PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 2 (of 2)
Smith, George Adam · 147,013 words · 201 reading sections
Fourth Series, 1890-91.
EDITED BY THE REV. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D., _Editor of "The Expositor," etc._ THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. VOL. II. BY THE REV. GEORGE ADAM SMITH, M.A., =London:= HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. _Crown 8vo, cloth, price_ 7s. 6d. _each vol._ Colossians. By A. MACLAREN, D.D. St. Mark. By Very Rev…
261 wordsSECTION 2_The Restoration._
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH BY THE REV. GEORGE ADAM SMITH, M.A., _Minister of Queen's Cross Church, Aberdeen_ _IN TWO VOLUMES._ VOL. II.--ISAIAH XL.-LXVI. _WITH A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL FROM ISAIAH TO THE EXILE._ =LONDON:= HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. _Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., …
298 wordsSECTION 3Introduction.
721. Fall of Samaria. Captivity of Northern Israel. 701. Deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib. 696?-641. Reign of Manasseh. Supposed time of Isaiah's death. 630. Josiah's Reformation begun. 629 or 628. Jeremiah called to be a prophet. 621. The Book of Deuteronomy discovered. 607. Fall of Nineveh and Assyria.…
759 wordsSECTION 4Introduction.
Accordingly, to expound Isaiah xl.-lxvi. is really to write the religious history of Israel. A prophet whose vision includes both Abraham and Christ, whose subject is the whole meaning and promise of Israel, cannot be adequately interpreted within the limits of his own text or of his own time. Excursions are necessary …
766 wordsSECTION 5Introduction.
This twofold division of the prophet's problem will not, it is true, strike his prophecy into separate and distinct groups of chapters. He who attempts such a division simply does not understand "Second Isaiah." But it will make clear to us the different currents of the sacred argument, which flow sometimes through and…
909 wordsSECTION 6_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
In conclusion, I have to express my thanks for the very great assistance which I have derived in the composition of both volumes from my friend the Rev. Charles Anderson Scott, B.A., who has sought out facts, read nearly all the proofs and helped to prepare the Index. The problem of the date of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. is thi…
775 wordsSECTION 7_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
Let us understand, therefore, at this very outset, that in discussing the question of the authorship of "Second Isaiah," we are not discussing a question, upon which the text itself makes any statement, or into which the credibility of the text enters. No claim is made by the Book of Isaiah itself for the Isaian author…
718 wordsSECTION 8_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
Now all this is not predicted, as if from the standpoint of a previous century. It is nowhere said--as we should expect it to be said, if the prophecy had been uttered by Isaiah--that Assyria, the dominant world-power of Isaiah's day, was to disappear and Babylon to take her place; that then the Babylonians should lead…
844 wordsSECTION 9_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
But besides the pedants in Israel, there is apparent through these prophecies another body of men, against whom also Jehovah claims the actual Cyrus for His own. They are the priests and worshippers of the heathen idols. It is well known that the advent of Cyrus cast the Gentile religions of the time and their counsell…
680 wordsSECTION 10_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
If what has been unfolded in the preceding paragraphs is recognised as the statement of the chapters themselves, it will be felt that further evidence of an exilic date is scarcely needed. And those, who are acquainted with the controversy upon the evidence furnished by the style and language of the prophecies, will ad…
855 wordsSECTION 11_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
3. It is the same with the thought and doctrine of our prophecy. In this there is nothing to make the Isaian authorship probable, or an exilic date impossible. But, on the contrary, whether we regard the needs of the people or the analogies of the development of their religion, we find that, while everything suits the …
672 wordsSECTION 12_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
A number of short prophecies now follow, till the end of ch. lix. is reached. These, as we shall see, make it extremely difficult to believe in the original unity of "Second Isaiah." Some of them, it is true, lie in evident circumstance of exile; but others are undoubtedly of earlier date, reflecting the scenery of Pal…
650 wordsSECTION 13_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
* * * * * This rapid survey has made two things sufficiently clear. _First_, that while the bulk of chs. xl.-lxvi. was composed in Babylonia during the Exile of the Jews, there are considerable portions which date from before the Exile, and betray a Palestinian origin; and one or two smaller pieces that seem--rather l…
792 wordsSECTION 14_The Date Of Isaiah Xl.-Lxvi._
But the remarkable fact is, that anciently tradition itself appears to have agreed with the results of modern scholarship. The original place of the Book of Isaiah in the Jewish canon seems to have been after both Jeremiah and Ezekiel,[13] a fact which goes to prove that it did not reach completion till a later date th…
581 wordsSECTION 15Footnotes:
Readers may wish to have a reference to other passages of this volume, in which the questions of the date, authorship and structure of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. are discussed. See pp. 65-68, 112, 146 f., 212, 223; Introduction to Book III.; opening paragraphs of ch. xviii. and of ch. xix., etc. [1] Chs. i., ii., etc. The o…
385 wordsSECTION 16701-587 B.C.
