dreaded (vers. 1, 2). Now the first that comes, in whose way they stand, treads them under foot. Others of them fall in war, and the slain fall on them and cover them with their bodies. Though in some sense the exile is the greatest theocratic

punishment, still that catastrophe is in itself not the extreme. For the question arises: how long will the exile last? To Judah restoration is promised after 70 years (Jer. xxv. 11). In the case of Israel there is no certain mention of the sort.

C.-ASSYRIA'S DESTRUCTION THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL.
CHAP. X. 5-XII. 1.

This address is related to the two that precede | 28 that Isaiah recognized in Hezekiah in a ceras bright day to dark night. After Israel is com-tain sense "the root" () or "branch" (3)— pelled to hear that the same Assyria to which Judah's king had appealed for help shall be the instrument of his severe chastisement, now Assyria must hear that the Lord will destroy His instrument, because it fulfilled its mission, not in the mind of God, but in the sense of its own brutal lusts, and with proud boasting about its own might. Out of the toils of the world-power, whose totality Assyria represents here, shall redeemed Israel return home. Out of the almost dried up root of the race of David shall a sprout grow up that shall set up a kingdom which shall pervade and rule all nations with the spirit of

peace.

As regards the time of the composition of this prophecy, it must be noticed, first of all, that x. 5-34 did not originate at the same time with chapters xi. and xii. Concerning x. 5-34, every thing depends on whether the passage x. 9-11 is understood in the sense of an ideal or an actual time past. VITRINGA, CASPARI, DRECHSLER, DELITZSCH take the view that the destruction of Samaria, that took place in the sixth year of Hezekiah, appears as a past event in our passage only in the contemplation of the Prophet. I can. not join in this view. The reasoning of the Prophet must have been without meaning and effect to his hearers if the conquest of the cities Carchemish, Calno, Arpad, Hamath, Damascus and Samaria were not at that time an accomplished fact and well known to all contemporaries. In addition, the messengers of Sennacherib, according to xxxvi. 18 sq.; xxxvii. 11 sq., really boasted thus. Nowhere in chap. x. is Ephraim spoken of as one that is to be conquered. Only the conquest of Jerusalem is lacking in order to let the destroying work of Jehovah on the people of His choice appear complete (x. 12). Of course one may say that our passage then belongs in the neighborhood of chapters xxxvi. and xxxvii. But those chapters, as they stand, are a historical report complete in themselves; whereas an essential piece, forming a consolatory conclusion, is lacking to the cycle of prophecies affecting Assyria, which begins chap. vii., if x. 5 sq. does not belong to it. As long as we have no proof that the passage x. 9-11 is not to be understood of things historically past, I can only assume that the Prophet combined the later address with the earlier, in order to give to that earlier the suitable conclusion. Concerning chap. xi. we have a datum for determining the period of its composition in the short prophecy against Philistia, xiv. 28–32. This short passage lives in the sphere of ideas of chap. xi. In fact, without chap. xi. it is not at all intelligible. On the contrary, we learn from xiv.

through which the kingdom of David was to
spring up with new life. The passage xiv. 28-32
was written in the year of Ahaz's death (728).
The young king Hezekiah is described there as
"the basilisk" (y) that shall proceed from "the
root of the serpent" (y). It is known
that Messianic hopes were connected with Heze-
kiah (comp. DELITZSCH on vii. 14 sq. and ix. 6);
how far Isaiah shared them we know not.
events chap. xi. was written after the death of
Ahaz, and just as the hopeful Hezekiah ascended
the throne (728 B. C.). Chap. xii. is a doxology
that certainly belongs to that period in which the
whole prophetic cycle, chaps. vii.-xii. were put
together.

At all

In accordance with this combination, the discourse plainly subdivides into three principal parts, and each principal part again into three subdivisions, so that three forms the underlying number. In the first part is Assyria, in the second Israel, in the third the Messiah, the chief subject. The chief traits of the discourse may be represented in the following scheme:—

ASSYRIA'S DESTRUCTION THE SALVATION OF
ISRAEL (chap. x. 5-xii. 6).
Woe against Assyria (x. 5-19).

