PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 1 (of 2)
Smith, George Adam · 137,423 words · 190 reading sections
Book Ii.
Was Isaiah, then, silent these ten years? Is there no prophecy lying farther on in his book that treats of Samaria as still standing? Besides an address to the fallen Damascus in xvii. 1-11, which we shall take later with the rest of Isaiah's oracles on foreign states, there is one large prophecy, chap. xxviii., which …
343 wordsSECTION 62_God'S Commonplace._
ISAIAH xxviii. (ABOUT 725 B.C.) The twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Isaiah is one of the greatest of his prophecies. It is distinguished by that regal versatility of style, which places its author at the head of Hebrew writers. Keen analyses of character, realistic contrasts between sin and judgement, clever reto…
651 wordsSECTION 63_God'S Commonplace._
Isaiah's intention is manifest, and his effort a great one. It is to rob passion of its magic and change men's temptations to their disgusts, by exhibiting how squalid passion shows beneath disaster, and how gloriously purity shines surviving it. It is to strip luxury and indulgence of their attractiveness by drenching…
841 wordsSECTION 64_God'S Commonplace._
[29] Ewald. The original runs thus: "Ki tsav la-tsav, tsav la-tsav qav la-qav, qav la-qav; z'eir sham z'eir sham." But Isaiah turns upon them with their own words: "You call me, Stammerer! I tell you that God, Who speaks through me, and Whom in me you mock, will one day speak again to you in a tongue that shall indee…
801 wordsSECTION 65_God'S Commonplace._
_Therefore hear the word of Jehovah, ye men of scorn, rulers of this people, which is in Jerusalem!_ _Because ye have said, We have entered into a covenant with Death, and with Hell have we made a bargain; the "Overflowing Scourge,"_ a current phrase of Isaiah's which they fling back in his teeth, _when it passeth alo…
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"I pray you read the Twenty-eighth of Isaiah, from the fifth to the fifteenth verse. And do not scorn to know that it is the Spirit that quickens and giveth life."[30] [30] _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_, Letter cxxxvi. Cromwell, as we have said, is the best commentator Isaiah has ever had, and that by an instinct…
762 wordsSECTION 67_God'S Commonplace._
But Isaiah's words have wider application. Short of faith as he exemplified it, there is no possibility for the spirit of man to be free from uneasiness. It is so all along the scale of human endeavour. No power of patience or of hope is his, who cannot imagine possibilities of truth outside his own opinions, nor trust…
872 wordsSECTION 68_Atheism Of Force And Atheism Of Fear._
We have said this is one of the finest prophecies of Isaiah. His political foresight was admirable, when he alone of his countrymen predicted the visitation of Assyria upon Judah. But now, when all are convinced of it, how still more wonderful does he seem facing that novel disaster, with the whole world's force behind…
686 wordsSECTION 69_Atheism Of Force And Atheism Of Fear._
_Cometh up from the North the Destroyer._ _He is come upon Ai; marcheth through Migron; at Michmash musters his baggage._ _They have passed through the Pass; "Let Geba be our bivouac."_ _Terror-struck is Ramah; Gibeah of Saul hath fled._ _Make shrill thy voice, O daughter of Gallim! Listen, Laishah! Answer her, Ana…
780 wordsSECTION 70_Atheism Of Force And Atheism Of Fear._
This prophecy of Isaiah contains a great Gospel and two great Protests, which the prophet was enabled to make in the strength of it: one against the Atheism of Force, and one against the Atheism of Fear. The Gospel of the chapter is just that which we have already emphasized as the gospel _par excellence_ of Isaiah: t…
846 wordsSECTION 71_Atheism Of Force And Atheism Of Fear._
