Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah Part 14

The new points are--that it is the women who are threatened, that Jerusalem itself is pictured in ruin, and that the pouring out of the Spirit is promised as the cause of the blessed future.

I. THE CHARGE TO THE WOMEN (vv. 9-12)

is especially interesting, not merely for its own terms, but because it is only part of a treatment of women which runs through the whole of Scripture.

Isaiah had already delivered against the women of Jerusalem a severe diatribe (chap. iii.), the burden of which was their vanity and haughtiness. With the satiric temper, which distinguishes his earlier prophecies, he had mimicked their ogling and mincing gait, and described pin by pin their fas.h.i.+ons and ornaments, promising them instead of these things _rottenness_ and _baldness_, and _a girdle of sackcloth and branding for beauty_. But he has grown older, and penetrating below their outward fas.h.i.+on and gait, he charges them with thoughtlessness as the besetting sin of their s.e.x. _Ye women that are at ease, rise up, and hear my voice; ye careless daughters, give ear to my speech. For days beyond a year shall ye be troubled, O careless women, for the vintage shall fail; the ingathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones._ By a pair of epithets he describes their fault; and almost thrice does he repeat the pair, as if he would emphasize it past all doubt. The besetting sin of women, as he dins into them, is ease; an ignorant and unthinking contentment with things as they are; thoughtlessness with regard to the deeper mysteries of life; disbelief in the possibility of change.

But Isaiah more than hints that these besetting sins of women are but the defects of their virtues. The literal meaning of the two adjectives he uses, _at ease_ and _careless_, is _restful_ and _trustful_.

Scripture throughout employs these words both in a good and a bad sense.

Isaiah does so himself in this very chapter (compare these verses with vv. 17, 18). In the next chapter he describes the state of Jerusalem after redemption as a state of _ease_ or _restfulness_, and we know that he never ceased urging the people to _trustfulness_. For such truly religious conditions he uses exactly the same names as for the shallow optimism with which he now charges his countrywomen. And so doing, he reminds us of an important law of character. The besetting sins of either s.e.x are its virtues prost.i.tuted. A man's greatest temptations proceed from his strength; but the glory of the feminine nature is repose, and trust is the strength of the feminine character, in which very things, however, lies all the possibility of woman's degradation.

Woman's faith amounts at times to real intuition; but what risks are attached to this prophetic power--of impatience, of contentment with the first glance at things, "the inclination," as a great moralist has put it, "to take too easily the knowledge of the problems of life, and to rest content with what lies nearest her, instead of penetrating to a deeper foundation." Women are full of indulgence and hope; but what possibilities lie there of deception, false optimism, and want of that anxiety which alone makes progress possible. Women are more inclined than men to believe all things; but how certain is such a temper to sacrifice the claims of truth and honour. Women are full of tact, the just favourites of success, with infinite power to plead and please; but if they are aware of this, how certain is such a self-consciousness to produce negligence and the fatal sleep of the foolish virgins.

Scripture insists repeatedly on this truth of Isaiah's about the besetting sin of women. The prophet Amos has engraved it in one of his sharpest epigrams, declaring that thoughtlessness is capable of turning women into very brutes, and their homes into desolate ruins: _Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say unto their lords, Bring and let us drink. The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by His holiness that, lo, the days shall come upon you that they shall take you away with hooks, and your residue with fish-hooks, and ye shall go out at the breaches, every one straight before her, and ye shall cast yourselves into Harmon, saith Jehovah._ It is a cowherd's picture of women: a troop of cows, heavy, heedless animals, trampling in their anxiety for food upon every frail and lowly object in the way. There is a cowherd's coa.r.s.eness in it, but a prophet's insight into character. Not of Jezebels, or Messalinas, or Lady-Macbeths is it spoken, but of the ordinary matrons of Samaria. Thoughtlessness is able to make brutes out of women of gentle nurture, with homes and a religion. For thoughtlessness when joined to luxury or beauty plays with cruel weapons. It means greed, arrogance, indifference to suffering, wantonness, pride of conquest, dissimulation in love, and revenge for little slights; and there is no waste, unkind sport, insolence, brutality, or hysterical violence to which it will not lead. Such women are known, as Amos pictured them, through many degrees of this thoughtlessness: interrupters of conversation, an offence to the wise; devourers of many of the little ones of G.o.d's creation for the sake of their own ornament; tormentors of servants and subordinates for the sake of their own ease; out of the enjoyment of power or for admiration's sake breakers of hearts. And are not all such victims of thoughtlessness best compared, with Amos, to a cow--an animal that rushes at its gra.s.s careless of the many daisies and ferns it tramples, that will destroy the beauty of a whole country lane for a few mouthfuls of herbage?