I.

1. Woe to the instrument that does not execute the will of God according to the mind of God (x. 5-11).

2. Woe to the instrument that knew not that it was an instrument (x. 12-15).

3. The execution of the woe (x. 16-19).

II. Israel's redemption in general (x. 20-34).
1. The believing remnant of Israel returns out
of the shattered world-power (x. 20-23).
2. The condemned world-power is also not to
be feared in the present (x. 24-27).
3. The impetuous onset of the condemned
world-power in the light of its final ruin
(x. 28-34).

5

I. WOE AGAINST ASSYRIA.

CHAPTER X. 5-19.

1. WOE TO THE INSTRUMENT THAT DOES NOT EXECUTE THE WILL OF GOD ACCORDING TO THE MIND OF GOD.

CHAPTER X. 5-11.

10 Assyrian, the rod of mine anger,

And the staff in their hand is mine indignation.

6 I will send him against an 'hypocritical nation,

And against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge,

To take the spoil, and to take the prey,

And to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

7 Howbeit he meaneth not so,

Neither doth his heart think so;

But it is in his heart to destroy

And cut off nations not a few.

8 For he saith,

Are not my princes altogether kings?

9 Is not Calno as Carchemish?

Is not Hamath as Arpad?

Is not Samaria as Damascus ?

10 As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols,

And whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria ; 11 Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols,

So do to Jerusalem and her idols?

1 Or, Woe to the Assyrian.

3 Or, though.

And in whose hand my fury is a staff. • To plunder plunder, and to prey prey. • carved images.

T:

TEXTUAL AND

2 Heb. Asshur.

Heb. to lay them a treading.

b unclean.

And yet their graven images excelled them, etc.

GRAMMATICAL.

T

beside זעם

On ver. 7. Piel is found also xiv. 24; xl. 18, 25; xlvi. 25; but is used in the last three texts in the sense of "to make like, compare," in which sense Hithp. ("to make one's-self like”) is used xiv. 14.

On ver. 5. As remarked at ver. 1, this occasioned Comp. e. g. In Deut. xii. 23.the existing arrangement of the chapter. What we here, is found ver. 25; xiii. 5; xxvi. 20; xxx. 27. have said concerning the origin of ix. 7—x. 4, and x. 5On ver. 6. comp. on ix. 16.— Y like Jer. xiv. xii., shows that this coincidence of the is accidental. The expression 1 is clear. It is found 14; xxiii. 32, with xxvii. 4. only here. Analogous is in a Prov. xxii. 8; Lam. iii. 1; comp. Prov. xxii. 15; Job ix. 34; xxi. 9.The second clause is difficult. The translation: "The staff which in their hand, is the staff of my anger" (GESENIUS) is grammatically incorrect. For then must not be wanting before N. Quite as grammatically impossible is that of HENDEWERK and KNOBEL, Who point and connect it, across 2 NT as a parenthesis, with "Dy: "and the staff of my arger, it is in their hand." To treat DT) N17 as a gloss, like HITZIG, EWALD, I. Edit. and DIESTEL do, is violence. Only that rendering is grammatically possible that takes Dyi as subject, and what precedes as predicate. Then M

only serves to mark as predicate. For, were it not there, it would not be known which of the two words and "Dy is subject, and which predicate.

with like ver. 14; Ps. xxi. 9; comp. Yo are "carved images;" comp. is to be sup

On ver. 10.
1 Sam. xxiii. 17.
xxi. 9; xxx. 22; xii. 8. Before D
plied comp. v. 29; xiii. 4.

On ver. 11. The Dry (in Isaiah again only xlvi. 1) are not essentially different from D. For as the underlying meaning of is caedere, caedendo fingere

(Exod. xxxiv. 1, 4; Deut. x. 1, 2; 1 Kings v. 32), so, too, yy, (kindred to yn, y) originally meant caedere, secare, "to cut out, to shape by hewing" (Job x. 8; Jer. xliv. 19).

