The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 261

Vere, 9-23,-Song of redeemed Israel: the scene 1n Hades, I. ENTRANCE OF THE TYRANT INTO THE UNDERWORLD, (Vere. 9-11.) The realm of the departed trembles with the excitement of expectation as the great potentate of Babylonia approaches to take up his abode in those gloomy regions. The shades of departed chiefs and kings bestir themselves, and rise from their thrones in amazement to greet the new- comer. " Hast thou also become weak like us ? Art thou become one of us?" His pomp and splendour is cast down to the lowest depth, the sound of his festive harp is silenced in that joyless place. Instead of his costly rugs, maggots a.re now his bed- olothes, and his counterpane worms. II. !DEAS OF THE UNDERWORLD. These pictures reach far back into antiquity, and represent a deep and universal belief in the heart of mankind. Sheol among the Hebrews, HadlUI and Tartaroa among the Greeks, the realm of Dis or Pluto among the Romans, are different representations of the same ideas of conscience. But with the Hebrew it is connected more sublimely and simply with the faith in the one supreme and righteous God. 1. It is viewed as a state of physical exhaustion. In Homer (' Odyssey,' xi.) the departed are described as faint, helpless ghosts, who recover not memory and consciousness till they have drunk of the blood poured by Odysseus into the trench. And when his mother has thus revived and has spoken to him- " Thrice in my o.rms I strove her shade to bind ; Thrice through my arms she slipp'd like empty wind, Or dreams, the vain illusion of the mind. ... All, all are such when life the body leaves I No more the substance of the man remains, Nor bounds the blood along the purple veins." Pale and wan beneath those "nether skies," their lot is in extreme contrast to that of their friends who still "breathe in rea.lms of cheerful day." 2. It is a place of profownd sadness and regret. Who can forget the piercing pathos of .Achilles' words when Odysseus hails him as a king among the shades, even as on earth he had been _ a guardian divinity to his countrymen- " Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom, Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom, Rather I'd choose laboriously to belll' A weight of woes and breathe the vital air, A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread, Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead." Oh, how gladly, exclaims Virgil, in describing the suicides in hell, would they now endure poverty and toil beneath the deep sky I But vain the wish ; justice forbids, and they must remain confined in the horrid swamp, with its melancholy waters, shut in by the ninefold stream of Styx. A sullen discontent is the mood of others, like Ajax, brooding over the loss of the prize of arms. It is a scene of hopelessness. The descent is easy; but to retrace the steps-the Roman poet admits the possibility only to a few, sons of gods, favoured by Jupiter, or inspired by superhuman virtue. Says the gloomy Italian, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," In the soul, whero all these dread events must happen, first o.nd last, what is this weakness, this unavailing regret, this void of hope, but the reaction of powers abused, of pai:sions indulged beyond their proper bound? .According to our sowing must be our reaping, and our daily deeds must be reflecting their colour upon the wall of the inner chamber of the mind, till it becomes to us either prison or palace, a hell or a heaven. Ill. THE CONTEMPLATION OF PAST GREATNESS, From the depth of sorrow men learn to measure past blessings, from the lowest point of abject humiliation the height of previous greatness. 'l'wo things, in a.II history, in all legend, in the experience of daily life, impress the imagination, and through the imagination the moral conscience-the riso of the obscure into glory, and the fall of the great into ignominy. Such changes hint at a great law, tho principle of which is one, the effects of whoso operation are dual and diverse. The King of Babel had been as the morning st.o.r, the type of the Orient in all its splendour of intellectul\l light, heralding the dawn and the onwarcl mqrch of the sun. How true II proposition is it. in 1'1ference  254: THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH, [cu. xrv. 1-32.