[85] _From to-day on_, Ez. xlviii. 35; but others take it _Also to-day I am He_.
[86] Renan's theory of the "natural monotheism" of the Semites was first published in his _Histoire des Langues Semitiques_ some forty years ago. Nearly every Semitic scholar of repute found some occasion or other to refute it. But with Renan's charming genius for neglecting all facts that disturb an artistic arrangement of his subject, the overwhelming evidence against the natural monotheism of the Semite has been ignored by him, and he repeats his theory unmodified in his _Histoire du Peuple d'Israel_, i., 31, published 1888.
[87] Literally _witnesses_--_i.e._, of the idols.
[88] This word is wanting in the text, which is corrupt here. Some supply the word sharpeneth, imagining that חדד has fallen away from the beginning of the verse, through confusion with the יחד which ends the previous verse; or they bring יחד itself, changing it to חדד. But evidently ברזל חרשׁ begins the verse; _cf._ the parallel עצים רשׁח which begins ver. 13.
[89] Here, again, the text is uncertain. With some critics I have borrowed for this verse the first three words of the following verse.
[90] Perhaps _feeder on ashes_.
[91] Chs. xliii. 25; xliv. 21, 22; xlv. 17.
[92] See ch. xiv. of this volume.
ISAIAH xli. 2, 25; xliv. 28-xlv. 13; xlvi. 11; xlviii. 14, 15.
Cyrus, the Persian, is the only man outside the covenant and people of Israel, who is yet entitled the LORD'S Shepherd, and the LORD'S Messiah or Christ. He is, besides, the only great personality, of whom both the Bible and Greek literature treat at length and with sympathy. Did we know nothing more of him than this, the heathen who received the most sacred titles of Revelation, the one man in history who was the cynosure of both Greece and Judah, could not fail to be of the greatest interest to us. But apart from the way, in which he impressed the Greek imagination and was interpreted by the Hebrew conscience, we have an amount of historical evidence about Cyrus, which, if it dissipates the beautiful legends told of his origin and his end, confirms most of what is written of his character by Herodotus and Xenophon, and all of what is described as his career by the prophet whom we are studying. Whether of his own virtue, or as being the leader of a new race of men at the fortunate moment of their call, Cyrus lifted himself, from the lowest of royal stations, to a conquest and an empire achieved by only two or three others in the history of the world. Originally but the prince of Anshan, or Anzan,[93]--a territory of uncertain size at the head of the Persian Gulf,--he brought under his sway, by policy or war, the large and vigorous nations of the Medes and Persians; he overthrew the Lydian kingdom, and subjugated Asia Minor; he so impressed the beginnings of Greek life, that, with all their own great men, the Greeks never ceased to regard this Persian as the ideal king; he captured Babylon, the throne of the ancient East, and thus effected the transfer of empire from the Semitic to the Aryan stock. He also satisfied the peoples, whom he had beaten, with his rule, and organised his realms with a thoroughness unequalled over so vast an extent till the rise of the Roman Empire.
We have scarcely any contemporary or nearly contemporary evidence about his personality. But his achievements testify to extraordinary genius, and his character was the admiration of all antiquity. To Greek literature Cyrus was the Prince pre-eminent,--set forth as the model for education in childhood, self-restraint in youth, just and powerful government in manhood. Most of what we read of him in Xenophon's _Cyropædia_ is, of course, romance; but the very fact, that, like our own King Arthur, Cyrus was used as a mirror to flash great ideals down the ages, proves that there was with him native brilliance and width of surface as well as fortunate eminence of position. He owed much to the virtue of his race. Rotten as the later Persians have become, the nation in those days impressed its enemies with its truthfulness, purity and vigour. But the man, who not only led such a nation, and was their darling, but combined under his sceptre, in equal discipline and contentment, so many other and diverse peoples, so many powerful and ambitious rulers, cannot have been merely the best specimen of his own nation's virtue, but must have added to this, at least much of the original qualities--humanity, breadth of mind, sweetness, patience and genius for managing men--which his sympathetic biographer imputes to him in so heroic a degree. It is evident that the _Cyropædia_ is ignorant of many facts about Cyrus, and must have taken conscious liberties with many more, but nobody--who, on the one hand, is aware of what Cyrus effected upon the world, and who, on the other, can appreciate that it was possible for a foreigner (who, nevertheless, had travelled through most of the scenes of Cyrus' career) to form this rich conception of him more than a century after his death--can doubt that the Persian's character (due allowance being made for hero-worship) must have been in the main as Xenophon describes it.