the second part. Koppe first of all expressed
doubt regarding the genuineness of chap. 1; then Doderlein expressed his
decided suspicion as to the genuineness of the whole; and Justi, followed by
Eichhorn, Paulus, and Bertholdt, raised the suspicion into confident assurance
of spuriousness. The result thus attained could not possibly remain without
reaction on the first part. Rosenmuller, who was always very dependent upon
predecessors, was the first to deny the Isaiah origin of the prophecy against
Babylon, in chaps. 13-14:23, though this is attested by the heading; Justi and
Paulus undertook to find further reasons for the opinion. Greater advance was
now made. Along with the prophecy against Babylon in chaps. 13-14:23, the
other, in Isaiah 21:1-10, was likewise condemned,
and Rosenmuller could not but be astonished when Gesenius let the former fall,
but left the latter standing. There still remained the prophecy against Tyre,
in chap. 23, which, according as the announced destruction of Tyre was regarded
as accomplished by the Assyrians or the Chaldeans, might either be left to
Isaiah or attributed to a later prophet unknown. Eichhorn, followed by
Rosenmuller, decided that it was spurious; but Gesenius understood the Assyrians
as the destroyers, and as the prediction consequently did not extend beyond the
horizon of Isaiah, he defended its genuineness. Thus was the Babylonian series
of prophecies set aside. The keen eyes of the critics, however, made still
further discoveries. In chaps. 24-27, Eichhorn found plays on words that were
unworthy of Isaiah, and Gesenius an allegorical announcement of the fall of
Babylon: both accordingly condemned these three chapters, and Ewald transposed
them to the time of Cambyses. With chaps. 34, 35, on account of their relation
to the second part, the procedure was shorter. Rosenmuller at once pronounced
them to be “a poem composed during the Babylonian Exile, near its close.” Such
is the history of the origin of the criticism of Isaiah, Its first attempts
were very juvenile. It was Gesenius, but especially Hitzig and Ewald, who first
raised it to the eminence of a science. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Advocates of an exilian
date for chaps. 40-66
Doderlein, in 1775, was the first modern scholar who took up this
position. Before then the traditional view does not seem to have been
questioned, except by the Jewish commentator, Aben Ezra ( 1167 A.D.),
who, in very obscure language, appears to hint that the title of the book does
not guarantee the authorship of every part of it, any more than in the case of
the books of Samuel, of which Samuel himself could only have written the first
twenty-four chapters (his death being recorded in 1 Samuel 25:1). Doderlein has been
followed, among others, by Gesenius, Ewald, Hitzig, Knobel, Umbreit, de Wette,
Bleek, Bunsen, Cheyne, Kuenen, Reuss, Duhm, Oehler, A.B. Davidson, Orelli,
Konig, Driver, G.A. Smith, Kirkpatrick, Delitzsch (in the 4 th edition of his
Commentary, 1890), etc. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Defenders of the Isaianic
authorship
Amongst these the best-known names are those of Hengstenberg,
Havernick, Drechsler, Delitzsch (down to about 1880), Stier, Rutgers, Kay,
Nagelsbach, Douglas, etc. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
General view of the
question of authorship
Part Second (Isaiah 11-66)
is broadly distinguished from Part First both in literary form and in subject
matter. It has the appearance of being one sustained composition, rather than a
number of spoken addresses; and whereas the situation in the First Part was the
Assyrian period in which Isaiah lived, the stand, point here is the time of the
Exile, and the tone is mainly that of consolation in the near prospect of
deliverance,--the name of Cyrus, who gave the edict permitting the return (536
B.C.), being expressly mentioned (Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1). We cannot doubt that the
deportation of the Ten Tribes, and the ominous threatening of a similar fate
for Judah, had accustomed Isaiah to the thought of the Captivity and its
ultimate issues. So that, if these chapters are from his hand, we must assume
that, in spirit, he placed himself in the Exile, and from that, as a prophetic
standpoint, depicted the restoration and the final glory. Moot modem critics,
however, think that these chapters are an anonymous production of the Exile, which
was united to the prophecies of Isaiah. (Prof. J. Robertson, D. D.)
The doubtful portions
The question relates to Isaiah 13:2-22; Isa_14:1-23; Isaiah
24-27; Isaiah 34; Isaiah 35; Isaiah 40-66 (Isaiah 21:1-10 must henceforth be
excluded, on objective, historical grounds, from the list of doubtful
prophecies). (Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
Isaiah of Jerusalem
capable of producing the entire book
Such a man as Isaiah of Jerusalem is universally acknowledged to
have been, with such an unique call as he claims to have received, was at least
capable of seeing in open vision the glories of the coming Messianic kingdom,
as clearly, as he saw the impending ruin of nations laden with iniquity. That
he should have written both portions of the great series of prophecies bearing
his name is prima facie as probable as that John Milton wrote “Paradise
Lost” and “Paradise Regained” long after having given to the politicians of the
Republic his dry polemic “In Defence of the People”; or that “Sartor Resartus,”
pantheistic and expressed in Carlylese, was the offspring of the same genius
that penned the chaste and simple English of the “Life of Sterling”; or that
Dr. Johnson was both the compiler of a dictionary and the author of such a
romance as “Rasselas.” (F. Sessions.)
The language of Isaiah
If Prof. Margoliouth is working on a right line, and if the
results which he anticipates are established, the conclusion, so far as
language is concerned, will be that the whole of Isaiah being written in
classical Hebrew, not in what he calls the Middle-Hebrew of the Prophets of the
Exile, still less in the New Hebrew, which was the classical language of
Jerusalem in the days of Ben-Sira, 200 B.C., belongs to the age of the historic
Isaiah of the days of Hezekiah. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
If a composite work
collected the several parts?
It is becoming more and more certain that the present form,
especially of the prophetic Scriptures, is due to a literary class [the
Sopherim, Scribes or Scripturists], whom principal function was collecting and
supplementing the scattered records of prophetic revelation. (Prof. T. K.
Cheyne, D. D.)
Prof. Cheyne’s idea of the work done by the Sopherim editors is
utterly baseless. The known writings of respired prophets were guarded as by a
wall of fire. And all classes, whatever their practical unfaithfulness, stood
in awe of them then, as they do until this day. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
The later authors Isaian
Isaiah had left his sublime deliverances to fructify in the minds
of his disciples. One disciple, separated by three or four generations from the
master, but living constantly with his prophecies and nourished upon his
spirit, produced at the crisis of Babylon’s fall a prophecy of Israel’s
restoration as immortal as Isaiah’s own. This disciple named not himself.
Whether he intended the work to become joined with Isaiah’s, and to pass among
men with the authority of that great name, we cannot know. But his
contemporaries joined the disciple’s work with the master’s, and by Ezra’s time
the conjunction was established. (Matthew Arnold.)
These later prophets so closely resemble Isaiah in prophetic vision,
that posterity might on that account well identify them with him. They belong,
more or less nearly, to those pupils of his to whom he refers (chap. 8:16). We
know of no other prophet belonging to the kingdom of Judah like Isaiah, who was
surrounded by a band of younger prophets, and, so to speak, formed a school.
Viewed in this light, the Book of Isaiah is the work of his creative spirit and
the band of followers. These later prophets are Isaian,--they are Isaiah’s
disciples; it is his spirit that continues to operate in them, like the spirit
of Elijah in Elisha,--nay, we may say, like the spirit of Jesus in the
apostles; for the words of Isaiah (8:18), “Behold, I and the children whom God
hath given me,” are employed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2:13) as typical of Jesus Christ.
In view of this fact, the whole book rightly bears the name of Isaiah, inasmuch
as he is, directly and indirectly, the author of all these prophetic
discourses; his name is the correct common denominator for this collection of
prophecies, which, with all their diversity, yet form a unity; and the second
half particularly (chaps. 40-66) is the work of a pupil who surpasses the
master, though he owes the master everything. Such may possibly be the ease. It
seems to me even probable, and almost certain, that this may be so; but
indubitably certain it is not, in my opinion, and I shall die without getting
over this hesitancy. For very many difficulties arise. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Why should important
portions of the book be anonymous?
It will always remain a mystery how the name of the great prophet
of the Exile, who stood far nearer to the return from Exile than Ezekiel, has
fallen into oblivion, and it is a question among how ninny prophets the
Deutero-Isaianic passages should be divided. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Orelli
(“Commentary on Isaiah”) thinks there are reasons for ascribing
the book (chaps. 40-66) to an exilian author, but says: “Its incorporation with
the Book of Isaiah remains a riddle.” “One thing remains utterly
unexplained--the anonymity of so glorious a book carefully arranged by the
author himself. It has been said that he could not mention his name from regard
to the Chaldeans; but what prevented him from coming forward after the victory
of Cyprus over Babylon? In a time when Haggai and Zechariah so carefully dated
their prophecies, how could the name be lost of the seer who had unquestionably
done most towards the revival of the theocratic spirit and the home coming of
the faithful ones? The question might be answered if the author appeared
pseudonymously under Isaiah’s name; but no trace of such intention is found
anywhere. Whereas in Isaiah I, the person of the prophet comes out in different
ways, here in Isaiah II, all name, even all heading, is wanting. Criticism
should honestly confess that the special reason of this anonymity remains in
utter obscurity.”
