The two narratives, in which Isaiah's career culminates--that of the Deliverance of Jerusalem (xxxvi.; xxxvii.) and that of the Recovery of Hezekiah (xxxviii.; xxxix.)--cannot fail, coming together as they do, to suggest to thoughtful readers a striking contrast between Isaiah's treatment of the community and his treatment of the individual, between his treatment of the Church and his treatment of single members. For in the first of these narratives we are told how an illimitable future, elsewhere so gloriously described by the prophet, was secured for the Church upon earth; but the whole result of the second is the gain for a representative member of the Church of a respite of fifteen years. Nothing, as we have seen, is promised to the dying Hezekiah of a future life; no scintilla of the light of eternity sparkles either in Isaiah's promise or in Hezekiah's prayer. The net result of the incident is a reprieve of fifteen years: fifteen years of a character strengthened, indeed, by having met with death, but, it would sadly seem, only in order to become again the prey of the vanities of this world (chap. xxxix.). So meagre a result for the individual stands strangely out against the perpetual glory and peace assured to the community. And it suggests this question: Had Isaiah any real gospel for the individual? If so, what was it?
First of all, we must remember that God in His providence seldom gives to one prophet or generation more than a single main problem for solution. In Isaiah's day undoubtedly the most urgent problem--and Divine problems are ever practical, not philosophical--was the continuance of the Church upon earth. It had really got to be a matter of doubt whether a body of people possessing the knowledge of the true God, and able to transfuse and transmit it, could possibly survive among the political convulsions of the world, and in consequence of its own sin. Isaiah's problem was the reformation and survival of the Church. In accordance with this, we notice how many of his terms are collective, and how he almost never addresses the individual. It is the _people_, upon whom he calls--_the nation, Israel, the house of Jacob My vineyard, the men of Judah His pleasant plantation_. To these we may add the apostrophes to the city of Jerusalem, under many personifications: _Ariel, Ariel, inhabitress of Zion, daughter of Zion_. When Isaiah denounces sin, the sinner is either the whole community or a class in the community, very seldom an individual, though there are some instances of the latter, as Ahaz and Shebna. It is _This people hath rejected_, or _The people would not_. When Jerusalem collapsed, although there must have been many righteous men still within her, Isaiah said, _What aileth thee that all belonging to thee have gone up to the housetops?_ (xxii. 1). His language is wholesale. When he is not attacking society, he attacks classes or groups: _the rulers_, the land-grabbers, the drunkards, _the sinners_, _the judges_, _the house of David_, _the priests and the prophets_, _the women_. And the sins of these he describes in their social effects, or in their results upon the fate of the whole people; but he never, except in two cases, gives us their individual results. He does not make evident, like Jesus or Paul, the eternal damage a man's sin inflicts on his own soul.
Similarly when Isaiah speaks of God's grace and salvation the objects of these are again collective--_the remnant; the escaped_ (also a collective noun); a _holy seed_; a _stock_ or _stump_. It is a _restored nation_ whom he sees under the Messiah, the perpetuity and glory of a _city_ and _a State_. What we consider to be a most personal and particularly individual matter--the forgiveness of sin--he promises, with two exceptions, only to the community: _This people that dwelleth therein hath its iniquity forgiven_. We can understand all this social, collective and wholesale character of his language only if we keep in mind his Divinely appointed work--the substance and perpetuity of a purified and secure Church of God.