Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah Part 1

The Book of Isaiah.

Volume I.

by George Adam Smith.

INTRODUCTION.

As the following Exposition of the Book of Isaiah does not observe the canonical arrangement of the chapters, a short introduction is necessary upon the plan which has been adopted.

The size and the many obscurities of the Book of Isaiah have limited the common use of it in the English tongue to single conspicuous pa.s.sages, the very brilliance of which has cast their context and original circ.u.mstance into deeper shade. The intensity of the grat.i.tude with which men have seized upon the more evangelical pa.s.sages of Isaiah, as well as the attention which apologists for Christianity have too partially paid to his intimations of the Messiah, has confirmed the neglect of the rest of the Book. But we might as well expect to receive an adequate conception of a great statesman's policy from the epigrams and perorations of his speeches as to appreciate the message, which G.o.d has sent to the world through the Book of Isaiah, from a few lectures on isolated, and often dislocated, texts. No book of the Bible is less susceptible of treatment apart from the history out of which it sprang than the Book of Isaiah; and it may be added, that in the Old Testament at least there is none which, when set in its original circ.u.mstance and methodically considered as a whole, appeals with greater power to the modern conscience. Patiently to learn how these great prophecies were suggested by, and first met, the actual occasions of human life, is vividly to hear them speaking home to life still.

I have, therefore, designed an arrangement which embraces all the prophecies, but treats them in chronological order. I will endeavour to render their contents in terms which appeal to the modern conscience; but, in order to be successful, such an endeavour presupposes the exposition of them in relation to the history which gave them birth. In these volumes, therefore, narrative and historical exposition will take precedence of practical application.

Every one knows that the Book of Isaiah breaks into two parts between chaps. x.x.xix. and xl. Vol. I. of this Exposition covers chaps. i.-x.x.xix.

Vol. II. will treat of chaps. xl.-lxvi. Again, within chaps. i.-x.x.xix.

another division is apparent. The most of these chapters evidently bear upon events within Isaiah's own career, but some imply historical circ.u.mstances that did not arise till long after he had pa.s.sed away. Of the five books into which I have divided Vol. I., the first four contain the prophecies relating to Isaiah's time (740-701 B.C.), and the fifth the prophecies which refer to later events (chaps. xiii.-xiv. 23; xxiv.-xxvii.; x.x.xiv.; x.x.xv.).

The prophecies, whose subjects fall within Isaiah's times, I have taken in chronological order, with one exception. This exception is chap. i., which, although it published near the end of the prophet's life, I treat of first, because, from its position as well as its character, it is evidently intended as a preface to the whole book. The difficulty of grouping the rest of Isaiah's oracles and orations is great. The plan I have adopted is not perfect, but convenient. Isaiah's prophesying was determined chiefly by _four_ a.s.syrian invasions of Palestine: the first, in 734-732 B.C., by Tiglath-pileser II., while Ahaz was on the throne; the second by Salmana.s.sar and Sargon in 725-720, during which Samaria fell in 721; the third by Sargon, 712-710; the fourth by Sennacherib in 701, which last three occurred while Hezekiah was king of Judah. But outside the a.s.syrian invasions there were three other cardinal dates in Isaiah's life: 740, his call to be a prophet; 727, the death of Ahaz, his enemy, and the accession of his pupil, Hezekiah; and 705, the death of Sargon, for Sargon's death led to the rebellion of the Syrian States, and it was this rebellion which brought on Sennacherib's invasion.

Taking all these dates into consideration, I have placed in Book I. all the prophecies of Isaiah from his call in 740 to the death of Ahaz in 727; they lead up to and ill.u.s.trate Tiglath-pileser's invasion; they cover what I have ventured to call the prophet's apprentices.h.i.+p, during which the theatre of his vision was mainly the internal life of his people, but he gained also his first outlook upon the world beyond. Book II. deals with the prophecies from the accession of Hezekiah in 727 to the death of Sargon in 705--a long period, but few prophecies, covering both Salmana.s.sar's and Sargon's campaigns. Book III. is filled with the prophecies from 705 to 702, a numerous group, called forth from Isaiah by the rebellion and political activity in Palestine consequent on Sargon's death and preliminary to Sennacherib's arrival. Book IV.

contains the prophecies which refer to Sennacherib's actual invasion of Judah and siege of Jerusalem, in 701.

