Every prophet was a theologian. His teaching rested upon that aspect of the Divine character which had been specially brought home to his consciousness. But Isaiah is pre-eminently a theologian. The vision in which he received his call was a revelation of the glory of Jehovah, exhibiting the supreme attributes of majesty and holiness. An overwhelming sense of these attributes was burnt into his inmost soul. It shaped his view of Jehovah's relation to Israel and of Israel's behaviour to Jehovah, and formed the inspiration and dominating idea of his teaching.
His theological beliefs, as presented in his writings, are not abstracted from the controversies in which they took shape and systematized into a body of doctrine, but appear in connexion with the emergencies which called for their expression. He emphasized from time to time different aspects of the Divine character, as he conceived it in opposition to the prevalent misconceptions of his countrymen; and his theology remains in the form it assumed under the pressure of practical needs. His convictions respecting the Lord's nature, supremacy, and purposes are not in general peculiar to himself, but are shared by his contemporaries Amos, Hosea, and Micah. The religious beliefs of all of the eighth-century prophets were influenced by the momentous changes occurring or impending in the political world around them. The extinction by Assyria of the smaller nationalities involved either the conclusion that Israel's God was inferior to Asshur, the god of Assyria, or the conclusion that He was a Being of altogether different nature and authority, whose dealings with His own nation had to be accounted for on other principles than those which were popularly thought to explain them; and it was in the second that these prophets believed the truth to lie. Their convictions that the Lord was a holy and righteous God enabled them to interpret the movements of history which portended disaster to their own country as due not to any defect of power on the part of the Lord but to the execution of a moral purpose of which Assyria was His instrument. But whilst the views which they held respecting the Lord and the service that He required from His people embraced much that was common to all of them, each accentuated those sides of the truth which the circumstances of his own time seemed to demand or to which his own genius and temperament inclined him.
In the case of Isaiah, from the beginning his message contained some elements not to be found in the writings of his contemporaries; while other distinctive conceptions emerge in the course of his active ministry. Being pre-eminently a man of action and a statesman, his firm grasp of political facts imparts a special direction to his thoughts of the Divine Kingdom; and the necessity of presenting a definite religious policy to the rulers of the State gives a precision and a fulness to his forecasts of the future in which he is hardly equalled by any other prophet. At the same time, there is an organic unity in his teaching, all his leading ideas being implicitly contained in a few simple but comprehensive principles disclosed to him in his inaugural vision.
1. Isaiah is a monotheist in the strictest sense of the term. There is no sentence in his writings which suggests that he attributed any sort of real existence to the false gods of the heathen; and if he never reasons on the subject of the Divine unity, it is because the fact was too fundamental in his mind to admit of demonstration. He frequently speaks of idols as “the work of men's hands”; his favourite designation for them is elîlîm (“not-gods” or “nonentities”), a word which he himself seems to have coined to express his sense of their unreality. No language could be more opposed to the spirit of idolatry than this; for it expressly denies the belief which is at the foundation of the worship of idols, namely, that the image is the abode of a supernatural being able to protect and help his votaries. Nor are the prophet's allusions to the primitive nature-worship which survived in the land less intolerant, or less decisive as to his attitude towards the polytheistic tendencies of his countrymen. For him, in short, there was but one Divine Being; and all his conceptions of Godhead are summed up in the revelation which made him a prophet, the vision of Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel.
The Hebrew doctrine of God grew up out of polytheism, for the fathers had their many gods. It was not a philosophical doctrine, but an outgrowth of moral and religious life. It appears to have passed through the henotheistic stage, affirming one God for Israel while there were other gods for other peoples; but under the influence of the prophets it became a doctrine of genuine monotheism, affirming one God alone existing. It was not merely an ordinary development from the polytheism of early days, but was rather a reaction against it. It came from those deep and inspiring insights of the best men that so well deserve the name of revelation. The living God was manifesting Himself to men who could discern Him. It was in the ethical life and the life of religion that the conviction of the Divine unity was borne in. God was conceived as bearing the qualities that we call personal, and as having such character as to command a reverence and loyalty such as no deity had ever obtained. He was conceived as living, knowing, loving, desiring, purposing, directing His own action, and influential upon the affairs of men. It was a doctrine of Divine unity that stood in contrast to everything pantheistic: it was a true monotheism, a doctrine of one personal God. Monotheism is contrasted with polytheism in affirming the unity of the Divine, and with pantheism in affirming the personality. The Hebrew doctrine proclaimed both.1 [Note: W. N. Clarke, The Christian Doctrine of God, 268.]
2. The attributes of the Lord which impressed themselves most deeply upon Isaiah's mind were His holiness and His glory. These were the subjects of the hymn of the seraphim in his vision; and it was these that he felt to be more especially outraged by his sinful countrymen.