At first sight, the circumstances of Judah in the last ten years of the seventh century present a strong resemblance to her fortunes in the last ten years of the eighth. The empire of the world, to which she belongs, is again divided between Egypt and a Mesopotamian power. Syria is again the field of their doubtful bat…
1,060 wordsSECTION 17701-587 B.C.
With these principles to guide us, let us now, for a little, thread our way through the crowded details of the decline and fall of the Jewish state. Isaiah's own age had foreboded the necessity of exile for Judah. There was the great precedent of Samaria, and Judah's sin was not less than her sister's. When the author…
779 wordsSECTION 18701-587 B.C.
It was from the North that Jeremiah summoned the vengeance of God upon Judah. In his earlier threats he might have meant the Scythians; but by 605, when Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar of Babylon's son, the rising general of the age, defeated Pharaoh at Carchemish, all men accepted Jeremiah's nomination for this successor…
987 wordsSECTION 19_What Israel Took Into Exile._
[16] The figure actually mentioned in 2 Kings xxiv. 14, but, as Stade points out (_Geschichte_, p. 680), vv. 14, 15 interrupt the narrative, and may have been intruded here from the account of the later captivity. Before we follow the captives along the roads that lead to exile, we may take account of the spiritual go…
1,002 wordsSECTION 20_What Israel Took Into Exile._
This short review--in which, for the sake of getting a complete view of our subject, we have anticipated a little--has shown that Israel had enough within themselves, in the teaching of their prophets and in the lessons of their own history, to account for that consummate expression of Jehovah's Godhead, which is conta…
930 wordsSECTION 21_What Israel Took Into Exile._
In our prophecy, which is absorbed with the deliverance of the nation as a whole, there was, of course, no occasion to develop Jeremiah's remarkable suggestions about each individual soul of man. In fact, these suggestions were germs, which remained uncultivated in Israel till Christ's time. Jeremiah himself uttered th…
1,046 wordsSECTION 22_What Israel Took Into Exile._
5. But with their temple in ruins, and all the world before them for the service of God, the Jews go forth to exile upon the distinct PROMISE OF RETURN. The material form of their religion is suspended, not abolished. Let them feel religion in purely spiritual aspects, unassisted by sanctuary or ritual; let them look u…
577 wordsSECTION 23From 589 Till About 550 B.C.
[17] See vol. i., p. 100 f. [18] Jer. xlv. [19] This is especially clear from ch. xxxi. [20] Having read through the Book of Jeremiah once again since I wrote the above paragraph, I am more than ever impressed with the influence of his life upon Isa. xl.-lxvi. [21] Psalm cii. 14. [22] Isa. xlix. 16. It is remarka…
887 wordsSECTION 24I.
By the route sketched above, it is at least seven hundred miles from Jerusalem to Babylon--a distance which, when we take into account that many of the captives walked in fetters, cannot have occupied them less than three months. We may form some conception of the aspect of the caravans from the transportations of capt…
818 wordsSECTION 25I.