Of course, any chronological arrangement of Isaiah's prophecies must be largely provisional. Only some of the chapters are fixed to dates past possibility of doubt. The a.s.syriology which has helped us with these must yield further results before the controversies can be settled that exist with regard to the rest. I have explained in the course of the Exposition my reasons for the order which I have followed, and need only say here that I am still more uncertain about the generally received dates of chaps x. 5-xi., xvii. 12-14 and x.x.xii. The religious problems, however, were so much the same during the whole of Isaiah's career that uncertainties of date, _if they are confined to the limits of that career_, make little difference to the exposition of the book.

Isaiah's doctrines, being so closely connected with the life of his day, come up for statement at many points of the narrative, in which this Exposition chiefly consists. But here and there I have inserted chapters dealing summarily with more important topics, such as The World in Isaiah's Day; The Messiah; Isaiah's Power of Prediction, with its evidence on the character of Inspiration; and the question, Had Isaiah a Gospel for the Individual? A short index will guide the student to Isaiah's teaching on other important points of theology and life, such as holiness, forgiveness, monotheism, immortality, the Holy Spirit, etc.

Treating Isaiah's prophecies chronologically as I have done, I have followed a method which put me on the look-out for any traces of development that his doctrine might exhibit. I have recorded these as they occur, but it may be useful to collect them here. In chaps. ii.-iv.

we have the struggle of the apprentice prophet's thoughts from the easy religious optimism of his generation, through unrelieved convictions of judgement for the whole people, to his final vision of the Divine salvation of a remnant. Again, chap. vii. following on chaps. ii.-vi.

proves that Isaiah's belief in the Divine righteousness preceded, and was the parent of, his belief in the Divine sovereignty. Again, his successive pictures of the Messiah grow in contents, and become more spiritual. And again, he only gradually arrived at a clear view of the siege and deliverance of Jerusalem. One other fact of the same kind has impressed me since I wrote the exposition of chap. i. I have there stated that it is plain that Isaiah's conscience was perfect just because it consisted of two complementary parts: one of G.o.d the infinitely High, exalted in righteousness, far above the thoughts of His people, and the other of G.o.d the infinitely Near, concerned and jealous for all the practical details of their life. I ought to have added that Isaiah was more under the influence of the former in his earlier years, but that as he grew older and took a larger share in the politics of Judah it was the latter view of G.o.d, to which he most frequently gave expression. Signs of a development like these may be fairly used to correct or support the evidence which a.s.syriology affords for determining the chronological order of the chapters.

But these signs of development are more valuable for the proof they give that the Book of Isaiah contains the experience and testimony of a real life: a life that learned and suffered and grew, and at last triumphed.

There is not a single word about the prophet's birth or childhood, or fortune, or personal appearance, or even of his death. But between silence on his origin and silence on his end--and perhaps all the more impressively because of these clouds by which it is bounded--there s.h.i.+nes the record of Isaiah's spiritual life and of the unfaltering career which this sustained,--clear and whole, from his commission by G.o.d in the secret experience of his own heart to his vindication in G.o.d's supreme tribunal of history. It is not only one of the greatest, but one of the most finished and intelligible, lives in history. My main purpose in expounding the book is to enable English readers, not only to follow its course, but to feel, and to be elevated by, its Divine inspiration.

I may state that this Exposition is based upon a close study of the Hebrew text of Isaiah, and that the translations are throughout my own, except in one or two cases where I have quoted from the revised English version.

With regard to the Revised Version of Isaiah, which I have had opportunities of thoroughly testing, I would like to say that my sense of the immense service which it renders to English readers of the Bible is only exceeded by my wonder that the Revisers have not gone just a very little farther, and adopted one or two simple contrivances which are in the line of their own improvements and would have greatly increased our large debt to them. For instance, why did they not make plain by inverted commas such undoubted interruptions of the prophet's own speech as that of the drunkards in chap. xxviii. 9, 10? Not to know that these verses are spoken in mockery of Isaiah, a mockery to which he replies in vv. 10-13, is to miss the meaning of the whole pa.s.sage.

Again, when they printed Job and the Psalms in metrical form, as well as the Hymn of Hezekiah, why did they not do the same with other poetical pa.s.sages of Isaiah, particularly the great Ode on the King of Babylon in chap. xiv.? This is utterly spoiled in the form in which the Revisers have printed it. What English reader would guess that it was as much a piece of metre as any of the Psalms? Again, why have they so consistently rendered by the misleading word "judgement" a Hebrew term that no doubt sometimes means an act of doom, but far oftener the abstract quality of justice? It is such defects, along with a frequent failure to mark the proper emphasis in a sentence, that have led me to subst.i.tute a more literal version of my own.

I have not thought it necessary to discuss the question of the chronology of the period. This has been done so often and so recently.

