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[FOOTNOTES:]
[1] Chs. i., ii., etc. The only title that could be offered as covering the whole book is that in ch. i., ver. 1: 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. But this manifestly cannot apply to any but the earlier chapters, of which Judah and Jerusalem are indeed the subjects.
[2] There are, it will be remembered, certain narratives in the Book of Isaiah, which are not by the prophet. They speak of him in the third person (chs. vii., xxxvi.-xxxix.), while in other narratives (chs. vi. and viii.) he speaks of himself in the first person. Their presence is sufficient proof that the Book of Isaiah, in its extant shape, did not come from Isaiah's hands, but was compiled by others.
[3] Matt. iii. 3, viii. 17, xii. 17; Luke iii. 4, iv. 17; John i. 23, xii. 38; Acts viii. 28; Rom. x. 16-20.
[4] Driver's Isaiah, pp. 137, 139.
[5] Psalm cxxi.
[6] Driver's Isaiah: His Life and Times, p. 191.
[7] Calvin on Isa. lv. 3.
[8] So quoted by Driver (Isaiah, etc., p. 200), from the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1879, p. 339.
[10] Professor Briggs' Messianic Prophecy, 339 ff.
[11] Ewald is very strong on this.
[12] Including Professor Cheyne, Encyc. Britann., article "Isaiah."
[13] According to the arrangement given in the Talmud (Baba bathra, f. 14, col. 2): "Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the Twelve." Cf. Bleek, Introduction to Old Testament, on Isaiah; Orelli's Isaiah, Eng. ed., p. 214.
[14] Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in Jewish Church, 109.
[15] It is the theory of some, that although Isa. xl.-lxvi. dates as a whole from the Exile, there are passages in it by Isaiah himself, or in his style by pupils of his (Klostermann in Herzog's Encyclopædia and Bredenkamp in his Commentary). But this, while possible, is beyond proof.
[16] The figure actually mentioned in 2 Kings xxiv. 14, but, as Stade points out (Geschichte, p. 680), vv. 14, 15 interrupt the narrative, and may have been intruded here from the account of the later captivity.
[17] See vol. i., p. 100 f.
[18] Jer. xlv.
[19] This is especially clear from ch. xxxi.
[20] Having read through the Book of Jeremiah once again since I wrote the above paragraph, I am more than ever impressed with the influence of his life upon Isa. xl.-lxvi.
[21] Psalm cii. 14.
[22] Isa. xlix. 16.
[23] If we would construct for ourselves some more definite idea of that long march from Judah to Babylon, we might assist our imagination by the details of the only other instance on so great a scale of "exile by administrative process"—the transportation to Siberia which the Russian Government effects (it is said, on good authority) to the extent of eighteen thousand persons a year. Every week throughout the year marching parties, three to four hundred strong, leave Tomsk for Irkutsk, doing twelve to twenty miles daily in fetters, with twenty-four hours' rest every third day, or three hundred and thirty miles in a month (Century Magazine, Nov. 1888).
[24] For the above details, see Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, vol. i.
[25] Herodotus, Bk. I.; "Memoirs by Commander James Felix Jones, I. N.," in Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No. XLIII., New Series, 1857; Ainsworth's Euphrates Valley Expedition; Layard's Nineveh.
[26] Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art d'Antiquité, vol. ii.; Assyrie p. 9.
[27] The Book of Daniel.
[28] Isa. xlii. 22, xlvii. 6.
[29] Records of the Past, second series, vol. i., M. Oppert's Translations.
[30] Mr. St. Chad Boscawen's recent lectures, of which I have been able to see only the reports in the Manchester Guardian.
[31] Ch. lviii. 2.
[32] Ch. lviii. 13, 14.
[33] See vol. i., p. 292 ff.
[34] Jer. xxix.
[35] Records of the Past, first series, ix., 95 seq.
[37] From the sequence of the voices, it would seem that we had in ch. xl. not a mere collection of anonymous prophecies arranged by an editor, but one complete prophecy by the author of most of Isa. xl.-lxvi., set in the dramatic form which obtains through the other chapters.
[38] Every one who appreciates the music of the original will agree how incomparably Handel has interpreted it in those pulses of music with which his Messiah opens.
[39] See ch. liv., where this figure is developed with great beauty.
[40] Lev. xxvii.
[41] The technical word to preach or proclaim.
[42] See xl. 21, Have ye not known?
[43] That is in the sense, in which our prophet uses the word, of salvation. See Ch. [XIV]. of this volume.
[44] Some intention of division undoubtedly appears. Notice the double refrain, To whom will ye liken, etc., of vv. 18 and 25; and then at equal distance from either occurrence of this challenge the appeal, Dost thou not know, etc., vv. 21 and 28. But though these signs of a strict division appear, the rest is submerged by the strong flood of feeling which rushes too deep and rapid for any hard-and-fast embankments.
[46] If an idol leant over or fell that was the very worst of omens; cf. the case of Dagon.
[47] When John Knox was a prisoner in France, "the officers brought to him a painted board, which they called Our Lady, and commanded him to kiss it. They violently thrust it into his face, and put it betwixt his hands, who, seeing the extremity, took the idol, and advisedly looking about, he cast it into the river, and said, 'Let Our Lady now save herself; she is light enough; let her learn to swim!' After that was no Scotsman urged with that idolatry."—Knox, History of the Reformation.
[48] Psalm cxlvii.
[49] Media simply means "the country." It is supposed, that of the six Median tribes only one was Aryan, holding the rest, which were Turanian, under its influence.
[50] There were, besides, a few small independent powers in Asia Minor, such as Cilicia, whose prince also intervened at the Battle of the Eclipse; and the Ionian cities in the west. But all these, with perhaps the exception of Lycia, were brought into subjection to Lydia by Crœsus, son of Alyattis.
[51] Vol. i., p. 92.
[52] Other passages are: xli. 5, Isles saw and feared, the ends of the earth trembled; xlii. 10, The sea and its fulness, Isles and their dwellers; lix. 18, He will repay, fury to His adversaries, recompence to His enemies: to the Isles He will repay recompence; lxvi. 19, The nations, Tarshish, Pul, Lud, drawers of the bow, Tubal, Javan, the Isles afar off that have not heard my fame. The Hebrew is אי 'î, and is supposed to be from a root אוה awah, to inhabit, which sense, however, never attaches to the verb in Hebrew, but is borrowed from the cognate Arabic word.
[53] Of the Philistine coast, Isa. xx. 6; of the Tyrian coast, Isa. xxiii. 2, 6; of Greece, Ezek. xxvii. 7; of Crete, Jer. xlvii. 4; of the islands of the sea, Isa. xi. 11 and Esther x. 1.
