Among the Dialogi mortuorum of LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA the thirteenth is between Diogenes and Alexander the Great. This dialogue begins with the words: "Ti Touro, ¿'Aλéğavdpe, tédvηkas кaì où, wσεр ημelo anavтeç," thereupon the contrast is ironically set forth between what Alexander was, as one given out to be a son of the gods, and so recognized by men, and possessor of all highest human glories, and what he is at present. It is, as is well known, doubtful whether LUCIAN really was acquainted with the Scriptures. See PLANCK, Lucian and Christianity in Stud. u. Krit., 1851, IV. p. 826 sqq. Comp. also SCHRADER, die Höllenfahrt der İstar., 1874.

7. On xiv. 4 sqq. utitur ad confirmandos et consolandos suos, ut simul "Omni genera figurarum sit conjuncta summa theologia cum summa rhetorica."

-LUTHER.

figurative speech has certain allurements by which | Impune quidvis facere id est regem esse.” — SALminds seek to dispose of difficulties. The LUST. true allegory of this passage is concerning the victory of conscience over death. For, the law is Cyrus, the Turk, the cruel and mighty enemy that rises up against the proud conscience of justitiaries who confide in their own merits. These are the real Babylon, and this is the glory of Babylon, that it walks in the confidence of its own works. When, therefore, the law comes and occupies the heart with its terrors, it condemns all our works in which we have trusted, as polluted and very dung. Once the law has laid bare this filthiness of our hearts and works, there follows confusion, writhing, and pains of parturition; men become ashamed, and that confidence of works ceases and they do those things which we see now-a-days: he that heretofore has lived by confidence of righteousnesss in a monastery, degerts the monkish life, casts away to ashes all glory of works, and looks to the gratuitous righteousness and merit of Christ, and that is the desolation of Babylon. The ostriches and hairy creatures that remain are ECK, COCHLEUS and others, who do not pertain to that part of law. They screech, they do not speak with human voice, they are unable to arouse and console any afflicted conscience with their doctrine. My allegories, which I approve, are of this sort, viz., which shadow forth the nature of law and gospel." LUTHER. 4. On xiii. 21 sqq. There the Holy Spirit paints for thee the house of thy heart as a deserted, desolate Babylon, as a loathsome cesspool, and devil's hole, full of thorns, nettles, thistles, dragons, spukes, kobolds, maggots, owls, porcupines, etc., all of which is nothing else than the thousandfold devastation of thy nature, in as much as into every heart the kingdom of Satan, and all his properties have pressed in, and all and every sin, as a fascinating serpent-brood, have been sown and sunk into each one, although not all sins together become evident and actual in every one's outward life."-JOH. ARNDT's Informatorium biblicum, & 7.

8. On xiv. 12 sqq. As early as the LXX. this passage seems to have been understood of Satan. It points that way that they change the second At least person into the third; πç éséreσev, etc. See JEROME, who they were so understood. thereby makes the fine remark: "Unde ille cecidit per superbiam, vos ascendatis per humilitatem." But LUTHER says: "Debet nobis insignis error totius papatus, qui hunc textum de casu angelorum accepit, studia literarum et artium decendi commendare tamquam res theologo maxime necessarias ad tractationem sacrarum literarum.”

9. On xiv. 13, 14. "The Assyrian monarch was a thorough Eastern despot... rather adored as a god than feared as a man." LAYARD'S Discoveries amongst the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853, New York, p. 632. "In the heathen period the pre-eminence of the German kings depended on their descent from the gods, as among the Greeks" (GERVINUS, Einleit. in d. Gesch. d. 19 Iahrh., 1853, p. 14). CHRISTIAN THOMASIUS, in his Instit. jurispr. divinae, dissert. proœmialis, p. 16, calls the princes "the Gods on earth." In a letter from Luxemburg, after the departure of the Emperor Joseph II., it is said (in a description of the journey, of which a sheet lies before me): we have had the good fortune to see our earthly god." BELANI, Russian Court Narratives, New Series, III. Vol., p. 125: "The Russian historian KORAMPZIN says in the section where he describes the Russian self-rule: "The Autocrat became an earthly god for the Russians, who set the whole world in astonishment by a submissiveness to the will of their monarch which transcends all bounds."

II. PROPHECIES RELATING TO ASSYRIA AND TO THE NATIONS THREATENED BY ASSYRIA, PHILISTIA, MOAB, SYRIA, AND ARAM-EPHRAIM, ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT.

