Gornell University Library
Dthara, Nem York
LIBRARY OF
LEWIS BINGLEY WYNNE
A.B..A.M.,COLUMBIAN COLLEGE,'71.°73
WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE GIFT OF
MRS. MARY A. WYNNE
: AND
JOHN H.WYNNE |
CORNELL ‘98
1922
Cornell eve Library
BS1513 .A75 187:
“iNT
1924 029 3
Sowa Gaioiay
Library
The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029305328
ISAIAH
XL—-LXVI
WITH THE
SHORTER PROPHECIES ALLIED TO IT
ARRANGED AND EDITED
WITH NOTES
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POERTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1875 7:
[All rights reserved ]
ay
OXFORD:
BY E, PICKARD HALL AND J. H. STACY,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY,
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
THE GREAT PROPHECY OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION
NOTES.
APPENDIX
THE FIRST VISION
NOTES
THE KING OF BABYLON
NOTES .
EDOM AND ISRAEL
NOTES. . . . : o
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN
NOTES. . . eee Y
PAGE
INTRODUCTION.
AT the very outset, the humbleness of what is
professed in the present work cannot be set forth
too strongly. With the aim of enabling English
people to read as a connected whole the last twenty-
seven chapters of Isaiah, without being frequently
stopped by passages of which the meaning is
almost or quite unintelligible, I have sought to
choose, among the better meanings which have
been offered for each of these passages, that which
seemed the best, and to weave it into the autho-
rised text in such a manner as not to produce any
sense of strangeness or interruption. This is all that
I have attempted; not to translate or to correct
independently, for which my knowledge of Hebrew,
—not more than sufficient to enable me in some
degree to follow and weigh the reasons offered by
others in support of their judgments,—and, indeed,
my resources of all kinds, would be totally inade-
quate; but to use the work of more competent
translators and correctors, to use it so as to remove
difficulties in our authorised version which admit,
many of them, of quite certain correction; and yet
to leave the physiognomy and movement of the
B
2 INTRODUCTION.
authorised version quite unchanged. Such a work
of emendation may be, I hope, of a useful cha-
racter, but it is certainly of a humble one; and the
reader is especially begged to note that to this,
and no more, does the present work aspire.
With like prominency must be set in view its
provisional character. It makes no pretensions
to be permanent. Persons of weight and of proved
qualifications are now engaged in revising the
Bible, and their revision must undoubtedly be
looked to as that which, it is to be hoped, may
obtain general currency. To have one version
universally received is of the greatest advantage.
And their corrections will, probably, be much
more extensive than those attempted here, and
will extend far more to small points of detail;
thus aiming at absolute correctness, at perfection.
A version thus perfectly correct will most justly,
if successful in other respects, supersede any private
and partial attempts. Such a partial attempt is
mine; an attempt, not to present an absolutely
correct version of the series of chapters treated,
but merely to remove such cause of disturbance
as now, in the authorised version, prevents their
being read connectedly, with understanding of what
they mean, and with the profit and enjoyment that
might else be drawn from them.
The present attempt was originally planned for
the benefit of school-children. It appears in this
larger form, because it has been found useful by
many who are not school-children, and*who find
the small print of a school-book irksome. But it
INTRODUCTION. 3
was intended in the first instance for the young and
for the unlearned, and this its original design must
not be forgotten.
The Hebrew language and genius, it is admitted
by common consent, are seen in the Book of Isaiah
at their perfection; this has naturally had its effect
on the English translators of the Bible, whose ver-
sion nowhere perhaps rises to such beauty as in
this Book. Whatever may be thought of the
authorship of the last twenty-seven chapters, every
one will allow that there comes a break between
them and what goes immediately before them, and
that they form a whole by themselves. And the
whole which they form is large enough to exhibit
a prolonged development and connexion, and yet:
is of manageable length, and comes within fixed
limits. Add to which, it is a whole of surpassing
interest ; so that, while Isaiah is styled the greatest
of the prophets, the evangelical prophet, and St.
Jerome calls him not so much a prophet as an
evangelist, and Ambrose told Augustine to read
his prophecies the first thing after his conversion,
and this prophet is of all Old Testament writers
the one far most quoted in the New,—while all
this is so, it is, moreover, in the last twenty-seven
chapters that the greatest interest is reached ; inso-
much that out of thirty-four passages from him
which Gesenius brings together as quoted in the
New Testament, there are twenty-one from these
last chapters against only thirteen from the rest
of the. Book. Finally, not only have the last
twenty-seven chapters this poetical and this reli-
B2
4 INTRODUCTION.
gious interest, but they have also an historical
interest of the highest order; for they mark the
very point where Jewish history, caught in the
current of Cyrus’s wars and policy, is carried into
the great open stream of the world’s history, never
again to be separated from it.
The reader, therefore, may well be glad to have
these chapters put by themselves, and made in-
telligible to him. I have also detached from their
received place, and printed as an appendix to the
last twenty-seven chapters, certain earlier chapters
of the Book of Isaiah :—the 13th with the 14th down
to the end of the 23rd verse, the 21st down to the
end of the roth verse, the chapters from the be-
ginning of the 24th to the end of the 27th, and
the 34th and 35th chapters. These chapters are
undoubtedly connected by their subject with the
concluding series, and should be read in connexion
with them by every student who wishts to appre-
hend the concluding series fully. Evidently, as
both they and this series now stand in his Bible,
they are baffling to him; and this is due partly to
their arrangement, partly to obscurities in the trans-
lation. To shew how this is so, let us take the 21st
chapter of Isaiah down to the end of verse Io.
Thus it stands in our Bibles :—
THE burden of the desert of the sea. “As whirl-
winds in the south pass through; so it cometh
from the desert, from a terrible land.
2. A grievous vision is declared unto me; the
treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the
INTRODUCTION. 5
spoiler spoileth, Go up, O Elam: besiege, O
Media: all the sighing thereof have I made to
cease.
3. Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs
have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman
that travaileth: I was bowed down at the hearing
of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of z¢.
4. My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me:
the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear
unto me.
5. Prepare the table, watch in the watch-tower,
eat, drink: arise, ye princes, azd anoint the shield.
6. For thus hath the LorvD said unto me, Go
set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.
7. And he saw a chariot with a couple of horse-
men, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels;
and he hearkened diligently with much heed :
8. And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand con-
tinually upon the watch-tower in the daytime, and
I am set in my ward whole nights:
g. And behold, here cometh a chariot of men,
with a couple of horsemen. And he answered
and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the
graven images of her gods he hath broken unto
the ground.
to. O my threshing, and the corn of my floor:
that which I have heard of the LORD of hosts,
the God of Israel, have I declared unto you.
And then the chapter goes on without any in-
terruption, in verses of just the same look, to a
wholly different matter.
6 INTRODUCTION.
Now the general reader, who has the bare text
of a common Bible and nothing more, may per-
ceive that there is something grand in this passage,
but he cannot possibly understand it; and this is
due partly to the want of explanations, partly to
the arrangement, partly to obscurity in the trans-
lation. He requires to be told first, as a reader
would be told before reading an ode of Pindar,
what it is all about; he requires to have the
passage separated for him from that with which
it has no connexion; and he requires to have the
text made much clearer, both in its words and
in its punctuation.
To supply explanations, it may be thought, is
a matter which need not embarrass us much; but
the same cannot be said of re-arranging and cor-
recting. For it must always be remembered, that,
in dealing with the English Bible, we are dealing
with a work consecrated in the highest degree by
long use and deep veneration.
With respect to the novel way of dividing, ar-
ranging, and presenting their single Psalms or
single Chapters, which recent translators, following
Ewald, have adopted: in him and them, and for
his and their purpose, we may acquiesce in it; but
for an ordinary reader it changes the face of the
Bible too startlingly and entirely. The divisions
in our common Bibles, however, do mark too little
the connexion of the sense, do often break it too
arbitrarily. and of themselves create difficulties for
the reader. This will not be denied; but the
question is, how to apply a remedy without inno-
INTRODUCTION. 7
vating overmuch. Now, it so happened that I had
for many years been in the habit of using a Bible’
where the numbers of the chapters are marked at
the side and do not interpose a break between
chapter and chapter; and where the divisions of
the verses, being numbered in like manner at the
side of the page, not in the body of the verse, and
being numbered in very small type, do not thrust
themselves forcibly on the attention. Breaks be-
tween the chapters, too, this Bible admits, but only
when the sense seems urgently to call for them;
and sometimes, from the same motive, it even
breaks a verse in the middle. It had always struck
me how much more connected and comprehensible
the sense of the Bible, and particularly of certain
parts of the Bible, such as the Prophetical Books
and the Epistles, appeared in this arrangement
than in that of our common Bibles; insomuch
that here things would often look comparatively
lucid and hanging together, which in our common
Bibles looked fragmentary and obscure. Well,
then, it suggested itself to me to try, for convey-
ing to the general reader our series of chapters,
this mode of arrangement, extending it a little
and simplifying it a little; extending it by using
breaks, if this seemed required by the sense, a
little more frequently; and simplifying it by
getting rid of italics, signs, references, and all
apparatus of this sort, which readers such as I
' Perhaps I may be allowed here to mention, what to me at least
will always be very interesting, that this Bible was given to me by
the late Mr. Keble, my godfather.
8 INTRODUCTION,
have in view hardly ever understand, and are more
distracted than helped by. So one might hope to
exhibit this series of chapters in a way to give
a clue to their connexion and sense, yet without
making them look too odd and novel.
So far for the arrangement: but even a more
important matter was correction, since an unin-
telligible passage, baffling the reader and throwing
him out, will often, as I have said, spoil a whole
chapter for him; and there are many such passages
in the authorised version. To avoid this check in
reading the grand series of chapters at the end
of Isaiah, I had gradually made for my own use the
corrections which seemed indispensable ; these cor-
rections, after having been carefully revised, are
adopted in the text now offered. And by indis-
pensable corrections I mean this: corrections which
enable us to read the authorised version without
being baffled and thrown out. The urgent matter,
of course, is to get rid of the stoppage and em-
barrassment created by such things as: ‘He made
his grave with the wicked ... decause he had done
no violence;? or as: ‘That prepare a table for
that troop, and that furnish the drink-offering for
that number.’ A clear sense is the indispensable
thing. Even where the authorised version seems
wrong, I have not always, if its words give a clear
sense, thought it necessary to change them. When,
however, the right correction seems to give a sense,
either clearer, or higher in poetic propriety and
? Tsaiah liii. 9, and Ixv. 11.
INTRODUCTION. 9
beauty, than the authorised version, I have cor-|
rected.
For example. I think it certain that at verse 15
of the 65th chapter the right rendering is: ‘And
ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my
chosen, So may the Lord God slay thee !?—the
words in italics being the words of the curse, as
in Jeremiah xxix: ‘Of them (Zedekiah and Ahab)
shall be taken up a curse by all the captivity of
Judah which are in Babylon, saying, The Lord
make thee like Zedekiah and Ahab!? But the
authorised version gives a perfectly clear sense:
‘And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto
my chosen; for the LORD God shall slay thee ;;—
and I have therefore left this as it stands. Again,
at verse 18 of the 66th chapter, I think the right
rendering almost certainly is: ‘But I —— their
works and their thoughts!—it shall come, that I
will gather all nations, &c.; the expression being,
as Ewald explains it, a broken, indignant one, with
this sense :—Utterly to confound and shame the
expectations and practices of the faithless, idol-
seeking Jews (who have been the subject of the
preceding verse), idolatrous nations themselves shall
come and worship me. But the authorised ver-
sion: ‘For I know their works and their thoughts’
(referring to the idolatrous Jews of the preceding
verse) ;—and then, after a pause, passing to another
subject: ‘It shall come, that I will gather all na-
tions, —gives, perhaps, a yet clearer sense, though, I
am inclined to believe, not the right sense; but the
sense given being good and clear, I think it better to
10 INTRODUCTION.
abstain from change. It may seem at variance with
this, that, for instance, in the last clause of the 46th
chapter: ‘I will place salvation in Zion for Israel
my glory, which is quite clear, I have yet allowed
myself to make a change, and to substitute : ‘I will
give salvation to Zion; to Israel my glory.’ But
this is because, while the change appears, from the
law of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, perfectly cer-
tain, the observance here of this law gives, at the
same time, a decided gain in poetic propriety and
‘beauty. So, too, in verse 14 of the 43rd chapter: ‘I
have sent to Babylon and have brought down all
their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in
the ships.” This cannot be right, but it gives a
sense which may be made out. We may refer to
what Heeren says of the maritime trade of Babylon
in the Persian Gulf, and explain the last clause of the
Chaldean fleets there, and of the joyful hailing and
shouting of the sailors. But we so little associate
Babylon with a maritime trade and fleets, that this
sense for the passage is a strained and unaccept-
able one. Whereas the more correct rendering,
‘I have sent to Babylon, and do make them all
to flee away, and the Chaldeans upon the ships of
their pleasure,’ associates Babylon with her great
feature,—the river and the use of the river; and
so gives a sense, if not absolutely plainer, yet
poetically much more natural and more pleasing.
Here therefore is a case where our rules justify
a change.
But when a change, however pleasing and in-
genious, depends on taking license to alter by
INTRODUCTION. IL
guess the original text, I have regarded it as quite
forbidden. There is a difficult expression in verse
17 of the 66th chapter, ‘behind one tree in the
midst, where the word ¢vee is supplied by our
English translators, and the original has only ‘be-
hind one in the midst.’ Now, the Hebrew word
for behind nearly resembles the Hebrew word for
one, and Ewald proposes to read, in place of the
word for oe, the word for behind repeated; so
that the meaning will be: ‘Back, back in the
innermost sanctuary !’—a cry of recoil of the idol-
serving and superstitious renegade Jews at the
approach of their uninitiated, and, as they thought,
profane countrymen. This suits well with the ‘I
am holier than thou!’ attributed to the same rene-
gades, and as a conjectural emendation it is highly
plausible and attractive; still, a conjectural emen-
dation it is, and therefore, as I consider, not per-
missible for our purpose here. All we may do
is to supply a word giving a better sense than the
word ¢vee, and such a word is chzef,—the ringleader
or chief in the idolatrous processions and cere-
monies held in the sacred gardens.
So it will be evident that our range for altera-
tion is limited; indeed, it may almost be said, in
general, to be restricted to those cases where in the
authorised version there is unintelligibility or am-
biguity baffling the reader and throwing him out.
A translator whose aim is purely scientific, to
render his original with perfect accuracy, will have
much more latitude, and no one can blame him for
taking it; but then the public he must propose
Te INTRODUCTION.
to himself is different. And a body of Bible-re-
visers, probably, acting by public authority, ought,
as I have already said, to take much more latitude,
and to correct the old version not only where it is
unintelligible, but also wherever they think it in
error. But my object is such that to retain as far
as possible the old text of the English Bible is very
desirable, nay, almost indispensable. I want to
enable the reader to apprehend, as a whole, a
literary work of the highest order. And the Book
of Isaiah, as it stands in our Bibles, is this in a
double way. By virtue of the original it is a monu-
ment of the Hebrew genius at its best, and by
virtue of the translation it is a monument of the
English language at its best. Some change must
be made for clearness’ sake, without which the
wark cannot be apprehended as a whole; but the
power of the English version must not be sacri-
ficed, must, if possible, be preserved intact. And
though every corrector says this, and pays his
compliment to the English version, yet few pro-
ceed to act upon the rule, or seem to know how
hard it is to act upon it when we alter at all, and
why it is hard. Let us try and make clear to
ourselves exactly what the difficulty is.
The English version has created certain senti-
ments in the reader’s mind, and these sentiments
must not be disturbed, if the new version is to
have the power of the old. Surely this considera-
tion should rule the corrector in determining
whether or not he should put ¥ehovah where the
old version puts Lord. Mr. Cheyne, the recent
INTRODUCTION. 13
translator of Isaiah,—one of that new band of
Oxford scholars who so well deserve to attract
our interest, because they have the idea, which the
older Oxford has had so far too little, of separated
and systematised studies,—Mr. Cheyne’s object is
simply scientific, to render the original with exact-
ness. But how the Four Friends, who evidently,
by their style of comment, mean their very in-
teresting and useful book, Zhe Psalms Chronolo-
gically Arranged, for religious use, for habitual
readers of the Psalms, and who even take, because
of this design, the Prayer-Book version as their
basis,—how they can have permitted themselves
to substitute yehovah for Lord passes one’s com-
prehension. Probably because they were following
Ewald; but his object is scientific. To obtain
‘general acceptance by English Christians, who,
that considers what the name in question repre-
sents to these, what the Psalms are to them, what
a place the expression Zhe Lord fills in the
Psalms and in the English Bible generally, what
feelings and memories are entwined with it, and
what the force of sentiment is,—who, that con-
siders all this, would allow himself, in a version
of the Psalms meant for popular use, to abandon
the established expression The Lord in order to
substitute for it Fehovah? Fehovah is in any case
a bad substitute for it, because to the English
‘reader it does not carry its own meaning with it,
and has even, which is fatal, a mythological sound.
The Eternal, which one of the French versions uses,
is far preferable. The Eternal is in itself, no doubt,
14 INTRODUCTION.
a better rendering of Jehovah than The Lord. In
disquisition and criticism, where it is important
to keep as near as we can to the exact sense of
words, Zhe Eternal may be introduced with ad-
vantage; and whoever has heard Jewish school-
children use it, as they do, in repeating the Com-
mandments in English, cannot but have been
struck and satisfied with the effect of the render-
ing. In his own private use of the Bible, any one
may, if he will, change Zhe Lord into The Eternal.
But at present, for the general reader of the Bible
or of extracts from it, 7Ze Lord is surely an ex-
pression consecrated. The meaning which it in
itself carries is a meaning not at variance with the
original name, even though it may be possible to
render this original name more adequately. But,
besides the contents which a term carries in itself,
we must consider the contents with which men, in
long and reverential use, have filled it; and there-
fore we say that The Lord any literary corrector of
the English Bible does well at .present to retain,
because of the sentiments this expression has
created in the English reader’s mind, and has left
firmly fixed there.
It is in deference to these pre-established senti-
ments in the reader that we prefer, so long as the
sense is well preserved, for any famous passage of
our chapters which is cited in the New Testament,
the New Testament rendering, because this ren-
dering will be to the English reader the more
familiar, and touches more chords. For instance,
in the 2nd verse of the 43rd chapter, Ae shall not
INTRODUCTION. T5
cry nor lift up is the Old Testament rendering.
He shall not clamour nor cry might in itself be
better; but He shall not strive nor cry seems best
of all, because the New Testament has made it so
familiar. For the same reason, the change in the
first clause of the 53rd chapter’ was originally made
with the utmost reluctance, and it has been now,
after re-consideration, abandoned. This is mentioned
to shew what deference I really feel to be due to
the pre-established sentiments above spoken of.
But perhaps there would not be much difficulty
if we had only to avoid rash change in these
marked cases. There is a far subtler difficulty
to be contended with. The English Bible is a
tissue, a fabric woven in a certain style, and a style
which is admirable. When the version was made,
this style was zz the air. Get a body of learned
divines, and set them down to translate, the right
meaning they might often have difficulty with, but
the right style was pretty well sure to come of
itself. This style is in the air no longer ;—that
makes the real difficulty of the learned divines
now at work in Westminster. And exactly in
what the style consists, and what will impair it,
and what sort of change can be brought into it,
and to what amount, without destroying it, no
learning can tell them; they must trust to a kind
of tact. Every one agrees that in correcting the
English Bible (we do not now speak of re-transla-
tion in an aim of scientific exactness) you must
1 In the first editions, ‘Who believed what we heard’ was substi-
tuted for ‘ Who believed our report.’
16 INTRODUCTION.
not change its style. The question is, what kinds
of alteration do change its style? By two kinds
of alteration, it may be affirmed, you change its
style; you change it if you destroy ¢he character
of the diction, and you change it if you destroy
the balance of the rhythm, Either is enough; and
one has only to state these two conditions to make
it clear how entirely the observance of them must
be a matter of tact, and cannot be ensured by any
external rules. It is often said that no word ought
to be used in correcting the English Bible which is
not there already. This is pedantry; no word
must be used which does not s¢ the Bible-diction,
but plenty of words may suit it which do not
happen to be there already. And after all, what
have you gained, if you get a word which is ever
so much a Bible-word, and put it in so as to spoil
the rhythm? The style of the Bible is equally
changed, whether it is the character of its diction
that you destroy, or the balance of its rhythm.
Thus quite petty changes may have a great and
fatal effect; the mass of a passage may be left
(and this is what a corrector generally understands
by shewing ‘affectionate reverence for the Author-
ised Version’), and yet by altering a word or two
the Bible-style may be more changed than if the
passage had been half re-. ritten. I name Bishop
Lowth with the highest respect. He, Vitringa, and
the Jewish commentator Aben-Ezra, are perhaps
the three men who, before the labours of the Ger-
mans in our own century, did most to help the stud,
of Isaiah. And what Lowth did was due mainly to
INTRODUCTION. 17
fine tact and judgment in things of poetry and
literature; this enabled him to make his just and
fruitful remarks on the structure of the composition
of the Hebrew prophets, and on the literary cha-
racter of the whole Hebrew Scriptures. And he
could point out, in Sebastian Castellio’s Latin
version, the fault of ‘the loss of Hebrew simplicity,
the affectation of Latin elegance, and observe that
‘to this even the barbarism of the Vulgate is pre-
ferable” And he saw the merit, both in diction
and in rhythm, of our authorised English version :
‘As to the style and language,’ he says, ‘it admits
but of little improvement ;’ all he proposed to
himself was to ‘correct and perfect it But in
good truth style, such as the beginning of the 17th
century knew it, was at the end of the 18th century
no longer in the air. Else how could a man of
Lowth’s sound critical principles and fine natural
tact have thought that he perfected ‘Speak ye
comfortably to Jerusalem,’ by making it ‘Speak ye
animating words to Jerusalem;’ or ‘ Taught him
knowledge, by substituting ‘/mpart to him science ;’
or ‘Hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, es ia
that dwellest carelessly, by ‘Hear now this, O thou, xe
voluptuous, that sittest in security ;’ or ‘Yet did we a
esteem him stricken, by ‘Yet we thought him judi-
cially stricken ;’ or ‘When thou shalt make his
soul ax offering for sin, by ‘If his soul shall make
a@ propitiatory sacrifice ;’ or ‘My salvation is near
to come, by ‘My salvation is near, just ready to
come?’ Surely this is not to be called perfecting
but marring.
Cc
ee
ae
ee
18 INTRODUCTION.
So, too, Mr. Cheyne, who, scientific though his
object be, nevertheless talks of governing himself in
making changes, by ‘the affectionate reverence
with which the Authorised Version is so justly re-
garded,’ may be rendering his original with more
accuracy when he writes: ‘ He shall not fail nor be
discouraged till he have set religion in the earth,
and the sea-coasts wait for his doctrine.’ But he
must not imagine that he is making a slight
change in the rhythm of ‘He shall not fail nor
be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the
earth ; and the isles shall wait for his law;’ for he
destroys the balance of the rhythm altogether.
He may or may not be expressing the prophet’s
meaning in appropriate English, which he says
is his design, when he puts ‘Who hath believed our
revelation, for ‘Who hath believed our report,’ or
‘He was tormented, but he suffered freely, and
opened not his mouth,’ for ‘He was oppressed, and
he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth ;’ but
he is not governing himself by ‘the affectionate
reverence with which the Authorised Version is so
justly regarded,’ for he is changing its effect totally.
And this, though there may be only a word or two
altered, or though the new and imported words
may be honest Bible-words like the old.
Hence we see how delicate is the matter we are
touching, when we take in hand the authorised
version to correct it. And as there is so much risk,
it seems the safest way, first indeed to be very
shy of correcting needlessly ; but then, if there is
need to correct, to keep if possible the cast of
INTRODUCTION. 19
phraseology and the fall of sentence already given
by the old version, and to correct within the limits
of these, transgressing the limits of neither. For
instance: ‘He was taken from prison and from
judgment, and who shall declare his generation ?
for he was cut off out of the land of the living ; for
the transgression of my people was he stricken.’
This needs correction, for it gives no clear sense ;
but it possesses a cast of phraseology and a fall of
sentence which are marked, which we all know
well and should be loath to lose. Mr. Cheyne
substitutes : ‘ From oppression and from judgment
was he taken,—and as for his generation, who con-
sidered that he was cut off out of the land of the
living, for the transgression of my people he was
stricken. This is hardly clearer, indeed, than the
old version; still, the old version’s cast of phrase-
ology is on the whole maintained, but what has
become of its fall*of sentence? Surely it is better
to try and keep this, too; and if we say: ‘He was
taken from prison and from judgment ; and who of
his generation regarded it, why he was cut off out
of the land of the living? for the transgression of
my people was he stricken! ’—we do at least try to
keep it. It would be-easy to translate the verse
more literally by changing its words and rhythm
more radically; but what we should thus gain
in one way is less than what we should lose in
another. :
. However, the safest way, of course, is to abstain
from change; and the trial of the corrector is in
deciding where to make change and where not.
