Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

5

and the grand Prophetic march of Moses,' furnish the grounds of hope. In the foreground of the future stands not the Ruler, or Conqueror, but the Servant' of God, gentle, purified, suffering—whether it be Cyrus whom He had anointed; or Jacob whom He had 2 chosen, His people with whom after all their affliction He was well pleased; or Jeremiah and the Prophetic order, the victim of their country's sins, led as a lamb to the 3 slaughter; or One, more sorrowful, more triumphant, more human, more divine, than any of these, the last and true fulfilment of the most spiritual hopes and the highest aspirations of the Chosen People. In the remoter horizon is the vision of a gradual amelioration of the whole " human race, to be accomplished not solely or chiefly by the seed of Israel, but by those outlying nations which were but just beginning to take their place in the world's history. In the strains of triumph which welcome the influx of these Gentile strangers, we recognise the prelude of the part which in the coming fortunes of the Jewish Church is to be played not only by Cyrus, and, if so be, Zoroaster, but by Socrates and Plato, by Alexander and by Cæsar. It has been truly observed that the new elements which Christendom received from the Greek, the Roman, and the Teutonic world were almost as important as those which it received from the Jewish race. Its European, as distinguished from its Asiatic features, form one of the main characteristics which raise it both above Judaism and Mahometanism. To have recognised and anticipated this truth is the rare privilege of the Evangelical Prophet.

This is the dawn of the new epoch of Jewish and of universal history; full of misgivings and doubts, such as have beset every great revolution in human opinions and institu

1 Isa. xli. 8; li. 2; lxiii. 11-14.

2 Ibid. xliv. 1, 28; xlv. 1; xlix. 3. Ibid. lii. 13; liii. 7. Comp. Jer. xi. 19.

Isa. liii. 1-12; Matt. viii. 17, xii. 18; Luke iv. 18; Acts viii. 32.

Isa. xlix 1, 6, 12; 1. 22, 23; lx. 1-22; lxi. 1-11.

[ocr errors]

tions. But in the chill of that new dawn, amidst the perplexities of that untried situation, amidst the ruins of those ancient empires, in the eager expectation of those unknown changes the first words which break the silence, and of which the strains echo through the whole of the next period of the history, and through its endless consequences, are those of the mighty and mysterious Teacher, Prophet and Psalmist both in one: the keynote not only of the revived and transformed Israel, but of the rising world of Asia and Europe, and of the Christendom of a still remoter future:--

1

Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.

The comfort is of that enduring kind, which is solid now as when it was first uttered. It is the expectation of constant, though unequal, progress towards perfection; the disappearance of present difficulties before the increasing light and energy of the fresh generations of mankind; the confidence that this continued advance is the cause of God Himself.

The voice of one that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the LORD;

Make straight in the desert a highway for our GOD. .”. . .
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain shall
be made low;

And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough

places plain; . . . .

They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings as eagles;

They shall run and not be weary;

They shall walk and not faint.

Isa. xl. 1, 2, 4, 31.

583

NOTE A.

ON ISAIAH XL.-LXVI.

I SUBJOIN very briefly the facts relating to the second portion of Isaiah, xl.-lxvi., which compel us to consider it apart from the earlier portion (i.—xxxv.).

1. Between these two portions a strong line of demarcation is drawn by the interposition of the historical chapters, xxxvi.—xxxix. Whatever be the date of the respective parts, there can be no doubt that they are entirely distinct compositions.

2. The style of the concluding portion, though in many respects similar to the earlier chapters, differs essentially in its ease and continuous flow.

3. The differences of language are variously stated by Orientalists. But by the most distinguished-such as Ewald and Gesenius -they are stated to be distinctly marked.

4. The subjects of thought which are prominent in the concluding division are new, if not in themselves, yet in the proportions which they occupy, such as the constant recurrence of the Servant of God,' and the glories of the enlarged Church of the future Jerusalem.

[ocr errors]

5. All the allusions presuppose that Jerusalem (not is to be, but) has been already destroyed; that the persons to be consoled (not will be, but) are already in exile (see the passages cited in Lecture XL. p. 577); that Babylon (not will be, but) is in the height of her power; and that Cyrus and his conquests are (not merely foreseen in some distant future, but) already well known.

