Isa 1:1 | KD | STEP | The prophetical histories are followed in the Old Testament canon by the prophetical books of prediction. The two together form the middle portion of the threefold canon, under the common name of „YJIYBINi. On account of their relative position in the canon, the former are also described as „YNI ŠOJRIHF „YJIYBINi, the first prophets, and the latter „YNIOERXáJÁHF, the last prophets. In the Masora this central portion is sometimes designated as JTfMiLEŠiJÁ, possibly because it exhibits a complete and homogeneous whole. The first prophets are in that case distinguished from the last, as JTFYiMFDiQA JTMLŠJ and JNFYFNiTI JTMLŠJ. The thorah is indeed also a prophetical work, since Moses, the mediator through whom the law was revealed, was for that very reason a prophet without an equal ( ); and even the final codification of the great historical law-book possessed a prophetical character (Ezr 9:11). But it would not have been right to include the thorah (Pentateuch) in that portion of the canon which is designated as “the prophets” (nebiim ), inasmuch as, although similar in character, it is not similar in rank to the other prophetical books. It stands by itself as perfectly unique — the original record which regulated on all sides the being and life of Israel as the chosen nation, and to which all other prophecy in Israel stood in a derivative relation. And this applies not to prophecy alone, but to all the later writings. The thorah was not only the type of the prophetic histories, but of the non-prophetic, the priestly, political, and popular histories also. The former followed the Jehovistic or Deuteronomic type, and the latter the Elohistic. The thorah unites the prophetical and (so to speak) hagiographical styles of historical composition in a manner which is peculiar to itself, and not to be met with in any of the works included among the „YN§JR „YJYBN. Those who imagine that it is only because of their later origin, that the historical words which are found among the hagiographa have not found their appropriate place among the “first prophets,” have evidently no idea whatever of this diversity in the style of historical writing. Ezra — whom we have good reason for regarding as the author of the larger “book of the Kings,” which the chronicler refers to under the title of “the story of the book of the Kings” (midrash sepher hammelacim , ), a compilation relating to the history of Israel, to which he had appended the history of the time of the restoration as the concluding part — is never called a prophet (nabi ), and in fact was not one. The chronicler — who not only had before him our book of Samuel, which has been so arbitrarily divided into two parts, and our book of Kings, which has been just as arbitrarily divided in the same manner, but used as his principal, authority the book of Ezra just referred to, and who worked out from this the compendium of history which lies before us, concluding with the memorabilia of Ezra, which we possess in a distinct form as the book of Ezra — also asserts no claim to be a prophet, and, judging from the liturgico-historical purpose of his work, is more likely to have been a priest. Nehemiah, from whose memorabilia our book of Nehemiah is an extract arranged in conformity with the book of Ezra, was, as we well know, not a prophet, but a TirsaÑta,[1] i.e., a royal Persian governor, and at the same time an Israelitish patriot, whose prayerful heart was set upon the welfare of his people, and who had performed good service in connection with the restoration of Jerusalem by the erection of buildings and the introduction of reforms. The book of Esther, with its religious features kept as they are in the background, is as far removed as possible from the prophetic style of historical composition: it differs indeed from this quite as much as the feast of purim— that Jewish carnival— differs from the feast of passover, the Israelitish Christmas. It does appear surprising, however, that the book of Ruth should stand among the hagiographa. This little book is so similar in character to the concluding portion of the book of Judges (Jud. 17-21), that it might be placed between Judges and Samuel. And in all probability it did stand there originally, but for liturgical reasons it was added to the so-called five megilloth (festal rolls), which follow one another in our editions, so to speak, according to the calendar of feasts of the ecclesiastical year: for the Song of Solomon is the lesson for the eighth day of the feast of passover; Ruth, that of the second day of the feast of Shabuoth (pentecost); Kinoth (Lamentations), that of the ninth Abib; Koheleth (Ecclesiastes), that of the third day of the feast of tabernacles; and Esther, that of the feast of purim, which fell in the middle of Adar. This is also the simplest answer to the question why the Lamentations of Jeremiah are not placed among the prophetic writings, and appended, as we should expect, to the collection of Jeremiah’s prophecies. The Psalms are placed first among the hagiographa — although David might be called a prophet ( ), and Asaph is designated “the seer” — for the simple reason that they do not belong to the literature of prophecy, but to that of the shir Jehovah , i.e., the sacred (liturgical) lyric poetry. Their prophetic contents rest entirely upon a lyric ground, whereas it is the very reverse with the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the lyric contents of which, though less prophetic in themselves, presuppose throughout the official position and teaching of Jeremiah the prophet. The canonical nebiim or prophets embrace only the writings of such persons as were called to proclaim the word of God publicly, whether in writing or by word of mouth; not like the priests, according to definite modes prescribed by the law, but in a free unfettered manner, by virtue of a special gift and calling. The word nabi is to be regarded, as we may judge from its Arabic flexion, not as a passive, but as an active form; in fact, as an emphatic form of the active participle, denoting the proclaimer, publisher, speaker, namely, of God and of His secrets. The oldest use of the word (vid., , cf., , and ), which was revived by the chronicler, is incomparably less restricted in its meaning than the later use. But when used to designate the middle portion of the Old Testament canon, although the word is not so limited as in , where it signifies a man who has passed through a school of the prophets and been trained in intercourse with other prophets, and has made prophetic teaching from the very first the exclusive profession of his life; yet it is employed in a sense connected with the organization of the theocratic life, as the title given to those who stood forward as public teachers by virtue of a divine call and divine revelations, and who therefore not only possessed the gift (charisma ) of prophecy, but performed the duties of a prophet both in preaching and writing, and held an office to which, at least on Ephraimitish soil, the institution of schools of the prophets gave the distinct stamp of a separate order. This will serve to explain the fact that the book of Daniel was not placed among the nebiim. Daniel himself was not a prophet in this sense. Not only was the mode in which the divine revelations were made to him a different one from the prevailing eÏpiÂpnoia profhtikhÃ, as Julius Africanus observes in his writing to Origen concerning Susanna, but he did not hold the office of a prophet; and for this reason even the Talmud (b. Megilla 3 a ), when speaking of the relation in which the prophets after the captivity stood to him, says, “They stood above him, for they were prophets; but he was not a prophet.” “A distinction must be drawn,” as Witsius has said, “between the gift of prophecy , which was bestowed even upon private persons, and consisted in the revelation of secret things, and the prophetic office , which was an extraordinary function in the church, committed to certain persons who were set apart by a special call from God.”[2] The reason, therefore, why all the historical and prophetic books which are to be found among the hagiographa (cethubim , which the son of Sirach speaks of in his prologue as “other books of our fathers,” and “the rest of the books”) were excluded from the second or middle part of the Old Testament canon called nebiim , rested upon a primary distinction between writings that were strictly prophetic and writings that were not so, — a distinction which existed in the domain of history as well as in that of prophecy. Thus the historical books from Joshua to Kings, and the prophetical books from Isaiah to Malachi, were separated, as works written by men whose vocation in life was that of a prophet and therefore works of a prophetical character, from such books as Chronicles and Daniel, which were written indeed under the influence of the Holy Spirit, but not in the exercise of a prophetical calling received through a prophetical impulse of the Spirit of God. The two different kinds of historical composition are also perfectly unmistakeable. Each of them has its own peculiar history. Of course it is quite possible for a prophetical history like the book of Kings, or an annalistic history like that of Chronicles, to embrace within itself certain ingredients which really belong to the other historical style; but when we have once discovered the characteristics of the two styles, it is almost always possible to single out at once, and with perfect certainty, those ingredients which are foreign to the peculiar character of the work in which they are found, and have simply been made subservient to the writer’s plan. It is very necessary, therefore, that we should look more minutely at the two styles of historical writing, for the simple reason that the literature of the books of prophecy gradually arose out of the literature of the prophetical books of history, and so eventually attained to an independent standing, though they never became entirely separate and distinct, as we may see from the book of Isaiah itself, which is interwoven with many fragments of prophetico-historical writing. The oldest type of non-prophetic historical writing is to be found, as we have already observed, in the priestly Elohistic style which characterizes one portion of the Pentateuch, as distinguished from the Jehovistic or Deuteronomic style of the other. These two types are continued in the book of Joshua; and taken as a whole, the Jehovistic, Deuteronomic type is to be been in those sections which relate to the history of the conquest; the priestly, Elohistic, in those which refer to the division of the land. At the same time, they are coloured in many other ways; and there is nothing to favour the idea that the book of Joshua ought to be combined with the Pentateuch, so as to form a hexateuchical whole. The stamp of prophetic history is impressed upon the book of Judges at the very outset by the introduction, which shows that the history of the judges is to be regarded as a mirror of the saving government of God; whilst the concluding portion, like the book of Ruth, is occupied with Bethlehemitish narratives that point to the Davidic kingdom, the kingdom of promise, which formed the direct sphere of prophecy. The body of the book is founded, indeed, upon oral and even written forms of the saga of the judges; but not without the intervention of a more complete work, from which only extracts are given, and in which the prophetic pencil of a man like Samuel had combined into one organic whole the histories of the judges not only to the time of Samson, but to the entire overthrow of the Philistian oppression. That the books of Samuel are a prophetico-historical work, is expressly attested by a passage in the Chronicles, of which we shall speak more fully presently; but in the passages relating to the conflicts with the four Philistian children of the giants (2Sa 21:15ff. = 1Ch 20:4ff.), and to the Davidic gibborim , i.e., the heroes who stood nearest to him (2Sa 23:8ff. = 1Ch 11:11ff.), they contain at least two remnants of popular or national historical writing, in which we discern a certain liking for the repetition of the same opening and concluding words, which have all the ring of a refrain, and give to the writing very much of the character of an epic or popular ode, suggesting, as Eisenlohr has said, the legend of Roland and Artus, or the Spanish Cid. We find more of these remains in the Chronicles — such, for example, as the list of those who attached themselves to David in Ziklag, and, in fact, during the greater part of Saul’s persecutions. It commences thus: “And these are they that came to David to Ziklag, whilst still hard pressed on the part of Saul the son of Kish; and they belong to the heroes, those ready to help in war, armed with bows, both with the right hand and the left hand using stones and arrows by means of the bow.” Some of these fragments may have fallen singly and unwrought into the hands of the later historians; but so far as they are tabulated, the chronicler leaves us in no doubt as to the place where they were chiefly to be found. After giving a census of the Levites from thirty years old and upwards, in a , he adds, in v. 24 b and the following verses, in a fragmentary manner, that David, taking into account the fact that the hard work of past times had no longer to be performed, lowered the age for commencing official service to twenty, “for in the last words of David (dibre David ha-acheronim ) the descendants of Levi are numbered from the twentieth year of their age.” He refers here to the last part of the history of David’s life in the “book of the kings of Israel” (sepher malce Israel ), which lay before him; and from what other work such lists as these had been taken into this his main source, we may learn from , where he follows up the list of the tribe-princes of Israel with this remark with reference to a general census which David had intended to take: “Joab the son of Zeruiah began to number, but he did not finish it; and there arose a bursting forth of wrath upon Israel in consequence, and this numbering was not placed in the numbering (RPSMB, read RPSB, ‘in the book’) of the chronicles (dibre hayyamim ) of David.” Consequently the annals or chronicles of David contained such tabular notices as these, having the character of popular or national historical composition; and they were copied from these annals into the great king’s-book, which lay before the chronicler. The official annals commenced with David, and led to those histories of the kingdom from which the authors of the books of Kings and Chronicles for the most part drew their materials, even if they did not do so directly. Saul’s government consisted chiefly in military supremacy, and the unity of the kingdom as renewed by him did not embrace much more than the simple elements of a military constitution. But under David there grew up a reciprocal relation between the throne and the people, of the most comprehensive character; and the multiplication of government offices followed, as a matter of course, from the thorough organization of the kingdom. We find David, as head of the kingdom, asserting his official supremacy on all hands, even in relation to religious affairs, and meet with several entirely new posts that were created by him. Among these was the office of mazcir (recorder in Eng. ver.: Tr.), i.e., as the LXX have often rendered it, uÎpomnhmatoÂgrafoj or (in ) eÏpiÃ twÌn uÎpomnhmaÂtwn (Jerome: a commentariis , a thoroughly Roman translation). The Targums give a similar rendering, JyFNARFKidF‰LJA JnFMÁMi, the keeper of the memorabilia (i.e., of the “book of records” or annals, , cf., Ezr 4:15, Esther 6:10. The mazcir had to keep the annals of the kingdom; and his office was a different one from that of the sopher , or chancellor. The sopher (scribe in Eng. ver.: Tr.) had to draw up the public documents; the mazcir had to keep them, and incorporate them in the connected history of the nation. Both of these offices are met with throughout the whole of the East, both ancient and modern, even to the remotest parts of Asia.[3] It is every evident that the office in question was created by David, from the fact that allusions to the annals commence with the chronicles (dibre hayyamim ) of David ( ), and are continued in the sepher dibre Shelomoh (a contraction for sepher dibre hayyamim Shelomoh , “book of the chronicles of Solomon,” 1Ki 11:41). The references are then carried on in Judah to the end of the reign of Jehoiakim, and in Israel to the end of the reign of Pekah. Under David, and also under Solomon, the office of national annalist was filled by Jehoshaphat ben-AhiluÑd.The fact that, with the exception of the annals of David and Solomon, the references are always made to annals of the “kings of Judah” and “kings of Israel,” admits of a very simple explanation. If we regard the national annals as a complete and independent work, they naturally divide themselves into four parts, of which the first two treated of the history of the kingdom in its unity; the last two, viz., the annals of the kings of Judah and Israel, of the history of the divided kingdom. The original archives, no doubt, perished when Jerusalem was laid in ashes by the Chaldeans. But copies were taken from them and preserved, and the histories of the reigns of David and Solomon in the historical books which have come down to us, and are peculiarly rich in annalistic materials, show very clearly that copies of the annals of David and Solomon were taken and distributed with special diligence, and that they were probably circulated in a separate form, as was the case with some of the decades of Livy. Richard Simon supposed the écrivains publics to be prophets; and upon this hypothesis he founded an exploded view as to the origin of the Old Testament writings. Even in more recent times the annals have occasionally been regarded as prophetic histories, in which case the distinction between prophetic and annalistic histories would unquestionably fall to the ground. But the arguments adduced in support of this do not prove what is intended. In the first place, appeal is made to the statements of the chronicler himself, with regard to certain prophetic elements in the work which constituted his principal source, viz., the great king’s-book; and it is taken for granted that this great king’s-book contained the combined annals of the kings of Judah and Israel. But (a ) the chronicler speaks of his principal source under varying names as a book of the kings, and on one occasion as dibre , i.e., res gestae or historiae , of the kings of Israel ( ), but never as the annals of the kings of Israel or Judah: he even refers to it once as midrash sepher hammelacim (commentarius libri regum ), and consequently as an expository and more elaborate edition either of our canonical book of Kings, or else (a point which we will leave undecided) of an earlier book generally. (b ) In this midrash the history of the kings was undoubtedly illustrated by numerous comprehensive prophetico-historical portions: but the chronicler says expressly, on several occasions, that these were ingredients incorporated into it ( ; ); so that no conclusion can be drawn from them with regard to the prophetic authorship of his principal source, and still less as to that of the annals. We do not, in saying this, dispute for a moment the fact, that there were prophetic elements to be found among the documents admitted into the annals, and not merely such as related to levitical and military affairs, or others of a similar kind; nor do we deny that the interposition of great prophets in the history of the times would be there mentioned and described. There are, in fact, distinct indications of this, of which we shall find occasion to speak more fully by and by. But it would be the greatest literary blunder that could be made, to imagine that the accounts of Elijah and Elisha, for example, which have all the stamp of their Ephraimitish and prophetic authorship upon the forefront, could possibly have been taken from the annals; more especially as Joram the king of Israel, in whose reign Elisha lived, is the only king of the northern kingdom in connection with whose reign there is no reference to the annals at all. The kind of documents, which were principally received into the annals and incorporated into the connected history, may be inferred from such examples as , where the division of the Levites into classes is taken from “the writing of David” and “the writing of Solomon:” whether we suppose that the documents in question were designated royal writings, because they were drawn up by royal command and had received the king’s approval; or that the sections of the annals, in which they were contained, were really based upon documents written with the king’s own hand (vid., ). When we bear in mind that the account given by the chronicler of the arrangements made by David with reference to priests and Levites rests upon the annals as their ultimate source, we have, at any rate, in a confirmation of the national, and so to speak, regal character of the year-books in question. A second argument employed to prove that the annals were prophetic histories, is the fact that otherwise they would not have been written in a theocratic spirit, especially in the kingdom of Israel. But (1) their official or state origin is evident, from the fact that they break off just where the duties of the prophets as historiographs really began. For fourteen of the references to the annals in our book of Kings, from Rehoboam and Jeroboam onwards, are to be found in the history of the kings of Judah (it being only in the case of Ahaziah, Amaziah, and Jehoahaz that the references are wanting), and seventeen in the history of the kings of Israel (the reference failing in the case of Joram alone); whilst in both lines the annals do not reach to the last king in each kingdom, but only to Jehoiakim and Pekah, from which we may conclude that the writing of annals was interrupted with the approaching overthrow of the two kingdoms. Now, if (b ) we examine the thirty-one references carefully, we shall find that sixteen of them merely affirm that the rest of the acts of the king in question, what he did, are written in the annals (1Ki 14:29; 2Ki 8:23; 2Ki 12:20; 2Ki 15:6, 2Ki 15:36; 2Ki 16:19; 2Ki 21:25; 2Ki 23:28; 2Ki 24:5; 1Ki 15:31; 1Ki 16:14; 2Ki 1:18; 2Ki 15:11, 2Ki 15:21, 2Ki 15:26, 2Ki 15:31). In the case of four Israelitish kings, it is simply stated in addition to this, that their geburah (might, heroism, i.e., their bravery in war) is written in the annals (1Ki 16:5, 1Ki 16:27; 2Ki 10:34; 2Ki 13:8). But in the accounts of the following kings we find more precise statements as to what was to be read in the annals concerning them, viz.: Abijam carried on war with Jeroboam, as might be read in them (1Ki 15:7); in the case of Asa they contained an account of “his heroism, and all that he did, and the cities which he built” (1Ki 15:23); in that of Jehoshaphat — ”the heroic acts that he performed, and what wars he carried on” (1Ki 22:46); in that of Hezekiah— ”all his heroism, and how he made the pool, and the aqueduct, and brought the water into the city” (2Ki 20:20); in that of Manasseh— ”all that he did, and his sin in which he sinned” (2Ki 21:17); in that of Jeroboam— ”what wars he waged, and how he reigned” (1Ki 14:19); in that of Zimri— ”his conspiracy that he set on foot” (1Ki 16:20); in that of Ahab— ”all that he did, and the ivory house which he erected, and all the towns that he built” (1Ki 22:39); in that of Joash— ”his heroism, how he fought with Amaziah king of Judah” (2Ki 13:12; 2Ki 14:15); in that of Jeroboam II — ”his heroism, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus and Hamath to Judah in Israel” (2Ki 14:28); and in that of Shallum — ”his conspiracy which he made” (2Ki 15:15). These references furnish a very obvious proof, that the annalistic history was not written in a propheticopragmatical form; though there is no necessity on that account to assume, that in either of the two kingdoms it stopped to courtly flattery, or became the mere tool of dynastic selfishness, or of designs at variance with the theocracy. It simply registered outward occurrences, entering into the details of new buildings, and still more into those of wars and warlike deed; it had its roots in the spirit of the nation, and moved in the sphere of the national life and its institutions; in comparison with the prophetic histories, it was more external than idea, — more purely historical than didactic, — more of the nature of a chronicle than written with any special bias of intention: in short, it was more distinctly connected with political than with sacred history. From the time of Samuel, with whom the prophetic period in the history of the legally constituted Israel strictly speaking commenced (Act. 3:24), the prophets as a body displayed great literary activity in the department of historical composition. This is evident from the numerous references made by the author of the Chronicles to original historical writings by prophetic authors. At the close of the history of David he refers to the dibre (Eng. ver. “book”) of Samuel the seer, Nathan the prophet, and Gad the seer; at the close of the history of Solomon (2Ch. 9:29), to dibre (Eng. ver. “book”) of Nathan the prophet, nebuoth (Eng. ver. “the prophecy”) of Ahijah the Shilonite, and chazoth (visions) of Ye’di (Ye’do; Eng. ver. Iddo) the seer; in the case of Rehoboam (2Ch. 12:15), to dibre of Shemaiah the prophet and ‘Iddo the seer; in that of Abijah (2Ch. 13:22), to the midrash (Eng. ver. “story”) of the prophet ‘Iddo; in that of Jehoshaphat (2Ch. 20:34), to dibre of Jehu ben Hanani, which were included in the book of the kings of Israel; in that of Uzziah (2Ch. 26:22), to a complete history of that king, which had been composed by Isaiah ben Amoz; in that of Hezekiah (2Ch. 32:32), to a chazon (Eng. ver. “vision”) of Isaiah, which was to be found in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel; and in that of Manasseh (2Ch. 33:19), to dibre of Hosai. The question might be raised, indeed, whether the dibre referred to in these passages are not to be understood — as in 1Ch. 23:27, for example — as signifying the historical account of such and such a person; but the following are sufficient proofs that the chronicler used the expression in the sense of historical accounts written by the persons named. In the first place, we may see from 2Ch. 27:22 how customary it was for him to think of prophets as historians of particular epochs of the history of the kings; secondly, even in other passages in which the name of a prophet is connected with dibre , — such, for example, as 2Ch. 29:30; , — the former is the genitive of the subject or author, not of the object; thirdly, in the citations given above, dibre is used interchangeably with YRBD‰Lˆ, which requires still more decidedly that it should be understood as denoting authorship: and fourthly, this is placed beyond all doubt by the alternation of midrash Iddo (2Ch. 13:22), with dibre Iddo (2Ch. 12:15). At the same time, it is evident that these accounts, which are called by prophets’ names, were not lying before the chronicler in the form of separate writings in addition to the work which constituted his principal source, from the fact that, with the exception of 2Ch. 33:18-19, he never quotes the two together. They were incorporated into the midrash sephere hammelakim (“the story of the book of the kings,” Eng. ver.), which lay before him (2Ch. 24:27), though not without showing their prophetic origin in distinction from the annalistic sources of the work in question; and inasmuch as it is inconceivable that the authors of our canonical books of Samuel and Kings should have made no use of these prophetic records, the question is allowable, whether it is still possible for critical analysis to trace them out either in whole or in part, with the same certainty with which it can be affirmed that the list of officers which is employed as a boundary-stone in 2Sa. 20:23-26, and the general survey of Solomon’s ministers and court in 1Ki 4:2-19, together with the account of the daily provision for the royal kitchen in 1Ki 4:22-23, and the number of stalls for the king’s horses in 1Ki 4:26-27, and others of a similar kind, were taken from the annals. This is not the place in which to enter more minutely into such an analysis. It is quite sufficient for our purpose to have exhibited, in the citations we have made from the Chronicles, the stirring activity of the prophets as historians from the time of Samuel onwards; although this is evident enough, even without citations, from the many prophetico-historical extracts from the writings of the prophets which we find in the book of Kings. Both authors draw either directly or indirectly from annalistic and prophetic sources. But when we look at the respective authors, and their mode of rounding off and working up the historical materials, the book of Kings and the Chronicles exhibit of themselves, at least as a whole, the two different kinds of historical composition; for the book of Kings is a thoroughly prophetic book, the Chronicles a priestly one. The author of the book of Kings formed his style upon the model of Deuteronomy and the prophetic writings; whilst the chronicler so thoroughly imitated the older dibre-hayyamim style, that it is often impossible to distinguish his own style from that of the sources which came either directly or indirectly to his hand; and consequently his work contains a strange admixture of very ancient and very modern forms. The observation inserted in 2Ki 17:7ff. shows clearly enough in what spirit and with what intention the writer of the book of Kings composed his work. Like the author of the book of Judges, who wrote in a kindred spirit (see Jdg 2:11ff.), he wished to show, in his history of the kings, how the Israel of the two kingdoms sank lower and lower both inwardly and outwardly till it had fallen into the depths of captivity, in consequence of its contempt of the word of god as spoken by the prophets, and still more because of the radical evil of idolatry; but how Judah, with its Davidic government, was not left without hope of rescue from the abyss, provided it would not shut its heart against such prophetic preaching as was to be found in its own past history. The chronicler, on the other hand, whose love to the divinely chosen monarchy and priesthood of the tribes of Judah and Levi is obvious enough, from the annalistic survey with which he prefaces his work, commences with the mournful end of Saul, and wastes no words upon the path of sorrow through which David reached the throne, but passes at once to the joyful beginning of his reign, which he sets before us in the popular, warlike, priestly style of the annals. He then relates the history of Judah and Jerusalem under the rule of the house of David, almost without reference to the history of the northern kingdom, and describes it with especial completeness wherever he has occasion to extol the interest shown by the king in the temple and worship of God, and his co-operation with the Levites and priests. The author of the book of Kings shows us in prophecy the spirit which pervaded the history, and the divine power which moulded it. The chronicler exhibits in the monarchy and priesthood the two chambers of its beating heart. In the former we see storm after storm gather in the sky that envelopes the history, according to the attitude of the nation and its kings towards the word of God; with the latter the history is ever encircled by the cloudless sky of the divine institutions. The writer of the Chronicles dwells with peculiar preference, and a certain partiality, upon the brighter portions of the history; whereas, with the author of the book of Kings, the law of retribution which prevails in the historical materials requires that at least an equal prominence should be given to the darker side. In short, the history of the book of Kings is more inward, divine, theocratic in its character; that of the Chronicles more outward, human, and popular. The author of the book of Kings writes with a prophet’s pen; the chronicler with the pen of an annalist. Nevertheless, they both of them afford us a deep insight into the laboratory of the two modes of writing history; and the historical productions of both are rich in words of the prophets, which merit a closer inspection, since they are to be regarded, together with the prophetico-historical writings quoted, as precludes and side-pieces to the prophetic literature, properly so called, which gradually established itself in more or less independence, and to which the nebiim acharonim (the last prophets) belong. The book of Kings contains the following words and sayings of prophets: (1) Ahijah of Shilo to Jeroboam (1Ki 11:29-39); (2) Shemaiah to Rehoboam (1Ki 12:22-24); (3) a man of God to the altar of Jeroboam (1Ki 13:1-2); (4) Ahijah to the wife of Jeroboam (1Ki 14:5-16); (5) Jehu ben Hanani to Baasha (1Ki 16:1-4); (6) a prophet to Ahab king of Israel (1Ki 20:13-14, 1Ki 20:22, 1Ki 20:28); (7) a pupil of the prophets to Ahab (1Ki 20:35ff.); (8) Elijah to Ahab (1Ki 21:17-26); (9) Micha ben Yimla to the two kings Ahab and Jehoshaphat (1Ki 22:14ff.); (10) Elisha to Jehoram and Jehoshaphat (2Ki 3:11ff.); (11) a pupil of Elisha to Jehu (2Ki 9:1-10); (12) a massa concerning the house of Ahab (2Ki 9:25-26); (13) Jehovah to Jehu (2Ki 10:30); (14) Jonah to Jeroboam II (indirectly; 2Ki 14:25-27); (15) leading message of the prophets (2Ki 17:13); (16) Isaiah’s words to Hezekiah (2Ki 19-20); (); (17) threat on account of Manasseh (2Ki 21:10-15); (18) Huldah to Josiah (2Ki 22:14ff.); (19) threat of Jehovah concerning Judah (2Ki 23:27). Of all these prophetic words and sayings, Nos. 2, 9, and 18 are the only ones that are given by the chronicler (2Ch. 11:2-4, 18, and 34), partly because he confined himself to the history of the kings of Judah, and partly because he wrote with the intention of supplementing our book of Kings, which was no doubt lying before him. On the other hand, we find the following words of prophets in the Chronicles, which are wanting in the book of Kings: (1) words of Shemaiah in the war between Rehoboam and Shishak (2Ch. 12:7-8); (2) Azariah ben Oded before Asa (2Ch. 15:1-7); (3) Hanani to Asa (2Ch. 16:7-9); (4) Jahaziel the Asaphite in the national assembly (2Ch. 20:14-17); (5) Eliezer ben Dodavahu to Jehoshaphat (2Ch. 20:37); (6) letter of Elijah to Jehoram (2Ch. 21:12-15); (7) Zechariah ben Jehoiada in the time of Joash (2Ch. 24:20); (8) a man of God to Amaziah (2Ch. 25:7-9); (9) a prophet to Amaziah (2Ch. 25:15-16); (10) Oded to Pekah (2Ch. 28:9-11). To extend the range of our observation still further, we may add, (1) the address of the maleach Jehovah in Bochim (Jdg 2:1-5); (2) the address of a prophet (ish nabi ) to Israel, in Jdg 6:8-10; (3) that of a man of God to Eli (1Sa. 2:27ff.); (4) Jehovah to Samuel concerning Eli’s house (1Sa. 3:11-14); (5) Samuel to Israel before the battle at Ebenezer (1Sa. 7:3); (6) Samuel to Saul in Gilgal (1Sa. 13:13-14); (7) Samuel to Saul after the victory over Amalek (1Sa. 15); (8) Nathan to David concerning his wish to build the temple (2Sa. 7); (9) Nathan to David after his adultery (2Sa. 12); (10) Gad to David after the numbering of the people (2Sa. 24). If we take a general survey of these prophetic words and sayings, and compare them with one another, there can be no doubt that some of them have come down to us in their original form; such, for example, as the address of the man of God to Eli, in the first book of Samuel, and the words of Samuel to Saul after the victory over Amalek. This is guaranteed by their distinct peculiarity, their elevated tone, and the manifest difference between them and the ordinary style of the historian who relates them. In the case of others, at least, all that is essential in their form has been preserved; as, for example, in the addresses of Nathan to David: this is evident from the echoes that we find of them in the subsequent history. Among the sayings that have been handed down verbatim by the author of the book of Kings, we may include those of Isaiah, whose originality several things combine to sustain, — viz. the massa in 2Ki 9:25-26, the construction of which is peculiar and primitive; together with a few other brief prophetic words, possibly in all that is essential the words of Huldah: for it is only in the mouth of Huldah (2Ki 22:19; 2Ch. 34:27) and Isaiah (2Ki 19:33), and in the massa referred to, that we meet with the prophetic “saith the Lord” (HOEFHYi „JUNi ), which we also find in 1Sa. 2:30, with other marks of originality, whilst its great antiquity is attested by Gen. 22:16, the Davidic Psalms, and 2Sa. 23:1. In some of these sayings the historian is not at all concerned to give them in their original words: they are simply prophetic voices generally, which were heard at a particular time, and the leading tones of which he desires to preserve, — such, for example, as Jdg 6:8-10, 2Ki 17:13; 2Ki 21:10-15. Reproductions of prophetic witnesses in so general a form as this naturally bear the stamp of the writer who reproduces them. In the books of Judges and Kings, for example, they show clearly the Deuteronomic training of their last editors. But we can go still further, and maintain generally, that the prophecies in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles contain marked traces of the historian’s own hand, as well as of the sources from which they were indirectly drawn. Such sayings as are common to the two books (Chronicles and Kings) are almost word for word the same in the former as in the latter; but the rest have all a marked peculiarity, and a totally different physiognomy. The sayings in the book of Kings almost invariably begin with “Thus saith the Lord,” or “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel” (also Jdg 6:8, and 2Ki 19:20, before the message of Isaiah); and nothing is more frequent in them than the explanatory phrase RŠEJá †JAYA, and such Deuteronomic expressions as SYˆKH, JY‹XH, DYB †TN, and others; to which we may add a fondness for similes introduces with “as” (e.g., 1Ki 14:10, 1Ki 14:15; 2Ki 21:13). The thought of Jehovah’s choosing occurs in the same words in 1Ki 11:36 and 2Ki 23:27; and the expression, “that David may have a light alway,” in 1Ki 11:36, is exclusively confined to the Deuteronomic author of the work (vid., 1Ki 15:4, 2Ki 8:19, cf., 2Ch. 21:7). The words, “I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel,” are not only to be found in the second address of Ahijah in 1Ki 14:7, but, with slight alteration, in the address of Jehu in 1Ki. 16:2. The words, “Him that dieth in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat,” are found in the same form in Ahijah’s second address (1Ki 14:11), in Jehu’s address (ch. 16:4), and in that of Elijah to Ahab (1Ki. 21:24). That threat, “I will cut off all that pisseth against the wall, that is shut up and that is free in Israel, and will sweep behind the house of Jeroboam,” is found, with trifling variations, in Ahijah’s second address (1Ki 14:10), in Elijah’s address to Ahab (1Ki. 21:21), and in Elisha’s address to Jehu (2Ki 9:8); whilst it is evident from 1Ki 16:11 and 2Ki 14:26, that the form of the threat is just in the style of the Deuteronomic historian. There can be no question, therefore, that nearly all these prophetic sayings, so far as a common impress can exist at all, are of one type, and that the common bond which encircles them is no other than the prophetic subjectivity of the Deuteronomic historian. A similar conclusion may be drawn with regard to the prophetic sayings contained in the Chronicles. They also bear so decidedly the evident marks of the chronicler’s own work, that Caspari himself, in his work upon the Syro-Ephraimitish war, is obliged to admit that the prophetic address in 2Ch. 15:2-7, which is apparently the most original of all, recals the peculiar style of the chronicler. At the same time, in the case of the chronicler, whose principal source of information must have resembled his own work in spirit and style (as we are warranted in assuming by the book of Ezra especially), it is not so easy to determine how far his own freedom of treatment extended as it is in the case of the author of the book of Kings, who appears to have found the greater part of the sayings given in mere outline in the annals, and in taking them thence, to have reproduced them freely, in the consciousness of his own unity of spirit with the older prophets. If these sayings had been handed down to us in their original form, we should possess in them a remarkably important source of information with regard to the historical development of the prophetic ideas and modes of expression. We should then know for certain that Isaiah’s favourite phrase, “for the Lord hath spoken it,” was first employed by Ahijah (1Ki 14:11); that when Joel prophesied “in Jerusalem shall be deliverance” (Joe. 2:32), he had already been preceded by Shemaiah (2Ch. 12:7); that Hosea (in Hos. 3:4-5, cf., Hos 5:15) took up the declaration of Azariah ben Oded, “And many days will Israel continue without the God of truth, and without a teaching priest, and without law; but when it turneth in its trouble,” etc. (2Ch. 15:3-4, where, as the parallel proves, the preterites of v. 4 are to be interpreted according to the prophetic context); that in Jer. 31:16, “for thy work shall be rewarded,” we have the echo of another word of the same Azariah; that in the words spoken by Hanani in 2Ch. 16:9, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth,” he was the precursor of Zechariah (Zec. 4:10); and other instances of a similar kind. But, with the influence which was evidently exerted upon the sayings quoted by the subjective peculiarities of the two historians (compare, for example, 2Ch. 15:2 with and 1Ch. 28:9; 2Ch. 12:5 with ; also v. 7 with 2Ch. 34:21, and the parallel 2Ki 22:13 and 2Ch. 15:5, “In those times,” with Dan. 11:14), and with the difficulty of tracing the original elements in these sayings (it is quite possible, for example, that the thought of a light remaining to David, 1Ki 15:4, 2Ki 8:19, was really uttered first of all by Ahijah, 1Ki 11:36), it is only a very cautious and sparing use that can be made of them for this purpose. It is quite possible, since Deuteronomy is the real prophet’s book, as compared with the other books of the Pentateuch, that the prophets of the earlier regal times took pleasure in employing Deuteronomic expressions; but it cannot be decided whether such expressions as “put my name there,” in 1Ki 11:36, and “root up Israel,” etc., in 1Ki 14:15, received their Deuteronomic form (cf., Deu. 12:5, ; ; ) from the prophet himself, or from the author of the book of Kings (cf., 1Ki 9:3, and the parallel passages, 2Ch. 7:20; , 2Ki 21:7-8). At the same time, quite enough of the original has been retained in the prophecies of these earlier prophets, to enable us to discern in them the types and precursors of the later ones. Shemaiah, with his threat and its subsequent modification in the case of Asa, calls to mind Micah and his words to Hezekiah, in Jer. 26:17ff. The attitude of Hanani towards Asa, when he had appealed to Aram for help, is just the same as that which Isaiah assumed towards Ahaz; and there is also a close analogy in the consequences of the two events. Hose and Amos prophesy against “the high places of Aven” (Hos. 10:8), and “the altars of Bethel” (Amo. 3:14; ), like the man of God in Bethel. When Amos leaves his home in consequence of a divine call (Amo. 7:15) and goes to Bethel, the headquarters of the image-worship of the Israelites, to prophesy against the idolatrous kingdom; is there not a repetition in this of the account of the prophet in 1Ki. 13? And when Hanani is cast into prison on account of his denunciation of Asa; is not this a prelude, as it were, to the subsequent fate of Micah ben-Imlah (1Ki. 22) and Jeremiah (Jer. 32)? And so, again, Ahijah’s confirmation and symbolical representation of what he predicted, by the rending in pieces of a new garment (the symbol of the kingdom in its unity and strength), has its analoga in the history of the earlier prophets (1Sa. 15:26-29) as well as in that of the latest (e.g., Jer. 22). It is only such signs (mophethim ), as that by which the prophet who came out of Judah into Bethel confirmed his prophecy, that disappear entirely from the alter history, although Isaiah does not think it beneath him to offer Ahaz a sign, either in the depth or in the height above, in attestation of his prophetic testimony. There was no essential difference, however, between the prophets of the earlier and those of the later times; and the unity of spirit which linked together the prophets of the two kingdoms from the very first, notwithstanding the inevitable diversity in their labours in consequence of the different circumstances in which they were placed, continued all through. Still we do meet with differences. The earlier prophets are uniformly occupied with the internal affairs of the kingdom, and do not bring within their range the history of other nations, with which that of Israel was so intimately interwoven. Their prophecies are directed exclusively to the kings and people of the two kingdoms, and not to any foreign nation at all, either to those immediately adjoining, or what we certainly might expect, to Egypt and Aram. The Messianic element still remains in a somewhat obscure chrysalis state; and the poetry of thoughts and words, which grew up afterwards as the result of prophetic inspiration, only just manifests itself in certain striking figures of speech. It is indeed true, as we have already seen, that it is hardly possible to pronounce a decided opinion respecting the delivery of these earlier prophets; but from a sufficiently reliable and general impression, we may trace this distinction between the prophecy which prevailed till about the reign of Joash and that of the later times, that the former was for the most part prophecy in irresistible actions, the latter prophecy in convincing words. As G. Baur has observed; in the case of the older prophets it is only as the modest attendants of mighty outward acts, that we meet with words at all concerned to produce clear inward conviction. For this very reason, they could hardly produce prophetic writings in the strict sense of the word. But from the time of Samuel downwards, the prophets had made the theocratic and pragmatic treatment of the history of their own times a part of the regular duties of their calling. The cloistral, though by no means quietistic, retirement of their lives in the schools of the prophets, was very favourable to this literary occupation, more especially in the northern kingdom, and secured for it unquestioned liberty. We may see, however, from 2Ch. 20:34, that the prophets of Judah also occupied themselves with writing history; for the prophet Jehu was a Judaean, and, as we may infer from 2Ch. 19:1-3, had his home in Jerusalem. The literature of the prophetic writings, strictly so called, commenced in the time of Jehoram king of Judah with a fugitive writing against Edom; if, as we think we have proved elsewhere, the vision of OBADIAH was occasioned by the calamity described in 2Ch. 21:16-17, to which Joel and Amos also refer. He was followed by JOEL, who had Obadiah’s prophecy before him, since he introduces into the wider and more comprehensive range of his announcement, not only Obadiah’s prophetic matter, but Obadiah’s prophetic words. We may also see from Joel’s writings how the prophetic literature, in the stricter sense, sprang out of prophetical histories; for Joel himself relates the result of the penitential worship, which was occasioned by his appeal, in a historical statement in Joe. 2:18-19 a , through which the two halves of his writings are linked together. The time when he prophesied can be distinctly proved to have been the first half of the reign of Joash king of Judah. Obadiah and Joel were both of them contemporaries of Elisha. Elisha himself did not write anything, but the schools under his superintendence not only produced prophetic deeds, but prophetic writings also; and it is a characteristic circumstance, that the writings which bear the name of Jonah, whom an ancient Haggada describes as one of the sons of the prophets belonging to Elisha’s school, belong far less to the prophetic literature in the strict sense of the term than to the prophetical histories, and in fact to the historical writings of prophets. At what period it was that Jonah’s mission to Nineveh took place, may be gathered to some extent from 2Ki 14:25, where Jonah ben-Ammitai, the prophet of Gath ha-Hepher, in the territory of Zebulun, is said to have predicted the restoration of the kingdom of Israel to its promised boundaries, — a prediction which was fulfilled in Jeroboam ben-Joash, the third in succession from Jehu, and therefore was uttered at the commencement of the reign of Jeroboam II, if not under Joash himself. The mission to Nineveh may possibly belong to a somewhat earlier period than this prediction, namely, to the time of the older Assyrian kingdom, which was fast approaching its dissolution. Eusebius is probably correct in making Sardanapalus the last ruler of the old kingdom of Ninos, who was overcome by Arbaces the Mede, a contemporary of Jeroboam II. A glance at the book of Amos, on the other hand, will show us that, at the time when he prophesied, a new Asshur was arising, and had already made considerable conquests. The date given in Amo. 1:1, “two years before the earthquake,” does not afford us any clue. But if Amos prophesied “in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and Jeroboam ben-Joash king of Israel;” assuming that Jeroboam II reigned forty-one years, commencing with the fifteenth year of Amaziah (2Ki 14:23), and therefore was contemporary with Amaziah for fourteen years and with Uzziah for twenty-seven, it must have been in the last twenty-seven years of Jeroboam’s reign that Amos prophesied. At the time when his ministry began, the kingdom of Israel was at the summit of its greatness in consequence of the successes of Jeroboam, and the kingdom of Judah still continued in the depression into which it had fallen in the time of Amaziah; and to both of them he foretells a common fate at the hand of Asshur, which is indicated clearly enough, although not mentioned by name. The commencement of the ministry of HOSEA coincides at the most with the close of that of Amos. The symbolical portion (Isa. 1-3), with which his book commences, brings us to the five last years of Jeroboam’s reign; and the prophetic addresses which follow are not at variance with the statement in Isa. 1:1, which is by a later hand, and according to which he still continued to prophesy even under Hezekiah, and therefore until the fall of Samaria, which occurred in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign. Hosea, the Ephraimitish Jeremiah, was followed by Isaiah, who received his call, if Isa. 6 contains the account of his prophetic consecration, in the last year of Uzziah’s reign, and therefore twenty-five years after the death of Jeroboam II, and continued his labours at least till the second half of Hezekiah’s reign, possibly to the commencement of that of Manasseh. His younger contemporary was Micah of Moresheth, whose first appearance took place, according to Isa. 1:1, within the reign of Jotham, and whose book must have been written, according to the heading “concerning Samaria and Jerusalem, before the fall of Samaria, in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign (with which the account in Jer. 25:17ff. also agrees); so that his labours began and ended within the incomparably longer period of Isaiah’s ministry. This also applies to NAHUM, whose “burden of Nineveh” closes the prophetic writings of the Assyrian age. He prophesied after the defeat of Sennacherib, when the power of Asshur was broken, and also the yoke upon Judah’s neck (Isa. 1:13), provided, that is to say, that Asshur did not recover itself again. HABAKKUK is linked on to Nahum. He was the last prophet of Isaiah’s type in the book of twelve prophets, and began to foretell a new era of judgment, namely the Chaldean. He prophesied in the time of Josiah, before Zephaniah and Jeremiah, and possibly even as early as the time of Manasseh. With ZEPHANIAH the line of prophets of Jeremiah’s type begins. He resembles Jeremiah in his reproductive, and, as it were, mosaic use of the words of the older prophets. As JEREMIAH was called, according to Jer. 1:2, in the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign, his ministry commenced before that of Zephaniah, since we are compelled by internal grounds to assign the prophecies of the latter to the period subsequent to the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign. Jeremiah’s labours in Judaea, and eventually in Egypt, extended over a period of more than forty years. He gave, as a warrant of the threats contained in his last prophetic address in Isa. 44, the approaching fall of Pharaoh Hophra, who lost his throne and life in the year 570 B.C., upon the very spot where his greatgrandfather Psammetichus had obtained forcible possession of the throne of Egypt a century before. Contemporaneous with Jeremiah was Ezekiel, who, though not personally acquainted with him, so far as we know, laboured in the very same spirit as he among the exiles of Judah. According to Isa. 1:1-2, the year of his call was the thirteenth year, viz., of the era of Nabopolassar, which was really the fifth years after the captivity of Jehoiachin, B.C. 595. The latest date given in connection with his ministry (Isa. 29:17) is the seven-andtwentieth year of the captivity, which was the sixteenth year from the destruction of Jerusalem, the time between Nebuchadnezzar’s raising of the siege of Tyre and his expedition against Egypt. We are aware, therefore, of twenty-two years of active life on the part of this prophet, who may have been older when called than Jeremiah, who was youthful still. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were the two great prophets who spread their praying hands over Jerusalem as a shield as long as they possibly could, and when the catastrophe was inevitable, saved it even in its fall. Their prophecies bridged over the great chasm of the captivity (though not without the co-operation of the “book of consolation,” Isa. 40-66, which was unsealed in the time of exile), and prepared the way for the restoration of the national community when the captivity was over. Into the community HAGGAI infused a new spirit in the second year of Darius Hystaspis, through his prediction of the glory which awaited the newly-built temple and the house of David, that was raised to honour once more in the person of Zerubbabel. ZECHARIAH began to prophesy only two months later. His last prophetic address belongs to the third year of Darius Hystaspis, the year after the edict requiring that the building of the temple should be continued. The predictions of the second part of his book (Isa. 9-14) were hardly delivered publicly: they are throughout eschatological and apocalyptical, and take earlier situations and prophetic words as emblems of the last days. Prophecy was now silent for a long time. At length the last prophetic voice of the old covenant has heard in MAL’ACHI. His book coincides with the condition of things which Nehemiah found on his second sojourn in Jerusalem under Darius Notus; and his peculiar calling in connection with the sacred history was to predict, that the messenger who was appointed to precede the coming of Jehovah would soon appear, — namely, Elijah the Tishbite, — and that he, the forerunner, a pioneer, would then be followed by the Lord Himself, as “the Angle of the covenant,” i.e., the Messenger or Mediator of a new covenant. This general survey will show very clearly that the arrangement of the nebiim acharonim (last prophets) in the canon is not a strictly chronological one. The three “major” prophets, who are so called on account of the comparative size of their books of prophecy, are placed together; and the twelve “minor” prophets are also grouped together, so as to form one book (monobiblos , as Melito calls it), on account of the smaller extent of their prophetic books (propter parvitatem colligati , as b. Bathra says). To this the name of “the twelve,” or “the twelve-prophet-book,” was given (vid., Wis. 49:10; Josephus, c. Apion , i. 8; cf., Eusebius, h. e. iii. 10). In the collection itself, on the other hand, the chronological order has so far been regarded, that the whole is divisible into three groups, representing three periods of prophetic literature, viz., prophets of the Assyrian period (Hosea to Nahum), prophets of the Chaldean period (Habakkuk and Zephaniah), and prophets after the captivity (Haggai to Malachi). And there is also an obvious desire to pair off as far as possible a prophet of the kingdom of Israel with one of the kingdom of Judah, viz., Hosea and Joel; Amos and Obadiah; Jonah and Micah; Nah. and Habakkuk (for the Elkosh of Nahum, if not the town on the eastern bank of the Tigris near to Mosul, was at any rate, according to Eusebius and Jerome, a Galilean town). Hosea is placed first, not because the opening word techillath made this book a very suitable one with which to begin the collection; still less because Hosea was the first to be called of the four prophets, Hosea and Isaiah, Amos and Micah, as b. Bathra affirms; but for the very same reason for which the Epistle to the Romans is placed first among the Pauline epistles, viz., because his book is the largest in the collection, — a point of view which comes out still more prominently in the Septuagint, where Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, and Obadiah follow one another, the first with fourteen chapters, the second with one, the third with seven, the fourth with three, and the last with one, and then a new series commences with Jonah. But the reason why Joel is placed next to Hosea in the Hebrew canon, may possibly be found in the contrast which exists between the lamentations of the former on account of the all-parching heat and the all-consuming swarms of insects, and the dewy, verdant, and flowery imagery with which the book of Hosea closes. Amos then follows Joel, because he not only takes up again his denunciations of judgment, but opens with one of the utterances with which Joel closes (Joe. 3:16): “Jehovah will roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem.” Then follows Obadiah , on account of the reciprocal relation between Obad. 1:19 and Amo. 9:12. And Jonah is linked on to Obadiah: for Obadiah begins thus, “We have heard tidings from Jehovah, and a messenger is sent among the nations;” and Jonah was such a messenger. Such grounds as these, the further study of which we must leave to the introduction to the book of the twelve prophets, also had their influence upon the pairing of the prophets of Judah with those of Israel. The fact that Zephaniah follows Habakkuk may be accounted for from a similar ground, which coincides in this case with the chronological order; for a catchword in Zephaniah’s prophecy, “Hold thy peace at the presence of Jehovah” (Zep. 1:7), is taken from Hab. 2:20. The prophets after the captivity (called in the Talmud nebiim ha-acharonim , the last prophets), which necessarily followed one another in the order determined by the date and contents of their books, bring the whole to a close. The so-called greater prophets are attached in the Hebrew canon to the book of Kings; and in both the Hebrew and Alexandrian canons Isaiah stands at the head. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel— this is the order in which they follow one another in our editions, in accordance with the time of their respective labours. In German and French codices, we occasionally meet with a different arrangement, viz., Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah. This is the order given in the Talmud, b. Bathra , 14 b. The principle upon which it is founded is the kindred nature of the contents, which also helped to determine the order of the twelve. Jeremiah follows the book of Kings, because nearly all his predictions group themselves around the Chaldean catastrophe, with which the book of Kings closes; and Isaiah follows Ezekiel, whose book closes in a consolatory strain, because that of Isaiah is, as the Talmud says, nothing but consolation. But the other arrangement, adopted in the Masora and MSS of the Spanish class, has prevailed over this talmudic order, which has been appealed to, though without any good ground, by the opponents of the authenticity of Isa. 40-66 as supporting their conclusions.[4] [1] The title Tirshatha is probably to be explained according to the Armenian tir-saÑt,“lord of the kingdom or province.” Shatha is another form of the terminations to such names of towns as Artaxata (= Artasata, for saÑtis equivalent to the Persian khsatra ), Samosata, etc. [2] See my article on Daniel in Herzog’s Cyclopaedia. [3] The office of national annalist among the ancient Persians (see Brissonius, De regno Persarum , i. § 229), and that of wakaÑjinuwÑs, or historian, which still exists at the Persian court, are perfectly similar in character. The Chinese have had their national historians from the time of Emperor Wu-ti of the Han dynasty (in the second century after Christ), and the annals of each dynasty are published on its extinction. The same institution existed in the kingdom of Barma, where the annals of every king were written after his death. [4] Isaiah was regarded as the consolatory prophet preeminently, and more especially on account of Isa. 40-66, so that, according to b. Berachoth , 57 b , whoever saw Isaiah in a dream might look for consolation; and, according to the Midrash on the Lamentations, Isaiah had previously rectified all the evils that Jeremiah foretold. The first prerequisite to a clear understanding and full appreciation of the prophecies of Isaiah, is a knowledge of his time, and of the different periods of his ministry. The first period was in the reigns of Uzziah (b.c. 811-759) and Jotham (759-743). The precise starting-point depends upon the view we take of -13. But, in any case, Isaiah commenced his ministry towards the close of Uzziah’s reign, and laboured on throughout the sixteen years of the reign of Jotham. The first twenty-seven of the fifty-two years that Uzziah reigned run parallel to the last twenty-seven of the forty-one that Jeroboam II reigned (b.c. 825-784). Under Joash, and his son Jeroboam II, the kingdom of Israel passed through a period of outward glory, which surpassed, both in character and duration, any that it had reached before; and this was also the case with the kingdom of Judah under Uzziah and his son Jotham. As the glory of the one kingdom faded away, that of the other increased. The bloom of the northern kingdom was destroyed and surpassed by that of the southern. But outward splendour contained within itself the fatal germ of decay and ruin in the one case as much as in the other; for prosperity degenerated into luxury, and the worship of Jehovah became stiffened into idolatry. It was in this last and longest time of Judah’s prosperity that Isaiah arose, with the mournful vocation to preach repentance without success, and consequently to have to announce the judgment of hardening and devastation, of the ban and of banishment. The second period of his ministry extended from the commencement of the reign of Ahaz to that of the reign of Hezekiah. Within these sixteen years three events occurred, which combined to bring about a new and calamitous turn in the history of Judah. In the place of the worship of Jehovah, which had been maintained with outward regularity and legal precision under Uzziah and Jotham; as soon as Ahaz ascended the throne, open idolatry was introduced of the most abominable description and in very various forms. The hostilities which began while Jotham was living, were perpetuated by Pekah the king of Israel and Rezin the king of Damascene Syria; and in the Syro-Ephraimitish war, an attack was made upon Jerusalem, with the avowed intention of bringing the Davidic rule to an end. Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, to help him out of these troubles. He thus made flesh his arm, and so entangled the nation of Jehovah with the kingdom of the world, that from that time forward it never truly recovered its independence again. The kingdom of the world was the heathen state in its Nimrodic form. Its perpetual aim was to extend its boundaries by constant accretions, till it had grown into a world-embracing colossus; and in order to accomplish this, it was ever passing beyond its natural boundaries, and coming down like an avalanche upon foreign nations, not merely for self-defence or revenge, but for the purpose of conquest also. Assyria and Rome were the first and last links in that chain of oppression by the kingdom of the world, which ran through the history of Israel. Thus Isaiah, standing as he did on the very threshold of this new and all-important turn in the history of his country, and surveying it with his telescopic glance, was, so to speak, the universal prophet of Israel. The third period of his ministry extended from the accession of Hezekiah to the fifteenth year of his reign. Under Hezekiah the nation rose, almost at the same pace at which it had previously declined under Ahaz. He forsook the ways of his idolatrous father, and restored the worship of Jehovah. The mass of the people, indeed, remained inwardly unchanged, but Judah had once more an upright king, who hearkened to the word of the prophet by his side - two pillars of the state, and men mighty in prayer ( ). When the attempt was afterwards made to break away from the Assyrian yoke, so far as the leading men and the great mass of the people were concerned, this was an act of unbelief originating merely in the same confident expectation of help from Egypt which had occasioned the destruction of the northern kingdom in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign; but on the part of Hezekiah it was an act of faith and confident reliance upon Jehovah (2Ki 18:7). Consequently, when Sennacherib, the successor of Shalmaneser, marched against Jerusalem, conquering and devastating the land as he advanced, and Egypt failed to send the promised help, the carnal defiance of the leaders and of the great mass of the people brought its own punishment. But Jehovah averted the worst extremity, by destroying the kernel of the Assyrian army in a single night; so that, as in the Syro-Ephraimitish war, Jerusalem itself was never actually besieged. Thus the faith of the king, and of the better portion of the nation, which rested upon the word of promise, had its reward. There was still a divine power in the state, which preserved it from destruction. The coming judgment, which nothing indeed could now avert, according to , was arrested for a time, just when the last destructive blow would naturally have been expected. It was in this miraculous rescue, which Isaiah predicted, and for which he prepared the way, that the public ministry of the prophet culminated. Isaiah was the Amos of the kingdom of Judah, having the same fearful vocation to foresee and to declare the fact, that for Israel as a people and kingdom the time of forgiveness had gone by. But he was not also the Hosea of the southern kingdom; for it was not Isaiah, but Jeremiah, who received the solemn call to accompany the disastrous fate of the kingdom of Judah with the knell of prophetic denunciations. Jeremiah was the Hosea of the kingdom of Judah. To Isaiah was given the commission, which was refused to his successor Jeremiah - namely, to press back once more, through the might of his prophetic word, coming as it did out of the depths of the strong spirit of faith, the dark night which threatened to swallow up his people at the time of the Assyrian judgment. After the fifteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, he took no further part in public affairs; but he lived till the commencement of Manasseh’s reign, when, according to a credible tradition, to which there is an evident allusion in (“they were sawn asunder”), he fell a victim to the heathenism which became once more supreme in the land. To this sketch of the times and ministry of the prophet we will add a review of the scriptural account of the four kings, under whom he laboured according to ; since nothing is more essential, as a preparation for the study of his book, than a minute acquaintance with these sections of the books of Kings and Chronicles. I. Historical Account of Uzziah-Jotham - The account of Uzziah given in the book of Kings (2Ki 15:1-7, to which we may add 2Ki 14:21-22), like that of Jeroboam II, is not so full as we should have expected. After the murder of Amaziah, the people of Judah, as related in , raised to the throne his son Azariah, probably not his first-born, who was then sixteen years old. It was he who built the Edomitish seaport town of Elath (for navigation and commerce), and made it a permanent possession of Judah (as in the time of Solomon). This notice is introduced, as a kind of appendix, at the close of Amaziah’s life and quite out of its chronological position, because the conquest of Elath was the crowning point of the subjugation of Edom by Amaziah, and not, as Thenius supposes, because it was Azariah’s first feat of arms, by which, immediately after his accession, he satisfied the expectations with which the army had made him king. For the victories gained by this king over Edom and the other neighbouring nations cannot have been obtained at the time when Amos prophesied, which was about the tenth year of Uzziah’s reign. The attack made by Amaziah upon the kingdom of Israel, had brought the kingdom of Judah into a state of dependence upon the former, and almost of total ruin, from which it only recovered gradually, like a house that had fallen into decay. The chronicler, following the text of the book of Kings, has introduced the notice concerning Elath in the same place ( , : it is written Eloth , as in 1Ki 9:26, and the Septuagint at 2Ki 14:22). He calls the king Uzziahu ; and it is only in the table of the kings of Judah, in , that he gives the name as Azariah . The author of the book of Kings, according to our Hebrew text, calls him sometimes Azariah or Azariahu , sometimes Uzziah or Uzziahu ; the Septuagint always gives the name as Azarias . The occurrence of the two names in both of the historical books is an indubitable proof that they are genuine. Azariah was the original name: out of this Uzziah was gradually formed by a significant elision; and as the prophetical books, from to Zec 14:5, clearly show, the latter was the name most commonly used. Azariah, as we learn from the section in the book of Kings relating to the reign of this monarch (2Ki 15:1-7), ascended the throne in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam’s reign, that is to say, in the fifteenth year of his sole government, the twenty-seventh from the time when he shared the government with his father Joash, as we may gather from 2Ki 13:13. The youthful sovereign, who was only sixteen years of age, was the son of Amaziah by a native of Jerusalem, and reigned fifty-two years. He did what was pleasing in the sight of God, like his father Amaziah; i.e., although he did not come up to the standard of David, he was one of the better kings. He fostered the worship of Jehovah, as prescribed in the law: nevertheless he left the high places ( bamoth ) standing; and while he was reigning, the people maintained in all its force the custom of sacrificing and burning incense upon the heights. He was punished by God with leprosy, which compelled him to live in a sick-house ( chophshuth = chophshith : sickness) till the day of his death, whilst his son Jotham was over the palace, and conducted the affairs of government. He was buried in the city of David, and Jotham followed by him on the throne. This is all that the author of the book of Kings tells us concerning Azariah: for the rest, he refers to the annals of the kings of Judah. The section in the Chronicles relating to Uzziah (2 Chron 26) is much more copious: the writer had our book of Kings before him, as , , clearly proves, and completed the defective notices from the source which he chiefly employed - namely, the much more elaborate midrash . Uzziah, he says, was zealous in seeking Elohim in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in divine visions; and in the days when he sought Jehovah, God made him to prosper. Thus the prophet Zechariah, as a faithful pastor and counsellor, stood in the same relation to him in which Jehoiada the high priest had stood to Joash, Uzziah’s grandfather. The chronicler then enumerates singly the divine blessings which Uzziah enjoyed. First , his victories over the surrounding nations (passing over the victory over Edom, which had been already mentioned), viz.: (1.) he went forth and warred against the Philistines, and brake down the wall of Gath, and the wall of Jabneh, and the wall of Ashdod, and built towns b'ashdod and b'phelistim (i.e., in the conquered territory of Ashdod, and in Philistia generally); (2.) God not only gave him victory over the Philistines, but also over the Arabians who dwelt in Gur-baal (an unknown place, which neither the lxx nor the Targumists could explain), and the Mehunim, probably a tribe of Arabia Petraea; (3.) the Ammonites gave him presents in token of allegiance, and his name was honoured even as far as Egypt, to such an extent did his power grow. Secondly , his buildings : he built towers (fortifications) above the corner gate, and above the valley gate, and above the Mikzoa , and fortified these (the weakest) portions of Jerusalem: he also built towers in the desert (probably in the desert between Beersheba and Gaza, to protect either the land, or the flocks and herds that were pasturing there); and dug many cisterns, for he had large flocks and herds both in the shephelah (the western portion of Southern Palestine) and in the mishor (the extensive pasture-land of the tribe territory of Reuben on the other side of the Jordan): he had also husbandmen and vine-dressers on the mountains, and in the fruitful fields, for he was a lover of agriculture. Thirdly , his well-organized troops : he had an army of fighting men which consisted - according to a calculation made by Jeiel the scribe, and Maaseiah, the officer under the superintendence of Nahaniah, one of the royal princes - of 2600 heads of families, who had 307,500 men under their command, “that made war with mighty power to help the king against the enemy.” Uzziah furnished these, according to all the divisions of the army, with shields, had spears, and helmet, and coats of mail, and bows, even with slinging-stones. He also had ingenious slinging-machines ( balistae ) made in Jerusalem, to fix upon the towers and ramparts, for the purpose of shooting arrows and large stones. His name resounded far abroad, for he had marvellous success, so that he became very powerful. Up to this point the chronicler has depicted the brighter side of Uzziah’s reign. His prosperous deeds and enterprises are all grouped together, so that it is doubtful whether the history within these several groups follows the chronological order or not. The light thrown upon the history of the times by the group of victories gained by Uzziah, would be worth twice as much if the chronological order were strictly observed. But even if we might assume that the victory over the Philistines preceded the victory over the Arabians of Gur-baal and the Mehunim, and this again the subjugation of Ammon, it would still be very uncertain what position the expedition against Edom - which was noticed by anticipation at the close of Amaziah’s life - occupied in relation to the other wars, and at what part of Uzziah’s reign the several wars occurred. All that can be affirmed is, that they preceded the closing years of his life, when the blessing of God was withdrawn from him. The chronicler relates still further, in , that as Uzziah became stronger and stronger, he fell into pride of heart, which led him to perform a ruinous act. He sinned against Jehovah his God, by forcing his way into the holy place of the temple, to burn incense upon the altar of incense, from the proud notion that royalty involved the rights of the priesthood, and that the priests were only the delegates and representatives of the king. Then Azariah the high priest, and eighty other priests, brave men, hurried after him, and went up to him, and said, “This does not belong to thee, Uzziah, to burn incense of Jehovah; but to the priests, and sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary, for thou sinnest; and this is not for thine honour with Jehovah Elohim!” Then Uzziah was wroth, as he held the censer in his hand; and while he was so enraged against the priests, leprosy broke out upon his forehead in the sight of the priests, in the house of Jehovah, at the altar of incense. When Azariah the high priest and the rest of the priests turned to him, behold, he was leprous in his forehead; and they brought him hurriedly away from thence - in fact, he himself hasted to go out - for Jehovah had smitten him. After having thus explained the circumstances which led to the king’s leprosy, the chronicler follows once more the text of the book of Kings - where the leprosy itself is also mentioned - and states that the king remained a leper until the day of his death, and lived in a sick-house, without ever being able to visit the temple again. But instead of the statement in the book of Kings, that he was buried in the city of David, the chronicler affirms more particularly that he was not placed in the king’s sepulchre; but, inasmuch as he was leprous, and would therefore have defiled it, was buried in the field near the sepulchre. But before introducing this conclusion to the history of Uzziah’s reign, and instead of referring to the annals of the kings of Judah, as the author of the book of Kings has done, or making such citations as we generally find, the author simply states, that “the rest of the acts of Uzziah, first and last, did Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, write.” It cannot possibly be either the prophecies of Isaiah of the time of Uzziah, or a certain historical portion of the original book of Isaiah’s predictions, to which reference is here made; for in that case we should expect the same notice at the close of the account of Jotham’s reign, or, at any rate, at the close of that of Ahaz (cf., and ). It is also inconceivable that Isaiah’s book of predictions should have contained either a prophetical or historical account of the first acts of Uzziah, since Isaiah was later than Amos, later even than Hosea; and his public ministry did not commence till the close of his reign-in fact, not till the year of his death. Consequently the chronicler must refer to some historical work distinct from “the visions of Isaiah.” Just as he mentions two historical works within the first epoch of the divided kingdom, viz., Shemaiah’s and Iddo’s - the former of which referred more especially to the entire history of Rehoboam, and the latter to the history of Abijah - and then again, in the second epoch, an historical work by Jehu ben Hanani, which contained a complete history of Jehoshaphat from the beginning to the end; so here, in the third epoch, he speaks of Isaiah ben Amoz, the greatest Judaean prophet of this epoch as the author of a special history of Uzziah, which was not incorporated in his “visions” like the history of Hezekiah (cf., ), but formed an independent work. Besides this prophetical history of Uzziah, there was also an annalistic history, as 2Ki 15:6 clearly shows; and it is quite possible that the annals of Uzziah were finished when Isaiah commenced his work, and that they were made use of by him. For the leading purpose of the prophetical histories was to exhibit the inward and divine connection between the several outward events, which the annals simply registered. The historical writings of a prophet were only the other side of his more purely prophetic work. In the light of the Spirit of God, the former looked deep into the past, the latter into the present. Both of them had to do with the ways of divine justice and grace, and set forth past and present, alike in view of the true goal, in which these two ways coincide. Jotham succeeded Uzziah, after having acted as regent, or rather as viceroy, for several years (2Ki 15:32-38). He ascended the throne in the second year of Pekah king of Israel, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, and reigned for sixteen years in a manner which pleased God, though he still tolerated the worship upon high places, as his father had done. He built the upper gate of the temple. The author has no sooner written this than he refers to the annals, simply adding, before concluding with the usual formula concerning his burial in the city of David, that in those days, i.e., towards the close of Jotham’s reign, the hostilities of Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel commenced, as a judgment from God upon Judah. The chronicler, however, makes several valuable additions to the text of the book of Kings, which he has copied word for word down to the notice concerning the commencement of the Syro-Ephraimitish hostilities (vid., ). We do not include in this the statement that Jotham did not force his way into the holy place in the temple: this is simply intended as a limitation of the assertion made by the author of the book of Kings as to the moral equality of Jotham and Uzziah, and in favour of the former. The words, “the people continued in their destructive course,” also contain nothing new, but are simply the shorter expression used in the Chronicles to indicate the continuance of the worship of the high places during Jotham’s reign. But there is something new in what the chronicler appends to the remark concerning the building of the upper gate of the temple, which is very bold and abrupt as it stands in the book of Kings, viz., “On the wall of the Ophel he built much (i.e., he fortified this southern spur of the temple hill still more strongly), and put towns in the mountains of Judah, and erected castles and towers in the forests (for watchtowers and defences against hostile attacks). He also fought with the king of the Ammonites; and when conquered, they were obliged to give him that year and the two following a hundred talents of silver, ten thousand cors of wheat, and the same quantity of barley. Jotham grew stronger and stronger, because he strove to walk before Jehovah his God.” The chronicler breaks off with this general statement, and refers, for the other memorabilia of Jotham, and all his wars and enterprises, to the book of the Kings of Israel and Judah. This is what the two historical books relate concerning the royal pair - Uzziah-Jotham - under whom the kingdom of Judah enjoyed once more a period of great prosperity and power - ”the greatest since the disruption, with the exception of that of Jehoshaphat; the longest during the whole period of its existence, the last before its overthrow” (Caspari). The sources from which the two historical accounts were derived were the annals: they were taken directly from them by the author of the book of Kings, indirectly by the chronicler. No traces can be discovered of the work written by Isaiah concerning Uzziah, although it may possibly be employed in the midrash of the chronicler. There is an important supplement to the account given by the chronicler in the casual remark made in , to the effect that Jotham had a census taken of the tribe of Gad, which was settled on the other side of the Jordan. We see from this, that in proportion as the northern kingdom sank down from the eminence to which it had attained under Jeroboam II, the supremacy of Judah over the land to the east of the Jordan was renewed. But we may see from Amos, that it was only gradually that the kingdom of Judah revived under Uzziah, and that at first, like the wall of Jerusalem, which was partially broken down by Joash, it presented the aspect of a house full of fissures, and towards Israel in a very shaky condition; also that the Ephraimitish ox- (or calf-) worship of Jehovah was carried on at Beersheba, and therefore upon Judaean soil, and that Judah did not keep itself free from the idolatry which it had inherited from the fathers ( ). Again, assuming that Amos commenced his ministry at about the tenth year of Uzziah’s reign, we may learn at least so much from him with regard to Uzziah’s victories over Edom, Philistia, and Ammon, that they were not gained till after the tenth year of his reign. Hosea, on the other hand, whose ministry commenced at the very earliest when that of Amos was drawing to a close, and probably not till the last five years of Jeroboam’s reign, bears witness to, and like Amos condemns, the participation in the Ephraimitish worship, into which Judah had been drawn under Uzziah-Jotham. But with him Beersheba is not referred to any more as an Israelitish seat of worship ( ); Israel does not interfere any longer with the soil of Judah, as in the time of Amos, since Judah has again become a powerful and well-fortified kingdom (Hos 8:14, cf., Hos 1:7). But, at the same time, it has become full of carnal trust and manifold apostasy from Jehovah (Hos 5:10; Hos 12:1); so that, although receiving at first a miraculous deliverance from God (Hos 1:7), it is ripening for the same destruction as Israel (Hos 6:11). This survey of the kingdom of Judah in the time of Uzziah-Jotham by the Israelitish prophet, we shall find repeated in Isaiah; for the same spirit animates and determines the verdicts of the prophets of both kingdoms. II. Historical Account of Ahaz and the Syro-Ephraimitish War. - The account of Ahaz, given in the book of Kings and in the Chronicles (2 Kings 16; ), may be divided into three parts: viz., first, the general characteristics; secondly, the account of the Syro-Ephraimitish war; and thirdly, the desecration of the temple by Ahaz, more especially by setting up an altar made after the model of that at Damascus. (1.) 2Ki 16:1-4. Ahaz ascended the throne in the seventeenth year of Pekah. He was then twenty years old (or twenty-five according to the lxx at , which is much more probable, as he would otherwise have had a son, Hezekiah, in the tenth years of his age), and he reigned sixteen years. He did not please God as his forefather David had done, but took the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire (i.e., burnt him in honour of Moloch), according to the abominations of the (Canaanitish) people whom Jehovah had driven out before Israel; and he offered sacrifice and burnt incense upon the high places, and upon the hills, and under every green tree. The Deuteronomic colouring of this passage is very obvious. The corresponding passage in the Chronicles is , where the additional fact is mentioned, that he even made molten images for Baalim, and burnt incense in the valley of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire (“ his children ,” a generic plural like “the kings” in , and “the sons” in : “ burnt, ” ויּבער, unless the reading ויּעבר be adopted, as it has been by the lxx, “he caused to pass through.”) (2.) 2Ki 16:5-9. Then (in the time of this idolatrous king Ahaz) the following well-known and memorable event occurred: Rezin the king of Aram, and Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel, went up against Jerusalem to war, and besieged Ahaz, “but could not overcome him,” i.e., as we may gather from , they were not able to get possession of Jerusalem, which was the real object of their expedition. “At that time” (the author of the book of Kings proceeds to observe), viz., at the time of this Syro-Ephraimitish war, Rezin king of Aram brought Elath to Aram (i.e., wrested again from the kingdom of Judah the seaport town which Uzziah had recovered a short time before), and drove the Judaeans out of Elath ( sic ); and Aramaeans came to Elath and settled there unto this day. Thenius, who starts with the needless assumption that the conquest of Elath took place subsequently to the futile attempt to take Jerusalem, gives the preference to the reading of the Keri , “and Edomites ( Edomina ) came to Elath,” and would therefore correct l'aram (to Aram) into l'edom (to Edom). “Rezin,” he says, “destroyed the work of Uzziah, and gave Edom its liberty again, in the hope that at some future time he might have the support of Edom, and so operate against Judah with greater success.” But, in answer to this, it may be affirmed that such obscure forms as ארומים for ארמּים are peculiar to this account, and that the words do not denote the restoration of a settlement, but mention the settlement as a new and remarkable fact. I therefore adopt Caspari’s conclusion, that the Syrian king transplanted a Syrian colony of traders to Elath, to secure the command of the maritime trade with all its attendant advantages; and this colony held its ground there for some time after the destruction of the Damascene kingdom, as the expression “to this day,” found in the earlier source of the author of the book of Kings, clearly implies. But if the conquest of Elath fell within the period of the Syro-Ephraimitish war, which commenced towards the end of Jotham’s reign, and probably originated in the bitter feelings occasioned by the almost total loss to Judah of the country on the east of the Jordan, and which assumed the form of a direct attack upon Jerusalem itself soon after Ahaz ascended the throne; the question arises, How was it that this design of the two allied kings upon Jerusalem was not successful? The explanation is given in the account contained in the book of Kings (2Ki 16:7): “Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pelezer ( sic ) the king of Asshur, to say to him, I am thy servant, and thy son; come up, and save me out of the hand of Aram, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, who have risen up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and the gold that was found in the house of Jehovah, and in the treasures of the palace, and sent it for a present to the king of Asshur. The king hearkened to his petition; and went against Damascus, and took it, and carried the inhabitants into captivity to Kir, and slew Rezin.” And what did Tiglath-pileser do with Pekah? The author of the book of Kings has already related, in the section referring to Pekah (2Ki 15:29), that he punished him by taking away the whole of the country to the east of the Jordan, and a large part of the territory on this side towards the north, and carried the inhabitants captive to Assyria. This section must be supplied here - an example of the great liberty which the historians allowed themselves in the selection and arrangement of their materials. The anticipation in 2Ki 16:5 is also quite in accordance with their usual style: the author first of all states that the expedition against Jerusalem was an unsuccessful one, and then afterwards proceeds to mention the reason for the failure - namely, the appeal of Ahaz to Assyria for help. For I also agree with Caspari in this, that the Syrians the Ephraimites were unable to take Jerusalem, because the tidings reached them, that Tiglath-pileser had been appealed to by Ahaz and was coming against them; and they were consequently obliged to raise the siege and made a speedy retreat. The account in the Chronicles (2 Chron 28:5-21) furnishes us with full and extensive details, with which to supplement the very condensed notice of the book of Kings. When we compare the two accounts, the question arises, whether they refer to two different expeditions (and if so, which of the two refers to the first expedition and which to the second), or whether they both relate to the same expedition. Let us picture to ourselves first of all the facts as given by the chronicler. “Jehovah, his God,” he says of Ahaz, “delivered him into the hand of the king of Aram, and they (the Aramaeans) smote him, and carried off from him a great crowd of captives, whom they brought to Damascus; and he was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who inflicted upon him a terrible defeat.” This very clearly implies, as Caspari has shown, that although the two kings set the conquest of Jerusalem before them as a common end at which to aim, and eventually united for the attainment of this end, yet for a time they acted separately. We are not told here in what direction Rezin’s army went. But we know from 2Ki 16:6 that it marched to Idumaea, which it could easily reach from Damascus by going through the territory of his ally - namely, the country of the two tribes and a half. The chronicler merely describes the simultaneous invasion of Judaea by Pekah, but he does this with all the greater fulness. “Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah a hundred and twenty thousand in one day, all valiant men, because they forsook Jehovah, the God of their fathers. Zichri, an Ephraimitish hero, slew Ma'asejahu the king’s son, and Azrikam the governor of the palace, and Elkanah, the second in rank to the king. And the Israelites carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand women, boys, and girls, and took away much spoil from them, and brought this booty to Samaria.” As the Jewish army numbered at that time three hundred thousand men ( ; ), and the war was carried on with the greatest animosity, these numbers need not be regarded as either spurious or exaggerated. Moreover, the numbers, which the chronicler found in the sources he employed, merely contained the estimate of the enormous losses sustained, as generally adopted at that time of the side of Judah itself. This bloody catastrophe was followed by a very fine and touching occurrence. A prophet of Jehovah, named Oded (a contemporary of Hosea, and a man of kindred spirit), went out before the army as it came back to Samaria, and charged the victors to release the captives of their brother nation, which had been terribly punished in God’s wrath, and by so doing to avert the wrath of God which threatened them as well. Four noble Ephraimitish heads of tribes, whose names the chronicler has preserved, supported the admonition of the prophet. The army then placed the prisoners and the booty at the disposal of the princes and the assembled people: “And these four memorable men rose up, and took the prisoners, and all their naked ones they covered with the booty, and clothed and shod them, and gave them to eat and drink, and anointed them, and conducted as many of them as were cripples upon asses, and brought them to Jericho the palm-city, to the neighbourhood of their brethren, and returned to Samaria.” Nothing but the rudest scepticism could ever seek to cast a slur upon this touching episode, the truth of which is so conspicuous. There is nothing strange in the fact that so horrible a massacre should be followed by a strong manifestation of the fraternal love, which had been forcibly suppressed, but was not rekindled by the prophet’s words. We find an older fellow-piece to this in the prevention of a fratricidal war by Shemaiah, as described in 1Ki 12:22-24. Now, when the chronicler proceeds to observe in , that “at that time Ahaz turned for help to the royal house of Assyria” ( malce asshur ), in all probability this took place at the time when he had sustained two severe defeats, one at the hands of Pekah to the north of Jerusalem; and another from Rezin in Idumaea. The two battles belong to the period before the siege of Jerusalem, and the appeal for help from Assyria falls between the battles and the siege. The chronicler then mentions other judgments which fell upon the king in his estrangement from God, viz.: (1.) “Moreover the Edomites came, smote Judah, and carried away captives;” possibly while the Syro-Ephraimitish war was still going on, after they had welcomed Rezin as their deliverer, had shaken off the Jewish yoke, and had supported the Syrian king against Judah in their own land; (2.) the Philistines invaded the low land ( shephelah ) and the south land ( negeb ) of Judah, and took several towns, six of which the chronicler mentions by name, and settled in them; for “Jehovah humbled Judah because of Ahaz the king of Israel (an epithet with several sarcastic allusions), for he acted without restraint in Judah, and most wickedly against Jehovah.” The breaking away of the Philistines from the Jewish dominion took place, according to Caspari, in the time of the Syro-Ephraimitish war. The position of in the section reaching from to (viz., , invasion of the Philistines; , that of the Edomites) renders this certainly very probable, though it is not conclusive, as Caspari himself admits. In , , the chronicler adds an appendix to the previous list of punishments: Tiglath-Pilnezer (sic) the king of Asshur came upon him, and oppressed him instead of strengthening him; for Ahaz had plundered both temple and palace, and given the treasures to the king of Asshur, without receiving any proper help in return. Thenius disputes the rendering, “He strengthened him not” (cf., ); but Caspari has shown that it is quite in accordance with the facts of the case. Tiglath-pileser did not bring Ahaz any true help; for what he proceeded to do against Syria and Israel was not taken in hand in the interests of Ahaz, but to extend his own imperial dominion. He did not assist Ahaz to bring ether the Edomites or the Philistines into subjection again, to say nothing of compensating him for his losses with either Syrian or Ephraimitish territory. Nor was it only that he did not truly help him: he really oppressed him, by making him a tributary vassal instead of a free and independent prince - a relation to Asshur which, according to many evident signs, was the direct consequence of his appeal for help, and which was established, at any rate, at the very commencement of Hezekiah’s reign. Under what circumstances this took place we cannot tell; but it is very probable that, after the victories over Rezin and Pekah, a second sum of money was demanded by Tiglath-pileser, and then from that time forward a yearly tribute. The expression used by the chronicler-”he came upon him” - seems, in fact, to mean that he gave emphasis to this demand by sending a detachment of his army; even if we cannot take it, as Caspari does, in a rhetorical rather than a purely historical sense, viz., as signifying that, “although Tiglath-pileser came, as Ahaz desired, his coming was not such as Ahaz desired, a coming to help and benefit, but rather to oppress and injure.” (3.) The third part of the two historical accounts describes the pernicious influence which the alliance with Tiglath-pileser exerted upon Ahaz, who was already too much inclined to idolatry (2Ki 16:10-18). After Tiglath-pileser had marched against the ruler of Damascus, and delivered Ahaz from the more dangerous of his two adversaries (and possibly from both of them), Ahaz went to Damascus to present his thanks in person. There he saw the altar (which was renowned as a work of art), and sent an exact model to Uriah the high priest, who had an altar constructed like it by the time that the king returned. As soon as Ahaz came back he went up to this altar and offered sacrifice, thus officiating as priest himself (probably as a thanksgiving for the deliverance he had received). The brazen altar (of Solomon), which Uriah had moved farther forward to the front of the temple building, he put farther back again, placing it close to the north side of the new one (that the old one might not appear to have the slightest preference over the new), and commanded the high priest to perform the sacrificial service in future upon the new great altar; adding, at the same time, “And (as for) the brazen altar, I will consider (what shall be done with it).” “And king Ahaz,” it is stated still further, “broke out the borders of the stools, and took away the basons; and the sea he took down from the oxen that bare it, and set it upon a stone pedestal (that took the place of the oxen). And the covered sabbath-hall which had been built in the temple, and the outer king’s entrance, he removed into the temple of Jehovah before the king of Assyria.” Thenius explains this as meaning “he altered them” (taking away the valuable ornaments from both), that he might be able to take with him to Damascus the necessary presents for the king of Asshur. Ewald’s explanation, however, is better than this, and more in accordance with the expression “before,” viz., “in order that he might be able to secure the continued favour of the dreaded Assyrian king, by continually sending him fresh presents.” But הסבdoes not mean to alter, and בית ה = בבית ה would be an unmeaning addition in the wrong place, which would only obscure the sense. If the great alterations mentioned in 2Ki 16:17 were made for the purpose of sending presents to the king of Assyria with or from the things that were removed, those described in 2Ki 16:18 were certainly made from fear of the king; and, what appears most probable to me, not to remove the two splendid erections from the sight of the Assyrians, nor to preserve their being used in the event