Explanation of the
supposed plural authorship
How came the works of five unknown prophets in Babylon to be
ascribed to Isaiah, or at any rate inserted in the Book of Isaiah?. . .These
chapters were evidently added at a later period, and most probably, as Eichhorn
suggested, with the object of producing a conveniently large volume, nearly
equal in size to those of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. In
taking this course the editor might invoke a precedent already familiar to his
contemporaries, the Twelve Minor Prophets having been combined into a single
“volume” at some unknown period previous to the composition of Ecclesiasticus.
(See Sirach 49:10.) (Prof. T. K.
Cheyne, D. D.)
The explanation regarded
as inadequate
We can easily see a reason why these minor prophets--minor in
bulk--should be engrossed on one roll for convenience sake. But they are still
twelve, not one. More than this. To each of them is carefully prefixed the name
of its author, even when, as in the ease of Obadiah, his prophecy consists of
but a single chapter. Had this “precedent” been followed by the hypothetic
editor who added chaps. 40-66, to chaps. 1-39, he would have inscribed on each
part the name of its author. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Providential guidance in
the form and contents of the book
The boldest advocates of even the most “advanced” critical
hypothesis will be still obliged to confess that it must have been a wise
instinct, to say nothing of Divine inspiration and guidance, that induced the
“compilers” of the Book of Isaiah to present it to the world in its existing
form. The denunciations of sin by the prophets held to be responsible for the
earlier chapters are incomplete and gloomy, with “a darkness that may be felt,”
without the addition of the glorious Evangel proclaimed by those who wrote the
later ones. The overthrow of the kingdom of Satan is not good enough for the
world without the simultaneous establishment of the kingdom of God. A sinner
without hope is a sinner lost,--a nation with its golden age behind it, and
none before it, is a nation God-forsaken and outcast, given over to despair and
reckless of the end. The preaching of the law and its terrors, apart from the
proclamation of the Gospel with its regenerative force, never has been, and
never can be, accordant with the mind of the All-just and All-merciful Creator.
(F. Sessions.)
The Book of Isaiah comes to us from poet-exilic times; on this
point there can be no doubt among educated students. It was brought into its
present form, not by a committee of lovers of ancient literature, but by men
whose great preoccupation was the building up of a righteous, God fearing
people. (Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
VII. CHAPTERS 40-66. -
Critical difficulties no
barrier to an understanding of the prophecy
Many persons who would wish to study the second half of Isaiah are
discouraged from making the attempt by a feeling that an insurmountable barrier
of critical difficulties lies between them and any comprehension of the
prophecy. That is, in great measure, a delusion. In spite of the fact that
large critical questions rise in connection with these prophecies, there is,
perhaps, no part of Scripture to the understanding of which criticism
contributes so little. Like the Book of Job, the piece is almost purely
theological, and occupied with ideas. It is a structure based upon and built
out of the Monotheistic conception, the idea that Jehovah, God of Israel, is
the true and only God. It need not be supposed that the author consciously
started from this principle and logically deduced his other conclusions from
it. This is not the method of Old Testament writers. Nevertheless, to us who
read his work now, the effect is the same as if he had done so; and obviously
the question at what time or in what circumstances such a theological structure
was reared is only of secondary importance; so far as understanding the work
itself is concerned. It may be that many of the details of the structure point
to a definite historical period; to many minds, indeed, the theological character
of the work will be conclusive evidence that it cannot belong to a time
anterior to the Exile; but such methods of reasoning show that the meaning of
the passage may he learned from itself independently of external aids, and that
this meaning may be found to lead to critical conclusions rather than to
receive light from them. (A. B.Davidson, D. D.)
The primary critical
question--what is it?
The great critical question agitated in regard to these
twenty-seven chapters is, whether the author was a contemporary of the Exile,
or was an older prophet, enabled by an extraordinary gift of foresight to
transport himself into its circumstances and realise its conditions. The way in
which such a question has to be put indicates how far scholars of all opinions
are in agreement. It is admitted on all hands that, at whatever time the
prophet actually lived and wrote, the Exile is the stage on which his
personages move, and on which the great drama which he exhibits is transacted.
(A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
A secondary question
Another critical question of less magnitude is, How far the
prophet of these twenty-seven chapters has adopted fragments from other
prophecies, or omer writers, into his own work! It is admitted that the bulk of
the chapters forms a unity, and is from the hand of one author. But certain
passages are thought to betray a different hand; while others, unlike the bulk
of the prophecy, seem written from a point of view anterior to the time of the
Exile. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
A third question
Another question lees strictly critical, but partly exegetical and
of a more internal kind, is the inquiry whether these twenty-seven chapters,
admittedly in the main a unity and the work of one hand, have been composed all
at one gush, or whether there are not distinct divisions in the composition,
points at which the author paused, having rounded off his previous work, and
from which he again started in order to give his conceptions a more perfect
development. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
A three-fold division
The great prophecy of Israel’s restoration falls naturally into
three divisions.
1. Chapters 40-46 deal mainly with the deliverance of the Jews by
Cyrus.
2. Chapters 49-57 with the future of Israel, and the work of
Jehovah’s ideal Servant.
3. Chapters 58-66, with the glories of the restored Zion, and the
difficulties caused by the nation’s sin. (Edward Grubb, M. A.)
The prophecy may be conveniently divided into three nearly equal
sections.
I. Chaps. 40-48.
The Restoration of Israel through the instrumentality of Cyrus.
II. Chaps. 49-55.
The work of Jehovah’s Servant, and the glorification of Zion.
III. Chaps. 56-66.
The future blessedness of the true Israel contrasted with the doom of the
apostates. The third section of the book is less homogeneous in its composition
than the two others. In passing from chap. 55 to chap. 56, the reader is at
once sensible of a change of manner and circumstance, which becomes still more
manifest as he proceeds. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
The contents
It begins with a prophecy putting into the mouth of John the
Baptist the theme of his preaching; it concludes with the prophecy of the
creation of a new heaven and new earth, beyond which even the last page of the
New Testament Apocalypse cannot soar; and in the middle Isaiah 52:13 -chap. 53), the suffering
and exaltation of the Servant of
God are announced as plainly as if the prophet had stood beneath
the Cross and seen the Risen One. Placing himself at the beginning of New
Testament days, he begins like the New Testament Gospels; he
describes further the death and new life of God’s Servant as completed facts
with the clearness of Pauline teaching; he cleaves at last to the higher,
heavenly world, like the Johannine apocalpyse;--and all this without exceeding
the
Old Testament limits; but within these he is evangelist, apostle,
and apocalyptist in one person. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The author’s wide range
The standpoint of the prophet may be the
Exile, but his vision ranges from Abraham to Christ. (Prof. G.
A. Smith, D. D.)
Problem before the writer
two fold
In order to effect some general arrangement and division of Isaiah
40-66, it is necessary to keep in view that the immediate problem which the
prophet had before him was two fold. It was political, and it was spiritual.
There was, first of all, the deliverance of Israel from Babylon, according to
the ancient promises of
Jehovah; to this were attached such questions as Jehovah’s
omnipotence, faithfulness, and grace; the meaning of Cyrus; the condition of
the
Babylonian Empire. But after their political deliverance from
Babylon was assured, there remained the really larger problem of Israel’s
spiritual readiness for the freedom and the destiny to which God was to lead
them, through the opened gates of their prison house: to this were attached
such questions as the original calling and mission of Israel; the mixed and
paradoxical character of the people; their need of a Servant from the Lord,
since they themselves had failed to be His servant; the coming of this Servant,
His methods and results. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
Our Lord’s favourite book
If it can be said of any prophetic book that it was certainly the
favourite book of our Lord, it is this book of the second Isaiah, in which what
God’s Elect One was to be and do was outlined with studied ideality. Here the
ideal stood before Him, the realising of which was His life task. When He read
in this book, the person of the Coming One and the Manifested One met together,
the former found its body and the latter its soul. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The author’s theological
conceptions
He is the first prophet who discerns in the signs of the times a
Divine purpose which is from the first a purpose of grace towards Israel. His predecessors
had all looked on the world power as the instrument of Jehovah’s chastisement
of His people, and had anticipated a happy issue only as a second step, after
the earthly instrument had been broken and thrown away. But the writer of these
chapters has the word “comfort” constantly on his lips; the whole burden of his
message is one of consolation and good tidings; and he views Cyrus as the
chosen agent of Jehovah, not merely in crushing obstacles to the execution of
His purpose, but as lending active support in the establishment of His kingdom.