(1) Holiness is not of course an attribute now for the first time ascribed to Jehovah. It is used by Isaiah's predecessors. To Amos it is the essential characteristic of Deity. “The Lord Jehovah,” he says, “hath sworn by his holiness.” That is synonymous with swearing by Himself. In Hosea He is proclaimed to be the Holy One in the midst of Ephraim. Nor is it a title which was limited to the sphere of revelation. Other Semitic nations applied it to their gods; but revelation takes it, and invests it with a deeper significance. Among the Semitic nations holiness was the quality which distinguished gods in general from men, and did not necessarily convey any moral significance. Hence, to describe the Lord as holy did not verbally mean more than calling Him Divine. But by Isaiah the word was employed in an ethical sense, and as applied to the Lord, it connoted especially the quality of righteousness. It implied that the Lord was separated from mankind not merely by perfection of power, but by perfection of moral purity.
Thus the writings of the Hebrew prophets, and of Isaiah in particular, mark an important stage in the development of this notion of holiness. At first sight it might seem inexplicable that a purely formal idea, expressing no positive conception beyond that of awe-inspiring power and majesty, should become a central doctrine of the prophetic theology. But in truth it is the very vagueness and comprehensiveness of the term that explain the profound significance attaching to it in the mind of Isaiah. By taking this word, which by universal consent embraced all that was distinctive of Deity, and restricting it to Jehovah, he expressed the fundamental truth that in the God of Israel and in Him alone are concentrated all the attributes of true Divinity. Holiness thus ceases to be an abstract quality shared by a number of Divine beings; it comes to denote the fulness of what Jehovah is as He is known from His revelation of Himself to the consciousness of the prophet. It signalizes the most notable fact in the religious history of Israel-the formation of an idea of God which at once placed an impassable gulf between Jehovah and all other beings who claimed the title of Divine; and it is this positive idea of God, expressed in the doctrine of Jehovah's unique holiness, that is the mainstay of Isaiah's ministry.
Jehovah, the Lord of all, is known to the Hebrew prophets as ineffable and supreme in His holiness and righteousness. He is not removed from the material universe, for He sustains and controls all its mighty and glorious powers. It is no deceptive shadow cast upon His glory. It is the robe of beauty which He wears. It is a majestic array of powers, every one of which is but a quick sensitive servant of His will. Nor is He cut off from human life. The children of men are no less His creatures than the sun and the moon in their splendour. Nay, they too are His servants, wherever they live and whatever false or unreal gods in their pathetic ignorance or bestial sin they may worship. But in His holiness and righteousness Jehovah recognizes one fact which is utterly hostile to His nature, His character, and His will-that is, human sin. Here prophetism speaks a most terrible message. Nothing further can it say until the bitter fact is fully and humbly recognized by men, that in one only spot has God no place, that is in the heart of the evil-doer. For God is holy and righteous, and His attitude towards the unholy and unrighteous will is and must be one of inexorable and complete hostility.1 [Note: W. D. Mackenzie, The Final Faith, 32.]
(2) The Lord's glory, in the sense which it has in the seraphs' song, is equivalent to the majesty pertaining to Him in virtue of His sovereign power. It is spoken of chiefly in two senses: first, of the honour and praise due to Him from men (or angels); and, second, of the dazzling brightness in which He arrays Himself when He supernaturally manifests His presence on earth. Neither of these meanings, however, quite suits the use of the term in the second line of the seraphs' hymn, which, literally translated, reads, “the fulness of the whole earth is his glory.” Obviously “glory” is here something objective, as distinct from the glory ascribed to God in the praises of His creatures; while it is at the same time something “far more deeply interfused” with nature than the supernatural phenomena of the cloud of fire and light. The general idea must be that all that the world contains, all that is sublime and powerful in nature, is the outward expression and symbol of the majesty which belongs to Him as the God of all the earth.
When Isaiah had his vision of God's holiness, he was told that it does not require a supernatural event to see the holiness, which is another name for the goodness, of God. The Seraphim sang their song of adoration, and said, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the fulness of the whole earth is his glory.” Our English versions translate the words of the Seraphim, “The whole earth is full of his glory.” It is quite true, but it is not an accurate translation. And the accurate translation is better: “The fulness of the whole earth is his glory.” For this earth of ours is a world on which He has lavished the riches of His nature. It is a full earth. At the return of every season we scatter a few seeds on the soil of it, and it brings forth “some an hundred fold.” Test its inexhaustibleness, He seems to say. It is full of the goodness of God. Its fulness is His glory.2 [Note: Expository Times, March 1915, p. 242.]
