CHAPTER VIII. ISAIAH IX. 8.-XII.-EPIC UNITY.-OBSTINATE ENERGY OF THE HEBREW RACE.— LAWLESSNESS OF THE TEN TRIBES.-LEGALISM OF JUDAH.-THE KING OF ASSYRIA.-GODS IN THE IMAGE OF MEN. THE SCOURGE OF NATIONS, AND ITS WIELDER. ANCIENT ROADS.-THE KING OF THE STOCK OF JESSE.THE GOLDEN AGE.-FUSION OF CONFLICTING ELEMENTS IN A NATION.CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLT OF EPHRAIM.-DEPORTATION OF JEWS IN ISAIAH'S TIME. THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH-ITS RELATION TO THE WORLD. -THE WATER OF SALVATION. THE strophical arrangement of Isaiah ix. 8 to x. 4, is supposed by many commentators to mark it for a distinct prophecy, delivered soon after the last; while they see in the allusion to Samaria, as actually taken by the Assyrians (chap. x. 10), proof that the following prophecy from x. 5, to the end of chapter xii. cannot date earlier than the sixth year of Hezekiah. But these arguments are not conclusive. There is no reason why a style of discourse in which historical narrative, political oratory, and poetical rhythm as well as imagery, are equally in place, should not embody in itself a refrain several times. repeated and then dropped, just as in other instances we find it containing a song or psalm.* Nor is it impossible to explain, by the ordinary prophetic usage of the past for the future, a reference to the taking of Samaria not more, though not less, definite than many other prophetic descriptions which were undoubtedly made before the event. On the other hand, we have the probability of a general adherence to chronological order in the actual arrangement of the book, the indications of an unbroken Chap. xxvi. 1, xxvii. 2; and compare the repetition in Amos i. and ii. The recurrence of this refrain in verse 25 of chapter v. seems to me no sufficient reason for supposing that this passage has been severed from the earlier prophecy. I cannot think that it is necessary even to alter the Masoretic divisions in order to make the refrain finish each period. EPIC UNITY OF ISAIAH. * 125 current of thought, the unity of subject of the whole portion, chapters vii. to xii. inclusive, and, lastly, the probability of which I believe the reader will see more evidence the longer he considers the subject, that here as throughout the book the author's own hand may have been at work, arranging, retouching, and fusing together the records of discourses originally distinct. These chapters form a kind of epic whole (itself a part of a still larger whole), in which the internecine enmities of the Ten Tribes among themselves and with Judah, and the alliances with the heathen nations by which they support these enmities, only to involve themselves in the common ruin, are traced to their first causes, and the loss of national unity and freedom shown to be the consequence of the loss of that spiritual unity and liberty which can only spring from and be sustained by the living faith of king and people in the unseen but present Lord of the nation and of each member of it: subjection to the heathenish, godless Assyrian power, is shown to be the proper and effectual punishment of the national sin and a restoration in and through the reign of a righteous prince of the line of David is declared to be certain, because God himself is pledged to it by a covenant which men's evil doings cannot cancel. The prophet stands as on a hill or tower, and sees the past and the future, the distant and the near, in one completed whole in which all events and all wills have but subserved the almighty Master-will; and, therefore, we find here an instance of the propriety of the word epic, which has with so much force been applied to the writings of the Hebrew prophets generally by Mr. Maurice. In the second edition. of the work referred to, this author has indeed omitted this and much more of formal comparison between the Hebrew and classical types of literature, apparently lest his readers should mistake a vital relation for a technical correspondence, and fall into the bondage to names into which that mistake always brings us. But if we take * As in verses 24-26, of chapter x., compared with chapter viii. 810; x. 6 with viii. 1, 4; x. 27 with ix. 3; x. 21 with vii. 3 (Shear-jashub); xi. 1-5 with ix. 6, 7; and xi. 13, 14 with ix. 12, 20, 21. + Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, 1st edition. Magazine, vol. ii. p. 226. See also Educational 126 ISAIAH IX. 8—16. DESTRUCTION care how we call the prophets 'epic poets,' and then fancy we understand them, we shall find a real light thrown on the subject by this word, which is farther explained by Coleridge's observation that epic and dramatic poetry are alike founded on the relation of Providence to the human will; but that while in the latter the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, in the former a pre-announced fate (or Providence) gradually adjusts and employs the will and the events as the instruments for accomplishing its designs :-Διὸς δὲ τελείετο βουλή. The Jewish historian, in relating the fall of Samaria, as the punishment of national sin, says, 'Yet Jehovah testified against Israel and against Judah, by all the prophets and all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and statutes, according to the law which I commanded your fathers and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.'t And here we have one of these repeated warnings, in this word which Jehovah sent unto Jacob,' by Isaiah. The Ten Tribes had already suffered many an