Like other prophets, too, he sees in the events of the time the immediate
precursors of Jehovah’s everlasting kingdom of righteousness. The final
consummation of God’s purposes with humanity lies in germ in the appearance of
Cyrus; in the writer’s own graphic phrase, it already “sprouts” before men’s
eyes (Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:19). The prophet is aware,
however, that his hearers are not in a mood to be easily cheered. References to
their state of mind are numerous, and nowhere do we find any indication of an
enthusiastic response to the prophet’s joyful proclamation. The prevalent mood
was one of utter weariness and despondency (Isaiah 40:27; Isaiah 49:14). To counteract this
despairing mood, something more was needed than a bare announcement of
deliverance. The first requisite was to revive their consciousness of God, to
impress them with a sense of His infinite power and resources, and the
immutability of His Word; and also to impart to them a new and inspiring view
of their own mission and destiny as a nation.
1. The prophet’s doctrine of God is, accordingly, the fundamental
element of his teaching.
2. Remarkable as is the prophet’s contribution to the Biblical doctrine
of God, it is surpassed in importance and originality by his teaching with
regard to the mission of Israel. The very grandeur and universality of his
conception of Jehovah appears to necessitate a profounder interpretation of
Israel’s place in history than any previous prophet had explicitly taught. This
view of Israel’s position among the nations is expressed in the title “Servant
of Jehovah,” which is applied to the People in passages too numerous to quote.
In most, there is no room for doubt as to the subject which the writer has in
his mind. It is the historic nation of Israel, represented in the present
chiefly by the community of the exiles, but conceived throughout as a moral
individual whose life and consciousness are those of the nation. But there is
another class of passages where this application of the title “Servant of
Jehovah” to the actual Israel does not suffice (Isaiah 42:1-4; Isaiah 49:1-6; Isaiah 50:4-9; Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:1-12). What makes it impossible
to suppose that the Servant means Israel simply is not so much the intense
personification of the ideal (although that is very remarkable, and weighs with
many minds); it is rather the character attributed to the Servant, and the fact
that he is distinguished from Israel by having a work to do on behalf of the
nation.
The author as an evangelist
The author has been called the evangelist of the Old Testament. All
the prophets are evangelists, in the sense that they teach that salvation
belongeth unto the Lord, that by grace are we saved through faith, not of
ourselves,--it is the gift of God. And in this the prophet of these chapters
agrees with his brethren. But while other prophets content themselves with this
general doctrine of grace, moving exclusively in the region of Divine
efficiency and operation, and suggesting no solution or principle of this
operation beyond this, that God pardons sin of His mercy, having by the severe
dispensations of His providence brought the sense of sin home to the people’s
heart, and thus fitted them to receive His mercy, this prophet, in his profound
doctrine of the suffering Servant of the Lord, makes an extraordinary movement
towards a solution, teaching that the sins of the people as a whole were laid
by God upon the innocent Servant, and were atoned by His sufferings, and that
thus the people were redeemed. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
The Messiah and His
kingdom
It is only when chaps. 40-66, are viewed in the light of a great
Messianic development--a series of predictions respecting the Person, the work,
and the kingdom of Christ--that the earnestness, the protracted length, the
fulness, the deep feeling, the holy enthusiasm, the glowing metaphors and
similes, and the rich and varied exhibitions of peace and prosperity, can well
be accounted for. The writer, in taking such a standpoint, uses the Exile and
the return from it as the basis of his comparisons and analogies. It was a rich
and deeply interesting source from which to draw them. Any other solution of
the whole phenomena is, to my mind, at least, meagre and unsatisfactory; on no
other ground can I account for it that Isaiah, so long beforehand, should have
dwelt on an Exile and a return from it which were more than a century distant
from him and his contemporaries. (Moses Stuart.)
“Two Isaiahs”
That the Isaiah who composed chaps. 40-66, in comparison with the
Isaiah of the time of Uzziah till Hezekiah, is one raised far above that time
and at a higher stage of insight into God’s work in the future, is certain,
whether the two Isaiahs are one person or two persons. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Were there two Isaiahs?
The author of chaps. 40-66 is in any case a prophet of the Isaianic
type, but of an Isaianic type peculiarly developed. It is scarcely conceivable,
although not quite inconceivable, that in a final stage of Isaiah’s life
reaching into the days of Manasseh, his style of thought and speech may have
undergone a modification in breadth and depth which carried it beyond itself.
And yet we ask for this ultro citoque the credit of a pure love of
truth, conscious of freedom from apologetic prepossession--yet the distinction
between an Assyrian and a Babylonian Isaiah involves us in all sorts of
difficulties, when we take into view the reciprocal relations of the Isaianic
collection of prophecies with the other Old Testament literature known to us. (F.
Delitzsch, D. D.)
The traditional view of the authorship
The existence of a tradition in the last three centuries B.C. as
to the authorship of any book is (to those acquainted with the habits of
thought of that age)
of but little critical moment;--the Sopherim, or students of Scripture in those
times, were simply anxious for the authority of the Scriptures, not for the
ascertainment of their precise historical, origin.. It was of the utmost
importance to declare that (especially) Isaiah 40-66, was a prophetic work of
the highest order; this was reason sufficient (the Sopherim may have had other
reasons, such as phraseological affinities in 40-66, but this was sufficient)
for ascribing them to the royal prophet Isaiah. When the view had once obtained
currency, it would naturally become a tradition The question of the Isaianic or
non-Isaianic origin of the disputed prophecies (especially 40-66) must be
decided on grounds of exegesis alone. There are indications among critics, bred
in different schools, of a growing perception of this truth. (Prof. T. K.
Cheyne, D. D.)
VIII. REASONS FOR BELIEVING
THAT CHAPS. 40-66 ARE NOT THE WORK OF ISAIAH
The evidence internal
Critical writers generally assign them to an anonymous prophet
living in the latter part of the Babylonian Exile. The grounds on which this
conclusion rests will be found to be all of the nature of what is called
internal evidence, being drawn from indications furnished by the book itself of
the circumstances in which it was composed. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
The true method of
procedure in investigating the evidence
The proper course obviously is, first of all, to gain as clear an
idea as possible of the prophecy itself, and then to consider what light is
thereby thrown on its origin. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Summary of evidence
1. The historical background.
2. The phraseology and style.
3. The character of the theology. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
Spoken appeals, not
“chamber prophecy”
If any prophet in the Old Testament gives evidence that he speaks
in public, and that his desire is to stir and move those whom he addresses, it
is the author of these chapters. What meaning have appeals and protestations,
each as those in Isaiah 40:21; Isaiah 40:26; Isaiah 40:28; Isaiah 43:10; Isaiah 48:8; Isaiah 50:10 f., Isaiah 51:6; Isaiah 51:12 f., Isaiah 58:3 ff., except as spoken in the
very presence of those whose assent the prophet seeks to win! The author’s warm
and impassioned rhetoric, the personal appeals with which his prophecies
abound, show conclusively that he is not writing a literary essay in the
retirement of his chamber, but, like a true prophet of his nation, is exerting
himself in all earnestness to produce an impression by the force of own
personality upon the hearts of those who hear him. The very first words of the
prophecy, “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people,” mark a rhetorical peculiarity of
the author. The emphatic duplication of a word, significant of the passion and
fervour of the speaker, is a characteristic feature of the entire prophecy; in
the prophets generally it is rare; in Isaiah the only examples--and those but
partly parallel--are Isaiah 8:9 b, 21:9, 29:1. (Prof.
S. R. Driver, D. D.)
The historical background
1. The allusions to Cyrus in the prophecy make it perfectly certain
that the time to which it refers lies between 549 and 538. Cyrus is mentioned
as one already well known as a conqueror, and one whose brilliant victories
have sent a thrill of excitement through the world. On the other hand, the
capture of Babylon is still in the future. The standpoint of the prophecy,
therefore, is certainly intermediate between 549 and 538, and most probably
about 540 B.C.
2. In perfect harmony with these references to Cyrus are those to the
circumstances of Israel. The nation is in exile, but on the eve of deliverance.
The oppressing power is Babylon, the imperial city, still called “the mistress
of kingdoms” (Isaiah 47:5)
. It is from Babylon that the exiles are summoned to make good their escape (Isaiah 48:20; cf. Isaiah 52:11, etc.). Meanwhile, Palestine
is a waste and ruined land (Isaiah 49:8; Isaiah 49:19; Isaiah 51:3; Isaiah 52:9). No such calamity as these
accumulated allusions imply had ever befallen Israel except in the half-century
that followed the destruction of the State by the Chaldeans (586 B.C.).
