NOTE. It is worthy of remark that while in chapters xl to lv the prophet has uniformly addressed Israel in the singular number as Jehovah's servant,1 he here drops that term of solidarity and discriminates within the nation itself between servants and outsiders. Only twice before has this plural designation been used, once of the native Israel (liv, 17), and once of converted foreigners becoming servants (lvi, 6) and so sharing the blessings of the "house of prayer for all peoples" (lvi, 7).

Like Ezekiel before him this prophet of the Second Isaiah is looking forward to a Temple rebuilt from ruins, but with a vastly enlarged ideal and with a more inward concept of what the restoration shall mean. To Ezekiel it meant a regained land and a reorganized ecclesiastical service; his ideals and plans were essentially priestly (Ezek. xl-xlviii). To the Second Isaiah it meant a worship befitting "new heavens and a new earth," a régime so much more spacious and generous that the narrow old order no more would come to mind (lxv, 17), and so much more intimate that no thought of ritual is raised. "Thus saith Jehovah, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: what manner of house will ye build unto me? and what place shall be my rest? For all these things hath my hand made, and so all these things came to be, saith Jehovah; but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word" (lxvi, 1, 2; cf. lvii, 15).

These words we may take as the sublime summing-up of a prophecy which, setting out with comfort to a redeemed and purified people (xl, 1, 2), encourages them to rise from their long ordeal of exile and avail themselves of the coming of Cyrus to start anew in a recolonized land, a rebuilt Jerusalem, and a newly founded Temple (xliv, 26-28). Here then is adumbrated the Temple that it is their mission to found as spacious as the universe, as deep laid as the regenerate heart of man. In reading this description one thinks of the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the

1 See above, p. 315.

first Temple, and of the wonderful spiritual experience that the nation has traversed since then. "But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded!" (1 Kings viii, 27= 2 Chron. vi, 18). The older relations with Jehovah are indeed to return; but clarified, enlarged, made inward and universal in the loyal spirit of the Servant of Jehovah.

To the prophet, by way of retrospect, all this traces back to a wonderful spiritual birth wherein a whole nation, as it were in a day and after a difficult gestation, is brought to a strange new life (lxvi, 7-9). What specific event, or events, the prophet had in mind we will not undertake to say; we recall, however, the mystic birth of the Immanuel child foretold by the First Isaiah and the actual birth announced,1 which we have regarded as symbolizing the uprise of a vital regenerating power in the saving remnant; we recall how little growth that power seems to have made when the crisis approached (xxvi, 17-19); how despairing King Hezekiah felt when it actually came because "the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth" (xxxvii, 3). Yet in spite of this difficult travail

perhaps in consequence of its miraculous deliverance from the Assyrian peril - the nation seems to have leaped to a faith and stamina which survived a century both of persecutions and of corrupting lures, growing all the while; until at length the Second Isaiah could in fervid terms assure them that they were redeemed and ready for a work wherein the nation could prevail in the world as the agency of divine enlightenment and salvation. Some epoch, it would seem, the prophet had in mind, when the nation was born to all this. Was it near the time when Isaiah the son of Amoz, after his long, thankless work, laid down his unfinished vision, leaving it ready, after suitable growth and ripening 1 See above, pp. 176, 177. 2 See above, pp. 182-184.

had intervened, to be taken up and completed by the later prophet whom we call the Second Isaiah? I am not reluctant to think so. On such line of spiritual birth and development as this recognizes, the Vision of Isaiah, because it is a vision rising beyond the local and temporal into eternal values, is unitary and homogeneous. The whole prophetic landscape is there.

NOTE. With this study of the Second Isaiah, the culmination of Old Testament prophecy, we close our consideration of the literary activities in Chaldea (see above, p. 257). One more work remaining, one of the greatest indeed of all, namely, the Book of Job, which is closely akin in spirit to the Servant of Jehovah in Isaiah, is reserved for consideration in a later connection, it being in fact the great classic of the completed canon; see below, pp 463 ft.

