The charge of unspirituality which is brought against the emphasis on Zion's security as a for- tress might have had some justice in it if Isaiah had anywhere attempted to pro vide for that security by merely political means. But, on the contrary, his conviction of God's purpose to preserve Jeru- salem is so profoundly spiritual that it leads him to condemn Israel's own restless attempts to save their State ; and he does so with as much fierceness as he has condemned their immorality. They wUl not trust their God any more than they will obey His law ; but, on the contrary, distrustful of His purpose and His power, they seek to eil'ect Zion's safety by intrigues and alliances with the heathen. These, says Isaiah, will only draw them into the confusion of the world's politics, from which trust in J" would assuredly keep them free. So, first, we find him seeking to restrain Ahaz from appeal- ing for help to Assyria when Judah is threatened by Pekah of N. Israel and Rezin of Damascus (7) : let them do their worst, they cannot harm Judah ; but if Ahaz persists in calling on Assyria, J" wUl punish his unbelief by summoning the heathen, either Egypt or Assyria (v.'*), to overrun his land. Yet in spite of this, when Ahaz has thrown himself upon Assyria, and Judah settled down in quiet- ness for thirty years as an Assyrian vassal, thus escaping the fate which destroyed N. Israel, Isaiah accepts the fact; and when, in 704, on the accession of Sennacherib, the nations of Ptilestine throw off their allegiance to the northern empire, he seeks to prevent Judah from joining them, and uses all his powers of counsel, scorn, and threatening to circumvent the political party at Jerusalem that intrigues for an alliance with Egypt (28-31). This apparent change of Isaiah's attitude to Assyria was not due to political opportunism, or only to the political experience of these thirty years, that Judah was as safe in allegiance to Assyria as in 734 he had believed she would be by abstaining from all intercourse with that heathen empire, but to the unchanging conviction that whatever Judah's political relations might be
in the providence of God, He was able to preserve her by Himself, and that her rulers' forgettulnesa of tliis, and their anxiety to take measures of their own, would only, because of the '.inbelief which was their motive, end in disgrace and ruin. Besides, the intrigue with Egypt was a breach of faith with Assyria, an unhallowed and immoral tiling, and this was a second proof to Isaiah that it could not succeed. He found a third in the blindness of the Jewish statesmen to the weakness of Egypt, which promised much, but never did, or could do, aught to help those who trusted in her. This gives him occasion to say that, clever i.s the
Soliticians deem themselves to be, J" is more wise, '"s measures for the security of Jerusalem are not mere arbitrary or supernatural exhihitions of power against iier foes, but rational counsel to her statesmen, advice to keep clear of Egypt and to continue faithful to the Assyrian alliance.
The Jewish statesmen did jot listen to Isaiah ; and when Sennacherib invaded Palefine in 701, he found Hczekiah, like all his neighbour princes, in a state of revolt. Even then, however, Isaiah did not abate his confidence in the deliverance of Jerusalem. Once, indeed, his people seemed so corrupt, so abandoned to distrust of J", and so incapable of the repentance to which he called them, that he announced the impossibility of their forgiveness, and condemned them to death (22'"'''). This, however, was momentary. Something hap- pened to change their disposition. What it was exactly we cannot say. The most probable sup- position is that Hezekiah submitted to Senna- cherib, and bought the security of his city by a large tribute; but tliat having accepted this the Assyrian returned with heavier and more insolent demands (36. 37). Hezekiah and his statesmen were in despair (37M, and the population, it would appear, ready to yield (36''). Isaiah alone stood firm. Judah was sulUciently punished, the Assyrian in his arrogance made it clear that he expected the city to fall, because its God was no better than the gods of the States he had already overthro^vn. Isaiah affirmed such arrogance must be punished by J", who would deliver His now penitent people. And the deliverance came. The hosts of Senna- cherib appear to have been visited by the plague during their approach to the Egyptian border, — always in antiquity a region liable to such a visitation, — and the Assj'rian corps that invested Jerusalem was suddenly withdrawn (cf. Isaiah 1-39 in ' Expositor's Bible' ; Driver's Isaiah in ' Men of the Bible' ; McCurdy, EPM, 1896, §§ 675-710). But however this may have been, Jerusalem was relieved, and Isaiah's predictions of her siege and ultimate deliverance literally fulfilled, and ful- filled, too, mainly by his own unbroken confidence and energy. It was, indeed, a victory of that faith by which the world is overcome. The people of J", though sorely punished, were saved, the con- tinuity of Israef s history preserved, and all the subsequent development of their religion made possible.
The above outline of Isaiah's doctrine and statesmanship makes it clear that while his long experience of the world's history, during one of its most critical periods, expanded and illustrated hia belief in God, it was the latter which was the origin and root of aU his convictions and his etl'urts on behalf of Israel. This is what Isaiah himself tells us (6). His ministry started from a vision of J" ; and as his record of this vision is not placed at the beginning of his book, but after the hrst collection of his prophecies, and as the im- pressions he received from it appear (especially from vv."- 1") to be stated as if articulated and de- veloped by his subsequent experience, we may see in tne chapter not only the origins, but a full