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Upon all the proud towers
And all the strong walls
And all gallant ships.

Man's haughtiness shall be brought down,
And man's loftiness shall be laid low,
And in that great day

Shall Jehovah alone be exalted.

Get ye into the caves of the rocks

And the holes of the earth,

From before the dread presence of God,

When he rises up to smite earth with his terror

(2: 12 ff.).

There are few things in literature to surpass in vividness

and simple vigor Isaiah's description of the Assyrian army :

See! hastily, swiftly they come,

None weary, none stumbling among them.

The band of their loins never loosed,

The thong of their shoes never torn.

Their arrows are sharpened,

Their bows are all bent.

The hoofs of their horses are counted as flint,

And their wheels as the whirlwind.

Their roar is like that of the lioness,

And like the young lions they roar,

Thundering, seizing the prey,

And bearing it off to a place of security

(5:26-29).

VI. LITERARY PROBLEMS OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH

This is not the place to discuss the literary problems of the book of Isaiah; but they happen to be of unusual importance in forming a true estimate of what the prophet's message really was, and their nature may be briefly indicated by one or two illustrations.

Take, for example, Chap. 29. The first four verses an

nounce, in the most unmistakable terms, a terrible siege of Jerusalem, when there will be mourning and lamentation and the city shall be reduced to the most abject humiliation. The fifth verse, however, starts off in a wholly different strain. Here it is announced that the enemy shall become like small dust, and like the chaff that passeth away. In vs. 6, Jerusalem is to be "visited of Jehovah" with thunder and earthquake, whirlwind and tempest, and fire. The natural impression made by this verse, if it stood alone, or if it immediately followed vss. 1-4, would be that for Jerusalem the visitation is to be one of terror: Jehovah will come in judgment, and bring the awful powers of nature, as in vss. 1-4 he is to bring the Assyrians, to bear upon the guilty city. But following vs. 5, we must suppose, though this does not seem very natural, that, for Jerusalem, the visitation is a gracious visitation, and the terrors announced are for the enemy. So in vs. 7 the beleaguering foes are to pass like a dream, and in vs. 8 their disappointment is compared to that of a dreamer when he wakes.

Unquestionably the effect of this announcement of the sure and utter destruction of the enemy is to blunt the edge of the terrible prophecy against Jerusalem which had just gone before; and it is not only fair but necessary to ask whether the same prophet - especially when that prophet is so consummate an orator as Isaiah - could at the same time have delivered two messages, one of which must have gone very far to obliterate from the mind of his audience the terror produced by the other. It is not absolutely inconceivable, especially if the second message were spoken among his intimate disciples, but it does not. seem probable.

Or take a similar case in 31:4. Isaiah has just been denouncing (vss. 1-3) the Egyptian alliance and declaring that "both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is helped shall fall, and they all shall be consumed together." Then in a simile of splendid power he goes on:

"For thus saith Jehovah unto me, As the lion and the young lion growling over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him, will not be dismayed at their voice, nor daunted at the noise of them: so will Jehovah of hosts come down to fight upon Mount Zion, and upon the hill thereof" (vs. 4).

The point is obscured, or rather obliterated, by the translation "upon mount Zion" instead of against (which is read in the margin).1 But coming as it does after the threat that "all shall be consumed together," against is certainly much more natural and almost certainly correct. In that case, Jehovah is the lion, mighty and unafraid, and Zion is his prey. Very different, however, indeed, quite the reverse, is the impression made by the following verse (5):

"As birds hovering, so will Jehovah of hosts protect Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it, he will pass over and preserve it."

The transition from the fearless lion to the fluttering birds, though not absolutely indefensible, certainly seems very improbable; and to say nothing of the awkwardness of the sentence in Hebrew, the threat of destruction in vs. 4, which is also supported by the previous context, is simply negated by the promise of preservation in vs. 5. And again we must raise the question: Is it probable that Isaiah or any other speaker would have presented to his audience a message whose component parts were so conflicting as to cancel each other? That were perplexity indeed.

