vation of the true knowledge of God. Yet with all this in view Isaiah never wavered. While all around him were paralysed with fear, his confidence remained unshaken, and in the supreme hour of danger he boldly announced that the city would be saved and the word of the Lord established. His success in this last emergency, after so many defeats at the hands of an unbelieving nation and its rulers, was an event which has had "more influence on the life of subsequent generations than all the conquests of Assyrian kings; for it assured the permanent vitality of that religion which was the cradle of Christianity1."

The remainder of Isaiah's life is wrapped in obscurity. How long he survived the deliverance, how his last years were occupied, in what spirit he faced the problems of a new century, we cannot tell. It is an attractive conjecture of Duhm that his most soaring pictures of the Messiah's kingdom (ii. 1—4; xi. 1-8; xxxii. 1-6) come from his latest years, when the aged prophet, after a life spent in labour and conflict, turned with rapture to that ideal future which in spite of all delays and disappointments must surely be realised. It is an attractive idea, but nothing more. A Jewish tradition current in the 2nd century A.D. asserts that he outlived Hezekiah and perished in the heathen reaction under Manasseh; but this also, though not inherently incredible, is destitute of historical value. This is a case in which the silence of scripture is as instructive as its speech. For it reminds us that Isaiah's life work really ended with the events of 701. It was enough for one man to have guided the policy of his country through its first eventful collision with the world power, which in its own ruthless fashion was preparing the way for a new civilisation; to have enunciated the principles of the moral government of the universe that made monotheism a practical power in history; to have enriched eschatology with the figure of the ideal King of God's kingdom; to have formed within the Jewish state a prophetic party in which the religion of the spirit eventually detached itself from its national environment; and to have left behind him an

1 Robertson Smith, Prophets, p. 356.

illustrious example of that faith in the unseen and eternal without which humanity cannot reach the goal appointed for it in the redemptive purpose of God.

CHAPTER III.

ISAIAH'S PROPHETIC CONCEPTIONS.

THE ruling ideas of Isaiah's ministry are not materially different from those of the other great prophets of the same period, Amos, Hosea and Micah. All these writers are animated by the same fundamental convictions with regard to the nature and character of Jehovah the God of Israel, His controversy with His people, the necessity of a national judgment to be inflicted through the agency of Assyria, and the final establishment of Jehovah's kingdom of righteousness and peace. But to this common body of prophetic doctrine each prophet contributes something that is distinctive, according as the bent of his genius or his peculiar experience led him to develop certain aspects of truth specially revealed to him. In the case of Isaiah we shall see that from the beginning his message contained some elements not to be found in the writings of his contemporaries; while other distinctive conceptions emerge in the course of his active ministry. Being preeminently a man of action and a statesman, his firm grasp of political facts imparts a special direction to his thoughts of the divine kingdom; and the necessity of presenting a definite religious policy to the rulers of the state gives a precision and fulness to his forecasts of the future in which he is hardly equalled by any other prophet. At the same time there is an organic unity in his teaching, all his leading ideas being implicitly contained in a few simple but comprehensive principles disclosed to him in his inaugural vision. They may be arranged under three heads: first, those more immediately connected with the prophet's conception of

God; second, his view of Israel; and third, the Messianic hope in its different aspects.

I. JEHOVAH AND HIS WORK.

Isaiah is a monotheist in the strictest sense of the term. There is no sentence in his writings which suggests that he attributed any sort of real existence to the false gods of the heathen; and if he never reasons on the subject of the divine unity, it is because the fact was too fundamental in his mind to admit of demonstration. He frequently speaks of idols as "the work of men's hands" (ii. 8, 20; xvii. 8; xxxi. 7); his favourite designation for them is 'ělîlîm (“not-gods" or "nonentities”) a word which he seems himself to have coined to express his sense of their unreality. No language could be more opposed to the spirit of idolatry than this; for it expressly denies the belief which is at the foundation of the worship of idols, namely, that the image is the abode of a supernatural being able to protect and help his votaries. Nor are the prophet's allusions to the primitive nature-worship which survived in the land (i. 29, 30; xvii. 10, 11) less intolerant, or less decisive as to his attitude towards the polytheistic tendencies of his countrymen. For him, in short, there was but one divine Being; and all his conceptions of Godhead are summed up in the revelation which made him a prophet, the vision of Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel (ch. vi.).

