Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah Part 10

[42] Cheyne.

This parade of Isaiah for three years, unfrocked and barefoot, is another instance of that habit on which we remarked in connection with chap. viii. 1: the habit of finally carrying everything committed to him before the bar of the whole nation. It was to the ma.s.s of the people G.o.d said, _Come and let us reason together._ Let us not despise Isaiah in his shirt any more than we do Diogenes in his tub, or with a lantern in his hand, seeking for a man by its rays at noonday. He was bent on startling the popular conscience, because he held it true that a people's own morals have greater influence on their destinies than the policies of their statesmen. But especially anxious was Isaiah, as we shall again see from chap. x.x.xi., to bring this Egyptian policy home to the popular conscience. Egypt was a big-mouthed, bl.u.s.tering power, believed in by the mob: to expose her required public, picturesque and persistent advertis.e.m.e.nt. So Isaiah continued his walk for three years.

The fall of Ashdod, left by Egypt to itself, did not disillusion the Jews, and the rapid disappearance of Sargon to another part of his empire where there was trouble, gave the Egyptians audacity to continue their intrigues against him.[43]

[43] W. R. Smith, _Prophets of Israel_, p. 282.

Sargon's new trouble had broken out in Babylon, and was much more serious than any revolt in Syria. Merodach Baladan, king of Chaldea, was no ordinary va.s.sal, but as dangerous a rival as Egypt. When he rose, it meant a contest between Babylon and Nineveh for the sovereignty of the world. He had long been preparing for war. He had an alliance with Elam, and the tribes of Mesopotamia were prepared for his signal of revolt.

Among the charges brought against him by Sargon is that, "against the will of the G.o.ds of Babylon, he had sent during twelve years amba.s.sadors." One of these emba.s.sies may have been that which came to Hezekiah after his great sickness (chap. x.x.xix.). _And Hezekiah was glad of them, and showed them the house of his spicery, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious oil, and all the house of his armour and all that was found in his treasures; there was nothing in his house nor in all his dominion that Hezekiah showed them not._ Isaiah was indignant. He had hitherto kept the king from formally closing with Egypt; now he found him eager for an alliance with another of the powers of man. But instead of predicting the captivity of Babylon, as he predicted the captivity of Egypt, by the hand of a.s.syria, Isaiah declared, according to chap. x.x.xix., that Babylon would some day take Israel captive; and Hezekiah had to content himself with the prospect that this calamity was not to happen in his time.

Isaiah's prediction of the exile of Israel to Babylon is a matter of difficulty. The difficulty, however, is not that of conceiving how he could have foreseen an event which took place more than a century later.

Even in 711 Babylon was not an unlikely compet.i.tor for the supremacy of the nations. Sargon himself felt that it was a crisis to meet her. Very little might have transferred the seat of power from the Tigris to the Euphrates. What, therefore, more probable than that when Hezekiah disclosed to these envoys the whole state of his resources, and excused himself by saying _that they were come from a far country, even Babylon_, Isaiah, seized by a strong sense of how near Babylon stood to the throne of the nations, should laugh to scorn the excuse of distance, and tell the king that his anxiety to secure an alliance had only led him to place the temptation to rob him in the face of a power that was certainly on the way to be able to do it? No, the difficulty is not that the prophet foretold a captivity of the Jews in Babylon, but that we cannot reconcile what he says of that captivity with his intimation of the immediate destruction of Babylon, which has come down to us in chap. xxi. 1-10.

In this prophecy Isaiah regards Babylon as he has been regarding Egypt--certain to go down before a.s.syria, and therefore wholly unprofitable to Judah. If the Jews still thought of returning to Egypt when Sargon hurried back from completing her discomfiture in order to beset Babylon, Isaiah would tell them it was no use. a.s.syria has brought her full power to bear on the Babylonians; Elam and Media are with her.

He travails with pain for the result. Babylon is not expecting a siege; but _preparing the table, eating and drinking_, when suddenly the cry rings through her, "_Arise, ye princes; anoint the shield._ The enemy is upon us." So terrible and so sudden a warrior is this Sargon! At his words nations move; when he saith, _Go up, O Elam! Besiege, O Media!_ it is done. And he falls upon his foes before their weapons are ready. Then the prophet shrinks back from the result of his imagination of how it happened--for that is too painful--upon the simple certainty, which G.o.d revealed to him, that it must happen. As surely as Sargon's columns went against Babylon, so surely must the message return that Babylon has fallen. Isaiah puts it this way. The Lord bade him get on his watchtower--that is his phrase for observing the signs of the times--and speak whatever he saw. And he saw a military column on the march: _a troop of hors.e.m.e.n by pairs, a troop of a.s.ses, a troop of camels_. It pa.s.sed him out of sight, _and he hearkened very diligently_ for news.