See Robertson Smith's _Prophets of Israel_, pp. 145, 402, 413, Driver's _Isaiah_, p. 12, or any good commentary.

I append a chronological table, and an index to the canonical chapters will be found before the index of subjects. The publishers have added a map of Isaiah's world in ill.u.s.tration of chap. v.

BOOK I

CHAPTER I.

_THE ARGUMENT OF THE LORD AND ITS CONCLUSION._

ISAIAH i.--HIS GENERAL PREFACE.

The first chapter of the Book of Isaiah owes its position not to its date, but to its character. It was published late in the prophet's life.

The seventh verse describes the land as overrun by foreign soldiery, and such a calamity befell Judah only in the last two of the four reigns over which the first verse extends Isaiah's prophesying. In the reign of Ahaz, Judah was invaded by Syria and Northern Israel, and some have dated chapter i. from the year of that invasion, 734 B.C. In the reign again of Hezekiah some have imagined, in order to account for the chapter, a swarming of neighbouring tribes upon Judah; and Mr. Cheyne, to whom regarding the history of Isaiah's time we ought to listen with the greatest deference, has supposed an a.s.syrian invasion in 711, under Sargon. But hardly of this, and certainly not of that, have we adequate evidence, and the only other invasion of Judah in Isaiah's lifetime took place under Sennacherib, in 701. For many reasons this a.s.syrian invasion is to be preferred to that by Syria and Ephraim in 734 as the occasion of this prophecy. But there is really no need to be determined on the point. The prophecy has been lifted out of its original circ.u.mstance and placed in the front of the book, perhaps by Isaiah himself, as a general introduction to his collected pieces. It owes its position, as we have said, to its character. It is a clear, complete statement of the points which were at issue between the Lord and His own all the time Isaiah was the Lord's prophet. It is the most representative of Isaiah's prophecies, a summary, perhaps better than any other single chapter of the Old Testament, of the substance of prophetic doctrine, and a very vivid ill.u.s.tration of the prophetic spirit and method. We propose to treat it here as introductory to the main subjects and lines of Isaiah's teaching, leaving its historical references till we arrive in due course at the probable year of its origin, 701 B.C.[1]

[1] See p. 343.

Isaiah's preface is in the form of a Trial or a.s.size. Ewald calls it "The Great Arraignment." There are all the actors in a judicial process.

It is a Crown case, and G.o.d is at once Plaintiff and Judge. He delivers both the Complaint in the beginning (vv. 2, 3) and the Sentence in the end. The a.s.sessors are Heaven and Earth, whom the Lord's herald invokes to hear the Lord's plea (ver. 2). The people of Judah are the Defendants. The charge against them is one of brutish, ingrate stupidity, breaking out into rebellion. The Witness is the prophet himself, whose evidence on the guilt of his people consists in recounting the misery that has overtaken their land (vv. 4-9), along with their civic injustice and social cruelty--sins of the upper and ruling cla.s.ses (vv. 10, 17, 21-23). The people's Plea-in-defence, laborious wors.h.i.+p and multiplied sacrifice, is repelled and exposed (vv.

10-17). And the Trial is concluded--_Come now, let us bring our reasoning to a close, saith the Lord_--by G.o.d's offer of pardon to a people thoroughly convicted (ver. 18). On which follow the Conditions of the Future: happiness is sternly made dependent on repentance and righteousness (vv. 19, 20). And a supplementary oracle is given (vv.

24-31), announcing a time of affliction, through which the nation shall pa.s.s as through a furnace; rebels and sinners shall be consumed, but G.o.d will redeem Zion, and with her a remnant of the people.

That is the plan of the chapter--a Trial at Law. Though it disappears under the exceeding weight of thought the prophet builds upon it, do not let us pa.s.s hurriedly from it, as if it were only a scaffolding.

That G.o.d should argue at all is the magnificent truth on which our attention must fasten, before we inquire what the argument is about. G.o.d reasons with man--that is the first article of religion according to Isaiah. Revelation is not magical, but rational and moral. Religion is reasonable intercourse between one intelligent Being and another. G.o.d works upon man first through conscience.

