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"whose stock remaineth," the hope of the future was to come (vi, 11-13). But when we understand whom he means by the remnant, this designation is not figurative but literal,

NOTE. The Calamity of the Land. The literal distress referred to in vi, 11, 12, depicted again in the introductory chapter as the nadir point from which the upward movement of the whole prophecy is to be reckoned (i, 7-9), was doubtless the Assyrian invasion by Sennacherib in 701 B.C., in the course of which, according to his inscription, many towns in the frontiers of Judah (Micah's district; cf. Mic. i, 8–16) were devastated, more than 200,000 captives were deported, and Jerusalem was beleaguered. How Isaiah met this calamity, with what conviction and faith, we have seen.

Throughout this moral and civic strain of prophecy, however, beginning at his first encounter with the recreant house of David (cf. vii, 13), there runs an undertone of what may be called symbolic presage; though whether more fitly termed symbolic or spiritually intrinsic is a fair question. In the use of this symbolic undertone Isaiah and his contemporary Micah are quite at one,1 Isaiah's being the more articulate and finished. Both shape their ideas to a coming golden age; both have at heart the worth and mission of the remnant; both are zealous for the daughter of Zion; both are deeply conscious of a gestation period in Israel "until the time that she who travaileth hath brought forth" (Mic. v, 3); and out of the visions of both there emerges a Personage to whom is ascribed, in terms suited to each prophet's circumstances, a leadership kingly and pastoral, a Prince of peace to high and lowly. It is in the masterly handling and coördination of these symbolic elements, if such they may be called, that we get at once the direction of Israel's noblest destiny and the substantial beginnings of Messianic prophecy. No other prophet (except his supplementer the Second Isaiah) has contributed such essential meanings to Jehovah's revealed will and purpose. 1 See above, p. 161.

Compared with the values involved in this symbolic undertone, the Assyrian menace was but an incident, a passing episode, to be faced and surmounted on the way to a nobler destiny.

A somewhat detailed account of the Messianic strain in which this shapes itself is in order here; because it is the element by which the Book of Isaiah 1 is best known and which has taken the most vital hold on all the ages succeeding him.

I have called it a symbolic undertone because it deals with the evolution of a race's ordained destiny in terms of the birth and maturing of a person, or as we may say more abstractly, of a divinely quickened personality. It is, so to say, the hidden history of the "holy seed" of Israel, which when the spiritual core of the nation is reduced to a seemingly insignificant remnant is "the stock thereof" (vi, 13); a history given in glimpses as salient as the needs of the dim and perilous times require. The prophet's cryptic announcement began when he gave to King Ahaz the sign for which the latter had neither sense nor desire: the sign of "God with us" (Immanuel; see vii, 14), a sign to be apprehended not by such as he but by a spiritual intuition. Touched with a mystic penetration, the prophet was aware of a thrill, a stirring of new life in Israel which he associated with the true daughter of Zion, and interpreted as the token of a new spiritual birth;. or as he expressed it, "Behold, the 'alma 2 (maiden) shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." This word, which for the prophet names not a symbol but a real fact, is used

1 One strong element of the essential unity of the Book of Isaiah is the fact that this element is carried on continuously and progressively in both First and Second Isaiah; see Chapter VI, 1, 3.

2 This is not the usual name for virgin; it means a marriageable maiden; and the definite article with it seems to refer to someone already known or identifiable. Like our Lord's parables, however, it is meant for those who have " ears to hear."

thereafter to enforce the prediction that when the flood of Assyrian invasion shall sweep through the land and men shall be inclined to dubious coalitions against it, there will be enough of divine power in this new birth, enough of spiritual firmness, to withstand the impact (see the repetition of the name, viii, 8, 10). With this mystic announcement, however, he joins a literal one, predicting with formal solemnity the birth of his second son, Maher-shalal-hashbaz (viii, 1-4); of whom, together with his other son Shearjashub, he affirms for those whose sense is duller, "Behold, I and the children whom Jehovah hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from Jehovah of hosts, who dwelleth in Mount Zion" (viii, 18).