3. One other fact may be noticed as showing how completely the
prophet’s point of view is identified with the age of the Exile. Amongst the
arguments most frequently adduced for the deity of Jehovah and against idolatry
is the appeal to prophecies fulfilled by the appearance of Cyrus Isaiah 41:26; Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:8-10; Isaiah 45:21; Isaiah 46:10). What prophecies are
referred to is a question of some difficulty. Whatever they are, the argument
has no force except as addressed to persons for whom the fulfilment was a
matter of experience. To the men of an earlier age such an appeal could only
appear as confusing and fallacious, being an attempt to illustrate ignotum
per ignotius; hence, we must conclude that the prophecy was directly
intended for the generation of the Exile, and could produce its full effect
only on them. It must be observed that neither the appearance of Cyrus nor the
captivity of Israel is ever predicted in this prophecy; they are everywhere
assumed as facts known to the readers. Predictions do occur of the most
definite kind, but they are of events subsequent to those mentioned and lying
in advance of the standpoint which the prophet occupies. A distinction is often
made by the writer between “former things,” which have already come to pass,
and “new things” or “coming things” (Isaiah 41:22; Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:9; Isaiah 43:18, etc., Isaiah 44:7; Isaiah 14:11; Isaiah 46:9; Isaiah 48:3-8), and in some cases it
seems clear that by “former things” he means the fulfilment of earlier
prophecies concerning Cyrus, while the “new things,” now first announced, are
such events as the triumph of Cyrus, the salvation of Israel, and the conversion
of the world to the worship of Jehovah. Even on the supposition that the
chapters were written by Isaiah, 150 years before any of these occurrences, it
still remains true that he does not formally predict the rise of Cyrus, but
addresses himself to those who have witnessed it and only require to be told
what developments will result from it in the unfolding of Jehovah’s purpose. (Prof.
J. Skinner, D. D.)
The evidence of language and style
When the biblical writings are examined care, fully, individualities
of style appear as one of their most prominent features . . . Now, when the
prophecies in the Book of Isaiah possessing an evident reference to the events
of Isaiah’s lifetime are compared with those relating to the restoration of
Israel from Babylon, and especially with chaps. 40-66, many remarkable
differences, both of phraseology and conception, disclose themselves The terms
and expressions which, in the former series of prophecies Isaiah uses, and uses
repeatedly, are absent in chaps. 40-66; conversely, new terms and expressions
appear in chaps. 40-66, which are without parallel in the first part of the
book. Sometimes the expressions used in one part of the book occur never in the
other; in other cases, they occur once or twice only in one part of the book,
while in the other part they occur frequently, and often with a peculiar nuance
or shade of meaning. No doubt, if the subject matter of the two parts varied
greatly, it would be natural that to a certain extent different terms should be
employed, even though both were by the same author; but, as will be seen, the
variations between the two parts of the Book of Isaiah are not to be explained
by the difference of subject matter; they extend, in many instances, to points,
such as the form and construction of sentences, which stand in no appreciable
relation to the subject treated. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
Theology and thought
Of course, the fundamental principles of the Israelitish religion
are common to both parts of the Book of Isaiah, as they are to the prophets
generally; when we look for features that are distinctive, we at once find that
they are different. Isaiah depicts the majesty of Jehovah; the author of
chaps. 40-66, His infinity. This is a real difference. It would be
difficult to establish from Isaiah--not the greatness merely, but--the infinitude
of the Divine attributes; the author of chaps. 40-66, exhausts the Hebrew
language in the endeavour, if possible, to represent it. Jehovah is the
Creator, the Sustainer of the universe, the Lifegiver, the Author of history,
the First and the Last, the Incomparable One. Where does Isaiah teach such
truths as these? Yet it cannot be maintained that opportunities for such
assertions of Jehovah’s power and Godhead would not have naturally presented
themselves to Isaiah whilst he was engaged in defying the armies of Assyria.
But the truth is, the prophet of the Exile moves in a different region of
thought from Isaiah. The doctrine of the preservation from judgment of a worthy
remnant is characteristic of Isaiah; it appears alike in his first prophecy Isaiah 6:13) and in his last (Isaiah 37:31 f.); in chaps. 40-66,
if it appears once or twice by implication (Isaiah 59:20; Isaiah 65:8 f.), it is not a
distinctive element in the author’s teaching; it is not expressed in Isaiah’s
phraseology, and is not more prominent than it is in the writings of many other
prophets. Where, in Isaiah, is the destiny of Israel, and the purpose of its
call, developed--or even noticed allusively--as it is developed in chaps.
40-66? In these chapters, again, the figure of the Messianic king is absent;
another figure, intimately connected with the view of Israel’s destiny that has
just been mentioned--a figure singularly striking and original in its
conception--holds a corresponding position. To say that the figure of Jehovah’s
ideal Servant is an advance upon that of the Messianic king is not
correct; it starts from a different origin altogether; it is parallel to
it, not a continuation of it. The mission of Israel to the nations is developed
in new directions; the Divine purposes in relation to them are exhibited upon a
wider and more comprehensive scale. The prophet moves along lines of thought
different from those followed by Isaiah; he apprehends and dwells upon
different aspects of truth . . . Thus, even where there is a point of contact
between the two parts of the book, or where the same terms are employed, the
ideas attached to them have, in chaps. 40-66, a wider and fuller import. But
this is exactly what would be expected from a later writer expanding and
developing, in virtue of the fuller measure of inspiration vouchsafed to him,
elements due, perhaps, originally to a predecessor. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D.
D.)
The idea of “righteousness” in the two parts of the book
This difference between the two parts of the book is summed up in
their respective uses of the word “righteousness.” In Isaiah 1-39, or at least
in such of these chapters as refer to Isaiah’s own day, righteousness is man’s
moral and religious duty, in its contents of piety, purity, justice, and social
service. In Isaiah 40-66, righteousness (except in a few cases)
is something which the people expect from God,--their historical vindication by
His restoral and reinstatement of them as His people. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D.
D.)
IX. ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT
OF THE UNITY OF THE AUTHORSHIP
1. The title of the whole book (Isaiah 1:1)
. In the general title of the book, as it has existed from a period centuries
before Christ, the claim is made by the book itself for the authorship of the
later as well as of the earlier chapters. And the anonymity of the part which
contains the later chapters, if not written by Isaiah, is unparalleled in the
prophetic writings of the Old Testament.
2. Historical evidence.
Ecclesiasticus says: “He (Esaias) saw by an excellent spirit what
should come to pass at the last, and he comforted them that mourn in Zion; he
showed what should come to pass forever, and secret things or ever they came.”
According to Prof. Margoliouth, the date of the book cannot be later than 200
B.C.
3. Similarity of religious idea and expression.
Scientific grounds for
believing in the unity of Isaiah
1. The external evidence, so far as it can be traced, is unanimously
in favour of it; and, since the second part of Isaiah has enjoyed exceptional
popularity, it is improbable that the name of the author would have been
forgotten within 200 years of the time when he wrote, and his work merged in
that of a writer of a few scraps of 150 years before.
2. The theory which bisects Isaiah leads, by a logical necessity, to
further and further dissection and so to results which are absurd.
3. The geography of chaps. 40-66, is earlier than the geography of
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, ann a geographical notice in the last chapter of Isaiah
was mistaken by Jeremiah.
4. The idolatrous practices rebuked by the “second Isaiah” are
pre-exilian rites, such as we cannot, without anachronism, attribute to the
Israelites either during or after.the Exile. They can only be explained as
relics of a very primitive fetish-worship connected with particular localities.
5. Other crimes rebuked by the “second Isaiah” are identical with
crimes rebuked by the “first Isaiah,” and are of a sort which imply the
existence of an independent community long established on the soil.
6. The “second Isaiah” gives us some personal details which enable us
to identify him with the prophet of chap. 6, and, what is most important, tells
us the, name borne by the prophet before he took the name Isaiah.
7. The “second Isaiah” employs words only known otherwise to the
“first Isaiah,” of which the meaning was lost by Jeremiah’s time.
8. The “second Isaiah” shows himself otherwise possessed of a
scientific and technical vocabulary which the “first Isaiah” only shares with
him. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
A touchstone
In the case of prophecy we have to deal with a class of literature
unrepresented anywhere but in Israel. Therefore, the only analogies that can
guide us must he got from Hebrew literature. And, happily, we have one that is
amply sufficient to serve as a touchstone for the twenty Isaiah theory. By the
side of the lengthy roll of Isaiah is the less lengthy roll of the Twelve Minor
Prophets. Few of these prophets figure in history; and the judgment of mankind
on their merits places none of them in the first class. They neither thrill as
Isaiah thrills, nor have they influenced mankind as Isaiah has influenced it.
How comes it, then, if it was really the fashion of the Israelites to lump the
oracles of different prophets together, that the works of the whole series are
not ascribed to the first? Why are not the prophecies of Haggai ascribed to
Hosea! Some of the Minor Prophets have produced one chapter or thereabouts; but
the tradition has not forgotten their names. How then comes it that the
brilliant authors of the Isaianic oracles are for the most part utterly
forgotten and neglected! (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The analogy of Ezra and Nehemiah
That two authors of stupendous merit might accidentally get bound
up together and so the works of the second get attributed to the first, is
exceedingly unlikely, but not so unlikely as to be impossible; in the case of
Isaiah, however, not only is the analogy of the Minor Prophets decidedly
against it, but that of Ezra and Nehemiah still more so. Owing to the
similarity of the subject of which these authors treat, they appear in several
canons under the single head of Ezra; but the Jews, though they probably often
bound them up together, never confused them. Still, if the division of Isaiah
between two authors gave satisfaction, and further dissection did not
immediately follow, this solution would not go so far outside the bounds of
experience as to be called uncritical But the fact that this first dissection
leads to innumerable others renders it useless. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M.
