crisis will end in the destruction of Assyria and the introduction of a glorious era for the people of God. At times (especially in xxix. 4; xxxii. 13 f.; xxii. 1-14) the first thought is pushed so far as apparently to exclude the other, so that the prophet seems to speak with a double voice, now uttering unrelieved oracles of doom, and again consoling the people with visions of the brighter future. The manner in which the two ideas alternate— each prophecy of judgment passing into a captivating picture of the idyllic peace and felicity just about to break on the nation-also presents a literary problem of some difficulty. We cannot hope to explain these phenomena to our entire satisfaction, because the oracles would naturally be modified in the act of committing them to writing, and we do not know to what extent they correspond with Isaiah's spoken message at the time. Nevertheless one or two aspects of the situation are revealed with unmistakeable distinctness; and on these it will be best to concentrate our attention.

The most prominent feature of Isaiah's activity which appears in xxviii.—xxxi., is his opposition to the project of rebellion in alliance with Egypt. This led him almost single-handed into a prolonged conflict with the leaders of the Egyptian party, whose influence was then in the ascendant at Hezekiah's court. Amongst these men a high official named Shebna (probably a foreigner) enjoys the distinction of being the only private individual who falls under the lash of Isaiah's invective (ch. xxii. 15 ff.). How great the prophet's political influence was is shewn by the anxiety of the conspirators to keep him in the dark with regard to the plot that was being hatched (xxix. 15; xxx. 1). In this they did not succeed; Isaiah's ceaseless vigilance unmasked their design, and he was able to follow the negotiations step by step with reiterated warnings. On one occasion we find him engaged in a heated altercation with the leaders of the war party, whom he had apparently surprised at a carousal held to celebrate what they called a "covenant with death and an agreement with the underworld” (xxviii. 8ff.). More than once he satirises the craft and subtlety on which the conspirators prided · themselves; and denounces the secrecy in which they screened

their proceedings as an attempt to outwit the Almighty (xxix. 15; XXX. I-12; xxxi. 1, 2). A parting glimpse of the ill-fated enterprise is probably given in ch. xxx. 6, 7, where the prophet pictures the heavily laden caravan making its way across the desert with presents from Hezekiah to the potentates of the Nile Valley. Isaiah's protest was therefore unavailing. The intrigue of the nobles prevailed over the wiser counsels of the prophet; and for the second time in his life he seems to have retired from a bootless controversy with a solemn testimony against the infatuation which had seized the whole people. Once more, as in the days of Ahaz, he embodied the substance of his message in a permanent written record, that it might be a witness against the unbelief and rejection of the divine revelation which must surely end in national disaster (xxx. 8 ff.).

There is no doubt that for the moment the policy adopted by the court was popular with all classes of the community. The prospect of a war with Assyria was eagerly welcomed by the reckless patriotism of the common people; and the spirit of levity manifested by the capital at this time seemed to Isaiah not less irreligious than the carnal tendencies of the court. A certain air of mirth and gaiety appears at all times to have impressed him as characteristic of the population of Jerusalem, the "jubilant city" as he twice names it (xxii. 2; xxxii. 13; cf. v. 14). Some of the gloomiest oracles belonging to this period were called forth by thoughtless exhibitions of this temper of mind which came under the prophet's observation. Looking on the merry throng that gathered in the temple court at one of the great annual festivals, he uttered the "Woe to Ariel" of ch. xxix. 1—4, in which he predicts the humiliation of the impenitent city within the space of one or two years. Another time it was the careless and scornful attitude of the women that moved him to deliver a very similar message of doom (xxxii. 9—14). But the worst display of this feeling seems to have occurred at the very moment when Isaiah looked for some token of penitential submission to the will of Jehovah. The difficult prophecy of ch. xxii. 1—14, which exceeds in severity any other in the whole book, refers most probably to what took place

when the first blockade of Jerusalem was raised in consequence of Hezekiah's surrender. That was emphatically a day on which "the Lord Jehovah of hosts called to weeping and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth” (v. 12). But instead of this, it was the occasion of a senseless outburst of mirth and festivity which astounded the prophet, and for the moment obliterated from his mind the vision of a happy future. Heedless of the late disasters, and the humiliating conditions of peace, the city kept holiday in honour of its deliverance, the house-tops were crowded with spectators watching the departure of the Assyrian army, and universal hilarity expressed the prevalent sentiment of the hour, “let us eat and drink for to-morrow we shall die” (v. 13). Isaiah was at first moved to tears by such a revelation of the incorrigible hardness of the people under Jehovah's chastisements (v. 4), but at length sorrow gives way to righteous indignation and in his inner ear there sounded, like a knell, the awful sentence of rejection, "Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts" (v. 14).