3. The thought of God as the universal Sovereign is specialized in the idea of His kingship over Israel, an idea whose influence makes itself felt in the whole of the prophet's activity. Israel is the immediate sphere of Jehovah's royal functions, and it is in His name that Isaiah claims an authoritative voice in the direction of the affairs of the State. He speaks to his countrymen as one who has “seen the King” and has been commissioned to declare His will as the supreme law of the nation. Thus through the medium of the prophetic word the abstract doctrine of the Divine sovereignty is translated into living and personal relations between Jehovah the King and Israel His kingdom. Similarly, the supreme quality of holiness, or essential Divinity, becomes a practical factor in religion through being brought to bear on Jehovah's relation to His people. He is, to use a favourite title of Isaiah, “the Holy One of Israel,” i.e., the Holy Being who is the God of Israel. Here again Israel is conceived as the community within which Jehovah reveals Himself as He truly is, and by which His character as the Holy One is to be recognized and exhibited to the world. The whole of Isaiah's conception of national religion is summed up in the phrase to “sanctify the Lord of Hosts”; that is, to acknowledge and worship His Godhead, and to cherish towards Him the sentiment of fear and reverence which was impressed on the prophet's own mind by the revelation of His holiness.
Belief in Divine sovereignty bears several fruits which are not over-abundant in our day; for one thing, it creates a majestic view of God, and this lies at the root of becoming and reverent religion. The unconscious irreverence of certain forms of religion in our day and the flabbiness of religious faith spring from inadequate conceptions of the power and righteousness of God. When one believes with the marrow of his bones that at the heart of the universe God reigns Almighty, All-Righteous, All-Wise, and All-Loving, then he has a worthy object of faith and a strong ground for prayer and a good hope of salvation. He is able to possess his soul in patience because he knows that above the fret and turmoil of this present life God is doing His will and accomplishing His purposes; and in his own straits and dangers he has in God a refuge and a hiding-place. The greatest reinforcements which religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.1 [Note: J. Watson, The Doctrines of Grace, 138.]
4. But it must not be supposed that Isaiah had no gospel for the individual. This will seem impossible if we remember three facts.
(1) Isaiah himself had passed through a remarkable individual experience.-He had not only felt the solidarity of the people's sin: “I dwell among a people of unclean lips”; he had first felt his own particular guilt: “I am a man of unclean lips.” One who suffered the private experiences which are recounted in chap. 6; whose own eyes had seen the King, Jehovah of hosts; who had gathered on his own lips his guilt and felt the fire come from heaven's altar by an angelic messenger specially to purify him; who had further devoted himself to God's service with so thrilling a sense of his own responsibility, and had so felt his solitary and individual mission thereby-he surely was not behind the very greatest of Christian saints in the experience of guilt, of personal obligation to grace, and of personal responsibility. Though the record of Isaiah's ministry contains no narratives, such as fill the ministries of Jesus and Paul, of anxious care for individuals, could he who wrote of himself that sixth chapter have failed to deal with men as Jesus dealt with Nicodemus, or as Paul with the Philippian gaoler? It is not picturesque fancy, nor merely a reflection of the New Testament temper, if we imagine Isaiah's intervals of relief from political labour and religious reform occupied with an attention to individual interests, which necessarily would not obtain the permanent record of his public ministry. But whether this be so or not, the sixth chapter teaches that for Isaiah all public conscience and public labour found their necessary preparation in personal religion.
The recognition of the infinite value of the individual soul is the explanation of the method by which Christianity spread in the world. Our Lord Himself and the apostles and evangelists whom He sent forth to carry on His work set themselves to the task of winning men one by one. It was never their way to endeavour to gain converts wholesale by political means. Their appeal was ever to the heart and conscience.
In the ministry of our Lord, nothing is more remarkable than the infinite pains which He took to help every soul which showed any readiness to respond to His influence. His dealing with individuals fills very large space in the Gospels. And in this dealing will be found the most extraordinary variety. No two cases are alike. Each is perfectly individualized. Discerning, with a penetrating insight which was all His own, the needs and spiritual situation of every one, He adapted His treatment accordingly. What a multitude of instances of this Divine tact is to be found in those four little books which tell the story of His life, and how vividly each character stands out! Reflection will reveal the fact that this vivid portraiture is due in the main to our Lord's way of dealing with men. There was in Him, and in His mode of responding to the call of every heart, a power which drew forth the individuality of every human being with whom He came in contact. How true it is that our Lord not only gave a new preciousness to the human soul, teaching by precept and example that the lowliest is worth the expenditure of the most loving care or the most costly sacrifice, but that He also possesses, in Himself, an inherent power to draw forth the individuality of each one, making every soul who comes under His influence to be more real in relation to life and more truly himself than he was before.1 [Note: C. F. D'Arcy, Christian Ethics and Modern Thought, 56.]
