Book of Isaiah

“ All we desire is to let English readers know how very lucid, impressive, and, indeed, how vivid a study of Isaiah is within their reach—the fault of the book, if it has a fault, being rather that it finds too many points of connection between Isaiah and our modern world, than that it finds too few. ”

“ When God presents Himself in the Old Testament as His people's Saviour, it is not always as Isaiah mostly saw Him, in awful power and majesty—a King high and lifted up, or as coming from far, burning and thick-rising smoke, and overflowing streams ”

“ The Israel, which was delivered into captivity at the word of Jeremiah, was a people at once more hardened and more exhausted than the Israel, which, in spite of its sin, Isaiah's efforts had succeeded in preserving upon its own land. A century had come and gone of further grace and opportunity, but the grace had been resisted, the opportunity abused, and the people stood more guilty and more wilful than ever before God. Even clearer, however, than the deserts of the people was the need of their religion. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII ISAIAH AND AHAZ 2 Kings xvi
"Expediency is man's wisdom; doing right is God's."
George Meredith.
Isaiah was one of those men whom God provides for the need of kingdoms. He was not only a prophet, but a statesman, a reformer, a poet, a man of invincible faith and unequalled insight. If Ahaz had accepted his counsels and followed his moral guidance, the whole history of Judah might have been different. ”

“ The visionary becomes a realist, the enthusiast a cynic, the seer of the glorious city of God the prophet of God's judgement. The recoil is absolute in style, temper and thought, down to the very figures of speech which he uses. Before, Isaiah had seen, as it were, a lifting process at work, Jerusalem in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills. Now he beholds nothing but depression. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and haughty, upon all that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. ”

“ Isaiah simply answers their self-congratulation with the utterance of a new Woe, and it is in this that the first of the three extraordinary descriptions of God is placed. Woe unto them that go down to Egypt for help; upon horses do they stay, and trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong: but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, and Jehovah they do not seek. Yet He also is wise. You have been clever and successful, but have you forgotten that God also is wise, that He too has His policy, and acts reasonably and consistently? ”

“ And there are many things which have been spoken by Isaiah which may be likened unto you, because ye are of the house of Israel.
6:6 And now these are the words: Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.
6:7 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their faces towards the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord ”

“ In some chapters of the Book of Isaiah, which, from our knowledge of the circumstances of his times, we know must have been published while he was alive, we learn that the Jewish people has never left its land, nor lost its independence under Jehovah's anointed, and that the inviolateness of Zion and the retreat of the Assyrian invaders of Judah, without effecting the captivity of the Jews, are absolutely essential to the endurance of God's kingdom on earth. ”

“ Isaiah's faith and his patriotism run free with the force of twin-tides in one channel, and we hear the fulness of their roar as they leap together upon the enemies of God and the fatherland. Woe to thee, thou spoiler, and thou wast not spoiled, thou treacherous dealer, and they did not deal treacherously with thee! Whenever thou ceasest to spoil, thou shall be spoiled; and whenever thou hast made an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee. ”

“ Book 23 Isaiah 001:001 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 001:002 Hear, heavens, and listen, earth; for Yahweh has spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. 001:003 The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's crib; but Israel doesn't know, my people don't consider. 001:004 Ah sinful nation, a people loaded with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken Yahweh. ”

“ Isaiah knew his man, and prepared a pretty dilemma for him. By offering him whatever sign he chose to ask, Isaiah knew that the king would be committed before his own honour and the public conscience to refrain from calling in the Assyrians, and so Judah would be saved; or if the king refused the sign, the refusal would unmask him. Ahaz refused, and at once Isaiah denounced him and all his house. They were mere shufflers, playing fast and loose with God as well as men. Hear ye now, O house of David. Is it a small thing for you to weary men, that ye must weary my God also? You have evaded God ”

“ The perfect balance of form and idea, the reticence which suggests without exhausting the significance of what is seen, the fine artistic sense which makes every touch in the picture contribute to the rendering of the emotion which fills the prophet's soul, combine to make the sixth chapter of Isaiah one of the most sublime passages in literature. No sympathetic reader can fail to catch the impression which the passage is intended to convey of the awful majesty of the God of Israel, and the effect produced on a frail and sinful mortal ushered into that holy Presence. ”

“ To him political prudence was part of religion. The Lord of hosts is for a spirit of judgement to him that sitteth in judgement, and for strength to them that turn back the battle to the gate. Knowledge of men, experience of nations, the mental strength which never forgets history, and is quick to mark new movements as they rise, Isaiah would have called the direct inspiration of God. And it was certainly these qualities in this Hebrew, which provided him with the materials for his prediction of the siege of Jerusalem. ”

“ Needing an earthly counsellor, he sent Eliakim and Shebna and the elders of the priests to Isaiah. They were to tell him the outcome of this day of trouble, rebuke, and contumely; and since the Rabshakeh had insulted and despised Jehovah, they were to urge the prophet to make his appeal to Him, and to pray for the remnant which the Assyrians had left. [577]
The answer of Isaiah was a dauntless defiance. If others were in despair, he was not in the least dismayed. "Be not afraid"—such was his message—"of the mere words with which the boastful boys of the King of Assyria have blasphemed Me. ”

“ Having thus made vivid the presence of their Lord to the purged eyes of His people, patient, powerful in order, wise in counsel, persistent in grace, and, last of all, very tender, Isaiah concludes with a cry to the people to turn to this Lord, from whom they have so deeply revolted. Let them cast away their idols, and there shall be no fear of the result of the Assyrian invasion. The Assyrian shall fall, not by the sword of man, but the immediate stroke of God. ”