[54] xlii. 15: Eng. version, I will turn rivers into islands.
[55] Anabasis 2, 4.
[56] There were two branches of the Persian royal family after Teispes, the son of Akhæmenes, the founder. Teispes annexed Anshan on the level land between the north-east corner of the Persian Gulf and the mountains of Persia. Teispes' eldest son, Cyrus I., became king of Anshan; his other, Ariaramnes, king of Persia. These were succeeded by their sons, Kambyses I. and Arsames. Kambyses I. was the father of Cyrus II., the great Cyrus, who rejoined Persia to Anshan, to the exclusion of his second cousin, Hystaspes. Cyrus the Great was succeeded by his son, Kambyses II., with whom the Anshan line closed, and the power was transferred to Darius, son of Hystaspes. Cf. Ragozin's Media, in the "Story of the Nations" series.
[57] Halévy, "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil," Études Juives, I.
[58] Inscription of Nabunahid.
[59] Herodotus, Book I.
[60] Herodotus explains this by his legend of Cyrus' birth, according to which Cyrus was a hybrid—half Persian, half Mede.
[61] Herodotus, Book I.
[62] Sir Edward Strachey.
[63] Lit. from the head, "da capo." I am not sure, however, that it does not rather mean beforehand, like our on ahead.
[65] This seems to me to be more likely to be the meaning of the prophet, than the absolute from the beginning. It suits its parallel beforehand, and it is more in line with the general demand of the chapter for anticipation of events. It is literally from the head, "da capo," cf. p. [117].
[66] ראשנות r'ishonôth is a relative term, meaning head things, things ahead, first things, prior things, whether in rank or time. Here of course the time meaning is undoubted. But ahead of what? prior to what?—this is the difficulty. Ewald, Hitzig, A. B. Davidson, Driver, etc., take it as prior to the standpoint of the speaker; things that happened or were uttered previous to him,—a sense in which the word is used in subsequent chapters. But Delitzsch, Hahn, Cheyne, etc., take it to be things prior to other things that will happen in the later future, early events, as opposed to הבאות of the next clause, which they take to mean subsequent things, things that are to come afterwards. I think Dr. Davidson's reasons (see Expositor, second series, vol. vii., p. 256) are quite conclusive against this view of Delitzsch, that in this clause the idols are being asked to predict events in the near future. It is difficult, as he says, to see why the idols should be given a choice between the earlier and the later future: nor does the הבאות of the contrasted clause at all suggest a later future; it simply means things coming, a term which is as applicable to the near as to the far future. Nevertheless, I am not persuaded that Dr. Davidson's own view of r'ishonôth is the correct one. The rest of the context (see above) is occupied with predictions of the future only. And r'ishonôth does not necessarily mean previous predictions, although used in this sense in the subsequent chapters. It simply means, as we have seen, head things, things ahead, things beforehand, or fountain-things, origins, causes. That we are to understand it here in some such general and absolute sense is suggested, I think, by the word אחריתן which follows it, their result or issue, and is confirmed by ראשן, r'ishôn (masc. singular) of ver. 27, which is undoubtedly used in a general sense, meaning something or somebody on ahead, an anticipator, predicter, forerunner (as Cheyne gives it), or as I have rendered it above, neuter, a prediction. If r'ishôn in ver. 27 means a thing or a man given beforehand, then r'ishonôth in ver. 22 may also mean things given beforehand, predictions made now, or at least things selected and announced as causes now, whose issue, אחריתן, may be recognised in the future. In a word, r'ishonôth would mean things not necessarily previous to the speech in which they were allowed, but simply things previous to certain results, or anticipating certain events, either as their prediction or as their cause.
[67] Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, English translation, i., 51.
[68] Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Bk. V., ch. iv., and by Eusebius, Præp. Evang. xiii., 13.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Quoted by Ueberweg, as above.
[71] Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion: Contents of the Religious Consciousness, ch. i. (Eng. trans., vol. iii., p. 291).
[72] See further on the subject the chapter on the Righteousness of Israel and of God, Chapter [XIV]. of this volume.
[73] And that which runs: ... he is come, from the rising of the sun he calleth upon My name (Bredenkamp) is wrong.
[74] The former of these in ch. lxiv. 7; the latter in xliv. 5.
[75] Translation of the Cyrus-cylinder in "Cyrus et le Retour de l'Exil," by Halévy, Revue des Études Juives, No. 1, 1880.
[76] Ezra i. 2; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23.
[77] אקרא בשמו for יקֹרא בשמי.
[78] See [Introduction].
[79] So the grammar of the original.
[80] Vol. i., pp. 144, 334.
[81] Isa. xxxi.
[82] Hosea xi. 9.
[83] Ch. lv. 8, 9.
[84] Ibid. ver. 11.
[85] From to-day on, Ez. xlviii. 35; but others take it Also to-day I am He.
[86] Renan's theory of the "natural monotheism" of the Semites was first published in his Histoire des Langues Semitiques some forty years ago. Nearly every Semitic scholar of repute found some occasion or other to refute it. But with Renan's charming genius for neglecting all facts that disturb an artistic arrangement of his subject, the overwhelming evidence against the natural monotheism of the Semite has been ignored by him, and he repeats his theory unmodified in his Histoire du Peuple d'Israel, i., 31, published 1888.
[87] Literally witnesses—i.e., of the idols.
[88] This word is wanting in the text, which is corrupt here. Some supply the word sharpeneth, imagining that חדד has fallen away from the beginning of the verse, through confusion with the יחד which ends the previous verse; or they bring יחד itself, changing it to חדד. But evidently חרשׁ ברזל begins the verse; cf. the parallel חרשׁ עצים which begins ver. 13.
[89] Here, again, the text is uncertain. With some critics I have borrowed for this verse the first three words of the following verse.
[90] Perhaps feeder on ashes.
[91] Chs. xliii. 25; xliv. 21, 22; xlv. 17.
[92] See ch. [xiv]. of this volume.
[93] Identified by Delitzsch as East, Halévy as West, and Winckler as North, Elam. Cyrus, though reigning here, was a pure Persian, an Akhæmenid or son of the royal house of Persia.
[94] The parallel which Professor Sayce (Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, p. 147) draws between the statement of the Cyrus-cylinder, that Cyrus "governed in justice and righteousness, and was righteous in hand and heart," and Isa. xlv. 13, "Jehovah raised him up in righteousness," is therefore utterly unreal. It is very difficult to see how the Deputy-Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford could have been reminded of the one passage by the other, for in Isa. xlv. 13 righteousness neither is used of Cyrus, nor signifies the moral virtue which it does on the cylinder.
