Isaiah was brought up under the pre-Exilic sacrificial system, and may have continued in that all his life. But when he saw that the people were wont to depend upon sacrifices rather than a clean moral life, then his denunciation broke out in strong words: “What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? saith Jehovah: I am sated with burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and in the blood of bullocks and lambs and he-goats I take no pleasure. When you come to see my face, who required now at your hand to trample my courts [i.e., with animals for sacrifice]? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; new moon and sabbath, the convoking of assemblies,-I cannot endure; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts are loathsome, they are a burden unto me, which I am weary of bearing.” What God demands is rightly seen and clearly stated by the prophet: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, deal justly with the fatherless, plead for the widow.” No sacrifice, no blood bath, can ever take the place of earnest moral endeavour. The prophet must take issue with his Church when he saw it sinking to an unworthy conception of God, as if His favours might be bought with blood.
One of the greatest dangers to the Church of God, whether Jewish or Christian, is unreality. We cannot escape this grave peril by adopting a ritual, nor by dispensing with ritual, but only by the most persistent and strenuous moral efforts. This danger was present in Isaiah's day; it was one of the things which made the wide gulf between God and His chosen people: “This people draw near me, and with their mouth and with their lips honour me; but their heart is far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote.”
But there was another phase of the popular feeling, which was worse than unreality, worse than merely formal sacrifices, and that was the attempt to force the prophets either to keep silence or to conform their utterances to the wishes rather than the needs of the people. God pity the prophet of any age who must ask, not, What would the Lord have me say to my people? but, What will my people receive without offence? God pity the people who would not gladly hear the Lord's truth, even though it made them shake like reeds in the wind.1 [Note: L. W. Batten, The Hebrew Prophet, 292.]
Oh for city reformers, for some Isaiah to take up the cry against the jerry-builder, against the rich monopolist who grinds the face of the poor, against the conscienceless companies caring for nothing but big dividends, against the licensing authorities who grant licences to sell intoxicants by the score for the districts where the poor dwell, but refuse them at their own park gates, or near their own suburban residences, against the gambling lord, against the clergy and Nonconformist ministers who fill their purses with gold taken from big brewery companies. This is no time for smooth speech, for pretty compliments. We need men with some steel in their blood, of passionate speech and of sympathetic heart who will say, “No matter what becomes of me, I will speak for the oppressed, I will plead the cause of the poor, I will hearken to the cry of the widow.” We need men with lofty civic ideals. Then “our sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth; and our daughters be as corner stones hewn after the fashion of a palace”; and no outcry “shall be heard in our streets.”1 [Note: S. Horton.]
1. Isaiah's preaching was, first, a message of wrath, and then one of mercy. No man could preach wrath pure and simple. Wrath is but the background, to set in brighter light the mercy. Even repentance could not be preached, unless there were forgiveness: “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The prophet lets us very little into his own feelings; he is too strong and reserved to be garrulous about them. We know not with what mind he set himself to his task. He felt that it was his task, and he must speak. But his preaching was a preaching of wrath, in order to bring into operation mercy and love.
From Jehovah's attributes of righteousness and sovereignty, Isaiah concluded that He would punish Israel, the nation which was peculiarly His own, for its unrighteousness and mistrust; but he did not regard punishment as exhausting the Divine intentions towards it. The infliction of a severe chastisement was a necessary part of the Lord's purpose in respect of His people, for since in their conduct they did not honour Him as holy, He was bound to vindicate His holiness by a purifying judgment. Hence the efforts which they made, by compacts with infernal powers and by negotiations with foreign nations, to avert that judgment would avail them nothing; for the Lord's purpose was immutable. But Israel was not to be exterminated; when the judgment had removed out of it all the evil elements, a remnant of it would be delivered. Assyria, the implement of its punishment, would be arrested, in the moment of its triumph, not by human but by Divine agency, and there would then follow for the chastened and repentant survivors an era of innocence, security, and happiness.
It is not easy to say whether it is more difficult to preach wrath or love. For a sinner to preach God's wrath to sinners implies either very great earnestness or very great insensibility. Yet to preach God's mercy is a great step for a sinner to take, who has any adequate sense of what sin is. There is a superficial preaching of the love of God, which appears rather to come of sentiment. On the other hand, there is a preaching of the wrath of God that is equally unreal; not reposing on any profound feeling of His anger against sin, but due to coarseness of nature. Again, it is sometimes noticed that a man's preaching is the expression of a battle he is carrying on with himself; and he preaches the opposite of what he feels, because he is dissatisfied with his own feeling, and knows that he has not rightly realized that which is to be realized in the gospel. And thus some profoundly exercised men have preached peace and love, with a strenuousness and intensity which was a protest against their own condition of mind, which was destitute of peace, and without that sense of God's love which was felt to be rightly due.1 [Note: A. B. Davidson, The Called of God, 203.]