C2
20 INTRODUCTION.
For the public and authorised corrector the latitude
is greater, as I have said, than for an attempt like
mine. / will destroy and devour at once, in verse 14
of chapter 42, is clear and gives a tolerable sense,
so I have kept it; but it can hardly be the sense
of the original (although this sense is not quite
certain), and public and authorised correctors
might do well to change it. But I doubt whether
any corrector should, merely for the sake of being
more ,exactly literal, change good words which
give the general sense of the original. For example,
in the second verse of the first chapter of our series,
‘ Her iniquity is pardoned’ sufficiently conveys the
general'sense; ‘Her sin-offering is accepted’ is more
exact, but there is no adequate reason for change.
But the next clause, ‘ She hath received at the Lord's
hand double for all her sins, is ambiguous. It may
mean, her punishments are twice as much as her
sins, or it may mean, her blessings are twice as
much as her punishments. It does mean the latter,
but the words would lend themselves to the former
meaning more readily. Lowth substitutes, ‘ She
shall receive at the hand of Fehovah blessings double
to the punishment of all her sins ;’ the right sense
is given, but the rhythm of the old version is gone.
Whereas the changing only one word would have
left the rhythm as it was, and yet have made the
meaning quite clear: ‘ She shall receive at the Lord’s
hand double for all her rue.
Lowth in this passage changes the tense of the
verb, and here too is a point where, it should be
noticed, great heed is requisite. Very often, in the
INTRODUCTION. 21
Hebrew prophets and poets, the time is a kind
of indeterminate one, neither strictly present, past,
nor future. They speak of God’s action; and the
time of God’s action is the time of a general law,
which we can without impropriety make present,
past, or future, as we will. So in Horace’s famous
lines declaring how regularly punishment overtakes
the wicked: ‘ Raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit
pede pana claudo;’ the verb here might almost
equally well, as far as the sense is concerned, be
deseruit, or deseret, or deserit,—hath abandoned,
shall abandon, or doth abandon. Very often,
where the time is of this kind, the form of the
Hebrew verb does not make it certain for us, as
in Latin, how we shall render. The authorised ver-
sion, having in view the nature, as popularly con-
ceived, of prophetical speech, always leans to the
future. Some modern translators uniformly lean
the other way; but in all cases where the sense is
not certainly brought out better by one tense than
another, the corrector of the English Bible had
better, in my opinion, hold his hand; for to change
the tense is, very often, to change the rhythm. In
the particular text of our prophet which we have
just been discussing, the authorised version has the
verb in the past tense: ‘She hath received at the
Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” Lowth
changes it to the future: ‘She shall rececve” The
present, however, is more vivid: ‘She vecezveth ,’ for
this represents the compensation as actually taking
place and begun. But it is the future tense in the
authorised version which nine times out of ten raises
22 INTRODUCTION.
the question of change. Take as an example: ‘The
isles shall wait for his law ;? where I have rendered,
‘Far lands wazt for his law. For, surely, waiting
is already prospective enough without weakening it
by making it more prospective still; so that here,
it seems to me, the meaning gains decidedly if we
change the tense to the present. But except where
there is a decided gain of this sort, I have let the
futures of the old version stand.
So, too, as to that often recurring expression, the
isles, the islands. This rendering is consecrated by
its long and universal use; not only our Bibles
have it, but the Septuagint and the Vulgate have
it also, and Luther has it. And it is noble and
poetical. Coasts, strands, is more literal, and is the
rendering preferred by the modern German trans-
lators, and by Mr. Cheyne following them. But
where the coasts and isles of the Mediterranean
are alone intended, and no stress is meant to be
specially laid on their remoteness, zs/es, which is
more distinct and beautiful than coas¢s, seems pre-
ferable. Sometimes, however, remoteness is an im-
portant part of the idea, and then neither zs/es nor
coasts quite satisfies. This is so in the passage
quoted a little way back: ‘ The isles shall wait for
his law.’ The full meaning is not here brought out ;
nor does Mr. Cheyne bring it out any more by ‘ The
sea-coasts wait for his doctrine.’ Lowth has: ‘ The
distant nations shall earnestly wait for his law ;’
and this is undoubtedly the meaning, only distant
nations is prosaic, and breaks the character of the
Bible-style. Therefore, where remoteness seems a
INTRODUCTION. * 93
prominent part of the idea, I have used the ren-
dering far lands; as here: ‘Far lands wait for
his law.’ But in general I have retained the well-
known isles.
And the same with those noble and conse-
crated expressions, judgment, righteousness ; I have
hardly ever meddled with them. To talk, indeed,
like Mr. Cheyne, of setting religion in the earth,
instead of setting judgment in the earth, seems to
me wanton ; but in our series of chapters there are
several places where saving health, salvation, un-
doubtedly renders the original more truly than the
righteousness of the English Bible. Here I have
hesitated, and there was considerable inducement
to change; still, the notions of righteousness and of
the salvation belonging to righteousness do in our
prophet so run into one another, and the word
righteousness in the English Bible is so noble a
word in itself, and so weighty an element of
rhythm, that again and again, even after changing,
I have gone back to it.
In short, I have had a most lively sense of the
risk one runs in touching a great national monu-
ment like the English Bible ; and how one is apt,
by changes which seem small, to mar and destroy
utterly. If I am asked why I could not wait for
the revision promised by Convocation, I answer
that several years, probably, will have yet to go
by before the revision comes, and even then it
will not give us what is wanted,—this admirable
and self-contained portion of the Bible, detached
to stand as a great literary whole. But I will
24 INTRODUCTION.
add, too, that I think there is a danger with any
body of modern correctors of changing too much,
and of thinking that little things, especially, may
be freely changed without harm. And I am
conscious of an ‘affectionate reverence’ for the
diction and rhythm of the English Bible, greater
even, perhaps, than that of many of the official
revisers,—a reverence which, while for our purpose
some change in the text is needed, makes me eager,
notwithstanding, to preserve its total effect unim-
paired, and binds me, in this aim, to a moderation
in altering much more than commonly scrupulous.
After all, the total number of changes made is consi-
derable, for clearness required it ; but nothing would
be so gratifying to me as to find that a reader had
gone from the beginning of the chapters to the end
without noticing anything different from what he
was accustomed to, except that he was not per-
plexed and thrown out as formerly. No corrector
should wish to claim any property in the English
Bible. That work, and the glory of it, belongs
to the old translators, and theirs, even if their
work is amended, it should remain. Even their
punctuation one would gladly retain; but this
one finds oneself more and more, the more one
deals with it, obliged in the interest of clearness
and effect to alter.
I must still add a word about the_notes and
explanations, I have no design in the present
work to discuss, or even to raise, questions which
are in dispute between different schools of Biblical
interpreters, There ought to be nothing in the
‘ INTRODUCTION. 25 .
book which should hinder the adherent of any
school of Biblical interpretation or of religious
belief from using it. The authorship of our
series of chapters is a vexed question; and un-
doubtedly I believe that the author of the earlier
part of the Book of Isaiah was not the author of
these last chapters. There is nothing to forbid a
member of the Church of England, or, for that
matter, a member of the Church of Rome either, or
a member of the Jewish Synagogue, from holding
such a belief; but it is not a belief which a work aro
like the present has to concern itself with, Our 7
work ought simply to place itself, in presenting the
last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, at the moment
of history where the contents of them become
simplest, most actual, most striking. Now, this
moment evidently is the moment of Cyrus’s attack
on Babylon and contemplated restoration of the
Jews. This is the moment when to the Jewish nation
itself these chapters must undoubtedly have come
out with far more clearness and fulness than could
have been possible a hundred and fifty years earlier,
when the matters handled must have been mere pre-
dictions of unknown future events. The greatness
of Hebrew prophecy, or even its special character,
are not concerned here. In my belief the unique
grandeur of the Hebrew prophets consists, indeed, |
not in the curious foretelling of details, but in the
unerring vision with which they saw, the unflinch-
ing boldness and sublime force with which the
said, that the great unrighteous kingdoms of th
heathen could not stand, and that the world’
\
26 INTRODUCTION.
salvation lay in a recourse to the God of Israel
But, anyhow, the general prophecy that the great
unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen could not
stand was all that could in the time of Ahaz be
fully effective ; the full effect of all the particulars
in our twenty-seven chapters must have been re-
served for the time when these particulars began
visibly to explain themselves by being produced
and fulfilled. This every one must admit. Even
those who believe that the prophecy existed in
the reign of Ahaz, a century and a half before the
conquests of Cyrus, will allow that at the moment
of the conquests of Cyrus its significance would be
brought out much more fully. And therefore we
desire to place the reader in the position of a Jew
reading the chapters at that critical moment, when
the wars and revolutions with which they deal had
a nearness, grandeur, and reality they could not
have before or afterwards. But any one is free to
suppose, if he likes, that these chapters, so apposite
and actual at that moment, were an old prediction
which had been in the possession of the Jews long
before. Whether this was so or not, whether it is
consistent with the true nature of Hebrew prophecy
that this should have been so, are questions into
which the present work does not enter, and ought
not to enter.
Some persons will say, probably, that the notes
and explanations confine themselves too much to
the local and temporary side of these prophecies ;
that the prophecies have two sides, a side towards
their nation and its history at the moment, and a
INTRODUCTION. 27
side towards the future and all mankind; and that *
this second side is by much the more important.
I admit unreservedly that these prophecies have a
scope far beyond their primary historical scope,
that they have a secondary, eternal scope, and that
this scope is the more important. The secondary
application of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah to Jesus
Christ, is much more important than its now
obscure primary historical application. To deny
this would, in my judgment, shew a very bad critic ;
but it would shew a very bad critic, also, to believe
that the historical and literary substratum in the
Bible is unimportant. Yet this belief is wide-
spread and genuine ;- but I answer,—and here is
the justification of works like the present,—that
it is of very high importance; that without this
historical and literary substructure the full religious
significance of the Bible can never build itself up
for our minds, and that those who most value the
Bible’s religious significance ought most to regard
this substructure. Admirably true are these words
of Goethe, so constant a reader of the Bible that
his free-thinking friends reproached him for wast-
ing his time over it: ‘I am convinced that the
Bible becomes even more beautiful the more one
understands it; that is, the more one gets insight
to see that every word, which we take generally,
and make special application of to our own wants,
has had, in connexion with certain circumstances,
with certain relations of time and place, a parti-
cular, directly individual reference of its own.’
So that though our series of chapters, like the
\y =
28 INTRODUCTION.
Bible in general, contains more, much more, than
what our notes chiefly deal with, yet this too,
nevertheless, is of very high importance and leads
up to that more. Moreover, it has the advantage
of not offering ground for those religious disputes
to which a more extended interpretation of the
Bible often gives rise. What disputes it offers
ground for are of the sort which may arise out of
any historical and literary enquiry, and they are
the fewer the more the enquiry is conducted in an
unassuming and truly scientific manner; when that
only is called certain which is really certain, and
that which is conjecture, however plausible, is
allowed to be but conjecture. It sets Bible-readers
against all historical and literary investigation of
the Bible, when novelties are violently and arro-
gantly imposed upon them without sufficient
grounds. No one who has been studying the
Book of Isaiah should close his studies without
paying homage to the German critics who in this
century have accomplished so much for that Book ;
and to two great names, perhaps, above all,—
Gesenius and Ewald. Ewald, that ardent spirit,—
whose death, the other day, may probably almost
stand as marking a date in the history of German
learning, and as closing a period,—Ewald exhibited
in a signal degree, over and above all his learning,
two natural gifts: the historical sense and the
poetical sense; the poetical sense, in my opinion,
in a yet higher degree than the historical. But for
both the literary and the historical investigation of
the Bible he has done wonders; yet perhaps no one
INTRODUCTION. 29
has done more to offend plain readers with such
investigation, by a harsh and splenetic dogmatism,
as unphilosophical as it is unpleasing. His great
fault is that he will insist on our taking as certainty
what is and must be but conjecture. He knows
just when each chapter and portion of a chapter
was written, just where another prophet comes in
and where he leaves off; he knows it the more
confidently the more another critic has known
differently. But £xow in these cases he cannot, he
can but guess plausibly ; and sometimes his guess,
which he gives as certain, has much to discredit
even its plausibility. Our series of chapters, for
instance, he insists we shall believe was written
in Egypt, not Babylon, because Persia is called
in it the north, and Persia is north to Egypt, not
to Babylon. How strange that it never occurred
to him, before thus making a certainty where there
can’ be none, that Persia is north to Zzon,; and
that for the Jewish exile in Babylon, Zion, the
centre of his thoughts, may well also have been the
centre of his geography !
The more we are content to let our text speak
for itself, to try and follow its intentions and
elucidate them without imposing on it ours, the
better critics we shall be certainly, but also the
less risk we shall run of indisposing ordinary
readers to sane Biblical criticism by rash changes,
or by assertions pressed too far. There can hardly
be a more interesting enquiry than who the servant
of God, so often mentioned in our series of chapters,
really was. We all know the secondary application
30 INTRODUCTION.
to Jesus Christ, often so striking; but certainly
this was not the primary application. Who was
originally meant? the purged idealised Israel? or
a single prophet, the writer of the book? or the
whole body of prophets? or the pious and persist-
ing part of the Jewish nation? or the whole mass
of the Jewish nation? It may safely be said that
all these are meant, sometimes the one of them,
sometimes the other; and the best critic is he who
does not insist on being more precise than his text,
who follows his text with docility, allows it to have
its way in meaning sometimes one and sometimes
the other, and is intelligent to discern when it
means one and when the other. But a German
critic elects one out of these several meanings, and
will have the text decidedly mean that one and no
other. He does not reflect, that/{n his author’s own
being all these characters were Certainly blended}
the ideal Israel, his own personal individuality, the
character of representative of his order, the cha-
racter of representative of the pious and faithful
part of the nation, the character (who that knows
human nature can doubt it?) of representative of
the sinful mass of the nation. How then, when the
prophet came to speak, could God’s servant fail to
be all these by turns? No doubt, the most im-
portant and beautiful of these characters is the
character of the ideal Israel, and Ewald has shewn
poetical feeling in seizing on it, and in eloquently
developing its significance. Gesenius, Ewald’s
inferior in genius, but how superior in good temper
and freedom from jealousy and acrimony! seizes in
INTRODUCTION. 31
like manner on the character of representative of
the order of prophets. But both of them make the
object of their selection a hobby, and ride it too
hard ; and when they come to the perilous opening
of the 49th chapter, both of them permit them-
selves, in order to save their hobby, to tamper with
the text. These are the proceedings which give
rise to disputes, cause offence, make historical and
literary criticism of the Bible to be regarded with
suspicion, A faithful, simple, yet discriminative
following of one’s author and his text might avoid
them all.
I have been too long; but the present attempt
is new, and needed explanation. One word of yet
more special explanation has still to be added. A
variety of interpretations of any passage is hardly
ever given; one interpretation is adopted, and the |
rest are left without notice. This is not because
I consider the interpretation to be in all cases
certain, but because the notes are written for those
who want not to occupy themselves with weighing
rival interpretations, but to get a clear view of the
whole. I make no apologetic phrases about the
faults of my own editing and annotating. It is not
that I am unconscious of their defectiveness ; but I
know that the work for which they in some sort
open a way is so important as far more than to
make up for it.
To make a great work of soul pass into the
general mind is not easy; but our series of chapters
have one quality which facilitates this passage for
them,—their boundless exhilaration. Much good
fh \
ww
32 INTRODUCTION.
poetry is profoundly melancholyj; now, the life of
the generality of people is such that in literature
they require joy. And if ever that ‘ good time com-
ing,’ for which we all of us long, was presented with
energy and magnificence, it is in these chapters ; it
is impossible to read them without catching its
glow. And they present it truly and with the true
conditions. It is easy to misconceive it on a-first
view, easy to misconceive its apparent conditions ;
but the more these chapters sink into the mind and
are apprehended, the more manifest is their con-
nexion with universal history, the key they offer to
it, the truth of the ideal they propose for it. Many
of us have a kind of centre-point in the far past to
which we make things converge, from which our
thoughts of history instinctively start and to which
they return; it may be the Persian War, or the
Peloponnesian War, or Alexander, or the Licinian
Laws, or Caesar. Our education is such that we
are strongly led to take this centre-point in the
history of Greece or Rome; but it may be doubted
whether one who took the conquest of Babylon and
the restoration of the Jewish exiles would not have
a better. Whoever began with laying hold on this
series of chapters as a whole, would have a starting-
point and lights of unsurpassed value for getting a
conception of the course of man’s history and
development as a whole. If but for a certain
number of readers this could happen, what access
would they thus gain to a new life, unknown to
them hitherto! what an extending of their horizons,
what a lifting them out of the present, what a
INTRODUCTION. 33
suggestion of hope and courage! ‘It is a stingy
selfishness, says Barrow, ‘which maketh us so
sensible of crosses and so uncapable of comfort.’
There are numbers whose crosses are so many and
comforts so few that to the misery of narrow
thoughts they seem almost driven and bound;
what a blessing is whatever extricates them and
makes them live with the life of the race! Our acts
are, it is most true, infinitely more important than
our thoughts and studies; but the bearing which
thoughts and studies may have upon our acts is
not enough considered. And the power of anima-
tion and consolation in those thoughts and studies,
which, beginning by giving us a hold upon a single
great work, end with giving us a hold upon the
history of the human spirit, and the course, drift, and
scope, of the career of our race as a whole, cannot
be over-estimated. Not pathetic only, but profound
also, and of the most solid substance, was that
reply “made by an old Carthusian monk to the
trifler who asked him how he had managed to
get through his life :—‘ Cogitavi dies antiquos, et
annos eternos in mente habui'
* Psalm Ixxvii. 5 (in the Vulgate, Ixxvi, 6).
THE GREAT PROPHECY OF
ISRAEL’S RESTORATION.
[In the year 722 B.c. the kingdom of Israel fell; its
capital, Samaria, was taken by Shalmaneser, king of
Assyria, and its ten tribes were carried away into Assyria.
Of the chosen people in the Holy Land, therefore, ‘ there
was none left but the tribe of Judah only.’ The great
eastern empire of Assyria was then at its height of power ;
Media, Persia, and Babylon were subject to it, and it was
hoping to conquer Egypt, with which Hoshea, the last
king of Israel, had made an alliance. The kingdom of
Judah, also, leaned towards Egypt; for Judah, though it
survived, was tributary to Assyria, and hoped by help of
Egypt to break the Assyrian power. Eight years after
the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, Hezekiah, the
king of Judah, refused to pay his tribute any longer:
the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, invaded Egypt and
Palestine, but without success, and his army which ap-
peared before Jerusalem was, according to the Jewish
accounts, destroyed. At this time Babylon threw off the
yoke of Assyria and sent an embassy to gain the friend-
ship of Hezekiah; Media also made itself independent.
Sennacherib regained his hold upon Babylon, but the
D2
36 THE GREAT PROPHECY.
end of Assyria’s greatness was drawing nigh. She again
lost Babylon; and in the year 625 3.c. the king of Baby-
lon, in conjunction with the king of Media, took Nineveh
and destroyed for ever the Assyrian empire. The king-
dom of Media with Persia, on the one hand, and the
kingdom of Babylon, on the other, were Assyria’s heirs
and successors. Judah, after the death of Hezekiah, had
no returning gleam of political prosperity. In 588 B.c.,
thirty-seven years after the fall of the kingdom of Assyria,
and a hundred and thirty-four years after the fall of the
kingdom of Israel, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon
made a final invasion of Judah, took Jerusalem, and
carried away the king and the chief part of the people to
Babylon. But Nebuchadnezzar’s brilliant reign founded
no enduring power for Babylon. His successors became
engaged in war with the Medo-Persian kingdom; and
it was this kingdom which was to grow and succeed.
Under Cyrus the Persian its fortunes prevailed. In
548 B.c., forty years after the fall of Jerusalem, Cyrus con-
quered the wealthy Lydian monarchy of Croesus, and
the Greek cities on the western coast of Asia Minor;
then, in the year 541 B.c., he turned upon Babylon,
defended by its walls and waters. Against their enslaver
and oppressor the Jewish exiles in Babylon saw uplifted
the irresistible sword of God’s instrument, this Persian
prince, to whose religion the Babylonian idolatry was
hateful; a victorious warrior, a wise and just statesman,
favourable to Babylon’s prisoners and victims, and dis-
posed to restore the exiles of Judah to their own land.
Assyria had fallen, Babylon was now falling; and in this
supreme hour is heard the voice of God’s prophets, com-
manded to comfort God’s people, as follows :—]
¢
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 37
(Lsatah 40-66.)
40 COMFORT ye, comfort ye my people, saith your
God.
2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry
unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that
her iniquity is pardoned; that she receiveth of
the Lorp’s hand double for all her rue.
3 A VOICE of one that crieth! In the wilderness
prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight
in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every moun-
tain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough places plain ;
5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth
of the LorD hath spoken it.
6 <A voice said, Cry! And he said, What shall
I cry?—All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness
thereof is as the flower of the field:
7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because
the spirit of the LoRD bloweth upon it: surely the
people is grass.
8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth ; but the
word of our God shall stand for ever.
38 THE GREAT PROPHECY
9 O THOU that bringest good tidings to Zion, get
thee up into the high mountain; O thou that
bringest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy
voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say
unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
10 Behold, the Lord Gop will come with strong
hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his
reward is with him, and his recompence before him.
11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall
gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in
his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are
with young.
12. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow
of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span,
and comprehended the dust of the earth in a mea-
sure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the
hills in a balance?
13. Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or
being his counsellor hath taught him ?
14 With whom took he counsel, and who instructed
him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and
taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way
of understanding?
15 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket,
and are counted as the small dust of the balance:
behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little
thing!
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 39
16 And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the
beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.
17 All nations before him are as nothing; and they
are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.
18 To whom then will ye liken God? or what like-
ness will ye compare unto him?
19 The workman melteth an,image, and the gold-
smith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth
silver chains.
20 He that is too poor for oblation chooseth a tree
that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning
workman to prepare an image, that shall not be
moved.
21 Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath
it not been told you from the beginning? have ye
not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 He that sitteth above the circle of the earth,
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers?
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and
spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in?
23 That bringeth the princes to nothing? he maketh
the judges of the earth as vanity.
24 Yea, scarce shall they be planted, yea, scarce
shall they be sown, yea, scarce shall their stock
take root in the earth; and he shall blow upon
them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind
shall take them away as stubble.
x
Ry
X
®
y :
40 . THE GREAT PROPHECY
25 To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be bf
equal? saith the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes unto the heavens, and behold!
who hath created these things? he bringeth out
their host by number, he calleth ‘them all by
names; by the greatness of his might, for that
he is strong in power, not one faileth.
27. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O
Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my
judgment is passed over from my God?
‘28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,
that the everlasting God, the LORD, .the Creator
of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is
weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
29 He giveth power to the faint, and to them that
have no might he increaseth strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and
the young men shall utterly stumble ;
31 But they that wait upon. the LorD shall renew
their strength; they shall mount up with wings
as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and
they shall walk, and not faint,
41 KEEP silence before me, O islands, and let the
nations renew their strength! let them come near,
then let them speak; let us come near together
to judgment.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 4.
2 Who raised up from the east the man with
whom goeth victory, gave the nations before him,
and made him rule over kings? he gave them as
the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to
his bow.
3 He pursued them, and passed safely, even by the
way that he had not gone with his feet.
4 Who hath wrought and done it? even he that
called forth the generations from the beginning:
I the LorD, the first, and to the last I am he.
5 Far lands saw it, and feared; the ends of the
earth were afraid, draw near, and come. x
6 They help every one his neighbour, and every
one saith to his brother, Be of good courage.
7 So the carpenter encourageth the goldsmith, and
he that smootheth with the hammer him that
smiteth the anvil, saying of the solder, It is good:
and he fasteneth it with nails, that it should not
be moved.
8 But thou, Israel,my servant, Jacob whom I have
chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend ;
9 Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the
earth, and called thee from the extreme borders
thereof, and said unto thee: Thou art my servant,
I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away ;
10 Fear thou not, for Iam with thee! be not dis-
mayed, for I am thy God! I will strengthen thee,
42 THE GREAT PROPHECY
yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with
the right hand of my righteousness.
11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee
shall be ashamed and confounded! they shall be
as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall
perish.
12. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them,
even them that contended with thee; they that
war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a
thing of nought.
13 For I the Lorp thy God will hold thy right
hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I help thee!
14 Fear not, thou worm, Jacob, and thou handful
Israel! I help thee, saith the LorpD, and thy
redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
15 Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing
instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the
mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make
the hills as chaff.
16 Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry
them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them ;
but thou shalt rejoice in the LORD, and shalt glory
in the Holy One of Israel.
17. When the poor and needy seek water, and there
is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the
LorD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not
forsake them.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 43
18 I will open rivers on high places, and fountains
in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wil-
derness a pool of water, and the dry land springs
of water.
19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the
acacia tree, and the myrtle, and the olive tree;
I will set in the desert the cypress tree, and the
pine, and the box tree together :
20 That they may see, and know, and consider, and
understand together, that the hand of the LorD
hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath
created it.