Thoughtlessness, says Amos--_and the Lord G.o.d hath sworn it by His holiness_--is the very negation of womanhood, the ruin of homes.

But when we turn from the degradation of woman as thus exposed by the prophets to her glory as lifted up in the New Testament, we find that the same note is struck. Woman in the New Testament is gracious according as she is thoughtful; she offends even when otherwise beautiful by her feeling overpowering her thought. Martha spoils a most estimable character by one moment of unthinking pa.s.sion, in which she accuses the Master of carelessness. Mary chooses the better part in close attention to her Master's words. The Ten Virgins are divided into five wise and five foolish. Paul seems to have been struck, as Isaiah was, with the natural tendency of the female character, for the first duty he lays upon the old women is to _teach the young women to think discreetly_, and he repeats the injunction, putting it before chast.i.ty and industry--_Teach them_, he says, _teach them discretion_ (t.i.tus ii.

4, 5). In Mary herself, the mother of our Lord, we see two graces of character, to the honour of which Scripture gives equal place--faith and thoughtfulness. The few sentences, which are all that he devotes to Mary's character, the Evangelist divides equally between these two. She was called _blessed_ because she believed the word of the Lord. But trustfulness did not mean in her, as in other women, neglect to think.

Twice, at an interval of twelve years, we are shown thoughtfulness and carefulness of memory as the habitual grace of this first among women.

_Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. His mother kept all these sayings in her heart._[51] What was Mary's glory was other women's salvation. By her own logic the sufferer of Capernaum, whom many physicians failed to benefit, found her cure; by her persistent argument the Syrophenician woman received her daughter to health again. And when our Lord met that flippant descendant of the _kine of Bashan, that are in the mount of Samaria_, how did He treat her that He might save her but by giving her matter to think about, by speaking to her in riddles, by exploding her superficial knowledge, and scattering her easy optimism?

[51] Cf. Newman, _Oxford University Sermons_, xv.

So does all Scripture declare, in harmony with the oracle of Isaiah, that thoughtlessness and easy contentment with things as they be, are the besetting sins of woman. But her glory is discretion.

II. The next new point in this prophecy is the

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM (vv. 13-15).

_Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city: for the palace shall be forsaken; the populous city shall be deserted; Ophel and the Watch-tower shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild a.s.ses, a pasture of flocks._ The attempt has been made to confine this reference to the outskirts of the sacred city, but it is hardly a just one. The prophet, though he does not name the city, evidently means Jerusalem, and means the whole of it. Some therefore deny the authenticity of the prophecy. Certainly it is almost impossible to suppose, that so definite a sentence of ruin can have been published at the same time as the a.s.surances of Jerusalem's inviolability in the preceding orations. But that does not prevent the hypothesis that it was uttered by Isaiah at an earlier period, when, as in chaps. ii. and iii., he did say extreme things about the destruction of his city. It must be noticed, however, that Isaiah speaks with some vagueness; that at the present moment he is not concerned with any religious truth or will of the Almighty, but simply desires to contrast the careless gaiety of the women of Jerusalem with the fate hanging over them. How could he do this more forcibly than by turning the streets and gardens of their delights into ruins and the haunts of the wild a.s.s, even though it should seem inconsistent with his declaration that Zion was inviolable? Licence for a certain amount of inconsistency is absolutely necessary in the case of a prophet who had so many divers truths to utter to so many opposite interests and tempers. Besides, at this time he had already reduced Jerusalem very low (xxix. 4).