But none came. It was a long campaign. _And he cried like a lion_ for impatience, _O my Lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower by day, and am set in my ward every night_. Till at last, _behold, there came a troop of men, hors.e.m.e.n in pairs, and_ now _one answered and said, Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the images of her G.o.ds he hath broken to the ground_. The meaning of this very elliptical pa.s.sage is just this: as surely as the prophet saw Sargon's columns go out against Babylon, so sure was he of her fall. Turning to his Jerusalem, he says, _My own threshed one, son of my floor, that which I have heard from Jehovah of hosts, the G.o.d of Israel, have I declared unto you_. How gladly would I have told you otherwise! But this is His message and His will. Everything must go down before this a.s.syrian.

Sargon entered Babylon before the year was out, and with her conquest established his fear once more down to the borders of Egypt. In his lifetime neither Judah nor her neighbours attempted again to revolt. But Egypt's intrigue did not cease. Her mines were once more laid, and the feudatories of a.s.syria only waited for their favourite opportunity, a change of tyrants on the throne at Nineveh. This came very soon. In the fifteenth year of his reign, having finally established his empire, Sargon inscribed on the palace at Khorsabad the following prayer to a.s.sur: "May it be that I, Sargon, who inhabit this palace, may be preserved by destiny during long years for a long life, for the happiness of my body, for the satisfaction of my heart, and may I arrive to my end! May I acc.u.mulate in this palace immense treasures, the booties of all countries, the products of mountains and valleys!" The G.o.d did not hear. A few months later, in 705, Sargon was murdered; and before Sennacherib, his successor, sat down on the throne, the whole of a.s.syrian supremacy in the south-west of Asia went up in the air. It was the second of the great Explosions we spoke of, and the rest of Isaiah's prophecies are concerned with its results.

BOOK III.

ORATIONS ON THE EGYPTIAN INTRIGUES AND ORACLES ON FOREIGN NATIONS, 705-702 B.C.

ISAIAH:--

xxix. About 703.

x.x.x. A little later.

x.x.xi. " "

x.x.xii. 1-8. "

x.x.xii. 9-20. Date uncertain.

_______

xiv. 28-xxi. 736-702.

xxiii. About 703.

BOOK III.

We now enter the prophecies of Isaiah's old age, those which he published after 705, when his ministry had lasted for at least thirty-five years. They cover the years between 705, the date of Sennacherib's accession to the a.s.syrian throne, and 701, when his army suddenly disappeared from before Jerusalem.

They fall into three groups:--

1. Chaps. xxix.-x.x.xii., dealing with Jewish politics while Sennacherib is still far from Palestine, 704-702, and having Egypt for their chief interest, a.s.syria lowering in the background.

2. Chaps. xiv. 28-xxi. and xxiii., a group of oracles on foreign nations, threatened, like Judah, by a.s.syria.

3. Chaps. i., xxii., and x.x.xiii., and the historical narrative in x.x.xvi., and x.x.xvii., dealing with Sennacherib's invasion of Judah and siege of Jerusalem in 701; Egypt and every foreign nation now fallen out of sight, and the storm about the Holy City too thick for the prophet to see beyond his immediate neighbourhood.

The _first and second_ of these groups--orations on the intrigues with Egypt and oracles on the foreign nations--delivered while Sennacherib was still far from Syria, form the subject of this Third Book of our exposition.

The prophecies on the siege of Jerusalem are sufficiently numerous and distinctive to be put by themselves, along with their appendix (x.x.xviii., x.x.xix.), in our Fourth Book.

CHAPTER XII.

_ARIEL, ARIEL._

ISAIAH xxix. (about 703 B.C.).

In 705 Sargon, King of a.s.syria, was murdered, and Sennacherib, his second son, succeeded him. Before the new ruler mounted the throne, the vast empire, which his father had consolidated, broke into rebellion, and down to the borders of Egypt cities and tribes declared themselves again independent. Sennacherib attacked his problem with a.s.syrian prompt.i.tude. There were two forces, to subdue which at the beginning made the reduction of the rest certain: a.s.syria's va.s.sal kingdom and future rival for the supremacy of the world, Babylon; and her present rival, Egypt. Sennacherib marched on Babylon first.

While he did so the smaller States prepared to resist him. Too small to rely on their own resources, they looked to Egypt, and among others who sought help in that quarter was Judah. There had always been, as we have seen, an Egyptian party among the politicians of Jerusalem; and a.s.syria's difficulties now naturally increased its influence. Most of the prophecies in chaps. xxix.-x.x.xii. are forward to condemn the alliance with Egypt and the irreligious politics of which it was the fruit.

At the beginning, however, other facts claim Isaiah's attention. After the first excitement, consequent on the threats of Sennacherib, the politicians do not seem to have been specially active. Sennacherib found the reduction of Babylon a harder task than he expected, and in the end it turned out to be three years before he was free to march upon Syria.

