380 ISAIAH all. [True, there was nut so much said about Babylon as we should have expected even in the first book ; the paucity of references to the local characteristics of Babylonia is one of the negative arguments urged in favour of the Isaianic origin of the prophecy.] Israel himself, with all his incon sistent qualities, becomes the absorbing subject of the prophet s meditations. The section opens with a soliloquy of the " Servant of Jehovah," in which the same paradox meets our view which we discovered in the earlier books ; the " Servant of Jehovah " is addressed as Israel, and yet is shortly afterwards distinguished from that people. The immediate prospects of Israel seem now to be overclouded ; but the prophet " bates not heart nor hope." He comforts .Zion with the thought of the unchanging love of God :
- Can a woman forget her sucking child," &c. (xlix. 1,
comp. li. 12, 13). Then his tone rises, Jerusalem can and must be redeemed ; he even seems to see the great divine uct in process of accomplishment. Is it possible, one can not help asking, that the abrupt description of the strange fortunes of the " Servant" by this time entirely personal ized was written to follow chap. lii. 1-12 1 The whole difficulty arises from the prevalent assumption that chaps, xl.-lxvi. form a whole in itself. Natural as the feeling against disintegration may be, the difficulties in the way of admitting the unity of chaps, xl.-lxvi. are insurmountable. Even if, by a bold assumption, we grant the unity of authorship, it is plain upon the face of it that the chapters in question cannot have been composed at the same time or under the same circumstances ; literary and artistic unity is wholly wanting. But once admit (as it is only reasonable to do) the extension of Jewish editorial activity to the prophetic books, and all becomes clear. Just as the historic records were filled out and adapted to the religious wants of later ages, so too were the prophetic. Orthodoxy loses nothing by the admission ; for why should not the same Spirit of wisdom which, as the church believes, inspired the prophets, have vouchsafed all needful gifts to the " sons of the prophets " the prophetically-minded Sopherim? Even the lowest degree of inspiration, as Iluclolf Stier remarks, is one of faith s mysteries. But we are not now concerned with orthodoxy, but only with the religious records of the Israelites. The record before us gives no information as to its origin. It is without a heading, and by its abrupt transitions, and honestly pre served variations of style, invites us to such a theory as ve are now indicating. There are portions of Isa. xl.-lxvi. of Palestinian origin, and some of them composed previously, others subsequently, to the exile. These are partly imbedded in, partly appended to, a work- written at the close of the exile by a true though literary prophet, well acquainted with the more archaic and less purely literary prophet Isaiah, but not without numerous peculiarities of his own. These insertions and appendices are seven in number. The first (a) is lii. 13-liii., which, as Ewald (who pointed the way which later critics have to follow) rightly felt, proceeds from a time of per secution. It should be taken in connexion with (b) Ivi. 9-lvii. , which is in the same harsh but strong style, and has a large num ber of distinct historical data. " The strikingly Palestinian char acter of the scenery in Ivii. 5, 6, the presumed reference to perse cution in Ivii. 1, and the correspondence of the sins imputed to the people with pre-exile circumstances," seem to favour a reference to the persecution of Manasseh. (So Ewald, Bleek, and even Luzzatto, who ascribes all the rest of the book to Isaiah.) It must be admitted that a religious persecution set on foot by Manasseh is not directly affirmed in the Old Testament ; but it is a legitimate inference from a combination of passages, audit were hypcrcriticism t > doubt it. Next comes (c) a short prophecy complete in itself (Ivi. 1-8), directed against the Jewish pride of race. The circum stances presupposed are manifestly neither those of the age of Isaiah nor yet those of the latter part of the exile : (1) the temple is in existence, ver. 5 ; (2) a special duty is inculcated (Isa. xl. and the following chapters are entirely taken up with infusing a new spirit into the Jews ; the correction of details is left to the future) ; and (3) this duty is one which was specially enforced in the age of Jeremiah (xvii. 19-27) and in that of Nehemiah (Neh. xiii. 15-22). If we further consider the apprehensions of exclusion from religious privileges expressed by the eunuchs, we can hardly doubt that the period of Nehemiah (when proselytes began to gather to Jerusalem) is that to which this prophecy belongs a period specially charac terized by legal rigour (see Neh. xiii.). Another isolated prophecy (d) is chap. Iviii. Its practical, hortatory tone reminds us of hi. 1-8, and the stress laid upon fasting the true fasting of the heart- points equally to the post-exile period. See Zech. vii. 5 (comp. viih 