Chap. xxviii. brings us back to the times of Hezekiah, and Isaiah, the son of Amoz, threatening deeper and deeper woe to Ephraim. Chap. xxix. is a "woe to Ariel" (Lion-of-God), that is, Jerusalem, "the city where David dwelt." The threats of siege are mixed, however, with hope of reformation and deliverance. Chapters xxx. and xxxi. denounce woe upon those who trust in alliance with Egypt (to which many of the Jews were looking hopefully), repeating the promise that the Assyrian shall be beaten down by the rod of God. Chap. xxxii., beginning, "Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment,' represents in a vague and indefinite manner the ideal, or "Messianic," Judaism. Chap. xxxiii. denounces the Assyrians, now evidently invading Judah, if not already besieging Jerusalem. Chapters xxxiv. and xxxv. denounce desolation against Edom, and promise restoration to the faithful, dwelling on the hope of a purer Judaism. This section is by some referred to a later author. Ch. xxxvi. to xxxix. inclusive contain the history of the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib, almost word for word the same as in the book of Kings (2 Kings xviii. -xx.), with the addition of " the writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when he had been sick and was recovered from his sickness" (xxxviii. 9-20). It is a noble hymn of gratitude. Whether this section was transcribed from the book of Kings by Isaiah, or by a later publisher of his prophecies, must be left to the critics to conjecture. It seems to have formed the conclusion of the book of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, if we are right in ascribing the rest to a later Isaiah. Chapters xl. to lxvi., that is to say, the rest of the book, relates altogether and pretty continuously to the Babylonian period;-to the condition of the Jews in Babylon, to the approaching fall of that proud state, and the restoration of the captives to their own land by order of Cyrus the Persian, who is mentioned by name. Now the final captivity occurred B. C. 588, that is 111 years after the death of Hezekiah; and the restoration of the Jews by Cyrus began in 536, or 52 years later still. Are we then to suppose that Isaiah, after so distinctly noticing all the events of his own time, passed over the whole ensuing history of the kingdom of Judah during those hundred years and more, through the reigns of Manasseh, Amon, Josiah; not to mention the short ones of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah; -that, after watching the fates of the neighbouring kingdom of Samaria to its fall, and moralizing grandly upon it, he has not a word to say of the progress of the events which will ultimately lead to the captivity of his own country;—that he passes over the world's great drama of the next hundred years, has not a word about the fall of Assyria and the rise of Babylon; but all at once, breaking through the unities of time and place, assumes the captivity of Judah in Babylon as completed, and, without any preparation, opens a new message, unintelligible to his own day, though blessed indeed to the ears of a generation then unborn: "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God! Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her: That her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; That she shall receive of the LORD's hand, [Blessings] double to the punishment of all her sins." This is the opening of the fortieth chapter and the key-note to the rest of the book. And on these plain internal marks, which every reader can appreciate, as well as for more critical reasons which we may leave with the learned, we may surely accept the general opinion of those best competent to judge, and consider the rest of the book of Isaiah, with a few previous portions referring to Babylon, as the work of a later prophet who lived during the captivity and the return,—a prophet probably of the same name, certainly of kindred genius, whom we may call "the second Isaiah." We shall therefore reserve the remainder of this book; and place it, where it chronologically suits, among the prophets of the captivity and return; meanwhile opening the prophecies of an undoubted contemporary of Isaiah Ben-Amoz, namely Micah. МІСАН. (Between B. C. 759 and 699.) MICAH, according to the introduction to his book, prophesied "in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah," whose reigns together reached from 759 to 699. He was of Mareshah, in the tribe of Judah; and this is all we know of him. Contemporary with Isaiah, his general topics are similar, if not identical, and his style of thought and expression, in some parts at least, scarcely inferior in power, beauty or tenderness. The prophecies before us are generally thought to belong chiefly to the reign of Hezekiah, the last of the three reigns to which the title limits them. They concern both "Samaria and Jerusalem." Some of them plainly belong to the period when the Assyrian king Shalmanezer is threatening Samaria, about the fourth year of Hezekiah; and others, almost as plainly, to his four teenth year, when Sennacherib is ravaging Judah and about to besiege Jerusalem. The book opens thus: "Hear, O ye people, all of you; Hearken, O land, and all that therein is; And let the LORD God be witness against you, The LORD from his holy temple. For behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, And will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall be molten under him, And the valleys shall be cleft; As wax before the fire, As waters poured down a steep place. For the transgression of Jacob is all this, And for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? Therefore I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, And I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, Not only idolatry, but wickedness and corruption of all kinds are denounced, in the highest strain of moralist and poet. Oppressive rulers and false prophets are strongly reprobated: "Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, And princes of the house of Israel, That abhor judgment and pervert all equity, Who build up Zion with blood, And Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, And the priests thereof teach for hire, And the prophets thereof divine for money. Yet will they lean upon the LORD and say, Therefore shall Zion, because of you, be ploughed as a field, And Jerusalem shall become heaps, And the mountain of the house as the high places of the (iii. 9-12.) forest." And then follows that striking prediction of "the latter days" which Micah has, in common with Isaiah, with little variation: "But it shall come to pass in the latter days That the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be esta(See Isaiah, p. 428.) blished," &c. It seems at first sight, that the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians might be predicted in the words, "Zion shall be ploughed," &c.; and then the annexed prophecy would seem naturally to denote the restoration under Zerubbabel after the seventy years' captivity. But perhaps the former should be taken rather as a warning of danger than as an absolute prediction of ruin, and the latter as expressing, here as in Isaiah, the ideal Judaism of the vague future, rather than the specific description of the return from exile. It will be observed, however, that it is presently afterwards said (ver. 10) that the daughter of Zion (i. e. the people of Zion) shall go even to Babylon and be rescued thence. It also seems plain from the next chapter (v. 5, 6) that by "the Assyrian" the same enemy is meant, and from him Zion is to be delivered "when he cometh into our land and when he treadeth within our borders." This quite agrees with the most probable account of that difficult and obscure part of history, the mutual relations of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. To the Jews they were, at this time, as one and the same people to all intents and purposes; and perhaps they were nearly so in reality; and the ascendancy of Nineveh at one time and Babylon |