If the great prophecy of Israel's redemption and glorification now included in the Book of Isaiah had come down to us as an independent and anonymous document, no reasonable doubt could have been entertained as to the time at which it was written. Internal evidence would be regarded as fixing its date with remarkable precision towards the close of the Babylonian Exile.
Israel is in exile. Jehovah has surrendered His people to their enemies. They are suffering the punishment of their sins. They are being tried in the furnace of affliction. Jerusalem has drunk to the dregs the cup of Jehovah's fury. The daughter of Zion lies prostrate in the dust as a mourner; the chains of her captivity are about her neck. The mother city of Zion is a barren exile, bereaved of her children, and wandering to and fro. Her children are scattered from their home. Jehovah's wife is divorced from Him, and her children are sold into slavery for their iniquities. Jerusalem itself is in ruins; the cities of Judah are deserted; the land is desolate; the Temple is a heap of ashes. The situation is summed up in the pathetic words: “Thy holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion is become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned with fire; and all our pleasant things are laid waste.” Babylon is the scene of Israel's captivity. Babylon is the oppressor who holds Zion's children in thrall. Babylon has been the agent in executing Jehovah's judgment, and she has performed her task with a malicious pleasure. The Exile has already lasted long. It seems to have become permanent. Zion fancies herself forgotten and forsaken. Jehovah sleeps. His wonderful works of old time are a memory and tradition only. Deliverance from the tyrant's iron grasp seems hopeless. The centuries during which Israel possessed its land are fading into a mere moment in the remoteness of the past. The weary decades of exile are lengthening out into an eternity of punishment. Faith and hope are strained to the point of breaking. But deliverance is at hand. Jerusalem's servitude is accomplished; satisfaction has been made for her iniquity. The decree has gone forth for pardon, redemption, restoration.
1. In order to understand the prophecy, it will be necessary to sketch in outline the course of history, in so far as it affected Judah, since the period of Isaiah's lifetime.
Sennacherib was succeeded in 681 by Esarhaddon; Esarhaddon by Asshurbanipal in 668, under whose reign of forty-three years the literature and art of ancient Assyria reached their greatest perfection. But after the death of Asshurbanipal in 626, Assyria rapidly declined: in 625 the great rival of Nineveh, Babylon, through the enterprise of Nabopolassar, emerged finally from dependence; and in or about 607 Nabopolassar, allying with the Medes under Cyaxares, laid the proud capital of Sargon and Sennacherib in ruins. The supremacy exercised hitherto by Assyria now passed to Babylon, and was retained by it till 538. Nabopolassar was succeeded by Nebuchadnezzar (606-561), who greatly strengthened and extended the Babylonian Empire, and beautified and largely rebuilt his capital, Babylon. In the history of Judah, the great turning-point was Jehoiakim's fourth year, 604 b.c., the year in which Nebuchadnezzar won his decisive victory over Egypt at Carchemish, on the upper course of the Euphrates. After submitting to the Chaldræans for three years, Jehoiakim rebelled. The Jews went into exile in two detachments: the flower of the nation (including, amongst others, the prophet Ezekiel), under Jehoiakim's son, Jehoiachin, in 599; the rest, after the revolt of Zedekiah, in 588, when the city was taken and the Temple burnt, and its vessels were carried away to Babylon.
The exiles must have formed a considerable community in Babylonia. The texts which speak of the numbers of those carried into captivity (2Ki_24:14-16; Jer_52:28-30) are indeed imperfect, and apparently also in some disorder; but that they formed a numerous body is evident from the fact that upwards of forty-two thousand males, irrespective of women and dependants, returned with Zerubbabel (Ezr_2:2; Ezr_2:64 f.), and many, as we know, remained behind. In a community as large as this the life and society of Judah would in great measure be perpetuated; some kind of organization would be needed; and the moral and religious condition of the exiles would be substantially what it had been in the closing years of the monarchy. Thus Ezekiel refers to the “elders” in exile with him as still forming a distinct class (Eze_8:1; Eze_14:1; Eze_20:1), and alludes to the idolatrous tendencies still prevalent in their midst (Eze_20:38-39). At first the exiles were unsettled by prophets, who raised their hopes by delusive promises of a speedy return to Palestine: Jeremiah shortly after 599 addresses to them a letter (Jer_29:1-32), in which he assures them that the seventy years of Babylonian dominion must expire before their hopes can be realized, and exhorts them to rest satisfied meanwhile with their condition, to “build houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them,” in the land of their captivity. Circumstances left the exiles no option but to follow the advice of Jeremiah; and many, in consequence, grew so attached to their new home, that when, sixty years afterwards, permission was granted to leave it, they did not care to avail themselves of it.1 [Note: S. R. Driver, Isaiah: His Life and Times, 135.]