of an Assyrian occupation of Jerusalem, but in order that his relation to the great king of Assyria might not be disturbed by his appearing as a zealous worshipper of Jehovah. They were changes made from fear of man and servility, and were quite in keeping with the hypocritical, insincere, and ignoble character of Ahaz. The parallel passage in the Chronicles is -25. “In the time of his distress,” says the chronicler in his reflective and rhetorical style, “he sinned still more grievously against Jehovah: he, king Ahaz. He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, who had smitten him. For the gods of the kings of Aram, he said, helped them; I will sacrifice to them, that they may also help me. And they brought him and all Israel to ruin. And Ahaz collected together the vessels of the house of God, and cut them in pieces, and shut the doors of the house of Jehovah, and made himself altars in ever corner of Jerusalem. And in every town of Judah he erected high places to burn incense to other gods, and stirred up the displeasure of Jehovah the God of his fathers.” Thenius regards this passage as an exaggerated paraphrase of the parallel passage in the book of Kings, and as resting upon a false interpretation of the latter. But the chronicler does not affirm that Ahaz dedicated the new altar to the gods of Damascus, but rather that in the time of the Syro-Ephraimitish war he attempted to secure for himself the same success in war as the Syrians had obtained, by worshipping their gods. The words of Ahaz, which are reported by him, preclude any other interpretation. He there states - what by no means contradicts the book of Kings - that Ahaz laid violent hands upon the furniture of the temple. All the rest - namely, the allusion to his shutting the temple - gates, and erecting altars and high places on every hand - is a completion of the account in the book of Kings, the historical character of which it is impossible to dispute, if we bear in mind that the Syro-Ephraimitish war took place at the commencement of the reign of Ahaz, who was only sixteen years old at the time. The author of the book of Kings closes the history of the reign of Ahaz with a reference to the annals of the kings of Judah, and with the remark that he was buried in the city of David (2Ki 16:19-20). The chronicler refers to the book of the kings of Judah and Israel, and observes that he was indeed buried in the city (lxx “in the city of David”), but not in the king’s sepulchre ( ). The source employed by the chronicler was his midrash of the entire history of the kings; from which he made extracts, with the intention of completing the text of our book of Kings, to which he appended his work. His style was formed after that of the annals, whilst that of the author of the book of Kings is formed after Deuteronomy. But from what source did the author of the book of Kings make his extracts? The section relating to Ahaz has some things quite peculiar to itself, as compared with the rest of the book, viz., a liking for obscure forms, such as Eloth (2Ki 16:6), hakkomim (2Ki 16:7), Dummesek (2Ki 16:10), and Aromim (2Ki 16:6); the name Tiglath-peleser ; מכף instead of מיד, which is customary elsewhere; the rare and more colloquial term jehudim (Jews); the inaccurate construction את־המסגרות המכונות (2Ki 16:17); and the verb בּקּר (to consider, 2Ki 16:15), which does not occur anywhere else. These peculiarities may be satisfactorily explained on the assumption that the author employed the national annals; and that, as these annals had been gradually composed by the successive writings of many different persons, whilst there was an essential uniformity in the mode in which the history was written, there was also of necessity a great variety in the style of composition. But is the similarity between 2Ki 16:5 and reconcilable with this annalistic origin? The resemblance in question certainly cannot be explained, as Thenius supposes, from the fact that was also taken from the national annals; but rather on the ground assigned by Caspari - namely, that the author of the Chronicles had not only the national annals before him, but also the book of Isaiah’s prophecies, to which he directs his readers’ attention by commencing the history of the Syro-Ephraimitish war in the words of the portion relating to Ahaz. The design of the two allies, as we know from the further contents of Isaiah 1, was nothing less than to get possession of Jerusalem, to overthrow the Davidic government there, and establish in its stead, in the person of a certain ben-Tāb ' êl (“son of Tabeal,” ), a newly created dynasty, that would be under subjection to themselves. The failure of this intention is the thought that is briefly indicated in 2Ki 16:5 and Isa 7:1. III. Historical Account of Hezekiah, more especially of the first six years of his reign . - The account given of Hezekiah in the book of Kings is a far more meagre one than we should expect to find, when we have taken out the large section relating to the period of the Assyrian catastrophe (2 Kings 18:13-20:19), which is also found in the book of Isaiah, and which will come under review in the commentary on Isaiah 36-39. All that is then left to the author of the book of Kings is 2Ki 18:1-12 and 2Ki 20:20, 2Ki 20:21; and in these two paragraphs, which enclose the section of Isaiah, there are only a few annalistic elements worked up in Deuteronomical style. Hezekiah began to reign in the third year of Hosea king of Israel. He was twenty-five years old when he came to the throne, and reigned twenty-nine years. He was a king after the model of David. He removed the high places, broke in pieces the statutes, cut down the Asheroth, and pounded the serpent, which had been preserved from the time of Moses, and had become an object of idolatrous worship. In his confidence in Jehovah he was unequalled by any of his followers or predecessors. The allusion here is to that faith of his, by which he broke away from the tyranny of Asshur, and also recovered his supremacy over the Philistines. We have no means of deciding in what years of Hezekiah’s reign these two events - the revolt from Asshur, and the defeat of the Philistines - occurred. The author proceeds directly afterwards, with a studious repetition of what he has already stated in in the history of Hosea’s reign, to describe Shalmanassar’s expedition against Israel in the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign (the seventh of Hosea's), and the fall of Samaria, which took place, after a siege of three years, in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign, and the ninth of Hosea's. But as Shalmanassar made no attack upon Judah at the time when he put an end to the kingdom of Israel, the revolt of Hezekiah cannot have taken place till afterwards. But with regard to the victory over the Philistines, there is nothing in the book of Kings to help us even to a negative conclusion. In 2Ki 20:20, 2Ki 20:21, the author brings his history rapidly to a close, and merely refers such as may desire to know more concerning Hezekiah, especially concerning his victories and aqueducts, to the annals of the kings of Judah. The chronicler merely gives an extract from the section of Isaiah; but he is all the more elaborate in the rest. All that he relates in 2 Chron 29:2-31 is a historical commentary upon the good testimony given to king Hezekiah in the book of Kings (2Ki 18:3), which the chronicler places at the head of his own text in 2Ch 29:2. Even in the month Nisan of the first year of his reign, Hezekiah re-opened the gates of the temple, had it purified from the defilement consequent upon idolatry, and appointed a re-consecration of the purified temple, accompanied with sacrifice, music, and psalms (Isa 29:3.). Hezekiah is introduced here (a fact of importance in relation to Isaiah 38) as the restorer of “the song of the Lord” ( Shir Jehovah ), i.e., of liturgical singing. The Levitical and priestly music, as introduced and organized by David, Gad, and Nathan, was heard again, and Jehovah was praised once more in the words of David the king and Asaph the seer. The chronicler then relates in Isaiah 30 how Hezekiah appointed a solemn passover in the second month, to which even inhabitants of the northern kingdom, who might be still in the land, were formally and urgently invited. It was an after-passover, which was permitted by the law, as the priests had been busy with the purification of the temple in the first month, and therefore had been rendered unclean themselves: moreover, there would not have been sufficient time for summoning the people to Jerusalem. The northern tribes as a whole refused the invitation in the most scornful manner, but certain individuals accepted it with penitent hearts. It was a feast of joy, such as had not been known since the time of Solomon (this statement is not at variance with 2Ki 23:22), affording, as it did, once more a representation and assurance of that national unity which had been rent in twain ever since the time of Rehoboam. Caspari has entered into a lengthened investigation as to the particular year of Hezekiah’s reign in which this passover was held. He agrees with Keil, that it took place after the fall of Samaria and the deportation of the people by Shalmanassar; but he does not feel quite certain of his conclusion. The question itself, however, is one that ought not to be raised at all, if we think the chronicler a trustworthy authority. He places this passover most unquestionably in the second month of the first year of Hezekiah’s reign; and there is no difficulty occasioned by this, unless we regard what Tiglath-pileser had done to Israel as of less importance than it actually was. The population that was left behind was really nothing more than a remnant; and, moreover, the chronicler draws an evident contrast between tribes and individuals, so that he was conscious enough that there were still whole tribes of the northern kingdom who were settled in their own homes. He then states in , that the inhabitants of the towns of Judah (whom he calls “all Israel,” because a number of emigrant Israelites had settled there) went forth, under the influence of the enthusiasm consequent upon the passover they had celebrated, and broke in pieces the things used in idolatrous worship throughout both kingdoms; and in 2Ch 31:2., that Hezekiah restored the institutions of divine worship that had been discontinued, particularly those relating to the incomes of the priests and Levites. Everything else that he mentions in 32:1-26, , belongs to a later period than the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign; and so far as it differs from the section in Isaiah, which is repeated in the book of Kings, it is a valuable supplement, more especially with reference to 2Ki 22:8-11 (which relates to precautions taken in the prospect of the approaching Assyrian siege). But the account of Hezekiah’s wealth in extends over the whole of his reign. The notice respecting the diversion of the upper Gihon ( ) reaches rather into the period of the return after the Assyrian catastrophe, than into the period before it; but nothing can be positively affirmed. Having thus obtained the requisite acquaintance with the historical accounts which bear throughout upon the book of Isaiah, so far as it has for its starting-point and object the history of the prophet’s own times, we will now turn to the book itself, for the purpose of acquiring such an insight into its general plan as is necessary to enable us to make a proper division of our own work of exposition. We may safely enter upon our investigation with the preconceived opinion that the collection before us was edited by the prophet himself. For, with the exception of the book of Jonah, which belongs to the prophetico-historical writings rather than to the literature of prediction, or the prophetical writings in the ordinary acceptation of the term, all the canonical books of prophecy were written and arranged by the prophets whose names they bear. The most important to our purpose is the analogy of the larger books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. No one denies that Ezekiel prepared his work for publication exactly as it lies before us now; and Jeremiah informs us himself, that he collected and published his prophecies on two separate occasions. Both collections are arranged according to the two different points of view of the subject-matter and the order of time, which are interwoven the one with the other. And this is also the case with the collection of Isaiah’s prophecies. As a whole, it is arranged chronologically. The dates given in ; ; ; , are so many points in a progressive line. The three principal divisions also form a chronological series. For Isaiah 1-6 set forth the ministry of Isaiah under Uzziah-Jotham; Isaiah 7-39, his ministry under Ahaz and Hezekiah down to the fifteenth year of the reign of the latter; whilst Isaiah 40-66, assuming their authenticity, were the latest productions of the deepest inner-life, and were committed directly to writing. In the central part, the Ahaz group (Isaiah 7-12) also precedes the Hezekiah group (Isaiah 13-39) chronologically. But the order of time is interrupted in several places by an arrangement of the subject-matter, which was of greater importance to the prophet. The address in Isaiah 1 is not the oldest, but is placed at the head as an introduction to the whole. The consecration of the prophet ( ), which ought to stand at the beginning of the Uzziah-Jotham group, if it relates to his original consecration to his office, is placed at the end, where it looks both backwards and forwards, as a prophecy that was in course of fulfilment. The Ahaz group, which follows next (Isaiah 7-12), is complete in itself, and, as it were, from one casting. And in the Hezekiah group (Isaiah 13-39) the chronological order is frequently interrupted again. The prophecies against the nations ( ), which belong to the Assyrian period, have a massa upon Babel, the city of the world’s power, for their opening piece (Isaiah 13-14:23); a massa upon Tyre, the city of the world’s commerce, which was to be destroyed by the Chaldeans, for their finale (Isaiah 23); and a shorter massa upon Babel, for a party-wall dividing the cycle into two halves ( ); and all the prophecies upon the nations run into a grand apocalyptic epilogue (Isaiah 24-27), like rivers into a sea. The first part of the Hezekiah group, the contents of which are pre-eminently ethnic (Isaiah 13-27), are interwoven with passages which may not have been composed till after the fifteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign. The grand epilogue (Isaiah 34-35), in which the second portion of the Hezekiah group dies away, is also another such passage. This second part is occupied chiefly with the fate of Judah, the judgment inflicted upon Judah by the imperial power of Assyria, and the deliverance which awaited it (Isaiah 27-33). This prediction closes with a declaration, in Isaiah 34-35, on the one hand, of the judgment of God upon the world of Israel’s foes; and on the other hand, of the redemption of Israel itself. This passage, which was composed after the fifteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, is followed by the historical portions (Isaiah 36-39), which enclose in a historical frame the predictions of Isaiah delivered when the Assyrian catastrophe was close at hand, and furnish us with the key to the interpretation not only of Isaiah 7-35, but of Isaiah 40-66 also. Taking the book of Isaiah, therefore, as a whole, in the form in which it lies before us, it may be divided into two halves, viz., Isaiah 1-39, and Isaiah 40-66. The former consists of seven parts, the latter of three. The first half may be called the Assyrian , as the goal to which it points is the downfall of Asshur; the second the Babylonian , as its goal is the deliverance from Babel. The first half, however, is not purely Assyrian; but there are Babylonian pieces introduced among the Assyrian, and such others, as a rule, as break apocalyptically through the limited horizon of the latter. The following are the seven divisions in the first half. (1.) Prophecies founded upon the growing obduracy of the great mass of the people (Isaiah 2-6). (2.) The consolation of Immanuel under the Assyrian oppressions (Isaiah 7-12). These two form a syzygy, which concludes with a psalm of the redeemed ( ), the echo, in the last days, of the song at the Red Sea. The whole is divided by the consecration of the prophet ( ), which looks backwards and forwards with threatenings and promises. It is introduced by a summary prologue (Isaiah 1), in which the prophet, standing midway between Moses and Jesus the Christ, commences in the style of the great Mosaic ode. (3.) Predictions of the judgment and salvation of the heathen, which belong, for the most part, to the time of the Assyrian judgment, though they are enclosed and divided by Babylonian portions. For, as we have already observed, and oracle concerning Babel, the city of the world-power, forms the introduction (Isaiah 13-14:23); an oracle concerning Tyre, the city of the world’s commerce, which was to receive its mortal wound from the Chaldeans, the conclusion (Isaiah 23); and a second oracle on the desert by the sea, i.e., Babel, the centre ( ). (4.) To this so thoughtfully arranged collection of predictions concerning the nations outside the Israelitish pale, there is attached a grand apocalyptic prophecy of the judgment of the world and the last things (Isaiah 24-27), which gives it a background that fades away into eternity, and forms with it a second syzygy. (5.) From these eschatological distances the prophet returns to the realities of the present and of the immediate future, and describes the revolt from Asshur, and its consequences (Isaiah 28-33). The central point of this group is the prophecy of the precious corner-stone laid in Zion. (6.) This is also paired off by the prophet with a far-reaching eschatological prediction of revenge and redemption for the church (Isaiah 34-35), in which we already hear, as in a prelude, the keynote of Isaiah 40-66. (7.) After these three syzygies we are carried back, in the first two historical accounts of Isaiah 36-39, into the Assyrian times, whilst the other two show us in the distance the future entanglement with Babylon, which was commencing already. These four accounts are arranged without regard to the chronological order, so that one half looks backwards and the other forwards, and thus the two halves of the book are clasped together. The prophecy in stands between these two halves like a sign-post, with the inscription “To Babylon” upon it. It is thither that the further course of Israel’s history tends. There, from this time forward, is Isaiah buried in spirit with his people. And there, in Isaiah 40-66, he proclaims to the Babylonian exiles their approaching deliverance. The trilogical arrangement of this book of consolation has been scarcely disputed by any one, since it was first pointed out by Rückert in his Translation and Exposition of Hebrew Prophets (1831). It is divided into three sections, each containing three times three addresses, with a kind of refrain at the close. The collection of Isaiah’s prophecies is thus a complete work, most carefully and skilfully arranged. It is thoroughly worthy of the prophet. Nevertheless, we should be unable to attribute it to him in its present form, (1.) if it were impossible that Isaiah 13-14:23; ; ; 34-35, could have been composed by Isaiah, and (2.) if the historical accounts in Isaiah 36-39, which are also to be found in 2 Kings 18:13-20:19, have been copied from the book of Kings, or even directly from the national annals. For if the prophecies in question be taken away, the beautiful whole unquestionably falls into a confused quodlibet , more especially the book against the nations; and if Isaiah 36-39 were not written directly by Isaiah, the two halves of the collection would be left without a clasp to bind them together. It would be irregular to think of deciding the critical questions bearing upon this point now, instead of taking them up in connection with our exegetical inquiries. At the same time, we will put the reader in possession at once of the more general points, which cause us to dissent from the conclusions of the modern critics, who regard the book of Isaiah as an anthology composed of the productions of different authors. The critical treatment of Isaiah commenced as follows: It began with the second part . Koppe first of all expressed some doubts as to the genuineness of Isaiah 1. Doderlein then gave utterance to a decided suspicion as to the genuineness of the whole; and Justi, followed by Eichhorn, Paulus, and Bertholdt, raised this suspicion into firm assurance that the whole was spurious. The result thus obtained could not possibly continue without reaction upon the first part. Rosenmüller, who was always very dependent upon his predecessors, was the first to question whether the oracle against Babylon in Isaiah 13-14:23 was really Isaiah’s, as the heading affirms; and to his great relief, Justi and Paulus undertook the defence of his position. Further progress was now made. With the first oracle against Babylon in Isaiah 13-14:23, the second, in , was also condemned; and Rosenmüller was justly astonished when Gesenius dropped the former, but maintained that the arguments with regard to the latter were inconclusive. There still remained the oracle against Tyre in Isaiah 23, which might either be left as Isaiah’s, or attributed to a younger unknown prophet, according to the assumption that it predicted the destruction of Tyre by Assyrians or by Chaldeans. Eichhorn, followed by Rosenmüller, decided that it was not genuine. But Gesenius understood by the destroyers the Assyrians; and as the prophecy consequently did not extend beyond Isaiah’s horizon, he defended its authenticity. Thus the Babylonian series was set aside, or at any rate pronounced thoroughly suspicious. But the keen eyes of the critics made still further discoveries. Eichhorn found a play upon words in the cycle of predictions in Isaiah 24-27, which was unworthy of Isaiah. Gesenius detected an allegorical announcement of the fall of Babylon. Consequently they both condemned these three chapters; and it had its effect, for Ewald transferred them to the time of Cambyses. Still shorter work was made with the cycle of predictions in Isaiah 34-35, on account of its relation to the second part. Rosenmüller pronounced it, without reserve, “a song composed in the time of the Babylonian captivity, when it was approaching its termination.” This is the true account of the origin of the criticism upon Isaiah. It was in the swaddling-clothes of rationalism that it attained its maturity. Its first attempts were very juvenile. The names of its founders have been almost forgotten. It was Gesenius, Hitzig, and Ewald, who first raised it to the eminence of a science. If we take our stand upon this eminence, we find that the book of Isaiah contains prophecies by Isaiah himself, and also prophecies by persons who were either directly or indirectly his disciples. The New Testament passages in which the second half of the book of Isaiah is cited as Isaiah’s, are no proof of the contrary, since , for example, which has no heading at all, is cited in as David’s, merely because it is contained in the Davidic Psalter, and no critic would ever feel that he was bound by that. But many objections present themselves to such a conclusion. In the first place, nothing of the kind can be pointed out in any of the other canonical books of prophecy, except indeed the book of Zechariah, in which Isaiah 9-14 is said to stand in precisely the same position as Isaiah 40-66, according to Hitzig, Ewald, and others; with this difference, however, that Isaiah 40-66 is attributed to a later prophet than Isaiah, whereas Zech. 9-14 is attributed to one or two prophets before the time of Zechariah. But even De Wette, who maintained, in the first three editions of his Introduction to the Old Testament , that Zech was written before the captivity, altered his views in the fourth edition; and Köhler has lately confirmed the unity of the book of Zechariah after an unbiased investigation. It is Zechariah himself who prophesies of the last times in Isaiah 9-14, in images drawn from the past, and possibly with the introduction of earlier oracles. It remains, therefore, that not a single book of prophecy is open to any such doubts as to the unity of its authorship and Hitzig admits that even the book of Jeremiah, although interpolated, does not contain spurious sections. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that something extraordinary might have taken place in connection with the book of Isaiah. But there are grave objections even to such an assumption as this in the face of existing facts. For example, it would be a marvellous occurrence in the history of chances, for such a number of predictions of this particular kind to have been preserved - all of them bearing so evidently the marks of Isaiah’s style, that for two thousand years the have been confounded with his own prophecies. It would be equally marvellous that the historians should know nothing at all about the authors of these prophecies; and thirdly, it would be very strange that the names of these particular prophets should have shared the common fate of being forgotten, although they must all have lived nearer to the compiler’s own times than the old model prophet, whose style they imitated. It is true that these difficulties are not conclusive proofs to the contrary; but, at any rate, they are so much to the credit of the traditional authorship of the prophecies attacked. On the other hand, the weight of this tradition is not properly appreciated by opponents. Wilful contempt of external testimony, and frivolity in the treatment of historical data, have been from the very first the fundamental evils apparent in the manner in which modern critics have handled the questions relating to Isaiah. These critics approach everything that is traditional with the presumption that it is false; and whoever would make a scientific impression upon them, must first of all declare right fearlessly his absolute superiority to the authority of tradition. Now tradition is certainly not infallible. No more are the internal grounds of the so-called higher criticism, especially in the questions relating to Isaiah. And in the case before us, the external testimony is greatly strengthened by the relation in which Zephaniah and Jeremiah, the two most reproductive prophets, stand not only to Isaiah 40-66, but also to the suspected sections of the first half. They had these prophecies in their possession, since they evidently copy them, and incorporate passages taken from them into their own prophecies; a fact which Caspari has most conclusively demonstrated, but which not one of the negative critics has ventured to look fairly in the face, or to set aside by counter-proofs of equal force. Moreover, although the suspected prophecies do indeed contain some things for which vouchers cannot be obtained from the rest of the book, yet the marks which are distinctly characteristic of Isaiah outweigh by far these peculiarities, which have been picked out with such care; and even in the prophecies referred to, it is Isaiah’s spirit which animates the whole, Isaiah’s heart which beats, and Isaiah’s fiery tongue which speaks in both the substance and the form. Again, the type of the suspected prophecies - which, if they are genuine, belong to the prophet’s latest days - is not thoroughly opposed to the type of the rest; on the contrary, those prophecies which are acknowledged to be genuine, present many a point of contact with this; and even the transfigured form and richer eschatological contents of the disputed prophecies have their preludes there. There is nothing strange in this great variety of ideas and forms, especially in Isaiah, who is confessedly the most universal of all the prophets, even if we only look at those portions which are admitted to be genuine, and who varies his style in so masterly a way to suit the demands of his materials, his attitude, and his purpose. One might suppose that these three counter-proofs, which can be followed up even to the most minute details, would have some weight; but for Hitzig, Ewald, and many others, they have absolutely none. Why not? These critics think it impossible that the worldwide empire of Babel, and its subsequent transition to Medes and Persians, should have been foreseen by Isaiah in the time of Hezekiah. Hitzig affirms in the plainest terms, that the very same Caligo futuri covered the eyes of the Old Testament prophets generally, as that to which the human race was condemned during the time that the oracle at Delphi was standing. Ewald speaks of the prophets in incomparably higher terms; but even to him the prophetic state was nothing more than a blazing up of the natural spark which lies slumbering in every man, more especially in Ewald himself. These two Coryphaei of the modern critical school find themselves hemmed in between the two foregone conclusions, “There is no true prophecy,” and “There is no true miracle.” They call their criticism free; but when examined more closely, it is in a vice. In this vice it has two magical formularies, with which it fortifies itself against any impression from historical testimony. It either turns the prophecies into merely retrospective glances ( vaticinia post eventum ), as it does the account of miracles into sagas and myths; or it places the events predicted so close to the prophet’s own time, that there was no need of inspiration, but only of combination, to make the foresight possible. This is all that it can do. Now we could do more than this. We could pronounce all the disputed prophecies the production of other authors than Isaiah, without coming into contact with any dogmatical assumptions: we could even boast, as in the critical analysis of the historical books, of the extent to which the history of literature was enriched through this analysis of the book of Isaiah. And if we seem to despise these riches, we simply yield to the irresistible force of external and internal evidence. This applies even to Isaiah 36-39. For whilst it is true that the text of the book of Kings is the better of the two, yet, as we shall be able to prove, the true relation is this, that the author of the book of Kings did not obtain the parallel section (2 Kings 18:13-20:19) from any other source than the book of Isaiah. We have similar evidence in 2Ki 24:18. and , as compared with Jer, that the text of a passage may sometimes be preserved in greater purity in a secondary work than in the original work from which it was taken. It was Isaiah’s prophetico-historical pen which committed to writing the accounts in Isaiah 36-39. The prophet not only wrote a special history of Uzziah, according to , but he also incorporated historical notices of Isaiah in his “vision” ( ). We reserve the fuller demonstration of all this. For whilst, on the one hand, we consider ourselves warranted in rejecting those tendencies of modern criticism, to which naturalistic views of the world have dictated at the very outset full-blown negative results, and we do so on the ground of supernatural facts of personal experience; on the other hand, we are very far from wishing to dispute the well-founded rights of criticism as such. For centuries, yea, for thousands of years, no objection was raised as to the Davidic origin of a psalm headed “a psalm of David ,” to say nothing of a prophecy of Isaiah; and therefore no such objection was refuted. Apart from the whims of a few individuals, . which left no traces behind them, it was universally assumed by both Jewish and Christian writers down to the last century, that all the canonical books of the Old Testament had the Holy Ghost as their one auctor primarius , and for their immediate authors the men by whose names they are called. But when the church in the time of the Reformation began to test and sift what had been handed down; when the rapid progress that was made in classical and oriental philology compelled the students of the Scriptures to make larger if not higher demands upon themselves; when their studies were directed to the linguistic, historical, archaeological, aesthetic - in short, the human-side of the Scriptures, and the attempt was made to comprehend the several aspects presented by sacred literature in their progressive development and relation to one another - Christian science put forth many branches that had never been anticipated till then; and biblical criticism sprang up, which from that time forward has been not only an inalienable, but a welcome and even necessary, member in the theological science of the church. That school of criticism, indeed, which will not rest till all miracles and prophecies, which cannot be set aside exegetically, have been eliminated critically, must be regarded by the church as self-condemned; but the labour of a spiritual criticism, and one truly free in spirit, will not only be tolerated, because “the spiritual man discerneth all things” ( ), but will be even fostered, and not looked upon as suspicious, although its results should seem objectionable to minds that are weakly strung, and stand in a false and fettered attitude in relation to the Scriptures. For it will be no more offended that the word of God should appear in the form of a servant, than that Christ Himself should do so; and, moreover, criticism not only brings any blemishes in the Scriptures to the light, but affords an ever-deepening insight into its hidden glory. It makes the sacred writings, as they lie before us, live again; it takes us into its very laboratory; and without it we cannot possibly obtain a knowledge of the historical production of the biblical books. It was at the time of the Reformation also that historico-grammatical exposition first originated with a distinct consciousness of the task that it had to perform. It was then that the first attempt was made, under the influence of the revival of classical studies, and with the help of a knowledge of the language obtained from Jewish teachers, to find out the one true meaning of the Scriptures, and an end was put to the tedious jugglery of multiplex Scripturae sensus . But very little was accomplished in the time of the Reformation for the prophecies of Isaiah. Calvin’s Commentarii answer the expectations with which we take them up; but Luther’s Scholia are nothing but college notes, of the most meagre description. The productions of Grotius, which are generally valuable, are insignificant in Isaiah, and, indeed, throughout the prophets. He mixes up things sacred and profane, and, because unable to follow prophecy in its flight, cuts off its wings. Aug. Varenius of Rostock wrote the most learned commentary of all those composed by writers of the orthodox Lutheran school, and one that even now is not to be despised; but though learned, it is too great a medley, and written without discipline of mind. Campegius Vitringa († 1722) threw all the labours of his predecessors into the shade, and none even of his successors approach him in spirit, keenness, and scholarship. His Commentary on Isaiah is still incomparably the greatest of all the exegetical works upon the Old Testament. The weakest thing in the Commentary is the allegorical exposition, which is appended to the grammatical and historical one. In this the temperate pupil of the Cocceian school is dependent upon what was then the prevalent style of the commentary in Holland, where there was an utter absence of all appreciation of the “complex-apotelesmatical” character of prophecy, whilst the most minute allusions were traced in the prophets to events connected with the history of both the world and the church. The shady sides of the Commentary are generally the first to present themselves to the reader’s eye; but the longer he continues to use it, the more highly does he learn to value it. There is deep research everywhere, but nowhere a luxuriance of dry and dead scholarship. The author’s heart is in his work. He sometimes halts in his toilsome path of inquiry, and gives vent to loud, rapturous exclamations. But the rapture is very different from that of the Lord Bishop Robert Lowth, who never gets below the surface, who alters the Masoretic text at his pleasure, and goes no further than an aesthetic admiration of the form. The modern age of exegesis commenced with that destructive theology of the latter half of the eighteenth century, which pulled down without being able to build. But even this demolition was not without good result. The negative of anything divine and eternal in the Scriptures secured a fuller recognition of its human and temporal side, bringing out the charms of its poetry, and, what was of still greater importance, the concrete reality of its history. Rosenmüller’s Scholia are a careful, lucid, and elegant compilation, founded for the most part upon Vitringa, and praiseworthy not only for the judicious character of the selection made, but also for the true earnestness which is displayed, and the entire absence of all frivolity. The decidedly rationalistic Commentary of Gesenius is more independent in its verbal exegesis; displays great care in its historical expositions; and is peculiarly distinguished for its pleasing and transparent style, for the survey which it gives of the whole of the literature bearing upon Isaiah, and the thoroughness with which the author avails himself of all the new sources of grammatical and historical knowledge that have been opened since the days of Vitringa. Hitzig’s Commentary is his best work in our opinion, excelling as it does in exactness and in the sharpness and originality of its grammatical criticisms, as well as in delicate tact in the discovery of the train of thought and in thoroughness and precision in the exposition of well-pondered results; but it is also disfigured by rash pseudo-critical caprice, and by a studiously profane spirit, utterly unaffected by the spirit of prophecy. Hendewerk’s Commentary is often very weak in philological and historical exposition. The style of description is broad, but the eye of the disciple of Herbart is too dim to distinguish Israelitish prophecy from heathen poetry, and the politics of Isaiah from those of Demosthenes. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to observe the thoughtful diligence displayed, and the anxious desire to point out the germs of eternal truths, although the author is fettered even in this by his philosophical standpoint. Ewald’s natural penetration is universally recognised, as well as the noble enthusiasm with which he dives into the contents of the prophetical books, in which he finds an eternal presence. His earnest endeavours to obtain deep views are to a certain extent rewarded. But there is something irritating in the self-sufficiency with which he ignores nearly all his predecessors, the dictatorial assumption of his criticism, his false and often nebulous pathos, and his unqualified identification of his own opinions with truth itself. He is a perfect master in the characteristics of the prophets, but his translations of them are stiff, and hardly to any one’s taste. Umbreit’s Practical Commentary on Isaiah is a useful and stimulating production, exhibiting a deep aesthetic and religious sensibility to the glory of the prophetic word, which manifests itself in lofty poetic language, heaping image upon image, and, as it were, never coming down from the cothrunus. Knobel’s prose is the very opposite extreme. The precision and thoroughness of this scholar, the third edition of whose Commentary on Isaiah was one of his last works (he died, 25th May 1863), deserve the most grateful acknowledgment, whether from a philological or an archaeological point of view; but his peculiar triviality, which amounts almost to an affectation, seems to shut his eyes to the deeper meaning of the work, whilst his excessive tendency to “historize” ( historisiren , i.e., to give a purely historical interpretation to everything) makes him blind even to the poetry of the form. Drechsler’s Commentary was a great advance in the exposition of Isaiah. He was only able to carry it out himself as far as ; but is was completed by Delitzsch and H. A. Hahn of Greifswald († 1st Dec. 1861), with the use of Drechsler’s notes, though they contained very little that was of any service in relation to Isaiah 40-66. This was, comparatively speaking, the best commentary upon Isaiah that had appeared since the time of Vitringa, more especially the portion on Isaiah 13-27. Its peculiar excellency is not to be found in the exposition of single sentences, which is unsatisfactory, on account of the comminuting, glossatorial style of its exegesis, and, although diligent and thorough enough, is unequal and by no means productive, more especially from a grammatical point of view; but in the spiritual and spirited grasp of the whole, the deep insight which it exhibits into the character and ideas of the prophet and of prophecy, its vigorous penetration into the very heart of the plan and substance of the whole book. In the meantime (1850), there had appeared the Commentary written by the catholic Professor Peter Schegg, which follows the Vulgate, although with as little slavishness as possible, and contains many good points, especially the remarks relating to the history of translation. At the same time there also appeared the Commentary of Ernst Meier, the Tübingen orientalist, which did not get beyond the first half. If ever any one was specially called to throw fresh light upon the book of Isaiah, it was C. P. Caspari of Christiania; but all that has yet appeared of his Norwegian Commentary only reaches to the end of Isaiah 5. Its further progress has been hindered partly by the exhaustive thoroughness at which he aimed, and the almost infinite labour which it involved, and partly by the fact that the Grundtvig controversy involved him in the necessity of pursuing the most extensive studies in ecclesiastical history. In the meantime, he has so far expanded his treatise om Serapherne (on the Seraphim), that it may be regarded as a commentary on ; and rich materials for the prophetic sayings which follow may be found in his contributions to the introduction to the book of Isaiah, and to the history of Isaiah’s own times, which appeared as a second volume of our biblico-theological and apologetico-critical Studien (1858), his Programme on the Syro-Ephraimitish war (1849), and his comprehensive and by no means obsolete article, entitled, “Jeremiah a witness to the genuineness of Isaiah 34, and therefore also to that of Isaiah 13:1-14:23, and ,” which appeared in the Zeitschrift für d. ges. luth. Theologie u. Kirche (1843), together with an excursus on the relation of Zephaniah to the disputed prophecies of Isaiah. We shall reserve those works which treat more particularly of the second part of the book of Isaiah for our special introduction to that part. But there are two other distinguished commentaries that we must mention here, both of them by Jewish scholars: viz., that of the M. L. Malbim (Krotoshin 1849), which is chiefly occupied with the precise ideas conveyed by synonymous words and groups of words; and that of S. D. Luzzatto of Padua - a stimulating work, entitled Profeta Isaia volgarizzato e commentato ad uso degli Israeliti , which aims throughout at independence, but of which only five parts have yet appeared. Title of the collection , as given in : “Seeing of Jesha'-yahu, son of Amoz, which he saw over Judah and Jerusalem in the days of 'Uzziyahu, Jotham, Ahaz, and Yehizkiyahu, the kings of Judah.” Isaiah is called the “son of Amoz.” There is no force in the old Jewish doctrine ( b. Megilla 15 a ), which was known to the fathers, that whenever the name of a prophet’s father is given, it is a proof that the father was also a prophet. And we are just as incredulous about another old tradition, to the effect that Amoz was the brother of Amaziah, the father and predecessor of Uzziah ( b. Sota 10 b ). There is some significance in this tradition, however, even if it is not true. There is something royal in the nature and bearing of Isaiah throughout. He speaks to kings as if he himself were a king. He confronts with majesty the magnates of the nation and of the imperial power. In his peculiar style, he occupies the same place among the prophets as Solomon among the kings. Under all circumstances, and in whatever state of mind, he is completely master of his materials - simple, yet majestic in his style - elevated, yet without affectation - and beautiful, though unadorned. But this regal character had its roots somewhere else than in the blood. All that can be affirmed with certainty is, that Isaiah was a native of Jerusalem; for notwithstanding his manifold prophetic missions, we never find him outside Jerusalem. There he lived with his wife and children, and, as we may infer from , and the mode of his intercourse with king Hezekiah, down in the lower city. And there he laboured under the four kings named in , viz., Uzziah (who reigned 52 years, 811-759), Jotham (16 years, 759-743), Ahaz (16 years, 743-728), and Hezekiah (29 years, 728-699). The four kings are enumerated without a Vav cop .; there is the same asyndeton enumerativum as in the titles to the books of Hosea and Micah. Hezekiah is there called Yehizkiyah , the form being almost the same as ours, with the simple elision of the concluding sound. The chronicler evidently preferred the fullest form, at the commencement as well as the termination. Roorda imagines that the chronicler derived this ill-shaped form from the three titles, were it is a copyist’s error for וחזקיּהוּ or וחזקיּה; but the estimable grammarian has overlooked the fact that the same form is found in and 2Ki 20:10, where no such error of the pen can have occurred. Moreover, it is not an ill-shaped form, if, instead of deriving it from the piel , as Roorda does, we derive it from the kal of the verb “strong is Jehovah,” an imperfect noun with a connecting i , which is frequently met with in proper names from verbal roots, such as Jesimiël from sim , : vid., Olshausen, §277, p. 621). Under these four kings Isaiah laboured, or, as it is expressed in , saw the sight which is committed to writing in the book before us. Of all the many Hebrew synonyms for seeing, חזה (cf., Cernere , κρίνειν, and the Sanscrit and Persian kar , which is founded upon the radical notion of cutting and separating) is the standing general expression used to denote prophetic perception, whether the form in which the divine revelation was made to the prophet was in vision or by word. In either case he saw it, because he distinguished this divine revelation from his own conceptions and thoughts by means of that inner sense, which is designated by the name of the noblest of all the five external senses. From this verb Chazah there came both the abstract Chazon , seeing, and the more concrete Chizzayon , a sight ( visum ), which is a stronger from of Chizyon (from Chazi = Chazah ). The noun Chazon is indeed used to denote a particular sight (comp. with ; ), inasmuch as it consists in seeing ( visio ); but here in the title of the book of Isaiah the abstract meaning passes over into the collective idea of the sight or vision in all its extent, i.e., the sum and substance of all that was seen. It is a great mistake, therefore, for any one to argue from the use of the word Chazon (vision), that was originally nothing more than the heading to the first prophecy, and that it was only by the addition of that it received the stamp of a general title to the whole book. There is no force in the argument. Moreover, the chronicler knew the book of Isaiah by this title ( ); and the titles of other books of prophecy, such as Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Zephaniah, are very similar. A more plausible argument in favour of the twofold origin of has been lately repeated by Schegg and Meier, namely, that whilst “Judah and Jerusalem” are appropriate enough as defining the object of the first prophecy, the range is too limited to apply to all the prophecies that follow; since their object is not merely Judah, including Jerusalem, but they are also directed against foreign nations, and at chapter 7 the king of Israel, including Samaria, also comes within the horizon of the prophet’s vision. And in the title to the book of Micah, both kingdoms are distinctly named. But it was necessary there, inasmuch as Micah commences at once with the approaching overthrow of Samaria. Here the designation is a central one. Even, according to the well-known maxims a potiori , and a proximo , fit denominatio , it would not be unsuitable; but Judah and Jerusalem are really and essentially the sole object of the prophet’s vision. For within the largest circle of the imperial powers there lies the smaller one of the neighbouring nations; and in this again, the still more limited one of all Israel, including Samaria; and within this the still smaller one of the kingdom of Judah. And all these circles together form the circumference of Jerusalem, since the entire history of the world, so far as its inmost pragmatism and its ultimate goal were concerned, was the history of the church of God, which had for its peculiar site the city of the temple of Jehovah, and of the kingdom of promise. The expression “concerning Judah and Jerusalem” is therefore perfectly applicable to the whole book, in which all that the prophet sees is seen from Judah - Jerusalem as a centre, and seen for the sake and in the interests of both. The title in may pass without hesitation as the heading written by the prophet’s own hand. This is admitted not only by Caspari ( Micah , pp. 90-93), but also by Hitzig and Knobel. But if contains the title to the whole book, where is the heading to the first prophecy? Are we to take אשׁר as a nominative instead of an accusative ( qui instead of quam , sc. visionem ), as Luzzatto does? This is a very easy way of escaping from the difficulty, and stamping as the heading to the first prophetic words in Chapter 1; but it is unnatural, as חזון אשׁר חזה, according to Ges. (§138, note 1), is the customary form in Hebrew of connecting the verb with its own substantive. The real answer is simple enough. The first prophetic address is left intentionally without a heading, just because it is the prologue to all the rest; and the second prophetic address has a heading in , although it really does not need one, for the purpose of bringing out more sharply the true character of the first as the prologue to the whole.