“ To-day from within the three great spiritual religions men look back to him as the father of the faithful.
When Isaiah, while all his countrymen were rushing down the mad, steep ways of politics, carried off by the only powers that were as yet known in these ways, fear of death and greed to be on the side of the strongest—when Isaiah stood still amid that panic rush, and uttered the memorable words, In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength ”

“ It is possible that this ambiguity was part of the prophet's design; but if he uses the name in both senses, some of the force of his enigma is lost to us. In any case, however, we get a picturesque form for a plain meaning. In a year after the present year is out, says Isaiah, God Himself will straiten the city, whose inhabitants are now so careless, and she shall be full of mourning and lamentation. Nevertheless in the end she shall be a true Ari-El: be it a true God's-Lion, victor and hero; or a true God's-Hearth, His own inviolate shrine and sanctuary. ”

“ It is in fact worthy to be put by the side of the finest passages of chaps. xl.-lxvi.—of those passages which irresistibly rise in the memory when we think of “Isaiah.”
V. Prophetic Contrasts in Isaiah.—From a religious point of view there is a wide difference, not only between the acknowledged and the disputed prophecies of the book of Isaiah, but also between those of the latter which occur in chaps. ”

“ To Isaiah the sentences and scourges of God are political and historical, the threats and arms of Assyria. He employs the violences of Nature only as metaphors for Assyrian rage and force. But he often promises fertility as the effect of the Lord's pardon, and when the prophets are writing about Nature, it is difficult to say whether they are to be understood literally or poetically. ”

“ God's hand of judgement is still uplifted over Judah, and it is that [54] hand which summons the cloud. The Assyrians are coming in answer to God's signal, and they are coming as a flood, to leave nothing but ruin and distress behind them. No description by Isaiah is more majestic than this one, in which Jehovah, who has exhausted every nearer means of converting His people, lifts His undrooping arm with a flag to the nations that are far off, and hisses or whistles for them from the end of the earth. And, behold, they come with speed, swiftly: there is no weary one nor straggler among them ”

“ But Isaiah, in the largest sense of the expression, is a man of the world—a man of the world because God made the world and rules it. Yet even from his far sight was hidden the length to which in the last days Commerce would carry her services to man and God, proving as she has done, under the flag of another Phœnicia, to all the extent of Isaiah's longing, one of Religion's most sincere and profitable handmaids. ”

“ The dark streak of blood and lust that runs through the condemned idolatry, and the stern conscience which only deepens its darkness, are sufficient reasons for dating the prophecy after 700. The very phrases of Isaiah, which it contains, have tempted some to attribute it to himself. But it certainly does not date from such troubles as brought his old age to the grave. The evil, which it portends, is, as we have seen, no persecution of the righteous, but a Divine judgement upon the whole nation,—presumably the Exile. ”

“ And God showed him a sign so that he might be sure that what the prophet had told him was true (Isaiah 38) . And Isaiah prophesied concerning the blotting out of the children of Israel, and he made manifest that only a few of them would believe him. And God made rain to fall by reason of his prayer, when the people obeyed. And on one occasion when he was thirsty God made to flow the spring of water of Siloam. And Isaiah prophesied also to Manasseh the king, the son of Hezekiah, who established the worship of idols, and he rebuked him because of his evil deeds. ”

“ The task, which was laid upon the religion of Israel while Isaiah was its prophet, was the task, as we have often told ourselves, of facing the world's forces, and of explaining how they were to be led captive and contributory to the religion of the true God. ”

“ With this loss Isaiah now reproaches Judah. The people are utterly materialized; their delights have been in gold and silver, chariots and [124] horses, fenced cities and broad streams, and their faith has now followed their delights. But these things to which they flee will only prove their destruction. The great foreign river, whose waters they covet, will overflow them: even the king of Assyria and all his glory, and he shall come up over all his channels and go over all his banks; and he shall sweep onward into Judah; he shall overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the neck ”

“ The representation of the earth as the fellow-convict of guilty man, sharing his curse, is very vivid in Isaiah xxiv.-xxvii. In the prophecies relating to his own time Isaiah, of course, identifies the troubles that afflict the land with the sin of the people, of Judah. But these are due to political causes—viz., the Assyrian invasion. 3. In the Lord's court of judgement the prophets sometimes employ Nature as a witness against man, as, for instance, the prophet Micah (vi. 1, ff) . Nature is full of associations ”

“ When we hear a name cried out, we understand immediately that a person is there. So when the prophet calls, Behold, the Name of Jehovah, in face of the prodigious advance of Assyria, we understand that he has caught some intuition of God's presence in that uplifting of the nations of the north at the word of the great King and their resistless sweep southward upon Palestine. In that movement God is personally present. The Divine presence Isaiah then describes in curiously mingled metaphor, which proves how gradually it was that he struggled to a knowledge of its purpose there. ”

“ It is impossible to be dogmatic on the point. But these facts—that our chapters are concerned, as no other Scriptures are, with the fulfilment of previous prophecies; that it is the prophecies of Isaiah which are the original and fullest prediction of the events they are busy with; and that the form, in which Isaiah's prophecies are handed down, did not preclude additions of this kind to them—contribute very evident reasons why Isa. xl.-lxvi., though written in the Exile, should be attached to Isa. i.-xxxix. [15]
Thus we present a theory of the exilic authorship of Isa. ”