A.)
The Cyrus predictions
The mention by [the author] of the name of Isaiah 45:4-6) is declared to be a
tremendous miracle wrought in order that the whole world from East to West
might know that Jehovah was the only God. If the fact was that the prophet of
an unimportant and oppressed community mentioned, in the name of his god, a
conqueror whose fame was filling the world, what miracle was there in this? The
world might as well ring with the fact that Virgil mentioned Augustus. Yet the
“second Isaiah” claims foreknowledge so constantly and so emphatically that he
has left himself no loophole (Isaiah 41:23; Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 43:9-10; Isaiah 44:7-8; Isaiah 48:3; Isaiah 48:5). These are not all the
passages in which this writer insists on the fact that he, as God’s spokesman,
has foretold events with certainty, whereas the representatives of other gods
have been unable to predict. The author therefore speaks like a man of science,
who is aware that the truth can submit itself to tests . . . If we regard
Isaiah 40-66, as the continuation of the first half of Isaiah, the references
to the former events which had come about as the prophet had predicted are
intelligible; the failure of the invasion of Sennacherib, which his lying
annals conceal, is attested by the Greek historian; and we are justified in
ascribing that failure to providential interference. That was, doubtless, the
most striking of Isaiah’s predictions, but in other cases he took the wise
precaution of having his oracles properly attested (Isaiah 8:2; Isaiah 8:16; Isaiah 30:8). Either, then, we are to
suppose that the “second Isaiah” had foretold events successfully, but that his
predictions attracted so little attention as to be lost; or, we are to suppose
that this profession of his is a piece of imposture; or thirdly, there remains
the old and traditional theory that the oracles on the fulfilment of which the
“second Isaiah” bases his claim to credibility are the oracles of the “first
Isaiah.” Rejecting the first proposition as absurd, and the second on the
ground that a claim so forcibly put forward would certainly have been
challenged unless substantiated, we are driven to the third alternative; the
“former events” to which the passages quoted allude must be events predicted by
the “first Isaiah,” and duly realised Either, then, the first Isaiah wrote the
work ascribed to the second, or the second Isaiah” wrote the work ascribed to
the first; for the idea that the “second Isaiah” claimed falsely to have
produced the oracles which were really by the “first Isaiah” may be excluded.
Either the “first Isaiah” was gifted with astounding knowledge of the future,
or a false prophet of the time of Cyrus forged a whole series of oracles, some
of which corresponded well with past history, in order to attach to them an
appendix of oracles referring to events in the then future. This latter
supposition may be refuted when any serious writer maintains it. (Prof. D.
S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The author knew but little of Babylon
Out of the oracles of the “first Isaiah” it seems impossible to
banish certain leading ideas which perpetually recur. “A remnant shall return”
(Isaiah 1:9; Isaiah 10:21; Isaiah 11:11; Isaiah 27:12-13). If, then, the true and
genuine message of Isaiah is that a remnant shall return, and yet that remnant
is not to return from Assyria, whence is it to return? Chiefly from Babylon, as
the historically attested oracle in chap. 39, implies; and what is clear is,
that the “second Isaiah,” like the first, knows little of Babylon but the names
Babel and Chasdees; and that, except the name Cyrus, the second possesses no
detailed foreknowledge Of later events that is not also at the command of the
first. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Geographical considerations
There is some geography in these chapters, and there is also some
in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel. If the “second Isaiah” wrote in the time of Cyrus,
he must have had the works of these two prophets before him, and can scarcely
have been less familiar than Ezekiel with the geography of the countries that
entered into Babylonian politics. But it is the fact that the “second Isaiah”
is ignorant of what was commonplace to Ezekiel The races Meshech and Tubal, to
the Assyrians Muski and Tabali, to the Greeks Moschi and Tibareni, formed a
natural couple, like Holland and Belgium, or Norway and Sweden. Ezekiel mentions
them together five times (Isaiah 27:13; Isaiah 32:26; Isaiah 38:2-3; Isaiah 39:1), and they are named together
in the genealogical tables, which couple Javan (the Oriental name for Greece)
with them. To Ezekiel, therefore, it was well known that Moshech (as Meshech
should be corrected) was a proper name, belonging to a nation or country. But
Isaiah thought it a Hebrew word meaning “drawer,” and he interprets it drawers
of the bow. Thus the Isaiah 66:19 reads: “I will send refugees
of them to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, drawers of the bow, Tubal and Javan.” But
the Hebrew for drawers is Mosh’che. If we compare the lists in Ezekiel
and in the genealogical tables, it will seem clear that “drawers of the bow” is
not an epithet of Lud, but the name of a race, namely, Moshech. Jeremiah had
this passage of Isaiah before him, and stumbled over It curiously. In
enumerating some warlike tribes (Isaiah 46:9) he mentions Cush and Put,
bearers of shields, and “Ludim, bearers treaders of the bow.” This variation is
highly interesting. The verb mashach is so rarely used of “the bow” that
the prophet might well doubt whether Isaiah’s phrase meant “draggers” of the
bow or “pullers” of it; i.e., whether it referred to the carrying of the
bow, or to the employment of it in actual warfare. The alternate suggestions,
curiously enough, remain side by side in the text; but the reason of the
association of the bow with the Lydian lancers is lost. Jeremiah is, however,
one step further than Isaiah in that he has the correct form “Put” for the
incorrect “Pul.” The name Pul is probably due to a reminiscence of the name of
an Assyrian king. We see from this passage in the last chapter of the
second Isaiah” a proof of priority to Jeremiah and Ezekiel. (For further
develepments of the geographical argument, see “Expositor,” sixth series, vol.
1, pp. 254-261.) (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Argument from idolatrous practices
The abominations described in chapter 57 include (verse 5) the
worship of elim under green trees; the only other place in which this
technical term appears is Isaiah 1:29 (“Men shall be ashamed of the
elim which ye have desired”). The ceremonies rebuked in chapter 65 include
sacrifices in gannoth (Isaiah 65:3), and the same technical term
figures in chapter 66 (Isaiah 66:17); the only other place in
which it is found is also Isaiah 1:29 (“Ye shall be ashamed of the gannoth
which ye have chosen”). That gannoth here does not mean ordinary
gardens, but is a technical term, appears from the threat in Isaiah 1:30,where the votaries of these gannoth
are told that they shall become like a garden that has no water. For
this threat evidently derives its suitability from a play on words . . . If the
word gannoth were not technical, the play on the words would be
pointless; and we may observe that the threat of Isaiah 1:30 is matched by the promise of Isaiah 58:11 : “Thou shaltbe like a
well-watered garden,” where (owing to the absence of any other allusion) the
ordinary form of the word for “garden” is used. The worship with which these
terms gannoth, and elim are connected was exceedingly elaborate,
and therefore characteristic of a period. We learn, therefore, that the authors
of Isaiah 1:1-31 and of Isaiah 57:1-21; Isaiah 65:1-25; Isaiah 66:1-24 were contemporaries. That
the first chapter of a great classic could be attributed to anyone but its
right author is too wild a surmise to deserve consideration. We start, then,
with the remarkable fact that the “first Isaiah” uses two technical terms with
which the “second Isaiah” and no other Hebrew author is familiar. And the
“second Isaiah” acts as interpreter to the “first Isaiah,” by enabling us to
locate, and to some extent comprehend, the nature of the cults to which these
technical terms belonged. And from this observation a very easy step leads to
the identification of the two authors. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Ceremonies alluded to in chapters 57, 65, and 66
The source of these practices in Palestine must have been ancient
and undisturbed custom; they had been brought by the Canaanites with them from
Arabia, and the Israelites had learned them from the Canaanites. They were kept
alive by attachment to particular mountains and particular rivers, and in part
were based on the system which connected and even identified the gods with
particular localities. The cultivation of them involved an insult to the temple
(Isaiah 65:11)
, which, therefore, must have been standing at the time of the rebuke. These
passages are in consequence so clearly pre-exilian, that even some of those who
were in favour of the dissecting theory have been unable to place them any
later. While, then, the “first Isaiah” is supposed to be interpolated with
post-exilian matter, the “second Isaiah” is supposed to be interpolated with
pre-exilian matter. Naturally, a theory that involves so much complication can
make little claim to probablility. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Anachronisms involved in the supposition of a “second Isaiah”
The author of Isaiah 65:8-9 takes the same view of the
purpose of the Exile which is taken throughout the book, and, indeed,
throughout the Bible. Attachment to these savage and primitive rites could only
be dissolved by removing the worshippers from the soil on which they were
practised; hence, the Exile was not only a punishment but also a corrective.
