THE EXILES' BOOK OF CONSOLATION (Chaps.

40-55)

I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND ORIGIN OF THE
PROPHECY

ALMOST exactly two centuries elapsed between the call of Isaiah in 740 B.C. and the publication of the great prophecy contained in Chaps. 40-55. Of the Assyrian empire, which constitutes the background of the prophecies of Isaiah, we hear in this prophecy nothing whatever; its place has been taken by the Babylonian empire (43: 14; 48 20). The Assyrians continued to dominate western Asia for about a hundred years after Isaiah's death; but their empire, which towards the end of that period had begun to totter, came to an end in 607 B.C. with the destruction of their capital city, Nineveh, by the Babylonians, whose empire, in its turn, lasted about seventy years (till 538 B.C.).

The great
As in the

For

It is within this period that the exile falls that experience which affected so profoundly the subsequent history, religion, and literature of the Jews. Nebuchadrezzar came to the throne in 604 B.C. previous century the small Syrian kingdoms, ever restless under the Assyrian yoke, were ever ready to throw it off when opportunity offered, so it was in Judah now. a few years the king, Jehoiakim, son of the reforming king Josiah, remained the nominal vassal of Babylonia; but at last he revolted, and consequently drew upon himself and his land the speedy vengeance of his overlord. Nebuchadrezzar appeared upon the scene, besieged Jerusalem, plundered the temple and palace of their treasures, and deported several thousand of the most efficient in

habitants, including Jehoiakim's son Jehoiachin, who, just three months before, had ascended the throne (2 Kings 24). This was in 597 B.C. The Babylonians placed Jehoiakim's brother Zedekiah upon the throne of Judah, and for about ten years he remained faithful in his allegiance to Babylon. Then he rebelled, and soon the Babylonian hosts were round the walls of Jerusalem. After a terrible siege of a year and a half the city was taken, its walls destroyed, its temple, palace, and great buildings reduced to ashes, and the best of its inhabitants carried away to Babylon-there to remain for nearly half a century (586-538 B.C.). This is the period known in Hebrew history as the exile.

Of this sorrowful period no history exists, and what we know of it we know only by inference. With the death of Nebuchadrezzar in 561 B.C., after a reign of forty-three years, hope was temporarily kindled in the desperate hearts of the exiles by the clement policy of his successor Evilmerodach, who showed particular favor to their king Jehoiachin by releasing him from the prison in which for thirty-six years he had been languishing (2 Kings 25 27 ff.). This hope was probably extinguished by the death of the Babylonian monarch in 559 B.C. At any rate the Jews who, twenty years after, are addressed in Isa. 40-55, are sorrowful and disconsolate enough (cf. 40: 1).

The control of the Babylonian empire passed in 555 B.C. into the weak hands of Nabonidus, who cared more for religious and antiquarian interests than for political and military enterprise. Suddenly about this time a new figure appeared upon the historical horizon in the person of the conqueror Cyrus, a Persian, no less gifted as a man than as a soldier. His whole career is a romance. With almost incredible rapidity he pursued his victorious way through Asia (Isa. 41: 3). The Median empire fell before him in 549 B.C., and the Lydian empire, whose head was the wealthy Croesus, in 546 B.C.; and no doubt it is somewhere between that date and 538, when Cyrus captured Babylon and brought her dominion to an end, that the great anony

mous prophet sought to comfort and stimulate his exiled brethren with the noble words which now form Chaps. 40-55 of the book of Isaiah.

The Babylonian background of these chapters is as plain as words can make it. Jerusalem and the cities of Judah are a desolation, her temple has been razed to the ground (44 26-28; 51: 3), her people are languishing in Babylonia (48: 20). Babylon is the empire which, for her pride and cruelty (47: 6), is doomed to speedy extinction; and Babylon's are the gods on whom scornful ridicule is poured (46:1). Cyrus is announced as the conqueror by whom Bablyon is to be overthrown and Israel set free. He it is who will execute Jehovah's purpose on Babylon (48: 14), set free the exiles (45: 13), and rebuild Jerusalem (44: 28). To this high task he has been divinely called (41: 2, 25), and in it he is divinely upheld (45 : 1–5). He is not predicted as a figure of the distant future; he is already on the stage of history, and well advanced on his triumphant career. Already victory has attended his every step (412), and soon he will burst Babylon's gates of bronze in sunder (452). We shall not go far wrong if we set the prophecy about the year 540 B.C. — after the brilliant successes of Cyrus had become matter of common knowledge, but before his capture of Babylon (in 538 B.C.).

II. THE PROPHET'S MESSAGE

Deutero-Isaiah (that is, second Isaiah) — as this nameless prophet is now commonly called addressed himself to the difficult task of consoling his fellow-countrymen in exile, and of interpreting for them the signs of the times. They are despondent. They not unnaturally imagine that their God has forgotten or forsaken them (49: 14), that he ignores their case and cares nothing for their fate (40: 27). The prophet's first aim is therefore to inspire them with his own magnificent conception of God. His people, now half a century in exile, might well believe that the gods

of Babylon, Bel, Nebo, etc. (46:1), are more powerful than their own God Jehovah. But not so. Jehovah is the omnipotent God of the universe, the Creator and Lord of the mountains, the world, the stars. This is the real significance of the familiar and splendid description of the power of God in Chap. 40: it is meant to inspire a broken-hearted people with faith and hope. Israel's God is the mighty God, never faint and never weary, but ever fresh and strong, and able to inspire the weak and the faint with something of his own strength (40: 28 ff.).

He is Lord of nature; he is no less Lord of history – another reason why the disconsolate people should take courage. For he is the First and the Last, the Eternal One; he knows the end from the beginning and announces it through his prophets. All the generations are his (41: 4), and they are all moving on to the grand consummation, when they shall all voluntarily acknowledge him. The sense of purpose that runs through the universe is finely expressed in 45: 18 f., where Jehovah is represented as creating the earth not to be a waste, but to be inhabited by saved and happy men, and as speaking his great word of revelation to Israel and, through Israel, to the world, plainly and in no dark and mystic way. Nature and history alike are pervaded by intelligence, order, purpose; and the ultimate end of the long series of events we call history is that all men should be saved. "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth" (45: 22).

This salvation, however, can only come through a knowledge of God, of Israel's God for he alone is the true God (456); and this knowledge of God can only be mediated by Israel, for she alone possesses it. "Surely God is in thee," the foreign peoples say to her (45: 14), and she alone is his competent witness"Ye are my witnesses" (43: 10, 12). Especially will Israel attain to her power to testify for him through her experience of his omnipotent grace in delivering her from exile. And here 1 For "spirit of the Lord" in 40: 13, the Greek version suggestively reads mind.