III. THE SPIRIT OUTPOURED (vv. 15-20).

The rest of the prophecy is luminous rather than lucid, full of suffused rather than distinct meanings. The date of the future regeneration is indefinite--another feature more in harmony with Isaiah's earlier prophecies than his later. The cause of the blessing is the outpouring of the Spirit of G.o.d (ver. 15). Righteousness and peace are to come to earth by a distinct creative act of G.o.d. Isaiah adds his voice to the invariable testimony of prophets and apostles, who, whether they speak of society or the heart of individual man, place their hope in new life from above by the Spirit of the living G.o.d. Victor Hugo says, "There are no weeds in society, only bad cultivators;" and places all hope of progress towards perfection in proper methods of social culture. These are needed, as much as the corn, which will not spring from the suns.h.i.+ne alone, requires the hand of the sower, and the harrow. And Isaiah, too, speaks here of human conduct and effort as required to fill up the blessedness of the future: righteousness and labour. But first, and indispensably, he, with all the prophets, places the Spirit of G.o.d.

It appears that Isaiah looked for the fruits of the Spirit both as material and moral. He bases the quiet resting-places and regular labours of the future not on righteousness only, but on fertility and righteousness. _The wilderness shall become a fruitful field_, and _what is_ to-day _a fruitful field shall be counted as a forest_. That this proverb, used by Isaiah more than once, is not merely a metaphor for the moral revolution he describes in the next verse, is proved by his having already declared the unfruitfulness of their soil as part of his people's punishment. Fertility is promised for itself, and as the accompaniment of moral bountifulness. _And there shall dwell in the wilderness justice, and righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field.

And the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect, or service, of righteousness, quietness and confidence for ever. And my people shall abide in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places.... Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth the feet of the ox and the a.s.s!_

There is not a prophecy more characteristic of Isaiah. It unfolds what for him were the two essential and equal contents of the will of G.o.d: a secure land and a righteous people, the fertility of nature and the purity of society. But in those years (705-702) he did not forget that something must come between him and that paradise. Across the very middle of his vision of felicity there dashes a cruel storm. In the gap indicated above Isaiah wrote, _But it shall hail in the downfall of the forest, and the city shall be utterly laid low._ A hailstorm between the promise and fulfilment of summer! Isaiah could only mean the a.s.syrian invasion, which was now lowering so dark. Before it bursts we must follow him to the survey which he made, during these years before the siege of Jerusalem, of the foreign nations on whom, equally with Jerusalem, that storm was to sweep.

CHAPTER XVII.

_ISAIAH TO THE FOREIGN NATIONS._

ISAIAH xiv. 24-32, xv.-xxi., and xxiii. (736-702 B.C.).

The centre of the Book of Isaiah (chaps. xiii. to xxiii.) is occupied by a number of long and short prophecies which are a fertile source of perplexity to the conscientious reader of the Bible. With the exhilaration of one who traverses plain roads and beholds vast prospects, he has pa.s.sed through the opening chapters of the book as far as the end of the twelfth; and he may look forward to enjoying a similar experience when he reaches those other clear stretches of vision from the twenty-fourth to the twenty-seventh and from the thirtieth to the thirty-second. But here he loses himself among a series of prophecies obscure in themselves and without obvious relation to one another. The subjects of them are the nations, tribes and cities with which in Isaiah's day, by war or treaty or common fear in face of the a.s.syrian conquest, Judah was being brought into contact. There are none of the familiar names of the land and tribes of Israel which meet the reader in other obscure prophecies and lighten their darkness with the face of a friend. The names and allusions are foreign, some of them the names of tribes long since extinct, and of places which it is no more possible to identify. It is a very jungle of prophecy, in which, without much Gospel or geographical light, we have to grope our way, thankful for an occasional gleam of the picturesque--a sandstorm in the desert, the forsaken ruins of Babylon haunted by wild beasts, a view of Egypt's ca.n.a.ls or Phnicia's harbours, a glimpse of an Arab raid or of a grave Ethiopian emba.s.sy.

But in order to understand the Book of Isaiah, in order to understand Isaiah himself in some of the largest of his activities and hopes, we must traverse this thicket. It would be tedious and unprofitable to search every corner of it. We propose, therefore, to give a list of the various oracles, with their dates and t.i.tles, for the guidance of Bible-readers, then to take three representative texts and gather the meaning of all the oracles round them.