From it there returned those whose progenitors had not bowed the knee to Baal,
while those whose interests were far removed from the objects which Israel was
destined to accomplish lost their nationality. Those who came back were cured,
or rather purified, from this particular form of evil. That they were not
faultless we know from the prophets of the Return; but, to attribute to them
fetish worship of a primitive sort is a gross anachronism. One might as well
accuse the English of the nineteenth century of burning heretics or using
ordeals as evidence . . . Next after the idolatrous rites rebuked by the “second
Isaiah,” we may consider some other crimes which he condemns. One of the most
serious impeachments is to be found in Isaiah 59:2-9. The prophet there states
that the sins of his countrymenhave been a bar between them and God; they have
caused God to hide His face, and prevented Him from hearing. This is the same
message as that in Isaiah 1:14-15, with a slight difference
in the tense and the expression. He then proceeds: “for your hands are polluted
with blood.” This also is identical with the accusation in Isaiah 1:15, “your hands are full of
blood”; or, perhaps, “tainted with blood.” Now, this is as grave an accusation
as can be made; to what it precisely refers our slight knowledge of Israelitish
history does not enable us to say: the prophet may have in mind either judicial
murders (such as that in old times of Naboth), or recklessness of human life
among loose livers, or . . . infanticide . . . Whichever of these it
be--supposing it does not refer, as many have thought, to a judicial murder in
the distant future--the two “remonstrances” must clearly belong to the same
period. And that period can only be pre-exilic; the mere notion of such a
remonstrance being addressed to the returned exiles seems to involve
anachronism. Indeed, the prophet’s idea is clearly that the Exile was a sort of
sea in which these offences were to be washed out. The terrible impeachment of
his contemporaries which follows strongly resembles that contained in chaps. 1
and 5. It is illustrated by similes taken from natural history, in which words
otherwise only used by the “first Isaiah” are employed. Verses 9 and 11 contain
a free paraphrase Isaiah 5:7; but the play on the words in
the earlier chapter isintentionally altered. An imitator would probably have
reproduced it. In Isaiah 56:10-12 the impeachment is
confined to the rulers; they are accused of drunkenness, corruption, and
incompetence, just as they are in Isaiah 5:22-23; Isaiah 3:12, and Isaiah 9:15. That the same impeachment
could be made with justice at such different periods as the time of the “first
Isaiah” and the close of the Exile or commencement of the Return seems
unthinkable; but to deny the authenticity of the early chapters of the book is
uncritical How could such a forgery have remained undetected? In chap. 38, the
people are accused of lip service; they ask why their punctilious performance
of ceremonies is unproductive of results, and are told that it is owing to the
fact that their service is not accompanied by a correspending reform in their
conduct. The same is the burden of chap. 1 and of Isaiah 29:13. Surely the remonstrances
addressed to the Jews before and after the great crisis in their national
existence cannot have been so similar. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The “second Isaiah” identical with the prophet of chap. 6.
Let us see whether the second half of Isaiah tells us anything
about the prophet’s person. Ewald seems to have rightly interpreted Isaiah 8:18 : “Verily, Iand the children
which the Lord has given me are for signs and tokens in Israel,” of the names
Isaiah, Shear-yashub, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Clearly, the names, “A remnant
shall return,” and “Hasten the spoil, hurry the plunder,” were too full of
meaning to escape notice; therefore the prophet’s own name, “The salvation of
the Lord,” must also have been of notable significance; and, indeed, that
theme, “the salvation of the Lord,” pervades the whole book. But it follows
that the prophet must have taken this name himself. Thus only would its
significance be forced on the minds of his contemporaries . . . What, then, was
his original name? This appears to be given in Isaiah 42:18-21. The way to translate
these verses seems to me the following: “Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, so
as to see. Who was blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger whom I send?
Who was blind as Meshullam, and blind as the servant of the Lord! Seeing much
without noticing; open-eared without hearing. The Lord was pleased of His grace
to make a great and notable example.” The name Meshullam is by no means
uncommon it belongs to a root which gives a great number of proper names both
in Hebrew and Arabic; they all mean “safe and sound,” and are names of good
omen . . . The “great and notable example,” then, lay in the fact that he,
Meshullam, had been enabled to see; why, then, should not others? Let us
compare this with the most autobiographical chapter in Isaiah--chap. 6. In the
first place, the vision there justifies the description of himself in the above
passage as “My messenger whom I send” Isaiah 6:8-9). He was told to go and say
to the people, “Hear, but understand not; see, and know not”--the very
condition wherein, according to Isaiah 42:20, the messenger himself had
been. Then, we see that in Isaiah 42:5 he identifies his condition
with that of his countrymen until the live coal had touched his lips. The
immediate result of that was to be the removal of sin; but assuredly the image
is meant to suggest “the scholar’s tongue,” which in Isaiah 50:4, he says, was given him by
the Lord, to utter the words which (as Ben-Sira says) blaze like a fire, and,
indeed, however inadequately they are translated, thrill the reader and hearer
more, probably, than any other form of utterance. Hence it would seem that the
verses Isaiah 13:18-21 give us a very needful
supplement to the biographical notice of chap.6. But is the supposition that
Meshullam is a proper name a wild conjecture, or an observation that is likely
sooner or later to be generally accepted? I trust the latter, because modem
scholars see the necessity of correcting the text, owing to the fact that,
taken as a substantive, the word gives no satisfactory meaning. It is only in
rare cases that [the correction of the text] is dictated by the canons of
science. On the other hand, I can imagine no reason, grammatical or other,
which stands in the way of the interpretation given above. And seeing how
deeply this prophet is imbued with the feeling that a new condition calls for a
new name (cf. Isaiah 62:2), the conjecture of Ewald,
that the name Isaiah was meant to mark the prophet’s new condition, seems
highly probable . . . We learn, then, from chap. 6 that the mission undertaken
by the prophet was without hope of brilliant success; it was only when
Jerusalem was reduced to a ruin that it was to begin to be heard. In Isaiah 50:6-10 we hear the prophet
complain of its ineffectual character; the reception of his message was lust
what had been promised: it was greeted with contempt and ridicule, with blows
and buffets. The consolation that he had was the same as that which nerves all
those who are defending the cause of science against tremendous odds, namely,
that the truth is permanent, and must slowly approve itself, whereas the
opposite is transitory. Naturally, it might be said that this was too often the
fate of those who interpreted the purposes or work of God aright for the first
time to serve for scientific identification; but then, it must be observed that
we have no other justification save this passage for the oracle of chap. 6. The
valuable notice Isaiah 42:19 of the author’s former name,
Meshullam, seems intelligible only on the hypothesis stated above. Had it not
been known that the author of that chapter bore the name Isaiah, the chapter
(and the collection in which it occurred) would be, of course, attributed to
Meshullam. Anyone who has ever catalogued MSS. is aware that the first
expedient adopted for finding out the name of an author is to search through
his book for some proper name that may, from the context, be his. To those with
whom classical Hebrew was a living language, a proper name would be as easily
distinguishable as to us in reading English; in such a sentence as “who is so
pathetic as gray,” the absence of the capital would confuse no intelligent
reader; and hence, had not the readers of these oracles from the time they were
first issued in a roll been convinced that the author’s name was Isaiah, it would
never have occurred to them to render Meshullam as “perfect,” or “requited,” or
“devoted.” But since the fact of the prophet having changed his name was only
recorded in the allusion of Isaiah 8:18, his former name was
forgotten. That “who so blind as Meshullam?” meant “who so blind as Isaiah
before his mission?” was not perceived by those who only knew of Isaiah. Even
in this country where a change of name is usually preceded by the most
important work in a man’s life, the name by which a peer was known before his
elevation is constantly forgotten by the majority of the public. But where the
change is preceded by no important work, the original name is likely to be lost
altogether. How many educated persons could say offhand what was the original
name of Voltaire or Neander or Lagarde? (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Argument from words common to the “first” and “second Isaiah”
A scientific argument can be drawn from the use of words only when
they can be dated before or after. By the latter method of dating I mean the
case in which we can show that by a certain date the sense of a word had been
entirely forgotten in a community; for then, whoever is found using it in the
old sense will almost certainly he earlier than that data The discovery of this
scientific principle is the service rendered the world by the Greek critic
Aristarchus; let us see whether it will help us to determine the date of the
“second Isaiah.”
There is a word nashath, used by Isaiah once in the first
half of the book Isaiah 19:5), and once in the second (Isaiah 41:17). In both those passages it
clearly means “to be dry”; “the waters shall dry up from the Nile,” and “their
tongue is dry with thirst.” It is well to know me etymology of a word before we
base any argument upon it; and here the surest source of Hebrew etymology,
classical Arabic, does not fail us. The word nashifa has, from time
immemorial, been used by the Arabs precisely as Isaiah uses this . . . What,
therefore, appears is that the authors of both parts of Isaiah are acquainted
with a verb nashath or nasath, meaning “to be dry,” and in all
probability identical with a very familiar Arabic verb meaning the same Now let
us examine two passages of Jeremiah. The first Jeremiah 51:30. The champions of Babylon
nave ceased to fight; they sit in their fortresses; their manhood is nashath;
they have become women” (nashim). The second clause is
here evidently in explanation of the first; it tells us what nashath
means, namely, “to become effeminate.” The author regards it as a denominative
from nashim, “women,” probably through an abstract nashuth,
“womanhood.” Hence, between the time when Isaiah II wrote, and the time of the
composition of Jeremiah 51:30, the meaning of the word nashath
must have been forgotten. Therefore, the author of Isaiah 41:1-29 is earlier than the author
of Jeremiah 51:1-64 by some generations.