2. Isaiah's most characteristic doctrine is the idea of a judgment imminent upon the nation, accompanied by the preservation of a faithful Remnant, for whom a new and blissful era will then immediately begin. This doctrine is first adumbrated at the time of Isaiah's call: it is soon afterwards embodied by him in the name of his son, “Shear-jashub,” i.e., “a remnant shall return” (viz., to God); it appears subsequently under many different figures and in different contexts, and holds its place in his last recorded utterance (701 b.c.), Isa_37:31 f. The chosen nation is imperishable; but Divine justice requires that its unworthy members should be swept away: the rest, purged and renovated, will then form the foundation of a new community, exhibiting the ideal character of the people. The ideal is noble and attractively delineated by the prophet: he grasps it firmly, and constantly reverts to it. In the darkest times it is his consolation and support. The approach of trouble or danger throws him back upon the thought of the permanence of the nation, and intensifies his faith in a blissful future reserved for it.
Here we have a fruitful idea which reappears, no doubt with essential modification, in St. Paul's conception of a spiritual Israel. Israel restored is still a nation with its old institutions, only its sin is purged and it has ideal rulers. “I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called The city of righteousness, the faithful city.” Isaiah's writings abound in glowing pictures of the glorious day towards which events are ripening. The general conception is that of a new and final order of things, in which Zion, as the seat of God's kingdom of righteousness and peace, is the centre of light and blessing for the nations, and all nature becomes subservient to the needs of humanity. The representation includes features which are to our minds supernatural, although on the whole it may be said that nature is merely idealized, through its evils being eliminated and its beneficent powers indefinitely enhanced. The later pictures especially are bathed in an atmosphere of idyllic peace and happiness, the simple joys of rural life affording apparently to the aged prophet the best emblem of the perfect felicity reserved for the true people of Jehovah. For along with this line of thought there always goes the prophecy of a transformation of the national character. The evil-doer is rooted out of the community; the poor and afflicted rejoice in the Holy One of Israel; the spiritual blindness which was characteristic of the people is taken away; and the true knowledge of God is diffused through all ranks and classes of society. The blessings of Jehovah's government radiate from Israel to all the nations of the earth; “from Zion goes forth revelation, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.” It is noteworthy that here and elsewhere the nations are represented as retaining their political independence, and voluntarily submitting to the rule of Jehovah, whose just arbitrament supersedes war and brings in an era of universal peace. Finally it is to be remarked that this golden age is not conceived as a remote goal of history or as the result of a long development, but as the immediate sequel of the prophet's own age, following closely on the desolation caused by the Assyrian conquest. In the most brilliant of his Messianic visions Isaiah compares it to a great light breaking on the land, dissipating the darkness of the invasion, bringing victory and rejoicing and prosperity in its train.
The feeling that Society is imperfect and capable of improvement has at various times prompted men to draw a picture of a better and happier community, an ideal commonwealth, or a race living a more tranquil life under more favourable conditions than ours. Sometimes the Utopia or ideal country is placed in a remote region of the earth, and introduced by the more or less transparent fiction of travel and discovery. Sometimes it is distant in time. It is projected into the future, or found in the supposed records of a remote past. In recent times the tendency has been to look forward to the distant future … With the Greeks, the opposite tendency is more conspicuous. Plato's Atlantis is an island that once existed in the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules, but is now submerged. The “Golden Age” of ancient poets is a primeval age of innocence and bliss. The modern man looks in one direction, the Greek in another. Why this contrast should exist, if it does exist, it would be difficult to say. Some probable causes of it may be suggested. Rapid progress in mechanical science, the conquest of steam and electricity, has prompted the thought of further advance. With deeper moral feelings or ideas there has come a greater dissatisfaction with the actual world, a stronger desire for progress, and with that, it may be, a greater reluctance to contemplate the idea that things are worse than they once were. At the same time, Ethics and Anthropology have brought us to a clearer conception of primitive man and of early stages of civilization. The idea of a past Golden Age rests to some extent on a fallacy. Go backwards, undo what has been done: take away the vices of civilization, and the virtues will be left. We know now that the virtues would not be left, and were not there. The vices and virtues grow up together, and by going back we arrive, not at what is highly moral, but at what is crude, half-conscious, and non-moral.1 [Note: W. R. Hardie, Lectures on Classical Subjects, 102.]
3. No reason forbids us to believe that Isaiah pictured his ideal State as subject to an ideal King, or, as we are accustomed to say, a Messiah. As men gird themselves for their work, so will this ideal King gird himself with righteousness: he will judge according to the truth: he will defend the cause of the poor. As a “wonderful counsellor” he will form his plans, carry them out as a “Divine hero” or conqueror; he will divide the booty and bring in lasting peace.