Isaiah's problem was thus the fundamental one between faith and atheism; but we must notice that it did not arise theoretically, nor did he meet it by an abstract proposition. This fundamental religious question--whether men are to trust in the visible forces of the world or in the invisible God--came up as a bit of pr…
1,081 wordsSECTION 72_The Spirit Of God In Man And The Animals._
Otherwise we are left with the intolerable paradox, that truth and honesty, patience and the love of man to man, are after all but the playthings and victims of force; that, to adapt the words of Isaiah, the rod really shakes him who lifts it up, and the staff is wielding that which is not wood. ISAIAH xi., xii. (ABOU…
895 wordsSECTION 73_The Spirit Of God In Man And The Animals._
Dean Plumptre has plausibly suggested, that these verses may represent the programme which Isaiah set before his pupil Hezekiah on his accession to the charge of a nation, whom his weak predecessor had suffered to lapse into such abuse of justice and laxity of morals.[33] The acts of government described are all of a p…
712 wordsSECTION 74_The Spirit Of God In Man And The Animals._
But draughts of this atmosphere are possible to us also, to whom the Holy Spirit is granted. We too, who sicken with the tainted breath of society, and see the characters of children about us fall away and the hidden evil within leap to swift flame before the blasts of the world--we too may, by Christ's grace, _draw br…
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[35] Didron, _Christian Iconography_, Engl. trans., i., 432. [36] Didron, _Christian Iconography_, Engl. trans., i., 426. But the influence of our passage may be followed to that wider definition of the Spirit's work, which made Him the Fountain of all intelligence. The Spirits of the Lord mentioned by Isaiah are pre…
714 wordsSECTION 76_The Spirit Of God In Man And The Animals._
We, who live in countries, from which wild beasts have been exterminated, cannot understand the insecurity and terror, that they cause in regions where they abound. A modern seer of the times of regeneration would leave the wild animals out of his vision. They do not impress any more the human conscience or imagination…
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Nor is this Bible answer,--of which the book of Genesis gives us the one end, and this text of Isaiah the other,--a mere pious opinion, which the true history of man's dealing with wild beasts by extermination proves to be impracticable. We may take on scientific authority a few facts as hints from nature, that after a…
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[40] Isa. lxiii. 13, 14; Hos. xi. 4. Our relation to the lower animals is one of the three great relations of our nature. For God our worship; for man our service; for the beasts our providence, and according both to Isaiah and Paul, the mediation of our holiness. IV. THE RETURN AND SOVEREIGNTY OF ISRAEL (xi. 10-16).…
411 wordsSECTION 79(720-705 B.C.).
ISAIAH xx.; xxi. 1-10; xxxviii.; xxxix. From 720, when chap. xi. may have been published, to 705--or, by rough reckoning, from the fortieth to the fifty-fifth year of Isaiah's life--we cannot be sure that we have more than one prophecy from him; but two narratives have found a place in his book which relate events tha…
816 wordsSECTION 80(720-705 B.C.).
[41] _Records of the Past_, vii., 40. In this we are told that _in the year_ the _Tartan_, the Assyrian commander-in-chief, _came to Ashdod when Sargon king of Assyria sent him_ [that is to be supposed the year of the first revolt in Ashdod, to which Sargon himself did not come], _and he fought against Ashdod and took…
776 wordsSECTION 81(720-705 B.C.).
Isaiah's prediction of the exile of Israel to Babylon is a matter of difficulty. The difficulty, however, is not that of conceiving how he could have foreseen an event which took place more than a century later. Even in 711 Babylon was not an unlikely competitor for the supremacy of the nations. Sargon himself felt tha…
854 wordsSECTION 82Book Iii.
