Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah Part 24

Perhaps the wildest cries that rose from Israel's famine of justice were those which found expression in chap. x.x.xiv. This chapter is so largely a repet.i.tion of feelings we have already met with elsewhere in the Book of Isaiah, that it is necessary now only to mention its original features. The subject is, as in chap. xiii., the Lord's judgement upon all the nations; and as chap. xiii. singled out Babylon for special doom, so chap. x.x.xiv. singles out Edom. The reason of this distinction will be very plain to the reader of the Old Testament. From the day the twins struggled in their mother Rebekah's womb, Israel and Edom were either at open war or burned towards each other with a hate, which was the more intense for wanting opportunities of gratification. It is an Eastern edition of the worst chapters in the history of England and Ireland. No bloodier ma.s.sacres stained Jewish hands than those which attended their invasions of Edom, and Jewish psalms of vengeance are never more flagrant than when they touch the name of the children of Esau. The only gentle utterance of the Old Testament upon Israel's hereditary foe is a comfortless enigma. Isaiah's _Oracle for Dumah_ (xxii. 11 f.), shows that even that large-hearted prophet, in face of his people's age-long resentment at Edom's total want of appreciation of Israel's spiritual superiority, could offer Edom, though for the moment submissive and inquiring, nothing but a sad, ambiguous answer. Edom and Israel, each after his fashion, exulted in the other's misfortunes: Israel by bitter satire when Edom's impregnable mountain-range was treacherously seized and overrun by his allies (Obadiah 4-9); Edom, with the hara.s.sing, pillaging habits of a highland tribe, hanging on to the skirts of Judah's great enemies, and cutting off Jewish fugitives, or selling them into slavery, or malignantly completing the ruin of Jerusalem's walls after her overthrow by the Chaldeans (Obadiah 10-14; Ezek. x.x.xv. 10-15; Ps. cx.x.xi. 7). In _the quarrel of Zion_ with the nations of the world Edom had taken the wrong side,--his profane, earthy nature incapable of understanding his brother's spiritual claims, and therefore envious of him, with the brutal malice of ignorance, and spitefully glad to a.s.sist in disappointing such claims. This is what we must remember when we read the indignant verses of chap. x.x.xiv. Israel, conscious of his spiritual calling in the world, felt bitter resentment that his own brother should be so vulgarly hostile to his attempts to carry it out. It is not our wish to defend the temper of Israel towards Edom. The silence of Christ before the Edomite Herod and his men of war has taught the spiritual servants of G.o.d what is their proper att.i.tude towards the malignant and obscene treatment of their claims by vulgar men. But at least let us remember that chap. x.x.xiv., for all its fierceness, is inspired by Israel's conviction of a spiritual destiny and service for G.o.d, and by the natural resentment that his own kith and kin should be doing their best to render these futile. That a famine of bread makes its victims delirious does not tempt us to doubt the genuineness of their need and suffering. As little ought we to doubt or to ignore the reality or the purity of those spiritual convictions, the prolonged starvation of which bred in Israel such feverish hate against his twin-brother Esau. Chap. x.x.xiv., with all its proud prophecy of judgement, is, therefore, also a symptom of that aspect of Israel's poverty of heart, which we have called a hunger for the Divine justice.

3. POVERTY OF THE EXILE. But as fair flowers bloom upon rough stalks, so from Israel's stern challenges of justice there break sweet prayers for home. Chap. x.x.xiv., the effusion of vengeance on Edom, is followed by chap. x.x.xv., the going forth of hope to the return from exile and the establishment of the ransomed of the Lord in Zion.[83] Chap. x.x.xv. opens with a prospect beyond the return, but after the first two verses addresses itself to the people still in a foreign captivity, speaking of their salvation (vv. 3, 4), of the miracles that will take place in themselves (vv. 5, 6) and in the desert between them and their home (vv.