21 PRODUCE your cause, saith the Lorp; bring
forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.
22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what
shall happen: let them shew the former things,
what they be, that we may consider them, and
know the latter end of them; or declare us things
for to come.
23 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that
we may know that ye are gods! yea, do good, or
do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it
together!
24 Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of
nought: an abomination is he that chooseth
you.
44 THE GREAT PROPHECY
25 Ihave raised up one from the north, and he
shall come: from the rising of the sun, that he
should call upon my name: and he shall come
upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter
treadeth clay.
26 Who hath declared from the beginning, that we
may know? and beforetime, that we may say, It
is right! yea, there is none that sheweth, yea, there
is none that declareth, yea, there is none that hath
heard your words.
27 1 the first said to Zion, Behold, behold it! and
I gave to Jerusalem one that bringeth good
tidings.
28 I look, and there is no one; even among them,
and there is no counsellor, that, when I should ask
of them, could answer a word.
29 Behold, they are all vanity! their works are
nothing: their molten images are wind and con-
fusion.
42, BEHOLD my servant, whom I uphold, mine
elect, in whom my soul delighteth! I have put
my spirit upon him: he shall declare judgment to
the Gentiles.
2 He shall not strive, nor cry, nor cause his voice
to be heard in the street.
3. +A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 45
flax shall he not quench: he shall declare judg-
ment with truth.
4 He shall not fail nor be discouraged, until he set
judgment in the earth: far lands wait for his law.
5 Thus saith God the Lorp, he that created the
heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread
forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it;
he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and
spirit to them that walk therein :
6 I the LorD have called thee in righteousness,
and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and
give thee for a mediator of the people, for a
light of the Gentiles;
7 To open the blind eyes, to bring out the
prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in
darkness out of the prison house;
8 I the LorpD: that is my name! and my glory
will I not give to another, neither my praise to
graven images,
9 Behold, the former things are come to pass, and
new things do I declare: before they spring forth
I tell you of them.
10 SING unto the LORD a new song, and his praise
from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the
sea and all that is therein; the isles, and the in-
habitants thereof!
46 THE GREAT PROPHECY
11 Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up
their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit:
let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout
from the top of the mountains.
12 Let them give glory unto the LORD, and declare
his praise in the islands.
13. The LorD shall go forth as a mighty man, he
shall stir up his zeal like a man of war: he shall
cry, yea, roar: he shall behave himself mightily
against his enemies.
14 I have long time holden my peace; I have been
still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like
a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at
once.
15 I will make waste mountains and hills, and
parch up all their herbs; and I will make the
rivers dry land, and I will dry up the pools.
16 And I will bring the blind by a way that they
knew not, I will lead them in paths that they
have not known: I will make darkness light
before them, and crooked things straight. These
things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.
17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly
ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to
the molten images, Ye are our gods.
18 Hear, ye deaf! and look, ye blind, that ye may
see!
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 47
19 Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my
messenger that I would send? who is blind as
God’s liegeman, and blind as the LoRD’S servant ?
20 Seeing many things, but thou observest not;
having the ears open, but he heareth not.
21. The LorpD was pleased to do it for his righteous-
ness’ sake ; to magnify the law, and to make it
honourable.
22 But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they
are all of them snared in dungeons, and they are
hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and
none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Re-
store.
23 Who among you will give ear to this? who will
hearken and hear concerning the fore time?
24 Who- gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the
robbers? did not the LoRD, he against whom we
have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways,
neither were they obedient unto his law.
25 Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of
his anger, and the strength of battle; and it hath
set him on fire round about, yet he knew not, and
it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.
43 But now thus saith the LorD that created thee,
O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel! Fear
not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee
by thy name, thou art mine!
48 THE GREAT PROPHECY
2 When thou passest through the waters, I will be
with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not
overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire,
thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee.
3 For I am the LorpD thy God, the Holy One of
Israel, thy Saviour: I give Egypt for thy ransom,
Ethiopia and Saba for thee.
4 Because thou art precious in my sight, honour-
able, and I have loved thee, therefore will I give
men for thee, and people for thy life.
5 Fear not, for I am with thee! I will bring thy
seed from the east, and gather thee from the west ;
6 I will say to the north, Give up! and to the
south, Keep not back! bring my sons from far,
and my daughters from the ends of the earth ;
7 Even every one that is called by my name: for
I have created him for my glory, I have formed
"him, yea, I have made him.
8 Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and
the deaf that have ears!
9 Let all the nations be gathered together, and let
the Gentiles be assembled : who among them can
declare this? Or let them shew us former things!
let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may
be justified! let one hear, and say, It is truth!
10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 49
servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know
and believe me, and understand that I am he:
before me there was no God formed, neither shall
there be after me.
11 I, even I, am the LorD, and beside me there is
no saviour.
12 I have declared, and have saved, and I have
shewed, and it was no strange god that was among
you: therefore -ye are my witnesses, saith the
Lorp, that I am God.
13 Yea, before the day was, I am he, and there is
none that can take away out of my hand: I will
work, and who shall let it ?
14 Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy
One of Israel: For your sake I have sent to
Babylon, and do make them all to flee away, and
the Chaldeans upon the ships of their pleasure ;
15 I the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of
Israel, your King.
16 Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in
the sea, and a path in the mighty waters ;
17. Which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the
army and the power: (they shall lie down together,
they shall not rise ; they are extinct, they are
quenched as tow.)
18 Remember not the former things, neither con-
sider the things of old!
E
50 THE GREAT PROPHECY
19 Behold, I do a new thing! now it shall spring
forth! shall ye not know it? I will even make a
way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
20 The beast of the field shall honour me, the
“> jackals and the ostriches: because I give waters in
“the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give
drink to my people, my chosen,
' 21 This people that I formed for myself; they shall
shew forth my praise.
22 BUT THOU hast not called upon me, O Jacob!
but thou hast been careless of me, O Israel!
23 Thou hast not brought me the lambs of thy
burnt offering, neither hast thou honoured me with
thy sacrifices: I have not burdened thee with an
offering, nor wearied thee with incense.
24 Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money,
neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy
sacrifices: but thou hast burdened me with thy
sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.
25 I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy trans-
gressions for mine own sake, and will not remember
thy sins.
26 Put me in remembrance, let us plead together!
declare thou, that thou mayest be justified !
27. Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers
have transgressed against me.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 51
28 Therefore I have profaned the princes of the
sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse, and
Israel to reproaches.
44 Yet now hear, O Jacob, my servant, and Israel,
whom I have chosen!
2 Thus saith the LorpD that made thee, and formed
thee from the womb, which will help thee: Fear
not, O Jacob, my servant;. and thou, Jeshurun,
whom I have chosen!
3. For I will- pour water upon him that is thirsty,
and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my
spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine
offspring :
4 And they shall spring up as the grass amidst
water, as willows by the water courses.
5 One shall say, I am the Lorp’s, and another
shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and
another shall subscribe with his hand unto the
LorbD, and surname himself by the name of Israel.
6 THUS saith the LorD the king of Israel, and his
redeemer the LORD of hosts: I am the first, and I
am the last; and beside me there is no God.
7 And who, as I, hath foretold, (let him declare it,
and set it in order for me!) since I appointed the
ancient people? and the things that are coming,
and shall come, let them shew!
E 2
ra oD bran,
52 THE GREAT PROPHECY
8 Fear ye not, neither be afraid! have not I
told thee from aforetime, and have declared it?
ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God
beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not
any.
9 They that make a graven image are all of them
vanity, and their delectable things shall not profit ;
and they are their own witnesses ; they see not, nor
know, that they may be ashamed.
10 Who hath formed a god, or molten an image
that is profitable for nothing?
11 Behold, all his fellows shall be ashamed, and the
workmen, that are but men. Let them all be
gathered together, let them stand up; they shall
fear, they shall be ashamed together.
12. The smith with the tongs both worketh in the
coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh
it with the strength of his arms: yea, he is hungry,
and his strength faileth: he drinketh no water, and
is faint.
13 The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he
marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with
planes, and he marketh it out with the compass,
and maketh it after the figure of a man, according
to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the
house.
14 He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 53
cypress and the oak: he chooseth for himself
among the trees of the forest: he planteth an
ash, and the rain doth nourish it.
15 Then shall it be for a man to burn, for he will
take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth
it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and
worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and
falleth down thereto.
16 He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part
thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is
satisfied : yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha,
I am warm, I have seen the fire!
17 And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even
his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and
worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith:
Deliver me, for thou art my god!
18 They have not known nor understood; for he
hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see, and
their hearts, that they cannot understand.
19 And none considereth in his heart, neither is
there knowledge nor understanding to say: I have
burned part of it in the fire, yea, also I have baked
bread upon the coals thereof, I have roasted flesh,
and eaten it; and shall I make the residue thereof
an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of
a tree?
20 He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath
54 THE GREAT PROPHECY
turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul,
nor say: Is there not a lie in my right hand?
21 Remember this, O Jacob and Israel, for thou art
my servant! I have formed thee, thou art my
servant: O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten
of me!
22 I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy trans-
gressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto
me, for I have redeemed thee.
23 SING, O ye heavens, for the LORD hath done
it: shout, ye foundations of the earth: break forth
into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every
tree therein! for the LORD hath redeemed Jacob,
and glorified himself in Israel.
24 Thus saith the LorD, thy redeemer, and he that
formed thee from the womb, I the LORD that
maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens
alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
25 That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and
maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men
backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish ;
26 That confirmeth his word to his servant, and
performeth his counsel toward his messengers ;
that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited!
and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and
I will raise up the decayed places thereof!
OF ISRAELS RESTORATION. eG
27 That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry
up thy rivers!
28 That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and
shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to
Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple,
Thy foundation shall be laid!
45 Thus saith the LoRD to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations
before him; and I will ungird the loins of kings, to
open before him the two leaved gates, and the
gates shall not be shut;
2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked
places straight: I will break in pieces the gates
of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:
3 And I will give thee the treasures hid in dark-
ness, and concealed riches of secret places, that
thou mayest know that I am the LORD which call
thee by thy name, the God of Israel.
4 For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine
elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have
surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.
5 Iam the LORD, and there is none else, there is
no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou
hast not known me:
6 That they may know from the rising of the sun,
and from the west, that there is none beside me: I
am the LORD, and there is none else.
56 THE GREAT PROPHECY
7 J form the light, and create darkness: I make
peace, and create evil: I the LorD do all these
things.
8 Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the
skies pour down righteousness! let the earth open,
and bring forth salvation, and let righteousness
spring up together! I the LORD have created it.
9 Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!
Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the
earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth
it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no
hands?
10 Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What
begettest thou? or to his mother, What hast thou
brought forth?
11 Thus saith the Lorp, the Holy One of Israel
and his Maker: Ask ye me of things to come
concerning my sons? and concerning the work of
my hands command ye me?
12 I have made the earth, and created man upon it:
I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens,
and all their host have I commanded.
13 I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will
direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he
shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward,
saith the Lorp of hosts.
14 Thus saith the LORD: The labour of Egypt, and
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 57
merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men
of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they
shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in
chains they shall come. over, and they shall fall
down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto
thee, saying: Surely God is in thee, and there is
none else, there is no God!
15 Verily thou art a God whose way is hidden,
O God of Israel, the Saviour!
16 They shall be ashamed, and also confounded,
all of them; they shall go to confusion together,
that are makers of idols.
17 But Israel shall be saved in the LorpD with
an everlasting salvation; ye shall not be ashamed
nor confounded, world without end.
18 For thus saith the Lorp that created the
heavens, God himself that formed the earth and
made it; he hath established it, he created it
not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited; I the
Lorp, and there is none else:
19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place
of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob,
Seek ye me im vain! I the Lorp speak up-
rightly, I declare things that are right.
20 Assemble yourselves and come, draw near to-
gether, ye that are escaped of the nations! they
have no knowledge that set up the wood of
58 THE GREAT PROPHECY
their graven image, and pray unto a god that
cannot save.
21 Tell ye, and bring them near, yea, let them
take counsel together! who hath declared this
from ancient time? who hath told it from that
time? have not I the LorD? and there is no
God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour;
there is none beside me.
22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends
of the earth! for I am God, and there is none
else.
23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out
of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not
return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every
tongue shall swear.
24 Surely, shall one say, in the Lorp have I
righteousness and strength! Even to him shall
men come, and all that are incensed against him
shall be ashamed.
25 In the LorD shall all the seed of Israel be
justified, and shall glory.
46 BEL boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols
are upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: they
are borne that ye carried; they are a burden to
the weary beast.
2 They stoop, they bow down together; they
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 59
cannot deliver the burden, but themselves are
gone into captivity.
3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all
the remnant of the house of Israel, which are
borne by me from the birth, which are carried
from the womb!
‘4 And even to your old age I am he, and even
to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and
I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver
you.
5 To whom will ye liken me, and make me
equal, and compare me, that we may be
like?
6 They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh
silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith, and
he maketh it a god: they fall down, yea, they
worship.
7 They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry
him, and set him in his place, and he standeth;
from his place shall he not remove: yea, one
shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor
save him out of his trouble.
8 Remember this, and shew yourselves men!
bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors!
g Remember the former things of old: for I am
God, and there is none else; I am God, and
there is none like me;
60 THE GREAT PROPHECY
to Declaring the end from the beginning, and
from ancient times the things that are not yet
done, saying: My counsel shall stand, and I will
do all my pleasure.
11 Calling the eagle from the east, the man that
executeth my counsel from a far country: yea,
I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I
have purposed it, I will also do it.
12 Hearken unto me, ye obdurate, that are far
from righteousness!
13 I bring near my righteousness: it shall not be
far off, and my salvation shall not tarry: and
I will give salvation to Zion; to Israel, my
glory.
47 COME down, and sit in the dust, O virgin
daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground! there
is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! for
thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.
2 Take the millstones, and grind meal! uncover
thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh,
pass over the rivers!
3 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy
shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and
I will be entreated of for thee by no man.
4 As for our redeemer, the LorpD of hosts is his
name, the Holy One of Israel.
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 61
5 Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O
daughter of the Chaldeans! for thou shalt no
more be called, The lady of kingdoms.
6 I was wroth with my people, I polluted mine
inheritance, and gave them into thine hand: thou
didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient
hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.
7 And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever!
so that thou didst not lay these things to thy
heart, neither didst remember the latter end
of it.
8 Therefore hear now this, thou that art given
to’ pleasures, that dwellest ‘carelessly, that sayest
in thine heart: I am, and none else beside me;
I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know
the loss of children.
g But these two things shall come to thee in a
moment in one day, the loss of children, and
widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their
perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries,
and for the great abundance of thine enchant-
ments.
10 For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, thou
hast said, None seeth me! Thy wisdom and
thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou
hast said in thine heart, Iam, and none else’ be-
side me.
62, THE GREAT PROPHECY
11 Therefore shall evil come upon thee, thou shalt
not know from whence it riseth; and mischief
shall fall upon thee, thou shalt not be able to
put it off; and desolation shall come upon thee
suddenly, which thou shalt not know.
12 Stand now with thine enchantments, and with
the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast
laboured from thy youth! if so be thou shalt
be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail.
13. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy coun-
sels! Let now the astrologers, the stargazers,
the prognosticators by the new moon, stand up,
and save thee from these things that shall come
upon thee.
14. Behold, they shall be as stubble! the fire shall
burn them, they shall not deliver themselves
from the power of the flame! it shall not be a
coal to warm at, nor a fire for a man to sit be-
fore it.
15 Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou
hast laboured, even they with whom thou hast
dealt from thy youth: they shall wander every
one to his quarter ; none shall save thee.
48 HEarR ye this, O house of Jacob, which are
called by the name of Israel, and are come forth
out of the fountain of Judah! which swear by
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 63
the name of the LORD, and make mention of
the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in right-
eousness !
2 For they call themselves of the holy city, and
stay themselves upon the God of Israel; the
LORD of hosts is his name.
3. I have declared the former things from the
beginning, and they went forth out of my mouth,
and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and
they came to pass.
4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and
thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass,
5 I have even from the beginning declared it to
thee: before it came to pass I shewed it thee:
lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them,
and my graven image, and my molten image,
hath commanded them.
6 Thou hast heard—see all this! and will not
ye declare it? I shew thee new things from this
time, even hidden things, and thou didst not
know them.
7 They are created now, and not in the former
time; even before this day thou heardest them
not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew
them.
8 Yea, thou heardest not, yea, thou knewest not,
yea, beforehand thine ear was not opened; for I
64 THE GREAT PROPHECY
knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously,
and wast called a transgressor from the womb.
9 For my name’s sake will I defer mine anger,
and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I
cut thee not off.
10 Behold, I have refined thee, but not gotten
therefrom silver; I have tried thee in the furnace
of affliction.
11 For mine own sake, even for mine own sake,
will I do it: for how should my name be pol-
luted? and I will not give my glory unto an-
other.
12 Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my
called! I am he; I am the first, I also am the
last.
13 Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of
the earth, and my right hand hath spread out
the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand
forth together.
14 All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear: which
among them hath declared these things? The
man whom the Lorp loveth will do his pleasure
on Babylon, and his chastisement on the Chal-
deans.
15 I, even I, have spoken; yea, I have called
him: I have brought him, and he shall make
his way prosperous.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 65
16 Come ye near unto me, hear ye this: I have
not spoken in secret from the beginning; from
the time that it was, there am I. (And now the
Lord GoD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.)
17 Thus saith the Lorp, thy Redeemer, the Holy
One of Israel: I am the Lorp thy God which
teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by
the way that thou shouldest go.
18 O that thou hadst hearkened to my command-
ments! then had thy peace been as a river, and
thy righteousness as the waves of the sea:
19 Thy seed also had been as the sand, and the
offspring of thy bowels like the grains thereof ;
his name should not have been cut off nor de-
stroyed from before me.
20 Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the
Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye,
tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth!
say ye: The LorpD hath redeemed his servant
Jacob, .
21 And they thirsted not when he led them
through the deserts; he caused the waters to flow
out of the rock for them; he clave the rock also,
and the waters gushed out.
22 No peace, saith the Lorp, unto the wicked!
49 LISTEN, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye
F
66 THE GREAT PROPHECY
people, from far! The Lorp hath called me
from the womb: from the bowels of my mother
hath he made mention of my name.
2 <And‘he hath made my mouth like a sharp
sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid
me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver
hath he hid me;
3. And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.
4 Then I said: I have laboured in vain, I have
spent my strength for nought, and in vain; yet
surely my righteousness is with the LORD, and
my recompence with my God.
5 And now, saith the LorRD that formed me from
the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again
to him, and that Israel may be gathered; (for I
have honour in the eyes of the LORD, and my
God is my strength ;)
6 And he said: It is a small thing that thou
shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes
of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel ;
I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that
my salvation may be unto the ends of the earth!
7 Thus saith the LorD, the Redeemer of Israel,
his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to
him ,whom the people abhorreth, to a servant of
tyrants: Kings shall see and arise, princes also
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 67
shall worship, because of the Lorp that is faith-
ful, the Holy One of Israel, and he chose thee.
8 Thus saith the LorpD: In an acceptable time
have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation
have I helped thee; and I will preserve thee,
and give thee for a mediator of the people, to
establish the land, to cause to inherit the desolate
heritages ;
9 That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go
forth! to them that are in darkness, Shew your-
selves! They shall feed in the ways, and their
pastures shall be in all high places;
10 They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall
the heat nor sun smite them; for he that hath
mercy on them shall lead them, even by the
springs of water shall he guide them.
11 And I will make all my mountains a way, and
my highways shall be cast up.
12 Behold, these shall come from far; and, lo,
these from the north and from the west; and
these from the land of Sinim.
13 Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and
break forth into singing, O mountains! for the
Lorp hath comforted his people, and doth have
mercy upon his afflicted.
14 But Zion said: The Lorp. hath forsaken me,
and my Lord hath forgotten me !—
F 2
68 THE GREAT PROPHECY
15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, that
she should not have compassion on the son of
her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not
forget thee!
16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of
my hands! thy walls are continually before me!
17 Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers
and they that made thee waste shall go forth of
thee.
18 Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold! all
these gather themselves together, and come to
thee. As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely
clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament,
and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth.
19 For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the
land of thy destruction, shall now be too narrow
by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swal-
lowed thee up shall be far away.
20 The children which thou shalt have, after thou
hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears:
The place is too strait for me; give place to me
that I may dwell.
21 Then shalt thou say in thine heart: Who hath
begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children,
and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and
fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold,
I was left alone; these, where had they been?
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 69
22 Thus saith the Lord Gop: Behold, I will lift
up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my
standard to the nations; and they shall bring thy
sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be
carried upon their shoulders.
23 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and
their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow
down to thee with their face toward the earth,
and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt
know that I am the LorD; for they shall not be
ashamed that wait for me.—
24 Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the
captivity of the righteous be loosed ?—
25 But thus saith the LorD: Even the captives of
the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey
of the terrible shall be loosed: for I will contend
with him that contendeth with thee, and I will
save thy children.
26 And I will feed them that « oppress thee with
their own flesh, and they shall be drunken with
their own blood, as with new wine; and all flesh
shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour, and
thy Redeemer the mighty One of Jacob.
50 Thus saith the Lorp, Where is the bill of your
mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away?
or which of my creditors is it to whom I have
sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye
70 THE GREAT PROPHECY
sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is
your mother put away.
Wherefore, when I came, was there no man?
when I called, was there none to answer? Is
my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem?
or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my
rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wil-
derness; their fish stinketh, because there is no
water, and dieth for thirst.
I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make
sackcloth their covering.
THE Lord GoD hath given me the tongue
of the learned, that I should know how to speak a
word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth
morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to
hear as the learned.
The Lord GoD hath opened mine ear, and I
was not rebellious, neither turned away back.
I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks
to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my
face from shame and spitting.
For the Lord Gop will help me, therefore
shall I not be confounded; therefore have I set
my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not
be ashamed.
He is near that justifieth me. Who will contend
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 71
with me? let us stand together! who is mine ad-
versary? let him come near to me!
9 Behold, the Lord Gop will help me; who
is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all
shall wax old as a garment, the moth shall eat
them up.
to Who is among you that feareth the LORD? let
him obey the voice of his servant! that walketh
in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust
in the name of the LorD, and stay upon his
God!
11 Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass
yourselves about with burning darts: get ye into
the flame of your fire, and among the darts that
ye have kindled! This shall ye have of mine
hand: ye shall lie down in sorrow!
51 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteous-
ness, ye that seek the LORD! look unto the rock
whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit
whence ye are digged.
2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto
Sarah that bare you; for I called him when he
was alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
3. For the LorD shall comfort Zion, he will com-
fort all her waste places, and he will make her
wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the
garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be
72 THE GREAT PROPHECY
found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of
melody.
4 Hearken unto me, my people, and give ear
unto me, O my nation! for a law shall proceed
from me, and I will make my judgment to rest
for a light of the Gentiles.
5 My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone
forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; far
lands shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall
they trust.
5 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon
the earth beneath! for the heavens shall vanish
away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old
like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall
die in like manner; but my salvation shall be
for ever, and my righteousness shall not be
abolished.
7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness,
the people in whose heart is my law! fear ye not
the reproach of men, neitlrer be ye afraid of their
revilings,
8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment,
and the worm shall eat them like wool; but my
righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation
from generation to generation.
g Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the
LorD! awake, as in the ancient days, in the
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 73
generations of old. Art thou not it that hath
cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
10 Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the
waters of the great deep? that hath made the
depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass
over?
11 Even so the redeemed of the LORD shall return,
and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting
joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain
gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall
flee away.
12 I, even I, am he that comforteth you! who art
thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that
shall die, and of the son of man which shall be
made as grass?
13 And. forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath
stretched forth the heavens, and laid the founda-
tions of the earth? and hast feared continually
every day because of the fury of the oppressor,
as if he were ready to destroy? and where is the
fury of the oppressor?
14 The captive exile shall very soon be loosed ; he
shall- not die in the pit, neither shall his bread
fail.
15 For I am the Lorp thy God, that divided the
sea, whose waves roared: The Lorp of hosts is his
name.
74 THE GREAT PROPHECY
16 And I have put my words in thy mouth, and
I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand,
that I may plant the heavens, and lay the founda-
tions of the earth, and say unto Zion: Thou art
my people!
17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which
hast drunk at the hand of the Lorp the cup of
his fury! thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup
of trembling, and wrung them out.
18 None to guide her among all the sons whom
she hath brought forth! neither any to take her
by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought
up!
I9 These two things are come unto thee: who
shall be sorry for thee? desolation with destruc-
tion, and famine with the sword: by whom shall
I comfort thee?
20 Thy sons have fainted, they lie at all corners of
the streets, as a wild bull in a net: they are full
of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God.
21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and
drunken, but not with wine!
22 Thus saith thy Lord the LorD, and thy God
that pleadeth the cause of his people: Behold,
I have taken out of thine hand the cup of
trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury;
thou shalt no more drink it again:
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 75
23 But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict
thee, which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that
we may go over! and thou hast laid thy body as the
ground, and as the street to them that went over.