[96] The following are extracts from the Cylinder of Cyrus (see Sayce's Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, pp. 138-140):—"Cyrus, king of Elam, he (Merodach) proclaimed by name for the sovereignty.... Whom he had conquered with his hand, he governed in justice and righteousness. Merodach, the great lord, the restorer of his people, beheld with joy the deeds of his vicegerent, who was righteous in hand and heart. To Babylon he summoned his march, and he bade him take the road to Babylon; like a friend and a comrade he went at his side. Without fighting or battle he caused him to enter into Babylon, his city of Babylon feared. The god ... has in goodness drawn nigh to him, has made strong his name. I Cyrus ... I entered Babylon in peace.... Merodach the great lord (cheered) the heart of his servant.... My vast armies he marshalled peacefully in the midst of Babylon; throughout Sumer and Accad I had no revilers.... Accad, Marad, etc., I restored the gods who dwelt within them to their places ... all their peoples I assembled and I restored their lands. And the gods of Sumer and Accad whom Nabonidos, to the anger of the lord of gods (Merodach), had brought into Babylon, I settled in peace in their sanctuaries by command of Merodach, the great lord. In the goodness of their hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should grant me length of days; may they bless my projects with prosperity, and may they say to Merodach my lord, that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and Kambyses his son (deserve his favour)."
[97] Why so sovereign a God should be in such peculiar relations with one people, we will try to see in ch. [xv]. of this volume.
[98] Earth here without the article, but plainly the earth, and not the land of Judah.
[99] Cf. with this Hebrew word צלח the Greek προκοπτειν, to beat or cut a way through like pioneers; then to forward a work, advance, prosper (Luke ii. 52; Gal. i. 14; 2 Tim. ii. 16).
[100] Cyropædia, Book VIII., ch. vii., 6.
[101] Crouches, Kara`; cowers, Kores.
[102] Bredenkamp.
[103] Sayce, Fresh Light, etc., p. 140.
[105] There is a play on the words 'anî `asîthî, wa'anî, 'essā'—I have made, and I will aid.
[106] Lam. v. 7.
[107] Ver. 4, second clause, and vii.
[108] Cf. Doughty, Arabia Deserta.
[109] The Turanians, who occupied Mesopotamia before the Semitic invasion, were the first builders of cities.
[110] Babylon, as far as we can learn, first rose to power about the time of that Amraphel who fought in the Mesopotamian league against the neighbours and friends of Abraham. Amraphel is supposed to have been the father of Hammurabis, who first made Babylon the capital of Chaldea. It scarcely ever again ceased to be such; but it was not till the fall of Assyria, about 625 b.c., and the rebuilding of Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar (604-561), that the city's second and greatest glory began.
[111] See ch. iv., pp. [53]-[56.]
[112] Vol. i., pp. 409-315.
[113] Vol. i., pp. 275, 286, 294.
[114] See especially Satires III. and VI., and cf. Bagehot's Physics and Politics.
[115] Rev. xvii., xviii.
[116] Ch. xlv.
[117] Bredenkamp will have it, that the prophet here mentions first Northern Israel and then Judah: O House of Jacob, the general term, both those that are called by the name of Israel, and that have come forth from the waters of Judah. But this is entirely opposed to the syntax, and I note the opinion simply to show how precarious the arguments are for the existence of pre-exilic elements in Isa. xl.-xlviii. The point, which Bredenkamp makes by his rendering of this verse, is that it could only be a pre-exilic prophet, who would distinguish between Judah and Northern Israel; and that, therefore, it might be Isaiah himself who wrote the verse!
[118] Former things (ri'shonôth). It is impossible to determine whether these mean predictions which Jehovah published long ago, and which have already come to pass, or former events which He foretold long ago, and which have happened as He said they would. The distinction, however, is immaterial.
[119] Literally, also. But נם, a cumulative conjunction, when it is introduced to repeat the same thought as preceded it, means yea, truly, profecto, imo.
[120] Ch. xxv., which is undoubtedly an authentic prophecy of Jeremiah.
[121] The Hebrew has not the words My Name. The LXX. has them.
[122] A second time without article though applied to the whole world.
[123] Giesebrecht takes this as an actual quotation from some former prophet: a specimen of the ancient prophecies which Jehovah sent to Israel, and which were now being fulfilled. At least it is the sum of what Jehovah's prophets had often predicted.
[124] This very difficult verse has been attributed either to Jehovah in the first three clauses and to the Servant in the fourth (Delitzsch); or in the same proportion to Jehovah and the prophet (Cheyne and Bredenkamp); or to the Servant all through (Orelli); or to the prophet all through (Hitzig, Knobel, Giesebrecht. See the latter's Beiträge zur Kritik Jesaia's, p. 136). It is a subtle matter. The present expositor thinks it clear that all four clauses must be understood as the voice of one speaker, but sees nothing in them to decide finally whether that speaker is the Servant, the people Israel, in which case I am there would have reference to Israel's consciousness of every deed done by God since the beginning of their history (cf. ver. 6a); or whether the speaker is the prophet, in which case I am there would mean that he had watched the rise of Cyrus from the first. But cf. Zech. ii. 10-11, Eng. Ver., and iv. 9.
[125] Or like its bowels, referring to the sea.
[126] It is only by confining his review of the word to its applications to God, and overlooking the passages which attribute it to the people, that Krüger, Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi., can affirm that the prophet holds throughout to a single idea of righteousness (p. 36). On this, as on many other points, it is Calvin's treatment, that is most sympathetic to the variations of the original.
[127] In Arabic the cognate word is applied to a lance, but this may mean a sound or fit lance as well as a straight one. "Originem Schult. de defect. hodiernis § 214-224 ponit in rigore, duritia, coll.
lancea dura, al. aequabilis" (Gesenii Thesaurus, art. צדק).
[128] It is not certain whether righteousness is here used in a physical sense; and in all other cases in which the root is applied in the Old Testament to material objects, it is plainly employed in some reflection of its moral sense, e.g., just weights, just balance, Lev. xix. 36.
[129] "Der Zustand welcher der Norm entspricht." Schultz, Alt. Test. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 540, n. 1.
[130] Cf. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 388, and Kautzsch's paper, which is there quoted.
[131] "Die Begriffe צדקה und צדק ... bedeuten nun wirklich bei Amos mehr als die juristische Gerechtigkeit. Indirect gehen die Forderungen des Amos über die blos rechtliche Sphäre hinaus" (Duhm, Theologie der Propheten, p. 115).
[132] Gen. xxxviii. 26. Cf. 2 Sam. xv. 4.
[133] The first chapter of Isaiah is a perfect summary of these two.