This sign is for the "house of David" (cf. vii, 2, 13) and the people of Judah; but with their faithlessness to Jehovah's law and their craze for necromancy and divination (cf. ii, 6) they are only in the way of distress and darkness (viii, 19-22). It is not from their quarter that the first light shall come, but from the northern lands that were first invaded (cf. 2 Kings xv, 29), "Galilee [circuit or district] of the nations” (ix, 1–5). There, as he prophesies, a Child is already born, who shall receive divine names, and "of the increase of [whose] government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever" (ix, 6, 7). As of the growth and fruitage of the remnant, so of this event the prophet says, "The zeal of Jehovah of hosts will perform this" (cf. xxxvii, 32).

The next announcement is not of a new-born child, but of One who has reached the estate of young manhood; and it comes after the prophet has assured his nation that the Assyrian is only an agency in Jehovah's hand for the punishment of Israel, a scourge whose arrogant function will pass, though not until it has swept through Israel

almost to Zion (x, 5-19, 28-32), and only a remnant shall be left who "shall no more again lean upon him that smote them," as did Ahaz when he invited their aid (vs. 20). A severe destruction and humiliation must precede the coming of this Personage (x, 20-23, 33, 34). And then his origin is traced not to David but to David's father Jesse and his stock; which, like Micah's prophecy, identifies him with Bethlehem, Jesse's abode (xi, 1; cf. Mic. v, 2). To the wonderful character ascribed to this "shoot out of the stock of Jesse" is appended a glowing description of regenerated nature (xi, 6-9), and then the universalized prediction: And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples, unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting-place shall be glorious" (xi, 10). A prophecy of return from exile and dispersion follows, with restored harmony between the discordant sections of Israel (xi, 11-16).

One more announcement belongs to the same chain of predictions, though it goes a step beyond the Messianic individual. It is of the Messianic realm. It comes in the part of Isaiah where the prophet is working most strenuously to bring princes and leaders to their right mind, as they are nervously groping for human devices against the Assyrian peril now imminent. Whether the timid piety and sincerity of Hezekiah did anything to color the ideal is only conjectural. It is the picture of a perfected realm wherein, under the reign of a righteous king and just princes, men's eyes shall be open to see things as they are and their tongues unloosed to call things by their right names; in other words, where a full-orbed personality shall exert its gracious power among men, "and a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a great rock in a weary land" (xxxii, 1-8). In this noble portrayal of ideal civic conditions, one of the most

impressive passages of the Old Testament, Isaiah of Jerusalem brings to its climax the symbolic undertone by which he reveals the Messianic values germinating under the surface of history and giving assurance of a redeemed and enlightened mankind.

IV

The Crisis Met and Weathered. In the middle of the Book of Isaiah, following upon a portion (xxxiv, xxxv) in which, as is his wont, the prophet's vision broadens into apocalypse, there is inserted a section of narrative prose (xxxvi-xxxix), which, recounting the issue of the Assyrian suspense and crisis, serves with eminent fitness to round off the prophecy of the First Isaiah. These chapters, substantially identical with chapters xviii, 13, to xx, 19, of the Second Book of Kings, are evidently from the same hand. Whether Isaiah or some other historian was the writer, and whether inserted here from Kings or vice versa, are interesting but somewhat profitless questions. In the condensed history of the Sennacherib campaign given in 2 Chron. xxxii, both "the vision of Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz" and the "book of the kings of Judah and Israel" are referred to as authority for the more extended account which the annalist does not profess to give (2 Chron. xxxii, 32); and in a previous passage Isaiah the son of Amoz is named as the historian of an earlier reign (2 Chron. xxvi, 22). It seems not unfair, therefore, to attribute to the seer-archivist Isaiah this section common to Isaiah and Kings; it is at any rate in eminently fitting place and function, and quite in harmony with the prophet's general plan and message.

In order to realize from the Biblical point of view how this momentous crisis of Israel's history was met and weathered, we will remember that the prophet had in mind an event of both near and remote significance, which could

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