II. THE LITERATURE OF REESTABLISHMENT IN THE

HOLY LAND

We have seen how fruitful a seed plot the Chaldea of the exile proved, under the constructive faith of such men as Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Second Isaiah, for the production of that forward-looking literature which we associate with these names. In the material sense that literature was a preparation for the return from exile to the ancestral home, from bondage to freedom. In a spiritual sense it was far more momentous; for it was an indispensable step toward inspiring Israel to be a saving missionary light and power in the world. For this the return was a necessary prerequisite. "It is too light a thing," Jehovah had said to the Servant, "that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (Isa. xlix, 6). It was for this great object that the Jewish people's two generations of hidden experience in a land of splendid but sterile religion, during which time they became as it were

immune to the idolatrous disease germ which had so long infected them, was the divinely ordained provision.

Back to

For the literary activity that rose out of the experiences of the regained homeland, the situation and impulsion were very different. From a life of relative comfort Hardship and and prosperity in the richest land of the earth Disillusion the returned exiles must for many trying years enter the life and bear the hardships of virtual settlers and pioneers. For the Holy Land to which they so joyfully returned, having lain so long waste, was reverting to primitive conditions, and Jerusalem was filled with the chaos and rubbish of ruin.

When in 538 B.C. the edict of Cyrus came, permitting all who were so minded to return to Jerusalem and rebuild there the House of Jehovah (Ezra i, 2, 3 = 2 Chron. xxxvi, 23), a caravan numbering nearly fifty thousand, of all classes needed for reorganization (Ezra ii, 64), set out from Chaldea for the eight-hundred-mile journey homeward. The company, only a relatively small proportion of the Jewish people at large, was made up mostly of the younger and more energetic element, born in Chaldea, men who could bear the perils of the way and the toils of resettlement; men too of stanch and sterling faith who, responding to the enthusiastic summons of the Second Isaiah, had consecrated themselves to bear the vessels of Jehovah back to their ancient repository in Jerusalem. The undertaking, as had been promised, was auspicious. 'For," the prophet

had assured them, "ye shall not go out in haste, neither shall ye go by flight: for Jehovah will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rearward" (Isa. lii, 11, 12). And it was turning out even so. Monarch and people, natives and kinsfolk, joined in friendly and helpful ways to speed the journey.

As this book is concerned with the literature of the times, we must needs pass over the details of the history that

here supervenes,1 except as mention of it is necessary as a setting for the literature which the age produced. In 538 B. C., soon after their arrival at Jerusalem, the returned exiles made it their first duty to clear away the débris and erect the altar of burnt offering on the conjectured site of the former one (Ezra iii, 1, 2). It was not until 520 B. C., however, eighteen years later, that they took hold in downright earnest to build the Temple, and not until four years more, just seventy years after the destruction of the first one, that the Second Temple, destined to be the cultural center of Judaism until the time of Herod the Great (37 B.C. to A.D. 4), was dedicated (Ezra vi, 15, 16). The main reason of this delay it is not hard to guess. The people's zeal was chilled by disillusion. Setting out in the fervor of a large but foreshortened prophetic vision, they had not counted on the seeming shrinkage that is sure to come when an object of idealized imagination becomes an object of concrete sense perception. Yet to deal with such shrinkagekeeping the ideal strong and sound at the core of the real - was the essential discipline on which the emancipated people of Israel was now unwittingly embarked. It was a foretaste of the kind of experience that on a more developed scale a later generation encountered when Jesus came to challenge their recognizing faith. They had doubtless fed their awakened hopes on some such good fortune as Isaiah had portrayed in his sixtieth chapter, with visions of eager nations flocking to their light and bringing both pious homage and material prosperity. What they actually found was a demolished Temple, a ruined capital, a desolated countryside, a life of stern toil and poverty. It was a situation fitted to test their spiritual stamina and loyalty. The genuineness of their inner life, that stratum deeper than enthusiasm and

1 For a very interesting account of all this later Jewish history see Hunter, After the Exile," Edinburgh, 1890.

१९

2 See below, p. 531.