[134] But the verb to make righteous or justify is used in a sense akin to the New Testament sense in liii. 11. See our chapter on that prophecy.
[135] At first sight this is remarkably like the cognate Arabic root, which is continually used for truthful. But the Hebrew word never meant truthful in the moral sense of truth, and here is right or correct.
[136] Earth again without article, though obviously referring to the world.
[137] Sense doubtful here. Bredenkamp translates by a slight change of reading: Only speaking by Jehovah: Fulness of righteousness and might come to Him, and ashamed, etc.
[138] צדק, the masculine, is used sixteen times; צדקה, twenty-four. Both are used of Jehovah: xlii. 21 צדקו, and lix. 16 צדקתו. Both of His speech: masc. in xlv. 19, fem. in xlv. 23 and lxiii. 1. Perhaps the passage in which their identity is most plain is li. 5, 6, where they are both parallel to salvation: ver. 5, My righteousness (m.) is near; ver. 6, My righteousness (f.) shall not be abolished. Both are used of the people's duty: lix. 4, None sueth in righteousness (m.); xlviii. 1, But not in truth nor in righteousness (f.); lvi. 1, Keep justice and do righteousness (f.) And both are used of the people's saved and glorious condition: lviii. 8, Thy righteousness (m.) shall go before thee; lxii. 1, Until her righteousness (m.) go forth as brightness; xlviii. 18, Thy righteousness (f.) as the waves of the sea; liv. 17, Their righteousness (f.) which is of Me. Both are used with prepositions (cf. xlii. 6 with xlviii. 1), and both with possessive pronouns. In fact, there is absolutely no difference made between the two.
[139] Wellhausen.
[140] "Revelation is never revolutionary.... As a rule, revelation accepts the fragments of truth and adopts the methods of religion already existing, uniting the former into a whole, and purifying the latter for its own purposes."... For instance, "in the East each people had its particular god. The god and the people were correlative ideas, that which gave the individuals of a nation unity and made them a people was the unity of its god; as, on the other hand, that which gave a god prestige was the strength and victorious career of his people. The self-consciousness of the nation and its religion re-acted on one another, and rose and fell simultaneously. This conception was not repudiated, but adopted by revelation; and, as occasion demanded, purified from its natural abuses."—Professor A. B. Davidson, Expositor, Second Series, vol. viii., pp. 257-8.
[141] Mr. Doughty, in his most interesting account of the nomads of Central Arabia, the unsophisticated Semites on their native soil, furnishes ample material for accounting for the strange mixture of passion and resignation in these prophet-peoples of the world.
[142] Ch. xlix. 2.
[143] Jer. xxx. 10, cf. xlvi. 27; also Ezek. xxxvii. 25: And they shall dwell in the land that I have given My servant Jacob. Cf. xxviii. 25.
[144] xliv. 1, 21; xlviii. 20, etc.
[145] Ch. li. 9, 10.
[146] Ch. xliii. 14.
[147] Ib. 3, 4.
[148] Robertson Smith, Burnett Lectures in Aberdeen, 1889-90.
[149] A king's courtiers, soldiers, or subjects are called his servants. In this sense Israel was often styled the servants of Jehovah, as in Deut. xxxii. 36; Neh. i. 10, where the phrase is parallel to His people. But Jehovah's servants is a phrase also parallel to His worshippers (Psalm cxxxiv. 1, etc.); to those who trust Him (Psalm xxxiv. 22); and to those who love His name (Psalm lxix. 36). The term is also applied in the plural to the prophets (Amos iii. 7); and in the singular, to eminent individuals—such as Abraham, Joshua, David and Job; also by Jeremiah to the alien Nebuchadrezzar, while engaged on his mission from God against Jerusalem.
[151] The definite article is not used here with the word people, and hence the phrase has been taken by some in the vaguer sense of a people's covenant, as a general expression, along with its parallel clause, of the kind of influence the Servant was to exert, not on Israel, but on any people in the world; he was to be a people's covenant, and a light for nations. So practically Schultz, A. T. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 284. But the Hebrew word for people עם is often used without the article to express the people Israel, just as the Hebrew word for land ארץ is often used without the article to express the land of Judah. (הארץ with the article, is in Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Earth.) And in ch. xlix. the phrase a covenant of the people again occurs, and in a context in which it can only mean a covenant of the people, Israel. Some render ברית עם a covenant people. But in xlix. 8 this is plainly an impossible rendering.
[152] Meshullam is found as a proper name in the historical books of the Old Testament, especially Nehemiah, e.g., iii. 4, 6, 30.
[153] Hosea xi. 1; Matt. ii. 15
[154] Of all the expressions used of him the only one which shows a real tendency to a plural reference is in his deaths (ver. 9), and even it (if it is the correct reading) is quite capable of application to an individual who suffered such manifold martyrdom as is set forth in the passage.
[155] Not one word in them betrays any sense of a body of men or an ideal people standing behind them, which sense surely some expression would have betrayed, if it had been in the prophet's mind.
[156] A. B. D., in a review of the last edition of Delitzsch's Isaiah, in the Theol. Review, iv., p. 276.
[157] Isaiah I. i.-xxxix., pp. [134], [135].
[159] See ch. [ii]. of this volume.
[160] Cf. The Jewish Interpreters on Isa. liii., Driver and Neubauer, Oxford, 1877. Abravanel, who himself takes ch. liii. in a national sense, admits, after giving the Christian interpretation, that "in fact Jonathan ben Uziel, 'the Targumist,' applied it to the Messiah, who was still to come, and this is likewise the opinion of the wise in many of their Midrashim." And R. Moscheh al Shech, of the sixteenth century, says: "See, our masters have with one voice held as established and handed down, that here it is King Messiah who is spoken of." (Both these passages quoted by Bredenkamp in his commentary, p. 307.)
[161] Isa. lix. 5.
[162] Id. vi. 13; ix. 18; x. 17, 34; xlvii. 14.
[163] Id. xxi. 10; xxviii. 27; xl. 24; xli. 15 ff.
[164] Id. i. 31; xlvii. 14.
[165] Isa. lviii. 7.
[166] Undoubtedly taken from Isa. liii.
[167] Cf. with the Greek version of Isa. l. 4-7, Luke xviii. 31, 32; Matt. xxvi. 67.
[168] In Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Septuagint translates the Hebrew for Servant by one or other of two words—παις and δουλος. Παις is used in xli. 8; xlii. 1; xliv. 1 ff.; xliv. 21; xlv. 4; xlix. 6; l. 10; lii. 13. But δουλος is used in xlviii. 20; xlix. 3 and 5. In the Acts it is παις that is used of Christ: "An apostle is never called παις (but only δουλος) Θεου" (Meyer). But David is called παις (Acts iv. 25).
