that the King of Israel should not be, and although the child Immanuel is not expressly connected with the house of David, the idea that he was to take the place of the worthless and incompetent monarch to whom the sign was given is nevertheless suggested by the circumstances of the prophecy (see note on vii. 14—16). It is at least a remarkable coincidence that both here and in ix. 6 the destiny of the nation is made to turn on the birth of a child, and even if with most recent authorities we reject the Messianic interpretation of vii. 14, there will still remain a presumption that the two passages stand near to each other in time. If this conclusion be correct it follows that the image of the ideal Ruler first dawned on Isaiah's mind in the dark days when he saw the ruin of his country accelerated by the weakness and unbelief of the reigning king.

It has been remarked that the three great portraits of the Messiah, taken in the order in which they stand, exhibit a progressive waning of the mysterious aspects of His character, until at last the ideal seems to fade into the light of common day. It is undoubtedly the fact that the attributes and prerogatives of the King come to be presented in more sober and subdued colours and in less exalted language. In ix. 6, he is endowed with attributes bordering on the divine; his fourfold name expressing some extraordinary and mysterious relation to Jehovah. He is called “Wonderful Counsellor, Hero-God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace.” In xi. I ff., he is described as the shoot from the stock of Jesse, and as one uniquely endowed with the spirit of Jehovah for the perfect discharge of his kingly functions. And in xxxii. I he appears simply as an ordinary good king, reigning in righteousness and associated with princes of a like spirit ruling in judgment.

These facts no doubt suggest questions of some interest and difficulty. But the sense of disparity between the different representations is relieved by two considerations which have to be borne in mind in dealing with Isaiah's conception of the Messiah. In the first place, the thought of the Messianic King never replaces or overshadows in Isaiah's mind the primary truth of Jehovah's kingship over Israel. The earthly king is the

representative of Jehovah and rules in His name, but he is not himself conceived as a superhuman person, or as sharing the divine nature in a transcendental sense. This is clear as regards the second of the three passages (xi. I ff.) where the ideal perfection of the Messiah's government is ascribed simply to his possession of the fulness of the spirit of Jehovah which imparts to him the insight, the energy, and the piety necessary for his high office. And this is in accordance with the common teaching of the Old Testament that the source of all kingly virtues, as indeed of all capacity for noble and heroic action, is the spirit of the Lord, resting on men chosen by God for great achievements in His kingdom. Nor does the language of ix. 6 f. when fairly interpreted imply that the new king is more than human. What is there described is neither the person of the Messiah nor his character, but the divine powers that come to light in his government. There is no reason to think that even the great titles there bestowed on him, marvellously as they foreshadow the Christian doctrine of the Person of Christ, expressed to Isaiah's age anything more than this. When we read that his name shall be called "Hero-God," or "Everlasting Father," we are not to understand these terms as conveying the idea that he is a Godman, or possesses the metaphysical attributes of omnipotence and eternity. All the four names denote aspects of the Messiah's rule, which is itself, in virtue of his unique relation to God, the perfect embodiment and reflection of Jehovah's kingship over Israel and the world. His relation to Jehovah is, in short, simply the ideal relation of a king of Israel to Jehovah, and the only new thing is the completeness with which that ideal is to be realised through his endowment with the spirit of God. Now it is possible that Isaiah may have had a deeper sense at one time than at others of the exceptional qualities required for the exercise of the functions of kingship, and this may account for the difference of tone which characterises his utterances at different periods. But a radical change of view does not appear to exist, when we remember that from first to last his outlook was towards one who should fully realise the divine ends for which the monarchy existed in Israel.

The second thing to be observed is that in Isaiah's vision of the future the monarchy itself is but one institution among many, and presupposes a political organisation after the fashion of the existing Hebrew commonwealth. Hence there could be no incongruity, from the prophet's point of view, in thinking of the Messianic king as surrounded by an aristocracy, who cooperate with him in securing a just administration of the reconstructed state (xxxii. 1). A reform of the upper classes was an issue of the judgment on which Isaiah laid great stress from an early period of his work (i. 26); and there is nothing to suggest that he ever lost sight of this, although he afterwards attached greater importance to the person of the king. It is true that in xxxii. I the person of the king is not invested with the halo of divine attributes spoken of in ch. ix. and xi. ; and this might seem to shew that the passage ought not to be classed amongst the prophecies of a personal Messiah. But that is a view which cannot be held, unless we go further and say that Isaiah had definitely abandoned the idea of the Messiah when he wrote ch. xxxii. The picture is in any case a picture of the Messianic age, and the king in the Messianic age is the Messiah, if the prophet retained his faith in a Messiah at all, which there is no sufficient reason to doubt. And in fact when he speaks of a king reigning in righteousness, he includes what is essential in his conception of the ideal King; for it is just the perfect discharge of the recognised duties of kingship which Isaiah regards as a task of such transcendent importance as to require the unique endowment of divine energies and virtues which is the distinctive element in his more ideal delineations of the Messiah.

