Isaiah

“ Isaiah has cried thus: ‘Shout vehemently, and do not spare: lift up thy voice as with a trumpet, and show My people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. They seek Me from day to day, and desire to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the judgment of God. They ask of Me now righteous judgment, and desire to draw near to God, saying, Wherefore have we fasted, and Thou seest not? and afflicted our souls, and Thou hast not known? Because in the days of your fasting you find your own pleasure, and oppress all those who are subject to you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Isaiah, with transcendent majesty of style, clear and luminous as it is poetical, declares that this person who is still unborn, this light which shall appear in Galilee, is no less than he on whose shoulders shall be the government, "whose name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; of the increase of whose kingdom and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and justice forever." ”

“ Certain is it that the Lord will have mercy on Jacob whom he hath chosen; his promises will not fail. Judah shall be chastised; but a part of Judah shall return to Jerusalem, purified, wiser, and shall again in due time flourish as a nation.
Isaiah is the prophet of hope, of forgiveness, and of love. Not only on Judah shall a blessing be bestowed, but upon the whole world. Forgiveness is unbounded if there is repentance, no matter what the sin may be. He almost anticipates the message of Jesus by saying, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." ”

“ Isaiah is by far the finest and least objectionable of the seventeen prophets whose supposed productions form the latter part of the Old Testament. A distinctly higher moral tone appears in the writings called by his name, and this is especially noticeable in the "second Isaiah," who wrote after the Babylonish captivity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them, and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answered: “I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception: but my senses discovered the infinite in everything; and as I was then persuaded, and remained confirmed, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote.” ”

“ A second lamp and two more figures came out of the gloom, but it was no place for stately greetings.
“The noble Prince Darius!” exclaimed Isaiah, softly, advancing from the darkness. “Jehovah be praised!”
“And with you is my Lord Daniel?”
“Safe and free, Jehovah willing,” answered the older Jew, stepping forward.
“Good, then,” replied the Persian. “Lead the way, for I am helpless here. Next to Ahura, I owe all to you, Isaiah, and to your friends!”
“Fear nothing.” And Isaiah trod forward into the dark. “Few know the secrets of this city [317] and palace as do I. We must haste to the tunnel.” ”

“ Then said Melekira to Isaiah: ‘Confess what I shall say, and I will change the heart of those who persecute thee, and I will make Manasseh, and the heads of Judah, and his people, and all Jerusalem worship thee.’
“Then Isaiah answered and said: ‘Cursed art thou in all that thou sayest, and in all thy power, and in all thy disciples!
“‘Thou canst do nothing against me; all thou canst do is to take from me this miserable life.’
“Then they seized the prophet, and they sawed him with a saw of wood, Isaiah, son of Amos. ”

“ He stands undaunted, with his strong paw on his prey, and the boldest of them durst not venture to drag it from beneath his claws. So, says Isaiah, with singularly daring imagery, God will put all His strength into keeping fast hold of Israel, and no one can pluck His people from His hands. ”

“ The birth of Isaiah's son was indeed typical of him whose name he was, at first, appointed to bear, viz., Immanuel, even as Oshea the son of Nun had his name changed to Jehoshua, the same with Jesus, of whom he was an eminent type. Hence the prophet, in the ninth chapter, breaks forth into a strain of exultation: 'To us a child is born;' after which follow denunciations against Rezin and the kingdom of Israel, which are succeeded by declarations, that when Assyria had completed the appointed chastisement upon Judah and Jerusalem, that empire should be destroyed. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ Whatever may be the severity of language with which Isaiah denounces sin, and awful the judgments he pronounces in view of it, as coming directly from God, yet he seldom closes one of his dreadful sentences without holding out the hope of divine forgiveness in case of repentance, and the peace and comfort which will follow. In his view the mercy of the Lord is more impressive than his judgments. Isaiah is anything but a prophet of wrath; his soul overflows with tender sentiments and loving exhortation. ”

“ For this cause they could not believe, for that Isaiah said again,
"He hath blinded their eyes, and he hardened their heart;
Lest they should see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart,
And should turn,
And I should heal them."
These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him. Nevertheless even of the rulers many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the glory that is of men more than the glory that is of God. ”

“ It will be my duty to explain the great prophecy of Isaiah in regard to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is, as you know, in the seventh chapter. Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, kinglet of Israel, were besieging Jerusalem. Ahaz, kinglet of Jerusalem, consults the prophet Isaiah as to the issue of the siege. Isaiah replies: “God shall give you a sign: a girl (or woman) shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. ”

“ 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 word, than that it finds too few. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But when He was manifested to Israel, and when they should have welcomed Him with shouts of joyous acclamation, the " builders " those pharisaic and sadducean priests and lawyers who looked for earthly pomp and grandeur of which they saw none in Christ " despised " Him, and said, " We will not have this man to rule over us," and the words of Isaiah have been literally fulfilled : "He was despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ; and as one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not." ”

“ Here we have the secret of the filial freedom, the life-long sense of responsibility, the regal power of initiative, the sustained [75] and unfaltering career, which distinguish Isaiah among the ministers of the old covenant, and stamp him prophet by the heart and for the life, as many of them are only by the office and for the occasion. Other prophets are the servants of the God of heaven; Isaiah stands next the Son Himself. On others the hand of the Lord is laid in irresistible compulsion ”

“ But Isaiah, guided by an impulse which supersedes the inferences of the profoundest philosophy, thus speaks concerning the God of the Hebrews:—"I am the Lord, and there is none else; there is no God besides me: I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil ”

“ And when Isaiah says, 'Who shall declare His generation?' he meant that His descent could not be declared. Now no one who is a man of men has a descent that cannot be declared. And when Moses says that He will wash His garments in the blood of the grape, does not this signify what I have now often told you is an obscure prediction, namely, that He had blood, but not from men; just as not man, but God, has begotten the blood of the vine? And when Isaiah calls Him the angel of mighty counsel, did he not foretell Him to be the teacher of those truths which He did teach when he came [to earth] ? ”

“ 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 thus foretold John’s forerunning: ‘And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, Good is the word of the Lord which He spake: Let there be peace and righteousness in my days.’ [160] And, ‘Encourage the people; ye priests, speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and encourage her, because her humiliation is accomplished. Her sin is annulled; for she has received of the Lord’s hand double for her sins. A voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the ways of the Lord; make straight the paths of our God. ”

“ The prophet Isaiah, who was a strong force and exercised a vital influence in the policies of Judah, began to object most strenuously. In the light of this background, we can understand such outbursts of Isaiah as are found in the thirtieth chapter of his prophecy, verses one to three:
“Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me ”

“ 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. ”