[169] Acts iii. 13, 26; iv. 27-30.
[170] Acts iii. 14; vii. 52.
[171] Acts viii. 30 ff.
[172] 1 Peter i. 19; ii. 22, 23; iii. 18.
[173] Rom. xv. 20 f.; 2 Cor. v. 21.
[174] Acts xiii. 47, after Isa. xlix. 6.
[175] Isa. l. 8, and Rom. viii. 33, 34.
[176] 2 Tim. ii. 24. We may note, also, how Paul in Eph. vi. takes the armour with which God is clothed in Isa. lix. 17, breastplate and helmet, and equips the individual Christian with them; and how, in the same passage, he takes for the Christian from Isa. xl. the Messiah's girdle of truth and the sword of the Spirit,—he shall smite the land with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.
[177] The English equivalent is, nor is loud.
[178] This time with the article, so not the land of Judah only, but the Earth.
[179] Bax, Religion of Socialism.
[180] This time "arets" with the article. So not the land of Judah only but the world.
[181] The following are the four main meanings of "mishpat" in Isa. xl.-lxvi.: 1. In a general sense, a legal process, xli. 1, let us come together to the judgement, or the law (with the article), cf. l. 8, man of my judgement, i.e., my fellow-at-law, my adversary; liii. 8, oppression and judgement, i.e., a judgement which was oppressive, a legal injustice. 2. A person's cause or right, xl. 27, xlix. 4. 3. Ordinance instituted by Jehovah for the life and worship of His people, lviii. 2, ordinances of righteousness, i.e., either canonical laws, or ordinances by observing which the people would make themselves righteous. 4. In general, the sum of the laws given by Jehovah to Israel, the Law, lviii. 2, Law of their God; li. 4, Jehovah says My Law (Rev. Ver. judgement), parallel to "Torah" or Revelation (Rev. Ver. law). Then absolutely, without the article or Jehovah's name attached, xlii. 1, 3, 4. In lvi. 1 parallel to righteousness; lix. 14 parallel to righteousness, truth and uprightness. In fact, in this last use, while represented as equivalent to civic morality, it is this, not as viewed in its character, right, upright, but in its obligation as ordained by God: morality as His Law. The absence of the article may either mean what it means in the case of people and land, i.e., the Law, too much of a proper name to need the article, or it may be an attempt to abstract the quality of the Law; and if so mishpat is equal to justice.
[182] Expositor, second series, vol. viii., p. 364.
[183] This might, of course, only mean what the Servant had to do for his captive countrymen. But coming as it does after the light of nations, it seems natural to take it in its wider and more spiritual sense.
[184] See ch. [xv]. of this volume.
[185] Expositor, second series, viii., pp. 364, 365, 366.
[186] Ibid., p. 366.
[187] This, of course, goes against Prof. Briggs's theory of the composition of Isa. xl.-lxvi. out of two poems (see p. [18]).
[188] This line is full of the letter m.
[189] This is as the text is written; but the Massoretic reading gives, that Israel to Him may be gathered.
[190] So it seems best to give the sense of this difficult line, but most translators render despised of soul, or thoroughly despised, abhorred by peoples, or by a people, etc. The word for despised is used elsewhere only in ch. liii. 3.
[191] Prof. A. B. Davidson, Expositor, Second Series, viii., 441.
[192] Page 68.
[193] So George Eliot wrote of her own writings shortly before her death. See Life, iii., 245.
[194] Lady Ponsonby, to whom George Eliot wrote the letter quoted above, confessed that, with the disappearance of religious faith from her soul, there vanished also the power of interest in, and of pity for, her kind.
[195] Jer. i. 5.
[196] See vol. i., p. 70.
[198] How all their meanness, how all the sense of shame from which He suffered, breaks forth in these words: Are ye come out as against a robber?
[199] Literally, lord of my cause; my adversary or opponent at law.
[200] Epistle to the Romans, viii., 31 ff.
[201] Though Cheyne takes His Servant in ver. 10 to be, not the Servant, but the prophet.
[202] Kindlers of fire is the literal rendering. But the word is not the common word to kindle, and is here used of wanton fireraising.
[203] Thus Ewald supposed ch. lii. 13-liii. to be an elegy upon some martyr in the persecutions under Manasseh. Professor Briggs, as we have noticed before, claims to have discovered that all the passages in the Servant are parts of a trimeter poem, older than the rest of the prophecy, which he finds to be in hexameters. See p. [315].
[204] I may quote Dillmann's opinion on this last point: "Andererseits sind nicht blos die Grundgedanken und auch einzelne Wendungen wie 52, 13-15. 53, 7. 11. 12 durch 42, 1 ff. 49, 1 ff. 50, 3 ff. so wohl vorbereitet und so sehr in Übereinstimmung damit, dass an eine fast unveränderte Herübernahme des Abschnitts aus einer verlornen Schrift (Ew.) nicht gedacht werden kann, sondern derselbe doch wesentlich als Werk des Vrf. angesehen werden muss" (Commentary 4th ed., 1890, p. 453).
[205] This verb best gives the force of the Hebrew, which means both to deal prudently and to prosper or succeed. See p. [346].
[206] Vulgate finely: "extolletur, sublimis erit et valde elatus."
[207] "The term rendered 'startle' has created unnecessary difficulty to some writers. The word means to 'cause to spring or leap;' when applied to fluids, to spirt or sprinkle them. The fluid spirted is put in the accusative, and it is spirted upon the person. In the present passage the person, 'many nations,' is in the accusative, and it is simply treason against the Hebrew language to render 'sprinkle.' The interpreter who will so translate will 'do anything.'"—A. B. Davidson, Expositor, 2nd series, viii., 443. The LXX. has θαυμασονται εθνη πολλα. The Peschitto and Vulgate render sprinkle.
[208] And not our report, or something we caused to be heard, as in the English Version,—שמועה is the passive participle of שמע, to hear, and not of השמיע, to cause to hear. The speakers are now the penitent people of God who had been preached to, and not the prophets who had preached.
[209] Tender shoot. Masculine participle, meaning sucker, or suckling. Dr. John Hunter (Christian Treasury) suggests succulent plant, such as grow in the desert. But in Job viii. 16; xiv. 7; xv. 30, the feminine form is used of any tender shoot of a tree, and the feminine plural in Ezek. xvii. 22 of the same. The LXX. read παιδιον, infant. Before Him, i.e. Jehovah. Cheyne, following Ewald, reads before us. So Giesebrecht.