(2) But, again, Isaiah had an Individual for his ideal. To him the future was not only an established State; it was equally, it was first, a glorious King. At first only the rigorous virtues of the ruler are attributed to Him, but afterwards the graces and influence of a much broader and sweeter humanity. Indeed, in this latter oracle we saw that Isaiah spoke not so much of his great Hero as of what any individual might become. “A man,” he says, “shall be as an hiding place from the wind.” Personal influence is the spring of social progress, the shelter and fountain force of the community. In the following verses the effect of so pure and inspiring a presence is traced in the discrimination of individual character-each man standing out for what he is-which Isaiah defines as his second requisite for social progress. In all this there is much for the individual to ponder, much to inspire him with a sense of the value and responsibility of his own character, and with the certainty that by himself he shall be judged and by himself stand or fall. “The worthless person shall be no more called princely, nor the knave said to be bountiful.”
Isaiah was an Oriental. We moderns of the West place our reliance upon institutions; we go forward upon ideas. In the East it is personal influence that tells, persons who are expected, followed, and fought for. The history of the West is the history of the advance of thought, of the rise and decay of institutions, to which the greatest individuals are more or less subordinate. The history of the East is the annals of personalities; justice and energy in a ruler, not political principles, are what impress the Oriental imagination. Isaiah has carried this Oriental hope to a distinct and lofty pitch. The Hero whom he exalts on the margin of the future, as its Author, is not only a person of great majesty, but a character of considerable decision.1 [Note: G. A. Smith, The Book of Isaiah, i.-xxxix., 392.]
(3) Faith in God is taught by Isaiah as it had never been taught before. It is a new note in prophecy, and the occasion of its proclamation by the prophet was the dramatic moment when he was confronted by the scheming politician Ahaz. Isaiah challenges the incredulous monarch, who relied more on the strong material support of Assyria than on the invisible might of Jehovah, and declared to him: “If ye will not believe, ye shall not abide secure.” This faith in the Divine power and presence which shall protect and save His people was expressed in a name Immanuel, “God-with-us,” and it may be regarded as the watchword of Isaiah's message to his countrymen at this dark moment of their fortunes, when the king trusted in Tiglath-pileser and the people resorted to the dark rites of necromancy and made “covenants with Sheol.” This quiet “rest,” this “refreshing,” is compared to the waters of the Shiloah stream that go softly.
His views, it is true, have their limitations. The morality upon which he principally insists is that which concerns men's social relations; and he takes more account of the outward conduct, which can be enforced by authority, than of the inward motives. His doctrine of faith, too, seems to need some qualification. He lived in an age which had a very imperfect conception of the regularity marking God's mode of action in the physical world, and which believed Him to intervene continually in human affairs by direct interposition. This belief has been corrected by experience, which has shown that the Almighty, whilst influencing human minds immediately, normally works in nature through secondary causes and in accordance with general laws. Though He is not bound by the physical laws of which He is the Author, yet His processes and methods are ordinarily uniform, so that neither nations nor individuals, though engaged in a just cause, can confidently look to God to defend them if they dispense with such means of self-defence as reason (which is His gift equally with conscience) may suggest. But although Isaiah's teaching thus requires to be qualified in certain directions, it will ever remain an invaluable protest against religious formalism and materialistic unbelief.
Has it ever happened to you, on a beautiful autumn day, to sit down on some landing-place of one of our Jurassic mountains at the edge of the incline which descends almost perpendicularly into the plain below? The bottom of the immense space spread out under your feet was covered with a thick fog, which, like a cold winding-sheet, concealed from your eyes the lakes, fields, and villages. For some time your eyes fell sadly upon this misty abyss. Then suddenly they rose, as if instinctively, to seek some other object; and what was the sight now revealed to them? It was those silvered summits, terraced majestically in two or three stages one above another, which form the southern wall of our country, shining brightly above the sea of fog which enveloped the plain, like a heavenly apparition. And you could not take your eyes off this glorious picture, which no artist's pencil could reproduce. At the time when Isaiah prophesied, the immediate future of Israel lay dark before him. The moral decay was beginning. The eye of the prophet scanned with terror the rapidity of the descent, the violence and depth of the inevitable fall. But beyond and above this abyss of sin and of chastisement there shone out before his prophetic gaze a most glorious future, a double salvation. First, a temporary deliverance-the national restoration after the purifying judgment of the captivity; secondly-higher and more distant-the true, the eternal salvation, the reconciliation of Israel and of mankind with Heaven, the establishment of the Kingdom of God upon the whole earth, by means of the holy remnant which was to emerge from the crucible of chastisement.1 [Note: F. Godet.]