52 Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion!
put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the
holy city! for henceforth there shall no more come
into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.
2 Shake thyself from the dust, arise, and sit up,
O Jerusalem! loose thyself from the bands’of thy
neck, O captive daughter of Zion!
3. For thus saith the LorD: Ye have sold your-
selves for nought, and ye shall be redeemed with-
out money.
4 For thus saith the Lord Gop: My people went
down aforetime into Egypt to sojourn there, and
the Assyrian oppressed them for nought.
5 Now therefore what have I here, saith the LORD,
that my people is taken away for nought? they
that rule over them make them to howl, saith the
Lorp, and my name continually every day is
blasphemed.
6 Therefore my people shall know my name:
therefore they shall know in that day that I am
he that doth speak: behold, it is I!
7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet
of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth
12
96 THE GREAT PROPHECY
peace! that bringeth good tidings of good, that
publisheth salvation! that saith unto Zion, T°
God reigneth!
8 Thy watchmen lift up the voice, with the vo:
together do they sing; for eye to eye they
behold, how that the Lorp doth bring again Zio
9 Break forth into joy, sing together, ye wa
places of Jerusalem! for the LoRD hath comfort
his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem.
10 The LorpD hath made bare his holy arm in |
eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of ©
earth shall see the salvation of our God.
Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from ther
touch no unclean thing! go ye out of the mi
of her! be ye clean, that bear the vessels of
LorpD!
For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go
flight; for the Lorp will go before you, and
God of Israel will be your rereward.
13 Behold, my servant shall prosper, he shall
exalted and extolled, and be very high.
14. As many were astonied at thee—his visage «
so marred more than any man, and his form n
than the sons of men—
15 So shall many nations exult in him: kings s
shut their mouths before him: for that which
PB oe ww
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 77
not been told them shall they see, and that which
they had not heard shall they consider.
58 Who believed our report, and to whom was the
arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For he grew up before him as a slender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground: he had no
form nor comeliness, and when we saw him, there
was no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected of men, a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid
as it were our faces from him; he was despised,
and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our
sorrows! yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he
was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement
of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes
we are healed.
6 All we like sheep were gone astray, we were
turned every one to his own way; and the LorD
hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he
opened not his mouth: as a lamb is brought to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment ;
98 THE GREAT PROPHECY
and who of his generation regarded it, why he was
cut off out of the land of the living? for the trans-
gression of my people was he stricken!
g And he made his grave with the wicked, and
with sinners in his death; although he had done
no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LorD to bruise him; he hath
put him to grief! When he hath made his soul
an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD
shall prosper in his hand:
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall
be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many; for he shall bear their ini-
quities.
Therefore will I divide him his portion with the
great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong!
because he hath poured out his soul unto death:
and he was numbered with the transgressors ; and
he bare the sin of many, and made intercession
for the transgressors.
54 SING, O barren, thou that didst not bear! break
forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst
not travail with child! for more are the children
of the desolate than the children of the married
wife, saith the LORD.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 79
2 ' Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them
stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations!
spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy
stakes!
3. For thou shalt break forth on the right hand
and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the
Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be in-
habited.
4 Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed! neither
be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put
to shame! for thou shalt forget the shame of thy
youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of
thy widowhood any more.
5 For thy Maker is thine husband, the Lorp of
hosts is his name: and thy Redeemer the Holy
One of Israel, the God of the whole earth shall
he be called.
6 For the Lorp hath called thee as a woman
forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth,
when thou wast refused, saith thy God.
7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but
with great mercies will I gather thee.
8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for
a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I
have mercy on thee, saith the Lorp thy Re-
deemer.
9 For this is as the waters of Noah unto me; for
80 THE GREAT PROPHECY
as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should
no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that
I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.
10 For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be
removed ; but my kindness shall not depart from
thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be
removed, saith the Lorp that hath mercy on
thee.
11 O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not
comforted! behold, I will lay thy stones with fair
colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires ;
12 And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy
gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant
stones.
13 And all thy children shall be taught of the
Lorp; and great shall be the peace of thy
children.
14 In righteousness shalt thou be established: be
thou far from anguish, for thou shalt not fear!
and from terror, for it shall not come near thee!
15 Behold, if any gather together against thee, it
is not by me: whosoever shall gather together
against thee shall come over unto thy part.
16 Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth
the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth a
weapon by his work; and I have created the
waster to destroy.
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 81
17. No weapon that is formed against thee shall
' prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against
thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is
the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and
their righteousness of me, saith the LORD.
55 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters, and he that hath no money! come ye,
buy, and eat! yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price!
2 Wherefore do ye spend money for that which
is not bread, and your labour for that which
satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and
eat ye that which is good, and let your soul
delight itself in fatness.
3 Incline your ear, and come unto me! hear, and
your soul shall live! and I will make an everlast-
ing covenant with you, even the sure mercies of
David.
4 Behold, I appointed him for a lawgiver to the
nations, a prince and commander to the nations.
5 Behold, thou shalt call nations that thou know-
est not, and nations that knew not thee shall run
unto thee, because of the LORD thy God, and for
the Holy One of Israel ; for he hath glorified thee.
6 Seek ye the LoRD while he may be found!
call ye upon him while he is near!
G
82 THE GREAT PROPHECY
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the un-
righteous man his thoughts; and let him return
unto the LorD, and he will have mercy upon
him, and to our God, for he will abundantly
pardon!
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts.
to For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from
heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the
earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it
may give seed to the sower, and bread to the
eater:
11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my
mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it
shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth
with peace: the mountains and the hills shall
break forth before you into singing, and all the
trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree,
and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle
tree; and it shall be to the Lorp for a name, for
an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 83
56 Thus saith the LoRD: Keep ye judgment, and
do justice! for my salvation is near to come, and
my righteousness to be revealed.
2 Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son
of man that layeth hold on it! that keepeth the
sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand
from doing any evil.
3 Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath
joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The
Lorp hath utterly separated me from his people!
neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry
tree!
4 For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that
keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that
please me, and take hold of my covenant :
5 Even unto them will I give in mine house and
within my walls a place and a name better than of
sons and of daughters; I will give them an ever-
lasting name, that shall not be cut off.
6 Also the sons of the stranger, that join them-
selves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the
name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one
that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and
taketh hold of my covenant;
7 Even them will I bring tomy holy mountain, and
make them joyful in my house of prayer: their
burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted
G2
84 THE GREAT PROPHECY
upon mine altar; for mine house shall'be called an
house of prayer for all people.
8 The Lord Gop, which gathereth the outcasts of
Israel, saith: Yet will I gather others to him,
beside those that are gathered unto him.
9 ALL ye beasts of the field, come to devour, yea,
all ye beasts of the forest!
10 His watchmen are blind, they are all ignorant ;
they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleep-
ing, lying down, loving to slumber.
11 Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have
enough, and they are shepherds that cannot under-
stand: they all look to their own way, every one
for his gain, one and all of them.
12 Come, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will
fill ourselves with strong drink; and to morrow
" shall be as this day, and much more abundant.
57 The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it
to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none
considering that the righteous is taken away
because of the evil.
2 He shall enter into peace! they shall rest in
their beds, whoso walked in his uprightness.
3 But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress,
the seed of the adulterer and the whore!
4 Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 85
whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the
tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed
of falsehood ;
5 Enflaming yourselves with idols under every
green tree, slaying the children in the valleys
under the clifts of the rocks?
6 Among the smooth stones of the valley is thy
portion; they, they are thy lot! even to them hast
thou poured a drink offering, thou hast offered a
meat offering. Should I receive comfort in these?
7 Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set
thy bed: even thither wentest thou up to offer
sacrifice.
8 Behind the doors also and the posts hast thou
set up thy remembrance: thou hast discovered
thyself to another than me, and art gone up; thou
hast enlarged thy bed, and made thee a covenant
with them; thou lovedst their bed where thou
sawest it.
9 And thou wentest unto Moloch with ointment,
and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send
thy messengers far off, and didst go down even
deep into hell.
10 Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way,
yet saidst thou not, There is no hope! thou hast
yet found strength in thine hand, therefore thou
wast not discouraged.
86 THE GREAT PROPHECY
tr And of whom hast thou been afraid or feared,
that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me,
nor laid it to thy heart? have not I held my peace
even of old? and thou fearest me not.
12 I declare thy salvation! and thy handiwork, it
shall not profit thee .
13. When thou criest, let thy companies of idols
deliver thee! but the wind shall carry them all
away, vanity shall take them. But he that putteth
his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall
inherit my holy mountain.
14 Thus shall it be said: Cast ye up, cast ye up,
prepare the way, take the stumblingblock out of
the way of my people!
15 For thus saith the high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell
in the high and holy place, with him also that is of
a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of
the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite
ones.
16 For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be
always wroth; for the spirit should fail before me,
and the souls which I have made.
17 For the iniquity of his covetousness was I
wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth,
and he went on frowardly in the way of his
heart.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 87
18 I have seen his ways, and will heal him! I will
lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and
to his mourners.
19 I create the fruit of the lips! Peace, peace to
him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith
the LorD, and I will heal him!
20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when
it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
21 No peace, saith my God, to the wicked!
58 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a
trumpet, and shew my people their transgression,
and the house of Jacob their sins!
2 Yet they seek me daily, and desire to know my
ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and for-
sook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of
me the ordinances of judgment, they desire that
God should draw nigh to them.
3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou
seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul,
and thou takest no knowledge? — Behold, in the
day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all
your labours!
4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to
smite with the fist of wickedness! your fast this
day is not a fast, to make your voice to be heard
on high.
88 THE GREAT PROPHECY
5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? such a day
that a man doth afflict his soul? is it to bow down
his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and
ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an
acceptable day to the LorRD?
6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose
the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy bur-
dens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye
break every yoke?
7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and
that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy
house ? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover
him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine
own flesh?
8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,
and thine health shall spring forth speedily, and
thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of
the Lorp shall be thy rereward.
9 Then shalt thou call, and the orn shall
answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here
I am! If thou take away from the midst of thee
the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and
speaking vanity ;
10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry,
and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light
risc in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the
noon day.
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 89
11 And the LorD shall guide thee continually, and
satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy
bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden,
and like a spring of water, whose waters fail
not.
12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the
old waste places: thou shalt raise up the ruins
of many generations; and thou shalt be called,
The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths
to dwell in.
13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath,
from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call
the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lorp,
honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing
thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure,
nor speaking thine own words;
14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lorn,
and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places
of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of
Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the LorpD hath
spoken it.
59 Behold, the Lorp’s hand is not shortened, that
it cannot save, neither his ear heavy, that it
cannot hear ;
2 But your iniquities have separated between you
and your God, and your sins have hid his face from
you, that he will not hear.
go THE GREAT PROPHECY
3. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your
fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies,
your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for
truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they
conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
5 They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the
spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth,
and that which is crushed breaketh out into a
viper.
6 Their webs shall not become garments, neither
shall they cover themselves with their works: their
works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence
is in their hands.
7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to
shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts
of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their
paths.
8 The way of peace they know not, and there is
no right in their goings: they have made them
crooked paths; whosoever goeth therein shall not
know peace.
9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth
justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold
obscurity ; for brightness, but we walk in dark-
ness. :
10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. gl
grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon
day as in the night; we are in desolate places as
dead men.
11 We roar all like bears, and moan sore like
doves: we look for judgment, but there is none;
for salvation, but it is far off from us.
12 For our transgressions are multiplied before
thee, and our sins testify against us; for our trans-
gressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we
know them ; :
13 In transgressing and lying against the Lorp,
and departing away from our God, speaking op-
pression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from
the heart words of falsehood.
14 And justice is turned away backward, and right-
eousness standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the
street, and equity cannot enter.
15 Yea, truth faileth! and he that departeth from
evil maketh himself a prey.
And the LorD saw it, and it displeased him that
there was no judgment.
16 And he saw that there was no man, and won-
dered that there was no intercessor: therefore his
arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteous-
ness, it sustained him.
17 For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and
an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put
g2 THE GREAT PROPHECY
on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was
clad with zeal as a cloke.
18 According to their deeds, accordingly he will
repay; fury to his adversaries, recompence to his
enemies; to the far lands he will repay recom-
pence.
19 So shall they fear the name of the LorD from
the west, and his glory-from the rising of the sun,
when the enemy shall come in like a flood, whom
the Spirit of the LORD shall drive.
20 And a redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto
them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith
the Lorp.
21 As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith
the LoRD: My spirit that is upon thee, and my
words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not
depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth
of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s
seed, saith the LorpD, from henceforth and for
ever.
60 ARISE, shine, for thy light is come, and the
glory of the LORD is risen upon thee!
2 For, behold, darkness doth cover the earth, and
gross darkness the nations! but the Lorp shall
arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon
thee.
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 93
3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and
kings to the brightness of thy rising. |
4 Lift up thine eyes round about, and see! all
they gather themselves together, they come to
thee! thy sons shall come from far, and thy
daughters shall be carried upon the arm.
5 Then thou shalt see and rejoice, and thine heart
shall flutter and be enlarged; because the abund-
ance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the
treasures of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.
6 The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the
dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from
Sheba shall come, they shall bring gold and
incense, and they shall shew forth the praises of
the Lorp.
7 All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered
together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall
minister unto thee: they shall come up with ac-
ceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house
of my glory.
8 —Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the
doves to their windows?
9 Surely the isles do wait upon me, and the ships
of Tarshish in front, to bring thy sons from far,
their silver and their gold with them, for the name
of the Lorp thy God, and for the Holy One of
Israel, because he hath glorified thee!
94 THE GREAT PROPHECY
10 And the sons of strangers shall build up thy
walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee;
for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour
have I had mercy on thee.
11 Therefore thy gates shall be open continually,
they shall not be shut day nor night; that men
may bring unto thee the treasures of the Gentiles,
and that their kings may be brought.
12. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve
thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be
utterly wasted.
13. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the
cypress tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to
beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will
make the place of my feet glorious.
14 The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall
come bending unto thee; and all they that de-
spised thee shall bow themselves down at the
soles of thy feet, and they shall call thee, The
city of the LORD, the Zion of the Holy One of
Israel.
15 Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated,
so that no man went through thee, I will make
thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many genera-
tions.
16 Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles,
and shalt suck the breast of kings; and thou shalt
t
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 95
know that I the LorD am thy Saviour, and thy
Redeemer the mighty One of Jacob.
17. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will
bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones
iron: I will also make thy officers peace, and thine
exactors righteousness.
18 Violence shall no more be heard in thy land,
wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but
thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates
Praise.
19 The sun shall be no more thy light by day,
neither for brightness shall the moon give light
unto thee; but the LorD shall be unto thee an
everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.
20 Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall
thy moon withdraw itself; for the LORD shall be
thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourn-
ing shall be ended.
21 Thy people also shall be all righteous; they
shall inherit the land for ever: the branch of my
planting, the work of my hands, that I may be
glorified.
22 A little one shall become a thousand, and a small
one a strong nation: I the LORD will hasten it in
his time.
61 THE Spirit of the Lord Gop is upon me;
96 THE GREAT PROPHECY
because the LORD hath anointed me to preach
good tidings unto the afflicted; he hath sent me
to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty
to the captives, and the opening of the prison to
them that are bound ;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,
and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort
all that mourn ;
3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to
give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of
heaviness; that they might be called trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lorp, that he
might be glorified. .
4 And they shall build the old wastes, they shall
raise up the former desolations, and they shall
repair the waste cities, the desolations of many
generations,
5 And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks,
and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen
and your vinedressers.
6 But ye shall be named the Priests of the LoRD:
men shall call you the Ministers of our God:. ye
shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their
glory shall ye boast yourselves.
7 For your shame ye shall have double; and for
confusion shall my people rejoice in their portion:
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 97
therefore in their land they shall possess the
double ; everlasting joy shall be unto them.
8 For I the LorD love judgment, I hate robbery
and wrong; and I will give them their reward
in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant
with them.
g And their seed shall be known among the Gen-
tiles, and their offspring among the people: all
that see them shall acknowledge them, that they
are the seed which the Lorp hath blessed.
10 I WILL greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall
be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with
the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with
the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh
himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth
herself with her jéwels.
Ir For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as
the garden causeth the things that are sown in it
to spring forth; so the Lord Gop will cause
righteousness and praise to spring forth before all
the nations,
62 For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and
for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the
righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and
the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.
2 And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness,
: i
98 THE GREAT PROPHECY
and all kings thy glory; and thou shalt be called
by a new name, which the mouth of the Lorp
shall name.
3 Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand
of the LorD, and a royal diadem in the hand of
thy God.
4 Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither
shall thy land any more be termed Desolate; but
thou shalt be called My delight is in her, and thy
land Married; for the Lorp delighteth in thee,
and thy land shall be married.
5 For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall
thy sons marry thee; and as the bridegroom re-
joiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice
over thee.
6 —I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jeru-
salem, which shall never hold their peace day nor
night.—Ye that are the LoRD’s remembrancers,
keep not silence,
7 And give him no rest, till he establish, and till
he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth!
8 The LorD hath sworn by his right hand, and by
the arm of his strength: Surely I will no more
give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies, and the
sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine for
the which thou hast laboured!
9 But they that have harvested it shall eat it, and
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 99
praise the Lor; and they that have gathered thy
wine shall drink it, in the courts of my holiness.
1o Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye
the way of the people! cast up, cast up the high-
way! gather out the stones! lift up a standard for
the nations!
It Behold, the LoRD hath proclaimed unto the end
of the world: Say ye to the daughter of Zion,
Behold, thy salvation cometh! behold, his reward
is with him, and his recompence before him!
12 And they shall call them, The holy people, The
redeemed of the LORD; and thou shalt be called,
Sought out, A city not forsaken.
63 WHO is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed:
garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his
apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?
—‘I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.’—
2 Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy
“garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?
3 —‘I have trodden the winepress alone, and of
the nations there was none with me; then trod I
them in mine anger, and trampled them in my
fury, and their blood was sprinkled upon my gar-
ments, and I have stained all my raiment.
4 ‘For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and
the year of my redeemed is come.
H 2
100 THE GREAT PROPHECY
5 ‘And I looked, and there was none to help, and
I wondered that there was none to uphold; there-
fore mine own arm brought salvation unto me, and
my fury, it upheld me.
6 ‘And I tread down the people in mine anger,
and make them drunk in my fury, and I bring
down their strength to the earth. —
7 IWILL mention the lovingkindnesses of the LorD,
and the praises of the LORD, according to all that
the LORD hath bestowed on us; and the great
goodness toward the house of Israel, which he hath
bestowed on them according to his mercies, and ac-
cording to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.
8 For he said, Surely they are my people, children
that will not lie! so he was their Saviour.
9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the
angel of his presence saved them: in his love and
in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them
and carried them all the days of old.
10 But they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit ;
therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he
fought against them.
11 Then remembered his people the days of old and
Moses, saying: Where is he that brought them up
out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock ? where
is he that put his holy Spirit within them?
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. Iol
12 That led them by the right hand of Moses with
his glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to
make himself an everlasting name?
13 That led them through the deep, as an horse in
the desert, and they did not stumble?
14 Asa beast goeth down into the valley, the Spirit
of the LORD caused them to rest: so didst thou
lead thy people, to make thyself a glorious name.
1§ Look down from heaven, and behold from the
habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory! where
is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy
bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they
restrained ?
16 Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham
be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not!
thou, O LoRD, art our Father! our Redeemer is
thy name from everlasting!
17, O Lorp, why hast thou made us to err from
thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear?
Return for thy servants’ sake, the tribes of thine
inheritance!
18 The people of thy holiness have had possession
but a little while: our adversaries have trodden
down thy sanctuary.
19 Weare thine! thou never barest rule over them ;
they were not called by thy name.
64 Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that
102 THE GREAT PROPHECY
thou wouldest come down! that the mountains
might flow down at thy presence,
2 As the fire burneth the stubble, the fire causeth
the water to boil! to make thy name known to
thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at
thy presence!
3 When thou didst terrible things which we looked
not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed
down at thy presence.
4 For since the beginning of the world men have
not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath
the eye seen, O God, beside thee, who hath pre-
pared such things for him that waiteth for him.
5 Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh
righteousness, those that remember thee in thy
ways.
Behold, thou art wroth (for we have sinned) with
thy people continually !—and shall we be saved?
6 We are all even as the unclean, and all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all are
faded as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, do
take us away.
7 And there is none that calleth upon thy name,
that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee; for
thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed
us, because of our iniquities.
8 But now, O LorD, thou art our father! we are
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 103
the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the
work of thy hand.
9 Be not wroth very sore, O LorD, neither re-
member iniquity for ever! behold, see, we beseech
thee, we are all thy people!
10 Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wil-
derness, Jerusalem a desolation.
tr Our holy and our beautiful house, where our
fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire; and
all our pleasant things are laid waste.
12 Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O
LorD? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us
very sore? |
65 I GAVE ear to them that asked not for me, J
am found of them that sought me not. I said,
Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that called
not upon my name.
2 I have spread out my hands all the day unto
a rebellious people, which walketh in a way not
good, after their own thoughts ;
3 A people that provoketh me to anger con-
tinually to my face; that sacrificeth in the
gardens, and burneth incense upon the tiles ;
4 Which remain among the graves, and lodge
in the monuments; which eat swine’s flesh, and
broth of abominable things is in their vessels ;
104 THE GREAT PROPHECY
5 Which say: Stand by thyself, come not near
to me, for I am holier than thou! These are a
smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.
6 Behold, it is written before me; I will not
keep silence, but will recompense, even recom-
pense into their bosom,
7 Your iniquities, and the iniquities of your
fathers together, saith the LorbD, which have
burned incense upon the mountains, and _blas-
phemed me upon the hills; therefore will I
measure the reward of their former work into
their bosom.
8 Thus saith the Lorp: As the new wine is
found in the grape-cluster, and one saith, Destroy
it not, fora blessing is in it! so will I do for my
servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all.
9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob,
and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains ;
and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants
shall dwell there.
to ©And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the
valley of Achor a place for the herds to lie down
in, for my people that have sought me.
11 But ye are they that forsake the Lorp, that
forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for
Fortune, and that furnish the drink-offering unto
that which destineth.
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 105
12 Therefore will I destine you to the sword, and
ye shall all bow down to the slaughter; because
when I called, ye did not answer, when I spake,
-ye did not hear, but did evil before mine eyes,
and did choose that wherein I delighted not.
13 Therefore thus saith the Lord Gop: Behold,
my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry;
behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be
thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye
shall be ashamed ;
14. Behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart,
but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall
howl for vexation of spirit.
15 And ye shall leave your name for a curse
unto my chosen; for the Lord Gop shall slay
you, and call his servants by another name;
16 That he who blesseth himself in the earth
shall bless himself in the God of truth, and he
that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the
God of truth; because the former troubles are for-
gotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes.
17 For, behold, I create new heavens and a new
earth; and the former shall not be remembered,
nor come into mind.
18 But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that
which I create; for, behold, I create Jerusalem
a rejoicing, and her people a joy !
106 THE GREAT PROPHECY
19 And If will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in
my people; and the voice of weeping shall be
no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying.
20 There shall be no more thence an infant of
days, nor an old man that hath not filled his
days; for the child shall die an hundred years
old, and the sinner being an hundred years old
shall be accursed.
21 And they shall build houses, and inhabit them ;
and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit
of them.
22 They shall not build, and another inhabit ;
they shall not plant, and another eat; for as
the days of a tree are the days of my people,
and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their
hands.
23. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth
for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed
of the LorD, and their offspring with them.
24 And it shall come to pass, that before they
call, I will’ answer; and while they are yet
speaking, I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock, and
dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not
hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith
the LORD.
‘
‘
‘
OF ISRAEL’S RESTORATION. 107
66 THUS saith the LorD: The heaven is my
throne, and the earth if my footstool; where is
the house that ye build unto me, and where is
the place of my rest?
2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and
all those things were, saith the LorD; but to
this man will I look, even to him that is meek
and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my
word.
3 He that killeth an ox is the same that slayeth
a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, the same that
cutteth a dog’s throat; he that offereth an obla-
tion, offereth swine’s blood; he that burneth
incense, is he that blesseth an idol. Yea, they
have chosen their own ways, and their soul de-
lighteth in their abominations!
4 Ialso will choose to mock them, and will bring
their fears upon them; because when I called,
none did answer, when I spake, they did not.
hear; but they did evil before mine eyes, and
chose that in which I delighted not.
5 Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble
at his word: Your brethren that hated you, that
cast you out for my name’s sake, said, Let the
LorD be glorified, and let your joy appear! but
they shall be ashamed.
6 —A voice of noise from the city, a voice from
108 THE GREAT PROPHECY
the temple, a voice of the Lorp that rendereth
recompence to his enemies!
7 Before she travailed, she brought forth: before
her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.
8 Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen
such things? Shall a land be brought forth in
one day, or shall a nation be born at once? for
as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her
children.
9 Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to
bring forth? saith the LorpD; shall I cause to
bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God.