2. The two ideas that Zion is the present seat of Jehovah's sovereignty and that it is to be the centre of the future kingdom of God appear in a large number of prophecies of Isaiah (i. 26 f., ii. 2-4, iv. 2-6, viii. 18, x. 32 f., xiv. 32, xviii. 7, xxviii. 16, xxix. 1, xxx. 19, 29, [xxxiii. 5, 14, 20 f.,] xxxvii. 32). In these there is nothing that is peculiar to Isaiah and little that requires explanation. It was in the Temple that he first saw the glory of Jehovah, and the thought that He dwelt there seems to have

been always present to his mind. And the further thought that Zion would occupy the same central position in the ideal age as in the present is a natural and inevitable consequence of the general principle that the future dispensation is always represented under forms derived from the present.

But there is a particular application of these truths which is not only distinctive of Isaiah, but apparently limited to a certain period of his ministry. It is that Zion as Jehovah's sanctuary is inviolable, that it shall be spared in the impending crisis of judgment, and form the refuge for those who are saved from the wreck of the nation, so that its sanctity becomes, along with the permanence of the Davidic kingdom, a pledge of the indestructibility of the Jewish state. This concrete form of the principle does not appear to have been held by the prophet at the outset of his public life, for in ch. v. 14, 17 the destruction of Jerusalem seems to be distinctly contemplated. Nor is it clear that it was enunciated even in the crisis of the Syro-Ephraimitish war, although the allusion to the waters of Shiloah as an emblem of Jehovah's invisible sovereignty and the emphasis laid on Jehovah's dwelling in Zion (viii. 6, 18) may perhaps point in this direction. The first unambiguous expression of it is probably to be found in xiv. 32, where we read that "Jehovah hath founded Zion and there the poor of His people find refuge." From this time onwards Isaiah seems to have held to the truth as the sheet anchor of his prophecy. We have seen already how largely it determined his attitude in the Assyrian invasion, and how signally his confidence was justified by the event. The assault on the sanctuary of Zion is the crowning insult of the Assyrian to the majesty of Jehovah, and by His protection of Jerusalem Jehovah gives to the world the demonstration of His divinity which as Isaiah anticipated would be speedily followed by the establishment of His everlasting kingdom. It must be admitted, however, that there is considerable uncertainty as to the precise sense in which Isaiah maintained this doctrine, and the range which he allowed to it, even in this last stage of his work. There is one oracle, usually assigned to this period (xxxii. 9 ff.), which seems to

amount to a prediction of the total overthrow of Jerusalem, and for this reason is pronounced spurious by many critics, and by one at least is assigned to the opening of his career. And in other passages threats are uttered (esp. xxii. 1 Á., xxix. 1 ff.) which appear to contemplate an equally sweeping catastrophe. The difficulty is to know how much is implied in the idea of the sanctity of Zion; how far it is equivalent to the actual preservation of the fortress of Jerusalem, and how far it is a spiritual fact symbolising the safety of those who in that hour of trial placed their faith in Jehovah's invisible power. The prophet may not have held an unvarying view on this point, and it is possible that the doctrine of the inviolability of Jerusalem was not to his mind the hard and fast dogma which it has become in the hands of his commentators.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF ISAIAH.

THE possibilities of the prophetic office are nowhere more splendidly illustrated than in the career of Isaiah. Called in early manhood to the service of Jehovah, he gave himself to his mission with a whole-hearted devotion and singleness of aim which suffered no abatement in the course of a long and strenuous life. The work of a prophet was the vocation of his life, and every faculty of his being, every source of influence open to him, his social position and even the incidents of his private history, were all made subservient to the one end of impressing the mind of God on his generation. And to this task he brought a nature richly endowed with gifts belonging to the highest order of genius. He is great alike in thought and action, and unites the profoundest religious insight with a wide knowledge of men and affairs. If any single quality can be selected as specially prominent in Isaiah it is an imperious and masterful decision of character which makes him perfectly unhesitating in his judgments and inexorable in his demands. But more remarkable than any one feature is the balance and