for the remainder of the chapter, in which that class of transgressors are made prominent. The same judgments which destroyed the wicked should redeem the righteous, or in other words, that the purification of the church could be effected only by the excision of her wicked members.

29. From the final destruction of idolaters the Prophet now reverts to their present security and confidence in idols, which he tells them shall be put to shame and disappointment. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks or terebinths which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens which ye have chosen as places of idolatrous worship. As these are terms constantly employed to express the frustration of religious trust, and as groves and gardens are continually spoken of as chosen scenes of idol-worship (see, for example, ch. 65: 3. 66 17. Ezek. 6:13. Hos. 4: 13), there can be little doubt that both this verse and the one preceding have particular allusion to idolatry.

30. The mention of trees and gardens, as places of idolatrous worship, suggests a beautiful comparison, under which the destruction of the idolaters is again set forth. They who choose trees and gardens, in preference to God's appointed place of worship, shall themselves be like trees and gardens, but in the most alarming sense. For, in answer to the tacit question why they should be ashamed and confounded for their oaks and gardens, ye yourselves shall be like an oak or terebinth, fading, decaying, in its leaf or as to its leaf, and like a garden which has no water, a lively emblem, to an oriental reader, of entire desolation. Some writers understand the Prophet to allude to the terebinth when dead, on the ground that it never sheds its leaves when living; but according to Robinson and Smith (Bib. Res. vol. iii. p. 15), the terebinth or "butm is not an ever

green, as is often represented; its small, feathered, lancet-shaped leaves fall in the autumn and are renewed in the spring."

31. This verse contains a closing threat of sudden, total, instantaneous destruction to the Jewish idolaters, to be occasioned by the very things which they preferred to God, and in which they confided. And the strong, the mighty man, alluding no doubt to the unjust rulers of the previous context, shall become tow, an exceedingly inflammable substance, and his work, his idols, often spoken of in Scripture as the work of men's hands, shall become a spark, the means and occasion of destruction to their worshippers, and they shall burn both of them together, and there shall shall be no one quenching or to quench them. The frequent mention of idols as the work of men's hands, and the prominence given to idolatry in the immediately preceding context, seem to justify us in understanding the whole verse as a prediction that the very gods, in whom the strong men of Jerusalem now trusted, should involve their worshippers and makers with themselves in total, instantaneous, irrecoverable ruin.

CHAPTERS II, III, IV.

THESE chapters constitute the second prophecy, the two grand themes of which are the reign of the Messiah and intervening judgments on the Jews for their iniquities. The first and greatest of these subjects occupies the smallest space, but stands both at the opening and the close of the whole prophecy. Considered in relation to its subject, it may therefore be conveniently divided into three unequal parts. In the first, the

Prophet foretells the future exaltation of the church and the accession of the gentiles, ch. 2:1-4. In the second, he sets forth the actual condition of the church and its inevitable consequences, ch. 2 : 5—4 : 1. In the third, he reverts to its pure, safe, and glorious condition under the Messiah, ch. 4 : 2–6. The division of the chapters is peculiarly unfortunate, the last verse of the second and the first of the fourth being both dissevered from their proper context. As the state of things which this chapter describes could scarcely have existed in the prosperous reigns of Uzziah and Jotham or in the pious reign of Hezekiah, it is referred with much probability to the reign of Ahaz, when Judah was dependent on a foreign power and corrupted by its intercourse with heathenism. The particular grounds of this conclusion will appear in the course of the interpretation.

CHAPTER II.

THIS chapter contains an introductory prediction of the reign of the Messiah, and the first part of a threatening against Judah.

After a title similar to that in ch. 1: 1, the Prophet sees the church, at some distant period, exalted and conspicuous, and the nations resorting to it for instruction in the true religion, as a consequence of which he sees war cease and universal peace prevail, vs. 2-4.

These verses are found, with very little variation, in the fourth chapter of Micah (vs. 1-3), to explain which some suppose, that a motto or quotation has been accidentally transferred from the margin to the text of Isaiah; others, that both Prophets quote from Joel; others, that both quote from an older writer now unknown; others, that Micah quotes from Isaiah; others, that Isaiah quotes from Micah. This diversity

of judgment may at least suffice to show how vain conjecture is in such a case. The close connection of the passage with the context, as it stands in Micah, somewhat favors the conclusion that Isaiah took the text or theme of his prediction from the younger though contemporary Prophet. The verbal variations may be best explained, however, by supposing that they both adopted a traditional prediction current among the people in their day, or that both received the words directly from the Holy Spirit. So long as we have reason to regard both places as authentic and inspired, it matters little what is the literary history of either.

At the close of this prediction, whether borrowed or original, the Prophet suddenly reverts to the condition of the church in his own times, so different from that which had been just foretold, and begins a description of the present guilt and future punishment of Judah, which extends not only through this chapter but the next, including the first verse of the fourth. The part contained in the remainder of this chapter may be subdivided into two unequal portions, one containing a description of the sin, the other a prediction of the punishment.

The first begins with an exhortation to the Jews themselves to walk in that light which the gentiles were so eagerly to seek hereafter, v. 5. The Prophet then explains this exhortation by describing three great evils which the foreign alliances of Judah had engendered, namely, superstitious practices and occult arts; unbelieving dependence upon foreign wealth and power; and idolatry itself, vs. 6–8.

The rest of the chapter has respect to the punishment of these great sins. This is first described generally as humiliation, such as they deserved who humbled themselves to idols, and such as tended to the exclusive exaltation of Jehovah, both by contrast and by the display of his natural and moral attributes, vs. 9-11. This general threatening is then amplified in a detailed enumeration of exalted objects which should

be brought low, ending again with a prediction of Jehovah's exaltation in the same words as before, so as to form a kind of choral or strophical arrangement, vs. 12-17. The destruction or rather the rejection of idols, as contemptible and useless, is then explicitly foretold, as an accompanying circumstance of men's flight from the avenging presence of Jehovah, vs. 18-21. Here again the strophical arrangement reappears in the precisely similar conclusions of the nineteenth and twenty-first verses, so that the twenty-second is as clearly unconnected with this chapter in form, as it is closely connected with the next in sense.

1. This is the title of the second prophecy, ch. 2-4. The word, revelation or divine communication, which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw, perceived, received by inspiration, concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Word is here a synonyme of vision in ch. 11. For the technical use of word and vision in the sense of prophecy, see 1 Sam. 3: 1. Jer. 18: 18.

nations.

2. The prophecy begins with an abrupt prediction of the exaltation of the church, the confluence of nations to it, and a general pacification as the consequence, vs. 2-4. In this verse the Prophet sees the church permanently placed in a conspicuous position, so as to be a source of attraction to surrounding To express this idea, he makes use of terms which are strictly applicable only to the local habitation of the church under the old economy. Instead of saying, in modern phraseology, that the church, as a society, shall become conspicuous and attract all nations, he represents the mountain upon which the temple stood as being raised and fixed above the other mountains, so as to be visible in all directions. And it shall be (happen, come to pass, a prefatory formula of constant use in prophecy) in the end (or latter part) of the days (i. e. hereafter) the mountain of Jehovah's house (i. e. mount Zion, in the widest