The alternative is to suppose that the original words of Isaiah, which in these passages (as, beyond any question, in 22 1-14) were probably words of threat and doom, were supplemented by later writers, who had in view the undoubted historic fact of the preservation of the city, besides other words of Isaiah which had definitely foretold that The Hebrew preposition can mean either upon or against.

preservation (cf. 37: 29; cf. vs. 7). There was all the more likelihood of this, as later ages, which were fond of idealizing Jerusalem, looked forward with imagination and hope to the great day of Jehovah, when the godless nations, in vain assault upon the holy city, would be shattered, and the city preserved inviolate. Nothing would be more natural to later scribes, whose ideas of literary property were very different from our own, than to project this thought back upon the prophecies of Isaiah, the more so as it had been encouraged and expressed by other words of his. But in that case it becomes a duty though frequently a task of great complexity to disentangle from our present text the original words of Isaiah. It is only then, when the text is stripped of the comments and hopes of later ages, that we can understand the prophet's real message and the changing phases it assumed. Thus, for example, if the argument is correct, Isaiah's message at that moment (in Chaps. 29 and 31) was one of unmitigated doom, and the great prophet strikes a far sterner note than our present text would lead us to suppose.

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This is, of course, by no means to say that he was a prophet of doom. We know that he announced the miraculous preservation of the city: we know that he was a prophet of hope, and that he believed that "a remnant would return." But there was also a very stern side to his character and message (cf. 5:17; 7: 17 ff.; 22: 1-14), which the present text of some passages, whose terror is shot through with promise, too easily leads us to forget and ignore; and it is the delicate task of literary criticism to recover so far as it can the prophet's genuine and original words.

ANALYSIS OF CHAPTERS 1-39

PROPHECIES CONCERNING JUDAH AND ISRAEL (Chaps. 1-12)

1. Jerusalem: her present sin and punishment: her future redemption and glory (11-25).

(1) The prophet's lament over the unfaithfulness of the people to their God (1:1−9).

(2) The futility of a merely ceremonial worship (1 : 10-17).
(3) The great alternatives (1:18-20).

(4) Zion's present shame and future glory (1:21-28).

(5) The heathen cult and its doom (1:29-31).

(6) Jerusalem the centre of blessing to the world (2:1-5). 2. Judgment upon the wealth and pride of Judah (2:6–4:6). (1) Jehovah's judgment day (2: 6-22).

(2) A reign of anarchy (3:1-15).

(3) The doom of the haughty women (3: 16-4: 1).
(4) Zion's final glory (4: 2-6).

3. The vineyard with the wild grapes (chap. 5).

(1) The song of the vineyard (5 : 1−7).

(2) Woe! (5:8-24).

(3) A foreign army is coming (5:25-30).

4. The prophet's call (chap. 6).

5. The crisis of 735 B.C. (7: 1-9: 7).

(1) The prophet's word to the terrified king (7: 1-9).
(2) The great refusal and the sign (7: 10-16).

(3) Judah will also be ravaged (7:17-25).

(4) The fall of Damascus and Samaria (8: 1-4).
(5) The invasion of Judah (8: 5-8).

(6) The futility of opposition to Judah (8:9f).
None is to be feared but Jehovah (8:11-15).

(8) Isaiah's patient hope (8: 16–18).

(9) The awful plight of unbelieving Judah (8: 19-22).
(10) The great deliverance and the glorious king (9:1-7).

6. The doom of Israel (9:8-10:4).

7. The doom of the Assyrian (10: 5-34).

(1) The two plans-Assyria's and Jehovah's (10:5-15).

(2) The fate of Assyria and Judah (10: 16-23).

(3) The consolation of Zion: Assyria will assuredly fall (10:24-34). 8. The bliss of Israel in the latter days (chaps. II and 12).

(1) The Messianic king and kingdom (11: 1–9).

(2) The triumphal return (11:10-16).

(3) The song of thanksgiving (chap. 12).

PROPHECIES CONCERNING FOREIGN NATIONS (Chaps. 3-23)

1. Prophecy concerning Babylon (13:1-14:23).

(1) The doom of Babylon (chap. 13).

(2) Song of triumph over the fall of Babylon's king (14:1-23).

2. Jehovah's invincible world plan (14: 24-27).

3. Warning to Philistia (14: 28-32).

4. Lament over Moab (chaps. 15 and 16).

5. Prophecy concerning Damascus and northern Israel (17:1-11). (1) The destruction of Damascus (17: 1-3).

(2) The doom of Israel (17:4-11).

6. The speedy doom of the Assyrians (17: 12-18:7).

(1) Their sudden destruction (17: 12-14).

(2) Isaiah's answer to the Ethiopian ambassadors (chap. 18).

7. The destiny of Egypt (chap. 19).

(1) The disasters of Egypt (19:1-15).

(2) The conversion of Egypt (19: 16-25).

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