ORATIONS ON THE EGYPTIAN INTRIGUES AND ORACLES ON FOREIGN NATIONS, 705-702 B.C. xxix. About 703. xxx. A little later. xxxi. " " xxxii. 1-8. " xxxii. 9-20. Date uncertain. _______ xiv. 28-xxi. 736-702. xxiii. About 703. We now enter the prophecies of Isaiah's old age, those which he published after 705, when hi…
251 wordsSECTION 83_Ariel, Ariel._
ISAIAH xxix. (about 703 B.C.). In 705 Sargon, King of Assyria, was murdered, and Sennacherib, his second son, succeeded him. Before the new ruler mounted the throne, the vast empire, which his father had consolidated, broke into rebellion, and down to the borders of Egypt cities and tribes declared themselves again in…
761 wordsSECTION 84_Ariel, Ariel._
The next few verses (3-8) expand this warning. In plain words, Jerusalem is to undergo a siege. God Himself shall _encamp against thee--round about_ reads our English version, but more probably, as with the change of a letter, the Septuagint reads it--_like David_. If we take this second reading, the reference to David…
770 wordsSECTION 85_Ariel, Ariel._
But it has not been found that such talents by themselves enable statesmen calmly to face the future, or clearly to predict it. Such knowledge of the past, such vigilance for the present, by themselves only embarrass, and often deceive. They are the materials for prediction, but a ruling principle is required to arrang…
798 wordsSECTION 86_Ariel, Ariel._
For such a disposition Isaiah says there is only one cure. It is a new edition of his old gospel, that God speaks to us in facts, not forms. Worship and a lifeless doctrine have demoralized this people. God shall make Himself so felt in real life that even their dull senses shall not be able to mistake Him. _Therefore,…
870 wordsSECTION 87_Ariel, Ariel._
For these He has given us three theatres--the Bible, our country's history, and for each man his own life. We have to take the Bible, and especially the life of Christ, and to tell ourselves that these wonderful events did really take place. In Christ God did dwell; by Christ He spoke to man; man was converted, redeem…
356 wordsSECTION 88_Politics And Faith._
ISAIAH xxx. (ABOUT 702 B.C.). This prophecy of Isaiah rises out of circumstances a little more developed than those in which chap. xxix. was composed. Sennacherib is still engaged with Babylon, and it seems that it will yet be long before he marches his armies upon Syria. But Isaiah's warning has at last roused the po…
698 wordsSECTION 89_Politics And Faith._
Then Isaiah pictures the useless caravan which Judah has sent with tribute to Egypt, strings of asses and camels struggling through the desert, _land of trouble and anguish_, amid lions and serpents, and all for _a people that shall not profit them_ (ver. 6). What tempted Judah to this profitless expenditure of time a…
870 wordsSECTION 90_Politics And Faith._
But reverence is truth's other self, for reverence is simply loyalty to the supremest truth. And it is against the truth that the Jews have chiefly sinned. They had shut their eyes to Egypt's real character, but that was a small sin beside this: that they turned their backs on the greatest reality of all--God Himself. …
655 wordsSECTION 91_Politics And Faith._
At this point, either Isaiah was stung by the demands of the politicians for an alternative to their restless Egyptian policy which he condemned, or more likely he rose, unaided by external influence, on the prophet's native instinct to find some purely religious ground on which to base his political advice. The result…
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III. GOD'S TABLE IN THE MIDST OF THE ENEMIES (vv. 19-26). This patient purpose of God Isaiah now proceeds to describe in its details. Every line of his description has its loveliness, and is to be separately appreciated. There is perhaps no fairer prospect from our prophet's many windows. It is not argument nor a prog…
834 wordsSECTION 93_Politics And Faith._
IV. THE NAME OF THE LORD (vv. 27-33). But Isaiah lays down "the oaten pipe" and lifts again a brazen trumpet to his lips. Between him and that sunny landscape of the future, of whose pastoral details he has so sweetly sung, roll up now the uncouth masses of the Assyrian invasion, not yet fully gathered, far less broke…
818 wordsSECTION 94_Politics And Faith._
Of the angel who led Israel to the land of promise, God said, _My Name is in him_. Our faith is not perfect till we can, like Isaiah, feel the same of the blackest angel, the heaviest disaster, God can send us, and be able to spell it out articulately: _The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, long-suffering an…
587 wordsSECTION 95_Three Truths About God._