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.

1. The LORD denounces woe against Assyria | the spirit in which he was commissioned, but in that is to be the instrument of His judgments (ver. 5). For He sent him against Israel (ver. 6), but Assyria did not execute the mission in

the spirit of his brutal and insatiable greed of conquest (ver. 7). This his sentiment appears in the grounds he assigns for his confidence that

he will make conquest of Jerusalem: 1) his | princes are all of them kings, which gives a measure of the extent of his might; 2) a row of conquests of great cities proves his invincibility. Having conquered kingdoms whose idols excel those of Samaria and Jerusalem, he will be able to treat Jerusalem as Samaria (8-11).

2. Woe unto Assyria not a few. Vers. 5-7. The pivot on which the whole of the following announcement turns, is that the LORD denounces woe against the instrument of His wrath. In ver. 5 (see Text. and Gram.), the Prophet expresses the thought that not only is Assyria the rod of God's anger, but that the anger of God is also the staff, as it were, the magician's staff (comp. vers. 24, 26, where allusion is evidently to the rod of Moses) in the hand of Assyria. This turn of the image need give no surprise in our artistic Prophet. How far Assyria is used as a rod is explained, ver. 6. He is to be commissioned against the impure people, that on account of this impurity are objects of divine wrath, as it were on an official mission, to rob and trample down Israel, that they may become as the mire of the streets (vii. 25), comp. Jer. li. 20 sqq. Assyria will indeed trample down Israel, and as many other nations as possible, but not in order to execute the purpose of Jehovah on them, but only to gratify his own lust for world-conquest.

German miles north of Haleb on the spot where is found at present the ruins of Tel Erfad. In every passage where Arpad is mentioned, Hamath is found too. But, beside that, Hamath is often mentioned in the Old Testament. According to Num. xxxiv. 8 the northern border of the land to be possessed by the Israelites, was to extend to Hamath, which, according to 2 Kings xiv. 25, 28; comp. 2 Chr. viii. 4, was actually the case at times. Comp., beside Amos, vi. 2, 14. The city lay on the Orontes and was called later Epiphania. Arpad and Hamath were thus Syrian cities lying nearer the Holy Land.

Damascus and Samaria lay still nearer Judah. After naming three pairs of names of conquered cities as proof of the irresistibleness of Assyria, the Prophet could simply proceed; so will Jerusalem, too, be unable to resist. But three thoughts suggest themselves, which he would express before that conclusion. First, that the idols of the conquered heathen cities surpassed the (supposed) idols of Jerusalem and Samaria. Second, the point that Samaria is already conquered; and third, the thought that Samaria and Jerusalem, may just as well be set in a pair as Carchemish and Calno, Arpad and Hamath, Damascus and Samaria. Now the Prophet might, of course, have said: as I have conquered the heathen kingdoms, whose idols surpass those of Samaria itself, shall I not be able just so to subSamaria and Jerusalem, and as I have subdued due Jerusalem? But then Samaria would belong to the premise, and Jerusalem would alone form the apodosis, and there would be lacking conformity to the pairs before named. Hence he combines Samaria and Jerusalem together in the apodosis, beginning with "shall I not,” ver. 11, but forms again within this apodosis, another protasis and apodosis, whereby, of course, the construction becomes abnormal; but still the thought is expressed that Samaria and Jerusalem should join as a fourth comparison, to the foregoing three. It is to be noticed that our passage rians (722 B. C.). According to 2 Kings xvi. 9, assumes the conquest of Samaria, by the AssyTiglath-Pileser subdued Damascus. Samaria fell by Shalmaneser, according to 2 Kings xvii. 5 sq., but according to the Assyrian monuments by Sargon, in the third year of the siege. It was long after, that Rabshakeh actually used the lan10 sqq.), that Isaiah here prophetically puts into guage against Judah (xxxvi. 18 sqq.; xxxvii. the mouth of the Assyrian. Perhaps Isaiah had here in mind, what Amos (vi. 1 sqq.), at an earlier period held up to the people, though it must remain in doubt, whether Isaiah means the refers to. Moreover, nothing more is known of same conquest of Hamath and Arpad, that Amos the conquest of the cities Carchemish, Calno, Hamath and Arpad, by the Assyrians. But comp. on xxxvi. 19. That the Assyrian speaks of

