THE LATER PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH. BY JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER, PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY. NEW-YORK & LONDON: 1847. 57080 ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER, in the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. мн PREFACE. THIS volume is a sequel to the one which appeared about a year ago, under the title of the Earlier Prophecies, the two together forming a continuous Commentary on Isaiah. While the same plan has been here retained without alteration, I have aimed at greater uniformity of execution, as well as a more critical selection of materials. The reasons for a separate investigation of these later chapters have been stated in the introduction to the other volume. In addition to the authors there enumerated, I have carefully compared the English version and remarks of Noyes (second edition, Boston, 1843) and die Cyro-jesaianischen Weissagungen of Beck (Leipzig, 1844); the first of which, though elegant and scholarlike, is too closely modelled on Gesenius to afford much new matter, and the other is remarkable chiefly for the boldness of its ultra-rationalistic doctrines, and the juvenile flippancy with which they are expressed. Of both these works occasional citations will be met with in the present volume. In the exposition of the last seven chapters, too polemical an attitude, perhaps, has been assumed with respect to a distinguished living writer, Dr. Henderson, to whose abilities and learning I have elsewhere endeavoured to do justice. The prominence here given to his book has arisen from his happening to be not only the best but the sole representative of certain views among the professed expounders of Isaiah. As to the question in dispute, the ground which I have taken and endeavoured to maintain is the negative position, that the truth of these "exceeding great and precious promises " is not suspended on the future restoration of the Jews to Palestine, without denying such a restoration to be possible or promised elsewhere. |