It may fairly be inferred from these three prophecies that Isaiah entertained no expectation of salvation for the mass of his countrymen, and that he was saved from absolute pessimism only by his unquenchable faith in an elect "remnant" and by the hopes that sprang from that conviction. There is no section of his writings where these hopes find grander or clearer expression than the discourses of Sennacherib's reign. The prophet felt that the hour of the decisive conflict between Jehovah and the world-power was at hand; and he knew that in the last extremity Jerusalem would be protected by the direct intervention of the Almighty (xxix. 7, 8; xxxi. 5). This thought is most powerfully expressed in an imaginative picture of the judgment on Assyria contained in ch. xxx. 27—33 (cf. xxxi. 8, 9). The crisis of Jerusalem's fate becomes the occasion of that final revelation of the majesty of God to which Isaiah had looked forward from the beginning of his work, and which he had with increasing distinctness connected with the overthrow of the Assyrian power. The whole history of redemption converges to this one event; it is

the consummation of Jehovah's work of judgment on both Israel and Assyria, and the inauguration of the reign of holiness and peace reserved for the purified remnant of the nation. Hence it is that the threats of judgment which the prophet was constrained by the perverseness of the people to utter are constantly relieved by ideal pictures of salvation in which he found a refuge from the discouragements and confusions of the present. It is possible that these passages may have been addressed in the first instance to his own disciples rather than to the people at large; at all events they shew how firmly he held to the belief that out of the immediate trial there would emerge a regenerate nation to enjoy the temporal and spiritual blessings of the Messianic age (xxix. 17-24; xxx. 18-26; xxxii. 1—8).

We have now traced Isaiah's activity to the close of the first attack of Sennacherib on Jerusalem, and we have seen that up to that moment nothing had occurred to modify his stern verdict on the disposition of the inhabitants. For what follows we are almost entirely dependent on the historical appendix of the book (ch. xxxvi., xxxvii.) and the prophecies imbedded there. We are at once struck by the change that has passed over the prophet's attitude in the short interval. The note of rebuke and menace which was so prominent during the first stages of the invasion has wholly disappeared from his teaching; his tone is one of serene confidence and his message is an unconditional assurance of the collapse of the Assyrian enterprise. It is not so difficult as it might appear to account for this sudden alteration in the prophet's demeanour. The renewal of the demand for the surrender of Jerusalem had a most salutary effect on the disposition of Hezekiah, and no doubt on the court and the populace as well. The king recognised the hopeless plight in which his adventurous policy had landed him, and, thoroughly humbled, throws himself unreservedly on the protection of Jehovah and the guidance of His prophet. On the other hand the perfidious conduct of Sennacherib, and his blasphemous defiance of the God of Israel, had put him in the wrong; he had committed the crowning offence against the majesty of Jehovah which Isaiah had long foreseen. He felt

therefore that the time of Judah's chastisement was past, and that of Sennacherib's downfall had arrived. All that remained for him to do was to sustain the faith and courage of Hezekiah with the assurance that Jehovah was with him in his refusal to submit to the demands of Sennacherib. It is not necessary here to follow the details of the narrative. What is most remarkable in the oracles of this time is the sobriety of the prediction on which Isaiah based his encouragement to resistance. He drops no hint of the frightful catastrophe which was to break the power of Assyria in that region for a whole generation. He simply announces that the Assyrian shall "hear a rumour and return to his own land," there to perish by the sword (xxxvii. 7), that "by the way that he came by the same he shall return," without having so much as "shot an arrow” against Jerusalem (vv. 29, 33, 34 f.). All this of course was strictly fulfilled, and would of itself form a complete vindication of Isaiah's authority to speak in the name of his God. But the sudden and terrible calamity which overwhelmed the army of Sennacherib answered in some degree to the most dramatic of his earlier prophecies (x. 33 f.; xvii. 12 ff.; xviii. 3 ff.; xxx. 27 ff.) and proved that all through his career Isaiah had been inspired with a true foreknowledge which no calculation of probabilities could have attained.

The comparative moderation of Isaiah's last utterances must not lead us to underestimate the heroism of faith which enabled him to stand out at this juncture as the saviour of his country. The political risks of the course he advocated were indeed tremendous; for a renewed declaration of war against Assyria must have seemed to all human sagacity a perfectly desperate policy. But far more momentous were the religious issues at stake. If Jerusalem had then been surrendered or captured, all that had been gained by the work of Isaiah and other prophets would have been lost to Israel and to the world. The spiritual religion which lay in germ in the teaching of Isaiah was not as yet capable of existing apart from the nationality in which it had been born, and hence the preservation of the Hebrew state was of paramount importance for the conser