First, however, two of the prophecies must be put aside. The twenty-second chapter does not refer to a foreign State, but to Jerusalem itself; and the large prophecy which opens the series (chaps.

xiii.-xiv. 23) deals with the overthrow of Babylon in circ.u.mstances that did not arise till long after Isaiah's time, and so falls to be considered by us along with similar prophecies at the close of this volume. (See Book V.)

All the rest of these chapters--xiv.-xxi. and xxiii.--refer to Isaiah's own day. They were delivered by the prophet at various times throughout his career; but the most of them evidently date from immediately after the year 705, when, on the death of Sargon, there was a general rebellion of the a.s.syrian va.s.sals.

1. xiv. 24-27. OATH OF JEHOVAH that the a.s.syrian shall be broken.

Probable date, towards 701.

2. xiv. 28-32. ORACLE FOR PHILISTIA. Warning to Philistia not to rejoice because one a.s.syrian king is dead, for a worse one shall arise: _Out of the serpent's root shall come forth a basilisk_. Philistia shall be melted away, but Zion shall stand. The inscription to this oracle (ver.

28) is not genuine. The oracle plainly speaks of the death and accession of a.s.syrian, not Judaean, kings. It may be ascribed to 705, the date of the death of Sargon and accession of Sennacherib. But some hold that it refers to the previous change on the a.s.syrian throne--the death of Salmana.s.sar and the accession of Sargon.

3. xv.-xvi. 12. ORACLE FOR MOAB. A long prophecy against Moab. This oracle, whether originally by himself at an earlier period of his life, or more probably by an older prophet, Isaiah adopts and ratifies, and intimates its immediate fulfilment, in xvi. 13, 14. _This is the word which Jehovah spake concerning Moab long ago. But now Jehovah hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt with all the great mult.i.tude, and the remnant shall be very small and of no account._ The dates both of the original publication of this prophecy and of its reissue with the appendix are quite uncertain. The latter may fall about 711, when Moab was threatened by Sargon for complicity in the Ashdod conspiracy (p. 198), or in 704, when, with other States, Moab came under the cloud of Sennacherib's invasion. The main prophecy is remarkable for its vivid picture of the disaster that has overtaken Moab and for the sympathy with her which the Jewish prophet expresses; for the mention of a _remnant_ of Moab; for the exhortation to her to send tribute in her adversity _to the mount of the daughter of Zion_ (xvi. 1); for an appeal to Zion to shelter the outcasts of Moab and to take up her cause: _Bring counsel, make a decision, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts, bewray not the wanderer_; for a statement of the Messiah similar to those in chaps. ix. and xi.; and for the offer to the oppressed Moabites of the security of Judah in Messianic times (vv. 4, 5). But there is one great obstacle to this prospect of Moab lying down in the shadow of Judah--Moab's arrogance.

_We have heard of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud_ (ver. 6, cf.

Jer. xlviii. 29, 42; Zeph. ii. 10), which pride shall not only keep this country in ruin, but prevent the Moabites prevailing in prayer at their own sanctuary (ver. 12)--a very remarkable admission about the wors.h.i.+p of another G.o.d than Jehovah.

4. xvii. 1-11. ORACLE FOR DAMASCUS. One of the earliest and most crisp of Isaiah's prophecies. Of the time of Syria's and Ephraim's league against Judah, somewhere between 736 and 732.

5. xvii. 12-14. UNt.i.tLED. The crash of the peoples upon Jerusalem and their dispersion. This magnificent piece of sound, which we a.n.a.lyse below, is usually understood of Sennacherib's rush upon Jerusalem. Verse 14 is an accurate summary of the sudden break-up and "retreat from Moscow" of his army. The a.s.syrian hosts are described as _nations_, as they are elsewhere more than once by Isaiah (xxii. 6, xxix. 7). But in all this there is no final reason for referring the oracle to Sennacherib's invasion, and it may just as well be interpreted of Isaiah's confidence of the defeat of Syria and Ephraim (734-723). Its proximity to the oracle against Damascus would then be very natural, and it would stand as a parallel prophecy to viii. 9: _Make an uproar, O ye peoples, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of the distances of the earth: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces_--a prophecy which we know belongs to the period of the Syro-Ephraimitic league.

