Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2

by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

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[THE PROPHET ISAIAH.]

[GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS.]

Isaiah is the principal prophetical figure in the first period of canonical prophetism, i.e., the Assyrian period, just as Jeremiah is in the second, i.e., the Babylonian. With Isaiah are connected in the kingdom of Judah: Joel, Obadiah, and Micah; in the kingdom of Israel: Hosea, Amos, and Jonah.

The name "Isaiah" signifies the "Salvation of the Lord." In this name we have the key-note of his prophecies, just as the name Jeremiah: "The Lord casts down," indicates the nature of his prophecies, in which the prevailing element is entirely of a threatening character. That the proclamation of salvation occupies a very prominent place in Isaiah, was seen even by the Fathers of the Church. Jerome says: "I shall expound Isaiah in such a manner that he shall appear not as a prophet only, but as an Evangelist and an Apostle;" and in another passage: "Isaiah seems to me to have uttered not a prophecy but a Gospel." And Augustine says, De Civ. Dei, 18, c. 29, that, according to the opinion of many, Isaiah, on account of his numerous prophecies of Christ and the Church, deserved the name of an Evangelist rather than that of a Prophet. When, after his conversion, Augustine applied to Ambrose with the question, which among the Sacred Books he should read in preference to all others, he proposed to him Isaiah, "because before all others it was he who had more openly declared the Gospel and the calling of the Gentiles." (Aug. Conf. ix. 5.) With the Fathers of the Church Luther coincides. He says in commendation of Isaiah: "He is full of loving, comforting, cheering words for all poor consciences, and wretched, afflicted hearts." Of course, there is in Isaiah no want of severe reproofs and threatenings. If it were otherwise, he would have gone beyond the boundary by which true prophetism is separated from false. "There is in it," as Luther says, "enough of threatenings and terrors against the hardened, haughty, obdurate heads of the wicked, if it might be of some use." But the threatenings never form the close in Isaiah; they always at last run out into the promise; and while, for example, in the great majority of Jeremiah's prophecies, the promise, which cannot be wanting in any true prophet, is commonly only short, and hinted at, sometimes consisting only of words which are thrown into the midst of the several threatenings, e. g., iv. 27: "Yet will I not make a full end,"--in Isaiah the stream of consolation flows in the richest fulness. The promise absolutely prevails in the second part, from chap. xl.-lxvi. The reason of this peculiarity is to be sought for chiefly in the historical circumstances. Isaiah lived at a time in which, in the kingdom of Judah, the corruption was far from having already reached its greatest height,--in which there still existed, in that kingdom, a numerous "election" which gathered round the prophet as their spiritual centre. With a view to this circle, Isaiah utters the words: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." The contemporary prophets of the kingdom of the ten tribes, which was poisoned in its very first origin, found a different state of things; the field there was already ripe for the harvest of judgment. And at the time of Jeremiah, Judah had become like her apostate sister. At that time it was not so much needed to comfort the miserable, as to terrify sinners in their security. It was only after the wrath of God had manifested itself in deeds, only after the judgment of God had been executed upon Jerusalem, or was immediately at hand,--it was only then that, in Jeremiah, and so in Ezekiel also, the stream of promise broke forth without hinderance.

Chronology is, throughout, the principle according to which the Prophecies of Isaiah are arranged. In the first six chapters, we obtain a survey of the Prophet's ministry under Uzziah and Jotham. Chap. vii. to x. 4 belongs to the time of Ahaz. From chap. x. 4 to the close of chap. xxxv. every thing belongs to the time of the Assyrian invasion in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah; in the face of which invasion the prophetic gift of Isaiah was displayed as it had never been before. The section, chap. xxxvi.-xxxix., furnishes us with the historical commentary on the preceding prophecies from the Assyrian period, and forms, at the same time, the transition to the second part, which still belongs to the same period, and the starting point of which is Judah's deliverance from Asshur. In this most remarkable year of the Prophet's life--a year rich in the manifestation of God's glory in judgment and mercy--his prophecy flowed out in full streams, and spread to every side. Not the destinies of Judah only, but those of the Gentile nations also are drawn within its sphere. The Prophet does not confine himself to the events immediately at hand, but in his ecstatic state, the state of an elevated, and, as it were, armed consciousness, in which he was during this whole period, his eye looks into the farthest distances. He sees, especially, that, at some future period, the Babylonian power, which began, even in his time, to germinate, would take the place of the Assyrian,--that, like it, it would find the field of Judah white for the harvest,--that, for this oppressor of the world, destruction is prepared by Koresh (Cyrus), the conqueror from the East, and that he will liberate the people from their exile; and, at the close of the development, he beholds the Saviour of the world, whose image he depicts in the most glowing colours.