Over against the prophetic view of religion sprawls and reeks in this same chapter the popular--religion as smoky sacrifice, a.s.siduous wors.h.i.+p, and ritual. The people to whom the chapter was addressed were not idolaters.[2] Hezekiah's reformation was over. Judah wors.h.i.+pped her own G.o.d, whom the prophet introduces not as for the first time, but by Judah's own familiar names for Him--Jehovah, Jehovah of Hosts, the Holy One of Israel, the Mighty One, or Hero, of Israel. In this hour of extreme danger the people are waiting on Jehovah with great pains and cost of sacrifice. They pray, they sacrifice, they solemnize to perfection. But they do not _know_, they do not _consider_; this is the burden of their offence. To use a better word, they do not _think_. They are G.o.d's grown-up children (ver. 2)--_children_, that is to say, like the son of the parable, with native instincts for their G.o.d, and _grown up_--that is to say, with reason and conscience developed. But they use neither, stupider than very beasts. _Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider._ In all their wors.h.i.+p conscience is asleep, and they are drenched in wickedness. Isaiah puts their life in an epigram--_wickedness and wors.h.i.+p: I cannot away_, saith the Lord, _with wickedness and wors.h.i.+p_ (ver. 13).

[2] At least those to whom the first twenty-three verses were addressed.

There is distinct blame of wors.h.i.+pping in the groves of Asherah in the appended oracle (vv. 24-31), which is proof that this oracle was given at an earlier period than the rest of the chapter--a fair instance of the very great difficulty we have in determining the dates of the various prophecies of Isaiah.

But the pressure and stimulus of the prophecy lie in this, that although the people have silenced conscience and are steeped in a stupidity worse than ox or a.s.s, G.o.d will not leave them alone. He forces Himself upon them; He compels them to think. In the order and calmness of nature (ver. 2), apart from catastrophe nor seeking to influence by any miracle, G.o.d speaks to men by the reasonable words of His prophet.

Before He will publish salvation or intimate disaster He must rouse and startle conscience. His controversy precedes alike His peace and His judgements. An awakened conscience is His prophet's first demand. Before religion can be prayer, or sacrifice, or any acceptable wors.h.i.+p, it must be a _reasoning together_ with G.o.d.

That is what mean the arrival of the Lord, and the opening of the a.s.size, and the call to know and consider. It is the terrible necessity which comes back upon men, however engrossed or drugged they may be, to pa.s.s their lives in moral judgement before themselves; a debate to which there is never any closure, in which forgotten things will not be forgotten, but a man "is compelled to repeat to himself things he desires to be silent about, and to listen to what he does not wish to hear, ... yielding to that mysterious power which says to him, Think.

One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a sh.o.r.e. With the sailor this is called the tide; with the guilty it is called remorse. G.o.d upheaves the soul as well as the ocean."[3] Upon that ever-returning and resistless tide Hebrew prophecy, with its Divine freight of truth and comfort, rides into the lives of men. This first chapter of Isaiah is just the parable of the awful compulsion to think which men call conscience. The stupidest of generations, formal and fat-hearted, are forced to consider and to reason. The Lord's court and controversy are opened, and men are whipped into them from His Temple and His altar.

[3] _Les Miserables_: "a Tempest in a Brain."

For even religion and religiousness, the common man's commonest refuge from conscience--not only in Isaiah's time--cannot exempt from this writ. Would we be judged by our moments of wors.h.i.+p, by our _temple-treading_, which is Hebrew for church-going, by the wealth of our sacrifice, by our ecclesiastical position? This chapter drags us out before the austerity and incorruptibleness of Nature. The a.s.sessors of the Lord are not the Temple nor the Law, but Heaven and Earth--not ecclesiastical conventions, but the grand moral fundamentals of the universe, purity, order and obedience to G.o.d. Religiousness, however, is not the only refuge from which we shall find Isaiah startling men with the trumpet of the Lord's a.s.size. He is equally intolerant of the indulgent silence and compromises of the world, that give men courage to say, We are no worse than others. Men's lives, it is a constant truth of his, have to be argued out not with the world, but with G.o.d. If a man will be silent upon shameful and uncomfortable things, he cannot. His thoughts are not his own; G.o.d will think them for him as G.o.d thinks them here for unthinking Israel. Nor are the practical and intellectual distractions of a busy life any refuge from conscience. When the politicians of Judah seek escape from judgement by plunging into deeper intrigue and a more bustling policy, Isaiah is fond of pointing out to them that they are only forcing judgement nearer. They do but sharpen on other objects the thoughts whose edge must some day turn upon themselves.

What is this questioning nothing holds away, nothing stills, and nothing wears out? It is the voice of G.o.d Himself, and its insistence is therefore as irresistible as its effect is universal. That is not mere rhetoric which opens the Lord's controversy: _Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken_. All the world changes to the man in whom conscience lifts up her voice, and to the guilty Nature seems attentive and aware. Conscience compels heaven and earth to act as her a.s.sessors, because she is the voice, and they the creatures, of G.o.d.