3. For he said--her idols.-Vers. 8-11. Assyria confides only in his own strength. He has no suspicion that he is Jehovah's instrument, the rod of His anger. Hence he enumerates the facts that justify his hope of easily subduing Israel. First, his princes are kings (comp. 2 Kings XXV. 28). When such have only second rank in the army of the great king of Assyria (xxxvi. 4) how wide must be his dominion. His second ground of confidence is past great successes. Three pairs of conquered cities are named. The conquest of one is premised as an event that made sure that the next one named must in turn succumb. 66 Is not Calno like Carchemish ?" Carchemish was a city on an island in the Euphrates at the mouth of the Chaboras, called by the Romans Circesium, Circessum, Circusium, Jer. xlvi. 2-12; 2 Chr. xxxv. 20, and appears' from the text to have been subdued earlier than Calno. The latter is called Gen. x. 10; and Amos. vi. 2: perhaps the of Ezek. xxvii. 23 is the same city. It lay North-east twenty hours from Babylon on the East bank of the Tigris opposite Seleucia, and belonged to Babylon. Rebuilt at a later day by the Persian king Pacorus (90 B. C.), it received the name Ctesiphon. Thus Carchemish and Calno were two cities of Mesopotamia. Did Calno become as Carchemish, it appears that the conquest of the latter was not merely a happy chance, but the proof of the existence of a real power, which in every like case will conquer in like manner. Arpad is mentioned xxxvi. 19; xxxvii. 13; Jer. xlix. 23; 2 nipp is as collective in the singuKings xviii. 34; xix. 13. The classics do not mention the city. According to the Arabian geographer MARASSID, (comp. KNOBEL in loc.), an ARPHAD lay in the Pashalik Haleb (Aleppo) North-west from the latter place. According to KIEPERT (D. M. G. XXV. p. 655) Arpad lay 3

lar) "the kingdoms of the idols" is a Judaism. The Prophet presents the Assyrian as making a distinction between idolatrous kingdoms and Israel, the monotheistic: whereas, the Assyrian knows nothing of monotheism, and afterwards speaks of the idols and images of Samaria and Je

rusalem. Moreover the Prophet describes them | restrial powers; only he maintained a distinction as "nothings" (comp. ii. 8, 18, 20; xix. 3; xxxi. among them in respect to power. Thus we see 7) whereas the Assyrian by no means regarded how Isaiah suffered here some mixing of his them so; for he held them all to be superter-point of view with that of the Assyrian.

2. WOE TO THE INSTRUMENT THAT KNEW NOT THAT IT WAS AN INSTRUMENT. CHAPTER X. 12-15.

WHEREFORE it shall come to pass,

That when the LORD hath performed his whole work

Upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem,

I will 'punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria,

And the glory of his high looks.

13 For he saith,

By the strength of my hand I have done it,

And by my wisdom; for I am prudent:

And I have removed the bounds of the people,

And have robbed their treasures,

And I have put down the inhabitants 'like a valiant man :

14 And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: And as one gathereth eggs that are left,

And there is none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.
15 Shall the ax boast itself against him that heweth therewith?
Or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it?
'As if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up,
Or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.

1 Heb. visit upon the fruit of the greatness of the heart.
Or, As if a rod should shake them that lift it up.
Have felled those enthroned as a bull.

TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL.

.comp הֵנִיף- שבט by the collective construction of לה) is the sole example of Poel of a verb שׁוֹשתי-8

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.