6, 7), of the highway which G.o.d shall build, evident and secure (vv. 8, 9), and of the final arrival in Zion (ver. 10). In that march the usual disappointments and illusions of desert life shall disappear. _The mirage shall become a pool_; and the clump of vegetation which afar off the hasty traveller hails for a sign of water, but which on his approach he discovers to be the withered gra.s.s of a _jackal's lair_, shall indeed be _reeds and rushes_, standing green in fresh water. Out of this exuberant fertility there emerges in the prophet's thoughts a great highway, on which the poetry of the chapter gathers and reaches its climax. Have we of this nineteenth century, with our more rapid means of pa.s.sage, not forgotten the poetry of the road? Are we able to appreciate either the intrinsic usefulness or the gracious symbolism of the king's highway? How can we know it as the Bible-writers or our forefathers knew it when they made the road the main line of their allegories and parables of life? Let us listen to these verses as they strike the three great notes in the music of the road: _And an highway shall be there, and a way; yea, The Way of Holiness shall it be called, for the unclean shall not pa.s.s over it_--that is what is to distinguish this road from all other roads. But here is what it is as being a road. First, it shall be unmistakably plain: _The wayfaring man, yea fools, shall not err therein_. Second, it shall be perfectly secure: _No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon; they shall not be met with there_. Third, it shall bring to a safe arrival and ensure a complete overtaking: _And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall overtake gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away_.

[83] Even at the risk of incurring Canon Cheyne's charge of "ineradicable error," I feel I must keep to the older view of chap.

x.x.xv. which makes it refer to the return from exile. No doubt the chapter covers more than the mere return, and includes "the glorious condition of Israel after the return;" but vv. 4 and 10 are undoubtedly addressed to Jews still in exile and undelivered.

4. So Israel was to come home. But to Israel home meant the Temple, and the Temple meant G.o.d. The poverty of the Exile was, in the essence of it, POVERTY OF G.o.d, POVERTY OF LOVE. The prayers which express this are very beautiful,--that trail like wounded animals to the feet of their master, and look up in His face with large eyes of pain. _And they shall say in that day, Lo, this is our G.o.d: we have waited for Him, that He should save us; this is the LORD: we have waited for Him; we will rejoice and be glad in His salvation.... Yea, in the way of Thy ordinances, O LORD, have we waited for Thee; to Thy name and to Thy Memorial was the desire of our soul. With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, by my spirit within me do I seek Thee with dawn_ (chaps.

xxv. 9; xxvi. 8).

An Arctic explorer was once asked, whether during eight months of slow starvation which he and his comrades endured they suffered much from the pangs of hunger. No, he answered, we lost them in the sense of abandonment, in the feeling that our countrymen had forgotten us and were not coming to the rescue. It was not till we were rescued and looked in human faces that we felt how hungry we were. So is it ever with G.o.d's poor. They forget all other need, as Israel did, in their need of G.o.d. Their outward poverty is only the weeds of their heart's widowhood. _But Jehovah of hosts shall make to all the peoples in this mountain a banquet of fat things, a banquet of wines on the lees, fat things bemarrowed, wines on the lees refined._

We need only note here--for it will come up for detailed treatment in connection with the second half of Isaiah--that the centre of Israel's restored life is to be the Temple, not, as in Isaiah's day, the king; that her dispersed are to gather from all parts of the world at the sound of the Temple _trumpet_; and that her national life is to consist in worship (cf. xxvii. 13).

These then were four aspects of Israel's poverty of heart: a hunger for pardon, a hunger for justice, a hunger for home, and a hunger for G.o.d.

For the returning Jews these wants were satisfied only to reveal a deeper poverty still, the complaint and comfort of which we must reserve to another chapter.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

_THE RESURRECTION._

ISAIAH xxvi. 14-19; xxv. 6-9.

Granted the pardon, the justice, the Temple and the G.o.d, which the returning exiles now enjoyed, the possession of these only makes more painful the shortness of life itself. This life is too shallow and too frail a vessel to hold peace and righteousness and worship and the love of G.o.d. St. Paul has said, _If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable_. What avails it to have been pardoned, to have regained the Holy Land and the face of G.o.d, if the dear dead are left behind in graves of exile, and all the living must soon pa.s.s into that captivity,[84] from which there is no return?

[84] Hezekiah's expression for death, x.x.xviii. 12.

It must have been thoughts like these, which led to the expression of one of the most abrupt and powerful of the few hopes of the resurrection which the Old Testament contains. This hope, which lightens chap. xxv.

7, 8, bursts through again--without logical connection with the context--in vv. 14-19 of chap. xxvi.

