and the instruments of fulfilling what he had long perceived to be inevitable are now present. It is the Assyrian that shall be God's instrument in bringing desolation on the country. 'The Lord shall bring on thee days that have not been since Israel departed from Judah, even the King of Assyria.' The country shall be depopulated, and reduced to a pasture land, thick milk and wild honey shall every one eat that is left in the land' (vii. 15-22); but behind the darkness a great light shall arise (ix. 2). Now this became the fixed scheme of the prophet's thought. The desolating invasion of the Assyrian is the judgment which from the beginning he had foreseen; it is the last judgment: the destruction of the Assyrian by Jehovah's hand is the dawn of the everlasting day: ' For the yoke of his burden, the rod of the oppressor, thou hast broken as in the day of Midian. For a Child is born to us, a Son is given to us; and His name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, to establish it with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever' (ix. 4 ff.).

It is not quite clear what Isaiah thought the fate of the country and of the capital city would be. He certainly looked for a great depopulation of the land (vi. 11, 12, cp. viii. 21, v. 14). On one occasion he mentions 'captivity' (v. 13), but he nowhere refers to a return from exile. He says of Jerusalem that 'her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall be desolate' (iii. 26), and in chap. xxxii. 13 ff. he seems to contemplate the complete desolation of the city. Possibly his view was not always the same. But upon the whole he appears to imagine a straggling population still maintaining itself in the land amidst all its deso

lations (vii. 22, viii. 21 ff.), and has a presentiment that Jerusalem, though distressed, will survive all her humiliations.

(5.) Messianic Prophecies. It is certainly to be supposed that the prophet, when contemplating the fate of the country and people, would have also some definite ideas of the destiny of the reigning family, the house of David. In the crisis of the Syro-Ephraimitic war he says to Ahaz, 'If ye will not believe ye shall not be established.' Faith was the condition of the permanence of his kingdom, and faith was wholly wanting to him. Chap. xi. contemplates the Davidic house as cut down to the root. It is difficult with the present text of chaps. vii.-viii. to interpret Immanuel of anyone but the Messiah, the final king of Jehovah's people. He is born and grows up amidst the Assyrian desolation, and the Assyrian is the last foe of Jehovah's people, and the devastation he causes the last judgment upon them. In chap. ix. 1-7, the child born is certainly a scion of the Davidic house, and so is the 'shoot out of the stock of Jesse' in chap. xi. ; and in both places he is final Ruler of the people. In the one place he is called the Mighty God, and in the other the Spirit of the Lord in its fulness rests upon him. To be 'called' is to be, at anyrate in manifestation to the eyes of others.

In considering the meaning of such passages all questions about the Divine 'nature,' 'substance' or 'essence' must be dismissed. They do not belong to the Old Testament. God is regarded there as a moral person, and as a person He is able to influence, direct, or even fill and overpower other persons. God when influencing persons is called the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is not something less than God, it is God. And the Spirit

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of God, i.e., God in a person, remains distinct; He suffers no confusion or composition with the spirit of man. Now the general conception was that salvation was the presence of God Himself directly among His people; the prophet gives this idea a certain turn: Jehovah is fully present in the Messianic king (chap. xi. I ff.); and the Messiah is His perfect manifestation as Ruler of His people (chap. ix. 1-7).

SECOND DIVISION OF THE BOOK (Chaps. xl.-lxvi.

The following remarks apply to chaps. xl.-lxvi. more or less as a whole; but they apply particularly to chaps. xl.-lv. Chaps. lvi. -lxvi. may, in parts at least, reveal a different situation, that is, while chaps. xl.-lv. seem addressed to the people in captivity in Babylon, chaps. Ivi. -lxvi. may presuppose a people settled in Judæa, in other words, a people partially returned from Exile.

The general principles from which the conclusion is drawn that chap. xl. ff. are not the writing of Isaiah the son of Amoz (740-700), but the composition of a much later author are these: (1) That a prophetic writer always makes the basis of his prophecies the historical position in which he and his people are placed. This principle is not an a priori assumption, but is one gathered from careful observation of those prophecies the age of which is undisputed. And (2) to this principle is to be added another, which is also a conclusion drawn from observation, namely, that the purpose of prophecy as exercised in Israel was in the main ethical and practical, bearing on the life and thought of the people among whom the prophet lived. These two principles support one another: the first is, that in point of fact we

find those prophets whose age is known frequently referring to the conditions of the people amidst whom they lived, to the contemporary kingdoms around Israel, and the political situation of their day, and founding their prophetic speeches upon these things; and the second is that this is just what we should expect, because prophecy was in the main a practical moral instrument, directed to the conduct and the religious life of the people, and exercised for their guidance amidst the political complications of their time. This does not exclude prophetic outlook into the future. On the contrary this outlook-revelation of the goal towards which history was moving, a kingdom of God upon the earth, and interpretation of the commotions among the nations which were leading on towards it—this outlook was just the light which the prophet was able to throw into the conditions of his own time, making their meaning clear to the people. But though the prophet's outlook might reach to the end of the heavens his feet were always firmly planted on the soil of his own place.

The conclusion drawn from these two principles is, that when in any prophet we find allusions to conditions of society which we know from history to be those of a particular date, to political complications with the states around Israel, to hopes or fears arising out of these complications, the prophet himself actually lived during these conditions and complications, and was a contemporary of the states, Assyria, Babylon or Persia, to which he alludes. And therefore, when we find prophecies, as in the second half of Isaiah, in which the people are comforted and told that their warfare is accomplished and their sorrows at an end; in which Jehovah speaks of having cast off His people for a time, but now returns to them in everlasting

mercy (liv. 8); in which Cyrus (558-529) is introduced, and the Lord promises in regard to him he shall let go My captives,' 'he shall build My city' (xlv. 13), 'saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built, and of the Temple, Thy foundation shall be laid' (xliv. 26 ff.); in which the people are brought forward supplicating the Lord in this manner: "Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever; behold, see we beseech Thee, we are all Thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised Thee is burnt up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste' (lxiv. 9 ff.) ; and in which we find the people addressed thus: 'Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans! say ye, The Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob' (xlviii. 20)—when such things are read, and when the prophet is found basing his exhortations on such a condition of things and such events, stilling the people's fears of Cyrus (xli. 8 ff.), striving to elevate their minds to such conceptions of Jehovah as he himself cherishes, that they may behold Him in all the commotions taking place around them fulfilling His great purpose of their redemption and the revelation of Himself to all mankind, the conclusion drawn is that the author of the prophecies was a contemporary of the Exile and of Zion's desolation, that he witnessed the career of Cyrus, in short, that he prophesied toward the close of the captivity and saw the day of Israel's deliverance beginning to dawn.

Subsidiary Arguments. This is the general consideration, though there are many subsidiary arguments, such as the great difference of style and phraseology in chap. xl. ff., and par