It was, in short, the very centre of the world--the most populous and busy region of His earth--to which God sent His people for their exile. The monarch, who transplanted them, was the genius of Babylonia incarnate. The chief soldier of his generation, Nebuchadrezzar will live in history as one of the greatest builder…
798 wordsSECTION 26Ii.
The social condition of the Jews in Exile is somewhat obscure, and yet, both in connection with the date and with the exposition of some portions of "Second Isaiah," it is an element of the greatest importance, of which we ought to have as definite an idea as possible. What are the facts? By far the most significant i…
706 wordsSECTION 27Ii.
In short, the state of the Jews in Babylonia resembled what seems to have been their fortune wherever they have settled in a foreign land. Part of them despised and abused, forced to labour or overtaxed; part left alone to cultivate literature or to gather wealth. Some treated with unusual rigour--and perhaps a few of …
797 wordsSECTION 28Iii.
3. The third special feature of the people in exile is their application to commerce. At home the Jews had not been a commercial people.[33] But the opportunities of their Babylonian residence seem to have started them upon those habits, for which, through their longer exile in our era, the name of Jew has become a syn…
751 wordsSECTION 29Iii.
But in this awful experience, there is still another strain, as painful as the rest, but pure and very eloquent of hope--the sense of innocent suffering. We cannot tell the sources, from which this considerable feeling may have gathered during the Exile, any more than we can trace from how many of the upper folds of a …
670 wordsSECTION 30Iii.
And, _thirdly_, they are a People with a Great Opportunity. History is at last beginning to set towards the vindication of their hope: Cyrus, the master of the age, is moving rapidly, irresistibly, down upon their tyrants. But, _fourthly_, in face of all their hope and opportunity, they are a People Disorganised, Dist…
367 wordsSECTION 31_The Prologue: The Four Herald Voices._
[23] If we would construct for ourselves some more definite idea of that long march from Judah to Babylon, we might assist our imagination by the details of the only other instance on so great a scale of "exile by administrative process"--the transportation to Siberia which the Russian Government effects (it is said, o…
763 wordsSECTION 32_The Prologue: The Four Herald Voices._
Nevertheless the prophecy is not anonymous. By these impersonal voices a personal revelation is made. The prophets may be nameless, but the Deity who speaks through them speaks as already known and acknowledged: _My people, saith your God._ This is a point, which, though it takes for its expression no more than these …
720 wordsSECTION 33_The Prologue: The Four Herald Voices._
Năhămu, năhămu ammi: _Comfort ye, comfort ye my people_: Dabbĕru `al-lev Yerushālaîm. _Speak upon the heart of Jerusalem._[38] But then the trumpet-tone breaks forth, _Call unto her_; and on that high key the music stays, sweeping with the second voice across hill and dale like a company of swift horsemen, stooping…
892 wordsSECTION 34_The Prologue: The Four Herald Voices._
Thus God adventures His Word forth by nameless and unaccredited men upon no other authority than the Grace, with which it is fraught for the heart of His people. The illustration, which this affords of the method and evidence of Divine revelation, is obvious. Let us, with all the strength of which we are capable, empha…
783 wordsSECTION 35_The Prologue: The Four Herald Voices._
On which word, how can our hearts help rising from the comfort of grace to the sense of mastery over this world, to the assurance of heaven itself? History must come round to the side of faith--as it has come round not in the case of Jewish exiles only, but wheresoever such a faith as theirs has been repeated. History …
655 wordsSECTION 36_The Prologue: The Four Herald Voices._
_Withers grass, fades flower,_ _But the word of our God endureth for ever._ Everything human may perish; the day may be past of the great prophets, of the priests--of the King in his beauty, who was vicegerent of God. But the people have God's word; when all their leaders have fallen, and every visible authority for …
814 wordsSECTION 37_The Prologue: The Four Herald Voices._