The English version makes ver. 14 to continue the reference to the lords, whom in ver. 13 Israel confesses to have served instead of Jehovah. "They are _dead; they shall not live_: they are _deceased; they shall not rise_." Our translators have thus intruded into their version the verb "they are," of which the original is without a trace. In the original, _dead_ and _deceased_ (literally _shades_) are themselves the subject of the sentence--a new subject and without logical connection with what has gone before. The literal translation of ver. 14 therefore runs: _Dead men do not live; shades do not rise: wherefore Thou visitest them and destroyest them, and perisheth all memory of them_. The prophet states a fact, and draws an inference. The fact is, that no one has ever returned from the dead; the inference, that it is G.o.d's own _visitation_ or _sentence_ which has gone forth upon them, and they have really ceased to exist. But how intolerable a thought is this in presence of the other fact that G.o.d has here on earth above gloriously enlarged and established His people (ver. 15). _Thou hast increased the nation, Jehovah; Thou hast increased the nation. Thou hast covered Thyself with glory; Thou hast expanded all the boundaries of the land._ To this follows a verse (16), the sense of which is obscure, but palpable. It "feels" to mean that the contrast which the prophet has just painted between the absolute perishing of the dead and the glory of the Church above ground is the cause of great despair and groaning: _O Jehovah, in The Trouble they supplicate Thee; they pour out incantations when Thy discipline is upon them_.[85] In face of _The_ Trouble and _The_ Discipline _par excellence_ of G.o.d, what else can man do but betake himself to G.o.d? G.o.d sent death; in death He is the only resource.

Israel's feelings in presence of The Trouble are now expressed in ver.

17: _Like as a woman with child that draweth near the time of her delivery writheth and crieth out in her pangs, so have we been before Thee, O Jehovah_. Thy Church on earth is pregnant with a life, which death does not allow to come to the birth. _We have been with child; we have been in the pangs, as it were; we have brought forth wind; we make not the earth_, in spite of all we have really accomplished upon it in our return, our restoration and our enjoyment of Thy presence--_we make not the earth salvation, neither are the inhabitants of the world born_.[86]

[85] I think this must be the meaning of ver. 16, if we are to allow that it has any sympathy with vv. 14 and 15. Bredenkamp suggests that the persons meant are themselves the dead. Jehovah has glorified the Church on earth; but the dead below are still in trouble, and _pour out prayers_ (Virgil's "preces fundunt," _aeneid_, vi., 55), beneath this punishment which G.o.d causes to pa.s.s on all men (ver. 14). Bredenkamp bases this exegesis chiefly on the word for "prayer," which means _chirping_ or _whispering_, a kind of voice imputed to the shades by the Hebrews and other ancient peoples. But while this word does originally mean _whispering_, it is never in Scripture applied to the dead, but, on the other hand, is a frequent name for _divining_ or _incantation_. I therefore have felt compelled to understand it as used in this pa.s.sage of the living, whose only resource in face of death--_Goa's discipline par excellence_--is to pour out incantations. If it be objected that the prophet would scarcely parallel the ordinary incantations on behalf of the dead with supplications to Jehovah, the answer is that he is talking poetically or popularly.

[86] English version, _fallen; i.e._, like our expression for the birth of animals, _dropped_.

The figures are bold. Israel achieves, through G.o.d's grace, everything but the recovery of her dead; this, which alone is worth calling _salvation_, remains wanting to her great record of deliverances. The living Israel is restored, but how meagre a proportion of the people it is! The graves of home and of exile do not give up their dead. These are not born again to be inhabitants of the upper world.

The figures are bold, but bolder is the hope that breaks from them. Like as when the Trumpet shall sound, ver. 19 peals forth the promise of the resurrection--peals the promise forth, in spite of all experience, unsupported by any argument, and upon the strength of its own inherent music. _Thy dead shall live! my dead bodies shall arise!_ The change of the personal p.r.o.noun is singularly dramatic. Returned Israel is the speaker, first speaking to herself: _thy dead_, as if upon the depopulated land, in face of all its homes in ruin, and only the sepulchres of ages standing grim and steadfast, she addressed some despairing double of herself; and secondly speaking _of_ herself: _my dead bodies_, as if all the inhabitants of these tombs, though dead, were still her own, still part of her, the living Israel, and able to arise and bless with their numbers their bereaved mother. These she now addresses: _Awake and sing, ye dwellers in the dust, for a dew of lights is Thy dew, and the land bringeth forth the dead_.[87]

[87] Technical Hebrew word for the inhabitants of the underworld--_the shades_.