CHAPTER XIV. 24-XX. 6.

a) Prophecy against Assyria. We have explained above why the prophecy against Assyria occupies the second place and after the one against Babylon. A prophecy against Assyria could not be omitted. It was necessary

CHAPTER XIV. 24-27.

as a background to the prophecies that follow. But it needed only to be a short one. For the Prophet is sensible that the power of Assyria is shattered by the overthrow of Sennacherib-there

fore that, in a prophetic sense, it is in principle a thing done away. But to Assyria and the other nations named in the superscription above, the Prophet does not proclaim merely temporal de

struction. He sets before all more or less plainly the prospect of partaking of the Messianic salvation of the future.

24

THE LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying,
Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass;
And as I have purposed, so shall it stand:

25 That I will break the Assyrian in my land,
And upon my mountains tread him under foot:
Then shall his yoke depart from off them,

And his burden depart from off their shoulders.

26 This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: And this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations.

27 For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disaunul it? And his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?

it has come to pass.

the

תקים
כן

Ver. 24. in the sense of animo componere, “to dispose in thought," only again x. 7; moreover the Prophet seems to have had in mind in this place, Num. xxxiii. 56.—The Perfect ' expresses the coincidence of the realization with the thought. No sooner said than done, i. e., as God conceives a thought, it is also (as to principle) realized. The following imperf. Dip has then the meaning that what is, as to principle, realized, must arise, set up as actual, outward circumstance. Before is not repeated, but is used, evidently for the sake of variety. The thought is essentially the same. It is a sort of Anacoluare used as in vii. 7; viii. 10. Ver. 25. The infin.' depends on the oath-clause ver. 24 b; what is determined shall be fulfilled frangendo Assyrios, etc. is therefore inf. modalis or gerundirus. With 101 (comp. ver. 19; lxiii. 6, 18) the language returns from the infinitive construction to the verbum fin., according to a frequent Hebrew usage.— The suffixes in Dhy and I

and היה-thon קים

have nothing to which they can relate in the words of vers. 24, 25.Moreover from' ver. 4 onwards, Israel is not referred to. True, in vers. 1, 2, Israel is likewise spoken of in the third person, and with quite similar suffixes (Dny

ver. 1, DW), Dп'avi ver. 2); but then ver. 3 intervenes, in which Israel is spoken of in the second person. It must, therefore, be assumed that the suffixes ver. 25 refer back, not only over the entire Maschal (4-23), but also away over ver. 3 to vers. 1, 2, and that these verses originated, not at the same time with the rest of the prophecy against Babylon, but much earlier. All this is very improbable. I cannot therefore agree with VITRINGA and DRECHSLER, but must side with the view, that the present verses are a fragment of a greater prophecy for Israel of a comforting nature, which, however, cannot be identical with vii.--xii. because in these Assyria is regarded in a totally different light from that which appears in the present verses. Ver. 27. comp. viii. 10. ["This has been variously translated "scatter" (LXX.), "weaken" (VULG.), "avert" (LUTH.), "dissolve" (CALVIN), "change" (J. D. MICHAELIS), "hinder" (GESEN.), break (EWALD [NAEGELSB.]); but its true sense is that given in the Eng. Version and by DE WETTE (vereiteln) [see FUERST LEX.]. The meaning of the last clause is not simply that his hana is stretched out, as most writers give it, but that the hand stretched out is his, as appears from the article prefixed to the participle . (See GESEN. 108, 3. EWALD, § 560.—J. A. A.].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.

questions are solved by the short section before us, vers. 24-27. It appears therein that in the immediate future Assyria must be destroyed, that, therefore, Israel may expect deliverance from the yoke of Assyria in a brief season, but that therewith Israel is neither delivered forever, nor is the world-power for ever broken up. But Babylon walks in the footsteps of Assyria; and if in vii.xii. the world-power appeared solely under the name of Assyria, it happened only because the Prophet could not then distinguish that which followed Assyria from Assyria itself, and therefore comprehended it under one name.

1. Whoever reads the prophecies of Isaiah | stands at the summit of the world-power? These against the heathen nations with attention, must feel surprise that in them, there is relatively little more said about Assyria. After occupying in vii.-xii. the foreground, it retreats in xiii. and onward into the background. On the other hand Babylon now stands front and the Prophet recognizes in it the representative of the perfectly developed world-power that has attained to the exclusive possession of dominion. Now the question arises: how are Assyria and Babylon related? What becomes of Assyria if now Babylon is called the world-power? How is it to be explained that according to x. 24-27 Israel at the end of days is delivered out of bondage to Assyria, if at that end-period not Assyria but Babylon