[210] Took for his burden. Loaded himself with them. The same grievous word which God uses of Himself in ch. xlvi. See p. [180].
[211] There is more than afflicted (Authorised Version) in this word. There is the sense of being humbled, punished for his own sake.
[212] The possessive pronoun has been put to the end of the lines, where it stands in the original, producing a greater emphasis and even a sense of rhyme.
[213] כלנו Kūllanū so rendered instead of "all of us," in order to be assonant with the close of the verse, as the original is, which closes with kullam.
[214] That is, by a form of law that was tyranny, a judicial crime.
[215] Cut off violently, prematurely, unnaturally.
[217] The verbs, hitherto in the perfect in this verse, now change to the imperfect; a sign that they express the purpose of God. Cf. Dillmann, in loco.
[218] From the travail of his soul shall he see, and by his knowledge be satisfied. Taking בדעתו with ישבע instead of with יצדיק. This reading suggested itself to me some years ago. Since then I have found it only in Prof. Briggs's translation, Messianic Prophecy, p. 359. It is supported by the frequent parallel in which we find seeing and knowing in Hebrew.
[219] Some translate many, i.e., the many to whom he brings righteousness, as if he were a victor with a great host behind him.
[220] Jer. xxiii. 5.
[221] Hitzig (among others) held that it is the prophets who are the speakers of ver. 1, and that the voices of the penitent people come in only with ver. 2 or ver. 3. In that case שמועתינו would mean what we heard from God (שמועה is elsewhere used for the prophetic message) and delivered to the people. This interpretation multiplies the dramatis personæ, but does not materially alter the meaning, of the prophecy. It merely changes part of the penitent people's self-reproach into a reproach cast on them by their prophets. But there is no real reason for introducing the prophets as the speakers of ver. 1.
[222] For the argument that it is Israel who speaks here, see Hoffmann (Schriftbeweis), who was converted from the other view, and Dillmann, 4th ed., in loco. A very ingenious attempt has been made by Giesebrecht (Beiträge zur Jesaia Kritik, 1890, p. 146 ff.), in favour of the interpretation that the heathen are the speakers. His reasons are these: 1. It is the heathen who are spoken of in lii. 13-15, and a change to Israel would be too sudden. Answer: The heathen are not exclusively spoken of in lii. 13-15; but if they were a change in the next verse to Israel would not be more rapid than some already made by the prophet. 2. The words in liii. 1 suit the heathen. They have already received the news of the exaltation of the Servant, which in lii. 15 was promised them. This is the שמועתנו, that is news we have just heard. האמין is a pluperfect of the subjunctive mood: Who could or who would have believed this news of the exaltation we have just heard, and the arm of Jehovah to whom was it revealed! i.e., it was revealed to nobody. Answer: besides the precariousness of taking האמין as a pluperfect subjunctive, this interpretation is opposed to the general effort of the prophecy, which is to expose unbelief before the exaltation, not after it. 3. To get rid of the argument—that, while the speakers own that the Servant bears their sins, it is said the Servant was stricken for the sins of my people, and that therefore the speakers must be the same as "my people":—Giesebrecht would utterly alter the reading of ver. 8 from מפשע עמו ננע למו, for the transgression of my people was the stroke to him to מִפִּשְׁעָם יְנֻנַּע, for their stroke was he smitten.
[223] נשׂא and סבל. In speaking of his country's woes, Jeremiah (x. 19) says: This is sickness, or my sickness, and I must bear it, ואשׂאני זה חלי. Ezekiel (iv. 4) is commanded to lie on his side, and in that symbolic position to bear the iniquity of His people, תשא עונם. One of the Lamentations (v. 7) complains: Our fathers have sinned and are not, and we bear (סבל) their iniquities. In these cases the meaning of both נשא and סבל is simply to feel the weight of, be involved in. The verbs do not convey the sense of carrying off or expiating. But still it had been said of the Servant that in his suffering he would be practical and prosper; so that when we now hear that he bears his people's sins, we are ready to understand that he does not do this for the mere sake of sharing them, but for a practical purpose, which, of course, can only be their removal. There is, therefore, no need to quarrel with the interpretation of ver. 4, that the Servant carries away the suffering with which he is laden. Matthew makes this interpretation (viii. 17) in speaking of Christ's healing. But it is a very interesting fact, and not without light upon the free and plastic way in which the New Testament quotes from the Old, that Matthew has ignored the original and literal meaning of the quotation, which is that the Servant shared the sicknesses of the people: a sense impossible in the case for which the Evangelist uses the words.
[224] But they do not tell us, whether they were totally exempted from suffering by the Servant's pains, or whether they also suffered with him the consequence of their misdeeds. For that question is not now present to their minds. Whether they also suffer or not (and other chapters in the prophecy emphasize the people's bearing of the consequences of their misdeeds), they know that it was not their own, but the Servant's suffering, which was alone the factor in their redemption.
[225] Mystery of Pain, by James Hinton, p. 27.
[226] Psalm cvi. 23; cf. also ver. 32, where the other side of the solidarity between Moses and the people comes out. They angered Him also at the waters of Strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes ... he spake unadvisedly with his lips.
[228] Isa. xlvi. 3, 4. See pp. [179], [180] of this volume.
[229] Ch. xlii. 25.
[230] If we remember this we shall also feel more reason than ever against perceiving the Nation, or any aspect of the Nation, in the Sufferer of ch. liii. For he suffers, as the individual suffers, sickness and legal wrong. Tyrants do not put whole nations through a form of law and judgement. Of course, it is open to those, who hold that the Servant is still an aspect of the Nation, to reply, that all this is simply evidence of how far the prophet has pushed his personification. A whole nation has been called "The Sick Man" even in our prosaic days. But see pp. [268]-[76].
[231] Jer. li. 4.
[232] xl. 39; xlii. 13; xliv. 29; xlvi. 20.
[233] 1 Sam. vi. 13.
[234] Cf. Wellhausen's Prolegomena, ch. ii., 2.
[235] There is no exegete but agrees to this. There may be differences of opinion about the syntax,—whether the verse should run, though Thou makest his soul guilt, or a guilt-offering; or, though his soul make a guilt-offering; or (reading ישים for תשים), while he makes his soul a guilt-offering,—but all agree to the fact that by himself or by God the Servant's life is offered an expiation for sin, a satisfaction to the law of God.
[236] Cf. Baldensperger (Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, p. 119 ff.) on the genuineness of Christ's predictions and explanations of His sufferings.