6. Except in lvi. 9-lvii. 12 (which has all the appearance of an earlier fragment incorporated), there is no allusion to the peculiar customs of Palestine under the monarchy; and no references to the Assyrian invasion or the other historical circumstances, which mark the reigns of Hezekiah and of Manasseh.

7. A few parallels may be adduced from Micah's allusions to the

[ocr errors]

Captivity; but they differ in this material point, that Micah (iv. 10) speaks of it as still to come, Isaiah (xl. 2, xlvii. 1, xlviii. 14, 20) as already far advanced.

8. The continuous and elaborate style confirms the supposition that the book belongs to the period when, as we see in Ezekiel, the speaker and the actor were exchanged for the writer. (See Lecture XL.)

9. The order of the Books in the Babylonian Talmud confirms the supposition that there were believed to be in the Book of Isaiah portions of a date subsequent to Jeremiah and Ezekiel :-1. Jeremiah; 2. Ezekiel; 3. Isaiah; 4. The Twelve Minor Prophets.

10. In Ezra i. 1 it is not Isaiah, but Jeremiah, who is quoted as having foretold the deliverance by Cyrus; and this is the more remarkable when contrasted with the later version of the same events in Josephus (Ant. xi. 1, §2), who expressly cites Isaiah as the author of the predictions which induced the act of Cyrus.

11. The amalgamation of the two Prophets would be sufficiently explained, either by the well-known practice of Eastern scribes, of combining together two or more works, following each other in the same collection, or by the undoubted occasional likeness of style between the first and second portions.

12. Similar instances of agglomerating several works under the same name are to be found, probably in the Prophecies of Zechariah, certainly in the Psalter of David, and in the Twelve Minor Prophets (called in the Babylonian Talmud by the single name of the Fourth 'Later Prophet').

[ocr errors]

13. In Mark i. 2, 3, according to the best MSS., the Prophecies not only of Isa. xl. 3, but of Mal. iii. 1, are included under the name of 'Isaiah the Prophet '-an exact parallel to the amalgamation in question.

It is true that these peculiarities may be explained by the hypothesis of an ecstatic transportation of the earlier Prophet out of his own time into the middle of the next century. But such a hypothesis is without any other example in the Scriptures. Even granting the interpretation of the Book of Daniel and of the Apocalypse which makes those two books predict minutely historical events of the remotest future, yet in each case the position in which the

Prophet is placed is that of his own time-Daniel at Babylon, St. John at Patmos; whereas the Isaiah of the second portion (xl.— lxvi.) is altogether removed from the reign of Hezekiah or Manasseh, and the practical appeals of his prophetic office would be as unmeaning, if addressed to the Jews of that period, as they are full of instruction, when considered as addressed to the Jews of the period of the Captivity. The second portion of the Prophecies, as having been for so many ages incorporated with the first, and as partaking so largely of the style and spirit of Isaiah, can still be called by his name. But the essential connection of these Prophecies with the period of the Captivity is a fact which must equally remain, whatever opinion we form of their date or their author.

NOTE B.

ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE BOOKS OF THE

OLD TESTAMENT.

THE question raised in the preceding Note is connected with one of a more general character; namely, the apportionment of the dates and authorships of many of the Sacred Books.

One of the most striking differences between the existing histories of the Jewish people and those of Greece and Rome is their anonymous character. Whereas the Classical historians, almost without exception, claim their books for themselves, the Sacred historians, almost without exception, leave their names undisclosed. For a long time this was unperceived, owing to the groundless assumption that the subject of a book must necessarily be the author of it; and that therefore Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and Job must have written the books which bear their names, even although their own deaths are recorded therein. This mode of argument was confined to Sacred criticism. It was never imagined, in classical literature, that the Odyssey was written by Ulysses, or the Æneid by Æneas. It is now generally abandoned in regard to Sacred literature also, As in Jos. Ant. xi. 1, 2; Ecclus. xlviii. 24; Matt. iii. 3; Mark i. 2, 3; Luke iv. 17; Rom x. 16, 30.

« AnteriorContinuar »