That this observation is correct is shown by Jeremiah 18:14 : “Can the cool flowing water
be destroyed” (nathash)? That men do not speak of water being
destroyed or plucked up is evident; the author must mean, “Can they dry up?”
The phrase, then, is modelled on Isaiah 19:5; but the later prophet, being
no longer familiar with the old verb nashath, “to dry up,” substitutes
by conjecture the more familiar nathash. By the time 51:30 is written he
has remembered that Isaiah used not nathash, but nashath, in
connection with waters drying; hence he gives it a special application, adding
an etymological explanation. The process is very similar to that which was
traced in reference to “the Lydians, drawers of the bow.” Just as Isaiah
utilised the lost Book of Wisdom, so Jeremiah utilises the language of the
existing classic, Isaiah. In the case of obsolete phrases, he makes guesses,
which, as philology is not the purpose of Holy Scripture, by the fact that they
are unfortunate, give us valuable clues of date. Isaiah 10:18 there occurs a difficult
phrase, rendered in ourAuthorised Version, “as when a standard bearer
fainteth.” The meaning of this expression is probably lost; but it must have
been known to the author Isaiah 59:19, “the Spirit of the Lord
shall lift up a standard against him.” For the same word (noses) is here
used, but in an entirely different context. There can, therefore, be no
question of imitation; the prophet must have known the meaning of the word,
though we do not know it; and the argument is unaffected by the question of the
meaning which should be assigned it. These words would appear to be of real
importance, because the argument drawn from them is of a sort that science
recognises. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The technical vocabulary of Isaiah 11:1-16 shared by Isaiah 1:1-31
Agriculture and natural history seem clearly to interest the
author (or authors) of these oracles very much; and allusions to these subjects
lead to the employment of a considerable number of technicalities. Whether a
member of the exiled community would have had the opportunity of becoming so
familiar with these subjects seems doubtful; but documents illustrating the
life of the exiles may some day be discovered, which will enable us to speak
positively on this matter. There are some facts about the use of these terms in
the two parts of the book which seem to me scarcely explicable on the
hypothesis of divided authorship. In the parable of the Vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-6) there occurs a word for “to
hoe” (ʽadar, Isaiah 1:6), and also a word for “to
stone,” meaning “to remove stones” (sikkel, Isaiah 1:2). Both these verbs have other
meanings, which are more familiar; but in the case of the vineyard there could
be no mistaking their import, whence they are used without any explanation.
However, in Isaiah 7:25 the prophet has occasion to
use the word for “to hoe” in a less technical context, so this time he adds
“with the hoe,” that there may be no error. The author of Isaiah 62:10 has occasion to use the word
for “to stone” of a road,where it would be ambiguous; for “to stone a road”
might mean to put stones on it or to remove them from it. Hence he adds “from
stones,” that there may be no error. Now, either there never was an Isaiah, or
the oracles of chaps. 5 and 7 are Isaianic. Therefore chap. 62 is also
Isaianic. For it must be remembered that these words, in their technical sense,
only occur in these two places. The theory that another author felt the same
scruple about the second as Isaiah had felt about the first scarcely commends
itself; a later imitator would have thought Isaiah’s authority sufficient to
justify him in using “to stone” for “to remove stones.” In Isaiah 34:15, and twice in Isaiah 59:5, a verb (meaning literally
“to split”) is used of hatching serpents’ eggs; it does not occur elsewhere in
this sense. In Isaiah 34:15 a special verb is used for
“to be delivered of,” “produce,”which only occurs in Isaiah 66:7 besides. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 17:11) is apparently acquainted
with part of this scientific vocabulary, but not with the word for “produce.”
Now, the author of Isaiah 34:1-17, seems on other grounds
identical with the “second Isaiah”; the reference to Edom and Bozrah in verse 6
cannot with any probability be separated from that in Isaiah 63:1,and the address to the
“nations and peoples” in Isaiah 34:1 is evidently in the style of
the author of Isaiah 12:1. The threat in Isaiah 34:3 closely resembles that with
which the Book of Isaiah closes. Chap. 35 also cannot, with any probability, be
separated from chaps. 40-66; both the thought and the language are closely akin
to, and in part identical with, those of the “second Isaiah.” On the other
hand, it is by no means easy to separate Isaiah 35:1-10 from what precedes; Isaiah 35:5 takes us back to Isaiah 29:18; Isaiah 35:4 to Isaiah 32:4. Now, this fact hits the
splitting theory veryhard. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
Is the standpoint Babylonian?
The Babylonian standpoint must at least be doubtful, when so great
and free a critic as Ewald not only failed to see it, but, while maintaining
the exilic date of these chapters, found an entirely different standpoint or
historic background in them--an Egyptian. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Professor Cheyne not only admits that there is “a paucity of
allusions in these chapters to the special circumstances of Babylon,” but
admits likewise that there is not a little of Palestinian colouring in them.
“Some passages,” he says, “of ‘second Isaiah’ are in variable degrees really
favourable to the theory of a Palestinian origin. Thus in Isaiah 57:6 thereferee nee to torrent
beds is altogether inapplicable to the alluvial plains of Babylonia; and
equally so is that to subterranean holes in Isaiah 13:22. And though, no doubt,
Babylonia was more wooded in ancient times than it is at present, it is certain
that the trees mentioned in Isaiah 41:19 were not, for the most part,
natives of that country; while the date palm, the commonest of all the
Babylonian trees, is not once referred to.” He admits, at the same time, that
there are allusions in the later chapters “which unmistakably point away from
the period of the Exile.” “They are most numerous,” he says, “and striking in
chaps. 56; 57; 65; 66. Let us read them by themselves, and I think we shall
hardly doubt that the descriptions refer to some period or periods other than
the Exile.” Isaiah, he further admits, might have learned in Palestine almost
as much about Babylon as is mentioned in the second portion of the book, either
from travelling merchants or from the ambassadors of Merodach Baladan. “The
only possible allusion of this kind (if we may press the letter of the
prophecy) distinctly in favour of an exilic date is that of Isaiah 46:1 tothe worship of Bel-Merodach
Nebo, which specially characterised the later Babylonian empire. This paucity
of Babylonian references would be less surprising (for prophets and apostles
were not curious observers) were it not for the very specific allusions to
Palestinian circumstances in some of the later chapters”: on which the remark
is obvious, that with “very specific allusions to Palestinian circumstances,”
and only “one possible allusion” to what is distinctly Babylonian, we
may assume that, so far as local environment is indicated, the standpoint of
the author is not Babylonian, but Palestinian. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Rev. G.A. Smith says: “While the bulk of chaps. 11-66 were
composed in Babylonia during the Exile of the Jews, there are considerable
portions which date from before the Exile and betray a Palestinian origin; and
one or two smaller pieces that seem--rather less evidently, however--to take
for granted the return after the Exile.” As to chaps. 11-48, Mr. Smith holds
very positively that they are to be dated in Babylonia, and that they form a
unity, being the work of one author. As to chaps. 49 to 66, the evidence he
regards as less conclusive. In chaps. 54; 55, he thinks we are still in exile.
“A number of short prophecies now follow till the end of chap. 59 is reached.”
These, he thinks, make it extremely difficult to believe in the original unity
of “second Isaiah.” Some of them are undoubtedly of earlier date. Such is Isaiah 56:9-12, which regards the Exile
as still to come; while others of these short prophecies are, he says, in the
opinion of some critics, post-exilic. Chap. 59, Mr. Smith says, is perhaps the
most difficult portion of all; chaps. 61 and 62 he holds to be certainly
exilic; Isaiah 63:7 to Isaiah 64:1-12 implies a ruined temple (Isaiah 64:11), but bears no traces of the
writer being in exile; chap. 65 has been assigned by some to the same date;
chap. 66 betrays more evidence of being written after the Return. Mr. Smith
considers himself “justified in coming to the provisional conclusion that
‘second Isaiah’ is not a unity, in so far as it consists of a number of pieces
by different men whom God raised up at various times before, during, and after
the Exile, to comfort and exhort amid the shifting circumstances and tempers of
the people; but that it is a unity in so far as these pieces have been gathered
together by an editor, very soon after the return from exile, in an order as
regular both in point of time and subject as the somewhat mixed material would
permit.” So that “it is rather an editorial than an original unity which is
apparent.” I submit that in the face of these differences as to what chapters
in “second Isaiah” do or do not manifest a Babylonian standpoint, it is
impossible to rely on the assumption of such a standpoint as an argument
against the authorship of the historic Isaiah. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
The value of the arguments from language and style
The assumption that we can locate disjointed fragments of Hebrew
is to be summarily rejected. (Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A.)
