Then said I, "Lord, how long?"

[{266}]

And he answered, "Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and the Lord have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land."

II
ISAIAH'S FIRST PUBLIC SERVICE

(Soon after, two kings from the North threatened to make war against Judah. The king of Judah was frightened. Isaiah tried to encourage him, and persuade him to trust God, but in vain. The king was a coward, and dared neither fight nor trust God, but instead he sent to the far-away land of Assyria for help.

This is the way in which Isaiah tried to encourage the timid king:)--

And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to war against it; but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David, saying, "Syria is confederate with Ephraim."

And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the forest are moved with the wind.

Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, "Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the high way of the fuller's field; and say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thine heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. Because Syria hath [{267}] counselled evil against thee, Ephraim also, and the son of Remaliah, saying, Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set up a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeel: thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin: and the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established."

(But the effort of the prophet was wholly without effect.)