10 Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with
her, all ye that love her! rejoice for joy with her,
all ye that mourn for her!
11 That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the
breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk
out, and be delighted with the abundance of her
glory.
12 For thus saith the Lorp: Behold, I will extend
peace to her like a river, and the glory of the
Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye
suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be
dandled upon her knees.
13. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will
I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in
Jerusalem.
OF ISRAEL'S RESTORATION. 109
14 And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice,
and your bones shall flourish like an herb; and
the hand of the LorD shall be known toward his
servants, and his indignation toward his enemies.
15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire,
and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render
his anger with fury, and his rebuke.with flames
of fire.
16 For by fire and by his sword will the Lorp
plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lorp
shall be many.
17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify them-
selves in the gardens behind one chief in the
midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination,
and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith
the LORD.
18 For I know their works and their thoughts.
It shall come, that I will gather all nations and
tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.
19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will
send those that escape of them unto the nations,
to Tarshish, Phul and Lud that draw the bow,
to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that
have not heard my fame, neither have seen my
glory; and they shall declare my glory among
the Gentiles.
110 THE GREAT PROPHECY, ETC.
20 And they shall bring all your brethren for an
offering unto the LorD out of all nations upon
horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon
mules, and upon dromedaries, to my holy moun-
tain Jerusalem, saith the LORD, as the children
of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into
the house of the LORD.
21 And of them also will I take for priests and for
Levites, saith the Lorp.
22 For as the new heavens and the new earth,
which I will make, shall remain before me, saith
the LORD, so shall your seed and your name re-
main.
23 And it shall come to pass, that from one new
moon to another, and from one sabbath to an-
other, shall all flesh come to worship before me,
saith the LORD.
24 And they shall go forth, and look upon the
carcases of the men that have transgressed against
me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall
their fire be quenched, and they shall be an
abhorring unto all flesh.
NOTES.
CHAPTER 40.
For the circumstances under which this Chapter opens
see the Note following the Introduction.
The Greek Version mentioned in these notes is that
of the Septuagint, or Seventy, begun at Alexandria in
the third century before Christ, but not completed till
the following century. It is the version which we find
generally used and quoted in the New Testament. The
Vulgate is the Latin Version of St. Jerome, made from
the Hebrew at the beginning of the fifth century after
Christ. It is the authorised version of the Church of
Rome, and up to the Reformation was the Bible of
Christendom; only for the Psalms a yet earlier Latin
version, made from the Greek, not the Hebrew, and
merely corrected by Jerome, maintained its ground; of
this version the Latin headings to the Psalms in the
Prayer-Book are relics. The Chaldazc Version and para-
phrase was formerly thought to be nearly contemporary
with the Christian era, or a little anterior to it; a con-
siderable weight of opinion now, however, seems to be
in favour of assigning this version to the third and fourth
centuries after Christ. In any case it possesses great
interest, having been made by learned Jews, in an idiom
akin to the Hebrew, and which was the idiom in common
T1132 NOTES.
use in Palestine at the Christian era. In this idiom were
interpreted the Scriptures at those ‘readings in the Syna-
gogue every Sabbath-day’ which we find mentioned in
the New Testament; and much of these old interpre-
tations and explanations is probably incorporated in the
Chaldaic paraphrase. Other versions will be mentioned
in the following notes, but they do not require special
remark here.
1. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people—Sometimes my
people is erroneously taken for the nominative of address,
as if the meaning were: Be comforted, my people. It
is not so: the prophets are commanded to comfort the
people. ‘Prophets, prophesy consolations,’ is the open-
ing in the Chaldaic version. And in the Greek the word
priests is supplied at the beginning of the second verse.
But the right word to supply is prophess.
6. And he said, What shall T cry ?—He is the pro-
phet to whom the command to cry came. The Greek
and the Vulgate have J sazd, the Arabic version sup-
plies, as a subject to sad, the words He who was
commanded. But this is not necessary. The air is full of
inspiration, of divine calls and prophetic voices, and the
forms of expression are naturally rapid and elliptical.
After a pause, it is given to the prophet what he shall
cry.
g. O thou.—Here the opening ends, and the main
subject,—Israel’s restoration by the Almighty God of
Israel,—is directly entered .on.
15. Zhe zsles—See note on verse 1 of the following
chapter.
16. And Lebanon 1s not sufficient to burn —The trees
of Lebanon are not enough for wood on the fire of
sacrifice.
NOTES. 113
18. Zo whom then will ye liken God ?—How should
the image-deities of idolatrous Babylon be compared to
this almighty and unsearchable God of Israel?
20. He that is too poor for oblation.—Probably a con-
trast is intended between the costly idol of metal and
the cheaper idol of wood, just as we find the two kinds
of idols put side by side again at c. 44, vv. 12-17. So
blinded are these heathens, the Prophet means, that every
man must have his idol; he who is too poor for oblation,
who is still more, therefore, too poor to have his molten
‘image with work of silver and gold, will yet have his
image of wood.
23. That bringeth the princes to nothing.—After these
words, in order to complete the sense, Have ye not known
him? should be repeated from v. 21.
26, Their host—The host of the stars.
24. Why sayest thou, O Jacob—How then can Jacob
and Israel be faint-hearted, or despair of their restoration,
when this unmatchable, all-powerful, unwearying God is
their God? Compare c. 49, v. 14.
1%. My judgment ts passed over—Is neglected. My
God neglects (Israel is supposed to say) to judge my
cause and to give sentence for me.
CHAPTER 41.
To make still clearer the contrast between the power
and wisdom of the God of Israel and of the gods of the
heathen, these latter are challenged to show and compare
their performances beside His.
1. O islands.—Literally, coast-lands, with especial refer-
ence to the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, and,
as these were westerly to the Jews, to the west; but used
also generally in the sense of far lands, distant regions.
I
114 NOTES.
1. Renew their strength—Collect all their force to
answer me.
2. The man.—The man called is Cyrus, from Persia,
which is easterly both to Babylonia and to Palestine.
Cyrus had the character of a mild and just prince ;
and Xenophon, the Greek historian, chose him for his
ideal of a virtuous ruler. The Persians themselves said,
according to Herodotus, that Darius was a hucksterer,
Cambyses a master, but Cyrus a father. But it specially
weighed, besides, with the Jews, that his religion, the
religion of Persia, rejected and forbade idols like the
religion of Israel. With this character to mark his reli-
gion, and pursuing, too, a policy favourable to the Jews,
Cyrus came to be spoken of by them almost as a servant
of the true God like themselves. See Ezra i. 2: ‘Thus
saith Cyrus King of Persia, Zhe Lord God of heaven hath
given me all the kingdoms of the earth.’
7. Gave the nations before him.—First the kingdom of
the Medes, then Lydia the kingdom of the rich Croesus,
and the Greek cities of Asia Minor; all conquered by
Cyrus before his enterprise against Babylon.
3. Even by the way that he had not gone.—Even in his
marches through new and unknown countries Cyrus was
guided prosperously to his goal, as God’s instrument.
8. But thou, [srael—Amid the conquest, panic, and
hurried recourse of the heathens to their idols, Israel has
a secure upholder and restorer in the Lord his God.
17. When the poor and needy seek water —On the march
of the suffering exiles through the desert between Baby-
lon and the Holy Land, in the promised and approaching
return of the Jews to their country. In these regions
water is almost the first object of a man’s thoughts. The
Ghassanides, one of the most powerful divisions of the
NOTES. 115
Arabian race, took their name from a spring of water
they fell in with on their march across the desert from
Arabia into Syria. God promises his people to pro-
vide water in the wilderness and on the bare highlands
for them, and verdure in the desert, that their return may
be made easier.
21. Produce your cause——Israe] having been exhorted
and encouraged, the discourse turns again to the heathen
and their false gods, who had been challenged to a com-
petition with the Lord.
22. Let them shew the former things——Let the gods of
the heathen show what counsel and warning they have
given to their dependents in former times, and let us see
whether it has been verified; or let them give some counsel
and warning to them now, and let us see whether it will
be verified. ‘
25. One from the north, and... from the rising of the
sun—Cyrus from Persia, which is to the north and east
of Babylon.
26. Who hath declared—wWho of the false gods can
point to warnings and prophecies fulfilled, as the God
of Israel can? What have they to produce like the
Lord’s sentence passed two hundred years ago on Assyria
in its pride of power: ‘When the Lord hath performed
his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem,
I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of
Assyria, and the glory of his high looks’ (Isaiah x. 12),—
and since fulfilled in Assyria’s fall? What can they pro-
duce like the Lord’s sentence passed sixty years ago
on Babylon in its pride of power: ‘I will punish the
king of Babylon and that nation for their iniquity, and
the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it a perpetual
desolation’ (Jeremiah xxv. 12),—and now being fulfilled
i2
116 NOTES.
in Babylon’s danger and fast-approaching fall? Nothing
of this kind can they produce, and they are all vanity.
24. I gave to Jerusalem.—Israel had prophets and true
counsellors from his God, while the heathen from their
false gods had none.
CHAPTER 42.
Israel, the object of this divine favour and these divine
purposes, is now more closely considered, his true mode
of working is declared, his blindness and shortcomings
are reproved.
1. Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect.—
The Greek supplies, ‘/acod my servant, Jsrael mine
elect.” The whole passage, vv. 1-4, is applied to Christ
in the New Testament, St. Matth. xii. 17-21; but neither
the Greek version nor the Hebrew original are there
closely followed. The oceasion of quoting the passage
is Jesus Christ’s charge to those whom he healed that
they should not make him known, the point primarily
to be illustrated being Christ’s mild, silent, and un-
contentious manner of working.
2. He shail not strive—More literally, shall not clamour :
shall not speak with the high, vehement voice of men who
contend. God’s servant shall bring to men’s hearts the
word of God’s righteousness and salvation by a gentle,
inward, and spiritual method.
3. A bruised reed. — Suffering and failing hearts he shall
treat tenderly, and restore them by mildness, not severity.
6. For a mediator of the people, for the light of the Gen-
tiles —We are familiar with the application of this to
Christ; but it is said in the first instance of the ideal
Israel, immediately represented to the speaker by God’s
faithful prophets bent on declaring his commandments
NOTES. 117
and promises, and by the pious part of the nation, per-
sisting, in spite of their exile among an idolatrous people,
in their reliance on God and in their pure worship of
him. The ideal Israel, thus conceived, was to be God’s
mediator with the more backward mass of the Jewish
nation, and the bringer of the saving light and health
of the God of Israel to the rest of mankind.
9. The former things are come to pass—Such as the
prophesied fall of Assyria.
2. And new things do I declare.—The approaching fall
of Babylon and the restoration of Israel.
10. Stug unto the Lord.—In the convulsions of war
and change coming upon the earth God’s arm was about
to be shown in the overthrow of idolatrous Babylon, and
in the restoration of his chosen people; hence this song
of triumph.
ib. Fe that go down to the sea, and all that ts therein.—
Compare Psalm xcvi. 11: ‘Let the sea make a noise, and
all that therein is.’
11. Lhe wilderness and the cities thereof.—The great
expanse of desert country between Babylonia, Palestine,
and Arabia, with nomad tribes masters of it, and settle-
ments scattered through it where there is water. Kedar
is the name of an Arabian people, descended from
Ishmael, lying in the north of Arabia, next to their
brother race, Nebaioth, the Nabathzans. See Gen. xxv. 13.
tb. The inhabitants of the rock—The country above
spoken of is by no means one great plain of sand, but
has stony regions (Arabia Petrzea), hills, and rock-forts.
These are often contrasted with the undefended habita-
tions of the nomad Arabs. ‘We Bedouins,’ says one of
these Arabs, in the sixth century after Christ, to the poet
Imroulcays, who sought his protection, ‘live in the plains,
118 NOTES.
and have no castles where we can make our guests safe:
go to the Jew Samuel in his castle of El-Ablak.’ The
fidelity of this Jewish lord of an Arabian rock-fort became
a proverb.
12. In the tslands.—See note to c. 41, v.14.
15. Z will make the rivers dry land, &c.—The great
rivers of Mesopotamia, from the nature of the country
through which they flow, have from the earliest times
offered scope for large engineering operations, both civil
and military. Mr. Layard speaks thus of the ruins of
a great stone-dam he found in the Tigris: ‘It was one
of those monuments of a great people, to be found in
all the rivers of Mesopotamia, which were undertaken
to ensure a constant supply of water to the innumerable
canals spreading like network over the surrounding coun-
try, and which, even in the days of Alexander, were looked
upon as the works of an ancient nation.” Engineering
works for a military object, besides the operations on the
Gyndes and Euphrates attributed to Cyrus, are continu-
ally mentioned. For example, Arabian writers relate how
Zebba (probably the Zenobia of our histories) built two
fortresses, one on the right, the other on the left bank
of the Euphrates, and connected them by a tunnel, which
she made by damming and turning the Euphrates when
its waters were low, executing a deep cutting in its bed,
bricking the cutting over, and then turning the waters
back again. She hoped thus to have always a sure place
of refuge, but an enemy who was at war with her got the
secret of the tunnel, met her at its mouth in the second
fortress when she fled from the first, and slew her.
16. And I will bring the blind, &c.—I will bring my
faint-hearted, incredulous, and undiscerning people safe
through the desert to their own land.
NOTES. 11g
19. Who 1s blind, but my servant.—Israel, as a whole,
is faint-hearted, is slow to understand God’s great pur-
poses for it, and incredulous of them, in spite of all the
experience it has had of God’s guidance.
21. Lhe Lord was pleased, &.—The Lord took Israel
for his chosen people, in order to exalt his law, the law of
righteousness, committed to Israel; Israel is conquered,
despoiled, and captive; how can such things befall God’s
chosen people? Clearly, because of Israel’s sins; because,
though the chosen people, Israel would not walk in God’s
ways. Let Israel now return to them and be saved.
CHAPTER 48.
And saved Israel shall be, the next chapter continues ;
his sons shall be gathered from all the regions where they
are dispersed, and shall be brought with safety and vic-
tory, as of old from the bondage of Egypt, to their own
land.
3. L give Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Saba for
thee.—In the crash now begun, the new conquering power,
Persia, was about to attack and overturn other powers
besides Babylon. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, con-
quered Egypt and invaded Ethiopia. Saba is Meroe on
the Upper Nile. The Persian king was to set free the
chosen people; these other peoples, given into his hand,
were to be as a ransom and a substitute for the delivered
Israel.
8. Bring forth the blind people that have eyes —Set free
my people Israel, who have been blind to my ways but shall
see them, and deaf to my word but shall hearken to it.
9. Let all the nations.—The heathen and their gods are
again challenged as in c. 41. See note to v. 24 of that
chapter.
320 NOTES.
10. Ve are my witnesses, &c.—Israel is here addressed,
both the blind and faint-hearted mass of the nation, and
the faithful and believing few.
14. And the Chaldeans upon the ships of their pleasure.
—‘I make the Chaldeans to flee upon the barks that had
before served for their pleasure. The great feature of
Babylon was its river, the Euphrates, with its quays,
bridges, cuts, and artificial lakes; it served alike for use
and pleasure.
16. Which maketh a way in the sea.—A remembrance
of the march out of Egypt and of Pharaoh’s overthrow.
20. The beasts of the field shall honour me—I will pro-
vide water in the desert for my returning people on their
march through it; and by this the wild creatures of the
desert, which usually suffer by the drought prevailing
there, shall profit.
23. Thou hast not brought me the lambs.—Compare
Ps. 1. 8: ‘I will not reprove thee because of thy .sacri-
fices or for thy burnt-offerings, because they were not
always before me.’ The sacrificial service of the temple
necessarily ceased during the exile at Babylon; God has
no concern for this, neither does he plague his people
about it; his concern is because his people plague Azm
with their sins.
24. Wo sweet cane.—A spice reed, calamus aromaticus,
used for the holy anointing oil. See Exod. xxx. 23, where
it is called ‘sweet calamus,’ and mentioned along with
cinnamon.
26. Let us plead together—As the heathen and their
deities were challenged recently, so Israel is now chal-
lenged to try its cause with God.
24. Thy first father.—Jacob, by whose representative
name the Jewish people is throughout addressed. See
NOTES. . 121
Hos. xii. 2, 3: ‘The Lord will punish Jacob according
to his ways, according to his doings will he recompense
him; he took his brother by the heel in the womb, &c.
But probably a general sense is meant to be given to
the expression: ‘thy forefathers,’ ‘thy race from its first
beginning.’
28. The princes of the sanctuary—The chief priests.
See Jer. lii. 24.
CHAPTER 44.
Nevertheless, Israel] shall be restored, and so evidently
blest that other nations shall attach themselves to him,
call themselves by his* name, and become servants of his
God. For his God is the only God, the idols are vanity.
Amidst the joy of the whole earth, God will perform his
promise and restore Israel by the hand of Cyrus.
2. Jeshurun.—Probably a diminutive of endearment,
coming originally from Jashar, wprzghi, and with a force
something like that of Goodchild. The Greek has, my
beloved Israel, the Vulgate, rectissime, Luther, Hrommer,
‘pious one.’
3. The ancient people—More literally, the everlasting
people ; Israel, the chosen, eternal people of God.
4. Let them shew.—A challenge as at c. 41, vv. 21-24;
see the notes there.
8. They are thetr own wrtnesses—They thémselves have
the plain evidence of the nullity of their gods; but they
are blind to it, that they may come to shame and ruin.
11. That are but men.—That are mere mortal men,
and yet make gods!
12. Zhe smith—There is here mention, first, of the
molten image made by the smith, and then of the cheaper
122 NOTES.
wooden image made by the carpenter. See c. 40, v. 20,
and the note there.
12. ea, he is hungry —This god-maker is hungry
and faint, even at the very time he is at his god-making !
24. That saith to the deep, &.—There is reference here
to the Israelites’ passage of the Red Sea, and probably
also to the operations of Cyrus in drying and turning the
tivers of Babylon.
CHAPTER 465.
Cyrus is God’s instrument, and those Jews that have
difficulty in recognising him as such, are warned not to
be more wise than God. God has raised up Cyrus and
is directing his wars, that Israel may be saved, and that
the world may be saved with Israel in Israel’s God, the
sole source of salvation.
1. Zo his anointed, io Cyrus-——The Vulgate keeps the
Greek word for anointed, and has Chris/o meo Cyro.
7h. I will ungird the loins—To gird the loins is to
make fit for action and to fill with strength; so to wagird
them is to make powerless for action and to leave de-
fenceless.
1b. To open before him the two-leaved gates, &.—The
gates of Babylon and the other cities besieged by Cyrus.
4. I have surnamed thee —‘ My shepherd.’ See the last
verse of the preceding chapter.
8. Drop down, ye heavens, &c.—Compare Deut. xxxii. 2:
‘My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil
as the dew,’ &c.
16. Have created him.—Cyrus.
9. Woe unto him.—God here turns to Israel, who was
looking for ‘a rod out of the stem of Jesse’ to restore
NOTES. 123
the Jews in triumph to Jerusalem, and was little pre-
pared to accept an alien deliverer like Cyrus. ‘ Will
Israel be more wise than God who made him and the
world and rules them in his own manner?’ is the sub-
stance of this and the following verses.
9. Zhy work.—In common speech we should say,
one's work. Shall one’s work say of him that fashioneth
it, &e. §
11. Ask ye me of things to come, &c.—See note to v. 9.
Will ye take the disposition of things out of my hands,
and direct me how I am to deal with my own chosen
people?
13. [ have ratsed him, &c.—Him is Cyrus, my city is
Jerusalem, my captives are the Jews.
14. The labour of Egypt, &c.—See c. 43, v. 3, and the
note there. Saba, or Meroe, on the Upper Nile, was the
centre of a great caravan trade between Ethiopia, Egypt
and North Africa, Arabia and India. Herodotus speaks
(iii. 20) of the Ethiopians as ‘the tallest of men.’
76. Shall come over unto thee.— Thee is Istael. The
conquest of strange nations by Cyrus shall acquaint these
nations with Israel and Israel’s' God, and make them see
that only in this God is salvation.
76. In chains.—After their conquest by Cyrus.
15. Thou arta God that hidest thyself—A God that is
unsearchable, whose ways, though excellent, are not as
man’s ways, and whose footsteps are not known.
19. [have not spoken in secret.—My oracles have not
been hidden and ambiguous, my promises and threaten-
ings have been distinct and clear. See note to c. 41,
Vv. 24.
20. Ve that are escaped of the nations—The great con-
vulsion of Cyrus’s conquests is supposed to be over, and
124 NOTES. .
the remnants of the conquered nations are called upon to
leave their idols, and to know and acknowledge the God
of Israel.
CHAPTER 48.
The idols of Babylon fall, and their captive wor-
shippers, instead of being sustained by them, have to
put them on beasts of burden to be carried; the God
of Israel is no idol fo be carried on beasts of burden
or on men’s shoulders, he carries his people. He has
called Cyrus and will save Israel in his own manner.
1. Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth—Babylonian idols.
In the star-worship of Babylon, Bel was the planet
Jupiter; it has been conjectured that Nebo was the
planet Mercury. The temple of Bel was one of the
wonders of Babylon. The gods of the conquered people
were carried off into captivity along with the people. So
Jeremiah says (xlviii. 7) of Chemosh the god of Moab:
‘Chemosh shall go into captivity with his priests and his
princes.’
2. They are borne that_ye carried.—The Babylonians
are addressed. The idols that they used to carry with
honour in their religious processions, are now packed on
horses and bullocks and borne by the weary beasts
away.
2. They could not dehiver the burden.—The false gods
could not deliver their own images, borne into captivity.
8. Shew yourselves men—Not such children as to con-
found me with these dumb idols, who cannot counsel or
save.
11. Calling an eagle from the east.—Cyrus from Persia.
12. Fe obdurate——Spoken to those Jews who were
slow to believe in their deliverance through Cyrus.
NOTES. 125
CHAPTER 47.
An outburst of triumph on the approaching fall of
luxurious, tyrannous, superstitious Babylon.
1. Daughier of the Chaldeans —Chaldza was the coun-
try, Babylon the capital.
2. Take the millstones, &c.—Perform the offices of a
slave, thou who hast been so luxurious!
1%. Uncover thy locks, &e.—Struggle along on thy way
into captivity, squalid and half-clad, thou who hast been
so delicate |
6. Upon the anctent.—Israel. Israel the ancient, Israel
in his old age, is used to heighten the picture of cruelty.
Ancient here must not be paralleled with ancten/ in
c. 44, Vv. 7, ‘the ancient people; the word in’ the
original is not the same there as here, and means there
eternal, God’s chosen and eternal people.
9. The loss of children and widowhood.—Babylon is
said to lose her children inasmuch as she loses her
citizens, and to be a widow inasmuch as she loses her
king. ;
16. The multitude of thy sorcertes-—The ‘magicians,
astrologers, and sorcerers’ of Babylon are familiar to us
from the book of Daniel. See Dan. ii. 2. 7
14. Lt shall not be a coal to warm at, &c.—Not a
pleasant, warmth-giving fire, but a devouring, destruc-
tive one.
15. Zhey with whom thou hast dealt—The magicians
and astrologers of Babylon, with whose arts she has so
busied herself, and on whom she has so relied, shall fail
her in her day of trouble; they shall either be destroyed
or flee.
126 NOTES.
CHAPTER 48.
Israel is warned against his old hardness of heart, and
bidden to receive the declaration of that which is God’s
present will,—the deliverance of Israel through Cyrus.
But for the wicked, let Israel know, there is no de-
liverance.
3. L have declared the former things.—Such as the fall
of Assyria and of Babylon. See c. 41, v. 24, and the
note there.
6. Thou hast heard; see all this/—The Vulgate well
translates, Qu@ audistr, vide omnia! All that was before
prophesied to thee, the fall of these mighty kingdoms,
behold it fulfilled !
16. I shew thee new things.—Whiat these ‘ new things’
are, namely, the deliverance through Cyrus, will be dis-
tinctly declared at v. 14.
11. Will I do ct.—Deliver thee.
14. Which among them.—Among the false gods and
the false prophets of the heathen.
7. The Lord hath loved him.—Him is Cyrus. The
Lord hath loved Cyrus; Cyrus will do the Lord’s pleasure
on Babylon, and the Lord’s arm shall be, by Cyrus, on
the Chaldeans.
16. Come_ye near unto me, &c.—In this verse the Pro-
phet, charged with these messages from God, speaks in
his own name, and testifies to his countrymen that he has
from the beginning pointed out to them God’s hand and
beck in these great events now happening.
21. And they thirsted not, &c.—This is what the de-
livered are to sing. On their return from Babylon, as in
old time on their return from Egypt, they have been led
safely through the desert and supplied with water.
NOTES. 127
22, No peace-—This is the note of warning, coming in
at the close of the strain of promise.
At the end of this chapter there is a kind of pause
in the discourse, which enters upon a second stage in
the next chapter.
CHAPTER 49.