‏ Isaiah 1:1

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The prophetical histories are followed in the Old Testament canon by the prophetical books of prediction. The two together form the middle portion of the threefold canon, under the common name of „YJIYBINi. On account of their relative position in the canon, the former are also described as „YNI ŠOJRIHF „YJIYBINi, the first prophets, and the latter „YNIOERXáJÁHF, the last prophets. In the Masora this central portion is sometimes designated as JTfMiLEŠiJÁ, possibly because it exhibits a complete and homogeneous whole. The first prophets are in that case distinguished from the last, as JTFYiMFDiQA JTMLŠJ and JNFYFNiTI JTMLŠJ.

The thorah is indeed also a prophetical work, since Moses, the mediator through whom the law was revealed, was for that very reason a prophet without an equal (Deu 34:10); and even the final codification of the great historical law-book possessed a prophetical character (Ezr 9:11). But it would not have been right to include the thorah (Pentateuch) in that portion of the canon which is designated as “the prophets” (nebiim), inasmuch as, although similar in character, it is not similar in rank to the other prophetical books. It stands by itself as perfectly unique — the original record which regulated on all sides the being and life of Israel as the chosen nation, and to which all other prophecy in Israel stood in a derivative relation. And this applies not to prophecy alone, but to all the later writings. The thorah was not only the type of the prophetic histories, but of the non-prophetic, the priestly, political, and popular histories also. The former followed the Jehovistic or Deuteronomic type, and the latter the Elohistic. The thorah unites the prophetical and (so to speak) hagiographical styles of historical composition in a manner which is peculiar to itself, and not to be met with in any of the works included among the „YN§JR „YJYBN.