infliction; their political organization had often been broken up by civil wars and foreign invasions, as the house of unburnt brick dissolves into mud before the rain; and the flower of the people had been cut down as lavishly as men cut down the cheap sycamores: but with that stoutness of heart, that obstinate toughness which in all ages to the present has marked this race, the men of Ephraim and Samaria seem to rise superior to every calamity; like Solomon,‡ they will change the sycamores for cedars, and they will replace the bricks with hewn stones. The conversion of Damascus from an ancient enemy to an ally encourages them in their hopes; but Jehovah will confound their policy by bringing the conquerors of Damascus upon them. The histories mention inroads of the Philistines into Judah, though not into Israel, at this period; but we can believe the latter did not escape, as these marauders were not likely to miss an opportunity, especially when once in movement. The 'Syrians' are either the same allies whose Literary Remains, vol. ii. pp. 159, 164. OF THE TEN TRIBES. 127 arms, on their becoming tributary to Tiglath-Pileser, would at once be turned against Ephraim; or the word (Aram) may be used in a sense wide enough to include the Assyrians themselves. Tiglath-Pileser took Damascus, killed Rezin, and carried the people away captive; and we find Ahaz going there to meet the Assyrian, when it is related that he took the pattern of an altar at Damascus, and adopted the gods of Syria, 'because they helped them,' an account which can only be applicable to the gods of Tiglath-Pileser.* The people turneth not unto him that smiteth them,' and therefore they shall be smitten again and again. It will not be a mere political change of an Assyrian satrap for an Israelite king, but every rank, every household from the highest to the lowest, shall suffer:-though youth is the season of joy, the young men shall find that it is not so when Jehovah, the source of joy, has no joy in them; though mercy and pity are the natural right of the fatherless and widow, they shall find that God himself refuses them these; and the reason is, that all of them, man, woman, and child, are demoralized and corrupted; one may be a hypocrite, and another an open sinner, but all speak, because their hearts believe, the language of that folly which is contrary to, and which denies and excludes, the knowledge of God. That in the middle of this threatening of universal calamity upon head and tail, palm-tree and rush, we should find an explanation that the 'tail' is the prophet that teacheth lies, and not the common people, as the context demands, does not require the supposition of an interpolation by a later hand, as some say. We have constant occasion to notice the Hebrew disregard of that mere logical balance of sentences which indeed soon becomes an intolerable pedantry in any other language: and here Isaiah's knowledge of what the teachers of a people ought to be and might be, and of how great is their personal responsibility, stops him before he can complete the explanation of the tail and the rush, and he turns it as though he had said, 'No, the common people are brutal 2 Kings xvi.; 2 Chron. xxviii. See too the use of 'Aram' in Isaiah xxxvii. 11. 128 ISAIAH IX. 17.-X. 4. ANARCHY. and degraded enough, but the men who have been the cause of this debasement are more guilty, and more contemptible than they they are the dregs of all.' Civil war and foreign invasion shall rage through this reprobate people like the fire with which the husbandman clears the ground of briers and thorns. The wickedness of the land becomes its own punishment, and burns with a fury which is indeed the wrath of God, while its fuel is the people themselves. The images of slaughter and fire—at once fact and symbol-suggest that of famine so desperate that no man shall spare his brother,' nay 'they shall eat every one the flesh of his own arm.' Ephraim and Manasseh were brethren, and sons of the same mother, but they appear as rivals in the earliest records;* and their names seem to be here put to represent the factions which made the history of the kingdom of Israel in great part a history of tyrannies, rebellions, and anarchies, which were gathering to their climax at this time, when the assassination of Pekah seems to have been followed by a nine years' interregnum and anarchy, as far as we can trace and make out the lines of a picture which is perhaps indistinct from the very confusion of the times.† And the prophet completes the description of this miserable war of brethren among themselves by saying that they shall be together against Judah. The strophical form connects the following verses (x. 1-4) with the preceding, as the exclamation with which they begin does with those that come after; and in both are corresponding links of the subject itself. The prophet has described the sins of Ephraim in a general manner; but on the mention of Judah he proceeds to denounce what we know from the whole tenour of his discourses he felt to be the worst form of the guilt of his own people, with a particularity which it is perhaps not fanciful to attribute to his thoughts being now directed homewards. The Ten Tribes were far more ferocious and anarchical than the men of Judah there are many indications in the latter of that national respect for law which so characterizes the * Genesis xlviii. 13-20; Judges viii. 1-3, xii. 1-6. + Compare the historical accounts and dates, in 2 Kings xv. with Hosea vii. 7. |