“As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them” (iii, 12). He describes the “tinkling ornaments” about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, their chains and bracelets and mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands and the tablets and the earrings, and the rings and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, and the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails, etc. This portion is no doubt realistic. It shows his mental condition and the mood he was in.
His humor changes: “Now I will sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard” (v, 1). In this chapter he touches upon everything that strikes his fancy. Hell, wind, land, instruments, lions, etc., etc., are all introduced. He rambles all over nature. Imaginary ideas are mixed with realities indiscriminately, for illustration, comparison, lamentation, or complaining. High in the temple he sees the Lord sit; sees the seraphim with six wings, etc. (vii). And in chapter viii he has a “great roll and writes in it with a man’s pen concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz.” Verse 1: “And I went to the prophetess; and she conceived, and had a son. Then said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz” (3).
Isaiah lived after the captivity of the Ten Tribes.
He also knows of the constant fighting between the Ten tribes and the two, Israel and Judah. Israel has been carried away captive to other lands and its country has been given to a people called Cutheans, or Samaritans. These cultivated and adopted in some measure the Jewish religion. In moments of despondency he refers to them as he refers to Moab and other nations elsewhere. The whole Christian faith seems to be based on the prophecy of the ninth chapter of Isaiah, 6th and 7th verses. Isaiah starts out in this chapter speaking of the time when God first lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, etc. In the 6th verse he says, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,” etc. That man has no reference to Christ as Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
Chapter viii, verse 8: “And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of the land, O Immanuel.” This really means the son which the prophetess conceived, and called Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
Chapter ix, verse 21: “Manasseh and Ephraim, and Ephraim and Manasseh; and they together shall be against Judah,” etc. He talks in a confused, mystified fashion, alluding now to this people, now to that; at one time to the Tribes and at another to the Moabites, Assyrians, then to Egypt or Zion; dreams of tyrants, hypocrites, and his hopes revived about the remnants of Israel. When he speaks of the child he has not the remotest dream of Christ. He has no foreknowledge, except what his judgment suggests. He feels annoyed and irritated, then his hope and aspiration soothe and comfort him, and in chapter xi he describes a most happy state of affairs: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (verse 6). “And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like an ox” (xi, 7), etc.
The wildest and most extravagant kinds of interpretation are given to various passages in Isaiah. Into them the theologians force a meaning:
Chapter xxxv, 1: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” Christians say it means the joyful flourishing of Christ’s kingdom.
In chapter xliii, verse 2, Jehova declares: “I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior.”
He repeats it in chapter xliv, verse 6: “I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God.”