Those who imagine that it is only because of their later origin, that the historical words which are found among the hagiographa have not found their appropriate place among the “first prophets,” have evidently no idea whatever of this diversity in the style of historical writing. Ezra — whom we have good reason for regarding as the author of the larger “book of the Kings,” which the chronicler refers to under the title of “the story of the book of the Kings” (midrash sepher hammelacim, 2Ch 24:27), a compilation relating to the history of Israel, to which he had appended the history of the time of the restoration as the concluding part — is never called a prophet (nabi), and in fact was not one. The chronicler — who not only had before him our book of Samuel, which has been so arbitrarily divided into two parts, and our book of Kings, which has been just as arbitrarily divided in the same manner, but used as his principal, authority the book of Ezra just referred to, and who worked out from this the compendium of history which lies before us, concluding with the memorabilia of Ezra, which we possess in a distinct form as the book of Ezra — also asserts no claim to be a prophet, and, judging from the liturgico-historical purpose of his work, is more likely to have been a priest. Nehemiah, from whose memorabilia our book of Nehemiah is an extract arranged in conformity with the book of Ezra, was, as we well know, not a prophet, but a TirsaÑta,[1] i.e., a royal Persian governor, and at the same time an Israelitish patriot, whose prayerful heart was set upon the welfare of his people, and who had performed good service in connection with the restoration of Jerusalem by the erection of buildings and the introduction of reforms. The book of Esther, with its religious features kept as they are in the background, is as far removed as possible from the prophetic style of historical composition: it differs indeed from this quite as much as the feast of purim— that Jewish carnival— differs from the feast of passover, the Israelitish Christmas. It does appear surprising, however, that the book of Ruth should stand among the hagiographa. This little book is so similar in character to the concluding portion of the book of Judges (Jud. 17-21), that it might be placed between Judges and Samuel. And in all probability it did stand there originally, but for liturgical reasons it was added to the so-called five megilloth (festal rolls), which follow one another in our editions, so to speak, according to the calendar of feasts of the ecclesiastical year: for the Song of Solomon is the lesson for the eighth day of the feast of passover; Ruth, that of the second day of the feast of Shabuoth (pentecost); Kinoth (Lamentations), that of the ninth Abib; Koheleth (Ecclesiastes), that of the third day of the feast of tabernacles; and Esther, that of the feast of purim, which fell in the middle of Adar.

This is also the simplest answer to the question why the Lamentations of Jeremiah are not placed among the prophetic writings, and appended, as we should expect, to the collection of Jeremiah’s prophecies. The Psalms are placed first among the hagiographa — although David might be called a prophet (Act 2:30), and Asaph is designated “the seer” — for the simple reason that they do not belong to the literature of prophecy, but to that of the shir Jehovah, i.e., the sacred (liturgical) lyric poetry. Their prophetic contents rest entirely upon a lyric ground, whereas it is the very reverse with the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the lyric contents of which, though less prophetic in themselves, presuppose throughout the official position and teaching of Jeremiah the prophet. The canonical nebiim or prophets embrace only the writings of such persons as were called to proclaim the word of God publicly, whether in writing or by word of mouth; not like the priests, according to definite modes prescribed by the law, but in a free unfettered manner, by virtue of a special gift and calling. The word nabi is to be regarded, as we may judge from its Arabic flexion, not as a passive, but as an active form; in fact, as an emphatic form of the active participle, denoting the proclaimer, publisher, speaker, namely, of God and of His secrets. The oldest use of the word (vid., Gen 20:7, cf., Gen 18:17-19, and Psa 105:15), which was revived by the chronicler, is incomparably less restricted in its meaning than the later use. But when used to designate the middle portion of the Old Testament canon, although the word is not so limited as in Amo 7:14, where it signifies a man who has passed through a school of the prophets and been trained in intercourse with other prophets, and has made prophetic teaching from the very first the exclusive profession of his life; yet it is employed in a sense connected with the organization of the theocratic life, as the title given to those who stood forward as public teachers by virtue of a divine call and divine revelations, and who therefore not only possessed the gift (charisma) of prophecy, but performed the duties of a prophet both in preaching and writing, and held an office to which, at least on Ephraimitish soil, the institution of schools of the prophets gave the distinct stamp of a separate order. This will serve to explain the fact that the book of Daniel was not placed among the nebiim. Daniel himself was not a prophet in this sense. Not only was the mode in which the divine revelations were made to him a different one from the prevailing eÏpiÂpnoia profhtikhÃ, as Julius Africanus observes in his writing to Origen concerning Susanna, but he did not hold the office of a prophet; and for this reason even the Talmud (b. Megilla 3 a), when speaking of the relation in which the prophets after the captivity stood to him, says, “They stood above him, for they were prophets; but he was not a prophet.” “A distinction must be drawn,” as Witsius has said, “between the gift of prophecy, which was bestowed even upon private persons, and consisted in the revelation of secret things, and the prophetic office, which was an extraordinary function in the church, committed to certain persons who were set apart by a special call from God.”[2]

The reason, therefore, why all the historical and prophetic books which are to be found among the hagiographa (cethubim, which the son of Sirach speaks of in his prologue as “other books of our fathers,” and “the rest of the books”) were excluded from the second or middle part of the Old Testament canon called nebiim, rested upon a primary distinction between writings that were strictly prophetic and writings that were not so, — a distinction which existed in the domain of history as well as in that of prophecy. Thus the historical books from Joshua to Kings, and the prophetical books from Isaiah to Malachi, were separated, as works written by men whose vocation in life was that of a prophet and therefore works of a prophetical character, from such books as Chronicles and Daniel, which were written indeed under the influence of the Holy Spirit, but not in the exercise of a prophetical calling received through a prophetical impulse of the Spirit of God. The two different kinds of historical composition are also perfectly unmistakeable. Each of them has its own peculiar history. Of course it is quite possible for a prophetical history like the book of Kings, or an annalistic history like that of Chronicles, to embrace within itself certain ingredients which really belong to the other historical style; but when we have once discovered the characteristics of the two styles, it is almost always possible to single out at once, and with perfect certainty, those ingredients which are foreign to the peculiar character of the work in which they are found, and have simply been made subservient to the writer’s plan. It is very necessary, therefore, that we should look more minutely at the two styles of historical writing, for the simple reason that the literature of the books of prophecy gradually arose out of the literature of the prophetical books of history, and so eventually attained to an independent standing, though they never became entirely separate and distinct, as we may see from the book of Isaiah itself, which is interwoven with many fragments of prophetico-historical writing. The oldest type of non-prophetic historical writing is to be found, as we have already observed, in the priestly Elohistic style which characterizes one portion of the Pentateuch, as distinguished from the Jehovistic or Deuteronomic style of the other. These two types are continued in the book of Joshua; and taken as a whole, the Jehovistic, Deuteronomic type is to be been in those sections which relate to the history of the conquest; the priestly, Elohistic, in those which refer to the division of the land. At the same time, they are coloured in many other ways; and there is nothing to favour the idea that the book of Joshua ought to be combined with the Pentateuch, so as to form a hexateuchical whole. The stamp of prophetic history is impressed upon the book of Judges at the very outset by the introduction, which shows that the history of the judges is to be regarded as a mirror of the saving government of God; whilst the concluding portion, like the book of Ruth, is occupied with Bethlehemitish narratives that point to the Davidic kingdom, the kingdom of promise, which formed the direct sphere of prophecy. The body of the book is founded, indeed, upon oral and even written forms of the saga of the judges; but not without the intervention of a more complete work, from which only extracts are given, and in which the prophetic pencil of a man like Samuel had combined into one organic whole the histories of the judges not only to the time of Samson, but to the entire overthrow of the Philistian oppression. That the books of Samuel are a prophetico-historical work, is expressly attested by a passage in the Chronicles, of which we shall speak more fully presently; but in the passages relating to the conflicts with the four Philistian children of the giants (2Sa 21:15ff. = 1Ch 20:4ff.), and to the Davidic gibborim, i.e., the heroes who stood nearest to him (2Sa 23:8ff. = 1Ch 11:11ff.), they contain at least two remnants of popular or national historical writing, in which we discern a certain liking for the repetition of the same opening and concluding words, which have all the ring of a refrain, and give to the writing very much of the character of an epic or popular ode, suggesting, as Eisenlohr has said, the legend of Roland and Artus, or the Spanish Cid. We find more of these remains in the Chronicles — such, for example, as the list of those who attached themselves to David in Ziklag, and, in fact, during the greater part of Saul’s persecutions. It commences thus: “And these are they that came to David to Ziklag, whilst still hard pressed on the part of Saul the son of Kish; and they belong to the heroes, those ready to help in war, armed with bows, both with the right hand and the left hand using stones and arrows by means of the bow.” Some of these fragments may have fallen singly and unwrought into the hands of the later historians; but so far as they are tabulated, the chronicler leaves us in no doubt as to the place where they were chiefly to be found. After giving a census of the Levites from thirty years old and upwards, in 1Ch 23:2-24 a, he adds, in v. 24 b and the following verses, in a fragmentary manner, that David, taking into account the fact that the hard work of past times had no longer to be performed, lowered the age for commencing official service to twenty, “for in the last words of David (dibre David ha-acheronim) the descendants of Levi are numbered from the twentieth year of their age.” He refers here to the last part of the history of David’s life in the “book of the kings of Israel” (sepher malce Israel), which lay before him; and from what other work such lists as these had been taken into this his main source, we may learn from 1Ch 27:24, where he follows up the list of the tribe-princes of Israel with this remark with reference to a general census which David had intended to take: “Joab the son of Zeruiah began to number, but he did not finish it; and there arose a bursting forth of wrath upon Israel in consequence, and this numbering was not placed in the numbering (RPSMB, read RPSB, ‘in the book’) of the chronicles (dibre hayyamim) of David.” Consequently the annals or chronicles of David contained such tabular notices as these, having the character of popular or national historical composition; and they were copied from these annals into the great king’s-book, which lay before the chronicler.

The official annals commenced with David, and led to those histories of the kingdom from which the authors of the books of Kings and Chronicles for the most part drew their materials, even if they did not do so directly. Saul’s government consisted chiefly in military supremacy, and the unity of the kingdom as renewed by him did not embrace much more than the simple elements of a military constitution. But under David there grew up a reciprocal relation between the throne and the people, of the most comprehensive character; and the multiplication of government offices followed, as a matter of course, from the thorough organization of the kingdom. We find David, as head of the kingdom, asserting his official supremacy on all hands, even in relation to religious affairs, and meet with several entirely new posts that were created by him. Among these was the office of mazcir (recorder in Eng. ver.: Tr.), i.e., as the LXX have often rendered it, uÎpomnhmatoÂgrafoj or (in 2Sa 8:16) eÏpiÃ twÌn uÎpomnhmaÂtwn (Jerome: a commentariis, a thoroughly Roman translation). The Targums give a similar rendering, JyFNARFKidF‰LJA JnFMÁMi, the keeper of the memorabilia (i.e., of the “book of records” or annals, 2Ch 34:8, cf., Ezr 4:15, Esther 6:10. The mazcir had to keep the annals of the kingdom; and his office was a different one from that of the sopher, or chancellor. The sopher (scribe in Eng. ver.: Tr.) had to draw up the public documents; the mazcir had to keep them, and incorporate them in the connected history of the nation. Both of these offices are met with throughout the whole of the East, both ancient and modern, even to the remotest parts of Asia.[3]

It is every evident that the office in question was created by David, from the fact that allusions to the annals commence with the chronicles (dibre hayyamim) of David (1Ch 27:24), and are continued in the sepher dibre Shelomoh (a contraction for sepher dibre hayyamim Shelomoh, “book of the chronicles of Solomon,” 1Ki 11:41). The references are then carried on in Judah to the end of the reign of Jehoiakim, and in Israel to the end of the reign of Pekah. Under David, and also under Solomon, the office of national annalist was filled by Jehoshaphat ben-AhiluÑd.The fact that, with the exception of the annals of David and Solomon, the references are always made to annals of the “kings of Judah” and “kings of Israel,” admits of a very simple explanation. If we regard the national annals as a complete and independent work, they naturally divide themselves into four parts, of which the first two treated of the history of the kingdom in its unity; the last two, viz., the annals of the kings of Judah and Israel, of the history of the divided kingdom. The original archives, no doubt, perished when Jerusalem was laid in ashes by the Chaldeans. But copies were taken from them and preserved, and the histories of the reigns of David and Solomon in the historical books which have come down to us, and are peculiarly rich in annalistic materials, show very clearly that copies of the annals of David and Solomon were taken and distributed with special diligence, and that they were probably circulated in a separate form, as was the case with some of the decades of Livy.

Richard Simon supposed the écrivains publics to be prophets; and upon this hypothesis he founded an exploded view as to the origin of the Old Testament writings. Even in more recent times the annals have occasionally been regarded as prophetic histories, in which case the distinction between prophetic and annalistic histories would unquestionably fall to the ground. But the arguments adduced in support of this do not prove what is intended. In the first place, appeal is made to the statements of the chronicler himself, with regard to certain prophetic elements in the work which constituted his principal source, viz., the great king’s-book; and it is taken for granted that this great king’s-book contained the combined annals of the kings of Judah and Israel. But (a) the chronicler speaks of his principal source under varying names as a book of the kings, and on one occasion as dibre, i.e., res gestae or historiae, of the kings of Israel (2Ch 33:18), but never as the annals of the kings of Israel or Judah: he even refers to it once as midrash sepher hammelacim (commentarius libri regum), and consequently as an expository and more elaborate edition either of our canonical book of Kings, or else (a point which we will leave undecided) of an earlier book generally. (b) In this midrash the history of the kings was undoubtedly illustrated by numerous comprehensive prophetico-historical portions: but the chronicler says expressly, on several occasions, that these were ingredients incorporated into it (2Ch 20:34; 2Ch 32:32); so that no conclusion can be drawn from them with regard to the prophetic authorship of his principal source, and still less as to that of the annals. We do not, in saying this, dispute for a moment the fact, that there were prophetic elements to be found among the documents admitted into the annals, and not merely such as related to levitical and military affairs, or others of a similar kind; nor do we deny that the interposition of great prophets in the history of the times would be there mentioned and described. There are, in fact, distinct indications of this, of which we shall find occasion to speak more fully by and by. But it would be the greatest literary blunder that could be made, to imagine that the accounts of Elijah and Elisha, for example, which have all the stamp of their Ephraimitish and prophetic authorship upon the forefront, could possibly have been taken from the annals; more especially as Joram the king of Israel, in whose reign Elisha lived, is the only king of the northern kingdom in connection with whose reign there is no reference to the annals at all. The kind of documents, which were principally received into the annals and incorporated into the connected history, may be inferred from such examples as 2Ch 35:4, where the division of the Levites into classes is taken from “the writing of David” and “the writing of Solomon:” whether we suppose that the documents in question were designated royal writings, because they were drawn up by royal command and had received the king’s approval; or that the sections of the annals, in which they were contained, were really based upon documents written with the king’s own hand (vid., 1Ch 28:11-19). When we bear in mind that the account given by the chronicler of the arrangements made by David with reference to priests and Levites rests upon the annals as their ultimate source, we have, at any rate, in 2Ch 35:4 a confirmation of the national, and so to speak, regal character of the year-books in question.

A second argument employed to prove that the annals were prophetic histories, is the fact that otherwise they would not have been written in a theocratic spirit, especially in the kingdom of Israel. But (1) their official or state origin is evident, from the fact that they break off just where the duties of the prophets as historiographs really began. For fourteen of the references to the annals in our book of Kings, from Rehoboam and Jeroboam onwards, are to be found in the history of the kings of Judah (it being only in the case of Ahaziah, Amaziah, and Jehoahaz that the references are wanting), and seventeen in the history of the kings of Israel (the reference failing in the case of Joram alone); whilst in both lines the annals do not reach to the last king in each kingdom, but only to Jehoiakim and Pekah, from which we may conclude that the writing of annals was interrupted with the approaching overthrow of the two kingdoms. Now, if (b) we examine the thirty-one references carefully, we shall find that sixteen of them merely affirm that the rest of the acts of the king in question, what he did, are written in the annals (1Ki 14:29; 2Ki 8:23; 2Ki 12:20; 2Ki 15:6, 2Ki 15:36; 2Ki 16:19; 2Ki 21:25; 2Ki 23:28; 2Ki 24:5; 1Ki 15:31; 1Ki 16:14; 2Ki 1:18; 2Ki 15:11, 2Ki 15:21, 2Ki 15:26, 2Ki 15:31). In the case of four Israelitish kings, it is simply stated in addition to this, that their geburah (might, heroism, i.e., their bravery in war) is written in the annals (1Ki 16:5, 1Ki 16:27; 2Ki 10:34; 2Ki 13:8). But in the accounts of the following kings we find more precise statements as to what was to be read in the annals concerning them, viz.: Abijam carried on war with Jeroboam, as might be read in them (1Ki 15:7); in the case of Asa they contained an account of “his heroism, and all that he did, and the cities which he built” (1Ki 15:23); in that of Jehoshaphat — ”the heroic acts that he performed, and what wars he carried on” (1Ki 22:46); in that of Hezekiah— ”all his heroism, and how he made the pool, and the aqueduct, and brought the water into the city” (2Ki 20:20); in that of Manasseh— ”all that he did, and his sin in which he sinned” (2Ki 21:17); in that of Jeroboam— ”what wars he waged, and how he reigned” (1Ki 14:19); in that of Zimri— ”his conspiracy that he set on foot” (1Ki 16:20); in that of Ahab— ”all that he did, and the ivory house which he erected, and all the towns that he built” (1Ki 22:39); in that of Joash— ”his heroism, how he fought with Amaziah king of Judah” (2Ki 13:12; 2Ki 14:15); in that of Jeroboam II — ”his heroism, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus and Hamath to Judah in Israel” (2Ki 14:28); and in that of Shallum — ”his conspiracy which he made” (2Ki 15:15). These references furnish a very obvious proof, that the annalistic history was not written in a propheticopragmatical form; though there is no necessity on that account to assume, that in either of the two kingdoms it stopped to courtly flattery, or became the mere tool of dynastic selfishness, or of designs at variance with the theocracy. It simply registered outward occurrences, entering into the details of new buildings, and still more into those of wars and warlike deed; it had its roots in the spirit of the nation, and moved in the sphere of the national life and its institutions; in comparison with the prophetic histories, it was more external than idea, — more purely historical than didactic, — more of the nature of a chronicle than written with any special bias of intention: in short, it was more distinctly connected with political than with sacred history.

From the time of Samuel, with whom the prophetic period in the history of the legally constituted Israel strictly speaking commenced (Act. 3:24), the prophets as a body displayed great literary activity in the department of historical composition. This is evident from the numerous references made by the author of the Chronicles to original historical writings by prophetic authors. At the close of the history of David he refers to the dibre (Eng. ver. “book”) of Samuel the seer, Nathan the prophet, and Gad the seer; at the close of the history of Solomon (2Ch. 9:29), to dibre (Eng. ver. “book”) of Nathan the prophet, nebuoth (Eng. ver. “the prophecy”) of Ahijah the Shilonite, and chazoth (visions) of Ye’di (Ye’do; Eng. ver. Iddo) the seer; in the case of Rehoboam (2Ch. 12:15), to dibre of Shemaiah the prophet and ‘Iddo the seer; in that of Abijah (2Ch. 13:22), to the midrash (Eng. ver. “story”) of the prophet ‘Iddo; in that of Jehoshaphat (2Ch. 20:34), to dibre of Jehu ben Hanani, which were included in the book of the kings of Israel; in that of Uzziah (2Ch. 26:22), to a complete history of that king, which had been composed by Isaiah ben Amoz; in that of Hezekiah (2Ch. 32:32), to a chazon (Eng. ver. “vision”) of Isaiah, which was to be found in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel; and in that of Manasseh (2Ch. 33:19), to dibre of Hosai. The question might be raised, indeed, whether the dibre referred to in these passages are not to be understood — as in 1Ch. 23:27, for example — as signifying the historical account of such and such a person; but the following are sufficient proofs that the chronicler used the expression in the sense of historical accounts written by the persons named. In the first place, we may see from 2Ch. 27:22 how customary it was for him to think of prophets as historians of particular epochs of the history of the kings; secondly, even in other passages in which the name of a prophet is connected with dibre, — such, for example, as 2Ch. 29:30; 2Ch 33:18, — the former is the genitive of the subject or author, not of the object; thirdly, in the citations given above, dibre is used interchangeably with YRBD‰Lˆ, which requires still more decidedly that it should be understood as denoting authorship: and fourthly, this is placed beyond all doubt by the alternation ofmidrash Iddo (2Ch. 13:22), with dibre Iddo (2Ch. 12:15). At the same time, it is evident that these accounts, which are called by prophets’ names, were not lying before the chronicler in the form of separate writings in addition to the work which constituted his principal source, from the fact that, with the exception of 2Ch. 33:18-19, he never quotes the two together. They were incorporated into the midrash sephere hammelakim (“the story of the book of the kings,” Eng. ver.), which lay before him (2Ch. 24:27), though not without showing their prophetic origin in distinction from the annalistic sources of the work in question; and inasmuch as it is inconceivable that the authors of our canonical books of Samuel and Kings should have made no use of these prophetic records, the question is allowable, whether it is still possible for critical analysis to trace them out either in whole or in part, with the same certainty with which it can be affirmed that the list of officers which is employed as a boundary-stone in 2Sa. 20:23-26, and the general survey of Solomon’s ministers and court in 1Ki 4:2-19, together with the account of the daily provision for the royal kitchen in 1Ki 4:22-23, and the number of stalls for the king’s horses in 1Ki 4:26-27, and others of a similar kind, were taken from the annals.

This is not the place in which to enter more minutely into such an analysis. It is quite sufficient for our purpose to have exhibited, in the citations we have made from the Chronicles, the stirring activity of the prophets as historians from the time of Samuel onwards; although this is evident enough, even without citations, from the many prophetico-historical extracts from the writings of the prophets which we find in the book of Kings. Both authors draw either directly or indirectly from annalistic and prophetic sources. But when we look at the respective authors, and their mode of rounding off and working up the historical materials, the book of Kings and the Chronicles exhibit of themselves, at least as a whole, the two different kinds of historical composition; for the book of Kings is a thoroughly prophetic book, the Chronicles a priestly one. The author of the book of Kings formed his style upon the model of Deuteronomy and the prophetic writings; whilst the chronicler so thoroughly imitated the older dibre-hayyamim style, that it is often impossible to distinguish his own style from that of the sources which came either directly or indirectly to his hand; and consequently his work contains a strange admixture of very ancient and very modern forms. The observation inserted in 2Ki 17:7ff. shows clearly enough in what spirit and with what intention the writer of the book of Kings composed his work. Like the author of the book of Judges, who wrote in a kindred spirit (see Jdg 2:11ff.), he wished to show, in his history of the kings, how the Israel of the two kingdoms sank lower and lower both inwardly and outwardly till it had fallen into the depths of captivity, in consequence of its contempt of the word of god as spoken by the prophets, and still more because of the radical evil of idolatry; but how Judah, with its Davidic government, was not left without hope of rescue from the abyss, provided it would not shut its heart against such prophetic preaching as was to be found in its own past history. The chronicler, on the other hand, whose love to the divinely chosen monarchy and priesthood of the tribes of Judah and Levi is obvious enough, from the annalistic survey with which he prefaces his work, commences with the mournful end of Saul, and wastes no words upon the path of sorrow through which David reached the throne, but passes at once to the joyful beginning of his reign, which he sets before us in the popular, warlike, priestly style of the annals. He then relates the history of Judah and Jerusalem under the rule of the house of David, almost without reference to the history of the northern kingdom, and describes it with especial completeness wherever he has occasion to extol the interest shown by the king in the temple and worship of God, and his co-operation with the Levites and priests. The author of the book of Kings shows us in prophecy the spirit which pervaded the history, and the divine power which moulded it. The chronicler exhibits in the monarchy and priesthood the two chambers of its beating heart. In the former we see storm after storm gather in the sky that envelopes the history, according to the attitude of the nation and its kings towards the word of God; with the latter the history is ever encircled by the cloudless sky of the divine institutions. The writer of the Chronicles dwells with peculiar preference, and a certain partiality, upon the brighter portions of the history; whereas, with the author of the book of Kings, the law of retribution which prevails in the historical materials requires that at least an equal prominence should be given to the darker side. In short, the history of the book of Kings is more inward, divine, theocratic in its character; that of the Chronicles more outward, human, and popular. The author of the book of Kings writes with a prophet’s pen; the chronicler with the pen of an annalist.

Nevertheless, they both of them afford us a deep insight into the laboratory of the two modes of writing history; and the historical productions of both are rich in words of the prophets, which merit a closer inspection, since they are to be regarded, together with the prophetico-historical writings quoted, as precludes and side-pieces to the prophetic literature, properly so called, which gradually established itself in more or less independence, and to which the nebiim acharonim (the last prophets) belong. The book of Kings contains the following words and sayings of prophets: (1) Ahijah of Shilo to Jeroboam (1Ki 11:29-39); (2) Shemaiah to Rehoboam (1Ki 12:22-24); (3) a man of God to the altar of Jeroboam (1Ki 13:1-2); (4) Ahijah to the wife of Jeroboam (1Ki 14:5-16); (5) Jehu ben Hanani to Baasha (1Ki 16:1-4); (6) a prophet to Ahab king of Israel (1Ki 20:13-14, 1Ki 20:22, 1Ki 20:28); (7) a pupil of the prophets to Ahab (1Ki 20:35ff.); (8) Elijah to Ahab (1Ki 21:17-26); (9) Micha ben Yimla to the two kings Ahab and Jehoshaphat (1Ki 22:14ff.); (10) Elisha to Jehoram and Jehoshaphat (2Ki 3:11ff.); (11) a pupil of Elisha to Jehu (2Ki 9:1-10); (12) a massa concerning the house of Ahab (2Ki 9:25-26); (13) Jehovah to Jehu (2Ki 10:30); (14) Jonah to Jeroboam II (indirectly; 2Ki 14:25-27); (15) leading message of the prophets (2Ki 17:13); (16) Isaiah’s words to Hezekiah (2Ki 19-20); (); (17) threat on account of Manasseh (2Ki 21:10-15); (18) Huldah to Josiah (2Ki 22:14ff.); (19) threat of Jehovah concerning Judah (2Ki 23:27).

Of all these prophetic words and sayings, Nos. 2, 9, and 18 are the only ones that are given by the chronicler (2Ch. 11:2-4, 18, and 34), partly because he confined himself to the history of the kings of Judah, and partly because he wrote with the intention of supplementing our book of Kings, which was no doubt lying before him. On the other hand, we find the following words of prophets in the Chronicles, which are wanting in the book of Kings: (1) words of Shemaiah in the war between Rehoboam and Shishak (2Ch. 12:7-8); (2) Azariah ben Oded before Asa (2Ch. 15:1-7); (3) Hanani to Asa (2Ch. 16:7-9); (4) Jahaziel the Asaphite in the national assembly (2Ch. 20:14-17); (5) Eliezer ben Dodavahu to Jehoshaphat (2Ch. 20:37); (6) letter of Elijah to Jehoram (2Ch. 21:12-15); (7) Zechariah ben Jehoiada in the time of Joash (2Ch. 24:20); (8) a man of God to Amaziah (2Ch. 25:7-9); (9) a prophet to Amaziah (2Ch. 25:15-16); (10) Oded to Pekah (2Ch. 28:9-11). To extend the range of our observation still further, we may add, (1) the address of the maleach Jehovah in Bochim (Jdg 2:1-5); (2) the address of a prophet (ish nabi) to Israel, in Jdg 6:8-10; (3) that of a man of God to Eli (1Sa. 2:27ff.); (4) Jehovah to Samuel concerning Eli’s house (1Sa. 3:11-14); (5) Samuel to Israel before the battle at Ebenezer (1Sa. 7:3); (6) Samuel to Saul in Gilgal (1Sa. 13:13-14); (7) Samuel to Saul after the victory over Amalek (1Sa. 15); (8) Nathan to David concerning his wish to build the temple (2Sa. 7); (9) Nathan to David after his adultery (2Sa. 12); (10) Gad to David after the numbering of the people (2Sa. 24).

If we take a general survey of these prophetic words and sayings, and compare them with one another, there can be no doubt that some of them have come down to us in their original form; such, for example, as the address of the man of God to Eli, in the first book of Samuel, and the words of Samuel to Saul after the victory over Amalek. This is guaranteed by their distinct peculiarity, their elevated tone, and the manifest difference between them and the ordinary style of the historian who relates them. In the case of others, at least, all that is essential in their form has been preserved; as, for example, in the addresses of Nathan to David: this is evident from the echoes that we find of them in the subsequent history. Among the sayings that have been handed down verbatim by the author of the book of Kings, we may include those of Isaiah, whose originality several things combine to sustain, — viz. the massa in 2Ki 9:25-26, the construction of which is peculiar and primitive; together with a few other brief prophetic words, possibly in all that is essential the words of Huldah: for it is only in the mouth of Huldah (2Ki 22:19; 2Ch. 34:27) and Isaiah (2Ki 19:33), and in the massa referred to, that we meet with the prophetic “saith the Lord” (HOEFHYi „JUNi ), which we also find in 1Sa. 2:30, with other marks of originality, whilst its great antiquity is attested by Gen. 22:16, the Davidic Psalms, and 2Sa. 23:1. In some of these sayings the historian is not at all concerned to give them in their original words: they are simply prophetic voices generally, which were heard at a particular time, and the leading tones of which he desires to preserve, — such, for example, as Jdg 6:8-10, 2Ki 17:13; 2Ki 21:10-15. Reproductions of prophetic witnesses in so general a form as this naturally bear the stamp of the writer who reproduces them. In the books of Judges and Kings, for example, they show clearly the Deuteronomic training of their last editors. But we can go still further, and maintain generally, that the prophecies in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles contain marked traces of the historian’s own hand, as well as of the sources from which they were indirectly drawn. Such sayings as are common to the two books (Chronicles and Kings) are almost word for word the same in the former as in the latter; but the rest have all a marked peculiarity, and a totally different physiognomy. The sayings in the book of Kings almost invariably begin with “Thus saith the Lord,” or “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel” (also Jdg 6:8, and 2Ki 19:20, before the message of Isaiah); and nothing is more frequent in them than the explanatory phrase RŠEJá †JAYA, and such Deuteronomic expressions as SYˆKH, JY‹XH, DYB †TN, and others; to which we may add a fondness for similes introduces with “as” (e.g., 1Ki 14:10, 1Ki 14:15; 2Ki 21:13). The thought of Jehovah’s choosing occurs in the same words in 1Ki 11:36 and 2Ki 23:27; and the expression, “that David may have a light alway,” in 1Ki 11:36, is exclusively confined to the Deuteronomic author of the work (vid., 1Ki 15:4, 2Ki 8:19, cf., 2Ch. 21:7). The words, “I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel,” are not only to be found in the second address of Ahijah in 1Ki 14:7, but, with slight alteration, in the address of Jehu in 1Ki. 16:2. The words, “Him that dieth in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat,” are found in the same form in Ahijah’s second address (1Ki 14:11), in Jehu’s address (ch. 16:4), and in that of Elijah to Ahab (1Ki. 21:24). That threat, “I will cut off all that pisseth against the wall, that is shut up and that is free in Israel, and will sweep behind the house of Jeroboam,” is found, with trifling variations, in Ahijah’s second address (1Ki 14:10), in Elijah’s address to Ahab (1Ki. 21:21), and in Elisha’s address to Jehu (2Ki 9:8); whilst it is evident from 1Ki 16:11 and 2Ki 14:26, that the form of the threat is just in the style of the Deuteronomic historian. There can be no question, therefore, that nearly all these prophetic sayings, so far as a common impress can exist at all, are of one type, and that the common bond which encircles them is no other than the prophetic subjectivity of the Deuteronomic historian. A similar conclusion may be drawn with regard to the prophetic sayings contained in the Chronicles. They also bear so decidedly the evident marks of the chronicler’s own work, that Caspari himself, in his work upon the Syro-Ephraimitish war, is obliged to admit that the prophetic address in 2Ch. 15:2-7, which is apparently the most original of all, recals the peculiar style of the chronicler. At the same time, in the case of the chronicler, whose principal source of information must have resembled his own work in spirit and style (as we are warranted in assuming by the book of Ezra especially), it is not so easy to determine how far his own freedom of treatment extended as it is in the case of the author of the book of Kings, who appears to have found the greater part of the sayings given in mere outline in the annals, and in taking them thence, to have reproduced them freely, in the consciousness of his own unity of spirit with the older prophets.