Isaiah has especially brought out the view of the Prophetic and Priestly offices of Christ, while in the former prophecies it was almost alone the Kingly office which appeared; it is only in Deut. xviii. that the Prophetic office, and in Ps. cx. that the Priestly office, is pointed at. Of the two states of Christ, it is the doctrine of the state of humiliation, the doctrine of the suffering Christ, which here meets us, while formerly it was the state of exaltation which was prominently brought before us,--although Isaiah too can very well describe it when it is necessary to meet the fears regarding the destruction of the Theocracy by the assaults of the powerful heathen nations. The first attempt at a description of the humbled, suffering, and expiating Christ, is found in chap. xi. 1. The real seat of this proclamation is, however, in the second part, which is destined more for the election, than for the whole nation. In chap. xlii. we meet the servant of God, who, as a Saviour meek and lowly in heart, does not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, and by this merciful love establishes righteousness on the whole earth. In chap. xlix., the Prophet describes how the covenant-people requite with ingratitude the faithful labours of the Servant of God, but that the Lord, to recompense Him for the obstinacy of Israel, gives Him the Gentiles for an inheritance. In chap. l. we have presented to us that aspect of the sufferings of the Servant of God which is common to Christ and His people--viz., how, in fulfilling His calling. He offered His back to the smiters, and did not hide His face from shame and spitting. Then, finally, in chap. liii.--that culminating point of the prophecy of the Old Testament--Christ is placed before our eyes in His highest work, in His atoning and vicarious suffering, as the truth of both the Old Testament high-priest, and the Old Testament sin-offering.

There are still the following Messianic features which are peculiar to Isaiah. A clear Old Testament witness for the divinity of Christ is offered by chap. ix. 5 (6); the birth by a virgin, closely connected with His divinity, is announced in chap. vii. 14; according to chap. viii. 23 (ix. 1.) Galilee, and, in general, the country surrounding the Sea of Gennesareth, being that part of the country which hitherto had chiefly been covered with disgrace, are, in a very special manner, to be honoured by the appearance of the Saviour, who shall come to have mercy upon the miserable, and to seek that which was lost. Isaiah has, further, first taught that, by the redemption, the consequences of the Fall would disappear in the irrational creation also, and that it should return to paradisaic innocence, chap. xi. 6-9. He has first announced to the people of God the glorious truth, that death, as it had not existed in the beginning, should, at the end also, be expelled, chap. xxv. 8; xxvi. 19. The healing powers which by Christ should be imparted to miserable mankind, Isaiah has described in chap xxxv. in words, which by the fulfilment have, in a remarkable manner, been confirmed.

Let us endeavour to form, from the single scattered features which occur in the prophecies of Isaiah, a comprehensive view of his prospects into the future.

The announcement first uttered by Moses of an impending exile of the people, and desolation of the country, is brought before us by Isaiah in the first six chapters, in the prophecies belonging to the time of Uzziah and Jotham, at which the future had not yet been so clearly laid open before the Prophet as it was at a later period, at the time of Ahaz, and, very especially, in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah. A reference to the respective announcements of the Pentateuch is found in chap. xxxvii. 26, where, in opposition to the imagination of the King of Asshur, that, by his own power, he had penetrated as a conqueror as far as Judah, Isaiah asks him whether he had not heard that the Lord, long ago and from ancient times, had formed such a resolution regarding His people. These words can be referred only to the threatenings of the Pentateuch, which a short-sighted criticism endeavoured to ascribe to a far later period, without considering that the germ of this knowledge of the future is found in the Decalogue also, the genuineness of which is, at present, almost unanimously conceded: "In order that thy (Israel's) days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."