6. xviii. _Unt.i.tled._ An address to Ethiopia, _land of a rustling of wings, land of many sails, whose messengers dart to and fro upon the rivers in their skiffs of reed_. The prophet tells Ethiopia, cast into excitement by the news of the a.s.syrian advance, how Jehovah is resting quietly till the a.s.syrian be ripe for destruction. When the Ethiopians shall see His sudden miracle, they shall send their tribute to Jehovah, _to the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, Mount Zion_. It is difficult to know to which southward march of a.s.syria to ascribe this prophecy--Sargon's or Sennacherib's? For at the time of both of these an Ethiopian ruled Egypt.

7. xix. _Oracle for Egypt._ The first fifteen verses describe judgement as ready to fall on the land of the Pharaohs. The last ten speak of the religious results to Egypt of that judgement, and they form the most universal and "missionary" of all Isaiah's prophecies. Although doubts have been expressed of the Isaian authors.h.i.+p of the second half of this chapter on the score of its universalism, as well as of its literary style, which is judged to be "a pale reflection" of Isaiah's own, there is no final reason for declining the credit of it to Isaiah, while there are insuperable difficulties against relegating it to the late date which is sometimes demanded for it. On the date and authenticity of this prophecy, which are of great importance for the question of Isaiah's "missionary" opinions, see Cheyne's introduction to the chapter and Robertson Smith's notes in _The Prophets of Israel_ (p. 433). The latter puts it in 703, during Sennacherib's advance upon the south. The former suggests that the second half may have been written by the prophet much later than the first, and justly says, "We can hardly imagine a more 'swan-like end' for the dying prophet."

8. xx. UNt.i.tLED. Also upon Egypt, but in narrative and of an earlier date than at least the latter half of xix. Tells how Isaiah walked naked and barefoot in the streets of Jerusalem for a sign against Egypt and against the help Judah hoped to get from her in the years 711-709, when the Tartan, or a.s.syrian commander-in-chief, came south to subdue Ashdod.

See pp. 198-200.

9. xxi. 1-10. ORACLE FOR THE WILDERNESS OF THE SEA, announcing but lamenting the fall of Babylon. Probably 709. See pp. 202, 203.

10. xxi. 11, 12. ORACLE FOR DUMAH. Dumah, or _Silence_--in Ps. xciv. 17, cxv. 17, _the land of the silence of death_, the grave--is probably used as an anagram for Edom and an enigmatic sign to the wise Edomites, in their own fas.h.i.+on, of the kind of silence their land is lying under--the silence of rapid decay. The prophet hears this silence at last broken by a cry. Edom cannot bear the darkness any more. _Unto me one is calling from Seir, Watchman, how much off the night? how much off the night?[52]

Said the watchman, Cometh the morning, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire, come back again._ What other answer is possible for a land on which the silence of decay seems to have settled down? He may, however, give them an answer later on, if they will come back. Date uncertain, perhaps between 704 and 701.

[52] Our translation, though picturesque, is misleading. The voice does not inquire, "What of the night?" _i.e._, whether it be fair or foul weather, but "How much of the night is pa.s.sed?" literally "What from off the night?" This brings out a pathos that our English version has disguised. Edom feels that her night is lasting terribly long.

11. xxi. 13-17. ORACLE FOR ARABIA. From Edom the prophet pa.s.ses to their neighbours the Dedanites, travelling merchants. And as he saw night upon Edom, so, by a play upon words, he speaks of evening upon Arabia: _in the forest, in Arabia_, or with the same consonants, _in the evening_.

In the time of the insecurity of the a.s.syrian invasion the travelling merchants have to go aside from their great trading roads _in the evening to lodge in the thickets_. There they entertain fugitives, or (for the sense is not quite clear) are themselves as fugitives entertained. It is a picture of the _grievousness of war_, which was now upon the world, flowing down even those distant, desert roads. But things have not yet reached the worst. The fugitives are but the heralds of armies, that _within a year_ shall waste the _children of Kedar_, for Jehovah, the G.o.d of Israel, hath spoken it. So did the prophet of little Jerusalem take possession of even the far deserts in the name of his nation's G.o.d.

12. xxiii. ORACLE FOR TYRE. Elegy over its fall, probably as Sennacherib came south upon it in 703 or 702. To be further considered by us (pp.

288 ff.).

These then are Isaiah's oracles for the Nations, who tremble, intrigue and go down before the might of a.s.syria.