If these sayings had been handed down to us in their original form, we should possess in them a remarkably important source of information with regard to the historical development of the prophetic ideas and modes of expression. We should then know for certain that Isaiah’s favourite phrase, “for the Lord hath spoken it,” was first employed by Ahijah (1Ki 14:11); that when Joel prophesied “in Jerusalem shall be deliverance” (Joe. 2:32), he had already been preceded by Shemaiah (2Ch. 12:7); that Hosea (in Hos. 3:4-5, cf., Hos 5:15) took up the declaration of Azariah ben Oded, “And many days will Israel continue without the God of truth, and without a teaching priest, and without law; but when it turneth in its trouble,” etc. (2Ch. 15:3-4, where, as the parallel proves, the preterites of v. 4 are to be interpreted according to the prophetic context); that in Jer. 31:16, “for thy work shall be rewarded,” we have the echo of another word of the same Azariah; that in the words spoken by Hanani in 2Ch. 16:9, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth,” he was the precursor of Zechariah (Zec. 4:10); and other instances of a similar kind. But, with the influence which was evidently exerted upon the sayings quoted by the subjective peculiarities of the two historians (compare, for example, 2Ch. 15:2 with 2Ch 13:4 and 1Ch. 28:9; 2Ch. 12:5 with 2Ch 24:20; also v. 7 with 2Ch. 34:21, and the parallel 2Ki 22:13 and 2Ch. 15:5, “In those times,” with Dan. 11:14), and with the difficulty of tracing the original elements in these sayings (it is quite possible, for example, that the thought of a light remaining to David, 1Ki 15:4, 2Ki 8:19, was really uttered first of all by Ahijah, 1Ki 11:36), it is only a very cautious and sparing use that can be made of them for this purpose. It is quite possible, since Deuteronomy is the real prophet’s book, as compared with the other books of the Pentateuch, that the prophets of the earlier regal times took pleasure in employing Deuteronomic expressions; but it cannot be decided whether such expressions as “put my name there,” in 1Ki 11:36, and “root up Israel,” etc., in 1Ki 14:15, received their Deuteronomic form (cf., Deu. 12:5, Deu 12:21; Deu 14:24; Deu 29:27) from the prophet himself, or from the author of the book of Kings (cf., 1Ki 9:3, and the parallel passages, 2Ch. 7:20; 2Ch 9:7, 2Ki 21:7-8). At the same time, quite enough of the original has been retained in the prophecies of these earlier prophets, to enable us to discern in them the types and precursors of the later ones. Shemaiah, with his threat and its subsequent modification in the case of Asa, calls to mind Micah and his words to Hezekiah, in Jer. 26:17ff. The attitude of Hanani towards Asa, when he had appealed to Aram for help, is just the same as that which Isaiah assumed towards Ahaz; and there is also a close analogy in the consequences of the two events. Hose and Amos prophesy against “the high places of Aven” (Hos. 10:8), and “the altars of Bethel” (Amo. 3:14; Amo 9:1), like the man of God in Bethel. When Amos leaves his home in consequence of a divine call (Amo. 7:15) and goes to Bethel, the headquarters of the image-worship of the Israelites, to prophesy against the idolatrous kingdom; is there not a repetition in this of the account of the prophet in 1Ki. 13? And when Hanani is cast into prison on account of his denunciation of Asa; is not this a prelude, as it were, to the subsequent fate of Micah ben-Imlah (1Ki. 22) and Jeremiah (Jer. 32)? And so, again, Ahijah’s confirmation and symbolical representation of what he predicted, by the rending in pieces of a new garment (the symbol of the kingdom in its unity and strength), has its analoga in the history of the earlier prophets (1Sa. 15:26-29) as well as in that of the latest (e.g., Jer. 22). It is only such signs (mophethim), as that by which the prophet who came out of Judah into Bethel confirmed his prophecy, that disappear entirely from the alter history, although Isaiah does not think it beneath him to offer Ahaz a sign, either in the depth or in the height above, in attestation of his prophetic testimony.

There was no essential difference, however, between the prophets of the earlier and those of the later times; and the unity of spirit which linked together the prophets of the two kingdoms from the very first, notwithstanding the inevitable diversity in their labours in consequence of the different circumstances in which they were placed, continued all through. Still we do meet with differences. The earlier prophets are uniformly occupied with the internal affairs of the kingdom, and do not bring within their range the history of other nations, with which that of Israel was so intimately interwoven. Their prophecies are directed exclusively to the kings and people of the two kingdoms, and not to any foreign nation at all, either to those immediately adjoining, or what we certainly might expect, to Egypt and Aram. The Messianic element still remains in a somewhat obscure chrysalis state; and the poetry of thoughts and words, which grew up afterwards as the result of prophetic inspiration, only just manifests itself in certain striking figures of speech. It is indeed true, as we have already seen, that it is hardly possible to pronounce a decided opinion respecting the delivery of these earlier prophets; but from a sufficiently reliable and general impression, we may trace this distinction between the prophecy which prevailed till about the reign of Joash and that of the later times, that the former was for the most part prophecy in irresistible actions, the latter prophecy in convincing words. As G. Baur has observed; in the case of the older prophets it is only as the modest attendants of mighty outward acts, that we meet with words at all concerned to produce clear inward conviction. For this very reason, they could hardly produce prophetic writings in the strict sense of the word. But from the time of Samuel downwards, the prophets had made the theocratic and pragmatic treatment of the history of their own times a part of the regular duties of their calling. The cloistral, though by no means quietistic, retirement of their lives in the schools of the prophets, was very favourable to this literary occupation, more especially in the northern kingdom, and secured for it unquestioned liberty. We may see, however, from 2Ch. 20:34, that the prophets of Judah also occupied themselves with writing history; for the prophet Jehu was a Judaean, and, as we may infer from 2Ch. 19:1-3, had his home in Jerusalem. The literature of the prophetic writings, strictly so called, commenced in the time of Jehoram king of Judah with a fugitive writing against Edom; if, as we think we have proved elsewhere, the vision of OBADIAH was occasioned by the calamity described in 2Ch. 21:16-17, to which Joel and Amos also refer. He was followed by JOEL, who had Obadiah’s prophecy before him, since he introduces into the wider and more comprehensive range of his announcement, not only Obadiah’s prophetic matter, but Obadiah’s prophetic words. We may also see from Joel’s writings how the prophetic literature, in the stricter sense, sprang out of prophetical histories; for Joel himself relates the result of the penitential worship, which was occasioned by his appeal, in a historical statement in Joe. 2:18-19 a, through which the two halves of his writings are linked together. The time when he prophesied can be distinctly proved to have been the first half of the reign of Joash king of Judah. Obadiah and Joel were both of them contemporaries of Elisha. Elisha himself did not write anything, but the schools under his superintendence not only produced prophetic deeds, but prophetic writings also; and it is a characteristic circumstance, that the writings which bear the name of Jonah, whom an ancient Haggada describes as one of the sons of the prophets belonging to Elisha’s school, belong far less to the prophetic literature in the strict sense of the term than to the prophetical histories, and in fact to the historical writings of prophets. At what period it was that Jonah’s mission to Nineveh took place, may be gathered to some extent from 2Ki 14:25, where Jonah ben-Ammitai, the prophet of Gath ha-Hepher, in the territory of Zebulun, is said to have predicted the restoration of the kingdom of Israel to its promised boundaries, — a prediction which was fulfilled in Jeroboam ben-Joash, the third in succession from Jehu, and therefore was uttered at the commencement of the reign of Jeroboam II, if not under Joash himself. The mission to Nineveh may possibly belong to a somewhat earlier period than this prediction, namely, to the time of the older Assyrian kingdom, which was fast approaching its dissolution. Eusebius is probably correct in making Sardanapalus the last ruler of the old kingdom of Ninos, who was overcome by Arbaces the Mede, a contemporary of Jeroboam II. A glance at the book of Amos, on the other hand, will show us that, at the time when he prophesied, a new Asshur was arising, and had already made considerable conquests. The date given in Amo. 1:1, “two years before the earthquake,” does not afford us any clue. But if Amos prophesied “in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and Jeroboam ben-Joash king of Israel;” assuming that Jeroboam II reigned forty-one years, commencing with the fifteenth year of Amaziah (2Ki 14:23), and therefore was contemporary with Amaziah for fourteen years and with Uzziah for twenty-seven, it must have been in the last twenty-seven years of Jeroboam’s reign that Amos prophesied. At the time when his ministry began, the kingdom of Israel was at the summit of its greatness in consequence of the successes of Jeroboam, and the kingdom of Judah still continued in the depression into which it had fallen in the time of Amaziah; and to both of them he foretells a common fate at the hand of Asshur, which is indicated clearly enough, although not mentioned by name. The commencement of the ministry of HOSEA coincides at the most with the close of that of Amos. The symbolical portion (Isa. 1-3), with which his book commences, brings us to the five last years of Jeroboam’s reign; and the prophetic addresses which follow are not at variance with the statement in Isa. 1:1, which is by a later hand, and according to which he still continued to prophesy even under Hezekiah, and therefore until the fall of Samaria, which occurred in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign. Hosea, the Ephraimitish Jeremiah, was followed by Isaiah, who received his call, if Isa. 6 contains the account of his prophetic consecration, in the last year of Uzziah’s reign, and therefore twenty-five years after the death of Jeroboam II, and continued his labours at least till the second half of Hezekiah’s reign, possibly to the commencement of that of Manasseh. His younger contemporary was Micah of Moresheth, whose first appearance took place, according to Isa. 1:1, within the reign of Jotham, and whose book must have been written, according to the heading “concerning Samaria and Jerusalem, before the fall of Samaria, in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign (with which the account in Jer. 25:17ff. also agrees); so that his labours began and ended within the incomparably longer period of Isaiah’s ministry. This also applies to NAHUM, whose “burden of Nineveh” closes the prophetic writings of the Assyrian age. He prophesied after the defeat of Sennacherib, when the power of Asshur was broken, and also the yoke upon Judah’s neck (Isa. 1:13), provided, that is to say, that Asshur did not recover itself again. HABAKKUK is linked on to Nahum. He was the last prophet of Isaiah’s type in the book of twelve prophets, and began to foretell a new era of judgment, namely the Chaldean. He prophesied in the time of Josiah, before Zephaniah and Jeremiah, and possibly even as early as the time of Manasseh.

With ZEPHANIAH the line of prophets of Jeremiah’s type begins. He resembles Jeremiah in his reproductive, and, as it were, mosaic use of the words of the older prophets. As JEREMIAH was called, according to Jer. 1:2, in the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign, his ministry commenced before that of Zephaniah, since we are compelled by internal grounds to assign the prophecies of the latter to the period subsequent to the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign. Jeremiah’s labours in Judaea, and eventually in Egypt, extended over a period of more than forty years. He gave, as a warrant of the threats contained in his last prophetic address in Isa. 44, the approaching fall of Pharaoh Hophra, who lost his throne and life in the year 570 B.C., upon the very spot where his greatgrandfather Psammetichus had obtained forcible possession of the throne of Egypt a century before. Contemporaneous with Jeremiah was Ezekiel, who, though not personally acquainted with him, so far as we know, laboured in the very same spirit as he among the exiles of Judah. According to Isa. 1:1-2, the year of his call was the thirteenth year, viz., of the era of Nabopolassar, which was really the fifth years after the captivity of Jehoiachin, B.C. 595. The latest date given in connection with his ministry (Isa. 29:17) is the seven-andtwentieth year of the captivity, which was the sixteenth year from the destruction of Jerusalem, the time between Nebuchadnezzar’s raising of the siege of Tyre and his expedition against Egypt. We are aware, therefore, of twenty-two years of active life on the part of this prophet, who may have been older when called than Jeremiah, who was youthful still. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were the two great prophets who spread their praying hands over Jerusalem as a shield as long as they possibly could, and when the catastrophe was inevitable, saved it even in its fall. Their prophecies bridged over the great chasm of the captivity (though not without the co-operation of the “book of consolation,” Isa. 40-66, which was unsealed in the time of exile), and prepared the way for the restoration of the national community when the captivity was over. Into the community HAGGAI infused a new spirit in the second year of Darius Hystaspis, through his prediction of the glory which awaited the newly-built temple and the house of David, that was raised to honour once more in the person of Zerubbabel. ZECHARIAH began to prophesy only two months later. His last prophetic address belongs to the third year of Darius Hystaspis, the year after the edict requiring that the building of the temple should be continued. The predictions of the second part of his book (Isa. 9-14) were hardly delivered publicly: they are throughout eschatological and apocalyptical, and take earlier situations and prophetic words as emblems of the last days. Prophecy was now silent for a long time. At length the last prophetic voice of the old covenant has heard in MAL’ACHI. His book coincides with the condition of things which Nehemiah found on his second sojourn in Jerusalem under Darius Notus; and his peculiar calling in connection with the sacred history was to predict, that the messenger who was appointed to precede the coming of Jehovah would soon appear, — namely, Elijah the Tishbite, — and that he, the forerunner, a pioneer, would then be followed by the Lord Himself, as “the Angle of the covenant,” i.e., the Messenger or Mediator of a new covenant.

This general survey will show very clearly that the arrangement of the nebiim acharonim (last prophets) in the canon is not a strictly chronological one. The three “major” prophets, who are so called on account of the comparative size of their books of prophecy, are placed together; and the twelve “minor” prophets are also grouped together, so as to form one book (monobiblos, as Melito calls it), on account of the smaller extent of their prophetic books (propter parvitatem colligati, as b. Bathra says). To this the name of “the twelve,” or “the twelve-prophet-book,” was given (vid., Wis. 49:10; Josephus, c. Apion, i. 8; cf., Eusebius, h. e. iii. 10). In the collection itself, on the other hand, the chronological order has so far been regarded, that the whole is divisible into three groups, representing three periods of prophetic literature, viz., prophets of the Assyrian period (Hosea to Nahum), prophets of the Chaldean period (Habakkuk and Zephaniah), and prophets after the captivity (Haggai to Malachi). And there is also an obvious desire to pair off as far as possible a prophet of the kingdom of Israel with one of the kingdom of Judah, viz., Hosea and Joel; Amos and Obadiah; Jonah and Micah; Nah. and Habakkuk (for the Elkosh of Nahum, if not the town on the eastern bank of the Tigris near to Mosul, was at any rate, according to Eusebius and Jerome, a Galilean town). Hosea is placed first, not because the opening word techillath made this book a very suitable one with which to begin the collection; still less because Hosea was the first to be called of the four prophets, Hosea and Isaiah, Amos and Micah, as b. Bathra affirms; but for the very same reason for which the Epistle to the Romans is placed first among the Pauline epistles, viz., because his book is the largest in the collection, — a point of view which comes out still more prominently in the Septuagint, where Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, and Obadiah follow one another, the first with fourteen chapters, the second with one, the third with seven, the fourth with three, and the last with one, and then a new series commences with Jonah. But the reason why Joel is placed next to Hosea in the Hebrew canon, may possibly be found in the contrast which exists between the lamentations of the former on account of the all-parching heat and the all-consuming swarms of insects, and the dewy, verdant, and flowery imagery with which the book of Hosea closes. Amos then follows Joel, because he not only takes up again his denunciations of judgment, but opens with one of the utterances with which Joel closes (Joe. 3:16): “Jehovah will roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem.” Then follows Obadiah, on account of the reciprocal relation between Obad. 1:19 and Amo. 9:12. And Jonah is linked on to Obadiah: for Obadiah begins thus, “We have heard tidings from Jehovah, and a messenger is sent among the nations;” and Jonah was such a messenger. Such grounds as these, the further study of which we must leave to the introduction to the book of the twelve prophets, also had their influence upon the pairing of the prophets of Judah with those of Israel. The fact that Zephaniah follows Habakkuk may be accounted for from a similar ground, which coincides in this case with the chronological order; for a catchword in Zephaniah’s prophecy, “Hold thy peace at the presence of Jehovah” (Zep. 1:7), is taken from Hab. 2:20. The prophets after the captivity (called in the Talmud nebiim ha-acharonim, the last prophets), which necessarily followed one another in the order determined by the date and contents of their books, bring the whole to a close.

The so-called greater prophets are attached in the Hebrew canon to the book of Kings; and in both the Hebrew and Alexandrian canons Isaiah stands at the head. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel— this is the order in which they follow one another in our editions, in accordance with the time of their respective labours. In German and French codices, we occasionally meet with a different arrangement, viz., Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah. This is the order given in the Talmud, b. Bathra, 14 b. The principle upon which it is founded is the kindred nature of the contents, which also helped to determine the order of the twelve. Jeremiah follows the book of Kings, because nearly all his predictions group themselves around the Chaldean catastrophe, with which the book of Kings closes; and Isaiah follows Ezekiel, whose book closes in a consolatory strain, because that of Isaiah is, as the Talmud says, nothing but consolation. But the other arrangement, adopted in the Masora and MSS of the Spanish class, has prevailed over this talmudic order, which has been appealed to, though without any good ground, by the opponents of the authenticity of Isa. 40-66 as supporting their conclusions.[4] [1] The title Tirshatha is probably to be explained according to the Armenian tir-saÑt,“lord of the kingdom or province.” Shatha is another form of the terminations to such names of towns as Artaxata (= Artasata, for saÑtis equivalent to the Persian khsatra), Samosata, etc. [2] See my article on Daniel in Herzog’s Cyclopaedia. [3] The office of national annalist among the ancient Persians (see Brissonius, De regno Persarum, i. § 229), and that of wakaÑjinuwÑs, or historian, which still exists at the Persian court, are perfectly similar in character. The Chinese have had their national historians from the time of Emperor Wu-ti of the Han dynasty (in the second century after Christ), and the annals of each dynasty are published on its extinction. The same institution existed in the kingdom of Barma, where the annals of every king were written after his death. [4] Isaiah was regarded as the consolatory prophet preeminently, and more especially on account of Isa. 40-66, so that, according to b. Berachoth, 57 b, whoever saw Isaiah in a dream might look for consolation; and, according to the Midrash on the Lamentations, Isaiah had previously rectified all the evils that Jeremiah foretold.

The Prophecies of Isaiah

Introduction

Time of the Prophet

The first prerequisite to a clear understanding and full appreciation of the prophecies of Isaiah, is a knowledge of his time, and of the different periods of his ministry. The first period was in the reigns of Uzziah (b.c. 811-759) and Jotham (759-743). The precise starting-point depends upon the view we take of Isa 6:1-13. But, in any case, Isaiah commenced his ministry towards the close of Uzziah’s reign, and laboured on throughout the sixteen years of the reign of Jotham. The first twenty-seven of the fifty-two years that Uzziah reigned run parallel to the last twenty-seven of the forty-one that Jeroboam II reigned (b.c. 825-784). Under Joash, and his son Jeroboam II, the kingdom of Israel passed through a period of outward glory, which surpassed, both in character and duration, any that it had reached before; and this was also the case with the kingdom of Judah under Uzziah and his son Jotham. As the glory of the one kingdom faded away, that of the other increased. The bloom of the northern kingdom was destroyed and surpassed by that of the southern. But outward splendour contained within itself the fatal germ of decay and ruin in the one case as much as in the other; for prosperity degenerated into luxury, and the worship of Jehovah became stiffened into idolatry. It was in this last and longest time of Judah’s prosperity that Isaiah arose, with the mournful vocation to preach repentance without success, and consequently to have to announce the judgment of hardening and devastation, of the ban and of banishment. The second period of his ministry extended from the commencement of the reign of Ahaz to that of the reign of Hezekiah. Within these sixteen years three events occurred, which combined to bring about a new and calamitous turn in the history of Judah. In the place of the worship of Jehovah, which had been maintained with outward regularity and legal precision under Uzziah and Jotham; as soon as Ahaz ascended the throne, open idolatry was introduced of the most abominable description and in very various forms. The hostilities which began while Jotham was living, were perpetuated by Pekah the king of Israel and Rezin the king of Damascene Syria; and in the Syro-Ephraimitish war, an attack was made upon Jerusalem, with the avowed intention of bringing the Davidic rule to an end. Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, to help him out of these troubles. He thus made flesh his arm, and so entangled the nation of Jehovah with the kingdom of the world, that from that time forward it never truly recovered its independence again. The kingdom of the world was the heathen state in its Nimrodic form. Its perpetual aim was to extend its boundaries by constant accretions, till it had grown into a world-embracing colossus; and in order to accomplish this, it was ever passing beyond its natural boundaries, and coming down like an avalanche upon foreign nations, not merely for self-defence or revenge, but for the purpose of conquest also. Assyria and Rome were the first and last links in that chain of oppression by the kingdom of the world, which ran through the history of Israel. Thus Isaiah, standing as he did on the very threshold of this new and all-important turn in the history of his country, and surveying it with his telescopic glance, was, so to speak, the universal prophet of Israel. The third period of his ministry extended from the accession of Hezekiah to the fifteenth year of his reign. Under Hezekiah the nation rose, almost at the same pace at which it had previously declined under Ahaz. He forsook the ways of his idolatrous father, and restored the worship of Jehovah. The mass of the people, indeed, remained inwardly unchanged, but Judah had once more an upright king, who hearkened to the word of the prophet by his side - two pillars of the state, and men mighty in prayer (2Ch 32:20). When the attempt was afterwards made to break away from the Assyrian yoke, so far as the leading men and the great mass of the people were concerned, this was an act of unbelief originating merely in the same confident expectation of help from Egypt which had occasioned the destruction of the northern kingdom in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign; but on the part of Hezekiah it was an act of faith and confident reliance upon Jehovah (2Ki 18:7). Consequently, when Sennacherib, the successor of Shalmaneser, marched against Jerusalem, conquering and devastating the land as he advanced, and Egypt failed to send the promised help, the carnal defiance of the leaders and of the great mass of the people brought its own punishment. But Jehovah averted the worst extremity, by destroying the kernel of the Assyrian army in a single night; so that, as in the Syro-Ephraimitish war, Jerusalem itself was never actually besieged. Thus the faith of the king, and of the better portion of the nation, which rested upon the word of promise, had its reward. There was still a divine power in the state, which preserved it from destruction. The coming judgment, which nothing indeed could now avert, according to Isa 6:1-13, was arrested for a time, just when the last destructive blow would naturally have been expected. It was in this miraculous rescue, which Isaiah predicted, and for which he prepared the way, that the public ministry of the prophet culminated. Isaiah was the Amos of the kingdom of Judah, having the same fearful vocation to foresee and to declare the fact, that for Israel as a people and kingdom the time of forgiveness had gone by. But he was not also the Hosea of the southern kingdom; for it was not Isaiah, but Jeremiah, who received the solemn call to accompany the disastrous fate of the kingdom of Judah with the knell of prophetic denunciations. Jeremiah was the Hosea of the kingdom of Judah. To Isaiah was given the commission, which was refused to his successor Jeremiah - namely, to press back once more, through the might of his prophetic word, coming as it did out of the depths of the strong spirit of faith, the dark night which threatened to swallow up his people at the time of the Assyrian judgment. After the fifteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, he took no further part in public affairs; but he lived till the commencement of Manasseh’s reign, when, according to a credible tradition, to which there is an evident allusion in Heb 11:37 (“they were sawn asunder”), ^{▼▼According to b. Jebamoth, 49 b, it was found in a roll containing the history of a Jerusalem family; and according to Sanhedrin, 103 b, in the Targum on 2Ki 21:16.} he fell a victim to the heathenism which became once more supreme in the land. To this sketch of the times and ministry of the prophet we will add a review of the scriptural account of the four kings, under whom he laboured according to Isa 1:1; since nothing is more essential, as a preparation for the study of his book, than a minute acquaintance with these sections of the books of Kings and Chronicles.

I. Historical Account of Uzziah-Jotham - The account of Uzziah given in the book of Kings (2Ki 15:1-7, to which we may add 2Ki 14:21-22), like that of Jeroboam II, is not so full as we should have expected. After the murder of Amaziah, the people of Judah, as related in Isa 14:21-22, raised to the throne his son Azariah, probably not his first-born, who was then sixteen years old. It was he who built the Edomitish seaport town of Elath (for navigation and commerce), and made it a permanent possession of Judah (as in the time of Solomon). This notice is introduced, as a kind of appendix, at the close of Amaziah’s life and quite out of its chronological position, because the conquest of Elath was the crowning point of the subjugation of Edom by Amaziah, and not, as Thenius supposes, because it was Azariah’s first feat of arms, by which, immediately after his accession, he satisfied the expectations with which the army had made him king. For the victories gained by this king over Edom and the other neighbouring nations cannot have been obtained at the time when Amos prophesied, which was about the tenth year of Uzziah’s reign. The attack made by Amaziah upon the kingdom of Israel, had brought the kingdom of Judah into a state of dependence upon the former, and almost of total ruin, from which it only recovered gradually, like a house that had fallen into decay. The chronicler, following the text of the book of Kings, has introduced the notice concerning Elath in the same place (2Ch 26:1, 2Ch 26:2 : it is written Eloth, as in 1Ki 9:26, and the Septuagint at 2Ki 14:22). He calls the king Uzziahu; and it is only in the table of the kings of Judah, in 1Ch 3:12, that he gives the name as Azariah. The author of the book of Kings, according to our Hebrew text, calls him sometimes Azariah or Azariahu, sometimes Uzziah or Uzziahu; the Septuagint always gives the name as Azarias. The occurrence of the two names in both of the historical books is an indubitable proof that they are genuine. Azariah was the original name: out of this Uzziah was gradually formed by a significant elision; and as the prophetical books, from Isa 1:1 to Zec 14:5, clearly show, the latter was the name most commonly used.

Azariah, as we learn from the section in the book of Kings relating to the reign of this monarch (2Ki 15:1-7), ascended the throne in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam’s reign, that is to say, in the fifteenth year of his sole government, the twenty-seventh from the time when he shared the government with his father Joash, as we may gather from 2Ki 13:13. The youthful sovereign, who was only sixteen years of age, was the son of Amaziah by a native of Jerusalem, and reigned fifty-two years. He did what was pleasing in the sight of God, like his father Amaziah; i.e., although he did not come up to the standard of David, he was one of the better kings. He fostered the worship of Jehovah, as prescribed in the law: nevertheless he left the high places (bamoth) standing; and while he was reigning, the people maintained in all its force the custom of sacrificing and burning incense upon the heights. He was punished by God with leprosy, which compelled him to live in a sick-house (chophshuth = chophshith: sickness) till the day of his death, whilst his son Jotham was over the palace, and conducted the affairs of government. He was buried in the city of David, and Jotham followed by him on the throne. This is all that the author of the book of Kings tells us concerning Azariah: for the rest, he refers to the annals of the kings of Judah. The section in the Chronicles relating to Uzziah (2 Chron 26) is much more copious: the writer had our book of Kings before him, as 2Ch 26:3-4, 2Ch 26:21, clearly proves, and completed the defective notices from the source which he chiefly employed - namely, the much more elaborate midrash.

Uzziah, he says, was zealous in seeking Elohim in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in divine visions; and in the days when he sought Jehovah, God made him to prosper. Thus the prophet Zechariah, as a faithful pastor and counsellor, stood in the same relation to him in which Jehoiada the high priest had stood to Joash, Uzziah’s grandfather. The chronicler then enumerates singly the divine blessings which Uzziah enjoyed. First, his victories over the surrounding nations (passing over the victory over Edom, which had been already mentioned), viz.: (1.) he went forth and warred against the Philistines, and brake down the wall of Gath, and the wall of Jabneh, and the wall of Ashdod, and built towns b'ashdod and b'phelistim (i.e., in the conquered territory of Ashdod, and in Philistia generally); (2.) God not only gave him victory over the Philistines, but also over the Arabians who dwelt in Gur-baal (an unknown place, which neither the lxx nor the Targumists could explain), and the Mehunim, probably a tribe of Arabia Petraea; (3.) the Ammonites gave him presents in token of allegiance, and his name was honoured even as far as Egypt, to such an extent did his power grow. Secondly, his buildings: he built towers (fortifications) above the corner gate, and above the valley gate, and above the Mikzoa, and fortified these (the weakest) portions of Jerusalem: he also built towers in the desert (probably in the desert between Beersheba and Gaza, to protect either the land, or the flocks and herds that were pasturing there); and dug many cisterns, for he had large flocks and herds both in the shephelah (the western portion of Southern Palestine) and in the mishor (the extensive pasture-land of the tribe territory of Reuben on the other side of the Jordan): he had also husbandmen and vine-dressers on the mountains, and in the fruitful fields, for he was a lover of agriculture. Thirdly, his well-organized troops: he had an army of fighting men which consisted - according to a calculation made by Jeiel the scribe, and Maaseiah, the officer under the superintendence of Nahaniah, one of the royal princes - of 2600 heads of families, who had 307,500 men under their command, “that made war with mighty power to help the king against the enemy.” Uzziah furnished these, according to all the divisions of the army, with shields, had spears, and helmet, and coats of mail, and bows, even with slinging-stones. He also had ingenious slinging-machines (balistae) made in Jerusalem, to fix upon the towers and ramparts, for the purpose of shooting arrows and large stones. His name resounded far abroad, for he had marvellous success, so that he became very powerful.

Up to this point the chronicler has depicted the brighter side of Uzziah’s reign. His prosperous deeds and enterprises are all grouped together, so that it is doubtful whether the history within these several groups follows the chronological order or not. The light thrown upon the history of the times by the group of victories gained by Uzziah, would be worth twice as much if the chronological order were strictly observed. But even if we might assume that the victory over the Philistines preceded the victory over the Arabians of Gur-baal and the Mehunim, and this again the subjugation of Ammon, it would still be very uncertain what position the expedition against Edom - which was noticed by anticipation at the close of Amaziah’s life - occupied in relation to the other wars, and at what part of Uzziah’s reign the several wars occurred. All that can be affirmed is, that they preceded the closing years of his life, when the blessing of God was withdrawn from him.

