The night, however, grew too awful for scorn. There had been no part of the land so given to the idolatrous practices, which the prophet scathed, as _the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, by the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles_. But all the horrors of captivity had now fallen upon it, and it had received at the Lord's hand double for all its sins. The night had been torn enough by lightning; was there no dawn? The darkness of these provinces fills the prophet's silenced thoughts. He sees a people _hardly bestead and hungry, fretting themselves, cursing their king_, who had betrayed them, _and their God_, who had abandoned them, _turning their faces upwards_ to heaven and _downwards_ to the sacred soil from which they were being dragged, _but, behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and into thick darkness they are driven away_. It is a murky picture, yet through the smoke of it we are able to discern a weird procession of Israelites departing into captivity. We date it, therefore, about 732 B.C., the night of Israel's first great captivity. The shock and the pity of this rouse the prophet's great heart. He cannot continue to say that there is no morning for those benighted provinces. He will venture a great hope for their people.
Over how many months the crowded verses, viii. 21-ix. 7, must be spread, it is useless now to inquire--whether the revulsion they mark arose all at once in the prophet's mind, or hope grew gradually brighter as the smoke of war died away on Israel's northern frontier during 731 B.C. It is enough that we can mark the change. The prophet's tones pass from sarcasm to pity (viii. 20, 21); from pity to hope (viii. 22-ix. 1); from hope to triumph in the vision of salvation actually achieved (ix. 2). _The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, on them hath the light shined._ For a mutilated, we see a multiplied, nation; for the fret of hunger and the curses of defeat, we hear the joy of harvest and of spoil after victory. _For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, Thou hast broken as in the day of Midian._ War has rolled away for ever over that northern horizon, and all the relics of war in the land are swept together into the fire. _For all the armour of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, and for fuel of fire._ In the midday splendour of this peace, which, after the fashion of Hebrew prophecy, is described as already realized, Isaiah hails the Author of it all in that gracious and marvellous Child whose birth he had already intimated, Heir to the throne of David, but entitled by a fourfold name, too generous, perhaps, for a mere mortal, _Wonderful-Counsellor_, _Hero-God_, _Father-Everlasting_, _Prince-of-peace_, who shall redeem the realms of his great forerunner and maintain _Israel with justice and righteousness from henceforth, even for ever_.
When, finally, the prophet inquires what has led his thoughts through this rapid change from satisfaction (chap. viii. 16) with the salvation of a small _remnant_ of believers in the word of God--a little kernel of patience in the midst of a godless and abandoned people--to the daring vision of a whole nation redeemed and established in peace under a Godlike King, he says: _The zeal of the Lord of hosts hath performed this._
_The zeal_, translates our English version, but no one English word will give it. It is that mixture of hot honour and affection to which "jealousy" in its good sense comes near. It is that overflow of the love that cannot keep still, which, when men think God has surely done all He will or can do for an ungrateful race, visits them in their distress, and carries them forward into unconceived dispensations of grace and glory. It is the Spirit of God, which yearns after the lost, speaks to the self-despairing of hope, and surprises rebel and prophet alike with new revelations of love. We have our systems representing God's work up to the limits of our experience, and we settle upon them; but the Almighty is ever greater than His promise or than His revelation of Himself.