ISAIAH xlvi.
Chapter xlvi. is a definite prophecy, complete in itself. It repeats many of the truths which we have found in previous chapters, and we have already seen what it says about Cyrus. But it also strikes out a new truth, very relevant then, when men made idols and worshipped the works of their hands, and relevant still, when so many, with equal stupidity, are more concerned about keeping up the forms of their religion than allowing God to sustain themselves.
The great contrast, which previous chapters have been elaborating, is the contrast between the idols and the living God. On the one side we have had pictures of the busy idol-factories, cast into agitation by the advent of Cyrus, turning out with much toil and noise their tawdry, unstable images. Foolish men, instead of letting God undertake for them, go to and try what their own hands and hammers can effect. Over against them, and their cunning and toil, the prophet sees the God of Israel rise alone, taking all responsibility of salvation to Himself--_I, I am He: look unto Me, all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved_. This contrast comes to a head in ch. xlvi.
It is still the eve of the capture of Babylon; but the prophet pictures to himself what will happen on the morrow of the capture. He sees the conqueror following the old fashion of triumph--rifling the temples of his enemies and carrying away the defeated and discredited gods as trophies to his own. The haughty idols are torn from their pedestals and brought head foremost through the temple doors. _Bel crouches_--as men have crouched to Bel; _Nebo cowers_--a stronger verb than _crouches_, but assonant to it, like _cower_ to _crouch_.[101] _Their idols have fallen to the beast and to the cattle._ _Beast_, "that is, tamed beast, perhaps elephants in contrast to _cattle_, or domestic animals."[102] The _things with which ye burdened yourselves_, carrying them shoulder high in religious processions, _are things laden_, mere baggage-bales, _a burden for a hack_, or _jade_. The nouns are mostly feminine--the Hebrew neuter--in order to heighten the dead-weight impression of the idols. So many baggage-bales for beasts' backs--such are your gods, O Babylonians! _They cower, they crouch together_ (fall limp is the idea, like corpses); _neither are they able to recover the burden_, and _themselves_!--literally _their soul_, any real soul of deity that ever was in them--_into captivity are they gone_.
This never happened. Cyrus entered Babylon not in spite of the native gods, but under their patronage, and was careful to do homage to them. Nabunahid, the king of Babylon, whom he supplanted, had vexed the priests of Bel or Merodach; and these priests had been among the many conspirators in favour of the Persian. So far, then, from banishing the idols, upon his entry into the city, Cyrus had himself proclaimed as "the servant of Merodach," restored to their own cities the idols that Nabunahid had brought to Babylon, and prayed, "In the goodness of their hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should grant me length of days. May they bless my projects with prosperity, and may they say to Merodach, my lord, that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and Kambyses, his son (deserve thy favour)."[103]
Are we, then, because the idols were not taken into captivity, as our prophet pictures, to begin to believe in him less? We shall be guilty of that error, only when we cease to disallow to a prophet of God what we do allow to any other writer, and praise him when he employs it to bring home a moral truth--the use of his imagination. What if these idols never were packed off by Cyrus, as our prophet here paints for us? It still remains true that, standing where they did, or carried away, as they may have been later on, by conquerors, who were monotheists indeed, they were still mere ballast, so much dead-weight for weary beasts.