It has been already remarked (p. xxiv) that the aspect of the divine nature chiefly expressed by this vision is that of overwhelming and awe-inspiring majesty. The effect produced on the mind by Isaiah's magnificent description is far more impressive and convincing on this point than any analysis of the contents of the vision can be. But if we must analyse, we cannot fail to observe how every touch in the picture emphasises the general conception of Jehovah as a transcendently glorious Being, in whose awful presence no unconsecrated mortal can stand. The throne "high and lofty" on which He sits indicates that He is a King, and not the King of Israel alone, but the absolute, universal Sovereign, (adôn) whose glory is the fulness of

the whole earth. The fiery creatures, the Seraphs, who are the ministers of His court, and who reflect something of His ineffable glory, nevertheless veil themselves before Him in the consciousness of their imperfection, while the hymn of praise that continually ascends from their lips expresses their sense of His adorable and incomparable majesty. Further, the fear of death which overtakes the prophet as he gazes unbidden on this solemn mystery, as well as the symbol of his expiation, which is by contact with the fire in which Jehovah dwells, and also the sternness of the divine message to Israel, all contribute to the impression which this scene conveys of Jehovah's unapproachable majesty.

The chant of the seraphs contains two words which may be said to sum up the import of the vision in so far as it is a revelation of God. Of these the first is the word holy, expressing what Jehovah is in Himself; while the second-glory-appears to denote an aspect of His Godhead which is reflected in the works of nature.

In order to understand the significance of the term "holiness" (gōdesh) in Isaiah's conception of God, we have to start from a much lower level of religious thinking than that which is represented by his teaching. The word is not confined to the religion of Israel, but was used throughout Semitic antiquity as the most comprehensive predicate of deity, although the idea primarily expressed by it is somewhat uncertain. If, as many writers believe, it comes from a root signifying "separation" or "distance" it would embody the notion of the contrast between the divine and the human which was perhaps characteristic of the conception of God common to the Semitic peoples. It is certain at all events that "holiness" does not express any special attribute of the divine nature but rather the general notion of godhead, as distinguished from every other form of existence. Such a phrase, for example, as 'the holy gods," which occurs in the inscription of Eshmunazar king of Sidon, as well as in Dan. iv. 8, 9, 18, v. 11, is a mere redundancy of speech, gratifying the reverential feeling of the speakers, but conveying no information as to the character of the gods. Least of all did the term connote ethical

purity; for the deities to whom it was applied by the heathen Semites were not only immoral from our point of view, but were not even regarded as moral beings by their own worshippers1.

Now the writings of the Hebrew prophets, and of Isaiah in particular, mark an important stage in the development of this notion of holiness. At first sight it might seem inexplicable that a purely formal idea, expressing no positive conception beyond that of awe-inspiring power and majesty, should become a central doctrine of the prophetic theology. But in truth it is the very vagueness and comprehensiveness of the term which explains the profound significance attaching to it in the mind of Isaiah. By taking this word, which by universal consent embraced all that was distinctive of deity, and restricting it to Jehovah, he expressed the fundamental truth that in the God of Israel and in Him alone are concentrated all the attributes of true divinity2. Holiness thus ceases to be an abstract quality shared by a number of divine beings; it comes to denote the fulness of what Jehovah is as He is known from His revelation of Himself to the consciousness of the prophet. It signalises the most notable fact in the religious history of Israel, the formation of an idea of God which at once placed an impassable gulf between Jehovah and all other beings who claimed the title of divine; and it is this positive idea of God, expressed in the doctrine of Jehovah's unique holiness, that is the mainstay of Isaiah's ministry.

From this point of view it is immaterial to determine how much or how little of permanent religious truth may have been contained in the primitive notion of holiness, which prevailed in

1 With the secondary applications of the word to places, persons and things we are not here concerned; but the fact that the Hierodouloi, or sacred prostitutes, of the Canaanite religion were known as "holy women furnishes decisive evidence of the complete divorce in ancient times of the two ideas of holiness and morality.

2 No attempt is here made to discriminate between what is peculiar to Isaiah and what is common to him and other prophets. It is not implied that he was the only, or the first, writer who made this application of the word "holy."