If one has seen a place of graves in the East, he will appreciate the elements of this figure, which takes _dust_ for death and _dew_ for life. With our damp graveyards mould has become the traditional trappings of death; but where under the hot Eastern sun things do not rot into lower forms of life, but crumble into sapless powder, that will not keep a worm in life, _dust_ is the natural symbol of death. When they die, men go not to feed fat the mould, but _down into the dust_; and there the foot of the living falls silent, and his voice is choked, and the light is thickened and in retreat, as if it were creeping away to die. The only creatures the visitor starts are timid, unclean bats, that flutter and whisper about him like the ghosts of the dead. There are no flowers in an Eastern cemetery; and the withered branches and other ornaments are thickly powdered with the same dust that chokes, and silences and darkens all.

Hence the Semitic conception of the underworld was dominated by dust. It was not water nor fire nor frost nor altogether darkness, which made the infernal prison horrible, but that upon its floor and rafters, hewn from the roots and ribs of the primeval mountains, dust lay deep and choking.

Amid all the horrors he imagined for the dead, Dante did not include one more awful than the horror of dust. The picture which the northern Semites had before them when they turned their faces to the wall was of this kind.[88]

[88] Extracted from the a.s.syrian _Descent of Istar to Hades_ (Dr.

Jeremias' German translation, p. 11, and _Records of the Past_, i., 145).

The house of darkness....

The house men enter, but cannot depart from.

The road men go, but cannot return.

The house from whose dwellers the light is withdrawn.

The place where dust is their food, their nourishment clay.

The light they behold not; in darkness they dwell.

They are clothed like birds, all fluttering wings.

On the door and the gateposts, the dust lieth deep.

Either, then, an Eastern sepulchre, or this its infernal double, was gaping before the prophet's eyes. What more final and hopeless than the dust and the dark of it?

But for dust there is dew, and even to graveyards the morning comes that brings dew and light together. The wonder of dew is that it is given from a clear heaven, and that it comes to sight with the dawn. If the Oriental looks up when dew is falling, he sees nothing to thank for it between him and the stars. If he sees dew in the morning, it is equal liquid and l.u.s.tre; it seems to distil from the beams of the sun--_the sun, which riseth with healing under his wings_. The dew is thus doubly "dew of light." But our prophet ascribes the dew of G.o.d, that is to raise the dead, neither to stars nor dawn, but, because of its Divine power, to that higher supernal glory which the Hebrews conceived to have existed before the sun, and which they styled, as they styled their G.o.d, by the plural of majesty: _A dew of lights is Thy dew_.[89] As, when the dawn comes, the drooping flowers of yesterday are seen erect and l.u.s.trous with the dew, every spike a crown of glory, so also shall be the resurrection of the dead. There is no shadow of a reason for limiting this promise to that to which some other pa.s.sages of resurrection in the Old Testament have to be limited: a corporate restoration of the holy State or Church. This is the resurrection of its individual members to a community which is already restored, the recovery by Israel of her dead men and women from their separate graves, each with his own freshness and beauty, in that glorious morning when the Sun of righteousness shall arise, with healing under His wings--_Thy dew_, O Jehovah!

[89] Cf. James i. 17.

Attempts are so often made to trace the hopes of resurrection, which break the prevailing silence of the Old Testament on a future life, to foreign influences experienced in the Exile, that it is well to emphasize the origin and occasion of the hopes that utter themselves so abruptly in this pa.s.sage. Surely nothing could be more inextricably woven with the national fortunes of Israel, as nothing could be more native and original to Israel's temper, than the verses just expounded.

