now feels the force'of the objectiot to this dr.aw^ fron, the language, which has many late fea u e" (so Kuenen'sTater opinion, Duhm, and Cheyiie
CHS 1 ?q ''"Tf '^'l ^'l^'t'^^^ ^«T IsAiAV's'in CHS 1-39. -The detailed discussion of these is
t l^f """'rr' *° ?" "^'tl^le on Isaiah 1 mtfelf • biit^a few data may be given concerning the ehilf
but m'ostTbin w'l"'' "^•^^ ■°' /"•'^l'^" authorship, has tTen n n,V lV''■^^-'5 'i'"!'!''^^ that the E.x,le nas taken place ; the Messiah is not, as in Isai-ih'a own prophecies, the political ruler of Israel but the restorer of the e.xiles and the resort of all nat'ont 2Hn"ll7:^%'^'''7^'L 2pir. ; Driver, /"^w"! p rlv 1.2,'s^Yi'^'i°it doubt from a date after the
Isaiah's time, but do suit the exuTc ag-l. For detaHs see Cheyne, Ixtrod. 69 ft'.: Driver dates it a 1 ttle before B.C. 549. 15'-16- has usually b en attr^
mc^jf^n-TrSli::'" °*"*^'^ " "'=^> '<" 'he reading of
cherib. 3C,2-a7 to™he sicond ^ ^ ^' '"'"'"" °' Senna-
ISAIAH
ISAIAH
49S
buted, on {^rounds of dillerence of style from Isaiah's, and of the suitability of its historical illusions to tlie time of Jeroboam II., to a prophet of that date (so among others Uitzig, Welltiausen, W. R. Smith,Dillmann,and more doubtfully Driver. Ewald, Kuenen, Baudissin, assign to at least a prophet earlier than Isaiuh), Isaiali himsi.lf adding 16'^". In 1888 Schwally {ZATIV 20HY.) argued for the post-exilic origin of the whole section ; and it forms one of those passages which Duhm would biing down to the Hasmonajan period. Choyno thinks the most conservative theory which is pos- Bible is that a post-exilic author combined a genuine oracle on Moab, 16'^, with an anonymous pre- exilic prophecy also ou Moab, and lilled up illegible passages in an antique style. 21'""' was assigned Dy some early critics (Ewald and others) to the close of the Exile, on the ground that no siege of Babylon such as the passage describes could have interested Judah before then. Then Kleinert {SK, 1877, 174 li". ; so also George Smith the AssjTiologist) argued that the passage referred to the lirst of these sieges of Babj-lon by the Assyrians in Lsaiah's time: 710, 703, 090. To this view Cheyne and Driver at first adhered ; but they have recently returned to Ewald's view (Cheyne, Introd. 121 11'. ; Driver, LOT* 216). Skinner agrees. There can be little doubt that they are right. 24-27, one of the most remarkable sections of projihecy in the OT, cannot be Isaiah's, and must be post-exilic, for the general reasons already given (to be found in greater detail in Driver, LOT* 219 U". ; Kirkpatrick, Doct. of the Prop/iets, 47511'.; Cheyne, Introd. 145 ff.; and Skinner, U. 1-3U, 204 f.). The exact date is very uncertain. Ewald and Delitzsch both placed it in the late 6th or early 5th cent. ; so, too, Dillniann, Kirkpatrick, and Driver ' most plausibly.' Prob- ably the question will ultimately lie between this date and the campaigns of Artaxerxes Ochus, c. 350 (see below on ()3'-04), for which Cheyne has ably argued in detail. For an exposition of this very important prophecy see the Comm. and ' Ex- positor's Bible,' Is. 1-39. 34. 35 are two visions from the same hand, 34 of a general judgment on the Gentiles ('"■*) and a special doom upon Edom ('■"), 35 of the restoration of Israel from exUe. Obviously, they must be later than the beginning of the Exile, and the great crime of Edom when the latter took place. With this their language agrees. We are quite unable to fix an exact date. Dillniann (cf. Driver, /«.» 131, ZOT"' 226) suggests the end of the Exile. Arguing that the writer quotes late exilic and post-exilic writings, lives in Palestine, feels nothing of the Babylonian oppres- sion, and sees imminent on Edom the same calamity as Mai !'"• refers to, Cheyne suggests the end of the 5th cent, or even a later period.
X. Structure and Date of Chapters 40-66. — The earliest critics who assigned these chapters to the Exile believed thera to bo a unity, liut in the lirst place it became obvious that after .')2'^ the style changes as decisively and almost as often as in clis. 1-39, and in the second place critics who continued to support Isaiah's authorship allei-ed that the references are not all exilic or Baoy- lonian, but that in the later chapters there are reflections of Palestine, and some allusions to the Exile as still to come. These facts graduiillj- led to the perception of the composite character of 40-60. IJlcek and K«ald wore the lirst to dis- tini;uisli this, the latter assigning 40''" ■'j2"-54'^ and 56"-57" to the reign of Manasseh. In 1881 Cheyne (E)ic. ISrit.') adhered to the pre-oxilio origin of some of these piussagcs, but claimed also that there were others equally separable from the earlier chapters, and these he assigned partly to the eaily Exile and partly to aftor the Exile.
In 1886 Briggs {.Mess. Propfi.) sought to prove that the sections on the Sen'ant of the Loid were in a dilTerent metre and by a dill'i/rcnt hand from the rest. In 1889 Kuenen assigned 40-49. 52'-" and perhaps 52"-53'- to one author, in the end of the ICxile, the rest he considered added by this author himself, or by others, after the Return. In 1890 the present \vriter argued for the composite character of 40-00. In \S'J2 Duhm distinguished three authors : the so-called ' second Isaiah in the Exile,* a post-exilic author of the pa.ssage» on the Servant, and a 'third Isaiah' the author of the bulk of 56-00. Various articles and monographs appeared, working in the same direction. Then in 1895 Cheyne produced the most finished i)re.senta- tion of the theoi/: 40-55 from one author who combined in it a cycle of poems on the Servant of Jahweh, and the great proidiecy of the restoration ; t but 50-06, a collection of ten compositions, all of them from the age of Nehemiah, except 03'-04", which is probably to be assigned to the reign of Artaxerxes Ochus, or about 300. Meanwhile Dill- mann (1890) and Driver [both in the first and sixth (1897) editions of his ZOJ] adhered to the author- ship of the great bulk of the prophecy by one prophet, mostly before but partly also after the Return. Dillniann (p. 30311'. of his commentary) assigns 40-48 to about 545, 49-62 between 545 and the Return, and 63-66 to the very eve of the Return ; only in 60 he sees in.iertions from a later hand. Driver, upon the resemblance of 56''-57"* and SO''" to passages in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, takes these to be pre-exilic proi)hecies ineoriJorated bv the author of 49-06 (/.wwA', 187 11'.). ComiD [Einleitung in AT) a.ixii Wildeboer (Littcratur dcs AT) admit in 49-02 many signs of composition in Palestine, which, however, do not force us to deny them to the author of 40-48. In 63-60, on the other hand, they find the marks of another and a later wxiter.