We might well have thought, that with the section we have been considering the prophecy of Israel's Redemption had reached its summit and its end. The glory of Zion in sight, the full programme of prophecy owned, the arrival of the Divine Saviour hailed in the urgency of His feeling for His people, in the sufficiency of His might to save them,—what more, we ask, can the prophecy have to give us? Why does it not end upon these high notes? The answer is, the salvation is indeed consummate, but the people are not ready for it. On an earlier occasion, let us remember, when our prophet called the nation to their Service of God, he called at first the whole nation, but had then immediately to make a distinction. Seen in the light of their destiny, the mass of Israel proved to be unworthy; tried by its strain, part immediately fell away. But what happened upon that call to Service happens again upon this disclosure of Salvation. The prophet realises that it is only a part of Israel who are worthy of it. He feels again the weight, which has been the hindrance of his hope all through,—the weight of the mass of the nation, sunk in idolatry and wickedness, incapable of appreciating the promises. He will make one more effort to save them—to save them all. He does this in an intercessory prayer, ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv., in which he states the most hopeless aspects of his people's case, identifies himself with their sin, and yet pleads by the ancient power of God that we all may be saved. He gets his answer in ch. lxv., in which God sharply divides Israel into two classes, the faithful and the idolaters, and affirms that, while the nation shall be saved for the sake of the faithful remnant, Jehovah's faithful servants and the unfaithful can never share the same experience or the same fate. And then the book closes with a discourse in ch. lxvi., in which this division between the two classes in Israel is pursued to a last terrible emphasis and contrast upon the narrow stage of Jerusalem itself. We are left, not with the realisation of the prophet's prayer for the salvation of all the nations, but with a last judgement separating its godly and ungodly portions.
Thus there are three connected divisions in lxiii. 7-lxvi. First, the prophet's Intercessory Prayer, ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv.; second, the Answer of Jehovah, ch. lxv.; and third, the Final Discourse and Judgement, ch. lxvi.
I. The Prayer for the Whole People (ch. lxiii. 7-lxiv.).
There is a good deal of discussion as to both the date and the authorship of this piece,—as to whether it comes from the early or the late Exile, and as to whether it comes from our prophet or from another. It must have been written after the destruction and before the rebuilding of the Temple; this is put past all doubt by these verses: Thy holy people possessed it but a little while: our adversaries have trodden down Thy sanctuary. Thy holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. The house of our holiness and of our ornament, wherein our fathers praised Thee, is become for a burning of fire, and all our delights are for ruin.[286]
This language has been held to imply that the disaster to Jerusalem was recent, as if the city's conflagration still flared on the national imagination, which in later years of the Exile was impressed rather by the long, cold ruins of the Holy Place, the haunt of wild beasts. But not only is this point inconclusive, but the impression that it leaves is entirely dispelled by other verses, which speak of the Divine anger as having been of long continuance, and as if it had only hardened the people in sin; compare ch. lxiii. 17 and lxiv. 6, 7. There is nothing in the prayer to show that the author lived in exile, and accordingly the proposal has been made to date the piece from among the first attempts at rebuilding after the Return. To the present expositor this seems to be certainly wrong. The man who wrote vv. 11-15 of ch. lxiii. had surely the Return still before him; he would not have written in the way he has done of the Exodus from Egypt unless he had been feeling the need of another exhibition of Divine Power of the same kind. The prayer, therefore, must come from pretty much the same date as the rest of our prophecy,—after the Exile had long continued, but while the Return had not yet taken place. Nor is there any reason against attributing it to the same writer. It is true the style differs from the rest of his work, but this may be accounted for, as in the case of ch. liii., by the change of subject. Most critics, who hold that we still follow the same author, take for granted that some time has elapsed since the prophet's triumphant strains in chs. lx.-lxii. This is probable; but there is nothing to make it certain. What is certain is the change of mood and conscience. The prophet, who in ch. lx. had been caught away into the glorious future of the people, is here as utterly absorbed in their barren and doubtful present. Although the salvation is certain, as he has seen it, the people are not ready. The fact he has already felt so keenly about them,—see ch. xlii., vv. 24, 25,—that their long discipline in exile has done the mass of them no good, but evil, comes forcibly back upon him (ch. lxiv. 5b ff.). Thou wast angry, and we sinned only the more: in such a state we have been long, and shall we be saved! The banished people are thoroughly unclean and rotten, fading as a leaf, the sport of the wind. But the prophet identifies himself with them. He speaks of their sin as ours, of their misery as ours. He takes of them the very saddest view possible, he feels them all as sheer dead weight: there is none that calleth on Thy name, that stirreth himself up to take hold on Thee: for Thou hast hid Thy face from us, and delivered us into the power of our iniquities. But the prophet thus loads himself with the people in order to secure, if he can, their redemption as a whole. Twice he says in the name of them all, Doubtless Thou art our Father. His great heart will not have one of them left out; we all, he says, are the work of Thy hand, we all are Thy people.