This leads us to emphasize another feature of the prophecy.

We have called this chapter a trial-at-law; but it is far more a _personal_ than a legal controversy; of the formally forensic there is very little about it. Some theologies and many preachers have attempted the conviction of the human conscience by the technicalities of a system of law, or by appealing to this or that historical covenant, or by the obligations of an intricate and burdensome morality. This is not Isaiah's way. His generation is here judged by no system of law or ancient covenants, but by a living Person and by His treatment of them--a Person who is a Friend and a Father. It is not Judah and the law that are confronted; it is Judah and Jehovah. There is no contrast between the life of this generation and some glorious estate from which they or their forefathers have fallen; but they are made to hear the voice of a living and present G.o.d: _I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me_. Isaiah begins where Saul of Tarsus began, who, though he afterwards elaborated with wealth of detail the awful indictment of the abstract law against man, had never been able to do so but for that first confronting with the Personal Deity, _Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?_ Isaiah's ministry started from the vision of the Lord; and it was no covenant or theory, but the Lord Himself, who remained the prophet's conscience to the end.

But though the living G.o.d is Isaiah's one explanation of conscience, it is G.o.d in two aspects, the moral effects of which are opposite, yet complementary. In conscience men are defective by forgetting either the sublime or the practical, but Isaiah's strength is to do justice to both. With him G.o.d is first the infinitely High, and then equally the infinitely Near. _The Lord is exalted in righteousness!_ yes, and sublimely above the people's vulgar identifications of His will with their own safety and success, but likewise concerned with every detail of their politics and social behaviour, not to be relegated to the Temple, where they were wont to confine Him, but by His prophet descending to their markets and councils, with His own opinion of their policies, interfering in their intrigues, meeting Ahaz at the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field, and fastening _eyes of glory_ on every pin and point of the dress of the daughters of Zion.

He is no merely transcendent G.o.d. Though He be the High and Holy One, He will discuss each habit of the people, and argue upon its merits every one of their policies. His constant cry to them is _Come and let us reason together_, and to hear it is to have a conscience. Indeed, Isaiah lays more stress on this intellectual side of the moral sense than on the other, and the frequency with which in this chapter he employs the expressions _know_, and _consider_, and _reason_, is characteristic of all his prophesying. Even the most superficial reader must notice how much this prophet's doctrine of conscience and repentance harmonizes with the _metanoia_ of New Testament preaching.

This doctrine, that G.o.d has an interest in every detail of practical life and will argue it out with men, led Isaiah to a revelation of G.o.d quite peculiar to himself. For the Psalmist it is enough that his soul _come to G.o.d, the living G.o.d_. It is enough for other prophets to awe the hearts of their generations by revealing _the Holy One_; but Isaiah, with his intensely practical genius, and sorely tried by the stupid inconsistency of his people, bends himself to make them understand that G.o.d is at least a _reasonable_ Being. Do not, his constant cry is, and he puts it sometimes in almost as many words--do not act as if there were a Fool on the throne of the universe, which you virtually do when you take these meaningless forms of wors.h.i.+p as your only intercourse with Him, and beside them practise your rank iniquities, as if He did not see nor care. We need not here do more than mention the pa.s.sages in which, sometimes by a word, Isaiah stings and startles self-conscious politicians and sinners beetle-blind in sin, with the sense that G.o.d Himself takes an interest in their deeds and has His own working-plans for their life. On the land question in Judah (v. 9): _In mine ears, saith the Lord of hosts_. When the people were paralyzed by calamity, as if it had no meaning or term (xxviii. 29): _This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in effectual working_. Again, when they were panic-stricken, and madly sought by foolish ways their own salvation (x.x.x. 18): _For the Lord is a G.o.d of judgement--i.e._, of principle, method, law, with His own way and time for doing things--_blessed are all they that wait for Him_. And again, when politicians were carried away by the cleverness and success of their own schemes (x.x.xi. 2): _Yet He also is wise_, or clever. It was only a personal application of this Divine attribute when Isaiah heard the word of the Lord give him the minutest directions for his own practice--as, for instance, at what exact point he was to meet Ahaz (vii. 3); or that he was to take a board and write upon it in the vulgar character (viii. 1); or that he was to strip frock and sandals, and walk without them for three years (xx). Where common men feel conscience only as something vague and inarticulate, a flavour, a sting, a foreboding, the obligation of work, the constraint of affection, Isaiah heard the word of the Lord, clear and decisive on matters of policy, and definite even to the details of method and style.