[239] The question whether this is the land of China is still an open one. The possibility of intercourse between China and Babylon is more than proved. But that there were Jews in China by this time (though they seem to have found their way there by the beginning of the Christian era) is extremely unlikely. Moreover, the possibility of such a name as Sinim for the inhabitants of China at that date has not been proved. No other claimants for the name, however, have made good their case. But we need not enter further into the question. The whole matter is fully discussed in Canon Cheyne's excursus, and by him and Terrien de Lacouperie in the Babylonian and Oriental Record for 1886-87. See especially the number for September 1887.
[240] His humbled, His poor in the exilic sense of the word. See Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. [432] ff.
[241] On the "Motherhood of God" cf. Isaiah i.-xxxix., p. 245 ff.
[242] For צדיק, the righteous or just, which is in the text, the Syr., Vulg., Ewald, and others read עריץ, as in the following verse, terrible or terribly strong. Dillmann, however (5th ed., 1890, p. 438), retains צדיק takes the terms mighty and just as used of God, and reads the question, not as a question of despair uttered by the people, but as a triumphant challenge of the prophet or of God Himself. He would then make the next verse run thus: Nay, for the captives of the mighty may be taken, and the prey of the delivered, but with him who strives with thee I will strive.
[243] The English version, Where is the bill, is incorrect. The phrase is the same as in lxvi. ver. 1, What is this house that ye build for Me? what is this place for My rest? It implies a house already built; and so in the text above What is this bill of divorce implies one already thought of by the minds of the persons addressed by the question.
[244] Cf. p. [221]. Dillmann's view that righteousness means here personal character is contradicted by the whole context, which makes it plain that it is something external, the realisation of which those addressed are doubting. What troubles them is not that they are personally unrighteous, but that they are so few and insignificant. And what God promises them in answer is something external, the establishment of Zion. Cf. also the external meaning of righteousness in vv. 5, 6.
[245] Isaiah. i.-xxxix., p. [441].
[249] "Das eigentliche Wort 'Liebe' kommt im A. T. von Gott fast gar nicht vor,—und wo es, bei einem späten Schriftsteller, vorkommt, ist es Bezeichnung seiner besondren Bundes-liebe zu Israel, deren natürliche Kehrseite der Hass gegen die feindlichen Völker ist."—Schultz, A. T. Theologie, 4th ed., p. 548.
[250] The reserve of this—the limitation of the relation to one of feeling—is remarkable in contrast to the more physical use of the same figure in other religions.
[251] Egre, or sudden rush of the tide, or spate, or freshet. The original is assonant: Beshesseph qesseph.
[252] So literally; LXX. crystals, carbuncles or diamonds.
[253] Cf. Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. [440] ff.
[254] The structure of this difficult passage is this. Ver. 3 states the equation: the everlasting covenant with the people Israel=the sure, unfailing favours bestowed upon the individual David. Vv. 4 and 5 unfold the contents of the equation. Each side of it is introduced by a Lo. Lo, on the one side, what I have done to David; Lo, on the other, what I will do to you. As David was a witness of peoples, a prince and commander of peoples, so shalt thou call to them and make them obey thee. This is clear enough. But who is David? The phrase the favours of David suggests 2 Chron. vi. 42, remember the mercies of David thy servant; and those in ver. 5 recall Psalm xviii. 43 f.: Thou hast made me the head of nations; A people I know not shall serve me; As soon as they hear of me they shall obey me; Strangers shall submit themselves to me. Yet both Jeremiah and Ezekiel call the coming Messiah David. Jer. xxx. 9: They shall serve Jehovah their God and David their King. Ezek. xxxiv. 23: And I will set up a shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I Jehovah will be their God, and My servant David prince among them. After these writers, our prophet could hardly help using the name David in its Messianic sense, even though he also quoted (in ver. 5) a few phrases recalling the historical David. But the question does not matter much. The real point is the transference of the favours bestowed upon an individual to the whole people.
[255] English version, trees of the field, but the field is the country beyond the bounds of cultivation; and as beasts of the field means wild beasts, so this means wild trees,—unforced, unaided by man's labour.
[256] Neh. xiii.
[257] The original is a hand; a term applied (perhaps because it consisted of tapering stones) to an index, or monument of victory, 1 Sam. xv. 12; or to a sepulchral monument, 2 Sam. xviii. 18.
[258] See vol. i., pp. 363, 364.
[259] So Ewald, Cheyne and Briggs. Ewald takes lvi. 9-lvii. 11a as an interruption, borrowed from an earlier prophet in a time of persecution, of the exilic prophecy, which goes on smoothly from lvi. 8 to lvii. 11b. We have seen that it is an error to suppose that lvi. 9-lvii. rose from a time of persecution.
[260] Ezek. xxi.; cf. xxxiii. 30 f.
[261] Delitzsch.
[262] Mishpat and mishpatim, cf. p. [299].
[263] Such as is also expressed by exiles in Psalms xlii., xliii. and lxiii., but there with what spiritual temper, here with what a hard legal conception of righteousness.
[265] Literally, the poor, the wandering. It was a frequent phrase in the Exile: Lam. iii. 19, Remember mine affliction and my homelessness; i. 7, Jerusalem in the day of her affliction and her homelessness. LXX. αστεγοι, roofless.
[266] Probably the fresh flesh which appears through a healing wound. Made classical by Jeremiah, who uses it thrice of Israel,—in the famous text, Is there no balm, etc., x. 22; and in xxx. 17; xxxiii. 6.
[267] Jer. xxxi. 12.
[268] Cf. Job xxiv. 13.
[269] Cf. Amos viii. 5.
[271] Ewald conceives chs. lviii., lix. to be the work of a younger contemporary of Ezekiel, to which the chief author of "Second Isaiah" has added words of his own: lviii. 12, lix. 21. The latter is evidently an insertion; cf. change of person and of number, etc. Delitzsch puts the passage down to the last decade of the Captivity, when for a little time Cyrus had turned away from Babylon, and the Jews despaired of his coming to save them.
[273] Another slight trace reveals the conglomerate nature of the chapter. If, as the earlier verses indicate, it was Israel that sinned, then it is the rebellious in Israel who should be punished. In ver. 18a, therefore, the adversaries or enemies ought to be Israelites. But in 18b the foreign islands are included. The LXX. has not this addition. Bredenkamp takes the words for an insertion. Yet the consequences of Israel's sin, according to the chapter, are not so much the punishment of the rebellious among the people as the delay of the deliverance for the whole nation,—a deliverance which Jehovah is represented as rising to accomplish, the moment the people express the sense of their rebellion and are penitent. The adversaries and enemies of ver. 18, therefore, are the oppressors of Israel, the foreigners and heathen; and 18b with its islands comes in quite naturally.