19) ; Joel ii. 12, 13. (It is here assumed that the book of Joel is a work of the Persian period. Nothing but the habit of looking at each book of Scripture separately, instead of in connexion with those of similar style and contents, hinders this theory from attain ing a more general prevalence.) Whether this prophecy conies from the same author, or simply from the same school, as Ivi. 1-8, it is neither possible nor of any importance to determine. From the same school, too, if not from the same author, must have proceeded (e) chap. lix. It has no distinct connexion with chap. Iviii., but the tone is similar. The first part of the chapter presents affinities with the book of Proverbs (a favourite subject of study during or after the exile, when, as it would seem, the introductory chapters, with their glowing portraiture of life in a metropolis, were prefixed). (f) The prophecy in chap. Ixiii. 1-6 is one of the most obscure in the prophetic literature. It would indeed not be hopeless to assign a probable date, but this would depend upon a consideration of other prophecies (notably Joel and Malachi), for which we have not space here. Suffice it to point out the eschatological apocalyptic tone which prevails in it. How unlike it is to the honied rhetoric of him whom we are accustomed to call the Second Isaiah : " It is certainly a strange phenomenon, this reference to a great battlefield in Edom, when the grand object of II. Isaiah is to help the Jews to realize their corning deliverance from Babylon. It creates a serious difficulty for those who maintain that II. Jsaiah was written at one time and under one set of impressions. The complications of the problems of Biblical criticism are only beginning to be adequately realized" (The Propliccus of Isaiah, ii. 99). At present Ixiii. 1-0 is an isolated passage, but it has affinities with lix. 15i-20, and with chap, xxxiv., and it is probable that chaps, xxxiv. , lix., and Ixiii. 1-6 were occasioned by the same contemporary circumstances. The gorgeousness of the theophany reminds us of Ezckiel and of the Apocalypse. With regard to the rest of chaps, xl.-lxvi., one general remark seems necessary. It is only the inveterate habit of reading Ixiii. 7-lxvi. as a work relating to the close of the exile that prevents us from seeing how inconsistent its tone and details are with this presupposition. Looking at it with eyes that strive to be impartial, we cannot resist the impression that it has not only come down from the restoration period, but that it was written at different parts of that period. Let us pursue the examination of the sections separately. (y) Chaps. Ixiii. 7-lxiv. This consists of "thanksgiving, peni tence, and supplication in the name of the pious portion of the Jewish nation." The tone is exactly that of the Lamentations ; the desolation of the temple and of the Jewish cities (Ixiii. 18, Ixiv. 10, 11) is described with all the emotion of an eye-witness. The style of the section is unusually abrupt. (h) Chap. Ixv. The subject-matter is "alternate threatening and promise. Most commentators regard this chapter as the answer of Jehovah to the [prayer of the] church [in chaps. Ixiii., Ixiv.]." But there are grave objections to this view. "The divine speaker makes not even a distant allusion to the difficulty stated in the foregoing prayer." Observe, too, that in chap. Ixiv. the church speaks as representing the nation, whereas in chap. Ixv. the national union is described as broken by open idolatry. The sins referred to in vers. 3-5 and 11 are at least in part characteristic 1 of Canaan rather than Babylonia ; and so also is the reference to the vintage in ver. 8. On the other hand, there are passages in vers. 11-25 which have been thought to point to the period of the exile,- e.g., " that forget my holy mountain " (ver. 11), and the entire descrip tion of the new Jerusalem. We admit that one of the exiles might have written such passages, but it is more probable that they were written by one of the returned Jews. The actual condition of the new Jud.tian state was very far from corresponding to the glorious predictions of chap. Ix. What more natural than that prophetic voices should have continued to point to the future for the fulfil ment of those predictions ? [Hence we can account for the parallel between Ixvi. 12 and Ix. 4. Note in passing that the figure in Ix. 16 has received a different application in Ixvi. 11 : the writer of chap. Ixvi. is familiar with the works of his predecessors, and uses them with freedom.] As to the phrase "that forget my holy moun tain," a similar one occurs in ver. 5 of Ps. cxxxvii., which is gene- 1 See TJie Prophecies of Isaiah (1880-81), vol. ii. The view main tained is that the idolatrous practices referred to, so far as they are distinctively Palestinian, were renewed by some of the Jews on their return to Palestine. We are apt to forget the local character of ancient cults, also the mixed motives of men. The Jews who returned, and still more the succeeding generations, cannot .have been uniformly as pious and believing as Ezra.