2. The external history of the Babylonian Empire from its destruction of Jerusalem to its own overthrow by Cyrus can be summarized briefly. Nebuchadnezzar, upon the conclusion of the war against Judah, attacked Tyre (585), which had been one of the States that encouraged Zedekiah in his rebellion. The siege lasted thirteen years, and ended without the city being captured. He next invaded Egypt (567), and penetrated into it, but does not appear to have effectively subjugated the country. He was succeeded in 561 by Amilmarduk (the Evil-merodach of the Old Testament). This king displayed clemency to the captive Jehoiachin by releasing him from prison; but little else is recorded of him, and he died by violence after a reign of only two years. The author of his death was Nergal-shar-usar (Neriglissar), who succeeded him, and whose reign was also short. He was followed by Labashi-marduk (Labassarachos), a youth who was murdered after occupying the throne for less than a year. His successor was Nabunaid (Nabonidus) (556-538), who was more interested in the building of temples than in the cares of empire, and who left the administration of the State largely in the hands of his son Bel-shar-usar (the Belshazzar of the Old Testament). Early in his reign the Manda, who had been instrumental in the overthrow of Assyria, and who had subjugated, and become amalgamated with, the Medes, had been conquered by Cyrus, the ruler of Anshan (a little State in N.W. Elam), their king Astyages being betrayed by his own troops (549). After this success Cyrus, who now called himself king of the Parsu (or Persians), conquered Crœsus of Lydia and captured Sardis (546); and he then menaced Babylon. He advanced upon it in 538 and entered it without resistance, Nabunaid being taken within his capital. Thus Babylon fell, some fifty years after it had brought about the fall of Jerusalem, so fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremiah delivered sixty-six years previously (Jer_25:12).
3. We thus see how great is the difference in historical standpoint between Isaiah and Deutero-Isaiah. Isaiah wrote in the latter half of the eighth century b.c., during the period of Assyrian ascendancy, when Shalmaneser, Sargon, and Sennacherib were threatening or attacking Israel, Judah, and other small Syrian States. By far the greater number of his prophecies have therefore a direct or indirect bearing on the relation between Judah and Assyria. On the other hand, the standpoint of at least the greater part of Deutero-Isaiah is the Babylonian Exile, which, begun by Nebuchadnezzar, was now nearing its end in the reign of Nabonidus, the last of the kings of Chaldæa. The precise moment at which the prophecy opens cannot be determined; but it must, in any case, have been prior to 538, and, as Isa_41:25 implies a date subsequent to the union of the Medes with the Persians in 549, it will be limited to the interval between these years, during which Cyrus was pursuing his career of conquest in the north and north-west of Asia. The prophet's eye marks him in the distance as the coming deliverer of his nation: he stimulates the flagging courage of his people by pointing to his successes, and declares that he is God's appointed agent both for the overthrow of the Babylonian Empire and for the restoration of the chosen people to Palestine.
4. The place of writing can hardly have been other than Babylonia. The prophet speaks in the presence of a dominant heathenism. Idolatry in all its grossness and folly surrounds him. He has watched the infatuated idolaters carrying their helpless gods in solemn procession; he has seen these contemptible idols manufactured, and set up in the temples; he has watched their besotted worshippers at their vain devotions. All this points naturally to Babylonia; and when we find the prophet in closest touch and sympathy with the exiles there; when we observe how fully acquainted he is with their circumstances, their character, their sins, their hopes, their fears, the impression is confirmed; and when we note how the prophet unites himself with those exiles in confession, thanksgiving, and earnest pleading, we can scarcely doubt that he was himself one of them.