ISAIAH xxxi. (ABOUT 702 B.C.). Chap. xxxi., which forms an appendage to chaps. xxix. and xxx., can scarcely be reckoned among the more important prophecies of Isaiah. It is a repetition of the principles which the prophet has already proclaimed in connection with the faithless intrigues of Judah for an alliance with E…
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But the temptation to refuse to God even ordinary wisdom is also the temptation of very successful and very clever people, such as these Jewish politicians fancied themselves to be, or such as the Rich Fool in the parable. They have overcome all they have matched themselves against, and feel as if they were to be maste…
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There is more than the unyielding persistency of Divine grace taught here. There is that to begin with. God will never let go what He has made His own: the souls He has redeemed from sin, the societies He has redeemed from barbarism, the characters He has hold of, the lives He has laid His hand upon. Persistency of sav…
752 wordsSECTION 98_Three Truths About God._
With such fountains in Scripture, we need not, as some have done, exalt the Virgin, or virtually make a fourth person in the Godhead, and that a woman, in order to satisfy those natural longings of the heart which the widespread worship of the mother of Jesus tells us are so peremptory. For all fulness dwelleth in God …
430 wordsSECTION 99_A Man: Character And The Capacity To Discriminate Character._
ISAIAH xxxii. 1-8 (ABOUT 702 B.C.?). The Assyrians being thus disposed of, Isaiah turns to a prospect, on which we have scarcely heard him speak these twenty years, since Assyria appeared on the frontier of Judah--the religious future and social progress of his own people. This he paints in a small prophecy of eight v…
862 wordsSECTION 100_A Man: Character And The Capacity To Discriminate Character._
I. A MAN (ver. 2). Isaiah has described personal influence on so grand a scale that it is not surprising that the Church has leapt to his words as a direct prophecy of Jesus Christ. They are indeed a description of Him, out of whose shadow advancing time has not been able to carry the children of men, who has been the…
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When, in the early critical days of the Church, that dark drift of Jewish custom, which had overflown the barriers set to the old dispensation, threatened to spread its barrenness upon the fields of the Gentile world, already white to the harvest of Christ, and Peter and Barnabas and all the Apostles were carried away …
732 wordsSECTION 102_A Man: Character And The Capacity To Discriminate Character._
What the surface of the world's life bears so deeply, that does every individual, who puts his trust in Jesus, feel to the core. Of Jesus the believer can truly say that life on _this_ side of Him is very different from life on _that_. Temptations keep far away from the heart that keeps near to Christ. Under the shadow…
707 wordsSECTION 103_A Man: Character And The Capacity To Discriminate Character._
In illustration Isaiah takes the conventional abuse of certain moral terms, exposes it and declares it shall cease: _The vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful_. _Liberal_ and _bountiful_ were conventional names. The Hebrew word for _liberal_ originally meant exactly that--_open…
937 wordsSECTION 104_Isaiah To Women._
[49] Cf. further with this passage F. J. Church, _Trial and Death of Socrates_, Introd. xli. ff. We must not forget, however, Isaiah's chief means for the abolition of this conventionalism and the substitution of a true moral vision and terminology. These results are to follow from the presence of the great character…
764 wordsSECTION 105_Isaiah To Women._
But Isaiah more than hints that these besetting sins of women are but the defects of their virtues. The literal meaning of the two adjectives he uses, _at ease_ and _careless_, is _restful_ and _trustful_. Scripture throughout employs these words both in a good and a bad sense. Isaiah does so himself in this very chapt…
714 wordsSECTION 106_Isaiah To Women._
But when we turn from the degradation of woman as thus exposed by the prophets to her glory as lifted up in the New Testament, we find that the same note is struck. Woman in the New Testament is gracious according as she is thoughtful; she offends even when otherwise beautiful by her feeling overpowering her thought. M…
722 wordsSECTION 107_Isaiah To Women._
III. THE SPIRIT OUTPOURED (vv. 15-20). The rest of the prophecy is luminous rather than lucid, full of suffused rather than distinct meanings. The date of the future regeneration is indefinite--another feature more in harmony with Isaiah's earlier prophecies than his later. The cause of the blessing is the outpouring …