2. The Lord of hosts- -turn it back.—

Vers. 24-27. DRECHSLER attaches great weight

to the fact that the phrase "the LORD of hosts hath sworn," is preceded by a thrice repeated "saith the LORD of hosts," vers. 22, 23. He says the former is only a climax of these latter. He lays stress, too, on the fact that the thrice repeated "LORD of hosts" of vers. 22, 23 has its correlative in the double use of the same in vers. 24, 27, and that the same words which in ver. 23 "conclude the proper body of the discourse, in ver. 24 begin the appendix." He, therefore, regards vers. 24-27 as an integral part of the discourse that extends through xiii. 1-xiv. 27, and therefore as having originated at the same time. But that is impossible. The words vers. 24-27 must be older than the catastrophe of Sennacherib before Jerusalem, for they foretell it. But the prophecy against Babylon xiii. 1-xiv. 23 must be much more recent, for it is the product of a much higher and, therefore, of a much later prophetic knowledge [? TR.]. If, too, in the points named there appears a certain correspondence, yet it remains very much a question whether that is intentional. The expressions in question, so far as they correspond, occur exceedingly often in all sorts of connections.

has come to pass, and as I purposed, it shall continue.' The Assyrian power is already broken, and shall never be restored. This strict interpretation of the preterite does not necessarily imply that the prophecy was actually uttered after the destruction of Sennacherib's army.. Such would indeed be the natural inference from this verse alone: but for reasons which will be explained below, [viz., in comment on ver. 26.-TR.] it is more probable that the Prophet merely takes his stand in vision at a point of time between the two events of which he speaks, so that both verbs are really prophetic, the one of a remote the other of a proximate futurity, but for that very reason their distinctive forms should be retained and recognized. Yet the only modern writers who appear to do so in translation are CALVIN and COCCEIUS, who have factum est, and J. D. MICHAELIS, who has ist geschehen.-J. J. A. So also substantially BARNES.]

In my land and on my mountain the LORD says. Therefore not in his own land or some other land, but in Palestine the annihilating blow shall fall on Assyria. This evidently points to the overthrow of Sennacherib before Jerusalem (2 The expression "the LORD hath sworn " is Kings xix. 35; Isa. xxxvii. 36). Though even especially frequent in Deuteronomy, but always after this overthrow Assyria's power did not at with the Dative of the person whom the oath once appear broken, still it was such inwardly concerns (Deut. i. 8; ii. 14; iv. 31, etc.). In and in principle. Ás much as Nebuchadnezzar Isaiah it occurs again, xlv. 23; liv. 9; lxii. 8.—after his victory at Carchemish was ruler of the The contents of the oath is: "as I have thought | ... so shall it stand."

The consequence of that overthrow of Assyria is that Israel shall be freed from his dominion.

The words his yoke shall depart, etc. sound essentially the same as x. 27. Other resemblances are of ver. 24 to vii. 5, 7; viii. 10; x.7; ver. 25 to ix. 3; x. 27; ver. 26 to ix. 11, 16, 20; x. 4; xi. 11; ver. 27 to viii 10. But much as vers. 24-27 remind one of chapts. vii.-xii., there is still this essential difference, that in the last named chapters there is no where a prophecy of an overthrow of Assyria in the holy land itself. In general the gaze of the Prophet in those chapters is directed to a much more remote distance. There he looks on Assyria still as representative of the worldpower generally, and thus, too, Assyria's overthrow coincides for him with the overthrow of the world-power in general by the Messiah. Here we encounter a look into the immediate future. It must belong to the time before the defeat of Sennacherib. Therefore our verses cannot belong originally to the prophecy against Babylon. [See above in Tert. and Gram.].

world, though outwardly he had not that appearance (Jer. xxv.), so Assyria, after the LORD had ["From the distant view of the destruction of smitten him in his territory, from the view-point Babylon, the Prophet suddenly reverts to that of of God, and according to inward and divine realithe Assyrian host, either for the purpose of mak-ty, was broken to pieces and trodden down.ing one of these events accredit the prediction of the other, or for the purpose of assuring true believers, that while God had decreed the deliverance of the people from remoter dangers, He would also protect them from those at hand.-On the formula of swearing vide supra, v. 9.-KIMCHI explains to be a preterite used for a future, and this construction is adopted in most versions, ancient and modern. It is, however, altogether arbitrary and in violation of the only safe rule as to the use of tenses, viz., that they should have their proper and distinctive force, unless forbidden by the context, or the nature of the subject; which is very far from being the case here. The true force of the preterite and future forms, as here employed, is recognized by ABEN EZRA, who explains the clause to mean that according to God's purpose, it has come to pass and will come to pass hereafter. The antithesis is rendered still more prominent by JARCHI, by whom this verse is paraphrased as follows Thou hast seen, oh Nebuchadnezzar, how the words of the prophets of Israel have been fulfilled in Sennacherib, to break Assyria in my land, and by this thou mayest know that what I have purposed against thee shall also come to pass' (comp. Ezek. xxxi. 3-18).-The only objection to this view is that the next verse goes on to speak of the Assyrian overthrow, which would seem to imply that the last clause of this verse (24) as well as the first relates to that event. Another method of expounding the verse, therefore, is to apply and Dp to the same events, but in a somewhat different sense,- As I intended it