The Prophet, who had appeared in v. 16 of the pre-
ceding chapter, comes forth in this chapter more dis-
tinctly. Speaking in the name of Israel, the true Israel,
the pious and persisting part of his nation, he announces
God’s calling and purposes for this Israel of whom he
is the representative. God will not only restore the
Jewish nation through this true Israel, full of faith and
of courage for the promised restoration; he will also
bring the Gentiles to himself through its light and lead-
ing. It is true, many of the Jews are incredulous and
desponding; but vain are their fears; God will not for-
sake his people.
2. He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword—Com-
pare Heb. iv. 12: ‘The word of God is quick, and
powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,’ &c.
6. Lt ts a small thing, &c.—See the introduction to this
chapter.
8. A mediator of the people— The same expression as
at c. 42, v. 6; see the note there. ‘The people’ is the
Jewish people as opposed to the Gentiles.
1. To establish the land—The Holy Land, which was
to be restored and re-settled.
9. The prisoners.—The exiled and captive Israelites.
ib. Their pastures shall be in all high places.—See
c. 41, v. 17, and the note there.
128 NOTES.
11. My highways shall be exalted.—Built up so as to
form a high and clear causeway to travel on.
12. Zhe land of Stnim.—Probably China, which may
have been known to the dwellers in Babylon as the name
of a distant land, beyond India. It seems used here to
imply the farthest parts of the world.
14. But Zion said—The great body of the Jews were
made despondent by their long adversity, and thought
God had left them and would never restore them. Com-
pare c. 40, v. 27: ‘Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and
speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my
judgment is passed over from my God?’
16. Graven thee upon the palms of my hands.—As some-
thing to be ever remembered by me. See Deut. vi. 8:
‘And thou shalt bind them (God’s words) for a sign
upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between
thine eyes.’ Here the object for remembrance is con-
ceived as written on something like paper, and then
attached to the hands or face; in the text it is conceived
as graven directly upon the hands. In Persia at this day
people wear talismans, called forms, representing a star
with five rays, each ray having written on it an im-
portant text of the Koran, and in the middle of the star
is written the name of God. These are now talismans,
but they were originally reminders, to keep God and
certain thoughts concerning him ever at hand. Their
use throws light on the expressions, ‘to trust in God’s
name, ‘to fear the mame, ‘to rejoice in the name,
‘to believe in the zame,’ which so often occur in the
Bible.
18. All these.—The scattered and exiled children of
Zion.
19. They that swallowed thee up.—Zion’s foreign con-
NOTES. 129
querors and occupiers shall evacuate her, and leave her
to her own children.
20. The place is too strait for me—aA picture of the
fulness and prosperity, after her restoration, of the deso-
late and empty Jerusalem of the time of the exile.
at. Then shalt thou say, &c.—The expressions in this
verse are to be closely noted, for the discourse returns to
them at the beginning of the next chapter. Zion com-
plains that she is (r) a mother who has lost her children,
and (2) a wife whom her husband (God) has abandoned.
24. Shall the prey.—Shall Israel be really rescued from
such a power as Babylon? Yes.
CHAPTER 50.
In the first three verses the thread of the discourse is
directly continued from the last chapter. At v. 4 the
Prophet, as the true Israel (see the introduction to the
last chapter), speaks again of himself and his mission.
1. Thus satth the Lord, &c.—See v. 21 of the pre-
ceding chapter. Zion complains that her children are
lost, and she is divorced. God answers: Can a writing
of divorcement (St. Matth. v. 31) be shown against me, as
in a man’s case, to prove a formal divorce? or, have I
creditors to whom, as a human debtor, I sell my children?
Zion is abandoned, and her children lost to her, but for
a time, because of her sins and while her sins last.
2. Wherefore, when I came, &c.—The faint-heartedness
of the bulk of the Jewish people, despondent and inert
about the promised restoration, is rebuked, and God’s
almighty power to effect his designs is set forth.
10. Who ts among _you.—God speaks. ;
11. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire-——This is said
to the Jews, who receive with incredulity, anger, and
K
130 NOTES.
persecution, God’s message and messenger. In this, as in
the preceding verse, it is God who speaks; and he warns
these Jews that their anger and violence shall be turned
against themselves, and they shall ‘lie down in sorrow.’
See c. 66, v. 24.
CHAPTER 51.
This chapter continues the encouragement given at
v. 10 of the preceding chapter. The faithful of Israel
shall be brought to the land of promise like their father
Abraham, and shall be blest and multiplied there; they
shall be the means of extending God’s salvation to the
rest of the world. Let not man make them afraid; the
Lord is with them, who brought them out of Egypt; who
afflicted them, but will now save them and afflict their
oppressors.
1. The rock, &c.—Abraham and Sarah, the progenitors
of Israel.
2. I called him alone-——When he was but one, God
called him, to make him a great nation. Compare Ezek.
xxxiii. 24: ‘Abraham was one, and he inherited the
land.’
5. Mine arms shall judge—The common figure of the
actual arm or hand of God swaying human affairs.
9. Cut Rahab and wounded the dragon.—Rahab, ‘the
Proud,’ is Egypt; the dragon is probably the crocodile of
the Nile, the emblematic beast of Egypt. As God smote
Egypt of old, and delivered his people, so he will deliver
them now. :
12. Afrazd of a man.—Such as thy oppressor, the king of
Babylon, whom thou fearedst so, and who is now falling.
16. That I may plant the heavens, &c.—The new
heavens and the new earth. Compare c. 65, v. 17.
NOTES. 131
18. Wone to guide her—What follows is a picture of
the misery wrought by Nebuchadnezzar’s siege and de-
struction of Jerusalem.
19. These two things.—Desolation and destruction of
the land is one of the two things; famine and slaughter
of the people the other.
21. Mot with wine—Dizzy and staggering, not with
wine, but with affliction from God.
23. Ladd thy body as the ground and as the street.—A trait
of the humiliation of the conquered and the insolence of
the conqueror in Eastern kingdoms. So it is related that
when Sapor king of Persia got on horseback, his pri-
soner, the Roman emperor Valerian, had to kneel down
and make his back a step for him.
CHAPTER 52.
The strain of the previous chapter is continued. Israel
shall be restored, and the mountains of Judah and the
waste places of Jerusalem shall rejoice at the triumphal
return to Zion of the Lord with his people. This strain
ends with v. 12.
3. Ve have sold yourselves for nought—This is the same
sort of argumentation as at c. 50, v. 1; see the note
there. Egypt and Assyria acquired no perpetual rights
over Israel, they never became his purchasers and legal
owners; so it is now with Babylon; Babylon has no
permanent property in Israel whom it so heavily op-
presses; therefore the Lord, who punished Israel by
giving him over for a time to his enemies, will now
restore him.
4. Thy waitchmen.—The prophets, who with joy an-
nounce God’s return with his redeemed people to Zion.
K2
132 NOTES.
1. rom thence—From Babylon, on their march home
to the Holy Land.
tb. The vessels of the Lord—The holy vessels of the
Temple, which had been carried off to Babylon, and
which Cyrus restored to the returning Jews. See Ezra
i. 7,8: ‘Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels
of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had
brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put them in the
house of his gods; even those did Cyrus king of Persia
bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and
numbered them unto Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.’
12. With haste-—With haste and by flight, as ye did
from Egypt. The exodus from Babylon shall be not
like this, but public and triumphant.
13. Behold my servant, &.—This and the two follow-
ing verses belong to the next chapter. They declare the
future glory of God’s persecuted servant.
14. His visage was so marred.— See c. 50, v. 6.
15. So shall many nations exult in him.—The Vulgate
has asperget gentes mulfas, ‘he shall sprinkle many na-
tions;’ and so, too, has our Bible. The Greek has:
‘Many nations shall be in admiration at him” The
Chaldaic has, ‘he shall row#,’ or ‘ scatter,
tb. Kings shall shut their mouths before him.—In sign
of reverence.
CHAPTER 653.
The application of this well-known chapter to. Jesus
Christ will be in every one’s mind. But it must be our
concern here to find out its primary historical import, and its
connexion with the discourse where it stands. On this the
5oth chapter throws much light; see particularly vv. 5-9.
There we find ill-usage and persecution of God’s servant:
NOTES. 133
‘I pave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them
that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame
and spitting.’ In Jeremiah (c. 11, v. 19) we find this
persecution of God’s servant, at the hands of those who
would not receive his word, threatening to proceed even
to killing: ‘I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to
the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised
devices against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with
the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land
of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.’
From the same prophet we find that in the case of Urijah,
brought from Egypt and put to death under Jehoiakim,
the persecution dd proceed even to killing (Jer. xxvi. 23).
From the New Testament we learn the same thing: ‘ Ye
are witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of
them which killed the prophets ;’—‘ Jerusalem, that killest
the prophets’ (St. Matth. xxiii. 31, 37). Leaving the Bible,
from Josephus we learn the same; from the Jewish tradi-
tions, too, the same. According to these traditions, Isaiah
himself was put to death by Manasseh. Adding all this
to the data furnished by this 53rd chapter itself, we have
for the original subject of this chapter a martyred servant
of God, recognisable by the Jews of the exile under the
allusions here made to him, who eminently fulfilled the
ideal of the servant of God, the true Israel, the mediator
of the people and the light of the Gentiles, presented in
this series of chapters; and whose death, crowning his
life and reaching men’s hearts, made an epoch of victory
for this ideal.
More, as to the first and historical meaning, cannot be
said with certainty. Many attempts have been made at
an identification of this ‘man of sorrows’ with his primary
historical original, in addition to the identification of him
134 NOTES.
with Christ; he has been said to be Hezekiah, Josiah,
Isaiah himself, Jeremiah; but there are no sufficient
grounds to establish his identity with any one of them.
The purport of the chapter is as follows. The Prophet,
speaking as one of the Jewish people (as in c. 42, v. 24;
‘The Lord, he against whom we have sinned’) declares
how God's faithful servant, the bearer of his commands
and promises, despised, persecuted, and at last taken
away from prison and judgment to die, was stricken for
the iniquities of the people, bare their sins, healed them
by his sufferings, and would finally, in spite, nay, by
means of his death, prevail and triumph. ;
1. Who believed our report—Literally, ‘our hearing,
which the Greek and the Vulgate have. The report we
gave of God’s commands and promises and of the glori-
fication of his servant. See the last three verses of the
preceding chapter; see also c. 49, vv. 1-8, and c. 50,
vv. 7-11. The Prophet speaks in the: first verse as one
of God’s messengers; immediately afterwards he begins
to speak as one of the sinful and undiscerning people.
2. Before him.—Before the Lord.
2b. A slender plant.—The word in the original means
merely a young shoot, a sapling. Not a sender plant,
which implies beauty, delicacy, and fostering care, but
a slender plant, ‘as a root out of a dry ground,’ thin and
insignificant.
3. We hid as wt were our faces.—In contempt and
disgust.
5. Lhe chastisement of our peace.—The chastisement by
which our peace is won.
4. He was oppressed and he was afflicted.—The Vulgate,
which throughout this chapter translates so as to heighten
the identification with Christ, has here: Od/atus est quia
x
NOTES. 135
apse voluzt, He was offered because he himself chose to
be. It is remarkable that in several places in this chapter
the old Latin version which the Vulgate superseded is
more faithful to the original than the Vulgate itself.
8. He was taken, &c.—Taken away from prison and
from judgment to a violent death. This and the pre-
ceding verses are quoted in Acts viii. 32, 33, as the
passage of Scripture which the Ethiopian eunuch was
reading when Philip joined him. This verse is there
quoted according to the Greek version, which mistakes
the original: ‘In his humiliation his judgment was taken
away, and who shall declare his generation? for his life
is taken away from the earth.’
7. Who of his generation—Who of his contempo-
raries recognised the true meaning of his death? that
he died, not, as we thought, by his own fault, but for us
and because of our sins.
7%. My people.—The Prophet speaks as in God’s
name. The Vulgate here makes God himself speak,
and say: Propter scelus popult mer percussd eum, Because
of the wickedness of my people I smote him.
9. He made his grave with the wicked. Compare
Jer. xxvi. 23, as to the burial of the prophet Urijah:
‘And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt and brought
him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the
sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the
common people.’
11. He shall see of the travail of his soul—He shall see
the fruits of his sufferings in the many whom his life and
death have turned to God and-saved.
1b, By his knowledge—Compare c. 50, v. 4: ‘The
~ Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that
I should know how to speak a word in season to him
136 NOTES.
that is weary,’ &c. In this and the following verse God
himself speaks.
CHAPTER 54.
God’s people thus purged and healed shall be eternally
established ; Israel shall extend his borders and multiply
his sons ; his enemies shall come over to him; this is the
heritage of the servants of the Lord and their promised
justification through God’s righteous servant.
1. Stmg, O barren.—Zion is addressed as at c. 49,
vv. 18-21, and with the same promises. See the notes
there. The captivity in Babylon is Zion’s widowhood
without her husband, the Lord; the slaughter and diminu-
tion of her people are her childlessness; this is to be
more than made good after her restoration.
2. Lengthen thy cords, &c.—Images taken from the
pitching of tents.
6. A wife of youth—And therefore beloved.
9. This is as the waters of Noah unto me.—I deal with
my people respecting this their captivity in Babylon, as
I dealt with them respecting Noah’s flood. The words
which follow explain the particular dealing meant.
15. Whosoever shall gather together against thee, &c.—It
had been already promised that the Gentiles should resort
to Israel for salvation; here it is added that even those
who try to be his enemies shall come over to him.
16. Behold I have created, &c.—Destroyers and destruc-
tion are God’s work; they reach those only whom he
means them to reach, and he does not mean them to
reach Israel.
14. Their righteousness of me—This is what was pro-
‘mised at v. 11 of the preceding chapter: ‘By his know-
ledge shall my righteous servant justify many.’ In the
NOTES. 137
original, the same word stands both for justification and
for righteousness, and what is said here is: ‘This is the
heritage of the servants of the Lord and their promised
_ justification by me through means of my righteous ser-
vant.’
CHAPTER 55.
The Jewish people are urged to take the freely offered
salvation now close at hand; but are warned that they
can have it only on condition of amending their lives.
1. Ho, every one that thirsteth—Compare St. John vii,
37: ‘Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst let
him come unto me and drink.’
3. The sure mercies of David.—The same sure, unfail-
ing mercies which I showed to David.
4. Behold, 1 appointed him.—I gave formerly the nations
into David’s hand; so will I now into yours.
5. Thou shalt call a nation, &c—See the preceding
chapter, v. 3. See also c. 52, v.15; and c. 45, v. 14,
and the notes there.
12, For ye shall go out with joy—On the return to the
Holy Land. See c. 52, v. 12, and the note there.
CHAPTER 56.
The warning is continued. Righteousness is needed,
in order to lay hold on God’s coming salvation 3 but,
with righteousness, the stranger may lay hold on it as
well as Israel. Atv. 8 the discourse turns abruptly, with
severe threatenings, to the slothful and sinful part of the
nation and their faithless guides.
1. Do justice! for my salvation 7s near —This is nearly
138 NOTES.
the same as John the Baptist’s preaching, St. Matth.
iii. 2: ‘Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.’
2. That heepeth the sabbath—This seems at variance
with Isaiah, c. 1, v.13: ‘The new moons and sabbaths
I cannot away with.” But that related to a time when
the kingdom of Judah yet stood, when the service of the
Temple was in full course, the whole exterior part of
the Jews’ religion splendid and prominent. At such a
time, a prophet might naturally undervalue the whole of
this exterior part in comparison with the inward part.
But during the exile in Babylon all the services and
sacrifices of the Temple had ceased, and the one tes-
timony of faithfulness to their religion which the Jews
among an idolatrous people could give was the observance
of their Sabbath; their Sabbath was the one outward thing
which brought their religion to their mind. Hence its
observance acquired quite a special value.
3. Metther let the son of the stranger, &c.—By the law
of Moses, eunuchs and strangers were not to enter into
the congregation of the Lord. See Deut. xxiii. 1-8.
This exclusion was now to cease. A stricter and nar-
rower policy, however, prevailed under Ezra and Nehe-
miah after the return (Neh. xiii. 14), and in general the
views of the priesthood were, on a point like this, less
liberal than those of the prophets. But our prophet’s
whole conception of the Gentiles in relation to the reli-
gion of Israel is unexampled in the Old Testament for
its admirable width, depth, and grandeur.
16. Eunuch.—It must be remembered that, attached
to a great Eastern court like that of Babylon, were a
multitude of eunuchs, some of whom had perhaps adopted
the religion of Israel. It is probable, also, that some of
NOTES. 139
the Jewish youths were taken for the court-service as
eunuchs, and their countrymen would afterwards have
been likely to abhor them on that account. These con-
siderations will enable us the better to feel the exquisite
tenderness and mercifulness of this passage.
5. Beiter than of sons.—A better and more enduring
name than he could have had through children born to
him to keep up his name and the name of his family.
4. Mine house shall be called an house of prayer —The
words quoted by Jesus Christ when he cleared the temple.
See St. Matth. xxi. 13.
9. All ye beasts of the field—There is here an abrupt
turn to the faithless part of the Jewish nation, under their
negligent rulers and guides. The barbarous idolatrous
nations are called, as beasts of the field and forest, to
devour this easy prey.
10, /fis watchmen—His chief men, princes, priests,
and prophets.
CHAPTER 57.
The insensibility and idolatry of the unfaithful part of
the Jewish nation are reproved. The restoration of Israel
is, indeed, willed by God, but it is for the righteous
only.
1. The righteous perisheth, &c.—We are taken back to
the subject of c. 53: ‘Who of his generation regarded
it, why he was cut off out of the land of the living?’ The
wicked cannot understand the meaning of the life and
death of the righteous ; how his perishing is not his fault,
but the fault of the evil around him.
3. But draw near, &c.—The righteous dies and is at
rest; but ye, what will ye make at last of your derision
140 NOTES.
of the righteous, and of the follies and idolatries wherein
ye trust? Nothing.
3. Sons of the sorceress, &c.—Ye who have mixed
yourselves up with the sorceries and idolatries of Babylon.
The figure of adultery, &c., has reference to this idolatrous
unfaithfulness. We find again in chapters 65 and 66 that
many of the Jews in Babylon gave themselves to this,
and thought it really religion and a way of safety out of
their troubles.
4. Against whom.—The idolatrous Jews mocked and
despised the pious and persisting servant of God.
5. Under every green tree.—The idolatrous worship in
the consecrated groves of the false gods, so often men-
tioned in Scripture.
2%. Slaying the children in the valleys—The most
famous sacrifices of this kind were those in the valley of
Hinnom. See Jeremiah vii. 31. They were made to
Moloch, the king of heaven, the god of the Ammonites.
But through all the kindreds of the Semitic race (to which
the Babylonians, too, belonged) sacrifices of this sort
seem to have been in use.
6. They, they are thy lof—To them thou attachest thy
luck, thy fortune. The worship of stones is a very early
form of idolatry, and originated, probably, in the venera-
tion paid to meteoric stones,—stones which, as the people
said, ‘ fell down from heaven.’ But the worship extended
to other stones also, Traces of this worship occur in
Genesis, in Jacob’s consecration of the stones in his pas-
sage by Bethel. ‘And Jacob rose up early in the morning,
and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set
it up for a pillar, and poured otl upon the top of it’ Gen.
xxviii. 18. The Greeks, too, had this stone worship; ‘In
the earlier times,’ says the Greek traveller Pausanias, ‘all
NOTES. 141
the Greeks worshipped, in place of images of the gods,
undressed stones. We find the name Beflia given to
these stones, and it has even been conjectured that this
name comes from Bethel.
7. Upon a lofty and high mountain.—The worship ‘in
high places’ is well known.
2%. Thy bed.—The idolatry of the Jews is throughout
spoken of under the figure of adultery, as unfaithfulness
to God.
8. Thy remembrance.—Frobably, small images like those
of the Roman Penates or household gods, which were in
every private family, and were the objects of prayers and
offerings.
7%. Thou. hast enlarged thy bed—sStill the figure -of
adultery against God committed with the false gods of
Babylon. ;
9. And thou wentest, &c.—See v. 5 and the second
note there. The idolatrous Jews offered precious oint-
ment and frankincense to Moloch. Moloch was the king
of heaven, but these Jews sought out all idolatrous wor-.
ships and false gods, down to the gods of the under-
world,
10. Thou art wearied.—Nothing could convince these
idolatrous Jews of the folly of their misplaced trust and
vain worship.
11. And of whom hast thou been afraid >—How could
thy calamities, and the fear of thy Babylonian tyrant,
make thee so superstitious and forgetful ?
14. Cast ye up—As before; make a clear and smooth
highway for my returning people.
15. Of a contrite and humble spirit.—This should be
noted as, what may be called, che new dest of religion,
brought in,—or at any rate first set in clear light,—by
142 NOTES.
this Prophet. See also c. 66, v. z, where this /es/ is again
given. Compare, too, c. 42, v. 2.
19. L create the fruit of the lips.—I create comfort and
joy of heart, and so give cause for the outpourings of
praise and thankfulness from those whom I save.
76. Peace to him that ts far off—Again this Prophet’s
large conception of the extent, reaching to the Gentiles
as well as Jews, of God’s salvation. St. Paul quotes
these words in Eph. iii. 17: ‘Christ came and preached
peace to you (the Gentiles) which were afar off, and to
them that were nigh.’
21. Wo peace.—Again this warning as to the sole
condition upon which God’s salvation can be had. See
the last verse of c. 48.
CHAPTER 58.
Reproof continues. External worship is insufficient; a
change of heart, mildness and mercy, are requisite in
order that God’s salvation offered to Israel may take
effect.
1. Cry aloud—God speaks to the prophet.
3. Wherefore have we fasted >—Besides the regular fasts
of the Jewish religion, there were, during the captivity in
Babylon, special fasts appointed as days of repentance
and prayer for Israel.
7b. Exact all your labours—Make your dependents do
all the work you want done. Oppression, fault-finding,
and harshness go on during the fast just the same.
4. To be heard on high—If ye wish your voice and
your prayer to be heard by God in heaven, this is not the
sort of fast to induce him to listen.
9. The putting forth of the finger—Mockery and in-
NOTES, 143
solence towards the pious and persisting part of the
nation.
13. The sabbath—For the special importance of the
Sabbath during the captivity in Babylon see c. 58, v. 2,
and the note there.
14. The high places of the earth—In early times and in
the warfare of early times the high and rocky situations
were also the strong and defensible situations, and
therefore he who occupied them was formidable and
powerful. —
CHAPTER 59.
Israel’s sins are what make Israel’s misery and defer
his salvation. But God, because Israel is his chosen
instrument, will himself interpose to break up the un-
righteous kingdoms of the world and to restore Israel.
3. Your hands are defiled —This and what follows is a
picture of the sins of the unfaithful part of the Jewish
nation during the captivity in Babylon, and in spite of the
lessons taught by that captivity.
5. They hatch cockatrice’ eggs—They hatch mischief.
Cockatrice is compounded of the words cock and adder,
and is a fabled venomous serpent bred from an egg.
Serpents do not lay eggs, but bring forth their young
alive.
7. Weave the spider's web—They spin vain, foolish
schemes, which can only come to nought.
4. Their feet run to evrl.—Quoted ‘in the Epistle to the
Romans (iii. 15), to prove the guiltiness before God of
the Jews under their law.
9. Therefore ts judgment gone from us.—Here the person
changes, and the Prophet speaks as himself one of the
144 NOTES.
sinful people, and offers up in his own name and theirs a
sort of confession of sins.
9. We watt for light, &c.—See the preceding chapter,
v. 3: ‘Wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest not?’
Now the people know and confess the reason ;—because
of their sins.
10. We grope for the wall.—A picture of the helpless-
ness and hopelessness of the Jewish exiles.
11. We roar all ithe bears, and moan sore like doves.—
We complain loudly and obstreperously, and we complain
with whining and moaning ; in vain, because our heart is
not right with God.
15. He that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey.—
Again a reference, probably, to the subject of the 53rd
chapter,—the death of the patient and innocent servant of
God.
26. And the Lord saw it, &c.—Israel, God’s chosen
instrument, failed to put down iniquity,—nay, himself fell
into it. Therefore God, by the wars and convulsions which
shatter the world, will himself destroy the wicked, both
Jew and Gentile, and will bring about, through these wars
and convulsions, the restoration of Zion and of the rem-
nant of the true Israelites, and the salvation of the world
through the light that shall spring from them.
18. According to their deeds, &.—The enemies of the
Lord, whoever and wherever they are, Jew or Gentile,
near or far, shall be visited and smitten.
19. When the enemy—Cyrus. See c. 45, v. 1. Cyrus
and his conquests are to be God’s instruments of punish-
ment to an unrighteous world, of restoration to the true
Israelites,
20. And a redeemer shall come to Zion, &c.—The
primary historical application of this is still to Cyrus, or,
NOTES. 145
more strictly, to the salvation which was to arise for Zion,
and through Zion for the world, out of that great storm of
war and change in which Cyrus was the chief human
agent. St.Paul, in Rom. xi. 26, quotes the Greek ver-
sion, which differs from the original: ‘ There shall come
out of Sion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness
from Jacob.’ The best Greek text has not ‘ out of Sion,’
as St. Paul quotes, but ‘for Sion’s sake.’
21. My spirit that 1s upon thee—The Prophet here
declares God’s promise to Israel that the line of prophets
of God should not fail.