The chronicler relates still further, in Isa 26:16, that as Uzziah became stronger and stronger, he fell into pride of heart, which led him to perform a ruinous act. He sinned against Jehovah his God, by forcing his way into the holy place of the temple, to burn incense upon the altar of incense, from the proud notion that royalty involved the rights of the priesthood, and that the priests were only the delegates and representatives of the king. Then Azariah the high priest, and eighty other priests, brave men, hurried after him, and went up to him, and said, “This does not belong to thee, Uzziah, to burn incense of Jehovah; but to the priests, and sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary, for thou sinnest; and this is not for thine honour with Jehovah Elohim!” Then Uzziah was wroth, as he held the censer in his hand; and while he was so enraged against the priests, leprosy broke out upon his forehead in the sight of the priests, in the house of Jehovah, at the altar of incense. When Azariah the high priest and the rest of the priests turned to him, behold, he was leprous in his forehead; and they brought him hurriedly away from thence - in fact, he himself hasted to go out - for Jehovah had smitten him. After having thus explained the circumstances which led to the king’s leprosy, the chronicler follows once more the text of the book of Kings - where the leprosy itself is also mentioned - and states that the king remained a leper until the day of his death, and lived in a sick-house, without ever being able to visit the temple again. But instead of the statement in the book of Kings, that he was buried in the city of David, the chronicler affirms more particularly that he was not placed in the king’s sepulchre; but, inasmuch as he was leprous, and would therefore have defiled it, was buried in the field near the sepulchre. But before introducing this conclusion to the history of Uzziah’s reign, and instead of referring to the annals of the kings of Judah, as the author of the book of Kings has done, or making such citations as we generally find, the author simply states, that “the rest of the acts of Uzziah, first and last, did Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, write.”

It cannot possibly be either the prophecies of Isaiah of the time of Uzziah, or a certain historical portion of the original book of Isaiah’s predictions, to which reference is here made; for in that case we should expect the same notice at the close of the account of Jotham’s reign, or, at any rate, at the close of that of Ahaz (cf., 2Ch 27:7 and 2Ch 28:26). It is also inconceivable that Isaiah’s book of predictions should have contained either a prophetical or historical account of the first acts of Uzziah, since Isaiah was later than Amos, later even than Hosea; and his public ministry did not commence till the close of his reign-in fact, not till the year of his death. Consequently the chronicler must refer to some historical work distinct from “the visions of Isaiah.” Just as he mentions two historical works within the first epoch of the divided kingdom, viz., Shemaiah’s and Iddo’s - the former of which referred more especially to the entire history of Rehoboam, and the latter to the history of Abijah - and then again, in the second epoch, an historical work by Jehu ben Hanani, which contained a complete history of Jehoshaphat from the beginning to the end; so here, in the third epoch, he speaks of Isaiah ben Amoz, the greatest Judaean prophet of this epoch as the author of a special history of Uzziah, which was not incorporated in his “visions” like the history of Hezekiah (cf., 2Ch 32:32), but formed an independent work. Besides this prophetical history of Uzziah, there was also an annalistic history, as 2Ki 15:6 clearly shows; and it is quite possible that the annals of Uzziah were finished when Isaiah commenced his work, and that they were made use of by him. For the leading purpose of the prophetical histories was to exhibit the inward and divine connection between the several outward events, which the annals simply registered. The historical writings of a prophet were only the other side of his more purely prophetic work. In the light of the Spirit of God, the former looked deep into the past, the latter into the present. Both of them had to do with the ways of divine justice and grace, and set forth past and present, alike in view of the true goal, in which these two ways coincide.Jotham succeeded Uzziah, after having acted as regent, or rather as viceroy, for several years (2Ki 15:32-38). He ascended the throne in the second year of Pekah king of Israel, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, and reigned for sixteen years in a manner which pleased God, though he still tolerated the worship upon high places, as his father had done. He built the upper gate of the temple. The author has no sooner written this than he refers to the annals, simply adding, before concluding with the usual formula concerning his burial in the city of David, that in those days, i.e., towards the close of Jotham’s reign, the hostilities of Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel commenced, as a judgment from God upon Judah. The chronicler, however, makes several valuable additions to the text of the book of Kings, which he has copied word for word down to the notice concerning the commencement of the Syro-Ephraimitish hostilities (vid., 2Ch 27:1-9). We do not include in this the statement that Jotham did not force his way into the holy place in the temple: this is simply intended as a limitation of the assertion made by the author of the book of Kings as to the moral equality of Jotham and Uzziah, and in favour of the former. The words, “the people continued in their destructive course,” also contain nothing new, but are simply the shorter expression used in the Chronicles to indicate the continuance of the worship of the high places during Jotham’s reign. But there is something new in what the chronicler appends to the remark concerning the building of the upper gate of the temple, which is very bold and abrupt as it stands in the book of Kings, viz., “On the wall of the Ophel he built much (i.e., he fortified this southern spur of the temple hill still more strongly), and put towns in the mountains of Judah, and erected castles and towers in the forests (for watchtowers and defences against hostile attacks). He also fought with the king of the Ammonites; and when conquered, they were obliged to give him that year and the two following a hundred talents of silver, ten thousand cors of wheat, and the same quantity of barley. Jotham grew stronger and stronger, because he strove to walk before Jehovah his God.” The chronicler breaks off with this general statement, and refers, for the other memorabilia of Jotham, and all his wars and enterprises, to the book of the Kings of Israel and Judah.

This is what the two historical books relate concerning the royal pair - Uzziah-Jotham - under whom the kingdom of Judah enjoyed once more a period of great prosperity and power - ”the greatest since the disruption, with the exception of that of Jehoshaphat; the longest during the whole period of its existence, the last before its overthrow” (Caspari). The sources from which the two historical accounts were derived were the annals: they were taken directly from them by the author of the book of Kings, indirectly by the chronicler. No traces can be discovered of the work written by Isaiah concerning Uzziah, although it may possibly be employed in the midrash of the chronicler. There is an important supplement to the account given by the chronicler in the casual remark made in 1Ch 5:17, to the effect that Jotham had a census taken of the tribe of Gad, which was settled on the other side of the Jordan. We see from this, that in proportion as the northern kingdom sank down from the eminence to which it had attained under Jeroboam II, the supremacy of Judah over the land to the east of the Jordan was renewed. But we may see from Amos, that it was only gradually that the kingdom of Judah revived under Uzziah, and that at first, like the wall of Jerusalem, which was partially broken down by Joash, it presented the aspect of a house full of fissures, and towards Israel in a very shaky condition; also that the Ephraimitish ox- (or calf-) worship of Jehovah was carried on at Beersheba, and therefore upon Judaean soil, and that Judah did not keep itself free from the idolatry which it had inherited from the fathers (Amo 2:4-5). Again, assuming that Amos commenced his ministry at about the tenth year of Uzziah’s reign, we may learn at least so much from him with regard to Uzziah’s victories over Edom, Philistia, and Ammon, that they were not gained till after the tenth year of his reign. Hosea, on the other hand, whose ministry commenced at the very earliest when that of Amos was drawing to a close, and probably not till the last five years of Jeroboam’s reign, bears witness to, and like Amos condemns, the participation in the Ephraimitish worship, into which Judah had been drawn under Uzziah-Jotham. But with him Beersheba is not referred to any more as an Israelitish seat of worship (Amo 5:5); Israel does not interfere any longer with the soil of Judah, as in the time of Amos, since Judah has again become a powerful and well-fortified kingdom (Hos 8:14, cf., Hos 1:7). But, at the same time, it has become full of carnal trust and manifold apostasy from Jehovah (Hos 5:10; Hos 12:1); so that, although receiving at first a miraculous deliverance from God (Hos 1:7), it is ripening for the same destruction as Israel (Hos 6:11).

This survey of the kingdom of Judah in the time of Uzziah-Jotham by the Israelitish prophet, we shall find repeated in Isaiah; for the same spirit animates and determines the verdicts of the prophets of both kingdoms.

II. Historical Account of Ahaz and the Syro-Ephraimitish War. - The account of Ahaz, given in the book of Kings and in the Chronicles (2 Kings 16; 2Ch 28:1), may be divided into three parts: viz., first, the general characteristics; secondly, the account of the Syro-Ephraimitish war; and thirdly, the desecration of the temple by Ahaz, more especially by setting up an altar made after the model of that at Damascus. ^{▼▼On the temple at Damascus, whose altar Ahaz imitated, see the Commentary on the Book of Job.} (1.) 2Ki 16:1-4. Ahaz ascended the throne in the seventeenth year of Pekah. He was then twenty years old (or twenty-five according to the lxx at 2Ch 28:1, which is much more probable, as he would otherwise have had a son, Hezekiah, in the tenth years of his age), and he reigned sixteen years. He did not please God as his forefather David had done, but took the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire (i.e., burnt him in honour of Moloch), according to the abominations of the (Canaanitish) people whom Jehovah had driven out before Israel; and he offered sacrifice and burnt incense upon the high places, and upon the hills, and under every green tree. The Deuteronomic colouring of this passage is very obvious. The corresponding passage in the Chronicles is 2Ch 28:1-4, where the additional fact is mentioned, that he even made molten images for Baalim, and burnt incense in the valley of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire (“his children,” a generic plural like “the kings” in 2Ch 28:16, and “the sons” in 2Ch 24:25 : “burnt,” ויּבער, unless the reading ויּעבר be adopted, as it has been by the lxx, “he caused to pass through.”) (2.) 2Ki 16:5-9. Then (in the time of this idolatrous king Ahaz) the following well-known and memorable event occurred: Rezin the king of Aram, and Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel, went up against Jerusalem to war, and besieged Ahaz, “but could not overcome him,” i.e., as we may gather from Isa 7:1, they were not able to get possession of Jerusalem, which was the real object of their expedition. “At that time” (the author of the book of Kings proceeds to observe), viz., at the time of this Syro-Ephraimitish war, Rezin king of Aram brought Elath to Aram (i.e., wrested again from the kingdom of Judah the seaport town which Uzziah had recovered a short time before), and drove the Judaeans out of Elath (sic); and Aramaeans came to Elath and settled there unto this day. Thenius, who starts with the needless assumption that the conquest of Elath took place subsequently to the futile attempt to take Jerusalem, gives the preference to the reading of the Keri, “and Edomites (Edomina) came to Elath,” and would therefore correct l'aram (to Aram) into l'edom (to Edom). “Rezin,” he says, “destroyed the work of Uzziah, and gave Edom its liberty again, in the hope that at some future time he might have the support of Edom, and so operate against Judah with greater success.” But, in answer to this, it may be affirmed that such obscure forms as ארומים for ארמּים are peculiar to this account, and that the words do not denote the restoration of a settlement, but mention the settlement as a new and remarkable fact. I therefore adopt Caspari’s conclusion, that the Syrian king transplanted a Syrian colony of traders to Elath, to secure the command of the maritime trade with all its attendant advantages; and this colony held its ground there for some time after the destruction of the Damascene kingdom, as the expression “to this day,” found in the earlier source of the author of the book of Kings, clearly implies.

But if the conquest of Elath fell within the period of the Syro-Ephraimitish war, which commenced towards the end of Jotham’s reign, and probably originated in the bitter feelings occasioned by the almost total loss to Judah of the country on the east of the Jordan, and which assumed the form of a direct attack upon Jerusalem itself soon after Ahaz ascended the throne; the question arises, How was it that this design of the two allied kings upon Jerusalem was not successful? The explanation is given in the account contained in the book of Kings (2Ki 16:7): “Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pelezer (sic) the king of Asshur, to say to him, I am thy servant, and thy son; come up, and save me out of the hand of Aram, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, who have risen up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and the gold that was found in the house of Jehovah, and in the treasures of the palace, and sent it for a present to the king of Asshur. The king hearkened to his petition; and went against Damascus, and took it, and carried the inhabitants into captivity to Kir, and slew Rezin.” And what did Tiglath-pileser do with Pekah? The author of the book of Kings has already related, in the section referring to Pekah (2Ki 15:29), that he punished him by taking away the whole of the country to the east of the Jordan, and a large part of the territory on this side towards the north, and carried the inhabitants captive to Assyria. This section must be supplied here - an example of the great liberty which the historians allowed themselves in the selection and arrangement of their materials. The anticipation in 2Ki 16:5 is also quite in accordance with their usual style: the author first of all states that the expedition against Jerusalem was an unsuccessful one, and then afterwards proceeds to mention the reason for the failure - namely, the appeal of Ahaz to Assyria for help. For I also agree with Caspari in this, that the Syrians the Ephraimites were unable to take Jerusalem, because the tidings reached them, that Tiglath-pileser had been appealed to by Ahaz and was coming against them; and they were consequently obliged to raise the siege and made a speedy retreat.

The account in the Chronicles (2 Chron 28:5-21) furnishes us with full and extensive details, with which to supplement the very condensed notice of the book of Kings. When we compare the two accounts, the question arises, whether they refer to two different expeditions (and if so, which of the two refers to the first expedition and which to the second), or whether they both relate to the same expedition. Let us picture to ourselves first of all the facts as given by the chronicler. “Jehovah, his God,” he says of Ahaz, “delivered him into the hand of the king of Aram, and they (the Aramaeans) smote him, and carried off from him a great crowd of captives, whom they brought to Damascus; and he was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who inflicted upon him a terrible defeat.” This very clearly implies, as Caspari has shown, that although the two kings set the conquest of Jerusalem before them as a common end at which to aim, and eventually united for the attainment of this end, yet for a time they acted separately. We are not told here in what direction Rezin’s army went. But we know from 2Ki 16:6 that it marched to Idumaea, which it could easily reach from Damascus by going through the territory of his ally - namely, the country of the two tribes and a half. The chronicler merely describes the simultaneous invasion of Judaea by Pekah, but he does this with all the greater fulness. “Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah a hundred and twenty thousand in one day, all valiant men, because they forsook Jehovah, the God of their fathers. Zichri, an Ephraimitish hero, slew Ma'asejahu the king’s son, and Azrikam the governor of the palace, and Elkanah, the second in rank to the king. And the Israelites carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand women, boys, and girls, and took away much spoil from them, and brought this booty to Samaria.” As the Jewish army numbered at that time three hundred thousand men (2Ch 25:5; 2Ch 26:13), and the war was carried on with the greatest animosity, these numbers need not be regarded as either spurious or exaggerated. Moreover, the numbers, which the chronicler found in the sources he employed, merely contained the estimate of the enormous losses sustained, as generally adopted at that time of the side of Judah itself.

This bloody catastrophe was followed by a very fine and touching occurrence. A prophet of Jehovah, named Oded (a contemporary of Hosea, and a man of kindred spirit), went out before the army as it came back to Samaria, and charged the victors to release the captives of their brother nation, which had been terribly punished in God’s wrath, and by so doing to avert the wrath of God which threatened them as well. Four noble Ephraimitish heads of tribes, whose names the chronicler has preserved, supported the admonition of the prophet. The army then placed the prisoners and the booty at the disposal of the princes and the assembled people: “And these four memorable men rose up, and took the prisoners, and all their naked ones they covered with the booty, and clothed and shod them, and gave them to eat and drink, and anointed them, and conducted as many of them as were cripples upon asses, and brought them to Jericho the palm-city, to the neighbourhood of their brethren, and returned to Samaria.” Nothing but the rudest scepticism could ever seek to cast a slur upon this touching episode, the truth of which is so conspicuous. There is nothing strange in the fact that so horrible a massacre should be followed by a strong manifestation of the fraternal love, which had been forcibly suppressed, but was not rekindled by the prophet’s words. We find an older fellow-piece to this in the prevention of a fratricidal war by Shemaiah, as described in 1Ki 12:22-24.

Now, when the chronicler proceeds to observe in 2Ch 28:16, that “at that time Ahaz turned for help to the royal house of Assyria” (malce asshur), in all probability this took place at the time when he had sustained two severe defeats, one at the hands of Pekah to the north of Jerusalem; and another from Rezin in Idumaea. The two battles belong to the period before the siege of Jerusalem, and the appeal for help from Assyria falls between the battles and the siege. The chronicler then mentions other judgments which fell upon the king in his estrangement from God, viz.: (1.) “Moreover the Edomites came, smote Judah, and carried away captives;” possibly while the Syro-Ephraimitish war was still going on, after they had welcomed Rezin as their deliverer, had shaken off the Jewish yoke, and had supported the Syrian king against Judah in their own land; (2.) the Philistines invaded the low land (shephelah) and the south land (negeb) of Judah, and took several towns, six of which the chronicler mentions by name, and settled in them; for “Jehovah humbled Judah because of Ahaz the king of Israel (an epithet with several sarcastic allusions), for he acted without restraint in Judah, and most wickedly against Jehovah.” The breaking away of the Philistines from the Jewish dominion took place, according to Caspari, in the time of the Syro-Ephraimitish war. The position of 2Ch 28:18 in the section reaching from 2Ch 28:5 to 2Ch 28:21 (viz., 2Ch 28:18, invasion of the Philistines; 2Ch 28:17, that of the Edomites) renders this certainly very probable, though it is not conclusive, as Caspari himself admits.

In 2Ch 28:20, 2Ch 28:21, the chronicler adds an appendix to the previous list of punishments: Tiglath-Pilnezer (sic) the king of Asshur came upon him, and oppressed him instead of strengthening him; for Ahaz had plundered both temple and palace, and given the treasures to the king of Asshur, without receiving any proper help in return. Thenius disputes the rendering, “He strengthened him not” (cf., Eze 30:21); but Caspari has shown that it is quite in accordance with the facts of the case. Tiglath-pileser did not bring Ahaz any true help; for what he proceeded to do against Syria and Israel was not taken in hand in the interests of Ahaz, but to extend his own imperial dominion. He did not assist Ahaz to bring ether the Edomites or the Philistines into subjection again, to say nothing of compensating him for his losses with either Syrian or Ephraimitish territory. Nor was it only that he did not truly help him: he really oppressed him, by making him a tributary vassal instead of a free and independent prince - a relation to Asshur which, according to many evident signs, was the direct consequence of his appeal for help, and which was established, at any rate, at the very commencement of Hezekiah’s reign. Under what circumstances this took place we cannot tell; but it is very probable that, after the victories over Rezin and Pekah, a second sum of money was demanded by Tiglath-pileser, and then from that time forward a yearly tribute. The expression used by the chronicler-”he came upon him” - seems, in fact, to mean that he gave emphasis to this demand by sending a detachment of his army; even if we cannot take it, as Caspari does, in a rhetorical rather than a purely historical sense, viz., as signifying that, “although Tiglath-pileser came, as Ahaz desired, his coming was not such as Ahaz desired, a coming to help and benefit, but rather to oppress and injure.” (3.) The third part of the two historical accounts describes the pernicious influence which the alliance with Tiglath-pileser exerted upon Ahaz, who was already too much inclined to idolatry (2Ki 16:10-18). After Tiglath-pileser had marched against the ruler of Damascus, and delivered Ahaz from the more dangerous of his two adversaries (and possibly from both of them), Ahaz went to Damascus to present his thanks in person. There he saw the altar (which was renowned as a work of art), and sent an exact model to Uriah the high priest, who had an altar constructed like it by the time that the king returned. As soon as Ahaz came back he went up to this altar and offered sacrifice, thus officiating as priest himself (probably as a thanksgiving for the deliverance he had received). The brazen altar (of Solomon), which Uriah had moved farther forward to the front of the temple building, he put farther back again, placing it close to the north side of the new one (that the old one might not appear to have the slightest preference over the new), and commanded the high priest to perform the sacrificial service in future upon the new great altar; adding, at the same time, “And (as for) the brazen altar, I will consider (what shall be done with it).” “And king Ahaz,” it is stated still further, “broke out the borders of the stools, and took away the basons; and the sea he took down from the oxen that bare it, and set it upon a stone pedestal (that took the place of the oxen). And the covered sabbath-hall which had been built in the temple, and the outer king’s entrance, he removed into the temple of Jehovah before the king of Assyria.” Thenius explains this as meaning “he altered them” (taking away the valuable ornaments from both), that he might be able to take with him to Damascus the necessary presents for the king of Asshur. Ewald’s explanation, however, is better than this, and more in accordance with the expression “before,” viz., “in order that he might be able to secure the continued favour of the dreaded Assyrian king, by continually sending him fresh presents.” But הסבdoes not mean to alter, and בית ה = בבית ה would be an unmeaning addition in the wrong place, which would only obscure the sense. If the great alterations mentioned in 2Ki 16:17 were made for the purpose of sending presents to the king of Assyria with or from the things that were removed, those described in 2Ki 16:18 were certainly made from fear of the king; and, what appears most probable to me, not to remove the two splendid erections from the sight of the Assyrians, nor to preserve their being used in the event of an Assyrian occupation of Jerusalem, but in order that his relation to the great king of Assyria might not be disturbed by his appearing as a zealous worshipper of Jehovah. They were changes made from fear of man and servility, and were quite in keeping with the hypocritical, insincere, and ignoble character of Ahaz. The parallel passage in the Chronicles is 2Ch 28:22-25. “In the time of his distress,” says the chronicler in his reflective and rhetorical style, “he sinned still more grievously against Jehovah: he, king Ahaz. He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, who had smitten him. For the gods of the kings of Aram, he said, helped them; I will sacrifice to them, that they may also help me. And they brought him and all Israel to ruin. And Ahaz collected together the vessels of the house of God, and cut them in pieces, and shut the doors of the house of Jehovah, and made himself altars in ever corner of Jerusalem. And in every town of Judah he erected high places to burn incense to other gods, and stirred up the displeasure of Jehovah the God of his fathers.” Thenius regards this passage as an exaggerated paraphrase of the parallel passage in the book of Kings, and as resting upon a false interpretation of the latter. But the chronicler does not affirm that Ahaz dedicated the new altar to the gods of Damascus, but rather that in the time of the Syro-Ephraimitish war he attempted to secure for himself the same success in war as the Syrians had obtained, by worshipping their gods. The words of Ahaz, which are reported by him, preclude any other interpretation. He there states - what by no means contradicts the book of Kings - that Ahaz laid violent hands upon the furniture of the temple. All the rest - namely, the allusion to his shutting the temple - gates, and erecting altars and high places on every hand - is a completion of the account in the book of Kings, the historical character of which it is impossible to dispute, if we bear in mind that the Syro-Ephraimitish war took place at the commencement of the reign of Ahaz, who was only sixteen years old at the time.

The author of the book of Kings closes the history of the reign of Ahaz with a reference to the annals of the kings of Judah, and with the remark that he was buried in the city of David (2Ki 16:19-20). The chronicler refers to the book of the kings of Judah and Israel, and observes that he was indeed buried in the city (lxx “in the city of David”), but not in the king’s sepulchre (2Ch 28:26-27). The source employed by the chronicler was his midrash of the entire history of the kings; from which he made extracts, with the intention of completing the text of our book of Kings, to which he appended his work. His style was formed after that of the annals, whilst that of the author of the book of Kings is formed after Deuteronomy. But from what source did the author of the book of Kings make his extracts? The section relating to Ahaz has some things quite peculiar to itself, as compared with the rest of the book, viz., a liking for obscure forms, such as Eloth (2Ki 16:6), hakkomim (2Ki 16:7), Dummesek (2Ki 16:10), and Aromim (2Ki 16:6); the name Tiglath-peleser; ^{▼▼This mode of spelling the name, also the one adopted by the chronicler (Tiglath-pilnezer), are both incorrect. Pal is the Assyrian for son, and according to Oppert (Expédition Scientifique en Mésopotamie), the whole name would read thus: Tiglatḣpalli̇shiar, i.e., reverence to the son of the zodiac (the Assyrian Hercules).} מכף instead of מיד, which is customary elsewhere; the rare and more colloquial term jehudim (Jews); the inaccurate construction את־המסגרות המכונות (2Ki 16:17); and the verb בּקּר (to consider, 2Ki 16:15), which does not occur anywhere else.

These peculiarities may be satisfactorily explained on the assumption that the author employed the national annals; and that, as these annals had been gradually composed by the successive writings of many different persons, whilst there was an essential uniformity in the mode in which the history was written, there was also of necessity a great variety in the style of composition. But is the similarity between 2Ki 16:5 and Isa 7:1 reconcilable with this annalistic origin? The resemblance in question certainly cannot be explained, as Thenius supposes, from the fact that Isa 7:1 was also taken from the national annals; but rather on the ground assigned by Caspari - namely, that the author of the Chronicles had not only the national annals before him, but also the book of Isaiah’s prophecies, to which he directs his readers’ attention by commencing the history of the Syro-Ephraimitish war in the words of the portion relating to Ahaz. The design of the two allies, as we know from the further contents of Isaiah 1, was nothing less than to get possession of Jerusalem, to overthrow the Davidic government there, and establish in its stead, in the person of a certain ben-Tāb'êl (“son of Tabeal,” Isa 7:6), a newly created dynasty, that would be under subjection to themselves. The failure of this intention is the thought that is briefly indicated in 2Ki 16:5 and Isa 7:1.

III. Historical Account of Hezekiah, more especially of the first six years of his reign. - The account given of Hezekiah in the book of Kings is a far more meagre one than we should expect to find, when we have taken out the large section relating to the period of the Assyrian catastrophe (2 Kings 18:13-20:19), which is also found in the book of Isaiah, and which will come under review in the commentary on Isaiah 36-39. All that is then left to the author of the book of Kings is 2Ki 18:1-12 and 2Ki 20:20, 2Ki 20:21; and in these two paragraphs, which enclose the section of Isaiah, there are only a few annalistic elements worked up in Deuteronomical style. Hezekiah began to reign in the third year of Hosea king of Israel. He was twenty-five years old when he came to the throne, and reigned twenty-nine years. He was a king after the model of David. He removed the high places, broke in pieces the statutes, cut down the Asheroth, and pounded the serpent, which had been preserved from the time of Moses, and had become an object of idolatrous worship. In his confidence in Jehovah he was unequalled by any of his followers or predecessors. The allusion here is to that faith of his, by which he broke away from the tyranny of Asshur, and also recovered his supremacy over the Philistines. We have no means of deciding in what years of Hezekiah’s reign these two events - the revolt from Asshur, and the defeat of the Philistines - occurred. The author proceeds directly afterwards, with a studious repetition of what he has already stated in Isa 17:1-14 in the history of Hosea’s reign, ^{▼▼The Chabor nehar Gozan (Eng. ver.: Habor by the river of Gozan), which is mentioned in both passages among the districts to which the Israelitish exiles were taken, is no doubt the Châbūr, which flows into the Tigris from the east above Mosul, and of which it is stated in Merâsid ed . Juynboll, that “it comes from the mountains of the land of Zauzân,” a district of outer Armenia lying towards the Tigris, which is described by Edrisi in Jaubert’s translation, Pt. ii. p. 330. Another river, on the banks of which Ezekiel’s colony of exiles lived, is the Chebar, which flows from the north-east into the Euphrates, and the source of which is in the Mesopotamian town of Râs-el-'ain, a place celebrated through the marvellous springs of this Chaboras, the praises of which have often been sung.} to describe Shalmanassar’s expedition against Israel in the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign (the seventh of Hosea's), and the fall of Samaria, which took place, after a siege of three years, in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign, and the ninth of Hosea's. But as Shalmanassar made no attack upon Judah at the time when he put an end to the kingdom of Israel, the revolt of Hezekiah cannot have taken place till afterwards. But with regard to the victory over the Philistines, there is nothing in the book of Kings to help us even to a negative conclusion. In 2Ki 20:20, 2Ki 20:21, the author brings his history rapidly to a close, and merely refers such as may desire to know more concerning Hezekiah, especially concerning his victories and aqueducts, to the annals of the kings of Judah.

The chronicler merely gives an extract from the section of Isaiah; but he is all the more elaborate in the rest. All that he relates in 2 Chron 29:2-31 is a historical commentary upon the good testimony given to king Hezekiah in the book of Kings (2Ki 18:3), which the chronicler places at the head of his own text in 2Ch 29:2. Even in the month Nisan of the first year of his reign, Hezekiah re-opened the gates of the temple, had it purified from the defilement consequent upon idolatry, and appointed a re-consecration of the purified temple, accompanied with sacrifice, music, and psalms (Isa 29:3.). Hezekiah is introduced here (a fact of importance in relation to Isaiah 38) as the restorer of “the song of the Lord” (Shir Jehovah), i.e., of liturgical singing. The Levitical and priestly music, as introduced and organized by David, Gad, and Nathan, was heard again, and Jehovah was praised once more in the words of David the king and Asaph the seer. The chronicler then relates in Isaiah 30 how Hezekiah appointed a solemn passover in the second month, to which even inhabitants of the northern kingdom, who might be still in the land, were formally and urgently invited. It was an after-passover, which was permitted by the law, as the priests had been busy with the purification of the temple in the first month, and therefore had been rendered unclean themselves: moreover, there would not have been sufficient time for summoning the people to Jerusalem. The northern tribes as a whole refused the invitation in the most scornful manner, but certain individuals accepted it with penitent hearts. It was a feast of joy, such as had not been known since the time of Solomon (this statement is not at variance with 2Ki 23:22), affording, as it did, once more a representation and assurance of that national unity which had been rent in twain ever since the time of Rehoboam. Caspari has entered into a lengthened investigation as to the particular year of Hezekiah’s reign in which this passover was held. He agrees with Keil, that it took place after the fall of Samaria and the deportation of the people by Shalmanassar; but he does not feel quite certain of his conclusion. The question itself, however, is one that ought not to be raised at all, if we think the chronicler a trustworthy authority. He places this passover most unquestionably in the second month of the first year of Hezekiah’s reign; and there is no difficulty occasioned by this, unless we regard what Tiglath-pileser had done to Israel as of less importance than it actually was. The population that was left behind was really nothing more than a remnant; and, moreover, the chronicler draws an evident contrast between tribes and individuals, so that he was conscious enough that there were still whole tribes of the northern kingdom who were settled in their own homes. He then states in 2Ch 31:1, that the inhabitants of the towns of Judah (whom he calls “all Israel,” because a number of emigrant Israelites had settled there) went forth, under the influence of the enthusiasm consequent upon the passover they had celebrated, and broke in pieces the things used in idolatrous worship throughout both kingdoms; and in 2Ch 31:2., that Hezekiah restored the institutions of divine worship that had been discontinued, particularly those relating to the incomes of the priests and Levites. Everything else that he mentions in 32:1-26, 2Ch 32:31, belongs to a later period than the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign; and so far as it differs from the section in Isaiah, which is repeated in the book of Kings, it is a valuable supplement, more especially with reference to 2Ki 22:8-11 (which relates to precautions taken in the prospect of the approaching Assyrian siege). But the account of Hezekiah’s wealth in 2Ch 32:27-29 extends over the whole of his reign. The notice respecting the diversion of the upper Gihon (2Ch 32:30) reaches rather into the period of the return after the Assyrian catastrophe, than into the period before it; but nothing can be positively affirmed.

Having thus obtained the requisite acquaintance with the historical accounts which bear throughout upon the book of Isaiah, so far as it has for its starting-point and object the history of the prophet’s own times, we will now turn to the book itself, for the purpose of acquiring such an insight into its general plan as is necessary to enable us to make a proper division of our own work of exposition.