When the Prophet (ver. 26) declares that the for the whole earth, and for all nations, he does catastrophe predicted for Assyria is significant it by reason of the connection that exists between all acts of the Godhead. That defeat of Sennathat the LORD has determined concerning the cherib, too, is an integral moment of the decree whole earth, and all nations. This counsel of God stands so firm that no power of the world can hinder its execution; the hand which the LORD has stretched out to do this execution nothing can turn aside from its doing.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL.

1. How grand is the Prophet's contemplation of history! How the mighty Assyria shrivels up, which in chapters vii.-xii., played so great a part! Only a line or so is devoted to it here, "Das macht, es ist gericht, eir Wörtlein kann es fällen." The Prophet knows that Sennacherib's defeat before Jerusalem is at once the overthrow of the Assyrian world-power, and the deliverance of Israel from his yoke, although Assyria stood yet a hundred years and did harm enough to Judah still (2 Chr. xxxiii. 11). But God always sees the essence of things. What He wills, comes to pass; and when it has happened, perhaps no one knows what that which has come to pass means: only the future makes it plain.

The fruit germ frosted in the blossom, may remain green for days. Only by degrees it becomes yellow, then black, and evidently dead.

["By this assurance (vers. 24-27) God designed to comfort His people, when they should be in Babylon in a long and dreary captivity. Comp. Ps. cxxxvii. And by the same consideration His people may be comforted in all times. His plans shall stand. None can disannul them. No arm has power to resist Him. None of the schemes formed against Him shall ever prosper. Whatever ills, therefore, may befall His people; however thick, gloomy, and sad their calamities may be; and however dark His dispensations may appear, yet they may have the assurance that all His plans are wise, and that they all shall stand."-BARNES].

b) Prophecies relating to the nations threatened by Assyria, viz.: Philistia, Moab, Syria and Ephraim, Ethiopia and Egypt.

CHAPTER XIV. 28-XX. 6.

1. AGAINST PHILISTIA. CHAP. XIV. 28-32.

This short piece was occasioned by an em- tions. That the present piece comes just here, bassy that the Philistines sent to Jerusalem in has, may be, its explanation in this, that Isaiah hypocritical courtesy, after the death of king would begin with these western neighbors as the Ahaz. It contains the most manifold correspond- least dangerous. He then passes on to the East ences to chap. xi., so that there can be no doubt to the mightier Moabites, from them he ascends about its having a contemporaneous origin. Yet north to the still mightier Syro-Ephraimites, chap. xi., originated before this piece, for the to conclude with the mightiest of all, the Egyp latter evidently leans on the former. It is seen tians and Ethiopians of the South. Jeremiah, that the young king Hezekiah, immediately on chap. xlvii., goes from the Philistines to the ascending the throne awakened great expecta- | Moabites, and then by a round-about to Damascus.

28 IN THE YEAR THAT KING AHAZ DIED WAS THIS BURDEN.

29 Rejoice not thou, "whole Palestina,

Because the rod of him that smote thee is broken:

For out of the serpent's root shall come forth a 1cockatrice,
And his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.

30 And the first born of the poor shall feed,

And the needy shall lie down in safety:
And I will kill thy root with famine,
And he shall slay thy remnant.

31 Howl, O gate; cry, O city;

Thou, "whole Palestina, art dissolved:

For there shall come from the north a smoke,

And none shall be alone in his appointed times.

32 What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation?

That the LORD hath founded Zion,

And the poor of His people shall trust in it.

Ver. 30. 1 is, so to speak, a superlative of those on whom the essence of poverty and lowliness is impressed in full, unmitigated power.-To take

8 Or, assemblies.

• basilisk.

the basilisk as the subject of (DELITZSCH) does too
much violence. I [thus, too, J. A. A.] take simply ÿ,
which is gen. masc., as subject.
Ver. 31.

metonymy for those assembled in the

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.