[274] Note on mishpat and Ssedhaqah in ch. lix. This chapter is a good one for studying the various meanings of mishpat. In ver. 4 the verb shaphat is used in its simplest sense of going to law. In vv. 8 and 14 mishpat is a quality or duty of man. But in ver. 9 it is rather what man expects from God, and what is far from man because of his sins; it is judgement on God's side, or God's saving ordinance. In this sense it is probably to be taken in ver. 15,—Ssedhaqah follows the same parallel. This goes to prove that we have two distinct prophecies amalgamated, unless we believe that a play upon the words is intended.
[275] Isa. i. 17; Ezek. ii. 18; Psalm ix. 12.
[276] Literally, on the side or hip, the Eastern method of carrying children.
[277] Or coasts. See pp. [109] ff.
[278] Isa. xiv.; Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. [281] ff.
[279] Isa. xlviii. 18.
[280] See p. [210], note. Some points of the speaker's description of himself—for example, the gift of the Spirit and the anointing—suit equally well any prophet, or the unique Servant. The lofty mission and its great results are not too lofty or great for our prophet, for Jeremiah received his office in terms as large. That the prophet has not yet spoken at such length in his own person is no reason why he should not do so now, especially as this is an occasion on which he sums up and enforces the whole range of prophecy. It can, therefore, very well be the prophet who speaks. On the other hand, to say with Diestel that it cannot be the Servant because the personification of the Servant ceases with ch. liii. is to beg the question. A stronger argument against the case for the Servant is that the speaker does not call himself by that name, as he does in other passages when he is introduced; but this is not conclusive, for in l. 4-9 the Servant, though he speaks, does not name himself. To these may be added this (from Krüger), that the Servant's discourse never passes without transition into that of God, as this speaker's in ver. 8, but the prophet's discourse often so passes; and this, that בשׂר, קרא and נחם are often used of the prophet, and not at all of the Servant. These are all the points in the question, and it will be seen how inconclusive they are. If any further proof of this were required, it would be found in the fact that authorities are equally divided. There hold for the Servant Calvin, Delitzsch, Cheyne (who previously took the other view), Driver, Briggs, Nägelsbach and Orelli. But the Targums, Ewald, Hitzig, Diestel, Dillmann, Bredenkamp and Krüger hold by the prophet. Krüger's reasons, Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi., p. 76, are specially worthy of attention.
[281] Literally, opening; but the word is always used of opening of the eyes. Ewald renders open air, Dillmann hellen Blick.
[282] Any insignia or ornament for the head.
[283] The same word as in xlii. 3, fading wick.
[284] See Isaiah i.-xxxix., pp. [438]-[40].
[285] Cf. Krüger, Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi., pp. 154-55. Lagarde has proposed to read מְאָדָּם, past participle, for מֵאֱדֹם and מִבּצֵר for מִבָּצְרָה. Who is this that cometh dyed red, redder in his garments than a vinedresser?
[286] Ch. lxiii. 18 and lxiv. 10, 11. In the Hebrew ch. lxiv. begins a verse later than it does in the English version.
[287] Semites had a horror of painting the Deity in any form. But when God had to be imagined or described, they chose the form of a man and attributed to Him human features. Chiefly they thought of His face. To see His face, to come into the light of His countenance, was the way their hearts expressed longing for the living God. Exod. xxiii. 14; Psalm xxxi. 16, xxxiv. 16, lxxx. 7. But among the heathen Semites God's face was separated from God Himself, and worshipped as a separate god. In heathen Semitic religions there are a number of deities who are the faces of others. But the Hebrew writers, with every temptation to do the same, maintained their monotheism, and went no farther than to speak of the angel of God's Face. And in all the beautiful narratives of Genesis, Exodus and Judges about the glorious Presence that led Israel against their enemies, the angel of God's face is an equivalent of God Himself. Jacob said, the God which hath fed me, and the angel which hath redeemed me, bless the lads. In Judges this angel's word is God's Word.
[289] Cheyne. Similarly Bredenkamp, who contends that the prophecy is Isaianic, and to be dated from the time of Manasseh.
[290] Cf. Dillmann, in loco.
[291] Among Orientals the planets Jupiter and Venus were worshipped as the Larger and the Lesser Luck. They were worshipped as Merodach and Istar among the Babylonians. Merodach was worshipped for prosperity (cf. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 460, 476, 488). It may be Merodach and Istar, to whom are here given the name Gad, or Luck (cf. Genesis xxii. 11, and the name Baal Gad in the Lebanon valley) and Meni, or Fate, Fortune (cf. Arabic al-manijjat, fate; Wellhausen, Skizzen, iii., 22 ff., 189). There was in the Babylonian Pantheon a "Manu the Great who presided over fate" (Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, etc., p. 120). Instances of idolatrous feasts will be found in Sayce, op. cit., p. 539; cf. 1 Cor. x. 21, Ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of devils. See what is said in p. [62] of this volume about the connection of idolatry and commerce.
[292] Bleek (5th ed., pp. 287, 288) holds ch. lxvi. to be by a prophet who lived in Palestine after the resumption of sacrificial worship (vv. 3, 6, 30), that is, upon the altar of burnt-offering which the Returned had erected there, and at a time when the temple-building had begun. Vatke also holds to a post-exilic date, Einleitung in das A.T., pp. 625, 630. Kuenen, too, makes the chapter post-exilic. Bredenkamp takes vv. 1-6 for Palestinian, but pre-exilic, and ascribes them to Isaiah. With ver. 1 he compares 1 Kings viii. 27; and as to ver. 6 he asks, How could the unbelieving exiles be in the neighbourhood of the Temple and hear Jehovah's voice in thunder from it? Vv. 7-14 he takes as exilic, based on an Isaianic model.
[293] So Dillmann and Driver; Cheyne is doubtful.
[294] Acts vii. 49.
[295] 1 Cor. x.
[296] So, in literal translation of the text, the One being a master of ceremonies, who, standing in the middle, was imitated by the worshippers (cf. Baudissin, Studien zur Semitischen Religions-geschichte, i., p. 315, who combats Lagarde's and Selden's view, that אהד, one, stands for the God Hadad). The Massoretes read the feminine form of one, which might mean some goddess.
[297] Know, Pesh. and some editions of the LXX.; punish, Delitzsch and Cheyne.
[298] The Hebrew text has Pul, the LXX. Put. Put and Lud occur together, Ezek. xxvii. 10-xxx. 5. Put is Punt, the Egyptian name for East Africa. Lud is not Lydia, but a North African nation. Jeremiah, xlvi. 9, mentions, along with Cush, Put and the Ludim in the service of Egypt, and the Ludim as famous with the bow.
[Transcriber's Notes:]
- Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.