Arrangement of the Collection

We may safely enter upon our investigation with the preconceived opinion that the collection before us was edited by the prophet himself. For, with the exception of the book of Jonah, which belongs to the prophetico-historical writings rather than to the literature of prediction, or the prophetical writings in the ordinary acceptation of the term, all the canonical books of prophecy were written and arranged by the prophets whose names they bear. The most important to our purpose is the analogy of the larger books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. No one denies that Ezekiel prepared his work for publication exactly as it lies before us now; and Jeremiah informs us himself, that he collected and published his prophecies on two separate occasions. Both collections are arranged according to the two different points of view of the subject-matter and the order of time, which are interwoven the one with the other. And this is also the case with the collection of Isaiah’s prophecies. As a whole, it is arranged chronologically. The dates given in Isa 6:1; Isa 7:1; Isa 14:28; Isa 20:1, are so many points in a progressive line. The three principal divisions also form a chronological series. For Isaiah 1-6 set forth the ministry of Isaiah under Uzziah-Jotham; Isaiah 7-39, his ministry under Ahaz and Hezekiah down to the fifteenth year of the reign of the latter; whilst Isaiah 40-66, assuming their authenticity, were the latest productions of the deepest inner-life, and were committed directly to writing. In the central part, the Ahaz group (Isaiah 7-12) also precedes the Hezekiah group (Isaiah 13-39) chronologically. But the order of time is interrupted in several places by an arrangement of the subject-matter, which was of greater importance to the prophet. The address in Isaiah 1 is not the oldest, but is placed at the head as an introduction to the whole. The consecration of the prophet (Isa 6:1-13), which ought to stand at the beginning of the Uzziah-Jotham group, if it relates to his original consecration to his office, is placed at the end, where it looks both backwards and forwards, as a prophecy that was in course of fulfilment. The Ahaz group, which follows next (Isaiah 7-12), is complete in itself, and, as it were, from one casting. And in the Hezekiah group (Isaiah 13-39) the chronological order is frequently interrupted again. The prophecies against the nations (Isa 14:24-32), which belong to the Assyrian period, have a massa upon Babel, the city of the world’s power, for their opening piece (Isaiah 13-14:23); a massa upon Tyre, the city of the world’s commerce, which was to be destroyed by the Chaldeans, for their finale (Isaiah 23); and a shorter massa upon Babel, for a party-wall dividing the cycle into two halves (Isa 21:1-10); and all the prophecies upon the nations run into a grand apocalyptic epilogue (Isaiah 24-27), like rivers into a sea. The first part of the Hezekiah group, the contents of which are pre-eminently ethnic (Isaiah 13-27), are interwoven with passages which may not have been composed till after the fifteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign. The grand epilogue (Isaiah 34-35), in which the second portion of the Hezekiah group dies away, is also another such passage. This second part is occupied chiefly with the fate of Judah, the judgment inflicted upon Judah by the imperial power of Assyria, and the deliverance which awaited it (Isaiah 27-33). This prediction closes with a declaration, in Isaiah 34-35, on the one hand, of the judgment of God upon the world of Israel’s foes; and on the other hand, of the redemption of Israel itself. This passage, which was composed after the fifteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, is followed by the historical portions (Isaiah 36-39), which enclose in a historical frame the predictions of Isaiah delivered when the Assyrian catastrophe was close at hand, and furnish us with the key to the interpretation not only of Isaiah 7-35, but of Isaiah 40-66 also.

Taking the book of Isaiah, therefore, as a whole, in the form in which it lies before us, it may be divided into two halves, viz., Isaiah 1-39, and Isaiah 40-66. The former consists of seven parts, the latter of three. The first half may be called the Assyrian, as the goal to which it points is the downfall of Asshur; the second the Babylonian, as its goal is the deliverance from Babel. The first half, however, is not purely Assyrian; but there are Babylonian pieces introduced among the Assyrian, and such others, as a rule, as break apocalyptically through the limited horizon of the latter. The following are the seven divisions in the first half. (1.) Prophecies founded upon the growing obduracy of the great mass of the people (Isaiah 2-6). (2.) The consolation of Immanuel under the Assyrian oppressions (Isaiah 7-12). These two form a syzygy, which concludes with a psalm of the redeemed (Isa 12:1-6), the echo, in the last days, of the song at the Red Sea. The whole is divided by the consecration of the prophet (Isa 6:1-13), which looks backwards and forwards with threatenings and promises. It is introduced by a summary prologue (Isaiah 1), in which the prophet, standing midway between Moses and Jesus the Christ, commences in the style of the great Mosaic ode. (3.) Predictions of the judgment and salvation of the heathen, which belong, for the most part, to the time of the Assyrian judgment, though they are enclosed and divided by Babylonian portions. For, as we have already observed, and oracle concerning Babel, the city of the world-power, forms the introduction (Isaiah 13-14:23); an oracle concerning Tyre, the city of the world’s commerce, which was to receive its mortal wound from the Chaldeans, the conclusion (Isaiah 23); and a second oracle on the desert by the sea, i.e., Babel, the centre (Isa 21:1-10). (4.) To this so thoughtfully arranged collection of predictions concerning the nations outside the Israelitish pale, there is attached a grand apocalyptic prophecy of the judgment of the world and the last things (Isaiah 24-27), which gives it a background that fades away into eternity, and forms with it a second syzygy. (5.) From these eschatological distances the prophet returns to the realities of the present and of the immediate future, and describes the revolt from Asshur, and its consequences (Isaiah 28-33). The central point of this group is the prophecy of the precious corner-stone laid in Zion. (6.) This is also paired off by the prophet with a far-reaching eschatological prediction of revenge and redemption for the church (Isaiah 34-35), in which we already hear, as in a prelude, the keynote of Isaiah 40-66. (7.) After these three syzygies we are carried back, in the first two historical accounts of Isaiah 36-39, into the Assyrian times, whilst the other two show us in the distance the future entanglement with Babylon, which was commencing already. These four accounts are arranged without regard to the chronological order, so that one half looks backwards and the other forwards, and thus the two halves of the book are clasped together. The prophecy in Isa 39:5-7 stands between these two halves like a sign-post, with the inscription “To Babylon” upon it. It is thither that the further course of Israel’s history tends. There, from this time forward, is Isaiah buried in spirit with his people. And there, in Isaiah 40-66, he proclaims to the Babylonian exiles their approaching deliverance. The trilogical arrangement of this book of consolation has been scarcely disputed by any one, since it was first pointed out by Rückert in his Translation and Exposition of Hebrew Prophets (1831). It is divided into three sections, each containing three times three addresses, with a kind of refrain at the close.

The Critical Questions

The collection of Isaiah’s prophecies is thus a complete work, most carefully and skilfully arranged. It is thoroughly worthy of the prophet. Nevertheless, we should be unable to attribute it to him in its present form, (1.) if it were impossible that Isaiah 13-14:23; Isa 21:1-10; 23; 24-27; 34-35, could have been composed by Isaiah, and (2.) if the historical accounts in Isaiah 36-39, which are also to be found in 2 Kings 18:13-20:19, have been copied from the book of Kings, or even directly from the national annals. For if the prophecies in question be taken away, the beautiful whole unquestionably falls into a confused quodlibet, more especially the book against the nations; and if Isaiah 36-39 were not written directly by Isaiah, the two halves of the collection would be left without a clasp to bind them together. It would be irregular to think of deciding the critical questions bearing upon this point now, instead of taking them up in connection with our exegetical inquiries. At the same time, we will put the reader in possession at once of the more general points, which cause us to dissent from the conclusions of the modern critics, who regard the book of Isaiah as an anthology composed of the productions of different authors.

The critical treatment of Isaiah commenced as follows: It began with the second part. Koppe first of all expressed some doubts as to the genuineness of Isaiah 1. Doderlein then gave utterance to a decided suspicion as to the genuineness of the whole; and Justi, followed by Eichhorn, Paulus, and Bertholdt, raised this suspicion into firm assurance that the whole was spurious. The result thus obtained could not possibly continue without reaction upon the first part. Rosenmüller, who was always very dependent upon his predecessors, was the first to question whether the oracle against Babylon in Isaiah 13-14:23 was really Isaiah’s, as the heading affirms; and to his great relief, Justi and Paulus undertook the defence of his position. Further progress was now made. With the first oracle against Babylon in Isaiah 13-14:23, the second, in Isa 21:1-10, was also condemned; and Rosenmüller was justly astonished when Gesenius dropped the former, but maintained that the arguments with regard to the latter were inconclusive. There still remained the oracle against Tyre in Isaiah 23, which might either be left as Isaiah’s, or attributed to a younger unknown prophet, according to the assumption that it predicted the destruction of Tyre by Assyrians or by Chaldeans. Eichhorn, followed by Rosenmüller, decided that it was not genuine. But Gesenius understood by the destroyers the Assyrians; and as the prophecy consequently did not extend beyond Isaiah’s horizon, he defended its authenticity. Thus the Babylonian series was set aside, or at any rate pronounced thoroughly suspicious. But the keen eyes of the critics made still further discoveries. Eichhorn found a play upon words in the cycle of predictions in Isaiah 24-27, which was unworthy of Isaiah. Gesenius detected an allegorical announcement of the fall of Babylon. Consequently they both condemned these three chapters; and it had its effect, for Ewald transferred them to the time of Cambyses. Still shorter work was made with the cycle of predictions in Isaiah 34-35, on account of its relation to the second part. Rosenmüller pronounced it, without reserve, “a song composed in the time of the Babylonian captivity, when it was approaching its termination.” This is the true account of the origin of the criticism upon Isaiah. It was in the swaddling-clothes of rationalism that it attained its maturity. Its first attempts were very juvenile. The names of its founders have been almost forgotten. It was Gesenius, Hitzig, and Ewald, who first raised it to the eminence of a science.

If we take our stand upon this eminence, we find that the book of Isaiah contains prophecies by Isaiah himself, and also prophecies by persons who were either directly or indirectly his disciples. The New Testament passages in which the second half of the book of Isaiah is cited as Isaiah’s, are no proof of the contrary, since Psa 2:1-12, for example, which has no heading at all, is cited in Act 4:25 as David’s, merely because it is contained in the Davidic Psalter, and no critic would ever feel that he was bound by that. But many objections present themselves to such a conclusion. In the first place, nothing of the kind can be pointed out in any of the other canonical books of prophecy, except indeed the book of Zechariah, in which Isaiah 9-14 is said to stand in precisely the same position as Isaiah 40-66, according to Hitzig, Ewald, and others; with this difference, however, that Isaiah 40-66 is attributed to a later prophet than Isaiah, whereas Zech. 9-14 is attributed to one or two prophets before the time of Zechariah. But even De Wette, who maintained, in the first three editions of his Introduction to the Old Testament, that Zech was written before the captivity, altered his views in the fourth edition; and Köhler has lately confirmed the unity of the book of Zechariah after an unbiased investigation. It is Zechariah himself who prophesies of the last times in Isaiah 9-14, in images drawn from the past, and possibly with the introduction of earlier oracles. It remains, therefore, that not a single book of prophecy is open to any such doubts as to the unity of its authorship and Hitzig admits that even the book of Jeremiah, although interpolated, does not contain spurious sections. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that something extraordinary might have taken place in connection with the book of Isaiah. But there are grave objections even to such an assumption as this in the face of existing facts. For example, it would be a marvellous occurrence in the history of chances, for such a number of predictions of this particular kind to have been preserved - all of them bearing so evidently the marks of Isaiah’s style, that for two thousand years the have been confounded with his own prophecies. It would be equally marvellous that the historians should know nothing at all about the authors of these prophecies; and thirdly, it would be very strange that the names of these particular prophets should have shared the common fate of being forgotten, although they must all have lived nearer to the compiler’s own times than the old model prophet, whose style they imitated. It is true that these difficulties are not conclusive proofs to the contrary; but, at any rate, they are so much to the credit of the traditional authorship of the prophecies attacked. On the other hand, the weight of this tradition is not properly appreciated by opponents. Wilful contempt of external testimony, and frivolity in the treatment of historical data, have been from the very first the fundamental evils apparent in the manner in which modern critics have handled the questions relating to Isaiah. These critics approach everything that is traditional with the presumption that it is false; and whoever would make a scientific impression upon them, must first of all declare right fearlessly his absolute superiority to the authority of tradition. Now tradition is certainly not infallible. No more are the internal grounds of the so-called higher criticism, especially in the questions relating to Isaiah. And in the case before us, the external testimony is greatly strengthened by the relation in which Zephaniah and Jeremiah, the two most reproductive prophets, stand not only to Isaiah 40-66, but also to the suspected sections of the first half. They had these prophecies in their possession, since they evidently copy them, and incorporate passages taken from them into their own prophecies; a fact which Caspari has most conclusively demonstrated, but which not one of the negative critics has ventured to look fairly in the face, or to set aside by counter-proofs of equal force. Moreover, although the suspected prophecies do indeed contain some things for which vouchers cannot be obtained from the rest of the book, yet the marks which are distinctly characteristic of Isaiah outweigh by far these peculiarities, which have been picked out with such care; and even in the prophecies referred to, it is Isaiah’s spirit which animates the whole, Isaiah’s heart which beats, and Isaiah’s fiery tongue which speaks in both the substance and the form.

Again, the type of the suspected prophecies - which, if they are genuine, belong to the prophet’s latest days - is not thoroughly opposed to the type of the rest; on the contrary, those prophecies which are acknowledged to be genuine, present many a point of contact with this; and even the transfigured form and richer eschatological contents of the disputed prophecies have their preludes there. There is nothing strange in this great variety of ideas and forms, especially in Isaiah, who is confessedly the most universal of all the prophets, even if we only look at those portions which are admitted to be genuine, and who varies his style in so masterly a way to suit the demands of his materials, his attitude, and his purpose. One might suppose that these three counter-proofs, which can be followed up even to the most minute details, would have some weight; but for Hitzig, Ewald, and many others, they have absolutely none. Why not? These critics think it impossible that the worldwide empire of Babel, and its subsequent transition to Medes and Persians, should have been foreseen by Isaiah in the time of Hezekiah. Hitzig affirms in the plainest terms, that the very same Caligo futuri covered the eyes of the Old Testament prophets generally, as that to which the human race was condemned during the time that the oracle at Delphi was standing. Ewald speaks of the prophets in incomparably higher terms; but even to him the prophetic state was nothing more than a blazing up of the natural spark which lies slumbering in every man, more especially in Ewald himself. These two Coryphaei of the modern critical school find themselves hemmed in between the two foregone conclusions, “There is no true prophecy,” and “There is no true miracle.” They call their criticism free; but when examined more closely, it is in a vice. In this vice it has two magical formularies, with which it fortifies itself against any impression from historical testimony. It either turns the prophecies into merely retrospective glances (vaticinia post eventum), as it does the account of miracles into sagas and myths; or it places the events predicted so close to the prophet’s own time, that there was no need of inspiration, but only of combination, to make the foresight possible. This is all that it can do. Now we could do more than this. We could pronounce all the disputed prophecies the production of other authors than Isaiah, without coming into contact with any dogmatical assumptions: we could even boast, as in the critical analysis of the historical books, of the extent to which the history of literature was enriched through this analysis of the book of Isaiah. And if we seem to despise these riches, we simply yield to the irresistible force of external and internal evidence. This applies even to Isaiah 36-39. For whilst it is true that the text of the book of Kings is the better of the two, yet, as we shall be able to prove, the true relation is this, that the author of the book of Kings did not obtain the parallel section (2 Kings 18:13-20:19) from any other source than the book of Isaiah. We have similar evidence in 2Ki 24:18. and Isa 25:1, as compared with Jer, that the text of a passage may sometimes be preserved in greater purity in a secondary work than in the original work from which it was taken. It was Isaiah’s prophetico-historical pen which committed to writing the accounts in Isaiah 36-39. The prophet not only wrote a special history of Uzziah, according to 2Ch 26:22, but he also incorporated historical notices of Isaiah in his “vision” (2Ch 32:32). We reserve the fuller demonstration of all this. For whilst, on the one hand, we consider ourselves warranted in rejecting those tendencies of modern criticism, to which naturalistic views of the world have dictated at the very outset full-blown negative results, and we do so on the ground of supernatural facts of personal experience; on the other hand, we are very far from wishing to dispute the well-founded rights of criticism as such.

For centuries, yea, for thousands of years, no objection was raised as to the Davidic origin of a psalm headed “a psalm of David,” to say nothing of a prophecy of Isaiah; and therefore no such objection was refuted. Apart from the whims of a few individuals, ^{▼▼e.g., that of Abenezra, who regarded king Jehoiakim, who was set free in the thirty-seventh year of his Babylonian captivity, as the author of Isaiah 40-60.}. which left no traces behind them, it was universally assumed by both Jewish and Christian writers down to the last century, that all the canonical books of the Old Testament had the Holy Ghost as their one auctor primarius, and for their immediate authors the men by whose names they are called. But when the church in the time of the Reformation began to test and sift what had been handed down; when the rapid progress that was made in classical and oriental philology compelled the students of the Scriptures to make larger if not higher demands upon themselves; when their studies were directed to the linguistic, historical, archaeological, aesthetic - in short, the human-side of the Scriptures, and the attempt was made to comprehend the several aspects presented by sacred literature in their progressive development and relation to one another - Christian science put forth many branches that had never been anticipated till then; and biblical criticism sprang up, which from that time forward has been not only an inalienable, but a welcome and even necessary, member in the theological science of the church. That school of criticism, indeed, which will not rest till all miracles and prophecies, which cannot be set aside exegetically, have been eliminated critically, must be regarded by the church as self-condemned; but the labour of a spiritual criticism, and one truly free in spirit, will not only be tolerated, because “the spiritual man discerneth all things” (1Co 2:15), but will be even fostered, and not looked upon as suspicious, although its results should seem objectionable to minds that are weakly strung, and stand in a false and fettered attitude in relation to the Scriptures. For it will be no more offended that the word of God should appear in the form of a servant, than that Christ Himself should do so; and, moreover, criticism not only brings any blemishes in the Scriptures to the light, but affords an ever-deepening insight into its hidden glory. It makes the sacred writings, as they lie before us, live again; it takes us into its very laboratory; and without it we cannot possibly obtain a knowledge of the historical production of the biblical books.

Exposition in Its Existing State

It was at the time of the Reformation also that historico-grammatical exposition first originated with a distinct consciousness of the task that it had to perform. It was then that the first attempt was made, under the influence of the revival of classical studies, and with the help of a knowledge of the language obtained from Jewish teachers, to find out the one true meaning of the Scriptures, and an end was put to the tedious jugglery of multiplex Scripturae sensus. But very little was accomplished in the time of the Reformation for the prophecies of Isaiah.

Calvin’s Commentarii answer the expectations with which we take them up; but Luther’s Scholia are nothing but college notes, of the most meagre description. The productions of Grotius, which are generally valuable, are insignificant in Isaiah, and, indeed, throughout the prophets. He mixes up things sacred and profane, and, because unable to follow prophecy in its flight, cuts off its wings. Aug. Varenius of Rostock wrote the most learned commentary of all those composed by writers of the orthodox Lutheran school, and one that even now is not to be despised; but though learned, it is too great a medley, and written without discipline of mind. Campegius Vitringa († 1722) threw all the labours of his predecessors into the shade, and none even of his successors approach him in spirit, keenness, and scholarship. His Commentary on Isaiah is still incomparably the greatest of all the exegetical works upon the Old Testament. The weakest thing in the Commentary is the allegorical exposition, which is appended to the grammatical and historical one. In this the temperate pupil of the Cocceian school is dependent upon what was then the prevalent style of the commentary in Holland, where there was an utter absence of all appreciation of the “complex-apotelesmatical” character of prophecy, whilst the most minute allusions were traced in the prophets to events connected with the history of both the world and the church. The shady sides of the Commentary are generally the first to present themselves to the reader’s eye; but the longer he continues to use it, the more highly does he learn to value it. There is deep research everywhere, but nowhere a luxuriance of dry and dead scholarship. The author’s heart is in his work. He sometimes halts in his toilsome path of inquiry, and gives vent to loud, rapturous exclamations. But the rapture is very different from that of the Lord Bishop Robert Lowth, who never gets below the surface, who alters the Masoretic text at his pleasure, and goes no further than an aesthetic admiration of the form.

The modern age of exegesis commenced with that destructive theology of the latter half of the eighteenth century, which pulled down without being able to build. But even this demolition was not without good result. The negative of anything divine and eternal in the Scriptures secured a fuller recognition of its human and temporal side, bringing out the charms of its poetry, and, what was of still greater importance, the concrete reality of its history. Rosenmüller’s Scholia are a careful, lucid, and elegant compilation, founded for the most part upon Vitringa, and praiseworthy not only for the judicious character of the selection made, but also for the true earnestness which is displayed, and the entire absence of all frivolity. The decidedly rationalistic Commentary of Gesenius is more independent in its verbal exegesis; displays great care in its historical expositions; and is peculiarly distinguished for its pleasing and transparent style, for the survey which it gives of the whole of the literature bearing upon Isaiah, and the thoroughness with which the author avails himself of all the new sources of grammatical and historical knowledge that have been opened since the days of Vitringa. Hitzig’s Commentary is his best work in our opinion, excelling as it does in exactness and in the sharpness and originality of its grammatical criticisms, as well as in delicate tact in the discovery of the train of thought and in thoroughness and precision in the exposition of well-pondered results; but it is also disfigured by rash pseudo-critical caprice, and by a studiously profane spirit, utterly unaffected by the spirit of prophecy. Hendewerk’s Commentary is often very weak in philological and historical exposition. The style of description is broad, but the eye of the disciple of Herbart is too dim to distinguish Israelitish prophecy from heathen poetry, and the politics of Isaiah from those of Demosthenes. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to observe the thoughtful diligence displayed, and the anxious desire to point out the germs of eternal truths, although the author is fettered even in this by his philosophical standpoint. Ewald’s natural penetration is universally recognised, as well as the noble enthusiasm with which he dives into the contents of the prophetical books, in which he finds an eternal presence. His earnest endeavours to obtain deep views are to a certain extent rewarded. But there is something irritating in the self-sufficiency with which he ignores nearly all his predecessors, the dictatorial assumption of his criticism, his false and often nebulous pathos, and his unqualified identification of his own opinions with truth itself. He is a perfect master in the characteristics of the prophets, but his translations of them are stiff, and hardly to any one’s taste. Umbreit’s Practical Commentary on Isaiah is a useful and stimulating production, exhibiting a deep aesthetic and religious sensibility to the glory of the prophetic word, which manifests itself in lofty poetic language, heaping image upon image, and, as it were, never coming down from the cothrunus. Knobel’s prose is the very opposite extreme. The precision and thoroughness of this scholar, the third edition of whose Commentary on Isaiah was one of his last works (he died, 25th May 1863), deserve the most grateful acknowledgment, whether from a philological or an archaeological point of view; but his peculiar triviality, which amounts almost to an affectation, seems to shut his eyes to the deeper meaning of the work, whilst his excessive tendency to “historize” (historisiren, i.e., to give a purely historical interpretation to everything) makes him blind even to the poetry of the form. Drechsler’s Commentary was a great advance in the exposition of Isaiah. He was only able to carry it out himself as far as Isa 27:1-13; but is was completed by Delitzsch and H. A. Hahn of Greifswald († 1st Dec. 1861), with the use of Drechsler’s notes, though they contained very little that was of any service in relation to Isaiah 40-66. This was, comparatively speaking, the best commentary upon Isaiah that had appeared since the time of Vitringa, more especially the portion on Isaiah 13-27. Its peculiar excellency is not to be found in the exposition of single sentences, which is unsatisfactory, on account of the comminuting, glossatorial style of its exegesis, and, although diligent and thorough enough, is unequal and by no means productive, more especially from a grammatical point of view; but in the spiritual and spirited grasp of the whole, the deep insight which it exhibits into the character and ideas of the prophet and of prophecy, its vigorous penetration into the very heart of the plan and substance of the whole book. In the meantime (1850), there had appeared the Commentary written by the catholic Professor Peter Schegg, which follows the Vulgate, although with as little slavishness as possible, and contains many good points, especially the remarks relating to the history of translation. At the same time there also appeared the Commentary of Ernst Meier, the Tübingen orientalist, which did not get beyond the first half. If ever any one was specially called to throw fresh light upon the book of Isaiah, it was C. P. Caspari of Christiania; but all that has yet appeared of his Norwegian Commentary only reaches to the end of Isaiah 5. Its further progress has been hindered partly by the exhaustive thoroughness at which he aimed, and the almost infinite labour which it involved, and partly by the fact that the Grundtvig controversy involved him in the necessity of pursuing the most extensive studies in ecclesiastical history. In the meantime, he has so far expanded his treatise om Serapherne (on the Seraphim), that it may be regarded as a commentary on Isa 6:1-13; and rich materials for the prophetic sayings which follow may be found in his contributions to the introduction to the book of Isaiah, and to the history of Isaiah’s own times, which appeared as a second volume of our biblico-theological and apologetico-critical Studien (1858), his Programme on the Syro-Ephraimitish war (1849), and his comprehensive and by no means obsolete article, entitled, “Jeremiah a witness to the genuineness of Isaiah 34, and therefore also to that of Isaiah 13:1-14:23, and Isa 21:1-10,” which appeared in the Zeitschrift für d. ges. luth. Theologie u. Kirche (1843), together with an excursus on the relation of Zephaniah to the disputed prophecies of Isaiah.

We shall reserve those works which treat more particularly of the second part of the book of Isaiah for our special introduction to that part. But there are two other distinguished commentaries that we must mention here, both of them by Jewish scholars: viz., that of the M. L. Malbim (Krotoshin 1849), which is chiefly occupied with the precise ideas conveyed by synonymous words and groups of words; and that of S. D. Luzzatto of Padua - a stimulating work, entitled Profeta Isaia volgarizzato e commentato ad uso degli Israeliti, which aims throughout at independence, but of which only five parts have yet appeared.

Isa 1:1 Title of the collection, as given in Isa 1:1 : “Seeing of Jesha'-yahu, son of Amoz, which he saw over Judah and Jerusalem in the days of 'Uzziyahu, Jotham, Ahaz, and Yehizkiyahu, the kings of Judah.” Isaiah is called the “son of Amoz.” There is no force in the old Jewish doctrine (b. Megilla 15 a), which was known to the fathers, that whenever the name of a prophet’s father is given, it is a proof that the father was also a prophet. And we are just as incredulous about another old tradition, to the effect that Amoz was the brother of Amaziah, the father and predecessor of Uzziah (b. Sota 10 b). There is some significance in this tradition, however, even if it is not true. There is something royal in the nature and bearing of Isaiah throughout. He speaks to kings as if he himself were a king. He confronts with majesty the magnates of the nation and of the imperial power. In his peculiar style, he occupies the same place among the prophets as Solomon among the kings. Under all circumstances, and in whatever state of mind, he is completely master of his materials - simple, yet majestic in his style - elevated, yet without affectation - and beautiful, though unadorned. But this regal character had its roots somewhere else than in the blood. All that can be affirmed with certainty is, that Isaiah was a native of Jerusalem; for notwithstanding his manifold prophetic missions, we never find him outside Jerusalem. There he lived with his wife and children, and, as we may infer from Isa 22:1, and the mode of his intercourse with king Hezekiah, down in the lower city. And there he laboured under the four kings named in Isa 1:1, viz., Uzziah (who reigned 52 years, 811-759), Jotham (16 years, 759-743), Ahaz (16 years, 743-728), and Hezekiah (29 years, 728-699). The four kings are enumerated without a Vav cop.; there is the same asyndeton enumerativum as in the titles to the books of Hosea and Micah. Hezekiah is there called Yehizkiyah, the form being almost the same as ours, with the simple elision of the concluding sound. The chronicler evidently preferred the fullest form, at the commencement as well as the termination. Roorda imagines that the chronicler derived this ill-shaped form from the three titles, were it is a copyist’s error for וחזקיּהוּ or וחזקיּה; but the estimable grammarian has overlooked the fact that the same form is found in Jer 15:4 and 2Ki 20:10, where no such error of the pen can have occurred. Moreover, it is not an ill-shaped form, if, instead of deriving it from the piel, as Roorda does, we derive it from the kal of the verb “strong is Jehovah,” an imperfect noun with a connecting i, which is frequently met with in proper names from verbal roots, such as Jesimiël from sim, 1Ch 4:36 : vid., Olshausen, §277, p. 621). Under these four kings Isaiah laboured, or, as it is expressed in Isa 1:1, saw the sight which is committed to writing in the book before us.

Of all the many Hebrew synonyms for seeing, חזה (cf., Cernere, κρίνειν, and the Sanscrit and Persian kar, which is founded upon the radical notion of cutting and separating) is the standing general expression used to denote prophetic perception, whether the form in which the divine revelation was made to the prophet was in vision or by word. In either case he saw it, because he distinguished this divine revelation from his own conceptions and thoughts by means of that inner sense, which is designated by the name of the noblest of all the five external senses. From this verb Chazah there came both the abstract Chazon, seeing, and the more concrete Chizzayon, a sight (visum), which is a stronger from of Chizyon (from Chazi = Chazah). The noun Chazon is indeed used to denote a particular sight (comp. Isa 29:7 with Job 20:8; Job 33:15), inasmuch as it consists in seeing (visio); but here in the title of the book of Isaiah the abstract meaning passes over into the collective idea of the sight or vision in all its extent, i.e., the sum and substance of all that was seen. It is a great mistake, therefore, for any one to argue from the use of the word Chazon (vision), that Isa 1:1 was originally nothing more than the heading to the first prophecy, and that it was only by the addition of Isa 1:1 that it received the stamp of a general title to the whole book. There is no force in the argument. Moreover, the chronicler knew the book of Isaiah by this title (2Ch 32:32); and the titles of other books of prophecy, such as Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Zephaniah, are very similar. A more plausible argument in favour of the twofold origin of Isa 1:1 has been lately repeated by Schegg and Meier, namely, that whilst “Judah and Jerusalem” are appropriate enough as defining the object of the first prophecy, the range is too limited to apply to all the prophecies that follow; since their object is not merely Judah, including Jerusalem, but they are also directed against foreign nations, and at chapter 7 the king of Israel, including Samaria, also comes within the horizon of the prophet’s vision. And in the title to the book of Micah, both kingdoms are distinctly named. But it was necessary there, inasmuch as Micah commences at once with the approaching overthrow of Samaria. Here the designation is a central one. Even, according to the well-known maxims a potiori, and a proximo, fit denominatio, it would not be unsuitable; but Judah and Jerusalem are really and essentially the sole object of the prophet’s vision. For within the largest circle of the imperial powers there lies the smaller one of the neighbouring nations; and in this again, the still more limited one of all Israel, including Samaria; and within this the still smaller one of the kingdom of Judah. And all these circles together form the circumference of Jerusalem, since the entire history of the world, so far as its inmost pragmatism and its ultimate goal were concerned, was the history of the church of God, which had for its peculiar site the city of the temple of Jehovah, and of the kingdom of promise. The expression “concerning Judah and Jerusalem” is therefore perfectly applicable to the whole book, in which all that the prophet sees is seen from Judah - Jerusalem as a centre, and seen for the sake and in the interests of both. The title in Isa 1:1 may pass without hesitation as the heading written by the prophet’s own hand. This is admitted not only by Caspari (Micah, pp. 90-93), but also by Hitzig and Knobel. But if Isa 1:1 contains the title to the whole book, where is the heading to the first prophecy? Are we to take אשׁר as a nominative instead of an accusative (qui instead of quam, sc. visionem), as Luzzatto does? This is a very easy way of escaping from the difficulty, and stamping Isa 1:1 as the heading to the first prophetic words in Chapter 1; but it is unnatural, as חזון אשׁר חזה, according to Ges. (§138, note 1), is the customary form in Hebrew of connecting the verb with its own substantive. The real answer is simple enough. The first prophetic address is left intentionally without a heading, just because it is the prologue to all the rest; and the second prophetic address has a heading in Isa 2:1, although it really does not need one, for the purpose of bringing out more sharply the true character of the first as the prologue to the whole.