539 wordsSECTION 108_Isaiah To The Foreign Nations._
ISAIAH xiv. 24-32, xv.-xxi., and xxiii. (736-702 B.C.). The centre of the Book of Isaiah (chaps. xiii. to xxiii.) is occupied by a number of long and short prophecies which are a fertile source of perplexity to the conscientious reader of the Bible. With the exhilaration of one who traverses plain roads and beholds va…
972 wordsSECTION 109_Isaiah To The Foreign Nations._
4. xvii. 1-11. ORACLE FOR DAMASCUS. One of the earliest and most crisp of Isaiah's prophecies. Of the time of Syria's and Ephraim's league against Judah, somewhere between 736 and 732. 5. xvii. 12-14. UNTITLED. The crash of the peoples upon Jerusalem and their dispersion. This magnificent piece of sound, which we anal…
769 wordsSECTION 110_Isaiah To The Foreign Nations._
[52] Our translation, though picturesque, is misleading. The voice does not inquire, "What of the night?" _i.e._, whether it be fair or foul weather, but "How much of the night is passed?" literally "What from off the night?" This brings out a pathos that our English version has disguised. Edom feels that her night…
795 wordsSECTION 111_Isaiah To The Foreign Nations._
How well fitted Jerusalem then was to be the world's watchtower, the traveller may see to this day. The city lies upon the great central ridge of Palestine, at an elevation of two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea. If you ascend the hill behind the city, you stand upon one of the great view-points o…
654 wordsSECTION 112_Isaiah To The Foreign Nations._
We have said that in nothing is the regal power of our prophet's style so manifest as in the vast horizons, which, by the use of a few words, he calls up before us. Some of the finest of these revelations are made in this part of his book, so obscure and unknown to most. Who can ever forget those descriptions of Ethiop…
666 wordsSECTION 113_Isaiah To The Foreign Nations._
With what light and peace do Isaiah's words break out across that unquiet, hungry sea! How they tell the world for the first time, and have been telling it ever since, that, apart from all the struggle and strife of history, there is a refuge and security of men, which God Himself has assured. The troubled surface of l…
692 wordsSECTION 114_Isaiah To The Foreign Nations._
Now we need not be concerned to defend the Jewish religion in its every particular, even as propounded by an Isaiah. It is an article of the Christian creed that Judaism was a minor and imperfect dispensation, where truth was only half revealed and virtue half developed. But at least let us do the Jewish religion justi…
593 wordsSECTION 115_Tyre; Or, The Mercenary Spirit._
ISAIAH xxiii. (702 B.C.). The task, which was laid upon the religion of Israel while Isaiah was its prophet, was the task, as we have often told ourselves, of facing the world's forces, and of explaining how they were to be led captive and contributory to the religion of the true God. And we have already seen Isaiah a…
698 wordsSECTION 116_Tyre; Or, The Mercenary Spirit._
But upon trade the Phoenicians had built an empire. At home their political life enjoyed the freedom, energy and resources which are supplied by long habits of an extended commerce with other peoples. The constitution of the different Phoenician cities was not, as is sometimes supposed, republican, but monarchical; and…
755 wordsSECTION 117_Tyre; Or, The Mercenary Spirit._
"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales." But all Isaiah's future is full of gardens and busy fields, of irrigati…
663 wordsSECTION 118_Tyre; Or, The Mercenary Spirit._
It is almost an unnecessary task to apply Isaiah's meaning to the commerce of our own day. But let us not miss his example in this: that the right to criticise the habits of trade and the ability to criticise them healthily are alone won by a just appreciation of trade's world-wide glory and serviceableness. There is n…
687 wordsSECTION 119_Tyre; Or, The Mercenary Spirit._
To this spirit, which treats all things and men, high or low, as matters simply of profit, Isaiah gives a very ugly name. We call it the mercenary or venal spirit. Isaiah says it is the spirit of _the harlot_. The history of Phoenicia justified his words. To-day we remember her by nothing that is great, by nothing tha…
662 wordsSECTION 120_Tyre; Or, The Mercenary Spirit._
A nation with such a spirit was of course foredoomed to destruction. Isaiah predicts the absolute disappearance of Tyre from the attention of the world. _Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years._ _Then_, like some poor unfortunate whose day of beauty is past, she shall in vain practise her old advertisements on men. _Aft…
469 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.