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Isaiah was the inferiority of a ceremonial system[1] to prayer and faithful obedience (xv. 8, xxi. 3, 27, xvi. 6), and the importance which one of the proverb-writers attached to prophecy is strikingly expressed (if only the text be sound) in the saying,

When there is no prophecy (lit., vision) people become disorderly,
but he that observes precept, happy is he (xxix. 18).

The prophets seem to have returned the friendly feeling of the sages. In tone and phraseology they are sometimes evidently influenced by their fellow-teachers (see e.g. Isa. xxviii. 23-29, xxix. 24, xxxiii. 11), and if they do not often refer to the wise men,[2] yet they do not denounce them, as they denounce the priests and the lower prophets. It may perhaps be inferred from this that there was in the early times no opposition-party of sceptical wise men, such as Ewald supposes,[3] and such as not improbably did exist in later times (see below on xxx. 1-4); and I notice that Ewald himself does not attempt to strengthen his view by appealing to the phrase 'men of scorn' in Isa. xxviii. 14, which some, following Rashi and Aben Ezra, explain of wise men who misused their talent by making mischievous proverbs.[4] The

  1. The author of the Introduction however writes, 'Honour Jehovah with thy substance,' i.e. by dedicating a part of it to the sanctuary (iii. 9), which the Septuagint translator carefully limits to substance lawfully gained (Deut. xxiii. 19).
  2. As perhaps they do in Am. v. 10, Isa. xxix. 21 ('him that rebuketh in the gate'). Observe again in this connection that the endowments of the Messiah include the spirit of wisdom as well as that of might (Isa. xi. 2), and that the wisdom of Jehovah is emphasised in Isa. xxxi. 2, comp. xxviii. 29.
  3. Die dichter des alten bundes, ii. 12. Ewald refers to xiii. 1, xiv. 6, and other passages in which 'scorners' are referred to. But it is not clear that 'a powerful school' of wise men is here intended; the title may be given to those who opposed or despised the counsels of the wise men, and broke through the restraints of law and religion: comp. Prov. xv. 12, xxi. 24.' (The Prophecies of Isaiah, ed. 3, i. 165). Among such persons were the politicians of Isaiah's day, so far as they opposed the warnings of the prophet; they were popularly considered 'wise men' (xxix. 14; comp. Jer. viii. 9), but not in the technical sense with which our present enquiries are concerned.
  4. Luzzatto renders, 'o voi uomini insipienti, poeti di questo popolo,' taking mōshēlīm in the same sense as in Num. xxi. 27 (similarly Barth, in his tract on Isaiah, p. 23, following Rashi and Aben Ezra), a view which receives some support from the parable offered by Isaiah in xxviii. 23-29 as if in opposition to the false parables of unsound teachers. But in Isa. xxix. 20 'scorner' is clearly used, not as a class-name for certain wise men, but in a moral sense.