[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.