But this intention of the prayer will amply account for any change of style we may perceive in the language. No one will deny that it is quite possible for the same man now to fling himself forward into the glorious vision of his people's future salvation, and again to identify himself with the most hopeless aspects of their present distress and sin; and no one will deny that the same man will certainly write in two different styles with regard to each of these different feelings. Besides which, we have seen in the passage the recurrence of some of our prophecy's most characteristic thoughts. We feel, therefore, no reason for counting the passage to be by another hand than that which has mainly written "Second Isaiah." It may be at once admitted that he has incorporated in it earlier phrases, reminiscences and echoes of language about the fall of Jerusalem in use when the Lamentations were written. But this was a natural thing for him to do in a prayer, in which he represented the whole people and took upon himself the full burden of their woes.
If such be the intention of chs. lxiii. 7-lxiv., then in them we have one of the noblest passages of our prophet's great work. How like he is to the Servant he pictured for us! How his great heart fulfils the loftiest ideal of Service: not only to be the prophet and the judge of his people, but to make himself one with them in all their sin and sorrow, to carry them all in his heart. Truly, as his last words said of the Servant, he himself bears the sin of many, and interposes for the transgressors. Before we see the answer he gets, let us make clear some obscure things and appreciate some beautiful ones in his prayer.
It opens with a recital of Jehovah's ancient lovingkindness and mercies to Israel. This is what perhaps gives it connection with the previous section. In ch. lxii. the prophet, though sure of the coming glory, wrote before it had come, and urged upon the Lord's remembrancers to keep no silence, and give Him no silence till He establish and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. This work of remembrancing, the prophet himself takes up in lxiii. 7: The lovingkindnesses of Jehovah I will record, literally, cause to be remembered, the praises of Jehovah, according to all that Jehovah hath bestowed upon us. And then he beautifully puts all the beginnings of God's dealings with His people in His trusting of them: For He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not deal falsely; so He became their Saviour. In all their affliction He was afflicted, the Angel of His Face saved them. This must be understood, not as an angel of the Presence, who went out from the Presence to save the people, but, as it is in other Scriptures, God's own Presence, God Himself; and so interpreted, the phrase falls into line with the rest of the verse, which is one of the most vivid expressions that the Bible contains of the personality of God.[287] In His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and bare them, and carried them all the days of old. Then he tells us how they disappointed and betrayed this trust, ever since the Exodus, the days of old. But they rebelled and grieved the Spirit of His holiness: therefore He was turned to be their enemy, He Himself fought against them. This refers to their history down to, and especially during, the Exile: compare ch. xlii., vv. 24, 25. Then in their affliction they remembered the days of old—the English version obscures the sequence here by translating he remembered—and then follows the glorious account of the Exodus. In ver. 13 the wilderness is, of course, prairie, flat pasture-land; they were led as smoothly as a horse in a meadow, that they stumbled not. As cattle that come down into the valley—cattle coming down from the hill sides to pasture and rest on the green, watered plains—the Spirit of Jehovah caused them to rest: so didst Thou lead Thy people to make Thyself a glorious name. And then having offered such precedents, the prophet's prayer breaks forth to a God, whom His people feel no longer at their head, but far withdrawn into heaven: Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and Thy glory: where is Thy zeal and Thy mighty deeds? the surge of Thy bowels and thy compassions are restrained towards me. Then he pleads God's fatherhood to the nation, and the rest of the prayer alternates between the hopeless misery and undeserving sin of the people, and, notwithstanding, the power of God to save as He did in times of old; the willingness of God to meet with those who wait for Him and remember Him; and, once more, His fatherhood, and His power over them, as the power of the potter over the clay.
Two points stand out from the rest. The Divine Trust, from which all God's dealing with His people is said to have started, and the Divine Fatherhood, which the prophet pleads.
He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not deal falsely: so He was their Saviour. The "surely" is not the fiat of sovereignty or foreknowledge: it is the hope and confidence of love. It did not prevail; it was disappointed.