1. Wherefore it shall- -high looks.—than the children of light (Luke xvi. 8). The Ver. 12. In the foregoing strophe the Prophet's borders of the nations he abolished by incorporatview-point was before the execution of judgment ing all in his kingdom; he robbed their treaon Jerusalem. In this he takes his view-point sures. Ver. 14 portrays the facility with which after it. As before Assyria boasted what he Assyria does his work. The unskilful and inexwould do, here he boasts what he has done. For perienced find a bird's nest at best by chance. what he boastfully promised to do (vers. 8-11) The knowing and experienced, however, find he actually accomplished. But when he has them as easily as surely. But the Assyrian comdone, then comes his hour. For then will the pares his conquests not to the easy work of seekLord bring about that fall that is wont to attend ing nests, but to the much easier one of gathering a haughty spirit. It is to be noted that what As- eggs from forsaken nests. He has so gathered syria is to execute on Zion is called the work of everything that came under his hand as he went Jehovah. But as only that work of which Assy- through the land (Hab. ii. 5). In a nest not forria is the instrument is meant, "all his work saken, the little owner makes a defence; he cannot be intended in an absolute sense, as com- strikes with his wings, he opens his beak and prehending the work of salvation.-"The fruit of hisses at his assailant. But his enemies had not haughtiness of heart" is not so much the boasting dared even to make a bird's defence. and blasphemy, but the works that haughtiness has done. Comp. Dan. iv. 27 (30), "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom?" etc. The destruction of city and kingdom is the destruction of the fruit of the haughtiness of the ruler.

66

The massing of the nouns admirably paints the spouting, puffed-up nature of haughtiness (comp. xxviii. 1; xxi. 17). "The loftiness of the eyes," i.e., self-complacency, reflected in the eyes, lends a certain refulgence (D) to the manner of a man. But even this illusive gleam will the Lord strip off. 2. For he saith-peeped.-Vers. 13, 14. The Prophet cannot reproduce to his hearers and readers the actual fruits and that proud gleam of haughtiness. But he can let that haughtiness express itself in words by which it may be estimated. These words state that Assyria now maintains that, as he purposed, so he had also actually accomplished all by his own might. He boasts his strength and his prudence. The power of this world is wise. According to Dan. vii. 8, 20; viii. 25 the horn of the fourth beast has eyes like the eyes of a man, the symbol of prudence (Comp. AUBERLEN, Der Prophet Daniel, 2 Aufl. p. 50).

The children of this world are wiser in their

way

3. Shall the axe-no wood.-Ver. 15. To this senseless boasting the Lord replies in words that set the matter in a just light. The answer presents two pairs of parallels that represent a gradation. Without men axe and saw can do nothing. Yet they are indispensable to men, and that may give their self-praise some apparent justification. But that rod or staff should lift those that have hold of them presents the extreme of absurd presumption. Yet this is the extent of Assyria's blind presumption, that he not only conceives that he executed judgment on the nations without the Lord, but that divinity was constrained to serve him. There lies thus in the second pair of comparisons a climax, and before

does not compare this second pair with the first, but with the higher degree of stupid blindthing, neither wood nor not-wood. Of not-wood it cannot even lift what is not man, e. g. a stone. If Isaiah, as the context shows, by not-wood means men, it is on the supposition that the reader of himself will recognize the true contrast (not-wood but much greater) and the (even pho

ness intimated in ver. 14. The staff can lift no

לא־אֵל netic) allusion to

16

3. THE EXECUTION OF THE WOE.

CHAPTER X. 16-19.

THEREFORE shall the LORD, the LORD of hosts, send

Among his fat ones leanness;

And under his glory he shall kindle a burning

Like the burning of a fire.

17 And the light Israel shall be for a fire,

And his Holy One for a flame :

And it shall burn and devour his thorns

And his briers in one day;

18 And shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field,

'Both soul and body:

And they shall be as when a standard-bearer fainteth.

19 And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be 'few,

That a child may write them.

1 Heb. from the soul, and even to the flesh.

▲ a weakly person pines away.

Heb. number.