The diction of the second part of Isaiah is tolerably pure and
free from Chaldaisms. (Samuel Davidson, D. D.)
There cannot be a more false canon of criticism than that a man
who has written one work will, when writing a second, introduce no ideas and
make use of no modes of expression that are not to be found in the first. On
the contrary, a writer may be pronounced very barren indeed if he exhausts all
his ideas and expends all his vocabulary on one production. (G. Salmon, D.
D.)
My own opinion is that the peculiar expressions of the latter prophecies
are, on the whole, not such as to necessitate a different linguistic stage from
the historical Isaiah; and that, consequently, the decision of the critical
question will mainly depend on other than purely linguistic considerations. (Prof.
T. K. Cheyne, D. D.)
On the authority of “great Hebraists,” with scarcely an exception,
there is no linguistic necessity for the theory of a dual or plural authorship.
(J. Kennedy, D. D.)
A supplementary
consideration
It is admitted that the man who wrote the second part of the Book
of Isaiah, or, at least, the greater part of it, was himself intellectually and
morally as great as, or greater than, the historic Isaiah. Our ideal of the
prophet Isaiah, on which so much eloquence has been expended, is the ideal rather
of the man who wrote the second part than of the man who wrote the first. It is
in chaps. 40 to 48, especially that we find the origin of our conception of
Isaiah as the greatest of the Hebrew poets. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
The prophecies respecting Cyrus
Josephus ascribes the decree of Cyrus Ezra 1:1-2)
to his having read the Book of Isaiah, or portions of it. Quoting part of the
passage in which Cyrus is named, Josephus says: “This was foretold by Isaiah
140 years before the temple was destroyed. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this,
and admired the Divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to
fulfil what was so written; so he called for the most eminent Jews that were in
Babylon, and said to them, that he gave them leave to go back to their own
country, and to rebuild their city Jerusalem and the temple of God” (Antiq. 11.1).
From which we gather, at the least, that Josephus had not discovered the grand
secret of the Higher Criticism, that the prophecy concerning Cyrus was only two
years old when he read it, if ever he did read it at all. (J. Kennedy, D.
D.)
The knowledge of the name by the historic Isaiah would, according
to Cheyne, “involve the necessity of assuming a suspension of the laws of
psychology.” But a priori objections of this sort must give way before
the evidence of facts. What, after all, is meant by a suspension of the laws of
psychology? In this ease it can only mean that the discovery of the name of Cyrus
was something above the operation of the natural laws of the human mind. And
this is only saying, in other words, that it was supernatural;--the very thing
we maintain concerning this and every other bona fide prediction.
Suppose we had the prophecy in all respects as it is, but without the name.
Instead of Cyrus, let it be only “a king” that shall arise to “perform
Jehovah’s pleasure.” Would all else in the prophecy be discoverable by the
human mind! Is there nothing supernatural in it but the name? Or, will it be
said that the other contents of the prophecy, though not discoverable by any
natural operation of the human mind, would be intelligible when made known?
Then we ask, What is there that is unintelligible in the addition of the name?
The prophet must have known that it was not of himself that he foresaw the
deliverance of his nation by the Persian monarch. The authoritative preface,
“Thus saith the Lord,” intimates the source of his knowledge. But how the Lord
said it to him he does not say,--probably could not say. And the revealing the
name of the deliverer to his mind would scarcely be a greater wonder to him
than the revealing of the deliverance itself, and of the circumstances in which
it should take place. The mention of the name of Cyrus is not without a
parallel in an older record (1 Kings 13:2). To suppose that
“Josiah by name” is an interpolation or gloss that has slipped into the text
from the record of its accomplishment (2 Kings 23:16; 2 Kings 23:16) is an arbitrary
assumption. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Did Isaiah form prophetic school?
As to this suggestion of a band of younger prophets who formed the
school of Isaiah, it is based on a very uncertain foundation, the words in Isaiah 8:16, “Bind up thetestimony,” etc.
Commentators differ in their interpretation of this text, some holding that the
words are the Lord’s, some that they are Isaiah’s. Even if we accept them as
Isaiah’s, there is no evidence that Isaiah was at the head of a school of the
prophets, such as we have in the case of Samuel, and in the story of Elijah and
Elisha. And if there were, it would be impossible to connect that school with
the origination of a book which was written during the Exile. We should have to
suppose that the school of Isaiah survived through the idolatrous and
disastrous reigns that followed, going into exile with other captives, and
still existing during the Exile period, and having a succession of heads or
masters all that time. Such a continuous existence would be a very remarkable
phenomenon. And very remarkable, too, is the absence of all historic reference
to it. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Did Isaiah lean his
prophecies in a fixed form?
In the Book of Jeremiah we are told that all the words of the
prophet were written in a roll, and that when the king cut the roll in pieces
the word of the Lord came to the prophet commanding him to have his prophecies
rewritten on a new roll or in a new book. And it was done (Isaiah 36:4; Isaiah 36:23; Isaiah 36:28; Isaiah 36:32). But as we find no
intimation of this sort in Isaiah, we are asked to suppose that his prophecies
were not left by him in a fixed form. If this be a correct inference, it
follows that no prophet but Jeremiah left his writings in a fixed form, i.e.,
on a roll or in a book! For in none of them are we told that he did. The true
inference from the incident in Jeremiah is, that all the prophets were
instructed of the Lord carefully to write in a book such communications as the
Divine Inspirer willed to be preserved for permanent use. It is not credible--
X. THE HISTORICAL
CHAPTERS, 36-39.--An historical section, differing (except by the addition of the
Song of Hezekiah, 38:9-20) only verbally 2 Kings 18:13; 2 Kings 18:17-37; 2 Kings 20:1-19, and narrating certain
important events in which Isaiah was concerned. The original place of these
narratives was not the Book of Isaiah, but the Book of Kings, whence they were
excerpted (with slight abridgments) by the compiler of the Book of Isaiah (as Jeremiah 52:1-34 was excerpted from 2 Kings 24:18 ff by the compiler of
the Book of Jeremiah), on account, no doubt, of the particulars contained in
them respecting Isaiah’s prophetical work, and the fulfilment of some of his
most remarkable prophecies, the Song of Hezekiah being added by him from an
independent source. (With Isaiah 37:36 f.compare not only Isaiah 37:7; Isaiah 37:22; Isaiah 37:29, but also Isaiah 10:33 f., Isaiah 14:26, Isaiah 17:13 f., Isaiah 18:5 f., Isaiah 29:6 f., Isaiah 30:27 ff., Isaiah 31:8 f., Isaiah 33:3; Isaiah 33:10-12). (Prof. S. R. Driver,
D. D.)
III. THE DEVOTIONAL
READING OF ISAIAH
First recall some of the general rules given by Thomas a Kempis
(Book 1, chap. 5). Speaking as one who accepts good many of the results of
modern criticism as most probably true, I should say that the Book of Isaiah
remains as helpful to devotion as it ever was. We are now concerned with the
contents of the book. These lay before our Lord in the form in which we read
them today; from these St. Philip preached Christ to the Ethiopian eunuch; in
these St. Paul found some of his most fruitful spiritual thoughts. In our
devotional reading we will put aside such questions as whether many authors or
one wrote the great prophetical book. I do not say that every passage of Isaiah
is suitable for devotional use, and when a verse is really obscure in meaning I
do not think it is right to give it a fanciful explanation, even if by so doing
a devotional use may be made of the verse. Such a proceeding is not quite
honest, and, be it remembered, devotion is nothing if it be not honest. Even a
cursory reading of Isaiah will bring to our knowledge many passages which are,
in the truest sense, helps to devotion. Let me take three such passages as
examples--
1. The first (Isaiah 11:1-9) may be called a vision of
the kingdom of God. Here we have an ideal picture of the future; how will such
a picture help us? By guiding and quickening our devotion. Devotion (in the
fullest sense of the word) means giving ourselves to God for one of God’s great
ends. Our own devotion, like St. Paul’s (Acts 22:10), needs to catch some glimpse
of God’s great ends, in order that it may not spend itself in aimless feeling.
We have been taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come”; but it is of no avail to use
that petition if we have no notion of that for which we pray. Here Isaiah’s
vision comes in to help us.
2. I would call the second passage (Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:1-12) a study of Christ’s
Passion. No one can gainsay the fact that we find here, in a passage written
centuries before Christ’s coming, the very principles laid down which governed
Christ’s atoning work on earth. The passage teaches us--
3. The third passage (Isaiah 63:7-19; Isaiah 64:1-12) may be called a model
prayer for one in trouble. It contains the pleading of one (the Israelite
nation is meant) who has had a rich experience of God’s goodness in the past,
and is now face to face with crushing affliction. It is a pattern of devotion
to us for four reasons--
The Sermons by Rev. C.H. Spurgeon in this volume are used by
permission of Messrs. Passmore & Alabaster..
──《The Biblical Illustrator》