It is held traditionally that Isaiah suffered martyr- dom under the wicked jManasseh, by being sawn in two under a memorable tree long said to have stood in tlie vicinity of Jerusalem (Gemara, Jebam. iv, 13 ; compare Sunhedr. f. 103 b, and the Targumites, in Assemani, Ca- talog. Bibl. Vat. i, 452 ; Trj'pho, p. 349 ; Jerome, in ,Tes. Ivii ; Origen, in Psalm, xxvii, in Matt, xxiii ; Tertullian, Patient, xiv; Augustine, Civ. Dei, xviii, 24; Chronic. Pasch. p. 155). The traditional spot of the martj'rdom is a very old mulberry-tree which stands near the Pool of Siloam, on the slopes of Ophel, below the south-east wall of Jerusalem. A similar account of his death is contained in the Ascension of the Prophet Isaiah, an apocryphal work, the Greek original of which Avas known to the earlj' Church (Epiphan. Har. xl, 2 ; Je- rome, in Jes. xliv, 4, p. 761, etc.), and of which only re- cently an Ethiopic version has been found and translated by Dr. Laurence, Oxford, 1819 (see Xitzsch, in the Stu- dien und Krit. 1830, ii, 209 ; Engelhardt, Kirchengesch. Ahhandl. 207 sq.). The same fate of Isaiah appears to be alluded to by Josephus {Ant. x, 3, 1).
II. Time of Isaiah. — The heading of this book places the prophet under the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah ; and an examination of the prophecies themselves, independently of the head- ing, leads us to the same chronological results. Chap- ter vi, in which is related the definite call of Isaiah to his prophetic office, is thus headed : " In the year in which king Uzziah died I saw the Lord," etc. The collection of prophecies is, therefore, not chronological- ly arranged, and the utterances in the preceding chajj- ters (i to vi) belong, for chronological and other reason^
ISAIAH
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ISAIAH
to the last year of the reign of Uzziah, although the ut terauces in chapters ii, iii, iv, and v have been errone- ously assigned to the reign of Jotham. As, liowever, the position of affiiirs was not materially changed under the reign of Jotham, we may say that the first chapter was uttered during that reign. The continuation of prophetic authorship, or the writing down of uttered prophecies, depended upon the commencement of new historical developments, such as took place under the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah. Several projihecies ' (namely, vii-x, 4; i, 2-31 ; xvii) belong to the reign of j Ahaz (xiv, 28-32, apparently to the occasion of his death) ; and most of the subsequent prophecies to the reign of Hezekiah. The prophetic ministry of Isaiah ' under Hezekiah is also described in a historical section contained in chapters xxxvi-xxxix. The data which are contained in this section come down to the fifteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah ; consequently we are in the possession of historical documents proving that the prophetic ministry of Isaiah was in operation during about forty-five years, commencing in the year B.C. 756, and extending to the year B.C. 711. Of this pe- riod, at least one year belongs to the reign of Uzziah, sixteen to the reign of Jotham, fourteen to the reign of Ahaz, and fourteen and upwards to the reign of Heze- kiah. It has been maintained, however, by Staudlin, Jahn, Bertholdt, Gesenius, and others, that Isaiah lived to a much later period, and that his life extended to the reign of ^lanasseh, the successor of Hezekiah. For this opinion the following reasons are adduced :
(1.) According to 2 Chron. xxxii, 32, Isaiah wrote the life of king Hezekiah. It would hence appear that he survived that king; although it must be admitted that in 2 Chron. xxxii, 32, where Isaiah's biography of Hezekiah is mentioned, the important words " first and last" are omitted ; while in xxvi, 22, we read, " Now the rest of the acts of Uzzu\h,Jirst and lust, did Isaiah, the son of Amoz, write."
(2.) We find (as above stated) a tradition current in the 'I'almud, in the fathers, and in Oriental literature, that Isaiah suffered martyrdom in the reign of IVIanas- seh by being sawn asunder. It is thought that an allu- sion to this tradition is found in the Epistle to the He- brews (xi, 37), in the expression they were sawn asunder \ (t7rpt(T0>;aaj/), which seems to harmonize with 2 Kings xxi, 16, "Moreover, Manasseh shed innocent blood very much."
(3.) The authenticity of the second portion of the
prophecies of Isaiah being admitted (see below), the nature of this portion would seem to confirm the idea that its author had lived under INIanasseh. The style of the second portion, it is asserted, is so different from that of the first that both could not weU have been composed by the same author, except under the suppo- sition that a consiilerable time intervened between the composition of the first and second portion. The con- tents of the latter— such as the complaints respecting gross idolatry, the sacrifice of children to idols, the wickedness of rulers, etc. — seem to be applicable neither to the times of the exile, into which the prcphet might have transported himself in the spirit, nor to the period of the pious Hezekiah, but are quite applicable to the reign of Manasseh. This last argument, however, is too subjective in its character to be of much weight ; the difference of style referred to may be more readily accounted for by the difference in the topics treated of, and it is a gratuitous supposition that the national sins rebuked in the later prophecies had ceased during the reign of Hezekiah. The other arguments may be ad- mitted so far as to allow a survivorship on the part of the prophet beyond the sickness of Hezekiah, and suflfi- ciently into the reign of Manasseh to have suffered martyrdom at the order of the latter, but it does not ap- pear that he uttered any predictions during the fifteen added years of Hezekiah ; at least none are found ex- tant that seem to belong to that period (except ch. xl to end, which may be assigned to the year ensuing Hez- ekiah's recovery) ; his great age and the absence of any special occasion may well account for his silence, and he may naturally be supposed to have occupied the time in writing down his former predictions. Nor will this view, which seems to meet all the requirements in the case, require to be extended a life-time ; for if Isa- iah, like Jeremiah, was called to the prophetical office in his youth, perhaps at twenty years of age, he ^vould have been but eighty years old at the accession of Ma- nasseh (B.C. 696), an age no greater than that of Ho- sea, whose prophecies extend over the same period of sixty years (Hos. i, 1).