As one winter after another left the work of the a.s.syrian army in Mesopotamia still unfinished, the political tension in Judah must have relaxed. The Government--for King Hezekiah seems at last to have been brought round to believe in Egypt--pursued their negotiations no longer with that decision and real patriotism, which the sense of near danger rouses in even the most selfish and mistaken of politicians, but rather with the heedlessness of principle, the desire to show their own cleverness and the pa.s.sion for intrigue which run riot among statesmen, when danger is near enough to give an excuse for doing something, but too far away to oblige anything to be done in earnest. Into this false ease, and the meaningless, faithless politics, which swarmed in it, Isaiah hurled his strong prophecy of chap. xxix. Before he exposes in chaps. x.x.x., x.x.xi., the folly of trusting to Egypt in the hour of danger, he has here the prior task of proving that hour to be near and very terrible. It is but one instance of the ignorance and fickleness of the people, that their prophet has first to rouse them to a sense of their peril, and then to restrain their excitement under it from rushing headlong for help to Egypt.

Chap. xxix. is an obscure oracle, but its obscurity is designed. Isaiah was dealing with a people, in whom political security and religious formalism had stifled both reason and conscience. He sought to rouse them by a startling message in a mysterious form. He addressed the city by an enigma:--

_Ho! Ari-El, Ari-El! City David beleaguered! Add a year to a year, let the feasts run their round, then will I bring straitness upon Ari-El, and there shall be moaning and bemoaning,[44] and yet she shall be unto Me as an Ari-El._

[44] Cheyne.

The general bearing of this enigma became plain enough after the sore siege and sudden deliverance of Jerusalem in 701. But we are unable to make out one or two of its points. _Ari-El_ may mean either _The Lion of G.o.d_ (2 Sam. xxiii. 20), or _The Hearth of G.o.d_ (Ezek. xliii. 15, 16).

If the same sense is to be given to the four utterances of the name, then _G.o.d's-Lion_ suits better the description of ver. 4; but _G.o.d's-Hearth_ seems suggested by the feminine p.r.o.noun in ver. 1, and is a conception to which Isaiah returns in this same group of prophecies (x.x.xi. 9). It is possible that this ambiguity was part of the prophet's design; but if he uses the name in both senses, some of the force of his enigma is lost to us. In any case, however, we get a picturesque form for a plain meaning. In a year after the present year is out, says Isaiah, G.o.d Himself will straiten the city, whose inhabitants are now so careless, and she shall be full of mourning and lamentation.

Nevertheless in the end she shall be a true Ari-El: be it a true _G.o.d's-Lion_, victor and hero; or a true _G.o.d's-Hearth_, His own inviolate shrine and sanctuary.

The next few verses (3-8) expand this warning. In plain words, Jerusalem is to undergo a siege. G.o.d Himself shall _encamp against thee--round about_ reads our English version, but more probably, as with the change of a letter, the Septuagint reads it--_like David_. If we take this second reading, the reference to David in the enigma itself (ver. 1) becomes clear. The prophet has a very startling message to deliver: that G.o.d will besiege His own city, the city of David! Before G.o.d can make her in truth His own, make her verify her name, He will have to beleaguer and reduce her. For so novel and startling an intimation the prophet pleads a precedent: "_City which David_ himself _beleaguered_!

Once before in thy history, ere the first time thou wast made G.o.d's own hearth, thou hadst to be besieged. As then, so now. Before thou canst again be a true Ari-El I must _beleaguer thee like David_." This reading and interpretation gives to the enigma a reason and a force which it does not otherwise possess.

Jerusalem, then, shall be reduced to the very dust, and whine and whimper in it (like a sick _lion_, if this be the figure the prophet is pursuing), when suddenly it is _the surge of_ her foes--literally _thy strangers_--whom the prophet sees as _small dust, and as pa.s.sing chaff shall the surge of tyrants be; yea, it shall be in the twinkling of an eye, suddenly_. _From Jehovah of hosts shall she be visited with thunder and with earthquake and a great noise,--storm-wind, and tempest and the flame of fire devouring. And it shall be as a dream, a vision of the night, the surge of all the nations that war against Ariel, yea all that war against her and her stronghold, and they that press in upon her. And it shall be as if the hungry had been dreaming, and lo! he was eating; but he hath awaked, and his soul is empty: and as if the thirsty had been dreaming, and lo! he was drinking; but he hath awaked, and lo! he is faint, and his soul is ravenous: thus shall be the surge of all the nations that war against Mount Zion._ Now that is a very definite prediction, and in its essentials was fulfilled. In the end Jerusalem was invested by Sennacherib, and reduced to sore straits, when very suddenly--it would appear from other records, in a single night--the beleaguering force disappeared. This actually happened; and although the main business of a prophet, as we now clearly understand, was not to predict definite events, yet, since the result here predicted was one on which Isaiah staked his prophetic reputation and pledged the honour of Jehovah and the continuance of the true religion among men, it will be profitable for us to look at it for a little.