We are now able to appreciate the dramatic unity of this Prologue. How perfectly it gathers into its four Voices the whole course of Israel's redemption: the first assurance of Grace whispered to the heart, co-operation with Providence, confidence in God's bare Word, the full Return and the Restoration of the City. Bu…
275 wordsSECTION 38_God: A Sacrament._
[36] See p. 47. [37] From the sequence of the voices, it would seem that we had in ch. xl. not a mere collection of anonymous prophecies arranged by an editor, but one complete prophecy by the author of most of Isa. xl.-lxvi., set in the dramatic form which obtains through the other chapters. [38] Every one who appre…
768 wordsSECTION 39_God: A Sacrament._
* * * * * The fact is familiar to all, that the Old Testament nowhere feels the necessity of proving the existence of God. That would have been a proof unintelligible to those to whom its prophets addressed themselves. In the time when the Old Testament came to him, man as little doubted the existence of God as he dou…
840 wordsSECTION 40_God: A Sacrament._
But none of these tendencies in Israel went so far as to deny that there was a God, or even to doubt His existence. This, as we have said, was nowhere yet the temptation of mankind. When the Jew lapsed from that true faith, which we have seen his nation carry into exile, he fell into one of the two tempers just describ…
806 wordsSECTION 41_God: A Sacrament._
When he has thus soared enough, as on an archangel's wings, he swoops with one rapid question down from the height of his imagination upon the images. _To whom then will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye range by Him?_ _The image! A smith cast it, and a smelter plates it with gold, and smelts silver chains. He …
784 wordsSECTION 42_God: A Sacrament._
2. TO THE DESPAIRERS OF THE LORD. From history we pass back to nature in ver. 26, which forms a transition, the language growing steadier from the impetuosity of the address to the idolaters to the serene music of the second part. Enough rebuke has the prophet made. As he now lifts his people's vision to the stars, it …
652 wordsSECTION 43_God: A Sacrament._
This chapter began with the assurance to the heart of Israel of their God's will to redeem and restore them. It closes with bidding the people take hope in God. Let us again emphasize--for we cannot do so too often, if we are to keep ourselves from certain errors of to-day on the subject of Revelation--the nature of th…
838 wordsSECTION 44_God: A Sacrament._
And, for ourselves, let us remember that to this day true religion is as independent of facts as it was with the prophet. True religion is a conviction of the character of God, and a resting upon that alone for salvation. We need nothing more to begin with; and everything else, in our experience and fortune, helps us o…
740 wordsSECTION 45Footnotes:
And so must it ever be. First the ideal, and then the rush at it with passionate eyes, and then the daily trudge onward, when its splendour has faded from the view, but is all the more closely wrapped round the heart. For glorious as it is to rise to some great consummation on wings of dream and song, glorious as it is…
408 wordsSECTION 46_God: An Argument From History._
ISAIAH xli. Having revealed Himself to His own people in ch. xl., Jehovah now turns in ch. xli. to the heathen, but, naturally, with a very different kind of address. Displaying His power to His people in certain sacraments, both of nature and history, He had urged them to _wait upon Him_ alone for the salvation, of w…
772 wordsSECTION 47_God: An Argument From History._
This extended horizon makes clear to us what our prophet has in his view, when in this forty-first chapter he summons _Isles_ to the bar of Jehovah: _Be silent before me, O Isles, and let Peoples renew their strength_,--a vision and appeal which frequently recur in our prophecy. _Listen, O Isles, and hearken, O Peoples…
757 wordsSECTION 48_God: An Argument From History._
Cyrus the Great is one of those mortals whom the muse of history, as if despairing to do justice to him by herself, has called in her sisters to aid her in describing to posterity. Early legend and later and more elaborate romance; the schoolmaster, the historian, the tragedian and the prophet, all vie in presenting to…
1,117 wordsSECTION 49_God: An Argument From History._