CHAPTER 60.
The Prophet, who has just announced ‘A redeemer shall
come-to Zion, now describes Zion as it shall be after its
restoration.
1. Arise, shine-—Zion is addressed; the Greek, the
Vulgate, and the Chaldaic insert the explanatory word~
‘ Jerusalem,’
z. Darkness doth cover the earth—The kingdoms of the
earth are breaking up amid gloom and misery; with
Israel alone is:light and joy in the Lord.
3. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light—It shall be
seen that Israel alone has in the Lord the secret of light
and joy, and the heathen nations shall come.'to share it
with Israel. See c. 45, v. 14, and the notes there.
4. Thy sons shall come from far.—See c. 49, v. 22:
‘The Gentiles .. . shall bring thy sons in their arms, and
thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.’
The nations amongst which the Jews are scattered shall
bring them back to the Holy Land, with offerings and
treasures to restore the Temple service and rebuild Jeru-
salem.
L
146 NOTES.
5. Zhe abundance of the sea—The riches of the coast-
lands of the West, the Mediterranean countries, ‘the isles.’
More fully at v. 9.
6. The multitude of camels.—In this and the following
verse are enumerated nations and contributions of the
inland country to the south and south-east of Palestine,
Arabian tribes and their respective products ; in verses 8
and g, those of the Mediterranean sea-board and the
west. Midian and Ephah, with their caravan trade,
Kedar (see c. 42, v. 11) and Nebaioth, with their flocks,
are tribes of Northern Arabia; Sheba, with its gold and
frankincense, is in Arabia Felix, to the south of them.
8. Who are these that fly as a cloud ?>—The Prophet has
pictured the approach of the caravans of inland Arabia ;
now he pictures the approach of the fleets from the coast
lands of the Mediterranean. The fleets with their sails, as
seen afar off, are compared to a cloud, or to a flock of
white doves flying towards their dovecote.
9. Zarshish—The Greek Tartessus, a Phcenician
settlement at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, outside the
Straits of Gibraltar, and representing to the Hebrews the
farthest west. It was the port whence the rich mineral
produce of Spain was shipped by the Pheenicians.
11. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually—This
trait, with many others in the present chapter, is repeated
in the picture of the new Jerusalem in the Book of Reve-
lation (xxi. 25). Here the open gates have their special
reason assigned: to admit the ever in-streaming world,
with its offerings and homage.
12. Mor the nation and kingdom.—Every nation shall
fall unless it serves the Lord, the righteous God, the God
of Israel, through whom alone is salvation. The figure
of serving Israel means serving the God of Israel.
NOTES. 147
13. The glory of Lebanon.—A reminiscence of the
building of Solomon’s temple, and of the contributions to
it of cedar-wood out of Lebanon (1 Kings v. 1-11),
which are to be repeated now for the rebuilding of the
Temple.
16. Thou shalt also suck.—See v. 11.
17. For brass, &c.—The more valuable, for the less
valuable thou hast lost.
1b, Thy officers peace—The restored Zion shall have
peace-loving and righteous rulers.
21. hy people also shall be all righteous.—The stress is
on all, See c. 54, Vv. 13; c. 57, V. 13; and the twice-
repeated warning: ‘No peace, saith my God, to the
wicked !’
%. The branch—This is in apposition with ¢hey. They,
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, shall
inherit the land for ever. In this and the concluding
verse God himself speaks.
At the end of this chapter is a pause.
CHAPTER 61.
The prophet speaks in his own name, as at c. 50, v. 4,
which should be compared with the opening of this chap-
ter. See also the opening of c. 49. He declares for
whom his ministry and God’s promises are intended, sums
up the blessings of the new era at hand, and professes his
joy and thankfulness for it.
1. Unto the afflicted —The Vulgate, which the English
Authorised Version follows, has mansuetis, ‘the meek ;’
the Greek has ‘the poor.’ It will be remembered how (St.
Luke iv. 18) Jesus Christ reads out this passage in the
synagogue at Nazareth, and applies it to himself and his
L2
148 NOTES,
ministry. St. Luke uses the Greek, and makes Christ
say ‘the poor.’
1. Liberty to the captives—The expressions, ‘liberty to
the captives,’ ‘opening of the prison to the bound,’ ‘ac-
‘ceptable year of the Lord,’ are all expressions with a
special meaning for the Jews from the year of jubilee,
when by the law of Moses the slave recovered his liberty.
Acceptable year is more properly gracious year, or, year of
grace of the Lord.
3. Beauty for ashes.—Beauty means ornament here; the
signs of joy instead of the signs of mourning.
5. And strangers—The Jews, a nation of God’s ser-
vants appointed to initiate the rest of the world into his
service, are to give themselves to this sacred and priestly:
labour, while the rest of the world do their secular labour
for them.
4. For your shame ye shall have double—See c. 40.
v. 1: ‘ Jerusalem receiveth of the Lord’s hand double for
all her rue.’
75. My people—One of the sudden changes of persor.
so common with this Prophet. Ye and ¢hey both relate to
God’s people, Israel.
10. Z well greatly rejoice—The Prophet speaks as
already possessing by anticipation the blessings promised,
and as filled with gratitude for them.
CHAPTER 62.
For these blessings the Prophet will not cease to pray
and wrestle, until they arrive, and the glorious salvation of
the renewed Zion shines forth.
1. Righteousness—More properly here saving health.
The Vulgate, to make the application to Christ evident,
NOTES. 149
translates : ‘Until her _/ust One go forth as brightness, and
her Saviour be lighted as a lamp.’
2. WVew name.—We have again, in the Book of Revela-
tion, this bestowal of a mew name upon those whom God
has redeemed and renewed.
4. My delight ts in her, and thy land Married.—In the
Hebrew, Hephzibah and Beulah.
6. I have set watchmen.—God declares that he has set
his watchmen, his angels, upon the walls of Jerusalem, to
remind him of her continually. Compare c. 49, v. 16.
The Prophet entreats these watchmen to ply their office
without ceasing, until Jerusalem is restored.
10. Go through, go through—Compare c. 40, v. 3.
The immediate return of the Lord with his chosen people
to Jerusalem is announced, and preparations for the
triumphal march and entry are to be made.
2. Lift up a standard for the nations—In order that
‘the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to: the
brightness of thy rising.” See c. 60, v. 3.
CHAPTER 68.
So sure are God’s purposes that even if mortal instru-
ments (such as Cyrus) fail, God himself will do the work
upon the enemies of Israel. The Prophet selects Edom
as a kindred and neighbour people of Israel, and yet their
ancient and specially bitter enemy (compare c. 34; com-
pare also Obadiah, and Ezek. xxxv. 5, and Ps. cxxxvii. 7),
who had assisted Nebuchadnezzar in the destruction of
Jerusalem. In a kind of short drama, of sublime
grandeur, the Prophet exhibits God himself as returning
' from executing vengeance upon Edom.
After the 6th verse the subject changes, and the Pro-
150 NOTES.
phet, reverting to God’s old mercies towards Israel, sup-
plicates for their renewal.
1. Who ts ‘his p—A conqueror with blood-stained gar-
ments is supposed to appear. The spectators ask, Who
is he?—He is the Lord.
2. Bozrah.—A place in Hauran, to the north of Edom
as marked in the maps, but the territory of the Edomites
reached there after the downfall of the Jewish kingdom.
Bozrah, or Bostra, afterwards became a place of import-
ance; the fairs of Bozrah and Damascus are mentioned
as the two great Syrian fairs which Mahomet in his youth
visited.
76. I that speak—God answers. In the next verse the
spectators again question; in the three following verses
God speaks.
4. I looked, and there was none to help—The year of
God’s redeemed has come (see c. 61, v. 1, and the note
there), the time for the restoration of Israel that the world
might be saved through Israel; the kings of the earth
and the revolutions of states might fail or delay in bring-
ing about God’s designs for Israel; then God himself
must interpose.
4. I will mention —Here the short drama, or vision,
of the Divine .Conqueror of Edom ends; the Prophet
reverts to God’s old loving-kindnesses and the de-
liverance from Egypt, and implores a return of the like
dealings.
13. As an horse in the desert—As the free, light-
stepping horse of the Arab in the desert.
14. As the beast.—As the cattle go instinctively down
to sheltered places for their rest, so Israel was led to
places of rest and security.
15. The sounding of thy bowels—The metaphor is from
NOTES. 151
strings tightly stretched, and giving, therefore, a louder
and deeper sound.
16. Though Abraham be ignorant of us—Though we
are in exile, strangers to the Holy Land and the polity
founded by our fathers.
18. Our adversaries——Babylon and the heathen na-
tions.
CHAPTER 64.
The supplication goes on without interruption, but it
passes into a confession of sins in the name of the whole
people,—sins that had grown up amidst the despair and
misery of the exile,—and ends with an appeal to God’s
grace and mercy.
1. That thou wouldest rend the heavens.—That thou
wouldest appear once more in fire, as formerly on Sinai.
4. Who hath prepared—Before who supply, to com-
plete the sense, a God.
3. That rejoiceth—In the Lord. Compare Psalm
xevil. 12: ‘ Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous.’
1b. Wroth with them continually—wWith thy people
Israel. One of the changes of person already noticed as
frequent with this Prophet.
CHAPTER 65.
God makes answer to the foregoing supplication. He
has called his people, but in vain; they have been obsti-
nately deaf to him, unfaithful and superstitious. The
unfaithful shall be punished; but a faithful remnant shall
be saved and restored to Zion, and for them the promises
shall take effect.
1. I gave ear to them, &c—Quoted from the Greek
152 NOTES.
version, but with a transposition of the two clauses, by St.
Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, x. 20: ‘I was found
of them that sought me not, I was made manifest unto
them that asked not after me.’ St. Paul applies this verse
to the Gentiles, and the verse following to Israel. Here
both verses apply to Israel.
3. Gardens—The gardens and sacred groves of the
false gods. See c. 1, v. 29: ‘Ye shall be confounded for
the gardens that ye have chosen.’
7b. The tiles—The roof-tiles of the flat-roofed Eastern
houses, where the Chaldeans: practised their star-worship.
See Zephaniah i. 4, 5: ‘I will cut off them that worship
the host of heaven upon the housetops.’
4. Remain among the graves, &c.—The Greek adds, in
explanation, ‘ for the sake of visions.’ What is meant is
the heathen practice called zmcubato,—passing the night
on tombs or in sacred places for the sake of apparitions
and revelations expected there.
1b. Which cat swine’s flesh, &c.—Which use for their
sacrifices, and for their feasts after their sacrifices, things
unclean and forbidden to Israel.
5. Which say, Stand by thyself —Yet doing all this out
of superstition, and out of the vain notion that it will be
of religious avail to them, they insolently repel their
unsuperstitious and faithful brethren as less holy than
themselves.
6. These are a smoke in my nose, &.—Make my nostrils
to smoke with wrath, and my wrath to burn like fire.
4. Burned incense upon the mountains, &c.—The so
often mentioned idolatrous worship upon the high places.
See c. lvii. v. 7.
8. As the new wine, &c.—The juice that shall one
day be wine is in the grape-cluster, and the grape-
NOTES. 153
cluster is preserved for its sake; so Israel shall be
preserved, for the sake of the life and blessing to come
from it.
9. My mountains—The mountains of Judah in general,
and the hills of Zion and Moriah in particular.
10. Sharon.—The strip of western coast from Joppa
northwards td Czsarea. The valley of Achor is op-
posed to it, as being in the east of the Holy Land, by
Jericho.
11. Fortune—In the original, Mortune and that which
destineth are Gad and Meni. Gad means Zuck, Meni
means fate or destiny. They are Babylonian names of
two stars, or, star-deities; probably of the two planets
held to: be fortunate, Jupiter and Venus. Or, Meni may
be the planet Saturn, the unlucky star, opposed to Jeph
the star of good luck.
15. By another name—A name like, The blessed of the
Lord. ,See v. 23.
17. I create new heavens—With the break up of the
heathen kingdoms and the restoration of Israel begins a
new epoch.
20: Zhere shall be no more, &c.—Child and man shall
alike attain to a patriarchal age. The child shall grow up
and come to old age; the sinner shall be an old man
when his curse overtakes him.
22. As the days of a tree—Man’s life shall have, instead
of its present brief term, the far longer term allotted to
the life of trees.
25. Dust shall be the serpent’s meat—The serpent shall
be harmful no more, but shall be content to feed on dust,
an innocent food.
154 NOTES.
CHAPTER 66.
The discourse is continued from the preceding chapter.
God declares his chief pleasure to be in piety; the
sacrifices of the superstitious and unfaithful Jews shall,
avail them nothing, while, on the other hand, the triumph
of their faithful brethren is immediately approaching.
Swiftly shall Zion rise again from her ruins; then shall be
held a day of the Lord to sift the unfaithful from among
the righteous, and to punish them and all their like; the
whole world shall afterwards flow to Zion and worship
before God.
1. The heaven %s my throne, &c.—Stephen quotes this
in his speech before the council. After saying, ‘ Howbeit
the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands,’
he goes on, ‘ As saith the prophet,’ and quotes this pas-
sage. See Acts vii. 48-50.
2. But to this man, &c.—See c. 57, v.15. The line of
thought seems ‘to be as follows: The temple is going to
be rebuilt, and men’s thoughts will be concentrated upon
this work made with hands; in Babylon the unfaithful
Jews have just shown, by even adopting the rites and
sacrifices of the heathen, how prone men are to rely upon
the outward parts of religion ; at this moment, therefore,
God will declare that what he regards is not these things,
but inward religion; lowliness, contrition, and awe of his
word.
3. He that killeth an ox—These superstitious Jews in
_ Babylon, who thought to be more religious than their
brethren by multiplying ceremonies and sacrifices, even
those of the heathen, included in the jumble of obser-
vances to which they were thus led, human sacrifices
and rites the most repulsive and abominable, far more
NOTES. 155
than enough to countervail the other sacrifices by which
they thought, perhaps, to replace the suspended worship
of the Temple. To this their superstitious unfaithfulness
and self-will brought them, and to a neglect or violation
of all that God really regards.
5. Ve that tremble at his word—tThis is addressed to
the faithful part of the nation. Their superstitious
brethren had scornfully repelled them, thinking that they
glorified God by doing so, and by multiplying the obser-
vances which constituted, they hoped, their own superior
holiness: God was indeed about to be glorified, but by
the restoration of Zion and the triumph of the faithful
few, to the discomfiture of the faint-hearted clingers to
Babylon.
6. A voice of notse, &c.—The restoration is supposed to
be taking place. The three following verses describe its
incomparable suddenness and rapidity.
12. The glory of the Gentiles —See c. 60, v. 5.
14. The hand of the Lord, &.—When Zion is rebuilt
the Lord will hold a great day of judgment there, to sift
out and punish his enemies.
1s. The gardens.—As before, the consecrated groves
and gardens of the heathen deities.
76. One chief in the midst—The choragus or ringleader
in the idolatrous processions and ceremonies.
16. All flesh.—Not the Jews only, but al? flesh ; and
the wicked of ad/ flesh shall perish.
17. Swine’s flesh—Such uncleanness and abomination
for Israel as has already been mentioned at v. 3, and in
c. 65, v. 4, and in c. 57, Vv. 5-9.
18. Lf shall come.—After this vengeance on the wicked
God will gather the world to Zion to see his glory and to
worship him,
156 NOTES.
19. Those that escape of them—See c. 45, Vv. 20:
“Assemble yourselves . . . ye that are escaped of the
nations.’ See also v. 14 of the same chapter. Those
who remain of the warring nations, after the wars and
destructions coming upon the earth, having been converted
themselves to the God of Israel, shall go to all parts of
the world spreading God’s name, and setting at liberty
the widely dispersed Israelites, whom they shall bring back
to Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord.
wb. Tarshish, Phul, and Lud, &c.—The prophet goes
from west to east in his enumeration. For Tarshish see
c. 60, v. 9, and the note there. Phul is the country
mentioned with Lud in Ezekiel, xxvii. 10, and by him
there called Phut, where the Greek and the Vulgate
translate Lidyans. In the text now before us the Greek
has Phud or Phut after the Hebrew, but the Vulgate
translates Africa. An African people is meant, and an
African people famous in the use of the bow, which the
Ethiopians, for example, were. Lud is Lydia, the well-
known western kingdom of Asia Minor, conquered by
Cyrus before his march against Babylon. Tubal is a
people in the north-east of Asia Minor. Javan is Greece,
. Ionia; Homer has the word Iaones, which is very near
Javan; and a Greek note-writer to another poet says:
‘The barbarians call all the Greeks Zaones.’ The sign
mentioned at the beginning of this verse consists in the
converted Gentiles going to convert the more distant
heathen world, and to bring the scattered Israelites home.
20. And they shall bring, &c.—Compare c. 43, V. 5;
and c. 49, v. 12 and v. 22.
1b. An offering.—The restored Israelites shall be offered
by their Gentile liberators to the Lord in Zion, as gifts
are offered to the Temple.
NOTES. 157
21. For priests and for Levites—Of the Gentiles also
shall priests and Levites for God’s service be taken.
Originally priests and Levites had been taken from the
tribe of Levi only, but at c. 61, v.6 it was said of the
Israelites generally: ‘ Ye shall be named the priests of the
Lord; men shall call you the ministers of our God’
And now, finally, our Prophet’s horizons widen yet more,
and he admits to the priesthood and ministry of God the
Gentiles also.
23. From one new moon, &c.—Every new moon and
every sabbath shall all flesh, Gentile as well as Jew,
worship before the Lord.
24. The men that have transgressed—The unfaithful
and unrighteous who in the day of God’s judgment have
been separated and slain. See v. 16.
76. Their worm shall not die, &e.—This expression is
adopted in the New Testament: ‘ Where their worm dieth
not, and the fire is not quenched’ (St. Mark ix. 44).
APPENDIX.
THE following shorter prophecies, relating in
general to the same times and circumstances as
_ the preceding, but which became incorporated
with earlier prophecies, are here disengaged, and
are given in the connexion and order to which
they seem naturally to belong.
THE FIRST VISION.
°
[The prophet is in Babylon, living amongst its people,
and partaking of its secure and magnificent life. Sud-
denly a vision reveals to him the conquest of Babylon by
the Median army under Cyrus. This vision is to be
conceived as a little anterior to the Great Prophecy.]
Lsaiah 21, 1-10.
21 THE burden of the desert of the sea.
As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it
cometh from the desert, from a terrible land.
2 <A grievous vision is declared unto me! the
robber robbeth, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up,
O Elam! besiege, O Media! all the sighing thereof
have I made to cease.
3. Therefore are my loins filled with pain; pangs
have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman
that travaileth : I was bowed down at the hearing of
- it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it.
4 My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me: the
night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear
unto me.
THE FIRST VISION. 161
5 Prepare the table, watch the watch, eat, drink.
—Kise, ye princes, anoint the shield !
6 For thus hath the LorD said unto me: Go, set a
watchman, let him declare what he seeth ;
7 And if he see a train of couples of horsemen, a
train of asses, a train of camels, let him hearken
diligently with much heed.
8 And he cried as a lion: My lord, I stand con-
tinually upon the watch-tower in the daytime, and
Iam set in my ward whole nights.
9 AND, behold, there cometh.a train of men, with
couples of horsemen!
And he answered and said: Babylon is fallen,
is fallen! and all the graven images of her gods
he hath broken unto the ground.
io O my threshing-ground and thou son of my
floor! that which I have heard of the LoRD of
hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you.
NOTES.
CHAPTER 21.
1. The desert of the sea—The sea is the Persian Gulf
to the south-east of Babylon. This heading was not
improbably prefixed to the prophecy by an ancient anno-
tator.
2. As whirlwinds in the south, &c.—As the whirlwind
passes through the desert by the sea to the south of
Babylon, through that terrible land of storms and desola-
tion, so passes the invading host through that desert,
coming upon Bablyon.
76. The robber.—The Babylonian conqueror continues
to plunder and afflict the captive Jews.
76. Elam.—The Elymais of the Greeks, the country
below Susa, at the head of the Persian Gulf, and south-
east of Babylon. It joins Persia proper and belonged to
the Persian Empire after Cyrus had founded this.
7b. Thereof—Of the captive Israel, whom the Median
conquest of Babylon is to deliver.
3. Filled with pain.—The prophet has lived in Babylon
and with its people until his lot seems bound up with
theirs, and the first hearing of their suddenly approaching
ruin fills him with dismay.
4. The night of my pleasure —The nightly feastings and
rejoicings of luxurious Babylon.
NOTES. 163
5. Prepare the table, &c.—Babylon is feasting securely.
2b. Rise, ye princes.—On a sudden is heard the watch-
man’s cry of alarm to the princes of Babylon to oil their
shields, to get ready against approaching danger.
6. Set a watchman.—The watchman is here the spirit
of vision of the prophet himself. The Median and
Persian host is described, with its various composition.
Strabo mentions the use of asses by the mounted troops
of certain Asiatic nations.
8. As a lion—The watchman, impatient, cries in a
loud and angry voice, like that of a lion, to complain of
his long and vain watching. But, even while he cries,
the invading column appears ; and his next cry is to an-
nounce: Babylon is fallen.
9. He hath broken.—Cyrus, an enemy to the Babylonian
idolatry.
10. O my threshing-ground, &c.—Under the figure of a
threshing-ground and the son of a threshing-floor (i.e. the
corn threshed upon it) the prophet describes his own
beaten, crushed and pounded people.
THE KING OF BABYLON.
(This prophecy may not improperly follow the pre-
ceding. It belongs to much the same date and circum-
stances ; but the Median invasion has come yet nearer,
and the overthrow of Babylon, the death and dishonour
of its king, stand before the prophet’s mind certain and
clear, and fill him with exultation.)
Isaiah 13, 2-22; 14, 1-23.
18 LIFT ye up a banner upon the high mountain,
exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that
they may go in to the gates of the nobles!
3. I have commanded my consecrated ones, I have
also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even
my proudly rejoicing ones.
4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like
as of a great people! a tumultuous noise of the
kingdoms of nations gathered together! the LORD
of hosts mustereth the host of the battle.
5 They come from a far country, from the end
of heaven, even the LorD and the weapons of his
indignation, to destroy the whole land!
THE KING OF BABYLON. 165
6 Howl ye! for the day of the Lorn is at hand:
it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every
man’s heart shall melt,
8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows
shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as
a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed
one at another ; their faces shall be as flame-faces.
9 Behold, the day of the LorpD cometh, cruel both
with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land
desolate! and he shall destroy the sinners thereof
out of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations
thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall
be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall
not cause her light to shine.
11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and
the wicked for their iniquity ; and I will cause the
arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low
the haughtiness of the terrible.
12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold ;
even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the
earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath
of the LorD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce
anger.
14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as sheep
166 THE KING OF BABYLON.
that no man gathereth: they shall every man turn
to his own people, and flee every one into his own
land.
15 Every one that is found shall be thrust through ;
and every one that is overtaken shall fall by the
sword.
16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces
before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled,
and their wives ravished.
17. Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them,
which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they
shall not delight in it.
18 Their bows also shall dash the young men to
pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of
the womb; their eye shall not spare children.
19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty
of ‘the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be
dwelt in from generation to generation: neither
shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall
the shepherds make their fold there.
21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there;
and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures ;
and ostriches shall dwell there, and ys shall
dance there.
22 And the wild beasts of the waste shall cry in
THE KING OF BABYLON. 1647
their lofty houses, and jackals in their pleasant
palaces: and her time is near to come, and her
days shall not be prolonged.
14 For the Lorp will have mercy on Jacob, and
will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own
land: and the strangers shall be joined with them,
and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.
2 And the heathen shall take them, and bring them
to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess
them in the land of the LorpD for servants and
handmaids: and they shall take them captives,
whose captives they were; and they shall rule
over their oppressors.
3 AND it shall come to pass in the day that the
LorD shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and
from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein
thou wast made to serve,
4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against
the king of Babylon, and say :—
How hath the oppressor ceased! the stress of
the exactor ceased!
5 The Lorp hath broken the staff of the wicked,
and the sceptre of the rulers.
6 He who smote the people in wrath with a
continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in
anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.
168 THE KING OF BABYLON.
7 The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they
break forth into’singing.
8 Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars
of Lebanon, saying: Since thou art laid down, no
feller is come up against us!
9 Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet
thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for
thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath
raised up from their thrones all the kings of the
nations.
10 All these shall speak and say unto thee: ‘ Art
thou also become weak as we? art thou become
like unto us?’
11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and
the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under
thee, and the worms cover thee.
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son
of the morning! how art thou cut down to the
ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou saidst in thine heart: I will ascend into
heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of
God; I will sit also upon the mount of assembly,
in the ends of the north:
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the most High.
15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the
sides of the pit!
THE KING OF BABYLON. "169
16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee,
and consider thee, saying : Is this the man that made
the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms?
17. That made the world as a wilderness, and
destroyed the cities thereof? that loosed not his
prisoners to their homes?
18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them,
lie in glory, every one in his own house.
