prevailing sins, and threatens it with judgments which shall befall it through an invasion of the Assyrian armies. "Already," says the prophet to the people of Israel, "God is stirring up the enemies of your ally, Rezin, [namely, the Assyrians,] against him, and while they assail Rezin on one side of you, and the Philistines on the other, they will not fail to devour with full jaws your intervening territory." The last passage I take to be a hymn of triumph over that overthrow of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, before Jerusalem, which is recorded in the Second Book of Kings. I would propose for the twenty-second and twenty-third verses of the tenth chapter a different rendering from that which, with immaterial variations, has, as far as I know, always been given, and which breaks the continuity of the sense. The prophet is speaking, not of continued affliction, but of the effect which a divinely wrought deliverance will have, or ought to have. "They shall no more lean upon him that smote them"; namely, the perfidious Assyrian, their former ally. They shall lean upon Jehovah," &c. And he goes on thus: 66 "If thy people, O Israel, have been as the sand of the sea, [and if only a remnant of it survives,] Yet the remnant shall return [or, repent]. The devastation is now finished [not " decreed "]; It overflows into mercy; For an end, a completion [of his judgments], in the midst of the land, hath the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, now wrought."-x. 22, 23. "Such," the prophet continues, 66 was God's purpose of deliverance for Judah. Jehovah said, [that * Is. ix. 8 - x. 4.—ix. 15 is evidently an interpolation. † 2 Kings xix. 35. Gesenius's rendering is better, I think, than that of our common version: Isaiah x. 20. - "Against a godless people I sent him," &c. (Isaiah x. 6. is, in his own purpose,] that he would deliver his people, as he had done in Egypt.* He would let their enemy pursue his triumphant march to their very walls, but there he would discomfit and ruin him."† "Nor," he goes on, "are all his purposes of mercy yet accomplished, but the national prosperity thus secured shall be made complete by the coming of that great prince of David's house whom all the nation longs for." The greatness of this prince's character and reign, and the people's gratitude for his accession, are the subject of the two remaining chapters. Under his government Judah and Israel, cordially reunited, with all their wanderers restored, shall make successful war together against the nations which have oppressed them. They shall manifest together a pious grati tude to the God who has redeemed them, § and shall enjoy together a kind of golden age. || * x. 24-27. xi. 11-16. tx. 28-34; comp. 2 Kings xviii. 17 – xix. 37. LECTURE XLV. ISAIAH XIII. 1. XXXIX. 8. SUPPOSED PROPHECY OF THE CAPTURE OF BABYLON BY THE MEDES AND PERSIANS UNDER CYRUS.-QUESTION CONCERNING THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE POEM.-ANTIQUITY OF THE EMPIRES MENTIOned. -TRUE INTERPRETATION OF THE PASSAGE. DENUNCIATIONS OF CALAMITY AGAINST THE ASSYRIANS, PHILISTINES, AND MOABITES. - WAR WITH ISRAEL AND SYRIA, AND ALLIANCE WITH THE ASSYRIANS. ASSYRIAN INVASION AND DEFEAT. REVOLUTIONS IN EGYPT. WARNINGS AGAINST AN ALLIANCE WITH THAT KINGDOM.-INVASION OF THE 66 DESERT OF THE SEA,' OR BABYLON. QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE AUTHENTICITY AND MEANING OF THE PASSAGE. FRAGMENTS RELATING TO IDUMEA AND ARABIA. PERIL AND RESCUE OF THE "VALLEY OF VISION," OR JERUSALEM. DENUNCIATIONS AGAINST TYRE.COMMON INTERPRETATION OF THE PASSAGE.-DEFICIENCY IN THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF THE SUPPOSED CAPTURE OF TYRE BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR.CAPTIVITY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. EXPOSTULATIONS AGAINST THE BLINDNESS OF THE JEWS. FURTHER PROTEST AGAINST AN EGYPTIAN ALLIANCE, AND EXHORTATIONS TO SEEK SECURITY IN RELIANCE ON JEHOVAH.- FUTURE VIRTUE AND PROSPERITY OF THE PEOPLE. TRIUMPH OVER THE DISCOMFITURE OF THE ASSYRIAN ARMY. -CALAMITIES OF THE EDOMITES, AND GLORY OF GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE. HISTORICAL PASSAGE IDENTICAL WITH ONE IN THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS, AND EMBRACING TWO POEMS. THE first division of that portion of the book of Isaiah to which we next proceed comprehends eleven chapters, and is mostly composed of poems and fragments denouncing calamities against foreign nations known to the Jews, as Babylon, Assyria, Philistia, Moab, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Idumæa, Arabia, and Tyre. A few passages are interspersed relating to Jewish affairs. It does not appear what principle of arrangement, if any, was followed in making up the collection. It is miscellaneous and disjointed, without any chronological or other order, which can now be discerned. The thirteenth and fourteenth chapters have furnished a remarkable example of the presumptuous facility with which, in Scriptural interpretation, conclusions the most important are deduced from the most insufficient premises. These chapters contain a denunciation of the wrath of Jehovah against the im pious kingdom of Babylon, to be expressed in the usual ways of national disaster and ruin; and for the instrument of its overthrow is specified the rising power of the Medes. In the course of time, Babylon was besieged and taken by a Median and Persian army, as Nineveh had been taken before by the Medes and Babylonians, and as both cities have been taken by other forces in later, and, no doubt, in earlier, ages. Building on this superstructure, Mr. Horne * expa. tiates on the "punctual fulfilment" of a prophecy "probably delivered in the reign of Ahaz, about two hundred years before its accomplishment"; and the same has been the strain of remark of all the English and of most other commentators. 1. But before we can reasonably rest in such a conclusion, we must have some satisfactory evidence, at least, that this passage was written by Isaiah. And such evidence is not to be had. External proof there is none. We have no historical knowledge of the sources whence the various compositions and fragments, collected at last in this book, were derived. And, unless this statement can be disproved, there is no good foundation for the momentous inference which has been drawn from the assumption of their being "Introduction," &c., Vol. II. p. 254. all genuine productions of Isaiah. But there is also some evidence-more or less weighty, as different persons will consider it on the other side. Critics have remarked a difference between the general tone and style of the chapters under our notice, and those of the undisputed writings of Isaiah contained in the first twelve chapters, and described in the inscription at the beginning of the first chapter, as his prophecies concerning Judah and Jerusalem." They have also pointed out a difference in various single words and phrases commonly used in one and the other in corresponding connections, and forms of language betraying a later age than that assigned to the prophet.* 66 2. But if we remain of the opinion that this poem was probably written, not after the taking of Babylon by Cyrus, but between one and two centuries before, it will be a very unsafe conclusion, that its author possessed a supernatural knowledge of distant future events. He seems to threaten Babylon with an overthrow by the Medes. Who shall say that this was not in Isaiah's time an event sufficiently likely to take place (and likely to take place even earlier than in fact it did), to justify his menace of it when speak ing of the retribution which a just God could not but have in store for "the haughtiness of the tyrants"? Who knows enough of the political relations of the time, to deny that the rising power of the Medes was just the instrument by which a sagacious observer would have said that the insolent pride of Babylon was doomed ultimately to be put down? To this the commentators reply, that "in the age of Isaiah there was no Chaldean monarchy, nor were the Medes and Elamites, who are predicted to be the destroyers of * For specimens, the reader is referred to Gesenius's "Commentar uber den Isaia,” Vol. II. pp. 448 et seq., and Knobel, "Der Prophet Isaia," p. 89. |