The origin of the Messianic hope in the mind of the Jewish race is wrapped in obscurity. If the Psalm for Solomon (72) belongs to the era to which it is attributed, there is evidence that the advent of a greater Prince than he had already become a national expectation. The strong probability, however, that the hope was born not in the sunshine, but in the dark shadow of national adversity and threatened collapse, cannot fail to impress itself on thoughtful minds. Israel wanted not, dreamed not of, a greater than Solomon while his glorious reign continued. When such a puppet of Asshur as Ahaz sat upon his throne, and the very existence of the State was in jeopardy, the thought of God's Anointed, “a King in his beauty,” to resuscitate and redeem her falling fortunes, would naturally occur to a mind like that of Isaiah, God-intoxicated and inspired with passionate patriotism as it was. At such a crisis as had befallen, the vision of the Prince with the four glorious names is at once natural and intelligible:
“Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given;
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:
And his name shall be called Wonderful-Counsellor,
Mighty One for God, abiding Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
There shall be no end.”
In the early years of his ministry, whilst the memory of the Divine call was still fresh, Isaiah met Ahaz terrified at the joint invasion of Judah by the kings of Israel and Syria. Scornfully calling these rulers “the two fag-ends of smoking logs,” all but burnt out, with no more power to hurt than a charred stick, he called on the descendant of David to trust in Jehovah alone. With hypocritical excuses the king put off the prophet, resolved already that in an Assyrian alliance alone lay any hope of deliverance. As Isaiah turned indignantly away there broke in upon his soul the great hope of a brighter future. In the near future should be born a Child whose glorious name should be Immanu-el-with us is God. In his youth he should suffer privations. In a land desolated by war he must live on the plain fare of a nomad, “curds and honey shall he eat.” But his presence with the people should be the pledge of God's protection; all the plots of their enemies must fail.
“Rage, ye peoples, and be dumbfounded;
And hearken, all distant parts of the earth:
Gird yourselves, and be dumbfounded;
Gird yourselves, and be dumbfounded.
Plan a plan that it may be destroyed;
Declare your purpose that it may not stand:
For-Immanu-el (with-us-is-God).”
The hope in a coming King, just as the hope in a coming “Day,” formed part of those deep-rooted human longings which were present in many different peoples, and which contained truths which the future was bound to justify. Neither Isaiah nor any other man of his period could cut himself loose from his environment, and build a future altogether out of relation to the present. Isaiah looks away beyond these weak and spiritless kings, and dreams of the strong Man who is to come, the Man who in his Godlike force of character shall be “as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” It is therefore possible to hold with the utmost confidence that this picture of the King to come formed the loftiest vision which Isaiah saw. It was the necessary completion of his earlier teaching about the inviolable City and the purged Remnant. Its absence would have been far more astonishing than its presence.
The term Messianic Prophecy strictly refers to the predictions in the Old Testament of a Messiah, that is of an ideal King of Israel, though the Old Testament does not use this term to describe him; but it is also employed in a wider sense, embracing the forecast of the golden age from which the figure of the ideal monarch is frequently absent.… It is with Isaiah that the figure of the Messianic King first makes its appearance in two great passages, Isa_9:1-7; Isa_11:1-9. Their genuineness has been keenly disputed in recent years, but apart from the silence about them in later Prophets there is no really strong argument against it, while the passages, both in what they say and in what they omit, point more plainly to the pre-Exilic than to the post-Exilic period. It is difficult, however, to say precisely to what period of Isaiah's career they should be assigned, and in any case we must not overrate the importance of this element in his forecast of the future.1 [Note: A. S. Peake, in Lux Hominum, 45.]
In the Old Testament “the Lord's anointed” is a synonym for “the king”; and in poetical passages the two stand in parallelism, as Psa_18:50 :
“Great deliverance giveth he to his king;
And sheweth mercy to his anointed.”
The king was called “the anointed” because at his coronation the sacred oil was poured upon his head, by which he was consecrated to his office. This oil was a symbol of the Spirit of God, from whom the young monarch was supposed to receive the wisdom, dignity, and other gifts necessary for the discharge of his functions; as is beautifully brought out in Isa_11:1-4. This perfect description of a king, although it does not contain the name “Messiah,” had a great deal to do with shaping the meaning ultimately attached to the term, which was that of an ideal king, who should embody in himself all the attributes and achievements proper to the kingly office and thereby conduct the nation to the full realization of its destiny.
For this ideal personage the title “Messiah” is already used in the Second Psalm, though not elsewhere in the Old Testament; in the post-canonical writings of the Jews there occur more frequent instances of its use in this sense; and in our Lord's time “the Messiah” was the regular term for the expected deliverer, as is manifest from the pages of the Gospels.1 [Note: J. Stalker, The Christology of Jesus, 129.]