This glimpse into the preparations of Crœsus, whose embassies compassed the whole civilised world, and whose wealth got him all that politics or religion could, enables us to realise the political and religious excitement into which Cyrus' advent threw that generation. The oracles in doubt and ambiguous; the priests, t…
726 wordsSECTION 50_God: An Argument From History._
We have seen what these were, which this vast heathen world--heathen but human, convinced as we are that at the back of the world's life there is a secret, a counsel and a governor, and anxious as we are to find them--had to resort to. Timid waiters upon time, whom not even the lavish wealth of a Crœsus could tempt fro…
950 wordsSECTION 51_God: An Argument From History._
We scarcely require to remind ourselves, that this great challenge and plea are not mere rhetoric or idle boasting. Every word in them we have seen to be true to fact. The heathen religions were, as they are here represented, helpless before Cyrus, and dumb about the issue of the great movements which the Persian had s…
702 wordsSECTION 52_God: An Argument From History._
Now, it is well for us--were it only for the great historic interest of the thing, though it will also further our argument--to take record here that, although this conception of the unity of life under One Purpose and Will was still utterly foreign, and perhaps even unintelligible, to the heathen world, which the prop…
1,489 wordsSECTION 53Note Upon Jehovah'S Claim To Cyrus.
This lengthened exposition will not have been in vain, if it has made clear to us, that Hebrew monotheism owed its unique quality to the emphasis, which the prophets laid upon the two truths of the Power and the Character of God. There was One Supreme Being, infinite in might, and with one purpose running down the ages…
763 wordsSECTION 54Footnotes:
[49] Media simply means "the country." It is supposed, that of the six Median tribes only one was Aryan, holding the rest, which were Turanian, under its influence. [50] There were, besides, a few small independent powers in Asia Minor, such as Cilicia, whose prince also intervened at the Battle of the Eclipse; and th…
932 wordsSECTION 55_The Passion Of God._
[67] Ueberweg, _History of Philosophy_, English translation, i., 51. [68] Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, _Stromata_, Bk. V., ch. iv., and by Eusebius, _Præp. Evang._ xiii., 13. [69] Ibid. [70] Quoted by Ueberweg, as above. [71] Pfleiderer, _Philosophy of Religion: Contents of the Religious Consciousness_, ch. i. …
674 wordsSECTION 56_The Passion Of God._
The terms of the last four lines are military. Most of them will be found in the historical books, in descriptions of the onset of Israel's battles with the heathen. But it is no human warrior to whom they are here applied. They who sing have forgotten the Servant. Their hearts are warm only with this, that Jehovah Him…
723 wordsSECTION 57_The Passion Of God._
When God presents Himself in the Old Testament as His people's Saviour, it is not always as Isaiah mostly saw Him, in awful power and majesty--a _King high and lifted up_, or _as coming from far, burning and thick-rising smoke, and overflowing streams; causing the peal of His voice to be heard, and the lighting down of…
743 wordsSECTION 58_The Passion Of God._
It is no answer, which is given by many in our day, that after all the prophets were but frail men, unable to stay upon the high flight to which they sometimes soared, and obliged to sacrifice their logic to the fondness of their hearts and the general habit of man to make his god after his own image. No easy sneer lik…
893 wordsSECTION 59_The Passion Of God._
* * * * * We have said enough to prove our case, that the true Old Testament prophecy of the nature and work of Jesus Christ is found not so much in the long promise of the exalted human ruler, for whom Israel's eyes looked, as in the assurance of God's own descent to battle with His people's foes and to bear their si…
278 wordsSECTION 60_Four Points Of A True Religion._
[78] See Introduction. [79] So the grammar of the original. [80] Vol. i., pp. 144, 334. [81] Isa. xxxi. [82] Hosea xi. 9. [83] Ch. lv. 8, 9. [84] _Ibid._ ver. 11. ISAIAH xliii.-xlviii. We have now surveyed the governing truths of Isa. xl.-xlviii.: the One God, omnipotent and righteous; the One People, His serva…
851 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.