19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like a rejected
branch! thou art clothed around with them that are
slain, that are thrust through with a sword, that go
down to the stones of the pit! as a carcase trodden
under feet!
20 Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial,
because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain
thy people: the seed of evildoers shall no more
be named.
21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity
of their fathers! that they do not rise, nor possess
the Iand, nor fill the face of the world with foes.
22 For I will rise up against them, saith the Lorp
of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and
remnant, and son, and grandson, saith the LoRD.
23 Iwill also make it a possession for the hedgehog,
and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the
besom of destruction, saith the LORD of hosts.
NOTES.
CHAPTER 13.
The invading host of Cyrus is at hand; the Jewish
exiles in Babylon are directed to signal to the invaders
to draw nigh, and to enter the proud city, which shall be
dismayed and destroyed.
2. Shake the hand—Beckon with the hand to the
invaders. , ;
26. The nobles—Of Babylon.
3. My consecrated ones—God calls Cyrus and his host
‘my consecrated ones’ because they are his appointed
instruments to work his vengeance on Babylon.
4. In the mountains—The mountains between Media
and the plain of the Euphrates, where the invading host,
drawn from many and far nations, is mustered.
6. Howl ye—Babylon and its people are addressed.
8. As flame-faces—Lurid with terror.
10. Lhe stars of heaven, &c-—Hebrew prophecy habit-
ually applied to ‘a day of the Lord,’ such as the downfall
of a mighty city or empire, figures drawn from great con-
vulsions of nature. See c. 34, and the notes there.
14. Lf shall be as the chased roe—The mixed multitude
from all lands, who were brought together in great and
rich Babylon, shall be dismayed and dispersed at its fall,
NOTES. 171
and shall wander back as they can to the countries from
whence they came.
147. The Medes.—Cyrus was a Persian, and Persia
afterwards gave its name to the empire; but at this time
the Persians were only known as a contingent of the
Median host, and the invading power is spoken of as the
Medes, Media. The same in Jeremiah li. 11.
26. Which shail not regard silver—The Medes are pre-
sented as a rude, raw, and fierce people, caring more for
bloodshed than for wealth and luxury.
19. Zhe Chaldees—The people of Babylonia.
20. The Arabian,—The wandering Arab from the
wastes of neighbouring Arabia.
21. Safyrs——Wild men with the hair and characters of
the goat. In the neighbourhood of the ruins of Babylon
the belief in such creatures as haunting the ruins still
subsists.
CHAPTER 14.
The Jews shall return home, and instead of being
bondsmen to the stranger, they shall rule the stranger ;
and then they shall sing a song of triumph over their
fallen tyrant, the king of Babylon.
1. The strangers—Those of the mixed multitude,
gathered in Babylon from all lands, who shall escort the
Jews on their return to Palestine, and serve them there.
4. Proverb.—Proverd is used for a taunting speech or
song. What follows may with advantage be compared,
for weight and splendour of diction, with the great commos
at the beginning of the Choephoree of Atschylus.
8. The fir-trees rejoice—The king of Babylon can in-
vade Syria and his other neighbouring countries, and
waste them, and cut down their forests, no more.
172 NOTES.
10. All these shall speak, &c.—The kings who are
already in Scheol, or Hades, shall rise up from their
thrones in curiosity when the great king of Babylon comes
down among them, fallen like themselves and extinguished.
Their address to him ends with the words /zke unto us ;
in the next verse the prophet speaks again.
12. Lucifer—The bright and glorious morning-star,
used as an image of the king of Babylon in his day of
splendour. From the occurrence of the name Lucifer in
this verse to denote a great enemy of God, it came to be
transferred by the Fathers, and in the popular use of the
Middle Age, to Satan himself.
13. Lhe mount of assembly, in the ends of the north.—
The mount of assembly of the Gods of the heathen, placed
by the Asiatic nations in the sacred north. Compare the
Mount Meru of Indian religion, the sacred mountain of
the Gods, in the Himalayas, on the extreme north of
India.
18. Jn his own house.—His grave, the house of the
grave. Other kings have honourable burial; the king
of Babylon, slain in the massacre when Babylon was
taken, lies cast out like a false and dishonoured scion of
royalty, a trampled carcase, covered only by the bodies of
the slain.
22. For I will rise.—With the preceding verse the
‘proverb’ against the king of Babylon ends; in what
follows the prophet speaks in the Lord’s name.
23. I will sweep it with the besom of destruction —After
the massacre on the night of the taking of Babylon, when
Belshazzar was slain, Cyrus spared the city, and proposed
to make it the third city of his empire (coming after Susa
and Ecbatana), and his winter-residence. He laid upon
it, however, a heavy tribute. Under Darius Hystaspes it
NOTES. 173
rose in revolt, and when it was at last taken after a long
siege, it suffered very severely, and never recovered itself.
Alexander meant to restore it, but was prevented by
death. Under his successors its true desolation began, after
the foundation of Seleucia in its neighbourhood; Babylon
was exhausia victnitate Seleucia, says the elder Pliny. Its
condition since that time, and at present, well answers in
general to the description by prophecy of its utter deso-
lation and ruin.
EDOM AND ISRAEL.
(See the introductory note to chapter 63 of the Great
Prophecy. In the crash and revolution of the epoch of
Babylon’s fall, Edom, that old and bitter enemy of Israel,
shall be visited with God’s vengeance and utterly wasted.
Edom’s savage exultation at Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest
of Jerusalem is familiar to us all from the 137th Psalm:
‘Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of
Jerusalem, how they said: Down with it, down with it,
even to the ground!’ Compare Jeremiah xlix. 7-22; and
Ezekiel xxv. 12-14, and xxxv; and Obadiah. Israel,
on the other hand, shall return in safety and joy to Zion.
This prophecy supposes the same situation of things as
the Great Prophecy.)
Isaiah 34, 35.
84 COME near, ye nations, to hear! and hearken,
ye people! let the earth hear, and all that is
therein ; the world, and all things that come forth
of it.
2 For the indignation of the LORD is upon all
nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he
EDOM AND ISRAEL. 175
hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered
them to the slaughter.
3 Their slain also shall be cast out, and their
stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the
mountains shall be melted with their blood.
4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved,
and the heavens shall be rolled together as a
scroll; and all their host shall fall down, as the
leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig
from the fig tree.
5 For my sword hath been bathed in heaven!
behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and upon
the people of my curse, to judgment !
6 The sword of the LorD is filled with blood, it
is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of
lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of
rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and
a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7 And the buffaloes shall fall down with them, and
the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall
be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with
fatness.
8 For it is the day of the LoRD’s vengeance, and
the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.
9 And the streams thereof shall be turned into
pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the
land thereof shall become burning pitch.
176 EDOM AND ISRAEL.
10 It shall not be quenched night nor day; the
smoke thereof shall go up for ever: ftom gene-
ration to generation it shall lie waste; none shall
pass through it for ever and ever.
11 But the pelican and the hedgehog shall possess
it; the ostrich also and the raven shall dwell in it:
and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confu-
sion, and the weights of emptiness.
12 The nobles thereof shall no more call a king to
the kingdom, and all her princes shall be nothing.
13 And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles
and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall
be an habitation of jackals, and a court for the
ostrich.
14 The wild cat and the wolf shall meet there, and
the satyr shall cry to his fellow: the night-demon
also shall rest there, and find for herself a place
of rest.
15 There shall the arrow-snake make her nest, and
lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow:
there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one
with her mate.
16 Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read!
no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate:
for his mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it
hath gathered them.
17 And he hath cast the lot for them there, and his
EDOM AND ISRAEL. 177
hand hath divided it unto them by line: they shall
possess it for ever, from generation to generation
shall they dwell therein.
35 THE wilderness and the solitary place shall be
glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as
the rose.
2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even
with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall
be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and
Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lorp,
and the excellency of our God.
3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the
feeble knees !
4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart: Be
strong, fear not! behold, your God cometh with
vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will
come and save you.
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and
the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and
the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness
shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.
7 And the parched ground shall become a pool,
and the thirsty land springs of water: in the
habitation of jackals, where each lay, shall be grass
with reeds and rushes...
N
178 EDOM AND ISRAEL.
8 And an highway shall be there, and a way; and
it shall be called, The way of holiness; the unclean
shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those:
the wayfarer, though a fool, shall not err therein.
9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast
shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there;
but the redeemed shall walk there :
to. ©And the ransomed of the LorD shall return, and
come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon
their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
NOTES.
CHAPTER 34
This chapter announces the ruin of Edom and its
people.
4. The host of heaven shall be dissolved, &c.—The usual
figures of prophecy for describing a ‘day of the Lord.’
The figures of this verse are adopted almost word for
word in Revelations, vi. 13, 14.
5. Aty sword hath been bathed—God speaks. The
Vulgate has zwebriatus est glad‘us. Bathed as in the
wine of God’s fury and made drunken.
6. Blood of lambs and goats.—Under the figure of
a great sacrifice of lambs, goats, rams, bullocks, &c., is
described the slaughter of the people and princes of
Edom.
ib. Bozrah.—See note on lxiii. 1, of Great Prophecy.
9. Burning pitch—Figures drawn from the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah. Compare xiii. 19.
11. The line of confusion, &c.—The measuring-line and
measuring-weights of ruin and desolation.
14. The satyr—sSee note to xiii. 21.
1b. The night-demon.— Lilith, corresponding to the
Lamia of Greek and Roman demonology, a she-demon
haunting waste places and supposed to be especially fatal
to children.
15. And lay, and hatch. See note to lix. 5.
N2
180 NOTES.
16. Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read—The
prophet means the book of his own prophecy. Read
and mark it well, he says; everything which it announces
shall come to pass. Compare Isaiah xxx. 8: ‘Now go,
write it before them in a table, and note it in a book,
that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.’
ib. Of these.—Of these creatures of the wilderness
and desolation.
CHAPTER 35.
In contrast to the ruin of Edom the Prophet now
describes Israel’s triumphant march home through the
blossoming wilderness. For similar pictures compare in the
Great Prophecy xli. 18, 19; xliii. 20; xlviii. 21; li. 3, 11
(where the last verse of the present chapter occurs over
again); and lv. 12, 13.
2. The excellency of Carmel and Sharon.—See note to
Ixv. 10, in the Great Prophecy.
8. An highway shall be there—Compare Ixii. 10.
16. or those.—For the chosen people, who shall find
the way so plain and easy that the weakest can march
in it without difficulty.
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN.
(Babylon had now fallen and Israel was restored. But
the wars, revolutions, and world-ruin, amidst which the
downfall of Babylon took place, still continued. Cyrus
perished miserably in an obscure war with a barbarous
foe (B.c. 529); then came the storm of Egypt’s invasion
by his son, the furious Cambyses (B.c. 525). The air
was full of rumours, and the earth of agitations; on the
other hand, Jerusalem found itself, by God’s wonderful
leading and favour, restored. But the infant community
there, though replaced in its home, was short of numbers,
feeble, and fearful. The prophet animates and uplifts it
by the assurance of its divine destinies.)
Lsaiah 24-21.
24 BEHOLD, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and
maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and
scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.
2 And it shall be, as with the people, so with the
priest; as with the servant, so with his master ;
as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with
the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender,
so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury,
so with the giver of usury to him.
182 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN.
3 The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly
spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word.
4 The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world
languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people
of the earth do languish.
-5 The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants
thereof; because they have transgressed the laws,
changed the ordinance, broken: the everlasting
covenant.
6 Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth,
and they that dwell therein are desolate: there-
fore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and
few men left.
7 The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth,
all the merryhearted do sigh.
8 The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them
that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth.
9 They shall not drink wine with a song; strong
drink shall be bitter to them that drink it.
10 The city is solitary and broken down: every
house is shut up, that no man may come in.
11 There is a crying for wine in the streets; all joy
is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone.
12 In the city is left desolation, and the gate is
smitten with destruction.
13 THUS shall it be in the midst of the earth among
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 183
the nations, as the shaking of an ‘olive tree, and as
the gleaning of grapes when the vintage is done.
14 They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing
for the majesty of the LorD, they shall cry aloud
from the sea.
15 Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the east, even
the name of the LORD God of Israel in the coasts
of the sea!
16 From the uttermost part of the earth have
we heard songs: Glory to the righteous! But I
_ said, My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!
the robber robbeth; yea, the robber robbeth very
sore.
17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee,
O inhabitant of the earth!
18 And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth
from the noise of the fear shall fall into*the pit;
and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit
shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from
on high are open, and the foundations of the earth
do shake.
19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is
clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.
20 The earth doth reel to and fro like a drunkard,
and doth sway like a hammock; the transgression
thereof is heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and
not rise again.
184 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN.
21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the
Lorp shall punish the host of heaven in the
height, and the kings of the earth upon the
earth.
22 And they shall be gathered together, as pri-
soners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut
up in the prison, and after many days shall they
be visited.
23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the
sun ashamed, when the Lorp: of hosts shall reign
in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his
-ancients gloriously.
25 O Lorbp, thou art my God! I will exalt thee, I
will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful
things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and
truth.
2 For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a
defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no
city ; it shall never be built.
3 Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee,
the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee.
4 For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a
strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from
the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast
of the terrible ones was as a storm against
the wall.
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 185
5 Thou dost bring down the noise of strangers, as
the heat in a dry place; as the heat by the
shadow of a cloud, so the song of the terrible
ones is brought low.
6 And in this mountain shall the LorD of hosts
make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast
of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow,
of wines on. the lees well refined.
7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of
the covering cast over all people, and the vail that
is spread over all nations.
8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the
Lord Gop will wipe away tears from off all faces;
and the rebuke of his people shall he take away
from off all the earth: for the Lorp hath
spoken it.
9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is
our God! we have waited for him, and he will save
us: this is the LORD! we have waited for him, we
will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
10 For in this mountain shall the hand of the Lorp
. rest, and Moab shall be trodden down in his place,
even as straw is trodden down in the dung-pool.
11 And they shall spread forth their hands in the
midst thereof, as one that swimmeth spreadeth
forth his hands to swim: and he shall bring down
their pride together with the wiles of their hands.
186 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN.
12 The fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he
bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even
to the dust.
26 IN that day shall this song be sung in the land
of Judah :—
We havea strong city; salvation will God ap-
point for walls and bulwarks.
2 Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation
which keepeth the truth may enter in!
3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose
mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in
thee.
4 Trust ye in the LorRD for ever! for in the LORD
JEHOVAH is everlasting strength :
5 For he bringeth down them that dwell on high;
the lofty city, he layeth it low; he layeth it low,
even to the ground; he bringeth it even to the
dust.
6 The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the
poor, and the steps of the needy.
7 The way of the just is made smooth: thou,
most upright, dost make smooth the path of the
just !
8 Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have
we waited for thee! the’ desire of our soul was to
thy name, and to the remembrance of thee.
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 187
9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night;
yea, with my spirit within me do I seek thee early!
for when thy judgments are in the earth, the in-
habitants of the world will learn righteousness.
10 Let favour be shewed to the wicked, so will he
not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness
will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the
majesty of the LorbD.
11 Lorp, thy hand is very high, but they see it
not; they will not see! they shall see, and be
ashamed at thy jealousy for the people; yea, the
fire of thine enemies shall devour them!
12. Lorp, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou
also hast wrought all our works for us.
13. O Lorp our God, other lords beside thee have
had dominion’ over us; but of thee only will we
make mention, of thy name!
14. They are dead, they shall not live! they are
deceased, they shall not rise! because thou hast
visited and destroyed them, and made all their
memory to perish.
15 THOU dost increase the nation, O LORD, thou
dost increase the nation! thou art glorified: thou
enlargest all the borders of the land.
16 LORD, in trouble they sought thee; they poured
out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them.
188 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN,
17 Like as a woman with child, that draweth near
the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out
in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O
Lorb!
18 We have been with child, we have been in pain,
we have as it were brought forth wind; we have
not wrought any deliverance in the earth, neither
are inhabitants of the land born unto it.
19 —Thy dead men shall live! my dead body, it
shall arise! Awake and sing, ye that dwell in
dust; for a dew of life is thy dew, amd the earth
shall bring forth the dead!
20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers,
and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it
were for a little moment, until the indignation be
overpast.
21 For, behold, the Lorp cometh out of his place
to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their
iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood,
and shall no more cover her slain.
27 IN that day the LorD with his sore and great
and strong sword shall punish leviathan the shoot-
ing serpent, even leviathan that coiling serpent;
and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
2 In that day sing ye thus of the fair vineyard :—
3 ‘I the Lorp do keep it; I water it every
EARLY DAYS OF RETURN. 189
moment: lest any hurt it, I keep it night and
day.
4 ‘Fury is not in me: let them set the briers and
thorns against me! I will go through them in
battle, I will burn them together.
5 ‘Or else let them take hold of my strength! let
them make peace wifh me; let them make peace
with me!’
6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take
root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the
face of the world with fruit.
7 Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that
smote him? or is he slain according to the
slaughter of them that slew him?
8 In measure, chasing her forth, thou punishedst
her; driving her out with a rough wind in the day
of the east wind.
9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be
purged, and this is all the fruit of putting off his
sin: when he maketh all the stones of the altar
as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, that the
groves and images shall stand up no more.
10 For the defenced city shall be desolate, and the
habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness:
there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie
down, and consume the green boughs thereof.
11 When the branches thereof are withered, they
190 EARLY DAYS OF RETURN.
shall be broken off: the women shall come, and
set them on fire: for it is a people of no under-
standing: therefore he that made them will not
have mercy on them, and he that formed them will
shew them no favour.
12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that
the LORD shall sift corn from the channel of the,
River unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be
gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel!
13. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the
great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come
which were forlorn in the land of Assyria, and the
outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship
the LorD in the holy mount at Jerusalem,
NOTES.
CHAPTER 24.
This chapter declares what trouble and dissolution
prevail on earth in this day of God’s judgments.
5. Broken the everlasting covenant—-Not the special
covenant with Israel, but God’s everlasting covenant with
the whole human race. Compare Genesis ix. 16: ‘And
the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it,
that I may remember the everlasting covenant between
God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the
earth.’
10. The city ts solitary.—Dominating the picture of the
general distress, is always the image of Babylon in ruin,
great and luxurious Babylon, then recently fallen.
13. As the shaking of an olive-tree—Compare Isaiah
. xvii. 6. Among the nations of the earth men shall be
scarce as the single olives left to be shaken down, or the
few grapes left to be gleaned, after the harvest is gathered.
Those who remain shall glorify God and his dealings.
14. Zhe sea—The Mediterranean, around which sea
all this history is transacted.
15. The coasts of the sea.a—The western sea, the Medi-
terranean, and thus as the wes/ contrasting with the eas/
in the parallel clause preceding.
16. But I satd.—The prophet, speaking as one of the
scanty and trembling remnant of Israel, newly re-esta-
19% NOTES.
blished in Jerusalem, refuses to be glad and hopeful amid
the violence and confusion prevailing around him.
16. The robber robbeth.—The same expression is used
in the First Vision. Here it is general, denoting the
world-wide confusion prevalent. See xxi. 2.
18. Zhe windows from on high are open.—A figure
taken from the deluge to signify the flood of ruin sub-
merging everything.
21. Lhe host of heaven.—The offending powers of
heaven and the offending kings of earth shall be punished
together.
22. Visited.—For their final sentence and punishment.
23. His ancients—The elders in Jerusalem, destined
to rule with God in the reign of saints.
CHAPTER 25.
In the twenty-first verse of the preceding chapter the
prophet had turned to the great future of God’s triumph
and glory which was to follow the present tribulation; he
now goes on in the same strain.. f
2. Thou hast made of a city an heap—The Prophet
dwells on the impressive lesson of God’s judgments con-
veyed by the recent fall of Babylon.
wb. A palace of strangers.—Of strangers and enemies
to Israel.
3. Lhe strong people—This is probably said generally,
and not with any special reference to the Medes who had
conquered Babylon.
4. A storm agarnst the wall——The Chaldee paraphrase
has, a sform which overthrows a wall. And this is pro-
bably the right sense; a storm so violent that it sweeps
down walls before it.
NOTES. 193
5. As the heat ina dry place.—The clause following
gives the mode in which the heat is brought down,—
namely, by the shadow of clouds. As clouds quell heat,
so God quells the tumult of ‘the strange children’ (Ps.
xviii. 46, Prayer-Book Version).
6. Unto all people a feast—The familiar figure of the
kingdom of God as a feast at which all nations come and
sit down. ‘Many shall come from east and west, and
shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the
kingdom of heaven: Matth. viii. 11.
4. And he will destroy in this mountain.—The mountain
is of course Zion. There is no sublimer text on the
sublime theme here treated than this and the following
verse.
8. He will swallow up death in victory —St. Paul quotes
this text, 1 Cor. xv. 54. The Greek Bible of the Seventy
does not take the words thus, but the Greek versions of
Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion do, and Theodotion
has the same words as St. Paul.
2. The rebuke of his people—The reproach of failure
cast on the people of righteousness.
10. MZoab.—Moab is, with Edom, the standing type of
the bitter and eternal enemy of God’s people, and the
’ triumph of God’s people involves always vengeance upon
Moab and Edom. Compare xxxiv. xxxv. Ezekiel puts
Moab and Edom together, as offenders against Israel.
See Ezek. xxv. 8-14.
11. They shall spread forth—The wily Moab tries to
save himself by swimming in the filthy pool where he is
trodden down; but in vain.
12. Thy walls.—Moab is addressed. He refers to God.
194. NOTES.
CHAPTER 26.
The strain of elation and of trust in God continues.
But the prophet, after celebrating the fall of those who
have lorded it over God’s people, turns his eyes upon
the restored remnant and cannot but perceive how small
and ineffectual it is, how far its actual power falls short of
its high hopes and destinies. But the people of righteous-
ness shall re-live; the earth shall give up God’s saints,
who are dead, to live with their re-animated nation, and
to do God’s work and share his reign when the present
tyranny and tribulation are overpast.
2. Salvation will God appoint—God’s salvation shall be
in place of walls and bulwarks to his Zion. Compare
the Great Prophecy, Ix. 18.
5. The lofty city—Again the prophet recurs to Babylon
and its recent fall.
10. So will he not learn—The prosperity of the wicked
misleads men; unless unrighteousness is punished, man-
kind will not quit it.
13. Other lords—The former captors and oppressors
of Israel, with especial reference to Babylon. They are
now visited and destroyed.
15. Zhou dost increase—God is now restoring and
exalting Israel again, and giving to him wide dominion.
16. Lord, im trouble we sought thee, &c.—But Israel,
speaking by the prophet’s voice, sees with disquietude and
discouragement how ineffectual are his actual means, how
little he has yet performed, how small are his present
numbers.
17. Thy dead men shall hve—Sublimely recovering
himself, the prophet cries that God’s saints (Zhy dead
men), though they are dead, shall live, and, with the life-
NOTES. 195
less but re-animated body of the restored exiles (my dead
ody), shall found the kingdom of righteousness, after the
present distress.
19. A dew of life—Literally ‘a dew of lights.” Light
and fe are in the Bible, as is well known, interchange-
able ideas.
2b. Thy dew.—God’s dew.
1b. The earth shall bring forth the dead—It may easily
be conceived how this magnificent verse, taken literally,
became a signal text for the doctrine of the resurrection
of the dead which from this time onward began to prevail
among the Jews. Compare Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14, and Dan.
xii. 2.
20. Come, my people-—God’s voice exhorts Israel to
patience and quiet until the storms of the troubled pre-
sent shall have blown over.
21. The earth also shall disclose.—Iniquity shall no
more remain hidden and unpunished.
CHAPTER 27.
The prophet continues to depict God’s care for the
city and people of righteousness, and their assured
permanency.
1. Leviathan, &c.—Probably the great Asiatic empires
in general are here meant, and not any two of them in
particular. ‘The dragon’ is the Biblical name for Egypt.
2. The fatr vineyard—A common Biblical figure for
Israel. Compare Psalm lxxx. 8.
4. Fury ts not in me, &c.—God is a gracious God, full
of love and care for his vineyard ; but if he is provoked
by enemies of his vineyard (the briers and thorns) he will
scatter and consume them, if indeed they do not (as they
196 NOTES.
had better) prevent his wrath by humbling themselves and
making peace with him.
5. Hath he smitten him, &c.—Israel has been punished,
but not as his enemies and destroyers have been punished.
Exile was in God’s eyes a sufficient punishment for Israel,
and his putting away idolatry is a sufficient title for re-
admission to God’s favour. Not suchis Babylon’s punish-
ment and end, for Babylon is ‘a people of no under-
standing.’
10. There shall the calf feed, &c.—Babylon shall be
abandoned to desolation ; the leafage of its gardens shall
be browsed by animals or broken off for the oven.
12. The Lord shall sift corn—Under the figure of
sifting corn is announced the final collection and restora-
tion of all the true Israel, however outcast and scattered.
The river is Euphrates ; the stream of Egypt is the torrent-
bed of El Arisch, marking the boundary between Palestine
and Egypt.
13. Assyria . . . Egypi—The prophet reverts to old
scenes of Israel’s captivity to figure the house of bondage
from which God’s people shall be eternally delivered.
THE END.