In such a scheme, it is plain, there U no need
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496
ISAIAH
ISAIAH
for that almost exclusive insistence upon the moral attributes of J", His demands for justice and purity, which we found in Isaiah's own teaching ; but the need is ratlier for emjjhasis upon God's in- tention to fulfil His word, and upon His power to bend to this end tlie forces of history. The change is best illustrated in the altered meaning which chs. 40-55 give to the term 'righteousness.' In the authentic prophecies of Isaiah, delivered to an unjust and inmioral generation, righteousness almost exclusivelj' means the purity and justice wliich God demands from His |)eople. But in chs. 40-55, in face of a "generation wlio are not charged vvitli the immoralities of Isaiah's, but who are in doubt or despair about their God's jiower and will to fuHil Uis word and redeem them, righteous- ness siOTilies mainly Uis consistency and faithful- ness. In 41'" the aajective zadiUk is applied to one whose prediction turns out to be correct.* In 41' the noun ^dek appears to be the virtue of carrying out what one has promised ; it is associated with J"'s call to Cyrus, who has been called not in vain, but in good faith, and for a purpose whicli will certainly succeed. So in 41'°, taken with its con- text, J"'8 zedek is His trueness, the harmony of Hia present purpose with His ancient promise to re- deem Israel — His good faith to the people He has called ; but it includes also His power to fulfil His word : ' the right hand of my righteousness ' is the pli'"^e He uses. The whole chapter and other parallel passages (esiiecially 43^- '"• ""• 44'- * 45'""^) iiiijily that zedek or zSddkCth (the forms are used iniiiHerentlj') is j'"8 fidelity to His calling of Israel • — the quality by which He can neither forsake His OHTi, nor for want of power fail in His promise to justify them to the world ; and so, besides bein^ sj'nonymous with strength, righteousness is applied to its own results, and becomes parallel to salva- tion— El zaddik, the Righteous God, is equivalent to MOshia, the Saviour (45^').
The chief claim, therefore, which 40 ff. make for the God of Israel is His power to direct the history of tlie world in conformity to a long predicted and faithfully followed purpose. This claim starts from the proof that J" has long before predicted events now happening or about to happen, with Cyrus as their centre. But this is much more than a proof of isolated predictions, though these imply omniscience. It is a declaration of tne unity of history sweeping to the high ends which have been already revealed to Israel — an exposition, in short, of the Omnipotence, Consistence, and Faith- fulness of the Proi'idence of the one true God. But with almost equal force the chapters insist upon the Creative Power of the same sovereign Deity. Alone, without counsellor or helper. He created and sustains the world, calls all things into being, and bends them to His will.t He has made and measured earth and ocean, mountains and hUls (401211.) j\^ii tijg magnitudes and processes of nature are His : heaven, the stars, the clouds, the sea, earth, drought and floods, light and darkness, peace and calamity. Before His omnipotence, His o^vn works and men and their works are as nothing. He is infinitely above them all, sublime and incom- parable— in short, the Holy One. For holiness in these chapters is attributed to God always either in connexion with His creative power and the incomparableness to wliich it exalts Him (40'-* 4r-'" 43'° 45''), or more especially in connexion with the manifestation of that incomparable power for the redemption and glorification of His people (41'* 433. 14 474 4817 497 545 55S)_ He U Jehovah, and there is none else ; God, and there is none beside Him (45"- etc.).
• As the Arabic zadik means one who speaks tnily. t To describe this creative power the author of clia. 40 ff. is the lint to use the term Ni3=cre«te.
the chief gods of the connuerin" empires (40'" are all equally absurd. Ihe ridicule whicli tl
From this absolute monotheism everything else follows in chs. 4011'. What invarialdy kindles the reason and style of the writer is the tliought of God. The breadth and force of imagination, tlie assurance of hope, the daring treatment d the liistory of the world as a whole, may be traced to the writer's sense of God's sovereignty, and are the signs of how absolutely he was possessed by this as his principal and governing truth. But that he held it not by faith alone or a partial e.v- perience, but with the whole force of his reason, ia shown, not only in the exposition of J'".s articulate, clear, reasonable and consistent revelation of Him- self and His j)urpo.so (IS'""-), but also in the power- ful scorn with wliich the author's mind sweeps down upon idolatry. If it is impossible to liken God to anything (41"), then the low thoughts which Israel has of J", the images in which the heathen figure the Godhead (41' 44'"'-). their en- chantments and divinations (47'- ""•), and even