We need not deny that their residence among a people, accustomed as the Babylonians were to belief in the resurrection, may have thawed in the Jews that reserve which the Old Testament clearly shows that they exhibited towards a future life. The Babylonians themselves had received most of their suggestions of the next world from a non-Semitic race; and therefore it would not be to imagine anything alien to the ascertained methods of Providence if we were to suppose that the Hebrews, who showed what we have already called the Semitic want of interest in a future life, were intellectually tempered by their foreign a.s.sociations to a readiness to receive any suggestions of immortality, which the Spirit of G.o.d might offer them through their own religious experience. That it was this last, which was the effective cause of Israel's hopes for the resurrection of her dead, our pa.s.sage puts beyond doubt. Chap. xxvi.

shows us that the occasion of these hopes was what is not often noticed: the returned exiles' disappointment with the meagre repopulation of the holy territory. A restoration of the State or community was not enough: the heart of Israel wanted back in their numbers her dead sons and daughters.

If the occasion of these hopes was thus an event in Israel's own national history, and if the impulse to them was given by so natural an instinct of her own heart, Israel was equally indebted to herself for the convictions that the instinct was not in vain. Nothing is more clear in our pa.s.sage than that Israel's first ground of hope in a future life was her simple, untaught reflection upon the power of her G.o.d. Death was _His chastening_. Death came from Him, and remained in His power. Surely He would deliver from it. This was a very old belief in Israel. _The Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to Sheol and bringeth up._ Such words, of course, might be only an extreme figure for recovery from disease, and the silence of so great a saint as Hezekiah about any other issue into life than by convalescence from mortal sickness staggers us into doubt whether an Israelite ever did think of a resurrection. But still there was Jehovah's almightiness; a man could rest his future on that, even if he had not light to think out what sort of a future it would be. So mark in our pa.s.sage, how confidence is chiefly derived from the simple utterance of the name of Jehovah, and how He is hailed as _our G.o.d_. It seems enough to the prophet to connect life with Him and to say merely, _Thy dew_. As death is G.o.d's own discipline, so life, _Thy dew_, is with Him also.

Thus in its foundation the Old Testament doctrine of the resurrection is but the conviction of the sufficiency of G.o.d Himself, a conviction which Christ turned upon Himself when He said, _I am the Resurrection and the Life. Because I live, ye shall live also._

If any object that in this picture of a resurrection we have no real persuasion of immortality, but simply the natural, though impossible, wish of a bereaved people that their dead should to-day rise from their graves to share to-day's return and glory--a revival as special and extraordinary as that appearing of the dead in the streets of Jerusalem when the Atonement was accomplished, but by no means that general resurrection at the last day which is an article of the Christian faith--if any one should bring this objection, then let him be referred to the previous promise of immortality in chap. xxv. The universal and final character of the promise made there is as evident as of that for which Paul borrowed its terms in order to utter the absolute consequences of the resurrection of the Son of G.o.d: _Death is swallowed up in victory_. For the prophet, having in ver. 6 described the restoration of the people, whom exile had starved with a famine of ordinances, to _a feast in Zion of fat things and wines on the lees well refined_, intimates that as certainly as exile has been abolished, with its dearth of spiritual intercourse, so certainly shall G.o.d Himself destroy death: _And He shall swallow up in this mountain_--perhaps it is imagined, as the sun devours the morning mist on the hills--_the mask of the veil, the veil that is upon all the peoples, and the film spun upon all the nations. He hath swallowed up death for ever, and the Lord Jehovah shall wipe away tears from off all faces, and the reproach of His people shall He remove from off all the earth, for Jehovah hath spoken it. And they shall say in that day, Behold, this is our G.o.d: we have waited for Him, and He shall save us; this is Jehovah: we have waited for Him; we will rejoice and be glad in His salvation._ Thus over all doubts, and in spite of universal human experience, the prophet depends for immortality on G.o.d Himself. In chap. xxvi. 3 our version beautifully renders, _Thou wilt keep_ him _in perfect peace_ whose _mind_ is _stayed_ on Thee, _because he trusteth in Thee_. This is a confidence valid for the next life as well as for this. _Therefore trust ye in the LORD_ for ever. Amen.

Almighty G.o.d, we praise Thee that, in the weakness of all our love and the darkness of all our knowledge before death, Thou hast placed a.s.surance of eternal life in simple faith upon Thyself. Let this faith be richly ours. By Thine omnipotence, by Thy righteousness, by the love Thou hast vouchsafed, we lift ourselves and rest upon Thy word. _Because I live, ye shall live also._ Oh keep us steadfast in union with Thyself, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.